A Guerrilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979

5. Three Failed Interlocutions: Diverging Propensities

156 5 Three Failed Interlocutions Diverging Propensities Not visible for the public were . . . the deviations that deepened by the moment and gradually eradicated the young tree of hope . . . This invisible current was the slow and painful process of the impoverishment of the movement. . . . Instead of Marxism-Leninism, Maoism showed up and instead of the authority of thought over weapon, militarism appeared, and this sad process continued to its final logical conclusion in thought and in action: the emergence of Stalinism. —Group for Communist Unity, Moshkelat va masael-e jonbesh [The problems and issues of our movement] The Fadai Guerrillas shone on one of the darkest horizons of Iranian politics, but their shining was not because of their theoretical contributions to the problématique of national liberation. Their works reached activists who did not need much theory to persuade them to join the movement. They joined the armed movement for rather existential reasons. Ahmadzadeh’s predilection for practice over theory demonstrates the pervasive mood of this dissident generation . For this generation, Siahkal was a rare but decisive blessing. Students and youth attempted to contact Fadaiyan, and when unsuccessful in joining the unattainable PFG, they formed guerrilla cells on their own. After sustaining heavy casualties in 1970–71, Fadaiyan found these cells to be ideal sources of recruitment . So the PFG expanded by continually absorbing these deeply practice-oriented (amalgara), self-made militants. No matter how pathbreaking, Fadaiyan could not avoid receiving their fair share of debate. The near eradication of the group in 1976 pushed the originative debate between Jazani’s and Ahmadzadeh’s positions to the decisive point when, Three Failed Interlocutions | 157 in 1977, the OIPFG officially adopted Jazani’s theory. Before this point, however, Ashraf curbed the originative debate within the group while he was still alive, but that produced a defiant opposition to guerrilla warfare that tore a quarter of the OIPFG away in 1976. The “Fadai Monsha’eb” (Fadai Splinter Group), or Monsha’ebin, radically questioned the raison d’être of the Fadai Guerrillas. In actuality, the exchange between Mohsha’ebin and Fadaiyan fell short of a live debate because of Monsha’ebin’s lack of original ideas and because of the fact that at the time (1976–77) Fadaiyan were occupied with rebuilding the OIPFG. As mentioned, Fadaiyan often recruited zealous militant cells, but not all whom they absorbed were theoretically docile. The OIPFG recruited members of the People’s Democratic Front (PDF) along with their maverick theorist, Mostafa Sho’aiyan, who single-handedly challenged Fadaiyan with such vigor that it led to his dismissal within a few months (chapter 6). Setareh, or the Group for Communist Unity (GCU), merged with the OPFG in 1973, providing them with much-needed logistics in Europe and the Middle East. Later, in 1975, when the GCU learned in dismay about the secret purging of Fadai members, it broke away from the OIPFG and publicized four theoretical exchanges and other documents about the OIPFG’s organizational life. Finally, the Marxist-Leninist Mojahedin-e Khalq, which had violently wrested this Muslim group away from its religious leaders, posed another challenge to Fadaiyan over the issue of the united popular front. Their exchanges show major differences in their understanding of national liberation, differences that made unification impossible. In this chapter, we focus on the three debates of Fadaiyan: with the GCU, the Marxist-Leninist Mojahedin, and Monsha’ebin. These debates show the specter of Stalinism that haunted the OIPFG, the internal plurality of Fadaiyan, and above all, the irreducibly paradoxical character of the discourse of national liberation , a discourse permeated by the aporias of agency and democratic politics. Last but not least, these diverging positions show that the unifying effect of armed struggle that Fadai theorists advocated was simply a phantasm. OIPFG and the Group for Communist Unity In 1972 the OIPFG was contacted by a clandestine exile group, known as Setareh (Star). Several members of Setareh had worked with the National Front Organization Abroad since its formation in Europe and the United States in 1961 (GCU 158 | A Guerrilla Odyssey 1978, 2, 5). Setareh was active under the name National Front of Iran–Middle East Chapter (henceforth NF-ME) (Matin 1999, 352). Setareh emerged in 1970 from the unification of several Communist circles in exile whose members were activists with the CISNU (founded in 1962) (Chaqueri 2001). By this time, two main factions existed in the National Front...