HISTORYAT A GLANCE |
THE REVOLUTION(Part 3.)
These measures ended further protests.
The Kurdish uprising proved more deep-rooted, serious, and durable. The
Kurdish leaders were disappointed that the Revolution had not brought them the
local autonomy they had long desired. Scattered fighting began in March 1979
between government and Kurdish forces and continued after a brief cease-fire;
attempts at negotiation proved abortive. One faction, led by Ahmad Muftizadeh,
the Friday prayer leader in Sanandaj, was ready to accept the limited
concessions offered by the government, but the Kurdish Democratic Party, led by
Abdol-Rahman Qasemlu, and a more radical group led by Shaykh Ezz ad Din Husaini
issued demands that the authorities in Tehran did not feel they could accept.
These included the enlargement of the Kordestan region to include all
Kurdish-speaking areas in Iran, a specified share of the national revenue for
expenditure in the province, and complete autonomy in provincial administration.
Kurdish was to be recognized as an official language for local use and for
correspondence with the central government. Kurds were to fill all local
government posts and to be in charge of local security forces. The central
government would remain responsible for national defense, foreign affairs, and
central banking functions. Similar autonomy would be granted other ethnic
minorities in the country. With the rejection of these demands, serious fighting
broke out in August 1979. Khomeini, invoking his powers as commander in chief,
used the army against other Iranians for the first time since the Revolution. No
settlement was reached with the Kurds during Bazargan's prime ministership.
Because the Bazargan government lacked the necessary security forces to
control the streets, such control passed gradually into the hands of clerics in
the Revolutionary Council and the IRP, who ran the revolutionary courts and had
influence with the Pasdaran, the revolutionary committees, and the club-wielding
hezbollahis,
or "partisans of the party of God." The clerics deployed these forces to curb
rival political organizations. In June the Revolutionary Council promulgated a
new press law and began a crackdown against the proliferating political press.
On August 8, 1979, the revolutionary prosecutor banned the leading left-wing
newspaper, Ayandegan. Five days later hezbollahis broke up a Tehran rally called
by the National Democratic Front, a newly organized left-of-center political
movement, to protest the Ayandegan closing. The Revolutionary Council then
proscribed the front itself and issued a warrant for the arrest of its leader.
Hezbollahis also attacked the headquarters of the Fadayan organization and
forced the Mojahedin to evacuate their headquarters. On August 20, forty-one
opposition papers In June and July 1979, the Revolutionary Council also passed a number of
major economic measures, whose effect was to transfer considerable private
sector assets to the state. It nationalized banks, insurance companies, major
industries, and certain categories of urban land; expropriated the wealth of
leading business and industrial families; and appointed state managers to many
private industries and companies.
were proscribed. On September 8, the two largest newspaper
chains in the country, Kayhan and Ettelaat, were expropriated and transferred to
the Foundation for the Disinherited.
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