Stadium-sized Guantanomos

Reporters without Borders note Evin Prison in Northwest Tehran, originally built under the Shah in 1971 and manned by the SAVAK.

• “Like Chile’s Santiago football stadium in 1973, Evin prison has become a bloody detention centre where arbitrary treatment is meted out. We urge the international community to do its utmost to break the silence surrounding prisoners of opinion in Evin prison”, the organisation added, pointing out that 26 June is World Day against Torture”. ("What is going on in the silence of Evin prison?," 27 June 2009)
• 

Saruman the White was a wizard....

niacINsight picked up the following from Salon:

• They want to keep us indoors, and quiet. But which subversive programmer picked “The Lord of the Rings”?
• In Tehran, state television’s Channel Two is putting on a “Lord of the Rings” marathon, part of a bigger push to keep us busy. Movie mad and immunized from international copyright laws, Iranians are normally treated to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week. Now it’s two or three films a day. The message is “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
  

Perhaps Khamenei does not look like Saruman. But actions?

• With his sweet lies Saruman tried to persuade Gandalf to join him.....
• Saruman likes to be the first in everything. There is a spirit of unsporting competitiveness and envy within him....
• Theoden in his turn affirms that “you are a liar, Saruman, and a corrupter of men's hearts.” And Gandalf adds: “Saruman, you missed your path in life. You should have been the king's jester and earned your bread, and stripes too, by mimicking his counsellors.”
• Saruman didn’t trust anyone and didn’t want to surrender.
• 

Up Next: Rick Steves Reviewing Hostels in East Tehran

From the Guardian Blog. Forget the IRGC, in comparison, even the Basiji look well-trained with this lot.

• Newspaper Roozonline has an interview (in Persian) with one of the young plainclothes militiamen who have been beating protesters.
• UPDATE: Robert says the man is paid 2m rial per day, which would be about £1220 for ten days of work. A hefty fee, even by UK standards....
• The Guardian's Robert Tait sends this synopsis.
• The man, who has come from a small town in the eastern province of Khorasan and has never been in Tehran before, says he is being paid 2m rial (£122) to assault protestors with a heavy wooden stave. He says the money is the main incentive as it will enable him to get married and may even enable him to afford more than one wife. Leadership of the volunteers has been provided by a man known only as "Hajji", who has instructed his men to "beat the counter-revolutionaries so hard that they won't be able to stand up".
  
• The volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces such as Khuzestan, Arak and Mazandaran, are being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran. Other volunteers, he says, have been brought from Lebanon, where the Iranian regime has strong allies in the Hezbollah movement. They are said to be more highly-paid than their Iranian counterparts and are put up in hotels. The last piece of information seems to confirm the suspicion of many Iranians that foreign security personnel are being used to suppress the demonstrators. (Guardian, News Blog, "Iran crisis: live," 24 June 2009)
  

Text and context

Excellent article by Juan Cole on the historical context of internal revolts and external diplomacy.

• Obama will likely be as helpless before a crackdown by the Iranian regime as Eisenhower was re: Hungary in 1956, Johnson was re: Prague in 1968, and Bush senior was re: Tienanmen Square in 1989. George W. Bush, it should remember, did nothing about Tehran's crackdown on student protesters in 2003 or about the crackdown on reformist candidates, which excluded them from running in the 2004 Iranian parliamentary elections, or about the probably fraudulent election of Ahmadinejad in 2005. It is hard to see what he could have done, contrary to what his erstwhile supporters in Congress now seem to imply. As an oil state, the Iranian regime does not need the rest of the world and is not easy to pressure. So Obama needs to be careful about raising expectations of any sort of practical intervention by the US, which could not possibly succeed. (Despite the US media's determined ignoring the the Afghanistan War, it is rather a limiting factor on US options with regard to Iran.) Moreover, if the regime succeeds in quelling the protests, however odious it is, it will still be a chess piece on the board of international diplomacy and the US will have to deal with it just as it deals with post-Tiananmen China. (June 24, 2009, "Washington and the Iran Protests: Would they be Allowed in the US?," Juan Cole, Informed Comment)

Who are these men?


