The Post-American Middle East: How the World Changed Where the War on Terror Failed 3031299116, 9783031299117

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The Post-American Middle East How the World Changed Where the War on Terror Failed Edited by Laurent A. Lambert · Moosa Elayah

The Post-American Middle East “This is a unique book analyzing with depth and breadth why and how the socalled ‘War on Terror’ had for more than two decades a dramatic impact on the broad Middle East region, contributing to the effective rise of China and Russia in this part of the world. Beyond the policy failures that it underlines, this edited volume is in the end, and more importantly, about governance. It emphasizes for the benefit of policymakers and academia, specific gaps and failures in the Middle East region, but with global consequences.” —Dr. Cristina D’Alessandro, Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa, Canada “This book makes an important contribution to research on U.S. policy in the Middle East, going beyond the energy security issue by drawing attention to topics such as the question of state formation and migration. The body of work illustrates the inadequate US assessment of the challenges in the region and proves that transforming societies through the use of military means cannot be a viable project in the twenty-first century.” —Dr. Farkhad AliMukhamedov, Sciences Po, France “Along these pages the reader will find unique contributions to understand the configuration of armed conflicts, the great crises of representation, and the dynamic relationship between local governments and international powers in the Middle East. This book presents in a clear and comprehensive manner, reflections and analysis that are key to the concern of researchers and students, but also for policymakers. A new indispensable addition for every library featuring Middle Eastern studies.” —Dr. Ignacio Rullansky, National University of San Martin, Argentina

Laurent A. Lambert · Moosa Elayah Editors

The Post-American Middle East How the World Changed Where the War on Terror Failed

Editors Laurent A. Lambert School of Economics, Public Policy and Administration Doha Institute for Graduate Studies Doha, Qatar

Moosa Elayah School of Economics, Public Policy and Administration Doha Institute for Graduate Studies Doha, Qatar

ISBN 978-3-031-29911-7 ISBN 978-3-031-29912-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Chapters 1 and 10 are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see license information in the chapters. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Our universe is catastrophic from the beginning. From the formidable deflagration which gave birth to it, it is dominated by forces of displacement, disintegration, collision, explosions and destruction. It is constituted in and by the genocide of antimatter by matter, and its terrifying adventure continues in the devastations, in the massacres and in the singular dilapidations. The exit is ruthless. Everything will die. Edgar Morin (1994). The United States, with other countries, will work to advance liberty and peace in [the Middle East] region. Our goal will not be achieved overnight, but it can come over time. The power and appeal of human liberty is felt in every life and every land. And the greatest power of freedom is to overcome hatred and violence, and turn the creative gifts of men and women to the pursuits of peace. 43rd President of the United States. George W. Bush’s so-called ‘War Ultimatum Speech’ at the White House, March 18, 2003, the day before the start of the war in Iraq.

This book is largely about the tragedy of conflicting worldviews turned lethally wrong in the twenty-first century. While some had believed that the fall of the USSR and the 1990s American moment as a hyperpower meant the end of History of grand ideological battles, this book shows all the contrary. It deals with the paradox of devastating wars in the name of liberty and fighting terror as unilaterally defined by the White v

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House, the grand narrative of jihadism and its consistently failing governance, the attempts by the governments of the region to navigate the many shockwaves of these conflicts and the sprawling chaos, and the disillusioned masses of Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Africa, who have been trying to survive—often via migrations—the violence, poverty, and instability that have reached unprecedented levels. Following the terror attacks against the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City, by the terror group Al-Qaida on September 11, 2001, the US Government undertook one of the most destructive and yet one of the most naïve global projects the country had ever produced. In a matter of weeks and months, the White House and Neoconservatives from within the Republican Party, undertook to eradicate all terrorist organizations, worldwide, and the social fact of terrorism itself. Their ambition—hubris?—did not stop there. They soon announced the United States would also make the Middle East region emerge more peaceful, more democratic, more stable, and more prosperous from a series of US-led wars, local institutions dissolution, and brand-new state- and nation-building efforts across Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Africa. Logically, it failed. As this book documents and explains, the War on Terror (WoT) has led to a transformed Middle East, in more than one way. Yet none of it is the Middle East the War on Terror and its corollary policy—the ‘Greater Middle East’ project—endeavored to produce. Many political commentators were initially eager to situate the 9/11/2001 terror attacks and ensuing wars as a validation sign of Samuel Huntington’s (1998) contested ‘clash of civilizations’. Yet most intellectuals and academics—at least, outside the United States—rapidly undertook the task of deconstructing this fallacy supposedly opposing a Western civilization defending itself from an Arab Muslim civilization which had—Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington had argued—been degenerating for too long out of religious hatred toward modernity and Western culture. Unfortunately, this narrative, largely based on old prejudices and supported by various lobby groups in Washington, became more palatable to the public than the Neoconservatives’ more complex agenda. And this ineluctable civilizational clash idea remains to this day powerful among extremeright militants and white supremacists. Though different—and President George W. Bush made a few short but clear statements exonerating ordinary Muslims from jihadism—, both the Neoconservatives’ imperial impetus to reshape Middle East countries to the image of the United

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States (a modern, democratic, and free-market country) and the extremeright/supremacist movements have shared the idea that the use of military force—within or without the legal framework of the United Nations— should be used to deal with the risks arising from the Middle East. Meanwhile, the idea of carefully negotiating peace—for instance between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, or between Algeria and Morocco over the Western Sahara—largely fell out of favor and the dogma of hit hard and impose your deal seems to have been the favored policy of the past two decades. A first crack in the simplistic narrative of the clash of civilizations came from the sharp division that arose from the looming threat of the American invasion of Iraq, in 2002 and early 2003. Several Western countries, such as France and Germany, staunchly opposed it. They led a formidable diplomatic resistance to these war efforts at the United Nations, which did not endorse the US-British request to support an invasion of Iraq. Across the Middle East, intellectuals and independent public figures from various political long stood against what was, and still is, seen as an illegitimate, unnecessary, and counter-productive series of aggressions of Arab nations, starting with Iraq, and then continuing in Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc. Understandably, in the Middle East, too, were also some figures who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and other wars against Arab regimes. Primarily of course, the old opponents to the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and later of dictators Muammar Al-Gaddafi and Bashar Al-Assad, but also some governments of countries with long grievances against these, such as the governments of Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, among others. The intellectual fault lines around the 2003 US–British war on Iraq had thus nothing to do with any supposed civilizational frontline of any kind. They reflected more classic clashes of perceived self interests as well as worldviews, especially between those who believe war can and shall solve political issues and those who believe that wars launched against a country without imminent threat from it are illegitimate and will increase instability or even chaos, as colonial history has so often proved in this part of the world. This meant, twenty years ago, a political clash between, largely, the American Neoconservatives’ naïveté of seeing the world potentially at peace if led by a benevolent yet hegemonic America—which sometimes had to make war to rebuke evil enterprises and expand the benefits of democratization and liberalized markets worldwide—, and the other, more careful—more

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realistic?—worldview according to which humankind, nations, and international relations are already so fragile and too often chaotic, by nature or by design, that all shall refrain from adding any further harm to our frail international diplomatic architecture. This also means, paradoxically, that the more pessimistic—or dystopian—actors may be about the capacity of humankind or the world to ever attain and sustain a form of national or international harmony, the less likely one was to support any such doomed Neoconservative project of democratization of the Middle East by war. As there was international, intellectual opposition to these ‘mad wars’, especially those against Iraq, Libya, and Yemen (later also widely called ‘forever wars’), it appears logical that this book gives a voice and perspective not solely to either Western or Eastern groups of academics, as is quite often the case. This book is thus an international, inter-cultural, and trans-disciplinary project that has been co-directed by Dr. Moosa Elayah and me. It involves authors principally drawn from or working in the Middle East region, as well as several authors from the US and NATO member countries. Yet this book aims to give a greater voice to people in the region than is generally the case when it comes to the consequences and legacy of the past two decades of US wars in the region. In reviewing and commenting on the WoT, the movement of intellectuals and academics is not taking revenge against the Neoconservatives who waged unnecessary wars and devastated several nations, despite our collective warnings and call for diplomacy. Instead, this book is a necessary reappraisal of the WoT, its evolution, and consequences onto a deeply disrupted Middle East region, marked by numerous violent conflicts, numerous terror groups and militias, and traversed by millions of asylum seekers fleeing it. To write this book, an international team of co-authors has been gathered, and several of the authors met, virtually or physically, during a conference in Doha, Qatar, in Fall 2021. Their chapters reflect, as much as possible, the evolution of both the WoT and that of the region over the past twenty years. It particularly focused on the WoT impacts in terms of oft-changing state- and nation-building policies, of redefining the local, national, and international governance, as well as in terms of state and diplomatic stability in the region, including the aspects of energy trade and large-scale migration of those had to live with the WoT. To inform us on the evolution of the Middle East under the WoT, the authors built upon a large number of past and recent interviews, from Afghanistan

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to Libya and Yemen, consulted past regional surveys, and undertook additional field work to better understand the conditions in which the WoT unfolded and generated lasting impacts, far from the White House and D.C. think tanks. We argue that no one could truly appreciate, for instance, the chaos of the US evacuation of Afghanistan without having spoken to Afghans who were in Kabul in that period and to some of the thousands of civilians who were evacuated, without having experienced the intense heat, humidity, and dust of the Al-Udeid air base area in Qatar which served as an improvised main transit place until they could go to safe third countries. No one could truly understand the lasting Iraqi resentment toward the US government, despite billion dollars spent in reconstruction, without having witnessed the genuine sense of pride of Iraqis for their nation’s rich historical past, and how they had felt humiliated, sometimes on a daily basis and during years, by military men who had not been trained for policing streets or raiding houses at night in an Arab, Muslim nation. No one could understand the tragedy happening in the Mediterranean Sea now, without having seen and spoken to some of the hundreds and thousands of young Afghan and Arab men, women and whole families desperately trying to reach Europe every day to escape the instability, armed violence and surging poverty in the region. Although this is not a book of cultural or political anthropology, field research has been used by several authors to provide the necessary depth to the politics, geopolitics, and policies of the WoT and their legacy in the region. All authors and co-editors acknowledge and are very grateful for the generally anonymous yet useful contribution of our interviewees for this book, and for the general support we received from people across the broad region. It is simply impossible to thank them all here, and some do prefer to remain anonymous for obvious reasons. We are and will remain, nevertheless, very grateful for the sharing of their personal experience, thoughts, data, and insights, as well as for welcoming us into their offices, houses, or refugee shelters for some. Spending time with us or with our colleagues is not simply a favor done to us, it is also a gift of time to help social scientists triangulate various sources of information and eventually come up with a clearer, more accurate understanding of what has happened in the Middle East and why some policies succeeded or failed the way they did. Thus, this book provides research-based chapters that feature a number of new insights as to what the broad region went through during the past two decades, and why it has affected in

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return the US policy and its role in the region—and arguably, the whole world—so negatively. Also, we want to express our gratitude to the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies for its funding and hosting of the conference ‘Governance of public policies during and after conflicts in the Middle East ’, from which several chapters were sourced for this book. Finally, we dedicate this book in memory of the dozens of millions of families who have been forcibly displaced by the war on terror and its consequences, the millions of people irremediably injured in their bodies and minds, the hundreds of thousands of persons directly killed by these wars, and to all the grieving families whose life has been irremediably affected by the WoT. Our planetary system and international relations may be fragile in nature, especially in this age of numerous armed non-state actors and climate change crisis, but this is precisely why this war on terror and the massive bombing of fragile countries should have never happened, and certainly not with foolish and ill-defined policy goals, as this book will illustrate. This book will be no consolation, and will certainly not undo the harm done, but—by debunking the dangerous myths of a ‘positive legacy’ of the WoT for the USA—it is a small contribution toward the truth and justice about these dark two decades that is deserved to all the victims and their families. This may, perhaps, help prepare a younger generation to refrain from trying again to eradicate by the massive use of military force the social dynamics of terrorism which, as the recent past demonstrated, feeds on and spreads because of military violence and foreign occupation. Doha, Qatar August 2022

Laurent A. Lambert

Contents

1

Introduction Laurent A. Lambert and Moosa Elayah

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Part I War, Expanding Chaos & Failed State-Building Across the Middle East 2

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4

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Afghanistan Since 2001: US Geostrategic Ambitions, a Failed State, and the Return of the Taliban Guillaume Beaud and René-Eric Dagorn

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Iraq 2003–2007, Geopolitics of an Imperial Democratization René-Eric Dagorn

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The Quasi-Legal Foundations of Rebel Oil Governance: The Case of the Houthis in Yemen Ariel I. Ahram

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Wars Against Terror in Oil Lands, Russian Interventions, and Chinese Energy Policies: The Case of Northern Iraq and Syria Amal Abdullah, Islam Aburok, Samiea Elmardy, Mahmood Alhosain, Massaab Al-Aloosy, and Laurent A. Lambert

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Part II Indirect Consequences of the War on Terror and Legacy 6

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Violence, Political Instabilities and Large-Scale Migrations in the MENA Region: Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni Cases in Regional Perspective Rima Kalush and Laurent A. Lambert

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Overcoming Jihadism in Arabia: Preventing Violent Extremism Policies in the Gulf Monarchies Heba Khoder

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Trump and Netanyahu’s Failed Palestine Sell-Out: ‘A Hate Plan, Not a Peace Plan’ Alain Gresh

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Geopolitical Polarization, Natural Gas, and Regional Energy (Dis-)Integration in the Middle East and North Africa Laurent A. Lambert and Majd Shath Conclusions Laurent A. Lambert and Moosa Elayah

Annex A: Detailed Description of the Methodology for Chinese-Iraqi Energy Forecasting

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List of Contributors

Amal Abdullah Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar Islam Aburok Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar Ariel I. Ahram School of Public and International Affairs, Arlington, Texas, USA Massaab Al-Aloosy Gulf International Forum, Washington, USA Mahmood Alhosain Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar Guillaume Beaud SciencesPo Paris, Paris, France René-Eric Dagorn Sciences Po, Paris, France Moosa Elayah Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar Samiea Elmardy Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar Alain Gresh Orient XXI, Paris, France Rima Kalush Migrant-Rights.Org, London, UK Heba Khoder American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon Laurent A. Lambert Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar Majd Shath Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar; Birzeit University, Birzeit, Palestine

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3

Fig. 4.1

United States costs of the post-9/11 wars, fiscal year 2001–fiscal year 2022 (Source Crawford, 2021, pp. 6–7) Iraqi attitudes towards the US, by Sect (Source Authors, based on data from the Arab Barometer [2012]) Afghan National Leaders since 2001. *de facto; **de jure and internationally recognized Global production capacity vs. effective global oil production (Source Authors, modified from Carnot, N., & Hagège, C. [2004]. Le marché pétrolier. Economie prevision, 166[5], 127–136. Retrieved from https://www. cairn.info/revue-economie-et-prevision-1-2004-5-page127.htm) Attacks recorded in Iraq during a month of civil war, in 2004 (Author Hamed Mohammed) Fading religious mix and the Sunni-Shia divide in Baghdad (Authors René-Eric Dagorn, Légendes cartographie; Editions Nathan) Yemen oil production, 2000–2020 (Source Author, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/businesssites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statis tical-review/bp-stats-review-2021-full-report.pdf)

2 5 44

74 86

87

101

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 9.1

Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3

Decline in average daily crude oil production in Syria (2010-2021) (Source Authors, based on OPEC data retrieved via CEIC data, Syria crude oil production https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/syria/crude-oilproduction) Iraq annual average of daily oil production (Source Authors, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019. Retrieved from: https://www.bp.com/content/ dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/ene rgy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2019full-report.pdf) Trends in the nationalities detected for illegal border crossings on the Eastern Mediterranean route (Source Frontex, years 2008 to 2009, Retrieved from: https:// frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_Analysis/Ann ual_Risk_Analysis_2010.pdf) Economic incentives for developing National Hydrocarbon Resources: Cost of Hydrocarbon Imports in the Eastern Mediterranean in 2018 (Sources Author’s compilation, based on World Integrated Trade Solutions [WTIS]. [2020]. Global trade statistics database. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://wits.worldbank.org/Default. aspx?lang=en; IEA. [2020]. World energy balances: Overview. Paris. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https:// www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-balances-overview; OECD. [2021]. Harmonised system 2017 [Edition 2020]: International trade by commodity statistics [database]. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://doi.org/10. 1787/e35fae2f-en) Europe’s natural gas imports by source in TWh (2017–2020) (Source Energy Industry Review [2020]) Major gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean (in billion cubic meters) (Author’s compilation. From: Karbuz, S. [2018]. Geostrategic importance of east mediterranean gas resources. In A. Dorsman, V. Ediger, & M. Karan [Eds.], Energy economy, finance and geostrategy [pp. 237–255]. Springer; Salameh, R., & Chedid, R. [2020]. Economic and geopolitical implications of natural gas export from the East Mediterranean: The case of Lebanon. Energy Policy, 140)

