(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - As recently as a few days ago, BBC-Persian and Voice of America as well as the Saudi funded Al-Arabiyeh network embarked on broadcasting especial programmes, in which the UK-based anti-Iranian terrorist group known as al-Ahwazi was the main theme of propagation.
The anti-Iranian terrorist group al-Ahwazi has launched fresh operations with the help of some western governments including Britain to destabilize southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan.
The al-Ahwazi group, whose remnants had to escape Iran after their main supporter Saddam Hussain was toppled in neighboring Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion of the country in March 2003, is comprised of communist, nationalist, socialist and Salafi groups, whom despite ideological and nominal differences are united around one goal and one strategy; which is to topple the government and separate Khuzestan from the rest of the country through armed conflict.
Khuzestan is the petroleum rich and ethnically diverse province of southwestern Iran and for three decades it has experienced bloody attacks carried out by armed insurgent groups known collectively as the al-Ahwazis.
Al-Ahwazi members were born in 1980, soon after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. They were inspired by the ruling Ba’ath regime in neighboring Iraq at the time, and they had already carried out a series of attacks in the province even before Saddam unleashed his military on Iran and imposed an 8-year war on the country.
Soon after the war broke out on September 1980, the Iraqi army occupied parts of Khuzestan and advanced to an area 15 kilometers from the capital city of Ahwaz.
The al-Ahwazis, known in Iran as the “Khalqe Arab” launched bomb and short-range mortar attacks inside the city of Ahwaz to facilitate a takeover by the invading Iraqi army. 16000 residents of Khuzestan died during the war, 12000 of them ethnic Arabs.
After the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Saddam founded “Arab Front for the Liberation of Ahwaz in Iraq”, whose main concern was to separate the Iranian province of Khuzestan.
After their god-father Saddam was overthrown, the al-Ahwazis faced a serious predicament. Desperate for support, they now had to look beyond the borders of Iraq, and in the distance they saw two allies, the deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the executed dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya. And the Khalq-e Arab terrorists turned to Egypt for support.
The al-Ahwazi groups have committed numerous crimes against the Iranian targets in the past 30 years, among them bomb attacks in public places, abductions that led to murder, assassinations, kidnapping for ransom, shooting at tourist and blowing up oil pipelines. Thousands of people have been killed or injured, as a result of their actions.
News channels like the BBC, VOA and some Arab funded channels including Al Arabiyeh are among several other networks tasked with portraying terrorist groups like the al Ahwazi as freedom fighters, and this is while that the same networks are largely turning a blind eye on several freedom-seeking movements like in Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where people are increasingly mobilized against the countries’ despotic regimes.
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