And why are they wearing camouflage? And why are they smiling? Police or Pasdaran - Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG)?

Baseeji as Rude Boys

Why me black brother why, dis robbing and killing?
Why me black brother why, dis looting and shooting?
Why me black brother why, you ruling your mumma?
Why me black brother why, you mash up your puppa?
What you gonna do when de voice say come?
Remember the day of judgment.
Pick up your guns and you go to town,
See your black brother and you shoot dem down.
That's wrong! (Mighty Diamonds, "Why Me Black Brother Why?")

Or, a song more related to what is going on on the ground by popular Iranian singer (now in exile I believe), who goes by the name Googoosh. (The Farsi is basically about those abroad remembering those back at home.)

Bit of a ramble: my response to those who claim we are only supporting street protesters because they look like us

Anonymous worries that we don't have any evidence of fraud and that we should perhaps assume that Ahmedinejad was the clear victor. But evidence is hard to come by because the government refused to let any observer near the polling stations, refused specific polling data, and, of course, refuses post-polling. What is probably true is that there is some real support for Ahmedinejad, although that is difficult to gauge because there are a lot of "supporters"out there like the police chief who stated, "I have a family." Collaboration takes its toll on the soul. I'd venture a guess that Ahmedinejad won the most votes, although well short of the 50% to prevent a run-off. But, it also seems that much of that support is weak. All circumstantial? I live in the USA, and we got very tired of our most unpopular president, Richard Nixon, claiming to speak for the "silent majority" (who, by definition, haven't said a thing). I suspect Iranians have tired of having Ahmedinejad and Khemeni claim the same, unprovable, mantle. As for Republicans moving from bomb Iran to our brother freedom fighters, well international politics means you cannot choose your "supporters." It doesn't damn the cause.

It is the singer not the song: know your players

• At least four distinct security institutions are involved in suppressing the demonstrations that have erupted since the June 12th election: The Pasdaran, the Army, the police and the Basij.
• The Pasdaran or Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp have the primary mission of protecting the Islamic Revolution. The Pasdaran number more than 100,000, or roughly one-sixth the size of the standing Army. I have not seen any indication in recent days of any hesitancy among thePasdaran leadership in putting down the disturbances, but I have read some unconfirmed reports of a division between Pasdaran officers and troops.
• The Army may be another matter. Soldiers share an heroic self-image as defenders of the nation and they certainly do not like suppressing civilians, especially unarmed, relatively respectful ones. Moreover, responding to civil unrest is hardwork. Soldiers hate doing it in my experience....
• Police have the task of keeping civil order, but once the numbers of demonstrators grew into the thousands and the demonstration sites increased, they lacked the numbers needed to maintain order. At present, the role of the police seems to be relatively unimportant.
• In the Iranian case, the Basijis are the heavies who use thuggery to intimidate demonstrators. The higher the profile of the Basijis in suppressing demonstrators, the higher the reputational costs for the regime of suppression. When mobilized, the Basij are supposed to be subordinate to the Pasdaran, but I cannot tell if this is actually the case at present. (Saturday, June 20, 2009, "Does the state have the upper hand?," Informed Comment blog)
  

Basiij, Google, and Farsi: an unlikely combination

from Friday, June 19, 2009, "How to help now that Google Translate is available in Persian / Farsi" Page F30)

Basij (بسیج) - Twitter / YouTube
Basiji (بسیجی) - Twitter / YouTube Note: Google is translating Basij and Basiji as "mobilize" so when you see that word it actually means Basij / Basiji.

