With Us or Against Us
Page 32
would have seriously challenged the federation. However, Bengali
nationalism was able to move forward first in electoral terms in 1970,
by winning a majority in the parliament and then in terms of a militant
struggle against Islamabad in 1971, with the increasingly overt help of
India. Washington’s perceived tilt in favor of Pakistan against the back-
drop of the aborted move of the American ship Enterprise in the Bay
of Bengal ignited anti-American feelings among Bengalis. We can
argue that the more the state of Pakistan was identified with
Washington, the more the leftist and ethnic movements cultivated
anti-American feelings. Activists from the left of the political spectrum
everywhere, including Punjab, which was otherwise closely identified
with the establishment, joined hands with ethnic nationalists, and were
often ideologically united with reference to “the national question” as
well as politically. In this way, they reinvigorated each other in the pur-
suit of their antiestablishment, and by default, anti-American agenda.
Conclusion
The preceding sections have outlined three major patterns of Pakistani
perceptions about the United States. Insofar as the friendship–betrayal
syndrome is concerned, a persistently India-centered worldview has
characterized Islamabad’s attitudes toward the United States as a
balancing factor vis-à-vis its stronger neighbor. However, since the
United States did not share this perspective on India, there was an
overlap between expectations from each other. The elite in Pakistan
felt betrayed whenever the United States opted for playing a neutral
role in Indo-Pakistan conflicts. At the other end, the general public is
becoming increasingly anti-American in the larger framework of the
world of Islam.17 The U.S. policies are largely perceived to be against
Muslims in various regional conflicts.18 A lesser current of opinion
criticizing the U.S. role in Pakistan and elsewhere is couched in an anti-
imperialist mode of thinking. In Pakistan, the leftist and ethnonation-
alist parties and groups oppose what they consider imperialist designs
of the United States and its allies, especially in the context of supporting
military dictatorships in Pakistan. Together these critical approaches
to the United States occupy a larger area of public space than ever
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Anti-Americanism in Pakistan
187
before, even as the ruling elite continues to be a partner in the
American-sponsored war against terrorism. As long as perceptions
about the conflict between the United States and the Islamic world
persist, anti-Americanism is expected to expand in the larger society,
both in scope and intensity.
Notes
1. See Denis Lacorne et al., The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism: A
Century of French Perception (London: Macmillan, 1990).
2. Alastair Lamb, Asian Frontiers (London: Pall Mall, 1991), p. 41.
3. See S.M. Burke, Pakistan Foreign Policy: A Historical Analysis (London:
Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 3–11.
4. See P.R. Kumaraswamy, Beyond the Veil: Israel–Pakistan Relations,
Memorandum no. 55 (Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, March 2000).
5. See Mohammad Waseem, “Pakistan’s perceptions of the impact of U.S.
politics on its policies towards Pakistan,” in Pakistan-U.S. Relations, edited
by Noor Hussain and Leo Rose (Berkeley: University of California, 1988).
6. See, e.g., Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan 1947–2000:
Disenchanted Allies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
7. Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
8. For a detailed account of the Soviet withdrawal, followed by the US
withdrawal from the region, see Deigo Cordovez and Selig Harrison,
Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995).
9. Mohammad Waseem, “The dialectic between politics and foreign policy”
in Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation, edited by Christophe Jaffrelot
(London: Zed Books, 2002), p. 271.
10. Richard Rose, “ ‘Russia’ as an hour-glass society: a constitution without
citizens,” East European Constitutional Review, 1995, p. 35.
11. See Marvin Weinbaum and Gautam Sen, “Pakistan enters the Middle
East,” Orbis (fall 1978).
12. See Saroosh Irfani, “Pakistani’s sectarian violence: between the ‘Arabist
Shift’ and Indo-Persian culture,” paper for conference on religion and
security in South Asia, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu,
Hawaii, August 20, 2002.
13. Mohammad Waseem, Pakistan Under Martial Law 1977–1985 (Lahore:
Vanguard, 1987), pp. 196–202.
14. Yunas Samad, “Imagining a British Muslim identification,” in Muslim
European Youth: Reproducing Ethnicity, Religion, Culture, edited by Steven
Vertovec and Alisdair Rogers (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 59–61.
15. For a comparative study of ethnic conflicts, see Charles Kennedy, “Pakistan:
ethnic diversity and colonial legacy,” in The Territorial Management of
Ethnic Conflicts, edited by John Coakley (London: Frank Cass, 2003),
pp. 150–161.
