When Saeid Golkar arrived in the United States in 2010 to begin postdoctoral work at Stanford University, California, he was struck by how little work had been done on the Basij, Iran’s state-financed militia. “There was much discussion, but nobody knew about the organisation, its function, or the sociology” of the membership, he says.
So Golkar penned a series of articles based on research he had done in Iran, especially while teaching at Tehran University after 2004, when he had carried out interviews and a survey of Basij members, and read academic dissertations and articles in Basij journals. Golkar has now published the first book, at least in English, focused entirely on one of the most important organisations in the Islamic Republic and its all-round role.
This is a scholarly study, but the content is far from academic given the role of the Basij – its full name is Sazeman-e Basij-e Mostazafan, Organisation for the Mobilisation of the Oppressed – in suppressing street protests after the disputed 2009 presidential election. At that time, Golkar felt many observers outside Iran failed to understand the organisation because they knew nothing of the parts of society most Basij members came from.
“One of the problems of Iranian-Americans outside Iran is that they came from middle- and upper-class families, and they don’t understand the rural areas, the poor conservative part of society,” he says. “In 2009, the Green Movement happened in Tehran and some of the big cities, but many of the small cities and rural areas didn’t join in.”
Here, Golkar had another research resource: people he knew. Among his wider family were many who joined the Basij after the 1979 Revolution. Golkar’s father was a construction worker, and so he moved as a child from his birthplace Tabriz to Mashhad, Bandar Abbas and Ajab Shir, before they settled in south-east Tehran.
Golkar’s central argument – reflected in the book’s title, Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Iran – is that the Basij is more widespread and effective than generally realised. “There are 12,000 Starbucks in the US and 22,000 around the world,” he says, “but in Iran we have more than 50,000 Basij bases and offices.”
While rejecting official claims the Basij has as many as 22m members, Golkar argues there are at least 4m and perhaps over 5m. He cites studies that one in three students is a member, as well as 65% of state employees.
In the book, Golkar distinguishes four levels of membership, moving up from 3m regular Basij, through 1-2m active members, to cadre and special Basij who together number 200,000. The Basij is organised not just by neighbourhoods, but as students, professors, members of gilds, even of tribes: it carries out military training and surveillance, supervises public behaviour, runs businesses, educates members, and propagandises through physical space and social media.
Only cadre and special members are paid, although other members receive many benefits, including cash bonuses, loans, and discounts on trips to holy cities. Young women from poorer backgrounds are attracted to the Basij, Golkar argues in the book, because membership may help them find a better job or a husband. Another potential benefit is securing one of the 40% of university places in theory reserved for members.
There is little evidence on the precise thinking on the setting up of the Basij in 1980 after a call from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s first leader, for “20m riflemen or a military with 20m soldiers”. This was a time when Iran’s new authorities found themselves having to improvise in many ways as they established a new state (the Basij had several name changes, after originally being called Basij-e Melli, National Mobilisation).
There were several models for the Basij. Before the Revolution, the Shah had established a party, Rastakhiz, to rally support for his regime.
“The Shah had tried to find a social base, and tried to penetrate society,” says Golkar. “The Islamic Republic has done this in a more clever way. The Basij is an upgraded version of Rastakhiz. It has the [same] political function, but at the same it’s part of Iran’s military organisation [subordinate to the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], especially the special and cadre members who have military training.”
Golkar also suspects influence from communist societies, at least as reflected in the Iraqi Baath party. “Ayatollah Khomeini was in Iraq during exile, and there are similarities between the Basij and the Baath party,” he says. “So I thought maybe there is a connection, but there is no information or documents that refer directly to that idea.”
Iran is also more factional than Baathist Iraq, meaning it is not always clear who the Basij answers to.
“The official structure is that the Basij is under the control of the Revolutionary Guard, but at the same time it has a connection to the office of Ayatollah Khamenei, the leader,” says Golkar. Hence Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the Basij commander, was appointed in 2009 “by command” of Khamenei at the suggestion of Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the IRGC commander.
“Who are Basiji loyal to?” asks Golkar. “The easiest answer is Ayatollah Khamenei, but with more than 5m members some are opportunist, just loyal to themselves. Cadre and special members are loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei. When [president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei were in conflict after 2011, more than 90% of the Basij supported Ayatollah Khamenei – in discussions I had on social media only 1 to 2% backed Ahmadinejad.”
But if Golkar sees the Basij as a combination of political party and military organisation, the picture is complicated by its part in policing, for example in the 2010 arrest of the Green Movement leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.
Not only has the Basij since 2004 provided 80% of police recruits, says Golkar, it has a precise role under a 2006 plan for assisting the police during social unrest: “There are different levels of security. The first period is when the police are in control, the second period is where the Basij should accompany the police, and the third – or crisis situation – is where the Basij, and Revolutionary Guards and the police work together to suppress and control society. When there is a situation like 2009 [street protests after the disputed presidential election], the Basij will help the police, sometimes independently, sometimes collaborating with the police.”
Quite how much independence the Basij exercises – and when – is hard to assess. Golkar thinks it likely that General Naqdi took the decision to arrest Mousavi and Karroubi, but certainly in co-ordination with the leader’s office.
It is difficult to be sure over another case – the shooting in 2000 that left reformist strategist Saeed Hajjarian largely paralysed.
“There are different stories,” says Golkar. “Saeed Asgar, who shot Hajjarian, was a Basij member, and the people that drove the motorcycle and brought the gun belonged to the Revolutionary Guards. The government accepted that, but said they worked independently and without orders. We don’t know who authorised it, or the murder of the intellectuals,” the “chain killings” of a number of reformist intellectuals from 1988 to 1998.”
Doubts remain, says Golkar, given the sheer commitment of Basij members. “The indoctrination in the Basij means some of these people are really brainwashed. Some of them believe the reformists are hurting the Islamic Republic.”
- Saeid Golkar, Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Iran, Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Columbia University Press, 2015
The Tehran Bureau is an independent media organisation, hosted by the Guardian. Contact us @tehranbureau
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