The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History 9780199672530, 0199672539

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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

C ON T E M POR A RY M I DDL E E A ST E R N A N D NORT H A F R IC A N H ISTORY

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t h e ox f or d h a n db o o k of

CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EASTERN AND NORTH AFRICAN HISTORY Edited by

AMAL GHAZAL and JENS HANSSEN

1

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2021 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2021 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937124 ISBN 978–0–19–967253–0 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, cr0 4yy Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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To the women and men of the Middle East and North Africa, speaking truth to power and paving the way for a spring for all…

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Acknowledgements

At over 700 pages, the success of this project and its final shape depended on many individuals, their time and their labor. We thank, first and foremost, our contributors for their commitment to this project and for their patience with some unexpected delays. External reviewers helped us shape its broad contours and its core mission. Staff at Oxford University Press and SPi Global did a most professional job, shepherding this project till the very end. We thank, in particular, our Commissioning Editor, Academic History Cathryn Steele in Oxford and our Editorial Coordinator for OUP Handbooks Laura Heston in New York for their dedication and patience. Colleagues and students at Dalhousie University, University of Toronto and Simon Fraser University shared conversations, provided comments and feedback and most important, valued the concept and goals behind this project. We thank them for their time and support.

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Contents

List of Contributorsxiii Note on Transliterationxv Introduction: Toward A History of the Presentxvii Jens Hanssen and Amal Ghazal

PA RT   I   F O U N DAT ION S 1. Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa

3

Elizabeth Williams

2. Fiscal Crisis and Structural Change in the Late Ottoman Economy

24

Murat Birdal

3. Foundations of Religious Reform (Islah) and Cultural Revival (Nahda)

39

Dyala Hamzah

4. Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations in Comparison: Iran and Turkey

68

Nader Sohrabi

PA RT I I   F OR M AT ION S 5. The First World War and Its Legacy in the Middle East

93

Eugene Rogan

6. The Levant Mandates

109

Michael Provence

7. The Emergence of Nationalism

127

James McDougall

8. The Matter of Sectarianism Max Weiss

144

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x   contents

9. Kemalism and Beyond

162

Christopher Houston

10. Fascism in the Middle East and North Africa

180

Gilbert Achcar

PA RT I I I   L E G AC I E S OF WA R A N D R E VOLU T ION 11. Communism in the Middle East and North Africa: From Comintern Parties to Marxist-Leninist Movements 197 Jens Hanssen

12. Nasserism

225

Reem Abou El-Fadl

13. A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence, 1954–1962248 Ryme Seferdjeli

14. Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War

269

Avi Raz

15. Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings: Modern Iran and Its Revolutions

292

Shahla Talebi

PA RT I V   N E OL I B E R A L AU T HOR I TA R IA N I SM S 16. Capital, Labor, and State: Rethinking the Political Economy of Oil in the Gulf

323

Adam Hanieh

17. Media as Method in the Age of Revolution: Statism and Digital Contestation342 Adel Iskandar

18. Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliberal Age

365

Laleh Khalili

19. W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies? Rosie Bsheer

384

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contents   xi

PA RT   V   STAT E , L AW, A N D G E N DE R 20. Syria’s Economic History: Bumpy Road from Economic Nationalism to Neoliberalism

409

Linda Matar

21. The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq

427

Zahra Ali

22. Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State

444

Maya Mikdashi

23. Contemporary Israel/Palestine

474

Shourideh C. Molavi

24. New Approaches to the Anthropology of Islamic Movements: Women’s Activism and the Question of Subjectivity

500

Sherine Hafez

PA RT V I   F ROM P ROT E S T M OV E M E N T S TO T H E A R A B U P R I SI N G S 25. The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective

515

John Chalcraft

26. Political Movements in Bahrain Across the Long Twentieth Century (1900–2015)

537

Omar Al-Shehabi

27. Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt

554

Reem Saad

28. Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History

572

Larbi Sadiki

29. Arab Youth: Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century?592 Linda Herrera and Abdelrahman Mansour

30. The Yemeni Uprising of 2011: A Product of Twenty Years of Grassroots Activism Atiaf Alwazir

609

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xii   contents

PA RT V I I   C R I SI S A N D C OL L A P SE 31. The “New Turkey” at Home and Abroad

627

Asli Ü. Bâli

32. The Crisis of Sovereignty, Ruptured Domination, and the Kurdish Quest for Democratic Self-Government in Syria

649

Abbas Vali

33. After Gaddafi: Libya’s Path to Collapse

666

Frederic Wehrey

Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History Jens Hanssen and Amal Ghazal

683

Index

697

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List of Contributors

Gilbert Achcar  School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London Zahra Ali  Rutgers University, New Jersey Omar Al-Shehabi  Gulf University for Science and Technology, Manama Atiaf Alwazir  Yemeni Activist, Sanaa Asli Ü. Bâli  University of California, Los Angeles Murat Birdal  Istanbul University Rosie Bsheer  Harvard University John Chalcraft  London School of Economics (LSE) Reem Abou El-Fadl  School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London Amal Ghazal  Simon Fraser University, Vancouver; The Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha Sherine Hafez  University of California, Riverside Dyala Hamzah  Université de Montréal Adam Hanieh  School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London Jens Hanssen  University of Toronto Linda Herrera  University of Illinois, Chicago Christopher Houston  Macquarie University, Sidney Adel Iskandar  Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Laleh Khalili  Queen Mary University of London Abdelrahman Mansour  University of Illinois, Chicago Linda Matar  National University of Singapore James McDougall  Oxford University Maya Mikdashi  Rutgers University, New Jersey Shourideh C. Molavi  American University in Cairo

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xiv   list of contributors Michael Provence  University of California, San Diego Avi Raz  Oxford University Eugene Rogan  Oxford University Reem Saad  American University in Cairo Larbi Sadiki  Qatar University Ryme Seferdjeli  University of Ottawa Nader Sohrabi  University of Leipzig and Free University of Berlin Shahla Talebi  University of Arizona, Tucson Abbas Vali  Boğaziçi University, Istanbul Frederic Wehrey  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington Max Weiss  Princeton University Elizabeth Williams  University of Massachusetts, Lowell

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Note on Transliteration

We followed a simplified version of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies conventions and limit the use of diacritics to the ayn: ʿ ; and the hamza: ʾ, as in ʿAbd alQadir al-Jazaʾiri. Familiar proper names are kept in their English and French spelling.

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Introduction: Toward A History of the Present Jens Hanssen and Amal Ghazal

“It is in moments of great upheaval that societies may best be studied.”1 Since the late historian of modern Iraq, Hanna Batatu, penned these words in the momentous year 1978, there has hardly been any let up for contemporary historians of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Many MENA countries have experienced foreign ­invasions, civil wars, and coups d’état, not to mention debilitating austerity measures in the last four decades. Although authoritarian regimes and their northern allies have brutally suppressed bread riots and mass uprisings, revolutionary aspirations have not diminished in MENA and around the globe. The more neoliberal economists, multinational companies and pliant national governments have moulded international law and the nation state form in order to “encase [and] inoculate capitalism against the threat of democracy,” the less people trusted their political systems and the rule of law.2 Instead, at the beginning of the second millennium of the common era, millions of people have taken to the streets to bring down regimes that are gutting social welfare provisions and plundering the environmental and human resources in ­ their countries. The late 1970s were, indeed, a watershed moment in MENA history and a harbinger of things to come globally. In the Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990, sectarian violence nipped progressive forces in the bud. President Sadat dismantled Nasser’s welfare system, groomed the Muslim Brotherhood, Americanized the Egyptian economy, and normalized relations with Israel. The Iranian Revolution against the Pahlavi regime in 1978 quickly mutated into an Islamic theocracy. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 destroyed a fledgling secular republic while the US-orchestrated and co-funded Mujahidin resistance against Soviet occupation planted terrorist seeds for 9/11.3 The elections of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and US President Ronald Reagan in 1980 paved the way for violent economic, political, military, and cultural 1  Batatu (1978).

2  Slobodian (2018).

3  Mamdani (2004).

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xviii   Introduction: Toward A History of the Present “rollback” at home and abroad.4 The petro-dollarization of the world economy in the wake of the “oil crisis” turned the Arab Gulf states from suppliers of the crude commodity into major shareholders in Western states since the 1980s.5 The end of the Cold War coincided with the ends of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Iraq–Iran war, and the Lebanese civil war. But the new world order that George Bush Senior proclaimed after his military coalition pushed Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1991 did not spell the triumph of Western democracy, much less “the end of history,” as enthusiasts for the global march of liberalism prophesized at the time.6 The demise of the Soviet Union gave free rein to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to implement austerity measures. Their policies, known as “the Washington Consensus,” have dismantled the social fabric and gutted the welfare state the world over. With organized labor and trade unions curtailed, the most destructive forms of organized resistance to globalization have come from xenophobic and identitarian movements, exacerbated by spectacular acts of non-state and state terrorism. An idealized past—whether cast in white nationalist or Islamist authenticity discourses— haunts the present. If in the second half of the twentieth century there had been a general consensus from left to right that the future will be better than the fascist and colonial past, left-wing melancholia and right-wing vindicationalism loom large in the twentyfirst century. Between 2001 and the Arab uprisings in 2011, MENA continued to experience great upheaval: the US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003; the Second Intifada in Palestine from 2001 to 2005; the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, and the subsequent “Cedar Revolution” in 2005; as well as the “Green Revolution” in Iran in 2009. These and many other political crises notwithstanding, aggregate socioeconomic conditions in the MENA region appeared to be improving in the new millennium, if we had believed experts dedicated to improving neoliberalism and shielding it from its victims’ wrath. According to the World Bank, per capita GDP at purchasing power parity was growing steadily in the Arab world as a whole and in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen in particular. International Labor Organization (ILO) studies found that youth unemployment numbers were high before 2011 but had tapered off—or had not spiked significantly—in countries affected by the Arab uprisings.7 Transparency International reported in 2008 that the Corruption Perception Index in MENA was high but not increasing toward 2011; nor was it any higher in pre-revolutionary Tunisia than in Saudi Arabia or Morocco.8 The Gini co-efficient that the World Bank uses to measure income inequality based on the distribution of monthly household earnings over consumption expenditures also failed to provide clues about impending revolution. Although the income inequality across MENA was dire and getting worse in absolute and comparative terms, it was more pronounced in ostensibly stable Arab countries. Gini statistics offered no single 4  Prashad (2013). 5  Mitchell (2014). 6  Fukuyama (2018). 7  See Herrera and Mansour in this Handbook. 8  See

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Introduction: Toward A History of the Present   xix cause, trigger, or coherent pattern to anticipate or explain the uprisings. Indeed, one inhouse commentator conceded in 2015 that “[j]udging by economic data alone, the revolutions of the 2011 Arab Spring should have never happened.”9 Meanwhile, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had warned that food prices had risen much quicker than inflation in MENA countries and therefore posed serious subsistence problems for most low-income people.10 However, only after the people of Tunisia and Egypt rose up, did policy experts and journalists make the connection. Still, the supporters of the Washington Consensus have blocked any systematic rethink for a more equitable world economy. The “silver-lining” messages from World Bank and other neoliberal economists have tended to downplay the exploitative nature of authoritarian regimes just enough to help consolidate the free flow of market forces. While the World Bank and similar inter­nation­al organizations buttress, in effect if not in intent, the antidemocratic ­status quo in MENA and other resources-rich regions in the world, scholars and intellectuals of, and in, MENA have rung loud alarm bells concerning the region’s “development deficits.” In five controversial, UNDP-sponsored Arab Human Development Reports (AHDR) in the context of “the war on terror,” they warned of the “growing knowledge gap . . . at the beginning of the twenty-first century” (AHDR 2003); the systematic attacks on political freedom (AHDR 2004); the persistence of gendered economic and legal inequality (AHDR 2005); and the dismal levels of “human security” (AHDR 2009). The Arab Human Development Report for 2005 insisted that the independence struggle in the 1940s and 1950s had bequeathed women’s rights and the entry of great numbers of women into salaried and academic professions. Also, the social welfare systems of the early independence period had made great strides in general literacy and secondary and tertiary education. But the economic downturn and deindustrialization in MENA in the 1990s and the parallel expansion of the petro-dollar economies in the Gulf, has had a negative effect on the level of knowledge production in general. The quality of state-run schools deteriorated, and investment in universities was left to the private sector and Gulf regimes. MENA governments arrested teachers and journalists, implemented censorship, and limited access to the internet while “Israel reoccupied Palestinian territories, inflicting horrifying human casualties and material destruction.”11 Moreover, an “alliance between some oppressive regimes and certain types of conservative religious scholars led to interpretations of Islam, which serve the government, but are unamicable to human development.”12 Examples of state violence included Bahraini security forces routinely killing and torturing citizens, Syria’s stifling fifty-year-long state of emergency, and Saudi Arabia’s severe restrictions on civil liberties, particularly of minorities and women. Although there were 9  See 10  See 11  AHDR (2003: 2). 12  AHDR (2003: 6).

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xx   Introduction: Toward A History of the Present encouraging signs of local push-back against such instances of systematic oppression, the biggest challenges to freedom—defined as “the liberation of the individual from all factors that are inconsistent with human dignity, such as hunger, disease, ignorance, poverty, and fear”—have come from the “continued occupation of the Palestinian territories . . . where some 58% of the population subsists below the poverty line, the US-led occupation of Iraq,” and their devastating effects on the region as a whole.13 As the fifth AHDR report argued, socioeconomic, political, and ecological insecurities have also risen dramatically over the last three decades. In the Arab world, “the number of undernourished has risen since the beginning of the 1990s: from about 19.8 million in 1990–1992 to 25.5 million in 2002–2004.”14 The reasons range from deliberate policies of food blockades,15 to manmade environmental disasters such as water scarcity, stressed groundwater systems, desertification, and pollution. Arab states without oil rent were struggling financially to meet these challenges which naturally hit the most vulnerable sectors of society the hardest—the poor and the sick, refugees, and the internally displaced. While MENA traditionally boasted low violent crime rates and robust public health records, the reports raised concern that growing economic and environmental insecurities have increased susceptibility to epidemics and diseases and have turned MENA into the largest food-importing region in the world. They also noted higher rates of violence against women and human trafficking, unemployment, and poverty.16 Time and again, the reports warned that the contemporary situation “could lead to chaotic upheavals that might force a transfer of power in Arab countries.”17 The fear of popular uprisings was palpable on the pages of these reports. The reformist alternative to the spread of revolution they offered was “to pursue an historic, peaceful and deep process of negotiated political alternation.” And the way to meet the challenges was to work for an indigenous “renaissance,” or Nahda, and to replace reform imposed from outside with “a strategic vision by Arab elites” from above and to harness the right kind of intellectual, cultural, and scientific legacy of Islam.18 The reception of these reports was mixed. Arab governments largely ignored them. Neocons in the Bush administration cherry-picked, in bad faith, quotes that contained criticism of Arab cultural deficits or of the discrimination and inequality of women in order to legitimize their aggressive foreign policy.19 At the same time, the US government delayed and censored the publication of the 2004 AHDR for highlighting the structural damage and human misery Israeli and US policies wrought, and for the way the war on terror emboldened oppressive regimes and impeded human development and freedom in MENA as a whole. The reports and these reactions have, in turn, generated harsh criticism in Western academic circles of the reports’ developmentalist underpinnings, paternalist attitude, and for providing intellectual ammunition for foreign intervention.20 13  AHDR (2004: 6, 8). 14  AHDR (2009: 12). 15  See 16  AHDR (2009: 7–8). 17  AHDR (2004: 19). 18  AHDR (2003: 10). 19  Mahmood (2006). 20  Abu-Lughod et al. (2009).

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Introduction: Toward A History of the Present   xxi The spaces for intellectual debates in the contemporary Arab world have been severely curtailed. But as Susanne Kassab has recently shown, Arab intellectuals in Cairo, Beirut, and Damascus defied the specters of imprisonment and assassination with their demands of a new cultural beginning based on a “return” to Arab enlightenment discourse. For them the Nahda, the Arab–Ottoman reform and revival period of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, served as the Punctum Archimedis on which they staked their critiques of contemporary Arab politics and their visions of a better future. Amidst the campaigns of mutually reinforcing Islamist- and state terrorism, Islamic and secular thinkers vied for interpretative authority over the essence and etiology of the modern Egyptian state. Syrians had few illusions about their state which had first framed the bread riots in the 1970s as terrorism and then brutally crushed the Muslim Brotherhood-led insurgency in Hama in 1982. And yet, hundreds of in­tel­lec­tuals dared to challenge the new president in what became known as the Damascus Spring of 2000– 2001 in a seemingly futile attempt to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable to his liberal overtures, lift martial law, and allow for democratic elections.21 While these snapshots of the diagnoses and debates indicate the discursive depth of popular and intellectual dissatisfaction, they also signal the limits of what was politically imaginable before 2011. Neither the optimism of the World Bank, nor the AHDRs’ alarmism, nor Western academics’ defensiveness, nor Arab intellectuals’ Nahda invocations anticipated the radical possibilities and contagion contained in the Arab uprisings. And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in southern Tunisia, the torture and killing of Khaled Sa‘id in Cairo, the arrest of lawyer Fathi Tirbal who advocated for prisoners’ release in Benghazi, and the torture and killing of graffiti-spraying children in the southern Syrian town of Der‘a, all took place in an intercontinental atmosphere of discontent. The chapters by Reem Saad on the Egyptian housing crisis, Larbi Sadiki on Tunisia’s trajectory of renewal, Omar al-Shehabi on rad­ ical politics in Bahrain, Atiaf al-Wazir on social movements in Yemen, and John Chalcraft on the interconnections between these struggles illuminate the genealogy of revolt before and during the Arab uprisings in 2011. Our epilogue takes this history up to the Sudanese, Algerian, Lebanese and Iraqi uprisings in October 2019.

The Shifting Grounds of Contemporary Islamism One notable development following the Arab uprisings has been around the phe­nom­ enon labelled as Islamism, in reference to Muslim political movements that advocate reformist or revolutionary programs defined by a religious idiom. In particular, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia, and the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” 21  Kassab (2019).

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xxii   Introduction: Toward A History of the Present (ISIS), have played important roles during the uprisings and afterwards. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a long-suppressed political party, was initially caught blindsided by the revolution. Its old guard shielded the organization from political contestation during Mubarak’s reign and bided their time. Still, it reaped the fruits of the Egyptian uprising when it decided to field a presidential candidate in the country’s first democratic elections in 2012. But the Muslim Brotherhood was internally divided, and their president, Muhammad Morsi, has proven incompetent, extremely short-sighted, and lacking a democratic commitment.22 His government quickly lost popular support when it imprisoned and killed many revolutionaries who had organized the iconic occupation of Cairo’s Midan al-Tahrir and had rallied around the mantra “sometimes with the Muslim Brothers, always against the state.” As the Kuwaiti writer Ahmad Shahab said in the wake of the uprisings, Islamists in general lacked the vision to administer a state and did not differentiate between their political vision and the expectations of the society.23 For the time being, the failure of Morsi’s term of office has been a reality check on the rhetoric and promises of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists who languish in jails or are exiled abroad. The Ennahda Party in Tunisia has proven to be more politically mature and pragmatic than the Muslim Brothers of Egypt, and more committed to democratic processes. Yet it was also put to test by challenging economic conditions. Moreover, its commitment to “consensus politics” was perceived locally as a reproduction of practices familiar from the previous Ben Ali regime and the graft associated with it.24 Nevertheless, when Ennahda’s leader Rashid al-Ghannuchi issued a landmark statement at the tenth annual party conference in May 2016 that his party would evolve from a preaching movement to a political party and focus only on politics and not get involved in religious affairs,25 he signaled a remarkable shift in the politics of Islamism in Tunisia. While this distinction made between politics and religion is analytically and practically problematic in the case of Ennahda, it no doubt points to what the sociologist of Islam Asef Bayat called “post-Islamist sensibilities.”26 By contrast, the anthropologist Talal Asad has floated ideas about what a new foundation for a post-secular society in MENA might look like. Writing after the shocking army massacres of a sit-in of Muslim Brothers and their families at Rab‘a Square in Cairo, Asad urged secularists to take more seriously the time-honoured sharia version of Aristotelian virtue ethics—al-amr bi-l-ma‘ruf wa nahy ‘an al-munkar (“commanding right and forbidding wrong”)—to build such a new foundation. This religious approach to a new social contract in Egypt, then, “could form an orientation of mutual care of the self, based on the principle of friendship . . . not on the legal principle of citizenship.”27 However, Asad’s remedy alienated many Egyptian revolutionaries who were being ostracized by the state, harassed by Islamists, crushed by the army. For them, abandon-

22  Fawaz (2018). 23  Qantara (2013). 24  Sulaymani (2017); McCarthy (2019). 25  See /‫نايبلا‬-‫يماتخلا‬-‫رمتؤملل‬-‫ماعلا‬-‫رشاعلا‬-‫ةكرحل‬-‫ةضهنلا‬ 26  Maydan (2018). 27  Asad (2015).

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Introduction: Toward A History of the Present   xxiii ing the struggle for political emancipation and citizen rights for the promise of shariaregulated social relations of friendship was an unattractive option.28 As these debates continued in universities and intellectual circles, another phe­nom­ enon within the spectrum of Islamism had begun to manifest itself in the ruptures and crackdowns of the Arab uprisings. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has commanded both scholarly and popular attention since its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the caliphate in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa in June 2014.29 While ISIS has recently been destroyed as a political entity and an economic network, all the conditions that led to its rise remain in place. For all intents and purposes, ISIS is the product of many wars, starting with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the jihadi franchise that the Reagan administration set up to “roll back” communism.30 That many within the ISIS leadership circulated through the infamous prisons set up by the Americans and their associates in Iraq after 2003 is testimony to how the US invasion created the breeding ground for radicalism and terrorism that it claimed to eradicate. President Bashar al-Assad’s annihilist response to the popular Syrian uprising in 2011 generated a proxy civil war which further augmented the region’s draw as a haven for Islamist mercenaries volunteering from all corners of the world. The international commentariat has been divided over the meaning of ISIS and its grotesque acts, including public beheadings, enslavement of Yezidi women, the destruction of cultural heritage as well as the many suicide attacks in cities around the world that it claimed. Right-wing pundits and born-again atheists take their cues from the late orientalist and neocon consultant Bernard Lewis to cast ISIS as the true face of modern Islam and, indeed, Islam as a whole. Most secular Muslims and their liberal allies have tended to decouple ISIS from Islam, insisting that ISIS does not represent Islam at all.31 The journalist and writer Pankaj Mishra has tried to offer a more probing analysis.32 The ISIS and al-Qaida phenomena, he argued, were more than chickens coming home to roost from the Reaganite jihadism in 1980s Afghanistan. Rather, they were local manifestations of universal rage. The emergence of ISIS was a repetition of the familiar structure of anti-modernism since the Luddites.33 These are plausible explanations in their attempt to undermine Islamophobic interpretations, but they fail to account for how ISIS ideologues tweaked and mobilized the theological canon of Islam to considerable appeal.34 ISIS is thus both a geopolitical and a religious phenomenon with an ideology 28  Bardawil (2016). 29  The derogatory Arabic acronym Da’ish, for al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fil-Iraq wa al-Sham, evokes the dialectical entanglement between “those who crush,” i.e. the Syrian regime, and “those who wreak havoc” in Syria and elsewhere, i.e. the Islamist mercenaries. 30  Mamdani (2004). 31  In this they echo President Barak Obama’s assessment that ISIS “is not ‘Islamic.’ . . . And ISI[S] is certainly not a state . . . it is a terrorist organization pure and simple.” See 32  See 33  Sultany (2015). 34  One way to bring out the affective appeal of ISIS is to study its poetic production and dissemination online, argue Creswell and Haykel (2015).

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xxiv   Introduction: Toward A History of the Present perhaps best understood in terms of political theology.35 There has been a lively debate on the grounds of political theology among contemporary Arab intellectuals and Muslim clerics in MENA. They challenge ISIS on its untenable versions of Islamic history and theology by mobilizing canonical and countercanonical literature of medieval and modern Muslim thinkers against them.36 If ISIS has derived its legitimacy from an unconventional interpretation of Islamic sources, its appeal among self-righteous and downtrodden Muslims rests not in the quality of its shallow political theology but rather in the material conditions that has nourished its political imaginary. ISIS is the product of dictatorial regimes, failed econ­ omies, broken educational systems, and extreme hopelessness, out of which a search for an Islamist utopia was born.37 That utopia has appealed to many, inside and outside the MENA region, but is no different from other utopias upheld by religious and political ideologies in different contexts.38 For as long as MENA’s political elites rule antidemocratically, disregard the basic rights of citizens, and adopt neo-liberal policies that ex­acer­bate social and economic disparities, violent groups like ISIS and al-Qaida will keep flourishing .39

Contemporary History, Interdisciplinarity, and Area Studies in Critical Perspective The contributions in this volume remind us how, for decades, pundits and politicians have forsaken “people power” that now challenges oppression and corruption. The ubiquitous rhetoric of reform has demanded political participation but not the dis­mant­ ling of the systemic root causes. Reformism seems to have deferred fundamental change indefinitely. As we argue in the Epilogue, the continuing waves of peaceful and democratic protests in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon in 2019—as much as the brutal 35  Dallal (2017). We note the spike in interest in Carl Schmitt’s work among Muslim intellectuals in MENA. See Somar al-Amir’s translation of Carl Schmitt (1927), “Der Begriff des Politischen:” Mafhum al-siyyasi (2017). 36  Ghazal and Sadiki (2016). 37  How the regimes in MENA led to the emergence of ISIS as a mirror of their practices and policies is best captured by Filiu (2015). 38  Most directly related to this topic and to the ongoing unrest in MENA are the findings of the 2018 Transparency International Report indicating that corruption in MENA remains “stubbornly high”, caused by lack of democratization and of checks and balances. See 39  Most directly related to this topic and to the ongoing unrest in MENA are the findings of the 2018 Transparency International Report indicating that corruption in MENA remains “stubbornly high”, caused by lack of democratization and of checks and balances. See

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Introduction: Toward A History of the Present   xxv attempts at stifling them—are reminders that people are fed up with mere reforms of authoritarian and sectarian states. They demand the fall of the regimes and nothing less than radical new beginnings.40 Academics are experts at identifying social roots and cultural residues but are less proficient at detecting emergent trends. The authors who we have selected to contribute to this Handbook hail from a variety of historically informed disciplines and represent a growing awareness in MENA studies of the contemporary stakes of scholarly research. Previous generations of MENA scholars may have left the analysis of headline-making developments to the newspaper commentariat and international-relations think ­tankers until, to invoke Hegel, the dusk had fallen for the owl of Minerva to spread its wings. Our Handbook breaks with this traditional division of labor. We therefore take the Arab uprisings genealogically as signposts and analytical endpoints. For us they present the promise of original insights into the past. If, as we have suggested at the beginning of this introduction, MENA’s contemporary moment can be dated to the late 1970s, MENA’s modern history begins in the early nineteenth century. However, we do not subscribe to the heuristic convention that the French invasion of Egypt in 1798 rendered irrelevant MENA’s precolonial history. It is true, states and societies underwent irreversible and abrupt changes in the nineteenth century through the spread of colonialism, nationalism, and the incorporation of MENA into the world economy. But for all its power, Western imperialism has not been the only factor and analytical perspective to explain MENA’s complex modern history. Rather, we view historical continuities and changes in MENA as constituting and shaping a particular modernity that has been global since its inception.41 The alternative antidote to quantitative policy studies or geopolitical and security paradigms lies not just in providing analyses with historical depth but also in prob­lem­ atiz­ing the geographic scope of scholarly inquiry. While this Handbook focuses on only a selection of the twenty-two Arabic-speaking countries, the MENA state system is a much larger integrated whole in an asymmetric international order. We dedicate chapters to Turkey, Israel, and Iran, three states that have shaped the history of MENA in fundamental ways, and to stateless peoples, such as the Palestinians and the Kurds who have been cheated by the MENA state system. By connecting historical developments from Algeria to Iran and from Turkey to Yemen over the past two centuries, we adopt a critical area studies approach. This approach does not consider MENA developments as mere exemplars or laboratories of processes and structures emanating from Europe and North America, perspectives that often come with the package of global and imperial histories. Our decolonial perspective takes seriously the location of history and the scales of socioeconomic change from the local to the global dimensions. In other words, critical area studies particularize universals and universalize particulars. It is well known that Area Studies have been institutionalized in the US in order to serve Cold War objectives. The study of MENA was no exception even if arguably it had 40  See Epilogue in this Handbook

41  Mitchell (1999): 1–34.

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xxvi   Introduction: Toward A History of the Present its roots prior to the Second World War and had to assert itself against biblical theology, Near Eastern archaeology, and Oriental philology. Since the publication of Edward Said’s foundational epistemological critique of orientalism in 1978, contemporary MENA scholars have had to confront their demons in ongoing self-critiques.42 The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and other Area Studies associations have prod­uced increasingly intersectional critiques of the uneven distribution of the knowledge/ power nexus. If European studies has been slow to accept its own area studies status, American Studies has begun to subject US and Canadian history to decolonial critiques by mainstreaming interdisciplinary research methods emanating from theoreticians of Marxism, feminism, settler colonialism, indigeneity, and post-secularism. Indeed, area studies’ interdisciplinarity—once a toolkit of knowledge production in the service of colonial rule—has become a potent force to expose ongoing epistemic eurocentrism in academia. Academic disciplines such as law, political science, philosophy, and soci­ology, by contrast, have largely remained bastions of eurocentrism.43 And even in the more self-aware discipline of social anthropology, there exists a bias against MENA studies, particularly around Palestine.44 Within MENA studies, North Africa has long been analytically severed from, or semantically subsumed by, the Middle East moniker.45 Our decision to unite the Middle East and North Africa in this Handbook is programmatic. We aim to point to the integration of this bi-continental region, and the fluidity and flows across heuristic sep­ar­ ations. MENA is not a politically and economically homogeneous region but one with much connectivity and similarity, defined by common historical threads, linguistic and religious bonds, and cultural affinities. That commonality is also defined by the history of European colonialism as much as by the shared and connected experience of anticolonial struggle. A combined Middle East and North African framing points to a transregional history that counters and subverts state borders and state-sponsored histories. Therefore, we do not consider our country-focused chapters in the latter sections a nod to nationalist historiography or to country studies as the only valid approach to contemporary history. Rather, they acknowledge the fact that statist policies have produced certain political and economic conditions that engender particular histories, be they unique or common, with which citizens engage and to which they react. For citizenship is a political subjectivity that is defined by state laws and institutions, however undermined or incomplete it remains in many parts of MENA.

The Handbook’s Architecture We have divided this handbook into seven sections containing between three and six chapters. The thematic sections frame the overall historical narrative to which the indi42  Lockman (2016). 43  Mitchell (2002); Shami et al. (2016). 45  Ghazal (2014); Bonine et al. (2012).

44  Deeb et al. (2016).

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Introduction: Toward A History of the Present   xxvii vidual chapters contribute. They capture continuities, ruptures and communalities as well as the systematic integration of the contemporary history of MENA. Part I, “Foundations,” points to the Ottoman legacy and the shared history across the MENA countries shaped by nineteenth-century institution-building and intellectual ferment. The contributors paint broad strokes of MENA history during the first age of globalization: from the tectonic shifts and colonial interventions in the natural environment, to the longue durée of the world economy, to religious reform and cultural revival movements and the worldwide circulation of revolutionary ideals. Part II, “Formations,” brings to light crucial junctures that shifted MENA from the Ottoman and Qajari period to a post-imperial regional dimension. The interwar period was marked by a more entrenched French and British colonialism under the auspices of the League of Nations in Geneva. Wilsonian and Leninist ideas of self-determination vied with each other to produce MENA’s nation-state system that has endured to this day, notwithstanding pan-Arab and Pan-Islamic challenges. State nationalism, mili­tar­ ism, and sectarianism of the interwar years have forged lasting political identities and new ideologies that shaped the post-independence period. Part III, “Legacies of War and Revolution,” captures the synchronicity of anticolonial struggle and Third-World liberation movements in the aftermath of the Second World War. Between the Egyptian Free Officers’ coup in 1952 and the Islamic revolution in Iran of 1979, the MENA region emerged as a key battleground of the global Cold War. Communist parties proliferated but were suppressed by nationalist governments, often with the connivance of the Soviet Union. Nasserism galvanized the Egyptian and Arab masses as well as the New Left in Europe. Egyptians enjoyed national sovereignty, but unprecedented social mobility came at the expense of democratic rights. The Algerian revolution ended 132 years of French occupation and inspired anticolonial struggles from Vietnam to South Africa. But at home, single party rule and modernization schemes stymied economic development. Israel expanded its territory after the June 1967 war, blocked Palestinian national aspirations, and  destabilized the region. With the demise of Nasserism, it fell to the exiled Palestinian Liberation Organization and its Marxist–Leninist splinter organizations to challenge the emergent geopolitical status quo until they were reamed during the long Lebanese civil war from 1975 to 1990. Part IV, “Neoliberal Authoritarianism,” focuses on the international political economy of MENA at the critical juncture between the internationalist mantra of social welfare and economic redistribution after independence on the one hand and the globalist doctrine of free trade and trickle-down capitalism since the 1970s on the other. This economic shift was premised on US hegemony and the demise of Soviet influence as well as the shift of the geopolitical center of gravity from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Gulf—Iraq, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula. The petro-dollarization of the world economy turned Saudi Arabia into a global powerhouse that generated competing Islamist agendas. This regional variety of neoliberal authoritarianism is examined through multiple prisms, including the rise of media institutions, militarized insurgency, and shifting geopolitical landscapes.

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xxviii   Introduction: Toward A History of the Present Part V, “State, Law, and Gender,” offers contemporary Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel/ Palestine, and Egypt as case studies to highlight the question of citizenship and the transformation of legal systems under conditions of neoliberal precarity. They render visible the processes of how state, law, class, sect, and gender intersect to define, prod­uce, incorporate, and exclude women and other marginalized social groups. Part VI, “From Protest Movements to the Arab Uprisings,” explores popular mo­bil­ iza­tions since the 1980s. Journalists, academics, and policymakers alike were surprised that popular protests in 2011 could topple seemingly unassailable leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen and threaten to their core other regimes, like in Bahrain. Reformers and transitionalists had feared that any resistance to neoliberal au­thori­tar­ ian­ism status will inevitably come from an “Islamist impulse.” As the contributors to this section demonstrate, the uprisings did not erupt in a vacuum but have drawn on mem­ or­ies of previous popular insurrections that dated back to the beginning of the twentieth century and were actually not beholden to Islamist utopias. Stereotypes about political docility in MENA may also have obstructed from view the latent potentialities of mass revolt and growing youth activism.46 The last section, Part VII, “Crisis & Collapse,” takes account of the counterrevolutions that have nipped in the bud the dreams of a new beginning for MENA since around 2013. Turkey under its president, Erdoğan, was once hailed as a model of both post-secular and post-Islamist democratic governance. But constitutional reforms, the systematic purging of dissenting voices within the state and its institutions, the continuous war on the Kurds, and the arrest of thousands of politicians, journalists, teachers, and activists have seriously undermined the democratic foundations of the Turkish state. In neighboring Syria, the attempt of Kurds to establish an autonomous and egalitarian republic next to the short-lived ISIS caliphate has fueled international and regional interventions and a crisis of sovereignty that will haunt Turkey, Syria, the wider region, and the European Union for years to come. The collapse of the state in Libya after the ousting of its president, Gaddafi in 2011 has led to the outbreak of militia warfare with no end in sight at the time of writing. If “moments of great upheaval” can clear one’s vision into the past and trouble the analytical complacencies during seemingly ordinary times, the volatility of the revolutionary present also renders the historian’s perch precarious. The future remains unpredictable, necessitating inter- and multidisciplinary approaches. One of the difficulties of writing a contemporary history of MENA is precisely its contingency. New factors emerge and forgotten ones reappear, often in new garb, during the very process of writing down history as it is unfolding. We conceived of this project before the Arab states’ counterrevolution set in. In line with the OUP Handbook series general practice, individual chapters were published online as they came in. Therefore, some early chapters do not include the most recent events. However, the arguments presented in all thirtythree chapters have lost none of their analytical potency. On the contrary, the current revival of the revolutionary spirit on the streets in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon has 46  Sultany (2017).

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Introduction: Toward A History of the Present   xxix vindicated the unpremeditated consensus among us that the search for new beginnings and a better future in MENA continues unabated. In our epilogue we account for the recent and ongoing events in these countries and MENA as a whole before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic put all contentious politics on hold.

References Abu-Lughod, L., F.  J.  Adely, F.  S.  Hasso, and I.  Jad (2009). “Overview: Engaging the Arab Human Development Report 2005 on Women,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41,1: 59–122. al-Amir, S. (trans.) (2017). Carl Schmitt (1927), “Der Begriff des Politischen:” Al-Mafhum alsiyasi (Cairo: Madarat lil-Abhath wa al-Nashr). Asad, T. (2015). “Thinking About Tradition, Religion, and Politics in Egypt Today,” Critical Inquiry 42,1: 177, 212. Bardawil, F. (2016). “The Solitary Analyst of Doxas: An Interview with Talal Asad,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 36,1: 153–173. Batatu, H. (1974). Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement of Iraq (London, Beirut: Saqi Books). “Al-Bayan al-Khitami lil-mu’tamar al-`am al-`ashir li harakat al-nahda,” (2016). At ةضهنلا‬. Accessed December 15, 2019. Bonine, M., A. Amanat, and M. Gasper (eds) (2012). Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). “Corruption Reception Index 2008,” . Accessed November 20, 2019. Creswell, R. and B. Haykel (2015). “Want to Understand the Jihadis? Read Their Poetry,” New Yorker, June 8 and 15. Daher, J. (2018). “The Political Economic Context of Syria’s Reconstruction: A Prospective in Light of a Legacy of Unequal Development,” European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, December. Dallal, A. (2017). The Political Theology of ISIS: Prophets, Messiahs, and the Extinction of the Grayzone (Washington, DC: Tadween Publishing). Deeb, L. and J. Winegar (2016). Anthropology’s Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Ehrenreich, B. (2019) “Global Rebellion Against Neoliberalism,” The Nation, November 25, 2019. Filiu, J.-P. (2015). From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and Its Jihadi Legacy (London: Hurst). “For an Emergency Economic Rescue Plan for Lebanon,” (2019). See , November 10. Accessed December 18, 2019. Fukuyama, F. (2018). “Socialism ought to Come Back,” New Statesman, October 17, 2018. Gerges, F. (2018). Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

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xxx   Introduction: Toward A History of the Present Ghazal, A. (2016). “Untangling the Leviathans of the Arab Spring,” R/Evolutions: Global Trends and Regional Issues 1,4: 69. Ghazal, A. (2014), “Transcending Area Studies: Piecing Together the Cross-Regional Networks of Ibadi Islam,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34,3: 582–589. Ghazal, A. and L.  Sadiki (2016) “ISIS: The Islamic State between Orientalism and MENA Intellectuals,” Jadaliyya, Jan. 19. See Guardian (2012). “Israel used ‘calorie count’ to limit Gaza food during blockade, critics claim,” Guardian, October 17. See Kassab, E. S. (2019). Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (New York: Columbia University Press). Lockman, Z. (2016). Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Mahmood, S. (2006). “Retooling Democracy and Feminism in the Service of New Empire,” Qui Parle 16,1: 117–143. Mamdani, M. (2004). Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror (New York: Three Leaves Press and Doubleday). McCarthy, R. (2019) “The Politics of Consensus: al-Nahda and the Stability of the Tunisian Transition,” Middle Eastern Studies 55,2: 261–275. “Middle-Class Frustration Fueled the Arab Spring” (2015). The World Bank, October 21.

“Middle East and North Africa: Corruption continues as institutions an political rights weaken” (2019). Transparency International: the global coalition against corruption, January 29. Mishra, P. (2015). “How to Think about the Islamic State,” Guardian, July 24, 2015. Mitchell, T. (2014). Carbon Democracy (London: Verso). Mitchell, T. (2002). “The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science,” in D. L. Szanton (ed.). The Politics of Knowledge Area Studies and the Disciplines, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 74–118. Mitchell, T. (1999). “The Stage of Modernity,” in The Question of Modernity, in T.  Mitchell (ed.). (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press), 1–34. Prashad, V. (2013). Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (London: Verso). Quinn, S. (2018) The Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neo-Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Roberts, A., M. Willis, R. McCarthy, and T. G. Ash (eds) (2016). Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumph and Disaster (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 248. “Roundtable on Political Islam after the Arab Uprisings” (2018). Maydan: Politics and Society, May 2, 2018. Ryzkova, L. (2019) “The Battle of Muhammad Mahmud Street in Cairo: The Politics and Poetics of Urban Violence in Revolutionary Times,” Past and Present 247: 1–46. Shahab, A. (2013). “al-Islam al-siyasi wa tahaddiyyat al-rabi` al-`arabi,” Qantara,

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Introduction: Toward A History of the Present   xxxi Shami, S. and C.  Miller-Idris (eds) (2016). Middle East Studies for the New Millennium: Infrastructures of Knowledge (New York: SSRC and NYU Press). Slobodian, Q. (2018). Globalists: the End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Sulaymani, H. (2017). “Al-Tawafuq al-Siyasi fi Tunis: Mahattat wa Matabbat,” Taqyim Hala, March (al-Markaz al-`Arabi lil-Abhath wa Dirasat al-Siyasat), 11–12. Sultany, N. (2015). “Three Theses on ISIS: The Universal, the Millenial, the Philistine,” Jadaliyya August 4, 2015. Sultany, N. (2017). Law and Revolution: Legitimacy and Constitutionalism After the Arab Spring (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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pa rt I

FOU N DAT IONS

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chapter 1

En v ironm en ta l History of th e M iddle East a n d North A fr ica Elizabeth Williams

Environmental history as a distinct field in the study of Middle Eastern and North African history is relatively new.1 The past few years, however, have seen a rapidly expanding body of scholarship on the subject, which continues to grow. Integrating the environment as a central actor in our analysis, this scholarship asks how an en­vir­on­ mental perspective challenges, refines, or expands our understanding of historical change. In this work, distinct elements that define the environment of the Middle East and North Africa—the nature of its surrounding bodies of water or the rivers that tra­ verse it, the composition of its soils and mineral resources, the winds and precipitation that define its climate, the contours of its mountains and plains, the microbes it hosts, the flora and fauna that are native to its landscapes, and the impacts of more recently introduced species—are essential components of historical analysis. Environmental history is distinctive in that many of these features have remained relatively unchanged for centuries unlike conventionally conceived historical actors. Other features, from ­rivers to forests, may be somewhat more amenable than mountains or oceans to human efforts to reshape or manage, although even these often confound human attempts at control. Human-induced environmental change and its unintended consequences have accel­ erated across the globe during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries as 1  I would like to thank Professor John McNeill and the participants in Georgetown University’s Environmental History Seminar for their comments on this chapter. Samuel Dolbee, Graham Pitts, Faisal Husain, Jackson Perry, Meredith Denning, and Laura Goffman each provided valuable insights. I am also grateful for Jens Hanssen’s thoughtful comments and suggestions.

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4   elizabeth williams new technologies and energy regimes have facilitated intervention in and trans­form­ation of the environment on a grander scale and at a more rapid pace than ever before.2 From massive water-related projects to expansive operations of oil and gas extraction and distribution, the Middle East and North Africa have been at the center of these global transformations. The last 150 years have also witnessed a transition from empires to nation-states in the region. One general and paradoxical phenomenon to observe out of this confluence between nature, economy, and politics was that the scale of projects to control the environment expanded massively even as the size of states had shrunk and the political boundaries of the region multiplied. The field of environmental history in the region promises to account for the effects of these trends by analyzing their cor­res­pond­ing historical trajectories and consequences. So what exactly qualifies as environmental history in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region? In what follows I not only engage historical scholarship, but also draw on political science, geography, sociology, and law. Much environmental history is based on historians reading documents from the archives against or even “along the grain” in order to bring out environmental perspectives, but new historians have realized that for environmental history to become a field in its own right, it needed to vastly extend its definition of what constitutes an archive to include nature itself.3 In order to include nature’s voice, many environmental historians incorporate unorthodox forms of evidence and interdisciplinary types of methodologies into their analysis. Evaluating evidence from pollen cores or tree ring data, for instance, enables historians to assess the claims made in more conventional historical documents, while insights from disciplines such as political ecology and critical geography can encour­ age a heightened awareness of the dynamics that characterize human–environment interactions. By examining the histories that emerge at the intersection of human and nonhuman agencies, en­vir­on­mental history can demonstrate the practical and material impacts of human efforts to manage the environment alongside environmental responses to these efforts.4 In addition to a more nuanced understanding of the political, economic, social, and ecological stakes in approaches to and contestations over environmental resource man­ agement at the practical and material levels, environmental histories of the Middle East and North Africa also have the potential to interrogate discursive representations of the

2  Burke (2011: x–xi). 3  For a discussion of what it means to read archives “along the grain” see Stoler (2002: 100–101); and Stoler (2009). 4  From the perspective of sources, the Middle East and North Africa is a relatively privileged region in which to study the history of humans and their interactions with the environment. Not least among the boons to historians studying its longue durée environmental history is the existence of a relatively well-documented history of human habitation that extends to antiquity. But this rich historical record also poses one of the major challenges as specialized language skills are necessary to access the array of documents that hold the most promise for writing incisive analyses. McNeill (2010: 366); Mikhail (2012: 169).

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   5 region’s environmental decline.5 Since the nineteenth century, much of the region ex­peri­enced the imposition of colonial control in one form or another: French conquest and rule over Algeria from 1830 to 1962; the British occupation of Egypt starting in 1882; French protectorates in Tunisia (1881–1956) and Morocco (1912–56); Italian control of Libya starting in the 1910s; the mandate system in the former Ottoman provinces of West Asia (Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Palestine, and Iraq) imposed after the First World War; as well as British and Russian spheres of influence in early twentieth-century Iran. Often justifications for these conquests carried an environmental component, implying that European oversight was necessary for responsible environmental stew­ ardship. These narratives about the environment often left nothing but disparagement for indigenous actors.6 Furthermore, these justifications continue to circulate as facts thanks to the archival legacy of imperialism and colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa. As a result of this legacy, often the most accessible sources about the region’s environment are those that elaborate a narrative of decline, or a “declensionist” perspective, regarding environmental change in the region.7 Clearly such documents require careful critical assessment. As Diana Davis has demonstrated in the context of French colonial control in North Africa, evidence from sources such as pollen cores belies the persistent declensionist narratives of colonial administrators that held local populations responsible for environmental destruction in order to justify the ap­pro­pri­ ation of environmental resources.8 Given the tremendous diversity of Middle East and North African (MENA) en­vir­on­ ments, it is important to emphasize alternative and local perspectives.9 The region’s ecologies range from lush to some of the driest on earth: from the steppe and semi-arid deserts of Afghanistan and Iran to the arid deserts of the Sahara and the Arabian Peninsula with the verdant seasonal exceptions that the Monsoon afforded Oman in particular; from the Mediterranean vegetation of the western North African coast and West Asia to the temperate forests of northern Anatolia and Iran.10 Furthermore, MENA is favored by well-positioned water resources, a feature that J. R. McNeill has identified as one of its “eccentricities.”11 The region is surrounded by bodies of salt water—the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Black Sea, and Mediterranean Sea—that are relatively

5  See Davis and Burke (2011); Davis (2012). Such narratives of decline and indigenous ineptitude are not unique to the Middle East. See for example, Cronon (2003) on colonists’ perceptions of local approaches to environmental management in colonial New England; and Isenberg (2000) on “Euroamerican” representations of the land use practices associated with the bison-hunting of Native Americans. 6  Davis (2007). 7  Davis (2007); Mitchell (2002: 209–243, 2011a). 8  Davis (2007). 9  See Mitchell (2011a: 266). For more details on these resources see Burke (2009). 10  See for example the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s biome map (accessed January 21, 2015); and Takriti (2013: 2). 11  McNeill (2013).

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6   elizabeth williams storm-free and, with the exception of the Black Sea, “fish poor.”12 It is traversed by a number of rivers, including the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates, which have enabled ancient civilizations and facilitated human mobility throughout the ages.13 Furthermore, the Arabian/Persian Sea lapping at the region’s southeastern shores and the Atlantic Ocean bordering its western edge provide outlets to trading networks across the Indian Ocean or the broader Atlantic world. These features have facilitated movement to and through the region, encouraging and extending the overland trade routes that proliferated as a result of its location at the intersection of the European, Asian, and African landmasses. This movement of humans and animals enabled the transmission of diseases such as plague,14 encouraged networks of knowledge production about environmental man­ agement such as those involved in what has been termed an “agricultural revolution” during the eighth through eleventh centuries,15 and assisted the dispersion of crops and commodities such as spices from the east, coffee from the south, and maize from west of the Atlantic.16 Locally, this configuration of water resources and biomes, or ecosystems, especially the extensive surface area comprised of arid and semi-arid lands traversed by rivers or bordered by seas has encouraged distinct social arrangements around land-use ­practices and cultivation techniques. Another “eccentricity” of the region is that “grasslands and arable lands exist in a mosaic,” placing large expanses of pasturelands in close proximity to cultivated and urban areas and leading to extensive interaction and interdependency between settled and primarily pastoralist communities.17 While there are some fresh­ water sources such as glaciers and a number of underground aquifers, most agriculture in the region relies on rain-fed or river-based irrigation.18 These resources’ dispersion and their disparate sources as well as the techniques developed to manage them over centuries have enabled a degree of ecological balance for human sustenance throughout much of the region. In the eastern Mediterranean, for example, the river-based cultiva­ tion of the Nile Valley and the rain-fed agriculture of the Levant rarely experienced the impacts of an extreme drought simultaneously, creating relative stability in the provi­ sioning capacities of the region.19 To further conserve water resources in the arid rainfed areas of the region, local communities developed technologies such as underground tunnels (qanat) to channel water into fertile plains.20 In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, dam-building along major rivers in the region has provided greater assurance 12  McNeill (2013: 29–30). While never having the same abundance of fish as the Black Sea, the Aswan High Dam’s depletion of nutrient flows from the Nile into the eastern Mediterranean and pollution from oil production in the Persian Gulf have made these waters even more inhospitable to fish than before (McNeill (2013: 30)). 13  McNeill (2013: 29). 14  See White (2010); White (2011); and Shakow (2010). 15  Watson (1983). 16  Mikhail (2012: 167–168). 17  McNeill (2013: 34). 18  McNeill (2013: 31–32). 19  Ellenblum (2012: 23–24). 20  The practice has been most fully covered by Burke (2009: 85–86) and Bulliet (2009) with primary reference to the practice in the Iranian plateau. On qanat construction in the Iranian plateau see also English (1998: 187–205). However, the channels were also constructed in the cultivable lands bordering the desert in the Levant as well. See Lewis (1949). In Morocco they are referred to as khattara and in Oman, a similar phenomenon is known as aflaj, see McNeill (2013: 32); and Wilkinson (1977).

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   7 against drought, but has also created its own environmental complications. Despite these sophisticated technologies, the ongoing sensitivity of much of the region’s agricul­ tural production to annual rainfall makes its ecological balance particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change.21 The existing literature has explored these en­vir­on­ mental constraints and specificities and human attempts to manage and explain them from a number of perspectives. In looking to the future of the field, especially work deal­ ing with the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with its colonial, nationalist, and devel­ opmentalist legacies, analyzing the coproduction of discourse and practice along with the environment’s particularities is essential to grasping the region’s environmental his­ tory in all its complexity.

From Mediterranean Ecologies to Middle Eastern Oil Some of the earliest work on the MENA environment places it in the context of a distinct Mediterranean ecology. Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean was the first to consider the region as an integrated geological and ecological entity and, in tracing the progres­ sion of historical change on an environmental level, he emphasized commonalities across the region from climate to patterns of transhumance.22 Other scholars have examined more specific manifestations of these trends such as in the aftermath of the sixteenth century when a wetter climate contributed to a “contraction in the arable” and increased swamps and therefore incidence of malaria.23 In response populations migrated from the plains to the mountains, a process aided at different points by sophis­ ticated irrigation techniques and recently introduced, mountain-hardy crops such as maize, only to descend again after deforestation and soil erosion had caused the rigors of mountain living to surpass its advantages, while increased security and swamp drainage in the plains increased their attractiveness.24 Climatic impacts and ecological limits continue to be a common theme in more region-specific environmental histories dealing with earlier eras, which tend to empha­ size the strategies and technologies developed to address environmental challenges, often as a way of contesting prevalent notions of decline.25 Peter Christensen’s work on the region between the Euphrates and the Amu Darya River from 500 bce and ce 1500, for example, critiques a paradigm of decline based on religious or cultural explanations by arguing that water scarcity in the region imposed “fundamental limits on ­production,” 21  McNeill (2013: 32). 22  Braudel (1972: 17–22). 23  Tabak (2008: 16–19); McNeill (1992: 86–87). 24  Tabak (2008: 288–297); McNeill (1992: 86–93, 220); Crosby (1982). 25  See for example Karl Wittfogel, who championed a concept of “Oriental despotism” derived from the ways in which he claims relationships around irrigation works were structured in “Oriental” so­ci­ eties. Wittfogel (1957).

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8   elizabeth williams which despite the development of well-suited technologies such as the qanat checked unlimited expansion.26 Other scholars have argued for the influence of climate on events in the medieval and early modern period, concluding that prolonged periods of drought in Egypt and West Asia and an extended period of cold from the tenth to the twelfth century in the Iranian plateau contributed to decreasing urban populations, rebellions against established dynasties, and the migration of the Oghuz Turks from the Caspian and Aral Sea region to the southwest.27 Sam White and the late Faruk Tabak have indentified the Little Ice Age and its accompanying droughts in Anatolia as a factor in the disruption of the Ottoman provisioning system and the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Celali Revolts.28 Shifts in climate also exacerbated the spread of disease. By taking these effects into account alongside local perceptions of disease and the measures taken to control its spread, several scholars have offered counterarguments to historical narratives that emphasize religious or cultural factors in assessing its impacts on the region’s humans and animals. This work has analyzed the implications of responses such as quarantine, the consequences for animal-derived energy and food supplies, and Ottoman understanding of and reactions to the plague, complicating or reassessing narratives that draw heavily on European sources and offering alternative perspectives that highlight networks of circulation, local experiences and in­ter­pret­ ations, and state responses.29 Before the advent of colonial regimes in the region, some large-scale environmental projects were already reshaping relationships between local communities and centraliz­ ing states. The Khazaʿil, for example, a peripheral community in the Ottoman Empire, thrived in the unique ecology of the Euphrates marshes, enabling it to largely elude the central government’s reach. Only after the Baghdad government diverted the main river through various damming projects and dried out the marshes in the early nineteenth century did the central government manage to gain dominance in the region.30 In Egypt, meanwhile, reliance on local knowledge for the management of Nile irrigation systems in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gave way to the prioritization of large-scale transport projects such as the reconstruction of the Mahmudiyya Canal from 1816 to 1820.31 Such large-scale management of environmental resources, especially the possibilities envisioned given ever more powerful energy regimes, attracted government officials, technocratic administrators, engineers, and entrepreneurs. But, over the last two cen­tur­ies the projects they have pursued and their associated expertise have become increas­ ingly intertwined with histories of colonialism and the nation-state. The maintenance 26  Christensen (1993: 10–11, 249) claims that even current technologies have not enabled Iranian farmers to surpass the yields of qanat-irrigated agriculture (249). 27  Bulliet (2009); Ellenblum (2012). 28  Tabak (2008); White (2011). 29  On plague and other human diseases, see White (2010); Shakow (2010); Mikhail (2011: 201–241); Bulmuş (2012); and Varlık (2015). On animals as sources of energy and victims of disease, see Burke (2011); Bulliet (1990); Bulliet (2009); Mikhail (2013); Mikhail (2014); and White (2011). On animals more generally in the Ottoman Empire see Faroqhi (2010). 30  Husain (2014). 31  Mikhail (2011).

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   9 of new nation-state borders has constrained resource flows and altered management perspectives, contrasting with the approaches of the imperial administrations that extended to and through the region. In addition to shifting political structures, degrees of scale have also changed. In large part thanks to the exploitation of increasingly potent energy regimes, the modern and contemporary worlds have witnessed the emergence of technologies with hitherto unimaginable capacities for humans to change the en­vir­on­ ment. Water and oil have been central to many of these transformations. Despite this, the history of oil production, transport, and consumption have been woefully under­ studied in the region.32 Water, in comparison, has figured prominently in en­vir­on­ mental histories of both the colonial and postcolonial periods. Mastery and management of water-related resources provided justifications for colo­ nial occupation and national sovereignty ranging from French officials’ (at times quite fantastical) proposals for making the Sahara bloom33 to the New Valley Project’s unsuc­ cessful land reclamation plans in Egypt’s southwestern desert.34 In these as in other instances, failure to grasp how local interactions with the environment had shaped rela­ tionships with the land led to proposals that were ultimately impracticable and often the root cause of natural disasters. Dam-building gave rise to environmental problems, too, as grandiose visions of plenty overcame concerns about the impacts on local practice.35 The effects of large-scale development projects in the MENA region have been most fully illustrated in the case of schemes to “tame” the Nile. Colonial administrators’ bib­ lical and antiquity-based imaginaries of the Nile’s fertility occluded centuries of success­ ful Ottoman and Mamluk irrigation management practices and rationalized the construction of the 1902 Aswan Dam.36 The dam, in turn, created a differentiated “colo­ nial geography” that facilitated cotton cultivation and its associated flows of capital along the northern banks of the river which now had access to perennial irrigation while peasants in the south did not.37 It also consolidated control over the river’s flow to serve, as Timothy Mitchell has argued, the interests of capital exploitation and to privilege dam-management expertise over that of water management in local communities.38 The construction of the successor to the 1902 Aswan Dam, Nasser’s prestigious Aswan High Dam, was based on an even more expansive imaginary of the dam’s purpose, one that included “flood control, irrigation, hydropower, and navigation,” a vision derived from similar projects in the US’s Tennessee Valley and France’s Massif Centrale.39 The high dam profoundly transformed both natural and human geographies along the riv­ er’s course. Not only did it alter the rockscape of the region—granite from local hills was crushed for its fill—and blocked silt flow, but it displaced local communities south of the

32  See Mitchell (2011b); Jones (2010); and Ghrawi (2016). See also Fuccaro (2016: especially 176) on the impacts of oil development in Kirkuk. In his celebrated and censored literary masterpiece Cities of Salt (1987), Abdulrahman Munif offers a painful narrative of the oil industry’s destructive effects on the en­vir­on­ment in the Arabian Peninsula. 33  Trumbull IV (2011); Heffernan (1990). 34  Sowers (2011). 35  See for example Scott (1998); and Davis (2001). 36  Derr (2011). 37  Derr (2011: 152). 38  Mitchell (2002: 35–36, 41). 39  Shokr (2009: 19).

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10   elizabeth williams dam and forced the relocation of ancient monuments.40 Downstream—which, in the case of the Nile, means to the north—the impact of the dam and other changes to water management and irrigation systems have fundamentally reshaped water use as Egyptian farmers and state officials had to cope with issues such as drainage, soil salinity, and land reclamation.41 Upstream the building of additional dams encouraged both interstate cooperation and rivalry as the river passed through a number of states, each one’s water use potentially affecting its downstream neighbors. But even in the era of the nationstate, the specter of the colonial past lingers. As reconfiguration of the river’s flow con­ tinues to be negotiated among countries of the Nile basin today, it often involves contention over colonial-era legal frameworks.42 The issue of borders has dominated work on the Jordan, Euphrates, and Tigris rivers, emphasizing the transnational contestations generated by boundaries imposed after the First World War.43 Competition and conflict over the Jordan River and its watershed have been well-documented, underscoring the uneven access not only to its resources, but to participation in debates about how those resources should best be managed.44 When British officials made the river the dividing line between the mandates of Palestine and Transjordan, the establishment and operation of a hydroelectric power plant on its waters transgressed that boundary in the “endlessly multiplying connec­ tions” its electrical output sought.45 Meanwhile, the Tigris and Euphrates, which prior to the First World War were contained entirely within the Ottoman domains, found their riverbeds traversed in the mandate and nation-state eras by the borders between Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.46 But interwar border drawings in MENA also produced states with virtually no river­ ine water sources and very limited freshwater resources. Lacking extensive water resources but oil-rich, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia attempted to manage this resource distribution by parlaying oil wealth into water security—a policy that in the 1970s even involved a scheme to haul an iceberg from Antarctica to supply the kingdom with fresh water.47 In addition to consolidating and maintaining Saudi political power, these resource management strategies were heavily dependent on knowledge about the en­vir­ on­ment produced by foreign consultants. Thus, the Saudi state’s management of nature and society also went hand in hand with “reinforced geostrategic interests.”48 Environmental resource management strategies not only increased state control, but also justified foreign intervention. Nowhere is this perhaps more evident than in the case of oil. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the discovery and extraction of oil from the extensive reserves 40  Reynolds (2013: 182). 41  For the local impacts of the dam see Barnes (2014: 123–135, 137–168, 175). 42  For negotiations over the river’s transnational management see Tvedt (2010). 43  Dolatyar and Gray (2000). 44  Zeitoun (2008); Alatout (2011). 45  Meiton (2015: 291). 46 For the international legal dimensions of conflict between countries sharing rivers, see Elver (2002); and Mehring, Wolfrum, Kibaroğlu, and Kirschner (2013). 47  Jones (2010: 1–3). 48  Jones (2013: 243).

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   11 that extend in pockets from the southeastern tip of the Arabia Peninsula through Saudi Arabia and Iran into northern Iraq and eastern Turkey, in addition to fields in Libya and Algeria, have had a profound impact on the region environmentally.49 These reserves have become a sudden source of wealth and power for certain regimes in the region, placing them at the epicenter of global energy production just before and into the age of decolonization. The vast wealth and energy potential generated by oil reserves (and car­ bon energy more generally) represent a departure from previous energy regimes based on solar energy (and to a much lesser extent wind and water) and intensify their en­vir­ on­mental impacts.50 Oil has not only engendered the development of distinct forms of political power, but also created the conditions for an ecological crisis as a result of the geological and technical processes involved in extracting, refining, transporting, and distributing it as well as the environmental impacts its use has precipitated.51 The rapid urbanization that accompanied the increased exploitation of oil resources has produced spaces of greater socioeconomic disparity and fraught projects of urban planning while also taking a toll on other vital resources—in Saudi Arabia, this urban expansion was in all probability a key contributing factor to a drastic reduction in the local water level.52 If the management of water and oil resources has served as a means for empires and states to centralize and consolidate power, the prevalence of pastoralism in the region has represented an ongoing challenge to this trend.53 Given the suitability of their landuse practices to making the most of the pastoral grasslands that constitute a large pro­ portion of the Middle East and North African ecology, pastoralists have played an integral role in the societies of the empires that once spanned the region and they con­ tinue to be a presence (albeit dwindling) in the nation-states that have succeeded them. Because pastoralists’ use of environmental resources has at times brought them into conflict with settled communities or challenged the priorities of centralizing states, they have not infrequently found themselves the subjects of critique in bureaucratic writing. On the other hand, a closer reading of the historical evidence clearly indicates that such an antagonistic relationship was not necessarily representative and that in regions of the Ottoman Empire, for example, pastoralist movement was considered essential to the empire’s “expansion and organization.”54 Despite representations that emphasized their difference, pastoralist communities were often well-integrated into economic and other networks spanning arable lands and the steppe, and empires and states developed myr­ iad ways of negotiating with those that traversed their territories.55

49  McNeill identifies this as the third “eccentricity” of MENA. See McNeill (2013: 41–45). 50  Burke (2011: x–xi). 51  Mitchell (2011b). 52  Jones (2010: 133–134, 141, 143,); Ghrawi (2016: 111, 116). For the impacts of oil-driven urban planning projects in Kuwait see al-Nakib (2016). 53  See Scott (2009) for a discussion of pastoralism as one among a number of strategies used by com­ munities to avoid the reach of states. 54  Kasaba (2009: 19). 55  See Kasaba (2009) for a sweeping history of these relationships. See also Khazeni (2010); Barakat (2015); Amara (2016).

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12   elizabeth williams Pastoralists’ relationship with the environment has defined the ambivalent role they play in the historical record. With their communal pastures left seasonally “empty” as they follow annual cycles of transhumance movement, their relation to the lands neces­ sary for pasturing their flocks has tended to defy the legibility associated with the landuse arrangements of more permanently settled communities. When the Anglo-Persian Oil Company signed contracts in 1911 for oil exploration in Iran, it refused to pay for access to thousands of acres of pastureland, which it deemed “wasteland,” leading to resistance from pastoralist groups.56 Such failures to acknowledge the value of these environmental resources, as well as the sensitivity of pastoralists’ livelihood to condi­ tions of drought or extreme cold, have often been at the heart of conflicts involving their communities.57 Despite having achieved a mutually beneficial relationship with environments that would otherwise be relatively marginal for farming, pastoralists’ management of their lands has often been misunderstood or misrepresented by observers, espe­ cially out­siders such as French colonial officials, who tended to view the region’s landscape through the lens of preconceptions or even misconceptions about the region’s fertility as the erstwhile “granary of Rome.”58 In particular, such observers have claimed that pastoralists’ voracious flocks were a primary contributing factor in deforestation and desiccation. Characterizing local land-use practices as respon­ sible for environmental degradation and mismanagement of the environment then justified imperial intervention and provided a pretext for appropriating land and expanding control over its exploitation.59 This colonial-era logic continues to play a role in some of the publications and projects of the United Nations, national gov­ ernments, and various NGOs, explaining the causes of and panacea for underdevel­ opment in arid regions.60 But what about the cultivators in MENA’s arable lands and grasslands themselves?61 If pastoralists have figured prominently in the environmental historiography of the Middle East and North Africa, farmers and farming have figured less so, especially in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Clearly agriculture has been a central theme in much of the historiography—the once-flourishing field of peasant studies and the more

56  Khazeni (2009: 125). 57  See for example Rogan’s work (1999: 70–94, 184–191) on interactions between pastoral communities and cultivating ones on the Ottoman frontier in what is now Jordan. Severe weather such as the winter of 1911 in the eastern Mediterranean could be devastating to pastoralists’ livestock. Reports indicated that of the 270,000 sheep that were to be brought from Mosul to Aleppo across the Euphrates River and the Jazira region only 30,000 made it (National Archives United Kingdom (NA-UK), Foreign Office 195.2366, Fontana to Lowther, March 20, 1911). 58  On the balanced nature of goat interactions with the Mediterranean environment see McNeill (1992: 277) and Rackham and Grove (2001: 45). For the French obsession with the “granary of Rome” idea see Davis (2007); Swearingen (1987: 15–35); and Williams (2010: 189). 59  See Davis (2007). For an earlier attempt to deconstruct such declensionist narratives by bringing social and economic factors into the picture, see Wagstaff (1985). 60  Mitchell (2002: 209–243); Davis (2007: 174, 2016). 61  McNeill (2013).

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   13 recent emphasis on peasants in social and economic histories are prime examples.62 While the environment has certainly played an important role in both economic and social history, scholars have not adopted a consciously environmental angle in their analysis.63 Yet an explicitly environmental perspective has much to offer. In particular, examining the productive intersections between technological change, agricultural practice, and the region’s varied ecologies from the late nineteenth century through today can challenge existing characterizations of the region’s agrarian history and pro­ pose new analytical angles from which to approach it.

Ecologies, Expertise, and Urban–Rural Connections: New Paradigms in the Environmental History of MENA Historically, a region’s agricultural practice and knowledge have represented a store of experience derived from working in a distinct local ecology. As Mikhail’s work on irri­ gation in Egypt demonstrates, a close reading of local sources can delineate how a mighty empire relied on detailed local knowledge and relationships to nature to supply essential provisions.64 The late Ottoman state tentatively and cautiously implemented a program of experimental farms and fields in which farmers and officials applied local knowledge about agricultural production to new techniques and tools, leading to an empire-wide network of institutions dedicated to disseminating knowledge about “sci­ entific agriculture.”65 Ottoman officials also participated in international networks of scientific knowledge production such as attending the agriculture exhibit of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, joining the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome, or translating recently published agricultural texts into Ottoman.66 In developing policies for administering aspects of the empire’s agricultural production, officials relied on local intermediaries and took into account the environmental 62  For early examples of peasant studies see Ayrout (1938); Weulersse (1946); Lambton (1953); and Baer (1964). More recently peasants have featured prominently in economic and social histories. See Seddon (1981); Reilly (1981); Tucker (1985); Lewis (1987); Doumani (1995); Batatu (1999), Chalcraft (2005); Cronin (2007). For examples of peasant histories from other regions see Scott (1976) and historians of the Subaltern Studies project such as Guha (1983). For an analysis of the emergence of peasant studies see Mitchell (1990). 63  See for example Owen (1969, 1993); Tucker (1985: 16–63); Swearingen (1987); Issawi (1982); Keyder and Tabak (eds) (1991); and Richards (1982). 64  Mikhail (2011). 65  Quataert (1973); Williams (2015: 68–120). 66  Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA), İ.HUS 17.23; International Institute of Agriculture archives, FOA-Rome, A-1, “Convention créant l’IIA, Rome, 1905”; and Kazım (1911). Kazım’s book is a translation of Leroux (1896, 1906). Kazım notes in his introduction that because Leroux had written the book for his country and its schools he could not translate it verbatim from French to Ottoman. He had to modify it according to “our agriculture methods” (4).

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14   elizabeth williams c­oncerns that could impact the processes of implementation.67 They also critically assessed whether technologies developed in other ecologies could be successfully applied across the empire.68 In the post-Ottoman era, the efforts of local technocrats to continue pursuing many of these projects would be frustrated as officials of the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon (c.1920–46), driven by imperial imperatives, insisted on policies often charac­ terized by less measured regard for local environmental particularities.69 Initiatives to encourage long-staple cotton cultivation for mills in the French metropole—a priority of mandate officials—floundered. Widespread dependence on rainfed irrigation meant farmers were reluctant to plant the crop, which was susceptible to such an insecure source of water.70 Mandate officials’ resistance to adopting a degree of administrative flexibility that could respond to much of the region’s proneness to insufficient rainfall exacerbated the impacts of several years of drought. Attempts to exact back taxes on harvests reduced by these climatic conditions left farmers struggling to eat not to men­ tion save seed for the next year’s planting. The heaviness of mandate taxation led to out­ rage in the nationalist press as well as rural to urban flight.71 Meanwhile policies to prioritize the importation of French agricultural machines, which turned out to be “poorly adapted to local conditions,” quickly proved impractical.72 Evidence from Ottoman-era documents belie representations of local farmers and farming methods as resistant to change, representations often packaged as justifications for mandate rule.73 In contrast to colonial discourses about Syrian agriculture that criti­ cized farmers for their “biblical”-era methods and tools, evidence from both the Ottoman and mandate periods clearly demonstrates that while many farmers were aware of new methods and machines whose relative costs and benefits were being debated internationally, they often chose to continue using simpler tools because of their suitability to existing land tenure and financial arrangements as well as their re­li­ abil­ ity and reparability.74 Works such as Mustafa al-Shihabi’s Modern Practical Agriculture, published in Arabic in 1922, indicate the breadth of analysis that local 67  See for example Mundy and Saumarez Smith (2007); Akarlı (1976: 147–169). 68  See for example Ferid (1919: 435). 69  See for example M. E. Achard’s proposals for agriculture under the mandate in Achard (1922). 70  Achard (1922: 159, 167); Ministère des Affairs Étrangères (1928: 97; 1929: 103, 104; 1933: 26; 1938: 15); O’Zoux (1931: 258–259); Williams (2015: 157–158). Cotton’s susceptibility to global price fluctuations fur­ ther reduced its appeal (see for example Ministère des Affairs Étrangères (1928: 97; 1933: 130); Khoury (1987: 51–52)). 71  Khoury (1987: 398–399); Sarrage (1935: 125–126); Williams (2015: 221–271). 72  United States National Archives (USNA), RG 166, FAS Box 473, “Market for Tractors, Tractor Attachments and Implements,” Aleppo Consulate to the Department of State, November 1, 1924; Haut Commissariat de la République française en Syrie et au Liban (1922: 211). 73  See for example, Achard (1922: 162–164). 74  See for example, Khuri (1936: 90–92); Centre des archives diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN)/SyrieLiban/2, Instruction Publique 92, “Formation Professionnelle,” p. 2; USNA, RG 84, Box 6, Aleppo Syria, General Correspondence 1914, Jackson to the Secretary of State, April 9, 1914; and Williams (2015: 68–120). For a more recent analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of the scratch plow see Swearingen (1996: 21). Swearingen estimates that a third of cereals are still produced this way in North Africa.

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   15 administrators produced as they grappled with the challenges involved in applying new methods and technologies to a variety of local environments.75 Mandate rule, however, would impede the implementation of their particular visions for a productive, postOttoman national space based on this diversity.76 In addition to rethinking the history of knowledge production about agricultural change in the region, understanding this trajectory also suggests a critique of post-independence development discourse. Even as some assessments of the region’s post-Second World War development “possibilities” drew on work produced by mandate scholars or foreign officials, they rarely explicitly acknowledged the legacies of local technocratic perspectives.77 Yet Ottoman, French, Syrian, and other technocratic experts circulated in the same networks of expertise pro­ duction. Despite these shared networks, they tended to advocate different approaches to translating these ideas into the management of local environments, often framing their proposals as necessitated by imperial versus nationalist prerogatives. Bringing these views into focus and assessing local practice in relation to these divergent interests vis-àvis the challenges presented by local environments exposes the reliance of imperial rhet­ oric on a dehistoricized narrative that attributed the state of the region’s agricultural production to its cultivators’ practices being temporally behind on a hypothetical con­ tinuum of progress. Such narratives could serve to justify intervention, whether in the form of a mandate or, post-Second World War, technical and scientific expertise.78 These developments would also introduce new connections between urban centers in the region and their rural hinterlands, contributing to a productive interdependence that has long been shaped by environmental particularities. Examining the evolving interaction between these environments and their associated political economies and forms of management adds a new dimension to our understanding of changing urban– rural dynamics and the impacts of increasing urbanization. The twentieth century has seen burgeoning urban populations—sixty percent of its populations now live in urban environments—and rising levels of air and water pollution often concentrated in or flowing from these urban conglomerations.79 Not only has urbanization led to stress on existing infrastructure and contestations over its expansion to accommodate these growing populations, but in many instances environmental change in these cities’ hin­ terlands, such as over-extraction of water resources or land appropriation, has provoked this population influx.80 While these trends have intensified in recent years, they have roots in the environmental management strategies of the region’s nation-states and the colonies, mandates, and empires that preceded them. These transitions have been crit­ ic­al to the evolving relations and intersections between rural and urban areas.

75  al-Shihabi (1922). 76  Williams (2015). 77  See for example the commendation of Weulersse (1946) and the use of Latron (1936) by Warriner (1948: 84, 94–98). Warriner notes that Weulersse’s study came out too late to be used in her book. 78  See for example Keen (1946); Warriner (1957: 110–112); and World Bank (1955). 79 Davis (2004: 841, 843–844). See McNeill (2000) for the distinct impacts of twentieth-century urbanization from a global perspective. 80  See for example Hanieh (2013: 84) and de Châtel (2014: 530–532).

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16   elizabeth williams In Nature’s Metropolis, Cronon traced the capital and commodity flows that made Chicago the city it became and connected it inexorably with its rural hinterland. In an instructive counterpoint, shifting regimes of governance and colonial and nation-state boundaries carved out of empires shaped the “second nature” of MENA’s urban spaces as they altered the hinterlands as well as the flows of capital, commodities, and know­ ledge production through the “primary natures” within which these cities were situ­ ated.81 The dynamic relationships between Damascus and its fertile agricultural hinterland, for example, involved a complex interplay between urban and rural en­vir­on­ ments. The city’s centrality to commerce in grain or apricots, among other commodities, and the processing of their derivative products generated networks, infrastructure, and flows between these rural and urban spheres, reshaping environments in the process.82 Circulations of capital between the city and its hinterland as a result of urban invest­ ments in rural property and production or debt obligations perpetuated by moneylend­ ing practices as well as the ever-encroaching expansion of the city’s suburbs into its productive hinterlands created distinct geographies.83 Recent events in the region highlight the importance of taking the environment and the contestations involved in managing its resources into account when analyzing his­ torical change. While by no means the determining factor in events like those of the Arab Spring, examining the effect of environmental-management strategies on deepen­ ing social and economic inequality and generating political opposition is an important part of the story. Some scholars have already begun to consider how questions of land use or environmental management contributed to discontent leading up to the Arab Spring.84 Access to environmental resources and the consequences of policies designed to mediate human and environmental interaction have become urgent issues, too. Analyzing these aspects of the environmental roots and repercussions of the Arab Spring brings another dimension to economic, social, and political perspectives and can help to expose persistent declensionist accounts of underdevelopment. They also facili­ tate analyses that take as their point of departure a focus on the productive interactions between discourse, elements of the environment, and human actors in the shifting con­ texts of varied imperial, colonial, and nation-state spaces.85 The intricate relationship between humans and the environment has ever-evolving repercussions. Take, for example, the environment of contemporary northern Egypt where urban waste washes into local fishing grounds contaminating the water with diseasecausing microbes and leading heavy metals and pesticides to build up in marine 81  Cronon (1991). Cronon takes a dialectical approach to these terms. He defines first nature as “ori­ gin­al, prehuman nature” and second nature as “the artificial nature that people erect atop first nature,” although he admits the “nature we inhabit is . . . a complex mingling of the two” (xix). 82  See Khoury (1987: 17, 161, 168–169, 281–282); Provence (2005: 34–35); and Schilcher (1991). 83  Regarding aspects of these dynamics in Damascus see Cuno (1995). See also Doumani (2017) for a pioneering effort at tracing some of these geographies for the cities of Tripoli and Nablus from the seven­ teenth through the nineteenth centuries. 84  See for example Elmusa and Sowers (2012). See also Saad in this volume. 85  This is a central component of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network theory approach to analysis. See Latour (1993) and Latour (2005).

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   17 a­ nimal bodies. The entire food supply chain of local communities is also under threat at precisely the moment when private fishing concerns are beginning to monopolize the market.86 Tracing the histories of these environmental flows and humans’ attempts to master, manipulate, or contest them—attempts mediated by social, economic, and political hierarchies—demonstrates nature’s central role in the production of capital, the exertion of state power, and the maintenance of socioeconomic difference, and the effects in turn of these on nature. Demonstrating the extent to which these bidirectional processes shape the policies, practices, and struggles of states, corporations, and social movements respectively and their outcomes is fundamental to assessing their impacts and urging accountability.87 Reading documents against the grain in order to bring out the environmental components of historical stories, at times supplementing with novel frameworks or evidence such as pollen cores that counter colonial narratives of desert­ ifi­ca­tion, offers a critical counterpoint to existing historical paradigms and narratives.88 The possibilities promised by these new approaches and sources suggest a variety of av­enues for future research as scholars explore the Middle East and North African en­vir­ on­ment, as well as its commonalities with comparative histories from around the globe. Study of the region’s environmental history will help us better understand how approaches to managing the environment in all its diverse manifestations as well as the representation of those approaches have been affected by the rise and fall of different political entities, the shifting of regional borders, and the emergence of new scales of energy and environmental transformation. Given the region’s centrality to global energy production and the diversity and complexity of its ecologies, the management of these resources will continue to have repercussions that resound not just locally but globally.

References Archival sources Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA) Centre des archives diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN) International Institute of Agriculture archives, FOA-Rome National Archives—United Kingdom (NA-UK) United States National Archives (USNA)

Published primary and secondary sources Achard, M. E. (1922). “La Syrie pays d’agriculture,” in Haut-Commissariat de la Republique Française en Syrie et au Liban. La Syrie et le Liban en 1921: La Foire-Exposition de Beyrouth, Conferences, Liste des Recompenses (Paris: Emile Larose), 149–169.

86  Bush and Sabri (2012). 88  See Davis (2007: 9).

87  See for example, Burkett (1999) and Moore (2015).

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18   elizabeth williams Akarlı, Engin Deniz (1976). “The Problems of External Pressures, Power Struggles, and Budgetary Deficits in Ottoman Politics under Abdulhamid II (1876–1909): Origins and Solutions.” PhD. diss., Princeton University. Alatout, Samer (2011). “Hydro-Imaginaries and the Construction of the Political Geography of the Jordan River: The Johnston Mission, 1953–56,” in Davis and Burke (eds). Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), 218–245. Amara, Ahmad (2016). “Beyond Stereotypes of Bedouins as ‘Nomads’ and ‘Savages’: Rethinking the Bedouin in Ottoman Southern Palestine, 1875–1900,” Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 15,1: 59–77. Ayrout, Henry Habib (1938). Moeurs et coutumes des fellahs (Paris: Payot). Baer, Gabriel (1964). Population and Society in the Arab East (New York: Frederick A. Praeger). Barakat, Nora (2015). “Marginal Actors? The Role of Bedouin in the Ottoman Administration of Animals as Property in the District of Salt, 1870–1912,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58, 1–2: 105–134. Barnes, Jessica (2014). Cultivating the Nile: The Everyday Politics of Water in Egypt (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Batatu, Hanna (1999). Syria’s Peasantry, the Descendants of its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Braudel, Fernand (1972). The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Row). Bulliet, Richard W. (1990). The Camel and the Wheel (New York: Columbia University Press). Bulliet, Richard  W. (2009). Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran (New York: Columbia University Press). Bulmuş, Birsen (2012). Plague, Quarantines and Geopolitics in the Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Burke, Edmund III (2009). “The Transformation of the Middle Eastern Environment, 1500 B.C.E.–2000 C.E,” in Burke and Pomeranz (eds). The Environment and World History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 81–117. Burke, Edmund III (2011). “Preface,” in Davis and Burke (eds). Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), ix–xii. Burkett, Paul (1999). Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (New York: St. Martin’s Press). Bush, Ray and Amal Sabri (2012). “Mining for Fish: Privatization of the ‘Commons’ Along Egypt’s Northern Coastline,” in Sowers and Toensing (eds). The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt (London: Verso), 242–249. Chalcraft, John (2005). “Engaging the State: Peasants and Petitions in Egypt on the Eve of Colonial Rule,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37,3 (August): 303–325. Christensen, Peter (1993). The Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environments in the History of the Middle East, 500 B.C. to A.D. 1500 (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen). Cronin, Stephanie (2007). Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–1941 (London: Routledge). Cronon, William (1991). Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton). Cronon, William (2003). Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang).

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   19 Crosby, Alfred W. (1982). The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Co.). Cuno, Kenneth M. (1995). “Was the Land of Ottoman Syria Miri or Milk? An Examination of Juridical Differences within the Hanafi School” Studia Islamica 81: 121–152. Davis, Diana (2004). “The Middle East,” in Krech, McNeill, and Merchant (eds). Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (New York: Routledge), 840–844. Davis, Diana (2007). Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press). Davis, Diana (2012). “Scorched Earth: The Problematic Environmental History that Defines the Middle East,” in Bonine, Amanat, and Gasper (eds). Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), 170–187. Davis, Diana (2016). The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press). Davis, Mike (2001). Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso). De Châtel, Francesca (2014). “The Role of Drought and Climate Change in the Syrian Uprising: Untangling the Triggers of the Revolution,” Middle Eastern Studies 50,4: 521–535. Derr, Jennifer L. (2011). “Drafting a Map of Colonial Egypt: The 1902 Aswan Dam, Historical Imagination, and the Production of Agricultural Geography,” in Davis and Burke (eds). Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), 136–157. Dolatyar, Mostafa and Tim Gray (2000). Water Politics in the Middle East: a context for conflict or co-operation? (New York, St. Martin’s Press). Doumani, Beshara (1995). Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700–1900 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Doumani, Beshara (2017). Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Family History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Ellenblum, Ronnie (2012). The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean: Climate Change and the Decline of the East, 950–1072 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Elmusa, Sharif and Jeannie Sowers (2012). “Damietta Mobilizes for its Environment,” in Sowers and Toensing (eds). The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt (London: Verso), 250–260. Elver, Hilal (2002). Peaceful Uses of International Rivers: the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers Dispute (Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers). English, Paul Ward (1998). “Qanats and Lifeworlds in Iranian Plateau Villages,” in Albert, Bernhardsson, and Kenna (eds). Transformations of Middle Eastern Natural Environments: Legacies and Lessons (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 187–205. Faroqhi, Suraiya (ed.) (2010). Animals and People in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: Eren). Ferid, Osman (1919). “Ateşli Pulluklar,” Çiftçiler Derneği Mecmuası, 1 May 1335. Fuccaro, Nelida (2016). “Dissecting Moments of Unrest: Twentieth-Century Kirkuk,” in Fuccaro (ed.). Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), 169–187. Ghrawi, Claudia (2016). “A Tamed Urban Revolution: Saudi Arabia’s Conurbation and the 1967 Riots,” in Fuccaro (ed.). Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), 109–126. Guha, Ranajit (1983). Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press).

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20   elizabeth williams Hanieh, Adam (2013). Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books). Haut Commissariat de la République française en Syrie et au Liban (1922). La Syrie et le Liban en 1922 (Paris: Emile Larose). Heffernan, Michael J. (1990). “Bringing the Desert to Bloom: French Ambitions in the Sahara Desert During the Late Nineteenth Century–the Strange Case of la mer intérieure,” in Cosgrove and Petts (eds). Water, Engineering and Landscape: Water Control and Landscape Trans­form­ation in the Modern Period (London/New York: Belhaven Press), 94–114. Husain, Faisal (2014). “In the Bellies of the Marshes: Water and Power in the Countryside of Ottoman Baghdad,” Environmental History 19 (October): 638–664. Isenberg, Andrew C. (2000). The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Issawi, Charles (1982). An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (New York: Columbia University Press). Jones, Toby  C. (2010). Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Jones, Toby C. (2013). “State of Nature: The Politics of Water in the Making of Saudi Arabia,” in Mikhail (ed.). Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 231–250. Kasaba, Reşat (2009). A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants and Refugees (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press). Kazım, Hüseyin (1911). İlm-i Ziraat (Istanbul: Tanin Matbaası), 1327. Keen, B. A. (1946). The Agricultural Development of the Middle East (London: HM Stationery Office). Keyder, Çağlar and Faruk Tabak (eds) (1991). Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Khazeni, Arash (2010). “Across the Black Sands and the Red—Travel Writing, Nature, and the Reclamation of the Eurasian Steppe Circa 1850,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42,4 (November): 591–614. Khazeni, Arash (2009). Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press). Khoury, Philip (1987). Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Khuri, Albert (1936). “Agriculture,” in Himadeh (ed.). Economic Organization of Syria (Beirut: American Press), 73–115. Lambton, Ann K. S. (1953). Landlord and Peasant in Persia: A Study of Land Tenure and Land Revenue Adninistration (London: Oxford University Press). Latour, Bruno (1993). We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Latour, Bruno (2005). Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Latron, André (1936). La vie rurale en Syrie et au Liban: étude d’économie sociale (Beyrouth: Imprimerie catholique). Leroux, Eugène (1896, 1906 [3rd edn]). Cours d’agriculture (Paris: G. Masson). Lewis, Norman N. (1949). “Malaria, Irrigation, and Soil Erosion in Central Syria,” Geographical Review 39,2 (April): 278–290.

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   21 Lewis, Norman N. (1987). Nomads and Settlers in Syria and Jordan, 1800–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). McNeill, J. R. (1992). The Mountains of the Mediterranean World: an Environmental History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). McNeill, J.  R. (2000). Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W.W. Norton). McNeill, J.  R. (2010). “The State of the Field of Environmental History,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 35 (August): 345–374. McNeill, J. R. (2013). “The Eccentricity of the Middle East and North Africa’s Environmental History,” in Mikhail (ed.). Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 27–50. Mehring, Sigrid, Rüdiger Wolfrum, Ayșegül Kibaroğlu, and Adele J. Kirschner (eds) (2013). Water Law and Cooperation in the Euphrates-Tigris Region: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers). Meiton, Frederik (2015). “Throwing Transjordan into Palestine: Electrification and State Formation, 1921–1954,” in Schayegh and Arsan (eds). The Routledge Companion to the Middle East Mandates (London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis). Mikhail, Alan (2011). Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mikhail, Alan (2012). “The Middle East in Global Environmental History,” in McNeill and Mauldin (eds). A Companion to Global Environmental History (Oxford: Blackwell), 167–181. Mikhail, Alan (2013). “Unleashing the Beast: Animals, Energy, and the Economy of Labor in Ottoman Egypt,” American Historical Review 118,2 (April): 317–348. Mikhail, Alan (2014). The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ministère des Affairs Étrangères (1928, 1929, 1933, 1938). Rapport à la société des nations sur la Situation de la Syrie et du Liban (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale). Mitchell, Timothy (1990). “The Invention and Reinvention of the Egyptian Peasant,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 22,2 (May): 129–150. Mitchell, Timothy (2002). Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Mitchell, Timothy (2011a). “Afterword,” in Davis and Burke (eds). Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), 265–273. Mitchell, Timothy (2011b). Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London: Verso). Moore, Jason W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (New York: Verso). Mundy, Martha and Richard Saumarez Smith (2007). Governing Property, Making the Modern State: Law Administration and Production in Ottoman Syria (London: I. B. Tauris). Munif, Abdulrahman (1987). Cities of Salt (New York: Vintage International). al-Nakib, Farah (2016). Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Owen, Roger (1969). Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820–1914 a Study in Trade and Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Owen, Roger (1993). The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800–1914 (New York: I. B. Tauris). O’Zoux, Raymond (1931). Les États de Levant sous Mandat Français (Paris: Larose).

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22   elizabeth williams Provence, Michael (2005). The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press). Quataert, Donald (1973). “Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia, 1876–1908,” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles. Rackham, Oliver and A. T. Grove (2001). The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: an ecological history (New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press). Reilly, James A. (1981). “The Peasantry of Late Ottoman Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies 10,4 (Summer): 82–97. Reynolds, Nancy  Y. (2013). “Building the Past: Rockscapes and the Aswan High Dam in Egypt,” in Mikhail (ed.). Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 181–205. Richards, Alan (1982). Egypt’s Agricultural Development, 1800–1980: technical and social change (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Rogan, Eugene L. (1999). Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Saad, Reem (2016). “Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt,” in Ghazal and Hanssen (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Sarrage, Mohammed (1935). La nécessité d’une réforme agraire en Syrie (Toulouse: Imprimerie du Sud-Ouest). Schilcher, Linda (1991). “The Grain Economy of Late Ottoman Syria and the Issue of LargeScale Commercialization,” in Keyder and Tabak (eds). Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), 173–195. Scott, James  C. (1976). The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Scott, James  C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Conditions Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Scott, James  C. (2009). The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Seddon, David (1981). Moroccan Peasants: A Century of Change in the Eastern Rif, 1870–1970 (Folkestone: Wm Dawson & Sons). Shakow, Aaron (2010). “ ‘Oriental Plague’ in the Middle Eastern Landscape,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42,4 (November): 660–662. al-Shihabi, Mustafa (1922 [1340]). Al-Ziraʿa al-ʿAmaliya al-Haditha [Modern Practical Agriculture] (Dimashq: Matbaʿa al-Hukuma). Shokr, Ahmad (2009). “Hydropolitics, Economy and the Aswan High Dam in Mid-Century Egypt,” Arab Studies Journal 17,1 (Spring): 9–31. Sowers, Jeannie (2011). “Remapping the Nation, Critiquing the State: Environmental Narratives and Desert Land Reclamation in Egypt,” in Davis and Burke, Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), 158–191. Stoler, Ann Laura (2002). “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance,” Archival Science 2: 87–109. Stoler, Ann Laura (2009). Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Swearingen, Will D. (1987). Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions, 1912–1986 (London: I. B. Tauris).

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Environmental History of the Middle East and North Africa   23 Swearingen, Will  D. (1996). “Is Drought Increasing in Northwest Africa? A Historical Analysis,” in Swearingen and Bencherifa (eds). The North African Environment at Risk (Boulder, CO: Westview Press), 17–34. Tabak, Faruk (2008). The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550–1870: A Geohistorical Approach (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Takriti, Abdel Razzaq (2013). Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman 1965–1976 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Trumbull, George R. IV (2011). “Body of Work: Water and Reimagining the Sahara in the Era of Decolonization,” in Davis and Burke, Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), 87–112. Tucker, Judith  E. (1985). Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tvedt, Terje (ed.) (2010). The River Nile in the Post-Colonial Age: Conflict and Cooperation Among the Nile Basin Countries (New York: I. B. Tauris). Varlık, Nükhet. (2015). Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600 (New York: Cambridge University Press). Wagstaff, J. M. (1985). The Evolution of Middle Eastern Landscapes: an Outline to A.D. 1840 (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble). Warriner, Doreen (1948). Land and Poverty in the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press). Warriner, Doreen (1957). Land Reform and Development in the Middle East: A Study of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq (London, New York: Royal Institute of International Affairs). Watson, Andrew M. (1983). Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Weulersse, Jacques (1946). Paysans de Syrie et du Proche-Orient (Paris: Gallimard). White, Sam (2010). “Rethinking Disease in Ottoman History,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42,4 (November): 549–567. White, Sam (2011). The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wilkinson, J. C. (1977). Water and Tribal Settlement in South-East Arabia: A Study of the Aflaj of Oman (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Williams, Elizabeth (2010). “Contesting the Colonial Narrative’s Claims to Progress: A Nationalist’s Proposal for Agrarian Reform,” Review of Middle East Studies 44,2 (Winter): 187–195. Williams, Elizabeth (2015). “Cultivating Empires: Environment, Expertise, and Scientific Agriculture in Late Ottoman and French Mandate Syria,” PhD diss., Georgetown University, Washington DC. Wittfogel, Karl (1957). Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). World Bank (1955). The Economic Development of Syria (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Zeitoun, Mark (2008). Power and Water in the Middle East: The Hidden Politics of the Palestinian-Israeli Water Conflict (London: I. B. Tauris).

chapter 2

Fisca l Cr isis a n d Structu r a l Ch a nge i n the L ate Ot tom a n Econom y Murat Birdal

Historically, land was the major source of wealth and income for the Ottoman state. It was principally owned by the sultan and was rented out to peasants in return for taxes. Though various rental arrangements existed, taxation was mainly based on tımar (fief) institution. Under the tımar system, tımar holders, called sipahis (cavalries) were granted the right to govern and collect the taxes in their provinces. In return, the sipahis were liable to provide security and order in the province and to train and enlist a prede­ termined number of cavalrymen in times of war. Hence, by outsourcing the main­ten­ ance of cavalry units the central administration avoided extra financial costs during peacetime and gained the ability to muster a large army in times of need. The tımar sys­ tem was practiced in a large part of the empire, but in remote areas such as Eastern Anatolia, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Romania, Moldavia, and the Maghrib, the Ottoman gov­ ernment collected tributes through local officials. The decentralized military structure sustained by the tımar system functioned well until the sixteenth century as territorial expansion of the empire continued. In the late sixteenth century, advancements in firearms technology radically altered the military organization structure all over Europe. New armies were not only larger and more com­ plex, but also more costly as they required a whole range of services such as arms, provi­ sions, and other supplies.1 The “military revolution,” as dubbed by Michael Roberts, generated the need for a permanent, centralized standing army, increasing the financial pressure on state budgets.2

  Storrs (2009: 3).   

1

  Roberts (1956).

2

Fiscal Crisis and Change in the Late Ottoman Economy   25 John Brewer coined the phrase “fiscal-military state” to denote the fiscal trans­form­ation in Europe that served to finance a modern professional army and sustain large-scale warfare.3 As financial needs of the military mounted, Ottomans found themselves having budget deficits for the first time in the late sixteenth century. Particularly during war­ time, state revenues fell considerably short of covering the military expenses. For instance, during the war against the Habsburgs in 1597–1598, Sultan Murad III borrowed twice his revenues.4 Moreover, the establishment of a central army required develop­ ment of new financial sources and collection of taxes at the central treasury. Measures adopted to overcome the liquidity problems of the treasury led to gradual replacement of the tımar system with iltizam.5 İltizam was a system based on tax-farm auctioning and subcontracting that began during the reign of Mehmed II (1432–1481). Tax collection of a fiscal unit was leased for a fixed period of time to the highest bidder who in return made cash payments to the cen­ tral administration.6 In the seventeenth century, when faced with persistent budget def­ icits, the government extended the length of farming contracts, demanding larger cash advances. This trend eventually led to the introduction of the malikane system in 1695, which allowed farming out of revenue sources on a life-term basis for a larger initial sum and annual payments.7 Financial straits of the treasury also forced the government to increase direct state taxes. In the seventeenth century, avarız, originally an extraordinary wartime tax col­ lected in kind and cash, became a cash tax collected on a regular basis. However, increas­ ing direct state collections also threatened the revenues of the tax farms by reducing the cultivators’ ability to pay.8 Nevertheless, these reform attempts failed to provide a durable solution to the fiscal problems of the treasury, as the government often resorted to debasements of the coin­ age. By the end of the eighteenth century, foreign borrowing was considered for the first time but this alternative was not pursued any further due to unfavorable conditions in the international capital markets and the reluctance of the palace. One major factor that limited the effectiveness of fiscal reforms in this period was that a large portion of the tax revenues, roughly two-thirds, was retained by the intermediaries.9 In 1839, with the tanzimat reforms, the Sublime Porte (a metonym used for the Ottoman government) aimed to overcome this limitation by centralizing tax collection through salaried government agents, muhassıls. However, this reform attempt met with resistance from the existing tax farmers. This provincial elite, or ayans, had turned into businessmen and the reform not only threatened their economic privileges but also their local political authority. Muhassıls, on the other hand, were appointed from the center and lacked local knowledge and connections in the countryside. Facing opposition from the ayans, the government failed to establish an efficient central tax collection system. As a result, in 1840, tithe (öşür)  Brewer (1990).   4  Balla and Johnson (2009: 816).    5  Salzman (1993).   Quataert (2008: 30).    7  Birdal (2010: 18).    8  McGowan (2010: 105). 9   Karaman and Pamuk (2010: 609). 3

6

26   murat birdal r­ ev­enues plummeted considerably forcing the government to revert to previous taxfarming arrangements. Another major reason for the fiscal crisis of the Ottoman state was the international treaties imposed on the empire by European powers. These so-called capitulations granted extraterritorial privileges to the foreigners conducting business in the empire. Initially, sultans voluntarily granted privileges to foreign merchants to stimulate inter­ regional trade in the empire. However, after the military decline of the Ottoman Empire, European states demanded greater concessions, imposing restrictions on fiscal sovereignty of the state and economic discrimination against local population.10 Consequently, the Ottoman state was deprived of the right to set its customs duties in a way that would maximize its revenues and protect native industries. Moreover, it was not allowed to establish state monopolies in sectors other than tobacco and salt. In nineteenthcentury Europe, on the other hand, the proceeds of the monopolies in various sectors such as petroleum, playing cards, matches, tobacco, and cigarette paper, constituted a considerable portion of state revenues. The tax privileges granted to foreign citizens and protégés of the European states also restricted the development of state revenues, as these actors dominated economic activity in the empire.11 In order to finance the recurring budget deficits, the Ottoman government also sought to broaden the base of domestic borrowing, which had played a crucial role in funding European warfare in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.12 In 1774, the Ottoman government issued state bonds, secured by particular anticipated revenues, to pay for goods and services and extend the repayment period of previous loans. The gov­ ernment also made payments in sergis, official promises of payment at a future date.13 Another instrument used for the same purpose was kaime. Initially issued in 1840 as eight-year treasury notes carrying an interest, kaimes gradually took the form of unbacked paper currency. Particularly during the Crimean War (1853–1856), the gov­ ernment’s increasing reliance on the issuance of kaimes caused a major wave of inflation. Toward the end of the 1850s kaimes no longer commanded trust and their withdrawal from the market had become a priority for the government. Finally, private capital accumulation was fairly limited and a small number of money­ changers, sarrafs, controlled the financial market. Galata Bankers, named after the financial district of Istanbul, provided the government with short-term advances in return for government securities, eshams. Also, due to the uncertainties about the pay­ ment dates and other difficulties in collecting the payments, recipients of government securities often chose to cash out their holdings by selling them to the bankers at a sig­ nificant discount. Owing to their close connections within the government, the bankers were able to secure the repayment of their loans, at least to some extent. The scarcity of capital in the empire allowed these sarrafs to charge usurious rates on their loans, earn­ ing them the nickname Galata Vampires.14

  Kuran (2012: 2013).      Clay (2000: 19–20).   

  Birdal (2010: 22).      Birdal (2010: 25).

10

11

13

14

  Çizakça (2011: 73).

12

Fiscal Crisis and Change in the Late Ottoman Economy   27

Foreign Loans and Institutional Reforms to Access International Markets Until the outbreak of the Crimean War, the Porte managed to finance its spending through domestic loans and frequent debasements of the coinage. In 1854, for the first time in its history, the Ottoman government turned to international capital markets to finance its war expenses. The issue of this loan also marked the date the Ottoman Empire embarked on a path that would ultimately lead to its insolvency. In 1902, a foreign observer, Charles Morawitz noted ironically: “There are things that are very quickly learned. The art of indebtedness is among them. As soon as the Ottoman Empire was initiated, it made rapid progress in this direction.”15 The 1854 loan was contracted in Europe, with the cooperation of the empire’s allies against Russians, Britain, and France. It was collateralized by the Egyptian tribute annu­ ally deposited at the Bank of England. The next year it was followed by another loan, this time under the official guarantee of the British and French governments, with the provi­ sion that proceeds of the loan would be used entirely for military purposes. The 1855 loan was secured on customs revenues of Istanbul and Izmir along with the Egyptian tribute. In both loans, effective interests were significantly lower (7.9% and 3.9% respectively) than the interests charged by Galata Bankers (around 15%). The success of these loans depended on two critical factors. First, the loans were supported by the allied govern­ ments. Particularly the 1855 loan held an official guarantee; hence credibility of the Ottoman government was no longer an issue. For British and French investors, this practically meant lending to their own governments. Second, for the collateral to com­ mand confidence of investors it should be monitorable, liquid, and easily seizable in case of default. In this context, both loans were secured on the most attractive and stable sources of revenue the Ottomans had to offer, Egyptian tribute. By the 1860s, the Ottoman Empire did not have an established budget system. Financial accounts of the treasury were not only unreliable, but it was also extremely dif­ ficult for potential investors to monitor these accounts. Therefore, investors were reluc­ tant to buy Ottoman bonds unless they were secured by particular revenue sources. However, as the Porte raised one loan after another, it ran out of attractive collaterals, and risk premiums increased drastically. In 1860, the effective interest on the loan had reached 9.6% and issue of another loan had failed due to the French government’s refusal to allow its quotation in the Paris Bourse. In order to restore the credibility of the Ottoman government and regain access to financial markets at more favorable terms, Grand Vizier Fuat Paşa (1814–1868) initiated   Suvla (1966: 99).

15

28   murat birdal a series of reforms including the establishment of a budget system. However, the reform attempt failed to convince the financial markets as the budgets were fiercely criticized for being vague estimations of revenues and expenditures of the state. It was also pointed out that the state itself did not have the means to obtain accurate information about its balances. Under conditions of uncertainty, Ottomans often overstated their revenues and understated their expenditures to convince creditors to lend under better terms.16 Fuat Paşa’s reforms also included the establishment of a state bank. After several failed attempts, in 1863 Anglo-French concessionaires were granted the privilege of establish­ ing a state bank, Imperial Ottoman Bank (BIO). According to the concession, the bank would hold the monopoly of issuing notes. Moreover, it would handle the operations of treasury, collect its revenues, provide the government with short-term advances, act as the financial agent of the government in the international markets, and raise new loans. The main motives behind the national bank concession were twofold. First was to restore monetary stability in the domestic economy. By 1861, kaimes had flooded the market causing popular discontent and protests.17 Hence, their withdrawal from the market and replacement with a new, sound currency had been an urgent priority for the government for both economic and political stability. In 1862 (before the concession), with the help of the Ottoman Bank, the government raised another loan to retire the kaimes. Second, by the establishment of the BIO the Porte aimed to regain credibility in international markets and raise new loans at lower costs. Both motives required the independence of the bank from the government. Therefore, government involvement in the bank’s administration was kept at minimum to command confidence both in domestic and international markets. The BIO assisted the government to raise a total of £22 millions in three loans between 1862 and 1865. Effective interests on these loans were 8.8%, 8.5%, and 9.1% respectively. It was also striking that the effective interest on the 1862 loan was considerably lower than the interest on the 1860 loan, despite its much larger size and the fact that it was secured on the same revenue sources. Particularly, after the failed loan attempt in 1860, these loans could be considered fairly successful. According to Edhem Eldem, in a country where Western financial interests lacked any formal or permanent representation, the presence of BIO as a European-controlled bank was “sufficient to give a sense of security to the European investors.”18 The reform attempt initiated by Fuat Paşa achieved its purpose of raising new loans in the short term but failed to provide a durable solution to the liquidity crisis of the state. In 1870s, the government faced severe difficulties in the service of debt. In the domestic market, local bankers did not lend the government even at interest rates as high as 25%.19 In the international markets, rumors of bankruptcy were circulating and the credit of the empire had plunged to its lowest level. Adverse economic conditions in inter­nation­al markets only added to its difficulties.

  Birdal (2010: 31–32).      Clay (2000: 20–21).

16 19

  Pamuk (2000: 211).   

17

  Eldem (2005: 438–439).

18

Fiscal Crisis and Change in the Late Ottoman Economy   29 Once again, in order to improve its credit in financial markets the Porte initiated a fiscal reform, which included the delegation of tax collection to the BIO and establishment of an independent commission to control and approve the imperial budget. Aside from three government representatives, the other ten members of the commission comprised local bankers including the general director of the BIO. The commission’s final report ­disseminated to the European press underlined that distrust in the finances of the empire was not justified by the facts. In the same year, the government raised another loan of £40 million on the general revenues of the treasury. The issue was considered a “success” in the European press, due to economic difficulties of the empire and the fact that it was not secured on a particular source of revenue.20 However, the high effective interest on the loan (around 11.5%) also reflected the reluctance of the European in­vest­ors and their eroding confidence in the BIO administration. As a bank operating in the empire and the largest creditor of the state, the BIO had strong vested interests in ensuring capital inflow to the empire that could otherwise face insolvency. The same was true for other local bankers in the commission. Therefore, the “independency” of the financial commission was questioned by European media and creditors, which suggested that a truly “independent” commission could only be formed by European financiers without any direct ties to the government.21 Critiques of the empire were proved right by the turns of events. In 1875, Grand Vizier Mahmud Nedim Paşa declared a partial default on interest payments for foreign loans. A year later, all coupon payments were suspended, except for the 1855 loan guaranteed by the British government. By the time of default, almost half of total revenues of the state were committed to debt service. After the default, chronic economic problems of the Porte were complicated by the outbreak of the war against Russia. The Ottoman government once again resorted to the issue of massive amounts of kaime leading to a sharp depreciation of the currency. In only three years after its revival, kaimes had lost almost 60% of its value, becoming a major bottleneck for economic activity in the capital. Under these circumstances, the Ottoman government managed to raise another loan in 1877, issued by the BIO and Glyn Mills, Curie and Co. in Britain and France. The “Ottoman Defense Loan” was secured on the remainder of the Egyptian tribute, the most credible and lucrative source of rev­ enue the empire had. However, the loan was not quoted on the stock exchanges due to the default, and the ongoing war created further reluctance on the part of investors pushing up the interest rate to 9.6%. Domestic borrowing, on the other hand, was even more costly than before. Local bankers faced great risks lending to an insolvent government fighting a costly war. They had already lent a great deal of money and a possible dismemberment of the empire could have far more adverse consequences. Moreover, during the years of default, the Ottoman Empire was excluded from international capital markets (with the exception of the defense loan). This strengthened the hand of Galata Bankers who turned oppor­ tunity into profit and charged up to 24% interest on their loans to the government.22   Birdal (2010: 37).      Clay (2000: 367).

20 22

  Economist (1874); Stock Exchange Review (1874).

21

30   murat birdal In 1878, the Ottoman Empire and Russia signed the treaty of San Stefano, later super­ seded by the treaty of Berlin (1878), ending the war. Aside from territorial losses, the Ottoman Empire was compelled to pay a war indemnity, which aggravated its fiscal dis­ tress. Moreover, there was a possibility of war against Greece. In desperate need of funds to finance the military arrangements, the government once again turned to Galata Bankers and the BIO. The local bankers agreed to make advances under very strict terms. As a result, in 1879, the government agreed to the establishment of the Administration of Six Indirect Revenues (ASIR). By the terms of the agreement, six indirect revenues of the state (tobacco, fish, salt, spirits, stamp taxes, and the silk tithes of Istanbul and Bursa) were ceded to the control of a consortium formed by the BIO and local bankers. The consortium had the first call on one million liras of revenues. The remainder was apportioned to the service of foreign debt.

The Administration of Revenues under the OPDA The establishment of ASIR infuriated European bondholders. New arrangements had granted the local bankers an administrative role over the revenue sources previously assigned to foreign bondholders along with a priority in repayment of loans. In response, bondholder organizations lobbied for the implementation of the recommendations of the Congress of Berlin, which included the establishment of an international commis­ sion to supervise the resources assigned to debt service. Eventually, diplomatic pres­ sures and concerns to regain access to international capital markets convinced the Porte to invite the bondholder organizations to the negotiation table. After long negotiations, an agreement was reached and the total outstanding debt of the empire was reduced to 58% of the original amount, £252 million. On December 20, 1881, the government issued the Decree of Muharrem sanctioning the establishment of a council charged with the administration and collection of the revenues assigned to the debt service. The Council of Foreign Debt was ostensibly private despite close connec­ tions of its members with their home governments. It was composed of two members from France, one each from Germany, Austria, Italy, and the Ottoman government, and one from Britain and Holland together. Members of the council were appointed by the banks, bondholders or, in the case of Italy, by the Rome Chamber of Commerce. The council established the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA). By the terms of the decree, along with the six indirect revenues, the Bulgaria tribute, the revenues of Eastern Rumelia and the surplus of the Cyprus revenue were handed over to the OPDA, until the liquidation of debt. The administration was to operate independently from the government. The government would not interfere with the operations of the OPDA, but it was obliged to provide assistance and security when needed. It was also entitled to send a commissioner to the regular meetings and examine its books. Disagreements

Fiscal Crisis and Change in the Late Ottoman Economy   31 between the government and the administration were to be resolved by an arbitration committee. The OPDA held the sole authority to hire and dismiss its employees who practically functioned as state employees. Concerned about the unpopular nature of its operations, the administration adopted a policy based on the employment of locals in order to avoid public unrest. In his report, Edgar Vincent, representative of the English, Dutch, and Belgian bondholders in the Council of Public Debt, outlined the employment policy of the administration as follows, “In a country like Turkey, there can be nothing more dan­ gerous to the permanence of a system of collection than to levy heavy taxes by means of foreigners.”23 Accordingly, the OPDA chose to leave the provincial executive in the hands of the locals, while the duty of control and supervision was entrusted to foreign officials. In its first year of operation, the administration employed only eighty-eight for­ eigners out of a total of 5,704 officers.24 The Decree of Muharrem was perceived as “a severe blow to Ottoman pride and sov­ ereignty.”25 By the terms of the decree, the government had compromised its financial autonomy by handing over around one-third of its revenues to an administration con­ trolled by foreign bondholders. Until the outbreak of the First World War, the OPDA functioned as a state within the state and gradually extended its control over the econ­ omy. By 1912, the number of employees in the OPDA surpassed those in the treasury. The Porte was not left with many options. Through direct negotiations with the bond­ holders, it avoided the imposition of an international commission directly controlled by European powers. As pointed out by the first historian of the OPDA, “it was less of an evil than would have been the establishment of an official political organization for the accomplishment of the same object.”26 Over the years, OPDA established a new administrative system and achieved signifi­ cant increases in the revenues under its management. It introduced new technologies and regulations, and sought new opportunities to increase the market base for products in the relevant sectors. Institutional changes by the OPDA also created positive exter­ nalities for the overall economy. One major obstacle for effective fiscal management was the widespread corruption within the ranks of bureaucracy. In order to eliminate cor­ ruption, the administration paid considerably higher wages than the government. The salary policy adopted by the administration was outlined as follows: The Oriental System is to give an official a mere pittance paid irregularly, and to allow him to rob. If you stop his robbing you must increase his pay and give him a sufficient sum to live upon in decency and comfort. Meanwhile the regularity with which our officials receive their salaries proved a sufficient attraction to enable us to select our employees from a large number of candidates. There are, I should esti­ mate, some fifty applications for every vacant post at Constantinople.27

 Vincent (1882).   24 Vincent (1882).   25  Eldem (2005: 443).   Blaisdell (1929: 97).    27  OPDA (1883: 8–9).

23

26

32   murat birdal The largest source of income ceded to the administration was the salt monopoly. In this sector, the OPDA mainly focused its efforts on the eradication of contraband salt. Particularly after 1908, with the government’s increasing cooperation against smugglers, the monopoly achieved significant improvements in this area. Besides combating contra­band, the OPDA also sought to extend the market for salt by encouraging the development of other sectors requiring large supplies of salt such as fisheries or olive cultivation and by exploring new export channels. Expansion of the railroads was another important factor that helped the administration to wipe out the contraband and improve salt revenues by lowering the transportation costs and driving down the prices. Another source of revenue controlled by the administration was the silk tithe. In the 1860s, silk production was seriously hit by a silkworm disease (pebrine). Despite the efforts of the producers and the government, the disease continued to ravage silk pro­ duction throughout the 1870s.28 In its early years, the OPDA’s top priority was the elim­ in­ation of the disease and establishment of a quality-control mechanism to prevent another outbreak. The OPDA contacted Louis Pasteur for his assistance, and on his re­com­menda­tions invited one of his students, Kevork Torkomyan, to the country.29 Torkomyan opened a silk-raising institute in Bursa to teach the Pasteur technique and help the producers raise disease-free eggs. Participation in the program was enforced by a law requiring the certificate of the institute for the sale and production of silkworm eggs and cocoons. Over the years, 2,032 people received training at the institute, which played a crucial role in the revival of the Ottoman silk industry.30 After the elimination of the disease, the OPDA played an active role in diffusion of technology in silk reeling and weaving and in establishment of new factories. As a result, silk revenue increased tremendously from 13,219 liras in 1881–1882 to 131,217 liras in 1907–1908, before declin­ ing due to territorial losses of the empire.31 Another tax collected by the OPDA was the stamp tax imposed on all commercial or governmental documents. The OPDA encountered several difficulties in the adminis­ tration of this revenue. First of all, written contracts were rarely used among Ottoman Muslims. They were typically used among religious minorities and in urban areas. Moreover, due to the capitulations, citizens and protégés of the states possessing extraterritorial rights were exempted from tax. The protégés made up a considerable portion of the religious minorities who dominated commercial activities of the empire, particularly modern economic sectors such as finance and insurance. Hence their exclusion from the tax was a serious obstacle for enlargement of the tax base. Secondly, the existing stamp law imposed extremely high charges on commercial activities so it was systematically evaded. The OPDA aimed to bring down the charges to a more reasonable level while extending the coverage of the law to foreign nationals. However, foreign missions opposed the proposal to end the tax exemptions of their sub­ jects. Still, the administration achieved significant increases in stamp revenue through stricter enforcement of the law. Lobbying efforts of the bondholder organizations to end   Quataert (1992: 51).      Birdal (2010: 114).

28 31

  OPDA (1884: 14).   

29

  Quataert (1987: 291).

30

Fiscal Crisis and Change in the Late Ottoman Economy   33 tax exemptions finally paid off in 1904 and brought a striking 54% increase in stamp rev­ enue in the same budget year.32 Overall, stamp revenues increased by 334% under the OPDA, despite territorial losses of the empire.33 The OPDA also collected the fishery tax of Istanbul and its suburbs. The fish were brought to market to be sold at an auction directed by OPDA officials. The administra­ tion received 20% tax off the final price and another 3% for the sale expenses.34 In order to improve fishery revenues, the OPDA aimed to prevent contraband and increase prod­ uct­iv­ity. For the latter, the administration invited scientists from Europe to conduct detailed research on the existing species in the Marmara Sea, published pamphlets, and organized lectures on alternative methods of fishing.35 It also encouraged the use of salt in the fishing industry, so that the fish would last longer. OPDA reports pointed out that exports of salted fish kept the prices high even when the fish was abundant.36 Spirits tax was another revenue ceded to the administration. One apparent obstacle in the development of this revenue source was the prohibition of alcohol in Islam, which was also backed by legal arrangements. Still, alcohol consumption by Muslims was not uncommon, but average consumption figures were considerably less compared to other European countries. Another obstacle was the unfair terms of trade imposed by the European powers through capitulations. In the Ottoman Empire, the importer of wine paid 8% import tax whereas the domestic producer had to pay a 15% ad valorem tax to the government.37 In the same period, the wine industry was heavily protected in Europe, hence Ottoman exports faced great disadvantages. Under these circumstances, the OPDA achieved significant increases in exports, which made up almost one quarter of total wine production in 1890s. However, alarmed by the increasing competition of Ottoman wines, first France, then Italy levied add­ ition­al duties on wine imports. Revision of tariffs constituted a major blow to Ottoman wine production. OPDA persistently protested the unfairness of the tariffs and lobbied for the revision of terms; but to no avail. In order to compensate for the decline in wine production, OPDA encouraged the development of the domestic beer industry. In the following years, growing beer production became the major driving force behind the increases in tax revenues. As a result, revenue obtained from the sprits tax increased by 138% between 1881 and 1912 until the Balkan wars.38 The tobacco monopoly was initially among the six indirect revenues ceded to the OPDA. In 1883 it was farmed out to the Régie Company, formed by a consortium of European Banks headed by the BIO. In return, the administration was guaranteed a fixed annual payment of 750,000 liras along with a share in the profits of the company.39 By the concession, the Ottoman government was also given an increasing share in profits to provide an incentive for its cooperation against smuggling activities.40 The Régie Company held the tobacco monopoly until 1925. Throughout its years of ­operation it was not only the largest foreign investment, but also the largest corporation   CFB (1905–1906: 38–39).    33  Birdal (2010: 119).    34  Blaisdell (1929: 113).   Önsoy (1999: 199–200).    36  CFB (1910–1911: 363).    37  Birdal (2010: 123). 38   Birdal (2010: 121).    39 OPDA (1883).   40  Doğruel and Doğruel (2000: 331–337). 32 35

34   murat birdal in the empire. During these years, operations of the company were often met with popu­ lar resistance and it was fiercely criticized as a symbol of Western imperialism and exploitation. The major reason for the widespread anti-Régie sentiment among the pub­ lic was its controversial methods in dealing with the cultivators and its infamous sur­ veillance unit, kolcus, who were held responsible for the deaths of thousands. The establishment of the Régie system radically altered the preexisting production, credit, and distribution networks in the sector. Due to severe restrictions, high license fees, and low purchase prices there was a sudden drop in tobacco cultivation. Also the number of cigarette factories fell from 300 to twelve, as private factories were elim­in­ ated.41 Smuggling activities also flourished under the Régie system. The large spread between buying and high selling prices led to the expansion of the contraband market. During the concession, the Régie’s priority had always been the prevention of contra­ band, and surveillance expenses made up a considerable portion of total expenditures. While the Régie’s surveillance policy often drew public complaints, the company per­ sist­ent­ly complained about the reluctance of the government to cooperate against the contra­band. Overall, it is difficult to say if the Régie ever fulfilled the expectations enter­ tained by foreign investors and bondholders, mostly due to the continuing prevalence of the contraband.

Foreign Investment After the OPDA After the debt settlement, the Ottoman government regained access to international capital markets and borrowed at substantially better terms compared to the pre-OPDA period. Lacking credibility in the financial markets, the Porte often relied on the cred­ ibil­ity of the OPDA and did not hesitate to transfer more resources to supervision of the administration in order to raise new loans. Through this process, the OPDA gradually extended its control over the Ottoman economy. In the 1854–1881 period, the total amount of foreign loans was £228,372,507 while the government received only £122,741,500. In the OPDA period, on the other hand, foreign loans amounted to £150,983,532 and the government received £133,510,354. Moreover, out of twenty-five loans contracted in this term, eighteen loans were secured on the sources of revenue supervised by the OPDA. These pledges included the surplus of the OPDA revenue, custom duties, and tithes collected from different districts. For the remainder of loans, monitorable and credible pledges were picked such as the govern­ ment’s share in the Régie Company or the tobacco tithe, both collected through the Régie system. Figure 2.1 illustrates the spread between the yields of Ottoman foreign loans and 2.5% British consols (bonds), which were selected as an indicator of risk-free return on

  Quataert (1983: 17).

41

13 19

10 19

08 19

05 19

03 19

96 18

93 18

90 18

86 18

72

74 18

70

18

18

18

62 18

58 18

18

65

Ottoman Bonds Spread over UK Consols Before and After the OPDA

9% 8% 7% 6% 5% 4% 3% 2% 1% 0%

54

Spread

Fiscal Crisis and Change in the Late Ottoman Economy   35

Years

Figure 2.1  Risk premium on Ottoman loans42

investment. As shown in Figure 2.1, with the exception of the Egyptian tribute loans in 1854 and 1855, risk premiums on Ottoman loans never fell below the 5% level and peaked at 8% in 1877. After the establishment of the OPDA, risk premiums fell significantly and remained below the 3.5% level. The average risk premium on Ottoman bonds in this period was 2.1%, as opposed to 5.7% in the pre-OPDA period. The major reason for lower risk premiums in the OPDA period was the growing con­ fidence among European investors in repayment of loans and administration of rev­ enues apportioned to foreign debt. Over the years, the Ottoman government had initiated several reforms aimed at improving the credibility of the empire in financial markets. However, the reforms were not pursued once they served their purpose, which was securing a new loan. Understandably, by the 1870s reform attempts of the govern­ ment were met with heavy skepticism from financial circles. A clear example of this growing skepticism in Europe was expressed by the Stock Exchange Review after the dec­ laration of financial reforms in 1874: “It may be laid down as the rule that the govern­ ment and their agents omit no opportunity of playing scurvy tricks for unfair gain where it can be done without exciting attention abroad.”43 In contrast to previous reforms, the Decree of Muharrem restored confidence in Ottoman bonds by constraining arbitrary power of the Porte on fiscal matters, particu­ larly in the administration of revenues apportioned to debt service. Investment in Ottoman bonds was no longer a matter of trust in the government, which had already defaulted once. Rather, it was a matter of trust in a commission formed by the repre­ sentatives of European bondholders for the liquidation of the foreign debt. The OPDA introduced international standards in accounting and auditing, provided transparency and standardization of financial records, thus enhancing their monitorability and en­ab­ ling the creditors to make more accurate risk assessments. The OPDA also issued annual reports with detailed accounts of the revenue sources supervised by the administration. The reliability of financial statements issued by the OPDA reduced uncertainty about the service of public debt and contributed to the fall in risk premiums on Ottoman loans.   Birdal (2010: 87).   

42

  Stock Exchange Review (April 1874).

43

36   murat birdal The presence of the OPDA not only facilitated foreign lending but also foreign direct investment. According to estimates, total net foreign direct investment in the 1859–1881 period amounted to £12.607 million, averaging around £548,000 annually. In the 1882–1913 period, total net foreign direct investment increased to £63.684 million, averaging around £1.996 million annually.44 In the OPDA era, the number of foreign joint stock companies also increased drastically, from nineteen to 213.45 In many cases, the OPDA was directly or indirectly involved in these investments. In the Ottoman Empire, foreign investors often complained about the violation of their property rights, arbitrary bureaucratic procedures of the government, and difficul­ ties in receiving payments from the treasury. After the establishment of the OPDA and its emergence as a major actor in the Ottoman economy, European capitalists sought protection and cooperation of the administration for their investments in the country. The OPDA, initially formed to protect the interests of bondholders, gradually evolved into the “watchdog” of European capital in the country.46 A main component of the investment boom in this period was the railroad invest­ ments, which made up around 63% of total foreign direct investments by 1914.47 Railroad companies were granted kilometric guarantees for their investments, usually ranging between 13,000 and 18,000 francs per kilometer. Furthermore, the government was asked to pledge revenues (such as the tithes or sheep taxes collected from districts tra­ versed by the railroad) to be administered by the OPDA.48 Several members of the administration also held posts in the board of directors of the railroad companies.49 The construction of the railroads facilitated internal and external trade by opening up new markets and lowering transportation costs. This brought an increase in the tax rev­ enues of the government. In the period between 1889 and 1914, öşür revenues collected from districts traversed by the Anatolian railroad increased by 114%, while overall öşür revenues increased by only 63%.50 The railroads also benefited the OPDA. The adminis­ tration not only extended its control over the Ottoman economy through the transfer of new pledged revenues under its supervision, but also experienced a rapid increase in its revenues. More im­port­ant­ly, the railroads benefited European capitalists by enabling the penetration of European goods into the interior of the country.

Conclusion There is a fairly broad literature pointing out the military revolution as a major driving force behind institutional change in early modern public finance.51 It was no different in the case of the Ottoman Empire. Increasing military needs coupled with lavish   Pamuk (1994: 197–200).    45  Toprak (1995: 115).    46  Blaisdell (1929: 152).   Pamuk (1994: 74).    48  Owen (1993: 196–197).    49   Blaisdell (1929: 215–224); Feis (1978: 338).    50  Eldem (1994: 93). 51   Balla and Johnson (2009: 10). 44 47

Fiscal Crisis and Change in the Late Ottoman Economy   37 ex­pend­itures of the Ottoman central bureaucracy in the nineteenth century led to mounting fiscal pressure. The Porte aimed to overcome fiscal difficulties through a series of reforms in the tax collection system, domestic borrowing, and depreciation of the currency. By the mid-nineteenth century, as fiscal reforms failed to provide a permanent solution to the fiscal crisis, the Ottoman government turned to international capital markets to finance recurring budget deficits. In this period, the government also initiated several fiscal reforms in order to raise loans with lower risk premiums. However, reforms were not carried through once the funds were secured. The establishment of the OPDA after the default not only enabled the Porte to regain access to international capital markets, but also facilitated foreign direct investment in the empire. The foreign-controlled administration introduced international standards in accounting and auditing, administered reforms in management of revenue sources, and restructured export-oriented sectors of the economy. The OPDA also played a piv­ otal role in the construction of the railroads, which contributed to the dissolution of subsistence production, opened internal markets to European goods, and furthered integration of the Ottoman economy into the world economy. In many aspects, the OPDA was a typical example of “colonization through lending” argument, facilitating the transfer of economic surplus from periphery to the capitalist core economies. Accordingly, it is viewed as an outpost of Western imperialism, safe­ guarding European interests in the country. However, the interests of the administra­ tion and those of European powers were not always aligned. The capitulations imposed on the Ottoman government formed a major obstacle in development of revenues con­ trolled by the administration. Hence, in several cases such as the tax privileges of the foreign nationals, wine duties, and patent law, the OPDA officials came into conflict with their home governments. Finally, it is equally important to acknowledge the contributions—for better or worse—of the OPDA to the modernization of public financial administration and the establishment of a public enterprise system, which later formed the backbone of the Turkish economy in the republican era.

Bibliography Balla, Eliana and Noel  D.  Johnson (2009). “Fiscal Crisis and Institutional Change in the Ottoman Empire and France,” Journal of Economic History 69: 809–845. Birdal, Murat (2010). The Political Economy of Ottoman Public Debt: Insolvency and European Financial Control in the Late Nineteenth Century (New York: I. B. Tauris). Blaisdell, Donald C. (1929). European Financial Control in the Ottoman Empire: A Study of the Establishment, Activities, and Significance of the Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt (New York: Columbia University Press). Brewer, John (1990). The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 Cambridge, Mass.: (Harvard University Press). Çizakça, Murat (2011). Islamic Capitalism and Finance: Origins, Evolution and the Future Cheltenham: (Edward Elgar Publishing). Doğruel, Fatma and Suut Doğruel (2000). Osmanlıʾdan Günümüze Tekel (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları).

38   murat birdal Eldem, Edhem (2005). “Ottoman Financial Integration with Europe: Foreign Loans, the Ottoman Bank and the Ottoman Public Debt,” European Review 13,3: 431–445. Eldem, Vedat (1994). Osmanlı İmparatorluğuʾnun İktisadi Şartları Hakkında Bir Tetkik (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi). Feis, Herbert (1974). Europe the World’s Banker, 1870–1914: An Account of European Foreign Investment and the Connection of World Finance With Diplomacy Before the War (Clifton: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers). Karaman, K., Kivanc Sevket, and Pamuk Sevket (2010). “Ottoman State Finances in European Perspective, 1500–1914,” Journal of Economic History 70,3: 593–629. Kuran, Timur (2012). The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press). McGowan, Bruce (2010). Economic Life in Ottoman Europe: Taxation, Trade and the Struggle for Land, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). “The New Turkish Budget,” Economist, April 25, 1874. Newspaper Cutting Files of the Council of Foreign Bondholders, Reel 193, Vol. III, Guildhall Library, London. Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA). Annual Reports of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, 1882–1914. Owen, Roger (1993). The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800–1914 (New York: I. B. Tauris). Önsoy, Rıfat (1999). Mali Tutsaklığa Giden Yol: Osmanlı Borçları (1854–1914) (Ankara: Turhan Kitabevi). Pamuk, Şevket (1994). Osmanlı Ekonomisinde Bağımlılık ve Büyüme, 2nd edn (Istanbul: Türkiye Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı). Pamuk, Şevket (2000). A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Quataert, Donald (1983). Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881–1908: Reactions to European Economic Penetration (New York: New York University Press). Quataert, Donald (1987). “The Silk Industry of Bursa, 1880–1914”, in H.  İ. İnan (ed.). The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 284–289. Quataert, Donald (2008). The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Roberts, Michael (1956). “The Military Revolution, 1560–1660,” An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the Queen’s University of Belfast, 1956. Salzmann, Ariel (1993). “An Ancient Régime Revisited: Privatization and Political Economy in the eighteenth century Ottoman Empire,” Politics and Society 21: 393–423. Stock Exchange Review. “The Latest Turkish Reform Programme,” Stock Exchange Review, April 1874. Newspaper Cutting Files of the Council of Foreign Bondholders, Reel 193. Vol. III, Guildhall Library, London. Storrs, Christopher (2009). “Introduction: the Fiscal-Military State in the ‘Long’ Eighteenth Century,” in C. Storrs (ed.). The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Essays in Honour of P. G. M. Dickson (Farnham: Ashgate), 1–22. Suvla, Refik Ş. (1966). “Debts During the Tanzimat Period,” in C. Issawi (ed.). The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800–1914 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press), 95–106. Vincent, Edgar (1882). Turkish Debt: Report to English, Dutch and Belgian Bondholders. Newspaper Cutting Files of the Council of Foreign Bondholders, Reel 201, Vol. 21, Guildhall Library, London, 1882.

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chapter 3

Fou n dations of R eligious R efor m (Isl a h) a n d Cu lt u r a l R ev i va l (Na hda) Dyala Hamzah

An Arab cultural movement born during the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire but with premodern roots, the Nahda simultaneously flourished and was tethered under colonial and autocratic rule before being phased out, or appropriated, by diverse nationstate projects between the 1920s and 1950s. Brought forth by a dynamic prenational public sphere centered around Beirut, Alexandria, and Cairo, radiating out to other provincial capitals and city ports in the Mashriq and the Maghrib, the Nahda was traversed by competing narratives and ideologies that all shared the mantra of reform (islah).1 Through newspapers and journals, publishing houses and bookshops, cafés and salons, local and global societies and diasporic networks, the Nahda engineered a modern political sensibility that left the post-Ottoman citizen with spaces of experience and horizons of expectation uneasily contained in the new world of nations-states. This understanding of the Nahda is new.2 In the past fifteen years, the Nahda as an object of study has morphed from a site of derivative and defensive modernity, into a complex process of cultural “rising” (the literal meaning of n-h-d)—partly an

1  A ubiquitous term, islah pervades the literature of the Nahda in ways technical and less so and with the definite incantational quality of a mantra. Khuri-Makdisi (2010). The leading encyclopedic reference on islah had been up until now the lengthy entry by Ali Merad in the Encyclopedia of Islam (2nd edn). It has been criticized recently for its “pseudo-philological” analysis and “fundamentalist,” i.e. “Salafi” perspective (Haddad 2013). 2 For ongoing resistance to a theoretical engagement with the Habermassian notion of a public sphere, see Di-Capua (2015), who asks: “But what exactly was the nature of this sphere?,” before answering: “a secular sphere” . . . that discriminated between a “moral sphere,” and a “material sphere.”

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40   dyala hamzah e­ ngagement with late European imperialism but also partly “autogenetic.”3 A new generation of social and intellectual historians of the Middle East and North Africa, steeped in Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, critiqued Albert Hourani’s 1962 Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1798–1939).4 Drawing on postcolonial studies, critical theory, social network analysis, comparative literature, translation studies, and discourse analysis, recent scholars ask new questions, though “not at the threat of making the Nahda itself irrelevant.”5 Adopting a creative approach to historical sources,6 they lead us away from the “coming of the West” paradigm and its attendant modernization theory and spatial and chronological framings. The gendering of the Nahda, an attention to the subaltern, as well as a return to political economy and material culture have shifted the focus toward the non-canonical, the “unschooled literates,”7 the popular, the domestic, and even the “non-modern.” This scholarship has highlighted the contradictions contained in the Nahdawi public sphere, a site of hegemonic and dissenting discourses, publics and counter-publics. New work in Ottoman studies has also contributed to this shift. Having chipped away at the “decline paradigm” of the Ottoman seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,8 “post-anti-decline” Ottomanists took a “cultural turn” opening vistas on leisure and consumption, book cultures, aesthetic practices of everyday rituals, and the trajectories of things in people’s lives.9 The turn of Islamic studies to social science and cultural analysis has also been central in reconsidering the Nahda. Systematic scrutiny of diverse texts produced or reproduced during the Ottoman centuries (in law, theology, philosophy and logic, grammar, poetry, and adab), the tracing of scholarly networks across Africa and Asia as well as the resulting trends accorded certain scholarly practices generated new interpretive frameworks regarding the preponderance of postclassical works and glosses in the Ottoman Arab provinces. Considered in conjunction with the role of print in resuscitating clas­ sic­al works during the Nahda (and not just in adab and poetry, but also in law and 3  The first to draw attention to an organic drive for reforms from within Nahda studies is Sheehi (2004), a critical field which he is credited to have launched. A much earlier attempt, one that saw “Islamic roots of capitalism,” was Gran (1979), a path followed by only a handful of scholars (Voll 1983, 1999; Schulze 1990, 1996), probably on account of their espousal of the “Enlightenment” thesis—a thesis energetically disavowed (Peters  1990; O’Fahey and Radtke  1993; Radtke  1994,  2000). See also note  57 below. A remarkable synthesis of the “Arab-Islamic reform movement” (eighteenth–twentieth centuries) is Nafi (2000). 4  Repeated tribute was recently still being paid to Hourani (Schumann 2008, 2010); for farewells, see Hamzah (2013); Hanssen and Weiss (2016). 5  Sheehi (2017: 131). 6  Sources have undergone quantitative as well as qualitative expansion. Their range includes: Court records, see Qattan’s recent reassessment, (2013); petitions, Ben Bassat (2013), Hilal (2004); media (as opposed to print) capitalism, Fahmy (2011): satirical press, vaudeville plays, recorded songs, and zajal [colloquial poetry] that shed light on the “agency of ordinary Egyptians in constructing and negotiating national identity” [p. xi]). Objects of material history, Abou-Hodeib (2017); dreams, Ghazal (2016); junk, Ryzova (2018); letters, Khaldi (2012); family archives, Parsons (2011); marginals, Sajdi (2013). 7  Yousef (2017). 8  Faroqhi (2016), Kafadar (1999), Quataert (2000a, 2000b). 9  For a genealogy of the critique of decline and of the “cultural turn” of the post-decline his­tori­og­ raphy, see Sajdi’s introduction to Ottoman tulips, Ottoman coffee (2014).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   41 t­ he­ology, historiography and philosophy), these frameworks will impact scholarship on the modern period in years to come.10 Thus we seem poised to reconsider the hegemonic reforms and discourses of the Nahda in light of its transnational magnitude, internal dynamics, and polyphonic scripts.11 Scholars have reassessed the modern origins of revivalist and reformist thought. The geographical and ideological “peripheries” of reformist thought have been mapped on the ever-growing heterogeneity of the Nahda. Mzabi or Zanzibari (Ibadi) “Salafis,” Fasi (Maliki) “Taqlidis,” or Syrian, Egyptian, and diasporic socialists and an­arch­ists have joined in conversation with their Levantine and Egyptian “liberal” counterparts. A heightened awareness of the role played by new media and genres in epistemic shifts has moved the emphasis from content to form and from canonical to non- or less canonical authors. Indeed, the latter have taken center stage, warding off new readings of former icons (e.g. al-Afghani). However, there remains a discrepancy between the scholarly output concerned with “religious” and “secular” reformist discourse and practice. In addition, an integrated comparative analysis across these ­categories has yet to happen. It is all the more surprising that “Islamic reform,” a colonial category once designating a homogeneous worldview, is itself on the brink of rupture. Opening the doors to reformers with diverse commitments to the modern has rendered Islamic reform a dubious descriptor that does not capture the multifarious empirical reality. This chapter traces the state of the field in order to shed light on promising forays. It also highlights Islamic reform’s enduring exceptionalism and the segregationist mix of deference and discomfort, which continues to envelop this province of Islamic studies,12 even as its place in the Nahda is slowly refashioned.13 This discussion also ponders the extent to which the Nahda, as an era and a cultural dynamic, can and should be conceptually extended to accommodate those brands of Islamic reform that are radically opposed to a public discussion and purview of their own authority. It asks whether it is 10 Rouayheb (2005,  2006,  2015), El Shamsy (2008,  2013,  2016, and  2020), Dayeh (2016), Dallal (2000, 2018), Ibrahim (2013, 2015, 2016a, 2016b), Dumairieh (2016), Khairul Umam (2016). 11 Ibid. 12  With regards to the persistence in treating islah as “Islamic,” i.e., as too specific to be cross-analyzed with non-Muslim reform, see Dupont’s entry on islah in the Encyclopedia of Mediterranean Humanism (2018) and compare with Dakhli’s entry on the Nahda in the same Encyclopedia (2014) who does not once mention Islamic reformers, a posture also present in her monograph (2009). See also Di-Capua (2015). Ryad (2014) considers “Pan-Islamism” as a province of its own. The first Nahda anthology does a much better job if only for its introduction of Hasan al-ʿAttar into the pantheon of translated Nahdawis, and even though central Islamic reformers like Rashid Rida are conspicuously absent: see el-Ariss (2018). 13  Compare Khuri-Makdisi’s cross-analysis of Rida, Shidyaq, and Zaydan in her rendering of nahdawi representations of the Ottoman capital (2013a) with her reluctance to cross-analyze ʿAbduh’s and Rida’s understanding of the social body (al-hayʾa al-ijtimaʿiyya) with that of Khuri-Makdisi (2014). The same attitude still informs our approach to later developments and issues of decolonization. On the need to acknowledge that Marxist and Islamist thinkers and activists “occupy the same discursive terrain or problem-space” and hence, need to be held together in the same archive of anticolonial struggle, El Shakry (2015: 933–934).

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42   dyala hamzah heuristically wiser to contemplate a counter-Nahda that would accommodate Nahda’s “others.” Before attempting to pose these questions, three comments are offered on the analytical categories and their philological underpinnings islah, maslaha, muslih. A lexical inquiry into the mainstream categories used to define the Nahda can lead us to question the existence of “Islamic reform.” The pervasive Arabic term of the Nahda was islah (reform) not islah islami.14 Reform was often but not always qualified as social, religious, moral, educational, political, economic, linguistic, literary, or even con­tem­ por­ary. It was as much the preserve of Muslims, as of Jews and Christians, secular or religious.15 It is odd that reformist discourses emanating from the dominant culture should be singled out as Islamic. They stand out as anomalous or idiosyncratic instead of “normal” (in the sense of mainstream). True, there was nothing normal about the totalizing consequences of a reformist discourse which covered “all aspects of life,” even as it was allegedly loosening the grip of certain religious norms and practices on modern life.16 However, it is rarely this argument that supports “Islamic” reform. More often than not, the term stands for an irreducible non-liberal, irrational core to a reformist discourse concerned with Islam and this in turn explains its “failure.” This is not to say that Jews, Christians and Muslims, secular and religious actors, did not each cater for their own idiosyncratic discursive communities: of course they did, but they first and foremost participated in the collective constitution of public opinion. This is also not to say that Jews and Christians were experts on or even interested in the fate of Islamic law or in their polity’s caliphal foundations. Nor is it suggested that Muslims uniquely cared for the future of Jewish and Christian institutions. But by “reinvent[ing] themselves as a linguistic community with a distinct historic legacy” sharing in common political and civic values, Nahdawis successfully promoted a cross-sectarian “Arab identity for all Arabic speakers.”17 On the other hand, there was never a consensus about what reform entailed. Scholars have underscored that reform was less content and more form, a “horizon,” a “mantra,” or a “method,”18 predicated on “the desire for power in all its forms (intellectual, military, industrial).”19 Even when reform reached executive capacity in state agencies, it never became a unified notion.20 While the three iconic figures of “Islamic reform,” Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839–97), Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905), 14  One of the major repositories of “Islamic reform,” al-Manar (1898–1935) is a four decade- and 30,000 page-long journal, in which the occurrences of the expression “Islamic reform” are infinitesimal; appearing at long intervals and mostly as titles, they are hardly elaborated upon in the articles. The expression is deployed in specific contexts: to distinguish what newspapers or other authors are saying about islah (Manar 1 and 2[1899]); to report on Orientalist polemics regarding Islam (Manar 3[1900]); to engage in polemics against Muslim enemies of islah such as al-Nabhani (Manar 13[1910]); to counter the Westernizers’s pseudo-reformism (Manar 20[1918]); to report on islah in the Maghreb (Manar 28[1927]). 15  Debunking the Orientalist misreading of nahdawi islah as “Salafi,” Lauzière writes: “For Abduh, Rida and their associates, reform (islah) remained the keyword; it was the true banner of their movement. They used it in a comprehensive manner that encompassed not only religious reform but also social, educational, political and civilizational reform” (Lauzière 2016: 40). 16  Dallal (2000: 337); Commins (2015: 151–152). 17  Levy (2008: 468). 18  Roussillon (1995a: 11), Khuri-Makdisi (2013b: 65), Haddad (2013). 19  Haykel (2013: 5–6). 20  Bashkin (2010).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   43 and Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935), partook in a shared ethos of activism, each personified one dimension of reformist agency: political mobilization; institutional implementation; public opinion-making, and social organizing. While it is useful to place the topos of islah in Islamic literature and social practice, it is much more potent, in the context of the Nahda, to underscore the term’s ubiquity. In addition, the semantic field of islah (to redress, to correct, to set right), multiplied not only the occurrences of the act itself (the verb s-l-h), but also of its subject (the reformer or muslih) and its object (equated with the public interest or maslaha).21 Thus, the three terms maslaha, islah, and muslih were used in conjunction to signify that the purpose of reform is achieved when the reformer caters for the public interest.22 It also became commonplace to find the alternatives commonweal (al-salih al-ʿamm or al-salih al-ʿumumi), common good (al-khayr al-ʿamm), shared interests (masalih mushtaraka), and utility (manfaʿa). This lexicon became the Nahdawis’ shared language; its inflections indicated the users’ ideo­ logic­al orientations. A telling instance is the recourse to both manfaʿa and maslaha by two self-proclaimed heirs of Muhammad ʿAbduh: the aforementioned Rida and the Egyptian nationalist Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (1872–1963), but with a very clear preference for maslaha by the first and for manfaʿa by the second.23 During the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire justified its far-reaching modernizing and centralizing reforms, the Tanzimat, by resorting to the notion of maslaha—a (contested) concept of legal theory and a source of the law systematically cast into the language of political and administrative reform.24 Until the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, Rida had been an impassioned Ottomanist. His preference for maslaha was in line with the lexicon of a centralizing state, and is better understood in terms of his political allegiances rather than loyalty to his scholarly milieu. Lutfi al-Sayyid’s use of manfaʿa, on the other hand, reflects his anti-Ottoman stance and adherence to a centrifugal ideology. Utility was often invoked by patriotic advocates of the homeland (watan), such as the first Nahdawi generation Butrus al-Bustani or Rifaʿa Rafiʿ al-Tahtawi, and later, by nationalists.

Muslih and Mujaddid Scholars who validate islah as moral entrepreneurship oriented to a pure and idealized past, invariably invoke two famous hadith: one reporting a prediction by the Prophet that “at the beginning of each century, God will send someone who will renew the 21  Hamzah (2013, 2020). 22  Opwis (2007: 62) questions the accuracy of “interest” when translating maslaha and prefers “welfare, well-being and the social weal.” Her reading is, however, restricted by her sources (jurisprudence, hadith), her indifference to the medium in which the concept is deployed, and her persistence in viewing publicists such as Rida as jurists. Press and jurisprudence produce very different epistemologies. In the context of the Nahda, maslaha carried both meanings, whereas within the hegemonic Islamic reformist discourse and in the writings of Rashid Rida in particular, maslaha definitetly connotes interest. 23  Hamzah (2006, 2020). 24  Findley (1989).

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44   dyala hamzah r­ eligion of that century: ʿala raʾsi kulli miʾati sanatin man yujaddidu laha dinaha;”25 the other, a warning to Muslims by the Prophet of the inescapable historical decadence of Islam after his passing: “The best people are those of my generation, then those who come after them, then those who come after them.” The renewer (mujaddid) in the first hadith has been understood as a historical figure who ruptures the tension between High and Low Islam by launching an internal movement of purification and renewal. Popular Islam’s resistance to purification and enduring aberrations explain in turn the need for renewal and the cyclical nature of reform.26 By equating the figure of the reformer (muslih) with that of the renewer (mujaddid), the reformer became a recurring figure at the helm of cyclical interventions. During the Nahda, however, a subtle semantic shift tore the reformer from cyclical times and grounded him in a linear teleology of progress. The now interchangeable usage of reform (islah) and renewal (tajdid), shields a semantic shift that brought the new (the material and institutional trappings of the modern, al-jadid)27 dangerously close to renewal (tajdid), a term formed from the same three-letter root j-d-d.28 To be sure, genealogies of renewers, a popular genre (and one in which Nahdawis could connect with the masses), still found credence with Nahdawi reformers. They used these to validate their self-ascribed position in the chain of authority, especially as they sought to legitimize their new journalistic calling. Genealogies of renewers were also used by Nahda scholars to enhance the status of this or that reformer in “Islamic” reform.29 However, one of the fundamental breaks in this tradition of islah came with the reorientation toward the future of Nahdawi reformist projects. Notwithstanding their promotion of “the way of the pious predecessors” (madhhab alsalaf),30 they circumvented centuries of postclassical glosses and the authority of the ʿulama who guarded their interpretation. Nahdawi reformers sought to recover the authority of sacred texts to articulate the grammar of civilization and progress, not to return to a Medinan utopia. The sense of inescapable retreat from the age of Prophetic perfection, of degradation and regression (taqahqur), at work in premodern invocations

25  Jansen (1960–2007), Encyclopedia of Islam (2nd ed.), “tadjdid.” 26 Ibid. 27  “The New,” according to Booth and Gorman, ranges “from technologies to gendered behaviours to publishing” (2014: 1). 28  See Rida, “al-tajdid wa-l-tajaddud wa-l-mujaddidun”: al-Manar 31 (1931): 770–777; 31 (1932): 49–60; 32 (1932): 226–223. Elissa-Mondeguer’s 2002 reading of jadid as the new antagonistic ideology, opposed to islah, during the last decade of the Manar stands out. Evidence for such a reading is, however, scarce in al-Manar. 29  For instance, Rida clearly saw himself as the renewer of the twentieth century—even as he ends his genealogy with the eighteenth-century Yemeni scholar Shawkani: see Hamzah (2013: 92–93. Conversely, while someone like Nabhani was never going to make it into Rida’s genealogy of reformers, he would in others, as in Qasim al-Barawi’s, a Somali shaykh (Ghazal 2016). For recourse to those genealogies by scholars of Islam during the colonial era, see Jomier (2012: 11) who shows the French-Algerian Islamicist Ali Merad inscribing Ibn Badis in the reformist lineage of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, ʿAbduh, and Rida. On Shawkani, see Haykel (2003). 30  The Nahdawis’ promotion of the way of the pious predecessors was less about their theological understanding of the divine attributes (neither anthropomorphic nor allegorical) and more about val­id­ at­ing direct rereading of the sacred texts (Quran and Hadith).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   45 of the hadith, is absent here.31 What the Nahdawis stressed here is the straying from the core values of the mature caliphal institution, not from the Prophetic state.32 A sense of decay characterizes their colonial present but was not inscribed into an eschatological perspective.33 Rather, it is measured against a modern future emancipated from alien­ ation caused by acculturation and ignorance. Popularized in a series of fictional dialogues by Rashid Rida in 1900,34 the figures of the acculturated Westernizers (mutafarnijun) and the ossified ʿulama (muqallidun) would go on to play a decisive role in the structuring of the field of reform. Rooted in Islamic scholarship, the theme of mimicry, whether of a perceived tradition35 or of a conquering European template, was shared among the iconic publicists in Cairo and beyond, and found in the writings of Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914), the promoter of the Nahda as an epochal category.

Nahda There is no academic agreement on which author first used the term “Nahda.”36 The originators are predictably found to be either Egyptian (Husayn al-Marsafi, 1815–90)37 or Syrians (Adib Ishaq, 1856–85 and Francis Marrash, 1835–73).38 But Zaydan’s mainstreaming of the term is attested. His use of the Nahda was descriptive and analytical. For one of the most important popularizers of Islamic history then, the term signaled an attempt at exiting Islamic historiography and inaugurating the new art of history 31  For an opposite view, see Haj (2009). 32  See, for instance, Rafiq Bey al-ʿAzm on the institution of wizara and the principles of consultation, deputation, solidarity, and justice, Manar 2 (1899): 81–88; Rashid Rida’s series of articles on the Caliphate around the time of its abolition, Manar 23 (1922) and Manar 24 (1923). 33  Rarely, eschatology is mobilized . . . to combat and disprove “materialism”: see Husayn al-Jisr’s writings on science and revelation in his two epistles: al-Risala al-Hamidiyya fi haqiqat al-diyana al-islamiyya wa haqqiyyat al-shariʿa al-Muhammadiyya (The Hamidian Treatise on the Truth of the Islamic Religion and the Verity of Mohammed’s Law: 1866) and Al-husun al-hamidiyya li-muhafazat al-ʿaqaʾid al-islamiyya (The Hamidian strongholds for defending the Islamic doctrines: 1905). On his deployment of eschatology to counter materialism, see Peters (1994) and El Shakry (2013: chs 3 and 4). 34  Muhawarat al-muslih wa-l-muqallid was a series of dialogues, printed in thirteen installments in al-Manar (1900–1902) and later in book form (1906, Manar Press). 35  The critique of taqlid was present even in postclassical Islamic scholarship, a scholarship deemed decadent and closed to independent reasoning (ijtihad). The fifteenth-century mystic and malekite theologian Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Sanusi, for example, described the muqallid as an animal being lunged, an imagery that would be taken up again two centuries later by another malekite, the legal scholar Hasan al-Yusi: see Rouayheb (2005: 13 and 17). 36  Hanssen and Weiss (2016: 3) draw attention to synonyms which “did not stick,” such as inbiʿath. This was used in the late 1930s by a Butrus al-Bustani, who was unrelated to the Nahda Bustani. 37  Di-Capua (2015: 63), quoting Delanoue. 38  Hanssen and Weiss (2016: 2), quoting Brugman (quoting Dassuqi). I thank Jens Hanssen for drawing my attention to Butrus al-Bustani’s use of the verbal noun inhad in his 1849 Fi taʿlim al-nisaʾ: “The intention of this treatise is to bring about an awakening (inhad) of women’s determination to acquire knowledge, so that they are treated with dignity . . . and perhaps to rally men to the reform of their state and to rescue them from the depth of inferiority (inhitat).”

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46   dyala hamzah ­writing.39 For Zaydan, there were many Nahdas in Islamic history, starting with the rise of Islam itself, followed by the Abbasid, the Fatimid, and the Andalusian Nahdas. The distinction of this contemporary Nahda was its articulation of the promise of progress and civilization, its deployment outside the cyclical times of chronicles. This Nahda then is the historical moment when the concept of Nahda becomes envisioned as a paradigm of Arab history.40 Its attendant tool, islah, while still retaining a foot in renewer genealogies becomes open-ended, even as it articulates tradition to the modern future.

The When and the Where The question of the Nahda’s periodization has been in flux longer than the question of its geographical reach. Indeed, it is as old as the field itself, if we look at the body of ­scholarship generated in the wake of Hourani’s 1962 opus magnum, which bracketed the period 1798 to 1939. The 1798 caesura imposed a narrative whereby the Orient was shocked out of its slumber by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, subsequently signing up for the modern by en­rol­ling in the student missions sent to Europe (from the 1820s) by the new dynast of Egypt, Mehmet Ali Pasha (r. 1805–49). Headed by Tahtawi, the massive movement of translation that ensued institutionalized cultural transfer by co-opting Azharis into the pasha’s modernizing schemes. These became readers, correctors, editors, and translators at Dar al-alsun (the School of Languages, founded in 1836), in the newly established press at Bulaq (in 1820), as well as at the helm of the first official journal, al-Waqaʾiʿ al-misriyya (established 1828), destined to inform and integrate the budding bureaucracy.41 They produced or oversaw the much-needed manuals for the pasha’s paramount military scheme and its associated academies of engineering, medicine, and agriculture. They also contributed to the translation and editing of works outside the state’s purview. Under Tahtawi’s directorship, Dar al-alsun translated a considerable number of English and French works of politics, philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, and literature into Arabic.42 A few decades later, other institutions consolidated the growing body of civil servants at the service of the new dynasty; Dar al-ʿUlum (1872) graduated Azharis and other Egyptians to staff government schools and other establishments. The 1798 caesura drove scholars to gloss over this new body of civil servants. They stressed Mehmet Ali’s marginalization of the (high) ʿulama, the social intermediaries between power and the people who lost their economic base after the pasha confiscated 39  Regarding Zaydan’s historical novels and his histories, see Dupont (2006: ch. 7); Di-Capua (2009: chs 1 and 2). 40  Dupont (2006: ch. 10). Jurji Zaydan, al-Nahda al-misriyya al-akhira (1892); Tarikh al-Nahda alsihafiyya fi al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya, May 2, 1910. 41  The reference to Azharis working for the pasha at the press remains an almost eighty-year-old paper by Heyworth-Dunne (1940). 42  Sawaie (2000), Pollard (2000).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   47 their tax farms. Certainly, the pasha and his successors devastated the religious establishment during the nineteenth century. Scores of primary Quranic schools (kuttab) lost their support foundations (awqaf) and were ruined or were turned into mosques, and mosques were turned into Sufi lodges (zawaya).43 But by primarily invoking economic causes to explain the ʿulama’s alienation or co-optation, the quest for meaningful ge­neal­ ogies and continuities between premodern and modern reform was neglected.44 Unlike many of his contemporaries he describes in his famed chronicle, the Cairene scholar al-Jabarti (1753–1825), for instance, was not exactly impoverished when he vituperated against the pasha’s state reforms. On the other hand, Muhammad ʿAbduh, whose family had lost everything under Mehmet ʿAli, went on to become an iconic functionary of “Islamic reform.” After a rebellious youth against the pasha’s dynasty, the British installed him as mufti in 1899. As a state official, he headed government commissions to reform sharia courts and implemented educational policies at al-Azhar. The foregrounding of socioeconomic causes also masked commonalities between scholars: when, for example, do we ever reflect on Abduh’s relationship to the historian Jabarti? Or to the Cairo-based Indian polymath Muhammad Murtada al-Zabidi (d. 1791)? Or to the Maghribi logicians who taught at al-Azhar in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?45 As our previously held view of an eighteenth century entirely absorbed with the revival of hadith studies recedes, we ought to include new scholarship on earlier developments.46 These developments can be synthesized under four headings.

The Intellectual Flowering of the Seventeenth Century This seventeenth-century intellectual flowering spread beyond Safavid Iran and Mughal India to include Ottoman lands. Maghribi scholars traveling east after the fall of the Saʿdian dynasty (1603), brought logic handbooks less known in Syria and Egypt. Kurdish and Persian scholars traveling west after the Safavids wrested Azerbaijan from the Ottomans revived the study of dialectics, opening the “gate of verification” (“tahqiq in the sense of rational or mystical-experiential verification of received scholarly opinions”).47 These findings mean that Arab scholars such as “seventeenth-century al-Hasan al-Yusi, Muhammad al-Rudani, Ibrahim al-Kurani, and ʿAbd al-Ghani ­ al-Nabulusi appear, not as ‘exceptions’ but as contemporaries and counterparts of 43  Crecelius (1972: 182). See also Tamari (2009), on the type of teaching positions endowed in eighteenthcentury Ottoman Damascus. 44  Crecelius (1972) speaks of “nonideological responses.” 45  While Patel (2013) elaborates on the premodern Azhari (and Christian) legacy, his preoccupation is with “genealogies of humanism.” On the Nahda and the classical tradition, see also Pormann (2006). 46  El-Rouayheb (2005, 2006, 2015); Ibrahim (2013, 2015, 2016a, 2016b), El Shamsy (2008, 2016); Dallal (2018). Compare with scholarship based on the hadith-patterned paradigm: Levtzion and Voll (1987). Lafi (2014), on the other hand, lays the ground for a “global history” of the Ottoman eighteenth century. 47  El-Rouayheb (2006: 275).

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48   dyala hamzah s­ eventeenth-century Persian and Indian scholars such as Bahaʾ al-Din al-ʿAmili, Mulla Sadra al-Shirazi, Ahmad al-Sirhindi, and ʿAbd al-Hakim al-Siyalkuti.”48

Independent Reasoning (ijtihad), “Nouveau Literacy,” and the Scripturalist Legacy of Wahhabism Wahhabism was not the matrix for all revivalist movements of the eighteenth and subsequent centuries.49 It may well have been a relic of the Qadizadelis, “a violently puritan movement”50 raging in Istanbul during the seventeenth century.51 This new finding may yet clear the way for an appreciation of the eighteenth century as a culturally distinct and vibrant time, in which Wahhabism is anomalous. The study of Najdi, Hijazi, Damascene, and Baghdadi scholars challenging Wahhabism and its weaponization of takfir from the mid eighteenth century onward also contributes to this reversal of perspective.52 The championing of ijtihad by eighteenth-century reformers meant to clarify and restrict the jurisdiction of sharia, vis-à-vis social claims (popular, “deviant” Sufi practice) as well as state authority. Ijtihad-minded reformers resorted to the science of hadith and the critique of legal theory to shake the hegemony of the schools of law (tamadhhub) and the grip of precedent-following (taqlid). This shift allowed laypeople, non-mujtahids (independent scholars), to participate in the diffusion of traditional authority.53 It remains to be seen how this participation of laity and commoner in ijtihad—long deemed the exclusive prerogative of the learned—related to the eighteenth century’s broader cultural trends such as “nouveau literacy,” that is, commoners’ access to literacy evidenced by the chronicles they left behind.54

Inflections Within the Islamic Sciences: Logic vs. Hadith The recently evidenced tension between logic studies and hadith studies during the eighteenth century will change how we read contemporary and later developments.55 How exactly did each relate to ijtihad and its revival? Was logic simply ancillary to had-

48  el-Rouayheb (2006: 277). 49  Dallal has long been a vocal critic of this idea. See his 1993 article, especially pp. 341–342 and associated footnotes (5 to 12) for an extensive listing and discussion of the literature contending a Wahhabi “fundamentalist matrix” and positing a “Neo-Sufism” paradigm. See also Dallal (2010). His recent book (2018) pursues this differentiation, by making the case for a very dynamic eighteenth-century reform movement opposed to Wahhabism. 50  Evstatiev (2013: 4). 51  Sariyannis (2012), Currie (2015), Evstatiev (2016). 52  See, amongst others, Commins (2006a), Rizk Khoury (2016). 53  Dallal (2018). 54  Sajdi (2013). 55  el-Rouayheb (2005).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   49 ith studies as scholars have claimed?56 Or were logic studies on the brink of declaring a secessionist agenda? The path from proving vibrant logic studies to the postulation of an “Islamic Enlightenment” is not a straightforward one.57 The logic that was practiced and taught in eighteenth-century Ottoman lands belonged to the Aristotelian–Avicennian tradition, not to an empiricist tradition understood as conducive to the scientific revolution in Europe.58

Changes in Pedagogy, Legal Practice, and Canon Islamic intellectual and legal history have recently recorded broad changes in pedagogy, legal practice, and canon. For instance, during the Ottoman seventeenth century, more impersonal modes of knowledge transmission through silent and critical “deep reading” contested the hegemonic oral knowledge transmission between a master and a listening disciple.59 This helps explain the otherwise “sudden” discontent with rote learning that countless Nahdawis, including ʿAbduh and ʿAli Mubarak, complained about. It also complicates the trope of colonial violence on the Egyptian classroom.60 The prized talfiq, or the combining of the doctrines of two or more independent scholars in the same juridical transaction, thought to have been a trademark of “Islamic Modernism,” in fact, dates back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.61 Most remarkably, pragmatic strategies of “school boundary crossing (al-intiqal bayna al-madhahib),” also seen as the epitome of modernist ijtihad were practiced in the premodern period as “following the licenses of the schools” (tatabbuʿ rukhas al-madhahib).62 In addition, the impact of print on book culture and on the constitution of the canon has recently been assessed through the inventory of private libraries of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Azhari scholars.63 Scholars appear acutely aware of the “loss” of classical canonical works over the centuries, following a range of events: the destruction of Baghdad; the Ottoman conquest; the migration of thousands of manuscripts to Istanbul’s libraries after the destruction of the endowed institutions that had previously held them; and the aggressive Orientalist theft of remaining manuscripts following Napoleon’s expedition. Nahdawi scholars actively sought to reconstitute the classical legacy through the purchasing and 56  Gran (1979: 145–146). In Hasan al-ʿAttar’s writings, Gran saw a revival of hadith science, sustained by grammar, logic, and dialectical theology (kalam), leading him to argue for a cultural revival in Egypt displaying clear secular trends as of the 1760s. See el-Rouayheb’s critique (2005: 18). 57  Cf. footnote 3 above. The arguments for an Islamic Enlightenment were sowed in a 1990s debate that raged mostly in the German-speaking academia. See Schulze (1990, 1996), Peters (1990), Radtke (1994), O’Fahey and Radtke (1993), Voll (1999). This followed after Peter Gran shook the foundations of the 1798-captive historiography with his Islamic Roots of Capitalism (1978). His reading of the literature “on its own terms” notwithstanding, Gran made less of a case for an indigenous reformist agenda than he pushed back in time the beginnings of middle-class modernity within a Marxist reading of world history. 58  el-Rouayheb (2005: 14–15). 59  el-Rouayheb (2015, ch. 3). 60  Mitchell (1991), Sedra (2011). 61  Krawietz (2002), Ibrahim (2013). 62  Ibrahim (2013). 63  El Shamsy (2016).

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50   dyala hamzah printing of “lost” manuscripts. Admittedly, the argument that the Nahda was concerned with retrieving the Arab classical heritage is an old one in relation to adab, but quite novel in relation to fiqh and other related Islamic sciences.64 It is too early to assess the full impact of these scholarly findings and how they might contest and displace the most far-reaching consequence of the 1798 caesura, namely, its equation of islah with the support of state centralization and modernization. In such a framework, Azharis partaking in the “revival” of logic studies in eighteenth-century Egypt would equip their nineteenth-century students with the ability to embrace modernization. They would do this by privileging certain juristic principles relevant for secu­lar­iza­tion and by reaching into adab literature for the concepts and lexicons to translate the Enlightenment.65 In such accounts, the “reform-minded” premodern Azhari scholars such as Muhammad al-ʿArusi (1819–29)66 or Hasan al-ʿAttar (1831–35, teacher and mentor of al-Tahtawi), but also the singular and obscure Azhari “court historian” Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Rajabi (who authored the only known panegyric of the pasha)67 all seemed to emerge inexplicably out of what one historian once dubbed an “unreadable” eighteenth century.68 Their historical relevance and reform-mindedness is contingent on their support of Mehmet Ali Pasha’s modernization program. Likewise, their opposites, diehard and embittered enemies of the pasha such as Jabarti, were detached from traditions of scholarship and historiography and read only through their reactions to the pasha. Within each camp, moreover, relevant continuities are rarely traced: what intellectual kinship bound Rajabi, ʿArusi, ʿAttar, and Tahtawi, for instance? Can we read Jabarti’s support for the Wahhabis as more than simply his opposition to the pasha in the 1820s? Supporters and detractors could be, and were, friends and kindred spirits (Jabarti and ʿAttar). How might we relate all these early nineteenth-century scholars, detractors and supporters of the pasha alike, to the outstanding reformist trends of the eighteenth century? The 1798 caesura also cast Egypt as seat and template of reform and modernization, side-lining Beirut’s Mount Lebanon exiles and intellectual pioneers. It is never explicitly stated how the “Lebanese Nahda” (if we toy with the idea that there were actually two distinct cultural awakenings happening simultaneously69), was affected by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, by his attempts at co-opting ʿulama and at dazzling them with the scientific prowess of his Institut d’Égypte. The repulsing of Napoleon’s siege at Acre— achieved without the assistance of Mount Lebanon’s ruler Bashir Shihab II (r. 1789–1841), indicates the complex Ottoman balance of power, which brutally held the Sayda–Mount Lebanon territories together. In its fledgling stages then, and the aggressive missionary penetration of the Americans and the Europeans notwithstanding, the Nahda in Beirut had much more to do with the ultimate consolidation and eventual demise of the old pre-sectarian social order of Mount Lebanon under Bashir Shihab II. 64  El Shamsy (2016). See also his 2020 book, Rediscovering the Islamic classics: How editors and print culture ttransformed an intellectual tradition (2020). 65  El-Rouayheb (2005: 14), Schulze (1996: 287, fn 29). 66  Falk Gesink (2009: 47–53). 67  Rajabi et al. (1997), Crecelius (2003), Hamzah (2007). 68  Schulze (1990: 153). 69  Although not extensively fleshed out, this argument is implied in Traboulsi (2007).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   51 Well-covered by historians, this demise was a result of the commoners’ challenge to the class of absentee landlords’ (aʿyan’s) social and political grip between 1840s and 1860s.70 Histories of the Nahda since Hourani have often glossed over contextual differences between Egypt and Bilad al-Sham. For example, they avoided a contextualization of the conditions under which Tahtawi produced his first works at Dar al-Alsun and those under which Bustani, Yaziji, and Mishaqa came to organize the Syrian Association for the Sciences and Arts. Bashir Shihab II’s Mount Lebanon was not Mehmet Ali’s Egypt, even when Bashir sided with Ibrahim Pasha’s occupation of Syria. Such a discussion would surely benefit from a comparison of Jabarti’s ʿAjaʾib and Tannus al-Shidyaq’s Akhbar al-aʿyan fi Jabal Lubnan.71 The semi-autonomous status of Mount Lebanon, ruled henceforth under the Mutasarrifiyya regime (1861–1914), and that of Egypt, ruled by the Alid dynasty (1805–82/1952), are important for an integrated history of the Nahda. But such a commonality ought not to detract from the specific circumstances that gave rise to novel ideas of homeland (watan), society (hayʾa ijtimaʿiyya), and state (dawla) in each of these two core lands of the Nahda.72 The “Syro-Lebanese Nahda” was concerned with sectarianism, the role of modern state policies and institutions in its deployment and entrenchment, and their nefarious impact on the new imagined community of educated citizens partaking in the grammar of nations and civilizations. The writings of F. Marrash, B. al-Bustani, and A. al-Rihani are exemplars of this trend.73 The “Egyptian Nahda” was centrally concerned with a watan. It evolved from Tahtawi to ʿAbduh, to ʿAli Mubarak and, of course, Taha Ḥusayn and was so enmeshed with the state that society appeared to proceed from the state itself.74 While the “two Nahdas” would eventually merge with the emigration of the Syro-Lebanese to Alexandria and Cairo, and from there radiate beyond Ottoman lands through diasporic networks and journals, their initial distinct trajectories within the early Nahda lived on and remain understudied. What might be called the “non-­statist” trajectory was exemplified by al-Bustani’s founding of non-governmental “civic” institutions (his “national school,” his journals, and learned societies) and by Rida’s s­ imilar founding of a journal, of a missionary school, and of diverse associations.75 The “statist” trajectory on the other hand was embodied by ʿAbduh’s imagining 70  Makdisi (2000a: 29 and 34), Makdisi (2000b). 71  A comparison attempted by Makdisi (2000b) himself, but only insofar as common and pejorative representations of commoners and elite structured the elite’s discourse in both Egypt and Mount Lebanon. 72  Khuri-Makdisi (2014), Abu ʿUksa (2016), Zemmin (2018), Mestyan (2017), Delanoue (1963, 1982), Hourani (1962), al-Bustani, Hanssen, and Safieddine (2019). 73  On Bustani’s watan, see Bou Ali (2017), al-Bustani, Hanssen, and Safieddine (2019). 74  On Tahtawi’s watan, see Cole (1980). On watan at large and related notions, see footnote 72 above. I owe this idea of society emanating from the state to Frédéric Abécassis, in our discussions of ʿAbduh and Rida’s distinct approaches to society. The paradigmatic text for such a representation of society is Delanoue 1973. Memorandum to the shaykhulislam, laying down the principles for a reformed Ottoman education. See Delanoue (1973). 75  Rida (1934), Al-Manar wa-l-Azhar: 139. He also explained that he refused to attend an Ottoman government school, lest he should be forced to serve the government. On Bustani, see Bou Ali (2017) and al-Bustani, Hanssen and Safieddine (2019).

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52   dyala hamzah of a society framed by the state and by Taha Husayn’s bureaucratization of culture and politics, of a “Nahda in Parliament.”76 The first Nahda literati of Beirut had often been former mudabbirs—administrators of muqataʿjis who had fled “service” for a career as “free” publicists—free in as much as they became emancipated from their former lords but dependent on “colonial capital;”77 those of Cairo had been commissioned by the modern Egyptian state not only to serve it but to actively imagine its bureaus. Periodizations of the Nahda that see the first half of the twentieth century as the years of its “nationalization” are loose at both ends of the timeline and squarely Egyptcentric.78 This was when the Nahda had evolved into a vibrant public sphere (i.e. a set of critical and commonweal institutions sitting outside or beside the state), in Egypt and beyond. A transnational public sphere at that, with institutions, endeavors, visions, and transactions that never were entirely subsumable under national institutions. Glossing over the two distinct trajectories of the early Nahda and its structural components at later stages has enabled nationalist make-overs of its history and prevented a more global conception. However, through new approaches, the Nahda’s time and place are undergoing reconsideration. It is true that periods can never be rigidly determined, yet the invocation of a Foucauldian suspicion of the “purity of origins” can make for overly elastic time frames.79 The accumulation of case studies is forcing us to narrow the implications of our chronologies. The coming of social historians to intellectual history has allowed for an integration of the ideological and geographical periphery thereby also affecting the time frame. For instance, an exploration of intellectual exchanges within the Iraqi margins of Empire sheds light on preprint debates on political community and activism as early as the 1780s to the 1830s. Sitting astride the premodern and modern Middle East, this era, otherwise dubbed by world historians as “catastrophic,”80 witnessed the rise of Asian mercantilism and the first significant attempts at imperial reform under Selim III (r. 1789–1807). The study of transnational networks of Beiruti, Alexandrian, and Cairene Nahdawis, as they open up the “liberal Nahda” to its radical currents—anarchism and socialism—inscribe the Nahda within global history, between 1860 and 1914. A return to political economy by social and intellectual historians alike has circumscribed the middle decades (1830s through to the 1870s) into an era where class differentiation between the grand bourgeoisie of merchants and future landowners and the small bourgeoisie of professionals and bureaucrats had not yet happened. An era, where, concurrently, ideological divergences were still subsumed under utopian

76  Ahmed (2018). 77  Hill (2015: ch. 1) distinguishes the “Beiruti bourgeoisie” and the “Egyptian-Ottoman officials.” 78  Di-Capua (2015) sees the Nahda as unfolding along the following timeline: “Early encounters, Enlightenment in Greater Syria, 1840–70;” “State of culture Egypt, 1860–80;” “Putting enlightenment to work, 1882–1900;” “Islamic quest for synthesis, 1880–1900;” “Nationalization of Nahda, 1900–1945.” One remarkable, if literature-bound, rebuttal of Nahda periodization is El-Ariss (2013), who sees the 1800s as the beginning of ongoing trials with modernity, and the Arab novel, as its privileged, affective site. 79  Hanssen and Weiss (2016: 1). 80  Rizk Khoury (2016: 103).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   53 thinking about civilization and progress (tamaddun and taqaddum).81 Conceptual historians’ diachronic and synchronic focus on specific concepts of the Nahda has also redrawn the chronology. Some have indicated how the concept of freedom (hurriyya) was first politicized in Arabic (1798–1820). Gestating between 1820 and 1860, the concept acquired a complexity that ushered in a period of ideologization (1860–82).82 Others have retraced the emergence of the concept of the social body (al-hayʾa al-ijtimaʿiyya), defining the periods 1860–90 and 1890–192083 as sitting either side of a turning point: the decade of press expansion (the 1870s).84 This sheds light on how we look at the press as an agent of social change. Remarkably, it also shows how, between the 1860s and 1890s, the concept of the social—like the concept of freedom—was tethered to civilization and progress. From the 1890s to the 1920s, the concept of the social was extricated from a utopian framework to stand on its own.85 Refashioning chron­ ology and geography is also about acknowledging the local, within a gendered and plural society. For instance, the Palestinian “economic Nahda” engaging liberalism, imperialism, and Zionism until deep into the 1940s, is a testimony of islah’s cogency in different circumstances.86 By the same token, narrowing the focus on a microcosmic site—the long overlooked Cairene salon of Mayy Ziyada—allows for a dissident chronology (1913–36) straddling the First World War. Ziyada’s salon demonstrates not only the importance of a gendering of the Nahda, but also the procedural deployment of publicity in the Habermassian sense, as Azharis, Christians, and atheists, male and female, rubbed shoulders in her home.87 On the other hand, the mapping of a vibrant network linking north- and eastAfrican and southeast Arabian margins between themselves and the Nahda’s core lands and periodizations (1880–1930) reveals just how incomplete our picture of the Nahda still is. “Expanding the crescent from the Mediterranean to the Indian ocean” has provided our knowledge with a triangulation, as we chart the collision course between reformist and nationalist discourses in Ibadi communities in the Mzab, Zanzibar, and Oman.88 Conversely, shining the light on Syro-Lebanese intellectuals between the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and the assassination of Arab nationalist ʿAbd al-Rahman Shahbandar in 1940, allows for a delineation of the constitutional and Mandate generations without accounting for the making of Islamic reform (of Damascene Salafism) at the turn of the twentieth century, making it seem almost irrelevant to the wider cultural effervescence.89 A genuine location of Nahda studies within Ottoman studies requires the intellectual or cultural historian to master at least both the Ottoman and Arabic languages. As a result, few studies have undertaken such bilingual historiographic and archival journeys, though their forays in this understudied arena are significant. Amongst them are 81  Hill (2015). On the later rise of the said small bourgeoisie of professionals and bureaucrats (effendiya): Watenpaugh (2006), Gasper (2009), Ryzova (2018). 82 Abu ʿUksa (2016). 83  Khuri-Makdisi (2014). See also Zemmin (2018). 84  Khuri-Makdisi (2014), Hafez (1993). 85  Khuri-Makdisi (2014: 99). 86  Seikaly (2015). 87  Khaldi (2012). 88  Ghazal (2010a). On the earlier networks of Ibadis: Jomier (2016). 89  Dakhli (2009).

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54   dyala hamzah investigations of the role of Ottoman governors in the promotion of a Syrian understanding of watan or the perception of the imperial capital within that watan by ca­non­ ic­al Nahdawis.90 Social historians of the Middle East have more readily overcome this linguistic hurdle, offering fascinating accounts of the making of the modern Egyptian army or of Lebanese sectarianism, based on both Ottoman and local Arabic sources.91 However, it has been Ottomanist intellectual historians and literary scholars who have served the larger argument of an organic link between Nahda and Ottoman studies, investigating who read what in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ottoman empire and looking at the Egyptian and Greek connections in nineteenth-century Ottoman literary and intellectual history.92 Recent research has capitalized on these earlier findings, offering a revisionist reading of Ottoman and Arab literary history, through poetic and anthological production. In Harabat, for instance, Ziya Pasha’s compilation of “texts from diverse geographical and temporal origins” is not one of distinct national traditions. These appear instead as components of a literary “reservoir” that constitutes the multilingual Ottoman canon; Ziya Pasha posits Ottoman culture as an “ocean” that encompasses Arabic, Persian, and Turkish “streams.”93 Likewise, the literary production of Ahmad Shawqi, the celebrated neoclassical “prince of poets,” reflects on Ottoman defeats in the Libyan and Balkan wars (1911–13) to argue for an imperial Nahda—at least until his famous poem of 1912, al-Andalus al-jadida.94 Comparative literature has signaled the movements between imperial center and Arab periphery, and between Ottoman Tanzimat and Arab Nahda modernities. For its part, Islamic studies has challenged the frontiers of “conservative Islam,” or the “nonNahdawi” intellectual production in the shadow of the liberal age paradigm. The ʿulama opposed to “Islamic reform” were nonetheless part of the public sphere and were involved in rival reformist projects, not simply in a reactionary sense. They were involved in “traditional” or historical reformism that still deferred to taqlid and engaged in ijtihad when necessary. They saw the undoing of the schools of law as the wedge of legal colonialism, not the means to modernize Islamic law. Thus the Wazzanis of Morocco and the Bakhits of Cairo (and nemesis of Rida) are now gaining credentials as scholars fully aware of modernity’s onslaughts and possibilities.95 Their chosen paths to reform differed from those of the editors of al-Manar or al-ʿUrwa al-Wuthqa. For their part, the ‘anti-Salafi’ group of Damascene ʿulama ironically lumped together Salafis and secularists within Rida’s Westernizer category (mutafarnijun). They portrayed themselves as mutadayyinun (the religious) and upheld progress and its benefits, and, like the Salafis, promoted the idea of a direct engagement with the scriptural sources. But praising the practice of taqlid on the pages of their mouthpiece al-Haqaʾiq (1910–13), they vigorously opposed the ideas that came to represent the salafi canon on law and its interpretation, including reinstating independent reasoning (ijtihad), combining elements 90  Abu Manneh (2013), Khuri-Makdisi (2013a,) respectively. 91  K. Fahmy (1997), Makdisi (2000a), respectively. 92  Strauss (2000, 2002, 2003, 2017[2003]). Guth (2003). 93  Arslan (2017), Yashin (2017). 94  Arslan (2016). 95  Terem (2014), Quadri (2013), Falk Gesink (2009), El Shamsy (2020).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   55 from distinct legal doctrines (talfiq), and a non-deference to the four legal schools (lamadhhabiyya).96 Their endorsement of Rida’s figures of the mutafarnij and the muqallid with such a creative twist—even when he completely ignored them—reveals conservatives’ deliberative engagement within the Nahdawi public sphere as well as the perceived centrality of journalism for one’s strand of reform and one’s own sense of social relevance. Beyond the geographical expansion of the Nahda, the domain extension to include “conservative ʿulama” has also brought into the conversation the other nemesis of Islamic reformers, the Sufis. In this respect, Sufi figures such as the Khalwati shaykh Ahmad al-Sawi (1761–1825), a contemporary of Jabarti and Rajabi, were important actors. Not a reformer in the Nahdawi publicist sense, Sawi debated ijtihad and condemned Wahhabism in his Meccan jousts with another major Sufi master, Ahmad Ibn Idris al-Fasi.97 Likewise, and a century later, Muhammad Hasanayn Makhluf (1861–1936), maintained the tradition of Wahhabi-bashing and embraced ʿAbduh’s brand of reform. Also a Khalwati, and a close disciple of the great Khalwatiyya master in Upper Egypt, Ahmad Sharqawi (d.1898), Makhluf was an Azhari and an ardent supporter of ʿAbduh’s reforms of Azhari institutes.98 The inclusion of conservatives and Sufis has pushed the frontiers of the Nahdawi public sphere to include counterreform figures like Nabhani or his patron in Istanbul, Abu al-Huda al-Sayyadi. A judge and a Sufi, Nabhani was against reform, conservative or liberal. He was also a renegade Nahdawi, having worked for Shidyaq’s al-Jawaʾib, one of the crown jewels of the Nahda press, only to retrospectively see in his publicist past the source of all evil.99

Publicity, Publicists, and the Public Interest: When the How Makes the Who (and the What) Partaking in public(ized) deliberation was trademark Nahda. It evolved a new hege­ mon­ic publicity deeming premodern discursive practices irrelevant and making rival ones invisible. The journal al-Manar was the paramount guardian of the islahi temple, letting in (aside from the tutelar masters, Afghani and ʿAbduh) fellow islahis such as the Damascene Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi, the Aleppan ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, the Baghdadi Alusis, the Indian Shibli Nuʿmani, and the transnational Taqi al-Din al-Hilali, and keeping out rivals. This historical erasure led to historiographic silence. Voices that did not make it into the Manar vortex were excluded from islah’s official story. Rida’s 96  Gelvin (2012), Commins (1990). Their defense of taqlid so internalized the Salafi critique of imitation, however, that they dubbed themselves followers, not imitators (muttabiʿun not muqallidun). 97  Mayeur-Jaouen (2017), Delanoue (1982). 98  Chih (2002). 99  Commins (1990), Ghazal (2016).

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56   dyala hamzah journal has been mined for its extraordinary engagement with religion, politics, and society. It has not been investigated for its omissions. Al-Manar was the paramount “Islamic reform” journal of the Nahda, spanning the years 1898 to 1935. Its longevity, its circulation, its polemics, its coverage of world affairs, and its press and book reviews partly account for its prominence. And its mainstreaming of the texts and concepts of Islam and the reinvention of Islamic paradigms and ­genres account for its resounding success and historical significance. Al-Manar campaigned against the ʿulama and their adherence to the schools of law (la-madhhabiyya); against the Sufis and popular religiosity; for imperial decentralization (la-markaziyya); and against the colonial-missionary onslaught on the Ottoman Empire. It promoted science and education, the press and the theater, and it also vigorously championed associationalism (“no national prosperity outside of associations!”: la najah li-l-umam illa bi-l-jamʿiyyat!).100 It was devoutly constitutionalist, and after the disillusionment with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) policies and the Empire’s eventual demise, it perfected political pragmatism and opportunism, for the sake of Muslims and its own survival, simultaneously praising the khedive and Ibn Saʿud. In such a journal, however, which sold in the four corners of the world, one finds no mention whatsoever (not even a critical or polemical one) of Wazzani’s al-Miʿyar aljadid, a colossal compilation of Maliki fatwas and a monument raised to Maliki law on the eve of the French and Spanish protectorates over Morocco. There is also no mention of al-Haqaʾiq, the Damascene anti-Salafi mouthpiece, despite al-Manar’s quasi-systematic review of the press. Therefore, reading al-Manar as a giant biographical dictionary (tabaqat) of Nahdawi reformers is a risky endeavor. Although it included the “nonIslamic,” engaging and crossing swords with liberals, atheists, Copts, and Bahaʾis, it excluded the “conservative reform” scholars of Islam, who may have belonged in the same camp, but stepped too hard on Rida’s toes. Naturally, al-Manar championed nonreformers who happened to do its editor’s bidding. Looking at these omissions reveals how figures who threatened Rida’s brand of reform, wherever they stood on the islahi spectrum, were dismissed. The Sufi Azhari Muhammad Hasanayn Makhluf, for ex­ample, is mentioned nowhere despite his service at the reformed Azhari library, his role as inspector of Azhari institutes, and his implementing ʿAbduh’s project of improving students’ material conditions. If, on the other hand, it was to be expected that Nabhani would be branded as a dangerous enemy of reform, why did Rida omit his fight against Christian missionaries? Rida wrote scores of articles against missions. His critique of al-Azhar was in part prompted by its inability to energize Muslims in the face of colonial aggression and missionaries’ educational zeal. Rida spent a decade advocating for an Islamic missionary institute in the imperial capital. He eventually founded Dar 100 Rida, “Hayat umma baʿd mawtiha: jamʿiyyat al-yahud al-sahyuniyya,” Manar 4 (1902): 803; “Manafiʿ al-urubiyyin wa madarruhum fi-l-sharq,” Manar 10 (1907): 340–343. Shaheen’s analysis of this article by Rida (1993: 46). Also, Arsan (2012).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   57 al-Daʿwa wa-l-Irshad in Cairo in 1912 and ran the institute himself until the First World War forced the school to close its doors. Nabhani’s vehement treatise against missionary schools, Irshad al-hayyara fi tahdhir al-muslimin min madaris al-nasara (1904), and its synthetic sequel (Mukhtasar 1908), both written during the same decade, do not garner a mention in the journal’s book review section. The partaking in public(ized) deliberation was not a matter of merely printing Islamic manuscripts and genres or transposing older forms of civil exchange between peers “who observed certain limits on public statements because of a residual sense of cordiality.”101 It was the explicit deferring to a new mode of deliberation—a procedural communication of ideas between self-anointed representatives of a new literate “public.” In the words of al-Muqtataf, the banner of public exchange became “munaziruka naziruka!”—your debater is your equal!” The equality between Ottoman citizens promoted by the founding imperial rescripts of the nineteenth century as well as the Empire’s first constitution of 1876 imbued the Arab public sphere with a sense of equality. It simultaneously entrenched a patriarchal discourse around new social stakes, such as employment. The emerging women’s press participated in and resisted this patriarchal entrenchment.102 A lecture given by Bahithat al-Badiya (Malak Hifni) in the club of the Umma Party in 1909 redrew the borders of public and private, and historicized the division of labor between the sexes. It cast professionalization as a defining transformation of Nahdawi sociability. The Lebanese/Egyptian dualism of the Nahda was nowhere more apparent than in the emergence, within the same public sphere, of discrete publics: the salaried professionals on the one hand, and the stipend-based functionaries on the other. Those women who skirted the “wife-of ” status, who shaped a life on and of their own outside the domestic spaces drawn for them by Rida’s call to the fair sex (nidaʾ ila al-jins al-latif) or even within the confines of the debate on emancipation as outlined by Qasim Amin and Talʿat Harb, are among the tragic icons of the Nahda and a stark reminder of its power of assignation.103 Still, their history ought to be recast within and beyond the history of the Nahda if we are to acknowledge their contribution in shaping Arab public opinion and advertising its structural deficiencies otherwise than in footnotes or special monographs.104 If patronage and philanthropy helped bridge the social and gendered divide by enhancing and funding new spaces and practices of association, it was public deliberation in the press that defined a new sociability. Everyone among the literate, urban classes of new professionals and functionaries, and some of their daughters, sisters, and wives took an interest in press columns. While women, however 101  Commins (1990: 117). 102  Badran and Cooke (1990), Baron (1994), Badran (1995), Abu Lughod (1998), Booth (2015). 103  Rida, “Nidaʾ li-l-jins al-latif fi huquq al-insan fi-l-islam,” Manar 1932 (32): 352–400; 433–465; 508–522; 607–624; 705–712. An exemplary and early “wife-of ” figure is Rahil al-Bustani: Lindner (2014). On women and class in T. Harb and Q. Amin, see Cole (1981), on the gender bias of the notion of effendiya (middle class), Efrati (2011). 104  Keddie and Baron (1993), Guity and Tucker (1999).

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58   dyala hamzah erudite in matters of ʿilm, staked their claim from a position of invisibility of “half the human world,” men drew on their specific professional expertise, prestige, or authority.105

Nahda’s Law? One outstanding feature of Nahdawi entitlement was the discrepancy between selfconfidence and socioeconomic precarity. The new professions still lacked unions and statutes as well as social capital. The publicist and the later public intellectual (sihafi and muthaqqaf) painstakingly extricated themselves from older designations (ʿalim, adib, katib ʿamm), and paid a heavy social and financial cost to be trained in missionary schools or abroad. A great many pre- and post-Young Turk Revolution “professional” Nahdawis embraced transnational projects (pan-Islam, socialism, anarchism, panArabism) that seldom materialized in the post-independence Arab future. Some “transnationalists” were broken by their circumstances and tried to join national/state institutions. We still do not have a full understanding of the legal drama between state and society that pitted reformers against each other. The publication of the Mecelle in 1877, a partial codification of the sharia, gave the Empire its first modern civil code. But it never halted the foreign legal codes adopted at the beginning of the nineteenth century and expanded under colonial rule. The debate about the codification was thus ongoing during the Nahda and centered mostly on family law. Telling the full tale starts with naming those actors in Egypt engaged in debate; from those who took on the roles of codification advocates such as ʿAbduh, Makhluf al-Minyawi, Muhammad Qadri Pasha, Qasim Amin, Ahmad Shakir, to opponents who included Muhammad Zahid alKawtharia, to silent participants such as Sayyid ʿAbdallah ʿAli Husayn al-Tidi and Muhammad Bakhit al-Mutiʿi.106 The debate on codification was also characterized by shifting positions. For example, Rashid Rida went from supporting the process initiated by the Mecelle to opposing it as he witnessed the workings of the mixed courts and British colonial rule in Egypt and, later, the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924. Telling the full tale would involve bringing not only non-Muslims into the debate (even when the latter were oblivious to it), but also non-Egyptians (and especially Maghribis). Marginalized by the Nahda’s historiography, they not only entertained personal and scholarly ties with their Egyptian counterparts, but their contribution to islahi issues had an impact beyond the Maghrib. The role of Tunisia’s Zaytuna mosque, reformed by Khayr al-Din Pasha much earlier than al-Azhar, is still missing from the Nahda story. Important Zaytunis such as ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Thaʿalbi or Muhammad al-Tahir Ibn ʿAshur are absent in the master narrative of a Mashriqi Nahda and until recently from

105 al-ʿAmili (1894), Booth (2006: 211, 2015), Cooke (2010).

106  Elgawhary (2014).

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Foundations of Religious Reform and Cultural Revival   59 Nahda studies altogether.107 The same is true of Algeria’s reformer and educationalist ʿAbd al-Hamid Ibn Badis, a Tijani and a Zaytuni student of Ibn ʿAshur.108

Conclusion Even after the revisionist accounts, some core features of the islahi discourse, including the fervent advocacy, the apologetics that lent it urgency and earnestness, will likely survive, hindering its emancipation from the distorting mirror raised by colonialism.109 A fundamental quietism also characterized islahi discourse and practice. While the counterreformist discourse has been described here as rejecting the rules of public de­lib­er­ ation, one of its (later) features was, of course, the recourse to force. Both these traits represented absolute opposites of what the islahi discourse stood for during the Nahda. In enthusiastically resorting to the Arabization of scores of European and non-European works, it internalized cultural translation as a code of social conduct and civility. The notion of public interest that Nahdawis idolized eventually perished with the advent of unaccountable polities, becoming atomized into as many national interests as there were Arab states. A rather marginal principle of Islamic legal theory, the concept of the public interest, had been harnessed into the center of the Tanzimat discourse by the Ottoman Empire’s centralizing drive.110 By disavowing the late Ottoman Empire as a dystopia, the nationalist successors of the Nahdawis erased from memory their political rootedness in a once-transnational public sphere that originated in a reforming polity and communal coexistence.

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chapter 4

Constit u tiona l R evolu tions a n d State For m ations i n Com pa r ison Iran and Turkey Nader Sohrabi

Introduction This chapter sets out with a historiographical paradox: while the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 have long been analyzed in isolation from each other, by contrast, the foundation of the nation-states of Turkey and Iran after the First World War has received much comparative analysis. This different treatment is justified at first glance. The respective founders, Atatürk and Reza Shah, were both military officers turned authoritarian state-builders at perilous moments of their countries. Atatürk’s rise to power coincided with the empire’s disintegration. The resulting decrease in territory and population made it comparable with Iran’s size. Nonetheless, a proper understanding of modern Turkey and modern Iran requires pushing back the scope of comparison to the origins of the two pre-First World War revolutions that paved the way for the ascendance of both Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) and Reza Shah (1878–1944). For one, comparison reveals major differences between the seemingly similar leaders by placing them in the differing institutional settings out of which they arose. The earlier time frame also sheds light on key differences between the democratic institutions in Turkey and Iran at their inception, divergences that had consequences then and now. Beyond the state- and nation-building endeavors, comparison affords a unique vantage point that reveals the different origins of the two

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   69 revolutions, and a greater appreciation for the role that contingencies played in the less institutionalized Iranian setting in contrast to the long years of planning by a cadre of professional revolutionaries in the Ottoman Empire. The comparative outlook here considers three layers of analysis simultaneously that pay heed to the scales of these revolutions. The global lens alerts us to features shared with other constitutional settings beyond the Middle East, and the effect of similar framing in channeling energies toward establishing rule-of-law frames, parliaments, and written constitutions.1 With a shift to a regional focus we encounter shared religiopolitical traditions negotiating global constitutionalism and the common geopolitical threat of European imperialism. Finally, the local layer brings out the particular features of the Ottoman Empire and Iran, highlighting the reasons for their divergent constitutional experimentation. Thus, the particularities of each case are not assumed at the outset but, instead, it is the method of comparison that demonstrates them. At the global level, constitutionalism owed its frame for action to the French Revolution (1789–99). The Russian Revolution of 1905—itself enormously influenced by the French Revolution—inspired the Ottomans and Iranians. These revolutions, unlike the later generation of revolutions after the 1917 Russian Revolution, did not call for the overthrow of the old regimes and complete dominance of the state but insisted on the tripartite separation of powers under a parliamentary system, entering power-sharing agreements with the government and monarchy, and checking the executive functions of the monarchy. Under these arrangements, monarchy was set to lose its centrality both as the locus of administration and cultural symbolism. Constitutional demands in Russia, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire resulted in hastily and vaguely concluded compromises with the very monarchies the more radical elem­ ents of the revolutions had sought to replace with republics. The new freedoms of association and the press held accountable republicans and monarchists alike. In all three cases, counterrevolutionary backlashes occurred that rolled back the new era, either to preserve the threatened old order, or to bring an end to the chaos and confusion created by the recent events.2 The Ottoman state, from the late eighteenth century, and the Iranian state, by the early nineteenth century, had initiated a set of defensive reforms typical of countries the world over exposed to European imperialism.3 For both, defeats against Russia played a decisive role in accelerating the impetus for greater administrative centralization, introduction of European military hardware, techniques, and schools, and legal rational reform of the army and bureaucracy. The Ottoman Empire’s changes to tax collection mechanisms and improved agricultural efficiency could hardly keep up with the costs of the ambitious state reforms. The public debt spiraled out of control and ended in fiscal bankruptcy in 1875. As shown in Birdal’s chapter in this volume, although the establishment of the Public Debt Administration in 1881 gave foreign powers significant control over the empire’s resources, the government of Sultan Abdülhamid II managed to

1 Philipp (2016).   2 Sohrabi (2011).   3  Bayly (2004).

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70   nader sohrabi c­ ontinue with its administrative, military, educational, and infrastructural improvements. Iranian reformers drew from the Ottoman experience when they adapted European institutions to their own political environment, and even borrowed Ottoman terms such as Nezam-i Jadid, the new model army, and Tanzimat, state reforms. While the shortage of funds remained the biggest source of weakness for both, the Ottoman transformations of the nineteenth century, unsatisfactory as they were, reached deeper into the administrative and military structures and society as a whole. In Iran, reforms peaked for a quarter century in the mid-nineteenth century but were almost at a standstill by its end. In short, similar global challenges had elicited parallel regional responses but given the varying local conditions, Iran was not transformed as thoroughly. Traditional Ottoman and Iranian states could be identified as patrimonial, but the Qajar and Ottoman patrimonialisms differed substantially. Historically, the Ottomans kept the sultan’s alliances with notables at a minimum through a well-known military elite recruitment strategy (the Janissaries) and highly restricted matrimonial and childbearing practices for the production of heirs to the throne and nobility. By contrast, the Qajars, reacting to the decentralized context out of which they arose late in the eighteenth century, pursued an opposite strategy on both fronts and entered as many military alliances and marriages with provincial magnates as possible having in mind the goal of stabilizing the center and creating an inbred nobility.4 The decentralized nature of monarchical rule remained intact during the reform era, siphoning off a large share of the tax revenue to the governors (princes and nobility for the most part) and local powerholders. More generally, the Qajar government and bureaucracy remained an extension of the shah’s household. Governorships were granted to the closest of kin and ministerial positions to household members. The bureaucrats were considered servants of the household, and public office the shah’s property which he allotted or sold to the highest bidder in times of crisis.5

State Formations and the Middle Class The Iranian state also failed to invest meaningfully in public education at a time when this global trend was pursued aggressively, including by the Ottomans. Modern schools remained primarily private initiatives, with low levels of general literacy and a negligible middle class. The Qajari military establishment also played a minuscule role in modern socialization compared to the Ottoman army. The small and decentralized Iranian standing army followed traditional patterns of recruitment, including reliance on tribes. Its modern wing was composed of a few thousand-strong Russian-trained and ­controlled Cossack Brigade stationed in Tehran. Its size constituted merely a fraction of 4  Amanat (1997: 20).    5  Sheikholeslami (1997).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   71 the vast new-model Ottoman army that was stationed throughout the empire and was supplemented by a modern navy. These basic divergences in administration and army suggest that the Ottoman state played a greater role in the formation of a middle class than the Qajari state. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman Tanzimat created an independent ex­ecu­tive at the prime minister’s offices behind the Sublime Porte. This move threatened the patrimonial power of the sultan’s palace considerably until Sultan Abdülhamid II reasserted his palace as the decision-making center of the empire.6 While the Sublime Porte continued to run the daily affairs of government, the Hamidian regime was determined to extricate the Tanzimat reforms from reliance on European concepts and expertise. Public education expanded in leaps and bounds in spite of the fiscal strictures imposed by the PDA. New primary and secondary schools as well as colleges of law, medicine, military, and civil administration mushroomed across the empire. They blended new classroom pedagogy and a modern sciences and languages curriculum with a new emphasis on Islamic morality. In thirty years, a new, state-bound middle class, including the future Young Turk revolutionaries, emerged which owed its rise to  the Hamidian educational system. But those who became disaffected by unmet expectations—particularly in the imperial army—became the revolution’s main driving force around 1900. Iran experienced no such infiltration of state power into the social fabric. And this difference with the Ottoman case may go a long way in explaining the sociology of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran and the authoritarian aftermath under the Pahlavi dynasty. What brought on the discontent among the late Ottoman middle class? One could point to the empire’s geopolitical weakness and emergence of ethno-religious conflict in the Balkans, or invoke a long list of administrative issues such as the slow pace of reforms, perpetually unpaid salaries, random payments, and promotions. But nothing matched Hamidian neo-patrimonialism as a source of discontent when it became clear to the well-educated and highly motivated civil and military staff that they also needed the patronage of a grandee for career success. In this system, the sultan and his inner circle at the palace were the sole dispensers of favors.7 The cadre of informants roaming the empire on behalf of the sultan’s court—widely whispered about as the “jurnalciler”— tested loyalty over ability. Many officers and occasionally even generals complained of the dire consequence of clientelism and non-merit-based appointments as a reason for disrespect, disobedience, and breakdown of discipline. Another source of frustration specific to the military was the endemic conflict between the officers who had risen through the ranks (alayli, rankers) and the college-educated (mektebli). In this context, the educated resented the violation of rules of institutional rationality, portraying the sultan as whimsical, unjust, and inclined to favoritism. This sense of blocked mobility was perhaps the most immediate cause of revolution. This is not to underplay the key role the clandestine precursors to the Committee of Union and Progress and then the CUP itself fulfilled in channeling and directing the discontent toward political action. 6 Findley (1980, 1989).   7  Hanssen (2011).

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72   nader sohrabi

Global Constitutionalism and their Transnational, Regional, and Local Histories Abdülhamid II’s assumption of the throne in 1876 intersected with two major challenges: the Young Ottoman movement that was the first extensive constitutional experiment in the Middle East in the 1860s and 1870s; and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8, a transformative defeat. The Young Ottomans, who hailed mostly from intellectual-elite backgrounds, left an important legacy of constitutional thought by creating a synthesis between Islam and Western liberal constitutionalism that still resonates in the Middle East.8 By revaluing the Islamic vocabulary (for example, meşveret, şura, ümmet, icma’-i ümmet, biat) in a constitutional light, endowing neutral terms without religious connotation (for example, vatan, hürriyet, tebaa, meclis) with new political meaning, or coining novel terms (for example, efkar-ı umumı, serbestiyet) when needed, they systematized a constitutional political discourse that drew legitimacy from religion. Their contribution had a long-lasting impact not only for being the most systematic attempt to date, but more importantly, for actually resulting in the constitution and a short-lived imperial parliament. The Young Ottomans gained force when a section of top military and bureaucratic elite accepted their constitutional ideological gambit to stage a coup in May 1876 and establish the first parliamentary structure in the Islamic lands. Yet the constitution that bore the name of their leading politician, the liberal one-time Grand Vizier Midhat Pasha, was modified thoroughly by the conservatives, leaving the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies subservient to the sultan. And the Chamber, which sat for only two short parliamentary sessions between March 1877 and February 1878, departed sharply from the toothless consultative bodies of the past and left an impressive record that included the forced resignation of high officials, ministers, and a grand vizier, and did not spare the sultan from criticism. Furthermore, new election rules gave voice to a surprisingly broad array of non-Muslim Ottomans, and the representatives’ conduct displayed a remarkable ease with parliamentary procedures. But the assertive young Sultan Abdülhamid II used the 1877–8 war with Russia to renege on his constitutional promises and prorogue the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies in early 1878. Although intended as a temporary measure, the condition lasted for more than thirty years until the Young Turk Revolution inaugurated the second constitutional period in 1908. The Young Ottomans indigenized Western constitutionalism and invented a constitutional tradition for Islam with profound regional influence. The Young Turks later instrumentalized it to enormous benefit even as they downplayed their forebears’ Islamic doctrine. The regionalized constitutionalism of the Young Turks had immediate influence on the Iranian intelligentsia who propagated it among the clerics, the merchants, the guilds, and beyond. Overall, the Young Ottoman synthesis as reworked and propagated by lay Iranian intelligentsia such as Yusuf Khan Mustashar al-Dawlah, Mirza Malkam Khan, and intellectual circles had far more practical and political impact than later Shiite constitutionalism associated with Ayatollah Naʾini in 1905.9 8  Mardin (1962); Devereux (1963).    9  Milani (2015).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   73 From today’s perspective, constitutionalism is equated with public sovereignty and political democracy. But from the vantage point of early-twentieth-century Ottoman and Iranian intelligentsia, constitutionalism was first and foremost the doctrine of legalrational order to which the idea of popular sovereignty took a back seat, despite its undoubted presence. The new elite’s concern was focused more on constitutionalism’s promise of an orderly, law-bound, and centralized state that ushered in material progress, resolved lingering injustices, and staved off geopolitical challenge.10 Public sovereignty notions were employed as political justification for transfer of power from the traditional elite to the newly installed parliaments, but concern was more with the guiding spirit of the new elite armed with the (so-called “scientific”) knowledge of the social world and global circumstances than the public’s unbridled right to rule under a democracy. Philipp has aptly described early manifestations of Middle East constitutionalism as the rule of law constitutionalism, a designation that applied equally to some European polities late into the nineteenth century.11 As for injustices that constitutionalism was supposed to remedy, taxes were of concern for both countries, and central in Iran. But if taxes were in comparatively better shape in the more centralized and rule-bound Ottoman administration, ethnicity and religion were severely politicized in the more heterogenous empire and concern for a united citizenry far greater. Thus, Ottoman constitutionalism was expected to address ethnic and religious solidarity and offer a new social contract for the Ottomans.12 The Young Turks were under the sway of Comtean positivism, Büchner’s biological materialism, Spencer’s (via Darwin) social evolutionism, not to mention other “scientific” doctrines, relegating religion to the realm of superstition.13 Their insistence on science-based progress interpreted societal problems with vocabulary taken from the study of the natural world, problems which the modern state was supposedly poised to solve with the scientific know-how of modern education. If we add to this mix the Young Turks’ focus on ethnic nationalism, a conclusion also reached “scientifically,” their ideological differences with the Young Ottomans become even more glaring. Beyond ideology, the difference in social backgrounds between the Young Turks and the Young Ottomans was even more important than ideological ones. If the Young Ottomans relied primarily on the military and bureaucratic elite, the Young Turks hailed primarily from the middle ranks of these institutions. The Young Turks needed to organize for years and employ other means to make up for their distance from levers of power, a deficiency they overcame mainly through strength in numbers. As the politicized core of an emerging Muslim-Turkish middle class, the Young Turks possessed a far broader social base. This gave the Young Turks an insider status that served as a huge advantage compared to Iranian or Russian opposition factions. Once in power, the proconstitutional party was well positioned to consolidate its vision within the administrative and military institutions at a time when the Iranian and Russian opposition remained outsiders for all practical purposes and despite their initially rapid successes. 10 Sohrabi (2011).   11  Philipp (2017: 156–160).    12  Der Matossian (2014). 13  Hanioğlu (1995).

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The Young Turk Revolution After the suppression of the Young Ottoman movement, it took more than ten years for the first opposition cells to infiltrate the military and civilian schools of higher learning and to spread out from there. After massive arrests, dissidents moved abroad, principally to Paris, Geneva, and Cairo where the CUP was founded in 1894. The broader Young Turk coalition included several tendencies that were brought together in the 1902 Congress of Ottoman Opposition to refine their positions and forge unity. In addition to the CUP, the most serious opposition included supporters of military and foreign intervention spearheaded by Prince Sabahaddin (1877–1948)—later known as the Liberals— and the main Armenian opposition party, Dashnaksutiyun.14 The CUP was vehemently opposed to the idea of Great Power intervention for fear of the empire’s disintegration, and the question almost split the movement. After the 1902 Congress, Ahmed Rıza, an adherent of social evolutionism and political gradualism, emerged as the leader of the CUP and secured a far broader organizational reach and access to the press than his rivals.15 In subsequent years differences between the factions were magnified over the question of centralization which the CUP ardently defended against the Liberals, Armenians, Albanians, Arabs, and other ethnicities that favored a decentralized federalist structure. At a time of growing prominence, Ahmed Rıza’s leadership faced another challenge but this time from insurrectionists within the CUP. They opposed Ahmed Rıza’s conservatism and preferred a method of holding out for an evolutionary transformation of the Hamidian regime. Eventually, the younger CUP group of insurrectionists gained the upper hand against the conservative old guard.16 A number of global, regional, and local developments helped to increase the insurrectionists’ clout, enabling them to call for broad military and popular mobilization. The constitutional revolutions in neighboring Russia and Iran were both popular events that widened the possibilities for involving the public in speeding up the revolution. Russia was home to a substantial Turkic-speaking population that had intimate contact with Ottoman cadres who helped propagate the popular revolution there. Moreover, the international press was reporting its first revolution in real time. The Japanese victory over the Russian Empire in 1905 and events in Iran in 1906 proved Muslim readiness for a modern system of political representation in a setting stigmatized as backward. Furthermore, constitutional murmurings from China and Portugal emboldened the CUP to act. Internally, a series of tax rebellions in Anatolia between 1906 and 1907 inspired Young Turk activists as not only being rare popular antistate revolts, but also lacking any tinge of ethnic conflict. These events—including the Ilinden revolt of Macedo-Bulgarians in 1903—strengthened their resolve.17 14 Berberian (2001).   15 Hanioğlu (1995).   16  Hanioğlu (2002). 17  Sohrabi (2002).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   75 The final and arguably the most important development that swayed the CUP in a revolutionary direction was the formation of officer cells in Macedonia in September 1906 under the banner of the Ottoman Freedom Society (OFS). The society was initiated by seasoned CUP members who had been exiled there. Within a year, the OFS merged with the CUP abroad. The CUP’s merger with the OFS was not by chance but an outcome of conscious collaboration between the two. Before the OFS officers’ arrival in Paris in mid-1907, the CUP had been contacted, and the insurrectionist faction headed by Bahaeddin Şakir and Dr. Nazım had responded positively to OFS overtures by planning clandestine meetings in Salonica. The main CUP journal attests to the fact that the insurrectionists had already called for military and public mobilization before the OFS was formed. By the time of merger, CUP activists and the OFS harbored similar views, among them a proclivity for revolutionary action, and ideological commitment to constitutionalism as a regenerative, integrative elixir beyond parliamentary democracy. The organization abroad helped greatly in expanding the internal network by providing organizational know-how, ease of communication, and propaganda materials.18 The insurrectionist faction’s commitment to violent revolutionary methods was officially adopted as the CUP platform during the Second Young Turk Congress in the closing days of 1907 in a joint declaration issued with the Liberals and the main Armenian party, Dashnaksutiun.19 The final pact showed that in return for siding with the partners’ insistence on revolutionary action, the CUP had convinced them against foreign intervention. And although centralization and decentralization remained unresolved, all sides explicitly agreed not to dwell on it in the face of a more immediate enemy. The CUP’s turn to broader mobilization was hardly a compromise with partners. In response to activist pressure, Ahmed Rıza had earlier called on the military to mobilize Macedonian villagers and liberate territories piecemeal until victory. The conservative Ahmed Rıza’s out-of-character announcement was a stunning foreshadowing of the revolutionary strategy in Macedonia only nine months later.20 The final uprising was hastened by two developments in June 1908. First, the Reval meeting between Russia and Britain was erroneously assumed to have resolved differences between the two at the expense of the Ottoman Empire; and second, was the Hamidian spy machinery’s uncovering of the CUP network. The committee abroad had made plans for an uprising and in response to these developments in June, the leadership authorized the CUP officers to take to the mountains. Supported by Turkish and Albanian village bands, officers set out to liberate one city and territory after another in a well-coordinated campaign. Within four weeks of popular uprisings, the sultan was forced to accede to the restoration of the Midhat constitution of 1876 on the night of July 23/24, 1908. Top loyal military commanders of the Third and Second Armies in 18  Hanioğlu (2002); Sohrabi (2011). 19  Şura-yı Ümmet (1908). “Osmanlı Muhalifin Fırkaları Tarafınadan Avrupaʾda İnikad eden Kongrenin Beyannamesi,” Şura-yı Ümmet, nos. 128–129, February 1, 1908, 2–3. 20  Şura-yı Ümmet (1907). “Çete Teşkili Lüzumuna Dair Mektub,” Şura-yı Ümmet, no 123, October 15, 1907, 3–4.

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76   nader sohrabi Macedonia and Thrace that had practically lost control to the CUP-led rebellion urged the sultan to concede to avert a more dangerous outcome. The extensive mobilization of village bands in the three Macedonian provinces of Kosovo, Monastir, and Salonica proved too much for the sultan and his reinstatement of the constitution in the early hours of July 24 led to general jubilation throughout Macedonia that made a point of their multireligious, multiethnic character. The capital Istanbul and the rest of the empire were slower, following suspicion about the veracity of the news in areas that had not witnessed any sign of insurrection. Once convinced it was not another palace intrigue, however, they, too, followed in euphoric celebrations that embraced a new bond of loyalty with Ottomanism amongst the multiple publics of the empire, especially the Armenians, Jews, and Arabs.21 In July 1908, the CUP-led army was indeed capable of capturing the capital and dethroning the sultan, but the army did not leave Macedonia, and CUP cadres came to the capital as civilian representatives of the new order. Yet, despite its verbal commitment to separation of powers, the CUP never intended to dissolve itself or end its influence through the army. This remained a central contradiction of the new constitutional order.22 The CUP justified its move with concerns about the fate of the Young Ottomans under the same sultan thirty years earlier and about the ongoing struggles of parliaments in Russia and Iran. Revolutions are by nature endowed with brief but deeply transformative experiences of freedom—days of liberty and springs of renewal—that signal a change of order through the sudden explosion of the public sphere and the press. The Young Turk Revolution was no exception, and this opening of the political sphere was apparent in the proliferation of political parties, clubs, societies, and groupings paired with their own presses whose demands undermined the CUP’s mantra of union and progress.23 Yet ironically, the newfound freedoms did not lessen but exacerbate the tensions carried over from the old order. A case in point was greater ethnicization of politics, a volatile issue the sultan had suppressed ineffectively through censorship, brute force, or by turning to pan-Islam. Ethnicity quickly found a new claims-making arena in the name of the constitution. Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, and Albanians, to name the most active voices, rallied behind the Liberal Party’s call for a decentralized, federalist administration. The Turkist CUP insisted on a strictly centralized administration which infuriated the federalists. Their denial of greater autonomy for the non-Muslim communities, which the CUP derogated as a government within the government, antagonized the Greeks and Armenians. The CUP adopted a two-pronged approach toward the Sublime Porte that employed legal-constitutional and extra-constitutional means. The legal fights were recognizable globally then as they are now: interpellation of ministers, and dismissals, individually or collectively; battles over violation, modification, and interpretation of constitution, including distinctions between the letter and the spirit of laws; efforts to define the locus of sovereignty; and striking the right balance between the legislative, the executive, the 21  Der Matossian (2014).    22 Chalcraft (2016).   23  Der Matossian (2014).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   77 judiciary, and the sultan. The extensive palace network was dismantled swiftly in the early days and the authority of the Sublime Porte was reinstated after thirty years of marginalization. This move was meant to disempower not only the palace secretariat but the sultanate altogether. This is not to say that the CUP left the field of administrative control to the Sublime Porte. Using newly won civil liberties, the CUP expanded its network of branches, clubs, and societies throughout the empire. Within less than a year after the revolution, it boasted established branches in the lowest administrative rungs, down to sub-districts with due-paying members, while the opposition blasted these as compulsory public taxation. The claim of omnipresence was hyperbole, to be sure, and not all CUP societies were genuine, with some no more than private groupings abusing the name for gain. Nonetheless, in many locations the CUP took over local administrations. What helped further consolidate the CUP’s empire-wide support were long-standing popular grievances that led to fierce campaigns of purges that ended up retiring or firing many army officers and civil bureaucrats. Many top officials were purged on assumption of connections to the sultan. For the middle ranks—the most critical category—qualification was used as the criteria for ordering purges, targeting those who had advanced through years of “servitude.” Other methods included administering exams, placing age caps (rank-and-file were typically older), or investigating past deeds and character. The overall results were dramatic. Within little more than a year, every single governorate and nearly all sub-provincial and district governorates (98 percent and 97 percent respectively) experienced firing, forced retirement, rotation, and reappointment. Only slightly less intense was the fate of the bottom ranks. The Liberal opposition challenged the CUP by denigrating it as a government within the government. Indeed, through its network, the CUP had managed to bypass the palace and impose its vision on the Sublime Porte. But such maneuverings were a doubleedged sword. They empowered the legislature and assured implementation of its decisions, making the Chamber more powerful than its Russian and Iranian counterparts, the Duma and Majlis. But it also planted the seeds of military interference in the name of upholding the constitution.24

The Counterrevolution The pace and extent of the purges fueled a massive counterrevolution in March 1909, a backlash that originated in the capital but spread rapidly. In Istanbul, ordinary soldiers fearing purges rose to leadership. Lower-rank clerics and religious students also rallied in opposition to the changes that ended their traditional privileges and reduced numbers. The counterrevolution adopted the language of religion, the only idiom that could

24  Chalcraft (2016).

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78   nader sohrabi confront the CUPs’ semantic monopoly over modern science and constitutionalism. For those CUP theoreticians who had traced the constitution’s origin to religion, this was a particularly unwelcome challenge. A closer look at the anti-CUP revolt brings out the complexity of the Young Turk Revolution and its discontents. The writing that appeared in the Society of Muhammed’s newspaper Volkan suggests that the religious opposition had a point that made the CUP uncomfortable. Volkan had initially targeted the CUP’s Westernism, its advocacy of Muslim and non-Muslim equality, antireligiosity, the manhandling of opponents, and the usurpation of local government authority. Eventually Volkan took up the cause of soldiers and bureaucrats under duress, and when it did, the newspaper received overwhelming support. During its short existence, the newspaper stuck closely to the Liberal opposition’s critique of the CUP’s violations of the law, its meddling in government affairs, and its authoritarian posture. This affinity may appear surprising given Volkan’s unhappiness with religious equality and its challenge to Muslim political superiority. So was its unease with the CUP’s advocacy of women’s rights which it disparaged as Western mimicry and loss of identity. On the day of the March 31, 1909 uprising, as the counterrevolution came to be known, the popular slogans of the day were “we want sharia—we do not want the constitution,” and “long live the sultan.” When it came to the high-ranking religious au­thor­ ities of the empire—no admirers of the sultan—they expressed unequivocal support for the constitution in speeches and publications and blasted the popular clerical agitators as an ignorant lot in religious garb. Yet Volkan, too, remained faithful to its earlier alliance with the Liberal position and came down in defense of the constitution. Like many who mistakenly assumed the sultan to have masterminded the uprising, Volkan publicly pleaded with him not to abolish the constitution or disband the Chamber, and it issued calls to soldiers for moderation and peace with the educated officers.25 In the end, the CUP mobilized support in Macedonia and army units there rode into the capital to defend the revolution under the leadership of well-respected General Mahmud Şevket Pasha (1856-1913). Istanbul offered little resistance and with its fall the sultan was deposed and exiled without any proof of involvement. The triumphant CUP now had a mandate to ignore critics. The counterrevolution had proven the CUP right, and it used its success to pursue even more aggressive purges. Greater authoritarianism was on display with new legislation on staff reductions, the press and publications, meetings, rallies, associations, political parties, and vagrancy. The extensively revised constitution now broke with the conservatism of the 1876 template by reducing the new sultan to a symbolic figurehead. The executive and the legislature were given new powers. This could be hailed as a triumph for liberalism had not the CUP later handed back greater constitutional powers to the sultan, whom it could control more easily than a legislature that remained unpredictable. 25  Volkan, No. 104, 14 April 1909/1 April /23 Rebiyülevvel 1325, “Halife-i İslam Abdülhamid Han Hazretlerine Açık Mektub,” p. 1; Volkan, No. 104, 14 April 1909/1 April /23 Rebiyülevvel 1325, “Dünkü Hal,” pp. 1–2. Sohrabi (2011: 248).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   79 The CUP’s increasing authoritarianism and extra-judicial meddling to empower the infant Chamber could be partially justified in view of the contemporaneous fate of the Iranian Majlis, or the Russian Duma, which the CUP followed closely. Theirs became the sole legislative body to survive the backlash. Yet the tradition of the military billing itself as the constitution’s guardian, elitism, extra-judicial meddling, authoritarianism, or in short, illiberal constitutionalism, was the legacies passed on to its heir, the Turkish Republic. It should be noted here that a limited aspect of the Young Turk rule has been addressed here, with an eye on the constitutional legacy and long-term impact on democratic institutions. A more detailed treatment should take account of the Albanian conflict and the Balkan Wars,26 the Sublime Porte coup, the First World War and reasons for participation;27 substitution of temporary laws for legislation during the war, partition, and creation of Arab states;28 emergence of nationalism among the Turks and other Ottomans;29 the emergence of national economy thinking;30 and lastly, the Armenian catastrophe during the First World War.31

The Revolution in Iran Revolutions happen under distinct structural circumstances, chief among them state weakness.32 This was a condition present in both Iran and the Ottoman Empire. Yet, contingency played a bigger role in Iran’s revolution. What was its significance? The brief history of oppositional societies in Iran prior to 1906 contained nothing comparable to organized parties such as the CUP, the Liberal opposition, the Armenian or Albanian political groupings, or comparable societies in Istanbul. There existed in Tehran and major cities such as Tabriz, Isfahan, or Kirman, intellectual circles and gatherings interested in the cause of reform, but these were tiny and hardly revolutionary. The reformist publications by long-standing merchant communities in Cairo, Istanbul, Calcutta, and Caucasus or by critical diplomats in Europe sought fundamental change but not through radical means. Among these, Qanun, a journal published by Malkam Khan (1834-1908) in London, was the most influential publication of its kind for its explicit advocacy of constitutionalism and the role it played in propagating an Islamic version. The most important grouping in Tehran, the intellectuals associated with the National Library which later formed the Revolutionary Committee and affiliated groups had well below a hundred members each. The differences in the educational and literacy levels of the two contexts was reflected in the sheer volume and content of newspapers, even after accounting for Iran’s population that was a third the size of its Ottoman neighbor. In the absence of a sizable middle class and low literacy, few were familiar with constitutional 26  Çelik (2004); Hall (2000); Yavuz and Blumi (2013).    27  Aksakal (2008). 28  Kayalı (1997); Rogan (2015); Gingeras (2016).    29  Hanioğlu (2006). 30 Toprak (1982).   31  Suny (2015); Reynolds (2011); Üngör (2011). 32  Skocpol (1979).

