July 2, 2009
A Conversation with Robert D. Kaplan
There are few places in the world Robert D. Kaplan has not visited and written about in his books and magazine articles. He travels to countries hardly anyone else even considers – to Turkmenistan, for instance, during the time of the lunatic "Turkmenbashi" who transformed his post-Soviet republic into the North Korea of Central Asia. He has an uncanny ability to see conflicts looming on the horizon well in advance and – reversing the standard relationship between journalists and officials – U.S. defense policy professionals often ask him for briefings about what he has seen.
His regular dispatches in the Atlantic ought to be required reading for anyone interested in foreign affairs, as should his numerous books.
I met him a few weeks ago in Washington D.C. while he was briefly in town after returning from a month-long trip to post-war Sri Lanka. We discussed Colombo’s brutal counterinsurgency campaign there against the Tamil Tigers, what China has been up to while no one was looking, Russia’s revived imperial project in its "near abroad," the geopolitcal ramifications of a more liberal Iran, Israel’s difficulty in fighting effective counterinsurgency warfare, and our new man-hunting General Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan.
MJT: So you just got back from Sri Lanka. What did you see there? What did you learn?
Kaplan: The biggest takeaway fact about the Sri Lankan war that’s over now is that the Chinese won. And the Chinese won because over the last few years, because of the human rights violations by the Sri Lankan government, the U.S. and other Western countries have cut all military aid. We cut them off just as they were starting to win. The Chinese filled the gaps and kept them flush with weapons and, more importantly, with ammunition, with fire-fighting radar, all kinds of equipment. The assault rifles that Sri Lankan soldiers carry at road blocks throughout Colombo are T-56 Chinese knockoffs of AK-47s. They look like AK-47s, but they’re not.
What are the Chinese getting out of this? They’re building a deep water port and bunkering facility for their warships and merchant fleet in Hambantota, in southern Sri Lanka. And they’re doing all sorts of other building on the island.
Now, why did the Chinese want Sri Lanka? Because Sri Lanka is strategically located. The main sea lines of communication between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, and between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. It’s part of China’s plan to construct a string of pearls – ports that they don’t own, but which they can use for their warships all across the Indian Ocean.
Sri Lanka defeated, more or less completely, a 26 year-long insurgency. They killed the leader and the leader’s son. But there are no takeaway lessons for the West here. The Sri Lankan government did it by silencing the media, which meant capturing the most prominent media critic of the government and killing him painfully. And they made sure all the other journalists knew about it.
MJT: Wow.
Kaplan: There are a thousand disappearances a year in Sri Lanka separate from the war. Journalists are terrified there. The only journalism you read is pro-government. So that’s one thing they did.
The Tamil Tigers had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the government and say "you have to kill all the people to get to us." So the government obliged them. The government killed thousands of civilians.
MJT: Tamil civilians?
Kaplan: Yes. They killed thousands of civilians in the course of winning this war. It acted in a way so brutal that there are no lessons for the West.
MJT: Would you say it was as brutal as Russia’s counterinsurgency in Chechnya?
Kaplan: Yeah. It was. The U.N. is investigating whether as many as 20,000 civilians have been killed during the last few months.
MJT: I didn’t know it was that brutal. I’ve read accusations that there were human rights violations, but we’re so used to hearing that no matter what happens.
Kaplan: The West thinks of Sri Lanka as unimportant, whereas for the Chinese and the Indians it’s very important. And I consider Sri Lanka part of the new geography. It’s part of the new maritime geography, and that makes it very important.
MJT: Until China started helping Sri Lanka, where was Sri Lanka geopolitically?
Kaplan: It’s a place that registers the geopolitical reality between China, India, and the Indian Ocean. The Indians have a very checkered record in Sri Lanka. They sent in a peacekeeping force in 1987 and got their asses kicked by the Tamil Tigers. They came in to help the Tamils, but the Tigers wanted no part of any force there. They came in to help the Tamils, and they wound up fighting the Tamil Tigers.
MJT: Sri Lanka’s government naturally isn’t aligned with India, though.
Kaplan: Right. But it has reasonably good relations with India. It’s now at a point where it’s balancing between India and China.
MJT: Sri Lanka has been fighting this counterinsurgency for decades. Have they slowly made progress all this time and have now finally finished it off, or was there a tipping point recently where a seemingly endless conflict just ended almost suddenly?
Kaplan: The Sri Lankan government was elected in 2005 to win the war. And it has done that. Extremely brutally. It’s a government that’s very nationalist Sinhalese Buddhist. These are not the Richard Gere’s "peace and love" Buddhists. These are the real blood and soil Buddhists, where Buddhism is like any other religion when it’s threatened and it’s defending a piece of territory. It can be very brutal.
It was elected to win the war, which it interpreted from the voters as a right to silence the media and to fight without any restrictions.
MJT: It does work, though, doesn’t it?
Kaplan: It does work, yeah.
MJT: Not that we should do it, of course.
How popular were the Tamil Tigers among the Tamil population?
Kaplan: Not particularly popular. The Tamil Tigers pioneered the use of suicide bombers. They pioneered the use of human shields, of fighting amidst large numbers of civilians. They had their own navy and air force.
MJT: They had an air force?
Kaplan: Yeah. They had a few planes that they used for bombing missions over Colombo. It was the only insurgent terrorist outfit that had a navy and air force.
MJT: That’s fascinating.
Kaplan: Yeah.
MJT: Not even Hezbollah has either of those, and Hezbollah is the most sophisticated Islamist terrorist group in the world.
The Tamil Tigers didn’t care much for the Arab and Islamist terrorist groups, did they?
Kaplan: No, they didn’t.
MJT: I read a quote from one of the Tamil Tiger leaders who said he refused to train Islamist terrorists because he didn’t want to help anyone kill Americans.
Kaplan: They didn’t want to create a situation where the West would aid this Sinhalese government under the guise of fighting international terrorism.
MJT: It makes sense. They were off our radar almost entirely.
Kaplan: In Sri Lanka you have a majority Sinhalese Buddhist population that thinks like a minority. They have a minority sense of oppression. Although they have 75 percent of the population while the Tamils have only about 18 percent, there are 60 million more Tamils nearby in southern India. So they’re kind of like the Iraqi Shias and the Serbs, other majorities who feel like minorities, and can be twice as brutal because of it.
MJT: So there are no lessons at all? Nothing for the U.S., Israel, or Pakistan?
Kaplan: No.
MJT: Only moral lessons, perhaps. Yes, this works, but it would take an awful lot to get us to fight that way again.
Kaplan: The only lesson is that while we’re obsessed with Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese have a fully developed world view. They’re thinking about many countries all at once.
MJT: What’s China’s ultimate objective?
Kaplan: They’re putting a lot of money into their navy, more than their army. Their ultimate objective is to project sea power, and not just in the western Pacific which makes them a great regional power, but also in the Indian Ocean which makes them a great power in total.
