SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND - Once the crowds were in the streets in Tehran, one could, if one knew the script, begin the countdown: if today there are mass protests, tomorrow there will be threats of retaliation in the name of "national security." By day three, we see journalists imprisoned and media shut down; day four, bloody reprisals against protesters by secret police; day five, arrests of key opposition figures. Sure enough, right on schedule, each of those steps was set in motion in Iran, within the space of a week.
These same 10 steps occurred in Thailand in 2006 -- in 10 days, and in seven days in Myanmar a year later. The script is so well known by now among the world's would-be dictators that it can take less than a week to lock down a country.
None of this should surprise anyone anymore. We should understand that this time-tested script for establishing or enforcing a dictatorship exists -- but so does a counter-strategy for opening up a closed society. When a would-be dictator -- anywhere, any time, on the right or the left -- wants to close an open society or initiate a crackdown against a democracy movement, he follows 10 classic steps: invoke a threat, create secret prisons, develop a paramilitary force, establish a surveillance apparatus, arbitrarily detain citizens, infiltrate citizen groups, target key individuals, go after journalists, call criticism "treason," and subvert the rule of law.
Once these steps are put in place, it is extremely difficult for a pro-democracy movement to survive -- but not impossible if counter-pressure is applied correctly. History shows again and again -- throughout the modern era and around the world -- that people do indeed have some powerful tools to reestablish an open society if they were willing to use them.
The counter-script for establishing or restoring pro-democratic conditions consists of more mass protest; the appearance and display of resistance symbols; the emergence of enough spokespeople throughout society that all of them cannot be arrested at once; overt civil and covert disobedience, at every level of society, that brings the economy to a halt; withdrawal of support by lawyers and judges for the regime's decisions; international sanctions tied to human rights and clean elections; the refusal -- tricky but not unattainable -- of many soldiers and police to fire at unarmed citizens; and, finally, when the rule of law is reestablished, serious prosecutions of the defeated regime's ringleaders.
When we see footage of nonviolent protesters being brutally beaten by police and militia members, it is painful to deliver the message that, if history is a guide, continued street protest will make the difference between Iran being like Myanmar or, possibly, like Czechoslovakia. Time and again, when mass street protest has been sustained for more than a week or two, a regime -- even one that has begun beating and arresting protesters -- eventually finds it practically and psychologically difficult to sustain its hold.
Street protest, if it can sustain itself for more than that crucial first week, has an effect that is both tactical and emotional; mass protest during the French Revolution made it clear to the courtiers that this rebellion would be too profound to quell in the usual manner; street protests in the American colonies, in the face of arrest or worse, made the colonies ungovernable even before George III waged a costly, unpopular war. In Estonia in the 1980s, the small, illegal protests that surrounded the public singing of the banned national anthem grew, and Estonians were emboldened as their numbers swelled by the thousands daily.
In the United States, street protests helped bring the Vietnam war to an end, and the mass protests of the civil rights movement showed that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, "business as usual" could no longer continue. According to King, disruptive mass protest exposes the tension that has been hidden or ignored, so that it can be addressed. (Ironically, such protest is now largely illegal in the US because of a systematic effort to deter it through a thirty year process of over-permiticization).
Iran's citizens -- and all people longing to resist a tyrannical government or to protest in an established democracy -- should bear the lessons of history in mind. Protest that works must disrupt business as usual and, ideally, stop traffic. Iranian citizens have shown great courage, and they would do well to continue pouring into the street and sitting down, lying down, or standing still. Unless a regime is willing to start machine-gunning its citizens, peaceful, steady, long-term disruption of "business as usual" always works.
What the West can do is apply pressure on Iran -- and on other governments in the future -- to assure and account for the safety of protesters. Natan Sharansky said that this tactic -- the West tracking and demanding accountability for the treatment of individual internal dissenters -- helped break up the Soviet Union. In this crisis, the US president should form a united front with human rights groups, which can advise him exactly how to follow, sustain, and support those Iranians who have been or may yet be arrested, or worse.
