The Oath

Provided being confirmed (God forbid!) by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , the following is the text of President elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s oath according to Article 121 of the Iranian Constitution:

“In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,

“I, as President, swear in the presence of the Noble Qur’an and the people of Iran (sic!), by God, the Exalted and Almighty, that I will guard the official religion of the country, the order of the Islamic Republic and the Constitution of the country; that I will devote all my capacities and abilities to the fulfillment of the responsibilities that I have assumed; that I will dedicate myself to the service of the people (sic!), the honor of the country, the propagation of religion and morality, and the support of truth and justice (sic!), refraining from every kind of arbitrary (sic!) behavior; that I will protect the freedom (sic!) and dignity of all citizens and the rights that the Constitution has accorded the people that in guarding the frontiers and the political, economic, and cultural independence of the country I will not shirk any necessary measure; that, seeking help from God and following the Prophet of Islam and the infallible Imams (peace be upon them), I will guard, as a pious and selfless (sic!) trustee, the authority vested in me by the people (sic!) as a sacred trust, and transfer it to whomever the people (sic!) may elect after me.”

Clearing the Way

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s public humiliation of ‘re-elected’ President Ahmadinejad by sending a handwritten note that the pick of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie as his first vice president is ‘null and void’ makes an impact. Ahmadinejad’s cabinet rapidly decays. Iranian media report that three ministers have been sacked today: Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad-Hassan Saffar-Harandi and Labor Minister Mohammad Jahromi; for criticizing the President’s decision, of course. Today’s claims that Health Minister Kamran Baqeri-Lankarani was also removed from his post were later denied, as semi-independent presstv writes.

Ahmadinejad seems to have little support in the majlis. But now it might be that the ‘re-elected’ President gets into real trouble. Since he has removed, during his first four-year term, 11 out of 21 ministers, he may face the rather weird situation of having to seek a fresh vote of confidence from Parliament for the very last days of his government. Article 136 of the Iranian Constitution demands that “[I]n case of half of the members of Cabinet are replaced, the government must seek a fresh vote of confidence from Parliament.”

The 9th Government tenure ends August 2, so there is one week left. Maybe the way is being cleared for a new election after the June 12 probable massive election fraud in favor of Ahmadinejad. Wouldn’t it be a pretty elegant loophole?

Legitimacy Charade

 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election was legitimate since it had been confirmed by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution. This message was spread today by Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami, interim leader of the Friday prayers at Tehran University in an outrageous criticism of former president Mohammad Khatami who had called for a referendum on the legitimacy of the administration to end the nationwide unrest. And the nomination of Ahmadinejad’s first vice president, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, was not, since the Supreme Leader has expressed his dismay. Khatami urged Ahmadinejad to “obey [the leader] at the quickest time.” Mashaie, whose daughter is married to Ahmadinejad’s son, had stressed last year his strong sentiment of Iran being friend with all nations, even the U.S. and Israel. Since then, he is under fire in Iran.

While even hardliners zero in on Ahmadinejad one might intuitively think that Ali Khamenei might seek an ultimate solution for the current political impasse: firing both, the ‘re-elected’ president and his veep. Irrespective of legitimacy.

Keep Going Iran

United4Iran

Afghan Hinterland

 

 

The country is 30 years at war, more or less continuously. Landlocked Afghanistan is not really Central Asia, and definitely not the Middle East. It has always been in-between. Its history may be described as a series of failed attempts of conquest. Maybe one early somewhat successful campaign had actually been that of Alexander the Great (after 330 BCE) who married Roxane, a Bactrian noble from Balkh.

In July 1960, a group of three diplomats who were working at embassies in Kabul, dared to set off to a passage to small and remote valleys in the southern parts of the Hindu Kush, Nuristan. The curious reader of their report: A Passage to Nuristan. Exploring the Mysterious Afghan Hinterland, only published 46 years after the arduous hike, has, honestly, never heard about the region and the people who had once been considered the last surviving native kafirs, or infidels, in the vast Islamic realm. Thus, the country had been called Kafiristan. When it was conquered by Emir Abdurrahman Khan in 1895, Islam was enforced. His armies brought the light (an-nur) to the polytheists. So, eventually the country became enlightened by Islam, Nuristan.

