Although driven by ideology, the Basij more often behave like thugs, writes MARY FITZGERALDin Tehran
FOR THE past two weeks, they have formed a menacing presence on Tehran’s streets and intersections. Some are middle-aged men with weathered faces but most are fresh-faced youths with wispy beards.
Scruffily dressed in ordinary clothes often mixed with bits of camouflage, they carry clubs, truncheons, sticks, metal bars and sometimes chains. These are the Basij, the Islamic Republic’s main volunteer militia.
Depending on who you ask, the very mention of the word “Basij” can inspire fear, derision or pride. Many consider the Basij as little more than professional thugs sanctioned by the regime. Others argue they should be respected as guardians of the revolution. But no one doubts their often brutal efficacy in suppressing public dissent.
The ideologically-driven Basij have played a major role in the events that have unfolded over the past two weeks, after hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Tehran and other cities to protest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in a ballot many believe was rigged.
In Tehran I saw swarms of Basij charging protesters on foot or on motorbike, or chasing them into alleyways. Many set up traffic checkpoints throughout the city. In Esfahan, a city six hours’ drive south, I saw plain-clothes Basij brandish metal chains and one who carried what appeared to be a knife attached to his belt.
“Have you seen how young some of them are?” asked one man in Tehran, going on to repeat some common criticisms of the Basij. “They are brought from the villages and their heads are filled with all sorts to ensure they see everyone as the enemy.”
Apart from beating demonstrators, the Basij have been linked to several deaths that have occurred during the unrest. Many believe a Basij sniper was behind the shooting of Neda Agha-Sultan, the young woman whose final moments were captured on video, making her a posthumous symbol of the convulsions that have wracked Iran since the disputed election.
The word Basij roughly translates as “mass mobilisation”. The militia was founded by Ayatollah Khomeini in late 1979. He is reported to have declared that “a country with 20 million youths must have 20 million riflemen or a military with 20 million soldiers; such a country will never be destroyed”.
The Basij was originally envisaged as a civilian auxiliary force subordinate to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and it has functioned as such for the past 30 years. Only 1 per cent of the Basij is reportedly armed and officially on the payroll of the Guards. The remainder consists of either active unpaid members who spend about 20 hours a month at a Basij base, or reservists who can be called upon when required.
The Basijis came to the fore during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, when they were encouraged to become martyrs by walking through minefields to clear the way for Iran’s conventional forces. Many were little more than teenagers.
“You cannot imagine what the Basij did for our country during the war,” says one veteran. “Their sacrifice should never be forgotten.” While this man was never a Basiji himself, his two sons joined up as teenagers but left because of the amount of time they were required to spend with their local chapter. Most mosques in Iran have a room known as the Paygah-e-Basij or Basij base, where members study the Koran and organise sports events or field trips. In rural areas, many Basij are involved with development projects and in education.
The war veteran says the Basij have changed in some respects in the two decades since. “The Basij now is not the same . . . they make mistakes and sometimes I wonder about the motives of some who join. But you should not judge the entire Basij by the actions of a few.”
I heard similar sentiments from two middle-aged men who said they joined the Basij when they were 15 and 17 and remain reservist members. “Our job is to help protect the Islamic Republic and its values,” said one. “This is very important but, of course, sometimes mistakes are made.”
Most Basijis are recruited from the more conservative and impoverished pockets of the population, but there are also university chapters. The Basij answer to and swear absolute loyalty to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor. Thousands chanted in support, fists raised in the air, when Khamenei warned, during a sermon at last week’s Friday prayer at Tehran University, that further opposition protests would not be tolerated.
Ahmadinejad is a proud Basiji, and the movement – its membership reputedly running to millions of both male and female Basij – forms a powerful element of his political base. During his election campaigns, Basijis in every town, neighbourhood and mosque became unofficial campaign workers for Ahmadinejad.
Because the Basij is a volunteer force, and its members are not uniformed, there is little accountability for their actions. In a letter to Iran’s National Security Council last week, defeated presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi, whose supporters have led the recent protests, claimed the Basij exploited the lack of anything that might denote them as state forces in order to act as agent provocateurs during the disturbances.
“Just before the police show up, they attack the demonstrations,” Mousavi wrote. “They try to provoke the demonstrators and they destroy people’s property and vehicles.”
This is not the first time the Basij have been deployed to smother public manifestations of discontent. They were instrumental in snuffing out the student protests of 1999 and 2003. When they are not putting down popular dissent, many of the Basij busy themselves with monitoring the population for any infractions of what they consider to be Islamic conduct, including violations of the dress code for women, mixed gender parties, and the consumption of alcohol or drugs.