[Mb-civic] FW: Another country

[Golsorkhi]

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From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 01:41:08 -0500
Subject: Another country

Guardian

  Another country

As rumours persist of US plans to invade Iran, Rageh Omaar, the face of
the BBC during the Iraq war, visits Tehran - and finds a nation far
removed from the one George Bush seems to fear

Rageh Omaar

Friday April 1, 2005


One of the first things that western visitors see at Tehran's Mehrebad
airport is two large portraits of Imam Khomeini, and his successor as
the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamanei. Next to them is an
advert for a Nokia mobile phone. It is a useful symbol of what is
happening in Iran. Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the talk again
is of war, as George Bush and Tony Blair claim that Iran supports
terrorism. Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic use words like
"eerie" to describe the similarities between the crises.

  Inside Iran, however, what you notice are the differences. Tehran
feels nothing like Baghdad before it fell to US forces. The Iraqi
capital was cut off entirely from the rest of the world; travel for
ordinary Iraqis was impossible without permission from the authorities,
and communication with the outside world was not just controlled, as it
is in Iran, but illegal. Tehran, on the other hand, looks and feels
like the capital of a rapidly industrialising country.

  "BMW has now arrived in Tehran," reads one poster on the way to
Esteqlal Square, in the commercial heart of Tehran. There is no
shortage of western, Chinese or Russian businesses, keen to take up the
economic opportunities available to them in Iran. The Americans are
here, too. You see them in the main hotels in Tehran, although once
they realise you are a journalist, they swiftly pass you with a guilty
look, as though they have been caught doing something shameful.

  Washington's attempts to isolate Iran, and pretend that its economy
would be as vulnerable to economic sanctions as Iraq's was, is wide of
reality. According to the latest figures, Iran's per-capita GDP stands
at $1,641, double that of Indonesia. It has the 22nd largest surplus in
the world at $5,256m, more than Denmark and Qatar. In terms of
purchasing power, it is the 22nd largest economy in the world, just
below Turkey, but above Poland.

  The statistics tell a story that is missed by the British and American
governments when they talk about Iran. A quarter of a century after the
Islamic revolution, the theocratic authorities in Iran face a critical
test of relevance and legitimacy in a country that is changing far more
quickly than they are.

  The northern suburbs of Tehran are home to the affluent, more liberal
middle classes, many of whom have relatives in the west. It is in these
districts that the pace of social and economic change in Iran most
graphically comes up against the strict moral control that the regime
still seeks to exert. Women of all ages sit in chrome and glass cafes
and fast-food outlets that would not be out of place in Chelsea,
wearing headscarves and consuming hamburgers. On the streets outside,
men and women sport the western fashions: peroxide blonde hair peeks
out from beneath colourful Parisian scarves, men wear their hair long.

  Two-thirds of Iran's 68 million people are under 30. Half the country
was born after the Islamic revolution and has no recollection of life
under the shah. The Islamic revolution opened up educational
opportunities for many in this generation, but their social and
economic aspirations are not being fulfilled. Economic dissatisfaction
and frustration with the speed of liberalisation are the greatest
challenges facing the Iranian authorities. The awarding of the Nobel
peace prize in 2003 to the human rights activist Shirin Ebadi drew
attention to the fact that there are people inside Iran willing,
despite intimidation, to challenge the authorities publicly. This is a
critical point: in Iraq, the absence of domestic opponents meant that
the human rights arguments for the invasion could be made only by
exiled groups and the British and American governments. In Iran, there
are authentic voices inside the country.

  In February, after Bush and Condoleezza Rice's comments about Iran,
Ebadi tackled the issue of Washington's confrontation with Iran.
"American policy toward the Middle East, and Iran in particular, is
often couched in the language of promoting human rights," read an
article that she co-wrote. "No one would deny the importance of that
goal. But for human rights defenders in Iran, a military attack on
their country represents an utter disaster."

  Ebadi knew that it was military intervention that established and
solidified Khomeini's Islamic revolution. That intervention came from
Saddam Hussein, who in the aftermath of the overthrow of the shah, when
the Islamic regime was at its weakest, invaded Iran and provided the
ayatollahs with a cause to unite the country. Bush could make the same
mistake.

  To understand this, one must travel to southern Tehran's working-class
districts, down a wide, German-built arterial road where advertising
billboards and hamburger joints give way to concrete council blocks. On
the sides of buildings you find revolutionary murals depicting Imam
Khomeini, and portraits of volunteers killed during the eight-year
Iran-Iraq war. Many of the paintings cover the entire side of an
apartment block, and the faces of the young martyrs, their eyes often
looking up at the heavens, are surrounded by flowers. The tens of
thousands of volunteers who joined the Basij and Hezbollah militias to
fight for the regime came from these districts. It is they who still
make up the ranks of these organisations.

  As you leave Tehran, you join the motorway that takes you to the holy
city of Qom, and on the right side of the road, you suddenly notice a
vast shrine. This is the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini. Sixteen years
after his death, this gargantuan burial site is still being built as a
place of pilgrimage. On the other side of the road is the
Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery. Seventy thousand war dead are buried here
alone. I visited the gardens of the martyrs' section, which are lined
with juniper trees. It was a Friday afternoon, and families were
picnicking as they visited relatives' graves. The headstones are
densely packed together; many of them bear pictures of the young men
beneath. Of the 30 or so headstones I inspected, not one belonged to a
man over 25. Families kept coming up to me, offering me sweets and
pieces of cake from their picnics. My guide said this was a normal
custom at the cemetery.

  There was none of the sense of mourning you might find in a western
military cemetery. But nor was anyone celebrating the sacrifice of
these young lives. Instead there was a sense of pride - a desire to
share in something, rather than hide it. The Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery
is a reminder that there are still many Iranians who have not lost
faith in the Islamic regime.

  At the height of the Iran-Iraq war, which is estimated to have killed
and wounded a million people, Khomeini made an extraordinary statement.
He described the conflict that was consuming a generation as "a war
sent by God". Western commentators saw this as an example of a
grotesque fundamentalist mentality that delighted in the spilling of
blood. In fact, it was a brutally honest assessment of how Saddam's
attack had given the Islamic leadership a golden opportunity to rally
the nation around it, and cast all its opponents as foreign agents.

  This, one suspects, is what Ebadi was talking about when she described
the threat of US military intervention as "a disaster" for human-rights
activists in the country. In a meeting with Gerhard Schröder during his
recent European visit, Bush is said to have told the German leader that
he realised Iran was not Iraq. That is certainly true - but perhaps to
a far greater extent than Bush realises.
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  Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1449753,00.html

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