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80   nader sohrabi causes. Nor did anything similar to the armed ethnic nationalist movements in Macedonia exist in Iran, and the large array of ethnicities constituting the Iranian public had not been politicized over cultural, linguistic, ethnic, or religious differences. The most significant tumult of the past two decades had been the Tobacco rebellion against the monopoly concession granted to the British. This movement’s importance lay in the alliances that emerged among the merchants, the clerics, the guilds, and the public, culminating in a national movement that led to its cancellation. If Malkam’s writings are any indication, the Tobacco rebellion focused the intelligentsia’s attention on the mo­bil­ iza­tion capacity of the clerical networks and encouraged concessions in anticipation of their future leadership role, especially as the meager reforms had left largely intact the clerical establishment and their informal networks.33 The events preceding the Constitutional Revolution, such as the protests against government injustices and the Belgian director of customs Naus in the spring of 1905, may appear trivial in hindsight. In December the government humiliated a few prominent merchants with a public bastinado for high sugar prices. In a charged atmosphere, this represented another indication of government injustice, prompting a number of public protests ranging from a large mosque gathering broken up violently by the government, to a month-long sanctuary at a holy site in Tehran attended by two of the three most prominent ayatollahs. At the same time Tehran became the scene of various protests, including women in some instances. In the subsequent negotiations with the government in January 1906, the clerical leadership succeeded in securing a promise for a House of Justice in the capital to attend to public grievances with greater attention to the laws of religion. This was a familiar-sounding concept and far from a parliament. When the government reneged on this rather trivial promise, disturbances began anew in June. The harsh response prompted the three most prominent ayatollahs to take sanctuary for a second time in mid-July, but now at a more prominent religious site in the city of Qom, far from the capital. The sanctuary choice and the large crowds accompanying clerics from Tehran signaled an escalation. Before leaving, the most liberal of the three, Mirza Sayyid Muhammad Tabatabaʾi (1842-1928), assured the government about their aim, which was not to secure a constitutional assembly but a House of Justice to end oppression by magnates and the exorbitant taxes on poor subjects. He couched his sermon in the old language of politics, the Circle of Justice. That Tabatabaʾi felt compelled to explicitly deny leading a constitutional revolt indicated that such murmurings were in the air. Internal government communications expressed relief after Tabatabaiʾs assurances allayed their worst fears.34

33  Qanun, No. 7, p. 4. Qanun, No. 21, p. 2. Qanun, No. 20, p. 3. Qanun, No. 11, p. 4. Sohrabi (2011: 304–306). 34  Kirmani (1983: 444–53). Vakil al-Dawlah to Nariman Khan Qavam al-Saltanah. See Document 2 in Safaʾi (1973: 29–30. Sohrabi (2011: 342–343).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   81 The clerical leaders’ Great Exodus to Qom, as the move came to be known, opened the way for a fateful contingency. That same night, merchants took sanctuary at the British Legation, to be joined in the next few days by a crowd of fifteen thousand guild members, students of religion, merchants, and intelligentsia. The Legation was turned into an educational ground led by the secret societies that expounded on the meaning of the constitution and its benefits to urge protestors to go beyond a mere House of Justice or the symbolically related Chief Minister’s dismissal. Had the clerical leadership remained put, the British Legation would not have been the choice of sanctuary, nor the demands escalate as they did. With the start of threeway negotiations between the government, Qom, and the Legation, the latter progressively overshadowed Qom, not only in the capital, but the protest site projected British support, even if the Legation’s accommodating personnel were as surprised as anyone. When during the exchanges the government proposals addressed the Legation first, its rising stature became apparent. By the time an accord was reached between all parties, the Iranian leaders camped at the British Legation had succeeded in broadening the new body’s membership beyond anything demanded by the clerics. They succeeded in substituting “national” for “Islamic” in the new institution’s appellation, and acquired the right to revise its “internal regulations”—which was later argued to be the constitution itself. In the end, a small intellectual clique with little social clout had exerted inordinate influence. The celebrations that ensued after the issuance of the shah’s decree gave rise to the belief that the constitutional era had begun, even if no document had made mention of the legislative role of the new body. In the ensuing months, each side attempted to impose its own definition upon the terms of the compromise. Two examples will suffice in this regard. In Tehran, where elections were held earlier, constitutionalists worried that the government might turn the body into Tehran’s municipal council. To preempt that possibility, they assigned to Tehran a disproportionate share of the representatives which strengthened the capital to legislate over the country. By doing so the constitutionalists inadvertently aided the government plan to derail the provincial elections with the help of governors and local magnates. The initial exchanges over drafting the constitution serves as another ex­ample. During negotiations, the Assembly had secured the right to modify “internal regulations” drawn up by the government. Afterwards, with the Assembly’s rising stature and public support, key representatives insisted that the commonly used and agreed upon term “internal regulations” was the constitution itself. The Assembly rejected the government’s interpretation of them as soon as it was tabled and in a reversal of roles drew up a constitution—albeit a highly limited one—to be sent back for approval. When on a firmer footing, the Assembly implemented a comparatively radical constitution, the “Supplement,” which granted the legislature extensive powers. With the Assembly in place, politics unfolded along similarly defined global paths. Delineating the powers of the legislature against the executive, defining the judiciary’s domain, struggles over drafting, changing, and interpreting the constitution, and the fall of individual ministers or collapse of entire cabinets, were some of these, which— given Iran’s institutional fragility—the cabinets shuffled continuously. As in the

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82   nader sohrabi Ottoman Empire, Iran also witnessed an explosion of the public sphere with a new hospitable environment for the press with restrictions removed for open mobilization, group formation, and party establishment. In Iran, the Assembly and the press devoted a good part of their efforts toward dissociating the monarchy from the government. Yet, if the Ottoman Chamber served as one site of struggle among a few, the Iranian Assembly was the main locus of the fight with the monarchy in the context of a new development: the proliferation of armed popular committees throughout the country. Composed mostly of guilds, their networks overlapped and competed with the informal networks of clerics. Acting as an extra-judicial arm, the Assembly used them to intimidate the government, but without the organization, military backing, or the insider status that the CUP enjoyed. Despite all its shortcomings, once the Assembly fully recognized the committees’ usefulness, it nurtured closer ties and took the unusual step of legally granting them many state-like functions in the provinces such as tax collection, public works, and supervision of local governments. Over time, the committees became the biggest thorn in the side of local and central governments. Naturally, the popular committees did not function as one disciplined body. Animated by popular just­ice, the hundreds of boisterous committees had difficulty coordinating action amongst themselves, let alone with the Assembly. Nonetheless, a national organization of committees was in the making that looked up to the Assembly as the savior from harsh and erratic taxes and day-to-day injustices. That committees were the reason why the Assembly had any clout was beyond doubt, but their proclivity to create chaos was cause for widespread concern.35 Counterrevolutions that erupted in Iran and the Ottoman Empire were responses to the new changes brought about by the new regimes. Both revolutions had pursued greater centralization, uniformity, and rationalization in broad terms, even if precise contents differed. Blocked mobility served as the principal micro-level conflict of the Young Turk Revolution and the resistance to CUP-orchestrated purges seriously challenged the party’s political power. In Iran, the ground-level factor behind public participation was opposition to unjust taxes. Consequently, tax overhaul preoccupied the Assembly and it was brought to the brink of collapse because of it. Ending the land income category tuyul enraged their powerful holders, but endowed the central government with the authority to dictate and collect both components of provincial taxes— amalkard and tafavut-i amal. Losing control of provincial budgets infuriated the governors and local magnates. Finally, rationalizing the court’s income and ex­pend­ itures and moving the treasury from the court to the ministry of finance further incensed the young and recently enthroned shah. Together these measures managed to rally a broad array of powerful social actors behind the shah. When it came to religious opposition in Iran, liberal or conservative, almost all had initially rallied against the Qajar monarchy. Both constitutionalists and the clerics sought to protect the subjects against government transgressions and wished for a more prosperous state that prevented Iran’s colonization. But as time went on it became 35  Adamiyat (2000); Sohrabi (2011); Afary (1996).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   83 increasingly clear that they each sought different means of attaining these ideals. The religious establishment defined justice as limits placed on government interference in public life and the safeguarding of an autonomous domain regulated by religious law under clerical influence. In theory, reduced injustice led to more prosperous subjects who could afford larger taxes which in turn strengthened the center and allowed it to withstand foreign intrusion. As such the clerics did not suggest a fundamentally different mode of governance, but simply a less intrusive and extractive one than the late Qajar government. Theirs was a local and practical definition of justice. In stark contrast, the constitutionalists’ ideal of justice was shaped by a regulative, legal-rational centralized state which implied far greater involvement in public life than any previous state. In short, they harbored a global definition of justice. If the clerics sought less state, without concern for its organizational structure, the constitutionalists strove for a powerful modern state to transform the taxation structure, manage and improve citizens’ welfare in accord with global norms, put into effect and enforce the laws strictly, act as the sole arbiter of justice, and enhance geopolitical standing through military modernization in order ultimately to withstand colonization. The contrasting visions of state were brought to a head during the passage of the Supplement—the real constitution. It pitted the Assembly and the committees against the monarchy and the conservative clerics. The Qajar monarchy, already incensed by the Assembly’s tax policies, felt even more threatened by the Supplement. With its clear division of powers, the Supplement put a definitive end to government as the extension of shah’s patrimonial household; it limited monarchical powers and endowed the legislature with superior powers over the executive. The Supplement was equally threatening to the religious establishment. Its early drafts mentioned only the state courts without so much as a mention of religious courts; it made education compulsory and solely the state’s responsibility. By doing so, it undermined the institutional pillars of the clerical establishment. Furthermore, the conservatives took issue with the heavy borrowings from the Belgian constitution (as the Ottomans had done) and with lawmaking by lay individuals. Other contentious topics were freedom of expression and the press, equality of all before the law regardless of religion, national sovereignty, educational programs, including women’s education and status, and Western dress and mannerism. These developments created divisions within clerical ranks. Even the conservative leader Ayatollah Nuri admitted that he had been impressed by the Islamicized constitution until realizing that the constitutionalists had ulterior motives. Some ayatollahs grew more distant and quiet, while others, most prominently Tabatabaʾi, became more vocal in denouncing Nuri and his conservative group. In this he was helped by a minority faction of clerics in Iraq around Ayatollah Naʾini who developed a Shia defense of constitutionalism.36 Also, many among the lower-ranking clerics with guild ties remained steadfast in their support. 36  Hairi (1977).

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84   nader sohrabi To oppose the Supplement, the conservative clerics relived the drama of earlier days and took sanctuary at Tehran’s holiest site. They demanded supervision of the Assembly’s law-making to ensure its compatibility with Islamic law and suggested a five-member clerical council with the authority to reject the legislative bills. Under pressure, the Assembly agreed but insisted on its right to elect the five from a roster of twenty selected by the clerical establishment. Conservatives rejected the offer, considering the lay representatives unfit to make that decision and thus shutting the door to a compromise. The Assembly’s offer nonetheless found its way into the Supplement. Although it was not implemented under the Qajars or Pahlavis, it served as the model for various bodies in the Islamic Republic that tempered legislation and the national sovereignty principle in favor of religion and clerical power. The ongoing posturing over the Supplement intensified the constitutional and extraconstitutional battles in 1907. The Assembly radicalized and became harsher in its interpellations and criticisms of the government and monarchy. The committees around the country stepped up their activities, as in Tabriz, where they staged a boisterous month-long sanctuary at the telegraph office. The committees’ most dramatic act during the battle over the Supplement was the assassination of Chief Vizier Mirza Ali Asghar Khan Atabak (1858–1907) at the end of August. This was an event saturated with symbolism. It resembled a ritual killing that destabilized the monarchy at a more abstract cultural level and proved to be a turning point for the movement. The thoroughgoing Supplement that was approved amidst turmoil some five weeks later—in early October 1907—gave the Assembly the right to dismiss ministers and cabinets without legal infractions or the shah’s consent. As the groups threatened by the Assembly rallied behind the conservative clerics and adopted their language, the shah, too, began to couch his criticisms of the Assembly in the language of religion while preparing the ground for a final assault. The conservative clerics returned the favor by addressing him consistently as the shah of Islam. In their hardening stance, Islamic law was argued to be complete and unchanging, in no need of addition or modification in light of changing circumstances. The conservatives eventually rejected constitutionalism altogether. The Ottoman and Iranian counterrevolutions shared nearly identical slogans. The difference was that the Qajari monarchy acted as the principal organizer of the opposition whereas the role of the sultan in the 1909 uprising was unclear. And in contrast to broad opposition to the Young Turk parliament and constitution among high-ranking Ottoman clerics, the ayatollahs in Iran were divided on the question of the Assembly and the Supplement. The Assembly was bombed in late June 1908, shortly after a committee-directed failed assassination attempt against the shah. The committees had taken positions in the Assembly compound, but their adjacent headquarters and the surroundings fell easily to the more disciplined Cossack Brigade. With the fall of Tehran, a thirteen-month bloody struggle ensued between the loyalists and constitutionalists throughout Iran. The northern city of Tabriz became the site of a legendary fight against the loyalists.37

37  Afary (1996: esp. ch. 4).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   85 Russia used the disorder to take control of northwestern Iran despite the Tabriz constitutionalists’ surrender. In the rest of the country, the constitutional forces—composed of the committees, revolutionaries from the Caucasus including the Armenian Dashnak, provincial militaries in the north, and Bakhtiari tribes from the south—managed to capture Tehran in a coordinated assault in July 1909. The shah was deposed and his minor son assumed the throne under a regent. The re-establishment of the Assembly marked the introduction of formal political parties in Iran. Yet, the centrifugal forces that the revolution and counterrevolution had unleashed ultimately rendered the central state incapable of dealing with them after the monarchy’s defeat. These prepared the ground for Russian and British intervention in the north and south. The constitutional movement came to a formal end after Bakhtiari militias shut down the Assembly at the end of 1911 following Russia’s threat to occupy Tehran.

The Aftermath Compared Two military strongmen rose from the ashes of these perilous developments: Atatürk and Reza Shah. Identified officially and popularly as founders of modern Turkey and Iran, they are imagined as nearly identical figures. How alike were they? Were they the sole initiators of the state transformations? What were their connections to the preceding constitutional movements and can we gain a better understanding of Atatürk and Reza Shah by looking at those movements? Finally, can this exercise shed light on the greater resilience of democratic institutions in modern Turkey compared to Iran? The constitutional movement in Iran, and especially the counterrevolutionary period from June 1908 to July 1909, unleashed the centrifugal forces at the periphery that opened the door further to foreign intervention. This, combined with a weak middle class and the absence of a centralized modern military, formally brought the constitutional movement to an end. With the outbreak of several autonomy-seeking movements during and after the First World War a decade of disorders followed, with Russia consolidating its power in the north until the Bolshevik Revolution and the British settling in the south. Yet, constitutionalism still could have survived in Iran. The institution of the Gendarmerie, the brainchild of the constitutional movement, was primed to protect the future republic with its highly trained, educated, and nationalist staff. Its foreign-trained officers, some hailing from the Harbiye of Istanbul, had affinities with the Young Turks and admired the Kemalist movement. But relative to the CUP, the Gendarmerie was only a budding institution with a small officer corps. Officers did not go through a public education system the way CUP officers did, and they were not part of an organic middle class. They hailed from the elite, and as such, more closely resembled the Young Ottoman military elite than the middle-class CUP officers. The Gendarmerie was at the height of its power and popularity when it joined Reza Khan’s Cossack Brigade in the

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86   nader sohrabi 1921 coup against the monarchy. But by the end of that year the ambitious future ruler of Iran had sidelined the force.38 This outcome was particularly surprising, given that the better-trained, better-disciplined, better-organized, and numerically larger Gendarmerie was poised to assume power as the protector of the constitution and the Assembly. Four years after the coup, Reza Khan, after initially considering republicanism, declared himself the new shah of Iran. His rule was characterized by increasing military dominance over civilian authority, arbitrariness, corruption, nepotism, and accumulation of enormous wealth by the shah and his military commanders, who also became key administrators. After co-opting the state-building programs of the constitutionalists, Reza Shah absorbed and subordinated the Gendarmerie to the Cossacks, curtailed constitutional rights, and rendered the Assembly ineffective after 1926. Reza Shah was an outsider to the revolution. If the constitutionalists finally rallied behind him, it was for lack of a better alternative. They settled on a candidate who could at least bring to fru­ition the state-building aspirations of their movement. And Reza Shah did build a stronger state than the constitutionalists had managed to do: he implemented forced sedentarization of tribes, a new army of conscripts, state sponsorship of mandatory free education, infrastructural works, and the beginnings of a welfare state. But aside from granting some rights to women, his centralization measures came at the expense of the constitutional movement’s hard-won political freedoms. Ottoman constitutionalism suffered major setbacks before the First World War. The government within the government continued to worsen throughout the CUP rule. Even if the CUP hesitated to fuse the executive and legislature or to abolish the latter, it did its best to exert control over both. The infamous 1913 coup at the Sublime Porte and the emergence of the so-called CUP triumvirate only worsened the situation. During the war years, the Chamber did not convene for long stretches and the government issued temporary laws that substituted for legislation. At the same time, the CUP held sway over the sultan. This made the CUP potentially dictatorial, but it continued to operate within the letter, but not the spirit, of the law. Atatürk emerged as the military commander of the national resistance movement after the Ottoman defeat in the First World War and the disbanding of the CUP. In many ways, he was an heir to the constitutional movement and the CUP. The connections between the two movements and the incontrovertible role the vast CUP network played in the war of national resistance had been established convincingly.39 If Atatürk maneuvered his way to the resistance movement’s leadership by beating rivals, it was a power struggle among like-minded CUP factions in which he belonged to the most Westernist faction.40 Members of a rising middle class and former CUP officers, they were all children of revolution. His was a victory different from Reza Shah’s over the Gendarmerie. Surprisingly, and despite the cult of personality surrounding him, Mustafa Kemal was thus much less of a lone figure than Reza Shah. He continued to represent the state and

38 Cronin (2007).   39 Zürcher (1984).   40  Hanioğlu (2011).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   87 nation-building aspirations of the intelligentsia and middle class, which rallied to his support. From the beginning of his authoritarian style of rule, he emulated the CUP’s earlier strategy of fusing the legislature and executive, and eventually he ruled with the help of a single party. His Republican People’s Party was a disciplined, extensive, and popular organization which became the training ground for the multiparty system of later generations. Atatürk’s Republic was an extension of CUP rule after the Young Turk Revolution. By contrast, Reza Shah was a political outsider who neither enjoyed popular support nor manage to build it. After a short experiment with party politics, he abandoned even the single-party alternative. The state-building programs of Atatürk and Reza Shah were part of the agendas of the preceding constitutional movements and their rise could be understood only in that light. But if one was an enlightened dictator in a republican setting, the other displayed despotic behavior. Unlike Atatürk, Reza Shah was not part of the constitutional movement or a rising educated middle class. Yet he did manage to co-opt that movement’s state-building programs and implemented them with the help of begrudging constitutionalists. In practice, the Kemalist movement also came close to abandoning the democratic dimensions; however, at the level of ideology it remained faithful to its constitutional beginnings and built institutions for the rule of law to manifest in the future. This was an ideal in the making at best, as the military turned from vanguard of the revolution to guardian of the constitution, a role it has continued to play until recently.41

References Adamiyat, Faridun (2000). Idiʾuluzhi-yi Nahzat-i Mashrutiyat-i Iran, vol. 2 (Tehran: Intisharat-i Rushangaran). Afary, Janet (1996). The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, & the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press). Aksakal, Mustafa (2008). The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Amanat, Abbas (1997). Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Bayly, C. A. (2004). The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell). Berberian, Houri (2001). Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1911 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Çelik, Bilgin (2004). İttihadçılar ve Arnavutlar (Istanbul: Büke Kitapları). Chalcraft, John (2016). Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Cronin, Stefanie (2007). Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–1941 (London: Routledge). Der Matossian, Bedross (2014). Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). 41  On Turkey under President Erdoğan, see Asli Ü. Bâli chapter in this handbook.

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88   nader sohrabi Devereux, Robert (1963). The First Ottoman Constitutional Period; A Study in Midhat Constitution (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Findley, Carter (1980). Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire, The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Findley, Carter (1989). Ottoman Civil Officialdom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Gingeras, Ryan (2016). Fall of the Sultanate: the Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hairi, Abdul-Hadi (1977). Shiʿism and Constitutionalism in Iran: A Study of the Role Played by the Persian Residents of Iraq in Iranian Politics (Leiden: E. J. Brill). Hall, Richard C. (2000). The Balkan Wars, 1912–1913: Prelude to the First World War (London: Routledge). Hanioglu, Şükrü (1995). The Young Turks in Opposition (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hanioglu, Şükrü (2002). Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hanioğlu, Şükrü (2006). “Turkism and the Young Turks, 1889–1908,” in Hans-Lukas Kieser (ed.). Turkey Beyond Nationalism: Towards Post-Nationalist Identities (London: I. B. Tauris), 3–19. Hanioğlu, Şükrü (2011). Atatürk an Intellectual Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Hanssen, Jens (2011). “Malhamé—Malfamè: Transimperial Networks and Levantine Elites on the Eve of the Young Turk Revolution,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43,1: 25–48. Kayalı, Hasan (1997). Arabs and the Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Kirmani, Muhammad Nazim al-Islam (1983). Tarikh-i Bidari-i Iraniyan, vol. 1, in Ali Akbar Saidi Sirjani (ed.) (Tehran: Intisharat-i Agah, Intisharat-i Nuvin), 444–453. Köroğlu, Erol (2007). Ottoman Propaganda and Turkish Identity: Literature in Turkey during World War I (London: I. B. Tauris). Mardin, Şerif (1962). The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, a Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Milani, Abbas (2015). “Scripting a Revolution: Fate or Fortuna in the 1979 Revolution in Iran,” in K. M. Baker and D. Edelstein (eds). Scripting Revolution: A Historical Approach to the Comparative Study of Revolutions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), 307–324. Philipp, Thomas (2016). “From Rule of Law to Constitutionalism: The Ottoman Context of Arab Political Thought,” in Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss (eds). Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 142–165. Reynolds, Michael (2011). Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rogan, Eugene (2015). The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (New York: Basic Books). Sheikholeslami, Reza (1997). The Structure of Central Authority in Qajar Iran, 1871–1896 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press). Sohrabi, Nader (2002). “Global Waves, Local Actors: What the Young Turks knew about other Revolutions and Why It Mattered,” Comparative Study of Society and History 44,1: 45–79. Sohrabi, Nader (2011). Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations   89 Sohrabi, Nader (2018). “Reluctant Nationalists, Imperial Nation State and Neo-Ottomanism: Turks, Albanians and the Antinomies of the End of Empire,” Social Science History Journal 42,4: 835–870. Suny, Ronald Grigor (2015). They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: a History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Toprak, Zafer (1982). Türkiyeʾde Milli İktisat, 1908–1918 (Ankara: Yurt Yayinlari). Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2011). The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Yavuz, Hakan and Isa Blumi (eds) (2013). War and Nationalism: The Balkan Wars, 1912–1913, and Their Sociopolitical Implications (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press). Zürcher, Erik J. (1984). The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement, 1905–1926 (Leiden: E. J. Brill).

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Pa rt I I

FOR M AT IONS

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chapter 5

The First Wor ld Wa r a n d its Legacy i n th e Middle E ast Eugene Rogan

As the states of Europe prepared their armies for war, the Ottoman government issued orders for general mobilization on August 1, 1914. Colorful posters were hung in towns and squares across the empire emblazoned with the legend: “Seferberlik var! Mobilization has been declared! All men to arms!” Men of military age—those between the ages of 21 and 45 years old—and their families responded to the news with justifiable dread. Many had only recently been demobilized following catastrophic wars in the Balkans. Few had confidence that the Ottomans, who had been soundly defeated by a coalition of fractious Balkan states in 1912–13, could withstand attack by some of the greatest European military powers of the day. They believed the Ottoman government rash to drag the empire into a European conflict in which they had no stake.1 The Ottoman government in 1914 was headed by three influential members of the Committee of Union and Progress who had come to power in the aftermath of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution: Enver Pasha, Minister of War; Talat Pasha, Interior Minister and later Prime Minister; and Cemal Pasha, Minister of Marine. They were distinctly young Turks. In the summer of 1914, Enver was only 33, Talat 40, and Cemal 42. Arguably they were rash, too, having risen to power through revolutionary times in which fortune favored the bold. Yet they knew of threats to the empire from dangerous neighbors that convinced the Unionist triumvirate that neutrality in the rapidly expanding European war was not an option. Russia followed the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 with great interest. Ottoman territorial losses in Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace convinced Tsar Nicholas II and his government that the Ottoman Empire, long dismissed as the “sick man of Europe,” had entered 1  This work draws on a number of recent surveys of the First World War in the Middle East, particularly Gingeras (2016); McMeekin (2015); Rogan (2015); and Ulrichsen (2014).

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94   eugene rogan a terminal stage. St Petersburg’s greatest concern was that one of the ambitious Balkan states—Greece or Bulgaria—might succeed in taking the Ottoman capital city of Constantinople (as Istanbul was commonly called by Turks and Westerners alike in 1914) and establish control over the strategic straits linking the Russian Black Sea with the Mediterranean. Fifty percent of Russian exports transited the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. These were strategic lands that Russia coveted for its own empire. In April 1914, the tsar approved his Council of Ministers’ recommendation to occupy Constantinople and the Straits and ordered his army to mobilize the forces to secure these territories at the earliest opportunity. The Russians believed a general European conflict would provide the best opportunity to realize these “historic claims.” The Unionist leadership, fully aware of Russian ambitions, believed the general mobilization of European armies in July and August 1914 heralded the start of just such a conflict. The Ottomans mobilized both to protect their own lands and to help secure a defensive alliance against Russian expansionism.2 The Unionist leaders approached different European powers in search of a treaty of mutual defense that might provide protection of Ottoman territory from Russian ambitions. Though Britain and France might once have been natural allies, the Ottomans were wary of British and French territorial ambitions. In the course of the nineteenth century, France had stripped the Ottoman Empire of Tunisia and Algeria, and was known to covet Syria. Britain for its part had forced the Porte to cede Cyprus in 1878 and occupied Egypt in 1882. The British and French were thus hardly disinterested parties. Moreover, both were bound to Russia as part of the Triple Entente. Neither France nor Britain was likely to intervene against their ally Russia in defense of Turkish territory. Germany was the Ottoman Empire’s natural ally. Kaiser Wilhelm II had twice visited the Ottoman Empire and had taken the opportunity to declare Germany’s perpetual friendship with the Muslim world. Germany had invested heavily in Turkey’s infrastructural development, epitomized by the Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad project. A Prussian general, Liman von Sanders, headed a German military mission to modernize the Ottoman army in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars. Yet for all its military and industrial might, Germany had no imperial ambitions in Ottoman territory. Its only real demand, in return for concluding an alliance with the Ottoman Empire, was that Sultan Mehmed V Reşat, in his role as caliph of the global Muslim community, declare a jihad on Britain, France, and Russia. The kaiser and his advisers were convinced that the religious authority of the sultan-caliph would stir colonial Muslims to rise in revolts in British India and Egypt, French North Africa, and the Russian Caucasus, undermining the Entente war effort through their imperial possessions.3 Agreement struck, German and the Ottoman Empire concluded a secret treaty of alliance on August 2, 1914—one day after Enver issued orders for a general mobilization.

2  Aksakal (2008: 42, 82–83); Reynolds (2011: 36–41); Sean (2011). 3  On German–Ottoman relations in the lead-up to the First World War, see McMeekin (2010); on Germany’s jihad politics, see Ludke (2005).

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The First World War and Its Legacy in the Middle East   95 The Ottoman Empire thus mobilized at the same time as all of the other wartime belligerents. In the course of the war, just under three million men would be called into service in the Ottoman army. At war’s end, only half returned home unharmed: 804,000 were killed, 400,000 wounded, and 250,000 taken prisoner. Ottoman casualty rates (48%) were thus much higher than the British (36%), on a par with German losses (56%), but well lower than Russian (59%), Austrian (77%), or French (78%).4 The Ottoman contribution to the Great War has been eclipsed in both the historiography and in public memory by European fascination with the horrors of the Western Front. Dismissed at the time as the weakest link in the Central Powers’ chain, the British and French were confident of their ability to inflict a swift and decisive defeat on the Ottomans. Instead, they found themselves drawn ever deeper into the sideshow of the Ottoman Front, committing hundreds of thousands of troops and tons of materiel to fight pitched battles for the full four years of the war. The Ottoman entry transformed the Great War from a European conflict into the First World War. The Great War, in turn transformed the Ottoman world, giving rise to the modern states of the Middle East and laying the seeds for many of the conflicts that would divide them over the ensuing century.

The Course of the War in the Middle East After months of preparations, the Ottomans entered the Great War on October 29, 1914, when their Black Sea fleet, under German command, fired on Russian shipping and naval facilities. Two weeks later, on November 14, Sultan Mehmed V Reşat fulfilled his empire’s commitment to its German ally and declared the war a jihad against Britain, France, and Russia.5 The declaration asserted it was the religious duty of all Muslims to fight against the Triple Entente as enemies of Islam, and prohibited colonial Muslims from giving any assistance to the Allied war effort as a crime against their religion. This posed a double threat to the Allies: the risk of Islamic uprisings in their imperial possessions; and the threat of mutiny by Muslim soldiers serving in the Indian Army and the French Army of Africa. In February 1915, Indian Muslim soldiers rebelled against their British commanders in Singapore in direct response to the sultan-caliph’s call for jihad. The uprising raged on for five days before the British and their allies were able to dispatch loyal troops to Singapore to restore order. Some 47 British officers, soldiers, and civilians were killed in course of the mutiny. Compared to the loss of life on the Western Front, events in Singapore seemed trivial. Yet the fact that colonial Muslims rebelled in a land as far from 4  Winter (2010: 249). On Ottoman casualty figures, see also Erickson (2001: 237–239). 5  Aksakal (2016: 53–69).

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96   eugene rogan Ottoman domains as Singapore convinced British commanders that the declaration of jihad posed a very serious threat to their war effort.6 Allied war planners believed they could eliminate the jihad threat by the early defeat of the Ottoman Empire. In the opening days of the war, the Entente pressed the Ottomans at different points along the empire’s extensive frontiers. Russian forces swept across the Caucasus frontier to occupy a salient fifteen miles deep into Ottoman territory on November 2. British and French warships bombarded the entry to the Dardanelles, detonating an ammunition depot in the Seddülbahr Fort. On November 10, a British force overran Ottoman gun emplacements off the coast of Yemen in the Bab al-Mandab straits, near the British colony of Aden. A detachment of the Indian Expeditionary Force entered the Shatt al-Arab on November 6 and occupied the southern Iraqi city of Basra on November 23. These quick and easy victories over thinly defended Ottoman outposts encouraged the Allies in their belief that the Ottomans were incapable of withstanding a concerted assault by Allied forces. Early Ottoman offensives in the Caucasus and Sinai only reinforced the Entente’s view of Turkey’s military weakness. Enver Pasha, the Minister of War, led the well-trained Ottoman Third Army to disaster in the Sarikamiş Campaign in December 1914–January 1915. Caught in the heavy snows of the high Caucasian mountains, a large part of Enver’s force died of exposure before even engaging Russian troops. Of the original force of 100,000 men, the Third Army lost between 50,000 and 80,000 soldiers killed, captured, or wounded.7 The Minister of Marine Cemal Pasha, who had been appointed military governor of Syria, led another unsuccessful assault against the British in Egypt in February 1915. It was a remarkable achievement, to lead a campaign force across the hostile terrain of the Sinai Peninsula with pontoon craft in tow. However, the handful of Ottoman troops who managed to cross the Suez Canal were either killed or captured. Cemal was lucky to withdraw the bulk of his forces back to the safety of Ottoman lines in Palestine. Encouraged by the Young Turk commanders’ failures, Britain and France began to plan a major offensive to force the straits of the Dardanelles and seize the Ottoman cap­ ital Istanbul. Not only would that give the British and French direct access to their Russian ally by securing the sea lanes, but the Ottoman capitulation would put an end to the threat of jihad once and for all. The result was the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign (March 1915–January 1916).8 The Gallipoli campaign always suffered from the contradictory goals of British war planners. Determined to keep up strength on the Western Front, the generals never sent sufficient men or materiel to the Dardanelles to overpower the determined Ottoman defenders. By the end of 1915, the British war cabinet recognized their position in Gallipoli was untenable and called for a total evacuation of Allied positions between December 20, 1915 and January 9, 1916. The British congratulated themselves on evacuating all combatants without suffering a single casualty in retreat. Yet the British and 6  Rogan (2016: 1–20).

7  Erickson (2001: 59–60).

8  Erickson (2010).

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The First World War and Its Legacy in the Middle East   97 French had committed nearly 500,000 men to the battle and had lost 252,000 dead and wounded in the course of the campaign. In accepting defeat and evacuating Gallipoli, the Allies dealt the Ottomans their first major victory of the Great War.9 Defeat in Gallipoli heightened British concerns about the jihad threat among colonial Muslims. Rather than withdrawing from the Middle East altogether, some in the war cabinet called for one more campaign in Ottoman lands to deal the Turks a decisive defeat, to lay to rest the risk of jihad once and for all. They looked to the east, to Mesopotamia. Between November 1914 and September 1915, British and Indian forces had won a string of impressive victories in southern Iraq that left them in control of the whole of the Ottoman province of Basra. Believing Ottoman morale in Mesopotamia to have been broken by successive defeats, an influential troika in the British war cabinet, including the foreign secretary Lord Grey, Winston Churchill, and Arthur Balfour, called for the immediate occupation of Baghdad to compensate for the Ottoman victory at Gallipoli. British and Indian troops set off from their front-line positions in Kut al-Amara, a market town on a bend in the Tigris some 110 miles from Baghdad. In December 1915 they engaged well-entrenched Ottoman defenders near the ancient Sassanian site of Ctesiphon at a site revered by Muslims as the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad’s barber, Salman the Pure, or Salman Pak. The Ottomans had reinforced their positions with experienced troops, while the British were over-extended after a year of campaigning. After three days of heavy losses on both sides, the British were forced into retreat under fire. They limped back to Kut al-Amara where they were besieged by the pursuing Ottoman army. Though the Ottomans were vulnerable in the Caucasus where Russian forces captured the fortress city of Erzerum on February 16, 1916, they held their ground ten­ acious­ly in Mesopotamia. Despite the best efforts of the British relief column to break through Turkish lines, the Ottomans starved General Charles Townshend’s troops into unconditional surrender after a siege of 145 days. On April 29, 1916, some 13,309 British and Indian officers and men were taken prisoner by the Ottomans, the officers to be billeted in comfort, the soldiers to be marched and worked, many of them to their deaths. The worst surrender in British history since the Battle of Yorktown, Kut was as great a boost to Ottoman morale as it was a blow to the Allied war effort in the Middle East.10 The British decision to enter into a wartime alliance with the Hashemite Sharifs of Mecca can be traced directly to Allied setbacks in both Gallipoli and Kut. Ottoman battle­field successes kept British fears of jihad alive. In striking an agreement with Hussein ibn Ali (who as Sharif of Mecca was the highest-ranking Muslim official in Arab lands) to lead an Arab revolt against Ottoman rule, the British hoped to “rob the call to Holy War of its principal thunderbolt.”11 With no more troops to commit to the sideshow of the Ottoman Front, the British hoped to undermine the Ottoman war effort from within its Arab provinces and give the lie to the declaration of jihad through their 9  Official British casualty figures from Aspinall-Oglander (1929: 2:484). 11  Antonius (1938: 140).

10  Townshend (2010).

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98   eugene rogan support of the Arab Revolt—the “sideshow of a sideshow” celebrated in the writings of T. E. Lawrence. The terms of the Anglo-Hashemite wartime alliance took shape through an exchange of correspondence between the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and Sharif Hussein in 1915–16. However, by the time the Hashemites launched their revolt, on June 10, 1916, the Ottomans had broken the support base among politically active Arabs by dispatching Arab officers to remote fronts and by arresting and placing on trial civilian Arab activists. The Hashemites were left to recruit Bedouin irregulars to their cause and found their revolt confined to the Red Sea province of the Hijaz, rather than sparking rebellion across Syria and Iraq. The Ottoman garrison at Medina very nearly defeated Hashemite forces in December 1916, when only a show of force by the Royal Navy prevented Fahri Pasha and his troops from overrunning Arab coastal positions. Britain’s Arab allies were proving more of a drain on Allied resources than a threat to the Ottoman position in the Arab provinces. In 1916 the British turned their attention to the security of Egypt. The Suez Canal was of great strategic importance to the British war effort; shipping from New Zealand, Australia, and India all transited the canal carrying men, horses, and material vital to the Allied war effort. The Ottomans and their German allies were keen to shut the canal and hoped to play on Egyptian hostility to the British occupation to foment a popular uprising in the Nile Valley. Britain had concentrated on defending the canal from its western banks, which enjoyed a fresh water supply and rail links for the rapid movement of men and materiel. This left the largely waterless Sinai Peninsula in Ottoman hands. By early 1916 the Ottomans had transformed the Sinai into a launch pad for sustained hostilities against British forces along the Suez Canal. The British realized they would need to drive the Ottomans out of the Sinai altogether if they were to assure the security of the canal. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force advanced across northern Sinai at the pace it took to lay a rail line and water pipeline—both essential for maintaining a campaign force in the roadless, waterless deserts of Sinai. Work on the railroad began in March 1916, and progressed slowly through the intense heat of the summer months. Ottoman forces took every opportunity to harass the British as they advanced their vital supply lines from the Suez Canal zone towards the Mediterranean port of El Arish. In April 1916, an Ottoman raid captured nearly an entire British cavalry regiment at the brackish Qatiya oasis and in August they managed to shell British positions in Romani with heavy artillery. Yet by December 21, the British had driven the Ottomans out of El Arish and on January 9, 1917 captured the town of Rafah on the Egypt–Palestine border. Twice the British stormed Ottoman positions in the southern Palestinian port of Gaza. And twice the Ottomans drove them back. In the First Battle of Gaza, on March 26, 1917, British commanders ordered a retreat when their forces were on the verge of a breakthrough, fearing they did not have sufficient water supplies to campaign through the night. With encouragement from Whitehall and armed with gas-tipped artillery shells and six tanks from the Western Front, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force made a second attempt on Gaza on April 17, which after three days of fighting also ended in an

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The First World War and Its Legacy in the Middle East   99 Ottoman victory over the invaders. The British, once certain of dealing the Ottomans a swift and decisive defeat, had suffered major losses to the Turks in the Dardanelles, in Iraq, and in Palestine. The fortunes of war began to shift in the Allies’ favor in the course of 1917. The British rebuilt their Mesopotamian expeditionary force to resume hostilities in Iraq and succeeded in occupying Baghdad on March 11, 1917. The Arab Revolt scored its first major breakthrough with the capture of the northern Red Sea port of al-ʿAqaba on July 6, 1917. The presence of Arab forces on the eastern Sinai inspired the new commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), Sir Edmund Allenby, to revise his strategy in Syria and Palestine. Allenby plotted a northward advance, with his own EEF driving the Turks back in Palestine and the Arab army advancing through Ottoman lines in Transjordan. The two armies would then converge in a pincer movement on Damascus, dealing Ottoman forces a death blow in the Arab lands. The EEF carried its end of the deal when Allenby’s forces broke through Ottoman lines with a surprise attack on Beersheba on October 31, 1917. The collapse of Ottoman defenses in southern Palestine led to rapid British advances to the gates of Jerusalem, which Turkish forces abandoned to British occupation on December 9. The loss of Baghdad and Jerusalem in the course of 1917 proved great setbacks to the Ottomans and eased Britain’s jihad fears. Yet even as the Turks were being driven back in Iraq and Palestine, their war efforts were thrown an unexpected lifeline with the Russian Revolution in March 1917 and the Bolshevik seizure of power in November that same year. The Ottoman government concluded an armistice with the new Russian au­thor­ ities on December 18 and, in line with their anti-imperial policies, the Bolsheviks initiated a full withdrawal from all Ottoman territories occupied in the course of the war, from the Black Sea port of Trabzon through Erzincan, Erzurum, and the Caucasus frontier zone. These gains were confirmed in the Peace Treaty of Brest–Litovsk concluded between Russia and the Central Powers on March 3, 1918. Yet the new year’s hopes of the Ottoman Empire surviving the war were not to survive 1918. Allenby precipitated the final collapse of Ottoman defenses in Greater Syria in the September 1918 Battle of Megiddo. Encouraging Ottoman expectations of an assault across the Jordan Valley (after two failed attempts earlier in 1918), Allenby unleashed a devastating surprise attack on Turkish positions in northern Palestine. Flooding through thinly defended Turkish lines, British forces outflanked Ottoman positions in Nazareth and Nablus, forcing the Turks and their German allies into a desperate retreat across the Jordan River. The Hashemite Arab Army mobilized in the oasis village of alAzraq to converge on Damascus with Allenby’s forces. Arab hopes of major victories against the Ottomans had been stymied, but they did succeed through their commando raids on the Hijaz Railway to pin down 11,000 men in Medina and another 4,000 in Maʿan who might otherwise have been redeployed to the defense of Palestine. It was thus deemed politically expedient to leave the honor of accepting the surrender of Damascus to the Hashemites and their Arab Army on October 1, 1918. British forces continued to pursue the retreating Ottoman army northwards to Aleppo. With the signing of the armistice on October 30, 1918, hostilities finally drew to an end.

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100   eugene rogan As even this brief survey demonstrates, the battles of the Great War were fought right across the Middle East—in the modern states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, and Libya. Those countries that did not witness fighting were nonetheless affected by the conscription of young men to fight in the armies of the Ottoman Empire, or of their British and French enemies. Civilians were caught up in the wartime suffering through disease, economic hardship, the wartime blockade of ports, and extraordinary government measures. Indeed, for much of the Arab world, the Turkish term Seferberlik, which originally referred to conscription, has come to represent the panoply of civilian suffering in the Great War.12

Seferberlik: Civilian Suffering in the Ottoman Great War Households across the Middle East and North Africa suffered the consequences immediately after the Ottoman entry into the Great War.13 The conscription of all men of military age dealt a blow to agriculture and trade just as the economy began to recover from the ravages of the Balkan Wars. The burden of tending fields and shops fell to women, children, and the elderly. Wartime requisition measures to feed the hundreds of thousands of soldiers under arms depleted agricultural stocks yet further. These hardships were compounded by nature’s wrath, when an unprecedented locust plague swept across the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia in 1915–16, devastating up to 80% of crops in some areas.14 The Ottoman economy was undermined by the introduction of paper money and inflation swept the marketplace. Those on fixed incomes faced shortages and ever higher prices. Ottoman supply and logistics were further undermined when the Allied fleet imposed a strict blockade on the Eastern Mediterranean. Starting in November 1914, the Allies deployed over a hundred vessels to close the Aegean coastline from the frontier with Greece to the Ottoman port of Izmir (or Smyrna). The blockade was extended the length of the Cilician and Syrian coastlines in early 1915. Cut off from natural maritime trade routes, the Syrian lands were unable to procure food from abroad to mitigate shortages at home. The immediate result was hunger that by 1916 gave way to full-scale famine. Contemporary documents suggest as many as 500,000 civilians died in Syria and Lebanon as a result of wartime famine.15 The hardships of war strained civilian loyalties toward the Ottoman government. These tensions were more pronounced in the Arab provinces, where Young Turk rule 12  al-Qattan (2004: 163–174). 13  Fawaz (2014). 14  The locust plague is followed in the diary of the Jerusalemite Ottoman soldier Ihsan Turjman, translated by Tamari (2011). 15  Schilcher (1992: 229–258); Çiçek (2014: 232–257).

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The First World War and Its Legacy in the Middle East   101 had provoked a distinct Arab political movement that, if not demanding outright secession, certainly sought major reforms in the way the Arab provinces were governed under Ottoman rule.16 Intolerant of any political opposition, the Unionist government sought to clamp down on Arabist movements. Tens of thousands of Arab Muslims and Christians were summarily arrested and exiled into central Anatolia for the duration of the war. A smaller number of political activists, compromised by their correspondence with French consular authorities in search of great power support, were put on trial in Mount Lebanon. Those found guilty of treason were sentenced to death. Twenty-one were hanged in public squares of Beirut and Damascus on May 6, 1916. The combination of famine, exile, and execution led many in the Arab provinces to believe the Ottoman state was deliberately targeting the Arab peoples for punishment. Such views encouraged a minority to throw their support behind the Arab Revolt declared by Sharif Hussein of Mecca in June 1916. For most, however, Ottoman repressive measures intimidated the Arab peoples into open shows of loyalty. Arab fears of government action against communities of questionable loyalty were only exacerbated by the tragic flood of Armenians who, deported from Anatolia to Aleppo and Dayr alZor, began to reach Syria in growing numbers in the summer of 1915.17 The Armenian genocide remains the most controversial legacy of the Ottoman Great War. Until recently, Turkish law forbade reference to the Armenian genocide as a crime against national honor. The Turkish Nobel laureate in literature, Orhan Pamuk, famously was charged in 2005 with the “public denigration of Turkish identity” after making reference to the killing of “one million Armenians” in an interview with a Swiss magazine. Charges against Pamuk were dropped in 2006 and a conference on the Armenian question held at Istanbul’s Bilgi University later that year served to break a long-standing taboo. Many prominent Turkish and Western scholars continue to dispute the claims that wartime measures against Armenian civilians constituted statesanctioned genocide.18 Yet their arguments are increasingly overtaken by a new wave of scholarship, based on Ottoman, Armenian, and Western sources, that undermines the case for denial. It is generally agreed that the Ottoman government initiated deportation operations against the Armenian community on the eve of the Gallipoli landings, on April 24, 1915 (the date commemorated by Armenians as Genocide Remembrance Day). Starting in Istanbul among the Armenian communal leaders, but rapidly applied across Anatolia and particularly in the eastern provinces in the Caucasus, whole 16  Tauber (1993). 17  Fayiz al-Ghusayn, an early Arab nationalist who served in the Ottoman army during the First World War, left a detailed account of the mass killing of Armenians that was translated and published in English: El-Ghusein (1918). 18  Justin McCarthy argues against genocide claims, McCarthy (1983: 47–88; 2015). Stanford Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw reject claims that the Armenians were victims of genocide, Shaw and Shaw (1977: 315–317). Others who have rejected genocide claims include Bernard Lewis, who in 1995 was found guilty by French courts of genocide denial and fined a symbolic 1 Franc.

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102   eugene rogan Armenian communities were ordered by the government to leave their homes under armed escort. Eyewitness accounts, both by survivors and by neutral consular officials, confirm that male adolescents and working-aged men were separated from their female family members and massacred. Women, children, and the elderly were marched from Anatolia to Syria, some to the relative safety of Aleppo, others on death marches across the Syrian Desert to Dayr al-Zor. While the worst of the deportations and massacres were conducted in 1915–16, the killing of Armenians continued to the end of the war. Recent Turkish scholarship argues the deportations and killings were deliberate state policy to remove the Armenian population from the vulnerable Caucasus region, where they were feared to make common cause with the Ottomans’ Russian enemies. The government sought to reduce the overall population of Armenians in the empire, to ensure their numbers did not exceed five to ten percent in any given province.19 Thus, while the Unionist leadership might not have sought the total annihilation of the Armenian popu­ la­tion, its policies called for acts of mass murder that ultimately led to an estimated 800,000–1,200,000 Armenian deaths and, for many recent scholars, qualify its actions as genocide.20 The Armenians were not the only Christian community to suffer from deportation and mass murder. Ottoman Greeks were forcibly expelled from their ancestral villages in Anatolia and Thrace before, during, and after the Great War as part of an internationally sanctioned population exchange.21 The Assyrian community was also a target of Unionist mass killing. Accused of collaboration with the Entente Powers, an estimated 250,000 Assyrian Christians, out of a pre-war population of some 620,000, were killed in the course of the First World War.22 Kurds and Turkish Muslim civilians also suffered from retaliatory killings by Armenian and Assyrian forces with the Russian army in the Ottoman Caucasus region.23 While the Ottoman government’s responsibility for crimes against civilians remains a subject of intense academic controversy, the magnitude of civilian suffering is beyond dispute. Unlike the Western Front, where military casualties far exceeded the number of civilian dead, the number of Ottoman civilians killed in the course of the Great War by the most conservative estimates is counted in the millions, where the number of military casualties were in the hundreds of thousands. Here again, the impact of the Great War on the Middle East and North Africa was more catastrophic than any conflict before or since.

19  On the “five to ten percent regulation” see Akçam (2012: 242–263); and Dündar (2011: 282). 20  Among the most prominent works by Armenian, Turkish, and Western historians treating the wartime deportation and massacre of Armenians as a genocide are Akçam (2011); Bloxham (2005); Üngör (2011); and Suny (2015). 21  Gingeras (2009). 22  Bloxham (2005: 97–98); Gaunt (2011: 244–259). 23 See, for example, the retaliatory killing of Kurdish civilians by Armenians and Nestorians in Russian service in Rawanduz in May 1916, discussed in Ahmad (1994: 170).

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The First World War and Its Legacy in the Middle East   103

Wartime Partition Diplomacy and the Postwar State System The end of the war brought the partition of the defeated Ottoman Empire and the cre­ ation of the modern states of the Middle East. The boundaries of the new states were the result of extensive negotiations between the Entente powers that spanned the years 1915 to 1920. Each of the partition agreements, beginning with the 1915 Constantinople Agreement and including the Hussein–McMahon Correspondence (1915–16), the Sykes–Picot Accord (1916), the Tripartite Saint-Jean de Maurienne Agreement (1917), and the Balfour Declaration (1917), was shaped by wartime exigencies.24 The Allies were left to iron out the contradictions between agreements as part of the postwar settlement when they met at San Remo in April 1920. The resulting boundaries have, for the most part, proven very enduring. So too have the conflicts that were engendered by the flawed process of colonial state-building. Britain, France, and Russia began to plan for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire within months of the Ottoman entry into the war. Russia started the process on the eve of the Gallipoli campaign when it approached Britain and France for their formal agreement to Russian claims to Constantinople and the Straits. In return, France sought its allies’ support for its claims to Cilicia and Syria. Britain, for its part, entered the war with no territorial ambitions in the Ottoman Empire. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, declared the British government needed “time to take into consideration what their own desiderata” in Ottoman lands would be, but reserved the right to claim territory of equal strategic significance in due course. These terms were formalized in a series of secret exchanges concluded between March 4 and April 10, 1915 that came to be known as the Constantinople Agreement, the first of the wartime partition accords. It was Britain that unilaterally reopened the partition diplomacy when it entered into secret negotiations with the Sharifs of Mecca to declare an Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Britain initiated serious discussions with the Hashemites in July 1915 when still confident of victory in Gallipoli. The British government hoped to conclude a wartime alliance with Sharif Hussein in return for recognizing him as caliph and his family’s hereditary rule over the Red Sea province of the Hijaz. British officials hoped to satisfy Sharif Hussein’s territorial and dynastic ambitions while using his religious authority to undermine the Ottoman sultan’s claim to the caliphate in a bid to weaken his authority to declare jihad. They found the Sharif ’s ambitions growing in the course of their correspondence, claiming kingship over all Arab lands between Egypt and Turkey. “His pretensions are in every way exaggerated,” Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt charged with negotiations with the Hashemites, wrote to London.25 24  The texts of each of these agreements is reproduced in Hurewitz (1980). 25  McMahon quoted in Schneer (2010: 59).

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104   eugene rogan As their campaign in Gallipoli faltered, the British were forced to reconsider terms with the Hashemites. Sir Henry McMahon’s famous letter of October 24, 1915, written as the British government began planning to evacuate from the Dardanelles, conceded most of the Sharif ’s demands. Excluding those territories in the Persian Gulf, in which Britain had established treaty relations with local rulers (such as Muscat and Oman, the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Ibn Saud’s territories in the Najd and the Eastern Province), and the provinces of Basra and Baghdad in which Britain declared its “established position and interests,” Sir Henry McMahon was willing to give Britain’s recognition of Arab independence within the boundaries demanded by the Hashemites. Yet mindful of his government’s prior agreement to French demands for Cilicia and Syria, Sir Henry also sought the exclusion of “the two districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and the portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo” on the spurious grounds that the inhabitants of those ter­ri­ tor­ies “cannot be said to be purely Arab.” Having struck the basic terms of an agreement with the Hashemites, the British realized they needed to put more specific boundaries to the French demands for “Cilicia and Syria,” classical toponyms with no modern administrative meaning. This is the background to the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement, negotiated between April 26 and October 23, 1916 by Lord Kitchener’s Middle East expert Sir Mark Sykes, a man with little more than a traveler’s experience of the Arab world, and Charles François GeorgesPicot, the former French Consul-General to Beirut. While the Sykes–Picot Agreement bears no resemblance to the modern map of the Middle East, it set the precedent for future map-drawing exercises to create nation-states from Ottoman Arab lands under British and French domination. It was, in essence, an exercise in balance-of-power pol­ it­ics between rival empires. As such, the British and French architects of the Sykes–Picot Agreement only considered the interests of Britain and France, with no thought to the aspirations of the peoples of the region who would live within the boundaries drafted in Paris and London. Following Italy’s entry into the Great War on the side of the Entente Powers in May 1915, the partition diplomacy resumed with Italy making its own demands in Ottoman territory. Between April 19 and September 26, 1917, Britain, France, and Italy concluded an agreement in Saint-Jean de Maurienne as an extension of the Sykes–Picot Accord. Because Italian demands were confined to the Turkish coastline and played no role in the ultimate shape of the Middle East, the Saint-Jean de Maurienne Agreement is often overlooked as part of the wartime partition diplomacy. Yet this agreement is essential to understanding the balance-of-power politics pursued by the Entente powers, and the way in which Ottoman territory increasingly came to be viewed as war prizes by the Allies. The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 was the last and most controversial wartime agreement. Seen in light of the Arab–Israeli conflict it engendered, the Balfour Declaration is often read to the exclusion of its wartime context, either as a betrayal of Britain’s pledges to the Arabs or as a triumph of the Zionist movement to win the sup-

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The First World War and Its Legacy in the Middle East   105 port of the British government for its cause.26 The British government was neither proArab nor pro-Zionist. Its only loyalty was to the British Empire, which by 1917 was caught up in a murderous war with no end in sight. Government officials, believing Jewish support might reinforce both Russian and American commitment to the war effort, thought it politic to lend support to the Zionist movement, believing Zionism represented a Jewish international whose political and financial influence stretched from Washington to St Petersburg (a misconception Chaim Weizmann, as leader of the Zionist movement, was only too happy to encourage).27 Moreover, the timing of the Balfour Declaration was clearly influenced by wartime considerations. The War Cabinet approved the declaration of support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine only after Allenby’s army had broken through Turkish lines in Beersheba. The British in Egypt had come to appreciate the importance of Palestine in assuring the security of the Suez Canal. So long as Palestine was in hostile hands, the canal could be attacked through the Sinai Peninsula with relative impunity, since the inhospitable and waterless terrain ruled out billeting soldiers in Sinai. The Sykes–Picot Agreement called for an international administration in Palestine. After the Sinai campaign and the hard-won victory in Beersheba and the Third Battle of Gaza, British commanders and administrators in Egypt agreed on the imperative of securing Palestine for British rule. This meant renegotiating with their French allies. The British found it easier to do so in the name of a great humanitarian cause, such as the restoration of the Jewish people to their historic homeland, rather than as a self-interested land grab. On the face of it, Lord Balfour was offering Palestine to the Zionist movement. In fact, Lloyd George’s government was using the Zionist movement to secure Palestine for British rule. By war’s end, the different agreements of the partition diplomacy left a number of contradictions for the peacemakers in Paris to resolve. In April 1920, the British, French, Italian, and Japanese delegations retreated to the Italian resort town of San Remo to agree the final partition of Ottoman lands. The Arab provinces were to be divided between the victorious powers, with Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan awarded to Britain while Syria and Lebanon were awarded to France as League of Nations mandates. In Anatolia, Italy was awarded the coastline around Antalya, and a Greek autonomous zone was established that extended from Izmir into central Anatolia. The allies also created autonomous zones for the Armenians and Kurds in Eastern Anatolia. All that was left to the Ottomans were their capital city, Istanbul, and those parts of northwestern Anatolia (roughly from Ankara north to the Black Sea and west to the Straits) that no one else wanted. These terms were drafted into the Treaty of Sèvres, the draconian peace imposed on the defeated Ottoman Empire in August 1920. While the Kemalist movement mounted a successful war of national liberation that between 1919 and 1922 succeeded in reunifying all of Anatolia and Turkish Thrace under Ankara’s rule, the state system imposed on the Arab world was to survive and endure down 26  The Arab view is epitomized in Antonius (1938), the Zionist view in Weizmann (1949). 27  Segev (2001: 42–43).

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106   eugene rogan to the present day. The manner in which the modern boundaries were imposed by imperial fiat has destabilized the region ever since. Guided by the imperative of bal­an­cing the ambitions of rival empires, rather than in consultation with the Arab peoples concerned, the frontiers of Arab states have lacked legitimacy. A century after the Great War, Middle Eastern frontiers continue to bedevil regional stability—less on grounds of legitimacy than as a consequence of the many peoples who remain stateless (notably the Kurds and Palestinians) as a result of the wartime partition diplomacy and its consequences.

Conclusion The Middle East played a decisive role in the history of the First World War. The Ottoman Front, where Britain and France hoped to secure a swift and decisive victory that might hasten the end of the war, served rather to lengthen the global conflict. Millions of soldiers that might have been deployed to the primary battlefield in the Western Front fought instead for four long years in Ottoman lands. Moreover, it was the Ottoman Empire more than any other belligerent that turned Europe’s conflict into a world war. Soldiers from around the world fought in the battlefields of Turkey and the Arab lands. New Zealanders and Australians, volunteers from Newfoundland, every ethnicity of South Asia, the English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish, the French and their North and West African colonial soldiers from Senegal, Mali, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia made war against Ottoman Turks, Arabs, Kurds, and their German and Austrian allies. The Ottoman front was a veritable tower of Babel, a killing field for global soldiers whose valor and sacrifice have too often been neglected in the history of the Great War. The First World War was also a decisive turning point in the modern history of the Middle East. The war touched more lives and incurred more destruction than any conflict in the region’s history. It also brought to an end four centuries of Ottoman rule over the Arab lands, and over six centuries in Anatolia. The modern state system that followed Ottoman rule was shaped by imperial ambitions rather than a process of selfdetermination. The emergence of the modern Middle East and many of its conflicts are thus a direct consequence of the Great War.

Bibliography Ahmad, Kamal Madhar (1994). Kurdistan During the First World War (London: Saqi Books). Akçam, Taner (2012). The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Aksakal, Mustafa (2008). The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Aksakal, Mustafa (2016). “The Ottoman Proclamation of Jihad,” in Erik-Jan Zürcher (ed.). Jihad and Islam in World War I (Leiden: Leiden University Press).

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The First World War and Its Legacy in the Middle East   107 Antonius, George (1938). The Arab Awakening (London: Hamish Hamilton). Aspinall-Oglander, C.  F. (1929). Military Operations: Gallipoli, vol. 2 (London: William Heinemann). Bloxham, Donald (2005). The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Çiçek, M. Talha (2014). War and State Formation in Syria: Cemal Pasha’s governorate during World War I, 1914–1917 (London: Routledge). Dadrian, Vahakn N. and Taner Akçam (2011). Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials (New York: Berghahn Books). Dündar, Fuat (2011). “Pouring a People into the Desert: The ‘Definitive Solution’ of the Unionists to the Armenian Question,” in Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Morman M. Naimark (eds). A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Erickson, Edward J. (2001). Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press). Erickson, Edward J. (2010). Gallipoli: The Ottoman Campaign (Barnsley: Pen and Sword). Fawaz, Leila Tarazi (2014). A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Gaunt, David (2011). “The Ottoman Treatment of the Assyrians,” in Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Muge Gocek and Norman M. Naimark (eds), A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press). el-Ghusein, Fâ’iz (1918). Martyred Armenia (New York: George H. Doran). Gingeras, Ryan (2016). Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Gingeras, Ryan (2009). Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hurewitz, J. C. (1980). The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics, vol. 2 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Ludke, Tilman (2005). Jihad Made in Germany: Ottoman and German Propaganda and Intelligence Operations in the First World War (Münster: Lit Verlag). McCarthy, Justin (1983). Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire (New York: New York University Press). McCarthy, Justin (2015) Turks and Armenians: Nationalism and Conflict in the Ottoman Empire (Madison, WI: Turko-Tatar Press). McMeekin, Sean (2010). The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power, 1898–1918 (London: Allen Lane). McMeekin, Sean (2011). The Russian Origins of the First World War (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press). McMeekin, Sean (2015). The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908–1923 (London: Allen Lane). Philipp, Thomas and Christoph Schumann (eds) (2004). From the Syrian Land to the States of Syria and Lebanon (Beirut: Orient-Institut). al-Qattan, Najwa (2004). “Safarbarlik: Ottoman Syria and the Great War,” in Thomas Philipp and Christoph Schumann (eds). From the Syrian Land to the States of Syria and Lebanon (Beirut: Orient-Institut). Reynolds, Michael A. (2011). Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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108   eugene rogan Rogan, Eugene (2015). The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914–1920 (London: Allen Lane). Rogan, Eugene (2016). “Rival Jihads: Islam and the Great War in the Middle East, 1914–1918,” Journal of the British Academy 4: 1–20. Schilcher, Linda S. (1992).“The Famine of 1915–1918 in Greater Syria,” in John Spagnolo (ed.). Problems of the Modern Middle East in Historical Perspective (Reading: Ithaca Press). Schneer, Jonathan (2010). The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Random House). Segev, Tom (2001). One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (London: Abacus). Shaw, Stanford and Ezel Kural Shaw (1977). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. II: Reform, Revolution and Republic—the Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Suny, Ronald Grigor (2015). They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Tamari, Salim (2011). Year of the Locust: A Soldier’s Diary and the Erasure of Palestine’s Ottoman Past (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Tauber, Eliezer (1993). The Emergence of the Arab Movements (London: Frank Cass). Townshend, Charles (2010). When God Made Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914–1921 (London: Faber and Faber). Ulrichsen, Christian Coates (2014). The First World War in the Middle East (London: Hurst). Üngör, Ugur Ümit (2011). The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Weizmann, Chaim (1949). Trial and Error (New York: Harper and Brothers). Winter, Jay (2010). “Demography,” in J. Horne (ed.). A Companion to World War I (Oxford: Blackwell).

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chapter 6

The Leva n t M a n date s Michael Provence

The End of the War and Treaty Conferences The Arab Middle East, like South Asia and much of Africa, experienced direct colonial rule between the First and Second World Wars. Everywhere colonialism spurred nationalist opposition movements and left traces in postcolonial legal and political structures. The Arab Ottoman lands were under allied military occupation at the time of the Ottoman armistice in late 1918 and a series of peace conferences and treaty conventions followed. British politicians had entered the war obsessed with the threat posed by Germany and its Ottoman allies to the Suez Canal and the route to India and to the new British-controlled oil fields of Persia. The corridor between the Mediterranean, the two great rivers of Mesopotamia, and the Gulf linked them.1 French politicians considered an empire in the eastern Mediterranean as a matter of national destiny. The civilizing mission would bring Francophone enlightenment and civilization to those people capable of receiving it and assert the supremacy of French power, prestige, and culture. A potent popular historical narrative combining mythic Frankish Crusaders, Catholic missionaries, the right-wing cadres of the colonial army, and provincial business interests had evolved to advocate a French Mediterranean empire. French and British political classes alike wished to demonstrate that imperial glory proved the carnage of the First World War had not been in vain. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) and American President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) had laid down a challenge to the victorious great powers; their 1  The most relevant document is a secret report from Leo Amery to the Imperial War Cabinet, titled “War Aims and Military Policy,” CAB 25/87, May 28, 1918. Earlier War Cabinet minutes echo these themes: CAB 29, April 12, 1917.

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110   michael provence popu­lar idealism threatened to upset the terms of the settlement and the distribution of the spoils. Wilson soon retreated from the anti-imperialist hopes his speeches had provoked, but his slogan “consent of the governed,” and the dream of a new world of justice and freedom animated discussion and protest throughout the world.2 By the time the Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) and British Prime Minister Lloyd George (1863–1945) had already met and secretly arranged the partition of the Ottoman realms. Wilson soon discovered that a back-room arrangement had been made.3 The Paris conference dealt with the terms of peace in Europe, but in keeping with Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” the conference took up the partition of the Ottoman Empire. The conference delegates endorsed Wilson’s proposal to create an international body to help keep the peace, adjudicate disputes, and safeguard the interests of the people under occupation of the victorious powers. The new League of Nations would assume the legal trusteeship of territories separated from the Ottoman Empire or Germany, which would be administered for the League of Nations by the victorious powers and called “mandates.” The theory sounded something like adult guardianship over minor children. The Paris Peace Conference produced the charter of the League of Nations. Article 22 dealt directly with those parts of the Ottoman state under Allied military occupation, which were expected to remain under some form of French or British colonial rule. To those colonies and territories which consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, . . . the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation. The tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations who can best undertake this responsibility, and who are willing to accept it, and that this tutelage should be exercised by them as Mandatories on behalf of the League . . . until such time as [the communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire] are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.

The text of the League charter, much of which had been written by Wilson himself, was already a grave disappointment to the inhabitants of the regions under discussion. Wilson had raised hopes he could not and would not satisfy. Telegrams arrived in Paris, Washington, and London, arguing forcefully for independence and the application of the principles of self-determination and consent of the governed.

2  Manela (2007: 41). 3  Lloyd George’s flexible standards of honesty are amply attested. Mantoux (1955: v. 1, 379).

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The San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sèvres At San Remo in April 1920, France and Britain assumed the League of Nations mandates for Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. The borders of the mandate territories were still undefined, and had to remain so until the final terms of the Ottoman surrender was negotiated. But two months before, in February 1920, British troops had evacuated Cilicia, a region in  southeastern Anatolia and French forces had occupied their positions. Various groups of renegade Ottoman soldiers in Cicilcia and coastal Syria engaged in combat against French forces. By the opening of the Treaty of Sèvres in August, French forces had been defeated in Cilicia. A French army had marched on Damascus and ­occupied the city, evicting Prince Faysal and the forces of his wartime British-supported Arab Revolt. The Treaty of Sèvres was intended to formalize the Ottoman surrender to Britain and France, codify the arrangements made earlier at San Remo, and transfer legal title to the territories to be held as League of Nations mandates. But by the time the treaty convention met, France had been defeated and expelled from Cilicia and had made an evacu­ ation agreement with a renegade movement of Ottoman army officers led by General Mustafa Kemal that was not recognized by the government in Istanbul, which had signed the armistice in 1918. In Damascus during 1919 and early 1920, ex-Ottoman generals Yasin al-Hashimi and Yusuf al-Azma had advised would-be British client King Faysal to prepare for military confrontation with France and Britain, like their officer comrades in Anatolia. Instead, Faysal placed his hopes on the goodwill and promises of the British government. In May and June 1920, the upper Euphrates region of Iraq—claimed and partly occupied, but not pacified by Britain—exploded in a major uprising, capturing several towns and defeating British garrisons. Ten months after Lloyd George abandoned Faysal, French General Gouraud sent an army east from Beirut and defeated Faysal’s hastily prepared forces outside Damascus and forced him into exile in July 1920. The AngloFrench arrangement was unraveling before it had been finalized.

The League of Nations and AngloFrench Colonialism in the Middle East The public have misunderstood the powers of the League of Nations regarding mandates. Mandates were not the creation of the League, and they could not be altered by the League. The League’s duties were confined to seeing that the terms of the mandates were in accordance with the decisions taken by the Allied Powers, and that in carrying out these mandates

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112   michael provence the Mandatory Powers should be under the supervision—not under the control—of the League. A mandate was a self-imposed limitation by the conquerors on the ­sovereignty which they exercised over the conquered territory. Arthur Lord Balfour, speech to the Council of the League of Nations, June 19224

The League of Nations moved to its new home in Geneva in November 1920. The location in a lovely place in a tranquil and picturesque city, in the most important neutral European country, lent an air of peaceful, civilized, and optimistic industriousness to the work of the various commissions. The Mandate Commission was intended to review the mandate treaties and the planned annual reports. Meanwhile petitions in their hundreds streamed into the mail and telegraph offices at Geneva. High officials of the League conspired with the French and British governments to bury the growing flood of petitions and protests.5 Mandates and League of Nations’ officials knew little about Ottoman governance and were unaware of the historical role of petitions in the Ottoman state, but, in fact, Ottoman subjects had been interacting with their government by petition for centuries.6 In 1920, bags of petitions took the mandates’ new overseers by unpleasant surprise. The earliest petitions to the League of Nations were in opposition to Zionism, the Balfour Declaration, and the assignment of French and British mandates in Syria and Palestine. The League of Nations had played no role in the assignment of mandates to Britain and France and refused to entertain any protest from citizens about their new mandatory governments. In August 1921, former Ottoman parliamentarian Shakib Arslan organized and convened the first Syrian-Palestinian Congress with a group of ten Arab Ottoman intellectuals at a Geneva hotel (see Figure 6.1). Arslan timed the congress to correspond with the first meeting of the Mandate Commission in October. The ten comprised a cross section of Ottoman Arab elites in their education, backgrounds, and sectarian diversity, and included prominent Muslim religious scholars and Christian financiers living in exile in Cairo or Europe, and Arslan, a politician and professional essayist. The group elected Arslan as secretary and resident representative in Geneva. The 1921 meeting produced a detailed pamphlet intended for the discussion at the Mandate Commission meeting: If the League is unable to cancel these mandates, to declare us independent and to accept us into its body as it accepted Georgia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Albania,

4  League of Nations [LN] Archives, Geneva, carton R16, “Mandate for Palestine, 1922.” 5  LN Mandates, carton R20. Article and commentary: Manchester Guardian, “The Problem of the Mandates,” January 29, 1920. 6  Ben-Bassat (2013: 27–30).

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The Levant Mandates   113

Figure 6.1  Syrian-Palestinian Congress Executive Committee in Geneva 1921. Seated from left to right: Sulayman Kinaan, Rashid Rida, Michel Lutfallah, Taan al-Imad, Tawfiq Hamad, Shakib Arslan. Standing from left to right: Amin Tamimi, Najib Chouciar, Shibli al-Jamal, Ihsan alJabri. United Nations Archives at Geneva.

and Armenia, which are neither more developed nor more important than we are, all we ask is to not subscribe to mandates.7

Arslan recognized that the justification for mandates was based on an unspoken racial and religious hierarchy, which qualified Christian Europeans for independence and Muslim Arabs for rule by mandate. Yet racial hierarchies were subordinate to im­per­ial strategy. Imperial strategy and the will to power came first and the racial/­ religious hierarchy was arranged to suit, shrouded in idealistic language and codified in the Mandate Charter. Shortly before the Syrian-Palestinian Congress opened its conference, a delegation visited the Permanent Mandates’ section head and American-educated Swiss diplomat and scholar William Rappard. He drafted a report on the discussion, which was included in the file for the members of the Mandates Commission. The delegation insisted they deserved and could be satisfied with nothing but independence. 7  LN mandates, R39, Congrés Syrio-Palestinien, Genève, August 23–September 21, 1921. Appel adressé a la Deuxième Assemblée Genérale.

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114   michael provence The Syrian people had great confidence in the League of Nations. The attitude of the mandatory powers in Syria and Palestine is intolerable and tends to undermine this confidence. The League of Nations should send an impartial Commission of Enquiry to the country. A representative congress of Syrians should be allowed to meet officially to discuss a form of government, and to choose the mandatory power and the content of the mandate. Otherwise the Syrian people will never be satisfied and their faith in the Covenant will disappear.

The mandatory powers, far from seeking to establish the Syrian people as an independent nation, oppressed them in every way. They had never been consulted about the choice of the mandatory, and it would soon become evident to every impartial visitor that the attitude of the mandatory powers in Syria and Palestine was most exasperating to the great majority of the inhabitants. France was abrogating old laws and promulgating new ordinances without any regard for the wishes of the people. Great Britain was carrying out the Balfour Declaration and pursuing a land policy which was contrary to the wishes, rights, and interests of the Arab population.8 The first nine-member Mandates Commission met in October 1921.9 Over the next two decades, the commission met twice a year to review the annual mandatory reports and hear and question the “accredited representatives” from each mandate power.10 A complicated procedure emerged to limit petitions, challenges, or representations from mandatory citizens. The procedure placed the indigenous inhabitants of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq at a disadvantage since they had few international advocates, while the Zionist movement, which was led by influential Europeans, had a great advantage in its ability to lobby the League directly. A small number of former Ottoman Arabs, led over the decades by Shakib Arslan, managed a sustained effort to lobby the League of Nations from exile.

Mandate Governance in Practice Colonial functionaries in Britain and France envisioned their mandates as colonies and conquered territory. They conceded little to the League of Nations’ Permanent Mandates Commission and even less to indigenous political leaders. When concessions were granted, they were invariably cosmetic and calculated to win praise in metropolitan newspapers and Geneva. The British government had specific goals in Transjordan and Iraq (and Egypt) to do with military bases, secure communications, and oil concessions. These priorities were eventually obtained by treaty. The contradictions of the Palestine Mandate were more difficult to reconcile and placed greater and 8  LN R22, 14993, August 25, 1921, report filed by Rappard. 9  Pedersen (2006). 10  This reconstruction owes much to Susan Pedersen’s various articles which have now culminated in Pedersen (2015).

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The Levant Mandates   115 eventually un­sus­tain­able demands on the British mandate administration and the Treasury. France’s mandates in Syria and Lebanon were also more complicated, troublesome, and expensive, tangled up in various strands of French national myth-making and nationalist ideology. British functionaries immediately understood the bureaucratic appetite for reports and flooded Geneva with an endless stream of paper in response to every query, however minor. French functionaries were less confident and refused requests for specific information or replies to petitions for nearly a decade. The annual reports for Syria and Lebanon for 1920 through 1926 under-reported every kind of disorder and repression. Under the pressure of international opprobrium surrounding the Syrian revolt of 1925–27, French reports became gradually more comprehensive. Persistent negative press cover­age tainted the British in Iraq in 1920, France in Syria in 1920 and 1925, and Britain in Palestine in the 1920s and through the 1930s. Such negative publicity came at a price that British and French politicians were often reluctant to pay. The tactics, goals, and intentions of colonial rule changed over time. All of the mandate states began their existence under some form of military occupation and direct rule. Only Palestine functioned as a settler colony, where an indigenous majority was marginalized and disenfranchised in favor of the immigrant minority. Despite optimistic initial intentions, direct rule was too expensive and too unpopular, both in the imperial capital and in the colony, and the other four mandates developed varieties of indirect rule, albeit with ultimate authority resting with colonial officials in most areas involving security, politics, and law. Lebanon and Syria eventually became indirectly ruled colonial constitutional republics, while Iraq and Transjordan quickly became indirectly ruled colonial constitutional monarchies. British officials secured their durable interests in petroleum, access to military installations, imperial security, and communications by a series of unpopular treaties imposed on the ruling monarch and parliament in both countries, as they had also done in Egypt. King Faysal in Iraq, Prince Abdallah in Transjordan, and King Fuad in Egypt thus owed their positions to a delicate balance between imperial power and popu­ lar support, generally tilted toward serving British interests. France was more ambitious and less successful in securing its priorities by treaty, due in part to the more ideological character of what constituted French interests. Indirect rule in Palestine and Greater Lebanon was based on the expectation that Zionists and Lebanese Christians would prove loyal and reliable colonial subjects. The mandate granted Zionists and Maronite Christians economic and political domination and conditional possession of states of their own, literally carved out of the territory of the majority indigenous Muslim population. In return, the colonial client populations served as instruments of policy for the colonial state. But metropolitan colonial advocates did not describe the colonial patron–client relationship between metropole and colony as one based on common interests, but in self-affirming ideological terms: the Zionists in Palestine and the Christians in Lebanon supported the colonial power not because their interests dictated, but because their racial, cultural, and civilizational status was superior to that of the majority populations. Bluntly stated, they were more

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116   michael provence “civilized” and thus higher on the racial and national hierarchy than other colonial subjects.11 The Mandates Commission had no power to influence events or dictate policy, but always received blame for the distasteful consequences of colonial policing, counterinsurgency, and policy generally. Crises demanded changes in mandate governance and revolts in Iraq in 1920 and Syria in the mid-1920s brought a shift toward indirect rule. But changes in governance came in response to various types of political pressure and not in answer to any advocacy on the part of the League of Nations. British and French politicians and colonial functionaries were rarely compelled to take the League seriously or change policy at its behest.

Constitutions, Treaties, and State Formation in the Mandates The Mandates Commission and international attention compelled the creation of quasirepresentative institutions not previously associated with colonial rule. In keeping with the racial and cultural paternalism of the time, the mandates were styled as educational operations between advanced nations and less advanced nations. The mandatory state derived its legitimacy from the idea that it was a representative state of a “national ­people” in formation. The definition of the “national people” was contentious from the outset as the British mandate identified European Jewish immigrants as a “nation” in their newly formed homeland under the Balfour Declaration, and the French mandate identified Arab Christians as the preferred “nation” in formation. The French mandate claimed to foster representative government for those ex-Ottoman Christian populations most receptive to mandate rule. The Mandates Commission applied modest pressure on the mandatory states to provide evidence of tutelage. Mandate governments decreed constitutions, elections, and supposedly representative institutions, always making the deceptive claim that such innovations were unprecedented in the region. The representative character of such institutions was defective relative to the previous Ottoman system. Moreover, mandate functionaries rarely acknowledged the existence of previous Ottoman representative institutions. No functionary of the mandate system or metropolitan politician could admit the fact that Ottoman citizens had drafted constitutions, elected local and parliamentary representatives, negotiated laws and state policies, and addressed petitions and grievances to the state’s representatives for decades before League of Nations mandatory tutelage arrived on the scene. Where Ottoman governors and institutions of state had been accessible, at least to some citizens, the 11  Winston Churchill’s famous testimony to the Peel Commission on Palestine partition is the clearest expression. “I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.” Palestine Royal Commission Report, Churchill papers, 2/317, July 1937.

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The Levant Mandates   117 office of mandate high commissioner was designed to remotely control every aspect of the state and to be completely inaccessible. The Ottoman state enjoyed popular le­git­im­ acy for the Muslim majority and so emphasized majority rule with certain guarantees and considerations for non-Muslim minorities. Mandatory states, with limited popular legitimacy, sought to disenfranchise majorities and privilege minorities at every turn. High commissioners in British Palestine and Iraq, and in French Syria and Lebanon, canceled and voided elections, dismissed and jailed politicians, and had veto power over all laws, including every constitutional draft law. The office of the high commissioner decided and implemented administrative divisions and election districts. The colonial archives are mostly silent on the shadowy aspects of mandatory rule such as extrajudicial detention, torture, collective punishment, assassinations and executions of critics and challengers of the mandatory regimes. Uncounted thousands of petitions alleging such abuses were dispatched to the Mandates Commission, but serious investigations could not take place without the cooperation of the mandate authorities. The application of martial law, detention without charge, trials, prison sentences, and executions could all be ordered or commuted at the whim of the high commissioner, practices that have continued as a feature of Middle East legal regimes since the colonial period. The League of Nations performed the unenviable service of shrouding such practices in a façade of international legalism and phony representative government.

Political Opposition There were three distinct strands of political opposition to the mandates. First, exOttoman military officers, trained in the extensive Ottoman military cadet system and in all cases veterans of the First World War, led sporadic armed struggles against the mandates in all former Ottoman regions. Second, ex-Ottoman civilian politicians of the major cities including Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut, and Aleppo, led political movements and parties and often landed in jail for their efforts. Such people were usually educated in elite Ottoman civil schools in the provinces and Istanbul and sought independence in a negotiated process with the mandate authorities. Finally exiled exOttoman politicians such as Shakib Arslan lobbied the League of Nations and popular opinion in the European capitals. During the 1920s, Arab nationalism emerged as the language and ideology of anticolonial opposition. Still-potent strands of Islamic and Ottoman mobilization intermingled with Arab nationalism also. Shakib Arslan, along with other former Ottoman statesmen, abandoned Ottomanism and Islamic solidarity slowly and reluctantly, but younger intellectuals embraced Arabism and sometimes secularism with enthusiasm. Common aspirations for independence and opposition to the mandates sometimes papered over other differences. Ex-Ottoman army officers admired and tried to emulate the example of Mustafa Kemal. They were often frustrated by the reluctance of civilian politicians to embrace armed struggle.

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118   michael provence

Mandate Structures in Palestine The first British high commissioner in Palestine, Herbert Samuel, envisioned and designed an indirectly ruled colonial state, run and policed by an integrated Zionist– Arab civilian administration and overseen by British colonial officials and police. The two communities within the colonial state were to take part in native rule on a sup­ posed­ly equal footing. The indigenous Arab majority comprised 85% of the population, while the immigrant minority was of European origin and was officially recognized both by the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations as possessing special rights to the colonial territory. The mandate charter codified these special rights in July 1922 and named the Zionist Agency as the official representative of Jews of Palestine. In influence, access, and internationally acknowledged rights, there was a basic asymmetry between the Arabs and Zionists in Palestine.12 Zionist leaders insisted on equal representation with Arabs in every state institution, despite their comparatively tiny numbers. The Zionists endorsed the mandatory regime and participated fully in governing the mandate. The League of Nations and the mandate authority accepted the Zionist Agency as the legitimate representative of the Jewish population of Palestine. By contrast, neither the mandate authority nor the League of Nations ever recognized the Palestinian Arab Congress or the Arab Executive it formed as legitimate representative bodies. The mandate government refused to accept Palestinian governing bodies unless they first endorsed both the mandate and the Balfour Declaration—a pattern that has prevailed to this day in relations between Zionists and Palestinians. Palestinian leaders traveled to London and Geneva to present their case to the British government and the League of Nations. Inevitably the Palestinians found that their interlocutors did not accept their basic right to self-representation and that wellconnected advocates for the Zionist movement had been there first. Shakib Arslan knew better than most that success in lobbying depended on access.

Palestine Constitution and State Formation The Balfour Declaration made the prospects for a constitution more complicated in Palestine than the other mandates. In August 1922, mandate authorities promulgated a constitution and a representative council, which was half elected and half appointed. Participation required acceptance of the Balfour Declaration and the terms of the mandate; a majority of Palestinian politicians refused this acknowledgement and so were 12  Following here Khalidi (2006: xlv–xlvi).

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The Levant Mandates   119 rendered officially unrepresented. The representatives of the Zionist movement found the mandate and the Balfour Declaration a congenial starting point for their aspirations and participated fully.13 By the time the Arab leadership had conceded to the idea of proportional representation, mandate authorities rescinded the offer.14 Musa Kazim al-Husayni and other ex-Ottoman civilian political leaders opposed the mandate and Zionism by recourse to rights, promises, and careful argument. Musa Kazim and Jamal al-Husayni made numerous visits to Geneva and London and wrote scores of petitions protesting the injustice of the situation in Palestine. By the end of the first decade of mandate rule, such arguments proved ineffective and different strategies and leadership came to dominate the opposition. Ex-Ottoman officers led armed revolts in the late 1920s and through the 1930s. For a time, the rise of Hitler in Germany increased Jewish immigration and eased the financial strain on the mandate. But by 1937, armed Arab opposition to the mandate and Zionism led to British retrenchment. Martial law codes and punitive legal measures proliferated, but British politicians sought to free themselves from the problems they had fostered in the Palestine mandate. By 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, Britain renounced the Balfour Declaration in an effort to buy the loyalty of the British Empire’s millions of Muslims. Immediately after the war, Britain renounced the mandate altogether and announced its intention to cede the problem to the new United Nations and evacuate Palestine. A UN partition plan, civil war, and then the first of many regional wars over Palestine ensued.

Mandate Structures in Iraq and Transjordan Iraq emerged as a British-sponsored Hashemite monarchy and Transjordan as a Hashemite principality in 1921. The deeply unpopular repression of the Iraqi revolt of 1920 led Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill to push through a plan to place Faysal on a quickly arranged Iraqi throne and his brother Abdallah, already encamped in Amman, as prince of the newly created British protectorate of Transjordan. The plan solved several vexing problems at once: the troublesome former wartime allies of the Hashemite family would be allowed to take some consolation from their loss of Syria and Arabia and continue to serve the British Empire, and the impossible expense of direct rule would be reduced by a cheaper structure of indirect rule. British strategic interests would be preserved, but at lower cost to the Treasury and with less political opposition in London. The overriding concerns of imperial security and communications between the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf and India, and the petroleum concessions would be 13  Smith (2004: 110–111). 14  LN R17, Report from Palestine Arab Congress, Jamal Husayni, Secretary General, October 22, 1924.

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120   michael provence addressed by treaty. Both rulers would owe their position and loyalty to Britain. Churchill came to the point with customary crudeness, when he wrote, “Faysal will be a long time looking for a third throne.”15 In Baghdad, King Faysal performed a difficult balancing act. He adapted to his dual role of Iraqi head of state and British appointed monarch. The new state of mandatory Iraq comprised most of three dissimilar Ottoman provinces: Basra in the south, which had included the British protectorate and principal port, Kuwait; Baghdad in the center; and Mosul in the north. Britain had sponsored the leading family of Kuwait since the end of the nineteenth century, and had created a protectorate to dominate the Persian Gulf and counter pervasive fears of the Berlin–Baghdad Bahn. Ottoman control was briefly reasserted in 1914 and the British army launched its early wartime offensive from Kuwait a month later in September 1914. Possession of Mosul was contested by the Turkish Republic and remained unresolved until 1926.16 The desert sanjak of Dayr al-Zūr on the Euphrates was split between the Syrian and Iraqi mandates with un­defined borders. Faysal owed his crown and country to British support and had lost Syria when this support was withdrawn in 1920. Between 1922 and his premature death in 1933 he was generally successful in maneuvering between British demands and at least minimally satisfying the desires of the Iraqi public. Politicized and nationalist Arab-Ottoman army officers were his most important supporters and his most dangerous potential critics. Faysal could not run his government without such people, but except for those few such as Nuri al-Saʿid and Jaʿfar al-ʿAskari who had long attached their fortunes to Faysal and to Great Britain, the ex-Ottoman officers and provincial officials perennially opposed the British role in Iraq and the king’s role as mediator.

Iraq and Transjordanian Constitutions and State Formation The government of Iraq was styled as a constitutional monarchy. The constitution was promulgated in mid-1925, forming a bicameral chamber, with a lower chamber elected by male citizens and an upper chamber appointed by the king. The assembly ratified the constitution, electoral law, and treaty with Britain, but the government fell immediately after passage. The constitution gave the king the right to select the prime minister and dissolve the assembly. And while the constitution placed the king above the assembly, the treaty placed the high commissioner above the king. Britain maintained the right to intervene to protect British interests, however defined, and British subjects were 15  CO 730/21/18407, Minute by Churchill, April 1922, quoted in Sluglett (2007: 77). 16  The League of Nations sent a commission of enquiry, which applied the logic of League of Nations ethnic theories and helpfully confirmed British claims that the population of Mosul Wilayat was insufficiently “Turkish” to be considered part of Turkey.

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The Levant Mandates   121 immune from Iraqi law and taxation. Peter Sluglett enumerates the goals of the treaties as the imperial air route to India, the oil fields, the RAF training ground, and British prestige and capital.17 The apparent success of the Iraqi constitution and treaty provoked similar moves in the other mandates. British authorities were confident the king would be a reliable instrument of British policy and in 1929 the government signed a seventy-five-year concession with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.18 Deutsche Bank had owned shares in the original prewar concession, but these were seized by the Allies as German property. In 1932, Faysal was rewarded with nominal independence and membership to the League of Nations. The responsibilities of the high commissioner devolved to the British ambassador. After Faysal’s death in 1933, conflict between the colonial power and its opponents reemerged, culminating in the Anglo-Iraqi war of 1941. Still, both Iraq and Transjordan were places of relative freedom in comparison with Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Iraq and Transjordan became refuges for disaffected ex-Ottoman officials and officers. The meager independence enjoyed by King Faysal and his brother Prince Abdallah of Transjordan was enough that both states attracted unemployed and frustrated former Ottoman officers and officials. Many were wanted men in Syria and Lebanon and unwelcome in Turkey. Exiled civilian politicians and activists often gravitated to Cairo, but the military men had limited financial resources and were unemployable in Cairo or Europe. Transjordan, by contrast with the other mandates, had no large cities, little water and settled agriculture, and a sparse, mostly nomadic population. The new state emerged as a colonial buffer zone between the British and French spheres, and a consolation prize for Prince Abdallah. Transjordan occupied a former frontier zone of the Ottoman province of Syria and gained some importance with the extension of the Hejaz railroad south of Damascus to Amman and beyond.19 Embittered at the prospect of being out­man­ euvered by Faysal and his British patrons for the throne of Iraq, Abdallah installed himself at the railroad town of Ma’n, north of Hejaz in late 1920. Transjordan had been nominally governed from Damascus between the armistice of 1918 and the end of Faysal’s Damascus government in June 1920. Thereafter, it became an adjunct of the new mandatory government of Palestine. As historian Mary Wilson has noted, Abdallah’s march north was fortuitously timed. British intelligence worriedly reported he was in contact with ex-Ottoman insurgent leaders in Syria and Anatolia, and menacing the settlement between Britain and France. Abdallah arrived in Amman ten days before the opening of Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill’s Cairo conference where it was decided that Abdallah should be offered some kind of conditional governorship to keep him in Amman.20 Churchill traveled to Jerusalem where he met Abdallah. They agreed that Abdallah should take responsibility for Transjordan for six months and Churchill suggested that, 17  Sluglett (2007: 63). 19  Rogan (1999: 160).

18  This company later came to be known as British Petroleum or BP. 20  Wilson (1990: 48).

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122   michael provence conditional on his ability to stop raids on the French-occupied region in Hawran south of Damascus, he might end up with more later on. On this meager suggestion, Abdallah became the custodian of the Transjordan portion of the British mandate for Palestine, surrounded by a small group of otherwise stateless and unemployed ex-Ottoman civil servants and soldiers. The total population, settled and nomadic, was calculated at less than 250,000 people. In early 1928, Abdallah’s Transjordan became a British recognized principality. The British “statement of policy” defined a formal subordinate relationship for Transjordan in place of a treaty or a more ostensibly equal arrangement. A few months later, a constitution was announced that established a twenty-one-member legislative council, which was partly elected and mostly appointed, met infrequently, and could in any case be ignored or dismissed at Abdallah’s pleasure. The Jordanian National Party protested the arrangement, constitution, and collusion between Britain and Abdallah as a violation of mandatory promises of representation and democracy.21 In 1946, after the end of the Second World War, Britain rewarded Abdallah for his loyal service with independence and he crowned himself king.

Mandate Structures in Syria and Lebanon French colonialism in the Middle East began and ended as a military affair. The first high commissioner, General Henri Gouraud, appointed in October 1919, was also the commander of the army of the Levant. Gouraud and his chief strategist Robert de Caix established the principal patterns of the French mandatory regime in Syria and Lebanon. De Caix served as the accredited representative to the League of Nations for the French mandate between 1924 and 1939. The mandate government identified educated Ottoman Muslim Arabs of the cities as its main enemies, and the sectarian minorities and rural populations as its potential allies in subduing and ruling the country. The members of the minorities were arranged in a hierarchy with Lebanese Maronite Christians in alliance with Jesuit priests at the top, followed by the other Christian rites, Alawite and Druze Muslims, and Bedouins. Two months after the conquest of Damascus, in September 1920, General Gouraud announced the formation of the state of Greater Lebanon with its capital at Beirut. The state would take its place as the Maronite homeland, based on an expansion of the Ottoman autonomous governate of Mount Lebanon from about 1,930 to 4,035 square miles (5,000 to 10,450 square kilometers).22 The problem with this territorial expansion 21  LN R2280, “Mandate over Palestine, 1929–32”. 22  LN R41, ARRETE no. 336, “Réglementant provisoiromont l’organisation administrative de I’Etat du GRAND LIBAN,” September 10, 1920.

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The Levant Mandates   123 was the dilution of a Maronite majority in a larger territory. Gouraud and de Caix placed Maronites in a dominant position despite their numbers. Having defeated Faysal’s army, conquered Syria, occupied Damascus, and invented Lebanon during the summer of 1920, Gouraud and de Caix turned their attention to arranging Syria’s regions and religions.23 The colonial idea of protecting eastern Christians from their Arab Muslim neighbors was more complicated in inland Syria. Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, and Homs all had large, cultured, cosmopolitan elite families who expected to exert influence on local and regional politics as they had done as Ottoman provincial elites. People such as Shakib Arslan were representatives of such families. A strategy emerged of separating the troublesome cities from rural areas, which were expected to be more quiescent and more easily convinced of the benefits of French rule. After the occupation of Damascus and Aleppo in the summer of 1920, Robert de Caix designed the partition of the Syrian mandate into five separate microstates, each with its specific sectarian majority.24 De Caix perceived the society of the region in simple terms, melding sectarianism and French colonial interests seamlessly. The Uniate Christians were reliable “friends of France,” and should be rewarded accordingly. The rural heterodox Muslims were isolated from the major cities and should remain so, governed by their tribal leaders with a strong guiding French hand. The major cities were the preserve of Muslim nationalist extremists, who should be ruled directly, closely dominated, and kept from spreading their contagion of nationalism and fanaticism to other regions. French sponsorship of Arab Christians opposed to Arab nationalism fit neatly into this schema. French mandate policies and politics remained relatively constant in the first years of the mandate. Things changed, however, with the election of a leftist coalition in France in 1925 and the appointment of a leftist and anti-cleric high commissioner. After the costly and destructive suppression of the Great Syrian Revolt across Mandatory Syria and parts of Lebanon in 1926 and 1927, mandate policy came to be driven by fiscal retrenchment and indirect rule over Aleppo and Damascus coupled with fully mili­tar­ ized structures of intelligence and repression. The more optimistic and ideological claims for mandate rule faded away. Under Robert de Caix’s guidance, the French mandates began as a more ideological undertaking than the British mandates. At the outset, mandate officials announced that they would institute a new legal system, regularize land tenure and survey all landed property, regularize taxation and customs, and build modern infrastructure. The announcement of such wholesale reform in 1920 took place in an atmosphere of ig­nor­ ance and ideological self-delusion; ignorance of the existing Ottoman system and selfdelusion about the motives and capabilities of the colonial power. By the end of the mandate twenty-six years later, most of these plans had long been abandoned and forgotten, but some lasting changes had materialized. The mandate had been endowed with an authoritarian executive in the office of the high commissioner and an overriding 23  G. Khoury (2006).

24  P. Khoury (1987: 58–59), and White (2012: 11).

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124   michael provence legal structure of martial law and unchecked intelligence services answering directly to the high commissioner.25

Syrian and Lebanese Constitutions and State Formation When General Gouraud declared the existence of Greater Lebanon he also announced a fifteen-member administrative council, two-thirds dominated by Christians. Gouraud ignored the existing Ottoman administrative council.26 Seven of the twelve former council members wrote a petition to the League of Nations, protesting against the expansion of Lebanon, the French mandate, and the denial of the full independence they felt they deserved.27 A doctored census and sectarian electoral roles followed shortly, but the ac­know­ ledged result was a Muslim majority colonial state under the control of indigenous Christians with a colonial sponsor.28 The system of sectarian proportional representation and the division of Lebanon into seventeen separate and legally defined sectarian communities was an invention of Robert de Caix and has prevailed in Lebanon until the present. In early 1926, the French mandate high commissioner appointed a constitutional committee for Lebanon. The four-member committee included three pro-French Christians and one pro-French Muslim. The Lebanese Republic was to be legally dom­in­ ated by Christians and permanently separate from Syria. The new chamber of deputies included an elected president, subordinate to the high commissioner. Muslims received a total of five seats, divided between Shiʿa, Sunni, and one Druze. The remaining ten seats were reserved for Maronites (five or six), Greek Orthodox (four), and Greek Catholic (one).29 Mass protests followed both the 1922 decree and the ratification of the constitution, and led to the expansion of the chamber of deputies by two seats set aside for Muslims, to bring the total to seventeen, and a 58% Christian domination instead of 66%.30 After 1922, the chamber was partly elected. In October 1927, fifteen ex-Ottoman civilian politicians and lawyers, from most of the major cities of Ottoman Syria, met in Beirut to plan a program to oppose the mandates

25  Mizrahi (2003). 26  Akarlı (1993: 148–149). 27  LN R41 “ Copie de la Déclaration en date du 10 Juillet 1920 du Conseil Administarif du Liban,” and following report from William Rappard from a meeting with Soliman Kenaan, representative member of the Ottoman administrative council for Mount Lebanon, protesting the French mandate. He bore a petition signed by seven of the twelve members of the council, requesting independence for Mount Lebanon. September 27, 1921. 28  P. Khoury (1987: 57). 29  LN R41, “Arrêté 336, September 10, 1920, p. 6. 30  Traboulsi (2007: 80–81).

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The Levant Mandates   125 and demand representation.31 Their meeting led to the emergence of the National Bloc (al-Kutla al-Wataniyya), which became the leading political configuration in Syria between 1928 and independence in 1946. Events in Iraq had made an impression on French mandate authorities. The British mandate government seemed to have achieved its goals by negotiation and treaty, and the high commissioner appointed a new government to oversee an election, draft a Syrian constitution, and approve a treaty with France.32 The election returned prom­in­ ent nationalist politicians and three experienced Ottoman legal scholars quickly produced the constitution.33 Syria would be a parliamentary republic governed by a single assembly elected every four years by universal male adult suffrage. It guaranteed equality of citizens of all religions, but stipulated that the president would profess Islam. Wellinformed admirers of Mustafa Kemal, the drafters of the constitution, one of whom was a Christian law professor, did not favor the religious requirement but they considered it necessary to preserve popular support for the process.34 They declared that Syria included all the regions under mandate except Iraq and was indivisible. The president could conclude treaties, receive ambassadors, grant pardons and amnesties, and declare and suspend martial law. The president had the power to dismiss the assembly but was required to call new elections if he did so. The high commissioner warned that the constitution was unacceptable to France but the assembly voted to accept it anyway; as a consequence the high commissioner dismissed the assembly in 1928. He closed the assembly indefinitely in February 1929.35 In summer 1930, the high commissioner issued decrees enacting the Syrian and Lebanese constitutions. Amended to the Syrian document was a final 116th article: as the mandatory power France had the right to determine, in all cases, if the constitution violated its “rights and obligations.” Mandate prerogative overrode the constitution at the will of the high commissioner. In 1936, eventual Syrian president Hashim al-Atasi published a statement in the main daily newspaper of Damascus: “Seventeen years of the Mandate has passed with continuous bloodshed, terror and harsh sanctions, which have long suppressed the voice of justice.”36 During 1936, continuous protests and a para­lyz­ing general strike brought France to the negotiating table. The talks produced the French-Syrian Treaty of Friendship and Alliance in September 1936. According to the treaty, the mandate would end after three years, but the French senate refused to ratify the treaty and the Second World War intervened. After the end of the war, French forces withdrew in disgrace and disorder in April 1946, exactly two years before British forces left Palestine in similar ignominy. The mandates finally ended after the colonial powers lost the political will and the economic and logistical ability to dominate the Middle East. They had also lost the ideo31  Edmond Rabbath, “Courte Histoire du Mandat en Syrie at au Liban,” unpublished ms, n.d., p. 53, Quoted in P. Khoury (1987: 248). 32  P. Khoury (1987: 334–335). 33  The Times, “Draft of the Syrian Constitution,” August 3, 1928. 34  FO 684/5 Consul Hole to FO, June 28, 1928. 35  FO 684/4 Damascus Consul Files. 36  Al-Qabas, “Hashim al-Atasi Manifesto of the National Party,” February 10, 1936. excerpted in FO 684/9.

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126   michael provence logical cover and legalistic collaboration of the League of Nations, which had been discredited and eclipsed by the events of the late 1930s. The details of the mandates are forgotten everywhere, but the legal and structural traces of nearly three decades of mandate rule remain even today, in martial law codes, authoritarian executives, and security and military structures.

Bibliography Akarli, Engin (1993). The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861–1920 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Ben-Bassat, Yuval (2013). Petitioning the Sultan: Justice and Protest in Late Ottoman Palestine (London: I. B. Tauris). Khalidi, Rashid (2006). The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (Boston: Beacon Press). Khoury, Gérard (2006). Une tutelle coloniale—Le mandat français en Syrie et au Liban—Écrits politiques de Robert de Caix (Paris: Belin). Khoury, Philip (1987). Syria Under the French Mandate; the Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Manela, Erez (2007). The Wilsonian Moment: Self Determination and the International Origins of Anti-Colonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Mantoux, Paul (1955). Les Délibérations Du Conseil Des Quatre (24 Mars–28 Juin 1919), v. 1 (Paris: CNRS). Mizrahi, Jean-David (2003). Genèse de l’État mandataire. Service des renseignements et bandes armées en Syrie et au Liban dans les années 1920 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne). Pedersen, Susan (2006). “The Meaning of the Mandates System: An Argument,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 32: 560–582. Pedersen, Susan (2015). Guardians of Empire: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Rogan, Eugene L. (1999). Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sluglett, Peter (2007). Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country (New York: Columbia University Press). Smith, Charles (2004). Palestine and the Arab Israeli Conflict (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s). Traboulsi, Fawwaz (2007). A Modern History of Lebanon (London: Pluto Press). White, Benjamin Thomas (2012). The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press). Wilson, Mary  C. (1990). King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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chapter 7

The Em ergence of Nationa lism James McDougall

The study of nationalism in the Middle East and North Africa has often been caught up in the politics of conflict and the tensions of social relations in the region. Throughout the twentieth century, arguments over the history of nations as self-defining cultural communities with claims to political self-determination, or as the populations (defined by others) over whom states (whose boundaries were drawn by others) claimed sovereignty, were burning and were frequently bloody political issues. Such arguments necessarily shaped the ways in which the region’s people themselves, and observers and scholars from elsewhere, wrote about its nationalisms. Whether nationalism, particularly among Arabs, should be singular or several; what the “true” relationship was between nation and religion, nation and language or locality, nation and social class or gender relations; what relation the nation (as a community of people) should have to the state (as an apparatus of governing institutions); how regimes claimed legitimacy as embodying or as furthering the cause of nationalism, while their opponents attacked them as betraying or compromising it, were all questions that shaped the social and political struggles of the region, as well as preoccupying historians and social scientists. As a result, the more general growth of critical studies of nationalism in the 1980s initially had only a somewhat tangential effect on writing the history of nationalism in the MENA region.1 Earlier scholarship was often concerned with establishing the chron­ ology of the emergence of nationalism understood as the “awakening” or propagation of national consciousness. Much influential writing on the subject was concerned either to defend or to attack the claims of nationalism as being legitimately grounded in its own history, or as reacting to internal decline and foreign occupation with a hastily fabricated, largely imported, and incipiently totalitarian ideology; to be the authentic, progressive expression of popular aspirations, or merely the frustrated reaction of 1  Especially relevant to the broader development of the field were Anderson (1983), Armstrong (1982), Breuilly (1982), Gellner (1983), Hobsbawm (1983), Smith (1986), Greenfeld (1992).

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128   james mcdougall middle-class ideologues to their political disempowerment and economic marginality.2 Accounts written in the 1950s and 1960s were inevitably shaped by the heyday of anticolonial movements, revolutionary politics, and radical-populist state-building. Those of the 1970s and 1980s altered their perspectives in light of the entrenchments of military authoritarian regimes, rising Islamism, and the often-proclaimed “end” of nationalism, especially in the Arab world. Changing perspectives on nationalism in academic studies more broadly, as well as the changes and intractabilities of the political landscape in the region, have subsequently influenced scholarly emphases. Newer directions in the study of nationalism have reflected the persistence of nationalism as an effective form of mass politics in the Middle East and North Africa while also exploring the multiplicity and complexity of national histories, memories, and imaginaries, and of the social actors who have expressed them.

Imperial Contexts From the mid-nineteenth century into the early years of the twentieth, several very different ideas about the legitimate form of communal solidarity, different forms of pol­it­ ics, and a combination of economic and social forces acted together to bring “the national question,” as it had become known in the multiethnic, dynastic states of Europe, into being as a focus of both anxiety and aspiration in the Middle East and North Africa. Such concerns became most rapidly and most fully developed in the Ottoman Empire, and especially in its Balkan and Anatolian provinces, followed by the Arab provinces of bilād al-shām. In the western Mediterranean and the Gulf, the societies and polities of the Maghrib and the Arabian Peninsula, as they faced incorporation into the effective influence of French and British imperial powers (in the Gulf after 1820, in Algeria and south Yemen from the 1830s, in Morocco and Tunisia from the 1860s), were already fa­cing the more direct challenges of European colonialism while remaining, in their political cultures, informed by other, longer-standing idioms of community, legitimacy, and sovereignty. This is not to restate the old argument of a diffusionist model of nationalism integrally formed in Europe and exported wholesale through intermediaries (Christian missionaries and their local interlocutors, European political languages and their local translators or imitators) before being propagated from the top down by the institutions of the state, first in the central Ottoman lands and later in its peripheries. Certainly, the changing—and increasingly unbalanced—connections between Europe on the one hand, and the southern and eastern Mediterranean and its hinterlands on the other, and the actors at their interface, would play a major role in this as in other dimen2  For “defense,” see Antonius (1938), Zeine (1966), Tibawi (1969); the principal “detractors” remain Kedourie (1960, 1971, 1992), and Haim (1962). For a critique of Haim and Kedourie and a more general assessment of the state of the field in the early 1990s, see Khalidi (1991); for studies incorporating critical perspectives, Jankowski and Gershoni (1997).

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The Emergence of Nationalism   129 sions of the region’s history over these years. So too would the connections between Istanbul, the provincial capitals of Damascus, Beirut, and Baghdad, the autonomous centers of Cairo and Tunis, and the networks that linked all of these to the remoter corners of northwest Africa and east-central Arabia. But, first of all, nationalism was not a unified ideology with a single meaning; made up of threats and promises, what it meant moved over the course of the century from the late eighteenth century, through the European revolutions of 1848, and the new social and scientific theories of the later nineteenth century—liberalism and constitutionalism; popular sovereignty, social revolution; common language and homeland; heredity, religion, and race. And as they spread unevenly and in different combinations across Europe, so these ideas and practices of politics began to circulate in the Middle East and North Africa only shortly after the French and Atlantic revolutions of the late eighteenth century, the Napoleonic wars, and their uneasy settlement after 1815, had made them central to European politics. They would develop, in the Ottoman lands, at the same time and in some of the same ways that they did in the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. The social forces that would eventually carry them into a newly coalescing public sphere were being created, as in Europe, by the impersonal agencies of expanding capital, communications, education, and the state, even when, again as in much of Europe, the political impetus behind all of these was usually an attempt to contain rather than to promote them. Nationalism in the region ought not, therefore, to be seen as a purely reactive response, belatedly imitating European ideas, to a preprogrammed general pattern of “decline” peculiar to the late Ottoman state and then, in particular, to the success of Zionist state-building in Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Nor should it be understood in the nationalist historians’ own terms, as a “rebirth” of latent identity out of the empire’s faltering rule. Instead, nationalisms—Ottoman, Turkish, Arab, Syrian, Egyptian, and others—were created in imperial contexts. They emerged on several social levels and at the intersection of dramatic patterns of change in culture and communication, markets and mobility that impacted very unevenly on different social groups across the region, as well as being influenced by shifting geopolitical relations and the rapid expansion of the state. Both the increasingly disruptive incorporation of Middle Eastern and North African societies into the periphery of global capitalism, and the unanticipated consequences of the defensive developmentalism upon which regional statesmen embarked to harness the dynamism of markets and technology while seeking to ward off their threat, combined to fragment and reorder social and market relations, exacerbate local social conflicts, politicize communal and sectarian identities, and destabilize established hierarchies. New “middle stratum” pro­ fes­ sionals—often seen as the new elite that would become the natural bearers of nationalist ideology—emerged from new forms of education to fill new roles in commerce, government, and the military. At the same time, workers and peasants in Egypt and the Ottoman provinces found themselves pushed into expanding urban and peri-urban spaces, into changed and often highly coercive labor relations, into obligatory military service, and into new patterns of life. In the process, many previously established guarantees of solidarity and security, from extended family networks in familiar spaces to

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130   james mcdougall the paternalism of religious and social authority, were stripped away. Programs of reform and regeneration in the state—the Ottoman empire’s tanzimat and the expansive autocracy of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909), the sub-imperialist state-building of Mehmet Ali (or Muhammad Ali, r. 1805–1849) and his dynasty in Egypt—set in motion the widespread changes, not only in law, government, and education for emerging elites but also in social and economic life for wider swathes of society, that would lay down the social basis for reimagining and reorganizing communities in nationalist idioms at and after the turn of the century. More dramatic upheavals occurred in the Maghrib, where after the French capture of Algiers in 1830, a devastating war of conquest between 1839 and 1847 had destroyed the fledgling nizām-i cedid (“new order”) state of the emir ʿAbd al-Qadir (1808–1883), and massive social dislocation, dispossession, and physical destruction combined with famine and epidemic to kill perhaps one-third of the pre-conquest-level Algerian population by the end of the 1860s. Landlessness, pauperization, and proletarization, and dependence on a colonial economy leading to the dispersal or demotion of existing social elites, extreme rural impoverishment, and widespread labor migration, thus reached their extreme in settler-colonial Algeria, but became familiar in other parts of the region too. In Tunisia, as on a larger scale in Egypt, the expansion of the state’s military-fiscal capacity and its growing entanglement with commercial and financial interests controlled from the other side of the Mediterranean could not, by the early 1880s, prevent direct military occupation and political subordination. In Morocco, late-nineteenth-century attempts to strengthen the state against the impacts of both commercial (especially British) and military (French and Spanish) destabilization that began in the 1840s proved by 1907, when the French landed troops at Casablanca and a dynastic civil war broke out, equally unable to contain internal pressures or to deflect foreign interventionism. In this rapidly shifting context of simultaneously embattled and expanding imperial power, the physical movements of people and the communication of ideas as well as the realigned mobility of capital, goods, and labor, began to produce new anxieties about the present and future of the community and the state, anxieties that also expressed political and cultural aspirations and reformulations of social identities. These were not necessarily, or even primarily, expressions of a renascent nationalism articulated against the sovereignty of the empire. Ottoman subjects began to articulate their ethnocultural identification as “Arabs” or “Turks,” terms that no longer referred, pejoratively, to rural nomads or peasants in contrast to the urbane and educated elites of Cairo, Damascus, or Istanbul, but denoted a cross-class community of linguistic and historic origins. But for many, the enlightenment and regeneration of society was to go hand in hand with the empowerment and reform of the existing state, such that a patriotic “love of country” (ḥubb al-wat ̣an) might animate a reinvigorated empire under better government than presently prevailed.3 Even under the most direct and invasive European rule, in French

3  See, for example, Hourani (1983: 262–263), on the Lebanese Christian polymath Butrus al-Bustani, and the similarity of some of his thinking to that of the “Young Ottomans.”

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The Emergence of Nationalism   131 North Africa, expressions of political aspiration by the first new generation of Arab and Berber spokesmen to emerge within colonial society in Algeria and Tunisia, from around 1904 up to the early 1920s, articulated hopes for social and cultural improvement, and legal and economic redress for their compatriots within a reformed and liberalized imperial regime rather than in an independent state. In some circles, especially among liberal-constitutionalist and nationalist dissenters in the late-nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, both Arab and Turkish, such ideas were already explicitly op­pos­ ition­al and expressed by groups of exiles and secret societies regarded by the Ottoman government as seditious and secessionist. But even for some of these groups, the work of national revival or of recovering the cohesion of community remained tied to the survival of the imperial state, and such a view would persist through the First World War.4 At the same time, the focus of political loyalty had also come to be identified, since the mid-nineteenth century, as lying in the local or regional territory, the wat ̣an (homeland) as one’s place of birth and belonging, a smaller unit within the state. This might be a province of the empire properly thought of as belonging under the sovereignty of the sultan, but it might also be a distinct space, temporarily misgoverned by outsiders, but promised to an independent political destiny of its own.

Cultures and Communities What the boundaries—in geography, history, or demography—of such spaces might be were not by any means self-evident anywhere in the region at the turn of the twentieth century. In North Africa and the Gulf, long-standing recognition of the limits of jurisdiction for the purposes of tax-raising, guaranteeing protection, or enforcing order meant that conventional borders of sovereignty had existed between the Moroccan sultanate and the western marches of Ottoman Algeria, between the regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, and between the dynastic statelets of the eastern and southern Arabian Peninsula. But such boundaries lay between populations more than across territory, and populations were often mobile, albeit within customary patterns of seasonal migration and under periodically renewed pacts of protection and allegiance. So although the limits of potentially “national” space in these areas had long been laid down, such limits were by no means fixed or exclusive. Even the colonial state, into the early twentieth century, had trouble policing its more sharply drawn and theoretically stable cartographically fixed frontiers. Within the Ottoman Empire, identification with particular spaces—from the coasts of Asia Minor to Mount Lebanon, through the Syrian desert to the marshes of southern Iraq—combined with particularities of language, religion, and custom to delineate regional identities that marked Ottoman subjects as “foreign” to places beyond their regular circuits of labor, pilgrimage, and market

4  Kayali (1997); Hakim (2013).

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132   james mcdougall exchange. Regional centers such as Aleppo, Damascus, Mosul, or Baghdad were focal points of land ownership, commerce, and social networks, exercising economic and political influence in the surrounding countryside and mediating with the distant sovereignty of the state. By the late nineteenth century, the pressures and transformations of state expansion and legal reform, economic instability, and social conflict turned these regional focal points and their hinterlands into more integrated centers in which new kinds of political claims were being staked. New kinds of political actors emerged in these spaces: not only reforming government officials and local notables, but also the popular “crowd,” which gained in importance both as a constituency to be mobilized by those with influence, and as an actor in its own interests. Events, in these contexts, that shaped later national histories did not simply express an emerging national sentiment (or the lack of one that “should have” existed. In some cases, such mobilization expressed the tense politicization of local and confessional identities, as in the civil war in Mount Lebanon and the riots in Damascus in 1860. In others, national assertiveness emerged from a combination of local, sectional, and supervening loyalties, as in the ʿUrabist movement in Egypt in 1881–1882. ʿUrabi’s revolt brought together popular opposition to the growing power of foreign interests with an army officers’ protest, and expressed both a patriotic defense of homeland, under the slogan “Egypt for the Egyptians,” and support for the Ottoman sultan’s legitimate Islamic suzerainty over the Egyptian viceroyalty, such that ʿUrabi’s supporters were popularly identified by the Qur’anic epithet ḥizb allāh, “the party of God.”5 An important historical debate about “the origins of Arab nationalism,” one of the major preoccupations of scholarship from the 1970s to the early 1990s, discerned the overlaps in elite political strategies (notably that of the Sharif of Mecca, Husayn bin ʿAli (1854–1931), and his Hashemite family), between Ottomanism, as continued loyalty to the imperial framework and hopes for advancement within it, and the emergence of Arabism as an oppositional force, culminating in the Arab revolt under Hashemite leadership against Ottoman rule in the Hijaz in 1916–1917.6 Such elites’ claims to community leadership, whether in connection with, in opposition to, or as succeeding the Ottoman center, sought to position leading families and individuals as mutanawwirūn, “enlightened,” muthaqqafūn, “cultured” or “educated,” muṣliḥūn, “reformers” who would “put to rights” the community’s collective life, especially through reassertions of social order and cultural authority, public morality, and religious and practical education. This “natural elite” saw itself as having the right and the duty to lead the nation—however they defined it—and as itself constituting the “political nation” in the sense of those most fit to embody and articulate the interests of the people. The nahḍa, the great nineteenthcentury movement of cultural revival in Arabic language and literature, combined with

5  Jankowski and Gershoni (1986: 6) On Lebanon, see Fawaz (1994), Makdisi (2000); on Egypt, Schölch (1981), Cole (1993). 6  See especially Dawn (1973).

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The Emergence of Nationalism   133 the spread of Islamic reformist thought, practice, and education, has long been recognized as a crucial incubator of the ideas of social progress and cultural “recovery” common to this milieu. Equally important, however, as later scholarship has shown, were the late Ottoman state’s expansion of more secular and professional education, especially in medical and military schools, its burgeoning bureaucracy, local government, army, and—despite the restrictions placed on political expression after 1909—participatory politics.7 Such claims found expression in writings that circulated among literate elites meeting in cultural clubs or secret societies—and in Egypt, as early as 1907, in formal political parties. As well as extolling religious and linguistic prestige, they explored new discoveries in history, archeology, and the nascent social sciences that added the weight of modern learned authority to claims of ancient greatness, seen as latent in the “sleeping” people, and needing only to be awakened in the present.8 For some, the historical mission of the Arabs lay quintessentially in the Prophetic revelation and mission of Muhammad that had made them “one Arab nation with an eternal message” (umma ʿarabiyya wāḥida dhāt risāla khālida). This was a slogan adopted by secular nationalists but for others, the restoration of Arab unity was inseparable from the revival of Islam, which preceded and conditioned all other social and political identities.9 In some formulations, on the other hand, Islam itself was reimagined as the original expression of a “national sentiment” innate to the Arabs, foundational to their history and civilization though no longer, perhaps, a focus of political loyalty in the present. Others sought to combine or to attenuate the centrality of Islam with a rediscovery of older national origins. Geographically distinct areas, especially the Nile Valley and Mount Lebanon, could be reimagined through archeology and ethnicity as the ancestral homelands of great civilizations, Pharaonic or Phoenician, whose descendants might now reclaim their impressive material remains and dignified historical stature.10 All Arabic speakers, whatever their religion or ancestral ethnicity, and wherever they lived from the eastern frontiers of Iraq to the Atlantic coast of Morocco, could also be defined as a community of culture in all of whom, over the centuries, lisān al-ʿarab, the Arabic tongue, had inculcated the noble attributes of the original Arab “race.” Historical imaginaries thus intersected variously with territory, culture, and ethnicity to produce multiple, potentially conflicting, but also sometimes overlapping conceptions of national belonging.

7  For the importance of the late Ottoman context, see Gelvin (1998), Hanioğlu (2008), Provence (2005, 2011). 8  For example, ideas on national “character” such as those of Gustave le Bon (1841–1931) held considerable appeal, as did the evolutionary philosophy of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). 9  A notion adopted by some historians, notably Lewis (1993: 190). 10  Different approaches to the importance of Islam can be seen, for example, in the writings of the Syrian intellectuals ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1849–1903) and Satiʿ al-Husri (1879–1968). On these figures, see Hourani (1983: 271–273, 311–316). On Egypt, see Jankowski and Gershoni (1986), Reid (1997, 2002). On Lebanon, Salibi (1988) ch. 9; Shehadi and Mills (eds) (1988), ch. 7; Hartman and Olsaretti (2003).

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Mass Politics and Popular Mobilization The writings of intellectuals, the emergence of the periodical press, and the milieus in which they moved, along with the idioms of modern literary and journalistic Arabic that they produced, long provided the focus of most research in the history of nationalism in the region. Subsequent scholarship shifted the focus from a primary concern with the politics of notable families and regional elites, their self-image, and the claims they espoused, to a broader view of the expanding field of politics in the years around the First World War. From the “Young Turk” revolution in 1908 that opened the Ottoman state’s second constitutional period through the geopolitical realignments of 1919–1921, broader constituencies became more central to political contests. Just as urban, landowning, dynastic, and educated elites began to formulate new claims to their own authority in the name of “the people” as a national leadership, so the people themselves became actors in new styles and spaces of politics. Collective popular action had, of course, long existed in the region, and in the nineteenth century, as urban guild workers protested and rural insurrectionaries revolted against taxation or rallied to millenarian uprisings, it was widespread, frequent, and varied. But if the popular movements of the late nineteenth century had been largely “reactive” (in Charles Tilly’s terms), around the First World War, and especially from 1919, in both North Africa and the Arab East they increasingly took the form of organized mass politics.11 In French North Africa, British-occupied Egypt, and the new states of the Levant subject to mandatory regimes under the auspices of the League of Nations, the immediate postwar years saw major popular mobilizations and the beginnings of mass nationalist politics both within each state’s political borders and across them. With the collapse of the Ottoman polity and the emergence of a Turkish nation-state through its own war of national independence (spearheaded by former Ottoman officers and actively aided by Arab soldiers and religious leaders who still saw the Turkish struggle against occupation and partition as theirs, too), the old Arab provincial centers rapidly took on the role of national capitals. Their existing notable family politics now became the politics of nationalist leadership, their established roles as intermediaries with Istanbul and its emissaries shifted to accommodate the demands of negotiation with the high-handed local representatives of London and Paris.12 At the same time as the Hashemite mon­ arch­ies in Transjordan and (briefly) Syria, then Iraq, founded themselves on their claim to have led Arab resistance to Turkish misrule, their bid for independence in an Arab state or rather a fraternity of states, across the borders imposed by imperial partition, found ready support among ex-Ottoman army officers such as Fawzi al-Qawuqji (1890–1977). Born in Lebanon and inspired by the anticolonial Rif War led by the emir 11  Gelvin (1997: 238). 12  For the example of Damascus, see Schilcher (1985) and Khoury (1987).

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The Emergence of Nationalism   135 Muhammad ibn Abd al-Krim al-Khattabi in northern Morocco in 1921–1926, alQawuqji would become one of the region’s first professional revolutionaries, fighting foreign occupation in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq from the 1920s to the 1940s. Such trans­ regional militancy was encouraged by the press and by more personalized circuits of news, through which Iraqis avidly followed the 1919 Egyptian revolution against the British, Syrians celebrated the Rifis’ early victories against the Spanish, and Tunisians demonstrated support for the Turkish struggle against Greek and French invasion. From the 1930s especially, the struggle over Palestine became a focal point of comment, anxiety, and solidarity all across the region. A shared imaginary of all Arabs as a single nation—umma, a people, an extended family, for whom one feels the affection of qawmiyya, loyalty to a community of kindred, standing together—animated expressions of common cause, in defense of common interests and aspirations, and against common enemies. At the same time, a distinctively territorial politics of nationalism as defense of the more immediate homeland, wat ̣an, within its borders emerged as the most pressing and most common form of political mobilization. Where territorial sovereignty within local limits had been more clearly established before the twentieth century, recovery of that sovereignty from the pretensions of a “protecting” power—or at least, in a first phase, its preservation under a “real protectorate” that would live up to its proclaimed mission and not simply serve as the vehicle of foreign nationals’ political preponderance and economic ascendancy—was the clearly avowed aim. Thus in Morocco and Tunisia until the mid-1940s, defense of the Alawi and Husaynid monarchies as the symbols of national cohesion and aspiration (and, in the Tunisian case, re-establishment of the country’s constitution, first promulgated in 1861) structured mobilization against the French occupation. Nationalists in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq demanded above all the “total independence” of their countries, understood to mean the restitution of full and unfettered sovereignty to the Egyptian, Syrian, Palestinian, or Iraqi people (or their representatives) in their own state as the expression of their legitimate right to selfdetermination. Colonial officials routinely dismissed the nationalist leaderships’ claims to represent their people, and frequently believed themselves, in their own paternal benevolence, to have the people’s best interests more genuinely at heart, even when the repression of popular revolts required the deployment of thousands of soldiers and aerial bombing, as occurred in Iraq and Syria in the 1920s. In some cases, the conventional borders of the wat ̣an, as the functional regional unit of precolonial times, were substantially altered by those of the colonial state. This was especially the case in Syria, amputated after 1920 of its western and southern districts, and in Iraq, where the new state amalgamated three distinct Ottoman provinces that had not previously looked to each other as parts of a “natural” whole. But even here, the logic of the colonial state nonetheless imposed itself as the frame within which politics could be, and indeed had to be, played out. Subject to newly proliferating and newly integrative governmental institutions, nationalist leaderships and their constituencies created a politics engaged in negotiation with a colonial “civic order,” in the languages and practices of the colonial state’s declared norms of governance, and seeking

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136   james mcdougall e­ ventually to take possession of that state and its means of appropriation and control, even as they denounced the colonial state and the armed force that sustained its rule. Such a dynamic was even more pronounced in the particular case of Algeria, where the claimed national territory had since 1848 been legally annexed to that of the occupying power. Here, popular nationalism was born in labor migration, in French factories (meaning, in French trades unions) and trades unions, as well as in the politics of notables demanding the rights as well as the duties of French nationality and those of religious scholars seeking to preserve and reassert the Arab and “Islamic personality” of their community.13 Newly significant political divisions within society also emerged, through this same process, in the terms of emerging norms of governance and law espoused by colonial states and the post-1919 international community to whose higher authority they paid, at least, lip service. This was especially relevant in the emergence, within newly defined national communities, of equally newly defined national “minorities,” set off by language, religion, or ethnicity from the “majority” community whose leadership could claim, on the basis of demographic preponderance, their preeminence as the nation’s spokesmen.14 The late Ottoman Empire had already entrenched the politicization of community (millet) distinctions along confessional lines; now Western statesmen (with an eye toward eastern Europe as much as to the former Ottoman lands) proclaimed an international language of minority protection. Astutely mobilizing this language, local leaderships, especially in Syria and Lebanon, constituted claims to particular rights that helped advance projects of education, cultural autonomy, political representation, and social mobility for their constituencies. At the same time, they highlighted newly sharp divisions within local societies that would prove dangerous, indeed repeatedly fatal, to the “national” body politic and its people. At the same time, attempts by colonial states to use perceived distinctions of community to further their own schemes of “rational” and effective governance were strenuously resisted by nascent nationalist movements that sought to unite whole populations within the larger, national wat ̣an across the subdivisions of territory or ethnicity. So in Syria, the early French attempts to establish separate statelets within the old Ottoman province and to contain the “Druze” revolt of 1925 as a merely local disorder were frustrated by effective mass mobilization all across the country. In Morocco, the “Berber dahir” (decree) of 1931, taken as an attempt to remove rural, Berber-speaking communities practicing customary law from the jurisdiction of Islamic courts, provoked mass urban protests that gave birth to Moroccan nationalism as an organized political force. Among nationalist leaderships and the popular constituencies that rallied to them, pressurized them in their negotiations with colonial administrations, and began vocally to hold them to account, a broad range of political colors also emerged, spanning the 13  For Morocco, see Pennell (2000), Miller (2013); for Tunisia, Tlili (1974), Perkins (2004); for the colonial “civic order,” Thompson (2000), Dueck (2010); for Algeria, Kaddache (1993), Stora and Daoud (1995), McDougall (2006). 14  White (2011).

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The Emergence of Nationalism   137 various imaginable projects for the shape and nature of a national state-to-be. Populist radicalism, infused with the energy of past insurrectionary traditions and new examples of social revolution abroad, jostled with formulations of a specifically Arab or an internationally fraternal socialism, with the liberal constitutionalism of propertied urban elites, and with the claims of dynastic families to embody Arab and Muslim prestige. A combination of socialist ideas for economic and social reform with cross-confessional, ethnolinguistic solidarity, and an emphasis on the historical unity of all Arabs produced the program of the Arab Ba‘th (“Renaissance”) party (only later a single-party instrument of military dictatorship), founded in Syria in the 1940s by the writer and schoolteacher Michel ʿAflaq. Similar ideas would be promoted in Iraq and across the region by another writer and educator, Satiʿ al-Husri. Labor movements and communist parties developed among workers and intellectuals from Iraq to Morocco, working to overturn “feudal” social relations and institute land reform, labor legislation, and social welfare as the aim of national independence and internationalist solidarity. At the same time, religious revivalists worried about the morally corrosive effects of colonial rule, urban life, and socioeconomic change, and formulated their own schemes for anticolonial activism aimed both at the political independence of territorial states and at a renewed moral vigor in the “Muslim nation” (umma islāmiyya) united across its historic heartlands. Thus the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, and sympathizers with its goals, laid the bases for direct action against colonial occupiers and for mass Islamist politics that would both contribute to nationalist movements and contest the legitimacy of a secular, cross-confessional public sphere as the proper political domain of the community’s self-expression and governance. While formal politics in most countries were dominated by the existing landed, religious, and professional elites who provided the leadership of the Egyptian Wafd, the Syrian National Bloc, or the Tunisian “old” Destour (the Dustur, “Constitution” party, founded in 1920), more dynamic and demanding movements increasingly, over the course of the 1930s and 1940s, gained popular support. Especially in the shape of dis­cip­ lined, paramilitary youth movements modeled on the symbols and practices of the British Scout movement and on European fascist organizations (but without, on the whole, adopting the latter’s ideology), increasing numbers of the rapidly growing younger generation came into the street and into the political sphere.15 While some younger, more assertive, and combative political leaders such as Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) in Tunisia emerged by the mid-1940s to articulate their aspirations and impatience, elsewhere young soldiers such as Gamal Abd al-Nasir (1918–1970) and his brother-officers in Egypt, or young militants of radical-populist parties such as Ahmad Ben Bella, Mohamed Boudiaf, and their colleagues in Algeria, gravitated toward a form of politics that dismissed the old elites’ conservative, gradualist, electoral negotiations, and imagined the rapid achievement of national liberation and development through the overturning of the existing order and the revolutionary seizure of power by force of arms. 15  On youth movements and fascism, see Dueck (2010) on Syria; Jankowski (1975), Jankowski and Gershoni (2010) on Egypt.

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Tensions of Nation Nationalism had become the most powerful political force everywhere in the region by the end of the Second World War, both on the international stage as imperial governments struggled to maintain their influence, and as the principal arena of contest between social groups and political actors within the region. Historians have often emphasized, as political dispute within the region often did, the opposition of qawmiyya, pan-Arab solidarity and the commitment to a single Arab political destiny as the­or­ ized by Satiʿ al-Husri, and as celebrated in the political rhetoric of Baʿthism and Nasserism, and wat ̣aniyya, territorial patriotism focused on the more immediate homeland and its people. In a longer perspective, these apparently irreconcilable standpoints seem to have been more important as twin dimensions of the same, shared political language. Claims to embody and defend the history and future of a larger (pan-)Arab nationalism were always framed within, and could usually only be made operative as, elements of political practice within more local arenas. In official rhetoric, they advanced the particular policies of territorial nation-states, often against other Arab neighbors; as elements of dissent and opposition they were effective barbs against regimes considered either as betraying the larger Arab cause in the service of sectional or “merely” local interests, or as allowing an overinflated rhetoric of transregional unity to endanger the more concrete priorities of national welfare, development, and protection. Similarly, from the early 1970s onward, historians debated the “end” of pan-Arabism as signifying the demise of nationalism, and its supplanting with radical (and both transnational and antinationalist) Islamism. The ideological and physical confrontation between self-described nationalist and Islamist politics in the region has often been bitter. But the diversity of political movements espousing an Islamist agenda, and the importance to most of them of local electoral arenas and national-territorial fields of action, on the one hand, and the long-standing significance of Islamic-revivalist cultural, ideological, and programmatic elements in older forms of nationalism on the other, belie such a simple division.16 In both these examples, rather than seeing the impasse, “failure,” or supersession of nationalism too narrowly construed, we might instead discern the severe but also cre­ative tensions inherent in the politics and the culture of nationalism, reflecting the different scales on which its proponents have operated, its flexibility and vitality as a shared political idiom, its ability to express and project both narrow bids for power and broad popular aspirations. In a similar way, much scholarship has elucidated the centrality of gender to nationalism; in the twentieth century, women mobilized through nationalism as never before in the region’s history, not as inspirational religious figures nor only as supportive 16  An early and influential statement of the “end” of nationalism was Ajami (1978, see also Ajami 1981) for a critical discussion, Owen (2004: 63–65). On the opposition between nationalism and Islamism, see Sivan (1985,  1997); on the persistence of nationalism and commonalities between nationalism and Islamism, Gelvin (1999).

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The Emergence of Nationalism   139 sisters, wives, and mothers to combatant or imprisoned men, but as political actors and constituents in their own right, frequently in public demonstrations or in delegations, as in Egypt in 1919 and in Palestine in the 1930s, sometimes bearing arms, as most famously (although in limited numbers) during the Algerian revolution (1954–1962). At the same time, nationalist politics were preeminently patriarchal, calling on women to subordinate their specific demands for gender equality and emancipation to the greater national struggle, and often asserting socially conservative codes of gender norms as integral to the preservation and protection of the national community. If the nation was habitually figured as female in her endangered honor and in her pristine cultural-spiritual “authenticity,” nationalism was imagined as her masculine protector, provider, and possessor; contests over the proper leadership of the people in their historic, heroic struggle were waged as struggles over legitimate paternity.17 This ambiguity has provided spaces within which demands for women’s emancipation could be repeatedly reformulated, as well as co-opting or neutralizing the challenges of gender equality and other dimensions of claims to social justice within nationalist narratives of in­corp­or­ation and loyalty.18 Such tensions and complexities within the national imaginary and the political practices it made possible have become more central to historical research and debate: the persistent movement of people and ideas across porous territorial frontiers, a major feature of the region since well before the emergence of the contemporary state system, combined with the relative stability of more local networks and centers of power, patronage and prestige; the expanding reach of media accessible to ever-greater numbers of people, from the periodical press to radio, transmitting messages of transregional unity and solidarity and thereby giving larger meaning to very local and specific situations and struggles; the resilience of popular identification with an emancipatory language of Arabism born in the interwar period, despite its subsequent instrumentalization by decades of vacuous rhetoric in repressive military-dominated “bunker states.” All of these factors direct attention to the multiple levels of analysis, or scales of focus, that are necessary to understanding them. If studies of nationalism have always been preoccupied with space, with the limits of the state, and with the spread of nationalist politics across geography and through the strata of society, it has also become more apparent how crucial a role time, too, has played. Historians of nationalism have increasingly paid attention to the ways nationalism has enabled and, at the same time, been produced by new perspectives on the past and future, (re)writing and re-imagining the story of communities, recasting and re-embedding social memories, celebrating, mourning, or selectively erasing past conflict and loss, creatively recombining perspectives on history and aspirations for the future to enable understanding of and change in the present.19 Such processes can be seen to be ongoing, without any clear resolution, 17  See, for example, Lazreg (1994), Abu Lughod (ed.) (1998), Baker (1998), Joseph and Slyomovics (eds) (2001), Fleischmann (2003), Baron (2005), Pollard (2005). 18  See, for example, Vince (2015), Kozma (2003). 19  On the role of history, social memory, and cultural heritage, see Shryock (1997), Jankowski and Gershoni (2004), Davis (2005), Makdisi and Silverstein (eds) (2006), Khalili (2007), Di Capua (2009), Volk (2010), Haugbolle (2010).

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140   james mcdougall rather than as simply “evolutionary” elements of an incomplete (or “failed”) regional quest for modernization. In the revolutionary early months of 2011, shared hope and common aspirations were expressed across the Arab world by popular movements that each espoused their own national symbols—the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, Syrian, and Bahraini flags, and their colors; slogans invoking cross-confessional national unity between Copts and Muslims in Egypt, between Sunnis and Shiʿa in Bahrain. The subsequent conflicts and counter-revolutions, from assassinations in Tunisia through repressions in Bahrain and Egypt to civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Iraq, in turn demonstrated the fragility and manipulation of fault-lines within national communities divided over the meaning of political community and its proper governance. Both the force and the frailty of nationalism have thus remained significant factors in the contemporary history of the Middle East.

Bibliography Abu Lughod, L. (ed.) (1998). Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Ajami, F. (1978). “The End of pan-Arabism,” Foreign Affairs 57,2: 355–373. Ajami, F. (1981). The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso). Antonius, G. (1938). The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National movement (London: Hamish Hamilton). Armstrong, J. (1982). Nations Before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press). Baker, A. (1998). Voices of Resistance: Oral Histories of Moroccan Women (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Baron, B. (2005). Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Breuilly, J. (1982). Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Cole, J. (1993). Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt’s ‘Urabi Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Davis, E. (2005). Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Dawn, C. E. (1973). From Ottomanism to Arabism: Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press). Di Capua, Y. (2009). Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History-Writing in Twentieth Century Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Dueck, J. (2010). The Claims of Culture at Empire’s End: Syria and Lebanon Under French Rule (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fawaz, L. (1994). An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Fleischmann, E. (2003). The Nation and its “New” Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1920–1948 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).

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The Emergence of Nationalism   141 Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell). Gelvin, J. (1997). “The Other Arab Nationalism: Syrian/Arab Populism in its Historical and International Contexts,”, ch. 12 in Jankowski and Gershoni (eds), Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Gelvin, J. (1998). Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Gelvin, J. (1999). “Modernity and its Discontents: On the Durability of Nationalism in the Arab Middle East,” Nations and Nationalism 5,1: 71–89. Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Haim, S. (1962). Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Hakim, C. (2013). The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea, 1840–1920 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Hanioğlu, S. (2008). A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Hartman, M. and A. Olsaretti (2003). “The First Boat and the First Oar: Inventions of Lebanon in the writings of Michel Chiha,” Radical History Review 86: 37–65. Haugbolle, S. (2010). War and Memory in Lebanon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hourani, A. (1983). Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (2nd edn) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hobsbawm, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Jankowski, J. (1975). Egypt’s Young Rebels: “Young Egypt,” 1933–1952 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press). Jankowski, J. and I.  Gershoni (1986). Egypt, Islam and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press). Jankowski, J. and I. Gershoni (eds) (1997). Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Jankowski, J. and I. Gershoni (2004). Commemorating the Nation: Collective Memory, Public Commemoration, and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Chicago, IL: Middle East Documentation Center). Jankowski, J. and I.  Gershoni (2010). Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship Versus Democracy in the 1930s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Joseph, S. and S. Slyomovics (eds) (2001). Women and Power in the Middle East (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press). Kaddache, M. (1993). Histoire du nationalisme algerien: Question nationale et politique algerienne, 1919–1951 (2 vols) (Algiers: Entreprise nationale du livre). Kayali, H. (1997). Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Khalidi, R. (1991). “Arab Nationalism: Historical Problems in the Literature,” American Historical Review 96,5: 1363–1373. Kedourie. E. (1960). Nationalism (London: Hutchinson). Kedourie. E. (1971). Nationalism in Asia and Africa (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Kedourie. E. (1992). Politics in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Khalili, L. (2007). Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Khoury, P. S. (1987). Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

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142   james mcdougall Kozma, L. (2003). “Moroccan Women’s Narratives of Liberation: A Passive Revolution?,” Journal of North African Studies 8,1: 112–130. Lazreg, M. (1994). The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question (London: Routledge). Lewis, B. (1993). The Arabs in History (6th edn) (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Makdisi, U. (2000). The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Makdisi, U. and P. Silverstein (eds) (2006). Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). McDougall, J. (2006). History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Miller, S.G. (2013). A History of Modern Morocco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Owen, R. (2004). State, Power, and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (3rd edn) (London: Routledge). Pennell, C. R. (2000). Morocco Since 1830: A History (London: Hurst). Perkins, K. (2004). A History of Modern Tunisia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pollard, L. (2005). Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing, Colonizing and Liberating Egypt 1805/1923 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Provence, M. (2005). The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press). Provence, M. (2011). “Ottoman Modernity, Colonialism, and Insurgency in the Interwar Arab East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43,2: 205–225. Reid, D. (1997). “Nationalizing the Pharaonic Past: Egyptology, Imperialism, and Egyptian Nationalism, 1922–1952,” ch. 7 in Jankowski and Gershoni (eds), Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Reid, D. (2002). Whose Pharaohs? Archeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Salibi, K. (1988). A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (London: I. B. Tauris). Schilcher, L. S. (1985). Families in Politics: Damascene Factions and Estates of the 18th and 19th Centuries (Wiesbaden: Steiner). Schölch, A. (1981). Egypt for the Egyptians! The Socio-Political Crisis in Egypt, 1878–1882 (London: Ithaca Press). Shehadi, N. and A. Mills (eds) (1988). Lebanon: A History of Conflict and Consensus (London: I. B. Tauris). Shryock, A. (1997). Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Sivan, E. (1985). Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Sivan, E. (1997). “Arab Nationalism in the Age of Islamic Resurgence,” ch. 11 in Jankowski and Gershoni (eds), Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Smith, A. D. (1986). The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell). Stora, B. and Z. Daoud (1995). Ferhat Abbas, une utopie algérienne (Paris: Denoel). Thompson, E. (2000). Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Tibawi, A. (1969). A Modern History of Syria, Including Lebanon and Palestine (London: Macmillan).

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The Emergence of Nationalism   143 Tlili, B. (1974). “Socialistes et jeunes-Tunisiens à la veille de la Grande guerre (1911–1913),” Cahiers de Tunisie 85/86: 49–134. Vince, N. (2015). Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954–2012 (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Volk, L. (2010). Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). White, B. T. (2011). The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Zeine, Z. N. (1966). The Emergence of Arab Nationalism, with a Background Study of ArabTurkish Relations in the Near East (rev. edn) (Beirut: Khayats).

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chapter 8

The M at ter of Secta r i a n ism Max Weiss

Since the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, ubiquitous discussions of sect­ar­ian­ism in the Middle East and North Africa have oscillated wildly around wideranging questions of irredentist religious violence and the intra-Sunni–Shia split that is ostensibly at the core of a struggle for “the soul” of Islam, as if sectarianism represented an ideology or a social movement equivalent to other “-isms” of the modern era. But any adequate exploration of the history and politics of sectarianism must recognize that sect­ar­ian­ism is as much a conceptual problem—one with its own complex and contested history—as an immanent social reality. A quick consideration of the multiple manifestations of sectarianism demonstrates the point: doctrinal difference(s) within a particular religious tradition; rejection or hatred of the other; a structure of feeling that produces particular forms of cultural identity or social solidarity; a political system in which sectarian criteria are institutionalized as the basis for the administration of government. Furthermore, sectarianism may appear as an expression of violent, even murderous, tendencies, as in the case of some salafi–jihadi tactics. It may also be performed in much more quotidian ways, as was the case in Lebanon until 2009, for example, where the requirement was to register one’s marriage or divorce or death records through a court administered by one’s own sectarian community. In other words, despite the tendency of scholarship and journalism to reduce the sectarian (and other forms of difference) to moments of violence, this is only one aspect of constructions of the sectarian in the modern Middle East and North Africa. Indeed, some of the most important and intractable dimensions of sectarian identities, politics, institutions, and cultures in the modern period are what might be called “everyday” or “bricks-and-mortar” forms of sectarianism.1 Simply put, therefore, it is better to think of sectarianisms in the plural in the modern Middle East and North Africa.

1  Cammett and Issar (2010); Weiss (2010).

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The Matter of Sectarianism   145 This chapter discusses how the matter of sectarianism has become a cornerstone of modern Middle East studies, a field with a substantial historiography.2 The scholarly literature on difference in modern North African history is less concerned with sect­ar­ian­ ism as such than with the concerns and social constructions of religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities.3 One major challenge for scholars has been—and continues to be—to offer compelling explanations and analysis of the matter of sectarianism without allowing it to explain everything about the region. While difference and diversity are hardly hallmarks of this region alone, when it comes to the Middle East and North Africa, the construction and maintenance of boundaries between groups defined according to doctrinal, sociological, or identitarian difference often appears to transcend time and space. In sum, a broad range of cultural, intellectual, and scholarly fields has been exercised by these seemingly “peculiar” forms of religious, ethnic, and sectarian difference that, it is all too often claimed, distinguish the Middle East and North Africa. Scholars of the Middle East and North Africa turned to explore the social and cultural histories of nationalism and other ideologies and social movements, ranging from Communism, anarchism, and leftism to pan-Arab nationalism, Baathism, and even right-wing fascism. Sectarianism has often been opposed—both practically and conceptually—to nationalism and internationalism, in ways that are comparable to the construction of ethnic identity, tribalism, and other forms of difference. In pan-Arab nationalist discourse, the slogan “Religion is for God and the Homeland is for All” exemplifies the antipathy—ideologically speaking—of Arab nationalism and “nationstate nationalisms” to religious, ethnic, and sectarian identities. Indeed, the history of the nation and its others in the post-First World War Middle East and North Africa can be read against the “appearance” or enhanced publicity of subnational—i.e. ethnic, religious, and sectarian—groups, which are often lumped under the broad category of “minorities.” By the same token, even Communists and leftists who sought to dissolve differences in the crucible of internationalist or solidarity-based ideology were ul­tim­ ate­ly forced to reckon with the power and force of subnational (and subinternationalist) modes of identification. In many historical cases, though, there has been no necessary contradiction between identifying with one’s community—be that religious, ethnic, or sectarian—and the national idea. For example, Copts and Jews in Egypt have alternatively been labeled as potentially outsiders through a xenophobic variety of Egyptian nationalism while others have found ways to integrate Egyptian difference into an ideology and political practice of nationalist solidarity. In Morocco and Algeria, Berber activists have often thrown their weight behind nationalist initiatives as well as struggles for cultural and legal recognition. The Lebanese Civil War, the quasi-civil war in Syria between the Baath regime and Syrian Islamists and others, the continued repression of Shias and Kurds in Iraq by the regime of Saddam Hussein, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iran–Iraq War, and subsequently globalized and globalizing forms of sectarian 2  Sarah (2000); Tejel (2009); White (2011); Longva and Roald (2012). 3  Gellner and Michaud (1972); Hoffman and Miller (2010); Gottreich (2008).

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146   max weiss rancor and conflict demanded a more careful and complicated explanation of these phenomena. More recently, global discourses on terrorism, Islamist radicalism as well as the generalized chaos spreading across and out of the Middle East and North Africa are crosscut by sweeping generalizations about the history, politics, and possible futures of the sectarian. In other words, the stakes of how we study and how we talk about difference—ethnic, religious, and sectarian—in the modern Middle East and North Africa have never been higher. But such difficulty in pinning down the phenomenon in the first place is similarly at work in language, in the difference, say, between “sectarianism” and “confessionalism” in English, terms often, if problematically, used interchangeably. Confessionalism harks back to sixteenth-century European Christian doctrinal disputes between Protestants and Catholics, while sectarianism may bring to mind ancient schisms within the Jewish and Christian traditions as well as more contemporary outbursts of irrational and inexplicable violence in the Middle East and Northern Ireland. In South Asian studies, the term “communalism” often does the work of “sectarianism,” although there are certainly some important differences to keep in mind between the two. Things get even more difficult for students of sectarianism when considering the concept-history of the term in Arabic. The words most often used to describe the phenomenon are madhhabiyyah and t ̣āʾifiyyah. The former derives from the Arabic word madhhab, which refers to a way or a road but more often is understood as an Islamic “school of law,” although technically more of an informal grouping of Islamic jurists and judges who work according to specific traditions and interpretations of Islamic law.4 In this regard, for simplicity’s sake, madhhabiyyah could be said to have more to do with the notion of confessionalism. By contrast, the term t ̣āʾifah, the root of the term t ̣āʾifiyyah, historically meant simply a group of people, a segment of society. Over the course of the medieval and Early Modern period, the term in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic came to connote a community defined by a shared profession, guilds of leather-workers or ironworkers, for example. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the term t ̣āʾifiyyah started being used to refer to sectarianism in its political, constitutional, and legal forms. In the recent past and into the present, the Arabic term t ̣āʾifiyyah tends to be used in reference to violent conflict. This may seem to be an ersatz detour into etymology, but conceptual and linguistic translation matters a great deal in thinking through the meanings and categories of the scholarly discourse of and on the sectarian. Given its widely varying and various ancient, medieval, and modern forms, sectarianism needs to be understood in the plural, as his­ tor­ic­al­ly contingent sectarianisms, each with its own particular qualities even if some dynamics of the sectarian are shared across time and space.5 Historically speaking, of course, indeed as long as there has been outside interest in “the Orient,” there has been discourse about minorities and sectarianism. In accounts by European travelers recording their sojourns across the Middle East and Islamic world, the diverse peoples of these regions constituted objects of fascination to those foreign 4  Bearman et al. (2005); Bearman et al. (2008); Hallaq (2009).

5  Makdisi (2015).

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The Matter of Sectarianism   147 explorers, who tended to describe local individuals and communities primarily in terms of their ethnic, religious, or sectarian differences. By the same token, questions of minorities and sectarianism, of difference and diversity, have been essential to modern scholarly engagements with the Middle East and Islamic world.6 From the mid-twentieth century, academic currents such as modernization theory, structural–functionalist anthropology, and sociology of religion shed new light on the experience and futures of “minority” and “sectarian” communities. The “new social history” that emerged during the 1970s and after, by contrast, rejected categories such as “religion” and “sect” as superfluous or, more precisely, superstructural; such materialist analysis sought to complicate and, in some instances, supplant culturalist perspectives on ethnic, religious, and sectarian difference. Be that as it may, problems related to ethnic, sectarian, and religious difference asserted themselves more forcefully on the regional and international stage during the last quarter of the twentieth century, in ways that could not be explained by materialist or culturalist explanations alone.

The Emergence of Modern Sectarianism If there is a single distinguishing hallmark of what might be called “modern sect­ar­ian­ ism,” it has had to do with the role of the modern state, which is why scholars of modern sectarianism tend to identify its emergence in relation to the late-eighteenth- and earlynineteenth-century modernizing Ottoman state. In the early modern Ottoman world, Christian and Jewish communities—considered “people of the book” (ahl al-kitāb) in Islamic doctrine, therefore deserving of special yet protected treatment under Muslim political authority—negotiated new relationships with the central state. There remains scholarly debate regarding the implications of attempts at centralization on the part of successive Ottoman rulers through the redefinition of the official relationship with semi­autonomous governing bodies led by elite patriarchs and rabbis.7 By the same token, the changing status and divergent experiences of heterodox Muslim communities across the Middle East and North Africa such as Imami Shias, Alawis, Druze, and Ibadis has also been of prime concern to historians and social scientists.8 Colonial and imperialist interventions in the Middle East and North Africa contributed to the reorganization of social organization, political authority, and cultural life across the region. European conceptions of religious, sectarian, and national difference in the region were transformed during the nineteenth century, in part, due to a language of humanitarianism meant to foster and support anti-Ottoman social and political movements in Greece, Serbia, and, subsequently, the Arab world. The cultivation of 6  Hourani (1947); McLaurin (1979); Chabry and Chabry (1984); Esman and Rabinovich (1988); Nisan (1991); Bengio and Ben-Dor (1999); Ma’oz (1999); Ma’oz and Sheffer (2002); Shatzmiller (2005); Bengio and Litvak (2011); Robson (2016). 7  Braude (1982); Rodrigue (1995a); Rodrigue (1995b); Barkey (2008). 8  Douwes (1993); Firro (2009); Ghazal (2010); Winter (2010); Winter (2015); Winter (2016).

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148   max weiss “special relationships” between European powers and specific religious communities demonstrated the extent to which global as well as local forces shaped the conditions of possibility for the rise of sectarian sentiment. The violent colonization of Algeria (and other North African territories) and its ultimate annexation to the French state was predicated on a fierce logic of divide and rule, administratively and legally separating Berbers and Jews from the majority Sunni Muslim population.9 French missionary activities among Maronite Catholics in Mount Lebanon contributed to the outsize influence of that community even as the country was redistricted and reimagined under the Ottomans.10 In the wake of violent events in Mount Lebanon during the 1840–60 period, a new model for dealing with difference was cooked up: a sectarian model for political organization.11 Urban violence in Aleppo, Damascus, and Beirut signified the arrival of a new stage in the history of modern sectarian politics.12 Broadly speaking, the encounter with European colonial and imperialist power in the mid-nineteenth century resulted in the reconfiguration of status hierarchies and new struggles over resources, power, and influence in the cities and in the countryside throughout the eastern Mediterranean. These developments set into motion transformative processes with profound consequences for the emergence of new forms of sectarian identity and institutions in the decades to come.

Sectarianism of the Street, Sectarianism of the State If shifting relationships between Europe and the Middle East as well as the transforming nature of imperial state–society relations across the Middle East and North Africa transformed the conditions of possibility for the emergence of new forms of sectarian identity in the nineteenth century, the colonial encounter in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries proved even more disruptive. From Algeria to Syria, from Iraq to Egypt, the advent of various forms of colonial rule contributed to the institutionalization of politics, culture, and identities along sectarian, religious, and ethnic lines. In addition to the difference between “confessional” differences within a given religious tradition (madhhabiyyah), and the interreligious differences that can also be perceived as sectarian iterations (t ̣aʾifiyyah), discussed earlier, sectarianism that originates in popu­lar form can be distinguished from state-generated forms of sectarianism.13 In other words, varieties of sectarian thinking and practice cooked up by colonial administrators in Lebanon or Iraq are quite distinct from those senses of affiliation and forms of 9  Burke (1973); Silverstein (2002); McDougall (2003); Schreier (2007); Kohl (2014). 10  Kaufman (2004); Hakim (2013). 11  Makdisi (2000); Hanssen (2005); Hakim (2013). 12  Masters (1990); Masters (2001); Makdisi (2002); Rogan (2004). 13  I have referred to these elsewhere as “sectarianism from above” and “sectarianism from below.” Weiss (2010).

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The Matter of Sectarianism   149 cultural practice that may be widely felt and deeply held by individuals, families, and communities around the Middle East and North Africa. Notions such as “sectarianism of the street” or “sectarianism of the state” only begin to articulate the range of sensibilities, practices, and forms of discourse that have served as indices of the sectarian. In the eastern Mediterranean during the first half of the twentieth century, the French and the British colonial powers converted excessive attention on “endangered” mi­nor­ ities into the very structure of rule under the aegis of the League of Nations Mandate Systems, further enervating the problem of sectarian difference. In 1936, French geog­ raph­er Jacques Weulersse offered a clear-eyed assessment regarding the ironically dele­ teri­ous consequences that such colonial “protection” of minorities in Syria and Lebanon could have on those communities. From both a “political and moral” standpoint, Western governments and militaries had “a responsibility that cannot be exaggerated. A politique de minorités is a beautiful thing. But it must also be said that to bring [mi­nor­ ities] into existence is to awaken them to unhappiness and suffering, that to protect them is to risk their condemnation.”14 In this regard, one can immediately discern the connection between “protection” in a colonial mindset—and this should immediately bring to mind more contemporary discussions of “responsibility to protect” (R2P), for ex­ample—and protection as a coercive bargain made between parties with unequal access to power. On the heels of their extensive experience of violent colonialism across North Africa, particularly in Algeria since 1830, the French colonial model of divide and rule was introduced in contradictory ways, presenting new challenges for reconciling sectarian difference to nationalist aspirations in Syria and Lebanon. In Lebanon, a sectarian framework of rule first cultivated in the mid-nineteenth century was formalized and made more durable. A comparable albeit less explicit version of rule-by-difference was proposed in the case of Mandate Syria but ultimately foundered. The struggle for power in Syria played out in boardrooms in Geneva and Paris but also in the streets of Damascus and Aleppo. The metropolitan colonial mindset oriented itself around hoary conceptions of sectarian and ethnic difference while simultaneously putting forth an administrative logic that enshrined those differences in bureaucracy and law. Meanwhile, nationalist leaderships ignored the politics of sectarian, religious, and ethnic difference at their own peril, with unintended consequences including political unrest and social turmoil that emerged during the early decades of Syrian independence.15 Hasan al-Alawi explores the relationship between the Iraqi Shia community and the “national state” during the twentieth century.16 Al-Alawi is interested in how the Iraqi state and attendant institutions within Iraqi society underwent a process of “madhhab­ ization” (tamadhhub). Skeptical that there was any kind of popular sectarianism, or, in his words, “sectarianism of the street,” al-Alawi defines this “madhhab-ization” as a political process that reinforced vertical social cleavages “from above.” In addition to the 14  Weulersse (1936: 38). 15  Mervin (2006); Altuğ (2011); White (2011); Weiss (2015); Weiss (2018).

16  al-Alawi (1991).

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150   max weiss resultant madhhabization of each community, therefore, al-Alawi perceives the madhhabization of the national state as being among the most pernicious qualities of contemporary Iraqi political life. This was particularly deleterious for the Shia community, as the “madhhabization of the state” facilitated the formal exclusion of the Shia and the impugning of their “national identity.” Consequently, Iraqi state–Shia society relations were characterized by “constant tension, misconceptions, lack of confidence and mutual mistrust.”17 As in the case of Lebanon, the construction of an inclusive national identity in Iraq hinged on the erasure or at least the submersion of certain “minority” cultural and religious forms of belonging. In both cases, subnational loyalties were maintained at the same time as they were ostensibly rejected, at the level of the national state and among the subnational communities themselves. British colonial rule in Egypt, as well as under the Mandate regimes in Iraq and Palestine, faced similar challenges in managing rebellious populations and rising anticolonial movements. In the case of British-ruled Egypt (1882–1952), for example, Jews, Coptic Christians, and other minorities such as Greeks, Italians, and Armenians who might be perceived or treated as “internal others” occupied a shifting role between inclusive cosmopolitanism and exclusivist varieties of nationalism and pan-Islam. But any attempt to reduce the history of modern Egypt to some age-old conception of Egyptian Muslims lording over passive Christian and Jewish communities is ultimately incomplete and inaccurate. Indeed, the ebb and flow of exclusivist varieties of nationalism in Egypt (as elsewhere) has been defined by materialist as well as discursive factors. Moreover, these relationships have changed over time, and need to be apprehended with a historical mindset. Following the 1952 Egyptian “revolution,” the status of minority communities changed once again.18 In Iraq under British Mandate (1920–32), the establishment of an altogether new monarchy allowed for the British–Iraqi regime to exploit clientelist relationships that took advantage of tribal, regional, and ethnosectarian difference. Both under British rule and after, power-sharing came to be seen as an essential component for cementing political rule in Iraq.19 In Palestine under British rule (1920–48), the Palestinian–Jewish conflict increasingly acquired the trappings of sectarianism, as intranational differences would splinter the Palestinian nationalist and Zionist state-building and social mobilization projects. More recent scholarship has begun to consider the Arab–Israeli conflict through the analytical lens of sectarianism.20 As intriguing as these lines of research may be, it would be inaccurate to reduce the nationalist struggle for material and symbolic resources in Palestine/Israel to sectarian ex­plan­ations. Whatever the case, the experience of these diverse historical trajectories suggest that historians and social scientists need to take more seriously the dialectical relationship between sectarianism of the state and sectarianisms of the street in the forging of polities, societies, and identities across the modern Middle East and North Africa, but 17 al-ʿAlawi (1991, 167). 18  Beinin (1998); Ibrahim (2011); Tadros (2011); Tadros (2013); Sedra (2014). 19  Dodge (2003); Sluglett (1976); Sluglett and Sluglett (1978). 20  Robson (2011); Haiduc-Dale (2013).

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The Matter of Sectarianism   151 also to determine when the matter of sectarianism should take precedence, and when it should take a back seat.

Authoritarian Sectarians The nature of colonial rule during the first half of the twentieth century in these various national settings had contradictory consequences for the establishment of political authority in the post-independence period. This negotiation was bound up with the tension between national aspirations and subnational loyalties—ethnic, sectarian, tribal— as well as supranational bonds, as in the case of pan-Islamism and political Islam throughout the twentieth century. The course of state-building and state failure in the Middle East and North Africa were defined, in part, with respect to the problem of sect­ ar­ian­ism. The dramatic series of episodes of bloodletting that constituted what is called the Lebanese civil war (1975–90), or what the Lebanese refer to simply as “the events” (al-aḥdāth), came to stand as a metonym for sectarianism and its violent repercussions. Although statistics remain inconclusive, some 250,000 people are believed to have died over the course of the conflict. Alongside the disruption of the country caused by the influx of three-quarters of a million Palestinian refugees from Palestine/Israel and Jordan, increasingly strident calls for the desectarianization of Lebanese government, bureaucracy, and social formations had the tragically reverse consequence of polarizing sectarian parties, movements, and everyday life. The Lebanese case demonstrated the emergence of radical antisectarian movements and intellectuals in Lebanon and beyond, as with the case of Kamal Jumblatt and his Progressive Socialist Party, founded in 1949, which increasingly called for the deconfessionalization of the Lebanese political system and bureaucracy during the 1960s.21 But the situation in mid- to late twentiethcentury Lebanon also helps to clarify many of the contradictions bound up with discourse on sectarianism and minorities. The Shia community in Lebanon, for example, has for decades constituted the plurality of the population in Lebanon, which remains unrecognized due to the lack of an official census since the French conducted one in 1932, but behaves and is treated as if it were a minority. Assertions of Shia identity in Lebanon are often taken to be indicative of “sectarian” assertion or even danger to other sectarian communities. To be sure, they often were, as in the case of the mobilization of the community under the charismatic leadership of Imam Musa al-Sadr and in the behavior of Hizballah. But the foundational examples of “sectarian community” in Lebanon belong to the various Christian communities as well as the Druze.22 The horrifying experience of the Lebanese civil war also precipitated crucial and crit­ ic­al consideration by Middle Eastern intellectuals directly engaged with the problem of sectarianism. To name just a few, in Lebanon, Mahdi Amil and Ahmad Baydoun, in 21  Richani (1998).

22  Khalaf (1968); Shararah (1975); Saghieh (1991); Weiss (2009).

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152   max weiss Syria, Burhan Ghalioun and Bu Ali Yasin, and in Iraq, Hasan al-Alawi and others have diagnosed and critically explored the history, present, and possible futures of sect­ar­ian­ ism.23 Amil (d. 1987) was not only concerned with exposing the limitations of sect­ar­ian­ ism as an explanatory principle for the nature of Lebanese society (perhaps with implications that extend beyond Lebanon), but also to establish a method for utilizing Marxist concepts and principles in order to deconstruct state power as well as “sect­ar­ ian­ism.” Following Louis Althusser, Amil suggests that the sectarian may be disarticulated as a conglomerate of ideological state apparatuses.24 By contrast, the Syrian sociologist Burhan Ghalioun, who teaches at the Sorbonne and served briefly as the president of the mainstream Syrian opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, has suggested that a robust form of liberal multiculturalism would be an adequate anathema to the scourge of sectarianism in Syria.25 The work of French sociologist Michel Seurat also grew out of his experience living (and ultimately dying) in Lebanon and Syria during the Lebanese civil war, and has been hugely significant in this regard, as he drew on the concept of ʿasabiyya (solidarity) first interrogated by the fourteenth-century North African historian and traveler Ibn Khaldun as a way of thinking about the relationship between centralized political authority and centrifugal forces in society, between settled rule and nomadic movement. The notion, broadly conceived, was that subnational bonds of solidarity (ʿasabiyya) were strong ties that could present serious, even fatal, challenges to the power of central authorities. The danger of the theory of ʿasabiyya was its reference to a sort of culturally dictated, ingrained feature of social organization that could not be tamed, or structured, or integrated into modern systems of government and social administration.26 However one wishes to read the history and theory of sectarianism produced by Middle Eastern and Western intellectuals during the twentieth century, it would seem undeniable that the phenomenon has informed some examples of authoritarian rule across the region from the 1970s onwards as well. Although they ruled in the name of pan-Arab nationalism and Baathism, for example, during the 1970s to 1990s, the “revolutionary” Syrian and Iraqi regimes often reflected clear sectarian tendencies. The repressive nature of the Syrian Baathist regime under Hafiz al-Assad led to the outbreak of nonviolent but also armed resistance to the regime, leading to a conflict (some call it a civil war) between 1979 and 1982 that acquired sectarian overtones.27 There has been much debate concerning the extent to which the post-1970 Syrian Baath regime deserves to be labeled an “Alawi regime.”28 It is worth remembering, with the sage words of Eberhard Kienle, that “a monopoly by Alawites is not the same thing as saying a monopoly by the Alawites.”29 Be that as it may, the constitution promulgated by President Hafiz al-Assad and his advisers in 1973—the Permanent Constitution of the Syrian Arab 23  Ghalyun (1979; 1990; 2006); Beydun (1984); ʿAmil (1985); ʿAmil (1989); ʿAlawi (1991); al-Hajj Salih (2007). 24  ʿAmil (1985; 1989). 25  Ghalyun (1979; 1990). 26  Seurat (1989). 27  Khatib (2011); Pierret (2011); Lefèvre (2013). 28  Balanche (2009; 2014); van Dam (1979); Picard (1980); Seurat (1984). 29  Kienle (1992: 14).

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The Matter of Sectarianism   153 Republic—was perceived to denigrate a key article of previous Syrian constitutions, namely, that the president of the Syrian polity would by law be a Sunni Muslim; the absence of this clause in the draft of the new constitution seemed to at once undermine the Sunni Islamic character of Syria and insinuate “Alawi power” into government and law. This, in turn, elicited massive opposition and street protests, which ultimately resulted in the article in question being reinserted. Partly as an attempt to make amends for this gaffe, al-Assad borrowed a move from Anwar al-Sadat’s playbook and sought to reinvent himself as “the believer president” (al-raʾīs al-muʾmin), attempting to downplay his own Alawi background while also seeking to undermine theological stridency that rejected Alawi jurisprudence as outside the fold. In this context, al-Assad sought the imprimatur of a figure no less significant than Imam Musa al-Sadr in Lebanon, who pronounced the inclusion of Alawi jurisprudence and religious practice within the parameters of mainline Twelver Shia Islam. It seemed hardly to matter that this opinion had already been proclaimed several times, and not only by Shia religious figures, as far back as 1936 when the Palestinian mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni made a similar pronouncement.30 These moments need not only be read in relation to sectarianism, but might also be understood in terms of a history of negotiation and tolerance within the Islamic world—the history of antisectarianism on a regional scale—often visible in terms of the pursuit of rapprochement among the conflicting branches of Islam (taqrīb or taqarrub); while studied in some scholarly contexts, this phenomenon remains relatively underappreciated in wider circles.31 In Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, many public figures not only endorsed but also struggled in the name of religious harmony and the eschewing of sectarianism. As mentioned above, the Progresssive Socialist Party (PSP), formed in 1949 by the Druze notable Kamal Jumblatt, as well as various leftist parties and social movements in Lebanon espoused a harsh criti­cism of the sectarian system, seeking to promote social justice but also the undermining of sectarian sinecures in matters of government and bureaucracy as well as sectarian difference in Lebanese culture and society. Returning to the case of Syria, those gestures of tolerance and concord by Hafiz alAssad and his regime were perceived as paying mere lip service, and the conflict between the regime and an opposition increasingly defined in sectarian terms escalated through the period from 1979 to 1982. Terrorist attacks on military academies in Aleppo and Hama as well as other acts of urban guerrilla warfare against regime targets resulted in savage reprisals by the Syrian regime, which resulted in the decimation of the city of Hama and the concomitant slaughter of nearly 20,000 people, according to conservative estimates. Tens of thousands of activists—and not only political Islamists—were imprisoned in the Syrian carceral archipelago, from the harsh torture centers of Sednaya to the desert prison in Palmyra (Tadmor). Even during and after the bloody events in Syria during the 1970s and 1980s, scholars continued to debate the extent to which “sect­ ar­ian­ism” or minority complexes should be used to explain them. 30  Boneschi (1940); Kramer (1987).

31  Brunner (2004).

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154   max weiss A similarly tragic and violent negotiation ensued in Iraq during the same period, in large measure due to the complications of establishing pluralistic rule in the face of ethnic and sectarian diversity. Defense Minister Saddam Hussein seized power in a putsch in 1969, constructing a kin-based, clientist regime in which sectarianism was similarly veiled yet omnipresent. As in Syria, the Iraqi branch of the Baath Party claimed to rule in the name of secular Arab nationalism.32 However, the particularly fierce interpretation of this ideology led to a violent campaign of “Arabization” that targeted the Kurdish community not only with cultural “reeducation” but the use of chemical weapons and other military means of repression. The regime also contributed to the othering of the Iraqi Shiite population in such a way that stirred up sectarian sentiment. Consequently, opposition to the Baath regime in Iraq, from the mid-1960s through the 2000s was often expressed in ethnonational and sectarian forms, in ways both guarded and explicit. The Iraqi regime’s assassination of key Shia leaders and intellectuals such as Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, his sister Bint al-Huda, and others only inflamed these sentiments. In the aftermath of the US-led Gulf War against Iraq in 1990–91, which led to the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait but did little to weaken the Iraqi regime itself, Saddam Hussein smashed “Shia” and “Kurdish” uprisings in the southern and northern provinces of the country. An ensuing war of narratives emerged, particularly in the 1990s, illustrating the ways in which cultural memory of sectarianism can also play an important part in shaping national and subnational identities as well as influence the course of popular and official politics. By the same token, it should be emphasized that to reduce sectarian difference in the Iraqi case to competing visions of nationalist aspiration is also too simplistic.33 Meanwhile, while the eight-year Iran–Iraq War (1980–88) must be understood in terms of power politics and national security interests, to say nothing of foreign intervention and provocation as well as the stunning human casualties on both sides amounting to over 800,000 people, the conflict’s consequences and effects were also profound for the shaping of sectarian politics around the region, in particular the Persian Gulf. The Islamic revolution in Iran was one of the most important global events of the late twentieth century, not least due to its profound impact on the spread of Shia radicalism around the region, inspiring ideologues and social movements that drew strength from Khomeini’s populist message but also his ideas of the guardianship of the jurist (velayet-i faqih). If the “export of the revolution” constituted one pillar of revolutionary Iran’s foreign policy, Saudi Arabia also played its part in the globalization of sectarianism during the 1970s and after. The spread and collision of these divergent local and regional forces played out in various ways in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the Gulf States. In the case of Saudi Arabia, for example, millenarian radicalism inspired by Wahhabi ideas led to the occupation and subsequent siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca in 1979. Less remarked but no less significant was a “rebellion on the Saudi periphery,” among Twelver Shiites in the Eastern Province that same year. In the case of Bahrain, a Shiite majority ruled by a 32  Kienle (1990); Mufti (1996). 33  Davis (2005); Haddad (2011); Sassoon (2012); Khoury (2013).

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The Matter of Sectarianism   155 Sunni monarchy would increasingly be accused of playing the sectarian card even as the regime tarred regime opponents in specifically sectarian ways. More recently, the assertion of the power of ascendant petro-monarchies such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates has taken form in the funneling of resources towards some of the most sectarian militias and movements in the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq.34

Towards the Globalization of Sectarianism? Following the terrorist attacks against New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, the world became obsessed with the question of what is now typ­ ic­al­ly referred to as salafi–jihadi militancy. In the context of the hastily assembled “Global War on Terrorism,” which initially entailed a military offensive in Afghanistan as well as the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the question of sectarianism skyrocketed to near-ubiquity throughout global political discourse on the Middle East and North Africa, on the Islamic world more broadly. But is sectarianism a useful category of scholarly analysis? Are “sectarianism” and “minorities” adequate analytical categories for understanding modern and contemporary Middle East and North Africa? Whereas the study of the modern Middle East and North Africa had long been ­concerned with questions of minorities and sectarianism as factual realities, scholars should more crit­ic­a l­ly analyze the emergence of “the minority” and “the sectarian” in terms of their discursive, conceptual, and practical aspects. Important work on south Asia over the past few decades, for example, might be one fruitful line of comparative inquiry.35 It remains imperative to recognize that sectarianism is not a simple phenomenon. Since “the sectarian” is not a coherent category of analysis, it does not make sense to attempt to write a comprehensive narrative of “sectarianism” or “minorities” in the modern Middle East and North Africa. Rather, historians may attempt to describe and understand what might be called “sectarian episodes” and “sectarian continuities.” Sectarianism is often linked to expressions of violence—be that colonial, state-driven, popular, or linguistic. Sectarianism is also produced, maintained, and reinforced through everyday, less perceptible types of social, religious, and political practice. Any attempt to reckon with the full force of sectarian ways of being in the Middle East and North Africa must recognize the discursive and the material underpinnings of these phenomena, the ascribed as well as the voluntarist form of sectarian identities. What these explosive episodes throw into relief, however, is the relative infrequency of such moments in the history of the modern Middle East and North Africa. Indeed, given the 34  Jones (2005; 2006; 2007); Trofimov (2007); Louër (2008; 2012); Matthiesen (2013); Wehrey (2014); Matthiesen (2015); Fuchs (2015). 35  Chatterjee (1993); Zubaida (2002); Appadurai (2006).

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156   max weiss fact that various models for both managing and celebrating difference have been experimented with over time, the current obsession with the problem of sectarianism runs the risk of projecting backwards into history a notion of unchanging discord and division across the region. To restate, it is too simplistic to argue for or against sectarianism as a category of analysis. It is more fruitful for scholars and observers to think with and against the categorization of society, culture, politics, and history within crudely circumscribed blocs, whether those concern sect, class, tribe, region, or any other sociological framework. Critics of Orientalism and Middle East studies accuse scholars of bearing responsibility for perpetuating (or, in some more extreme cases, producing) sectarianism. While there is an element of truth to this claim, it remains to be seen how willful ignorance or aversion of the phenomenon on the part of the scholars and other observers of the Middle East and North Africa would contribute in any way to its diminishment or disappearance. Quite the contrary, more careful scholarship on the histories, circumstances, and conditions of possibility for sectarianism—in relation to secularism, but also in relation to religion itself—might help to create other ways of talking about difference in the contemporary and future Middle East and North Africa. “Sectarianism” has come to function as a kind of catch-all term, to stand in for all manner of religious and other differences across the region. But sectarianism does not work as an analytical category; it cannot account for all instances of ethnic, cultural, religious, or geographical discord. The problem with modern scholarship on sectarianism, therefore, is not only that it carelessly and inaccurately transforms sectarianism into an analytical category rather than an object of study and critique, but rather that it tends to ignore the ways in which the sectarian intersects with and has been produced or exacerbated by other social, political, and cultural factors. It remains imperative to consider the work that sectarianism does in the world, but it is equally important to interrogate critically how undue attention to sectarianism forecloses the possibility of other research questions and modes of engagement with the modern and contemporary Middle East and North Africa. It would be more appropriate to approach sectarianism as a his­tor­ic­al­ly conditioned problem, one whose manifestations and effects must be carefully contextualized within local, regional, and global frames. By attending to these multiple iterations of the sectarian—its premises, politics, and social practices— historians, political analysts, and other observers are better suited to break down rigid categorical modes of analysis without necessarily turning away from the significance of sectarian phenomena, forms of discourse, and identity, to sectarianisms in the plural. In other words, the matter of sectarianism has as much to do with conceptual framing as it does with historical reality, as much to do with the observers as the observed. In this light, a responsible reckoning with the real stakes, dangers, and consequences of sect­ar­ian­ism—its histories, present, and possible futures—demands a scholarly and political approach that would neither flinch from identifying the sectarian when it appears nor carelessly impose a rigidly sectarianist vision on the region and its histories.

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The Matter of Sectarianism   157

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158   max weiss Dam, Nikolaos van (1979). The Struggle for Power in Syria: Sectarianism, Regionalism, and Tribalism in Politics, 1961–1978 (London: Croom Helm). Davis, Eric (2005). Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Dodge, Toby (2003). Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (New York: Columbia University Press). Douwes, Dick (1993). “Knowledge and Oppression: The Nusayriyya in the Late Ottoman Period,” in Convegno sul tema: la Shʿia nell’impero ottomano (Roma, 15 aprile 1991) (Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei), 149–169. Esman, Milton  J. and Itamar Rabinovich (1988). Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Firro, Kais (2009). Metamorphosis of the Nation (Al-Umma): The Rise of Arabism and Minorities in Syria and Lebanon, 1850–1940 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press). Fuchs, Simon Wolfgang (2015). “Relocating the Centers of Shīʿī Islam: Religious Authority, Sectarianism, and the Limits of the Transnational in Colonial India and Pakistan,” PhD diss., Princeton University. Gellner, Ernest and Charles A. Michaud (1972). Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books). Ghalyun, Burhan (1979). Al-Masʾalah al-tāʾfiyyah wa-mushkilāt al-aqalliyyāt (Beirut: Dar al-Taliʿah. Ghalyun, Burhan (1990). Niẓām al-tāʾifiyyah min al-dawlah ilā al-qabīlah (Beirut: al-Markaz al- Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī). Ghalyun, Burhan (2006). “Naqd mafhūm al-t ̣āʾifiyyah,” al-Adāb 10/11/12, 82–85. Ghazal, Amal (2010). “The Other Frontiers of Arab Nationalism: Ibadis, Berbers, and the Arabist-Salafi Press in the Interwar Period,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42,1 (February): 105–122. Gottreich, Emily Benichou (2008). “Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Maghrib,” Jewish Quarterly Review 98, 4 (Fall): 433–451. Haddad, Fanar (2011). Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity (London: Hurst & Company). Haiduc-Dale, Noah (2013). Arab Christians in British Mandate Palestine: Communalism and Nationalism, 1917–1948 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Hajj Salih, Yasin al- (2007). “Sināʿat al-t ̣awāʾif: al-t ̣āʾifiyyah bi wasfihā istrātījiyyatu sayt ̣aratin siyāsiyyah,” al-Adāb 1–2: 38–44. Hakim, Carol (2013). The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea, 1840–1920 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Hallaq, Wael  B. (2009). Sharīʿa: Theory, Practice, Transformations (New York: Cambridge University Press). Hanssen, Jens (2005). Fin-De-siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hoffman, Katherine E. and Susan Gilson Miller (2010). Berbers and Others: Beyond Tribe and Nation in the Maghrib (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Hourani, Albert (1947). Minorities in the Arab World (London: Oxford University Press). Ibrahim, Vivian (2011). The Copts of Egypt: Challenges of Modernisation and Identity (London: Tauris Academic Studies). Jones, Toby Craig (2005). “The Iraq Effect in Saudi Arabia,” Middle East Report 237 (Winter): 20–25.

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The Matter of Sectarianism   159 Jones, Toby Craig (2006). “Rebellion on the Periphery: Modernity, Marginalization, and the Shia Uprising of 1979,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38,2 (May): 213–233. Jones, Toby Craig (2007). “Saudi Arabia’s Not So New Anti-Shi’ism,” Middle East Report 242 (Spring): 29–32. Kaufman, Asher (2004). Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for Identity in Lebanon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004). Khalaf, Samir (1968). “Primordial Ties and Politics in Lebanon,” Middle East Journal 4, 3 (April): 243–269. Khatib, Line (2011). Islamic Revivalism in Syria: The Rise and Fall of Baʿthist Secularism (New York: Routledge). Khoury, Dina Rizk (2013). Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance (New York: Cambridge University Press). Kienle, Eberhard (1990). Baʿth v. Baʿth: The Conflict Between Syria and Iraq, 1968–1989 (London: I. B. Tauris). Kienle, Eberhard (1992). Entre jamaʾa et classe: le pouvoir politique en Syrie (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch). Kohl, Ines (2014). “Libya’s ‘Major Minorities’. Berber, Tuareg and Tebu: Multiple Narratives of Citizenship, Language and Border Control,” Middle East Critique 23,4: 423–438. Kramer, Martin S. (1987). “Syria’s Alawis and Shiʿism,” in Shiʿism, Resistance, and Revolution, ed. M. Kramer (Boulder, CO: Westview Press), 237–254. Lefèvre, Raphaël (2013). Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (New York: Oxford University Press). Longva, Anh Nga and Anne Sofie Roald (2012). Religious Minorities in the Middle East: Domination, Self-Empowerment, Accommodation (Leiden: Brill). Louër, Laurence (2008). Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (London: Hurst & Company). Louër, Laurence (2012). Shiism and Politics in the Middle East (London: Hurst & Company). Makdisi, Ussama (2000). The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Makdisi, Ussama (2002). “After 1860: Debating Religion, Reform, and Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34,4 (November): 601–617. Makdisi, Ussama (2015). “Diminished Sovereignty and the Impossibility of ‘Civil War’ in the Modern Middle East,” American Historical Review 120,5(December): 1739–1752. Ma’oz, Moshe (1999). Middle Eastern Minorities: Between Integration and Conflict (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy). Ma’oz, Moshe and Gabriel Sheffer (eds) (2002). Middle Eastern Minorities and Diasporas (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press). Masters, Bruce (1990). “The 1850 Events in Aleppo: An Aftershock of Syria’s Incorporation Into the World Capitalist System,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 22,1 (February): 3–20. Masters, Bruce (2001). Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Matthiesen, Toby (2013). Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Matthiesen, Toby (2015). The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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160   max weiss McDougall, James (2003). “Myth and Counter-Myth: ‘The Berber’ as National Signifier in Algerian Historiographies,” Radical History Review 86 (Spring): 66–88. McLaurin, R. D. (1979). The Political Role of Minority Groups in the Middle East (New York: Praeger). Mervin, Sabrina (2006). “L’«entité alaouite», une création française,” in Le choc colonial et l’islam: les politiques religieuses des puissances coloniales en terres d’islam, ed. Pierre-Jean Luizard (Paris: La Découverte), 343–358. Mufti, Malik (1996). Sovereign Creations: Pan-Arabism and Political Order in Syria and Iraq (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Nisan, Mordechai (1991). Minorities in the Middle East: A History of Struggle and SelfExpression (Jefferson, NC: McFarland). Picard, Elisabeth (1980). “Y-a-t-il un problème communautaire en Syrie?” Maghreb-Machrek 87: 7–21. Pierret, Thomas (2011). Baas et Islam en Syrie: la dynastie Assad face aux oulémas (Paris: Presses universitaires de France). Robson, Laura (2011). Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press). Robson, Laura (ed.) (2016). Minorities and the Modern Arab World: New Perspectives (Middle East Studies Beyond Dominant Paradigms) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Richani, Nazih (1998). Dilemmas of Democracy and Political Parties in Sectarian Societies: The Case of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon 1949–1996 (New York: St. Martin’s Press). Rodrigue, Aron (1995a). “Difference and Tolerance in the Ottoman Empire: Interview By Nancy Reynolds,” Stanford Humanities Review 5,1: 81–90. Rodrigue, Aron (1995b). “From Millet to Minority: Turkish Jewry,” in Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson (eds), Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 238–261. Rogan, Eugene L. (2004). “Sectarianism and Social Conflict in Damascus: The 1860 Events Reconsidered,” Arabica 51,4: 493–511. Saghieh, Hazem (1991). Taʿrīb al-katāʾib al-lubnāniyyah: al-ḥizb, al-sult ̣ah, al-khawf (Beirut: Dar al-Jadid). Sarah, Fayiz (2000). Aqalliyāt fī sharq al-mutawassit ̣ (Damascus: Dar Mashriq-Maghrib). Sassoon, Joseph (2012). Saddam Hussein’s Baʿth Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (New York: Cambridge University Press). Schreier, Joshua (2007). “Napoléon’s Long Shadow: Morality, Civilization, and Jews in France and Algeria, 1808–1870,” French Historical Studies 30,1 (Winter): 77–103. Sedra, Paul (2014). “Copts and the Millet Partnership: The Intra-Communal Dynamics Behind Egyptian Sectarianism,” Journal of Law and Religion 29,3 (October): 491–509. Seurat, Michel (writing as Gérard Michaud) (1984). “Terrorisme d’état, terrorisme contre l’ètat,” Esprit (octobre–novembre): 188–201. Seurat, Michel (writing as Gérard Michaud) (1989). L’État de barbarie (Paris: Seuil). Shararah, Waddah (1975). Fī uṣūl Lubnān al-t ̣āʾifī: khat ̣t ̣ al-yamīn al-jamāhīrī (Beirut: Dar al-Taliʿah). Shatzmiller, Maya (2005). Nationalism and Minority Identities in Islamic Societies (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press). Silverstein, Paul (2002). “The Kabyle Myth: The Production of Ethnicity in Colonial Algeria,” in Brian Keith Axe (ed.), From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 122–155.

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The Matter of Sectarianism   161 Sluglett, Peter (1976). Britain in Iraq, 1914–1932 (London: Ithaca Press). Sluglett, Peter and Marion Farouk-Sluglett (1978). “Some Reflections on the Sunni/Shiʿi Question in Iraq,” Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies) 5,2: 79–87. Tadros, Mariz (2011). “Sectarianism and Its Discontents in Post-Mubarak Egypt,” Middle East Report 41,2: 26–31. Tadros, Mariz (2013). Copts At the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Contemporary Egypt (New York: American University in Cairo Press). Tejel, Jordi (2009). “Repenser les nationalismes «minoritaires»: le nationalisme kurde en Irak et en Syrie durant la période des mandats (entre tradition et modernité),” A contrario 11 (mars): 151–173. Trofimov, Yaroslav (2007). The Siege of Mecca: The 1979 Uprising at Islam’s Holiest Shrine (New York: Doubleday). Wehrey, Frederic  M. (2014). Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprisings (New York: Columbia University Press). Weiss, Max (2009). “The Historiography of Sectarianism in Lebanon,” History Compass 7: 141–154. Weiss, Max (2010). In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, ShiʾIsm, and the Making of Modern Lebanon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Weiss, Max (2015). “Community, Sect, Nation: Colonial and Social Scientific Discourses on the ʿAlawis in Syria during the French Mandate and Early Independence Periods,” in Michael Kerr and Craig Larkin (eds), The ʿAlawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant (New York: Oxford University Press), 63–75. Weiss, Max (2018). “Mosaic, Melting Pot, Pressure Cooker: The Religious, the Secular, and the Sectarian in Modern Syrian Social Thought,” in Max Weiss and Jens Hanssen (eds), Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age. (New York: Cambridge University Press), 181–202. Weulersse, Jacques (1936). “Aspects permanents du problème syrien: la question des minorités,” Politique étrangère 1,1: 29–38. White, Benjamin Thomas (2011). The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Winter, Stefan (2010). The Shiites of Lebanon Under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1788 (New York: Cambridge University Press). Winter, Stefan (2015). “The ʿAlawis in the Ottoman Period,” in Michael Kerr and Craig Larkin (eds), The ʿAlawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant (New York: Oxford University Press), 49–62. Winter, Stefan (2016). A Secular History of the ʿAlawis: From Medieval Syria to the Turkish Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Zubaida, Sami (2002). “The Fragments Imagine the Nation: The Case of Iraq,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34, 2 (May): 205–215.

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chapter 9

K em a lism a n d Beyon d Christopher Houston

Kemalism is the name “given to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s party’s political thought and practice – and [to] the persistently official and semiofficial, hegemonic ideology of the Turkish Republic.”1 Although Kemalism attained its most succinct definition in the program of the Republican People’s Party in 1931 in the metaphor of its six “arrows” (republicanism; nationalism; populism; laicism; transformationism; statism), many of its key concepts and actions can be traced back to the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) or the Young Turks, in the late Ottoman period (1908–1918), of which Mustafa Kemal had been a not particularly influential member. Although this contextualizing of the crucible of Kemalist ideology is now standard historical practice,2 it also relativizes and even demythologizes the work and person of Atatürk, who in the official history of Kemalism is claimed to have single-handedly fostered its development and operationalization. Complicating matters is the fact that this official history of the foundation of the Turkish Republic was also composed by its chief subject (Mustafa Kemal himself), most completely in a long and self-serving speech (Nutuk) delivered in the National Assembly in 1927. In the national curriculum it is also the version of the republic’s past that has been taught ever since to each generation of primary and secondary school students. Today, despite the ceaseless efforts of what its supporters name the “Atatürk Cumhuriyeti” (Atatürk Republic), Kemalism is seen by many as a discredited ideology and an oppressive political practice. Dispute rages not only over different accounts of its content and their merits but equally crucially over what role Kemalism should play in political, social, and cultural relations in contemporary Turkey. What has happened? The first part of this chapter explores the social history of Kemalism since 1923 and the background to its now decades-long crisis of legitimacy. It compares the orthodox narrative concerning the Kemalist project with its various deconstructive accounts, many of which zero in on the years after the First World War and the 1920s and 1930s as foundational in present-day conflicts. These orthodox and heterodox histories, allied to the 1  Parla and Davison (2004: vii). 2  Zürcher (1984); Keyder (1987); Derengil (1998); and Dündar (2001).

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Kemalism and Beyond   163 interests of different groups, do politics by another means. The shorter second half of the chapter outlines how the power struggle over Kemalism’s futures is developing. Rather than pontificate about what the state or civil society should do, it concludes by drawing attention to emerging lineaments of change in existing civil society and social conditions. Before exploring both the self-definition of Kemalism and oppositional accounts of it, the chapter briefly proposes reasons why it has lost its authority for many people. Given the imperfections of social life, any ideology that both institutes and justifies the legal structures of state and civil society is liable to criticism. But the current crisis of Kemalism reflects more than an inevitable gap between its utopian ambitions and the realities of people’s everyday lives. Its critical reassessment by broad segments of the population, and its strident defense by others, dates to the military coup of September 12, 1980 (12 Eylül in the political vernacular), and the nearly three years of martial law (much longer in the Kurdish provinces) that traumatized Turkey in the name of Atatürk. In the junta’s 1982 constitution—high point of the armed forces’ restitution of 1930s Kemalism—loyalty to the nationalism of Atatürk was declared the sole guiding prin­ ciple of the Turkish state and society, with no tolerance afforded “to thoughts or opinions contrary to . . . the nationalism, principles, reforms and modernism of Atatürk.”3 Political parties must show allegiance to these defining characteristics or face closure by the constitutional court. Given the state of emergency that existed during the period of its drafting and electoral ratification, the constitution was not an act of political autonomy—literally the giving of the law to oneself—by the people of Turkey. Further, in enshrining “Atatürkism” at the center of repressive power, the 1982 constitution ensured that Kemalism ceased to be a means to something else—in its own terms to Westernization or modernization—but became the primary ends of policy, governance, and even civil society itself. The constitution’s explicit circumscribing of the bounds of legal politics meant social and political dissent thereafter had, of necessity, minimally to reference itself in relation to Kemalism and maximally to mobilize against it. The result has been a strong need felt by many intellectuals and activists since the 1980s to critically reexamine the original years of Kemalism in search of clues to its present oppressive form, and a widespread crisis of belief in it.

Kemalism in its Own Terms The political project of the new republican nation-state after 1923 has been described in a variety of ways, including the unsatisfying appellations of “secularization,” “mod­ern­ iza­tion,” and “Westernization.”4 Occasionally it has even been graced with the title of the “Turkish Enlightenment,” while often being presented as a “model” for other 3  Preamble to the Constitution of the Turkish Republic (1982). 4  See Lewis (1961), Berkes (1964), and Ahmad (1993).

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164   christopher houston Muslim-majority countries to emulate. All these terms indicate clear approval of Kemalism, and comprise both the self-representation of its essence by its supporters and the mainstream evaluation of its importance by Anglophone political scientists and historians. There has, in fact, been some acknowledgment of Mustafa Kemal’s authoritarianism in this orthodox account, but Parla and Davison note the influence of the “tutelary democratic thesis” in interpretation of the goals of Atatürk, in which the “cult of the hero status that sprung up around Kemal . . . has less to do with Kemal’s personal ambitions or with Kemalism’s essential anti-democratic content than with the needs of the people in a heavily traditional context.”5 In the 1930s writers were less politically squeamish, as seen in the title of Armstrong’s 1937 biography, Grey Wolf Mustafa Kemal: An Intimate Study of a Dictator. Its final line gestures to the pedagogic necessity of his actions: “He is Dictator in order that it may be impossible ever again that there should be in Turkey a Dictator.”6 In brief, the dominance of the modernization paradigm in Western social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s in explaining social change has been replicated in the literature on Kemalism during those same years, simplifying the more ambiguous policies signified by its six “arrows,” and downplaying their authoritarian dimensions. Perhaps the most arresting example of this apparent contradiction is seen in the person of sociologist Niyazi Berkes. Despite being dismissed from Ankara University in 1948, taken to court for his writings, and sent into exile (never to return), Berkes could still in his influential book The Development of Secularism in Turkey (1964) identify ideal types of “traditional” and “secular” societies, list their binary distinctions, interpret the Kemalist revolution as conforming to this long-term process of Western development, and claim that it en­abled rational behavior and freedom from sacred rules. The tenets of modernization theory also clarified the nature of the empirically messy present in Turkey, imagined as caught between the incomplete dissolution of old Islamic/Ottoman institutions and the fragile establishment of their replacements. Similarly, they informed analysis of the motivations for political conflict while simultaneously casting combatants in their roles: trad­ itionalists versus modernizers; religious sympathizers versus secularists; reactionaries versus radicals; old men/old patriarchies versus young. (In Kemalist mod­ern­iza­tion women as wives and mothers were emancipated but they were not the prime actors in their liberation.) Finally modernization theory often made pious judgments concerning the tempo of social change, asserting that functional equilibrium and stability must be maintained while encouraging social mobility.7 In hindsight, it is impossible to overlook the strong elective affinities between the modernization paradigm that influenced much of the political science literature on Kemalism in the 1950s and 1960s and the concern of the US, the hegemonic global power of the era, to sponsor change in Turkey through economic and technical aid in the rollout of the Marshall Plan, of which Turkey was the first recipient in 1947.

5  Parla and Davison (2004: 4). 6  Armstrong (1937: 284). 7  See, for example, Lerner and Robinson on the Turkish military (1960).

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Kemalism and Beyond   165

Complicating “Facts” Before venturing some alternative conceptual models of Kemalism, we should first note how its continued labeling as a process of Westernization, modernization, or secularization obfuscates rather than clarifies a number of its significant dimensions. One of these is the close ideological relationship between European fascism and “high” Kemalism in the 1930s single-party period. The authoritarian repression of Turkish civil society was achieved most fully in these years, with the closing down or forced incorporation of all quasi-independent civil society groups into the ruling Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, or CHP), climaxed by the pronouncement of “full congruency” between state administration and party organization in 1936. As in Italian fascism, “with this declaration all state officials in the administrative field became local party officials.”8 Appropriately populism then, and not democracy, was one of Kemalism’s six arrows, in which the people were conceived as composed of functional, occupational groupings, and the CHP posited to be the sole legitimate representative of the Turkish nation. In 1935, and despite the related assertion that antagonistic classes did not exist amongst the Turkish people—a claim legislated after the 1971 military intervention by the prohibiting of the Turkish Workers Party—the regime felt it necessary to copy Mussolini’s Italian labour law that banned all “class-based” activities, including the forming of trade unions and the holding of strikes. Secondly, given Kemalism’s semi-dictatorial quality, the close economic and cultural relations between the Soviet Communist Party and the Kemalist state in the republic’s first two decades are not as paradoxical as it seems. Soviet loans partially funded the building of state enterprises in the first five-year development plan for industrialization (1934), while the establishment of the Halkevleri (People’s Houses) across the country in 1931 was modeled on the Soviet Union’s “Culture Houses.” Similarly the 1930s construction of the monumental and beloved Kültürpark in İzmir, built over the burnt-out ruins of the city’s non-Muslim quarters, was inspired by the world-famous “Gorky Park of Culture and Rest” in Moscow, and was begun soon after the visit of İzmir’s deputy mayor to that park in 1933.9 Perhaps none of this was surprising given the proximity of the Soviet Union and the power of its discourse regarding the revolutionary modernity at work there, a rhetoric similarly heard in the future-oriented speech of the Kemalists in Turkey, and expressed most lucidly in the arrow of “transformationism.” What is surprising, however, is why their radical and sometimes violent project of cultural revolution has been regularly described in such anodyne terms as Westernization or mod­ern­iza­ tion, even as it was justified as a development (along with secularization) towards which each society would inevitably evolve. Thirdly and equally significantly, the terms obscure a further historically important (if indirect) connection between the Soviet Union and Turkey, symbolized most clearly 8  Keyder (1987: 100).

9  Kolluoğlu-Kırlı (2002).

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166   christopher houston in the Third International’s confirming in the early 1920s of the Kemalist movement’s anti-imperialist and anti-colonial qualities. The Comintern’s definition and approval of Kemalism as a struggle for national independence reinforced Turkish socialists’ sym­ pathy for the official history of the founding events of the new republic, its leader, its ideology, and its attempts to transform society. One stream of “Turkish Leftism” then has been influential supporters of the Kemalist state and of its nationalism and laicism ever since, inspired by a powerful imaginary signification that if one wants to revolutionize society, it is both necessary and sufficient to seize control of the state. Affinities between leftist Kemalism and Mustafa Kemal’s state are nowhere more clearly seen than in the internal dispute in Turkish historiography over the meaning of the first military coup in Turkey in 1960. If Kemalism constitutes a revolution, then the electorate’s choosing of the Demokrat Party to dethrone Atatürk’s party (CHP) in the first multiparty election in 1950 signifies its opposite, a counter-revolution. Equally logically, the 1960 military coup that deposed the Demokrat Party government and led to the hanging of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes “possesses [for the left] a positive meaning: it terminates the ‘counter-revolution’ and gives power once again to the revolutionaries.”10 In brief, the complexity of Kemalism in all its varied facets indicates minimally the imprecision of the terms modernization, Westernization, or secularization in describing its practice and theory. Fascist modernism or anticolonial capitalism might be equally good (or bad) descriptors. Perhaps more importantly, the fact that these official terms are still used by many outsiders to Turkey to explain or justify contemporary political developments—visiting journalists and travel writers, political commentators on the Middle East or Islamic affairs, experts and lobbyists advising Western governments or corporations on foreign policy and business—reveals that too often Kemalism’s own vindicatory self-representation is, for different reasons, taken at its word. Yet clearly the inadequacy of modernization theory in comprehending its revolutionary and authoritarian dimensions suggests a more varied genealogy needs referencing in their accounting for them. This would involve theorizing Kemalism’s self-institution, through its appropriation of a number of political, social, and aesthetic movements and ideas, including the imaginary of the French Revolution, futuristic modernism, ideological corporatism, and romantic nationalism.

Alternative Kemalisms What alternative analytic/descriptive terms can we use to more fully capture the primary political practices and ideas of Kemalism? There are a number of possibilities. In his introduction to Kemalism in the Political Thought in Modern Turkey series, Ahmet Insel begins his account with this sentence: “Milliyetcilik ve medeniyetcilik, Kemalizmin iki aslı öğesidir” (Nationalism and civilizationism are the two foundational elements of 10  Belge (2010: 3).

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Kemalism and Beyond   167 Kemalism).11 What might be meant by “civilizationism,” given that it is not one of Kemalism’s six arrows? Civilizationism should be understood as a principle and process that underlies all, a presumption of the universal status of contemporary European civ­il­ iza­tion combined with a selective desire for certain of its forms (most particularly republicanism, laicism, and modern art, including sculpture, dance, cubic architecture, and music). If, in practice, the carrying out of a civilizational transformation sim­ul­tan­ eous­ly entailed the abolition of Ottoman institutions and the repression of Islamic habits (including aesthetic traditions), it also both disenfranchised and peculiarly politicized “Muslims,” inscribed suddenly as ignorant and backwards, and forced thereafter to claim in the new context a modern yet non-Eurocentric Islamic identity in indignant response to excluding forms of Kemalist cultural capital. Civilizationism is not a synonym of Westernization. In it instead the “West,” “republic,” “nation,” “revolution,” and even “Islam” are better understood in Castoriadis’s terms as imaginary significations, new forms, ideas, and images through which Kemalist society is instituted. “Every society defines and develops an image of the natural world, of the universe in which it lives . . . in which a place has to be made not only for the natural objects and beings important for the life of the collectivity, but also for the collectivity itself, establishing finally, a certain world-order.”12 Kemalist society’s institution of a certain world order through its creation of core imaginary significations was made neither in isolation from other societies nor in sole reference to any single one. Rather, as we saw earlier, it was made in knowing relation to a host of them, via trade, mimicry, an­tag­on­ ism, improvisation, appropriation, transformation, and development, including its inheriting of a long history of Ottoman reflection on the adequacy of its social institutions. In the process Kemalism created its own social-historical forms, investing selected significations and figures derived from both Ottoman society and European historical experience (including the Bolsheviks) with new meanings. This was not simple emulation as implied in the term “Westernization” but self-institution through representation, interpretation, translation, and evaluation (of a context, history, or tradition). In Castoriadis’s words, “the old [foreign] enters the new with the signification given to it by the new and could not enter it otherwise.”13 Yet the Kemalist self-institution, as Insel noted earlier, is founded on more than civ­il­ iza­tionism, its constructed synonymy between civilization and European modernity, accompanied by a related orientalist discourse on Islam. Privileging its transformative “civilizing” of Ottoman Muslim society overlooks its equally significant nationalizing project, characterized not only by corporatist-style economic development policies (or nationalist developmentalism), but by its producing a master ethnic identity in the midst of a multicultural population. Accordingly nationalist or (more precisely) “Turkist Civilizationism” is an accurate abbreviation for describing the essential Kemalist program. It draws attention to two central aspects of its political reforms and to their legacy in the present: (1) the propagating from above of a Turkish nationalism that demanded the assimilation or obliteration of non-Turkish ethnic “others;” and (2) the constructing 11  Insel (2001: 17).

12  Castoriadis (1987: 149).

13  Castoriadis (1997: 14).

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168   christopher houston of a political theology that justified the incorporation and submission of Islam to the institution of the state, in the shape of the “Turk–Islam” synthesis (in Turkish dini-Türkcülük). First, let us briefly discuss the latter. This manufacture of a state-friendly religion was not an atheistic project. Instead it instrumentalized Islam in a fashion prescribed by Thomas Hobbes, in which the state arrogates to itself the right to command what doctrine the religious institution must preach. The key Kemalist innovation was the establishment in 1924 of the Department of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), whose staff have been the prime intellectual generators of the synthesis, in line with their brief to produce and manage Islam for the state by the state. The first article of the law establishing the Diyanet stated that “the administration of all matters concerning the beliefs and rituals of Islam will belong to the Department of the Affairs of Piety.”14 Accordingly the historian Mete Tuncay characterizes the relationship between the republic and “Islam” in its first decades not as one of hostility (as in the Soviet case) but of indifference (umursamazlık): that is, as an indifference to the “traditional” content of Islam, represented sim­ul­tan­ eous­ly as backward and culturally Arab. As an example of this high disregard, he notes a serious discussion in 1926 at a council meeting of the State Commission of Fine Arts about whether to turn Sultan Ahmet Camii (Istanbul’s celebrated Blue Mosque) into an art gallery.15 Here in the single-party period, there was a dual politics, an excluding modernism operating as a form of status distinction marking off a class of enlightened laicists from their urban Muslim rivals, and a radical Turkism directed against both non-Turks (in particular against Kurds) and non-Muslims (in particular against Greeks, Armenians, and Jews). A second, apparently more concrete description of the Kemalist project is Sibel Bozdoğan’s term de-Ottomanization.16 Bozdoğan discerns a focus on the transforming of the visual appearance of the urban landscape (and of its inhabitants) as a key method and substitute for social change. Typically the same politics of appearance were applied in the Soviet Union. Where did de-Ottomanization and Turkist civilizationism converge? One place was in urban planning, and in the construction of a number of modernist buildings and public parks/splaces in cities in Turkey in which Islamic dress and idioms were censured, as well as in the closing down or redefining of significant Islamic institutions and sites (for example, Sufi lodges). The building of Ankara as a new modern cap­ ital over Ottoman Istanbul symbolized the rejection of one history and the creation of another. Yet more significant than the construction of new buildings in modernist architectural style in Istanbul (with their accompanying regimes of spatial interaction and practice) was the targeting for ethnic cleansing of the mixed Ottoman populations who lived in that city. This has also been perceived as the eradication of Ottoman spaces, as pursued, for example, in the rebuilding of the fire zone in Izmir that obliterated all traces of its non-Turkish history.17

14  Berkes (1964: 485). 17  Kolluoğlu-Kırlı (2002).

15  Tuncay (2001: 95).

16  Bozdoğan (1994).

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Kemalism and Beyond   169

Turkification Nationalism is often considered a progressive political practice for its mobilizing of resistance to colonial regimes. Thus it may be broadly defended, as it is by some streams of leftist Kemalism, as the ideological practice of the victimized. Fueling this resistance is not just anger at imperialist exploitation but also a counternarrative of the cultural commonality and virtue of the oppressed, however identified. Yet (to adapt Marx) even as the nationalist party seeks to transform the protonation from a group in itself to one for itself, the commonality of nationals does not necessarily translate as their equality, or as their sharing of economic interests. Further, culturally “uncommon” people amongst the oppressed—minorities (however identified) or those with different or insufficient national consciousness—are problematically situated vis-à-vis this emerging national society and its ruling nation-state. Kemalist politics exemplify these ambiguities. The emergence of nationalism in Ottoman lands in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries constituted a rival theory of political sovereignty, attacking symbols of dynastic authority and developing new rituals and justifications for nationalist rule. Nascent states defended their legitimacy through a new discourse, organized around key terms of ethnicity, race, and nation. Their inhabitants, however, were not homogeneous. In doing so each was faced with a political decision regarding their “management” of groups of people, speaking different languages from the national majority and practicing a variety of religious creeds, in their newly inscribed territories. The Kemalist state’s management of its population can best be illustrated by taking as case studies the fate of two groups of people perceived as contradicting this national commonality in different ways: non-Muslims in Istanbul and Kurds in southeast Anatolia. For those unable or unwilling to become Turkish, Kemalism has been a catastrophe. “In 1913, one out of five persons in the geographical area that is now Turkey was a Christian; by the end of 1923, the proportion had declined to one in forty.”18 In the case of Christians, the two biggest single causes for this massive population loss were the Young Turks’ forced migration and the massacre of Armenians during the First World War, and the compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923 which, together with the war in Anatolia between the Greek army of occupation and the Turkish nationalists, led to the flight or expulsion of some 1.4 million Anatolian Christians. For Keyder, the expulsion of the generally well-educated and commercially inclined Greeks was a constituting act of the new Turkish nation-state.19 Not all Christians and Muslims were “unmixed” in this population exchange. Greeks in Istanbul were exempted from this mutual expulsion of indigenous inhabitants, even as they were marked by it as alien in newly consolidated Turkish territorial space. Yet later they, too, were forced to abandon the city. The most significant cause of their leaving, 18  Keyder (2003: 43).

19  Ibid (2003: 44).

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170   christopher houston affecting Armenians, Jews, as well as Greeks, was the Turkist nationalism of the new citizenship and economic regime, expressed through a number of discriminatory laws directed at both non-Turks and non-Muslims. For example, some 40,000 Istanbul Greeks who fled the city in 1922 were barred from returning (despite their nonexchangeable status), and their property confiscated. According to Alexandris, by 1924 the “most valuable properties of the absent and Hellene Greeks [including the famous Pera Palas Hotel] had been largely distributed amongst ministers and notables of whom Ismet Pasha is one.”20 In 1925 Greeks were barred from travel outside Istanbul without state permission, and in 1928 they were forbidden to own property outside the Greater Istanbul City area.21 In the same year all non-Muslim employees were fired from the Istanbul Water Utility at the request of the Ministry of Reconstruction and Resettlement.22 Further, in 1926 the parliament passed a law that declared that only Turks could be government employees. Military commissions were reserved for Turks, and in their compulsory military service non-Muslims were forbidden from bearing arms. Minorities were also banned from establishing Boy Scout units. In 1928 Ankara legislated that doctors, dentists, midwives, and nurses, too, had to be Turks. A 1932 law allocated a number of professions to Turkish citizens, banning “non-citizens, especially some Istanbul Greeks, who were Hellenic citizens, from a variety of jobs. . . . More than 15,000 Greek Christians left the country as a result.”23 The “Citizen Talk Turkish” campaigns occurred in the same years (1927 and 1933), directed at the sound of other languages in urban space. The result of all these measures was a steady decrease in the non-Muslim population of Istanbul. According to Alexandris the population of Istanbul in 1924 was 1,065,866, of which 279,788 were Greeks, 73,407 Armenian, and 56,390 Jews. The census of 1927 shows a large decrease in the city’s population, with 809,993 inhabitants in Istanbul of which 126,033 were Greek.24 In just three years some 150,000 Greeks had left the city. Three other political acts led to the final collapse of the non-Muslim communities there. The first was the forced conscription in 1941 of all non-Muslim men in Turkey aged between 18 and 45, who were sent to camps in Anatolia and made to build roads and the like. Death rates in the camps were extremely high.25 The majority of deportees were only allowed to return to Istanbul a year later. Second, and much more calculated, was the government’s levy of an extraordinary wealth or capital tax (Varlık Vergisi) in 1942, in the context of a serious economic crisis caused by the Second World War. In a CHP group meeting closed to the press, the prime minister (Şükrü Saraçoğlu) explained the purpose of the tax to the party: “This law is simultaneously a revolutionary law. It is an opportunity for us to gain our economic independence. We will present the Turkish market to Turkish hands by eliminating the foreigners who control our markets.”26 Ostensibly intended to tax and deter war profiteering, the assessment boards charged with determining levy amounts targeted the businesses of “foreigners”—local ­non-­Muslims. 20  Alexandris (1983: 118). 21  Ibid (1983: 140). 23  Ibid (2006: 70). 24  Alexandris (1983: 142). 26  Cited in Aktar (2000: 148).

22  Cağaptay (2006: 28). 25  Ibid (1983: 213–214).

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Kemalism and Beyond   171 The sixteen-month campaign was extremely damaging to Istanbul’s non-Muslim population. The tax collected from the city alone amounted to 349 million lira, of which 93% was collected from Greeks, Jews, and Armenians.27 Some 1,400 people were deported for non-payment of the tax within thirty days, all non-Muslims. Twenty-one people died in labour camps.28 Notwithstanding the crippling of Istanbul’s large nonTurkish businesses, the tax also resulted in a massive transfer of wealth from Christians and Jews to Muslim Turks. Aktar’s study of the tapu sicil (property register) for the years 1942–43 in six areas of Istanbul with large non-Muslim populations (Beyoğlu/Şişli, Eminönü, Fatih, Kadiköy, and the Princess Islands) reveals the extent of the change of ownership of houses, work places, apartments, land, and offices. In these suburbs alone non-Muslims were forced to sell 1,202 properties in order to pay the tax. Some 70% of the sales of these properties were to Turkish businessmen, 30% to institutions under the control of the Turkish state (Istanbul Council, National Banks, National Factories, etc.)29 Aktar notes that five years later, in the first two years after the founding of Israel, 30,000 Jews left the city.30 The third event transforming Istanbul’s urban character was the state-sponsored riot organized against Greek properties, churches, and schools on September 6 and 7, 1955. The coordinated attacks in a number of suburbs caused major damage to Greek Istanbul’s built environment. Initiated by an act of provocation—the “bombing” of the Turkish consulate in Salonika by a Turkish agent, and faked photographs published in the Istanbul newspaper Istanbul Ekspres showing extensive bomb damage to the Salonika house in which Atatürk was born31—the final result (as intended) was another mass exodus of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews from the city. According to the records of a special court in Beyoğlu established to investigate the attacks, 4,214 houses, 1,004 shops, seventy-three churches [twenty-nine completely destroyed, thirty-four badly damaged along with many Byzantine art treasures32], twenty-six schools, two monasteries as well as many factories, restaurants, and hotels were attacked and totally or partially destroyed.33 With the deChristianization of the city, Istanbul’s de-Ottomanization, too, was almost complete.

27  Aktar (2000: 154). 28  Aktar (2000), Alexandris (1983). 29  Aktar (2000: 230–233). Tan newspaper reported on the sale of the Serkldoryan Complex in Beyoğlu in the following way: “Indebted by the Wealth Tax, the Turkish Theatre Society has sold the Serkldoryan Buildings to the Council for 1,100,000 lira. The Serkldoryan complex includes the building that houses the Serkldoryan Club, many shops in that building, the Melek, Ipek and Sümer cinemas and a printing press” (cited in Aktar 2000: 204) (my translation). All three cinemas were well-known institutions on Istiklal Caddesi, principal thoroughfare of Beyoğlu. 30  Aktar (2000: 207). 31  Thirty-six years later Göksin Sipahioğlu, the editor of Istanbul Ekspres in 1955, said in an interview: “Of course the 6–7 September attacks were planned by the Özel Harp Dairesi (Special Warfare Unit). It was an extremely well planned operation and it realized its aims. Let me ask you: was it not an extraordinary successful event?” Cited in Güven (2005: 72) (my translation). 32  Cited in Alexandris (1983: 258). 33  Güven (2005a: ix).

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172   christopher houston By contrast, for the large Kurdish population in Anatolia the outcome of Turkist pol­ icies was radically different—forced assimilation, not expulsion. Turkish nationalism here denied Kurdish self-description of their difference from Turks. In his study of the changing keywords of what he calls Turkish state discourse on the Kurds, Yeğen notes that throughout the first seventy years of Kemalism the one unvarying aspect of state discourse has been a categorical denial that Kurds constitute a separate ethnic element in Turkey. Strict control over the representation of Kurds by the state resulted in the enunciation of Kurdish identity in limited ways, in a discourse on “reactionary politics, tribal resistance or regional backwardness.”34 For Yeğen, official state discourse on the Kurds since the founding of the republic has been characterized by an “ethnocidal” logic, in its determination to Turkify those “who think themselves Kurdish.” The words are from a 1961 report on the “Eastern problem” commissioned by the Turkish military after the coup in 1960, which refused to use the word “Kurds.” This ethnocidal logic had an anthropological reference. First sketched out by intellectuals of the CUP after 1910, its core thesis was that the Kurds had no separate language, history, or culture, and thus could not be considered a legitimate nation. In it Kurds were claimed to possess no indigenous cultural system of their own, their variety of sociocultural institutions and practices reflecting the characteristics of those who governed them. Similarly, Kurdish poetry was said to be derivative, the work of those composing under the influence of Arabic, Turkish, and Persian literature, just as the Kurdish language was accused of being parasitic on the languages of other nations, both for its grammatical structure and for its lexicon. Kurdish history, too, was the history of other nations, as they were unable to establish a state or government, founding only rival chieftainships in periods of imperial power vacuum.35 These core claims have been asserted by Kemalist intellectuals over the history of the republic, particularly after each military coup. The theory of nationalism in them is plain: groups who are not self-instituting are not a nation. The CUP and the Kemalists anxiously applied the same romantic logic to the history of the Turks, necessitating the “discovery” and formalization of a national history, culture, and language. In the process, rural Anatolia was claimed as the pure heartland of living Turkish culture, in contra­dis­tinc­tion to the cosmopolitanism and antinationalism of the urban Ottoman past. Not just the material culture (from rug-weaving to handicrafts) but the spiritual culture (proverbs, folk songs, riddles, tales, games, poems, and rhymes) of the different regions of Anatolia was construed as variegated local manifestations of a single ethnic Turkish genius. Forcibly included within this inventory of the Turkish people were “Kurdistan” and “Kurds,” renamed as “Eastern Anatolia” and “mountain Turks” respectively. Forcibly excluded from this Anatolian inventory were Armenians and Greeks. To give one example, Hamit Koşay, Turkey’s first musicologist and an expert on Anatolian music, accompanied Bela Bartok on his trip to Adana in 1936 to record local songs and melodies in 1936. In the section on Halk Musikisi (folk music) in his Guide to Ethnography and Folklore Koşay makes a distinction between Anatolian and Greek 34  Yeğen (1996: 216).

