Trouble & Attitude 1/Trouble and Attitude - Issue 01.iso/pc/pctext/ewrepc1.txt

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BEGINNING OF EW REPORT VOLUME 13, PART ONE
Volume 13, No. 2, February 17, 1995

Mexican Rounds

The latest effort by Mexican President Ernesto
Zedillo to create an image of a strongly led,
orderly country evaporated on Tuesday. After a
five-day military offensive against the Indian
villages in the mountains of Chiapas state, Zedillo
called a halt to the army's operations.

Mexican sources attribute Zedillo's shift to
political advisers, who blamed the offensive
against the Indian campesinos for the sweeping
defeat in Sunday's elections in Jalisco, Mexico's
second most populous state. The candidates of the
ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)
[Institutional Revolutionary Party] for governor
and mayor of Guadalajara lost. The candidates of
the opposition Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN)
[National Action Party] led their PRI opponents
by 18 points when the votes were tallied. Though
only 30 percent of the electorate chose to partici-
pate, 75 percent of those who did voted for oppo-
sition candidates.

Jalisco's populace has little reason to love the
PRI. Three years ago, government corruption led
to an explosion of sewer gas that leveled a city
block and killed some 225 people. The murder of
the cardinal of Guadalajara two years ago remains
unsolved; and the once-prosperous state economy,
based on small-scale farming and businesses, has
been seriously pinched by the free-trade policies
of the last two PRI presidents, Carlos Salinas and
Zedillo, who have opened markets to such big
U.S. retailers as Walmart. The PAN governor-
elect, Alberto Cárdenas, who won a reputation for
budget-cutting good government as mayor of
Jalisco's second-largest city, Ciudad Guzman, will
have a lot on his plate, as will Guadalajara's PAN
mayor-elect, Cesar Coll.

In a night offensive last Thursday, troop-
carrying helicopters arrived at remote Indian
villages close to the Lacandon forest that were the
homes and headquarters of the Zapatista National
Liberation Army (EZLN). Their goal was to
capture Zapatista leaders, starting with the green-
eyed military commander known as Subcoman-
dante Marcos, named by the government as a
Jesuit-trained former college professor from
Tampico Rafael Sebastian Guillon Vicente, 37,
who quit teaching 11 years ago and disappeared.
The troops found only the oldest men, women and
children. The rest had fled into the surrounding
forests.

IN THIS ISSUE

1Mexican Rounds: President Zedillo's prob-
lems of economic destabilization increased this
week. It is the result of discontent with eco-
nomic mismanagement, sympathy towards some
of the reformist aspects of the Zapatistas, and
the evaporation of the military campaign against
them. International fears of debt service default
and possible collapse of the U.S.-led bailout
bring new pressure on the peso - and the dollar.

3Iran's Future: An in-depth report on Iran's
theocratic leadership factions as the country
moves towards the sixteenth anniversary of its
Islamic and socialist revolution.

6Misconnects: While broad environmental
issues remain a cause for many, concerns in
1995 are focussing on pragmatic issues.

7Yeltsin and the Security Services: While
the health of President Boris Yeltsin remains
problematic, his close supporters have created a
stable, massive, clandestine and probably
unconstitutional security apparat for the Krem-
lin. The new "special services" are outside par-
liamentary control and can terrorize the presi-
dent's political opponents.

8The Final Frontier: Russians and Americans
may get together in space, but feuds and U.S.
complaints about conditions continue at the
Baikonur Cosmodrome.

9Global Briefs: Shorter reports from Algeria,
Fiji, Japan, Korean Affairs, Latin American
Affairs, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Uzbekistan
and Vietnam.

11Jiang Zemin's Army: China's army, believed
by many to be the key to the post-Deng transi-
tion, is thrust into the limelight by a mass mur-
der carried out by a disgruntled officer. The
army, plagued with poor morale, failed draco-
nian remedies and inflexible regulations, must
remain the tool and never the partner of the
Communist Party.

On the weekend, after reporters were barred
from the region, the Red Cross received reports
that Indian villages were being bombed, leaving
many civilian casualties; it began to withdraw its
staff.

