As we know, the reason, Israel
can justify it brutality and mass killing of
Palestinian civilians is because the notion of ‘collateral damage’ is accepted
as an inevitable result of military warfare.
However, there was an exception to this consensus during the first 9
months of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, which challenges the consensus and
shows the way out.
In September 1980, the Iraqi army
invaded Iran. Saddam believed that he could
defeat the Iranian army in less than a week.
As the religious clergy had decapitated and severely demoralized the
Iranian army by executing, imprisoning and expelling more than 12,000 army
officers. However, when the
democratically elected president Abol-Hassan Banisadr became commander-in-chief
of the army, he removed the principle of ‘blind obedience’, democratized the
authoritarian command and control of the army structure, kicked the clergy out
of army barracks and became a constant presence on the front lines. There was
an immense rise of patriotism within the army’s rank and file and Saddam’s dream
turned into a nightmare of a war that he could not win.
In desperation, he decided to
resort to creating terror within the Iranian population. He attacked some of
Iran’s frontier cities with missiles, leading to thousands of casualties. Banisadr visited one of those that were
destroyed, in city of Dezful, and in which many
had been killed. The furious people
demanded that he retaliate by attacking Iraqi cities. Banisadr recalls:
»Again, going back to my experience
during the war with Iraq, while the Iranian air force had dominated Iraq’s sky,
the Iraqi military used missiles against some Iranian cities which killed and
injured many civilians. I resisted demands for revenge and ordered the air force
not to carry out any mission, which might lead to collateral damage in
Iraq. As a result, when sirens sounded
in Baghdad and other cities, Iraqi civilians ran not for shelter but to the
roofs of their houses to see the planes as they were certain that they were not
targets. This method weakened Saddam
Hussain’s propaganda for mobilising Iraqi public opinion in the war with
Iran. It became one of the main reasons
that, nine months after he invaded Iran, he agreed to end the war and pay hefty compensation. «
What he
(Banisadr) was referring to was survivors of Iraq's attacks on the cities were
demanding a revenge attack and he had refused to order one. Once again, at the
time, we can see his refusal in his daily report to the people, referring to
negotiations with the ‘Eight mediating Islamic Countries Committees’ (Pakistan,
Turkey, Bangladesh, Gambia, Senegal, Guinea and Yaser Arafat.) who were trying
to end the war. On one of the occasions, he wrote:
"After
Mr. (Ahmed) Sékou Touré, (president of Guinea at the time) finished talking, I
responded that from the beginning (of the war) we had recruited peaceful
methods. Methods that we are still using while the war is happening Have
patience and come with us to the front. Then you will see what I tell you with
your own eyes. We are able to make an aerial attacks on Iraqi cities, and a
land attack with our missiles and canons. Until now we have resisted the
increasing pressure of the people who are under the fire of Iraqi warplanes,
missiles and canons. We haven’t (retaliated) and attacked any Iraqi
cities. (23 April 1980) (1)
We see
the same policy, around six months before before Iraq's invasion of Iran, the Komeleh Party (a Kurdish
Stalinist–Maoist organization, which was backed by Saddam Hussein and Shapur
Bakhtiar, Shah’s last prime
minister. Who was trying to overthrow the revolutionary regime.) attacked a military convoy on its way to the Iraqi
border. They inflicted casualties and then attacked the army's headquarters in
the city of Sanandaj, while entrenching themselves in people’s houses. In order
to break the siege, Banisadr not only refused to use the Airforce and heavy
weaponry in the town, but made a direct order that the military should not
inflict civilian casualties, at the cost of receiving themselves. Hence, the
military operation that could have broken the siege in a few hours by
inflicting a high level of casualties lasted 23 days as the army had to use
only light weaponry to spare the lives of civilians.
Unfortunately, the Iranian clergy
conducted a coup against Banisadr in June 1981, (2) which few people know about today as its story has been stolen from
the history of the revolution. It was
after this coup that the clergy began to retaliate and attack Iraqi cities.
It was because of this policy
that the Iraqi army increasingly lost motivation to fight an army that saw and
treated them as human. The treatment of
Iraqi prisoners was so humane, that the Red Cross, twice praised Iran’s
treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
Partly, because of these methods,
The Iranian army was able to liberate half of the land that it lost to Iraq, and
Saddam Hussein agreed to end the war, remove Iraqi forces from the remaining
Iranian land and pay a hefty compensation. This was the very thing the clergy
did not want, as in order to establish and solidify their dictatorship they
needed to continue the war. Hence, while
the coup against Banisadr interrupted his policy of not attacking civilians, it
demonstrates that ‘collateral damage’ cannot and should not be justified.
1. Enghelabe Eslami News Paper, issue: 521
https://www.banisadr.org/ketab/karnamee12.pdf
p. 1663
2. For
detailed analysis of the coup, see: Editor: Fatima Waqi Sajjad, ”Peace as
Liberation”, Mahmood Delkhasteh, ‘The June 1981 Coup: The Stolen Narrative of
the Iranian Revolution. Springer Publishing Co, Ohio-USA, 2023) pp. 156- 182