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132

149

225 226

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 9.4

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

A1 A2 A3 A4 A5

Map 4.1 Map 5.1 Map 6.1

Selected National Natural Gas Reserves in 2019 (in trillion cubic meters) (Author’s compilation. Sources Salameh, R., & Chedid, R. [2020]. Economic and geopolitical implications of natural gas export from the East Mediterranean: The case of Lebanon. Energy Policy, 140, 111, 369; BP. [2019]. BP statistical review of world energy 2019; United States Geological Survey [USGS, 2010a, 2010b]. *Estimateds) China’s oil imports from all countries Iraq’s oil exports to China Iraq’s oil revenues from China Share of Iraq from all China’s oil imports Energy consumption by source Oil and gas production in Yemen (Source US Department of Energy) Syria’s oil and gas fields (Source Authors, partly based on Energy Consulting Group) Middle East and Northeast Africa map of WoT wars, mass migrations, with main destinations, as of 2020 (Source Vine et al. [2020, p. 3])

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239 269 269 270 272 273

100 123

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List of Tables

Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 7.1 Table 7.2

Table Table Table Table

A1 A2 A3 A4

The framework of scenario analysis Variables and indicators for the scenario-based energy forecasting List of Organizations and their types and main work on PVE in each of the six GCC member states National PVE policies, international agreements, public engagement initiatives, and related PVE courses in each of the GCC member states Power generation by different sources from 2012 to 2017 Diversification index of energy import suppliers in China Chinese investment in Iraq after 2015 Evaluation matrix

136 137 186

192 268 271 275 276

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Laurent A. Lambert and Moosa Elayah

Almost exactly twenty years after the terror attacks of 9/11/2001, the world witnessed the humiliating withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan under the ‘protection’ of the new rulers of Kabul and the country, the Taliban. The two-decade-long ‘War on Terror’ (WoT), an umbrella term for many US conflicts abroad, had unambiguously failed in that country and well beyond. US-designated terror groups have remained active in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, and have been spreading across Asia, the Sahel, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The past two decades saw several terror attacks on US soil, including by Al-Qaedaaffiliated jihadists. US allies and partners in the Middle East—chiefly Israel and Saudi Arabia—have been repeatedly attacked by Iranian-supported groups, all considered terrorist organizations by Washington. Meanwhile, the long-term economic cost of the post-9/11 wars has been estimated at more than eight trillion US dollars (Crawford, 2021), as can be seen in

L. A. Lambert (B) · M. Elayah Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar e-mail: [email protected] M. Elayah e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_1

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Fig. 1.1 United States costs of the post-9/11 wars, fiscal year 2001–fiscal year 2022 (Source Crawford, 2021, pp. 6–7)

Fig. 1.1, and the deployment capacity of the American war machine has been seriously eroded by these multiple conflicts abroad (US Department of Defense, 2018). Although not as deadly for American lives as the war in Vietnam, the WoT has constituted the costliest war defeat of US history, and, this book argues, the most severe one in terms of foreign policy and geostrategic consequences in a region where it once was the unrivalled hyperpower. Several chapters of this book will illustrate these two points, especially regarding what the White House called the ‘Greater Middle East’ project, i.e., an American-led policy of pacification and democratization of the region, defined as extending from Afghanistan in Central Asia to Morocco in North Africa, and including all the Middle East region as generally delineated. Although no single US President since the Obama administration has labeled one of his major military operations or war in the Middle East under the banner of the WoT, letting some to assume that this has long ended, it is important to highlight that not only the core element of the WoT approach has remained (initiating or contributing to armed conflicts in the Middle East to eradicate terrorist groups and enemy states in the name of fighting terror), but also the legal basis for the WoT have remained. Developed right after the 9/11 terror attacks,

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the special legal architecture that has enabled and facilitated the start of these armed conflicts has remained to this day, and has been used by all US Presidents so far this century, from George W. Bush to Joseph R. Biden (Bridgeman & Finucane, 2022; Bridgeman & Rosen, 2022). This particularly bellicose approach to foreign policy, often marked by an exacerbated unilateralism and the disregard for the diplomacies and populations of the Global South, has been heavily criticized in the US and around the world. Not the least because it rapidly backfired against American interests worldwide. By 2008, political journalist and author Fareed Zakaria had started claiming that America was experiencing a geostrategic decline as emerging economies (China, India, Russia, among others) had been growing fast in economic, diplomatic, and geopolitical importance. For Zakaria, the world had entered a ‘Post-American’ period and the US should resolutely change its global strategy, “moving from its traditional role of dominating hegemon to that of a more pragmatic, honest broker” (Zakaria, 2008), by sharing power, creating coalitions, building legitimacy, and (re-)defining the global agenda. Yet, instead of supporting the multilateral system for peace and building large coalitions, the US has long remained in a position of contested hegemon. It kept on initiating additional conflicts in the Middle East under President Obama’s two terms (2009–2017) and then under the Trump administration’s foreign policy (2017–2021), which has included the US withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear agreement, the total disregard for Palestinians while moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and the attempt to depart from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This escalation in unilateralism eventually put Washington at odds with nearly all of its NATO and non-NATO allies and partners alike. Despite spending hundreds of billion US dollars for reconstruction, security, and nation building in selected countries of the Middle East and North Africa region, the reputation of the US in the region had heavily suffered from the 2003 invasion of Iraq on bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction threatening America and its allies, and then from the post-invasions violence, insecurity, and harsh treatments of any suspected civilians, including women and children, as well as from thousands of cases of torture, and the severe disruption of the lives of dozens of millions of Afghans and Iraqis, among others. Against such a grim background, the US could hardly remain the foreign yet unrivaled super-power in the region, in what had been from 1991 to the mid-2000s, the “American moment in the Arab Middle East” (Laurens, 2004). As Zbignew

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Brzezinski (2007) once put it in the columns of the Washington Post: “[T]he “war on terror” has gravely damaged the United States internationally. For Muslims, the similarity between the rough treatment of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military and of the Palestinians by the Israelis has prompted a widespread sense of hostility toward the United States in general ”. This general hostility towards US foreign policy has been surveyed many times in the Middle East and forms a consensus in the literature. For instance, the Arab Barometer academic program has reported the results of large-scale surveys performed in Arabic across Arab countries since 2006. As of 2012, a period with fewer civilian deaths than in the years directly following the American invasion, the Arab Barometer survey reported nevertheless that a strong majority of Iraqis expressed that armed operations towards the US were legitimate, irrespective of their sectarian affiliations. Yet among Shiite Iraqis, the largest demographic group of the country, nearly three-quarters of respondents agreed with the statement: “The United States ’ interference in the region justifies armed operations against the United States everywhere”, as can be shown in Fig. 1.2. That didn’t mean that the Iraqi people, Shiites, Sunnis, or of any other confession were against American citizens or their culture. The majority of surveyed Iraqis, quite paradoxically, showed an appreciation for both in the survey.1 It reflected instead that the US foreign policy in the region, the War on Terror and its Greater Middle East project, were so hated that people supported armed violence against the US state, and chiefly its military arm, wherever it was in the world. In other words, the war on terror was not only failing to protect the US, it was backfiring. The overall negative image of the US has remained and in 2019, another Arab barometer survey of Iraqis showed that the US elicited little trust and support, while its strategic competitors had become much more popular among Iraqis. Iraqis’ preferences for whom they want stronger international relations with have shifted away from the “Western bloc” and more toward the “Eastern” one. Roughly half prefer that economic relations become stronger with China (51 percent) and Turkey (47 percent), followed by Russia (43 percent) [Against only 35% with the USA, a minority of Iraqis, according to the

1 The Arab Barometer. (2012). Iraq Public Opinion Survey. https://www.arabbarom eter.org/wp-content/uploads/Iraq_Public_Opinion_Survey_2012.pdf.

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0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 The United States' interference in the Despite negative U.S foreign policy, region justifies armed operations American are good people against the United States everywhere Sunni

American and Western Culture has positive aspects

Shi'a

Fig. 1.2 Iraqi attitudes towards the US, by Sect (Source Authors, based on data from the Arab Barometer [2012])

report, p.15.] (…) More than twice as many Iraqis believe that Putin’s (38 percent) and Erdo˘gan’s (37 percent) foreign policies are better for the region than those of Trump (16 percent). Similarly, majorities prefer greater aid from China (57 percent), the European Union (55 percent), and Russia (53 percent). (…) Results on attitudes toward the United States appear to reflect general fatigue with nearly 15 years of continued American military presence in the country. Source: Arab Barometer (2019).2

This lasting impopularity of the US in Iraq and the region has made the 2021 withdrawal a geostrategic win for what the US government considers as hostile states within the region, such as Iran and Syria, and ‘near-peer competitors’ outside of the region, such as China and Russia, as this book will further develop.

2 Arab Barometer. (2019, pp. 14–15). Arab Barometer V Iraq Country Report. https://www.arabbarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/ABV_Iraq_Report_PublicOpinion_2019.pdf.

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Why This Book? After two decades of WoT, it is particularly important, for both academic and policy purposes, to clearly understand why the formidable mobilization of means and might has transformed into such a blatant geostrategic defeat of the US government and its allies in the broad Middle East region. The magnitude of this defeat was so substantial that some international relations specialists have called for a rethinking of their discipline and its main paradigms, with for instance Bertrand Badie explaining this bewildering paradox of our time: “Power is becoming powerless, the US superpower does not win the wars and even weakness seems currently more efficient than power” (Badie, 2020, p. 1). This situation is all the more perplexing that the WoT has achieved a remarkable series of tactical victories—such as toppling hostile regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya; the crippling of enemy states Iran, North Korea, and Syria’s economies by sanctions; the successful targeted killings of lead terrorist Usama Bin Laden, ISIS cult leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, and Iran’s most eminent Revolutionary Guard officer, general Qasem Soleimani, among many others. Leaving the broad theories of international relations largely aside, we will pay greater attention to policy paradoxes that need to be explained: why have so much military, diplomatic, and financial power, and so many clear tactical victories, not mechanically led to what was supposed to become a new and greater Middle East? Or at the very least, why hasn’t it led to a more pro-US Middle East? What has happened in this broad region that has made it the place where the WoT, in its various declinations, so wretchedly failed? There has been a lot of partisan finger-pointing and blaming over the past decade in the US. For instance, (Republican-nominated) Ambassador Paul Bremer, in charge of Iraq’s Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 and 2004, openly blamed the (Democrat) Obama administration for the chaos in the country that enabled the rise of ISIS in 2014; while a substantial part of Donald Trump’s 2016 primary campaign against candidate Jeb Bush (brother of former President George W. Bush) focused on the Bush administration’s lies supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq and highlighted the disastrous political, economic, and security outcomes it had long generated. By contrast with these partisan analyses, what the authors of this book—all professional observers of the region, many working there—, provide as an added value and insight, is a non-partisan

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and external perspective, an eye on what the US has brought, generated, and left behind in the Middle East. This regional perspective brings insights, understanding, and details that no other book on the war on terror has ever provided, ranging from the field study in Libya of the flows of forcibly displaced persons within and from the region, to an interview with a Taliban government representative, as well as the analysis of the faltering public administration of oil by the Houthi militia in Yemen, and insights from Doha, Qatar, about the multiple diplomatic tensions and spats over natural gas exploration and trade within the region. These examples—that could seem disconnected from the WoT to foreign observers—not only shed light on poorly documented facets of the new Middle East that has emerged over the past two decades, they also enable us to better understand why the region never transformed into what the WoT and corollary policies initially anticipated. It explains this lasting policy failure and how it created instead an unsustainable position wherein the US kept on spending trillion dollars and yet eventually had to withdraw to somehow cut its losses, without having met its main policy goals: eradicating jihadist groups, pacifying the region, and supporting a growing number of pro-American democracies there. We do acknowledge that several domestic US events and trends have had an influence, limited for some, more important for others, on American foreign policy over that period. Yet most of these will be considered out of the scope of this MENA-centered book, such as the role of domestic economic factors—chiefly, the 2008 economic crisis—, or the US political infighting in the White House, particularly under the Trump administration, or the role of the changing mediascape in what is a vibrant democracy, inter alia. Instead, this book takes the perspective of the retrospective why, and does so from a specific Middle East perspective. The book focuses on what has happened in the broad Middle East and what was of importance for the region (its governments and inhabitants first and foremost), and eventually transformed it over the past two decades. That doesn’t mean that the book will not consider the most salient issues in American foreign policymaking over that period. But that does mean it will only address those that were important enough to explain why the WoT evolved as it did. This book will include chapters about dynamics which have been poorly covered by fellow researchers and the press, or at least not against the background of the two decades of WoT (sometimes inherited and renamed) and the ‘transformational diplomacy’ promoted by US Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, President

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Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), and President Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ approach. As all of these have influenced the broad Middle East, they will be integrated into our analysis, though they will not constitute the main objects of research, as this is no book of American foreign policymaking as much as it is about its various impacts and legacy in the Middle East. Of great importance, several chapters will document the changing policy rationales, regional legacies, and geostrategic consequences of two decades of war, with a perspective from what we will simply call ‘the broad region’. This terminology shares the same geographic scope of the ‘Greater Middle East’ political notion, but it does not support the idea that the Republican Neoconservatives’ project ever became a reality. It is important to highlight that the failure of the Neoconservative project is unambiguous, and that we are entering, as we will explain, the era of a post-American Middle East.

A New Era A post-American Middle East does not mean that the US has totally withdrawn or is absent from the region. Nor does it mean that Washington is non-influential there. The US remains, after all, the world’s leading economic and military power of our times, and its economic and military support is still very important to countries like Jordan, Israel (to keep its regional military supremacy), and Egypt, where bilateral aid provides a substantial support to the governments’ military capacities. The US’ economic might is also still particularly understood in countries like Iran and Syria, where sanctions have stifled the nation’s economic vitality. But the Middle East is not the America-led region that it largely was between 1991 and 2004 anymore, following the exceptionally powerful 1991 crushing of Iraqi troops and liberation of Kuwait, the disbandment of the pro-Iraq diplomatic axis (Yemen, Jordan, Libya, and the Palestinian leadership), and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that same year. This era of American supremacy lasted until the combined effects of the 2004 escalation of asymmetric, anti-US warfare in both Afghanistan and Iraq; until most people in the US and around the world realized that the threat of mass destruction weapons was a deception, and pictures and reports of systemic torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons eroded trust in both US values and reliability across the broad Middle East. In the 1990s, no country could challenge the supremacy of the US, be it economically, militarily, or diplomatically. At best, enemy states could

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survive the US hegemony and make incendiary comments, but no military attack on its troops. It was this American Middle East that saw the birth and development of the Oslo Peace Process between Israelis and Palestinians, the 1994 Israel–Jordan Peace Treaty, and the first Gulf cities hosting Israeli delegations, as in Doha and Muscat for some years. Even the media and academic landscapes benefited from this American moment in the region. The launch of the more liberal Al-Jazeera news channel in 1996 and of branches of major American Universities across the Gulf countries that decade, pioneered an increasingly diversified and liberalized mediascape and intellectual life. Although the region was characterized by autocratic regimes, there was an air of reform and increasing overture towards political liberal ideas. Even in Iran, the election in 1997 of reformist President Khatami, who had campaigned for reforms and a pragmatic thaw in tie with the West in general, seemed to announce the possibility of improving bilateral relations with Washington, then an attractive potential economic partner with formidable soft power for the Iranian youth. The regime in Teheran, which had remained one of the US’ most vocal foes in the region since the so-called ‘Islamic Revolution’ of 1979, had started in 1990 to implement cautious liberalization policies of its economy, diplomacy, and media. Reformist President Khatami’s highly mediatized meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1999 seemed to confirm that a new diplomatic era with the West had started. Although the Iranian conservative deep state fought back as much as it could against this liberal wave, by closing some newspapers and violently clapping down on prodemocracy student demonstrations, the nail in the coffin of Khatami’s diplomatic agenda eventually came from abroad. It came from other Islamists, far overseas.

