Ethnic politics of Khuzestan: Encyclopedia II - Ethnic politics of Khuzestan - Demographics

Ethnic politics of Khuzestan - Demographics

The Khuzestani population is predominantly divided between Arabic and Persian speaking groups. How much of the population is ethnically Arab and Arabic-speaking no one knows for certain, and definitions and estimates are often disputed, as the Iranian central government does not release any ethnic-related census figures. According to the 2004 CIA World Factbook, Iranian Arabs comprise 3% of the overall population, while Arabic-speakers comprise 1%.

The Minorities At Risk (MAR) project states that there are approximately 690,000 Bakhtiaris in Iran, most of them centered in the provinces of Khuzestan and Isfahan.

According to Human Rights Watch,

According to Iranian Arab journalist and writer Yusef Azizi Bani-Torof, in a lecture at the Industrial University of Isfahan in 1999,

The following table, reportedly based on unofficial provincial census data gathered in 1996 by the Centre for Iran Studies and published in 1997, accompanied his lecture:

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Demographics", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki