Inside the Axis of Evil

May 07, 2009

By The Diplomat

The capital was shrouded in haze and a din of police sirens, gunfire, car alarms and the odd car bomb punctuated the morning rush hour. Cars were banked up on one lane on the bridge over the Tigris as utes laden with masked gunmen surged across on the other lane. All the noise served to amplify the total absence of blaring car horns as the terrified men huddled over their steering wheels, obliged to venture outside the house to work and terrified of drawing attention to themselves.

Here was another kind of fear, diametrically opposed to North Korea’s dread of authority – it was the terror of no authority, the unpredictability of operating in a city that had reverted to a state of nature.

Such trepidation is present but much-reduced in Iran. The fear of the Shah’s secret police or of the vigilante Islamic militias in the early days of the Revolution has been washed away in the past 30 years. The tension has receded and the pageantry of morality roadblocks and Islamic executions blend into a background as dull as the electronic ticket-tape at railway stations warning citizens to be on the look-out for foreign spies.

Dictatorships bank on fear to keep them in power. They specialise in conjuring up nightmarish alternatives to dissuade their populace from contemplating insurrection. Invoking foreign threats appeals to the nationalists and promotes the impression of threat. Aside from appealing to personal interest, no other plea is more effective in rallying the crowds than the erosion of its culture.

Iran’s standard-bearer was the philosopher Jalal al-e Ahmad and his theory of Westoxification (gharbzadegi). North Korea’s Juche ideology promotes self-sufficiency and non-dependence on foreigners. And Saddam’s pan-Arabism was more encompassing for its appeal to common Arab roots across 20 Arabic-speaking countries, but hardly less chauvinistic.

What made these three dictatorships so deeply rooted and enduring was the skill with which their leaders tapped into enduring aspects of their countries’ national character. The power of Khomeini’s voice motivated thousands of Iranians to climb to their rooftops every night and shout ‘Allahu Akbar!’ in an eerie and unpunishable rebuke to the doomed Shah. When the Revolution came, of all the competing factions, it was not an imported ideology like Marxism that emerged to lead the country, but that which spoke most intimately to the average Iranian: his religion.

The vigorous idealism of the Revolution has abated, but its guardians cannot afford to admit it publicly. That is why today’s marches are staffed by civil servants stiltedly shouting irrelevant slogans. The numbers are made up by the poor and hungry, who are enticed by steaming cauldrons of free food. The only truly passionate crowds in Iran are those attending Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rural tours, where thousands of men, women and children run behind his motorcade stuffing personal notes to the president asking for hard cash, a civil servant position or exemption from military service for the family breadwinner.

‘The Revolution was not about the price of watermelons’ and ‘There is no fun in Islam’ are Ayatollah Khomeini’s most quoted utterances. But dictatorships are not just about depriving their citizens of free expression and a strong economy, as the China model shows. Nor can all dictatorships be lumped into one basket. Uniquely, though, today’s Iran is forging blossoming alliances with North Korea and former arch-enemy Iraq.

Perhaps this will be the greatest legacy of George W Bush and his Axis of Evil: cementing his three rogue states together stronger than ever.