35  Houston (2009).

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Kemalism and Beyond   173 modal melodies, as well as establishing a connection between Anatolian and Turkish/ Central Asian music.36 In this he follows Kemalist intellectual Ziya Gökalp, who in his influential 1923 work, The Principles of Turkism, described Ottoman music as both Eastern and Byzantine, as well as “depressingly monotonous” because it was based on modal quarter tones.37 Koşay’s disinterring of the history of musical modes in Anatolia led to his nationalizing of certain series of notes and rhythmic intervals, and gives an indication of the tremendous importance ascribed to cultural self-institution as central to justifying a politics of Turkism—directed sometimes at Turkish speakers—within the new national borders. In brief, both Istanbul and the Kurdish areas of Turkey were for decades a spatial target of what Aktar calls the “Türklestirme” (Turkification) politics of Kemalism. Essentially Turkification entailed: the hegemony and domination of Turkish ethnic identity without compromise at every level and in every aspect of social life, from the language spoken in the street to the history taught in schools, from education to industry, from business to State personnel employment policy, from special laws to citizens’ housing in certain regions.38

Kemalism Abroad? Is Kemalism unique to Turkey, as the name suggests? Or were (or are) its political practice and ideology pursued by other regimes in the region? That Kemalism is exclusive to Turkey is a mainstay of Kemalist self-perception, especially when Turkey is placed in the broader context of the “Muslim” or Arab Middle East. Typically the exceptionalism of Kemalism is posited to inhere in its secularism, antagonistically defined in distinction to Islamic political orders. By contrast I would follow Sayyid in arguing that the work of the CUP and Mustafa Kemal is exemplary of a new political paradigm for many of the postimperial regimes that came to power in Muslim-majority areas after the First World War, not just in Turkey but in Iran under Reza Shah (in 1926) and in Iraq with the establishment of an oligarchic monarchy in 1932.39 Despite differences between these regimes, all are marked as Kemalist by their rejection of “the use of Islam as the master signifier of their political discourse,”40 compounded by efforts to forcibly Westernize their citizens on the assumption of the progressive universality of European civilization. Here Islam is reinscribed as that against which modern life is known. Nevertheless as the section above shows, Sayyid’s reducing of Kemalism to its coopting and bureaucratizing of Islam is literally half the story. A more serious accounting of its equally significant constructing of new sovereign ethnic identities—Turkish, Persian, 36  Koşay (1939). 39  Sayyid (1997).

37  Cited in Tekelioğlu (1996: 201). 40  Ibid (1997: 70).

38  Aktar (2000: 101).

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174   christopher houston and Arab—in all three countries is required.41 Indeed, as Abbas Vali documents in this Handbook, in each of these an ethnocidal denial of Kurdish identity was the necessary condition for that construction, illuminating the motivation and constitution of Kurdish actors across the region. In countries that have been exposed to a Kemalist project, Kurdish nationalism becomes a social movement for the formation of a Kurdish subject and agency that has been excluded from official definitions of national identity. Finally, we should note how acknowledging the transregional, nationalist, and antiKurdish qualities of Kemalism complicates the widespread claim that either Kemalism or Khomeinism is the diametrically opposed and sole choice for the Muslim world.42 Not only does such a binary distinction simplify Islamism and conflate it with theocracy, but it obscures significant similarities between Kemalist practice in Turkey and Iraq, and Islamist practice in Khomeini’s Iran, most importantly their continuing chauvinism against ethnic minorities and their respective propagation of Turkish-, Arab-, and Persian-centric state Islam. It was not coincidental that both Reza Shah and the Islamist regime in 1979 began their rule with military campaigns designed to crush autonomist movements in the Iranian province of Kurdistan, just as happened in Turkey in 1925.

. . . and Beyond? The Turkish elite have discovered that their long pursuit of secularization and universalism in the name of enlightenment and modernity has been redefined, almost overnight, as the oppression and internal colonialism of Islam and of the Kurdish people.43

As we have seen, for ninety years Kemalism has been the single most important political theory and practice in Turkey. Its durability suggests that the question of its future is less relevant than discerning the elements of change and continuity in its present condition. Yet Öncü’s quip indexes a number of historical developments. As already argued, it confirms that Kemalism faces a legitimation crisis, its politics perceived and resisted by many as oppressive, its self-representation disputed, and its history reinterpreted. It gestures to the fact that this crisis involves a loss of faith in its concept of modernization, connected in part to a wider global reassessment that has questioned the alleged singular and indigenous character of Western modernity and analysis of other societies or civilizations in terms of their conformity to or deviation from it. If it would be too modernist in turn to conclude that these doubts have made the modernization paradigm obsolete—the intellectual equivalent in its own terms of outdated and irrational ­trad­ition—a number of arguments have been proposed that intend to transcend the occidental experience of modernity and its providing of normative analytic categories 41  Houston (2008). 43  Öncü (1993: 261).

42  Lewis (1998); Inalcık (1996); and Sayyid (1997).

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Kemalism and Beyond   175 for its understanding. “Multiple modernities” and “multiple secularisms” are two shorthand terms for these speculations: “alternative,” “divergent,” “voluntary,” and “extra”modernity are others. Each relativizes the social scientific theory of historical development and modern society elaborated by Kemalism, while taking as their object of study claims to ownership of the project of modernity, and the political profit that accrues to those who make them. Most importantly, Öncü’s remark indicates that Kemalism is more than a master signifier organizing meaning in the clauses of the disputed 1982 constitution; more than the hegemonic ideology of the Turkish republic; more than congeries of institutional practices underpinned by a set of imaginary significations; and more than a theory of historical progress. Given that state discourse and bureaucrats’ initiatives alike are null and void without individuals to subscribe to them, it reveals that Kemalism has been, along with all of these, a process of self-institution for a powerful class of Turkish citizens. Atatürk is dead, despite his immortality declared in the 1982 constitution. Yet in the embodied practices, multisensory perceptions, and affective sentiments of those who claim his legacy, Atatürk lives on, for them a source of inspiration, ethics, agency, and social power. In brief, there can be no hypothesizing about “Kemalism and Beyond” that does not also consider Kemalists. Kemalist self-institution through ownership of selected imaginary significations is not an abstract process. Instead as Göle writes, the public sphere “provides a stage for the didactic performance of the modern subject in which the nonverbal, corporeal and implicit aspects of social imaginaries are consciously and explicitly worked out.” The body, “as a sensorial and emotional register, links the implicit nonverbal practices and learned dispositions (namely habitus) into a public visibility and conscious meaning.”44 Accordingly, alongside ideological analysis, an ethnographic focus on Kemalism draws analytic attention to other of its dimensions: to laic actors’ gendered embodied existence (corporeal styles and techniques, comportment, manners, clothing); to dimensions of their affective existence (mood, senses, and sensibilities, including their mocking humor about pious Muslims); to Kemalists’ associational practices and the political knowledge they generate; and even to their spiritual experiences, in which practices such as yoga or ney-learning (Sufi flute) may facilitate power for their lives. None of these features of Kemalists’ “life-world” are worked out in a monologue or in an isolated fashion. In the micropractices of everyday life the central stakes of Kemalist distinction (civilizationism and Turkism) are enacted in tension with competing and similarly self-conscious pious “Muslim” and Kurdish presentations and definitions of self, embodied practices, and attempted counteruse of common spaces. Here the relative strength of Kemalist self-institution in Turkey is revealed: the embodied display of Muslim or Kurdish distinction in the public sphere—say in wearing a headscarf in the parliament, or in making visible symbols of Kurdish identity such as the national flag— is heavily policed by the state, and often by Kemalist individuals themselves. In the process, urban space is defended as a site for Turkish nationalist and laic performance, 44  Göle (2002: 177).

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176   christopher houston subordinating non-Kemalist identities. Indeed, Mustafa Kemal is memorialized as a ubiquitous presence in the city; in nomenclature (the naming of a thousand schools, streets, and parks); in the dignifying of parks, state buildings, schools, etc. with his ­statues, busts, and photographs; in his Turkist aphorisms inscribed on suitable flat planes and in foyers of business enterprises, in people’s individual offices and on the cluttered walls of every shop in the city. All of these “tactical” spatial practices illustrate the struggle to appropriate space by different political actors. Within this process the electoral victories of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP) in 2002, 2007, and 2011 have been perceived by many Kemalists as a particular threat to the “Atatürk Republic.” The anxiety, fear, and anger that both “publicly out” Kurds and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP supporters inspire (and have projected upon them) stem from a variety of sources. Özyürek describes the development since the late 1990s of a “nostalgic Kemalism,” understood as an affective expression of growing laicist anxiety over the supposed Islamization of Turkey. She argues that the Kemalist state’s ideology, politics, and symbolism found a new life and legitimacy in the private sphere at the very moment a nonKemalist political force (the Refah or Welfare Party) appeared in the public sphere.45 One key dimension of this new laic-identity politics has been the commodification and consumption of symbols from the heroic period of the republican state, with priority given to images of Atatürk. Similarly, the long political and armed struggle of the PKK (or Kurdish Workers Party) has played a significant part in a Kemalist public’s appropriation of the symbols of radical Turkism. In the first decade of the new century, the state that was yearned for by anxious Kemalists in response was a specific one, the celebrated “party-state” of the single-party period (1923–50). Both the secular establishment (led by the military and connected to other state institutions) and leftist Kemalists shared this desire for a revolutionary, nationalistic, and unified state (and state of affairs), an affective yearning that partially defined Kemalists as a class of actors. The result has been that for the first decade of AKP rule, civil society in Turkey, particularly in the Kurdish areas, existed on a political knife edge, the threat of a military coup hovering over its horizons. As much as a sign of Kemalist power, the atmosphere of violence and repression also attests to a historical development, what Kaya (channeling Öncü) called the collapse of the “official narrative” in Turkey. For those who subscribe to that narrative Kaya diagnoses the existence of a “meaning threat,” leading to a denial of all of the “expectancy-violating experiences, and [a striving] to revert back and maintain the status quo.”46 Magnifying it, the rise to political power of the AKP has resulted in a partial thwarting of the agency (social and economic) of Kemalists. It has also brought into open dispute their cultural capital, their ways of distinguishing themselves. A true hegemony—the situation that Bourdieu calls doxa—does not require explicit justification. However, in the present, for a Kemalist living in Turkey, just like everyday life lived as a conscious Muslim, everyday life has become both a reflexive performance and a mode of social distinction. In particular the visibility of embodied Islamic difference in 45  Özyürek (2006: 3).

46  Kaya (2012: 154).

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Kemalism and Beyond   177 public transforms the living of laicism into a mode of similarly assertive self-creation. Suddenly, amidst the deconstruction of Kemalist narratives of historical progress and rationality, living a secular life, too, has to be chosen, one possible lifestyle amongst other alternatives. Accordingly, one already present “future” of both Kemalists and of middle-class religious Muslims is their privileged ghettoization in spaces reserved for people similar to themselves, spaces facilitated by Istanbul and other Turkish cities’ emerging neo-liberal urban configurations of gated communities and gentrification.47 Is this an inevitable development concerning Kemalism (and Kemalists) in Turkey, the living out of clashing or mutually alternative civil lifestyles in cities segregated and structured by class and identity politics? Do other futures require a fundamental reform of the 1982 military-sponsored constitution, the development of multicultural state pol­ icies, and a change in Kemalism’s core imaginary significations? At the time of writing none of these seem particularly likely. And yet less antagonistic Kemalist futures exist even in present conditions. One lies in the creating of urban spaces—tea gardens, cafes, tourist spots, markets, museums, etc., and their mirror images in the virtual spaces of soap opera, film, and fiction—cohabited and consumed by different classes of people. A second has been glimpsed in the post-Kemalism of the Gezi Park protests, a season of dissent involving demonstrators in a broad agenda concerning their rights to the city: the right to have a say on urban planning, conservation, public spaces, and the quality of life in Istanbul (including sexual); rights that were removed in the 1980 coup, and again in 1982 (in the military constitution). A third “beyond” has emerged in people’s immersion in certain aesthetic and ethical activities, well seen in the present widespread interest in learning to play the ney (bamboo or Sufi flute) or to write hat (calligraphy). Both practices were historically associated with Ottoman Islam, but are no longer necessarily understood by students as a sign of an outdated tradition or even of Islamic piety, being studied by secularists and Muslims alike in huge numbers. Small steps perhaps, but enough to indicate a growing public disengagement from attempts to politicize civil society around classic Kemalist polarizations. Combined with the slow struggle to create a post-coup constitution, they suggest a new determination and ability of “the ­people” in Turkey to partially institute for themselves their own ethics and laws. This ability to transcend the recent past might be accounted as one of the chief and most significant legacies of Kemalism itself.

Bibliography Ahmad, Feroz (1993). The Making of Modern Turkey (New York: Routledge). Aktar, Ayhan (2000). Varlık Vergisi ve Türklestirme Politikaları (Istanbul: Iletişim). Alexandris, Alexis (1983). The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-Turkish Relations 1918–1974 (Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies). Armstrong, H.  C. (1937) Grey Wolf Mustafa Kemal: An Intimate Study of a Dictator (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books). 47  Geniş (2007) and Ergün (2004).

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178   christopher houston Belge, Murat (2010). “Son 27 Mayıs’ın ardından,” in Taraf, 30 Mayis, Pazar. Berkes, Niyazi (1964). The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press). Bozdoğan, Sibel (1994). “Architecture, Modernism and Nation-Building in Turkey,” New Perspectives on Turkey 10 (Spring): 37–55. Cağaptay, Soner (2006). Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk? (Oxford: Routledge). Castoriadis, Cornelius (1987). The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: Polity Press). Castoriadis, Cornelius (1997). “The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain,” in World in Fragments: Writings on Politics, Society, Pyschoanalysis, and the Imagination (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 3–18. Deringil, Selim (1998). The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris). Dündar, Fuat (2001). “Ittihat ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Arastırmaları,” Toplumsal Tarih 16: 43–50. Ergün, Nilgün (2004). “Gentrification in Istanbul,” Cities 21,5: 391–405. Geniş, Serife (2007). “Producing Elite Localities: The Rise of Gated Communities in Istanbul,” Urban Studies 44,4: 771–798. Göle, Nilüfer (2002). “Islam in Public: New Visibilities and New Imaginaries,” Public Culture 14,1: 173–190. Güven, Dilek (2005). Cumhuriyet Dönemi Azınlık Politikaları Bağlamında 6–7 Eylül Olayları (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi). Houston, Christopher (2008). Kurdistan: Crafting of National Selves (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press). Houston, Christopher (2009). “An Anti-History of a Non-people: Kurds, Colonialism, and Nationalism in the History of Anthropology,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15,1: 19–37. Inalcık, Halil (1996). “The Meaning of Legacy: The Ottoman Case,” in Brown (ed.). Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East (New York: Colombia University Press). Insel, Ahmet (2001). “Giriş,” in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düsünce: Kemalizm (Istanbul: Iletişim): 17–28. Kaya, Serdar (2012). “The Social Psychology of the Ergenekon Case: The Collapse of the Official Narrative in Turkey,” Middle East Critique 21,2: 145–156. Keyder, Çağlar (1987). State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (London: Verso). Keyder, Çağlar (2003). “The Consequences of the Exchange of Populations for Turkey,” in Crossing the Agean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey (Oxford: Berghahn), 39–52. Kolluoğlu-Kırlı, Biray (2002). “The Play of Memory, Counter-Memory: Building İzmir on Smyrna’s Ashes,” New Perspectives on Turkey 26: 1–28. Koşay, Hamit (1939). Etnografya ve Folklor Kilavuzu (Ankara: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Yayını). Lerner, Daniel and Richard Robinson (1960). “Swords and Ploughshares: The Turkish Army as a Modernizing Force,” World Politics 13,1: 19–44. Lewis, Bernard (1961). The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Lewis, Bernard (1998). Multiple Identities of the Middle East (New York: Schoken). Öncü, Ayse (1993). Turkey and the West (London: I. B. Tauris).

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Kemalism and Beyond   179 Özyürek, Esra (2006). Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (Durham: Duke University Press). Parla, Taha and Andrew Davison (2004). Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press). Sayyid, Bobby (1997). A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (London: Zed Books). Tekellioğlu, Orhan (1996). “The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music,” in Middle Eastern Studies 32,2: 194–215. Tuncay, Mete (2001). “Ikna (Inandırma) Yerine Tecebbür (Zorlama),” in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düsünce: Kemalizm (Istanbul: Iletişim), 92–96. Yeğen, Murat (1996). “The Turksh State Discourse and the Exclusion of Kurdish Identity,” in Middle Eastern Studies 32: 216–229. Zürcher, E. (1984). The Unionist Factor: the Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement 1905–1926 (Leiden: E. J. Brill).

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chapter 10

Fascism i n th e Middl e East a n d North A fr ica Gilbert Achcar

The starting point of any discussion of “fascism,” beyond the Italian movement that held this name officially, is necessarily a definition of what is meant by the term. Even the equation of Nazism with fascism is problematic, and it is therefore much more problematic to apply the same label to movements beyond the European/Western sphere when they are not direct clones of the Italian and German models.1 If we posit, for instance, that two of the essential features of fascism are that it is an extreme expression of imperialism on the one hand, and a counterforce to radical socialist and communist workers’ parties threatening the capitalist order on the other hand,2 it becomes very hard to classify as “fascist” those movements that developed among natives in colonial countries on an anticolonial platform. This is especially true where there was no radical left challenger in a position to bid for power—as was generally the case in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) before the Second World War. For the sake of the discussion therefore, the definition of fascism must be limited to generic formal features, excluding the historical–functional dimension. This chapter regards as “fascist” any attempt to build a mass movement on the basis of a combination of three key elements: paramilitary organization, ultranationalism, and a totalitarian political project requiring dictatorship.3 It must be stressed, however, that there were, in the MENA region, instances of fascism in the most complete sense of the term, i.e., movements that displayed the abovementioned generic features along with the historical–functional characteristics of being part of an imperialist colonial project and a counterweight to forces arising from the workers’ movement within their own direct societal environment. These most direct 1  Griffiths (2000) and Paxton (2004). 2  Mandel (1971) and Poulantzas (1979). 3  This chapter draws on Achcar (2010: 64–103).

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Fascism in the Middle East and North Africa   181 and genuine instances of fascism were to be found naturally among the colonial communities of European origin in the region, especially in settler-colonial societies of which the three obvious cases are the European settlers in Algeria, Libya, and Palestine. Thus, Italian fascism was naturally extended to the Italian settler society in Libya4; far-right French movements of the fascist type could prosper among European settlers in Algeria under the Vichy regime5; and Vladimir Jabotinsky’s (1880–1940) Revisionist emulation of Italian fascism—including the openly fascist Maximalist wing of Revisionism—developed within the Jewish settlers’ Yishuv in British Mandate Palestine.6 On the latter movement, Yaacov Shavit emphasizes that it bore “more than a passing resemblance” to fascism in its conception of the nation as well as: the cult of the undisputed leader, the uniforms (brown shirts and leather bandoliers), the disciplinary hierarchical organization of Betar, the propaganda style and populist appeal, and the conviction among its opponents that Revisionism was ready—and willing—to achieve its objectives through organized violence and political terror.7

These colonial fascist movements are most often overlooked in discussions of the impact of Italian Fascism and German Nazism in the MENA region, especially when they are not immune to an Orientalist perspective in the Saidian sense of the term. The view that informs most such discussions—with the exception of a revisionist countertrend that emerged in recent years8—is one that seeks to pin the fascist label exclusively on Arab movements opposed to British and French colonialism and/or to Zionism. It is heavily marred by what Israel Gershoni rightly called “the shortcomings and disservices to our understanding created by the careless application of the labels ‘Fascist’ and ‘Nazi’ in the documentation of Nazism’s and Fascism’s influence on Arab individuals and organizations (particularly in Greater Syria).”9 In fact, the tendency to recognize “fascist” or “Nazi-like” movements in anticolonial, anti-imperialist, or anti-Zionist movements in the MENA region was perpetuated after the defeat of the Axis powers and continues until our time. Thus, their diversity notwithstanding, Nasser’s regime in Egypt, the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq, up to Palestinian Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, and so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have all been described as Nazi-like by writers with scholarly pretenses, seeking to recognize in these regimes and movements features that are characteristic of historical Nazism. This is without counting the merely vituperative use of such analogies, void of scholarly pretenses, as manifested 4  Ahmida (2005: 35–54) and Cresti (2011). 5  Cantier (2002) and Darmon (2014). 6  Brenner (1983 and 1984); Cohen (1987: 134–160); Shavit (1988); Kaplan (2005); Shindler (2006). 7  Shavit (1988: 372). 8  For a bibliography of the revisionist counter-trend, see Gershoni (ed.) (2014). Israel Gershoni’s introduction to the volume (2014: 1–31) is a useful survey of the literature in English and Arabic on the impact of Nazism and fascism on the Arab East. 9  Gershoni (ed.) (2014: 30).

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182   gilbert achcar along the same lines or in the countertendency on the Arab side to compare Zionism with Nazism. The claim that fascist movements were massively present in Arab countries from the 1930s until the end of the Second World War is based on the widespread presumption that “the Arabs” were sympathetic to the Axis powers, if for no other reason than their aversion to British colonial domination and Jewish Zionism. However, this simplistic view has been challenged by recent historical research.10 The truth is that different members of the Axis were perceived in different ways within the Arab world: the further away each power was, the greater the sympathy for it. Thus imperial Japan enjoyed the broadest admiration, especially in the eyes of anti-Western nationalists who saw in it a successful model of modernization that did not involve cultural Westernization— unlike Mustafa Kemal’s Turkey, which was disliked for aping Westerners and discarding the Arabic alphabet. Conversely, fascist Italy was perceived as a colonial power even more odious than France and Britain, owing mainly to the Italians’ tyrannical occupation of Libya—an aversion that became especially intense with the execution, in 1931, of the Libyan “Lion of the Desert,” Umar al-Mukhtar (1858–1931).11 Nazi Germany was perceived as Britain’s foe, first and foremost, and as such it in­ev­it­ ably attracted sympathy of varying intensity and extent, especially among those struggling against British domination in Palestine, Egypt, and Iraq. This sympathy was the greater, especially in Palestine, in that Nazi anti-Semitism made Germany an ally in the struggle against the Zionists, but only in the view of those who ignored or chose to ignore the fact that Berlin helped organize the immigration of German Jews to Palestine.12 By the same token, sympathy for Nazi Germany diminished in lands under French domination—in Syria and Lebanon in the Arab East, as well as in North Africa— when the Vichy government, allied with the Axis powers, replaced Paris as the seat of colonial authority. That fascism exerted a widespread influence and led to various forms of emulation in the epoch when it was on the rise is hardly disputable. This was indeed a worldwide phenomenon—not anything particular to Arab countries. Thus, the tendency to form paramilitary youth organizations in the 1930s was so pervasive that their existence alone cannot be regarded as an indication of “fascism.” Moreover, this tendency actually predates fascism: British Lieutenant-General Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) set up the Boy Scouts movement in 1908. In Arab countries, liberal nationalist movements followed the worldwide trend. The Egyptian Wafd party had its “blueshirts,” and its Syrian counterpart, the National Bloc, its gray-blue “ironshirts.” Both were eager to retain the

10  See the contributions collected in Gershoni (ed.) (2014), as well as Gershoni and Jankowski (2009). 11  At the Islamic Conference held in Jerusalem in December 1931, the Egyptian Wafdist ‘Abd al-Rahman ʿAzzam harshly condemned the Italian atrocities in Libya, going “so far as to argue that the Italian threat to the Islamic faith in Libya was stronger than the Jewish-Zionist threat to Palestine.” Mayer (1982: 318–319). When the Italian consul lodged a protest with the British Mandatory Authority, ʿAzzam was expelled. 12  Nicosia (2008).

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Fascism in the Middle East and North Africa   183 allegiance of young members; they feared that the youth might be lured away by radical nationalists who were emulating the same model. One such radical, Syrian Akram al-Hurani (1912–1996),13 a founder of the Baath Party, asserted in his memoirs that his country’s “ironshirts” were “very far from welding this popular army full of ardor and enthusiasm into a true combat unit.” He emphasized the contradiction between their “fascistic appearance,” as represented by “the organization’s external appearances, its uniforms and insignia, for instance, which were in the fashionable Nazi and fascist style that appealed to people in those days” and their “liberal-democratic principles.”14 Organizations advocating a combination of nationalist and socialist principles can no more be regarded ipso facto as avatars of Nazism. The latter perverted and subverted socialist ideals, although it retained the terminology as manifested in the name of the Nazi party (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, NSDAP). However, no serious scholar would lump social democrats and Nazis together. Likewise in the Arab world, the Ba‘th Party, which has been the object of many attempts to portray it as fascist or Nazi-like from its inception in 1939–1940, was actually a left-wing organization whose key ideologist cooperated with the Communists and contributed to anti-fascist publications.15 There is, however, a broad consensus on the identification of three organizations and a less formal political current as having been directly inspired by European fascism in the Arab world. These are the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), the Lebanese Phalangist Party (al-Kataʾib), the Young Egypt movement (Misr al-Fatat), and the Arab nationalist current in Iraq. As for the direct involvement of Nazi Germany in supporting an Arab allied force during the Second World War, the scholarly consensus points to the short-lived nationalist government resulting from the 1941 coup in Iraq as the only significant episode that could be construed as an attempt to link up militarily with the Axis.

The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) Antun Saʿada (1904-1949), a Lebanese Greek-Orthodox Christian teacher of German and an early admirer of Hitler, founded the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP, alHizb al-Suri al-Qawmi al-Ijtimaʿi) as a clandestine subversive organization in 1932. The 13  In 1952, Akram al-Hurani’s Arab Socialist Party merged with Aflaq’s and Bitar’s Party of the Arab Renaissance (Baath) to form the Party of the Socialist Arab Renaissance, commonly known as the Baath Party. 14  Hurani (2000: 156). On the “ironshirts,” see Khoury (1987: 473–476). An example of exaggerated interpretation of such features is Nadav Safran’s comment on the Egyptian “blueshirts” (1961: 192). 15  For a detailed refutation of the depictions of the early Baath Party as fascist, see Achcar (2011: 65–74).

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184   gilbert achcar SSNP—in whose name “Syrian” refers to the “Greater Syria” of the “fertile crescent,” encompassing Sinai, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, to which Saʿada would later and oddly add Cyprus—was a Levantine clone of the Nazi party in almost every respect: political ideology including hostility to the Enlightenment and a geographicracial-nationalist theory with scientific pretensions; paramilitary organizational structure; and a leadership (al-zaʿīm) cult, with a “Long live Syria, long live the leader” party salute. The party’s flag itself is patterned after that of the Nazis, with red and black inversed and a helix—the “hurricane” (al-Zawbaʿa)—with four blades in place of the swastika. Patrick Seale writes that Saʿada: relied less on argument than on organization. What was attractive was the accent on youth, the rigid discipline, the Fascist conception of the role of the leader, as well as the simple thesis that “natural Syria” was a great nation which had played, and would play once more, a great role in history. Saʿada was perhaps the first Arab to produce a wholly indigenous version of the youth formations which flourished in Italy and Germany in the 1930s.16

In November 1935, in a secret political report informing Berlin that Saʿada’s party had been discovered and punished for conspiring to stage a putsch, the German consul in Beirut depicted this “Syrian People’s Party”—“Syrische Volkspartei,” reflecting an erroneous but persistent French translation of qawmi as “people’s” or “popular” rather than “nationalist”—as a party “that has obviously been deeply influenced by national-socialist or fascist ideas and models in its worldview, organization, and external forms.”17 However, having failed in his bid to attract German support in 1935 and after visits to Berlin and Rome in 1938, Saʿada would later demarcate his party from Nazism and fascism, stating on occasions that the SSNP was neither fascist nor national-socialist, and likewise neither “democratic” nor “communist,” but simply “Syrian nationalist.”18 In his book on nationalism in the Arab Levant, Hazim Saghiyya, himself a former SSNP member, uncovers the Christian sectarian fanaticism that underlies Saʿada’s thought in its scorn for Arabs (especially African Arabs), Islam, and even the Orient in the name of the supposed superiority of the “Syrians,” said to belong to Mediterranean civilization.19 It is this logic that led the party to side with the Western-backed presi-

16  Seale (1965: 67). 17 Deutsches Generalkonsulat, “Politischer Bericht. Inhalt: Aufdeckung einer umstürzlerischen Bewegung,” Beirut: November 22, 1935 (L327547–L327549)—facsimile reproduction in Dayih (1994: 51–53). A member of the SSNP himself, Jean Dayih rejects the accusation of Nazism traditionally leveled against his party, but the document that he reproduces as his main exhibit, while indicating the German consul’s lack of interest in the SSNP, rather confirms that it was inspired by fascism and Nazism. On the SSNP’s ideology, see among other critical sources Zuwiyya Yamak (1966). 18  Saadeh, cited by Dayih (1994: 22). The late Christoph Schumann (2004) attempted to downplay the SSNP’s fascist character by treating it as merely “symbolic.” His essay is based on the judgments of a few former members of the party who are not particularly critical toward their own past. 19  Saghiyya (2000: 195–249).

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Fascism in the Middle East and North Africa   185 dency of Camille Chamoun against its Nasser-backed Arab nationalist opponents in the 1958 crisis in Lebanon. The SSNP was subjected to harsh repression after two abortive putsch attempts, one in 1949 resulting in the summary execution of Saʿada and another in 1961. It shifted ideo­logic­al­ly and politically in the 1970s, joining the alliance of the Lebanese left and Arab nationalist parties with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The SSNP still exists in Lebanon and Syria; it is widely seen in Lebanon as an instrument of the Syrian regime, along with other various Lebanese organizations. In Syria, it is one of the junior partners of the Baʿth Party in a setup supposed to show that the country’s government is based on political pluralism.

The Lebanese Phalanges The Lebanese Phalanges (al-Kataʾib al-Lubnaniyya) was founded in 1936 by Pierre Gemayyel [al-Jumayyil] (1905–1984), a Lebanese Maronite pharmacist, on his return from a visit to Germany and Central Europe during the Olympic Games held that same year in Berlin.20 Gemayyel was impressed by both the Nazi regime and the Sokol movement of Central Europe—a forerunner of the Boy Scouts, which was founded in 1862 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and played an important role in fostering nationalism among the Empire’s Central European populations. The name of the Lebanese Phalanges itself—using Phalanges for Kataʾib in the French denomination of the Party—is inspired by the Spanish Falange (Falange Española), the right-wing nationalist organization that was to become the ruling party in Spain under the Caudillo Francisco Franco. In fact, the Lebanese Phalanges Party, as it came to be known, had more affinities with the Spanish Francoist model than with German Nazism or Italian fascism. Reflecting a Christian-Maronite sectarian agenda, it can be classified within the Catholic “clerical fascist” tradition inaugurated by the pro-fascist wing of the Italian People’s Party (the precursor of the Christian Democrats); variants of fascism associated with Francoism (and its “national Catholicism”) were Salazar’s regime in Portugal, DollfussSchuschnigg’s dictatorship in Austria, the Pétain regime in France, and other similar historical movements.21 The Lebanese Phalanges Party was right-wing conservative on the social level and typically fascist in its organizational structure. It always projected itself as the protector of Lebanese Christians in general and Maronites in particular, as well as a defender of the Lebanese entity carved out from Syria by French colonial mandate authorities in 1920—in opposition to any form of nationalism seeking to incorporate that entity into a larger national unit, whether Pan-Arab, Syrian, or Greater “Syrian.” Thus, the Lebanese Phalanges Party has always been a fierce enemy of Saʿada’s SSNP as well as of Arab 20  Entelis (1974).

21  On “clerical fascism,” see Feldman and Turda (eds) (2007).

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186   gilbert achcar nationalism. It was concerned, above all, with the continued existence of an independent Christian-dominated Lebanon in the face of any effort to absorb it into a larger Muslim-majority polity. The party posed, therefore, as the defender of all Lebanon’s non-Muslim minorities, cultivating good relations among them for electoral as well as ideological reasons. Although predisposed to anti-Semitism by both its fascist and its Maronite Catholic inspiration, the party also posed as the protector of Lebanon’s Jews, especially when regional tensions flared up as a prelude to the creation of the state of Israel and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Phalanges nevertheless endorsed anti-Zionism in 1945 as a necessary condition in order to join with Muslim allies in the struggle for Lebanon’s independence, such as the Najjada movement, a Muslim counterpart to the Kataʾib but of lesser importance politically. This was also because the Phalanges saw a Jewish state as a likely competitor to the Lebanese state in economic matters and in privileged relations with Western powers.22 However, faced with the radicalization of Arab nationalism fueled by the 1948 war, the Phalanges forged an alliance with the young Israeli state, though the support it got from the latter was rather thin in the early stages.23

Young Egypt and Egyptian Nationalism Founded in 1933, the Young Egypt (Misr al-Fatat) movement has been characterized by a highly erratic political trajectory, including changes of name and political outlook that reflected the political versatility of its founder and leader, Ahmad Husayn.24 Inspired by the rising tide of European fascism, Young Egypt aped its paramilitary modes of or­gan­ iza­tion, setting up “greenshirts” on the pattern of the German brownshirts and Italian blackshirts. Its ideology evolved toward a combination of ultranationalism with Islam. Thus Young Egypt in the mid-1930s contrasted its “spiritual dimension” with the “ma­ teri­ al­ ism” of European fascism. It even envisaged merging with the Muslim Brotherhood in 1939, before deciding instead to compete with it for a short while under the name of the Islamic Patriotic Party, before reverting to its old name. Ahmad Husayn visited Mussolini’s Italy in 1934 and returned bitterly disappointed at having not been taken seriously, one year before the SSNP went into a similar experience with Germany. Young Egypt turned very critical of Italy afterward, and yet supported Italy in its war against Ethiopia in 1935, buying into the view that Mussolini would protect Ethiopia’s oppressed Muslims.25 The movement’s attitude toward Rome con­ tinued to zigzag thereafter. Its attitude toward Germany was no less erratic: Ahmad Husayn tried to build a relationship with the Third Reich as early as 1934, openly 22  Eisenberg (1994). 23  Morris (1984). 24 On Young Egypt, see Jankowski (1975); Saʿid (1979); and especially Shalabi (1982)—the most detailed work on Ahmad Husayn’s movement. 25  On contrasting Arab attitudes to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, see Erlich (2014).

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Fascism in the Middle East and North Africa   187 ­ eclaring his admiration for Hitler. In 1938, he visited Germany and, for the second time, d Italy and came back enthused about the Third Reich.26 Husayn’s frequent political shifts were influenced by an admiration for whichever anti-British power of the day held sway, and led him to praise the Soviet Union after the war. With the exacerbation of tensions in Palestine during the latter half of the 1930s, Young Egypt—especially given its 1938 pro-Nazi turn—was soon to lapse into antiSemitism. Whereas Ahmad Husayn had criticized Nazi anti-Semitism as regressive in 1938, blaming it for the negative impact it had had on Palestine, his movement organized an unmistakably anti-Jewish campaign in 1939, calling for a “Boycott of Jewish Commerce” and compiling lists of Jewish-owned businesses in various Egyptian cities. Unlike the 1930s anti-Zionist boycott launched in other Arab countries, such as Syria,27 or the boycott of “Zionist” products (defined as “Jewish goods produced in Palestine”) that the League of Arab States called for in 1945,28 Young Egypt’s campaign was undeniably anti-Semitic. On November 2, 1945, on the twentyeighth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Young Egypt and the Muslim Brothers organized attacks on Jewish stores or institutions in Egypt—the first ever, according to Rifʿat al-Saʿid.29 The movement organized a new anti-Jewish campaign during the 1948 war. Young Egypt reinvented itself as the Socialist Party of Egypt in 1949 until the Egyptian military, after seizing power on July 23, 1952, outlawed all political parties in January 1953.

Arab Ultranationalism and the 1941 Coup in Iraq There existed in 1930s Iraq an Arab ultranationalist current that was fascinated by Nazi Germany, like many others among radical nationalists in colonial and semicolonial countries during that same period. Its main representatives belonged to the Al-Muthanna Club, founded in 1935.30 The club had an authoritarian, populist orientation, but the degree to which its members subscribed to Nazi ideology varied. Police reports and documents of the Al-Muthanna Club published in Baghdad in 1998 show that it was generally ultranationalist, anti-communist, and Pan-Arab, with an anti-Jewish 26  Ahmad Husayn’s July 1938 open letter to Adolf Hitler, a long extract of which has been translated from the original Arabic text found in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ archives (Deutsches Auswartiges Amt, Akten betreffend Arabien, Pol. VII, 26, vol. 1, 293) in the otherwise error-ridden article by Stefan Wild (1985: 134–135). 27  Khoury (1987: 447). 28  Resolution of December 2, 1945, in Khalil (ed.) (1962: 161). 29 Saʿid (1974: 43). 30  On the Al-Muthanna Club, see Wien (2006: 32–33) and Batatu (1978: 297–300). For an overview of Iraq’s history in this period, see Tripp (2007, ch. 2–3).

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188   gilbert achcar or anti-Semitic dimension that was more implicit than explicit.31 However, some of the club’s Iraqi and Palestinian members were indeed Nazi sympathizers who established contact with the German embassy.32 A police report of April 1942, written shortly before the club was dissolved by Nuri al-Saʿid’s pro-British government, attributes the club’s pro-Nazi turn to the influence of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husayni, who arrived in Baghdad in October 1939.33 This seems to be corroborated by the fact that in the same year (1939), the club had published a pamphlet on Nazism that was very critical of Hitler’s Germany and its ideology, yet without discussing German anti-Semitism.34 Nazi Germany is portrayed as an expansionist power that violates international treaties and the right of peoples to freely determine their future; one that is inspired by a theory of racial supremacy that is scornful of Arabs, and one that terrorizes its own people. It concludes by calling on Arabs to “maintain an attitude of reserve and suspicion” during the Second World War, which started that year, to “direct their efforts toward defense of their true interests,” and “to resist Communist, Zionist, Nazi, fascist, and other colonialist movements detrimental to [their] identity and progress.”35 One of the most eminent members of the Al-Muthanna Club was Sami Shawkat, director-general of the Iraqi Ministry of Education, a man who distinguished himself in 1938 with an anti-Jewish diatribe that was so virulent that he has been accused of preconizing genocide—not without exaggeration.36 What is indisputable, however, is that there were Arab ultranationalist circles in 1930s Iraq, to which Shawkat belonged, that deployed a discourse riddled with anti-Semitic overtones. Although the discourse referred constantly to the exacerbation of tensions in Palestine, especially when voiced by Palestinian nationalists living in Iraq, the Iraqi context of the period was, of course, very different from that of Palestine where Jews in their vast majority were immigrants perceived as participants in the Zionist colonial-settler enterprise. In reality, the anti-Semitism of Iraqi Arab ultranationalists was more akin to that of a group such as Young Egypt than to the blurred anti-Jewish/anti-Zionist distinction that was widespread among Palestinians. Moreover, the Jewish community in Iraq was one of the oldest autochthonous components of the country’s population. Nevertheless Iraqi anti-Semitism exhibited a distinctly higher level of violence than in the Egyptian case. Anti-Semitic discourses in 1930s Iraq went hand-in-hand with an upsurge in ethnic and religious violence, which reached a new peak in 1933 with massacres that took the lives of thousands of Christian Assyrians in Northern Iraq. These were a belated jolt of the Assyrian genocide that Turkish and Kurdish Ottoman forces perpetrated beginning in 1914, at the same time, and in the same areas as the Armenian genocide. Sami Shawkat’s anti-Semitic views are believed to have permeated Iraq’s Futuwwa (“young manhood” in Arabic), an official youth movement, through which all students 31  Hamidi (1998). 32  Hamidi (1998: 34–35). 33  Hamidi (1998: 37–38). 34  Hamidi (1998: 80–90). 35  Hamidi (1998: 90). 36  Haim (1955: 311); Wild (1985: 137); for a more nuanced perspective on Shawkat, see Wien (2006: 84–88).

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Fascism in the Middle East and North Africa   189 of high school upper classes received paramilitary training.37 The Futuwwa was sponsored by the pro-British government of Iraq. London’s representatives in the country believed that the movement “should be physically and socially beneficial because it provides for discipline on the square (the British teachers all say that lack of discipline is one of the worst difficulties in the classes).”38 The movement fit in with the earlier-discussed pattern of paramilitary youth organizations that was pervasive in the 1930s. It has even been suggested that it was closer to a state-run Scouting movement than to a Nazi-like youth organization.39 However, a major difference with a banal Scout-like organization developed when Iraq’s pro-British Prime Minister Nuri al-Saʿid charged Sami Shawkat with reorganizing the Futuwwa along the lines of the German model. Military training of the movement was entrusted to Colonel Salah al-Din al-Sabbagh, one of the four colonels of the “Golden Square” who led the anti-British coup d’état of April 1, 1941 and stood behind Rashid ʿAli al-Gaylani’s government during the subsequent two-month nationalist episode, until the pro-British government was restored on June 1, 1941.40 The four colonels were known sympathizers of al-Muthanna Club. Thus, the young people of the Futuwwa came to be exposed to nationalist political education of a sort that predisposed them to take an active part in the Baghdad anti-Jewish pogrom known as the Farhūd (a term referring to chaos and pillage in dialectal Iraqi Arabic) on June 1 and 2, 1941.41 The Farhūd occurred in the wake of the British military intervention that overthrew the Gaylani government: it was the culmination of a tide of anti-Jewish violence that had been rising since the end of the First World War, particularly in the 1930s. It represented, however, the worst anti-Jewish massacre in Iraq’s long history. Baghdad’s Jews became scapegoats on whom the ultranationalists vented their frustrations. Indeed, they regarded Iraqi Jews as a pro-British fifth column—an accusation that was hammered home by Nazi propaganda through Radio Berlin broadcasts in Arabic. Against a backdrop of anarchy and looting, 130 to 180 Iraqi Jews were killed and several hundreds wounded. As Hayyim Cohen put it: It is fairly certain that most of those who took part in the slaughter of the Jews were young men influenced by Nazi propaganda, especially soldiers, officers, policemen and members of the para-military groups. The looters and thieves, however, were mainly the uneducated, illiterate masses . . . They took part in the outbreak mainly for the sake of easy gain. For this reason, they were easily dispersed when fired on, on Monday afternoon, 2 June.42

37  On the Iraqi Futuwwa, see, among other sources, Simon (1986: esp. 110–114) and Wien (2006: esp. 88–112). 38  From a 1939 Foreign Office Document cited by Simon (1986: 113). 39  Wien (2006: 113–114). 40  On the 1941 episode, see Khadduri (1960). 41  Simon (1986: 154–160); Cohen (1996); Wien (2006: 109–112); and Bashkin (2012: 100–140). 42  Cohen (1966: 12–13).

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190   gilbert achcar The Farhūd, along with Germany’s support of the Iraqi nationalists in their military confrontation with British forces, and Gaylani’s subsequent flight to Berlin into exile and collaboration with Nazi Germany until 1945,43 led credence to the characterization of the 1941 coup as German-instigated and “pro-Nazi”—a characterization that is still pervasive in Western sources. The reality is more complex, however. Condemned to death in his own country and prominent on the British authorities’ most wanted list, Gaylani had few other choices than to seek refuge in Berlin. Nonetheless, the Iraqi pol­it­ ician and likewise the four army colonels behind the coup were, above all, Iraqi Arab nationalists who wished to keep their country out of the Second World War. They did not want their countrymen to fight on the British side, but neither this, nor Gaylani’s forced residence in Berlin, meant that they incited them to fight on the side of the Axis. Such neutralist attitudes were common among nationalists all over the region and were best represented by ʿAli Mahir, Egypt’s prime minister between August 1939 and June 1940. The same attitude is expressed in the memoirs of Colonel Salah al-Din al-Sabbagh, written in the interlude between his flight to Turkey after the British overthrow of the Gaylani government and his subsequent extradition to Iraq, where the British au­thor­ ities oversaw his execution in 1945. Sabbagh relates telling a German officer in 1939, before the outbreak of the war: Suppose that Germany were to emerge from the war victorious over Great Britain: what guarantee would the Arab countries have their situation would be better than it is today? . . . Neither a German nor a British victory, should war break out, is in any sense in the Arabs’ interests. We want neither the victory nor the defeat of the one side or the other; rather, we wish to see them emerge from the war with matching forces, so that the balance between them is maintained.44

In his memoirs, Sabbagh describes two different positions that prevailed among Arab nationalists in Iraq after the war broke out: a relatively moderate position defended by General Taha al-Hashimi before he became president of the Council of Ministers in February 1941, and a more radical one defended by the Mufti of Jerusalem. They differed mostly on the stance to adopt toward the Axis and on the strategy of the Arab nationalist battle. Wary of alienating Britain, Hashimi advocated breaking off relations with the Axis and fomenting a revolt in Syria against the colonial authorities of Vichy France, whereas the Mufti stood in favor of maintaining links with the Axis and advocated launching a revolt against the British in Palestine, persuaded that they would bow to the Arabs’ demands under the circumstances. All agreed on three points, however: to appease the British by sticking to the much-resented Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1922; to build up the Iraqi army; and to keep out of the war while waiting to see how it would develop.45 43  On Rashid ʿAli al-Gaylani’s role in Berlin, see Hirszowicz (1966) and Nicosia (2015). 44  Sabbagh (1994: 76). 45  Sabbagh (1994: 130–131).

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Fascism in the Middle East and North Africa   191 As Majid Khadduri showed in his history of monarchical Iraq, it was actually London’s colonial arrogance that radicalized Gaylani, led the Iraqi nationalists to establish contact with the Axis, and precipitated the anti-British coup on April 1, 1941. Yet, after the coup, Gaylani’s government, in line with the nationalist consensus, continued proclaiming its intention to respect Iraq’s international commitments and offered explicitly to abide by the Anglo-Iraq treaty.46 When the British forces—dispatched to Iraq in reaction to the coup—arrived in Basra, Gaylani even granted them permission to land, “as evidence of the friendly attitude of his Government towards Britain,” even though they had not requested his permission.47 When it became clear, however, that London intended to overthrow the new Iraqi government by force, Gaylani and the colonels, with military resources far inferior to those of the British, naturally sought assistance from London’s enemies, not only the Axis, but also the Soviet Union, which Hitler had yet to attack.48 In his memoirs, al-Sabbagh maintains that his government abandoned neutrality only at “five o’clock in the morning of Friday, 2 May 1941, the day the English betrayed us, taking us by surprise and bombing our units and camps from the air. Our soldiers were torn to bits, although we had peaceful positions and were endeavoring to respect the treaty while defending our rights.”49 Even Yunus al-Sabʿawi—an eminent member of Gaylani’s government, generally regarded as the most pro-Nazi of the leaders of the 1941 putsch because he had translated Mein Kampf in 1934 for a Jesuit anti-Jewish Arabic-language daily50—actually cultivated ties with the Iraqi communists from 1936 onward.51 After the end of the Gaylani episode, Sabʿawi took refuge in Iran where he contacted the Soviet ambassador and asked for Moscow’s help in organizing a rebellion, explaining that the government to which he had belonged was “a patriotic movement directed against the imperialists,” and had “no connection with Nazism.”52 Neither in Iraq nor in the rest of the Arab world were the events of April–May 1941 perceived as a pro-Nazi coup d’état. The Iraqi Communists themselves—who were fiercely anti-Nazi and cannot be suspected of anti-Semitism if only because of the large numbers of Jews among them—wrote a letter to Gaylani on May 7 reminding him of the support they had given his government soon after it came to power and commending him for his popularity, while warning him against anti-Jewish acts and pro-Axis propaganda.53 46  Khadduri (1960: 214–217). Khadduri (1962) has also shown how London’s 1939 rejection of the solution to the Palestinian problem that its most faithful Iraqi ally Nuri al-Saʿid urged it to adopt on the basis of the British White Paper of the same year did increase hostility toward Britain among Iraqi Arab nationalists, leading Nuri al-Saʿid himself to approach the Axis. 47  Khadduri (1960: 219). 48  Khadduri (1960: 229). See also Hirszowicz (1966: 106). Germany attacked the Soviet Union three weeks after the end of the Gaylani episode, on June 22, 1941. 49  Sabbagh (1994: 76–77). 50  Wild (1985: 150–155). 51  Batatu (1978: 457–458). 52  Batatu (1978: 459). 53  A nearly complete translation of the Communists’ letter is to be found in Batatu (1978: 453–455).

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192   gilbert achcar The Iraqi nationalist coup was hugely popular in the Arab world: its overthrow by British force led to increased resentment against Britain, but this did not translate into increasing support for the Axis, nor was the Farhūd matched by any similar anti-Semitic surge in other Arab countries. In Iraq itself actually, the Farhūd was mostly restricted to Baghdad, although Jews lived in many other Iraqi towns.

Conclusion What is most striking about the balance sheet of the impact of Fascism and Nazism in Arab countries is actually how limited it was, despite natural animosity toward British colonial domination and Zionism. All considered, there were fewer fascist and fascistlike movements in the Arab world than in Europe, the United Kingdom included, whether in absolute or relative terms. Not only did very few Arabs fight on the side of the Axis, unlike the very large numbers who fought in British and French Allied forces, but very few anti-British actions were undertaken in Arab countries during the Second World War. In that regard, the 1941 coup in Iraq was more the exception than the rule. As George Lenczowski accurately wrote in a handbook on the Middle East published shortly after the end of the Second World War, there was among the Arabs “a widespread belief that the war was a conflict of the big powers and as such of no direct concern to the Arabs. This explains why there was relatively little anti-Ally unrest in the Middle East during the war.”54 For the most part, Arab nationalism was a component of the progressive anticolonial movement that will unfold dramatically in the immediate postwar period of decolonization.

References Achcar, Gilbert (2010). The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, G. M. Goshgarian (trans. from the French) (New York: Picador, and London: Saqi). Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif (2005). Forgotten Voices: Power and Agency in Colonial and Postcolonial Libya (New York and Abingdon: Routledge). Bashkin, Orit (2012). New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Batatu, Hanna (1978). The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba’athists, and Free Officers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Brenner, Leni (1983). Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill and Co.). Brenner, Leni (1984). The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (London: Zed Books). Cantier, Jacques (2002). L’Algérie sous le régime de Vichy (Paris: Odile Jacob). 54  Lenczowski (1980: 692). The first edition of Lenczowski’s handbook came out in 1952.

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Fascism in the Middle East and North Africa   193 Cohen, Hayyim (1966). “The Anti-Jewish Farhūd in Baghdad, 1941,” Middle Eastern Studies 3,1: 2–17. Cohen, Mitchell (1987). Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Cresti, Federico (2011). Non desiderare la terra d’altri. La colonizzazione italiana in Libia (Rome: Carocci). Darmon, Pierre (2014). L’Algérie de Pétain (Paris: Perrin). Dayih, Jean (1994). Saʿada wa-l-naziyya. Wathaʾiq al-kharijiyya al-almaniyya (n.p. [probably Beirut]: Fajr al-Nahda). Eisenberg, Laura Zittrain (1994). My Enemy’s Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination, 1900–1948 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press). Entelis, John (1974). Pluralism and Party Transformation in Lebanon: Al-Kataʾib 1936–1970 (Leiden: Brill). Erlich, Haggai (2014). “The Tiger and the Lion: Fascism and Ethiopia in Arab Eyes,” in Gershoni (ed.). Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion (Austin: University of Texas Press), 271–288. Feldman, Matthew and Marius Turda (eds) (2007). “ ‘Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Europe,” special issue of Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, vol. 8, no. 2. Gershoni, Israel (ed.) (2014). Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion (Austin: University of Texas Press). Gershoni, Israel and James Jankowski (2009). Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Griffiths, Richard (2000). An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Fascism (London: Duckworth). Haim, Sylvia (1955). “Arabic Antisemitic Literature: Some Preliminary Notes,” Jewish Social Studies 17: 307–312. Hamidi, Ja‘far ‘Abbas (1998). Min wathaʾiq al-nawadi al-qawmiyya fi al-ʿIraq: Al-Muthanna bin Haritha al-Shaybani wa-l-Baʿth al-ʿArabi (Baghdad: Bayt al-Hikma). Hirszowicz, Lukasz (1966). The Third Reich and the Arab East (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). al-Hurani, Akram (2000). Mudhakkirat Akram al-Hurani, vol. 1 (Cairo: Maktabat al-Madbuli). Jankowski, James (1975). Egypt’s Young Rebels: “Young Egypt,” 1933–1952 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press). Kaplan, Eran (2005). The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press). Khadduri, Majid (1962). “General Nuri’s Flirtation with the Axis Powers,” Middle East Journal 16,3 (Summer): 328–336. Khadduri, Majid (1960). Independent Iraq, 1932–1958: A Study in Iraqi Politics, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press). Khalil, Khalil Muhammad (ed.) (1962). The Arab States and the Arab League: A Documentary Record, vol. 2 (Beirut: Khayats). Khoury, Philip (1987). Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism 1920–1945 (London: I. B. Tauris). Lenczowski, George (1980). The Middle East in World Affairs, 4th edn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Mandel, Ernest (1971). “Introduction,” in Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder): 9–49.

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194   gilbert achcar Mayer, Thomas (1982). “Egypt and the General Islamic Conference of Jerusalem in 1931,” Middle Eastern Studies 18,3: 311–322. Morris, Benny (1984). “Israel and the Lebanese Phalange: The Birth of a Relationship, 1948–1951,” Journal of Israeli History 5,1: 125–144. Nicosia, Francis (2008). Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press). Nicosia, Francis (2015). Nazi Germany and the Arab World (New York: Cambridge University Press). Paxton, Robert (2004). The Anatomy of Fascism (New York and London: Alfred A. Knopf and Allen Lane). Poulantzas, Nicos (1979). Fascism and Dictatorship: The Third International and the Problem of Fascism, Judith White (trans. from the French) (London: Verso). al-Sabbagh, Salah al-Din (1994). Fursan al-ʿuruba: Mudhakkarat al-ʿaqid al-rukn Salah al-Din al-Sabbagh (Rabat: Tanit). Safran, Nadav (1961). Egypt in Search of Political Community: An Analysis of the Intellectual and Political Evolution of Egypt, 1804–1952 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Saghiyya, Hazem (2000). Qawmiyyu al-mashriq al-ʿArabi: Min Dreyfus ila Garaudy (Beirut: Riyad al-Rayyis). al-Saʿid, Rifʿat (1974). Al-Yasar al-Misri wa-l-qadiyya al-filastiniyya (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi). al-Saʿid, Rifʿat (1979). Ahmad Husayn: Kalimat wa Mawaqif (Cairo: Al-ʿArabi). Schumann, Christoph (2004). “Symbolische Aneignungen. Antūn Saʿādas Radikalnationalismus in der Epoche des Faschismus,” in Höpp, Wien, and Wildangel (eds). Blind fur die Geschichte? Arabische Begegnungen mit dem Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz): 155–189. Seale, Patrick (1965). The Struggle for Syria: A Study of Post-War Arab Politics 1945–1958 (London: Oxford University Press). Shalabi, ʿAli (1982). Misr al-fatat wa Dawruha fi al-siyasa al-misriyya 1933–1941 (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Jami‘i). Shavit, Yaacov (1988). Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement 1925–1948 (London: Frank Cass). Shindler, Colin (2006). The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right (London: I. B. Tauris). Simon, Reeva (1986). Iraq Between the Two World Wars: The Creation and Implementation of a Nationalist Ideology (New York: Columbia University Press). Tripp, Charles (2007). A History of Iraq, 3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wien, Peter (2006). Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian, and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932–1941 (London: Routledge). Wild, Stefan (1985). “National Socialism in the Arab Near East between 1933 and 1939,” Die Welt des Islams 25,1/4: 126–173. Zuwiyya Yamak, Labib (1966). The Syrian Social Nationalist Party: An Ideological Analysis (Cambridge, MA: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University).

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pa rt I I I

L E GAC I E S OF WA R A N D R E VOLU T ION

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chapter 11

Com m u n ism i n th e M iddl e E ast a n d North A fr ica From Comintern Parties to Marxist-Leninist Movements Jens Hanssen

“To live like a tree alone and free. To live like a forest in brotherhood.” Nazim Hikmet, 1945 “First they came for the Communists…” Martin Niemöller, 1946 “In Vietnam the revolutionaries are gaining victory because their struggle relies on a theoretical revolutionary base.” Nayif Hawatimeh, 1968 “The older revolutionary intellectuals made us tools for their entertainment, our relationship with them, which should have been a volunteer association among fighters for freedom, became like a slavery relationship.” Arwa Salih, 1996

This chapter explores the promises and pitfalls of communism in the interwar years and during the Cold War until the early 1970s. Turkish, Iranian, and Arab cadres struggled with their parties’ relationship with Moscow. Algerian communists also challenged the mother party in Paris over “the colonial question.” Like its Central Asian, Iranian, and Turkish counterparts, Arab communism emerged in the wake of the First World War, however, its subsequent trajectories differed. Iran and Turkey became Western allies during

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198   jens hanssen the Cold War and the Central Asian republics were integrated into the Soviet bloc. After a brief survey of the origins of communism in those regions, this chapter zooms in on the Arab countries that became key Third World battlegrounds between both sides of the global Cold War.1 Communists in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) sometimes confronted and sometimes collaborated with progressive domestic rivals, oppressive governments, and their geopolitical allies in the various countries within the Soviet bloc. But they were nearly always the first victims of colonial counterinsurgency measures and Cold-War geopolitics.2 This chapter contends that Arab communist parties lost their monopoly over Marxist-Leninist ideology to Palestinian-led and Front de Libération Nationale (FLN)/Vietcong-inspired militant liberation organizations in the mid-1960s. These groups eschewed nationwide party structures in favor of direct action and “lean,” cellstructured movements while combining class and internationalist struggles.3 Friedrich Engels first articulated the core communist principles in 1847 and concluded: “Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat” from the exploitation of capitalism.4 Communist parties around the world shared the utopian belief that once private property and social inequality are overcome, the state would wither away, all of humanity be liberated, and the world become a better place. The term “socialism” is often used interchangeably with communism, and communists often gathered in socialist parties. But on Marxist-Leninist doctrine, socialism is merely the imperfect stage of social development in which the state is still necessary as a guarantor to enforce human equality and just distribution of resources.5 Ideological competition between different interpretations of Marxism-Leninism, even within Soviet com­mun­ism, fed notorious left-wing sectarianism. Questions of strategy and tactics competed fiercely with shared ideals.6 Arab Stalinists demanded total submission to the dictates of “the Party”; Marxist-Leninists saw themselves as the militant vanguard of scientific socialism, while Maoists believed in the peasant-led people’s war of liberation.7 Formally, Comintern headquarters in Moscow determined the decisions and organization of all communist parties around the world. But regional and national contexts also influenced the particular organizational shape, policy priorities, and

1  Westad (2007). For the most recent country-by-country study of communist parties in MENA, see Feliu and Izquierdo-Brichs (2019). 2  Murqus (1964). 3  See Alexander (2014) for a companion piece on communists that focuses on their rivalry with Islamists. 4  Engels (1847). See also Chattopadhyay (2014) and S. Smith (2014) more generally. 5  Lenin (1917). See also Lih (2014). 6  Stalin’s “Concerning the Question of the Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists,” Pravda No. 56, March 14, 1923, was widely cited. It was translated into Arabic by the People’s Publication Bureau in Beirut and Damascus in 1947, along with other works, including Stalin’s “The Party,” “The Peasant Problem,” “The National Problem,” and “Dialectical and Historical Materialism,” as well as The Communist Manifesto. On Stalin and Stalinism more generally, see McDermott (2014). 7  Cheek (2014).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   199 i­ deological makeup of communism. Moreover, Arab socialist regimes and revolutionaries cultivated bilateral relations elsewhere in the Eastern bloc. The Cold War was fought out in the Third World. The Egyptian Marxist economist Samir Amin (1931–2018) has offered a useful periodization to this effect: Between 1945 and 1955, a new global economic system was forged through which the United States established monetary and industrial hegemony over European markets devastated by the war. During the next two decades the Baghdad Pact, the Bandung Conference, and the Warsaw Pact marked the geopolitical territory through which “the world system was organized around the emergence of the Third World.” The Soviet Union “escaped from its isolation by allying itself with the rising tide of Third World national liberation,” to push back the ideology of “free trade.” The limits of economic growth and successive crises of capitalism ushered in the third postwar phase from 1975 until 1992.8 Petrodollars from the Gulf monarchies bankrolled Nixon’s dicey decision to delink the US dollar from the gold standard in the early 1970s.9 This, in turn, paved the way for the global entanglement of neoliberalism and Arab authoritarianism. But by this time the heyday of MENA communism had long passed.

The Origins of Radicalization The Middle East and North Africa experienced colonialism in a variety of forms. France had annexed Algeria and ruled Tunisia and Morocco as protectorates. Libya was an Italian colony and Egypt was a British protectorate. After the First World War, the League of Nations mandated Syria and Lebanon to France, while Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq went to Great Britain. Economic, agricultural, and industrial development in these countries was subordinated to fiscal exigencies in the imperial centers. Anarchist and socialist tendencies had existed in MENA since the late nineteenth century. Workers mobilized against capitalist encroachment across the Mediterranean and organized strikes, demonstrations, and boycotts.10 Lenin’s and Trotsky’s popularity soared after they decided to leak and denounce the Sykes-Picot-Sazanoff Agreement of 1916 that carved up the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire between France and Britain and promised Istanbul to the Russians. If Wilsonian liberal and monarchical notions of national self-determination were dominant in the post-Ottoman Middle East, the only political force that ranged itself against them were the communists who drew strength from the October Revolution of 1917.11 But it was east of the Ottoman Empire that revolutionary communism first took root before traveling to the Arab world. 8  Quoted in Hanssen and Weiss (2018: 8). 9  According to Mitchell (2013: 171), “[a]bandonment of the gold standard in August 1971 amounted to a declaration of bankruptcy by the US government.” 10  Khuri-Makdisi (2010); Çetinkaya (2014). 11  Mayer (1969).

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200   jens hanssen

Sultan-Galiev and Muslim Communism in Central Asia The relationship between communism and nationalism has long divided Marxist ­thinkers, most famously in the exchange on the national question between Luxemburg and Lenin.12 After the October Revolution swept the Bolsheviks to power in Russia, the old theoretical questions of priority and timing of “the socialist revolution and the right of nations to self-determination” acquired practical urgency.13 Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev (1892–1940), a young Tartar Bolshevik and president of the Central Muslim Commissariat, badgered the communist leadership to overcome its suspicion of nationalist middle classes, to stop temporizing for a proletarian revolution in the West, and to recognize the value of anticolonial struggle both theoretically and geopolitically. To prove his point he founded the Muslim Communist Party and raised military units which helped defeat the White Russian army.14 The defeat of the Spartacist revolt in Berlin and socialist republics elsewhere in Europe in 1919, swayed Lenin in favor of Sultan-Galiev’s arguments. Lenin fleshed out support for national self-determination in Central Asia in his “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions” and other writings of 1920. He also dispatched Grigory Safarov (1891–1942), his expert on “the Eastern Question,” to Kazakhstan in order to support the indigenous population against Russian colonizers.15 Early Bolshevik thinkers had misjudged the staying power of the capitalist regimes in the West because they under­ esti­mated the key fiscal roles their colonial possessions played in keeping the doomed system afloat. Persuaded by the Indian socialist M. N. Roy (1887–1954), Lenin argued that it was time to support revolution in the East as a precondition for defeating Western imperialism.16 Sultan-Galiev was encouraged by this policy change at the Second Congress of the Comintern in July 1920 and applied himself to organizing an anticolonial movement for the “enslaved masses of Persia, Armenia, and Turkey,” where he hoped the idea of Muslim National Communism would spread.17 The Congress of the Peoples of the East in September of the same year launched the Comintern with the proclamation of “holy war against British and French capitalists . . . above all against British imperialism.”18 Held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, it was attended by almost two thousand delegates from Asia, MENA, Europe, and by a couple of North Americans.19 Although Comintern president Grigory Zinoviev (b. Hirsch Apfelbaum, 1883–1936) called the shots at Baku, the Ottoman contingent was one of the largest and most active, with feminist Naciye Hanem delivering the motion for the liberation of women.20 12  Dunayevskaya (1991). 13  Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination” (1916), https:// www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x01.htm 14  Renault (2015). 15  White (1976). 16  Lenin, “Address to the second All-Russia Congress of Communist Organizations of the Peoples of the East,” in Riddell (2015: 286–299). 17  White (1974: 498). 18  White (1974: 500), Riddell (2015). 19  Rodinson (2015: 135–141). 20  Riddell (2015: 232–235).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   201 Zinoviev barred Sultan-Galiev himself from attending Baku, and his idea of a lasting alliance between colonized “petty bourgeoisie” and Muslim “proletariat” was rejected at the congress. When the Muslim Communist Party was incorporated into the Comintern soon afterward, this only spelled the return of Russian chauvinism for Sultan-Galiev. For all intents and purposes, he was an agnostic who was less interested in Islamic authenticity and theological purity than in Marxifying Islam and in Muslim demographics. He claimed that apart from the feudal elites and their clerical allies, Muslims were a homogeneous subaltern class and a Muslim communist revolution therefore called for Soviet support.21 Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin’s rise, and Zinoviev’s demise in 1926 nipped any political convergence between transnational communism and pan-Islamism in the bud.22 But Sultan-Galiev’s concept of a national communism that accommodates religious iden­ tities spread through the teachers and his students at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow and flourished in Indian, Indonesian, and Vietcong lib­er­ation struggles.23 “Sultangalievisme” also inspired FLN leader Ahmed Ben Bella (1916–2012), the first president of independent Algeria, particularly for its notion of an anticolonial International.24 But North Africa had its own traditions of anticolonial insurgency. In particular the guerilla tactics of the Rif revolt led by the socially conservative ‘Abdel-Karim al-Khattabi (1882–1963) against the Spanish and French occupation of Morocco from 1921 to 1926 inspired Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara in decades to come. Even though young radical French communists supported the Rif uprising at the time, as we shall see, most communists in France and French North Africa remained decidedly antinationalist until the 1960s.

Communism in Iran The Japanese victory over imperial Russia in 1905 and the Russian Revolution between 1905 and 1907 set in motion a global wave of revolutionary socialist ideas. These also swept through the Middle East and affected the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11.25 Formed around 1905, the Iranian Social Democratic Party had its roots among the Iranian and Azerbaijan’s oil workers in Baku.26 It played an important role 21 Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, “Social Revolution and the East (1919),” translated in Ismael (2005: 180–185). 22  Fowkes and Gökay (2013). The idea of pan-Islamism as an anticolonial force goes back to Gamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1898) and was continued by Shakib Arslan (d. 1953), a personal friend of Zinoviev’s duringthe First World War. 23  Kirasirova (2017); Ravandi-Fadai (2015). Graduates from this university included future leaders and writers in their countries: Deng, Ho Che Minh, M. N. Roy, Harry Haywood, Albert Nzule, Jomo Kenyatta, George Padmore, Nazim Hikmet, Jaʿfar Pishevari overlapped with the Iraqi Fahd, Syrian Khalid Bakdash, the Palestinian Najati Sidqi and Bulus Farah, and the Algerians Mohamed Badsi, ʿAli Mira, and Ben Ali Boukort. 24  Renault (2015). 25  See Nader Sohrabi’s chapter in this volume. 26  Dailami (2004).

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202   jens hanssen especially in Tabriz, where journalists, workers, and progressive merchants organized the defense of their city against the shah’s counterrevolution in July 1908.27 In the wake of the Russian-backed military coup that ended the constitutional period, the Armenian Iranian Bolshevik and economic theorist Avetis Mikaleian, known as Ahmad Sultanzade (1890–1938), founded the socialist Justice Party. After the First World War, a radical democratic movement made up of communists and Jangali (“men from the forest”) militants started an armed rebellion in northern Iran and its clandestine, civilian organization, the Justice Party, carried out large-scale land distribution. Their shortlived Soviet Socialist Republic in Gilan fell after the Soviet–British agreement of 1921.28 Iranian communists turned the Justice Party into the Communist Party and moved their activities to central Iran. However, Reza Shah Pahlavi crushed the movement in 1925 and passed antisocialist laws in 1931 which all but destroyed the left and the trade unions. It took a decade and the outbreak of the Second World War for the Iranian com­ mun­ists to regroup, and in 1941 Marxist intellectuals founded the Tudeh (“Party of the Masses of Iran”). Initially the Tudeh had a moderate profile, promoting constitutional and individual rights, democracy against fascism and imperialism. But it quickly became a mass movement and adopted a Marxism-Leninism line. After a successful election campaign around the demand of the nationalization of the oil industry, it obtained eight seats in parliament in 1944. It counted almost 100,000 sympathizers in addition to local allies in Kurdistan and Azerbaijan, leading a trade union federation of 355,000 members. Repressed between 1946 and 1950, the Tudeh rose again from 1951 to 1953 when Liberal Nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq (1882–1967) came to office.29 The party initially attacked Mosaddeq as an agent of American imperialism, then supported him during and after the July 1952 uprising. The Tudeh was destroyed after the CIA-sponsored coup against Mosaddeq in August 1953. In 1965, a splinter faction advocated armed struggle. When several party members were sentenced to death in 1966, international solidarity forced the government to reduce the sentences to life imprisonment. These events helped reunify the party. The Tudeh became an influential underground movement and, along with various small splinter groups, played a role in the oppositional politics in the two decades prior to the 1979 revolution.30

Turkish Communism Before the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, Salonika was home to the largest leftist organization in the Ottoman Empire, the Socialist Workers’ Federation, which represented the city’s ethnically divided work force.31 When Sultan Abdülhamid II was ousted in 1909 Istanbul became a hub of international socialist activities, including 27  Afary (1996); Chaqueri (2010). 28  Dailami (1990). 29  See Shahla Talebi’s chapter in this volume. 30  Sadeghi-Boroujerdi (2018). 31  Quataert and Zürcher (1995).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   203 Helphand-Parvus (1867–1924), the Marxist critic of Ottoman fiscal policies and the future fixer of Lenin’s train ride to the Finland Station.32 In June 1920, Mustafa Subhi (1883–1924) and Naciye Hanem established a socialist party during the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku which became the official Turkish section of the Communist International. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk soon created a rival Communist party to neutralize the growing influence of revolutionary communism. This was accompanied by a violent Kemalist campaign in the course of which Mustafa Subhi and a dozen other communists were arrested and drowned in the Black Sea.33 Lenin’s silence about the affair emboldened Atatürk to crush other types of independent and oppositional political expression.34 The pro-Kemalist Turkish Communist Party maintained a reformist platform until the mid-1960s when the Kurdish independence struggle polarized and radicalized Turkish politics. The communists reconstituted themselves under the name of the Turkey Workers Party and became an independent parliamentary force allied with the trade union movement.35 The army coup of 1971 spawned radical extraparliamentary leftist groups including the “People’s Liberation Front” which were violently opposed to Turkey’s membership in NATO and adopted their PKK allies’ Guevarism and Maoism.36 Although all six still-extant Turkish communist parties have been outlawed for decades, a communist candidate won a mayoral race in the March 2019 municipal elections.37

Formation of Arab Communist Parties, 1920–48 The Sixth Congress of the Comintern in 1928 adopted the “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies.” The document became the strategic program of Arab communist parties for a quarter of a century.38 Its principles included the overthrow of imperialist domination; the confiscation of foreign enterprises and banks, and lands of absentee land-owners; the recognition of the right of national selfdetermination; the establishment of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils; the eighthour working day, increase of wages, unemployment assistance, and social insurance; and the alliance with the Soviet Union and the world peace movement. The global financial crisis of 1929 hit the Arab Mandate states hard as European masters had realigned their nascent national economies to serve as pressure valves for fiscal crises at home. The fledgling communist parties became more popular and the rise of 32  Karaömerlioğlu (2004). 33  Harris (1967). 34  Tungay and Zürcher (1994). Dumont (1997). 35  Gökay Bülent (2006). Lipovsky (1992). 36  Cengiz (2012). 37 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-election-communist/turkeys-sole-communistmayor-promises-small-steps-to-socialism-idUSKCN1RZ1OY 38  Ismael (2005: 13).

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204   jens hanssen fascism accelerated membership growth. Although in Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria communists punched above their parties’ relatively small institutional weight, hopes of independence in the colonized world became stronger and served to radicalize patriotic and social struggles. Significant sections of the educated youth and of the trade unions began to embrace socialism for offering alternative explanations of colonial underdevelopment.39 Only a small group of communists, mainly Trotskyist thinkers in Palestine, criticized the despotic nature of the Soviet regime.40 In the 1930s, the Comintern made substantial efforts to support local communist groups through providing material support, university scholarships, and ideological training. World revolution was an attractive mantra for the bright and disaffected youth, especially after Stalin issued the Popular Front line in the Soviet Union-led global fight against fascism. The Comintern adopted the theory of revolution by stages, according to which the fulfillment of a bourgeois democratic revolution, in alliance with the national bourgeoisie, was a historical prerequisite stage to any future socialist revolution in colonial and semicolonial countries. The Soviet Marxist model also offered the most sophisticated theory of party organization in a region where parliamentarism was compromised by colonialism. In the interwar period, liberal and nationalist parties were elite-run and often the domain of individual politicians. By contrast, communist parties were tightly organized and allowed subaltern cadres to rise through the ranks.

Palestine: Crucible of Arab Communism The historiography of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Middle East in general, and the Palestine Communist Party in particular, has been dominated by a collusion of opposites who only shared anticommunism: American Cold warriors and Israeli Sovietologists on the one hand, and Arab nationalists on the other. Musa Budeiri and Ran Greenstein have recently challenged these views and offered more nuanced accounts.41 Both disregard late Ottoman socialist tendencies, and agree that com­mun­ ism in Palestine was imported from the Soviet Union by the leftist party of the Poale Zion (“Workers of Zion”), which had operated in Palestine since 1905. Poale Zion attracted British government attention on May Day, 1921, when two tendencies, the Socialist Workers Party which advocated solidarity with Arab workers and Ahdut HaAvoda (“the Unity of Work”) which David Ben Gurion (1886–1973) founded after the war, clashed over the latter’s racist Hebrew land-labor-and-language policy.42 The Comintern recognized the Palestine Communist Party, founded by Ashkenazi socialists in 1924, on the condition that it transform itself “from an organization of Jewish workers 39  Couland (1970); Beling (1961); Cliff (1946). 40  For an early immanent critique of Vanguardism and the Soviet Union’s transformation to state capitalism under Stalin, see C. L. R. James (1937). See also the Palestine-born Trotskyist, Tony Cliff (1974), aka Yigael Gluckstein (1917–2000). 41  For an overview of scholarship on early communism in Palestine, see Flores (2013). 42  Shafir (1989); Lockman (1996: 59).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   205 into a truly territorial party,” and align itself with progressive Palestinians against Palestinian feudalism, Zionism, and British imperialism. Displeased with the reluctance of Arab militants to join the Palestine Communist Party during the 1920s, Moscow recruited a dozen young Palestinians for political training, including Najati Sidqi ­(1905–1979), who wound up fighting against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, Radwan al-Hilu who became the party’s general secretary in 1934, Mahmud al-Atrash alMughrabi (1903–1939), and Bulus Farah (1910–1991), the author of an authoritative account of the rise and fall of the Arab workers’ movement in Palestine.43 The Palestine Communist Party tried to establish links with transnational movements such as the League against Imperialism which convened in Brussels in 1927 as an alternative to the liberal-colonial governance ethos of the League of Nations.44 But such efforts at internationalization could not gloss over the contradictions within the party as it prioritized the Jewish community in Palestine—“Yishuvism”—while claiming to represent all of Palestine to the Comintern. The Wailing Wall Riots of 1929 have long been identified as the birth of Palestinian nationalism. While the party denounced the Palestinian uprising in Jerusalem, the Comintern supported its popular and rural dimension and criticized the party again for failing to enlist Arab Palestinian members. In October 1930, the Comintern’s executive committee imposed Arabization on the party by appointing a new central committee consisting of three Palestinians, including Najati Sidqi, and two Ashkenazi communists. The new leadership prioritized antiimperial solidarity between Jewish and Arab workers and accused the Palestinian nationalist leadership of collusion with the British authorities.45 The election of Hitler in 1933 led the Soviet Union to organize a global antifascist alliance of all leftist forces including anticolonial nationalists. In Palestine, this Soviet shift to a National Front approach opened the door for the Communist party to openly agitate for Arab liberation. It was aided by the British Mandate authorities’ refusal to ­implement any of its political reform promises to the liberal Palestinian leadership. When the Arab Executive organized a series of explicitly anti-British demonstrations across Palestine in October 1933, the communists welcomed this radicalization as the ­beginning of the Palestinian struggle for independence from Britain.46 The arrival of destitute Jewish refugees from fascist Europe exposed the limits of com­ mun­ism under settler colonial conditions. The genuine solidarity with victims of fascism was undermined by the practical consequences of Zionism’s ethnic nationalism. The party leadership’s anti-immigration stance alienated its majority Jewish cadres. The 1936 general strike that launched the three-year-long Palestinian revolt against Mandate rule kept Jewish and Arab communists together for its six-month duration. But subsequent militarization of the Palestinian resistance strained the communist principle of nonviolence and bifurcated the party. The enlistment of Zionist forces in the British attempt to quell the revolt, the Peel Plan for the partition of Palestine in 1937, and the British White Paper of 1939 further fractured the Palestine Communist party between 43  al-Mughrabi (2015); Farah (1987); Tamari (2003); Gershoni (2012). 45  Budeiri (2010: 18–30). 46  Budeiri (2010: 49–53).

44  Prashad (2007: 21).

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206   jens hanssen Jewish cadres who aligned themselves with Ben Gurion on the one hand, and Arab ­cadres who sought a rapprochement with the exiled Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni (1895–1974) on the other. As these developments unfolded, the Comintern began to side with the Jewish section of the party and to brand Arabs “pawns in the game of fascism.”47 The Hitler-Stalin Pact and the outbreak of the Second World War compelled the Jewish communists to support British war efforts in Palestine—a strategic shift that their Arab comrades took only after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Paralyzed by the irreconcilability of antifascism and national liberation under ­wartime conditions, the Palestine Communist party dissolved itself a few weeks after Moscow announced the end of the Comintern in 1943. Shmu’el Mikunis (1903–1982) revived the Palestine Communist party as a political forum for a binational Palestine a year later. Disaffected, young, nonaligned Palestinian communists, under the leadership of Bulus Farah with mentorship from the young Syrian member of the Comintern, Khalid Bakdash (1912–1995), and members of the League of Arab Intellectuals and trade unions, soon organized a new independent Arab party, communist in nature, the “National Liberation League” in name.48 When delegations of the two parties met at the conference of the Communist Parties of the British Empire in 1947, the Communist Party of Palestine advocated a “democratic Arab-Jewish State,” while the National Liberation League demanded a single democratic state in Palestine “guaranteeing the rights of all inhabitants without distinction.”49 The positions were close to each other but not identical. After the Soviet Union supported the partition of Palestine at the UN vote in November 1947, both parties abandoned their respective versions of the one-state solution. While Mikunis’s party adopted a new Hebrew name and flourished in Israel, the National Liberation League fell apart during the Nakba, as its members were forced to defend their cities against the Hagana onslaught. After the war, the survivors joined the leaderships of either the Israeli or the Jordanian communist parties.

Communism on the Nile Sudan had a history with Anglo-Egyptian colonialism.50 Since the early nineteenth century, Egyptian modernization was premised on the abduction of thousands of Sudanese men and women for slave labor and military conscription. When resistance arose in the 1880s, British forces brutally crushed it, and from 1899 Sudan was ruled as an AngloEgyptian fiefdom. The colonization of Sudan fueled Egypt’s industrialization as well as  Egyptians’ sense of national identity and sovereignty. Socialists, Marxists, and ­anarchists, whether foreign residents, religious minorities, or Muslims, all championed Egypt’s independence and the political unity of the Nile Valley. A pact between leftist trade unionists, often of Jewish and European origin, and radical nationalist ­in­tel­lec­tuals 47  Budeiri (2010: 73). 49  Beinin (1990: 41).

48  Beinin (1990: 42–48), Budeiri (2010: 129–139). 50  Troutt-Powell (2003).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   207 gave birth to the Egyptian Socialist Party in August 1921. Its key figures included Joseph Rosenthal (1867–1927), a Jewish unionist from eastern Europe based in Alexandria, the Lebanese activist Antoun Maroun, and Egyptian intellectuals such as the Fabian thinkers Salama Musa (1887–1958) and Mahmud Husni al-ʿUrabi. When the latter returned from ideological training in Moscow in 1923, many Egyptian socialists joined the newly formed Communist Party of Egypt. It created the Workers General Unions to fight an array of landmark social struggles, especially in Alexandria. Following formal independence in 1922, the new Wafdist government crushed both the unions and the communist party.51 But the British government deposed Prime Minister Saʿd Zaghlul (1859–1927) anyway when he publicly supported a group of Sudanese officers, the White Flag League, who championed the Unity of the Nile Valley and staged an anti-British mutiny amidst nationwide demonstrations and strikes in 1924. In the mid-1930s, a radicalized group of Egyptian students launched the Pacifist League with links to the Soviet Partisans of Peace. Another group that came to be known as the Workers’ Vanguard became influential among the Wafd leftist youth wing.52 Other Marxist groups emerged: the People’s Liberation; the Egyptian Movement for National Liberation; the Leninist Iskra which attracted the feminist artist Inci Aflatun (1924–1989); and the surrealist artist Georges Henein’s (1914–1973) Art and Liberty which espoused a Trotskyist line.53 Intellectual boundaries between these groups were both tension-ridden and fluid but unlike liberal and nationalist parties in interwar Egypt, they were sympathetic to the Sudanese people’s right to self-determination from both British and Egyptian tutelage.54 Meanwhile, young Sudanese activists established the Graduate Student Congress in 1938. Inspired by the Indian National Congress Party’s tactics of civil disobedience, this movement became Sudan’s preeminent nationalist umbrella organization. But diverse factions emerged, including the Sudanese Movement for National Liberation (SMNL) out of which was spawned the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) in 1949. The SMNL was closely affiliated with Henri Curiel’s Egyptian Movement for National Liberation and became one of the key grassroot organizations in Sudan’s independence struggle. Dozens of party members had been students in Cairo during the Second World War before joining local Marxist circles, some of whom were trained by British Marxists teaching at Gordon College in Khartum.55 The first general elections in Sudan were held in early 1954. The victorious National Unionist Party and the main opposition party, al-Ummah, drew their bases from Sudan’s diverse Sunni fraternities and both favored union with Egypt. The SMNL and the SCP 51  Beinin and Lockman (1987). 52 It formed around three young Jewish Egyptians: Sadeq Saʿd, Raymond Douek, and Youssef Darwich. Its official names were Popular Vanguard for Emancipation (1946), Popular Democracy (1949), and Workers and Peasant Communist Party (1957). 53  Ginat (2011). Between 1949 and 1965, the Egyptian Marxist Organization was the first Arab party to adopt a Maoist line. 54  Ismael (2013: 14). 55  Ismael (2013: 14–16).

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208   jens hanssen were part of the United Front for the Sudanese Liberation, which rejected this vision. There developed a division of labor between movement and party which contributed to a greater openness to other leftist organizations than anywhere else in MENA, including religious groups, women’s organizations, as well as professional and teachers’ unions. The career of Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim (c.1929–2017) exemplifies the particularity of Sudanese communism. She joined the party in 1954 having made a name for herself as an organizer of strikes since her school days. She had also founded the Women’s Intellectual Association in 1947 and as an executive in the Women’s Union she campaigned for women’s constitutional equality, female political representation, equal pay, and access to education, as well as organizational independence from the SCP. As an author and journalist, she became a revered critic of Sudanese military dictatorships. After she participated in the “October Revolution” that ousted General Ibrahim Abboud in 1964, she was the first Arab woman to be elected to an Arab national parliament. During these uneasy years of parliamentary democracy, the SCP was banned, but Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim remained a deputy and saw most of her women’s rights bills passed into law.56 The tide turned after the Sudanese Free Officers’ coup d’êtat in 1969. The SCP had previously rejected a military coup citing the example of Nasser’s and Suharto’s treatments of communists in Egypt and Indonesia. While many joined Jaʿfar Nimeiri’s military government on Marxist-Leninist and anti-imperialist grounds, others hesitated, including Fatima Ahmad Ibrahim and SCP Secretary General ʿAbdel Khaliq Mahjub (1927–71). With Soviet backing, President Nimeiri (1930–2009) moved to dissolve the SCP and, in response, Mahjub purged Nimeirists from the party. Before Nimeiri could arrest army officers suspected of party links, they occupied the presidential palace and seized power in July 1971. But celebrations were short-lived as troops loyal to Nimeiri nipped the ­revolution in the bud. The entire party leadership and hundreds of cadres were executed  without Soviet objection.57 Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim survived Nimeiri’s rule in exile and  under house arrest to fight another dictator, the recently ousted Omar ­al-Bashir (b. 1944).58

Syro-Lebanese Communism The process of industrialization in Bilad al-Sham—Ottoman Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan—first affected the silk workers of Mount Lebanon, construction workers in large-scale infrastructural projects and those men and women working in tobacco cultivation under the Ottoman Public Debt Administration.59 The great famine during the First World War and the decimation of the male, working-age population on the 56  Hale (1996). 57  Gresh (1989: 393–409). 58 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/21/fatima-ahmed-ibrahim-obituary?CMP=share_ btn_link 59  The first May Day rally in Beirut was held in 1907. See Hanssen (2005). On the Ottoman integration into the world economy in the nineteenth century, see also Murat Birdal’s chapter in this volume.

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   209 Ottoman front catapulted women to prominence as workers and labor organizers in the factories and workshops. Although the party’s first secretary general, Fuʾad al-Shimali (1894–1939), urged women to become active in the party, “unionists and communists seemed uninterested in recruiting women into their ranks or making their meetings and circles more female-friendly and sensitive to women’s domestic, family, and time constraints.”60 al-Shimali had been active in Egypt where he created a Lebanese Workers Party in Alexandria affiliated with Rosenthal’s Egyptian Socialist Party. Expelled in 1922, he took a job in the Bikfaya tobacco factory and launched the General Union of Tobacco Workers of Lebanon. In 1924, he was approached by Josef Berger (1904–78), a representative of the Communist Party of Palestine, to create a local branch in Lebanon. The Lebanese People’s Party emerged out of this meeting.61 But when the Great Syrian Revolt broke out in the Hawran in 1925, and French authorities disbanded its leadership, alShimali relaunched the organization as the joint Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria. Suppressed for the duration of the Syrian revolt, the party was admitted to the Comintern at the 1928 congress in Moscow.62 In the 1930s, the party attracted more members, especially among the students who devoured the new Arabic leftist press, particularly Sawt al-Sharq and the literary review al-Taliʿa (The Vanguard) about news from the fight against fascism in Spain. The com­ mun­ists cofounded the anti-Nazi and anti-fascist league in Syria and Lebanon, but they also accepted the 1936 Franco-Lebanese Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, a decision that was to haunt them after independence.63 Raʾif Khuri (1913–67) was at the center of the Syro-Lebanese left’s struggle against fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. An independent communist, Khuri was a prolific publicist, intellectual historian, and political theorist perhaps in the mold of E. P. Thompson or Raymond Williams. In his opening statement to the first anti-fascist conference in Beirut in 1939, Khuri framed fascism as a variant of European imperialism and, predictably, incited the ire of French authorities, which promptly banned the communist party again. In December 1941, he launched al-Tariq, which remains an influential Arabic Marxist magazine to this day. After Lebanese independence in 1943, new nominally socialist parties emerged, most notably the Progressive Socialist Party. Its high-born Druze humanist-socialist leader, Kamal Jumblat (1917–77), developed the party as a way to turn utopian ideals into reality, channel class-consciousness into political action, to operate as the intellectual vanguard for comprehensive social transformation, and to be the parliamentary wing of trade unions and labor organizations. Through its alliance with the formidable com­ mun­ist trade union leader Mustafa al-ʿAriss, who had won significant rights for workers in the Labor Code of 1946 and maintained close ties to the Tudeh party in Tehran as well as British and Commonwealth communist parties, Jumblat’s small party proved a potent 60  Abisaab (2010: 71–72). 61  For an overview of party members’ memoirs of early communism in Lebanon, see Flores (2013a). 62  al-Shimali (2014). 63  Tannoury-Karam (2019).

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210   jens hanssen force against the first postindependence president, Bishara el-Khoury.64 And when Camille Chamoun tried to bend the constitution for a second term in 1958, the Druze politician and the trade union leader gathered the Socialist National Front to mobilize the street in protest and effectively foil Chamoun’s re-election.65

Communism in a Settler-Colonial Setting: the Algerian Case Algeria has been on the Marxism’s cognitive map since Frederick Engels wrote about French colonialism—approvingly in 1848, scathingly in 1857.66 Karl Marx spent two months in Algiers at the end of his life arranged by old Communard friends. Having amassed a “small library” there, he was set on writing “on the peasant question” upon his return.67 He expressed his fear that Algerian workers and peasants will “go to rack and ruin without a revolutionary movement,” but died before he could do anything about it.68 Three decades later, Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) dedicated an influential chapter to Algeria as a case study for the colonial system of land acquisition in her Accumulation of Capital (1913). But the first organized socialist party was established by French settlers in Oran in 1906/7, and it advocated the assimilation of indigenous workers into the French civilizing project. After the First World War, the Jeunes Algériens under the Young-Turkinspired officer Emir Khalid (1875–1936), a charismatic grandson of the Algerian resistance leader ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jazaʾiri, offered sustained resistance to assimilation. He championed equal political representation for Arabs in his newspaper al-Ikdam and in the burgeoning subaltern coffeehouse culture, a milieu which also came to politicize the young communist Albert Camus and other poor Jewish Algerians. The Young Algerians were movementist in orientation and Muslim reformist in principle, and they were plugged into the Tunisian, Egyptian, and Syro-Lebanese Nahda networks.69 They also made alliances with Algerian Jewish leftists and liberal groups in France and internationally. And together with French socialists in Algeria they supported the imperial reform bill of 1919 which offered a modicum of political rights to Muslim Algerians.70 The Communist Party of Algeria was founded amidst waves of labor action across urban Algeria in 1920 in the hope of uniting subaltern European and Arab class interests.71 But the Twenty-One Points Declaration passed at the Second Congress of the Comintern in Moscow that year brought to the fore the contradictions of a communist party in a settler colony. Point 8 called for communist parties to support “all movements of liberation in the colonies,” and “demand the expulsion of its own imperialists.” This was obviously hard to swallow for the French communist leaders of the Algerian 64  Couland (1970); Beling (1961). 65  Gendzier (2006: 115–138). 66  Avineri (1968). See also http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me14/me14_095.htm 67  Vester (1995); Benhassine (2002). 68  Mezzadra (2018). 69  On the history of the Nahda—or Arabic revival and reform movement—see Dyala Hamzah’s chapter in this volume. 70  Drew (2017: 81, 87); Zack (2006). 71  Ageron (1972).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   211 Communist Party.72 In order to thwart the prospect of self-elimination, the French leadership stalled and issued vague developmentalist and educationalist arguments about the priority of revolution in France and the “unpreparedness of Muslim society” in Algeria. If the early Communist Party never gained much traction among Muslim Algerians, it was not because of their unpreparedness, however. They understood well that the contradiction at the heart of settler-colonial communism could not be resolved without an indigenous turn in the party. The outbreak of the Rif Revolt in Morocco in 1921 encouraged Algerian communists to agitate for such an anticolonial turn. The revolt profoundly shook the Communist Party in France, too, where an antiwar wing of younger cadres invoked the Comintern’s Point 8 and agitated in favor of Moroccan independence.73 This move was supported by the new leadership in Moscow, Stalin and Trotsky, who had laid down “Bolshevization and indigenization” as the core twin principles of communist parties at the Third Congress in 1924. In 1925, Muslim Algerians—symbolically headed by the now-exiled Emir Khaled—ran on communist lists in municipal elections in Paris and in Algeria. The settler state cracked down hard on these early attempts at class solidarity in urban centers. But during the deteriorating economic conditions in the 1930s, communists garnered considerable popularity among more mobile railroad workers and in small towns such as Blida. Among the Ibadi community of the Mzab and other remote peasant communities, too, livelihoods were threatened by the property expropriations that Luxemburg had written about earl­ier. Although small in numbers, indigenous Algerians were generally the majority in communist cells in these sites. And in contrast to their urbaine French comrades, they regarded the peasants’ Islamic idiom of resistance not as a sign of backwardness but as a fraternal expression of suffering.74 In fact, one of the most effective organizers of these peasant protests, ʿAli Mira, had been trained at the University of the Toilers in Moscow.75 These local alliances between communists and nationalists did little to advance the cause of independence, however. The Soviet Union’s Popular Front approach sub­or­din­ ated national liberation to the fight against fascism and many Algerians joined the fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. They also joined the communist party in greater numbers even though settler state’s repression increased because of their anticolonial stance and the party’s increasing Arabization.76 When France fell to Nazi Germany in 1940, Algeria became a refuge for European antifascists as well as the site of antisemitic and anticommunist persecution by the Vichy government.77 The Sétif Massacres on May 8, 1945, Victory Day for Europe, drove a sharp wedge between Algerian nationalists who sought to avenge the hundreds of victims on the one hand, and French communists in Algeria who supported General de Gaulle’s “res­tor­ ation” on the other. During the Algerian War of Independence from 1954 to 1962, the city-based party leadership tended to side with the socialist governments in Paris 72  Quoted in Drew (2017). 73  Le Guennec (1972). 75  Drew (2017: 62). 76  Drew (2017: 90, 96–97).

74  Drew (2017: 68). 77  Drew (2017: 115–122).

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212   jens hanssen against the settler organizations in Algeria. But many communist cadres in the ­countryside supported the armed struggle of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), which nevertheless remained suspicious of the party throughout the war.78 Some ­members of the party, such as Henri Alleg (1921–2013), were arrested by the colonial government, and others, such as the historian of the landmark Marxism in the Muslim World, Maxime Rodinson (1915–2004), were expelled from the party. The FLN’s invitation to the Bandung conference in 1955 was a major breakthrough as Nasser’s Egypt, the Soviet bloc, and China offered diplomatic and military support.79 But it was the iconic global intellectual and Marxist existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre who popularized Algeria as the crucible of Third World Revolution—much to the dismay of Camus, who disavowed the revolution and his former friend.80 The most famous adopted son of Blida’s communist-led resistance, Frantz Fanon (1925–61), had opened Sartre’s eyes to the psychological effects of white racism, violence, and anticolonial struggle. These insights made Sartre a persona non grata across the political spectrum in France but a celebrated figure in radical Arab circles—until, that is, they felt betrayed by his equivocation on Israel in 1967.81

In al-Nakba’s Wake: Palestinians take Marxism-Leninism to Arabia Arabs felt betrayed by Molotov’s speech in favor of the partition of Palestine in 1947 and Stalin’s support for the unilateral declaration of the state of Israel in 1948; none more so than the communists whom “Moscow’s man” Khalid Bakdash, in particular, had forced to toe the Soviet line.82 Arab communist parties, especially in countries neighboring Israel, were henceforth tainted by Soviet complicity in the Nakba. Other political forces emerged underground which, like the radical Movement of Arab Nationalists (MAN), sought Arab unity and Palestinian liberation through acts of sabotage and the assassination of Arab leaders. Arab socialists adopted communist economic policies and political vanguardism but considered communism itself inimical to pan-Arab identity.83 Instead, people such as the Syrian peasant leader Akram Hawrani (1912–96) struggled to incorporate socialism into nationalist party ideology. Some represented the line that Islam contained socialist dispositions of equality, that Arab socialism was more humanist than the Soviet variant, and that Nasserism was a cooperative form of democratic socialism.84 Others, like Clovis Maqsud (1926–2016), championed the nonalignment project conceived at the Bandung Conference in 1955.85 78  See Rhyme Seferdjeli’s chapter in this volume. 79  Haddad-Fonda (2014). 80  Byrne (2016). 81  Di-Capua (2018). 82  Krammer (1973); Ismael (2005: 57–70). 83  Akhavi (1975); Kadri (2016). 84  Thompson (2013); Sayf al-Dawla (1965). 85  Maksud (1960), discussed in Hanssen (2020).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   213 Through the circuitous routes of Cuba, Vietnam, and other anticolonial struggles, Marxism-Leninism gained wider popularity in Arab progressive circles in the 1960s and 1970s. But this intellectual opening to communist ideas came at the expense of the party that had propagated them in the first place. The younger generation of cadres began to formulate their new brand of communism as a return to the forgotten tradition of rad­ ical democracy before Stalin.86 The career of Khalid Bakdash, who became secretary general of the Communist Party in Syria and Lebanon in 1932 and was elected to the Syrian parliament in 1949, epit­om­ ized the strictures and contradictions of being a communist during the Arab Cold War as well as the shift from Stalinism toward independent Marxism-Leninism.87 While studying at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism and the University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow between 1933 and 1937, Bakdash was appointed to the Comintern as the representative of all Arab communist parties. Upon his return to Syria, he led the party to join the antifascist Popular Front and to support French colonial authorities against Nazi Germany. At the plenary session of the Central Command of the Communist Party in Syria and Lebanon in January 1951, Bakdash delivered a position paper that gained much attention inside and outside the party: “For the Successful Struggle for Peace, National Independence, and Democracy we Must Resolutely Turn to the Workers and the Peasants” is worth examining closer for it crystallizes the promise and pitfalls of Arab communism at the end of Stalin’s life. In the context of the anticommunist government of Beshara el-Khoury in Lebanon and the “fascist” regime of Adib Shishakly in Syria, Bakdash scolded the party membership not to “forget the basic aims of the Party” over its “immediate day-to-day operations.” Democratic national liberation should be sought in stages: first, by putting an end to “imperialist political and economic dom­in­ ation and its agents,” and “liquidating the remnants of feudalism in our country; then the party would work to “strengthen the popular democratic regime” and mobilize the peasants and workers in order to create the “conditions necessary for the realization of socialism in the country;” and to “isolate the nationalist bourgeoisie and end its influence among the people.” He urged that “we must work constantly also to unmask groups and parties claiming to be ‘socialist’, such as the Arab Socialist Party, the Islamic Socialist Front, the Baath Party in Syria and the Progressive Socialist Party of Jumblat etc. in Lebanon.” Neutralism in the Cold War was not an option because this “leads to the breaking up of the wave of hatred and the growing struggle (a) against war and the aggressive schemes of the Anglo-American imperialists aiming to occupy our land and (b) against the treason of our rulers.” In an “extremely backward” region, so “far removed from Marxism,” the work of the party, then, was to move beyond sloganeering and focus on building a comprehensive infrastructure in order to persuade the Arab masses, especially in rural areas, that communist alternatives suited them better than the existing regimes. Domestically, the party should work with and through the labor unions but avoid their workerist perspective. Internationally, the party should maintain a strategic 86  On Arab radical notions of democracy, see Kerr (1963).

87  Ismael & Ismael (1998: 38–40).

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214   jens hanssen alliance with the global, Soviet-sponsored, Partisan for Peace movement but be critical of its naive optimism.88 Revolutionary changes that swept the MENA in the months and years following this meeting rendered Bakdash’s Stalinism an anachronism. The rising popularity of Nasserism after the Egyptian Free Officers’ Coup in 1952, the nationalization of the Suez Canal, and Nasser’s survival of the “Tripartite Aggression” in 1956 pushed most Syrian politicians against the communists, to dissolve Syria and their parties, and to enter a union with Egypt in 1958.89 In the turbulent three years of the United Arab Republic, hundreds of Egyptian communists were thrown into prison, and the Lebanese and Syrian branches of the communist party split. While the former participated openly in the struggle against Camille Chamoun’s attempt to extend his presidency, the latter was severely repressed, most notoriously with the assassination of Farajallah al-Hilu (1906–59) while in a Syrian prison in 1959. The party never fully recovered after the breakup of the union in 1961 and the Baathist coup in 1963. After Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970, Khalid Bakdash dissolved his party into the Baathist-led National Progressive Front. When the Assad regime entered the Lebanese civil war to defend the right-wing government against progressive forces in 1976, a group of communist dissidents around the leadership of soon-to-be-jailed Riyad al-Turk (b. 1930) split to form the independent Syrian Communist Party Polit-Bureau. Bakdash’s authoritarian leadership and his unwavering allegiance to the Soviet Union weakened Lebanese and Syrian communism. But other more independent Arab com­ mun­ist parties fared no better. Iraqi and Iraqi-Jewish communists had cut their teeth in their fight against fascism during the Second World War, and afterward the party boasted a large membership and considerable popularity, particularly in factories and the oil industry.90 When Colonel ʿAbd al-Karim Qasim overthrew the British-supported Hashemite monarchy in July 1958, the Iraqi Communist Party rallied to his side, and supported his regime even after it cracked down on them. But after the Iraqi Baathists staged a coup in 1963 during which communist militants resisted the takeover in street battles, party members were liquidated en masse.91 Under Saddam Hussein’s rule the few remaining Iraqi communists struggled to survive underground or in exile. In recent years, however, the party made significant electoral gains on joint lists.92 Communist parties were dissolved or incorporated into the single-party-cum-security apparatus of Arab authoritarian regimes—again with Soviet consent. But Marxist ideas continued to inspire struggles for social justice, equality, and human dignity. Many campaigns were rural and sporadic with no intention of toppling governments. Peasants in the Egyptian delta village of Kamshish in the early 1960s, for example, launched a successful campaign to expropriate a large estate because they could invoke Nasser’s socialist Law of the Liquidation of Feudal Properties. If President Sadat’s regime reversed the ­decision in the early 1970s, the successful struggle lived on in the popular songs by 88  Bakdash (1951). 89  Ismael & Ismael (1998). 90  Bashkin (2012). Batatu (1978). 91  Franzén (2011). 92 https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/are-iraq-s-communists-on-the-rise-again-1.733384

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   215 Shaykh  Imam (1918–1995) and Ahmad Fuʾad Nigm (1929–2013) and the lifelong political activism of one of the Kamshish campaign’s leaders, Shahinda Maqlad (1938–2016).93 President Sadat’s austerity measures also affected millions of Egyptians, especially in the capital. With the old communist party voluntarily dissolved in 1965 and its former members largely discredited as state-funded cranks, a new crop of radical leftists emerged in the universities who sought common cause with factory workers and the urban poor.94 These young activists organized themselves in the new Egyptian Communist Workers’ Party which played a key role in coordinating the nationwide bread riots of 1977.95

Monsoon Communism While this generational shift in Egyptian communism was set in a national and unionist frame, a similar generational challenge had already occurred inside the Movement of Arab Nationalists (MAN) after the breakup of the United Arab Republic.96 Based in Beirut, young cadres around Marxist theoretician Mohsen Ibrahim (1935–2020) started to question the movement’s lack of ideological principles and its vague slogan “Unity, Liberation, and Vengeance.” The old guard around Georges Habash (1926–2006) and alHakam Darwaza had always been hostile to socialist ideas. As a result, the youthful theoreticians accused them of consigning social revolution and class struggle to the waiting room of Arab nationalism, playing into the hands of repressive states, and leaving no room to rationalize the internal contradictions of Israeli society.97 After the demise of the Nasserist liberation paradigm, new Palestinian and Lebanese leftist tendencies proliferated that were committed to political lines ranging from scientific socialism and Maoist immersion to direct guerilla action. The most sustained marriage of transnational Marxism-Leninism and armed struggle took place in southern Arabia.98 In 1962, military officers seized the Zaydi Imam’s palace in Sanaa and declared the Yemen Arab Republic. The YAR became the site of a five-year bloody civil war between republican and royalist forces that drew in and repelled Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the US, Britain, Israel, the USSR, and the UN.99 After Egypt’s ignominious defeat against Israel in the June 1967 war, Nasser withdrew his forces from northern Yemen. Soviet military airdrops and fighters of the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen helped to defend republican Sanaa and prevented a reinstatement of the Zaydi Imamate. As the YAR finally found peace in a unity government but veered toward an alliance with Saudi Arabia and Western powers, the British Protectorate of Aden fell to the Yemeni Socialist Party. The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen became the only Arab communist state on December 1, 1970. 93  Maqlad (2006). 94  Salih (2018), Abdallah (1985). 95  Gervasio (2010). 96  Barut (1997). 97  Kazziha (1975: 65–82). 98  al-Akri (2003). Sudayri (2019) has analyzed the origins and influence of the Saudi Communist movement in the oil field work camps of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 1953s to 1975. 99  Orkaby (2017).

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216   jens hanssen The port city of Aden had been home to small communist cells since the 1950s. They constituted themselves as the People’s Democratic Union, the future Yemeni Socialist Party, in 1961, and became popular among the growing number of unionized workers employed in the British port authority and oil refinery. After the MAN opened its first southern Arabian branch in 1959, Aden quickly turned from a key node in the British Empire into a gateway for transnational revolutions.100 Yemeni communists and Arab nationalists provided ideological and logistical expertise for the National Liberation Front (NLF), the nationwide organization that balanced southern Yemen’s political tendencies and negotiated independence with Britain in November 1967. When the revolutionary socialists within the NLF took over the government in June 1969, the new government managed to draw loans from China and technical assistance from the German Democratic Republic to implement radical political, social, and economic reforms.101 The left wing of the NLF also supported the fledgling struggle of the Dhufar Liberation Front in neighboring Oman. The Dhufar Liberation Front had launched its revolution in 1965 in order to overthrow Sultan Saʿid ibn Taymur (1910–72). But it was soon suffering military setbacks at the hands of British mercenaries fighting for the Omani sultan. Marxist-Leninist Aden offered revolutionary republicans in Dhufar military bases, printing presses, access to Chinese supplies, Maoist alternatives to the discredited Nasserist paradigm, and a success story to emulate.102 During this drawn out armed struggle, Arab revolutionaries from Palestine to Oman vernacularized MarxismLeninism, effectively subverting the old party-discipline approach to theory. Through their “ideological fluidity” young revolutionaries hoped to gain greater analytical clarity of their historical situation and link their particular causes horizontally to liberation struggles elsewhere in the world.103 The Dhufar revolution ended without achieving its republican goals, but it did force the British to replace the sultan with his son who proved more adept at running a re­li­ able and effective absolutist state in counter-revolutionary times. By the time Sultan Qabbus announced “the defeat of international communism” in Oman, the theater of revolution had moved to Beirut, then dubbed the Arab Hanoi.104 When the right-wing Phalange militia’s massacre of Palestinian bus passengers ignited the Lebanese civil war in April 1975, Lebanese, Palestinian, Arab, Kurdish, Armenian, and Iranian militant leftists of all tendencies joined Kamal Jumblat’s Lebanese National Movement to defeat in battle the reactionary forces in the region.105 These joint forces came close to military victory and held 80 percent of Lebanese territory before Syria’s President Hafiz al-Assad intervened to protect the status quo.106

100  Takriti (2013: 100). 101  Lackner (1985: 33–39; 60–64); Müller (2015). 102  Takriti (2013: 72–108). 103  Takriti (2013: 113). 104  Takriti (2013: 309). 105  Institutional members of the LNM included the Nasserist Murabitun, the Lebanese Communist Party, Mohsen Ibrahim’s Communist Action Organization, the Trotzkyist Revolutionary Communist Group, Georges Habash’s PFLP, and Nayif Hawatimeh’s DFLP. 106  Traboulsi (2007).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   217

Conclusion: Self-Criticism and Immanent Critique In a work of critical self-reflection, the late former Iraqi communist Faleh Abdel Jabbar (1947–2018) argued that the failure of Arab communists to build effective autonomous voices deepened their dependency on the Soviet Union. This implicated them in the political disasters of authoritarian nationalist regimes with which they aligned themselves at the behest of Moscow.107 These same regimes repressed communists, often severely. Physical violence as well as propaganda campaigns, denouncing them as infidels and foreign agents turned cadres and their organizations into political “pariahs.” Western counterinsurgency experts discovered that encouraging the assertion of Islamic identity in MENA societies was an effective tool to shore up conservative regimes against radical movements, parties, and ideologies, especially in the Gulf.108 If the weight of conservatism existed in MENA before colonialism, hostility between Islam and communism was not necessarily “natural,” as Sultan Galiev’s attempt at a Muslim Communist Party showed.109 Arab nationalists deeply distrusted communism and fought its parties tooth and nail. Communist ideas nevertheless seeped into the political mainstream as soon as harsh economic realities dampened the euphoria of independence. Packaged as Arab socialism, young leftists’ demands for combining the struggle for sovereignty and unity with the struggle for social equality and the redistribution of wealth were incorporated into Nasserist and Baathist ideology after the breakup of the United Arab Republic in 1961. When the single-party system emerged in Egypt and Syria and Arab communist parties dissolved or members went underground, Marxist-Leninist approaches to Arab revolution migrated out of the traditional communist party shells. Militant liberation movements mushroomed in MENA that took their cues from the FLN’s brutal but successful armed struggle. Egypt’s and Syria’s military defeats against Israel in 1967 initially strengthened the movementist line of revolutionary politics. Inspired by communist Vietnam’s defeat of the US army, new revolutionary currents sprang out of the MAN that sought to ground the popular praxis of armed struggle on the “scientific socialism” of Marxism-Leninism and Maoism. Made up of over a dozen separate groups, this was one current of the New Arab Left.110 Quite aside from the security apparatuses of their enemies, these groups also faced immanent critique from independent Syrian Marxist critics such as Ilyas Murqus (1929–91) and Sadeq al-Azm (1934–2016) who blasted the various movements’ short-sightedness and impatience as “fidaʾism” as well as their views of socialism as mechanistic.111 To these often disillusioned critics, historical consciousness was the key

107  Abdel Jabbar (1997: 91–92). 108  Mamdani (2004). 109  Rodinson (2015). 110  Ismael (1976: 92–101). 111  al-Azm (1968/2012); Murqus (1970).

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218   jens hanssen to building a more sustainably Arab left.112 Sophisticated though their interventions were, they were also far removed from the perceived urgency of daily revolution.113 The Lebanese “red Mujtahid” Husayn Muruwwa (1910–87) and the Syrian Marxist philosopher Tayyib Tizini (1929–2019) developed a new Arab class analysis out of materialist readings of the Abbasid and Andalusian canon of philosophy.114 Other former militant socialists, such as the Lebanese Waddah Sharara, augured that “the people” in whose name they had fought did not actually exist. They left the front line and converted to Hannah Arendt’s or Ibn Khaldun’s political thought in attempts to fathom the traits that apparently make Arabs so prone to sectarianism and authoritarianism.115 Organized Marxists also hit back at the independent Arab left’s new philosophical sources of inspiration. The Egyptian communist literary critic Mahmud Amin al-ʿAlim (1922–2009) railed against the new and favorable Arabic reception of Critical Theory and the European New Left in general, and the Arabic translation frenzy of Herbert Marcuse’s work in particular.116 Sadek al-Azm and the young theoretician of the Lebanese communist party, Mahdi ʿAmil (1936–87) warned against the right-wing seductions of poststructuralism and Islamist appropriations of Edward Said’s Orientalism.117 Indeed, if 1968 had been the iconic moment of global revolutionary convergence—between theory and praxis; university and street politics; Marxism, fem­in­ ism, and Third-Worldism—then all these drifted apart again in the 1980s.118 Finally, the life and death of Arwa Salih (1953–97), a prominent student activist and leader in the Egyptian Communist Workers Party, serves as a poignant reminder that misogyny and sexual harassment are ubiquitous menaces. But the failure of leftist parties and movements to afford the “gender question” the same urgency as other programmatic questions has jeopardized progressive politics in particular. Salih’s autobiographical account offers a rare glimpse into the experience of being a young female communist in early 1970s Cairo. The Stillborn brings across the thrill and comradeship of anyone who has ever been part of an ostracized group when planning and plotting against authorities and social conventions in pursuit of justice. Her book also captures the moment when dreams of liberation turn out to be poorly conceived pipedreams and become nightmares of persecution. Female activists will readily recognize the combination of seniority and sexism that haunts tightly knit rebellious organizations. Salih recalls incidents in which men exploited their female comrades’ vul­ner­abil­ ities, and “mediocre” older leaders forced gratuitous sacrifices on bright young cadres—all of which perpetuated the Egyptian Communist Workers Party’s isolation and factionalism during the short duration of its hopeful existence.119 112  Laroui (1976), Frangie (2015). 113  Sing (2017). 114  Tizini (1972). Muruwwah (1979). See also Hanssen (2020). 115  Bardawil (2013), Hanssen (2013). 116 al-ʿAlim (1972). Arabic Translations included Marcuse’s critique of Soviet Marxism in 1965; his One-Dimensional Man in 1966; his Freud book Eros and Civilizations in 1969; and his Hegel book, Reason and Revolution in 1970. 117  al-Azm (1968/2012); Frangie (2012). 118  Cusset (2008). 119  Salih (2018); Hammad (2016).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   219 Arwa Salih was rehabilitated only after her suicide, as leftist nostalgia was subjected to a thorough autocritique in Egypt and Lebanon.120 In the new millennium, neither the old nor the new Arab Lefts offered blueprints for revolution anymore. And yet, a new generation of Arabs did rise up in 2011. That revolutionaries could topple President Mubarak had much to do with their nonviolent approach and with the fact that they took gender and feminism seriously when they occupied Tahrir Square. The fact that the successive counter-revolutions of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Sisi regimes “first came for them,” may or may not have been due to their lack of organizational depth and mass appeal. Either way, although they broke with past practice and opted for loose “networked, leaderless, and ‘leaderful’ forms of organizing,” they share the same cruel  fate as previous generations of Arab communist parties and Marxist-Leninist movements.121

References Abdallah, Ahmed (1985). The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt (London: alSaqi Books). Abdel Jabbar, Faleh (ed.) (1997). Post-Marxism and the Middle East (London: Saqi Books). Abisaab, Malek (2010). Militant Women in a Fragile Nation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Achcar, Gilbert (2013). Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism (London: Saqi Books). Afary, Janet (1996). The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press). Ageron, Charles-Robert (1972). “Les communistes français devant la question algérienne de 1921–1924,” Le Mouvement Social 78: 7–37. Akhavi, Shahrough (1975). “Egypt’s Socialism and Marxist Thought: Some Preliminary Observations on Social Theory and Metaphysics,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17,2: 190–211. al-ʿAkri, ʿAbd al-Nabi (2003). al-Tanzimat al-yasariyya fi al-jazira wa al-khalij al-ʿarabi (Beirut: Dar al Kunuz al-ʿArabiyya). al-ʿAlim, Mahmud A. (1972). Markuza aw falsafa al-tariq al-masdud (Beirut: Dar al-Adab). al-Azm, Sadeq Jalal (1968/2012). Self-criticism after the Defeat. tr. by G. Stergios (Beirut: Saqi Books). Alexander, Anne (2014). “Communism in the Islamic World,” in Steve Smith (ed.). Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 268–283. Avineri, Shlomo (ed.) (1968). Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization (New York: Doubleday). Bakdash, Khalid (1951). “For the Successful Struggle for Peace, National Independence, and Democracy…,” Middle East Journal 7: 206–221. Bardawil, Fadi (2013). “The Inward Turn and Its Vicissitudes: Culture, Society, and Politics in Post-1967 Arab Leftist Critiques,” in C. Harders, et al. (eds.). Local Politics and Contemporary Transformations in the Arab World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 91–109. 120  Hammad (2016); Halabi (2018). 121  On the concept of “leaderfulness” in the 2011 uprising, see Chalcraft’s chapter in this volume.

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220   jens hanssen Barut, Jamal (1997). Haraka al-qawmiyyin al-ʿarab: al-nashʾa, al-tatawwur, al-masaʾir (Damascus: al-Markaz al-ʿArabi lil-Dirasat al-Istratijiyya). Bashkin, Orit (2012). “The Barbarism from Within: Discourses about Fascism among Iraqi and Iraqi Jewish Communists, 1942–55,” Die Welt des Islams 52: 400–429. Batatu, Hanna (1978). The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Beinin, Joel (1990). Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948–1965 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Beinin, Joel and Zachary Lockman (1987). Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1852–1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Beling, Willard (1961). Pan-Arabism and Labor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Benhassine, Mohamed Lakhdar (2002). “Le séjour de Karl Marx à Alger du 20 Février au 2 Mai 1882,” in Alger: Lumières sur la Ville, Actes du Colloque (Algiers, 2002), 713–729. Budeiri, Musa (2010). The Palestine Communist Party 1919–1948 (Chicago, IL: Haymarket). Byrne, Jeffrey (2016). Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization and the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press). Çetinkaya, Doğan (2014). The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey (London: I. B.Tauris). Chattopadhyay, Paresh (2014). “Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on Communism,” in S. A. Smith (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 37–52. Chaqueri, Cosroe (ed.) (2010). “The Left in Iran 1905–1940.” Revolutionary History 10: 2. Cheek, Timothy (2014). “Mao and Maoism,” in S.  A.  Smith (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 90–105. Cliff, Tony (1946). “The Working Class Movement in the Arab East,” in his The Problem of the Middle East (manuscript published on https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1946/ probme/index.html Cliff, Tony (1974). State Capitalism in Russia (London: Pluto Press). Couland, Jacques (1970). Le mouvement syndical au Liban, 1919–46. (Paris: Editions sociales). Cusset, François (2008). French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Dailami, Pezhamann (1990). “The Bolsheviks and the Jangali Revolutionary Movement, 1915–1920,” Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique 31: 43–60. Dailami, Pezhmann (2004). “The First Congress of the Peoples of the East and the Iranian Soviet Republic of Gilan, 1920–21,” in S.  Cronin (ed.). Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left (London: RoutledgeCurzon), 85–117. Di-Capua, Yoav (2018). No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Sartre and Decolonization (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Drew, Allison (2017). We are no longer in France: Communists in Colonial Algeria (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Dumont, Paul (1997). Du socialisme ottoman à l‘internationalisme anatolien (Istanbul: Isis Press). Dunayevskaya, Raya (1991). Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, foreword by A. Rich (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press). Engels, Friedrich (1847). “Principles of Communism.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/ marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm.

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   221 Farah, Bulus (1987). al-Haraka al-ʿummaliyya al-ʿarabiyya al-filastiniyya: jadaliyya baʿthiha wa suqutiha (Haifa: Maktab wa Maktaba Kull Shay). Feliu, Laura and Ferran Izquierdo-Brichs (2019). Communist Parties in the Middle East: 100 Years of History (Abingdon: Routledge). Flores, Alexander (2013). “Recent studies on the history of the Palestine Communist Party.” https://libcom.org/library/recent-studies-history-palestine-communist-partyalexander-flores Flores, Alexander (2013a). “The early history of Lebanese Communism reconsidered.” https:// libcom.org/library/early-history-lebanese-communism-reconsidered Fowkes, Ben and Bülent Gökay (2013). “Communists and Muslims: the Years of Alliance,” Twentieth Century Communism 5: 126–155. Frangie, Samer (2012). “Theorizing from the Periphery: The Intellectual Project of Mahdi ʿAmil,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44: 465–482. Frangie, Samer (2015). “Historicism, Socialism and Liberalism after the Defeat: On the Political Thought of Yasin al-Hafiz,” Modern Intellectual History 12: 325–352. Franzén, Johan (2011). Red Star Over Iraq: Iraqi Communism Before Saddam (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Gendzier, Irene (2006). Notes from the Field: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East, 1945–1958 (New York: Columbia University Press). Gershoni, Israel (2012). “Why the Muslims Must Fight against Nazi Germany: Muhammad Najati Sidqi’s Plea,” Welt des Islams 52: 471–498. Gervasio, Gennaro (2010). Al-Haraka al-marksiyya fi Misr, 1967–81 (Cairo: al-Markaz alQawmi lil-Tarjama). Ginat, Rami (2011). A History of Egyptian Communism: Jews and Their Compatriots in Quest of Revolution (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers). Gökay, Bülent (2006). Soviet Eastern Policy and Turkey, 1920--1991: Soviet Foreign Policy, Turkey and Communism (London: Routledge). Greenstein, Ran (2014). Zionism and its Discontents: a Century of Radical Dissent in Israel/ Palestine (London: Pluto Press). Gresh, Alain (1989). “The Free Officers and the Comrades: The Sudanese Communist Party and Nimeiri Face-to-Face, 1969–71,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 21: 393–409. Günes, Cengiz (2012). The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London: Routledge). Haddad-Fonda, Kyle (2014). “An Illusory Alliance: Revolutionary Legitimacy and SinoAlgerian Relations, 1958–1962,” Journal of North African Studies 19,3: 338–357. Halabi, Zeina (2018). The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual: Prophecy, Exile and the Nation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Hale, Sondra (1996). Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, Socialism, and the State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Hammad, Hanan (2016). “Arwa Saleh’s The Premature: Gendering the History of the Egyptian Left,” Arab Studies Journal 24: 118–139. Hanssen, Jens (2005). Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Hanssen, Jens (2013). “Translating Revolution: Hannah Arendt in Arab Political Culture,” in http://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/view/301

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222   jens hanssen Hanssen, Jens (2020). “Crisis and Critique: The Transformation of the Arab Radical Tradition, 1960s–1980s,” in L.  Guirguis (ed.), The Arab Lefts: Histories and Legacies, 1950s to 1970s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 222–242. Hanssen, Jens and Max Weiss (eds) (2018). Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Harris, George  S. (1967). The Origins of Communism in Turkey (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institute). Ismael, Tareq (1976). The Arab Left (New York: Syracuse University Press). Ismael, Tareq (2005). The Communist Movement in the Arab World (New York: RoutledgeCurzon). Ismael, Tareq (2013). The Sudanese Communist Party: Ideology and Party Politics (Abingdon: Routledge). Ismael, Tareq and Jacqueline Ismael (1998). The Communist Movement in Lebanon and Syria (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida). James, C.  L.  R. (1937). World Revolution, 1917–1936: the Rise and Fall of the Communist International (London: M. Secker and Warburg). Kadri, Ali (2016). The Unmaking of Arab Socialism (London: Anthem Press). Karaömerlioğlu (2004). “Helphand-Parvus and his Impact on Turkish Intellectual Life,” Middle Eastern Studies 40,6: 145–165. Kazziha, Walid (1975). Revolutionary Transformation in the Arab World: Habash and his Comrades from Nationalism to Marxism (London: Knight). Kerr, Malcolm (1963). “Arab Radical Notions of Democracy,” St Antony’s Papers, 16 (London: Chatto & Windus). Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham (2010). The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Kirasirova, Masha (2017). “The ‘East’ as a Category of Bolshevik Ideology and Comintern Administration: The Arab Section of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East,” Kritika 18,1: 7–34. Krammer, Arnold (1973). “Soviet motives in the partition of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies 2: 102–119. Lackner, Helen (1985). P. D. R. Yemen: Outpost of Socialist Development in Arabia (London: Ithaca Press). Laroui, Abdallah (1976). The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual; Traditionalism or Historicism? (Berkeley, CA: California University Press). Le Guennec, Nicole (1972). “Le parti communiste français et la guerre de Rif,” Le Mouvement Social 78: 39–64. Lenin, V. I. (1917). “The First Phase of Communist Society,” in The State and Revolution: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/ works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm Lih, Lars  T. (2014). “Lenin and Leninism,” in S.  A.  Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 53–73. Lipovsky, Igor P. (1992). The Socialist Movement in Turkey, 1960–1980 (Leiden: Brill). Lockman, Zachary (1996). Comrades and Enemies—Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Maksud, Klufis (1960). Azma al-yasar al-ʿarabi (Beirut: Dar al-ʿIlm lil-Malayin). Mamdani, Mahmood (2004). Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror (New York: Doubleday).

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Communism in the Middle East and North Africa   223 Maqlad, Shahinda (2006). Min awraq Shahinda Maqlad (Cairo: Dar Merit). Mayer, Arno Joseph (1969). Wilson vs. Lenin (Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company). McDermott, Kevin (2014). “Stalin and Stalinism,” in S. A. Smith (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 72–87. Mezzadra Sandro (2018). “Marx in Algiers,” Radical Philosophy 2.01 (February): 79–86. al-Mughrabi, Mahmud al-Atrash, Tariq al-kifah fi Filastin wa al-Mashriq al-ʿarabi: mudhakkirat al-qaʾid al-shuyuʿi Mahmud al-Atrash al-Mughrabi ed. by M. Cherif (Beirut: Muʾassassa al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, 2015). Müller, Miriam (2015). A Spectre is Haunting Arabia: How the Germans Brought Their Communism to Yemen (Bielefeld: transcript). Murqus, Ilyas (1964). Tarikh al-ahzab al-shuyuʿiyya fi al-watan al-ʿarabi (Beirut: Dar al-Taliʿa). Murqus, Ilyas (1970). ʿAfawiyya al-nazariyya fi al-ʿamal al-fidaʾi (Beirut: Dar al-Haqiqa). Muruwwah, Husayn (1979). Nazaʿat al-maddiyya fi al-falsafa al-ʿarabiyya al-islamiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi). Orkaby, Asher (2017). Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962–68 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Prashad, Vijay (2007). Darker Nations: a Popular History of the Third World (New York: The New Press). Quataert, Donald and Jan Zürcher (1995). Workers and the Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, 1839–1950 (London: I. B. Tauris). Ravandi-Fadai, Lana (2015). “ ‘Red Mecca’—The Communist University for Laborers of the East (KUTV): Iranian Scholars and Students in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s,” Iranian Studies 48,5: 713–727. Renault, Matthieu (2015). “The Idea of Muslim National Communism: On Mirsaid SultanGaliev,” in https://www.viewpointmag.com/2015/03/23/the-idea-of-muslim-nationalcommunism-on-mirsaid-sultan-galiev/ Riddell, John (ed.) (2015). To See the Dawn. Baku, 1920, First Congress of the Peoples of the East (New York: Pathfinder). Rodinson, Maxime (2015). Marxism and the Muslim World (London: Zed Books). Said, Abdel Moghny (1972). Arab Socialism (Gateshead: Northumberland Press). Sayf al-Dawla, ʿIsmat (1965). Usus al-ishtirakiyya al-ʿarabiyya (Cairo: Dar al-Qawmiyya). Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, Eskander (2018). “The Origins of Communist Unity: anti-Colonialism and Revolution in Iran’s tri-Continental Moment,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 45: 796–822. Salih, Arwa (2018). The Stillborn: Notebooks of a Woman from the Student-Movement Generation in Egypt, trans. S. Selim (London: Seagull Books). Shafir, Gershon (1989). Land, Labour and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). al-Shimali, Fuʾad (2014). Asas al-haraka al-shuyuʿiyya fi al-bilad al-suriyya wa al-lubnaniyya: mudhakkirat (Aleppo: Nun 4). Sing, Manfred (2017). “Arab Self-Criticism after 1967 Revisited: The Normative Turn in Marxist Thought and its Heuristic Fallacies,” Arab Studies Journal 25: 144–190. Sudayri, Mohammed  T. (2019).“Marx’s Arabian Apostles: The Rise and Fall of the Saudi Communist Movement,” Middle East Journal 73: 438–457. Smith, Stephen  A. (ed.) (2014). The Oxford Handbook of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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224   jens hanssen Takriti, Abdel Razzaq (2013). Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965–1976 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Tamari, Salim (2003). “Najati Sidki: The Enigmatic Bolshevik,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32: 179–194. Tannoury-Karam, Sana (2019). “This War is Our War: Antifascism among Lebanese Leftist Intellectuals,” Journal of World History 30: 415–436. Thompson, E. P. (1991). The Making of the English Working Class (London: Penguin Books). Thompson, Elizabeth (2013). “Akram al-Hourani and the Baath Party in Syria: Bringing Peasants into Politics,” in Justice Interrupted (Cambridge, MA: Harvard), 207–235. Tizini, Tayyib (1972). Mashruʿ ruʾya jadida lil-fikr al-ʿarabi fi al-ʿasr al-wasit (Damascus: Dar Dimashq). Traboulsi, Fawwaz (2007). A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto Press). Troutt-Powell, Eve (2003). A Different Shade of Colonialism; Britain, Egypt, and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley, CA: California). Tungay, Mete and Erik Jan Zürcher (1994). Socialism and Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (London: I. B. Tauris). Vester, Marlene (1995). Marx in Algier (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein). Westad, Odd Arne (2007). The Global Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). White, Stephen (1974). “Communism and the East: The Baku Congress, 1920,” Slavic Review 33: 492–515. White, Stephen (1976). “Colonial Revolution and the Communist International, 1919–1924,” Science and Society 40,2: 173–193. Zack, Lizabeth (2006). “Early Origins of Islamic Activism in Algeria: the case of Khaled in post-World War I Algiers,” Journal of North African Studies 11: 205–217.

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chapter 12

Nasser ism Reem Abou El-Fadl

Nasserism is a political phenomenon that continues to surpass the frames within which observers have attempted to capture it. The term itself, coined during the rule of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970), has been difficult to define ever since. As Palestinian scholar Fayiz Sayegh put it at the time, “The composite phe­nom­ enon which some have chosen to call ‘Nasserism’ is made up of several ingredients.”1 On the simplest level, we may understand Nasserism as denoting the combination of prin­ ciples and ideologies on the one hand, and policies and practices on the other, which characterized Nasser’s rule from the 1952 coup to his death in 1970. The word “characterize” is key here, however, since there was a great deal of policy variation in the two-decade Nasser era, and yet the term “Nasserism” has been widely used to connote only certain policies. These comprise welfarist economics, pan-Arab unity campaigns, and broader Third World solidarity politics, in opposition to colonialism and dependence. These were not necessarily the earliest nor the most enduring of the Nasser era’s policies, but a combination of those that resonated the most and incited the most controversy. We must therefore be careful to distinguish between Nasserism as the historically delimited series of principles and practices developed under Nasser himself—with all the nuances and recalibrations they involved—and the policy combination for which he became well known, whether adored or reviled. The latter may be analyzed separately as the political tradition of Nasserism that survived the man and his era, with its different interpretations in continuing political and scholarly debates. Its carriers are those Egyptian and Arab movements and parties whose political programs have taken Nasser’s trajectory as an inspiration in addressing contemporary challenges, and who call themselves Nasserists. Accordingly, this chapter deals first with Nasserism between 1952 and 1970, and then with its legacy and political tradition. Close analysis of these different phases and agents of Nasserism reveals a political phenomenon that has firmly transcended its historical origins.

1  Sayegh (1969: 98).

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226   reem abou el-fadl

Nasserism under Nasser Objectives and Praxis Well before the elements of Nasserism had cohered, a set of plans and powerful as­pir­ ations animated the rise of the Free Officers’ movement, the clandestine network in the Egyptian military which overthrew King Faruq (1920–1965) in a bloodless coup in July 1952. There is an accepted wisdom that the Free Officers lacked a clear “blueprint” of action when they came to power—no doctrine, program, or mass organization. However, in 1948, while recruiting for the Free Officers, Nasser had spoken about the need for two simultaneous “political and social revolutions.” These would become a motif in his public discourse, including his 1953 publication The Philosophy of the Revolution, and would inform his political practice. The political revolution referred to the struggle for national liberation from colonialism, while the social revolution was to generate national unity through social justice. Both entailed confronting the British and their local collaborators—the monarchy, landowners, and political elites—all held responsible for deepening dependence and economic inequality in Egypt.2 Also in The Philosophy was an emphasis on Egypt’s commitment and belonging to Arab and African spheres, based on a shared history of colonialism and resistance, rather than ethnic ties. Nasser recalled demonstrating against the 1917 Balfour Declaration as a young boy, and explained the import of his experience fighting in the 1948 Palestine War to his understanding of the Arab world “as one.”3 He and fellow Free Officers recounted the frustration of Egyptian troops bitterly in their memoirs.4 As Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi put it, “We returned from this battle . . . completely convinced that a fundamental change had to take place in Egypt and in the Arab world itself if we wanted to live with honour and dignity.”5 It should be emphasized that Nasser’s preoccupation with social equality and a panArabist regional orientation was common among the nationalist working and middle classes across mid-twentieth-century Egypt. In a society subject to European economic control since the 1870s and in which inequality had soared under British rule,6 nationalist uprisings had featured strong social dimensions for decades.7 Similarly, pan-Arabism had taken hold in Egypt through popular pressure. It had been the preserve of elite secret societies at the turn of the century, but went beyond these confines with the 1936–9 Palestinian Arab Revolt. Palestinian resistance against the British Mandate and its support for Zionist settlement had inspired middle-class Egyptians such as Nasser, who were also fighting British rule. They now manifested an incipient Arab conscious-

2  Free Officer Pamphlets (1946, 1950, 1952); Shaʿrawy (2014: 30–31). 3  Nasser (2003: 61–62, 69, 90). 4  Nasser (1973: 4). 5  al-Baghdadi (vol. II, 1977: 29). 6  Waterbury (1983: 41–52). 7  Beinin and Lockman (1987); Cole (1999); Chalcraft (2005).

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Nasserism   227 ness and engaged in practices of solidarity with the Palestinians.8 Meanwhile, Egypt’s underground communist movements were theorizing the role of “Anglo-American imperialism” in the Arabs’ position, while they and the Muslim Brotherhood were sending armed members to fight the British in the Suez Canal Zone.9 Both the political and social revolutions, then, were Nasser’s terms for aspirations already at the fore of popular politics in Egypt. This was key to the evolution of Nasser’s charisma; he became the leader seen as able to articulate and even realize these aspirations like no one had done before. Some scholars have described Nasser as having prioritized the domestic Egyptian scene, while instrumentalizing popular ideas of Arab unity in the regional sphere.10 Others describe a focus on foreign affairs and embroilments in Arab politics due to a desire for regional hegemony.11 However, depictions of a domestic or international bias can be overdrawn. The crux of the praxis of Nasserism was arguably the conception of domestic and external objectives as intertwined. Specifically, the Free Officers addressed themselves to two colonial legacies—underdevelopment and compromised sovereignty. The praxis of Nasserism sprang from this endeavor—a project for national liberation with limited resources, entailing simultaneous action on the domestic, regional, and international levels. Similarly, the standard assessment of Nasser’s domestic policy describes an authoritarian military regime with power centralized in executive institutions and discursive strategies to maintain this. Yet this characterization obscures more than it explains in terms of the motivations and development of the Free Officers’ “revolution from above.” Nasserist praxis was built on a belief in the role of the revolutionary state as the appropriate vehicle through which to represent popular sovereignty and advance a particular project. The Free Officers’ assessment was that Egyptians were living through extra­or­ din­ary times, that the Free Officers needed to expedite Egypt’s development and de­col­ on­iza­tion, and that there were internal and external threats to this project. After ousting the king, the Free Officers formed the Command Council of the Revolution (CCR). By June 1953, the CCR had transformed Egypt from a monarchy to a republic. Knowing that their project would undermine the privileges of the landed class and its colonial allies abroad, the Free Officers retained a deep-seated belief that opening up the political system would restore the ancien régime. They were suspicious of party politics, given their own political formation in the 1930s and 1940s and their disillusionment with the liberal order. In 1953, they abolished the party system and announced a threeyear transition period. They soon became reluctant to relinquish their hold on power, enjoying the unrivaled influence they had to pursue their objectives. In 1954, Nasser and then-President Muhammad Nagib (1901–1984) clashed over the restoration of parliamentary process. Nagib was ousted and by 1956 Nasser had replaced him. Thereafter, he dominated decision-making in domestic and foreign affairs. 8  Jankowski (1980). 9  Muhyi al-Din (1992: 90–92, 104). 10  Jankowski (1997: 162–168, 2002: 30); Bromley (1994: 177). 11  Sela (2004: 181–182); Ferris (2012: 4); Hasou (1985).

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228   reem abou el-fadl Given the same principle, the Free Officers’ rule developed to be heavily repressive of political challengers. Their founding statement requested “all citizens not to allow any traitors to resort to violence or vandalism—for this will not be in the best interests of the nation. Any such action will be met with unprecedented penalty, and the traitor will be severely punished by both the police and the army.” Egypt’s communists were subject to waves of arrests in 1952–53 and to periodic crackdowns thereafter. In 1954, after an attempt on Nasser’s life by a Muslim Brother, the CCR extended the ban to the Muslim Brotherhood and thousands were jailed or went into exile. Thus, organized political opposition was not tolerated and the security apparatus expanded to monitor political activity across the country. With these objectives and this centralized approach, Nasserist praxis evolved through three areas: firstly, a welfarist economic project featuring redistribution, industrialization, and planning policies; secondly, foreign policies seeking greater autonomy for Egypt and forging connections with Arab and other decolonizing movements; and thirdly, cultural and educational policies fostering “modern” citizenship values and promoting secular Egyptian and Arab identity. Social justice and national sovereignty were guiding principles but Nasser’s decisions were pragmatic, open to revision in pursuit of competing objectives. The three fields will be considered in turn.

Nasserism as Social Justice: Launching the Social Revolution The Free Officers were preoccupied with the socioeconomic inequalities in Egypt from the first. Amin Huwaydi recalls joining the movement in 1951 and endorsing “Nasser’s idea” that there could be no democratic freedom without the “freedom of bread.”12 In 1952, the CCR articulated Six Principles that would guide its earliest decisions: these included ending “feudalism,” eliminating monopolies, and striving for “social justice.” However, redistribution was married with the pursuit of accelerated development, which generated confrontations with Egypt’s capitalist class and revealed the limits of international financial support. Consequently, the CCR gradually increased the state’s interventionism in three phases. The first began with the 1952 land reform, the second with the 1956 sequestrations of foreign assets generating the 1957 Egyptianization laws, and the third with the 1961 nationalizations and the 1962 doctrine of “Arab socialism.” As Tignor notes, “these historical changes have not received their historical due. Accounts treat them with an air of inevitability.”13 Rather, they were outcomes of a complex negotiation of internal and external challenges, guided by the Six Principles.

12  Huwaydi, (2002: 44).

13  Tignor (1995: 104).

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Nasserism   229 In its first budget, the CCR transferred substantial funds from military to public expenditure, underlining its priority of national development and social welfare.14 The CCR’s first policy was the redistributive land reform of September 1952. Its cap of 200 feddans and generous compensation terms for landowners reflected the gradualist approach of the Free Officers, who were anticommunist and also working to curb the political power of the landed elites. Ultimately the redistributive aspect of the reform was limited and its implementation undermined by bureaucratic inefficiency and nepotism.15 However, the new limits on agricultural rent “benefited perhaps four million of the farming population and gave them an average net increase in income of about 50 percent.”16 Many Egyptians cherished the reform as a symbol of the overturning of colonial-era disenfranchisement. The leadership underlined this through village cere­monies in which Nasser handed out land ownership certificates—Egyptian peasants still called this the “law of freedom” on its repeal in 1992.17 The Free Officers also set up a new Permanent Council for Public Welfare Services,18 expanded free education, and encouraged girls’ enrollment.19 Also in the first phase, the CCR aimed to transform Egypt from its colonial model into a modern and independent industrial-based economy. The land reform had aimed to increase the number of small landowners and redirect capital investment into industry. Accordingly, the Economic Institution, the Permanent Council for the Development of National Production, and the Industrial Bank were established. However, Egypt’s bourgeoisie resisted, and most new investment went into the building industry. In reaction, Nasser’s speeches and state publications began to articulate the need for state-led development, and the Council for National Planning was founded in March 1955.20 Meanwhile, Nasser was trying to secure funding for a central public works project, the Aswan High Dam. This would enhance industrial production through the regulation of agriculture, rural electrification, and power generation, as well as being a potentially superlative source of political legitimacy. The second phase of Nasser’s economic policy began when the former colonial powers, along with the United States, withdrew their pledges of funding for the dam, prompting him to nationalize the Suez Canal Company. Here Nasser faced most acutely the challenge posed by the simultaneous need for social and political freedom; his plans for “freedom of bread” required autonomy of maneuver abroad, while the latter was dependent on a far more robust economic base than decolonizing Egypt could muster. The praxis of Nasserism was the effort to turn this dilemma into an opportunity: to make the international sphere work for the domestic. When Britain and France followed Israel in attacking Egypt in 1956, Nasser decided to nationalize their assets. The Economic Institution now absorbed fifty-five British and French companies as fully state owned: “The State was thus endowed, by imperialism, with the necessary resources 14  Heikal (1988: 53), el-Shakry (2007: 203). 15  Waterbury (1983: 263–282). 16  Mansfield (1973: 672); Fahmy (2002: 200–205). 17  Nasser (1953); Saad (2002). 18  Muhyi al-Din (1992: 239); Amin (1994: 122). 19  Ibrahim (1982: 142). 20  Nasser (1955); al-Imam (2003: 289).

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230   reem abou el-fadl for it to become a senior partner with the most important groups among the Egyptian bourgeoisie.”21 In 1956, the new Ministry of Industry undertook to regulate private industry and in January 1957 the Economic Agency was created, charged with taking over sequestered assets and designing policy for public investment.22 Balancing this was the pull factor of Soviet support, manifest in the agreement to exchange Egyptian cotton for Czech arms in 1955 and in Moscow’s commitment to finance the High Dam in January 1958.23 By that year, Egypt was sending almost half its exports to and receiving a third of its imports from the Soviet bloc.24 At the same time, the Egyptian leadership remained wary of the communist bloc’s influence.25 In this second phase then, the Egyptian leadership developed its “cooperativist democratic socialism,” expressing its “non-Marxist trajectory towards egalitarian national development.”26 The 1956 Constitution maintained that “social solidarity was the basis of Egyptian society” (article 4), repudiating any notion of class struggle. Regional considerations then imposed themselves on the domestic scene in new ways from 1958 to 1961. After Egypt and Syria merged into the United Arab Republic (UAR), Nasser launched the first Five Year Plan in 1960 and chose the inaugural address of the National Union to announce the goal of “doubling the gross national product in ten years.” He soon found himself constrained by the Syrian landed classes opposed to agrarian reform and the Western bloc as Britain, France, and the United States had intensified sanctions on Egypt since 1957. Syrian secession in 1961 dealt a decisive blow and galvanized a third phase of economic policy. This concentrated economic power still further in the state’s hands, seeking to contain the rising bourgeoisie, which was blamed for its reluctance to propel the UAR. In 1961, all banks, heavy industry, insurance, and key economic enterprises became state-owned.27 From these three phases of praxis was fashioned an evolving ideological framework that came to rest in the 1962 Charter of National Action, under the name “Arab socialism.” The changing sources of foreign assistance for the development project had done much to determine this orientation toward the left. Later, Nasser would elaborate on this evolution: We had the courage, at the beginning, to declare that we had no theory—though we did have clearly defined principles . . . we are now heirs to an experiment and an application of some eleven years. This has furnished us with the foundation of a theory . . .28

During the 1960s, Egypt was burdened by the significant compensation payments relating to its nationalizations and turned increasingly to external borrowing. At the same time, the Western bloc punished Nasser for his assertive foreign policy. Although Egypt’s growth rates were not as high as those of comparable states at the time, until 1966 21  Abdel Malek (1964: 40–41). 22  Waterbury (1983: 70); Abdel Malek (1968: 111). 23  Owen (1989: 363). 24  Owen (1989: 373). 25 Ismaʿil (1987: 49). 26  Nasser (1957). 27  Abdel Malek (1968: 151–154). 28  Nasser (1963: 142).

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Nasserism   231 growth had been rising, while inequality was falling.29 But with the US cutting its food aid in 1965 and European countries’ aid shrinking, Egypt was forced to seek short-term credit, almost doubling its deficit. This was compounded by military expenditure in Egypt’s protracted intervention in the Yemen War (1962–7) on the side of the re­pub­ licans against the Saudi-backed royalists, and by its 1967 defeat by Israel.30 Till then, Nasser had endeavored to channel foreign policy credit into domestic development. Both Amin and Waterbury conclude that these external shocks ultimately hobbled Nasser’s strategy.31

Nasserism as Pan-Arabism and Neutralism: Launching the Political Revolution The defining features of Nasserist foreign policy were pan-Arabism and Third World neutralism, later nonalignment, albeit with crucial Soviet military support. Though now regarded as hallmarks of the Nasserist project, these policies evolved through the negotiation of pressures of domestic capacity and external challenges. This was a contingent process which the CCR began without the intention of antagonizing the Western bloc nor reaching out to its Soviet rival. This section focuses on the 1950s, the period that saw these policies first take shape. Egyptian neutralism developed in stages, from the struggle with British colonialism in the mid-1950s towards nonalignment by the early 1960s. Nasser had recorded his rejection of Western-sponsored defense alliances in August 1952, recommending instead the Arab League Collective Security Pact (ACSP). During negotiations with Britain, CCR members echoed their Wafd government predecessors, describing “neutrality” as “non-cooperation with those who do not recognize Egypt’s sovereignty.”32 To this was harnessed the Wafdist practice of increasing pressure during talks by authorizing guerrilla warfare in the Canal Base zone. While prioritizing Britain’s withdrawal, the Free Officers also sought to avoid antagonizing the rising American power, whose support they craved in the quest to expedite national development. Meanwhile, the Free Officers attempted to “freeze” Egypt’s second front of hostilities: Chief of Military Planning Amin Huwaydi noted in 1952 that the army could not face Israel on the eastern border while the British remained in the Canal Zone.33 Nasser ­reasoned that ultimately only development could empower the Arabs to restore their stolen lands. However, contrary to some accounts, the early foreign policy of the Free 29  Waterbury (1983: 207). 30  Amin (1995: 3–7). 31  Waterbury (1983: 100); Amin (1995: 5–7). Barnett and Levy (1991) consider this strategy in comparative case studies from the 1960s. 32  Nasser (1954). 33  Huwaydi (2002: 53).

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232   reem abou el-fadl Officers was preoccupied not only with the Palestinian cause but also with Arab liberation movements in general. This was manifest in Nasser’s instruction to the new intelligence Bureau of Arab Affairs to establish the Voice of the Arabs radio station as early as 1953. It was also clear in the visits of ministers and intelligence officials to different Arab capitals between 1953 and 1955. Egypt’s first logistical and military support went to Algeria’s National Liberation Front, through the special relationship forged with Ahmed Ben Bella in 1953.34 Meanwhile the Palestine Students’ Union operated freely at Cairo University and 1954 saw the phasing in of free education and the right to work for Palestinians in Egypt.35 When the momentous agreement with Britain came in 1954, Nasser capitalized on it in the regional sphere, linking Egypt’s independence to the fate of all Arabs, and enjoining them to “raise their heads from the imperialists’ boots, for the era of tyranny is past.”36 This had been a time of preparation, before Egypt’s subsequent projection onto the regional and world stages as pan-Arab leader. Beyond the Arab world, the Free Officers extended their support to a host of Third World liberation movements, particularly in Africa. In 1954, Muhammad Fayiq (who later became African Affairs minister) founded the first Swahili-language radio station, Voice of Africa—the first of many Egyptian stations in the continent. Egypt offered diplomatic and media support to the East African Mau Mau movement in early 1955 and Kenyan leaders established permanent headquarters in Cairo.37 Together with support for the FLN, these measures were the earliest regional corollaries of the Free Officers’ national efforts to confront European imperialism. This ability to build up Egypt’s Arab and African network, while simultaneously focusing on domestic development, was not to last. Three external factors intervened. First, Britain and the United States pressured Egypt to join a Middle East collective se­cur­ity pact, effectively a regional arm of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This would grant them influence over Egyptian foreign policy and military bases on its soil. Second, they attached to this conditions for an Egyptian–Israeli settlement that Nasser refused to accept. Third came multiple provocations by the Israeli leadership itself, aimed at nipping Egypt’s development plans in the bud. Most notable among these was the February 1955 Israeli raid on Egyptian-administered Gaza. These three challenges would recur in various guises and combinations for the rest of Nasser’s presidency, while his own policies evolved in pursuit of further coordination within the Arab and Afro-Asian arenas. Throughout, his response was to attempt to harness the popular successes of his pan-Arab stances—given their limited impact on Arab leaders—to gain leverage on the international stage, and translate this in turn into as­sist­ ance. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to assess them all, but the illustrative episode of Suez cannot be overlooked. In 1955, just as Nasser was building his regional front against the latest Westernsponsored security alliance, the Baghdad Pact, the Gaza Raid had highlighted the Egyptian army’s weakness vis-à-vis Israel. This undermined Egypt’s pan-Arabist cam34  al-Deeb (1984). 35  Brand (1988: 34–35); el-Abed (2009: 41–43). 36  Sawt al-ʿArab, October 19, 1954, cited in Seale (1987: 210). 37  al-Deeb (1982: 32–37).

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Nasserism   233 paign and threatened its developmental project by forcing the diversion of resources to defense. It also propelled Egyptian neutralism and pan-Arabism into clearer positions. The Egyptian reaction began with inter-Arab diplomacy, but when Turkish and Iraqi leaders signed the pact in January 1955, inviting other Arab states to join, Nasser rallied them to refuse. The popular resonance of Egypt’s pan-Arab message now revealed itself, notably through Arab populations’ heeding of calls to protest delivered on Radio Cairo. The Baghdad Pact was duly contained, as leaders in Jordan and Lebanon felt unable to join in this climate and an alternative was formed between Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Different influences now arrived from other quarters, helping cement Egypt’s positive neutralism. In April 1955, the Soviet Union pledged support for Egypt, while Nasser and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) signed a friendship treaty.38 Both dimensions came together in the Asian and African Nations Conference at Bandung, Indonesia, where Nasser met the leaders of fellow decolonizing nations. Their message was that the priority should now be development, avoiding embroilment in the Cold War. There Nasser approached Chinese Premier Chou En-lai (1898–1976) to make contact with Moscow and by May Egypt had secured the Czech arms deal. This deal was an instance of the international leverage that regional and broader south–south activism could give to a decolonizing state. The effects appeared first in the Anglo–American pledges of aid to the Aswan High Dam in late 1955, and then in Arab reactions to their withdrawal the following July. When Nasser moved to nationalize the Suez Canal Company, it was partly Arab popular support that buoyed him through the tripartite invasion, toward political victory. This included the transnational mobilization of a pan-Arab strike protesting the London Conference in August and the bombing of gas pipelines in Syria during the Suez War in October. What Hudson describes as “a ‘reflected legitimacy’, achieving its effect from behavior in the regional and international system,”39 became a pillar of Nasserist praxis. In the literature on this period, the main debates revolve around the regional wrangles of the “Arab Cold War,” the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the dynamics between the rising American superpower and declining imperialist Europe.40 Far less is known about relations between Egypt and the non-state actors that it supported, whether existing Arab movements for national liberation or new Nasserist organizations. These require elaboration in a separate study, but a list of their locations is indicative of Nasserist influence: the Movement of Arab Nationalists that spread from Lebanon region-wide spawning the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf in Bahrain and Oman, and the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine; the Independent Nasserist Movement in Lebanon; the Nasserist Unionist People’s Organization in Yemen; the Arab Progressive Unionist Students and the Unionist Nasserist Movement in Tunisia. As Palestinian historian Anis Sayigh explains,

38  Abdel Malek (1968: 226). 39  Hudson (1977: 242). 40  Kerr (1971); Seale (1987); Louis and Owen (1989); Takeyh (2000); Yaqub (2004).

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234   reem abou el-fadl “what distinguished Nasser was that . . . those who opposed him, like those who loved him, treated him as an Arab and not an Egyptian leader.”41 Great controversy persists around whether Egypt’s intelligence apparatus and embassies provoked regime change in Arab countries or merely supported revolutionary organizations, as officials’ memoirs pledge.42 Certainly Egypt made use of Nasserist fronts in Arab capitals, particularly after the clandestine Arab Vanguard Organization formed in 1965, which liaised with opposition figures.43 In Africa, Egypt used a range of methods to block Israeli influence in the continent.44 Related to this is the small but burgeoning literature on the nonaligned movement, revisiting its different members’ perspectives in light of new antiglobalization movements.45 Even less scholarship is available on relations between non-state actors in the context of this Third World solidarity, though they may be captured from press records and memoirs of the time. According to the standard narrative, Egypt’s negotiations behind the Iron Curtain were bound to falter in the 1960s, because it had tried to leverage too much from the superpowers in a relationship ultimately defined by “objective dependency.”46 Indeed, Nasser was acutely aware that his 1956 political victory had been underpinned by Washington’s and Moscow’s reining in of the aggressors. It is still debated whether the ways in which a small state such as Egypt “split the core” exhausted its potential, or enhanced its autonomy. As the 1967 defeat showed, it could certainly never be an in­fal­ lible long-term strategy, given staunch US support for Egypt’s rivals in Saudi Arabia and its adversaries in Israel. At the same time, the experience of the under-studied 1969–70 War of Attrition offers further insight, given that post-1967 Egyptian military rebuilding with Soviet assistance was proceeding apace, and had managed to achieve parity with the Israeli army on the eve of Nasser’s passing.47

Cultures of Nasserism: Political and Popular Studies of the Nasserist project have made much of its status as a “revolution from above.” Examining the culture of Nasserism, both political and popular, is instructive; it reveals the ways in which it structured political expression for Egyptians and the ways in which they engaged with this. Nasserist political culture was characterized by the paradoxical dual objective of transmitting empowerment to a decolonizing people and of steering its overall direction. The official discourse of the July Revolution projected a message of realized potential and the amplified capacities of Egyptians once they were united in an equal society. Media and cultural outlets underlined social justice as a sign of progress and articulated 41  Sayigh (1980: 5). 42  al-Deeb (2000: 189). 44  Fayiq (1982); Shaʿrawy (2014). 45  Lee (2010). 47  Khalidi (1973).

43  Shukr (2015). 46  Dawisha (1997: 47).

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Nasserism   235 official narratives on the equality of men and women, Muslims and Christians, as well as a corporatist discourse on rural and urban labor. All these groups were enjoined to collaborate in the service of this vision. The replacement of the monarchy with the republic was the revolutionary event launching this self-empowerment in practice. It was followed by rather more reformist measures, which nevertheless transformed the lives of large numbers in the working and middle classes, particularly given the guarantee of jobs to every graduate. Nasser’s expanding welfare state introduced progressive labor laws for women, but stopped short of addressing the patriarchal personal status laws of the 1930s.48 Similarly, Nasser underlined his position on religious equality through such executive interventions as assuring seats for Coptic deputies and dedicating public funds to construct St Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo. He failed to institutionalize this by legislative means, but his rule was notable for its absence of sect­ ar­ian conflict.49 This recentering of the citizen in the political and social spheres, as compared with previous eras, established Nasser’s charismatic legitimacy and partially enabled his centralization of power. On the one hand, Egyptians (and Arabs) began to perceive Nasser’s qualities as extraordinary and to rely on him to fulfill their ambitions. He was al-rayyis, without whom Egyptians felt unable to go on after 1967. On the other hand, his charm lay in his message of self-empowerment. The national component of the Nasserist social contract cannot be underestimated in this charismatic dynamic.50 It explains why public-sector workers “protested by staying at the workplace after hours and, in many cases, increased production. Such a tactic was in line with the populist-nationalist pact . . .”51 It further explains the reaction of many leftists whom Nasser had imprisoned and who, once released, became the state’s crucial ideological partners, placed in charge of cultural and media institutions during the Bandung “moment” (1955–9) and again in the mid-1960s.52 It also forms the backdrop of the engagement of Egyptian middle-class women with the encouragements and limits of Nasserist state feminism, in a broader context of south–south feminist relations.53 The paradox was that the CCR viewed itself as responsible for guiding this process of change. This was informed by a broader anticolonial and modernist worldview, which envisioned progress as a combination of secular education, industrialization, and techno­logic­al advances, and a negotiation of modernity and authenticity in the private and cultural realms. Nasser’s leadership style was pedagogical, frequently describing the ways in which Egyptians could cooperate to meet their own needs. This is summed up in Nasser’s speech at Cairo University in December 1958, in which he counseled: “In order to make room for the atomic age and the space age . . . we must prepare ourselves mentally, spiritually, and psychologically . . .”54 To shape the direction of political mobilization accordingly, the CCR sought to establish vehicles of unrivaled mass political organization. The political culture fostered by 48  Hatem (1994: 231–233); Bier (2011: 65–68). 49  Farah (2013). 50  Pratt (2007: 35). 51  el-Mahdi (2011: 398). 52  al-Mulla (2014: 19–84); Abdel Malek (1968: 215–219). 53  Bier (2011: 65). 54  Abdel Malek 1968, p. 213.

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236   reem abou el-fadl such institutions—as with much of domestic policy—was heavily influenced by Egypt’s external affairs and the CCR’s nationalist worldview. Egyptians were encouraged to consider their political participation as tied to the fortunes of the decolonization project and to perceive their own rights within a collective, national framework. The first such institution was the Liberation Rally, founded in 1953, with an eleven-point program that prioritized British withdrawal, a welfare state, and “friendly relations with all Arab states.”55 The second came after independence from Britain and the 1955 Bandung Conference, when Nasser “realized the vital importance of mobilizing the people for defense and development work and, consequently, of adopting a certain form of guided democracy . . .”56 The new constitution of January 1956 declared Egypt an “Arab nation,” and established a presidential system that recognized a range of rights and freedoms. In 1957, the National Union replaced the Liberation Rally, and a National Assembly formed. The dominance of the executive over the legislature continued, however. The Union was to be formed by presidential decree and would then exclusively nominate members to the Assembly. Constitutional freedoms were to be enjoyed within the confines of regu­lated public debate, with far left and Muslim Brotherhood organizations banned. Nevertheless, the short-lived Assembly proved to be a forum for heated debate, coinciding with the revival of the leftist National Front during the resistance to the Suez invasion. According to Anouar Abdel Malek, Marxist scholar and keen observer of Nasser’s Egypt, “[e]verything was propitious for Nasser to go further, to encourage this powerful tide of the popular forces and to liberalize the government in order to provide better guarantees for its future.”57 The external dimension intervened, however, this time with the Syrian campaign for unity and Nasser squandered this opportunity. The Assembly was dissolved and another founded within the United Arab Republic framework. Nasser voiced significant self-criticism after the Syrian secession in 1961 and after the 1967 defeat.58 He described the shortcomings of the effort to control political organization from above and the resulting lack of effective cadres.59 In 1962, he had replaced the National Union with the Arab Socialist Union (ASU), which underlined the importance of “the alliance of working forces” in Egyptian political culture—peasants, workers, national capital, professionals, teachers, students, and women. The ASU in turn elected a new National Assembly in 1964. The ASU had between four and six million members and Nasser had regularly undergone rigorous questioning during the last National Assembly (1964–8).60 However, the ASU Executive Committee contained several Free Officers, and these kept a tight grip on recruitments to senior positions through a patronage network that served to contain potential discord. The ASU Executive came into particular conflict with Egypt’s independent Marxists, who had been released in 1964–5 on the understanding that their support for the July Revolution would afford them the opportunity to debate the challenges facing Egypt in building a socialist society. The forum for this was Al-Taliʿa magazine, loosely affiliated 55  Abdel Malek (1968: 93). 58  Brand (2014: 55–56, 61–63). 60  Dekmejian (1971: 165).

56  Abdel Malek (1968: 115–116). 57  Abdel Malek (1968: 122). 59  Shukr (1993); Dekmejian (1971: 164–165).

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Nasserism   237 to Al-Ahram but editorially independent. Its Marxist writers played an important role in providing the ideological justifications for the left-leaning leadership, debating issues from the nature of Arab socialism, to the relationship with the Soviet Union, to the class composition of the leadership and its impact on political change. The principal condition of its freedom to express criticism and suggest policy changes at the time was the dissolution of Egypt’s communist parties. Indeed, even as these loyal intellectuals noted the signs of apathy among the young generation and after student protests in 1967 confirmed this, Nasser did not move to authorize an opposition party. His own March 1968 declaration recognized the need for liberalization and a plurality of voices. However, the model remained one in which the government deemed threats to its direction too great to enable any meaningful devolution of power. Accompanying these institutional efforts were a slew of cultural policies aimed at producing educated, “model citizens” with socialist values.61 There was a concerted effort to make “high culture,” associated with both Arab and European art and letters, accessible to most Egyptians. In 1956, the High Council of Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences was founded, followed in 1958 by the Ministry of Culture. A central figure in this process was Free Officer turned Minister of Culture Tharwat ʿUkasha (1921–2012), who founded the Arts Academy and its constituent High Institute for Music (Conservatoire), the Ballet Institute, and the so-called Culture Palaces in far-flung towns of the republic.62 Simultaneously, there was a prominent orientation toward the celebration of popular or folk arts, in line with the revolution’s emphasis on the sovereignty and capacities of the people, and its care to maintain “connections with the past.”63 Thus the state established the Puppets Theatre, National Circus, and National Folk Dance Troupe, while in 1960 a Chair in Folklore Studies was endowed at Cairo University. This popular cultural production was either state-sponsored or mirrored the state’s public agenda and official historiography. Vehicles such as the National Union were charged with “organizing culture” and taking the lead in this “collective task.”64 In 1960–61, the entire Egyptian press and its cinema were nationalized. Yet the message of Nasserist empowerment, if within limits, had already been enthusiastically engaged by Egypt’s intelligentsia and artists, including with critique, and audiences were receptive. As economist Galal Amin puts it, such “cultural fluorescence” was linked to “the widespread optimism for the social and political future of Egypt” and “a genuine sympathy on the part of most Egyptian intellectuals for the social and political goals of the revolution.”65 This explains the motivation and success of the composers of the July Revolution’s mobilizing anthems, many sung by “Son of the Revolution” Abd al-Halim Hafez on July 23 anniversary concerts. In literature, too, popular leftist novelist Yusuf Idris, for ex­ample, reaffirmed the reasons for agrarian reform with his stories of Egyptian village life and later endeavored to create an authentically Egyptian dramatic tradition, derived 61  See el-Shakry (2007: 81–82). 62 See ʿUkasha (1988). 64  Nasser (1960). 65  Amin (2004: 113).

63  Hudson (1977: 230).

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238   reem abou el-fadl from Egyptian vernacular folklore. In the field of cinema, “with the onset of the Nasser revolution . . . a series of long-standing taboos against treating social and economic ills . . . were swept away. Egypt’s filmmakers, who had been pushing the edges of censorship in the early 1950s, jumped at newfound opportunities . . .”66 In 1961, the new and flourishing Reda Dance Troupe accepted an offer of state sponsorship from the Culture Ministry. Its interpretations of regional dances became a staple alongside Umm Kulthum in the entertainment of visiting heads of state, as well as that of audiences nationwide.67 At the same time, Salah Jaheen was both the composer of some of the most celebratory revolutionary odes of the era and the caricature artist who satirized the inefficiency and corruption of the Egyptian bureaucracy in the pages of Sabah al-Khayr and Al-Ahram throughout the 1960s.68 After the 1967 defeat, critical films such as Shayʾ min al-Khawf sparked controversy, but were screened.69 The Nasser era has been described as one of “pluralism under surveillance,”70 with the government suggesting “some generally approved direction” but then “allowing considerable discussion of the exact meaning of concepts like revolutionary historiography, the revolutionary university, and socialist realism.”71 The parameters for expression were highly regulated, partly through the patronage of such institutions as the Higher Council of Arts and Letters, and partly through censorship, but popular engagement was thoughtful and trans­ forma­tive.72 It was in this atmosphere that the talents of rising stars in music, cinema, literature, choreography, and visual arts found their outlets.

Nasserism Today: Evaluative Standard and Contemporary Political Tradition Four years after Nasser’s death, successor Anwar Sadat (1918–1981) began his policy of economic liberalization with America’s blessing, and four years later he signed the Camp David Peace Accords with Israel. It was during this period of extraordinary upheaval that a serious evaluation of the record of Nasserism could begin, but this was immediately polarized by the regime’s attack on this record, and its opposition’s defensiveness. Sadat, who intended to overturn his predecessor’s policies and escape his shadow, feared the potential counter-maneuvers of Nasser’s aides. Several former ministers were arrested in the 1971 “corrective movement,” while the official media began to smear the Nasser experience as a series of misadventures in a thankless foreign sphere. The regime now promoted Islamist groups, particularly on university campuses, as an alternative. It collaborated with the intellectual elites once again, this time to produce a particular assessment of Nasserism that remains widespread to this day, which empha66  Gordon (2007: 211). 67  Fahmy (2014). 69  Issa (2014). 70  Jacquemond (2008: 17). 72  Jacquemond (2008: 18–21); Bier (2011).

68  Radwan (2012: 109–112). 71  Crabbs Jr. (1975: 413–414).

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Nasserism   239 sizes its founding of the modern security state and the false promises it offered Egyptians and Arabs. This prompted external observers to announce the death of pan-Arabism and the failure of the Nasserist experiment.73 However, what unfolded instead was a series of contestations of the new regime, in which several prominent strands invoked Nasser’s legacy and Nasser-era references became an evaluative standard with which to criticize the status quo. This was ac­com­ pan­ied by the crystallizing of a political tradition, as former political and intellectual elites along with younger activists realized that a deNasserization process was underway, and sought to counter this. In both cases, it was clear that Nasserism now survived as the recently shared lived experience that reflected preexisting values and aspirations that continued to preoccupy Egyptians. As a result, the power of Nasserism endured as a lens through which to judge and to counsel on contemporary affairs. The following sections confine themselves to developments in Egypt, but it is crucial to note that similar trends are seen across the Arab world, where the Nasser era has continued to inform and frame political contestation.

Nasserism in Protest In 1972–3, a leftist and pan-Arabist stream within the Cairo University student body led protests against Sadat’s failure to go to war with Israel.74 Their movement made it clear to the president that departing from Nasser’s war plans was not a viable option. In 1977, industrial workers and public-sector employees decried the effects of the erosion of the Nasserist social pact in turn in their “bread uprising.”75 As Beinin writes: popular slogans like “In the days of defeat, the people could still eat” (raised by ­strikers in 1975) or “Nasser always said, ‘take care of the workers’ ” (heard in 1977) suggest that workers were looking back to a period when their wages and, perhaps just as important, their social status were higher than they were in the Sadat era.76

Periodic mass mobilizations continued under Sadat’s successor, Husni Mubarak, often expressing popular sympathy with Arab causes. These included protests at the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the 1985 bombing of the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis, and the crackdown on the first and second Palestinian intifadas of 1987–91 and 2000.77 Each one featured the use of slogans and images from the Nasser era. Participating in popular demonstrations, strikes, or solidarity committees in this way, contentious actors were retrieving from Nasser’s record a set of principles and precedents which they deployed in the face of the new regime. These elements now endured 73  Ajami (1978/9); Ajami (1995). 74  Abdallah (1985). 76  Beinin (2009: 71). 77  Ibrahim (1988: 26–27).

75  Baker (1990: 81).

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240   reem abou el-fadl and were rejuvenated as a lexicon of protest, which many dubbed “Nasserist,” from the 1970s onward. Among the protesters’ grievances was the breakdown of the Nasserist social contract; Egypt’s new alliance with Washington and its drift away from efforts at autonomous development; and Egypt’s turn away from the Arab world.

Evolution: Political Tradition A related, less diffuse group soon expressed their relationship with the Nasser era in a formalized way, both in intellectual exchange and political activity. This included former Nasser-era elites, many detained, and a younger generation that had graduated from the ASU’s Youth Organization programs. In this new and hostile environment, political formations began to advocate a political current they called Nasserism, defending the July state’s record in upholding pan-Arabism and socialism. After Sadat opened up the ASU to plural platforms in 1975, these groups struggled to attain legal political representation as Nasserists. Political parties with this name were consistently refused licenses and their budding political leaders were arrested. Regime mouthpieces worked to conflate Nasserism with Marxism and attack the latter in the context of the leftist National Progressive Unionist Party.78 Eventually, they were forced into the role of opposition more often than the positive proposal of alternatives. In 1980, for example, together with like-minded leftists, Nasserist writers and artists from both generations formed the Committee for the Defence of National Culture to protest the cultural clauses of the 1979 Israeli–Egyptian peace treaty. In 1981, leaders of two separate attempts to set up Nasserist parties were arrested. The Nasserists eventually secured a license to form the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party (ADNP) in 1992 and the al-Karama (“Dignity”) Party followed in 1997. Important among these organizers were the new Nasserists, part of the student generation that came of age after Nasser’s death, and separate from the old guard that had held positions in Nasser-era governments. Crucially, in the process of taking up Nasser’s legacy in their political claims-making, these actors redefined and reordered the priority principles of Nasserism to surpass the old centralized state context, and to demand greater political rights. They critiqued Nasser’s one-party system and explicitly incorporated references to human rights and democracy in their new party platforms.79 Indeed, the reason for the founding of al-Karama was the charge of persistent authoritarian practices by ANP leader and former Free Officer Diyaʾ al-Din Dawud, in a generational schism that saw a number of younger activists leave. One of the founding members of al-Karama was Hamdin Sabahi, former Cairo University student union president. He contested seats in the 1995, 2000, and 2005 elections, despite harassment and arrests, attempting to illustrate by example the new democratic credentials of the Nasserist tradition. In taking 78  Baker (1990: 108–110).

79  Iskandar (2006).

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Nasserism   241 positions against privatizations, wrongful dismissals, and Mubarak’s trade agreements with Israel, Sabbahi consistently invoked the memory of Nasser and Nasserist principles of social justice and pan-Arabism. Throughout this time, the neo-Nasserists were a key group in a larger set of intellectual circles in Egypt and the Arab world, which continued to debate the challenges of development and democracy, and the fortunes of pan-Arabism, while evaluating Nasser’s legacy. Many participated in anniversary conferences and studies convened by pan-Arabist political associations. Several of these were based outside Egypt, such as the Centre for Arab Unity Studies founded in Beirut in 1975. Within Egypt, Nasser’s birthday was commemorated in independent, often clandestine gatherings, while Nasserists also found outlets within other independent associations—such as the Journalists Syndicate, Bar Association, and university clubs—to make commentaries on con­tem­ por­ary politics.80 These debates show that over time, regional politics remained a major concern, but there developed a desire to get the Egyptian house in order before addressing foreign policy. There was little talk of an Arab state: the ANDP manifesto spoke of “Arab economic integration” instead. The meaning of anti-Zionism was also reconfigured from a call to arms into the practice of opposing normalization with Israel. In 1987 and again in 2000, Nasserist groups helped form the Egyptian National Committee in Support of the Palestinian Uprising, but at neither time was participation beyond relief convoys and diplomatic efforts seriously proposed.

Revolution Nasserism continued to manifest as a protest repertoire within a larger political trad­ ition throughout the years leading up to the 2011 revolutionary outbreak. By the early 2000s, workers’ protests had intensified, still drawing on the Nasserist legacy to contest the Mubarak regime. Particularly prominent was the role of al-Karama and Nasserist leader Kamal Abu-ʿAita in leading the 2007 real-estate tax collectors’ strikes to form the first independent union.81 These protests, which spread across sectors from 2006 to 2009, did not demand the restoration of Nasserist corporatism, however. Instead, starting with the Mahalla strikes of September 2007, they “explicitly framed their struggle as a political contest with national implications,” and demanded a set of labor rights and political freedoms that had not been a feature of the Nasserist era.82 After the 2003 Iraq war protests, popular rejection of Mubarak’s foreign policies gave way to a demand for domestic regime change.83 The neo-Nasserists formed part of the first group of actors in Egypt to contest the regime directly, namely the “Egyptian Movement for Change” or Kifaya [“Enough”] coalition of 2004. Formed together with

80  Baker (1990: 111). 81  Lachapelle (2012). 82  Beinin (2009: 84–85); el-Mahdi (2011: 392).

83  See el-Mahdi and Marfleet (2009).

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242   reem abou el-fadl socialists and neo-Islamists, the group made no public commitment to Nasserism.84 Kifaya’s founding “Statement to the Nation” used pan-Arabist language, warning against the interlocking threats of dictatorship and US–Zionist “aggression against Arab lands.”85 Nasserism appeared here in the convictions of some of the main players—ʿAbd al-Halim Qandil and George Ishaq for example—but not in the explicit goals of the project, which focused on democratization. It was therefore a mark of some continuity when, starting January 2011, Egyptian revo­lu­tion­ary protests featured images, slogans, and music from the 1950s, but made thoroughly new demands. During the initial eighteen days, many unorganized protesters used Nasser-era symbols as recognized cultural frames to communicate the demand for social justice, while Nasserist Kamal Abu-ʿAita led several other unions to form Egypt’s first independent labor federation.86 Then in occupations of Tahrir Square and the marches to the Israeli Embassy of 2011–12, the image of Nasser was consistently present. These repertoires expressed a desire for social justice and secular pan-Arabist commitments that predated the July Revolution, but for which Nasserist symbolism was now among the most widely recognized set of signifiers. However, protesters used such symbols to signal a new understanding of Arab solidarity in which citizens and not regimes defined the nation and its borders, and without a yearning for any kind of merger.87 It was against this backdrop that Hamdin Sabbahi ran for president in 2012 and came a popular third, with a fifth of the vote. Given the symbolic use of elements of Nasserism in the 2011 protests, its principles became part of the contest for revolutionary legitimacy in Egypt. Nasserism was duly instrumentalized in efforts to contain the revolution—such that political contests could be waged over this in 2014. Figureheads of the anti-Mursi mobilization, for example, were an openly Nasserist group of youth activists called Tamarrud (“Rebellion”), who received logistical support both from Sabbahi’s Popular Current movement and from sections of the military elite. The invocations of Nasser were stark in these protests, with emphasis on Mursi’s foreign policy and US ties. After Mursi’s ouster, Sabbahi and Chief of Staff Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi would go head to head in the 2014 presidential elections. Rivaling interpretations of the Nasserist tradition marked their competition, as al-Sisi emphasized the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood, while Sabbahi raised difficult questions about the economy and Israel.

Conclusion When asked once, Nasser himself expressed the view that there was no such thing as Nasserism.88 Indeed, this chapter has described a set of core principles and eclectic practice that does not constitute a clearly delimited ideology. Nasser’s own answer may 84  Shourbagy (2007); el-Mahdi (2009). 85 Shaʿaban (2011). 87  Abou-el-Fadl (2012). 88  Aburish (2004: 134–135).

86 Fuʾad (2011).

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Nasserism   243 have aimed to signal that the July Revolution was not about his person, but about chan­ ging the system. This institutionalization of change ultimately eluded Nasserism, however, which enabled its undoing under Sadat. Given the passing of the man and the historical juncture, the message remains, but it is unable to command significant pol­it­ ical influence without a leadership, whose potential members have endured persistent repression since Sadat’s presidency. Meanwhile Nasserism’s resourceful praxis is today constrained by the regional and international contexts of post-Cold War US hegemony. Yet precisely because of its core principles, Nasserism has been employed and deployed by different political figures into the twenty-first century, each emphasizing a different configuration of its associated elements to a particular end. Nasserism is now an authentic political tradition in the Arab world and Egypt’s recent revolutionary contestations are testament to this. Meanwhile, there is no doubt that its legacy as an ex­ample of political praxis—pursuing a fairer deal for less privileged nations and promoting unification trends such as pan-Africanism, tricontinentalism, and Bolivarism— has continued to inspire beyond Egypt. In 2006 in an interview, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared himself a Nasserist, while in 2011 members of an Egyptian popular delegation to African capitals found sympathetic interlocutors who invoked their cherished debt to Nasserist Egypt. In Egypt in 2015, however, with political violence escalating and democracy still elusive, many argue that the shortcomings of the Nasserist experience have cast a long shadow. Others see in Egypt today echoes of the reality that Nasserism challenged, and emphasize an ongoing struggle for sovereignty and social justice. Pursuing these requires creative thinking among those who see the relevance of Nasserism’s core principles to today’s revolutionary situation.

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Nasserism   245 Free Officer Pamphlets (1946). Al-Jaysh Juzʾan  min al-Shaʿb [“The Army is a Part of the People”]: . Free Officer Pamphlets (1950). Al-Jaysh Jaysh al-Shaʿb [“The Army is the Army of the People”]: . Free Officer Pamphlets (1952). Al-Inqilab al-Jadid [“The New Coup”]: . Fuʾad, H. (2011) “Al-Iʿlan ʿan Taʿsis Al-Ittihad Al-Misri li-l-Niqabat al-Mustaqila” [“Declaration of the Founding of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Unions”], Al-Ishtiraki, March 3: . Gordon, J. (2007). “Secular and Religious Memory in Egypt: Recalling Nasserist Civics,” The Muslim World 87: 94–110. Hasou, T. (1985). The Struggle for the Arab World: Egypt’s Nasser and the Arab League (London; Boston: KPI, distributed by Routledge and Kegan Paul). Hatem, M. (1994). “Economic and Political Liberalization in Egypt and the Demise of State Feminism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24: 231–233. Heikal, M. H. (1988). Cutting the Lion’s Tail: Suez through Egyptian Eyes (London: Corgi). Hudson, M. (1977). Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Huwaydi, A. (2002). Khamsun ʿAman min al-ʿAwasif: Ma Raʾaytuhu Qultuhu [“Fifty Years of Storms: I Said What I Saw”] (Cairo: Al-Ahram). Ibrahim, S. E. (1982). “Al-Mashruʿ al-Ijtimaʿi li-Thawrat Yulyu” [“The Social Project of the July Revolution”], in Ibrahim (ed.). Misr wa-l-ʿUruba wa Thawrat Yulyu [“Egypt, Arabism, and the July Revolution”] (Beirut: Dar al-Mustaqbal al-ʿArabi). Ibrahim, S. E. (1988). “Domestic Developments in Egypt,” in Quandt (ed.). The Middle East: Ten Years after Camp David (Washington DC: Brookings). al-Imam, M. (2003). “Muqawimat Al-Tanmiya fil-Mashrouʿ al-Nasiri” [“Development in the Nasserist Project”], in Idris (ed.). Dirasat fi-l-Haqaba al-Nasiriyya [“Studies in the Nasserist Era”] (Cairo: Markaz al-Ahram li-l-Dirasat al-Siyasiyya wa-l-Istratijiyya). Iskandar, A. (2006). Al-Nasiriyya wa-Ishakliyyat al-Dimuqratiyya, Ahram Ismailiyya Conference Paper. Ismaʿil, M. H. (1987). Amn Misr al-Qawmi fi ʿAsr al-Tahaddiyat [“Egypt’s National Security in the Era of Challenges”] (Cairo: Al-Ahram). Issa, S. (2014). “Safahat min Kitab ʿDhulm ʿAbd al-Nasir lil-Muthaqqafin’,” Al-Ayyam, December 12. . Jacquemond, R. (2008). Conscience of a Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press). Jankowski, J. (1980). “Egyptian Responses to the Palestine Problem in the Interwar Period,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12,1: 1–38. Jankowski, J. (1997). “Arab Nationalism in ‘Nasserism’ and Egyptian State Policy, 1952–1958,” in Jankowski and Gershoni (eds). Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press). Jankowski, J. (2002). Nasser’s Egypt, Arab Nationalism, and the United Arab Republic (Boulder: Lynne Rienner). Kerr, M. (1971). The Arab Cold War: Gamal Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Khalidi, A. S. (1973). “The War of Attrition,” Journal of Palestine Studies 3,1: 60–87.

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246   reem abou el-fadl Lachapelle, J. (2012). “Lessons from Egypt’s Tax Collectors,” Middle East Report 264. http:// www.merip.org/mer/mer264/lessons-egypts-tax-collectors-0. Lee, C. (ed.) (2010). Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and its Political Afterlives (Athens: Ohio University Press). Louis, W. R and Owen, R. (eds) (1989). Suez 1956: The Crisis and its Consequences (Oxford: Oxford University Press). el-Mahdi, R. (2009). “Enough! Egypt’s Quest for Democracy,” Comparative Political Studies 42: 1011–1039. el-Mahdi, R. (2011). “Labour Protests in Egypt: Causes and Meanings,” Journal of African Political Economy 38,129: 387–402. el-Mahdi, R. and Marfleet, P. (eds) (2009). Egypt: The Moment of Change (London: Zed). Mansfield, P. (1973). “Nasser and Nasserism,” International Journal 28,4, Autumn, 670–688. Muhyi al-Din, K. (1992). Wa-lʾaan Atakallam [“And Now I Speak”] (Cairo: Al-Ahram). al-Mulla, A.  S. (2014). Al-Yasar al-Misri bayn ʿAbd al-Nasir wa-l-Sadat: Majallat al-Taliʿa, 1965–1977 [“The Egyptian Left Between Abdel Nasser and Sadat: Al-Tali’a, 1965–1977”] (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub wa-l-Watha’iq al-Qawmiyya). Nasser, G. A. (1953). Speech on Occasion of Land Distribution to Peasants, Taftish Damira, July 23 . Nasser, G. A. (1954). Press Conference, Kafr al-Dawaar, April 19: . Nasser, G.  A. (1955). Lecture at Military College, March 28. . Nasser, G.  A. (1957). Speech at Cooperatives Conference, Cairo University, December 5: . Nasser, G.  A. (1960). Speech in Hasaka, Syria, February 15. . Nasser, G. A. (1963). Proceedings of the Unity Talks (Cairo: Al-Ahram Press). Nasser, G.  A. (1973) “Nasser’s Memoirs of the First Palestine War,” Walid Khalidi (trans.), Journal of Palestine Studies, 2,2. Originally Published in Akhir Saʿa, April–May 1955. Nasser, G. A. (2003) [1953]. Falsafat al-Thawra [“The Philosophy of the Revolution”] (Cairo: Madbuli). Owen, R. (1989). “The Economic Consequences of the Suez Crisis for Egypt,” in Louis and Owen (eds). Suez 1956: The Crisis and its Consequences (New York: Clarendon). Pratt, N. (2007). Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner). Radwan, N. (2012). Egyptian Colloquial Poetry and the Modern Arabic Canon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Saad, R. (2002). “The Two Pasts of Nasser’s peasants: Political Memories and Everyday Life in an Egyptian village,” in Chatterjee and Ghosh (eds). History and the Present (New Delhi: Permanent Black Press). Sayegh, F. (1969). “The Theoretical Structure of Nasser’s Socialism,” in Hanna and Gardner (eds). Arab Socialism: A Documentary Survey (Leiden: Brill). Sayigh, A. (1980). ʿAbd al-Nasir wa Ma Baʿd [“Abdel Nasser and After”] (Cairo: Al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr). Seale, P. (1987). The Struggle for Syria: A Study of Post-war Arab Politics, 1945–1958 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press).

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Nasserism   247 Sela, A. (2004). “Nasser’s Regional Politics: A Reassessment,” in Podeh and Winckler (eds). Rethinking Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Egypt (Gainsville: University Press of Florida). el-Shakry, O. (2007). The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Shaʿaban, A. B. (2011). Interview with author, Cairo, Arabic. Shaʿrawy, H. (2014). Political and Social Thought in Africa (Dakar: CODESRIA). Shukr, A.  G. (1993). Abdel Nasser Yatahaddath Hawl Mafhum al-ʿAmal al-Siyasi (Cairo: Al-Mawqif al-ʿArabi). Shukr, A. G. (2015). Al-Taliʿa Al-ʿArabiyya: Al-Tandhim Al-Qawmi Al-Sirri li-Gamal ʿAbd alNasir [“The Arab Vanguard: The Secret Arabist Organisation of Gamal Abdel Nasser”] (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wihda al-ʿArabiyya). Shourbagy, M. (2007). “The Egyptian Movement for Change—Kefaya: Redefining Politics in Egypt,” Public Culture 19,1: 175–196. Takeyh, R. (2000). The Origins of the Eisenhower Doctrine: The US, Britain and Nasser’s Egypt, 1953–7 (New York: St Martin’s Press). Tignor, R. (1995). “Foreign Capital, Foreign Communities, and the Egyptian Revolution of 1952,” in Shamir (ed.). Egypt from Monarchy to Republic: A Reassessment of Revolution and Change (Boulder: Westview). Ukasha, T. (1988). Mudhakkirati fi-l-Siyasa wa al-Thaqafa [“Memoirs in Politics and Culture”], vol. 1 (Cairo). Waterbury, J. (1983). The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Yaqub, S. (2004). Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (Chapel Hill, NC/London: University of North Carolina Press).

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chapter 13

A Wa r ov er th e Peopl e The Algerian War of Independence, 1954–1962 Ryme Seferdjeli

The Algerian War of Independence was one of the longest and most brutal wars of decolonization. The war lasted eight years and ended with Algeria gaining its independence after over a century of French colonization. During the war, an estimated 300,000 people died, another two millions were displaced and violence—committed by both sides—reached appalling levels. Its consequences both in Algeria and in France have been immense. In France, the Algerian war has been central in shaping French politics and identity.1 Long taboo after the end of the war, the Algerian war resurfaced in French public debates at the end of the 1990s. The revelations by former actors of the war, as well as the partial opening of the French archives on the war in 1992—which led to the publication of a number of important works by historians on the conflict—reopened sensitive issues such as the systematic use of torture by the French as a weapon of war and France’s treatment of the harkis2 during and after the war.3 In Algeria, the legacy of the war has been central to the nation-building process and to the regime’s traditional le­git­ im­iz­ing narrative. On the international scene, the struggle of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) against French colonialism and the nature of the war itself, turned the Algerian war in to a rallying point for the nonaligned movement and the Arab world and as a point of reference for other liberation movements such as the African National Congress and the Palestine Liberation Organization.4 1  See, e.g. Silverstein (2004), and Shepard (2006). 2 The harkis were Algerians who served as auxiliaries in the French army during the war. On the history of the harkis, see e.g. Besnaci-Lancou and Manceron (2008); Crapanzano 2011, and Hautreux (2013). 3  In particular the revelations by a former FLN militant, Louisette Ighilahriz, on her torture at the hands of the French military, published in 2000 in an article in Le Monde. Her revelations, followed by General Massu’s revelations and by the publication in 2001 of the work of French historian Raphaëlle Branche on the question of torture during the Algerian war, reopened the debate in France about the systematic use of torture and other types of violence during the Algerian war. 4  See, e.g. Connelly (2002); and Byrne (2016).

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   249 This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the Algerian war. It is divided into three sections. The first section examines the colonial period prior to the outbreak of the war and looks at the origins of the Algerian nationalist movement. The second section provides an account of the three main phases of the war. Finally, the last section examines a few significant characteristics of the conflict—such as the widespread use of violence, the significance of diplomacy in the conflict, but also the nature of the war, the participation of women in the war, and the use of women’s activism by both the FLN and the French during the war.

Colonial Algeria, 1830–1954 The French invasion of Algeria in 1830 led to the conquest of the country and its subsequent colonization by the French. In 1834, Algeria was officially annexed to France and in 1848 it became an integral part of French territory. The military campaign for the conquest and possession of the Algerian territory was long, gradual, and violent, and lasted over forty years; only in 1871 was the last major insurrection against the French put down and the country deemed officially “pacified.” The steps toward complete colonization of Algeria included land expropriation and a reconfiguration of the local socioeconomic and administrative structures, as well as the establishment of a large community of European settlers. Once Algeria was integrated into French territory, it was subject, except in matters of budget, to the same laws of government as the rest of the Third Republic. Yet at the same time, French colonial authorities put in place a discriminatory system that denied most of the native population the rights that were offered to European settlers in Algeria.5 Colonial society was composed of two main groups: the native population of Algerian Muslims6, and European settlers. European settlers, who began arriving in Algeria at the beginning of colonization, quickly developed into a large and powerful community. By 1886, settlers numbered over 400,000, and in 1954, on the eve of the Algerian war, they numbered approximately one million, that is, ten percent of the total population. European settlers who came from areas other than France—such as Italians, Spaniards, or Maltese—were naturalized and became full French citizens.7 A third group was the Jewish population whose members were declared French citizens by the décret Crémieux of October 24, 1870.8 5  Thénault (2005: 20). 6  In this chapter, I use the term “Algerian” to refer to the Algerian Muslims. It has to be noted though that during the colonial period, the term “Algerian” was used to refer to the European settler population. 7  Lefeuvre (2004: 267–268). 8 Their integration remained, however, limited and Jews in Algeria suffered from anti-Semitism throughout the colonial period. During the Second World, the décret Crémieux was abrogated for three years by the Vichy regime, during which Jews were back to their status of “indigènes.” On the history of

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250   ryme seferdjeli Unlike the European settlers (known as pieds-noirs), Algerians were not considered full French citizens but French subjects with a Muslim status; in civil matters, they did not come fully under French law but were governed by local customs and Islamic prin­ ciples. And since they were governed by different legal systems, the settlers and the Algerians were subject to different rules and regulations—with Algerians having a status distinctly inferior to that of the settlers. The Senatus-Consulte of July 14, 1865 and the law of February 1919 gave Algerians the possibility of applying for full French citizenship on the condition that they respect the French civil code and hence renounce their own legal practices in matters such as marriage and inheritance laws. Naturalization was nevertheless particularly difficult and was possible only after a lengthy and degrading investigation and complex administrative procedures. As a result, the vast majority of Algerians were not full French citizens and were therefore excluded from citizens’ civic and political rights.9 The inferior status of Algerians was also rooted in a special code, the Code de l’Indigénat, which was introduced in 1881 and remained in force until 1944. This code included a series of codified offenses specific to Algerians and for which Algerians were punished—fines, imprisonment, and house arrest—without judgment. In addition, Algerians had access to limited positions in the civil service. Until 1945 Algerians were also only allowed to elect local representatives, while full French citizens had the right to vote in French elections and send representatives to the National Assembly in Paris. A high proportion of Algerians lived in extreme poverty while the colons—who had expropriated most of the best lands—had a considerably higher standard of living and, determined to retain their privileges, made sure to block or sabotage any concessions or reforms that improved the situation of the Algerians. While the differences and imbalance between the two populations were striking, it is important to observe that—at least in some circles—the boundaries between the two populations were blurry. Moreover, many European settlers were conscious of the discrimination. Some even sided with the FLN-ALN during the war of independence and chose to stay in Algeria after independence and become Algerians.10 By the turn of the century, Algerians had begun to address the inequalities and discrimination to which they were subjected. They started to form social and political movements—each with its own vision and aspiration for the Algerian “nation.” The first movements to become active fought mostly for equal rights and for a greater assimilation of Muslims. Assimilation meant that Algeria was to become an integral part of France. Central to assimilation was the application of a common legislation. Algerians would have equal rights and duties to French. Assimilation also meant that Algerians would adopt French language and culture.11 In the 1920s, the assimilationists were represented by the Fédération des Élus Indigènes, a coalition of independent elected officials. the Jewish population in Algeria and their legal status during the colonial period, see Kateb (2001); Weil (2005); Schreier (2010); and Stein (2014). 9  Weil (2005: 95–109). 10  Perhaps one of the best-known cases is that of the young French surgeon Pierre Chaulet and his wife Claudine Chaulet, both of whom sided with the FLN-ALN during the war. Chaulet (2012). 11  Betts (2005: 8–9).

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   251 The Fédération des Élus fought continuously for the extension of political rights and full citizenship rights for Algerians, equal payment for equal work in the civil service, and equality in the length of military service. One of the most prominent leaders of this federation, and a major figure in Algerian politics, was Ferhat Abbas, a committed partisan of assimilation who saw no contradiction between being French and being Muslim. Other prominent movements within Algerian politics were the cultural and reformist Association des ʿulama musulmans algériens (AUMA), founded in May 1931 by Cheikh Ben Badis, and the Parti Communiste Algérien (PCA). The most important political movement of the first half of the twentieth century was, however, the Étoile NordAfricaine (ENA). The ENA was created in 1926 in Paris under the leadership of Messali Hadj, a young Algerian worker living in Paris. Unlike other movements, the ENA aspired to the immediate independence of Algeria. It called for the abolition of the Code de l’Indigénat, freedom of the press and of association, the creation of a National Assembly for Algeria, the withdrawal of all French troops from Algeria, and the immediate independence of Algeria with all confiscated lands to be returned to the Algerian people. Messali Hadj’s party quickly came to represent the voice of Algerian nationalism and, throughout its existence, faced significant repression from French authorities. In March 1937, the ENA reconstituted itself as the Parti du Peuple Algérien (PPA) and the movement relocated to Algeria. In September 1939, however, the PPA was banned and forced underground.12 The Second World War opened a new era for Algerian nationalism. First, the occupation of France during the Second World War had highlighted the country’s military weakness. Second, political movements were becoming increasingly disillusioned with the failure of reforms. Despite growing discontent, protest, and demands for reforms by Algerians, little had been done to bring about a fuller assimilation of Muslims. Disillusionment about reforms and an intensification of French repression toward the PPA and other movements during the Second World War soon radicalized the nationalist movement and led to the collapse of the assimilationist program. Economic de­priv­ation at the end of the Second World War, worsened by famine—the winter of 1944–45 was record-dry—deepened the sense of hopelessness among Algerians and bred a climate of violence that eventually culminated in the tragic events of May 1945, a turning point in the history of colonial Algeria. In March 1944, Ferhat Abbas had started Les Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté (AML), a movement that favored the creation of an Algerian nation federated with an anticolonialist France. On May 8, 1945, a demonstration for the liberation of Algeria, organized by the AML along with PPA leaders, took place just as Europeans were celebrating the liberation of Europe. While there were no major incidents in most cities, in Sétif, in the eastern part of the country, demonstrators called for immediate independence and the release of Messali Hadj, who had been imprisoned since 1937. The march was broken up by the police and sparked a general and violent insurrection in which 193 settlers were brutally murdered and over one hundred injured. French retaliation 12  On Messali Hadj, see Stora (1986).

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252   ryme seferdjeli was ruthless. Thousands of Algerians were reportedly killed and over five thousand arrested, including Ferhat Abbas. Historian Annie Rey Goldzeiguer and others have identified the events of May 1945 as the direct cause of the Algerian war.13 Indeed, the May 1945 events led to a rise in support for the nationalist movement, and after May 1945, the nationalist movement gained greater popular support and became more radicalized, with many Algerians seeing direct armed action against the French as the only way forward. The period from 1945 to the outbreak of the war in 1954 was a period of intense rad­ic­ al­iza­tion and deep political divisions on the Algerian side, and more failed reform attempts, broken promises, and violent repression on the French side. Following the violent reprisals of May 1945, French authorities attempted to bring change with a new Statute of Algeria. The 1947 Statute proclaimed equality among all French citizens without distinction of origin, race, language, or religion, and reaffirmed that Algerians would keep their personal civil status unless they expressly renounced it. The 1947 Statute safeguarded most Europeans’ interests and still kept Algerians in a separate college. It nonetheless contained a number of measures, which, according to historian Charles-Robert Ageron, “signalled real progress.”14 Unfortunately, those measures remained only promises. First, they were all subject to approval by the Algerian Assembly and an impossible two-thirds majority.15 At its dissolution in the middle of the war, on April 11, 1956, the Assembly had still not seriously addressed these issues. In addition, the colonial au­thor­ ities manipulated the composition of the Assembly by consistently rigging the elections in order to ensure the election of loyal Muslims. In November 1946, the outlawed PPA had created the Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques (MTLD), a party that would pursue the route of electoral politics, while the underground PPA continued its struggle for complete independence. But continuous repression, rigged elections, and failed reforms by the colonial au­thor­ ities served to reinforce the conviction of many young nationalists that the electoral way was not credible and that the only way forward was direct military action. During that same period, the PPA-MTLD faced several serious internal crises causing deep divisions within the Algerian nationalist movement. In the summer of 1954, at a time when conflict and divisions within the movement were at a high point, the “activists” within the PPA-MTLD—also former members of the dismantled Organisation Secrète (OS), the PPA-MTLD paramilitary organization in charge of exploring and preparing for armed action—convinced that independence could only be gained through war, decided to act and started to plan for an armed insurrection. It included Ahmed Ben Bella, Hocine Aït Ahmed, and Mohamed Boudiaf. They created a new organization, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) and planned for the inception of an armed insurrection on the eve of November 1, with coordinated attacks across the country.

13  Rey-Goldzeiguer (2002).

14  Ageron (1990: 95).

15 Ibid.

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   253

The War, 1954–1962 The approximately seventy coordinated attacks across Algeria on the eve of November 1, 1954 by the newly created and largely unknown FLN marked the official beginning of the Algerian War of Independence. But the fledgling FLN initially had to face an insurmountable task. First, the organization was virtually unknown to the Algerians and the French; second, it had few men and was poorly armed. At the beginning, the FLN had an estimated fighting force of less than a thousand men.16 It also had no proper political and military structure and little of what could be called a program. Its program was to act first and to organize later. Its goal was simple: to achieve the independence of Algeria. To this end, as John Ruedy explains, “The task of the revolutionary leadership was first to convince the Algerian people of its existence, then to give it confidence in its capacities, and finally to create structures through which the people could begin to express its nationhood.”17 In what could be identified as the first phase of the war, all these goals were achieved in less than three years. From 1954 to 1957, the FLN went from being a largely unknown organization, mounting what the French had called a mere “rebellion,” to a large-scale resistance movement. With few adherents and little means, the men who founded the FLN (the nine “historical leaders”) organized the revolution in the Algerian territory in a very rudimentary way. First, they divided the territory into five zones, each headed by a leader responsible for organizing the uprising in his own zone. The remaining four leaders were stationed in Cairo and were in charge of arms supply and the internationalization of the Algerian question.18 The FLN also created an armed branch, the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN), and called on the population to join or to support the ALN by any means possible.19 In one of the first documents the FLN circulated at the time of the insurrection and one of the FLN’s most significant texts during the war—the FLN Proclamation of 31 October 1954—the FLN stated its goals and strategies. The main goal was national independence, which would restore the sovereign, democratic, and social Algerian state within the framework of Islamic principles. In order to achieve this goal, the FLN identified both internal and external objectives. Its internal objective was political housecleaning. The nationalist movement would be redirected on to the right track and all corruption in the movement would be eliminated. The FLN’s internal objectives clearly indicated the FLN’s opposition to and intended break with Messali Hadj’s movement. Through the proclamation, the FLN also clearly positioned itself as the Algerian nationalist movement. Its main external objective was the internationalization of the Algerian question. The document also clearly specified that the FLN would continue the armed

16  Meynier (2002: 278). 17  Ruedy (2005: 157). 18  They were Ahmed Ben Bella, Mohammed Khider, Hocine Aït Ahmed, and Mohammed Boudiaf. 19  L’Appel de l’ALN, October 31, 1954.

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254   ryme seferdjeli struggle by all means possible until the achievement of independence.20 These goals and strategies remained virtually unchanged for the entire duration of the war. Up until the end of 1955, the FLN-ALN’s gains were few and the FLN-ALN was barely surviving. The French forces had arrested several of its leaders, and killed another, Mourad Didouche, a few weeks after the start of the war. Moreover, there was little, if any, coordination or contact among the different zones. More critically, the insurrection had not yet attracted the popular support that it needed. Toward the end of 1955, however, things quickly changed. On August 20, 1955, two FLN-ALN leaders from the area of North Constantine—Youssef Zighout and Lakhdar Ben Tobbal—launched an insurrection in the Constantinois with the aim of relaunching a revolution that had not yet produced the reaction it needed from the population. ALN fighters, with the help of the population, went on the offensive in over twenty localities and attacked centers of colonial power such as gendarmeries, city halls, post offices, and military barracks. In two villages, however, the August offensive led to a massacre of civilians. Overall, thirty-one military and ninety-two civilians, among them seventyone Europeans, were killed.21 French retaliation against Algerian civilians was brutal. It is believed that the French killed over 10,000 Algerian civilians as a reprisal. As a result, Algerian civilians started to support and to join the FLN-ALN. The August 1955 insurrection is significant and is considered in the historiography of the Algerian War of Independence as the true beginning of the war in that it marked the beginning of the population’s involvement in the war and the transformation of what was considered a minor rebellion into a full-fledged war. By the end of 1955, the FLN-ALN had a fighting force of approximately six thousand men.22 Less than a year later, the FLN-ALN met another of its major goals. At the beginning of the insurrection, the FLN had appealed to other political movements to join in the common struggle, and as early as 1955, some former centrist members of the now banned MTLD who had opposed Messali Hadj during the 1953–54 crisis joined the FLN-ALN.23 In January 1956, the ʿulama rallied to the FLN and recognized it as the “authentic” representative of the Algerian people. In April 1956, Ferhat Abbas’ UDMA joined the FLN-ALN, followed by the communists in July of the same year. The decision of Ferhat Abbas, who had long been the voice of moderation and was the personification of dialogue with France, to join the armed struggle was of particular symbolic importance. It signaled clearly that Algerians throughout the territory saw no viable alternative to armed struggle and full independence from France. The only significant faction to resist the FLN-ALN were Messali Hadj and his partisans (the Messalists) who rejected the FLN-ALN appropriation of the nationalist movement and its legitimacy as the sole representative of the Algerian nationalist movement. In late 20  La Proclamation du FLN, October 31, 1954. 21  Mauss-Copeaux (2011: 118). 22  Meynier (2002: 290). 23  The MTLD centralists were members of the party Central Committee who opposed the movement leader, Messali Hadj, during the 1953 crisis, accusing him of dictatorial tendencies and of attempts to impose a personality cult.

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   255 1954, to counter the FLN-ALN, Messali Hadj and his partisans had formed themselves into a new movement, the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA). Finally, another significant development during this first phase of the war was the development of the FLN-ALN into a structured organization that took responsibility not only for the armed insurrection but also for the population. During the Soummam Congress of August 20, 1956, when FLN-ALN’s leaders met for the first time since the outbreak of the war, they unified the ALN, defined its command structures, and gave the army a proper organization with a specific hierarchy. Moreover, the FLN-ALN created its own administrative institutions to replace the colonial ones—registry and judicial office, tax collection, medical, family assistance program, propaganda service, and so on. Thus, by 1956, the FLN-ALN became an organization with proper political institutions, a growing organized fighting force, and institutions to oversee and manage the population. The French responded to the outbreak of the war by introducing a series of harsh measures. On March 12, 1956, the National Assembly voted for special powers and gave the army a free hand to break the rebellion. Reservists were called up and, by the end of 1956, some 400,000 soldiers were stationed in Algeria. French strategy went beyond military operations, however. Since the FLN-ALN recruited combatants from among the people and depended on their active or passive support, one of the army’s main missions was to isolate the FLN-ALN from the population. The strategy was multifaceted: to drive a wedge between the FLN-ALN and the population (what the French called the rebels’ “most solid base”), to encourage the population to cooperate and provide intelligence, and to rally the people to the French side in support of a French Algeria. To that end, the army divided the territory of Algeria into several zones of their own and started a policy of resettlement. The resultant zones interdites were areas from which people were displaced to be resettled in camps. By the end of the war, the army had uprooted almost one-third of the rural population and placed them under guard, transferring them to resettlement camps (centres de regroupement).24 The zones d’opération (op­er­ ation­al zones) were areas from which the French army launched its military operations. Finally, the zones de pacification (protected zones) were areas in which a large number of forces were stationed and in which the army aimed to develop regular contact with the population through various programs of economic and social advancement. As of 1956, the army took charge of administrative and civilian tasks, as well as the re-establishment of order and security. The French army thus used military, political, economic, social, medical, and psychological weapons in its struggle against the FLN-ALN. By 1956, however, despite substantial gains, the FLN-ALN was under considerable pressure from the French army. At that time, the war took a different turn, spreading from the countryside to the cities. While there had been attacks in cities from as early as 1955, the first two years of the conflict were limited to spontaneous actions. In the summer of 1956, a series of violent events led to one of the most aggressive and most publicized episodes of the war, commonly known as the “Battle of Algiers.” 24  For an early study on the effects of this policy of uprooting, see Bourdieu and Sayad (1964).

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256   ryme seferdjeli On June 19, 1956, two FLN activists, Ahmed Zabana and Abdelkader Ferradj, were guillotined. This led to a cycle of violence in Algiers in which both the FLN-ALN and pro-French Algeria European activists engaged in a series of random killings and terrorist attacks against Europeans and Algerians respectively. Eventually, the FLN-ALN organized at the end of 1956 a major counteroffensive in the city of Algiers, and carried out hundreds of attacks in the capital. This included planting bombs in public spaces— many by young Algerian women who looked and acted and dressed as European women. Taking guerrilla warfare into the cities radically altered the course of the war. It meant targeting the French military and civil administration directly and exposing the main concentrations of European population to the conflict. Also during the battle, the FLNALN organized a general strike—with its main center in Algiers—to coincide with the United Nations (UN) General Assembly debate on the Algerian question. The aim of the strike was to demonstrate to the UN that the population supported the FLN-ALN and the goal of independence for Algeria. Faced with the urban violence in Algiers, the French government handed over police powers to the army. General Massu, commander of the Tenth Paratroop Regiment, took command of the battle with the aim of breaking the FLN by any means possible. During the Battle of Algiers or what Algerians also commonly refer to as the “great repression of Algiers,” which lasted over nine months, the French army resorted to widespread and systematic use of torture. At the end of the battle, the French had defeated the FLN-ALN and dismantled its organization in Algiers. Yet at the same time, the battle of Algiers turned out to be a major diplomatic victory for the FLN-ALN. The systematic use of torture by the French—and more particularly, the stories of young Algerian women who were arrested and subjected to torture, became widely reported. The worldwide response to these abuses, as well as the concerted effort by the FLN-ALN to make the world aware of the Algerian conflict during the repression of Algiers, greatly contributed to internationalizing the conflict, and aroused a great deal of sympathy for the Algerian cause at the international level. As for France, its use of torture contributed to its isolation at the international level. It had won militarily but lost diplomatically. The second phase of the war goes from the end of the battle of Algiers and the fall of the Guy Mollet government in France to September 1959. This phase saw the collapse of the Fourth Republic and the return to power of General de Gaulle in May 1958. By early 1958, the Fourth Republic was facing a crisis. There was no government in Paris, and although Robert Lacoste, Governor General of Algiers, had been recalled to Paris, no one had been designated to replace him at the head of the General Government in Algiers. With no civil power in Algiers, the military ruled. Fearing negotiations with the FLN-ALN and the recognition of the FLN-ALN “rebels” as valid interlocutors, the army and pro-French Algeria Europeans organized demonstrations throughout Algeria on May 13. At the end of the day the army, with the support of the European population of Algeria, took power in Algiers. On June 1, General de Gaulle was given emergency ­powers to restore order and draft a new constitution, and in September 1958, the new constitution was approved by referendum.

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   257 In his memoirs, De Gaulle admitted that he had approached the Algerian question with “no strictly predetermined plan.”25 Yet, in 1958 and 1959, the French government pursued an integrationist policy in Algeria and implemented a number of significant reforms aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the Algerian people. On June 4, 1958, speaking in Algiers, General de Gaulle announced the institution of a single electoral college and proclaimed that from then on, there would be only one category of citizen in Algeria: full French citizens with equal rights and duties. On September 28 of that year, in the referendum to approve the new constitution, Algerians—including women, who voted for the first time—voted just like any other French citizen. Another particularly important move toward integration was the gigantic Plan de Constantine26 announced on October 3, 1958. To be implemented within a five-year period between 1959 and 1963, the plan was intended to improve the situation of the Algerian population and to close the gap between Algerian and European living standards. It was designed to initiate a profound transformation of the economic and social structures of Algeria and to enable a growing number of Algerians to enter the modern sector of the economy, while raising the standard of living of those still working in traditional sectors. All the while, the French government also engaged in massive military operations against the FLN-ALN. In 1957, the French had erected electrified barriers at the Moroccan and Tunisian borders, making the crossing of the border extremely difficult. As a result, the ALN lost a large number of its fighters when they attempted to cross and found itself increasingly isolated inside Algeria. Under the command of General Maurice Challe, appointed head of the French army in Algeria under de Gaulle, pressure on the ALN was particularly intense. General Challe’s military operations almost disintegrated the ALN in Algeria. With the ALN in Algeria almost completely defeated, large contingents of fighters remained blocked in Tunisia and Morocco, unable to reenter Algerian territory. In add­ ition, de Gaulle’s integrationist policy and all the French efforts to win over the population put immense pressure on the FLN-ALN. Naturally, the FLN-ALN rejected all reforms, in particular the Plan de Constantine, and urged Algerians to boycott the referendum. Despite FLN-ALN orders, however, Algerian turnout for the September 1958 referendum was particularly high (79.9 percent), and the results dealt a serious blow to the FLN-ALN’s prestige. Even though the FLN-ALN was facing a particularly difficult situation internally, it now made considerable advances at the international level. In the first phase of the war, the struggle for the FLN-ALN had taken place largely in Algeria with the aim of getting Algerians to side with the FLN-ALN; but from 1958 onward, the struggle took place primarily at a diplomatic level and outside the country.27 To counteract de Gaulle’s initiatives and reforms, the FLN-ALN launched a new diplomatic offensive. On September 19, 1958, at a Cairo press conference, it announced the creation of a provisional government, the Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne (GPRA), with its capital 25  De Gaulle (1970: 44). 27  Ruedy (2005: 174).

26  On the Plan de Constantine, see Davis (2010).

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258   ryme seferdjeli in Tunis. In Tunisia, the FLN-ALN became better organized. The FLN-ALN had proper institutions and the ALN became a proper army. More important, the GPRA was successful in gaining diplomatic recognition. By October 1958, thirteen states had already recognized the GPRA, and it was operating offices in the states of the Arab League and also in West Germany, Spain, Finland, Britain, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland.28 The FLN-ALN diplomatic offensive meant that, despite French military superiority and the implementation of socioeconomic reforms in Algeria, there was no prospect of an end to the conflict, and de Gaulle quickly concluded that only a political solution would bring an end to the war. On September 16, 1959, in a televised speech, de Gaulle eventually mentioned self-determination for the first time. He announced that Algerians would be called upon to choose between three solutions: secession, integration with France, or close association with France. In his speech, he clearly indicated that he was in favor of the latter solution. The third and final phase of the war, from 1960 to 1962, was dominated by three aspects: negotiations between the French government and the FLN-ALN in an attempt to reach an agreement; the signing of the Evian agreement, which put an end to the conflict and formally recognized the independence of Algeria; and the state of anarchy and violence that dominated Algeria in the summer of 1962. The first talks between the French government and the GPRA took place in Melun in June 1960 but they quickly broke off. Negotiations eventually resumed in Evian on May 20, 1961 but reached an impasse on several issues. The first issue was the fate of the European minority that was expected to remain in Algeria after independence. The French government wanted assurances that the Europeans of Algeria would enjoy normal civil and political rights and that their property rights would be guaranteed. The GPRA, on the other hand, did not want to make any promises—especially on the question of property rights—before a sovereign Algerian state was in place. The second issue was the question of sovereignty over the Sahara. For the French, the Sahara was of particular importance. First, major deposits of petroleum had been discovered in 1956. Second, the French government had been using the Sahara for nuclear testing and argued that the Sahara had never been an integral part of Algeria but was only attached to Algeria through colonization. The GPRA, on the other hand, viewed the Sahara as an integral part of Algeria. Finally, another important issue was the status of French military air and naval bases on Algerian soil. After months of protracted negotiations, an agreement was eventually signed on March 18, 1962. The Evian agreement formally recognized the independence of Algeria over its entire territory—the Sahara included— and called for an immediate ceasefire. The ceasefire went into effect the next day, on March 19, and on July 1, 1962, Algerians went to the polls. Some 99.72 percent of Algerians voted for independence.29 On July 3, 1962, President de Gaulle proclaimed the independence of Algeria.

28  Connelly (2002: 195).

29  Thénault (2005: 253).

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   259 Despite the ceasefire, the war didn’t really end until September 1962. With no forces to maintain order after the signature of the Evian agreement, the country descended into a state of anarchy and violence reached high levels. The war left the country in a miserable condition. Even though the GPRA and the French government had reached an agreement in Evian over the French minority, most European settlers decided to leave. The escalation of violence following the signing of the Evian agreement further accelerated the departure of the settlers. By June 1962, more than 700,000 had left Algeria, and by the end of 1962, over 90 percent of European settlers had left,30 leaving a major administrative void. The human cost of the war was enormous. By the end of the war, the French army had lost more than 20,000 men. On the Algerian side, the French army indicated that it had killed 141,000 FLN-ALN “rebels.” As for civilians, while there is no consensus on the numbers, it is generally acknowledged that approximately 300,000 Algerians were killed in the conflict. In addition, the war had ravaged the Algerian countryside and by the end of the war, more than two million Algerians had been displaced and were living in resettlement camps.31

The FLN-ALN, a Total War, the Use of Violence, Diplomacy, and the Participation of Women The FLN-ALN One of the most intriguing aspects of the Algerian war is perhaps the FLN-ALN. Until recently, only one historian, Algerian historian Mohammed Harbi, had produced significant works on the FLN-ALN.32 The publication in 2002 of Gilbert Meynier’s monumental work on the FLN-ALN, Histoire Intérieure du FLN eventually shed light on a number of important aspects of the movement and highlighted its complexity, divisions, the conspiracies within the movement, the significance of regionalism and kinship within the movement, its authoritarianism, and its use of violence. Contrary to what the FLN-ALN tried to project during and after the war, the FLNALN was never a cohesive movement, nor was it a unified “front” leading a revolution by the people and for the people, against one common enemy—the colonizer. The first aspect to note about the FLN-ALN is its extreme diversity. During the war, the forces of each zone or wilaya varied in their modus operandi, there was little coordination between the different wilayat and each commander had considerable independence in his particular zone, area, or wilaya. This diversity within the movement throughout the 30  Lefeuvre (2004: 277–278).

31  Thénault (2005: 265–267).

32  Harbi (1975; 1980; 1984).

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260   ryme seferdjeli war has been so extreme at some point that historians have often argued that it would be more appropriate to talk about several FLNs during the war. Second, in order to understand properly the internal history of the FLN-ALN, one must take into account personal relations, as well as kinship, regional and clan solidarity, all of which played a significant part in the way the FLN-ALN operated. There were also divisions along ideological lines, as well as divisions over the day-to-day organization of the movement. Third, there was a deep suspicion within the movement toward those who joined in the movement later, such as the ʿulama, members of Ferhat Abbas’ UDMA, the com­mun­ ists, and Algerians with no former political affiliations. FLN-ALN leaders were also deeply suspicious of the population and did not hesitate to eliminate anyone suspected of working for the French or belonging to a rival organization. Fourth, in its relations with the population and other movements, the FLN-ALN was authoritarian—even though most of the population genuinely supported the movement and the independence of Algeria. Everybody had to rally to the FLN-ALN. The FLN-ALN was almost as much at war against any potential rivals or opponents amongst Algerians as it was against the French. As Meynier explains, “The FLN fills in all the space and does not tolerate any organizations operating outside of it. It exterminates with violence activists of the rival MNA.”33 Finally, despite its break with the PPA-MTLD and some obvious differences, the FLN-ALN was evidently a continuation of the pre-1954 nationalist movement. Mohammed Harbi points out that during the war the FLN-ALN “played strongly on the myth of a break with the past,” but he insists that the creation of the FLN-ALN was not a radical break with the past.34 Indeed, the FLN’s ideology—but not its pol­it­ ics—remained broadly similar to that of the PPA-MTLD.35

A Total War Despite the FLN-ALN’s suspicion of the population, its survival and success rested almost entirely on the active or passive support and/or complicity of the population. The Algerian war was a total war and it was above all a war over the people. Even during the latter phase of the war, when diplomatic maneuvers were as, if not more, important than actions on the ground, the people’s support was crucial in showing the international community that the vast majority of the Algerian population supported the FLN-ALN and the independence of the country. Having the population on its side was vital for the FLN-ALN. To that end, the FLN-ALN used a variety of tactics in order to rally the population to its cause: persuasion, propaganda, but also education, social and medical as­sist­ ance and care, as well as intimidation and violence. To counteract the FLN-ALN’s actions toward the population, the French attempted to win the hearts and minds of the people. In the middle of the war, the French colonial authorities engaged in a number of reforms aimed at fully integrating Algerians. Specific groups—such as women and the youth—were targeted in specific programs. In addition, on the ground, the French army 33  Meynier (2002: 427).

34  Harbi (1980: 170–171).

35  Roberts (2003: 39).

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   261 sought to “re-establish” or to develop contact with the native population and to ­“re-conquer” them, which could—the army believed—be achieved only through regular contact with the population. Every functionary and soldier was therefore instructed to seek, on a regular basis, individual, personal, and human contact with the Algerian population, the “only one that counted.”36 The army thus used propaganda, education, social and medical care, but also violence and intimidation.

The Banalization of Violence A key characteristic of the Algerian war was its extreme violence. The Algerian war bears the sad reputation of being one of the most violent and most brutal of decolonization wars. In its struggle against the FLN-ALN, the French army used violence against the population and routinely resorted to torture and summary executions. French historian Raphaëlle Branche argues that from 1957 onward, torture became the French army’s main weapon in a conflict in which the population was its main target, and in which the French made little distinction between civilians and military.37 Torture methods included hanging by the feet or hands, water torture, electric shock (the gégène), sleep deprivation, and rape.38 It is believed that rape and sexual violence against Algerian women perpetrated by the French military reached appalling levels.39 The FLN-ALN, too, resorted to violence, intimidation, and terrorism during the war. FLN-ALN violence—which included assassination, but also decapitation, mutilation, and throat cutting—was not solely directed toward the French. In fact, most of the FLNALN’s violence was internal violence—Algerians fighting other Algerians. As mentioned earlier, support from the population was imperative, but so was control over the population. During the war, the FLN-ALN made it clear to the population and to any rival factions that they had to rally to the FLN-ALN and to abide by its rules, and that it would not tolerate any betrayal. In an interview with historian James Le Sueur, Harbi has explained the internal violence during the war by the internal dynamism of Algerian society, which Harbi argued, required “adherence to communal rules.” Breaking those communal ties was not tolerated and was severely punished.40 Throughout the war, the FLN-ALN targeted pro-French Algerians, Algerian administrators, members of Messali’s rival MNA, as well as anybody—including members of the FLN-ALN—suspected of “treason.” When in 1958 and 1959 French intelligence infiltrated the ALN and generated confusion, distrust, and suspicion within the ALN, it resulted in major purges within the ALN. It is estimated that the ALN tortured and executed several thousands of 36  Lettre du Ministre Résident en Algérie au Général Commandant Supérieur Interarmées en Algérie, July 10, 1956, Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer (CAOM), 13/CAB/63. 37  Branche (2001: 14). 38  On the question of torture, see Branche (2001). 39  Alistair Horne (2002: 402). On rapes during the Algerian war, see Branche (2002a; 2002b). 40  Le Sueur (2005: 12).

