Saturday, July 4, 2009
Links for the Mousavi election fraud report, released July 4, 2009
From the field: The Yeltsin Moment in Iran? Mousavi Details Alleged Election Fraud
Read more on this article...
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Does the state have the upper hand?
Crossposted with From the Field.
Judged by firepower and control of the communications network it does seem to have the open hand. But this is not a one-sided contest at all. Provided the demonstrations are not geographically limited to one or two cities, there are several factors that favor the protesters even if they only deploy in smaller numbers in the days to come:
Dealing with civil disturbances is a labor intensive work. The natural response is to arrest the leaders and cut their communications, but those steps do not seem to be working to this point. People who are sufficiently inspired to join a demonstration at some risk to their lives constitute a movement not a bureaucratically organized unit. Particularly in fast-moving street confronations where wile, personality and courage are the currency unexpected leaders quickly emerge. As important, people learn quickly how to test, taunt and stretch the government forces. Provided the demonstrators desist from using deadly violence, their moral legitimacy will be enhanced. Plus, the government forces are hardly a monolith.
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.
The demonstrators can scatter and reform repeatedly throughout the day and night. Meantime, the soldiers are on the job continuously with limited breaks. Morale can be expected to dip as the demonstrations go on; if they go on.
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.
Meantime, highly respected clerics including Grand Ayatollahs Montazeri, Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardabili and Saafi Golpaygaani have either condemned the government for its handling of the disputed election and its reaction to protests, or they have taken symbolic steps to signal their disapproval as in the case of GrandAyotollah Yousef Saneei (thanks to x for this information on Saneei). Saneei has traveled from Qum to Tehran's Jamaran Husseiniyya (where Ayatollah Khomeini lived) silently protest. (Also see)
What all the major figures in the ruling establishment must now be watching for anxiously is any sign that the security forces are losing the will to contain the demonstrations. Pious Iranian deployed to quell civil disturbances will be torn when their officers tell them to use force and the Ayotallah who they revere warns them that they will be responsible before Allah for following illegitimate orders (as Montazeri as already said).
If the demonstrations continue for many days, even at the reduced levels seen the day following Khamenei's speech, it is hard to imagine a beneficial outcome for the Leader. His reputation, such as it is, will be further chipped away making him even more vulnerable to criticism from leading clerics. Yet, if an even bloodier crackdown is ordered the regime may insure the unrelenting hostility of many millions of Iranians. Men ofKhameinei's generation will understand the gravity of risk quite well.
Read more on this article...
Judged by firepower and control of the communications network it does seem to have the open hand. But this is not a one-sided contest at all. Provided the demonstrations are not geographically limited to one or two cities, there are several factors that favor the protesters even if they only deploy in smaller numbers in the days to come:
Dealing with civil disturbances is a labor intensive work. The natural response is to arrest the leaders and cut their communications, but those steps do not seem to be working to this point. People who are sufficiently inspired to join a demonstration at some risk to their lives constitute a movement not a bureaucratically organized unit. Particularly in fast-moving street confronations where wile, personality and courage are the currency unexpected leaders quickly emerge. As important, people learn quickly how to test, taunt and stretch the government forces. Provided the demonstrators desist from using deadly violence, their moral legitimacy will be enhanced. Plus, the government forces are hardly a monolith.
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.
The demonstrators can scatter and reform repeatedly throughout the day and night. Meantime, the soldiers are on the job continuously with limited breaks. Morale can be expected to dip as the demonstrations go on; if they go on.
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.
Meantime, highly respected clerics including Grand Ayatollahs Montazeri, Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardabili and Saafi Golpaygaani have either condemned the government for its handling of the disputed election and its reaction to protests, or they have taken symbolic steps to signal their disapproval as in the case of GrandAyotollah Yousef Saneei (thanks to x for this information on Saneei). Saneei has traveled from Qum to Tehran's Jamaran Husseiniyya (where Ayatollah Khomeini lived) silently protest. (Also see)
What all the major figures in the ruling establishment must now be watching for anxiously is any sign that the security forces are losing the will to contain the demonstrations. Pious Iranian deployed to quell civil disturbances will be torn when their officers tell them to use force and the Ayotallah who they revere warns them that they will be responsible before Allah for following illegitimate orders (as Montazeri as already said).
If the demonstrations continue for many days, even at the reduced levels seen the day following Khamenei's speech, it is hard to imagine a beneficial outcome for the Leader. His reputation, such as it is, will be further chipped away making him even more vulnerable to criticism from leading clerics. Yet, if an even bloodier crackdown is ordered the regime may insure the unrelenting hostility of many millions of Iranians. Men ofKhameinei's generation will understand the gravity of risk quite well.
Read more on this article...
The Failure of the Iranian Model
Twelve years ago, with the election of Khatami as President of Iran, it became obvious that in large cross sections of the Iranian society the revolutionary zeal has petered out. The clergy was determined to keep the revolution that brought it to power alive and prevent its moderation and for that aim went to great length to limit free elections and democracy. With Ahmedinejad’s first (and only) election there was an attempt to revive its zeal internally and, as is customary with revolutions, project it outwards by linking it with local grievances, in this case, in Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The rigging of the elections and the violent clampdown on peaceful protestors that began today, demonstrates that the uneasy combination of an Islamic state and democracy has failed. By choosing revolution over the remaining vestiges of democracy, the clergy ensured that Iran will no longer serve as a model of mass supported Islamic Revolution. While internally the revolution has been saved, its foreign influence is likely to vane. Nor, as we learned, is it possible to make a peaceful transition from an Islamic to a democratic state, as happened in the aftermath of communism. Instead, Iran is coming to resemble the authoritarian regimes of the region.
Read more on this article...
Friday, June 12, 2009
State of Decay
My new piece is up at The Review (National), State of Decay. It argues, by taking a longer historical look at the idea of Pakistan, that the relationship between the provinces and the federal govt. determine what the future for Pakistan holds :
X-posted at CM. Read more on this article...
Twenty years of military dictatorships, under Ayub Khan and Zia ul Haq, cemented the rule of the few over the many. Their policies led to the emergence of specific grievances by sub-nationalist groups in Baluchistan and Sindh. In the decade of Pervez Musharraf’s rule, these tensions grew dramatically, and pushed the state into a greater alienation from its own citizens.
Musharraf’s dictatorial regime sought to polish over any internal incoherence with a unified foreign front aimed primarily at operating militarily in Afghanistan, NWFP and Baluchistan. The influx of cash, some $6 billion, into the coffers of the military propelled the army to new-found heights as the country’s largest landlord, largest employer and largest business. But maintaining this new oligarchy came at a steep price for Pakistan.
X-posted at CM. Read more on this article...
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
THE SPECTACLE OF COMPARISON
BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
“Tiananmen’s anniversary unimportant to China’s youth,” laments the Los Angeles Times. “Tiananmen now seems distant to China’s students," opines the New York Times.
With the approach of the twentieth anniversary of June 4, 1989, there have been a spate of news stories comparing young people in China today with the students who protested at Tiananmen, and the comparison is usually not a flattering one. Apathy has replaced activism. Propaganda has replaced knowledge. Today’s youth are characterized as the “stupid generation,” or at best, “hip but clueless.”
I think such comparisons are unfair.
First of all, twenty years is a long time. Why should young people today be compared to aunts and uncles who were on the march when they hadn’t even learned yet to walk?
The students in 1989 in their day were no different in this respect. They did not spend a huge amount of time pondering why they were or weren’t like the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution.
If anything, it was precisely because they had little or no first-hand contact with the horror of Mao’s social experiment gone awry that they could in good faith and unremitting optimism write provocative wall posters and take to the streets, naively hoping for positive results.
It seems student activism, to really get off the ground, and to have any integrity at all, requires forgetting the past, --or at least not being beholden to it-- as much as invoking it.
Referencing the past as a guide to one’s actions, especially in a place where the past weighs as heavily as it does in China, is intimidating to the point of despair.
The conditions under which the 1989 generation came of age are not repeatable, nor desirable. China is in many important respects a better country today, much more liberal in terms of lifestyle and individual choice, though politics remains hemmed in as before.
China is also incontestably more prosperous, more open and open to much more information, though media controls remain. One glaring gap in an otherwise improving picture, is that Tiananmen remains a taboo in China today.
It is fully understandable that older observers might get periodically nostalgic about the euphoric burst of people power that erupted on the streets of Beijing during the Sino-Soviet summit twenty years ago. For anyone who was there, or felt a part of it from media immersion; it will always be a part of them.
It was a time in which ordinary people found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. But students were reacting to a unique environment, not inventing it.
There was a perfect storm of campus restiveness, Western media readiness (thanks largely to the expected pomp and circumstance of the Gorbachev visit) and a win-or-die Politburo impasse; all of which conspired to allow something small, narrow, and local to snowball into something large, broad and universal, over many weeks involving millions of people.
No wonder those of us who were there were swept away by the cyclone-like force of it. But one can’t help but notice how quickly the West’s willingness to identify with the cause of Chinese protests waned, when, in subsequent years, the crowd turned its angry gaze first to the US, and later, Japan.
Demonstrations subsequent to Tiananmen tend to be dismissed as phony demonstrations, reeking of government interference. But there was ample evidence in 1989 that one faction or other of the government was ever trying to play the crowd, infiltrate and direct the course of the protests as well.
The hyper-nationalistic students I interviewed after the anti-American and anti-Japanese demonstrations in 1999 and 2005 were not that different from the impulsive, idealistic and overly excitable students I marched shoulder to shoulder with in 1989.
The forward rush of feet, the billowing red flags, the hypnotic cadences of slogan and song chanted over and again in concert with the reckless enthusiasm of youth were in evidence in each instance, though there were differences in quality and scope.