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M ohammad Waseem
16. See, e.g., Selig Harrison, In the Shadow of Afghanistan: Baluch Nationalism
and Soviet Temptations (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 1981).
17. See Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Why Do People Hate
America? (Cambridge, UK: Icon Books, 2000).
18. For the two positions for and against the U.S. policies being the root
cause of anti-Americanism among Muslims, see Usaama Makdisi, “Anti-
Americanism in the Arab world: an interpretation of a brief history,” The
Journal of American History, Bloomington, September 2002; and Barry
Rubin, “The real roots of Arab anti-Americanism,” Foreign Affairs,
November–December 2002.
* * *
1 0
T hree Sources of
A nti-Americanism in Iran
Morad Saghafi
When on November 4, 1979 a number of armed individuals (a
group later called Daneshjouyan-e Khat-e Emam or “Students of
Imam [Khomeini]’s Line”) took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran,
few people knew that this was the second invasion of the U.S. Embassy
since the Revolution that unseated the Pahlavi dynasty. The first occu-
pation occurred on February 14, only three days after the Pahlavi
regime was overthrown. That takeover was initiated by militant members
of the Marxist–Leninist group Fadaiyan-e Khalgh, established a
decade earlier and dedicated to guerilla attacks against the Pahlavi
regime as well as U.S. interests in Iran.1 That day, the group issued a
communiqué stating that the overthrow of the regime was the first
step of the revolution that had to be continued until the elimination
of capitalism in Iran and that American imperialism will be the
most important force opposing this event.2 The clergy and the
“Revolutionary Council” condemned the action and, followin
g a meet-
ing with the provisional government’s foreign minister, Ebrahim
Yazdi, the group accepted to leave the premises peacefully. The
resolution of the crisis took only half a day.
The second takeover lasted longer: a number of Embassy staff were
taken hostage for 444 days. At the beginning of the seizure, it seemed
that the new hostage takers did not know exactly what they wanted.
Abbas Abdi, an eminent member of the group, admitted eight years
later that they had responded to Imam Khomeini’s speech on
November 1, when he asked “students, collegians as well as students
of theological schools to expand their struggle against America to
force return the Shah”3 who had recently been admitted to a
hospital in the United States for treatment against cancer. He said
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190
M orad Saghafi
that they had thought the affair would last “3 to 5 days.”4 It did not,
and the longer the affair lasted, the more the demands for the
Shah’s extradition faded out in the light of the internal political
debate.
The hostage takers confessed later, “they thought the success of
this experience would have marginalized the provisional government.”5
But the student movement did not consider a mere confrontation
with the government challenging enough. After a while, backed by the
first document found in the U.S. Embassy, reconstructed carefully and
published with an eye on the condemnation of the most democratic
political factions, the students requested “the ban of political parties
and organizations whose actions were not aligned with the revolu-
tion’s objectives and values.” First the “westernized intellectuals”6
were denounced, then it was the turn of the “army officers, the
westernized managers and technicians, liberal and democratic politi-
cians, romantic militias and communists.”7 The students even asked
the religious leaders to “purify their ranks from politically wrong
elements.”8
The diplomatic relations with the United States were severed,
and, in the process, the United States was branded “The Great Satan.”
Iran had entered a new era in the field of foreign relations. However,
the U.S. embassy affair had a much deeper effect on Iran’s domestic
political scene.
The provisional government resigned and with it the nonradical
discourse that had gained the upper hand during the eight months
that separated the victory of the revolution from the occupation of
the American embassy. The embassy takeover provided another
golden opportunity for radical Islamist forces, who used the event to
challenge secular leftists as well as rival Islamic leftist groups, which
did not show the expected allegiance to and respect for Khomeini’s
leadership.