MJT: Do you get the sense that China is becoming more ambitious as it gets more powerful?
Kaplan: I think as their economy develops, and as they have more and more economic interests around the world, they suddenly have more national interests. As they trade more, they have more things to protect. So they develop a world view and their military expands accordingly. It’s very similar to the U.S. military expansion in the late 19th century and the early 20th century before World War I.
MJT: That’s what I thought.
Kaplan: Between the end of the Civil War and the outbreak of World War I, our economic expansion made us a great power. We suddenly were dealing with Latin America, with the Pacific, and with Europe in ways we hadn’t before the Civil War. And that led to a corresponding military expansion. We very quietly and unobtrusively became a great power.
MJT: I don’t think the U.S. ever consciously intended to become the most powerful country in the world.
Kaplan: No.
MJT: We just slowly, step by step, ended up there.
Kaplan: Right. It just happened. And that’s how I look at China.
MJT: Russia was more deliberate about it. Soviet Russia, I should say.
Kaplan: Russia is a land power. And land powers are much more insecure than sea powers.
MJT: They can be conquered much more easily.
Kaplan: Russia’s only coast to speak of is in the frozen wastes of the Arctic. It’s a polar ice cap. It’s useless.
When you’re threatened on land, you’re much more insecure than if you’re threatened an ocean away. We’re virtually an island nation.
MJT: Russians seem to feel genuinely threatened by NATO expansion.
Kaplan: Yeah, they do.
MJT: Way more than they should.
Kaplan: They’ve been invaded by the French under Napoleon. They’ve been invaded by the Germans. They’re insecure about their Western frontier. That was the whole purpose behind the satellite states of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It provided a buffer region for the Russians, a buffer region that was under their total control. So what the Russians want to do is somehow, some way, create another buffer on their Western border. So there’s a lot of pressure on the Baltic states, on Poland.
MJT: It looks like Ukraine is in danger.
Kaplan: It’s endangered perpetually. Russia as a land power can’t tolerate an independent Ukraine.
MJT: It doesn’t look good for them after what happened in Georgia. I’ll be surprised if nothing much happens there over the next couple of years.
Kaplan: Russia has to be able to control Ukrainian politics behind the scenes.
MJT: They were doing it before the Georgian incident when they poisoned the current president, Viktor Yukoshenko.
Kaplan: Yeah.
MJT: I can see it from their point of view to an extent. It’s as if the U.S. suddenly lost Florida. That’s how the Russians look at Ukraine. They lost a nice place with a warm climate and a beach on the Black Sea. Almost everywhere else is winter for eight months of the year. Almost half of Ukraine is ethnically Russian.
Kaplan: And they lost the Caucasus. The Caucasus figures large in Russian literature, in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writing and in others’. They write about the beauty of the Caucasus. It was Russia’s Wild West, its romantic Wild West, except it was to the south. And it’s deeply embedded in the Russian psyche. So the loss of the Caucasus, especially Georgia, really hurt.
MJT: Have you been there lately?
Kaplan: No.
MJT: It’s interesting.
Kaplan: And who knows? They may get it back.
MJT: They got pieces of it.
Kaplan: Yeah.
MJT: I doubt they’ll get Tbilisi back.
Kaplan: There’s a good chance they’ll get a government there that’s, quote unquote, "friendly."
MJT: It’s looking that way.
Kaplan: A "friendly" regime.
MJT: Saakashvili isn’t too popular these days.
Kaplan: No. He miscalculated.
MJT: Yeah. But he’s not a bad guy. He’s certainly better than Shevardnadze and Gamsakhurdia.
Kaplan: Yeah. The problem, though, with Georgia, was the Bush Administration. It spoke loudly and carried a small stick rather than the reverse. They promised Saakashvili all this aid and support. The two presidents had a hug fest and all that. But there was little we could do if the Russians called the bluff.
MJT: And what could we do? We aren’t going to war with Russia over, well, anything, let alone Georgia.
Kaplan: Right.
MJT: If they tried to conquer Western Europe that would be a different story, but of course they won’t.
Kaplan: I thought the body language between Bush and Saakashvili was bad. It was the kind of public friendship that indicated we would back him up. It sent the wrong message.
MJT: To Saakashvili, you mean?
Kaplan: Yeah.
MJT: There wasn’t much we could do. Likewise, if the U.S. moved into South Ossetia – which of course wouldn’t happen even in an alternate universe – Russia couldn’t have done anything. With Russia and the U.S. right now, the winner is whoever moves first.
Kaplan: Yes. And keep another thing in mind. The Obama Administration is trying to find a way to get Russia’s help with Iran. And what is Russia’s price for that? My guess is they want control of Georgia.
MJT: Do you think that would be enough?
Kaplan: It might be. And keep something else in mind. Since the days of Gorbachev, the Iranians and the Russians have had an unspoken agreement about stability in the southern tier of the former Soviet Union. The Iranians are not mucking about in Georgia and Armenia and other places right on their border the way they’re mucking about in Iraq.
MJT: Right.
Kaplan: And that is something Russia really appreciates. So Russia’s friendship with Iran, and it’s willingness to have Iran’s back at the United Nations, is born of geopolitical and geographical realities.
MJT: They aren’t messing with Azerbaijan all that much either, even though Azerbaijan used to be part of the Persian Empire. There was a Hezbollah terrorist attack foiled there recently against the Israeli embassy, but that only took place in Azerbaijan. It didn’t have much to do with Azerbaijan itself.
Kaplan: Yeah.
MJT: I was there last August.
Kaplan: How’s the government under Aliyev?
MJT: Not great.
Kaplan: Yeah. That’s what I would expect.
MJT: They have the right idea about where the country should go, but the government is autocratic.
Kaplan: Yeah.
MJT: I have to say, though, that I was impressed with the physical condition of the country. At least the capital Baku. Outside Baku it started to look a bit like Iraq.
Kaplan: Yeah. That’s always been the truth. There is a syndrome in a lot of these countries where the capitals are really city-states. All the money flows into the capital and there’s nothing outside. This is true in Bulgaria, in some other places. It’s going to take a long time for the money to flow to the countryside.
MJT: It will. It’s true in Georgia, too, to a lesser extent. It isn’t doing as well as Eastern Europe. Baku, though, in Azerbaijan, is very pleasant.
Kaplan: It has a beautiful old section by the waterfront. You should have seen it in 1993. It was a trash heap.
MJT: I’ll bet.
Kaplan: It was hideous. And then I went back in 1999, and it was a different world. I can’t even imagine it now.
MJT: So you’re working on a book about the Indian Ocean.
Kaplan: Yeah. I’m deep into it. One day we’re going to wake up from Iraq and Afghanistan, and we’re going to see a changed world. We’re going to see a world where there are still geopolitical contests, but they’ll be between China and India. We’ll see the emergence of China on the world’s seas with less U.S. dominance. We’re going to see a more maritime world. We may live in an era of globalization, but 90 percent of all goods travel by sea in containers. It’s container shipping that allows for the whole globalization, the clothes we wear, the prices we pay for them, etc. Those who control the sea lanes are going to be crucial.