The Tiananmen demos were rigorous but peaceful, politically daring, but welcomed in open arms by ordinary citizens. The 1989 protests endured for weeks and laid claim to revolutionary iconography in the central plaza of the Central Kingdom’s capital, making for unforgettable symbolic spectacle. It gave one the feeling of being in the center of the world.
But that was then, this is now. Different conditions call for different strategies and different solutions. Some of today’s battles may be fought out entirely on the internet or in courts or in civil society forums. Other little insurrections will, tragically, fail to get the attention they deserve until things take a violent turn, and then we’ll hear about them.
Nowadays, there’s plenty of unrest going on in every part of China, but if it doesn’t happen in a convenient place under the nose of the media, it may as well be deemed a non-event. China’s Public Security Bureau routinely releases shocking statistics that suggest China hardly goes a day without dozens of demonstrations or “mass incidents” erupting somewhere or else in the provinces, to the tune of thousands of little insurrections a month.
Demonstrating in a country as obsessed with stability as China is not a surefire course of action and is often counter-productive, but it continues to happen to an alarming degree. It’s not desirable politically, but today’s China is built on the back of innumerable mass incidents, the revolution culminating in the 1949 establishment of the People’s Republic being the biggest one of all.
So is it not just a bit smug to say Chinese today are apathetic, that they are victims of propaganda and know nothing of the spirit of Tiananmen? The spirit of ’89 is alive and well every time someone, somewhere peacefully asserts a basic right or speaks out on a trying issue or pleads for a little more justice.
Read more on this article...
“Tiananmen’s anniversary unimportant to China’s youth,” laments the Los Angeles Times. “Tiananmen now seems distant to China’s students," opines the New York Times.
With the approach of the twentieth anniversary of June 4, 1989, there have been a spate of news stories comparing young people in China today with the students who protested at Tiananmen, and the comparison is usually not a flattering one. Apathy has replaced activism. Propaganda has replaced knowledge. Today’s youth are characterized as the “stupid generation,” or at best, “hip but clueless.”
I think such comparisons are unfair.
First of all, twenty years is a long time. Why should young people today be compared to aunts and uncles who were on the march when they hadn’t even learned yet to walk?
The students in 1989 in their day were no different in this respect. They did not spend a huge amount of time pondering why they were or weren’t like the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution.
If anything, it was precisely because they had little or no first-hand contact with the horror of Mao’s social experiment gone awry that they could in good faith and unremitting optimism write provocative wall posters and take to the streets, naively hoping for positive results.
It seems student activism, to really get off the ground, and to have any integrity at all, requires forgetting the past, --or at least not being beholden to it-- as much as invoking it.
Referencing the past as a guide to one’s actions, especially in a place where the past weighs as heavily as it does in China, is intimidating to the point of despair.
The conditions under which the 1989 generation came of age are not repeatable, nor desirable. China is in many important respects a better country today, much more liberal in terms of lifestyle and individual choice, though politics remains hemmed in as before.
China is also incontestably more prosperous, more open and open to much more information, though media controls remain. One glaring gap in an otherwise improving picture, is that Tiananmen remains a taboo in China today.
It is fully understandable that older observers might get periodically nostalgic about the euphoric burst of people power that erupted on the streets of Beijing during the Sino-Soviet summit twenty years ago. For anyone who was there, or felt a part of it from media immersion; it will always be a part of them.
It was a time in which ordinary people found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. But students were reacting to a unique environment, not inventing it.
There was a perfect storm of campus restiveness, Western media readiness (thanks largely to the expected pomp and circumstance of the Gorbachev visit) and a win-or-die Politburo impasse; all of which conspired to allow something small, narrow, and local to snowball into something large, broad and universal, over many weeks involving millions of people.
No wonder those of us who were there were swept away by the cyclone-like force of it. But one can’t help but notice how quickly the West’s willingness to identify with the cause of Chinese protests waned, when, in subsequent years, the crowd turned its angry gaze first to the US, and later, Japan.
Demonstrations subsequent to Tiananmen tend to be dismissed as phony demonstrations, reeking of government interference. But there was ample evidence in 1989 that one faction or other of the government was ever trying to play the crowd, infiltrate and direct the course of the protests as well.
The hyper-nationalistic students I interviewed after the anti-American and anti-Japanese demonstrations in 1999 and 2005 were not that different from the impulsive, idealistic and overly excitable students I marched shoulder to shoulder with in 1989.
The forward rush of feet, the billowing red flags, the hypnotic cadences of slogan and song chanted over and again in concert with the reckless enthusiasm of youth were in evidence in each instance, though there were differences in quality and scope.
The Tiananmen demos were rigorous but peaceful, politically daring, but welcomed in open arms by ordinary citizens. The 1989 protests endured for weeks and laid claim to revolutionary iconography in the central plaza of the Central Kingdom’s capital, making for unforgettable symbolic spectacle. It gave one the feeling of being in the center of the world.
But that was then, this is now. Different conditions call for different strategies and different solutions. Some of today’s battles may be fought out entirely on the internet or in courts or in civil society forums. Other little insurrections will, tragically, fail to get the attention they deserve until things take a violent turn, and then we’ll hear about them.
Nowadays, there’s plenty of unrest going on in every part of China, but if it doesn’t happen in a convenient place under the nose of the media, it may as well be deemed a non-event. China’s Public Security Bureau routinely releases shocking statistics that suggest China hardly goes a day without dozens of demonstrations or “mass incidents” erupting somewhere or else in the provinces, to the tune of thousands of little insurrections a month.
Demonstrating in a country as obsessed with stability as China is not a surefire course of action and is often counter-productive, but it continues to happen to an alarming degree. It’s not desirable politically, but today’s China is built on the back of innumerable mass incidents, the revolution culminating in the 1949 establishment of the People’s Republic being the biggest one of all.
So is it not just a bit smug to say Chinese today are apathetic, that they are victims of propaganda and know nothing of the spirit of Tiananmen? The spirit of ’89 is alive and well every time someone, somewhere peacefully asserts a basic right or speaks out on a trying issue or pleads for a little more justice.
Read more on this article...
Sunday, May 17, 2009
ZHAO ZIYANG AND TIANANMEN
(from the Bangkok Post, May 18, 2009)
Zhao spotlights all of the culprits
By: PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
The release of Zhao Ziyang's memoirs may not settle, once and for all, the degree of culpability, if any, that 1989 Beijing student activists bear for the tragic outcome of an otherwise uplifting and peaceful movement.
But the former secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party's last words on the topic serve as a powerful reminder that the lion's share of blame for the brutal and completely unnecessary military crackdown in June 1989 falls on Li Peng and a handful of party hardliners who, as Mr Zhao tells it - and as observers have long surmised - gunned for unnecessary violent intervention.
This revelation serves to balance the public discussion about Tiananmen, a debate long hampered by the paucity of verifiable information from the government side and rather too much information from the student side. The student side of the equation, rich in its tabloid complexity, faults, foibles and all, is well documented, thanks in part to the unblinking glare of the media, and the general accessibility of key personalities, most of whom escaped to the United States.
To a lesser extent, the street-level story of what happened in Beijing in the spring of 1989 can be understood in general terms; multitudinous facets of it have been captured in texts, photos, music, memoir, drama and video footage, with enough over-lapping documentation and corroborative detail to map out a basic chronology, even though interpretations differ and divisive views are not entirely settled.
The iconic image of a man standing in front of a tank has exactly that sort of built-in redundancy; it was filmed simultaneously by several photographers and cameramen - one angle on it was taken from my room at the Beijing Hotel - but who the man is, or what meaning can be drawn from the sight of him venting his anger in front of a tank slowly withdrawing from Tiananmen Square remains open to debate.
But if our knowledge of what went on in the streets and behind the closed doors of student strategy sessions is incomplete, it is meticulously documented in comparison to what we know of the government's position. This uneven access has led to a media tendency to put undue emphasis on student agency, both in terms of heroics and assigning guilt.
Given the timid but intransigent stance of China's information guardians who are so far unwilling to pin blame anywhere near the late, great Deng Xiaoping, a variety of intellectual contortions and political postures need be put into play to avoid facing the truth. The most effective obfuscations serve to divert attention elsewhere, but the one that is most distressing to me as a witness and participant is "blame it on the students".
The students were indeed imperfect, and in unwitting ways mimicked the best and worst tendencies of their communist elders. But they did not carry out the bloody crackdown, rather certain units of the PLA did. As for the units of the PLA that refused to join the crackdown, they should be considered people's heroes on a par with the man in front of the tank.
I marched with the students and know most of the student leaders. During the 1989 uprising, I interviewed Chai Ling, the so-called student commander-in-chief, on several occasions. The May 28, 1989 interview seemed of great portent; was she going to run away or stay around until blood started to flow? In a tearful outpouring of words recorded to low-quality videotape, she explored both possibilities and has been both applauded and roundly criticised for this and other provocative statements ever since. I interviewed her again on June 2, 1989 after which she returned to Tiananmen Square where she and hundreds of other fellow students made a last stand followed by a peaceful, PLA-negotiated exit on the dawn of June 4, 1989.
Only then did Chai Ling run away, and to this day the details of her escape from China remain sketchy, though secret diplomatic assistance was the likely route.
By making available to the media, with Chai Ling's express permission in writing, the May 28, 1989 interview, I inadvertently contributed to a media process that put far too much focus on a vivid personality with very little actual power, though she was the titular leader of the students at the time and thus in the mind's eye in charge of tens of thousands of followers.
The charged rhetoric she has subsequently been vilified for was not unique to her; one could hear it in the whispers and shouts of marchers; one could see ink-brush portents of it in poems scribbled on university walls that spoke of "blood flowing down Chang'an Boulevard" a full month before the massacre.
