AMW interviewed comrades from the Anarchist Union of Iran and
Afghanistan (Asranarshism) about the potential war between Iran and the
United States and building international solidarity with anarchists
around the world.
As anarchists, what is your analysis of the threat of war occurring between the US and Iranian state?
Today, while we write this response, an American drone was targeted
by the Islamic Republic, so now it’s very difficult for all of us
anarchists to provide a uniform analysis. We can only predict what will
happen because we cannot observe behind-the-scenes communications
between states and many other issues. Only different hypotheses can be
considered and assessed. Your question is focused on what, as
anarchists, what is our analysis of the threat of war between these two
states? It must first be said, naturally, anarchists oppose state wars,
but how does this opposition affect wars of states is another
discussion. We will always remain anti-war. A war between states is at
the service of states and capitalism, and the Iranian people must strive
to put an end to this deadly war and conflict, and the state militia
and infantry cannot go to war and must have their own independent line.
It should not remain unsaid that a large part of the Iranian people are
waiting for the Islamic Republic to weaken so they can dissolve the
dictatorship and theocracy ruling Iran—and us anarchists will be
alongside the people and in the streets and we will do whatever we can
do for the revolution and the fall of the Islamic Republic. People in
Iran have experienced the devastating 8 year war between Iran and Iraq;
however some people in Iran have been reluctant to end the Islamic
Republic after 40 years of atrocities and unfortunately, they have given
assent to the US war against the Iranian state and see it as the
easiest possible way to break the evil Islamic Republic. Although they
know war will destroy all the infrastructure, they say that the last
forty years of the Islamic Republic’s record has been nothing less than
war; it plundered the country’s wealth, destroyed the environment, the
lakes, and wetlands, brought the people of Iran poverty and misery,
executed more than 100,000 people, and expelled 8 million, setting them
adrift around the world.
You
have criticized the defence of the Iranian regime by some Western
leftists who call it “anti-imperialist.” How can revolutionaries
effectively oppose both the fascism of the Iranian state and imperialist
intervention?
The target of absolutist and state-oriented anti-imperialist critique
is only American imperialism, but we are more open to this than some
so-called anarchists or communists such as Noam Chomsky or Slavoj Zizek
who defend the Islamic Republic of Iran. The silence of these
intellectuals about the crimes of the Islamic Republic repressing the
Iranian people and the severe crackdown on anarchists, Islamic Republic
crimes against immigrants, especially Afghan immigrants (who are
deprived of their basic human rights and have been slaughtered in the
Syrian war for the promise of temporary residence in Iran), and the
repression of women, workers, and students is unacceptable. In fact,
Chomsky and his like are silent about the Islamic Republic because it is
a state that appears to stand against American imperialism and if they
are presented with the choice between the ruling government of Iran and
the Iranian people, they will choose power. This is a tragedy because
the power and authority that has crystallized in the Iranian government
has conquered and fascinated them, and the fate of the Iranian people
does not matter to them—and instead of always opposing power and
defending individual freedom and the collective freedom, they are
entranced by power and forget about freedom and opposing domination of
the Iranian government; instead they examine this major contradiction
through Marxist theory and not on the basis of liberty and anarchist
libertarianism.
What
historical revolutionary movements and figures are particularly
inspiring or relevant for your movement today in Iran and Afghanistan?
The failure of state communism globally on the one hand and the
failed, unsuccessful political developments in Iran and Afghanistan on
the other hand led youth to gravitate toward liberal and libertarian
alternatives that were new to them. The Internet, anarchist artists and
anarchist activists abroad have helped in this process. Since we are
anarchist militants, individuals and revolutionary movements close to
our tendency are most relevant to us. But if we were to name some of
them, we would include the Paris Commune of 1871, the Spanish Civil War,
the Chicago anarchist workers, the Kronstadt sailors, the Black Army
and Nestor Makhno, Emiliano Zapata, Dorothy Day, the AANES (Autonomous
Administration of North and East Syria) and Abdullah Öcalan, the Chiapas
Zapatistas, Japanese anarchists, Bakunin, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel,
and Camillo Berneri.
As
your website has published articles on the death of Lorenzo Orsetti and
repression of Indonesian anarchists this past May Day, would you like
to comment about these two important moments for the anarchist movement
internationally?
So far, more than 500 international fighters have been killed in
Syria fighting for the AANES and mostly in the war with ISIL. Many of
them were our fellow international anarchists and Lorenzo Orsetti is
one. We have always tried to identify international fighters who were
anarchists fighting for our ideals to commemorate these comrades by
introducing them to our audience and we emphasize that anarchists are
idealists without pretensions and they are mostly anonymous and only
called International Fighters, and main-stream platforms use it to
deliberately hide anarchism so they do not advertise anarchists
accidentally. Of course fallen anarchists do not care because they did
not fight for power or fame, but to take revolutionary action. As you
mention comrades, anarchist fighters in Rojava and the presence of
anarchists in Indonesia are two significant historical moments, and it
is very important to record these historical moments and our
responsibility to highlight them. We emphasize the revolutionary nature
of anarchists by calling attention to fallen comrades and encourage our
young audience to radicalize.
Are there any new development in the situation of anarchist prisoner Soheil Arabi?