The pressure for an armed offensive against
the Zapatistas came not from the Mexican public,
for the demands for democratic political reform
and social programs issued by the EZLN have
widespread support. Many Mexicans across the
political spectrum credit the Zapatistas with gal-
vanizing the national debate that has pressed the
PRI and its entrenched old-style authoritarian
politicians to accept gradual reform under the
technocratic President Salinas. Rather, the pres-
sure for sending in the army to crush the Zapatis-
tas came from the New York-based Chase Man-
hattan Bank and other creditors.

A memorandum dated January 13, 1995,
entitled "Political Update on Mexico" circulated
by the Emerging Markets Group at Chase is cred-
ited with sparking the sudden change in President
Zedillo's policies. In part, the document said,
"The government [of Mexico] will need to elimi-
nate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective
control of the national territory and security pol-
icy." The memorandum made reference to the
pending local elections and said, "The Zedillo
administration will need to consider carefully
whether or not to allow opposition victories if
fairly won at the ballot box."

Elections are pending in the states of Yucatán,
Guanajuato, Baja California and Michoacán - all
opposition strongholds.

In Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies,
that publicized the Chase memo, says its author is
Riordan Roett, a distinguished Latin American
scholar and liberal who in 1974 headed the Emer-
gency Committee to Aid Latin American Scholars
(ECALAS), an organization that helped sponsor
Chilean political refugees into U.S. academic
posts. Roett is director of Latin American Studies
at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced Interna-
tional Studies in Washington; he is on leave-of-
absence while serving as Chase adviser.

Shortly before the memo was circulated, Roett
spoke at a Washington panel on the Mexican
economic crisis and its ramifications. There,
Roett recounted that the top Clinton State Depart-
ment officials he spoke with "were somewhat
puzzled that Chiapas was of such concern to
investors [since they felt] Chiapas is a tiny part of
Mexico and Comandante Marcos does not appear
to have nuclear power to use against Mexico City.
But in this context, Chiapas becomes one of those
drops, drops, drops of water that anticipates a
great deal of anxiety on the part of the investor
community."

Roett insisted that despite the bailout efforts,
foreign investors would not return to Mexico until
their confidence was reestablished, meaning when
the Zapatistas were eradicated, saying "It is abso-
lutely essential to resolve the Chiapas issue from
the investor point of view as quickly as possible."

Roett acknowledged, "There are always political
costs in bold action. If it cannot be resolved
diplomatically; it must be resolved."

"Even if this were a good year," said Roett,
"from the investor point of view, Chiapas is one of
the questions that I am constantly - constantly -
hit with by investors in my Chase Manhattan Bank
hat. They want to know why it isn't resolved, when
will it be resolved, why can't it be resolved and
what it represents."

He warned that Mexican international currency
reserves had fallen to $5.5 billion from $28 billion
at the end of 1993. Even with the $18 billion
credit line initially put together by the Clinton
administration with other nations, said Roett,
Mexico had access to less than $24 billion. In
other words, he feared that Mexico would default
on service of its debt, of which Chase and other
U.S. banks hold a great deal. Thus, unless real
support took place quickly, the collapse of the
peso would pull down every other emerging
market in the Third World and leave creditors
looking at default.

Interestingly, the huge investment funds and
banks do not blame the collapse of the peso on
the deliberate prolonged overvaluation of the peso
in the face of serious inflation of the money
supply by the PRI government in order to finance
Zedillo's presidential election. Experts believe the
peso should have been devalued heavily a year
ago.

Devaluation was postponed, claim many ana-
lysts, for two reasons - to pacify the Mexican
voters, U.S. investors and the U.S. Congress when
the NAFTA vote was pending. The real culprits,
the Mexican government would like the United
States to believe, are the Mayan-speaking Indians
of remote Chiapas state. On December 19, 1994,
the Zapatistas staged their first demonstration
since starting their rebellion in January. They
took over three small towns to dramatize their
demands that President Zedillo resume the dia-
logue. The Zapatistas had held to their cease-fire
through the election and Zedillo's December 1
inauguration. Zedillo's failure to appoint a peace
commissioner sparked the December 19th brief
takeovers. It had nothing to do with the Finance
Ministry's announcement of a 20 percent devalua-
tion the next morning. Foreign investors saw that
the Mexican government had deceived them [the
Finance Ministry denied plans to devalue right to
the end], that there was no transparency in the
government's actions, and that surely the overval-
ued peso would fall at least another 20 percent.
As a result, they bailed out. Wednesday's debt
default of Grupo Sidek, a large Mexican construc-
tion conglomerate, precipitated another pounding
of the peso, bonds and the Mexican stock
exchange that dropped more than 6 percent that
day.