Talk of bodily, if not bloody sacrifice, along with the melodramatic last wills and testaments of the sort that Chai Ling handed me on May 28 were part and parcel of a mass hunger strike, an uncannily effective crowd precipitant that caused the square to swell with well-wishers beyond expectation.
Yet despite crowds a million strong and an abundance of over-the-top rhetoric, the hunger strike ended quietly without a single casualty.
For 20 years the official voice of China, and to a surprising extent, many of its foreign interlocutors, has found it expedient to sweep the basic facts of the crackdown under the carpet, by quibbling about details, cooking up various arguments about the overarching need for stability, or by giving it the silent treatment, in counterpoint to readily available lurid descriptions of what rascals and opportunists the student activists were.
To blame it on the students, as many young people in China do today, is to fall for a propaganda line, to take one's eye off the ball.
The so-called student leaders of 1989, crowd facilitators at best, not unlike the enthusiastic student volunteers who helped manage crowds at the Olympics last year, were at once hailed as abstract heroes in a way they were decidedly undeserving of, and then later cast as villains, in a way they were also decidedly undeserving of.
As best I could judge, from studying the crowd every day for a month on the square, is that the ever-shifting crowd largely organised and ordered itself, at once subject to the vagaries of mass psychology and the kinetics of crowd dynamics, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Countless individuals poured into Beijing's most central plaza to create a vivid living tableau with their passion and dedication to peaceful change; they became part of a whole beyond individual control yet coherent and compelling.
While the possibility that there were indeed "black hands" cannot be dismissed, whether it be communist party factions trying to play the student movement to their own political advantage, or the question of clandestine support lent to protesters by foreign embassies, or even the tango between Western media and the protesters, the revelation of influences and interactions is not the same as culpability.
The only real crime was demanding a military solution and then turning the guns on unarmed civilians.
The value of releasing Mr Zhao's belated memoir, which goes for the jugular by singling out a hard-line clique within the CCP, on this, the 20th anniversary of an unnecessary tragedy, is to get the public eye back on the culpability of those most culpable.
Philip J Cunningham is a free-lance writer and political commentator
Read more on this article...
Zhao spotlights all of the culprits
By: PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
The release of Zhao Ziyang's memoirs may not settle, once and for all, the degree of culpability, if any, that 1989 Beijing student activists bear for the tragic outcome of an otherwise uplifting and peaceful movement.
But the former secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party's last words on the topic serve as a powerful reminder that the lion's share of blame for the brutal and completely unnecessary military crackdown in June 1989 falls on Li Peng and a handful of party hardliners who, as Mr Zhao tells it - and as observers have long surmised - gunned for unnecessary violent intervention.
This revelation serves to balance the public discussion about Tiananmen, a debate long hampered by the paucity of verifiable information from the government side and rather too much information from the student side. The student side of the equation, rich in its tabloid complexity, faults, foibles and all, is well documented, thanks in part to the unblinking glare of the media, and the general accessibility of key personalities, most of whom escaped to the United States.
To a lesser extent, the street-level story of what happened in Beijing in the spring of 1989 can be understood in general terms; multitudinous facets of it have been captured in texts, photos, music, memoir, drama and video footage, with enough over-lapping documentation and corroborative detail to map out a basic chronology, even though interpretations differ and divisive views are not entirely settled.
The iconic image of a man standing in front of a tank has exactly that sort of built-in redundancy; it was filmed simultaneously by several photographers and cameramen - one angle on it was taken from my room at the Beijing Hotel - but who the man is, or what meaning can be drawn from the sight of him venting his anger in front of a tank slowly withdrawing from Tiananmen Square remains open to debate.
But if our knowledge of what went on in the streets and behind the closed doors of student strategy sessions is incomplete, it is meticulously documented in comparison to what we know of the government's position. This uneven access has led to a media tendency to put undue emphasis on student agency, both in terms of heroics and assigning guilt.
Given the timid but intransigent stance of China's information guardians who are so far unwilling to pin blame anywhere near the late, great Deng Xiaoping, a variety of intellectual contortions and political postures need be put into play to avoid facing the truth. The most effective obfuscations serve to divert attention elsewhere, but the one that is most distressing to me as a witness and participant is "blame it on the students".
The students were indeed imperfect, and in unwitting ways mimicked the best and worst tendencies of their communist elders. But they did not carry out the bloody crackdown, rather certain units of the PLA did. As for the units of the PLA that refused to join the crackdown, they should be considered people's heroes on a par with the man in front of the tank.
I marched with the students and know most of the student leaders. During the 1989 uprising, I interviewed Chai Ling, the so-called student commander-in-chief, on several occasions. The May 28, 1989 interview seemed of great portent; was she going to run away or stay around until blood started to flow? In a tearful outpouring of words recorded to low-quality videotape, she explored both possibilities and has been both applauded and roundly criticised for this and other provocative statements ever since. I interviewed her again on June 2, 1989 after which she returned to Tiananmen Square where she and hundreds of other fellow students made a last stand followed by a peaceful, PLA-negotiated exit on the dawn of June 4, 1989.
Only then did Chai Ling run away, and to this day the details of her escape from China remain sketchy, though secret diplomatic assistance was the likely route.
By making available to the media, with Chai Ling's express permission in writing, the May 28, 1989 interview, I inadvertently contributed to a media process that put far too much focus on a vivid personality with very little actual power, though she was the titular leader of the students at the time and thus in the mind's eye in charge of tens of thousands of followers.
The charged rhetoric she has subsequently been vilified for was not unique to her; one could hear it in the whispers and shouts of marchers; one could see ink-brush portents of it in poems scribbled on university walls that spoke of "blood flowing down Chang'an Boulevard" a full month before the massacre.
Talk of bodily, if not bloody sacrifice, along with the melodramatic last wills and testaments of the sort that Chai Ling handed me on May 28 were part and parcel of a mass hunger strike, an uncannily effective crowd precipitant that caused the square to swell with well-wishers beyond expectation.
Yet despite crowds a million strong and an abundance of over-the-top rhetoric, the hunger strike ended quietly without a single casualty.
For 20 years the official voice of China, and to a surprising extent, many of its foreign interlocutors, has found it expedient to sweep the basic facts of the crackdown under the carpet, by quibbling about details, cooking up various arguments about the overarching need for stability, or by giving it the silent treatment, in counterpoint to readily available lurid descriptions of what rascals and opportunists the student activists were.
To blame it on the students, as many young people in China do today, is to fall for a propaganda line, to take one's eye off the ball.
The so-called student leaders of 1989, crowd facilitators at best, not unlike the enthusiastic student volunteers who helped manage crowds at the Olympics last year, were at once hailed as abstract heroes in a way they were decidedly undeserving of, and then later cast as villains, in a way they were also decidedly undeserving of.
As best I could judge, from studying the crowd every day for a month on the square, is that the ever-shifting crowd largely organised and ordered itself, at once subject to the vagaries of mass psychology and the kinetics of crowd dynamics, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Countless individuals poured into Beijing's most central plaza to create a vivid living tableau with their passion and dedication to peaceful change; they became part of a whole beyond individual control yet coherent and compelling.
While the possibility that there were indeed "black hands" cannot be dismissed, whether it be communist party factions trying to play the student movement to their own political advantage, or the question of clandestine support lent to protesters by foreign embassies, or even the tango between Western media and the protesters, the revelation of influences and interactions is not the same as culpability.
The only real crime was demanding a military solution and then turning the guns on unarmed civilians.
The value of releasing Mr Zhao's belated memoir, which goes for the jugular by singling out a hard-line clique within the CCP, on this, the 20th anniversary of an unnecessary tragedy, is to get the public eye back on the culpability of those most culpable.
Philip J Cunningham is a free-lance writer and political commentator
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009
BEIJING HUNGER STRIKE 1989
Twenty years ago Beijing students launched a hunger strike which changed the course of Chinese history. For more photos and narrative, please see TIANANMEN MOON.
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Thursday, May 7, 2009
Pakistan is not a failed state
I.
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez were kind enough to host me this morning on their show, Democracy Now!: Manan Ahmed on the Politics of US “Hysteria” over Pakistan
II.
The excellent UAE National gave me space to develop my argument about the Pakistani "failed state": Legends of the Fail Manan Ahmed examines the decades-old tradition of experts predicting that Pakistan is sure to collapse any day now. Read more on this article...
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez were kind enough to host me this morning on their show, Democracy Now!: Manan Ahmed on the Politics of US “Hysteria” over Pakistan
II.
The excellent UAE National gave me space to develop my argument about the Pakistani "failed state": Legends of the Fail Manan Ahmed examines the decades-old tradition of experts predicting that Pakistan is sure to collapse any day now. Read more on this article...
Monday, May 4, 2009
TWENTY YEARS AGO IN BEIJING
Photos and narrative about the May 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square will be updated daily. Please see TIANANMEN MOON. --Phil
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Friday, May 1, 2009
HISTORIC STIRRINGS OF BEIJING CAMPUS UNREST
As part of a twenty year retrospective, I have posted a narrative describing the mood in Beijing on the eve of the May 4, 1989 march to Tiananmen Square. Please see TIANANMEN MOON for the full post and additional photos. --Phil Cunningham Read more on this article...
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Iran’s Presidential Election Becomes a Two-Man Race
Farideh Farhi
Although some news outlets prematurely announced his candidacy last week, former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaie officially entered Iran’s presidential race today.
Despite his entry, the contest is increasingly looking like a two-man race between the current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mussavi. The race, the official registration for which will begin on May 5th, also looks highly contested with both sides, particularly Ahmadinejad, hoping to avoid a runoff election by getting more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.