Basij (I have given up standardizing spelling Farsi) in Historical Perspective

Good brief article in New Yorker on Basiji history

• The Basij is now said to have some 400,000 active members nationwide, with perhaps a million more reservists; in some ways, their relationship to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is also their commander in chief, recalls the one between Nicolae Ceausescu and the loyalist miners trucked in from the Romanian countryside to strong-arm pro-democracy protestors. From 1997 to 2005, during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, the Basij showed its usefulness again, by attacking students at demonstrations. Some students were killed. The protests died out. (June 19, 2009, Jon Lee Anderson: "Understanding The Basij")

Basiji-hunting and the paths to and from local knowledge

Is this true? Who is confident and who is not?

• By the way, two nights ago I went out to see a few things ... as the general crowds spread into their homes militia style Mousavi supporters were out on the streets 'Basiji hunting'.
• Their resolve is no less than these thugs -- they after hunting them down. They use their phones, their childhood friends, their intimate knowledge of their districts and neighbours to plan their attacks -- they're organised and they're supported by their community so they have little fear. They create the havoc they're after, ambush the thugs, use their Cocktail Molotovs, disperse and re-assemble elsewhere and then start again - and the door of every house is open to them as safe harbour -- they're community-connected
• The Basiji's are not.
• These are not the students in the dorms, they're the street young -- they know the ways better than most thugs - and these young, a surprising number of them girls, are becoming more agile in their ways as each night passes on.
• Also, with $10K every local police station lock can be broken and guns taken out...the police too are crowd friendly...for sure put a gun in their hands and these young become a serious counter-balance to the Basij...call them 10% of 18-22 year olds - that makes circa 10 million around the country versus max 4 million Basijis. (Steve Clemons, 'The Four Iran Scenarios and "Basiji Hunting"' Jun 19 2009, 2:06PM)

Michael Collins and the IRB? Is the comparison the Velvet Revolution 1989, Hungary 1956, Prague 1968, or Ireland 1919? Surely not the latter as the regime is not an outside force. But if you lose the community that you are policing, if you lose local knowledge, it might as well be. Perhaps the Civil War in Ireland 1922-1923? That is a dark comparison indeed.

Basiij and University Students

Pictures of baton charges, beatings, and destruction of dormitory rooms abound on the internet (the latter focusing on the destruction of computers, but there are a number of discussions of beatings and threats such as here). The forces of repression have two problems here, although neither threatens to unrail them at the moment.

• First, attacking computing/wireless phone service/the internet poses problems. Cell phone users include supporters of Mousavi, Ahmadinejad, and others. You cannot hinder one group without hindering all. Note the following graphic measuring internet traffic from Iran (based on inference from a good article, Wednesday, June 17th, 2009, "Iranian Traffic Engineering," by Craig Labovitz which also notes "The state owned Data communication Company of Iran (or DCI) acts as the gateway for all Internet traffic entering or leaving the country. Historically, Iranian Internet access has enjoyed some level of freedom despite government filtering and monitoring of web sites."). It shows the slowing of traffic on the date of the election 13 June and successive dates. But note that Iran has a number of businesses that are connected to the world market. They cannot just stop.
• Second, attacking university students is no longer attacking the elite. Iran's revolution has brought education to a huge swathe of the population. Beating students' heads no longer means beating the heads of the offspring of people used to skiing the Swiss Alps. And, as a parent, I can state categorically that parents don't like folks beating the heads of their children at university. Whomever they voted for.
  

baseej and revolutionary guard: a hierarchical chart and an ethical query



I have taken this from Iran Military Forum who have taken it from a Rand Report. It distinguishes the Revolutionary Guard from the Basiij. The selection below appears to exonerate some of the latter. But is this a question of supporting the troops not the war?