 

  

It is a story of the lost paradise, blooming meadows and woods, torrents, daring mountain hiking; of dwarfs and fairy-tales, beautiful girls and cheerful lads, honorable maleks, great hospitality of proud people and, of course, post-colonial attitudes of White Man’s supremacy, including mild Islam phobia.  

The three diplomats are Sir Nicholas Barrington who had served in the British Embassy in Kabul from 1959 to 1961; Joseph T. Kendrick, political officer in the American Embassy in Kabul in the late 1950s; and Reinhard Schlagintweit, who was working at West Germany’s Kabul Embassy between 1958 and 1961. These young men were adventurous enough to encounter the still almost unknown Afghan hinterland for which, at that time, even reliable maps were missing. They were not dependent on themselves. After having got approval for the passage from governor of Jalalabad and the Eastern Province they were even assigned a police escort to safeguard the whole trip. Anyway, what they describe in this very uncommon book is amazing.

While Barrington provides the narrative of the 10 days in Nuristan, written shortly after the adventure, Kendrick (JT) gives a more ethnologic account on the different tribes in partly isolated villages of two major valleys, the Pech and the Waigel, which are separated by a rugged mountain ridge. Several passes permit, at least in summer, communication of the people in the two valleys. While the Wamaites are generally tall with long and thin faces, and proud of descending from Arabs, Kendrick compares the short people of the Presuns (“below five feet”) with Nordic fishermen, while Barrington calls them simply dwarfs. “The Waigelis resembles southern Europeans, particularly Italians.” It is amazing to read about his comparisons with Mexican or American Indian clothing here.

Kendrick reports that Islam is not visibly being practiced among the Sefid Posh, and “[p]aganism in all its manifestations is not yet stamped out.” “[T]he stories of old gods and legends are still known among the older men and held in respect,” much to the mullah’s discontent. Dancing, songs, festivals, even wine making and consumption, seemed to be possible in this remote region of Afghanistan in the 1960s. It is unfortunately not very clear, what kind of polytheism had been (and in last century’s sixties, was?) practiced from Kendrick’s account.

 

  

The third part of the book provides reflections of the authors almost 45 years after their passage to Nuristan. While the notes were made shortly after the adventure, when the three authors were in their twenties or thirties, it is most interesting to read the memories of now worldly-wise and experienced men, all three having had gorgeous careers as diplomatic envoys. Their post-colonial attitude of White Man’s supremacy had vanished in the meantime. The country had been devastated with a terrible proxy of the Cold War when Barrington had been appointed British Ambassador in Islamabad. He concludes:

“Sadly, as this book was going to print, the situation in Afghanistan was becoming increasingly infected by the disastrous events in Iraq. The ill-planned and illegal (in UN terms) invasion of Iraq by US and coalition forces increased support for Al Qaeda-type extremists round the world, as some of us had warned. London and Madrid suffered. Karzai’s task in Kabul was made more difficult. Remote Nuristan was not immune. In a high-profile incident in July 2005 an American Special Forces helicopter trying to rescue servicemen on the ground was shot down by missile, killing all 16 men on board – America’s greatest casualty toll in Afghanistan so far. The press reported that this took place in the Waigel Valley, which had seemed so peaceful years before.”

And Kendrick concludes in 2002 (he had deceased in January 2003):

“In my view, relations between Islam and the Western world are also at a precarious stage, and now need sensitive handling. To add to the internal difficulties, the situation in Afghanistan has intensified Muslim hatred of the Western world. The West must make clear to the Muslim world that there is respect for Islam, although not acceptance of the actions of an extremist minority. The United States, for its part, cannot afford to take unilateral political actions that will inflame the Muslim world even further and lend credibility to the terrorists.”

