Ethnic Identity and the State in Iran

A. Saleh

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137310873
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

While the Islamic Republic has employed various strategies to mitigate the worst excesses of inter-ethnic tension while still securing a Shi'a dominated "Persian hegemony, " the systematic neglect of ethnic groups by both the Islamic Republic and its predecessor regime has resulted in the politicization of ethnic identity in Iran.

Chapter 1

Ethnic Conflict

Theories and Concepts

In the aftermath of the Cold War, the nature of conflicts occurring in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East brought societal security concerns to the forefront of the international security agenda. In fact, many modern societies are multiethnic, multiracial, and multireligious. The presence of minorities in conflicts that span the borders of two or more countries and who identify with their ethnic kin in formally opposing states increases the likelihood of interstate conflict and societal insecurity, such as the war in the former Yugoslavia. This is one reason why societal security should be brought to the forefront of security studies. It provides a way of thinking about security issues in which the referent object is not the state but, instead, the people. For instance, the existence of the Kurdish people, who are present in large numbers in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, raises the issue of the potential of national secession from the currently existing states. Furthermore, Kurds are internally divided into different factions, clans, and insurgency movements, and all four states have consistently and fervently suppressed their Kurdish minorities.1

Regarding the Middle East, “Democracy is rare, dictatorship common, and the use of force and repression in domestic political life endemic. Strong links among authoritarian regimes, oil resources, international capital, and great power allies have allowed entire states to deploy extensive internal security forces to suppress their populations and delink their regimes from civil society.”2 In discussing the Middle East, Barry Buzan argues that “only rarely are state and societal boundaries coterminous. This provides a first motive for taking societal security seriously (for example, in thinking about the security of the Kurds).”3 In the case of the Middle East, Buzan adds, there are states in which nations do not fit into state boundaries, such as is the case with the stateless Kurds. He also argues that “overarching identities” (Islamism and nationalism) play clashing roles: “They can be seen as threatening to, and as threatened by, attempts to construct specific national identities and as useful in mobilizing on the international level.”4 Nationalism and Islamism are strong in the Middle East, and there are many racial, cultural, ethnic, historical, and territorial issues that they can be fuelled by. They are competitive as well as closely interlinked ideas.6

The state is based on the possession of a fixed territory and formal membership with an administrative body, whereas society is about identity, particularly the way in which communities and individuals identify and perceive themselves. Societal insecurity, therefore, emerges when communities feel that their identity is being targeted or threatened. Iran, for instance, believes that it has maintained security for the state, and yet its ideological principles and Islamic values are targeted by “Western cultural imperialism.”7 Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran’s central aim has been to form its national identity in accordance with its Islamic identity, whereas in the age of globalization, with Iranians exhibiting “a wide range of lifestyles, ideologies, identities, and modes of being, the idea of restricting people within the boundaries of a single ideology sounds more like an illusion.”8 Buzan argues that “the organizing concept in the societal sector is identity. Societal insecurity exists when communities of whatever kind define a development or potentiality as a threat to their survival as a community.”9 Buzan continues: “Collective identities naturally evolve and change in response to internal and external developments. Such changes may be seen as invasive or heretical, and their source pointed to as existential threats, or they may be accepted as part of the evolution of identity. Given the conservative nature of ‘identity,’ it is always possible to paint challenges and changes as threats to identity, because ‘we will no longer be us,’ no longer the way we were, or the way we really ought to be to be true to our ‘identity.’”10 Tension occurs when a community resists assimilation into a dominant culture or the presiding state and when it feels threatened. Distinguishing factors such as race, religion, language, and culture generate a sense of identity—for instance, “with a strong perception of external threat from western conspiracies, like threats of divide and rule, cultural and economic imperialism,”11 Iran feels threatened by globalization and perceives any foreign cultural influences as constituting a threat to its national identity by so-called outsider cultural invasions.12 Sometimes, however, the state itself becomes a threat to the nation. Buzan contends that “where state and nation do not line up, the minority nation will be the point of reference for actors ranging from a counterelite trying to achieve secession or independence to a group defending the cultural identity of the minority.”13

Societal Security

Pinar Bilgin, with regard to interstate relations, argues that the traditional concepts underpinning national security studies are increasingly irrelevant, especially in the post–Cold War era.14 He argues for the importance of introducing notions of societal security dilemmas in terms of ethnicity, nationalism, and religious identities. He further explains that the dangers that societal insecurities pose to a state’s stability are more serious than external threats. Buzan argues that societal security is one of the five dimensions in which security dilemmas can occur.15 He further argues that societal insecurity is one of the key threats to the state. The other dimensions, as mentioned before, are military, political, economic, and environmental security. Buzan goes on to define societal security as being characterized by “the sustainability within acceptable conditions for evolution, of traditional patterns of language, culture and religious and national identity and custom.”16 Whereas the state’s responsibility is to protect its society from external threats, Ole Wæver argues that when the state power grows, it may itself become a source of threat to its own people.17 The research in this book explores the concept of societal security as it applies to Iran, and as such through studying the case of Iran, this research develops the concept outlined by Buzan and Wæver. A sophisticated development of such a concept can help the scholar to identify the actors and developments that can potentially determine the level of social and political cohesion of the state.