Now, we’ve seen a little of this already in the news with the piracy issue. When does piracy thrive when you read about piracy historically? It thrives when trade is thriving. Pirates are parasites. The more international trade is thriving, the more hosts are available for parasites. So piracy is an indication that things are good, in a way.
MJT: Right.
Kaplan: And we see how critical these sea lines of communication are if just a few hundred pirates can get ships to divert from using the Suez Canal and instead choosing to go around southern Africa. Which is what’s happening.
So I think we’re going to make up more of a maritime world where the rim line of the world is going to be between the Horn of Africa and the Sea of Japan with the Strait of Malacca as sort of the Fulda Gap of the 21st Century. The Fulda Gap, you know, was a valley in West Germany during the Cold War where Soviet tanks would come through if there was ever a confrontation.
MJT: Right.
Kaplan: Global warming could change things a bit, if it’s true. If the seas really are warming and the ice is freeing up, land-locked Russia will no longer be land-locked. It has this vast coast to the north that it could suddenly use for shipping across the Arctic to North America, Japan, and elsewhere. That would bring a whole new advantage to Russia.
Now, of course you could say that Russia is losing population, the health statistics are terrible, and that’s true. That’s also something we’ll have to take into account. Russia is deteriorating greatly in social and medical terms. But if the ice really is melting, that’s going to provide a great benefit for Russia in the decades to come.
We don’t even look at that geography now. But we would start looking at it in an age of ice melt in the Arctic.
MJT: A lot of Americans will listen to what you’re saying about the Indian Ocean, that India and China are going to ramp up their navies, and they’ll be in charge of policing the Indian Ocean area, and say "Great. Finally. Someone else is finally doing this work. Why do we have to do it all the time?"
Kaplan: That’s a good point.
MJT: Would they be right? I mean, neither India nor China is an ideological power.
Kaplan: Right. Excellent. Look, not only that, our differences with China are much less than our differences with the Soviet Union.
MJT: Much less.
Kaplan: And India is a democratic country that’s inferentially pro-American. So your average American would be right. This is a way for us to gracefully retreat from global domination, by leveraging other powers to take up responsibility.
Either way, this is the world that will confront us after Iraq and Afghanistan. We will still be a great power, and an indispensable power. We’re the only great sea power operating in Asia that does not have territorial ambitions in Asia. We’re half a world away.
MJT: I don’t feel threatened by China policing sea lanes to protect their commercial interests. I don’t care for its support of nasty regimes in Burma and North Korea, but I’m not sure this will have much affect on any of that.
Kaplan: China practices what I’d call a very bleak form of realism. It’s classic realism with no light at the end of the tunnel or any kind of sentimental or humanistic outlook.
MJT: It’s very bloodless, isn’t it?
Kaplan: Yeah. They will deal with a democratic power, and they’ll deal with Burma and Zimbabwe and Sudan and Sri Lanka. They’re hungry for energy, for oil. It’s a very bloodless form of realism.
MJT: I don’t like it, but it worries me less than Russia’s outlook.
Kaplan: It should. I agree with you. I’m not painting a disastrous world after Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m painting a different world.
MJT: How does Iran fit into all this? We’re all familiar with how Iran interferes with countries to its west, in the Arab world. What does Iran do on its eastern side?
Kaplan: Iran is so beneficially placed between the two oil-rich regions of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. They border both. What’s interesting is that when you travel to Turkmenistan and through Central Asia, Iran is like a cultural lode star. All these countries are influenced by Persian language and culture.
But the current Iranian regime is very unappetizing for all these countries. If Iran loosens up, and I think it might…
MJT: I’m sure it will eventually.
Kaplan: Yeah. It’s going to be an incredibly attractive power in all of Central Asia. And then we will really see a greater Iran. Iranian influence will increase with a more moderate regime for cultural reasons.
MJT: Because of its soft power.
Kaplan: Exactly. Because of the soft power of Persian culture.
MJT: Persian culture, without Khomeinism on top of it, is very appealing. Not just to Central Asians, but also to me.
Kaplan: It’s very attractive.
MJT: Many Kurds in Iraq have told me the same thing. They admire Persian culture much more than they admire Arab culture, which they detest.
Kaplan: Yeah.
MJT: But Iran doesn’t appeal to them much now because it’s smothered under this awful Khomeinism.
Kaplan: Yes. You’ve explained it. You don’t need me to explain it. That’s exactly it.
MJT: But I pay much more attention to what’s going on to the west of Iran. What is Iran up to in its east, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and so on? Are the Iranians mucking around over there like they are in the Arab countries?
Kaplan: Western Afghanistan is now essentially an Iranian satellite.
MJT: They speak a version of Persian there.
Kaplan: The Iranian currency freely circulates in Herat. Iran is supplying electricity to Herat and much of Western Afghanistan. So while Western Afghanistan is relatively quiet and free of violence, the reason it is so is because of the influence of Iran.
MJT: I assumed it was quiet more because it’s outside Pashtunistan, so to speak. But I guess what you’re saying is the flip side of that.
Speaking of Pashtunistan, you have written before that Afghanistan and Pakistan are best thought of as a single political entity.
Kaplan: Yes.
MJT: And that’s much more obviously true now than it was when you first wrote it.
Kaplan: Yes.
MJT: Because now we’re seeing a Taliban insurgency in both countries. Do you think this insurgency is beatable if the U.S. can only really operate on the Afghanistan side of it?
Kaplan: I think the U.S. is able to influence both sides. The recent offensive in the Swat Valley by the Pakistani government has been pretty successful. And who do you think is behind all that? Uncle Sam. We really put pressure on them to solve their own problems. They transferred their military resources from the Indian border to the Swat Valley.
MJT: Is the Swat Valley ethnically Pashtun or Punjabi?
Kaplan: It’s more Pashtun than Punjabi, I think. It’s where they overlap.
I traveled all throughout the Swat Valley in the mid-1990s. It was beautiful, touristy, and peaceful. There was no problem. All this is very recent.
I find it interesting that after all this pressure was put on Pakistan by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that the Pakistanis really started a major offensive.
MJT: How much of Pakistan’s response was because of U.S. pressure, and how much because the Taliban got so close to Islamabad?
Kaplan: It was both. Probably both. And they’ve really pursued this seriously. Much more seriously than they’ve pursued anything else.
MJT: It was quite striking, actually, how quickly they turned around.
Kaplan: Yeah. It is.
You know what’s interesting? The Israelis. They’ve been great at defeating structured Arab armies, but they haven’t figured out how to deal with a few thousand insurgents in South Lebanon or in Gaza. What did their wars in 2006 and 2009 in Lebanon and Gaza get them?
MJT: It got them fewer rockets for a while, but it’s temporary.
Kaplan: Yeah.
MJT: I don’t know what they should do. They can’t put a David Petraeus in Gaza or Lebanon. It won’t work.