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262   ryme seferdjeli its fighters—students and intellectuals were the primary targets—on account of the rumors that were spread.

A Diplomatic Revolution It is also important to note that during the Algerian war, two wars took place: one in Algeria and in France and another one—a political and diplomatic battle—on the international scene. Indeed, perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the Algerian war is the role diplomacy played in the conflict. From its inception, the FLNALN had identified the internationalization of the war as a key element in its strategy since it knew that it could not defeat France militarily. And indeed, even though France won the war militarily, Algerians gained their independence through diplomatic means. From the start, the FLN-ALN saw the benefits of using the non-aligned movement, the UN, and the international media to further their cause. As historian Matthew Connelly argues: what the Algerians called “the Revolution” was distinctly diplomatic in nature, and its most decisive struggles occurred in the international arena. For weapons the Algerians employed human rights reports, press conferences, and youth congresses, fighting over world opinion and international law more than conventional military objectives.41

FLN members were very active in the international arena. In 1955, they managed to send a delegation to the Bandung Conference in 1955 and in February 1957, the Algerian question was on the UN agenda. Having the UN debating the Algerian question was a major victory for the FLN-ALN since it directly challenged the idea that Algeria was France. Eventually, the FLN struggle became an inspiration to the non-aligned movement and to the Arab world, with people across the Arab world following the war. Influential world leaders such as Nasser, Sukarno, Kwame Nkumah, and Fidel Castro all embraced the FLN-ALN cause.42

The Participation of Women and the War Over Women A particularly remarkable feature of the Algerian war was the active participation of women during the war.43 From the start, Algerian women became active participants in the FLN-ALN and women’s participation took many different forms. Some women left their homes and families to join ALN military units and put themselves at the total disposal of the ALN (the mudjahidat or women fighters). Others actively supported the 41  Connelly (2002: 4). 42  Connelly (2002: 9). 43  On the history of Algerian women during the war, see Amrane (1991); El Korso (1997); Meynier (2002); Seferdjeli (2005a; 2005b; 2012); and Vince (2015).

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   263 FLN-ALN in cities and, among other things, took part in attacks and planted bombs in Algiers (the fidaiyat). Others—the great majority of women—supported the FLN-ALN in more modest ways. They provided shelter to FLN and ALN fighters, cooked for them, washed and sewed their clothes, nursed the wounded, became liaison and contact agents, provided information, and carried and hid documents, arms, and munitions. They also took part in demonstrations in support of the FLN-ALN. The history of Algerian women during the war has been almost automatically associated with women siding with the FLN-ALN and in particular with the image of the mudjahidat and the fidaiyat. Little attention has been paid to Algerian women, although they were in considerably fewer numbers, who sided with the French or to those who worked for the French administration and/or the French army. They were nurses, social assistants, and interpreters. A few collected intelligence and in one exceptional case, they took part in military activities.44 Over the past fifteen years, there has been a renewed interest in scholarship on the roles of Algerian women during the war. Historians have revisited women’s participation in the FLN-ALN.45 A few historians have also examined French efforts to win over women during the war.46 Indeed, during the war, the French authorities initiated a series of measures aimed specifically at women in order to win them over. They granted women the franchise in 1958, offered them greater access to education and employment, and revised the Muslim personal status in women’s favor. At the same time, the French army adopted a psychological strategy that deliberately targeted women in deep rural areas through a mobile network of medico-social teams. In their effort to win over women, the French recruited Algerian women. Some assisted the French in their campaign; a few became spokespersons for a French Algeria. The French campaign to win the hearts and minds of Algerian women was, by and large, a response to the large-scale participation of Algerian women in the FLN-ALN, and the impact it had on the Algerian population and internationally. In addition to their logistic support, women’s active participation into the FLN-ALN sent powerful messages and, very early on, the FLN-ALN saw the benefits of publicizing this re­mark­ able development during the war. First, Algerian women’s active participation symbolized the shift from what the French called merely a “rebellion” to a large-scale national independence movement. Indeed, internally, the FLN used examples of women in ALN guerrilla units to impress the population and presented their involvement in the ALN as an example of patriotism. It was intended to encourage the population to join the FLNALN.47 In addition, by publicizing the participation of women and especially the in­corp­or­ation of young, often unmarried, women in the ALN, the FLN-ALN was able to project to the international community a constructed image of a modern and progressive FLN-ALN within which women were being liberated and emancipated. It has to be noted that this image of the mudjahidat greatly differed from the reality. In reality, the 44  Mathias (2000). 45  Meynier (2002); Seferdjeli (2005a; 2005b); and Vince (2015). 46  Seferdjeli (2004; 2005a; 2005b); Sambron (2007; 2009); and MacMaster (2012). 47  Amrane (1991: 243).

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264   ryme seferdjeli ALN was generally hostile to the presence of women in military units, and eventually removed most women from ALN units in the middle of the war, assigning them roles that explicitly excluded them from military activities, such as nursing and cooking as well as assisting and educating the population, usually the female population. In that regard, they barely managed to cross the gender line, and most of the time they remained segregated from men. Nevertheless, as a response, the French initiated a series of reforms and projects to win over Algerian women, just as the FLN-ALN offered women, at least in their official rhetoric, liberation through their participation in the FLN-ALN. To illustrate the significance of women’s participation during the war for both the FLN-ALN and the French, as well as their respective use of women’s activism during the war, this chapter examines the war experience of two high-profile Algerian women during the war: Djamila Bouhired and Nafissa Sid Cara. Djamila Bouhired is probably one of the best-known FLN militants during the war. In the middle of the war, her name came to symbolize the struggle of the Algerian people against French colonialism. When creating a film about the Algerian struggle, the Egyptian director Youcef Chahine chose to portray it through the story of Djamila Bouhired. In addition, several prominent singers in the Arab world composed songs telling her story.48 As historian Djamila Amrane observes, no other fighter during the war became the subject of so many films or songs composed and sung outside of Algeria.49 Bouhired was one of the first women to plant a bomb during the battle of Algiers, on September 30, 1956. She was eventually arrested in April 1957. While under arrest, Bouhired was tortured by the French military and on July 15, 1957, she was condemned to death. Her trial and death sentence provoked strong reactions inside and outside Algeria. In February 1958, in London, “Labour delegations demonstrated three days in a row in front of the French embassy to denounce the conduct of Djamila Bouhired’s trial and demand reprieve of her death sentence.”50 A series of telegrams in March 1958 from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Minister for Algeria reveal the extent of the mobilization of public opinion throughout the world on the Bouhired affair. In Beirut, public protests, demonstrations, and a “violent anti-French campaign” took place. Demonstrations were also held in front of French schools in Syria. In addition, the Soviet, Yugoslav, and Chilean press took up Bouhired’s case, with the Yugoslavian press naming her the Algerian Joan of Arc. In London, the BBC invited George Arnaud—one of Bouhired’s lawyers—to discuss the case on television. The program was eventually cancelled after the French Foreign Service protested to the Foreign Service in London. Nonetheless, personalities and high government officials from various countries intervened on behalf of Bouhired. In one telegram to Algiers, an officer of 48  Youcef Chahine, Djamila the Algerian (1958). Chahine’s film was based on the book of her story and in particular her trial, written by her lawyer Jacques Vergès, whom she later married. Arnaud and Vergès (1957). The Algerian singer living in Egypt, Warda El Djezairia, the Egyptian singer Souʾad Mohamed and the Moroccan singer Hadja Hamdaouia, all composed and sang songs about Djamila Bouhired. 49  Amrane (1991: 13). 50  Horne (2002: 242–243).

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   265 the French Foreign Service concluded: “If I could express my point of view, the execution of this woman would be a serious mistake.”51 In the event, the sentence was never carried out; but Bouhired by now had become a symbol of the Algerian people’s resistance to French colonialism. Bouhired’s story illustrates well the significance of women’s participation in the FLN-ALN, and undoubtedly her story considerably advanced the cause of the FLN-ALN abroad. Not only did the story of Bouhired symbolize the people’s commitment to the FLN’s struggle against French colonialism, ilustrating women’s participation in the war, but it was also very effective in denouncing the use of torture by the French. The second high-profile figure—a very different one from Bouhired and considerably less well known—is Nafissa Sid Cara52. Nafissa Sid Cara was the first “Muslim” woman appointed secretary of state in a French government. Her appointment in the middle of the war exemplifies the war over women waged by both the FLN-ALN and the French during the war. In 1959, Sid Cara became a “curiosity,” to repeat the phrase of her then chief of cabinet Roger Benmebarek, who pointed out how journalists from as far as Japan came to see the first “Muslim” woman appointed secretary of state in a French government.53 Sid Cara was born in 1910 in Saint Arnaud, next to the town of Sétif. Her father was a schoolteacher in an indigenous school reserved for Algerian children. Just like a great number of Algerian teachers at the beginning of the century, her father had pro-French sentiments and believed in French values and Republican ideals. Like her father and two sisters, Sid Cara eventually became a schoolteacher, and in 1945 she moved to Algiers, where she taught French in a school in the Casbah. In Algiers, she lived in a pre­dom­in­ ant­ly European area and, as her niece recalls, “à la française” (in the French style).54 Thus, Sid Cara perfectly matched the profile of the Algerian schoolteacher évoluée who was fully assimilated into French culture. This was also the case for her brothers and sisters. One of her brothers, Dr. Cherif Sid Cara was a well-known politician, a fervent defender of a French Algeria, and a rare Algerian in French political circles. Nafissa Sid Cara entered politics following the events of May 1958. She stood in the legislative elections of November 1958, which followed the approval of the new French constitution in September 1958. She ran as a candidate for the Liste d’Action pour l’Algérie Française et la Promotion Musulmane par l’Intégration which defended Algeria as an integral part of the French Republic. Sid Cara was elected on November 30, 1958 and joined the chamber of deputies as deputy for Algiers, along with two other Muslim women.55 Her brother also won a seat as the deputy for Oran. Michel Debré, who had met her at the National Assembly in Paris, approached her when he was asked to form the first government of the Fifth Republic, and on January 8, 1959, Debré appointed her Secrétaire d’État aux Affaires Sociales auprès du Premier Ministre.56 51  CAOM, 12CAB52. 52  On Nafissa Sid Cara, see Seferdjeli (2004). 53  Interview with Roger Benmebarek (2003). 54  Interview with Stéphane Herbelin, (2003, 2005). 55  The other two Muslim women were Khedira Bouabsa and Rebiha Kebtani. Seferdjeli (2004: 47–50). 56  Debré (1988: 14).

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266   ryme seferdjeli During her time in the government, Sid Cara worked mainly on the 1959 reform of marriage, the Law of Social Advancement of December 28, 1959, and on a decree that would reform the role of cadi. She remained in office until April 14, 1962, when the Debré government resigned. She never returned to Algeria. Sid Cara represented a minority, the pro-French Algeria Muslim évolués, among whom France hoped to find its “third force” during the war. Undoubtedly, her appointment symbolized integration and the ideal of the new Algeria that France was eager to project. Her appointment also reflects the efforts of the French government to demonstrate its will to “emancipate” “Muslim” women—an essential component of the policy of integration—as well as offering alternative inducements to the FLN-ALN. She was indeed the perfect illustration of the “emancipated Muslim” woman, models of what France could offer Algerian women in exchange for their support for a French Algeria, and effectively personified Algerians’ advancement. Unprecedented thought it was, Sid Cara’s appointment was never able to match, locally or internationally, the symbolism of a young Djamila Bouhired. Nafissa Sid Cara failed to attract much interest in Algeria during the war, and historical accounts of the Algerian war reflect this by largely ignoring her. The stories of both Djamila Bouhired and Nafissa Sid Cara are illustrative of significant developments during the war, as well as a constant reminder that the Algerian War of Independence was above all war over the people.

References Ageron, Charles-Robert (1990). Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine (1830–1988) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Amrane, Djamila (1991). Les femmes algériennes dans la guerre (Paris, Plon). Arnaud, George and Jacques Vergès, (1957). Pour Djamila Bouhired (Paris: Minuit). Besnaci-Lancou, Fatima and Gilles Manceron (2008). Les Harkis dans la colonisation et ses suites (Ivry-sur-Seine: Les éditions de l’Atelier). Betts, Raymond F. (2005). Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press). Branche, Raphaëlle (2001). La Torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie, 1954–1962 (Paris: Gallimard). Branche, Raphaëlle (2002a). “Être soldat en Algérie face à un ennemi de l’autre sexe,” Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, tome 109,2: 143–150. Branche, Raphaëlle (2002b). “Des viols pendant la guerre d’Algérie,” Vingtième Siècle—Revue d’Histoire 75: 123–132. Bourdieu, Pierre and Abdelmalek Sayad (1964). Le Déracinement (Paris: Minuit). Byrne, Jeffrey J. (2016). Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization and the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press). Chahine, Youcef (1958). Djamila the Algerian. Chaulet, Pierre and Claudine Chaulet (2012). Le Choix de l’Algérie: Deux voix, une mémoire (Alger: Éditions Barzakh). Connelly, Matthew (2002). A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press).

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A War over the People: The Algerian War of Independence   267 Crapanzano, Vincent (2011). The Harkis: the Wound that Never Heals (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Davis, Muriam Haleh (2010). “Restaging Mise en Valeur: ‘Postwar Imperialism,’ and The Plan de Constantine,” Review of Middle Eastern Studies 44: 176–186. Debré, Michel (1988). Gouverner: Mémoires III 1958–1962 (Paris: Albin Michel). El Korso, Malika (1997). “La Mémoire des militantes de la Guerre de Libération Nationale,” Insaniyat 3: 25–42. Gaulle, Charles de (1970). Mémoires d’Espoir, Tome I: Le Renouveau 1958–1962 (Paris: Plon). Harbi, Mohammed (1975). Aux origines du FLN, le populisme révolutionnaire en Algérie (Paris: Christian Bourgeois). Harbi, Mohammed (1980). Le FLN: Mirage et Realité (Paris: Éditions Jeune Afrique). Harbi, Mohammed (1984). La Guerre commence en Algérie (Bruxelles: Éditions Complexe). Hautreux, François-Xavier (2013). La Guerre d’Algérie des Harkis (Paris: Perrin). Horne, Alistair (2002). A Savage war of Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962 (London: Pan Books). Kateb, Kamel (2001). Européens, “Indigènes” et juifs en Algérie (1830-1962): représentations et réalités des populations‬ (L’Institut National d’ Etudes Démographiques, Paris). Lefeuvre, Daniel (2004). “Les pieds-noirs,” in Mohammed Harbi and Benjamin Stora (sous la direction de), La Guerre d’Algérie 1954–1962, la fin de l’amnésie (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont), 267–268. Le Sueur, James  D. (2005). Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the Decolonization of Algeria (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press). MacMaster, Neil (2012). Burning the Veil: the Algerian War and the ‘Emancipation’ of Muslim Women, 1954–62 (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Mathias, Grégor (2000). “La SAS de Catinat, entre souvenirs d’un officier et écriture de l’histoire,” in La Guerre d’Algérie au miroir des décolonisations françaises—en l’honneur de Charles-Robert Ageron (Paris: Société Française d’Histoire d’Outre-Mer), 562–565. Mauss-Copeaux, Claire (2011). Algérie, 20 août 1955—Insurrection, répression, massacres (Paris: Payot). Meynier, Gilbert (2002). Histoire Intérieure du FLN (1954–1962) (Paris: Fayard). Rey-Goldzeiguer, Annie (2002). Aux Origines de la guerre d’Algérie, 1940–1945: de Mers-elKébir aux massacres du Nord-Constantinois (Paris: Éditions la Découverte). Roberts, Hugh (2003). The Battlefield: Algeria 1988–2002. Studies in a Broken Polity (London and New York: Verso). Ruedy, John (2005). Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Sambron, Diane (2007). Femmes musulmanes (Paris: Éditions Autrement). Sambron, Diane (2009). Les Femmes Algériennes pendant la colonisation (Paris: Éditions Riveneuve). Schreier, Joshua (2010). Arabs of the Jewish Faith: the Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press). Seferdjeli, Ryme (2004). “French ‘reforms’ and Muslim women’s emancipation,” Journal of North African Studies 9,4: 19–61. Seferdjeli, Ryme (2005a). “The French Army and Muslim Women During the Algerian War,” Hawwa—Journal of Women in the Middle East and Islamic World 3,1: 40–78. Seferdjeli, Ryme (2005b). “ ‘Fight With Us Women and We Will Emancipate You’: France, the FLN and the struggle over women during the Algerian war.” PhD diss., London School of Economics.

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268   ryme seferdjeli Seferdjeli, Ryme (2012). “Rethinking the History of the Mujahidat During the Algerian War: Competing Voices, Reconstructed Memories, and Contrasting Historiographies,” Interventions—International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 14,2: 238–255. Shepard, Todd (2006). The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Silverstein, Paul A. (2004). Algeria in France; Transpolitics, Race, and Nation (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press). Stein, Sarah Abraya (2014). Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Stora, Benjamin. (1986). Messali Hadj. Pionnier du Nationalisme Algérien, 1898–1974. (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan). Thénault, Sylvie (2005). Histoire de la Guerre d’Indépendance Algérienne (Paris: Flammarion). Vince, Natalya (2015). Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Gender, and Memory in Algeria, 1954–2012 (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Weil, Patrick (2005). “Le statut des musulmans en Algérie coloniale—Une nationalité française dénaturée,” in La Justice en Algérie, 1830–1962, Actes du colloque tenu les 22 et 23 octobre 2002 à la Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris: La Documentation Française).

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chapter 14

Dodgi ng th e Per il of Pe ace Israel and the Arabs in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War Avi Raz

The Six Day War of June 1967 was a momentous historical watershed in many respects. The decisive military victory of the Israeli armed forces reshaped the geopolitical map of the Middle East. The rout of three Arab armies in less than a week drasti­cally affected the Arab–Israeli balance of power. It signaled to the Arabs that the Jewish state was there to stay. The capture of vast Arab lands transformed the nature of ­relations between the Arab countries and Israel. Egypt,1 Syria, and Jordan were no longer enemies of Israel merely because of their declared objection to its existence. Having lost territories to Israel, each had its own, separate score to settle—for the sake of which they effectively abandoned their often-proclaimed commitment to fight for the Palestinian cause. Israel, on the other hand, now had for the first time since its foundation in 1948 something concrete to offer to its hostile neighbors in return for peace. Moreover, with the whole of Mandatory Palestine and more than half of the Palestinian people under its rule, Israel was provided with a historic opportunity to defuse the Palestinian problem that lies at the heart of the decades-long Arab–Zionist conflict. But intoxicated with victory, Israel persistently and deliberately squandered every opportunity for a peaceful accommodation with its Arab adversaries in the immediate aftermath of the June hostilities. The desire to keep the territorial spoils of war was irresistible. The policy and practice Israel applied during the formative early days of the half-a-century-long occupation crucially shaped the things to come.

1  Between 1958 and 1971, Egypt’s official name was the United Arab Republic.

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270   avi raz

New Empire The launch of the surprise attack on Egypt on the morning of June 5, 1967 was ac­com­ pan­ied by public assurances from Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and Foreign Minister Abba Eban that Israel had no aims of territorial conquest.2 Indeed, the objective of the onslaught was, in the words of Dayan on the eve of the war, “to destroy the Egyptian forces concentrated in central Sinai. We should have no geographical aim whatsoever.”3 The Egyptian military buildup in Sinai, fueled by a sequence of Arab, Israeli, Soviet, and United Nations blunders, started in mid-May. A week later, when Egypt’s President Gamal ʿAbd al-Nasser announced the closure of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, the war that nobody wanted became a certainty. During the countdown to war the Arab world was swept by a wave of belligerency toward the “Zionist entity.” The Arab Cold War4 between “revolutionary” republics and “conservative” monarchies came to an abrupt end, or at least paused; old feuds and rivalries were set aside in favor of a loosely united front against Israel, built on a series of mutual defense pacts. Alarmed by what was perceived as a tightening stranglehold, Israel mo­bil­ ized its army reserves, which constituted the backbone of its combat force, thereby bringing the state’s economy to a standstill. Bloodcurdling Arab threats of annihilation prompted fresh memories of the Holocaust. Even the generals, who were confident of Israel’s battlefield superiority and pushed hard for immediate action, feared a staggering number of military and civilian casualties. To paraphrase Thucydides in History of the Peloponnesian War, what made war in­ev­ it­able was the growth of Egyptian power and the fear which this caused in Israel.5 So grave was the fear that Israel went so far as to cross the atomic weapons threshold. A few days before the outbreak of the war Israeli scientists and technicians improvised the nearly complete assembly of a handful of nuclear devices. Shimon Peres—a well-connected member of Knesset and future cabinet minister, prime minister, and president of the state—proposed conducting a nuclear explosion test. He believed that a demonstration of Israel’s doomsday capability would deter the Arabs and prevent an armed conflict. Defense Minister Dayan dismissed the idea.6 (According to the American journalist Patrick Tyler, who relies on “a number of Israeli sources,” Prime Minister Eshkol himself ordered the assembly of two crude atomic bombs at Dimona Nuclear Reactor. They were readied for deployment on trucks that could race to the border for detonation in the event of Egyptian incursion.7)

2  Raz (2012: 25). 3  Dayan (1977: 339). 4  Coined by Malcolm Kerr, the term “Arab Cold War” refers to a series of conflicts that plagued the Arab world during the 1950s and 1960s, an era dominated by Nasser’s Pan-Arabism. Kerr (1971). 5  Thucydides (1972: 1.23): “What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.” 6  Cohen (2010: 72–73, 78, 79, 86); Peres (1995: 166–167). 7  Tyler (2009: 87–88).

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   271 Israel chose to fight a conventional war, and hoped to confine the hostilities to the Egyptian front. But soon after the first Israeli shot had been fired, Jordan joined the fray by shelling the Israeli sector of divided Jerusalem and other targets in central Israel. Syria, which actually triggered the crisis because of false Soviet claims that Israeli troops were massing on its border, attempted to avoid battle. Nonetheless, on the fifth day of the war, after defeating the Egyptian and Jordanian armies, Israel turned on Syria as well, in defiance of a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution, which both countries had accepted. When the final ceasefire came into effect on the evening of June 10, Israel controlled Arab territories more than three times its prewar size: the West Bank, including the Old City of Jerusalem, was taken from Jordan; the Golan Heights were seized from Syria; and Egypt forfeited the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, and two tiny islands on loan from Saudi Arabia, Tiran and Sanafir. “We are now an empire,” boasted Moshe Dayan.8

Territorial Appetite Overnight, Israel’s somber mood was replaced with euphoria, and reason with messianic ardor.9 Discarded were the pledges of not having expansionist aspirations. The Israelis, leaders and ordinary citizens alike, regarded the captured Arab lands as “liberated” territories. Most coveted were the Old City of Jerusalem and the West Bank, being part of biblical Erets Yisra’el, or the Jewish Land of Israel. “We have returned to our most holy places; we have returned and we shall never leave them,” proclaimed Defense Minister Dayan on the third day of the war.10 That day, Premier Eshkol expressed “great desire” to keep the Gaza Strip as well, although he had difficulty explaining why. “[P]erhaps because of Samson and Delilah,” he said.11 The Israelis also insisted on retaining the Golan Heights—hitherto “the Syrian Plateau” in Israeli parlance—emphasizing their strategic importance. The true reason for storming the Golan was, according to Dayan’s retrospective admission, strong pressure from leaders of kibbutzim in the Galilee who craved the fertile land of the area.12 Israel set its heart on Sinai, too, particularly Sharm al-Sheikh at the southern tip of the peninsula, overlooking the Straits of Tiran—the gateway to the Israeli port of Eilat. “Better Sharm al-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm al-Sheikh,” Dayan famously stated.13

8  Raz (2012: 38). 9  Ibid., 6, 38, 267, 276. 10  Benvenisti (1976: 84). 11  Remarks at a Meeting of Mapai Secretariat, June 8, 1967, Levi Eshkol (2002: document 174). 12  “Moshe Dayan: Self-Examination,” Yediʿot Ahronot (Tel Aviv), April 27, 1997. Published sixteen years after Dayan’s death, the article is based on notes from conversations with Dayan in late 1976 and early 1977. 13  Gazit (2003: 240 n33).

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272   avi raz Popular opinion polls conducted in late June and early July 1967 show that an overwhelming majority of the Israelis wished to possess the occupied territories.14 Within weeks after the war, prominent public figures and intellectuals formed a powerful and influential pressure group, The Movement for the Whole Land of Israel, with the purpose of pressing the government not to relinquish the territorial acquisitions of June 1967. But pressure was unnecessary. As the flames and the dust of the fighting subsided, Levi Eshkol coined a metaphor that encapsulated the Israeli postwar ambition. In the metaphor, Israel’s conquests were a “dowry” and the Arab population a “bride.” “The trouble is that the dowry is followed by a bride whom we don’t want,” the prime minister repeatedly lamented.15 Eshkol, reputedly a moderate, indecisive, and weak, and his National Unity Government effectively translated the metaphor into a firm and consistent policy whose aim was to appropriate the dowry and divorce the bride. The unstated controlling consideration of the Israeli policymakers was the desire to keep as many of the occupied lands as possible with as few Arab inhabitants as possible. This attitude inevitably influenced the Israeli approach toward the Arab states and peacemaking in general. During the first few months of the occupation the government took a number of symbolic steps demonstrating Israel’s determination to appropriate the “dowry.” The occupied territories were officially called “administered territories” (shtahim muhzakim, literally “held territories”), and the term “West Bank” was formally substituted with the biblical Hebrew names Yehudah ve-Shomron (Judea and Samaria).16 The cabinet decided to produce a new official map of Israel that included the captured Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian lands without featuring the prewar lines.17 Individual leaders followed suit by making unequivocal statements. Dayan publicly asserted that Israel must ensure “living space”—an expression shockingly reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s infamous Lebensraum—to deter “adventurous Arab leaders,” and that it must therefore not return to the June 4 borders.18 Another cabinet member, Moshe Carmel, suggested that Israel should sit tight in the occupied territories because in twenty years’ time the world might be accustomed to it.19 Carmel’s words reflected wishful thinking that was shared by many and based on the encouraging precedent of Israel’s prewar boundaries: the UN Partition Resolution of November 1947 had allocated 55% of Palestine to the future Jewish state, but following the 1948 War and the conclusion of the 1949 Israel–Arab Armistice Agreements, Israel controlled an additional 23% of the land (78% in total). Although the agreements expressly emphasized that the Armistice Green Line demarcations should not be

14  In the June and July polls, 98% and 95% (respectively) supported the retention of Arab Jerusalem; the West Bank—81% and 86%; the Gaza Strip—72% and 77%; the Golan Heights—92% in July; Sharm al-Sheikh—82% and 85%; Sinai—33% and 32%. Lammfromm (2014: 489). 15  Raz (2012: 3, 39, 125). 16  Ibid., 184. 17  Ibid., 139. 18  “M. Dayan: ‘We Must Not Return to the Borders Determined in 1948,’ ” Davar (Tel Aviv) August 10, 1967. 19  Carmel’s comments in cabinet meeting, December 31, 1967, cited in Zohar (2012: 69).

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   273 regarded as political or territorial frontiers, during the ensuing twenty years they acquired de facto international legitimacy. Israel consolidated its grip on the occupied territories by a number of far-reaching physical measures. The first was the swift annexation of Arab/Jordanian Jerusalem together with an area twelve times its size. The annexed region encompassed, wholly or partially, the lands of twenty-eight Palestinian villages, and areas previously within the municipal limits of the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Bayt Jalla, and al-Bireh. The municipal boundaries were intentionally manipulated so as to incorporate a minimal number of Arab residents.20 Ruhi al-Khatib, the mayor of the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem whose municipality was unceremoniously dissolved, later described the annexation as part of a well-prepared Zionist plan to Judaize Jerusalem.21 Khatib’s allegation was not without foundation. In August, Teddy Kollek, the magisterial mayor of the so-called unified Jerusalem, said in a meeting with his deputies: “if the interior and justice ministers let us work, we’ll be able to Judaize the Old City.”22 Nine days after the war the Israeli cabinet secretly agreed that “the Gaza Strip is located within the territory of the State of Israel,” and on October 31, 1968 the cabinet passed another top-secret resolution, restating that the Strip should “obviously” remain within Israel’s boundaries.23 Although Egypt had no claim to sovereignty over Gaza, Israel avoided formal annexation because of the enormous number of 1948 refugees who resided in this tiny, densely populated region—some 210,000 out of the total of 356,000 inhabitants. Israel, which had adamantly refused to acknowledge any responsibility for the 1948 refugee problem, now preferred to let the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) continue to take care of the refugees in Gaza. The cabinet’s October 31, 1968 resolution also provided that Israel should maintain its control over Sharm al-Sheikh “with territorial continuity to the State of Israel.” The distance between Sharm al-Sheikh, at the extreme south of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and Eilat, at the extreme south of Israel, is 150 miles (243 kilometers). Most significant was the Jewish settlement project in the occupied territories. As early as June 8, the fourth day of the war, Defense Minister Dayan gave the commanding general of the Central Command a “policy directive . . . that he was to act in accordance with our intention to establish permanent Jewish settlements in the Mount Hebron and Jerusalem areas.”24 One month later, the first settlement was established on the Golan Heights.25 In September, Theodor Meron, the Foreign Ministry’s legal counsel and expert in international law, advised Premier Eshkol and Foreign Minister Eban that 20  Benvenisti (2007: 86). In the early 1970s the Israeli government secretly decided that the demographic ratio of Jews to Arabs in Jerusalem should be at least 72% to 28%. 21  Khatib (1970: 7–8). 22  Minutes, “Mayor’s Meeting with the Deputies and Others,” August 10, 1967, 1331/1, Jerusalem City Archive. 23  Cabinet Resolutions 563, June 19, 1967; and 95, October 31, 1968—both in A-7060/6, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem (ISA). 24  Dayan (1977: 374). 25  Gorenberg (2006: 72–98).

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274   avi raz civilian settlement in the occupied territories would contravene the Fourth Geneva Convention.26 Regardless of Meron’s unequivocal legal opinion, a second settlement— the first in the West Bank—came into being within days.27 More Israeli settlements were to follow—in the Golan, West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Sinai—in the months and years ahead, but not as many as the government wished. Budget constraints and a scarcity of would-be settlers limited the pace of expansion. The humble beginning notwithstanding, the settlement enterprise manifested the Israeli intention to stay put indefinitely in the occupied territories. While refusing to draw a peace map, Israel—in keeping with one of the Zionist ethos’ main pillars—effectively demarcated its new frontiers by fait accompli.

Demographic Danger “The bride”—the Arabs living in the occupied territories—was undesirable to the Israelis from the very start.28 On the morning of June 7, the third day of the war, just before the capture of the West Bank was complete, Defense Minister Dayan instructed Lieutenant General Yitzhak Rabin, the chief of the General Staff, that the aim was to empty the West Bank of its inhabitants.29 By then, the exodus of Palestinians to Jordan’s East Bank was already in full swing. The conquest of Jericho, a town located near the Allenby Bridge on the River Jordan, and the dynamiting of the Jordan bridges were delayed so that the West Bankers could cross over to the other side unhindered. On June 9, at the request of US Undersecretary Eugene Rostow, the government of Iran told the Israeli government “that it would be a mistake to drive the Arab population from the West Bank.”30 But to no avail. Tens of thousands were fleeing their homes as people in war zones always do, and for fears fed by the bitter memories of what had happened in the Nakbah (catastrophe) of 1948. But Israeli troops also played a role in the outflow. Because of the world’s watchful eye there were no mass expulsions of the same magnitude as in 1948. The Israelis applied more “subtle” methods to drive the West Bankers out. Using loudspeakers mounted on army vehicles and radio broadcasts, they advised the population that they should take the road to the River Jordan “or face the consequences.” Shooting in the air or even 26  Meron to Foreign Minister, September 14, 1967; Meron to Adi Yafeh, Political Secretary to the Prime Minister, September 18, 1967—both in FM-4088/8, ISA. A decade later Meron became a law professor at New York University. Since the 2000s he has been a senior judge at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. 27  Gorenberg (2006: 99–128); Raz (2012: 140–141). 28  The discussion of the Israeli attempts to push the West Bankers out and to prevent their return is based on Raz (2012: 103–125). 29  Golan (2007: 258). 30 “Policy and Diplomacy in the Middle East Crisis, May 15–June 10, 1967” (State Department’s Historical Research Division, Research Project 879), January 1969 (p. 155), RG59 250/63/20/7, Box 4, United States National Archives, College Park, Maryland (USNA).

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   275 shooting above people’s heads served as additional inducement to leave. The occupation authorities launched a free one-way bus service from Arab Jerusalem and other West Bank towns to the river crossings. The buses carried signs in Arabic which read: “To Amman for free.” In several places Israeli troops forced Palestinian inhabitants onto waiting buses and trucks. After the fighting had ended, the Israeli military attempted to obliterate the prewar border. Soldiers razed, completely or partially, twenty West Bank villages and towns along the Green Line. The villagers were rendered homeless, and consequently many of them crossed the river eastward. The long columns of refugees from the ruined villages increased panic and drove more West Bankers to escape. In the Old City of Jerusalem the Israelis leveled Harat al-Magharibah, the eight-centuries-old waqf-owned North African quarter of 650 inhabitants immediately adjacent to the Wailing Wall in order to create a plaza for Jewish worshippers. On the Syrian Golan Heights a systematic and comprehensive demolition operation began as soon as the final ceasefire took effect. The bulk of the Golan population had run away before the Israeli assault, yet some who had stayed were driven out forcibly. The destruction of their 200 villages and farms was meant to ensure that there would be no homes to which the Golanites could return. Only 6,000 Druze, living in half a dozen villages in the northern part of the region, were allowed to stay.31 A second Arab refugee tragedy was born. In early July 1967 its victims amounted to 345,000 at the very least.32 The new refugees were internationally designated as “displaced persons” (nazihun in Arabic) to distinguish them from the 1948 refugees (Arabic: lajiʾun). In fact, many were both. The Israelis called them notshim, Hebrew for “quitters.”33 The political leaders of Israel, who had not instigated the military orgy of expulsion and ruination, wholeheartedly welcomed its outcome. Although the army’s actions involved numerous war crimes, no one was held to account or brought to justice. A few weeks after the war, in a gathering of the General Command Staff, Defense Minister Dayan referred to the destruction spree in the West Bank and said that it had been motivated by “Zionist intentions” which he fully shared.34 Following the precedent set by the Israeli government of 1948, the Eshkol cabinet barred repatriation of the 1967 refugees. Whereas its predecessor was motivated by the desire to minimize the number of non-Jews within the newly created State of Israel, now the government denied the June War refugees entry to Arab lands under Israeli military occupation. The government defied a unanimous UN Security Council resolution

31  Raz (2014: 43–44). 32  There are no reliable statistics, but according to UN figures there were 210,000 new refugees out of the total West Bank and Arab Jerusalem population of 800,000; 35,000 out of the 356,000 Gaza Strip inhabitants; and almost the entire population of the Golan Heights of more than 100,000. Ibid. 33  For example, a member of the Israeli mission to the UN advised a fellow diplomat: “We should use the term ‘notshim’, not ‘ʿakurim’[displaced persons].” Pinhas Eliav to Amnon Ben-Yohanan, November 12, 1968, FM-4197/1, ISA. 34  Brown (1997: 153–154).

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276   avi raz demanding Israel facilitate the return of uprooted civilians,35 and did not heed similar calls from Washington, London, and other friendly capitals. But mounting international outcry and strong American pressure compelled the Israeli government to go through the motions of changing its position by announcing a return program. Dubbed Mivtsaʿ Palit—Hebrew for Operation Refugee—and presented as a benevolent Israeli “gesture,” the scheme was not intended to allow a mass return from the East Bank, but only to look like one. Limited to twelve working days, the admittance of the new refugees was frustrated by a host of bureaucratic obstacles. In addition, the scheme excluded Jerusalem inhabitants, UNRWA-registered 1948 refugees, and men of working age. The latter restriction, which principally covered breadwinners, also prevented their family members from coming back. Consequently, only 14,000 of the 170,000 applicants—a mere 8.2%—were allowed in.36 Ensuing diplomatic pressure drove Israel to introduce a longrange family reunion plan, which was also a sham. Many West Bankers, stranded in the East Bank in appalling conditions, tried to infiltrate back by crossing the shallow waters of the River Jordan. Hundreds were shot dead by Israeli troops who regularly ambushed them on the ceasefire line. According to the chilling testimony of an Israeli soldier: We were given an order to shoot to kill with no early warning. Indeed, shots of this kind were fired every night at men, women, and children, even during moonlit nights when we could identify the people crossing [the river]. That is, distinguish between men, women, and children. In the mornings we searched the area and, by explicit order from the officer present, killed the living, including those who hid [or] were wounded (again: women and children among them). After the killing we ­covered the corpses with earth, and sometimes left them [lying] in the terrain until a bulldozer came to cover them with earth.37

At the root of the Israeli desire to reduce the Arab population has always been the socalled “demographic danger”—the fear of undermining the overwhelming Jewish majority within the state’s limits. The same consideration was now applied to the occupied territories as well, particularly the Palestinian-inhabited West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Arab Jerusalem. “Crush me with a mortar,” Premier Eshkol once said, “and I wouldn’t know how to swallow another million Arabs in this country. By doing so we would liquidate ourselves.”38 While highlighting the small size of Israel’s population (2.77 million in 1967, of whom 2.38 million were Jews and 393,000 non-Jews, mostly Palestinian Arabs), Eshkol regarded the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of sovereign Israel. Explaining in the Knesset why he rejected the idea of resettling 1948 refugees in the occupied territories and insisting on resolving the refugee problem elsewhere, the

35  S/RES/237, June 14, 1967, UN public records (UNPR). 36  For a detailed discussion of Operation Refugee see Raz (2012: 125–135). 37  Ibid., 123. 38  Minutes, “A Meeting with Ministers Eban, Allon and Dayan,” May 29, 1968, A-7921/4, ISA. Emphasis added.

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   277 prime minister exclaimed: we are not allowed to place a time bomb in Israel.39 Foreign Minister Abba Eban, a self-proclaimed dove, also drew on a deadly simile to make the same case: there was a limit, he said at a party forum, to the amount of arsenic the human body could absorb. In response to those who might question the morality of his attitude, Eban added that any Arab wishing to live in an Arab state was free to do so.40 While the 1948 and 1967 refugees were demanding the right of return, Israel was only willing to grant the Palestinian population under its control the right to leave. From late 1967 onward, various branches of the government were engaged in a number of topsecret schemes designed to facilitate Palestinian emigration to Jordan, other Arab countries, and even further afield, especially South America. These efforts predominantly targeted the 1948 refugees living in the Gaza Strip. “Twenty years ago we did a job and the result is that there are refugees. Now again there are additional refugees, and again we want to get rid of them,” Premier Eshkol once bemoaned in a cabinet meeting. “Had it been up to us, we would have removed all the Arabs to Brazil.”41 But all attempts to induce mass Palestinian emigration failed, either because of the meager financial incentives Israel was willing to offer or due to Palestinian determination to cling on to their land.42

Two Options The postwar era began with Israel’s official voice chanting peace. “Our hand is extended in peace to all who are ready for peace,” Premier Eshkol solemnly stated.43 The policymakers vowed not to return to the erstwhile no-war-no-peace situation. The Armistice Agreements, they stressed, must be replaced with peace treaties arrived at through direct negotiations. However, the seemingly reasonable demand for reconciliation and permanent borders was doublespeak. What the Israelis were really saying was that they rejected not only the previous status but also the old frontiers. Indeed, Israel was speaking with more than one voice. While Eshkol claimed on one occasion that he did not want any Arab territory and expressed satisfaction that “at last we have something we can bargain with,”44 Defense Minister Dayan articulated the government’s true ob­ject­ ive: Israel, he said, should keep major portions of its conquests, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip.45 When asked what Israel’s next move would be, Dayan replied 39  Divrei ha-Knesset [The Knesset Proceedings], August 7, 1968, 3125. Emphasis added. 40  Minutes, Mapai Secretariat Meeting, January 2, 1968, 2–24–1968–92, Israel Labor Party Archives, Beit Berl. 41  Cabinet minutes, August 20, afternoon, 1967, G-16718/6, ISA. 42  Raz (2014: 44). 43  Cable, Foreign Ministry to Israeli diplomatic missions, June 27, 1967, A-7461/11, ISA, citing Eshkol’s interview with foreign television stations. 44  Talmon (1969: 3). 45  “Dayan would keep major conquests,” Washington Post, June 12, 1967, citing Dayan’s prerecorded interview on NBC’s Meet the Press (aired on June 11).

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278   avi raz arrogantly: “We are waiting for a phone call from the Arabs. We shall take no step. We are quite pleased with what we have now. If the Arabs desire any change, they should call us.”46 Israeli propaganda has incessantly alleged that there was no one to talk to on the Arab side. This was untrue. The phone call Dayan had expected came without delay. In fact, the telephone rang twice: first there was a local call from the occupied West Bank, and soon afterward Jordan was on the line. Whereas Syria rejected any kind of accommodation with Israel, and Egypt under President Nasser was still not ready to negotiate ser­ ious­ly an accord with its Jewish neighbor, the two claimants to the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem—the local Palestinian leadership and Jordan’s King Hussein, the biggest ­losers in the Six Day War—were eager to resolve the conflict with Israel directly. Both communicated their peaceful ambition from the start of the occupation. They offered Israel two competing options for a settlement. The West Bankers embodied what became known in Israel as the “Palestinian option,” while the Hashemite Kingdom was considered the “Jordanian option.” The Palestinian option presented itself even before the war was over. The political elite of Arab Jerusalem and the West Bank effectively suggested a two-state solution—an idea then regarded by most Arabs as anathema. This elite was mostly comprised of trad­ ition­al leaders and aʿyan (Arabic for notables), and many of them were part of the Jordanian establishment. In the summer of 1967 they could deliver because the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was then an insignificant body, largely controlled by Egypt, and the Palestinian guerrilla movements, notably al-Fateh, were still limited in number and appeal. In the wake of the June debacle the local leaders realized that a new situation had arisen, and with it new prospects: they could now turn the Palestinian problem, a humanitarian issue since 1948, back into a matter of nationhood. The annexation of Arab Jerusalem in the end of June shocked the notables; disabused, they changed tack and opted for a Jordanian–Israeli settlement. Only a small group still advocated the creation of a Palestinian entity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with Arab Jerusalem as its capital. Nonetheless, they all wished to resolve the conflict with Israel peacefully. It would soon become apparent that the June 1967 War had catapulted the Palestinians onto center stage, but for many years Israel (as well as the US) myopically refused to recognize their emergence as an independent political factor—a nation with a legitimate claim to statehood. During the early days of the occupation a handful of senior Israeli officials and army officers advocated unilateral plans for a Palestinian satellite ministate, autonomous region, or “canton”—Bantustan actually—in the northern half of the West Bank, but the policymakers would have none of this. Israel not only ignored the overtures of the Palestinians under occupation, but also banned any political organization and denied Palestinian requests to convene and discuss possible solutions. The Israelis, desiring a trouble-free occupation, were not looking for independent-minded 46  “Dayan: We are waiting for a phone call from the Arabs,” Maʿariv (Tel Aviv), June 13, 1967, citing Dayan’s BBC interview on the previous day.

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   279 leaders, but for lackeys. In July 1967, Israel’s internal security service Shabak launched a top-secret operation aiming to turn West Bank leaders into quislings.47 In the same month Israel began to exile Palestinian leaders who did not toe the official line, and in September it started to deport them to the East Bank. The Jordanian option was a different matter because the Johnson administration wanted Israel to negotiate a settlement with King Hussein, Washington’s long-time ally. The American postwar Middle East policy was set within the context of the global Cold War. In the aftermath of the hostilities the Soviet Union, alarmed by the crushing defeat of its Egyptian and Syrian clients and equally humiliated, deepened its penetration into the region. This development unsettled the US, which feared losing the pro-Western Jordanian monarch. Thus, the Americans urged an Israeli–Jordanian dialogue. Between the summer of 1963 and the fall of 1966, Jordan and Israel had been the best of enemies. In 1963, Hussein had initiated a secret face-to-face exchange with Israel, leading to a peaceful coexistence. But the devastating Israeli raid on the West Bank village of Samuʿ in November 1966—in response to a Syrian-sponsored al-Fateh attack— shattered Hussein’s trust in Israel; the king felt betrayed. And yet the loss of the Old City and the West Bank prompted Hussein to resume contact in the hope of getting them back. On July 2, a bare three weeks after the war, the king secretly met Yaʿacov Herzog, Premier Eshkol’s confidant, in London. Hussein said that he was trying to set up an Arab summit conference to decide what course the Arabs should take. Should he fail to achieve a united Arab line for peace, he would feel free to act unilaterally in relation to Israel.48 Hussein did not wait for an Arab summit. Ten days later, and with President Nasser’s approval, the king conveyed to Israel his readiness to negotiate a bilateral accord. Through the Americans and the British, Hussein asked Israel for its peace terms. US Secretary of State Dean Rusk viewed Hussein’s initiative as “a major act of courage” that “offers the first important breakthrough toward peace.”49 But the unenthusiastic Israeli response, which lacked anything of substance, drove Hussein to shelve his peace proposal. This became a repeating pattern which characterized direct Israeli–Jordanian contacts henceforth: time and again Hussein inquired about Israeli peace ideas; time and again the Israelis untruthfully told him that his curiosity would be satisfied in full at the negotiating table. In reality, however, Israeli policymakers decided not to decide: on June 19 the cabinet agreed “to defer the discussion of the position regarding Jordan.”50 The deferral turned out to be permanent. In short, Israel chose neither the Palestinian option nor the Jordanian one. Instead, it played one option off against the other as part of a prevarication strategy.

47  Raz (2012: 80–84). 48  “Meeting with Charles [the Israeli code name for Hussein], July 2, 1967,” Yaʿacov Herzog’s private papers (YHPP). 49  “Telegram from the Department of State to the Mission to the United Nations,” July 13, 1967, FRUS 19, document 360. 50  Cabinet Resolution 563, June 19, 1967, articles 1(c), A-7060/6, ISA.

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280   avi raz

Foreign Policy of Deception The Israelis’ main concern was not the Arabs but the Americans. On the eve of the war, France, hitherto Israel’s major arms supplier, particularly of the front-line Mirage fighters, announced a Middle East arms embargo that affected Israel alone; it refused to deliver fifty already paid-for Mirages. Israel desperately needed new aircraft after losing a fifth of its combat planes in the hostilities. America became Israel’s only hope for replenishing its air power. But on June 8, Washington also imposed a Middle East arms embargo. Both presidents, Charles de Gaulle of France and Lyndon Johnson of the US, were annoyed by the Israeli offensive against Egypt despite their separate strong advice not to fire the first shot. There was no prospect of de Gaulle’s hostile attitude toward Israel being reversed. Johnson, on the other hand, was a great friend of the Jewish state. In the precarious postwar circumstances the Israelis were doubly aware that they should not alienate the president and his administration. Furthermore, Israel sought urgent American help in the diplomatic battle that promptly followed the shooting war. The Soviet Union, acting on behalf of Egypt and Syria, tabled a UN resolution demanding an immediate and unconditional Israeli withdrawal behind the June 4 lines. The Israelis counted on Washington to lead the struggle against the Soviet move, but the American position complicated matters. The US accepted the Israeli insistence on replacing the prewar situation with peace settlements, but held that the final borders should not be different from the 1949 Armistice lines, save for minor and reciprocal modification. Worse still for Israel, the all-Arab postwar position, which was adopted at a summit conference in Khartoum, Sudan, in late August was regarded by the international community—including the US and the president himself—as promisingly moderate: for the first time in the history of the Arab–Israeli conflict, the leaders of the Arab states (excluding Syria which boycotted the summit), who before the war had called for the final liquidation of Israel, decided to resort to political and diplomatic means rather than military ones in order to recover the lands they had lost in the Naksah (setback) of June 1967.51 King Hussein, in particular, was considered by Washington as a peaceseeker. Though remaining more committed to Israel, the Johnson administration had a sense of duty toward Hussein. In the fall of 1967, the Americans assured him that he would regain the territory he had lost in the war within six months,52 and they continually pressured Israel to negotiate a settlement with Jordan. Unwilling to pay the inescapable territorial price for peace, the Israelis adamantly sidestepped any bona fide discussion with Jordan. “I fear the day when we have to sit face to face and conduct negotiations [with the Arabs],” Premier Eshkol candidly admitted in a closed meeting.53 With no intention to negotiate peace, the Israeli government had only short-term or ad hoc political objectives. The first was to prevent a UN reso­ 51  Raz (2012: 136–138). 52  Ibid., 154. 53  Minutes, Ministerial Security Committee, May 8, 1968, YHPP.

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   281 lution demanding a prompt and complete return to the status quo ante. This goal was partially achieved. Five months into the occupation, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242 that called for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories—not the (or all the) occupied territories. The so-called (mainly by the Israelis) ambiguous wording was not ambiguous at all, because the resolution’s preamble explicitly underlined “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.”54 (In his memoirs Defense Minister Dayan goes so far as to argue that this phrase contributed to Syria and Egypt’s decision to launch the October 1973 Yom Kippur War.55) In any case, Resolution 242 enshrined the principle of land-for-peace, and initiated a peace mission that was entrusted to the Swedish diplomat Gunnar Jarring. While dodging full acceptance of the resolution, Israel’s next objective was to keep the Jarring mission afloat without en­gaging in substantive discussion so as to avoid renewed debate at the Security Council leading to a much tougher resolution than 242. Procuring new US-made fighter aircraft, especially fifty F-4 Phantoms, was another critical goal of Israel’s postwar foreign policy. In January 1968, shortly after the American suspension of arms shipments to the Middle East had been lifted, Eshkol traveled to Lyndon Johnson’s ranch in Texas and begged the president to authorize the sale. “[P]eace was not to be saved by 27 or 50 new planes,” Johnson told Eshkol, and emphasized that much more was required, “including positive moves toward a peaceful settlement.” The president demanded to know “what kind of Israel we would be expected to assist”; that is to say, how Israel envisaged its final boundaries. The question remained unanswered.56 Eshkol’s silence reflected the Israeli effort to obscure its overarching postwar ob­ject­ ive, which was to preserve the territorial status quo without losing American material and diplomatic support. To this end the Eshkol government applied a foreign policy of deception. In fact, the term “policy” is somewhat misleading. No explicit decision regarding such a policy was taken. After all, no Israeli government has ever been accused of having an organized and systematic decision-making process, or of ever adopting a long-range policy. (Foreign Minister Abba Eban conceded retrospectively that criticism of the Israeli cabinet’s decision-making was justified.57) However, a series of cabinet reso­lutions and ad hoc governmental decisions and actions added up to a consistent policy of deception, the aim of which was to mislead the international community— first and foremost the US—into thinking that Israel was seriously seeking a peaceful ­settlement with its Arab neighbors.

54  S/RES/242, November 22, 1967, UNPR. 55  Dayan (1976: 679). Interestingly, Dayan’s claim is absent from the English translation of his auto­ biog­raphy, which offers a different formulation of the relevant passage. Dayan (1977: 620–621). 56  “Memorandum of Conversation,” January 8, 1968, Session II, FRUS 20, doc. 40. 57  Shlaim (2003: 170). Maj. Gen. (ret.) Aharon Yariv, former Military Intelligence chief (1964–1972) and cabinet minister (1974–1975), also acknowledged: “Everything we [i.e. the government] have been doing here has been improvisation.” Gilboa (2013: 691). In his Annual Report for 2002, Israel’s State Comptroller included a scathing analysis of the government’s decision-making process over the years.

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282   avi raz The Six Day War itself began with a deception. Less than half an hour after Israel started the hostilities by blasting the Egyptian fighter aircraft on their runways, a preprepared official announcement claimed that “[t]he Egyptian forces opened an air and land offensive this morning. . . . our forces went out to meet them.”58 The reason for the lie was President Johnson’s stark warning not to fire the first shot. Contrary to claims in the existing literature, Johnson never replaced the red light he had given Israel against striking Egypt with a green or amber one. This was the reason why Foreign Minister Eban stressed in the first cabinet meeting after the war that it was extremely important that Johnson should think Israel had been responding to an Egyptian assault.59 The next deceptive move took place in the following week. Aiming to convince Washington of not having territorial appetite, on June 19 the Israeli cabinet passed a reso­lution that seemingly proposed a withdrawal from the occupied Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights in return for contractual peace with Egypt and Syria, respectively. But there was a catch. The resolution provided that the peace accords should be “based on the international borders and the security needs of Israel”—a formulation intended to allow Israel to retain substantial portions of Sinai and the Golan.60 In other words, Israel was far less magnanimous than it wanted the US to think. Furthermore, the June 19 resolution was not a generous peace offer but a diplomatic maneuver to win over the Johnson administration. When Foreign Minister Eban conveyed the substance of the resolution to Secretary of State Rusk two days later, he significantly left out the “security needs” caveat.61 In his autobiography, published in 1978, Eban claims that the Americans conveyed the Israeli “peace proposal” to Cairo and Damascus, and that both immediately rebuffed it.62 In reality, however, the cabinet ideas were meant for Washington’s ears alone and never reached the Arabs. Nonetheless, dozens of scholars and writers have recycled Eban’s fictitious tale unchallenged, thereby creating a myth of Israel’s postwar largess and insurmountable Arab animosity.63 The establishment of the first civilian settlement on Syria’s Golan Heights in July proved that the cabinet’s June 19 resolution was anything but a genuine peace initiative. In September, on the day a second civilian settlement came into being in the West Bank, the government decided that “as a ‘cover’ for the purpose of [Israel’s] diplomatic campaign” the new settlements should be presented as army settlements and the settlers should be given the necessary instructions in case they were asked about the nature of their settlement.64 The Foreign Ministry directed Israel’s diplomatic missions to present

58  Raz (2012: 21–22). 59  Cabinet minutes, June 11, 1967, A-8164/6, ISA. 60  Cabinet Resolution 563, June 19, 1967, articles 1(a) and 1(b), A-7060/6, ISA. Emphasis added. 61  “Telegram From the Mission to the United Nations to the Department of State,” June 22, 1967, FRUS 19, document 314. 62  Eban (1978: 435–436). 63  For elaborate discussion of the June 19 Resolution affair see Raz (2013). 64  Colonel Gazit to Chief of Staff ’s Office, September 27, 1967, 46–2845/1997, Israel Defense Forces Archives, Tel ha-Shomer; Gorenberg (2006: 121).

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   283 the settlements in the occupied territories as military “strongpoints” and to emphasize their alleged security importance.65 The annexation of Arab Jerusalem together with a considerably larger area surrounding the Old City to the north, east, and south, also involved deception. Aware of the breach of international law, the annexation was carried out on June 27 by swift passage in the Knesset of three laws that deliberately did not mention Jerusalem or use the term “annexation.” But this was annexation in all but name. The Foreign Ministry instructed its diplomats abroad to conceal the true meaning of the legislation. Nevertheless, the UN General Assembly instantly called on Israel to rescind the annexation.66 Foreign Minister Eban responded in a letter to the UN Secretary General, saying: “The term ‘annexation’ . . . is out of place. The measures adopted relate to the integration of Jerusalem in the administrative and municipal spheres . . .”67 It took Israel thirteen years to formally drop the charade when the Knesset passed Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel, whose first article reads: “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.”68 As noted, the international community believed that the Arabs emerged from their summit conference in Khartoum (August 29–September 1) with a moderate approach. In fact, the Israelis themselves felt the same way. Major General Aharon Yariv, the Military Intelligence chief, acknowledged that it had been decided at the summit to seek a “political solution.”69 Yaʿacov Herzog, Premier Eshkol’s hawkish advisor, maintained that the Khartoum resolutions marked an Arab advance toward peace.70 Even Eshkol alluded in a press interview to “some very limited progress” at Khartoum.71 But Israeli propaganda chose to highlight the three “no’s” included in the resolutions—no sulh (Arabic for peace in its deepest sense; reconciliation) with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel—as unequivocal proof of Arab intransigence. While Western diplomats in Khartoum viewed the three “no’s” as the usual ritualistic sloganeering,72 Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s ambassador to Washington from early 1968, observed that the three “no’s” are implicitly included in UN Security Council Resolution 242, which Israel eventually accepted.73 Notwithstanding, Abba Eban, the architect of Israel’s foreign policy of deception, suggested that due to the inclination of the world press to characterize the Khartoum resolutions as moderate, the government should expose them as extreme.74 65  Raz (2012: 141). 66  A/RES/2253 (ES-V), July 4, 1967, UNPR. 67  Cited in “Measures Taken by Israel to Change the Status of the City of Jerusalem: Report of the Secretary-General,” July 10, 1967, S/8052, UNPR. 68  Emphasis added. 69 Minutes, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee (KFASC), September 26, 1967, A-8161/8, ISA. 70  Herzog’s diary, September 4, 1967, A-4511/3, ISA. 71  Ma‘ariv, 4 October 1967. 72  Bowen (2003: 337). 73  Minutes, KFASC, June 29, 1970, G-16707/8, ISA. Jordan’s Foreign Minister ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Rifaʿi also argued that the Khartoum resolution coincided with UN Resolution 242. See “Mr. ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Rifaʿi’s address at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg” [on January 30, 1968], Al-Wathaʾiq al-Urduniyyah: 1968 [Arabic], document 10. 74  Cabinet minutes, September 3, 1967, G-16718/7, ISA.

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284   avi raz In early November, King Hussein arrived in Washington. He assured the Americans, privately as well as publicly, that he and his fellow Arab leaders agreed at Khartoum “to reach permanent peace (silm) with all our neighbors.”75 The Israeli response was swift. The cabinet launched a premeditated anti-Hussein propaganda campaign whose aim was to trash the king’s positive image in world opinion and to discredit his peaceful statements.76 This was to no avail. Washington increased its pressure on Israel to negotiate a settlement with the Jordanian monarch. In an attempt to put off the evil hour, the Israelis turned to the hitherto-ignored Palestinian option. The idea was to present the Palestinians in the occupied territories as an alternative to Hussein by holding extensive talks with the local leadership. “Hussein is scared to death of this,” said Defense Minister Dayan, who strongly advocated the “Palestinian alternative” stratagem.77 The talks with the West Bank leadership lasted three months and led nowhere, but they dispersed a dark cloud which might have hung over Eshkol’s forthcoming talks with President Johnson. In December the UN peace envoy Gunnar Jarring embarked on his Sisyphean mission. While the Arabs insisted on an Israeli withdrawal as a first step, Israel demanded unconditional direct negotiations. None of the parties was willing to relent. Foreign Minister Eban, who feared that the failure of the Jarring mission would have grave consequences for Israel at the Security Council, proudly boasted in a confidential forum about the scheme he had devised to preempt such an eventuality: Israel, he said, was feeding Jarring with numerous procedural proposals, which the Arabs simply dismissed. The accumulating proposals were kept in a special dossier in order to demonstrate to the Security Council Israel’s positive approach, compared with the Arab negative attitude. The dossier, Eban added, should be made as thick as possible because it was also important in the short run to maintain the support of the US and other friendly governments.78 All the while, the secret channel of contacts between King Hussein and Eshkol’s confidant Yaʿacov Herzog remained open. In early May 1968 Abba Eban himself met the king. The foreign minister now heard firsthand what he had already known—that Hussein was eager to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Israel. In view of this and the growing American resentment at Israel’s evasive behavior, it seemed that the crunch had finally arrived. In a further attempt to play for time, Israel redoubled its double game. As regards Hussein, Eban summarized the Israeli line in a closed meeting in June: The government, he said, was not engaged in a peace process but in a tactical political struggle designed to maintain the status quo and to avoid foreign political intervention. Only contacts with Hussein could save Israel from this. Israel, therefore, should maintain “a futile discussion” with Jordan “which should last weeks and months.”79 75  “His Majesty King Hussein’s Address at the National Press Club in Washington,” November 7, 1967, Al-Wathaʾiq al-Urduniyyah: 1967 [Arabic], document 132. 76  Raz (2012: 155–156). 77  Brown (1997: 164). 78  Minutes, KFASC, January 19, 1968, A-8161/10, ISA. 79  Minutes, Labor Party Expanded Political Committee, June 3, 1968, A-7921/13, ISA.

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   285 Eban frequently described his diplomatic approach as takhsisanut—Hebrew for “tactics” or “trickery”; he undoubtedly meant the former, but in reality it was the latter. Eban’s purpose was to deflect American pressure by keeping the contacts with Hussein going so that there should be a follow-up meeting with Hussein, and then another one, and yet a third. But in the second half of 1968, as Washington put further pressure on Israel to negotiate seriously with Jordan, the Israelis were compelled to talk substance with Hussein for the first time. The meeting took place in London on September 27. Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon accompanied Eban, and the two men presented the Allon Plan, which offered Hussein two-thirds of the West Bank in the shape of an enclave with a narrow connecting corridor to the East Bank. Regarding Jerusalem, Israel was willing to bestow on Hussein the status of Guardian of the Muslim Holy Places, but nothing more.80 The Allon Plan was presented in full knowledge that it was totally unacceptable to Hussein. Moreover, the plan was never approved by the cabinet. Most important, the Allon Plan was not a genuine peace plan. In the words of none other than its author, Yigal Allon: “No Arab would ever accept the plan and nothing will come out of it, but we must appear before the world with a positive plan.”81 As if all this was not enough, the Israelis insisted on the Jewish “historical association” with biblical Eretz Yisrael. They told Hussein that in practical terms the historical association of the Jews with the Land of Israel meant that Jews should enjoy the right to settle anywhere in the West Bank, regardless of sovereignty, and to come and go as they pleased.82 In November 1967, when Herzog first presented the concept of the Jewish “historical association” and its meaning to Hussein, the king smiled wistfully and asked: “What were the limits of the land?”83 In the summer of 1968 Israel also played the Palestinian card by attempting to establish an Arab civil administration in the West Bank, run by local collaborators and devoid of power. Defense Minister Dayan’s intention was to replace the existing occupation regime that had been imposed on the West Bankers, with a new situation, which would be basically the same but would enjoy the endorsement of the inhabitants in a bilateral agreement.84 Within a couple of months the Arab civil administration scheme ended in fiasco, but Israeli diplomacy—whose paramount guideline was to perpetuate the territorial status quo by playing for time—used the botched initiative to claim that the government was still weighing the Palestinian option as well as the Jordanian one.85

80  Minutes, “Meeting with Charles, on September 27th, 1968, in London (15.30–17.00 p.m.),” YHPP. 81  Shashar (1992: 208). 82  Raz (2012: 271–272). 83  Report by Ya‘acov Herzog, “Two Meetings with Charles (On the morning of November 19th and on the morning of November 20th respectively),” YHPP. 84 Minutes, “Consultation on the Arabs’ Problems in the Administered Territories,” July 3, 1968, A-7921/5, ISA. 85  For a detailed discussion of this episode see Raz (2012: 228–245).

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Impunity Neither the international community nor King Hussein of Jordan was fooled by Israeli duplicity. In December 1968, during a meeting with William Scranton, President-elect Richard Nixon’s special emissary to the Middle East, Hussein handed him a written statement describing in no uncertain terms the Israeli attitude: For whatever reason, Israel is not truly serious in negotiating a settlement with Jordan. . . . Israel has adopted a transparent and cynical policy of using the excuse of alleged negotiations in an attempt to prevent or delay any possible pressure from outside, and thus . . . to avoid having to make any decisions of the terms of the final settlement.86

The Americans possessed the necessary levers to exert influence on Israel, but despite their awareness of Israel’s prevarication they did not use these levers. On the contrary, in October 1968 the friendly President Johnson approved Israel’s request for fifty Phantom fighter-bombers. During the negotiations with Ambassador Rabin over the terms of the sale, senior White House officials Walt Rostow and Harold Saunders, frustrated and irritated, burst out saying: We’ve told you the US position ad nauseam—you have to give the West Bank back, you have to give Hussein a role in Jerusalem, a “Polish corridor” to Sharm el-Sheikh doesn’t make sense. When Allon was here, we told him what we thought of his plan. If the Israelis aren’t tired of hearing this, we’d be glad to say it again, but we think they’ve known all along what our position is if they’ve been listening.87

Harsh words indeed, but again they were not followed by action. And so, Israel kept pursuing the same line of avoiding peace by insisting on unacceptable terms. In the spring of 1969 Foreign Minister Eban boasted behind the closed doors of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee that “for the past two years our political strategy has been . . . to insert a sufficient number of obstacles and explosives into any American document [about an Arab–Israeli settlement] so that the Arabs could not accept it.” Among the “obstacles and explosives”—which Israel, Eban stressed, must “nurture and fortify”—was the demand that the final borders should be different from the prewar boundaries.88 In May 1972 Prime Minister Golda Meir, Eshkol’s successor, shared with the Shah of Iran in a secret meeting in Teheran what she and every other Israeli leader were persistently denying publicly: “There have been contacts [with 86  Quoted in Symmes, Amman, to State Department, December 9, 1968, NSF/Country File/Jordan, Memos, Vol. V, Box 148, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas. 87  Memorandum of conversation: Walt Rostow et al. and Yitzhak Rabin et al., November 18, 1968, POL ISR-US, RG59, Central Files 1967–69, USNA. 88  Minutes, KFASC, April 16 and 29, 1969—both in A-8162/5, ISA.

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   287 Hussein]. With respect to a comprehensive solution, the king is perhaps ready for a separate peace, but according to his own plan, which means a return to [the] 1967 [lines]. This is, of course, inconceivable to us.”89 The common Israeli argument has been that the quest for peace in the aftermath of the June 1967 War proved abortive because the Arabs only understood “the language of force.”90 In fact, it was the Israelis who spoke only the language of force. The use of excessive force against innocent civilians has become an Israeli trademark; it has been particularly apparent in the way Israel reacted to Palestinian terrorism. The attempts of the fledgling Palestinian muqawamah (Arabic for resistance) or­gan­iza­tions outside the occupied territories to establish underground bases inside the West Bank during the first months of the occupation did not win the support of the local popu­la­tion, and were quickly crushed by the Israelis. Consequently the guerrilla groups—with al-Fateh in the lead—used the eastern Ghor, or Jordan Valley, as a launch pad for their armed struggle against Israel. The hit-and-run terrorist attacks of the fidaʾiyyun (self-sacrificing commandos) increased considerably in early 1968, killing and injuring many Israelis, soldiers and non-combatants alike. Israel reacted ferociously by adopting a policy of hoshamah—a Hebrew biblical term meaning destruction—of Jordan’s eastern Ghor (as well as the western bank of the Suez Canal, in response to Egyptian fire). Using heavy artillery shelling, air bombardments, and even acts of terrorism such as planting mines, the Israelis deliberately targeted civilians.91 “I am in favor of striking the village on the opposite side with artillery, even if it hits civilians,” Premier Eshkol said during a cabinet discussion in the wake of a terrorist attack on a kibbutz in the Beisan Valley in October 1967. “I won’t be put off if people get killed, but I wouldn’t want women and children [to be among them].” Menachem Begin, a cabinet member and future prime minister, commented that hitting civilians is an integral part of the cruelty of war.92 In the spring of 1968 Dayan suggested that the eastern Ghor should become “a graveyard,” and Lieutenant General Haim Bar-Lev, the army’s new chief of staff, assured the defense minister that the plan to turn the East Bank into “a wasteland” had already been executed.93 By then the eastern Ghor had been emptied of most of its inhabitants, the majority of whom were old and new Palestinian refugees living in makeshift tent camps. The Israeli fury forced them to flee eastward to the highlands, and thus becoming displaced for the second or the third time. According to official estimates, only 8,700 people out of some

89  “The Prime Minister’s Conversation with the Shah on Thursday, 18.5.72,” A-7028/2, ISA. In her autobiography, published three years later, Golda Meir claims that “the Arabs continued to refuse to meet us or deal with us in any way.” Meir (1975: 398). 90  Finkelstein (2003: 150). 91  Zohar (2012: 78, 89, 91, 146, 305); Drori (2012: 105–106, 213, 237); Raz (2012: 202–203). 92  Drori (2012: 104). 93  Gai (1998: 167).

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288   avi raz 75,000 remained in the Ghor.94 But fidaʾiyyun terrorism continued unabated, and so did Israeli disproportionate retaliation and so-called preemptive assaults, striking hard, deep into Jordan’s territory, including the city of Irbid and the town of al-Salt. In one case, Lt. Gen. Bar-Lev ordered a massive shelling of Irbid in response to artillery fire on the Israeli town of Beit Sheʾan. As a result, an entire quarter of Irbid was destroyed. BarLev referred to actions of this kind as “visiting cards.”95 Both the fidaʾiyyun and Israel inflicted death on innocent civilians, but the toll on the Arab side was far higher. When Israel complained to the Americans about its civilian casualties, the dismissive response was, according to Ambassador Rabin’s reporting: “The Egyptians didn’t hit a single one of your citizens along the Suez [Canal], and yet you destroyed three Egyptian cities. You did that with canons in Egypt, and with aircraft in Jordan. So don’t talk about civilian casualties because you do more of this than them [the Arabs].”96 Washington’s resentment of the Israeli approach was reflected in voting for a series of unanimous condemnatory resolutions at the UN Security Council.97 At the same time, however, the US reversed its pre-1967 policy of not being Israel’s main arms supplier, thereby transforming Israel into a regional power. Considered a strategic asset by the Americans, Israel effectively enjoyed impunity for its indiscriminate belligerency. But the Israeli behavior not only failed in its aim of stopping Palestinian terrorism, it often backfired resoundingly. A glaring example is the massive raid on the main al-Fateh base in the Jordanian town of al-Karameh in March 1968. Instead of dealing the intended lethal blow to the Palestinian guerrillas, the ill-planned and ill-executed incursion served the resistance organizations as a recruiting sergeant by inspiring thousands of highly motivated young Palestinians to join their ranks. Although the battle of Karameh98 was no Arab military victory, it went down in Palestinian history as their Stalingrad: the fidaʾiyyun (and Jordanian army units) stood up to the mighty Israeli army and shattered its image of invincibility.99 The resulting prestige of the guerrillas enabled them in February 1969 to gain full control of the PLO. The Palestinian center of gravity now shifted entirely to outside the occupied territories, and the moderate West Bank leadership lost any political weight. This development rendered useless the Israeli “Palestinian alternative” stratagem, which was part of its foreign policy of deception. Before long, the PLO became the sole recognized representative of the Palestinian ­people. And all this was Israel’s doing.

94  Symmes, Amman, to State Department, February 20, 1968, POL 27–9 ARAB-ISR and February 23, 1968, POL 27 ARAB-ISR—both in RG59, Central Files 1967–69, USNA; “The Transfer of the Displaced Persons from the Jordan Valley to the Highlands,” Amman, February 22, 1968, Al-Wathaʾiq al-Urduniyyah: 1968, document 25; “A Press Conference with His Majesty King Hussein,” Amman, March 23, 1968, ibid., document 46. 95  Gai (1998: 203–204). 96  Minutes, KFASC, May 20, 1969, A-8162/4, ISA. 97  In 1968 alone, the Security Council condemned Israel four times for attacking Jordan (resolutions 248 of March 24, 256 of August 16, 258 of September 18, and 262 of December 31). 98  Karameh means dignity in Arabic. 99  Raz (2012: 206–207).

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   289

Legacy February 1969 also marked the death of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, which heralded the end of the first chapter of the post-June 1967 War era. During the preceding twenty-one months, Eshkol’s National Unity Government set the stage for five decades of occupation that still continues. Subsequent governments followed the same policy even more vigorously. The desire to control the entire Land of Israel, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights, was unrelenting. When Secretary of State Dean Rusk reminded Abba Eban of Israel’s June 5, 1967 pledges of having no territorial ambitions, the foreign minister “simply shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘We’ve changed our minds.’ ”100 In his 1993 memoirs, Eban cites King Hussein cautioning “that Israel can have either peace or territory, but not both. This,” Eban goes on, “is not far from being a universal international consensus.”101 A quarter of a century earlier, however, Eban was instrumental in the Israeli efforts to have the territory at the expense of peace. Little attention has been paid in the existing literature to Israel’s voracious territorial appetite in the immediate aftermath of the June 1967 War, although the evidence is there for all to see. For example, four months after the war, when a newspaper interviewer mentioned to Eshkol the Israeli formula that there would be no change to the postwar map of Israel and the occupied territories without negotiations with the Arabs, the prem­ier interjected: “And if there were negotiations, does it mean that there would be a change [to the map]? I’ve asked myself this question. Another formula should have been found.” In response to another question Eshkol said that Israel should not hurry to look for an Arab peace partner.102 The traumatic Yom Kippur War of October 1973 was the direct result of the Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir governments’ refusal to take the road to peace. In a press interview in December 1973, when Israel was still licking its war wounds, Abba Eban expressed regrets at the attitude of these two governments: during the past six years, the foreign minister said, they had initiated no peace plan, and had rejected every peace plan put forward by the international community, acting “like theater critics who have a negative view of every single play or work they see.”103 In a public lecture a decade and a half later, Major General (ret.) Aharon Yariv, who during the period under review headed the Military Intelligence Branch, and in the mid-1970s served as a cabinet minister, launched a scathing criticism of the government’s postwar approach: We [Israel] didn’t take advantage of the time for political activity. What it might have been possible to do during the first [few months after war], was impossible to do afterwards. . . . As a result of the Six Day War we were once again in direct proximity 100  Rusk (1991: 332). 101  Eban (1993: 498). 103  Maʿariv, 28 December 1973.

102  Maʿariv, October 4, 1967.

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290   avi raz with the Palestinians, with whom we have the most serious struggle. And not a single political link was made [with them]. . . . I mean, as regards [our] future relations and all that is connected with the Palestinian entity [concept] and so on. Regrettably, this didn’t happen [then], and still doesn’t today [i.e. January 1988].104

Israel’s peace policy was best summarized by Yosef Sapir, a cabinet minister between June 1967 and August 1970, shortly after he had resigned the government. “What we [Israel] did during the previous four years was done in order to gain time. . . . [A]ny gain in time is in our favor.”105 This Israeli policy is the origin of the running sore that still plagues Arab/ Palestinian–Israeli relations today.

Bibliography Benvenisti, Meron (1976). Jerusalem: The Torn City (Jerusalem: Isratypeset). Benvenisti, Meron (2007). Son of the Cypresses: Memories, Reflections, and Regrets from a Political Life (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press). Bowen, Jeremy (2003). Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East (London: Simon and Schuster). Brown, Arie (1997). Hotam Ishi: Moshe Dayan be-Milhemet Sheshet ha-Yamim ve-Ahareha [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Yediʿot Ahronot). Cohen, Avner (2010). The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press). Dayan, Moshe (1976). Avnei Derekh: Otobiyographyah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem; Tel Aviv: ʿEdanim; Dvir). Dayan, Moshe (1977). Story of My Life (London: Sphere Books). Drori, Zeʾev (2012). Esh ba-Kavim: Milhemet ha-Hatashah ba-Hazit ha-Mizrahit, 1967–1970 [Hebrew] (Ben-Shemen: Modan; Maʿarakhot). Eban, Abba (1978). An Autobiography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Eban, Abba (1993). Personal Witness: Israel through My Eyes (London: Jonathan Cape). Finkelstein, Norman  G. (2003). Image and Reality of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2nd edn) (London, New York: Verso). Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS], 1964–1968. Vol. 19, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967 (2004). Harriet Dashiell Schwar (ed.); Edward C. Keefer (gen. ed.) (Washington, DC: United States Printing Office). Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS], 1964–1968. Vol. 20, Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1967–1968 (2001). Louis J. Smith (ed.); David S. Patterson (gen. ed.) (Washington, DC: United States Printing Office). Gai, Karmit (1998). Bar-Lev [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: ʿAm ʿOved; Sifriyat Poʿalim). Gazit, Shlomo (2003). Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories (London: Frank Cass).

104  Transcript, Yariv’s lecture, delivered at the annual seminar of the Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University: “The Middle East 20 Years after the Six Day War,” January 13, 1988, Dayan Center Library. 105  Minutes, KFASC, February 2, 1971, G-16708/6, ISA.

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Dodging the Peril of Peace: Israel and the Arabs   291 Gilboa, Amos (2013). Mar Modiʿin: Aharaleh, Aluf Aharon Yariv, Head of Aman [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Yediʿot Ahronot—Sifrei Hemed). Golan, Shimon (2007). Milhamah be-Shalosh Hazitot: Kabalat ha-Hahlatot ba-Pikud ha-ʿElyon shel Tsahal be-Milhemet Sheshet ha-Yamim [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Maʿarakhot). Gorenberg, Gershom (2006). The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 (New York: Times Books). Kerr, Malcolm H. (1971). The Arab Cold War: Gamal ʿAbd al-Nasir and His Rivals (3rd edn) (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs). al-Khatib, Ruhi (1970). The Judaization of Jerusalem (Beirut: PLO Research Center). Lammfromm, Arnon (2014). Levi Eshkol: Biyographyah Politit, 1944–1969 [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Resling). Levi Eshkol: Rosh ha-Memshalah ha-Shlishi: Mivhar Teʿudot mi-Pirkei Hayav (1895–1969) [Hebrew] (2002). Arnon Lammfromm and Haggai Tsoref (eds and historical notes) (Jerusalem: Israel State Archives). Meir, Golda (1975). My Life (New York: Putnam). Peres, Shimon (1995). Battling for Peace: Memoirs (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Raz, Avi (2012). The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). Raz, Avi (2013). “The Generous Peace Offer that was Never Offered: The Israeli Cabinet Resolution of June 19, 1967,” Diplomatic History 37,1 (January): 85–108. Raz, Avi (2014). “The Right of No Return: Israel and the Second Refugee Problem of 1967,” Bulletin of the Council for British Research in the Levant 9: 43–44. Rusk, Dean (1991). As I Saw It: A Secretary of State’s Memoirs (London: I. B. Tauris). Shashar (Shershevski), Michael (1992). Sihot ʿim Rehavʿam-Gandi-Zeʾevi [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Yediʿot Ahronot; Sifrei Hemed). Shlaim, Avi (2003). “Interview with Abba Eban, 11 March 1976,” Israel Studies 8,1: 153–177. Talmon, J. L. (1969) “Israel and the Arab World: A View from Within,” Jewish Quarterly 17,3–4 (Winter): 3–13. Thucydides (1972). History of the Peloponnesian War. Rex Warner (trans.) (London: Penguin). Tyler, Patrick (2009). A World of Trouble: America in the Middle East (London: Portobello). Al-Wathaʾiq al-Urduniyyah: 1967; Ayar–Kanun al-Awal [Arabic] (1973) (Amman: Daʾirat al-Matbuʿat wa-l-Nashr, Wizarat al-Thaqafah wa-l-Iʿlam). Al-Wathaʾiq al-Urduniyyah: 1968 [Arabic] (1973) (Amman: Da’irat al-Matbuʿat wa-al-Nashr, Wizarat al-Thaqafah wa-l-Iʿlam). Zohar, Avraham (2012). Lohamei Kav ha-Mayim ve-ha-Esh [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Ha-Makhon le-Heker Milhamot Yisraʾel).

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chapter 15

R eli v i ng Tr agedie s as Histor ica l R e awa k en i ngs Modern Iran and Its Revolutions Shahla Talebi

Defeated History Reminiscences In “The Unraveling of Form,” Samuel Weber contemplates Kafka’s strange creature, Odradek, who laughs without lungs and “with the rustle of fallen leaves.”1 As bizzare as it sounds, this phrase reminds me of my father’s laughter which I heard almost every time he read, listened to, or watched the propaganda of the Shah’s regime. Engraved in my memory is the monotonic Odradek-like sound of his laughter, characteristic of his effort to mask an array of emotions from bitterness, to despair, disillusionment, and nostalgia. So often, however, his laughter appeared as a precursor for histories, recalling the 1953 Oil Nationalization uprisings and the subsequent defeat, which had left many Iranians, including my father, quite disillusioned. The uprisings (1951–53) had begun in support of the nationalization of oil, a campaign embarked upon by Prime Minister Mossadegh against the British government. In its initial phase, the movement did not target the Shah’s regime; rather, it sought an end to the control of Iranian oil by the British government.2 Only when Britain, the United States, and the Shah refused to give into the demand for nationalization of the oil industry did the chants turn against the Shah.3 From my father’s many recountings, one aspect is more deeply embedded in my memory, perhaps because he repeated it in many 1  Weber (1996). 2  Kinzer (2008). 3  Abrahamian (2013); Bayandor (2010); de Bellaigue (2013); Shawcross (1989).

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   293 ­ ccasions, especially when he was trying to discourage us from involvement in political o activism. I vividly recall how he would lament the way people had lost heart as soon as the CIA-funded-and-organized “thugs” had crowded the streets and terrorized whoever was not chanting “Long Live the Shah” or “Death to Mossadegh.” With his voice reverberating with grief and anger, he would relate to us how the same streets that were filled with peaceful demonstrators chanting alliance with Mossadegh and condemning the Shah had suddenly witnessed opposite chants by a small violent group of thugs. In this version of my father’s story, the very power of the people that had forced the Shah to flee the country (on August 15, 1953) had dissipated in the face of the terrorizing ruthless violence, unleashed by a group of lumpens organized and paid for by the CIA and backed by the military. While in my father’s stories the CIA imposed terror and the betrayal of those who gave in to the terror were considered detrimental in causing the defeat of the movement, the British journalist William Shawcross concentrates on the Shah and Mossadegh’s popularity. He suggests that in fact many Iranians did not despise the Shah and that it was Mossadegh who lost his popularity.4 Ervand Abrahamian, however, defends Mossadegh’s act of refusing the British government’s recommendation and argues that Britain was not about to accept nationalization of the Iranian oil industry for which Iranians were fighting. Unlike Shawcross’ claim, my father did not seem to believe that any Iranian truly supported the Shah, except those with a personal interest in maintaining his regime. In his account, those who had chanted “Long Live the Shah” were criminals, prostitutes, and outcasts, paid to perform a malicious role. The supporters of the movement had, nevertheless, given in to the terror and evacuated the streets, or had reluctantly joined the anti-Mossadegh “protest” due either to their fear for their lives or for doubting their own power, the power of the people. This left the stage open for the military to take over the streets, arrest Mossadegh, crush the remaining resistance, and facilitate the Shah’s return. Yet, in other occasions, my father would express outrage about such high-ranking clergy as Ayatollah Kashani (1882–1962) and Behbahani (1874–1963) for their stance against the nationalization movement and Mossadegh. He would tell us how these ʿulama (learned clergy) had changed their position in accordance with their interest and their fear of communism. Ayatullah Kashani, for example, had sided with the Shah and accused Mossadegh of either refusing, or failing, to stand up to the threat of the Toudeh Party and the Soviet Union. In my father’s view, this was a pretext for these ʿulama to cover up their collaboration with Britain to protect their own hold on religious and economic power. In yet other versions of his “historical” narration, he would express disillusionment toward the Toudeh Party for betraying the Iranians by supporting the demand of the Soviet Union to control the nonexistant oil in the north of Iran5—a resentment both toward the party he had once supported and toward an self-claimed socialist country that manifested imperialistic interests similar to those of the Western imperialists. At times he would tell us how Mossadegh, too, made a mistake by not 4  Shawcross (1989: 20). 5  The rumors about the oil found in the north of Iran never materialized.

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294   shahla talebi t­ rusting the people, and by fearing the communists, hence failing to rely on the people’s power or seek alliance with the communist Toudeh Party. Despite these different accounts of a critical period in recent Iranian history, his story was not necessarily inconsistent. The various versions rather revealed divergent aspects of the events and the multiplicity of angles of, or purposes behind, his narrations, depending on the context within which they were invoked. Although his emphasis on various players made differing impressions, repetition brought the pieces together and rendered them somewhat coherent. Repetition also highlighted the complex dynamics and relations of power in the Iranian polity. It accentuated the interconnectedness between modern, pre-Islamic, and Shia history of Iran in relation to colonialism, global economies, ideologies, and politics. My father’s mistrust toward political parties, politicians, clergy, leftists, and the role of Britain and the United States was shared by a large number of Iranians of his generation. His disillusionment toward the alleged unreliability of people’s positions was also lamented by many others. As this chapter will show, modern Iranian history has been characterized by these often conflicting forces and aspirations. They are interlocked and in constantly shifting relation of power shape, and are shaped by, the course of events within the nation and beyond. They cause, and are at times caused by, anxieties and disenchantments that are simultaneously the source of hesitance for many Iranians in engaging in collective struggles yet the very ground and potential for social or/and revolutionary movements in Iran. Within the labyrinth generated by these disparate forces emerges a history of revolutionary movements, not rarely swathed in violence, with the inclination or claim to fighting for dignity and against the ties, or accusations of ties, with foreigners. From the Constitutional Revolution to the most recent unrests (December 2017–January 2018), the genuine desires for a better life and the repetition about their manipulation by different political parties or foreign powers toward their own agenda have led to ongoing tension, hindrance, and confusion. Yet, the dreams of a more dignified and just life and a greater freedom has awaited, and still awaits, another tragic awakening, with tragedy invoked here “as an aesthetic, as an ideology, as a philosophy, and an ‘immediate experience’ ”(Román, 2002: 2). The victory of the 1979 Revolution showed the resourcefulness of Iranian revolutionary Shiism, in that particular historical moment, in its effective recourse to and reenactment of the Karbala tragedy in all these aspects, aesthetically, ideologically, philosophically, and in its invocation as an immediate experience. The oil nationalization movement was perhaps the epitome of the contrary where these resources were absent or put to use in a counterrevolutionary mode. I will try to show that my father’s and others’ complaint about the unreliability of the people invokes it once again, though after the fact, in the tragedy of the defeat. The nationalization movement was summoning and responding to other moments in modern Iranian history. Following the series of defeats, since the eighteenth century on, that cost the country a great deal of its land and resources, Iran was brought to the verge of bankruptcy under the Qajar kings. From tobacco to the banks, they conceded control of national resources to different colonial powers for many decades into the future. Even the Constitutional Revolution (1905–11) could not put an end to all these granted

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   295 ­ riv­il­eges. Reza Shah ended Qajar’s dynasty through a coup (1921), partially backed by p Britain, which was granted control of Iranian oil.6 In all these situations, modernizing projects went hand in hand with the intrusions by colonial powers. Yet until the richness of oil resources was discovered, the competition among colonial powers over Iran was not as intense. The Constitutional Revolution was also marked by an era when the socialist attitudes and the desire for modernization came into conflict with the Shia religious structure, Rohaniyyat, in Iran. I recall the recitation by my father of the sharp satirical, often anticlerical poems of Mirzadeh Eshghi (1893–1924)7 and the classconscious poems of Farrokhi Yazdi (1889–1939). He would usually recite these poems along with, or as an opening of, his stories of the Constitutional Revolution, which he had heard from his own father’s generation. Ayatollah Khomeini had referred to Ayatollah Moddaress (1870–1937) and Ayatollah Kashani (1882–1962) as the leading clergy figures who had paved the way for the Islamic Revolution. For my father and many of his friends, however, they were reactionaries who had diverted the Constitutional Revolution and oil nationalization (1951–53) from achieving its pursuits of independence, freedom, and justice. My father’s unwavering opposition to the regime and his account of 1953 were collared by his left-leaning political views. His views were also shaped by his experience of the Mossadegh era and by the stories he had heard from a generation before him about the Constitutional Revolution. In his interpretation, many factors linked these two events to one another. While the violence of the regime and the intrusive role played by Britain, Russia (the former Soviet Union), and the United States in these historical turning points were consistent in all accounts, my father seemed more disillusioned by what he assumed to be people’s readiness to change their position, especially when directed by the religious clergy or by fear. This judgment about “people’s unreliability” was frequently expressed by many Iranians of his generation, who bemoaned witnessing ­people chanting “death to the Shah” in the morning only to see them shout “long live the Shah” in the evening. In suggesting this sudden shift of attitude they seemed to imply a lack of commitment to the struggle, perhaps at times losing sight of the complex relations of power that rendered standing on one side or another difficult if not impossible, considering the newly emerging modern discourses, colonial interferences, and the formation of new nation-state modalities. The narrative of betrayal was a commonly accessible social capital, invoking the story of Karbala and the alleged betrayal of the Kufi people; in Iranian-Shia collective conscious, Kufis exemplify a cowardly, unreliable people who in 681, according to dominant Karbala narrative, promise to pledge their alliance to Imam Hussein but intimidated by Yazid, the caliph of the time, silently stay put while Imam and his companions are killed in the nearby desert of Karbala. A sense of familiar guilt was traceable as many Iranians spoke of how Mossadegh had been left to die alone under house arrest.8 This narrative 6  On the rise of Reza Shah see (Zirinsky 1992). 7  Mirzadeh Eshghi (Seyyed Mohammad Reza Kordestani) and Farrokhi Yazdi were both killed. 8  Katouzian (1999).

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296   shahla talebi and its theatrical performativity have informed and been re-enacted in different revolutionary junctures in recent Iranian history, with powerful emotional effects. In postrevolutionary Iran, such chants as:“We are not the people of Kufeh to let our Imam [Khomeini] be left alone,” “We are not the people of Kufeh to let Ali [Khamenei] be left alone,” or even “We are not the people of Kufeh to let Hussein [Mousavi] be left alone”(a reference to the 2009 uprisings that led to Hussein Mousavi’s house arrest) are all invocations of Karbala story in the present political milieu. Yet while many Iranian interlocutors blame “we Iranians” for their floating positions, in the same breath they name the real culprits as Americans and the British who paid and mobilized a small group of thugs to terrorize people and force them out of the streets, implying a sense of victimhood as well. The anxiety about the foreign threat, espionage, and corruption has been an enduing characteristic of the Iranian polity. In addition to aversion toward the Shah, whose ties with the United States were now acutely overt, behind closed doors many people expressed disgust in recalling how some of their county fellows had lost heart and allowed themselves to be terrorized by scattered rallies of “some brainless thugs,”9 meanwhile emphasizing the thugs’ ruthless violence. The views on who was to blame were as divergent as those who upheld them. While not easily fitting into any monolithic category, one may, however, draw a general though never clear-cut gist of the related actors. Leaving the CIA and the regime aside, the Toudeh Party received the most generous assembly of blames. People from different perspectives and political affiliations converged in considering the party disloyal or even traitorous to national interests. Many of its supporters blamed the party for acting conservatively in a critical historical moment, when it should have relied on its grass roots and brought them to the street to avert the coup and prevent the Shah from returning to Iran. The majority of religious clergy and their supporters accused the party of working for the Soviets to bring communism to power and to enable the Soviets to gain control over the country. Most of the religious clergy were in turn condemned for siding with the Shah due to their fear of communism and attempting to safeguard their own economic and religious authority.

The Spectral Colonial Powers and Reoccurring Past Long before Marx and Engels brought to light the specter of communism that was to haunt Europe, colonialism was sweeping the world in and through flesh and blood. In Iran, where several colonial powers were competing over dominance and cheap resources, their presence appeared somewhat less inclusive yet ever-present. While not 9  Refers to Shaban Jafari, known as Shaban bi Mokh ((Shaban, the brainless), one of those most influential figures of 1953 terror in supporting the Shah.

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   297 colonized by a single power, colonial manifestations loomed behind nearly every corner of the Iranian socioeconomic and political landscape and overshadowed most aspects of people’s everyday life. Their elusive specters characterized the nature of the Iranian polity and the political consciousness of the populace. The military defeats of the nineteenth century did not merely cost Iranians a substantial loss of territory under the Qajar kings, but also their sense of their place in the world. In conjunction with their more advanced modes of production and technologies, these defeats further contributed to the inferior position Iran found itself in relation to the western powers. Fascinated by and in response to this uneven power relation, the Qajar monarchs began to bargain with several Western countries to acquire their technologies, knowledge, and skills; to fulfill these needs the Qajar in return allowed Iranian resources to be exploited with devastating consequences. This left Iran with a radically compromised national sovereignty, though “officially” not colonized. As Ervand Abrahamian argues (1979), the military defeats forced the signing of treaties that granted Britain and Russia commercial and legal capitulations, e.g. lowering import duties, allowing their trading agencies almost unlimited control over its emer­ ging industry without subjecting their merchants to any local laws, tariffs, or road tolls. In 1872, for instance, Baron Julius de Reuter, a British citizen, purchased: for 40,000 pounds and 60% of the profits from a concession on the customs the exclusive right to finance a state bank, farm out the entire customs, exploit all minerals (with the exception of gold, silver and precious stones), build railways and tramways for 70 years and establish all future canals, irrigation works, roads, telegraph lines, and industrial factories.

Yet the concession was cancelled due to “so much opposition in Iran and Russia.”10 In Curzon’s words this agreement “contained the most complete surrender of the entire resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has ever been dreamed of, much less accomplished, in history.”11 The colonial powers, particularly under the corrupt Qajar rulership, had a devastating role in the conditions of life of millions of Iranians. Without any adequate support from the government, the Iranian peasants were unable to compete with their western counterparts. The surplus of wheat in California in the late 1890s, for instance, resulted in its failure to see a significant rise in its “realized value,” despite the 80% increase in the “volume of wheat exported from Bushehr.”12 Failing to sustain themselves under these circumstances, landowners were forced to respond to the “Western demand by using their lands increasingly for export crops like cotton and opium, which made them vulnerable to the economic fluctuations in the world

10  Abrahamian (1982: 55). 11  Cited in Moaddel (1992: 456). On tobacco movement see Kazemi (2014); Abrahamian (2008), and Keddie (2012). 12  Moaddel (1992: 457). For the role of Great Britain and colonial powers in Iran in this period see also Shavnavaz (2005).

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298   shahla talebi market.”13 Great Britain benefited from this policy. The allocation of most of the land had direct consequences for the populations in China, India, Iran and several other countries. Mohammad Gholi Majd details the role of Great Britain in the severe famine that just in Iran cost millions of lives.14 This haphazard national sovereignty turned Iran into the landscape wherein the colonial powers vied for a greater share of its resources and even lands. The internal parties often sided, were accused, or accused others of siding with one or the other colonial power. The government usually vacillated between alliance with one power or the other, either to maintain some kind of balanced, though always compromised, independence, was really sold out, or sat somewhere between striving for independence and selling out. It was within these intricately complex conditions that the communist parties, the clergy, the modernists, presented themselves and their interests, at times working together while at other times clashing, with their positions almost never entirely linked to their status as leftists, clergy, etc. The move toward a more centralized nation-state and modernization was obviously accompanied by some transformation in socioeconomic and legal power relations, not all of which were seen as desirable by the high-ranking clergy especially. From the eighteenth century on, the role of the clergy became ever more contentious, due both to modernization attempts and the colonial meddling in national affairs. The clergy had a particular advantage that made their involvement detrimental in nearly all the movements since the nineteenth century. The ʿulama had the power to mobilize people through religious verdicts (fatwas),15 and relied on their massive access to and ability to reach almost every sector of the population, as well as their financial resources. This power was exercised and illustrated in the case of the 1890 tobacco concession that granted to a British major, G. F. Talbot, a full monopoly over the production, sale, and export of tobacco for fifty years. In 1981, Ayatullah Mirza Hasan Shirazi issued a fatwa, which led to such widespread boycotts and protests that famously even the wives of Nasir al-Din Shah took part in, forcing him to cancel the concession.16 This movement marked a significant point in recent Iranian history for it revealed the role of the clergy in mobilizing and leading popular resistance, and became a harbinger of the popular revolutions to come.17 The boycott was not merely about tobacco but about the corruption of the government and the colonial exploitation; in return for granting Britain fifty years of control over the tobacco industry, the government had agreed to receive a meager share of the profit in addition to the cash amount that was paid to the king. Through these privileges, colonial powers paved the way for the dramatic influx of mass-manufactured goods into 13  Keddie (1981: 28). See also Ansari (2001) and Summitt (2004). 14  See Majd (2017). 15  Keddie (1966). 16  For Islamic Revolution and the role of clergy see Abrahamian (1979 and 1982); Afary and Anderson (2005); Amir Arjomand (1988,  2002, and  2010); Amuzgar (1991); Chelkowski and Dababshi (1999); Dabashi (1993,  2008 and  2016); Esposito (1990); Keddie (1981 and  2003); Kurzman (2004); Moaddel (2013); Mottahedeh (2000); Paidar (1997); Nomani and Behdad (2006); Rahnema and Behdad (1995); Smith (1998). 17  See Moaddel (1992).

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   299 Iran. As in the Nationalization of Oil uprisings, in the 1979 Revolution, and the uprisings of disputed election results in 2009, in the Constitutional Revolution (1905–11) too, Iranians were not merely fighting to eliminate systematic corruption, political despotism, economic injustice, but also to reclaim their sense of dignity. As in those historical events, here too the success of the revolution was soon curtailed by different conflicting forces, foreign and internal; a mere sham of a constitution kept wheezing, as if Odradek was laughing without lungs.

Vengeful Return Following the disarray after the conflicts around the Constitutional Revolution, in 1921 the British government supported Reza Khan, an army officer, in a coup d’état that toppled the last Qajar king, Mohammad Agha Khan; in 1925 Reza Khan was crowned as the king. Britain supported him to establish a more centralized government to guarantee its colonial monopoly. In a rush to bring Iran to a par with more developed Western countries, Reza Shah sent Iranians to the West to receive secular educations and established a European-style national public education system in the country. His mandatory military conscription of all male persons, including the clergy, and his policy to ban the wearing of veils in public for women provoked a huge outcry from the clergy and the majority of laypeople. However, in 1941, in the heat of the Second World War, he was expelled by the Allies due to his ties with Germany, and forced into exile, where he died soon after. Replacing his father was the Swiss-educated, twenty-two-year-old Mohammad Reza, crowned by the Allies as the Shah of Iran. During the War, Iran was torn between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, each claiming and bargaining over their share of its land and resources. Following the war, the United States emerged as the superpower, while the dominance of Great Britain as the old colonial power subsided. With the defeat of the nationalization movement, the Shah was returned and reinstated thanks to the CIA coup d’état. Unlike his father’s forced exile by the Allies in 1941 or his own second exile in 1979, his departure this time was quite brief (August 15–21, 1953). Upon his return, the Shah chiefly relied on the unabashed support of the United States, weakening only toward the end of his reign. To fortify and safeguard his power, in September 1953 the CIA provided direct as­sist­ ance and guidance toward establishing an intelligence service, the goal of which was to eliminate any internal challenges to the Shah’s regime. Receiving substantial and systematic assistance and training from the United States and Israeli intelligence services, in 1957 the intelligence service was reorganized and given a new name: “Intelligence and National Security Organization,” Sazeman-e Ettleaʾat va Aminiyat-e Keshvar (SAVAK). To fulfill its chief agenda, which was to guarantee the “domestic security”18 of the country, SAVAK concentrated on silencing and obliterating opponents through extensive 18  Duthel (2014: 222).

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300   shahla talebi surveillance of the populous, arresting, ruthlessly interrogating, and torturing those who were accused or even suspected of challenging national security. In 1953, following the coup, the United States granted the Iranian regime $45 million with the aim of significantly strengthening the Shah’s position. The money allowed the Shah to purchase advanced weaponry for the military while contributing to the growing corruption within the system. Soon Iran became a particular favorite of the US, because, as Michael Klare suggests, it “possessed a sizeable navy and air force, and its well-equipped army of 150,000 was considered among the most powerful in the region.” In contrast to its claim, the US has generally enjoyed and even encouraged despotic regimes, including that of the Shah. In Klare’s view, a despotic regime enables the US to avoid complications that dealing with too many venues of decision-making for a country may entail. In Iran, for instance,“Washington needed only consult one individual—the Shah—when critical decisions had to be made”(Klare, 1984: 115). In 1973, the US News and World Report stated that: “Iranian Society is like a pyramid, with the Shah at the apex and the army as the privileged caste”(Klare, 1984: 116). The US was assured that “the army was kept in line by lucrative perquisites on the one hand and the oversight of SAVAK on the other”(cited in Klare, 1984: 116). The road toward this condition was paved by the coup. Following the coup, gone was the young indecisive king under whose regime some kind of parliamentary power and an organized labor syndicate could survive. The retuned Shah was a transformed monarch, determined to reign with the iron fist of SAVAK. Following the defeat of 1953, an atmosphere of dismay overshadowed people’s daily activities. A seemingly impenetrable fog of suppression, along with fear and mistrust, enveloped the political landscape of the country. Yet, whispers continued behind closed doors among small circles of friends and family. Cab drivers spoke of things in response to which most passengers, especially the young educated ones, nodded affirmatively, at times even daringly in words. Yet the rumors about the omnipotence and omnipresence of SAVAK was effective enough to often turn the loud and overt criticisms to whispers, masked under symbolism in art, often in poetry, in adult concerns hidden behind children’s books, and in the works of translation, which allowed writers to express their own views through the words of ­others. Swathed in symbolism, dissidence vibrated behind many works of art, particularly nested in and communicated through literary productions. In elementary school, our textbooks exposed us to poems such as: “We are the smiling flowers, we are the children of Iran; we consider our homeland as our soul/life.”Not found in our textbooks, however, in “My Heart Feels Pity for the Little Garden,” literally, “My Heart is Burning for the Little Garden” (1973),19 Forough Farrokhzad drew an image of a little garden left unattended while the adults went about their lives oblivious to its imminent impending decay. Written in a child’s voice, the poem reveals the 19  Farrokhzar, Forough 1973 (1352) “Delam Baraye Baghcheh misoozad” (My Hearts Feels Pity for the Small Garden), in Iman Biavarim Beh Aghaze Fasle Sard (Let’s Believe The Cold Season Has Begun) Terhan: Morvarid Publishers.

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   301 i­ mminent danger of death the garden faces and laments the adults’ negligence of its fate. Along with the child/poet, our hearts “burnt” for this small garden that symbolized our homeland.20 Slowly, there emerged among the new generation of dissidents a more mili­tant nationalistic attitude, despite transnationalism embedded in the Marxist, Islamic, and postcolonialist ideologies prominent in their orientations.

Lightening the House21 The sense of shock, humiliation, and disillusionment that had ensued after the defeat could obviously not last forever. By the late 1960s and 1970s, two major guerrilla or­gan­ iza­tions, Mojahedin-e Khalgh-e Iran (ideologically Muslim with leftist leaning) and Cherikhaye Fadayee Khalgh-e Iran (a Marxist-Leninist group) had announced their existence through militant actions.22 Both organizations were critical of conservative approaches to the regime and aimed to break the silence through small but noticeable armed operations. Their militancy was not unprecedented. Long before them, in 1946, Fadayeian-e-Islam (the Self-Sacrificers of or for Islam) emerged with the mission of “purifying Islam,” resulting in the killing of Ahmad Kasravi (1890–1946), a nationalist anticlerical figure, and several others. Despite their differences, Mojadein-e-Khlagh and Cherikhaye Fadayee Khalgh shared a goal, fighting the Shah’s regime and the United States. Through their armed operations they sought to draw people’s attention and show them that it was possible to break through the seemingly impenetrable security that the image of an omnipotent SAVAK had created. The regime responded with even harsher measures of incarceration, torture, imprisonment, and execution. The “White Revolution” had been announced in 1963, but by late 1960s, the regular villagers were already experiencing its disastrous consequences. The peasants were un­able to compete with the mechanization on the large farms and hence were leaving villages for seasonal jobs in the cities. By the 1970s, most individuals who were still able to work had left the villages and migrated to the large towns and cities in search of jobs. In addition to socioeconomic instabilities and disparities there were growing and conflicting anxieties about being modern and urban, with its reified sociocultural etiquettes. Notwithstanding all variations, being a true Shia Muslim also had its own sets of delineations. Within both groups and in between them, there were opponents and proponents of the regime, with the opponents growing larger in number. While the left mainly rejected the “White Revolution” for its lack of radical vision and for aiming to veer off the opposition, the majority of high-ranking clergy denounced every aspect of its premise, from land reform, to women’s right to vote or run for the 20  An allusion to Forough Farrokhzad’s poem “My Heart Feels Pity for the Small Garden.” 21  The title alludes to a poem by Ahmad Shamlou, “Khatabeh-ye Tadfin” (1956a), in which he alleg­ edely praises the guerrillas of the time who were executed as those “who stand against thunder [and lightening], lighten the house, and die). 22  On the Iranian left, see Cronin (2013).

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302   shahla talebi parliament, to the inclusion of women in the literacy, health, and reconstruction corps, as well as in the military service. They were also outraged that the new law did not make an exception for the conscription of the students of religious schools from the military service—Reza Shah had declared military service mandatory for all men over eighteen years old. In short, the majority of religious clergy perceived the “White Revolution” as a threat to their authority and economic power as well as an assault on Islamic values. The effect of the “White Revolution” on the peasants was devastating. The ruinous outcome of uncontrolled imports from the West in the case of wheat, for example, and its incredible dependency on wheat imports from the West, and its unfair pricing was even acknowledged by the Shah in his several interviews with western journalists. In these interviews, the Shah mentioned, again and again, that Iran was “meanly exploited.” He highlighted the hypocracy of the West making all the fuss about Iran or other oilproducing countries in the region raising the price of oil while “you increased the price of wheat three hundred times.”23 The increase of the oil price in the early 1970s and its reversed trend was also a catalyst, which fanned the flames of opposition to vaster areas. By 1977, the country that US President Jimmy Carter had praised as the island of peace and security was already showing signs of turmoil, though still vibrating beneath the surface and scattered in the margins of the cities, in the shanty towns and impoverished neighborhoods, and in the intellectual circles, especially those of college students. Along with the economic and religiocultural incongruities that were increasingly aggravating larger sections of the population, a few timely sensitive incidents ignited the revolutionary fire. In 1971, the Shah gathered a large number of heads of states or their representatives, to celebrate the so-called anniversary of 2,500 years of monarchy in Iran in an event that in the words of Maxim’s director, Monsieur Louis Vaudable, was more ex­trava­gant that any other party in the “history of humankind” (reported by Bündner Zeitung). The chefs, the waiters, the food, were all imported. Not so ironic, hence, that all the 50,000 songbirds flown in from Europe to create an exotic atmosphere died in the desert climate. Metaphorically telling was also the fact that the Swiss and the French kitchen brigades fought over the control of the kitchen during the event. The rumor and the news of the extravagant celebration of a supposedly Persian civilization that benefited the West more than the Iranians themselves spread around like a volcanic eruption. While both the left and the clergy denounced these costs, no newspaper or other forms of government media in Iran could ask the question some foreign journalists came to pose: why would the Shah spend so lavishly for this celebration while many Iranians did not have food on their table? The squandering outraged many educated Iranians who felt deprived, not merely of the rich resources of their country but of a political voice. 23  These interviews were in the context of OPEC and the so-called oil crisis. See for instance, his interview with Adrienne Clarkson available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-grR1e6dw8 & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imil1iIpIYA. In fact there has been a debate on whether or not these positions cost the Shah his crown, for the West withdrew its strong support and did not stand against the revolutionary movement of the late 1970s as they had during 1953.

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   303 Since the inception of the so-called Pahlavi dynasty, two contradictory trends had emerged in Iran. On the one hand, both the father Shah and later, especially since the coup, his son sought to concentrate greater power in their own hands and in the hands of a few trusted figures around them. On the other hand, their attempts to fashion a more modern, industrial Iran called for the emergence of a new intelligentsia, initially educated in Europe and later with the establishment of a new educational system, in more massive numbers within the country. These trends took opposing directions particularly after the coup and the White Revolution. The White Revolution, which, in Abrahamian’s words, was “explicitly designed both to compete with and preempt a Red Revolution from below,”24 brought many changes, but did not generate the kind of optimism and trust among people the Shah may have hoped.

The Double-edged Sword In his memoir Mission for My Country (published in 1974, and written by an American ghostwriter only seven years after the coup), the Shah claims his full commitment to a multiparty system. “If I were a dictator rather than a constitutional monarch,” argues the Shah, “then I might be tempted to sponsor a single dominant party such as Hitler organized or such as you find today in Communist countries. But as constitutional monarch I can afford to encourage large scale party activity free from the strait-jacket of one party rule or the one party state.” These were the years when, as Abrahamian points out:“the shah still liked to bill himself as a sincere ‘democrat’ determined to ‘modernize’ a highly ‘traditional society.’ ”.25 But alongside his regime growing increasingly more despotic, to accomplish the goal of modernizing the country, new developments were launched.26 The landscapes of the cities and towns were transformed by the new roads, dams, schools and hospitals, cinemas and theaters, new forms of coffee shops, books and book-publishing companies, etc. Including women in the work force, creating cultural and art centers, facilitating higher education, above all making education free all through school and college, were seminal factors in opening up lively spaces within which intellectual and artistic productions, and the voice of dissent emerged. Herself educated in Paris, Queen Diba was particularly interested in promoting the literary and artistic production. The queen concentrated on cultural and artistic domains as well as women’s issues. As part of this modernizing project, she took it upon herself to oversee the creation of several significant institutions. Kanoon Parvaresh Fekri-e koodakan va nojavanan, the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Teenagers, established in 1965, was one of her initiatives. While the Center was initially focused on translating c­ hildren’s books by Western writers, it soon became a vibrant space for Iranian writers, artists, and 24  Abrahamian (2008: 131). 25  Abrahamian (2008: 130). 26  For the Shah’s modernization projects see Bill (1970).

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304   shahla talebi film makers, which fostered the habits of reading and debating among young children and teenagers beyond their textbooks and mere literacy; these modern cultural spaces were spread around the city, even in less affluent neighborhoods. Within Kanoon, the voice of dissent found a great niche. Translations, symbolism, and children’s books—written as much for adults as for children—emphasizing such issues as poverty, ignorance, religious and political manipulation, discrepant access to modern amenities, and so on, were means of circumventing the censorship. From the movies with children as their main characters to the short stories, fiction, and poems written supposedly for, or from the “point of view,” of children, a particularly social cap­ ital thrived under the auspices of the regime that sought to project an image of success in fashioning a modern society, manifested in its cultural, artistic, and other modern institutions and features.27 Yet this goal challenged another fundamental agenda of the state. Since the coup, the monarch had been more adamant to eliminate the possibility of dissent or threat to his power through foreclosing any genuine political participation for the intelligentsia and educated technocrats whose cultural capital and middle-class position made them conscious of and resentful about the absence of their voice in the sociopolitical decision-making processes in the country. As the universities developed a more Western-based curriculum, promoting such modern disciplines as philosophy, history, psychology, anthropology, archeology, sociology, architecture, economics, and liberal and fine arts, a new generation of scholars, artists, and studentship came into being, along with a new definition and demarcation of literacy, literature, arts and sciences. Cinema and theaters were promoted as modern forms of art while the older modes of performative, visual arts were “traditionalized.” With the queen’s objective to modernize the cultural façade, new Western-style foundations were established, boosting the schools of art and architecture, music, writing, translation, and literary criticism, as well as museums, galleries, opera house, ballet institute, and historical buildings. At times entire villages or towns were chosen as cultural heritage. For the celebration of 2,500 years of monarchy, Diba oversaw the programs for Shiraz Art Festival28 in which a large number of native and foreign scholars and artists participated. Yet this trend was also generating a different attitude toward religious education, considering it either as non-education, or as a “traditional” form of education, creating a binary opposition between modernity and tradition. Yet the larger the “modern” intelligentsia grew, the greater threat the Shah assumed to his monopoly on power. He was not just concerned about the dissidence within. A very basic knowledge of the recent history of Iran could have warned him of the way that Western colonial and later imperialist powers shifted their alliances, supporting one or another political figure or party, both within a single country and between countries, often instigating or inflaming conflicts between them. During the Cold War era, with 27  See Behrangi (1968 and 1996); Kiarostami (1974); Farrokhzad (1973a and 1973b); Shamlou (1956b and 1959). On Samad Behrangi see Milani (2008). 28 See http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/shiraz-arts-festival; http://www.mitpressjournals.org/ doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.20; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FegUjxJg4bY; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15NDSE8gS6Q,

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   305 the Soviets and the US competing for control of resources and power, the leaders of a large number of countries ended up choosing sides or maneuvering between the two superpowers.29 Upholding some kind of independence was in fact the ability of these leaders to play their cards between the two superpowers in a more balanced manner.30 Reza Shah had already paid for his attempt to loosen the ties with the British government, which since 1919, through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, had indulged itself with Iranian oil and other economic and political privileges. The Allies had punished the Shah for his ties with Germany as Iran’s major trade partner and for his decision to remain neutral during the Second World War; the result was his dethronement, forced exile, and subsequent death. The two intertwined goals of the Shah—the attempt to safeguard the absolute power of the monarch and to furnish the façade of modern institutions—acted as a doubleedged sword. Initially, both edges appeared to be serving the state. Their hazardous potential to strike against the regime was, nevertheless, just awaiting the right moment— Alidad Mafinezam and Aria Mehrabi (2008) argue that both Pahlavi kings had a similar strategy and goal: to modernize, yet maintain independence of the country. To claim and guarantee a greater power, the Shah spent more and more on its defense budget; yet the more confident he felt in the aptitude of SAVAK and the army to save the regime from its internal and external enemies, the greater became his ambition to dominate the region and feel like the Shahanshah, the king of the kings, as he called himself. The more the regime was backed by the US, the louder the opposition referred to the Shah as the “shackled dog of America,” a phrase commonly used against the Shah by nearly all his opponents. To prove otherwise or to assume sovereignty he began making claims to national resources in his increasingly more frank negotiations with the West. In 1972, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger flew to Tehran to sign a secret agreement with the Shah that allowed Iran to purchase “virtually any weapons it wanted.”If the United States sought to “make Iran the ‘guardian’ of Western oil supplies in the Persian Gulf area”31 by selling advanced weapons, the Shah too refused to accept less than the best. Soon after signing the agreement, he purchased the most cutting-edge American aircraft, never before sold to any of the so-called Third World countries, providing Iran with, according to the US Congress, “the most rapid build-up of military power under peacetime conditions of any nation in the history of the world.”32 Yet neither the large army nor those sophisticated weapons could save the Shah from being toppled just a few years later. In the early 1970s, following the overindulgent spending for the celebration of “2,500 years of monarchy” and the drastic growth in its defense budget,33 the Shah took an active role in raising the oil prices, despite the opposition from Saudi Arabia. The decision resulted in the so-called world oil crisis. In a frenzy, some US government officials 29  On the Cold War and Iran see Fawcett (2009); Blake (2009); Sayigh and Avi (1997); Alvandi (2014); Klare (1984). 30  Mafinezam and Mehrabi (2008). 31  Klare (1984: 116). 32 Ibid. 33  See Walid (2009) on the Military expenditure in Iran of this period.

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306   shahla talebi had more critical words for the Shah than the praises to which he had become accustomed; reacting to this, William E. Simon refers to the Shah as “a nut,” who is “not merely an uninformed, misinformed, irrational, megalomaniac given to hallucinating,” but “also duplicitous.”34 In January 1973, the Shah forewarned the Western oil consortium that at the end of its contract with Iran in 1979 he would not renew it unless it doubled the production and paid the same price for Iranian oil that they were paying the Arab oil-producing countries.35 This, too, seemed to flabbergast the Western countries, especially the United States. With trepidation, it began criticizing the Shah for what it saw as his self-delusional aggrandized sense of himself and his ambition to act as an independent powerful king. In 1974, in response to the demands by the US for an oil-price reduction, the Shah asserted: “No one can dictate to us,” or “No one can wave a finger at us, because we will wave a finger back.”36 While the increase in the oil price substantively boosted the national revenue, it also led to greater corruption, a far deeper distinction between the poor and the wealthy, and a more urgent desire of the educated middle class for a say in the polity. The Shah was, however, determined to tighten his grip on power, which he attempted to accomplish not merely through frequent elimination of those high-ranking military officers whose long-term commanding positions he considered a possible threat, but also in declaring a one-party system, Rastakhiz, or Resurrection.37 In an overindulgent show of confidence, in 1975 the Shah bluntly asserted: “Those who believe in the Iranian Constitution, the Monarchical regime, and the principles of the White Revolution, must join the new party. Those who do not believe in these principles are traitors who must either go to prison or leave the country.”38 His confidence was fed by the oil-price increase that led to a drastic boost in national revenue, amounting to 30.3% in 1973–74 and to 42% in 1974–75.39 Despite these seemingly positive signs, the regime was indeed facing a tricky situ­ ation. The inflation rate increased from 9.9% in 1975 to 40% in 1977, generating intense resentment among different sectors of society. To confront the inflation, the Shah embarked on an anti-profiteering policy, ensuring even more intense discontent among the bazaari merchants and small shopkeepers;40 even before then, the bazaaris had lamented the loss of markets due to foreign imported goods. The shanty-town dwellers had grown poorer while observing, now on commonly accessible television, the luxurious lives of a small group of Iranians; the farmers were devastated due to imported cheap agricultural products which had left their own produce too costly and obsolete; educated Iranians, especially young university students, felt silenced; and the leftists were disgusted by what they saw as the dependence of the regime on US imperialism and abhorred the increasingly more stratified economic system. The majority of religious Iranians believed that the country had sunk into moral degeneracy, becoming too deeply afflicted with Western values and lifestyle. From the first movements beginning 34  Simon (2013). 35  See Special to the New York Times (Jan. 24, 1973). 36  The Associated Press. EPT. (27, 1974). 37  See Amini (January 2002, pp. 131–168). 38  Caryl (2014: 50). 39 Ibid. 40  See Daneshvar (2016).

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   307 in the shanty towns of Khake-Sefid-e-Tehran Pars neighborhood, to the university students refusing to attend their classes, to the factory workers going on strike, tensions built up, awaiting only a catalyst; this arrived at the right moment.

The Last Straw Years of human rights abuses had been ignored, tolerated, if not at times even encouraged, by the United States, while SAVAK was persecuting dissidents, especially those with leftist-leaning political views, with infamous brutality. While exaggeration contributed to this infamy, rumors were productive means of creating terror and silence.41 Yet, with Carter becoming US president in 1977, the issue became rather pressing. One cannot ignore the escalation of anxiety about the Shah’s less accommodating relationship with the US, especially since the oil crisis, as one of the factors in allowing for this pressure to be effectively employed by the United States. Neither can one underestimate the impact of the dissidence growing among Iranian students in Europe and the United States. Carter’s policy led to some relaxation in the censorship and a lessening of the use and intensity of torture in the interrogation of political dissidents. As if throwing dry twigs into the already-burning flames, this relative opening inflamed and brought to the surface the scattered and invisible resistances. The poetry nights at the Goethe Institute and the sermons of the clergy at the mosques turned into political critiques of the regime; the general labor strikes in the oil refinery in Abadan added the necessary economic and political fuel to shake the ground under the feet of the government and shatter its illusion of stability. From “the 1977 New Year Eve state dinner in Tehran, when President Carter toasted the Shah, calling the country ‘the island of stability’ ” it took only thirteen months for the revolutionary populace to topple the seemingly omnipotent Pahlavi regime.42 On the dirt grounds of the impoverished suburb neighborhoods of Khak-e-Sefid-e Tehranpars in Terhan and Zoorabad on the way to Karadj, the chants of the leftists university students, “Bread, Housing, Freedom,” came to resonate with the residents who had rebelled in outrage against their city municipalities for basic needs, water, electricity, and housing. Yet if freedom for the leftists students had an anti-imperialist and anti-dictatorship connotation, for the dwellers of these neighborhoods its meaning was rendered tangible in their quest and desire for a dignified life, even if in the outskirts of the cities; it meant access to basic urban amenities, without being bulldozed out and without being seen as outcasts. While these chants expressed the shared sentiments between the leftists, the inhabitants of these impoverished areas, and the factory workers who were on strike requesting their unpaid salaries, they also contained gaps in translation. As the members of the clergy showed up with their chants enveloped in religious terms, and as they explained in their more familiar language, that their young 41  See Talebi (2011).

42  Ghamari-Tabrizi (2016: 20).

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308   shahla talebi allies were “Godless” leftists, the doubts were spread and travelled faster than the wind in the fall. This revealed the elusive and phantasmagorical reality of the Iranian sociopolitical milieu around the revolution of 1979. The death of Ayatollah Khomeini’s son and an offensive piece written against the Ayatollah in the major newspaper brought the people on to the street of the Holy City of Qom.43 The police shot and killed some of the demonstrators, setting the revolutionary rage ablaze. The commemoration of Karbala event now materialized, with each mourning procession turning into a demonstration, rendering, as Khomeini suggested, everyday into Ashura and every place into Karbala. Yet, a significant element of the revolutionary movement was also the role of a “small but militant faction within the clergy . . . who followed Ayatollah Khomeini.”44 Extending back to at least the beginning of sixteenth century when Shiism45 became the official form of the Islamic religion of the Persian Empire, Shia clergy have been an indispensable socioeconomic, religiocultural, and political power in the land, part of which is now called Iran. The Shia clergy has possessed a flexible yet extremely complex network. Its hierarchical structure palliates both by an emphasis on the merit of religious virtue and knowledge and a fluid and elastic connection between its expansive grassroots constituencies. Those on top of the pyramid hold a powerful yet malleable position of authority, accessible both directly and though the middle-ranking clergy. The highest-ranking mojtaheds receive the alms, vaghfs (religious donation often of land and properties), or other religious charities either from laypeople or from the wealthy; the clerics are to distribute it back to the ­people through establishing new religious schools, paying for the housing and tuition of their students, supporting the orphans, the mentally ill, and so forth. If the high-ranking clergy give sermons to government officials and high-status ech­ elons of the society, the low-ranking clerics, the mullahs, offer sermons in the regular mosques or recite the Quran or religious laments at laypeople’s graves, homes, funerals, religious observances, and other such occasions. Through mullahs, the ʿulama could reach the entire society, even when television and radio did not give them direct access to some areas. They hence reinforced a sense of community whose love for the Shia imams was reinforced every day through daily narrations of Karbala stories and their annual reenactments. Economically powerful, socially and politically influential, Rohaniyyat, or the institution of clergy, could strengthen the state or undermine it by mobilizing the people one way or another. This thread has been continuously woven through different modes of socialities in Iran for at least the past four centuries. But the role of the clergy became more contentious and critical with modernization and with the colonial intrusions in the affairs of the state from the eighteenth century onward.

43  On the events of 1963 leading to Khomeini’s arrest and exile see Kurzman’s “The Qum Protests”(PDF); Rosenfeld (June 28, 2011). 44  Ghamari-Tabrizi (2016: 19). 45  The announced Shiism was selective of a particular sect, the Shii Isna (or Ithna) Ashari, or the twelvers. On twelvers see: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ithna-Ashariyyah; Tabatabaʾi (1975); Shomali (2003); Daftari (2014); Newman (2010 and 2013).

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   309 While the majority of the clergy has been less involved in the political governance prior to the 1960s, there has always been a small group of clerics whose role has been detrimental in particular historical moments. In all of the events, from the tobacco protest to the Constitutional Revolution, to the Oil Nationalization Movement, the Revolution of 1979, and the 2009 uprisings, the line between the clergy and the nationalists or leftist individuals have never been drawn entirely based on the religious or secular divide. In fact the “dramaturgy”(GhamariTabrizi, 2016), which enveloped and characterized the events of the revolution and the “original” Shia events, may not be reductively attributed to a particular ideology or action. Take for instance, the uprisings in the northern province of Gilan (1915–21) where the communist party and the religiously devout Mirza Kochak Khan Jangali46 collaborated and later clashed in building the Democratic or the Socialist Republic of Gilan, one of the occasions in which there were disagreements both within and between the leftists and the religious individuals in assuming a shared goal of fighting for social justice. Along with these developments, and indeed their very condition of possibility, were new concepts of nation-state, citizenship, individual rights, and anxieties about national, ethnic, religious, and gender identity. Iranians have often expressed an ambivalent attitude toward the spectral presence of foreign forces for reasons that may be traced in, albeit always contested, the collective memory of the history of the Persian Empire, especially its experiences with its invaders. The desire for independence and the claim to sovereignty have often been undermined by the invaders who could not be defeated in first encounters. Yet somehow, as some scholars have argued, the intruders and occupiers have mostly come to leave their marks but also assimilate the cultures of their host.47 The constitutional revolution of 1905, the Nationalization movement, the 1979 Revolution, and even the 2009 post-election uprisings epitomized these anxieties and aspirations. If the constitutional Revolution and the Nationalization movement of 1953 brought some clergy to stand against the constitutions with some others supporting it, in the Revolution of 1979, even those who had not initially participated in the uprisings joined in as the Revolution sped toward its climax. The Revolution wrote itself at once as a ­reenactment, continuation, and a rewriting of Karbala events, with resemblances teased out, highlighted, and produced. Killed by the Shah’s men, every young man became an Ali Akbar. Carrying his coffin on their shoulders, the protesters chanted: “This is our Ali Akbar, a Gift to our Leader (Khomeini).” As the martyrs raised to the level of the saintly family members of Imam Hussein, the third imam of Shia, Khomeini ascended to the position of a Shia imam, nearly assuming the very embodiment of Imam Hussein. Yet like the Shah whose claim of his commitment to multiparty system had waned in the face of his desire to fortify his power, Khomeini’s assertion that he or other religious clerics are not to rule, not too long after the victory of the Revolution he would take the role of the Supreme Religious Leader, while many clergy served in high-ranking 46  See Chaqueri (1995).

47  See Naraghi (1966); Ravandi (1978).

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310   shahla talebi g­ overnment positions. The Revolution that was to create an egalitarian system, benefiting the poor and the marginalized, failed to deliver on most of its promises. The new wealthy emerged, similar to the Shah’s regime, backed by the connections to the government. The Revolutionary Guards and the Foundation for the Dispossessed and the Foundation for the Martyrs, and the Basij became known for their corruption and their abuse of power. The rumor about the corrupted clergy swept the society. The children who had been born after the Revolution, gone to school under the Islamic Republic and mandated to read religious texts, appeared more rebellious and transgressive than the youth of the Shah’s era. The 2009 uprisings erupted, as a reaction to an alleged voting fraud, which led to Ahmadinejad’s presidency. The 2009 uprisings did not transpire out of the blue; the seeds of resistance had been planted through years of polarizing modes of governance and conflicting systems of values and ideals. As it has at least since the eighteenth century, global politics played a significant role in intermingling with, producing, shaping, and often escalating these issues. From the inception of the Islamic Republic, Iran had to face a bloody eight years of war in which the West, especially the US, Russia, and several Arab countries, Saudi Arabia in particular, were involved in a duplicitous act that dragged the war on and allowed for justification of political suppression within both countries. The extended US sanction (beginning in 1980 and intensified and joined by European and many other countries since 2006) created a greater monopoly of the state institutions on the economy, and to a deeper deprivation. As disillusionment grew wider and deeper, the state’s repressive policies became deeply intertwined with systematic corruption. More increasingly, Iranians began to feel that the rhetorical propaganda and actions of the more socially and religiously “conservative” faction within the state had little to do with its commitment to the revolutionary ideals or with religious ethos and mores, and more to do with holding on to power. The periods ensuing—the “Reconstruction Era”— marked by the end of the Iran–Iraq War and the presidency of Ali Akbar Rafsanjani (1989–1997), followed by the election of Mohammad, or the “Reformist Era”, created a space for the emergence of new generations of dissidents, no longer easily dismissible as Marxists, Royalists, etc. Sanctions and corruption also bred a new group of an outrageously wealthy minority of Iranians, a rapidly eroding middle class, and an extremely large number of Iranian families living beneath the poverty line.48 Along with this, since the 1979 Revolution, and especially the War, a very high percentage of Iranian women have been receiving college and graduate degrees, hence qualifying for and sometimes landing high-position jobs. With universities now in nearly every small town, many of which are private, Iranians have found themselves among the most highly educated people in the world. This has led to the emergence of a large middle class, which claims sociocultural capital 48  For US role in Iran since 1979 Revolution, see Crist (2012); Ganji (2006); Mafinezam & Mehrabi (2008); Tarock (1998); Cottam (1989). On the relationship between sociocultural transformations in Iran and its international relations see Matin (2013), and Mehrabi (2014).

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   311 and prestige not because of economic affluence but due to educational status. As a result, an incredibly vivacious ambiance of debate and dialogue has emerged, which particularly flourished under the reformist presidency of Khatami (1997–2005). This educated group has access to advanced communication technologies, which include but are not limited to social media. Many young Iranians are quite knowledgeable about modern scientific advancements and follow the current discourses in the social sciences and humanities in the rest of the world. An unprecedented massive publication of books and journals on modern social sciences, humanities, and literary products, even if many of them translations of Western authors,49 have enhanced this dynamic, intellectually rich atmosphere.50 The cultural vivicity could be seen in nearly all aspects, including art, science, technology, civil discourses, both in elite and popular forms, especially during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The mosques and cultural centers that expanded to all neighborhoods had enabled the majority of Iranians, even those living in poor neighborhoods, to have access to computers and the Internet. If this allowed for an invasion of Western values and fashions as many scholars have assumed, it also opened the door for new forms of piety and religiosity to be contemplated, formulated, and practiced. In the midst of all this, discussions about citizenship, nationhood, religion, and politics were growing more complex, challenging the simplistic binaries of liberal secularism, conservative religiosity, or the mutually exclusive notions of religion and politics. These reductive simplifications were and have been promoted by the dominant formal discourses, both in the West and in Iran, each with their own agendas. This “epistemology of ignorance” (Sullivan and Tuana 2007) has enabled the US, and the majority of the states in general, to justify their anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, racist, and ethnocentric policies. The so-called Iranian hardliners have in their own turn been empowered by these simplified notions toward chastising any dissidence in Iran as anti-revolutionary, anti-Islam, liberal, instigated and funded by Western or Israeli governments. A rift grew deeper within different factions of the government, with the Supreme Religious Leader continually leaning to the far right. This rift became more manifest during the election and the first-term presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013). Terrified by the student, women, and labor movements of the 1990s, especially 1977,  Khamenei had ordered an unlimited budget to boost the power of the Revolutionary Guards (Sepah-e-Pasdaran), allowing it to not only monopolize economic projects, but even partake in politics. In the meantime, he resurrected and activated Khomeini’s dream of turning “basij militia” into an army of twenty million 49  On the relationship between translation and cultural modernity see Karimzadeh, Abdollah (2014). Also for the vibrant intellectual atmosphere of modern Iran see Mirsepassi (2010); Yaghmaian (2002); Arjomand (2010). 50  See for example the surprise expressed by Stephen Greenblatt during his visit to Iran in April 2014 and his conversation and the richness of the questions he received from the audience, mostly college students, in his piece “Shakespeare in Tehran” published in the New York Reviews of Books, April 2, 2015 Issue. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/04/02/shakespeare-in-tehran/.

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312   shahla talebi volunteers.51 In his first term, Ahamadinez had managed to further intensify the divide within Iranian society by mobilizing the villagers, lower-class Iranians, members of Basij and Sepah, and some of his powerful close allies through his populist and demagogic approaches and alienated a substantial number of others. The 2009 presidential election was thus already impregnated with intense anxiety and tension. Even in his first election, suspicion of fraud had been a big concern of the losing candidates and their supporters. But his run for a second term appeared even more critical. Two candidates from within the regime, but marginalized by its new dominantly conservative faction, had announced their candidacy, Mir Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, the Prime Minister of the war era, and the former head of the parliament and Martyrs’ Foundation respectively. Of the two, Mousavi was the more popular candidate. For the first time since the early years of the Revolution and/or perhaps the election of Khatami (1997), even those who had never voted in any presidential election, convinced themselves to vote. The vote was more against Khamenei than for Mousavi or Karubi, since Khamenei had directly supported Ahmadinezhad. Confident that the margin would be large enough not to permit a fraud, or maybe due to a naiveté rooted in having lost contact with the disenchantment and desperation of the economically impoverished Iranians, those who had voted for Mousavi were in celebratory mode when the unusually early results announced an Ahmadinez had triumph. The shock turned into anger and to massive demonstrations calling for the recount of their vote. The response was extremely violent. The peaceful protesters were beaten, arrested, shot, changing their chants from “Give my vote back,”“Where is my vote,” to “I will take my vote back.” Soon they were shouting the chants of 1979 Revolution: “My martyr brother [or sister], your journey (path) will go on,” “Allah-o-Akbar,” and “Death to the dictator” (replacing the Shah with Khamenei).52 As the 1979 Revolution had brought millions of people together to topple the Shah’s regime with such different needs and dreams, the uprising of 2009 was the amal­gam­ ation of diverse sets of demands and emotions, from frustrations about their present and past conditions, to nostalgia for and fantasies about a glorious future or merely a desire and need for a dignified life in the here and now. The marchers evoked, echoed, and reenacted the spirit of the Revolutionary movement of 1978–79—a reenactment and a correction for a revolution that had inevitably (though not acceptably) failed to deliver on its diverse and elusive promises. These deep disillusionments had roots in history, collective memory, as well as in realities of economic disparity, unjust global politics, new liberal policies, institutional corruption, brutal persecution of dissent and deviance, and the suppression of political voice. Here too, as the state accused opponents of having ties with the West, the opponents evoked the Karbala narratives and the Revolution of 1979. The movement was defeated perhaps partially because it had failed 51  Golkar (2015); Talebi (2016).

52  See Talebi (2014).

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   313 to reach the most economically impoverished sectors of Iranian population and it had mainly remained a movement of the more educated, culturally middle class, population living in the capital, Tehran. Unlike Khomeini whose language and slogans spoke to the downtrodden (mostazafin), the language of this movement had not been as popular as that of Khomeini during the 1979 revolution had been. This voice of impoverished was to be heard in the most recent events in Iran. The recent uprisings (Dec 2017–Jan 2018) which unlike those of 2009 initially and mainly erupted in the towns and provinces, involved the lower-class and more economically impoverished population. The protesters poured their rage on the streets against economic disparity and massive corruption. Their mood and expression of outrage was, however, quite different from those of the generally well-educated middle-class Iranians of Tehran in 2009. In fact, some of the youngsters who were actively involved in the 2009 uprisings found these recent mode of uprisings “less civil.” One of these youngsters explained why he could not join these recent protests in these words: “I could not go out and join them for I did not want to break the windows of the banks. What would I want to do that for?” He also felt uncomfortable with such chants as “Happy your spirit Reza shah” or “an Iran that does not have a king, lacks accountability and law [order].” These chants have emerged either as a real support some Iranians have begun to extend to Pahlavis; or they imply the extent of dissatisfaction some people feel toward the Islamic Republic Regime that, in comparison, they seem to suggest, even the Pahlavis may be supported. Many reformists were fast to denounce these protests, some going as far as calling for their quick suppression (Abbas Abdi being one of them). Others spoke of their anxiety of the hidden hands of the foreigners, implying the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and their fear of Iran becoming another Syria. Some suggested that the events were instigated by Mahmood Ahmadinejad, who has fallen out of favor with Khamenei and the hardliners. Some of the leftist organizations in diaspora rejoiced in assuming that these uprisings were the turning point in people’s resistance against the regime. They argued that these demonstrations had shown that people had gone beyond the reformists’ attempt to hold on to the regime and only amend it. All in all, while they were rapidly subdued, these uprisings once again highlighted the deep tension within the modern Iranian polity, resulting from a desire to fight for a better life, on the one hand, and the concern for possible foreign or internal manipulations of their struggle. They accentuated the shared sentiments as well as the profound fractures within the polity. They brought to light the intensity of the class, ethnic, religious, and ideological differences among Iranians—note that some of those towns and regions where the uprisings were the most intense were Sunni Iranians, which may explain the almost lacking symbols and invocation of Karbala narrative in their protests. The language of the majority of the people living in these regions is not Farsi. Some of these small towns are particularly impoverished and are considered less urban, in the sense of the prevailing ideal of urbanity among the middle-class Iranians, especially those living in Tehran. A variety of factors from nationalistic sentiments, religious, particularly Shii

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314   shahla talebi ethics, and the sense of pride in the “ancient” history and literary treasures were listed by many dissident politicians as reasons to stay away if not denounce these uprisings.53 But as one of my hopeful interlocutors suggested, the time will come for all these differences to fade away toward a united resistance. What he did not seem to take into consideration is the reality that currently no leader or party appears to be able to convince the majority of Iranians of speaking for their varying sentiments and aspirations and gain their trust with which they had bestowed Khomeni. In 1979, the time was right and the condition ripe for so many conflicting dreams to merge in the invocation of Karbala narrative. Neither 2009 nor 2017 uprisings were able to find that time and that condition in their right constellation. Yet the disillusionments and the incentives to remedy them are as alive as ever.

Concluding Remarks: Present as Past Since the Constitutional Revolution nearly every movement in Iran has sought to elim­ in­ate the abuse of power and corruption, and demanded some idea of social justice, freedom of thought and expression, and, albeit often vague, a notion of citizen rights. Yet again and again these demands have been suppressed and treated as a great source of danger to the old or the emerging establishment, as well as to some involved foreign powers. From oil to nuclear enrichment, Iranians’ socioeconomic and political lives have been subject to uneven relationships of power on the global scene. This has also always given Iranian regimes the chance to accuse their dissidents of having ties to foreign powers; the Shah called dissidents Black and Red reactionaries. The Islamic Republic had even greater options for its accusations, in each case justifying their suppressive measures. The Constitutional Revolution had sought a parliamentary system to curtail the power of monarchy and allow for the citizens to elect their representatives for the parliament. The 1953 Nationalization movement aspired to retain control of the most important source of its national revenue, but also to fulfill the undelivered goal of the Constitutional Revolution by electing Prime Minister Mossadegh as a way of limiting the monarchical field of power. In the Republic aspect of the Islamic regime, and the active presence of women in the Revolution of 1979 and thereafter, one could hear the cry of all those that each of the revolutionary movements had sought to actualize. Yet, the Islamic Republic too began from an election which was annulled by the toppling of the elected prime minister (Mehdi Bazargan), and later the president (Abolhasan Bani Sadr) by Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini too, like the Shah, became the law and assumed an ascended position of untouchable saintly figure. Justice, and all the chants about the 53  For Farsi readers see for example the exchange of letters between Mohsen Makhmalb and Mostafa Tajzadeh in which Tajzadeh explicitly mentions these characteristics as reasons Iran should not become like Afghanistan and that everything should be done to avoid the US War on Iran. See https://www. radiozamaneh.com/377020 & https://www.radiozamaneh.com/378041.

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Reliving Tragedies as Historical Reawakenings   315 dispossessed were soon to become more of revolutionary mottos than real inspirations. The SAVAMA became more suppressive than SAVAK and prisons were far more crowded than those under the Shah. Thus, while the struggles of 2009 and the recent uprisings have been defeated, the Iranians are still clamoring to find their voice. A continuous search for self-expression, desire for justice and dignity, independence, and public voice has epitomized all these revolutionary movements, either overtly or implicitly. The tragedies of the past have been summoned along with the dramaturgy of the Karbala event, awaiting the right moment. Impregnated with energy, nostalgia, and despairing need to move forward with the failed dreams of the past, the desire for their tragic reawakenings still lurk in the collective unconsciousness, awaiting the right moments to crawl out and arise as if from the depths of history. Meanwhile, the Odradek-like laughter of those who narrate their stories of defeat can be heard, like the rustle of fallen leaves. The rustle laughter goes on not merely to remind the Iranians of their defeated struggles but of their never-ending desire to laugh with real lungs, to live in a more inclusive, just society with a more dignified relationship to the rest of the world.

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Newspaper Links Special to the New York Times, Jan. 24, 1973. http://www.nytimes.com/1973/01/24/archives/ iran-tells-oil-consortium-pact-will-not-be-renewed-companies.html. The Associated Press. EPT. 27, 1974. http://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/27/archives/shahrejects-bid-by-ford-for-cut-in-prices-of-oil-no-one-can.html.

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pa rt I V

N E OL I BE R A L AUTHORITARIANISMS

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chapter 16

Ca pita l , L a bor, a n d State Rethinking the Political Economy of Oil in the Gulf Adam Hanieh

Beginning in the first decades of the twentieth century and through to the aftermath of the Second World War, a fundamental shift took place in the world’s energy regime. From a system of industrial production based primarily on coal, this period marked a transition to oil and gas as the principal fuels underpinning manufacturing, industry, and transport. Oil and gas were considerably more energy efficient than coal, and their portability made them ideal fuels for automobiles and airplanes. New chemical industries based on the production of synthetic and inorganic commodities—plastics, synthetic fibers, detergents, fertilizers, and so forth—shifted away from using coal as a feedstock toward oil and gas, enabling an expansion in production and productivity (indeed, the term “petrochemicals” first emerged at this time to signify this shift).1 Significantly, the Second World War had also demonstrated the superiority of oilpowered militaries—US output of gasoline for military use at the end of the war was about eighteen times greater than at the beginning, and that of aviation gasoline about eighty times greater.2 In 1949, oil and gas had accounted for 53% of all energy used in the United States. By 1960, this was to rise to 72%.3 Not only did these hydrocarbons enable a radical reworking in the nature of production, transport, and war-making, they were also considered “politically more reliable;” coal miners had formed one of the most militant sections of labor unions through the decades before the war.4 Furthermore, the significance of oil and gas extended beyond their utility as fuels and feedstocks. Associated with the sale of these commodities on the world market was the potential accumulation of 1  Spitz (1998); see also Chapman (1991). 2  Baldwin (1959: 10–11). 3  US Energy Information Administration (USEIA): http://www.eia.doe.gov. 4  Painter (1986: 155), see also Mitchell (2011).

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324   adam hanieh e­ normous financial surpluses. The redirection of these surpluses into the developing financial circuits of the new global capitalism—most particularly US treasuries, European and North American financial institutions, and the international debt markets that were to form through the 1970s and 1980s—was a crucially enabling factor in how these circuits grew.5 So-called “petrodollars” continue to be a central pivot of global financial architecture into the contemporary period. Initially, much of the postwar demand for oil and gas was supplied by the United States and Europe. By the mid-1960s, however, the world’s principal supplies of cheap and accessible hydrocarbons were to be found in the Middle East—notably in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, and the smaller Gulf states of Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the seven sheikhdoms that would eventually become the United Arab Emirates. The first oil well was drilled in Bahrain in 1931, with exploration and commercial export massively expanding through the decades following the Second World War. By 1969 the Middle East’s oil production exceeded that of North America and Europe; by the mid-1970s, it would be equivalent to their combined total.6 For this reason, political domination of the Gulf and wider Middle East was an essential element to how the postwar inter­ nation­al states system developed—as numerous authors have analyzed in detail, the emergence of a US-dominated global capitalism was to a great extent premised on Western control of the region.7 Despite the availability of alternative sources of oil in recent years—such as North American shale reserves—the Middle East remains key to the world energy markets, accounting for more than half of proven oil reserves and nearly one-third of oil production, and 47% of proven gas reserves.8 The Middle East’s pivotal position in a hydrocarbon-based global capitalism carries enormous ramifications for the region as a whole, and the Gulf Arab states in particular. In just a few short decades, social relations in the Gulf had undergone a dramatic shift, from an economy based largely on pearling, entrepot trade, and some agriculture, into a core zone of the global political economy. The aim of this chapter is to present a survey of some of the key debates associated with this transformation. To this end, the chapter begins with an overview of an influential perspective known as Rentier State Theory (RST), which has been described as “one of the major contributions of Middle East regional studies to political science.”9 Rentier State theorists foreground the impact of oil rents on Gulf states, drawing causal relationships between these rents and the characteristics of the Gulf ’s political economy. Employing a theoretical understanding of state and society drawn from Weberian sociology, these theorists argue that rents have fostered a pronounced autonomy of the Gulf states from society, allowing the former to dominate and shape all other social processes. After outlining the principal contentions of RST, the chapter turns to a critique of some of its core theoretical assumptions, notably its theorization of state and class. Ultimately, it is argued, a more satisfactory understanding of the political economy of oil 5  Spiro (1999). 6  BP Annual Review http://www.bp.com. 7  Bromley (1991); Klare (2002); Harvey (2003); Stokes (2007). 9  Anderson (1987: 9).

8  el-Katiri et al. (2014: 2).

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Capital, Labor, and State   325 in the Gulf can be found through a return to the categories of class and capitalism, and a deeper appreciation of the ways in which the Gulf is located in the wider dynamics of accumulation in the world market. In this manner, the analysis below emphasizes the necessarily intertwined processes of class and state formation in the Gulf, tracing how this has shaped forms of capital and labor over recent decades. The chapter concludes by assessing the implications of such an approach for emerging avenues of critical scholarly work.

Rentier States and the Gulf Much contemporary work on the political economy of the Gulf builds on the earlier insights of an Iranian economist, Hossein Mahdavy, who wrote a germinal account of the impact of oil on Iran’s economy prior to the revolution of 1970. According to Mahdavy, Iran was an archetypal example of a rentier state, defined as an economy that received “on a regular basis substantial amounts of external rent [which are] rentals paid by foreign individuals, concerns or governments to individuals, concerns or governments of a given country.”10 Describing these external rents as akin to “a free gift of nature or as a grant from foreign sources,”11 Mahdavy argued that they produced a particularly distorted pattern of economic development. Notably, they enabled the Iranian government to embark on large spending programs without having to resort to taxation—a situation that Mahdavy characterized as “fortuitous étatisme.” As a consequence of this particular economic structure—regular capital inflows with little need to extract wealth from alternative industrial or productive activities—Mahdavy posited that rentier states would be inclined to spend on consumption rather than pursue industrial diversification.12 This, in turn, would accentuate the gap between those sectors connected to oil rent and other industries; while “considerable government expenditure (usually in a few cities) [create] an impression of prosperity and growth, the mass of the population may remain in a backward state and the most important factors for long-run growth may receive little or no attention at all.”13 From this standpoint, Mahdavy, and later RST-influenced scholars, highlighted the presence of external rents to explain the social, political, and economic characteristics of resource-rich countries. But while Mahdavy’s analysis warned of the potentially negative impact that rents could have on economic development, he was nonetheless careful 10  Mahdavy (1970: 428). Mahdavy noted that these rents did not necessarily have to be oil-based, mentioning other examples such as payments for pipelines or transportation routes (e.g. the Suez Canal in Egypt). He concluded, however, that oil rent was particularly significant because it was long-term and predictable (1970: 428–429). 11  Mahdavy (1970: 429). 12  Mahdavy (1970: 436); see also Niblock (1980); Abdel–Fadil (1987). 13  Mahdavy (1970: 437).

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326   adam hanieh to avoid determinist readings—emphasizing that governments could pursue alternative paths that prioritized industrialization and support of education and training.14 Subsequent interpretations of RST, however, have tended to adopt a much more deterministic approach to the effects of oil-derived rents on politics, economics, and even the behavior of individual citizens. In an extremely influential account, for example, Beblawi and Luciani (1987) highlight the impact of “no taxation” and state largesse in rentier states on citizen attitudes. They argue that in the absence of any pressure to engage in “productive activities,” citizens tend to lack the spirit of entrepreneurialism and are susceptible to a “rentier mentality” in which the state is expected to provide for their needs in return for their political passivity.15 Similarly, other authors have claimed a causal correlation between reliance on rent and political autocracy.16 Ross, for ex­ample, contends that there are few “pressures for greater accountability” in rentier states due to the absence (or low levels) of taxation, and thus little incentive for groups to challenge established powers.17 In this manner, Ross argues that rentierism promoted three key effects: a “rentier effect,” in which the lack of taxation encouraged political quiescence; a “repression effect,” which meant the state’s resources allowed it to fully develop extensive repressive capacities; and a “modernization effect,” where rents led to uncompetitive and poorly developed economies, and consequently weakened occupational specialization, educational attainment, and urban development.18 Among the wider population, rentier-state theorists have also explored the internal dynamics of citizenship and its relationship to the state. In this regard, an overriding theme is once again the supposed reluctance of the state to create “market incentives for development”—instead, the state utilizes its control of rents to “structure relationships with society vertically through chains of patronage dependence.”19 Because the allocation and circulation of external rents is fully controlled by the Gulf ’s ruling families— and access to these rents forms the primary means of wealth for all social groups— internal competition around rent circuits becomes a major preoccupation of citizens. Various corporate entities, social groups, and individuals, are thus very reluctant “to act economically or politically on [their] own behalf, let alone seriously criticise the state.”20 The state is able to penetrate all spheres of society, using its distributive powers to bind allegiances, incorporate patronage networks, and mute opposition. One result of this system is a pronounced “vertical segmentation,”21 through which various (and evershifting) alliances based on tribal, religious, ethnic, and other interests are divided from one another and seek to gain access to the centrally determined flow of rents—further 14  Rutledge (2014: 5). 15  Beblawi and Luciani (1987). Beblawi and Luciani adopt an ideal-type definition of the rentier ­economy, based on four features: (1) the rent from foreign sources; (2) it is the predominant economic activity (defined by Luciani as 40% of revenue); (3) the majority of the population is involved in the consumption and redistribution of rent rather than its production; and (4) the principal recipient of the rent is the government (1987: 86–88). 16  Skocpol (1982); Ross (2001); Jensen and Wantchekon (2004). 17  Ross (2001: 332). 18  Ross (2001: 332–338). 19  Springborg (2013: 302). 20  Ayubi (1995: 183). 21  Khalaf (1998); Al Naqeeb (2012).

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Capital, Labor, and State   327 undermining the potential for horizontal forms of cooperation. Running through all these accounts is an analytical emphasis on the pronounced autonomy of the state ap­par­atus in the Gulf from wider society. Freed from the constraints of taxation and the need to account for societal pressures—and having differentially incorporated citizens into rent circuits through patterns of vertical segmentation—Gulf monarchies constitute an archetypal “strong state,” with a particularly enhanced capacity “to penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate or use resources in determined ways.”22 As noted above, RST remains a particularly influential approach to understanding the specificities of Gulf social formations—an approach, moreover, that has found theoretical resonance beyond the Middle East (among, for example, studies of mineralrich African states). It has certainly led to some useful insights into the nature of these states, particularly at a comparative level—where different initial institutional arrangements between states, ruling families, and corporatist groups have led to different forms of “path dependency,” shaping a variety of social outcomes.23 The close attention to how Gulf state apparatuses are institutionally structured has produced rich and detailed accounts that valuably assist our understanding of political processes in these states. The theory has, nonetheless, been subject to a variety of critiques. These have included a questioning of its empirical predictions around political quiescence and the presence of rent24; claims that the theory excluded politics and needed to better the­or­ ize the interaction between exogenous rents and domestic sociopolitical variation25; critiques of its ability to account for different state spending policies between the first and second oil booms26; and arguments that RST downplays the political economy of imperialism in the Middle East.27 These and other critiques have spawned numerous subgenres of RST and, indeed, a convincing case can be made that there is no single RST but a variety of theories that have emerged in close association with the movement of the price of oil on the world market (and hence the level of rents accruing to Gulf states).28 Notwithstanding this variation, a core feature of all RST approaches is a particular theoretical conceptualization of the state and class that is drawn from Weberian soci­ ology and political science. Framing this perspective are two basic analytical cat­egor­ ies—the state and “civil society.” Following Weber, the former is defined by its monopoly over the “legitimate use of force” within a given territory,29 and consists of the various political institutions that govern a country. The latter is made up of “institutions autonomous from the state which facilitate orderly economic, political and social activity.”30 In this manner, the Weberian framework posits a strict conceptual division between both categories (often expressed as the separation of “politics” and “economics”)31; the state is

22  Migdal (1988: 5). 23  See, for example, Crystal (1995). 24  Okruhlik (1999). 25  Moore (2004). 26  Maloney (2008). 27  Hanieh (2011). 28  Gray (2011). 29  Weber (1978: 54–55). 30  Norton (2001: x). 31  Weber (1978: 64).

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328   adam hanieh thus granted a wide degree of freedom and latitude to operate “as a public realm sep­ar­ate from the private realm of civil society.”32 It is this assumption of state autonomy—ultimately derived from the “free gift of nature” that oil rents provide—which explains the analytical focus of RST on the institutional configuration of the Gulf state. As with the wider Weberian literature in which it is located, institutions (specifically those of the state) are considered the determinant, a priori, factor driving the characteristics of wider social patterns. As a result, within the rentier framework, categories such as class and capitalism either disappear from view or are considered derivate and subordinate to the policies of the state. The development of capitalism is understood as a consequence of the nature and choices of the state ap­par­ atus (particularly decisions made by the ruling family). It is striking that virtually all of the debate around RST has focused on assessing its predictive and descriptive powers, and has generally avoided a critical examination of its basic theoretical assumptions concerning state and class. This lacuna persists despite the rich and ongoing debate around state theory that exists within the wider political economy literature. Within this literature, numerous scholars have argued that the state, as an institution, is never independent from the social (class) relations that govern the reproduction of any capitalist society. The state is an institutional “form of appearance” of these social relations, which acts to maintain the existing class structure, mediates the conflicts that inevitably appear between and within classes, and allows these relations to reproduce themselves.33 Although the state may appear to us as an independent pol­it­ ical institution, we need to penetrate below this appearance to grasp the state as a social relation, which, in the words of the philosopher Bertell Ollman, constitutes a “set of institutional forms through which a ruling class relates to the rest of society.”34 As a consequence, the relationship that the ruling class holds with the state is actually part of what constitutes it as a class; state and class need to be seen as mutually reinforcing and co-constituted, with the latter providing the conditions of existence for the former.35 An analysis of the state, therefore, must begin with an “examination of the ‘anatomy of bourgeois society,’ that is, an analysis of the specifically capitalist mode of social labour, the

32  Radice (2008: 1157). This view of the sharp separation between state and civil society is encountered within much social science theory, and is often characterized by a decidedly normative edge. The “statebuilding” literature, for example, views successful states as those that wield their autonomy to facilitate markets, the rule of law, and functioning liberal democratic institutions through which individuals (all of whom are said to possess equal rights) are able to express their political choice (World Bank 2012). For scholars concerned with the political economy of development, analysis has focused on the so-called Developmental State—an attempt to explain the impressive growth rates of countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan on the basis of the supposed autonomy of their states (Amsden 1989; Wade 1990). This autonomy is said to enable a balance of contending social interests and well-coordinated government-led policies, prioritizing growth and domestic industrial development. Throughout all this literature, the ideal-type state is viewed as one in which the political and economic spheres are distinct and independent from one another. 33  Davidson (2012). 34  Ollman (2003: 202). 35  Hanieh (2013: 8).

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Capital, Labor, and State   329 appropriation of the surplus product and the resulting laws of reproduction of the whole social formation, which objectively give rise to the particular political form.”36 This perspective offers an insightful alternative to Rentier State Theory and its understanding of the political economy of the Gulf. If the Gulf state is viewed as an institutional form of the class relations that typify Gulf societies, then the challenge becomes one of tracing how capitalist social relations developed and took the particular form that they did in the Gulf (including, of course, the political form). Methodologically, this alternative standpoint redirects analytical attention toward the categories of class and capitalism, which have largely dropped from view within the RST literature’s focus on the state. Important questions that subsequently arise include: who constitutes the cap­ ital­ist class in the Gulf? How did this class originate and how is its accumulation structured? How is the formation of labor connected to the dominance of capital? How does the political form of the Gulf state mediate the relationships of power between labor and capital? How are these relationships located within the wider global political economy as well as regional processes? Obviously oil revenues and the concomitant development of the state will form a central part to answering these and similar questions, but an emphasis on the intertwined processes of class and state formation brings to the fore the relations of power that underlie the political economy of the Gulf.

Capital in the Gulf How then, can the notion of a “capitalist class” be conceptualized with respect to the Gulf states? The first aspect to note is that class formation in the Gulf needs to be located alongside and within the wider development of the world market in the postwar period. Viewed from this perspective, Gulf capitalism is not a self-enclosed space that can be understood simply through features that are considered “internal” to it (such as the use of oil revenues). Rather, Gulf capitalism arose as an integral part of the making of the global political economy. This means that certain tendencies at the heart of the contem­ por­ary world market—including the increasing internationalization of production, the immense growth of financial markets in recent decades, and the rivalries (and shared interests) between different global powers—are very much interiorized within Gulf cap­ italism itself. These factors are important not simply to understanding processes of state and class formation in the Gulf. They are also key to moving beyond the “commodity fetishism” of much RST—a fetishism that attempts to explain patterns of social development through the presence (or absence) of a commodity rather than understanding the significance given to that commodity by the (global) social relations within which it is embedded.37 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore these issues in detail, but 36  Hirsch (1979: 58). 37  See McNally (1981) for a similar argument concerned with the question of “staples theory” in Canadian political economy.

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330   adam hanieh numerous scholars have contributed important work that helps to illuminate the interaction between the Gulf states and accumulation at the global scale.38 Given this context, over the past few decades the Gulf states have witnessed the emergence of large business conglomerates that dominate all economic activities in the region. Typically these conglomerates are structured around holding companies whose subsidiaries span industrial and manufacturing activities, commerce, retail, and finance. They are controlled by influential families (often drawn from the older merchant class) or by members of the ruling families themselves. The origins of these conglomerates are most often linked to the arrival of oil industries and the early urbanization of the Gulf states, including the provision of services to foreign multinationals, the laying of pipelines, and construction of buildings and other infrastructure. In all of these sectors, business opportunities were heavily dependent on the provision of state contracts and other forms of state support (such as joint investments with state-controlled firms or access to cheap land). In this manner, early capital accumulation in the Gulf was closely linked to the emergence of the state itself. In the contemporary period, it is useful to analyze the activities of this class through three interconnected circuits: productive, commercial, and financial.39 The first of these is naturally centered on the hydrocarbon industry and its derivative products. While upstream ownership of oil resources remains overwhelmingly in the hands of the state and ruling families, privately owned conglomerates have become increasingly involved in downstream industries over recent years. These industries include the production of energy-dependent commodities such as steel, aluminum, and cement, as well as petrochemical manufacture. In addition to this, the construction industry—particularly given the Gulf ’s remarkable real estate and infrastructure boom of the last decade— remains a core activity within the productive circuit. Profit-making opportunities in the commercial circuit are largely connected to the possession of rights to import and distribute foreign commodities—automobiles, food stuffs, technology, basic consumer goods, and so forth. In all of the Gulf states, these agency rights form a lucrative source of income for the largest conglomerates. Because agency rights are granted by the state, there is a tight connection between accumulation opportunities in this circuit and proximity to the ruling family. Frequently, business groups control both agency and distribution rights and simultaneously hold ownership stakes in the outlets in which they are sold (such as shopping centers and malls). Each of these sectors is linked through financial markets that redirect capital within and between different corporate groups and economic activities. Nationally owned banks typically incorporate representatives of large conglomerates on their boards and 38  Mitchell (2011); Hanieh (2011); Cowen (2014). One important side to this is the Gulf ’s preeminent role as a market for international arms and military sales, which constitutes another route for petrodollar recycling. From 2009 to 2013, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were among the top five arms importers in the world. Taken together, these two countries alone were responsible for over 40% of all arms sales to the Middle East during this period (Wezeman and Wezeman 2014: 7). 39  This section draws on Hanieh (2011). See this book for a fuller discussion and concrete illustrations of the arguments.

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Capital, Labor, and State   331 amongst their largest shareholders. These are closely linked to state pension funds and other investment authorities, which provide a further mechanism for shifting capital flows originating in the hydrocarbon sector into other circuits of accumulation. Moreover, the last decade has seen the emergence of new financial institutions such as private equity companies, Islamic finance, and other investment firms. As with trad­ ition­al banking structures, a mix of state and private Gulf capital dominates these new forms of finance capital. These three circuits of accumulation intersect most starkly within the real estate sector, and thus help to explain the striking prominence of new malls, towers, and residential blocks that compete to exceed one another in size and extravagance.40 Not only does this expansion of the real estate sector provide a constant stream of work for construction companies, it also reinforces and bolsters retail and commercial activities. This is one of the reasons why the recent real estate boom has been so heavily centered on malls and the marketing of the Gulf as a premiere destination for shopping. Moreover, the real estate boom has been a key destination for financial surpluses, confirming that the Gulf has been no exception to the increasing entanglement of financial and real estate markets within contemporary capitalism.41 Accompanying these processes is a reworking of the Gulf urban space, characterized by privatized and fragmented enclaves that market tourist, financial, residential, and shopping activities to select participants. As Rami Daher has perceptively commented, this neoliberal reimagining of the Arab urban space is centered on building “gated communities with practices of inclusion and exclusion”—locations that deny entry to the vast majority while aiming to provide dreams of “constant play” for local and foreign elites.42 This process is not confined to the Gulf itself; numerous scholars have noted the ways in which the urban development of cities such as Amman, Beirut, and Cairo are in large part following similar trajectories.43 A further characteristic of Gulf capital needs to be noted here—the increasing tendency toward its cross-border expansion. At one level, this internationalization of cap­ ital can be seen within the Gulf itself, partly enabled by the regional integration project embodied in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This includes cross-border Gulf investments in areas such as petrochemicals, construction, and finance; the establishment of subsidiaries in neighboring Gulf states; share ownership on the regional stock markets; and the incorporation of numerous Gulf states within a single conglomerate’s agency rights. Most advanced in this regard are private equity firms, where corporate structures are typically characterized by ownership from a variety of different Gulf investors. This internationalization of Gulf capital within the GCC does not mean the amelioration of national rivalries in the Gulf—indeed, it is a sharply hierarchical process largely dominated by a Saudi–UAE axis—but it does mean that conceptions of state/ class relations in the Gulf need to move beyond nationally centered frames of analysis. Moreover, the internationalization of Gulf capital is also notable throughout the wider Arab world. This feature of the regional scale became increasingly prominent 40  Elsheshtawy (2008); Kanna (2011). 41  Aalbers (2008); Buckley and Hanieh (2014). 42  Daher (2008: 61). 43  Elsheshtawy (2008).

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332   adam hanieh during the first decade of the twenty-first century, with a growing proliferation of crossborder investments by both Gulf conglomerates and state-owned investment firms. According to figures from the World Bank, investments originating in the Gulf reached more than one-third of total foreign investments in the Middle East in 2008, surpassing North America, Europe, and Asia.44 Most of these Gulf-based investments went to Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria.45 Indeed, in these five countries, more than half of total global investments came from the GCC states during the period between 2003 and 2008. These figures reveal an important characteristic of the recent political economy of the Arab world: neoliberal reform has been accompanied by the increasing penetration of Gulf-based capital into national class structures. Emerging from this account of the structure and moments of accumulation of Gulf capital are two important features that challenge the analytical assumptions of Weberian approaches to the Gulf state. The first is that Gulf ruling families—while clearly dom­in­ at­ing state power—should be viewed as the central, organizing core of the Gulf cap­it­al­ist class itself, rather than as simply the locus of political power. There is no strict dividing line between capital and state in this regard. Many individuals from ruling families occupy positions within the state apparatus as well as their own private business interests—or simultaneously act in both “private” and “public” capacities. The avowed autonomy or independence of the Gulf state from class disappears when viewed from this perspective. Second, the capitalist class needs to be seen as broader than simply the ruling fam­ ilies. While the latter may constitute the dominant, central core of capital, there also exists a wider layer of large conglomerates drawn from older merchant families and other newer social groups. These conglomerates—like the ruling families themselves— have formed in close symbiosis with the state. Much of this process is acknowledged by traditional analyses of the Gulf—land grants, provision of agency rights, joint ventures with state-owned conglomerates, and the like—but the key point is to recenter ana­lyt­ic­al primacy on the class relations underpinning capital. The Gulf is not an anomaly within capitalist states internationally, in which a “weak” capitalist class is arrayed against a “strong, independent state.” Rather, the nature of state power in the Gulf is reflective and supportive of a powerful capitalist class—consisting of both ruling fam­ilies and a wider network of large conglomerates.

The Question of Migrant Labor Furthermore, an analytical emphasis on processes of class formation in the Gulf acts to illuminate the centrality of labor migration to the political economy of oil in the region. According to the most recent statistics, the percentage of non-nationals has reached a 44  World Bank (2009: 56).

45  ANIMA (2009: 155).

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Capital, Labor, and State   333 remarkable 48% of the Gulf ’s 49 million-strong total population.46 In the labor force this proportion is even higher—ranging from between 56 to 82% of the employed population in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait, to around 93–94% in Qatar and the UAE.47 Throughout the entire Gulf, 70% of the total employed population is made up of non-nationals48—the largest proportion of migrant workers in any country or region in the world. The vast majority of this migrant labor force—around 88% of all foreign workers—is found in the Gulf ’s private sector.49 Collectively, the GCC is the destination of more migrants than any other region in the Global South, and for this reason many neighboring countries are highly dependent on remittance flows that originate in the Gulf. A distinctive structure has developed to manage the deployment and control of these workers. This includes the notorious kafala system, a work visa arrangement that essentially binds the migrant to a sponsor (known as a kafeel) and prevents them from seeking work elsewhere. This system is not simply a means of disciplining labor; it is also critical to the ways in which Gulf citizenry are incorporated into their societies. Because the right to be a kafeel is provided by the state and becomes a property right of the employer, it creates a situation in which Gulf citizens are delegated the right to control the entry and employment of a migrant. In this manner, the surveillance and control of migrant labor is “subcontracted” by the state to individual citizens and businesses.50 This provides a profitable income source for citizens (through the sale of permits), and also situates Gulf citizenry as an integral part of the state’s disciplining of labor.51 Moreover, competition between citizens over access to kafeel rights helps to generate a further process of vertical segmentation within society, encouraging the profession of loyalty and allegiance to the ruling family.52 The control over migrant labor is further enhanced through laws that prevent migrant workers from organizing collectively and systematically exclude them from the limited political and civil rights enjoyed by citizenry. One important illustration of this is the restriction on movement and residence within the country. Low-paid migrant workers are frequently housed in specially designed labor camps with their movement to and from work organized through employer-provided transportation.53 These kinds of mobility restrictions are also an outcome of economic barriers, with worker accommodation consciously located far away from citizen or tourist areas. At times these restrictions on residence are legally enforced—in 2011, for example, Qatari authorities prohibited male migrant workers (mostly involved in construction) from living in established residential areas.54 Female domestic workers are particularly subject to control over movement, as they typically live with their employer who may bar them from leaving the house. Indeed, one scholar has noted that close to one-half of all domestic 46  GLMM (2014a). 47  GLMM (2014b). 48  GLMM (2014b). 49  GLMM (2014c). This figure does not include the UAE for which figures are unavailable but are likely of a similar magnitude. 50  Longva (1997: 100). 51  Dito (2014). 52  Khalaf (2014: 45–46). 53  HRW (2014: 7). 54  Kovessy (2014).

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334   adam hanieh workers she interviewed in the UAE had never left the houses of their employees unaccompanied.55 Taken together, these processes enable a profound exploitation of labor that includes dangerous and low-paid working conditions, very long hours of work, and the legally sanctioned possibility of arrest and deportation in the case of any labor protest. Minimum wages do not exist in the private sector (where most migrants are found) and huge wage differentials are present between citizen and non-citizen labor—even more pronounced if non-wage benefits are included (such as access to education, health, and housing).56 In some sectors, particularly domestic work, wages are even linked to the national origin of the migrant. This exploitation is accompanied by a heavily racialized discourse that emphasizes the ever-present “threat” that migrants pose to the Gulf.57 In several key ways, this class structure is essential to how Gulf capitalism is able to reproduce itself. It has, for example, directly underpinned the accumulation of the conglomerates described above through the supply of a highly controlled and cheap labor force. Once again, construction and real estate is key in this regard—the vast pro­lif­er­ ation of “mega projects” that sustain the activities of many of these conglomerates depends critically on the supply of migrant labor. Moreover, a highly precarious migrant workforce has enabled the Gulf to deal with numerous economic crises, such as that which occurred following the collapse of the real-estate bubble in Dubai in 2009–2010. By shutting down real-estate projects, slowing the hiring of new workers, and deporting workers back to their home countries, the UAE was able to partially ameliorate the worst aspects of the crisis itself—spatially displacing it onto sending countries dependent on the labor markets of the Gulf.58 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this class structure has acted to block the emergence of any significant indigenous labor movements that could challenge the obduracy of the Gulf mon­arch­ ies and state system—indeed, this is one of the key reasons why the Gulf ’s labor structure developed in the way that it did.59 In contrast, therefore, to the causal link that some versions of RST draw between the lack of taxation and pressures for political change, this perspective points to the centrality of class relations in understanding the nature of autocracy in the Gulf. All of these observations highlight the importance of locating migrant labor at the core of an understanding of the political economy of oil in the Gulf. The development of the Gulf ’s economies cannot be adequately theorized through looking solely at the deployment of oil revenues, the internecine rivalries of royal families, or the institutional configurations and policies of the Gulf state. Both state and capital in the Gulf fully depend on the presence of a transient, precarious, and highly exploitable class of migrant workers drawn from numerous states across the globe. Their occluded status in 55  Gambard (2009: 65). 56  The exception to this trend is found in sectors such as high-level management, banking, and finance, where a different type of migrant worker can be found (usually from Western countries). 57  Buckley (2014). 58  Hanieh (2011). 59  Vitalis (2007); Hanieh (2011); AlShehabi (2014).

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Capital, Labor, and State   335 the literature is symptomatic of the ways in which arrangements of power are naturalized or obfuscated within much academic work. This is significant not simply for relations of power in the Gulf itself; the trajectory of global capitalism would likely have taken a radically different path if the Gulf had not rested on the exploitation of a tem­por­ ary, transit work force.

Conclusion: Emerging Questions and Future Paths The arguments made above are naturally not meant to deny the criticality of oil revenues to the ways in which Gulf capitalism reproduces itself. Petrodollars have both underpinned the development of capital and state in the Gulf, and permitted the emergence of a labor market that depends so crucially on migrant workers. The point, however, is to refocus attention on Gulf capitalism as a totality—where institutions are seen as social forms that reflect and mediate relations of class power. Seen in this light, political economy accounts of the Gulf can avoid a type of “commodity fetishism,” which posits determinate and causal conclusions simply from the availability of oil rents as such, toward an analysis much more concerned with tracing how forms of class and state power in the Gulf developed through a mutually reinforcing process fully embedded in the development of the global economy. From this perspective, the precipitous drop in the global price of oil in the latter part of 2014 raises an important series of issues for understanding the political economy of the Gulf. Numerous observers have proffered competing explanations for this price decline—ranging from the Gulf ’s interest in driving high-cost US producers of shale oil out of the market, oversupply and decreased global demand stemming from economic weaknesses in Asia, and US–Saudi collusion to undermine geopolitical rivals such as Iran, Venezuela, and Russia.60 Regardless of the precise cause, it is certain that the Gulf will continue to be a pivotal focus of global fault lines—particularly the political and economic rivalries between Asia and the United States. For this reason, there is an important need for scholars to explore more deeply the ways in which these rivalries (and the shared interests of global powers) are embodied in political economy relations between the Gulf and different zones of the world market. This includes questions such as the eastward shifting patterns of the Gulf ’s trade and financial linkages, cross-border ownership and investment flows in oil and other industries, the growth of the Gulf as a key headquarters of global Islamic financial institutions and of new Islamic finance instruments, the impending opening of several Gulf stock markets to foreign investment, the relationship between militarism, petrodollar recycling, and international arms sales, and the prominence of emerging global industries in Gulf development 60  Fattouh (2014).

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336   adam hanieh strategies (such as medical tourism, education cities, sustainable energy, and integrated global logistics zones). All of these questions are intimately connected to the nature of class and state formation discussed above. The oil price drop has also brought into focus the ongoing viability of the Gulf ’s ubi­ qui­tous “mega-projects”—new cities, airports, logistics zones, hydrocarbon projects, and so forth—which continued to expand even in the wake of the 2008–2009 global crisis. Over the last six years, these projects have formed important investment op­por­ tun­ities for both Gulf and international companies in the context of ongoing global stagnation. A January 2015 announcement that Shell was not moving ahead with a massive $6.4 billion petrochemical project in Qatar—following similar multi-billion-dollar cancellations by Qatar Petroleum in September 2014 and the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) in October 2014—illustrates the potential impact of the oil price slump on the Gulf ’s continued economic expansion.61 Projects such as these provide numerous lucrative contract opportunities for a range of Gulf-based companies, and any widespread and prolonged disruption will likely pose significant problems for the conglomerates discussed above. Petrodollar surpluses are important not solely for the business opportunities they present. As this chapter has noted, hydrocarbon revenues have enabled Gulf states to bind citizen populations to ruling families through the use of generous subsidies around food, energy, housing, and other social services. In the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings—and the outbreak of protests in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Kuwait— an increase in this state spending was an important mechanism throughout which Gulf states attempted to insulate themselves from the wider regional uprisings. Although the so-called “break-even” price of oil remains relatively low in the Gulf compared to other global oil producers (notably Venezuela, Russia, and Iran), there is wide regional variation found throughout the Gulf—estimated to range from $50–60/barrel in Qatar and Kuwait to just under $100/barrel in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.62 Given the significance of the latter two countries to the GCC as a whole, a prolonged downturn in the price of oil could have a substantial impact on social stability in the Gulf over the long-term.63 Budget sustainability is closely connected to the ongoing reality of social exclusion and poverty among some sections of Gulf citizenry. In Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, rising levels of youth unemployment (around 30% in both countries) raises the possibility of social protest following any significant reduction in social spending. Given the structural importance of migrant labor to the Gulf it is very difficult for governments to substantially address these unemployment levels, despite the professed aim to shift reliance away from migrants toward a citizen-based labor force. These issues are particularly accentuated by the demographic profile of Gulf populations—over half of the region is

61  Saadi (2015). 62  Aissaoui (2013: 2); Alkhabeer (2014: 8). 63  It should be noted, however, that the surpluses accumulated by these states over recent years will likely allow them to deal with these budgetary pressures in the short-term.

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Capital, Labor, and State   337 aged under 25.64 Levels of unemployment and poverty, moreover, frequently correlate with religious and sectarian differences—the political implications of this are significant in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. In this context, any long-term drop in the oil price accompanied by further downturn in global economic conditions means that the question of migrant labor remains essential. Previous crises have pointed to the ways in which migrants in the Gulf have borne the most severe impact of these moments, and the likelihood of increased repression of labor is immanent in any attempt by Gulf states to resolve a potential crisis. There have been several recent precursors of this, including the mass deportation of over 250,000 migrants from Saudi Arabia between November 2013 and January 2014, equivalent to nearly 3% of the country’s migrant workforce.65 At least three people died in the wake of the expulsions, with tens of thousands of migrants relocated to makeshift and poorly equipped detention camps.66 At the same time, migrant workers across the Gulf have engaged in numerous strikes and other forms of action despite the heavy structural barriers noted above.67 Alongside these labor actions, new examples of international solidarity have emerged with migrants in the Gulf.68 All of these dimensions of the Gulf political economy bear deeply on our understanding of the wider Middle East. The Gulf ’s dominant position in the regional political situation—as well as the growing influence of Gulf businesses in key Arab economic sectors such as real estate, finance, construction, retail, and agribusiness—is a striking feature of the contemporary moment. For this reason, there is an urgent need to position the Gulf as a core component of the study of political economy in the Middle East. Processes of class and state formation in the Gulf have significant implications not just for the Gulf region—they will continue to decisively shape the future trajectory of the Arab world for many years to come.

Bibliography Abdel-Fadil, M. (1987). “The Macro-Behaviour of Oil Rentier States in the Arab Region,” in Beblawi and Luciani (eds). The Rentier State: Nation, State and the Integration of the Arab World (London: Croom Helm). Aissaoui, Ali (2013). “Modeling OPEC Fiscal Break-even Oil Prices: New Findings and Policy Insights,” APICORP Research Economic Commentary, Vol. 8 No 9–10, September–October. Alkhabeer Capital (2014). “GCC Budget Analysis,” August, http://jeg.org.sa/data/modules/ contents/uploads/infopdf/2472.pdf AlShehabi, Omar (2014). “Histories of Migration to the Gulf,” in Khalaf, AlShehabi, and Hanieh (eds). Transit States: Labour, Migration and Citizenship in the Gulf (London: Pluto Press). 64  Malecki and Ewers (2007). 65  Guardian (2014). 66  HRW (2013). 67  This has included a four-day strike of thousands of construction workers in the UAE in 2013, which, despite the arrest and deportation of strike leaders, was reported to have won a 20% increase in wages. 68  Hanieh (2014).

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338   adam hanieh Amsden, Alice (1989). Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Anderson, L. (1987). “The State in the Middle East and North Africa,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 20, No. 1 (October). ANIMA (2009). “Foreign Direct Investment Towards the Med Countries in 2008: Facing the Crisis,” Anima Investment Network Study, No. 3, April 20. Ayubi, N. H. (1995). Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris). Baldwin, H. (1959). “Oil Strategy in World War II,” American Petroleum Institute Quarterly— Centennial Issue (Washington DC: American Petroleum Institute). Beblawi, H. and G. Luciani (eds) (1987). The Rentier State: Nation, State and the Integration of the Arab World (London: Croom Helm). Bellamy-Foster, John (2003). “The New Age of Imperialism,” Monthly Review 55,3. BP (2007). “Annual Statistical Review.” http://www.bp.com Bromley, Simon (1991). American Hegemony and World Oil (Cambridge: Polity Press). Buckley, Michelle (2014). “Construction Work, Bachelor Builders and the Intersectional Politics of Urbanisation in Dubai” in Khalaf, AlShehabi, and Hanieh (eds). Transit States: Labour, Migration and Citizenship in the Gulf (London: Pluto Press). Buckley, Michelle and Adam Hanieh (2014). “Diversification by Urbanisation: Tracing the Property–Finance Nexus in Dubai and the Gulf,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38,1: 155–175. Chapman, Keith (1991). The International Petrochemical Industry: Evolution and Location (Oxford: Blackwell). Crystal, J. (1995). Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Glasgow: Cambridge University Press). Daher, Rami (2008). “Amman: Disguised Genealogy and Recent Urban Restructuring and Neoliberal Threats,” in Elsheshtawy, The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development (Routledge: New York). Davidson, Neil (2012). “The Necessity of Multiple Nation-States for Capital,” Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 24,1. Dito, Mohammed (2014). “Kafala: Foundations of Migrant Exclusion in GCC Labour Markets,” in Khalaf, AlShehabi, and Hanieh (eds). Transit States: Labour, Migration and Citizenship in the Gulf (London: Pluto Press). Elsheshtawy, Yasser (2008). The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development (Routledge: New York). Fattouh, Bassem (2014). “The US Tight Oil Revolution and its Impact on the Gulf Cooperation Countries—Beyond the Supply Shock,” The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, October 13 http://www.oxfordenergy.org/2014/10/the-us-tight-oil-revolution-and-its-impacton-the-gulf-cooperation-countries-beyond-the-supply-shock/ Gambard, M. (2009). “Advocating for Sri Lankan Migrant Workers,” Critical Asian Studies 41,1. Guardian (2014). “Saudi Arabia Says it Has Deported More Than 250,000 Foreign Migrant workers,”, January 22 www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/22/saudi-arabia-deportedforeign-migrant-workers Gulf Labour Markets and Migration (GLMM) (2014a). “GCC Total Population and Percentage of Nationals and Non-nationals in GCC Countries Latest National Statistics 2010–2014,”

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Capital, Labor, and State   339 http://gulfmigration.eu/gcc-total-population-and-percentage-of-nationalsand-non-nationals-in-gcc-countries-latest-national-statistics-2010-2014/ Gulf Labour Markets and Migration (GLMM) (2014b). “Percentage of Nationals and nonNationals in Employed Population in GCC Countries” http://gulfmigration.eu/ percentage-of-nationals-and-non-nationals-in-employed-population-in-gcc-countriesnational-statistics-latest-year-or-period-available/ Gulf Labour Markets and Migration (GLMM) (2014c). “Percentage of Non-Nationals in Government Sector and in Private and Other Sectors” http://gulfmigration.eu/ percentage-of-non-nationals-in-govpercentage-of-non-nationals-in-government-sectorand-in-private-and-other-sectors-in-gcc-countries-national-statistics-latest-year-orperiod-available Gray, Matthew (2011). “A Theory of ‘Late Rentierism’ in the Arab States of the Gulf,” Occasional paper no.7 Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/558291/CIRSOccasionalPaper7MatthewGray2011.pdf?sequence=5 Hanieh, Adam (2011). Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Hanieh, Adam (2013). Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (Chicago: Haymarket Books). Hanieh, Adam (2014). “Migrant Rights in the Gulf: Charting the Way Forward,” in Khalaf, AlShehabi, Adam Hanieh (eds). Transit States: Labour, Migration and Citizenship in the Gulf (London: Pluto Press). Harvey, David (2003). The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hirsch, Joachim (1979). “The State Apparatus and Social Reproduction: Elements of a Theory of the Bourgeois State,” in Holloway and Picciotto (eds). State and Capital: A Marxist Debate (London: Edward Arnold). Human Rights Watch (HRW) (2013). “Saudi Arabia: Labor Crackdown Violence,” December 1. www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/30/saudi-arabia-labor-crackdown—violence Human Rights Watch (HRW) (2014). “I Already Bought You”: Abuse and Exploitation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the United Arab Emirates, October 23 http://www.hrw. org/node/129798 Jensen, N. and L.  Wantchekon (2004). “Resource Wealth and Political Regimes in Africa,” Comparative Political Studies 37,7: 816–841. Kanna, Ahmed (2011). Dubai, the City as Corporation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). el-Katiri, L., B. Fattouh, and R. Mallinson (2014). “The Arab Uprisings and MENA Political Instability—Implications for Oil & Gas Markets,” OIES MEP 8. Khalaf, Abdulhadi (1998). “Contentious Politics in Bahrain: From Ethnic to National and Vice Versa,” the Fourth Nordic Conference on Middle Eastern Studies. http://org.uib.no/smi/ pao/khalaf.html Khalaf, Abdulhadi (2014). “The Politics of Migration”, in Khalaf, AlShehabi, Adam Hanieh (eds). Transit States: Labour, Migration and Citizenship in the Gulf (London: Pluto Press). Klare, Michael (2002). Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Owl Books). Kovessy, Peter (2014). “Crackdown on partitioned homes continues with amended Qatar law,” Doha News http://dohanews.co/crackdown-partitioned-homes-continues-new-law/

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340   adam hanieh Longva, A. N. (1997). Walls Built on Sand: Migration, Exclusion and Society in Kuwait (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Mahdavy, H. (1970). “The Patterns and Problems of Economic Development in Rentier States: The Case of Iran,” in Cook (ed.). Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press). Malecki, E. and M. Ewers (2007). “Labor Migration to World cities: with a Research Agenda for the Arab Gulf,” Progress in Human Geography 31,4: 467–484. McNally, David (1981). “Staples Theory as Commodity Fetishism: Marx, Innis and Canadian Political Economy,” Studies in Political Economy 6,Autumn: 35–64. Maloney, Suzanne (2008). “The Gulf ’s Renewed Oil Wealth: Getting it Right This Time?” Survival 50,6: 129–150. Mitchell, Timothy (2011). Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London and New York: Verso). Moore, Pete W. (2004). “Late Development and Rents in the Arab World,” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2 http://www. allacademic.com/meta/p61099_index.html al-Naqeeb, K. (2012). Society and State in the Gulf and Arab Peninsula: A Different Perspective (London: Routledge). Niblock, T. (1980). Dilemmas of Non-Oil Economic Development in the Middle East (London: Arab Research Center). Norton, Augustus Richard (2001). Civil Society in the Middle East, vol. 2, Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East Series (Leiden: Brill). Okruhlik, G. (1999). “Rentier Wealth, Unruly Law, and the Rise of Opposition: the Political Economy of Oil States,” Comparative Politics 31,3: 295–315. Ollman, Bertell (2003). Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press). Painter, David (1986). Oil and the American Century: The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Oil Policy, 1941–1954 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press). Radice, Hugo (2008). “The Developmental State under Global Neoliberalism,” Third World Quarterly 29,6: 1153–1174. Ross, M. (2001). “Does Oil Hinder Democracy?” World Politics 53,3(April): 325–361. Rutledge, Emilie (2014). “The Rentier State/Resource Curse Narrative and the State of the Arabian Gulf,” MPRA Paper No. 59501 http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/59501/ Saadi, Dania (2015). “Qatar Petroleum and Shell Pull Out of $6.4bn Al Karaana Project as Oil Price Slides,” The National, January 15 http://www.thenational.ae/business/energy/ qatar-petroleum-and-shell-pull-out-of-64bn-al-karaana-project-as-oil-price-slides Skocpol, T. (1982). “Rentier State and Shiʾa Islam in the Iranian Revolution,” Theory and Society 11,3: 46–82. Spiro, D. (1999). The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Spitz, Peter (1988). Petrochemicals: The Rise of an Industry (New York: John Wiley). Springborg, R. (2013). ‘GCC Countries as “Rentier States” Revisited,’ The Middle East Journal 67,2: 301–309. Stokes, Doug (2007). “Blood for Oil? Global Capital, Counter-Insurgency and the Dual Logic of American Energy Security,” Review of International Studies 33,2: 245–264. Vitalis, Robert (2007). America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press).

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Capital, Labor, and State   341 Wade, Robert (1990). Governing the Market (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Weber, Max (1978). Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press). Wezeman, Siemon and Pieter Wezeman (2014). “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2013”. SIPRI Factsheet March http://books.sipri.org/files/FS/SIPRIFS1403.pdf World Bank (2012). Strengthening Governance: Tackling Corruption. The World Bank Group’s Updated Strategy and Implementation Plan (Washington DC: The World Bank).

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chapter 17

M edi a as M ethod i n th e Age of R evolu tion Statism and Digital Contestation Adel Iskandar

The first ever broadcast of the British Empire Radio’s Arabic service on January 3, 1938 featured a story about a young Palestinian living under the British Mandate being shot dead by an imperial officer. During the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Qatari-funded Al-Jazeera1 broadcast critical coverage of the military operation and its hefty civilian cost from studios in Doha that are just 25 miles away from the US military’s Centcom (Al-Udeid Air Base), the functional headquarters from where all bombardments of the country were orchestrated and executed. In 2010, antigovernment protesters used Silicon Valley-based social media platforms to reach, entice, and mobilize communities to rise up against their governments in Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain.2 In 2020, Iraqi youth rising up against their government and its proxy militias toy with gender roles— women donning moustaches and men wearing hijabs—online and in the square to sat­ ir­ize and ridicule influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s call to avoid gender mixing in the sit-in. In each of these seemingly absurd and peculiar circumstances, the mediation of power, politics, and identity is incomprehensible without recognizing the importance of 1  For more information about the history and inception of Al-Jazeera, see el-Nawawy and Iskandar (2003). Refer to Zayani’s (2019) edited volume and Iskandar (2006) for additional analyses of the network’s controversial politics, motivations, and coverage of conflicts. To explore Al-Jazeera’s construction of an imaginary audience in the region, see Matthews and Al-Habsi (2018) study on the channel’s approach to newsworthiness. 2  So much has been noted and researched about the role that technology firms and their platforms have played in the organization and capacity building stages of the Arab uprisings that commenced in 2010 and 2011 in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and beyond. Beyond the technologically deterministic argument that Facebook precipitated the revolution, some of the extensive research that highlights this dynamic include Aslan Ozgul (2019), el-Nawawy and Khamis (2013), Aouragh (2012), Bebawi and Bossio (2014), and Hudson, Iskandar and Kirk (2016).

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   343 unpacking the role that media play in contemporary histories of the Middle East and North Africa. This chapter sets out to articulate the ways in which the study of media in contemporary regional history is critical to our understanding of the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural transformations that have unfolded over the past century. The chapter argues that when we use media analyses as a methodological tool, not unlike other multidisciplinary approaches, we are able to glean far more about how history itself is articulated, represented, and contested. Through both a political economic critique of the media and using critical cultural studies, we can produce substantial understandings of the colonial legacies, perennial revolutions, and neoliberal authoritarianism.

Historicizing Mediation The circumstances and conditions that inform media institutions and practices in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) today are deeply informed by the social and economic transformations as well as the political convulsions that transpired in the last century of the region’s history. For this reason, to characterize the dynamics at play in the contemporary moment, a thematic historicization is necessary. This section argues that the historical circumstances that precipitated our existing models of mediation in the region reflect three prevailing themes—the persistent structure of colonial legacies, the reimagining of revolutionary discourse, and the entanglement of capital with authoritarianism.

Colonial Legacies The colonial state in the Middle East and North Africa was governed both militarily and ideologically using integrated communication networks. In addition to infiltration of the local print journalism in the post-Ottoman period, the earliest broadcast networks, in the form of terrestrial radio in the region, were launched by colonial powers to stake their claims to territories in the region and to propagandize to the local populations in their languages. The first Arabic-language radio broadcast to the region was courtesy of the Italian government’s Radio Bari. With the ambition of reaching listeners in the Arabic-speaking countries to advocate for Fascist Italy’s commitment to their wellbeing, the content was geared to undermine the British and French presence in the region prior to the eruption of the Second World War.3 Shortly thereafter, the newly 3  The launch of Radio Bari’s Arabic-language broadcasting and how it reflected Fascist Italy’s ambitions in the Middle East are best reviewed by Arielli (2010).

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344   adel iskandar minted British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) initial World Service, then explicitly named “Empire Radio” as well as French Radio-East began their first Arabic-language programming to cement the UK’s and France’s control over the territories they both held in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region following Sykes-Picot.4 They both had the explicit objective of consolidating the power of both countries in the region and to counter the anti-British and anti-French content generated by Radio Bari and other competing political forces vying for influence on local populations, and control over their territories.5 The Second World War heralded the magnification and outright transformation of media competition into communication wars. With so much at stake and the MENA region becoming a war zone between the Allies and the Axis, local communities and media entities became embroiled in the rivalries with various colonial powers and their adversaries as they invested in both infrastructure and programming on the airwaves and in print journalism. Local populations were being promised improved conditions and comparative freedoms for committing their support to one power or another. Long after the end of colonial presence in the region, imperial influence continues to exist in multiple forms. One of these is the perpetual impact of Western state propaganda instruments, now rebranded as public diplomacy. The United States’ Voice of America (VOA), a long-time extension of the government’s outreach to global publics, was reconfigured post-September 11 and relaunched in the form a predominantly youth-oriented top pop music hit station with different streams for each region of the Middle East and North Africa. The so-called “battle for the hearts and minds” of audiences in the region continued unabated with the launch of the single most costly and most ambitious US government media outreach project in the form of Arabic satellite television station Al-Hurra in 2004.6 It was an attempt to improve public opinion about the US in the eyes of Middle East and North African publics and to advocate for the country’s continued influence in the region. With the same ends, the US government continued to invest in cultural capital—from basketball tournaments and musical concerts to women’s rights campaigns and comedy tours—to advocate for itself across the region. This outsourcing and privatization of public diplomacy has become the contemporary norm in imperial influence through the appropriation of cultural production as a tool for outreach and persuasion. Furthermore, by hybridizing and amalgamating cultural content from both the region and the US, these efforts attempt to blur the lines

4  A concise review of international broadcasting across the region during this period and beyond is offered by Boyd (1976). 5  For a detailed account Fascist Italy’s campaign to reach audiences in the region during the interwar period and their competition from British and French content productions, see Marzano (2012) 6  Much has been published about the US government’s broadcasting outreach to the Middle East and North Africa, including the most contemporary iterations of these efforts in the form of satellite television station Al-Hurra and entertainment-based Radio Sawa. For more information on these, see Douglas and Neal (2013) and Seib (2016).

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   345 between the two, culminating in public acceptance of American society, culture, pol­it­ ics, and in the Middle East and North Africa.7 In a similar vein, France continues to wield considerable influence in the media spaces of its former colonies in the Maghreb region. With the launch of France 24 Arabic, the French national broadcaster’s satellite channel dedicated to Arabic-speaking audiences worldwide, advocates for the state and its foreign policy toward the MENA region with considerable audience reach and impact. Similarly, in 2008, the Foreign Office of the British government launched BBC Arabic Television on satellite to further advocate on behalf of the government and extend regional influence among Arabicspeaking audiences. With the increasing involvement of Russian and Chinese governments in the MENA, we saw the subsequent launches of RT Arabic (Rusiya Al-Yawm TV) in 2007 and CGTN Arabic (China Global Television Network) in 2009. As opposed to their imperial precursors, contemporary broadcasting outlets from former colonial power centers have now been reimagined and rebranded as “objective” media entities with greater credibility than national and transnational regional equivalents due to their perceived disentanglement from the intricate local politics and rivalries. With employees from across the region’s journalistic corps, they appeal to authenticity while implying editorial distance from the centers of power, garnering large audiences and high marks for credibility across the Middle East and North Africa. Besides casting them as innocent vis-à-vis the conflicts in the region, this view further underplays the political and economic interests of Britain, France, and the United States, and the extent to which their media enterprises in MENA are informed by their ambitions. In addition to the production of original media content for political ends, Western countries have also invested substantially in the development of local media infrastructure within MENA states with the stated objective of building capacities but with the overarching goal of strengthening their political hand domestically through patronage. This includes providing resources for transmitters, training for technical staff, workshops for journalists and reporters, and numerous other activities. In countries where the local government is at political odds with the funding nation, the tendency is for such media investments to be channeled toward the privatization of the local media sector to serve as an instrument for political opposition. Nevertheless, unlike the colonial period, mediated influence and imperial ambitions today involve much discursive subtle­ty and the often-convincing veneer of benevolent support for local aspirations. Furthermore, major world powers, particularly the United States, are considerably at an advantage in the regions’ media sector with the outsized influence of US-based digital media corporations such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others. With tens of millions of daily users across MENA, these companies not only have access to the personal information and content production of these users but also have the ability to authorize or ban it in accordance with company policies, US laws, and domestic pro­hib­ itions. This means that much of the digital sovereignty is concentrated in the US and 7  For a discussion of the cultural discourses employed by US government public diplomacy efforts to the Middle East, see Iskandar (2020).

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346   adel iskandar other Western countries. While there is growing competition from other global powers such as Russia and China—with one notable example being TikTok, the immensely popular video-sharing social media application produced by Chinese company ByteDance—the lopsided impact of American internet companies remains the status quo. Furthermore, Western cyber-security companies are also the most sophisticated at providing tools for internet surveillance to allied regional governments to support their stability in the face of any public opposition or dissent. The synergistic interests between the US government and some regional governments such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar mean that their oil- and gas-rich economies have sufficient sovereign wealth to invest in American digital companies in Silicon Valley. Conversely, governments that are at odds with the United States, such as Iran, regularly obstruct the use of these platforms by their citizens on the account that they are being weaponized to foment dissent and destabilize their countries. Hence, while the media sectors and infrastructures have transformed considerably, the battle for public opinion in the MENA region continues unabated with competition between states often privileging the hegemonic powers of former colonial architecture. What was once the dominion of government officials has since been outsourced to corporations. In the wake of these transformations, the model for both pol­it­ ical governance and media that pervades the region is now both neoliberal and authoritarian (with very few exceptions).

Perennial Revolution Throughout the colonial periods in the MENA region, challenges to occupation were omnipresent but often lacked the infrastructure to produce and disseminate resistance to large segments of the population. The gradual waning of colonial presence and influence was due to confrontations with emancipatory movements and the demise of the colonizer’s capacities to control empires. Particularly following the Second World War, this significantly shifted the balance of power across the region, creating an opening for revolutionary counter narratives. This was the first major wave of anticolonial uprising. By the end of the 1960s, more countries in the region had transitioned toward some modicum of self-determination and self-governance. This period was characterized by the rise of anticolonial political sentiment and capacity to confront colonial infrastructures across the region was at an all-time high. Whether in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Sudan, or Iraq, and Iran to name a few, the colonial legacies faced substantial challenges from a mobilized intelligentsia in solidarity with sovereignty movements with massive popular reach across most locales. Socialist revolutionary and loyal royalist ideologies split the spoils of postcolonial governance in the region as both approaches articulated and propa­gated a revolutionary anti- or postcolonial nationalist liberationist discourse. Whether in the form of armed struggle against the residual influence of French, British, and Italian colonizers (and their local functionaries) or the articulation of nationalist independence discourses, the shifting systems of governance across the region

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   347 ­ recipitated the reconstitution of politics along various iterations and manifestations of p revolutionary discourse. Such revolutionary discourses became a recognizable feature of a newly reimagined and burgeoning communication infrastructure. Some states in the region—including Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Iran—commenced their respective political sovereignty projects with the instrumentalization of anticolonial media. Whether through nationalist or pan-nationalist ideological stances, their adversarial disposition toward former colonies and their continued influence in the region were of considerable appeal to their constituencies and publics. A glaring example of this is Egypt’s remarkably influential pan-Arab radio station Sawt al- ʿArab (Voice of the Arabs), which dominated the airwaves until the 1967 war.8 By fomenting anticolonial resistance and Arab nationalism, these broadcasts were seen as considerably revolutionary against a backdrop of Western-dominated radio frequencies.9 For some of the newly independent states, their fragility necessitated the construction of a nationalist discourse and popular agenda to consecrate their identities. Some of these countries saw the encroachment of revolutionary politics sweeping the region through Nasserism, Arab nationalism, Baathism, socialism, and Islamism as outright threats to their territorial nationalism and perhaps even the integrity of their states. Over the span of decades, with the complete consolidation of the media in the hands of the state, much of these counter-hegemonic revolutionary discourses have either waned or become institutionalized into the national identity.10 However, for many citizens of countries that espouse such political ideologies—such as Baathism in Iraq and Syria or Islamism in Iran—both the conviction and appeal have dissipated as the pol­it­ical landscapes change but leaderships remain stagnant. What was once nimble idealistic revolutionary fervor, such as the early days of Qaddafi’s Libyan Jamahiriya, morphed into a bureaucratic state that suppressed opposition and undermined rights in the name of these ideals. By the time the Arab uprisings erupted in 2010 and 2011 in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere, the revolutionary movements were themselves confronting the once self-described revolutionary states. Local and regional movements calling for freedom, social justice, and an end to corruption, state oppression, and neo­ liberal­ism spread from one country to the next.11 Each with its own nuances, local 8  See Boyd (1975) for the sociopolitical history of Sawt al-Arab during this phase of Egyptian broadcasting and its impact in fomenting anticolonial and revolutionary narratives throughout the Arab world. 9  Abdelrahman (2002) has produced some of the most extensive accounts of the history of 1960s and 1970s pan-Arabist broadcasting with reflections on the politicization of revolutionary narratives and what she describes as the “social responsibility” imperative for media at the time. 10  Cherkaoui (2017) situates conflict and war at the center of the competition between media practice in the Middle East and the West with CNN and Al-Jazeera serving as a backdrop. He also tackles the journalistic mandates of these networks and how they frame one another. 11  See Hudson, Iskandar, and Kirk (2016) for a collection of essays addressing the run up to the Arab uprisings, the media and digital build-up to the protests, and how the ground was prepared for confrontations between the state and its domestic subjects as the latter demanded rights, freedom, justice, and economic betterment.

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348   adel iskandar dynamics, political ecology, and sociocultural particularities, the revolutionary movements were determined to confront the entrenched state media institutions that had a near-complete monopoly on the communication environment in each country.12 In just under a decade, these revolutionary movements have changed some aspects of the pol­it­ ical landscape in their respective countries, but also precipitated a retrenchment of an even more muscular centralized state media apparatus. This has forced many of the youth-driven revolutionary movements to either cease to exist and regroup outside their home countries, or to coordinate on digital platforms and utilize social media as their means of propagating their messages.13 This has also left them vulnerable to opportunistic co-option by other countries whose interests are in politically destabilizing their states. Hence, almost a decade since the Arab uprisings, which rose against the repressive state apparatus, the revolutionary movements are often heavily reliant on the support of either other repressive regional states or global powers with less than benevolent ambitions.

Neoliberal Authoritarianism In countries such as Syria, Egypt, Turkey and Bahrain, the state’s control of the media has become a matter of existential importance, leading to the arrest, sentencing, torture, and exiling of journalists. Most states have responded to criticism regarding their media control by justifying the restrictions on the grounds of protecting national security. Yet, the most compelling structural maneuver is the deregulation of their media sector to allow loyalist and government-aligned investors and entrepreneurs to own and run networks, channels, and companies. This sleight of hand ensures the government appears firewalled from the media while at the same time outsourcing its state propaganda to these channels, networks and sites.14 With almost a thousand different Arabic satellite stations broadcasting across the region reflecting seemingly every identity, nationality, religious denomination, entertainment taste, and aesthetic, the neoliberal authoritarian media model that currently exists across the region ensures that each of these networks reflects, implicitly or explicitly, the perspectives espoused by the government of the country from which it is broadcasting. For instance, Al-Jazeera’s political discourse is perfectly harmonized with the policies of the government of Qatar,15 its host nation and primary benefactor. Similarly, 12  For a broad engagement with the various (and often conflicting) accounts of the uprisings in the region, see Iskandar and Haddad (2013). Bebawi and Bossio (2014) offer greater focus on the social media components of journalistic practice around the uprisings. 13  Wheeler (2017) tackles the role that digital innovation and cyberactivism played in shifting circumstances around authoritarianism in the Arab uprisings. 14  Sakr (2002). 15  See Iskandar (2006) for an examination of Al-Jazeera’s approach to coverage that highlights the contradictory relationship toward the Qatari government by debunking the view that the large network constitutes an alternative medium.

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   349 Al-Arabiya reflects the political motives and agendas of Saudi Arabia, home to the station’s owners. The same is true for Beirut-based pro-Syrian Al-Mayadeen as well as Egypt’s state-aligned private channels CBC, Al-Nahar, dmc, ONTV and Sada El-Balad. Dozens of other transnational channels broadcasting out of the Dubai Production City in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have their loyalties synchronized perfectly with their respective government-aligned ownership. Turkey’s ruling AK Party of Recep Tayyib Erdoğan has consolidated complete media control of its one entirely privately owned media sector, not through nationalization, but rather by rendering these pol­it­ ical­ly and ideologically compliant or at best loyalist.16 Throughout the past thirty-five years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has, at various stages, experimented with the pri­vat­ iza­tion of its once entirely centralized media system through the licensing of media companies loyal to the regime. Whether commencing with a predominantly state-run media structure and grad­ ual­ly privatizing,17 or gradually reining in a once-boisterous private media, the outcomes have all too frequently been the same. Today the media configuration most observable across MENA allows for a considerable increase in the quantity and variety of sociocultural offerings in all programming. The arguments in favor of privatization and deregulation of media sectors globally, which often lead to the consolidation of such industries into monopolies, have often been anchored and justified on the premise that this culminates in greater diversity in content and programming.18 With convergence and monopolization in the media sector, powerful companies are able to produce greater content volume through a growing number of platforms, channels, and outlets. This explains the remarkably large and seemingly wide-ranging productions from such companies as Disney, TimeWarner, Newscorp, and Comcast which are responsible for the lion’s share of audio-visual content produced from the United States to global audiences.19 Similarly, the neoliberal system of media governance that commenced in MENA with the advent of satellite in the late 1990s has resulted in the gradual proliferation of a dizzying array of media products across the spectrum of social, cultural, entertainment, and personal interests. However, conditions for eligibility to register and run such media operations are rarely stated publicly and decisions made for licensing are understood to be determined on the basis of proximity to the ruling government with jurisdiction over the media sector.20 Nepotism and cronyism are rampant in these dealings with many of those investing in the media themselves being intimately involved in 16  Read Adaklı (2009) and Akser and Baybars-Hawks (2012) for richer context on the Turkish pol­it­ ical communication scene. 17  Yesil (2016) documents the privatization and commercialization of the Turkish media as reflections of a neoliberal and authoritarian state. 18  See Schiller (1989) and McChesney (2008) as well as their other writings about the political economy of media. 19  McChesney, R. (2008). 20  Gher and Amin’s (1999) survey of the media scene in the region forecasted the new media in­nov­ ations and the conditions they precipitated in terms of media ownership, licensing, and identity-based diversity.

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350   adel iskandar government either personally or through kinship.21 This is precisely how conformity and allegiance are guaranteed and wielded in this system. In the same way that the American-style corporate media system ensures owners, large advertising firms, and powerful financial backers of the networks are hardly scrutinized on their airwaves, so does the government-shackled neoliberal media system in the MENA region. With authoritarianism rampant in the region, criticism of government is strictly prohibited and enforced through censorship, setting the news agenda, the careful framing of stories, and gate-keeping. With money from the oil- and gas-rich Gulf countries and Iran bankrolling a significant proportion of the major transnational media entities in the Middle East and North Africa, they ensure the political discourses espoused by these networks are consistent with their national priorities and foreign policies.22 This is also reflected in proxy conflicts and wars across the region where the media funded by one country or another consistently produce loyalist content. As competition over influence, ideology, and contemporary constructions of national identity escalates between the extraction-based economies of the Gulf, we can see this reflected in the coverage of media companies across the region. This is exemplified by the several-year-old embargo and standoff between Qatar and the Saudi–Emirati–Bahraini nexus of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Whether the competition translates into rivalries in the realms of geopolitical influence, ideological perspectives such as political Islamism, or contemporary constructions of branded nationalisms as identity, the media play a central role in the externalization of this competition. For this reason, media outlets owned or funded by either of these countries publicly espouse such competition through selfaggrandizing accounts of influence, ideology, and national identity. These expressions are consistent across networks of influence in the media whereby the rhetorical landscape on each outlet mirrors the politics of the network ownership, exemplifying the amalgam of both neoliberalism and authoritarianism. With all these media outlets broadcasting via satellite beyond their state borders, they have become instruments of influence in other countries. Regional rivalries and state competition have precipitated conflicts that play out in the media—print, radio, television, and online. In some cases, countries invest or host entire media infrastructures to challenge their regional adversaries. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the UAE have all rendered their countries homes to media that are expressly hostile to their political rivals. Qatar’s Al-Jazeera serves as an advocate for political change in rival countries but expresses congratulatory aggrandizement toward the political status quo in allied nations such as Turkey under the AK Party. Saudi Arabia and the UAE invest heavily in media that challenge Muslim Brotherhood-aligned groups across the region, including criticism of Qatari policies, Turkey, and subnational groups in Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria while propping up compatriot governments such as Egypt. Turkey’s solidarity 21  See Akser and Baybars-Hawks (2012) and Adaklı (2009) for detailed explorations of the move toward neoliberal authoritarianism in the Turkish state media. 22  Elnawawy and Iskandar (2003) and Hafez (2008; 2001) offer differing but complimentary studies on the persistent and intrusive role of the state on the national and regional media landscape.

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   351 with Islamist political agendas explains its hosting of the majority of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated television networks such as Mekameleen TV, Al-Sharq, and Watan TV that espouse enmity toward the state. In circumstances where there is an ongoing militarized conflict, such as Libya, Syria, and Yemen, these media entities have essentially been weaponized in favor of one faction or another. For instance, Iranian news networks support Houthi insurgents in Yemen, Emirati channels support Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA), Qatari Al-Jazeera supports Syrian opposition militias, and Turkish networks reflect favorable depictions of both Libya’s Tripoli-based government’s armed factions and Syrian op­pos­ ition Islamist militias. Other militias and armed groups, such as the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and Jabhat Al-Nusrah, to name a few, continue to operate with some covert state and individual support with accusations leveled at Gulf governments whose citizens appear to provide material support to such militias. Most active armed groups and militias—such as the numerous Iran-loyal armed groups in Iraq, Jabhat Al-Nusra in Syria, Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the HPG (People’s Defense Forces) armed wing of the Kurdish Workers’ Party in Turkey, or the anti-regime People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK)—have developed considerably sophisticated online media platforms and operations that circulate propagandistic material including footage from the battlefields, recruitment videos, and personal testimonies sometimes on par with professional television production. As conflicts continue to rage across the region, revolutionary movements are increasingly synonymous with militarized insurrection supported by otherwise antirevolutionary governments. Yet the embroilment into regional politics has allowed many of these centralized authoritarian governments to reconstitute their image and resuscitate their revolutionary discourses, albeit under different circumstances. The Qatari state, an absolute monarchy with no semblance of democratic practice, flaunts its revolutionary credentials as a staunch supporter of Islamist opposition groups in a dozen countries across the region and a strong advocate for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian state, itself an antirevolutionary authoritarian republic dominated by the military establishment under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, derives and performs its perceived revolutionary credence from having come to power on the heels of what it refers to as the June 30 Revolution in 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi. Furthermore, it also wears revolutionary camouflage in the form of determined support for Khalifa Haftar’s renegade militias, the opposition Libyan National Army facing off against the UN-recognized Government of National Accord. Even the Saudi Arabian government under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman poses as revolutionary by systematically appropriating and monopolizing social change agendas including the erosion of gender-discriminatory policies and laws long advocated for by activists. In its own way, the Turkish Republic under Erdoğan’s AK Party at once both undermines Kurdish revolutionary activism domestically while advocating for revolutionary Islamism in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Libya and elsewhere. The Islamic Republic of Iran performs counter-hegemonic revolutionary politics in the Gulf and against US “im­per­ ial interests in the region” but exercises statist political intransigence in Iraq, Syria, and

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352   adel iskandar Lebanon. Hence, revolutionary legitimacy across MENA is increasingly more vacuous with states reconstituting their own ideologies and interests as revolutionary politics to be deployed against their rivals across the region and beyond. All these dynamics are reflected both implicitly and explicitly through the media operations of each respective state. Nevertheless, many of the region’s politically unaffiliated youth remain disenchanted with both their states’ often-fictitious revolutionary credentials and the states attempting to co-opt their independent justice-based ideals. More recently, examples of such movements that categorically defy appropriation include the Sudanese revolutionary protests that toppled the government of Omar al-Bashir and the Algerian revolution that brought down the government of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, both in April of 2019. The Iraqi revolution that erupted in October 2019 has also stood apart from all centers of power, thereby challenging the interests and interference of both the United States and Iran in their country. These revolutionary movements cannot be reduced to statist ideolo­gies. Instead, most of these movements have had little to no coverage in the mainstream media across the region. Rather, they continue to resort to the few tools they have at their disposal—namely social media platforms, messenger apps, video-sharing sites, and other apps—to mobilize online deliberation and confront both iterations of intransigent neoliberal authoritarianism.23 The remarkable political consistency between each state’s foreign policy and the mainstream media discourses emanating from it exemplifies the neoliberal au­thori­tar­ ian­ism that is the new status quo across MENA,24 with Tunisia being a notable exception.

Frameworks and Methodologies While the opening salvo in broadcasting and electronic media in MENA was shepherded by the colonial powers, it was revolutionary discourse of yesteryear that gave the media landscape political and ideological gravitas, and more recently the rise of neo­ liberal­ism that cemented its structural components that continue to this day. It is, henceforth, imperative for analyses of this kind to be firmly grounded in a nuanced comprehension and dynamic application of the two most influential frameworks for the understanding of media institutions and their discourses—the political economy of communication and critical cultural studies. Before explaining each of their conditions and providing tangible examples, it is important to note that this chapter does not privilege one methodology at the expense of the other. Rather the most 23 Iskandar (2019) offers a recent assessment of the revolutionary youth engagement happening online almost a decade since the Arab uprising. 24  Della Ratta, Sakr, and Skovgaard-Petersen’s edited volume (2015) offers the single most comprehensive account of the role of ownership and media moguls in controlling both the message and the audience across the region.

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   353 c­ ompelling, informative, and wholly significant works of media research in the region are those that take both the political economic and critical cultural dimensions into genuine consideration.

Political Economy of Communication Inspired largely by Marxist critiques of knowledge production, research on media and communication practices has often raised questions about the ways in which those who possess power wield it to affect both the output of these outlets and impact public opinion. The early works of Harold Innis,25 Marshall McLuhan,26 and Dallas Smythe27 are of lasting impact on how we comprehend media ownership and the economic influence that has on communication processes whether through gate-keeping, setting the news agenda, or rendering censorship a norm. Through media ownership, the exercise of power and the pursuit of economic influence are substantially impacted, often to the detriment of public interest and an impoverishment of both diversity and accuracy. The writings of Schiller and McChesney further elaborate on the ways capital concentration, legal deregulation, financial convergence, institutional conglomerization, and cor­por­ ate consumerism turn media and communication into mass producers of commodities at the expense of social responsibility, social justice, and egalitarianism.28 Such critiques of major corporate centralization of media organizations reflect how the uneven distribution of capital is leveraged and its impact on coverage, censorship, and other forms of discursive control.29 Unfortunately, there has been a significant dearth in the research and publication of works that analyze media in MENA from a political economic perspective. In addition to widespread systemic biases in the canon of global communication research,30 this can also be explained through the incredible restrictions and risks faced by journalists and scholars alike in pursuing information about media ownership, concentration, and where power is located in these remarkably influential institutions. Furthermore, the near-universal absence of laws that protect the public access to information across much of the region ensures that networks of ownership and funding are extremely opaque and often speculative. Nevertheless, the works of Boyd, Sakr, Sreberny-Mohammadi and Mohammadi, Semati, as well as Gher and Amin are important forays into the

25  Harold Innis’ significant contribution to the political economy of communication helped shape this approach to inquiry by examining the structural inequities embedded in the systems of media ownership and how they inform journalistic production and bias. One such publication is the second edition of his seminal work The Bias of Communication (2008). 26  Fitzgerald (2001). 27  Melody (1994). 28  Schiller (1989) and McChesney (2008). 29  Sreberny (2008). 30  For a review of the structural and discursive biases in communication and media research, including institutional devaluing of anti-racist, anti-colonial and global south perspectives, see Chakravartty and Jackson (2020) and Chakravartty et al. (2018).

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354   adel iskandar c­ haracterizations of the structures of media institutions and their political economic conditions.31 More recently, Della Ratta, Sakr, and Skovgaard-Petersen collaborated to bring together an important edited volume about the rise of communication conglomerates by examining the emergence of regional media moguls and the influence they wield in their respective countries and transnationally.32 Irrespective of the system of governance, each country in the Middle East and North Africa has seen a startling rise in the concentration of media assets in the hands of a small number of people or corporations, most being extremely proximate to the centers of political power. Given that this is the pervading structure in the region with major implications for representation of power, people, conflict, and identity, there is urgency in investigating these questions. The operations of these institutions are responsible for the mass production of know­ ledge in the form of mediatized content. Whether they are extensions of state public affairs activities or seemingly independent journalistic establishments—most are governed by structural characteristics that predetermine the influence and impact of resource-rich capacities that anchor their work. The structures of funding, revenue-generation, and ownership are intricately and intimately connected to both the structure and function of these media operations. Historically, and throughout the majority of the twentieth century—the formative period in the development of print and electronic media in the MENA region—most state media operations were treated as extensions of politicized government agendas. Because their employment structure, chain-of-command approach to operations management, and most importantly their exclusive reliance on governmental funds for labor costs, resources, facilities, hardware, connectivity, and distribution, these institutions were accurately categorized as statist both in configuration and performance. The pol­it­ ical intonations were informed largely by the economic dependency on state ap­par­ atuses. Whether in Nasser and Sadat’s Egypt, Baathist Syria and Iraq, or the pre-1990s Gulf countries, the political economic structure of media across the region mapped almost perfectly on to the system of governance. This means that ownership, funding, personnel management, and resource allocation were the exclusive dominion of the state apparatus. In the last thirty years, we have seen a gradual and purposeful deregulation of the media industry across the region, with the rise of media entrepreneurs, venture capital in the broadcasting sector, and the diversification of major companies into the media sector. This is, of course, happening under the watchful eye and enthusiastic endorsement of the state. Despite the seemingly unrelenting proliferation of outlets, platforms, and networks, the ability to function and produce content in any given country is tightly regulated through licenses and permits. These ensure operational conformity and 31 In addition to other writings that tackle the structural configurations of media ownership in MENA, Boyd’s (1999) work on the Gulf countries, Sakr’s (2002) work on Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and Sreberny-Mohammadi and Mohammadi (1994) as well as Semati’s (2007) work on Iran are particularly informative. 32  Della Ratta, Sakr, and Skovgaard-Petersen (2015).

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   355 ­ ol­it­ical uniformity, effectively discouraging or silencing opposition and dissent. The p pol­it­ical economic approach to media analyses exposes through organizational, structural, and institutional critique the flow of capital and labor forces that underlie the regional operations of media and journalism. This approach places revenue-generation practices and the investment of resources toward political influence at the center of discourses on the contemporary history of politics and identity in the region.

Critical Cultural Studies While the political economic analyses of media and communication in the MENA region unpack the structural conditions that make institutions of knowledge production and journalistic output tick, they nevertheless do little to reconcile these patterns with the content generated and distributed across these platforms and beyond. It also doesn’t account for the representation of various political, social, economic, and cultural expressions and how these inform and shape public opinion. Growing out of the influence of Foucauldian critiques of knowledge and power33 and Gramscian analyses of hegemonic production,34 the radical criticality and interdisciplinarity of cultural studies constitutes the second methodological approach that elucidates how media messages are created and comprehended. This is best exemplified by the significant contribution of cultural theorist Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School to the explorations of discourse construction and representation and how these manifest in communication practices and mediated utterances.35 This methodology is translated into a set of em­pir­ ic­al linguistic and semiotic tools to examine the way media content is produced, meaning is constructed, and ideology is affirmed. Stuart Hall’s interrogation of representation placed discourse at the center of the production of knowledge and hence the reproduction of dominant discourses and consecration of hegemonic power. This both coincided and intersected seamlessly with Hall’s contemporary, Edward Said, who was deconstructing discourses of colonial power and how they imagined and reproduced the other in the Orient.36 This developing area of research and criticism also coincided with multiple intellectual currents of cultural interrogation by the likes of bell hooks, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams, and Gayatri Spivak, to name a few. Analytical frameworks are imperative to analyze how media and communication content and representations are an affirmation of the ideological constructions that reinforce the dominant paradigms.37 For instance, much of Western media coverage of the Middle East and North Africa is remarkably similar in its reinforcement of stereotypical orientalist tropes. Conversely, regional, national, and local depictions of similar dynamics and phenomena are often inclined to affirm prevalent and pervasive 33  Foucault and Gordon (1980). 34  Gramsci (1971). 35  Hall (1974; 1991). 36 Said’s Orientalism (1978), among other works, contributed significantly to Hall’s writings about representation and the colonial project. 37  Iskandar (2007).

