The Baloch people are smack in the middle of everything: Iran's turmoil, Pakistan's breakdown, Afghanistan's ongoing tribal wars.
From The Guardian:

President Ahmadinejad is intensifying his repression of the Baluch minority, with 19 campaigners executed since last month

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A new blog for you: Iran Rises

My friend Wendy just alerted me to this Iran blog written by a U.S.-based academic. He's doing translations of domestic Iranian news, web and radio broadcats from the original Farsi.

This is the go-to blog to read a well-selected range of source articles about issues not surfacing in the MSM, like the importance of regional minorities and ethnic groups in the political mix, and last weekend's police roundup of local journalists .

In Slate, Anne Applebaum writes about the connection between the Iran uprisings and the strengthening women's rights movement in the country.

I think she's on to something:

It is no accident that the two main challengers to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Iranian election campaign promised to repeal some of the laws that discriminate against women—and no accident that the leading challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, used his wife, political scientist and former university chancellor Zahra Rahnavard, in his campaign appearances and posters.