Wednesday, September 29, 2010

New Monograph on the Ideological-Political Training of Iran's Basij

By Mark Pyruz

A new monograph is being offered by the Crown Center for Middle East, an element of Brandeis University, itself a predominantly jewish school of higher learning, titled The Ideological-Political Training of Iran's Basij by Dr. Saeid Golkar. It is available as a Scribd or download, here.

From the beginning, the author depicts the Basij role as being used by "the Iranian government to crush and eventually control opposition demonstrations." He makes no mention of the fact that the bulk and direction of law enforcement efforts during this time period came from NAJA police forces, and not the Basij.

Indeed, the entire effort is skewed toward the "combatting internal strife" role of the Basij, as if the challenges facing Iran were taking place in a vacuum. That is to say, nowhere in this monograph is there an objective reading of the cold war, soft war, economic war and externally encouraged ethnic terror war being directed against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the role of this conflict in shaping Iranian efforts toward safeguarding their nation from threat. That their efforts are more expansive and acute than somewhat corresponding efforts by US Homeland Security volunteers (and cadre forces), organized at the local level in the wake of 9/11, is only a measure of how severe a threat this segment of Iran believes it is facing.

Nonetheless, there is a noteworthy level of detail in this monograph- focusing on IPT- that deserves further study and comment.

1 comment:

Winston said...

why did you emphasize on the 'jewish' part of the school's nature?