In 1969, the French geographer Francois Balsan wrote the book Wondrous Baluchestan; he had previously written about Baluchestan in The Mysterious Mound. In fact, his books and articles were the first reports on Baluchestan in the West, and in recognition of these services to the French Academy of Geography, Balsan received the Legion of Honor medal. In the text of the medal's bestowal, he was commended for introducing unknown regions. In other words, around the 1950s, Baluchestan was still a region as unknown to the world as the heart of Africa or the depths of the Amazon rainforests — places where one could still find human beings living in utter ignorance of and disconnection from the surrounding world. Of course, this was not so extraordinary, because even the awareness of the people of the mother country — which considered Baluchestan part of its own body — was, until quite recently, not much greater. The central government took notice of these people's condition only when it was confronted with the Goldsmit arbitration overseeing the annexation of vast eastern territories to British India. It was as if the people of this land and the fate of their territory had held no place in the minds of the Qajar rulers, who would not trouble themselves with any concern or effort. Only when a portion of their fiefdom was about to be seized by another did they bestir themselves to the extent of voicing displeasure to the Eminent Embassy. It is no accident that Baluch people still frighten their children with "Qajar" rather than with anything else, and when they grow exasperated with us — the rest of the inhabitants of the Iranian plateau — they hurl a "Gajar" our way, meaning all that the Qajars were reputed for.
Baluchestan is astonishing: on the one hand, it has gathered together everything that all Iranians possess, and on the other, it is so distant and different that when you arrive there, everything seems foreign — as foreign as if you had entered another country and culture entirely. Baluchestan has always been far from us, so far that we had nearly forgotten that such a land and such a people also live within our country. Setting aside the troubled years of the Qajar era, it was not until the reign of the first Pahlavi that any attention of a governing nature was directed at this corner of Iran. Though this attention, too, was of the kind that involves dispatching soldiers and mounting military campaigns to dismantle the local rule of Dost Mohammad Khan Barkazahi, because it was followed by the establishment of security, construction, and development, the Baluch do not recall it with particular bitterness. Even Dost Mohammad Khan himself, who in the calculus of Reza Shah's order had been rebellious, consistently maintained in all his conversations and negotiations with the British that Baluchestan was part of Iran — that if the Shah gained power and established order, he would strive for its prosperity, and therefore it had no need for the attention and favor of foreigners. With this very outlook, he managed to keep Baluchestan free from the presence and influence of British India. The Baluch are undoubtedly of the same root as all of us Iranians. Perhaps over all these centuries of dwelling at the gateway to India and in the neighborhood of Arabia, they have come to resemble their southern and eastern neighbors somewhat in dress, dialect, and appearance — but they remain more similar to and more faithful custodians of the founders of ancient Iran than any of the rest of us. By way of comparison, if the measure is the resemblance to and cultural inheritance from our Iranian ancestors, it would be well to stand each of us beside the stone reliefs and statues surviving from the Achaemenid, Arsacid, and Sasanian eras to see whether anyone more closely resembles these founding forebears than the Baluch. If you place a Baluch man beside the statue of the Parthian prince kept in the Iran Bastan Museum, an observer can attest that the living model for the statue is this Baluch man, athletic and draped in Baluchi garb. The same is true of
all the stone relief figures of the Arsacid and Sasanian periods. It was, in fact, the Sasanians who dispatched the Baluch on a national mission from the vicinity of the Gilani and Taleshi peoples to this side of the land. The policy of sending purebred Iranian tribes — who would be both guardians of Iranian culture and formidable warriors — was a foundational policy of Iran's sovereigns throughout all the years of governance on the Iranian plateau. From the dispatch of the Scythians of Central Asia to present-day Sistan in the era of Cyrus, to the settlement of Kurdish Kurmanji families in northern Khorasan in the era of Reza Shah — all are the continuation of one policy: the vigilant defense of sensitive and fragile geographical and cultural borders by the most Iranian of Iranians. The history of Iran shows that in the tempest of events that has ceaselessly battered and ground Iran, this policy has been far more effective than central government military campaigns in preserving geographical and cultural frontiers. The living exemplar of this policy is the Baluch and Baluchestan. Although in recent years, murmurings and claims have been raised by some Baluch and non-Baluch regarding Baluchestan's past or future in separation from Iran, all archaeological, linguistic, cultural, and social evidence speaks in a thousand tongues of the bond between this people and this land and the body of Iran. These murmurings, too, if properly heard and understood, are partly due to waves of identity-seeking from the Indian subcontinent and partly due to the indifference of us and our governments during these years of modernity.
