Why Iran will remain theocratic and Pakistan quasi-secular!
I cannot remember the number of times people make the tired prediction that Iran will have a counter-revolution within the next decade whilst Pakistan will become the world's theocracy.
Let me rebut:It is vital to note that nowhere within the Islamic world has there been a successful revolution without crucial support of the army, it is the military that determines which and what type of government will rule the nation (since in most cases it is the only truly national institution which transcends ethnic & religious irredentism). A fact omitted from scholarly study of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is that the Shah was only overthrown because the military threw their lot behind their revolutions. This was inspired by a variety of factors especially when the army soon found out that some of the low ranking officers, especially the Air Force cadets, had joined the revolution (the role of the cadets was critical) . Indeed conflict between the Imperial Guard and the Air Force cadets broke out only to be ceased when the former ordered by General Qarabaghi to return to the barracks. That was the moment when the revolution and the Shah's ousting became a reality.Iran is idealised in the West and the Islamic world as nation evolving towards a secular democracy, when in fact the popular reforms have largely been ineffective and meaningless. Iranians generally are not sympathetic to America and in the end Iran has no affluent secular class that could formulate a successful opposition to the present government (apart from a bunch of divided students).
The “reformers” in Iran are further right than Pat Robertson! Iranians are deeply traditional by nature (as opposed to the highly Westernised, secular & successfully Iranian diaspora which is in any case depleting it’s numbers through intermarriage) and even within the university students, (who are allegedly liberal and are considered to be the main engine of change in Iranian politics); there is a deep schism between the “reformers” and the “conservatives”. In fact many Iranians are deeply in favour of it, especially those who recently arrived in Tehran from the out-lying rural areas. The regime may have numerous faults but there have been an infusion of funds to improve the outlying provinces of Iran and the centralisation achieved in the past two decades, is something that eluded the Pahlavis.
Iran will never have a successful counter-revolution, since its army is deeply religious and it has the undying loyalty of the peasants and their recently settled brethren in the cities.Iran was a nominal secular nation when the revolution occurred, and it only succeeded because Islamists had infiltrated the military and the middle classes who were dissatisfied with the Shah intensified their religiosity. We see the opposite situation in Pakistan; the military is a significant secular component in Pakistan and backed by the moderate middle class & highly Westernised elite (wine is always flowing in the parties thrown by the upper echelons of Pakistani society). Pakistan’s secular political elite derives from (moderate) Barwelis whilst the clerics hail from the fundamentalist Deodandi school of thought. Thus certain compromises have been made over the generation and the conflictual nature of this relationship has always made Pakistan a peculiar place to comprehend in the eyes of the foreigner. However ultimately it is the moderate Barwelis who steer the course of the nation whilst the Deodandi run isolated Madrassas and mosques.
Pakistan can never become a theocracy because we are far more diverse people than the Iranians (despite only 50% of the population being Persian, there is no doubt which culture entirely defines Iran as a nation) and unlike Iran, our national life does or did not revolve around one city. Tehran was the focal point of the cultural, commercial, political and indeed spiritual life in Iran (Not even Isfahan, Shiraz and Qom could hope to compare with Tehran) at the time of the Shah. On the other hand Pakistan has an administrative capital in Islamabad, commercial heart in Karachi and cultural hub in Lahore. Islamic revolutionaries will have to be active throughout these three cities and the eastern Indic provinces (Punjab and Sindh, which are highly urbanised and contain the aforementioned cities) do not display the fanatical Islamic bent as the Pathans and Baluchis populated (& predominantly tribal) provinces do.