9/11/2001 and the War on Terror The Al-Qaeda terror attacks against the US in 2001 radically transformed America’s foreign policy towards the Middle East region. This transformation is now well documented, though most of the WoT literature has become particularly outdated as we will see. What is much less documented, and not studied in a comprehensive manner, is how the WoT influenced the broad Middle East region in many ways. This approach, however, is fundamental to be able to understand why the WoT didn’t work and couldn’t work, despite formidable means being invested. This book endeavors to understand the why.s of this dual political and

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geostrategic failure, by focusing on the world region which has been at the core of the ‘Global War on Terror’, as officially declared by George W. Bush on September 16, 2001. Much has been written on the genesis of the WoT and its early evolution, on the American hyperpower era following the 1991 Gulf war against Iraq and fall of the USSR on the one hand, and the rise of the terror group Al-Qaeda in Taliban held Afghanistan during the 1990s on the other (see e.g., Coll, 2004; Laurens, 2004; Roy, 2008; Scheuer, 2004). There is also an abundant literature on the Neoconservative faction from the Republicans which has been influencing a messianic— and largely delusional—President George W. Bush after the 9/11/2001, implementing their ideology of transformative wars in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and North Africa (Suskind, 2004; Woodward, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008), a region the White House used to designate as part of the ‘Greater Middle East’, for propaganda purposes. Fundamentally, the literature on the WoT is difficult to delimitate given the fuzziness of the WoT idea itself. Shall it simply focus on anti-terrorism and the wars against the regimes supporting it, as initially devised? Does it include all the ethical and legal problems of the anti-terrorism legislation and the archipelago of torture sites abroad (Bridgeman & Finucane, 2022; Hannah, 2006; Taguba, 2008)? Shall it include the whole literature about the psychological aftermath and related public health issues (Baker, 2014; Sirin et al., 2021), as well as the ‘culture of fear’ and islamophobia it has disseminated across the US and well beyond, via mass media and hateloaded cultural products (Brzezinski, 2007; Gresh, 2009)? Because of this vast array of sub-topics, the literature on the WoT appears fragmented, and indeed generally deals with only one or two specific aspects at once. Hence our desire to dedicate to it a whole book, updated, academically rigorous, and non-partisan. The WoT is not solely a Republican policy. The Obama Presidency (2009–2017) initially tried to take its distance with the WoT ambitions, terminology, and worst practices, including waterboarding torture. The first Obama administration highlighted instead the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) preventive approach,3 in the US first, but also abroad, and renamed the US wars as ‘Overseas Contingency Operations’. Despite this change in semantics, the Obama 3 Office of the President of the United States, Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, Dec. 2011, www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/sip-final.pdf.

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administration did inherit the de-territorialized war against spreading jihadist networks and the territorialized wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, the US was facing asymmetric conflicts that proved extremely difficult to sustain. The Obama administration gradually found itself increasing the number of countries of direct military interventions, including Libya and Syria, and especially so via drones and special forces, as in Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and various Sub-Saharan African countries. Although by the early to mid-2010s, a generalized war fatigue made the WoT topic of decreasing interest to academics and journalists alike, the WoT was continuously involving more countries, reaching 85 countries in 2020 (see Savell, 2021). There is an abundant literature on how the war on terror has long been failing, most particularly since the controversial US invasion of Iraq in 2003. This ranges from relatively dry and to-the-point military and intelligence reviews of US military activities (e.g., Taguba, 2008; US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 2014), to more detailed first-hand accounts by the protagonists (e.g., Bush, 2010; Feith, 2009; Gates, 2014; Powell, 2012; Rumsfeld, 2011). Of particular importance is Richard Clarke’s (2004) book. In it, the former counter-terrorism highest official under President Georges W. Bush described how that administration and the Neoconservatives had ignored intelligence warnings about Al-Qaeda before 9/11/2001 and had subsequently utilized these terror attacks to start a totally unrelated war on Saddam Husein’s regime in Iraq. To do so, Clarke (2004) explained, the Bush administration had been misleading the American people about the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, which was not related to 9/11 or Al-Qaeda efforts against the US. Another important acknowledgment candidly explained in several of these books, is the explanation, years too late, of how unprepared the American leadership was to deal with Iraq, and the hidden tensions between the ideologues surrounding the President and the more pragmatic policymakers at the Pentagon. Former Secretary of State General Colin Powell (2012) summarized with diplomacy this matter. I wanted to make sure that [the President] understood that military action and its aftermath had serious consequences, many of which would be unforeseen, dangerous, and hard to control. Most of the briefing he had been receiving had been focused on the military option -- defeat of the Iraqi army and bringing down Saddam Hussein and his regime. Not enough attention had been given either to non-military options or

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the aftermath of a military conquest. (...) According to plans being confidently put forward, Iraq was expected to somehow transform itself into a stable country with democratic leaders ninety days after we took Baghdad. I believed such hopes were unrealistic. (...) By early March 2003, the President and other world leaders decided that UN efforts would not succeed, and the war came. Military victory quickly followed. Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. Hussein and his regime were brought down, we declared “Mission Accomplished” and celebrated victory... And chaos erupted. We did not assert control and authority over the country, especially Baghdad. We did not bring with us the capacity to impose our will. We did not take charge. (Powell, 2012, pp. 209–211)

A number of journalistic publications have significantly enriched our knowledge and understanding of the WoT, often by depicting the incoherences, hubris, and even denial of realities by key protagonists (see e.g., Suskind, 2004; Woodward, 2006, 2007, 2008). Academic publications have generally been critical about the multiple policy and conceptual incoherences of the WoT, mounting ethical issues (including widespread torture), and overall negative to very negative outcomes only a few years after its start (see e.g., Ahmed, 2013; Bellamy et al., 2007; Fouskas & Bülent, 2005; Lustick, 2006). A key limitation with this broad literature on the WoT is that it has been written long before any withdrawal date from Afghanistan was announced or before negotiations had even started with the Taliban, or with the Iranian regime over a nuclear agreement, or with armed radical Shiite militias in Iraq for elections to be held in peace. In 2021 and 2022, however, several articles and commentaries on the twenty years of the WoT were published. They essentially acknowledged how the Americans found themselves mechanically drowning into a desperate situation overseas (see e.g., Kissinger, 2021), the particularly chaotic situation of the Middle East now, and the need for more US political pragmatism in that specific region (Gause, 2022), an area that the US troops should not totally leave to its strategic competitors (chiefly China but also Russia and Iran), despite its decreased status in a region that can now be referred to as a ‘Post-American Middle East’ (Elayah & Lambert, 2021; Kaye, 2022).

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Structure of This Book This book is divided into two sections. The first one is about the wars, the subsequent chaos that rapidly spread within and without Afghanistan and Iraq, and the failed American and Jihadist nation-building endeavors in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The second section of the book focuses on some major consequences and legacy of twenty years of the WoT in the region. Chapters 2 and 3 of the book provide a useful background about the post-9/11 US context and the development of the wars and nationbuilding efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively. Both illustrate the new visions and unchecked ambitions that have transformed the two countries with particularly ill-prepared American policies of transformation of states and societies for both countries. Amid various forms of American military interventions and political near-chaos in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, radical religious groups (both Sunnis and Shiites) have thrived across the region, sometimes with only the desire to capture energy resources and deep anti-Americanism as their common denominators. The fourth and fifth chapters deal with the specific contexts of Yemen, Northern Iraq, and Syria, and how non-state actors, sometimes helped by foreign powers, have been engineering, with various degrees of success, state and nation-building efforts, based on both access to oil resources and religion-derived ideologies: Salafi jihadism in Northern Iraq and Syria; Shiite revolutionary jihadism in Northern Yemen. Chapter 4 shows how the Houthis have been using the matter of oil resources control to bolster their governability and claims of controlling Yemen as the sovereign government of the (still divided) country and most impoverished nation, even when they lacked physical control over fields and export terminals. The staunchly anti-American Houthis have been able to capture large swathes of Yemen and some of its oil resources to legitimize their war against the internationally recognized Yemeni government, currently based in Aden, and its Saudi and Emirati backers. Despite the increase in drone attacks under the Obama administration and the Trump-supported Saudi Emirati-led full-scale war on Yemen, the Houthis’ sustained efforts to build a rebel oil regime are part of larger measures to establish and legitimize their (rebel) governance of the country. So far, international attempts to disrupt this oil regime under progress by using international sanctions have proven ineffective and even counterproductive. Houthi rulers have found ways to shift and offset the

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costs of sanctions onto civilians, worsening an already dire humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Chapter 5 illustrates how the political and military shocks of the WoT have very negatively affected the state sovereignty, general security, and the oil industries in Iraq and Syria. It illustrates how the US invasion of Iraq and subsequent intervention in Syria, a decade later, failed to stabilize the countries and to restore and rapidly increase their pre-invasion oil productions, as initially planned. It led instead to the rise of anti-American (many of them pro-Iranian) armed groups, and favored anti-American policy actors, with strong Russian and Iranian military support for Bashar Al-Assad in Syria; Iranian support of specific Shiite political parties in Iraq; and Chinese financial investments in Iraq’s vast oil resources. Neither the Syrian nor Iraqi peoples nor the American energy companies have been able to benefit as initially planned from these countries’ respective oil wealth since the American interventions. Meanwhile, three geostrategic adversaries of the US—namely China, Iran, and Russia —have gained the upper hand in these countries and are positioned to greatly benefit from their oil wealth in the years and decades to come. Though the targets of the WoT, both Shiite and Sunni Jihadist experiments at state and nation (re-)building have constituted direct and antithetical efforts against the Greater Middle East project. Although the jihadist experiment eventually collapsed in Iraq and Syria, the US plan to utilize Iraq’s oil wealth to rebuild the country and make it a new, pro-US democracy never could materialize. The second section of the book deals with the impact and main legacies of the War on Terror. Chapter 6 deals with the mass migrations that rose out of post-invasion chaos. It shows how the political destabilization of several countries following foreign interventions (American-led first and foremost, but then also Iranian and Russian interventions) have generated an estimated 38–60 million of internally displaced persons and refugees (Vine et al., 2021). Most of them, tellingly, being Afghans, Iraqis, and Syrians. Chapter 7 documents a more positive case. In line with the Obama administration’s focus on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), it documents how the Gulf monarchies have deeply reformed their approach and policies towards the prevention of Jihadism. This is of particular interest, as most of the literature has long highlighted how they had tolerated or even promoted it in the 1980s, with the US President Reagan administration’s indirect support because of the Cold War and the international

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fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during that decade (see e.g., Ahmed, 2013; Coll, 2004; Roy, 2008). Chapter 8 then addresses how the Trump Administration’s failed attempt to transform and fix the Israeli-Arab issue once and for all, was deeply flawed in favor of the American-Israeli alliance and could only be logically resisted by the Palestinian government. If the Trump diplomacy and 2020 Abraham Accords can be seen as a sign of diplomatic progress by some, with diplomatic relations having been established between Israel and two Arabian Gulf states as well as Sudan and Morocco, the chapter shows how this imperial logic of external transformation of the Middle East to fix its complex political problems could lead to no peace at all between Palestinians and Israelis, as illustrated by the grave escalation of tensions and violence between the two nations in 2022 and 2023. Chapter 9 illustrates how the Trump Administration’s policy to polarize regional politics and delegate to the Egyptians, Emiratis, Moroccans, and Saudis the inherited WoT—largely redefined by the Trump administration as a fight against Iran and political Islamism—has led to two poorly known yet very disruptive events across the region. First, the 2021 rupture in diplomatic relations and energy trade in the Arab Maghreb, as Algiers’ stopped providing natural gas to Morocco following Washington’s pro-Rabat positioning on their long dispute over the Western Saharan region, and for which Rabat accused Algiers of supporting the Front Polisario ‘terrorist’ organization. Second, and of greater geostrategic importance, the initial Trump policy of strong support to a few client Middle Eastern states (i.e., Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) has led to the 2018 creation of a second international gas forum for exporting countries to be based in the Middle East. The Cairo-based East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF ) was launched despite the presence of an already well-established international gas forum, based in Doha, the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), because the latter included Algeria, Iran, Qatar, and Russia, as influential member countries. At a time when President Trump pressured Qatar for allegedly supporting Iran and political Islam, this additional gas forum in the Eastern Mediterranean area of the Middle East enabled some of its members (Egypt, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the US, as observer) to try to counterbalance the energy geopolitical weight of some of their diplomatic rivals from the other forum, especially Iran, Qatar, and Russia, in a form of competition for the hard power that gas exports towards the EU market could provide. Despite a recent thaw in ties in

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the region, one may consider that this new gas forum remains unnecessarily divisive, especially considering the 2022-23 international gas crisis (Lambert et al., 2022). This book, in the end, illustrates why the changing and ill-defined American foreign policies towards the Middle East, under the name of—or simply inheriting—the deeply unilateral WoT, were incapable of devising locally coherent, locally accepted, locally implementable, and stable policies that could serve American interests and the vision of a democratic, prosperous, and pro-American Middle East. Despite trillions of dollars spent, and at the human costs of close to a million deaths because of the post-9/11 wars, and dozens of millions of internally displaced persons and refugees (Vine et al., 2021), this book illustrates why the WoT has failed and led, so far, to the largest geostrategic defeat of the USA since the Vietnam War. This has contributed to the de facto revision of the Carter doctrine, which had explicitly made the security of the Persian Gulf oil states part and parcel of America’s vital interests since 1980, and it has also meant that the countries of the region had to increase their international alliances with other powers to compensate for the withdrawing American forces, thereby accelerating the regional emergence of a new multilateral order: the Post-American Middle East.

References Ahmed, A. (2013). The thistle and the drone: How America’s war on terror became a global war on tribal islam. Brookings Institution Press. Arab Barometer. (2012). Iraq Public Opinion Survey. https://www.arabbarom eter.org/wpcontent/uploads/Iraq_Public_Opinion_Survey_2012.pdf Arab Barometer. (2019). Arab Barometer V Iraq Country Report. https:// www.arabbarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/ABV_Iraq_Report_Public-Opi nion_2019.pdf Badie, B. (2020, originally published in 2005). Rethinking international relations. Elgar Publishing. www.elgaronline.com/view/9781789904741/978 1789904741.xml Baker, M. S. (2014). Casualties of the global war on terror and their future impact on health care and society: A looming public health crisis. Military Medicine, 179(4), 348–355. Bellamy, Alex J., Roland Bleiker, Sara E. Davies., & Richard Devetak (Eds.). (2007). Security and the war on terror. Routledge.

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Bridgeman, T., & Finucane, B. (2022). Tit-for-Tat hostilities in Syria: War powers and international law implications. Just Security. https://www.justse curity.org/82979/tit-for-tat-hostilities-in-syria-war-powers-and-internationallaw-implications/ Bridgeman, T., & Rosen, B. (2022). Introduction to symposium: Still at war—Where and why the United States is fighting the “War on Terror”. Just Security. https://www.justsecurity.org/80800/introduction-to-symposiumstill-at-war-where-and-why-the-united-states-is-fighting-the-war-on-terror/ Brzezinski, Z. (2007). Terrorized by ‘war on terror’. Opinions. Washington Post, 25. Bush, G. W. (2010). Decision points. Crown. Clarke, R. A. (2004). Against all enemies: Inside America’s war on terror. Simon and Schuster. Coll, S. (2004). Ghost wars: The secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Penguin. Crawford, N. C. (2021). The US budgetary costs of the Post-9/11 Wars. Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs. Elayah, M., & Lambert, L. A. (2021, November 7–8). Session 1: The postAmerican Middle East: How the world changed where the war on terror failed [Panel Session]. International Workshop: Crisis and Post-Crisis Governance in the MENA Region, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar. Feith, D. J. (2009). War and decision: Inside the pentagon at the dawn of the war on terrorism. Harper Collins. Fouskas, V., & Bülent G. (2005). The new American imperialism: Bush’s war on terror and blood for oil. Greenwood Publishing Group. Gates, R. M. (2014). Duty: Memoirs of a secretary at war. New York. Gause, F. G., III. (2022). The price of order: Settling for less in the Middle East. Foreign Affairs, 101, 10. Gresh, A. (2009). From Thermopylae to the Twin Towers: The West’s selective reading of history. Le Monde Diplomatique. https://mondediplo.com/2009/ 01/07west Hannah, M. (2006). Torture and the ticking bomb: The war on terrorism as a geographical imagination of power/knowledge. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96(3), 622–640. Kaye, D. D. (2022). America’s role in a post-American Middle East. The Washington Quarterly, 45(1), 7–24. Kissinger, H. (2021). Why America failed in Afghanistan. The Economist. https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/08/25/henry-kissingeron-why-america-failed-in-afghanistan Lambert, L. A., Tayah, J., Lee-Schmid, C., Abdalla, M., Abdallah, I., Ali, A. H., & Ahmed, W. (2022). The EU’s natural gas Cold War and diversification challenges. Energy Strategy Reviews, 43, 100934.

