Iran: Murder v. Reform

In the windswept mountains and fertile valleys of the Iranian province of Fars, where Cyrus founded the Persian empire almost 2,500 years ago, time has stubbornly stood still. The feudal landlords defiantly lead the fight against change, and especially against the Shah’s ambitious land-reform program.

This program permits landlords to own only one village and its farm lands and buildings; their other holdings must be sold to the government at specified prices for distribution to sharecropping farmers. Along with most of the other 450 wealthy families, the landlords of Fars have fought the land distribution law by helping to foment street riots in Teheran, falsifying ownership records with the connivance of provincial officials, forging ballots in local elections. Recently, the landlords won powerful allies by enlisting Moslem mullahs who are using their pulpits to frighten illiterate, landless peasants out of demanding their legal rights.

It was a formidable alliance, but last week it received a severe jolt. The landlords of Fars, by apparently hiring assassins to murder a young land-reform agent, turned an angry nation against them. Vowed the Shah: “His blood will be avenged.”

Malek Abedi, 32, lived in the provincial capital of Shiraz with his wife and an eight-year-old son. While he was being driven home in a Jeep with two other land-reform officials, a band of 15 or 20 masked, armed horsemen stopped the car near town and ordered the occupants to get out. “Abedi was the first one out.” recalled the driver, “and they immediately cut him down with shotgun and rifle fire.” Without harming the other two officials, the killers fled.

The government, convinced that the landlords were responsible for the deed, moved swiftly. Army planes flew low over the hills of Fars, stronghold of the fierce Kashgai tribe, to try and spot the killers. Under martial law, a military governor took over control from civilian officials who, it was rumored, had plotted with landlords to oppose reform. A national day of mourning was declared for Abedi, and the Teheran radio broadcast only news and funeral music. Instead of halting land reform in the area, the murder had the opposite effect. Agriculture Minister Hasan Arsanjani, who has aggressively pushed the cause of land reform under two Premiers, ordered local officials to finish the job in Fars within 45 days.

It will be tough, but Arsanjani is determined. In less than a year, the program has distributed 1,150,000 acres belonging to big private owners; they still control about three-fourths of Iran’s 50 million cultivated acres. Warned the Shah: “There is no longer any place for privileged landlords seeking prosperity from the privations of working peasants, who have equal rights to happiness.”