Wæver emphasizes the juxtaposition of the state and societal security and explains that state security concerns are about threats to its sovereignty, while societal security is about the threats to a society’s identity.18 Both Wæver and Buzan contend that societies are fundamentally about identity. In Wæver’s words, “Society is about identity, about the self conception of communities and of individuals identifying themselves as members of a community.”19

In short, societies possess a sense of shared identity, and this identity enables its members to employ the word we in reference to themselves.20 This helps to generate a sense of “belonging together” among societal groups, at the national level, at the civilizational level, and in terms of religious identities, “where people are prepared to kill or die in its services.” Wæver claims that if national and religious identities are threatened, the effect on a “very large” part of society can be intense.21 He argues that the dichotomy of religious affinity and ethnonationalism creates a very powerful distinctive identity, such as is exhibited by Catholicism in Poland, Judaism in Israel, and Shi’ism in Iran.22 As Peter Katzenstein puts it, a “definition of identity that distinguishes between self and other implies a definition of threats and interests that have strong effects on national security policies.”23

When a society perceives that its “we” identity is under threat, societal insecurity occurs. In other words, societal insecurities occur when a society believes that its identity is being targeted and endangered. Any attempt to increase the security of a nation not embodied by the state inevitably increases the insecurity of the state. Buzan argues that the threat posed therein to society occurs because of the state’s repressive attitude toward certain societal groups. For instance, “if the institutions that reproduce language and culture are forbidden to operate, then identity cannot be transmitted effectively from one generation to the next.”24 Since language is fundamental for the continuation of minorities’ identities, any attempt by the dominant group to prevent the reproduction of language within a minority is “the engine of mass ethnic conflicts.”25

States often pursue their ethnic policies either through military means or by denying the minorities’ rights. Buzan explains that some states use forced immigration in order to change the ethnic demography and consequently to undermine ethnic identities, such as the Soviet Union did during Joseph Stalin’s time and Pakistan consistently does in Baluchistan.26 He concludes that although the suppression of identity might “work” temporarily, it can, however, also intensify and strengthen cohesion among the members of the targeted group; for instance, both Palestinian and Jewish identities have increasingly become more intense in response to perceived threats in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel.27 In Wæver’s words, “Societal security is about situations when societies perceive a threat in identity terms.”28

Buzan is uncertain as to quite when societal security should be considered to be threatened: “Are threats real or imagined?”29 He argues that “what is perceived as a threat, and what can be objectively assessed as threatening, may be quite different.”30 Threats may not be real but may nevertheless still have very real effects. Buzan maintains that “security can be approached both objectively (there is a real threat) and subjectively (there is a perceived threat), and nothing ensures that these two line up.”31

If one society attempts to strengthen its own societal security, the other society or societies react, invoking a societal security dilemma. As Robert Jervis aptly puts it, “many of the means by which a state tries to increase its security decrease the security of others.”32 Paul Roe argues that “this suggests that just as is the case between states wherein some difficulties can occur in distinguishing between ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ preparations, such difficulties might also exist between societies; the difference here being that we are focusing on threats to identity rather than sovereignty.”33 He further argues that societies, like states, may use arms to defend their identity. Barry R. Posen explains that the societal security dilemma occurs when “proximate group of people suddenly find themselves newly responsible for their own security. A group suddenly compelled to provide its own protection must ask the following questions about any neighbouring group: is it a threat? How much of a threat? Will the threat grow or diminish over time? Is there anything that must be done immediately? The answers to these questions strongly influence the chance for war.”34 Yet little effort has been made to discern how state identity may be perceived as threatening to societies or minorities within the state. Benedict Anderson’s book Imagined Communities outlines just how state and nonstate communities’ identities are constructed. The importance of this book lies in its explanation of how group identity distinguishing the “self” from the “other,” how this distinction can lead to conflict with those classified as others, and the ways in which these sentiments are manipulated by elites. It is not only the state, however, that constructs and promotes a national identity; societal actors also play an important role in shaping and creating the collective identity “in intense alliances with the state.”35

Nations, according to Anderson, are a political project of identity creation, used in nation building, achieving a coherent collective identity, and the mobilization of people within a particular territory to kill or die for an ideal.36 This model is identified by Charles Tilly as “state-led Nationalism”37 or as state-building nationalism. This enables the state to “use nationalism as a tool to consolidate their rule over the society.”38 Buzan, in regard to interstate societal identity, comments that “to the extent that tensions over migration, identity and territory occur between societies, we might by analogy with international politics talk about a ‘societal security dilemma.’ This would imply that societies can experience processes in which perceptions of ‘the threats’ develop into mutually reinforcing ‘enemy-pictures’ leading to the same kind of negative dialectics as with the security dilemma between states.”39 Furthermore, Wæver asks, “If we think of societies as units, do we therefore have to think of societal security dilemmas between them? Such an investigation would require further analysis into the interplay of identities. Societal security would have to occur within, between or through states.”40

Tension between the state and its societal groups may undermine, for instance, the territorial integrity and political autonomy of the state as well as the identity of the society. As argued before, states survive by maintaining their sovereignty, and the society survives by maintaining its identity. As a result, like the state, societal groups may defend their identity by militarizing their members. In other words, societal confrontations destabilize the political security and undermine the legitimacy of the state. In explaining how states can be threatened by societal insecurity, Wæver expresses the way in which societal insecurity can weaken and threaten the functioning of the mechanisms of a government and indeed can hinder its concomitant ideologies, which “give governments and states their legitimacy.”41

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Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Ethnic Conflict: Theories and Concepts
• 2. Continuity and Change: The Tradition of Security Discourse in Iran
• 3. Iran’s National Identity Problem
• 4. Ethnic Conflict in Iran: Continuity and Change
• 5. Relative Deprivation Theory and Political Violence in Iran
• 6. Ethnic Minorities in Iran: The View from the Ground
• 7. Separatism and the State’s Mechanism of Control
• Conclusion: Themes and Implications
• Bibliography
• Notes