Zedillo's policy wobbles may give the old-time
PRI warlords an opening to impose reactionary
policies on the elections, the Zapatistas and their
sympathizers, and detonate just the sort of explo-
sion they hope to avert.

Iran's Future

The year has not opened propitiously on the eve
of the 16th anniversary of the Islamic revolution-
ary regime in Iran. Unprecedented torrential
rains fell on Fars Province this month, sending
floods rampaging down the Zagros Mountain
ravines and flooding salt flat remnants of ancient
lakes that dried up at the end of the last ice age.
Villages were inundated; almost all the bridges in
the province were washed away or seriously
damaged. In the adjacent coastal province,
Büsher, riverbeds normally dry overflowed and
the port city of the same name suffered extensive
flooding. The more northerly portions of the
Zagros, northeast of Shiraz, the provincial capital
of Fars, suffered a two-day blizzard.

Iranians are having to take care of themselves
after these catastrophes for the central government
is hard pressed for resources. Individual Iranians
[whether hanging out at shopping malls, standing
on line for food, traveling in buses, or the pro-
verbial taxi driver] freely express their cynicism
over official corruption, mismanagement and the
bullying excesses of the fanatical religious vigi-
lantes, the hezbollahi [members of God's party].
Individual Iranians are not punished usually for
speaking their minds and expressing opinions
because the mullahs [clerics] know it can not be
stopped - but action can. If any try to organize
opposition, the full force of the state security
apparatus is directed against them.

Indeed, there are questions as to whether the
government of President Ali Akbar Hashemi-
Rafsanjani remains standing simply because it is
under attack by fragmented enemies. Just before
his death last month, one of the regime's most
revered secular democratic critics, Mehdi Bazar-
gan, who served as Ayatollah Khomeini's first
post-revolution prime minister, estimated that the
committed supporters of the regime may number
only five percent of the population, with most of
them being Khomeini's hezbollahi rather than
Hashemi-Rafsanjani's allies. Iran's president has
been testing the waters for a constitutional
amendment to allow him to run for a third term.
Rafsanjani won reelection in June 1993 with 63
percent of the vote against a divided field of
weak candidates. When Deputy President for
Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Hojat ol-Islam
Ataollah Mohajerani tested the waters with Maj-
les-e Shura-ye Islami [Islamic Consultative Coun-
cil] deputies, the reaction was so strong he and
Hashemi-Rafsanjani backed down for the time
being. New maneuvers on the idea of a constitu-
tional amendment were revived in January; but
now the dominant clerical factions are rent by a
new dispute in and out of the government.

The dispute among the clergy was not caused
by Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Araki, whose
only fault was to die in December at the age of
106 and leave open the question of which cleric
should ascend to the exalted position of Marja-e
Taqlid [preeminent source of emulation].

Hashemi-Rafsanjani and his allies decided the
title should go to one of his political allies irres-
pective of standing in the religious hierarchy. A
list naming four ayatollahs as suitable candidates
for Marja-e Taqlid was published in the English-
language Iran News, a paper controlled by the
president, and in the quasi-governmental Resalat.
The list of suitable candidates was signed by the
powerful Tehran Jame' Rohaniyat-e Mobarez
[Society of Combatant Clergy]. The organization
is led by Ayatollah Mahdavi-Kani, a member of
the Assembly of Experts, who has been at various
times prime minister, head of the revolutionary
committees, interior minister and the official in
charge of all the mosques. The list omitted the
name of Iran's head of state Ayatollah Ali
Hoseini-Khamenei. It appears that Hashemi-
Rafsanjani has allied himself with Mahdavi-Kani
to block a move by Khamenei and his faction to
combine the supreme religious and supreme polit-
ical offices in one person.