The Baluch, who in the era of Qobad I and Khosrow Anushirvan were able, through their presence in the southeastern territories, to either absorb or drive back the Dravidians of Indian descent into the subcontinent, have not only admirably fulfilled this national duty but have managed to adorn the entire Indian subcontinent and the Pamir-Hindu Kush plateau with Iranian elements and markers through their influence and lineage. If Iranian elements can be found from Indochina to Balkh and Ferghana, it is partly thanks to the efforts of these Baluch warriors. Nader Shah would not have reached India had the Baluch not guided him and escorted him through the Bolan Pass. The coasts of Makran would not have remained under Iran's dominion had Dost Mohammad Khan bowed before the British. These people, settled in that corner of our land, who through all the centuries past have shown devotion and valor, have safeguarded the land of Iran and, with humility, contentment, and kindness, have uttered not a word of complaint — yet today they do not live at the same standard as other Iranians. The highest rate of youth deprived of education, the lowest levels of literacy, healthcare, and cultural and athletic per capita — these are the lot of today's Baluchestan. The vast land of Baluchestan still has the lowest population density per area and the greatest distance between inhabited points. If the ratio of urban population in the national average has surpassed the rural population — and this is regarded as evidence of governmental attention and development — Baluchestan, with its rural population exceeding its urban, stands as testimony to its exclusion from this trajectory of development.
Contemporary development in Baluchestan has still not managed to close the economic, social, and cultural gap between this region and other parts of the homeland. Centuries of remoteness and ignorance and the absence of any trace of state-built infrastructure in past centuries — unlike other population centers of the country — have turned this region into a deep well of diverse needs that the locust-swarms of aid that governments have sent there since the onset of modernization cannot fill, and that have still not managed to remedy any of the fundamental afflictions of this people. Yet in recent years, all those who have traveled to this land have been so awestruck by its landscapes, its nature, and the warmth of its people that they have been compelled to overturn the mental cliches they held about this region and its inhabitants — cliches fabricated by television and cinema. The behavior of television and cinema in past years — especially the last forty years — is testimony to the sloppy and careless gaze of the establishment, intellectuals, and artists upon this region and its people. A region that should, like other areas in need of development, be at the center of the government's attention until its basic needs are met, has been abandoned in the ethnic and political rivalries of planners and policymakers at the national level. And a people whose representatives in the central government can be counted on the fingers of one hand must extract the funds they need for development from the jaws of the powerful lobbies of other, more privileged ethnic groups — something that typically does not happen; the Baluch do not possess the ferocity to wrestle with others over such interests. He lets it go and walks away, sinks back into his contentment that borders on poverty, and watches us as we carry dozens of steel mills and tile factories to Yazd and Isfahan and Tabriz and Mashhad. For years, for centuries, he has watched with the same gaze as we stuff our sacks with the wealth of this land. Why should he not endure these years too? If nothing at all reaches him, he says nothing.
Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, in his encounter with the Baluch, aptly likens them to the nature of Baluchestan. They resemble their palm trees and their camels: patient and proud, despite the harshness of the environment and the roughness of the camel driver. Let us pray they do not harbor resentment and that the cup of their patience does not overflow — otherwise, we too will find ourselves in the company of those same Qajars and Mongols whose memory of the torment they inflicted still occupies the Baluch mind. Today, the development of the Makran coast is in vogue. Capital and projects are being directed there, numerous projects are being defined, and various investors are traveling to Chabahar and Konarak. Indians and Chinese repeatedly speak of their future investments in the port of Chabahar, and even the United States — in support of its ally Afghanistan and to guarantee that country's foreign trade — has exempted this Iranian port from its sanctions at the height of its confrontation with Iran. It appears that the future of government investment in the Makran coast is very bright. One can only hope that this region does not, like Assaluyeh, Kharg, and many other areas, fall victim to the government's sloppiness and indifference and be lost — especially when we observe the Baluch people's silence and acquiescence in the face of what has been done to them, we have every right to be fearful. The concerns are serious regarding the hasty pace of development in this coastal region. While for years Baluchestan has been outside the orbit of national and international investment, it has suddenly, over a short period and out of geopolitical necessities and rivalries, become the target of unrestrained attention with numerous and in many cases contradictory plans. These interventions in the nature and resources of this region — in the effective absence of its indigenous inhabitants, who are the Baluch — lay the groundwork for deep inequalities that are themselves the seeds of future conflicts and challenges. The numerous plans for transferring water from the Sea of Oman to the Sistan and Khorasan regions, which will inevitably result in salt accumulation on the shores of Chabahar, threaten the ecology and fragile equilibrium of the Sea of Oman. The port transit projects from Chabahar to Afghanistan and Central Asia have been so overblown that just recently, the entire urban shoreline of Chabahar was nearly dried up and converted into a cargo dock between two large piers — Shahid Kalantari and Shahid Beheshti — and cost-benefit considerations in constructing a freight railway were about to deprive the city of its future development area. These two examples, alongside the desalination plants, workers' settlements, steel mills, and petrochemical plants slated for these coasts, when combined with the prevailing tradition of rent-seeking development in our country, darken the picture of future development — especially when the Baluch, the inhabitants of this region, are still denied many of their rights as second-class citizens.
