Basij-e Mostaz'afin
The Basij-e Mostaz'afin ( Persian بسيج مستضعفين, DMG Basīǧ-e Mostażʿafīn , 'Mobilized of the Oppressed', Basitsch or Basidsch for short ) are a paramilitary militia of Iran that is employed as an unofficial auxiliary police and is recruited from volunteers. Founded on November 26, 1979 by a decree of Ruhollah Khomeini , the Basiji are organizationally a division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard . In the first Gulf War against Iraq , tens of thousands Basij found in some youthful age at Forlorn death.
The state news agency IRNA put the number of Basij on the occasion of a visit by revolutionary leader Ali Khamene'i on November 26, 2007 at 12.5 million, including 5 million women. A 2005 study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington describes 90,000 active “full-time” Basijs, 300,000 reservists, and the ability to mobilize up to a million. The current commanding officer is Brigadier General Mohammed Resa Nagdi .
First Gulf War
recruitment
In an address to the people in 1981, Ruhollah Khomeini demanded:
“In this holy war the devils of the fifth column are trying to lure you with the lack of gasoline, heating material, sugar and fat - do our sons only die for gasoline and sugar? Are they not rather dying for Islam and our heroic nation? Do you only want to serve Islam and the nation so that you can fill your bellies? I praise the twelve-year-old hero who tied hand grenades around his body and threw himself under the armor of the devil Saddam. "
The 14-year-old Hossein Fahmideh blew himself up on November 10, 1980 near Khorramshahr with a hand grenade in front of an Iraqi tank. His death was hailed as a role model in the Iranian media and honored with a postage stamp. The chairman of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Dschannati , gave as the motto for the mobilization:
“We need an army of 20 million Basijis. Such an army must be ready to live for God, to die in God's way and to wage jihad to please God. "
After that, all students from the eighth grade received military training. The most suitable students and volunteers were taken over by the organization of the Basij and were first used in a targeted manner in 1982 in the Iranian counter-offensive. The Basij were systematically recruited in schools and were allowed to go to war after they reached the age of majority without their parents' permission. The age of majority was set at 15 years by the Guardian Council in 1980 .
The task of the child soldiers was to walk over the combat area in front of the regular troops and tanks as a kind of living deminers. Drögemüller describes unemployed young people from the province, mostly without weapons, with a white or red forehead band with the inscription “ Allahu Akbar ”, who run across the minefields against the positions of the Iraqis.
Human wave
The combat tactic of the human wave , with barely trained or untrained civilians as the vanguard for the paramilitary Pasdaran , was first used on September 30, 1982 on the front section near Mandali . At least 4,000 Iranians were killed in a single action, while 300 of the defending Iraqis died. An Iranian school book from 2004 for level 10 figures 36,000 schoolboys who died in the war.
Mine clearers
Bahman Nirumand quotes a 1984 edition of the Ettelā'āt newspaper :
“In the past you saw volunteer children, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and twenty year olds like buds in meadows that had blossomed at dawn. They went over minefields. Her eyes saw nothing, her ears heard nothing. And a few moments later you could see clouds of dust rising. When the dust settled again, nothing of them could be seen. According to Ettelaat, this condition has improved, because before entering the minefields, the children wrap themselves in blankets and roll on the floor so that their body parts do not fall apart after the mines detonated ... "
The parents of those children who died as so-called "martyrs" were promised bonuses. The children had plastic keys hung around their necks that were supposed to unlock the gate to paradise. Half a million plastic keys had been imported from Taiwan . Donkeys and mules are said to have been used before children were used. However, they fled in a panic as soon as the first animals were torn apart by the explosions.
Mohsen Rezai , the then commander of the Pasdaran and thus also of the Basitschi, was accused by the "Association of Mothers of Child Soldiers" of being responsible for the deaths of thousands. One indictment in court was dismissed; the current revolutionary leader Ali Khamene'i was then commander in chief of the armed forces.