In effect, Iran's president and the Tehran
Combatant Clergy are arguing for a separation of
the religious and political institutions. The oppo-
sition is centered in the Jamae'-ye Modarresin
Hozeh Elmiyeh Qom [Society of Qom Seminary
Teachers] led by the chairman of the Assembly of
Experts, Ali Meshkini, Judiciary chief Moham-
mad Yazdi and Ahmad Jannati, an influential
member of the 12-member Council of Guardians.
They want their ally Khamenei to embody both
the governmental leadership and the marja'iyat
[condition, state or status of being accepted as a
source of emulation] lest the leadership be weak-
ened. The Majles issued a statement saying only
Khamenei was worthy of the marja'iyat.

A third group of "clerics within the regime" is
said to have proposed the rehabilitation of Grand
Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, deposed as
Khomeini's heir because of his criticisms of the
regime. There is a fourth faction - the Shi'ite
clerical establishment at Najaf in southern Iraq,
whose candidate is Ayatollah Sistani, successor to
Ayatollah Abolqasem Khoi, who died under house
arrest by the Iraqi regime. The only point on
which the Qom clergy is united is that the
marja'iyat should not go to Najaf.

The stakes are very high for the clerical fac-
tions. Those who oppose the regime and lose face
prison, torture and execution. In a letter to the
U.N. secretary-general, one non-clerical opponent
noted that Yazdi, Meshkini, Jannati and former
Minister of Intelligence and Information Hojjat
ol-Islam Mohammad Mohammadi-Reyshahri wage
a war of oppression against dissident clerics via
the Special Court. It is claimed that more than
1,000 dissident clerics had been stripped of their
posts, 1,000 more were imprisoned, flogged or
banished, and 600 had been condemned to death
[the number executed is uncertain].

One sign of the government's unpopularity has
been its ruthless suppression of any form of dis-
sent. Last August, the Majles-e Shura-ye Islami
rejected the petition of the city of Qazvin and its
environs, an agricultural center of 750,000, 80
miles northwest of Tehran, to be separated from
Zanjan Province and allowed to form its own
provincial government just as Tehran has its own
provincial-type government. The issue was local
self-government and control of taxes levied.
When thousands marched in protest of the Majles
ruling, the government reacted violently. Oppo-
nents of the regime claim between three and four
thousand were killed. The government said only a
handful died. All local government officials and
even the Friday iman [preacher] in the mosque
[the Friday imams are appointed by and answer-
able to the government] supported the people.
For this "rebellion," save only the Friday iman, all
lost their jobs and many their lives.

In his last interview, Bazargan said that "the
smallest movement, the smallest gathering of
people, even a strike by workers or students is
forcefully suppressed out of fear that it might
spread." Bazargan died on January 20 in Zurich,
Switzerland, of heart failure. Reportedly, the
government delayed granting his family's request
that he be allowed to seek medical help abroad.
Tehran's official media said he was flown by
helicopter to the hospital directly from the plane
and was shortly pronounced dead.

Some five years ago, Hashemi-Rafsanjani
explained his reason for draconian measures quite
forthrightly in a conversation with Bazargan and
other opposition leaders. Said Iran's cleric-
president, "When the Shah gave us freedom, we
drove him out of the country. We will not repeat
this mistake."

Iran lists more than 70 legal parties, but they
are powerless shells. Three groups count: the
Tehran Militant Clergy, the Qom Seminary
Teachers and the Fedaiyin Islam [Fighters for
Islam] Organization, headed by Sadeq Khalkhali.
All have large followings of Majles deputies.

The regime has been brutal to Bazargan and his
Iranian Liberation Movement. Bazargan, whose
family hails from the eponymously named town
on the frontier between Iranian Azerbaijan and
Turkey, had the confidence and support of Iran's
middle classes and bazaaris [small businessmen].
He was known as a consistent democratic oppo-
nent of the Shah and as a pious, devout Muslim.
His presence as head of government gave the mul-
lahs cover and a breathing space as they maneu-
vered to take full power. He and his party have
the potential to be a real threat to the regime.

