by Amir Taheri
Although calm was restored on the campus, the events of the summer of 1999 marked a major defeat for the regime, as it lost its image as the expression of a revolution and acquired a new one as an arbitrary power sustained by repression. Since 1999, Iran has witnessed countless student demonstrations and protests. In hundreds of resolutions passed during mass gatherings, students have challenged virtually every aspect of the Khomeinist ideology and the regime’s domestic and foreign policies. One typical resolution passed repeatedly states that the people of Iran do not desire the destruction of Israel and do seek close and friendly relations with the United States. Every year in July, students mark the anniversary of the 1999 events. On October 8, 2007, students in Tehran greeted Ahmadinejad with cries of “Down with the Dictator” and “Forget about Palestine! Think about Us,” forcing him to run away briefly with the help of his bodyguards. On March 8, 2008, students marched in some twenty cities across the nation calling for an end to “gender apartheid.” This was in reaction to a decision by Ahmadinejad to put men and women students in separate classrooms. Under this scheme, the teacher will be physically present only in the male students’ classroom, while female students in another room will follow the lecture on closed-circuit television. Female students who have questions will write them and fax them to the teacher from their separate classroom. Even Khomeini had not dared impose such a system of apartheid on Iranian universities. Khamenehi and Ahmadinejad, however, are persuaded that strict separation of the sexes is a precondition for the return of the Hidden Imam.
The student movement remains a potentially major threat to the regime. Despite the massive purges conducted under Ahmadinejad, accompanied by the entry of thousands of handpicked Khomeinist young men and women exempted from the rigorous entrance examinations because of their loyalty to the regime, the student community remains overwhelmingly hostile to the system. Ahmadinejad’s purge of academic personnel has led to the expulsion of hundreds of antifascist lecturers, professors, and deans; yet it is safe to say that a majority of the teaching staff of universities sympathize with the broad aims of the student movement. While it enjoys immense support among young Iranians as a whole, the student movement on its own cannot bring about regime change. One reason is that the students, while united in rejecting Khomeinism, are divided when it comes to a successor. Here we find the entire spectrum of Iranian political opinion, from monarchist and nationalist to social-democratic, socialist, communist, even anarchist.
By all accounts, the generation born and raised after the revolution is the most indifferent, not to say hostile, to the Khomeinist discourse. Young Iranians—in contact with the outside world thanks to satellite TV, the Internet, and travels to Persian Gulf emirates—clearly wish to be part of what they regard as a world of many promises.4 The popularity of some pre-revolutionary pop stars such as Gugush and Dariush, and the growing audience for Western-style popular music from beat to rap, show that Iranian youth are creating their own space of freedom beyond state control. This is also reflected in the way young Iranians dress. Things are harder for girls because they are forced to wear the hijab and the accursed manto in all seasons, yet they still manage to dress in ways that manifest their dislike of the regime. A colorful headscarf worn loosely to let a wild strand of hair fall into view and tight trousers in bright tones to attenuate the somberness of the manto do the trick, much to the chagrin of the fascist morality police. Sports occasions, especially soccer matches, also provide young Iranians with an opportunity to display their hatred of fascism while celebrating their favorite sport. Each time there is a major soccer match, the regime is compelled to deploy paramilitary units to prevent the crowds from translating their love of sport into a show of hatred for Khomeinism. In a report prepared for the interior minister, Mullah Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, in October 2007, a group of Tehran social researchers warned that “growing segments of our youth are disconnected with the ideals of our revolution and the teachings of Islam.” The report also showed that less than 5 percent of young people watched religious and/or political programs on the state-owned television networks.
Opposition to the regime and its Islamic-fascist ideology also comes from thousands of nongovernmental organizations active in all walks of life. Offering medical, educational, and cultural services to the community, these NGOs not only fill gaps left by the state but also provide an alternative space in which Iranians can meet and work together away from the hysterical atmosphere of government organs. These NGOs honor the writers and poets banned by the state, and look after those parts of the national cultural heritage neglected by the Khomeinists because of their pre-Islamic origin. Some NGOs also help the families of political prisoners and other victims of repression, whose numbers run into the millions. Families of political prisoners and the “disappeared”—dissidents abducted by the regime and never heard of again—are often in the vanguard of demonstrations against Khomeinism and for freedom and democracy.
