Akbar Ganji, "someone who spent six years in Tehran's Evin Prison on a bogus charge of endangering national security," has published a column in the Washington Post (translated from Farsi) to clarify "why Iranian pro- democracy forces oppose the $75 million the U.S. government provides to aid civil society in their country."

But even the very title and the starting point is presumptuous. First, why should Ganji think he can represent such a vast group of people as "Iranian pro-democracy forces"? Second, why is being an Iranian democrat taken to be synonymous with "shuning foreign aid"? What, then, are Akbar Atri, Ali Afshari, and countless other activists? Ganji also claims that in any Middle Eastern country other than Iran people would choose fundamentalists in a free and fair election. Why? This is pseudo-intellectual nonesense! In fact, this statement has already been proven wrong in Iraq. But the problems with Ganji's piece are much deeper than this.

After a string of incongruous expressions of facts and opinions-dressed-as-facts about the situation in Iran and the Middle East and what people want or don't wan't, he reaches the following culminating point:

So here is our request to Congress: To do away with any misunderstanding, we hope lawmakers will approve a bill that bans payment to individuals or groups opposing the Iranian government.

This rhetorical request has a deeply sensational tone. But it is a foolish thing to say, void of any logic. Why should anyone hoping to help a group of people (Iranian pro-democracy forces here) ban transactions with them? How could such outright blocking of aid possibly help?

But it gets even worse. Ganji charges the (collective) West of helping Iran's government to restrict and filter the Web. (This, of course, confounds private companies with governments, but that's a minor offense.) Then, he proceeds to say that all Iranians really need is free media and TV,

The support we need at this point has nothing to do with funding the regime's opposition but with aiding Iranians in the quest for independent media and accurate information.

Mr. Ganji's piece is apparently in response to an earlier op-ed by Michael Rubin. But he seems not to have read it:

The congressional appropriation has grown from $1.4 million in 2004 to $66 million this year. Of this, $36 million disappears into the coffers of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. The State Department applies an additional $5 million each to visitor exchange programs and to translation of its Web sites into Persian.

VOA Persian and Radio Free Europe (Radio Farda in Persian) are perhaps the closest things accessible in Iran to free media with wide coverage through their radio and TV programs. Mr. Ganji has used VOA's platform several times already to reach his fellow Iranians. Now, he wouldn't want them off, or would he?

Labels: democracy, Ganji, iran, UN

 

Akbar Ganji, the Iranian dissident who spent 6 years in jail and more than 2 months on hunger strike, has written a letter to the UN Secretary General, endorsed by more than 300 intellectuals. In it, he appeals for the human rights in Iran. But he also uses the opening half of the letter to criticize America's policy in the region, writing for instance:

The Bush Administration, for its part, by approving a fund for democracy assistance in Iran, which has in fact being largely spent on official institutions and media affiliated with the US government, has made it easy for the Iranian regime to describe its opponents as mercenaries of the US and to crush them with impunity. At the same time, even speaking about "the possibility" of a military attack on Iran makes things extremely difficult for human rights and pro-democracy activists in Iran.

A Reuters correspondent, Alistair Lyon, informs us that similar opinions are shared by other activitst in the region. We read that

"(U.S.) money is not going to help the democratization process here," said Ebrahim Yazdi, Iran's first post-revolution foreign minister and leader of the banned Freedom Movement.

and that

"The United States has lost a lot of its credibility on human rights because of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and renditions," said Nadim Houry of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch group.

But are these true? Has America lost its credibility with Mr. Yazdi or Mr. Ganji? That question supposes that these people once believed the US was a credible force of good and now they don't. But did they? In reality, the answer is no! These same people, long before "Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and renditions," indeed long before George Bush Sr. and Jr. were ever in power, were hostile to the US. Mr. Ganji joined at a young age in a revolution whose mantra was "we crush the US!" and took more than a decade to go through a change of heart about its worth. Mr. Yazdi is a subtler type: while he and his cohorts in the Freedom Movement decry political repressions in Iran, they were happy to take power in the revolution that ousted their once close friend and last Prime Minister of the Shah, Shapour Bakhtiar of the National Front (a true believer in freedom), and that eventually assassinated him in exile in Paris. They are simply failed politicians after regaining their lost power.

Old habits are hard to kick.

Perhaps it is easy and convenient to blame our shortcomings on outside powers and expect them to be saints who uphold our rights and act for our freedoms even more steadfastly than we do ourselves. But the fact of the matter is that Iranian (and other Mideast) activists have consistently made far more serious mistakes and are far more responsible for their conditions than any outside power. The constant blaming of the US, whether to distance themselves from the West for domestic reasons or to please their idelogical prejudices, is just another one of those mistakes.

Labels: freedom, Ganji, iran, UN, US