The domestic consequences seemed ideal: the provisional govern-
ment (composed in majority of liberal Islamic and secular forces)
resigned a day after the takeover; the anti-Shah and anti-monarchic
ambiance was revived; and, more importantly, all radical elements were
forced to fully support the Khomeini followers, who had demonstrated
that they were the most revolutionary because they were the most
anti-imperialist force of the country.9
Considering this change of equilibrium among domestic political
forces in Iran, which provided Khomeini’s most radical followers with
a dominant position, one can say that the takeover of the U.S. Embassy
was, in fact, successful. But for the sake of our study, the event
* * *
Anti-Americanism in Iran
191
underlined other more important phenomena: first that anti-
Americanism, as the most important criterion for anti-imperialism, no
longer was the monopoly of Leninist and leftist secular groups in Iran,
but the common position of nearly all antimonarchic revolutionary
groups, including religious forces. Second that relations with the
United States were not only a foreign policy issue but, also perhaps
much more seriously, an internal Iranian affair. In other words, within
Iran’s domestic political framework, America became the focus of the
relationship with a foreign power—a position reserved for Great
Britain for 150 years prior to the event. When, how, and why this
important shift happened, are questions that this chapter discusses.
For the same reason—that is, the internal dimension of Iran-U.S. rela-
tions—the answer to these questions could not be found as the sole
result of a debate about diplomatic history. Nondiplomatic factors,
most of which have roots in the country’s internal development, should
also be considered.
The Untrue Friend
Since the mid-nineteenth century, when the intrusion of the two
superpowers of the time, Russia and Great Britain, became determi-
nant for the destiny of Iran, the country’s diplomacy has evolved around
two basic ideas: first, trying to use the rivalry between the two super-
powers and second looking for a third force. France, Austria,
Germany, and, finally, America came to play the role of this third force
in Iran’s contemporary history.10 Both strategies faced severe limita-
tions. Regarding the rivalry between the two powers, Iran appeared too
weak to be able to play one against the other.
As for the involvement of this third power, it was necessary that it
was necessary that it has, not just sufficient military and economic
authority but also the same level of geostrategic interest that dictated
Russian and British attitudes toward Iran. Notwithstanding, it was
evident that the serious involvement of this third force was very much
dependent on the formation of a sphere of strategic interests in Iran.
In fact, the French experience during the Napoleonic wars and the
German experience at the time of World Wars I and II, demonstrated
that, counting on the intervention of a third force could not only be
in vain but also dangerous for the country.11 Incidentally, for four
decades, the Iranians tried to create such a sphere of interest for
America. The decisive moment in this long “engagement” is when
Washington not only appeared to be the only government that
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192
M orad Saghafi
pushed for Iran’s participation at the 1919 Paris conference, but also
openly opposed the Iran–English treaty of 1919, which made Iran an
English protectorate.12
But it was during the Azerbaijan crisis following World War II
that America fulfilled the Iranian dream of a third force counterbal-
ancing the British and Russian presence in Iran.13 The American
effort to force the Soviet army to withdraw from Iran—as other
allied military forces did after the end of the war—could be consid-
ered as the fruit of a century of Iranian effort to involve the United
States in its destiny. The territorial integrity of Iran was no longer
threatened by the rivalry or the coalition of the two great powers
and Iran could think about a more active foreign policy after some
The euphoria of such a delayed victory hid another important reality
from the Iranian eyes: the fact that America could no longer be this so
called “third force,” as Iran had already become an essential element
in the confrontation between superpowers—the world had already
entered the Cold War era.
In fact, during the period between the Azerbaijan affair (1945) and
the coup against Mossadegh (1953) officials of both sides lived two
very different versions of the same story. Americans had seen Iran as a
Third World country, which needed development aid in order to
avoid the grip of communism, hence Washington’s so-called Point 4
Program.14 They saw Iran as a neighbor of their most important Cold
War adversary (Soviet Union), and could not allow the growth of a
communist movement in Iran. Nor could they permit the country
being ruled by an unstable state.15 Finally, they saw Iran as an oil-
producing country in a position to control half of the coast of the
region where 70 percent of the world oil exports were in transit at that
time. Washington considered the free flow of oil as one of the pillars of
the development of Europe after World War II, but also of the Middle
East including Iran.16
On the other hand, Iranian officials saw America as their liberator
from Soviet occupation, their savior, their supporter in the struggle
against British domination over Iran’s oil industry, and their devoted
friend, eager to develop their country; in short, a friend they had
desired for two centuries. Incidentally, it was this same ever-sought
ally that conducted the 1953 coup. A coup not against the unpopular
and reactionary Qajar dynasty—as the British fomented it three decades
ago—but against a nationalist and popular prime minister who was
fighting against the British for the right of the country to manage its
own source of wealth. In short, America became not just an enemy
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Anti-Americanism in Iran
193
but something much worse than that, a disloyal, deceitful, and untrue
friend—a fact that was difficult to forgive and even more difficult to