Ideological dance on a scorched land: the political economy of underdevelopment in Rojhelat (East Kurdistan)

This article examines the political economy of underdevelopment in Rojhelat (East Kurdistan), drawing on historical evidence including pre-modern policymaking and critical readings of state documents, development plans and statistical reports from 1954 to 2024. It argues that the Iranian state, through centralisation, resource extraction and Persian–Shi'a nationalist hegemony, has systematically relegated Kurdish regions to a peripheral status. The study shows how economic peripherality, environmental degradation and securitisation perpetuate systematic structural inequalities. Peripheral capitalism, as the dominant political-economic logic of Rojhelat, has two intertwined dimensions: first, an economic-material dimension comprising resource extraction, blocked accumulation and exploitative labour; second, a discursive-epistemological dimension in which Persian–Shi'a nationalism naturalises inequality as common sense. This article argues that underdevelopment in Rojhelat is not the result of accidental mismanagement but rather a deliberate product of centre–periphery relations. This relationship operates as a state-led project of internal colonialism, in which resource plunder sustains accumulation in the centre while obstructing local development.