Rafsanjani’s Sermon

I doubt whether any of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s numerous Friday prayer sermons in the past has ever attracted more attention than yesterday’s speech when he tried to calm down the present unrest in Iran and stylized himself as an elder statesman in sorrow of loosing the achievements of 30 years of Islamic Revolution. However tempting it might be praising his speech at Tehran University one should never forget another Friday prayer sermon of his at exactly the same location. It was on 14 December 2001, Qods Day, when he predicted:

“If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.”

This was formulated only weeks after 9-11, a couple of months after ‘reformist’ President Mohammad Khatami had been re-elected, and only days before former US President G. W. Bush would put Iran on his notorious Axis of Evil. In essence, this threat towards Israel was much more frightening than any of those the incumbent and now, under questionable circumstances, re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had ever made, his alleged “wiping Israel off the map” statement included.

Now, Rafsanjani’s speech yesterday had a completely different tone. When reading through the transcript, I noted several interesting issues. He is remarkably clear in blaming the Guardian Council in missing a chance of re-gaining the public’s trust after doubt had raised that the election results were rigged, which has eventually led to the deep split in the clerical establishment:  

“We have to provide the ground to return this trust to the people. Unfortunately, good use was not made of the opportunity that the Supreme Leader (Ali Khamene’i) gave the Guardian Council in which an extra five days was given to them to talk to the ulema. I do not of course want to blame anyone for this lost opportunity, but, nonetheless, it did not happen. (Crowd chanting) We have passed that stage. We are going through another stage now.

“Why should our Sources (of Emulation, meaning senior clerics), who have always been supportive, and our seminary schools, which have never had any expectations for their efforts, be upset today. We should keep their support and rely on them.”

He might in fact refer here to Grand Ayatollah Hosein-Ali Montazeri, one of the “sources of emulation”, who had recently issued a fatwa on request of Dr. Mohsen Kadivar, Visiting Associate Professor at Duke University, Durham, NC. Montazeri, for years under house arrest in Qom, is considered one of the most dangerous figures for the ruling establishment in Iran. In his fatwa of July 6, he more or less concludes that, if Ahmadinejad had stolen the election, the present regime was illegitimate.

The next interesting point in Rafsanjani’s sermon is his mentioning of Ali, the first Shi’a Imam, who had been advised by the Prophet that even he, Ali, has to seek support from the people. 

“Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib himself says that when the prophet (Mohammad) was (indistinct words) rather worried in the last year of his life. He said this to Abi-Talib; (reads a short verse from Koran) This is after Eid-e Ghadir. He said that you are the Guardian of this Ummah (nation) this is a Guardianship that belongs to you, and is something that God has given you.

“If you felt that these people are satisfied (with you) and they accept you, and felt that you are a worthy person (ruler) and there was consensus, of course consensus is always relative it can never be absolute; if the majority coalesced around you, then have to accept it. You will become the Guardian and see to their day to day affairs and resolve their problems.

“If you saw that they opposed you, and that they do not come along with you, then you have to leave them. Let them do what they want to; they know themselves what they need to do with their lives.

“God will find a way for you to realize your goals.”

Imam Ali is mentioned a second time:

“The title of Islamic Republic is not just a formality. This is a reality passed on to us on the basis of Koran, as well as the religious sayings of the (Shiite) Imams and prophet. We believe in them. We should have them at the same time. Rest assured if one of those two aspects are damaged we will loose our revolution. If it looses its Islamic aspect, we will go astray. If it looses its republican aspect, it (The Islamic Republic) will not be realized. Based on the reasons that I have offered, without people and their vote there would be no Islamic system. Ali bin Abi-Talib (the first Shiite Imam) stayed at home for 19 years for the same reason. When the people came forward (word indistinct), Ali bin Abi-Talib accepted to come to power after people’s insistence, despite the difficulties he faced.”

Rafsanjani is presently chairman of the Assembly of Experts which, at least theoretically, can even dismiss Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The above sentences may in fact directly address Ali Khamenei, advising him to better seek the people’s support, to establish a true republic. It is about legitimacy, too, without any doubt.

One should not forget that Rafsanjani has been an active part of the system of the Islamic Republic since its beginning. The supposedly richest man in the country, a two-term former president, has much to loose if Iran, what many expect, will be drifting towards a military dictatorship. So, his sermon yesterday was an extremely clever maneuver of somebody who has understood that Iran is at a watershed.