Kaplan: No.
MJT: And they can’t fight a counterinsurgency from the air because that’s just absurd.
Kaplan: Yeah. They haven’t been able to solve this problem at all.
MJT: I’m glad it isn’t up to me what Israel should do. There aren’t any good options. Maybe they should hold Syria accountable. Syria is at least a state with a return address and national interests. I don’t think the Syrian government is particularly ideological. It isn’t like the Iranian government. Syria isn’t an ideology, it’s a state.
Kaplan: It wants to survive.
MJT: Maybe the Israelis should lean on Assad. They can’t lean on Hamas or Hezbollah. They can’t lean on Beirut because Beirut is too weak to do much.
Kaplan: Yeah. I mean, the idea of bombing highway overpasses near Beirut to punish Lebanon for Hezbollah is ridiculous.
MJT: There is no way they could have pulled that off in Lebanon in 2006, no matter how brilliantly they might have fought.
Kaplan: And they didn’t fight brilliantly.
MJT: Even if they did…
Kaplan: Well, as you said, they can’t do what Petraeus did.
Speaking of Petraeus, this appointment of General Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan is really interesting.
MJT: What do you think of him?
Kaplan: Oh, he’s got it. He’s another Petraeus. He’s larger than life. I’ve interviewed General David McKiernan, the man he’s replacing. He’s a good guy, but he’s no lightning. He has no great ideas.
I think deep down the real reason the Obama Administration fired McKiernan and wants to bring in McChrystal is because McChrystal is a man hunter. He got Zarqawi in Iraq. And Obama desperately wants to kill Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri to show that they can do this better than the Republicans.
So the White House said, "we want to get these people." And Secretary Gates said, "well, if you want to get them, McChrystal’s your man." He ran the Joint Special Operations Command for five years. It conducts all the secret operations – Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, the best Ranger battalions. It’s all very secret. And they go out on man hunting missions and kill people.
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July 1, 2009
Georgia’s Hard Slog to Democracy
By Michael Cecire
Editor’s note: The following article by Michael Cecire is a necessary follow-up to my coverage of Russia’s invasion of Georgia last August, and it’s written by a former resident who knows the country much better than I do. – MJT
The events swirling within Iran have been nothing short of startling, taking the world by surprise by its speed and intensity. Perhaps it’s testament to the Army of Davids globalization schema that, for weeks, the top two trending topics on the surprisingly super-relevant Twitter were about the events in Iran. While most have been vocal in their support for the protestors in Iran, other ‘pragmatic’ voices have ranged from cautious to dismissive. Among some of the comments have been some who cynically compare the rather withered, unclearly-supported opposition protests in Georgia with the proto-revolution in Iran. By extension, these analogies imply equivalence between Georgia’s temperamental president Mikheil “Misha” Saakashvili and the apocalyptic lunacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. Suffice to say that this is gross skewing of realities that needs to be put to bed immediately.
The last time I wrote on these pages, shortly following Russia’s invasion into Georgia, I cautioned that the United States should be wary not to invest its hopes in Caucasus democracy solely in the person of Saakashvili. While the United States and much of the world rightly condemned Russia’s bald-faced militarism, the reflexive fawning over Saakashvili’s Western credentials and crisp American English was decidedly two-dimensional. Saakashvili, even before the August war, faced mounting challenges to his vertical style of rule. From property rights violations to media blackouts and straining centralization, Misha at times seemed on a path to resembling the coterie of Central Asian strongmen to which the West has become more or less resigned.
Of course, a lot has happened since last August. The same brewing chorus of opposition is now camping in the streets of Tbilisi and daily demanding Saakashvili’s immediate resignation. At the same time, Misha himself seems to have undergone a decided shift. Credit where it’s due: the twin ravages of the Russian blitz and the debilitating global recession may have revived the pluralistic tendencies that catapulted the young Columbia-educated lawyer into the highest echelon of Georgian politics in 2003’s Rose Revolution. Since the war, Saakashvili has invested considerable political capital into a bevy of reforms, much of which are at the expense of his own political power, to satisfy NATO conditions and reassure a neo-realist United States tilting leftward.
Even at the onset of a crush of opposition street protests that began on April 9th, the Georgian government has been remarkably quiescent, allowing tremendous latitude to the fiery protestors whose singular platform was Misha’s removal. Now in its third month, one cannot imagine any other country, even in the democratic West, which would tolerate such an aggressive protest regime that has erected street barriers, strangled businesses, attacked police stations and parliamentarians, and been cold to generous outreach from the government. Keen on metaphor, the opposition has erected a constellation of “cells” that sit along Tbilisi’s main roads, blocking traffic for months and starving local businesses. The steepest irony is that the prison cells sit mostly empty, sometimes outnumbering the opposition activists themselves. It’s thus no surprise that Saakashvili’s popularity has risen.
Concurrently, evidence has begun to emerge of a startling nexus between elements within the radical opposition and Moscow, which has directed expatriate Georgian oligarchs loyal to the Kremlin to fund and, in some cases, escalate the already tense situation. All of this against the backdrop of eerily reminiscent provocations from Russia and its proxies lends to the possibility that a re-ignition of conflict may be on the horizon.
To be sure, the opposition is by no means monolithic and the vast majority has no more wish to assist Russia than Misha himself. But the clashing of personalities and the extremist approach embraced by some of the opposition leaders have largely rendered Saakashvili positively moderate in comparison. At the same time, Misha has wisely expended his re-appreciating political capital by reaching out to the opposition in talks, in church, and even offering government posts. Perhaps most significantly, Georgia has embarked on a comprehensive economic development and reform agenda for the regions outside Tbilisi. While it’s tempting to write this off as calculated maneuvering by a besieged Saakashvili, the opposition strategy of protesting-at-all-costs is largely backfiring. Georgia remains intact and largely free of the large-scale violence many analysts feared before the protests began in April.
Saakashvili deserves credit for this approach. As the specter of war continues to haunt the small Caucasian republic, the maintenance of stability is as important as ever. While the effects of the August war might have even made the prioritization of sovereignty over liberty understandable, the Georgian government has struck an impressive balance between resisting persistent Russian provocations and advancing an agenda of political reforms to reinvigorate its democracy, which is easily the freest in the Caucasus and Central Asia region.
Yet as the summer marches forward and Russia replays its pre-invasion war games as the opposition becomes increasingly desperate, the threat of conflict – whether internally, externally, or in some combination – will loom larger. The real test for Saakashvili, and the opposition as well, will be during the same general time frame during which the last war erupted. Though much of the responsibility for averting renewed conflict will lie on the savvy of the Georgian government and the cooperation of the opposition, the United States and the West have a real role to play here.
