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Banisadr did, however, manage to have talks with scores of prominent Azerbaijanis. In one session with 30 mullahs, he was presented with an eight-point resolution demanding that all government appointments in the region be vetted by Sharietmadari and that secular curbs be placed on the near dictatorial powers given Khomeini under Iran's new constitution. A mullah then rose and recounted acts of brutality committed in Tabriz by the revolutionary guards. Whereupon all the other mullahs wept profusely.
Undaunted, Banisadr organized a pro-government rally at a soccer stadium. Carrying Khomeini posters, some 4,000 people—hardly a crowd by Iranian standards—gathered in the middle of the field. Suddenly, they were charged by some 2,000 Azerbaijanis waving Sharietmadari posters and chanting "Down with Bani-sadr!" Gradually, a phalanx of Khomeini supporters drove the Sharietmadari forces out of the stadium.
In the holy city of Qum, which is the home of most Shi'ite leaders, Sharietmadari met repeatedly with Khomeini and grew uncharacteristically angry. The normally meek ayatullah warned that unless the Tehran government granted more self-rule to the Azerbaijanis, "dis-turbances will continue, tensions will increase, people will start to kill each other, and civil war will take place." He gave Khomeini an uncommonly aggressive lecture about insisting that the West was responsible for the uprising. Said Sharietmadari: "Everything that happens in this country should not be blamed on 'international Zionism and imperialism.' The legitimate demands of the people of Azerbaijan should not be dismissed."
The tensions in Azerbaijan can only further stir Iran's other jostling eth nic minorities—the Kurds in adjoining Kurdistan, the Arabs near the Persian Gulf, the Baluchis and the Turkomans to the east. Last week there even came a brief incursion by the Iraqis across their disputed frontier. The Kurds are most likely to cause trouble next. These flinty, well-armed peasants, isolated in their mountain hideaways, have in the past fought more fiercely for independence than Iran's other dissident minorities, and a cease-fire agreement that they signed last month with the Khomeini government just expired.
During the month, the Kurds held autonomy talks with Tehran, demanding, among other things, an enlarged Kurdish province, a freely elected Kurdish assembly, and recognition of Kurdish as their region's official language. The talks have not gone well, and though the ceasefire has been unofficially extended, it is the most fragile of truces. "With the first snowfall, we'll attack," growled one key Kurd rebel.