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356   adel iskandar ­ erspectives and constructions about the region. Whether in the form of dismissal of p criticism over human rights violations, the outright advocacy for state or non-state violence and militarization, the production of sectarian narratives, or the frivolous and aloof parading of privilege and power, problematic representations and codifications are aplenty in a cacophonous media landscape. With thousands of journalistic pieces being produced from and about the region every day, there is an urgent impetus to comprehend how these competing so-called “first drafts of history” construct and represent realities through discourses that embody or are seen as hegemonic frames, negotiated codes, or oppositional positions.38 Through critical discourse analyses (CDA) of media—pi­on­eered by the work of Van Dijk, Fairclough, and Wodak—and other methodological textual instruments to explore how meanings are imbued in mediated content, such analyses have contributed greatly to the way in which identity, gender, race, sexuality, and other attributes are politicized, demonized, weaponized, or obfuscated in media content.39 To envisage how the critical cultural studies framework applies to the analyses of media and communication in the contemporary Middle East and North Africa, ex­plor­ ations of news and entertainment alike, both mainstream and alternative, would constitute the bedrock of the research field.40 Cultural studies entails a nuanced reading of the myriad expressions and creative productions, from the literary to the artistic. At the local, national, and regional levels, the production of artistic material, both mainstream and independent music, novels, short stories, spoken word, poetry in its classical and colloquial forms, sculpture, handicrafts, paintings, graffiti, street and wall art, contemporary folklore, theatrical performance, caricatures, memes, and user-generated digital content are but a drop in the ocean of the cultural expressions being created in communities across the Middle East and North Africa. Whether these are best-selling songs, independent bootlegged mahraganat (inner city Egyptian autotuned digital recordings), anasheed (religious chants and recitations), or Turkish television series romanticizing Ottoman history, these are part of the region’s increasingly complex cultural inventory and register. Whether these expressions reflect populist, separatist, communalist, or humanist tendencies, these are the expressions of communities in flux whose histories are constantly being contemplated, articulated, and possibly reconfigured. Many of these productions and expressions reflect discursive and ideological inclinations and proclivities.41 Whether they articulate an affirmation or critique of identity politics, 38  See Hall (1991). His work on the encoding of messages in media constructions and their decoding through audience engagements is foundational to cultural studies. 39  See such works as Fairclough (1995), van Dijk (1997), and Wodak and Meye (2015) for theorizations, operationalizations, and implementations of critical discourse analysis as a methodology. 40  By moving beyond taxonomic proscriptive categorical approaches to understanding media in the region, Iskandar (2007) argues in favor of the importance of a cultural studies approach. 41  Sabry and Khalil (2019) hone in on the notions of space and temporality to ask important questions about culture both in time and across locales in an informative edited collection of essays on the media and publicness.

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   357 pan-Arabism, territorial nationalism, subnational identities, minoritarian allegiances, religious affiliations, denominations, membership of sects, cults, communities of faith, or belongings to ethnic and racial genealogies, the range and potentialities of such cultural expressions is near infinite in possibility. A significant proportion of these expressions are individual and collective articulations of gendered critiques leveled against the paternalism, patriarchy, and chauvinism of states, authorities, religious figures, families, working spaces, and societies at large. Some of these expressions are Nubian, Amazigh, and Kurdish communities resuscitating their cultural and linguistic heritage as a form of nationalist identification. For instance, following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the predominantly Kurdish north became increasingly self-governing with substantive investment in Kurdish language instruction and cultural media programming. The Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011 shepherded an incredible proliferation of communitarian expression from regions and groups often neglected. One example of this is among the Amazigh communities of Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria who have pushed for recognition and rights since the uprisings in each of their respective countries. This has heralded a resurgence of subcultural identification, pride, and interest in increased self-representation in the media. Other communities are turning to exclusively religious jihadist narratives to justify newfound commitments to struggle against political adversaries. While some of these expressions reflect attempts at imagining a futuristic utopia for some communities, ­others are staunch attempts to recreate the nostalgic past. The immeasurable diversity of such expressions means that there will always be a deficit in the scholarly literature that attempts to ascertain and archive these mediated productions. Nevertheless, their the­ or­iza­tion is well under way across many disciplines including communication studies where the important work of Marwan Kraidy on hybridity,42 reality television,43 and the contentious politics of the body,44 alongside writings on Iran’s Islamic revolutionary discourse and innovation,45 Walter Armbrust’s extensive oeuvre on the mediation of popular and public culture, and Tarik Sabry’s collective project on defining Arab cultural studies, are just a few of the critical forays into such areas.46 42  Kraidy (2008) tackles the faultlines of transculturalism in media production and community engagement across the region, raising theoretical questions around the veracity of hybridity and globalization as explanatory and analytical tools. 43  Kraidy’s (2010) writings on reality television exposed cultural constructions that inform nationalism and other identity-based productions across the region. From game shows and competitions to music entertainment and theatrical narratives, his work unpacks the range of discourses and their reception from social taboos to political posturing. 44  Kraidy’s (2016) writings on the uprisings across the Arab world focused specifically on the construction and inscription of the corporeal body as a means of contention, both figuratively and literally. At once, the body becomes a medium, content, and metaphor. 45  Semati (2007) and Sreberny-Mohammadi and Mohammadi (1994) both look at the Islamic revolution in Iran and the complexities of balancing ideology, politics, and technological innovation. 46  Armbrust’s expansive works over more than two decades deserve close examination in their explication of publicness, politics, and culture. Additionally, Sabry’s (2012) important collection lays the foundation for cultural studies as an approach to understanding mediated production in the Arab world.

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358   adel iskandar This is also the terrain for hybrid and mixed identities, glocalized patterns of living, and creolized ways of communicating. From the use of classical Arabic and local dialects, to code-switching between slang and the languages of former colonizers, the realms of cultural overlap and exchange become opportunities for unique and in­form­ative expressions. This is particularly evident in the cultural expressions of communities in North Africa where—over decades—local Amazigh languages, Arabic, French, and sometimes Spanish have created complex linguistic topographies with different dialects, vernaculars, vocabularies, accents, syntax, colloquialisms, and slang. As Appadurai explains, much of these complex utterances and hybrid cultural spaces and productions are themselves the outcome of the movement of “scapes.” Whether it is the movement of people (ethnoscapes), technology (technoscapes), money (financescapes), images (mediascapes), or ideas (ideoscapes)—these mediatized expressions are the product of diasporic experiences, the transfer of ideas, commodities, and symbols across ter­ri­tor­ ies.47 They are at times also reflections of utterances that have at their core the experiences of migration, occupation, exile, and displacement. The critical cultural framework also provides the tools to examine how political discourse is manufactured and encoded in mediated messages—whether in the form of news journalism, song, poetry, cinematic production, or other forms of knowledge. Political intonations and aspirations can be examined as tropes reflective of either the statist or oppositional perspectives. They could be Baathist, Nasserist, royalist, Islamist, revolutionary, socialist, capitalist, nihilist, consumerist, or an amalgam of these ideological perspectives. In environs where these discourses are the statist status quo, they are propagated by the government and constitute the sanctioned foundational expressions of those in power. However, depending on the locale and power dynamics, what would be considered an oppositional frame would differ depending on context. For example, a particular statist discourse in one country can be an oppositional one in another. Under the Baathist Syrian regime context, Islamist expressions can be considered counter-hegemonic and revolutionary. Alternatively, in the Islamist AK Partycontrolled Turkey, religious ideological positionality and neo-Ottoman narratives are the prevailing status quo, rendering its targeted Kurdish, secularist, nationalist, Gulenist, and diasporic opposition rivals counter-hegemonic. Sometimes, the layers and faultlines of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic contestation are so intertwined and complex so as to make the dichotomization of protagonist/antagonist difficult, if not largely obsolete. For instance, Kurdish identitarian politics is at once counterhegemonic vis-à-vis the Turkish republic but while allied with superpowers such as the United States or Russia, becomes embroiled in the exercise of hegemonic power. The cultural approach should, by no means, be perceived as purely textual or limited to semiotic products and the construction of ideological messages. Rather, the im­port­ ance of nuanced forays into sociocultural contexts around mediation necessitate a 47 Appadurai’s (1990) framework explores the importance of movement as a prism from which knowledge about cultural production, identity, politics, artifacts, material, and other criteria are globalized through spatial transfer.

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   359 c­ uriosity about audiences and publics and the impact reception of such content. For this reason, sociological and anthropological methodologies that anchor the personhood of audiences and readings of mediated narratives are absolutely critical. Qualitative ­methods such as interviews, focus groups, and especially media ethnographies48 reveal the ways in which individuals, families, communities, and groups in society negotiate and contest mediated discourses and how these inform their views and choices on morality, values, identity, politics, and lifestyle.49 Furthermore, increasingly, research that focuses on expressions through social media platforms,50 blogs,51 user-generated videos,52 memes,53 and other circulating content is serving as a barometer of the prevalence and characteristics of opinions in the public domain.54 Beyond this, the sophistication with which cultural production reflects new literacies and literatures renders possible complex and convoluted ways of recreating digital modernity by way of hackers, trolls, whistleblowers, voyeurs, and other embodied subjectivities.55 With the boom in big data analytics and other quantitative methodologies that attempt to process large sample sizes (or even entire populations) becoming the norm, audiences’ social, cultural, political, and behavioral expressions are constructed population patterns. While such studies are incredibly informative and provide insight into the salience and resonance of some arguments, perspectives, ideologies, affinities, and actions, their ability to reflect on nuances or showcase the interstitial negotiations that take place at the organic social levels remains limited. These limitations are largely the function of large-scale methodological instrumentation that relies heavily on the generalizability of phenomena, the rendering of algorithmic patterns of action and expression, the reduction of variability into variables, and the essentialization of characteristics into categories. That said, the tools used by big data analytics both in the corporate social media sector or in the social sciences will likely refine these incongruences and in­cap­ aci­ta­tions, but will constantly struggle with the immeasurability of multifactorial expressions and the complexity of their underlying sociocultural and political dimensions. From the preservation of traditional arts to novel forms of cultural expression, ­cultural studies provides a shift in the frame of communication from one of the study of media to the study of mediation. The incredible resonance of visual cultural

48  Like Kraidy’s writings on media ethnography, Zayani (2011) argues in favor of the interpretive value of participant observation as a methodological framework. 49 One landmark work of media ethnography from the region is Lila Abu-Lughod’s  2005 book Dramas of Nationhood where she examines the way communities in Upper Egypt reflect and interpret their identities through the prisms of national drama series broadcast on state television. The extensive work of Christa Salamandra (2019) on Syrian television dramas is also very informative. 50  Herrera (2014) and Wheeler and Wheeler (2017), and Wagner and Gainous (2013). 51  Ulrich (2009). 52  Comninos (2011). 53  Using the Egyptian revolutionary milieu as an exemplar, Iskandar (2014) argues that memes are a novel manifestation of cultural bricolage with political implications in many contexts across the MENA region. 54  Shirazi (2013). 55  el-Ariss (2018).

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360   adel iskandar ­expression56 from the photographic to the architectural to the digital is understated and often overlooked in the exploration of contemporary historical experience.57 With the dizzying proliferation of internet technology and widespread generation of userproduced content, the range of visual expressions and the intersections of cultural production are near infinite in possibility and immeasurably variable. This both poses a challenge to traditional means of knowledge production and offers opportunities for the further entrenchment of such knowledge given the extent to which it adapts to and appropriates the tropes of technological innovations such as social media. To forge such understandings of contemporary histories of the MENA region through mediation is an undertaking that necessitates critical discursive explorations of all forms of expression and knowledge production across all spectra. From formal rhetorical discourse espoused by state institutions and their extremities, to small-scale indigenous colloquial expressions of despondency, and everything in between, there is no shortage of testimonials, artifacts, and mediated creative production that, when explored, can be instructive to our comprehension of the resonance of sociological, political, cultural, and economic perspectives on lived experience in the MENA region.

Conclusion With disenchanted youth protests proliferating across the region, from the Arab uprisings of 2011 to more recent revolutionary mobilizations in Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, and Lebanon, the role that media play in obfuscating, promoting, and admonishing these movements is under greater scrutiny in an increasingly cacophonous media space. This chapter aimed to center the examination and analyses of media and communication practices in MENA as a vital dimension of how we understand the way power is configured and wielded in the region as well as comprehending how communities represent and embody their perspectives, aspirations, and identities. With the proliferation of online platforms and increased internet penetration across MENA, there is a marked amplification of independent voices operating beyond political, social, cultural, and religious taboos. Yet, in almost equal measure, institutions of the state and apparatuses of social control have markedly scrutinized, securitized, and surveilled these very voices with increasing efficacy. This chapter argues that to explore the ramifications of these patterns, we must utilize interdisciplinary methodologies in the study of media that unpack the political, social, cultural, and economic circumstances that make these conditions possible. The political economy of communication provides the tools necessary to explore how the amalgam of privatization, convergence, and authoritarianism in the media sector are significant 56  See Khatib (2013) and other works on the role that visual representation plays in constructing political discourses and cultural mores. The writings here are informed by journalistic imperatives. 57  Shirazi (2013).

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   361 determinants of how local politics, histories, and identities are grappled with and in some instances explicitly engineered. The entangled relationships between authoritarian states and neoliberal economies are one of the critical angles begging further ana­ lyses, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, where the obfuscation of financial control in the media industry and the infiltration of networks of nepotistic ownership and patronage are characteristically high. With evocations of nationalism and revolution unfolding across the region, communities are embroiled in processes that redefine the notions of identity, ideology, and citizenship. As these air out in the form of mediated communications on the airwaves and online, another interdisciplinary methodology of critical value for the examination of these expressions is critical cultural studies. By presenting exemplary ways to comprehend how discourses perpetuate or perturb power, cultural studies expands the ana­lyt­ic­al frame to include the multitude of expressions and utterances across platforms—from graffiti to social media commentary, and from television dramas to sound studies. With the advent of internet technology and platforms designed to amplify self-expression, collective organizing, and knowledge mobilization, individuals and collectives across the Middle East and North Africa are actively engrossed in complex practices of em­bodi­ment and the production of cultural artifacts. The historicization of media and communication in MENA helps us reflect on the ways by which revolutionary discourses are perennially reimagined and propagated by authoritarian regimes, their adversaries, and citizenry. The colonial legacies form the backdrop and foundation of discursive production across the region followed by the rise of anticolonial statist media that gradually consolidated power and centralized communication output. Understanding these historical periods informs us of the existing communication structures and the manner in which they operate and self-perpetuate. As political rivalries, conflicts, and revolutions continue to unfold across MENA, the prospects of the collective imagination and construction of realities are often the product of what is deemed possible in the media. As the media become the conduit for much of the knowledge produced about politics, culture, economics, and society in the MENA region, it is fundamental to the exploration of the ascendant neoliberal authoritarian condition and the revolutionary currents it both confronts and co-opts, that we not understate the way contemporary history is being mediated.

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362   adel iskandar Akser, M. and B. Baybars-Hawks (2012). “Media and Democracy in Turkey: Toward a Model of Neoliberal Media Autocracy,” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 5,3: 302–321. Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture & Society 7,2–3: 295–310. Arielli, N. (2010). Fascist Italy and the Middle East, 1933–40 (London: Palgrave Macmillan). el-Ariss, T. (2018). Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals: Arab Culture in the Digital Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Armbrust, W. (ed.) (2000). Mass mediations: New approaches to popular culture in the Middle East and beyond (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Aslan Ozgul, B. (2019). Leading Protests in the Digital Age: Youth Activism in Egypt and Syria (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Aouragh, M. (2012). “Social Media, Mediation and the Arab Revolutions.” TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 10,2: 518–536. Bebawi, S. and D. Bossio (eds) (2014). Social Media and the Politics of Reportage: The ‘Arab Spring’ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Boyd, D. (1999). Broadcasting in the Arab World: A Survey of the Electronic Media in the Middle East, 3rd edn (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press). Boyd, D.  A. (1975). “Development of Egypt’s Radio: ‘Voice of the Arabs under Nasser,” Journalism Quarterly, 52,4: 645–653. Boyd, D. A. (1976). International Broadcasting in Arabic To the Middle East and North Africa. International Communication Gazette, 22,3: 183–196. Chakravartty, P., and S. J. Jackson (2020). “The Disavowal of Race in Communication Theory,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17:2: 210–219. Chakravartty, P., R.  Kuo, V.  Grubbs, and C.  McIlwain (2018). #Communication SoWhite. Journal of Communication, 68,2, 254–266. Cherkaoui, T. (2017). The News Media at War: The Clash of Western and Arab Networks in the Middle East (London: Bloomsbury). Comninos, A. (2011). “E-revolutions and Cyber Crackdowns: User-generated Content and Social Networking in Protests in MENA and Beyond,” in Global Information Society Watch 2011 Internet Rights and Democratisation, 31–37. Della Ratta, D., N. Sakr, and J. Skovgaard-Petersen (eds) (2015). Arab Media Moguls (London: I. B. Tauris) Douglas, W., and Neal, J. (2013). Engaging the Muslim World: Public Diplomacy After 9/11 in the Arab Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (New York: Rowman & Littlefield). el-Nawawy, M., and S.  Khamis (2013). Egyptian Revolution 2.0: Political Blogging, Civic Engagement, and Citizen Journalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: Papers in the Critical Study of Language (New York: Longman). Fitzgerald, J. (2001). Marshall McLuhan (Toronto: Dundurn). Foucault, M. and C. Gordon (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon Books). Guaaybess, T. (ed.) (2013). National Broadcasting and State Policy in Arab Countries (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Ghareeb, Edmund (2000). “New Media and the Information Revolution in the Arab World: An Assessment,” Middle East Journal 54,3: 395–418. Gher, L. A. and H. Y. Amin (1999). “New and Old Media Access and Ownership in the Arab World,” International Communication Gazette 61,1: 59–88.

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Media as Method in the Age of Revolution   363 Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from The Prison Notebooks Of Antonio Gramsci (New York: International Publishers). Hafez, K. (2008). Arab Media: Power and Weakness (New York: Continuum). Hafez, K. (2001). Mass Media, Politics, and Society in the Middle East (New York: Hampton Press). Hall, S. (1991). “Encoding, Decoding,” in S. During (ed.). The Cultural Studies Reader (London: Routledge). Hall, S. (1974). “Media Power: The Double Bind,” Journal of Communication 24,4: 19–26. Herrera, L. (ed.) (2014). Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East (New York: Routledge). Hofheinz, A. (2011). “Nextopia? Beyond Revolution 2.0,” Oriente Moderno 91,1: 23–39. Hudson, L., A. Iskandar, and M. Kirk (2016). Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Innis, H. (2008). The Bias of Communication, 2nd edn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Iskandar, A. (2020). American Public Diplomacy Between Hybridity and Hegemony: On Hearts and Minds (London: Routledge). Iskandar, A. (2019). “Egyptian Youth’s Digital Dissent,” Journal of Democracy 30,3: 154–164. Iskandar, A. (2014). “The Meme-ing of Revolution: Creativity, Folklore, and the Dislocation of Power in Egypt,” Jadaliyya. Available online at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/19122/ the-meme-ing-of-revolution_creativity-folklore-and Iskandar, A. (2007). “Lines in the Sand: Problematizing Arab Media in the Post-Taxonomic Era,” Arab Media & Society. Available online at http://www.arabmediasociety.com/articles/ downloads/20070523153324_ams2_adel_iskandar.pdf Iskandar, A. (2006). “Is Al-Jazeera Alternative? Mainstreaming Alterity and Assimilating Discourses of Dissent.” in The Real (Arab) World: Is Reality TV Democratizing the Middle East (Cairo, Egypt: Adham Center for Electronic Journalism and The Middle East Center). Iskandar, A. and B.  Haddad (eds). (2013). Mediating the Arab Uprisings (Washington, DC: Tadween Publishing). Khatib, L. (2013). Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle (London: Bloomsbury Academic). Kraidy, M. (2016). The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Kraidy, M. (2010). Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press). Kraidy, M. (2008). Hybridity: The Cultural Logic of Globalization (Philadelphia: Temple University Press). Marzano, A. (2012). “ ‘La guerra delle onde.’ The British and French Responses to the Arabic Propaganda of Radio Bari (1938–1939),” Contemporanea 15,1: 3. Matthews, J., and M. Al Habsi (2018). “Addressing a Region? The Arab Imagined Audience and Newsworthiness in the Production of Al Jazeera Arabic,” International Communication Gazette 80,8: 746–763. McChesney, R. (2008). The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (New York: Monthly Review Press). Melody, B. (1994). “Dallas Smythe: Pioneer in the Political Economy of Communications,” in T. Guback (ed.). Counterclockwise: Perspectives on Communication (Boulder, CO: Westview Press): 1–6. el-Nawawy, M., and A. Iskandar (2003). The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (New York: Basic Books).

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364   adel iskandar Sabry, T. (2012). Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field (London: I. B. Tauris). Sabry, T., and J. Khalil (2019). Culture, Time and Publics in the Arab World: Media, Public Space and Temporality (London: I. B. Tauris). Sakr, N. (2002). Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization, and the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris). Salamandra, C. (2019). “Past Continuous: The Chronopolitics of Representation in Syrian Television Drama,” Middle East Critique 28,2: 121–141. Schiller, H. (1989). Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press). Seib, P. (2016). “US Public Diplomacy and the Media in the Middle East,” in M. Zayani and S. Mirgani (eds), Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press). Semati, M. (ed.) (2007). Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living With Globalization and the Islamic State (New York: Routledge). Shirazi, F. (2013). Social Media and the Social Movements in the Middle East and North Africa. Information Technology & People 26,1: 28–49. Sreberny, A. (2008). “The Analytic Challenges of Studying the Middle East and its Evolving Media Environment,” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 1,1: 8–23. Sreberny-Mohammadi, A., and Mohammadi, A. (1994). Small Media Big Revolution: Communication, Culture and the Iranian Revolution (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Ulrich, B. (2009). “Historicizing Arab Blogs: Reflections on the Transmission of Ideas and Information in Middle Eastern History,” Arab Media & Society. Available online at https:// www.arabmediasociety.com/historicizing-arab-blogs-reflections-on-the-transmissionof-ideas-and-information-in-middle-eastern-history/ van Dijk, T (1997). Discourse as Structure and Process: Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction (London: SAGE Publications). Wagner, K. M. and J. Gainous (2013). “Digital Uprising: The Internet Revolution in the Middle East,” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 10,3: 261–275. Wheeler, D. L. (2017). Digital Resistance in the Middle East: New Media Activism in Everyday Life (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Wodak, R. and M. Meyer (eds) (2015). Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). Yesil, B. (2016). Media in New Turkey: The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal State (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press). Zayani, M. (2011). “Toward a Cultural Anthropology of Arab Media: Reflections on the Codification of Everyday Life,” History and Anthropology 22,1: 37–56. Zayani, M. (ed.) (2019). Al Jazeera Phenomenon: Critical Perspectives on New Arab Media (London: Routledge).

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Chapter 18

Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliber al Age Laleh Khalili

Although the concept of “counterinsurgency”—asymmetric and irregular warfare— has been part of the military parlance of many modern states, the term itself was invented by Walt Rostow in 1961, when he was US President John F. Kennedy’s national security advisor.1 Throughout the decades since 1961, the term and the apparatus it sig­ nifies have been incorporated into US military practices and doctrines with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The modular set of tactics, techniques, and discourses that are variously concatenated to produce the range of different “small wars” fought by the United States since its inception have been perfected on the battlefields of colonization and decolonization by the militaries of Britain, France, and the United States itself.2 The battlefields on which these practices have been effectuated, adapted, and institutional­ ized have included numerous wars, military interventions, peacekeeping operations, covert military activities, and “foreign military assistance” operations undertaken by the US and its near and far allies.3 Counterinsurgencies differ from conventional warfare not only in the latter’s focus on battles fought on the field, but also in conventional warfare’s clearly delineated set of rules of engagement and legal boundaries, however haphazardly these are enforced. Counterinsurgency, in contrast, arranges a state military (whether invading or in­di­gen­ ous) against irregular or guerrilla forces, and with civilian populations directly con­sidered

1  I use the terminology (counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and War on Terror) that have become predominant in the military discourse. Although I do recognize that all these terms are laden with the politics out of which they have emerged, I nevertheless use them here in order to subject them to critical analysis. On Rostow, see Milne (2008). 2  Gregory (2004); Feichtinger and Malinowski (2012); Khalili (2013b). 3  Gorka and Kilcullen (2011).

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366   laleh khalili by both sides as foci of strategic attention.4 I also distinguish liberal counterinsurgencies from the illiberal variants.5 Illiberal counterinsurgents—Russia in Chechnya, or the Sri Lankan defeat of the Tamil Tigers—use kinetic, or killing force indiscriminately and very often deploy the language of sovereignty as the ultimate justification for their use of force. Liberal counterinsurgencies, by contrast, calibrate their use of force, co-opt legal and administrative apparatuses in the service of warfare, and increasingly deploy a language of humanitarianism and/or development as both the justification and impetus for war. In all counterinsurgencies, the civilian population is the prize, to be won whether by persuasion and bribery or force of intimidation and terror.6

Transformations in Combat in the War on Terror After the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and the attack on the Pentagon in September 2001, the government of the United States set about waging an indefinite war against those considered culpable for the attacks: al-Qā’ida, but also their hosts, the Afghan Taliban, and eventually even past enemy Iraq, with no connections whatsoever to the September 11 attacks.7 The US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom,” began with an array of tactics that today would be best categorized under the heading of counterterrorism or covert operations. These included the insertion of spe­ cial operations forces primarily belonging to the CIA’s militia, the Special Activities Division, soon to be joined by the US military’s Joint Special Operations Forces (JSOC).8 It also included aerial bombardment using Tomahawk Cruise Missiles launched from US navy ships, as well as the use of helicopter gunships and eventually fighter and bomber jets,9 and provision of financial and military aid to the Afghan Northern Alliance fighters.10 From December 2001 onwards, US Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted counterterror operations under the umbrella of Operation Enduring Freedom. At the same time, the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) com­ prised military personnel from a number of different allied countries provided military policing functions in Kabul and later throughout Afghanistan. A year later, the dual forces were joined by the reborn Afghan National Army. ISAF was brought under 4 Kilcullen (2006;  2009a,  2009b;  2010); Nagl (2005); Porch (2013); US Army and Marine Corps (2007; 2014). 5  Khalili (2013b). The counterinsurgents themselves use the terminology “population-centric” vs “enemy-centric” counterinsurgency to distinguish between wars that incorporate the use of humanitar­ ian and developmental practice and discourse as opposed to asymmetric warfare that has no compunc­ tions about using violence and terror without dressing it in the language of civilization or progress. 6  Gregory (2006); Khalili (2013b: 206–210). 7  Woodward (2002). 8  Crumpton (2012). 9  Dadkhah (2008); Lambeth (2005). 10  Shahrani (2002).

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Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliberal Age   367 NATO command in 2003, operating alongside US and Afghan forces mostly in counter­ insurgency mode.11 The invasion of Iraq in 2003, by contrast, first took shape as conventional (though radically asymmetric) warfare; but with the rapid defeat of the Iraqi military and the US takeover of Iraq’s territories and major cities, and with the eventual appearance of guer­ rilla forces, it assumed a haphazard form of counterinsurgency, with emphasis on the killing of irregular forces.12 The special operators of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) under the command of General Stanley McChrystal also continued to operate in the shadows, engaging in assassination and detentions. Their most notable target had been Abu Mus’ab Zarqawi, and their detention practices in Camp Nama had come under investigative journalists’ scrutiny.13 The extraordinary escalation in irregular attacks against US forces, the slowly mounting popular domestic unease with US atroci­ ties in Iraq (beginning with the Abu Ghraib revelations), and the dizzying rise of civilian Iraqi deaths led to a two-pronged transformation in the US military’s approach to com­ bat there.14 The first of these transformations was the consolidation of counterinsur­ gency tactics in the US Army and Marine Corps’ Counterinsurgency Field Manual.15 The second entailed changes at policy level, with a “surge” of troops into Iraq under the com­ mand of General David Petraeus and the implementation of the tactics that had now been consolidated in the Field Manual.16 In schematic tactical terms, what the transition from conventional warfare to the “surge” entailed was an increase in number of troops to allow for “clear-hold-build” tac­ tics: door-to-door “clearing” of abodes, streets, and cities of insurgents; establishment of small neighborhood bases to allow perpetual policing of the neighborhood by the invading force; and the calibrated distribution of aid intended to secure acquiescence, as well as construction of facilities such as roads and other infrastructure that can be used both defensively and as a means of enforcing normalcy.17 In practice, these tactics meant a shift from battles by military forces to a focus on detention, both of combatants and civilian suspects and of civilian populations who may be inclined to support the mili­ tants.18 The “surge” of troops accommodated not only combat activities but also the training of proxy security forces.19 Even as the surge was taking place, US military and civilian policymakers were plan­ ning for the withdrawal of the great majority of the US forces from Iraq, scaling back direct activities there, to allow for the consolidation of the Iraqi state’s hold over the country.20 What this second transition entailed was a shift from counterinsurgency to counter­ terrorism: a radical reduction in the number of invading and occupying ground troops, a discernible shift in combat into the shadow spaces of covert and robotic wars, and a 11  ISAF and Operation Enduring Freedom were integrated from 2008/2009 onwards. 12  Woodward (2004); Ricks (2006). 13  McChrystal (2013); Scahill (2013); McKelvey (2007). 14  Hersh (2004); Fay (2004); McKelvey (2007). 15  US Army and Marine Corps (2007); Kilcullen (2009a; 2010). 16  Ricks (2009); Broadwell and Loeb (2012). 17  Kilcullen (2008). 18  Khalili (2013b). 19  Nagl (2010); Petraeus (2006). 20  Woodward (2010); Gates (2014).

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368   laleh khalili focus on special operations, remote warfare, and intelligence-gathering.21 This switch­ back from “humanitarian” detentions to kinetic force was also in line with a more obvi­ ously realist foreign and military intervention policy, as embodied in the decision-making of George  W.  Bush and Barack Obama administrations’ Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and the Obama national security team. This more realist mode was best on display in the US Defense Strategic Guidance of January 2012, which, along­ side announcing a “pivot to Asia,” declared that “US forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.”22 Throughout this period, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the other battlefields of the War on Terror (Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, inter alia), local proxies have been absolutely crucial, not only to grant permission for operations but in fact to claim the operations as their own (as the Yemeni, Pakistani, and Iraqi militaries have done at vari­ ous times), to share intelligence, and to provide the cover of plausible American deni­ abil­ity. US military advisors, intelligence agents, and special operators all have continued to assist the proxy forces in this work of suppression.

Iron Fist or Velvet Glove? What is perhaps most notable about the manner in which counterinsurgency and coun­ terterrorism have worked is the modularity of the various tactics, techniques, and tech­ nologies that can be flexibly concatenated in order to achieve the best results within a given context. The oscillation between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strat­egies in war is based on a complex calculus of costs, interim outcomes, and future possibilities, not to mention ideologies, historical inertias and memories, and popular mobilization for or against the war. The spectrum along which these two forms of asymmetric warfare are located move from biopolitics to thanatopolitics. At one end is the set of techniques and tactics, that while using force, also remake living bodies and habitations and social rela­ tions, “making live and letting die” in Foucault’s words; while at the other end, sovereign power allows for brutal slaughter should the state apparatuses so demand.23 Whereas large-scale direct counterinsurgencies are fought with large numbers of conventional troops, counterterrorism condenses the number of personnel and volume of material needed, which inevitably allows for this form of warfare to maintain a degree of invisibility from public scrutiny.24 If counterinsurgencies provide the technical means for implementation of liberal interventionist policies, counterterrorism is the military option more congruent with “realist” policy discourses. Counterinsurgencies integrate humanitarian or developmental apparatuses and dis­ courses with the work of military combat. They often require large nodal military bases 21  Khalili (2012a); Mazetti (2013). 22  Department of Defense (2012). 23  Foucault (2003: 241); Foucault (2000: 416). 24  Khalili (2012a; 2014a).

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Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliberal Age   369 and more numerous and diffuse smaller ones, massive logistics operations, and exten­ sive and visible presence of ground troops in combat, very frequently supported by fighter jets or helicopter gunships. Counterinsurgency combat operations, by virtue of their breadth and density, tend to occur door to door, and in a sense turn public and pri­ vate spaces inside out.25 As liberal counterinsurgencies require mobilization of troops, material, and resources, they need public support at home, which is often secured via information operations, appeal to law, developmental aims, discourse of democratiza­ tion, and a call for good order. In practice, this insistence on lawfulness means that new legal techniques, arenas, and languages are concocted that provide an alibi to the military and political operations that make counterinsurgency possible, but which are also the subject of contestation.26 While the horizons of legality are expanded by the exigencies of combat, legal in­nov­ ations provide new tools for counterinsurgency pacification. Among these new and revivified legal tools have been military commissions (rooted in nineteenth-century wars against Native Americans), extraordinary rendition, offshore detention (discussed later), and the category of “enemy combatant.”27 Developmentalism, in turn, works in two registers: on the one hand, the construction of roads, electricity plants, markets, and other infrastructural projects underwrites the military efforts by being a site of military activity.28 On the other hand, and over a longer period of time, these infrastructures act to co-opt the pacified peoples into new systems of governmentality. In addition to the construction of roads, markets, and schools that have been part of the modus operandi of counterinsurgents, forms of dress, gender rela­ tions, and new bureaucratic and constitutional apparatuses are other mechanisms of counterinsurgency governmentality.29 Knowledge production and the incorporation of colonial knowledge into ap­par­atuses of waging war would also be significant facets of liberal counterinsurgencies. Demographics—particularly of the kind that tracks the volume of “surplus populations” and troublesome “military-aged-males”—frames the counterinsurgency episteme.30 A kind of stultified and old-fashioned ethnography, premised on understanding of “adver­ sary culture” provides the granular tools of knowledge-gathering about intransigent populations.31 While in the War on Terror, this instrumental knowledge of “culture” has been transformed into the institution of Human Terrain Systems (mixed teams of mili­ tary personnel and civilian research teams that gather everyday information about the

25  Khalili (2011a; 2014b); Weizman (2007). 26  Anghie (2005); Hajjar (2003; 2005); Mégret (2006). 27  Khalili (2013b: 65–100); Begg and Brittain (2006). 28 For example, health clinics can be used as a site of intelligence-gathering (as they were in Afghanistan; Barnard et al. (2008)), roads can be used for the movement of materiel; and markets are excellent spaces for measuring the success of counterinsurgency efforts (Kilcullen (2008); Khalili (2014b)). 29  Rabinow (1989: 150); Gottman (1943). 30  Therborn (2009); Khalili (2013b). 31  Johnson and Zellen (2014); Davis (2010); McFate (2005); McFate et al. (2012).

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370   laleh khalili populations to be pacified), today, there are calls for incorporating ethnographic and cultural knowledges into formal apparatuses of intelligence-gathering.32 If counterinsurgency is a mailed fist in a velvet glove, in counterterrorist activities the gloves come off. Kinetic operations—those that employ lethal force—characterize counterterrorism. These include the deployment in hundreds of countries around the world of special operations forces, often dispatched from “floating bases” on specially configured naval vessels, and engaged in kidnapping and assassinations on the one hand, and training of allied and proxy commando forces and gathering foreign intelli­ gence on the other.33 Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones—which are also used in coun­ terinsurgencies and in conventional warfare—are central to counterterrorism. The chains of commands of drone and special operators bypass ordinary structures of the military and end directly in the White House or the offices of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, and as the focus of the killings are often inaccessible and distant places, counterterrorism is lauded as “minimalist” and “nonintrusive.”34 In what follows, I will shed light on the modular techniques and technologies that form the basis of both counterinsurgencies and counterterrorism operations, and will reflect on the role of local proxies.

Techniques and Technologies Given the vast investments by the US military in a broad range of technologies, it is not surprising that many of these become incorporated into the US counterinsurgency and counterterrorism arsenal, used for lethal activities as well as surveillance and monitor­ ing. Just as important, however, is the use of detention techniques, which serve punitive, performative, and pedagogic means.

Confinement and Detention Practices One of the most distinct characteristics of counterinsurgency warfare is the prevalence of confinement as a technique of warfare, as opposed to slaughter.35 Confinement and detention take several shapes: they include battlefield detentions in detention camps, offshore internment of suspects in liminal jurisdictional circumstances, and mass con­ finement of civilian populations intended to sever their support for irregular forces. Detention camps such as Abu Ghraib, Camp Nama, Camp Cropper in Iraq, and the Bagram Airforce Base detention camp in Afghanistan, serve as holding and processing sites for persons suspected of being combatants, and significantly, also vast numbers of “military-aged males” who are often caught up in sweeps. The phrase “military-aged 32  Gavriel (2014). 33  Khalili (2013a; 2014a). 35  Khalili (2013b).

34  Lujan (2013); Mazetti (2013); Scahill (2013).

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Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliberal Age   371 male” is a technical military designation that includes men of diverse age ranges, often between fifteen and sixty years old. Throughout the Iraq and Afghan wars, population sweeps in the wake of attacks on US forces produced neighborhood-wide detention of vast numbers of men. The genealogy of this mass detention of suspected combatants can be traced back to colonial and anticolonial counterinsurgencies.36 The US itself had extensive prior experience with such detention in the context of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, whose primary aim was to destroy the civilian support mechanism for the Viet Cong guerrillas.37 In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the aims of battlefield detention camps have been mani­fold. While they can act as punitive measures against combatants, more importantly they also provide occasions for intelligence-gathering via interrogation and sur­ veillance, the use of combatants as potential hostages, and as holding tanks for potential combatants in contentious neighborhoods and towns. Also significantly, battlefield detention in liberal counterinsurgencies includes an element of “counterinsurgency inside the wire,” or a complex of processes that further strengthen the hegemonic mech­ anisms deployed by the US military. These processes include extensive “re-education” programs meant to indoctrinate the detainees against future activity. Such re-education programs have included religious components that emphasize “moderate” sympa­ thies.38 Further, “counterinsurgency inside the wire” has incorporated a set of pro­ced­ ures within its release process that requires the release of a detainee to be guaranteed by a community or “tribal” leader “to assume responsibility for [the detainees’] post-release conduct.”39 The process in essence acts to diffuse the disciplinary mechanisms of deten­ tion through transforming the social environments of the former detainees, influencing “the detainees’ web of relatives, friends, and tribesmen who were directly affected by their internment and who, by some estimates, included a half-million Iraqis.”40 In addition to camps and prisons detaining suspected combatants and suspicious civilians, modern liberal counterinsurgents have deployed the mass detention of civil­ ians as another mechanism of control and pacification. Such mass detention can occur in situ—with the enclavization of existing centers of habitation, or through the resettle­ ment of civilian populations into newly created townships, entry and exit to which are monitored, and which are often encircled by barbed wire enclosures. Examples of the latter include the concentration camps of the Boer War, the New Villages of Malaya, the centres de regroupement of Algeria, and the strategic hamlets of Vietnam. As the techno­ logical ability to conduct monitoring and surveillance has improved and in counter­ insurgencies where the population is primarily urban rather than disbursed in expanses of countryside, resettlement gives way to in situ encirclement. The encirclement of Gaza and the enclavization of the West Bank, using walls, seam zones, and other mechanisms of control is the best example of in situ mass confinement par excellence. The US has also extensively used such in situ mass incarceration in a range of insurgent cities in Iraq, especially Falluja and in the neighborhoods of Baghdad.41 36  Elkins (2005); Kelly (1965: 189–190); Heggoy (1972: 182); Short (1975). 38  Khalili (2013b: 141–142). 39  Brooks and Miller, (2009: 130–131). 41  Khalili (2011b; 2013b).

37  Valentine (1990). 40  Azarva (2009).

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372   laleh khalili The mass detention of civilians provides an occasion for what is called “population control”; preventing civilians from aiding the guerrillas with victuals, labeled “food con­ trol” is one of the main aims of controlling the population. Food control is effected through the confiscation or rationing of food, and destruction of agricultural products via defoliants (such as Agent Orange).42 The mass incarceration of civilians is also seen as a means of pooling populations that could either act as hostages or as sources of intel­ ligence about the movements and activities of guerrilla forces.43 The longer-term effect of such concentration of populations and their detention or resettlement is social en­gin­ eer­ing on a mass scale. In many instances, land tenure and property ownership regimes have been transformed; community boundaries and class structures have been remod­ eled; vast populations have been brought into the field of vision of the state; and in the great majority of instances, a kind of forced urbanization has been effected. Perhaps the most novel forms of detention in the War on Terror have been the range of practices that can be categorized as offshore detention. These include proxy deten­ tion via extraordinary rendition and detention in spaces that are made legally liminal in order to ensure invisibility and inaccessibility of detainees. The Guantánamo Bay detention center and Bagram Air Force base best fit the category of liminal spaces of detention. Because the Guantánamo Bay naval base is located in a corner of Cuba (secured by the US via colonial means in perpetuity), the US military and legal apparatuses have attempted to exempt it from habeas corpus claims of human rights lawyers. Although the US failed to prevent Guantánamo detainees from receiving legal repre­ sentations, it succeeded with Bagram Air Force base, which was ruled outside US legal jurisdiction by the US Supreme Court.44 While both the British and the French have used offshore ­prisons to confine rebel and revolutionary anticolonial leaders after ­trials, the pretrial indefinite detention that characterizes Guantánamo Bay is far rarer.45 The US has claimed that these offshore detention sites are akin to prisoner-of-war camps. But it refuses to recognize the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the detainees. Even more significant is both the indefiniteness of the duration of the War on Terror, and that many of the detainees were captured in places far from the battle­ fields of this putative war. Extraordinary rendition—or detention by proxy—is in some ways less novel: where the tattered remnants of legal and normative prohibition on interrogation under torture have acted as an obstacle toward torturing detainees, the US has shipped these detainees to countries that have little legal or political constraints on their ability to extract infor­ mation (often false and useless) from detainees placed under unimaginable phys­ic­al and psychological distress.46 The aforementioned Phoenix Program, most notorious for its use of tiger cages on Vietnamese detainees was ostensibly under the control of South Vietnamese forces, while the Israeli military has consistently refused to ac­know­ledge

42  Khalili (2013b: 193–196). 43  Khalili (2013b: 172–212). 44  Hafetz (2011). 45  For exceptions see Horesh (2010), Khalili (2013b: 65–100). 46  Khalili (2013b: 101–138); also see The Rendition Project at http://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/.

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Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliberal Age   373 that it was responsible for the Khiyam Detention Center operated by its proxy force, the South Lebanese Army.47

Remote Control Weaponry Although there are indications that the US had developed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) as early as the 1960s and used them for intelligence-gathering in the Vietnam War, the weapons were not provided extensive funding by either the Pentagon or the CIA, which favored spy satellites.48 It was the technological advances in the Israeli use of remote control weaponry in the early 2000s that encouraged the US to accelerate the development of drones not only for reconnaissance but also for assassination pur­ poses. The first known US use of a drone for an assassination took place in February 2002 in Pakistan.49 Since then, up to 6,000 people have been killed by drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, many of them civilians.50 The primary US operators of assassination drones are the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the CIA. Both organizations intensively compete against one another for the control of the pro­ gram, and although human rights organizations have demanded that the program be operated by the military for better oversight, the US military’s JSOC is at least as se­cret­ ive and unaccountable as the CIA, having been set up to operate like the private militia of the US executive branch. The advocates of using drones for assassination defend it because it allows for a “smaller footprint,” and claim that as a weapon it is more precise than most other forms of aerial bombing.51 A former legal advisor to the Israeli military and current human rights law professor at Harvard has argued that “for actors committed to humanitarian ideals, the coupling of remoteness and precision [that drones represent] allows for the possibility of striking only those most ‘deserving’ players—political leaders, military commanders, and the like.”52 The remote lethality of drones, however, is controversial even among those commit­ ted to liberal interventionism. It is the perfect vehicle for what Martin Shaw has called “risk transfer war,” in which the danger to the lives of US military personnel is contained through displacement onto the bodies of the “enemy,” whether civilian or combatant.53 What is perhaps most striking about both the language and practice of drone usage is the extent to which its advocates’ language of “protection” and “precision” is—like so many other modular techniques and tactics of asymmetric and irregular warfare— about the calibration of the use of lethal force in order to make its violence palatable to the public constituencies at home.54 This function is reinforced by the inaccessibility of the victims of drone attacks to reporters, and their invisibility (except as photographic 47  Khalili (2013b: 105–115). 48  Jones (1997). 49  Sifton (2012). 50  See the data available at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, http://www.thebureauinvestigates. com/category/projects/drones/drones-graphs/. 51  Brennan (2012); Koh (2010). 52  Blum (2012: 11). 53  Shaw (2005). 54  Khalili (2012b).

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374   laleh khalili negative silhouettes in the drone operators’ crosshairs). Even more harrowingly, the tar­ gets of drone assassinations could be chosen not only because they are specifically named persons designated as targets on the basis of intelligence, but also on the basis of a broad profile (two or three “military-age males” in a location considered suspicious), a lethal process euphemistically designated “signature strikes.”55 These essentially extend the shadow of death to people simply suspected of nefarious activity—by virtue of their age, location, and physical appearance—without any solid evidence whatsoever.

Private Firms Most militaries have intricate and dense webs of connections with private firms that provide technical and technological services and products to the military and are cru­ cial to the logistics and operational activities of those militaries. In the War on Terror, logistics provision firms were the biggest financial beneficiaries of contracts; KBR Halliburton and Kuwait-based Agility received $39.5 billion and $7.2 billion respectively in contracts.56 Most notably, these firms often employ “third-country nationals,” or immigrant workers from countries that are not party to the war. The massive rise in the employment of such workers in menial jobs on military bases (engaged in cooking and cleaning, cutting hair, and driving goods vehicles) produces a hierarchy of labor in which the repressive labor practices replicate those from which migrant laborers every­ where suffer.57 However, the rise of private firms in waging war, intelligence-gathering, policing, security provision, and frontline activities is a much more recent affair.58 The US gov­ ernment agencies’ extensive use of corporate warriors employed by the likes of Blackwater (later Xe; currently Academi), Aegis Defense Services, Control Risks Group, Titan, and CACI, in both an arms-wielding capacity and as interrogators has rightfully attracted a great deal of attention. Among this group of firms, the most notorious are on the one hand Titan and CACI, and on the other hand Blackwater. While the former pro­ vided interrogators and translators broadly implicated in tortures in Abu Ghraib, the latter’s warriors were engaged in a number of different scandals involving attacks on civilians in Iraq.59 Just as significant is the gargantuan private intelligence-gathering apparatuses that serve both the government’s military, intelligence, and domestic lawenforcement services and the voracious demand for private or industrial intelligence.60 In some ways the use of private warriors best embodies the transformation in waging war in a neoliberal age. Sovereign functions of the state, and its capacity to wield death, are outsourced: fighting is displaced onto persons who are categorized as “civilians”; and the exercise of violence is classified into a broad range of subcategories, from security 55  Becker and Shane (2012). 56  Fifield (2013). 57  Li (2015), Lipman (2009); Stillman (2011). 58  Silverstein (2000); Scahill (2007); Chatterjee (2004); Singer (2003; 2004; 2007). 59  Fay (2004); Kinsey (2009: 12). 60  Priest and Arkin (2011).

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Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliberal Age   375 detail to force protection to armed reconstruction or reconnaissance work, and, of course, the broad range of intelligence-gathering functions. This finessing of the differ­ ent coercive functions means that the use of violence can be calibrated or justified in a diverse way, permitting a great deal of malleability in use. The fluctuations in the ap­plic­ abil­ity of laws and military regulations to private warriors further allows a degree of impunity, invisibility, and unaccountability to the private firms. More fundamentally, a war fought by military warriors most brazenly normalizes the equation of violence with economic enterprise, and through the structure of the free market embeds the will to war in the largest number of people vested in the private firms. In a sense, such private firms effect the distribution of responsibility and the desire for violence to the broadest segments of the public, while at the same time, through the structures of corporate privacy, they severely limit public participation in the decisionmaking processes that go on within the firms. As such, private military forms most clearly reflect neoliberal ethos and practice: not the retreat of the state, but its re­con­fig­ ur­ation as a machine whose primary function is the facilitation of enterprise.

Biometrics and Big Data The fetishes for privatized intelligence-gathering and for the newest technology con­ verge in the rapidly expanding commercial sector of biometrics and “big data.” Biometrics allows the collection of biological markers (iris patterns, fingerprints, facial recognition software, and other distinct and unique bodily identifiers) in easily accessed digital forms. The roots of biometrics lie in the old-fashioned identity card, used as a tool of surveil­ lance and pacification by the French in Syria in the 1920s and by the British in Palestine in the 1930s.61 As identity cards have become increasingly sophisticated, they have con­ tinuously incorporated advances in the science of identification.62 In the counterinsur­ gency contexts, whether analogue or digital, they allow for tracking the movements of persons passing through checkpoints, and for more longitudinal or spatial mapping of vast numbers of peoples. In Falluja in Iraq, for example, the US issued identity cards or badges that listed “the kinship affiliations of the bearer, their place of work and resi­ dence, any detention history, and contain biometric data including fingerprints and iris scans.”63 This form of tracking is not only a passive means of intelligence-gathering, it also allows the counterinsurgent force to harass or intimidate. After gathering such data (and depositing them in the Biometrics Fusion Center in Virginia) the US military affixed posters in Falluja that announced, “We know where you are and what you are doing. Who will you trust now?”64

61  Khalili (2011b: 421). Also see Tawil-Suri (2010). 62  Amoore (2006); Department of Defense (2007); Graham (2009). 64  Shachtman (2007).

63  Khalili (2013b: 200).

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376   laleh khalili The information gathered via biometrics is only one category of data aggregated by “big data” technologies. Mining for big data, of course, occurs within a great many sec­ tors (as well as academia) and essentially allows for the aggregation, manipulation, and interpretation of vast numbers of datapoints often collected through trawling the inter­ net, multiple open or proprietary databases, or other digital or digitized resources. Where identity cards and biometrics are the perfect instruments of a politics of security, big data facilitates forecasting, prediction, and what Louise Amoore has called the “pol­ it­ics of possibility.”65 If a politics of security depends on a calculation of risks on the basis of statistical reasoning, big data, used in the service of security, counterinsurgency, or counterterrorism, provides the necessary mathematical underpinnings of decisionmaking simply to prevent even the possibility of risk. The collection of vast amounts of data—texts of emails, electronic correspondence, and conversation metadata, recordings of conversations on landlines, mobile phone lines, or via software—by the National Security Agency (and its private contractors, including Booz Allen, which had employed Edward Snowden) is the most obvious and egregious example of mining for “big data.”66 But such “big data” can also be collected by private firms on contract to various US agencies. The dizzying proliferation of “frontier consulting” firms, populated by former counterinsurgency, special operations, and intelligence operatives attests to the faith of government agencies in ever-broadening bodies of data guiding aid, foreign, and mili­ tary policies. Among these firms, for example, is Caerus, founded by counterinsurgency supremo David Kilcullen, which uses big data to map a range of social and political pro­ cesses in places such as Syria, Somalia, San Salvador, and Colombia.67

The Irresistible Rise of Proxies If the concatenation of a series of modular technologies and techniques elides the reality of US counterinsurgency as a kind of biopolitics at the muzzle of a gun and US counter­ terrorism as thanatopolitics, the most important lubricant of US action overseas has been the presence of willing and eager proxies. As an enthusiastic advocate of US empire, Robert Kaplan has frankly admitted, “Imperialism [is] less about conquest than about the training of local armies. Reliance on American techniques and weapons sys­ tems, and the relationship established between American officers and their third world protégés, helped give the US the access it needed around the globe.”68 Similarly, the bestknown US counterinsurgent, General David Petraeus, has quoted T. E. Lawrence on the use of proxies: “Do not try to do too much with your own hands.”69

65  Amoore (2013). 66  Belcher (2013: 165–194); Greenwald (2014). 67  On the work of Caerus, see Kilcullen (2013). 68  Kaplan (2005: 48). 69  Petraeus (2006: 3).

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Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliberal Age   377 More than any other political practice, the use of proxies allows for exogenous pol­it­ ical relations—political and economic hierarchies, use of force, exploitation, ideologies, unequal access to resources, and forms of domination—to be translated and in­corp­or­ ated into endogenous actors and activities. Proxies provide the veil of “local” legitimacy. The most immediate form the use of proxies takes is the training of security forces— either in situ or in academies, schools, and bases in the US (and Europe).70 Similarly, the presence of both more massive and permanent bases and the smaller lilypad variety overseas also requires the acquiescence, support, and protection of the host govern­ ments.71 Most important, of course, is the intertwining of the national political and eco­ nomic elites in the global webs of neoliberal economy, founded on capital accumulation and violence.72 Using local clients and training local security forces to engage in counterinsurgency under the tutelage of the metropolitan force allow for costs (in blood and treasure and reputation), responsibilities, accountability, and blame to be devolved from the metro­ politan centers to the margins. Though dependence on local clients (many of whose elite are pursuing their own interests) is not without liabilities, it is nevertheless calculated to be a more effective and cost-efficient form of presence on asymmetric battlefields.73 The extent to which the US has depended on local clients has fluctuated over the course of the War on Terror. As the US has withdrawn its combat troops from Iraq— leaving behind private military contractors, special operations forces, and training and advisory personnel—its military doctrine has also concurrently shifted to emphasize “indirect” counterinsurgencies. Where the first version of the US Counterinsurgency Field Manual provided the guidelines for US troops pacifying intransigent populations, the updated 2014 version (whose name has changed to Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies) now emphasizes “indirect” work from the outset, and any US military operation is seen as occurring entirely within the context of a “host nation.”74 Certainly, the activities of drones and special operations forces similarly require the acquiescence of host nations and the cooperation of their proxy forces in provision of intelligence, targeting data, and necessary diplomatic, political, and legal cover. The use of proxies reinforces the creation of interstitial spaces in which “extraterritoriality, legal and pro­ ced­ural ambiguity,” and a calibrated visibility/invisibility create the conditions of possi­ bility of rule from a distance, freed from demands for accountability or transparency.75

Conclusions An attempt to cloak the calibrated use of force within a discourse either of humanitarian rescue, or of scientifically precise wielding of violence has been the distinguishing 70  Gill (2004); Khalili (2014). 71  Lutz (2009); Vine (2011). 72  Fanon (1963: 148–205). 73  Khalili (2013b: 246–248; 2014). 74  US Army and Marine Corps (2014). 75  Khalili (2010a: 78); also Khalili (2014).

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378   laleh khalili f­eature of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism warfighting by the US in the long twentieth century, but especially in the War on Terror. The convergence of neoliberal managerial innovations and military doctrine has meant the emergence of a series of modular techniques and tools that can be deployed in a range of combinations across different contexts. These include detention, the use of robotic wars, mass surveillance, and the employment of private military firms. What characterizes the range of specific tools and technologies is their modularity, which lends them malleability and flexibility, their distribution and displacement of accountability to a range of external actors (whether private firms or local proxies), and their careful calibration of visibility and invisibility. Through these mechanisms, war­ fare can be waged cloaked in a discourse of legality, humanitarianism, and right, while transparency and accountability are kept to a minimum. Perhaps most significantly, what counterterrorism and counterinsurgency warfare do is to provide technical solutions to what are ultimately political problems. By always perfecting short-term responses to fundamental questions of global inequality in power and resources, these forms of warfare make acceptable the use of violent intervention in addressing political contestation and revolt, conflicts and insurgencies. But these tech­ nical solutions also have another effect. In the new colonial context, they make govern­ ance the work of militaries. Conquered or subjugated populations are transformed into adversaries who are kept in good order through the application of ever-increasingly refined lethal methods of control.

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380   laleh khalili Graham, Stephen (2009). “Cities as Battlespace: The New Military Urbanism,” City 13,4: 383–402. Greenwald, Glenn (2014). No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State (New York: Metropolitan Books). Gregory, Derek (2004). The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell). Gregory, Derek (2006). “The Death of the Civilian?,” Environment and Planning D 24: 633–638. Hafetz, Jonathan (2011). Habeas Corpus after 9/11: Confronting America’s New Global Detention System (New York: New York University Press). Hajjar, Lisa (2003). “From Nuremberg to Guantánamo: International Law and American Power Politics,” in Middle East Report 229: 8–15. Hajjar, Lisa (2005). Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (Berkeley: University of California Press). Hastings, Michael (2012). The Operators: The Wold and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan (London: Phoenix). Heggoy, Alf Andrew (1972). Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Hersh, Seymour (2004). Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: HarperCollins). Horesh, Roxanne (2010). “To Die or Conquer the Hill: Sites of Resistance for Jewish Detainees in British Mandate Prisons in East Africa, 1944–1948” (Oxford: unpublished MPhil thesis). Johnson, Thomas  H. and Barry Scott Zellen (eds) (2014). Culture, Conflict, and Counterinsurgency (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Jones, Christopher (1997). “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): An Assessment of Historical Operations and Future Possibilities,” A Research Paper Presented To The Research Department Air Command and Staff College http://fas.org/irp/program/collect/docs/970230D.pdf Kaplan, Fred (2013). The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (New York: Simon and Schuster). Kaplan, Robert D. (2005). Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond (New York: Vintage). Kelly, George Armstrong (1965). Lost Soldiers: The French Army and Empire in Crisis 1947–1962 (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press). Kelly, Tobias (2006). Law, Violence and Sovereignty among West Bank Palestinians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Khalili, Laleh (2010a). “Tangled Webs of Coercion: Parastatal Production of Violence in Abu Ghraib,” in Khalili and Schwedler (eds). Policing and Prisons in the Middle East: Formations of Coercion (London: Hurst). Khalili, Laleh (2010b). “The New (and Old) Classics of Counterinsurgency,” Middle East Report 255: 14–23. Khalili, Laleh (2011a). “Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency,” Review of International Studies 37,4: 1471–1491. Khalili, Laleh (2011b). “The Location of Palestine in Global Counterinsurgencies,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42,3: 413–433.

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Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliberal Age   381 Khalili, Laleh (2012a). “COIN vs. CT,” in Middle East Report Blog, January 9 http://www.merip. org/coin-vs-ct Khalili, Laleh (2012b). “Fighting Over Drones,” Middle East Report 264: 18–22. Khalili, Laleh (2013a). “The tip of the spear: US Special Operations Forces,” Al Jazeera, March 29 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332811912362162.html Khalili, Laleh (2013b). Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Khalili, Laleh (2014a). “Scholar, Pope, Soldier, Spy,” Humanity 5,3. Khalili, Laleh (2014b). “The Uses of Happiness in Counterinsurgencies,” Social Text 118: 23–43. Khalili, Laleh (2014). “The Utility of Proxy Detention in Counterinsurgencies,” in Bachmann, Bell, Holmqvist (eds). The New Interventionism: Assemblages of War: Police (London: Routledge). Kilcullen, David (2006). “Counterinsurgency Redux,” Survival 48,4: 111–130. Kilcullen, David (2006). “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, May–June 2006: 103–108. Kilcullen, David (2008). “Road-Building in Afghanistan,” Small Wars Journal, April 24 http:// smallwarsjournal.com/blog/political-maneuver-in-counterinsurgency Kilcullen, David (2009a). Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (London: Hurst & Co.). Kilcullen, David (2009b). “Measuring Progress in Afghanistan,” http://blog.oup.com/2010/06/ afghanistan/ Kilcullen, David (2010). Counterinsurgency (London: Hurst & Co.). Kilcullen, David (2013). Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (London: Hurst & Co.). Kinsey, Christopher (2009). Private Contractors and the Reconstruction of Iraq: Transforming Military Logistics (London: Routledge). Koh, Harold Hongju (2010). “The Obama Administration and International Law,” http:// www.state.gov/s/l/releases/remarks/139119.htm Lambeth, Benjamin  S. (2005). Air Power Against Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp.). Li, Darryl (2015). “Offshoring the Army: Migrant Workers and the U.S. Military,” in UCLA Law Review 62. Lipman, Jana K. (2009). Guantánamo: A Working Class History between Empire and Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press). Lutz, Catherine (ed.) (2009). The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts (New York: New York University Press). Lujan, Fernando (2013). “Light Footprints: The Future of American Military Intervention,” (Washington DC: Center for a New American Security) http://www.cnas.org/publications/ reports/light-footprints-the-future-of-american-military-intervention Mazetti, Mark (2013). The Way of the Knife: The C.I.A., A Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth (New York: Penguin). McChrystal, General Stanley (2013). My Share of the Task (New York: Penguin). McFate, Montgomery (2005). “The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture,” Joint Forces Quarterly 38: 42–48. McFate, Montgomery, Britt Damon, and Robert Holliday (2012). “What Do Commanders Really Want to Know? U.S. Army Human Terrain System Lessons Learned from Iraq and

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382   laleh khalili Afghanistan,” in Laurence and Matthews (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Military Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 92–113. McKelvey, Tara (2007). Monstering: Inside America’s Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers). Mégret, Frédéric (2006). “From ‘Savages’ to ‘Unlawful Combatants’: A Postcolonial Look at International Humanitarian Law’s ‘Other,’ ” in Orford (ed.). International Law and Its Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 265–317. Milne, David (2008). America’s Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War (New York: Hill and Wang). Nagl, John  A. (2005). Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Nagl, John (2010). “Local Security Forces,” in Rid and Kearney (eds). Understanding Counterinsurgency: Doctrine, Operations and Challenges (London: Routledge), 160–170. Petraeus, David (2006). “Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq,” Military Review, January–February: 2–12. Porch, Douglas (2013). Counterinsurgency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Price, David H. (2011). Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State (Oakland, CA: AK Press). Rabinow, Paul (1989). French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Ricks, Thomas  E. (2006). Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (London: Allen Lane). Ricks, Thomas E. (2009). The Gamble: General Petraeus and the Untold Story of the American Surge in Iraq, 2006–2008 (London: Allen Lane). Rid, Thomas and Thomas Kearney (eds) (2010). Understanding Counterinsurgency: Doctrine, Operations and Challenges (London: Routledge). Scahill, Jeremy (2007). Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books). Scahill, Jeremy (2013). Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (New York: Serpent’s Tail). Shachtman, Noah (2007). “How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social—Not Electronic,” Wired.com, November 27 http://www.wired.com/ politics/security/magazine/15-12/ff_futurewar Shahrani, Nazif  M. (2002). “War, Factionalism, and the State in Afghanistan,” American Anthropologist 104,3: 715–722. Shaw, Martin (2005). The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and its Crisis in Iraq (Oxford: Polity). Short, Anthony (1975). The Communist Insurrection in Malaya (London: Frederick Muller Ltd.). Sifton, John (2012). “A Brief History of Drones,” Nation, February 27 http://www.thenation. com/article/166124/brief-history-drones Silverstein, Ken (2000). Private Warriors (New York: Verso). Singer, Peter  W. (2003). Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Singer, Peter W. (2004). “War, Profits, and the Vacuum of Law: Privatized Military Firms and International Law,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 42,2: 521–549. Singer, Peter W. (2007). “Can’t Win with ’Em, Can’t Go to War without ’Em: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency,” Brookings Policy Paper No. 4.

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Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in the Neoliberal Age   383 Stillman, Sarah (2011). “The Invisible Army: For Foreign Workers on U.S. Bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, War can be Hell,” New Yorker, June 6, 2011. Tawil-Suri, Helga (2010). “Orange, Green, and Blue: Palestinian ID Cards as Media and Material Artifacts,” in Lyon, Zureik, and Abu-Laban (eds). Surveillance and State of Exception: The Case of Israel/Palestine (New York: Routledge), 219–238. Therborn, Göran (2009). “NATO’s Demographer,” New Left Review 56: 136–144. Thompson, Robert (1968). “Squaring the Error,” Foreign Affairs 46,3: 442–453. United States Army and Marine Corps (2007). Counterinsurgency Field Manual: US Army Field Manual No. 3–24; Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3–33.5 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). United States Army and Marine Corps (2014). Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies: US Army Field Manual No. 3–24; Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3–33.5, C1. (Washington DC: United States Army) https://armypubs.us.army.mil/doctrine/index.html Valentine, Douglas (1990). The Phoenix Program (New York: William Morrow & Co.). Verkuil, Paul R. (2007). Outsourcing Sovereignty: Why Privatization of Government Functions Threatens Democracy and What We Can Do About It (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Vine, David (2011). Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S.  Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Weizman, Eyal (2007). Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso). Woodward, Bob (2002). Bush at War (New York: Pocket Books). Woodward, Bob (2004). Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster). Woodward, Bob (2010). Obama’s Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster).

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Chapter 19

W(h)ither A r a bi a n Pen i nsu l a St u die s? Rosie Bsheer

A most deafening silence has prevailed in the academic world since Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a war on Yemen in March 2015. With the exception of a few scholars of Yemen,1 scholars of the Middle East in general, and the Arabian Peninsula in particular, have all but turned a blind eye to the urgency of critical analysis on the humanitarian, sociopolitical, and environmental catastrophes overtaking the southwestern region of the peninsula. This has opened up the field for what historian Toby C. Jones once called “instant experts”2 to dominate public statements (and thus knowledge production) on Yemen—sparse as they may be—with little to no rigorous analysis of Yemen. Embedded within the nexus of think tanks, public relations firms, and governments, these “experts” have instead prioritized the security concerns, national interests, and dominant narra­ tives of external powers and their local allies over those of the people bearing the brunt of unfathomable violence. Geopolitics is thus reduced to a simple game of identity pol­it­ ics that privileges the (un)analytical category of “sectarianism.” The net effect has been to elide how decades of destructive Saudi intervention and US counterterrorism policies in Yemen have produced the current reality in the country. If political turmoil is a productive site for critical scholarly examination, then some­ thing has gone terribly amiss in Arabian Peninsula studies, to the extent that such a field exists. For not only is the absence of sustained critical analysis in the face of brute regime force in the peninsula commonplace, but it is also emblematic of the state of Arabian Peninsula studies more broadly. On the one hand, the peninsula remains marginal in Middle East studies and beyond. This is despite its centrality to the broader circuits of power, counterrevolution, capital, labor, popular mobilization, and religion that have shaped world history. On the other hand, within the field itself, long-entrenched ­analytic 1  Schwedler and Philbrick Yadav (2015); Mundy (2015); Schwedler (2015); and Carapico (Dec. 19, 2016 and 2016). 2  Jones (Fall 2013: 11).

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   385 frameworks have persisted. Notwithstanding a select set of critical works produced in the last decade, scholarship on Arabia has largely embraced the myopic focus on oil, religion, and security. It has also reified the artificial, and very much political, separation between Yemen and the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) which political scientist Sheila Carapico warned of over a decade ago.3 The result has been deep ig­nor­ ance of the southwest region of the peninsula and its people, history, and contemporary politics. This ignorance has both enabled and normalized the analytical silence around the current war on Yemen. While the aggressor Gulf states have suffered great material losses as a result of the ongoing war, they have so far emerged with narrative power on their side and the ability to shape global discourse on the war. That political practices and institutions work to shape the form and content of know­ ledge produced about peoples, places, and events is not surprising. They are constitutive of all political governance and the ways in which power operates, as Edward Said and others have argued. To be sure, the various regimes of the Arabian Peninsula are com­ plicit in obscuring political, cultural, social, and economic realities therein. They have long invested in shaping knowledge production on the peninsula’s history and that of their own. In so doing, they aim to render invisible, among other things, the decadeslong popular opposition to conservative and authoritarian systems of rule as well as the struggle for political, civil, social, and economic rights. Such realities betray official rep­ resentations of conservative populations that are docile, supportive of the un­account­ able regimes that have ruled over them for decades, and—in the case of the oil-rich states—politically pacified by distributive wealth. Whereas scholarship on Arabia was deployed in the service of British and then US imperialism in the early twentieth cen­ tury, it has, at least since the 1970s, fallen largely within the purview of national regimes.4 The petroregimes of the peninsula have institutionalized various limits to knowledge production and access to information. They strictly monitor their borders and those who are allowed to enter or leave. Academic and journalistic criticism of the regimes is grounds for denial of entry into the country, detention, deportation, or—in some cases—imprisonment. Critics residing in these countries—citizens and non-citizens alike—are often banned from traveling. They are also regularly placed under house arrest and stripped of the source of their economic livelihood. Scholars who reside out­ side the region either remain silent or temper their criticism so as not to lose what little access they had to their research sites or their jobs. Following the Arab uprisings, and increasingly so after the ongoing war on Yemen, the GCC states further escalated their punitive measures against critics of state policies. These include hefty fines and signifi­ cant prison time that include acts of torture.5 Such measures are reinforced by the con­ trol that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates increasingly have on media and publishing infrastructures throughout the Middle East. Despite the political differ­ ences of these regimes, they monitor and shape what is written and broadcast about the region. They also, independently, endeavor to favorably shape US policy in the Middle 3  Carapico (2004). 4  Vitalis (2006); Jones (2010); and al-Rasheed (Fall 2013: 11–15). 5  “Saudi Arabia” (Freedom House, 2016).

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386   rosie bsheer East and to improve their respective images. They do so by hiring public relations firms and lobbyists and by donating to universities, think tanks, and nonprofit foundations.6 Severe as the censorial and punitive measures of the peninsula’s regimes may be, they are not as exceptional as scholars and laypeople often portray them. They are part of our daily political lexicon. After all, power and knowledge are co-constitutive, and govern­ ments everywhere engage in such practices to varying degrees. In the United States, for example, the executive branch continues to embargo archival documents decades past their declassification dates, such as those on the 1953 coup in Iran or the 1964 overthrow of King Saud in Saudi Arabia, in the name of national security. Such elision from the his­ tor­ic­al record is a central part of practices of knowledge production everywhere. It is also consistent with other forms of censorship. Denying scholars Adam Habib and Tariq Ramadan entry to the United States because of their critical political stances, racially profiling Muslim Americans, and the harassment of artists who speak truth to power, such as the Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, are but a few other examples.7 Yet they are stark reminders of the nondemocratic machinations that even so-called liberal democracies practice to prevent or punish certain forms of criticism. The regimes of the Arabian Peninsula are no different. They have adopted technologies of surveillance, policing, and censorship that are tried and tested elsewhere. Their oil wealth has also enabled them to invest heavily in security and other experts from Western Europe and the United States—and more recently, Israel—in order to silence criticism, punish dis­ sent, and shield such practices from public scrutiny. Despite the challenges of conducting research in and on the Arabian Peninsula, a crit­ ical scholarship has emerged since the turn of the twenty-first century. This chapter engages some of the intellectual directions that the English-language scholarship on the peninsula has taken, before turning to my own work on Saudi Arabia and the signifi­ cance of Yemen therein.8 The goal is not to take stock of the state of the field or to review its rich historiography. Rather, the chapter aims to highlight the latter’s methodological rigor, conceptual interventions, and intellectual significance to other fields and dis­cip­ lines. In other words, it is to take seriously the view of the Middle East from one of the world’s most penetrated and diverse regions. Against all odds, the Arabian Peninsula emerges in this scholarship as an exciting site of theory-making that confronts struc­ tures of political domination, economic exploitation, and cultural reductionism. Incorporating scholarship on the peninsula promises to challenge conventional his­tor­ ies of the modern Middle East, but also of capitalism, empire, space, state formation, material culture, and sociointellectual movements.

6  Lipton, Williams, and Confessore (2014); Fang (2014); Pecquet (2014); and Desmukh, Jones, and Shehabi (2016). 7  Hussain (2017). 8  For more on local scholarship in the states of the peninsula, see Bsheer and Warner (2013); Bishara (2014a).

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   387

Dominant Frameworks in the Study of the Arabian Peninsula Theorizing the relationship between oil and politics has preoccupied scholars of Arabia since the 1970s. With the publication of Hossein Mahdavy’s critical work on rentier pol­it­ics in Iran, which Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani later developed in the context of the Arab petrostates, an authoritative yet problematic link was established between natural resources and political governance.9 Accordingly, external oil rents enable regimes to singlehandedly dominate political power, eschew the need for economic diversification, and pacify citizens through cash rewards. Through their financial power and aid flows, these regimes also shaped the politics of non-oil-producing states as well. Indeed, political economists of the modern Middle East have relied on Rentier State Theory to explain the prevalence of authoritarianism and single-commodity economies as well as the alleged absence of popular politics in the Arabian Peninsula and its neigh­ bors. They did so with little regard to historical specificity and political realities, as Adam Hanieh shows in this volume and elsewhere.10 That British and US imperial powers were party to the very making, and survival, of the conservative and hereditary regimes in the Gulf did not factor into their analyses.11 Neither did the central role that Islamic con­ servatism, Gulf authoritarianism, and petrocapital played in the success of global cap­it­al­ ism in the twentieth century.12 For these scholars, the existence of oil revenues was enough to explain the behavior of rulers and ruled in these oil-producing states. When social, economic, or political realities did not fit the rentier model, as was often the case, they were either ignored or subsequently theorized as exceptions to the rule. The success of Rentier State Theory was, at best, premised on a selective reading of the past. The challenges of conducting research in the Arabian Peninsula, coupled with orien­tal­ist tropes on religion, tribalism, and gender, facilitated the production and cir­ culation of knowledge that was neither rigorous nor archivally grounded. Further, pro­ ponents of Rentier State Theory and other scholars of the peninsula took imperial and other archives at face value. They reproduced the internal logics of these archives and their representations, thereby compounding facile explanations of an already under­ studied region. These scholars failed to see the myriad attempts of Arabian regimes to diversify their economies, even if these regimes only did so to ensure their own longev­ ity. They also did not take seriously the decades-long popular political mobilizations that sought a more equitable future, such as those in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen that called for economic and social justice and an end to authoritarianism and imperialism. Even after several scholars of Arabia began to reveal the complexity of state power and the existence of such movements throughout the twentieth century through

9  Mahdavy (1970); Beblawi and Luciani (1987). 11  Bsheer (2018). 12  Mitchell (2011).

10  Bsheer and Warner (Fall 2013).

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388   rosie bsheer a critical use of archives,13 the analysis remained the same. So dominant was the Rentier State Theory framework that not only did it shape research agendas on the region and dictate what people and scholars outside the region came to believe about the peninsula, but it also obscured critical scholarship, with its proponents acting as gatekeepers of the field. That even some otherwise critical scholars of the Arabian Peninsula continue to question whether states such as Saudi Arabia are “exceptional” is testament to the durability of the theory. In privileging theory at the expense of everyday life, these scholars of Arabia pro­ duced the peninsula as a place without history, politics, or people (as historical agents). In many ways, this echoed the ideologies of Gulf Arab regimes, which, for the better part of the twentieth century, encouraged an ahistorical and apolitical understanding of the states they ruled. They did so in order to shore up their own political legitimacy and downplay their codependent relationship with imperial powers. If Arabia is said to have no history, short of that of the monarchies, or a history that is not really worth in­corp­or­ at­ing in the classroom, then that is because of the prevalent views that the reactionary forces in power there have propagated. To regurgitate such views is thus to be complicit in the violence that the peninsula’s regimes have done to the diverse histories of Arabia and its people. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Rentier State Theory was still the dominant framework in studies of the Arabian Peninsula. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States, and the surge of scholarly interest in the peninsula, the rela­ tionship between oil and politics was not the only framework that a new generation of scholars had to contend with. For some scholars, understanding the alleged correlation between Islam and violence and its implications in the global “war on terror” became pressing. For others, such a barrage of essentialist, ahistorical, and ideological approaches to religion within a security paradigm was troubling, if not downright dan­ gerous. It threatened to—and, in fact, did—further reify orientalist tropes on Islam, Arabs, and the Middle East and to ultimately shape policy accordingly. Prevalent assumptions about the people of the Arabian Peninsula, in particular, circulated un­crit­ ic­al­ly both in the Middle East and beyond. With the proliferation of think-tank reports, security studies, and government-parroting journalism in post-September 11 know­ ledge production on the Middle East, scholarship on the Middle East took on a defen­ sive posture. The not-so-covert war in Yemen—which was designated a “combat zone” in April 2002—coupled with the 2003 Iraq War and subsequent occupation only raised the stakes. This defensive scholarship aimed to at once dispel misconceptions about the region, its people, and politics, while somehow offering a corrective to the foreign-policy decision of the George W. Bush administration. As regimes across the peninsula also felt under attack by the media, various governments, and think tanks, they initially adopted a defensive position and made research in places such as Saudi Arabia more

13  Halliday (1974); Khalid (1979); Khalaf (1980); Vasiliev (1998: 337); Okruhlik (1999); Haddad, Bsheer, and Abu-Rish (2012).

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   389 ­ ifficult. This compounded the difficulty of producing critical scholarship on the d Arabian Peninsula. Notwithstanding these and other challenges, a sophisticated literature has emerged since the turn of the century on the various states of the peninsula. This literature has made a significant political and intellectual contribution to the collection of works on the Arabian Peninsula. Theorizing the role of politics, religion, natural resources, class, gender, space, infrastructure, and imperialism in processes of state and subject forma­ tion has directed attention away from Rentier State Theory as well as religious and se­cur­ity studies, thereby nuancing—or even overturning—previous understandings of modern Arabian history. Pursuing new lines of inquiry, this emerging scholarship sig­ nals the importance of connecting Arabia—conceptually, theoretically, and methodo­ logically—to regional and global developments from which they have long been disconnected.

Beyond Area Studies? Arabian Peninsula Studies in the Twenty-First Century The turn of the twenty-first century saw the emergence of scholarly works that, in hind­ sight, constitute the building blocks of Arabian Peninsula studies, even if some of their authors do not subscribe to the field as such. Among these, anthropologist Madawi al-Rasheed has labored, at great personal cost, to expose the political excesses of the ruling Al Saud monarchy, both domestically and regionally. Although al-Rasheed has conducted her research from afar, her academic and journalistic interventions have expanded our knowledge of both state and society in Saudi Arabia. From exploring state formation and the machinations of Saudi power to everyday gender and religious pol­it­ ics, the prolific writer has taught us much we did not previously know about the king­ dom’s history, politics, and people.14 Her co-edited volume with political scientist Robert Vitalis, Counter-Narratives: History, Contemporary Society and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, was equally significant.15 The chapters therein bridge the divide in the scholarship on Yemen on the one hand, and the Gulf Arab states on the other. Studying both Yemen and Saudi Arabia from a regional perspective, the volume dispells many long-standing myths in the study of both countries. For example, Najd, the central plateau of Saudi Arabia, could no longer be dismissed as a backwater of the peninsula as so many scholars had previously assumed and stated. It was actually central to trade and pilgrimage routes as well as religious learning and exchange. The volume reveals a dynamic, transnational, and interconnected alternative history of state and society.

14  al-Rasheed (1996: 359–372; 1999; 2005; 2007; 2008; 2013). 15  al-Rasheed and Vitalis (2004).

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390   rosie bsheer If Counter-Narratives signaled a new approach to studying the peninsula, it was Vitalis’s own work on the intersection of race, oil capitalism, and imperialism that most exemplified this shift.16 His groundbreaking research analyzes how Jim Crow racism was exported to Saudi Arabia’s oil industry and institutionalized therein, and the ways in which an indigenous labor movement emerged in the 1950s to resist it. In historicizing the role of the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) in the making of the Saudi state and the writing of its history, Vitalis exposes US corporate and government involvement in the internal politics of a client state as central to the exploitation of the natural resources within. In one stroke, he dismantles the US government’s, Aramco’s, and al-Saud’s much-acclaimed roles as harbingers of modernity in the kingdom. It was probably this triple critique that motivated the Saudi embassy in Washington DC to suc­ cessfully pressure many US universities to rescind their invitations for him to present his work at already-confirmed book talk events. Vitalis was not the only political scientist to make a serious dent in the study of the Arabian Peninsula. It was, in fact, Timothy Mitchell who, in prioritizing the role of materiality, and not ideology, forced us to reconsider the kinds of questions we asked when studying Arabia’s oil states.17 Inspired by Vitalis’s intervention, Mitchell exposed the importance of Saudi Arabia’s religiously conservative forces not only for the main­ ten­ance of the regime but also the country’s oil industry, and by extension, the world economy. Indeed, forces of jihad cooperated with those of the British and then US empires to slow down oil production—thereby increasing prices—and to create a moral and legal order that enabled the crushing of popular political dissent. Linking the materiality of oil production to political agency and the making of “the economy” and “the environment,” Mitchell’s alternative history of global capitalism accomplishes several things. It dismisses simplistic, ideological, and cultural understandings of Islam as anti­ thetical to globalization. Instead, Mitchell reveals the centrality of Islamic movements in the defining structures and practices of modern world history. Highlighting the inter­ twined his­tor­ies of Middle Eastern states and the global economy following the world wars, his work also disturbs the universal story of Western modernity. Toby C. Jones then critically employed this material turn in his study of the environment in Saudi Arabia.18 His work on technopolitics reveals how US scientists and so-called experts, and the support they provided the Saudi Arabian regime by way of managing nature and the environment, were fundamental to the making and consolidation of Saudi power and political governance.19 Together and separately, these authors offered an analytical and transregional under­ standing of the peninsula and established a more critical agenda for Arabian Peninsula studies. Just as global political developments were reshaping scholarship on the penin­ sula, so was the interconnected field of Indian Ocean studies undergoing a welcome reinvigoration. Taking seriously the infrastructures and everyday lives of maritime trade, mobility, and migration, twenty-first-century scholarship on the Indian Ocean 16  Vitalis (1999; 2002: 185–213; and 2006). 17  Mitchell (Winter 2002; 2009; and 2011). 18  Jones (PhD diss., 2006). 19  Jones (2010).

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   391 revealed the interconnectivity and multiplicity of Indian Ocean worlds. The attendant studies on the transnational flow of economic, political, intellectual, and cultural net­ works have forced us to rethink such categories as capitalism, globalization, and empire while shedding light on processes of migration, slavery, diaspora, and religion.20 In contra­dis­tinc­tion to the place that Yemen holds in Arabian Peninsula studies, this schol­ arship is striking in the extent to which parts of Yemen—Hadramawt, in particular— and its people were central to the transnational dynamics and spaces across the Indian Ocean. Scholarship on the Indian Ocean remains as marginal to the field of Arabian Peninsula studies as the latter is in Middle East studies. It has nonetheless started to make its mark on both, albeit over a decade after Janet Abu-Lughod called for reorient­ ing our geographic and transregional gaze in her critique of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems approach and of Eurocentrism more broadly.21 Indeed, approaching bodies of water as geographic units of study promised to upend the heightened focus on the nation as the privileged site of history, identity, and economy. And irrelevant as the Indian Ocean may still be for many a scholar of Arabia, its study has nonetheless fur­ thered the fledgling inclination toward transnational, oceanic, and global histories that the field was already starting to experience. Further, by incorporating Arabia into their scope of research, some critical historians of empire finally elucidated the machinations and nature of imperial powers and their consequences to state and identity formation.22 From disclosing the politics of difference that imperialists deployed across Arabia to the central role that violence and cultural relevance played in subduing people, these works revealed Arabia to be a crucial site of scholarly inquiry for understanding some of the twentieth century’s most profound developments. The last decade thus featured a prominence in much-needed critical local histories and ethnographies that were at once attuned to the transregional and global dynamics that shaped everyday life across the peninsula. The rise of a new generation of scholars coincided with several significant developments in the region. Importantly, and follow­ ing the initial defensive reactions to the September 2001 attacks, peninsular regimes sought to remake the image of the states they ruled. As a result, they eventually eased up restrictions to entering some of the region’s countries and to conducting limited archival and ethnographic research. In Yemen, the 1994 civil war and its aftermath had seriously constrained the freedom of scholars and their ability to do research there. In the early 2000s, however, then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh eased up access for scholars in his quest to improve the image of Yemen following the USS Cole bombing and the September 11 attacks. He was also maneuvering to materially benefit from cooperating with the US government in its global “war on terror.” This was the case until 2009, when the regime imposed travel restrictions to large parts of the country following the rise of 20  McPherson (2001); Boxberger (2002); Bang (2003); Freitag (2003); Ho (2004: 210–246; and 2006); Bose (2006); Willis (2013b); Bishara (2014b); Mathew (2016). 21  Abu-Lughod (1989); Ghazal (2010); Keshavarzian and Hazbun (May 2010); Aslanian (2011); Green (2012); Hopper (2015); Bishara (Nov. 2016). 22  Onley (2007); Satia (2008); Willis (2009: 23–38; and 2013b); Kuehn (2011).

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392   rosie bsheer al-Qāʿida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as well as the Southern Movement (alHirak). In the other peninsular states, access remained easier until the beginning of the 2011 Arab uprisings. Thereafter, these regimes again narrowed avenues for research, especially so with the start of the war in Yemen in 2015. Nevertheless, with the temporar­ ily increased access to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, and—to a lesser extent—Saudi Arabia, the attendant scholarship was locally grounded but trans­ nationally oriented. The richness of the emerging literature defies summary. However, a few broad the­ matic interventions are worth mentioning. Some of the scholarship, for example, took on the intersection of capitalism, class, labor, space, and law to complicate conventional ideas about political, economic, and social power.23 Indeed, it turned out that the authoritarian regimes of the peninsula were not formed outside class politics and global economic processes. On the contrary, class formation and dominant capitalist orienta­ tions were as instrumental to the production and maintenance of power in the penin­ sula as they were—and are—in states elsewhere. Therein, the reliance on coercive labor was both instrumental and necessary. It also further connected Arabia to different parts of Asia and Africa. Historically, imperialism and slavery in Arabia, along with transAtlantic slavery, undergirded the formation of modern capitalism. As Matthew Hopper has shown, slavery in the Middle East was not constitutively different, and somehow more benign, than its Atlantic counterpart, as some scholars have argued.24 The demand for goods led to the enslavement of Africans as commodities in the Arabian Peninsula as elsewhere. Cheap migrant workers grew alongside forced labor, with the peninsula’s economies becoming mostly dependent on them by the last quarter of the twentieth century. This social group has attracted great attention in recent years. Shedding light on their political, social, and cultural lifeworlds, and not simply their exploitation, has been a welcome development. Studying migrant labor has helped us more critically understand the politics of iden­ tity, citizenship, gender, and sociocultural exchange among migrant workers and other residents of the peninsula. Labor migration, however, has not been the only bridge between labor-source countries and those of host communities. Other forms of migra­ tion, travel, trade, and commerce between the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and East Africa have been equally important. They reveal the trans-regional/national dynamics of exchange to be crucial to political, social, economic, and urban life and forms of belonging.25 The circulation of people, commodities, and ideas also had an indelible influence on the diverse cultures of the peninsula, including on religion. Some of the exciting new scholarship on religion and religious movements in the peninsula is grounded in critical theory and ethnographic and archival research.26 Adopting a 23  Gardner (2010); De Regt (April 2, 2010); Hanieh (2011); Mahdavi (2011); Kanna (2011); Buckley (2012): 250–259; Vora (2012); Ahmad (2012). 24  Hopper (2015). 25  Fuccaro (2005); Valeri (2007); Nicolini (2007); Limbert (2014); al-Dailami (2014). 26  Ghazal (2010); Bonnefoy (2011); Ahmad (2013); Miller (2015); Matthiesen (2015); Farquhar (2016).

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   393 t­ ransnational and contextual approach, it rejects simplistic understandings of religious ideolo­gies as being exported, or transported, from one place to the other, unscathed. Instead, this scholarship expands on how religious ideas and theories travel.27 It accounts for the tensions and disagreements within religious discourse and the trans­ formations of religious life over time and space in both places and the ways in which they are adapted to fit one’s lived reality. Sectarianism emerges in this literature as a con­ textualized and historicized phenomenon, one that the regimes of the peninsula and their imperial supporters have varyingly deployed as a tool of control since state forma­ tion, but increasingly so since 1979.28 Where the 1960s saw local regimes in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, and elsewhere cooperate with US forces to brutally crush leftist move­ ments, 1979 epitomized the decade-long marginalization of these secular movements and the privileging of reactionary Islamist politics. As I argue elsewhere, 1979 was a turning point in world history, not simply that of the Arabian Peninsula.29 That year’s Iranian Revolution, the takeover of Mecca, the uprising in Saudi Arabia’s Qatif, and the war in Afghanistan all brought religion and politics closer together. In so doing, they altered the sociopolitical landscape in the Middle East, with consequences for contem­ porary political life around the world. Critical explorations of transnational subjectivities were not limited to the study of religious life and socialization. Indeed, the circulation of people and ideas was central to the emergence of leftist, anticolonial, and antiauthoritarian movements as well as net­ works of solidarity across the Indian Ocean world throughout the twentieth century.30 And as the work of Flagg Miller, Lisa Wedeen, and Mandana Limbert shows, identity— broadly conceived—was intertwined with experiences of urbanization, time, material­ ity, and political and cultural modes of socialization.31 Exploring urbanization, in particular, has been a growing line of inquiry in Arabian Peninsula studies, one that has linked practices of urban (petro)modernity to everyday political and social life in the last century.32 Thinking critically about space has picked up pace in the last few years. Whether taking up the intersection of urbanization and financialization and the rela­ tionship between natural resources, infrastructure, and the management of the Muslim pilgrimage, or rethinking territoriality and sovereignty through the management of the environment, these works promise to further connect studies of the peninsula to fields and disciplines further afield.33 Indeed, where scholarship on the peninsula was once marginal, today not only does it place Arabia at the heart of regional and global history, but it also engages with exciting cross-disciplinary methodologies and theoretical inter­ ventions, promising to transcend Middle East studies, and area studies more broadly.

27  Said (1983). 28  Bsheer and Warner (Fall 2013); Trofimov (2007). 29  Bsheer (2018). 30  Jones (2010); Takriti (2013); Matthiesen (2014); al-Shehabi (2012 and 2017); Bsheer (2018). 31  Miller (2007); Wedeen (2008); Limbert (2010). 32  Freitag (2011); Menoret (2014); Le Renard (2014); al-Naqib (2016); Fuccaro (2016). 33  Buckley and Hanieh (2013); Low (2016); Peutz (2011); Kanna (2012); Mundy et al. (2013); Caton (2014).

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394   rosie bsheer

Saudi Arabia: Knowledge, History, Politics Despite these rich histories and complex connections, and perhaps because of them, the Saudi regime has long endeavored to assert local and regional control over the press, the media, scholarship, and academic institutions. The aim was to project a sanitized, teleo­ logical narrative of state formation wherein Al Saud were the only legitimate rulers of the 1932 state and its imagined antecedents, the so-called first and second Saudi states. It was also to elide the regime’s many contradictory domestic and foreign policies from the purview of Saudi subjects. Increased access to Arab satellite television networks and then to Internet servers encroached on the kingdom’s ability to control the discursive realm on Saudi Arabia. In addition, the September 11, 2001 attacks as well as the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq presented a paradoxical and stark image that the regime needed to spin in its favor. In the former, the attacks on US soil were largely planned and orchestrated by subjects in, and residents of, Saudi Arabia. In the latter, and not for the first time, Saudi Arabia sup­ ported a US invasion of another Arab state, this time in the name of the global “war on terror.” Around the same time in the early 2000s, al-Qāʿida operatives struck inside Saudi Arabia. They targeted foreigners, local residents, and domestic institutions and assets in their quest to pressure the Saudi regime to expel US troops—remnants of the 1991 Gulf War—from Saudi Arabia. Despite its domestic counterterrorism agenda, the Saudi regime supported Sunni insurgents in Iraq who years later formed the Islamic State. Through these developments, the kingdom remained one of the US government’s strong­ est allies in the Middle East. Following the Arab uprisings at the end of the decade, the regime had much to conceal and repackage by way of improving its own image abroad while revisiting its internal mechanisms of subject formation and political legitimation. The Saudi regime’s history with image-making and control over information, how­ ever, long predates these twenty-first-century concerns. They can actually be traced back to the 1960s rivalry between Faisal ibn Abdulaziz and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, which largely played out throughout the 1962–70 Yemen Civil War in the context of the “Arab Cold War.”34 In many ways, Yemen played a huge role in Saudi domestic and regional politics since the formation of the Saudi state in 1932. But the 1962 revolution on Saudi Arabia’s southwestern borders, which started the war, proved espe­ cially alarming to Faisal and his supporters in the ruling family, especially the Sudayri brothers.35 Because it firmly pitted Faisal against Abdel Nasser, the most popular of 34  Kerr (1965). Denoting the power struggle between Arab nationalist republics and Arab mon­arch­ ies, the Arab Cold War spanned the mid-1950s until Abdel Nasser’s death in 1970. 35  The Sudayri brothers have largely ruled the kingdom since 1982. They are the sons of the late King Abdulaziz from Hussa bint Ahmad al-Sudayri, his alleged favorite wife. They include the late King Fahd, the late Crown Princes Sultan and Nayif, current King Salman, and the three powerful princes, Abdulrahman, Turki, and Ahmad.

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   395 Arab leaders, it attracted unprecedented internal opposition, both military and civilian. The revolution also came on the heels of intense developments inside Saudi Arabia. Popular optimism and anti-authoritarian activism had spread throughout the kingdom following King Saud’s 1960 radio broadcast of a new constitution and 1962 announce­ ment that he would not renew the US Dhahran Airfield accord.36 The revolution in Yemen thus exacerbated the Saudi regime’s financial, military, and political problems. Yet, alarming as it may have been, the 1962 revolution on Arabia’s southwestern bor­ ders presented an opportunity for Faisal and the Sudayri brothers to consolidate their power and dictate the emerging shape of the Saudi state as well as the regional power balance. On October 4, 1962, less than a month after the revolution in Yemen began, Faisal held secret negotiations with the Kennedy administration.37 By the end of the month, he succeeded in sidelining King Saud, replacing his nationalist Council of Ministers with one heavily represented by the Sudayri brothers.38 He also proceeded to crush the revolutions in Yemen and the one in Dhofar in 1963.39 It was then that the new Saudi regime, with support from the CIA, began to set the stage for the Islamicization of state and society as a counter to the secular politics of the previous decades. But when Faisal forcibly took control of the throne from Saud in 1964, he was primar­ ily alarmed with the symbolic threats that Gamal Abdel Nasser presented to his rule. Not only was the Egyptian president increasingly popular inside the kingdom, but his relent­ less war of information against the monarchy, which continued until Abdel Nasser’s death in 1970, also proved especially incriminating. The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques had relied on US support to overthrow his brother and crush popular, antiimperial mobilizations that had sought social justice, independence, political represen­ tation, and Arab unity since the late 1940s.40 Abdel Nasser’s propaganda machines, which lacked both accuracy and impartiality,41 nonetheless found King Faisal, who enjoyed the blatant support of imperial powers, to be an easy target to prey on. The fledgling Saudi state bureaucracy had neither the technical nor the human infra­ structures needed to compete with Egypt’s seasoned multimedia government mouth­ pieces. Intent on remedying the imbalance, Faisal pleaded with successive US administrations to prevent Egyptian propaganda against the kingdom. He also asked the US government for the technical equipment and training needed to bolster the regime’s symbolic capital. In contradistinction to his predecessor, Faisal invested in firmly controlling the production and circulation of knowledge on Arabia and its mon­ archy, starting with an unofficial ban on any mention, oral or written, of Saud. He issued new media, publishing, and archiving laws and signed bilateral cultural cooperation protocols that kept records on mid-twentieth-century Arabia in foreign and corporate archives inaccessible long past their declassification dates. Faisal’s regime resorted to 36  “al-Nizam al-Asasi” (December 27, 1960); and al-ʿAwwami (2011: 2: 57). 37  Haykal (1988: 634). 38 al-ʿAwwami (2011: 2: 45–47). 39 Muhammad Hassanayn Haykal argues that in his first year as king, Faisal spent two million Egyptian pounds on the Palestinian cause, as opposed to twenty million in the first month of his reign alone to crush the Yemeni Revolution. See Haykal (1967: 16). 40  Bsheer (2018). 41  James (2006).

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396   rosie bsheer developing and centralizing mass education, and the historiographical self-representation of the Saudi state in particular, employing a network of non-Saudi historians, poets, and writers.42 The goal was to solidify a homogeneous, Najd-based and religiously framed “Saudi identity” against the competing secular populist ideologies that had chal­ lenged Al Saud’s rule. At the same time, Faisal’s regime mobilized education as a tool through which it could both reconcile differences with its opponents and build new alliances. In this way, Faisal’s regime connected official historical praxis and knowledge pro­ duction on Arabia to the necessity of foreclosing political and sociointellectual chal­ lenges of the mid-twentieth century. Therein, producing a more homogeneous public and a benign, ahistorical narrative of the Saudi past was necessary. Control over his­tor­ic­al production thus amplified practices of power and constrained the unfolding of alterna­ tive futures while producing and refracting social, cultural, and political differences.43 Such practices were, and remain, central for transforming Al Saud’s territorial empire into an authoritarian petrostate, with its deep-seated violence to the very idea of the self as connected to ones that have come before.44 The counterrevolutionary measures that Faisal adopted in the late 1960s had the intended effect of stifling knowledge production on Arabia, particularly, but not exclu­ sively, on the formative decades of the mid-twentieth century. His regime succeeded in consigning this crucial period in Saudi history to an insignificant moment in an other­ wise important era of state and economic formation. Additionally, it was able to flatten the history of Arabia and confine it to that of the Saudi-Wahhabi quest for imperial ter­ ritorial control. State-sanctioned historiography in Saudi Arabia thus severed Saudi Arabia’s diverse subjects and spaces from their cosmopolitan pasts, identities, and intel­ lectual trajectories, oriented as they were toward the northeastern littoral of the Gulf, North Africa, East Africa, and Southeast Asia.45 Instead, it rendered pre- and early mod­ ern state forms as insular, apolitical, and outside history’s inexorable march. But various parts of the Arabian Peninsula were connected to transnational political, economic, and cultural formations that predate the advent of Al Saud’s state and the petroeconomy and that persisted long after the formation of the modern state. Rendering these historical narratives visible brings into conceptual view the intersection of Saudi state-making, history writing, and imperial formation. It reveals the multiple identities, histories, and potentialities that Saudi Arabia offered and the violence done in and to its history.46 The goal of such an endeavor is not to simply interrogate history’s constructed nature and resurrect the heroic and activist subjectivities of the Saudi people. Rather, it is to exam­ ine how these breaks with the past are configured and structured and the importance of history-making to the production of the state and everyday social distinctions therein. It

42  See Gorman (2003: 72). 43  Comaroff and Comaroff (1992); Steedman (2002); Trouillot (1995). 44  Bsheer (PhD diss., 2014). 45  al-Rasheed (2005); Peutz (2013: 24). 46  Bsheer (PhD diss., 2014).

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   397 is also, as David Scott urges, to “make the present yield more attractive possibilities for alternative futures.”47

Authoritarianism, Imperialism, and the Politics of Knowledge Production Foreclosing the anti-authoritarian mobilizations of mid-twentieth-century Arabia en­abled King Faisal to consolidate the Saudi state. Not unlike that historical moment, the ongoing Saud-led counterrevolutionary campaigns in the Middle East allowed the GCC regimes to individually and collectively consolidate their own power. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, in particular, emerged as the strongest Arab states. They dictated regional policies and shaped how the world viewed them and the many conflicts and wars in which they were embroiled. Their ability to buy off scholars in some of the highest echelons of academic institutions in Europe and the United States only reified and gave credence to their state-sanctioned narratives, as did the infrastructures of knowledge production and dissemination that they either controlled or held sway over around the world. Given the increasing power of the authoritarian GCC states, unpacking knowledge production on the peninsula is all the more urgent. Doing so furthers the recent em­pir­ ic­al, conceptual, and political interventions of scholarship on the peninsula in several ways: first, by exposing what the peninsula’s regimes want elided from official dis­ courses. This, in turn, reveals their anxieties, domestic and regional transgressions, and the alliances that enable such practices. Second, by marginalizing state-driven, topdown histories and instead narrating pasts that regimes of the peninsula have long attempted to conceal. Finally, by confronting the growing discourses of Gulf exception­ alism and dispelling the stereotypes that these regimes and their foot soldiers perpetu­ ate to obscure the daily struggles of the people of Arabia. Peoples in the Arabia Peninsula, much like their brethren elsewhere, have suffered from economic inequality, poverty, and myriad other socioeconomic issues. Far from being shielded from dire economic realities and summarily pacified by oil wealth, they have a history of resilience against brutal regimes that pride themselves on having unbridled US and European support. The peoples of the peninsula have, at great cost, engaged in various forms of political activism, from signing petitions to joining peace­ ful protests. For the fifth year in a row, Bahrainis have taken to the streets as part of an ongoing uprising that still requires the military and intelligence intervention of Saudi Arabia to keep it under control. If what little attention the Bahraini uprising received since 2011 has all but come to a halt, that in Yemen has attracted even less coverage. The US “war on terror” long predated, and established the conditions for, the Yemeni 47  Scott (2004: 56).

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398   rosie bsheer ­ prising in 2011–12. Carried out under the Bush and then Obama administrations, the u war on terror had drastically undermined Yemeni sovereignty and confidence in state institutions.48 As the central government was shown to be increasingly impotent in its control over its own territory, alternative claims to territorially based belonging and political authority were strengthened. More than other popular mobilizations, the uprising on Saudi Arabia’s southern borders caused an internal crisis among the king­ dom’s ruling classes. Indeed, it was a peaceful and successful uprising until Saudi Arabia and the United States intervened to halt it by endorsing a transnational plan and impos­ ing it on the Yemenis, despite growing signs of the reconstitution of authoritarian governance. In March 2015, the United States, United Kingdom, and a coalition of regional states led by Saudi Arabia began an unprovoked war on Yemen. At this time, no border had been breached by troops, no bombs had landed on neighboring lands, and no foreign citizens had been imprisoned or killed. This was always a move to ensure a compliant regime reliably outside the sphere of Iranian influence, despite claims of support for the restoration of the “legitimate” government of Yemen. In addition to causing the un­imagin­able loss of life, the war enabled, among other things, al-Qāʿida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to strengthen its stronghold inside Yemen. This, in turn, has given Saudi Arabia and the United States further justification to continue their wars in Yemen, with little regard for civilian casualties, as the latest commando raid under drone cover by the Trump administration indicates.49 Such a circular logic is part of counterterror­ ism strategies, but it also undergirds the politics and technologies of knowledge produc­ tion. Indeed, it has enabled authoritarian regimes such as that of Saudi Arabia and others to silence criticism and crush dissent and any form of political opposition in the name of the war on terror. With the emergence of the Islamic State, and the absence of political legitimacy, these regimes are sure to continue deploying such logics to ensure their own survival and longevity.

Conclusion This chapter details the ways in which the Arabian Peninsula was largely written out of modern history except to explain the post-1970s vagaries of oil wealth, religion, and ter­ rorism. The political rulers and their imperial supporters are first to blame for the empirical and conceptual marginalization of this otherwise prominent space and its people. But scholars are also liable for the persistence of this omission despite paying lip service to the centrality of the peninsula. What would the political, economic, intellec­ tual, social, and environmental history of the modern Middle East look like if we were to seriously incorporate the Arabian Peninsula within multiple scales—local, regional, and 48  Willis (2013a: 30–34).

49  Greenwald (2017).

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   399 global? How would our understanding of colonialism and imperialism in the Middle East—but elsewhere as well—change upon a critical analysis of their machinations in Yemen and its neighbors? What would it mean for the contemporary history of the Middle East for scholars to examine the “war on terror” in the Arabian Peninsula and its implications to spatial, religious, and sexual politics? When will studies of the Middle East writ large incorporate the research of scholars from the region, not only those of us in European and North American universities? On a somewhat grander scheme, in what ways would our very thinking on capitalism and global history differ if the penin­ sula played a more central role in it? Indeed, the recent scholarship on the Arabian Peninsula forces us to rethink a half-century of academic and other literature on the Middle East and beyond. To use Dipesh Chakrabarty’s terminology, it may be time to seriously provincialize the Levant, not simply within the bounds of Middle East studies, but especially to find a productive way beyond it.

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   401 Fang, Lee (2014). “The Saudi Lobbying Complex Adds a New Member: GOP Super PAC Chair Norm Coleman,” The Nation, September 18 https://www.thenation.com/article/ saudi-lobbying-complex-adds-new-member-gop-super-pac-chair-norm-coleman/. Farquhar, Michael (2016). Circuits of Faith: Migration, Education, and the Wahhabi Mission (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Freitag, Ulrike (2003). Indian Ocean Migrants and State Formation in Hadhramaut: Reforming the Homeland (Boston, MA/Leiden: Brill). Freitag, Ulrike (2011). “The City and the Stranger: Jeddah in the Nineteenth Century,” in Freitag et al. (eds). The City in the Ottoman Empire: Migrations and Modernity (London: Routledge), 218–227. Fuccaro, Nelida (2005). “Mapping the Transnational Community: Persians and the Space of the City in Bahrain, c.1869–1937,” in Al-Rasheed. Transnational Connections and the Arab Gulf (London: Routledge). Fuccaro, Nelida (ed.) (2016). Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Gardner, Andrew (2010). City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community of Bahrain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Ghazal, Amal N. (2010) Islamic Reform and Arab Nationalism: Expanding the Crescent from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean 1880s–1930s (London: Routledge). Green, Nile (2012). Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the Western Indian Ocean, 1840–1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Greenwald, Glenn (2017). “Obama Killed a 16-Year-Old American in Yemen. Trump Just Killed His 8-Year-Old Sister,” The Intercept, January 30 https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/ obama-killed-a-16-year-old-american-in-yemen-trump-just-killed-his-8-year-old-sister/. Gorman, Anthony (2003). Historians, State and Politics in Twentieth Century Egypt: Contesting the Nation (London: Routledge Curzon). Haddad, Bassam, Rosie Bsheer, and Ziad Abu-Rish (2012). The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? (New York: Pluto Press). Halliday, Fred (1974). Arabia Without Sultans (London: Penguin). Hanieh, Adam (2011). Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Haykal, Muhammad Hassanayn (1967). Al-Istiʿmar Liʿbatahu al-Malik [The king is colonial­ ism’s toy] (Cairo: Dar al-ʿAsr al-Hadith). Haykal, Muhammad Hassanayn (1988). Sanawat al-ghalayan [Boiling years] (Cairo: Dar al-ʿAsr al-Hadith). Ho, Enseng (2004). “Empire Through Diasporic Eyes: a View From the Other Boat.” Comparative Studies of Society and History 46,2: 210–246. Ho, Enseng (2006). The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility Across the Indian Ocean (Berkeley: University of California Press). Hopper, Matthew (2015). Slaves of one Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Hossein, Mahdavy (1970). “Patterns and Problems of Economic Development in Rentier States: The Case of Iran,” in Cook (ed.). Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 428–467. Hussain, Murtaza (2017). “Complaints Describe Border Agents Interrogating Muslim Americans, Asking for Social Media Accounts,” The Intercept, January 14 https://theinter­ cept.com/2017/01/14/complaints-describes-border-agents-interrogating-muslim-americansasking-for-social-media-accounts/.

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402   rosie bsheer James, Laura  M. (2006). “Whose Voice? Nasser, the Arabs, and ‘Sawt al-Arab’ Radio,” in Transnational Broadcasting Studies, vol. 16. http://www.tbsjournal.com/James.html. Jones, Toby C. (2006). “The Dogma of Development: Technopolitics and the Making of Saudi Arabia, 1950–1980,” (PhD diss., Stanford University). Jones, Toby  C. (2010). Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Jones, Toby  C. (2013). “Thinking Globally About Arabia,” in Bsheer and Warner (eds), Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula, Tadween Publishing, Issue 1.1 Fall, 11, 6–11. Kanna, Ahmed (2011). Dubai: The City as Corporation (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Kanna, Ahmed (2012). “A Politics of Non-Recognition? Biopolitics of Arab Gulf Worker Protests in the Year of the Uprisings,” Interface 4,1: 146–164 (May). Kerr, Malcolm H. (1965). The Arab Cold War: Gamal ʿAbd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Keshavarzian, Arang and Waleed Hazbun (eds) (2010). “Transnational Connections in the Middle East: Political Economy, Security and Geopolitical Imaginaries,” Special Section in Geopolitics 15: 2 (May). Khalaf, ʿAbd al-Hadi (1980). “Oil and the Labor Movement in the Gulf: The Bahraini Case,” al-Tariq 3–4 [Arabic]. Khalid, Abdulla (1979). “Hawla taʾasees awal naqaba ommaliyyaa fi al-khaleej” [On the Formation of the First Trade Union in the Gulf], al-Tariq, 38,6: 104–121. Kuehn, Thomas (2011). Empire, Islam, and the Politics of Difference: Ottoman Rule in Yemen, 1849–1919 (Boston, MA: Brill). Lafi, Nora (2011). “The Ottoman Urban Governance of Migrations and the Stakes of Modernity,” in Freitag et al. (eds). The City in the Ottoman Empire: Migration and the making of urban modernity (London: Routledge), 8–25. Le Renard, Amélie (2014). A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Limbert, Mandana (2010). In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory and Social Life in an Omani Town (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Limbert, Mandana (2014). “Caste, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Arabness in Southern Arabia,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34,3: 590–598. Lipton, Eric, Brooke Williams, and Nicholas Confessore (eds) (2014). “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks,” New York Times, September 6 https://www.nytimes. com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html. Low, Michael Christopher (2016). “Ottoman Infrastructures of the Saudi Hydro-State: The Technopolitics of Pilgrimage and Potable Water in the Hijaz,” Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 57,4: 942–974. Mahdavi, Pardis (2011). Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Mathew, Johan (2016). Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Matthiesen, Toby (2014). “Migration, Minorities, and Radical Networks: Labour Movements and Opposition Groups in Saudi Arabia, 1950–1975,” Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 59: 473–504. Matthiesen, Toby (2015). The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   403 McPherson, Kenneth (2001). “Port Cities as Nodal Points of Change: The Indian Ocean, 1890s–1920s,” in Fawaz and Bayly (eds), Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York: Columbia University Press), 75–95. Menoret, Pascal (2014). Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Revolt (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press). Miller, Flagg (2007). The Moral Resonance of Arab Media: Audiocassette Poetry and Culture in Yemen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Middle Eastern Monographs series). Miller, Flagg (2015). The Audacious Ascetic: What the bin Laden Tapes Reveal about Al-Qaʿida (Oxford: Oxford University Press and Hurst). Mitchell, Timothy (2002). “McJihad: Islam in the U.S. Global Order,” Social Text 73: 20,4: 1–18. Mitchell, Timothy (2009). “Carbon Democracy,” Economy And Society 38,3: 399–432. Mitchell, Timothy (2011). Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London: Verso). Mundy, Martha (2015). “Yemen as Laboratory: Why is the West So Silent About This Savage War?” Counterpunch, September 23. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/23/ yemen-as-laboratory-why-is-the-west-so-silent-about-this-savage-war/. Mundy, Martha, Amin al-Hakimi, and Frédéric Pelat (2013). “Neither Security Nor Sovereignty: The Political Economy of Food in Yemen,” in Babar and Mirgani (eds). Food Security in the Middle East (London: Hurst Publishing), 137–159. al-Naqib, Farah (2016). Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Nicolini, Beatrice (2007). “The Baluch Role in the Persian Gulf During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27,2: 384–395. Okruhlik, Gwen (1999). “Rentier Wealth, Unruly Law, and the Rise of the Opposition: The Political Economy of Oil States,” Comparative Politics 31,3: 295–315. Onley, James (2007). The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Pecquet, Julian (2014). “Saudis Count on US Network to Get Obama on War Footing,” Al-Monitor, August 17 . Peutz, Nathalie (2011). “ ‘Shall I tell you What Soqotra once Was?’: World Heritage and Sovereign Nostalgia in Yemen’s Soqotra Archipelago,” Transcontinentales 10/11. Peutz, Nathalie (2013). “Perspectives from the Margins of Arabia,” in Bsheer and Warner (eds). Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula (Tadween Publishing), Issue 1.1 Fall, 25–29. al-Rasheed, Madawi (1996). “God, King and the Nation: The Rhetoric of Politics in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s,” Middle East Journal 50,3: 359–372. al-Rasheed, Madawi (1999). “Political Legitimacy and the Production of History: the Case of Saudi Arabia,” in Martin (ed.). New Frontiers in Middle East Security (New York: St Martin’s Press), 25–46. al-Rasheed, Madawi (2002). A History of Saudi Arabia (London: Cambridge University Press). al-Rasheed, Madawi (2005). Transnational Connections and the Arab Gulf (London: Routledge). al-Rasheed, Madawi (2007). Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation (New York: Cambridge University Press). al-Rasheed, Madawi (ed.) (2008). Kingdom Without Borders: Saudi Political, Religious and Media Frontiers (London: Hurst Publishers).

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W(h)ither Arabian Peninsula Studies?   405 Willis, John (2009). “Making Yemen Indian: Rewriting the Boundaries of Imperial Arabia,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41,1: 23–38. Willis, John (2013a). “Writing Histories of the Arabian Peninsula or How to Narrate the Past of a (Non)Place,” in Bsheer and Warner (eds), Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula (Tadween Publishing), Issue 1.1 Fall, 30–35. Willis, John (2013b). Unmaking North and South: Cartographies of the Yemeni Past (New York: Columbia University Press). Willis, John (2015). “Azad’s Mecca: On the Limits of Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanism,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35,3: 574–581.

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pa rt V

STAT E , L AW, A N D GE N DE R

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chapter 20

Sy r i a’s Econom ic History Bumpy Road from Economic Nationalism to Neoliberalism Linda Matar

Introduction The Syrian uprising began in early 2011 following the outbreak of political protests in other Arab countries. Since then, the conflict has precipitated into a brutal proxy war between regional and international powers. Syria is now a war-torn and splintered society. The country is shattered as large parts of its geographical area have been lost to different rebel groups that continue to fight fiercely on the ground. The geostrategic positioning of Syria has so far proven to be more complex than expected, as regional and international players reinforce their intervention, frustrating any attempts to resolution. With the Russians strengthening their position via the battle in Syria and the Americans not willing to risk the loss of their global hegemonic power, it has become an accepted fact that the conflict in Syria has more to do with external rivalries and contradictions than internal tensions, all at the expense of the suffering Syrian civilian population.1 This chapter provides a reading of the economic history of Syria from the 1960s to 2011. It examines the investment question or net additions to capital stock, the key physical indicator of development.2 In parallel with the economic history, the chapter addresses the class aspect of investment, pinpointing the social agency that was in control of the means 1  Haddad (2015). 2  The demand-determined system in economics advocates the importance of investment in driving aggregate output. It presents investment as the key determinant of the level and rate of change in output, and therefore employment. In other words, growth in an economy arises from investment expenditure that adds to the capital stock, and it is this prospect of growth that in turn can generate demand for new net investment (Weeks, 2005).

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410   linda matar of production and the resource allocation mechanism. The political climate and the rise of neoliberalism globally in the last decade prior to the uprising co-opted the agency of development inside Syria and precipitated a malignant course of capital accumulation.3 This chapter relies on a number of data sources, some compiled from the author’s fieldwork in Syria in 2007 and others compiled from local and secondary sources, which provide evidence for the contentions presented here: that investment after market lib­er­ al­iza­tion was of diminished productivity, and favored the privately owned service sector in general and political allies in particular. Not surprisingly, the market liberalization efforts that were introduced by the Hafiz and Bashar Assad governments resulted in hollow growth devoid of development content.4 But the data also reveals the true macro­ eco­nom­ic story in the decade that preceded the uprising: rising prices of food and basic necessities, growing unemployment and poverty levels, and widening social polarization. The uprising itself and the calls for bread and dignity stand as proof of the failure of neoliberal reforms introduced during the Assad family rule.5 In the literature a few authors—such as Abdel-Nour, Haddad, and Perthes—have addressed the question of investment in Syria; however, their works, with the exception of Haddad, take the form of article contributions that lack in-depth theoretical ana­lysis.6 In this chapter, the author studies the trend in investment throughout Syria’s different phases of development (state capitalism and private capitalism) by investigating the dominant social class in control of the process of capital accumulation, which hereafter is termed the agency of investment. Generally, the agent of investment is defined as the politically empowered social force (dominant within the state and the economy) that 3  Capital is an immaterial social relation of production that creates a social condition by which it privately appropriates socially produced wealth (Fine and Saad Filho, 2004). Within this Marxist context of capital, capital accumulation is the means by which social classes relate to each other in the process of production, exchange, and distribution to create more commodities and wealth. Capital accumulation remains the fundamental dynamic of capitalism and the capitalist class since its inception (Bottomore, 1983: 272). In more concrete terms, it is the maximization of profit and of capital growth. 4  Hafiz al-Assad was president from 1970 until 2000. Bashar al-Assad assumed power after the death of his father Hafiz in 2000. 5  Compared to the Hafiz government (1970–2000) which introduced its own “home-based” set of gradual market-friendly reforms, the Bashar government sought advice from the International Monetary Fund (the IMF). The IMF imposed on the Syrian government the need to focus on “macroeconomic stabilization strategies” while pursuing economic liberalization (IMF, 2009 and 2010), alleging that the “trickle-down” effect would follow. One need not say that the social conditions that followed were so dire such that they contributed to the uprising. 6  Khalid Abdel-Nour looked into the investment question in Syria and warned that local products would not be able to compete with international products after being protected from international competition by state policies for many years (Abdel-Nour, 2000). Volker Perthes studied the post-lib­er­al­iza­ tion sectoral division of private investment in Syria. He concluded that given that industrial investment was perceived as the harder way to attain fast-earning profits, the bulk of private-sector investment following economic liberalization was mainly concentrated in trade and commercial types of activities (Perthes, 1992). By adopting network analysis as his conceptual framework, Bassam Haddad investigated the formal and informal economic networks between state figures and the business community that emerged during Syria’s process of economic transformation (Haddad, 2012). He concluded that these networks played a crucial role in influencing the form and the extent of economic reforms.

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Syria’s Economic History   411 either controls or owns the means of production and decides on the amount and type of investment to be undertaken. Different historical agents of investment pushed for various kinds of investment during different phases of development (the Baathist and Assad rules), influenced by the political conditions that prevailed during these specific times. This chapter starts with a brief reading on class formation and alliance-building that illuminates the historical agency of investment prior to the social unrest in 2011. The second section presents an overview of Syria’s economic history since post-independence. The third section provides data on investment undertakings before and after economic liberation in the late 1980s. The fourth section concludes with the inadequacy of the general investment theory in analyzing the particularity of investment in Syria.

Class and Capital in Postcolonial Syria Syria emerged as a liberal state during the postcolonial period, however, its socioeconomic structure remained semi-feudal. The conservative old bourgeoisie was incapable of lifting the economy out of the fragile and weak conditions that existed after independence in 1946. Because the majority of the old bourgeoisie were involved in family-based businesses, they were structurally and financially incapable of enhancing the productive forces and boosting industrialization. They lacked the capacity to tap into the substantial resources needed for industrial advancement (private capital was too scarce both financially and physically which is the salient trait of underdevelopment). It is not because, as Turner explained, that in a developing context, the lack of vibrant entrepreneurship and risk-taking ventures failed to place the postcolonial developing economy on a path of self-sustained economic development.7 It is the structural deficiency, meaning poorly capitalized national bourgeois class that pushed for a different impetus to development, wherein the state supplanted the private sector, acted as a surrogate bourgeoisie, and guaranteed funds needed to nurture the national industrial nucleus. In 1963, the radical factions of the army, the Baathist military officers, launched a revolt against the postcolonial socioeconomic structure dominated by the traditional national bourgeoisie.8 After seizing control of the state, the Baathist officers transmuted into a state bourgeois class, and refrained from retreating to the barracks. These officers upheld secularist and socialist attributes that shaped their practice once in power. Adhering to Arab “socialist” ideology, they allied themselves with the educated middleand unprivileged working classes and voiced their aspirations. Through their control of the state, the newly formed state bourgeoisie took control of the means of production and decided on resource allocation and distribution. They pushed for import-substituting investment in order to mitigate foreign influence and to protect the local productive market. Acting as the agent of investment, they allocated a 7  Turner (1984).

8  Hinnebusch (2001a).

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412   linda matar considerable amount of government spending on public investment, promoting investment in infrastructural, industrial, and agricultural projects. The process of capital accumulation during the 1960s and 1970s met rising social needs, generated employment opportunities, and provided other social security measures. Around the late 1980s, Syria, like other developing countries, followed the path of economic liberalization. Syria’s military defeat in the first three decades after independence, the fall of the “Soviet project,” and the spread of the neoliberal paradigm, pushed the state bourgeoisie during the rule of Hafiz al-Assad to initiate market-oriented economic reforms and side with the winners of the Cold War.9 From the late 1980s up until 2011, Syria witnessed the gradual erosion of state-controlled economic structure along with its associated economic planning and import-substituting industrialization (ISI) program. It was also a time when the state bourgeoisie parted ways with the middle class and workers and started a rapprochement with the commercial bourgeoisie. The state bourgeois class was keen on investing the wealth that it accumulated from the usurp­ ation of state funds in the private sector. By aligning themselves with the commercial bourgeoisie, the state bourgeoisie formed a new agent of investment that was defined in the literature as the “military-mercantile complex.”10 In doing so, the Baathist party was demoted to a secondary position during the Assad era and no longer served as the social base of support to the Assad regime.11

A Bird’s Eye View of the Economic History of Syria Prior to the Uprising Syria during the Baathist rule was a state-controlled economy in the period 1963–70.12 The Syrian-style dirigisme was characterized by a dominant public sector, far-reaching nationalization (in the banking, education, health, trade, agriculture, and industry sectors), state-set prices, price caps and subsidies on basic goods, restrictions on private sector activities, and regulated capital account and multiple exchange rates.13 The Baathist government initiated a public plan to promote economic nationalism or the retention, reinvestment and recirculation of the economic surplus in the national economy. Under economic nationalism, a more nuanced definition would involve a government strategy that advocates the protection of its infant industry through trade protection on the one hand, and expands the productive potential of the economy through state-led and import-substituting investment to attain self-sufficiency in ­production and mitigate foreign economic influence.14 Along these lines, some degree 9  Kadri (2016). 10  Picard (1985). 11  Hinnebusch (2015). 12  The “socialist” period in Syria lasted from 1958 to around the mid-1970s; in this chapter, the author labels the period between 1963 to 1970 as the Baathist rule and the period as of 1970s onward as the Assad rule (father and son). 13  Matar (2016) and Seifan (2010). 14  Chang (2002) and Khoury (1987).

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Syria’s Economic History   413 of economic planning aims at accruing the financial prerequisites needed to kick-start the national development process. The Baathist government introduced an interventionist investment strategy to enhance the productive capacity and avoid returning to the fragile economic conditions of the post-independence ancien régime in the early 1950s. The intensive nationalization measures had shrunk the private-sector activities from 85% of GDP in 1963 to 30% in 1970.15 The Baathist government increased public investment that encompassed all economic activity for both political and economic reasons. Politically, the aim was to preserve Syria’s role in the region as a “front-line” state confronting Israel. In the early 1970s, President Hafiz al-Assad stressed a combination of production and political austerity in order to reach parity with Israel.16 Economically, the objective was to attain selfsufficiency in production and to channel resources to sectors that exhibited high potential for employment creation concurrently with growth. In order to build the social base of support and co-opt the middle and working classes, the government locked in resources, allocated them to national industry, and promoted more egalitarian redistribution (access to health and education plus income and full employment policies).17 It is because of the government’s extensive nationalization that included many sectors in the economy and its promulgation of progressive land reform that the Syrian case in the 1960s and early 1970s can be described as a state capitalist model along with the main pillars of étatism, agrarian reform, and nationalization.18 Under a typical state-capitalist structure, the state becomes the effective owner of the means of production (productive forces) and the organizer of production in terms of deciding on the resource allocation mechanism. More tellingly, the state replaces the private sector and manages the means of production in a capitalist manner as it appropriates surplus value and gears economic activities toward production for sale and profit-making. According to Kalecki (1976), a state-capitalist developing economy relies heavily on economic planning in order to accrue the financial prerequisites needed to kick-start national development. Against this basic definition of state capitalism, the Baathist government nationalized the means of production and hence was practically the sole decision-maker regarding the allocation of economic resources and the distribution of economic surplus. In the industrial sector, the government installed state-led and import-substituting investment that was meant to expand the productive potential of the economy and remove the economic constraints of the previous governments. Radical changes promoted by Baathist politicians after the late 1950s were meant to reduce the economic and political dominance of foreign intervention and to move toward national liberation. Promoting 15  Seifan (2012). 16  Sottimano and Kjetil (2008). 17  Kadri (2012). 18  The early 1970s benefited from the momentum of the radical measures of the earlier 1960s phase. It was in the late 1980s that the Hafiz al-Assad government officially declared the launch of market-driven economic reforms, although it introduced home-based, gradual, and tailored economic reforms starting in the 1970s. See Matar (2016).

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414   linda matar economic self-reliance was part of the national security structure that in turn promoted the well-being of the working class by national means.19 In the agricultural sector, the Baathist government supported the farmers by issuing loans at concessional rates and providing fertilizers, seeds, pesticides and other agricultural inputs, and equipment at subsidized prices after 1963. The government also bought locally produced crops at prices frequently higher than the international market prices in order to ensure that local farmers earned a minimum guaranteed income.20 The crop price guarantees, and subsidized farming input costs remained in place for most of Hafiz al-Assad’s rule before they were drastically lifted during the Bashar rule. In hindsight, these interventionist measures boosted the agricultural output, culminating in no less than 20% of GDP throughout Syria’s development trajectory until 2007.21 During this time, necessities and food provision were also subsidized by the state, meaning that the majority of Syrians had access to basic health, education, and other public services. The government also raised wages in the public sector and ratified labor legislation that protected workers against job dismissal.22 Such social welfare guarantees and protections enabled the majority of citizens to conduct their daily lives in a decent and fulfilling way, and in so doing, raised the overall standard of living. The above-mentioned radical measures that were predominantly promoted by the state capitalist rule cul­min­ ated in eventually bridging the income gap between the rich and the poor,23 with GDP per capita growing at an annual rate of 3% in the period between 1964 and 1974, and higher than the average rate achieved by the middle-income Least Developed Countries (LDCs).24 However, following this period of intense state intervention, inward-looking and protectionist economic policies that translated into public investment expansion, the Syrian government under Hafiz al-Assad, like the majority of the developing economies, began to introduce economic liberalization that gradually transformed the economy from a state-controlled to a market-oriented one.25 The collapse of the Soviet project and the hegemony of the Washington consensus paradigm that followed in the early 1990s played a major role in pushing Syria to reorient itself toward the Western orbit.26 Internally, the regressive policies of the Hafiz al-Assad government introduced after the mid-1970s siphoned resources from the national economy toward building the security apparatus of the regime.27 While the ISI program during the 1960s and early 1970s ­managed to channel external aid and financial flows to the productive sectors in the 19  Kadri (2016). 20  Hinnebusch (1989). 21  Central Bureau of Statistics (various issues). 22  Longuenesse (1996). 23  Seifan (2012). 24  This rate contrasts with the average 1% annual rate recorded during 1980–2000, a period characterized by gradual economic liberalization (World Bank, 2014). It may be also crucial to compare the mid1960s phase with the preceding period of the post-independence governments when the economy experienced a relatively low growth rate of less than 2% in the period 1959–63 (Central Bureau of Statistics, 1975). 25  Heydemann (1992); Hinnebusch (2001b); Haddad (2012), and Joya (2007). 26  Kadri (2016). 27  The Hafiz Assad government spent lavishly on military, especially after the 1973 War and after the 1979 Camp David agreement—although it did not undertake any major combat operations after 1973.

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Syria’s Economic History   415 economy, the Hafiz government used these instead to expand military expenditure and enlarge political patronage. It should not be forgotten that the biggest heists in Syrian history involved the state bourgeoisie’s smuggling of currency in the early 1980s that contributed to the foreign exchange rate crisis in Syria and to the severe depreciation of the Syrian pound in the mid-1980s. Because of Syria’s overdependence on external funds,28 the economy suffered immensely from the downfall of these capital inflows following the international oil price crash in the mid-1980s. A crisis in the economy’s balance of payment accompanied with low production levels, trade deficit, budget deficit, and hyperinflation pushed the economy into a severe crisis in the second half of the 1980s. The Assad government at that time decided not to pursue counter-cyclical policies (expansionary fiscal and monetary pol­ icies) that could have been financed by domestic debt and that could in turn have pulled the economy out of recession, but instead opted for contractionary measures.29 Starting in the late 1980s, the Hafiz government gradually curtailed the public sector and shifted the task of investment promotion and employment creation to the private sector. This was not unique to Syria. According to Petras (1976), the state capitalist experience in most developing economies was short-lived mainly because the working class was not allowed to hold political representation in the state, which inhibited them from objecting to the gradual lifting of the progressive measures that were introduced in the earlier state-controlled period. In addition, the state capitalists pushed for marketdriven economic reforms in the late 1980s, because they were keen on transforming from being controllers to owners of the means of production and of capital. Petras argues that after liberalization and privatization experiences were materialized in the economy, the tycoons in town were the state bourgeoisie or their offspring. In hindsight, the Syrian case of neoliberal transformation and the concentration of economic wealth in the hands of the state bourgeoisie underscore this contention.30 Along these lines, Hafiz al-Assad’s government introduced Investment Law No. 10 in 1991 to facilitate market liberalization. By introducing new financial incentives, the law allowed local and international investors to invest in previously prohibited sectors, the result of which was an increase in the private sector’s share of GDP from 45% in the early 1990s to 60% by the end of the period.31 While the avowed motive behind the i­nvestment 28  The Syrian government received funds in the form of aid, loans, etc. from both the conservative Gulf states (allies of the US) and from the former Soviet Union and other ex-Soviet East European nations (especially in the early 1970s). Capital inflows from Arab countries increased right after the 1973 war to strengthen Syria’s role as a “front-line state” with regard to Israel. In Arab League parlance, Syria was considered a confrontational state to Israel. Syria received around $2.1 billion between 1973–6 and $7 billion between 1977–81 (Hopfinger and Boeckler, 1996: 185). Syria also benefited from the oil windfalls from the Gulf countries, because of high oil prices during the first oil boom of the 1970s. 29  In more technical terms, a set of counter-cyclical policies including expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, financed by introducing progressive taxation and by issuing domestic debt, can boost domestic demand and help the economy get out of its vicious cycle. In this regard, future growth can increase general savings (tax and export revenues) that in turn can pay off the debt service and that can also be used to finance future investment (Mckinley, 2009). 30  Matar (2013). 31  Seifan (2012).

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416   linda matar reform was to pave the way for Syria’s transformation from state capitalism to private capitalism, the ulterior motive, however, was to restore private property ownership that had been confiscated by the Baathist rule, and to enable the state bourgeoisie to formalize its informal ownership of the means of production. Economic liberalization did not stop here but accelerated during the second Assad rule, the Bashar al-Assad government, in the post-2000 period. International financial institutions—in this case the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank— intervened for the first time in the economy and called for liberalization of the climate for investment on the basis of laissez-faire economics. A legislative decree No. 8 (here­ after, LD No. 8) was introduced in 2007 (to replace Law No. 10) to remove all remaining state controls that inhibited the undertaking of private investment, such as the ownership of land where investment projects were carried out. According to the late Issam alZaim, a Syrian scholar, this LD was meant to attract Gulf capital into buying real estate in Syria.32 In retrospect, local and foreign investors’ speculation and investment in real estate culminated in a property market boom during 2002–10.33 As the next section will show, the investment liberalization process not only had a deleterious impact on the resource allocation mechanism which was this policy’s explicit target, but also failed the stated goals of job creation and poverty alleviation.

The Trend of Capital Formation Prior to the 2011 Uprising Syria’s economic downturn was a function not of the protectionism of the 1960s and early 1970s but the economic distortions brought about by Hafiz al-Assad’s government. In order to understand this process, we need to address the history of Syria’s efforts in promoting capital formation and the increase in the capital stock, i.e. investment. The investment rate witnessed a considerable increase in the 1960s and 1970s and surged to 38.1% in 1977.34 As mentioned earlier, the Arab and Soviet external aid to Syria were channelled to finance the productive sectors of the economy. The 1960s witnessed a rise in industrial investment, as its average increased from Syrian £113 million between 1961 and 1965 to Syrian £252 million in 1968–9.35 Industrial production increased at an annual growth rate of 11.6% during 1970–78, as compared to 5.6% between 1960–70.36 Some examples of industrial projects included a modern fertilizer factory in Homs and a cotton mill and a steel-rolling plant at Hamah.37 Industrial activities ranged from light manufacturing (glass and pottery-making) to heavy manufacturing (textile 32  Author’s interview with Issam al-Zaim in March 2007. 33  Seifan (2011). 34  Matar (2016). 35  Kanovsky (1977: 47). 36  Chatelus and Schemeil (1984: 254). 37  Lawson (1989).

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Syria’s Economic History   417 ­ eaving and assembling of refrigerators and cars). These projects were part of an interw ventionist industrial policy that aimed at building the nascent industrial nucleus.38 The Baathist government pushed for import-substituting investment in order to enhance the economy’s productive capabilities and to attain a certain level of self-sufficiency in production that would satisfy local demand. Hinnebusch has argued that the public-sector experience during Syria’s stateintervention was plagued with bureaucratization, lack of dynamism, and weaker productivity: the “expansion of [public-sector investment in the 1970s] had several flaws which sharply limited its sustainability and impact.”39 He justifies his contention by relying on the Incremental Capital Output Ratio (ICOR), a ratio that assesses the impact of investment on GDP. The ICOR was “three” for the period 1971–6, meaning that investment went a long way in boosting output.40 The ICOR then went up to “ten” in the 1980s, meaning investment hardly contributed to boosting output, i.e. it was significantly inefficient. Of course, such an indicator does not reveal robust results, because the ICOR is a price measure that is oil-revenue sensitive. But if it proves anything, then it is that the more public-sector-dominated period of history (1970s) was the more capital efficient. Yet, if one follows the development in the ICOR measure after the 1980s, it appears that it reverted back to around “three” in the 2000s.41 The reason for that is not the higher efficiency of capital under more economic liberalization; rather that oil revenues rose in that period and inflated the capital output efficiency ratio. This chapter argues that this measure is faulty, because the true measure of output growth per capital invested is best reflected by the rate of industrialization, which progressively declined in Syria.42 Moreover, as shown by the statistical evidence presented in Kadri (2016), the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) measure from the Pen tables reveals that the state-interventionist pre-Hafiz al-Assad period was more productive.43 At any rate, the state-interventionist period for the Global South witnessed a much better economic performance than the neoliberal period. The case for the Arab World including Syria was no different. Kadri states:

38  The industrial sector in Syria emerged weak during the postcolonial independent period, because industrialization was curtailed during the French Mandate period (1920–46). The Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 16, 1916, that split Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan from Syria, had harmed the economic landscape of the Arab Mashreq. Moreover, three major cities, Tripoli (the port city), Aleppo, and Mosul, that had once formed the industrial heartland of Arab Mashreq by the early twentieth century, were also detached from the truncated Syria (el-Solh, 2004). These geographic divisions inflicted long-term in­jur­ ies to industrialization on Syria and other Arab countries. Other impediments to industrialization included political instability that acted as the main deterrent to productive investment, reinforcing short-term rent-seeking activity in immobile property (such as lands and buildings) during the colonial and postcolonial periods (Khoury, 1987: 26). 39  Hinnebusch (2009: 16). 40  Hinnebusch (2009); also see Clawson (1989: 36). 41  World Bank (2017). 42  Matar (2016: 22). 43  Kadri (2016: 74–75). As Kadri (2016: 125) argues: “the estimated output capital ratio after 30 years of gradual neoliberalism and supposed modernisation was at around 1.05 in the early 1970s and dropped to a plateau of around .95 to 1.0 from 2000 to 2008.”

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418   linda matar The collapse of Arab socialism is attributed to statist economic practices and their alleged outcomes, such as low levels of productivity, resource misallocation, institutional weakness, debt build-up and foreign-exchange shortages. But this is not true. It is as if no one bothered to check the statistical facts. Only on account of investment per worker, which rose to $3,117 per worker in 1980 (measured in purchasing power parity dollars) and later went down to a plateau of $2,000 between 1985 and 2008, the dirigiste past appears far more advanced than the neoliberal era. It was during neoliberalism that productivity growth became negative, unemployment rose, public and private institutions exhibited a marked lack of efficacy, real wages declined and inflation rose significantly.44

The assumption that industrialization represents a sturdier developmental ascent than commerce is corroborated through the higher living standards witnessed during Baathist industrialization than during the neoliberal commercial phase. The economic policies during Baathist rule narrowed the gap between the rich and the poor, resulting in the increase in consumption of those living in rural areas and the hinterland.45 In the words of Samir Seifan: the second half of the 1970s witnessed a robust economic growth rate that was equit­ able. The increase of employment in the public sector is one measure that guaranteed income redistribution. The government’s infrastructural development was also geographically balanced as public investment on transportation, schooling and health were expanded to rural areas, facilitating the daily lives of those living in the countryside.46

The 1980s was marked by a severe economic crisis that was accompanied by lower government expenditure. The investment rate trended downward, dropping abruptly to 15% in 1988 following the drop in capital inflows from Arab countries as a result of the crash in the international oil price.47 The rate drop was accelerated by internal fiscal and monetary austerity measures. The Assad government ignored the industrial sector and industrial investment was limited to the completion of unfinished projects and the replacement and repair of plant and equipment.48 After investment liberalization Law No. 10 was introduced in 1991, the investment rate averaged 23% during 1991–5 before falling to 20% during the “lost years” of the late 1990s. In fact, the 23% rate had been massaged because consumption items (notably imported cars) were recorded as investment goods in the accounting books.49 During the 2000s and following the promulgation of LD No. 8, the average rate remained more

44  Kadri (2016: 124–125). 45  Seifan (2012). 46  Seifan (2012: 103). 47  Matar (2016). 48  Perthes (1995). 49  Author’s fieldwork interviews in Damascus, mid-2017. Magid Basil, a consultant at the United Nations, revealed that Syrian merchants took advantage of Law No. 10’s elimination of tariffs on cars to circumvent state monopoly on car imports. Under the guise of car-leasing agencies and the promotion of tourism, these traders were able to import a high number of cars that were then put to private use.

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Syria’s Economic History   419 or less at the same level (21%).50 Data compiled from the author’s fieldwork reveal that investment projects executed under Law No. 10 and LD No. 8 generated 105,467 job opportunities during 1991–2008.51 With approximately 240,000 entrants into the labor market every year, the generated job opportunities by the new investment projects could not absorb nearly enough of the labor force.52 The investment rate during the 1990s and 2000s therefore remained low. It could not surpass the peak attained in the late 1970s. When public investment shrank as a result of market liberalization, private investment could not achieve high rates of overall gross fixed capital formation (as achieved by public investment during the late-1970s). More importantly, the share of manufacturing output out of total value-added production dropped from 19% in 1970 to 8% in 1985 and to 6% in 1990 and 1995, then further to 2% in 2000.53 In an unprecedented move, the Syrian Investment Agency (SIA) published data pertaining to the implementation or execution of approved or licensed projects under Law No. 10 in February 2007. Table 20.1 shows that a total of 3,824 projects, whose capital cost stood at Syrian £1.3 trillion (US $24.8 billion), were licensed by the Investment Bureau during 1991–2006. Out of these approved projects, 2,450 (or 64% of total projects) got off the ground and were implemented. Out of these implemented projects, 61% were conducted in the transport sector alone. This was done at the expense of projects that sought industrial productivity. These projects’ share stood at 37% for the whole period 1991–2006 (Table 20.1).54 The table also shows that agricultural projects registered only 3% of the total implemented investment ventures that were licensed by Law No. 10. This data underscores the failure of investment Law No. 10 in boosting industrial projects in the 1990s and early 2000s given that the majority of investment projects that were licensed and implemented through Law No. 10 were in the transport sector. The total cost of the executed transport projects sector accumulated to Syrian £52 billion (about US $1 billion) over the fifteen-year period (refer to Table 20.1), indicating these projects were small commercial types of investment ventures that did not entail such high sunk costs as the large transportation infrastructural projects. The author’s interviews with government officials in 2007 also verified that investment activity shifted toward commerce as Law No. 10 failed to promote long-term and pro­duct­ ive investment that could have ensured job creation for the growing labor force. Data compiled from the Ministry of Industry reveals that the new industrial establishments created by Law No. 10 constituted only 1% of the total industrial ventures. The remaining establishments that opened up in the industrial sector were either processed by the artisanal law (artisanal ventures) or by the old Industrial Law No. 21 of 1958.55 According to United Nations figures, manufacturing production remained below 10% of total ­value-added production in the 1990s and 2000s.56 Meanwhile, the author argues that the 50  Central Bureau of Statistics (2011). 51  Syrian Investment Agency (SIA) (2008: 33). 52  Seifan (2012). 53  UNIDO (2014). 54  Their implementation capital cost remains unknown. 55  Matar (2016). 56  UNIDO (2014).

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420   linda matar

Table 20.1  Licensed and Executed Investment Projects by Law No. 10 during 1991–2006 Agriculture

Transport

Industry

Other

Total

Number of Licensed Projects

161

2,099

1,534

22

3,824

Number of Implemented Ones

 64

1,491

  895

-

2,450

Capital Cost of Licensed Projects*

 44

  107

  962

81

1264**

Capital Cost of Implemented Ones*

 24

   52

Source: The Syria Report, 2007.* in billions of Syrian Pounds (S£). ** Total figure includes discrepancy.

stability in agriculture’s share of output (contributing not less than 20% of GDP up until 2007—afterwhich it dropped following the onset of the drought in 2006) partially offset the country’s welfare deterioration driven by the fall in industrial production.57 Estimates show that at least 33% of Syrian households in 2010 were earning less than what was required to satisfy subsistence-level consumption. Their daily income was less than $2 a day.58 Results of field surveys revealed that the poorer segments in society reduced their food intake from three to one meal a day. Other families relied on extra blankets during winter rather than on electric heaters. Even worse, the privatization of health and education added extra pressure on the poor who could not afford the good quality, privately priced schools and hospitals.59 Against this backdrop, the chapter argues that the process of capital accumulation in Syria witnessed a crisis in terms of its inability to secure the production of goods and services that would have been used for the betterment of society. As in all crises of accumulation, this debacle was one of mal-distribution causing underconsumption and pauperization of the workers and the lower middle class. This evidence begs the question as to why the continuous investment reform (as represented by investment Law No. 10 of 1991) could not create an environment conducive to higher and better quality investment? If the allure of tax incentives that were provided through investment reforms were not sufficient to boost investment, specifically the industrial type, another question then arises as to how investment is determined in a country such as Syria, which is characterized by a small market and whose structure experienced a transformation from a state-controlled to a market-oriented one. 57  The agricultural sector absorbed 20% of the labor force in 2005, ranking second after the services sector (27%) (al-Hindi, 2011: 23). 58  Seifan (2012). 59 Ibid.

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Syria’s Economic History   421

The Inapplicability of General Investment Theory to the Particularities of Syria This chapter argues that the general investment theory that dominates IMF/World Bank development thinking which examines the determinants of investment, cannot be applied universally as it fails to analyze the determinants of investment in a developing formation, more specifically to those that have experienced some degree of central planning.60 In general, the principal determinant of any investment decision is the expected rate of profit. According to Joan Robinson, a leading British Keynesian economist of the 1960s and 1970s, private investment satisfies the “animal spirits” of private capitalists who wish to accumulate more profit.61 The two strands in the literature, the mainstream neoclassical approach and the demand-led approach (Keynes and Kalecki), emphasize profit maximization as the driving force behind an investment decision. The neo­clas­ sic­al approach presents a static mathematical formula, constrained by unreal assumptions (perfect competitive economy with perfect information and with minimal need for public policy) to determine investment in fixed capital assets. It assumes that investment moves a certain stock of capital from disequilibrium to the “equilibrium level” (the level at which all markets clear). Since the conventional approach springs from a pricedetermined system, it considers the cost of capital as the main determinant of investment, largely overlooking the broader macroeconomic variables. Because of its inherent limitations, this approach has been subject to criticism in the literature by economists who adopt the demand-determined system as the means for investment analysis.62 The most daunting criticisms of the vacuous content of neoclassical theory is levied by a team of economists from Cambridge (whose discussion culminated in the Cambridge Capital Controversy).63 Because of the adding-up fallacy or the fallacy of deductive reason­ing, it may be concluded that the mainstream approach hardly corresponds to the conditions in the developed world, let alone a developing economy such as Syria. The primary determinant of investment in the demand-led approach is the change in the level of output and its associated change in the profit rate. Kalecki and Keynes in­de­ pend­ent­ly highlight the psychological factors in their analysis of investment determination, emphasizing the behavioral aspect of investment analysis.64 The demand-determined approach does not adhere to the standard equilibrium position and consider adaptive expectations, shaped by past and current events, to have an influential impact on i­ nvestment 60  von Hayek (1950 [1941]) and Jorgenson (1971). 61  Robinson (1964). 62  For further elaboration on the price-determined and demand-determined systems, refer to Weeks (2005). 63  Robinson (1964) and Sraffa (1960). 64  Keynes (2008 [1936]); Kalecki (1972).

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422   linda matar determination. While this approach can be applied to developed countries, it remains ahistorical and is incapable of presenting a full picture when analyzing investment in countries developing out of a colonial economy. The matter becomes more complicated when one considers a developing economy that experienced heavy-handed state intervention that restricts investment from operating within an explicitly free-market context. Syria is an example of such type of economy. As we have seen, the Syrian state governed market performance for several years. Investment in Syria was not affected by changes in market forces, remaining within the hold of the state until economic lib­er­al­ iza­tion took effect. Not only were market prices not affected by market conditions (changes in supply and demand), but they also did not influence investment demand or any other demand. The state increased credit that financed public and private investment according to a pre-set credit allocation plan. In addition, interest rates that remained fixed for almost two decades, did not transmit policy signals into changes in money supply and investment. It follows that a thorough analysis of investment in Syria entails a reading of the history of the class in charge of the state and investment policy and how capital accumulation was commandeered by a narrow group to further its own interests. Hafiz and later his son Bashar decided to reverse the statist policies that retained resources in the national economy. In particular, Bashar introduced structural adjustment policies that reduced the size of the public sector, revitalized the private sector, lifted protections out of local industry, liberalized capital and trade accounts, and promoted foreign investment and exports. The “military-mercantile complex” made use of investment reform laws in order to legitimize their informal hold of property. Because the investment laws revamped private ownership, the state bourgeoisie transformed itself into private bourgeoisie and became the tycoons who controlled the market through monopolies and quasi-monopolies.65 In August 2013, the Washington Institute published a chart that reveals how the Assad family and its business allies were in control of the major investment hubs in the country.66 Based on this evidence, the chapter concludes that the process by which the old agent of investment accrued surplus during the Baathist period was indirect through public investment, whereas the process of appropriation during the neoliberal phase of the Assad government was direct through private ownership and investment. Resources were siphoned away from public service toward the private enrichment of a small segment of society. In addition to that, because the investment reform laws treated all economic sectors equally and did not prioritize the productive sectors in terms of incentives and priv­il­ eges, the new agent of investment was encouraged to invest in commercial rather than industrial types of investment. This explains why the bulk of investment that was 65  Matar (2016). 66  In a co-authored book with Mary Wilson to be published by Cambridge University Press (the late Peter Sluglett) illustrates how members of the Assad family occupied the key positions in the government’s security apparatus. He also reveals how the Assad clan and its allies in the Sunni business community owned a variety of actual and virtual monopolies; see also http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/ Documents/infographics/SyriaRegimeChart20150526v2.pdf.

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Syria’s Economic History   423 licensed and implemented by the new investment laws were in the tertiary sector (see data presented under The Trend of Capital Formation Prior to the 2011 Uprising). In other words, investment liberalization strengthened the more commercial ways of doing business and directed investment from industry into the tertiary sector, spe­cif­ic­ al­ly into real-estate speculation, construction, services, tourism, and short-term transport activities.67 Such activities entailed quick returns and lower risks.

Conclusion This chapter argued that the market liberalization prior to the uprising backfired economically and socially. With widening social polarization and a declining share of wages out of income, laissez-faire reforms were neither pro-poor nor growth-developmental. The focus here, however, was on tracing the transformation of national investment policy since independence. The author has demonstrated that productive investment failed to rise and build Syria’s weak productive capacity despite investment liberalization laws. This research also emphasized that the bulk of private-sector-led investment remained concentrated in low productivity endeavors of the tertiary sector. Data and other relevant information gathered from fieldwork in Syria support the hypothesis that the military-mercantile class had reformed the system to serve its own private ends. Data on investment projects undertaken since Law No.10 was passed in 1991 reveals that merchant investment activities in short-gestating capital or capital of an ephemeral nature dominated the investment scene. As more of the resources destined for long-term investment and the maintenance of society shifted toward speculation on low-productivity assets or affluent consumption, the macroeconomic balance necessary for the reproduction of society tilted gravely toward the ruling class. Naturally, the grounds for sustaining livelihood eroded, demand fell, growth became hollow or highly inequitable, and fewer jobs were being created for the steadily growing labor force. These are not guesses about what has happened in Syria; the wage share declined under pressure from lack of autonomous unionization and inflation and conversely, the share of rents and profits rose in an increasingly freer environment of the trade and capital accounts. The transformation of the state bourgeoisie from nationalist dirigiste to commercial bourgeoisie occurred at a time when neoliberalism as the ideology of capital reigned supreme. Ideological ties are also class ties. The fact is that the state bourgeoisie espoused variants of neoliberalism, they began to amass wealth by dipping into the workers’ share of wages out of GDP, and denominated its wealth in dollar form, which could only speak of the real and ideological rapprochement between world financial capital and local Syrian capital. At the time of writing in early 2017, the war landscape appears to be dominated by a Russian- and Iranian-backed government on the one hand, rogue Islamist groups, and 67  Joya (2007: 166).

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424   linda matar various US/Saudi-backed oppositional groups on the other; the latter’s political ­victory—in case it happens—would shift Syria into a social model that swings between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Whatever the outcome of the war, there is little hope for peace and justice if the neoliberal world order is allowed to continue its destructive path in Syria.

Bibliography Abdel-Nour, K. (2000). “The Private Sector, from Protectionism and Competition [Al-qitaʿ al-khass bayn al-himayah wa-al-munafasah],” The Syrian Economy Entering the 21st Century: Problems Waiting for Solutions (Mazzeh: Syrian Economic Society). Bottomore, T. (ed.) (1983). A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Oxford: Blackwell Reference). Buick, A. and J. Crump (1986). State Capitalism: the Wages Systems under New Management (London: Macmillan). Central Bureau of Statistics, 1975. Statistical Abstract (Damascus: Central Bureau of Statistics). Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011. Statistical Abstract (Damascus: Central Bureau of Statistics). Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract. Various issues (Damascus: Central Bureau of Statistics). Chang, H.  J. (2002). “Kicking Away the Ladder: Infant Industry Promotion in Historical Perspective,” Oxford Development Studies 31,1: 21–32. Chatelus, M. and Y.  Schemeil (1984). “Towards a New Political Economy of State Industrialization in the Arab Middle East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 16,2: 251–265. Fine, B. and A. Saad Filho (2004). Marx’s Capital (London: Pluto Press). Haddad, B. (2012). Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Haddad, B. (2015). “The Russian Moment via Syria,” in Disrupting the Chessboard Perspectives on the Russian Intervention in Syria. Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School (October 2015). von Hayek, F. A. (1950 [1941]). The Pure Theory of Capital (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Heydemann, S. (1992). “The Political Logic of Economic Rationality: Selective Liberalisation in Syria,” in H. J. Barkey (ed.). The Politics of Economic Reform in the Middle East (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 11–32. al-Hindi, A. (2011) “Syria's Agricultural Sector: Situation, Role, Challenges and Prospects”. In: Hinnebsuch, R. (et al.) (eds). Agriculture and Reform in Syria (Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., Boulder, Colorado), 15–55. Hinnebusch, R. (1989). Peasant and Bureaucracy in Baʿthist Syria: The Political Economy of Rural Development (Boulder: Westview Press, Inc). Hinnebusch, R. (2001a). Syria: Revolution from Above (London: Routledge). Hinnebusch, R. (2001b). “The Politics of Economic Liberalization: Comparing Egypt and Syria,” in H. Hakimian and Z. Moshaver (eds). The State and Global Change: The Political Economy of Transition in the Middle East and North Africa (Richmond: Curzon), 111–134. Hinnebusch, R. (2009). “Syria Under the Baʿth: The Political Economy of Populist Authoritarianism,” in R. Hinnebusch, and S. Schmidt. The State and the Political Economy

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Syria’s Economic History   425 of Reform in Syria, St Andrews Papers on Contemporary Syria (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). Hinnebusch, R. (2015). “President and Party in Post-Baʿthist Syria: From Struggle for ‘Reform’ to Regime Deconstruction,” in R. Hinnebusch and T. Zintl. Syria from Reform to Revolt, Vol. 1 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Hopfinger, H. and M. Boeckler (1996). “Step by Step to an Open Economic System: Syria Sets Course for Liberalisation,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 23,2: 183–202. International Monetary Fund (2009). Syrian Arab Republic: 2008 Article IV Consultation. IMF Country Report No. 09/55 (February) (Washington, DC: IMF). International Monetary Fund (2010). Syrian Arab Republic 2009. Article IV Consultation. IMF Country Report No. 10/86 (March) (Washington, DC: IMF). Jorgenson, D. (1971). “Econometric Studies of Investment Behaviour: A Survey,” Journal of Economic Literature 9,4: 1111–1147. Joya, A. (2007). “Syria’s Transition, 1970–2005: From Centralisation of the state to Market Economy,” Research in Political Economy 24: 163–201. Kadri, A. (2012). “The Political Economy of the Syrian Crisis,” Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics no. 46 (Norway: The Other Canon Foundation). Kadri, A. (2016). The Unmaking of Arab Socialism (London: Anthem Press). Kalecki, M. (1972). “The Structure of Investment,” in M.  Kalecki. Selected Essays on the Economic Growth of the Socialist and the Mixed Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 102–112. Kalecki, M. (1976). Essays on Developing Economies (Hassocks: Harvester Press). Kanovsky, E. (1977). Economic Development of Syria (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects). Keynes, J.  M. (2008 [1936]). The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (BN Publishing). Khoury, P. (1987). “The Syrian Independence Movement and the Growth of Economic Nationalism in Damascus,” Bulletin. British Society for Middle Eastern Studies 14,1: 25–36. Lawson, F. H. (1989). “Class Politics and State Power in Baʿthi Syria,” in B. Berberoglu (ed.). Power and Stability in the Middle East (London: Zed Books), 15–30. Longuenesse, E. (1996). “Labor in Syria: The Emergence of New Identities,” in E. J. Goldberg (ed.). The Social History of Labor in the Middle East (Boulder: Westview Press, Inc), 99–129. Matar, L. (2013). “Twilight of ‘State Capitalism’ in Formerly ‘Socialist’ Arab States,” Journal of North African Studies 18,3: 416–430. Matar, L. (2016). The Political Economy of Investment in Syria (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). McKinley, T. (ed.) (2009). Economic Alternatives for Growth, Employment and Poverty Reduction Progressive Policy Recommendations for Developing Countries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Perthes, V. (1992). “The Syrian Private Industrial and Commercial Sectors and the State,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24,2: 207–230. Perthes, V. (1995). The Political Economy of Syria under Asad (London: I. B. Tauris). Picard, E. (1985). Espace de référence et Espace d’Intervention du Mouvement Rectificatif au Pouvoir en Syrie 1970–1982. PhD dissertation, University of Paris. Robinson, J. (1964). Introduction to the Theory of Employment (London: Macmillan). Seifan, S. (2010). “Syria on the Path to Economic Reform,” St Andrews Papers on Contemporary Syria (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers).

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426   linda matar Seifan, S. (2011). “The Economic Consequences of the Real Estate Boom,” The Tuesday Economic Session No. 24 (31/05/2011). Available at http://www.mafhoum.com/syr/ articles_11/16-seifan.pdf (accessed October 30, 2013). Seifan, S. (2012). “Policies of Income Distribution and its role in the Social Explosion,” in The Background of Revolution: Syrian Studies (Doha: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies). Sluglett, P. “Bashar Al-Assad, 2000–2010: The Early Years: Disappointed Hopes or Unrealistic Expectations?,” unpublished chapter of an unpublished co-authored book (with Mary Wilson) on Syria, to be submitted to Cambridge University Press. el-Solh, R. (2004). Lebanon and Arabism: National Identity and State Formation (London: I. B. Tauris). Sottimano, A. and S.  Kjetil (2008). “Changing Regime Discourse and Reform in Syria,” St. Andrews Papers on Contemporary Syria (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). Sraffa, P. (1960). Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities: Prelude to a Critique of Economic Theory. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Syrian Investment Agency (SIA) (2008). The Second Annual Investment Report in Syria for the Year 2008 (Damascus: Prime Ministry). The Syria Report (2007). “Two-thirds of Law No.10 Projects Took Off the Ground,” The Syria Report (February 19. 2007). Turner, B. (1984). Capitalism and Class in the Middle East: Theories of Social Change and Economic Development (London: Heinemann Educational Books). UNIDO (2014). Industrial Statistics Database, INDSTAT4 (Vienna: United Nations Industrial Development Organisation). Weeks, J. (2005). “Pre-equity Macroeconomic Framework for Employment Generation and Poverty Reduction,” unpublished paper. World Bank (2014). World Development Indicators (WDI) (Washington, DC: World Bank). World Bank (2017). World Development Indicators (WDI) (Washington, DC: World Bank).

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Chapter 21

The Fr agm en tation of Gen der i n PostI n vasion Ir aq Zahra Ali

Since the invasion by ISIS in June 2014 of parts of northern and western Iraq, images of women brutalized by the terrorist group, especially from minority communities such as Yazidis, were spread across the global media and social networks. The systematic use of enslavement and rape of women and girls from ethnic and religious minorities by ISIS soldiers characterized one of the most horrific forms of sexual violence. These terrible images can easily lead to a simplistic reading of women’s rights and gender issues in Iraq that would reduce gender-based violence to issues of religious fundamentalism. However, instead of limiting the reading of the Iraqi context to the rise of ISIS, it is essential to look carefully at the structural social, economic, and political dimensions that allowed this extreme version of religious fundamentalism to exist. Gender and women’s rights issues in Iraq need to be looked at through a complex lens and a historical analysis that goes back, for the purpose of this discussion, to at least the establishment of the first Iraqi Republic in 1958. The fact that gender and ethnic issues intersected with one another in the enslavement of Yazidi women by ISIS reveal deep social, economic, and political dynamics that have evolved historically and therefore demand further analysis. Considering Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq or elsewhere in Muslim majority countries as the main root of women’s oppression and gender-based violence is perhaps another way of stating that “Islamic culture” is patriarchal in essence and to blame for women’s oppression. It also means considering one variable—religion—as the unique medium of gender-based violence. In line with robust postcolonial feminist literature, the first point to be made is that “Islamic culture” does not exist as a homogeneous reality and in a vacuum, neither does “Islamic fundamentalism.”1 Furthermore, “Islam”—if 1 See for example Abu-Lughod (2013,  1998); Kandiyoti (1996,  1991); Joseph (2000); Ahmed, (1992, 1982); Mohanty (2003; 1988).

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428   zahra ali we want to use this word to refer to a very diverse religious and cultural frame—has been practiced and interpreted very differently throughout time and space, as well as in diverse social and economic contexts.2 By now, it is clear that religion does not exist as an essence outside social, political, and economic transformations but rather in complex relations with these. In this regard, Iraq is an instructive case that shows how much “Islam” has been interpellated and turned into jurisprudence in the context of postcolonial state-building processes. My research on women and gender issues in Iraq shows how religion has long been imbricated with matters of nationhood and that this overlapping has been very much gendered. Thus, taking a more historical and intersectional approach to this matter will provide a better understanding of women and gender issues in Iraq today. This chapter takes a reflexive approach as I explore women’s rights and activism ethno­graph­ic­al­ly, relying on fieldwork conducted within women’s rights groups in Iraq,3 and historically through a study of the evolution of women’s social, political and economic experiences since 1958. I argue that when looking at the social and political mo­bil­iza­tions around women’s rights in post-2003 Iraq, it is essential to explore the very concrete realities in which Iraqi women live and the broader social, political and economic contexts that shape their experiences, rather than applying a priori argumentation involving an undifferentiated “Islam.” In this chapter, I outline three essential dimensions to consider when looking at this matter. First, looking at the evolution of the struggles around women’s legal rights in Iraq, I show the importance of going beyond a simplistic analytical frame involving gender issues to religion. Secondly, I highlight the importance of considering violence, especially the development of political, economic, and military violence in Iraq since the 1980s and its impact on gender norms and relations. Then, looking at the specific context in which Iraqi women lived and mobilized since 2003 will provide key elements for understanding the general social and political fragmentation of the country and its gender dimensions.

Beyond “Gender in Islam”: The Evolution of Women’s Legal Rights in Iraq The Personal Status Code (PSC) also known as the Family Law is the main legal frame based on Muslim jurisprudence and adopted by many Muslim majority states at the 2  See for example Zubaida (2011, 1989). 3  I have conducted indepth fieldwork mainly in Baghdad, and in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan between October 2010 and June 2012. Throughout this ethnography of women’s political activism in Iraq I conducted eighty semi-structured interviews (most of them consisting in life-stories) of Iraqi women political activists from across the political, ethnic and religious spectrum—leftists, secular, Islamists, Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Sunnis, Shias etc. and have been a participant observer of Iraqi women’s political mobilizations and gatherings. I have also conducted fieldwork among women and civil society groups in Baghdad, Najaf-Koufa, Karbala, and Nasiriyah in March-April 2016 and May 2017.

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The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq   429 time of their independence from European imperial powers. This code gathered le­gis­la­ tion regarding private matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, effectively most of women’s legal rights.4 The PSC represents a field of struggle between different social and political groups: the state, the ʿulemas, the tribal leaders and social and political movements including the women’s movement.5 In Iraq, the adoption of an openly pro-women’s rights PSC in 1959 (in the form of Law no. 188) was not only due to the political culture of the revolutionary elite that came to power through ʿAbd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963)’s 1959 coup, but also signaled the questioning of ʿulemas and tribal leaders’ dictates over private matters. Crucially, the adoption of this code marked the beginning of women activists’ inclusion in the process of negotiating for their rights. As an example, Naziha al-Dulaymi (1923–2007), gynecologist by trade, a prominent figure of the League for the Defense of Women’s Rights,6 the first Iraqi and Arab female minister, and prominent communist activist, participated to the drafting of the PSC. The PSC adopted in 1959 put certain intestate inheritance rights for male and female heirs under Civil Code and thus granted through an indirect mechanism gender equality in certain cases in that matter.7 This one of the most sensitive and sacrosanct issues within both Sunni and Shia fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence), along with the severe limitations placed on polygamy, and the adoption of 18 years old as the minimum legal age for marriage for both sexes, represented a strong political statement by the new Iraq Republic that directly challenged the power of ʿulemas in urban areas. As for rural areas, the abolition of the Tribal Law, which had given tribal sheikhs the power to decide over personal matters, constituted an essential part of the new state’s modernization project. The text of Law no. 188 was clearly inspired by different schools of fiqh and operated within sharia, thus eliminating the differential treatment of Sunnis and Shias and allowing statetrained and appointed judges to rule on personal matters without consulting the ʿulemas. Thus, the new PSC gathering both Sunni and Shia jurisprudences provided a legal frame applicable equally to all Muslim Iraqis. This makes the Law no. 188 a symbol of both the new nation’s unity beyond ethno-sectarian lines and the inclusion of women’s rights activists’ demands through their participation in the legislative process itself.8 This shows the strong relationship between issues of nationhood and gender in postcolonial Iraq: at a time when the political culture was marked by the anti-imperialist left both ethno-sectarian unity and pro-women’s rights aspirations were linked to one another. The revolutionary regime aspired to provide, and even more importantly determine the rights of its citizens in linking issues of nationhood with issues of gender. In comparison with most Muslim majority contexts, it is crucial to understand the PSC as a field of struggle between newly independent states, political elites, and social and political movements, especially when considered within the political context of contesting European imperialism, which resulted in the discursive claim of authenticity and resistance to Western models. During early independence the landed Iraqi 4  For the studies on pre-republican legal frameworks for women, see Kern (2011) and Noga Efrati (2012). 5  Charrad (2011; 2001). 6  That will become few years later the Iraqi Women’s League. 7  Straight after the first Baath coup in 1963, this measure was abolished. 8  Efrati (2005; 2012).

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430   zahra ali ­ ationalist elite attempted to build a strong state that would be the arbitrator of all matn ters pertaining to civil law undermining its direct competitors—tribal leaders and ʿulemas. However, in this postcolonial context marked by the western/indigenous modern debate in which women were deemed as “bearer of the nation” and through which issues of “cultural authenticity” were played, the field of family and women’s legal rights remained the only field submitted to the so-called “authentic” authority of sharia in the frame of the PSC. The “authenticity” and “indigeneity” of the emerging “nation” relied on the compliance of women and family issues to “Islam.” Women activists, therefore, were forced to operate in the spaces between state-building and nation-building projects. They were, and are still, caught between these two sep­ arate but entwined projects that together reinscribed or reproduced patriarchal structures and practices legitimized by a so-called “Islam” used as symbol of an “authentic” culture. As Suad Joseph’s research has demonstrated, from the 1970s to the end of the 1980s, the centralized Iraqi political power—unified around the authoritarian Baath Party and supported by oil revenues—came to impose state authority at every level of society, including at the community and family level.9 Joseph contrasted the situation of Iraq with that of Lebanon which is a country as religiously and ethnically diverse but whose elite was even more heterogeneous, factionalized, and supported by fewer resources and thus with a weaker state. The Lebanese republic had passed a communitybased PSC, as the non-interventionist state deferred to religious institutions matters regarding women and the family. In Iraq in contrast, the Baath regime attempted to subordinate family to the state by taking over family functions—child socialization, healthcare, and social control—and to transform the family from a unit of production to a unit of consumption. Until the mid-1980s, the Baath regime subsidized the nuclear family in order to shift tribal, religious and sectarian allegiances to the state.10 In the 1970s, women activists who mobilized for their legal rights in the very limited political pluralism of the increasingly authoritarian Baath regime, were able to push for even more progressive reforms. Their efforts were supported by full employment and the regime ideological narrative promoting a pro-women secular socialism. However, by the mid-1980s, with the country at war with Iran, the women’s movement was reduced to the General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW), which became a mouthpiece for Baathist ideological turn into a more conservative discourse regarding family and gender issues. In this period of economic weakening of the regime that concentrated its budget to the war effort, women were invited to go back to their houses and give birth to the “future soldiers of the nation.”11 After the 1991 Gulf War, the politics of “state feminism” witnessed a dramatic reversal, as this period was marked by the pol­it­ical and economic weakening of the Baath Party; six weeks of devastating US-led bombings; the regime’s brutal crackdown on the northern and southern uprisings; and a decade of severe, UN-imposed economic sanctions. All of these factors signaled the end of Iraq’s reign as a regional power, plunging its middle class into poverty, destroying its infrastructure, and ruining its social, 9  Joseph (1991). 10  Joseph (1991); Ismael J. and Ismael S. (2000). 11  Efrati (1999) and Rohde (2010).

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The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq   431 e­ ducational, and health systems. Once reputed as the country with the most educated women and home to one of the most developed and effective higher education systems in the region, Iraq in the 2000s had one of the highest rates of illiteracy and infant mortality. The dismantling of the education system, the public sector, and state services as a result of sanctions, therefore, had a direct impact on the everyday lives of Iraqi women.12 In her research on the gender impact of the UN sanctions, al-Jawaheri noted the emergence of new forms of patriarchy in extremely impoverished contexts.13 The Baath Party aligned itself with the rise of political Islam in the region, forging anew the Islamic and tribal nature of the Iraqi identity. Under the banner of the al-hamla al-imaniyah (“the Faith Campaign”), President Saddam Hussein added “Allahu Akbar” to the Iraqi flag, portrayed himself as a pious Muslim, Islamized public discourse, and funded the construction of huge mosques. In addition, measures were imposed regarding women’s legal rights. Now a mahram (a male relative) was required in order for women to travel abroad; severe punishments for prostitution were imposed; and the legislation tolerating crimes committed “in the name of honor” was reinforced.14 The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 has exacerbated the social, economic and political crisis in which the country has been plunged since 1991, and framed it in ethno-sectarian lines. In this context marked by the institutionalization of communal—ethnosectarian and ethnoreligious—identities by the US-led administration and the extreme weakening of the state, the PSC has once again taken a central role in debates about issues of nationhood and statehood. The US-led administration put in power ethnosectarian political groups that were at the marge of power under the Baath regime, Shia Islamist parties and Kurdish nationalists. In Arab Iraq, the US-led politics through the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) marked by the institutionalization of a communal-based political system, a marginalization of the Sunni population alongside the destruction of the old state’s institutions, in addition to the contestation of the occupation itself by most Iraqis, plunged the country into a sectarian war. The post-2003 context is characterized by an extremely weak state, a largely contested political regime and the very fragmentation of Iraqi nationhood through the separation of the Kurds and the Arabs, and the Sunni-Shia political divide. While Kurdish nationalists dealt with the PSC on nationalist terms in the separate territory of Iraqi Kurdistan. Shia Islamists, driven by the defense of their politico-sectarian identity, pushed for a questioning of the unified PSC on sectarian grounds through different propositions that all introduce the possibility of a sectarian-based PSC: Decree 137 proposed in 2003, Article 41 of the new Iraqi Constitution adopted in 2005 and more recently in 2014 the Jaʿfari Law proposition. The latter, based on the Jaʿfari school—main Shia religious school in Iraq- could allow the marriage of girls since the age of 9 years old considered by the Jaʿfari school as sinn al-balagha (the age of maturity), and allow precarious forms of marriage in which women and girls loose legal protection. Activists of the Iraqi Women Network (IWN), the main independent women’s rights platform in Iraq since 2003, 12  al-Jawaheri (2008); al-Ali (2007); Ali (2018). 14  al-Jawaheri (2008); Efrati (2005).

13  al-Jawaheri (2008).

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432   zahra ali were firmly opposed to all these measures, defending the Law no 188 for its inclusion of all Muslim Iraqis. According to IWN activists, Decree 137, Article 41 and the Jaʿfari Law proposition brought the very notion of the comparatively progressive and unifying PSC into question on both religious and sectarian grounds. In turn, many civil society activists expressed fears over both the adoption of a system based on a regressive and conservative reading of Muslim jurisprudence and the sectarianization of women and family issues. Significantly, Sunni Islamists also opposed these propositions, siding instead with the preservation of a unified code that facilitates intercommunal marriage. Conversely, most Shia Islamist women activists supported the Jaʿfari Law, considering it to be an affirmation of the freedom to practice Shia Islam after decades of repression under the Baath regime. According to a survey conducted by a women’s organization in southern Iraq which confirmed my own research, even the majority of the Shia population (70%) considered Article 41 to threaten the unity of Iraq.15 Most Shia clerics also opposed the Jaʿfari Law, or example, Hussein al-Sadr—a prominent Shia cleric—stated that it was better for the state to adopt civil legislation in line with international conventions and leave issues of sharia to the clerics: “We want Iraq to be a civilian [madani] and civilized [mutahadhar] state.”16 The fact that most of the Shia population and clerics also oppose the sectarianization of the PSC shows how much this issue does not divide Sunnis and Shias on strictly religious-sectarian lines, but rather on political-sectarian lines. Shia Islamists who are in power push for a sectarianization of the PSC which is synonymous for them of more power, while Sunni Islamists who are on the marge of power defend a unified PSC to make sure that Sunnis would be treated as equal citizens. This brief history of the challenges to women’s legal rights highlights the extent to which gender issues are entangled with ideas of nationhood, and increasingly with sect­ ar­ian issues, as well as the nature of political regimes and the way it framed women’s activism. Gender issues were continually raised throughout the Baathist project, oscillating between Arab-Socialist nationalism and a tribalism colored by Islam. Subsequently, conflicting gender politics can be seen to have economic, political, ideological, and sociodemographic triggers. Such ambivalent legacies partly defined the ways in which the PSC has been debated in the post-2003 context. So far, my analysis of the formation and deformation of women’s legal rights in Iraq has shown that the question cannot be reduced to the static perspective of “gender in Islam.” If the interpretation of “Islam” was in favor of more egalitarian conceptions of women’s rights between the 1950s and the 1970s, it was the product of a particular social, economic, and political conjecture in which a gendered secular leftist nationalist narrative dominated Iraqi political culture. The same “Islam” was interpreted in a more conservative way in the 1980s and 1990s owing to militarization and general impoverishment. Since 2003, the violent fragmentation of the country negatively affected the very existence of a unified frame of women’s legal rights, and “Islam” is interpreted through conservative sectarian lines. 15  Bint al-Rafidain/UNIFEM (2006).

16  Al-hiwar al-mutamaddan, March 2, 2014.

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The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq   433

The Military, Political, and Economic Genealogy of Gender-Based Violence in Iraq Iraq has become one of the most brutalized countries in the world. In addition having experienced one of the most authoritarian regimes in the region, its population has been plunged into several devastating wars starting in the early 1980s with the war with Iran. Iraq seems to have been in a “state of war” since then as military violence has characterized its everyday reality until today. The devastating impact of the UN sanctions after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 is still palpable today. Each of these forms of violence has brought about the militarization and thus celebration of masculinization of Iraqi society which, in turn, also carry ethnic and sectarian dimensions.17 Thus, this violence is both gendered and ethnosectarian, and the imbrication of both created the fragmentation of Iraq since the US-led invasion and even more since the invasion of ISIS. Even before these wars and occupations, the authoritarian Baath regime had normalized violence and turned it into a particular sense of Iraqi political identity. From 1975, the cultural identity and very existence of the four million Iraqi Kurds was under threat: between 250,000 and 300,000 Kurds were deported from Kirkuk to the south in order to “Arabize the population.” The Baath Party also undertook a campaign of “internal population redistribution,” deporting thousands of Yazidis from Sulaymaniyah and Sinjar. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the repression of both the Shia movement and the Kurdish nationalist movement made the Baath regime one of the most violent dictatorships in the world. Under the banners of Arab nationalism and the struggle against Iranian influence, the regime undertook massive campaigns of repression. The war with Iran lasted more than eight years and caused the deaths of many thousands of in­di­vid­ uals, mostly male soldiers. This is coupled with the Tasfirat politics in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families deemed to be of Iranian origin were taken from their homes and expelled across the Iranian borders.18 As a consequence of these atrocities, the regime’s gender rhetoric shifted radically toward the reinforcement of normative conceptions of masculinity and femininity.19 The rhetoric of the “good Iraqi man and woman, educating and participating in the labor force” changed radically. During the 1980s, the state engaged in a glorification of militarized masculinity and emphasized Iraqi women’s reproductive responsibilities. Being a good Iraqi woman became synonymous with being the mother of future soldiers.20 In several speeches, Saddam Hussein insisted that “a woman who does not bring at least five children is a traitor to the nation.”21 The regime pressured women to raise the fertility rate by banning contraception, making abortion illegal, and enhancing 17  Khoury (2013). 18  Kutschera (2005); Bozarslan (2009; 2008). 19  Khoury (2013), Rohde (2010; 2006). 20  al-Ali (2007), Efrati (1999). 21  Rohde (2010).

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434   zahra ali ­ aternity benefits, including free infant food. Men were pictured as battle-ready solm diers: the protectors of the nation’s women and children. As national agency was masculinized and the land was presented as female, gendered obligations were denoted in poems and propaganda literature. In the war’s last stages, reproductive representations encouraged an Islamic discourse, presenting women as “mothers.” Even children’s literature was mili­tar­ized and in it, Iranians dehumanized.22 The Baath regime’s discriminatory notion of Iraqiness was also gendered in the sense that it affected very concretely the legislation regarding who could marry whom and how the ideal Iraqi family conducted its life.23 The regime implemented specific le­gis­la­ tion in the early 1980s to push mixed couples to divorce. Dima M., born in Baghdad in 1955, was victim of the tabaʿiyya campaign against Iraqis considered of Iranian descent, and in 1980 her husband was jailed for leaving the war front. She recounted to me how he was forced to “divorce her” in order to obtain his freedom, as the law rewarded those who divorced “Iranian” Iraqis: It was when Saddam was giving 2000 dinars to those who divorce a tabaʿiyya person. At the time, 2000 dinars was something huge. We earned around 100 dinars per month, so you can imagine how important this amount of money was. Saddam tried to destroy families from the inside, pushing people to betray their own fam­ ilies. My husband obtained his release after he divorced me. He was released in 1984 and I saw him again for the first time in 1991.24

The years of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait marked two of the most brutal episodes of state violence against Iraq’s northern and southern populations in the history of Iraqi society. Between 1988 and 1989, chemical attacks on Halabja—known as the al-Anfal campaign—killed more than 180,000 Kurds, mostly civilians.25 The 1991 uprising of the Kurdish nationalists in the north gained international attention, and in April 1991 Operation Safe Haven was undertaken in the Kurdish region in order to protect the population from the Baath army. The spontaneous uprising by communists, Shias, and disaffected regional Baathists in southern Iraq, on the other hand, did not gain as much attention after the US regime abandoned them. Saddam Hussein’s praetorian guards launched a merciless attack on the insurgents. Hundreds of thousands were killed, tortured, imprisoned, and declared missing. The memories of these atrocities represented a turning point in the country’s sectarian relations and fueled the sectarian war of 2006–2007.26 The US-led coalition’s six-week bombing campaign in January–February 1991 destroyed the functionality of the Iraqi economy and state. A UN special report from March 1991 indicated that after the bombing campaign, Iraq moved from a modern,

22  Khoury (2013), Rohde (2010). 23  Ali (2018). 24  Interview conducted in Baghdad in 2012. 25  Kutschera (2005); Bozarslan (2009; 2008). 26  Haddad (2014; 2010).

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The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq   435 highly urbanized and mechanized economy to a pre-industrial one.27 The UN’s im­pos­ ition of drastic economic sanctions perpetuated the war’s destruction of state infrastructure. Hardest hit were the sectors on which women relied: the public services, and social, education, and health systems. The regime in Baghdad responded by imposing austerity measures: it reduced the number of government employees, demobilized thousands of military and civilian personnel, and curbed women’s work in the public sector. It pushed the population into a “survival economy” as people were forced to work several jobs, selling personal belongings, and sewing their own clothes.28 The dismantling of the education system, public sector, and state services impacted women’s everyday lives. The effects were especially felt by female teachers and public employees, who saw their salaries plummet to such a degree that they could not even afford to pay for weekly transport.29 Women could not work alternative jobs; men, on the other hand, could work as engineers in the morning and as a taxi driver or shopkeepers in the afternoon. This limited women’s financial contributions to the household, and pushed many into domestic life. Iman A. was in her twenties at the time, employed in the production sector, and married with two children. She spoke about the drop in her salary, as well as the fact that most of her female friends quit their jobs. Iman A. also spoke about how her sector managed to carry on despite the lack of staples: The sanctions taught us a lot. How to face difficulties, how to be autonomous? I decided to carry on working, although my salary was 6000 dinars (around 20 dollars), so almost nothing. It was not enough to buy the monthly bus ticket to go to my place of work. I chose to carry on with my job despite the fact that all the women around me were quitting their jobs, because it was a waste of time for almost no salary. I did not work for the salary, I worked in order to have something to do, to morally and psychologically handle the terrible situation of the 1990s. Most of the women around me who quit their jobs ended up at home, they did not find another job. It morally and psychologically destroyed so many women.30

More generally, women bore the burden of household survival, as many men were involved in the military. Many women found alternative, informal ways to provide for their family’s basic necessities, selling ready-made meals, personal objects, and homemade sweets; giving tutorials for teachers; nursing; or cleaning.31 In the context of extreme poverty, new forms of patriarchy emerged that were marked by conservatism and the idea that women “needed protection.”32 On the one hand, the regime’s Faith Campaign espoused moral propriety of Iraqi women and, on the other, women were forced to make degrading life-saving choices.33 Female and child prostitution became rampant, men spent fortunes on pornography, kidnapping of girls for 27  Ahtissaari, M, “Report to the Secretary-General on Humanitarian Needs in Kuwait and Iraq in the Immediate Post-Crisis Environment”, New York, UN Report no. S122366, March 1991. 28  al-Jawaheri (2008). 29  al-Jawaheri (2008); Ali (2018). 30  Interview conducted in Baghdad in 2010. 31  Ismael J. and Ismael S (2008). 32  al-Ali (2007); al-Jawaheri (2008); Ali (2018). 33  al-Ali (2007); Rohde (2010).

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436   zahra ali r­ ansom occurred, young women were forced into marriages with old wealthy men, all practices that the PSC had sought to eradicate. Proportionate to this deterioration, general poverty decimated the marriage rate. Informal unions—ʿurfi marriages—and temporary marriages—mutʿa for Shias, misyar for Sunnis filled the gap.34 More generally, the spread of corruption, communal and neighborhood relations degenerated into individualistic economic survival and mafia-type racketeering. This period restructured the social and cultural fabric of Iraq, fundamentally altering the values of sociability and morality.35 This sketch of political, economic, and military violence in Baath Iraq shows how much these forms of violence are both gendered and carry ethnic and sectarian dimensions. It is precisely the imbrication between gender, ethnicity, and sectarianism that is at the core of the post-invasion condition of severe fragmentation of the country. Bearing this gloomy reality in mind is essential when considering the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism since 2014.

Living and Mobilizing in an Occupied and Fragmented Country The invasion of Iraq, coupled with the bombing and fighting that occurred between March and May 2003, led to around 150,000 civilian deaths.36 After the establishment of the occupation through the CPA, and the establishment of Iraqi governing councils based on communal quotas, Iraqis’ daily lives began to be characterized by violence. The sectarian civil war that continues to haunt the country was the direct result of the CPA de-Baathification campaign which decommissioned 400,000 Iraqi soldiers and lowly Baath Party members undermining the state, the political marginalization of the Sunni population and the establishment of communal identities as the basis of the Iraqi pol­it­ ical system.37 The US army’s repression of uprisings against the occupation—especially in Fallujah—and the rise of political and party-associated militias benefiting from the power vacuum, all took a sectarian shape.38 The exacerbation of sectarian conflict reached its extreme during the 2006–2007 sectarian war.39 This civil war and all the associated events represented the second turning point after 1991 in Iraqi sectarian relations, and reorganized society and territory according to sectarian lines.40 Such a

34  Rohde (2010); Ali (2018). 35  al-Ali (2007); al-Jawaheri (2008). 36  Estimated according to the Lancet (2004), Iraq Body Count: www.iraqbodycount.org, (last access February 3 2017) and Iraq: the Human Cost: http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/ (last access February 3 2017). 37  Ismael Y. and Ismael S. (2015); Arato (2009); Dodge (2005, 2013). 38  Dodge (2013). 39  Between 2006 and 2007, the sectarian civil war claimed at least 1,000 lives per week, mostly civilian, and both internally and externally displaced around 2,500,000 according to the UNHCR. 40  Haddad (2014; 2010).

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The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq   437 f­racturing is visible in the division of Baghdad into homogeneously Sunni and Shia neighborhoods, each separated by checkpoints and concrete walls.41 The sectarian dimension of the social retribalization started under the Baath in the 1990s was pushed even further in the chaos that followed the invasion. Sectarian violence is gendered. Most of the women activists I interviewed, especially public and media figures, have received death threats or been directly targeted by violence, including car bomb attacks in front of their offices or homes. Some had to flee the country, but the majority remain in Baghdad. Some moved into areas controlled by their sect, as their neighborhoods were “cleansed” by sectarian militias. Ibtihal I., in her early forties, very active women’s rights activist of the Iraqi Women’s League, recounted to me how, in an attempt to kill her in 2007, a group of men placed explosives in the front of her house, and made it explode. The event occurred after she had received several death threats from conservative Islamist militia groups in the form of phone calls and messages. Fortunately, no one was in the house at the time. Ibtihal recalled the police incompetence and lack of will to help her find the perpetrators of the attack and provide her with protection. She described the atmosphere of Baghdad in 2006–2007 and her feelings about it: You know in 2006 and 2007, after 2 p.m., the streets of Baghdad were empty. There was no life in Baghdad. The next day, everything opened at 8 a.m. But people were scared to go out very early or later than 2 p.m. Violence was everywhere. Armed groups, death threats, militias, the everyday reality was terrible, frightful. Until today you know, the value of life is lost in Iraq. Any disagreement between political leaders, ends up by violence in the streets. We face death every single day, every Iraqi that goes out of his house is not certain that he will come back alive. Iraq transformed into a scene of death. Even when we have moments of joy, we feel that we are stealing these moments, and we then refrain ourselves saying Allah yesterna [May God protect us]. The worse is that we do not even have a state, a government towards whom we could seek for protection or complain.42

In addition to the overall insecurity that led to the deaths of many Iraqi women activists, most of the women I interviewed noticed how the rise of conservative gender norms impacted their dress and ability to move freely in specific neighborhoods of Baghdad. As many neighborhoods are controlled by militias and armed groups backed by conservative, sectarian Islamist parties, many women have witnessed or experienced incidents regarding clothes or behavior when crossing checkpoints. Christian women activists, too, prefer to wear a loose shawl over their head when moving between the capital’s different neighborhoods. Gender norms are imbricated with sectarian division: in Sunni-dominated cities women often wear a jubbah consisting of a hijab and a long mantle while in Shia-dominated cities, particularly in southern Iraq, women now wear a

41  Damluji (2010); Pieri (2014).

42  Interview conducted in Baghdad in 2011.

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438   zahra ali black ʿabayah43 over their hijab and cover their feet with black socks. Many of the women I interviewed described incidents such as the closing of hair salons or car bomb attacks to forbid women from driving. More generally, an overwhelming sense of tension has been created by the violence, and the dominance of competing armed militias in the streets. This feeling was expressed repeatedly to me: “Before we had one Saddam, today we have a Saddam at every street corner.” Moreover, my ethnographic research showed that the militarization of the Iraqi public spaces has turned Baghdad to a “city of men”: checkpoints, walls, and soldiers in the streets everywhere. Many places are now inaccessible for women and some places such as cafés, once the pride of riverside Baghdad, are forbidden for women from five p.m. even in al-Karrada neighborhood known for its openness. In 2007, over half of the Iraqi population lived on less than one dollar a day. Acute malnutrition has more than doubled since 2003, affecting no less than 43% of all children between the ages of six months and five years. Almost 50% of all households have been deprived of healthy sanitation facilities. There is a critical lack of medical drugs and equipment, and more than 15,000 doctors have been killed, kidnapped, or fled the country. Even in Baghdad, the state provides a maximum of five hours of electricity per day.44 In addition, the lack of control and stability since 2003, as well as the privatization and liberalization of the economy, has provoked a drastic increase in the price of staple goods and basic necessities. As a result, the majority of Iraqis are poor while living in an oil-rich country. No major plan or policies have been undertaken by the new regime to deal with these issues. The new state’s weakness, its inability to provide security and respond to basic needs such as access to running water, electricity, housing, and employment, mismanagement and corruption pushed Iraqis to rely on alternative sources of protection and service.45 Alongside mobilizations around women’s legal rights, women civil society activists were at the forefront of the struggle for welfare and social protection laws, against corruption, advocating freedom of expression, criticizing governmental salaries and “institutionalized corruption.” Most of the independent women civil society activists I met participated in the Civil Initiative to Preserve the Constitution, which was launched in 2010 to apply pressure on the government, as well as mobilizations denouncing armed violence, sectarianism, and state incompetence in providing basic public services. The IWN took a strong stand with regard to Iraq’s independence from foreign interference; it supported federalism and denounced human rights abuses in Iraq.46 Activists also raised the issue of the disappeared and prisoners of the anti-terrorism campaign, who are still detained without judgment, as well as the police and security forces’ use of violence.47 The situation is so chaotic and fragmented that even female parliamentarians face considerable challenges that makes their work on the ground almost impossible. 43  Long and large black tissue covering the whole body excluding the face. 44  Dawisha (2009). 45  Dawisha (2009). 46  Ali (2018). 47  Ali (2018).

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The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq   439 Betoul M.—a prominent Shia Islamist activist—believes the sectarian quota system is the root of state and government dysfunction. She represented Tayar al-Islah, a Shia political group founded by Ibrahim al-Jaʿfari, at the Baghdad Provincial Council and faced much difficulty: We face a lot of problems at the Baghdad Provincial Council. The greater problem, in reality, is the communal quota system. [. . .] I had to struggle to get the Committee of Civil Society Organizations, because I felt that as a civil society and women’s activist, it was my place to be on this committee. But once I joined this committee, I faced a lot of conflicts with the head of the committee. This man, once he became the head of a committee, he thought he became the King of Baghdad. We are both elected representatives; he has his position and I have mine. I proposed him to divide Baghdad into different zones in order to operate more efficiently. He imposed the areas where he wanted to work, and he refused to work on certain areas. Let’s be honest here, the problem is sectarianism. He told me: “You take al-Sadr, al-Kazimiyah, al-Istiqlal, al-Kerrada and Tesaʿ Nisan etc. [all Shia areas] and I take Abu Ghraib, Tarmyah, Mayadeen and al-Aʿdhamiyah etc. [all Sunni areas].” I finally told him that I agreed, because I cannot go to these places with my ID card and my ʿabayah. The ʿabayah is the most visible sign, as you know. And at the time, after 2005, it was dangerous. But even today, I do not know these areas or trust going there. Anyway, I cannot access these areas. [. . .] Before the fall, didn’t we live all together, Sunnis and Shias, all neighbors? [. . .]However, in the context where the state is so weak, when people are in such need, it is normal that the citizen turns to its representatives to complain, or even hurt them sometimes. [. . .] It is easier now to work and ask for funds from NGOs than the government. If I want to deal with basic services in a neighborhood, it is easier for me to ask for funding from an NGO than from the government, because of corruption the administrative process and control makes it take years to obtain anything. It will be so complicated and so long, and I need to fix some very urgent problems. It is a pragmatic approach. We have so many emergency issues: water, electricity and basic needs. We cannot wait until the government builds social housing, we have to find concrete solutions.48

In a context characterized by violence and a weak state, where individuals are pushed to rely on alternative sources of protection and security, tribal leadership gained significance and took a sectarian shape. It is not surprising, therefore, that a large number of tribesmen and political leaders chose to join ISIS in June 2014, during its capture of Mosul. In response to the invasion of ISIS, Grand Ayatollah Sistani—the most im­port­ ant marjaʿ in Iraq—called for a “jihad to preserve Iraq,” which incited thousands of civilians, mainly Shias, to join the military operations against ISIS. More recently in the context of the invasion of ISIS, ordinary citizens, civil society, and women’s rights activists launched a strong grassroots movement that started last summer (2015). From Baghdad’s Tahrir Square across Iraq, this movement has expressed citizens’ general exasperation at the corruption and mismanagement of the post-2003 48  Interview conducted in Baghdad in 2010.

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440   zahra ali government; corruption and mismanagement epitomized by electricity cuts and a lack of public services. These protests quickly turned into a massive popular movement— supported even by the prominent religious figure Ayatollah Sistani—vilifying Iraq’s post-invasion regime and demanding radical reforms. Every Friday since, demonstrators have gathered in the main public squares of Iraq’s big cities including Najaf, Nasrya, Basra, and echoed the slogans of the protestors in central Baghdad: “Bi-ism il-din bagunah al-haramiyya” (“in the name of religion we have been robbed by looters”) and “Khubz, Huriyya, Dawla Medeniya” (“Bread, Freedom, and a Civil State”). Demonstrators consider the new regime’s corruption and sectarian politics as directly responsible for the formation and spread of ISIS. The Shia Islamist Sadrist movement joined the protest, as its leader Moqtada al-Sadr met the sit-in—that started on March 18, 2016—in front of the concrete T-walls that encompass the Green Zone in the capital, where the main central government building, foreign embassies, and Iraq’s new political leadership all reside. If many civil society and women’s rights activists are critical of the involvement and possible hijacking of the popu­lar movement by the Sadrist, others were far more nuanced. Henaa Edwar, head of the Al-Amel organization and a prominent figure of the IWN, was very hopeful regarding the developments of the popular protests when I met her in the Al-Amel offices in al-Kerrada, central Baghdad, the day she visited the sit-ins with a delegation of IWN activists on March 22, 2016. Despite remaining critical of the Sadrists’ populism and conservatism, especially regarding gender matters, Edwar expressed her support for the protesters and a positive view of the Sadrists’ involvement. She believes that Moqtada alSadr’s presence pushed the Sadrists’ wide grassroots proletarian base onto the streets in a show of unified nationhood and citizenship, especially at a stage when after weeks of mobilizations, some protesters, tired of being in the streets every Friday, were starting to go home. Many women’s rights activists who participated actively in this movement of protest emphasized the importance of linking gender equality advocacy with the struggles for religious and class equality. The IWN activists insist on the preservation of equal citizenship for Iraqis from all ethnic and religious backgrounds as a cornerstone of the preservation of women’s legal rights.

Conclusion As eloquently shown by al-Ali and Pratt,49 the neocolonial use of women’s rights rhet­ oric to justify imperialist and geopolitical agendas is well known in Iraq. The reality of Iraq today shows that there is a great contradiction between the US government’s advocacy of women’s rights and its actual neocolonial and neoliberal politics. The ethnosect­ ar­ian form of government the US occupation force ordained has resulted in generalized violence and a fragmented citizenship. In the context of the ISIS invasion and the ­ter­rible 49  al-Ali and Pratt (2009).

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The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq   441 violence it unleashed, this discourse justifying military actions in order to “save women” has been used again not only by political leaders in the West, especially the US administration, but also very strongly by the Iraqi political leadership. The new regime describes ISIS as the “main enemy” of Iraq and the Shia-dominated central government intensifies its sectarian discourse legitimizing military violence and arbitrary executions in the name of “security.” Since 2014, the central government has launched a huge media campaign showing video clips more than ten times a day on Iraqi TV in which male Iraqi soldiers kill a “terrorist.” They celebrate both a violent model of masculinity and an exclusive definition of nationhood in which the figure of the Sunni tribesman is depicted as either an ISIS supporter or a former Baathist. As demonstrated in this chapter, militarization and political violence that started under the Baath regime are the central factor of everyday gender-based violence and in Iraq today, the entanglement of gender and ethnosectarian enmity creates a highly fragmented reality. The very basis of the early republic’s women’s legal rights are de­legit­im­ ized by the central government dominated by conservative Shia Islamists which either seeks a sectarianization of the PSC. Meanwhile in the areas occupied by ISIS women are deemed minors or inferiors. It is clear that the situation women are facing in Iraq today is not the simple product of a misreading of “Islam,” but it is rather the direct consequences of a series of wars and invasions that have led to social and political fragmentation coupled with the rise of conservative forces, the foremost victims of which have been Iraqi women. And still, Iraqi women’s rights and civil society activists have rallied in Tahrir Square every Friday since the summer of 2016 and insisted that only an inclusive, socially, religiously, and ethnically egalitarian society could bring about an environment in which Iraq can rebuild itself. The US-led invasion and occupation exacerbated the ethnosect­ ar­ian divisions as well as the social and economic crisis that characterized Iraq since at least 1991. As Iraqi women and men demonstrators articulate very clearly, ISIS is the product of sectarian oppression and corruption of this new regime produced by the imperialist US-led invasion and occupation.

References Abu-Lughod, Lila (2013). Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press). Abu-Lughod, Lila (ed.) (1998). Remaking Women: Feminism and modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Ahmed, Leila (1992). Women and Gender in Islam. Historical roots of a modern debate (New Haven/London: Yale University Press). Ahmed, Leila (1982). “Feminism and Feminist Movements in the Middle East, a preliminary exploration: Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen,” Women’s Studies International Forum 5, 2: 153–168. al-Ali, Nadje (2007). Iraqi Women. Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (London/New York: Zed Books).

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442   zahra ali al-Ali, Nadje and Pratt, Nicola (2009). What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press). Ali, Zahra (2018). Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press). Arato, Andrew (2009). Constitution Making Under Occupation. The Politics of Imposed Revolution in Iraq (New York/Chichester: Columbia University Press). Bint al-Rafidain/UNIFEM (2006). Dirasa Qanuniyya li Waqiʿ al-Ahwal al-Shakhsiyya fi Manatiq al-Furat al-Awsat. Babel/Kerbala/Najaf/Diwanyah/Waset. Bozarslan, Hamit (2009). Conflit kurde (Paris: Autrement). Bozarslan, Hamit (2008). Une histoire de la violence au Moyen-Orient. De la fin de l’Empire ottoman à Al-Qaida (Paris: La Découverte). Charrad, M. Mounira (2011). “Central and Local Patrimonialism: State-Building in Kin-Based Societies,” ANNALS, AAPSS 636 (July): 49–68. Charrad, M. Mounira (2001). States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco (Berkeley: University of California Press). Damluji, Mona (2010). “Securing Democracy in Iraq: Sectarian Politics and Segregation in Baghdad, 2003–2007,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 21,2: 71–87. Dawisha, Adeed (2009). Iraq: A Political History From Independence to Occupation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton). Dodge, Toby (2013). Iraq—From War to a New Authoritarianism, Adelphi series (London: Routledge Taylor and Francis). Dodge, Toby (2005). Iraq’s Future: the Aftermath of Regime Change. Adelphi Papers, 372. (Abingdon: Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies). Efrati, Noga (2012). Women in Iraq. Past meets Present (New York: Columbia University Press). Efrati, Noga (2005). “Negotiating Rights in Iraq: Women and the Personal Statutes Law,” Middle East Journal 59,4: 575–595. Efrati, Noga (1999). “Productive or Reproductive? The Roles of Iraqi Women during the Iraq–Iran War,” Middle Eastern Studies 35,2: 27–44. Haddad, Fanar (2014). “A Sectarian Awakening: Reinventing Sunni Identity in Iraq After 2003,” Current Trends in Islamist Ideology 14: 70. Haddad, Fanar (2010). Sectarian Relations in Arab Iraq: Competing Mythologies of History, People and State. (University of Exeter, thesis, March 2010). Ismael, Tareq  Y. and Ismael, Jacqueline  S. (2015). Iraq in the Twenty-First Century. Regime Change and the Making of a Failed State (London & New York: Routledge). Ismael, Jacqueline S. and Ismael Shereen T. (2000). “Gender and State in Iraq,” in Suad Joseph (ed.). Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press), 185–213. Ismael, Jacqueline  S. and Ismael, Shereen  T. (2008). “Living Through War, Sanctions and Occupation: the Voices of Iraqi Women,” International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 2, 3: 409–424. al-Jawaheri, H. Yasmine (2008). Women in Iraq. The Gender Impact of International Sanctions (London: I. B. Tauris). Joseph, Suad (ed.) (2000). Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press).

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The Fragmentation of Gender in Post-Invasion Iraq   443 Joseph, Suad (1991). “Elite Strategies for State Building: Women, Family, Religion and the State in Iraq and Lebanon,” in Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.). Women, Islam, and the State (London: Macmillan Press), 176–200. Kandiyoti, Deniz (ed.) (1996). Gendering the Middle East (London/New York: I. B. Tauris). Kandiyoti, Deniz (1991). Women, Islam and the State (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press). Kern, Karen (2011). Imperial Citizen: Marriage and Citizenship in the Ottoman Frontier Provinces of Iraq (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Khoury, R.  Dina (2013). Iraq in Wartime. Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press). Kutschera, Chris (2005). Le Livre Noir de Saddam Hussein (Paris: Oh editions). Mohanty, T.  Chandra (2003). Feminism Without Borders. Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC/London: Duke University Press). Mohanty, T.  Chandra (1988). “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Feminist Review 30: 61–88. Pieri, Caecilia (2014). “Can T-Wall Murals Really Beautify the Fragmented Baghdad,” Jadaliyya 18 mai 2014 http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/17704/can-t-wall-murals-really-beautifythe-fragmented-b (last access December 4 2016). Rohde, Achim (2010). “Gender Policies in Baathist Iraq,” in State-Society Relations in Baathist Iraq (London/New York: SOAS Routledge Studies on the Middle East) pp. 75–118. Rohde, Achim (2006). “Opportunities for Masculinity and Love: Cultural Production in Baathist Iraq during the 1980s,” in Ouzgane Lahoucine (ed.). Islamic Masculinities (London/ New York: Zed Books). Zubaida, Sami (2011). Beyond Islam: a New Understanding of the Middle East (London/New York: I. B. Tauris). Zubaida, Sami (1989). Islam, the People and the State (London: Routledge).

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Chapter 22

Sexta r i a n ism Notes on Studying the Lebanese State Maya Mikdashi

Introduction Lebanese citizenship and statecraft are constituted along two axes of political difference: sectarian and sexual difference. To be a Lebanese citizen with a full set of attendant rights and duties, one must be a member of one of eighteen legally recognized religious sects. Official state discourse identifies all of these sects as minorities (a governing strategy used to officially negate any discussion of actual demographics) that form the basis of power-sharing in the Lebanese state. Personal status law, and with it the assigning of each citizen to a particular set of personal status laws, is a primary mechanism of legal recognition by the state for separate sectarian groups. French colonial authorities first established this system of recognition in 1936 with the promulgation of administrative and civil law LR 60, by which the state recognizes different sectarian communities in Lebanon based on their adjudication of a separate personal law for kinship relations.1 LR60 was subsequently amended and ultimately made inapplicable to Muslims, though many of its controversial articles were incorporated into other arenas of law. Postcolonial Lebanese law states that citizens are born into the jurisdiction of different personal status laws depending on their father. In this way sectarian belonging itself is defined through sexual difference and patriarchal kinship regulations. In fact, not only is sect a paternally inherited biopolitical category, citizenship itself is also exclusively inherited patrilineally.2

1  See Grafton (2003), Weiss (2010). 2  There are currently approximately four million citize -residents, approximately two million Syrian, Palestinian, Iraqi, Sudanese, and Kurdish refugees, and more than two hundred thousand migrant laborers residing in Lebanon.

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   445 The three highest offices of the state—president, prime minister, and speaker of parliament—are distributed to members of the three numerically largest sects—Maronite Christian, Sunni Muslim, and Shia Muslim. Furthermore, parliamentary seats are allocated on a 1:1 ratio between Muslim and Christian members of parliament, the result of the post 1975–90 civil war settlement. The logic of sectarian allocation is that equal pol­it­ ical representation ensures sectarian harmony and protects Lebanese diversity and secu­lar­ism. In effect, this logic posits that political sectarianism emerged as a powersharing agreement between preexisting antagonistic sectarian communities, and that the state is the neutral arena of compromise and debate between these preexisting pol­it­ ical communities. This article challenges this a priori assumption to demonstrate how the law itself produces this idea of compromise between preexisting communities. Influential academic literature on the Lebanese state has focused on the historical developments and operations of sectarianism, political sectarianism, regionalism, and to a lesser extent the production and protection of class interest.3 This body of literature also suggests that the management of sectarian difference is the primary mode of Lebanese statecraft and sovereignty4 and theorizes political violence through a focus on sectarian violence,5 Israeli–Lebanese violence, or Lebanese–Palestinian violence.6 Notable interventions by feminist scholars have outlined the ways that gendered and sexed differences have developed historically and in conjunction with sectarian differences, in addition to the ways in which sexual difference operates in conjunction with sectarian differences in the arenas of law and state practice.7 However, much of the lit­ era­ture on sectarianism in Lebanon and indeed, in the Middle East region, does not engage with the fact that sectarian citizens are made by laws that govern reproduction, sexual difference, and kinship. In other words, sectarianism is an embodied and biopol­ it­ical category. Sectarian citizens are reproduced through laws, bureaucracies, and state practices that regulate sexuality, sexual difference, and gender. This chapter builds on this body of academic literature on Lebanon and suggests that the making and management of both sectarian difference and sexual difference are the products of Lebanese statecraft and sovereignty. Sexual difference refers to both the structural conditions of sexual dimorphism and to the regulation of sexualities. Sectarian and sexual differences are not two separate spheres of production and management. Rather, my argument is that Lebanese statecraft is fundamentally practiced at the intersection of these two types of political difference. Consequently, I suggest that the two cannot easily be analytically disentangled. Put differently, sex along with sect, are articulated and operate together to form the legal infrastructure of biopolitical citizenship in Lebanon. I use “sex’ throughout the article because sex is the operative legal and bureaucratic category in state practice. Moreover, feminist and queer theorists have suggested that 3  See Hanssen (2005), Traboulsi (2007), Salibi (1990), Makdisi (2000). 4  See Hanf (1994), el-Khazen (2000), Picard (2002). 5  See Khalaf (2002), Hermez (2012), Hanf (1994). 6  See Khalidi (2013), Sayigh (2015), Peteet (2009). 7  See Deeb (2006), Deeb and Harb (2013), Joseph (1997: 73–92), Abu Rish (2017), Thompson (2000).

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446   maya mikdashi too often “gender” is used to refer to cultural/social/intersubjective processes, while “sex” continues to be used to refer to biological or chromosomal “truth”—as if scientific processes and truths are not imbricated and implicated with social, political, historical, or economic processes. The maintenance of a strict binary between sex and gender form a disciplinary feedback loop that continues to privilege both sexual dimorphism and the power of science to determine truth.8 My use of “sex,” as opposed to “gender,” follows the terminology and categories used by the Lebanese state—I am not subscribing an inner truth or an intersubjective register to that category in this article. Importantly, sex9 and sect are biopolitical categories themselves: they are defined at birth and categorized, quantified, and managed through state law and institutions at the level of the individual (citizen, non-citizen) and at the level of populations (sexes, sects, citizenry). One is not a cypher of the other. Sex is not an analytic frame to unlock or understand sect or vice versa. Instead, I argue that sect and sex are mutually constitutive modes of political difference. The “state effect” and indeed, Lebanese sovereignty itself, emerges from the management of these modes of political difference.10 When we are thinking or writing about sectarian political difference, we are always already thinking about sexual political difference. The intractability of sex and sect is manifest in law, legal practice, and the bureaucratic regulation of citizenship (and non-citizenship) in Lebanon. I call this approach to the study of the Lebanese State “sextarianism,” following Joan Scott’s intervention into the constitutive nature of sexual difference to the history of secu­lar­ism in France and in the current operations of secular power in contemporary France.11 I take from Scott attention to historical detail and the ways in which the gen­ esis of French secularism and secular and scientific power continue to be tied to and mediated through debates and practices of sexual difference. I depart from her argument in that I highlight the ways in which sexual difference is inextricable from the making (and unmaking) of citizens in a secular state that, although deeply influenced by the colonial legacies and amplifications of French secularism, was constructed by French colonial authority as a state of political minorities in order to further colonial rule. Secular colonial power, and later secular Lebanese state power, was produced and practiced through the management of sectarian groups that French authorities made inextricable from individual citizenship. Simply put, you could not, and still cannot, be a Lebanese citizen without a state-assigned sex and sect. Moreover, French mandate laws, practices, and administrative rules (with input from Ottoman Empire precedents) grounded the legal, bureaucratic, and thus political legitimacy of sectarian groups in the regulation of sexual difference. Only religious groups that could demonstrate mastery and sovereignty over its citizens’ sexual and kinship affairs— via a distinct personal status law—were recognized by the French colonial state as sectarian political groups that were represented in the state. Citizens had to be members of those sectarian political 8  Karkazis, (2008). 9  Butler (2006), Najmabadi (2013). 10  Mitchell (2006), Brown (1995). 11  Scott (2009). See also Fernando (2014) and Surkis (2006).

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   447 groups in order to enjoy a full array of political, economic, and social rights. In addition, the sovereignty of religious authorities over the sexual and kinship affairs of Lebanese citizens was shared, or “nested,” to use Audra Simpson’s term, within that of the tran­ scend­ent state. Thus “sextarianism,” while informed and indebted to Joan Scott’s work on “French sexularism,” is necessarily a colonial and postcolonial formation—one that draws attention to the relationship between modern forms of secular state power and colonial forms of indirect rule. The regulation of sexual difference is key to the op­er­ ations of both. This itinerary of “sextarianism” perhaps also influences the operations of “sexularism” in contemporary France, as Judith Surkis has suggested. In contemporary Lebanon, sextarianism is a modality of power that functions through the production, quantification, inheritance, and management of both sexual and sectarian differences. In fact, we might call the articulation of the two “sextarian difference.” It is a way of viewing the Lebanese state that does not separate or privilege sect­ ar­ian difference from sexual difference. Instead, such an approach insists that they are braided together. Sextarianism makes possible the biopolitical categories of citizenship,12 family, and sect—the very structure of power-sharing (and rivalry) in the Lebanese state. The fact that sexual difference is an integral part of political difference is not unique to Lebanon,13 nor are the ways that kinship and intimacy are regulated as part and parcel of state power.14 The “social contract” is not only an origin story for political practice and theory, but the initial signers of this social construct—posited in classic political theory as rational, individual, property owning, and disembodied actors (gendered male and deracinated)—are just as mythological. Indeed, as feminist and queer theory has taught us, citizens have bodies that matter, bodies that both operate in the political sphere and that are constructed and regulated through political processes. Sextarianism in Lebanon follows this feminist rethinking of political theory and practice. What is unique about Lebanon, or rather, what stands out, is the intensity of sextarianism at all levels of political life. Sextarian difference inspires and articulates demographic, democratic, and ideological fantasies, contradictions, and practices. Sextarianism makes possible the nationalist ideal of “taʿayush” (living together through difference) and forms the basis of political inclusion and exclusion in service of that ideal. For example, sextarianism is key to the ways that refugees and citizens are made from the same historical population movements—Kurds and Armenians in the early twentieth century—and even from the same population—nationalized Christian Palestinian citizens of Lebanon and Muslim Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. In what follows, I illustrate the operations of sextarianism in three arenas of Lebanese law and state practice: personal status, civil, and criminal law. While I focus on the legal and bureaucratic registers of sextarianism, knowledge of the broader political, economic, social, and gendered dynamics at play in Lebanon is key. It is often these broader factors that shape how laws are practiced in a courtroom, in judges’ chambers, in lawyers’ offices, and within civil and religious institutions. Furthermore, these dynamics are 12  Foucault (2003), Stevens (1999), Stoler (1995). 14  Eng (2010), Aslı Zengin (2016).

13  Pateman (1988).

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448   maya mikdashi not static. Their historical movement continues to affect the practice of the Lebanese legal system. Thus, for example, the past fifty years of feminist advocacy in Lebanon has had an effect on the ways that laws are practiced in Lebanon, as have growing rates of female employment and economic independence.

Sexual Difference in State Registries The census registries are an integral biopolitical technology of the Lebanese state: they both individualize citizens and produce the citizenry as a unitary population and as a group of populations (sectarian, regional, sexed). They make possible birth, death, marriage and divorce, sectarian, and regional statistics. Moreover, census registries naturalize the work they do by organizing regional, sectarian, and national belonging using appeals to “traditional” Lebanese family structure, all the while constructing, regulating, and quantifying kinship relations and patterns through the axes of sexual difference. The sectarian demography of the area that became the Lebanese nation-state was produced through a census undertaken in 1932 under the French Mandate. The information gathered during this census project identified and enumerated fourteen different sect­ar­ ian communities and played a role in determining the nascent national body of citizens. The birth of the census was at once the birth of citizenship and of the nation-state of Lebanon, which would be recorded and managed through the national registries also being created at the time.15 These registries were to be run by the Ministry of the Interior, and were to record meticulously citizens’ patrilineage, sex, sect, municipality/region (also inherited patrilineally), and marital (married, single, divorced) and kinship statuses (daughter, son, father, mother).16 The system of census-taking and record-keeping that was elucidated under the French Mandate, based on the legal categories of sex, sect, and kinship, is still largely in place today. The 1932 census played a major role in legitimizing the founding of the first postcolonial Lebanese republic in 1943, which official state discourse posits as having come into being in order to incorporate and manage the sectarian communities that preceded it—a preceding presence recorded by the technology of the census undertaken under French colonial mandate. The 1932 census used sectarian categories to produce demographics for the first time across the defined land area that would become the Lebanese nation-state and thus revealed (or rather, produced) the “reality” of sectarian diversity. The census also revealed that unlike other emerging states in the region, there was approximate parity between Christian and Muslim would-be citizens. In fact, as Rania Maktabi has brilliantly demonstrated, the census produced this parity and a slight Christian majority through a series of inclusions and exclusions that privileged Christian refugees (i.e. Armenians, Greeks, Syriacs) from other former territories of the 15  Stoler (1995), Hacking (1990), Hull (2012).

16  Salloukh et al. (2016).

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   449 Ottoman Empire as well as the nascent Republic of Turkey at the expense of their Muslim co-refugees (i.e. Kurds). The census also included mostly Christian émigrés from the newly defined Lebanese territories who lived in Europe or the Americas but not the mostly Muslim ones who lived in other parts of the Middle East.17 Even then, had the census been undertaken with religion rather than sect as the category being counted, the Christian majority would have disappeared. French Mandate officials and their local allies used sect as the category relevant to demography and, in sharp distinction to the preceding Ottoman regime, minoritized “Sunni” by considering it one sect among many. This actuarial decision “revealed” that Maronites were the largest sect of all, followed by Sunnis, and then by Shia. The 1932 census was pivotal in the legitimation of not only the system of political sectarianism, but also much of its legal architecture, including the state promise that every historic sectarian community revealed in Lebanon at the time of the census had a right to its own network of religious schools, family law, and courts. Thus sectarian difference and sectarian differentiation were tied and legitimated through the recognition of different personal status laws that regulate kinship relations through a focus on sexual difference.18 The system of political sectarianism devised by the French and their local allies was based on the demographic realities supposedly reflected in the 1932 census. In its first two phases of state-building (colonial and first republic), Maronite Christian elites dominated the Lebanese state. Under the mandate system, the colonial state’s professed role was to wean citizens away from sectarianism and toward unified nationalism in order to prepare the population for independence and statehood. The mandate state was colonial, pedagogical, and reformatory. It claimed to be making nation-state citizens out of former Ottoman subjects while ruling them through a system of indirect rule/pol­it­ ical sectarianism that favored their political allies, Maronite Christians elites.19 This dual nature of the Lebanese state—ruling through political sectarianism yet considering political sectarianism to be corrosive to the state’s goal, nationalism—is repeated in the Taif Accord, the peace agreement that ended the Lebanese civil war of 1975–90. The fragile peace of the Taif Accord, which proclaimed “no victor, no vanquished” in a war that killed or wounded over 350,000 Lebanese citizens, brought the logic of the reformatory state to its conclusion. The accord calls for the state to reform itself and its citizenry into a unified nation, only after which the system of political sectarianism would be removed and replaced. Only once citizens stop being sectarian can political sectarianism be ended without fear for the political future of Lebanon’s multiple minority communities. Politicians who were in charge of enacting reforms and a desectarianizing time frame were ex-militia leaders and civil war profiteers. The argument that the end of political sectarianism must only come when the citizenry is “ready” (i.e. no longer sectarian) reproduces the colonial French fantasy that the Lebanese state emerged as a “compromise” between preexisting sectarian political communities. As Martin Chanok, Mahmood Mamdani, and Nicholas Dirks have written in 17  Maktabi (1999). 18  Joseph (1997), Thompson (2000), Weiss (2010). 19  Hourani (1946), Thompson (2000).

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450   maya mikdashi the context of colonial Africa and India, the codification of group difference within state structures, in fact, transforms, hardens, and “ethnicizes” these group identities.20 Thus they become, in Wendy Brown’s words, the grounds from which one speaks and engages in politics—a politics of identity grounded in governmental institutions and narrations of a “common history.”21 Ussama Makdisi’s work is key to understanding the ways in which a culture of sectarianism is produced at particular historical junctures, and how this hegemonic culture of sectarianism is projected into the past and future of Lebanon.22 The idea that sectarianism as a social, political, and economic phenomenon precedes political sectarianism as a system of rule, effectively personalizes and individualizes the responsibility of ending political sectarianism. It also obscures the history of governmental and biopolitical technologies of rule that function through sectarian demographics, family law, and a national registry regime defined by sect and sex. In order to understand the integral nature of sexual difference to the bureaucratic and legal edifice and practice of Lebanese citizenship, I outline some of the ways it is an organizing principle of census registries and state bureaucracy. The use of sexual difference as an organizing principle for record-keeping by the state affects the ways that census, electoral, and demographic data is collected, stored, and analyzed.

Census Data Lebanese census data is recorded and reflected on a citizen’s census document (ikhrāj alqayd), one of three official documents issued by the state to citizens. The census document, the national identification card (hawiyya), and the passport are interchangeable for many bureaucratic procedures, but there are important differences between them. While passports assign an individual serial number to each citizen, census documents are organized by family, such that individuals from the same extended patriarchal family carry the same registration number.23 Moreover, to receive or renew a national identification card or a passport, a new census document must be produced and submitted with the application. The census document lists a citizen’s birthdate, sex, marital status, municipality, and personal status—a designation that is often collapsed with sect.24 The census registries are under the purview of the Lebanese Ministry of the Interior, and each municipality has a census office that records and stores the data of citizens that belong to it. There are two forms of census documents that can be requested by an individual citizen: an individual census document and a family document. Lebanese citizens are registered in their respective local census offices according to the organizational metrics of region of origin, kinship and/or marital status, personal 20  Mamdani (1996), Chanock (1998), Dirks (2011). 21  Brown (2009). 22  Makdisi (2000). 23  Moawad (2016). 24  See Mikdashi (2014: 279–293) for more on the ways that personal status and sect are both articulated and disarticulated in Lebanon.