The initial expectations for this presidential race were different. Given the reformist weakness and lack of access to resources, the anticipation was that Ahmadinejad’s only real challenge would come from the conservative ranks, some of whom are increasingly unhappy with his expansionist economic policies and erratic management style. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Tehran’s current mayor, was perceived as the most likely conservative candidate given his relative popularity in the city of Tehran and his rather tense relationship with the president over issues connected to the metropolis.
Mir-Hossein Mussavi’s entry into the race and the organizational support he has received from reformist organizations across the board changed the dynamics of the race, finally forcing several hesitant conservative coalitions and organizations to join hard core Ahmadinejad supporters and come out publicly in his support as the unity candidate of the so-called principlist camp.
At the end of the day, support for Ahmadinejad had nothing to do with his personality or policies and had everything to do with electoral numbers and the political realities on the ground.
A significant conservative challenge to Ahmadinejad was made impossible by his refusal to step aside if conservative activists chose another candidate and the perception that Mussavi will be able to pick up a good chunk of the anti-Ahmadinejad vote.
Qalibaf - a man with serious presidential aspirations who already lost a presidential election in 2005 - could not afford risking another loss by competing against both Ahmadinejad and Mussavi and endangering his chances for future elections. And this calculation ultimately became the reason for his refusal to run on his own. Reported attempts to make him a co-runner in a president/vice-president team with others such as former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati also failed.
To be sure, Mohsen Rezaie is a conservative running against Ahmadinejad because of his stated dissatisfaction with the state of the country. But given lack of support from conservative organizations, he is unlikely to pose a serious challenge to either Ahmadinejad or Mussavi. The most his candidacy can do is to give cover to prominent conservatives who do not want to support Ahmadinejad by allowing them to maintain their impartiality in the contest between the two conservative candidates.
It is no secret that good portions of the principlist camp have been unhappy with Ahmadinejad and this showed in their rather late and begrudging endorsement. Conflicts abound within the camp and there is no guarantee that they will go away by election time.
Ultimately, however, this week’s endorsement of the Followers and Leadership and Imam Front, a coalition of 14 conservative groups led by more traditional conservative groups such as the bazaar-based Islamic Coalition Party and Islamic Engineers Society signaled the calculation that Ahmadinejad is the only candidate who can keep the presidency in the conservative column.
Interestingly, the clerical counterpart in the traditional conservative camp, the Society of Combatant Clergy, has so far refused to take a stance, publicly stating that it is delaying its decision to after the period of registration and vetting by the Guardian Council. It may even choose to remain mum. The chatter in the Iranian papers and websites is that the organization – whose prominent members include former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former interim prime minister Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, and former Majles Speaker and presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri – preferred Mussavi but the pressure on all conservative organizations to tow the line has prevented it from taking a stance.
Similar dynamics seem to be at play within the Society of Qom Seminary Teachers, another clerical organization, even if a couple of prominent clerics in that organization – Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi and former chief justice Mohammad Yazdi – are known to be strong Ahmadinejad supporters. So far there has been no endorsement.
The Iranian parliament is also caught in this conservative drama. Speaker Larijani, no fan of Ahmadinejad, has mooted the idea of impartiality in the election on the part of the 200-member conservative caucus in the name of separation of power between the legislative and executive branches; an idea vociferously objected to by about 70 diehard Ahmadinejad supporters in the Parliament.
Larijani is caught between a rock and hard place. As the representative of the city of Qom, he simply cannot ignore the views of the religious establishment, which in unhappy with Ahmadinejad. At the same time, he has a rather rambunctious group of Ahmadinejad-nudged deputies to deal with. There are already noises in the Parliament, hinting at an attempt to bring back the previous speaker Gholamreza Haddad Adel to replace him. This is unlikely, but the fact that there are such noises reflects the extent of disagreement that Ahmadinejad tends to generate within the conservative camp.
The drama will continue until Election Day. Something to look for until that day is the public positioning of conservative politicians like Larijani and Qalibaf. Their silence will in effect be a signal that Mussavi’s election is fine with them.
For Mussavi, this is the best he can hope for as he is running a campaign not based on charisma - he doesn’t have much - and generation of popular excitement as former president Khatami would have done, Instead, he is making a calculated effort to peel away votes from Ahmadinejad. This is why he has called himself a reformist that regularly goes back to principles in order to draw the support of both reformists and principlists. He has also been focused on Ahmadinejad’s policies and management capabilities, specifically criticizing them while pronouncing himself to be the true progeny of Ayatollah Khomeini.
He has attacked Ahmadinejad for weakening Iran’s managerial class, economic policies that have harmed the poor and middle classes, deviation from economic development plans, and his adventurist and extremist foreign policy. To be sure, Mussavi has made clear that Iran’s nuclear program is not negotiable. No government can go against popular will on this issue, he said. But, for instance, just last weak he blasted Ahmadinejad for going to Geneva and allowing to be insulted while everyone knew that this was going to happen. He has also said that he will be willing to meet with Barrack Obama, perhaps in a not so hidden hint that chances of Obama meeting with him are much higher than with Ahmadinejad. He has also explicitly used the term détente– a term used during Khatami’s presidency – with the world as a general guide for his foreign policy.
Mussavi's campaign is not without flaws or challenges. He lacks charisma and so far his campaign organization does not seem up to par. It is to be seen whether help from some key Khatami lieutenants will bring organizational order and vibrancy to his campaign.
But the most serious challenge to Mussavi comes from the so-called ‘Sheikh of Reform,’ former Majles speaker Mehdi Karrubi, who is running on a platform of change and refuses to abandon the field in favor of Mussavi. Mussavi has managed to receive the enthusiastic support of former president Khatami and endorsement of major reformist organizations, including Islamic Iran’s Participation Front, Islamic Revolution’s Mojahedin, Servants of Construction Party, and Combatant Cleric Association due to some bad blood between some of these organizations and Karrubi but more so because they think he has a better chance of beating Ahmadinejad. But key members of these organizations such as former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, former head of Planning and Budget Organization Mohammad Ali Najafi have chosen to work in Karrubi’s campaign and several well known human rights activists such as Emadeddin Baghi and journalists such as Abbas Abdi have publicly identified Karrubi as their preferred candidate due to his support of student and prisoner rights as well as his ability to take strong stances when faced with opposition.
This division among reformists is likely to harm them unless one begins to envision the possibility, as some reformists do, that not only Karrubi will increase participation but also draw more votes away from Ahmadinejad than Mussavi. This argument is based on the belief that in the 2005 election, the 5 million or so vote that Karrubi received in the first round of that election was based on his populist promise of giving out money to every Iranian. This bloc of vote, it is believed, went to Ahmadinejad in the second round contributing to the 17.2 million votes he received. Today, it is argued, these votes are up for grabs because of Ahmadinejad’s failure to deliver on his redistributive policies. Karrubi’s presence may lead his previous supporters to move away from Ahmadinejad and come back to him particularly since Karrubi’s promised economic policies again rely on the idea of distributing the oil money among the people as opposed to sending it to government coffers.
Ethnic links are forwarded as another reason why Karrubi’s presence may be helpful. Karrubi is a Lor and in the last election did well in provinces in the Zagros region. There are talks that he will also do well in border provinces most unhappy with Ahmadinejad policies such as Kordestan and Sistan and Baluchestan (although in the latter Mussavi will also do well since in the last election, the reformist Mustafa Moein won in that province).
Mussavi, who is an Azeri, is expected to do well in the two Azerbaijan provinces and Ardebil and this combined provincial strategy is hoped to be at least sufficient enough to take the election to the second round between Mussavi and Ahmadinejad. Mussavi, of course, will take a first round win if he can. But he is not yet quite well known among the voters and this will work against him in the first round.
In a second round confrontation with Ahmadinejad, however, Mussavi is more likely to benefit from a large number of ‘anti’ votes cast against Ahmadinejad; the same way in the 2005 election such votes were cast against Hashemi Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad is much better known and has his sure to vote supporters estimated to be somewhere between 10 to 12 million out of the total electorate of about 46.2 million and a likely voting population of about 28 to 30 million; but he also has high negatives and these high negatives will kick in the second round.
Rezaie’s presence may also help Mussavi in so far as it drives up the total number of votes, pushing Ahmadinejad’s base vote to less than 50 percent.
I must admit that I really don’t have any up-to-date yardstick to assess such an analysis. Certainly the reference to the previous election makes sense in so far as estimating the committed Ahmadinejad votes. The 10 to 12 million number comes from the total number of votes for the three conservative candidates – Ahmadinejad, Larijani and Qalibaf - in the first round of 2005 election.
However, few have a feel for the extent to which Ahmadinejad’s populist policies have bought him permanent support, extending his base. This is because, unlike let us say in Chavez’ Venezuela, Ahmadinejad’s populism has been mostly hand-out based. There has been no transfer of assets (land in particular). Money has been handed out, food distributed, short term loans given, immediate financial problem perhaps solved but the fundamentals of the economy, particularly in terms of higher prices, have made these remedies short-term and fleeting.
This is perhaps why just this week, campaigning in the poor area of Islamshahr which is south of Tehran, Ahmadinejad was again telling everyone that had the Majles allowed his policies would have given a family of five close to $300 a month in cash subsidies. In all likelihood, given his promise of bringing oil money to people’s tables in the last election, an alert electorate is less likely to fall for these types of promises. But, in the absence of reliable polling, nothing is really known for sure.
Also unknown is the systemic will to re-elect Ahmadinejad. Iran’s elections are run by the Interior Ministry and supervised by the Guardian Council. Both of these institutions are currently headed by solid Ahmadinejad supporters. Certainly there will be some voter manipulation in his favor. Voiding ballots is a favorite instrument; so is encouragment of people, financially or otherwise, by provincial governor generals and governors appointed by the Interior Ministry to vote in blocs. National television, where most Iranians get their information, is also critical in favoring one candidate over another and giving or not giving sufficient time to candidates who are lesser known than Ahmadinejad. What is not clear is the extent to which these types of instruments will and can be used if all the candidates running are more or less acceptable to significant players and political groupings of Iran.