As a first order, the West should reject the Kremlin-approved revisionism being bandied by the Russophiles and neo-Detentists and should not fall into the trap of “respecting Russian interests” for its own sake, as though this were a goal in itself. Meanwhile, President Obama, who is scheduled to visit Moscow on July 6th, must strongly endorse Georgia’s sovereignty to avert what may be renewed Russian preparations for invasion. At the same time, a higher level of Western engagement may be the leverage that is needed to create conditions for resolution between the more moderate blocs of the opposition and the government. Ensuring the stability and independence of Georgia, a geopolitical linchpin between Asia and Europe, has long term implications for Europe’s energy security, Russia’s behavior towards its neighbors as well as the United States, and democracy promotion overall.
Saakashvili remains a flawed man, but in an area of the world where ‘benign’ dictatorships are seen as the best of options, Misha’s Georgia is a relative oasis of civil liberties and electoral participation. Though many areas require serious reform and the West should challenge the Georgian government to live up to its democratic obligations, the last year has demonstrated that Saakashvili can still be a constructive partner in the region. If anything, the protests in Iran should stand to highlight the kid-gloves approach of Saakashvili’s government toward the mostly unelected opposition, where dialogue between contrasting viewpoints is a real option forward. If a tiny fraction of the outreach and transparency existed in Iran as in Georgia, our Twitter feeds would be churning out different messages.
Michael Hikari Cecire is an independent analyst, freelance writer, and economic development practitioner. A former Peace Corps Volunteer in Georgia, he is currently finishing graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and regularly comments on the Black Sea region and economic development policy issues. A regular writer for Bacon's Rebellion and TCS Daily, he has also been published in the London Telegraph and the Democracy Project weblog. Cecire is also a long-suffering Mets fan.
June 29, 2009
Home from the End of the Earth
I’m home again after a nine-day road trip from Anchorage, Alaska, to Prudhoe Bay on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. It was an extraordinary journey beyond civilization, during the time of the midnight sign, on the last and loneliest road that doesn’t stop until the end of the world.
I need a day or so to re-acquaint myself with the land of life, darkness, and warmth.
Thanks to Howard Baskerville for keeping the blog going while I was off the grid. I have two dispatches from Iraq to knock out before they’re out of date. Then I’ll publish a photo-rich travel essay from the end of the earth.
June 28, 2009
Not over yet
The protests in Iran have subsided because of regime violence. Despite that, some people are willing to take the risk of demonstrating. Here is footage of the latest protest from Raye man kojast? Where is my vote?.
June 27, 2009
Iran's abuse of technology
Graham in the comment box below mentioned a useful article on Iran's use of high-end AMD chips for missile research. The presence of western high-tech in Iran is sadly not a new development. In late 2007 it emerged that Amir Kabir University in Tehran had built a super computer using sanctioned AMD Opteron chips. Computerworld had a great story on this.
There is a world of difference between AMD, on the one hand, and Nokia and Siemens, on the other. The Iranians purchased AMD products illicitly. Nokia and Siemens directly and knowingly did business in Iran, aided a country that they knew was a serial human rights violator. More on Nokia and Siemens here.
June 26, 2009
They only know the languages of menace and violence
The foreign ministers of the G-8, meeting in Italy, have something to say about the atrocities in Iran. The Italian foreign minister said: "We will adopt a particularly tough and clear position." The Iranian ambassador in Japan, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, warned them not to saying it would be "their biggest mistake." He also said that there is "no legal problem" with what Iranian police have been doing, such as this (thanks to Raye man kojast? Where is my vote?). The key footage begins 56 seconds in.
More on Nokia and Siemens
Eli Lake had a great story in The Washington Times about Nokia and Siemens in Iran. If you have a 401k (or equivalent) or own mutual funds, then you probably own Nokia and Siemens. For example, Vanguard Global Equity Fund (ticker: VHGEX) has holdings in Nokia and Siemens. If you own this, then you own Nokia and Siemens. Nokia investor relations can be contacted through this page and Siemens Investor Relations is here.
An important campaign
The American Islamic Congress is a serious human rights organization. Headed by Zainab al-Suwaij, they have run a series of important campaigns. Their latest is against Nokia, which has been assisting Iranian regime repression.
June 25, 2009
More on Roger Cohen
There have been some very interesting comments on Roger Cohen. His support for ordinary, decent Iranians is welcome. What is interesting is how he covered Iran previously, which is separate from the question of why he covered it that way (a question that too easily becomes ad hominem).
Here is the example of when he covered Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech in March, during which Khamenei responded to President Obama’s Iranian New Year message. Roger Cohen wrote that:
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responded to Obama with a scathing speech at the country’s holiest shrine in Mashad, recalling every past U.S. misdeed, describing prerevolutionary Iran as “a field
for the Americans to graze in,” and demanding concrete steps — like a lifting of sanctions — rather than words.
View all that as an opening gambit. Khamenei also quieted the crowd when it began its ritual “Death to America” chant and he said this: “We’re not emotional when it comes to our important matters. We make decisions by calculation.”
That’s right: the mullahs are anything but mad. Calculation will demand that Iran take Obama seriously.
Here is Khamenei’s speech from his official website. What is interesting is that official English translation changes "Death to America" to "Down with America." Here is the relevant section (Persian is here and clearly includes the words "Marg bar Amrika"):
The new US President insulted the Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic right after he was inaugurated as President and delivered his inaugural address. Why? If you really believe there has been a change, show us. We cannot see any change. I would like to tell everybody - including US government officials as well as others - that the Iranian nation will neither be deceived nor intimidated.
First of all, verbal change is not enough. Of course I have not noticed much verbal change either. There must be genuine change. I would like to tell American government officials that the kind of change to which they only pay lip service is a necessity for them. You have no other choice: You must change. If you do not change, the divine laws of nature will force you to change. Nature will force you to change. You must change, but this change must not be in words only and there must be no ulterior motives. You cannot talk about change if you only change your policies and pursue the same goals. This kind of change does not constitute genuine change: That is deception. If there is any genuine change, it must manifest itself in action. I advise the US government officials or whoever makes the decisions there - be it the President, the Congress, or other people - that the situation in which the US government is involved is harmful to the American nation as well as the US government. You ought to know that you are one of the most hated countries in the world. Other nations burn your flag. Muslim nations shout "Down with the US" throughout the world. [Howard Baskerville note: at this point the crowd shouted “Death to America”]
What is the reason behind so much hatred? Have you ever tried to investigate this issue? Have you ever scrutinized it? Have you learnt any lessons?
That's right. Khamenei did not quieten his listeners' chants of "Death to America." He incited them.
June 24, 2009
Theocratic crowd control
Hat tip: Rayeman kojast? (Where is my vote?)
Ouch!
Emanuele Ottolenghi simply and effectively takes apart a newly minted friend of Iranian democracy.
But is it news?
The Iranian interior ministry claims that its recount of some ballot boxes found "no discrepancies." The discrepancies could have been minor or or insignificant. That would have been a very slightly credible but unsatisfactory claim. Instead, they have stuck with the notion that this is a clean election.