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   451 status/sect, and sex. These four metrics determine which folder an individual’s census information is placed in, and importantly, the mechanisms for this information to change through life events such as religious conversion, marriage, birth, death, or divorce. Some regions are singular, such as Beirut, while others, such as Mount Lebanon, are divided into different towns and cities. In such regions, the towns or cities that comprise it are aggregated and stored separately. However, whether the region is singular (Beirut) or plural (Mount Lebanon) citizens are disaggregated according to sect and placed as extended patriarchal families into separate folders. It is on the basis of this shared sectarian folder that extended patriarchal family serial numbers are issued. Individuals who choose to remove their sect as a form of political protest25 are still cat­ egor­ized in the larger sectarian folder because their family registration number does not change. A note is made on family state records that this particular citizen has removed their sect, but thus far no structural change has been made to accommodate citizens without sects in the census registries. Male and female citizens are both registered according to the same organizational metrics: town, family, personal status, and sex. A citizen’s sex, however, determines the ways that this data is recorded and aggregated in state registries. For example, because serial numbers are distributed on the basis of extended patriarchal families, female citizens cannot be considered heads of families, circumscribing their ability to be con­ sidered legal and individual guardians of their children. They are either recorded into state registries as daughters of their fathers or wives of their husbands. In fact, when a female citizen gets married she is removed from her family serial number and added to that of her husband, a bureaucratic transfer that is reversed in case of divorce. Women can only be added or subtracted from these patriarchally organized databases of extended families, but they cannot, as mentioned earlier, be heads of families or nonpatriarchally incorporated individuals. One must be registered in order to receive a birth certificate from the state and to be legally legible and traceable by state bureaucracy and institutions. Due to the organizational structure of the census registries, when female citizens are married and adopt their husbands’ family serial number, they are automatically counted as “from” their husband’s region.26 This determines where she will vote in local elections. Children are automatically incorporated into their fathers’ family serial numbers, “inheriting” their father’s municipality and his sect. If the father changes his religion or sect or legally changes his municipality, his minor children’s sectarian and/or regional status are automatically changed also. In the case of religious or sectarian conversion by the father, such actions effectively place legal barriers between mothers and their minor children (unless she was initially from a different sect), who then fall under the jurisdiction of different personal status courts. A mother’s conversion has no legal effect on her children, minority or otherwise.27

25  Mikdashi (2014).

26  Moawad (2016).

27  Mikdashi (2014) dissertation.

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452   maya mikdashi Female citizens are registered and quantified in relation to male citizens, as wives and/or daughters, while male citizens form the nodal points around which legal, bureaucratic, and kinship relations extend and contract. Citizenship law is intimately affected and tied to the sexual regime of the census registries. Because women cannot be heads of families, they cannot “add” non-Lebanese husbands to their family serial numbers. Lebanese women who are married to non-Lebanese men are listed as “married” on their natal family “family census document,” but they cannot initiate a new family census document for the family they create with their foreign husband. In contrast, non-Lebanese women who marry Lebanese male citizens are automatically incorporated into their husbands’ family serial number through which they may file for and receive citizenship. While Lebanese women cannot transfer citizenship to their spouses or their children, there exists a legal loophole to the regulations that determines the transfer of citizenship according to sexual difference. In the case of a Lebanese citizen giving birth in Lebanon to a child of an unknown father, the child in question can be incorporated into their maternal grandfather’s family serial number and thus be eligible for citizenship. This loophole only exists for children whose paternity is unclaimed and are thus considered illegitimate by the state.28

Children of Men: Lebanese Citizenship Law Examined The majority of Lebanese citizens cannot grant citizenship to their spouses or children. This majority of citizens is diverse in terms of sect, income bracket, race, sexual orientation, religious belonging, and political affiliations. Despite this diversity, they have one thing in common; their classification by the Lebanese state as “female.”29 Thus, while a Lebanese woman could both theoretically and legally become the prime minister of Lebanon, under the current legal system she would have to be married to a Lebanese man in order to produce children who are Lebanese citizens. Even a woman who occupies the most privileged political, social, and economic positions cannot practice a right that every Lebanese male citizen takes for granted. There are, however, notable exceptions to this rule. For example, Saudi prince al-Walīd bin Talāl has Lebanese citizenship through his mother, Mona el-Solḥ, who is the daughter of one of Lebanon’s founders and its first prime minister, Riad el-Solḥ. Riad el-Solḥ had the “misfortune” of having only daughters, but they were nevertheless granted the right to pass on Lebanese citizenship to their children. Yet even in this example, the exception granted to Riad el-Solḥ’s daughters stems from his role as “patriarch” of the Lebanese nation.30 This contradiction was recently emphasized by Lebanese lawyer and civil rights activist Nadine Moussa, who announced her candidacy for the Lebanese presidency in 2016, making her the 28  Mansour and Abou Aad (2012).

29  Joseph (2000).

30  Mikdashi (2014).

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   453 first-ever female candidate for the post.31 Moussa is married to a non-Lebanese man and thus her children are not Lebanese citizens, despite having lived their entire lives in Lebanon.32 Women’s rights activists have argued that the Lebanese Constitution’s guarantee of equality between the sexes is contradicted by Lebanese nationality law, which limits the power to extend citizenship to children and spouses to Lebanese male citizens. The foreign spouses of Lebanese male citizens are eligible for naturalization after one year of marriage. In a legal loophole passed under the French Mandate, naturalized foreign women can grant Lebanese citizenship to their minor children if they outlive their Lebanese spouse. This loophole has led activists to argue that even foreign naturalized women have more rights than women who are Lebanese by birth. Article 1 of Civil Law No. 15 pertaining to nationality grants Lebanese citizenship to individuals: (a) if born to a Lebanese father; (b) if born in the Greater Lebanon territory and able to prove that they are not nat­ ur­al­ized as a foreign subject; (c) if born in the Greater Lebanon to unknown or stateless parents.33 The denial of full citizenship rights to women has legal, economic, and social effects. The children of Lebanese women and non-Lebanese men must have a visa to enter or reside in Lebanon, must pay more to access public education, and must have a work permit in order to work legally in Lebanon. The need for this paperwork and its regular filing, storing, and processing is an economic and psychological burden. Additionally, there are laws that limit how much property non-Lebanese residents can own in Lebanon, and how that property can be inherited.34 These economic and legal differences are not neutral, they are coercive: Lebanese law actively discourages Lebanese female citizens from marrying foreigners. The specter of sectarian balance saturates current debates and efforts to amend Lebanese citizenship law. In particular, the fear that allowing Lebanese women to grant citizenship is a back door to the naturalization of Palestinian refugees (and more recently, Syrian refugees) is often cited in public discourse around the need to change nationality law.35 The anxiety around potential refugee naturalization is predicated on demographic fears and realities within a system of sectarian power-sharing, compounded by xenophobia and classism directed as Palestinian and Syrian refugees. Sextarianism, as a biopolitical modality of power, shapes and genders the ways that birth, marriage, and emigration patterns produce demographic anxieties in Lebanon. 31  Michel Aoun was eventually elected president by parliament in 2016, whose electoral mandate expired more than two years prior. This constituted a violation of the electoral process as laid out by the Tāʾif Accords. Furthermore, this election of the president came two years after the last president’s term ended in 2014. 32  Pollard (2016). 33  Law No.15, promulgated on 19/11/1925, as amended by law dated 11/1/1960. 34  Mansour and Abou Aad (2012). 35  Salloukh et al. (2016).

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454   maya mikdashi The debate over granting Lebanese female citizens rights equal to their male counterparts is refracted through the question of sectarian parity and the declining share of Christians in the demography of Lebanon because the majority of Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Lebanon are Sunni Muslims. Indeed, when Lebanese citizenship law was amended in 2015 it was to ensure that foreigners of Lebanese origin could apply for and receive Lebanese citizenship, an amendment largely seen as an attempt to further buttress the number of Christian citizens, as Christians form a majority of the Lebanese diaspora.36 The Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Gibrān Bassīl, also refused to amend the nationality law to grant equal rights to female citizens, citing sectarian demographic anxieties. He instead pushed through an amended nationality law that preserved and extended the sex exception, or bargain, embedded into current nationality law and made it applicable to the Lebanese diaspora, here citing favorable sectarian concerns. The same concern over demographic balance is never issued over the fact that Lebanese men have been marrying non-Lebanese Muslims (and Christians) and granting them and their children citizenship for generations. The challenges of extending the right to pass citizenship status to the children and spouses of Lebanese women are also grounded in the structural conditions of sexual difference and of the masculinist state. But due to the structural and ideological functions of sextarianism, children are registered and incorporated into the state through their fathers’ extended patriarchal family alone. They inherit their father’s municipality, their sect, and their legal status—they truly are children of men. Giving female citizens the ability to pass on citizenship would be a step toward assuring female citizens have pol­it­ ical, economic, and civic rights equal to those of their male co-citizens, at least on paper. However, extending full citizenship rights to women would require a total overhaul of the role that sexual and sectarian differences play in state registries, and crucially, the ways that sectarian difference is defined, given legal meaning and felicity, and how it is regulated, produced, and changed. The discursive and structural functions of sextarianism, as seen through Lebanese citizenship law, demonstrate how female citizens are conditionally incorporated into the state. They inherit citizenship from their father but cannot transfer this inheritance on to their children. They may represent the nation, but they do not reproduce it— instead they reproduce the sexual and sectarian exception and bargain upon which Lebanese nationality is predicated.37 Moreover, the debate over “giving” Lebanese women full citizenship rights revolves around sextarianism—it is the marriage and procreative acts and choices that women make that are said to be dangerous to the sectarian balance in Lebanon. This “sex bargain,”38 alongside the “sect bargain,” produces and stabilizes Lebanese citizenship and nationalism. Lebanese statecraft and practices of sovereignty emerge from the management of conflict emanating from the sect and sex bargain within Lebanese law. Recent work has highlighted ways that debates over women’s rights in 36  Kechichian (2015).

37  Pateman (1988), Bell and Binnie (2000).

38  Pateman (1988).

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   455 Lebanon “call into question the pillars of the political order, namely, the gendered pacts that served to entrench sectarianism.”39 While gendered pacts do entrench sectarianism and sectarian practices in Lebanon, I suggest, with Suad Joseph, that the relationship cuts both ways: sectarian pacts also entrench gendered pacts and heteropatriarchal sexual ideologies and practices in Lebanon.40 Structurally, sexual difference is as foundational to Lebanese law as sectarian difference, and the management of sexual difference is as productive of Lebanese sovereignty as that of sectarian difference. To illustrate the foundational nature of sexual difference to all major areas of Lebanese law, see Table 22.1, which emphasizes some of the ways that sexual difference is produced, upheld, and regu­lated in major areas of criminal, civil, and personal status law.41 As Table 22.1 illustrates, there is no area of law in Lebanon (save constitutional law) that does not distinguish between men and women. Criminal codes distinguish between the rape of a stranger and the rape of a wife. They also afford leniency to crimes against women under the rubric of “honor” or “passion.” Civil laws and institutions register female citizens as legal dependents of their fathers or husbands. Nationality laws and procedures ensure that women cannot pass citizenship to spouses and children. All fifteen personal status laws distinguish between the rights and duties of male and female identified persons. It is difficult, if not impossible, to study political difference in Lebanon without enumerating the various ways that sectarian difference is to a large part articulated through sexual difference. Indeed, the condition of possibility for staterecognized sectarian difference (LR 60) is the presence of a law and a bureaucracy that regulates sexual difference and sexual/kinship relations, in this case personal status law.

Personal Status and Sexual Difference The Lebanese legal system is a hybrid of common law and jurisprudential law practices. It is based on and inspired by the French legal system and as such follows a civil law system composed of legal codes. The most extensive was promulgated in 1932 during the French Mandate. The Lebanese “Code of Obligations and Contracts” is the equivalent of the French Civil Code except for matters related to personal status, which are governed by a separate set of laws designed for the different sectarian communities. While personal status laws were supposed to be voted on and passed by parliament, they were

39  Salloukh et al. (2016: 55). 40  Joseph (1997). 41  Data as of 2015, compiled by Maya Mikdashi from al-qawanīn wa al-qarārāt li al-aḥwāl al-shakhsiyya li al-tawāʾif al-masīḥiyya fī Lubnān, al-Qawanīn wa nusūs al-aḥwāl al-shakhsiyya wa tanẓīm al-tawāʾif al-ʿislāmiyya fī Lubnān; Qanūn usūl al-muḥākamāt al-madaniyya, al-sādir bimūjab al-marsūm al-ishtirāʿī raqm 90/83 tārīkh 16/9/1983 wataʾdīlātihi; Qanūn al-ʿuqūbāt, al-sādir bimūjab al-marsūm al-ishtiraʿī raqm 340, tārīkh 1/3/1943 wataʿdīlātihi; Qanūn ʾusūl al-muḥākamāt al-jazāʾiyya, al-sādir bimūjab al-qanūn raqm 328, tārīkh 7/8/2001 wataʿdīlātihi; Qanūn al-qadāʾ al-ʿadlī waltanẓīm al-qadaʾī, al-sādir bimūjab al-marsūm al-ishtiraʿī raqm 150, tārīkh 16/9/1983 wataʿdīlātihi.

Men

Women

Citizenship

Men can pass on Lebanese citizenship to their spouses and children. Women cannot pass on Lebanese citizenship to their spouses or children. There are two exceptions to this rule: if a woman is a naturalized Lebanese citizen she can pass on Lebanese citizenship to her next husband and non-Lebanese children, and if a Lebanese woman is unmarried and no one claims paternity over her illegitimate child within the first year.

Census

Men are the heads of families; their wives are added to their family census registries. In the event of a divorce, daughters are “returned” to their father’s registry.

Women are either registered under their father’s family census record or their husband’s.

Criminal Law2 Family Violence The Lebanese parliament passed a domestic violence law in 2014 Law, passed 2014 which was an amended version of a bill that activists had submitted in 2010. The law explicitly criminalizes violence within the family unit, and defines violence as both physical and psychological. The law also outlines acts and procedures to be undertaken by the judiciary and the police in regards to family violence and allows wives to file restraining orders against their spouses. This applies strictly within the family rather than a domicile, and exempts marital rape from being considered family violence unless there is physical proof of harm. The Family Violence Law also nullifies preceding laws and articles that may contradict it, except in the cases of personal status laws or laws for the protection of juveniles and for juvenile offenders.

Feminist activists have critiqued the Family Violence Law for not explicitly addressing violence against women, for not making marital rape illegal, and for abrogating aspects of different personal status laws that may be considered family violence or violence against women. Furthermore, because the Family Violence Law is enforced strictly within the legal-family unit rather than the domicile, it does not apply to violence—physical or psychological—committed against foreign or Lebanese domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are women.

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Civil Law1

456   maya mikdashi

Table 22.1  Sexual Difference in Lebanese Law

Article 252 provides lesser punishment for a crime if it was committed “in a state of anger” because of a dangerous action by the victim. While this article is extremely broad, it has been used to provide lesser sentences to those who commit “honor crimes.” Article 562, often cited as the “honor crime” clause, states that “he who catches his wife, ascendants, descendants, or sister in an act of adultery or an illegitimate sexual act” will be given a lesser punishment for the injury or murder of one or both of the people involved. Article 562 is clearly written in the male gender, positioning men as potential perpetrators and beneficiaries of legal statutes concerning “honor crimes.”

Under Article 562, women are positioned as the potential victims; they cannot kill for honor, but they can be killed for honor. A woman who kills her husband after catching him with another woman (or man) is punished for murder under the full extent of the law, and is not given a lesser sentence due to the nature of the crime. However, under Article 252 a woman could benefit from a lesser sentence for committing a crime in a state of extreme anger because of the actions of the victim. There have been no cases thus far where a woman committed an honor crime and benefited from a lesser sentence under Article 252.

Honor Crimes Articles 252, *562 *Article 562 annulled in 2011

Abortion Abortion is illegal in Lebanon. Articles 539 and 540 cover the Articles 539–545 advertisement and sale of medicines or technologies of abortion. Those who perform abortions (men or women) with the consent of the woman can be imprisoned for 1–3 years. If the abortion leads to the woman’s death the sentence is 4–10 years. Performing an abortion against a woman’s will could result in 5 years of hard labor, extended to 10 years if the abortion leads to the woman’s death. Men who perform abortions out of concern for a female descendant or ascendant’s honor receive a lesser sentence.

In addition to being included in all the statutes mentioned in the previous column, women who consent to undergo abortions can be imprisoned for up to three years. Statute 545 lessens the potential prison sentence if the woman underwent an abortion in order to “protect her honor,” effectively making abortion in certain circumstances an “honor crime.”

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Women are constituted as the potential victims in the legal statutes governing rape, with the exception of the articles covering consensual sex with minors. Wives are excluded from legal protection from marital rape. If a rapist marries his victim he evades criminal charges. If either of them divorces the other within three years criminal charges can be resumed.

Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   457

Rape Men are posited as the potential perpetrators of rape. Marital rape is Articles 503–506, excluded from punishment. If a man rapes someone other than his wife, 522 he can be sentenced to five years of hard labor if the woman is older than 15, and up to seven years if she is below the age of 15. There are harsher punishments for the rape of minors and the mentally and physically challenged. These statutes also cover consensual sex with minors. Article 522 allows the perpetrator to marry the victim of any of the previously mentioned crimes and escape punishment. If the couple divorces within three years the man can be charged with the initial crime.

Men

Women Women who have committed adultery can be imprisoned for three months to two years for having consensual sex with someone other than their husband. Her partner in crime receives the same punishment if he is married, and a lesser sentence of one month to a year if he is unmarried.

Misc. If a man kidnaps a woman with the intention of marrying her, he can Articles 514, 515, be imprisoned for up to three years. If a man kidnaps a woman or 516, 518, 519 man with the intention of violating him or her is sentenced to hard labor, and if he does violate him or her the sentence is at least seven years. The same sentence applies if the kidnapped victim is less than 15 years old, even if a violation has not occurred. Men who trick a girl with promises of marriage and break a virgin’s hymen can be imprisoned up to six months and pay a fine of 200,000 Lebanese liras. Under Article 519, anyone who physically molests a male or female minor under 15 years old will be imprisoned for a sentence of at least six months. While the same statute applies to female victims aged 15–18, it does not apply to male victims aged 15–18.

Women can be punished for kidnapping through deception or violence with the intent to violate the victim. They can be sentenced under Articles 515 and 516, and the penalties are the same as for a man. Under Article 519, anyone who physically molests a male or female minor under 15 years old will be imprisoned for a sentence of at least six months. The same sentence apples to females between the ages of 15–18 who were touched inappropriately against their will.

Public Order Article 534

Article 534, which makes illegal “sexual acts contrary to nature,” is punishable for up to one year of imprisonment.

Article 534, which makes illegal “sexual acts contrary to nature,” is punishable for up to one year of imprisonment.

Personal Status Law Catholic Sects3 Marriage

Minimum marriage age with guardian’s permission: 16. Minimum marriage age without guardian’s permission: 17.

Minimum marriage age with guardian’s permission: 14. Minimum marriage age without guardian’s permission: 15.

Annulment Article 818.

Article 818 clarifies the stipulations for an annulment of a marriage contract. These are inability to contract a marriage due to mental impairment, inability to perform one or more of the major marital duties toward a spouse, an inability to cope with the essential marital responsibilities due to a mental or physical impairment.

Article 818 clarifies the stipulations for an annulment of a marriage contract. These are inability to contract a marriage due to mental impairment, inability to perform one or more of the major marital duties (continued) toward a spouse, an inability to cope with the essential marital responsibilities due to a mental or physical impairment.

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Adultery If a man has sex with someone other than his wife in the marital Articles 487, 488 home, he may be imprisoned for one month to one year.

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Table 22.1  Continued

Divorce is not recognized in Catholic sects, although in some cases legal separation can be granted.

Divorce is not recognized in Catholic sects, although in some cases legal separation can be granted.

Custody Article 865

Men are the legal guardians of their children. Article 865 states that the child’s well-being should not be affected by the parents’ separation.

Women are recognized as the caregivers of their children.

Roman Orthodox4 A man must be 17 years old in order to marry. If he is younger than Marriage 17 but has achieved mental and physical maturity, he needs the consent of a guardian in order to marry.

A woman must be 15 years old in order to marry. If she is younger than 15 but has achieved mental and physical maturity, she needs the consent of a guardian in order to marry.

Annulment

Marriages can end in the death of a spouse, by annulment, or divorce. All of these only go into effect when a decision is issued by the Roman Orthodox personal status court.

Marriages can end in the death of a spouse, by annulment, or divorce. All of these only go into effect when a decision is issued by the Roman Orthodox personal status court.

Divorce Both men and women can file for divorce in the personal status court, Articles 68, 69, 71 but they are differentiated in terms of the conditions they must satisfy in order to qualify for a divorce. Adultery is grounds for divorce for men and women, but what constitutes sufficient evidence of adultery is different for men and women. According to Article 69, a man can demand a divorce on the grounds of adultery if on the wedding day he discovers that she is not a virgin and he did not have prior knowledge of this fact; if he asks her not to patronize a place that has a bad reputation, or not to spend time with people who are known to be immoral and she does so against his wishes; if she leaves the marital home without his permission; if the court orders her to follow her husband to the place of his residency and she refuses; if it is proven that she is sexually perverted. As soon as a divorce is granted a man can remarry.

Article 71 outlines the conditions under which a woman can file for divorce in the Roman Orthodox personal status court. They are if her husband facilitated her act of adultery and insisted on it without her consent; if he falsely accuses her of adultery; if it is proven that he is sexually perverted; if she repeatedly asks him not to patronize places with bad reputations or spend time with people who are known to be of bad reputations. After an Orthodox woman is divorced, she must remain unmarried for up to four months unless medical proof is submitted that she is not pregnant.

Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   459

Inheritance Law Men and women inherit equally under a civil law that is applied to all Men and women inherit equally under a civil law that is applied to all for non-Muslims Christians and Jews in Lebanon and is regulated by civil courts. Christians and Jews in Lebanon and is regulated by civil courts. According to this law a parent can legally disinherit a child. According to this law a parent can legally disinherit a child.

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Divorce

Men

Women

Men are by default the legal guardians of their children. Fathers are obligated to raise and educate their children. This state of affairs can be challenged in particular circumstances, such as the end of a marriage or the presence of legal reasons why the children should not reside with the father and a consideration of the children’s best interests. Men lose custody over their children under these circumstances upon a ruling by the Roman Orthodox personal status court.

Inheritance

Men and women inherit equally under a civil law that is applied to all Men and women inherit equally under a civil law that is applied to all Christians and Jews in Lebanon and is regulated by civil courts. Christians and Jews in Lebanon and is regulated by civil courts. According to this law a parent can legally disinherit a child. According to this law a parent can legally disinherit a child.

Sunni (H∙anafıˉ)5 Marriage

Men must be 18 years old to marry. If they are younger than 18 but have reached maturity the Sunni personal status court can grant them permission to marry. No one can arrange a marriage for a male minor who is younger than 17. A male may marry a Jewish or Christian woman. The right to initiate divorce lies with the man by default. A man can marry up to four women at a time.

Annulment

Annulments are only granted if the marriage was not consummated Annulments are only granted if the marriage was not consummated (continued) after the signing of the marriage contract. after the signing of the marriage contract.

Women must be 17 years old in order to marry. If she is younger than 17 and has reached maturity the court can make an exception and allow her to marry. No one can arrange a marriage for a female minor who is younger than 9 years old. A woman must have her guardian’s permission to marry. However, if she is 17 or older the guardian must present probable cause for his objection to the court. His objection to the marriage may be overturned by the court. If the woman is a non-virgin she does not need her guardian’s permission. A woman may not marry a non-Muslim man. A woman may stipulate conditions, including the right to initiate divorce, the right to half of the spouse’s property, and the right to initiate divorce if her spouse takes a second wife.

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Women can gain custody of their children upon the order of the Roman Orthodox personal status court. Under such circumstances, women retain custody of their male children until they are 14 years of age, and custody of their female children until they are 15 years of age.

Custody

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Table 22.1  Continued

Women can ask for divorce under particular circumstances but must forgo her alimony and belated dowry in order to do so. If the woman has stipulated in the marriage contract that she has the right to initiate a divorce then she may do so without losing any of her rights. The court decides all financial results of a marriage and divorce.

Custody

By default, the father is the legal guardian of his minor children. He is responsible for them financially and must continue to pay for their upkeep even when they are under the custody of their mother. By default, the man has custody of his children who are over the age of twelve. Under particular circumstances and in the best interest of the children, civil courts can intervene and amend custody rulings by personal status courts.

By default, the divorced wife retains custody of her male children until they are twelve years old. The mother may have custody if she is a non-Muslim or if she remarries and has a daughter who is not legally prohibited through kinship to her new husband. Under particular circumstances that have to do with the best interests of the child, the court can intervene and amend custody rules. Recently the court for juvenile affairs has been more active in intervening in personal status custody cases under the logic that it must protect “the best interests of the child.”

Inheritance

A male child inherits a full share from each of his parents’ estate. A male agnate may also inherit from his uncle and/or aunt if they do not have male children. A non-Muslim is not allowed to inherit from a Muslim. A Muslim man may write a will for up to 1/3 of his estate, provided that the benefactor of his will is not a legal heir.

A female child inherits half of a share from each of her parents’ estate. If there is no son in the family and only one daughter, she inherits half the estate and the male agnates inherit the other half. If there is more than one daughter, they inherit 2/3 of the estate and the male agnates inherit the remaining third. A non-Muslim is not allowed to inherit from a Muslim. A Muslim woman may write a will for up to 1/3 of her estate, provided that the benefactor of this will is not a legal heir.

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Men have the right to initiate divorce. Divorces are enacted through the verbal utterance of repudiation. It is then recorded in the personal status courts. A divorce is irrevocable if the intent to divorce is uttered three times simultaneously. After a woman is divorced she must retreat to her family’s house for three menstrual cycles, during which time the husband can change his mind and return her to his home with or without her consent. A man and woman can divorce and remarry up to three times. A man who divorces his wife must pay her belated dowry and alimony, unless the husband initiated the divorce due to a fault in the woman. The court decides all financial results of a marriage and divorce.

Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   461

Divorce

Men

Women

There are two types of marriages. Temporary marriages, which are contracted for a specified amount of time, and regular marriages. There is no specified age for marriage, only that a man must have reached “maturity.” A man can have up to four wives during the same period of time.

Annulment

A man can obtain an annulment under the following circumstances: A woman can initiate divorce (annulment) only under the following if his wife is found to be insane; if she has leprosy; if she is blind; if circumstances; if her husband is found to be insane. she is physically lame; if there is urine or stool within menstrual blood, and if she cannot conceive.

Divorce

There must be a witness to the divorce in the Jaʿfarıˉ personal status court.

There must be a witness to the divorce in the Jaʿfarıˉ personal status court.

Custody

In the event of a divorce, men retain custody of their male children after the age of two and that of their female children after the age of seven.

In the event of a divorce, women retain custody of their male children until they are two years old and that of their female children until they are seven. A woman may lose custody of her children if she is a non-Muslim or if she remarries.

Inheritance

A male child inherits a full share from each of his parents’ estate. A non-Muslim is not allowed to inherit from a Muslim. A Muslim man may write a will for up to 1/3 of his estate, provided that the benefactor of his will is not a legal heir.

A female child inherits half of a share from each of her parents’ estate. If there is no son in the family and only one or more daughters, they inherit the entire estate. A non-Muslim is not allowed to inherit from a Muslim. A Muslim woman may write a will for up to 1/3 of her estate, provided that the benefactor of this will is not a legal heir. (continued)

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There is no specified age for marriage, only that a girl must have reached “maturity.” She needs the authorization of a guardian (usually the father or the grandfather) to marry except under the following conditions: if she is no longer a virgin as a result of a former marriage; if it is impossible to reach the guardian as a result of his absence; if the guardian objects and his objection is judged to be misplaced by the court.

Shia (Jaʿfari)6 Marriage

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Table 22.1  Continued

Women can get married at the age of 17. If a woman is between the ages of 15 and 17 the judge at the personal status court can grant her permission to marry, as long as she has medical proof. Women do not need consent of a male guardian to marry, but the judge does notify the guardian of the impending marriage contract. If the guardian does not object with legally convincing reasons within 15 days, the marriage is conducted. If the woman is over 21, a male guardian does not need to be notified.

Annulment Divorce

Men have to request a divorce from the judge. He decides if the couple can divorce. If they do, then they can no longer be in each other’s lives.

Women have to request a divorce from the judge. He decides if the couple can divorce. If they do, then they can no longer be in each other’s lives.

Custody

By default, after a divorce the man retains custody over his male children after they reach twelve years of age and over his female children after they reach fourteen years of age. The judge can rule otherwise in the best interest of the child.

By default, after a divorce the woman retains custody over her male children until they are twelve years of age and over her female children until they are fourteen years of age. The judge can rule otherwise in the best interest of the child.

Inheritance

Druze are the only Muslim sect in Lebanon that allows the writing of Druze are the only Muslim sect in Lebanon that allows the writing of a a will for all of one’s estate. If no will is written, Sunni (H∙anafıˉ) will for all of one’s estate. If no will is written, Sunni (H∙anafıˉ) inheritance laws are applied. inheritance laws are applied.

Notes: 1 Qanuˉn usuˉl al-muḥaˉkamaˉt al-madaniyya, al-saˉder bimuˉjab al-marsuˉm al-ishtiraˉʿıˉ raqm 90/83 taˉrıˉkh 16/9/1983 wata’dıˉlaˉtihi. 2 Qanuˉn al-ʿuquˉbaˉt, al-saˉder bimuˉjab al-marsuˉm al-ishtiraʿıˉ raqm 340, taˉrıˉkh 1/3/1943 wataʿdīlaˉtihi. 3 Al-qawanıˉn wa al-qaraˉraˉt li al-aḥwaˉl al-shakhsiyya li al-tawaˉʾif al-masıˉḥiyya fıˉ Lubnaˉn. 4 Al-qawanıˉn wa al-qaraˉraˉt li al-aḥwaˉl al-shakhsiyya li al-tawaˉʾif al-masıˉḥiyya fıˉ Lubnaˉn. 5 Al-qawanıˉn wa nusuˉs al-aḥwaˉl al-shakhsiyya wa tanzıˉm al-tawaˉʾif al-ʿislaˉmiyya fıˉ Lubnaˉn. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid.

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The Druze personal status is the only Muslim personal status in Lebanon that does not allow men to marry more than one woman. The marriage age for men is 18. If the man is between the ages of 16 or 18 he can receive permission to marry from the judge in the personal status court.

Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   463

Druze7 Marriage

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464   maya mikdashi given legal force without a parliamentary vote.42 Importantly, all matters of personal status are organized under civil legal precepts. For example, although the Sunni personal status law is based on the Ottoman family law of 1917, the law that organizes the Sunni personal status courts and conduct within them was passed in 1963 under the imprimatur of the Lebanese state. Despite having a civil code system, Lebanese judges often follow established precedents, which are constituted through authoritative readings of the code and landmark rulings by the Court of Cassation. Each of the fifteen current personal status laws distinguishes between the rights and duties of male and female persons. Civil, criminal, and nationality laws which apply to all citizens also differentiate systematically between these categories. As such, there are almost thirty articulations of structural sex-based differentiated Lebanese citizenship in operation. For example, a Sunni Muslim woman and a Maronite Christian woman equally cannot transfer their Lebanese citizenship to their foreign husbands or to their children. However, the Sunni Muslim woman will inherit one half of a share of her father or mother’s estate according to Islamic inheritance laws, whereas the Maronite woman will inherit a full share under a civil law that adjudicates inheritance for non-Muslims. Similarly, while both Maronite and Greek Orthodox men can legally rape their wives, Maronite men cannot divorce them. The modern Lebanese state regulates the intersection between rights, sex, and kinship through the simultaneous application of civil and personal status law and through civil institutions that both regulate and provide oversight over the legal system as a whole. The interstitial nature of personal status and civil laws makes possible one of the main functions of the nation-state: to produce a body of people who, although differentiated by sex and sect, are unified under the overarching category of Lebanese citizenship.43 While there are fifteen different sets of personal status laws in Lebanon, there are important differences between the ways that Christian personal status courts and Muslim personal status courts are incorporated into the state. Christian courts, owing in large part to Ottoman policies, are institutionally separate and enjoy a greater measure of independence from the state. As such they also receive less funding from the state.44 The state, for example, has no say in who is elected the Maronite Patriarch of Lebanon (although individual politicians may), nor does it have a say in the staffing or wages of personal status court judges, scribes, and bureaucrats. The lack of state oversight can leave Lebanese Christians in a more vulnerable position than their Muslim counterparts. For example, Muslim citizens who are getting a divorce have the right to demand that a representative from the attorney general’s office attend all legal proceedings in order to insure that the rights of both plaintiffs are respected, while Christian citizens do not have this right. Similarly, the fees associated with legal proceedings at Muslim personal status courts are standardized across the country and according to civil precepts, while at the time of my research (2009–12), the cost of initiating a divorce in Greek Orthodox personal status courts ranged in multiples between Beirut and other, wealth42  Salloukh et al. (2016).

43  Stevens (1999), Joseph (1997).

44  Salloukh et al. (2016).

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   465 ier areas such as Brummana. Citizens are only allowed to appeal to courts of first instance where they are registered as having “originated from” according to census records. Perhaps most importantly, all Lebanese citizens are allowed to enter Muslim personal status courts because they are considered an aspect of the Lebanese legal system and thus cannot discriminate against citizens based on sectarian affiliation. This is not the case for Christian courts, which have the right to demand that those entering the court or practicing within it are Christians, and often Christians of the same sect. Many argue that the solution to the problem of sexual difference in personal status law is the adoption of an optional, secular personal status law.45 While the adoption of such a law would indeed be a great benefit to the many Lebanese heterosexual couples who could choose to be under its jurisdiction, the law itself would be promulgated under the precepts of French Mandate era LR 60.46 Moreover, any optional civil marriage law should be judged on how it defines, adjudicates, and manages kinship relations. Such a civil law, for example, may still legislate different marriage ages for men and women, or define marriage as between a man and a woman. Finally, the adoption of an optional law will not affect the structural nature of sexual difference to personal status, civil, or crim­ inal law or to the organizing and bureaucratic logics of the Lebanese state. While an optional civil marriage law, depending on its content and the way it defines and legislates kinship relations, is a necessary measure to meet the needs and rights of current Lebanese citizens, moving the state’s exercise of power away from sextarianism necessitates reconfiguring the entire legal and bureaucratic system and the ways it co-produces sexual and sectarian difference. The constitutive nature of sexual difference to Lebanese citizenship and the Lebanese legal system is evident in cases involving religious and/or sectarian conversion. In fact, legal sexual difference often engenders the choice to convert for both male and female citizens. When both members of a married couple convert to the same sect, the new sect’s personal status replaces the previous as having the force of law. For example, a Maronite couple may convert to Greek Orthodoxy together in order to apply for a divorce. However, if the man alone converts to Islam he may marry a new wife under Ḥanafī or Jaʿfarī personal status law, while his first wife remains married to him under Maronite law.47 Similarly, a Sunni man who has daughters but no sons can convert to Shia Islam in order to assure that his children inherit the majority of his estate. If the aforementioned father has sons and daughters, inheritance laws that grant his sons twice as much as his daughters hold sway, regardless of whether he is under the jurisdiction of Shia or Sunni personal status law. These religious conversions, therefore, are 45  See Human Rights Watch (2015). 46  The last time such a law was debated in the Lebanese government the controversies surrounding it were deeply gendered: the main complaints of religious authorities were that it would interrupt religious custody rules (which are deeply discriminatory against women), would allow Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men (a right men enjoy under Sunni and Shia personal status law), would not allow polygamy for Muslim men, and would violate Islamic inheritance laws that are currently determined according to sexual difference. 47  There have been many such cases decided by the Court of Cassation.

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466   maya mikdashi effectively also conversions between structurally produced modes of female and male sexed citizenship. In fact, many of these conversions are done with the express purpose of changing one’s gendered rights or duties: these are conversions that are done in order to make use of the different rights and duties afforded to men and women within particular personal status laws. The Lebanese Court of Cassation rarely overturns conversions, even those that seem obviously done in order to remarry, divorce, or bequeath, despite the fact that conversion with the intent to manipulate law is illegal.48 In fact, when female plaintiffs sue their spouses and ex-spouses for sexual discrimination due to their conversion and subsequent use of a different set of gendered rights, the Lebanese state most often protects those conversions on the grounds of freedom of religion and the nested independence of personal status courts. Thus claims of sexual discrimination in the application of personal status law are rerouted by high court jurists toward the state’s role to protect religious freedom, religious community, and diversity—discursive and legal acts that produce the state’s sovereignty and secularism in ways similar to Saba Mahmood’s work on the contemporary Egyptian state. The protection of Lebanon’s sect­ar­ian diversity, and thus its practice of secularism, is articulated through the main­ ten­ance of multiple forms of male and female sexual difference.49

Criminal Law Conflicts over the “sex bargain” within Lebanese citizenship are fought, and managed, across all areas of Lebanese law: constitutional and nationality law, personal status law, civil law, labor law, and criminal law. This struggle has been against the state and its allies, and in a contradiction familiar to feminist organizing the world over, the battle terrains have been the institutions of the state itself.50 In recent years, feminist activists and their allies have fought a struggle over violence against women and family violence, resulting in the passage of a domestic violence law in 2014. Domestic laborers, a highly racialized and precarious category of labor that has become almost synonymous with women and girls from across South and South-East Asia and more recently Ethiopia, employed under conditions that resemble indentured servitude, are excluded from the protections of the family violence law. Their exclusion from the protections of the family violence law is in contradiction to growing centrality within Lebanese families and domestic space, yet it also reflects the insistence that the “family” is a reproductive cat­ egory tasked with the making of legitimate Lebanese citizens of different sects, and does not reflect the totality of sexual, intimate, and reproductive labor or abuse that occurs within Lebanese families. This exclusion is despite the fact that the law is enforceable for non-citizen residents, including Syrian and Palestinian refugee populations.

48  Mikdashi (2014) dissertation. 49  Mikdashi (2014), Joseph (1990), Mahmood (2015). 50  Brown (2009), Pateman (1988), Zalzal (1997).

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   467 Criminal law in Lebanon differentiates between male and female citizens in im­port­ ant cases requiring different sentencing precepts or regimes of evidence for men and women who are accused of committing the same crime. For example, adultery committed by a wife carries higher consequences and a lesser burden of proof than adultery committed by a husband. While Article 562 of the criminal code, understood as providing a legal framework for lesser sentences in crimes committed out of concern for honor, was targeted by feminist activists and successfully repealed in 2011, Article 252, which provides lesser punishment for a crime if it was committed “in a state of anger” because of a dangerous act done by the victim, remains on the books and in practice. While this article is open to broad interpretation, it has been used to provide lesser sentences to those who commit “crimes of passion,” a crime that in practice is deeply gendered.51 Additionally, abortion is illegal in all cases except to save a mother’s life, but a lesser sentence is possible if the abortion was undertaken out of concern for family status or honor. The laws that criminalize rape specifically make an exception for husbands, in addition to offering lesser prison time if rapists subsequently marry their victims. “Unnatural” sexual acts, largely interpreted by Lebanese jurists to indicate male and female homosexual sex, are illegal, and a woman who cohabitates with a man can be investigated and/or charged with prostitution unless they are married. Heterosexual marriage is the only non-criminalized sexual venue for female citizens. The family violence law of 2014 does not criminalize marital rape, a rape exception insisted upon by religious and patriarchal leaders and their political allies.52 Rarely is gendered violence considered political violence.53 In a fashion similar to sectarian violence, gendered violence emerges from a complex knot of legal, historical, social, and economic factors.54 Like sectarian violence, gendered violence is distributed across and articulated through law, bureaucracy, and parastatal actors.55 I suggest that in the case of gendered violence, the heteropatriarchal family could be understood as parastatal actor, a structure that is constituted legally and is permeated with the state’s patriarchal sexual ideology—a structure that operates as a satellite of state norms and power. The state maintains its sovereign right to produce sexual difference, and in the case of foreign domestic labor, racial difference, but distributes and shares its sovereign right to regulate sexual difference to parastatal actors within a shared heteropatriarchal ideological space. The state constructs and regulates the heteropatriarchal family as the ideal form of intimacy and as the only legitimate sphere for female (reproductive) sexuality. This heteropatriarchal family is deeply masculinist: men are the heads of families in census registries, the conduit for the citizenship of children, and the de facto legal guardians of their minor children. Husbands can block their wives from travel outside the country, though wives can lobby to get such restrictions removed. The constitution of female ­citizens as the legal dependents of their husbands or fathers, coupled with the state’s

51  Abu Lughod (2011). 54  Abu Lughod (2013).

52  Human Rights Watch (2014). 55  Joseph (1997), Amar (2013).

53  Al-Ali (2014).

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468   maya mikdashi le­gal­iza­tion of forms of gendered violence, in effect distributes those forms of gendered violence to the heteropatriarchal family. Given the constitutive nature of sexual difference to Lebanese law, citizenship, and statecraft, the passage of a family violence law in 2014 was a watershed event. Yet, precisely because the logic that produces this weighted sexual difference is everywhere, legal reform may only take us so far. Imagine, for example, laws that make sectarian killings a “hate crime” in a sectarian political and legal system. Such a law might make killing a Sunni because he is a Sunni a crime, but it would do nothing to address how material and legal conditions produced this citizen as “Sunni” to begin with.56 Similarly, the removal of the “sex bargain” from Lebanese citizenship as an entire edifice of rights, laws, and duties necessitates an overhaul of criminal, civil, personal status, procedural, and nationality laws. Racialized national “outsiders,” most prominently domestic and migrant labor, and Syrian and Palestinian refugees, holds this gendered-national architecture together.57 The exclusion of domestic laborers from the 2014 family violence law further demonstrates the racial and racializing dimensions of sextarian power at both the state and parastatal level.

Sextarianism While thinking and writing about sovereignty and citizenship in Lebanon, academics have emphasized the production and/or management of sectarian difference. This art­ icle has suggested that we should also be emphasizing sexual difference and sexual regulation when thinking about sovereignty and state and citizenship practices, and that in fact the Lebanese state operates through what we might call “sextarianism.” The ways that sectarian and sexual difference are articulated together legally, bureaucratically, and discursively, are critical to our understanding of the political technologies of the Lebanese state and other states with similar structures and national ideologies. Sectarian citizens are not naturally occurring phenomenon, nor are they disembodied actors. Instead, sectarian citizens are literally reproduced through laws, bureaucracies, and discourses that regulate sexual difference—understood as both the regulation of sexual dimorphism and of sexuality. The Lebanese legal system produces sexual difference in every area of law. In fact, sexual difference is an operative legal category to a much larger extent than sectarian difference. The Lebanese state manages sexual and sectarian difference through judicial and governmental/bureaucratic apparatus. The legal edifice of citizenship, and the production and quantification of population demographics in Lebanon are made possible by laws and bureaucratic practices that shape and produce the married heterosexual

56  Volpp (2002), Eng (2010).

57  Human Rights Watch (2012).

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   469 patriarchal family as the only legal form of female sexuality.58 The kinship regime that governs married heterosexual patriarchal families expands and contracts around male citizens and their life events. Sextarianism produces and regulates legal, bodily, economic, and political precarity and privilege across the intersecting vectors of sex, sexuality, sect, class, citizenship status, and race. Sexual difference is often inextricable from sectarian difference. Opposition to granting female citizens the right to pass on citizenship travels through anxieties and discourses around sectarian demographics and balance, but a man’s right to extend citizenship to his foreign spouse and their children is never questioned under this logic. Additionally, fifteen different personal status laws form the legal architecture of sect­ar­ ian recognition and sectarian census registration, and they have complete jurisdiction over a citizen’s “family affairs.” As we have learned from theorists such as Suad Joseph, Carole Pateman, and Jacqueline Stevens,59 the family is a public and political construct and institution, one whose regulation contributes to what Timothy Mitchell has called “the state effect.”60 Kinship regimes are a political technology that shape and give legal form to ideologically inflected and coercive forms of intimacy.61 In Lebanon, sectarian communities are recognized by the state as distinct based on the presence of a personal status law, or kinship regime. “Sectarian difference” is articulated through sexed difference to the extent that when citizens appeal to Lebanon’s secular high courts on the basis of sexual discrimination within personal status courts, jurists often dismiss their claims as challenges to religious difference and diversity.62 Secular power in Lebanon, and the secularity of the Lebanese state, emerges from the management of sextarian difference. To read the Lebanese state through an analytic of sextarianism emphasizes, with Carole Pateman and Joan Scott, that sexual difference is political difference63 and that secular power is deeply invested in the maintenance and management of sexual difference as political difference. Grounding a theory of sextaranism in Lebanon allows us to further interrogate the relationships between secular power, sexual difference, and colonial rule and authority within colonial and post-colonial states. At the same time, approaching the state through a focus on sextarianism allows us to think more cap­ acious­ly about sectarian political difference in Lebanon, by highlighting the ways in which sectarian difference is dependent on, emergent with, and articulated together with sexual difference and the regulation of heteronormative reproductive sexuality at the level of law and bureaucracy. These two axes of political difference are articulated and implicated together in the production and maintenance of political sectarianism as a system of power-sharing. Thus the biopolitical registers, technologies, and tactics of the Lebanese state are clearer through the lens of sextarianism. 58  As Foucault wrote in 1972, “sexuality is the realm where the body and the population meet. And so it is a matter for discipline but also a matter for regularization. . . sexuality represents the precise point where the disciplinary and the regulatory, the body and the population, are articulated.” Foucault (2003: 252). 59  Joseph (1997), Pateman (1988), Stevens (1999). 60  Mitchell (2006). 61  Eng (2010), Kholoussy (2010). 62  Mahmood (2015), Mikdashi (2014). 63  Pateman (1988), Scott (2009).

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470   maya mikdashi The mechanisms through which a state produces and regulates political difference are key to understanding the ways that power works at both the macro and micro levels. In the case of Lebanon, the structures and institutions of the state produce multiple vari­ ations of sexual–sectarian subject positions that are legally bound and socially, pol­it­ic­ al­ ly, and economically refracted. The chapter has argued throughout that our understanding of the ways that sectarianism is produced, regulated, maintained, and practiced in Lebanon through both state and parastatal structures (such as the heteropatriarchal family) is hindered unless we take into account the ways it is emergent and articulated with the production, regulation, and practice of sexual difference, and vice versa. Thinking about sexual and sectarian differences separately in fact genders sect­ar­ ian differences as male (the realm of politics and power sharing) and sexual differences as female (the so-called private sphere and discrimination). I have offered “sextarianism” as an analytic term and lens through which to study the ways that the Lebanese state constitutes political difference at the intersection of sex and sect. Only when we bring sexual and sectarian difference together in our analysis can we approach the biopolitical registers of the Lebanese state.

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   471 Fernando, Mayanthi L. (2014). The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Foucault, Michel (2003). Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976, vol. 1 (London: Picador). Grafton, David (2003). The Christians of Lebanon: Political rights in Islamic law (London: I. B. Tauris). Hacking, Ian (1990). The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hanf, Theodor (1994). Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation (London: I. B. Tauris). Hanssen, Jens (2005). Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hermez, Sami (2012). “ ‘The War is Going to Ignite’: On the Anticipation of Violence in Lebanon,” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 35,2: 327–344. Hourani, Albert (1946). Syria and Lebanon: A Political Essay (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hull, Matthew  S. (2012). Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan (Oakland, CA: University of California Press). Human Rights Watch (2012). Lebanon: Stop Abuse of Domestic Workers. Human Rights Watch, 23 Mar. 2012. Web. 18 Jan. 2017 . Human Rights Watch (2014). Lebanon: Domestic Violence Law Good, but Incomplete. Human Rights Watch, 3 Apr. 2014. Web. 18 Jan. 2017 . Human Rights Watch (2015). “Unequal and Unprotected: Women’s Rights under Lebanese Personal Status Laws.” Report Human Rights Watch, 11 June 2015. Web. 18 Jan. 2017 . Joseph, Suad (1990). “Working the Law: A Lebanese Working Class Case,” The Politics of Law in the Middle East: 143–160. Joseph, Suad (1997). “The Public/Private—The Imagined Boundary in the Imagined Nation/ State/Community: The Lebanese Case,” Feminist review 57,1: 73–92. Joseph, Suad (2000). Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Karkazis, Katrina (2008). Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Kechichian, Joseph  A. (2015). “Lebanon Contemplates a New Citizenship Law,” GulfNews, 18 Nov. 2015. Web. 18 Jan. 2017 Khalaf, Samir (2002). Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon: A History of the Internationalization of Communal Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press). Khalidi, Rashid (2013). Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War (New York: Columbia University Press). el-Khazen, Farid (2000). The Breakdown of the State in Lebanon, 1967–1976 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Kholoussy, Hanan (2010). For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis that Made Modern Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).

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Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State   473 Salloukh, Bassel F., Rabie Barakat, and Jinan S. Al-Habbal (2016). The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon (London: Pluto Press). Sayigh, Rosemary (2015). Too Many Enemies (Beirut: Al Mashriq). Stevens, Jacqueline (1999). Reproducing the State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Stoler, Ann Laura (1995). Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Surkis, Judith (2006). Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in France, 1870–1920 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Thompson, Elizabeth (2000). Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press). Traboulsi, Fawwaz (2007). A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto Press). Volpp, Leti (2002). “The Citizen and the Terrorist,” Immigration and Nationalist Law Review, 23: 561 Weiss, Max (2010). In the Shadow of Sectarianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Zalzal, Marie Rose (1997). “Secularism and Personal Status Codes in Lebanon,” Middle East Report 203: 37–39. Zengin, Aslı (2016). “Violent Intimacies: Tactile State Power, Sex/Gender Transgression, and the Politics of Touch in Contemporary Turkey,” Journal of Middle East Women Studies 12,2: 225–45.

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chapter 23

Con tempor a ry Isr a el/ Pa lesti n e Shourideh C. Molavi

My approach to theorizing contemporary Israel/Palestine is twofold. The first is a the­or­ iza­tion of Zionism as a settler-colonial project and a racial ideological construct for the State of Israel. In contemporary Israel/Palestine, Zionism is in thought and in practice a political project of settlement, colonialism, and statehood based on an ideological understanding of the ethnic exclusiveness of the Jewish people. As a result, the relation­ ship between the indigenous people of Palestine with Zionism and the Israeli state is founded on an interaction of political rejection and non-identification, formed long before Israel was established. The continuation of these pre-state settler-colonial pol­ icies and practices into the legal, operational, budgetary, and institutional structures of the modern Jewish state reveal the fundamental contradictions in Israel’s paradoxical self-identification as “Jewish and democratic.” By problematizing the concept of the “Jewish state,” recent scholarship has challenged the prevalent liberal assumption in Israeli and Western academia that Israel, even within its pre-1967 territorial boundaries, is a democratic state for all its citizens. Second, as both a territorial space and a political paradigm, contemporary Israel/ Palestine is here theorized as a single geographic unit. Despite differences in the legal categorizations of cities in pre-1967 “Israel proper,” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, and the refugee camps in the Arab world, the laws and settler-colonial pol­ icies of the Israeli regime maintains a geographic continuity of exclusion and affects all Palestinian nationals as non-Jewish persons.1 The oppressive and exclusionary mech­an­ isms of Zionist thought and the historic and political policies of Jewish ethnic privilege 1  Similar to the work of other scholars, the terms “Palestinian Arabs,” “Palestinians,” and “Arabs” will be used interchangeably in this chapter to refer to the indigenous non-Jewish Arab collective in contem­ porary Israel/Palestine. This terminology is used to highlight that whether citizens, residents, displaced, or refugees, the Palestinian population (including its Bedouin and Druze communities) has a shared history and collective experience within the country and a language and culture shared with those in broader Arab societies.

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   475 it has formed are theorized as extending across and beyond Israel’s “legal” boundaries. In effect, this chapter does not reproduce the dividing “borders”—whether concrete, psychological, or conceptual—presenting contemporary Israel/Palestine as separate and detached territorial slices. Instead, the legal and political spaces of “Israel proper,” “Jerusalem,” the “West Bank,” the “Gaza Strip,” and the surrounding Palestinian “refugee camps” are here theorized within their own contexts but nevertheless as parts, as “en­gin­ eered neighborhoods” of a broader territorial unit operating according to a singular logic of exclusion. Placing together the above emphasis on Jewish ethnic privilege, demographic dom­in­ ance, and geographic continuity of exclusion, this chapter examines contemporary Israel/Palestine as an incorporation regime. The mode of incorporation, combining both formally written or legal principles and informal political and ideological practices, is defined by Yasemin Soysal as an “incorporation regime.”2 This refers to “patterns of institutional practices and more or less explicit cultural norms that define the member­ ship of individuals and/or groups in the society and differentially allocate entitlements, obligations and domination.”3 In other words, an incorporation regime is an exclusion­ ary regime of social, political, economic, and cultural practices and institutions that stratify the assumed equal or universalist membership with the state through a differen­ tial dispensing of rights, privileges, and obligations to various communities. Importantly, “incorporation” refers to the actual political arrangement of belonging and the exclusionary institutional modes to which people are subjected. Similar to other nation-states, the nature of the State of Israel translates into the char­ acter of its political membership.4 As we will see, the ideological, conceptual, structural, and symbolic emphasis on its Jewish and Zionist character shapes the kind of political membership it provides to non-Jewish communities, along with how this subjectivity is formulated, structured, and arranged. This produces intense juridico-political, socio­ cultural, and economic mechanisms of settler-colonial exclusion. These multifaceted racialized frameworks of exclusion embedded within what I examine as a unitary Zionist incorporation regime—relations and categories of inclusion and exclusion shaped by a settler-colonial Zionist ideology—work in conjunction, intersect, and fuel one another.

Layered Exclusions of Settler-Colonial Subjects That the Zionist incorporation regime favors Jews regardless of actual residency or legal origin and does not treat its inhabitants equally has been extensively outlined and sup­ ported with rich academic scholarship on the subject. This present examination 2  Soysal (1994: 36).

3 Ibid.

4  Molavi (2013: 42).

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476   shourideh c. molavi c­ on­siders the layers of exclusion, or “statelessness,” to which various segments of the Palestinian nation are violently exposed. Observers familiar with the Israel/Palestine conflict understand that, at an elementary level, the Palestinian nation as a whole— whether citizens or non-citizens of other states—are a stateless people. They do not have an established and independent state that agrees (or is able) to represent them, their needs, rights, and aspirations, as a nation. At the same time, the exclusions faced by each segment of the Palestinian nation differ conceptually and substantively within Israel’s hegemonic representational regime. Their particular juridico-political positionality within the Zionist incorporation regime varies their exposure to the sovereign decisions of the State of Israel, its “sovereign ban,” placing different segments of the Palestinian nation within varied legal, political, and socioeconomic conditions. That said, as a nonJewish indigenous population, all Palestinian Arabs are, regardless of their particular legal and political status, living as settler-colonial subjects in relation to entrenched pol­ icies of Jewish ethnic privilege. Today, all non-Jewish Palestinian Arabs living within the Israeli regime are divided into various categories, each with differing sets of privilege and protection arranged according to a spatial logic. Largely living under the separate and impaired protection of the United National Relief and Works Agency, Palestinian refugees who live outside the juridico-political parameters of the State of Israel are denied any share of its struc­ tures and frameworks. According to the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, by 2015 at least 7.98 million of the 12.1 million Palestinian population worldwide were forcibly displaced persons, of which 6.14 million are refu­ gees from the 1948 war (or Nakba) and their descendants; more than one million are refugees from the 1967 war in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip; and around 720,000 are internally displaced persons (IDPs) on both sides of the 1949 Armistice Line, or Green Line.5 As it stands, Palestinian refugees and IDPs form the largest and oldest unresolved case of refugees and displaced persons in the world: their numbers continue to grow due to Israeli settler-colonial policies and with the devastating armed conflicts in Syria and Iraq, thousands of Palestinian refugees are subjected to forced secondary displacement.6 When it comes to IDPs in the Zionist incorporation regime, the settler-colonial prac­ tices against Palestinians causing their ongoing mass displacement since 1948 include, among other practices: land confiscation; tens of thousands of administrative home demolitions; the establishment of military “security zones”; discriminatory housing and planning; imposed closures on the movement of persons; the forced expulsion, transfer, and relocation of entire communities, as in the Bedouin populations in Jerusalem and the Naqab desert; major Israeli military assaults and extreme warfare practices render­ ing impossible the rebuilding of homes and civilian structures such as the 2006, 2009, 2012, and 2014 wars in Gaza; the confiscation of identity cards and the revocation of resi­ dency rights in Jerusalem, including those of children; discriminatory permit regimes; 5  Badil Survey (2013–2015: xiii).

6  See Erakat (2014).

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   477 and the displacement of over 30,000 Palestinians resulting from the illegal construction of the Apartheid Wall in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Yet, despite this multiple and ongoing displacement, today the majority of Palestinian refugees continue to live within 62 miles (100 km) of the legal borders of Israel and the 1967 occupied Palestinian ter­ri­ tor­ies where their places of origin and homes are located.7 The Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain on their historic lands after the major displacements of the 1948 and 1967 wars and numerous Israeli mili­ tary incursions. These residents live under a military occupation where nearly every facet of public life is controlled by Israeli settler-colonial policies. Here the Zionist incorporation regime separates communities from one another and restricts movement of the civilian population within those isolated spaces. Practices including closures of entire villages, road blocks and forbidden roads, regular impositions of curfews often as punishment, permanent and temporary (“flying” or “mobile”) military checkpoints, physical obstacles such as the Apartheid Wall, dirt piles, electric fences, deep trenches and/or concrete blocks are designed to impede the normalcy of daily life for Palestinians. Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip further endure territorial isolation and a debili­ tating twenty-six-year blockade, where gradual closures since 1991 have today resulted in total Israeli control over their borders, land, airspace, sea, and monetary and business transactions.8 Representing itself as a mere service-provider rather than an occupying force with legal humanitarian responsibilities, Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories routinely blocks the import/export of vital goods into the Strip and cuts daily access to electricity. As recently as May 2017 the Israeli Security Cabinet announced its decision to further reduce the supply of electricity to Gazans in a context where blackouts are already causing entire hospital wings to shut down, pre­ venting water desalination stations from operating for daily household use, impeding sewage water from being pumped away from residential areas, and putting additional pressure on the limited existing generators that are already over-extended.9 Together, these residents of the West Bank and Gaza lack formal membership within the Israeli state but are nevertheless subject to the settler-colonial laws and spatial arrangements of the Zionism incorporation regime. Today, West Bank Palestinians remain subjects of the Palestinian Authority (PA), an interim self-governing body estab­ lished in 1994 designed to have sole control over civilian and security-related issues in Palestinian urban areas (referred to as “Area A”), and only civilian control over Palestinian rural areas (“Area B”), while residents of Gaza have since 2007 lived under a de facto Hamas-controlled government. As the largest employer in the West Bank, the PA allots around one-third of its annual budget to security and the maintenance of pub­ lic order, with new security recruits vetted by Israeli and US authorities. After seven dec­ ades of military occupation, the popular struggle against Israeli practices and policies of 7  Badil Survey (2013–2015: 37). 8  See Roy’s studies (1987, 2016) on the economic de-development of the Gaza Strip. 9  Gisha, Letter to Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman, June 11, 2017, .

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478   shourideh c. molavi ethnic exclusion in the West Bank and Gaza has today grown to include mass opposition to the PA and its cooperation with Israeli institutions of repression. Under the Oslo agreements signed between Israel and Palestine in 1993, the PA is required to practice security coordination with the internal Israeli Security Services, or Shabak. This collab­ oration means that Palestinian security shares intelligence about any opposition and/or armed resistance within Palestinian society with the Israeli military occupation. In practice, this often means the deployment of PA security officers to violently suppress popular protest in Palestinian cities and refugee camps, detention of political opponents to and critics of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, harassment and arbitrary arrest of jour­ nalists and suppression of nonviolent Palestinian civil society activities. Yet at the same time, they have no jurisdiction over Jewish settler activities meaning that PA security cannot interfere even in situations where they directly witness violent civilian attacks on Palestinians. As such, PA remains wholly impotent and unable to prevent and protect Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank from repeated Jewish extremist incur­ sions. Although relations between the PA and Israel have been unstable in the face of ongoing Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem and repeated military onslaughts in Gaza generating threats made by the Palestinian leadership to dissolve the security coordination, this special relationship has remained intact. Structurally and institutionally, so long as the expanding Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories continues to exist, so will the PA as a mechanism of the Zionist incorporation regime. Since the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967 and its subsequent annexation, Palestinians living in the city hold the status of permanent residents, a legal status defined by The Entry into Israel Law of 1952. Typically granted to immigrants, the per­ manent residency provided to Arab Jerusalemites was a legal tool to demote their con­ nection to the city and status as an indigenous non-immigrant population. While the majority of East Jerusalem Arabs hold Jordanian travel passports, these documents are considered by the Jordanian state as “temporary” and does not allow them the right to employment, prolonged residency, or ownership in Jordan. As residents of Jerusalem, they have the right of mobility in the country, and permission to work within East Jerusalem and Israel, but are provided significantly inferior protections and entitle­ ments than that of formal citizenship or nationality. For instance, as permanent residency is not automatically transferred through mar­ riage, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem who marries a Palestinian from elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territories and seeks to reside in Jerusalem must apply for family unification. The application process for family unification is onerous and has become virtually impossible since 2003, when Israel passed The Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) prohibiting the granting of any residency or citi­zen­ ship status to Palestinians from the 1967-occupied Palestinian territories married to Israeli citizens or permanent residents. As has been well-documented by Palestinian civil society organizations, the law disproportionately affects thousands of Palestinian families in Jerusalem who are denied unification not only with their spouses but also their minor children who do not inherit permanent residency “by right” from their par­

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   479 ents.10 As a result, the alternative to dividing the family with one parent in the West Bank with the children and the other residing in Jerusalem to maintain her/his resi­ dency, is that many Palestinian children are left unregistered in East Jerusalem and numerous families are criminalized by the state for residing “illegally” in the city with their spouses and children. As residents of East Jerusalem, Palestinians are forced to constantly defend their resi­ dency by proving that their “center of life” lies within the Israeli-defined municipal boundary of Jerusalem. Since 1995, Israel has taken a number of measures to revoke the residency status of Arab Jerusalemites, mainly citing the British Mandate Emergency Regulations (1945), The Citizenship Law (1952), The Entry into Israel Law (1952), and The Entry into Israel Regulations (1974), to implement what is called the “center-of-life” pol­ icy.11 Part of Israel’s overall political goal to engineer a Jewish demographic majority in Jerusalem, this policy requires that Palestinian residents prove that their center of life has been and remained Jerusalem for at least seven consecutive years, with a high stand­ ard of proof that requires the submission of numerous documents, including various bills (insurance, health, electricity, water, and municipal taxes), home ownership papers or rental contract, certification of children’s school registration, and proof of employ­ ment in Jerusalem. Failure to prove the above results in the forcible revocation of their residency (including the status of children where the other parent also lacks residency), the loss of homes, families, and communal relations, social benefits and employment in Jerusalem as well as in the rest of Israel. Importantly, the revocation of residency status takes place in an arbitrary manner at the discretion of the Ministry of Interior and is often punitive and retaliatory. Here the Israeli Citizenship Law (1952) is cited to revoke the residency of individuals involved in “terrorist” activities or suspected of being so, including that of their families, given an alleged “breach of allegiance.” Increasingly depicting residency revocations as a punitive measure in official discourse, the Israeli government has also openly discussed political proposals and blueprints for mass revo­ cations as a retaliatory measure. Today, the Zionist incorporation regime continues to rely on this “quiet deportation” and “silent relocation” policy and has, from 1967 until 2016, effectively revoked the residency status of over 14,500 Palestinians from East Jerusalem12. Combined with ongoing land expropriation via systematic settlement activity, infrastructural underdevelopment and neglect of neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, home evictions and demolitions, and restrictive zoning and planning, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem endure a de facto restriction of their freedom of 10  See collected documents and case summaries by HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, . 11  Jefferis (2012). 12  HaMoked (2017). HaMoked reports that in 2016, the Israeli Ministry of Interior has confirmed its revocation of the residency of ninety-five East Jerusalem Arabs, including forty-one women and eleven minors. Several other human rights organizations have collectively petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice against this policy. For a breakdown on the number of Palestinians whose residencies was revoked per year from 1967–2014, see also B’Tselem (2015), “Statistics on Revocation of Residency in East Jerusalem,” updated May 27, 2015, .

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480   shourideh c. molavi movement, risking the loss of residency and a denial of re-entry into Jerusalem and “Israel proper.” The Palestinian Arabs within “Israel proper” who hold Israeli citizenship and main­ tain civic relations with the state along with some entrenched rights, remain legally and politically excluded insofar as they do not have a Jewish national identity. Often called Arabs of 1948, the Arabs inside, or Palestinian-Israelis, this major indigenous citizen ­population totals more than 1.81 million persons, constituting around 20.8% of Israel’s total citizen population. Of this community, around 200,000 are Bedouin citizens, members of the indigenous Palestinian community who remained on their lands in the Naqab (Negev) region, and around 360,000 Arab citizens are classified as IDPs referring to those who either fled or were driven from their villages and towns by the Zionist forces before the creation of the State of Israel, or by institutions following its establish­ ment, and who remained within its borders.13 The youngest segment of Israel’s citizen population, the Bedouin community is also the most vulnerable. Since its inception, the policy of the State of Israel has been one of forced displacement, home demolitions, and dispossessions specifically targeting the indigenous Bedouin population.14 As a result, today nearly half of the entire Bedouin population in the Naqab lives in forty-five vil­ lages that are “unrecognized” and its inhabitants considered “trespassers on State land” by the Israeli government, thereby denying these citizens access to infrastructure such as water and sewage systems, electricity, education, hospitals, social services, and accessible safe roads.15 Despite their respective socioeconomic differences, the collective situation of the Palestinian citizens of Israel is, at best, paradoxical. On the one hand, they are denied national membership as non-Jews, and state identification, given Israel’s legal, political, and social self-definition as “a state for the Jewish people.”16 On the other hand, this community is also distanced from the rest of the Palestinian population through the same legal, political, and social dimensions. As it stands, the State of Israel continues to violently deny the existence of its Palestinian Arab citizenry as an indigenous popula­ tion, a national group, or even a national minority. Far from integration into the Israeli regime, Palestinians are placed in a paradoxical situation where, as Arab citizens of a Jewish state, they are both inside and outside, host and guest, citizen and stateless.17 We cannot consider the collective evolution of the Palestinian citizenry of Israel with­ out assessing the kind of citizenship regime within which they are placed. However complex these determinations may be, it is clear that Israeli (ab)uses of citizenship per­ petrated in the process of placing Arabs within their multifaceted system of control have 13  Adalah (2012: 1). 14  See Amara et al. (2013). 15  For ongoing state policies and practices of displacement against this segment of its citizen popula­ tion, see Adalah’s coverage on the Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev, also called the Prawer Plan, a plan for the mass expulsion of the Bedouin community in the Naqab . See also Jack Khoury’s coverage in Haaretz on August 25, 2017, “Israel Revokes Citizenship of Hundreds of Negev Bedouin, Leaving Them Stateless,” . 16  Molavi (2013: 3). 17 Ibid.

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   481 situated these people on the periphery of Israeli and Palestinian societies.18 It is also clear that, rather than pursuing the absorption or integration of the Arab citizenry, Israeli policy has, since the inception of the state, been shaped by the objective of ef­fect­ ive control and exclusion.19 Equally clearly, this objective has been realized, insofar as it has succeeded, through the active application of the principles, tools, and discourse of citizenship.20 While all Arabs are excluded from the Israeli incorporation regime, the logic of the relation of exclusion faced by Palestinian citizens differs from that of noncitizen Palestinians. Put differently, the statelessness of Arab citizens is characterized by the fact that though they possess a recognized and legally supported citizenship status in Israel, they are not represented by it at an ideological, existential, institutional, and pol­it­ ical level.21 The State of Israel is, by its self-definition, not theirs. This makes them state­ less in that they have formal membership, but as non-Jews, are not a part of the self-definition of, nor are they embodied by, the State. Taken together, such differences highlight the Zionist regime’s particular use of citizenship in transferring the Palestinian population within Israel into a condition of statelessness. Here the concept of “stateless citizenship” becomes a particularly useful paradigm to understanding the particular exclusion faced by Arab citizens of Israel. Understanding Palestinian citizens as stateless citizens reveals to us that “the means, the actual medium, through which, by which, and from which peripheral and limited Palestinian existence is maintained in Israel has been citizenship itself.”22 Recently, scholars have paved an intellectual and political space for numerous im­port­ant, useful, and critical conceptualizations of the features, dynamics, and con­ straints of Arab citizenship in a Jewish state. Today, these analyses have been developed and compiled mainly by Arab academics, intellectuals, political representatives, urban planners, researchers, social justice community activists, and civil society organizations in Israel, but also by Jewish-Israeli and Western sources.23 Together, they show that the Israeli citizenship regime is shaped by a Zionist ideology that nurtures sophisticated policies of exclusion with its respective systems of control. These policies of exclusion work in tandem with limited inclusion in all areas of social life. As discussed below, the Jewish state is not only a source of identity but it is also the guarantor of rights. This is because Jewish identity in Israel provides an entirely new and much broader scope of rights irrespective of formal citizenship. Put differently, Jewish identity is automatically merged with Israeli citizenship.24 Such a conception of social membership impacts and (re)shapes the boundaries of participation, representation, 18 Ibid. 19  See Lustick (1980). Many analysts, this author included, view the ultimate and ongoing objective of the Zionist project as one of completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs left unfinished in 1948 in the entire area of Mandate Palestine. See also Pappé 2006. 20  Molavi (2013: 3). 21  Molavi (2013: 185). 22  Molavi (2013: 213). 23  Writings on this topic include key pioneering texts by Jiryis (1976); Zureik (1979); Lustick (1980); Rouhana (1997); and Ghanem (2001) and the more recently, the work of Yiftachel (2002); Sultany (2003); Bishara (2004); Jamal (2007); Zreik (2008); Pappé (2011), Banko (2016); and Masri (2017). 24  Molavi (2013: 4, 98).

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482   shourideh c. molavi and inclusion for its Arab and other non-Jewish citizens. Indeed, in the Zionist in­corp­ or­ation regime, access to the home, the city, the state, and the land itself in the form of civic identification, claims, rights, and membership, is deliberately designed to exclude the non-Jewish community, whether citizen, resident, or refugee. This chapter paints the picture of contemporary Israel/Palestine from these positionalities of settler-colonial exclusion. As we will see, the formal and informal policies and practices of settler-colonial exclusion and their respective layered systems of control, to which the various parts of the Palestinian nation are uniquely exposed, structure the Zionist in­corp­or­ation regime and form the racialized contours of contemporary Israel/Palestine.

Colonizing the Land of Milk and Honey Since its inception in the late nineteenth century, Zionism has evolved into a plethora of ideologies, assuming religious, labor, spiritual, revisionist, humanist, cultural, and other ideological forms. Many of these forms of Zionism, notably its variations as epitomized by prominent thinkers, activists, and religious scholars such as Ahad Haʾam, Martin Buber, Ernst Simon, and Judah Magnes, among others, have critiqued the nationalistic, statecentric, militaristic, and xenophobic elements that political Zionism was injecting into its reading of Judaism.25 That said, Zionism’s model for Jewish national self-determination has been in the form of an ethnically exclusive and demographically dominant Jewish nation-state in what is called Eretz Yisrael, or “Greater Israel,” which includes the area of Mandate Palestine, along with parts of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. As such, the key premise for understanding the Zionist movement is that it is, in thought and prac­ tice, a settler-colonial project that relies heavily on a projected inferiority, erasure, and negation of the indigenous population.26 Within this “logic of coloniality” the native Palestinian population is “deindigenized” so as to indigenize the relation of the Jewish population with the land.27 Here surfaces one of the defining characteristics of the Zionist brand of colonialism: instead of claiming to apply full or partial control over the territory of another population, settlement of the land is presented as a process of rec­ lam­ation by, or return to, its rightful custodians. The settlers are therefore posited as indigenous to the land.

25  See, for example, “Palestine—Divided or United? The Case for a Bi-National Palestine before the United Nations,” in Magnes et al. (1947), and “Arab-Jewish Unity: Testimony before the Anglo-American Inquiry Commission for Ihud (Union) Association,” in Magnes and Buber (1947). 26  There is an increasing body of scholarly work that examines Zionism and the Israeli state through a settler-colonial framework. See Hilal (1976, 2015); Abdo and Yuval-Davis (1995); Abu el-Haj (2003); Wolfe (2006, 2012); Veracini (2007, 2013); Pappé, (2008); Lloyd (2012); Amara et al. (2013); Robinson (2013); Brull (2014); Rouhana and Sabbagh-Khoury (2014); Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2014); Mamdani (2015); and Gordon and Ram (2016), among others. 27  See Mignolo (2007).

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   483 Importantly, the notion of race, racialized representation, and racism is integral to any discussion of modern Zionism and cannot be satisfied with considerations of the function of ethnicity and religion in Israel alone. Far from an accidental or passing fea­ ture of Israeli society and politics, racism and racial discrimination are inherent in the ideological construct of modern Zionism and its basic motivation for Jewish settlement, colonization, and statehood. Believing in the national oneness of all Jewish people regardless of any political, social, legal, religious, or linguistic ties, Zionist literature and discourse make repeated reference to “common ancestry,” “national fulfillment,” and a “national oneness” of Jewish people everywhere.28 Since taking shape as a national movement, “a dominant order of Zionism articulated ‘the Jewish race’ as creating coher­ ence, artificing initially discursive homogeneity of and for ‘the Jewish people’ in the face of a scattered and diffuse ‘nation’.”29 Within such a framework, the master signifiers of the state, nation, and a chosen people that give shape to the Zionist project render the continued existence of an indigenous non-Jewish population in the coveted territory essentially contradictory. For instance, the incompatibility of non-Jewish persons with the Zionist state project is made explicit in the discriminatory land policies of the Jewish National Fund (JNF)—a Zionist organization that, by May 1948, was the largest land­ owner in Mandate Palestine.30 Proposed at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in August 1897 and amended in subsequent years, the title to the lands held by the JNF was “to be held in perpetuity, ‘as the inalienable property of the Jewish people’.”31 These lands “could not be leased to a non-Jew, nor could the lease be subleased, or sold, or mortgaged, or given, or bequeathed to any but a Jew,” and “non-Jews could not be employed on the land or even in any work connected with the cultivation of the land.”32 As a “racially configured” and “racially representative” nation-state, Israel has, as South African scholar David Theo Goldberg explains, been “caught up in the race-making web of modernizing statehood.”33 The importance of examining Zionism as a racially and not merely ethnically or religiously configured ideology and movement becomes evident when we look at exclusions from the racialized structures of power within Israel and its placement within the racial hierarchy of the region. Goldberg out­ lines that: Israel is taken as an outpost of European civilization, a frontier of sorts, in an al­together hostile and alien environment. Brothers to Christians, keepers of the faith and holy sites, a flourishing democracy in the land of Christ and region of alien autocratic regimes, a defender against irrationality and irreverence of life sur­ rounded by infidels, a tower of strength and stability fueling American industry, readers of the same book(s) and lovers of the same culture. . . . In this scheme of 28  See, for example, Ben-Gurion (1954: 489). 29  Goldberg (2008: 31). 30  Lehn (1974: 74–75). 31  Article 3 of the Constitution of the Jewish Agency for Palestine (adopted August 1929, repr. 1945); see Lehn (1974: 92–93). 32 Ibid. 33  Goldberg (2008: 109).

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484   shourideh c. molavi things, it seems, Israel must be European, presumably white. [. . .] Israelis occupy the structural positions of whiteness in the racial hierarchy of the Middle East. Arabs, accordingly—most notably in the person of Palestinians—are the antithesis….34

Within this racial configuration of Zionism and its principal progeny, the State of Israel, politically softer and less divisive concepts such as “discriminatory” and “differential” to explain what are basically racist conceptual and practical frameworks of exclusion must be problematized and rejected. As Judith Butler writes, today “Israel is at once the colo­ nial occupier, the maker and arbiter of the rule of law, which means that the rule of law is implicated in the colonial project itself.”35 Simply put, Zionist is about a certain type of exclusionary attachment, a commitment to a national homeland for Jews only that reduces Palestine to an experimental land for humanity—a blank slate on which human will and ingenuity could write what it wished. On this, Edward Said reminds us to con­ sider Jewish colonization in Palestine within the larger context in which it was carried out. “Zionism was a movement for acquiring land in the Orient,” he writes, “during a period when in only one century (1815–1918) Europe's overseas territorial acquisitions increased from 35% to 85% of the earth’s surface.”36 For Said, such territorial acquisitions cannot be dissociated from a specifically Eurocentric ideological constellation: “imperi­ alism was the theory, colonialism the practice.”37 This colonial mindset and imperial justifications for Jewish statehood are most evi­ dent in the first and most referenced documentation supporting “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” namely, the Balfour Declaration. Completed on November 2, 1917 and composed of a mere sixty-seven words, this pro­ nouncement is a letter signed by Lord Balfour to Baron Rothschild, a Jewish community leader in Britain. An analysis by British journalist J. M. N. Jeffries in 1939 outlines the deep conceptual, legal, and political problems of this document, through which the colonial mindset of the Zionist movement and its European supporters surface. Pointing out that the “authorship of the text was not solitary but collective,”38 and that before its public unveiling, the Declaration underwent intense examination “in all its bearings and implications, and subjected to repeated change and amendment,” Jeffries concludes that there is “no doubt” that “whatever is to be found in the Balfour Declaration was put into it deliberately” and that “if there is any vagueness in it this is an intentional vagueness.”39 The colonial underpinnings of the Declaration surface in three central ways. First, Jeffries points to a series of “unfathomable phrases” with a “culpable lack of definition,” which result in a certain vagueness of terminology.40 Phrases from the Declaration affirming support for “a national home for the Jewish people,” a “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations,” and pledging Britain’s “best endeavours to facilitate the achieve­

34  Goldberg (2008: 32–33). 35  Zalloua (2017: 49). 36  Said (1979: 21). 37  Said (1979: 28). 38  See Jeffries, “Analysis of the Balfour Declaration” in Khalidi (1971: 175). 39  Ibid., 173–174. 40  Ibid., 177.

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   485 ment of this object” were masterfully (and intentionally) dubious.41 “National home” had no established political or legal meaning in 1917, and the claims of “sympathy” and “best endeavours” were skillfully used in an unqualified and ambiguous manner to allow the British government to remove itself from any explicit indebtedness if neces­ sary.42 The second and third elements of colonial logic are apparent in the following, and final, clause of the Declaration: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by any Jews in any other country.”43 Appearing as a desire to protect the rights of the indigenous population of Palestine, or an implicit call for Zionist military and political restraint, the depiction of Palestinian Arabs as the “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” effectively identifies the colonial unit of measurement as “Jewish” and “non-Jewish.” The native Arabs are trans­ lated into the “non-Jews.” The majority population becomes the non-minority popula­ tion.44 In other words, not only is the actual ratio of Arab and Jewish populations in Palestine skewed with this imaginative phraseology, but the very identity of the in­di­gen­ ous Arab is effaced and made obscure. Jeffries also notes that the qualification “existing” gives the “impression [. . .] that these Arabs have just managed to survive” after ran­ domly ending up in the territory.45 Taken together, the Zionist drafters of the Balfour Declaration established a colonial logic that continues to persist in contemporary Israeli incorporation regime, whereby “a distinction. . . [is drawn] between Jewish rights and Arab claims…[so that] Palestine . . . is not a country unless the Jews occupy it.”46 In other words, as the units of political meas­ urement, only Jewish presence is political (and therefore grievable47) and forms the con­ tours of the state. Importantly, the logic of Jews as the central figures in the Israeli body politic lays the colonial grounds within which Arab and Jewish interactions around civil, political, and social rights have been framed since its inception. On this, the the­or­ et­ic­al framework of analysis adopted by Israeli sociologist Gershon Shafir in his account of Israeli colonialism is particularly radical and crucial. Shafir draws direct conceptual and historical links between post-1967 Israeli colonization in the West Bank and Gaza and pre-1948 Zionism. While acknowledging that the mode of Jewish colonization and settlement in Mandate Palestine differed and tailored itself according to the pol­it­ical, legal, and economic realities of its time, he contends that the essence and nature of the Zionist project stayed colonialist. Shafir writes:

41  Ibid., 176–178. 42 Ibid. 43  Ibid., 179. 44  Jeffries notes: “At the time the Declaration was issued the population of Palestine was in the neigh­ borhood of 670,000. Of these, the Jews numbered some 60,000. [. . .] Therefore we have Palestine with 91% of its people Arab and 9% Jew at the time of the Declaration. It was an Arab population with a dash of Jew. Half of the Jews were recent arrivals.” Jeffries, “Analysis of the Balfour Declaration” in Khalidi (1971: 179–180). 45  Ibid., 181. 46  Ibid., 185–186. 47  See Zalloua (2017) which problematizes Palestinians as homines sacri.

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486   shourideh c. molavi Where others see historical bastards, I find a streak of historical ancestry. I offer, therefore, a theoretical and conceptual perspective that highlights the continuous centrality of colonization in Zionism and at the same time gives appropriate weight to the changes that have taken place, under new circumstances, within the frame­ work of settlement. European colonialism, after all, did not create just one model of overseas society, and it seems to me that we can understand the transformation of Israeli society since 1967 most fruitfully as a transition from one method of European colonization to another one.48

Shafir begins his comparative analysis by outlining the specific attributes of the Zionist means of colonization: unlike European hegemonic powers the Jews had no organized polity until the beginning of the British Mandate; areas earmarked for settlement were selected ideologically by Zionists and not based on their economic potential; only a minor segment of the indigenous Palestinian population were nomadic when Zionist settlement was underway and most were in the process of expanding their areas of resi­ dence to coastal and inland areas; purchase was considered a means of territorial accu­ mulation by Zionist settlers unlike their European counterparts who considered colonized land as free; Jewish farmers employed seasonal unskilled wage labor unlike the contract-based or slave workers in European colonies; and many of the Jewish ­col­on­izers were refugees and lacked independent resources.49 These differences between the Zionist “pure settlement” project and other frontiers of settlement do not indicate a non-colonial character of the Jewish national movement, explains Shafir. Instead, these differences existed to ensure the smooth colonization of Palestine given the difficult cir­ cumstances of the incoming settlers. In essence, colonialism is therefore not a cursory or transient effect of Zionism, but instead serves as its congenital backbone.50

Demography, Territory, and Jewish Statehood Two concepts are essential to any understanding of contemporary Israel/Palestine. The first is that the Zionist–Palestinian conflict has first and foremost been a struggle over land, territoriality, and spatial control over historical Palestine. This struggle over terri­ tory continues today and is not limited to East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. Rather, areas with a significant Arab population within the pre-1967 borders of Israel (most significantly the Galilee and Naqab) continue to serve as sites for what Israeli geographers and urban planners have named spatial “policies of Judaization”—which some scholars prefer to call Israelization. Both are now starting to label this ongoing

48  Shafir (1999: 83). 49  Shafir (1999: 84–85). 50  This point is deepened and expanded upon in Piterberg (2008).

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   487 process as ethnic cleansing.51 Described by Palestinian scholar Yousef Jabareen as “obsessive territoriality,” the political, social, military, structural, and material realities in the country have, since the establishment of Israel, been shaped by a desire for terri­ tory and spatial control that is “a continuous, never completed, compulsive project.”52 In practice, this has meant that the territorial colonization of Palestine has to go in two dif­ ferent directions: Jewish settlement on the land and the resettlement of its Palestinian population to neighboring Arab states. This forms the second major concept giving form to contemporary Israel/Palestine, namely, demographic and social dominance. In addition to control over the land, demo­ graphic control is also a cornerstone of the Zionist project. The Zionist settler-colonial paradigm dictates that the “right” people—namely Jews—must settle the land and that this population must constitute a majority of the total population of the state to main­ tain its Jewish character. A recurring concern for Israeli national security officials, and a stimulant of periodic geographic and topographic changes to the state, governmental obsession around non-Jewish (i.e. Palestinian Arab) births, has shaped Israel’s public debate. The politics of a “demographic competition” between Arabs and Jews is embed­ ded in the cultural code of Israeli society, fueling a national narrative of an outnumbered Jewish collective in a hostile environment. With this narrative, Jewish demographic majority is reinforced, not merely as a tool of political survival, but also as a moral and civic necessity.53 Explicit and structural planning policies aimed at achieving Jewish ownership of land, through the racialized two-pronged strategy of forcefully controlling and annex­ ing the land and maintaining a Jewish demographic majority in every area of the coun­ try have served as the major objectives of successive Israeli governmental agendas. As a result, support for demographic engineering to maintain a Jewish majority has resulted in various violent and exclusionary practices against Palestinians. This includes, among others, legally sanctioned Jewish domination in all areas of Israel/Palestine, vehement opposition to the proposed paradigm of Israel as a “state for all its people,” as well as sup­ port for illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem.54 Together, the two pillars of territorial control and demographic dominance give shape to historical, pol­it­ ical, social, economic, military, structural, and material realities of the country, and form the kind of exclusion experienced by the various segments of Palestinian nation. 51  The Zionist practice of “Judaization,” or Israelization, refer to the systematic domination of Jewish populations and the formation of clear Jewish demographic majorities in Mandate Palestine, through the process of ethnic cleansing and dispossession of the indigenous Arab population. A secret 1976 memo­ randum submitted to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other officials recommended changes in Israeli policy toward Palestinian Arabs in Israel and outlined a detailed plan for the Judaization of the Galilee. For a reprint of the original report, see Koenig (1976). For a critique of the report and its discreet implementations, see COHRE and Badil (2005). 52  Jabareen in Rouhana and Huneidi (2017: 238). 53  See Shalev and Gooldin (2006). 54  For more on the continuing rise of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, see UNHCR’s 2014 Report of the Secretary General (A/HRC/25/28). See also Yotam Berger’s article in Haaretz, “70% Rise in Building Starts in West Bank Settlements During 2016–17,” .

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488   shourideh c. molavi Today, while recognizing that some systemic inequalities do exist between Arabs and Jews given Israeli state policies of demographic engineering, liberal Zionist scholars nevertheless continue to defend the argument for a Jewish majority.55 In doing so, Zionist scholars mostly present a circular argument, one steeped in liberal language and sensibilities, and one that deserves careful attention and deconstruction. Their argu­ ment runs as follows: We need a Jewish majority inside Israel so as to have a Jewish state. But at the same time, we need a Jewish state because the Jewish majority wants this. As such, those rejecting the Jewish state violate democratic principles by failing to respect the democratically expressed will of the majority of Israeli citizens.56 Taken together, the Jewish state begets practices of demographic engineering to ensure a Jewish majority, and simultaneously, the Jewish majority is then made a prerequisite for the consumma­ tion of the Jewish state. One brings about the other and any proposal for a reconception of Jewish statehood in a manner that is reconcilable with Palestinian access and return to their land is considered a denunciation of both. Overall, even the most liberal argu­ ments for Israeli demographic engineering whitewash the relations of power and vio­ lence that underpin Jewish majority status and supposed Palestinian minority status on the land. Such positions lack both historicity and an analysis of power as they abruptly transition Palestinians from a national non-immigrant indigenous group to a minority population similar to other immigrant national collectives living in settler-colonial states. Defining Palestinians in the territory as a “minority” population in relation to the majority Jewish population is a deliberate attempt to revise their historical presence in the space, thereby justifying amendments to their political and legal claims in the Israeli incorporation regime. This redefinition and reconceptualization of Palestinians is done without asking why they are a minority or how they came to be a minority. Much can be said about the ways in which Israel relies on spatial control and demo­ graphic and social dominance. For our purposes, however, some mechanisms of settlercolonial exclusion that ensure territorial control and demographic domination that place Israel apart from other nations deserve mention. When it comes to territorial and spatial control, today there exists in Israel a multi­fa­cet­ed framework of laws and military regulations that have granted it the legal and pol­it­ical authority to confiscate Palestinian land and property. First codified by the British Mandatory government and later adopted by Israel, the Land Ordinance of 1943 sanc­ tioned the confiscation of private lands for “public purposes,” which was most often defined by Israel as serving the needs of the Jewish population. Israel also adopted the Emergency Regulations left behind by the British Mandate. These regulations allowed military commanders to forcibly declare areas as “closed” and deny Arab residents access to their homes. Many Arab citizens of Israel today find that they are still denied access to their homes because they live on a land in a “closed area.” In 1950, the newly established state passed The Absentee Property Law, which defined all those who were expelled, fled, or left the country between 1948 and 1952 as “absentees” and their prop­ 55  See, for example, Peleg and Waxman (2007); Smooha (1997); Yakobson and Rubinstein (2009). 56  Molavi (2013: 129).

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   489 erty as “absentee property.” The first of a sequence of laws aimed at the expropriation of Arab land, The Absentee Property Law redefined the legal status of the property and lands of Palestinians outside Israel. Here the property and lands of refugees and IDPs were confiscated, transferred to an ad hoc “Custodian” of Absentee Property, and even­ tually used for the purposes of Jewish settlement. Without being openly discriminatory, provisions in this law ensured that the “absent” persons were understood not to include Jews. For instance, this law was also applied to the Palestinians who involuntarily became citizens of Israel and, at the time, about half of the population (an estimated 40,000 to 75,000 people) were not at their usual place of residence as defined by the law. These individuals who remained inside Israel but were not at their place of residence were paradoxically defined as “present absentees” and prevented from reclaiming their lands. Assessments of the total amount of lands Israel defines as “abandoned” and over which it claims ownership range between 420,000 to 580,000 hectares (4.2 and 5.8 mil­ lion dunums) and in the first years of its establishment (between 1948 to 1952 alone) it is estimated that Israel built 350 of the 370 new Jewish-only settlements on lands appropri­ ated under the above law.57 Working in conjunction with a series of Israeli land and planning laws that favor the Jewish population over Arab citizens, residents, and refugees, is the practice of turning land into state land that is maintained by Jewish national and regional planning groups.58 Here the JNF again plays a pivotal role. Formally established by the World Zionist Organization in 1902 and incorporated in England in 1907, the goal of the JNF then and now is to “purchase and develop land as a national resource for the Jewish ­people, by the Jewish people, and for the Jewish people.” After the 1948 war, the Israeli government passed The Jewish National Fund Law of 1953 which dissolves and reorgan­ izes the JNF from a company in the UK to an Israeli company, passing on its racially exclusionary policies to the state. Under the said law, the JNF was transferred to Israel and all its assets situated within the jurisdiction of the government, which would own and develop the lands on behalf of the Jewish people. In 1960–1, The Basic Law: Israel Lands, The Israel Lands Law, and The Israel Lands Administration Law were formulated on behalf of the government of Israel to formalize its land regime so that the land controlled by the JNF would now be administered by a single authority, the Israeli Lands Administration (ILA). Here it was agreed that “the lands controlled by the ILA shall be administered according to the principles of the JNF,” and the objective of purchasing and developing land as a national resource of the Jewish people, by the Jewish people, and for the Jewish people.59 As such, the ILA is forbidden from selling or leasing the land to non-Jews. This extraterritorialization of the land places it beyond the Israeli government. This means that though Israel has a centralized planning system for the use of land, where the government has extensive powers to 57  COHRE and Badil (2005: 41). 58 See, for example, Lustick (1980); COHRE and Badil (2005); Stein (1984); Zayyad (1976); and Kimmerling (1983), among others. 59  Lehn and Davis (1988: 116). See also COHRE and Badil (2005).

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490   shourideh c. molavi oversee plans for the use of land at the local level, quasi-governmental bodies such as the JNF and the ILA are granted special status. With this status, they are able to legally man­ age land, housing, and service provision in a manner almost exclusively serving the Jewish population, rendering the land inaccessible to all Arabs, including the citizen population. The Israeli state now controls 93% of the country’s lands, and in this pre1967 territory, there exist around 1,065 settlements exclusively for Jews. In the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, the settler population has doubled since the Oslo Accords, reaching over 594,000 people by the end of 2015 (including around 208,000 in East Jerusalem) who live in around 130 settlements and 100 outposts.60 When it comes to Jewish demographic and social domination, a particular juridicopolitical practice of settler-colonial exclusion concerns the internal social contradic­ tions and chasms of Israeli nationality. As it stands, the dominance of Jewish-Israeli citizens in the Zionist incorporation regime and others granted the status of “Jewish nationality” under Israeli law has made the notion of “Israeli nationality” an impossibil­ ity. This is an impossibility that has, on numerous occasions, been upheld through vari­ ous Israeli court decisions. Since the 1970s, legal petitions by both Arab and Jewish citizens calling for an “Israeli” nationality, and the changing of their official designations as “Jewish” nationality have been repeatedly rejected by the Israeli government, various District Courts, and the Supreme Court.61 Today, Israel remains the only recognized state in the world whose citizens do not constitute its nationals. In fact, although the Interior Ministry includes 137 nationalities in its list of recognized designations for Israeli citizens, including Assyrian, Albanian, Burmese, Hong Konger, Samaritan, and even Hebrew, it denies its citizens an “Israeli” nationality.62 The Israeli government has even gone so far as to create nationalities that are not recognized outside Israel including “Arab,” “Druze,” and “Unknown” to evade the formation of an “Israeli” nationality.63 To maintain Jewish majority and social dominance, Israel legally and politically refuses to recognize an “Israeli” nation separate from a “Jewish” nation because, from its ideological perspective, Israel is the state of the Jewish nation. To officially recognize an Israeli nationality and even to adopt the language of an “Israeli” nation as a category dis­ tinct from a “Jewish” nation, would imply that at some conceptual level, the two are dis­ tinct. That one category includes a collective identity that the other does not. However small, this conceptual separation between “Israeli” and “Jewish” would have juridicopolitical repercussions for the entrenchment of Jewish ascendancy within the state. Of course, this is because, in doing so, it could open a window of inclusion within the Israeli nation for non-Jewish citizens. The conceptual separation between “Jewish” and “Israeli” along with the potential practical implications of having to formally—and even equally—incorporate a non-Jewish collective within the self-definition and political objectives of the state renders calls for an “Israeli nation” a danger to the existing Zionist consensus. 60  UNHCR’s 2017 Report of the Secretary General (A/HRC/34/39). 61  For more on this, see Molavi (2013: ch. 5). 62  Cook (2010).

63  Cook (2006: 15–17).

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   491 Taken together, reliance on spatial control and demographic and social dominance by the Israeli regime have produced various unique political practices and sequences of laws—only some of which have been mentioned here. These juridico-political practices render the mode of settler-colonial exclusion in contemporary Israel/Palestine apart from exclusion in other European and North American states. Among other practices, this includes: the transfer of some of their sovereign powers to extraterritorial and quasi-governmental bodies whose charters basically obligate them to exclude based on ethnic belonging; the structuring of a citizenship regime that gives rights to members of a group (in Israel’s case, Jewish persons) who are not actually citizens or present in the state yet, and even privilege them over a group (Arab citizens) who do have citizenship and are present in the state; the nationalization of 93% of the land so that one ethnic group can exclude another ethnic group; and the strategic absence of a legal nationality representing a state identity that is accessible to all of its citizens, and the imposition of an ethnically exclusive nationality so as to set apart and prioritize an extraterritorial population (the “Jewish people”) outside its sovereign jurisdiction. Some variations of these exclusionary practices and policies are be shared with various liberal-democratic states, especially settler-colonial ones. However, what sets the Israeli incorporation regime apart is that today no other state exists that implements all of these exclusionary mechanisms of settler-colonial exclusion, and more.

The Contemporary Israeli Incorporation Regime Much has been written about the effects of the policies and practices of the Israeli in­corp­or­ation regime and the meaning of the Jewish state for non-Jews.64 That the Israeli incorporation regime favors Jews and does not treat its inhabitants equally has been extensively outlined and supported by rich academic scholarship on the subject. Serious scholars and observers will not deny that Jewish privilege and dominance stretches over “Israel proper,” the West Bank, and Gaza Strip regardless of actual resi­ dency or legal origin.65 Today, visible symbols such as official state holidays, the flag and other state symbols, the national anthem, the imposition of religious observances, street and road signs depicting the names of villages and towns, and regulated dietary laws are all built on the premise of the social and political hegemony of the Jewish people throughout the Zionist incorporation regime, and are completely dismissive of the Arab population. These exclusionary and discriminatory laws and political practices surface

64 For instance, Jiryis (1976); Rouhana (1997); Bishara (2004); Jamal (2007); Masri (2017), and others. 65  There is also extensive and multifaceted discrimination among Jews of various national and ethnic backgrounds in Israel. For more, see Shohat (1999); Abu (2011).

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492   shourideh c. molavi on a regular basis and are too numerous to mention here,66 but of these The Law of Return (1950) and The Citizenship Law (1952) deserve special mention.67 Key tools for ensuring a Jewish demographic majority, these laws reveal that the fracture embedded in the concept of the “people” at work in Israel is more complicated than that which exists in liberal-democratic states in the West. Determination of who is the desired or preferred political subject to be included in the nation and provided the rights and benefits of recognition in Israel is mainly conducted through these two foundational laws. Perhaps the most important legal expression of Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state, The Law of Return (1950), guarantees the right of immigration to every Jewish per­ son. Instead of a general civic immigration law, The Law of Return only applies to any Jew looking to immigrate to Israel, to her/his spouse, children, grandchildren, and their respective spouses. And it applies to Jewish immigrants after the establishment of Israel and retroactively to Jews, without major preconditions, who had immigrated to Palestine or had been born there before the creation of the State of Israel. The exclusive parameters of this law become evident when Palestinian refugees who were expelled from their land and homes in 1948 are not granted the “right of return” and are not even entitled to residency or citizenship status. An extension of the Zionist project of enabling the return of the exiles as embedded in The Law of Return is The Citizenship Law. This law defines the criteria under which nonJewish persons can be granted citizenship in Israel and grants almost automatic Israeli citizenship to any Jew on immigration “according to the Law of Return” without any length of residency, economic, or language requirement. In essence, a nation-state with a hierarchical incorporation regime is established through this legal tenet encompass­ ing all Jews, and only Jews, by virtue of their ethnonational or religious descent. This law solidifies the secondary citizenship status of Palestinian Arabs, as there is no chance for a non-Jew to acquire automatic citizenship through the Ministry of Interior.68 Together, The Law of Return and The Citizenship Law form the substructure on which a whole arrangement of formal policies, informal practices, and new legislation ensuring Jewish dominance within the State of Israel, are based.69 Ultimately, these two laws are key in managing the hierarchical design of the Israeli body politic. In conjunction with the exclusionary gaze of The Law of Return prioritizing Jewish presence on the land, multiple other formally written legal principles and informal political and ideological practices that make up the Zionist incorporation regime have 66  A list of the legislation and political practices that specifically target Palestinian refugees, residents, and citizens and affect the community disproportionately is provided and regularly updated by Adalah (June 2012) and (March 2011). 67  The Israeli Citizenship Law (ezrahut) is often mistranslated as “Nationality Law.” 68  Even partners of Palestinian citizens of Israel can only gain citizenship or residency status through extensive legal procedures. Evidently, these same two laws, each of which is ideologically and historically foundational to the State of Israel, privileges Jews by systematically excluding Palestinian Arabs who were compelled to flee their villages and homes between 1947 and 1952, deny them their indigenous sta­ tus, strip them of their right to their land, and directly contradict the internationally recognized Palestinian right of return as affirmed in UN Resolution 194. 69  See Adalah (March 2011).

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   493 shaped and produced various forms of Palestinian life, politics, and resistance. Far from mere effects of sovereign power, Palestinians living within Israeli-engineered neighbor­ hoods have actively challenged and undermined the Zionist project for over a century. For this reason, and taking direction from the writings of Palestinian scholar Nadim Rouhana, when tracing Jewish privilege in the Zionist incorporation regime it is im­port­ ant to stress that its settler-colonial project is not yet complete.70 It remains unresolved because its main objective of an ethnically exclusive nation-state is still actively resisted by an indigenous nation that Zionism has defeated but has yet to transform into a ca­pitu­lated population. Rouhana explains: The Palestinians have not granted the Jewish state legitimacy and continue to claim their homeland in different ways: Palestinian citizens deny recognizing Israel as an ethnic Jewish state, claim that the homeland on which the Jewish state is established is rightfully theirs (not exclusively), and seek to transform Israel into a democratic state; Palestinian refugees whose right of return is supported by International law seek to be repatriated to their homeland; and Palestinians under military occupa­ tion reject recognizing Israel as a Jewish state even in a two-state solution framework.71

We are increasingly seeing new forms of multifaceted and creative struggle by Palestinians against Israel’s settler-colonial military regime from their respective juridico-political positionalities as refugees, displaced persons, residents, and citizens. Whether it is the building of cultural centers and experimental educational platforms in West Bank refugee camps,72 the ongoing legal and humanitarian documentation of daily narratives, struggles, and violations of the Israeli army by Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations in Gaza,73 the publishing of vision documents and pro­ posals for an alternative democratic state and social structure in Israel inclusive of Palestinian Arab historical and collective rights,74 the refusal of the majority of Jerusalem Arabs to adopt Israeli citizenship and their daily resistance to Israeli military restrictions to movement and prayer space in the Old City, or the dynamic and evolving international and broad-based Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment, and

70  Rouhana (2015). See also Mamdani (2015). 71  Rouhana (2015: 2). 72  See, for example, the educational project Campus in Camps based in Dheisheh refugee camp in Beit Jala: and the community-based theater and cultural center The Freedom Theatre, located in the Jenin Refugee Camp: . 73  Here the efforts and well-researched regular legal reports of The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights deserve special mention. See and . 74  Published in 2006 and 2007, “The Future Vision of the Palestinian-Arabs in Israel” formed under the auspices of the High Follow-Up Committee for the Arabs in Israel; “The Democratic Constitution” by Adalah; and “The Haifa Declaration” by Mada al-Carmel: The Arab Center for Applied Social Research were drafted by a range of Arab political activists, public figures, and intellectuals. They constitute the first formal statements by collectives from the Palestinian community in Israel on their placement within Israeli society and politics.

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494   shourideh c. molavi sanctions of Israeli political, cultural, and academic institutions75—it is clear that Palestinians are not passive colonial subjects. As such, we must understand contemporary Israel/Palestine through a settler-colonial lens as a project of ethnic exclusion that is still unfolding. Part of Palestinian resistance involves the deorientalization of the Palestinian subject and an understanding of their struggle in a manner that moves beyond their conceptualization as simply victims of Israeli settler-colonial violence. At seventy years, the political, legal, and ethical rationale for denying legitimacy to an ethnically exclusionary Jewish state has become more clear. There is growing awareness among Palestinians and various Israeli and Western observers that confronting the Zionist project of settlement, colonialism, and exclusivist statehood goes far beyond notions of anti-discrimination and models of coexistence. Instead of merely cosmetic changes, the amendments required for genuine inclusion of all residents and citizens living on the land requires a fundamental uprooting of juridico-political ethnic priv­il­ ege, so as to open up the state structure of Israel/Palestine beyond its current racist and settler-colonial contours. Without the ideological, conceptual, and political undoing of the Zionist incorporation regime, not only is equality unachievable (and calls for its implementation necessarily considered an existential threat to the state), but a genuine and accessible democratic system for Arabs and Jews in the territory in whatever cap­ acity is rendered impossible.

Conclusion When considering how power, violence, exclusion, and the law have shaped the his­tor­ic­al transformations and contemporary realities of Israel/Palestine, as scholars and ­observers, we ought to start from certain agreed-upon political and theoretical posi­ tions. This chapter has sought to outline some of these tenets or starting points, in order to offer a strong scholarly and intellectual guide for understanding the foundations of Israel’s policies and practices toward Palestinians living within the various engineered neighborhoods of “Israel proper,” “Jerusalem,” the “West Bank,” the “Gaza Strip,” and the surrounding Palestinian “refugee camps.” I have tried to show that the settler-colonial framework and ideological, legal, and political structures that form the geographic con­ tinuity of exclusion in Israel/Palestine work in conjunction, intersect, and fuel one another. Together, they shape the racialized contours of a unitary Zionist incorporation regime that exposes all Palestinian Arabs, as a non-Jewish indigenous population, to a settler-colonial exclusion regardless of their particular legal and political status.

75  For more, see the ongoing work of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with interna­ tional law: .

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   495 This contemporary reality and the multifaceted and dynamic forms of Palestinian life, politics, and resistance to which it has given rise, problematizes the concept of a Jewish state, even outside the 1967 military occupation. Even in the unlikely agreement to a two-state settlement, if such an arrangement means a Palestinian state and a sep­ar­ ate Israeli state with entrenched Jewish domination and control over its non-Jewish citi­ zen population, then this too fails to address the main political problems at hand.76 Formulated, structured, and arranged through an exclusionary Zionist regime, a Jewish state means both in theory and in practice a state that justifies, legislates, constitutional­ izes, and forcefully renders Palestinians as settler-colonial subjects. Key to uprooting the violent contemporary landscape in Israel/Palestine is first recognizing the the­or­et­ic­al tenets and political principles outlined in this chapter. Indeed, only from this intel­ lectual and political starting point can scholars and observers understand, discuss, and undo the settler-colonial exclusions of contemporary Israel/Palestine.

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76  Molavi (2013: x–xi).

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496   shourideh c. molavi Amara, Ahmad, Ismael Abu-Saad, and Oren Yiftachel (eds) (2013). Indigenous (In)Justice: Human Rights Law and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab/Negev (Cambridge, MA: Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School). Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (2013–15). Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, vol. VIII 2013–15. . Banko, Lauren (2016). The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship: 1918–1947 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Ben-Gurion, David (1954). Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (New York: Philosophical Library). Berger, Yotam (2017). “70% Rise in Building Starts in West Bank Settlements During 2016–17,” Haaretz, June 19, 2017. . Bishara, Azmi (2004). “Israel, Palestine, and the Question of Citizenship.” Lecture at St Anthony’s College, University of Oxford, February 6, 2004. Revised PDF e-publication. . Brull, Michael (2014). “A Tale of Two Settler Colonies,” Overland No. 217 (Summer 2014). (accessed August 2017). B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (2015). “Statistics on Revocation of Residency in East Jerusalem,” updated May 27, 2015. . Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) and Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (2005). Ruling Palestine: A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine. May 2005, . Cook, Jonathan (2006). Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (London: Pluto Press). Cook, Jonathan (2010). “Why There Are No ‘Israelis’ in the Jewish State,” Dissident Voice, April 6, 2010. . Erakat, Noura (2014). “Palestinian Refugees and the Syrian Uprising: Filling the Protection Gap during Secondary Forced Displacement,” International Journal of Refugee Law 26,4: 581–621. Ghanem, Asʾad (2001). The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel, 1948–2000: A political study (New York: State University of New York Press). Gisha (2017). Letter to Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman, June 11, 2017. . Goldberg, David Theo (2008). “Racial Palestinianization,” in Ronit Lentin (ed.), Thinking Palestine (New York: Zed Books), 25–45. Gordon  N. and M.  Ram (2016). “Ethnic Cleansing and the Formation of Settler Colonial Geographies,” Political Geography 53: 20–29. HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual (2017). Press Release on April 6, 2017. . HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual. “Child Registration in Jerusalem,” docu­ ments and case summaries. Updated until 2017. . Hilal, Jamal (1976). “Imperialism and Settler Colonialism in West Asia: Israel and the Arab Palestinian Struggle,” Utafi 1,1: 51–70. Hilal, Jamal (2015). “Rethinking Palestine: Settler-Colonialism, Neo-Liberalism and Individualism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Contemporary Arab Affairs 8,3: 351–362.

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   497 Jabareen, Yosef (2017). “Controlling Land and Demography in Israel: The Obsession with Territorial and Geographic Dominance,” in Nadim Rouhana and Sahar S. Huneidi (eds), Israel and its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 238–265. Jamal, Amal (2007). “Nationalizing States and the Constitution of ‘Hollow Citizenship’: Israel and its Palestinian Citizens,” Ethnopolitics 6,4: 471–493. Jefferis, Danielle C. (2012). “The ‘Center of Life’ Policy: Institutionalizing Statelessness in East Jerusalem,” Institute of Palestine Studies 50. . Jiryis, Sabri (1976). The Arabs in Israel (New York: Monthly Review Press). Khalidi, Walid (ed.) (1971). From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948 (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies). Kimmerling, Baruch (1983). Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California, Institute of International Studies). Koenig, Israel (1976). “Top Secret: Memorandum-Proposal—Handling the Arabs of Israel,” March 1976. Reprint Journal of Palestine Studies 6,1: 190–200. Khoury, Jack (2017). “Israel Revokes Citizenship of Hundreds of Negev Bedouin, Leaving Them Stateless,” Haaretz, August 25, 2017. . Lehn, Walter (1974). “The Jewish National Fund,” Journal of Palestine Studies 3,4: 74–96. Lehn, Walter and Uri Davis (1988). The Jewish National Fund (London: Kegan Paul International). Lloyd, David (2012). “Settler Colonialism and the State of Exception: The Example of Palestine/ Israel,” Settler Colonial Studies 2,1: 59–80. Lustick, Ian (1980). Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press). Mada al-Carmel: Arab Center for Applied Social Research (2007). “The Haifa Declaration,” May 2007. . Magnes, Judah et al. (1947). Palestine—Divided or United? The Case for a Bi-National Palestine before the United Nations (Jerusalem: Ihud). Magnes, Judah and Martin Buber (1947). Arab-Jewish Unity: Testimony before the AngloAmerican Inquiry Commission for Ihud (Union) Association (London: Victod Gollancz). Mamdani, Mahmoud (2015). “Settler Colonialism: Then and Now,” Critical Inquiry 41: 596–614. Masri, Mazen (2017). The Dynamics of Exclusionary Constitutionalism: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State (Portland, OR: Hart Publishing). Mignolo, Walter D. (2007). “Introduction: Coloniality of Power and De-Colonial Thinking,” Cultural Studies 21,2–3: 155–167. Molavi, Shourideh  C. (2013). Stateless Citizenship: The Palestinian-Arab Citizens of Israel (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers). Pappé, Ilan (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: One World Publishers). Pappé, Ilan (2008). “Zionism as Colonialism: A Comparative View of Diluted Colonialism in Asia and Africa,” South Atlantic Quarterly 107,4: 611–633. Pappé, Ilan (2011). The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Peleg, Ilan and Dov Waxman (2007). “Losing Control? A Comparison of Majority- Minority Relations in Israel and Turkey” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 13,3: 431–463.

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498   shourideh c. molavi Piterberg, Gabriel (2008). The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel (New York: Verso Books). Robinson, Shira (2013). Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Rouhana, Nadim (1997). Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Rouhana, Nadim (2015). “Homeland Nationalism and Guarding Dignity in a Settler Colonial Context: The Palestinian Citizens of Israel Reclaim Their Homeland,” Borderlands E-Journal 14: 1. Rouhana, Nadim and Areej Sabbagh-Khoury (2014). “Settler-Colonial Citizenship: Conceptualizing the Relationship Between Israel and its Palestinian Citizens,” Settler Colonial Studies 5,3: 205–225. Roy, Sara (1987). “The Gaza Strip: A Case of Economic De-Development,” Journal of Palestine Studies 17,1: 56–88. Roy, Sara (2016). The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development, expanded 3rd edn. Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. Said, Edward (1979). “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims,” Social Text 1: 7–58. Shafir, Gershon (1999). “Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach,” in Ilan Pappé (ed.). The Israel/Palestine Question (New York: Routledge), 81–96. Shalev, Carmel and Sigal Gooldin (2006). “The Uses and Misuses of In Vitro Fertilization in Israel: Some Sociological and Ethical Considerations,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 12: 151–176. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera (2014). “Human Suffering in Colonial Contexts: Reflections From Palestine,” Settler Colonial Studies 4,3: 277–290. Shohat, Ella (1999). “The Invention of the Mizrahim,” Journal of Palestine Studies 29,1: 5–20. Smooha, Sammy (1997). “Ethnic Democracy: Israel as an Archetype,” Israel Studies 2,2: 198–241. Stein, Kenneth  W. (1984). The Land Question in Palestine: 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill, CA: University of North California Press). Sultany, Nimer (2003). Citizens Without Citizenship, Mada’s First Annual Political Monitoring Report 2000–2002 (Haifa, Israel: Mada al-Carmel: Arab Center for Applied Social Research). Soysal, Yasemin (1994). Limits of Citizenship, Migration and Post-National Citizenship in Europe (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press). United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Council (2014). Twenty-fifth session. A/ HRC/25/28. “Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem, and in the Occupied Syrian Golan,” February 12, 2014. . United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Council (2017). Thirty-fourth session. A/ HRC/34/39. “Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem, and in the Occupied Syrian Golan,” March 16, 2017. . Veracini, Lorenzo (2007). “Settler Colonialism and Decolonization,” Borderlands E-journal 6,2. Veracini, Lorenzo (2013). “The Other Shift: Settler Colonialism, Israel and the Occupation,” Journal of Palestine Studies 42,2: 26–42. Wolfe, Patrick (2006). “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8,4: 387–409.

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Contemporary Israel/Palestine   499 Wolfe, Patrick (2012). “New Jews for Old: Settler State Formation and the Impossibility of Zionism: In Memory of Edward W. Said,” Arena Journal 37/38: 285–321. Yakobson, Alexander and Amnon Rubinstein (2009). Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights (New York: Routledge). Yiftachel, Oren (2002). “The Shrinking Space of Citizenship: Ethnocratic Politics in Israel,” Middle East Report 223: 38–45. Zalloua, Zahi (2017). Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question: Beyond the Jew and the Greek (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing). Zayyad, Tawfiq (1976). “The Fate of the Arabs in Israel,” Journal of Palestine Studies 6,1: 92–103. Zreik, Raef (2008). “The Persistence of the Exception: Some Remarks on the Story of Israeli Constitutionalism,” in Ronit Lentin (ed.). Thinking Palestine (New York: Zed Books), 131–147. Zureik, Elia (1979). The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

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chapter 24

N ew A pproach e s to th e A n thropol ogy of Isl a m ic Mov em en ts Women’s Activism and the Question of Subjectivity Sherine Hafez

The immediate years following Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in December of 2010 reshaped history in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Analysts and observers of the political status quo in this region of the world produced a substantial amount of scholarship about the Arab uprisings situating these trans­form­ations historically and sociopolitically. Spanning a wide range of topics covering emer­ging political and social transformations, from experiments with democratic processes, rethinking the new nation-state, changing boundaries in the Levant, the refugee tragedy in Syria, Sunni/Shii sectarianism, armed guerilla warfare in Libya and a proxy war in Yemen—the list is daunting. A good amount of published material deals with assessing the potency of Islamist organizations vis-à-vis other emerging political groups. More often than not, the aim of many of these contributions focused on the outcome of the socalled rivalry between secularism and Islamism in the region. Despite the importance of the topic, however, few provided any adequate problematization of the development of these conceptual categories within their local contexts and histories. Approaches that operate from within an assumption that normalizes the binary between Islamism and secular politics tend to view each as distinct and separate categories rather than as mutually productive, interactive processes that are more fluid than oppositional. With the widening rift between secular and religious groups in Muslim majority countries, “Islamism” continues to be reified as a separate entity from “secularism,” thus uprooting

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New Approaches to the Anthropology   501 it from its historical and sociopolitical context. The following chapter critically examines these binarizing discourses to propose an interdisciplinary approach that situates Islamic movements within broader discussions of social power structures that frame the discursive contentious divide between the secular and the religious. Taking ethnographic data from an Islamic women’s reform movement in Egypt as a starting point, the chapter argues that the reification of the so-called “religious subject” as the opposite of the “secular other” in literature in the MENA is not only distortive to the analysis of Islamic movements but has repercussions on how we understand political and social transformations in postrevolutionary Arab Muslim-majority societies. By focusing on the subjectivities of Islamic women activists in a social reform movement in Cairo, the data reveals that social subjects are produced through the multifarious forces that constitute their sociopolitical environments and not simply through reified identity pol­it­ ics. Subject-making is a messy, complex, and often contradictory process which defies the neat, diametric understanding of categories of Islam and secularity. Moreover, subject production is discontinuous, multifarious, and rhizomatic. Hence, participants in Muslim activism need to be viewed through ethnographic and theoretical lenses that capture the refractions and complexities of subject-making processes. Understanding that Muslim subjects shape their movements in ways that reflect the intersecting forces of Islam and secularism despite putting in place margins and boundaries that proclaim their political distinctiveness can be instrumental to new ways of examining Islamic movements today.

Shaping the “Female Muslim Subject” In news broadcast by the international media in January 2011 large numbers of Islamic activist women in Cairo demonstrated to the world that women who follow Islamic teachings are not the docile obedient subjects often portrayed by media pundits in the West. In fact, in one of the most telling moments in the Egyptian uprising right before Husni Mubarak was toppled, a group of Islamic activist women of different ages, carrying the Egyptian flag, marched across Tahrir chanting, “Ihna krihna el sout al waty, min delwaqty mish hantaty!!” [“We have come to hate the low voice, from this moment we shall not bow our heads!”]. Such public declaration made by women who are traditionally seen as oppressed and silent because they choose to cover their hair or espouse the tenets of a religion often linked to misogyny turned out to be somewhat disconcerting to many onlookers. They chose to attribute this show of voice and empowerment to “revolutionary fervor” or to an unfortunate conspiracy theory that might claim that these Islamist women’s voices are not “genuine” but in fact “bought” by Mubarak opponents or the now infamous Muslim Brotherhood. These depictions

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502   sherine hafez of activist Islamist identifying women either imply that their actions were driven by irrational emotion brought about by the excitement of revolution or by devious intentionality motivated by illicit monetary gain—implications that undermine and reduce public political participation through simplistic explanations that silence and marginalize social actors. Whether these abundant scenarios that proliferated post the uprising of January 21, 2011 in Egypt reflect real or imaginary references is not the point. Rather, it is the process of shaping religious political actors in the public sphere that is of interest. Public def­am­ation, gossip, and bad press publishing contentious and conflicting information have become a common way to create social fragmentation and undermine solidarity among the masses in postrevolutionary Egypt. Yet, such negative claims have traditionally followed members of Islamist groups for decades. The classification of the ­behavior of religious subjects in the public sphere in Egypt into reductive categorizations as, “treacherous,” “misguided,” or just simply “irrational,” builds upon cultivated discourses that have faithfully served hegemonic power. There is a long history in the production of knowledge about the “religious other” vis-à-vis the dominant secular default subject in Western scholarship which in turn has been the topic of critique in anthropology and the social sciences. In studies of the post-colonialist Arab world, secular-centric the­or­et­ic­al approaches have received sharp criticism from various anthropologists who focus on the study of Islam as a historical tradition. Processes of colonization and imperialist dominance preside over the construction of ideologies that facilitate violence against and occupation of “so-called” traditional and “underdeveloped” populations.1 However, this institutionalized knowledge, which Edward Said calls “Orientalist,” is often deployed historically within Muslim majority countries for the rationalization of state control which defines itself as “secular” and “modern” as opposed to “Islamist” and “traditional” groups. Though this process of appropriation is more complex than what I have described here and is perhaps a topic of further study, it is an interesting lesson in the cyclical nature of colonialist normative knowledge structures and the systematic ways by which these organize political and cultural processes to this day. One good example of these constructs or tropes readily employed when examining a postcolonialist Islamic “other” is the concept of rationality. Talal Asad points out that rationality is a pivotal concept around which binary distinctions between secular subjects and religious subjects are constructed. Islamic “traditionalists” are thus represented as having failed to modernize because of “an irrational reluctance to abandon tradition.”2 Asad argues in his book Formations of the Secular that anthropologists can no longer afford not to historisize the secular nor to view it as a normative development of the religious.3

1  Said (1978).

2  Asad (1991, 318).

3  Asad (2003).

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New Approaches to the Anthropology   503

We Have Come to Hate the Low Voice, from this Moment We Shall Not Bow Our Heads! Similarly, in the field of gender in the Middle East, an implicit binary emerged not so long ago, in the accounts about women who engage in Islamic activism. The debate between two major trends in the literature revolved around whether Islamic activism may be empowering or disempowering to these women. On one hand, one camp readily saw opportunities for empowerment through religious activism for women in the Muslim world.4 On the opposing side, however, scholars were unconvinced that a patriarchal religion such as Islam could hold the promise of any form of emancipation for women.5 Of interest in this debate, is not only that most of these studies did not foreground the women themselves as their main reference, but also that these contradictory theoretical positions were informed by one particular paradigm. At the root of these assumptions lies the core normative conviction that not only reifies religion and secu­ larism as bounded and anachronistic concepts but one that views them as binaries. Therefore, within this debate, one can view “Muslim women” as empowered if they employ a modernized version of Islam or dismiss them as oppressed—or worse, falsely conscious women who are blinded by faith into believing there is a place for them in these movements. Glossing over embedded assumptions in scholarship regarding the imbricated relationship between Islam and secularism often leads to analysis that does not reflect the lived experience of Muslim subjects. Regardless of identity politics and the strength of religious conviction in many cases, Muslim subjects live in a world informed by embedded discourses of religion and secularism, they are shaped by histories of nationalism, modernizing projects, and are often born as postcolonialist subjects already constituted through discourses of imperialism and domination. Postcolonial subjects are honed through relations of domination whereby colonial ideology frames notions of selfhood and sovereignty. Beginning with the assumption that Islam and secularism are binaries thus obscures the on the ground complexity of individual subjectivity of participants of Islamic movements. Such assumptions distort the nature, vision, and nuances of the practice of Islamism in the contemporary world. In what follows, I question the implicit normative notion of a bounded “religious subjectivity” in studies of Islamic movements in the Middle East by arguing for an interdisciplinary anthropological approach that takes account of the inconsistency of subject production and the heterogeneity of (post) modern subjectivity. Such an approach will trouble the tendency to see Muslim subjects as consistent, whole, and antithetical to secular subjects. In an Islamic movement that has rapidly spread across Egyptian cities, women engage in Islamic activism that engages with social reform and the Islamization of the Egyptian public sphere. These women were my interlocutors for the 4  Cooke (2001), Karam (1998), Zuhur (1995). 5  Moghissi (1999), Mojab (2001), Shahidian (2002).

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504   sherine hafez better part of a ten-year field research project (Hafez 2003, 2011). Their lives, memories, and experiences honed my analysis of their subjectivities, revealing the inadequacy of the normative binaries of religion/secularism, trad­ition/modernity, submission/emancipation, and of assumptions of subjectivity implicit in relativistic approaches to the study of “the other.” A stark contrast between binary representations of subjectivity unfolded: on one hand, there is an emphasis on an emotionally charged religious subject that hones itself through physical comportment and repeated religious ritual—thus shaping an “embodied subjectivity” found in “non-Western” Muslim, postcolonialist, and developing societies. On the other, the “rational,” individual subject representing the default values of responsibility and obligation deemed necessary to members of modern secular “Western/ ized” society. In my observations and lengthy conversations with my interlocutors, the fluidity and complexity of their lives unraveled slowly.6 This had a direct impact on the analytical categories I have taken to task which to a large degree still influence the field of Islamic movements and women’s studies in the region.

An Islamic Women’s Movement (1990–2007) The advent of the past president Mubarak’s regime saw Islamism resurface with a strong intensity relying on old networks of social services such as health units, schools, and widely spread systems of social welfare that, after many years, proved far more reliable than the retreating support of the state. As Egypt’s economic conditions worsen, the rates of unemployment are directly impacted. The capital, Cairo, is besieged with rural workers looking for work. Overpopulation directly undermines the infrastructure, which in many parts of Cairo was inadequate to begin with. Female-headed households are estimated to be 22 percent of households in Egypt, with rates of illiteracy remaining especially high among women, who suffer from lack of vocational training or op­por­tun­ ities for employment. Rates of population under the poverty line in Egypt have increased from 17.1 percent in 1981–2, 24.2 percent in 1990–1, falling to 22.9 percent in 1995–6 and reaching a lower rate of 16.7 percent in 1999–2000. Yet despite these erratic fluctuations, 10.7 million people in Egypt remain in need of food and necessities, which compared to 7.3 million in 1981–2, shows an annual increase in poor populations of 2.15 percent (World Bank 2002).7 The failure of modern projects of reform to uphold their promised agenda was easily challenged by local Islamic alternatives such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Though male leadership led the Islamic revival, Islamic women spearheaded a popular movement bent on social reform. Women activists lead this popular religious movement that has gained impetus in the last two decades. In addressing itself 6  All names have been changed to protect their privacy. 7  All the names of these centers have been changed to protect their privacy.

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New Approaches to the Anthropology   505 to women, it aimed at the Islamization of Egyptian society and the replacement of what were perceived to be alien corrupt and immoral practices with Islamic values and norms. Islamists regard this aim as the only way to rise above the present state of what they describe as chaos in society. However, it was not until the late 1980s when a woman from Syria arrived with her businessman husband to Cairo that a women’s Islamic movement truly took shape. This woman, whom I will call Hagga Warda, was to create the biggest network of women’s Islamic activism in Egypt’s history. Little is known about Hagga Warda, who is a small woman in her late sixties now, around whom hundreds of women rally. Very low key and unassuming, she commanded the awe and respect of the women who saw in her an inspiration for their activism. Most of the women activists I met talk about Hagga Warda as the founder of Islamic social reform activism. She is not perceived as a leader, but more as a symbolic figure who enjoys prestigious historical importance as the founder of the movement. Out of the organization Hagga Warda developed in Heliopolis, several other satellite organizations emerged in other suburbs of Cairo. There are organizations in Helwan, Mohandisseen, Maadi, and Haram, in strategic locations across the capital. Islamic women activists purposefully chose the residential areas around the city to start their organizations close to their homes and neighborhoods. Out of the main or­gan­iza­ tions located in the suburbs, emerged gamʿiyyat or associations such as those I name Al Hilal and Al Fath, where I conducted my field research. Private Voluntary Organizations (PVOs) or gamʿiyyat is what activist women call the centers where they work. In general terms, a gamʿiyya means an association, literally however the term refers to a community of people coming together as a group. Although many women’s Islamic PVOs have mosques attached to them, ironically these are run by Islamic male clergy and consequently, the women may not always have access to them. The scope of Islamic activism, however, goes beyond these locations, to extend to the poorer districts of the city and villages on the outskirts of Cairo. One such location is the village of Mehmeit, where a group of activists focused their attention on improving women’s living conditions by eradicating poverty and creating a sustainable form of development. The rapid increase in these organizations is often taken as an indicator of the lack of state support for the growing masses who are increasingly dependent on state administration to meet the necessary demands of the soaring costs in living expenses and the decreasing value of earned wages. In 1992, there were 3554 religious organizations in Egypt that amounted to 31.4 percent of all civil organizations. By 2002, religious or­gan­ iza­tions grew by 34 percent.8 These statistics reveal that Islamic activism grew relatively rapidly in the last decades. The Islamic activist women I worked with came from various socioeconomic levels and all levels of education. Scholars have commented on similar demographics from around the Arab world. Esposito describes them as, “a new emerging alternative elite, modern, educated, but (more) formally Islamically oriented than their mothers and grandmothers.”9 Women who participate in Islamic movements follow an Islamic 8  Kandil and Ben Nafiss (1992).

9  Esposito (1998, x).

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506   sherine hafez i­deology that addresses itself to various walks of life, creating a unifying force among them that transcends class and economic standing and provides them with the impetus to address people’s needs and fulfill their religious obligations. Gamʿiyyat Al Hilal (not its actual name), is nestled in a tree-lined street in one of Cairo’s suburbs. Over a hundred women actively work at gamʿiyyat Al Hilal. The or­gan­ iza­tion is part of a network of PVOs that are most well-established in Egypt and act as the driving force behind the women’s Islamic movement in the country. But this network is not only connected in Cairo but also enjoys links to other Islamic women’s organizations in neighboring countries such as Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. These networks often spring to action in times of crisis such as devastating earthquakes, war, and floods. In 2005, Al Hilal, together with its affiliated organizations in Cairo, sent six 42-foot-square containers of relief food and clothing to Pakistan within two weeks of an earthquake disaster. The scale of their fundraising ability demonstrated how Al Hilal is well established within Egyptian society. Of all the projects that attested to the organization’s success in mobilizing resources and personnel, it was their development project in a village I call Mehmeit that epitomized this more clearly which will be discussed here.

A Snapshot of Islamic Development While the focus of the work of gamʿiyyat Al Hilal is in Cairo’s poorest quarters, a few miles down the Nile, a group of Islamic women activists gathered to promote an Islamic form of development in a village I call Mehmeit. It was there that it became clear how Islamic teachings inspired the development project, but that despite the activists’ branding of their work, their project to improve the villagers’ lives could not be separated from the state's modernizing schemes. Al Hilal’s development project in the village of Mehmeit illustrated clearly how Islamic teachings and the nation-state’s modernizing schemes intersected fluidly in ways that debunk normative binary constructs that posit Islam and secular liberal modern principles as dichotomous. The project at Mehmeit, was run by two women, Amal and Samira, who had spent the last three years working (in 2006) leading an Islamic reform program in the village. Other activists came and went but the two women were there every week. As they worked to develop the impoverished rural community according to Islamic teachings, their goals and organizational plan often mirrored disciplinary techniques and modernizing approaches that the Egyptian state had followed over the years. The regulation of behavior, systematic supervision, and record-taking, the restructuring of daily ac­tiv­ ities, timed sessions, and scheduling—all familiar methods meant to inculcate discipline and regulate households by the state—were observed in Mehmeit. Amal and Samira took copious notes and maintained detailed records of the village households—all eighty of them thus far. This enabled them not only to monitor progress and development but also to note lack of progress and absence of investment in the program they were disseminating to the villagers.

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New Approaches to the Anthropology   507 As I observed Amal and Samira’s work in the village, the contours of a project for a particular subjectivity of the women of the village began to emerge. This Muslim ideal of womanhood emerged from their records and their discussions and interactions with the women. Their desires for an ideal Muslim woman informed by the principles of Islamic tradition that focus on closeness to the divine, dedication to Islamic teaching knowledge and learning, merged with the liberal secular emphasis on discipline, autonomy, independence, and productivity of individuals. Neither viewed in contradiction nor perceived in tension with Islamic teachings, the Muslim ideal for womanhood was religiously well-informed, educated, capable of making self-motivated choices as well as financially independent. At the core of the relationship between the activist women and the village women was a contractual relationship. This was the basis of the exchange of goods and services in return for compliance and investment in the development program. While the village women were expected to attend religious lessons, literacy classes, to follow hygienic practices, as well as to work on several types of production, the activist women would reward them with gifts, monthly wages, and would give them the opportunity to acquire loans and sustain financial independence. The Al Hilal women placed significant value on the economic productivity of the village women. In fact, they often emphasized the commitment to the program as essential, even in cases when this was against the will of the village women’s husbands. While contractual relationships are prevalent in Islamic society as they are in liberal secular societies, Amal and Samira used the contract to motivate and encourage commitment among the village women. By emphasizing rewards and individual autonomy, the Islamic activist women directly followed modernizing projects and secular principles by underscoring accountability to the contract and not to divine benevolence. In the village, Amal and Samira emphasized Islamic values such as piety, honesty, excelling in one’s work, dedication to the principles of Islamic faith, kindness, and doing good in the community. As leaders of a project of this size, they were, however, cast in a space that was not simply about worship or pious inculcation. The role they played was that of the “developer” while the village women became the “developed.” Implicit in these roles is a hierarchy, integral to local and international development programs which validated as well as rationalized the developers’ role vis-à-vis those who were being developed. Mark Hobart describes this all-too-familiar dynamic as a “patho­ logic­al condition” where those being developed initially need to be defined as ignorant or needy by the hegemonic developer.10 The villagers of Mehmeit readily fell into the position of those in need. Their poverty, illiteracy, lack of access to resources and Islamic knowledge, all contributed to the hierarchal and unequal power structure in their relationship to the women of Al Hilal. This ensured that the Islamic activist women occupied the position of the knowledgeable “experts,” consequently bestowing them with authority and status. Their power drew on their detailed knowledge of the village and the systems of regulation and monitoring of the villagers’ progress—all similar to structures of modern state control that rely on the regulation and discipline of human bodies and “bio-power,” as named by Michel Foucault.11 Emphasis on productivity, scheduling, 10  Hobart (1993).

11  Foucault (1998).

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508   sherine hafez timed sessions, and the focus on self-fashioning as a means of achieving progress and upward mobility, all point to modern techniques of discipline that underlie liberal secu­ lar life in European society. These forms of disciplinary reforms also found their way into the Egyptian lexicon as part of a long history of colonization and nation-state building processes.12 The domestic sphere became a space for inculcating bourgeois notions of individualism central for the creation of modern secular subjects obedient and compliant with state systems and programs. Processes of census-taking, the introduction of health and hygiene in schools, child-rearing practices that foregrounded the superiority of scientific European pedagogy as well as school curricula, were all means to that end. As mothers of the nation, women and young girls were the particular target of modernization schemes that sought to instill in them modern disciplined values necessary for future generations.13 Thus the development project of the village of Mehmeit encapsulated these larger systems of modern secular government and the complex histories of secularization and modernization in Egypt. As products of this history, the activist women of Al Hilal are subjects shaped through Islamic teachings cultivated at the gamiʿiyya which merge fluidly with the principles and ideals of a secularizing state.

Conclusion Considering the inseparability of secularism and piety has the potential to provide an understanding of the desires and subjectivities of participants of Islamic movements. Asad’s analysis of the history of the imbrication of secularism and religion in Egypt is a helpful starting point for situating subjectivity.14 From this point of departure, we can begin to understand that participants in Islamic movements are not caught between two polarizing forces: modern secular values and an Islamic return to tradition. This approach calls into question liberal modernist assumptions about bounded individuality, the stability of selfhood, and the normative view this creates, then binarizes a secular versus religious subject. Engaging on the level of the subject opens possibilities to seeing how desiring modern subjects are embedded in ambivalence, contradiction, and het­ ero­gen­eity rather than reified categories of thought. It is in the ethnographic moments of inconsistency that this ambivalent subjectivity can be captured—not as a single subject position in which the self undergoes a consistent and uniform journey of self-fashioning. The data gathered from my fieldwork experience in the village of Mehmeit pointed to the subtle ways discourses mesh fluidly and inhabit the lives of modern subjects. As subjects of a modernizing state that has focused its institutions on the inculcation of modern liberal values in its population, the activism of the women of Al Hilal reflected how 12  Mitchell (1988).

13  Shakry (1998).

14  Asad (2003).

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New Approaches to the Anthropology   509 Islamic notions of development as worship and liberal modern schemes of development can be reconstituted through discourse and action as one impetus. Though these modern liberal ideals are not contradictory to Islamic principles, discerning similarities and differences are not the objective here. Understanding how fluidly these discourses mutually inform one another in the activist women’s vision is testimony to how sub­ject­ iv­ity cannot be binarized. It was apparent that whereas Islamic teachings were the driving principle behind the development project, these could not be separated from the state’s modernizing schemes and the Al Hilal’s activists’ own interpretation of Islamic beliefs and traditions. Muslim ideals of womanhood that focused on closeness to the divine, dedication to Islamic teaching, knowledge, and learning, merged with liberal secular emphases on discipline, autonomy, independence, and productivity of in­di­vid­ uals—values that in themselves do not contradict Islamic beliefs. These observations from the field are often mirrored in the everyday lived experiences of individuals in Muslim majority countries whose lives often engage seamlessly with Islamic teachings, secular politics as well as histories of colonial and nation-state building projects. Yet, as we have witnessed post the so-called “Arab Spring,” binary constructs of Islam and secularism often loom as intractable, thus dividing communities and neighborhoods, and even families. The consequences of these seemingly intractable normative assumptions can be witnessed across the Arab world where Islamist and secu­lar groups fight bloody wars that preclude any understanding of the mutuality of the histories behind these subject positions. In Egypt, the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood government postrevolution in 2012 painfully rekindled these binary positions between Islam and secularism, and gained momentum, eventually resulting in the confrontation in Rabʿa ʿAdawiya Square. Military police dispersed a two-month sit-in by Islamist supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the deposed Muslim Brotherhood president. This resulted in the massacre of almost 800 Morsi supporters. The confrontation, although not simply the result of binary thinking, did however point to the facile deployment of assumptions around religion and politics in ways that side-stepped any critical understanding of their intersections. Secularism and religion are often taken uncritically as anachronistic, dehistoricized, and decontextualized units of analysis. This is especially significant to studies of Islamic movements today due to the closely tied relationship of these concepts to particular Western historicities, as Asad argues in his seminal work Formations of the Secular. Normative assumptions regarding the constructs of religion and secularism have largely dictated a monolithic view of participants who engage in Islamic activism as religious subjects primarily devoted to a spiritual, internal faith. Discourses of modernity have constructed separate spheres of what they define as religion and secularism. Yet, these spheres, in practice, are not always so neatly demarcated as they are in modern prin­ ciples. Religion is not a separate construct from politics, nor can it be described as existing in the private realm. Subjects shaped by the temporal dynamics of colonialism, modernization, secularization, and nation-building projects present more complex and heterogeneous forms of subjectivity. What also becomes clear in the research findings is that models of subject production that underscore consistency and homogeneity are

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510   sherine hafez unhelpful in determining how individuals shape their dispositions. Therefore, representing religious selfhood as continuous and systematic self-fashioning subjects seeking a fixed “religious ideal” ignores the complexity and seamlessness of the desires that animate these subjectivities. This also renders inaccurate the homogenization of in­di­vid­ uals who participate in Islamic activism into one overarching group. Subject production in Islamic majority societies is not consistent, linear, or homogeneous. Modern subjectivity has been understood to be rhizomatic (meaning fluid, non linear), impartial, and often inconsistent and incomplete.15 The role gendered subjects play in these processes and a critical epistemological gendered paradigm that takes into account the genealogies of normative categories of religion and secularism and their intersections with gender are central to grappling with the complexity of subjectivity in postcolonialist societies. The discourses and daily routines of those who engage in religious movements are necessary for a deeper understanding of Islamic movements today.

References Asad, Talal (1991). “From the History of Colonial Anthropology to the Anthropology of Western Hegemony,” in George Stocking (ed.). Colonial Situations: Essays on the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press), 314–324. Asad, Talal (2003). Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Cooke, Miriam (2001). Women Claim Islam. Creating Islamic Feminism Through Literature (London: Routledge). Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (2004). A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Mark Seem and Helen Lane (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Esposito, John (1998). “Introduction,” in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John Esposito (eds). Islam, Gender and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press). Foucault, Michel (1998). The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (London: Penguin). Hafez, Sherine (2003). The Terms of Empowerment: Islamic Women Activists in Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press). Hafez, Sherine (2011). An Islam of Her Own: Reconsidering Religion and Secularism in Women’s Islamic Movements (New York: New York University Press). Hobart, Mark (1993). An Anthropological Critique of Development: The Growth of Ignorance (London: Routledge). Kandil, Amany and Sara Ben Nafiss (1992). Al-Jamʿiyyat al-ahliyyah fi Misr, Citizens’ Societies in Egypt (Cairo: MDSE). Karam, Azza (1998). Women, Islamisms and the State (London: St Martin’s Press). Mitchell, Timothy (1988). Colonizing Egypt (New York: Cambridge University Press). Moghissi, Haideh (1999). Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis (London: Zed Books). Mojab, S. (2001) “Theorizing the Politics of ‘Islamic Feminism,’ ” Feminist Review 69: 124–146. 15  Deleuze and Guattari (2004).

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New Approaches to the Anthropology   511 Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books). Shahidian, Hammed (2002). Women in Iran: Emerging Voices in the Women’s Movement (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press). Shakry, Omnia (1998). “Schooled Mothers and Structured play: Child-rearing in turn-of- thecentury Egypt,” in Lila Abu-Lughod (ed.). Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 126–170. World Bank (2002). “Arab Republic of Egypt. Poverty Reduction in Egypt: Diagnosis and Strategies” (Washington DC: World Bank). Zuhur, Sherifa (1995). “Women Can Embrace Islamic Gender Roles,” in David Bender and Bruno Leone (eds). Islam. Opposing Viewpoints (New York: Greenhaven).

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Pa rt V I

F ROM PROT E ST MOV E M E N T S TO THE ARAB U PR ISI NG S

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chapter 25

The A r a b U pr isi ngs of 2011 i n Histor ica l Perspecti v e John Chalcraft

This chapter aims to put the Arab uprisings of 2011 into historical perspective. It takes the road less traveled by focusing not on the actions and reactions of powerful and established collective actors, such as the military, or on systems, such as crony capitalism or the new media, but on the mass uprisings themselves. These uprisings are forms of contentious mobilization that involved the new and forceful political intervention of diverse masses of previously unpoliticized subaltern actors. The chapter has two tasks. The first is to develop arguments about what sorts of contexts, antecedents, and comparisons, both within and beyond the region, can help to identify and explain the uprisings. A danger here is determinism and the apparent wisdom of hindsight. The second, related task is to identify what was new, distinctive, and creative in these uprisings, and to find ways to understand such active forms of agency, without explaining them away in terms of something other than themselves. This chapter argues that these uprisings, distinctively directed against domestic regimes that had previously incarnated anticolonial nationalism, can be compared to uprisings against domestic regimes in the region before 1914, and can be contextualized fruitfully in terms of rising protest against domestic regimes since the 1970s. It is proposed that the important context for these uprisings is the thinning of the political hegemony of domestic regimes in the region since that time. The chapter highlights the uprisings’ democratic genealogies, which played a role in making crowd unity possible. These uprisings are compared to people-power uprisings in other parts of the world and new forms of radically democratic activism. As for the second task, it is argued that the mass uprisings—historical comparisons and explanatory contexts notwithstanding—were surprising and creative. Like the Iranian revolution of 1978–79, their emergence was surprising because it was not preceded by state breakdown, military defeat, or fiscal crisis, and their course was

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516   john chalcraft ­ npredictable because they were capable in some instances of ousting dictators. It is u argued that the constitution of the people as an active, rights-bearing, and sovereign subject, distinct in important ways from the people of anticolonial nationalism, was one of the most important innovations at work in 2011; this was a creative act that was fortified by new networked modes of organizing, and new strategies and tactics such as occupation of public squares and pitched battles with police. In closing the chapter considers some of the weaknesses of people-power uprisings, suggesting that unity in the face of segmentation is one of the most fundamental conditions of success for this form of contentious mobilization.

Popular Uprisings that Brought Down Presidents for Life The Arab uprisings of 2011 were new in that for the first time since independence the domestic regime of an Arab state or at least the real head of the regime was brought down by a mass popular uprising. When the Tunisian army refused to open fire on masses of civilian protestors, Bin Ali, the strongman president there since 1987, boarded a plane to Saudi Arabia on January 14, 2011 and did not return. Mass uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria followed the fall of Bin Ali, along with protests in many other parts of the region. In little more than a year, three more dictators of long tenure fell or were dislodged from power, albeit in increasingly complicated and indirect ways. Most dramatic was the ousting on February 11, 2011 of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, president of the Arab world’s most populous state since 1981. He was a leader that many doubted would be “let go” by the United States because of the latter’s interest in maintaining the Camp David Accords of 1979 securing an Egyptian–Israeli peace. This assumption was disproved after only eighteen days of protest. On October 20, 2011 Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, president since 1969, was killed after losing control of the country. On February 27, 2012 Ali Abdullah Saliḥ of Yemen, president since 1990, finally ceded power by negotiation. It was the toppling of these dictators, in large measure as a result of popular protest, that was so extraordinary and unexpected for virtually everybody, from activists to academics. Retrospective claims to prescience rang hollow. Even the Egyptian economist and public intellectual Galal Amin, who came as close to predicting the uprisings as any public figure, nonetheless in his first substantial publication after Mubarak’s fall only emphasized the surprise that Egypt had experienced.1 Historians with the benefit of hindsight are supposed to demonstrate the many ways in which these uprisings were entirely explicable in terms of contexts and antecedents. On the other hand, the historians’ task is also to return to the moment and recapture, in 1  Kurzman (2012: 380).

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   517 historicizing mode, the surprise that such events evoked at the time. In this latter sense, a historical perspective suggests that surprise was a perfectly reasonable response. Even regime change, let alone one originating in popular protest, was something of an in­nov­ ation in the recent history of the region. All but one of the ruling regimes in the independent states of the Arab world had endured, with personnel changes only, since Colonel Gaddafi’s Free Officers’ revolutionary coup seized power from King Idris in Libya under the banner of pan-Arab national liberation in 1969. External powers had generally been content to work with, support, and succor the antidemocratic “devil they knew.”2 The only partial exception was Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s strongman rule there since the 1970s, having been supported by the United States in the 1980s, was broken by the US invasion of 2003. This was an exception that seemed to prove a simple rule: the people could not bring down the regime. The mass uprising of 1991 in Iraq, we note, was smothered in blood.3 Probably the most significant popular uprising of recent times in the region, the Palestinian intifada of 1987–1991, did not topple a domestic regime. It was directed not at a domestic dictatorship but a colonizing occupation, and was eventually repressed and demobilized, although it did make a mighty contribution to what became the Oslo process in the 1990s. Even fifteen years of Lebanese civil war (1975–90)—which after the defeat of the Leftist Palestinian forces in 1976 following the Syrian military intervention—was a many-sided conflict that did not sweep away the consociational and sect-based political system.4 The “independence intifada” in Lebanon in 2005 was a formidable display of people power, involved the sustained occupation of a central urban square, and led to the withdrawal of the Syrian army which had lain a controlling hand on the country since 1976.5 It did not, however, lead to the fall or major reform of the domestic regime, which was reconstituted on relatively familiar lines. The Bahrainis did not bring down the sectarian monarchy there through the long uprising of the 1990s, although certain political concessions were won in the early 2000s.6 Bread riots and crowd actions in the 1970s and 1980s were able to slow the pace of International Monetary Fund-led structural adjustment. They did not bring down regimes and, in the main, did not seek to. The resurgence of strike action among industrial workers and civil servants in Egypt after 2004 only blunted privatization.7 Further, it is important to note that the vast energies of Islamist movements, many of which did target the “Near Enemy” for revolution, failed to topple a single regime in the Arab world.8 The assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat by Islamists in 1981 did not spark the anticipated popular uprising or dislodge the rule of the military. The electoral route pursued by the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) in Algeria after the constitutional opening of 1989, in turn a result of the popular protest of October 1988, led to the cancellation of elections in 1992 and a bloody civil war. None of this, however, dislodged or even fundamentally reformed le pouvoir in Algeria.9

2  Brownlee (2012). 3  Nakash (1994: 274–280). 4  Picard (2002). 5  Kassir (2005). 6  Tripp (2013: 107–108). 7  Beinin and Duboc (2013). 8  Gerges (2005). 9  Roberts (2003).

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518   john chalcraft Many among the urban and slum-based poor were hunkered down before 2011, thinking less of revolution or even reform, and more about migration opportunities abroad and survivalism at home. This meant “weapons of the weak”: the use of informal networks, the “quiet encroachment of the ordinary,” the maintenance of a certain presence in the streets and slums, and everyday modes of resistance in order to acquire goods and services and make claims on the propertied and powerful.10 Although street politics, from Tehran to Cairo, involved discontinuous confrontation with police and government officials, it nonetheless avoided overt, organized collective action, the elaboration of a political program, or oppositional ideology, or costly outright assault on the regime. In this regard, the masses were an object of great perplexity to those such as the Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany who wondered in 2010 why they did not rise up in the face of many forms of oppression.11 His book on this issue was republished in the aftermath of the uprisings, now framed as an explanation for the revolution.12 No such comparable event had unfolded in Israel or Turkey before 2011. The Green movement in Iran in 2009 was an important uprising around a seemingly stolen election, but it mobilized fewer participants than the Arab uprisings, and it did not bring down the president, the supreme leader, or the regime.13 The only partially comparable event in the Middle East and North Africa in recent times took place in Iran in 1978–79. Here was a mass, popular, nonviolent uprising directed victoriously against a domestic regime that had not suffered a prior state breakdown, recent defeat in war, major fiscal crisis, blow to its repressive capacities, or peasant rebellion.14 Both the Arab uprisings and the Iranian revolution shared this “unthinkable” feature, and were hence surprising in this basic way.15 The spectacle of urban avenues and squares filled with millions of protestors, accompanied by institutional disruption occasioned by strike action and civil disobedience on a major scale, was in some respects regionally pioneered in Iran in late 1978.16 Apart from these important similarities, however, the Iranian revolution of 1978–79 exhibited many vital differences to the Arab uprisings of 2011. In point of context, it was partly unfinished business from the neocolonial moment of 1953 when the United States engineered a coup to re-establish the Pahlavi Shah on an authoritarian basis against the democratic constitutional system, after the elected prime minister, Muhammad Mossadeq sought economic independence through the nationalization of the AngloIranian Oil Company.17 In point of activism, the revolution of 1978–79 involved a determined revolutionary leadership with a long track record going back to the 1960s. It had a strong organizational core among Khomeini’s seminary networks and leaders. It expressed a clear ideological program with regard to the reorganization of the state along Shia republican lines, a program that had been under development since the late 1950s in Shia clerical circles in Najaf, Karbala, and Qom.18 In Iran, a version of politi10  Bayat (1997); Singerman (1995); Ismail (2006). 11  al-Aswany (2010). 12  al-Aswany (2011). 13  Tripp (2013: 82–88). 14  Skocpol (1982). 15  Kurzman (2004). 16  Kurzman (2004: 122). 17  Abrahamian (2001). 18  Louër (2008).

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   519 cized Shiism, complete with socioeconomic dimensions and identified with the figure of Ayatollah Khomeini, hegemonized much of the protest. In Iran, guerrilla groups were present to deliver the coup de grâce to the shah’s imperial guard. And after the fall of the shah, revolutionary transformation was driven forward by the revolutionary leadership: the Pahlavi monarchy was replaced with an Islamic republic in ways that involved rapid and far-reaching social, economic, cultural, and political change. With regard to the Arab uprisings, by contrast, the domestic regimes targeted were not installed by the United States, but were, with the exception of Bahrain, the heirs (Saliḥ, al-Asad, Bin Ali, Mubarak) and even direct protagonists (Gaddafi) of the anticolonial, nationalist, and revolutionary traditions of the 1950s and 1960s. Moreover, the various strands of Sunni-modernist and Salafi-Wahhabi activism mostly got organized after the uprisings had broken out: they did not lead the action or hegemonize its constituencies, whose slogans were universal and secular during the uprisings themselves. They invoked bread, dignity, and freedom, and above all performed and embodied the unity of a rights-bearing and sovereign people.19 Many activists were relatively newly minted. There was no strong organizational core: activism was more decentralized. Only in Egypt did strike action approach the scale of what took place in Iran.20 There was no clear ideological program for transformation: doctrinalism was viewed as problematic in many activist sectors. The Arab uprisings did not push through sweeping revo­lu­tion­ary change (with the partial exception of Tunisia), and their initial leaderships, insofar as they existed, nowhere took power (with the partial exception of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt). Neither Tunisia nor Egypt attempted to export the revo­lu­tion, and neither country was invaded by a foreign power, both important features of the revolutions of 1789 (in France), 1917 (in Russia), and 1978–79 (in Iran). These differences from the Iranian case caution against straightforward analogies. The uprisings are also distinctive in a longer, post-1914 regional perspective. Most of the major uprisings during the period from the First World War to the 1960s were undertaken against colonial rule or against local rulers who were perceived as and often were colonial proxies. Armed struggles of national liberation, such as in Algeria (1954–62), South Yemen (1963–67), Oman (1965–75), and among the Palestinians (1964–82), along with revolutionary coups d’état (Egypt 1952, Iraq 1958, North Yemen 1962, Libya 1969), not to mention the rounds of armed struggle from Morocco to Iraq that followed the First World War, are hard to compare directly with 2011.21 They were armed, nationalist, opposed to colonialism, and were marked by liberalism in the 1920s and socialism in the 1950s and 1960s, and were often thick in organization and leadership. Alternatively, the Cairo fire of January 1952 is suggestive because it involved a major, largely spontaneous rising without any clear leadership or program that quickly subsided and paved the way for the military intervention of July 1952.22 But it targeted with 19  Compare Tripp (2013: 133). 20  Compare Bayat (1987) with Alexander and Bassiouny (2014). 21  Halliday (1974); Provence (2005); Quandt (1969); Sayigh (1997); Takriti (2013). 22  Reynolds (2012).

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520   john chalcraft fire the symbols of the colonial order and its domestic allies in a highly charged nationalist context and was not a statewide uprising, but limited to downtown Cairo. The intervention of the Free Officers in 1952, furthermore, was insurrectionary and unpredictable, entirely different to the recent more widely predicted political role of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or of General el-Sisi.23 Egypt’s insurrection of 1919 was thoroughly mass-based, unarmed, and engaged the liberal middle classes. But it involved the peasantry on a broader scale than the rising of 2011 and was directed above all against colonial rule, not a domestic ruler. One of the striking features of the Arab uprisings is that they did far less than almost any mass uprising since 1914 to define their local rulers as lackeys of the West. The Arab uprisings were very much focused on the tyranny, kleptocracy, corruption, and incompetence of the local regimes. This was, indeed, in contrast with Iran 1978–79, where neocolonialist theses were recast in Islamist clothes: the US was depicted as the Great Satan and Khomeini declared that the rulers of the world, which included the Pahlavi Shah, were America’s serfs. The importance of the attitude the region’s militaries took up to political incumbents has been made increasingly clear.24 Some defected, some stayed neutral, others maintained their loyalty to incumbents. It was, nonetheless, the mass uprising that provided the dynamic context which set other actors, powerful and not so powerful, into motion. Military intervention in politics in Egypt (since 1952) and in Turkey (since at least 1913), is no surprise in historical context. The back seat taken by the military in Tunisia, conversely, was to be expected given the military’s highly limited role in political society there. By the same token, Syria’s military could be expected to continue to follow orders, since this was a continuation of the pattern established in the massive suppression of the Hama rising of 1982, and nothing new. The major surprise, on the other hand, and what no one had predicted except in vague terms, was the mass uprising. If it became in the interests of the military in Tunisia and Egypt to detach their fates from those of the political incumbents,25 the decisive factor that made this new calculus of interest possible was the uprising.

Nineteenth-century Comparisons Comparisons with protests and uprisings in the nineteenth century should not be dismissed. Before 1914, the constitutional movements in Khedivial Egypt (1881–82), Qajar Iran (1905–11), and the Ottoman Empire (1908) wrought major political concessions from domestic governments, and sometimes drew in foreign invasion or intervention. They were led in large measure by urban liberals and sometimes patriots, and targeted the rulers of local states. But patriotism meant something different (and new) in states that were actually empires or parts of empires, and these movements were less evidently 23  Gordon (1997).

24  Springborg (2014).

25  Brooks (2013).

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   521 mass popular uprisings. In Egypt, the ʿUrabi movement, albeit making popular appeals, was led by officers, provincial notables, and merchants maneuvering for power within the state, not by peasants, artisans, or townspeople. The latter, when they did rise after the first British invasion in June 1882, did so for different reasons, under different banners, and not in ways that were coordinated with the ʿUrabiyyin.26 In Qajar Iran during 1905–11, peasants and urban townspeople were outside and quickly became disaffected with the core alliance of liberals, bazaar, and clergy, champions of the new parliament.27 In Istanbul in 1908, the constitutional movement was led by an alliance of elitist, antireligious liberals and military28; the most popular uprising of the period was in fact in the name of Islam in 1909 against the Young Turks and their military methods. Risings involving commoners (al-ʿamma, al-raʿiya) and defecting elites (al-khassa, al-ʿaskeri), and notables (aʿyan) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries against Ottoman, Ottoman–Egyptian, Moroccan, and local rule on occasion unseated sultans or local potentates, and in some cases had a mass character. In 1703, an uprising against the new lifetime tax farms deposed the Ottoman Sultan Mustafa II (r. 1695–1703) and put Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730) on the throne. The uprising of Patrona Halil in 1730 deposed Ahmed III and replaced him with Mahmut I (1730–1754).29 In Izmir in 1788, urban artisans, guilds, and townspeople rose against the tripling of taxes stemming from the outbreak of war in 1787, ousting a number of important officials and local notables.30 Ottoman Sultan Selim III (r. 1789–1807) was unseated in May 1807 and replaced as a result of mass protests of Janissaries, ʿulama, and townspeople against his new conscript army.31 There were commoner uprisings in Moroccan towns against merchants and heavy taxes on several occasions (e.g. 1818 and 1873 in Fez, and in 1844 in Rabat).32 In  Morocco, notables and commoners were involved in the risings of ʿAbd al-Hafiz (1875–1937), which brought this pretender to the sultanate in 1908, and of Ahmad al-Hiba (1876–1919), whose revolutionary heterodoxies briefly held sway in Marrakesh after the sultan had signed Morocco over to the French Protectorate in 1912.33 Commoner uprisings, by turns against taxation and feudalism, were something of a tradition on Mount Lebanon: there were risings, for example, in 1790, 1821, 1840, and most famously in 1858–60, when the Christian muleteer Tanyus Shahin evicted the Khazin notables in an initially nonviolent way in the name of a radically egalitarian interpretation of the tanzimat (1839–76).34 Commoner risings proclaiming loyalty to the sultan but seeking redress in matters of taxation and local exploitation, and laying claim to the promises of the tanzimat were relatively common in the Balkans during the nineteenth century.35 Finally, millenarian uprisings, sometimes with a mass base, against taxes, economic ex­ploit­ation, urban orthodoxy, and corrupt Muslim rulers studded the history of the Nile Valley ­during the nineteenth century.36 The Mahdiyya of 1881–85, which created a state on 26  Chalcraft (2016). 27  Afary (1996). 28  Hanioğlu (2001). 29  Abou-el-Haj (1984); Shaw (1976: 227–228, 240). 30  Clogg (1973: 24–25). 31  Kafadar (2007); Shaw (1976). 32  Laroui (1977: 129). 33  Burke (1976). 34  Makdisi (2000). 35  Pinson (1975). 36  Abul-Magd (2013).

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522   john chalcraft the Upper Nile almost the size of Egypt, was only the most successful of these uprisings against Ottoman–Egyptian rule and Islamic orthodoxy.37 Pre-1914 uprisings and their lessons regarding reform, authoritarianism, sectarian violence, and imperial intervention are instructive for the present. Strongmen have come to power after popular protest before. In Egypt in 1805, commoner protest played an important role in forcing out the existing governor and championing the accession to power of the warlord and dynasty-builder Muhammad Ali Pasha (r. 1805–1849), who certainly brought law and order, but also massacred opponents, coerced a conscript army into existence, and massively increased the tax burden.38 Here was a faint echo of the Egyptian events of June–July 2013, when a partly pro-army popular uprising (June 30, 2013) paved the way for a military coup (July 3, 2013), whose leaderships went on to  re-establish the security state through massacre and repression. Tanyus Shahin’s (1815–95) egalitarian uprising in the historic Bilad al-Sham (present-day Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine) wound up in sectarianism and violence because it was unable to prevent a confrontation between Christian and Druze in the mixed districts of Mount Lebanon and the Shuf.39 Activists in Syria since 2011 have certainly faced the acute problems posed by the politics of sectarianism and the drift toward violence in 2011–12. Present-day external powers have seized on the opportunities presented by uprisings to intervene militarily just as they did in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the commoner rising of 1889 in Jabal Druze in Bilad al-Sham won real and lasting economic and political concessions.40 These examples, albeit drawn from a very different historical context to the present, suggest more generally that mass uprisings against domestic (rather than colonial) tyranny, variously under the banners of religion, justice, rights, custom, and local autonomy, are not alien to the modern history of the region, as more contemporary-focused views have suggested. Historically, nationalism has not been the only basis for regional mass mobilization. This historical perspective cautions against the exceptionalist view in which the Arab uprisings are seen as something fundamentally new, contrary in some sense to the constituted nature of the region, whatever that would be, and therefore owing something decisive to external influence, conspiracy, extraordinary innovation, or revolutionary awakening. The capacities of the peoples of the region to mount forceful and even revolutionary challenges to established authorities has a long history and should not be treated as a fundamental rupture with the past, however surprising the events of 2011. The perspective underlines, finally, the existence of long-term shifts in the targets of protest that seem to respond to historical and sociopolitical contexts. These targets included domestic rulers before 1914, colonialism and neocolonialism from the First World War until the 1960s and 1970s, and a return to an emphasis on domestic regimes since the 1970s (global jihad and resistance against Israeli colonization and warmongering aside).

37  Holt (1970). 39  Makdisi (2000).

38  Baer (1977: 217, 238–239, 241, 242); Fahmy (1997). 40  Provence (2005: 33–37).

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   523

Protests Targeting Regimes Since the 1970s The military firmly established itself in Arab state politics after independence. Democratic participation, independent organizing, and civil liberties were curtailed or excluded on the basis that rule by patriotic Free Officers or strongmen of civilian origin would bring economic growth, redistribution, social mobility, and social reform. This archetypal, antidemocratic “social pact” was established in Egypt in 1952 and played an important role in various ways in Tunisia after 1955, Iraq after 1958, Syria after 1963, Algeria after 1965, Yemen after 1967, and Libya after 1969. It was burnished as a form of cultural hegemony by recourse to pan-Arabism and strong forms of nationalism and sometimes Third Worldism on the regional and international stage. Absolutism in independent Saudi Arabia was established and maintained through the Leftist and pan-Arab challenges of the 1950s and 1960s in part because of elite arrangements within the dominant bloc, but also with regard to the subaltern population, rentier provisionism, segmentation via the import and sharp exclusion of working and productive classes, and by the cultivation of an absolutist version of SalafiWahhabism that preached a sectarian antipolitics that left political decisions to the waliyy al-amr (the ruler) to whom obedience was required. In most of the other Gulf states, post-independence consent in an authoritarian context was won by rentierism, migration segmentation and exclusion, and the cultivation of the image of rulers who cherished and promoted Arab values.41 It is preponderantly in the formerly “revolutionary republics” that the postindependence form of hegemony has seriously unraveled, and therefore the basis for post-independence antidemocratic rule has been fundamentally eroded. Their social pacts were increasingly violated from the 1970s onwards, when indicators on real economic growth, redistribution, social mobility, and social reform ceased to improve or went into reverse. While crony capitalism meant spoils for a narrow dominant bloc, hegemony on a wider scale was never reformulated on new bases, as promises over new forms of prosperity and democracy always rang hollow for the mass of the subaltern population. Credentials in pan-Arabism and nationalism were not replaced with alternative forms of cultural hegemony. Among the nonrevolutionary republics, Bahrain’s rentier provisionism has become less significant over time with the reduction in oil production. It is partially explicable, therefore, that as these forms of consent were thinned out, and as the promised provisions of dictatorship became increasingly threadbare from the late 1960s onward, that protests against domestic, post-independence regimes became increasingly frequent.

41  Khalaf (1992).

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524   john chalcraft

Uprisings Since 1977 In the 1970s, the tradition of popular uprising, when diverse masses of ordinary people poured onto the streets in ways that were not immediately under the control of any one leadership, frequently in anti-imperial clothes during the colonial period, was taken up anew in the region, this time targeting the domestic regime. The intifada of January 18–19, 1977 in Egypt, was a popular uprising, the most dramatic mass action since the Cairo fire of January 1952. In accordance with IMF structural adjustment prescriptions, Sadat’s government announced on January 17 a 50% cut in subsidies for basic consumer goods, implying steep rises in the price of bread, sugar, tea, and bottled gas, and im­port­ ant rises in the price of rice, cooking oil, macaroni, gasoline, and cigarettes. In the cap­ ital, protestors, led initially by industrial workers, increasingly filled the streets and violent confrontations with security forces developed. Downtown Cairo was largely in the hands of the demonstrators for two days. Considerable damage was done to regime institutions and commercial private property owned by Sadat’s nouveau-riche. There were significant protests in Alexandria and elsewhere. To judge by their slogans, the demonstrators saw themselves as the people, as workers, students, and peasants, suffering from poverty and hunger, pitted against corrupt and tyrannical authorities, corrupt, wealthy, exploitative, and even decadent elites, and the dangers of capitalism.42 Broadly comparable, pioneering waves of protest against post-independence regimes and their new forms of crony capitalism took place elsewhere in the region. There was a wave of strikes in Tunisia in 1977 in which the country’s major union federation, the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT), played an important role. These cul­ min­ated in a general strike in 1978. There were major street protests against price hikes for basic commodities in Morocco in 1981 and in both Morocco and Tunisia in 1984, when such protests were able to win socioeconomic concessions in many cases and slow the course of neoliberal advance.43 On October 5, 1988, thousands of youths, mostly male secondary-school students and unemployed, ransacked central Algiers. Over the following two days, the movement spread across the country, drawing in broader constituencies and Islamist organizations, and bringing military repression from the government. While major protests had taken place in the name of the Amazigh/Berbers in 1980, the protests of 1988 were more widespread, drew in a wider cross section of the public. They involved an array of economic and political motivations and demands.44 In Bahrain, a broad-based uprising seeking political concessions (above all the reinstatement of the National Assembly) from the Sunni sectarian monarchy continued from 1994 to 1998–99. Widespread protests took place in the wake of the “stolen election” in Iran in 2009.

42  Abd al-Raziq (1979); Beinin (1994). 44  Roberts (2002).

43  Tripp (2013: 150–151).

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   525 This history gives the lie to those who professed astonishment that the uprisings of 2011 were not hegemonized by Islamism: none of the above-mentioned mass protests were led or initiated by Islamists or their demands, slogans, and networks. In Algeria in 1988, for example, Islamists joined after the urban poor had started the action. The twoday uprising in Egypt in 1977 does not seem to have had any specifically Islamist content. Indeed, the strategy of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood never included a mass uprising: the stage of “execution,” insofar as it was pursued (largely before 1952), was a poorly defined armed struggle, but not an insurrection of the masses. The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria called for a mass uprising in 1982, but in practice their antiregime jihad involved organized cadres undertaking armed attacks on regime targets and insurrectionary protest in 1982 was limited to Hama.45 If we broaden the focus we note that in both the first Palestinian intifada of 1987–91, and the uprising in Lebanon in 2005, the more spon­tan­ eous aspects of these protests were not organized by Islamists and did not express Islamist slogans. Only in Iran in 1978–79 did Islamists stand at the head of a mass uprising, quite likely because politicized Shiism not only had a republican and democratic component, but also because it was far more explicit than many strands of Sunni modernism, let alone Salafi-Wahhabism, on socioeconomic questions and the problems of the dispossessed. Indeed, it was not just a strategic decision, fear of the American “veto” that kept Islamist banners at home during the Egyptian uprising of 2011; it was also that Islamist framing was not capable of uniting the protestors.

Democratic Genealogies These observations suggest a popular democratic genealogy to the uprisings of 2011 that  has been under-researched. Amid the thinning political hegemony of the postindependence regimes, some sought to reconstitute the original social pact, looking back to Nasserism and Baathism. Others believed, in revolutionary or reformist modes, that Islam was the solution, and that the secular state had usurped the true destiny of the region. Less emphasized is that others looked for answers and solutions in democratic forms of socialism or Islamism, or participatory and even radically democratic forms of politics. Influenced by the rejection of official communism in 1960s France, a significant group of Lebanese intellectuals and activists developed an interest in democratic forms of socialism in the 1960s and early 1970s. They elaborated a Leftist critique of the Arab world’s military and “progressive” regimes and were active in a number of organizations, including ones such as Socialist Lebanon (1964–70).46 The socialism of the Lebanese National Movement in the mid-1970s was sharply critical of the military regimes, and Maoist currents aside, had democratic, decentralized, and even anarchic features.47 In Egypt, important intellectuals such as Anwar Abd al-Malik criticized Egypt’s “military 45  Lefèvre (2013).

46  Bardawil (2010).

47  Jumblatt (1982).

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526   john chalcraft society” as early as 1962 for failing to bring about popular democracy.48 Democratic demands were at work in Egypt in the slogans of 1977, one of which ran as follows: The first demand, young men, is the right to a multi-party system / The second demand, you masses, is the right to publication and expression / The third demand, oh free people, is fixed prices (Awwal matlab ya shabab, haqq taʿaddud al-ahzab / Tani matlab ya jamahir, haqq al-nashr wa-l-taʿbir / Talit matlab ya ahrar, rabt al-ajr bi-l-asʿar).49

Sunni modernist Islamism may not have been as precise as politicized Shiism on the place of republican politics. However, unlike Salafi-Wahhabism it never decisively rejected party politics, elections, parliaments, and constitutions, whether in theory or in practice. This was demonstrated by the democratic mobilization of the FIS in Algeria between 1989 and 1992, as well as other cases in Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen.50 The reform movement in Iran from the early 1990s onward pushed a more democratic and women’s rights-oriented interpretation of Shia Islam.51 Liberal, democratic, and sometime secular themes were taken up in the first Palestinian intifada, the Bahrain uprising in the 1990s, the short-lived Damascus “spring” of 2000–2001, the Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights after 2004, the independence intifada in Lebanon in 2005, and in the return of liberal and labor protest in Egypt in the 2000s, including the Kifaya movement, opposing dynastic succession in Egypt in 2005. Such themes were also at work in the labor protests in Gafsa in Tunisia in 2008, among Anarchists against the Wall in Israel/Palestine, and among militant bloggers using social media to denounce humanrights abuses in various parts of the region from at least 2008 onwards.52 In particular, a new generation of “liberal youth” emerged on the regional scene after the 2000s. While downplaying the language of socialism, these groups increasingly spoke in the languages of human rights and individual freedom, and sometimes found progressive inspiration in themes of radical and participatory democracy. They targeted the abuse, tyranny, and corruption of the crony capitalist regimes in place, and made much use of new media to communicate and publicize their views. In Tunisia and Egypt, languages of social and economic rights were elaborated anew by a labor movement re-energized to protect itself against privatization, cutbacks, and corruption, and workers in their millions, especially in Egypt, became practiced in strike action and protest. These demo­ crat­ic forms of activism, alongside new assertions of social and economic rights, played an important role in the background to the Arab uprisings and their leading slogans of bread, dignity, and freedom.

48  Abd al-Malek (1968). 50  Schwedler (2006).

49  Abd al-Raziq (1979: 81–82). 51  Bayat (2007). 52  Beinin (2014).

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   527

Crowd Unity and Participatory Democracy The unity of the crowds in Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond in 2011 was not just a matter of “surging alongside one another” by diverse groups with entirely different interests and concerns: if so, how could the popular unity that the uprisings exhibited have been constituted? Nor was it simply a matter of a liminal and fleeting experience of communitas, although this was undoubtedly part of the picture. Nor clearly, was this unity pre-given or constituted on the spot by a vanguard that stepped up to hegemonize the crowd, as the Islamists in Algeria had done to some extent in 1988–89. This was so for the simple reason that no such vanguard or leadership existed in 2011, whether among workers, Islamists, or revolutionary youth. These different groups and their organizations, in Egypt at least, took their place alongside urban poor, women, Copts, public-sector workers, and others within a broader, informal revolutionary coalition capable of expressing coherent demands and demonstrating considerable powers of solidarity. New media and the Internet cannot explain this unity; a historical perspective shows that major protests always make use of the communication technologies at hand. This has been so throughout the history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from rumor in nineteenth-century Algeria, to radio in the 1950s and 1960s, to cassette-tapes in the 1970s.53 Protestors and their opponents make use of these technologies, and technology can be used in ways that are divisive. In other words, if we are to eschew technological determinism, we need to understand how popular unity was achieved among millions of protestors, a rare achievement by historical standards, even if briefly, in certain parts of the Arab world in 2011. The democratic genealogy sketched here may serve to explain in part how this unity was possible. Various segments of the liberal youth had made attempts to eschew doctrine, hierarchy, and ideological division in the years preceding the uprisings. They had also made use of networked, leaderless, and “leaderful” forms of organizing, forms of coordination that are open to new adherents, and which do not police their own boundaries with expulsions, membership cards and dues, or doctrinal tests. Liberal youth had rejected the idea of the sole leader, a form which would almost certainly have acted to divide rather than unite the mass of the population in the context of 2011.54 This participatory democratic style had considerable potential as a basis of unity, at least if we consider Egypt as a case study. It formed an important basis for the links and alliances that were forged between liberals and Muslim Brotherhood youth, insofar as such links relied absolutely on the readiness of protagonists to set aside organizational and doctrinal differences. Less noted is the significance of the fact that the labor movement, informally and locally organized, was highly suspicious of urban leaderships, formal organizations, and ideologues. It was far more likely that under these circumstances, 53  Clancy-Smith (1994); Boyd (1975).

54  Browers (2009); Chalcraft (2012); Mossallam (2013).

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528   john chalcraft the labor movement would join forces with groups that did not proclaim that they knew in advance what were the true economic and political interests of workers. The respectable, apolitical, and patriotic middle classes in Egypt, furthermore, were far more likely to be inspired by Wael Ghonim’s lowest-common-denominator style of framing, his eschewal of “politics” and “ideology,” and his positioning as a “good son of Egypt,” than by more openly “political” currents.55 Likewise, the urban poor, scraping together livelihoods, sometimes in confrontation with elements of the “shattered state,” and developing their own informal networks and rules and codes of action, had undermined the ideological hegemony of the state.56 They were hardly likely to be drawn to wealthy secu­lar activists proclaiming a new program, leadership, and organization that would transform state and society in some systemic way. Quite apart from the class issues at stake, the poor knew above all else that there was no such formal and functioning system to be transformed; formal rules and actual practice were so far apart as to make society seem as if it was “structured as a joke.”57 When the liberals targeted the humanrights abuses of the ubiquitous and intrusive police, however, this was, indeed, a language that the poor could understand. While uprisings are often networked, decentralized, and partially leaderless, some sectors of the liberal youth in the Arab uprisings made a virtue of this horizontalist organizational structure, an important participatory democratic background that made possible alliances between diverse and usually mutually divided groups. For this reason, horizontalism was more important than its relatively thin sociology might suggest.

The People Demand! The historical perspective, nonetheless, has an almost built-in tendency toward determinism. A complete historical explanation often leaves no room for creativity—understood in terms of the arrival of a new collective actor, or the rapid rise to potency of a previously fragile and inchoate collective actor—as everything is explained in terms of antecedents or accidents. Historians may be able to identify the change in “continuity and change,” but they often end up explaining it away, either by recourse to contingency, or by reference to the overweaning capacities of an existing powerful actor (individual or collective), or with reference to a grand overarching process—modernization, ­cap­it­al­ist development, or globalization. One of the most important forms of creativity to emerge from the Arab uprisings, however, was the on-the-spot and unpredetermined constitution of the people as a rights-bearing, activist, diverse, demanding, and sovereign subject. This constitution was perhaps best encapsulated when the well-worn poetry of the Tunisian national anthem was infused with new meaning:

55  Ghonim (2012).

56  Ismail (2006); Singerman (1995).

57  Gilsenan (1996): 303.

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   529 If, one day, a people desires to live / Then fate will answer their call / Darkness must dissipate / And must the chain give way.58

The idea of popular sovereignty had been established in the region in the age of anticolonial nationalism, but the idea that a rights-bearing people in a post-independence context could en masse realistically demand and bring about the fall of the local, national regime was something new. Revolutionary calls have indeed been largely monopolized by Islamists or socialists, in different registers, in recent decades. What is so striking is that no particular segment, individual, or organization devised this revolutionary call in advance. The slogan “the people demand to bring down the regime” (al-shaʿb yurid isqat al-nizam) originated in Tunisia in the heat of the action; its status became so iconic that not even Egyptians translated it into their own colloquial. In this phrase, the people did not only demand, but implied through the transitive verb “asqata” that it was they who would undertake the action and actually overthrow the regime themselves. This idea was unthinkable, laughable even, the preserve of cranks and idealists, only weeks before. It is hard, therefore, to resist the notion that this leading idea emerged from the struggle itself, and did not precede it. To grasp this, it may be helpful to consider how new connections between previously unconnected but subordinated constituencies can give rise to new feelings of empowerment, the collapse of the “wall of fear,” and new forms of collective solidarity capable of authorizing themselves and bringing into being demands and collective agencies that did not previously exist or were fragile or protean. In the Arab uprisings, such new solidarities and demands marched together with the new strategies and tactics that also emerged in the heat of the action. These moves included the continuous occupation of major public squares, so central to the theater of the regime’s repressive power, the swarming tactics that enabled demonstrators to access the squares in the first place (by gathering first in back streets, and drumming up support there), and the pitched battles with police that astonishingly degraded the capacity of the security forces to repress crowds and discharge their more quotidian functions.59 These forms of organization, strategies, and tactics performed the unity of the people, and the people’s unity stood on the effectiveness of these repertoires.

People Power The foregoing suggests that the Arab uprisings can be compared broadly to peoplepower uprisings, characterized by two keen observers as relatively nonviolent demonstrations in which hundreds of thousands simply showed their disgust, lack of fear, and

58  Colla et al. (2012). 59  Gunning and Baron (2013); Ismail (2012); Tripp (2013).

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530   john chalcraft unwillingness to cooperate with the old regime in massive demonstrations in urban public spaces.60 Such nonviolent uprisings do not involve disciplined hierarchical organization and armed struggle; nor do they necessarily propose through any determined revolutionary leadership an alternative ideological blueprint for state and society. Independent or nominally independent nation-states have witnessed such uprisings since the 1980s. One such case was the Philippines in 1986, and there were a number of lesser-known cases in Southeast Asia from the 1980s to the 2000s.61 Eastern Europe during 1989–90 furnished a number of cognate examples. Finally, there were “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics in the 2000s. In this perspective, and inspired explicitly and im­pli­ cit­ly by the Arab uprisings, Occupy movements in Spain, Greece, London, New York, Iceland, the occupation of the Maidan in Ukraine, and more recently protests in Turkey, Brazil, and Hong Kong, have also exhibited characteristics of people power. On the global scene, moreover, movements have for some time placed weight on the logics of participatory democracy and horizontalism, have eschewed vertical hier­arch­ ies, and embraced decentralization, diversity, and networked structures. Since 1968, these movements have worked in progressive circles to replace and rework official, doctrinal, hierarchical, and statist communism. The alter-globalization and social-justice movement has made much of “[p]refiguration, horizontality, diversity, decentralisation and the network structure.”62 Occupy movements embraced consensus-seeking and participatory decision-making processes in opposition to Left doctrinalism and sect­ar­ ian­ism.63 The movement of landless workers in Brazil since 1984 eschewed the use of a party and invoked themes of decentralization, non-hierarchy, and consensus; piquetero movements of the unemployed in Argentina emphasized themes of autonomy and decentralization.64 The term “horizontalism” (horizontalidad) was coined in Argentina to describe the movements that emerged there in December 2001 after the economic crisis. This activism was distinctive in its rejection of a political program and its attempts to create directly democratic and deliberative spaces and new social relationships.65 The global spread of demonstrations against the Iraq War of 2003 evoked a strong mass rejection of militarism, neoliberalism, and racism as evinced in the US–UK decision to attack Iraq on a unilateral and illegal basis in 2003.66 In some respects, these demonstrations, traveling with the rising sun from Australia to California, by way of Egypt and the UK, were the transnational equivalent, albeit at a far lower level of institutional disruption, of people-power uprisings in different national settings, this time with the target being the predatory policies of the United States. In this perspective, the Arab uprisings in 2011 are in some ways comparable to uprisings and participatory democratic forms that have been important in various parts of the world in recent times.

60  McAdam and Sewell (2001: 113–115). 61  Qumsiyeh (2011); Katsiaficas (2013). 62  Maeckelbergh (2009: 145). 63  Castells (2012); Graeber (2013); Maeckelbergh (2009). 64  Chatterton (2005). 65  Sitrin (2006). 66  Tarrow (2006: xiii).

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   531

Weaknesses of People Power The Arab uprisings suggest, however, that people power is vulnerable to military repression and even more to the segmentation of the people. “The condition of the success of . . . ‘people power’ revolution,” write McAdam and Sewell, “is that the regimes in power be unwilling to use their superior military force in putting the demonstrations down.”67 In Bahrain and Syria, above all, where military force was used extensively against the crowds, and in Egypt and Tunisia, where in 2011 it was not, seem to confirm the im­port­ance of the role of the military in the success or failure of this kind of uprising. In Bahrain and Syria existing regimes endure, while in Egypt and Tunisia transform­ ation was much more farreaching, even if Egypt has now reconstituted, if in unstable and violent fashion, a security state. People power, unlike guerrilla warfare, does not have a clear strategy for forceful victory in the case of a direct confrontation with tanks and missiles. The region’s recent history seems to confirm the same point: Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq did not hesitate to crush uprisings from the 1970s to the 1990s, and these regimes survived, while during the same period in Iran, the shah did hesitate to unleash the full weight of his available repressive capacity against the crowds and his regime fell. We should note that military decisions to use force are by no means innocent of geopolitical factors. In the face of a people-power uprising, the decision to repress with force may turn in part on external backing. In Eastern Europe in 1989–90, Soviet leader Gorbachev made clear that he would not lend military support to the Warsaw Pact regimes. Likewise, in Lebanon in 2005 the Russians did not give Syria the green light to engage in the violent repression of the independence intifada in Lebanon; the Syrians withdrew. In Egypt in 2011, the White House set itself against a military bloodbath and the army defected. In Bahrain in 2011, the military intervention of Saudi Arabia was decisive in crushing the crowds, while other important external backers, the United States and the United Kingdom, turned a blind eye or continued to support the Bahraini monarchy. By contrast, in Egypt in 2013, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) offered financial and diplomatic support for a military takeover in Egypt and the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood there. The Brotherhood’s occupation of Rabʿa and al-Nahda squares then proved unable to protect their protagonists from massacre at the hands of the Egyptian security forces. On the other hand, when the people can demonstrate what Tilly called WUNC (worthi­ness, unity, numbers, and commitment),68 it was arguably more likely that militaries would vacillate and even withdraw their support from political incumbents. Iran offered a partial case of this, where military vacillation may have been linked to the WUNC of the crowds, especially because the shah did have the backing of the United States. And in Syria and Iraq in the 1980s, uprisings linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, to 67  McAdam and Sewell (2001: 115). 68  Giugni et al. (1999).

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532   john chalcraft region, to Shia, or to Kurds were always segmented in some way, relative to the people as a whole, and thus failed to demonstrate popular unity. Likewise in Bahrain and Syria, protestors were vulnerable to the charge of sectarianism, and in Syria in particular, certain minorities preferred to stick with the strongman they knew, fearing the Islamist sectarianism that might emerge from any uprising. In Yemen and Libya, popular unity was always harder to demonstrate, and results were, in keeping with this, more ambiguous. The WUNC of “the people” in Egypt and Tunisia, on the other hand, together with the unarmed nature of the action, played a role in persuading militaries in Egypt and Tunisia to recalculate where their interests lay, and to vacillate and even defect. This move was greatly hastened in Egypt by the great popularity which the army dem­on­strably enjoyed. In Tunisia, France continued to back the regime until a very late stage. Various strands of Islamism, it should be noted, above all those drawn from Salafi-Wahhabism, have acutely exacerbated segmentation. While the military factor is vital, along with the position adopted by external backers, we should not lose sight of the fact that popular unity is equally significant and perhaps even more important to the overall outcome. Finally, while horizontalist principles were important in enabling the unity of diverse constituencies amid a revolutionary uprising, they were less effective or even at odds with the exigencies of mobilization within political society when opportunities opened up in electoral processes and elsewhere after the crowds had gone home. The eschewal of organization, leadership, and program, in a situation where negotiators, spokes­ persons, policies, representative mechanisms, and organization were required was counterproductive. Those who did row back on their principles in order to become engaged in this kind of politics could be seen as sellouts. Those who did not “sell out” were ineffective. It was a harsh dilemma. Those adept at revolution could not be expected, necessarily, to be strong in electoral games. The best outcomes in Tunisia were quite likely related to the way that strong organizations meshed with continued crowd actions capable of achieving significant institutional disruption. On several decisive occasions, derogation from popular rights were confronted and defeated by this kind of combination.

Conclusion This chapter has aimed to put the Arab uprisings of 2011 in historical perspective, identifying and explaining continuity and change without erasing creativity. It has been argued that mass uprisings against domestic rules and regimes have been seen before in the region, albeit in a very different historical context, under prenationalist banners during the nineteenth century. More recently, contentious mobilizations, including uprisings of various kinds, targeting domestic regimes and involving participatory and democratic content, have taken place increasingly in the region since the 1970s, responding to the thinning of the political hegemony of the region’s rulers and regimes. The rele­ vant global comparison, it has been argued, is with people-power uprisings in various

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   533 parts of the world in recent times and with various new strands in radically democratic activism, which in the MENA region played an important role in securing the unity of the protesting crowds. The chapter has argued that the mass uprisings had their surprising and creative dimensions: they emerged without any preceding state breakdown, and they constituted the people as a sovereign, rights-bearing, and diverse subject in a way distinctive from anticolonial nationalism. The chapter suggests that while people power faces formidable external foes, above all decision-making located in the military and among its external backers, the main internal weakness that people power has to overcome is segmentation. The perspective offered here suggests that in the present and future, crises and protests will continue as long as political society and its external backers continue to think and act in repressive, identitarian, or merely provisionist terms, and as long as the people of the region’s long and tenacious search for more participatory and democratic political arrangements is repressed.

Bibliography Abd al-Malek, Anwar (1968). Egypt: Military Society: The Army Regime, the Left, and Social Change under Nasser (London: Random House). ʾAbd al-Raziq, Husayn (1979). Misr fi 18, 19, Yanayir: dirasa siyasiyya wathaʾiqiyya/Egypt on 18–19 January: A Documented Political Study (Beirut: Dar Al-Hikma li-l-Nashr). Abou-el-Haj, R. (1984). The Rebellion of 1703 and the Structure of Ottoman Politics (Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul). Abrahamian, Ervand (2001). “The 1953 Coup in Iran,” Science & Society 65,2 (Summer): 182–215. Abul-Magd, Zeinab (2013). Imagined Empires: A History of Revolt in Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Afary, Janet (1996). The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press). Alexander, Anne and Mustafa Bassiouny (2014). Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers and the Egyptian Revolution (London: Zed Books). al-Aswany, Alaa (2010). Limadha la-Yathur al-Misriyyun?/Why don’t the Egyptians Rise Up? (Cairo: Dar Al-Shuruq). al-Aswany, Alaa (2011). On the State of Egypt: What Caused the Revolution, Jonathan Wright (trans.) (Edinburgh: Canongate). Baer, Gabriel (1977). “Popular Revolt in Ottoman Cairo,” Der Islam 54: 213–242. Bardawil, Fadi A. (2010). “When All this Revolution Melts into Air: The Disenchantment of Levantine Marxist Intellectuals,” unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University, New York. Bayat, Asef (1987). Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers’ Control (London: Zed Books). Bayat, Asef (1997). Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran (New York: Columbia University Press). Bayat, Asef (2007). Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Beinin, Joel (1994). “Will the Real Egyptian Working Class Please Stand Up?,” in Z. Lockman (ed.), Workers and Working Classes in the Middle East: Struggles, Histories, Historiographies (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), 247–270.

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534   john chalcraft Beinin, Joel (2014). “High-Risk Activism and Popular Struggle Against the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank,” public lecture at the London School of Economics (November 4, 2014). Beinin, Joel and Marie Duboc (2013). “A Workers’ Social Movement on the Margins of the Global Neoliberal Order, Egypt 2004–2012,” in Beinin and Vairel (eds), Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, 2nd ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), 205–227. Boyd, Douglas A. (1975). “Development of Egypt’s Radio: ‘Voice of the Arabs’ under Nasser,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 52 (Dec.): 645–653. Brooks, R. (2013). “Abandoned at the Palace: Why the Tunisian Military Defected From the Ben Ali Regime in January 2011,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 36,2: 205–220. doi:10.1080/014 02390.2012.742011. Browers, Michaelle  L. (2009). Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Brownlee, Jason (2012). Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Burke, Edmund III (1976). Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Precolonial Protest and Resistance, 1860–1912 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Castells, Manuel (2012). Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. (Cambridge: Polity Press). Chalcraft, John (2012). “Horizontalism in the Egyptian Revolutionary Process”. In Middle East Report, No. 262 (Spring), 6–11. Chalcraft, John (2016). Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Chatterton, P. (2005). “Making Autonomous Geographies: Argentina’s Popular Uprising and the ‘Movimiento de Traebajadores Desocupados’ (Unemployed Workers Movement),” Geoforum 36,5: 545–561. Clancy-Smith, Julia (1994). Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Clogg, Richard (1973). “Aspects of the Movement for Greek Independence,” in R. Clogg (ed.), The Struggle for Greek Independence (London: Macmillan), 1–40. Colla, Elliott, Daniel Gumbiner, and Diana Abouali (2012). Now That We Have Tasted Hope: Voices from the Arab Spring (Kindle Edition, Byliner Inc.). Fahmy, Khaled (1997). All the Pasha’s Men (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gerges, Fawaz (2005). The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Ghonim, Wael (2012). Revolution 2.0 (London: Fourth Estate). Gilsenan, Michael (1996). Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Giugni, Marco, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly (eds) (1999). How Social Movements Matter (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Gordon, Joel (1997). Nasser’s Blessed Movement: Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press). Graeber, David (2013). The Democracy Project: A History. A Crisis. A Movement. (London: Allen Lane). Gunning, Jeroen and Ilan Zvi Baron (2013). Why Occupy a Square? People, Protests and Movements in the Egyptian Revolution (London: Hurst). Halliday, Fred (1974). Arabia Without Sultans (London: Penguin).

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The Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Historical Perspective   535 Hanioğlu, M Şukru (2001). Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Holt, P. M. (1970). The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898: A Study of its Origins, Development and Overthrow, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Ismail, Salwa (2006). Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Ismail, Salwa (2012). “The Egyptian Revolution Against the Police,” Social Research 79,2: 435–462. Jumblatt, Kamal (1982). I Speak for Lebanon, Michael Pallis (trans.), recorded by Philippe Lapousterle (London: Zed Books). Kafadar, Çemal (2007). “Janissaries and Other Riffraff of Ottoman Istanbul: Rebels without a Cause?” in B. Tezcan and K. K. Barbir (eds), Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World: A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz (Madison, WA: University of Wisconsin Press), 113–134. Kassir, Samir (2005). Intifadat al-istiqlal ka-ma rawaha Samir Kassir/The Independence Uprising As it Was Narrated by Samir Kassir (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar). Katsiaficas, George (2013). Asia’s Unknown Uprisings: Vol 2: People Power in the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia, 1947–2009 (Oakland, CA: PM Press). Khalaf, Suleyman N. (1992). “Gulf Societies and the Image of Unlimited Good,” Dialectical Anthropology 17: 53–84. Kurzman, Charles (2004). The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Kurzman, Charles (2012). “The Arab Spring Uncoiled,” Mobilization 17,4 (Dec.): 377–390. Laroui, Abdallah. 1977. Les Origines Sociales et Culturelles de Nationalisme Marocain, 1830–1912. Paris: Maspero. Lefèvre, Raphaël (2013). Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (London: Hurst). Louër, Laurence (2008). Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (London: Hurst). Maeckelbergh, Marianne (2009). The Will of the Many: How the Alterglobalisation Movement is Changing the Face of Democracy (London: Pluto Press). Makdisi, Ussama (2000). The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). McAdam, Doug and William H. Sewell Jr. (2001). “It’s About Time: Temporality in the Study of Social Movements and Revolutions,” in Ronald R. Aminzade et al., Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 89–125. Mossallam, Alia (2013). “These Are Liberated Territories,” in L.  Sadiki (ed.), Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Unmaking Power (London: Routledge), 109–137. Nakash, Yitzhak (1994). The Shi’is of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Picard, Elizabeth (2002). Lebanon: A Shattered Country: Myths and Realities of the Wars in Lebanon (Teaneck, NJ: Holmes and Meier). Pinson, Mark (1975). “Ottoman Bulgaria in the First Tanzimat Period—The Revolts in Nish (1841) and Vidin (1850),” Middle Eastern Studies 11 (May): 103–146. Provence, Michael (2005). The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press). Quandt, William B. (1969). Revolution and Political Leadership: Algeria, 1954–1968 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

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536   john chalcraft Qumsiyeh, Mazin B. (2011). Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment (London: Pluto Press). Reynolds, Nancy (2012). A City Consumed: Urban Commerce, the Cairo Fire, and the Politics of Decolonization in Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Roberts, Hugh (2002). “Moral Economy or Moral Polity? The Political Anthropology of Algerian Riots,” Crisis States Programme, Working Papers Series No. 1 (London: London School of Economics, DESTIN). Roberts, Hugh (2003). The Battlefield Algeria 1988–2002: Studies in a Broken Polity (London: Verso). Sayigh, Yezid (1997). Armed Struggle and the Search for State: the Palestinian National Movement 1949–1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schwedler, Jillian (2006). Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Shaw, Stanford (1976). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Vol. I: Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Singerman, Diane (1995). Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Sitrin, Marina (ed.) (2006). Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland, CA: AK Press). Skocpol, Theda (1982). “Rentier State and Shiʿa Islam in the Iranian Revolution,” Theory and Society 11,3 (May): 265–283. Springborg, Robert (2014). “Arab Militaries,” in Marc Lynch (ed.), The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press), 142–160. Takriti, Abdel Razzaq (2013). Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965–1976 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Tarrow, Sidney (2006). The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tripp, Charles (2013). The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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chapter 26

Politica l Mov em en ts i n Ba hr a i n Across th e L ong T w en tieth Cen tu ry (1900 –2015) Omar Al-Shehabi

As the gales of the misnamed “Arab Spring” lashed across Bahrain’s political landscape in February 2011, political mobilization in the tiny archipelago became the center of global attention. This chapter traces the birth, rise, and evolution of political movements on the island throughout the long twentieth century, taking as its starting point the beginning of direct British presence in the local political scene in 1900, and ending with the aftermath of the mass protests that engulfed the islands in 2011. It highlights four intersecting dichotomies that have characterized these political movements across time. The first is the trans-sectarian versus ethnosectarian, as pol­it­ ical movements oscillated between ethnosectarian versus civic-based identities and demands. The second is the national versus the transnational, as mobilization varied between pushing local-centric issues versus reaching toward other currents in the regional or global setting to draw inspiration. The third dichotomy is the reformist versus revolutionary currents, as these movements switched between putting forward gradualist reform demands, versus taking a much more radical approach. The fourth is the public versus underground nature of the movements, as mobilization shifted between open versus clandestine forms. The two poles of each of these dimensions served as sliding scales on which the different political movements gravitated across time, combining and intersecting across these spectrums to produce distinct sociopol­it­ ical formations as the century unfolded. The chapter sheds light on the importance of externally imposed structural factors on local developments on the island, including British colonial absolutist rule, the discovery of oil and the subsequent fluctuation in the commodity’s global prices, and the rise of American hegemony.

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538   omar al-shehabi However, and taking its cue from the work of the autonomistas,1 the analysis also highlights the central role that political movements have played in shaping the actions and reactions of the state. The state’s attempts to contain these movements, and the contestation between the two sides, played a central role in shaping the contours of both state and society across Bahrain’s long century. Such an analysis serves as a muchneeded corrective to the exclusively ethnosectarian narrative through which politics in Bahrain are usually construed, where developments are reductively essentialized to “a Sunni loyalist minority versus a Shia opposition majority.”

British Colonialism and the Birth of Ethnosectarianism and Nationalism (1900–1923) Our story begins in 1900 with the advent of direct British involvement in local affairs, based on the forward policy of Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India. This was encapsulated by the switch from a native agency system that relied on local agents as representatives of the British Empire, to a political agency directly headed by British officers. As the pearl-diving industry and the associated imports trade boomed in Bahrain during the global “age of capital” in the latter half of the nineteenth century,2 Curzon decided that regional intrigues with other imperial powers necessitated the presence of white British boots on the ground. Bahrain was chosen as ground zero for the British presence in the Gulf. Prior to direct British involvement, internal rule was centered around the Al Khalifa ruling dynasty since 1783. Political power took the form of a conjunctural balance of localized and decentralized forces, instead of being monopolized by a central bureaucracy. Al Khalifa would assign different fiefs on the island to different sheikhs, with each having a large degree of autonomy in rule and collection of taxes, particularly in the villages, whose workers were subjected to bonded labor. Externally, the regional politics of the first decades of Al Khalifa’s rule were based on the considerations of the “politics of protection,” in which tribute was paid to the different military and economic powers dominant in the region. The biggest sources of rivalry were other ʿUtub tribal members,3 the Al Saʿud, the Imam of Muscat, the Ottomans, and later on the Al Thani on the Qatari peninsula, in addition to Persian governors.

1  The autonomistas were a largely Italian-Marxist strand of analysis that shifted the focus away from capital toward labor, emphasizing how capitalists respond and react to contain movements and ­con­test­ations by workers, thus placing actions by the latter as a central driving force in shaping social formations. For more see Mezzadra and Neilson (2013) ch. 3. 2  Hobsbawm (2010). 3  Such as the infamous Rhama bin Jabir Al Jalahma.

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Political Movements in Bahrain Across the Long Twentieth Century    539 Once the British became directly involved in local affairs by force in 1904, they instituted a system of “divided rule”4 in Bahrain. Dual authority meant that individuals on the island were to be categorized either as “foreign” or “local” subjects, with “foreigners” under the jurisdiction of the British, while “locals” would be under the jurisdiction of the ruler. The sticking point, however, was that “foreigner” was not a clear-cut category, and thus would turn into a point of contestation, with significant legal and political repercussions. The definition of “foreign” versus “local” would mainly be constructed and contested by the British based on an ethnosectarian gaze, a systematic approach that saw ethnosectarian cleavages as the underlying epistemic codes that shape local political power, practice, and discourse. Thus, ethnosectarian divisions were elevated to become the most important markers of the local political map from the British point of view, while other socioeconomic and political factors such as class, geography, and profession were relegated to play a secondary role to these “primordial” forces. According to their censuses, the British saw the local society as composed of 60% Sunnis and 40% Shias. Ethnic divisions of “Baharna,” “Persian,” “Tribes,” “Huwala,” and “Najdi” then became markers that defined the groups in which each individual should fall. These groups would then determine who was “foreign” or “local” and thus, entitled to British or local jurisdiction.5 “Divided rule” created a legal and institutional basis to catalyze political mobilization based on ethnosectarian identities. Thus, the British passed laws and set up courts, business arbitration councils, and municipal councils that reflected the situation of fragmented sovereignty. All of these institutions were crafted from an ethnosectarian perspective, which now had a codified legal footing with real consociational structures and institutions on the ground. As time passed, the British and local rulers struggled to contain the increasing contra­ dic­tions arising from this fragmentation of sovereign power. The local ruler contested the definition of “foreigner” and the scope of his jurisdiction. Locals, for their part, engaged in both “forum shopping” in terms of courts and laws, as well as “protection shopping” in terms of the sovereign power to rally to for protection against other powers. Regional powers would also enter the fray and try to use the contradictions to their advantage. Three would come to exercise a significant role: the Ottomans, the Qajar dynasty in Iran, and Al Saʿud. This was a convulsive mix. The interplay between ethnosectarianism, divided rule, and regional intrigues was firmly set in motion, with each feeding into the other. In contrast to ethnosectarian mobilization, the opening two decades of the twentieth century also saw the rise of another form of modernist movement, one that was both antagonistic to and symbiotic with colonial rule. It traced itself to al-Nahda (Renaissance) that emerged across the Arab world in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Its protagonists in Bahrain immersed themselves in a cocktail of British anticolonialism, literary critique, Arabism, and ecumenical Islamic reform. This mix would 4  For more on divided rule as a concept, see Lewis (2013).

5  Al Shehabi (2016: 4–10).

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540   omar al-shehabi interact to crystallize itself by the second decade of the twentieth century in a nationalist trans-sectarian discourse with strong currents of anticolonialism and demands for civic participation in political decision-making. Many of the actors in this movement were involved in setting up al-Hidaya school in Muharraq, the first school in Bahrain independently financed by, and catering for, locals. Given that the nationalist movement took the school as its unofficial base, this caused significant anxiety to the British. By 1922–23, the contradictions that arose from the contested system of “divided rule” had reached boiling point. Neither was the ruler, Isa Al Khalifa, able to establish authority over “locals,” nor were the British able to control “foreigners,” and political mobilization increasingly turned violent. Two poles emerged around which the different groups mobilized mainly on ethnosectarian lines, with each pole centered around an opposite source of sovereignty: The British saw “Sunnis” and “tribes” as being proruler and anti-British, while they saw “Shia” and “Persians” as being anti-ruler and pro-British. Thus, by 1923, Bahrain was in the eyes of the British a restive set of sects and ethnicities, headed by an ineffective ruler, surrounded by regional threats from Al Saʿud to Iran, and showing alarming signs of emergent nationalism. The system had to be re­organ­ized. Events reached a climax in May 1923, as the British completely took over local rule. The ruler Isa was deposed and his powers transferred to his son Hamad. The anticolonial nationalists would then put forward a petition demanding reform of the pol­it­ical system to become more participatory and for the cessation of British meddling. The British responded by arresting and deporting them.6

Modernized Absolutism Meets Petrodollars (1923–1957) This juncture was important as it marked the birth of the modernized form of absolutism that would become a predominant feature of Bahrain and the Gulf Arab States in the twentieth century. The British goal was not to end the rule of Al Khalifa, nor to institute a representative form of government, but to “reform” the system to ensure that it was stable and compatible with their interests, largely based on models they deployed previously in other colonies, such as Basra and the Indian princely states. Weak and with few allies and many more adversaries, the newly installed ruler was to depend almost entirely on the British to bolster his position. The British would duly recruit an “advisor” in 1926, the infamous Charles Belgrave, who would act as the government’s chief executive and effectively the country’s first prime minister for the next three decades. The British wager was that the new rationalized mode of government would drive economic gains and thus defeat any opposition. However, the remainder of the 1920s 6  Al Shehabi (2016: 13–17).

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Political Movements in Bahrain Across the Long Twentieth Century    541 were challenging years economically for Bahrain, particularly after the collapse of the pearling market in the late 1920s due to the Great Depression and the advent of Japanese cultured pearls. The fortunate discovery of oil in 1932 reversed the situation drastically, as Bahrain was the first of the Gulf Arab States to discover the commodity, largely saving it from the harsh economic situation that its neighbors faced in the 1930s. The new oil industry in many ways took over from the pearl industry as the major form of economic sustenance on the island. Pearl divers as an economic class eventually disappeared, and instead the oil industry became the main employer until the 1960s. Thus, the government was able to achieve independence in terms of revenue from merchants and the rest of local society, as the oil revenues poured in during the 1930s. This was coupled by a program of reform aimed at modernizing the governmental bureaucracy, whose senior positions would largely be staffed by British subjects and members of the ruling family. The police force was professionalized and all extra-state militias were disbanded. Sovereign power came to be monopolized in the hands of the ruler, with the advisor running the scene from behind. Bahrain would emerge as the role model for the rest of the region from the British viewpoint. This system of “modernized absolutism” came to control the local population through “vertical segmentation”7 based on the ethnosectarian gaze. From here onward, the ­population was to be viewed as a collection of sects and ethnicities, with the sovereign situated at the top, gazing from a bird’s-eye view, and binding these groups together. Any political movements that might arise in opposition to this absolutist rule would be dealt with by being reduced to their constituent ethnicities and sects.8 These epochal transformations would reflect themselves on the political scene, which was racked by several bouts of social upheaval throughout the 1930s. First, was the 1932 pearlers’ uprising. This was not the first time that pearl divers had staged militant action, as they were by far the most mobilized and organized workforce on the island, given the labor-intensive nature of the industry. Spurned by a set of British-imposed reforms to modernize the pearling industry, several divers staged a protest, and the police responded by arresting many of them. In response, a group of 1,500 armed pearl divers set out from Muharraq to Manama and freed their coworkers.9 The response was swift and the uprising was put down violently and ruthlessly, with some pearl divers crucified publicly in retaliation. Then came the 1934 ‘Baharna petition’ movement. Baharna merchants and notables put forward a petition demanding that Shia courts be reformed and that a distinct school be allocated to Shias. Most notably, they called for a greater ethnicity-based representation in Majlis al-ʿUrf (the business arbitration council) and the Manama Municipality council, claiming that the Shia are the “majority of the population.” This heralded the explicit emergence of ethnodemographic arguments of “minority” versus “majority” into politics.

7  Khalaf (1998).

8  Al Shehabi (2016: 21).

9  Al Mahmood (2013: 71).

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542   omar al-shehabi Throughout the twentieth century, ethnosectariancentric political mobilization in Bahrain would mainly manifest itself in Shiacentric movements.10 The unique experience of bonded labor directly under tributes paid to the ruling family in the villages, which were overwhelmingly composed of Baharna, coupled with the fact that the rulers were from a different sect, as well as the emergence of the religious institutions of Ashura processions, the Ma‘tams,11 and the ʿulama (clergy), provided the socioeconomic backdrop that cultivated the formation of Shiacentric movements to address their grievances throughout Bahrain’s modern history. In contrast, and although tribes were present as a form of political mobilization, there was a marked lack of political movements self-identifying and shaping their political discourse and mobilization ­primarily as “Sunni” throughout the twentieth century.12 This did not prevent the British and subsequent local rulers from reading all political movements in ethnosectarian terms. Hence, although the nationalist movement from 1923 explicitly adopted a trans-sectarian discourse, the British labeled the movement as mainly being driven by “Sunnis,” given that the propagators of the movement were mainly members of that sect. Such a labeling of the nationalist opposition as “Sunni” by the British would continue well into the 1950s. The year 1938 marked the rise of another nationalist movement, with the nationalist current continuing to gain strength in the upcoming decades. It began when workers from the oil company Bapco struck and brought work at the company to a halt, after Belgrave had started a crackdown on alleged secret labor and youth movements. The striking workers were fired. In response, notable members of both sects got together to put forward a list of demands. These included the formation of an elected legislative body, reforming the courts, and forming a committee to represent workers in the oil company.13 This marked the first time that both “Sunnis” and “Shia” would explicitly present themselves as putting forward common nationalist demands in a jointly signed statement. This movement was also notable for following in the footsteps of similar movements in Dubai and Kuwait—all then under British protection—calling for a greater say in ruling matters. Indeed, the Bahrain movement was directly inspired by the one in Kuwait, where a group consisting mainly of merchants demanded the establishment of an elected assembly with wide-ranging executive and legislative powers. They were successful in setting up the assembly and even reached the point of demanding control over the anticipated oil revenues from the ruler. Recognizing the danger, the British and the ruler colluded to put down forcibly the assembly after nearly a year in power. In Bahrain, the British also recognized the links in demands put forward in the two countries and moved swiftly to put down the movement. Belgrave labeled it in ethnosectarian terms as one mainly driven by “Huwala,” a Sunni ethnic local grouping. He 10  For a similar analysis in Iraq of Shiacentric mobilization see Haddad (2016). 11 Maʾtams are Shia religious places of worship that also act as focal points for social meetings and organizing, including funeral and wedding ceremonies. 12  As we will see, this would change with the 2011 mass protests. 13  Al Mahmood (2013: 80–81).

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Political Movements in Bahrain Across the Long Twentieth Century    543 moved to divide the movement by granting reform in Shia courts, in return for a promise from self-identified ‘Baharna’ notables to suspend their support for the movement as it was put down.14 The tectonic events of the Second World War coincided with a relatively quiet local political scene. Bahrain’s involvement in the war was mainly as a refueling spot for Allied planes and a hospital transit stop for their injured soldiers. Due to this, the Italian air force unsuccessfully attempted to bomb the oil refinery in Bahrain. Price and quantity controls on staple foods were imposed locally, to stop an impending famine which claimed the lives of several individuals. Continued oil production and revenues, however, helped Bahrain to avoid the terrible economic conditions faced by its neighbors such as Qatar, where the population decreased considerably due to economic hardship. Radio and written propaganda by both the British and the Germans intensified during this time, reflecting their worries regarding political agitation, as several flyers from supposed underground local groupings began to appear. One development of note during this period was the founding of the first fully articulated organized political movement in Bahrain. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1941 by a band of students in Al Hidaya school in Muharraq, under the name of Al Islah Society. Never to play a dominant role in Bahraini politics, and distinguished from Muslim Brotherhood chapters elsewhere by the close involvement of individuals from the ruling family in its founding and membership, it did, however, herald the establishment of organized political parties in Bahrain. It played a prominent role in the protests that wracked Bahrain after Al-Nakba (catastrophe) in Palestine and the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, as well as sending a small number of fighters to join the Arab armies that participated in the war.

Nationalism Takes Center Stage (1953–1956) The 1950s was a revolutionary period in the Arab world, with the rising tide of Arab nationalism, heightened by the charismatic figure of Jamal ʿAbd al-Nasir (1918–1970) in Egypt. These regional developments echoed strongly in Bahrain, where a vibrant local press and several cultural and sports centers had emerged throughout the 1930s and 1940s. These brewing developments needed a catalyst that would transform them into a larger movement. This was provided by the sectarian violence that erupted after clashes in the Ashura processions of 1953, which were soon followed by the 1954 taxi drivers’ labor strikes protesting the monopoly of British companies in car insurance provision. To address these ethnosectarian and anticolonial tensions, several meetings were held 14  Al Mahmood (2013: 83).

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544   omar al-shehabi between members from both sects, which culminated in the election of a Higher Executive Committee (HEC) composed of eight members—four Shia and four Sunnis— to articulate their political demands to the local ruler Salman Al Khalifa and the British. Although nationalist, the HEC was very aware of the sectarian undertones to its emergence and this explicitly played out in its choice of membership composition. The demands put forward included the establishment of a legislative body, a general legal code, labor unions, and the reformation of the court system. These, as we have seen, had become recurrent demands that were not dissimilar from those put forward by the nationalist movements in 1923 and 1938. At first, the British and the local ruler Sheikh Salman refused to deal formally with the HEC, but the strong momentum and nationwide reach of the movement finally forced the authorities to officially recognize it. The HEC collected 25,000 signatures in support of its demands—a remarkable feat in a country whose population barely numbered 150 thousand at the time. The British advisor and the rulers then resorted to the well-worn tactic of ethnosectarian divide and rule, labeling the movement as mainly driven by “Huwala,” and creating an alternative committee of Shia notables under their wing, in the hope of splitting and weakening the HEC. Finally, the authorities seized an opportune moment to forcibly end the movement. When violent protests broke out in November 1956 to denounce the tripartite aggression against Egypt after the na­tion­al­ iza­tion of the Suez Canal, these were used as an excuse to arrest and deport the leaders of the HEC, with many sent into exile on St Helena Island.15

Revolutionary Fervor and the Move Underground (1956–1971) Although the HEC was dissolved prematurely, it left a long-lasting legacy that continues until today. It arguably constitutes the crystallization of modern Bahraini nationalism, becoming an idealized source of inspiration for subsequent political movements. It also successfully formed Bahrain’s first labor union, which was disbanded with the end of the HEC, as well as actively being involved in drafting the country’s first labor law of 1957. It also acted as a catalyst for governmental reforms, as the state responded to the crisis by ending Belgrave’s services, who was retired on health grounds, and by commissioning a British-led inquiry into how to reform the state and its ruling structures, a recurrent move in the face of crises. In fact, state governance fell into limbo for a while, with no clear leader to replace the adviser, until a new ruler, Sheikh Isa (1933–1999), took over the helm in 1961, while his brother Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman (1935–) emerged as ef­fect­ ive­ly the head of the government in the 1960s, a position he holds to this day. Hence, this period saw the rise of a local technocracy, with a plethora of British advisors still playing 15  Al Shehabi (2013: 100–102).

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Political Movements in Bahrain Across the Long Twentieth Century    545 a role in the background. Modernized absolutist rule was increasingly taking on a local flavor. The dissolution of the HEC marked a new epoch in the history of Bahraini political movements. In essence, the HEC confined its demands to political reform within the existing system of British and Al Khalifa rule. The political movements that emerged in its aftermath, however, saw these aims as not far-reaching enough. They went underground and took a much more radical approach. Their goals were no longer reform, but the overthrow of the regime, using armed struggle if necessary. Two clandestine movements were to dominate the local scene over the next decade. The National Liberation Front (NLF) was a communist movement that was established in 1955, with its creation heavily influenced by its ties to the Iranian Tudeh party and the Iraq Communist party. The anti-Communist Movement of Arab Nationalists (MAN) ori­gin­ated in Beirut, aiming to establish a vanguard secular movement focused on the lib­er­ation of Palestine and the wider Arab world by revolutionary means. Between 1958 and 1959, the group began enrolling some Bahraini students in Beirut and Cairo in its ranks. The movement subsequently expanded rapidly in Bahrain, with several hundred local members joining. Both movements were strongest in the urban parts of Bahrain, establishing footholds in the cities of Muharraq and Manama. The relationship between the two movements was always ambivalent due to their ideological differences. The MAN viewed the Arab world as its natural homeland and the main focus of its activities. It saw the NLF as an internationalist agent that did not have the region’s interest at heart, with its equivocal support to the Palestinian struggle clouding its legitimacy. In return, the NLF viewed the MAN as a parochial upstart laced with nationalist xenophobia and limited horizons. The idea of Arab nationalism did not sit naturally with communists. The activities of the two groups climaxed with the March 1965 uprising, which became a legendary event in both movements’ historiography. The spark was ignited when the local oil company announced it was laying off several hundred workers, which quickly developed into mass protests, mainly in the cities of Muharraq and Manama. The protests were not planned and they caught both the MAN and NLF by surprise. The cadres from both movements spontaneously led the protests and tried to coordinate between each other, but the hastily assembled coalition rapidly fell apart when faced with state repression. Many of the cadres were arrested and eventually the protests fizzled out, but not without leaving a significant imprint on the future of the island’s pol­it­ ical movements. For one, the uprising signaled a major reshuffle within the underground movements on the island, particularly within the ranks of the Arab Nationalists. The Arab forces’ defeat against Israel in the Six Day War in June 1967 was the final death blow to the MAN, and in its place arose the Marxist forces from within the MAN. They would initiate a new movement in the late 1960s, which would eventually solidify under the banner of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG). The movement refocused its attention on the Arabian Gulf instead of the wider Arab world, adopted Marxism-Leninism as an official ideology, and advocated the use of armed

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546   omar al-shehabi struggle.16 The PFLOAG became increasingly involved in the Dhofar revolution in Oman that lasted from 1965 to 1976, with several Bahraini cadres joining the fight in Dhofar.17 Meanwhile, the British announced in 1968 their intention to withdraw from areas east of the Suez, including the Arabian Peninsula. To fend off any potential Iranian claims to Bahrain, a UN commission was sent to the island to inquire about the local population’s desire for independence. The preordained outcome was the establishment of the independent state of Bahrain in 1971 under the rule of Al Khalifa. As the British withdrew, a new major superpower ally for the now-independent regime appeared on the horizon as the United States of America became the dominant military and political force glo­bal­ly. This was epitomized by the expanding US Navy presence on the island, with the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy eventually coming to be based in Bahrain.

Labor, Parliamentary Rule, and the Rise of the Petro-Modernist Emirate (1970s) The year of independence also marked the establishment of the Constitutive Committee (CC) for the General Federation of Workers in Bahrain, the first organized public mass movement in Bahrain’s independent era. As the industries and sectors in Bahrain’s economy expanded, so did the labor movements situated within them, with labor strikes intermittently erupting across the different sectors in the late 1960s. The CC signaled a major shift within the tactics of Bahrain’s political movements, shifting once again away from clandestine political activity toward public coalition-building. It organized petitions for the establishment of a general labor union, with chapters across the diverse industries and sectors, and it was able to garner nearly 5,000 membership signatures in its support. Although the CC was spearheaded by individuals from PFLOAG, NLF, and MAN, it was not organized along party lines, and included many independents among its members. The CC acted in public rather than focusing on clandestine activity. Its composition and goals were formulated without any regard for sectarian or ethnic considerations whatsoever, the first public coalition to achieve such a feat in Bahrain’s modern history. The authorities repeatedly refused to grant recognition to the CC. The deadlock climaxed in the March 1972 uprising. Workers at the local airline company went on strike after a group of workers were brought in from Pakistan and they were asked to train them. Suspecting that the migrants were brought in to replace them, the workers initiated a strike that closed down the airport. The strikes quickly multiplied across the

16  Al Shehabi (2013: 100–107).

17  Takriti (2013).

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Political Movements in Bahrain Across the Long Twentieth Century    547 island’s sectors. The authorities deployed the military, and the protests were put down, with members of the CC either imprisoned or escaping into exile abroad.18 During the uprising, however, state authorities promised the CC members that they would go beyond simply granting them laborcentric demands; they were aiming to introduce comprehensive political rights. This was optimistically viewed as a promise to implement broad political reform. The activities of the CC, combined with British pressure for some semblance of political reform, hastened the establishment of the Constituent Assembly of 1972, a partly elected assembly that was tasked with drafting a constitution for the country, in an attempt to placate rising political tensions. The PFLOAG and NLF would coalesce once again with other Arab Nationalist figures to form the “Shehabi bloc,” although the alliance ended up boycotting the Constitutive Assembly elections due to differences within the two movements regarding participation in the elections. This was one of several blocs forming at that period, with a range of nationalists, village-based Shia religious clerics, and loyalist groupings emerging. The elected legislative assembly of 1973 quickly followed, with the Shehabi bloc acting as a precursor to the “People’s bloc,” a similar-minded grouping of leftist and Arab Nationalists who would contest the parliamentary elections and win eight seats. Nationalists, independents, and Shia clerical figures came to compose the other blocs within the newly elected assembly. The parliamentary experiment did not last long. The legislature locked horns with the government on a proposed “state of emergency” law and the proposed lease renewal for the American naval base on the island. The government grew increasingly frustrated and reacted by dissolving the assembly, suspending the constitution, and declaring a state of emergency, which was to last for the next twenty-five years.19 Many individuals were arrested, including former parliamentary members. The crackdown focused mainly on leftists and Arab Nationalists, with the rural conservative clergy acquiescing, as the authorities made it clear that this crackdown would not reach them. Accusations of the use of torture, always present in previous epochs, increased. The repression culminated with Bahrain’s first two political torture martyrs. Saʿid al-Uwainaty from the NLF and Muhammad Buchiri from the PFLOAG were arrested and accused of murdering a prominent Shia religious cleric, and subsequently died in jail in 1976. Thus ended Bahrain’s first experiment with democratic political institutions in the independence era. The oil boom of 1973 and the backing of the Americans gave the newly independent government confidence to push forward with a modified version of absolutist rule, heralding the rise of the petro-modernist emirate.20 Fueled by a huge increase in petrodollars throughout the 1970s, the governmental bureaucracy and the welfare state expanded rapidly along with the economy. Rapid social change ensued. Fordist modes of consumption predominated, with locals moving out of the old cities to live in newly built suburban car-based areas and working mainly in government-funded jobs, which over

18  Al Shehabi (2013: 113–121).

19  Khalaf (1998).

20  Al Shehabi (2015: 3–38).

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548   omar al-shehabi the years increasingly displayed an ethnosectarian element in their allocation.21 The arrival of migrant workers, both blue and white collared, accelerated under the rapidly consolidating Kefala system,22 with the majority of the workforce becoming non-national.

