Ovi Magazine Issue #12: Sexuality Published: 01-03-2006

iFormat
History shouldn’t
surprise
By Thanos Kalamidas
Back in the ‘70s we all learned the atrocities of the Iranian leader, the Shah, his corrupted government and
the militant style dictatorship he had established, destroying and often killing his opposition.
In front of all this, demonstrations
and pictures made the public start
supporting, especially in Europe,
the opposition which, in this case,
was either the radical left or the
fundamentalists Muslim clerics,
with Ayatollah Homeini based in
exile in Paris.
The clerics won more sympathy
since people were somehow keener
on a cleric with a peaceful message
than a covered face Marxist with a
machine gun and that expanded to
governments, with even the American
government accepting the idea
of clerics ruling the country. What
happened after caught everybody
by surprise. The peaceful clerics
established a dictatorship using a
total Stalinist structure and slaughtered
their opposition establishing a
law system that returned the country
centuries in the past.
The biggest surprise for the west
came from the support of the Iranian
people to the clerics. Since
the ‘50s, the world was divided
into democratic or capitalist (you
can chose the word) west and the
Marxist east and there was a constant
conflict for power and influence.
For both sides one dogma
ruled: the enemy of my enemy is
my friend, which is something that
both powers paid in the worst way.
Bin Laden is a creation of this dogma.
He is a creation of the CIA and
the American administrations in
the name of stopping the Russian
influence in the East. They armed
him and funded him with weapons
and money, state armies in different
places of the world haven’t even
dreamed.
Iran was another case; the Shah
was going down even though a loyal
servant of the American and European
interests and his atrocities
were so big that they had to pull out
every obvious support. That meant
that a new regime had to replace
him that would continue to support
the western interests.
Between the Marxist groups and
the clerics the choice was easy.
There were others, but most of
them were part of the Shah regime
that had withdrawn their support to
Shah seeing the end of his ruling
and they definitely didn’t have the
support of the Iranian public.
The reason I go through this part
of international history is simple,
history should teach us; we should
learn from our mistakes and change
policies and ideas if necessary. But
here it happened again. A country
under siege from a mighty power
and suffering a constant war had
democratic elections. Democratic
the way the western powers hope
that every country will adopt soon.
And what do they elect? Another
Muslim regiment, following Islamic
laws and to make it worse,
listed as a terrorist organization by
the EU and USA.
Nobody doubts the role of Yasir
Arafat in the Palestinian fight. The
Palestinian people deserve a land
and nobody, including the American
president, has any doubts on
that issue. Fatah, Yasir Arafat’s
organization, started as a rebelling
team that gradually gave back
dignity and faith to the Palestinian
people. This has gone through the
hard prospect of being a terrorist
organization hunted by all the major
countries to be elected democratically
as a government in an
occupied land.
The very same organization has to
now give up their arms and a lifestyle
which they were born into,
and change into a government that
would lead its people to a welfare
state that provides safety, health,
education and work to the people.
A difficult step that failed and that’s
something history again has shown
us a lot of times.
Arafat’s government became illdisciplined,
corrupted and ineffective
organizations disappointing the
thousands of Palestinians who had
put all the faith for a better future on
them. A Muslim organization, Hamas,
became Fatah’s successor in
the hearts of the Palestinian people,
creating schools and looking after
their education, funding hospitals
and with a use of a network finding
jobs to the poor Palestinian people.
This is the very same Hamas that
armed and sent the suicide bombers
into Israel killing hundreds of
innocent people.
So what happens now? Hamas was
elected in the most democratic and
acceptable way for the west and
now they govern the Palestinian
state and lead the negotiations with
Israel, a country that the Hamas
again doesn’t recognize and has
an aim to destroy. The irony of the
whole thing is that Arafat and Fatah
are responsible for the uprising of
Hamas since they used them often
against their inside enemies practicing
exactly the same dogma with
the western governments.
The fact is that the west has, one
way or another, to accept the result
of these elections however hard it
is to swallow and Hamas has to
change into the new role without
making the mistakes of Fatah. Sad
as it sounds, Hamas has to follow
the example of Turkey’s Prime
Minister Erdogan, although I think
that Turkey has a long way before
they call themselves a democracy.
Erdogan, even though his Muslim
background has created a very
modern profile and despite being a
puppet of the militants that take the
decisions in the back, has managed
to give a European face to Turkey
and leads the country into the EU.
Finally, one thing the west has to
understand that democratic elections
do bring democracy and the
road to get there is long and difficult.
Steps that took us centuries
to accomplish, so we should not
expect the others to do in just few
years.