• [T]here are some indications that the Basij—many of whom are drawn from the ranks of Iran’s disaffected youth and elderly pensioners—hold cynical or ambivalent views of this ideological training. Basij training is frequently necessary for certain social benefits—loans, university scholarships, welfare subsidies, and the like. As stated by one 24-year-old member in a 2005 interview, “The only reason I stay in the Basij is for the money . . . many of my friends in the Basij are unhappy with the government.”
• Compounding this reported cynicism, there appears to be a rural-urban split in public perceptions of the Basij, noted in a previous RAND study and reinforced to us in 2006 by a longtime visitor to the Islamic Republic. In the provinces, the Basij present a more benign face through construction projects and disaster relief, while in urban areas, they are more apt to be seen quite negatively, quashing civil society activities, arresting dissidents, and confronting reformist student groups on campuses. Urban sentiments may be, moreover, affected by the Basij’s affilia-tion with the “pressure groups” or hardline vigilantes, of which Ansar-e Hezbollah is the most widely known. ("Who Controls Iran's Military And How Big Is It?," Iran Military Forum, June 16, 2009, 08:07:11 PM)

The question remains: is this man and his type culpable? (Police or Baseej?)

them regular trademark

Everybody run run run
Everybody scatter scatter
Some people lost some bread
Someone nearly die
Someone just die
Police dey come, army dey come
Confusion everywhere
Hey yeah!

Seven minutes later
All don cool down, brother
Police don go away
Army don disappear
Them leave Sorrow, Tears, and Blood

[Chorus]
Them regular trademark!

Them leave Sorrow, Tears, and Blood
Them regular trademark
That is why

[Chorus]
Hey yeah!

Everybody run run run.. ("Sorrow, Tears, and Blood," Fela Kuti)
.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders chant slogans during their meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, not pictured, in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 11, 2007. (AP Photo/ISNA, Rouhollah Vahdati, File)

2009 = 1979?: more attention needs to be placed on the forces of repression

(Andrew Sullivan has footage of basiij violence here and here)

• An Iranian journalist who witnessed the shooting told the Monitor that, in fact, the gunmen were plainclothed basiji militia in riot helmets and body armor who fired an estimated 300 bullets from a rooftop – roughly half into the air, and the other half directly into the crowd, over the course of an hour.
• "The guy shooting from the roof was very calm, not like he was shooting at people," said the witness. The ideological militiamen, who operate under the auspices of the Revolutionary Guards, fired as if "they were just trying to empty their guns into the ground, very cool, very relaxed."
• The resulting images of protesters with green armbands carrying away their dead comrades – with looks of horror on their faces and shouts for help on their lips – evoked the prolonged bloody protests that shook Iran before the 1979 revolution.
• Back then, soldiers of the pro-West shah fired directly on student protesters, prompting a growing cycle of violent 40-day mourning protests, which produced yet more dead "martyrs" each round and eventually led to the fall of the government. ("Eyewitness: Iranian militiamen shot 300 rounds during Monday's protest," By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, from the June 16, 2009 edition)
• 

Iran and Poland

If we are expecting a quick change in the government of Iran: in Poland, Solidarity was created in 1980 and talks between Solidarity and the government reached an impasse in 1981. The result was 2+ years of martial law. Eventually, 1988, Solidarity was re-legalized, and, in 1989, won the majority of seats in the new government. That is still revolutionary change. But whole lives are lived in the in-between time. (Taken from The Fall of Communism in Poland: A Chronology)

Is it Basiij or Baseej?; either way, these paramilitaries are as dangerous as Blackwater/Xe

Very good blog from Channel 4 reporter "A day in Iran I will never forget," by
Lindsey Hilsum|Posted: 11:33 am on 16/06/09

• Just before we went on air, we manged to obtain – and I won’t say how – pictures of a terrible scene of violence which had just occurred as dusk fell. People – who knows if they were real protesters or agents provocateurs – attacked a base of the basiij, the paramilitary shock troops of the Revolution. They set fire to the place shouting “You killed our brothers, now we’ll kill you.” People hate the basiij, and this assault was a shocking manifestation of that. The basiij shot into the air and then into the crowd. A man fell, dead; his body was pulled away.
• As I write this morning, I have no idea what today will bring. The violence which broke out at the end of the day was a terrible contrast with the peaceful protest we had seen earlier. I don’t know how many died, but certainly now people are being killed and injured.
• The protesters say they will come out on the streets again today. Who knows what will happen now?