So far, one key player, Ayatollah Khamenei, has publicly said that he will not make his individual choice in favor of any candidate become public, signaling that he is fine with any of the candidates and promising a fair election. But this is his public posture in every election - although in this election he has taken the unusual step of publicly pointing out that his support for Ahmadinejad as president should not be confused with support for him as candidate - and questions about his “real” preference remain.
Mussavi’s attempt to represent himself as someone who has a foot in both reformist and principlist camps must hence be seen in the light of his attempt to peel away votes from Ahmadinejad and reduce the will to cheat. Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad’s will to win should not be under-estimated.
Read more on this article...
Although some news outlets prematurely announced his candidacy last week, former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaie officially entered Iran’s presidential race today.
Despite his entry, the contest is increasingly looking like a two-man race between the current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mussavi. The race, the official registration for which will begin on May 5th, also looks highly contested with both sides, particularly Ahmadinejad, hoping to avoid a runoff election by getting more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.
The initial expectations for this presidential race were different. Given the reformist weakness and lack of access to resources, the anticipation was that Ahmadinejad’s only real challenge would come from the conservative ranks, some of whom are increasingly unhappy with his expansionist economic policies and erratic management style. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Tehran’s current mayor, was perceived as the most likely conservative candidate given his relative popularity in the city of Tehran and his rather tense relationship with the president over issues connected to the metropolis.
Mir-Hossein Mussavi’s entry into the race and the organizational support he has received from reformist organizations across the board changed the dynamics of the race, finally forcing several hesitant conservative coalitions and organizations to join hard core Ahmadinejad supporters and come out publicly in his support as the unity candidate of the so-called principlist camp.
At the end of the day, support for Ahmadinejad had nothing to do with his personality or policies and had everything to do with electoral numbers and the political realities on the ground.
A significant conservative challenge to Ahmadinejad was made impossible by his refusal to step aside if conservative activists chose another candidate and the perception that Mussavi will be able to pick up a good chunk of the anti-Ahmadinejad vote.
Qalibaf - a man with serious presidential aspirations who already lost a presidential election in 2005 - could not afford risking another loss by competing against both Ahmadinejad and Mussavi and endangering his chances for future elections. And this calculation ultimately became the reason for his refusal to run on his own. Reported attempts to make him a co-runner in a president/vice-president team with others such as former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati also failed.
To be sure, Mohsen Rezaie is a conservative running against Ahmadinejad because of his stated dissatisfaction with the state of the country. But given lack of support from conservative organizations, he is unlikely to pose a serious challenge to either Ahmadinejad or Mussavi. The most his candidacy can do is to give cover to prominent conservatives who do not want to support Ahmadinejad by allowing them to maintain their impartiality in the contest between the two conservative candidates.
It is no secret that good portions of the principlist camp have been unhappy with Ahmadinejad and this showed in their rather late and begrudging endorsement. Conflicts abound within the camp and there is no guarantee that they will go away by election time.
Ultimately, however, this week’s endorsement of the Followers and Leadership and Imam Front, a coalition of 14 conservative groups led by more traditional conservative groups such as the bazaar-based Islamic Coalition Party and Islamic Engineers Society signaled the calculation that Ahmadinejad is the only candidate who can keep the presidency in the conservative column.
Interestingly, the clerical counterpart in the traditional conservative camp, the Society of Combatant Clergy, has so far refused to take a stance, publicly stating that it is delaying its decision to after the period of registration and vetting by the Guardian Council. It may even choose to remain mum. The chatter in the Iranian papers and websites is that the organization – whose prominent members include former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former interim prime minister Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, and former Majles Speaker and presidential candidate Ali Akbar Nateq Nuri – preferred Mussavi but the pressure on all conservative organizations to tow the line has prevented it from taking a stance.
Similar dynamics seem to be at play within the Society of Qom Seminary Teachers, another clerical organization, even if a couple of prominent clerics in that organization – Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi and former chief justice Mohammad Yazdi – are known to be strong Ahmadinejad supporters. So far there has been no endorsement.
The Iranian parliament is also caught in this conservative drama. Speaker Larijani, no fan of Ahmadinejad, has mooted the idea of impartiality in the election on the part of the 200-member conservative caucus in the name of separation of power between the legislative and executive branches; an idea vociferously objected to by about 70 diehard Ahmadinejad supporters in the Parliament.
Larijani is caught between a rock and hard place. As the representative of the city of Qom, he simply cannot ignore the views of the religious establishment, which in unhappy with Ahmadinejad. At the same time, he has a rather rambunctious group of Ahmadinejad-nudged deputies to deal with. There are already noises in the Parliament, hinting at an attempt to bring back the previous speaker Gholamreza Haddad Adel to replace him. This is unlikely, but the fact that there are such noises reflects the extent of disagreement that Ahmadinejad tends to generate within the conservative camp.
The drama will continue until Election Day. Something to look for until that day is the public positioning of conservative politicians like Larijani and Qalibaf. Their silence will in effect be a signal that Mussavi’s election is fine with them.
For Mussavi, this is the best he can hope for as he is running a campaign not based on charisma - he doesn’t have much - and generation of popular excitement as former president Khatami would have done, Instead, he is making a calculated effort to peel away votes from Ahmadinejad. This is why he has called himself a reformist that regularly goes back to principles in order to draw the support of both reformists and principlists. He has also been focused on Ahmadinejad’s policies and management capabilities, specifically criticizing them while pronouncing himself to be the true progeny of Ayatollah Khomeini.
He has attacked Ahmadinejad for weakening Iran’s managerial class, economic policies that have harmed the poor and middle classes, deviation from economic development plans, and his adventurist and extremist foreign policy. To be sure, Mussavi has made clear that Iran’s nuclear program is not negotiable. No government can go against popular will on this issue, he said. But, for instance, just last weak he blasted Ahmadinejad for going to Geneva and allowing to be insulted while everyone knew that this was going to happen. He has also said that he will be willing to meet with Barrack Obama, perhaps in a not so hidden hint that chances of Obama meeting with him are much higher than with Ahmadinejad. He has also explicitly used the term détente– a term used during Khatami’s presidency – with the world as a general guide for his foreign policy.
Mussavi's campaign is not without flaws or challenges. He lacks charisma and so far his campaign organization does not seem up to par. It is to be seen whether help from some key Khatami lieutenants will bring organizational order and vibrancy to his campaign.
But the most serious challenge to Mussavi comes from the so-called ‘Sheikh of Reform,’ former Majles speaker Mehdi Karrubi, who is running on a platform of change and refuses to abandon the field in favor of Mussavi. Mussavi has managed to receive the enthusiastic support of former president Khatami and endorsement of major reformist organizations, including Islamic Iran’s Participation Front, Islamic Revolution’s Mojahedin, Servants of Construction Party, and Combatant Cleric Association due to some bad blood between some of these organizations and Karrubi but more so because they think he has a better chance of beating Ahmadinejad. But key members of these organizations such as former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, former head of Planning and Budget Organization Mohammad Ali Najafi have chosen to work in Karrubi’s campaign and several well known human rights activists such as Emadeddin Baghi and journalists such as Abbas Abdi have publicly identified Karrubi as their preferred candidate due to his support of student and prisoner rights as well as his ability to take strong stances when faced with opposition.
This division among reformists is likely to harm them unless one begins to envision the possibility, as some reformists do, that not only Karrubi will increase participation but also draw more votes away from Ahmadinejad than Mussavi. This argument is based on the belief that in the 2005 election, the 5 million or so vote that Karrubi received in the first round of that election was based on his populist promise of giving out money to every Iranian. This bloc of vote, it is believed, went to Ahmadinejad in the second round contributing to the 17.2 million votes he received. Today, it is argued, these votes are up for grabs because of Ahmadinejad’s failure to deliver on his redistributive policies. Karrubi’s presence may lead his previous supporters to move away from Ahmadinejad and come back to him particularly since Karrubi’s promised economic policies again rely on the idea of distributing the oil money among the people as opposed to sending it to government coffers.
Ethnic links are forwarded as another reason why Karrubi’s presence may be helpful. Karrubi is a Lor and in the last election did well in provinces in the Zagros region. There are talks that he will also do well in border provinces most unhappy with Ahmadinejad policies such as Kordestan and Sistan and Baluchestan (although in the latter Mussavi will also do well since in the last election, the reformist Mustafa Moein won in that province).
Mussavi, who is an Azeri, is expected to do well in the two Azerbaijan provinces and Ardebil and this combined provincial strategy is hoped to be at least sufficient enough to take the election to the second round between Mussavi and Ahmadinejad. Mussavi, of course, will take a first round win if he can. But he is not yet quite well known among the voters and this will work against him in the first round.
In a second round confrontation with Ahmadinejad, however, Mussavi is more likely to benefit from a large number of ‘anti’ votes cast against Ahmadinejad; the same way in the 2005 election such votes were cast against Hashemi Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad is much better known and has his sure to vote supporters estimated to be somewhere between 10 to 12 million out of the total electorate of about 46.2 million and a likely voting population of about 28 to 30 million; but he also has high negatives and these high negatives will kick in the second round.
Rezaie’s presence may also help Mussavi in so far as it drives up the total number of votes, pushing Ahmadinejad’s base vote to less than 50 percent.