Although at war against the Iranian people as a whole, Khomeinism is even more hostile to Iran’s religious and ethnic minorities. We have already mentioned the hatred that Khomeinism has always manifested against Jews, Baha’is, and Sunni Muslims because these faiths offer spaces in which their adepts can build a moral and even physical alternative to the public space controlled by the Khomeinists. A totalitarian regime cannot tolerate the existence of any space where it does not enjoy full control. In recent years, the regime has developed a hostile attitude towards Christians and Zoroastrians as well, communities that had hitherto enjoyed slightly better treatment than Jews, Baha’is, and Sunnis. The reason is that a growing number of Iranians, especially the young, are converting to Zoroastrianism or Christianity. The authorities claim that this surge in conversions is due to the activities of evangelical missions dispatched by American Christian churches, and some Zoroastrian organizations in India, Europe, and the United States, to tempt young Iranians with promises of easy immigration and good jobs abroad. However, there is little doubt that many young Iranians, repulsed by the image of Islam as presented by the fascists, are shopping around for a faith with which they might feel more comfortable. In 2002, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security ordered all Christian churches to close their doors outside specially approved masses, and make sure that those who attended the mass were “Christians of long-standing well-known to their community.”5 The ministry also arranged for special agents to be present at all church ceremonies. Instantly recognizable by their look and attitude, these agents sit in the back pews and are referred to as “the cockroaches of the end.” Their task is to make sure that no criticism of the regime is aired in church and, above all, that no Muslim apostates are admitted.
The regime’s fear of a mass conversion of young people to Christianity was first aired under Khatami, who ordered the drafting of a law to deal with change of religion or apostasy. Before the revolution, there was no mechanism for preventing individuals or even whole groups from switching to another religion. The Khatami administration tried to fill the gap with a draft law completed in 2005. At the time, lawyers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that a law on apostasy would run counter to Iran’s commitments under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international obligations. The presentation of the text was delayed until after the presidential election that produced Ahmadinejad’s victory. nevertheless, a crackdown was started without any legal basis and hundreds of Muslim converts to Christianity had their homes raided and then were imprisoned on charges relating to espionage. Many Christian converts were held for weeks and were physically and psychologically mistreated. Astronomical bails were required for their release.
Forbidden to spread their faith and even to attend church, these converts created a new institution known as Kelisa-Khaneh or “house church,” turning their homes into places of worship and religious study. According to Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors USA, a charity that supports converts in the Middle East, Iranian authorities “are recogniz
ing that there’s a mushrooming house church movement going on in Iran. . . . This indigenous house church movement doubles in size every six months. So the rate of growth is actually stunning.”6 Calling Iranians to Christianity is facilitated by the fact that in Persian literature, Jesus Christ is easily the most popular figure associated with religion.
In January 2008, Ahmadinejad vowed to “root out this new Christianity” in Iran. Soon he presented a draft law to the Islamic Majlis based on the text prepared by Khatami, but adding tougher punishments for apostates. The new text describes the act of abandoning Islam, whether for the purpose of converting to another religion or simply living with no religion at all, as “a crime against the security of the Islamic state.” Those found guilty of apostasy would become “Corrupters on Earth” (Mufsed fil Ardh) and thus punishable by the Islamic hadd (limit), which means capital punishment. By June 2008, the text had not yet been enacted into law, and there was a chance that it would not be, as the new Majlis elected in March was not bound to adopt the legislative program set by Ahmadinejad for the previous parliament. If adopted, the text under its Article 112 could expose anyone, whether of Iranian origin or not, who abandons Islam anywhere in the world to death fatwas issued from Tehran. Anyone born even with a single Muslim parent, grandparent or ancestor is automatically considered as Muslim and forbidden to change his or her faith. The proposed law also creates a new crime under the title “Insulting the Prophet” (Sibb al-Nabi), which would also be punishable by death. This law would officially sentence Rushdie to death once again, along with the Danish cartoonists of Prophet Muhammad. The new draft is especially dangerous for Baha’is of Iranian origin because all of them have had Muslim grandparents or ancestors.
In June 2008, over thirty Iranians, including a pregnant woman, were in prison on charges of apostasy, according to human rights groups. Of special concern to the Khomeinists is the fact that conversion to Christianity and Zoroastrianism does not appear to be a middle-class, urban phenomenon. The four hundred or so individuals arrested on such a charge and then released came from all over the country, including small towns and villages.
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The Ethnic Time Bomb
In September 2005, a group of armed Kurdish rebels attacked an outpost of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the Mount Qandil area, close to the border with Iraq. Although the operation did not cause serious casualties, it was significant because it marked an end to almost twenty years of calm in the three Iranian provinces where the Kurdish minority live. Something else was new in this operation: the group that carried it out did not belong to any of the traditional Kurdish parties active in Iran since 1940. It was a new group, designating itself as the Party of Free Life in Kurdistan, soon to be known under its Persian acronym, Pejak.
Tehran was surprised by the attack, if only because it thought it had the upper hand in the Kurdish area. Since 2004 it had bombed and raided a number of Kurdish villages in Iraq, ostensibly to destroy bases created there by two Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, the Communist Party of Kurdistan (Komaleh) and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (PDK), with support from the newly liberated Kurds of Iraq. Tehran had hoped that its Kurdish arm, known as the Kurdistan Hezballah, operating in Iraq, would make sure that no Kurdish group dared attack the Islamic Republic. Pejak, however, was a new group set up by Iranian Kurds mostly living in exile in Germany and France. After the liberation of Iraq in 2003, they went to Iraqi Kurdistan and recruited a number of fighters from among disillusioned Komaleh and PDK members. Pejak also had strong links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Communist outfit operating in Turkey since the 1970s.
