Wanted: Military man
Iran will remain theocratic and Pakistan quasi-secular! Unless...

December 28, 2005
iranian.com

I cannot remember the number of times people make the tired prediction that Iran will have a counter-revolution within this decade whilst Pakistan will become the world's latest Sunni theocracy.

It is vital to note that nowhere within the Islamic world has there been a successful revolution without crucial support of the army, it is the military that determines which and what type of government will rule the nation (since in most cases it is the only truly national institution which transcends ethnic & religious irredentism). Image of a strong man is integral to any Muslim society. From Morocco to Brunei we see quasi democracies or theocratic royalties with the exception of Turkey.

Islamic armies of every nation have played a solemn role in continuity of a dictatorship or a tyranny; even quasi-democracy has been subject to the whims of the army if they decide to stay always like Egypt, it is only because they had their share of Colonel's revolutions and they feel quite adequate to stage manage the show by supporting a quasi democracy and autocracy. Sometime the armies in Islamic world discover a civilian face to counteract escalating currents of ideology more opportune.

A fact omitted from scholarly study of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is that the Shah was only overthrown because the military threw their lot behind their revolutions. The military commanders, such as General Qarabaghi, believed that the orders left by the Shah were to avoid bloodshed at all costs. He was concerned an attempted coup would have a bloody, inconclusive outcome. By the night of the 9th of February 1979 the tensions within the army could no longer be contained. Armed conflict broke out at the Doshan Tappeh Garrison between the Imperial Guard and the Air Force cadets. This was precisely the day when General Qarabaghi was meant to be inspecting the garrison.

News of the fighting in the army - which resulted in a number of deaths - brought the people on to the streets. Curfew regulations were ignored and barricades set up. Mr Karim Sanjabi, the provisional government's Foreign Minister, was concerned that the army, the last remaining bastion of the Shah's regime would attempt a coup d'etat. He believed that such a move would only lead to civil war.

On February the 10th 1979 Dr. Bakhtiar met with the military commanders at the National Security Council to discuss the situation: General Qarabaghi and Dr. Bakhtiar differ in their versions of what happened that night. Dr. Bakhtiar asked for reinforcements. But under the orders of General Qarabaghi the troops returned to the barracks. No coup would have saved Iran from the uprising but an indecisive Army destined Iran to an unconstrained radical essence.

That was the moment when the revolution and the Shah's ousting became a reality. Iran was idealized in the West and the Islamic world as nation evolving towards a secular democracy, when in fact the popular reforms have largely been ineffective and meaningless. Iranians generally were not sympathetic to America and in the end Iran has no affluent secular class that could formulate a successful opposition to the present government (apart from a bunch of divided students).

The "reformers" like Khatami or Rafsanjani in Iran of today are further right than Akhwan in Egypt! Common Iranians are deeply traditional by nature (as opposed to the highly Westernized, secular & successfully Iranian diaspora which is in any case depleting it's numbers through intermarriage) and even within the university students, (who are allegedly liberal and are considered to be the main engine of change in Iranian politics); there is a deep schism between the "reformers" and the "conservatives".

In fact many Iranians are deeply in favor of it, especially those who recently arrived in Tehran from the out-lying rural areas. The regime may have numerous faults but there have been an infusion of funds to improve the outlying provinces of Iran and the decentralization achieved in the past two decades, is something that eluded the Pahlavis.

Iran may never have a successful counter-revolution, since its army is deeply religious and it has the undying loyalty of the peasants and their recently settled brethren in the cities. Iran was a nominal secular nation when the revolution occurred, and it only succeeded because Islamists had infiltrated the military and the middle classes who were dissatisfied with the Shah.

This revolution has also resulted into an uninterrupted flow of new mullahs from Qom; the rejuvenated brand of new cadre of 'Mullahs' post revolution is a huge lobby and a new factor that is predetermined on the theocratic nature of Iran. Nowhere in the Middle East with the exception of Pakistan we have 'mullah-producing factories' churning out new scholars every day. The Deobandi seminaries of Pakistan and Shiite seminaries of Iran in Qom are making sure that interference of religion stays as the pivot of state politics.