I must admit that I really don’t have any up-to-date yardstick to assess such an analysis. Certainly the reference to the previous election makes sense in so far as estimating the committed Ahmadinejad votes. The 10 to 12 million number comes from the total number of votes for the three conservative candidates – Ahmadinejad, Larijani and Qalibaf - in the first round of 2005 election.
However, few have a feel for the extent to which Ahmadinejad’s populist policies have bought him permanent support, extending his base. This is because, unlike let us say in Chavez’ Venezuela, Ahmadinejad’s populism has been mostly hand-out based. There has been no transfer of assets (land in particular). Money has been handed out, food distributed, short term loans given, immediate financial problem perhaps solved but the fundamentals of the economy, particularly in terms of higher prices, have made these remedies short-term and fleeting.
This is perhaps why just this week, campaigning in the poor area of Islamshahr which is south of Tehran, Ahmadinejad was again telling everyone that had the Majles allowed his policies would have given a family of five close to $300 a month in cash subsidies. In all likelihood, given his promise of bringing oil money to people’s tables in the last election, an alert electorate is less likely to fall for these types of promises. But, in the absence of reliable polling, nothing is really known for sure.
Also unknown is the systemic will to re-elect Ahmadinejad. Iran’s elections are run by the Interior Ministry and supervised by the Guardian Council. Both of these institutions are currently headed by solid Ahmadinejad supporters. Certainly there will be some voter manipulation in his favor. Voiding ballots is a favorite instrument; so is encouragment of people, financially or otherwise, by provincial governor generals and governors appointed by the Interior Ministry to vote in blocs. National television, where most Iranians get their information, is also critical in favoring one candidate over another and giving or not giving sufficient time to candidates who are lesser known than Ahmadinejad. What is not clear is the extent to which these types of instruments will and can be used if all the candidates running are more or less acceptable to significant players and political groupings of Iran.
So far, one key player, Ayatollah Khamenei, has publicly said that he will not make his individual choice in favor of any candidate become public, signaling that he is fine with any of the candidates and promising a fair election. But this is his public posture in every election - although in this election he has taken the unusual step of publicly pointing out that his support for Ahmadinejad as president should not be confused with support for him as candidate - and questions about his “real” preference remain.
Mussavi’s attempt to represent himself as someone who has a foot in both reformist and principlist camps must hence be seen in the light of his attempt to peel away votes from Ahmadinejad and reduce the will to cheat. Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad’s will to win should not be under-estimated.
Read more on this article...
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Bakshi: Where Religion Meets Politics
There is no doubt that religion and politics make for a potent mix and the recent UN resolution, condemning the ‘defamation of religion’ has created quite a stir in the international community. In the following article Gitanjali Bakshi analyzes the possible implications of this resolution and what it could mean for the on-going debate on religion and politics.
Where Religion Meets Politics…
By Gitanjali Bakshi
There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions" – Dr. Hans Kung
In 1992 Samuel Huntington claimed that culture and religion would be the primary source of conflict in the ‘post cold-war era’. Some have argued against his theory -- stating that modern wars are as much a product of limited resources as they are a ‘Clash of Civilizations’. Others contest that civilizations have clashed and will clash for eons to come, and that Huntington was simply stating an age old fact rather than a new phenomenon.
Nevertheless, on the 26th of March 2009, a resolution passed by the Human Rights Council, condemning the ‘defamation of religion’, spoke to the very essence of Huntington’s assertion. This resolution is significant because it has once again emphasized the importance of religious debate within the international political arena. With both strong supporters and strong detractors, the resolution is forcing policymakers to deal with the proverbial elephant in the room: religion.
Pakistan and the 22 other states that advocated a resolution against the ‘defamation of religion’, claim that individuals have faced intolerance, discrimination and even acts of violence as a result of certain stigmas about their religious beliefs. In particular, they agree that in recent years there has been a vilification of Islam -- that the religion has often been associated with terrorism, extremism and human rights abuses and that this vilification has led to an irrational fear or even hatred against Muslims, often called ‘Islamophobia’. The resolution, supporters say, is an effort to curb the harmful consequences of this unwarranted slander against any one religion. These 23 advocates speak to an individual’s inalienable right to practice their religion without prejudice, without condemnation.
On the other hand, opponents of the resolution, claim that it is a “shot across the bow of free speech” – one of the central tenets of the Human Rights Charter. They are concerned that the resolution is simply a ruse to stifle debate and inquiry in countries that already suffer from poor human rights records and even poorer press freedoms. The 11 states that voted against the resolution argue that religion must be questioned in order to reform and that individuals must enjoy their right to communicate their opinions freely. A decision to punish those responsible for expressing their beliefs is a decision to steal from human beings one of their most unassailable rights: the right to speak up against what we perceive as unjust or wrong, the right to our own convictions.
While both sides have valid points and both highlight certain undeniable realities, the answer lies somewhere in between.
While engaging in dialogue, we must be careful with our words, we must weigh our thoughts and we must, as much as possible, refrain from the harshest of judgment. Along with freedoms come responsibilities. Unrestrained freedom of one individual can quite possibly mean the curtailment of freedom for another. This is why President Obama has highlighted that it is important to engage the Muslim world and not just criticize them; because the foundation of any dialogue, and especially inter-faith dialogue, must include a certain level of receptivity and respect.
At the same time, saying that religious ideas must be ‘respected’ does not mean that they should go unchallenged. Religion is redundant if it cannot adapt to time and circumstance. The only reason why religion has been subject to reform over the ages is because it has been scrutinized and examined. If we didn’t have the right to question religion, we would not be able to speak up against archaic and cruel practices like sati, witch-hunts and female genital mutilation. These laws are an affront to the most basic human rights of freedom, justice and peace and we must be able to express our collective voice against them.
These guidelines are of course applicable to both opponents and advocates of the resolution against the ‘defamation of religion’. All institutions of governance must undergo change and reform in accordance with their sufficiency in the time and circumstances that we live in. Similarly, religions must award respect to the beliefs of others, if they want respect in return.
But above all, leaving both sides of the debate behind, the recent resolution on the ‘defamation of religion’ has emphasized that -- in a world where we grapple with modern theories like the ‘Clash of Civilizations’, in a world where Political Islam is becoming a clear and undeniable reality and in a world where cartoons criticizing a particular faith can create world wide civil protest -- we can no longer segregate religious debate from political debate.
Read more on this article...
Where Religion Meets Politics…
By Gitanjali Bakshi
There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions" – Dr. Hans Kung
In 1992 Samuel Huntington claimed that culture and religion would be the primary source of conflict in the ‘post cold-war era’. Some have argued against his theory -- stating that modern wars are as much a product of limited resources as they are a ‘Clash of Civilizations’. Others contest that civilizations have clashed and will clash for eons to come, and that Huntington was simply stating an age old fact rather than a new phenomenon.
Nevertheless, on the 26th of March 2009, a resolution passed by the Human Rights Council, condemning the ‘defamation of religion’, spoke to the very essence of Huntington’s assertion. This resolution is significant because it has once again emphasized the importance of religious debate within the international political arena. With both strong supporters and strong detractors, the resolution is forcing policymakers to deal with the proverbial elephant in the room: religion.
Pakistan and the 22 other states that advocated a resolution against the ‘defamation of religion’, claim that individuals have faced intolerance, discrimination and even acts of violence as a result of certain stigmas about their religious beliefs. In particular, they agree that in recent years there has been a vilification of Islam -- that the religion has often been associated with terrorism, extremism and human rights abuses and that this vilification has led to an irrational fear or even hatred against Muslims, often called ‘Islamophobia’. The resolution, supporters say, is an effort to curb the harmful consequences of this unwarranted slander against any one religion. These 23 advocates speak to an individual’s inalienable right to practice their religion without prejudice, without condemnation.
On the other hand, opponents of the resolution, claim that it is a “shot across the bow of free speech” – one of the central tenets of the Human Rights Charter. They are concerned that the resolution is simply a ruse to stifle debate and inquiry in countries that already suffer from poor human rights records and even poorer press freedoms. The 11 states that voted against the resolution argue that religion must be questioned in order to reform and that individuals must enjoy their right to communicate their opinions freely. A decision to punish those responsible for expressing their beliefs is a decision to steal from human beings one of their most unassailable rights: the right to speak up against what we perceive as unjust or wrong, the right to our own convictions.
While both sides have valid points and both highlight certain undeniable realities, the answer lies somewhere in between.
While engaging in dialogue, we must be careful with our words, we must weigh our thoughts and we must, as much as possible, refrain from the harshest of judgment. Along with freedoms come responsibilities. Unrestrained freedom of one individual can quite possibly mean the curtailment of freedom for another. This is why President Obama has highlighted that it is important to engage the Muslim world and not just criticize them; because the foundation of any dialogue, and especially inter-faith dialogue, must include a certain level of receptivity and respect.
At the same time, saying that religious ideas must be ‘respected’ does not mean that they should go unchallenged. Religion is redundant if it cannot adapt to time and circumstance. The only reason why religion has been subject to reform over the ages is because it has been scrutinized and examined. If we didn’t have the right to question religion, we would not be able to speak up against archaic and cruel practices like sati, witch-hunts and female genital mutilation. These laws are an affront to the most basic human rights of freedom, justice and peace and we must be able to express our collective voice against them.
These guidelines are of course applicable to both opponents and advocates of the resolution against the ‘defamation of religion’. All institutions of governance must undergo change and reform in accordance with their sufficiency in the time and circumstances that we live in. Similarly, religions must award respect to the beliefs of others, if they want respect in return.
But above all, leaving both sides of the debate behind, the recent resolution on the ‘defamation of religion’ has emphasized that -- in a world where we grapple with modern theories like the ‘Clash of Civilizations’, in a world where Political Islam is becoming a clear and undeniable reality and in a world where cartoons criticizing a particular faith can create world wide civil protest -- we can no longer segregate religious debate from political debate.
