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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 July 1999 Issue No. 439 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 July 1999 Issue No. 439
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Focus Interview Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters The silent president
By Azadeh MoaveniIf it was a "pro-democracy movement" it conspicuously lacked both leadership, strategy and organisation. If it was a right-wing blow to the reform process, it was neither premeditated nor systematic. As domestic factions compete to write the history of the most angry, open defiance since the 1979 Revolution, only the political and social aftermath of the increasingly complex crisis can suggest the damage done last week, and to whom.
Tehran's Evin Prison is crowded day and night, as families and students search for the hundreds that have been arrested -- 1,400 by student claims -- in the protests. President Mohamed Khatami maintains his thunderous silence, worrying supporters and confounding analysts, who rush to deduce his motives. The centrist and right-wing press becomes more aggressive daily, taking a tone that even one month ago would have been unseemly.
"Supreme Leader" Ali Khamenei, having doffed the guise of distressed parent to authorise a brutal crackdown, speculates about foreign interference. His Basij youth-militia patrol the streets, stopping university-age drivers at will. Student leaders lay low, having called off future demonstrations and submitted what is considered a very moderate set of demands.
Despite the dialectic of set-back and gain that has characterised Khatami's tenure, last week's protests and riots, which culminated in Wednesday's mass unity rally, has undeniably called into question the president's leadership, political courage, and degree of control. His supporters in the press are sympathetic, arguing that only by keeping distance from the crisis could he hope to control it. "Naturally he had to be very cautious," said Ali Reza Rajai, political editor of the reformist daily Neshat. According to Rajai, the roots of support for the reforms are very deep and will not be undone by a single incident.
Some say the degeneration into violence of what began as a legitimate protest will encourage the students to close ranks, organise, and intensify their demand for change. Though inevitably weakened by having their leaders arrested and their ranks infiltrated, the students have won wide public support. Moreover, the students have taken -- and successfully pleaded -- their case before the religious ulama in Qom. In their latest communiqué, student leaders called upon their fellow-students "not to participate in any demonstration, gathering, or sit-in that could be manipulated by those who favour violence."
All signs, however, seem to indicate that the student uprising erupted spontaneously, as an expression of outrage over the brutal dormitory attack of 8 July. The attack, in which members of the fanatical Ansar Hizbollah stormed into the Tehran University dormitories, beating students and setting fire to their rooms, left several students dead and dozens injured. The revolutionary guard intervened on the side of the Ansar, and some 500 arrests were made. The Ansar attack was in revenge for demonstrations earlier in the day at which students protested a decision by the judiciary, which is controlled by hard-liners, to close down the newspaper Salam, known for its liberal views and close ties to moderate Iranian President Mohamed Khatami.
The students themselves freely admit that, initially, they had no idea where their protest was heading. "I saw people marching and I ran ahead to make sure they were students," said one bystander-turned-participant in Tuesday's protest.
Above, Iranian students demonstrating in central Tehran on 12 July, shortly before police dispersed the crowd using clubs and tear gas; top, a Muslim cleric addresses a pro-Khamenei counter-rally outside Tehran University on 14 July (photos: AFP, AP)
By 15 July, many analysts were already regarding the movement as explosion of pent-up frustration over years of suppression and a host of social ills, as much as it was directly triggered by fury over the dormitory attack. The peaceful character of the protest, could have been maintained, said one Tehran University professor, by an early, symbolic overture from Khatami. As one student wrote in the daily Neshat, an acknowledgment of their suffering would have sufficed.
An acknowledgment did come in the end, but from Khamenei. "If Khatami has any hopes of survival," said the Tehran University professor, "he needs to show himself to be more in touch with the people."
Many of Khatami's supporters, who number upwards of 20 million -- if the ballots cast in his favour in the presidential election are a true measure -- are giving him the benefit of the doubt, seeing the invisible hand of the right-wing at work once again. The reformist press has murmured along these lines, linking the protests to the murders of eight dissident writers earlier this year. "There is parallel thinking behind the attack on the writers and the university attack," said Neshat. One of the students' slogans, an unprecedented public crossing of the theocracy's sacred line, attacked Khamenei himself: "The secret killings are hidden under the leader's robes."
Conventional wisdom here says the right wing will become even more aggressive, emboldened by a largely unchecked demeaning of civic virtue. A conservative backlash now would be more damaging than ever, as the outcome of the upcoming parliamentary elections will determine the fate of Khatami's reforms.
The restrictive new press law, which together with the banning of the reform newspaper Salam, ostensibly sparked the students' protest, strikes at the heart of this reform agenda. "A perceptible bit of breathing room has opened up, and it will not close again," said the Tehran University professor.
The press plays a key role in the power struggle between reformists and hard-liners. It has come to enjoy a degree of freedom unthinkable under the Shah's regime, and a considerable following as well.
But the battle has gone beyond the broadsheets and the streets and into the economy. The pro-Khatami Sobh-i Emrooz reported that conservative-backed bazaari merchants are buying up dollars in the exchange market to push up already high prices, squeezing the reformist government which is powerless over most of the economy.
Beleaguered on many sides, with his popular following more critical than ever before, does Khatami's silence acknowledge his own lack of power? It is too early yet to tell, but there is little doubt here that the reformist wing in the regime, if it is to survive, will have to find ways to recover from a lost battle it has chosen not to fight.
