The Outsourcing of State Repression in Iran (1941-1978)

In addition to government and official institutions such as the police, the gendarmerie, and the National Organization for Security and Intelligence (SAVAK), the second Pahlavi government used militias to suppress its opponents. This use of armed non-state actors continued throughout this period (1942-1979). In fact, force and violence which should have been the monopoly of the state were also entrusted to non-state actors. Previous academic studies have ignored and underestimated the role of such informal/semi-official forces in the politics and militarism of the government. Moreover, these studies have paid little attention to their persistence. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to explain why pro-government militias continued to exist in the second Pahlavi period. To explain this issue, the views of experts in the field of militias were used as the research hypotheses. The research method was functional-historical explanation and library, documentary, and field methods were used for data collection. The present study examined the performance of militias during the events and political developments of this period. The research showed that during the various political and security crises that the Pahlavi government was involved in from the beginning to the end, gradually, some of the advantages of the militias over the official and government military were realized. These advantages included the low cost of managing and training them, local and specialized knowledge, strengthening the legitimacy of the government, and their deniability. Therefore, the government insisted on strengthening and developing the militias.