Book Review

Soulmate

Narges Karami
Translated by: Zahra Hosseinian

2020-10-27


Biography of the Commander of the 27th Mohammad Rasoolullah Division, Sardar Shahid Saeid Mohtadi Jafari (1958-2008).

Soulmate is the fifteenth volume of the "Twenty-seven in 27" collection. Each volume contains the biography of one of the twenty-seven commanders of the 27th Muhammad Rasoolullah Division. Soulmate is the life story of Brigadier General Saeid Mohtadi Jafari, one of the commanders of this division.

The author of the book, Seyyed Hassan Shokri (Commander of the 1st Company of Habib Battalion during the Sacred Defense), who spent a year of the war with Saeid Mohtadi, has written the life of this shahid as a linear narrative from childhood to martyrdom through interviews and conversations with the family, friends and fellow-warriors, as well as using published war resources and central archives for preserving and publishing sacred defense works and values of the Mohammad Rasoolullah Corps. The author's initiative in narrating the life of this shahid is to use direct quotations from family members, friends and even the shahid himself to portray special situations and excerpts from his life, which he has mentioned in the footnote of the book as the sources of these quotations. In addition, the information about different people, events, places and military terms in the footnotes of the book makes the reader more familiar with the atmosphere of those days and the front and the war. The author, in fact, has led the book to a research work in the field of oral history by adding historical data and referring memories to documents.

According to Hassan Shokri, "This book is the result of more than 70 interviews and conversations with different people and the use of various sources and in compiling it, in addition to presenting a documentary work, an attempt has been made to use a format that the content not to be boring for the reader and is attractive."

Saeid Mohtadi Jafari was born on October 20, 1958 in Pishva, Varamin. In 1975, after receiving a diploma degree, he was accepted to the University of Tehran in the field of chemistry, but he dropped out and entered the Teacher Education in Shahr-e-Rey. In the fall of 1977, after graduating, he taught in the deprived areas of Varamin and at the same time began his revolutionary activities. After the revolution, in early 1979, he joined the construction jihad to help the deprived people at Pishva. In the late spring of 1980, he went to Kurdistan to fight against the counter-revolution. From that time until February 1983, under the supervision and command of Mohammad Boroujerdi, he was present on various western fronts and commanded several operations. During this period, he met Mohammad Ibrahim Hemmat, the commander of the 27th Muhammad Rasoolullah Division, and this acquaintance had a great impact on his life.

In March 1983, he formed the Komeil Battalion by order of Hemmat and accompanied by several of his fellow-warriors. In 1983, he took part in Operation Dawn-1 as a battalion deputy. After this operation, he went to the west with the intelligence forces of the 27th Division at the request of Hemmat.

He was the commander of the intelligence forces of 27th Division and the commander of the 1st Brigade Ammar since November 1983 up to the March 1984. He got married on January 9, 1984 and returned to the front immediately after the wedding ceremony. After Hemmat's martyrdom in March 1984 in the Operation Kheibar, the command of the 27th Division was handed over to Abbas Karimi, and Saeid Mohtadi was also in charge of the intelligence-operations unit of the division.

Mohtadi was involved in several operations and was wounded many times and returned to the front, but at July 1986 in Operation Karbala-1, his injuries were so severe that despite twenty surgeries on his legs, he still had no successful treatment; so it prevented him from participating in operations until the end of the war.

In October 1988, he started studying in the field of chemistry teacher and received his bachelor's degree with an excellent grade in 1994.

In the early 1990, he was sent to Germany for treatment, but upon hearing the news of Imam Khomeini's death, he left the treatment unfinished and returned to Iran.

When Ahmad Kazemi took command of the Hamzeh headquarter in Urmia at 1993, invited Saeid to work there. Saeid was the operations commander of Hamzeh headquarter and the provincial commander of Shahid Boroujerdi headquarter since June 1993 to October 1997. His operational plans were very effective in calming the region, however, suffering from typhoid fever forced him to leave Hamzeh headquarter.

After completing his recovery period in December 1997, he was assigned the responsibility of planning management of the IRGC land forces operations deputy, which was continued until September 1999. With the knowledge that Qassem Soleimani had of Mohtadi, assigned him to command the operations of the Lebanese IRGC in October 1999. Three years after participating in the front lines of the war with Israel, he returned to Iran in June 2002 and accepted commanding the operations of IRGC ground forces.

Two years later, in November 2004, he replaced Hussein Hamedani, the commander of Muhammad Rasoolullah Division, and served there for one year. On January 2006, when he and Ahmad Kazemi - the then commander of the IRGC ground forces - and a number of commanders set out for Urmia to inspect Hamzeh quarter, their aircraft crashed due to a technical defect and Saeid Mohtadi and all the occupants of the plane were martyred.

The title of this book is taken from the term "soulmate", which Shahid Hemmat uses about Saeid Mohtadi. The book is compiled in 17 chapters, each of which is a narrative and a period of the shahid's life. The first, second and fifth narrations of the book each have an appendix in which the author has described the significant event of that narration. The book concludes with four appendices; "Text of Qassem Soleimani's speech at the anniversary of Saeid Mohtadi's martyrdom", "Chronicle of the Shahid's Life", "Sources, documents and pictures" and "Index".

This book, which is written by Hassan Shokri and researched by Shamsa Tabrizian and Masoumeh Zahrakar, was published by 27-Besat Publications in 515 pages at 2019.

 



 
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