Answer: The Basij, or “mobilization” force, also referred to as the Baseej, are Iranian vigilantes recruited from lower- and working-class neighborhoods by the Revolutionary Guard to enforce Islamic behavior, crush protests, mete out beatings and carry out torture and extra-judicial executions. They purposefully wear no uniforms or identifying markings. The Basij vigilante’s favored weapons, beside fists and boots, are hoses, clubs, iron bars, truncheons, ropes and firearms.
An all-volunteer paramilitary force reputed for its unpredictability, violence and unaccountability, the Basij vigilantes are similar to the Taliban’s roving vigilantes of the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, itself derived from Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The significant difference between the Basij and the other two vice squad is in sectarian orientation. The Basjij enforce Iran’s Shiite ideology. The Taliban’s and Saudi Arabia’s vigilantes enforce extreme interpretations of Wahhabi -Sunni repression.
Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini created the Basij toward the beginning of the Iranian Revolution in 1981 to serve in the Iran-Iraq war—not as soldiers, but as suicidal human waves. The Basij at the time were largely children.
According to The New York Times, “The Basij was reinvented in the late 1990s, Iran experts said, after the government felt that it had lost control of the streets during spontaneous celebrations when Iran won a spot in the World Cup soccer championship in 1998 and again during student protests in 1999. ‘They decided to invest in a force that could take over the streets that didn’t look like a military deployment,’ said an Iran analyst who did not want to be identified because of his involvement in the events.” The Basij were unleashed somewhat stealthily against protesters in the wake of the 2009 presidential election, beating up and murdering at least 13 supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who lost an apparently fraudulent election to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
As protests continued almost a week after the election, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme Leader,” warned, ironically during a prayer sermon on June 19, 2009, that opposition to the vote would no longer be tolerated. The warning was interpreted as a signal to the Basij to take off the gloves.
It is impossible to know the Basij’s precise manpower because the vigilantes are not organized like a military organization. Part of Iran’s Byzantine power structure, they’re sponsored by the Revolutionary Guard, but they don’t answer to a single authority. Rather, they are a collection of local militias with allegiances to local clerics or particular individuals. Their home base is the mosque (virtually every mosque in Iran has a “Basij” room).
The paramilitary force has been variously estimated at a few hundred thousands to 2 million. Zvi Shtauber and Yiftah Shapir, in The Middle East Strategic Balance 2005-2006 (Sussez, 2007), which includes a detailed numerical breakdown of every Middle Eastern country’s armed and paramilitary forces, puts the number of Basij at 2 million.
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