View of the Pasdaran
In an interview with Ali Sadrzadeh, the Pasdar Ahmad described his view of the deployment of militarily inexperienced young people
“The province of Khusistan was in danger, without whose oil Iran would be a poor house, and with it the revolution, which was borne by 90 percent of the population, was also in danger. In such a situation, a lot of things seem irrelevant. The work of the young volunteers has to be welcomed, especially since the army was very insecure at the time (...) with the offensives in 1984 we had to cross a wide minefield, and the volunteers were there as well as the Pasdaran. "
International protest
On August 19, 1983, more than 200 children and young people were captured by Iraqi forces. The Terre des Hommes charity took in the children. On September 9, 1983, the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued an urgent appeal to Iran to refrain from recruiting and using child soldiers.
Present function
Use against opposition
Today the Basij serve the Iranian regime to suppress the opposition . In the protests after the Iranian presidential elections in 2009 , the Basij were used against demonstrators. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared at some official events in Basij uniform, and other high-ranking politicians also declare the Basij as national role models.
Persecution of religious minorities
The Basij are by the government against religious minorities, including Sufi - dervishes brought into position. On February 13, 2006, the militia set fire to the dervishes' house of prayer in the city of Qom . 1,200 members of the Nematollah Sufi order were arrested. On October 10 and 11, 2007, the Basij Sufi houses of worship in the southwest Iranian city of Borudscherd , Lorestan Province , cleared . 80 people were injured. Molotov cocktails and bulldozers were used for the evacuation . According to the Sufi master Seyed Mostafa Azmayesh , the aim is to wipe out the dervish movement. A campaign in newspapers and by preachers in mosques had been going on for months. Although the Nematollah Dervish order belongs to the Shia , the religious community in Iran is persecuted as un-Islamic. Commentators see the fear of the Iranian Ayatollah regime for its right to opinion leadership in the Umma as the reason . The dervishes' open-minded interpretation of the Qur'an, combined with dance and music, has made the movement increasingly popular among young people in Iran.
Against satellite television
In July 2016, General Mohammed Resa Nagdi of the Basij-e Mostaz'afin warns citizens of the “pernicious” influence of satellite television on “the morality and culture of society”. Its use resulted in “an increase in divorces, drug addiction and insecurity”. The state authorities have implemented the ban in force in the country and destroyed 100,000 illegally installed parabolic antennas (satellite dishes) in raids . The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Leadership under Ali Dschannati is calling for a change in the law, since "70 percent of Iranians" use parabolic antennas.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ IRNA of November 26, 2007 ( Memento of the original of February 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2005/iran-050930-rferl01.htm .
- ↑ THE ATTITUDE TO 'THE OTHER' AND TO PEACE IN IRANIAN SCHOOL BOOKS AND TEACHER'S GUIDES ( Memento of the original from July 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , October 2006, p. 294.
- ↑ M. Küntzel: Are 500,000 plastic keys enough? ( Online )
- ↑ Ali Sadrzadeh: The Pasdar. 1987. page 155.
- ↑ Sepehr Sepahrom: fifteen in the mines. In: Iran. Wieser Verlag, 2003. page 90.
- ↑ Hans-Peter Drögemüller: Iranisches Tagebuch. 5 years of revolution . 1983, Hamburg: Libertarian Association, ISBN 3-922611-51-6 , page 301.
- ^ Economist, October 16, 1982.
- ↑ THE ATTITUDE TO 'THE OTHER' AND TO PEACE IN IRANIAN SCHOOL BOOKS AND TEACHER'S GUIDES ( Memento of the original from July 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , October 2006, p. 7.
- ↑ a b Bahman Nirumand: War, war, until victory. In: Iran-Iraq. 1987. page 95.
- ↑ Ali Sadrzadeh: The Pasdar. In: Iran-Iraq until the wicked are destroyed. 1987. Pages 156-158.
- ↑ https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Der-iranische-Mythos-3405717.html .
- ↑ a b c Michael Hanfeld in the FAZ of November 14, 2007, p. 35 below: Erasing the dervishes. In Iran, the religious minority of the Sufis is persecuted.
- ↑ Iranian authorities destroyed 100,000 satellite dishes. Der Standard, July 24, 2016, accessed July 24, 2016 .