In subsequent Islamic Consultative Assembly
elections, Hashemi-Rafsanjani used the certifica-
tion board of Shi'ite clerics that he appointed to
disqualify as unfit to run for public office his
secular democratic critics led by Bazargan and in
addition some of his critics among the clergy who
charged Hashemi-Rafsanjani was failing to imple-
ment the policies of Khomeini. Prominent among
this group were two leading "red mullahs," both
with the clerical titles of hojat ol-Islam, Moham-
mad Musavi-Khoeinha, who orchestrated the
occupation of the U.S. Embassy and subsequently
was prosecutor general; and Ali Akbar Mohtashe-
mi-Pur, who created Hezbollah while he was
Tehran's ambassador to Damascus and from 1985
to 1989 was interior minister.

In mid-January, in what proved to be his last
interview with a German publication, Bazargan
recalled methods by which the Iranian government
destroys potentially challenging opposition parties.
A party is forbidden to publish and hold public
assemblies; any who make copies of party
announcements are arrested. The registration
commission informed Bazargan that his applica-
tion was rejected and his Iranian Liberation
Movement was illegal - by law only a court can
do that. He put no hope in Iran's courts terming
the level of official corruption "breathtaking" -
especially in Yazdi's judiciary.

The secret police harass ordinary party mem-
bers directly and using violent gangs of fanatics,
the hezbollahis, as the devotees of the late Ayat-
ollah Khomeini's teachings are termed. The
intent of the regime is to isolate the party leaders
from their supporters. Recently, the secret police
recorded telephone calls of a school teacher and
one of his female students, spliced the words to
concoct a scandalous conversation, made the tape
public and arrested the teacher, ruining his career.
In prison, his tormenters boasted they were cut-
ting off the branches of the tree so the roots
would dry up.

In Bazargan's opinion, perhaps only 5 percent
of the populace actively support the Iranian gov-
ernment. "Even among the ministers, functionar-
ies, directors and clergy there are people who are
against it and do not support the system."

In the past, a few independent or opposition
publications have been licensed. However, control
over the media is exerted and maintained through
the Ministry of Culture's monopoly on paper and
newsprint. Publishing stories that displease the
government brings a cut in the allocation - or
sometimes outright banning.

At the end of last week, Hashemi-Rafsanjani's
government decided to strike indirectly at
Khamenei by a ban on the newspaper Jahan
Islam [Words of Islam], founded in 1991 and
owned by a cleric, Hojat-ol-Islam Hadi Khame-
nei, a brother of Leader of the Islamic Revolution
Ayatollah Khamenei. The publication had run a
series of interviews with former Interior Minister
Mohtashemi, who often criticizes Hashemi-
Rafsanjani's regime as abandoning the Khomeinist
principles of export of the Islamic revolution and
militant opposition to the West. In his private
capacity, Mohtashemi has made many visits back
to Damascus and the Bekka Valley of Lebanon to
consult with Hezbollah [Party of God] leaders.

Iran's clergy have divergent views of how
strictly the population must be disciplined in
order to make them conform to the precepts of

Shi'ia Islam, under what conditions to have rela-
tions with Western countries and how best to
reconstruct the national economy.

After 15 years of Islamic revolutionary rule,
democracy is a shell and the per capita income of
Iranians has been slashed in real terms despite oil
exports. The wreck of the economy began with
the upheaval accompanying the revolution,
nationalization of major sectors of the economy
and the eight-year war with Iraq. In the eyes of
the revolutionaries, virtually any entrepreneur was
subject to charges of collaboration with the for-
mer regime. Even while the war with Iraq conti-
nued, Tehran's bazaar merchants who put millions
into financing the Islamic revolution against the
monarchy were singled out as capitalist exploiters
by the red mullahs. Hashemi-Rafsanjani has
promised privatization and new laws to encourage
foreign investment ever since becoming president
six years ago. Movement in that direction has
been slow. The main successes have been in
persuading members of the Iranian diaspora to
invest in the homeland.

