IND: An overview of the Basij forces.

In the months since Iran’s contested June 2009 presidential election, the Basij Resistance Force has emerged as one of the regime’s main pillars of support against the democracy movement. In the long term, however, it is uncertain whether the militia is capable of prevailing in a prolonged fight against a persistent opposition.

Rather than having independent bases, the Basij is physically organized at mosques, government administrative offices, factories, and educational institutions. This and other factors make it impossible to establish precisely how many members the Basij has. Two of the militia’s core components are the so-called “Ashura Brigades” for male members and “al-Zahra Brigades” for female members, established around 1992-1993 to suppress urban uprisings. According to one account, there are 2,500 such brigades with 300-350 armed members each. It is even more difficult to determine how many members joined the Basij for ideological reasons and how many joined for opportunistic reasons — the latter are much more likely to defect.

There are signs that the regime leadership has not been particularly happy with the Basij’s performance. On October 2, Hojjat al-Eslam Hossein Taeb was removed as Basij chief, and on October 5, the militia was formally integrated within the framework of the IRGC Ground Forces, with Brig. Gen. Muhammad Naghdi as the new chief.

Implications

A weak Basij will be a serious problem if the Iranian regime becomes embattled. The regular military would not be able to pick up the slack: besides being politically noninterventionist, it is based in garrisons along the country’s international borders, far from major urban centers. Meanwhile, the Law Enforcement Forces have given a mixed performance in street battles with protesters, and the so-called “pressure groups” (e.g., the Ansar-e Hizballah vigilante organization) are too undisciplined for concerted action. Theoretically, the IRGC could serve as the regime’s backbone at a time of need, but many of its 125,000 enlisted men may be conscripts, raising questions about how they would act if sent on the streets. The last time regular IRGC personnel were ordered to move against demonstrators was in Qazvin in 1994; the unit in question refused to go.