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THE FORGOTTEN MEANING OF "TIANANMEN"
An appreciative thanks to Juan Cole for posting my latest essay during this season of remembrance for the uprising at Tiananmen. I will be posting essays and excerpts on the topic in the next few weeks, linking Global Affairs to sites such as The China Beat and Frontier International. For more information on my forthcoming book, "Tiananmen Moon" published by Rowman & Littlefield, please see minzhuwansui.
-Phil
THE FORGOTTEN MEANING OF TIANANMEN
by Philip J Cunningham
“Tiananmen” is a taboo topic in China. But even in places where it is remembered and commemorated, the Beijing student movement of 1989 is best known for its bloody ending on June 4, a tragic turning point of unquestioned significance, but one which tends to obscure the amazing weeks of restraint, harmony and cooperation in crowds that swelled to a million at the height of an entirely peaceful and extremely popular social movement.
Twenty years ago, as hundreds of thousands demonstrated day after day in Beijing, as ordinary citizens joined in or supported the student protesters with offers of food, drink and hearty cheers, crime all but disappeared and with it everyday suspicions and the habitual selfishness of an alienated populace. A remarkable degree of forbearance was evident on all sides, the government included, making it possible for a truly peaceful mass movement to emerge and blossom in the sunshine of that fateful Beijing spring. Even the provocative hunger strike, despite its grim overtones of self-starvation, did not claim a single victim and was wisely called off after one week.
Given the way the media works, perhaps reflecting something intrinsic to the workings of memory itself, there is undue focus on the big-bang at the end, the ultimate failure of the movement, rather than its peaceful flowering. The brutal crackdown of June 4 tends to eclipse the breath-taking accomplishments of April 27, May 4, May 10, May 13 --indeed nearly every day in mid-May 1989—until martial law was declared. After the troops were moved in, protesters started to panic and mutual threats became more pointedly violent.
Of course, mourning the dead and injured, mourning the lost opportunities for China, bemoaning the injustice is essential in taking measure of what happened. But what about the good times that preceded the blow-out, the soaring dreams taken wing, the beauty of a peaceful uprising?
The understandable, but ultimately misplaced media focus on a handful of nervous politicians and their hot-headed student interlocutors has obscured not only the considerable restraint showed by the communist party and its leaders for much of the period in question, but also occludes the positive, in some cases, outright remarkable contributions of the student leadership who performed brilliantly as crowd facilitators and morale boosters. Key actors on both sides of the barricades were less than democratic in word and deed, but they were adept at utilizing native, communist-influenced political tools to manage people power to an impressive degree.
The focus on the failure of the movement, and the foibles of those best known as its representatives, also obscures the even more weighty and valorous contributions of tens of thousands of ordinary citizens whose defiance was singular and courageous, who made China's biggest peace fest both peaceful and festive. Nobody was really in charge of the crowd, as much as student activists and government emissaries might try, the crowd was self-policing and constantly undergoing spontaneous transformations, at once creating the conditions of its own existence and reacting to subtle shifts in the prevailing political winds.
While focusing on a handful of individuals is perhaps necessary for narrative simplicity, if not coherence, we need to constantly remind ourselves about the multifarious ‘silent majority' who were out there in the streets of Beijing, hoping to augur in and witness the re-birth of a more equitable and just China. Even for those without a clue as to what democracy might mean, there was courage and conviction in the way so many showed their feelings with their feet, voting with their bodies rather than ballots, putting their lives on the line, come sunrise, come sunset, at Tiananmen Square.
Now that twenty years have passed, it is time to go beyond the hate inspired by the crackdown, beyond the ad hominem attacks on inept octogenarians, dithering party cadre and inexperienced student activists, and instead to look at the larger picture of a million souls gathered purposefully and with great self-discipline on the streets and plazas of Beijing, and many more across China, who were part of a rare transformative moment in history. Nearly everyone involved, despite their disagreements, stubbornness and imperfections, exhibited a potent love for country and fellow citizens.
Now that twenty years have gone by, it is a time for reconciliation, a time to ponder the tragedy not with a desire for revenge or recrimination but with a plain telling of the truth, as best as a multidimensional and in some respects unknowable truth can be told, and to accept that this revolutionary drama-turned-tragedy, this alternatively uplifting and gut-wrenching karmic kaleidoscope, was composed of ordinary, mostly well-meaning people acting in predictably human, if not always completely noble, ways.
When mourning the victims of June 4,1989, when challenging the uncomfortable silence that has descended upon an otherwise much reformed, much more open China, let us recall not just the bloodshed that ended the popular uprising at Tiananmen, but the sustained participation of hundreds of thousands of ordinary folks who, simultaneously empowered and laid vulnerable, contributed to the inspirational flourishing of peaceful protest in May 1989.
Philip J Cunningham marched with student protesters in 1989 at Tiananmen Square and conducted interviews with student activists for BBC and ABC news. His memoir, Tiananmen Moon; Inside the Chinese Student Uprising in 1989, will be published in May by Rowman & Littlefield.
see the following websites for more information:
http://icga.blogspot.com/
http://jinpeili.blogspot.com/
http://minzhuwansui.blogspot.com/
http://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/
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Thursday, April 16, 2009
On Iran’s Sincerity in Nuclear Talks
Farideh Farhi
Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute had a piece in the Wall Street Journal on April 12 that really got me wondering about the extent to which opponents of U.S. engagement with Iran are willing to twist the truth to make their case against US-Iran talks.
Reflecting on the history of nuclear negotiations between the EU-3 and Iran, Rubin finds the Iranians to have been as “insincere as European diplomats were greedy, gullible or both. Why? Because Iranian negotiators of all colors have proven to be committed to Iran’s nuclear program!! He identifies this as Iranian insincerity.
But, ironically, the only insincerity that I see reflected in the WSJ piece is the author's!
What do I mean? Well, let's start with the public consistency of the Iranian government's position on its nuclear program. One doesn’t have to agree with Iran’s nuclear program to acknowledge that from day one, Tehran has said publicly that it will not agree to the permanent suspension of its enrichment or enrichment-related programs. Even when it suspended its program in 2004-5, it said it would do so only temporarily and for the purpose of building confidence.
Perhaps people have forgotten the trajectory of the EU-Iran negotiations but, as explained here, 2004 negotiations in Paris were only saved when the Europeans agreed to change the language demanding suspension and instead used the language of "objective guarantees" regarding the peacefulness of Iran's program. If others thought that this was a bargaining ploy or something else, it was not because of lack of consistency or sincerity on the part of the Iranian negotiators.
Now let's turn to Michael Rubin. He uses two quotes in his piece to make his point that to me are highly questionable. The first one is from Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, government spokesman during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency. The quote is drawn from a reporting of a debate between the reformist Ramezanzadeh and a hard-liner by Fars News, which should never be relied upon in its reportage of what reformists say in public debates because its reports are clearly slanted towards the hard-line right.
Even assuming that Fars News is engaged in accurate reporting, the way Rubin takes the quote out of context manages to change the meaning of it. This is how Rubin translates the quote:
“We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.”
The clear implication that Rubin wants the reader to draw is that Khatami’s government was "trying to lull the West into a false confidence so that Iran could pursue illicit nuclear activities." In fact, the words I have placed in quotation marks here are Rubin's exact words in an old post in the National Review's Corner blog about Ramezanzadeh's quote.
Rubin makes a couple of subtle changes in the translation but, more importantly, what Rubin does not report are Ramezanzadeh’s prior sentences which make it clear that by other activities he is still talking about a civilian program. This is the full context of Ramezanzadeh’s quote:
“If we want the right to nuclear energy for the bomb, then it is clear that the world doesn’t want this. But if we want it for electricity, they say you don’t have a nuclear power plant, why do you want the fuel? Just take a look at what the Russians have done to us over the Bushehr power plant? With the current speed of enrichment it will take us 25 years to reach enrichment self-sufficiency. Even then, from where are we going to get our fuel? [The extent of] our reserves are not even unclear. The solution is to prove to the world that we want the power plant for electricity and then begin other activities.”
In fact, anyone with little knowledge of Iran’s domestic discourse on nuclear issues should know that the idea of a nuclear program beyond a civilian one simply does not have a place in public conversations. The Iranian government has been successful in selling the idea of enrichment precisely because it has always maintained that it is pursuing a civilian program, a "right" made possible by NPT, and no illicit activities.
So for Michael Rubin to imply that Ramezanzadeh was saying something beyond that Iran should "prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity" - a statement in support of the act of confidence building embarked upon during the Khatami era - is simply disingenuous.
Even more disingenuous is what Rubin does with the interview of Iran's former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani. In response to a question about his failures as a negotiator, Rowhani discusses Iran's strategy for 10 long paragraphs. Rubin takes isolated and out of context sentences – even half-sentences - from different paragraphs, weaves them together as though these were sequential sentences and makes it seem as though Rowhani was making an argument for Iran’s deceptive approach during negotiations.
In fact, Rowhani says that Iran suspended because there was an international consensus against Iran and because the negotiators were led to believe the Europeans were going to negotiate in good faith and that the Americans were interested in a diplomatic resolution of the conflict. He also says that he made abundantly clear to the Europeans that permanent suspension was out of the question and Iran came out of suspension not under Ahmadinejad but under Khatami (which is an often forgotten fact).
Now I fully understand Rubin's position regarding US-Iran talks, even if I disagree with it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, as it is often said but misrepresentation is another story.
Of course, there is always the possibility that Rubin's Persian is not very good (or his translators are not very good). For instance, in his reaction to one of Roger Cohen's pieces in NYT, Rubin writes in the National Review Corner blog:
"One of Cohen’s interlocutors, at least according to his February 5, 2009 column, was former IRGC Chief Mohsen Rezai. Here is Rezai in today’s Iranian press: “Our enmity with the U.S. has no end." Cohen painted him as a bit more reasonable."