Barack Obama says that America "stands with" those who support free assembly. That will be welcome news to people living under dictatorial regimes installed and propped up by the US, and to the opposition leaders and journalists languishing in US-supported prisons in those countries for having engaged in just such protest. But it is a start. What a real revolution it would be if the Western democracies did indeed begin to frame their foreign policies with human rights and democratic processes as their benchmark.
Naomi Wolf is the author of Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.
Project-syndicate.org
Therein lies the rub. It's like a hostage situation. In addition to winning the election, President Obama also "negotiated" the end to the Bush/Cheney hostage situation.
I can't see the Ayatollah getting "tipped" over, but I can see him being compelled by popular will to take a seat and let the inevitable modernization of Iran take place.
That's why I was in favor of backing off the every-day street action in Iran, even while I was quite pleased to see it happening.
An intellectual history of the Green Wave.
Post Date Wednesday, July 15, 2009
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=cd438858-9a24-4214-aa53-645c7fe476c7
If you read Persian: BTW, This article should be translated and read by all Iran experts! Most comprehensive analysis of recent events thus far.
http://jomhouri.com/a/04int/006984.php
Lyons: Spectre of Khomeini as religious radical still stalks Iran
Jonathan Lyons writes in a guest editorial for IC:
http://www.juancole.com/2009/07/lyons-spectre-of-khomeini-as-religious.html
I question, after Bush/Cheney, whether enough of our own credibility remains to be seen by the world as an effective force in this. Given all the unresolved questions about the last administrations behaviors, I would find it hard if I were one of those "human rights groups" to accept our help with open arms. Right now, US support is likely viewed as toxic to such a cause.
""and, finally, when the rule of law is reestablished, serious prosecutions of the defeated regime's ringleaders.
very ineresting --i wonder if it applies in theUSA
Disgusted Americans could become vigilantes, round up W & his crew, lynch the Bushies if Pres Obama doesn't direct AG Holder to present the evidence of treason the DOJ has & gather more, to federal grand juries. The USA need not have to deal with irate vigilantes roundig up & executing W & his bunch-if Pres Obama has AG Holder deal with W, et al. When irate vigilantes are at large, it's difficult to get them to go home.
In normal times, we know little of how iran's government functions; we watch who's on the podium, and their position at the day parade. What we do know is the regime is terrified of "a velvet revolution." Unfortunately for Iranians (60 to 70% weren't born before 1977), unlike the shah, who exercised restraint and was reluctant to kill thousands. these guys have no such compunctions, though it's often too difficult to say who "these guys" are. Obviously many iranians (we really can't even tell low many; iran hasn't crossed the 50% urbanized line yet).) Those showing anger, they're saying "stop insulting our intelligence! election results weren't counted and the results were made up!"
there is nothing anyone outside can do; this causes the adoption of self-serving resolutions and laws that do nothing but make it harder for future constructive relations, and gives the killers justification to claim, as those grisly "tv-show confessions" indicate, that foreigners are behind it. They hurt those we'd like to help, and they help those we'd like to hurt. we won't know the names of whoever could replace the regime. But it won't be outsiders like an Iranian ahmad chalabi. President Obama has taken the right tone: do nothing, but keep expressing our own and the world's moral outrage. but the outside world can do little. it will be up to iranians, those whose suffrage was stolen, or those who stole it.
In other words, the Bush Administration.
They march in Tehran because they have the tacit support of Moussavi and Rafsanjani who are using them as a lever in an ongoing power struggle between competing factions of the political elite, If they believed there was any danger that the marchers presented a genuine threat to the status quo that support would not have been forthcoming.
If Moussavi and Rafsanjani do by chance come out on top in that struggle then the marchers will be expected to return home, if they don't they are likely to get a rude awakening as the 'new leadership' will if necessary put them back in their box with the same brutality as the current ones.