Between 2004 and 2008, Pejak rebels carried out more than fifty operations against Iranian positions, killing dozens of IRGC men and wounding many more. In retaliation, the IRGC has raided Kurdish villages in Iraq, killing hundreds and capturing dozens of suspected militants. In March 2008, Pejak launched its most daring operations by entering the small Iranian Kurdish town of Mahkok and holding it for a few hours, and by raiding an IRGC position in Marivan, a much bigger town. These operations, although militarily insignificant, shattered the region’s calm and revived talks of armed struggle amongst Kurds.
As an ethnic minority, the Kurds, most of whom are Sunni Muslims or heretical Shiites and Zoroastrians, felt doubly oppressed in the Islamic Republic. With Ahmadinejad’s coming to power, they have been subjected to even more repressive measures. The only publications appearing in the Kurdish language were closed in 2006, and the only theater company offering plays in Kurdish dissolved. Worse still, the fascist regime has carried out a massive purge of the civil service, the teachers’ corps, and the independent trade union movement, supposedly to weed out “Kurdish separatists.” In June 2008, over a thousand Kurds were held as political prisoners by the regime, often on trumped-up charges of anti-state activity. This made the Kurds the ethnic minority with the largest number of political prisoners in the Islamic Republic. Between 2004 and 2008, more than fifty Kurdish activists were sentenced to death and executed, among them trade unionists, journalists, and schoolteachers. Some parts of the province of Kurdistan and the neighboring province of West Azerbaijan, where Kurds account for at least half the population, were turned into no-go areas in 2007, indicating the regime’s loss of legitimacy and control. Ahmadinejad’s iron-fist policy has created new risks of a long and costly war of the kind that Turkey has suffered in its Kurdish areas for three decades.
The fascist regime has also provoked ethnic unrest among Iran’s Arab minority in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan. During the 1990s, both Rafsanjani and Khatami tried to dilute the Arab presence in sensitive areas close to the border with Iraq by bringing in settlers from other parts of Iran, especially the central province of Yazd. According to some estimates, over the past eighteen years more than 800,000 Arabs have been displaced from their ancestral villages, their places being taken by non-Arab settlers. Many of the displaced Arabs had left their homes after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980 and spent the eight years of war in temporary camps all over the country. At the end of the war and much to their surprise and anger, they were told that they could not go back to their villages and had to settle in other parts of the country. While the Kurds share ethnic and linguistic roots with other Iranians, the Arabs of Iran are a distinct people with their own ethnic and linguistic heritage. What binds them to Iran is the shared Shiite faith, the broad Iranian culture, and a common history going back three millennia. Iranian Arabs demonstrated their attachment to Iran as homeland by fighting the Saddamite invaders and sustaining more casualties than any other component of the nation. Yet the fascist regime has rewarded them with displacement, and cultural and political repression.
not surprisingly, Iranian Arabs have reacted with massive demonstrations in more than a dozen cities, including the provincial capital of Ahvaz and the oil city of Abadan. Dozens of Arabs have been killed in clashes with the Baseej and other repressive forces of the regime. Between 2005 and March 2008, more than one hundred Iranian Arabs were executed or murdered by Khomeinist death squads, among them trade unionists, writers, musicians, and tribal figures. In March 2008, more than four hundred Iranian Arabs were still in prison or listed among the “disappeared.” Tension was high in many parts of the province, especially in the border areas with Iraq, such as Dasht Mishan, Susangerd and Hoveyzeh. Several Arab tribes—including the Bani-Amer, the Bani-Turuf, and the Bani-Kaab—were reportedly buying arms to create self-defense units against the regime. The liberation of Iraq and the advent of a democratically elected government dominated by the Shiite majority had inspired immense hopes for the spread of democracy to Iran, thus giving Iranian Arabs the same rights that new Iraq had granted to its Kurdish minority. However, the opposite has happened. As free Iraq has built itself up in the teeth of opposition from Sunni extremists and sabotage by Tehran-backed groups, Iranian Arabs have been subjected to even greater repression.
In 2008, the Iranian
Arab political movement was divided into three distinct trends. The most militant, still representing a small but active minority, operated under the label of Ahvaz Liberation Front. This is a secessionist group that dreams of a separate Arab state covering almost half the province of Khuzestan and most of its oil reserves. Using violence and terror, this group has been responsible for a number of bomb attacks in the province since 2005. Another trend is represented by a number of groups fighting for human rights and democratization. These are generally peaceful movements trying to operate within the limits of the Islamic Republic’s constitution. They include the remnants of the Khuzestan Welfare Party (Hizb Saadat Khuzestan) of the 1940s, which promoted the idea of a federal Iran in which ethnic Arabs would enjoy a large measure of autonomy in areas where they formed a majority of the population. The third trend consists of groups dedicated to the overthrow of the Khomeinist regime but not willing to use arms against it. However, the fascist regime’s increasingly repressive posture in the province risked weakening the position of the moderates, forcing more and more ethnic Arabs into the arms of the outright secessionists.