Shy and retiring
The Financial Times claims that Ahmadinejad is remaining in the shadows temporarily to calm things down. If true, this means has had finally had a good idea. He can make this a great idea: make it permanent.
A partial record of the suffering in Iran
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has a partial list of those killed and arrested in Iran. The roll call of names is long, the sadness worsened by the knowledge that there are many more unaccounted for.
Targeting a journalist
The Iranian regime is now targeting Iason Athanasiadis (aka Jason Fowden) of The Washington Times. According to Hossein Mohseni Ejeii, Iran's intelligence minister:
"Some people with British passports were involved in recent riots," he said. "One of the detainees collected information needed by the enemies under the guise of a reporter."
Such an unfair focus on one person, without regard to their rights or due process, is deeply worrying and authentically totalitarian.
We will take that as a compliment
Boris Johnson, the untidy haired Mayor of London, has a good laugh at Ayatollah Khamenei's expense. Johnson is flattered that Khamenei considers Britain still to be a superpower:
Doesn't it make you almost burst with pride? For decades, we have got used to the idea that we are a dowdy middle-ranking sort of country that long ago abandoned any pretensions to influence east of Suez. We thought we were wholly dependent on America for our nukes and our cryptography--and here's this top mullah who seems to think that the Tehran protests are being staffed by swarms of burka-wearing Bonds, and that the whole thing is being orchestrated by Dame Judi Dench from her lair on the South Bank.
President Obama's letter to Ayatollah Khamenei
Barbara Slavin at The Washington Times has a great story: that the Obama Administration sent a letter to Iran's theocratic dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in May. The text is not yet available, but knowing Washington D.C. soon will be. (By the way, CNN has the same story but ungraciously does not source The Washington Times).
What was Iran's response to the letter? Silence, until the Iranian people stood up against the theocracy's tawdry practice of electoral theft. Then, with the sound of gun fire and breaking bones in the background, Ayatollah Khamenei derided the letter in his sermon on June 19, 2009.
The State Department also invited Iranian diplomats in countries where Iran and the U.S.A. have embassies to attend July 4 parties. The offer was a waste of time. The Iranians were never going to attend. Today, the State Department withdrew the invitations. More Bud for everybody else, but a pointless charade in the interim.
June 23, 2009
What is the problem with this picture?
The gentleman has omitted the definite article: "Down with the British" not "Down with British."
Confused in Tehran
Press TV, one of the Iranian regime's slimey organs, is confused. The headline on a report about President Obama's comments today is:
US supports street rallies in Iran
The report states:
US President Barack Obama has criticized the Iranian government's response to street rallies but rejected that US was instigating the protests.
...
Obama dismissed accusations that the US was instigating massive protests as 'patently false and absurd'.
So which is it?
How much do taxpayers spend on them?
There is an organization out there that competes with the Iranian regime for the clueless gold medal. Not clueless in the treatment of its citizens/democracy sense, but in its understanding of the world beyond its shores. It is called the U.S. government. Billions of dollars on intelligence later and they still don't know.
Rounding up the usual suspects
Here is a list of some of the journalists under arrest in Iran. As we now know (and that for the comment on this), all Iranians are now journalists. Still, there is somebody in the Iranian secret police methodically working his way down the list of journalists: "40 arrested, 70 million to go."
Who is helping the bad guys?
Eli Lake at The Washington Times had this article in April how some European companies have been helping the Iranian regime. He also reports the same companies do a lot of business with the United States government (i.e. your taxes). Maybe they should choose between the dollars of a democracy and the blood money of a dictatorship?
Are we worried?
Iran's Guardian Council has asked for an extra five days to review the election (full text here). The Guardian Council had previously said the election was just fine, there having been "no major polling irregularities."
So what's happening? Maybe, they are cooking up an explanation. Maybe there is behind the scenes quarreling. Or maybe, there is some sad guy sitting there filling in the extra ballots to justify Ahmadinejad's supposed victory. Here's what the conversation was probably like:
Scene: a smoke filled room, loads of empty candy packets and empty coffee cups.
Boss: How are the ballot papers coming along?
Sad dude: Fine.
Boss: When will those 20 million papers be ready?
Sad dude: Soon
Boss: How soon is "soon"?
Sad dude: Next week
Boss: Are you nuts? What am I gonna tell the Ayatollah?
Sad dude: Five more days?
Boss: Let me see what I can do. By the way, no need to put "Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," just put "Ahmadinejad"
Sad dude: Now you tell me
June 22, 2009
Musavi's latest message
From Raye Man Kojast? (Where Is My Vote?) who pulled it off his twitter page:
be persistent in defending your rights also don't adhere to violence
The lights are on, but is anybody in?
Iran will not attend the upcoming G-8 summit in Italy. Not because Iran refused to. Because Iran simply has not answered. Here is what the Italian foreign minister said:
"With three days to go, I still do not have a reply: I must consider that Iran has declined the invitation," Frattini, who will host the summit, told Italian television. "Iran has lost an opportunity by not participating in the conference."
This was Iran's first opportunity to respond to President Obama's offer of engagement, an opportunity to demonstrate that Iran might be able to play a positive role in Afghanistan. Clearly the Iranian regime has another engagement that is more pressing.
Welcome Daily Dish readers
Andrew Sullivan kindly linked to this blog. Thank you and thank you for visiting. More soon.
You cannot be serious--now with update!
A commenter suggested this was a more appropriate video for the post "You cannot be serious!" Enjoy.
June 21, 2009
More eyewitness reports
Thanks to RFE/RL.
You cannot be serious!
How else can you react to Reza Aslan’s notion that the Iranian regime’s electoral system allows for "greater diversity of religious and political thought" (thanks to Michael Goldfarb at TWS)?
The Iranian constitution’s article 115 contains many discriminatory elements.
The president must be from a defined group of “religious and political personalities.” The word for “personalities” is regal. It has until recently been interpreted to mean a man. Certainly no woman has ever been allowed to run. That means 50% of Iran's population is excluded from running for the presidency.
Article 115 also states specifically that only members of the official madhab (school of Islamic jurisprudence) can run for the presidency. That is a religious test which excludes the 20% of Iranians who are not Shia Muslims. Such a religious test is illegal in the U.S.A. according to article VI of the constitution.
You cannot be serious!
It is about Iran, not about America!
There is a silly debate starting about the impact of President Obama on the Iranian election. It is worth noting that President Obama is making no such claims. Here are some examples:
“'Whereas the Bush administration united Iran's disparate political factions against a common threat, Obama's overtures have accentuated the deep divisions and incongruities among Iran's political elites,'' said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (from the BBC).
Could there be something to all the talk of an Obama effect, after all? A stealth effect, perhaps?
…
And in his Cairo address June 4, he accepted responsibility for America’s part in the enmity between the United States and Iran.
“In the middle of the cold war, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government,” Mr. Obama said — a reference to the 1953 coup in which an Iranian prime minister, under whom Iran had nationalized its oil industry, was overthrown and the now-despised Shah was restored to power. (from The New York Times).
