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Index Kabul / Teheran 19979 ff | Imprint |
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Jochen Becker
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From the White to the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khomeini, who was already in opposition at the time, was deported to Turkey. He then lived for several years in Iraqi exile and from October 1978 on in the Parisian suburb of Neauphle-le-Château. This offered him access to the worldwide press and to the BBC, which broadcast programmes in Farsi that reached a large audience in Iran, something which facilitated the upcoming revolt from abroad. (20) Bahman Nirumand gives a description of the pilgrimages to the "Ayatollah under the apple tree", whom even leftists asked for an audience. The battle against the Shah was fought both domestically and in exile. (21) When Shah opponents disrupted his visit with U.S. president Carter, the tear gas employed against the protesters blew towards the foreign dignitaries. "The Shah cries and the people laugh", was the slogan of the demonstrations that same evening in the streets of Tehran. At the beginning of 1978, tens of thousands took to the streets in the holy city of Qom. Since after seven and forty days the dead are remembered, the funeral processions turned into mass demonstrations. (22) At night people in Tehran, and later in other cities, stood on the roofs and shouted "Allah o Akbar - God is almighty". These actions were supported by strikes in the power plants: "At night the ghosts appeared - a psychological battle that could not be dealt with by employing weapons and tanks" (Nirumand 1985: 60). Mosques served to organize food cooperatives, the medical treatment of victims of the protests, "night patrols", and the sale of oil; there were kindergartens, theatre groups and courses on Islam, Marxism, economy, Arabic grammar, contemporary history, as well as various other training offers and language classes. "The Western leftists would say that the supporters of Khomeini organized the workers on the neighbourhood level and less or not at all in the factories." (July 1979: 99). While the secular Left and the bourgeois opposition were driven to the torture chambers or out of the country, the organizational power of the clergy and its national network of Koran schools and mosques increasingly empowered the religious opposition. Hundreds of thousands of mullahs dispersed throughout the country were activated and placed at the service of the revolution. Mosques were turned into party meeting-places. "On their initiative, numerous grassroots committees were founded who raised the claim to administrate social life. In face of the disintegration of the state apparatus, in several cities (...) they were able to establish a substitute and proclaim an autonomous Islamic republic. There were around three thousand mosques in Tehran. (...) According to unconfirmed estimates, approximately 100 mosques were deeply committed to the revolution" (July 1979: 98). More than two million people participated in a protest march in Tehran in December 1978. The struggles were accompanied by strikes of oil workers, airline employees, the editorial staffs of newspapers, banks employees, and public servants. As opposed to the official image that the current president, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, again conjures up today, the poor population was not the main pillar of the revolution. "One could have (...) conceived that, for example, the slum residents, who had fled to the cities in the hundreds of thousands as a result of the land reform and now led a life in poverty on the outskirts of the cities, would have protested against the regime. Or also the deprived inhabitants of the remote regions" (Nirumand 1985: 17). The contribution of Asef Bayat in this volume examines the actions and activities of those marginalized in the cities, who in the shadow of the revolution went their own ways instead. Once the protests and revolts against the Shah took hold of the military itself in the form of disobedience, desertions and sabotage, the Shah fled to Egypt on January 16, 1979. Two days later, Iran experienced the largest demonstration in its history. The overthrow, which was until then supported by the most various political and social groups, was now clearly dominated by the mullahs and interpreted as a plebiscite in favour of Khomeini's reign. Religious "forces of order" tore pictures of Mosaddeq from the hand of protesters and attacked them with knives and chains. Paint was spilt on women with open hair; later acid was used to cauterize their faces. Cinemas were burnt down, film rolls were thrown on the street, alcohol was removed from shops, bars, hotels, and soon also from private homes; entire breweries were burnt down and bottles were publicly smashed. In January 1979 the government heads of France, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Unites States met to discuss the aggravated situation in Iran. The United States set up a special crisis committee. During this time, the Iranian press experienced a short phase of freedom between the flight of the Shah and the appointment of the new leader. Soon afterwards, Khomeini's people occupied the coordinating positions in radio and TV. "We shall eradicate Westernization. (...) All must adapt to Islam", Khomeini declared from Qom three weeks after his arrival in Iran, and proclaimed the Islamic Republic. In the beginning, the new line was not without contradiction. For example, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Masaddeq's death on March 5, 1979, a million people too to the streets, organized by the National Democratic Front. On the next day, leftist book stores and publishing houses, newspapers and kiosks were attacked and burnt down. "Communist pig" became a popular slur. In Shiraz, the revolutionary court began passing sentences on so-called enemies of the revolution; numerous homosexuals and prostitutes were sentenced to death. Women's Day onMarch 8 was placed under the Hezbollah verdict, "either the headscarf or a blow to the head". (23) Democracy was deemed a Western concept. 98.2 percent of the population allegedly voted for the introduction of an Islamic republic. All essential ideas of the Ayatollah were included in the constitution passed at the end of 1979. The question of power was decided with the introduction of the Islamic revolution and the passing of the constitution. Official Islamicization