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Laurens, H. (2004). L’Orient arabe à l’heure américaine : de la guerre du Golfe à la guerre d’Irak. Armand Colin. Lustick, I. S. (2006). Trapped in the war on terror. University of Pennsylvania Press. Powell, C. (2012). It worked for me. Harper Perennial. Roy, O. (2008). The politics of chaos in the Middle East. Columbia University Press. Rumsfeld, D. (2011). Known and unknown: A memoir. Penguin. Savell, S. (2021). United States counterterrorism operations 2018–2020. Costs of War Project. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/pap ers/2021/US%20Counterterrorism%20Operations%202018-2020%2C%20C osts%20of%20War.pdf Scheuer, M. (2004). Imperial hubris: Why the West is losing the war on terror. Potomac Books, Inc. Sirin, S. R., Choi, E., & Tugberk, C. (2021). The impact of 9/11 and the war on terror on Arab and Muslim children and families. Current Psychiatry Reports, 23(8), 1–7. Suskind, R. (2004, October 17). Faith, certainty and the presidency of George W. Bush. The New York Times Magazine. ISSN 0028-7822. Taguba, A. M. (2008). U.S. army report of abuse of prisoners in Iraq. MacMay. US Department of Defense. (2018). Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-Nat ional-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (2014). Committee study of the central intelligence agency’s detention and interrogation program ( “Torture report ”). “Findings and Conclusions”. Vine, D., Coffman, C., Khoury, K., Lovasz, M., Bush, H., Leduc, R., & Walkup, J. (2021). Creating refugees: Displacement caused by the United States’ Post9/11 wars. Costs of War Project. http://tiny.cc/ajbtuz Woodward, B. (2002). Bush at war. Simon and Schuster. Woodward, B. (2004). Plan of attack. Simon and Schuster. Woodward, B. (2006). State of Denial. Simon and Schuster. Woodward, B. (2007). The commanders. Simon and Schuster. Woodward, B. (2008). The war within: A secret White House history, 2006–2008. Simon and Schuster. Zakaria, F. (2008). The post-American world. W. W. Norton & Company.

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Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

PART I

War, Expanding Chaos & Failed State-Building Across the Middle East

CHAPTER 2

Afghanistan Since 2001: US Geostrategic Ambitions, a Failed State, and the Return of the Taliban Guillaume Beaud and René-Eric Dagorn

On August 29, 2021, the New York Times summarized both the American consternation at the Taliban’s rapid capture of Kabul and the popular demand for explanations: “The insurgents’ return to power, two decades after they were ousted, came despite years and hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the United States to build up the Afghan government and its defense forces. In a lightning offensive, the Taliban swallowed dozens of cities in a matter of days ”.1 1 Goldbaum, C., Gibbons-Neff, T., Gall, C., Khapalwak, R., Hassan, S., Huylebroek, J., Rahim, N., & Jakes, L. (2001, August 15). 20-Year U.S. War Ending as It Began, With Taliban Ruling Afghanistan. The New York Times, pp. 1–3.

G. Beaud (B) · R.-E. Dagorn SciencesPo Paris, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] R.-E. Dagorn e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_2

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On that day, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani released a written statement on Facebook announcing he had fled the country—officially to spare the capital unnecessary bloodshed—and international TV channels started broadcasting US helicopters evacuating the American embassy in a relentless choreography over the befallen city. Only a month after US President Joe Biden had firmly stated that “[t]here’s going to be no circumstance where you see people lifted off the roof of an Embassy of the United States of America from Afghanistan”, the parallel with the air-lifted evacuation of Saigon, on April 30, 1975, was painfully broadcasted live and worldwide. Meanwhile, in the presidential palace of Kabul, dozens of Taliban fighters were posing calmly in the office of Ashraf Ghani for the cameras of Al Jazeera, as new rulers of a post-American Afghanistan. The official launch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,2 to replace the US-supported Afghan Republic, has led to a number of debates as to what exactly happened over the past twenty years in the country. Why has the powerful NATO coalition and American army failed to eliminate the Taliban? Why has the Afghan nation not resolutely fought against their return to power? In other words, how has a movement of Islamic seminarists turned guerrilleros been able to defeat the world’s most powerful military powers and the modern Afghan army they had been heavily financing, equipping, and training for nearly two decades?

Afghanistan: Why Did Nothing Go as Planned? Years earlier, on October 7, 2001, the formidable American air campaign against the terror group Al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan, then hosted by the Taliban, had marked the beginning of the Bush administration’s military response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US soil. Four American planes had been highjacked and two crashed against the twin towers of New York, one onto the Pentagon in Washington, and the last one has crashed in a field, apparently on its way towards the White House. In total, 2973 people died on that day, in what became the deadliest terrorist attack in US history. To be able to retaliate against Al-Qaeda’s Afghan hosts, these attacks were not labeled as a terrorist crime by the Bush administration, but as an “act of war”.

2 The self-proclaimed Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is not recognized by the international community.

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“To War, Not to Court”. 9/11 and the Rush to War It was the complex connection between the regime of the Taliban, in power in Afghanistan since 1996, and the international terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, that would prove decisive for Afghanistan’s geostrategic fate. Born in 1957, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden grew up in one of the Kingdom’s richest families and received a modern education until his mid-twenties. After graduation, he became more interested in religion and in supporting Afghanistan’s resistance to the Soviets who had invaded this country in December 1979. Against the background of the Cold War, several Afghan resistance groups, largely composed of Afghans but including foreign fighters, confronted the Soviets in guerilla warfare supported by the United States and several allies, including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Together, the United States and these countries provided most of the military intelligence, training, military equipment, logistical supplies, and funding needed for the Afghan “holy [war] effort” (“jihad”, in Arabic) against the Soviets. It was in this context that the young Osama bin Laden, unknown until then, became part of this generation of young Arab Muslims who went to Pakistan to be trained in guerrilla warfare and fight in Afghanistan. As a provider of funding from a rich Saudi family network, bin Laden was not particularly exposed to frontline combats, and rather made a name by financing the war effort and showing an increasingly radical behavior. After years of a difficult war, he founded “AlQaeda” (literally, “the rule” or “the network”, in English) with Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian medical doctor and theorist of an emerging idea, “global jihad”. After the defeat and withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1990, Al-Qaeda moved to Sudan. In Khartoum, Sudan’s impoverished capital city, a newly established Islamist-military regime was led by a putschist officer named Omar Al-Bashir. The new Sudanese regime had invited bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, along other figures of international terrorism, as they could provide funding and, if needed, be used for diplomatic bargaining with foreign powers. Rapidly installed in Sudan, Al-Qaeda started funding operations of foreign armed islamists and embarked on its own first terrorist actions. A series of deadly attacks rapidly followed, as in 1992 in Aden (Yemen) and already in 1993 at New York’s World Trade Center (USA) and in Mogadishu (Somalia).

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Expelled in 1996 from Sudan, where bin Laden had become too problematic for Al-Bashir, Al-Qaeda went back to the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan where the Taliban had recently established their power over most of the country. There, he developed what some called a “marriage of connivance” with the Taliban.3 Bin Laden, still perceived locally with the aura of a foreign holy warrior (“mujahid”, in Arabic) against the Soviets, started spending his money backing the new, incompetent, and growingly unpopular regime of the Taliban. The latter provided refuge and training camps to bin Laden and his followers, always overlooking his projects abroad as long as he would use his money propping them up. On August 7, 1998, two series of explosions against the US embassies in Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar el-Salaam (Tanzania) transformed overnight Osama bin Laden into one of the world’s most notorious terrorist leaders. It killed 224 persons, most of them non-American civilians working there, and directly challenged the American diplomacy and its symbols abroad. President Clinton decided to respond with missile strikes against bin Laden, but it failed to murder the terrorist and killed in its place several Afghan civilians working on his estate. Instead of getting rid of AlQaeda, the strikes made many nationalistic Afghans resent the Americans and obliged the Taliban to keep on protecting their problematic guest. It was from there that Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda organization conceived, designed, and prepared the 9/11 terror attacks. What was the geopolitical logic behind them? To understand the attacks is to enter into the thinking and texts disseminated by Al-Qaeda, to understand the political and geopolitical objectives of the attacks—and not simply to stick to the very weak idea of astonishment and fear by the terror of a large-scale attack.4 In a manifesto in Arabic entitled “Horsemen under the banner of the prophet”, Ayman al-Zawahiri provided the political justification for why bin Laden’s radical followers have massively struck the United States, that he called the “distant enemy”. For him, the failure of the Islamist movements in the 1990s was due to the absence of a great unifying cause led 3 Denoeux Guilain, “The Forgotten Swamp: Navigating Political Islam”, Middle East Policy 9, no. 2 (2002): 71. The expression focuses on the opposing sociologies and goals of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda (uneducated vs. educated, relations opposed to modernity and politics, goal limited to Afghanistan vs. transnational jihad, Afghan vs. cosmopolitan movement, etc. see below). 4 Kepel Gilles (Ed.), Al-Qaida in Its Own Words, New York, Belknap, 2008.

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by an Islamist vanguard and around which the world’s Muslim population in its majority could have identified and mobilized. Fighting an invasion could create a feeling of cohesion among many Muslims, which has otherwise long been lost. In autumn 2000, the start of the 2nd Palestinian intifada (“uprising”, in English) across Palestinian territories seemed to provide Islamists with a unifying cause. The televised repression of Palestinians by the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seemed to boost the jihadists’ legitimacy and their call for armed struggle among Arab and Muslim TV watchers. For political sociologist Gilles Keppel, “(t)he militants of jihad pursue [therefore] by the exemplarity of violence, a precise strategy that aims first of all to conquer supremacy in their own universe”.5 Jihadist attacks are then part of a historical sequence in which, on the one hand, the decline of Islamist movements initiated by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 is articulated—which has the consequence of splitting the “Islamist consensus” between impoverished urban youth and pious merchant or liberal professions bourgeoisies––whose decoupling induces this quest for radicalism, and the paroxysm of anti-Americanism, catalyzed by the limits of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.6 “Striking the distant enemy”—via the attacks of 9/11—will make it possible to attract Western armies to the heart of the Muslim world, to bog them into the trap of asymmetric warfare, and to federate around Al-Qaeda a popular resistance to this foreign enemy and invader. More importantly, the jihadist narrative articulated, this would provide a great unifying cause that had so far lacked local jihads, with a key place to trap a superpower. For Al-Qaeda’s mastermind, Dr. al-Zawahiri: “A jihadist movement needs an arena that would act like an incubator, where its seeds would grow and where it would acquire practical experience in combat, politics, and organizational matters ”.7 Unaware of the jihadist plan’s sophistication, the hawks in Washington fell into the trap. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Charles Krauthammer, one of the most influential neoconservatives, declared in the Washington

5 Kepel Gilles, 2006, Op. Cit. 6 Kepel Gilles, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, New York and London, I.B. Tauris,

2006. 7 Cited in Aboul-Enein, Y. H. (2004, p. 16). Ayman Al-Zawahiri: The Ideologue of Modern Islamic Militancy (No. 21). USAF Counterproliferation Center, Air University.

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Post that it was a question of going “To war, not to Court”.8 This is exactly the reaction that the attacks of September 11, 2001 meant to trigger. For Islamic fundamentalists, it was a matter of “territorializing jihad”,9 as Jean-Pierre Filiu analyzed it. Of creating the territorial “base” of jihad and of drawing the West into the trap of asymmetric military action on the ground. It is in this sense that we must understand the logical time sequence between the murder of the Afghan Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud (September 9, 2001) and the subsequent attacks in the United States, two days later. The killing by Al-Qaeda operatives of the archenemy of the Taliban, Commandant Massoud, who still controlled a northeastern pocket of resistance in Afghanistan, eventually symbolized the complete control of the Taliban over the country. From this unified “Jihadistan” under the firm control of Al-Qaeda’s allies, bin Laden launched its global jihad against the United States, the “distant enemy”, to drag it there and start a new jihad against a superpower in Afghanistan, the oft-called graveyard of empires. Unable to understand bin Laden and al-Zawahiri’s strategic maneuvering, the US leadership moves forward not knowing, nor wanting to rethink the overvaluation of its conventional military power—not knowing, nor wanting to understand the strategy and social processes on which Qaeda relied in Afghanistan, i.e., a tribal, conservative Muslim society with a tradition of successfully fighting till the end foreign invaders, like the Soviets or the British Empire before them. At that time, one of Bin Laden’s favorite phrases was to call the United States a “weak horse”. Muscularly powerful but intellectually incapable to understand where it is being led to.

8 Krauthammer Charles, “To War not to Court. This is not Crime, this is War”, The

Washington Post, September 12, 2001. Quote: “This is not Crime, this is War. (…) Secretary of State Colin Powell’s first reaction to the day of infamy was to pledge to “bring those responsible to justice.” This is exactly wrong. Franklin Roosevelt did not respond to Pearl Harbor by pledging to bring the commander of Japanese naval aviation to justice. He pledged to bring Japan to its knees. You bring criminals to justice; you rain destruction on combatants. (…) The bombings of September 11, 2001, must mark a turning point. War was long ago declared on us. Until we declare war in return, we will have thousands of more innocent victims. We no longer have to search for a name for the post-Cold War era. It will henceforth be known as the age of terrorism”. 9 Filiu Jean-Pierre, From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and Its Jihadi Legacy, Oxford UP, 2015.

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First US Strikes, Capture of Kabul by the Northern Alliance, Bin Laden Disappears On Friday, September 14 and Saturday, September 15, at Camp David, George W. Bush brings together all the decision-makers of his administration: Dick Cheney (the Vice President), Colin Powell (the Secretary of State), Condoleezza Rice (the National Security Advisor), and George Tenet (the CIA Director). George Tenet confirms to the President that it is indeed Al-Qaeda that is responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Saturday, September 15, 2001 is a particularly important milestone: for the United States, which will then enter the long tunnel of more than twenty years of wars; for the Middle East, which is going to be treated as a region where societies are stuck in time and must be liberalized by force; and for the world, which is going to be caught for many years in what Jason Burke called “the wars of September 11”. Here is how Bod Woodward described that morning at Camp David.10 On Saturday morning, September 15, at Camp David (…), at 9:30 a.m., Tenet (…) distributed (…) a file (…): “Going to War” (…). Tenet opened it on the front page: “Initial stage: destruction of al-Qaeda, closure of its sanctuary—Afghanistan, bin Laden’s base and refuge. We would deploy the CIA’s paramilitary teams with the Northern Alliance. Which could then join the US Special Forces units (…). At the heart of the proposals was a recommendation to the president to grant the CIA what Tenet called “emergency powers” so that it could destroy al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the rest of the world. He wanted a very broad order allowing the CIA to conduct clandestine operations without having to formally request authorization for each of them. The current procedure required too much time, legal arbitrations, studies and debates. The CIA needed a new and solid authority that would allow it to act unhindered (…). Then the CIA director released another Top Secret document, the “Worldwide Attack Matrix” list, which described the clandestine operations already underway in 80 countries or those he advised to undertake. They ranged from basic propaganda to assassinations preparing military attacks (…). In a stunning sweep, he quickly took the assembly through the 80 countries: this is where we are, this is what we could do, this is what we want to 10 Burke Jason, The 9/11 Wars, NY and London, Penguin Books, 2012.