So is there “an Obama effect” in Iran?
Short answer: No
Long answer: No
Why? Because the Clinton Administration made the same overtures. Here and here are links to stories from 2000 in which Madeleine Albright acknowledged the U.S. role in the 1953 coup in Iran. President Obama is saying little different from his last Democratic predecessor.
What has changed is Iran. Back in 2000 Iran was run by a so-called reformist who was running into opposition from the same forces that have recently showed just how dishonest Iran's system is. Today Iranians are on the streets in protest against that act of massive electoral fraud and the regime's violent response.
It is about them. It is not about us.
What they are chanting in Iran
Here is a video from yesterday's protests in Tehran with a translation of the chants.
"Death to the Dictator" (see earlier post)
"As long as Ahmadinejad is in power, the situation will be the same"
"Allahu Akbar" (God is Great)
"People why are you sitting...Iran is becoming Palestine" (The Iranian regime never tires of talking about the Palestinians)
"Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein" (A reference to Hossein and then to Musavi, whose first names are Mir Hossein)
"Do not fear...we are all together"
Pictures from the front line
Here is a remarkable Flickr gallery on Iran. Here you will see Iranians setting fire to a poster of Ayatollah Khamenei. The Iranian regime's favorite words are "Marg bar [insert name of enemy]"-- "Death to [insert name of enemy]." Generally the "enemy" is America and Israel. Recently it has been those who oppose Khamenei. So now the demonstrators are turning that around with cries of "Marg bar diktator." No translation needed.
Electoral fraud for dummies
Here is a youtube video that explains why the Iranian election result is problematic--even the interior ministry's own figures do not add up. Also, Josh Muravchik takes apart a Washington Post article that tried to claim that the June 12, 2009 election reflected the will of the Iranian people. One of the authors of that article, who organized the so-called opinion poll, Ken Ballen, will be speaking at the New America Foundation tomorrow. With him will be Flynt Leverett, a leading light in what should be called the American Friends of Ahmadinejad.
Europeans behaving well
Yesterday embassies of EU countries opened their doors to casualties. They were near the clashes and there were rumors that the Basij vigilantes were waiting at the hospitals. EU countries have also been vociferous in their criticism of Iranian regime violence.
Weep for Iran, cheer the Iranians
The news from Iran is overwhelming and overwhelmingly tragic. The Islamic Republic was never, as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed on June 19, 2009, a "religious democracy." It was always a dictatorship with some window dressing of constitutionalism and representative government.
As Samira Makhmalbaf, an Iranian filmmaker said on the same day:
“Until Friday we had 80 percent dictatorship and 20 percent democracy, and since Friday we have 100 percent dictatorship.”
Iran is bleeding. Iranians are, however, demonstrating great courage. They are on the streets defying a bloody regime. They know that their government will stop at nothing to stay in power. Yet still they turn out on the streets and absorb the blows of the police and the vigilantes.
For some Americans, Iran can seem a place only of menace and darkness. If you are worried by the conduct of the Iranian regime, you have understood the country better than many commentators. What Americans now see is that Iranians are a people with spirit who are not easily broken. For all the claims that Americans are an unsophisticated bunch, they know that a regime and its people are not one and the same. What has happened in recent weeks has confirmed that instinct.
Are those protesting true believers in democracy? We do not know, because they have never been given the chance. What we do know is that they reject the dishonesty of a repressive theocracy. For that reason alone, we should stand with them.
Let us weep for Iran. Let us cheer the Iranians.
June 19, 2009
Confrontation looms
The Iranian activist blog Raye Man Kojast? reports that the authorities have denied Musavi permission to march tomorrow. Sounds like Iranians will have to defy the Islamic Republic again--as they have done for the last week.
P.S. Raye man kojast means Where is my vote?
Who says Iranian regime media has no sense of humor?
Only Press TV (beautifully mocked by Harry's Place) could come up with this headline:
Iranian demonstrators ignore threats
Iran’s protesters are ignoring the intimidation handed out by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this morning.Instead, Musavi has chosen not to comment, but will instead rally people tomorrow afternoon in Tehran. Below is a statement from an Iranian reformist blog Campaign 88 (this year is 1388 in the Iranian calendar).
Reformist Blog: 'Destiny-Making' Protest March To Go On in Tehran 20 Jun 09
The destiny-making march will take place at 1600 [1130 gmt] on Saturday [20 June] in the company of Messrs [Mehdi] Karrubi, [Mir-Hoseyn] Musavi and [Mohammad] Khatami from Revolution Square towards Azadi ["Freedom" Square].
We call on all the supporters of reform and change to have an overwhelming presence so that their cries are a protest at cheating and lying and backing for it at the highest levels of the system. May the massive crowd make all officials, who do not attach the slightest value to the people's votes, tremble.
June 18, 2009
The Ghost of Howard Baskerville
Howard Baskerville was an American from Nebraska who died fighting with the Constitutionalists against Iran’s despotic King Mohammad Ali Shah in the Azeri-Iranian city of Tabriz in 1909. He was only 24 years old when he was shot through the heart and buried there. You might not have heard of him, but many Iranian nationalists consider the man a hero even now.
For the next nine days, Howard Baskerville’s ghost will be filling in for me on this blog.
Let me explain: Nine months ago I planned a short nine-day vacation -- my first in almost four years -- with some friends. Most of it has been paid for already. I would not have chosen such an electrifying time in history to drop off the face of the world had I known what was going to happen. (In case you just woke up from a week-long nap, there is an uprising in Iran that may change the country forever.) And I certainly don’t want to leave this Web site without fresh material on it for much of the remainder of June.
So please welcome “Howard Baskerville” who will keep you apprised of events while I am away. He’s a friend who needs to write under a pen name right now, he knows more about Iran than I do, so I think you should trust him.
And don’t forget to be nice in the comments.
June 17, 2009
Don't Forget
I'm posting a huge amount of material on Iran at Commentary's Contentions blog. I'll be posting there through tomorrow. Just click here and keep scrolling.
See also Why We Should Support the Green Revolution by David Hazony.
Party Like it's 1979
Kevin Sullivan at RealClearPolitics and I were interviewed about developments in Iran on the Rick Moran show last night. You can listen to the podcast here.
June 16, 2009
The Iranian Revolution
I'm posting a huge amount of material on the Iranian revolution (and yes, it's a revolution now) over at Commentary. I'll be posting there for the next couple of days so I can get paid without having to ask for donations from readers here. So please don't neglect to follow me there.
June 15, 2009
Blogging at Commentary
Commentary asked me to cover the upheaval in Iran on the Contentions blog during the next couple of days, and you can click here to read what I'm publishing. I know it's slightly less convenient for you read my work over there, but this means I don't have to rattle my tip jar over here.
I'm mostly finished with my next dispatch from Iraq, but I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on it right now. It's a bit "off topic" anyway, so I'm thinking of holding onto it for a bit. Maybe Iran will settle down soon.
