Everyday Charisma as a Source of Cohesion: The Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Iran-Iraq War

• In Event: 114 - Section on Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Thicker Concepts in Altruism and Social Solidarity Research

Abstract

As a non-professional, lightly-armed, but ideologically committed militia formed to repress internal anti-revolutionary upsurges in post-revolution Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was not suited for a conventional inter-state war. With the outset of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, however, it started fighting the Iraqi Army along with the regular Armed Forces of Iran. Existing theories on sources of military cohesion and organizational survival do not explain how an untrained and unequipped group of zealots like the IRGC did not follow either of the two frequently observed paths: that of fragmentation or dismantlement under battle pressure and that of rationalization through integration into the regular army. Using more than 60 published wartime diaries of Iranian veterans as data, I argue that the institution enjoyed a diffused and readily accessible charisma as a source of cohesion and motivation. Regardless of rank, every Guard was believed to have the potential of having charismatic attraction, and many were recognized to have manifested it. The particular cultural tradition of the Guards, recently reinvigorated by the revolution, created the condition of possibility for recognition of charisma in the war: the deeply embedded Shi’ite culture of celebrating the saint’s martyrdom enabled a recurrent interpretation of self-sacrificial will to martyrdom in the war as a holy state of being.

Author

• Maryam Alemzadeh, University of Chicago