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do—a secret global war against terror (…). The president made no effort to hide what he thought of Tenet’s proposals, not being able to help but exclaim: “Nice job!”.11

On October 7, 2001, the triple military strategy that the United States and Western allies will carry out in Afghanistan in the months of October 2001 to February 2002 began: a. Series of aerial bombardments and intense cruise missile launches, carried out from four aircraft carriers and US military bases in the Middle East. Between 30 and 80 strikes are launched per day, for nearly four months—exceptionally high figures that put the US military at the limit of its logistical and tactical capabilities. These strikes targeted Taliban forces (estimated at 35,000 men, plus 10,000 Pakistani fighters and 1,000 “Arabs”) and their logistical structures, while trying to preserve the country’s limited capabilities so that reconstruction can quickly begin after the war. b. The second element was the massive US support for the late Commandant Massoud’s Northern Alliance and some associated warlords (such as Uzbek military leader Abdul Rashid Dostom), between 15,000 and 30,000 men, who in a few weeks became the main Afghan military power on the ground. The goal was to take the main cities of northern and eastern Afghanistan—and of course, Kabul, where Osama bin Laden was at that time. At first, Western forces on the ground were very limited: 300 men of the American special forces, a hundred agents of the CIA, and 200 men of the British Royal Marines. Some of these troops were looking for bin Laden who left Kabul and took refuge in the Tora Bora Mountains, on the edge of Pakistan’s tribal areas.12 11 Woodward Bob, Bush at War, London-New York, Simon and Schuster, 2002, p. 78

[en]. 12 Several authors point to the time lag between the bombings and the effective support for the Northern Alliance, from 26 October. According to Michael Barry (The Kingdom of Insolence, pp. 19–20), the original idea (having the blessing of Pakistan) would have been to limit itself to non-binding bombing on the ground and to promote a rise to power of a moderate southern Pashtun opposition dear to Musharaf. According to him, the sagging, the lack of effectiveness of the bombings (due to the lack of infrastructure), the internal and global criticism, and the loss of key Pashtun supporters (such as Abd-ol-Haqq) would have pushed Bush to intervene “boots on the ground”.

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c. Finally, it was a question of setting up the post-Taliban Afghanistan by relying on the Pashtun majority of the country. The United States put forward a 45-year-old Afghan intellectual and politician, Hamid Karzai, spotted by the RAND Corporation and supported especially by one of the influential neo-conservative intellectuals of the RAND, Zalmay Khalilzad, himself an ethnic Afghan Pashtun, future US ambassador to Afghanistan (2003–2005), then to Iraq (2005– 2007), at the UN (2007–2009), and ultimately US Chief negotiator with the Taliban in Doha between 2018 and 2021. Hamid Karzai was leading a few military operations in southern Afghanistan, with the help of US special forces. It was eventually he who would represent Western interests in Afghanistan for the next ten years. The United States and Western allies initially expected long and difficult operations. The opposite was true. In a matter of weeks, from October 7 to November 13, Taliban troops were defeated both by bombings of unprecedented intensity since the Kuwait War, and by the operations of the Northern Alliance and warlords allied to the United States, on the ground. Operation “Enduring Freedom” aimed to destroy training camps and terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan, capture AlQaeda leaders and cease terrorist activities in the country. This was the beginning of what George W. Bush called on September 20, 2001, “the war on terror”. [W]e condemn the Taliban regime. It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists. By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And tonight, the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: – Deliver to United States Authorities All the Leaders of Al-Qaida Who Hide in Your Land. – Release All Foreign Nationals—Including American Citizens—You Have Unjustly Imprisoned, and Protect Foreign Journalists, Diplomats, and Aid Workers in Your Country. – Close Immediately and Permanently Every Terrorist Training Camp in Afghanistan and Hand Over Every Terrorist, and Every Person in Their Support Structure, to Appropriate Authorities. – Give the United States Full Access to Terrorist Training Camps, so We Can Make Sure They Are no Longer Operating.

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These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate (…). Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.13

On that day, President Bush officially launched the US government into a war with an undefined enemy, explicitly refuting the idea that AlQaeda would be the only target. Every “terrorist group of global reach”, a notion that would never be defined, should be considered a legitimate target. From global jihadists in Kabul to independentists capturing Western hostages in the South of the Philippines, to environmental activists threatening international oil supplies, the distinction between terrorists now turned war enemies and the rest of US-unfriendly international movements was more than thin at times, always ambiguous and risky for public liberties ever since. Massive surveillance of US and international telecommunications was taken to another level by the NSA and other intelligence services. Back in Afghanistan, Kabul was taken over without fighting by the Northern Alliance on November 14. Kunduz fell on November 23, then Kandahar between November 23 and December 7. On October 19 and 20, 2001, two major raids by American special troops took place, one at Dolangi, a hundred kilometers south of Kandahar in the Registan desert; the other in the southern suburbs of Kandahar. The aim was to capture Mullah Omar, the spiritual and political leader of the Taliban. It was a failure: the special forces left empty-handed. But in five weeks the Taliban regime had fallen. Several thousand Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters had been killed. Yet researchers also estimated that the number of civilians killed was between 2,000 and 4,000 victims and 10,000 to 20,000 wounded.14 In a proud tribal society, these deaths would not be left unrevenged. Moreover, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri too remained to be found and captured. 13 Transcript of President Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001. 14 Wright Donald P., A Different kind of War, The United States Army in Operation Enduring Freedom (2001–2005), US Army publishing, 2010.

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Osama bin Laden was in Kandahar on October 7 when US bombings began. He just sent a letter to the unhappy Emir of the Taliban regime, Mullah Omar, in which he articulated his long-term strategy: “an American attack on Afghanistan would begin the United States self-destruction causing long-term economic burdens which will force America to resort to the former Soviet Union’s only option: withdrawal from Afghanistan, disintegration and contraction”.15 On October 10, bin Laden returned to Kabul to meet with Taliban leaders, and, faced with the advance of northern Alliance troops towards the city, he eventually left Kabul for Jalalabad first, and then he and Ayman al-Zawahiri moved to the Mountains of Tora Bora, on the border with Pakistan. Dalton Fury (the pseudonym of a 37-year-old warrant officer who commanded special forces at Tora Bora) recounted in detail the hunt for bin Laden in “Kill Bin Laden”, in 2008.16 From 3 to 10 December, massive bombings disrupted the guerrilla war planned for Tora Bora. Local groups and tribes were beginning to let go of bin Laden. By December 11, bin Laden understood that staying was too dangerous. He announced to his troops he was leaving them fighting, while he would escape with his most loyal bodyguards.17 On that night, on horseback, bin Laden left the heights of Tora Bora towards Jalalabad. With a few men and one of his teenage sons, he crossed distended American lines: 200 men to control a line of about thirty kilometers of mountains. On January 4, 2002, Michael Morell, one of the CIA’s most influential analysts, announced to President Bush that bin Laden had probably left the Mountains of Tora Bora alive. As Peter Bergen later analyzed: “Osama bin Laden disappeared from the radar and began to rebuild, slowly, his organization” (p. 71).

15 Bergen Peter, Manhunt. From 9/11 to Abbottadad. The Ten-Year Search for Osama Bin Laden, New York, Vintage Books, 2013. 16 Fury Dalton, Kill Bin Laden. A Delta Force Commander’s Account of the Hunt of the World’s most Wanted Man, New York, St-Martin Press, 2008. 17 Mountains Peter, Op. cit., pp. 47–48.

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The Social and “Liberal” War in Afghanistan: Creating a Society via Military Power? 2002–2010: State-Building, Society-Building: How to “Liberalize” Afghan Society? On January 29, 2002, the beginning of George W. Bush’s State of the Union address summarized well his approach to what would become mainstream Western policy in Afghanistan: using the geostrategic victory against the Taliban and support of segments of the Afghan society to set up an ambitious nation-building agenda.18 The American flag flies again over our embassy in Kabul. Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay. (Applause.) And terrorist leaders who urged followers to sacrifice their lives are running for their own. (Applause.) America and Afghanistan are now allies against terror. We’ll be partners in rebuilding that country. And this evening we welcome the distinguished interim leader of a liberated Afghanistan: Chairman Hamid Karzai. (Applause.) The last time we met in this chamber, the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today women are free, and are part of Afghanistan’s new government. And we welcome the new Minister of Women’s Affairs, Doctor Sima Samar (Applause).

The Bonn conference, held on December 5, 2001 in Germany, had set out the main objectives of this ambitious nation-building project: “to put an end to the tragic conflict in Afghanistan and to promote national reconciliation, lasting peace, stability and respect for human rights in the country (…); recognize the right of the Afghan people to freely determine their own political future in accordance with the principles of Islam, democracy, pluralism and social justice … ensure a broad representation of all components of the Afghan population (…); establish an inclusive, gender-sensitive, multi-ethnic and fully representative Government”.19 In a classic institutional logic, an emergency Loya jirga (a “grand council”, in Pashto) was set up in line with point IV of the Bonn Agreement, on June 10, 2002, under the chairmanship of former King Zaher Shah. 18 Bush George W. State of Union Address, January 29, 2002. 19 Bonn Agreement, 5 December 2001, excerpt from the opening statement.

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It established a Transitional Authority, to be headed by Hamid Karzai until presidential elections. This Authority started on July 13, 2002, with various commissions being created, assisted by the offices and specialized institutions of the United Nations: a commission for the creation of a central bank, another for the establishment of a civil administration, one aimed at building a new judicial system in Afghanistan, one for human rights, inter alia. The whole was in line with the institutional and security logic of the United Nations system: “All measures taken by the Interim Authority must comply with Security Council resolution 1378 (2001) of 14 November 2001 and other Council resolutions concerning Afghanistan” (point V of the Bonn agreements). It also specified that security will be provided by an international security force in order to “establish and train new Afghan security and armed forces” (Annex I, paragraphs 1–3): “Aware that it will take some time for the new Afghan security forces and armed forces to be fully constituted and operational, the participants in the UN talks on Afghanistan request the UN Security Council to consider authorising the rapid deployment in Afghanistan of a UN-mandated force. The force will contribute to the maintenance of security in and around Kabul. Its activities could, if necessary, be gradually extended to other urban centers and areas ”. Arguably, the most daunting objective of Western forces in Afghanistan was social. Nation-building can be seen as a basis for society-building, leading to the question: how do we create a society? Political scientist and sociologist Florent Guénard (2016) articulated a paradox behind this objective: “We generally consider that it is enough for an authoritarian regime to be overthrown for a democracy to take its place. Most of the time, we judge that despotism, whatever its forms, prevents the expression of a desire for freedom deeply rooted in us. And we are both right and wrong. We are right to think that our freedom presupposes democratic institutions, but we are wrong to reduce democracy to a set of institutions. We are right to consider that our thirst for freedom is never fully covered, but we are wrong to identify liberation with democratization. These intellectual errors are profound (…) [a]nd their political consequences can be dramatic”.20 Theories of democracy are also implicit models of democratization: formal and institutional democracy allows the transition to concrete liberal society. 20 Guenard, Florent, Universal democracy. Philosophie d’un modèle politique, Paris, Seuil, 2016, p. 11.

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“Democratization can be considered social here: it consists of a struggle for individuals to conquer or re-conquer greater participation in the affairs of the polity—it is empowerment (the power to act on local decisions)”.21 And we find ourselves again with the same question: how can we create these social processes—on the ground and not only in the field of ideas? The RAND Corporation—an intellectual and financial leading institution in the field of Democratization Studies—had a very clear vision of what to do. It published nation-building and society-building Manuals. The first of these was titled The Beginner’s Guide to Nation Building.22 It was authored by several of the most prestigious international specialists on Afghanistan, such as James Dobbins and Seth G. Jones. These Manuals draw on the experience of the United States since the end of World War 2. “From Germany to Iraq” is the subtitle of another of these NationBuilding manuals.23 The following lines from the “Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building” demonstrate well their policy ambitions, including “future interventions”. Nation-building involves the use of armed force as part of a broader effort to promote political and economic reforms, with the objective of transforming a society emerging from conflict into one at peace with itself and its neighbors. This guidebook is a practical “how-to” manual on the conduct of effective nation-building. (…) [T]his guidebook presents a comprehensive history of best practices in nation-building and serves as an indispensable reference for the preplanning of future interventions and for contingency planning on the ground.24

In Afghanistan, these social and societal objectives led to the establishment of a main instrument of action, the PRT—the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. PRTs are teams of 80–300 people who integrated three 21 Guenard, Florent, Op. cit., 2016, pp. 15–16. 22 Dobbins James, Jones Seth. G, Crane Keith, Cole Degrasse Beth (Eds.), The Begin-

ner’s Guide to Nation Building, Washington, Rand Corporation, 2007, 328 pages. Online in PDF https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG557.html. 23 Dobbins James & Alii (Eds.), America’s Role in Nation-Building. From Germany to Iraq, Washington, RAND Corporation, 2003, 244 pages. Online in PDF https://www. rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1753.html. 24 Dobbins, James, Seth G. Jones, Keith Crane, & Beth Cole DeGrasse, The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building, Santa Monica, CA, RAND Corporation, 2007. https://www. rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG557.html.

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main components: military, police, and civil reconstruction.25 Established in 2002, PRTs could only begin their field work in February 2003 in the provinces of Paktia, Khost, and Ghazni. About thirty of these PRTs will eventually be active across Afghanistan between 2003 and 2013, when these PRTs were terminated. Their main activities were the financing of the construction of schools, hospitals, and public buildings in order to enhance the new role and legitimacy of the new democratic Afghan government. But the effectiveness of these PRTs was from the start weakened by their structures and military aspects: it was not civilians who rebuilt schools and public buildings—it was the Western military. In Kunduz, for example, it was the German military who took charge of these constructions, creating in Afghan society a confusion between war goals and civilian objectives. In a decade of existence, PRTs were never able to overcome this contradiction and appear as solely social and civil instruments.26 Especially since at the same time, in 2003–2004, Afghanistan gradually disappeared from the top priorities on the policy agenda of the United States and the West as the important and most debated issue had become Iraq and more broadly, the imperial project of democratization by force of the Middle East (the GMEP—or “Greater Middle East Project”), as further developed in the next chapter, focusing on Iraq between 2003 and 2007. Funding, skilled human resources, material means, and even interest were simply diverted to Iraq. Did the PRTs work? The photographic report American Chaos published in 2004 unambiguously answered this question. During a first 3,000-km tour of Afghanistan in 2002, Journalists Serge Michel and Paolo Woods had previously been hopeful shortly after the fall of the Taliban, with the return of refugees, reconstruction projects and marriages being celebrated. Two years later, while doing the same long circuit again, they discovered something widely described by Afghans, 25 Bebber, Robert J. “The Role of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Counterinsurgency Operations: Khost Province, Afghanistan”, in Small Wars Journal, 2008. smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/131-bebber.pdf. 26 Perito, Robert M. The U .S. Experience with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan—Lessons Identified. Special Report 152, Washington, United States Institute of Peace (USIP), 2005; JAKOBSEN, Peter Viggo. PRTs in Afghanistan: Successful but not sufficient. DII S Report 2005:6, Copenhagen, Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), 2005.

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such as the rapid enrichment of warlords, antiquities looters, and opium growers, and that corruption, disorder, and fear reigned again across the country.27 Meanwhile, Afghanistan seemed to continuously disappear, once more, from the radar of the White House and State Department, only to reappear in 2008–2009, with the Obama administration’s new strategy. 2010–2011. The Battle of Marjah: The Victory of the Generals? When newly elected President Barack Obama took stock with the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell of the situation in Afghanistan, on November 6, 2008, the conclusions were not very reassuring: “It is very confusing what is happening there (…). The day is a succession of explosions, dramas, atrocities, dangers”.28 Obama had already indicated his priorities in its Middle East policy: leaving Iraq, which the Surge led by Petraeus seemed to have stabilized, and prioritizing the war in Afghanistan, but in a perspective totally renewed by the approaches of Obama and his administration. It was a question of first creating the conditions for military intervention, but an intervention as short and limited as possible and that must lead to an operation of economic and political construction, led by an Afghan State that is also reframed and renewed. It was General David Petraeus and his team, particularly Stanley McChrystal, who convinced Obama and his administration of the implementation of this new policy that is presented in four words and four phases: “1-security, 2-stabilization, 3-construction, 4-transfer”.29 In a chapter of their Counterinsurgency Manual, titled “The Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency”, Petraeus highlighted the difference between the counterinsurgency he proposed and traditional military combat in a number of important ways, including that “sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is”; and that it is “usually better to let the host nation do something good enough rather than trying to do it very well for it”. [note pp. 41–42]. Petraeus had arguably redefined the notion of warfare with his Counterinsurgency Field Manual that was

27 Michel Serge, Wood Paolo, American Chaos (2002–2004), Paris, Seuil, 2004. 28 Woodward Bob, Obama’s Wars, Simon and Schuster, 2010. 29 Mansoor Peter R., Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War, Yale, Yale UP, 2013.