As far as we have come to know, no further fatalities had occurred in the streets of Tehran despite thousands of protesters.

One Giant Leap

“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Neil Armstrong, 2:56 UTC, July 21, 1969

Ever fascinated by the uselessness of the first moon landing forty years ago, I gave all of my students the following advice: getting a PhD is exactly the opposite.

In East Anatolia

 

 

 

 

 

Rebel Land [1] is the story about the ethnic and religious conflicts in East Anatolia in the 20^th century. It is remarkable as it blends known and largely unknown historical facts with personal experiences of an investigative journalist and very emotional descriptions of a largely forgotten, harsh and dramatic region and its mainly inhospitable people(s). It is from the borders between civilization and notorious unrest, West and East, Europe and, well, something in-between. Let’s describe it as a country gradually developing into (or from) Central Asia, from where the various Turkish tribes have once colonized the Anatolian highlands. Willingly or not, Rebel Land provides excellent evidence for denying modern Turkey’s desire of eventually joining the European Union in the near future.

The author, Christopher de Bellaigue, is a likeable writer. He has lived in Turkey in the 1990s for five years and speaks the language fluently. At first encounter he is usually considered a Turk, as he writes not without some pride. I have become curious after having read his two books about Iran [2], a country which also fascinates me for a long time. He went farther. He has got married to an Iranian woman and even converted to the Shi’a branch of Islam. Rebel Land is written in a century-long tradition of a traveling reporter who wants to tell a true story about history.

De Bellaigue’s first and main intention to travel to Varto in the East Anatolian province of Mus was definitely to figure out the truth about the Turkish genocide of the Armenian people in 1915. It is the most disturbing part of the book and portrays well the problems of modern Turkey, which officially denies the very facts and threatens with prosecution everybody who is telling what actually had happened. It is also about Turkish ‘historians’ counterfeiting the dark chapters of Turkish history in the last century [3]. There is an unfortunate melting pot there made of Armenians, Ottoman Turks and Kurds, Sunnis and Alevis. The struggle for forced modernity in remote regions hopelessly stuck in medieval traditions, numerous military coups, etc.

De Bellaigue visited and interviewed also Turks from Eastern Anatolia now living in by and large xenophobic Germany, who seemed to have lost their real identity as Armenians, or Alevis, even Kurds. Lost identity, another sad aspect of this book. It may culminate in the epilogue, when de Bellaigue describes a visit in Armenia’s capital Yerevan and an afternoon in an unforgiving Armenian friend’s home. Armen, so his name, told him that once he met, in a tea house in Anatolia, a Kurdish man wearing a silver belt heavily embossed with detachable sections and with Armenian inscriptions of 1902. He managed to buy the belt after some bargaining. Men are not wearing this kind of belts, he said. Armenian girls are given these belts when they got married. For his friend, still full of hatred, it was clear that this belt had been stolen from an Armenian family which had been killed in the massacres. Now, ridiculously, a man was wearing it! De Bellaigue confesses:

“I think these things in a neat, well-ordered terraced house in London, where I have belts of my own – my family; the nice reassuring things that I inherited from my mother. Supposing these people, these things, were wrenched away from me by an ancestral enemy, supposing that I were robbed of everything in a matter of minutes – I suppose that I too would disregard those principles, of love and forgiveness, that were instilled in me painlessly as a child, and abandon myself to insatiable rage.”

The book is at best when its author entertains with sad and poetic stories about the people there, somewhat disclosing their soul. “Tell me about the Armenians”, de Bellaigue asks an Alevi from Varto, who narrates the following story about the pepukh, the yellow-winged cuckoo.

