Word: azerbaijan
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...tackle Iran's domestic problems. Chief among them: the revolt by the Azerbaijanis in northwestern Iran that has exacerbated unrest among Iran's other minorities, including the Kurds in the west, the seminomadic Qashqais in the south and the Baluchis in the southeast. All of Azerbaijan now appears to be virtually under the control of forces loyal to Ayatullah Seyed Kazem Sharietmadari, Khomeini's chief rival (see following story). Late in the week, local air force and army units joined in a huge demonstration in favor of Sharietmadari in Tabriz (pop. 500,000), capital of East Azerbaijan...
...largest ethnic minority, revolted against Khomeini's rule shortly after a referendum had made him a virtual dictator for life. The rebels are followers of Ayatullah Kazem Sharietmadari, who is both Khomeini's leading religious rival and Iran's foremost Muslim moderate. They demanded autonomy for Azerbaijan...
...shootings prompted a march by 30,000 Sharietmadari followers in Tabriz, the capital of Azerbaijan province, and the march quickly turned into a full-scale revolt. The insurgents seized control of government buildings, the governor's mansion and the local headquarters of the national radio and television station. They sent Khomeini's officials fleeing with the admonition: "You return, you die!" The rebels were joined by local units of the Iranian army and air force and the police, in both Tabriz and the nearby towns in the rugged mountains of the western part of Iran, near the borders...
Khomeini also reacted cautiously, pleading that Iranians cease fighting among themselves and concentrate "on the confrontation with the U.S." But he acted quickly to forestall trouble in the province of Kurdistan, to the south of Azerbaijan. The 4 million Kurds, who revolted unsuccessfully against Tehran's rule last summer, had boycotted the referendum too. Late last week Khomeini's revolutionary guards that were supposed to pull out of Kurdistan stayed on. The Ayatullah also faces potential trouble among Iran's other minorities, particularly the Baluchi tribesmen in the southeast, Turkomans in the northeast and the Arabs...
...flourish, in the Communist world. The Soviet Union is now home to the world's fifth largest Muslim population (after Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). Officials in Moscow are notably fearful that the currents of fervor sweeping Iran might cross the border and infect the Islamic populations of Azerbaijan, Turkmen and other republics on the Soviet Union's southern tier. More than half of the estimated 11 million people in China's huge western province of Xinjiang (Sinkiang) are Muslim; a heavy propaganda campaign against the "opiate of the masses" has failed to prevent the faithful from performing their daily...