In Pakistan we see an opposite situation; the military is a significant secular component in Pakistan and backed by the moderate middle class & highly Westernized elite. Pakistan's secular political elite derives from (moderate) Barwelis whilst the clerics hail from the fundamentalist Deodandi school of thought.

Thus certain compromises have been made over the generation and the conflictual nature of this relationship has always made Pakistan a peculiar place to comprehend in the eyes of the foreigner. However ultimately it is the moderate Barwelis who steer the course of the nation whilst the Deodandi run isolated Madrassas and mosques and those are the ones that have produced Mullah Omar kind of firebrand lunatics.

Pakistan may not ripe for a theocracy because it consists of far more diverse people than the Iranians (despite only 65% of the population being Persian, there is no doubt it is culture of 'Fars' that entirely defines Iran as a nation) and unlike Iran; Pakistani national life does or did not revolve around one city. Tehran was the focal point of the cultural, commercial, political and indeed spiritual life in Iran (not even Isfahan, Shiraz and Qom could hope to compare with Tehran) at the time of the Shah.

On the other hand Pakistan has an administrative capital in Islamabad, commercial heart in Karachi and cultural hub in Lahore. Islamic revolutionaries will have to be active throughout these three cities and the eastern Indic provinces (Punjab and Sindh, which are highly urbanized and contain the aforementioned cities) do not display the fanatical Islamic bent as the Pathans and Baluchis populated (& predominantly tribal) provinces do. Perhaps, Baluchis independently are fiercely autonomous race and worldly in their habits.

I am amused by the oversimplification when Western reporters imply that Pakistan is teetering toward a theocracy because Pathan tribal chiefs in the border regions gave their allegiances to Osama Bin Laden. The inhabitants of the tribal & rural areas are heavily Islamicised, and along with the Madrassa students, form a significant bulk of the population however their political influence is marginal at best and they most definitely will not shape the future of Pakistan.

The heterogeneity as a nation will ensure a prevention of coalescence of the Islamic peoples and parties into an united framework (the well connected Shi'ite minority, whose numbers form 20-30% of the nation, will not countenance a Sunni oriented Islamic theocracy) and even if there is an Islamic revolution it will be a short lived one rebellion.

Since as I stated earlier, no revolution in the Islamic Crescent has succeeded without the explicit backing of the military and Pakistan's military won't be turning Islamic any time soon. Any reconfiguration of Pakistan's national life would mean a redistribution of power from the status quo which would be unacceptable even to the most fanatical army officer, after all when one is in a position of power one will not callously endanger it by advocated alternate forms of governance.

Despite some superficial Islamicisation by General Zia, the bulk of the army remains secular and indeed in the Cadet colleges association with Islamic parties are frowned upon and indeed restricted. The argument that Pakistan will become a theocracy rests upon the fallacious assumption that the Pakistani people have uniformly significant Islamic interests, which is not true, and that the illiterate populace, rather than the army or the elite, will determine the course of the nation's future that is most definitely not true. May be the changing nature of the officer cadre coming from rural areas may impact the ideological underpinnings of the army in few decades.

Ultimately Iran will remain theocratic whilst in Pakistan the balancing act will culminate in the military formally integrating itself into the political mainstream and framework. These are not necessarily bad developments in themselves after all Iran is progressing as a nation and it's main problems are it's weak economy & foreign isolation.

However it has a good credit rating, as evinced by the willingness of European companies to underwrite Iran's upcoming bond issue (for seven of the past eight years Iran has had a budget surplus but now with subsidies and higher oil prices the deficit is alarming and threatening).

Oil prices have given new leash of life to the Mullah regime of Iran; higher oil prices have hidden the damages of isolation of Iran from international community. The damage of the colossal brain drain is minimized when Oil windfall hides the loss of contribution of great Iranian expatriates communities who are contributing to the western civilization with some tears and longing to go back to their roots.

Nature has its own ways of uprooting chaos and counter-revolution, the present Islamic revolution looks stable until economic misery strikes hard, luckily for Iranian Oil prices have remained quite stable and has helped in flourishing of the word of Allah, rather revolution today is surviving today on petro-dollars.

