Iran

ATLANTIC

January 1953

on the World today

SEVERAL times last year crowds assembled in the streets of Teheran to denounce American germ warfare in Korea. This came as a shock to many Americans, who hadn’t realized the efficacy of Communist propaganda and who asked the question, “What has happened to the envied position which the United States enjoyed not only in Iran but in the entire Orient just after World War II?” Then we were knights in shining armor with high ideals, a different breed of men from the hated “colonial" Europeans. Confused, the first reaction of the Americans was to withdraw and keep to themselves. But the riots continued.

In the face of growing anti-American sentiment many feel we can only sit back and wait to see what happens. Meanwhile the Tudeh (Communist) party intensifies its activities among villagers and tribesmen, and once the latter are well infiltrated, there are few left to form any organized resistance to the minions of Stalin. The situation is serious, more serious than we think.

Americans are in a dilemma in Iran. Whom to support and how to support them, or whether to support anyone, are questions which most of our diplomatic personnel would rather not answer. Yet we must face the facts in Iran and elsewhere in the Orient, even though America is woefully lacking in qualified public servants who understand or appreciate the problems of a complex country such as Iran.

Who will manage the farms?

Take the question of land reform. Much of the success of the Chinese Communists was the result of their work on the land. After the fall of China many voices in the U.S.A. were raised on the necessity of land reform throughout Asia. Landlords had to go and large estates were to be divided in an attempt to beat the Communists at their own game.

But elimination of the landlord and division of the land would be especially difficult in Iran. In most sections agriculture is maintained by irrigation from underground canals or qanats. These qanats are real feats of engineering, for they sometimes lead water a distance of thirty miles or more from mountains out into what would be desert if it were not for the water. In Jumin, Khurasan province, where reputedly some of the deepest qanats in Iran are found, men have to descend several hundred yards into the ground to clean or repair the tunnels.

The maintenance of qanats requires a considerable outlay of capital and a skilled organization. Not only organization but leadership is needed, and now it is supplied by landlords or their agents. If they are removed, who will replace the landlords? Perhaps commissars? Those who speak of peasant coöperatives do not understand the social organization and position of the Iranian peasants.

In the province of Seistan on the Afghan-Pakistan frontiers, for centuries the peasants have been mobilized by the landlords each year to construct a dam to hold the waters of the Helmand River. And each year the barrier of mud, sticks, and stones is swept, away by the torrent, whose rate of flow increases from 34 cubic meters a second to almost. 1500 in the flood season.

Several years ago the “king" of the province, Huzaima ‘Alam, decided to build two concrete dams using American steam shovels and bulldozers. The difficulties of transport to this isolated area of Iran over unpaved roads were enormous, but the machines were pushed, pulled, and dragged to the spot, and the dams are being built. When finished they should transform the province into a rich agricultural area, the fruits of which will not be lost to the uncontrolled waters.

If the people of Heistan had waited for their government to build the dams, or if they had decided to join together in a coöperative endeavor, there would be no dams. This does not mean that the feudal domain which ‘Alam has created is all sweetness and light. Far from it, for he does rule like a feudal lord.

The American brand of democracy which we are trying to spread around the world just doesn’t make sense in Iran. Conditions which apply in Seistan would not in Azerbaijan, and a blanket generalization for Iran is impossible; for the Near Fast or the entire Orient it is absurd. Conditions in Iran vary widely and much study is needed before one can venture a solution of the land-water-and-agriculture problem.

The Moslem leaders fear the West

Then there are the religions leaders. Americans have little opportunity to come into intimate contact with religious leaders, or to understand the religious situation in Iran. Much mystery surrounds the activities of Ayatollah Kashani, the leader of “reactionary" religious groups. Actually his program is rather direct — he advocates what he believes are the Islamic principles of life and wants “Iran for the Iranians.”His followers support a pan-Islamic movement, perhaps blissfully unaware of the sentiments of Sunni religious leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq in regard to the Iranian Shiites.

In Iran, Kashani seeks more power for the religious leaders. They feel themselves menaced by the West, and hope that by excluding foreigners their country can live in peace and return to good Islamic practices of the past. His followers proclaim that the Iranians do not need oil and can live as they did before the invention of the automobile.

The religious leaders were suppressed during the reign of Reza Shah but they were not crushed. Now they are seeking to regain lost privileges and power. That they are having some success is indicated by the stricter observance of the month of fasting, Ramazan, and by public processions and revival of the passion plays during the religious holidays.

The religious people fear the West more than the U.S.S.R., perhaps because they know there is an historic antipathy of Iranians towards the Russians, while British influence, for them, is more subtle and dangerous. Kushani’s followers will ally themselves with the Communists, as they did during the riots of the short-lived Ghavam premiership in July, but this is only because they believe they can handle the Communists — perhaps a fatal assumption which has been disproved elsewhere. One incident which the religious leaders have not forgotten was the infamous bombardment of their sacred shrine in Meshed by Russian troops before World War I. Memories are long in the Orient.