The Rise of Islamists (1979–2000) These social changes were reflected on the contours of the local political movements. The historic cities of Muharraq and Manama, for long the hotbed of opposition, were slowly emptied of citizens who moved to the suburbs as migrants took their place there. The ethnosectarian reading of the local political map would shift as well. Thus, while during the 1920s to 1950s, Sunnis were seen by the British as the main source of op­pos­ ition, throughout the 1960s and 1970s this perception changed to members of nationalist and leftist movements, with their bastion still being the urban centers. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, however, these forces declined, and Shia Islamist movements, with strong support in the villages, would take center stage as the main source of opposition. Particularly, the Shia clergy, playing a largely marginal and conservative role in political movements on the island for the past eighty years, and which were until recently seen by the British as strong possible allies with the local regime, would rise to head the largest opposition political movements for the remainder of the twentieth century. Two groups in particular would have a strong influence on Shia Islamist movements in Bahrain. One was Hizb al-Da‘wa al-Islamiyya (Party of the Islamic Call), commonly known as al-Da‘wa, which was formed in the late 1950s in Iraq, and whose early star was Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Al-Sadr formulated his ideas as a response to leftist thought dominant during the period, and partly drew inspiration from the political program of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Some of Bahrain’s leading Shia clergy, including Sheikh Issa Qassim, studied under al-Sadr. The other was the more radical Shirazi movement, named after Ayatollah Mohammad Al Shirazi, another high-ranking Shia cleric who was based in Karbala. In the 1960s, Ayatollah Shirazi (1928–2001) aligned himself with Ayatollah Khomeini (1902–1989) (who was in exile in Iraq), in a counterbalance to the clerical establishment in Najaf, where al-Sadr was based. His nephew, Hadi Al Modarrisi, was allowed by the authorities to settle in Bahrain in 1969, and indeed cultivated close connections with high-ranking members of the ruling family during the early 1970s, a period where Shia clerics were 21  Although no official statistics exist, popular perception sees the development of different ethnosectarian fiefs in the local economy, with tribal members concentrated in the military, Huwala in banking, Baharna in health, water, and electricity, and Ajams (Shia of Persian descent) concentrated in the local airline Gulf Air and the aluminum smelter Alba. 22  “Kefala” refers to the set of practices and laws that govern the importation of migrant labor to the Gulf, under which each migrant worker has to have a local “Kafeel” (sponsor) who acts as his legal guardian.

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Political Movements in Bahrain Across the Long Twentieth Century    549 not seen as a threat by the regime. Ayatollah Shirazi himself was also eventually exiled to Kuwait in 1970 by the Baath in Iraq, and his presence in the Gulf expanded the influence of the movement there considerably. The 1979 revolution in Iran and the rise of the Islamic Republic had a significant impact on galvanizing Shia Islamist movements in Bahrain. Members of al-Daʿwa were seen as following a more reformist and “moderate” path, while the Shirazis turned towards revolution and armed means to overthrow the regime and install an Islamic republic. The political branch of the Shirazis in Bahrain was the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain. Their efforts culminated in a failed 1981 coup attempt in Bahrain, thus marking a shift by political movements back toward a strategy of overthrowing the regime using violent and covert means.23 The authorities responded swiftly and violently after the discovery of the coup attempt, as several individuals were arrested and long prison sentences were handed out. The tough security situation was compounded by the economic depression caused by the fall in oil prices throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s. As the political and economic situation stalled, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent liberation marked a turning point in regional dynamics and local political movements. The 1990s witnessed once again the re-emergence of a public movement that attempted to unite the diverse political groupings together in a movement for greater political representation. Former members of the NLF, PFLOAG, along with independents and Shia religious clergy initiated the “elite petition” and “popular petition” that called for the restoration of the 1973 constitution and parliamentary democracy. By this point, Shia political Islam was the dominant form of political mo­bil­ iza­tion on the island. The backbone of the popular movements was now firmly fixed in the villages. Shia religious scholars, such as Abdul Amir al-Jamri and Ali Salman would become the most influential in the emerging movement. As in previous epochs, the movement was met with a campaign of state violence that increasingly took on a sectarian dimension. The authorities blamed Iran for foreign interference, and the country plunged into what became known as the “nineties uprising,” lasting from 1994 to 1999.24

A Parliamentary Monarchy (of Sorts) (2000–2011) A new ruler ascended to the throne in 1999, and at the turn of the century, Bahrain seemed to enter a new phase of political reform. The National Action Charter of 2001 promised to establish a constitutional democracy and was passed with a referendum result of 98.4%. The new constitution of 2002, however, was written behind closed doors and with no popular input in its drafting. It did not live up to the expectations of the 23  Alfoneh (2012: 1–11).

24  For more see Fakhro (1997).

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550   omar al-shehabi opposition. A half-elected legislative assembly with weak supervisory and legislative powers was established, to be elected via heavily gerrymandered electoral districts. The booming economic situation gave the authorities the belief that they were able to control the political situation. The price of a barrel of oil rose from below $20 in 2000 to a peak of more than $140 in 2008, with more than US$2 trillion in resultant revenue pouring into the Gulf States. Bahrain became a hub for some of these investments, via both its burgeoning finance and real-estate sectors. The new system seemed to entrench demographic and political divisions successfully, with a dizzying array of political societies emerging under the new system that rarely found common ground. Some decided to contest the parliamentary elections, while others chose to boycott the official system altogether. Al Wifaq, the heir to the Shia Islamist movement of the 1990s, and Waʿad, a secular-liberal society with its roots in the MAN and PFLOAG, formed the backbone of the formally recognized opposition so­ci­ eties. The local Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi movements also established their own political societies and entered parliamentary politics. Individuals who chose to boycott the political system formed Haq, an unauthorized movement that continued to call for a full constitutional monarchy. Nevertheless, the government seemed to be in a comfortably commanding position. The high oil prices sustained an economic boom throughout the island, as privatization and neoliberalism became the modus operandi, fueled by government expenditure and soaring migration.25 The officially sanctioned opposition groups were effectively contained within a weak parliament, while members of the more radical movements that operated outside official channels were faced with jail on charges of terrorism and plotting to overthrow the regime.26

February 14 Explosion and Beyond (2011–) The stalled political situation unexpectedly exploded in February 2011, when Bahrain entered its most recent and largest political upheaval in the midst of the so-called Arab Spring. Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, anonymous social media activists in Bahrain called for a “Day of Rage” on February 14, 2011, the anniversary of the National Action Charter. The Pearl roundabout subsequently became the center of the protest movement for the next month. Composed of a motley collection of different political forces and individuals with no unifying thread except opposition to the regime, the protesters’

25  For more on the socioeconomic changes during this period see Al Shehabi (2014). 26  Katzman (2011).

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Political Movements in Bahrain Across the Long Twentieth Century    551 demands varied from system reform to the regime’s downfall, with the latter becoming by far the most dominant chant at the roundabout. The now-entrenched sectarian divide, heightened since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was the most formidable political obstacle facing the protesters, and so it proved this time around. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the opposition protestors were Shia. As the protests wore on, official media channels began adopting an antagonistic rhet­ oric, which increasingly targeted the sectarian divide. Security forces were withdrawn from the streets, and over time vigilante groups appeared and sectarian clashes occurred across the island. The opposition split in their demands, with the more radical elements now openly demanding a republic. Given that all those who made the demand for a republic were from a Shia Islamist background, many Sunnis took this as a call for the establishment of an Islamic Republic, along the lines of the theocratic regime in Iran. Calls increasingly grew amongst Sunnis for a forcible government response. Saudi troops entered Bahrain on March 14 through the causeway connecting the two countries. The king declared a state of emergency the subsequent day. The Pearl round­ about was forcibly cleared of protesters, and over the next two months, dozens were killed, hundreds jailed, and thousands more fired from their jobs, mainly on a sectarian basis.27 The protest movement continued to show notable resilience. Protests and clashes with security forces continued, although their intensity and frequency had decreased markedly by 2015, and have largely been confined to sporadic flash protests in the villages. Thus, the government seemed able to control the security situation, if not the political one. From its side, the state has shown little intention to make substantial pol­it­ ical reforms. Indeed, it took several antagonistic steps during 2016, dissolving Al Wifaq, the largest formally recognized opposition group, and revoking the citizenship of Isa Qassem, the highest Shia cleric on the island. Bahrain has become a heavily politicized country, with a new cohort of youth en­gaging in contentious politics for the first time. A fertile and as yet unstable political terrain has emerged with constantly shifting contours. Society continues to be split on sectarian lines, with events in the wider Arab world further agitating the situation, especially in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. This seems to suit the regime, ensuring that no transsectarian movements are able to emerge like they have in the past, although the sectarian situation does threaten to spiral out of its control. On the opposition front, the more formally established political societies, and particularly Al Wifaq, have had to compete with new groups that have emerged on the scene, such as the February 14 Coalition. These groups have resorted to anonymous mobilization with a heavy focus on direct street action, adopting regime change as their explicit aim. This sits in contrast to the demands of the formally recognized political societies, which continue to focus on reforming the system into a democratic constitutional monarchy.

27  For a detailed account of events see Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (2011).

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552   omar al-shehabi These opposition movements have become extremely active abroad, marketing their cause through international outlets. The general trend has been to reach out to potential allies in the West, particularly Europe and the US, based on considerations of human rights and democracy, while in the region, most of the solidarity has been sect-based, with the most vocal and active regional support coming from Shia in Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iran, and the Eastern province in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, such ties have reflected in the opposition groups’ healthy funds, setting up several TV channels, newspapers, think tanks, human rights and democracy advocacy outlets, with large parts of the funding coming from sect-based funders in the region, or Western human rights and democracy advocacy institutions. One of the most significant qualitative developments has been the emergence of what is now known as the “Sunni street,” with groups such as the Gathering of National Unity and Al Fateh Youth emerging on the scene. As previously mentioned, there was little historical precedence of Sunnis mobilizing primarily as “Sunnis” in Bahrain, but the slowly brewing sectarian factors since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 exploded with the events of 2011. Although their stance so far has focused against the Shia opposition, they have also started to signal their increasing frustration with the way the authorities are ruling. They, too, have turned their gaze abroad, with active calls for a federal union with the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. They have also increasingly adopted the Syrian revolution as their cause célèbre regionally. Although critical of the government, they perceive Bahrain as a fault line in a wider regional battle between Iran and the Gulf Arab States—a battle that requires conscientious and sustained mo­bil­iza­ tion, with the other side already far more advanced than they are in this regard.28 What about trans-sectarian movements with a national outlook that try to bridge the gap between all of these divergent groups? Small attempts have been witnessed in this regard, notably by the old guard of nationalists and leftists, who have tried to resuscitate some sort of a national trans-sectarian coalition. Given that this period is marked by the most entrenched sectarian division in Bahrain’s modern history, however, they face a daunting task. On the regime front, and although seemingly containing the protests by 2015, one crucial factor that continues to cause worry is its heavily dented international image, which has impacted negatively on Bahrain’s trade-dependent economy. As the oil prices tumbled in 2015, the economy has further stagnated, with the public deficit and debt climbing at alarming and unsustainable rates, forcing the regime to undertake a series of unpopular steps of subsidy removals and price hikes of basic goods in the midst of pol­it­ical instability. Nor does it seem like the regime will be granted relief any time soon on the political front. As we have outlined, by now political movements in Bahrain have had a long history of mobilization for more than a century. Throughout this period, the colors and contours of these movements have changed considerably, shifting from urban to rural, secular to religious, national to transnational, public to underground, reformist to revolutionary, and vice versa. The responses to these movements have sculpted the shape of 28  Al Shehabi (2012).

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Political Movements in Bahrain Across the Long Twentieth Century    553 absolutist rule the petro-modernist state has taken during this time, formed under the heavy backing of British colonial and then American and Saudi protection. Indeed, it is quite certain that new and emerging political movements will continue to write several further chapters in the future of Bahrain’s contested sociopolitical scene.

References Alfoneh, Ali (2012). “Between Reform and Revolution: Sheikh Qassim, the Bahraini Shiʿa, and Iran,” American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 1: 1–11. Al Mahmood, Mahmood (2013). The Rise and Fall of Bahrain’s Merchants in the Pre-oil Era. MA thesis, American University. Washington DC. Al Shehabi, Omar (2016). “Contested Modernity: Divided Rule and the Birth of Sectarianism, Nationalism, and Absolutism in Bahrain,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies: 1–23. Al Shehabi, Omar (2015). “Histories of Migration to the Gulf,” in Khalaf, Al Shehabi, and Hanieh (eds). Transit States: Labour, Migration and Citizenship in the Gulf 3–38 (London: Pluto Press). Al Shehabi, Omar (2014). “Radical Transformations and Radical Contestations: Bahrain’s Spatial-Demographic Revolution,” Middle East Critique 23,1: 29–51. Al Shehabi, Omar (2013). “Divide and Rule in Bahrain and the Elusive Pursuit for a United Front: The Experience of the Constitutive Committee and the 1972 Uprising,” Historical Materialism 21,1: 94–127. Al Shehabi, Omar (2012). “Bahrain’s Fate: On Ibrahim Sharif and Misleadingly Dubbed ‘Arab Spring,’ ” Jacobin 2012 https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/bahrains-fate/. Accessed December 22, 2016. Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (2011). Report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (Manama: Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry). Fakhro, Muneera (1997). “The Uprising in Bahrain: An Assessment,” in Sick and Potter (eds). The Persian Gulf at the Millennium: Essays in Politics, Economy, Security, and Religion (New York: St Martin’s Press). Haddad, Fanar (2016). “Shia-centric State Building and Sunni Rejection in Post-2003 Iraq.” Paper presented at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2016 . Accessed December 22, 2016. Hobsbawm, Eric (2010). Age of Capital: 1848–1875 (London: Hachette UK). Katzman, Kenneth (2011). “Bahrain: Reform, Security, and U.S.  Policy,” Congressional Research Service www.fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/158480.pdf. Accessed December 22, 2016. Khalaf, Abdulhadi (1998). “Contentious Politics in Bahrain,” in The Fourth Nordic Conference on Middle Eastern Studies, Oslo http://org.uib.no/smi/pao/khalaf.html. Accessed December 22, 2016. Lewis, Mary (2013). Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Mezzadra, Sandro and Brett Neilson (2013). Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Takriti, Abdel Razzaq (2013). Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965–1976 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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chapter 27

Befor e th e Spr i ng Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt Reem Saad

Despite the brutal crushing of the Arab Spring, the tenacious paradigm of “Arab exceptionalism” has lost much of its scholarly status as an analytically useful idea. Dominant perceptions of Arab populations in Western policy and academic circles have long been governed by stereotypes of Arab passivity, an unchanging cultural Islamic essence that dictates all belief and action, and an assumption that Arab societies are destined to be governed by authoritarian regimes. Dislodging such resilient stereotypes continues to have a dynamic effect both politically and academically as new questions and areas of inquiry emerge that challenge outmoded policy paradigms. The 2011 Arab uprisings have swept into the limelight hitherto ignored or intentionally muffled social groups. Women, youth, religious minorities, workers, farmers, to name but a few, have mobilized to have their agency acknowledged. Struggles for visibility have gone hand in hand with struggles for rights and entitlements, and for carving a place in a dramatically and, indeed, violently reconfigured social and political order. The immediate trigger to the revolution was a call on the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook page. Hitherto little-known youth activists Abdul Rahman Mansur and Wael Ghoneim founded and secretly operated the page since June 2010 following the death of the Alexandrian youth Khaled Said due to torture at the hands of police agents. The page’s success in mobilizing young people against the Mubarak regime and the un­pre­ce­dent­ed turnout in response to the call to demonstrate on January 25, 2011 led to a tendency in the media to reduce the events of January 2011 to a “Facebook revolution.” This tendency obscured histories of struggle of various political groups, and prompted crit­ic­al responses from observers and activists who had a more complex story to tell.1 They especially ­highlighted the role of workers, given that the decade that preceded the uprising

1  See for example el-Mahdi (2011a) and Abul-Magd (2012).

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Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt   555 ­ itnessed a sustained wave of labor-contentious actions, and that labor strikes during the w critical days before Mubarak’s ousting played a decisive role in ending the regime.2 The Egyptian uprising was very much an urban phenomenon and spectacle.3 The most visible thrust of the challenge to the regime was occupying the center of the capital and the physical presence of the huge crowds in Tahrir Square. For a number of reasons, analyzing the role of farmers in the uprising has been harder to achieve. But the story of Egypt’s uprising and the ongoing struggle for justice, bread, and dignity would not be complete without addressing the question of Egypt’s rural population and trying to understand their place in the unfolding of this story. Yet the story of the farmers’ struggles and rural protest is less straightforward than that of the workers’ protest, and it is not enough to argue that such struggles exist but just need to be uncovered and made more visible. Part of the difficulty of understanding rural resistance is intimately tied to the enduring stereotype of the “passive peasant.” On the one hand, the resilience of this stereotype has led to obscuring the varied forms of resistance that indeed existed. On the other hand, attempts to fight that stereotype have often led to excessive celebration of a variety of acts that were too hastily conceived as resistance, without due attention to their pol­it­ ical significance and efficacy. Scott’s idea of the “everyday forms of peasant resistance” continues to influence thinking on rural resistance and subaltern protest more generally. The effectiveness of such acts, and whether they should be considered as “resistance” have, however, been called into question (Adas 1986; Fegan 1986). There has also been a tendency to glorify such acts,4 perhaps beyond what is politically sensible. In what follows, I join other academics and activists in their attempt to shed greater light on rural lives and farmers’ livelihoods and struggles.5 In doing so, I wish to take a closer look at rural resistance and protest activity during the two decades preceding the uprising. I will examine two instances to illuminate the changing dynamics within rural society and show the ways in which such changing forms of protest link to wider pol­it­ ical and social processes at the national level. The first instance concerns farmers’ responses to the 1992 Tenancy Law, which was fully implemented in 1997. This law amended the first Agrarian Reform Law of 1952 through repealing the article granting tenancy security to farmers holding rented land. Despite the magnitude of the blow, the tenants mostly responded either by coping with the new conditions or by sporadic protesting activities that were, ultimately, not effective. The second instance of protest activity concerns spectacular forms of rural protest that intensified during the latter half of the decade preceding the Egyptian uprising. It is here that we see a qualitative shift in the types and scope of rural resistance in an especially illuminating moment, and one that sheds light on the subsequent events. This chapter argues that while rural Egypt has a long history of resistance, there has been a 2  See for example Joel Beinin (2012) and el-Mahdi (2011b). 3  McMurray and Ufheil-Somers (2013) and Sowers and Toensing (2012). 4  See especially Abu-Lughod (1990: 42). She draws attention to a tendency in recent literature on resistance to romanticize and regard as heroic a variety of actions undertaken by the powerless. 5  On post-2011 rural protest, see especially El Nour (2015) and Ahmed (2015, 2016).

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556   reem saad qualitative shift in the type, scope, and effectiveness of such acts during the first decade of the new millennium. We do not have enough evidence to attribute a causality to such shift, yet there is a clear association between new forms of protest on the one hand and the pattern of urbanization of rural Egypt on the other. The scope and quality of rural protest in the 2000s is more closely related to social and spatial factors than to trad­ ition­al concerns over farming and agricultural land.6 Before discussing these cases, an overview of the main features of social and political changes in rural Egypt is in order.

Rural Change: Two Watersheds Rural Egypt has witnessed an intense process of social transformation over a relatively short time span. For the purposes of this discussion, I pinpoint two watersheds that triggered two different processes of social change. The first watershed can be traced to the mid-1970s when Sadat initiated his open-door policy and when the exodus of Egyptian labor—both urban and rural—to Arab countries began. The same direction of change included the spread of education coupled with continued public sector over-employment, resulting in a huge increase in the number of government employees residing in the villages. Electricity, television, as well as telecommunication facilities have covered practically every corner of the Egyptian countryside. The impact of these nation-wide technological transformations has been noted by many observers of rural Egypt. John Waterbury noted as early as the early 1990s, that the phenomenon of the part-time peasant in the Middle East spread “with a hold on the land and on the city, on village life and migration, on agricultural and nonagricultural sources of livelihood.”7 One of the most consequential effects of this change process has been that village residence no longer automatically means an agricultural occupation, and village–city boundaries have become more fluid than ever. The changes in the rural scene associated with the emergence of consumption styles that sought to emulate the urban middle class have become more visible than other types of social change. Replacing traditional mud-brick houses with concrete red-brick urban middle-class-style houses, the urban-style furniture and electrical appliances, and the appearance of satellite dishes on rooftops are striking signals of change. The 6  Much of the data underlying this chapter was gathered during a research project on the immediate consequences of Law 96, carried out by a team (of which I was a member) from the Social Research Center of the American University in Cairo, and using mainly qualitative methods. Fieldwork has been conducted by the team in six villages in the Governorates of Minya, Qena, and Aswan during the period January to December 1998. The aim of the project was to capture the moment of transition to the new situation and explore how evicted tenants experienced abrupt impoverishment. Other studies during subsequent years, however, show that evicted tenants’ behavior during the transitional phase was not a temporary handling of a crisis moment as much as a sustained trend signaling a dramatic, and enduring, decline in living standards. 7  Waterbury (1991: 3).

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Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt   557 changes in the appearance of the rural landscape are largely responsible for the widespread view of a linear and uniform progression toward urbanization. Yet several factors complicate this picture. Most importantly, we need to assert that agriculture remains the central defining feature of rural Egypt’s economy, society, and culture, and that the rural/ agricultural family is the primary framework within which changes in consumption and urbanized lifestyle take place. Such changes need to be understood as part of the logic of the agricultural household diversification of sources of income. Yet we also need to keep in mind the tensions that mark such change processes. These tensions between young and old, between farmers and non-farmers, and between educated and uneducated family members are often played out within the family but do have manifestations on a wider scale. The altered consumption styles reflected in the possessions of those with aspirations for upward mobility tell only one side of the Egyptian rural transformation story. A sinister but more significant trend of change is that of increasing impoverishment of the great majority of rural dwellers. This trend has intensified with the second watershed under investigation: the process of agricultural liberalization, dubbed by its critics as the “counterreform” process.8 This process, which started in the late 1980s, included the lifting of subsidies on agricultural inputs, abolishing mandatory crop delivery, and abolishing agricultural cooperatives’ marketing of crops. It also involved a drastic change in tenure regimes and in conditions of access to land and water. The liberalization process climaxed in 1992, with the issuance of Law 96, which abolished hitherto secure tenancies, and allowed for market forces to be the sole determinant of rent value. The successive measures associated with structural adjustment policies have had adverse impacts on the poor. A decline in quality of life of low-income groups correlates to lifting subsidies, drastic cuts in public-sector employment, withdrawal of whatever welfare coverage that existed, in addition to a soaring inflation. Last but not least, Law 96 left the majority of one million families (almost 10 percent of the population then) without their main source of livelihood. One cannot think of a decision that negatively affected the livelihoods of poor farmers more than this law.

Coping with the Tenancy Crisis: 1992–1997 Against this background, the 1992 law that repealed tenancy guarantees and resulted in mass evictions was a culmination of long-term shifts in policy orientation, of shifting power relations at the national level, and of structural changes in rural society.9 Saker Elnur identifies—quite understandably—this moment as key in the periodization of

8  Bush (2002).

9  For further details on the 1992 tenancy law, see (Saad 1999, 2002, 2003).

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558   reem saad rural resistance.10 The years 1992–97 did witness significant acts of rural resistance and protest activity, yet I argue that such acts were neither proportionate to the magnitude of the dispossession nor to the extent of the breach of the social contract and the moral economy.11 The types and scale of protest activity did not match the dramatic nature of this act, and were ultimately ineffective. The evicted tenants ended up coping rather than resisting, which resulted in further degradation in their quality of life. The big picture was not one of resistance but of accommodation and coping. What is coping and how exactly did the evicted tenants cope? A dominant trope in Egyptian national (also nationalistic) discourse views the ability to cope with adverse conditions as a sign of the genius of the Egyptian people (“ʿabqariyyat al-Shaʿb alMasri”) and the ability of its members to make do with very little and to deal with any circumstances, however difficult. The scholarly response turns to investigating coping or survival strategies of low-income groups, and the literature on this issue tends to focus on urban areas, with special emphasis on networks of support and cooperation and the pooling of resources in order to access both financial and other types of resources such as work or marriage opportunities. Assaad and Rouchdy offer a simple and useful description for coping strategies, describing them as the “ability to pull together monetary and non-monetary resources to sustain their livelihoods.”12 The gamʿiyya (rotating savings association) figures prominently among such strat­ egies. In addition, Diane Singerman discusses networks of monetary and in-kind gifts and exchanges as a way of sustaining livelihood and easing pressures on households. These include gifts of “food, clothing, cash, labor and small household furnishings.”13 Homa Hoodfar, in a similar vein, lists a number of survival strategies used by Cairene low-income households. These include various means of saving on expenses such as using male and female family labor to accomplish household tasks (ranging from childcare to making home improvements), keeping track of price fluctuations and variations to make the best shopping decisions, and labor migration.14 The same type and range of strategies are mentioned by Mahmoud Ouda, who also tackles the positive cultural valu­ation of coping in the notion of shatara (cleverness), in the face of limited resources, as exemplified in the proverb “esh-shatra teghzel bi-rigl humar” (“the clever woman can spin with a donkey’s leg”).15 In all of this, it has to be remembered that the ability to reciprocate is a vital aspect of this support system,16 and failure to comply practically means deprivation from access to the benefits of communal networks of support and security. It marked a breakdown of the fragile mutual aid system.17 “Coping strategies” remains a useful way of guiding investigation into the realities of living with poverty and looking at ways in which a population living under conditions of extreme economic distress is managing to survive. In what follows, I will present some 10  El Nour (2015). 11  Tripp (2006). 12  Assaad and Rouchdy (1999: 36). 13  Singerman (1995: 157). 14  Hoodfar (1990). 15  Ouda (1995: 200). 16  Singerman (1995: 157–159). 17  I have discussed elsewhere the value of shame and trust as cultural necessities for the functioning of informal financial institutions, and the grave consequences of non-compliance (Saad 2004).

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Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt   559 of the “coping strategies” followed by evicted tenants subsequent to their abrupt impoverishment. The intention here, however, is not to celebrate the tenants’ creative abilities in adapting to harsh conditions as much as to highlight the cost of such adaptation. I will try to show that in this case, strategies for coping with the immediate state of distress engendered longer-term adverse conditions. At the social level, they hit at the most vulnerable social groups within an already distressed population. At the political level, I argue that coping is negatively correlated to political mobilization and resistance. As has been the case with “everyday forms of resistance,” good-intentioned excessive celebration of “strategies of survival” as signs of popular genius may have unwittingly contributed to dissipating the potential for political action toward effective change.

The Social Cost of Coping Coping strategies intend to show ways in which the poor display resourcefulness and creativity, and where these strategies provide some explanation for the social, economic, and physical survival of households in the face of adverse conditions. We regard them with admiration and we also get the impression that this system looks like it is “working.” In this section, I will discuss coping strategies during the landloss-induced crisis. This is a situation that lacks the normalcy and a certain degree of stability and pre­dict­ abil­ity that studies of coping strategies usually assume. In fact, I hesitated to use the term “strategy,” but even under conditions of duress, we do find the element of conscious decisions in the redeployment of household resources to attain a certain goal. In this case the main goal was to ensure physical survival. The following outlines the basic coping strategies of evicted tenants. As is usually the case, these strategies are a combination of cutting on expenditure and generating income.

Cutting Expenditure The implementation of Law 96 coincided with the beginning of the school year. Qualitative research during the transition to landlessness revealed that discontinuing children’s education, especially girls, was one of the first actions taken in order to cut household expenses. This was not an easy decision for families to make, of course. In several cases, children started the school year in the hope that it would be possible for them to continue, but they had to stop attending mid-year.18

18  On the impact of Law 96 on the level of school dropouts four years after full implementation, see Land Center for Human Rights (2003: 114–120).

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560   reem saad Perhaps the most alarming example of coping with this crisis has been the changing dietary habits—a euphemism for eating less in both quantity and quality. People started eating less regularly and at greater intervals. Those who used to grow their own wheat and maize became dependent on government bakeries. With the sale of cattle and poult­ry, there was no access to eggs and dairy products.19 Meat consumption dropped drastically, too. Many women reported either buying less per week (up to quarter of the previous quantity), or buying once every two weeks or once a month.20 The Egyptian Land Center for Human Rights (LCHR) noticed people began “sleeping early in order to avoid feeling hungry” as one strategy used by evicted tenants to cope with the new situation.21 Farmers who rented land under the new tenancy regime were hard pressed to pay the high rents. Their strategies to raise money for the rent were detrimental to their standards of living as they were forced to grow cash crops in order to cover the value of the rent. The Egyptian sociologist Mohamed Abdel Aal sees this tendency as endangering household food security: Tenant fellahin may seem to have become more market-oriented, because many of them, out of the necessity to pay increased rents, have shifted towards cash crop production. Yet, this has led to an imbalance, compared with the situation before Law 96, in the production of cash crops and food crops for household consumption as well as feed for farm animals.22

With the pressing need to provide for basic household necessities, evicted tenants started cutting out items that relate to social obligations. In some cases, this amounted to choosing physical survival over social survival. A couple of vignettes reveal the profound effects Law 96 had on everyday life and the structure of Egyptian society. The first example involves a wealthy tenant and respected tribal elder in his village. When he lost his tenancy, he was not only forced to beg his sons to contribute to household expenses, he also lost his ability to perform the customary celebration of slaughtering an animal at the time of receiving the sugar cane money, and to uphold the custom of sponsoring a hadra (religious ceremony) at the time of the Mawlid (celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday). Such activities have long been crucial for the “career” of any village leader or tribal headman. In this case, the eviction caused abrupt downward social mobility. Another case involved a poor tenant whose wife left home angrily when he became unable to provide her with expected amenities and—more im­port­ ant­ly—to pay the customary money gift (nuqta) for her nephew’s wedding. These gifts

19  Though these products are normally intended for sale, a portion is usually kept for household consumption. 20  Reducing number of meals and quality of food is reported for subsequent years. See LCHR (2003) and Bach (2002: 78). 21  LCHR (2003: 15). 22  Abdel Aal (2002: 156).

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Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt   561 are debts that have to be repaid and failure to comply with the strict norms of reciprocity signals shame and exclusion and a wider breakdown of already precarious life worlds.23

Generating Income The hardship that these two cases epitomize has forced rural Egyptians to tap into child labor to sustain the household. This desperate measure put further pressure on families to take their children out of school. Ray Bush has demonstrated how policies of economic liberalization have resulted in a sharp rise of “unfree labor,” whereby wages are not set by a “free” labor market “but by a new poverty-induced labor regime,” that depends in large measure on child labor.24 He notes from fieldwork in a Giza village that labor contractors started appearing in the village after October 1997. Bush directly links the availability of this type of labor to the drop in school registers “because many fam­ ilies cannot afford to keep their children in school.”25 During the first year of landlessness, tenants resorted to liquidating household assets in order to survive. Women sold their gold jewelry which, apart from doing away with their savings, had implications for gender relations within the household. It was especially humiliating for men, the traditional breadwinners, to feel helpless and dependent on their wives’ possessions. Moreover, families were forced to sell household appliances, furniture, and livestock—the most valuable asset of a peasant household after land. Contrary to jewelry, livestock represents a key productive asset that generates income and sustains social status.26 The decision to sell such assets is therefore an atypical behavior, pointing to the devastating effect of the loss of land. Cattle sale continued beyond the transitional year due to hiking land rents and crop price fluctuations, with the long-term consequence for women’s economic independence within the family.27 Incurring debt is a well-established strategy for dealing with financial need.28 In the case of the evicted Egyptian tenants, there is ambiguity as to the extent of use of debt as a coping strategy.29 Resorting to taking on debts from local charity organizations was a way of facing the crisis. For example, a widow was able to keep her children in school thanks to the Association of Sponsoring Orphans, which supplied school fees and a monthly allowance of 30 Egyptian pounds.30 But the sustainability of such short-term 23  See Singerman (1995: 158) and Saad (2004). 24  Bush (2002a: 186). 25  Bush (2002a: 186). Assaad and Rouchdy also note the connection between child labor and school dropout rates: “Parents may initially put their child to work to supplement the household’s income in a time of crisis, hoping that the child will remain in school, but indications are that child work and schooling are incompatible in Egypt” (Assaad and Rouchdy 1999: 38). 26  Saad Nagi (2001: 185). 27  Bach (2002: 174). 28  For the Middle East during the 1990s, see for example Khalaf and Alkobaisi (1999: 286). 29  Here I am not addressing the problem of tenants’ indebtedness to banks which was another pervasive problem they faced. 30  Land Center for Human Rights (2003: 85).

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562   reem saad solutions are not clear. There is convincing evidence that points to the inability of evicted tenants to borrow, both through formal and informal channels. Loss of land deprived evicted tenants of credit worthiness not just vis-à-vis official institutions but also within informal networks as well. While the much-celebrated social networks have provided a modicum of urgently needed social security in crisis situ­ ations, the functioning of such networks as sustainable safety nets depends on compliance with norms of reciprocity. Eligibility for joining a gamʿiyya (rotating savings association) depends on credit-worthiness and a regular income, and evicted tenants lacked both. Thus a tenant’s wife responded incredulously at my question: “Why are you not joining a gamʿiyya?” As politely as possible she responded that the gamʿiyya needed a regular income that they no longer had.

The Political Cost of Coping The above discussion addresses a nothing-to-lose situation. This is the point where we should shift our question from: “how did they survive?” to “ Why did they accept their hardship?” This shift of focus transports us to the issue of peasant resistance. Mindful of both the myth of the passive peasant and the pitfalls of the peasant resistance paradigm, I ask: Was rural protest present and if so, what form did it take, was it effective and did it link up with wider Egyptian discontent at the national level? The historical and ana­lyt­ic­al links between mere coping strategies and collective resistance are neither straight­ forward nor easy to verify. They require zooming out toward long-term traditions and historical trends of peasants’ dealing with oppression and zooming in on the elusive level of individual decision-making and agency.31 With these caveats in mind, let me provide the general context in which protest in the crucible of the tenancy crisis took place. Sayyid Ashmawi’s study on peasant movements in Egypt in the period 1919–99 attempts to prove that Egyptian peasants have used various means of resistance both as downtrodden peasants fighting against unjust landlords, and as citizens participating in broader nationalist struggles. He accumulated historical and literary evidence of instances of resistance of various types including telegrams and petitions, sarcastic proverbs and jokes, desertions and dissimulation, as well as rioting in the runup to Law 96. But it is not clear if all these acts of protest actually constituted a continuous “development in the level of consciousness of peasant population.”32 The anticipated large-scale violence after the evictions deadline in October 1997 did not materialize. There were, indeed, several incidents of violent protest but these were mostly not reported in the official media and when major incidents occurred they were 31  Ouda (1995) contains interesting insights relating to this issue, but its “national character” approach obstructs the exploration of wider conceptual questions. 32  Ashmawi (2001:18).

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Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt   563 buried on the “crime” pages. As the deadline passed relatively peacefully, the tenancy problem was abruptly wiped off the political agenda and, with the exception of some dedicated activists, tenants lost what little support they had. Many established and usually vocal political actors lost interest the moment it became clear that the potential for the formation of a political movement faded. The victims were left to develop strategies of coping and adaptation. Despite these unfavorable conditions, “unprecedented political activity” against the application of the law crystallized, which included around 200 “formal agricultural conferences” that “played a vital role in conveying farmer opinions to the authorities.”33 Protest covered a wide variety of activities that included sending telegrams to the president, the minister of agriculture, and the press; collecting signatures on petitions; hanging black banners on roof tops; destroying agricultural cooperative registers at the time of transfer of the land deeds; and stopping trains and blocking highways.34 Half a year before the deadline a rally of 7,000 tenants organized by the Tagammuʿ Party, capped a number of smaller protests.35 These acts of resistance were all the more remarkable because they faced brutal police repression including arrests, detention, torture, and banning or disrupting public meetings, all under the convenient cover of chronic emergency laws. Whereas the level of resistance accompanying Law 96 documented by the LCHR and other researchers and observers leaves no doubt as to the fallibility of a “passive peasant” thesis, it is unwarranted to view them as the culmination of a conscious peasant movement. The activities in 1997 and 1998 were, in fact, repetitions of earlier responses to similar grievances. They remained ad hoc and in response to specific, higher-than-usual levels of oppression. As throughout the twentieth century, incidents of rural revolt, or indeed any form of protest, typically ended with brutal repression after which, it seems, villagers went back to coping mode. With most early tenancy-related violence fragmented into local disputes, it is imprecise to talk of a crystallized peasant movement with focused, long-term goals.36 The comparison with the early 2000s corroborates this assessment.

Emergence of a Rural Street: The 2000s The first decade of the new millennium witnessed an unprecedented wave of intense protests all over the country. Rural Egypt also witnessed a proliferation and diversification of collective action and a heightened level of instances of protest and resistance 33  Land Center for Human Rights (2002: 127). 34  These activities are summarized by Ashmawi, based on LCHR documentation. (2001: 225–248). 35  Bush (2002a: 190). 36  Exceptional cases stand out, notably the village of Kamsheesh with a history of a politically mo­bil­ ized peasantry and a peasant movement that culminated and gained momentum with the assassination in 1966 of Salah Hussein, who led the struggle against landlords evading agrarian reform laws.

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564   reem saad before the revolution of 2011. For example, the Land Center for Human Rights reported sixty-one forms of recorded protest across rural Egypt, resulting in 1,394 arrests.37 As we have seen, previous acts of protest concerned the subsistence and survival of the agricultural sector of society. The new forms of protest were articulated by a much wider crosssection of the rural population, addressed broader political issues, and attacked symbols of capitalism and state power. These included uprisings in demand for potable water, better housing, and infrastructure. Documenting the decade of intense protest that preceded the 2011 revolution, Maha Abdelrahman shows that, alongside the more organized protests of the pro-democracy and labor movements, waves of spontaneous and dispersed forms of contentious action by marginalized and disfranchised groups swept rural and urban areas all over the country. These “citizens’ protests” were mostly triggered by “the almost total breakdown in the provision of basic services such as water, electricity, education facilities, healthcare, and housing, which characterized the second half of Mubarak’s rule.”38 Due to their spontaneous, localized, and ad hoc nature, these actions were mostly undocumented and went largely unnoticed. However, Abdelrahman sees that this type of protest was instrumental in mobilizing and emboldening previously unpoliticized citizens and in creating new and more direct forms of confrontation with the state.39 Rural protest in the decade preceding the January 2011 revolution shares many characteristics of the “citizenship-based protests” as described by Maha Abdelrahman. Concerns for road safety were the subject of a number of such protests, which typically followed motor accidents on main roads. For example, residents of Salaka village blocked the Mansoura–Cairo main road, setting fire to car tires and stopping traffic for three hours after a young man from the village was hit by a car. The road reopened only after security forces and central security vehicles were dispatched to “quell the anger of the people who repeatedly called for erecting a pedestrian bridge and speed breakers in front of this village following an increase in the number of road accidents.”40 In a similar incident, around 1,500 residents of Arab al-Shaykh Awnallah village, Qusiyya District in Asyut, blocked the Cairo–Asyut road for two days protesting the injury of a child due to a road accident, and demanded the installation of speed breakers in front of their village.41 In the Menoufia village of Arab Al-Raml, the funeral of a man and his daughter who were killed in a road accident quickly turned into a demonstration where angry villagers protested because their demand for a pedestrian bridge or tunnel to cross the main road had been ignored. They accused the governor and other government officials of killing the many victims of road accidents in front of their village.42 These are examples of a pattern of protest that spread all over rural Egypt. Villagers’ anger following road accidents is not new. But whereas in earlier incidents anger was solely directed at the driver of the car that caused the accidents, more recent incidents invariably involved anger at the 37  Land Center for Human Rights Newsletter August 2008, quoted in Abdelrahman (2015). 38  Abdelrahman (2015: 64). 39  Abdelrahman (2015: 66). 40  Al-Dustur (2007). 41  Al-Masry Al-Youm (2010). 42  Al-Masry Al-Youm (2007b).

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Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt   565 government and its representatives and always raised a clear demand for improving road safety. Demands for clean potable water constituted another main cause of “citizens’ protests.” In one incident, residents of six villages in the Governorate of Sharkiyya staged a sit-in in front of the governorate building in the Governorate’s capital Zaqaziq protesting the lack of drinking water, following the Minister of Housing’s statement that Sharkiyya was among the lucky governorates where 99 percent of its residents enjoy clean drinking water. The protestors told al-Badil newspaper that they had earlier staged a sit-in in front of the water company carrying empty jerry-cans, and that one of them insisted on filling his jerry-can from the WC of the governor. They finally managed to meet with the head of the water company who promised the problem would be dealt with swiftly.43 For the same reason, a major incident took place when the villagers of Borg Al-Borollos in the Delta Governorate of Kafr Al-Shaykh came out in large numbers setting fire to car tires and blocking the international coastal road for ten hours. The incident ended only when President Mubarak ordered the peaceful dispersal of the crowds and the resumption of water service to the residents.44 Protests against the erection of mobile phone towers on the rooftops of village houses were numerous and widespread all over the country. It is interesting to note that the express motivation for action was a concern over health and environmental safety. These incidents typically involved demonstrations, petitions, telegrams, and resorting to the media. While they are characterized by a degree of coordination and organization, they almost invariably climax with a high degree of violence involving the destruction of the mobile station, attacking the communication engineers and workers physically, and torching the houses, cars, and belongings of the persons who leased their house or land for that purpose. Several of these incidents involved fatalities45 as in the case of the Denshawai incidents discussed below, as well as the village of Kafr Turki, Giza Governorate, where a police officer shot dead one of the protestors,46 and the village of Safai in Minya Governorate where supporters of the owner of the house rented out to the mobile phone company shot dead one of the villagers who were demonstrating in opposition to erecting the tower.47 During the summer of 2007, the Governorate of Menoufia alone witnessed fifty violent conflicts caused by the villagers’ opposition to erecting mobile phone towers.48 In one such incident, the village of Denshwai in Menoufia Governorate witnessed a prolonged and bloody confrontation between the villagers on the one hand and security forces and a wealthy landlord who was also a member of the ruling National Democratic Party on the other. The landlord had signed a contract with a mobile phone company whereby the latter would erect a mobile phone tower on the rooftop of his house. The villagers opposed the move, fearing that the radiation would harm their health and that 43  Al-Badil (2008). 44  Al-Masry Al-Youm (2007b). 45  Al-Karama (2007). 46  Sawt Al-Umma (2007). 47  Al-Masry Al-Youm (2010a). 48  Al-Masry Al-Youm. August 1, 2007: “Police forces continue to besiege Denshwai village following fifty protests against mobile stations.”

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566   reem saad of their children, especially since the tower would be placed in the center of the residential part of the village. The landlord ignored their objections and decided to go ahead, and the villagers insisted they would stop the project. The youth of the village organized themselves and took shifts in monitoring the entrances to the village in order to stop the equipment coming in. Leaflets were distributed alerting villagers to the harmful effects of the tower and calling upon them to resist its installation. One of the leaflets concluded by saying: “the government is finished; and the age has started where the right is to be taken by the power of the people.”49 When the truck carrying the equipment finally arrived, it was first spotted by some of the village women who stood in front of the truck preventing it from advancing, started hurling stones at it, and screaming loudly until a crowd of farmers, youth, and students gathered and prevented the truck from entering the village.50 A few days later, a verbal altercation between the landlord and some village youth escalated, after which the landlord rushed to his house followed by the village crowd. The landlord got out his pistol and started shooting at the villagers, killing one of them and wounding several others. The youth started hurling stones and throwing petrol bombs, setting the house on fire. Local police could not contain the situation and special forces had to be called in. They used tear gas, imposed curfews, and arrested the landlord. The role played by women in the Denshawai incident was a typical feature of these protests. When villagers of Shubra Balula, Gharbeya Governorate, received no official response to their several complaints against erecting a mobile phone tower on the rooftop of a house in the middle of their village, they decided to take matters into their hands and to dismantle the station themselves. Newspaper reports claim that over 3,000 vil­la­ gers came out in an angry demonstration heading toward the house where the station was being erected. The demonstration was led by the village women as this was thought to prevent the crowd from being attacked. They managed to reach the rooftop, dismantled the equipment, and smashed it. The men and the women beat up the mobile company’s engineers and workers, some of whom were severely injured.51 Another characteristic of these acts was the clear role played by village residents who may be described as members of the middle class by virtue of their professions: lawyers, schoolteachers, doctors, large merchants . . . etc. Lastly, the incidents mainly defended the residential parts of the village and tended to take place in villages with a high population density and a high degree of urbanization (in one of the villages, the contested site was a seven-storey residential building; in another the population of the village was 80,00052; also from newspaper reports it is clear that the contested sites are contiguous to schools, clinics, youth clubs and the like). These incidents were generally characterized by a high level of organization, at least in the initial stages, high risk, and novel tactics (like the organized and systematic obstruc49  Al-Dustur (2007). 50  Al-Araby Newspaper (2007). 51  Al-Ahrar Newspaper. February 1, 2008. “3 Alaf Muwaten Yuhattemun Shabaka lel-Mahmul FelGharbeya” (“Three Thousand Citizens smash a mobile phone station in Gharbeya”). 52  Al-Gomhuriyya Newspaper. February 19, 2007. “Farmers reject the mobile in the village of Dandeet, Daqahliyya.”

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Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt   567 tion of highways in demand of drinking water). Most significantly, these actions were effective, as they were often met with swift response from the government trying to quell the protests not only through the use of force but also through taking steps toward complying with the demands. The incidents were mainly motivated by demands relating to quality of life and displayed a sense of citizenship entitlement. It is reasonable to argue that the marked increase in the level of rural protest was partly due to the general protest climate that swept the whole country at the time. The wave of organized labor protest, including demonstrations, sit-ins, and strikes, was quickly gaining momentum. According to Joel Beinin, “from 1998 to 2010, well over 2 million, and probably closer to 4 million, Egyptian workers participated in some 3,400 to 4,000 strikes and other collective actions.”53 The wave climaxed with the massive strike by the workers of al-Mahalla al-Kubra Spinning and Weaving Company. The strike was triggered when the government did not fulfill its promise to increase the workers’ annual bonus. The three-day strike was led by thousands of female workers, and witnessed the participation of a total of 24,000 workers who occupied the factory. The scale of the strike forced the government to meet the workers’ demands and ended up giving them an even higher bonus.54 The success of this strike inspired a wave of similar strikes in several factories across the country. As Maha Abdelrahman puts it, “The strike played a major role in generalizing and strengthening the culture of protest which had been gripping Egypt since 2000.”55 It is important to note that a number of the major labor strikes and protest actions took place in industrial plants located in provincial towns and cities mostly in the Nile Delta region, i.e. in the middle of or very close to predominantly rural areas. Apart from al-Mahalla al-Kubra in Gharbeya Governorate, there were major strikes by textile workers in 2007 in textile factories in Shibin El-Kom (Menoufiya Governorate) and Kafr al-Dawwar (Beheira Governorate). The impact of major industrial complexes within predominantly rural regions is a topic that merits further research, yet it is safe to assume that this factor, in addition to the village origin and residence of a significant portion of the workforce must have played a role in spreading the “culture of protest” into neighboring rural areas. The closeness of the centers of labor protest to rural areas is one way in which the spatial factor has likely played a significant role in shaping the nature of rural protest in this phase. Apart from this factor, the new forms of protests bear marks of increasing tensions due to a rapid erosion of boundaries between city and country and to the specific ways in which rural Egypt is being urbanized. Bayat and Denis make an important contribution to the study of the pattern of urbanization in Egypt. Most significantly, they refute a widespread assumption of a growing trend of internal rural migration toward large cities, mainly Cairo and Alexandria. Instead, they argue that the rapidly growing urbanization trends take the form of the growth of agro-towns or urban villages, and their acquisition of urban characteristics. Bayat And Denis’ analysis seeks primarily to uncover the unrecognized urbanism that is 53  Beinin (2012: 326).

54  el-Mahdi (2011: 387–388).

55  Abdelrahman (2015: 57).

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568   reem saad masked by the official definition56 of rural and urban.57 Considering agglomerations of 10,000 inhabitants or above to be urban, Denis calculates the rate of urbanization in 1996 at 70 percent, and estimates it to have risen to 80 percent by 2008. He argues that “(M)ost of those neo-urbanites, no longer engaged in agriculture, have to earn their living and make their settlements habitable by themselves—without services from the state and, indeed, without its recognition.”58 Denis and Bayat make an important point regarding the discrepancy between the official definition of the urban and the actual urbanization process of rural areas.59 The official designation of a place as urban entails a lot more privileges, services, and entitlements than if it is designated as rural. We thus have many places which, socially, economically, and demographically, are ripe for urban status but remain deprived of the necessary services to effect this transformation smoothly. It is not just a matter of unrecognized urbanism but also unrealized urbanism. This discrepancy sheds light on sources of discontent and motives for new types of protest in rural Egypt. Increasing features of urbanization, without the necessary services and provisions precipitated discontents that could account for the type and scale of rural protest in the first decade of the new millennium.

Conclusion In 2003, Asef Bayat published his famous article on the Arab street. Arguing against the post 9/11 Western image of the Arab street as either irrational, dead, or aggressive, Bayat enumerates past and present forms of protest at the level of “the Arab Street.” He particularly notes that “When traditional social contracts are violated, Arab populations have reacted swiftly” (Bayat 2003). Farmers’ responses during the tenancy crisis of the 1990s did not follow this script, nor did they follow a “moral economy” paradigm. The evicted tenants’ shock and disbelief arose primarily from viewing the loss of secure tenancy as a crude breach of their social contract with the state. Despite that, and despite the scale and magnitude of their dispossession, the dominant response was one of accommodation and coping rather than resistance. One question that merits further investigation is the place of the rural in the Arab street. To put it another way, is the Arab street that reacts swiftly to breeches of the social contract necessarily an urban street? At any rate, we should pay more attention to the impact of the spatial factor in shaping the nature of rural protest in the 2000s. Habib Ayeb makes a persuasive case for the role of this factor in understanding the Tunisian revolution. He sees that it is no coincidence that the spark of revolution started from the 56  In the words of Nicholas Hopkins and Kirsten Westergaard (1998: 2): “Basically what is defined as rural in the census consists of everything outside the seats of governorates and district towns, that is, the urban is defined in terms of its administrative role, and the rural is residual.” 57  Bayat and Denis (2000: 194). 58  Denis (2008: 246). 59  I have reservations regarding the use of population statistics as the main marker for urbanization, and that this automatically turns inhabitants to urban non-farmers.

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Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt   569 south, and traces the roots of precipitating discontent to years of systematic mar­gin­al­ iza­tion of the south. In the case at hand, the spatial factor is not so much related to regional wealth disparities as much as to the specific process of urbanization rural Egypt has been undergoing.60 The significant shift in the nature and quality of rural protest is, of course, linked to a particular moment when Egyptian political culture was especially vibrant. But it also has to do with the changing nature of the village and of the very meaning of rurality. A key development toward the end of that decade was the emergence of a rural public arena—a “rural street,” and the importance of this development would appear later with the eruption of the 2011 uprising.

Bibliography Abdel Aal, M. H. (2002). “Agrarian Reform and Tenancy in Upper Egypt,” in R. Bush (ed.). Counter Revolution in Egypt’s Countryside (London and New York: Zed Books), 139–158. Abdelrahman, M. (2015). Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings (London and New York: Routledge). Abu Lughod, Lila (1990). “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women,” American Ethnologist 17,1: 41–55. Abul Magd, Zeinab (2012). “Occupying Tahrir Square: the Myths and the Realities of the Egyptian Revolution,” South Atlantic Quarterly 111,3: 565–572. Adas, Michael (1986). “From Footdragging to Flight: The Evasive History of Peasant Avoidance Protest in South and South-east Asia,” Journal of Peasant Studies 13,2: 64–86. Ahmed, Yasmine (2015). “Islah (agrarian reform) from Gift to Right,” in N. Hopkins (ed.). The political economy of the new Egyptian republic. Cairo Papers in Social Science 33,4: 85–111. Ahmed, Yasmine (2016). “Encountering the Egyptian State in Revolutionary Times: A Rural Perspective.” Unpublished PhD thesis. Division of Social Anthropology. University of Cambridge Al-Arabi Newspaper (2007). “Following the Murder and Injury of 13 Farmers, Denshwai Revolts Against the New Infitahis,” August 5, 2007. Al-Badil (2008). “Residents of 6 Sharkiyya Villages Stage a Sit-in in Protest of Lack of Drinking Water,” August 7, 2008. Al-Dustur Newspaper (2007). “Salaka Villagers Block the Mansura-Cairo Road for 3 Hours,” May 18, 2007. Al-Karama Newspaper (2007). “Abrag Al-Mahmul Taqtul Muwatenan Kol Shahr” (“Mobile phone towers murder a citizen every month”), August 6, 2007. Al-Masry Al-Youm (2007a). “The Funeral of the Arab Al-Raml Farmer and his Daughter Turns Into a Demonstration Blocking the Agricultural Road,” August 23, 2007. Al-Masry Al-Youm (2007b). “Mohamed Tharwat Witnesses Al-Borollos Events: I lived Through 10 Horrific Hours,” July 6, 2007. Al-Masry Al-Youm (2010). “Residents of Arab Al-Shaykh Village Block the Cairo-Assyut Road in Protest of a Road Accident That Left One Person Injured,” August 22, 2010.

60  Habib Ayeb (2011). “Social and Political Geography of the Tunisian Revolution: the Alfa Grass Revolution,” Review of African Political Economy vol. 38, no. 129, September 2011: 467–479.

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570   reem saad Al-Masry Al-Youm (2010a). “Masraʿ Shakhs wa Esabat 9 bel-Rasas Besabab Shabakat Mahmoul Bel-Minya” (“One Person Killed and Nine Injured Because of a Mobile Phone Station in Minya”), November 6, 2010. Ashmawi, Said (2001). “Al-Falahun wal-Sulta ʿala Dawʾ al-Harakat al-Falahiyya al-Misriyya 1919–1999” [“Peasants and Authority in the Light of Egyptian Peasant Movements 1919–1999”] (Cairo: Merit). Assaad, Ragui and Malak Rouchdy (1999). “Poverty Alleviation Strategies in Egypt,” Cairo Papers in Social Science vol. 22, no. 1. Bach, Kirsten (2002). “Rural Egypt Under Stress,” in R.  Bush (ed). Counter-Revolution in Egypt’s Countryside (London and New York: Zed Books), 159–184. Bayat, Asef (2003). “The ‘Street’ and the Politics of Dissent in the Arab World,” Middle East Report 226 (Spring): 10–17. Bayat Asef and Eric Denis (2000). “Who is Afraid of ashwaiyyat? Urban Change and Politics in Egypt,” Environment and Urbanization 12,2: 185-199. Beinin, Joel (2012). “Egyptian Workers and January 25th: A Social Movement in Historical Context,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 79,2: 323–348. Bush, Ray (2002). “Land Reform and Counter Revolution,” in R.  Bush (ed.). CounterRevolution in Egypt’s Countryside (London and New York: Zed Books), 3–31. Bush, Ray (2002a). “More Losers than Winners in Egypt’s Countryside: the Impact of Changes in Land Tenure,” in R. Bush (ed.). Counter-Revolution in Egypt’s Countryside (London and New York: Zed Books), 185–210. Denis, Eric and Ann Delehanty (2008). “Demographic Surprises Foreshadow Change in Neoliberal Egypt,” Middle East Report 38: 32–37 El Nour, Sakr (2015). Small Farmers and the Revolution in Egypt: The Forgotten Actors. Contemporary Arab Affairs 8,2: 198–211. Fegan, Brian (1986). “Tenants’ Non-violent Resistance to Landowner Claims in Central Luzon,” Journal of Peasant Studies 13,2: 87–106. Hoodfar, Homa (1990). “Survival Strategies in Low Income Households in Cairo,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 8,4: 22–41. Khalaf, Sulayman and Saad Alkobaisi (1999). “Migrants Strategies of Coping and Patterns of Accommodation in the Oil-Rich Gulf Societies: Evidence From the UAE,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26,2: 271–298. Land Center for Human Rights (2003). Huquq al-Fallaheen Fi Khatar-2 [Peasants’ Rights in Danger] (Cairo: LCHR). Land Center for Human Rights (2002). “Farmer Struggles Against Law 96 of 1992,” in R. Bush (ed.). Counter-Revolution in Egypt’s Countryside (London and New York: Zed Books). el-Mahdi, Rabab (2011a). “Orientalizing the Egyptian Uprising,” Jadaliyya, April 11, 2011. el-Mahdi, Rabab (2011b). “Labor Protests in Egypt: Causes and Meanings.” Review of African Political Economy 38,129: 387–402. McMurray, David and Amanda Ufheil-Somers (eds) (2013). The Arab Revolts: Dispatches on Militant Democracy in the Middle East (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Nagi, Saad (2001). Poverty in Egypt: Human Needs and Institutional Capacities (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books). Ouda, Mahmoud (1995). Al-Takayyuf wal-Muqawama: Al-juzur al-ijtimaʿiyya wal siyasiyya lil-shakhsiyya al-masriyya [Adaptation and Resistance: the social and political roots of the Egyptian personality] (Cairo: Higher Council for Culture).

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Before the Spring: Shifting Patterns of Protest in Rural Egypt   571 Saad, Reem (1999). “State, Landlord, Parliament and Peasant: The Story of the 1992 Tenancy Law in Egypt,” in Bowman and Rogan (eds). Agriculture in Egypt from Pharaonic to Modern Times, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 96 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 387–404. Saad, Reem (2002). “Egyptian Politics and the Tenancy Law,” in R.  Bush (ed.), CounterRevolution in Egypt’s Countryside: Law and farmers in the Era of Economic Reform (London and New York: Zed Books), 103–125. Saad, Reem (2003). “A Moral Order Reversed? Agricultural Land Changes Hands, Again,” in E.  Kienle (ed.), Politics From Above, Politics From Below: The Middle East in the Age of Economic Reform (London: Saqi Books). Saad, Reem (2004). “Social Reproduction and Social Transformation: Trade and Exchange Relations in the Rural South,” in Hopins and Saad (eds), Upper Egypt: Identity and Change (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press), 233–250. Sawt Al-Umma (2007). “Hadeyyat Al-Dakhleya lel-Muwatenin fi ʿEideha- Mathbaha Gadida fi Al-Ayyat” [“MOI’s Gift to the Citizens on Police Day: A New Massacre in Ayyat”], January 29, 2007. Scott, James (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Singerman, Diane (1995). Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Sowers, Jeannie and Chris Toensing (eds) (2012). The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest and Social Change in Egypt (New York: Verso). Tripp, Charles (2006). Islam and the Moral Economy: The Challenge of Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Waterbury, John (1991). “Peasants Defy Categorization (as Well as Landlords and the State),” in Kazemi and Waterbury (eds), Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East (Miami, FL: Florida International University Press), 1–23.

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chapter 28

Casca di ng Liber ation a n d R en ewa l—Tu n isi a i n History Larbi Sadiki

Under the pervasive force of change, from Dido’s Carthage to Bourguiba’s Tunis, two leitmotifs recur in the reconstruction of identity, community, meaning, and polity throughout Tunisia’s political history. The country’s foremost learned scholar of Islam, Muhammad Tahar ibn ʿAshur (d. 1973), captured this ‘essence’ in his magnum opus, Liberation and Enlightenment (al-Tahrir wa-l-Tanwir). The investigation followed in this chapter attempts to indirectly upend the Orientalist narration of Arab and Tunisian political history. It seeks to follow a trajectory that presents Tunisia’s prismatic quest for liberation and enlightenment. It is within this historicization and contextualization that the chapter uncovers stories that enable a reinterpretation of the country’s ability to spark the moral flames of protest, liberation, and renewal, with special reference to the country’s Arab Spring. Here the verve of politics and an ethos of liberation and enlightenment conjoined in a gripping historical moment, worthy of study.

The Return of Ibn Khaldun Try to imagine what a scholar of Ibn Khaldun’s stature,1 returning to his Tunisian birthplace after an absence of over six centuries, might write (by way of a quasi-Muqaddima) on being invited to introduce his country to a Western readership. What histories would he weave together in order to present a history of history that unlocks the narratives that have made the North African country what it is in the twenty-first century? How far can 1  Abu Zayd Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) is famous for his magnum opus Al-Muqaddimah or Introduction to Kitab al-ʿIbar, The Book of Precepts, or the Universal History: see Issawi (1987).

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   573 an enlightened returnee scholar go in trying to disentangle Carthaginian ruins from Roman monuments; Muslim shrines from pre-Islamic Berber legacies; visceral Islamic theological disputes from Francophile (secular) “rationality”; the thrill of independence (istiqlāl) from the traumas of the liberation fight against colonization. Tunisia’s political history—as a text—must be made anew to capture more adequately its nuance and complexity. The identity of Tunisia is associated with geniality. Literally, “Tunis” or “Tunisia” means the “land of geniality”—something very well known to Ibn Khaldun. In the Arab world, the mention of Tunis elicits the adjective “al-khadra” (Greenland, or land of verdure), a reference to a land that was once a province and a breadbasket of the Roman Empire.2 Its name in Arabic derives from uns, geniality, sociability, affability, cheerfulness, and delight. It changed names from Carthage and “Ifriqiya” (Africa) to Tunis (from the verb anasa, conjugated in the third feminine personal pronoun tuʾnis) during the Hafsid rule when the capital moved from Kairouan to its current seat. Diverse influences have historically sought and shared a common space in Tunisia due to its geniality. Perhaps it was that geniality that drew Queen Dido (or Elissa) to disembark in the Gulf of Tunis and found Carthage in 814 bc as a home for the Phoenician royalty who hailed from Tyre (Lebanon) in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Muqaddima’s author is a master of Maghribi society and politics whose insights can only inspire. My own reflection represents that of a student of Arab democratization who, like others of his kind, continues to be attracted by Tunisia’s history. Today there is the additional lure to write about the country’s political history with special reference to its distinctive version of the “Arab Spring.” The country’s political history conjures up bright spots, the minds, and struggles that have continuously constituted and reconstituted the country’s “identity” within the “society of nation-states” and kindles the memory, the repository of enlightened ideas and figures. My position here is challenging. Through our imagined returnee-scholar I seek to rerepresent Tunisia without issuing summary judgments on a country whose political history requires articulation through the local idioms that the greats such as Ibn Khaldun have mastered. Like most Orientalists, distance from Arab states does not in itself seem to inhibit writers from ‘Orientalizing’ about the Arab Spring in Tunisia, the Maghrib, or the Arab Middle East more generally.3 The tendency has been to write, speak, and talk about these societies—the “other”—from the vantage point of civilizing agents who demote the agency of the subject in question, producing “prescriptive” texts that attempt to “normativize” Western interpretations of history. The old colonizers’ reflexes perhaps still color the lens through which the Maghrib is seen, spoken about, and written. However, the ability to see the Maghrib or Tunisia outside the “seen” moral, political, and even philosophical purview seems to elude most of us. The Eurocentric worldview and moral outlook provide the brush with which 2  According to Goldsworthy, Carthage was endowed with more fertile soil than Italy. See Goldsworthy (2000: 29). 3  Sadiki (2012: 21–42).

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574   larbi sadiki Orientalists tar the histories, identities, and “modernities” of the Middle Eastern or Arab “other.” The locale’s nuances are often diluted, if not sacrificed altogether. The idea here then is to stress the capacity for renewal in order to refresh our take on a country that, following the 2011 January revolution, may be steadily morphing into a democratic republic. No single figure excites our imaginary Ibn Khaldun more than his compatriot Ibn ʿAshur (like him, of Andalusian lineage), one of the most famous doctors of the Zaytuna University Mosque. He belongs to the phalanx of knowledge-keepers and makers that have over time contributed to Tunisia’s rich scholarly repertoire. El-Mesawi notes that Ibn ʿAshur’s standing makes him iconic—on par with Ibn Khaldun, and with the likes of Imam Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿArafa (d. 1401 in Tunis): “unmatched in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Tunisia.”4 Ibn ʿAshur’s centrist position (wasatiyya) as an innovative exegete congenial with reformism is what lures Ibn Khaldun to immerse himself in the fecund mind of the author of such works as Tafsir al-Tahrir wa-l-Tanwir (Commentary [on the Qurʾan] of Liberation and Enlightenment), Al-Nizam al-Ijtimaʿi fi al-Islam (Social System in Islam), and Maqasid al-Shariʿa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Law’s Higher Objectives/Godly Sanctions).5 Most emblematic of Ibn ʿAshur’s centrist position in the historically venerable and arduous vocation of exegesis or tafsir is his penchant for unshackling the mind from the vestiges of imitation (hence the stress on tahrir/ “lib­er­ ation”) and adding to or challenging the authoritative scholars’ legacy (hence the emphasis on tanwir/ “enlightenment”), which is also associated with renewal. That is, the vocation Ibn ʿAshur carves for himself is that of rereading the old texts to shed new light, instead of letting his mind be blinded, as it were, by the “floodlights” of the intellectual grandees of Islamic tafsir such as fellow Maliki legal scholar Imam Abu Ishaq alShatibi (d. 1388) of Granada, whose own Qur’an commentary first engaged with the exploration of the notion of Islamic Law’s “higher objectives” or maqāṣid.6 El-Mesawi notes Ibn ʿAshur’s intellectual “positionality” in the spectrum of Islamic jurisprudence as standing between the excesses of “neo-literalism” (deference to the forebears’ exegesis overdoing superficial textual understanding, which ignores change of time and space), and those of “neo-rationalism” (deference to Westernizing trends, which does not account for specificity and context, including of language, culture, history etc.).7 If Ibn Khaldun were to find the very scholarly rigor that once enticed him to rethink the assumptions of historiography, he would go no further than Ibn ʿAshur as a logical choice: for his bold, rigorous, systematic, and innovative rereading of the corpus of tafsir. Ibn ʿAshur, whether in his 15,000-word tafsir (known by its short name: al-Tahrir wa-lTanwir) or his maqasid, his intent is to reread the relations of God and man/woman, revelation and reason, and text and context, in harmony. In so doing, he stresses public 4  el-Mesawi (2006: xiv–xv). 5  Amongst his many books three stand out in the elaboration of reformism, rationalism, and mod­er­ ation in Islam. See Ibn ʿAshur’s Tafsir al-Tahrir wa-l-Tanwir (1984), Usul Al-Nizam al-Ijtimaʿi fi al-Islam (1979), and Maqasid al-Shariʿa al-Islamiyya (1978). 6  al-Raysuni (2005). 7  el-Mesawi (2006: 1).

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   575 utility (maṣlaḥa)—“good” in its entirety—as integral to the godly scheme of things. That is, “good” that serves the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of people. Therefore Ibn ʿAshur makes laws the fulcrum of civility. Civility is symbiotic with the “good,” the purpose for which combine revelation and reason. Ibn ʿAshur’s enterprise is indeed literally and metaphorically emancipatory, illuminating a new trajectory that leads to reformulation of the principles of jurisprudence. In Ibn ʿAshur’s own words, his undertaking is not only to interrogate the bequeathed corpus of tafsir, but also to unearth what he deems to be Islamic Law’s higher objectives [to] prove why the jurist should know them, as well as the goal categories and methods to identify and confirm them. The provisions and or­din­ ances of any divine law are instituted for humankind and aim at certain objectives intended by God. He sent messengers and revealed laws to establish human order. Furthermore, humans possess a God-given disposition for civilization, whose greatest manifestation is the making of laws to regulate their lives.8

The gist of the intellectual project that Ibn ʿAshur frames revolves around the idea that Islam is a godly project of emancipation and enlightenment, intended to realize parity with non-Muslim nations in all domains of know-how for the community of believers— the “demos” that constitutes the nation.9 In this vein, the hermeneutical content of Ibn ʿAshur’s tafsir is about liberation and renewal through free inquiry, interpretivist in­nov­ ation, textual analysis that stresses context, and independent thinking.10 This is integral to Ibn ʿAshur’s “epic” tafsir, as the full title shows: “emancipation of the sound opinion/ way of thinking, and enlightenment of the new intellect/mind.” Thus, we find that Ibn ʿAshur’s vocation of taḥrīr and tanwīr seeks nuanced lexical understanding and deconstruction of meaning, according to context (time, space of revelation) as well as by accounting for the variability of meaning according to linguistic variety in wording, regis­ter, and style—given the richness of the Qur’an’s Arabic language.11 Through this renewed scholarly undertaking, Ibn ʿAshur refuses to resign to a notion of a closed gate of ijtihad, independent reasoning, as it were. It is scholarly inquiry that is the shared space in which he seeks the meeting of other minds, and at the same time insisting that attainment of the higher objectives of God’s law derives from free inquiry—one whereby scientific advancement—including in the vocation of exegesis—“requires freedom more than censorship.”12 Moreover, the motivating ethos of taḥrīr and tanwīr reveres God and God’s word, but equally reveres how divinely “ennobled” people—Homo sapiens as it were—whose intellectual capacity equips them for earthly viceregency (“alinsan sultan al-ʿalam al-ardi”; human beings are kings on earth).13 I think Ibn ʿAshur is genial when his twin notion of taḥrīr and tanwīr boldly proposes that since God has fitted humans with intellect, then people do not always need revelation’s guidance—“duna ihtiyaj ila al-tawqif. . . fi ghalib al-tasarrufat” [without the need for revelation in most dealings] (especially that Ibn ʿAshur refers to the idea that divine scripture can be silent 8  Ibid., p. 2. 9 Ibn ʿAshur (1979: 195–196). 11  Ibid., pp. 92–122. 12 Ibn ʿAshur (1968: 137).

10 Ibn ʿAshur (1984: 27–29). 13  See Ibn ʿAshur (1984: vol. 1, 437).

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576   larbi sadiki on many mundane issues).14 Intellect is God-given; so is revelation. From this perspective, Ibn ʿAshur translates the human imperative for reliance on independent intellect/ reasoning (al-ʿaql) as not being disjunctive with divinity or the scheme of things God’s higher objectives have intended the world to be. Relevance of the imperative to think “outside the box” of religion where revelation does not meet humans’ need to run their mundane affairs, in accordance with changing time and space, does not “doom” or “kill” God; nor does it spell irrelevance of religion. Reverence of God and God-given intellect is intended, in the final analysis, to facilitate man’s renewal and reform of self/being, thinking, and acting, in the quest for upgrading human existence and governance of the political and the spiritual.15 To this end, two values for the attainment of taḥrīr and tanwīr are prerequisites accorded high premium in Ibn ʿAshur’s search for the higher objectives of God’s law: equality and freedom.16 Reconstitution of these higher ob­ject­ ives occurs within a reading of the texts of Islam seeking to regenerate rather than break apart the Islamic imaginary among Muslims. Ibn ʿAshur’s ethos of taḥrīr and tanwīr stands out as more than a metaphor for mapping out the dialectics of making and unmaking, and imagining and de-imagining community (to paraphrase Benedict Anderson)17 and identity in Tunisia throughout history. They symbolize a thread of continuity, as our imaginary Ibn Khaldun finds out, a trajectory that aligns in history Tunisians of antiquity and modernity. It is the drive to liberate thought and action and illuminate new ways of managing change through time in Tunisia. It is the past that today helps render meaning to post-2011 Tunisia after its uprising the reverberations of which are still felt in a region that yearns for (and of) taḥrīr and tanwīr. For Tunisia, one element has not been fleshed out boldly: the country’s first founder was a woman. This should not simply be sidelined as a historical footnote. Dido or Elissa’s own taḥrīr and tanwīr-like journey commands attention in any narration of Tunisia’s history, as our masterly imaginary Ibn Khaldun would suggest. In reflecting on Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, Ibn Khaldun would trace the historical roots of that revolution, by valorizing the cumulative nature of change as he does, brilliantly, in his masterpiece, the Muqaddima.

The Gender “Monument”. . . Pivoting Tahrir “Kart hadast” (“new city”) had to be invented to embrace a pathbreaking queen and her quest for liberation. Thus the first seeds of Tunisia as a state were sown—by a stateswoman. She built Carthage, a new polis, community, and a polity, initially a space for seeking protection from tyranny (following escape from Tyre). Queen Dido founded 14  Ibid., p. 413. 15 Ibn ʿAshur (1978: 62–63). 17  Anderson (2006).

16  el-Mesawi (2006: 12–13).

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   577 Carthage after she escaped her brother’s tyrannical rule. This reads more like an act of liberation, paving the way for a new polis, a safe haven, as it were. Here taḥrīr stands as a metaphor—a beacon of hope—for political renewal enacted in the spirit of peaceful consociation. This is one linkage that recurs in Tunisia’s history. It has continuously inspired a rethinking by Tunisians of their own kart hadast (new city). It squares well with Ibn Khaldun’s own notion of ʿumran (associated with hadarah or civilization), the civilizing process manifested in the evolution of prosperous and self-regenerating cities and communities. For Ibn Khaldun, civilization has social (namely, solidarity), political, economic, religious, and natural dimensions.18 Dido’s “new city” stands as a powerful symbol for an enterprising and civilizing space with its own ethos of liberation and renewal. It is part of the Tunisian political heritage, evocative of the capacity to crossfertilize with new ideas (in the quest for renewal): Roman, Arab, Muslim, French, and generally Euro-American ideals. A “new city” demands audacity of engagement through dialogue, including with invaders and visitors—ranging from Phoenician to Arab. It is the variety of difference throughout history that has predisposed today’s “ ‘political culture” to engender a kind of “cosmopolitan” citizenship, a dialogical identity, and a national temperament that leans toward political “moderation” and tol­er­ ation. Like Dido, Tunisians seem to look beyond the Mediterranean for ideas. This they do to make the most of existing global cosmopolitanism by adapting borrowings to the local context. Had not it been for this factor, the Twitter and Facebook social-mediasavvy youth generation would not have connected with the locale (of political disenfranchisement) when they took to the streets to unhinge a brutal dictatorship on January 14, 2011—and disconnect Tunisia from its postcolonial authoritarian state-making. This is not a romanticization of social media in revolution-making; rather, it is a romanticization of the agency and the emancipatory spirit that were fully displayed during the 2011 uprising that led to the ousting of a brutal dictator. The point is that antiquity feeds into modernity, especially today as the country follows the learning curve of democracy, civic-building, and participation. Dido’s audacious history and state-making have ­echoes in women’s emancipatory struggles during the 2011 revolution and in the course of democratic institution-building between 2011 and 2014. This includes the fight they have had to safeguard laws that give them equality to enter politics as lawgivers and representatives in elections and parliament. This is integral to Tunisia’s nascent public sphere. There is enough of a cumulative civic, ethical, and practical learning and struggle that has engendered a kind of “gender monument” as it were. Gender-consciousness has run deep in the revolutionary moment from the first forms of organization and mobilization against Bin ʿAli and in its aftermath, in Tunisia’s public squares of revolt and within formal and informal networks of political participation and activism. From the outset, Tunisia’s women, including from within the rank and file of the Federated Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT), have asserted themselves as an integral dimension of the January 14 revolution. One specificity of the country’s democratic learning curve is that the engendering of gendered citizenship has placed a high 18  Ibn Khaldun (1967).

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578   larbi sadiki ­ remium on universal rights of worthiness and inclusiveness, lending credence to the p revolutionary demands of social justice, dignity, and freedom. The gender “monument” in Tunisia feeds into the social capital that is today feeding into gender democracy as symbiotic of a holistic democracy that weds women and men, and the political and the personal, the history of which is rehearsed by others in the context of the Maghrib.19 In relation to the new constitution,20 the gender parity law, passed in April 2011 and requiring an equal number of male and female candidates for the Constituent Assembly, even if still in its infancy, came to commemorate women’s achievements and leadership in Tunisia during a democratic transition. Islamist and secularist women today organize and mobilize as well as create forums committed to the ideals of gender democracy as part of the country’s fledgling democracy through both partisan and non-partisan forums such as Democratic Women and Coalition for Tunisian Women, among others. The parliament elected democratically on October 26, 2014 features many dynamic female voices equipped to add value to democracy-learning in Tunisia. Initially, four women applied to the country’s Election Commission to contest the presidency in November 2014. The Democratic Movement for Reform and Construction Party’s president, Amina al-Karoui, became the first Tunisian woman ever to present her presidential candidacy. Her small centrist party’s agenda is to promote civic behavior and awareness. A true champion of Bourguiba (Tunisia’s father of independence who introduced the “Personal Status Code” in the late 1950s) was a presidential hopeful and stood to make the point that women counted in the public sphere. Another presidential aspirant, Leila Hammami, is an economist (who worked for the African Development Bank). She speaks the language of cosmopolitanism, pluralism, democracy, gender equality, and sustainable development. The only female contender among a dozen male presidential contestants for the November presidency whose candidacy was accepted by the Elections Commission was Kalthoum Kennou, a dissident judge who had the moral courage to speak against the dictator Bin ʿAli’s authoritarianism. In a country where women are visible and vociferous about human rights, equality, inclusiveness, and genuine democracy, Kennou stands as a reminder of Dido’s spirit of initial taḥrīr and tanwīr, the very ethos Ibn ʿAshur extols as vital for freedom and equality.

Constitutive Histories Ibn Khaldun would readily aver that the Tunisian heritage has benefited from the ­plur­al­ity and diversity of inputs as noted above. Carthage, Utica, Kairouan, Bardo, Tunis, Mahdia, Sfax, and Sousse represent links in a chain of history that tell “stories” of statemaking not entirely devoid of civic and constitutional capacity. This history must inform 19  Charrad (2001).

20  Voorhoeve (2014).

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   579 any line of inquiry into the roots of Tunisia’s 2011 uprising. The road to renewal began with Tunisia’s most famous politician—a woman. Dido has the lion’s share of limelight in a territory populated by illustrious scholars (Tertullian, Augustine, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn al-Jazzar or Algizar (c.898–980), Ibn Manzour (c.1230–1311), Ibn Sahnoun (c.777–855), Ibn ʿAshur, etc.); statesmen (Hassayn bin ʿAli, Khayr al-Din, Moncef Bey, Bourguiba); generals (Hannibal Barca), and other greats such as ʿAziza ʿUthmana; and liberators such as Bechir Sfar, ʿAli Bach Hamba, and trade unionist leaders Mohamed ʿAli and Farhat Hachad.21 This makes the moral symbolism of emancipation and renewal in Tunisia, especially in a globalized world, naturally fitting. Geographical propinquity to European and Arab lands and historical links with both have predisposed Tunisia to seek models (via Muslim and European templates) to engender liberation and renewal. In order to grasp Tunisia’s long-standing pursuit of liberation and renewal, our im­agin­ ary Ibn Khaldun would begin by mapping out the nineteenth-century intellectual terrain of renewal and reform or iṣlāḥ. An impressive array of like-minded reformers set in motion a process of “enlightenment,” founding Tunisia’s age of liberal thought or nahḍa.22 Two idiosyncrasies characterize this “enlightenment” drive. The first is the attempt to create a division of labor between political and religious establishments. The roots of “soft” secular politics of Tunisia may be traced to the 1870s and the leadership provided by statesman Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi. The nineteenth-century reformer is a notable example of a leader for whom political innovation hinges upon the affinity in thought and action between the political and the religious. Reform in politics necessitates renewal in religious matters. As in the case of Ibn ʿAshur, Khayr al-Din champions rational interpretation of the divine scripture. For him, this should include full cognizance of worldly matters in order for the learned scholars of Islam to render contextual understanding of the sacred texts. The subsequent synergy between the luminaries within the state civil service/bureaucracy in the nineteenth century, on one hand, and the Zaytuna Mosque-university, on the other, drew a reformist itinerary that still inspires the engineering of renewal agendas in modern-day Tunisia. The second idiosyncrasy is the attempt to harmonize the mundane and the sacred, and Eastern religious knowing with Western political genius. The political thought of the Beylic of Tunis’s Grand Vizier, Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi, is paradigmatic of this reconciliation.23 The postindependence state in Tunisia has never decoupled itself from reinterpreting and enacting this nineteenth-century heritage in the design of political renewal. Even the language of reform (iṣlāḥ), renaissance (nahḍa), and constitution (dustur) have never left the political discourse. It is within the temporal and spatial specificity of practiced politics that our grasp of what makes sociopolitical renewal (or ʿumrān)—as Ibn Khaldun amongst others have called it—happen, endure, degenerate, deform, and reform. In this context, the systematic renewal designed and implemented in the nineteenth century remains the biggest “factory” of ideas that inspire the ethos of taḥrīr and tanwīr in modern-day Tunisia. It seems that the country can act in the spirit of taḥrīr 21  Hachad (1990).

22  Hourani (1983).

23  al-Tunisi (1967).

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580   larbi sadiki from colonialism, gender inequality, and from authoritarianism. However, a historical constant in modern history has been to tap into the political heritage of renewal undertaken in the nineteenth century. Its claimants are both secularists (postindependence leaders such Bourguiba) and Islamists (Zaytuna scholars and in more recent history Nahda Party figures and ideologues).24

Carthage: Constructing a Democratic Kingdom The history curriculum of modern-day Tunisia celebrates the greatness that was Carthage and its founding queen. It points to historical continuity, political pedigree, and imperial lineage of the modern state. Similarly, it is taught as an act of statecraft that offers one clue for understanding the status enjoyed by women in Tunisia, relative to the region. Queen Dido founded Carthage whose famed General Hannibal Barca (Hannibal the Great) fought and even defeated Rome. Rome’s senators Cato and Cicero demanded Carthage be burnt to the ground. Rome did exactly that in the period 149–146 bc: Carthage was destroyed, fulfilling Cato’s ardent wish and the Roman demand which had finally forced the unwilling Carthaginians to fight in 149. Soon a senatorial commission of ten would arrive to supervise Scipio’s systematic destruction of the city. Large areas had been destroyed by fire, leaving a layer of burnt material still covering much of the site today. . . As Scipio Aemilianus gazed upon the wreck of the once proud city he is supposed to have wept and quoted from a passage of the Iliad referring to the fall of Priam’s Troy. He explained to a puzzled Polybius that he was wondering whether his own home would one day suffer a similar fate.25

The symbolic flame of Carthage never dimmed, and served to spark the political im­agin­ ation of several generations of Tunisian leaders in their quest for prosperity, stability, and good government. Tunisia has had in Carthage a reminder that political renewal must not be feared. The Greeks, who invented democracy, praised Carthage’s own version of it. By their standards, the form of good government practiced by Carthage had merits, which Aristotle compared favorably to its practice in Greek states. That democracy had elective, representative, and participatory elements. The only qualification is that it largely excluded the multitude. Carthage had originally been a monarchy, its kingship possessing a strongly religious character, but by the third century the senior executive officers of the state were the two annually elected suffetes. It is unknown whether this office developed from or replaced the monarchy, but the Greek use of the word basileus (king) for 24  Tamimi (2001).

25  Ibid., pp. 353–354.

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   581 this magistracy makes it possible that there was a connection. The nature of the Punic monarchy is fiercely debated by scholars, but it may be that it had been an elective office. Wealth as much as merit was important in the election of the suffetes; they held supreme civil and religious power but did not act as military commanders. A Council of Thirty Elders (or gerousia) acted in an advisory capacity and was supervised by and probably drawn from another tribunal, the Council of 104. If the suffetes and the Elders agreed on a course of action then they had the power to implement it. If they were unable to reach agreement then the proposals were taken to the Assembly of the People to decide the matter. At these meetings any citizen was permitted to make a counter-proposal. . . Greek philosophers, most notably Aristotle, praised Carthage for possessing a balanced constitution combining elem­ ents of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, which allowed it to avoid the chronic instability, which was the weakness of most Greek states.26

In Tunisia, both desert and sea have engendered identities whose technology, myth­ ology, and cosmology have traveled beyond their temporal and spatial confines. Whether invited or uninvited, some of those identities have over millennia landed on Tunisia’s Mediterranean shores. Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Spanish, and French have all left their technological, mythological, and cosmological inscriptions on Tunisia’s self-identity. Tunisia’s southern desert opened it to waves of migration, the first of which was under General ʿUqbah Ibn Nafiʿ who Islamized the country in the seventh century ad. Consecutive migrations from the Arabian Peninsula, especially the massive influx in the eleventh century ad of Hilalian and Sulaym tribes, Arabized the country far more deeply than its Maghribi neighbors where Berbers still form a measurable segment of the populations of Algeria and Morocco. Tunisia’s cultural, ethnic, and linguistic template owes a great deal to these two historical benchmarks: Islamization and Arabization. Historian Kenneth Perkins confirms the profundity and durability of the Arabo-Islamic imprint on the country’s identity.27 In his fine work A Modern History of Tunisia, Perkins deftly inducts his readers into the various influences that have made up a quasi-historical melting pot in such a limited geographical surface area (165,000 km2). Through a ride in the Tunis–Goulette–Marsa (TGM) light metro, Perkins guides his imaginary passengers through the many ins and outs of Tunisian history. He stops at the various stations that dot the coastal rail line. Every station punctuates a historical event, a figure, or a period that Perkins uses to narrate the many “stories” of Tunisia—from 814 bc when Utica was created as a precursor to the great empire that was Carthage, up to the “new Tunisia” of ousted dictator Bin ʿAli.28 Queen Dido is only one link in a long chain of famed figures tied by common spatial bonds to Tunisia but separated by time. Creatively spotting these figures through the metro’s windows, Perkins renders his accounts as if awakening and communicating with the ghosts of Tunisia’s past. These include the French Orientalist, Baron Rudolphe d’Erlanger (1872–1932), famous for documenting and preserving the Andalusian 26  Ibid., p. 30.

27  Perkins (2004: 5).

28  Ibid., pp. 1–6.

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582   larbi sadiki mu­sic­al heritage; nineteenth-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), who found inspiration in Tunis; the Spanish Hapsburg ruler King Charles V, whose pro­ tect­or­ate ruled Tunisia from 1535 to 1574. The trajectory of Tunisia, placed between Queen Dido’s Carthage and the modern-day rulers whose gilded “Carthage” palace occupies the same surroundings as their Punic ancestry, appears to Perkins as a long and tumultuous journey, in which each historical epoch and each historical figure is a clue for piecing together what may be termed the “story” of Tunisia’s geniality. In La Marsa station, Perkins recalls the 1881 Treaty that the invading French generals made the Bey of the day sign, subjecting the country to colonial rule that was to last for seventy-five years.29 On top of a hill not far from La Marsa stood the village of Sidi Bou Said, which became a sanctuary for waves of Muslims exiled from Andalusia during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when the Spaniards ruthlessly reasserted their control over the Iberian Peninsula.30 Stations farther along from those named after Hannibal and his father Hamilcar, Perkins continues his history-telling, which resounds with echoes from the past: the cemeteries for the Allied soldiers who fell in the war against the Nazis during the Second World War; the port of La Goulette from where the two famous Khayr al-Dins, Barbarossa the pirate, and al-Tunisi the statesman and reformer, sailed in different times on different missions.31 Ending his tour on foot on leaving the TGM, Perkins walks his readers through the streets of “the main east–west thoroughfare of the ‘new’ city. . . accommodat[ing] a European quarter outside the Arab city, the medina.”32 Perkins intended to end his tour de force with his description of the key features and monuments adorning each of the Arab and European districts of the city of Tunis. The two districts represent a powerful metaphor that brings to the fore the reality in modern-day Tunisia of both a politico-cultural polarity and a politico-cultural convergence between two worldviews, systems of thought and of value, and modes of practice. One looks to the East in its search for meaning in polity, society, and identity. The other, in its perennial quest for parity, modernity, and sovereignty, looks northward (toward Europe) or to the West for the know-how of development, and good government. Historically, these two trends have vied for the command of popular support, peacefully most of the time but at times violently. Increasingly, as Tunisia matures and its political architects grasp the inevitability of cross-cultural pollination with the augmented travel of ideas and people in a borderless world, the challenge has shifted from a quest for politico-cultural monism to a search for a balancing act in East–West inputs. Our imaginary Ibn Khaldun agrees with Perkins who notes the dynamic of geographical proximity in Europe–Tunisia relations. According to him the fact that Tunisia is separated from Europe by “the scant eighty-mile width of the Sicilian Channel” has made inevitable the travel of European influences. By and large, the travel of influences and political control has been in one direction from the northern to the southern-rim states of the Mediterranean. Tunisia was incorporated into the Roman and French empires. The reversal of that flow was made possible only twice: under the Carthaginians 29  Ibid., p. 1.

30 Ibid.

31  Ibid., p. 2.

32  Ibid., p. 3.

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   583 in the sixth century bc and under the Aghlabid dynasty in the ninth century ad33 when the Arabs ruled over Sicily. A third time came with the 2011 uprising, which spilled over briefly into Algeria, and more permanently into Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. On the whole, it is the idea of renewal (freedom and dignity) that informed the people’s power movements of the Arab Middle East. Tunisia has historically been receptive to outside ideas to the point of being “awash with an array of exogenous influences” at any given time of its continuous history of statehood (the Aghlabid dynasty: 800–909; the Fatimid dynasty: 909–973; the Sanhajah dynasty: 973–1159; the Muwwahid state followed by Hafsid dynasty: 1159–1535; Spanish rule: 1535–1574; Ottoman rule: 1574–1705; the Husaynid dynasty: 1705–1956, coupled with the French protectorate: 1881–1956).34 Furthermore, Perkins notes how Tunisians celebrate the legacy of their forebears’ “skill in blending the many stimuli,” with which they come into contact.35 Three of the four salient themes that Perkins deems important in illustrating the interplay of past influences on the trajectory of nation- and state-building in Tunisia are: (1) the effort to create a political environment deemed acceptable by rulers and ruled alike; (2) the endeavour to modify or, in some cases, eradicate traditional beliefs and practices deemed to impede “progress” while, at the same time, retaining a national identity rooted in the precolonial past; [and] (3) the attempt to foster economic growth sufficiently vigorous to diminish dependence and provide a stable platform for political and social development.36

All of this is congenial with the metaphors of taḥrīr and tanwīr developed by Ibn ʿAshur. Understanding Tunisia’s quest for taḥrīr and tanwīr will not be complete, realizes our imaginary Ibn Khaldun, without an account of the nineteenth-century nahḍa movement. Without a doubt, Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi is the founding “father of the Tunisian” nahḍa or renaissance.37 It is another link that helps historicize and contextualize the 2011 revolution and the quest for good government that followed it.

Renewal and the Construction of a Constitution Tunisia, like other Arab countries, is not a cultural or political “blank sheet.” It has cultural and intellectual resources, which have enabled a continuous practice of statehood, a reformist political history, ethics of gender equality, human rights activism, trade unionism, and consensus-building. They form part of the moral cognitive “toolkit” of

33  Ibid., pp. 5–6.

34  Ibid., p. 6.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37  van Krieken (1976).

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584   larbi sadiki local taḥrīr and tanwīr traceable to the mid-nineteeth century.38 The search for renewal in recent history had begun more than 150 years ago. The 1857 ʿahd al-amān or “Fundamental Pact” marks the beginning of a period of constitution-making in Tunisia—the actual constitution followed in 1861. The use of the term ʿahd (pact, contract) invokes contractual politics and “pacted” reform. The “Fundamental Pact” is noted for the European influence.39 Its production is not entirely motivated by political altruism or benevolence and interpenetration with powerful European interests is partly behind its instigation. Protection of Christian minorities, European merchants’ freedom to trade, and guarantees of debt settlement are all major concerns factored into the “Fundamental Pact.” It reads almost as a precursor to modern-day liberalization templates. The following rights are guaranteed in the country’s first constitution:

1. Equality of protection for all of the monarchy’s inhabitants regardless of religion, language, or color (note how this rudimentary and early constitution does not mention gender). It also guarantees the protection of wealth and honor. 2. Equality in taxation. 3. Equality between Muslims and non-Muslims in the right to justice. 4. Freedom of religion for non-Muslim citizens (or dhimmis). 5. Guarantees for fixed and fair military conscription. 6. The right of dhimmis to the presence of a leader from their community to attend criminal trials involving them. 7. Joint Muslim and friendly states commercial tribunals to adjudicate in matters involving Europeans. 8. Equality of Muslim and non-Muslim inhabitants in customary law. 9. State guarantees of non-interference and non-participation in free trade and commitment to prevent disruption to it. 10. Equal rights of the monarchy’s subjects and foreigners to engage in all industries and services, subject to compliance with local laws. 11. Equal rights of the monarchy’s subjects and foreigners in ownership of land and real estate.40

The preamble of that constitution grounds al-qānūn al-siyāsi (the political law) within the spirit of Islam as a religion intended to maximize public utility. This is not a coincidental thread picked up by Ibn ʿAshur, himself a champion of Tunisia’s age of renewal. The establishment of partially elected and partially appointed representative councils 38  For more details on the reforms initiated by Tunisia’s most important monarch in the nineteenth century, Ahmad Bey (1837–1855), see Ibn ʿAshur’s Al-Haraka al-Adabiyya wa-l-Fikriyya fi Tunis (1972, 27–34). 39  Leon Carl Brown notes in ch. 7 containing the translation of the “Fundamental Pact” that four days before the constitution was issued on September 10, 1857, the British and French consuls wrote to Muhammad Bey (r.1855–59) with their own inputs to the final draft of the constitution. See Brown’s masterly translation of another Tunisian political treatise after Ibn Abi Diyaf (2005: 131). 40  Ibid., pp. 133–135.

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   585 dates back to this period. The scope of renewal expanded to other fields of know-how such as languages and politics. The systematic trajectory of taḥrīr and tanwīr has been driven since the 1840s by the desire to emulate European advancement—technical and ideational. This trajectory, spelled a process of “taḥrīr” from “Ottoman political culture,”41 increasing links with Europe. Disassociation from Ottoman political culture meant refiguring of Islam as a force of positive change.42 The key stumbling block for Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi’s reforms came from the religious establishment, in addition to political rivals. Some of his most staunch supporters from within the religious and civil service establishments were the likes of Shaykh Mahmud Qabadu, Mahmud Bayram V, Salim bu Hajib, Ahmad bin Abi Diyaf, General Husayn, and General Rustum. Ibn ʿAshur notes how this cohort’s dedication to the cause of renewal led to labeling it as the “pol­it­ical party of the late monarch,”43 Ahmad Bey,44 who administered over the most systematic Westernization program. His Westernizing reforms culminated under the short tenure of his successor, Muhammad Bey, in the “Fundamental Pact.” Abi Diyaf documents Ahmad Bey’s state visit to France in 1846, noting how the monarch was dazzled by its enlightenment and progress.45 Khayr al-Din’s quest for renewal meant enlisting the endorsement of high-ranking learned scholars of Islam. The roots of policy preferences for secular politics originate in this period. Khayr al-Din had to rely on the leaders of Sunni orthodoxy to support his reformist agenda. To this end, the Tunisian statesman favored a soft form of secular pol­ it­ics. He deployed the moral potentiality of Islam for the purpose of reform. Khayr alDin assigned the learned scholars a role in his reformist enterprise. His call for an “association of the ʿulama [learned scholars] of Islam with the statesmen”46 must be qualified. In promoting this association, Khayr al-Din insisted on a clear division of labor. “Thus, the politicians discern the public interest and the sources of harm while the ʿulama assure that the action taken in accordance with the public interest is in agreement with the principal of [Islamic law].”47 Khayr al-Din’s point was two-edged: stressing the association of politics and religion based on specialized vocations, and inviting dissident scholars to assume the role of rational interpreters and role defenders of good government: . . . Just as the administration of [Islamic law] rulings depends on knowledge of the texts, it depends also upon knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the revelation of these texts. If one of the ʿulama chooses seclusion and keeping his distance from the political leaders, he closes upon himself the doors leading to knowledge of these circumstances and opens the doors to the oppression of governors. . . . 48

41  The term is borrowed from Brown; see Brown, p. 5. 42 Ibn ʿAshur (1972: 28). 43  Ibid., 35. 44  Brown (1974). 45  See the section on Ahmad Bey’s state in the full work of Ibn Abi Diyaf (1990). 46  Ibid., p. 124. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid.

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586   larbi sadiki This daring attitude to rationalize the reading of the Islamic canons was bequeathed to the reformist movement that sprang up in the early twentieth century and of which Bourguiba (on the political front) remains and Ibn ʿAshur (on the religious side) are two powerful symbols. Nonetheless, the key point is that Khayr al-Din was able to recruit learned scholars of Islam from within the Zaytuna establishment with its bi-partisan Hanafi–Maliki jurisprudence. For instance, his stress on modern education with a scientific curriculum modeled on European counterparts required a special institution and a bureaucracy, and for this he turned to some of the leading scholars of the time as Green notes: . . . what the military academy of Le Bardo was for Ahmad Bey, Sadiki College. . . was to the reforms of Khayr al-Din. To organize the school, the Prime Minister selected a nine-member committee, which included himself, Muhammad al-ʿAziz Bu ʿAttur (. . . chief secretary), al-ʿArabi Zarruq (President of the Municipality), and six ʿulama: Hanafi Mufti Ahmad ibn al-Khuja, Maliki Qadi al-Tahir al-Nayfar, Qadi of Bardo Umar ibn al-Shaykh, Muhammad Bayram V, Mustafa Radwan, and Ahmad al-Wartani.49

France represented the model of renewal that the Tunisian circle working with Khayr al-Din deemed exemplary in terms of liberty, equality, institutionalization (in reference to the concept of “tanzimat”). “Bin Diyaf, writing only for his readers of Arabic, was even more outspoken in praise of Europe. . . telling his [fellow Muslims] that, given their lofty pedigree as heirs to the once-great civilization of Islam, they ought to regain the standing they once held.”50 The language of reform in both treatises is “clothed” in Islamic garb, as Brown notes. Khayr al-Din realized what balancing acts were needed for his reforms to succeed; and, as Green notes, which allies he needed to enlist for his reform project: Khayr al-Din wanted to forestall European imperialism by borrowing Western institutions. Secondly, he needed simultaneously to convince Tunisian political and intellectual leaders that renewal was necessary for survival as well as compatible with Islamic culture.51

Khayr al-Din appreciated the value of borrowing technical or political templates to engineer taḥrīr and tanwīr locally—homegrown renewal.52 To this end, mobilization of religious know-how to aid in the effort of renewal was necessary. For Khayr al-Din the higher objective of public utility (religious or political) justified borrowing from the Christian “other” when in possession of the skills or know-how required for renewal.

49  Green (1978: 112–113). 52  See Brown (1967: 17).

50  Ibid., pp. 28–29.

51  Ibid., p. 107.

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   587 The objective is to aid the realization of justice.53 Khayr al-Din’s key reforms, renewal efforts based on institution-building in the footsteps of Ahmad Bey, directly bear the imprint of the reformer’s high esteem of the European genius across many fields, especially in politics: 1. Leading the “constitutional movement” that included luminaries such as Qabadu,54 Bayram V, bu Hajib,55 and Abi Diyaf, amongst a small group of reform-minded and Western-inspired figures. The 1861 constitution, the Muslim world’s first such document, the legislative council, and the civic bodies created on its basis all had the support of Khayr al-Din and his co-reformers. The key thing for them was the institution of constitutional rule with that document stipulating separation of powers, accountability to the legislature (Grand Council) of government ministers and the Bey, and equality before the law of all inhabitants, etc.56 2. Curricular and educational reforms of which the Sadiki College, modeled on the French lycée system, is the most famous. Green observes that the Sadiki College (which served as an “incubator of future reformist and nationalist leaders”) was intended to “provide modern and secular education.”57 Press, libraries, and publication, allowing for a greater number of books to be printed locally; and a bi-monthly government gazette called Al-Raʾid al-Tunisiyya was reorganized and put under more efficient administration.58 3. Taxation, providing relief for the population at large. 4. Judicial reforms. The quest for good government within the nineteenth-century reform movement can also be illustrated by the treatise of Abi Diyaf. L. Carl Brown’s recently published fine translation of the Muqaddima or Introduction to Ithaf Ahl al-Zaman bi Akhbar Muluk Tunis wa ‘Ahd al-Aman [Presenting Contemporaries, the History of the Rulers of Tunis and the Fundamental Pact] by Ahmad ibn Abi Diyaf explicate the dialectics of reform and European influence. Like Khayr al-Din, Abi Diyaf is besotted by the idea of Europe and what it symbolizes in terms of a model for inspiring renewal. The significance of the political and constitutional reformist thought of nineteenth-century intellectuals and statesmen lies in the foundation it laid for future taḥrīr and tanwīr.

53  For more details on this point, see Green (1978: 108–109). 54  An excellent work by Ibn Salim (1975) in Arabic, Qabadu: His Life, His Legacy and His Reformist Thought, which summarizes the reform ideas of Qabadu. 55  For in-depth work on the reformist luminaries, see al-Zumurli (1986). 56 Ibn ʿAshur (1972: 37). 57  Green (1978: 113). 58  Ibid., p. 115. See also Ibn ʿAshur (1972: 40–43).

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Concluding Remarks: Renewal, Decay, and Revolution Through the threading of diverse frames of history-making, the intention has been to avoid the irreducibility of Tunisia to a fixed history and narrative. The birth of the Arab Spring in Tunisia must be contextualized within these frames of thought that cor­rob­or­ate one idea: Tunisia is not an “empty space.” The uprising in 2011 has had analogues such as'in the 1864 anti-Bey uprising of Ali Bin Ghdhahim staged against high taxes. Similarly, promulgation of the constitution in early 2014 has a historical precedent in the 1861 constitution. It is not the distance between them that matters—colonial and postcolonial descent into misrule—but the values they share. In a sense, difference of circumstances has not lessened the values that have historically shaped the Tunisian imaginary as a worthwhile aim either of revolt (injustice in 1864 and 2011) or good government (constitutions of 1861 and 2011). These histories—including of Carthage—when generalized into defining features of continuously dynamic and changing political action in Tunisia, provide apt contexts within which to give meaning and situate the Tunisian “story” of the Arab Spring. It is therefore the linkages between the various frames of political thought–practice and the historicization they summon that help contextualize Tunisia’s 2011 uprising. Thus our imaginary Ibn Khaldun threads all of these elements together. The 1857 “Fundamental Pact,” from whence the conception of the constitution followed in the country’s political history, provided the foundation for republican ideas in the 1950s. The seeds sown by Khayr al-Din for creating a constitutional monarchy had to wait a hundred years to be institutionally consummated. In 1957, Bourguiba abolished the monarchy and established a republic. Bourguiba’s imprint on steering a pro-Europe trajectory of nation- and state-building was informed by his forebears’ convictions about the necessity of taḥrīr and tanwīr. The constitutional heritage informed the nationalist movement’s struggle for independence. That movement was not conceived in an intellectual vacuum. The resonance of that movement with its constitutionalist and reformist precursor is strong. The designation of the first and longest-surviving political party, the “Destour” or “Constitutional Party,” was not merely a rhetorical flourish. It was a meaningful moment of resumption of the painstaking and rudely interrupted reform (by the 1864 anti-tax uprising coupled with palace intrigue, and then in 1881 by French occupation) movement engineered by Khayr al-Din and the first wave of Tunisian renewal. Postcolonial rule, the last decade of Bourguiba’s rule, and Bin ʿAli’s dictatorship (1987–2011) represent intervals in the long-standing quest for renewal in Tunisia. Given the historical continuity and pedigree of the reformist movement, the 2011 uprising almost found a logical space for staging the Arab world’s most sustained and successful display of anti-systemic people’s power on behalf of ideas and values (good government, constitution-bound rule, councils, justice, freedom, and equality) that have been in gestation since the nineteenth century.

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   589 The generation that followed Khayr al-Din broadened the scope of freedom, paying attention to impediment to nation-building and full citizenship: gender equality. Tahar Haddad, the ‘feminist’ reformer of early-twentieth-century Tunisia, was vociferous about this agenda.59 His innovative ideas held sway within the nationalist movement and the reform-minded elite of the time. Bourguiba passionately embraced and vigorously embodied them in the constitutional apparatus of Tunisia’s first republic.60 The progressive Personal Status Code logically unfolds from the early battles on behalf of women by the likes of Haddad.61 Another thread connecting the first pioneers of Tunisian taḥrīr and tanwīr from the nineteenth century with their followers in the next century is the standing of Islam in polity and society. Perhaps the affinity of Bourguiba and Khayr al-Din in their common advocacy of a rational Islam that rereads the texts to account for changing contexts is strongest. That nineteenth-century episode instructed Bourguiba, a relatively self-assured leader with autocratic tendencies, to disallow op­pos­ ition by the religious establishment. Despite arguing for separation of religion and pol­it­ ics—à la française—he allowed himself a wide margin of independent reasoning or ijtihad. Bourguiba is a prime symbol of a Francophile brand of “enlightenment rationality” and “laicism.”62 His stand vis-à-vis women and the veil is evocative of the ethos taḥrīr and tanwīr with a conspicuously secularist bent.63 Since the 2011 revolution, Tunisia has adopted a degree of tolerance vis-à-vis the forces of political Islam—but there remains enough of Bourguiba’s legacy that may not catapult Islamists into a pos­ ition whereby they become natural power-holders in Tunisia. The country’s free and fair elections of 2014 denied Islamists victory—but without excluding them from power. The religious sphere has had its share of renewal, and in Ibn ʿAshur’s legacy, Tunisia’s Islamists have today an ideational repertoire to study and to help refashion their debut in civic politics. Tunisia’s early twentieth-century syndicalism adopted institutionalization and mo­bil­iza­tion, working in conjunction with the nationalist movement.64 Today Tunisia’s trade unionism continues to light the moral flame of emancipation as it did against colonialism, postcolonial authoritarianism,65 and in the battle to oust Bin Ali in 2011. As of that moment the public spoke to oust the dictatorship, Tunisia returned to its history to find an old “dialogue” in the offing—driven by renewal—between creative leadership and women’s visibility (Dido), constitutionalism (Khayr al-Din), rational Islam (Ibn ʿAshur), and emancipatory trade unionism (Mohamed Ali and Farhat Hachad— UGTT). Now that the dictatorial intermission has ended, it remains to be seen how successfully Tunisians will cope with their newly earned revolution and democratic openings.

59  See Liauzu (2004: 24–25). 60  Salem (1984a) and Salem (1984b). 61  Gafsia (2004: 69–78). 62  Bégué (1972); see also el-Ganari (1985). 63  Camau et al. (1987); see also Micaud (1964). 64  Ben Miled (1984). 65  Azaiez (1970: 13–30; 225).

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Bibiography Anderson, Benedict (2006). Imagined Communities (London and New York: Verso Books). Azaiez, Boubaker (1970). Tels syndicalistes, tels syndicats (Tunis: Editions STEAG). Bégué, Camille (1972). Le Message de Bourguiba: Une Politique de l’homme (Paris: Hachette). Ben Miled, Ahmed (1984). Mʾhamed Ali: La naissance du movement ouvrier tunisien (Tunis: Editions Salammbo). Brown, L.  Carl (1967). “Introduction,” in his translation of Al-Tunisi’s The Surest Path: The Political Treatise of a Nineteenth-Century Muslim Statesman (Harvard: Harvard University Press). Brown, L. Carl (1974). The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837–1855 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Camau, Michel et al. (eds) (1987). Tunisie au présent: une modernité au-dessus de tout soupçon (Paris: Centre national de la recherché scientifique). Charrad, Mounira (2001). States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco (California: California University Press). Gafsia, Nawel (2004). “Bourguiba et le Code du statut personnel: Réflexions sur le recours à l’ijtihad,” in Camau and Geisser (eds). Habib Bourguiba: La Trace et l’héritage (Paris: Karthala). el-Ganari, Ali (1985). Bourguiba: Le combattant suprême (Paris: Plon). Goldsworthy, Adrian (2000). The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265–146 bc (London: Phoenix). Green, Arnold  H. (1978). The Tunisian Ulama, 1873–1915: Social Structure and Response to Ideological Currents (Leiden: E. J. Brill). Hachad, Farhat (1990). Uhibbak Ya Shaʿab (Sfax: Dar Sawt Al-Amal). Hourani, Albert (1983). Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Issawi, Charles (1987). An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections from the Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (1332–1406) (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press). Ibn Khaldun (1967). The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. F.  Rosenthal, abridged N. J. Dawood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Ibn ʿAshur, Muhammad Tahir (1968). Alaysa al-Subhu bi Qarib [Isn’t Dawn Drawing Near?] (Tunis: Al-Sharika al-Tunisiyyah li al-Tawzeeʿ). Ibn ʿAshur, Muhammad al-Fadil (1972). Al-Harakah al-Adabiyyah wa-l-Fikriyyah fi Tunis [The Intellectual and Literary Movement in Tunisia] (Tunis: Al-Dar Al-Tunisiyyah li al-Nashr). Ibn ʿAshur, Muhammad Tahir (1978). Maqasid Al-Shariʿah al-Islamiyya [Islamic Law’s Higher Objectives/Godly Sanctions] (Tunis: Al-Sharika al-Tunisiyyah li al-Tawzeeʾ). Ibn ʿAshur, Muhammad Tahir (1979). Usul Al-Nizam al-Ijtimaʿi fi al-Islam [Principles of Islam’s Socio-political System] (Tunis: Al-Sharika al-Tunisiyyah li al-Tawzeeʿ). Ibn ʿAshur, Muhammad Tahir (1984). Tafsir al-Tahrir wa al-Tanwir [Commentary on the Qur’an, Liberation and Renewal/Enlightenment] (Tunis: Al-Dar al-Tunisiyyah li al-Nashr). Ibn Abi Diyaf, Ahmad (1990). Ithaf Ahl al-Zaman bi Akhbar Muluk Tunis wa ʿAhd al-Aman (Tunis: Al-Dar Al-Tunisiyyah li al-Nashr). Ibn Abi Diyaf, Ahmad (2005). Consult Them in the Matter: A Nineteenth-Century Islamic Argument for Constitutional Government, trans L. Carl Brown (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press).

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Cascading Liberation and Renewal—Tunisia in History   591 Ibn Salim, Umar (1975). Qabadu: Hayatuhu, Atharuhu, wa Tafkiruhu al-Islahi [Qabadu: His Life, His Legacy and His Reformist Thought] (Tunis: Silsalat al-Dirasat al-Adabiyyah). Liauzu, Claude (2004). “Bourguiba, héretier de Tahar Haddah et des militants reformistes des années 1920?,” in Camau and Geisser (eds), Habib Bourguiba: La Trace et l’héritage (Paris: Karthala). el-Mesawi, Mohamed El-Tahir (2006). Ibn Ahsur: Treatise on Maqasid Al-Shariʿah (London and Washington: International Institute of Islamic Thought). Micaud, Charles (1964). Tunisia: The Politics of Modernization (New York: Praeger). Perkins, Kenneth J. (2004). A History of Modern Tunisia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). al-Raysuni, Ahmad (2005). Imam Al-Shatibi’s Theory of the Higher Objectives and Intents of Islamic Law (Washington: International Institute of Islamic Thought). Sadiki, Larbi (2012). “The Arab spring and the Coming Fall of Orientalism’s Tower of Babel,” in Isakhan, Mansouri, and Akbarzadeh (eds). The Arab Revolutions in Context: Civil Society and Democracy in a Changing Middle East (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press). Salem, Norma (1984a). “Islam and the Status of Women in Tunisia,” in F. Hussain (ed.). Muslim Women (New York: St. Martin’s Press). Salem, Norma (1984b). Habib Bourguiba, Islam and the Creation of Tunisia (London: Croom Helm). Tamimi, Azzam (2001). Rachid Ghannouchi: A Democrat within Islamism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). al-Tunisi, Khayr al-Din (1967). Muqaddimat Aqwam al-Masalik li Maʿrifat Ahwal al-Mamalik [The Surest Path: The Political Treatise of a Nineteenth-Century Muslim Statesman] trans. and ed. Leon Carl Brown (Harvard: Harvard University Press). Van Krieken, G. S. (1976). Khayr Al-Din et la Tunisie, 1850–1881 (Leiden: E. J. Brill). Voorhoeve, Maaike (2014). “Women’s Rights in the New Tunisian Constitution,” openDemocracy, 11 March 2014 at https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/maaike-voorhoeve/ women%E2%80%99s-rights-in-new-tunisian-constitution (Accessed: August, 2014). al-Zumurli, Al-Sadiq (1986). Aʿlam Tunisiyyun [Tunisian Luminaries] (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami).

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chapter 29

A r a b You th Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century? Linda Herrera and Abdelrahman Mansour

A Disruptive Generation? These were times of youth, enthusiasm, pride, generous and sincere passions, the memory of which, despite mistakes, [wo]men will preserve forever and which, for years to come, will disturb the sleep of all those wishing to corrupt or enslave them.1

This passage from Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic study, The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, captures the spirit of the early stages of a revolutionary movement. While referring to the French Revolution of 1789, it intimates a universal story about youthful rebellion and the rise of an active generation. The rebelling generation invariably aspires to build a new order even though it may lack the tools, resources, and experience needed to actualize its goals. A post-revolutionary government, weary of the determination of its emboldended population, will crack down on all forms of freedoms. As de Toqueville observes, the new government “becomes much more autocratic than the one the Revoution had overturned [.…] suppressing all those dearly bought freedoms and putt­ ing empty shams in their place.”2 These observations from eighteenth-century France are reminiscent of the situation of Arab youth in the wake of the uprisings that marked the second decade of the twenty-first century. Looking back at history reveals certain universal patterns of youth rebellion and responses to it, but there are limitations to the predictive power of the past. We live in decidedly different times, and the study of Arab

1  de Tocqueville (2008 [1856]: 10).

2  Ibid. (11).

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Arab Youth: Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century?   593 youth, while it speaks to certain universal struggles, can also offer a way to identify some of the spaces for maneuver, moral signposts, and strategies of a rising generation. For a brief moment in 2011, Arab youth became the global symbol of hope. The popular uprisings that began in Tunisia in December 2010 and quickly spread to more than half the Arab states including Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, saw millions of people take to streets, schools, and social media with demands for change. The overwhelming majority of these protesters were young people born between the 1980s and 2000s. Their most pressing calls were for the end of the old regimes or “old orders” (alandhima al qadima), and for “bread, freedom, and social justice.” While the uprisings were not strictly youth movements since they contained important multigenerational dimensions, the participation of large numbers of young people and the ways in which they disrupted the hierarchies, social divisions, cultural norms, and forms of rule and organization of the established order, give the study of Arab youth an especially historic urgency. The term “disruption,” which has gained much currency in Silicon Valley, is regularly used to refer to innovation in the high-tech world. A “disruptive technology,” according to the industry definition, “is one that displaces an established technology and shakes up the industry or a groundbreaking product that creates a completely new industry.”3 We can similarly propose the term “disruption” to refer to ways members of this generation are challenging and shaking up the political and cultural foundations of not only their societies, but of the global order. Youth in the roughly twelve- to thirty-five-years-old range, in all their diversity with regard to class, religion, legal status, identity, and other categories, have been experimenting with novel forms of politics, networking, creative expression, socializing and coupling, working and learning. They have been transgressing the norms of the established order, sometimes in collaboration with other age and interest groups (such as industrial workers, members of political opposition groups, artists, or even extremist militias), and other times through transnational networks and peer communities. Disruption by definition denotes change and transformation, but the term does not in itself carry any inherent positive or negative value, nor does the “disruptor” necessarily carry a consciousness about the effects of her actions. Many people, by virtue of participating in emerging communities (such as those formed online), by adapting new technologies for a range of human interactions (from coupling to commerce), by consuming goods and services in particular ways, by using public spaces in an innovative and/or subversive manner because it is expedient to do so,4 may very well be disrupting the order of things, but to what ends? Any abrupt changes, whether in the realms of technology, politics, consumption, education, or the economy, compete with older ways of organizing life and society and come with winners and losers. It remains a matter of research and reflection to ascertain the role of youth in spurring disruption and to

3  See, for example, http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/disruptive-technology 4  See the work of Asef Bayat on “non-movements” (2009).

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594   linda herrera and abdelrahman mansour understand the economic, ethical, and political underpinnings of their collective and individual actions.

Youth in an Age of Uprisings The Arab uprisings, and particularly Egypt’s January 25 revolution, were televised, Tweeted, and Facebooked in ways that made them a global spectacle. These were revolutions of the digital information age that inspired youth communities around the globe.5 The Egyptian revolution became an iconic event with a historical effect similar to that of May 1968 in Paris. Whatever its weaknesses and merits, during the eighteen days of the uprising, people experienced a rare moment of collective action where they captured the meaning of life and were willing to die for their ideals.6 For a short time the rebelling people formed a community and felt as if they had defeated the state. Tahrir Square crystallized into a model of a youthful utopian society, a microcosm of how to organize an alternative order with a different notion about the meaning of society and even the meaning of revolution. Contrary to much of the analysis that emerged from the US and European media at the time, the square did not exemplify a model of western liberalism. The demonstrators in Tahrir Square enacted a society based on ideas of self-government, horizontal organizing, equality between men and women with no sexual harassment, generosity, distrust of the state security and state apparatuses, and solidarity across class, religious, regional, age, and other lines of difference. This community imagined a demilitarization of the state in favor of civilian rule, a society run on principles of fairness and respect for ­people and the environment. The Occupy Movements, Los Indignados in Spain, mobilizations in Wisconsin, Hong Kong, and Turkey’s Taksim Square, represent just a few of the movements that cited Tahrir Square and the “Arab Spring” as an idea and model for change. Despite the early attempts by people to reorganize society, they were not able to strat­ egize about how to construct alternative institutions and build a new state. As Azmi Bishara has noted: “A few weeks spent together in Egypt’s public squares was not sufficient for establishing trust on the intellectual level or unity on the organizational level.”7 By the time of the constitutional referendum in Egypt on March 19, 2011, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) together with conservative political groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Free Egyptian Party (al Masriyyin al Ahrar), the Wafd Party, and the Communist party (al Tagammuʾ) pursued strategies of divide and rule to weaken the newly constituted “people.”8 With the exception perhaps of Tunisia, the old

5  To be sure there was a diverse field of youth culture prior to the uprisings. See the work of Winegar (2006) and Mehrez (2010). 6  Sowers and Toensing (2012). 7  Bishara (2013). 8  Desouky (2014).

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Arab Youth: Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century?   595 orders tightened their grip over the people and, above all, the youth. The people have had to contend with fresh waves of repression and counterrevolution. During the early stages of the uprisings participating youths, born in the shadow of authoritarian systems in a highly militarized geopolitical region, experienced for the first time the exhilaration, responsibility, and high risk of being an actively participating member of society. This is not to say that all youth, or even a majority of them, shared the same understanding of how to engage in public life, or embraced a common set of ideas about what would constitute a desirable future order. Among the competing—and overlapping—ideas that have been circulating have been those rooted in non-violent civil disobedience, armed struggle, liberalism, Islamism, socialism, fundamentalism, atheism, militarism, capitalism, all of which intersect and shape the complicated worldview of a generation. A generation, as Karl Mannheim expounds in his seminal essay, “The Problem of Generations,” is a social collectivity insofar as it is a group of people who share a common historical time, what he terms “a common location in the historical dimension of the social process.”9 Members of a generation are shaped by major world events, popular culture, the prevailing technological regimes, and economic system, among the countless other influences that permeate a group’s mode of being, thinking, and acting on the world. The concept “generation,” thus, is a meaningful category insofar as it allows us to glean the common characteristics, behaviors, worldviews, and dispositions of a demographic collectivity who have come of age during a particular historical moment. Having said that, a generation is by no means a homogeneous entity. It is made up of a diverse range of individuals and groups at odds with each other insofar as they embody different ideological positions, subjectivities, and visions about the kind of society they deem desirable. For instance, young Egyptians who collectively participated in the January 25 revoultion and called for the toppling of the thirty-year dictator/president President Hosni Mubarak, fairly quickly formed antagonistic inter-generational relations. Just two years after the uprising a proportion of the revolutionaries supported the return of a de facto military dictatorship under General Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, the head of the armed forces, while others continued to agitate for social justice through means of civil disobedience and by experimenting with the “art of absence” (discussed later). Still others became staunch Muslim Brotherhood supporters, or abandoned politics altogether, or traveled to join the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The largest number of ISIS fighers, paradoxically, originates from Tunisia, the country that ignited the “Arab Spring.” ISIS, which espouses an extremist ideology that condones the practice of staged executions of minorities and trades in human slavery,10 can be viewed as a form of youth movement that has arisen out of the same globalized, commodified, high-tech, digital social media environment of the Arab uprisings, but to chilling effects.11 9  Mannheim (1952: 105). 10  el-Naggar (2015). 11  ISIS has shown an extremely high aptitude in how to use new media for recruitment, marketing, and generating a global media sensation. As reported in the New York Times, the group has an “extra­or­ din­ary command of [. . .] state-of-the-art videos, ground images shot from drones and multilingual Twitter messages” (Shane and Hubbard 2014).

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596   linda herrera and abdelrahman mansour “Generation” is a useful sociological concept to understand the different trends and pathways within a social cohort, but can the same be said for “youth”? Is it valid to isolate “youth” as a category given all the diversity within this demographic unit? Should it really be a matter of interest or surprise that young people triggered and participated in the uprisings in large numbers and were the ones who paid the highest price? Is it not expected that youth are the ones most susceptible to recruitment by radical groups and movements? How can engagement with “youth” provide a helpful lens from which to understand the disruptions, movements, and changing social mores in Arab societies and beyond?

The “Youth” Question In his seminal essay “Youth is Just a Word,” Pierre Bourdieu objects to the concept of “youth” as a sociological category. He posits: “[I]t’s an enormous abuse of language to use the same concept [youth] to subsume under the same term social universes that have practically nothing in common.”12 Bourdieu nevertheless acknowledges that power is related to the age structure in any society. He writes: “[T]he logical division between young and old is [. . .] a question of power, of the division . . . of powers. Classification by age (but also by sex and, of course, class . . .) always means imposing limits and producing an order to which each person must keep himself in place”.13 Youth, by virtue of their age and their place in the structure of power—in the governing system that controls, for instance, education, health, the judiciary, and the economy, are subject to a set of regulations and norms perpetuated by the bearers of the older generations. The elders, intent on reproducing the old order, would oppose the rise of a younger, active, and assertive generation bent on experimenting with new ways of organizing society, knowledge, and social relations. As Bourdieu further elucidates, “a feature of the old people of the declining classes [. . . is that] they are against young people [. . .] against protest, against everything that changes and stirs things up, precisely because their future lies behind them, because they have no future, whereas young people are defined . . . as those who will define the future.”14 When viewed as a subordinate group within an ageist structure of power, youth take on a keen sociological significance. In the post-uprising period adult authorites from schools, the state, and security apparatuses, have cracked down on and tightened channels of surveillance over children and youth who continue to agitate for change via schools, streets, and social media, among other sites.15 When the regular avenues for public participation are blocked or become highly precarious, where can the young turn? What can they do?

12  Bourdieu (1993: 95).

13  Ibid (94).

14  Ibid (100).

15  Herrera (2015).

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Arab Youth: Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century?   597

Arts of Presence and Absence The Arab uprisings can be seen as the culmination of years of “ordinary”and “extra­or­ din­ary” people actively participating in public life in what sociologist Asef Bayat terms “the art of presence.” By art of presence, active citizenry, I do not necessarily mean pervasive social movements or collective mobilization for political transformation, although such im­agined citizenry is likely to welcome largescale collective action. For authoritarian rule not only impedes contentious actions, but it is unrealistic to expect society to be in a constant state of vigour, vitality, and collective struggles. Society, with its ordinary people, also gets tired, demoralized, and even repressed. Activism, the extra-ordinary practices to produce social change, is the stuff of activists, who may energize collective sentiments when the opportunity allows. The point is not to reiterate the political significance of contentious movements, nor to stress on the necessity of undercutting the coercive power of the states. The point rather is to stress how lay citizens, with their ordinary practices of everyday life, through the art of presence or active citizenry, may recondition the established political elites and refashion state institutions into their habitus.”16

Bayat’s work was prescient insofar as it grasped how the sum of many people and groups asserting themselves through the art of presence could lead to a large-scale mobilization.17 If the art of presence is a tactic citizens use during times leading up to revolt, then an “art of absence” may very well be the inverted strategy that manifests during periods of intense crackdowns on people and public spaces following a popular uprising; during times of counterrevolution when the meaning of a citizen loses its power in the absence of a state that neither recognizes people’s rights nor values their lives. The young are especially vulnerable during periods of counterrevolution when the repressive apparatuses of the state work in overdrive to rein in youth rebellion and thwart their newly claimed freedoms. Young people get disproportionately persecuted for expressing dissent through acts as varied as participating in street protests, criticizing the government via social media, painting graffiti, or transgressing religious and cultural boundaries. The guardians of the established order send youth a resounding message—through the media, courts, police stations, streets—that their lives hold little or no value and that their own security depends on the degree to which they tow the line. What is the meaning of participation and presence in the absence of a state that neither recognizes young people’s rights nor values their lives? When people find it both too futile and risky to openly challenge the system, they will necessarily withdraw from public life. As a student activist from Cairo University lays out:

16  Bayat (2004).

17  Bayat (2009; 2010).

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598   linda herrera and abdelrahman mansour Fear is perfectly natural at this moment in which the police state is reestablishing itself, while apathy is also to be expected after the tragedies of the last four years.18 The bloodshed has led to a state of mass desensitization. [. . .] During such times of repression, political participation often drops significantly. This is not always bad, for it is the perfect time to reflect over the past and organize for the future.19

In the post-uprising period, possible acts of disruption to the system are occurring through a combination of presence and absence. By absence we refer to ways people withdraw to more intimate, private, and protected spaces, away from the public gaze. Absence can also be used in a more literal sense as in students’ opting out of the spaces that the state designates for their participation, such as bricks-and-mortar schools, youth clubs, and universities. Often the two strategies of presence and absence work in tandem. To get a sense of ways in which young people may be disrupting the established order through the art of absence, we draw on examples from two areas: schooling and student culture; and virtual communities. We highlight these two sites of struggle because we are dealing with a highly literate and “wired generation”20 where schooling and internet use are ubiquitous. In other words, a vast majority of Arab youth have direct experience with schools and social media, yet their exposure to, and participation in, these spaces have led them on vastly different trajectories. A number of examples are taken from Egypt, mainly because we are most familiar with social and political life there and understand that historically, Egypt has been a harbinger of wider trends in the region.

Opting out of Schooling Many analysts still suppose schools to be the bastions of nation-building and youth socialization that marked the postcolonial period, but schooling is an increasingly wily enterprise. Over the past two decades, during a period of advanced liberalization combined with growing insecurity and conflict, schools and universities have not only declined as sites of citizen-building, but have become places of profit, identity politics, and heightened risk. Many youths and their parents have opted out of full participation in national school systems for reasons ranging from fear over their students’ physical safety, to concerns over their psychological and ideological well-being.21

18  “Active communities are one of the most dangerous threats to the survival of authoritarian regimes like the one ruling Egypt. This is why immediately after the coup, there were massive efforts by both state and non-state actors to de-democratize academia. With the death of 16 students on campus, the suspension of 260 and the prosecution of 370 more” (Bellah 2015). 19  Bellah (2015). 20  Herrera (2012). 21  Herrera and Torres (2006).

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Arab Youth: Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century?   599

Risk and Insecurity School, in theory, is supposed to function as a “safe space” for a society’s children and youth to congregate and learn. In reality, many schools and universities are places of indeterminate risk and insecurity. Risk can be interpreted in a wide range of ways.22 We begin with the most visceral forms of risk, namely risk of severe bodily harm or death. All too frequently, in contexts of geopolitical conflict, foreign invasions, or civil strife, students suffer disproportionate risk. They may get caught in the crossfires on their way to or from school, or become victims when their schools become deliberate military targets. In the span of a single year alone in 2014, a number of assaults on schools in and around the region grabbed international headlines. In the summer of 2014, during the Israeli incursion of Gaza, several schools were targeted in air strikes including a UN school that was sheltering large numbers of children and their families.23 In Pakistan in December 2014, Taliban fighters attacked and brutally murdered some 132 school children and nine adults.24 In Nigeria, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, ravaged a boarding school in Yobe State, locked and burned down a boys’ dormitory, kidnapped female students, and forced some of them into “marriages.”25 Each event has its own players and political context, but what all these situations share is evidence of how assaults on schoolchildren and schools distorts and undermines the purpose of schooling and carries devastating effects on local populations. On a smaller but no less alarming scale, kidnappings of children as they travel to and from school have been on the rise as the economic and security conditions of countries deteriorate.26 The data on kidnappings within the Arab states is sketchy at best, especially in war-torn countries such as Syria, Iraq, Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen, nevertheless, evidence suggests that student kidnapping for ransom is a growing and alarming phenomenon.27 Adults and youth with a legitimate presence in educational institutions might also be the cause of physical, sexual, and psychological harm to students. In countries as varied as the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, physical abuse in schools at the hand of adults can be a serious problem.28 At the same time, peer-to-peer bullying, behavior that has gained much attention in the United States and Europe in past years, has recently surfaced in the literature on the Arab world.29 More research is needed on Arab societies to better understand strategies youth pursue to cope with the different challenges they encounter in their school environments, and also why youth perpetrate violence against each other. Bodily and psychological harm constitute two forms of risk, but in any given community a segment of the population will consider the ideological project of schooling a 22  Beck (1992). 23  CBS/AP (2014); Chappell (2014). 25  Crisis Group (2014). 26  Soliman (2009). 27  Al Gharbawy (2014); IRIN (2012); Mohamed (2014). 29  Kazarian and Ammar (2013).

24  Khalil (2014). 28  Badan (2014); Bazan (2011).

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600   linda herrera and abdelrahman mansour source of peril. In Egypt after the uprisings, for instance, schools became repressively and narrowly nationalistic, pro-military, and anti-revolution. It became difficult, if not outright dangerous, for students with affiliations and affinities to banned opposition groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood or liberal and leftist-oriented movements, to fully participate in the everyday life of their schools. In Egypt after the July 3, 2013 military takeover of the country, for instance, the military cracked down considerably on student dissent in high schools and universities. Over a period of eighteen months, Cairo University alone witnessed sixteen student deaths, 260 suspensions, and 370 criminal prosecutions.30 For those who choose to be absent from the bricks-and-mortar school, where are they present? Can opting out of school, whether out of fear, resistance, or expediency, lead to a new model? If youth opt out of the old ways and institutions, what are they opting into? Many dissenting youth, even when they are at odds with their governments and are critical of the prevailing order, continue to place a high premium on educational credentials which they view as important for their social status and future employment opportunities. These students seek ways to benefit from the credentials of the education system with minimal risk to their intellectual, moral, ideological, and political wellbeing. One method of achieving their aims, which are laden with tensions, is to avoid the physical environment of the school and to rely more on private lesson sessions to learn the school syllabus and prepare for high-stake exams. The phenomenon of private lessons is by no means a new trend, and has been pervasive for at least a couple decades. An overwhelming majority of students were taking private lessons in some form or another prior to the uprisings.31 However, since the uprisings these lessons have become more imbued with a politics of resistance. That said, private lessons do not constitute an alternative practice or vision for education. The private lesson route can be characterized as a conservate route since it is a way to stay in the system while at the same time avoiding or minimizing some of its harms. From another angle, a critical mass of scholars and educator/activists are experimenting with more emancipatory and alternative ideas about learning, knowledge, and education. The Palestinian mathematician and educationist Munir Fasheh proselytizes for liberating knowledge from “occupation.” He argues that in order to achieve this form of liberation it is important to first make the distinction between a citizen (muwatin) and the community member (al-ahali) which “has a relation to each other, to place, to history, to culture, to civilization, to a collective memory.”32 The “citizen,” he argues, is reduced to her connection to a national government, a national bank, and national institutions, all of which are protected by a national army. Education that takes place under the auspices of the state, whose aim is to connect the citizen primarily to the state and its institutions, destroys community and “occupies knowledge.” If schooling as we know it represents the occupation of knowledge by the state, what does community-based practice where knowledge is liberated look like? In a talk Fasheh 30  Bellah (2015).

31  Hartmann (2008).

32  Fasheh (2011).

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Arab Youth: Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century?   601 gave just three months after the 2011 Egyptian uprising, he found the answer in Tahrir Square. He said, “Cairo in my opinion is beginning to regain a world we are losing. Cairo, I hope, is overcoming the occupation of knowledge. Not just its political and economic occupation. Ahali [community] is the biggest wealth we have.” It did not take long, a matter of some months, for Tahrir Square to become co-opted by a range of antiliberation forces including the military, Islamist groups, other squabbling political opposition groups, and the police.33 Four years after the uprisings the public squares and streets are no longer fertile or safe grounds for experimentation. Young people who want to maintain the project of building alternative knowledge communities have had to migrate to other spaces. Young Arabs today are taking poetic license with the past in order to reinvent the present. For instance, some Egyptians with a large social-media following have revived the mosque study circle (dawayir), but with a contemporary twist.34 One such example is Yasmine Madkour who, with some colleagues, started a discussion circle via social media, and later migrated it to a physical location, a mosque located in a socially conservative and traditional urban neighborhood. The first major discussion took place about “Atheism and Islam” in an atmosphere of reconciliation. The participants, which included women, men, believers, non-believers, and Christians, received some pushback from members of the neighborhood who opposed the topic of discussion and probably the eclectic assortment of people. This particular mosque circle persisted and participants gathered to discuss not only aspects of their personal and political lives, but also the writings of intellectuals and the erotic poetry of the Syrian Nizar Qabbani (1923–1998). Meetings such as these encouraged those attending to consider unconventional ways of thinking about and navigating the cultural and political crossroads. Youth camps represent another alternative learning and cultural space. Camps designed to help children gain artistic, activist, and media skills started in the years prior to the uprising, and continue, more quietly, in the post-revolution period. The vanguard “Arab Digital Expression Foundation” (ADEF) has been running residential technology camps since 2007. Founded by the late Ali Shaath, the camps of the ADEF Foundation promote “freedom of expression, digital freedom, cultural exchange, and the use of technology in democratic development.”35 These camps have attracted the daughters and sons of left-leaning and other families from across the Arab world, and have

33  It can be argued that the “pro-revolution” groups also contributed to a climate of divisiveness and made the square less inclusive. For instance, certain revolutionary groups announced that Mohamed Mahmoud street, the street that became famous for the memory of the martyrs of the January 25 revolution, was off limits to the Muslim Brotherhood. For its part, the Brotherhood also behaved in a highly exclusionary way. The revolutionaries themselves, whether liberals, Islamists, or others, were also partly responsible for dividing the ranks. 34  Centuries ago, in Abbasid Baghdad, the mosque served as a dynamic intellectual and cosmopolitan space. 35  TIMEP (2014).

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602   linda herrera and abdelrahman mansour included training sessions by high-profile activists such as Alaa Abd el-Fattah.36 In contrast to the staid environment of government high schools, these camps “embark on an experiential educational journey where technology and art are fertile avenues for selfexpression and identity exploration.”37 Other groups, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, run their own partisan youth camps. The group’s precarious political standing—the Brotherhood was rebanned in Egypt in 2014—and antagonistic relationship with the formal education sector,38 have led a segment of the group to pursue the home-schooling route. One such example is “Ibn Khaldun for Home Schooling,” a website with online homeschooling resources launched by a reform-minded Muslim Brotherhood member. The website draws on the anti-government literature of American home-school advocate Joel Turtel, author of Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children (2005). This online platform aims to build a community for Arab home-schoolers, and find ways to organize schooling outside the state-school systems. Initiatives of this sort may be paving the way for alternative education practice and community, but they may also be contributing to wider social fractures and politics of identity within a wider Arab community which can lead to further polarization and insecurity in individual countries and the region as a whole. The question remains about how communities outside the state can work to build alternative models without bringing about divisions and increased civil strife.

Virtual Learning Communities A growing number of “non-ideological” online educational platforms cater to Arab students. A good number of these initiatives fit into a neoliberal “knowledge economy” framework. Knowledge economy refers to the prevailing entrepreneurial model of development whereby information and communication technologies (ICT), rather than manufacturing, are “the driver[s] of productivity and economic growth.”39 Under freemarket conditions, “crowdsourcing” or online “open platforms” can work both to re­inforce and challenge the status quo. The Egypt-based Tahrir Academy is one case in point.40 Tahrir Academy was launched in 2012 by the Nabadat Foundation, which was founded by Wael Ghonim, formerly a regional marketing manager for Google in the Middle East and North Africa. 36  There are three main reasons why many leftist families sent their children to these camps. First, they could afford it financially; second, they did not have their own space such as the Muslim Brotherhood so had to carve out a unique space; and third, during the Mubarak era the leftist groups were not targeted, and hence had more space to maneuver. 37  Abdulhaq, Attallah, and Seikaly (2013). 38  See Herrera & Torres (2006). 39  Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (1996). 40  Other entrepreneurial education initiatives include Ustadhak (“Your Professor”), an online service in Egypt that matches students with private teachers in subjects ranging from IGCSE preparation to lessons in art, yoga, and photography. In Jordan there is Idrak (“Realization”), a website launched by Queen Rania that draws on the expertise of Arabs in the diaspora to address issues for youth in the region. In Saudi Arabia, Riwak (“Gallery”) is an online space for professors to share their expertise.

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Arab Youth: Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century?   603 Ghonim gained notoriety as one of the two administrators of the “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook page that made the initial call for the January 25 uprising. Tahrir Academy caters to the thirteen-to eighteen-year-old age group (the “pre-MOOC age”) and is modeled after the well-known Khan Academy. The Khan Academy has achieved far-reaching recognition for its online video lessons in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). As outlined in its mission statement, the “Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom.” Tahrir Academy mirrors the branding of the Khan Academy by calling itself “a non-traditional learning destination” that is leading a “revolution against the traditional concept of knowledge.”41 It claims that it will foster a generation of “critical thinkers.”42 When the Khan Academy and Tahrir Academy use terms such as “empowering,” “revolution,” and “critical thinking” it can be misleading at best. These platforms do not encourage innovative thinking or provide a space to critically question and challenge prevailing knowledge orthodoxies, whether in the STEM fields or other subjects. From a pedagogical point of view, Tahrir Academy reinforces a top-down, prepackaged, ­corporate-model, traditional approach to instruction behind the veneer of digital technology and “critical thinking.” These platforms do, however, provide access to any learner with a Wi-Fi connection and can provide inroads in areas of educational equity and access. Initiatives of this sort are still in their infancy and quickly evolving. In the hands of more self-conscious critical educators, they could very well evolve into more genuinely emancipatory and critical knowledge spaces, but this will entail conscious efforts and experimentation. Video games and educational apps targeted at Arab children and youth represent another form of dynamic and rapidly evolving virtual learning communities. A number of companies from the Middle East region, spanning from Lebanon, Egypt, the UAE, Jordan, and Morocco, to Turkey and Palestine, have experienced a robust growth since 2011. As reported by an industry source: “[M]any Arabic educational apps targeting children [. . .], including AbjadCity and KidsLoveArabic, in addition to EduKitten apps [. . .] aim at reviving the Arab culture in a fun and entertaining way for kids aged three to eight years. [. . . These games aim] at building children’s capacities in math and [teach] the importance of time in an interactive and fun way.”43 Video games can also provide a way for players to imagine and enact alternative social and political scenarios, to virtually live in and experience a different kind of social order. In the severely restricted public sphere in Egypt and other post-uprising societies, and in the hands of conscientious creators, video gaming can provide a way for players to create different worlds and realities, to build confidence, and potentially imagine and create, at least in the fictious virtual world, solutions to social problems. As they stimulate the imagination, the games can be a source to experiment with problem-solving, and give young players from different backgrounds, genders, and family histories, the chance to come together in mutual purpose. Arabic educational video games have been 41  Tarek (2013).

42  Tahrir Academy YouTube Channel (2013).

43  Mustafa (2014).

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604   linda herrera and abdelrahman mansour largely off the radar of youth studies researchers,44 however given the way these games are tied to the cultural, congnitive, and political formation of Arab children and youth, they demand serious scholarly attention.

Virtual Clowns and the Arts of Satire Much has been written about Arab virtual cultures and how new forms of youth pol­it­ ical education and activism had been incubating online in the years leading up to the uprisings.45 While many tech-savvy young people did indeed initiate and participate in the more conventional form of civic activism online, which included mobilization for offline actions, it is safe to say that millions of young women and men with a Wi-Fi connection, more likely than not went online more out of boredom, to hang out in chat rooms and social media, and have some fun. Fun, we must remember, can be the stuff of serious business. Andeel, an Egyptian cartoonist and short filmmaker, recalls how the availability of programs such as Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Studio, combined with free social media platforms YouTube and Facebook, gave rise to a new generation of satirists.46 In the lead-up to the uprisings and the period following them, a number of anonymous YouTubers including “Ezzo,”47 “EgypSpoor,”48 and “Bahgaga Channel49 made their marks on youth culture and gained a kind of cult status. These YouTubers communicated through the medium of short video clips, which they took from television news and entertainment programs. They remixed the clips with comical voice-overs and songs to hilarious effects. As Andeel relates, “Some people remember videos such as “The Secret of the Hysterical Penis”50 more than they remember the actual political events they were commenting on (a fight in parliament [in 2012] between Brotherhood members and the supply minister, in this case).”51

44  Dalakian (2013). 45  Faris (2013); Haddad and Iskandar (2013); Herrera (2012, 2014a, 2014b); Hudson, Kirk, and Iskandar (2014). 46  See Andeel who writes, “Way too much has been said and written about the social media use of the January 25 generation. Hysterical (local and international) news outlets and commentators quickly concluded that the explosion of online interaction and the call for political action on social media platforms were all products of an active and enraged youth. But the ‘twitter revolution’ of January 25 had little to do with these trends and, in retrospect, seemed to consist of millions of bored people in their 20s and 30s with a Wi-Fi connection who just could not stand seeing the same faces over and over again—the face of Hosni Mubarak, the faces of authority, or even the faces of their own family and friends. So they turned to fresher faces, who coincidentally shared the same boredom and hatred of old faces.” See Andeel (2015). 47 https://www.youtube.com/user/ezzawynawyawy/videos 48 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=egyspoof 49 https://www.youtube.com/user/bahgagachannel/videos 50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmRRxveSdBg 51  Andeel (2015).

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Arab Youth: Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century?   605 Other figures have used vlogs (video blogs) to provide satirical commentary on current events. The voices represented in this youthful Arabic virtual space are diverse, and include young women (Sarrahsworld52), pious and more conservative Muslims (Joe Tube53 and “The Cheb Ashraf ”54), and liberal Christians, and atheists.55 A vibrant and irreverent youth culture that creates and communicates via social media, that revels in irony and satire, has become an important fixture in the youth cultural landscape. These times have also given rise to a dynamic music and low-budget documentary and experimental film scene which also circulate via social media and local arts spaces.56 The scale, impact, and disruptive impact of these largely youth-driven creations vary considerably. What they share is their attempt to form communities, knowledge cultures, and social practices outside the gaze, confining rules, and authoritarian nature of state institutions.

Conclusion Young Arabs provided the spark for the uprisings, but they did not envision the tremendous complexity of the task that lay ahead of them. The spontaneous communities that formed in the streets, schools, and social-media spaces during the extraordinary months of the Arab uprising proved fragile and temporary. For many young people who supported and participated in the “Arab Spring,” they caused a rupture with the past, but quickly learned that being an active citizen demands tireless commitment and has high costs, whether measured in income, time, freedom, or life itself. The Arab uprisings have proven that the struggle to change the social structure and improve governance is not a local struggle, but a global one. The movements that erupted in 2011, 2012, and continue in various forms throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, North America, and Latin America, share a common language of dissent and some clear generational features. In the Arab states the demands for change have been met, at least in the short term, with political defeat, but change at the level of community and society remain vibrant and dynamic. Through strategies that combine “the art of presence” with the “art of absence” people are creating and honing protest and resistance tools to develop new communities, build new ideas, and create political alternatives. 52 https://www.youtube.com/user/sarrahsworld/videos 53 https://www.youtube.com/user/JoeTubeVid 54 https://www.youtube.com/user/TheChebAshraf 55  These virtual creators depend almost entirely on the platforms of US tech companies, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Vine, the economic and political consequences of which require further examination. For discussions about the political and economic consequences of youth using platforms of US companies for political and creative purposes, see Christensen (2012) and Herrera, “Cyberdissident Diplomacy” (ch. 3, 2014a). 56  The Egyptian film scene was recognized, for instance, at the Berlin International Film Festival of 2015.

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606   linda herrera and abdelrahman mansour The “art of presence” can produce a sudden unplanned revolutionary movement as happened in Tunisia and Egypt, but it remains to be seen where that will lead in the longer term, especially in contexts of counterrevolution and the growth of armed extremist groups. The art of absence cannot produce a political or social alternative without alliances inside the power structure, but this strategy can provide a way to incubate ideas, express dreams, to continue the work of communities formed during the liberatory moments of struggle and revolution. Among the questions that beg attention at this juncture are: How can “disruption” be honed to shake the political and cultural foundations of the old order while allowing for constructive ideas and sustainable structures to build an alternative one? How can community life lead to more healthy and plur­al­is­tic societies as opposed to contributing to more fractured and divided ones? What structures should provide the foundation for a new kind of state, economic order, planetary order? In the process of withdrawing or opting out of institutions and practices of the established order, how are youth initiating or cultivating alternative ideas and practices, and to what ends? We are living in a time of questions, and research on youth in the Arab world can provide keys to navigating these uncertain times that are brimming with peril but also overflowing with possibility.

References Abdulhaq, Maysara, L. Attallah, and S. Seikaly (2013). “Remembering Ali Shaath,” Jadaliyya, December 17 http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/15603/remembering-ali-shaath (accessed February 2, 2015). Al Gharbawy, Mariam (2014). “Children Abducted in Egypt. Ransom and Begging and Other Reasons,” Khatf al-atfal fi masr, fedia wa tasawol wa maʾareb okhra, Masr Al Arabiya, September 9 http://bit.ly/1CoyrBD (accessed January 21, 2015). Andeel (2015). “A Quick Look Back at the Revolution’s Internet Sensations,” Mada Masr, January 28 http://www.madamasr.com/sections/culture/quick-look-back-revolutionsinternet-sensations (accessed January 28, 2015). Badan, Ramola (2014). “Children More Likely to Face Abuse at School than at Home, Survey Reveals,” The National, November 19 http://www.thenational.ae/uae/courts/children-morelikely-to-face-abuse-at-school-than-at-home-survey-reveals (accessed February 1, 2015). Bayat, Asef (2004). “The Art of Presence,” ISIM Newsletter, 1 (14) https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/169511 (accessed June 20, 2010). Bayat, Asef (2009). Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press). Bayat, Asef (2010). “Muslim Youth and the Claim of Youthfulness,” in Herrera and Bayat (eds), Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (New York: Oxford University Press), 27–48. Bazan, Cesar (2011). “Using Child Helplines to Protect Children from School Violence,” Plan International http://www.childhelplineinternational.org/media/55116/learn_without_fear__chi-plan_report_-_final_document.pdf (accessed February 1, 2015). Beck, Ulrich (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishers).

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Arab Youth: Disruptive Generation of the Twenty-first Century?   607 Bellah, Taher El Moataz (2015). “On the de-Democratization of Egyptian Universities,” Mada Masr, February 18 http://www.madamasr.com/opinion/de-democratization-egyptianuniversities (accessed February 18, 2015). Bishara, Azmi (2013). “Revolution Against the Revolution, Street Against the People, and Counter-Revolution,” Research Paper, September (Doha, Qatar: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies). Bourdieu, Pierre (1993). “ ‘Youth’ is Just a Word,” in Sociology in Question (London: Sage), 94–102. CBS/AP (2014). “Shells Hit U.N. School in Gaza, Killing 15,” July 24 http://www.cbsnews.com/ news/israeli-fire-hits-compound-housing-u-n-school-in-gaza-killing-15/ (accessed February 4, 2015). Chappell, Bill (2014). “U.S. ‘Appalled’ by Deadly Airstrike Outside U.N. School in Gaza.” NPR, August 3 http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/08/03/337531548/-deadly-attack-nearu-n-school-update-on-israeli-soldier Christensen, Christian (2012). “Thoughts on Revolution, State Aid and Liberation Technologie,” Irish Studies in International Affairs 23: 37–45. Crisis Group (2014). “Nigeria: Boko Haram’s Deadly School Attack,” International Crisis Group, February 27 http://blog.crisisgroup.org/africa/2014/02/27/nigeria-boko-haramsdeadly-school-attack/ (accessed February 1, 2015). Dalakian II, Glen (2013). “Gaming in the Middle East: An Overview of Game Types, Models, and Revenues,” November 7 http://www.wamda.com/2013/11/overview-gaming-sector-arabworld (accessed January 20, 2015). Desouky, Ayman (2014). The Intellectual and the People in Egyptian Literature and Culture: Amara and the 2011 Revolution (New York: Palgrave). Faris, David M. (2013). Dissent and Revolution in a Digital Age: Social Media, Blogging and Activism in Egypt (London and New York: I. B. Tauris). Fasheh, Munir (2011). “Occupation of Knowledge,” TEDxRamallah, May 24 http://bit. ly/1CBBvur (accessed January 21, 2015). Haddad, Bassam and Adel Iskandar (eds) (2013). Mediating the Arab Uprisings (ASI-FAMA, Inc.). Hartmann, Sara (2008). “The Informal Market of Education in Egypt. Private Tutoring and its Implications,” Arbeitspapiere/Working Papers # 88 (Mainz, Germany). Herrera, Linda and Carlos Alberto Torres (eds) (2006). Cultures of Arab Schooling: Critical Ethnographies from Egypt (New York: State University of New York Press). Herrera, Linda (2012). “Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A view from Egypt,” Harvard Educational Review 82,3: 333–353. Herrera, Linda (2014a). Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet (New York: Verso). Herrera, Linda (ed.) (2014b) with Rehab Sakr. Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East (New York: Routledge). Herrera, Linda (2015). “Citizenship Under Surveillance: Dealing With the Digital Age,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47,2: 354–356. Hudson, Leila, Mimi Kirk, and Adel Iskandar (eds) (2014). Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). IRIN (2012). “Egypt: Rising Tide of Child Abductions,” IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis, April 11 http://www.irinnews.org/printreport.aspx?reportid=95271 (accessed January 19, 2015).

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608   linda herrera and abdelrahman mansour Kazarian, Shahe  S. and Joumana Ammar (2013). “School Bullying in the Arab World: A Review,” Arab Journal of Psychiatry 24,1: 37–45. Khalil, Shaimaa (2014). “Pakistan Taliban: Peshawar School Attack Leaves 141 Dead,” BBC News, December 16 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30491435 (accessed February 2, 2015). Mannheim, Karl (1952). “The Problem of Generations,” in Kecskemeti (ed.), Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (originally published 1928) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Mehrez, Samia (2010). Egypt’s Culture Wars: Politics and Practice (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press). Mohamed, Doaʾa (2014). “Children of Egypt: Hostages to the Cartels and Mafia Members,” El Badil, Baʿad el-inflat el-amny, atfal masr—rahaʾen lada ʿesabat tegaret al-aʿadaʾa wa mafia al-tasawwol—July 5 http://bit.ly/1CovNvX (accessed January 21, 2015). Mustafa, Eman (2014). “Entrepreneur Puts Palestine on Region’s Educational Gaming Map,” Wamda, December 4 http://bit.ly/1yrNKdF (accessed January 21, 2015). el-Naggar, Mona (2015). “From a Private School in Cairo to ISIS Killing Fields in Syria,” New York Times, February 18 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/world/middleeast/from-aprivate-school-in-cairo-to-isis-killing-fields-in-syria-video.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1 (accessed February 18, 2015). Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (1996). The KnowledgeBased Economy (Paris: OECD Publications). http://www.oecd.org/sti/sci-tech/1913021.pdf (accessed February 1, 2015). Shane, Scott and Ben Hubbard (2014). “ISIS Displaying a Deft Command of Varied Media,” New York Times, August 30 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/world/middleeast/isisdisplaying-a-deft-command-of-varied-media.html?_r=0 (accessed February 10, 2015). Soliman, Moustafa (2009). “The Increase of Kidnapping Children in Egypt: The Internal Ministry Denies the Existence of a ‘Phenomenon,’ ” Masr tabhath tazayud khatf Al-atfal wa Al-dakhiliyya tanfi wujud al-dhahirah, Alarabiya, April 8 http://bit.ly/1wjSkFp (accessed January 21, 2015). Sowers, Jeannie and Chris Toensing (eds) (2012). The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest and social change in Egypt (New York: Verso). Tahrir Academy YouTube Channel (2013). “What is Tahrir Academy?” March 7 http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=wlwz0eIraxo (accessed February 15, 2015). Tarek, Rola (2013). “Tahrir Academy Looks to Revolutionize Education in Egypt,” Wamda, April 1 http://www.wamda.com/2013/04/tahrir-academy-looks-to-revolutionize-educationin-egypt (accessed February 19, 2015). TIMEP (2014). “A Tribute to Ali Shaath,” Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy http://timep. org/commentary/memory-ali-shaath/ (accessed February 15, 2015). de Tocqueville, Alexis (2008 [1856]) The Ancien Régime and the Revolution, Translated by Gerald Bevan (London & New York: Penguin Books). Turtel, Joel (2005). Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children (Staten Island, NY: Liberty Books). Winegar, Jessica (2006). Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press).

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chapter 30

Th e Y em en i U pr isi ng of 2011 A Product of Twenty Years of Grassroots Activism Atiaf Alwazir

The departure of Zayn al-ʿAbidin Bin ʿAli from Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak from Egypt in January and February of 2011 respectively instilled Yemenis with hope. Yet it is too simplistic to treat them as the sole catalysts of the movement that emerged in Yemen in the winter of 2011. For two decades before the fall of Bin ʿAli, Yemen witnessed an array of political actions against injustice, massive unemployment, population growth, a failing economy, and absence of basic rights. These included the creation and maintenance of a coalition of opposition political parties, social movements such as the Huthis in North Yemen and al-Ḥirāk (al-Hirak) in the South, and the continuous weekly protests in Freedom Square. These forces, I argue, were essential to creating a vibrant—if often ­violently suppressed—oppositional identity, and ultimately made possible the consolidation of collective actions that erupted in the capital Sanaa on January 15, 2011.

Yemeni History 101 At the end of the First World War, Yemen was the first Arab country to become independent,1 when the Zaydi2 imam, Yahya Muhammad Hamid al-Din, established the Mutawakkilite Kingdom in northern Yemen in 1918. The kingdom lasted until 1962, when a military coup in Sanaa dethroned the imam and formed the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). Meanwhile in the South, the Aden Protectorate remained in British hands until November 1967, when British forces retreated following a guerrilla war led 1  Vom Bruck (2005: xv). 2  Zaydiyya, or Zaydism is a Shia Muslim school of thought that is named after Zayd ibn Ali, the grandson of Husayn ibn Ali. Followers of the Zaydi Islamic jurisprudence are called Zaydis.

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610   atiaf alwazir by two nationalist groups, the National Liberation Front and its rival the Arab Nationalist Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen. After independence, the former seized power from its rival, reorganized itself into the Yemini Socialist Party (YSP), and established a Marxist–Leninist regime, known as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which was committed to a radically egalitarian program.3 Following a power struggle for the leadership of the YSP, a brutal civil war erupted in 1986. Southern President ʿAli Nasir Muhammad and tens of thousands of supporters fled north across the border escaping factional fighting. They were welcomed by the Arab Republic of Yemen’s president, ʿAli ʿAbdullah Salih, who played them against the YSP which remained in Aden.4 Salih, from a humble background with little formal education, had risen, surprisingly, through the ranks of the army and had come to power in 1978. Few expected he would last, especially since the previous two presidents had been assassinated.5 Nevertheless, Salih maneuvered his way to a thirty-three-year autocracy. North and South Yemen were officially unified on May 22, 1990 as a result of the November 1989 agreement reached by President Salih of the Arab Republic of Yemen and ʿAli Salim al-Bid, the General Secretary of the YSP. The unification brought two ideologically opposed states together into one. Sanaa became the seat of government while Salih served as an interim president. He held the swing vote on crucial matters of state policy.6 For a brief period, the new coalition government embarked on dem­oc­ra­ tiza­tion. Freedom of expression was booming, repression and violence diminished, and many political forces were participating in the Yemeni government. As Ursula Braun noted, within the first year of unification, “150 publications of all hues, hundreds of civil associations, and no less than thirty-eight political parties had formed.”7 Despite these democratic developments, real unification never took place. The two armed forces were never placed under a single command, while President Salih con­ tinu­ous­ly looked for ways to consolidate his power at the expense of the YSP. A year after unity, Salih’s ruling party, the General People’s Congress, supported the formation of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, known as al-Tajammuʿ al-Yamani li-l Iṣlāḥ or simply al-Islah. By creating a third party that was aligned to the Congress party, the ruling party hoped to shift the balance of power in their favor and against the YSP. Al-Islah party brought together three different groups: the Muslim Brothers who were active under the GPC in the North, prominent Northern tribal leaders including Sheikh ʿAbdullah al-Ahmar, and Salafis such as Sheikh Abdulmajid al-Zindani. What they had in common was “a measure of social conservatism, a largely Northern political base, and a deep skepticism of—if not downright hostility toward—Southern Socialism.”8 They also had strong tribal and family links to President Salih. The formation of al-Islah, indeed, proved beneficial in reducing the power of the YSP, as seen by the first parliamentary election of unified Yemen in 1993 that resulted in a coalition government which included all three parties9, with the YSP having the least number of seats. 3  Halliday (2007: 1). 7  Braun (1992: 179).

4  Day (2010: 4). 8  Yadav (2010: 58).

5  Worth (2014: 1). 9  Carapico (1993: 2).

6  Day (2010: 4).

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The Yemeni Uprising   611 In early May 1994, fighting between the North and South erupted after a number of political assassinations, the imbalance in economic distribution in the North’s favor, and the failed attempts to merge the two armies. In addition, Salafis affiliated with al-Islah inspired young men to engage in violence against the “communist apostates” in the South. On May 21, 1994, after three weeks of clashes, former Southern leader ʿAli Salim al-Bid, formally declared secession from the North. A full-scale war dragged on until July 7, when President Salih’s troops marched into Aden while al-Bid and his colleagues fled the country. Four years later, the YSP was “temporarily disabled as a contender for national power.”10 Meanwhile in the North, Salih further consolidated his power, and ruled “by creating confusion, crisis and sometimes fear among those who might challenge him.”11 While violence, brutal force, and assassinations were used against those who opposed him, the most common tactics of the president included threats, co-optation, and bribery.

Contentious Politics Prior to 2011 The vast number of diverse social groups who expressed their discontent, articulated grievances, and demanded reform, severely challenged the social, political, and economic conditions that Yemen faced after reunification in 1993. These constant mobilizations constituted what Stacey Philbrick Yadav called “antecedents of the revolution.”12 This section will highlight three groups of “antecedents” that were active in opposing the regime in various forms since the 1990s.

Political Parties and the Formation of the Cross-Ideological Opposition Bloc In the 1997 parliamentary elections, the Congress party won 187 of the 301 seats.13 Several opposition parties including the YSP boycotted the election after the government harassed and arrested their party workers. al-Islah ran as an opposition party, and won fifty-three seats, losing ten seats from the previous election. In an attempt to unify the left against the ruling GPC and the Islamist al-Islah party, several secular opposition parties buried their differences and created the Coordination Council of the Yemeni Opposition headed by the YSP “to coordinate political activities, including presenting joint election lists for the municipal elections in 2001.”14 Then in a surprising move, the Coordinating Council expanded to include al-Islah and other parties in the form of al-Liqāʾ al-Mushtarak or the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP). This was 10  Yadav (2010: 60). 11  Phillips (2011: 1). 12  Yadav (2011: 550). 13  “Yemen’s leaders Party Dominates Elections,” New York Times, May 8, 1997. 14  Ottaway and Hamzawy (2009: 58).

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612   atiaf alwazir aimed at uniting the entire opposition to the ruling Congress party.15 Despite the tensions, the setbacks, and the diversity amongst the JMP, they have nevertheless managed to stay united to this day. While the JMP networks and forums established many links between activists and politicians across partisan lines, at times they alienated a number of their members including many women. An instructive example of this alienation is the debate over Sanaa University’s Empirical Research and Women’s Studies Center which was established in 1993.16 alIslah extremists demanded the center’s suspension and threatened the founder, Dr. Raufa Hasan’s, life claiming that it endangered Islamic values. The Center was eventually closed, then reopened years later. The disappointment and abandonment that Yemeni women politicians felt was compounded by the political parties’ lack of support for women candidates in the 2003 national elections. Those who decided to run did so as independents without party support. In response, many women disengaged from direct politics and invested their energy in the associational sector instead, where they found new possibilities for political participation and contestation. After the 2001 law that allowed non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to officially register at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, NGOs mushroomed across Yemen. While the majority of these NGOs served the ruling party or al-Islah, a few independent groups, which were often led and staffed by women, managed to promote political reform, document human rights abuses, and challenge the status quo. This general discontent with the party political process was not only felt by women, but also the younger male JMP members who felt that their priorities of highlighting issues linked to un­employ­ment, better education, and involvement in the parties’ decision-making were neglected. The longer the regime ignored their grievances, the more the ranks of the discontented swelled.

Anṣārullah—Partisans of God (Commonly Known as Huthis) The government’s tacit support for hardline Salafis and Wahhabis throughout Yemen allowed the latter to build new schools, even in areas that have historically been Zaydi, such as Saada Governorate along Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia. This support contributed to the decline of Zaydism in some areas, which had already began after the overthrow of the imamate in 1962,17 and intensified with the spread of Wahhabism in Yemen. President Salih’s own background was Zaydi, but he supported Wahhabism even though it “actively opposes both the main Yemeni schools—Zaydi Shiism in the north and Shafii Sunnism in the South and in the Tihama.”18 With their strong revolutionary motivation, the Zaydis posed a more immediate threat to both the Salih regime and neighboring Saudi Arabia.

15  Durac (2011: 343). 18  Weir (1997: 1).

16  al-Gomhoriya (2011: 1).

17  Winter (2011: 3).

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The Yemeni Uprising   613 In response to the sense of threat and “dilution of identity,” al-Shabāb al-Muʾmin or the Believing Youth Movement, was created as an informal advocacy group for Zaydi education and culture in Saada in the early 1990s. It sought to protect religious and cultural traditions in Saada from Wahhabi ideology. True to his tactic of playing powers one against another, Salih tolerated the group and at times even supported it to counter the growth of the Salafis. The Believing Youth ran summer study sessions, printed and distributed Zaydi literature19, and held rallies protesting the expansion of governmentsupported Wahhabi ideology. They also demonstrated against the underdevelopment of the Governorate of Saada—which is among Yemen’s poorest governorates. Then, gal­ van­ized by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Believing Youth Movement shifted from religious and cultural to political activism.20 It started issuing public statements against the central government, attacking President Salih directly in its sermons, invoking the importance of Khurūj21, and encouraging its followers to refuse to pay taxes. Since then, the movement has come to be known as the “Huthis,” in reference to their leader, Husayn Badr al-Din Huthi (1956–2004).22 When Huthis began gaining more power, President Salih ordered a general crackdown on them. Following an anti-government demonstration by members of the Believing Youth in Saada, Salih’s security services attempted to arrest Husayn al-Huthi. This sparked a brutal conflict between Huthis and the Yemeni government in 2004. President Salih asserted that the Huthis would be handled once and for all, and pledged to crush the rebels with a “scorched-earth” policy.23 To garner international support, the government accused them of seeking to establish a Shii theocracy in Saada and to revive the Zaydi Imamate, and linked the rebellion to the American war on terror.24 The Yemeni government claimed that Huthis’ supporters included Libya, al-Qaʿida, the Lebanese Hizbullah, and Iran.25 The Huthis rejected this claim, but with a full media blackout, their perspective failed to reach the broader public. The first round of fighting ended with government forces killing Husayn al-Huthi in 2004.26 Yet, instead of crushing the Huthis, it incited support for them. The Yemeni regime banned or severely restricted reporting from Saada and, in fact, prosecuted several reporters and media organizations on allegations of supporting the insurrection.27 For example, journalist ʿAbdulkarim al-Khaywani was arrested in 2004 and was sentenced to death, but was later pardoned due to international pressure.28 The war grew more dangerous in November 2009 when Saudi Arabia openly joined on the side of the Yemeni government. Tens of thousands of Yemenis were killed, including women and

19  Haykal (1995: 21). 20  Boucek (2010: 9). 21  Zaydis believe in the concept of Khurūj that dictates that people must rise in revolt against the unjust, oppressive rulers. 22  International Crisis Group (2009: 2). They self-identify as “Anṣārullah.” 23  In a speech celebrating the revolution of September 26, 1962, then President Saleh said, “War against al-Huthi rebels would continue until uprooting them even if it lasted for ages.” 24  Boucek (2010: 2). 25 Ibid. 26  Wedeen (2008: 149). 27  Boucek (2010: 5). 28  Human Rights Watch (Jan 2009: 2–3).

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614   atiaf alwazir children, and more than 340,000 people were displaced.29 This misery was compounded by reports of food blockades, power outages, and media blackouts in Saada. These wars positioned the Anṣārullah or Huthis as a key oppositional force in the country. Their raison d’être became “resistance to Yemeni military offensive.”30 The fighting was also simultaneously complicated by intra-elite power struggles to determine a successor for President Salih, especially in the midst of reports of clashes between General ʿAli Muhsin—Salih’s second man—the commander of the northern military district, and Ahmad ʿAli, the president’s son and commander of the Republican Guard.31 A ceasefire was later reached in mid-February 2010, yet the government did not address the underlying grievances.

Al-Ḥirāk al-Janūbi—the Southern Movement Since unification and reunification, Southerners have complained of marginalization by the Northerner-led government in jobs, political power, and land acquisition. Central to Southern dissatisfaction were economic grievances. For example, while oil is located mostly in the South, the region has seen little economic development. Southerners have asserted that the North has never followed through on commitments to improve conditions. Tensions, protests, and sporadic violence followed and continued to increase. By the mid-2000s, many Southerners had completely lost trust in Salih. At the same time, the conflicts that had occurred in Saada exposed the regime’s vulnerabilities, proving that the central government was, in fact, weak. In May 2007, former Southern military officers, headed by General Nasir ʿAli alNuba,32 who had been forced into early retirement with worthless pensions after the 1994 war, began holding weekly sit-ins in the streets.33 Fearing the spread of this op­pos­ ition, the government detained al-Nuba and a few of his colleagues later that year.34 Protests nevertheless grew to tens of thousands. Then, on the eve of Yemen’s October 14 holiday commemorating South Yemen’s revolt against British rule in 1963, security forces shot and killed four young men in the very streets where British colonial soldiers had killed seven Yemenis exactly forty-four years earlier. This violence ignited massive anti-government protests across the South. By spring 2008, the anti-government protests, while having no central leadership, began organizing under the name “al-Ḥirāk al-Silmi al-Janūbi” or the “Peaceful Southern Movement,” that later became known as simply al-Hirak. They demanded equal citizenship, jobs, greater local decision-making power, and more control over the South’s economic resources.35 By 2009, demonstrators began waving the flag of the former South Yemen, which had not been seen publically since the 1994 war. Some

29  Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (2013: 1). 30  Boucek (2010: 4). 31  Boucek (2010: 3). 32  Head of Retired Military Consultative Association. 33  Day (2008: 8). 34  Human Rights Watch (Dec 2009: 47). 35  Day (2010: 2).

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The Yemeni Uprising   615 Southern figures associated with jihadists, such as Sheikh Tariq al-Fadli,36 joined alHirak. As a result, a faction of the Southern Movement became more radical and more militarized, with alleged links to al-Qaʿida.37 Yet, the majority members of al-Hirak continued to distance themselves from militants and the movement remained largely a political one seeking redress for failure of the unity through peaceful means. Through sit-ins, protests, and distribution of literature, al-Hirak highlighted the growing incapacity of the Salih regime to take into account the demands of the people and deal with grievances through non-repressive means. They pointed to Aden’s commercial advantage as a port city, and the revenues that flowed to Sanaa rather than to Aden. Women pointed to the regress in gender equality since unification and young graduates complained of lack of jobs in the South. As expected, the central government cracked down on al-Hirak through what Human Rights Watch called “unlawful killings, arbitrary detentions, beatings, crackdowns on freedom of assembly and speech, arrests of journalists.”38 The authorities again used the “war on terror” as a pretext to detain, kill, or incarcerate many Southern Movement activists. Dozens of journalists were subjected to politicized court proceedings, frequently on anti-state charges. In the South, al-Ayyām’s editor, Hisham Basharahil, and another journalist working for this independent newspaper were charged with “instigating national feuds,” “instigating the spirit of separatism,” and “harming national unity.” But the more attacks the Southern Movement endured, the more members joined. With time, it became a political umbrella for multiple Southern opposition groups with demands ranging from federalism to outright independence.

Street Mobilizations: Public Protests and Strike Action Following the Southern example of protests and civil disobedience, activists, civil society leaders, and journalists began holding similar activities in the North. Various street mobilizations took place since the 2004 war in Saada, mainly by relatives of the disappeared, political prisoners, and martyrs, in addition to journalists demanding access to the conflict zones. From 2007 onward, protesters began gathering in front of the government buildings to express their concern over the deteriorating political atmosphere, the lack of freedom of expression, and increased arbitrary arrests and political detentions. With time, this became a weekly event—every Tuesday—to coincide with the cabinet meetings. Activists with different types of demands convened in this symbolic location, which came to be known popularly as Saḥat al-Ḥurriyyah or Freedom Square and which the Londonbased Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat ̣ considered “the Yemeni Hyde Park.”39 36  al-Fadli was a former mujahid in Afghanistan and a former southern ally of President Salih’s who assisted Salih’s Congress party during its showdown of the YSP in the early 1990s. al-Fadli was also the brother-in-law of General ʿAli Muhsin, Salih’s former second-in-command. 37  Root, Tik and Casey Combs (2014: 1). 38  HRW (2009: 1). 39  Al-Sharq al-Awṣat ̣ (Arabic) (2007: 1–2).

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616   atiaf alwazir Given the formal parties’ complete shut-out of female politicians, it is striking that many of these street protests were organized by female activists and journalists, thus challenging the patriarchal traditions and the strict public/private division in Yemen. In fact, women led and organized many of the protests, including those demanding the release of the 115 Guantanamo Yemeni detainees, the largest group among the detainees remaining in Guantanamo.40 One cause which the protesters on Freedom Square advocated was the eviction of dozens of families known as al-Jaʿāshin. In 2009, a local tribal sheikh, Muhammad Mansur, expelled dozens of families from Raash village for refusing to pay taxes to him.41 Then on July 25, 2010, the evicted began a hunger strike to protest the injustice against them and to bring the activists’ attention to the issue. Their weekly protests garnered strong support from members of civil society, journalists, and even average citizens because it raised the broader issue of tribal rule in Yemen. In 2008, port workers, day laborers, school teachers, and university professors joined the fray as they organized numerous strikes and labor action in cities across Yemen. Oil workers were among the most active in the years preceding the 2011 uprising. Their strikes shut down oilfields, refineries, and pipelines all over the country six times in less than three years.42 The considerable cost of work stoppages to the state’s finances succeeded in extracting periodic concessions from the Yemeni government. Professional syndicates also mobilized. In 2010, a fatal attack on Dr. Dirham al-Qadasi led to a month-long sit-in by relatives and colleagues. In addition, the Yemeni Physicians and Pharmacist Syndicate announced a full strike on January 22, 2010 in order to denounce the attack on one of their colleagues and the lack of accountability. Even though some hospitals placed security guards at the gates to prevent their doctors from participating in the sit-in, the sustained pressure from physicians, activists, and the general public forced the authorities to finally arrest the five individuals accused of the murder of the popular physician.43 While Article 58 of the Yemeni Constitution guarantees citizens the right to create and establish associations and unions, the strikers were dismissed and detained on several occasions.44 The regime also responded violently at times by using live ammunition against protesting workers, and by incarcerating a large number of union members. Despite the violations and abuse against workers, the awareness of political opportunity culminated in the general strike of May 2010.45 This nation-wide protest forced the regime to the negotiating table and procured conditional improvements for publicsector workers.46

40 http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/by-country. 41  Manea (2012: 2). 42  These shut-downs occurred in March and August 2009; April, May, and October 2010; and January 2011. For more information see: Al-Ṣaḥwā Net (2009: 1), Yemen Post (April 2010: 1), Building and Wood Workers’ International (2010: 1), Reuters (2014: 1). 43  International Trade Union Confederation (2010: 2). 44  International Trade Union Confederation (2010: 1). 45  Yemen Post (May 2010: 1). 46  Alwazir (2012: 1).

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The Yemeni Uprising   617

The 2011 Uprising and the Convergence of Movements The protests over the past decades substantially weakened President Salih’s grip on power and prepared the ground for the 2011 uprising. While these various groups and movements came from different backgrounds with divergent goals, they all challenged the central government. This is what led one keen Yemen observer to conclude that “the revolution in Yemen is not the creation of the youth, it is the complex by-product of previous mobilizations and of a specific context.”47 Two factors mark this continuity: a large number of revolutionaries came from the pre-2011 movements; and the various protests, sit-ins, and marches before and during the 2011 uprising targeted precisely those public spaces that were the preserve of the ruling elite. The existence of political cadres with experience in organizing and linking protests as well as their ability to mobilize large numbers of people who demanded change publically and without authorization, shifted the power dynamics in Yemeni politics. The government’s interaction with the pro­ testers was a recognition of their power. The first call for a protest demanding the overthrow of the Salih regime was on the night news reached Yemen that former Tunisian President Bin ʿAli had escaped. The next morning, January 15, 2011, a few activists and students gathered in front of the Tunisian embassy chanting “al-shaʿb yurīd isqāt ̣ al-nizām” (“the people want to overthrow the regime”). Other protests followed, and after Mubarak of Egypt stepped down on February 11, 2011, the situation in Yemen escalated. On that night, protesters in the city of Taiz held a sit-in. Two days later, university students also held a sit-in at Sanaa University where they vowed to stay “until the end of the regime.” A week later, Sanaa was filled with thousands of protesters, and with time the protest site transformed into a three-kilometer tent city that protesters started calling “Change Square.”

The School of Democratic Resistance Since many members of civil society, activists, and journalists knew each other from the pre-2011 protests, it was easy to reconnect and form a network that transcended tribal, class, ideological, and regional affiliations. By the end of February 2011, over 400 coalitions were formed in Change Square in Sanaa. Liberals, leftists, Islamists, tribesmen, mothers, fathers, as well as apolitical activists formed various groups to promote change.

47  Bonnefoy (2012: 4).

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618   atiaf alwazir In an attempt to unify the voices of the early independent youth,48 the Coordination Council for Yemeni Revolutionary Youth was created, and together with another group, al-Wat ̣an li-l-Jamīʿ, “The Country for All,” they managed to unify, despite their diversity, the demands of all revolutionaries in a list of thirteen specific points.49 The various Change Squares throughout the country transformed the public spaces in the cities into what Bonnefoy calls “a lively political festival.”50 The activists proved to be very creative. They developed new means of communication, chanted innovative slogans, used art, music, theater, and poetry as means of mobilizing and shaping ideas.51 Leaders of civil society used their knowledge to help raise awareness about political rights, the constitution, and social issues. For example, a coalition called the Free Independent Yemenis made up of political activists and social scientists began what was called the “Academic Tent.” This tent offered daily afternoon lectures on a host of pol­it­ ical issues, including civil rights, human rights, feminism, the constitution, social justice, and structure of the state. In addition, since the university remained closed, many pro­testers, most notably the well-known sociology Professor al-Dughaish and his wife Ihssan, used their tents to provide tutoring classes for university students (which was later opposed by al-Islah for the mixing of men and women inside the tent). In addition, literary classes were held and more than twenty newspapers were produced and distributed by both professional and “citizen journalists.”52 The most notable and, indeed, inspiring aspect of the uprising was the duration of its peaceful nature. Yet, this was hardly unprecedented. Peaceful resistance practices of the 2011 uprising owed much to al-Hirak. As Nabil Subayʿ, an independent liberal journalist, reminds us: “the southern movement started from the very beginning as an explicitly pacific movement. It was quite certainly the most durable contestation movement to use this specific type of action, not only in Yemen but also in the Middle East.” He added: “The previous methods of contestation as well as the demands of the protesters have shaped much of Yemeni contestation.”53 What was unique, however, was that armed tribesmen who pride themselves in the type of weapon they own, put down their arms, and remained peaceful even when attacked. The reaction to the murder of ʿAwad alSurayhi, a young tribesman from Maʾrib, by thugs on February 26, 2011 was a case in point. When a group of women went to the tent where al-Surayhi’s family resided, they asked them not to seek revenge. The family responded: “the only revenge will be building a new Yemen.”54 48  The term “the youth” was used to identify students and unemployed graduates, generally under 30 years old, and not members of any formal political or student organization, who identified themselves when they began the protests. By using this term, these men and women put themselves at a clear distance from any of the existing political forces, including the opposition alliance “Joint Meeting Parties” (JMP). 49  Alwazir, (2012: 4). 50  Bonnefoy (2012: 9). 51 Ibid. 52  Vom Bruck, Alwazir, and Wiacek (2014: 290). 53  Laruent Bonnefoy, Mermier, and Poirier (2012: 152). 54 Personal interview conducted with the al-Ṣuraiḥi family on February 27, 2011, Sana’a, Change Square.

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The Yemeni Uprising   619 A political culture of feminist resistance that had begun to emerge in Yemen’s civil society in the 1990s was also present in the uprising. In 2011, just as in previous protests, women were not only present in protests but were also initiators and organizers of the first demonstrations against the regime. These women resisted patriarchy but also promoted a new culture of equality, by merely staying put in the square. Their steadfastness had a significant impact on a number of feminists who worked to politicize Yemini women. Women in the square created their own subculture in the revolutionary camps. They were encouraged to participate in all activities side-by-side with men. They took part in front-line actions, as well as behind the scenes and in more traditional—but just as important actions—such as procuring, preparing, and cooking food for protesters, and nursing the wounded. Schooled in the vibrant Yemeni associational sector, women rapidly assumed positions of authority within the anti-government movement.55

Institutionalized Resistance and the Decline of Revolutionary Principles As we have seen, the JMP had been in dialogue with the government for many years prior to 2011. In late February 2011, they shifted their positions and started overtly supporting the “revolutionary youth” in Change Square. Tribal figures, particularly those linked to the powerful tribe al-Ahmar,56 members of al-Hirak and Huthi movements, civil society activists, as well as some members of the ruling party also aligned themselves with the revolutionaries. But as the uprising unfolded, they began to take over important arenas in the square. They controlled access to its central stage, staffed the financial volunteer committee and the organization committee, and coordinated their revolutionary practices with their parties’ leadership rather than with fellow revolutionaries on the square. They used their numerical superiority to impose their parties’ agendas and to undermine the consensus of what youth leaders perceived as the essence of their revolution: “individualism, gender equality, exchange, tolerance, etc.”57 Thus, women in the squares were stifled because powerful and conservative elements within al-Islah began dictating actions that went against calls for equal citizenship, such as banning women from marching, and beating women who marched with men. Al-Islah-affiliated organizing committee made sure gatherings around the square’s main stages were segregated by a fence separating

55  Internationally the most recognized female Yemeni activist to emerge from this groundswell of feminist activity was Tawakul Karman, a locally controversial figure. She is a journalist, human rights activist, and senior member of the Islah party in her mid-thirties, who called for “A Day of Rage” on February 3, 2011. 56  The family is the head of the Ḥāshid tribal confederation, the most powerful of Yemen’s two tribal confederations. Neither confederation is a monolithic block. For more on al-ʾAḥmar family, see: http:// bigthink.com/waq-al-waq/the-al-ahmar-family-whos-who. 57  Bonnefoy (2012: 17).

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620   atiaf alwazir men from women.58 Their organizational skills enabled them to dominate the square, marginalizing the youth who had started the revolution. Thus, despite their essential contribution to the revolution, the independent revolutionaries were eclipsed in the negotiations leading up to the signing of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative, where Salih transferred his powers to VicePresident ‘Abd al-Rab Mansur Hadi, in return for immunity from prosecution. The representatives of the JMP presented themselves as the sole negotiators on behalf of the protesters, and regional and international actors treated the JMP as such. After Salih signed the GCC’s implementing mechanism on November 23, 2011 at a ceremony in Saudi Arabia, a national unity government was created, evenly divided between the JMP and Salih’s Congress party, while the independent revolutionaries remained largely marginalized. What the JMP viewed as pragmatism, other protesters saw as betrayal.

Conclusion While the JMP’s approach was the cause of huge disappointment, numerous members of the 2011 revolutionary movement have persisted to engage in contentious politics, locally and nationally. While the majority of revolutionaries have not had their demands met, their gradual impact on the long-term political, social, and cultural environment remains significant. It is important to remember that the social movements this chapter has analyzed have not erupted overnight. Just as the 2011 uprising was a crystallization of previous forms of contestation, future mobilizations will likely resume as a product of the networks of resistance laid down in 2011. The memory of the revolutionary moment that year is bound to outlive the current political violence in Yemen and the wider Middle East, if it is committed to the historical record.

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The Yemeni Uprising   623 International Crisis Group (ICG). “Defusing the Saada Time Bomb,” Middle East Report, May 27, 2009). http://www.observatori.org/paises/pais_64/documentos/86_yemen___defusing_the_saada_time_bomb.pdf (accessed June 23, 2014). International Crisis Group (ICG). “Yemen: Coping with Terrorism and Violence in a Fragile State,” Middle East Report, January 2003. http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middleeast-north-africa/iraq-iran-gulf/yemen/008-yemen-coping-with-terrorism-and-violencein-a-fragile-state.aspx (accessed June 10 2014). International Crisis Group (ICG). “Yemen’s Southern Question: Avoiding a Breakdown,” Middle East Report, September 2013. http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/Middle%20 East%20North%20Africa/Iran%20Gulf/Yemen/145-yemen-s-southern-question-avoidinga-breakdown (accessed May 20, 2014). International Trade Union Confederation. 2010 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights—Yemen (June 9, 2010). http://www.refworld.org/docid/4c4fec4ea.html (accessed July 12, 2014). International Trade Union Confederation. 2011 Annual Survey of violations of trade union rights—Yemen (June 8, 2011). http://www.refworld.org/docid/4ea661d624.html (accessed July 25, 2014). Lucas, Winter (2011). Conflict in Yemen: Simple People, Complicated Circumstances (Washington, DC: Middle East Policy Council). http://www.mepc.org/journal/middleeast-policy-archives/conflict-yemen?print (accessed July 18, 2014). Madelung, Wilfred (1987). Islam in Yemen, ed. W. Daum (Innsbruck and Frankfurt: Penguin Verlag), 174–177. Manea, Elham (2012). Sheikhdown: Why Tribes Aren’t the Answer in Yemen (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/index. cfm?fa=show&article=47588&solr_hilite=Yemen (accessed June 23, 2014). Mundy, Martha (1995). Domestic Government: Kinship, Community and Polity in North Yemen (London: I. B. Tauris). Ottaway, Marina and Amr Hamzawy (2009). Getting to Pluralism: Political Actors in the Arab World (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), 55–59. Philbrick-Yadav, Stacey (2011). “Antecedents of the Revolution: Intersectoral Networks and Post-Partisanship in Yemen,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11,3: 550–563. Philbrick-Yadav, Stacey et al. “Disappointment and New Directions: Women, Partisanship, and the Regime in Yemen,” Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 8,1: 55–95. Phillips, Sarah (2010). “Western Policy Makers Shouldn’t Accept this Saleh Spin,” Guardian, April 10, 2011. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/10/yemen-saleh-alqaida (accessed August 11, 2014). Rentz, G. (2014). Hashimids (Brill Online: Encyclopedia of Islam). Reuters. “Total Shuts Down Operations at Yemen Oil Field,” (January 30, 2014). http://www. rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/131360/Total_Shuts_Down_Operations_At_Yemen_Oil_ Field (accessed July 12, 2014). Root, Tik and Casey Combs (2014). “A Sheikh’s Life,” American Prospect, April 30, 2013. http:// prospect.org/article/sheikhs-life (accessed July 12, 2014). Schwedler, Jillian (2002). “Yemen’s Aborted Opening,” Journal of Democracy 13,4: 48–55. Seale, Patrick (1970). “The War in Yemen,” New Republic, January 1, 1970. http://www. newrepublic.com/article/world/the-war-yemen (accessed July 18, 2014).

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624   atiaf alwazir The Times Higher Education (2014). “Gender Trouble at ‘Immoral’ Centre”, The Times Higher Education, June 16, 2000. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/gender-troubleat-immoral-centre/152142.article (accessed July 10, 2014). Tripp, Charles (2013). “Performing the Public: Theaters of Power in the Middle East,” Constellations 20,2: 203–216. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cons.12030/abstract; jsessionid=1D3813BCB676AD984E9D85609E913467.f04t04 (accessed July 19, 2014). Vom Bruck, Gabriele (2005). Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Vom Bruck, Gabriele, A. Alwazir and G. B. Wiacek (2014). “Yemen: Revolution Aborted or Suspended?” in F. Gerges (ed.). The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wedeen, Lisa (2007). “The Politics of Deliberation: Qāt Chews as Public Spheres in Yemen,” Public Culture 19,1: 59–84. http://publicculture.org/articles/view/19/1/the-politics-ofdeliberation-qat-chews-as-publi (accessed December 28, 2013). Wedeen, Lisa (2008). Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Wedeen, Lisa (2003). “Seeing Like a Citizen, Acting Like a State: Exemplary Events in Unified Yemen,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45,4: 680–713. Weir, Shelagh (1997). “A Clash of Fundamentalism: Wahhabism in Yemen,” Middle East Research and Information Project 27: 22–26. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer204/clashfundamentalisms (accessed July 18, 2014). Whitaker, Brian (2001). “Opposition United,” Middle East International, January 26, 2001. http://www.al-bab.com/yemen/artic/mei73.htm (accessed June 23, 2014). Worth, Robert (2014). “Even Out of Office, a Wielder of Great Power in Yemen,” New York Times, January 31, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/world/middleeast/even-outof-office-a-wielder-of-great-power-in-yemen.html (accessed July 5, 2014). Yemen Post. “Mass Arrests As Police Clear Oil Workers’ Strike in Aden,” Yemen Post, April 10, 2010. http://yemenpost.net/Detail123456789.aspx?ID=3&SubID=356 (accessed July 12, 2014). Yemen Post. “Yemeni Laborers on Widespread Strike,” Yemen Post, May 26, 2010. http://www. yemenpost.net/Detail123456789.aspx?ID=3&SubID=2225 (accessed March 4, 2014).

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pa rt V I I

C R ISIS A N D C OL L A P SE

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chapter 31

The “N ew T u r k ey ” At Hom e a n d A broa d Asli Ü. Bâli

Bugün Türkiye’nin özüne döndüğü gündür. Türkiye’nin istikbalinin, her zamankinden daha açık, daha aydınlık olduğu gündür. Yeni Türkiye’nin doğum günüdür. Yeni Türkiye, siyasetin vesayetten kurtularak özerkleştiği bir Türkiye’dir.1

Turkey has recently undergone a bewildering and jarring set of transformations that have produced a new political configuration in the country. During the first decade (2002–2012) of rule by the governing Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (better known by its acronym, the AKP), Turkey’s trajectory was marked by what were widely hailed as advances in democratization, impressive economic growth rates, and a new assertiveness as a regional power. During this period, the AKP won three consecutive general elections—in 2002, 2007, and 2011—gaining overwhelming majorities in parliament and solidifying its position as the dominant political force in the country under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, widely regarded as the most influential and charismatic political leader in Turkey since the founding statesman, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938). By the end of the first decade of AKP rule Turkey seemed poised to consolidate its democracy, resolve the long-standing Kurdish conflict, and realize its ambition to be among the world’s leading economies by the time of the republic’s centenary in 2023. Instead, over the last five years the country has descended into a spiral of repression,

1  “Today is the day that Turkey returns to its roots. A day on which Turkey’s future has become more open and brighter. Today is the birthday of a New Turkey. The New Turkey is a Turkey in which politics has escaped from tutelage and become free.” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s speech on August 28, 2014, at an extraordinary meeting of the AKP party congress to appoint a new leader upon Erdoğan’s assumption of the presidency, reprinted in “Hep birlikte Yeni Türkiye” (“All together a New Turkey”), Takvim, August 28, 2014, (translation by author).

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628   asli ü. bâli corruption, economic stagnation, ethnic conflict, and political violence that represents a disorienting reversal of fortunes. The AKP has continued to win elections—first a presidential election in 2014 and then legislative elections in 2015—but its grip on power is increasingly maintained through coercion rather than successful political contestation. Following a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, this coercion has escalated to the point of all but extinguishing freedom of expression, opposition politics, and even civic associational life in the country. These domestic developments have also had an impact on Turkey’s regional role. Once touted as a “model” for democratizing countries in the Muslim-majority world, Turkey has gone from success story to cautionary tale.2 Moreover, the country’s creeping involvement in the Syrian civil war, its increasingly sectarian orientation to the region, and a pivot away from its traditional relationships with NATO (Turkey has been a member state since 1952), the European Union, and the United States, have all resulted in considerable blowback. As a result, the “new” Turkey is more fragile at home and weaker abroad than during the first decade of AKP rule. This short chapter provides an overview of the remarkable reversal of Turkey’s trajectory over the last fifteen years. To understand what has changed, it helps to begin by understanding the nature of Turkey’s traditional political order and foreign policy.3 The chapter then considers the ways in which the last fifteen years have shifted the republic’s basic orientation. The domestic transformation of Turkey in this period has multiple dimensions: constitutional reforms,4 shifting civil–military relations,5 economic growth followed by decline and corruption, ethnic conflict,6 and the renegotiation of the relationship between religion and state.7 The chapter provides a survey of these changes to explain how and why Turkish politics became more polarized as the AKP consolidated a majoritarian system and began a far-reaching crackdown on dissent. The changes in Turkey’s foreign policy, too, have unfolded on many fronts. The chapter describes the transition from the country’s traditional prioritization of relations with Washington and Brussels toward a more multifaceted regional role by examining its relations with the European Union, NATO, and the United States on the one hand, and Israel, the Arab world, and Russia on the other.

Understanding the “Old” Turkey When the AKP took office in 2002, Turkey was a republic described by a prominent Turkish constitutional law scholar as semi-democratic with a number of authoritarian and tutelary features.8 This description accurately captures important characteristics of 2  Tuğal (2016). 3  For an overview of the formation and history of the Turkish republic, see Zürcher (2004). 4  Özbudun and Gençkaya (2009). 5  Söyler (2015). 6  Çiçek (2017). 7  Turam (2007). 8  Özbudun (2011: 151).

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   629 the Turkish republic since its founding: first, the country has always had a highly statist constitutional order, privileging the prerogatives of the state and “Turkish national interests” ahead of the protection of individual rights, as is evident in the 1982 Constitution’s preamble.9 Second, the constitutional order long included a set of tutelary institutions designed to check the powers of the elected branches of government. These institutions were the National Security Council (with a strong military presence and broad policymaking powers), the Higher Education Board (including representatives of the military in decisions concerning academic appointments and the regulation of higher education), and the judiciary with an appointments procedure that, for the higher echelon courts, had imposed an ideological litmus test requiring fealty to the republic’s founding “Kemalist” commitments.10 In addition, the military has traditionally enjoyed significant institutional autonomy, with very broad jurisdiction for military courts. Third, while the country had a tradition of a strong and centralized executive branch, for most of the last ninety years it was generally a semi-democratic parliamentary system.11 The Turkish republic has been formally secular since 1928.12 But Turkey’s repressive definition of secularism, informed by the founding republican ideology of Kemalism, long set it apart from most other secular constitutional systems. Secularism in Turkey did not result in separation of state and religion (or even state neutrality on questions of religion) but rather state control and regulation of religion.13 This conception of secularism enabled the state to monopolize the domain of religious education, producing a state-sanctioned orthodoxy on Islam, excluding the beliefs and practices of heterodox Muslim communities, such as Turkey’s large Alevi community.14 Ironically, this state monopoly, established in the name of secularism, has enabled a religiously conservative

9  Turkey’s current constitution was introduced in 1982 as part of the transition away from military rule, following a coup in 1980. The text of the constitution has been revised by eighteen different packages of constitutional amendments over thirty-five years but the preamble and several unamendable provisions remain as originally drafted. The preamble provides, inter alia, that “no protection shall be afforded to an activity contrary to Turkish national interests, Turkish existence, and the principle of its indivisibility with its State and territory” and “that all Turkish citizens are united in national honor and pride . . . in their rights and duties regarding national existence.” The constitution was profoundly altered by a constitutional referendum in April 2017 though the preamble remains unchanged. 10  The founding ideology of the republic, identified with its first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was a set of six modernizing commitments: republicanism, populism, nationalism, secularism, statism, and reformism. These commitments guided the sweeping political, social, cultural, and religious reforms that were designed to establish a new secular, unitary Turkish republic out of the ashes of the collapsed multireligious, multiethnic Ottoman Empire. For an overview, see Parla and Davison (2004); see also Ciddi (2009). 11  Until the constitutional referendum of April 2017, Turkey had a parliamentary system of government though the military and the high judiciary served as counter-majoritarian tutelary institutions that constrained the elected branches of government. 12  For a discussion of the origins of the Turkish conception of secularism, see Azak (2010). 13  For a range of views on Turkish secularism, see A. Kuru and Stepan (eds) (2012). 14  For a discussion of the Alevi community’s struggle as a heterodox Muslim community in Turkey, see Tambar (2014).

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630   asli ü. bâli government under the AKP to wield the power to define and promulgate orthodoxy extending the reach of religion through new state-enforced policies. The Turkish Constitution also specifies nationalism as one of the characteristics of the republic.15 Provisions related to nationalism serve to produce an ethnic (rather than civic) conception of citizenship in Turkey, marginalizing the country’s large Kurdish minority. Thus, the constitutional conceptions of secularism and nationalism have been tied to an enduring politics of exclusion for religious and ethnic minorities in the republic. Over the course of the last three decades, efforts to redefine the constitutional prin­ ciple of secularism have enjoyed some success, but demands for a civic rather than ethnic conception of citizenship have made less headway.16 Turkey has a market economy in which major state assets were largely privatized as part of a broad program of economic liberalization begun in the mid-1980s and accelerated over the last fifteen years.17 This liberalization witnessed the emergence of a market-oriented religiously conservative social sector in Turkey,18 which led to the expansion of the middle class and the rise of new small- and medium-sized enterprises as engines for economic growth in the central parts of the country.19 Economic lib­er­al­ iza­tion has been correlated with greater economic growth and reduced inequality. The country’s GDP tripled under the first decade of AKP rule and the party also presided over substantial improvements in quality of life for many Turks through investments in infrastructure, and through access to health and education. On the other hand, the AKP’s economic stewardship has been marked with repeated corruption scandals that reveal biased bidding processes for state contracts, partisan privatization of state assets, and the co-opting of religiously conservative capital, particularly in the construction and mining sectors, to serve the interests of the party.20 The extent and nature of corruption, together with the widespread fear that growth has been fueled by a construction bubble, cast a long shadow over the country’s economic performance over the last five years. This brief survey provides a portrait of the Turkish republic characterized by military tutelage, repressive secularism, limited individual rights, discrimination against minorities, and economic liberalization accompanied by rampant corruption. As a result, it is hardly surprising that the AKP’s initial promises to undertake constitutional reform, redress civil–military relations, improve economic performance, and much else were 15  The preambular language begins by “affirming the eternal existence of the Turkish Motherland and Nation and the indivisible unity of the Sublime Turkish State, this Constitution, in line with the concept of nationalism.” 16  For a discussion of the civic versus ethnic conception of citizenship in the Turkish context, see Ince (2012). 17  Öniş and Şenses (2009). 18  For more on how religiously observant communities were absorbed into market-based economic growth, see Tuğal (2009). 19  Demir, Acar, and Toprak (2004). 20  Berivan Orucoglu (2015). “Why Turkey’s Mother of All Corruption Scandals Refuses to Go Away,” Foreign Policy, January 6, 2015, .

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   631 met with electoral enthusiasm.21 Representing a religiously conservative and Anatolian constituency that had been largely marginalized through much of the republic’s history, the party promised to liberalize access to the levers of state power that had previously privileged the urban elites of the country’s Western cities. The party also promised to attenuate the repressive conception of secularism, campaigned on a platform of reconciliation with the Kurdish community, and offered Anatolian businessmen the prospect of economic liberalization. Following a decade and a half of AKP rule, some of these promises have been partially realized but at a very high price. The transformation of the country’s political system from a semi-competitive democracy to one of durable, populist majoritarianism has produced a level of social and political polarization that has destabilized the country and left fully one half of the population—the combined constituencies that do not vote for the AKP—deeply alienated and increasingly imperiled.

The “New” Turkey At Home Following his election as president in 2014, Erdoğan famously proclaimed that he would preside over the creation of a “new” Turkey. Many outside the party had doubted the sincerity of the party leadership’s commitments to their earlier reform agenda beyond measures that happened to address long-standing grievances of their religiously observant constituents and tactics to increase their vote share. Even so, the reforms that the AKP had initially identified as priorities had the potential to address persistent social cleavages that had marked the republic from its founding—along religious and ethnic lines—and modernize ossified state institutions identified with the “old” Turkey. These reforms included removing ideological litmus tests for joining the Turkish state bureaucracy, opening the civil service to religiously observant individuals who had long been barred access to state positions. Another area of selective liberalization was the gradual removal of obstacles to education and employment for women who wear headscarves. More generally, their efforts to attenuate strict adherence to the founding ideological commitments of the state also eased some restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language.22 The AKP’s Kurdish policies provided the party with the further benefit of producing substantive increases in their vote share in the country’s southeastern provinces. While these changes had a liberalizing effect, subsequent actions by the AKP confirmed that such apparent liberalism was primarily tactical. Once its principal 21  For an account of the alleged liberalism of the AKP in its first term, see Hale and Özbudun (2010). 22  Kurban (2014). But in other ways the AKP continued the state’s tradition of treating all Kurdish political organizing as a threat to be criminalized. For example, the AKP oversaw a series of prosecutions of hundreds (possibly thousands) of Kurdish citizens—including journalists, politicians, and academics—for their involvement with the Koma Civakên Kurdistan (the Group of Communities in Kurdistan, or KCK) under antiterrorism laws. See, e.g. Ziad Abu-Rish, “Turkish Politics, Kurdish Rights and the KCK Operations: An Interview with Asli Ü. Bâli,” Jadaliyya, November 3, 2011, available at .

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632   asli ü. bâli constituents’ core demands were met, and the party had consolidated control over the country’s center-right constituencies, the shallow commitment to liberalization gave way to an increasingly repressive mode of governance. The “new” Turkey Erdoğan announced in 2014 proved to be in keeping with this repressive turn. There have been many junctures at which AKP policies incrementally shifted from an initial, apparently liberalizing trajectory toward consolidating the party’s power and creating a new system of populist majoritarianism. Viewed in retrospect the accumulation of these incremental changes has resulted in what might best be described as dedemocratization. An early change that facilitated the shift from liberalization to consolidation of power was the transformation of the presidency in 2007, by constitutional referendum, from a position appointed by parliament to a directly elected office, enabling the elected president to claim a popular mandate to govern. Erdoğan became the first such directly elected president in 2014 and has used his position to further transform the office. Though the constitution required presidential candidates to renounce party affiliation, Erdoğan remained the de facto leader of the AKP. A subsequent raft of constitutional changes in 2017 gave de jure legitimacy to Erdoğan’s partisan presidency and transformed the country’s parliamentary system of government into a presidential system.23 The AKP’s use of referenda to alter the Turkish constitution has more generally served to deconsolidate Turkish democracy. Many packages of constitutional amendments had passed before the AKP took office, but those amendments had been designed to blunt illiberal characteristics of a constitution originally drafted under military rule. Rather than continuing this trend of adopting liberalizing amendments, the AKP used referenda to remove institutional checks and balances, altering the rules governing the composition and mechanisms for promotion within the state’s civil service and in the judiciary, and transforming the character of Turkey’s constitutional order. A package of constitutional amendments in 2010 served multiple purposes, on the one hand ad­van­ cing some liberalizing reforms and on the other hand laying the groundwork for the AKP to subsequently pack the judiciary and politicize the process of military appointments and promotions.24 By 2017, a package of constitutional amendments to establish what Erdoğan described as an executive presidency was opposed by a wide swathe of the Turkish electorate for establishing a form of electoral authoritarianism. The referendum took place on an uneven playing field, with the government openly repressing efforts to campaign against the amendments, imprisoning opposition members of parliament, and even altering the rules concerning ballot-counting as the tally had begun.25 23 Ilayda Gunes (2017). “What’s at Stake in the Turkish Constitutional Amendment Proposal,” International Journal of Constitutional Law Blog, Apr. 14, 2017, at . 24  Haldun Gülalp (2010). “The battle for Turkey’s constitution,” Guardian, Sept. 4, 2010, at . 25  Alexandra Topping (2017). “Turkey referendum: Erdoğan wins vote amid dispute over ballots,” Guardian, Apr. 16, 2017, at .

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   633 According to the official results the amendments passed by a narrow majority of 51.18 percent, but international observers and domestic critics argue that the result was inflated by the counting of unofficial ballots, and that the measure may well have failed to garner majority support.26

Governing through Polarization The structural changes implemented under AKP rule over the last fifteen years have deeply polarized the country while exacerbating long-standing social cleavages over religious and ethnic identity. Two watershed moments occurred in 2013 and 2015 re­spect­ive­ly. The first, the Gezi Park protests, garnered international attention and tarnished the AKP’s reputation as a party presiding over economic growth and dem­oc­ra­ tiza­tion in Turkey.27 The protests erupted initially over the razing of one of the few green spaces left in central Istanbul to make way for a new mall project. This was one of many projects authorized by the AKP that were transforming Istanbul’s urban landscape while short-circuiting the usual urban policy planning and approval processes. All across the city, the results of the AKP’s construction boom were serious environmental concerns, massive reductions in low-income housing, and displacement of long-standing communities.28 Beyond these concerns, all of which came to a head at Gezi, the police brutality with which initial protests were met triggered a broader, nationwide protest against increasingly repressive rule by the AKP.29 Erdoğan responded to the protests first by denying any legitimacy to the concerns raised and then by rallying his own base, characterizing the protesters as secular elites engaging in a culture war against the socially conservative and religiously observant classes represented by the AKP.30 The result, by the end of the summer of 2013, was the violent suppression of the protests and the deployment of old cleavages over religious identity in the service of a new politics of polarization to consolidate the support of the AKP’s base. The manipulation of religion as a means of fostering polarization for elect­ or­al gain accelerated that year with the introduction of policies designed to cater to a 26  Shadia Nasralla and Andrea Shalal (2017). “Turkish referendum: Up to 2.5 million votes could have been manipulated, says foreign observer,” Independent, Apr. 19, 2017, at . 27  Efecan Gürcan and Efe Peker (2015). Challenging Neoliberalism at Turkey’s Gezi Park (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). 28  Erdem Yörük and Murat Yüksel (2014). “Class and Politics in Turkey’s Gezi Protests,” New Left Review 89 (Sept–Oct 2014). 29  Özen (2015). 30  Lisel Hintz (2016). “Adding Insult to Injury: Vilification as Counter-Mobilization in Turkey’s Gezi Protests,” Project on Middle East Political Science (May 2016), ; see also Zeynep Korkman and Salih Can Aciksoz (2013). “Erdogan’s Masculinity and the Language of the Gezi Resistance,” Jadaliyya, June 22, 2013, at .

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634   asli ü. bâli religiously observant base and alienate non-AKP constituencies. These included the expansion of religious courses in the national curriculum, new policies limiting alcohol sales, and new restrictions on reproductive rights among others.31 By 2017, when the AKP sought to reintroduce religious marriage as an option, the deployment of religion as a wedge issue to sustain societal divisions and solidify the party’s own base had become a routinized part of Erdoğan’s governing strategy.32 President Erdoğan has been equally willing to deploy long-standing cleavages around ethnic identity to address electoral challenges by bringing ultra-nationalist voters into his electoral bloc. For instance, in 2015, when the AKP feared a loss of vote share it aborted the Kurdish “peace process” that it had initiated in fits and starts over the previous decade.33 Erdoğan had realized that instead of delivering votes to the AKP among Kurdish constituencies, the peace dividend was inuring to the benefit of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (known by its Turkish acronym, HDP). In anticipation of legislative elections in June, Erdoğan abruptly discontinued talks then underway with the jailed Kurdish leader, Abdullah Öcalan, cutting off all contact in the spring. When the June results gave the HDP 13 percent of the national vote-share, and eighty seats in parliament, Erdoğan’s fears concerning a loss of vote-share were realized with the AKP losing its outright majority for the first time since 2002. To flip the results back in its favor and deprive the HDP of votes, the AKP embraced a hard-line ethno-nationalist position, courting far right voters while engaging in voter suppression in Kurdish precincts. Exacerbating nationalists’ fears that the Syrian civil war would produce an autonomous Kurdistan bordering Turkey and presenting the country’s Kurdish population as an internal enemy colluding with Syrian Kurds, Erdoğan declared an end to the ceasefire that had been in effect between the Turkish military and the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (better known by the acronym PKK) in July 2015. The pretext for this move was the killing of two Turkish police of­fi­ cers, itself a reprisal for the earlier killing of thirty-two Kurdish youth activists by a suicide bombing in Suruç (on the Turkish side of the border with Syria) for which the Kurdish community held the government responsible.34 Over the next three months predominantly Kurdish cities and towns in Turkey such as Diyarbakır and Cizre experienced sustained fighting and air strikes, resulting in the displacement of over half a mil31  Cinar Kiper (2013). “Muslim Light: What’s Behind Turkey’s Islamization and the Protests Against It,” The Atlantic, June 5, 2013, at ; Daniel Dombey (2014). “Erdogan looks to the classroom to create a religious generation,” Financial Times, Dec. 11, 2014, at . 32  “Women’s rights groups, opposition MPs protest bill allowing mufti marriages,” Hürriyet Daily News, Oct. 3, 2017, . 33  Jonathan Steele (2017). “Turkey and the Kurds: A Chance for Peace?,” The New York Review of Books (April 20, 2017), . 34  “PKK claim double police officer killings in Turkey,” Deutsche Welle, July 22, 2015, .

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   635 lion civilians.35 In the meantime, the AKP used its plurality in parliament to block the formation of a new coalition government based on the June 2015 election results and called instead for snap elections. Those elections, in November 2015, witnessed reduced vote-share for the HDP, which lost twenty-one seats, and restored the AKP’s majority in parliament. The government’s cynical military gamble delivered an electoral dividend. The AKP reversed over a decade of policies seeking reconciliation with the Kurdish community in favor of remilitarizing the Kurdish question, initiating a war of choice, and traumatizing a new generation of Kurdish citizens left with few democratic options to pursue their rights.

From Crisis to Opportunity: The Attempted Coup and its Aftermath Against this background of escalating violence and repression, the failed coup attempt of July 2016 produced a window of opportunity for Erdoğan to fundamentally transform the country through emergency rule. The background conditions that gave rise to the coup attempt were related to a falling-out between the AKP and a religious community with which they were aligned for the party’s first decade in office. That community, led by the exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen, had built a powerful educational and business network in Turkey (and beyond) that made it an important civil society partner for the AKP, able to furnish the party with educated cadres to fill appointments in the state bureaucracy and judiciary as the two groups sought to alter the composition and ideological orientation of those institutions. The Gülen community had benefited from the economic liberalization and relative tolerance of religiously observant social actors following the 1980 military coup to build businesses and establish schools with the goal of training generations of socially conservative students to assume positions of power in the state bureaucracy as well as the private sector.36 That made the community a natural ally for the AKP’s political project in its first years in office, but strain over competing loyalties became apparent in policy disputes between the party and the exiled cleric as early as 2010.37

35  Chase Winter (2016). “Amnesty: Mass displacement in Turkey’s southeast ‘suggestive of premeditated plan,’ ” Deutsche Welle, Dec. 6, 2016, . 36  For more on the Gülen movement, see Turam (2007). 37  Two examples of public disputes over policy were: the fallout of the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, in which Fethullah Gülen questioned the AKP’s decision to allow a humanitarian ship convoy to leave port for Gaza; and a 2012 incident in which allegedly Gülen-affiliated prosecutors questioned the head of intelligence, Hakan Fidan, over his role in the government’s negotiations with the PKK. See, e.g. Joe Lauria, “Reclusive Turkish Imam Criticizes Gaza Flotilla,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2010; and Daniel Dombey, “Turkish spy chief summoned over PKK talks,” Financial Times, Feb. 9, 2012, .

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636   asli ü. bâli By 2013, the conflict burst into the open when allegedly Gülen-affiliated prosecutors and judges initiated a massive corruption probe against AKP leaders and supporters, including some cabinet members.38 The government’s response to this threat was swift and far-reaching: first he initiated a purge of all police, prosecutors, and judges involved in the corruption investigation, and then a much broader purge of all Gülen-affiliated personnel in the executive branch and the judiciary, even extending his actions into the private sector.39 As thousands of people were dismissed from their positions or detained, corporations with ties to the community were targeted with prosecution, asset seizure, expropriation, and the involuntary imposition of state-appointed trustees. Between 2014 and 2016, the targeting of the Gülen community resulted in massive turnover in the state’s civil service and judiciary and substantial disruption to civil society organizations and the private sector.40 But the measures also had support beyond the AKP’s base as years of favoritism in appointments and promotions for members of the community, as well as earlier politicized trials led by allegedly Gülen-affiliated prosecutors, had generated tremendous resentment of the community among the traditional secular elites of the country.41 The coup attempt in 2016, which has been widely attributed to Gülen-affiliated of­fi­ cers in the Turkish military, resulted in the deaths of more than 240 people, another 2,000 injured, and a night of disorienting scenes that included Turkish jets dropping bombs on the country’s own parliament building. The violence was suppressed by the morning of July 16, but the catastrophic impact of the events had only begun to be felt. Most of the Turkish population was deeply traumatized by the coup attempt and sincerely opposed military interventions of any kind against civilian governance in the country. As a result, an enormous proportion of the population rallied to the defense of the AKP-run government and participated in “democracy vigils” for weeks after the coup, gathering in central squares across the country.42 In an early-morning press conference on July 16, as the military and security forces were regaining control from the mutineers, Erdoğan described the attempted coup as a “gift from God.”43 On one inter38  Berna Turam (2015). “Gülenology,” The American Interest (February 2, 2015), . 39  Berivan Orucoglu (2015). “Why Turkey’s Mother of All Corruption Scandals Refuses to Go Away,” Foreign Policy, Jan. 6, 2015, . 40  See, e.g. “Turkish Police Carry Out Wiretapping Raids Targeting Erdogan Enemies,” Newsweek, Jan. 20, 2015, . 41  See, e.g. Gareth Jenkins (2014). “The Balyoz Retrial and the Changing Politics of Turkish Justice,” Turkey Analyst, June 25, 2014, . 42  See, e.g. “Turkey unity rally draws thousands as post-coup torture claims emerge,” Guardian, July 24, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/25/turkey-unity-rally-draws-thousands-as-postcoup-torture-claims-emerge. 43  Patrick Kingsley (2016). “Turkey detains 6,000 over coup attempt as Erdoğan vows to ‘clean state of virus,’ ” Guardian, July 17, 2016, .

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   637 pretation this expression connotes gratitude that the country had been spared a successful military coup and the outright toppling of Turkish democracy. However, in light of the measures taken by the AKP in the days and weeks that followed the attempted coup, a more sinister interpretation would be that botched violence had delivered to Erdoğan an opportunity for a ferocious counter-coup of unparalleled breadth and depth. What Erdoğan embarked on in the aftermath of the coup was nothing less than a cultural revo­ lu­tion and social engineering project on a par with the original state-building project of the Kemalist vanguard at the founding of the republic. Moreover, Erdoğan’s pursuit of a “new” Turkey branded in his image is explicitly designed to replace the “old Turkey” and its Kemalist republican commitments. The means that Erdoğan has used to create this new Turkey are a vast expansion of the purges that were already underway from 2014–16, this time targeting not only the Gülen community, but also other perceived adversaries of the AKP, from leftists to feminists, to environmentalists, to journalists, to professors, to human rights activists. By emptying the state’s civil service and the judiciary, with over 150,000 people purged,44 the AKP is redefining the core competencies and basic nature of the Turkish state, all the while appointing cadres from among their own supporters, dependent on the party for pos­ ition and advancement and without competing loyalties. Measures to transform and suppress civil society movements and organizations have been equally far-reaching. Over 5,000 academics have been purged from universities and excluded from employment in the country, with passport cancellations preventing them from leaving to reconstruct intellectual community and knowledge production abroad.45 Some 1,500 civil society organizations have been closed, while human rights activists have been im­prisoned and tried on allegations of material support to terrorism for advocacy of Kurdish rights or attempts to protect privacy.46 Under a state of emergency declared in the immediate wake of the coup and repeatedly renewed since, the AKP has altered the basic legal environment for civil society organizing and diminished nearly to the vanishing point the remaining civic space in the country.47 Turkey has become the country to jail the highest number of journalists of any country in the world, outstripping Russia, China, Iran, and others. As part of the post-coup crackdown over 160 news organizations have been closed including newspapers, radio

44  On the numbers purged, see, for example, “Turkey dismisses thousands a year after coup attempt,” BBC, July 14, 2017, . 45 Humeyra Pamuk (2017). “Purge of academics leaves future of Turkish universities in doubt,” Reuters, Mar. 1, 2017, . 46  Tulay Cetingulec (2016). “State of emergency shuts down Turkey’s NGOs,” Al-Monitor, Nov. 21, 2016, . 47  “Turkey to extend state of emergency declared after coup,” Washington Post, Oct. 16, 2017, .

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638   asli ü. bâli stations, television channels, magazines, and even children’s programs and cartoons.48 Moreover, the crackdown is not limited to traditional media but extends to social media. In 2014, Turkey passed new laws establishing one of the most extensive censorship and surveillance systems for the internet of any country in the world.49 Since the attempted coup, hundreds of individuals face long-term detention without trial for the apps they downloaded on their phones or for comments posted on Facebook or Twitter. In the “new” Turkey, most people assume that their phone conversations, internet searches, and social media usage are monitored and have adapted to avoid any form of expression that might be disfavored by the AKP. The imprisonment of opposition MPs from the HDP and even the CHP has demonstrated that no one is immune from arbitrary detention on the basis of political opinion and association.50 The rooting out of internal en­emies has also extended to the business and finance sectors in Turkey, as politicized regulators have seized banking communications and corporate records to target al­leged­ly anti-AKP capital.51 Within a year, over 1,000 businesses were expropriated with $15 billion of assets changing hands from non-AKP supporters to business groups affiliated with the AKP that are allowed to purchase seized assets at massive discounts.52 The effect of this dizzying escalation of coercion has profoundly scarred Turkey’s domestic politics, hollowed out the state bureaucracy, and done lasting damage to civic associations, the media, and Turkish higher education. Moreover, the fear that has gripped much of civil society as a result of pervasive government surveillance leaves people unwilling to have critical conversations in public places or by phone and without an outlet to express their despair and opposition. The use of social media for organizing and disseminating alternative information has also decreased. With traditional news sources shut down, censored, or now controlled by pro-AKP business interests, there are few remaining sources of information free from party control. Yet even as Erdoğan proclaims a “new” Turkey, many aspects of the top-down social engineering project the AKP has undertaken through emergency decrees borrows from 48  See, e.g. Roy Gutman (2017). “Turkey’s bleak media scene: Arrests, closures, and closed trials,” Los Angeles Times, March 3, 2017. 49  See, e.g. “Turkey: Internet Freedom, Rights in Sharp Decline,” Human Rights Watch, Sept. 2, 2014, . 50  Ironically, some MPs from the CHP supported a move by the AKP to lift MPs’ immunity from prosecution at a time when the AKP was accusing the HDP of colluding with the PKK. Eventually, the decision paved the way for CHP parliamentarians to join their HDP colleagues in detention. Gulsen Solaker and Humeyra Pamuk (2016). “Turkish parliament strips MPs of immunity in blow to Kurdish opposition,” Reuters, May 20, 2016, ; and Ece Toksabay and Gulsen Solaker (2017). “Turkish opposition lawmaker gets 25-year sentence in espionage case,” Reuters, June 14, 2017, . 51  See, e.g. Yeliz Candemir (2016). “Turkey’s crackdown sweeps through business and finance, imperiling the economy,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 18, 2016. 52  “Turkish businesses snagged in government’s post-coup crackdown,” NPR, Aug. 3, 2017, http:// www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/08/03/541360939/turkish-businesses-snagged-in-governmentspost-coup-crackdown.

