Because of the destruction of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war which destroyed Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province the other border provinces, and the aftercoming ignorance of the regime’s officials to rebuild these provinces, there is no room for life and no possibility for it to flourish. But the tragedy had just begun. The Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and other organizations of the regime pursued nefarious goals and sinister plans for this part of Iran.
Policies that led to the destruction of the environment and added to the devastation caused by this illegal war and lead to poverty and unemployment for the indigenous people of this province.
While most of the facilities and Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemical resources are in this province. last year, the protests of the deprived people of Ghizaniyeh district of Ahvaz, with 83 villages and 250,000 inhabitants, due to the lack of drinking water, raised the question and wonder of many local and foreign media, that how the richest region is experiencing such a miserable situation.
However, after forty-three years of oppressive rule on these people, numerous documents have been revealed that a vicious plan has been developed to crush the people of Khuzestan, which today a glimpse of this is the drinking water scarcity.
It was only a few days ago that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the regime’s then-president, revealed a “security plan” for “unbalanced development” in this province.
He said that the Supreme National Security Council had approved a plan after the war to prevent any investment in Khuzestan, as the development of Khuzestan could be a problem for the government.
Khuzestan province has five large and important rivers on which the lives of its people depend. In addition to providing drinking water, they also provide water to farmers. Therefore, any damage, deviation, and shortcoming of these vital resources make life impossible for the inhabitants of this region.
The province has a population of about 5 million people and has 14% of GDP (mainly due to the oil industry) but has an economic participation rate of 40%.
Unemployment of the population between the ages of 15 and 24 in this province is more than 33% and the total unemployment rate is more than 25%. An important part of the unemployed is also university graduates.
Also, more than 25% of the people are below the poverty line and marginalization in the province has gained second place in the country! Social harms have also been placed on other problems, and because of all these factors, migration from the province to other parts of the country is one of the goals pursued by the regime to abandon the main inhabitants of Khuzestan.
Now, in fear of the security situation raised by the regime’s behavior in this province, many scared government officials put the blame on all the officials, saying:
“Khuzestan has not got so many problems overnight that it can be treated overnight. Beyond this issue, it is possible to question from the Hashemi’s government to Rouhani’s government, it is possible to question all the assemblies and all the representatives and all the governors of this province. And this means that in the case of Khuzestan, ‘we are all to blame.’” (Aftab-e-Yazd, July 20, 2021)
Mohamad Kianoush Rad, former MP, about this collective responsibility said: “Unfortunately, all post-revolutionary central governments, left and right, reformist and principlists, have all been involved in transferring water from the Karun tributaries to the central plateau of Iran for consumption in industries such as steel, agriculture, and rice.
“The people of Khuzestan have also realized that by delighting the principlists or reformist, Hashemi, Khatami or Ahmadinejad and Rouhani, and now Raisi, there will be no difference or change in macro water transfer policies.” (Ensaf News, July 19, 2021)
As the protests of Khuzestan’s people and other provinces raised slowly, documents and plans of the Revolutionary Guards were exposed. Mojtaba Yousefi, MP from Ahvaz, protested the implementation of unprofessional and confidential water transfer projects in Khuzestan province and said:
“Khuzestan witnessed a self-made flood of the Ministry of Energy in 2019. Because they wanted to say that Khuzestan has surplus water resources and transfer it.” (ISNA, July 22, 2021)
Expert discussions and scientific evaluations during these forty years, which have been repeated many times, said that water should not be transferred from Khuzestan to other places, or this should be done with the utmost care to preserve the environment and the lives of its inhabitants.
Some many dams should not be built on the rivers, the damage of which is enormous and irreversible. Sugarcane cultivation should not be done with all kinds of environmental damages to plains that cannot bear the burden of such wrong decisions.
It never caught the attention of officials, and the result was that millions of people are now searching for a drop of water.
“An informed source in the Ministry of Energy said: ‘The live and usable (water) volume behind Karkheh Dam is currently 760 million cubic meters based on today’s monitoring, and with this volume of harvest, we are only 54 days away from zero water of Karkheh Dam.” (State-run daily Hamshahri, July 21, 2021)