Rezaie in fact said exactly the opposite, using a double negative. He said: "Our enmity with the U.S. is not without end"!
So mistakes can be made in translation. But what Rubin does with Rowhani’s and Ramezanzadeh’s quotes suggests that something more than a mistake is going on.
Iran and the United States are about to begin serious rounds of talks about Iran’s nuclear program. At the center of the controversy is Iran’s enrichment program, which is a civilian program. Iran’s interlocutors have so far taken a "zero-option" position demanding Iran to suspend all enrichment and enrichment-related activities for the fear that this civilian program will give Iran the ability to build a weapons program.
Iran, in turn, has consistently and publicly said it will not suspend its program permanently under any circumstances. It said so during Khatami administration and it is saying so today.
There is an exclusivity of positions and a deep conflict here that may or may not be resolved or compromised over in the future talks because, even though the Obama Administration has given up suspension as a precondition for talks, it is not yet clear whether it is prepared to give suspension up as negotiation objective in exchange for more intrusive inspections and some limits on Iranian program.
But the reason the Obama administration is finally coming to the table is not because it is not aware of this deep conflict of positions or it is gullible enough to be misled by Iran's deceptive diplomatic maneuvers, as Rubin seems to suggest. Rather it is changing course because more than half a decade of useless diplomatic wrangling with frequent deadlines and red lines, repeatedly crossed by Iran, have not been effective.
Iran is now spinning more centrifuges, has continued work on its heavy water plant, while the international community’s inspection regime, even though still in line with Iran’s treaty obligations, has become less extensive mainly because Iran has stopped implementing the Additional Protocol that it used to implement voluntarily before its case was referred to the Security Council.
In fact, a case can easily be made that the gullible and insincere folks in this process were the ones who refused to face reality and kept claiming, despite evidence to the contrary, that deadlines and red lines, military threats and economic pressures, will work despite repeated straight-forward statements by Iranian officials of all hue that they will not.
Misrepresentations of the Iranian position seem to be the only munitions left in defending a failed policy.
Read more on this article...
Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute had a piece in the Wall Street Journal on April 12 that really got me wondering about the extent to which opponents of U.S. engagement with Iran are willing to twist the truth to make their case against US-Iran talks.
Reflecting on the history of nuclear negotiations between the EU-3 and Iran, Rubin finds the Iranians to have been as “insincere as European diplomats were greedy, gullible or both. Why? Because Iranian negotiators of all colors have proven to be committed to Iran’s nuclear program!! He identifies this as Iranian insincerity.
But, ironically, the only insincerity that I see reflected in the WSJ piece is the author's!
What do I mean? Well, let's start with the public consistency of the Iranian government's position on its nuclear program. One doesn’t have to agree with Iran’s nuclear program to acknowledge that from day one, Tehran has said publicly that it will not agree to the permanent suspension of its enrichment or enrichment-related programs. Even when it suspended its program in 2004-5, it said it would do so only temporarily and for the purpose of building confidence.
Perhaps people have forgotten the trajectory of the EU-Iran negotiations but, as explained here, 2004 negotiations in Paris were only saved when the Europeans agreed to change the language demanding suspension and instead used the language of "objective guarantees" regarding the peacefulness of Iran's program. If others thought that this was a bargaining ploy or something else, it was not because of lack of consistency or sincerity on the part of the Iranian negotiators.
Now let's turn to Michael Rubin. He uses two quotes in his piece to make his point that to me are highly questionable. The first one is from Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, government spokesman during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency. The quote is drawn from a reporting of a debate between the reformist Ramezanzadeh and a hard-liner by Fars News, which should never be relied upon in its reportage of what reformists say in public debates because its reports are clearly slanted towards the hard-line right.
Even assuming that Fars News is engaged in accurate reporting, the way Rubin takes the quote out of context manages to change the meaning of it. This is how Rubin translates the quote:
“We should prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities.”
The clear implication that Rubin wants the reader to draw is that Khatami’s government was "trying to lull the West into a false confidence so that Iran could pursue illicit nuclear activities." In fact, the words I have placed in quotation marks here are Rubin's exact words in an old post in the National Review's Corner blog about Ramezanzadeh's quote.
Rubin makes a couple of subtle changes in the translation but, more importantly, what Rubin does not report are Ramezanzadeh’s prior sentences which make it clear that by other activities he is still talking about a civilian program. This is the full context of Ramezanzadeh’s quote:
“If we want the right to nuclear energy for the bomb, then it is clear that the world doesn’t want this. But if we want it for electricity, they say you don’t have a nuclear power plant, why do you want the fuel? Just take a look at what the Russians have done to us over the Bushehr power plant? With the current speed of enrichment it will take us 25 years to reach enrichment self-sufficiency. Even then, from where are we going to get our fuel? [The extent of] our reserves are not even unclear. The solution is to prove to the world that we want the power plant for electricity and then begin other activities.”
In fact, anyone with little knowledge of Iran’s domestic discourse on nuclear issues should know that the idea of a nuclear program beyond a civilian one simply does not have a place in public conversations. The Iranian government has been successful in selling the idea of enrichment precisely because it has always maintained that it is pursuing a civilian program, a "right" made possible by NPT, and no illicit activities.
So for Michael Rubin to imply that Ramezanzadeh was saying something beyond that Iran should "prove to the entire world that we want power plants for electricity" - a statement in support of the act of confidence building embarked upon during the Khatami era - is simply disingenuous.
Even more disingenuous is what Rubin does with the interview of Iran's former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani. In response to a question about his failures as a negotiator, Rowhani discusses Iran's strategy for 10 long paragraphs. Rubin takes isolated and out of context sentences – even half-sentences - from different paragraphs, weaves them together as though these were sequential sentences and makes it seem as though Rowhani was making an argument for Iran’s deceptive approach during negotiations.
In fact, Rowhani says that Iran suspended because there was an international consensus against Iran and because the negotiators were led to believe the Europeans were going to negotiate in good faith and that the Americans were interested in a diplomatic resolution of the conflict. He also says that he made abundantly clear to the Europeans that permanent suspension was out of the question and Iran came out of suspension not under Ahmadinejad but under Khatami (which is an often forgotten fact).
Now I fully understand Rubin's position regarding US-Iran talks, even if I disagree with it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, as it is often said but misrepresentation is another story.
Of course, there is always the possibility that Rubin's Persian is not very good (or his translators are not very good). For instance, in his reaction to one of Roger Cohen's pieces in NYT, Rubin writes in the National Review Corner blog:
"One of Cohen’s interlocutors, at least according to his February 5, 2009 column, was former IRGC Chief Mohsen Rezai. Here is Rezai in today’s Iranian press: “Our enmity with the U.S. has no end." Cohen painted him as a bit more reasonable."
Rezaie in fact said exactly the opposite, using a double negative. He said: "Our enmity with the U.S. is not without end"!
So mistakes can be made in translation. But what Rubin does with Rowhani’s and Ramezanzadeh’s quotes suggests that something more than a mistake is going on.
Iran and the United States are about to begin serious rounds of talks about Iran’s nuclear program. At the center of the controversy is Iran’s enrichment program, which is a civilian program. Iran’s interlocutors have so far taken a "zero-option" position demanding Iran to suspend all enrichment and enrichment-related activities for the fear that this civilian program will give Iran the ability to build a weapons program.
Iran, in turn, has consistently and publicly said it will not suspend its program permanently under any circumstances. It said so during Khatami administration and it is saying so today.
There is an exclusivity of positions and a deep conflict here that may or may not be resolved or compromised over in the future talks because, even though the Obama Administration has given up suspension as a precondition for talks, it is not yet clear whether it is prepared to give suspension up as negotiation objective in exchange for more intrusive inspections and some limits on Iranian program.
But the reason the Obama administration is finally coming to the table is not because it is not aware of this deep conflict of positions or it is gullible enough to be misled by Iran's deceptive diplomatic maneuvers, as Rubin seems to suggest. Rather it is changing course because more than half a decade of useless diplomatic wrangling with frequent deadlines and red lines, repeatedly crossed by Iran, have not been effective.
Iran is now spinning more centrifuges, has continued work on its heavy water plant, while the international community’s inspection regime, even though still in line with Iran’s treaty obligations, has become less extensive mainly because Iran has stopped implementing the Additional Protocol that it used to implement voluntarily before its case was referred to the Security Council.
In fact, a case can easily be made that the gullible and insincere folks in this process were the ones who refused to face reality and kept claiming, despite evidence to the contrary, that deadlines and red lines, military threats and economic pressures, will work despite repeated straight-forward statements by Iranian officials of all hue that they will not.
Misrepresentations of the Iranian position seem to be the only munitions left in defending a failed policy.
Read more on this article...
TIANANMEN TWENTY YEARS AGO
TIANANMEN SQUARE DURING THE HIGH TIDE OF THE UPRISING IN 1989
As the 20th anniversary of "Tiananmen" approaches, I would like to post excerpts from "TIANANMEN MOON," my forthcoming memoir about Beijing Spring 1989 to commemorate in a modest but heartfelt way the many moments of wonder, soaring hopes, dashed dreams and raw terror as experienced in the heat of the action, each entry posted twenty years to the day of events described. The excerpts will run chronologically, from May 4 to June 4, including highlights such as the May Fourth demonstration, the ten-thousand bicycle demonstration, the hunger strike, the occupation of Tiananmen Square, the water strike, the imposition of martial law, the arrival of troops and the midnight crackdown.
-Phil Cunningham
Please see Frontier International and Tiananmen Moon for more information.
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