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   639 the familiar playbook of the “old” Turkey: statism, ethnonationalism, and the instrumentalization of religion to serve the purposes of the governing elite. Erdoğan has discovered that the very counter-majoritarian institutions of the state that once limited his ability to consolidate rule now serve as handy instruments for his new project. As a result, the “new” Turkey that has emerged is, in many ways, the most recent iteration of Turkey’s long-standing authoritarian legacy. Some elements are certainly innovative, even unprecedented: never before has the country as a whole been ruled under a stateof-emergency by a civilian government. The scale of the repression of dissent and op­pos­ ition, the extensive dismantling of autonomous civil society institutions and the media, and the breadth of civil service purges under the pretext of emergency are all far greater than anything seen previously. More fundamentally, there has been a role reversal: the erstwhile guardians of the republic—the military, the high judiciary, the secular elites—are now the targets of state-led top-down repression. But once the makeup of the institutions and elites has shifted through purges and expropriations, the reliance on these same levers remains the basic paradigm of state authoritarianism at the heart of the executive presidency system that Erdoğan established. The AKP and its charismatic authoritarian leader represent a transformative force that is simultaneously heir to a long-standing statist tradition. The transformation they have presided over is a changing of the guard—conservative, religious Turks now control the levers of state power having displaced the secu­lar, ethnonationalist Kemalists that long controlled the state. This has been accomplished by means of outright repression as well as constitutional and judicial trans­form­ ation, the redefinition of civilian–military relations through purges and institutional reorganization, and an embrace of a new hard-right ethnonationalism (and acute antiKurdish repression) that reinforces the populist playbook from which Erdoğan now governs.

The “New” Turkey Abroad: From Atlanticists to Eurasianists By contrast to the domestic trajectory of the “new Turkey,” where the AKP has exploited and exacerbated existing fault lines, on the foreign policy front the party has presided over a truly novel set of crises. The international challenges now confronting Turkey derive largely from the AKP’s decision to position Turkey as a major player in the Arab and Muslim world and to pivot away from the country’s traditional relationships with NATO, the European Union, and the United States. This shift has deepened since the failed coup attempt, with purges that have altered the composition of the senior military leadership and foreign policy establishment, replacing Atlanticists who favored the country’s long-standing Western alliances with Eurasianists who prefer a pivot to the East, replacing Turkey’s traditional foreign policy priorities with an emphasis on a

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640   asli ü. bâli ­ ro-Russian, pan-Turkic, and Islamist reorientation. In many ways these changes run p parallel to the repudiation of the Kemalist Westernization project domestically in favor of an embrace of Turkey’s Ottoman heritage. On the foreign policy front, this is sometimes characterized as a neo-Ottoman turn, though that term overstates the ambition and coherence of the AKP’s foreign policy. To understand the sources of Turkey’s shifting foreign policy, this chapter provides a brief overview of a few episodes of Turkish foreign policy in the AKP’s first decade, followed by a consideration of the impact of the Arab uprisings on Turkey’s pivot over the last five years. The AKP’s first year in office coincided with the 2003 Iraq invasion, which represented a serious challenge for Turkey. Having joined the coalition against Iraq in 1991, the country’s economy had been adversely impacted by twelve years of sanctions that starved the southeastern provinces of much-needed commerce and employment at the Turkish–Iraqi border. The prospect of a new war in Iraq was extraordinarily unpopular in Turkey, to the point that despite prodding by the AKP’s leadership, the Turkish parliament would not authorize the stationing of American troops participating in the Iraq war on Turkish territory. While this unwillingness soured early relations between the AKP government and the George W. Bush administration, it set the tone for a potentially more independent Turkish foreign policy as the “global war on terror” began to unfold. At the same time, the reluctance to participate in the Iraq invasion improved Turkey’s standing in much of the Arab world as well as among European publics that were opposed to the Iraq invasion and its aftermath.

Zero Problems From 2002 until 2011, Turkish foreign policy under the AKP was largely directed by Ahmet Davutoğlu, an international relations scholar who had been tapped by Erdoğan as an advisor.53 A religiously observant person and an accomplished academic, Davutoğlu was the author of a book entitled Strategic Depth arguing that Turkey should reorient its foreign policy to counterbalance reliance on the West by valorizing its geostrategic location and reviving ties to former Ottoman lands. Over time, his approach to foreign policy came to be identified with a posture of “zero problems with neighbors” and a series of initiatives to build stronger trade relations on all of Turkey’s borders.54 This orientation led to dozens of new agreements with Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, and even Armenia in addition to the creation of a visa-free trade zone between Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. In the meantime, with apparently liberalizing reforms underway domestically between 2002 and 2010, Turkey also successfully initiated accession talks

53  Stein (2004). 54  Gönül Tol (2013). “Turkey’s Search for a ‘Zero Problems’ Policy,” Middle East Institute, Nov. 25, 2013, .

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   641 for membership in the European Union, the most visible sign of international enthusiasm for the country’s growing economy and apparent political democratization.55 Zero problems proved to be a difficult policy to sustain however. The first setbacks came in the European accession process when the collapse of negotiations to reunify Cyprus—with a Greek-Cypriot vote rejecting a United Nations-brokered plan—was quickly followed by the admission of Cyprus to the EU.56 As a veto-wielding member of a union that operated by consensus, Cyprus became a formidable obstacle to Turkish accession. Moreover, 2005 witnessed referenda across the EU on a proposed constitution that was transformed into a litmus test over Turkish accession, with nativist pol­it­ icians depicting greater European integration as a path to the uncontrolled flow of Turks into the continent. The “no” votes by the French and Danish voters carried a potent rejectionist message for Turkey.57 By 2007, with an economic crisis in Europe triggering political crises between the larger and smaller economies of the continent, the prospect of accession seemed both dimmer and less appealing. In the meantime, the pace of liberalizing reforms in Turkey slowed, reducing the country’s progress toward meeting European standards. By 2011, Turkey’s leaders were publicly criticizing the EU for not moving forward with talks, and in 2013 the EU accession process was dropped from the list of Turkish foreign policy priorities.58 Within the next two years, as the Syrian refugee crisis began to dominate European headlines, both Brussels and Ankara focused diplomatic energies on coming to an agreement on that subject rather than accession.59 Zero problems failed another set of tests in Turkey’s relationship with Israel, which blossomed in the first years of AKP rule with a significant increase in trade and business relations between the two countries, and Turkey playing a role as a mediator between Israel and Syria. But the 2009 Gaza war brought the relationship to a low point with then-prime minister Erdoğan publicly excoriating the Israeli government, which, in turn, engaged in a series of diplomatic slights.60 The relationship hit a nadir in 2010 when Turkey became embroiled in a conflict with Israel over an attack by Israeli commandos on a Turkish humanitarian ship resulting in the deaths of nine Turkish citizens. The Turks demanded an official apology and reparations and severed relations with 55  Joerg Baudner (2014). “The Evolution of Turkey’s Foreign Policy under the AK Party Government,” Insight Turkey 3(4) (Summer 2014), . 56 George Wright (2004). “Greek Cypriot leaders reject Annan plan,” Guardian, Apr. 22, 2004, . 57 Lionel Beehner (2005). “European Union: The French and Dutch Referendums,” Council On Foreign Relations, June 1, 2005, ; and Nicholas Watt (2005). “Europeans reject Turkey, poll shows,” Guardian, July 18, 2005, . 58 Interview with Marco Pierini, EU ambassador and head of delegation to Turkey 2006–2011. “Pierini: Turkish rule of law rolled back, away from EU standards,” Acturca, Jan. 26, 2015, . 59  Valeria Talbot, “Resetting Turkey-EU Relations?” . 60  Ilene Prusher (2010). “Turkey demands Israel apology, threatens to pull ambassador,” Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 13, 2010, .

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642   asli ü. bâli Israel for a period over the incident.61 Erdoğan’s posture with respect to Israel won praise among Arab publics, and the AKP doubled down on a strategy of expanding its reach into the Arab world. In the same year, Davutoğlu, by then foreign minister, sought to mediate the ongoing international crisis over the Iranian nuclear program by joining forces with Brazil to negotiate an agreement to remove enriched fuel from the country. The Tehran Agreement, signed in May 2010, was unexpectedly repudiated by the Obama administration—which had earlier signaled support for the initiative—producing another set of tensions in the AKP’s efforts to balance its various bilateral relationships in a state of zero problems equipoise.62

War in Syria and the path to zero friends The greatest test for Turkish foreign policy, however, would come with the Arab uprisings and the destabilizing effects of the Syrian civil war. Initially, the AKP appeared to treat the uprisings as more of an opportunity than a challenge. Perhaps imagining that the uprisings would bring democratic forces and Islamist political parties to power in key countries such as Egypt and Syria, the Turkish government backed calls for the ouster of authoritarian leaders.63 When the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt, Erdoğan seemed keen to serve as an advisor to, and even a model for, the first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi. Yet even while Morsi was in office, the Turkish “model” proved less appealing than expected—with a speech Erdoğan gave in Cairo falling particularly flat64—and after the military coup in Egypt in 2013, relations between the two countries deteriorated dramatically.65 From Libya to Egypt, from Syria to Yemen, Turkey’s ambitions to project regional influence and become a hegemonic actor in the region were dashed as Turkish policies backfired and rival Sunni powers in the Gulf began to invest in counterrevolution. Nowhere was the inability to capitalize on the uprisings to expand influence or gain new allies more acute than in Syria where Turkey’s strong anti-Assad stance produced dramatic blowback on numerous fronts. Turkey initially welcomed opposition groups to Assad, allowing them to establish headquarters in the country and run logistics operations from the Turkish side of the border. Then, as the opposition became more and more militarized, Turkey’s southeast

61  Erin Cunningham and Ruth Eglash (2016). “Israel and Turkey announce deal to repair relations after six-year split,” Washington Post, June 27, 2016, . 62  “Brazil, Turkey urge delay in UN sanctions vote on Iran,” BBC, May 19, 2010, . 63  Joe Parkinson (2011). “Turkey: Mubarak Should Leave Now,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2011. 64  “Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood criticizes Erdogan’s call for a secular state,” Al Arabiya, Sept. 14, 2011, . 65  Mustafa Akyol (2013). “Turkey Condemns Egypt’s Coup,” Al Monitor, Aug. 21, 2013, .

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   643 became a meeting place for Gulf financiers, arms traders, and militias of all stripes.66 By 2013, with the war escalating and Syrian civilians being displaced by the hundreds of thousands, refugees began flooding into Turkey, some in the hopes that their displacement might be temporary but many others intending to travel on to Europe. Even as Turkey accepted larger and larger numbers of refugees—totaling over three million by 2016—it also added fuel to the fire by backing various Islamist militias and acting increasingly as a sectarian partisan in the regional proxy war unfolding in Syria.67 Eventually, with the rise of the Islamic State (known by the acronym IS) the violence in Syria began to have spillover effects in Turkey with several major terrorist attacks, first in the southeastern cities where the targets were largely Syrian and Kurdish, and later in the country’s western cities, targeting tourists and even Istanbul’s international airport.68 At the same time, the Assad regime’s loss of territorial control over large swathes of the country created an opportunity for the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish region. As Kurdish militias and political actors built control over a contiguous territory they established the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, more commonly known as Rojava. The emergence of a de facto autonomous Kurdish region changed the equation in Syria from the perspective of both political and military leaders in Turkey. Soon the objective of Assad’s ouster and the creation of an allied Sunni regime in Syria gave way to the narrower goal of disrupting the contiguity of Kurdish territorial control and preventing the de facto autonomous region of Rojava from being recognized as a de jure Kurdish state.69 By this time, Turkey had lost international support for its Syria policy and was even seen by some in Europe and the US as a tacit supporter of Islamic State fighters.70 Turkey’s failure to close its border to Islamist militias and its tepid participation in the American anti-IS coalition had serious reputational consequences. Moreover, as the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (known by the Kurdish acronym YPG) proved to be the most effective fighting force against IS on the ground in Syria, the United States began to partner with the Kurdish militias, a move that heightened Turkish anxiety about Rojava. The result was a 2015 Turkish military incursion into Syria, code-named Operation Euphrates Shield, that Erdoğan presented as part of the fight against both the Islamic State and Kurdish militias, which Turkey characterized as “terrorist” groups based on their alignment with the PKK. The actual nature of the operations made clear 66  “Saudi Arabia and Qatar funding Syrian rebels,” Reuters, June 23, 2012, . 67 Daniel Dombey (2013). “Syria crisis: Refugees highlight Turkey’s sectarian tension,” Financial Times, Oct. 18, 2013. 68  Aslı Aydintasbas (2017). “The Islamic State is pulling Turkey into a vortex,” Washington Post, Jan. 9, 2017, . 69  Michael R. Gordon and Kamil Kakol (2017). “Turkish Strikes Target Kurdish Allies of U.S. in Iraq and Syria,” New York Times, Apr. 25, 2017. 70  See, e.g. Meredith Tax (2016). “Turkey is Supporting the Syrian Jihadis Washington Says it Wants to Fight,” The Nation, Sept. 16, 2016, .

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644   asli ü. bâli that the principal Turkish objective was to prevent the unification of the Kurdish cantons in Syria.71 At this juncture, the AKP’s domestic and international approach to the Kurdish community converged with Turkish warplanes striking Kurdish provinces on both sides of the border in the fall of 2015. Yet on both fronts there has been no military solution to the political problems produced by AKP policies. Operation Euphrates Shield ended in 2017 without accomplishing the declared goal of capturing the town of Manbij, which remained under the de facto control of Rojava, or deterring international support for the YPG forces.72 A few months after the end of the operation, and over strong Turkish objections, the Trump administration approved a plan to supply heavy weaponry to Syrian Kurdish forces, demonstrating the extent of Turkey’s loss of influence.73 Similarly, military operations against Turkey’s own Kurdish provinces have resulted in international condemnation while setting back the process of political reconciliation by at least a decade.74 Erdoğan’s Syria policy also embroiled Turkey in a nearly catastrophic conflict with Russia. The downing of a Russian jet, allegedly flying over Turkish territory en route to Syria, resulted in the imposition of a set of punitive sanctions by Russia against Turkey. While the risk of direct hostilities with Russia was averted, economic measures taken against Turkey, including blocking Russian tourists from traveling to the country and banning agricultural imports, represented a major hit to the economy. With tourism already adversely impacted by terrorist attacks and the refugee crises, the loss of the enormous flow of Russian tourists brought much of the country’s coastal economy to its knees. Ultimately, Erdoğan sent Vladimir Putin a letter of condolence in June 2016 that was widely interpreted as an apology, setting the two countries on a path to normalize relations. But the humiliating step also clearly demonstrated the limits of Turkey’s room for maneuver in navigating its relationship with its large northern neighbor, particularly as they continue to find themselves on opposing sides of the Syrian conflict.75 The conflict with Russia came at a time when Turkish relations with Europe had also hit a low point. The combination of Turkish backsliding on democratic reforms and the enormous flow of Syrian refugees through Turkey onward to Europe reconfigured Turkey’s relationship to the EU. On the one hand, Erdoğan secured important concessions from Europe in exchange for stemming the tide of refugees, including financial 71  “Turkey deploys more tanks in Syria, warns Kurdish YPG,” Al Jazeera, Aug. 25, 2016, . 72  Sudarsan Raghavan and Erin Cunningham (2016). “How Turkey’s offensive into Syria is opening up a hornet’s nest,” Washington Post, Aug. 27, 2016, . 73  Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt (2017). “Trump to Arm Syrian Kurds, Even as Turkey Strongly Objects,” New York Times, May 9, 2017. 74  “UN report details massive destruction and serious rights violations since July 2015 in southeast Turkey,” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mar. 10, 2017, . 75  “Erdogan ‘sorry’ for downing of Russian jet,” Al Jazeera, June 27, 2016, .

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   645 support and relative immunity from human rights scrutiny of the country’s domestic practices.76 On the other hand, the nature of the bilateral relationship shifted from a posture of strategic partnership to an instrumental, tactical, and deeply cynical bargain in a tense and increasingly adversarial relationship. Turkey might be able to leverage the fear of refugees to wrest concessions, but it was hardly shoring up its credentials for accession. On all fronts, from Europe to the Arab world to the Caucasus, Turkey was transformed from an important regional actor and strategic partner just five years earl­ ier to a defensive and calculating adversary by 2015.

Toward Eurasia When the attempted coup happened in July 2016, most of Turkey’s international relationships were already under strain. Davutoğlu, the erstwhile foreign minister and then prime minister, had been unceremoniously ousted from his position as premier by Erdoğan in May 2016,77 in part because he had become a trusted interlocutor for European and American partners (and thus increasingly a potential rival to Erdoğan) who were reluctant to deal directly with the country’s mercurial president. By the time Davutoğlu was dispatched his “zero problems” formula had become a grim joke, with Turkey in a position, instead, of zero friends on its borders. Because the attempted coup was undertaken by the air force, the wing of the Turkish military most integrated with NATO, it further destabilized Turkey’s traditional partnerships.78 The far-reaching purge of the military officers who had trained with NATO counterparts and the attempts by Ankara to recall military officers stationed in Brussels and the US as alleged co-conspirators (and the ensuing wave of asylum applications from those individuals and their families in the countries where they had been stationed) set off alarm bells across the alliance.79 While Turkish leaders complained that NATO allies had shown insufficient concern about the failed coup and had been slow to denounce the mutineers in the midst of the attempt, they praised Russia for its rapid response. A landmark ­weapons deal between Turkey and Russia in 2017, including the purchase of a Russian missile defense system, became the first major weapons purchase from Russia by a

76  Kondylia Gogou (2017). “The EU-Turkey Deal: Europe’s year of shame,” Amnesty International, Mar. 20, 2017, . 77  Jared Maslin (2016). “Why Turkey’s Prime Minister Had No Choice But to Resign,” Time, May 5, 2016, . 78  Arthur Beesley (2017). “Nato holds its peace as relations with Turkey degrade,” Financial Times, June 25, 2017. 79  Teri Schulz (2017). “Turkey’s purged military officers stuck in limbo one year after failed coup,” Deutsche Welle, July 14, 2017, .

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646   asli ü. bâli NATO member. Technically incompatible with the defense systems operated by the alliance, the deal was widely seen as evidence of Turkey distancing itself from NATO.80 Analysts studying Turkey’s trajectory away from its partnerships with the European Union, NATO, and the United States argue that the traditional Turkish “Atlanticist” orien­ta­tion has been replaced at first gradually and then, after the coup attempt, on an accelerated basis. Following the purges of foreign policy and military leaders that had favored the country’s pro-Western stance a new set of actors, widely described as “Eurasianists,” are now reportedly ascendant.81 When Erdoğan publicly stated that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization would be the more appropriate regional body for Turkey to join than the European Union, he gave voice to the Eurasianist faction in his new entourage of advisors.82 These advisors, chief among them the ultranationalist pol­ it­ician and ideologue Doğu Perinçek, believe that Turkey should fundamentally reorient its center of gravity eastward.83 It remains to be seen, however, whether it is ideology or opportunism that best explains Turkey’s pivot. After all, the view that Turkey’s stra­ tegic interests no longer align with Europe and the United States, and the overt embrace of Russia, may be more a reflection of the government’s pursuit of allies comfortable with the country’s authoritarian turn than a well-thought-through ideological reorientation. Whatever the explanation, a year after the attempted coup with the domestic crackdown continuing apace and Turkish relations with Western partners sinking to new lows,84 the pivot toward Russia, Central Asia, and the Gulf seems likely to persist.

Conclusion Erdoğan’s “new” Turkey is on a far less hopeful trajectory than when the AKP first came to power some fifteen years ago. Over the last decade, the country has shifted from democratization to an embrace of illiberal electoral majoritarianism, from investmentdriven economic growth to neoliberal kleptocracy, and from increasing pluralism to ethnonationalism. Moreover, in the quest to turn Turkey into a regional hegemon in the Middle East, the last five years have also witnessed a profound reversal of the country’s fortunes internationally. Whatever else the “Eurasianist” turn might entail, it is being pursued by a Turkey that has fewer allies and more hostile neighbors than at any 80 Carlotta Gall and Andrew Higgins (2017). “Turkey Signs Russia Missile Deal, Pivoting from NATO,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 2017. 81  Metin Gurcan (2017). “The rise of the Eurasianist vision in Turkey,” Al Monitor, May 17, 2017, . 82  “Fed up with EU, Erdogan says Turkey could join Shanghai bloc,” Reuters, Nov. 20, 2016, . 83  Leela Jacinto (2017). “Turkey’s Post-Coup Purge and Erdogan’s Private Army,” Foreign Policy, July 13, 2017, . 84  “U.S. Suspends Visa Services in Turkey, and Turkey Responds in Kind,” New York Times, Oct. 8, 2017, .

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The “NEW TURKEY” at Home and Abroad   647 ­ revious time in its republican history. These changes are largely attributable to the p ambitions of a single powerful leader—Erdoğan—and an ever-narrowing entourage of trusted advisors determined to extend his (and their) power through 2023 (the republic’s cen­ten­ary) and beyond. With each passing year, this goal is being pursued through increasingly coercive means to silence dissent, crush political opposition, consolidate economic and political control, and dismantle the institutional prerequisites of accountability. The “new” Turkey also appears bent on building strategic relationships with likeminded allies, preferring the authoritarians of the Caucasus and the Gulf to the nagging over human rights that emanates sporadically from Brussels and Washington. The constitutional amendments of 2017 created an electoral path for Erdoğan to remain in office as president until 2034. In his time first as prime minister (2003–14) and then as president (2014 to the present), Erdoğan has deepened the enduring domestic challenges of the republic: the social cleavages around religion and ethnicity that date to the founding of the republic (and earlier) persist. Reliance on the coercive power of the state to enforce the ideological preferences of governing elites is a well-rehearsed trad­ ition in Turkey, now employed to spectacular effect by the AKP. The party’s use of elab­ or­ate patronage networks to ensure loyalty distorts the institutions of the state and the private sector, reproducing and exacerbating the corruption and incompetence of earl­ ier Turkish governments. Intolerance of diversity and pluralism, a hallmark of Kemalism, continue unabated despite the AKP’s break with the nation’s founding ideology. Erdoğan has described the suppression of the coup attempt as a second war of independence for the republic, asserting his own place as the “New Turkey’s” independence leader. But in seeking to displace Atatürk, he has made himself into a shabby replica, more dependent on coercion, less able to command the trust of his people, and presiding over an increasingly polarized, traumatized, isolated, and destabilized nation.

References Azak, Umut (2010). Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Kemalism, Religion and the Nation State (London: I. B. Tauris). Çiçek, Cuma (2017). The Kurds of Turkey: National, Religious and Economic Identities (London: I. B. Tauris). Ciddi, Sinan (2009). Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People’s Party, Secularism and Nationalism (London: Routledge). Demir, Ömer, Mustafa Acar, and Metin Toprak (2004). “Anatolian Tigers or Islamic Capital: Prospects and Challenges,” Middle Eastern Studies 40,6: 166–188. Gürcan, Efecan and Efe Peker (2015). Challenging Neoliberalism at Turkey’s Gezi Park (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Hale, William and Ergun Özbudun (2010). Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP (London: I. B. Tauris). Ince, Başak (2012). Citizenship and Identity in Turkey: From Atatürk’s Republic to the Present Day (London: I. B. Tauris).

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648   asli ü. bâli Kurban, Dilek (2014). “The Kurdish question: Law, politics and the limits of recognition,” in Rodriguez, Avalos, Yavuz, and Planet (eds). Turkey’s Democratization Process (London: Routledge), 345–360. Kuru, Ahmet T. and Alfred Stepan (eds) (2012). Democracy, Islam and Secularism in Turkey (New York: Columbia University Press). Öniş, Ziya and Fikret Şenses (eds) (2009). Turkey and the Global Economy: Neoliberal Restructuring and Integration in the Post-Crisis Era (London: Routledge). Özbudun, Ergun and Ömer Faruk Gençkaya (2009). Democratization and the Politics of Constitution-making in Turkey (Budapest: CEU Press). Özbudun, Ergun, The Constitutional System of Turkey: 1876 to the present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), at 151. Özen, Hayriye (2015). “An Unfinished Grassroots Populism: The Gezi Park Protests in Turkey and their Aftermath,” Journal of South European Society and Politics 20, 4: 533–552. Parla, Taha and Andrew Davison (2004). Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order? (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press). Söyler Mehtap (2015). The Turkish Deep State: State Consolidation, Civil-Military Relations and Democracy (London: Routledge). Stein, Aaron (2004). Turkey’s New Foreign Policy: Davutoglu, the AKP and the Pursuit of Regional Order (London: RUSI Whitehall Papers Series). Tambar, Kabir (2014). The Reckoning of Pluralism: Political Belonging and the Demands of History in Turkey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Tuğal, Cihan (2009). Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Tuğal, Cihan (2016). The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprising Brought Down Islamic Liberalism (London: Verso). Turam, Berna (2007). Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Yörük, Erdem and Murat Yüksel (2014). “Class and Politics in Turkey’s Gezi Protests,” New Left Review 89 (Sept–Oct): 103–123. Zürcher, Erik (2004). Turkey: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris).

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chapter 32

The Crisis of Sover eignty, Ruptur ed Domination, and the Kur dish Quest for Democr atic SelfGover nment in Syria Abbas Vali

Introduction The Arab Spring signified the ascent of the people, the awakening of the popular masses and their emergence as a political force, rejecting the ruling regimes and laying claim to power. From Tunisia to Syria, popular demand for change was expressed in terms of a quest for democratic rule representing the will of the people. The demand that sovereignty had to be restored to the people echoed in the streets, becoming the focal point of the popular protest movements. The fall of Bin Ali, Mubarak, and Gaddafi had already given considerable legitimacy and confidence to popular uprisings in these countries before the popular protest movement surfaced in Syria, much to the displeasure of Bashar al-Assad, who had already warned the Syrians against the coming of the “virus.” But in Syria the popular protest movement against the Baathist regime stalled without being consolidated, spread without being organized, and fragmented before being grounded. The vehemence of the state response and the indiscriminate use of violence fragmented an already disunited opposition, undermining its cohesion and direction, before regional powers and their internal proxy forces intervened in the unfolding “national” crisis, trying to influence the course of events and define their outcomes in an

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650   abbas vali increasingly volatile political field. The regionalization of the crisis, the civil war, and the subsequent ethnic (Arab–Kurd) and religious (Alawi–Sunni–Christian) sectarianism forced the uprising off its course, boosting the fortunes of the Baathist regime, which was given a new lease of life by the shift in the US policy in August 2013. The “strategic disengagement,” which has since been actively pursued by the US and the EU, has ex­acer­bated the power struggle in the sectarian political field, marginalizing secular forces and widening the gap between them and the growing jihadi Islamist forces. The secular forces, divided internally on ethnic, religious, and political grounds and caught up in a vicious crossfire between the Baathists and Islamists, proved unable to form a united front to reclaim the lost ground. Their fortunes were dealt a further and more serious blow as the bulk of the Syrian military and security forces remained loyal to the regime, and large-scale breakups and desertion did not materialize. The resulting power vacuum provided fertile ground for the development of the jihadi forces, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL). Their organizational flexibility, military cohesion, and effective use of indiscriminate violence initially won them considerable support among the disaffected sectors of the majority Sunni community, worn out by the prolonged and seemingly self-perpetuating crisis presided over by a Shia–Alawi regime.1 The civil war and the emergence of internal proxy forces and their foreign backers led to the regionalization of the conflict and the militarization of the political field in 2012. The subsequent predominance of violence in the political process marked the end of the crisis of legitimacy of the Baath regime which had set the popular protests in motion in spring 2011. The regime was already fighting for its survival when the jihadi forces gained ground in the military field and dominated the opposition in 2013; thereafter the juridical legitimacy of the regime no longer featured in the discourse of the opposition, jihadi or otherwise, which was now bent on its destruction. The rise to prominence of the Peoples’ Democratic Union (PYD) in Rojava, along with the consolidation of its territorial gains and subsequent formation of three autonomous political-administrative cantons (Jazira, Kobani, and Afrin) in the summer of 2012, signified a rupture in the structure of sovereign domination. The formal declaration of democratic autonomy by the PYD in January 2014 was enabled by this rupture, and by the political vacuum created by the failure of sovereign power to assert its authority beyond its immediate zone of security and control. The rise of ISIL, its military might, and remarkable territorial gains and political influence in Syria and Iraq, helped bolster the fortunes of the Kurdish autonomous administration in Rojava in several ways. The new realignments in the military field, involving major international and regional powers and their internal proxy forces, provided the ground for the PYD to mobilize the bulk of the population and play a leading role in the struggle against the military machine and political influence of ISIL in Rojava. The defense of Kobane and the defeat and expulsion of ISIL from the region (October 2014–January 2015) was the culmination of the PYD’s regional supremacy and inter­ nation­al legitimacy. This gave particular status to the PYD in the operational structure 1  McHugo (2014); Phillips (2016); Glass (2015).

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THE KURDISH CRISIS IN SYRIA   651 of the anti-ISIL coalition, defined primarily by the military and logistical requirements of US strategy in Syria. The PYD thus occupied a strategic space created by the US refusal to commit ground troops to the war against ISIL. The functioning of the PYG as the US infantry in the expanding battlefield within and outside the territorial bound­ar­ ies of Rojava enabled it to participate in strategic decision-making in the daily conduct of the war. The organizational expansion and military success of the PYD, grounded by an egalitarian communalist ideology, enabled it to supersede the ethnic and linguistic boundaries of the Kurdish community and to reach out to a wider and more differentiated population in the region. The PYD took a leading role in the institutional structure of the formation of the Syrian Democratic Force, a loose coalition of multiethnic, multilingual forces in the area, spearheading the war against ISIL in the outskirts of Raqqa, the capital and military–security headquaters of ISIL. The Russian military intervention, which has shifted the balance in favor of the Baath regime, has simultaneously enhanced the political standing of the PYD in war-torn Syria. The PYD has benefited from the US–Russia “understanding” in the area, with both apparently content with its military role and growing political influence. There are indications that both powers consider the PYD as an asset, capable of playing a positive role in the effective implementation of their strategies in post-ISIL Syria, although their position on the development of the democratic autonomy project in Rojava, and indeed the very idea of a federal political system in Syria, remains unclear. The existence of a democratic federal republic is an essential condition of possibility of democratic autonomy in post-crisis Syria. As long as a democratic federal order is absent in Syria, only the crisis of sovereignty and the rupture in the structure of sovereign domination can ensure the continuation of the democratic autonomy project in Rojava. This point refers to the “interiority” of sovereign power and the modality of its institutional structures to the concept of democratic autonomy as a non-sovereign mode of governance under the conditions of sovereignty. They are interconnected. This argument will constitute the focal point of my critique of democratic autonomy theory in the context of Kurdistan.

The Nation-State and the Stateless There is a historical and logical connection between the nation-state and the stateless people/nation. Historically, they are twin-born as they are contradictory outcomes of the processes and practices of state formation grounded in the sovereign rights of the people/nation to self-rule. Logically, the nation-state and the stateless people/nation presuppose each other: the suppression, denial, and exclusion of the non-sovereign communities/identities is the condition of possibility of the political and legal unity of the nation represented by the state. This unity is usually achieved by reducing the stateless people to the dominant ethnicity within the state’s variegated ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural structure, and presenting it as a uniform entity with a single identity. The reduction of the people to the nation is an effect of political power: it is the effect of the founding act of the state, which is also at the same time constitutive of the nation and

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652   abbas vali its non-sovereign other, the stateless people/nation. The founding act of the state, ­for­ging the nation by reducing the “demos” to the “ethnos,” is constitutive of the stateless people/nation in modernity. The logical connection between the nation-state and the stateless people/nation is thus forged by the violence of the founding act of the state: they are the conditions of possibility of one another, standing in a relationship of identity in difference. This connection, as stated earlier, is interior to the structure of sovereign power in the nation-state. Later on I shall return to a consideration of this historical-logical connection and its significance for the analysis of the democratic autonomy project in Syria.2 The modern history of the Kurds in the Middle East bears witness to the truth of this argument. The founding acts of the nation-states in Iran (1906), Turkey (1924), Iraq (1932), and Syria (1946) also signified the genesis of the Kurdish question. The “per­ forma­tive” and “interpretative” violence perpetrated on the Kurdish community by the founding acts, at the founding moments of these sovereign states, was met with op­pos­ ition by leading political forces in Kurdish communities at the time.3 Kurdish op­pos­ ition to sovereign domination frequently turning to armed resistance with varying degrees of popular participation, resisted the suppression of Kurdish identity. The struggle for the recognition of Kurdish rights to an autonomous existence as a distinct ethniclinguistic community constituted the core of the Kurdish question in the modern Middle East. In this sense, therefore, the Kurdish question is the political articulation and representation of the Kurds’ resistance against sovereign suppression and denial of their identity and rights, and their struggle for the recognition of their identity and the right to govern themselves in their territory. The Kurdish question as such refers to the multiplicity of discourses and practices which originate in the intersection of two sets of mutually exclusive relationships, of suppression/resistance and denial/recognition, between the Kurds and the four sovereign powers ruling over them in their divided community and territory. This definition indicates that the Kurdish question is grounded in the dialectical nexus of an antagonism created and nurtured by the violence of the founding acts of sovereign states. The suppression and denial of Kurdish identity was constitutionally sanctioned and perpetuated in the structure of sovereign power in these nation-states. The constitutional law of these states continues to exclude Kurdish identity from the legal political process, that is, from the constitutionally recognized domain of legitimate political conduct, forcing it into extrajuridical space ruled by violence. Kurds thus became objects of extrajuridical violence perpetrated on them by sovereign powers insofar as they resisted sovereign domination and the imposition of sovereign identity on their communities. This theoretical outline represents the Kurdish question in its generality, pointing to a community ruptured by sovereign violence at various junctures in the past hundred 2  I have discussed the historical and logical connection between the nation-state and the stateless people/nation in detail in various writings on modern Kurdish history and politics; see for example Vali (1998), (2012). 3  Derrida (1992).

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THE KURDISH CRISIS IN SYRIA   653 years. Sovereign violence is constitutive of the Kurdish question, while at the same time defining the historical diversity of its fragments. The historical specificity of the fragments, their diverse formations and developments, are defined by the diversity of their constitutive sovereign powers. The ruptured unity of the Kurdish question defies a common origin and a uniform history. There are now “Kurdish questions,” each having a diverse origin and a diverse history, and this structural diversity signifies their discursive autonomy as objects of theoretical investigation. The Kurdish question in Syria, the object of this study, has its own autonomy, while at the same time displaying the main features of the general theoretical outline discussed earlier. In Syria, as in Iraq, the formation of the modern nation-state was preceded by colonial rule, which, though it entailed a different mode of domination, laid the foundation for the institutional structure of the state after independence. The staggered development of the Kurdish question in Syria, from partial recognition under mandatory rule to total denial and exclusion after independence, is defined by two different modes of domination.4

The Kurdish Question in Syria: The Sovereign and the Unrepresentable The modern territorial state in Syria was founded by the French mandatory power in the aftermath of the First World War and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The independent sovereign state which replaced French rule in 1946 was founded on the old colonial territorial arrangements laid out by the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916, subsequently sanctioned by the League of Nations in 1924. The Syrian state inherited and sanctioned the colonial territorial boundaries drawn by the mandatory powers, as well as the social and political forces and relations which subsequently defined the formation of the ruling elites in the new sovereign state. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, in this sense, constituted the historical framework of the new sovereign power but fell short of defining its identity. For the independent Syria was aspiring to be a nation-state, a modern political institution with a uniform national identity. The historical framework in­herit­ed from the colonial power lacked the juridical-political and cultural conditions required to ensure the construction of such an identity. As independence was followed by the triumph of Arab nationalism, the nationalist elite was instrumental in forging the crucial linkage between the dominant/majority ethnos and sovereign power. The Arab identity of the state, asserted relentlessly in official and semiofficial discourses, and backed up by sovereign violence exercised by the military and security apparatuses of the state, laid the ground for the suppression and denial of Kurdish identity, history, and culture.5 4  Vali (1998). 5  For histories of the formation and development of the Syrian state since the end of the First World War, see van Dam (2011); Hinnebusch (1989); Moʾaz et al. (1988); Zisser (2001); Wedeen (1999); George (2003).

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654   abbas vali The Kurds were the unwanted and unacceptable other simply because they did not share sovereign Arab identity. The assertion of Kurdish otherness reached its cul­min­ ation in the totalizing discourse of the United Arab Republic (1958–61), as official statements of total denial and suppression of Kurdish identity proliferated to justify the unity and supremacy of the Arab nation. The denial of Kurdish identity was a condition of the submission to sovereign will which qualified the Kurds as Syrian citizens and le­git­im­ ized their status as part of the Syrian–Arab nation. Citizenship by denial of identity surpassed the legal-political conditions of subjectivity associated with this shared identity; it was rather a means of subjection of the Kurds, ensuring their status as objects of sovereign domination. Following a 1962 population census in Hasaka in Syria, 120,000 Kurdish inhabitants of Jazira province were stripped of their Syrian citizenship by governmental decree. The act, prompted by the need “to preserve the Arab character of Jazira,” also amounted to expropriation of land, resulting in the desubjectification of twenty percent of the Kurdish population. They became stateless without juridical conditions of statelessness in international law. The official discourse referred to them as ajanib (aliens) or maktumin (the hidden); they were objects of power as subjection, bereft of rights to legal and political representation, education, employment, and property ownership. As ajanib they were unrepresented, and as maktumin unrepresentable. The specific status of the Kurds as such remained almost entirely intact for the next forty years, during which Syria experienced three Baathist coups d’état, in 1963, 1966, and 1970. Throughout this period, Kurdish identity was effectively denied and suppressed in order to safeguard the unity and stability of the Syrian sovereign identity.6 Sovereign power defined the conditions and modality of the subjection of the Kurds under the successive Baath governments from 1963 to 2004. The modes of Kurdish subjection were, in effect, modes of denial of subjectivity, and as such conditions of sovereign domination under Baath rule. For the majority of the Kurds, who were allowed to retain Syrian citizenship in return for the denial of their identity and civil and democratic rights and liberties, citizenship rights functioned as a “sovereign ban,” to use Agamben’s concept: the means of exclusion by inclusion.7 In this sense therefore, the denial of their identity was the condition of their subjectivity, enabling them to be represented through their sovereign other. The Kurds who were stripped of Syrian citizenship in 1962 were excluded from the juridical domain of power; they were forced into the extrajuridical domain, where law no longer signified and power had an exclusively violent character. These Kurds were “legitimate” objects of sovereign violence; devoid of the conditions of subjectivity, they were unrepresentable. These conditions were brought to an end by the popular Qamishli uprising in March 2004. The recognition of Kurdish identity and the removal of the sovereign ban was the prelude to the crisis of sovereignty. 6  Before the recent crisis there was little interest in the history, politics, and culture of the Kurds in Syria. Some major works on the history and politics of modern Syria are almost silent on this issue; ­others treat the Kurds as a docile community uninterested or unable to have a voice in Syrian politics, a parochial issue at best. March 2004 was a watershed in this respect. See Yildiz (2005); Montgomery (2005); Lynch (2006); Tejel (2009); Alssopp (2014); Lynch and Perveen (2006). 7  Agamben (1998).

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THE KURDISH CRISIS IN SYRIA   655 The advent of the popular protest movement marked the onset of the rupture in the structure of sovereign domination, laying the ground for the ascent of the oppressed nearly a decade later.8

The Crisis of Sovereignty and the Reconstitution of the Kurdish Question The Qamishli revolt of March 17, 2004 is a landmark in the history of the Kurds in Syria, representing a shift in the relationship between the Kurdish community and the Baath regime. Although the uprising, or serheldan, was crushed, its effects reverberated in the political field, defining the relationship between the Baathists and the Kurdish community. The revolt was the culmination of the growing discontent in the Kurdish community, precipitated by developments in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. The achievements of the Kurds in Iraq, signified by the provisions of the draft constitution of the proposed binational federal state made public shortly after the fall of the Iraqi Baath regime, stood in sharp contrast with the meager concessions offered to the Kurdish community in Syria. These concessions, amounting at best to a partial recognition of cultural rights and legal measures to restore citizenship rights to the dispossessed Kurds, were introduced in a new political and discursive space created by the drive to reform the organization of the state and the economy by the new ruler Bashar al-Assad, following his rise to power in 2000. Bashar’s reforms were conservative in ethos, focusing on the consolidation of his power in the principal apparatus of sovereign domination in the country. The restructuring of the party, army, and the security apparatuses of the state was not meant to increase their organizational cohesion and functional efficiency, nor their popular legitimacy in the political field. The rationale was primarily political, aiming to instill and expand loyalty to the new leader, and to protect and promote his authority against op­pos­ition within and outside the state. This, in effect, led to the consolidation of the status of primordial relations of tribe, clan, ethnic, and religious relations and affiliation in the institutional structure of the state on the one hand, and increasing statization of civil society on the other, reaffirming the sectarian politics which the reformist measures were supposed to neutralize or indeed eradicate. The reorganization of the apparatuses of sovereign domination under Bashar reinforced the position of those Alawi/Shia community and tribal/clan enclaves which were related directly or indirectly to the political leadership, consolidating their power and influence at the expense of the Sunni majority and the Kurdish community. These reforms, geared to the consolidation and expansion of sectarian rule, did little to redress the growing imbalance in the 8  For accounts of the 2004 uprising and subsequent developments in Kurdish politics in Syria, see Tejel (2009); Alssopp (2014).

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656   abbas vali i­nstitutional structure of political power. The growing opposition to this consolidation of ­sectarian rule was played out in an emergent political space which remained under strict surveillance and control by the state security. The discursive field opened up by Bashar’s attempt to reorganize his power base did not have the opportunity to develop into a public sphere, however rudimentary. The public critique of sovereign power was beyond the accepted limit defined by state security, as the treatment of the Kurdish question before the 2004 uprising confirmed. The boundaries of the new political space for the articulation of the Kurdish demands, and hence its function and efficacy, however, were neither fixed nor stable. They changed significantly in the years leading to the crisis and the civil war, as internal and external circumstances influenced the articulation of the discursive and political fields. The implementation of the conservative reorganization of the apparatuses of sovereign domination coincided with new international and regional political conditions defined by the rise to power of the neocons in the US. The interventionist ethos of the new im­per­ial sovereignty articulated by the neocon strategists was triggered by 9/11, with Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 being its major theaters. The military presence of the US in Iraq and the possibility of invasion of Syria, already notorious as a pariah state in the axis of evil in neocon discourse, loomed large in the political calculations of the Baath regime and the Kurdish opposition alike, though for quite different reasons. The Qamishli uprising heightened the Baath regime’s fear that the US would exploit the situation, while at the same time raising Kurdish hopes of an end to the conditions of denial and suppression. That the Baath chose to soften its position after the suppression of the uprising and allow for the expression of Kurdish demands in political space demonstrated the insecurity resulting from its inability to influence the course of events outside its domestic jurisdiction, in particular Iraq. Although Bashar al-Assad’s softer approach toward Kurdish demands never went beyond the public admission of the existence of the Kurds as an ethnic community, along with the restoration of citizenship rights to the dispossessed in Jazira and a partial recognition of cultural rights, the course of events nationally and regionally since 2000 helped to put the Kurdish question on the Syrian political agenda. But the prominence of the Kurds in the political field was not without opposition in the Sunni and Christian communities. The Ikhwan (the Muslim Brothers), the most prominent force in the clandestine Sunni opposition to the Baath regime, actively opposed the representation of Kurdish demands in the Syrian political field, a position which effectively amounted to the denial of Kurdish identity before the outbreak of the civil war, and which has been retained to date. The Christian community, meanwhile, expressed its unhappiness at the rise to prominence of the Kurds in Jazira in explicitly racist language, asserting its educated urban superiority to the un­civ­ il­ized Kurdish peasants. After 2004, the Baath regime tried to utilize the growing ethnic and religious divisions, focusing in particular on the rising Sunni and Christian opposition to the Kurdish ascendancy in the new political space opened by the uprising. The regime’s aim was not so much to return to the old days as to shore up its declining supremacy in the country through new approaches requiring a minimal use of coercive force and violence. In

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THE KURDISH CRISIS IN SYRIA   657 r­ elation to the Kurdish community, this meant encouraging sectarian tendencies, and undermining attempts by the Kurdish political parties and organizations to form a united front against the regime in the aftermath of the Qamishli uprising. The effective control of the new political space, defining its boundaries and the conditions of participation in the oppositional discourse and practice, was a primary objective of Bashar alAssad’s rule following the suppression of the uprising. He managed to ride the gathering storm in this space, in particular the mounting danger of a united Kurdish opposition to the Baath regime, as the threat of the US military intervention began to recede after 2007. The new political space created by the 2004 serheldan had already shrunk considerably when the shock waves of the Arab Spring began to hit Damascus in March 2011. The Kurdish political field remained deeply fragmented before the advent of the Arab Spring. The chronic rifts and sectarian conflict among the political forces and their constituencies of support in the community were bolstered by the underlying centrifugal dynamics of primordial loyalties on the one hand, and by allegiances to non-Syrian Kurdish political forces in the region, primarily the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Iraq and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey, on the other. These loyalties and allegiances also defined positions, rifts, and conflicts within each political party and organization, often with long-term effects extending to the political-military field in present day Rojava. Nonetheless, the 2004 serheldan, which sustained its challenge to the authority of the Baath regime with varying degrees of force and popular support for nearly a year, shifted the ground and changed the social structure of the Kurdish movement. Although sovereign violence continued to define the boundaries of democratic discourse, references to the Kurdish question, however limited, increasingly involved discussions of solutions and their conditions of possibility in Syria. This was a crucial shift in the representation of the Kurdish question, putting it on the agenda not as a question of Imperialist–Zionist plots against the unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian-Arab nation, but as one of denied identity and the suppressed rights and liberties of a community ignored by state and op­pos­ ition alike. While the uprising did not directly achieve more than a de facto partial recognition of Kurdish identity, it propelled the Kurdish masses into the political field, facilitating the emergence of the “Kurdish people” as a political subject in Syrian pol­it­ ics. It was the active presence and the discourse and practice of this emergent political subject which came to define the democratic character of the new political space in the Kurdish community after 2011.

The Discursive Formation of the Concept of Democratic Autonomy The concept of democratic autonomy refers to forms of non-sovereign self-government within the territorial framework of a sovereign state. The autonomous rule may or may

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658   abbas vali not be territorial, but it always eschews modern political sovereignty and its characteristic institutional form for strategic or political-moral considerations. In the context of Kurdistan, too, the concept of democratic autonomy, elaborated in the writings of Abdullah Ocalan, essentially signifies a quest for self-government within the legal-political framework of sovereign states. The institutional structure and socioeconomic processes and practices of the autonomous government, it is contended, are grounded in a democratic culture characterized by communal participation in the process of policyand decision-making, gender equality, and care for community and environment. The origins of these processes and practices, we are further told, lie in the indigenous institutions of ancient Mesopotamia, in particular the Sumerian civilization, preserved and passed on to succeeding civilizations in the area. But the “natural” course of the development of this indigenous democratic culture and its communal institutions was interrupted by “capitalist modernity” and its universal political form, the nation-state, which not only distorted the natural course of history but also destroyed the autonomous institutions of policy and decision-making by imposing modern sovereign rule on them. The concept of democratic autonomy thus treats capitalist modernity and in particular the institution of the nation-state as external causes, distorting the natural historical development of Mesopotamian societies, including Kurdistan. They are external to these communities and are imposed on them from outside, remaining alien to in­di­gen­ ous cultural formations. The concept of democratic autonomy attributes the Kurdish question to the repressive character of the nation-state: modern sovereignty is said to account for the suppression and denial of Kurdish identity and rights. The repressive character of sovereign power, its totalizing force, discriminatory nature, and exclusionary function disqualify the nation-state as a viable/credible solution to the Kurdish question. The Kurds should avoid repeating this failed experience of capitalist mod­ern­ ity. The concept of democratic autonomy is held to offer a radical alternative to the “bourgeois” institution of the nation-state.9 This brief outline shows the basic features of the theory of democratic autonomy in the Kurdish context.10 The introduction of capitalist modernity and the establishment of the nation-state are said to be the cause of the distortion of Kurdish history and society as well as the reason for the Kurdish question. The concept of natural history implies the absence of social relations to define its dynamics, process, and direction. Similarly, the conception of a community and communal life devoid of power and relations of domination and subordination is theoretically flawed and historically untenable. However, it is not my intention here to take issue with these notions and to dwell on 9  See Ocalan (2007),  (2012). All references are to the English editions of these sources. Ocalan acknowledges the influence of Murray Bookchin, the American libertarian-socialist-ecologist theorist, as his teacher and source of inspiration, but his conception of democratic autonomy varies from that of Bookchin on a number of key issues, including the historicist account of the evolution of the ancient communal/natural origins of Mesopotamian sociocultural institutions, the institutional structure of democratic autonomy and the role of political party organization in the process of the constitution and consolidation of democratic autonomy. See Leezenberg (2016). 10  See Akkaya and Jongerden (2012); Jongerden (2015); Gunes (2012); White (2015); Yeyen (2016).

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THE KURDISH CRISIS IN SYRIA   659 their theoretical formation and discursive representation; rather my aim is to show that these notions, flawed as they are, are essential to the theoretical construction of the concept of democratic autonomy, in particular to the conceptualization of the nation-state as an external (non-indigenous) institution responsible for the Kurdish question. The insistence on the exteriority of the nation-state to the histories of Mesopotamian so­ci­ eties containing fragments of Kurdish territory, it will be argued, has serious consequences for the conceptualization of the conditions of possibility of the concept of democratic autonomy. To be more precise, it serves to conceal the interiority of the violence of the founding act, the originary mechanism of suppression and denial of Kurdish identity, to the structure of sovereign domination in the nation-state, and hence overlooks the centrality of sovereign power to the conditions of the possibility of the project of democratic autonomy in any part of Kurdish territory currently ruled by a sovereign state. Sovereign domination is central to the theoretical discussion of the conditions necessary to realize the project of democratic autonomy in present-day Turkey and Syria, which constitute the practical ground for the application of the project.

The Conditions of Possibility of the Concept of Democratic Autonomy The concept of democratic autonomy presupposes specific conditions of possibility as a political project to ensure its realization and resolve the Kurdish question. The realization of the political project is to take place under the sovereign rule of the states currently administering Kurdish territories. These conditions are therefore mainly related to the historical specificity of sovereign power and its effects on the Kurdish community. Although these conditions have been admittedly instrumental in the formation and development of the Kurdish question, they are not a given in the discursive construction of the concept but remain external to it. Their exteriority, it is argued, effectively undermines the discursive coherence of the concept of democratic autonomy, casting serious doubt on the possibility of the resolution of the Kurdish question within the juridicalpolitical framework of state sovereignty. The PKK and the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in Bakur and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Rojava are committed to the project of democratic autonomy, ideologically and programmatically. The concept has been variously incorporated into their political programs, defining their strategic ob­ject­ives and informing their discourse and practice. Given the authority of Ocalan as its author, and the aura of moral and political superiority attached to his personality within these organizations, the concept of democratic autonomy has also been used as the means of legitimation of discourse and practice since 2005. The HDP fought a successful election campaign in the name of democratic autonomy, surpassing the ethnic boundaries of Kurdish politics and reaching out to non-Kurdish voters in June 2015. The PKK’s berxodan (civil resistance) on the other hand, perceived as a preliminary phase in

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660   abbas vali the implementation of the project of democratic autonomy in Bakur, failed to achieve its declared objective. The urban armed action (the so-called “trench war”) was suppressed by the Turkish state, using concentrated violence on a massive scale indiscriminately against the fighters in the streets and the non-combatant population in Kurdish towns. The leadership of the PKK attributed the failure of their strategy to a mere miscalculation on their part of the scale and intensity of state violence in response to the process of civil resistance.11 Although the seemingly unexpected response of the Turkish government had direct implications for the conditions of possibility of the concept of democratic autonomy, the party leadership and the host of followers and sympathizers remained silent, as if the theoretical construction of the project, in particular the conditions of its possibility in practice, had nothing to do with this outcome. The silence implied, in no ambiguous terms, that to them the conditions of possibility of the concept of democratic autonomy were external to it, having no effect on its application and realization in the political field. The leadership of the PKK has paid a high price for this fundamental misconception, although it refuses to accept publicly that the theory should be rethought in light of the experience of the civil resistance. Now with the benefit of hindsight, it should not hesitate to admit that the conditions of possibility of the concept of democratic autonomy are internal to its theoretical structure, and as such have significant impact on the form and conditions of realization of the project. To admit this does not mean casting aside the concept but reconstructing it, to enable it to account for the interiority of the connection between Kurdish community and sovereign power in Turkey. This connection involves relations of domination and subjection, suppression and resistance, and as such is grounded in the violence of the founding act of the Turkish state. It should be theorized and articulated in the structure and application of the concept. The founding act, as was argued, is constitutive of the Turkish sovereign and its Kurdish other; it is embedded in the structure of sovereign domination, and will continue to define the modality of their relationship until the moment of rupture when sovereign violence begins to lose its efficacy in the face of the mounting resistance and counter-violence of the non-sovereign other. Contrary to the assertions of the concept of democratic autonomy, non-sovereign resistance to sovereign domination goes far beyond self-defense; it is at the same time a quest for power involving relations of force, which may or may not include violence.12 Thus, the resistance of the non-sovereign other and its quest for power may take a ­constitutional-legal form pursued through existing democratic political channels, like the path taken by the HDP leading to the June 2015 parliamentary elections. In this case, the quest for power presupposes freedom to enable the non-sovereign to build the broadest possible alliance with democratic forces in the political field. This allows it to garner active support and votes from a cross-section of the population with different ethniclinguistic, sexual, cultural, and economic identities. Opposition to sovereign power and 11  See my interviews in Agos (2016) and Evrensal (2016). 12  See Ocalan (2007), (2012) on resistance.

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THE KURDISH CRISIS IN SYRIA   661 refusal to submit to its authoritarian will constitute the inner core of the diverse iden­ tities joining this alliance. This leads to a situation signified by the concept of “common” developed by Negri and Hardt, involving a multiplicity of singular identities sharing a common political position, by virtue of which they become members of the common.13 The common is not a shared identity; rather it is a shared political position held by diverse identities. The significance of the concept of common as such is in its capacity to recognize and respect the singularity of its constituent identities. On the other hand, non-sovereign resistance may take a political-military form involving use of force. In this case, the conditions of democratic alliance against sovereign domination will be defined primarily by the range and efficacy of the political force, especially insofar as the formation of a common is concerned. These forms of resistance are interior to the structure of sovereign domination. This clearly means that they are more than strategies of self-defense; they are at the same time forms of quests for power. We have seen both forms in the recent history of Kurdish resistance in Turkey: the PKK’s strategy of armed resistance and the HDP’s struggle for the formation of a broad democratic alliance. While the former has hardly been able to surpass the ethnic-linguistic boundaries of the Kurdish community and reach out to the democratic forces in Turkish civil society, the latter has achieved this strategic objective and operated as a non-ethnic “national”/ countrywide force in Turkey at large. However, at present it is above all the ascent of the PYD in the Syrian political field and its phenomenal success in the war against ISIL which has come to represent the concept of democratic autonomy. The fortunes of the concept have been significantly boosted since 2012, when the PYD announced its aim of creating a new social-economic order inspired by democratic autonomy. The creation of the three cantons of Jazira, Kobane, and Afrin, based on a new democratic administration and gender equality, is widely seen as the dawn of a new era not only in Rojava and Greater Kurdistan, but also in the Middle East in general, dominated by repressive authoritarian regimes, religious and secular, with scant regard for civic and democratic rights and liberties. The success of the PYD in Rojava notwithstanding, it hardly demonstrates the discursive coherence and logical consistency of the concept of democratic autonomy. On the contrary, the success of the project of democratic autonomy in Rojava is due in no small measure to the persistence of the crisis of sovereignty and the rupture in the structure of sovereign domination in Syria, which has undermined the centralizing functions of sovereign power and severed its links with regions outside immediate state control, including Rojava.14 This situation, which has continued for the past five years, accounts for the political and administrative autonomy of Rojava. The persistence of the crisis has enabled the PYD to take preliminary steps in the implementation of the project of democratic autonomy, free of state intervention and the debilitating effects of sovereign power. 13  See Hardt and Negri (2004). 14  For recent publications on Rojava and the system in place in the three constituent cantons see Kucuk and Ozselcuk (2016); Kapp et al. (2016); Ustundag (2016); Madra (2016); Kapp et al. (2016).

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662   abbas vali Unlike Bakur, in Rojava the anomalies of the theory have been made irrelevant to the implementation of the project, owing mainly to the persistence of the crisis and the rupture in the structure of sovereign domination. In other words, the crisis has rendered the project free of a fundamental obstacle in the way of its realization, presenting a unique opportunity to establish an autonomous region in Rojava within the national jurisdiction of a sovereign state incapable of exercising sovereignty. This project of democratic autonomy in Rojava can continue to flourish as long as the crisis persists and the conditions of sovereignty, in particular the power to exercise territorial centralism, effectively elude the Syrian state. The final outcome will depend on the conditions of the resolution of the crisis and the resulting balance of power between the state and the administration of the autonomous Rojava in post-crisis Syria. The outcome may still be settled by military confrontation and force of arms if the legal-political status of the autonomous Rojava is not ensured in the juridical framework of a sovereign Syria. The political character of the post-crisis state will be decisive in this respect.

Conclusion This argument indicates that there are two options regarding the conditions of realization of the project of democratic autonomy. First is an acute crisis of sovereignty precipitating a rupture in the structure of domination and end of subjection and the subsequent ascent of the Kurdish community, signified by the developments in Rojava since 2012. Second is negotiating the conditions of autonomy as conditions of struggle against subjection by engaging in a genuine and all-round process of democratization, involving an active mobilization of civil society and a broad alliance and cooperation with democratic forces in the political field. The main object of this process should be the desecuritization of the Kurdish question/identity as a necessary precondition for a democratic constitutional reform. Contrary to the view held by a number of prominent academics and journalists on the left and center left of the political spectrum in Turkey, constitutional reform, necessary as it is, cannot be confined to changing the existing concept of Turkish citizenship. The proposed de-ethnification of the Turkish citizenship, though a necessary democratic measure, is by no means sufficient to ensure the desecuritization of the Kurdish question/identity. For the representation of the Kurdish other as a perennial threat to Turkish national security at all times is entailed in the discursive structure of sovereign identity. Sovereign identity, and hence the representation of the Kurdish other as a threat to national security, are both effects of the founding act of the state, presupposing each other. It follows that the desecuritization of the Kurdish question/identity presupposes a redefinition of sovereign identity so that its connection with the violence of the founding act of the state is severed for good. Only the crucial delinking of

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THE KURDISH CRISIS IN SYRIA   663 sovereign identity from the violence of the founding act of the state can provide the ground for the recognition of and respect for the non-sovereign other.15 This, of course, requires a new theoretical framework and fresh conceptual tools beyond the limits of democratic theory, which is the common point of reference for works seeking to find a “democratic solution” for the Kurdish question. For democratic theory is grounded in the “philosophy of presence,” in Derrida’s words, a long-standing and dominant tradition in Western philosophy, marked by the suppression of difference in its discursive structure.16 This discursive violence against the other resides in the heart of democratic theory, accounting for its insensitivity to the other, and concealing the differences constituting the identity of the other. Democratic theory should be rad­ ic­al­ly rethought and reconstructed so as to be able to expel this violence from its discursive structure and to become sensitive to the fate of the suppressed other, recognizing the other and respecting his/her rights and liberties. This could pave the way for a genuine conception of pluralism to overcome the “democratic political paradox” and dispense with “democratic deficit,” which are but different names given to the suppression and denial of the other entailed in the discursive structure of democratic theory.17

References Agamben, Giorgio. (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and the Bare Life (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press). Idem. (2005). State of Exception (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Akkaya, Ahmet H. and Joost Jongerden (2012). “Reassembling the Political: The PKK and the Project of Radical Democracy,” European Journal of Turkish Studies 14: 1–16. Alssopp, Harriet (2014). The Kurds of Syria: Political Parties and Identity in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris). Connolly, William  E. (1992). Identity and Difference: Democratic Negotiations of political Paradox (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Derrida, Jacques (1976). Of Grammatology (London: Johns Hopkins University Press). Derrida, Jacques (1978). Writing and Difference (London: Routledge). Derrida, Jacques (1992). “The Force of Law: The Mythical Foundations of Authority,” in P. Cornell et al. (eds). Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, 3–67 (London: Routledge). George, Alan. (2003). Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom (London: Zed Books). Glass, Charles. (2015). Syria Burning: A Short History of the Catastrophe (London: Verso). Gunes, Cengiz. (2012). The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London: Routledge). Gunter, Michael. (2014). Out of Nowhere: Kurds of Syria in Peace and War (London: Hurst). Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press). 15  I have discussed this issue in detail in Vali (1998), (2006). 17  See Connolly (1992) and Mann (2005).

16  Derrida (1976), (1978).

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664   abbas vali Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri (2009). The Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Hinnebusch, Raymond (1989). Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Baʾthist Syria: Army, Party and Peasant (San Francisco, CA: Westview Press). Hinnebusch, Raymond (2001). Syria: Revolution from Above (London: Routledge). Hinnebusch, Raymond (2012). “Syria: from ‘Authoritarian Upgrading’ To Revolution?” International Affairs 88: 1. Honig, Bonnie (2001). Democracy and the Foreigner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Jongerden, Joost (2015). “Radicalizing Democracy: Power, Politics, People and the PKK,” Research Turkey 4,3: 64–78. Kapp, Michael et al. (2016). Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan (London: Pluto). Küçük, Bülent and Ceren Özselçuk (2016). “The Rojava Experience: Possibilities and Challenges of Building a Democratic Life,” South Atlantic Quarterly 115,1: 184–197. Leezenberg, Michiel (2016). “The Ambiguities of Democratic Autonomy: the Kurdish Movements in Turkey and Rojava,” South European and Black Sea Studies 16,4: 671–690. Lesch, David W. (2013). Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad (London: Yale University Press). Lynch, Maureen and Ali Perveen (2006). Buried Alive: Stateless Kurds in Syria (Washington, DC: Refugees International). Madra, Yahya M. (2016). “Democratic Economy Conference: An Introductory Note,” South Atlantic Quarterly 115,1: 212–222. Mann, Michael (2005). The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Maʾoz, Moshe and Yaniv, Avner (eds.) (1988). Syria under Assad (Croom Helm, London). McHugo, John (2014). Syria: A Recent History (London: Saqi). Montgomery, Harriet (2005). The Kurds of Syria: An Existence Denied (Berlin: Europaisches Zentrum fur Kurdische Studien). Negri, Antonio (2009). Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Ocalan, Abdullah (2007). Prison Writings, Vol. 1: The Roots of Civilization (London: Pluto Press). Ocalan, Abdullah (2012). Prison Writings, Vol. 3: The Road Map to Negotiation (Cologne: International Initiative Editions). Phillips, Christopher (2016). The Battle For Syria; International Rivalry in the New Middle East (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Ranciere, Jacques (1999). Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Schmidinger, Thomas (2018). Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds (London: Pluto Press). Tejel, Jordi (2009). Syria's Kurds: History, Politics and Society (London: Routledge). Tully, James (1995). Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in the Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Ustundag, Nazan (2016). “Self-Defence as a Revolutionary Practice in Rojava, or How to Unmake the State,” South Atlantic Quarterly 115,1: 197–210. Vali, Abbas (1998). “The Kurds and Their Others: Fragmented Identity and Fragmented Politics,” Comparative Studies of the Middle East, Africa and South Asia 18,2: 73–94.

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THE KURDISH CRISIS IN SYRIA   665 Vali, Abbas (2012). Kurds and the State in Iran: The Making of Kurdish Identity (London: I. B. Tauris). Vali, Abbas (2016). Interview Agos 25 December. http://www.agos.com.tr/tr/yazi/13816/ abbas-vali-hukumet-kendi-hendegini-kaziyor Vali, Abbas (2016). Evrensal 29 August. http://www.agos.com.tr/tr/yazi/13816/ abbas-vali-hukumet-kendi-hendegini-kaziyor Vali, Abbas (2006). “The Stolen History,” Introduction to the Turkish translation of Essays on the Origins of Kurdish Nationalism (Istanbul: Avesta). Van Dam, Nikolaos (2011). The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Assad and the Ba’th Party (London: I. B. Tauris). Wedeen, Lisa (1999). Ambiguities of Domination, Politics, Rhetoric and Symbolism in Contemporary Syria (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press). Wenman, Mark (2013). Agonistic Democracy: Constituent Power in the Era of Globalization (New York: Cambridge University Press). White, Paul (2015). The PKK: The Coming Down From the Mountains (London: Zed Press). Yeyen, Mesut (2016). “Armed Struggle to Peace Negotiation: Independent Kurdistan to Democratic Autonomy: the PKK in the Context,” Middle East Critique 25,4: 1–19. Yildiz, Kerim (2005). The Kurds in Syria, Forgotten People (London: Pluto Press). Zisser, Eyal (2001). Asad’s Legacy: Syria in Transition (London: Hurst).

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chapter 33

A fter Ga dda fi Libya’s Path to Collapse Frederic Wehrey

Introduction On October 20, 2011, a young Libyan rebel executed Muammar Gaddafi with a gunshot to the temple, having pulled the bedraggled dictator from a drainpipe where he was cowering after a Western air strike on his convoy.1 It was a dramatic end to an armed and highly localized national uprising that had started seven months before—and to an epic reign that had begun in 1969. In the years that followed the revolution, Libyans would struggle to escape the long shadow of the self-proclaimed “Brother Leader” while refashioning a new political order.2 Geographic, demographic, and historical contexts have shaped that struggle—but not predetermined it. A vast desert country three times the size of France, Libya’s population hovers somewhere around 6.5 million. Most of its citizens are concentrated in urban centers along the Mediterranean coast, with 65 percent in Tripolitania and 28 percent in the east, Cyrenaica, or Barqa. The inhabitants of the southern region of Fezzan, with its strong links to the Sahel and Sahara, constitutes just 7 percent.3 The country is overwhelmingly Sunni and Arabic-speaking, though ethnolinguistic minorities—the Imazighen, the Tuareg, and the Tabu—exist along the western and southern peripheries.4 Though urbanization and internal migration have diluted tribal solidarity, tribal kinship remains an important social bond, which is context-dependent and constructed.5

1  Chulov (2012). 2  Lacher (2017: 139–152); Wehrey (2018a); Mundy (2018); Vilmer (2016: 23–43). 3  The World Fact Book. 4  Kohl (2014: 423–438). 5  Najem (2017); Anderson (1990: 288–302); Hüsken (2009: 169–209).

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After GADDAFI: Libya’s Path to Collapse   667 Similarly, the country’s long history of weak institutions has influenced the present. Even in antiquity, Libya was a place on the margins. Successive rulers, whether the Ottomans, the Italians, or the British, never set up governing institutions or created a local educated class. With the exception of the Sanussiya, a Sufi revivalist dynasty centered in the east, the country lacked anything resembling a proto state.6 The Italian period was especially devastating, not only in terms of loss of life but also because of the demolition of the traditional pastoralist economy and the exclusion of Libyans from education and political participation.7 Resistance against the Italians helped empower local notables and elites, the most prominent being the Sanussiya and, in the western coastal town of Misrata, the short-lived Tripolitanian Republic under Ramadan Swehli. But a true national identity remained lacking, as did unifying anti-imperial movement, along the lines of Algeria or Egypt. After the Second World War, the state’s modern borders were formed under United Nations supervision through the joining of the three Italian provinces of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan. Elites from the three regions barely disguised their distrust of each other but nonetheless agreed upon the independent kingdom of Libya in 1951.8 The monarchy that followed under King Idris (1889–1983) was among the poorest countries in the world and illiteracy hovered above 90 percent. Governance passed through a brief phase of federalism, before being abandoned in 1963.9 The king had formed alliances with Western powers including the United Kingdom and the United States whose airbase at Wheelus, outside Tripoli, was at one point the largest American overseas base. Yet even these allies took an increasingly dim view of the king’s popularity and dur­abil­ ity.10 The discovery of oil in 1956 arrived too late to save the increasingly isolated Idris from mounting dissent, especially from an officer class that had been exposed to the nationalist, anti-imperial ideologies sweeping the Arab world. Joining a bloodless officers’ putsch in 1969 that toppled Idris, then-Captain Gaddafi had promised modernization and prosperity, while rejecting what he saw as the monarchy’s deference to foreign military and economic interests. Following the footsteps of his hero Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Gaddafi enacted beneficial reforms and raised the standard of living. But the following decades saw a disastrous theoretical experiment in “statelessness” and the collectivization of property—the so-called Jamahiriya or “State of the Masses.”11 Gaddafi eviscerated civil society, and, with the exception of the National Oil Corporation and some financial bodies, gutted most governing institutions. He distributed the country’s staggering oil wealth through a hypercentralized system of clientalism designed to reward loyalty and punish dissent—a system that would fuel competition and warlordism after his demise.12 Radicalism at home was matched by radicalism abroad, with Gaddafi supporting an array of militants and insurgents from across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin 6  Baldinetti (2010: 27–29); Anderson (2017: 232–233). 7  St John (2011: 17); Vandewalle (2006: 31). 8  Anderson (1993: 114–128). 9  St John (2011: 38). 10  Central Intelligence Agency (2018). 11  Fitzgerald and Megerisi (2015). 12  Costantini (2016: 405–422).

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668   frederic wehrey America, and even the South Pacific. This violence abroad famously brought him into confrontation with America under President Ronald Reagan, eliciting air strikes in 1986, and then, after his bombing of two foreign airliners, international sanctions. The resulting isolation only intensified Libya’s mounting economic ruin. Then, after the turn of the millennium, Gaddafi “came in from the cold.” He renounced his nascent program of weapons of mass destruction and abandoned his support for terrorism abroad. Under the supervision of his London-educated son, Saif, he embarked on what seemed to be a series of economic and political reforms. Yet substantive change proved elusive. Even so, the appearance was enough to lure the return of Western diplomats, intelligence officers, and oil companies. Eager for profits and co­oper­ation against terrorism—facing a jihadist threat at home, the dictator had been the first foreign leader to issue an Interpol arrest for Osama bin Ladin—the West ignored the fact that the template of power in Libya had never really changed; it had just been rearranged, becoming more kleptocratic and dynastic, as Gaddafi devolved greater power to his sons.13 By late 2010, the reform project had all but died and frustration was mounting over the country’s worsening economy, corruption, and human rights abuses. Early 2011 saw protests over housing shortages. The revolution that formally started with protests in Benghazi on February 15, 2011 had a broad array of causes—and the political and military actors that joined did so for a variety of parochial reasons, as was the case for those that stayed loyal. Beyond the goal of defeating Gaddafi, there was an underappreciated disunity among the rebels who advanced differing historical narratives and visions for the post-revolutionary order. The course of the revolution, international intervention, and the regime’s application of armed force created new forms of sub-state affiliation and mobilization, manifested in tribal and town councils, Islamist networks, revolutionary brigades, and ethnolinguistic activism, to name a few. In some senses, the rivalries that would plague the country after the revolution were long in the making, the results of Gaddafi’s rule, but in others, they resulted from the revolution itself. The spark of the revolution was the arrest in Benghazi of a lawyer, Fathi Terbil, who had advocated for families of victims of a notorious prison massacre at Abu Slim in 1996. In many respects, it was natural that the east and Benghazi in particular became the locus of the resistance—the city had long been marginalized under the dictator and had a tradition of activism stemming back to the monarchy. Protests calling for Terbil’s release quickly spiraled into calls for political reform and then, as the regime used force, into calls for the downfall of the regime. The early protestors hailed from a broad spectrum—liberals, lawyers, students, and Islamists—but it was the defection of a Benghazibased special forces unit that proved crucial in enabling the rebels to seize Benghazi. A speech on February 20, 2011 by Gaddafi’s son Saif which threatened a crackdown and removed any hopes for reform, had a similarly electrifying effect. By March 5, the rebels had formed a transitional governing body, the National Transitional Council, that declared itself the sole representative of the Libyan people and called for the establishment of a “civil, constitutional and democratic state.”14 13  Pargeter (2010).

14  Bartu (2015: 37).

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After GADDAFI: Libya’s Path to Collapse   669 By mid-March, Gaddafi was threatening to retake Benghazi by force and his strident threats of punishment raised fear in Western capitals of an impending bloodbath. In retrospect, the likelihood of mass killings was exaggerated, the result of inflated reports by exiled Libyans and a general lack of intelligence among Western powers. The NATOled intervention that began prematurely on March 19 with French air strikes on Gaddafi’s columns outside Benghazi was predicated on a United Nations Security Council Resolution to protect civilians. Yet as the revolution progressed the logic of civilian protection gave way to regime change, abetted by active support to the rebels from NATO member states and, especially, by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which funneled weapons and sent advisors.15 The competition between these two powers, each of which backed disparate factions on the ground, had a far-reaching effect on Libya’s divisions after the revolution. By early summer, the revolution had spread to the coastal town of Misrata, which endured a vicious, months-long siege, to the western Nafusa mountains, and to the south. The battlefield stalemate was compounded by growing disunity within the rebel ranks, epitomized by the assassination in July of a popular defected army commander, Abdel Fatah al-Younis, allegedly by radical Islamists.16 As Misrata broke out of its siege through assistance from British and French special forces advisors—and as the Nafusa front turned in the rebels’ favor, again with the support of French and Gulf Arab weapons—the focus turned toward the liberation of the capital and what would come next.17 Here, an array of competing plans and uncoordinated outside support to different rebel factions would help ensure that the post-Gaddafi order would be wracked by divisions.18 The capital finally fell in August through an assault from east and west and, especially, an uprising within the city aided by covert shipments of arms. The last remaining pockets of pro-Gaddafi forces endured ferocious attacks by the rebels, particularly Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, where the dictator had fled before meeting his end on October 20, 2011.

After the Fall: The Lost Year In the year after Gaddafi’s death, Libyans grappled with the enormity of fashioning a new political compact, struggling against the ruin of the dictator’s rule but, more im­port­ant­ly, the after-effects of the revolution. The resulting political fragmentation was largely due to that revolution’s character: it was decentralized, hyper-local, and lacking in cohesive leadership. Added to this was the external dimension: international support for the revolution had been divided, exacerbating fault lines that would later destabilize the country.

15  Wehrey (2015: 43–68). 16  Bartu (2015: 48–50). 18  Cole and Khan (2015: 55–79).

17  Wehrey (2015: 43–68).

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670   frederic wehrey In the first year of the transition, however, much of this was not apparent: inter­ nation­al actors rallied behind the new government, supporting the push for elections, guided by the mantra of “Libyan ownership.” For the Obama administration, the im­ pera­ tive to avoid another Iraq-style military presence was especially acute: Washington ceded most post-conflict initiatives to the Europeans and the United Nations.19 But the United Nations, by its own admission, had a small mission that was focused on supporting elections to the detriment of dealing with the country’s growing challenge from well-armed militias.20 For their part, the Europeans exerted only scattershot and ill-coordinated efforts of technocratic assistance. As the first year unfolded, the full scale of the challenges became apparent. Libya lacked sufficient bureaucratic and technocratic capacities to absorb assistance; foreign diplomats and development officials would visit ministries to find them hollow and devoid of staff. Libyans with the expertise, education, and know-how were often in exile abroad for years, if not decades, and grew suspicious of Libyans who stayed.21 Popular frustration with the transitional government mounted: its processes were opaque, it offered deference on important decisions to preserve consensus and it distributed funds based on the old patterns of cronyism and clientalism.22 Liberal women activists who had helped spearhead the first protests against Gaddafi were especially frustrated at what appeared to be a growing patriarchy and, in some instances, a reversal of the late dictator’s liberalizing reforms toward women.23 Still, in the first months of 2012, it was possible to be guardedly optimistic. Oil production had rebounded more expediently than many had expected. Civil society or­gan­ iza­tions started to flourish, as did political associations and media, all unfettered by government control.24 The country was making steady progress toward national elections and had conducted successful municipal elections. On the eve of parliamentary voting, there were scattered acts of violence, mostly by armed federalists in the east. Those federalists demanded a greater share of seats to compensate for the east’s historic neglect by the Gaddafi regime—a marginalization they felt was being repeated by the country’s new leadership.25 But the popular push-back against the federalists was de­cisive and loud: in protests across the country, Libyans rejected attempts to divide the country while also calling for a revision of the centralization that had defined the Gaddafi era. Even so, shortly before the voting, the transitional council yielded to federalists’ demands in order to prevent them from boycotting, amending the 2011 Constitutional Declaration to allow for direct elections to the Constitutional Drafting Assembly rather than selection by the newly elected parliament. This seemingly minor technical concession in reality set a dangerous precedent in Libya’s new political life: the use or threat of force to coerce electoral bodies or electoral process. Despite this disturbance, international observers hailed the elections as a success. Turnout at 62 percent was higher than anticipated and the voting was generally fair and 19  Wehrey (2018a: 68). 20  Ian Martin (2013: 127–152). 21  Wehrey (2018a: 73). 22  Bartu (2015: 31–54). 23  St John (2017). 24  Perroux (2015); Wollenberg and Pack (2013: 2). 25  Kane (2015).

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After GADDAFI: Libya’s Path to Collapse   671 transparent.26 The much-feared landslide by Islamists did not happen—but neither was the election a sweep for liberals as commonly reported in the media—even the head of the so-called liberal bloc, the National Forces Alliance, had agreed that Islamic law was to be the basis for the state.27 The peculiar distribution of party and independent seats created challenges for forming a consensus. The lack of a consensus proved to be one of the causes of Libya’s unraveling. In hindsight, the rush to elections and the focus on technocratic institution-building obscured and ignored the unresolved political divisions that had catalyzed during the revolution. These political fractures would gradually merge with the growing power of the armed groups, a specter that had been fatefully unaddressed, and even worsened, by Libya’s transitional leadership and its international supporters.

Libya’s Armed Groups: Social, Political, and Economic Roots Like tribes, Libya’s armed groups—denoted in popular idiom and in the press as “mil­ itias”—have become a shorthand for describing the country’s chaos and violence. Yet to fully unpack the contours of Libya’s conflicts and to accurately describe the actors in those conflicts, the social and political bases of the armed groups and their links to elites and communities need to be understood.28 At the most basic level, the term “militia” is anathema to Libyans filling the ranks of these groups and their supporters: discarding its negative normative connation, they prefer the term “brigade” or “company” and describe themselves as “revolutionaries” (thuwwar) even though, as will be discussed later, many self-described revolutionaries did not fight in the anti-Gaddafi uprising. The proliferation and growth of armed groups after the revolution was partly the result of Gaddafi’s policy of neglecting the army starting in the 1980s after a series of coup attempts. Deprived of funds, equipment, and junior ranking officers, the Libyan army on the eve of the revolution was a largely hollow institution, save for a few elite and ultraloyal “security brigades” commanded by Gaddafi’s sons. The revolutionary armed groups that filled the vacuum after 2011 emerged in a hyperlocalized and fragmented pattern across the country. The most common basis of or­gan­ iza­tion was around towns, although within towns and cities themselves there were often dozens if not hundreds of armed groups, constituted along neighborhood lines and tied to specific business and political elites.29 Tribal solidarity was certainly a factor, though it is inaccurate to speak of a wholly “tribal” revolutionary militia. In eastern Libya, Islamism formed an important foundation though many of the brigades described as “Islamist” at the time of the revolution only became Islamist later, in 2013 and ­afterwards. 26  Carter Center (2012). 29  Lacher (2011: 140–54).

27  Slavin (2012).

28  McQuinn (2012: 12).

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672   frederic wehrey In 2011, Islamists fought alongside defected officers, students, and activists, with ideological leanings across the spectrum. For many Islamists, the bonds of incarceration in Gaddafi’s notorious Abu Slim prison were an important solidifying network. In contrast to the older defected colonels and generals, jihadist-leaning Islamists often emerged as the most capable and charismatic commanders, battle-hardened from combat in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Bosnia.30 Perhaps most importantly, the experience of combat and subjection to Gaddafi’s fierce counterinsurgency shaped the formation of the armed groups, their leadership, and their links to local communities.31 A key example here is the port city of Misrata, with its own distinctive identity of mercantilism and Mediterranean ties, which endured a ferocious, months-long siege that helped forge its disparate armed groups into Libya’s preeminent armed coalition.32 Foreign intervention and support were other catalyzing influences that had a long-term impact on the armed groups. Though the official NATO mandate was to protect Libyan civilians and not act on behalf of the rebels, the actions of individual member states, specifically the Arab nations of Qatar and the UAE, painted a different picture. These countries sent intelligence and special operations personnel early in the conflict and started funneling weapons and materiel into Libya.33 Crucially, there was a lack of coordination and, in the case of Qatar and the UAE, fierce competition that crystallized during the final push on Tripoli in August 2011. Rebel plans called for an assault from the western mountains and the east, combined with an uprising by secret armed cells within the capital itself, which had been armed and supported via Western and Gulf intelligence agents. Yet the actual assault became a free-for-all, with militias from the powerful western mountain town of Zintan and from Misrata quickly grabbing strategic sites within the capital—the airport, ministries, and the port—which they would later use as leverage in politics and for self-enrichment.34 Local Tripolitanian brigades, some of which were Islamist and backed by Qatar, were a third major force in the capital. The consequences of the armed groups’ seizure of the capital were far-reaching: it set up a pattern of predation and a zero sum contest that continues to the present. After Gaddafi’s death, the country’s transitional leadership tried repeatedly, and without success, to disarm and demobilize the brigades. The government tried to set up a program to funnel the young men in the armed groups into jobs trainings, education, or the official police and army. Yet the program foundered because of political infighting and because Libya’s bloated public-sector economy could not absorb them.35 But more important was a fateful step by the government in December 2011 to start channeling funds to the armed groups. The result was an expansion of the number of self-professed “revolutionary” armed groups, many of which had risen only after the revolution.36 Anyone with vehicles, friends, and access to weapons could “register” as an armed group and start receiving funds. Becoming a militia member became yet another way to access 30  Fitzgerald (2015). 31  Lacher (2020) 32  Blake (1968: 11); McQuinn (2015). 33  Wehrey (2015: 43–68). 34  Cole and Khan (2015: 55–79). 35  Wehrey (2014b). 36  Jeursen and Borgh (2014: 173–191).

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After GADDAFI: Libya’s Path to Collapse   673 state rents. In tandem with these payouts, the government tried to enlist the militias under the nominal authority of ministries of defense and interior as auxiliaries to help with such functions as border control, the protection of oil infrastructure, and quelling outbreaks of tribal fighting. But these schemes further entrenched militia power and, because Libya’s ministries of defense and interior, and the office of the chief of staff were controlled by competing political factions, the militias that fell under them mirrored this rivalry.37 The entry of armed groups into politics happened after the parliamentary voting. With the exception of the aforementioned violence by federalists, armed groups did not threaten the voting—and in fact guarded the polling stations and election officials. All that changed in late 2012. Violence from the armed groups was felt the strongest in Benghazi and in the east where, starting that summer, a campaign of assassinations began against ex-security men, judges, and foreign interests, such as the Red Cross. The actual perpetrators remained murky but were most likely radical jihadists, many of whom had been persecuted by the Gaddafi regime and were now taking revenge against their former tormentors.38 This trend culminated in the tragic attack on the American diplomatic outpost which left dead four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The retreat of the Americans from Benghazi and from Tripoli capped a burgeoning diminution of the international presence in Libya due to security. Civic activists mounted protests calling for the withdrawal and disbanding of militias, but the weak government— which was also increasingly penetrated by the militias—was both unwilling and unable to do anything. The full threat of militia pressure was felt in the middle of 2013 during parliamentary debates over a piece of legislation that would exclude Libya’s technocrats, bureaucrats, and officer corps from future employment in the government because of their affiliation with the Gaddafi regime. Though many Libyans favored some sort of exclusion against those who had committed crimes, the bill that was actually passed—the Political Isolation Law—went too far. By including ambassadors, deans of universities, student union leaders, and other categories, it deprived vast swathes of the population of an income and, more importantly, it implicitly favored the “revolutionary” militias, which had played a role in threatening and pressuring legislators to pass it.39 Along with the 2011 decision to pay the militias, the Political Isolation Law was probably the single most detrimental step in the unraveling of Libya. It sharpened the fault lines between Libya’s “revolutionary” camp—drawn from Islamists, western towns, and those who wanted a complete remaking of the old order—and those who wanted some return to or reform of the status quo, including formerly loyalist tribes, ex-regime officials, and towns that had enjoyed the dictator’s favors. It solidified the links between political blocs in the parliament and militias. In Tripoli, its effects were especially acute: it deepened the battle lines between the Zintani militias, who had suffered because of

37  Lacher and Cole (2014).

38  Wehrey (2014a).

39  Smith (2013).

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674   frederic wehrey the law, and the Misratans, who had endorsed it.40 Politically, it disfavored the National Forces Alliance, which worked to subvert the parliament through a civic movement and drew closer to the Zintani armed groups to do this.41 Adding to the domestic pressures, Libya’s transition was threatened and transformed by events within the Arab world. Among these, the 2013 coup in Egypt by General Abdel Fatah el-Sisi against the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi—along with the slaughter of hundreds of Brotherhood members and their supports—had a polarizing effect on Libya. In retrospect, it signaled the Arab Spring’s Thermidor period across the region—a counterrevolutionary wave engineered largely through Saudi and Emirati support. For Libyan Islamists, especially in parliament, the coup had a chilling effect, hardening their resolve to cling to power and weapons as a guarantee against imprisonment or worse.42 Among Libya’s anti-Islamists, the Sisi coup was greeted with glee: many hoped that a Sisi-like strongman would arrive in Libya to restore order and eliminate the Brotherhood. Meanwhile, Libya’s politics continued to fracture and militarize. The embattled prime minister, Ali Zeidan, had been largely powerless to mediate among the quarreling factions in parliament, especially an increasingly powerful Islamist/revolutionary bloc and its militia backers: he eventually sided with Zintani militias himself, out of selfprotection.43 A string of incidents in mid and late 2013 highlighted his impotence before Libyans and the international community: an oil blockade, militia massacres of civilian protestors, and then in October 2013 his own kidnapping by Islamist-leaning militias with links to a hard-line parliamentary bloc. But it was in Benghazi, the cradle of the revolution, where Zeidan would face his greatest challenge, the one that would drive the country into civil war. By late 2013 and early 2014, the pace of killings in the city had escalated: drive-by shootings and car bombs against activists, judges, and security men had left residents cowering in fear. While criminality and tribal vendettas likely accounted for some of the deaths, many were attributed to a campaign by radical Islamists, led by Ansar alSharia. Most of the killings went unsolved because there was never any follow-up by the weak-to-nonexistent police. Zeidan tried to halt the increase, pleading with the more moderate Islamist militias, who drew their salaries from the government, but many of their members had social and familial links with the radicals. An embattled Libyan Special Forces unit started clashing with the radicals in late 2013 and pleaded for more ammunition and support from the Tripoli government. Its commander railed against Islamist parliamentarians for funding and backing the Islamist militias in Benghazi.44 The city awaited its deliverer and in May 2014, it came in an unlikely person.

40  Lacher (2016). 41  Tabib (2016: 87). 43  Wehrey (2018a: 62). 44  Wehrey (2014).

42  Kirkpatrick and Hubbard (2013).

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After GADDAFI: Libya’s Path to Collapse   675

Civil War and Regional Intervention General Khalifa Haftar is a septuagenarian army officer who had supported Gaddafi’s coup in 1969 before defecting in the 1980s, with CIA assistance, after leading Libyan troops in Libya’s disastrous war with Chad. Residing in northern Virginia for decades and moving in Libyan opposition circles, he returned in 2011 during the revolution and jostled for military leadership of the rebellion, only to be rejected.45 Fading to the margins, he re-emerged in February 2014, declaring on television that the Libyan parliament, the General National Congress (GNC), had outlived its mandate and was void, under threat of military force. Prime Minister Zeidan decried the move as “ridiculous” and Libyans shrugged the episode off as “the coup that wasn’t.”46 But Haftar wasn’t done. Building on anti-Islamist sentiment and, especially, the public desire for security in Benghazi, he forged a loose coalition of tribes and disaffected army and air force units and, on May 16, launched an attack on the bases of Benghazi’s Islamist militias. Crucially, he did not just attack the jihadists but also Islamists who were also pro-state and who might have been reconciled. The result was predictable: the disparate Islamist armed groups joined forces and pushed his forces to the outskirts of the city. Haftar drew increasing support in the months ahead for what he called “Operation Dignity,” from federalists, ex-regime loyalists, eastern tribes, anti-Islamist activists, and ordinary residents in Benghazi who were sick of the grinding violence. In the west, Zintani militias, opponents of the Islamists and Misratan bloc, supported his operation, as did politicians from the National Forces Alliance, which had suffered because of the Political Isolation Law. From abroad, wealthy financiers poured in money and sponsored adoring media coverage of his campaign.47 The parallels to General Sisi’s coup in Egypt were obvious—Haftar himself had borrowed the Egyptian strongman’s messianic and pro-military tropes in his speeches. However, ultimately, those comparisons were superficial: Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) was a collection of local paramilitaries and hardly equal to the Egyptian military. In addition to “cleansing” Benghazi, an unspoken aim of Haftar’s operation was to restore the privileges and pay of the Libyan military’s officer class which had been sidelined by the militias and their backers in the parliament. Haftar also sought to force the dissolution of the parliament and the holding of elections for a new body, which some of his key backers hoped would be based in eastern Libya as opposed to the west. In June 2014, the GNC belatedly convened elections for the follow-on legislature, the House of Representatives, resulting in a blow to Islamist and revolutionary bloc candidates. This lessening of influence, combined with the fear that Haftar was planning a military assault on the capital through his allies, the Zintanis, prompted an assault on Tripoli International Airport (a key stronghold of the Zintanis) in July. This assault was 45  Tremblais (2018).

46  Kirkpatrick (2014).

47  Fitzgerald (2014).

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676   frederic wehrey by a coalition drawn from Misrata and other western towns and Islamist militias—what its leaders dubbed Operation Dawn, a direct counterpoint. As fighting rattled Tripoli, the new parliament moved to the Haftar-controlled east. Within months, the fighting had engulfed the entire country: to the south, already wracked by communal conflict between Arabs, Tabu, and Tuareg, and the oil-rich Sirte basin.48 More importantly, it resulted in its de facto split: the eastern-based House of Representatives appointed Haftar its commander-in-chief and tried to duplicate a number of government institutions that still resided in Tripoli such as the Central Bank.49 Regional intervention only intensified the fighting: the Egyptians and Emiratis provided weapons, advisors, and air strikes to aid Haftar while the Turks and Qataris backed his Misratan and Islamist op­pon­ents—all of it in contravention of the UN arms embargo.50 The fighting raged for months, driving foreign diplomats out of the country, sending oil revenues downward, and worsening the living conditions of ordinary Libyans to abysmal lows.51 As the economy and service delivery dwindled, localism reigned supreme: the notion of Libya’s warring Dawn and Dignity factions controlling “blocs” of territory did not match reality on the ground.52 The conflict actors were in fact highly localized and fragmented; towns and their militias became a law unto themselves and even within specific cities, there was a dizzying array of factions.53 All of this complicated international and UN-led efforts to mediate a settlement. In December 2015, such a settlement was indeed reached, in the resort town of Skhirat, Morocco, where representatives from the opposing sides signed an agreement producing the Government of National Accord, integrating the legislative bodies from both sides. Predictably, this misplaced belief in a binary settlement has failed: the parties that signed the accord did not speak for the armed factions involved in the conflict. When the Government of National Accord finally took office in Tripoli, its governing council proved unwieldy and was rife with internal divisions, unable to extend its authority beyond a few neighborhoods. Even one-time supporters of the government grew dismayed at its inability to provide services. Electricity and water shortages became the norm. Worse, corruption and extortion at the Central Bank caused a liquidity crisis and rampant inflation. Much of this was due to the GNA’s tolerance for and reliance upon what has been described as a “cartel” of local Tripoli militias.54 With its domestic legitimacy floundering, the government leaned even more on Western support. But it was Western security interests that had resulted in what many believed was the rushed and ill-conceived founding of the GNA in the first place: the United States was worried about the rise of the Islamic State in Libya and the Europeans were concerned about the explosion of irregular migration, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, across Libyan territory and through the Mediterranean. In both cases, these threats were of secondary importance to Libya’s factions: it was the preoccupation of 48  Murray (2017). 49  Wehrey (2018a: 191–195). 50  United Nations Security Council (2017: 24–35). 51  Raval and Saleh (2016). 52  Matthia Toaldo (2016). 53  Willcoxon (2017); Carboni and Moody (2018: 456–490). 54  Lacher (2018).

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After GADDAFI: Libya’s Path to Collapse   677 Dawn and Dignity with fighting each other that allowed the Islamic State to expand unimpeded. Nevertheless, local militia barons, sometimes nominally affiliated with the Tripoli government, positioned themselves as interlocutors and allies to outside powers in combating both migrant smuggling and the Islamic State. Western states channeled their assistance on both fronts through the Government of National Accord, maintaining the fictive notion of its sovereignty and legitimacy.55 On the ground, disparate outside assistance to different factions had the effect of empowering and emboldening local actors, to the detriment of national reconciliation. The clearest evidence of this was the secret support by French intelligence officers to Haftar’s troops in Benghazi despite the fact that the French had pledged to support only the UN-backed Tripoli government.56 French aid, along with Emirati armored vehicles, allowed Haftar’s forces to finally conquer Benghazi in late 2017 at the cost of widespread destruction, displacement, and human rights abuses by both sides.57 Flush from victory, Haftar threatened to move on Tripoli and was soon courted in European capitals.58 Yet his self-styled narrative of strongman rule was illusory: the militia coalition he had assembled under the rubric of the Libyan National Army began to fracture along tribal and factional lines soon after the liberation of Benghazi.59

Conclusion: Truncated Sovereignty and Hybridity Libya today exists in an uneasy stasis of frozen fragmentation and sporadic violence. The worst of the fighting has passed and the scale of the bloodshed pales in comparison to Yemen and Syria. Media depictions of a Hobbesian anarchy ignore the fact that on the ground new forms of governance have arisen—what can best be described as hybrid orders, whereby local councils, tribes, militias, and criminal elements have reached a sometimes uneasy accord on security and service provision.60 The specter of complete financial collapse was averted by rebounding oil production, even if oil facilities, along with other financial assets, remain continued prizes of militia contention, along with a burgeoning illicit economy.61 Similarly, the threats that had long preoccupied Western powers have receded or been contained. By subcontracting counter-smuggling to militias and the national Libyan coastal guard, the Europeans and Italians have diminished the flow of migrants— though at great moral cost, as the migrants continue to be housed in detention centers in Libya and subject to great abuses. On the terrorism front, Libyan forces drawn mostly from the city of Misrata, backed by American airpower and ground advisors, ousted the 55  Kirkpatrick (2015). 56  Bensimon, Bobin, and Zerrouky (2016). 57  United Nations Security Council (2011: 24–35). 58  Wehrey (2017). 59  Harchaoui (2018). 60  Husken and Kluete (2015: 320–337); Megerisi (2018). 61  Eaton (2018).

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678   frederic wehrey Islamic State from its stronghold in the central coastal city of Sirte.62 Elsewhere, local Libyan militias, whether smugglers or rival Islamists and jihadists, defeated the Islamic State in Sabratha, Darna, and Tripoli—often for self-serving economic and political motives.63 Yet the potential for a jihadist re-emergence remains: cells of the terrorist group move along central valleys and desert. Also, the underlying drivers of radicalization—corruption, despair, economic misery, and especially prison abuses, are still everpresent.64 In the southwest corner of the country, al-Qaeda’s Saharan affiliate continues to enjoy freedom of movement. For ordinary Libyans, the descent has been heartbreaking. If they have not fled the country—and many have done so or tried to, sometimes joining African migrants in rickety boats—they are beset with everyday afflictions ranging from kidnappings to militia violence to skyrocketing prices and a shortage of medical care. In many instances, Libyans accuse the country’s elites, whether the political class or especially the militia bosses, of plundering the country’s wealth while benefiting from the frozen status quo. Socially, the country’s religious sphere is changing with the rise of a conservative form of Salafism known as Madkhalism, which has undercut Libya’s historic Sufi and Maliki heritage, often through the influence of well-armed Salafi militias who have taken on policing functions.65 It seems likely that Libya will persist in a state of truncated sovereignty, contained violence and hyper-localism. Similarly, the country will continue to be penetrated by Middle Eastern and Western powers, each pursuing disparate objectives in concert with competing factions. Successive United Nations missions and sanctions-monitoring reports have failed to deter this meddling or to forge anything resembling a durable social contract among Libyans.66 Faced with this dissolution, it is natural that some Libyans look to the Gaddafi past and long for the security provided by authoritarian rule.67 Even those who do not exhibit this nostalgia speak of a sobering loss of idealism about the revolution’s legacy. “We thought it would be the last bullet,” one Libyan said of the gunshot that killed Gaddafi. “In fact, it was only the first.”68

References Anderson, Lisa (1990). “Tribe and State: Libyan Anomalies,” in Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (eds). Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris). Anderson, Lisa (1993). “Ramadan al-Suwayhli: Hero of the Libyan Resistance,” in Edmund Burke III (ed.). Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 114–128. Anderson, Lisa (2017). “ ‘They Defeated Us All’: International Interests, Local Politics, and Contested Sovereignty in Libya,” Middle East Journal 71,2: 232–233. 62  Wehrey (2016). 64  Wehrey (2018b). 67  Rubin (2018).

63  Wehrey and Alrababa’h (2015); Chivvis (2016: 113–130). 65  Wehrey (2016). 66  Wehrey and Lacher (2018). 68  Wehrey (2018a: 64).

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After GADDAFI: Libya’s Path to Collapse   679 Baldinetti, Anna (2010). The Origins of the Libyan Nation (New York: Routledge), 27–29. Bartu, Peter (2015). “The Corridor of Uncertainty: The National Transitional Council’s Battle for Legitimacy and Recogntion,” in Peter Cole and Brian McQuinn (eds). The Libyan Revolution (London: C. Hurst & Co.), 31–54. Bensimon, Cyril, Bobin Frédéric, and Zerrouky Madjid (2016). “Trois membres de la DGSE tués en Libye, le gouvernement libyen proteste,” Le Monde, July 20. Blake, G. H. (1968). “Misurata: A Market Town in Tripolitania,” Research Paper Series 9: 11 (Durham: University of Durham). Carboni, Andrea and James Moody (2018). “Between the Cracks: Actor Fragmentation and Local Conflict Systems in the Libyan Civil War,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 29,3: 456–490. Carter Center (2012). “Carter Center Congratulates Libyans for Holding Historic Elections,” July 9. Central Intelligence Agency (2018). The World Fact Book. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency. Chivvis, Christopher  S. (2016). “Countering the Islamic State in Libya,” Survival, 58,4: 113–130. Chulov, Martin (2012). “Gaddafi’s Last Moments: ‘I Saw the Hand Holding the Gun and I Saw It Fire,” Guardian, October 20. Cole, Peter and Umar Khan (2015). “The Fall of Tripoli,” in Peter Cole and Brian McQuinn (eds). The Libyan Revolution and Its Aftermath (London: C. Hurst & Co.), 55–79. Costantini, Irene (2016). “Conflict dynamics in post-2011 Libya: a political economy perspective,” Conflict, Security & Development 16,5: 405–422. Eaton, Tim (2018). “Libya’s War Economy: Predation, Profiteering and State Weakness,” Chatham House, April. Fitzgerald, Mary (2014). “Libya’s New Power Brokers,” Foreign Policy, August 27. Fitzgerald, Mary (2015). “Finding Their Place. Libya’s Islamists during and after the 2011 Uprising,” in Peter Cole and Brian McQuinn (eds). The Libyan Revolution and Its Aftermath (London: C. Hurst & Co.). Fitzgerald, Mary and Tarek Megerisi (2015). “Libya: Whose Land Is It?,” Legatum Institute, April. Harchaoui, Jalel (2018). “Haftar’s Ailing Narrative,” Sada, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 16. Hüsken, Thomas (2009). “The Neo-Tribal Competitive Order in the Borderland of Egypt and Libya,” in Ulf Engel and Paul Nugent (eds). Respacing Africa (Amsterdam: Brill), 169–209. Husken, Thomas and Georg Kluete. 2015. “Political Orders in the Making: Emerging Forms of Political Organization from Libya to Northern Mali,” African Security 8,4: 320–337. Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer (2016). “Ten Myths About the 2011 Intervention in Libya,” Washington Quarterly 39,2: 23–43. Jeursen, T. and C.  van der Borgh (2014). “Security Provision after Regime Change: Local Militias and Political Entities in Post-Qadda Tripoli,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 8,2–3: 173–191. Kane, S. (2015). “Barqa reborn? Eastern regionalism and Libya's political transition,” in Peter Cole and Brian McQuinn (eds). The Libyan Revolution and Its Aftermath (London: C. Hurst & Co.), 205–227. Kirkpatrick, David D. (2014). “In Libya, a Coup. Or Perhaps Not,” New York Times, February 14. Kirkpatrick, David D. (2015). “ISIS Finds New Frontier in Chaotic Libya,” New York Times, October 3.

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680   frederic wehrey Kirkpatrick, David D. and Ben Hubbard (2013). “For Islamists, Dire Lessons on Politics and Power,” New York Times, July 4. Kohl, Ines (2014). “Libya’s ‘Major Minorities’. Berber, Tuareg and Tebu: Multiple Narratives of Citizenship, Language and Border Control,” Middle East Critique 23,4: 423–438. Lacher, Wolfram (2011). “Families, Tribes and Cities in the Libyan Revolution,” Middle East Policy 18,4: 140–154. Lacher, Wolfram (2013). “Fault Lines of the Revolution: Political Actors, Camps and Conflicts in the New Libya,” German Institute for International and Security Affairs Research Paper 4: May. Lacher, Wolfram (2016). “Libya’s Local Elites and the Politics of Alliance Building,” Mediterranean Politics 21,1. Lacher, Wolfram (2017). “Was Libya’s Collapse Predictable?” Survival, 59:2, 139–152. Lacher, Wolfram (2018). “Tripoli’s Militia Cartel,” SWP Comment, April 20. Lacher, Wolfram (2020). Libya’s Fragmentation (I. B. Tauris). Lacher, Wolfram and Peter Cole (2014). “Politics by Other Means: Conflicting Interests in Libya’s Security Sector,” Small Arms Survey Paper 20: October. Martin, Ian (2013). “The United Nations’ Role in the First Year of the Transition,” in Peter Cole and Brian McQuinn (eds). The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath (London: C. Hurst & Co.), 127–152. Massie, Christopher (2013). “Libya, a Country Under-Covered,” Columbia Journalism Review, August 27. Mattes, Hanspeter (2004). “Challenges to Security Sector Governance in the Middle East: The Case of Libya,” Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces (DCAF). McQuinn, Brian (2012). “After the Fall. Libya’s Evolving Armed Groups,” Geneva Security Assessment in North Africa Working Paper 12. McQuinn, Brian (2015). “History’s Warriors: The Emergence of Revolutionary Battalions in Misrata,” in Peter Cole and Brian McQuinn (eds). The Libyan Revolution and Its Aftermath (London: C. Hurst & Co.), 229–255. Megerisi, Tarek (2018). “Order from chaos: Stabilising Libya the local way,” European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), July 19. Mundy, Jacob (2018). Libya (Hot Spots in Global Politics) (Cambridge: Polity Press). Murray, Rebecca (2017). “Southern Libya Destablized: The Case of Ubari,” Small Arms Survey, Briefing Paper, April 2017. Najem, Faraj (2017). Tribe, Islam, and State in Libya: Analytical Study of the Roots of Libyan Tribal Society and Evolution Up to the Qaramanli Reign (1781–1835) (Benghazi: Center for Africa Research), 130–139. Ouannès, Moncef (2009). Militaires, Élites et Modernisation dans la Libye Contemporaine (Paris: L’Harmattan). Pargeter, Alison (2010). “Reform in Libya: Chimera or Reality?” Mediterranean Paper Series 2010, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, October: 288–302. Perroux, Jean-Louis Romanet (2015). “Libya’s Untold Story: Civil Society Amid Chaos,” Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, Middle East Brief. Raval, Anjli and Saleh, Heba (2016). “War and Strife Have Cost Libya $68bn in Lost Oil Revenues,” Financial Times, January 24. Rubin, Alissa J. (2018). “Libyan Factions Agree to Elections Despite Deep Divisions,’ New York Times, May 29. Slavin, Barbara (2012). “Jibril: Libya Is a ‘Stateless Society,’ ” Al-Monitor, November 8.

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After GADDAFI: Libya’s Path to Collapse   681 Smith, R. (2013). “Libya’s political isolation law: confusion and charade,” openDemocracy, May 13. St John, Ronald Bruce (2011). Libya: Continuity and Change (New York: Routledge). Tabib, Rafaa (2016). “Mobilized Publics in Post-Qadhafi Libya: The Emergence of New Modes of Popular Protest in Tripoli and Ubari,” Mediterranean Politics 21,1: 87. Toaldo, Matthia (2016). “Decentralising authoritarianism? The international intervention, the new ‘revolutionaries’ and the involution of Post-Qadhafi Libya,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 27: 1. Tremblais, Jean-Louis, “Khalifa Haftar, un maréchal face au chaos libyen,” Le Figaro, January 5 2018. http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2018/01/05/01003-20180105ARTFIG00035khalifa-haftar-un-marechal-face-au-chaos-libyen.php United Nations Security Council (2017). “Final Report of the Panel of Experts on Libya Established Pursuant to Resolution 1973 (2011),” June 1, 24–35. Vandewalle, Dirk (2006). A History of Modern Libya (New York: Cambridge University Press). Wehrey, Frederic (2014a). “The Battle for Benghazi,” The Atlantic, February 28. Wehrey, Frederic (2014b). “Ending Libya’s Civil War: Reconciling Politics, Rebuilding Security,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September. Wehrey, Frederic (2015). “The Libyan Experience,” in Karl Mueller (ed.). Precision and Purpose: Airpower in the Libyan Civil War (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation), 43–68. Wehrey, Frederic (2016). “Quiet No More,” Diwan blog, Carnegie Middle East Center, October 13. Wehrey, Frederic (2017). “ ‘Whoever Controls Benghazi Controls Libya,’ ” The Atlantic, July 1. Wehrey, Frederic (2018a). The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Wehrey, Frederic (2018b). “When the Islamic State Came to Libya,” The Atlantic, February 10. Wehrey, Frederic and Alaʾ Alrababaʾh (2015). “Splitting the Islamists: The Islamic State’s Creeping Advance in Libya,” Diwan blog, Carnegie Middle East Center, June 19. Wehrey, Frederic and Wolfram Lacher (2018). “The Wrong Way to Fix Libya,” Foreign Affairs, June 19. Willcoxon, George Frederick (2017). “Contention, Violence and Stalemate in Post-War Libya,” Mediterranean Politics 22: 1. Wollenberg, Anja and Jason Pack (2013). “Rebels with a Pen: Observations on the Newly Emerging Media Landscape in Libya,” The Journal of North African Studies, 18,2.

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Epilogue: R evolutionary Times in Contemporary History Jens Hanssen and Amal Ghazal

As we sat down to write this Handbook’s introduction in the spring of 2019, Sudanese and Algerian protestors had launched a new wave of Arab uprisings. Then the Iraqis and Lebanese rose up in unprecedented fashion in October. We realized that we needed to compose an epilogue to capture these monumental events. It has been exhilarating to start this project in the wake of one wave of uprisings and to close it with another. We took a final look at this epilogue as the Covid-19 pandemic broke out and all but suspended anti-regime mobilizations in MENA. But there is every reason to conclude that the uprisings will continue. Too determined are the demonstrators to complete the struggle that began in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria in 2011 and to bring about “the fall of the regime” in their countries; too dependent are the politician–business class and the military industrial complex on the corruption they have sown and on the geopolitical protection they reap from abroad. The aspirations of the first set of Arab uprisings, expressed in the ubiquitous slogan “freedom, bread, and dignity” have been renewed by the Lebanese chant “Kullun ya‘ni kullun” (“all of them means all of them”); the Iraqi slogan “Nurid watan” (“we want a homeland”); and the Algerian mantra “Yetnahaw Ga3” (“they should all go”). It has been said that the “Arab Spring” turned into an “Arab Winter.” While a cycle of counter-revolutions did seem to have crushed the 2011 uprisings, we have avoided seasonal metaphors to explain the dynamics of popular upheavals, revolutionary processes, and political stakes at work in contemporary MENA. If anything, the Arab uprisings constitute a chain of events that defy the contemporary litany of political oppression and economic crises.1 It now appears certain that people will not settle until significant institutional changes are brought out that improve economic and political conditions. It is unclear what forms the ongoing revolutions will take. But we contend that the validity

1  Ghazal (2016: 69).

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684   Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History of our Handbook’s arguments does not depend on future outcomes. Should the current revolutions suffer the same tragic fate as the ones in 2011, it would invalidate neither our point that the political economy of the region—if not the world—needs to be rethought from the bottom up, nor the fact that the people in the region and elsewhere suffer enormously from neoliberal authoritarianism and will continue to demand better at ever-greater risks to their lives. Our Handbook has challenged existing narratives that expect defeat, foreclose alternative futures, or are deaf to popular demands. It is time to consider remodeling our analytical toolkits in light of contemporary human practices, collective experiences, and social movements. A serious engagement with contemporary events in MENA exposes the deep gulf between academic research agendas and disciplinary debates on the one hand, and the aspirations of the people trying to disrupt and change the ordinary flow of history.2 In the course of revolutionary times, cultural and geopolitical epistemicians struggle to square the unruly events unfolding before their eyes with the analytical cat­ egor­ies in their heads. There appears to be a reluctance to accept those emergent phenomena that fail to conform to established disciplinary forms of knowledge, whether political science or religious studies, international law or social anthropology. We have written this epilogue in an attempt to account for key developments that occurred after our contributors wrote their chapters. We first provide a brief survey of the causes and triggers of the current revolutionary cycle in its international socioeconomic context. We conclude by way of offering some preliminary reflections on the dynamics of the 2019 protest movements themselves.

“All of Them Means all of Them” In the immediate aftermath of the first set of uprisings in 2011, many skeptics commented that they might turn out to be temporary outbursts of popular discontent un­able to generate long-term transformations. This is certainly a short-sighted analysis and echoes the counterrevolutionary measures adopted by some MENA regimes. For ex­ ample, Muhammad bin Salman, the new crown prince of Saudi Arabia and Muhammad bin Zayid, the crown prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates (the UAE), have speculated on Egypt and Bahrain as success stories in counterrevolution, when they tried to force similar outcomes in Libya and Yemen, two countries that were key sites of uprisings but are now zones of proxy war and civil strife. The war in Yemen was “Muhammad bin Salman’s war” as Saudi journalists, including the late Jamal Khashuqji (Kashoggi), boasted at the beginning of the campaign in 2015. The UAE has recently cut its losses by pulling troops out of the war which has cost over 100,000 lives, manufactured a severe famine, and repartitioned 2  Thomas Serres has dissected eloquently the epistemic gulf between Western academics and Algerian revolutionaries in his “Can the Algerian Revolutionary Speak? The Challenges of Analyzing a Political Crisis in Real-Time,” jadaliyya.com, December 8, 2019. https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/40331?fbclid= IwAR0H3Vtsn3BOd59BWIxzavxWXiqWTAKNKmi5TYM5VO_nb4ahEO9AKtfq67E

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Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History   685 the country. The Saudis have taken over the port of Aden and oil-producing regions in southern Yemen and are trying to solidify their role in Yemen through the Riyadh Agreement signed on November 5, 2019. If implemented, “it will mean that Saudi Arabia will assume ultimate responsibility for southern Yemen politically, militarily and in terms of security,” according to a Yemeni political analyst.3 The situation in Libya is no more promising since Frank Wehrey has predicted in the last chapter of our Handbook that the country “will persist in a state of truncated sovereignty, contained violence and hyper-localism.” The renegade General Khalifa Haftar and his army’s six-month-long siege of the capital Tripoli has cost the lives of over a thousand people and continues relentlessly. Weapons and mercenaries pour into the country while the victims of this “second Libyan civil war” since 2011 pour out across the Mediterranean. Like in Yemen, there is no end in sight for the human suffering. Examples like these make it easy to become cynical, expecting the dark forces to always win. But one aspect that ought to distinguish critical area studies and contemporary history approaches from those of geopolitical and security studies is the recognition that victory and defeat are hindsight categories that obfuscate social processes, human practices, experiences, and aspirations during revolutionary times.4 Since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the War on (Islamist) Terror has cost the US treasury $6.4 trillion dollars, killed over 800,000 ­people and made thirty-seven million refugees and displaced persons.5 At the global level the US, Canada, and the European Union compete with Russia and China to pour arms into the region, and to provide diplomatic and logistical support for the repressive policies of their regional allies. At the regional level, the Saudi, Egyptian, and Israeli governments compete with those of Iran, Syria, and Hizbollah to suppress democratic aspirations across much of the region. Everywhere authoritarian regimes have resorted to civil-war fear-mongering, and xenophobic nationalism—and mass incarceration has surged dramatically. In the course of putting this Handbook together, we have witnessed an accelerated worldwide turn to right-wing politics in the US, the UK, and Russia, as well as outright fascism in many parts of eastern and southern Europe. Like their right-wing allies in the West, centrist states such as Canada, France, and Germany have imposed parliamentary restrictions on freedom of speech and academic freedom regarding Israel’s relentless destruction of Palestinian lives and livelihood. Iran has descended into a severe economic crisis, exacerbated by President Trump’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Deal and harsh new US sanctions. Faced with a growing public debt, this oil-rich government has rationed gas and hiked the price by between 50 percent and 200 percent in November 2019. Spontaneous, nation-wide protests were met with police brutality under cover of a five-day internet blackout. While the material conditions of ordinary Iranians have been worsening, the country has grown to become a weighty regional power. It has been the main beneficiary of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003; it has ensured the survival of the Assad regime 3  Maged al-Madhaji, “The Riyadh Agreement: Saudi Arabia Takes the Helm in Southern Yemen,” Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, November 5, 2019. 4  Serres (2019). 5  See .

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686   Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History in Syria against all odds; it has protected the unpopular government of Iraq; and provided financial and military cover for Hizbollah in Lebanon.6 The American as­sas­sin­ ation of Gen. Qasem Soleimani on January 3rd, 2020 has heightened international tensions while the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ “accidental” downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane a week later has further eroded the regime’s domestic stability and popu­lar acceptance. Saudi-Arabia’s and the UAE’s stand-off with Iran has further increased sectarianization that continues to threaten destabilization in the Gulf region and beyond, as their proxy warfare in Yemen has made clear. Saudi Arabia has recently undergone domestic change—some call it a palace coup, others a “Game of Saudi Thrones” – after King Salman made his then thirty-one-year-old son Muhammad bin Salman crown prince in June 2017. “MBS,” as he is known among his supporters, had first made a name for himself in Washington when he launched “Vision 2030”—an ambitious ten-year economic plan to wean Saudi-Arabia off its dependency on oil and foreign labor at a time when a barrel of crude was below $40 US. As crown prince, he quickly purged the council of princes who traditionally advised the Saudi king. In November 2017, he arrested dozens of Saudi billionaires and leading businessmen on charges of corruption and allegedly tried to extort billions for their release. This spectacular heist scared away international and local investors. The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi on October 2, 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a hit squad linked to Bin Salman, has further exposed the crown prince’s intolerance of dissent.7 Under mounting pressure, the friendship between the Trump family and Bin Salman has become a political lifeline for both sides. The most glaring example of the Trump administration’s criminal incompetence is its policy on Palestine. Since December 2018, the president has broken international law a number of times, in efforts to throw a political lifeline to the corrupt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to consign Palestinians to political and social death. First, Trump moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; in February 2019, he cut all US aid to the Palestinian Authorities; on March 15, he recognized the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights; and in June, his son-in-law Jared Kushner launched the “Peace to Prosperity” plan.8 Billed as “a new vision for the Palestinian people and the broader Middle East,” it is in fact no more than a scheme to incentivize Arab millionaires to bene­fit from the expulsion of the remaining Palestinians. The fact that as of November 18, 2019 the Trump administration no longer considers the Israeli settlements illegal provides further political cover for the accelerated Israeli settlement and annexation drive in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

6  Authenticated documents leaked to the Intercept recently have disclosed the extent to which in particular the head of the Iranian Quds Brigade, Major General Qasem Soleimani, meddled in Iraqi government affairs: . 7 German Intelligence Services warned publicly in 2015 that Muhammad bin Salman's assent to power was a threat to regional security. 8  See .

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Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History   687 Today the War-on-Terror consensus has over-written the UN-mandate to uphold international law in general and the Palestinian right to exist in particular. The global right-wing consensus not only grants Israel impunity for its crimes against Palestinians and anti-Zionist Jews. This authoritarian alliance also helps frame its victims as aggressors and label legitimate criticism as anti-Semitism. The Israeli government has created the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in response to the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement in 2006. The new ministry continues to function as an effective propaganda machine to “explain,” white-wash, and deflect from, Israeli atrocities.9 Its main mandate has been to intimidate the general public, discredit and harass pro-Palestinian activists, pervert the legal definition of anti-Semitism to include anti-Zionism, and put pressure on governments, organizations, media, and universities to criminalize criticism of Israel. If Donald Trump calling Egyptian President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi “my favorite dictator” in 2019 felt like another bad joke by a hapless president, his words give license to MENA heads of state to rule as pharaohs—like al-Sisi—or sultans—like President Erdoğan. Since riding to power on the back of a popular anti-Muslim Brotherhood uprising in 2013, the Egyptian president has turned the country into a security and surveillance state in which close to one hundred million inhabitants are effectively under permanent curfew. This has allowed the government to implement draconian austerity measures all the while spending Gulf loans on building a new national capital in the Egyptian desert. President Erdoğan has been in power much longer than al-Sisi. And he is a businessman, not an army man. But the dictatorial turn in Turkey developed in parallel with Egypt’s. As Asli Ü. Bâli’s nuanced chapter demonstrates, President Erdoğan used his enormous popularity to take advantage of the Turkish constitution by switching from prime minister to president. He built a personality cult around himself between the Gezi Park protests in 2013 at which police killed twenty-two activists, and the botched army coup attempt of 2016. The subsequent crackdown cost the lives of an estimated 300 people; over 50,000 people have been arrested and 160,000 fired from their jobs. By March 2019, President Erdoğan’s popularity began to dip, judging by the republican opposition’s municipal election victories in five of the largest cities. In this context, President Trump’s decision to withdraw most US troops from Syria and from the American– Kurdish military alliance against ISIS has given President Erdoğan license to occupy northern Syria and uproot Kurdish communities on both sides of the border. The Turkish government justified the invasion with the pretext of returning refugees to Syria, all the while threatening Europe with a new stream of refugees should the EU protest the invasion. Meanwhile, this latest Turkish population engineering plan has also given imprisoned ISIS fighters a second chance to regroup at the behest of Erdoğan, even as their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was assassinated on October 29, 2019. The resurgence of Russian power in MENA since the 2011 uprisings has primarily occurred through the Syrian corridor. President Putin’s military and diplomatic support 9  Hasbara Handbook (2002); see also Quigley (2016).

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688   Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History for the Assad family has sustained a regime responsible for the vast majority of the over half a million Syrians killed and tortured, as well as the over thirteen million refugees and internally displaced Syrians. Putin’s ruthless policy on Syria has severely challenged American hegemony in the region as a whole. Diplomatically, Russia has become the kind of broker for the Assad regime that the US has been for Israel for decades. Putin’s government has set the agenda of various peace talks since the Geneva negotiations over UNSC Resolution 2254 and a Syrian transition government broke down in 2017. At one and the same time in the fall of 2019, Israeli planes bombed the Iranian positions near Damascus; Russian and Syrian regime rockets rained down on Idlib province; and the Turkish army invaded northern Syria—each in the name of fighting terrorism. Syria’s future cannot begin until the Assad regime is dismantled, and national sovereignty restored. The Assad family has ruled over Syria for fifty years and, as Yassin al-Haj Saleh, the prominent intellectual of the globalized Syrian condition, has argued, it still deploys the rhetoric of eternity.10 The nation-wide, ecumenical uprising in 2011 shook the Assadist personalization of the Syrian state to the core. The revolution signaled to the world, that there was another subaltern Syria beneath decades of martial law and mass incarceration. The regime could only maintain the chimera of eternity by conducting a total war on the Syrian people, killing and torturing its finest. And yet, there has been a growing global consensus left, right, and center that a military victory of Assadist rule is the lesser evil. The mass exodus of Syrians in 2015 has shaken the foundations of the Turkish state, the European Union, and the world order as a whole. It has brought out the best and the worst in people. Those who have learned from the past have opened up their homes; and those who have not have attacked refugees, closed borders, and tampered with citizenship and asylum laws. Right-wing governments, fascist parties, and liberal indifference made racism respectable again in Europe, the US, and elsewhere. It has created a political environment which permits trampling the most basic shared understandings of human rights and international law. Tunisia stands out as a political success story despite a crippling economy. On October 13, 2019, Tunisians elected in a landslide vote the independent candidate Kais Saied, a legal scholar and political outsider promising to carry out the goals of the uprising. His victory was made possible by the support of the Tunisian youth and constituted a signal defeat of the frontrunner Nabil Karoui, a media mogul turned philanthropist who had served time for corruption during the election campaign. In this sense, popu­ lar revolutions continue in the Arab world—“al-thawra mustamirra.”11

10  Yassin el-Haj Saleh, “Dawlat ibada, wa laysa nizam diktaturi,” https://www.aljumhuriya.net/ar/, April 30, 2018. 11  We consider the debates about whether this, that, or any uprising qualifies as a revolution a heuristic distraction thrown up by liberal reformists, good governance gurus, democratic transitionalists, and scientific socialists. Revolutions, in our understanding, do not follow scientific models, nor do they need to be successful to earn the label. ‘Azmi Bishara makes the point that Arab uprisings may have started as movements of protest but turned into revolutions once they demanded and sought the downfall of their governments and an overhaul of the regime structures. See Bishara (2014).

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Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History   689 State and militia violence has destroyed Libyan, Yemeni, and Syrian societies. It has also severely damaged the social contract between citizens and the state in Bahrain and Egypt, often in the name of counterterrorism. In many cases, this has led to securitized sectarian and ethnic identities that “end up creating self-perpetuating in-out group dynamics and social realities that become difficult to roll back.”12 This form of se­curi­tiza­tion in MENA mirrors developments that are eroding democracy in the West, a paradigm shift that Yassin al-Haj Saleh calls “genocracy”—a form of state sovereignty, tried and tested inter alia by Apartheid Israel, Assadist Syria, and most recently in Modi’s India, whose legitimacy rests on securitization of refugees and migrants in the name of antiterrorism, and whose effect is the racialization or “sectarianization” of citizenship.13 The heavy weight of all these global forces of oppression and exploitation make all the more remarkable the current mass protests in the four key MENA countries that had not risen up in 2011.

The Revolution Continues . . . By 2019, economic suffering and political injustice had reached tipping point in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The protests in these four countries were sparked by a combination of government breaches of constitutional rule, rampant corruption and nepotism, and austerity measures targeting the middle and lower classes to pay for the neoliberal gutting of national economies. These uprisings, like previous ones, reference one another through social media in witty slogans, songs, and signs of solidarity. They also draw tactical and emotional strength from parallel revolutionary struggles in Chile, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. They make clear that the worldwide revolutionary struggle against oppression and exploitation continues. Since October 17, 2019, half the population of Lebanon took to the streets and squares across the country. With the universal Arabic chant “the people demand the fall of the regime,” the vernacular slogan “all of them means all of them,” and an endless repertoire of witty rhyming insults against the elites, the October Revolution celebrated the largest nation-wide demonstrations in Lebanon’s ninety-nine years of existence.14 Unlike other neoliberal Arab authoritarianisms where power emanates from a single figure at the top, the “regime” here, like in Iraq after 2003, means the class and sectarian nature of the whole system. Reinforced by the Taif Agreement of 1989, this system allowed competing political elites to advance their personal interests in the name of representing their respective communities and preventing a return to civil war. But as Bassel Salloukh pointed out, “[d]ecades of monetary policies favoring the rich triggered the kind of united uprising that identity divisions in a sectarian system are supposed to prevent.”15 12  Del Sarto, Malmvig, Soler i Lecha (2019: 18). 13  Yassin El-Haj Saleh, “Terror, genocide, and the ‘genocratic’ turn,” https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en/ content/terror-genocide-and-“genocratic”-turn , September 19, 2019. 14 See . 15  Bassel Salloukh, “Here is What the Protests in Lebanon and Iraq Are Really about,” Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2019.

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690   Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History The trigger that brought half the country’s population onto the streets was a tax on the popular messaging app, WhatsApp. But the economic crisis had been brewing for years, with the Lebanese government so dysfunctional and corrupt that it could not provide basic services. Its failure to reach a deal over garbage collection had led to the 2015 “You Stink” protests. Wild fires on October 15, 2019 exposed the gross incompetence and underfunding of the Lebanese civil defense. In the meantime, unemployment had reached twenty percent, with youth unemployment at over thirty percent. The publicdebt burden, exacerbated by a ballooning public service amounting in 2018 to thirty-five percent of government expenditures, was “projected to increase to 155% of GDP by the end of 2019.”16 What may bring the Lebanese economy to a final state of collapse is a massive Ponzi scheme involving the political and business elite, in which the Central Bank borrowed dollars from private Lebanese banks at high interest in order to ­service the public debt. This has left the Central Bank owing $85 billion US dollars, twice the amount of its currency reserves, to Lebanese banks which are owned or run by parliamentarians, their families, and international partners. This in turn has led to a dollar shortage, a steep fall in the value of the Lebanese pound, a liquidity crisis, and supply bottlenecks, all of which is being felt most severely by the middle and lower classes, who have risen against their own sectarian leaders.17 Protestors are calling for a caretaker government of independent experts that would desectarianize the electoral law and party structures, prepare a new constitution, repatriate the stolen funds, and take the country to early elections. They are demanding progressive taxation that stops shielding the wealthy, ‘haircuts’ for banks and their millionaire depositors, and the prosecution of economic corruption and environmental malfeasance. Civil society groups are pushing for greater rights for women, especially for Lebanese mothers to pass on their citizenship, and for civil marriage. However, Lebanese protestors realize that they are demanding the impossible, namely that the elites abolish the system that feeds them. They also realize that this revolution is a marathon not a sprint. The sorry state of regional and global politics might yet buy them enough time to engineer the long-overdue fundamental constitutional changes as long as the imminent economic collapse can be averted.18 The role that independent professional associations have been playing in the Sudanese revolution serves the Lebanese protestors as a model of civil-society transformation and has been much discussed in the tents in downtown Beirut in November 2019. Mass demonstrations in Sudan brought down Omar Bashir’s thirty-three-year-long rule on April 11, 2019. These demonstrations had begun four months earlier in response to a series of austerity measures launched by the government, including cuts in bread and fuel subsidies. Rallying around the figure of Kandaka—“Nubian queen”—Sudanese protesters continued to occupy public spaces across the country even after a transitional 16  IMF Country Report No. 19/312, “Lebanon,” August 21, 2019. 17  Sami Halabi and Jacob Boswall, “Lebanon’s Financial House of Cards,” Triangle Working Paper 1, Beirut, Nov. 2019. 18  Arab Reform Initiative, “For an Emergency Economic Rescue Plan for Lebanon,” November 10, 2019.

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Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History   691 military council took over the reins of power, for fear of a repeat of the Egyptian experience. On June 3, the transitional military government committed a massacre in Khartoum which cost the lives of over a hundred people gathered in peaceful sit-ins. The opposition Forces of Freedom and Change, representing Sudanese professional associations, youth, and women’s movements, have continued to organize civil dis­ obedi­ence against ongoing state violence and signed a constitutional declaration in August. The resultant Sovereignty Council commits the military to return to the barracks and pave the way for free elections. While the African Union considered this council as civilian and lifted Sudan’s suspension, the military members on the council have been supported by Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia and remain reluctant to relinquish power. The army’s strongman, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, has dispatched his loyal Rapid Support Forces to rebellious Sudanese towns and villages as well as to Yemen to join Muhammad bin Salman’s war.19 The political situation in Sudan remains tense. Protesters across the country continue to challenge the military, the old ruling parties, government institutions, and corrupt companies. Sudanese feminists have been driving change since the socialist parliamentarian Fatima Ibrahim introduced equality laws in the 1950s. Their work to undo subsequent Islamist legislation has led to the revocation of a notorious public order law restricting women’s movement in public spaces on November 29, 2019.20 The revolution in Sudan shares similarities with the Algerian uprising where women, too, have been at the forefront of the year-long, nation-wide protests.21 In Algeria the revolutionary trigger was the news that the octogenarian president Abdel Aziz Bouteflika would stand for a fifth term of office.22 Like Omar Bashir in Sudan, Bouteflika was forced to resign in April 2019, after two months of peaceful demonstrations. People are fed up with the atrophied single-party rule of the FLN and a moribund state. Both have proven incapable of tackling economic crises by any other measure than improving the national security apparatus. Algerian protests also represent a broader generational coup across MENA. The vast majority of bodies demonstrating on the streets belong to young Algerians born after the brutal war between the Algerian army and Islamist militants in the 1990s and are against both sides.23 Today’s generation of young Algerian women and men appear immune to the waron-terror politics of fear. They are suspicious of all established politicians, including figures from the official opposition. They have drawn lessons from 2011 and refuse to be baited into negotiations with the government. They had demanded the cancellation of the presidential election on December 12, 2019 and since then have contested the 19  “Safeguarding Sudan’s Revolution,” International Crisis Group Report, October 21, 2019. 20  See . 21  Leïla Ouitis, “Feminists on the front lines of the Algerian uprising,” roarmag.org, September 6, 2019. See . 22  Hicham Aloui, “Form Sudan to Algeria, a new lease of life for Arab Springs,” https://www.jadaliyya. com/Details/39808, July 12, 2019. 23  Mundy (2015).

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692   Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History regime-friendly election result of a loyalist to ex-President Bouteflika. At this point, they will settle for nothing less than a clean break with the past—a Second Algerian Republic of sorts. Like in Lebanon, we are currently witnessing a political stalemate here, a test of which side can hold their breath longest while the economic situation deteriorates. The question is: will the unity of the revolution outlast the unity of the political elites? The protesters refuse to be co-opted and have set clear conditions before approving a transitional government, and the government is holding out for protest fatigue. But if the Sisi government successfully banked on the population eventually turning against the Egyptian revolution in 2011, this outcome is not self-evident in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, and in the fourth, most tenacious revolution: Iraq. Since October 1, 2019, millions of Iraqis have been demonstrating across the country.24 They, too, demand the overthrow of the regime. But the order they fight is of much more recent, neocolonial coinage, and the state response has been much more violent than in parallel revolutions. After 2003, the American occupation forces grafted a sect­ ar­ian system onto a state purged of its bureaucratic class. Since the US government has begun to cut its losses in Iraq, Iranian forces under Qasem Soleimani have filled the country’s power structure. And the protesters have risen to reclaim their country. The revolution has spread across the country, most noticeable in Baghdad’s Sadr City and Shia centers of learning in Kerbala and Najaf, and to all classes of society, including thousands of women, high-school and university students, artists, and professional as­so­ci­ations. The government in Baghdad has responded with live ammunition and sent army units to crush the protests all over the country. Over 400 Iraqis have been killed by se­cur­ity forces and snipers. Criticism of violence against protestors, especially by Iraq’s most senior and revered cleric, the Iran-born Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, finally led to the resignation of the prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, on November 30, 2019. The corrupt political system is hanging on during the Covid-19 crisis, and so are the demonstrators. Iraq’s is a generational revolt, too. While the October revolution in Lebanon was a rebellion of the people born after 1990—“you are the civil war, we are the popular revolution”—the Iraqis who “demand a homeland” and confront government militia bullets, came of age only after the US invasion in 2003. And also like in the three other current MENA uprisings, their protests are directed at the entire political class and the sectarian system that has enabled their corruption. The new Iraqi generation opposes the Baathist old guard that sees salvation in a return to Saddam Hussein’s iron fist; it also accuses the Iranian government and Iranian-backed Iraqi politicians of exploiting and perpetuating the lawlessness, poverty, and corruption that the American occupation created in Saddam’s wake. In a notable deviation from recent Iraqi anti-establishment protests, this generation also rejects the patronage of Muqtada Sadr, the Shia cleric–politician whose popularity used to be based on his independence from Iranian backers.

24 Ahmed Youssef, “Forty Days of Revolution in Iraq,” Mada Masr, https://madamasr.com/ en/2019/11/12/feature/politics/forty-days-of-revolution-in-iraq/, November 12, 2019.

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Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History   693 In one of their revolutionary pamphlets “Tuk Tuk,” named after the three-wheeled rickshaw ambulances that have become the symbol of the lower-class origins of the uprising, “The Youth of Iraq” presented a list of ten demands to the government of Iraq, including: the instant resignation of the government; the establishment of a threemonth transition government composed of independent patriotic members unaffiliated with past and future political parties or local, provincial, or national governments; the dissolution of governorate councils, replacing them with a new system approved by the people; the amendment of the electoral law and the establishment of an independent and patriotic electoral committee; enacting the existing political party law to guarantee financial transparency and disarmament of parties; new elections to be held under UN supervision; a constitutional review by parliament within three months; transparent and fair investigation of the attacks on protestors, compensation for families of those killed and injured; the Supreme Judicial Council to lead public corruption investigations of current and previous officials and returning and ensuring the return of all stolen public funds. These demands echo those of Sudanese, Algerian, and Lebanese protesters. As ‘Azmi Bishara, a leading theoretician of the Arab uprisings, observed, we are currently witnessing an unprecedented cultural–political revolution in which protestors constitute a civil mainstream, driven by moral values, not party ideologies. They are demanding full citizenship rights and, in the case of Iraq and Lebanon, insisting on an antisectarian national unity. While political elites normally defend national unity, they are now defending a sectarian system as the best viable option.25 The one MENA country that never had a chance at independence and remains under colonial rule is Palestine. As Wendy Pearlman reminds us, “if any nation in the region had a tradition of people’s power, it was the Palestinians.”26 Today, this people’s power is represented by a global solidarity movement that supports the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS) modeled on the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.27 Palestinian civil society organizations have appealed to people, institutions, and companies around the world to refuse to be implicated in Israel’s violations of Palestinian territory, property, and humanity. They call for a boycott of Israeli institutions until the state complies with the requisite UN resolutions by ending its occupations of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights as well as its siege of Gaza; by granting Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel full legal equality; and by respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to Palestine.28 An international solidarity movement can fulfill neither the functions of a legitimate national government nor of a liberation organization. In the absence of either, Palestinians are reamed by the everyday violence of the Israeli siege and occupation— daily house invasions, confiscations and demolitions, curfews and checkpoints, arrests 25  ‘Azmi Bishara, “al-Intiqal al-dimuqrati wa ishkalyyatihi: Durus nadhariyya min tajarib ‘arabiyya,” Arab Centre 2nd Annual Conference, Collège de France, Paris, November 28, 2019. 26  Pearlman (2016: 248). 27  Jamjoum (2011). 28  See .

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694   Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History and assassinations. And despite this life and death situation, the vast majority of Palestinians protest peacefully. Since March 2018, Gazans have continued their weekly peaceful marches of return, although army snipers have shot dead as many as 350 of them as soon as they came near the Israeli enclosures.29 In the West Bank, sit-ins, protest marches, and legal battles have tried to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. In East Jerusalem, Hebron, and elsewhere, Palestinians resist by remaining there, even though legal and physical harassment by the occupation authorities makes life unbearable. Going forward, MENA scholars in North America and Europe face the ethical and academic conundrum of how to respond to the Palestinian plea for an academic boycott of Israel. Decades of research and experience in MENA countries, the best of which has been assembled in this Handbook, have confirmed the findings of colleagues who work on settler colonialism elsewhere that nominal democracies can be as violent as dictatorships. While China, Syria, and other “genocracies” are rightly sanctioned, even as the West appeases them as lesser evils, the accelerated Israeli colonization of Palestine enjoys full legal, diplomatic, and financial cover from Western governments, and lately even some Arab ones. As such it is incumbent on MENA scholars to act on their better knowledge and keep breaking the epistemic injustice that still shrouds Palestine and the region as a whole.30 Jens Hanssen, Lüdinghausen, Germany Amal Ghazal, Vancouver, Canada

References Bishara, ‘Azmi (2014). Fi al-Thawra wa-l-Qabiliyya li-l-Thawra, 2nd edn (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Arabi lil-Abhath wa Dirasat al-Siyasat). Del Sarto, Raffaella A., Helle Malmvig, and Eduard Soler i Lecha (2019). “Interregnum: The Regional Order in the Middle East and North Africa after 2011,” Middle East and North Africa Regional Architecture (MENARA), 2019. Fricker, Miranda (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: OUP). Ghazal, Amal (2016). “Untangling the Leviathans of the Arab Spring,” R/Evolutions: Global Trends and Regional Issues 1: 4. Jamjoum, Hazem (2011). “The Global for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel,” in M.  Carter Hallward and Julie  M.  Norman (eds). Non-violent Resistance in the Second Intifada (New York: Palgrave), 133–153. Mundy, Jacob (2015). Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence: Conflict Science, Conflict Management, Antipolitics (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Quigley, John (2016). The International Diplomacy of Israel’s Founders: Deception at the United Nations in the Quest for Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

29  Mike Merryman-Lotze, “What you need to know about the bombings in Gaza,” American Friends Service Committee, November 13, 2019. 30  Fricker (2007).

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Epilogue: Revolutionary Times in Contemporary History   695 Pearlman, Wendy (2016). “Palestine and the Arab Uprisings,” in A. Roberts et al. (eds). Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumph and Disaster (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 248–269. Ryzkova, Lucie (2019). “The Battle of Muhammad Mahmud Street in Cairo: The Politics and Poetics of Urban Violence in Revolutionary Times,” Past and Present 247: 1–46. World Union of Jewish Students (2002). Hasbara Handbook: Promoting Israel on Campus (Jerusalem: n. p.).

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Index

A

Abbas, Ferhat  251–2, 254 Abbas, Mahmoud  478 Abboud, Ibrahim  208 Abd al-Hafiz risings (1875–1937), Morocco  521 Abd al-Krim al-Khattabi, Muhammad ibn  134–5, 205 Abd al-Malek, A.  525–6 Abd al-Qadir  130 Abdallah, Prince of Transjordan  115, 119, 121–2 Abdel Aal, M. H.  560 Abdel Jabbar, F.  217 Abdel Malek, A.  236 Abdelrahman, M.  564, 567 Abdi, Abbas  313 Abduh, Muhammad  42, 43, 47, 49, 51–2, 55, 58 Abdūlhamid II  69–70, 71, 72, 130, 202 Abdel-Nour, K.  410, 410n.6 Abi Diyaf, Ahmad ibn  585, 586 Abrahamian, E.  293, 297, 303 Abu- ʿAita, Kamal  241, 242 Abu Ghraib prison, Baghdad, Iraq  367, 370, 374 Abu-Lughod, J.  391, 555 Abu Slim prison, Tripoli, Libya  672 massacre (1996)  668 Actor-Network theory  16n.85 Aden  96, 215–16, 609–10 Aegis Defense Services  374 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din  42 Afghanistan: detention camps  370–2 Soviet invasion (1979)  xvii, xviii Taliban 366 US invasion (2001)  xviii, 366 Afghanistan National Army  366 Aflaq, Michel  137 Aflatun, Inci  207 African National Congress  248

Agamben, G.  654 Ageron, C.-R.  252 Aghlabid dynasty  583 Agility defense company  374 Ahdut HaAvoda (“the Unity of Work”)  204 Ahmad al-Hiba  521 Ahmad Bey  585, 587 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud  310, 312, 313 al-Ahmar, ʿAbdullah 610 Ahmed III  521 Ahmed Riza  74, 75 Ajami, F.  138n.16 AK Party, Turkey  176, 349, 350, 351, 358, 627–47 attempted coup (2016) and its aftermath  635–9, 687 foreign policy  639–46 governing through polarization  633–5 Kurdish policies  630, 631n.22, 631–2, 634–5 use of referenda  632 Aktar, A.  171, 171n.29, 173 Al-Amel organization  440 Al-Arabiya and Saudi Arabia agendas  349 Al Hilal organization  506–10 Al Hurra television station  344–5, 344n.6 Al-Jazeera TV  342, 342n.1, 351 political discourse and Qatar government 348 and Turkey  350 al-Karama (“Dignity”) Party, Egypt  240, 241 al-Karameh, Israeli raid on (1968)  288 Al Khalifa dynasty  538, 540 al-Mahalla al-Kubra Company strike, Egypt 567 al-Manar  42n.14, 55–7 Al-Mayadeen 349 al-Qaida  xxiii, xxiv, 351, 366, 615, 678 in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)  392, 398 targeting Saudi Arabia  394

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698   index Al-Sharq 351 Al-Tali ʿa magazine  236–7 al-Tariq magazine  209 Al Saud monarchy  389 Al Wifaq  550, 551 al-Alawi, Hasan  149–50, 152 Alawites, Syria  152–3 Alevi community, Turkey  629 Alexandris, A.  170 Algeria  94, 525 1947 Statute  252 Berber activists  145 Code de l’Indigénat  250, 251 communism  197, 210–12 Étoile Nord-Africaine (ENA)  251 Evian agreement (1962), recognizing independence 258 Fédératon des Élus Indigènes 250–1 French colonialism  128, 130, 148, 181, 249–52 Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne (GPRA)  257–8, 259 Jews in  248, 248–9 n.8 legacy of War of Independence  248 popular nationalism  136 Sétif massacre (1945)  211, 251–2 uprising (2019)  xxvii, 683, 691–2 war of conquest (1839–1847)  130 Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962)  211–12, 248–68 August 1955 insurrection  254 banalization of violence  259, 261–2 Battle of Algiers (1956–1957)  255–6 colonial Algeria  249–52 diplomacy, role of  262 first phase (1954–1956)  253–6 harkis  248, 248n.2 Plan de Constantine (1958)  257 second phase (1957–1959)  256–8 third phase (1960–1962)  258–9 torture  248, 248n.3, 256, 261, 264 as a total war  260–1 women’s participation  139, 256, 262–6 see also Front de Libération Nationale (FLN-ALN), Algeria Ali, Mohamed  579 Ali Mubarak  49

Ali Salman  549 al-ʿAlim, Mahmud Amin  218 Alleg, Henri  212 Allenby, Edmund  97–9, 100 Allon, Yigal  285 Allon Plan for the West Bank  285 Althusser, Louis  152 Amazigh communities  357, 358 Amazigh/Berbers protests,  524 Amil, Mahdi  151, 152, 218 Amin, G.  237, 516 Amin, Samir  198 Amin al-Husayni, Mohammed  206 Amoore, L.  376 Andeel, cartoonist  604, 604n.46 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company  305, 518 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (1922)  190, 191 Anglo-Iraqi War (1941)  121 Anglo-Persian Oil Company  12, 121, 121n.18 Ankara, Turkey  168 anti-Semitism  186, 187–9, 248n.8 anti-Zionism  186, 241 Aoun, Michel  453n.31 Apartheid Wall, Jerusalem and West Bank 477 Appadurai, A.  358, 358n.47 Arab Cold War  270, 270n.4 Arab Democratic Nasserist Party (ADNP), Egypt  240, 241 Arab Digital Expression Foundation (ADEF) 601–2 Arab-Israeli War (1948)  186 Arab League Collective Security Pact (ACSP) 231 Arab (pan-Arab) nationalism  117, 123, 138, 154, 185–6, 192 antipathy to sectarianism  145 Iraqi ultranationalism  187–92 origins 132–3 Arab Revolt (1916–1917)  97–8, 99, 101, 103, 132 Arab socialism  417–18 Arab Socialist Union (ASU)  236, 240 Arab uprisings (Arab Spring, 2011)  xix, xxi, 16, 140, 342, 342n.2, 336, 347–8, 357, 500, 554, 649 see also individual countries; media as method in the age of revolution

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index   699 Arab uprisings (2011), in historical perspective 515–33 class issues  528 crowd unity and participatory democracy  527–9 democratic genealogies  525–6 horizontalism  530, 532 human rights and individual freedom  526, 528 Nineteenth-/twentieth-century comparisons  519, 520–2, 523, 524–5 people power  529–30 people power, weakness  531–3 post-protest political effectiveness  532 role of external backers  531, 532 role of military in uprisings  531–2 social media  527 WUNC (worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment) 531–2 Arab Youth  592–606 in an age of uprising  594–6 arts of presence and absence  597–8 Cairo University student persecution, post military takeover  598n.18, 600 counterrevolution and the young  597–8 disruption 593–4 disruptive technology  593 post-uprising repression and counterrevolution  595, 598 risk and insecurity  599–602 schooling, opting out  598, 598n.18 Tahir Academy  602–3 video games and educational apps  603–4 virtual clowns and the arts of satire  604–5 virtual learning opportunities  602–4, 602n.40 youth camps  601–2, 602n.36 Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) 390 Arabian Peninsular studies  384–99 authoritarianism, imperialism and politics of knowledge production  397–8 censorial and punitive measures  385–6 dominant frameworks  387–9 imperialism and slavery in Arabia  392 Indian Ocean Studies  390–1 journalistic criticism  385

knowledge production and access to information 385–6 migrant labor studies  392 racism 390 religion and religious studies  392–3 Rentier State Theory and research agendas  387–8, 389 Saudi Arabia: knowledge, history, and politics 394–7 sectarianism 393 trans-regional/national dynamics of exchange 392 in the twenty-first century  389–93 urbanization studies  393 war on terror  388, 391 Arabism  132, 139 al-ʿAriss, Mustafa  209 El-Ariss, T.  52n.78 Aristotle 580 Armbrust, W.  357, 357n.46 Armenian genocide  101–2, 101n.17, n.18, 169 Armstrong, H. C.  164 Arnaud, George  264 Arslan, Shakib  112, 113, 113f, 114, 117, 118, 123 al-ʿArusi, Muhammad  50 Asad, T.  xxii–xxiii, 502, 509 Ashmawi, S.  562 al-Askari, Jaʿfar 120 Assaad, R.  558 Assad, Bashar and regime  xxiii, 152, 410, 422, 642, 643, 649, 655, 656, 685 Assad, Hafez  152–3, 214, 216, 412, 413, 422 Assyrian genocide  188 Aswan Dam, Egypt  9 Aswan High Dam, Egypt  6n.12, 9–10, 229, 230, 233 al-Aswany, Alaa  518 Atabak, Mirza Ali Asghar Khan  84 al-Atasi, Hashim  125 Atatūrk, Mustafa Kemal  68, 85, 86–7, 105–6, 162–77, 203, 627, 629 al-Attar, Hasan  49n.56, 56 al-ʿAzm, Rafiq Bey  45n.32 al-Azm, Sadeq  217, 218 al-Azma, Yusuf  111 Azzam, Abd al-Rahman  182n.11

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700   index

B

Baath (“Renaissance”) party  138 founding 137 Iraq  154, 430, 431, 433, 434 Syria  152, 183, 183 nn.13,15, 185, 411, 412, 645–51, 655–7 Baden-Powell, Robert  182 Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights  476 al-Badiya, Bahithat (Malak Hifni)  57 Baghdad  97, 99 Baghdad Pact (1955)  198, 232, 233 al-Baghdadi, Abu Bakr  xxiii, 687 al-Baghdadi, Abd al-Latif  226 Bagram Airforce Base and detention camp, Afghanistan 370 Bahrain  xix, 324, 517, 523, 531, 546 Bahrain political movements (1900–2015)  537–53 autonomists  538, 538n.1 “Baharna petition” movement  541 British colonialism and the birth of ethnocentrism and nationalism  537, 538–40 Constituent Assembly of 1972  547 constitution (2002)  549–50 Constitutive Committee (CC)  546–7 “Day of Rage” (14 February 2011)  550 failed coup (1981)  549 February 14 Coalition  551 Higher Executive Committee (HEC)  544, 545 Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain 549 labor, parliamentary rule, and the rise of the petro-modernist emirate (1970s) 546–8 March 1965 uprising  545 March 1972 uprising  546–7 modernized absolutism meets petrodollars 540–3 National Action Charter (2001)  549 nationalism (1953–1956)  543–4 parliamentary monarchy (2000–2011) 549–50 pearlers’ uprising (1932)  541

protests (2011–)  140, 397, 550–3 revolutionary fervor and the move underground (1956–1971)  544–6 rise of Islamists  548–9 sectarian divide  154–5, 551, 552 Shehabi bloc  547 Shiacentric movements  542 Shirazi movement  548–9 US naval presence  546, 547 Bakdash, Khalid  206, 213–14 Balfour, Arthur  97, 111–12, 484 Balfour Declaration (1917)  103, 104–5, 114, 116, 118, 119, 187, 226, 484–5 Balkan Wars (1912–1913)  93 Bandung Conference (1955)  198, 212, 233, 236, 262 Bani Sadr, Abolhasan  315 Bapco oil company  542 Bar-Lev, Haim  287, 288 Bartok, Bela  172 Basharahil, Hisham  615 al-Bashir, Omar 208,  352, 690 Bashir Shihab II  50, 51 Basra, Iraq  96 Bassīl, Gibrān  454 Batatu, H.  xvii Bayat, A.  xxii, 567–8, 597 Baydoun, Ahmad  151–2 Bazargan, Mehdi  315 Beblawi, H.  326, 326n.15, 387 Bedouin citizens in Palestine  470, 480, 480n.15 Beersheba, Battle of (1917)  105 Begin, Menachem  287 Behbahani, Ayatollah  293 Beinin, J.  239, 567 Belgrave, Charles  540, 542–3, 544 Ben Badis, Cheikh  251 Ben Bella, Ahmed  137, 201, 232 Ben Gurion, David  204, 206 Ben Tobbal, Lakhdar  254 Benghazi, Libya  674–5 siege (2011)  668–9 Benmebarek, Roger  265 Berkes, N.  164 Berlin, Treaty of (1878)  30 Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad project  94 al-Bid, ʿAli Salim  610, 611

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index   701 Bin ʿAli, Zayn al-ʿAbidin  516, 578, 581, 588, 589, 609, 617 Bin Ghdhahim, Ali  588 bin Laden, Osama  668 Biometrics Fusion Center, Virginia, US  375 Birmingham School  355 Bishara, A.  594, 693 Blackwater (Academi)  374 Boko Haram, boarding school attack  599 Bouazizi, Mohamed, self-immolation (2010)  xxi, 500 Boudiaf, Mohamed  137 Bouhired, Djamila  264–5, 264n.48 Bourdieu, P.  176, 596 Bourguiba, Habib  137, 588, 589 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz  352, 691 Bozdoğan, S.  168 Branche, R.  248n.3, 261 Braudel, F.  7 Braun, U.  610 Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty (1918)  99 Brewer, J.  25 Britain see United Kingdom (UK) British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service/“Empire Radio”  344, 345 Brown, L. C.  584n.39, 586, 587 Brown, W.  450 Buber, M.  482 Buchiri, Muhammed  547 Budeiri, M.  204 Bulliet, R. W.  6n.20 Burke III, E.  6n.20 Bush, George Senior  xviii Bush, George W.  xx, 368, 388, 640 Bush, R.  561 al-Bustani, B.  45n.38, 51 Butler, J.  484

C

CACI company  374 Caerus 376 Cairo Conference (1921)  121 Cairo University student persecution, post military takeover  598n.18, 600 Camp Cropper, Iraq  370 Camp David Accords (1979)  238, 516 Camp Nama, Iraq  370

Camus, Albert  210, 212 Carapico, S.  385 Carmel, Moshe  272 Carter, Jimmy  307 Carthage  573, 567–7, 580–1 Castoriadis, C.  167 Cato 580 Cemal Pasha, Ahmed  93, 96 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), US  293, 299, 366, 370, 373 Centre for the Intellectual Development of Children and Teenagers, Iran  303 CGTN Arabic (China Global Television Network) 345 Chahine, Youcef  264, 264n.48 Chakrabarty, Dipesh  399 Challe, Maurice  257 Chamoun, Camille  185, 210, 214 Chanok, M.  449–50 Charles V  582 Chaulet, Pierre and Claudine  250n.10 Chavez, Hugo  243 Cherikhaye Fadayee Khalgh-e Iran  301 Chou En-lai  233 Christensen, P.  7–8, 8n.26 Churchill, Winston  97, 119, 120, 121–2 Cilicia 104 Clarkson, Adrienne  302n.22 Clemenceau, Georges  110 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Iraq  431, 436–7 Cohen, H.  189 Cold War  198, 199, 304 colonialism: colonial powers and Iran  296–9 “colonization through lending”  37 and environmental “declensionism”  5, 5n.5 and environmental resource management 8–11 experienced in MENA  199–203 and fascism  180–1 legacy, and media  343–6 and sectarianism  147–51 see also individual countries; Levant mandates Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), Turkey  74–9, 86–7, 162, 172, 173

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702   index “communalism” 146 communism in MENA  197–219 Algerian  210–12, 254 Arab Communist Party formation (1920–1948) 203–15 colonialism experienced in MENA  199–203 Egypt  206–8, 227, 228, 236–7, 240 and feminist activism  218–19 Iran  201–2, 296, 309 Jewish 204–6 monsoon 215–16 origins of radicalization  199–203 Palestine and Arab  204–6, 209, 212–15 self-criticism and immanent critique  217–19 Sultan-Galiev and Muslim in Central Asia  200–1 Syro-Lebanese  208–10, 213, 14 Turkey 202–3 “confessionalism” 146 Congress of Ottoman Opposition  74 Congress of the Peoples of the East (1920), Baku  200, 203 Connelly, M.  262 Constantinople Agreement (1915)  103 Control Risks Group company  374 Coptic Christians, Egypt  145, 150, 235 Corruption Perception Index in MENA  xviii Counter-Narratives: History, Contemporary Society and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen (Al-Rasheed and Vitalis)  389–90 counterterrorism and counterinsurgency in the neoliberal age  365–78 biometrics and big data  375–6 confinement and detention practices 370–3 extraordinary rendition  372 Human Terrain System  369–70 identity cards  375 lawfulness and legal techniques  369 population sweeps  371 private firms and warriors  374–5 remote control weaponry  370, 373–4 rise of proxies  376–7 transformation in combat in the War on Terror 366–8

US counterinsurgency and counterterrorism arsenal 370–6 Covid-19 pandemic  683 Crecelius, D.  47n.44 Crimean War (1853–1856)  26, 27 Cronon, W.  5n.5, 16, 16n.81 Curiel, Henri  207 Curzon, Lord  538 Cyprus  94, 641

D

Dagalo, Mohamed Hamdan  691 Daher, R.  331 Dakhli, L.  41n.12 Dallal, A.  48n.49 Damascus, Syria  xxi, 99, 132 Darwaza, Hakam  215 Dashnaksutiyn Party, Armenia  74, 75 Davis, D.  5 Davison, A.  164 Davutoğlu, Ahmet  640, 642, 645 Dawud, Diyaʾ al-Din  240 Dayan, Moshe  270, 271, 271n.12, 272, 273, 274, 275, 277–8, 281, 284, 285, 287 Dayih, J.  184n.17 de Caix, Robert  122, 123, 124 de Gaulle, Charles  212, 256–7, 258, 280 de Reuter, Julius  297 de Tocqueville, Alexis  592 Della Ratta, D.  354 Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (Rojava)  643–4, 657, 661–3 Democratic Union Party (PYD), Rojava  659, 661–2 Demokrat Party, Turkey  166 Denis, E.  567–8 Derʿa, Syria  xxi d’Erlanger, Baron Rudolphe  581–2 Derrida, J.  663 Dhahran Airfield accord, US  395 Dhufar Liberation Front, Oman  216 Di-Capua, Y.  39n.2, 52n.87 Diba, Queen of Iran  303, 304 Dido, Queen of Carthage  576–7, 580, 581, 582 Didouche, Mourad  254 Dirks, N.  449–50

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index   703 Druze, on the Golan Heights  275 Dubai, real-estate bubble  334 Dubai Production City, UAE  349 al-Dulaymi, Naziha  429 Dupont, A.-L.  41n.12

E

Eban, Abba  270, 273, 277, 281, 282, 284–5, 286, 289 Edwar, Henaa  440 Egypt: African liberation movements, support for 232 Anglo-Egyptian Agreement (1954)  232 British rule (1882–1952)  150 Command Council of the Revolution (CCR)  227, 228–9, 231, 235–6 communism  206–8, 227, 228, 236–7, 240 Communist Workers’ Party  214, 215, 218 Czech arms deal  233 formal political parties (1907)  133 Free Officers’ Coup (1952)  214 Free Officers’ movement  226, 227, 228, 229, 231–2 French invasion (1798)  xxv, 46, 50 Gaza Raid (1955)  232 intifada (1977)  425 July Revolution (1952)  226, 234–5, 236, 237, 243 Land Center for Human Rights (LCHR)  560, 563, 564 Law of the Liquidation of Feudal Properties 214 marine pollution  16–17 Mehmet Ali Pasha’s modernization  46–7 Movement for Change (Kifaya) 241–2 nationalism 186–7 New Valley project  9 and non-state actors  233–4 Nahda  46–7, 50–2 Palestinian solidarity  226–7, 241 pan-Arabism  226–7, 232–3 participatory democracy  527–8 Private Voluntary Organization  505–8, 508–9 propaganda against Saudi Arabia  395 Revolution (1919)  135

“revolution” (1952)  150 Sawt el ʿArab pan-Arab radio station  347 Six-Day War defeat (1967)  238 Soviet support for  230, 233 state aligned private media channels  349 status of minority communities  145, 150 Suez Crisis (1956–7)  233 uprising (2011)  140, 242, 531, 532, 554–5, 594 Urabist movement (1881–1882)  132, 521 Wafd party  137, 182–3, 207, 231, 594 War of Attrition with Israel (1967–1970)  234 women and nationalist struggles  139 women’s Islamic activism (2011)  501–8 Egypt rural patterns of protest before the Arab Spring  554–69 Agrarian Reform Law (1952)  555 al-Mahalla al-Kubra Spinning and Weaving Company strike  567 Association of Sponsoring Orphans  561 child labor  561, 561n.25 “counterreform” process  557 cutting expenditure  559–61 drinking water protests  565 Egyptian Land Center for Human Rights (LCHR)  560, 563, 564 food security  560 gamʿiyya (rotation savings association)  558, 562 income generation  561–2 Law  96 556n.6, 557–9, 559n.18, 559–61, 562, 563 mobile phone tower protests  565–7 networks of monetary and in-kind gifts 558 political cost of coping  562–3 road safety  564–5 rural change: two watersheds  556–7 rural street protest emergence (2000s)  563–8 social cost of coping  559–63 Tagammuʿ Party  563 tenancy crisis (1992–1997), coping with 557–9 Tenancy Law (1992)  555 women’s role in rural protests  566

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704   index Egyptian Expeditionary Force, British (WW1)  98–9 Eilat, Israel  271, 273 Eldem, E.  28 Elissa-Mondeguer, N.  44n.28 Elnur, S.  557–8 Engels, Friedrich  198, 210 Ennahda Party, Tunisia  xxii Enver Pasha, Ismail  93, 96 environmental history of MENA  3–17 “agricultural revolution”  6 agriculture, and local ecologies and expertise 13–15 climatic impact and ecological limits  7–8 “declensionist” perspectives  5 ecological diversity  5 grasslands and arable mosaic  6 interdisciplinary methodologies  4 Mediterranean ecology  7 oil resource management  10, 11 pastoralism 11–12 peasant studies  12–13 pre-colonial environmental projects  8 qanat channels  6, 6n.20, 8 unorthodox evidence  4 urban-rural connections  151–6 water resource conservation  6–7 water resource management  9–10 water resources  5–6 Erdoğan, Tayyip  176, 349, 627, 631, 632, 633–4, 635, 687 and the attempted coup and purges (2016) 636–9 Egypt relations  642 and Israel  641 and the “new” Turkey  646–7 Syria policy  643–5 see also AK Party, Turkey Eshghi, Mirzadeh  295 Eshkol, Levi  270, 271, 272, 273, 275, 276–7, 280, 281, 283, 287, 289 Esposito, J.  505 European Union (EU), and Turkey  639, 640–1, 646

F

Facebook revolution  554 Fadayeian-e-Islam 301

al-Fadli, Tariq  615 Fahri Pasha  98 Fairclough, N.  356 Faisal ibn Abdulaziz (Faisal of Saudi Arabia)  394–7 Falluja, Iraq  375 Fanon, Frantz  212 Farah, Bulus  205, 206 Farrokhzad, Forough  300, 300n.18 Faruq I of Egypt  226 fascism in MENA  180–91 Arab ultranationalism and the coup in Iraq (1941) 187–92 definition of  180 Lebanese Phalanges Party  185–6 in settler-colonial societies  180–1 Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP)  183–5 Young Egypt and Egyptian nationalism 186–7 Fasheh, Munir  600–1 al-Fasi, Ahmad Ibn Idris  55 al-Fateh  278, 288 el-Fattah, Alaa Abd  602 Fayiq, Muhammad  232 Faysal, King of Iraq  111, 115, 119, 120, 121 Ferradj, Abdelkader  256 First World War and its legacy  93–106, 109, 131, 134 Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire  97–8, 99, 101, 103 Armenian genocide  101–2, 101n.17, n.18 Assyrian Christians  102 course of the war in the Middle East 95–100 Gaza, Battles of (1917)  98–9, 105 Gallipoli campaign (1915–1916)  96–7 German/Ottoman relations  94 Hashemite revolt  97–8, 99 Indian Muslim soldiers rebellion, Singapore 95–6 jihad declared against the Triple Entente  95–6, 97–8 Kut al-Amara siege and surrender (1916)  97 locust plague (1915–1916)  100 Mesopotamia campaigns  97, 99 Mount Lebanon trials (1916)  101 Ottoman armistice with Russia  99 Ottoman Greeks  102

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index   705 Russian fears for Constantinople  93–4 Sarikamiş Campaign (1914–1915)  96 seferberlik: civilian suffering in the Ottoman Great War  100–2 Sinai campaign (1916–1917)  98–9 Suez Canal campaign (1915)  96, 98 wartime partition diplomacy and the postwar state system  103–6 Flaubert, Gustave  582 Foucault, M.  368, 507 France 24 invasion of Egypt (1798)  xxv, 46, 50 Middle East arms embargo (1967)  280 Radio-East 344 and Tunisia  94 see also Algeria; Algerian War of Independence; Lebanese state studies in sextarianism; Lebanon, French Mandate; Levant mandates; Syria, French Mandate Franco, Francisco  185 Franco-Lebanese Treaty of Friendship and Alliance (1936)  209 “freedom, bread and dignity” slogan  683 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN-ALN), Algeria  198, 212, 248, 252, 253–4, 254–6, 256, 257–8, 261–2 and diplomacy  262 European settler sympathists  250 internal history  259–60 Proclamation of 31 October 1954  253 violence, intimidation and terrorism  261–2 women’s participation  139, 256, 262–6 Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), Algeria  517 Fuad, King  115 Fuat Paşa, Deli  27–8 Futuwwa movement, Iraq  188–9

Hamas-controlled government  477 siege  693, 694 Gaza, Battles of (1917)  98–9, 105 Gemayyel, Pierre  185 General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW) 430 Geneva Convention (Fourth) and Jewish settlements 273–4 Georges-Picot, Charles François  104 Gershoni, I.  181, 181n.8 Gezi Park protests, Istanbul  177, 633 Ghalioun, Burhan  152 al-Ghannuchi, Rashid  xxii Ghonim, Wael  528, 554, 602–3 Gökalp, Z.  173 Golan Heights  271, 693 civilian settlement  282–3 destruction of Arab villages  275 Jewish settlements  273 Goldberg, D. T.  483–4 Goldzeiguer, A. R.  252 Göle, N.  175 Gorbachev, Mikhail  531 Gordon College, Khartum  207 Gouraud, Henri  111, 122–3, 124 Graduate Student Congress, Sudan  207 Gran, P.  40n.3, 49n.56, n.57 Great Mosque siege (1979), Mecca  154 Green, A. H.  586 Greenstein, R.  204 Grey, Edward  97, 103 Guantánamo Bay  370 Yemeni detainees  616 Gülen, Fethullah  635–6, 635n.37 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)  331, 350, 385, 552, 620 Gulf War (1990–1991)  154, 430–1

G

H

Gaddafi, Muammar  516, 517, 666, 667–8, 669, 670, 671, 672, 678 Gaddafi, Saif  668 Gallipoli campaign (1915–1916)  96–7 Gates, Robert  368 al-Gaylani, Rashid ʿAli  189, 190, 191 Gaza  271, 277, 370, 476, 641 air strikes on schools (2014)  599 declared Israeli territory  273

Haʾam, Ahad  482 Habash, Georges  215 Habib, Adam  386 Hachad, Farhat  579 Haddad, B.  410, 410n.6 Haddad, Tahar  589 Hadi, ʿAbd al-Rab Mansur  620 Hadj, Messali  251, 253, 254–5 Hafez, Abd al-Halim  237

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706   index Haftar, Khalifa  351, 675–6, 685 Halabja chemical attacks, Iraq  434 Halkevleri (People’s Houses), Turkey  165 Hall, S.  355 Hamba, ʿAli Bach  579 Hamidian regime, Ottoman  74 Hammami, Leila  578 HaMoked 479 Hanem, Naciye  200, 203 Hanieh, A.  387 Hannibal Barca  580, 582 Hanssen, J.  45nn.36,38 Harbi, Mohammed  259, 260 Hardt, M.  661 Hariri, Rafiq  xviii Hasan, Raufa  612 Hasan al-ʿAttar 41n.12 Hashemites  97–8, 99, 104 al-Hashimi, Taha  190 al-Hashimi, Yasin  111 Hawatimeh, Nayif  197 Hawrani, Akram  212 Helphand-Parvus, Alexander  203 Henein, Georges  207 Herzog, Yaʿacov  279, 283, 284, 285 Hezbollah  151, 351, 685, 686 al-Hidaya school, Muharraq  540 Hikmet, Nazim  197 al-Hilu, Farajallah  214 al-Hilu, Radwan  205 Hinnebusch, R.  417 Hitler, Adolf  119, 183, 187, 187n.26, 205 Hizb al-Daʿwa al-Islamiyya (Party of the Islamic Call)  548 Hobart, M.  507 Hobbes, Thomas  168 Hoodfar, H.  558 Hopper, M.  392 Hourani, Albert  40, 40n.4, 46 al-Huda, Bint  154 Hudson, M.  233 human-induced environmental change 3–4 al-Hurani, Akram  183 Husayn, Ahmad  186–7, 187n.26 Husayn, Taha  52 Husayn bin ʿAli 132

al-Husayni, Amin, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem  153, 188, 190 al-Husayni, Jamal  119 al-Husayni, Musa Kazim  119 al-Husri, Satiʿ  137, 138 Hussein, Imam  295, 309 Hussein, King  278, 279, 280, 284–5, 289 Hussein ibn Ali  97, 98, 103 Hussein-McMahon Correspondence (1915–1916) 103 Huthi, Husayn Badr al-Din  613 Huthis  351, 609, 612–14 Huwaydi, A.  228, 231

I

Ibn ʿArafa, Muhammad ibn Muhammad  574 Ibn ʿAshur, Muhammad Tahar  572, 574–6, 584, 585, 586 Ibn Khaldun, Abu Zayd al-Rahman  152, 572, 573, 574, 576, 577 Ibn Khaldun for Home Schooling  602 Ibn Nafiʿ,ʿUqbah 581 Ibrahim, Fatima Ahmed  208, 691 Ibrahim, Mohsen  215 Idris, King of Libya  517, 667 Idris, Yusuf  237–8 Ighilahriz, Louisette  248n.3 Ikhwan (Muslim Brothers)  656 Ilinden revolt of Macedo-Bulgarians (1903) 74 Imam, Shaykh  215 income inequality, MENA  xviii–xix Indian Muslim soldiers rebellion, Singapore 95–6 Innis, Harold  353, 353n.25 Insel, A.  166–7 International Labor Organization (ILO), youth unemployment studies  xviii International Monetary Fund (IMF)  xviii, 421–3 International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) 366–7 Iran: advanced weapons acquisition  305 as archetypal rentier state  325 centralized media system  349, 351–2 communism  201–2, 296, 309

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index   707 computer and Internet access  311 coup (1921)  86 “epistemology of ignorance”  311–12 Gendarmerie 85–6 Great Exodus to Qom  80–1 House of Justice establishment  80 “Reconstruction Era” (1989–1997)  310 “Reformist Era” (1997–2005)  310 Revolutionary Guards  310, 312 Social Democratic Party  201 tobacco concession and boycott (1890/1891)  80, 298, 309 Trump’s withdrawal from Nuclear Non-proliferation Deal  685 US sanctions (from 1980)  310 Iran and its revolutions  154, 292–315 1905–1911 Constitutional Revolution  68–73, 79–85, 85–7, 201, 294–5, 298, 309, 310, 314 1915–1921 Gilan uprisings  309 1951–1953 oil nationalization uprisings  292–6, 298, 300, 309, 310, 314–15 1963–1979 “White Revolution”  301–2, 303 1979 Revolution  294, 295, 298, 307–8, 309, 310, 312, 313, 314, 315, 518–19 2009 uprisings (Green Revolution)  xviii, 296, 298, 309, 310–13, 518 2017–2018 uprisings  313–14 CIA coup (1953)  299, 300 and colonial powers  296–9 Karbala narrative  294, 295–6, 308, 310, 313, 315 role of clergy  293, 295, 296, 298, 301–2, 308–9 SAVAK (Intelligence and National Security Organization)  299, 300, 301, 305, 307 Iran, constitutional revolutions and state formations, Turkey compared  68–87 constitutionalism 72–3 global constitutionalism and their transnational, regional and local histories 72–3 rule of law constitutionalism  73 state formations and the middle class  70–1 Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988)  xviii, 154, 310, 430, 433 Iranian Cossack Brigade  70–1 Iraq: anti-British coup (1941)  121, 183, 189, 190–2

Arab ultranationalism  187–92 Baathists coup (1963)  214 Communist Party  191, 214 demonstrations (2019)  692–3 Farhūd (anti-Jewish pogrom, 1941)  189–90, 191 invasion of Kuwait (1990)  434, 549 revolt (1920)  111, 116, 119 sectarianism  149–50, 154 youth uprising (2020)  342 Iraq, British mandate (1920–1932)  114, 115, 117 alteration of borders  135 constitution and state formation  120–1 exploitation of tribal and ethnic differences 150 independence struggles  134, 135 mandate structure  119–21 Iraq, fragmentation of gender, post-invasion 427–41 Article 41 of the Constitution (2005)  431 Civil Initiative to Preserve the Constitution  438, 440 evolution of women’s legal rights  428–32 Jaʿfari Law  431–2 living and mobilizing in an occupied and fragmented country  436–40 military, political, and economic genealogy of gender-based violence  433–6 Personal Status Code (PSC)/Family Law  428–30, 431, 432 sectarian war (2006–2007)  431, 436–7, 436n.39 Shia Islamist women activists  432 tabaʿiyya campaign  433, 434 Tribal Law abolition  429 ʿulemas  429, 430 UN economic sanctions, impact on women 435–6 Women Network (IWN)  431–2 Women’s League  437 Iraq, US-led invasion and occupation (2003)  xviii, xx, 144, 155, 342, 367–8, 431 coalition bombing campaign  434–4 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)  431, 436–7 global demonstrations against  530 US detention camps  370–2

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708   index Irbid, Jordan  288 Isa, Sheikh  544 Isa Qassim  548, 551 Isenberg, A. C.  5n.5 islah (religious revival)  39, 39n.1, 42–3, 42n.14, 42n.15, 46, 50, 53, 55 islahi discourse  59 as “Islamic”  41n.12, 42 as moral entrepreneurship  43–4 maslaha (public interest), muslih (reformer) and  43 and tajdid (renewal)  44 Islam/Islamism  xxi–xxiv, 133, 138, 144, 153, 238, 186 Islamic fundamentalism  427–8 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)  xxi–xxii, xxiii–xxiv, 351, 459–40, 595, 595n.11, 642, 650–1, 661, 676, 677, 678 invasion of northern and western Iraq (2014)  427, 433, 440–1 sexual violence  427 Ismet Pasha  170 Israel  xix, xx, 270, 281, 373, 694 creation  129, 186 Gaza Raid (1955)  232 Khiyam Detention Center  372–3 Ministry of Strategic Affairs  687 Security Services  478 Turkey relationship  641–2 War of Attrition with Egypt (1969–1970) 234 Israel and the Arabs in the aftermath of the June 1967 War  269–90 arms suppliers to Israel (1968)  281 demographic danger  274–7 foreign policy of deception  280–5 Israeli-Jordanian dialogue  279 “Jewish historical association”  285 “Jordanian option”  278, 279 legacy 289–90 occupied/administered territories  272 Operation Ridge  276 Palestinian exodus from the West Bank  274–7, 275n.32 Palestinian leaders deported to East Bank 279

“Palestinian option” (two-state solution)  278–9, 284 Palestinian resistance in eastern Ghor 287–8 two options  277–9 Israel/Palestine, contemporary  xix, xx, 474–95, 694 The Absentee Property Law (1950)  488–9 Apartheid Wall, Jerusalem and West Bank 477 Balfour Declaration  484–5 The Basic Law: Israel Lands, The Israel Lands Law 489–90 “center-of-life” policy  479, 479n.12 The Citizenship Law (1952)  492 demography, territory, and Jewish statehood 486–91 destruction of Palestinian lives and livelihoods  685, 686–7 East Jerusalem and Palestinian residency 478–80 The Entry into Israel Law (1952)  478, 479 ethnic cleansing  486–91 family reunification process  478–9 The Israel Lands Administration Law 489–90 Israeli incorporation regime  475, 491–4 The Jewish National Fund Law (1953) 489–90 Judaization/Israelization  487–8, 488n.51 Land Ordnance of 1943 488 The Law of Return (1950)  492 layered exclusions of settler-colonial subjects 475–82 Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order, 2003)  478 Oslo Accords  490 Palestinian Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship  480–2, 481n.19 Palestinian Authority (PA)  477, 478 Palestinian internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees  476–7, 480 Palestinian residents of West Bank and Gaza Strip  477–8 “right of return”  492 structural planning policy  487–9

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

index   709 Zionism and Eretz Yisrael (“Greater Israel”) 482–6 Zionism and racism  483–6 Zionism as a settler project  474 Israeli-Arab Armistice Agreement (1949) 272–3 Israeli-Egyptian peace Treaty (1979)  240 Italian Fascism  180, 181, 182, 186, 187, 343, 344

J

Jabareen, Y.  487 Jabarti  47, 50, 51 Jabhat Al-Nusrah  351 Jabotinsky, Vladimir  181 al-Jaʿfari, Ibrahim  439 Jafari, Shaban (Shaban bi Mokh)  296n.9 Jaheen, Salah  238 al-Jamri, Abdul Amir  549 Jangali, Mirza Kochak Khan  309 Jarring, Gunnar  281, 284 Al-Jawaheri, H. Y.  431 Jeffries, J. M. N.  484, 485, 485n.44 Jericho 274 Jerusalem  271, 476 British forces occupation (1917)  99 East Jerusalem  693, 694 Harat-al-Magharibah razed  275 Israeli annexation of  273, 273n.20, 283 Jewish settlements  273 Jewish communism  204–6 Jewish National Fund (JNF)  483 Jewish Settlement, and the Fourth General Convention 273–4 al-Jisr, Husayn  45n.33 Johnson, Lyndon  279, 280, 281, 282, 286 Jones, T. C.  384, 390–1 Jordan  122, 271, 278 see also Transjordan, British mandate Joseph, S.  430, 454–5, 469 Jumblatt, Kamal  151, 153, 209–10, 216, 469 Justice Party, Iran  202

K

Kadri, A.  417–18, 417n.43 Kafka, F.  292 Kalecki, M.  412, 421

Kaplan, Robert  376 Karman, Tawakul  619n.55 Karoubi, Mehdi  312 al-Karoui, Amina  578 Karoui, Nabil  688 Kashani, Ayatollah  293 Kasravi, Ahnad  301 Kassab, S.  xxi Kaya, S.  176 KBR Halliburton  374 Kefala system  548, 548n.22 Kemalism and beyond  85, 87, 105–6, 162–77, 629 abroad 173–7 alternative Kemalisms  166–8 Christians in Turkey  169–70 civilizationism 166–8 complicating “facts”  165–6 de-Ottomanization 168 European fascism and “high” Kemalism relationship  165, 166 in its own terms  163–4 Istanbul Greeks  170–1 Kurdish population in Anatolia  172–3, 174 modernization theory  163, 164, 166 Soviet Community Party-Kemalist state relations 165–6 “Turk-Islam” synthesis  167–8 Turkification 169–73 Kennedy, John F.  365 Kennou, Kalthoum  578 Keyder, C.  169 Keynes, J. M.  421 Khadduri, M.  191, 191n.46 Khalid, Emir  210, 211 Khalifa bin Salman  544 Khalili, L.  366n.5 Khamenei, Ali  296, 312, 313 Khan Academy  603 Khartoum Arab Summit (1967)  280, 283, 284 Khashuqji (Kashoggi), Jamal  684, 686 Khatami, Mohammad  311 al-Khatib, Ruhi  273 Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi  579, 583, 585–7, 588, 589 al-Khaywani, ʿAbdulkarim 613

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710   index Khomeini, Ayatollah  295, 296, 308, 310, 312, 313, 315, 518, 548 Khomeini, Ruhollah  154 el-Khoury, Bishara  210, 213 Khuri, Raʾif 209 Khuri-Makdisi, I.  39n.1, 41n.13 Kienle, Eberhard  152 Kilcullen, D.  376 Kissinger, Henry  305 Klare, M.  300 Kollek, Teddy  273 Koşay, H.  172–3 Kraidy, M.  357, 357nn.42,43,44 Kufi people, Iran  295 Kültürpark, İzmir  165 Kurban, D.  631n.22 Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), Iraq  657 Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)  643–4 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)  351, 634, 657 Kurds  xxv, 105, 203, 351, 357, 358, 433, 654, 658, 687 Anatolian populations  172–3, 174 and the Arab Spring  657 democratic autonomy concept  657–62 democratic autonomy condition of possibility 659–63 Greater Kurdistan  661 Iraq repression of  154 in Jazira province  654 in the Middle East and sovereign domination 652–3 nationalism  172–3, 174, 431, 434 Operation Safe Haven, Iraq  434 Qamishli uprising (2004)  654–5, 656, 657 Syrian communities  655–7 Turkey, minorities  630, 631–2, 631n.22, 634–5 see also Syria, civil war Kushner, Jared  686 Kut al-Amara siege and surrender (1916)  97 Kuwait  120, 542, 549

L

Lacoste, Robert  256 Lafi, N.  47n.46 Latour, B.  16n.85

Lauzière, H.  42n.15 Lawrence, T. E.  98, 376 Le Sueur, J.  261 League of Arab Intellectuals  206 League of Nations  xxvii, 110, 111–12, 117, 118, 121, 122, 124, 126, 134, 199, 653 Article  22 110 Mandates Commission  112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 149 Lebanese civil war (1975–1990)  xvii, xviii, 151, 152, 214, 216, 449, 517 Lebanese state studies in sextarianism  444–70 Article 1 of Civil Law No. 15  453 Census (1932)  448–9 census data  450–2 citizenship law examined  452–5, 456t civil law LR 60  444, 465, 465n.46 civil marriage law  465 “Code of Obligation and Contracts”  455, 464–6 Court of Cassation  464, 466 “crimes of passion”  467 criminal codes and gender  455, 456t, 467 criminal law  466–8 domestic violence law (2014)  466–7 gendered violence  467 personal status and sexual difference  444, 455, 464–6 political sectarianism  445, 448–9, 455 refugee naturalization  453 sextarianism 468–70 sexual difference in state registries  448–50 state practices and sexuality, sexual difference and gender  445 Taif Accord peace agreement  449, 689 Lebanon: 1858 crisis  185 communism  208–10, 213, 214 “independence intifada” (2005)  xviii, 517, 531 Nahda 50–2 Nationalist Movement  216, 525 October Revolution (2019)  689–90 Phalanges Party  185–6 sectarianism  144, 148, 149, 151–2, 153 Socialist (1964–1970)  525 Workers party  209

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index   711 Lebanon, French mandate (1920–1943)  14, 114, 115–16, 117, 149, 448–9 constitution and state formation  124–6 mandate structure  122–4 “protection” of minorities  149 Lenczowski, G.  192 Lenin, Vladimir  109–10, 199, 200, 203, 221 Levant mandates  109–26 constitutions, treaties, and state formation 116–17 end of WW1 and treaty conferences 109–10 Iraq and Transjordan constitutions and state formation  120–2 Iraq and Transjordan structures  119–21 League of Nations and Anglo-French colonialism 111–14 mandate governance in practice  114–16 Palestine constitution and state formation 118–19 Palestine structures  118 popular mobilizations and mass national politics 134–5 San Remo Conference (1920)  111 Syria and Lebanon structures  122–4 Syrian and Lebanese constitutions and state formation  124–6 Treaty of Sèvres (1920)  111 Lewis, Bernard  xxiii Libya: Arab Spring  140 Italian occupation  181, 182, 182n.11 after the fall: the lost year  669–71 American diplomatic outpost attack  673 armed groups: social, political, and economic roots  671–4 civil war and regional intervention  675–7 Constitutional Declaration (2011)  670 Dawn and Dignity factions  676 General National Congress (GNC)  675 Government of National Accord  676–7 House of Representatives established  675, 676 Jamahiriya (“State of the Masses”) policy 667 jihadist-leaning Islamists  672, 673 Libyan Special Forces in Benghazi  674

National Forces Alliance  674 National Transitional Council  668 parliamentary elections (2012)  670–1, 673 Political Isolation Law (2013)  673, 675 “registering” of armed groups  672–3 Tripoli, final push (2011)  672 truncated sovereignty and hybridity  677–8 Zintani militias  673–4, 675 Libyan National Army (LNA)  351 Liman von Sanders, Otto  94 Limbert, M  393 Lloyd George, David  105, 110 Luciani, G.  326, 326n.15, 387 Lutfi al-Sayyed, Ahmad  43 Luxemburg, Rosa  200, 210, 211

M

Madkhalism 678 Madkour, Yasmine  601 Mafinezam, A.  305 Magnes, J.  482 Mahdavy, H.  325–6, 325n.10, 387 Mahdi, Adel Abdul  692 Mahdiyya uprising (1881–1885)  521–2 Mahir, ʿAli 190 Mahjub, ʿAbdel Khaliq  208 Mahmud Nedim Paşa  29 Mahmut I  521 Majd, Mohammad Gholi  298 Makdisi, U.  51n.71, 450 Makhluf, Muhammad Hasanayn  55, 56 Maktabi, R.  448 Malkam Khan, Mirza  72, 79, 80 Mamdani, M.  449–50 Mannheim, K.  595 Mansur, Abdul Rahman  554 Mansur, Muhammad  616 Maoists 198 Maqlad, Shahenda  215 Maqsud, Clovis  212 Marcuse, Herbert  218 Maronite Christians, Lebanon  115, 122–3, 124, 148, 185, 445, 449, 464, 465 Maroun, Antoun  207 Marx, Karl  210 Massu, Jacques  248n.3, 256 Mau Mau movement, Kenya  232

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712   index McAdam, D.  531 McChesney, R.  353 McChrystal, Stanley  367 McLuhan, Marshall  353 McMahon, Henry  98, 103, 104 McNeill, J. R.  5 media as method in the age of revolution  336, 342–61, 554 anticolonial movements  346–7 authoritarianism through censorship, agenda setting, framing, and gate-keeping 350 big data analysis  359 colonial legacies  343–6 confronting state media  347–8 corporate centralization of media organizations 353 critical cultural studies  355–60, 361 critical discourse analysis (CDA)  356 deregulation and privatization of media sector  348–9, 354–5 frameworks and methodologies  352–60 historicizing mediation  343–52 jihadist narratives  357 neoliberal authoritarianism  348–52 nepotism and cronyism in the media sector 349–50 perennial revolution  346–8 political economy of communication  353–5, 360–1 regional media moguls’ influence  354 regional rivalries played out it the media 350 state control of media and journalism  348 weaponized media in ongoing conflicts 351 youth protest and social media platforms 352 Megiddo, Battle of (1918)  99 Mehmed II  25 Mehmed V Reşat  94, 95 Mehmet Ali Pasha (Muhammad Ali)  46–7, 50, 130 Mehrabi, A.  305 Meir, Golda  286–7, 289 Mekameleen TV  351 Menderes, Adnan  166

Merad, Ali  39n.1, 44n.29 Meron, Theodor  273–4, 274n.26 el-Mesawi, M. el-Tahir  574 Meynier, G.  259, 260 Middle East Studies Association (MESA)  xxvi Midhat Pasha, Ahmed Şefik  72 Mikhail, A.  13 Mikunis, Shmu’el  206 “military revolution” theory  24–5, 36–7 Miller, F.  393 Mira, ʿAli 211 Mishra, P.  xxiii Misrata siege, Libya (2011)  669, 672 Mitchell, T.  9, 390, 469 Al Modarrisi, Hadi  548 Moddaress, Ayatollah  295 Mohammad Agha Khan  299 Mohammad Reza  299–300 Mohammed bin Salman  351 Mojahedin-e Khalgh-e Iran  301 Morawitz, Charles  27 Morocco: ʿAbd al-Hafiz risings (1875–1937)  521 Berber activists  145 Berber dahir (decree) protests (1931)  136 Casablanca bombardment (1907)  130 European colonialism  128 Morsi, Muhammad  xxii, 351, 509, 642, 674 Mossadegh, Mohammad  202, 292, 293–4, 295, 314–15, 518 Mount Hebron Jewish settlement  273 Mount Lebanon  50, 51, 122–3, 208, 451 civil war (1860)  132, 148 Maronite Catholics  148 risings  521, 522 trials (1916)  101 Mousavi, Hussein  296, 312 Moussa, Nadine  452–3 Mouvement National Algérien (MNA)  255, 260, 261 Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques (MTLD), Algeria  252, 254 Movement for the Whole Land of Israel  272 Movement of Arab Nationalists (MAN)  212, 215, 216, 217, 545 Mubarak, Hosni  xxii, 219, 239, 241, 501, 504, 516, 554, 564, 565, 595, 609, 617

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index   713 al-Mughrabi, Mahmud al-Atrash  205 Muhammad (the Prophet)  43–4, 133 Muhammad, ʿAli Nasir  610 Muhammad Ali Pasha  522 Muhammad Bey  585 Muhammad bin Salman  684, 686 Muhammad bin Zayid  684 Mujahidin xvii al-Mukhtar, Umar 182 Munif, A.  9n.23 Murad III  25 Murqus, Ilyas  217 Muruwwah, H.  218 Musa, Salama  207 Muslim Brotherhood: affiliated television networks  351 Bahrain  543, 550 banned in Egypt  227, 236, 531, Egypt  xvii, xxi, xxii, 137, 186, 219, 227, 242, 501, 504, 509, 525, 527, 595, 600, 642, 674, 687 Syria 525 youth camps  602 Muslim Communist Party  200, 201 “Muslim nation” (umma islāmiyya) 137 Mussolini, Benito  186 Mustafa II  521 Mustashar al-Dawlah, Yusuf Kahn  72 Mutawakkilite Kingdom, Yemen  609 Al-Muthanna Club, Iraq  187–8, 189

N

Nabadat Foundation  602 al-Nabhani, Yusuf  42n.14, 44n.29, 55, 57 Nagib, Muhammed  227 Nahda (cultural revival)  xx, xxi, 39–59, 132–3 changes in pedagogy, legal practice, and canon 49–55 emerging women’s press  57–8 and freedom (hurriya) 53 and independent reasoning (ijtihad) 48 intellectual flowering of the seventeenth century 47–8 and “Islamic reform”  41, 42–3, 42n.14, 44, 54–5, 56 Lebanese/Egyptian dualism  50–2, 57 “liberal” 52

logic vs. Hadith 48–9 manfaʿa (utility)  43 maslaha (public interest)  43, 43n.22 muslih (reformer) and mujaddid (renewer) 43–5 Ottoman studies  53–4 Palestinian “economic”  53 public sphere  39, 39n.2, 40, 52 publicity, publicist and the public interest 55–9 and the scriptural legacy of Wahhabism  48 and the social body (al-hay’a al-ijtimaʿiyya) 53 Sufis 55 watan (homeland)  43, 51, 51n.74, 54 Zaydan’s conception  45–6 Naʾini, Ayatollah  72, 83 Najd plateau, Saudi Arabia  389 Napoleon Bonaparte  46, 50 Naqab (Negev) region  480 al-Nasir, Jamal ʿAbd 543 Nasir al-Din Shah  298 Nasser, Gamal Abdel  xvii, 9, 137, 215, 225, 226–38, 242–3, 270, 278, 394, 395 elected president (1956)  234, 227 The Philosophy of the Revolution 226 self-criticism 236 Nasserism  xxvii, 138, 212, 214, 225–43 “Arab socialism”  212, 230 definition 225 evolution 240–1 and land reform  229 nationalizations 230 objectives and practices  226–8 as pan-Arabism and neutralism  231–4 political and popular culture  234–8 in protest  239–40 revolution 241–2 “revolution from above”  227, 234 sequestration of foreign assets  229–30 as social justice  228–31 today 238–9 National Bloc, Syria  125, 137, 182–3 National Liberation Front (NLF), Algeria 232 National Liberation Front (NLF), Bahrain  545, 547

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

714   index National Liberation Front (NLF), Yemen  216, 217 National Liberation League, Palestine  206 National Progressive Front, Lebanon  214 nationalism, emergence of  127–40 crucial role of time  139–40 cultures and communities  131–3 diffusionist model  128–9 and gender  138–9 imperial contexts  128–32 mass politics and mobilization  134–7 Ottoman Empire  128–31 vs. sectarianism  145 and solidarity (ʿasabiyyah) 152 tensions of nation  138–40 and watan (homeland)  131, 135, 136, 138 Naus, Joseph  80 Nazi Germany  182, 183, 184, 185, 186–7, 188, 190 Nazim, Dr  75 Nazism  180, 181, 183, 187–8, 181 Negri, A.  661 Nehru, Jawaharlal  233 Netanyahu, Benjamin  686 al-Nuba, Nasir ʿAli 614 Nicholas II  93–4 Niemöller, Martin  197 Nigm, Ahmad Fuʾad 215 Nimeiri, Jaʿfar 208 9/11 attacks  155, 366, 388, 394, 685 Nixon, Richard  305 nonaligned movement  234, 262 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)  232, 367, 628 operations in Libya  669, 672 and Turkey  203, 639, 645–6 Nuri, Ayatollah  83

O

Obama, Barak  xxiii n.32, 368, 642 and Libya  670 Öcalan, Abdullah  634, 658, 658n.9, 659 Occupy movements  530 Ollman, B.  328 Öncü, A.  174, 175 Opwis, F.  43n.22 Oslo Accords/Agreements (1993)  478, 490, 517 Ottoman Empire:

agriculture, and local ecologies and expertise 13–15 army 71 Chamber of Deputies  72 Committee of Union and Progress  71 emergence of nationalism  128–31 family law (1917)  464 Hamidian educational system  71 Ottoman studies and Nahda studies  53–4 partition 110 pastoralism 11 patrimonialisms 70 Public Debt Administration (1881)  69 role of petitions  112 state modernization and emergence of sectarianism 147 tanzimat reforms  25, 43, 54, 59, 70, 71, 130, 521 Ottoman Empire, and the First World War  93–106 armistice (1918)  109, 111 armistice with Russia  99 general mobilization (August 1, 1914)  93, 94–5 Ottoman Empire, fiscal crisis and structural change in the late Ottoman economy 24–37 administration of revenues under the ODA 30–4 Administration of Six Indirect Revenues 30 Decree of Muharrem  30, 31, 35 domestic borrowing  26, 29 European-imposed capitulations  26 foreign investment after OPDA  34–6, 35f foreign loans and reforms to access international markets  27–30 Galata Bankers  26, 27, 29, 30 ilitzam system  25 Imperial Ottoman Bank (BIO)  28, 29, 30, 33 Istanbul fishery tax  33 kaimes  26, 28, 29 malikane system  25 “Ottoman Defense Loan”  29 Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA)  30–3, 34, 35–6, 37 railroad investments  36 Régie system  33–4

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

index   715 salt revenues  32 silk tithe  32 spirits tax  33 stamp tax  32–3 timar system  24 tobacco revenues  33–4 Ottoman Freedom Society (OFS)  75 Ouda, M.  558 Özyürek, E.  176

P

Palestine/Palestinians  xix, xx, xxv, 105, 188, 269, 693 and Arab communism  204–6, 212 Arab Congress  118 boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS)  693 intifada (1987–1991)  517, 525 leaders deported to East Bank  279 as non-citizens and a stateless people  476, 481 “Peace to Prosperity” plan  686 resistance in eastern Ghor  287–8 Second Intifada  xviii Sunni refugees in Lebanon  454 women and nationalist struggles  139 see also Gaza; Jerusalem; West Bank Palestine, British mandate (1920–1948)  114–15, 115–16, 117, 342 constitution and state formation  118–19 Jewish Yishuv fascism  181 mandate renounced  119 mandate structures  118 Palestinian Arab Revolt (1936–1939)  226 Palestinian-Jewish sectarianism  150 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)  xxvii, 185, 239, 248, 278, 288 Palestine War (1948)  226 Pamuk, Orhan  101 pan-Arabism  226–7, 232–3, 239, 241 pan-Islamism  201, 201n.22 Paris Peace Conference (1919)  110 Parla, T.  164 Parti du Peuple Algèrien (PPA)  251, 252 Pasteur, Louis  32 Patel, A.  47n.45 Pateman, C.  469 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Iraq  657

Pearlman, W.  693 Peel Plan for partition of Palestine (1937)  205 People’s Democratic Party (HDP), Bakur  659, 660, 661 People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen  215–16 People’s Democratic Union (PYD), defeat and expulsion of ISIL  650–1 People’s Liberation Front, Turkey  203 People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK)  351 Peres, Shimon  270 Perinçek, Doğu  646 Perkins, Kenneth  581, 582, 583 Perthes, V.  410, 410n.6 Petraeus, David  367, 376 Petras, J.  415 Philipp, T.  73 Phoenix Program, Vietnam  371, 372 PKK, Bakur  659–60, 661 Poale Zion (“Workers of Zion”)  204 Poitras, Laura  386 political economy of oil in the Gulf  323–37 agency rights  330 arms sales  330n.38 capital in the Gulf  329–32 “commodity fetishism”  335 construction industry  330, 334 cross-border investment  332 emerging questions and future paths  335–7 female domestic workers  333–4 financial markets  330–1 internationalization of Gulf capital  331–2 kafala system  333 kafeel rights  333 Middle East key to world energy market  324 migrant labor  332–5 privately owned conglomerates  330, 332 real estate sector  331, 334 remittance flows  333 Rentier State Theory (RST)  324–5 Rentier State Theory critiques  327 Rentier States and the Gulf  325–9 ruling families and Gulf capital  332 state and social (class) relations  328–9 taxation constraints  325, 326, 327 and US-dominated global capitalism  324 “vertical segmentation”  326–7 Weberian framework  327–8 youth unemployment  336

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

716   index Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG)  545–6, 547 Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), Lebanon  151, 153, 209–10 Putin, Vladimir  644, 687–8

Q

Qabbani, Nizar  601 al-Qadasi, Dirham  616 Qajar dynasty, Iran  70–1, 294–5, 297 Qanun journal  79 Qasim, ʿAbd al-Karim  214, 429 Qatar  333, 350, 672 Qatar Petroleum  336 al-Qawuqji, Fawzi  134–5

R

Rabin, Yitzhak  274, 283, 286, 288 Radice, H.  328n.32 Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar  310 al-Rajabi, Khalil ibn Ahmad  50 Ramadan, Tariq  386 Rappard, William  113 al-Rasheed, M.  389 Reagan, Ronald  xvii, xxiii, 668 reformism xxiv–xxv Rentier State Theory (RST)  324–5 research agendas  387–8, 389 Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey  162, 165 revolutionary time in contemporary history 683–94 counter-revolution and the Arab Winter 683 right-wing political turn in the West  685 Reza Shah Pahlavi  xvii, 68, 71, 85, 86, 87, 173, 174, 202, 292, 299, 295, 301–7 coup (1921)  295, 299 declares one-party system (Rastakhiz or Resurrection) 306 flight and return (August, 1953)  293, 299 Mission for My Country 303 raises oil prices (early 1970s)  305, 306 safeguarding his power monopoly  304–5, 306 second exile (1979)  299

US relationship  305–6, 307 “White Revolution”  301–2, 303 Rida, Rashid  41n.12, 43, 44n.29, 45, 45n.32, 51, 51n.75, 54, 55–7, 56n.100, 58, 113f Rif War, Morocco  134–5, 201 Riyadh Agreement (2019)  685 Roberts, M.  24 Robinson, J.  421 Rodinson, Maxime  212 Rogan, E. L.  12n.57 Rojava, Northern Syria  643–4, 657, 659, 661–3 Rosenthal, Joseph  207 Ross, M.  326 Rostow, Eugene  274 Rostow, Walt  286, 365 Rothschild, Baron  484 Rouchdy, M.  558 Rouhana, N.  493 Roy, M. N.  200 RT Arabic (Rusiya Al-Yawn TV)  345 Ruedy, J.  253 Rusk, Dean  279, 282, 289 Russian Revolution (1905)  69 Russo-Turkish War (1877–8)  29, 30, 72 Ryad, U.  41n.12

S

Saʿada, Antun  183–5 Sabahaddin, Prince  74 Sabahi, Hamdin  240–1, 242 al-Sabʿawi, Yunus  191 al-Sabbagh, Salah al-Din  189, 190, 191 Sabry, T.  357, 357n.46 Sadat, Anwar  xvii, 153, 214, 215, 238–9, 240, 243, 517, 556 Saddam Hussein  xviii, 145, 154, 214, 431, 433, 517, 655 al-Sadr, Hussein  432 al-Sadr, Moqtada  342, 440, 692 al-Sadr, Muhammad Baqir  154, 548 al-Sadr, Musa  151, 153 Safarov, Grigory  200 Saghiyya, H.  184 Said, Edward  xxvi, 40, 218, 355, 385, 484, 502 Said, Khaled  xxi, 554 al-Saʿid, Nuri  120, 189, 191n.46

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

index   717 Saʿid ibn Taymur  216 Saied, Kais  688 Şakir, Bahaeddin  75 Sakr, N.  354 Salafi movement  550 Saleh, Ali Abdullah  391, 516, 610, 611, 613–14, 613n.23, 615, 617, 620 Saleh, Yassin al-Haj  688, 689 Salih, Arwa  197, 218–19 Salloukh, B.  689 Salman, King of Saudi Arabia  686 Salman Al Khalifa  544 Salman the Pure (Salman Pak)  97 Samuel, Herbert  118 al-Sanusi, Muhammad b. Yusuf  45n.35 Sanussiya dynasty  667 Sapir, Yosef  290 Sarikamiş Campaign (1914–1915)  96 Sartre, Jean-Paul  212 Saudi Arabia  310, 523 Al Saud regime  394–7 civil liberties restrictions  xix globalization of sectarianism  154 knowledge, history and politics  394–7 media challenging Muslim Brotherhood-aligned groups  350 proxy war in Yemen  384, 385, 388, 397–8, 684 support for Salih  613–14 Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) 336 Saunders, Harold  286 al-Sawi, Ahmad  55 Sayegh, F.  225 Sayigh, A.  233–4 Sayyid, B.  173 Schiller, H.  353 Schumann, C.  184n.18 Scott, D.  397 Scott, J.  446, 447, 469, 554 Seale, P.  184 Second World War  183, 190, 192, 251, 299, 305 Second Young Turk Congress (1907)  75 sectarianism 144–56 as analytical category  155–6 authoritarian sectarians  151–5 and “communalism”  146 concept-history of term in Arabic  146

as conceptual problem  144 emergence of modern  147–8 “everyday” 144 historical discourse about  146–7 as a historically conditioned problem  156 of the street and of the state  148–51 towards globalization of?  155–4 Seddülbahr Fort, Turkey  96 Seifan, S.  418 Selim III  52, 521 Sétif Massacres (1945)  211, 251–2 Seurat, Michel  152 Şevket Pasha, Mahmud  78 Sèvres, Treaty of (1920)  105 Sewell, W. H.  531 Sfar, Bechir  579 Shaath, Ali  601 Shabak security service, Israel  279 Shafir, Gershon  485–6 Shahab, A.  xxii Shahin, Tanyus  521, 522 Shamlou, Ahmad  301n.20 Shanghai Cooperation Organization  646 Shararah, Waddah  218 al-Sharia, Ansar  674 Sharm al-Sheikh  271, 273 Sharqawi, Ahmad  55 al-Shatibi, Abu Ishaq  574 Shavit, Y.  181 Shaw, M.  373 Shawcross, W.  293 Shawkat, Sami  188–9 Shawqi, Ahmad  54 Sheehi, S.  40n.3 Shell petrochemical project, Qatar  336 Shia Islam: Bahrain 154–5 Iraq  149–50, 154, 44 Lebanon  151, 445, 449, 453 Shia Islam, Iran  301 clergy, power and influence  308–9 religious structure (Rohaniyyat) 295 revolutionary 294 Shia Islam Shii Isna Ashari (Twelvers)  153, 308n.45 Twelver rebellion, Saudi Arabia  154 al-Shidyaq, Tannus  51

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

718   index al-Shihabi, M.  14–15 al-Shimali, Fuʾad 209 Shirazi, Mirza Hassan  298 Al Shirazi, Mohammad  548 Shishakly, Adib  213 Sid Cara, Cherif  265 Sid Cara, Nafissa  265–6 Sidqi, Najati  205 Simon, E.  482 Simon, William E.  305–6 Simpson, A.  447 Sinai campaign, WW1 (1916–1917)  98–9 Singerman, D.  558 Sipahioğlu, G.  171n.31 el-Sisi, Abdel-Fattah  242, 351, 521, 595, 674 Trump’s comments  687 al-Sistani, Ali  439, 440, 692 Six Day War (Arab-Israeli War, 1967)  215, 231, 269, 545 Skovgaard-Petersen, J.  354 Sluglett, P.  121, 422n.66 Smythe, Dallas  353 Socialist Workers’ Federation, Turkey  202 Socialist Workers Party, Palestine  204 Sokol movement, Central Europe  185 Soleimani, Qassem, assassination (2020)  686 el-Solh, Mona  452 el-Solh, Riad  452 Southern Movement (al-Hirak)  392 Soviet republics, color revolutions  530 Soviet Union (USSR): Afghanistan invasion  xvii, xviii Cold War era  304–5 demise of  xviii Egypt and Syria relations after the Six Day War 280 influence on Palestine communism  204–5 and Iran  293, 295, 296, 299 Popular Front approach in Algeria  211 UN vote for partition of Palestine  206 Soysal, Y.  475 Stalin, Joseph  198, 204, 211, 221 Stevens, J.  469 Stevens, J. Christopher  673 Subayʿ, Nabil  618 Subhi, Mustafa  203 Sudan  206, 207–8, 683, 690–1

Sudanese Communist Party (SCP)  206, 207, 208 Sudanese Movement for National Liberation (SMNL) 207 Sudayri brothers  394–5, 394n.35 Suez Canal  105, 109 WW1 campaign (1915)  96, 98 Suez Canal Company nationalization  229, 233 Suez Canal Zone  227, 231 Suez Crisis (1956–1957)  233 Sufis, and Nahda  55 Suleimani, Qasem  686n.6, 692 Sultan Ahmet Camii, Istanbul  168 Sultan-Galiev, Mirsaid  200–1, 217 Sultanzade, Ahmad  202 Sumerian civilization  658 Sunni Islam: Bahrain 552 French Algeria  148 insurgents in Iraq, supported by Saudi Arabia  394 Iranians 314 Lebanon  445, 449, 453 Syria 153 al-Surayhi, Awad  618 Surkis, J.  447 Swehli, Ramadan  667 Sykes, Mark  104 Sykes-Picot-Sazanoff Agreement (1916)  103, 104, 105, 199, 653 Syria  xix, xxi, 104, 125, 136, 278, 531 communism  208–10, 213, 214 Kurdish communities  655–7 Ottoman vs colonial agricultural knowledge production  14–15 Permanent Constitution of the Syrian Arab Republic (1973)  152–3 revolt (1963) and socialist period  411–12 secession from UAR  230, 236 sectarianism 152–3 Six Day War with Israel  271 Syria, civil war (2011–)  409, 522, 649–63, 687–8 Arab Spring  649–50 concept of democratic autonomy  657–62 consolidation and expansion of sectarian rule 655–6

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

index   719 crisis of sovereignty and the reconstitution of the Kurdish question  653–5, 654n.6, 655–7 the nation-state and the stateless  651–3 refugee crisis  454, 641, 643, 644–5, 688 and Turkey  628, 642–5 US policy of “strategic disengagement” (2013)  650, 651 US-Russia “understanding”  651 Syria, economic history  409–24 agricultural sector  414 capital accumulation  410, 410n.3 capital formulation prior to the 2011 uprising  416–20, 420t class and capital in postcolonial Syria 411–12 GDP growth (1964–1974)  414, 414n.24, 415 import-substituting industrialization (ISI) program 412 import-substituting investment  417 inapplicability of general investment theory 421–3 Incremental Capital Output Ratio (ICOR) 417 industrial investment  416–17, 417n.38 Investment Agency  419 Investment Law No.  10 (1991) 415, 418, 418n.49, 419, 420t legislative decree No. 8 (2007)  416, 418–19 market liberalization  410, 410n.5, 412, 415–16, 418–19 military expenditure  414–15 nationalization programs  412–13 neoclassical approach to investment  421–2 overdependence on external funds  414, 414n.28 privatization of health and education  420 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)  417 social welfare guarantees and protections 414 view prior to the 2011 uprising  412–16 Syria, French mandate (1923–43)  114, 115, 117 agricultural policies  14 alteration of borders  135 constitution and state formation  124–6 Great Syrian Revolt (1925–1927)  115, 116, 123, 136

independence struggles  134, 135 mandate structure  122–4 “protection” of minorities  149 sectarianism 149 Syrian Democratic Force  651 Syrian National Bloc  137 Syrian-Palestinian Congress (1921)  112–14, 113f Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP)  183–5

T

Tabak, F.  8 Tabatabaʾi, Mirza Sayyid Muhammad  80, 83 Tahir Academy  602–3 al-Tahtawi, Rifaʿa Rifiʿ 43 Taif Accord (1989)  449, 689 Tajzadeh, Mostafa  314 n.56 Talat Pasha  93 Talbot, G. F.  298 Taliban, Afghanistan  366, 599 Tamarrud (“Rebellion”), Egyptian youth group 242 Tehran Agreement (2010)  642 Terbil, Fathi  xxi, 668 Thatcher, Margaret  xvii Third-World liberation movements  xxvii Thucydides 270 Tignor, R.  228 TikTok 346 Tilly, C.  531 Titan company  374 Tizini, Tayyib  218 tobacco rebellion, Iran  80, 298 Torkomyan, Kevork  32 Townshend, Charles  97 Transjordan, British mandate (1922–1946)  114, 115 constitution and state formation  121–2 independence 122 independence struggles  134 mandate structure  119–21 Transparency International Report  xxiv n.40 Tripartite Saint-Jean de Maurienne Agreement (1917)  103 Tripoli (2011)  672 Trotsky, Leon  199, 211

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

720   index Trump, Donald  644, 686 comments on Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi  687 policy on Palestine  686–7 withdrawal from Iran’s Nuclear Non-proliferation Deal  586 and Yemen  398 Tudeh (Toudeh) Party, Iran  202, 293, 294, 296 Tuncay, M.  168 Tunisia  94, 140, 516, 688 national anthem  528–9 Tunisia, political history  572–89 Carthage 580–1 constitution 583–7 constitution (2014)  588 constitutive histories  578–80 Federated Union of Tunisian Workers 577–8 “Fundamental Pact” (1857)  584–5, 584n.39, 588 gender parity law (2011)  578 renewal, decay and revolution  588–9 women and gender  577–8 al-Turk, Riyad  214 Turkey: army coup (2016) and crackdown  628, 635–9, 687 complete media control  349, 351 Department of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) 168 Islamist political agendas and the media 350–1 military coup (1960)  166 military coup (1980)  163 and the PKK  660 Syrian civil war involvement  628 war of national independence  134 Workers Party  165, 203 Young Ottoman movement  72, 73, 74, 76 see also AK Party, Turkey; Kemalism and beyond Turkey at home and abroad  627–47 attempted coup (2016) and its aftermath 635–9 civil society organizations purged  637–8 Constitution (1982)  163, 175, 177, 629, 629n.9, n.11, 630

constitutional amendment (2017)  632–3, 647 constitutional referendum (2007)  632 Cyprus negotiations  641 European Union membership  640–1 founding “Kemalist” commitments  629, 629n.10 governing through polarization  633–5 Israel relationship  641–2 journalists purged and jailed  637–8 Kurdish minorities  630, 631–2, 631n.22, 634–5, 644 NATO relations  203, 639, 645–6 “new” Turkey abroad  639–46 “new” Turkey at home  631–9 Operation Euphrates Shield  643–4 People’s Democratic Party (HDP)  634 Russia relations  644, 645 secularism 629–30 surveillance state  638 Syrian refugee crisis  454, 641, 643, 644–5, 688 toward Eurasia  645–6 understanding the “old” Turkey  628–31 war in Syria and path to zero friends  642–5 zero problems policy  640–2 Turkey constitutional revolutions and state formations, Iran compared  68–87 constitutionalism 72–3 global constitutionalism and their transnational, regional and local histories 72–3 rule of law constitutionalism  73 state formations and the middle class  70–1 Turner, B.  411 Turtel, Joel  602 Twenty-One Points Declaration, Second Congress of the Comintern, Moscow 210–11

U

ʿUkasha, Tharwat  237 Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT), Tunisia  524 United Arab Emirates (UAE)  350, 672, 684

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

index   721 United Arab Republic (1958–1961)  217, 230, 654 United Kingdom (UK): Anglo-Egypt Agreement (1954)  232 Egypt, rule (1882–1952)  150 and Iran  292, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299 and the Ottomans (1914)  94 Palestine 105 and Yemen  128, 398 see also Iraq, British Mandate; Palestine, British Mandate: Transjordan, British Mandate United Nations (UN)  12, 119, 262 Arab Human Development Reports (AHDR) xix–xx Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food prices in MENA countries xix Partition Resolution (1947)  272 Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA)  273, 476 United Nations (UN) General Assembly: and Algeria  256, 262 and Israeli annexation of Israel  283 United Nations Security Council (UNSC): condemnatory resolutions of Israel  288 resolution on Libya  669 resolution on Palestinian refugees  275–6 Resolution  242 281, 283 Resolution 2254  688 United States of America (US): Afghanistan invasion and occupation of (2001)  xviii, 366 Cold War era  304–5 counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, proxy use  376–7 and Iran  292, 294, 295, 296, 299, 300, 305–6, 307, 310, 311 Iraq invasion and occupation of  xxiii, 367–8, 431, 693 Israel relations  xx, 280–5, 286, 288 Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) drones use  272 Kurdish militias, support for  643 Middle East arms embargo (1967)  280

neoconservative strategy in Iraq and Syria post-9/11 656 outsized influence of US-based digital media corporations  345–6 Special Operations Forces (JSOC) 366 Syria, and “strategic disengagement” policy (2013)  650, 651 Voice of America (VOA)  344 withdrawal from Nuclear Non-proliferation deal with Iran  685 Yemen relations  397–8 see also Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); War on Terror al-ʿUrabi, Mahmud Husni  207 USS Cole 391 al-Uwainaty, Saʿid 547

V

Vali, A.  174 Van Dijk, T.  356 Vaudable, Louis  302 Vincent, E.  31 Vitalis, R.  389–90 Volkan newspaper  78

W

Wafd party, Egypt  137, 182–3, 207, 231, 594 Wahhabism  48, 154, 612–13 Wailing Wall Riots (1929), Palestine  205 Al-Walīd bin Talāl  452 Wallerstein, Immanuel  392 War on Terror, US-led  155, 388, 391, 685, 687 transformation in combat  366–8 and Yemen  397–8 Washington Consensus  xviii, xix Watan TV  351 Waterbury, J.  556 al-Wazzani, al-Mahdi 56 Wazzanis, Morocco  54 Weber, A.  292 Wedeen, L.  393 Wehrey, F.  685 Weiss, M.  45n.36, n.38 Weizmann, Chaim  105

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

722   index West Bank, Palestine  271, 273, 370, 476, 693, 694 civilian settlement  282–3 destruction of villages and forced exile of Arabs  274–7, 275n.32 raid on Samu (1966)  279 Weulersse, Jacques  149 White, S.  8 Wilhelm II  94 Wilson, M.  121, 422n.66 Wilson, Woodrow  109–10 Wittfogel, K.  7n.25 Wodak, R.  356 women: Algerian activism  139, 256, 262–6 Coalition for Tunisian Women  578 Democratic Women, Tunisia  578 Egypt, role in rural protests  566 and Egypt’s nationalist struggles  139 emerging press  57–8 General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW) 430 Iraq, economic sanctions, impact on  435–6 Iraq, evolution of legal rights  428–32 Iraq, Women’s League  437 Iraq Women Network (IWN)  431–2 mobilization through nationalism  138–9 and Palestinian nationalist struggles  139 Yemeni politicians in 2003 elections  612 women’s Islamic activism  500–10 Egypt (2011)  501–8 Iraq, Shia Islamist women activists  432 Islamic development  506–8 Islamic women’s movement (1990–2007) 504–8 Private Voluntary Organization, Egypt  505–8, 508–9 secularism and Islamism rifts  500–1, 503, 508, 509 Workers’ Vanguard, Egypt  207, 207n.52 World Bank  xviii general investment theory  421–3

Y

Yadav, S. P.  611 Yahya Muhammad Hamid al-Din  609

Yariv, Aharon  283, 289–90 Yasin, Bu Ali  152 Yazdi, Farrokhi  295 Yazidis  427, 433 Yeğen, M.  172 Yemen  96, 391 British colonialism  128 Yemen Arab Republic  215–16 civil war (1962–1970)  231, 394–5 civil war (1986)  610 civil war (1994)  391, 611 formation 609 Socialist Party (1961)  216 US relations  397–8 Yemen Civil War (2015–)  351, 392, 397–8, 684–5 and Saudi Arabia  384, 385, 388 Yemeni uprising (2011)  609–20, 618 Believing Youth Movement  613 Congregation for Reform (al-Islah)  610–11, 619–20 Congress Party  611–12 Council for Yemeni Revolutionary Youth 618 cross-ideological opposition bloc formation 611–12 female activists and journalists  616 feminist resistance  619, 619n.55 general strike (2010)  616 Huthis (Ansārullah – Partisans of God)  351, 609, 612–14 institutionalized resistance and the decline of revolutionary principles  619–20 Joint Meeting Parties (JMP)  611–12 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 612 North and South Yemen unification (1990) 610 People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen 610 politics prior to 2011  611–16 public protests and strike action  615–16 school of democratic resistance  617–19 the Southern Movement (Al-Hirāk al-Janūbi) 614–15 women politicians in 2003 elections  612

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 10/14/2020, SPi

index   723 Women’s Studies Center, Sanaa University 612 Yemeni Constitution Article  58 616 Yemeni history  609–11 Yemini Socialist Party (YSP)  610–11 youth protest  618, 618n.48 Zaydism 612–14 Yezidi women  xxiii Yom Kippur War (1973)  289 Young Turk Revolution (1908)  68–79, 84, 85–7, 93, 134, 521 counterrevolution (1909)  77–9 CUP 74–9 CUP-orchestrated purges  82 al-Younis, Abdel Fatah  669

Z

Zabana, Ahmed  256 Zaghlul, Saʿd 207 al-Zaim, I.  416 Zarqawi, Abu Musʾab 367 Zaydan, Jurji  45–6, 46n.39 Zeidan, Ali  674, 675 Zighout, Youssef  254 al-Zindani, Abdulmajid  610 Zinoviev, Grigory  200–1 Zintani militias  673–4, 675 Zionism  114, 115, 118, 119, 129, 182, 474, 482–6 Ziya Pasha  54 Ziyada, Mayy  53