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implemented in Iraq, with the insight that the U.S. “could not kill its way out of the war”; it had to protect and win over the population, providing security so that a stable government could emerge and durably govern.30 The Obama administration eventually accepted the plan proposed by David Petraeus and the generals. The idea was to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan—in addition to the 90,000 already there— and to conduct two large-scale military operations: one in Marjah first and one in Kandahar, to control southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban had reestablished a strong presence. This military control should allow the establishment of a politico-military operation, led by the civilians of the State Department and by a reorganized Afghan government and a renewed, more efficient Afghan administration.31 ,32 On February 13, 2010, the Battle of Marjah was launched. Officially it was a joint operation with the Afghan army: Operation “Mustarak” (“together”, in Dari). 8500 American soldiers, 4000 British, 4000 soldiers of the Afghan forces quickly took control of the city and region of Marjah (80,000 inhabitants) in helmand province. The Taliban left only a few hundred fighters in the city: clearly the Taliban leaders decided not to fight. As of February 27, 2010 the military operation was over … and then should have begun what the plan called “civilian economic development operations”. A domestic authority had to take over now to face the Taliban over time and create a viable alternative to it. The Surge forces into Afghanistan aimed to secure the population and train the Afghan forces for them to take over as well. Foreign and local observers alike observed the American strategy unfold yet expressed serious concerns: “A “government-in-a-box” of civilian administrators is already poised to move into Marjah to step into the vacuum left by the Taliban. We obviously have major doubts about how effective this box government can be at building up civil authority in a town that has been governed by the Taliban for most of the last decade. Yet what happens in Marjah and places like it in the coming months will be the foundation upon which the success or failure of

30 Woodward Bob, Obama’ Wars, Op. cit. 31 BergenPeter, “The General’s Victory”, in The New Republic, December 16, 2010.

https://newrepublic.com/article/80045/the-generals-victory-obamas-wars-woodward. 32 Bob Woodward notes that at a Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting on October 30, 2009, Obama was looking for another option. Chapter 22.

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this effort will be built ”.33 Quickly, the failure of this economic and political development based on simple injunctions became obvious. “Filling the void” could not be decreed. Local populations, on the other hand, were concerned about the declared desire to restructure the functioning of a largely informal economy, which relied heavily on poppy cultivation. As always in this kind of operations, the death of about fifty civilians created the conditions for a rejection of any element coming from a liberator now perceived as an occupier. Bob Woodward argued in 2010, just prior to the launch of the second phase of the Obama-Petraeus plan to Kandahar, that the strategy of 1-security, 2-stabilization, 3-construction, 4-transfer had morphed into security and stabilization alone over years and that in most of the country, there had not been neither construction nor transfer.34 2011–2021. Leaving Afghanistan (The Least Damaging Way Possible) After the failure of Marjah’s political-military operation, the idea of achieving political development goals in Afghanistan was definitively buried. In a few weeks, the country became a non-priority issue for successive US administrations, first under Obama and then under Donald Trump. This gradual abandonment of Afghanistan by the West was done in three stages. A. The Obama administration became content with only a tactical management of the Afghan file, essentially by using drone strikes more than ever, and letting go of increasingly distrustful Afghan President Hamid Karzai, while slowly establishing a parallel and very informal diplomatic channel with the Taliban to end the conflict; B. The Trump administration was content with having a few military operations and with accelerated, direct, and official discussions with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, though without recognizing the Taliban organization or their claims to an “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”;

33 Bokhari Kamran, Zeihan Peter & Hughes Nathan, “The meaning of Marjah”, The Asian Times, 18 fevrier 2010. http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http% 3A%2F%2Fwww.atimes.com%2Fatimes%2FSouth_Asia%2FLB18Df01.html. 34 Woodward Bob, Obamas’ Wars, Chapter 30.

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C. In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed the oft-called “Doha agreement” with the Taliban, which provided in theory for their peaceful and negotiated return to power in a (largely hypothetical) power-sharing political setting: a “new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations ”.35 But years prior to the Trump administration’s direct negotiations with the Taliban, between 2011 and 2016 the Obama administration, which had increasingly become powerless in large areas of the Middle East, expressed its interest in a diplomatic and geostrategic shift towards the Asia–Pacific region. Yet to manage an Afghanistan for which no one no longer knew what to do, Obama seized a then relatively marginal tactical tool until then: drone strikes.36 In a few months, Obama became the president of drones and the AfPak region (Afghanistan-Pakistan), and especially the Waziristan area, became in the words of Mark Mazzetti, the “laboratory of drone strikes ”. The goal here was no longer to change society. Drones constitute a simple, short-term tactical tool supposed to disrupt terrorist networks for a few weeks, enough to keep the violence of the guerrillas and the terrorist at low intensity, before starting again.37 In geopolitics and military affairs, this kind of action is called “mowing the grass”: we cut the grass (the “bad guys”) by drone strikes; then the grass grows back, etc. Any longterm strategy disappears. The strikes are limited to trying to limit the chaos, before leaving. In 2014, the Stimson Center produced a report on the decade of US government drone strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and provided chilling conclusions: While tactical strikes may have helped keep the homeland free of major terrorist attacks, existing evidence indicates that both Sunni and Shia Islamic extremist groups have grown in scope, lethality and influence in the broader area of operations in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

35 The Doha Agreement, p. 2. Available at https://www.state.gov/wp-content/upl oads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf. 36 Tusrse Nick, The Changing Face of Empire. Special Ops, Drones, Spies, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare, Haymarket Books, 2012. 37 Mazzetti Mark, The CIA, a Secret Army and a War at the Ends of the Earth, Penguin, 2013.

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Prior to 9/11 such extremist groups operated in a generally confined geographic area near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Today, such groups operate from Nigeria to Mali, to Libya, to the Sinai, to Syria, to Iraq, to Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond, and there is no indication that a US strategy to destroy al-Qaida has curbed the rise of Sunni Islamic extremism, deterred the establishment of Shia Islamic extremist groups or advanced long-term US security interests. The use of targeted UAV strikes to gain tactical advantage has led to some successes in various geographic areas of operations, but evidence about the scope, number, and lethality of terrorist attacks worldwide suggest that al-Qaida elements still have a broad reach and, potentially, a decades-long lifespan. These weapons will be part of that struggle, but they will not defeat the broader strategic threat. In fact, evidence suggests that the broader strategic struggle against terrorist entities is not succeeding. (…) Civilian casualties, even if relatively few, can anger whole communities, increase anti-US sentiment and become a potent recruiting tool for terrorist organizations. Even strikes that kill only terrorist operatives can cause great resentment, particularly in contexts in which terrorist recruiting efforts rely on tribal loyalties or on an economically desperate population. Friends, family and fellow tribe members of those attacked or harmed in strikes may become hostile to the United States, and, over years, their hostility may cost the United States in terms of foreign cooperation, hostility to US travelers and foreign business and support for terrorism.38

The Trump administration also had little interest in Afghanistan. President Donald J. Trump initially left free hands to the military. The actions were limited for two years (2017–2018) except for some spectacular bombings, such as that of April 2017. A GBU-43/B bomb, the most powerful conventional (i.e., non-nuclear) bomb in the US arsenal, was dropped on underground caches in the heights of Tora Bora—in Tangi Assad Khel, about fifty kilometers south of Jalalabad—where some ISIS groups in Afghanistan were based. “We have the greatest military in the world”, Mr. Trump said. “We have given them total authorization, and that’s what they’re doing, and frankly, that’s why they’ve been so successful lately”. Derek Chollet, who was the assistant secretary of defense for international affairs in the Obama administration, analyzed the bombing 38 Recommandations and Report of the Task Force on US Drone Policy, Stimson Center (Washington, DC), 2014, pp. 29–30. www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file-attach ments/recommendations_and_report_of_the_task_force_on_us_drone_policy_second_edi tion.pdf.

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in the following manner: “Trump has ceded responsibilities to his military commanders, and it appears he’s paying little attention to operational details.39 ” By 2018 and then more intensively by 2020, series of peace negotiations were held in Doha, Qatar, with the objective to “move the country forward to reduce violence and accede to the demands of Afghans: a country reconciled with a government that reflects a nation that is not at war”, as Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State of the Trump administration, stated on the eve of the opening of the first official meeting. The culmination of these discussions took place in 2020: the “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan”, signed on February 29, 2020, sets up a timetable for the departure of US troops within fourteen months (in May 2021) in exchange for inter-Afghan discussions aimed at the constitution of a government including the Taliban (negotiations scheduled from March 10, 2020) and a commitment by the latter to no longer let Al-Qaeda take hold on Afghan territory. The four-page document provides for a whole series of closures of bases, precise reductions in US and NATO troops, prisoner exchanges… all conditioned on a drastic reduction in violence in the country. As early as March 2, 2020—three days after the signing in Doha— Ashraf Ghani’s government refused some of the conditions, particularly prisoner exchanges. Violence was on the rise again in 2020 and 2021. On April 14, 2021, President Biden announced the end of the US intervention in Afghanistan and the total withdrawal of US troops—without consultation with NATO allies. Afghan government forces were defecting at increasingly higher rates. Within a few weeks, the Taliban announced that they controlled more than a third of the country’s 407 districts. In parallel, the government of Ashraf Ghani, which had long resisted direct negotiations, was still sending teams of Afghan officials back and forth to Doha in order to save what it could of his collapsing regime, by then essentially functioning in Kabul and a few large cities. He even went himself to Qatar for such negotiations, claiming then in a conference at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies that he alive, he would never leave or escape Afghanistan. A few months after, on August 15, 2021, the Taliban swiftly took over Kabul without any reported fight, the President having left the country, and the first surrender negotiations with key 39 Cooper Helen, Mashal Mujib, “U.S. Drops ‘Mother of All Bombs’ on ISIS Caves in Afgfhanistan”, The New York Times, April 13, 2017.

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national figures definitively sealing the fate of the country. It was then up to the Biden administration to end the game by fully withdrawing from Afghanistan after nearly twenty years of military presence. The republic was no more, the Taliban and their Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan were back (Fig. 2.1). To further this analysis of Afghanistan beyond the geopolitical chronology and analysis of what was missing since 2001, one needs to ask the question “what went wrong”? In other words, after having understood what was crucially missing (e.g., a clear definition of the enemy for the WoT, a post-conflict strategy, political consistency, etc.), we need to complete this war policy review with an analysis of what was actually made Leader

Years of national leadership

Name of the Afghan national

* Mohammad Omar

April 3, 1996 – November 13,

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

(1960-2013)

2001

(1996-2001)

entity

** Hamid Karzai

13 July 2002 – 26 January

Transitional Islamic State of

(born 1957)

2004

Afghanistan (2002-20024)

** Hamid Karzai

13 July 2002 – 29 September

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

(born 1957)

2014 (re-elected in 2009)

(2004-2021)

** Ashraf Ghani

29 September 2014 – 15

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

(born 1949)

August 2021

(2004-2021)

* Haibatullah

Since August 15, 2021

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

Akhundzada

Haibatullah Akhundzada has

(Since August 2021)

(born 1961)

been the leader of the Taliban since 2016, informally controling large swathes of the country. He proclaimed the reestablishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan over Kabul and the country on 15 August, 2021.

Fig. 2.1 Afghan National Leaders since 2001. *de facto; **de jure and internationally recognized

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and contributed to this US defeat despite two decades of fighting and financing the Afghan republic. As Gilles Dorronsoro once put it, how has the failure of Afghanistan’s transnational government led to such a predictable failure?40 Beyond the academic importance of this question, this can help us appreciate how solid or fragile is the new regime in Kabul, and why.

The Institutionalization of Instability: The Afghan State Since 2001 Back to the Bonn Legacy: Depoliticizing State Reforms, Overlooking Elite Politics In December 2001, the Bonn Agreement laid the foundations of a technocratic approach to peacebuilding which, by wrongfully framing Afghanistan as a “post-conflict” situation and eclipsing the continuing conflict’s domestic and external causes, failed to provide a framework for an inclusive peace settlement. This, among other matters, could have helped regulate the conflicting interests of elite groups. The Agreement instead, generated a “grand bargain” predicated upon international actors’ military concerns, a security and patronage pact, arguably, an “externally driven division of the spoils among a hand-picked group of [Afghan] stakeholders”.41 By not tackling elite fragmentation, this highly flawed elite pact had the consequence of depoliticizing the issue of state reform, reduced to an emphasis on re-establishing institutions through an acute centralization of state resources, decision-making leverage, and power to appoint. New power-sharing arrangements ultimately created “winners and losers”. Not only did they exclude all the Taliban—the “original sin” for many Afghan officials—but also many Pashtun elites who were reluctant to support Hamid Karzai, and other warlords questioning the Bonn process’ inclusiveness. The promise of “broad-based, multi-ethnic [and] politically balanced” elites remained on paper, as the Northern Alliance’s Pandjsheris—responsible for the 2001 takeover of Kabul—gained control of 40 Dorronsoro, G. (2021). Le Gouvernement transnational de l’Afghanistan; Une si prévisible défaite. Karthala. 41 Jonathan Goodhand & Mark Sedra, “Who Owns the Peace? Aid, Reconstruction, and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan”, Disaster 34, no. 1 (2010): S82.

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most of the bureaucracy between 2002 and 2004, initially circumscribing the power of President Karzai. Consequently, ethno-regional Tanzim factional leaders—warlords—were incentivized to retain control over provinces,42 ,43 ,44 ,45 ,46 where they had built monopolies over income, coercion, and resources during the war.47 The Puzzle of State Capacity—State Failure In absence of structural reforms channeling elite disunity within powersharing mechanisms, capacity-building, and enhanced state centralization—far from winning hearts and minds via boosting service delivery,48 fueled patronage between the center and regional patrons. In neglecting constraints on state capacity, enhancing state capacity via aid influx fed forms of corruption and governance failure.49 To understand both the deficient bedrock on which post-2001 state reforms drew, the puzzling articulation of state capacity and failure, as well as the post-2001 state-elites paradigm, one has to appreciate Western powers’ “imaginary anthropology”: that Afghans’ historical rejection of the state and,

42 Timor Sharan, “The Dynamics of Elite Networks and Patron–Client Relations in Afghanistan”, Europe-Asia Studies 63, no. 6 (2011): 1109–1127, p. 1110; William Maley (2002) The Afghanistan Wars, New York, Palgrave MacMillan. 43 Ibid., p. 1117. 44 Nasir A. Andisha, “An Enduring Lesson from the History of Peacemaking in

Afghanistan”, International Studies 57, no. 4 (2020): 331–343, p. 337. 45 One could easily compare the flaws of the Bonn Agreement to those of the 1988 Geneva Accords that, while securing the retreat of Soviet troops and the return of Afghan refugees, excluded the Mujahedeen opposition from negotiations. 46 Ali A. Jalali, “Afghanistan in 2002: The Struggle to Win the Peace”, Asian Survey 43, no. 1 (2003): 174–185, p. 175. 47 Gilles Dorronsoro, The Afghan Revolution (Paris: Khartala, 2000), Chapter 3, 107–

154. 48 The “Afghanistan National Development Strategy” and the 2004 Constitution emphasized rights and service delivery. 49 Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, “Afghanistan: A Vicious Cycle of State Failure”, Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions 29, no. 2 (2016): 163–166.