Anarchist prisoner Soheil Arabi was imprisoned in Ward 1, Hall 9
within the Greater Tehran Prison and is currently serving his 11 year
prison sentence. He has been on a hunger strike to protest the
horrendous conditions in the prison, which includes: violent behaviour
by prison authorities, the spread of drug use among prisoners, lack of
prison maintenance and provisioning, confessions coerced with shockers
and batons, not separating prisoners by crimes, absence of adequate
accommodations and sanitation facilities, denial of right to treatment,
and an infestation of bedbugs and lice. The hunger strike happened
because the prison authorities ignored Soheil’s repeated requests to
address prison conditions. While performing his hunger strike, Soheil
Arabi was transferred to the dispensary in the Greater Tehran Prison on
June 20, 2019 after his health deteriorated severely. Farangis Mazloum,
the brave mother of Soheil Arabi, was arrested in Tehran at her home on
Monday July, 22 2019 by eight members of the security forces. She has
been transferred to an unknown location. Anarchist comrade Soheil Arabi
should have been released last year, but he was tried again last year in
October and sentenced to another 3 years. After the last time he was
tortured and beaten, he was not sent to the hospital despite a groin
injury and broken nose. Recently, a 21-year-old political prisoner named
Alireza Shir Mohammad Ali, his mother’s only son, was deliberately
killed by two other prisoners with a knife in the same prison—this is
one of the methods the Iranian state uses to physically remove political
prisoners. We are worried about comrade Soheil because there is no
security in the Islamic Republic’s prisons. Of course, besides Soheil,
there are several anarchist prisoners in Iranian prisons. On May 1,
2019, fifty participants at a May Day demonstration, including women
activists Neda Naji, Marzieh Amiri, Anisha Asadollahi, and Atefeh
Rangriz were arrested and detained by security forces and have not been
released. There are others that we cannot name for security reasons
What are some of the ways in which you have been organizing in your communities?
Anarchists in Iran and Afghanistan have clandestine activities that
cannot be shared externally, because of the very dangerous security
conditions, so that the secret police in Iran do not know how to fight
anarchist organizations and do not know where we are operating. If we
make our organizing, campaigns, and areas of activity public, then the
Iranian state will focus their security institutions on them and create
security traps. After the ten-day protests in more than 100 cities in
Iran beginning on December 28, 2017, security agencies realized that
people were organizing without leadership and, as a result, were at
risk. Of course, when we began our activities 10 years ago, security
institutions were at risk because since 1979, they had been able to
suppress all of the opposition in Iran and quash them in the eyes of the
people, and for three decades of repression, it was easy to imagine
that no politics were attractive to young people and women, and that
they were comfortable with the political structure, parties and
currents. The regime was shocked by the emergence of new and fresh
political currents, which on the one hand, was welcomed by young people,
women and workers, and on the other hand, the regime itself had no
knowledge about this new political thinking, its main activists, and how
it spreads. For this reason, we and other political activists asked the
questions: what would the regime do to counter the spread of anarchism
through society? And what methods of oppression will they use to repress
anarchists? Until the answers to these questions reveal themselves
over-time, security agencies are opposing us and by using their Internet
and propaganda facilities, they created a virtual faction and ordered
them to create parallel organizations. By creating a counterfeit
political movement called “anarchism,” it destroys the anarchist
movement and pushes teenagers and young people in the desired direction
of the state.
What issues do you see percolating in Iran and Afghanistan that would make people more responsive and interested in anarchism?
In Iran and Afghanistan, cases such as patriarchy, religion, limited
individual liberty, lack of social justice, ecological collapse and the
extinction of many animal and plant species, the theocracy in Iran, and
the lack of alternative, revolutionary opposition in Iran and
Afghanistan. Anarchism is attractive because anarchist libertarianism
and its emphasis on the importance of individual and secular freedom and
radicalization, the importance of women’s rights, the protection of
animals and the environment, the opposition to all hierarchy, and
opposition to authority are all essential for Iranian society and
strongly catches people’s attention.
How can anarchists in other parts of the world act in solidarity with the movement in Iran and Afghanistan?
We can say that so far anarchists in other parts of the world have
been supporting the anarchist movement inn Iran and Afghanistan very
well, and shared our struggles through interviews and voluntary
translation of interviews on their own websites in different languages.
Our anarchist comrades supported Soheil Arabi and other actions that we
cannot mention for security reasons. Because we are all anarchists, we
have a deep interest in the global anarchist movement and in the
vastness of the world, our range of struggles is wide and all anarchists
face many anarchist struggles; however they do as much as they can for
the anarchist movement in Iran and Afghanistan. In any case, the
struggle continues and all kinds of anarchist support from the
international anarchist movement will continue.
In
the long term, how do you think anarchists can build stronger
connections internationally to support revolutionary movements in a way
that is not merely reactive to crises or repression?
Now the left movement and communist movement are facing a crisis,
they do not have a strong presence at the international level or in
international struggles, they have largely lost their revolutionary and
militant characters, and even the parliamentary left is facing a crisis,
even liberals face a crisis—but anarchists do not face this situation
and they have not lost their revolutionary character and are still
pragmatic. Anywhere in the world that has the smallest movement, the
whole international anarchist movement focuses on it and stands up like
in Syria, where several hundred international anarchists have fallen in
the fight against ISIS alongside the SDF. Yes, we also think that in the
long run anarchists can create create stronger international ties to
support revolutionary movements abroad. They should not only be involved
in everyday struggles and should attract many other popular political
tendencies and movements, as we do. This is the very nature of the
revolutionary and honestly also of anarchists: their pragmatism and the
importance they invest in international struggles provides the
groundwork for the practical support of revolutionary movements. The
next important point is that anarchists from different parts of the
world communicate with one another through their websites and email to
share news about each other, which means they have a true and broader
political worldview, and that they are quick to learn of problems and
struggles, so they can rapidly support their international peers.