In the meantime, you can click this link and read only my blog posts at Commentary, or you can click this link and read everyone's blog posts at Commentary.
An Enemy of the World
The Islamic Republic regime in Iran is vividly revealing itself as an enemy of the entire world.
“Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s police and the Basij militia are using violence and terror to suppress the Iranian people at home. His terrorist proxies fire missiles at Israel while torturing, maiming, and murdering Palestinians. He sponsored a violent coup d’etat against the elected government in Beirut last year with his Hezbollah militia. He sponsors a terrorist insurgency against the elected government of Iraq, while his fanatical proxies shoot and kill American soldiers. A car bomb cell belonging to the regime’s Lebanese franchise was recently arrested in Azerbaijan, and more cells were rolled up in Egypt. Terrorists sponsored and encouraged by him and his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, have murdered civilians from Argentina to Japan.
The regime’s only allies in the world are terrorist armies and Bashar Assad’s Baath Party state in Syria. Assad himself, like Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, is a pariah among the Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Azeris, and Israelis who make up the region.
Iranian civilians risk violent beatings and worse by the thousands for standing up to the regime in the streets and treating it as the enemy it clearly is. There is no better time for the rest of us to do so, as well, especially since such gestures carry far less risk for us. The Pasdaran have no divisions in Washington, Paris, or London.
Obama Administration officials still hope they can talk Khamenei out of developing nuclear weapons and supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. This is delusion on stilts. Khamenei can’t even compromise with his own regime or his hand-picked presidential candidates. He placed them under house arrest, along with a Grand Ayatollah, and deployed thousands of violent enforcers into the streets. Not only does he confront the world, he is at war with his very own country.
Understand the mind of a totalitarian. “Probe with a bayonet,” Vladimir Lenin famously said. “If you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.”
The Khomeinists in Iran likewise only stop when they meet steel. In his book The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution
, Amir Taheri describes how since 1979 the regime has always continued to push until, as he put it, it hits something hard. It’s hitting something hard right now within its borders. This is no time for mush from everyone else. The regime today is weaker than it has ever been. If the insurrection continues, a fast hard shove might well push it over. If the regime survives, it may well feel invincible.
Read the rest in Commentary Magazine.
June 14, 2009
Insurrection: Day 2
The great Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski witnessed and wrote about dozens of revolutions in the course of his life. He has, perhaps, seen more revolutions than anyone in the history of the world. He knew, while he lived, revolutions better than anyone.
In his book Shah of Shahs
Now the most important moment, the moment that will determine the fate of the country, the Shah, and the revolution, is the moment when one policeman walks from his post toward one man on the edge of the crowd, raises his voice, and orders the man to go home. The policeman and the man on the edge of the crowd are ordinary, anonymous people, but their meeting has historic significance.They are both adults, they have both lived through certain events, they have both their individual experiences.
The policeman’s experience: If I shout at someone and raise my truncheon, he will first go numb with terror and then take to his heels. The experience of the man at the edge of the crowd: At the sight of an approaching policeman I am seized by fear and start running. On the basis of these experiences we can elaborate a scenario: The policeman shouts, the man runs, others take flight, the square empties.
But this time everything turns out differently. The policeman shouts, but the man doesn’t run. He just stands there, looking at the policeman. It’s a cautious look, still tinged with fear, but at the same time tough and insolent. So that’s the way it is! The man on the edge of the crowd is looking insolently at uniformed authority. He doesn’t budge. He glances around and sees and sees the same look on other faces. Like his, their faces are watchful, still a bit fearful, but already firm and unrelenting. Nobody runs though the policeman has gone on shouting; at last he stops. There is a moment of silence.
We don’t know whether the policeman and the man on the edge of the crowd already realize what has happened. The man has stopped being afraid – and this is precisely the beginning of the revolution. Here it starts. Until now, whenever these two men approached each other, a third figure instantly intervened between them. That third figure was fear. Fear was the policeman’s ally and the man in the crowd’s foe. Fear interposed its rules and decided everything.
Now the two men find themselves alone, facing each other, and fear has disappeared into thin air. Until now their relationship was charged with emotion, a mixture of aggression, scorn, rage, terror. But now that fear has retreated, this perverse, hateful union has suddnely broken up; something has been extinguished. The two men have now grown mutually indifferent, useless to each other; they can now go their own ways.
Accordingly, the policeman turns around and begins to walk heavily back toward his post, while the man on the edge of the crowd stands there looking at his vanishing enemy.
Now take a look at this video uploaded from the city of Isfahan. A ferocious-looking unit of armed riot police officers is shown running away in terror from civilian demonstrators.
Reza Shoja reports for The Media Line.
Car horn protests could be heard throughout the city, as could chants of "Bye bye dictator", "Ahmadi Nejad is the biggest liar in Iran," and "The president is committing a crime and the supreme leader is supporting him".
Listen to the chants on Tehran's rooftops in the middle of the night.
Roger Cohen in the New York Times:
I’ve argued for engagement with Iran and I still believe in it, although, in the name of the millions defrauded, President Obama’s outreach must now await a decent interval. I’ve also argued that, although repressive, the Islamic Republic offers significant margins of freedom by regional standards. I erred in underestimating the brutality and cynicism of a regime that understands the uses of ruthlessness.
Defrauded opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi belongs to the establishment. The regime is coming apart and turning on itself. Even clerics are turning against the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei.
Grand Ayatollah Sanei in Iran has declared Ahmadinejad's presidency illegitimate and cooperating with his government against Islam. There are strong rumors that his house and office are surrounded by the police and his website is filtered. He had previously issued a fatwa, against rigging of the elections in any form or shape, calling it a mortal sin.
Kevin Sullivan at RealClearWorld:
What's emerging here could be interesting. Iran hawks prefer to label the Iranian police state as simply "The Mullahs," but the legitimate clerics in this dispute are the ones standing with Mir-Hossein Mousavi against ONE Mullah and his secular police apparatus. If the election has been rigged in such a fashion, then what you are in fact seeing is the dropping of religious pretense in the "Islamic" Republic of Iran. This is a secular police state in action.
Iranian poet Sheema Kalbasi agrees with Sullivan's analysis:
Today is the day that the Islamic Republic officially transformed from a theocracy supported by Pasdaran to a Junta supported by a handful of clerics.
Meanwhile, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is sounding like Baghdad Bob again today.
The situation in the country is in a very good condition. Iran is the most stable country in the world, and there’s the rule of law in this country, and all the people are equal before the law.
According to a Twitter post from inside Iran, the army announced it will not use force against Iranians, only foreigners. The army is made up of conscripts. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij Militia, though, are separate armed forces loyal to the regime.
I don’t like relying on Twitter feeds. Rumors are bound to get posted this way. But things are moving so fast. You can follow Twitter feeds yourself here here and here. (Thanks to David Hazony at Commentary for the pointer.)
David also points to a YouTube channel where dozens of videos have been uploaded.
A reader comments at niacINsight: