IRAN’S POLITICAL STRUGGLE HITS THE BOX OFFICE

[The film does not mention any of the real candidates in Iran’s 2009 elections. But opposition activists say that it is no coincidence that the two most opportunistic characters resemble the official image the government is trying to portray of presidential challengers Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi.]

By Thomas Erdbrink 

TEHRAN — In Iran, newspapers stay away from politically sensitive topics, more and more Web sites are being blocked and anti-government protests have been declared illegal.

But the popular cinema is going strong, and, in recent weeks, the screenings of two locally made films at theaters across the capital have become a popularity contest of sorts between supporters of the government and the grass-roots opposition movement.

One movie, directed by a controversial backer of the regime, ridicules opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The other shows how complicated life has become for Tehran’s vast middle class, many of whom support the opposition movement.

“Ekhrajijha 3,” or “Outcasts 3,” with about $6 million in ticket sales, is a political comedy that follows a group of war veterans, some of whom are trying to convert their fame into political capital by running for president. Two of the most power hungry candidates lie, cheat and organize illegal, late-night parties to win the hearts of the nation’s young people, who are demanding change.

The film does not mention any of the real candidates in Iran’s 2009 elections. But opposition activists say that it is no coincidence that the two most opportunistic characters resemble the official image the government is trying to portray of presidential challengers Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

The two men became figureheads for the grass-roots movement that took to the streets to dispute Ahmadinejad’s victory. Both were placed under house arrest more than four months ago and haven’t been heard from since.

In his downtown office decorated with landmines, artillery shells and other war memorabilia, director Masoud Dehnamaki — a bearded veteran who says he misses the atmosphere of the Iran-Iraq war every day — said he saw no similarities between his film’s characters and the real-life candidates.

“The film warns against the wrong methods of democracy and elections campaigns,” Dehnamaki said between bites of pistachio nuts and sips of tea. The film focuses on “concepts,” not real people, he said.

Although Dehnamaki insists he is an independent artist, he appears to have many ties to official Iran. “Outcasts 3” has been heavily promoted on state TV and authorities allowed him to shoot big scenes of political rallies in the center of Tehran, gatherings that many mistook for anti-government protests.

Dehnamaki often finds himself denying charges that he was a leading member of the controversial Ansar-e Hezbollah militia, which was accused of beating anti-government demonstrators with sticks during student protests in 1999. “I was a journalist for the group, not a participating member, nor was I a leader,” he said.

But it is the opposition’s calls for a boycott of his movie that bother him most.

“The same people who always speak of tolerance and human rights are now inviting people for cultural boycotts,” he said. “They have created an unfair competition with the other movie.”

The other movie, “Jodaeye Nader Az Simin,” or “Nader and Simin: A Separation,” won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival in February and the top prize at the Sydney Film Festival on Sunday.

The family drama centers on the growing problems facing a typical middle-class couple in their early 40s going through a divorce. The film resonates powerfully with those who took to the streets in 2009, people well aware of the daily lies one needs to make in Iran to be protected from suffocating laws and outdated traditions. The movie sold about $3 million worth of tickets, according to local media.

Critics have accused director Asgar Farhadi of painting a dark picture of Iranian society, and the director is under pressure. Last year, his filming permits were temporarily revoked by the ministry of Islamic guidance and Islamic culture after Farhadi came out in favor of exiled filmmakers. During an April speech in Paris, pro-government media reported that he supported Iran’s opposition.

Farhadi does not deny that he backs demands for more freedoms in Iran, but he said that he did not wish to go into details at the moment. And, despite any troubles, early this year he received the Golden Simorgh, Iran’s highest film award.

In his spare office with the blinds down, Farhadi said Iran is a big paradox with two groups, one traditional and the other modern, constantly debating issues such as morality, religion and politics. “Our society is like a child reaching adolescence,” he said. “Some things will change as it gets older.”

Aware that he might be compared with Dehnamaki, he said he is less direct than his rival and, instead of providing answers, he wants his audience to leave the theater with questions, “because that is what we need in Iranian society, more thinking.”

In his movie, people often lie to protect themselves. “We need to be secretive in Iran, in order to survive,” he said. “These lies are for safekeeping a relative calm.”

Farhadi said he strongly opposes the boycott of Dehnamaki’s film. “But believe me, if there were appropriate circumstances for people to freely express their views they would never choose boycotting films.”

@ The Washington Post

IN PAKISTAN, PRO-AMERICAN SENTIMENT IS RARE

[While bin Laden was held in low regard by most Pakistanis and there have been few public displays of anger at his passing, the impact on attitudes toward the United States has been profound. Critics of Pakistani ties with Washington are ascendant on the streets, in the media and, crucially, at Pakistan’s military headquarters in Rawalpindi. Backers of the relationship, the few who remain, have been cowed into silence or are reconsidering their stands.] 

By Griff Witte 

ARIF ALI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES - The United States and Pakistan
have been allies for decades, but it has rarely been easy to
be pro-American here. In the photo, Pakistani protesters
hold up a burning US flag in Lahore on May 27, 2011.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Ali Khan Afridi is a wanted man. Militants come to his house in this frontier city and menace his family. Men claiming to be from Pakistan’s intelligence services call at 2 a.m., and tell him to watch his back.

Afridi accepts all this as the price of his radical views: In a country where the vast majority of people believe the United States is an enemy, Afridi is unabashedly pro-American.

“I believe that America is the only power that can defeat these monsters, these terrorists,” Afridi said. “And that means my life is in permanent danger.”

The United States and Pakistan have been allies for decades, but it has rarely been easy to be pro-American here. Now, following last month’s killing by U.S. Navy SEALs of Osama bin Laden, speaking out on behalf of the United States requires a degree of boldness that verges on a death wish.

While bin Laden was held in low regard by most Pakistanis and there have been few public displays of anger at his passing, the impact on attitudes toward the United States has been profound. Critics of Pakistani ties with Washington are ascendant on the streets, in the media and, crucially, at Pakistan’s military headquarters in Rawalpindi. Backers of the relationship, the few who remain, have been cowed into silence or are reconsidering their stands.

“The U.S. doesn’t realize it, but the damage done is huge. This is a deep hurt that is not going to go away,” said Riaz Khokar, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States who now advocates a dramatic downgrading of the relationship. “We have placed all our eggs in the U.S. basket. And the eggs turned out to be rotten.”

What Khokar and others object to is not that the United States killed bin Laden. It’s the fact that after a decade of partnership in battling extremists, the Obama administration decided to carry out the raid in the northern city of Abbottabad without informing Pakistan.

U.S. officials have said they were concerned about tipping bin Laden off and did not want to risk confiding in Pakistani security services that have not always proved trustworthy. Since May 2, U.S. policymakers have openly wondered whether elements of the Pakistani military or intelligence services knew about bin Laden’s presence.

Such statements have deepened the mistrust here, and the sense of betrayal.

“In this part of the world, public humiliation is a very serious matter. And the U.S. has humiliated the armed forces of Pakistan,” said Khokar, who has met recently with Pakistan’s powerful top general, Ashfaq Kayani.

Perhaps no other Pakistani backer of the American alliance has come under more scrutiny, or pressure, than Kayani. The army chief had been tightly aligned with the United States, and had forged a particularly strong relationship with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

But after May 2, Kayani “almost went into a state of shock. He could never imagine in his wildest dreams that after all the coordination with Mike, this would be the outcome,” according to retired Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, a former ambassador to the United States who is considered close to Kayani.

In his public statements since the bin Laden raid, Kayani has been frequently critical of the United States. He is facing pressure from his corps commanders to go beyond rhetoric and take a far tougher policy line, including forcing an end to the U.S. campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt.

Despite growing anti-Americanism within the public in recent years, the army’s top leadership had long been a bastion of belief that the U.S. alliance was too important to risk losing. But that has changed.

“The army is very, very sensitive to public opinion,” Durrani said. “Right now there’s a rethinking because there’s been a failure in the old strategy of so-called cooperation with the U.S. Anyone in their position would rethink.”

‘Verbally abusing America’

On Pakistani television screens, the rethinking plays out nightly. The airwaves are filled with prime-time anchors who attack the United States, and lately go after even the Pakistani generals who support the alliance. “If you are a journalist and you want high ratings, start verbally abusing America,” said Saleem Safi, host of a popular show on the privately run Geo network. “If you abuse the Taliban, al-Qaeda or the Pakistani establishment, you face threats to your life — people say you are a non-Muslim. If you are talking against America, you become a hero.”

Advocates of downgrading the U.S. relationship point to the estimated 35,000 Pakistanis who have been killed in extremist violence since Pakistan partnered with the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The billions of dollars in aid supplied by Washington, they say, hardly compensate for the economic devastation wrought by a war with militants that has never been accepted as Pakistan’s own.

In Peshawar, the teeming capital of Pakistan’s northwest that has suffered a disproportionate share of attacks, a massive billboard memorializes a police official assassinated by the Taliban last year. Streets are named after other soldiers and officers who have fallen. But by and large, “people have not owned this war. They say it is the war of the U.S. that has been imposed on us,” said Shaheed Soherwordi, an international relations professor at Peshawar University.

Soherwordi spoke from a desk in the Lincoln Corner, a section of the university library co-sponsored by the U.S. government that gives Pakistanis a place to read American books and magazines — everything from thick biographies of presidents to Entertainment Weekly.

It is one of the few places in the city that is openly associated with the United States. Another, the American consulate, is considered such a prime target for attack that Soherwordi recently pulled his daughter from a school that he felt was situated too close to the fortress-like compound.

“Every thing and every person associated with the U.S. is a target,” Soherwordi said.

That includes Afridi, who leads a consortium of non-governmental groups operating in the neighboring tribal areas.

Afridi, 36 and clean-shaven, insists he does not have a death wish, but is well aware of the risks of speaking out so strongly in favor of the United States. In recent days, a known militant visited the Afridi home, and told Afridi to stay quiet.

Afridi said he has no intention of doing so. The real threat to his native tribal lands is not the United States, he said, but the Arab, Chechen and Uzbek extremists who have moved in and taken over. He believes others agree with him, but are too afraid to say so.

“There are millions like me,” Afridi said. “But they are terrified. And they are silent.”

© The Washington Post