DEATH OF SOLDIER WOULD HARM THE IMAGE OF REV.GUARDS
PARIS 23RD Feb. (IPS) One soldier was killed and several others were wounded in an armed clash between Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the regular army in the southern city of Shiraz, Tehran newspapers reported Wednesday.
According to the reformist daily "Sobhe Emrooz" (This Morning), units of the Revolutionary Guards opened fire on soldiers of the regular army guarding a piece of land belonging to the Shiraz Air Force Base, one of Iran's largest and most modern, commending the sensitive Persian Gulf region.
The paper did not said when the clash took place not why the revolutionary guards wanted to take over the land.
Authorities, including the regular army and the revolutionary guards spokesmen remained silent.
Ever since the creation of the Revolutionary Guards of the Islamic Republic (RGIR), or the pasdaran, by grand in the early days after the victory of the Islamic revolution to oppose any possible coup that would come from the regular armed forces, considered as faithful to the former regime and particularly to the person of the Shah who had fled the country, relations had never been good between the two major Iranian armies.
The two armies fought hand in hand in the eight years of war against Iraq. The historic liberation of the port-city of Khorramshahr in 1986 by the army was marred by the Guards insistence to push the advantage inside the enemy's territory and continue the war until the collapse of the Iraqi regime. As a result of that ruinous decision that, according to some recent press reports, was endorsed by hojatoleslam Hashemi Rafsanjani, then in charge of the war operation, the conflict lasted tow more years and ended in a draw.
Considered as the ruling mollahs Praetorian Guard, the pasdarans received the best of the weapons the regime could get on the international black market or from countries like North Korea, Russia and China in the years after the war to the point to make it Islamic Iran's strongest armies.
While the regular forces were given the task of guarding the nation's borders and safeguarding the sovereignty of the motherland, the pasdarans, better equipped, were put in charge of domestic security, doing the regime's dirty jobs, clashing with students and the young, stopping popular demonstrations, enforcing Islamic codes on women, raiding houses, spreading fear and terror.
According to this division of tasks, the army refused to intervene four years ago when called in by local authorities to suppress a riot in Qazvin, 150 kilometres west of Tehran, the army commander of the region arguing that he had not order to intervene in local conflicts.
Also the pasdaran crushed an insurrection in Islamshahr, a huge shanty twon south west of Tehran two years ago.
As a result,a new unit named Rapid Intervention Forces were was created within the revolutionary guards, equipped with modern anti-riot weapons, using helicopters and transport planes in order to crush popular uprising anywhere in the country.
The result was that the regular army became the darling of the people and the revolutionary guards that of the ruling ayatollahs, disliked by the people.
Though similar clashes over same kind of demands by the ever expanding guards from the armed forces has occurred in the past, but this is the first time that such incident is reported by the press and considering the timing, when the reformists have scored such a big victory in legislative elections, observers fears that the reported clash would open wider the wall of mistrust between the people and the pasdarans.
Meanwhile, it was confirmed that the pasdaran clashed with population in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, using tear gas and bullets to put an end to demonstrations commemorating the city's last year uprising. Similar incidents were also reported in Kamyaran, another Kurdish town in Iranian Kurdistan, where pasdaran anti-riots units attacked demonstrators, arresting more than 100 protesters.
Reliable Kurdish sources, including the Kurdistan Committee of the Iranian Communist-Workers Party and the Democratic Party of the Iranian Kurdistan told Iran Press Service that demonstrators attacked public buildings and banks and chanted slogans against the Islamic Republic and it's leader, ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i. ENDS ARMY, PASDARANS CLASHES