Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz

The ASMLA was covertly established by Ahmad Mola Nissi and Habib Jabor, members of the Islamic Reconciliation Party who under cover of doing legal and legitimate political activities, formed the group and its armed wing.[5] They did not declare existence until 2005, when a fabricated government document was circulated among the Khuzestani Arabs to provoke ethnic tensions.[5] Shortly after the group's military wing, MMDNB, carried out attacks in which many people, including civilians, were killed.[5] In spring 2006, ASMLA founders fled Iran to avoid prosecution by the Iranian security forces and moved to the United Arab Emirates.[5] They visited the Consulate General of the United States in Dubai and asked to meet a representative from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).[5] Mola Nissi and Jabor were granted refugee status in the Netherlands and Denmark respectively.[5]

According to Casey Donahue, since 2007 the group has operated in two headquarters located in Denmark and the Netherlands, but in October 2015 the ASMLA experienced a schism.[6] Both Dutch and Danish factions use the same name and flag, and continue to claim they control the 'Martyrs Brigade', ASMLA's military wing.[6] There are reports indicating that the two factions split over disagreements about how Saudi money they receive should be used.[7]

Ideology and positions

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ASMLA's profile on Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium repository[17] and a piece published by the Jamestown Foundation in 2011[18] suggest that the group is Ba'athist, the latter also mentioning that in 2007 it had recognized Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri as the successor of Saddam Hussein and the new leader of the Iraqi Ba’ath party.[18]

The group refers to Iran as the "Persian enemy"[19] and says that it wants to "liberate Ahwaz lands and people from the Iranian occupation".[20] They compare themselves with Palestinians.[7] ASMLA pictures the territory of its proposed state to be beyond Khuzestan Province borders, including Zagros Mountains and the northern coasts of the Persian Gulf.[6] It also claims the entire Bushehr province, as well as parts of Ilam, Lorestan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Fars and Hormozgan, which combined have a population drastically more than total number of Arabs living in whole Iran.[21]

Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University, who was born and raised in Ahvaz, states that it is a cosmopolitan and pluralist city with people from different ethnic backgrounds, while the separatists make an exclusive and absolutist claim on the city due to a "decidedly racialised, ethnicised" and "narrow-minded ethno-nationalist" ideology.[22]

ASMLA claims that its proposed state would be a democratic republic in which free elections will be held and human rights will be respected, however its use of violence against civilians and the way the organization is run by its leaders contradicts with democratic values.[21] Witnesses interviewed by the Swedish Security Service in the 2019 espionage case have described the group's leader as "authoritarian" and "machiavellian".[7]

The organization has argued in favor of creating an "Arab NATO" that will take military action against Iran.[7]

2005

• June 12: ASMLA claimed responsibility for a series of four bomb explosions in Ahvaz.[26] One of the bombs was concealed in a briefcase outside a residential area and was exploded when authorities were moving it to a secure area, while one blew up the governor's office and the other two were in public buildings. The bombings collectively killed at least 8 people and left some 75 wounded, including women and children.[27]

2006

• January 24: Bombs were blown up in a branch of Saman Bank in Kianpars neighborhood of Ahvaz, as well as the city's natural resources government office, killing at least 8 people and injuring 46 others, including staff and clients in the bank.[28] The ASMLA claimed responsibility for the killings by issuing a statement, saying "[o]ur heroes... in the military wing of The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz attacked and destroyed the dens of the occupying enemy".[29]

2012

• October 23: A gas pipeline facility near Shush was exploded and the ASMLA took responsibility for the attack.[30]

2013

• August: A petro-chemical plant was attacked by the group.[31]
• November 27: The group announced that its Majid al-Baghbeh Martyrs Battalion of the Mohiuddin al-Nasser Martyrs Brigade has conducted attacks on natural gas pipelines running from Shadegan and Sarbandar.[4]

2015

• April 2: A police checkpoint in Hamidiyeh was attacked, resulting in three officers being killed and two injured.[32]
• May 14: ASMLA bombed a government office in Susangerd.[33] The number of casualties is uncertain.[32]
• September 3: An oil installation in Arjan was attacked.[33]
• September 6: ASMLA claimed responsibility for bombing an oil pipeline near Behbahan.[34]

2016

• January 2: An attack on a pipeline north of Ahvaz was claimed to have been conducted by the Battalion of Martyr Razi Zarqani.[33]
• June 14: The group claimed its Battalion of Martyr Razi Zarqani has "crippled the flow of oil from Ahvaz toward Tehran" in Zarqan.[33]
• July 17: ASMLA declared its al-Farouq Battalion has targeted oil pipelines in Haftkel County and claimed that the perpetrators have successfully escaped Iranian forces.[35]

2017

• January 2: The group claimed to have caused major damages to petroleum pipelines of Marun Field and those from the Baharkan oilfield to Kharg Island. A spokesman for the Iranian interior ministry denied this.[36]
• January: ASMLA claimed responsibility for killing two servicemen in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.[20]
• April: The group claimed it had put oil pipelines on fire.[37]

2018

• February 26: ASMLA claimed it had bombed oil facilities.[38]
• September 22: Four assailants disguised in IRGC uniforms attacked a military parade in Ahvaz, killing 29 and wounding 70 people, including civilians. ASMLA claimed responsibility for the attack, which was also claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).[39] ASMLA later denied involvement, after Iranian foreign ministry summoned the ambassadors of Denmark and the Netherlands in Tehran in protest for hosting the group.[40]

Iran designates ASMLA as a terrorist organization.[41]

In February 2020, Dutch police arrested one ASMLA member in Delft for membership of a terrorist organization and suspicion of planning terrorist attacks inside Iran, despite the fact the European Union does not consider ASMLA a terrorist group.[42] Earlier, three suspected ASMLA members had been arrested in November 2018 by Police of Denmark, which announced they were "suspected of violating the Danish law... on condoning terrorism".[43]

Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of supporting the group, which the Saudis have rejected.[9]

Finn Borch Andersen, chief of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET), told the press in February 2020 that his agency had arrested three members of the ASMLA who have been spying for a Saudi Arabian intelligence service in Denmark from 2012 to 2018.[44]

In November 2020, Iranian Ministry of Intelligence published what it said was secret correspondence between ASMLA and the Saudi intelligence agency General Intelligence Presidency.[45]

Nazanin Soroush, writing in a April 2015 issue of Jane's Intelligence Weekly, comments that ASMLA is likely to receive foreign support from Iran's opponents, and act as a proxy.[46] Rasmus Christian Elling of the University of Copenhagen suggests that the group has probably received support from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, stating "there are certain indications that groups such as ASMLA are receiving support, either from private individuals or state institutions in Gulf countries. It would be interesting, for example, to know how they can afford to launch TV stations with brand new equipment in places such as the Netherlands and Denmark".[47]

In April of 2021, Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) charged three senior members of ASMLA for aiding and abetting terrorism, illegal intelligence activities as well as financing and promoting terrorism in Iran in collaboration with Saudi intelligence. [48]

In September 2012, head of the ASMLA met Mohammad Riad al-Shaqfeh, his counterpart in the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria, indicating a potential cooperation between the two organizations.[46] The possibility of links between the ASMLA and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has also been suggested by analysts.[49]

• Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan
• National Liberation Movement of Ahwaz
• Ahvaz National Resistance

• Khoshnood, Arvin (2021), ASMLA: An Empirical Exploration of an Ethno-Nationalist Terrorist Organization, Mideast Security and Policy Studies, vol. 103, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, ISSN 0793-1042, JSTOR resrep34340