“There were once a sister and a brother. Their mother had died and their father had married again. The stepmother was wicked and she was cruel to the children, who were scared of her. When spring came, and the cardoon started to sprout across the meadows, the stepmother gave the children a saddlebag and told them to fill it with cardoon. When they had filled it, they set out for home, the little boy carrying the saddlebag over his back. As they approached home, the girl noticed that the saddlebag was empty and she accused her brother of eating the cardoon. ‘It’s almost dark! What will our stepmother do to us now?’ Her brother was distraught. ‘I didn’t eat the cardoon. I only took one stalk, and that was with your permission. Open up my stomach and look; you’ll find one stalk inside.’ So the girl split open her brother’s stomach and saw that he was telling the truth; there was only one cardoon stalk inside. Then she was filled with remorse, for her brother would never rise again, and after washing and burying him she prayed: ‘God! Turn me into a bird that will forever mourn my brother.’ And this is what God did. And she sang:

‘Pepukh! Oh woe! Who slew him? I slew him! Who washed him? I washed him! Who buried him? I buried him!’”

“We and the Armenians were like brother and sister,” the Alevi said sadly. “Only we didn’t have the decency to bury them.”

                                                        

Notes

[1] Christopher de Bellaigue C. Rebel Land. Among Turkey’s Forgotten Peoples. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. London 2009.

[2] C. de Bellaigue. In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. A Memoir of Iran, HarperCollins Publishers 2005; and The Struggle for Iran, NYRB collections 2007

[3] De Bellaigue describes with bitterness his discussions in the 1990s with Professor Yusuf Halacoglu, author of Ermeni Tehciri, or Armenian Deportation, who estimates a ridiculous 30’000 casualties among the Armenian people during the 1915 deportations, rather than the one or one and a half million commonly assumed.

Mr. Biden’s Green Light?

Exactly one year ago, in July 2008, former President G. W. Bush had more or less encouraged Israel for going ahead with its preparations of a military strike against Iran in order to stop Tehran’s assumed illicit nuclear weapons program. It was actually one week after Iran had aired fabricated pictures of missile tests in the Dasht-e Kavir desert near Qom. Bush’s remarks had widely been interpreted as ‘amber’, not ‘green’, light for former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who, after all, then only organized some war games in the Mediterranean but was more than reluctant of pursuing an attack. While it had been leaked during the weekend that according to a diplomatic source “the Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a statement which has been denied by Saudi officials, the American Vice President Joe Biden, in an ABC interview said yesterday:

“Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.

“Whether we agree or not. They’re entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to that. But there is no pressure from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how proceed.

“If Netanyahu’s (Israel’s Prime Minister) government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.”

At least, it is not their (the Obama Administration’s) choice. What Biden actually does, namely publicly declaring that Israel is ‘entitled’ to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities which are run, at least officially, and surveyed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty (NPT), having been signed by Iran but not by Israel, which many believe possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads, is highly questionable. Maybe it is even illicit, and he should better know. While his President is presently in Moscow in order to convince his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev of the advantages of a world-wide denuclearization, his Vice President may have put the Middle East another step further into the direction of a real disaster, as Admiral Mullen has warned on Fox News yesterday.

Meanwhile, the designated new Director General of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, horrified the Israeli Administration when telling Reuters Friday last week that he has not seen “any evidence in IAEA official documents” that Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear arms.

The last four weeks have seen an almost struggling regime in Tehran after serious and probably qualified accusations inside the country and by foreign media of massive election fraud. Dozens have been killed in riots after the largest demonstrations the country has seen since the Islamic Revolution. And probably hundreds detained, maybe tortured. Show trials are expected, maybe even executions.

The so-called Green Revolution which has never been a revolution since the silent majority, Iran’s have-nots, did not try a rebellion but rather supported ‘their’ demagogic hardliner President, has failed for the time being. What we have seen is understandable dissatisfaction of Tehran’s upper class, students, and intellectuals, with an oppressive regime which clearly violates human rights, a true dictatorship. It indicates a deep disruption of the whole Iranian nation, not only within the complex and unusual framework of political, economic and social powers. We have also learned about the immense power of the internet and the profound fears of regimes all over the world of the new ways of communication and ease of spreading information.

However, none of this would justify ‘green light’ for Israel to preemptively attack the country right now. Insofar the remarks of Biden are irresponsible and highly counterproductive.