Teaching Comparative

Evaluating

Here I go again, trying to evaluate news reporting and then trying to figure out whether or how the reported events relate to a study of comparative politics.

Sunday morning, I read the al Jazeera report, excerpted below, about a bombing in southeastern Iran and gunfights between Iranian police and "armed bandits."

Iran police clash with armed group

"Clashes have broken out between police and an armed group after a bomb exploded in southeast Iran, near to where a car bomb killed at least 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday...

"Responsibility for Wednesday's attack was claimed by a Sunni group, Jundallah [God's soldiers], which Iran has said is linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
 
"Tehran has blamed Jundallah for past killings in the area bordering Pakistan...

"Iran has accused Britain and the US of supporting ethnic minority rebels operating in sensitive border areas in an attempt to destabilise the country...

"Iranian officials said five of those behind Wednesday's bombing, including the key suspect, were arrested by security forces.
 
"One Iranian agency quoted an unnamed official as saying the detained men had received training from the US in order to create ethnic divisions in Iran.
 
"The upsurge in unrest in Sistan-Baluchestan follows violence in Iran's oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan, which has a minority Arab population."


I hadn't seen anything about these events in any of the other sources I usually pay attention to, but like everyone else I have my limitations.

So I went looking for other reports of the unrest. A search of Google news found over 400 articles. The ones I looked at were short and seemed based on the Fars (Iranian news agency) reports. After all, who stations reporters in Iranian towns near the Pakistani border?


Reuters and The Australian essentially reported the same things al Jazeera did: Blast, clashes in southern Iran

"CLASHES broke out between police and an armed group following a bomb explosion in southeast Iran overnight, the Fars news agency has reported...

"Responsibility for the Wednesday attack was claimed by a shadowy Sunni group, Jundallah (God's soldiers), which Iran has said is linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network."

Zee News (India) reported that
Iran summons Pakistan envoy over bomb blasts

"Iran today said it had summoned the Pakistani Ambassador following two bomb blasts in its southeastern border city of Zahedan, one of which killed 11 elite Revolutionary Guards...

"After the meeting with Ambassador Shafkat Saeed, the two countries resolved to form a committee to improve security over their shared borders..."


Should we pay much attention to these events in teaching about Iran? Perhaps not unless there is more unrest. But we shouldn't forget them either. But how are they a part of studying and teaching about comparative politics?

The most valuable reminder about Iran and about news reports I found while following this story came from an op-ed piece by Ewen MacAskill in the Guardian (UK) titled, A better way to meddle. [my emphases added]

"Iran is far from being a homogenous state, and the leadership in Tehran is fearful of unrest. Persians only make up 51% of the population. Azeris, some of whom have been pushing to break away, make up 24% of the population. The Kurds, many of whom look at Iraqi Kurdistan and dream again of an independent Kurdish nation, account for 7%. Arabs, in the economically and strategically sensitive southwest, make up 3% of the population. And there are a host of others, including Baluchi, populous in the province where the bombings took place, who make up 2% of the population.

"The extent of the unrest is hard for Western reporters to substantiate. Getting a visa for Tehran can be hard enough. Once there, getting permission to visit some of these areas is extremely rare."

Labels: demographics, Iran

posted by Ken Wedding @ 10:55 AM