Iranian militaryUganda and Iran have had regies in power for roughly the same length of time. Both seized power after violent upheavals, and, therefore, both declared themselves to be revolutions in the service of their populations. In his recent Observer article, Dr Yusuf Sserunkuuma is right when he talks about both the value of deep education as a key factor in the very different directions both countries have gone since then. Iran, having been attacked by the United States and Israel, has effectively defeated them both, if we understand defeat to mean causing your enemy to fail to meet their objectives behind attacking you militarily. The regime is still intact. No part of Iran is under foreign occupation. Iran has not been forced to agree to any kind of ceasefire terms or peace treaty. And the United States has failed to defend and protect its friends in the region, or even simply maintain its original military presence there, in the battle for the control of the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The American and their allied regimes in the region have been shocked by the speed, focus, scope and capacity of Iran’s reaction. Even with the higher technological base it had, Iran has clearly demonstrated a qualitative leap in how it thinks about national development, which includes national defence, and then implements it. Uganda is not doing so well. Instead, our government has made us one of America’s most trusted friends in the region. We help with American military ambitions. In return, America, through the World Bank and IMF, has designed our banking system, our health and social service provision, and our wider economic policies. Our population is poor, exploited, overtaxed, under skilled and badly housed. Dr Sserunkuuma puts this down largely to the types of minds and the culture that produced them, on the Iranian side. Certainly, over the past four decades, the United States has become the basically unchallenged big dog of planet earth, invading or bombing whoever did not comply with its view of the world, and using its currency to control and influence events. Resistance was always dangerous. If you had something that the USA wanted, or was not happy with the way you used it for yourself, you would first face bribery to betray your country, then economic sanctions, then sponsored rebellions by your citizens, followed by indirect warfare where a neighbour could be persuaded to invade you, and finally, direct invasion, then collapse. That is, until now. Iran has faced all of these things. The Americans first tried to make friends with them. Then later used neighbouring Iraq under Sadam Hussein to invade and wage an eight-year war against them, killing thousands. Then it financed rebel movements. After that (and after falling out with Saddam) the Americans then began a programme of diplomatic and economic bullying that has lasted until this direct joint attack with Israel. As many analysts have now explained, Iran had been preparing for this moment since at least the time of the 2004 American invasion of their neighbour Iraq, and the eventual arrest and execution of Saddam Hussein. Since then, America has been the official controller of all money earned from the sale of oil drilled in Iraq. When taken with the American bases in all the other Persian Gulf countries, Iran is the only country outside direct American control, and whose oil resources are not directly tied to the American economy, since Iran’s 1979 revolution had renationalized it after evicting the regime America had installed in 1953. So, the Iranians wisely assumed that their own turn to be invaded would come one day, and began preparing for it. This is where education comes in. Having clearly thought deeply, and studied the experience of their former enemy Saddam, they came to a number of conclusions. First and foremost, that the entire investment of a military presence in the Gulf was about oil. This meant that the oil trade was very important to the American economy. Secondly, that building a conventional military force of centrally-controlled land army, navy and airforce was never going to match similarly-deployed power from the American side. Thirdly, the whole regime should not be built around a few powerful individuals who, if deposed, or killed, would collapse the whole country. Fourth, the best way to ensure you had enough weapons was to make them yourself, and not be dependent on outsiders for technical support, spare parts and repairs, and who in that process, would come to know a lot about your defence arrangements. This set off a decades long process in re-organization, training, technological research and development. And this is where the education came in. A brief scan of the now widely discussed qualifications of the various layers of Iranian leaders, whose orientation combines three things: the study of religion; the mastery of hard sciences, and the understanding of Western European philosophy, society and economics. So, they have understood themselves and the enemies, and developed the knowledge to deal with them at a technical and physical level. Now they have fought against America and Israel using a combination of advanced technologies, non-traditional warfare, global media presence, and turning America’s dependence on the Gulf oil trade as a weapon against it. If we here in Uganda should undertake such a course of study, what would it look like, and how would it begin? We can all agree that the current content of our education, from primary to third- level, seems to teach how not to know ourselves, and also to admire Western society instead of understanding it. In that context, the sciences then become useless for building a national agenda because they lack guiding ideological context. Clearly, the Iranian population has a clear sense that their country is a thing worth defending, no matter what they might think of their government. Dr Sserunkuuma does not take us further into this question. Iran is a Shia Muslim country. That has been their culture for centuries. But they have a much older history as a people that they study and preserve. They know who they are. It is onto that identity that they have built this formidable defence system. As he rightly points out, Uganda has had its own share of PhDs. Some have even served in government. But we have not produced Iran-like results. It’s not a matter of what you know, but how you know it and where you may apply it. Ironically, there was an armed political movement set up and led by four doctorate-level Ugandans. It was briefly in power in 1979, the same year the Iranian revolution took place. It then went underground after being overthrown in 1980, and remained active until 1993 when it disbanded. In that whole time, it was mocked by many. The leaders of the current ruling party -and their ideologues, such as Mamdani and Kirunda Kivejinja – were particularly scornful. During its time in power, it was belittled as “the Gang of Four”, and “the learned professors”. It would be interesting to know what terms those ideologues would apply to the current leaders of Iran. What is the equivalent here in Uganda? From where would we draw the values and world outlook to which we could anchor our plans for guaranteeing our future as a people? We don’t seem to have a new collective culture in the way the Iranians have built a nation out of their many ethnicities. And we are trained to be suspicious of our own native cultures. To what extent are we allowed to officially contribute to a collective consciousness? At this rate, we should worry that, if faced with such an invasion, many “Ugandans” would probably cross to the American side. The writer is a political analystThe post It’s not just what you know; it’s how you know it appeared first on The Observer.