I would always laugh when Western reporters would imply that Pakistan was teetering toward a theocracy because Pathan tribal chiefs in the border regions gave their allegiances to Osama Bin Laden. The inhabitants of the tribal & rural areas are heavily Islamicised, and along with the Madrassa students, form a significant bulk of the population however their political influence is marginal at best and they most definitely will not shape the future of Pakistan.Our heterogeneity as a nation will ensure a prevention of coalescence of the Islamic peoples and parties into an united framework (the well connected Shi'ite minority, whose numbers form 20-30% of the nation, will not countenance a Sunni oriented Islamic theocracy) and even if there is an Islamic revolution it will be a short lived one rebellion. Since as I stated earlier, no revolution in the Islamic Crescent has succeeded without the explicit backing of the military and Pakistan's military won't be turning Islamic any time soon. Any reconfiguration of our national life would mean a redistribution of power from the status quo which would be unacceptable even to the most fanatical army officer, after all when one is in a position of power one will not callously endanger it by advocated alternate forms of governance.
Despite some superficial Islamicisation by General Zia, the bulk of the army remains secular and indeed in the Cadet colleges association with Islamic parties are frowned upon and indeed restricted. The argument that Pakistan will become a theocracy rests upon the fallacious assumption that the Pakistani people have uniformly significant Islamic interests, which is not true, and that the illiterate populace, rather than the army or the elite, will determine the course of the nation's future which is most definitely not true. Ultimately Iran will remain theocratic whilst in Pakistan the balancing act will culminate in the military formally integrating itself into the political mainstream and framework. These are not necessarily bad developments in themselves after all Iran is progressing as a nation and it's main problems are it's weak economy & foreign isolation. However it has a good credit rating, as evinced by the willingness of European companies to underwrite Iran's upcoming bond issue (for seven of the past eight years Iran has had a budget surplus). Rapprochement with America is more tricky however Richard H. Curtiss, the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, ended his article “Solutions to Two Major Problems Dividing U.S. and Iran Lie in Israel” , with the following passage: ‘No one is more aware than this writer of the dark side, both past and present, of Iran’s current, deeply divided regime, or of the catastrophic consequences for Iran (and, eventually, America) of U.S. intervention in 1953. At this point, however, virtually all problems between Iran and the United States could be solved with even a minimum application of patience and goodwill. But among problems cited by Ms. Albright are two that won’t be easily solved because they are not between Iran and the U.S. but between Iran and Israel. Specifically, these are, in her words, Iran’s “effort to develop a nuclear weapons capability” and its “support for terrorism abroad.”
Iran, and maybe other Middle Eastern countries, are going to continue to develop nuclear weapons for defensive purposes until Israel gives up its nuclear weapons, the only ones presently in the region. As for “terrorism abroad,” it appears that Iran’s incoming moderates already have halted Iranian assassinations of domestic political opponents in such countries as Turkey and Germany. But Iran is unlikely to give up its support for Palestinians fighting for their own land until Israel makes peace agreements with both. For that reason, when it comes to rapprochement with Iran, all Americans are just as much hostage to a divided and fractious government of Israel in 2000 as were U.S. Embassy staff members hostage to a divided and fractious revolutionary movement in Iran throughout 1980.’The theocratic republic & the constitutional republic do not have a significant conflict of interest except over the Jewish state and that is the only hurdle to their relations. This doesn't lay inasmuch with the theocracy as the traditional Iranian-Muslim hostility towards Israel (which is endemic to every Islamic nation) and as such a compromise over the delicate issue can be arranged.
Once that is overcome Iran will be able to rejoin the family of nations with a clean sheet and with renewed relations with America. For Pakistan, we Pakistanis will eventually have a democracy of sorts but with the shadow of the army always hovering by. The army has the necessary strength and will to carry through policies, which are unpalatable to the majority. For instance in Karachi, the conflict between the Muhajirs & Sindhis have subsided since the army has been very accommodating towards the Sindhis by delegating more power to them in their own province (indeed the army has been much better at managing inter-provincial relations than any democratic government, I remember when I was in Pakistan, during the democratic 90's, a major issue of concern was water rights for Sindh from the Indus tributaries in Punjab).
Evergreen posts of Zack..written on Tuesday, July 30, 2002 |