There exists a religious revival in Iran of considerable proportions and influence, and much of it seems anti-modern and directed against reform. Nonetheless it behooves Americans to investigate this revival, meet its leaders, and convince them they will only court disaster if they throw their lot in with the Communists. Also they need to be shown that America is not and-religious or antiMoslem, as many of them believe.

Our unofficial ambassadors

Unfortunately some of the activities of Americans in Teheran are not well calculated to spread even American democracy. The scandal of the APO is already history — when an American sergeant imported considerable quantities of American products duty-free which found their way into the local bazaars. The Iranian government now requires APO packages to go through the local customs. The clubs, APO, PX, automobiles, and the like, have become necessary concomitants of swollen American embassies in the Orient.

Inflation and especially the fluctuation in the rate of exchange tempt Americans to try their hands at speculation. This is not to say that the Americans alone are guilty of speculation; far from it. During one week last spring the exchange on the open market rose from 65 rials to the dollar to 90, and then dropped back to 76. The official rate is 32, although there is another equally fictitious rate of 41 to the dollar.

Perhaps it is too much to expect Americans abroad to be supermen, with more than ordinary generosity, better morals, and better concepts of democracy than others have. When they fall short of the ideal, as they must, they are open to criticism. Furthermore, one cannot, expect all foreign-service employees to like their posts and speak the local languages, but it would be desirable to have some who did.

We must avoid developing a “colonial-minded" group of officials who are reminiscent of the Europeans in the nineteenth century, now discredited everywhere though not completely discarded. For if we are regarded by the Oriental peoples as successors of the “sahibs,” and not as free, fresh people with actions as well as words about democracy and equality, then we shall have lost the Orient for our side.

We must go more than halfway to meet the peoples of the Orient, and we must do more than put them under microscopes and say, “This is what we must do for your army, and this is what you must do for your agriculture.” We must put our hearts into our relations with these people. We cannot behave like the rich dowager visiting a slums settlement seeking to do good, but thankful to leave the odors behind, and thankful that she is a dowager. It is not mere gushing sentiment which should impel Americans to a brotherhood with the peoples of the Orient. As Charles Malik of Lebanon put it, “The Near East, must be made to feel that it belongs” to the Western world and not to the Soviet world.

What can we do?

This may be all very well, one may say, but what specifically must we do in Iran? Formerly the Iranians were the least xenophobic of all peoples in that part of the world, but times have changed, and the situation of a year ago is quite different from today. Therefore one must be flexible in formulating policy and attitudes towards the Iranians. We can do these things: —

1. We should screen carefully all Americans who are going to Iran on government service and weed out those who cannot make the necessary adjustments. More of them should be trained in languages and background, and this requires more time than a few briefing lectures. Also we should endeavor to convince government employees that they are public servants, not government rulers.

2. In the field we must get State Department people who will specialize in the Near Eastern area and serve there over a period of time, rather than career foreign-service men who will spend one year in Teheran and the next in Mexico City.

3. We should publicize the admirable Point. Four program in Iran. As a matter of fact we need to publicize all American work in Iran, past and present. The work of such organizations as the Near East Foundation and the missionary hospitals and schools has not been made sufficiently well known among the Iranians.

4. Books and pamphlets on the rivers of America have a place in an American information library in Teheran, but so do books on Iran and the Soviet menace to Iran, which at present are not found there. The translation program from English into Persian should be revised to include such books even more than the tracts on America the Beautiful which it now has. The Iranians should be made to feel that we are interested in their welfare.

5. We should answer the Communist propaganda and not dismiss it with a shrug or wait to see if it is effective. We could print and subsidize tracts showing the Communists in their true lights. There is no reason why the Soviets should have a monopoly on printing “anti” literature in Persian. We should conduct a hardhitting campaign of winning the Iranian people to the cause of the West. Moreover, we cannot afford to wait and merely to ignore Soviet propaganda against us.

We have a fine record in Iran; two Americans who are respected and still remembered in Iran are now living in the United States. One is Morgan Shuster, who went, to Iran before World War I to help Iran solve her financial problems, and who wrote a book entitled The Strangling of Persia, which has been translated into Persian. The other is Dr. Jordan, beloved head of the American Elburz college in Teheran for many years. This legacy of good will should be remembered and continued as a living denial of Soviet propaganda about American imperialism in Iran.

We must not forget that if we do not make a great effort, Iran will fall by default behind the Iron Curtain. We are pitted against a relentless foe who utilizes each opportunity to attack our every weakness or faltering. If we demonstrate to the Iranians by deed as well as word that we are their friends, we can keep them on this side of the Curtain.