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conversely, the alleged predominance of tribalism and localism to understand politics.50 In contrast with this belief, since the state expanded its power and reach after 1880 as the British wished to make the country a buffer state, Afghan political history has been embedded in dialectics between the center (i.e. the government—hok¯ umat ) and peripheries (i.e. solidarity groups—qawm). From the mid-twentieth century, the latter found themselves unable to contest state supremacy. Since, regional leaders and notables (kal¯ an nafar) have sought to be “plugged” to the state to access its material and symbolic resources through patronage.51 In turn, the centralist state entertained relations—for instance through partial incorporation—of centrifugal sources of power. Thus, fragmented elites have long accommodated state presence and legitimacy, mostly that of a power broker and distributional entity, that has historically been strong in its reach, yet not asserting a Weberian monopoly over certain functions.52 After 2001, the Karzai government replicated pre-war patron–client clientele relations, tying the centralist state to traditional elites who previously acted as local intermediaries (arb¯ abs, kh¯ ans, maliks ),53 yet warlords

50 Adam Baczko, “Legal Rule and Tribal Politics: The US Army and the Taliban in Afghanistan (2001–13)”, Development and Change 47, no. 6: 1412–1433; Gilles Dorronsoro, Le Gouvernement Transnational de l’Afghanistan: Une Si Prévisible Défaite, Paris, Khatala, 2021. 51 Olivier Roy, “De la stabilité de l’État en Afghanistan”. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 5–6 (2004): 1183–2020, pp. 1200–1201. 52 The American anthropologist Thomas Barfield summarized this point in a personal anecdote related to a field trip pursued in 1971 in Northern Afghanistan: “People, often, when they would talk about government, were not talking about it as an idea or an institution, but as a place. They would say: ‘You have been to the government?’, meaning the compound were the police was, and as soon as the pave road ended, government ended. (…) What the people did have was their own form of self-governance (…). However they were not pure anarchists, because they thought the government’s responsibility was to prevent fighting between different villages (…), banditry on the road (…) and if problems were too difficult to solve for local communities, then it was okay for the government to do it” (See Thomas Barfield, “Anthropology in Afghan Studies”, Serious Science, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kmjgjmxG-E&t=91s, 1:50–2:43). 53 Thomas J. Barfield. Afghanistan: A cultural and political history, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2010, pp. 220, 223.

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had become the new sources of authority who could not be marginalized so easily, and competed for a share of state power.54 Moreover, unprecedented power and budgetary centralization in the state, and uneven ethno-regional representativity within its institutions have further established “neo-patrimonial”55 bonds that were less conducive to stabilized governance. Additionally, the patronage system, fed by the capacity drive, prevented any desire to pursue meaningful structural reforms of the state and public administration. While local officials held weak policy leverage, a highly centralized and corrupted bureaucracy proved unresponsive and unaccountable to policy demands. Consequently, policymaking at the local level mostly stemmed from provincial leaders crafting their own rules, ignoring Kabul and formal institutions.56 The promotion of decentralization reforms remained largely inconsequential and did not curb unaccountability,57 as provincial councils, governors or police chiefs remained tied to—and appointed by—the center. Thus, subnational governance remained “beholden to ministries in Kabul”.58 Finally, because local elites competed to access state resources fuelled by unprecedented foreign aid, co-optation practices favored a return of violence.59 International Donors: Centralizing the State—Bypassing the State The post-2001 era was that of Afghanistan’s “international government”, run by a transnational bureaucratic field wherein the policies financed by international donors were designed.60 In 2009, international aid reached

54 Said Yaqub Ibrahimi, “Afghanistan’s Political Development Dilemma: The Centralist State Versus a Centrifugal Society”, Journal of South Asian Development 14, no. 1 (2019): 40–61. Warlord co-optation will be enhanced from 2009. 55 William Maley, “State-building in Afghanistan: Challenges and pathologies”. Central Asian Survey 32, no. 3 (2013): 255–270, pp. 260–261. 56 Murtazashvili, “Afghanistan: A Vicious Cycle of State Failure”, p. 165. 57 Francesc Vendrell (2012). “What went wrong after Bonn”. www.mei.edu/publicati

ons/what-went-wrong-after-bonn. 58 Murtazashvili, “Afghanistan: A Vicious Cycle of State Failure”. 59 Antonio Giustozzi, “The Ethnicisation of an Afghan Faction: Junbish-I-Milli From

its Origins to the Presidential Election”, Crisis States Research Center (2005); Ibrahimi, “Afghanistan’s Political Development Dilemma”, p. 56. 60 Gilles Dorronsoro, Le Gouvernement Transnational de l’Afghanistan.

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nearly 100% of the Afghan GDP. The emphasis on building capacities in a centralized set of state institutions run by Hamid Karzai’s presidential regime allowed the international donor community to channel aid. However, as the aid influx overwhelmed—yet expanded—state monitoring capacities, this “premature load bearing” led international donors to bypass the state to get things done.61 Centralized state bureaucracies’ ineptitude to implement policy led donors to establish ad hoc non-state institutions, and state institutions to outsource service delivery to international NGOs. Circumventing the state was further seen legitimate as Afghans were wrongly perceived as historically disapproving the state, solely relying on local governing actors. To attract foreign staff, this “second civil service” ensured far higher salaries than that of the Afghan civil service—even that of “super-scales” that aimed to recruiting wellqualified Afghan civil servants.62 Institutional duplications and ineffective institution-building, and the subsequent capture of public resources by private entities further undermined the confidence in the state through which aid was transited. Citizens were ultimately more confident in semiautonomous, local, and informal systems of governance, which gradually proved to be more responsive. Yet, the official state-building agenda did not take such challenges into consideration, struggling with the lack of long-term vision and effective coordination among the international donor community. Afghanistan became a rentier state based on foreign aid influxes and which, though deemed ineffective, is often bypassed by foreign donors. The breakdown of the security apparatus and reliance on foreign partners—primarily American—exemplified the extent to which state-driven patronage and predatory behaviors ultimately made the mere emphasis on capacity strengthening and aid counter-productive. As such, state failure did not result from state weakness, but from, on the one hand, the discrepancy between the state’s strong “despotic power” (i.e. its ability to enact decisions autonomously) vis-à-vis society but dependence on international actors and, on the other hand, weak “infrastructural power” (i.e.

61 Murtazashvili, “Afghanistan: A Vicious Cycle of State Failure”, p. 163. 62 Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. ‘Moving Forward? Assessing Public

Administration Reform in Afghanistan’, Briefing Paper, Kabul, AREU, Sept. 2016, p. 18; Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. ‘Civil Service Reform in Afghanistan: Roles and Functions of the Civil Service Sector’, Issue paper, Kabul, AREU, Aug. 2016, p. 50.

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its ability to penetrate society to implement policy choices within the territory it claims to govern),63 resulting in a corrupt and inefficient, hence illegitimate, Leviathan. From State Failure to Regime Illegitimacy: Democratic Disenchantment Democratic Ambitions in Absence of Elite Settlement Ratified in January 2004, the Afghan Constitution emphasized the state’s ambition to build “democracy”, and national “sovereignty” to be ensured via “elected representatives”.64 However, not only did patronage politics neither prevented accountability nor citizens’ input in government decisions, but the transnational bureaucracy’s centrality in setting reform agenda and monopoly of resources—which further depoliticized decisions through circumventing public debate—fostered ruling elites’ unaccountability and the political processes’ illegitimacy. From 2002, the centralization of resources and external legitimacy in the hands of President Hamid Karzai (2001–2014) enabled his network to enhance its position via granting shares of state resources to peripheral elites. By the end of 2004 indeed, it was able to substitute most Tajik bureaucrats, controlling most of the state’s strategic institutions, by Southeastern Pashtun technocrats, and to gradually co-opt Tanzim factional leaders and warlords, by offering them positions in the central government. The Failure of Electoral Democracy The looting of state resources by elite groups further delegitimized the regime (i.e. the formal and informal power arrangements within a state, involving how power is accessed and wielded), in the context of elections. Re-elected in 2009, Karzai had secured the support of Tajik, Pashtun, Uzbek, and even Hazara elites through renewing patron-client bonds.65

63 On the “despotic power” vs “infrastructural power” nexus, see Michael Mann, “The autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and results”, European Journal of Sociology 25, no. 2 (1984): 185–213. 64 Articles 6 and 4 of the 2004 Afghan Constitution, respectively. https://www.consti tuteproject.org/constitution/Afghanistan_2004.pdf?lang=en. 65 Sharan, “The Dynamics of Elite Networks and Patron–Client Relations in Afghanistan”, pp. 1121–1124; Ibrahimi, “Afghanistan’s Political Development Dilemma”, p. 57.

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Relying on state patronage in order to “divide and rule”, this policy of accommodation was furthered after his re-election which, while fostering elite fragmentation, simultaneously weakened any political opposition. The flawed institutional process culminated in the 2014 presidential elections, as fraud allegations required American support for the establishment of a National Unity Government, whereby Ashraf Ghani became President and Abdullah Abdullah Chief Executive of the Afghan Government. The paralysis of the Electoral Commission and the transparency deficiency, adding to elected representatives’ unwillingness to enact thorough structural reforms, further delegitimized the regime. While elites failed to reach a consensus in regard to the political regime, institutional processes by which state power was acquired took the form of a zero-sum game: as politics was restricted to the capture of state resources outside of power-sharing institutional mechanisms, effective political alternation seemed impossible. Hence, while elections did not provide political legitimacy nor did they allow for effective governance, democracy was spoiled. The regime was further deinstitutionalized after 2014 as the elections of the parliament (Wolesi Jirga), initially scheduled in October 2016, after a first postponing, ultimately took place two years after, in October 2018. Accounting for the Resurgence of the Taliban Movement Re-Anchoring the Taliban Phenomenon in State-Society Relations Since December 2001, the inability to institutionalize the relations between the centralist state and centrifugal forces, combined with the delegitimation of democratic institutions, has fostered the deterioration of state–society relations. This context was conducive to the resurgence of the Taliban, whose political leaders had settled in neighboring Pakistan after 2001. In 1994, the T¯aleb¯an had emerged in Afghanistan’s SouthEastern rural Pashtun regions in the midst of the Afghan civil war followed the collapse, in 1992, of Mohammad Najibull¯ah’s formerly Socialist government. Structured and staffed via theological schools (dini madressa) networks, which proliferated in neighboring Pakistan during General Zia ul-Haq’s rule (1978–1988), training displaced Afghans,66 the Taliban eventually took Kabul in September 1996. Before the 2001

66 See Dorronsoro, 2010, pp. 299–303; Marsden, 2008.

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intervention, the Taliban ran an ulama-led clerical state mostly articulated around its judiciary institutions. Following the establishment of a very strict moral order, they gained legitimacy in their ability to bring peace. The Taliban are a revolutionary movement, in that it could strongly oppose tribal elders (maliks, arb¯abs), notables (kh¯ans), the educated, and foreign presence. This latter point led the Taliban to provide a safe haven for Al-Qaeda’s transnational networks, which was led, somehow ironically, by foreigners.67 While Olivier Roy emphasized in 1998 how “the Taliban did not, after all, come from nowhere”,68 the international community’s assertion that the Taliban issue should be solved locally prevented its understanding as a social movement once anchored in state–society relations.69 Indeed, as the selective co-optation of local elites in the state had not gone hand-in-hand with the development of state structures throughout the territory but, rather, had given rise to predatory practices, districts (uluswali) remained deprived of effective and accountable local governance. Moreover, the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Police (ANP) proved unable to control the territory without international assistance, leading to subcontracting to paramilitary forces which, in the case of the police, came under the control of regional strongmen.70 The state’s inability to monopolize the means and practice of violence further weakened its legitimacy, and that of international actors, moving from guest (mehm¯ an) to enemy (doshm¯ an).71 In sum, eager to receive continuous support from the international community while at the same time keeping the state strong but not too much, the ruling elite in Kabul promoted a

67 While Al-Qaeda’s presence infringed on Afghans’ sovereignty ideal and constituted the primary cause of the 2001 military intervention, many Taliban sympathizers thus turned against Al-Qaeda foreign fighters soon after the intervention. 68 Olivier Roy, “Has Islamism any Future in Afghanistan?”, in William Maley (Ed.), Fondamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban, New York, New York University Press, 1998, p. 205. 69 William Maley, “Interpreting the Taliban”, in Maley (Ed.), Fondamentalism Reborn? 70 Antonio Giustozzi & Mohammed Isaqzadeh, Policing Afghanistan. The Politics of the

Lame Leviathan, New York, Columbia University Press, 2013. 71 Gilles Dorronsoro, “The Taliban’s Winning Strategy in Afghanistan”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2009): 16–17.

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hybrid system blending the promotion of the rule of law “in the making” and a patronage system fed by state resources.72 Overtaking the State, Acting Like a State Conversely, Afghan Taliban have gradually taken on key state functions back again, supporting their claims to be stabilizing the country in the face of state failure and endemic corruption. Militarily first, despite the need to coordinate with other movements (e.g. the Hizb-e Eslami), the Taliban have showed strong organizational and strategic coherence,73 reinforcing the narrative of Afghans’ fight against infidel invaders (the British, the Soviets, then, the Americans). In short, the Taliban provided protection to local elites, who, in turn, supplied sufficient recruitment.74 Second, while Taliban finances were largely dependent upon drug trade and foreign funding in 1996–2001, it has in the past decade enhanced its fiscal capacity via institutionalizing taxation on mining, exports, drug, and a highway tax scheme in the areas it controls.75 Extracting resources therefore required the building of a parallel administration, fostering the “infrastructural” penetration of society,76 further enhanced through a sophisticated communication apparatus.77 Above all, Taliban-run courts allowed to promote relations between the rulers and the ruled via ensuring local governance, like guaranteeing property rights via land conflicts arbitrage and fighting corruption.78 Norbert Elias’s seminal work had showed how the French modern state emerged in the sixteenth

72 Giustozzi & Isaqzadeh, Policing Afghanistan, p. 186. 73 Dorronsoro, “The Taliban’s Winning Strategy in Afghanistan”. 74 Sharan, “The Dynamics of Elite Networks and Patron–Client Relations in Afghanistan”, p. 1124. 75 On Afghan Highways, Even the Taliban Fear the Taliban’s Toll Collectors”, New York Times, November 1, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/world/asia/ afghanistan-taliban-bribery.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage. 76 Barnett Rubin, “Saving Afghanistan”, Foreign Affairs 86, no. 1 (2007): 60. 77 International Crisis Group, “Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words”, Asia

Report 158 (2008): i. 78 Baczko Adam, “Legal Rule and Tribal Politics”.

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century thanks to its ability to impose its monopoly on taxation and coercion over the feudal lordship. Fiscal resources financed military capacity that, in turn, secured taxation and control, as a tool for pacification.79 Despite being a mostly Pashtun movement, the Taliban never claimed to create a Pashtunistan. Hence, although opposing Shia Afghans, the group’s rhetoric has tried to prevent an ethnicization of politics and to show a proclivity to forge a pan-ethnic Afghan identity, emphasizing Afghanistan as the stronghold of Sunni Muslim identity.80 In controlled Pashtun regions, this was further exemplified by the marginalization of the Pashtunwali (the Pashtun code of conduct—basis of customary law81 ), substituted by religious courts. Finally, the American–Taliban deal reached in 2020—which was arguably more about securing retreat than peace—witnessed the movement’s desire to build legitimacy abroad, beyond the informal communication ties it has entertained with regional actors. In contrast with the initial Taliban leader Mollah Omar’s invisible charisma, the movement has become increasingly personified, by its spokesperson in particular, such as Suhail Shaheen, during negotiations in Doha.82 Engaging in formal diplomatic practices, the Taliban have been attempting to assert their credibility as a regional power and partner. Acting like a state in its practice and image,83 this new behavior was not confined to being a short-term means to secure its return to power. Rather it is, in the long term, both an end in itself, to foster its ability to rule, and to be perceived 79 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, Oxford, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1994 (1939). 80 Olivier Roy, “The Taliban: A strategic tool for Pakistan”. In Christophe Jaffrelot (Ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism without a nation? London, Zed Books, 2002, pp. 149–159. 81 See Thomas Barfield, “Culture and Custom in Nation-Building: Law in Afghanistan”, Maine Law Review 60, no. 2 (2008): 347–373. 82 Suhail Shaheen is the political spokesperson of the Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar, and was the Taliban official who replied to our written questions in early December 2022. Though we do not quote him, his contribution was critically analyzed, and helped us to complete this book with a more comprehensive understanding of the Afghan national situation, past and present. 83 In State in Society: Studying how States and Societies Transform and Constitute One

Another, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 16–19; Joel S. Migdal differentiates the “image” of the state (i.e. that of a “coherent, controlling organization in a territory, which is a representation of the people bounded by that territory”) and its “actual practices” to grasp the evolution of—and the modalities of—the nature of state–society relations.

