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Iran's Situations: Military Violence, Protests, and Group Dynamics

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Iran's Situations: Military Violence, Protests, and Group Dynamics Iran's Situations: Military Violence, Protests, and Group Dynamics The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Saha, Sparsha. 2014. Iran's Situations: Military Violence, Protests, and Group Dynamics. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:13065029 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Iran’s Situations: Military Violence, Protests, and Group Dynamics A dissertation presented by Sparsha Saha to The Department of Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2014 ©2014 — Sparsha Saha All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Beth Simmons Sparsha Saha Iran’s Situations: Military Violence, Protests, and Group Dynamics Abstract Iran is a country with a rich history of successful social movements and not so successful ones. The two most recent ones—1979 and 2009—set up a very unique puzzle that sheds some light not only on the factors of micro-variation (in levels of violence against protesters) within states over time, but also on the factors that drive variation within a protest wave—factors that are related to the design of a state’s security system (for example, multiple security force actors that provide options for protest policing). Explaining variation across and within these two cases requires that we think about the ensuing potential for violent conflict as inter-group related. In order to predict violence on protesters in Iran, it is necessary to measure the level of representativeness in the military organization, which I disaggregate at the level of the security force actor (Basij/IRGC/Artesh), and consider this in relation to the composition of the protesting crowd. The more representative a security force body within the military, the less likely is the outbreak of violence in any given protest event if that body is involved. This is because representative entities are less likely to view crowds as part of a threatening other. iii | Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1 1 Theoretical Framework 12 1.1 Introduction . 12 1.2 Linking Representativeness to Military Violence During Protests: Us Versus Them Distinctions . 15 1.3 An Implication of this Argument: Paramilitary Units in the Armed Forces . 38 1.4 Representativeness in the Armed Forces: The Main Explanatory Variable 45 1.5 Military Violence During Protest Events: The Dependent Variable . 50 2 Alternative Explanations 56 3 The Iranian Revolution: Representativeness in the Iranian Armed Forces and Violence against Protesters in 1979 94 3.1 Introduction . 94 3.2 The Shah’s Security Apparatus in Context . 100 3.3 1979 Revolution and the Security System . 113 3.4 Conclusion . 142 4 The Green Revolution: Representativeness in the Iranian Armed Forces and Violence against Protesters in 2009 144 4.1 Introduction . 144 4.2 Basij, Revolutionary Guard, and Military; Three Actors, Three Pre- dictions . 150 4.3 Data Collection and Methods . 168 4.4 Quality and Coverage of Sources . 172 4.5 Results . 179 4.6 Us Versus Them Distinctions . 189 iv Conclusion 211 A Appendix to Chapter 4 221 Bibliography 225 v | Acknowledgments Many thanks to my committee members: Beth Simmons, Muhammet Bas, and Steve Rosen. Beth, thank you so much for your encouragement and guidance during this process. Muhammet, I’ve always left meetings with you optimistic about my work, and what I can accomplish. Steve, thank you for pushing me to be better—it is reflected in my work. I’m grateful to you all. I’m also grateful to friends and family for their support. You have been there through thick and thin. Thanks to IQSS, the Weatherhead Center, the Tobin Institute, and GSAS for the support. It has been crucial. vi | Introduction How do quasi-democratic states design security institutions that are capable of violence against unarmed citizens who are protesting? The most effective design is one that exploits a significant social cleavage in society. Even a quick analysis of the Arab Spring demonstrates this point. This revolutionary wave of demonstrations that swept through the Middle East from 2010-2012 (some argue is still ongoing) changed the political landscape in the region. The cause of the dissatisfaction stemmed from something very basic: inequality. Whether this was inequality because of the concen- tration of money or power does not really matter—the causes were many, and they were all interrelated. What is significant is the mobilization of people that ended up changing the structure of politics. In some cases, the people succeeded. In other cases, they did not. The most glaring difference among all these cases is the response of the state’s security apparatus to the protests. Some militaries were willing to shoot, and others were not. 1 Syria’s and Tunisia’s uprisings started off in similar ways: mass street protests against the governments. However, the most significant difference between Tunisia and Syria was the nature of the state’s response via its military and security appara- tus. In Tunisia, the military refused to fire on protesters, standing back and allowing the movement there to be successful. This did not happen in Syria, where the military responded with violence very early in the crisis (March 2011). This pattern extends to most countries during the Arab Spring. The ones in which the military refused to fire on protesters saw transitions (the success of which remains to be seen in many cases): Tunisia and Egypt. In a similar vein, the ones in which significant government concessions were made, which peacefully suppressed protests, ended up being countries with representative militaries (Jordan, Oman). The countries with unrepresentative militaries that were willing to fire on protesters were those that either fell into civil war or teetered on the edge of civil war (Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya). The Arab Spring created a flurry of scholarly research on regime cohesion, dura- bility, and military defection. Researchers were eager to fill the gap on civil-military relations in the Arab World. Many attempted to explain the variation during the 2 Arab Spring, and they were successful to a certain extent. The focus on macro-level variables like food prices (Lagi et al. 2011), climate change (Slaughter, Werrell, and Femia 2013), ethnic representativeness (Droz-Vincent 2011), economic penetration (Springborg 2011), institutionalization (Bellin 2012), coup-proofing (Makara 2013), and regime legitimacy (Barany 2011) has been fruitful. These factors have provided a framework within which to partially understand the inter-state variation in military behavior during periods of mass protest. However, these macro-level variables fail to explain intra-state variation, partic- ularly between periods of time during which they do not change. This includes not only the short periods of time between protest waves within a country, but also the day to day variation that occurs within a protest wave. This variation is puzzling because we might expect similar outcomes in similar situations if we only consider the macro-variables. For example, why the same military organization that might be willing to fire on crowds that are big and threatening falls apart in the face of different protests a few years later is problematic for these variables. There is a need to look beyond just the security force actor and its relationship to the state. It is important to also consider the relationship the military has with society as well as 3 the ideological foundations of the state system. To understand intra-state variation, both across protest waves and within protest waves, we have to assess the actors within a protest event and their relationships to each other. These micro-level variables affect the probability of violence at the level of each protest event. Chapter 1 lays out the theoretical framework of this project. Here, I claim that representativeness affects the likelihood of military violence during protest movements. More representative militaries are less likely to inflict violence on protesters because they are less likely to view crowds as a threatening “other." This is particularly true if the protesting crowd is broad, composed of more than one subgroup of society. Furthermore, an additional contribution of my theory is to disaggregate the mili- tary organization, recognizing that states design their security apparatus’ with both internal and external threats in mind. This can be clearly seen in Iran today. The Ira- nian security apparatus is comprised of three entities: the regular Artesh, the IRGC, and the Basij. Representativeness varies across these three bodies. To the extent that the Basij is the most unrepresentative entity within the Iranian security apparatus, and given paramilitary characteristics that condition the effect of group cohesiveness 4 in a perverse way, I expect the worst forms of violence to occur when the Basij is present at a protest event. Chapter 2 considers alternative explanations for the likelihood of military violence during a protest event. This chapter looks at three alternative explanations. All three are rationalist, but the third is also realist to the extent that it traces the source of variation in the levels of international pressure between 1979 and 2009 to realpolitik concerns (or lack thereof). The first alternative assesses the role of professionalization through a rationalist framework. This version of a rationalist argument focuses on the costs of engaging in high intensity coercion by the military. The main factor in the “utility function" is the concern for survival. The alternative (i.e., what the cost of engaging in high intensity coercion is compared against) is what life would look like for the military as an institution after the potential fall of the current regime.
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