One example pertinent to macro-planning of this kind can be seen in the restrictions on electing capable and courageous representatives to parliament and government. All the usual vetting processes become more stringent when it comes to Baluchestan, and this, for a people who — owing to that same multidimensional poverty — can scarcely find among themselves an expert who is capable, courageous, and familiar with the fiercely competitive environment of the capital, constitutes a double hardship and, of course, a double deprivation. In many cases, those who represent these people in parliament and government are neither worthy nor trustworthy representatives, and do not embody the dignity, humility, and honor of their constituents. It is therefore not surprising if a representative goes through all four years of his term without once delivering a speech from the parliamentary podium, or if somewhere his fury so ignites that he shames both himself and his people, or if he busies himself mostly with fixing things for this or that capitalist or socio-religious authority of the province at the center, rather than pursuing the important affairs of the beleaguered people of Baluchestan. This ill-fated collusion between the vetter and the elected, and the restrictions on appointments from among this people to national responsibilities, have caused geographical isolation to compound into a kind of personal and social isolation as well — so that the Baluch internalizes all his problems, protests, and words and, like the seething Taftan volcano, becomes a cauldron of inner turmoil that rarely finds the opportunity for expression. Only occasionally, through a heartfelt conversation, can one become aware of the magnitude of this discrimination — as when, somewhere, one of the prominent Baluch figures told a high-ranking official: "They did not consider us worthy of even helping in the war; we were at least fit to be killed for the homeland." And this is no idle remark. The head of the country's Cultural Heritage Organization during the reform years recounted, on the authority of one of Iran's diplomats in Tanzania, that at the outbreak of war, a throng of people appeared at the door of the Iranian embassy requesting passports to come to Iran and fight against Iraq. They said: "We are the Baluch of Tanzania; we came to this land decades ago. We consider ourselves Iranian. Give us the chance to defend Iran." Recalling these accounts brings a lump to the throat — what have we done and what are we doing to a people so patriotic and grateful? What kind of a deal is this that is being made with them regarding the rights they have to their lives and their land? Of course, the behavior of us and our governments — which are not separate from us — is the same as what we do to Khuzestan and Kurdistan and essentially everywhere that has no seat at the table of power. But the people are the dependents of the state, and even if there be weakness or fault in them, the duty of compassionate, caring attention — and particularly positive discrimination — is not lifted from the shoulders of the state. The consequence of our actions will remain in the memory of such patient peoples, just as the memory of the Qajar endures.
Despite all the carelessness and sloppiness that governments in these years have shown in allocating resources and increasing social capital and human dignity in Baluchestan, and despite the unkind cliches that have formed in the minds of many Iranians about this people and this land — on the basis of which they sometimes say something, in jest or in earnest, to a Baluch traveler that churns his stomach — and even despite the flood of films that artists make or act in, where the Baluch are depicted like the Native Americans in Hollywood Westerns as impediments to development and threats to the country's security and well-being (every film made in cinema about the Baluch or set in Baluchestan, from Kimiai's "Baluch" to the latest films such as Hatamikia's "Bodyguard" and Narges Abyar's "The Night the Moon Was Full"), still the Baluch appreciate and do not forget even the smallest kindnesses and attentions. In these past few years, several independent groups — unendowed with the abundant resources of the government, unbidden by anyone, and with no desire to display their services anywhere — have traveled to the most remote corners of Baluchestan, lived among these people, and sometimes lent a hand in building a school, a health clinic, or a music center, bringing joy to the hearts of a few Baluch children, adolescents, and young people and transforming their worlds. Not long ago, an Irish woman who had visited the coast of Chabahar found the beach of the village of Ramin suitable for surfing and spent some time there engaged in this sport. Today, the adolescents and youth of this village surf, and surfboards can be seen on the beach of this village. In this issue, we recount several such efforts — which, as it happens, have been carried out by honorable Iranian women — as a seedling of hope planted in our hearts: the promise that our future in Baluchestan and throughout Iran may be different, so that in a shared existence, amid all our differences and conflicts of interest — which are human nature — we remain mindful of one another, and do not forget that not everyone is equally powerful. Sometimes, in walking together, one must stop so that another may catch up; sometimes a hand must be extended so that a friend may cross over a stone. The author hopes that everyone who reads these words and sees these images will pause a moment to reflect, and consider what he or she can do to make the lives of these noble people in that slender province a little better, and to bring to that place a little of what we in these more fortunate regions enjoy — even if that benefit takes the form of a single fine work of architecture for a private individual or a government institution. The irony is that in nearly all such experiences among the many construction projects of this region, the fruit that has reached their hands has been either unripe or overripe. This is not the right of our people.
The Cemetery of the Seventy Mullas, located on the eastern slope of Mount Taftan, was once the site of meditation, concentration, and worship by a number of mystics in the distant past who, following the tradition of their Buddhist counterparts in Bamiyan, chose the silence of the mountains, and were ultimately buried at that same site. Today, this place can be found in a village of the same name in the Mirjaveh district, near the Pakistani border. Photo by Saeed Bohlouli