Throughout the war with Iraq, virtually noth-
ing was spent on fundamental infrastructure ele-
ments like roads, ports, communications and elec-
trical power. Many of Iran's rural villages are not
on the electrical grid - one reason the government
has been promoting wind power and other alter-
native sources of electricity for small villages.
During the past 15 years, the population increased
from 33.5 million to 66 million. Half the popula-
tion is under the age of 20. The development
plans of Hashemi-Rafsanjani largely have not
been implemented because of corruption, wastage
and diversion of funds to a huge military buildup
that, according to the United States and Israel,
includes a clandestine nuclear weapons acquisition
program apparently sparked in 1992 when U.N.
inspectors found Iraq's secret nuclear weapons
factories and discovered Baghdad was about two
years away from building and testing its first
nuclear weapon when Saddam Hussein made his
catastrophic decision to invade and annex Kuwait.

For several weeks, Israel has been leading a
campaign to raise U.S. awareness of the strategic
danger posed to the Mideast - Arab monarchies
and other secular states as well as Israel - by a
future Iran with its fanatical mullahs able to
blackmail governments with a modest arsenal of
nuclear weapons jury-rigged to Chinese medium-
range [M-9 and M-11] and North Korea's
intermediate-range Nodong I missiles. Washing-
ton also has said Iran is seeking a chemical weap-
ons arsenal utilizing insecticide and chemical
plants purchased from India and Germany - a
move sparked by Iraq's extensive use of poison
gas on the Kurdish villages in the mid-1980s.
These reports coincided with the arrival early last
month of Russian Minister of Atomic Energy
Viktor Mikhailov to sign an accord to repair and
complete the two 1,200-megawatt reactors at the
Büsher nuclear-power plant nearly completed by
Germany when the revolution took place, but
bombed and seriously damaged by Iraq.

This week U.S. Defense Secretary William
Perry, an expert on defense technology, dismissed
Iran's current program saying Tehran would need
a decade or more to build nuclear weapons.
Furthermore, Iran has not built even one reactor
or missile on its own. As one Israeli expert on
Iran noted, Tehran has been running a missile
development program for a decade, so far without
success. One Tel Aviv commentator recently
noted, "Iran is a weak country, economically back-
ward (GNP per capita is $1,400 compared with
$14,000 for Israel), torn apart from within, no
vision, no government, no military capability. . . .
If Iran's leaders have decided to go for the
nuclear option, they are doing so out of weakness
and desperation." The further the nuclear weap-
ons program progresses [and it will cost $30 bil-
lion or more], said the writer, the further Iran
will move from strengthening its conventional
army, raising the living standards, education and
supporting the networks of international terrorists.

Yet, it is possible that Iran is thinking in terms
of gestures and prestige. Obtaining by bribery
two or three former Soviet nuclear warheads from
Central Asia and affixing them to the Nodong I
that has a range of some 600 miles and can just
barely reach Israel may be the sort of use Tehran
has in mind, or perhaps using it to blackmail the
Gulf states and Iraq.

The position of Hashemi-Rafsanjani and his
relatively small support faction is far from secure.
He needs Western technology and trade to rebuild
Iran's infrastructure. Yet his government alarms
potential Western trading partners by strident
anti-Western rhetoric backed up by extensive
terrorist operations against exiled opponents and
open-handed support and arms for Islamic politi-
cal revolutionaries throughout the Islamic world.
Iranian leaders seem not to understand why West-
ern governments feel outraged by the slaughter of
Iranian political refugees in their capitals, bomb-
ings of civilian buildings, embassies and airliners,
and the training and arming of revolutionary
terrorists. Since last year, there have been reports
of Tehran's emissaries seeking meetings in West-
ern capitals with Israeli considered close to their
government asking in effect why they were upset
by what Iranian officials say in public. Hashemi-
Rafsanjani's need for Western loans has not low-
ered the confrontational tone coming.

Inflation and unemployment cause many hard-
ships for those least able to bear them - the poor,
the unemployed and the crippled veterans of the
war with Iraq. Three million Iranians receive
assistance from the foundations formed to manage
the property of the late Shah and his supporters.
Though charges of embezzlement and corruption
attach to such entities as the Foundation for the
Oppressed, headed by former Iranian Revolution-
ary Guards Corps commander Mohsen Rafiqdust,
55, the pull of Islamic political populism has its
attractions. Hashemi-Rafsanjani's term ends in
two years, barring a constitutional amendment.
The nature of the successor government is in the
balance.
END OF EW REPORT VOLUME 13, PART ONE.