Rapprochement with America is more tricky however Richard H. Curtiss, the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, ended his article "Solutions to Two Major Problems Dividing U.S. and Iran Lie in Israel" , with the following passage: 'No one is more aware than this writer of the dark side, both past and present, of Iran's current, deeply divided regime, or of the catastrophic consequences for Iran (and, eventually, America) of U.S. intervention in 1953.

At this point, however, virtually all problems between Iran and the United States could be solved with even a minimum application of patience and goodwill. But among problems cited by Ms. Albright are two that won't be easily solved because they are not between Iran and the U.S. but between Iran and Israel. Specifically, these are, in her words, Iran's "effort to develop a nuclear weapons capability" and its "support for terrorism abroad."

Iran is going to continue to develop efforts to have covert nuclear weapons for defensive purposes until Israel gives up its nuclear weapons, the only ones presently in the region. Perhaps one can argue Israel as a protect when it comes to 'force' Iranian mullahs think of Iran in more traditional terms and consider the invasions of Qadisiya as wounds on Iranian nation.

As for "terrorism abroad," it appears that Iran's moderates already had halted Iranian assassinations of domestic political opponents in such countries as Turkey and Germany, now under Ahmadinejad the jury is still out as to the conduct of new government vis a vis political opponents. But Iran is unlikely to give up its support for Palestinians fighting, it is continuous 'Jihad' against infidels that revolution breeds on and finds its strengths.

The theocratic republic & the constitutional republic of US do not have a significant conflict of interest except over the Jewish state and that is one of the main hurdles to their relations. This doesn't lay inasmuch with the theocracy as the traditional Iranian-Muslim hostility towards Israel (which is endemic to every Islamic nation) and as such a compromise over the delicate issue can be arranged.

Once Arab-Israeli issues are overcome Iran will be able to rejoin the family of nations with a clean sheet and with renewed relations with America, Iranian revolution is one of the foremost supporter of extremism in Palestine. In its fears of Arabs it is very 'Iranian' but in its religious doctrines the fights of Arabs against Israel are Iran's battles. This is not the case for Pakistan and Pakistan is trying to breakaway from universal Israeli hatred of the Islamic lands. The recent ice breaking between Musharraf and Sharon are first steps towards greater reconciliation.

Pakistan realizes the consequences of his nuke program being termed as Islamic bomb, the last thing they want to be is on Israel target list. Iran is more than ever happy to expose itself from a preemptive strike of Israel as they carry this program as a program of the revolution and in solidarity with Palestine. This is a very steep price of the revolution where Arab interests are more important than the interests of Iran.

For Pakistan, the Pakistanis will eventually have a democracy of sorts but with the shadow of the army always hovering by. The way Pakistan Army recently dealt with Alqaeda pockets in North of the country with fire proves the point that when it comes to vested interests disciplined Army vested interests are superior than Islamic brotherhood.

Pakistan 'first' was the new slogan that outlived Pan Islamism of ruthless General Zia who wanted the borders of Pakistan to be shifted to Oxys. The u-turn of ideology from Jihad against Russia to eliminate Osama the prodigal son of that Afghan Jihad was a change of hearts that was unprecedented. The ideology of 70's was dumped and a new strategy of pragmatism that ensured survival was accepted, the stick and carrot approach of super powers was accepted in Toto.

Instead of Gaddafi's belligerency or Saddam self-destructive overconfidence, Pakistan avoided decline to a bottomless pit of failed nation by being nice kind on the block. The army has the necessary strength and will to carry through policies, which are unpalatable to the majority; it imposes its wills and tries to make a nation out of four separate nations.

Where Yugoslavia, and USSR failed Pakistan has survived so far, in terms of new nations created out of colonialism Pakistan has so far miraculously survived against all odds. It has been the endurance instincts and expediency more than ideology that ensured this so far survival.

Iran unfortunately being a 5000-year-old civilization, is caught in a web of self-aggrandizement, impudence, ideological theocratic stubbornness and steel of nerves as a result of 'predestination' as will of Allah may very soon lead to grim cost for a nation that deserves far better.

Hence my opinion is that Iran will remain theocratic and Pakistan quasi-secular! Only a secular uprising of disciplined Army can save Iran from disasters looming ahead.