Bahman Nirumand states that the official Islamicization of the country in the wake of the drastic changes of 1979 began with the women. At the end of February 1979 the "Law to Protect the Family" was abolished and, with it, birth control as well. Wearing the headscarf, which was banned under the Shah, was now mandatory. The demonstration on International Women's Day on March 8, directed against the compulsion to wear the hejab, was massively attacked. Prostitution was forbidden (25) and the red-light district of Shahr-e Now in the south of Tehran - where Kamran Shirdel's film "Qal'eh" was set - was raided by hundreds of paramilitary Hezbollah with torches. The women were taken away and the houses burnt down. Six thousand prostitutes had previously worked in the narrow, winding streets and alleys. On November 4, 1979, students in Tehran occupied the U.S. embassy and took the diplomats hostage. The United States imposed an economic boycott which is maintained until today. Iran, in turn, used this conflict for a further domestic forcing into line. The failed attempt to free the hostages cost President Jimmy Carter his re-election in 1980. Precisely at the time when victorious Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, the hostages were let free after 444 days. In June 1980 the Shah died of cancer in Cairo. In autumn of 1980 Iraq attacked Iran. (26) The fear of a Shiite Islamicization of the region and the influence of the United States on Saddam Hussein were presented as reasons. The enormous stocks of weapons (27) of the Shah regime saved Iran, which was weakened by the revolution, from being overrun. But the expected blitzkrieg turned into an eight-year-long war of attrition that prolonged the revolution's state of emergency and covered up the growing social and political problems in Iran. House searches and road-blocks became part of everyday life, critics of the regime were arrested, tortured and executed. The war changed the face of the newly founded republic and cost hundreds of thousands of lives inside the country and on the front. "Martyrs" with the "key to paradise" around their necks blew themselves up as human mine-detectors. Even Tehran was bombed by specially equipped Iraqi aircraft and missiles, and for this reason the wealthier inhabitants moved to the east behind the mountain ranges. Darkness descended over the city at night due to the black-outs. In a hopeless situation Iran finally agreed to a ceasefire in July 1988. The country was exhausted. At the same time, thousands of political prisoners were executed and a fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie with a bounty of several million euros. In June 1989 the revolutionary leader Khomeini died. His successor, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, assumed office with the promise of supporting the industry to a greater extent. But his liberal economic programme did not suit the conservative bazaar purveyors who dominated Iran's entire trade. When Rafsanjani's technocratic programme failed, leaving behind increased external debt, there were repeated food revolts by "peopled deprived of their rights" starting in mid-1991, which were brutally suppressed by the military. In 1997 the liberal Islamist and former Minister of Cultural Affairs, Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, won the presidential elections. Civil society, freedom of the press, equality of women, and the de-ideologizing or denationalization of religion became part of the vocabulary of Iranian politics. These political promises met a positive response, especially with younger people and the urban intellectual milieus. For a short while, the press landscape flourished, and in the wake of the alliance against the Afghan Taliban regime, an easing of the tension with the United States even appeared possible. But everyday life was different. The invitation of Iranians more or less critical of the regime to a conference organized by the Heinrich-Böll Foundation in Berlin led to the imprisonment of many attendants after their return from Germany. (28) The judiciary tormented even moderate dissidents and did not shrink from death sentences and execution squads. The Iranian parliament, which compared with other countries of the Near and Middle East was lively and open to discussion, was ultimately dismissed by the conservative Council of Guardians: "Each and every republican institution has a superordinate clerical one" (Nirumand 1985: 119). Ninety percent of the draft statutes presented by the "reform government" at the time were blocked or rejected by the Council of Guardians, a sort of constitutional court. Control was so tight that even the president's television speeches had to be approved by the conservative censors. This impotence vis-à-vis the Council of Guardians and the unkept promises of his government forced Khatami to step down at the end of his term in 2004 as a failed reformer. Despite the religious permeation of politics, "in the year 25 after the Islamic revolution the Iranian population is perhaps the most secularised in the Middle East" (Amipur/Witzke 2004: 9). Ahmadinejad's election as the new president is not necessarily a sign of a distinct religiousness of the Iranians but a protest against poverty. Forty percent of the population, according to the Iranian Chamber of Commerce, live below the poverty line, and fifty percent are unemployed. At the same time, competition on the education market is extreme. In the year 2000, 1.5 million school-leavers applied for 130,000 university places. (29) Ahmadinejad presents himself as a down-to-earth guy from the countryside, who knew how to convert his demonstrative asceticism into electoral success. It remains to be seen whether he will improve the living conditions of the poor. Stories from the Production Prior to the revolution, in Tehran alone 700,000 people were involved in "dead work", as a minister called the sale of chewing gum in the streets (Bürker 1979: 8). (30) Hundreds of thousands of job-seekers emigrated to the neighbouring sheikhdoms. At the same time, around 50,000 immigrated Afghan and Pakistani assembly workers laboured for low wages in Iran and "were utilized to enforce industrial discipline via the ethnic division of the workforce and (...) additionally functioned as strikebreakers" (ebd.: 86). In the assembly plants of "Iran National", where Mercedes lorries and busses (31) as well as Chrysler cars and tractors were manufactured, workers from Afghanistan constituted a large portion of the staff. Further guest workers for the building industry came from Turkey and the Philippines - while the jobless rate in the country continued to rise. "Mass production in the foreign state companies could only be raised to a standard that at least partly corresponded with the Western norms through the massive exploitation of women and the employment of foreign labourers" (ibid.: 88). Flight of capital, the emigration of qualified workers and the exodus of the former elites have left clear marks on Iran's post-revolutionary society. There is hardly a global enterprise willing to set up its headquarters in Tehran. "After walking through the city for a couple of days it becomes clear that the huge posters of martyrs who died in the war between Iraq and Iran only serve to cover up the remains of ostentatious company headquarters that were never completed", is how the Dutch architect Wouter Vanstiphout describes his impressions (2005: 76). "Islamism as it exists in reality" (Amipur/Witzke
2004) is how others mockingly call this development, alluding to
the collapse of the real-socialist GDR. At the same time, Iran possesses
the third largest oil deposits in the world, and ranks second behind
Russia in gas reserves, which decisively contributes to the country's
income. Rich oil reserves and political influence reaching far into
neighbouring regions make Tehran appear as a "semi-peripheral
global city" (ebd.: 25) that competes with other metropolises
in Turkey and Pakistan as well as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States
and the Middle East.
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