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as a credible aid recipient, something likely to remain pivotal in shaping the new Afghan state. For that matter, and contrary to the 1996–2001 period, Taliban leaders have been keen on forging economic and security deals with foreign governments, such as with China around the Mes Aynak copper mine, with Russia to jointly fight the so-called Islamic State which is active in the North of Afghanistan, with Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to import energy supplies, or with Turkey to secure Turkish investments in the country, so as to foster economic development, stability, and infrastructural reconstruction. This approach equally derives from the Taliban’s acknowledgment of the imperative to normalize its image in the concert of nations, which made them behave like a state on the diplomatic scene, from Doha to Beijing and Moscow.

Conclusion The swift takeover of the Afghan territory and state apparatus by Taliban forces in August 2021 is consequential to a large number of issues. On the one hand, key elements of peace-, state-, and nation-building were missing, including a post-conflict policy, a definition of who was the fundamental enemy (Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, all persons opposing the US presence in Afghanistan?) as well as a lack of consistent political support for a clearly defined strategy in the Bush and Obama administrations. Arguably, the only consistent presidential strategy on Afghanistan seems to have come from the unique term of their successor, during which the Trump administration focused on leaving Afghanistan following a face-saving diplomatic agreement. On the other hand, and until today, a number of challenges have remained unresolved since 2001, that of an inability to accommodate, via enormous military and financial capacity, relations between the center (i.e. a historically centralized state in Kabul since the mid-twentieth century) and the peripheries (i.e. localized regional leaders that have, historically, opposed the state yet sought to be-co-opted by it, and shared power with it). International actors—both civilian and military, from Kabul to Washington—have indeed failed to assess the complex nature of the problem and to design an efficient organizational structure as a response. These

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two elements have naturally proved mutually reinforcing. By overemphasizing state “capacity”,84 the US policy did not recognize infrastate constraints on state capacities (i.e. rampant corruption within the political elite, vested interests opposed to any reformist agendas), as well as the constraints posed by the regional environment (chiefly Pakistan, but also Iran and other polities), hence the need to revalorize the role of diplomacy, beyond military and financial capacity surges. On the other hand, international actors were unable to craft an appropriate organizational structure, which proved fragmented, to address the problem. Vertically first, between the bureaucratic institutions of the Afghan state, and international bureaucracies, that have increasingly sought to bypass the latter. Horizontally then, as a result of the plurality of international actors and institutions—international donors, non-governmental organizations, and nation-states—that formed Afghanistan’s “transnational government”.85 Paradoxically, the new Taliban’s governmental ability to maximize its durability will hinge upon its capacity to face similar hardship, that of accommodating the social, economic, and normative aspirations of society and elite groups, as well as delivering on stability, welfare, and economic redistribution, without over-sizing state capacities. However, the Taliban seem to have committed to a similar paradigmatic approach to state-building. Contrary to the 1996–2001 period, Taliban leaders have been keen on forging economic deals with foreign governments and this made them behave like a state—though it has remained unrecognized on the diplomatic scene, from Doha to Dubai to Ankara, Moscow, Ashgabat, and Beijing, to name only official visits. Also, soon after the takeover of Kabul, the Taliban have sought to convince all public servants to stay in office, including women initially, in order to maximize the administrative and policymaking capacities of the state to deliver on pivotal public policies (urban services such as education, public health, welfare systems, but also police/security and industrial policies, such as mining).86 The granting 84 Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, “Afghanistan: A Vicious Cycle of State Failure”. 85 Dorronsoro Gilles, Le Gouvernement Transnational de l’Afghanistan, Paris, Karthala,

2021. 86 The emails from the Doha Taliban Office that we received on these points confirmed overall what the journalistic literature has so far described. However, the Taliban spokesperson did not address the gender discriminations and fears at all, although they

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of amnesties to public servants nonetheless did not prevent their reluctance to serve under the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. This led the Taliban leadership to overcome the deficiencies in human resources by both establishing a commission aiming at incentivizing public servants of the 2001–2021 period who had fled the country to return to Afghanistan and, critically, to call for individuals who had served in the first Taliban government (1996–2001), to return. Many of those had fled to Pakistan, holding weak qualifications.87 Finally, military capacity will unsurprisingly constitute a pivotal organizational challenge for the post-2021 era. One can wonder whether these strategies will prove successful: internationally, these measures have not effectively enabled the Taliban government’s recognition (a precondition to the implementation of a series of policy works relying on foreign actors, such as China, Turkmenistan, and Turkey, among others), given the absence of elite inclusivity and international consensus. Domestically, numerous civil servants have fled abroad or gone into hiding due to the failure to deliver decent salaries and the absence of any real institutional protections, that were sought to withstand the autonomous power of local Taliban militia leaders. But foremost, one can suggest that an approach solely oriented towards feeding state capacities and infrastructural power without mitigating the main constraints on the state (i.e. elite disunity, over-centralization, the major dependence on foreign aid, the frustration of a young and educated female population) may sustain such a zero-sum elite game among the political, administrative, warlord, and feudal elite classes. But for lay Afghans, and especially civil servants, the press reporting on the post-Taliban takeover didn’t bode very well for the future of the country. [In] his first day, the Taliban-appointed mayor of Kunduz […] was on a charm offensive. […] Civil servants who could fix problems were hiding at

have been described by the press. See e.g., Christina Goldbaum and Najim Raim, “A Week Into Taliban Rule, One City’s Glimpse of What the Future May Hold”. The New York Times, 17 August 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/world/asia/afg hanistan-taliban-kunduz.html. See also “Ed¯ame-ye k¯ar-e shard¯ar-e k¯abul va sarparast-e vez¯arat-e sehat-e hokumat-e Pishin” [Resuming of the work of the municipality of Kabul and Interim minister of the Ministry of Health of the previous government], TOLO news, 16 August 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm0hWfThb6g. 87 Zia Rul-Rehman & Emily Schmall, The Taliban Have Staffing Issues. They Are Looking for Help in Pakistan. The New York Times, 13 January 2022. https://www.nyt imes.com/2022/01/13/world/taliban-members.html.

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home. […] So [he] summoned some to his office, to persuade them to return to work. […] Taliban fighters began going door to door, searching for absentee city workers. […] At the entrance to the regional hospital, a new notice appeared on the wall: Employees must return to work or face punishment […]. At the state-owned water and sewage corporation, he demanded that the water supply be turned back on. When a manager told him that power lines would first have to be repaired, he told the director of the electricity department to compel his employees to return.88

The late 2021–2022 era has indeed been marked by a clear isolation of the Taliban regime which, despite initial efforts at softening its image via a modernized official discourse, did not succeed in obtaining international recognition nor in broadening its national support base.89 The rollback of girls’ right to education, as well as of women’s access to professions, in legal and media sectors for instance, have become blatant symbols of the Taliban’s failure to uphold previous arrangements in the face of an Afghan society which hardly tolerates the loss of rights gained between 2001 and 2021. Upcoming years will allow us to better identify the locus of such failure, between shared political unwillingness, dissensions within the Taliban political leadership, and sheer administrative incapacity. But already, according to UN reports, the economic situation has been “disastrous” across the country. A chronic food crisis has been affecting almost half the population at the time of writing this conclusion.90 Additionally, the return to Kabul of Ayman al-Zawahiri under Taliban protection (though he was eventually killed by an American drone strike on July 31, 2022), seems indicative of the lack of capacity or willingness to root out Al-Qaeda’s presence, though promised while taking power. This has thus reinforced foreign actors’ resolve to sustain Afghanistan’s isolation. Especially as world powers’ economic and security interests do not incentivize them to recognize the Taliban. At the time of completing this chapter, even Pakistani and Chinese support remains meager. Though

88 Goldbaum & Raim, “A Week Into Taliban Rule, One City’s Glimpse of What the

Future May Hold”. 89 United Nations Report, “One Year in Review. Afghanistan since August 2021”, 5 October 2022. https://www.undp.org/afghanistan/publications/one-year-review-afghan istan-august-2021. 90 UNDP, “Ten Years of Afghan Economic Growth, reversed in just 12 months”, 5 October 2022. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129287.

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former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan (2018–2022) had congratulated Talibans for having broken the “shackles of slavery” on August 16, 2021, the return of the Taliban rapidly led to an upsurge of the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), organizing several attacks on Pakistani security forces in the neighboring province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.91 In late 2022, the Stimson Center sternly summarized the situation as follows: Almost fourteen months into resumed Taliban control of Afghanistan, the Taliban’s state-building, international commitments, and relations with regional powers remain fluid. A dire humanitarian crisis grips the country. And skepticism of and disagreement on the Taliban’s human rights and counterterrorism assurances to the world have emerged. With the threat of ISKP and other groups, the international community is closely watching the scope of the Taliban’s security operations and its ability to prevent regional instability.92

91 Georges Lefeuvre, “Afghanistan 2022, le coup de pied de l’âne des vaincus et l’impasse des vainqueurs”, [“Afghanistan 2022, the donkey’s kick of the defeated and the deadlock of the winners”], RIS—La revue internationale et stratégique 125, no. 1 (2022): 19–29. 92 Stimson Center [https://www.stimson.org/], “Afghanistan Under the Taliban and its Regional Impact”, 13 October 2022. https://www.stimson.org/event/trip-findingsafghanistan-under-the-taliban-and-its-regional-impact/.

CHAPTER 3

Iraq 2003–2007, Geopolitics of an Imperial Democratization René-Eric Dagorn

“We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality” —Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House (2001–2006), Director of the White House Iraq Group (2002–2004), and Principal Adviser to President George W. Bush.1

1 Süskind, R., “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush”, The New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/ faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html. In that press article, published before the November 2004 election, Karl Rove was not named directly. It’s in 2014, in the review Mother Jones, that journalist Ron Suskin revealed the name of K. Rove (see: Engelhart, Tom, “Karl Rove Unintentionally Predicted the Current Chaos in Iraq”, Mother Jones, 19 June 2014. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/us-karlrove-iraq-crisis/).

R.-E. Dagorn (B) Sciences Po, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_3

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Introduction: Debating American Imperialism in Iraq (2003–2007) Referring to the rapid and disorderly withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan on August 16, 2021, President Joseph Biden, visibly embarrassed, made the following statement from the White House: “Our mission (…) was never meant to be nation-building. We have never sought to create a unified and centralized democracy.”2 Yet, during the two decades preceding that statement, the official narrative of the US government and, more importantly, the plans designed and partly implemented in Afghanistan and Iraq painted a very different picture of the American ambitions. On Wednesday, November 21, the eve of Thanksgiving 2001, General Tommy Franks, the commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM), was working in his office at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida when he received the latest situation reports of the war in Afghanistan. The air intervention had begun on October 7, four weeks after the joint attacks of 9/11. CENTCOM launched nearly 80 missions a day—a remarkably high figure—, and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) teams had been infiltrating enemy lines since September 27. The support of the Northern Alliance (even if it was reluctant to fully enter the US sphere of influence in a clear manner) had proved particularly effective. The Taliban were losing the battle, and fast. But none of this was simple. The army’s special forces had taken much longer to deploy than the Central Intelligence Agency teams. They did not arrive in Afghanistan until October 19 to the General’s great irritation. The US military, according to Franks, was a huge machine, poorly adapted to new, asymmetric wars and the unfolding revolution in military affairs.3

2 Remarks by President Biden on Afghanistan, 16 August 2021. https://www.whiteh ouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-onafghanistan/. 3 Stories and analyses of George W. Bush, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Tommy R. Franks, Bob Woodward, Michael R. Gordon, and Bernard E. Trainor. Bush, George W., Decision Points, New York, Crown, 2010; Rumsfeld, Donald H., Known and Unknown: A Memoir, Sentinel, 2011; Franks, Tommy R., American Soldier, New York and Londres, Harper and Collins, 2004; Woodward, Bob, Plan of Attack, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2004; Gordon, Mickael R., Trainor, Bernard E. Cobra (general.), The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Irak, New York, Pantheon Books, 2006.

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On that same day, George W. Bush came out of a meeting with his advisers from the National Security Council. Seventy-two days after the terror attacks, the President had just been updated on the Afghanistan situation and things seemed overall to be unfolding positively and, clearly, to the American advantage. “I have to see you,” the president told his secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld. “What military plan do you have regarding Iraq. What do you think?”. “You have to get started”— said the President. “Ask Tommy Franks to study how to protect America, overthrowing Saddam Hussein if necessary.” A few minutes later, General Tommy Franks received the request of G. W. Bush and D. Rumsfeld, via Gregory S. Newbold—the director of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff—and Victor E. Renuart—director of operations of CENTCOM. “That’s it, says Newbold, I have a big problem to tell you. The Secretary of Defense will ask you to study in detail your plans for Iraq – and to provide him with a new personal estimate.” And “better get started right away,” added Renuart. When told about the requests from the highest level, General Tommy Franks’ reaction was explicit. “Goddamn. What (…) are they talking about?”, a witness vividly remembered.4 The General was upset and dismayed. They already had a war in Afghanistan on their hands, yet they were asking for detailed plans for an additional one, in Iraq. What could be the rationale behind President G.W. Bush’s early shift of attention toward Iraq?

Going to Iraq (2001–2002) Changing the Rationale of War and the Neoconservative Influence We propose the following definition of empire to make better sense of this specific period of US policy and Middle Eastern history. Imperial project/Empire: desire to spread by all the tools of power—and particularly by military force—the ideological core beliefs of the imperial entity.5 4 Bob Woodward’s quotes in this passage are taken from Chapter 1 of Plan of Attack, pp. 3–8 of the English edition. 5 Dagorn, René-Eric, Gabriel-Oyhamburu, Kattialyn (eds.), Géopolitique des Amériques, Paris, Nathan, 2008, p. 136–137. See also: Chaudet, Didier, Parmentier, Florent, Pelopidas, Benoit, When Empire Meets Nationalism, Ashgate, 2009: « The continuing actualization by a political community of the narrative of its historical calling; the abovementioned community embraces the difficulty of an indefinite expansion of its domination

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The rationale that led to the Bush Administration’s additional plans to invade Iraq while the war on Afghanistan had not yet been completed was the imperial project of transformation, liberation, and emancipation by force of the Arab side of the Middle East, via its Eastern flank, Iraq. Without the understanding of this geopolitical project of radical, politicalsocietal transformation, there is no possible understanding of the policy of the Bush Administration in Iraq and the Middle East, between 2001 and 2007, or the policy until February–May 2010 and the battle of Marjah, in Afghanistan, under the Obama administration that inherited this grand project. This imperial initiative, or neoconservative vision to be more accurate, has been prepared by high-level civil servants and neoconservative thinkers based on the construction of an American international image, a political identity and a discourse that value the idea of emancipation of the world by power; not simply by the higher morality of the “City upon the hill.” This should be a liberalization of the region through a transformational and military-led “nation-building” process that could only be spearheaded by the United States and its allies.6 American geopolitics were thus passing, from “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there”—(George W. Bush addressing the Congress, on September 20, 2001),7 following the 9/11 attacks, to “[o]ur mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there”— as articulated by neoconservative thinkers William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan, in March 2003, at the very start of the military invasion of Iraq.8 If this grand vision was unexpected—and often unwelcome—among the military elite of the country, this approach to world affairs and war was not new in the United States and among their allies. British writer Rudyard over an ever-increasing territory likened to the whole world, upon which it imposes peace and offers to join its project of transforming the world », p. 78. 6 Lindemann, Thomas, “Entre intérêt national et affirmation identitaire. Les guerres américaines de l’après-guerre froide”, in Thomas Lindemann, Penser la guerre. L’apport constructiviste, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2009, pp. 173–191. 7 Bush, George W., “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People”, The White House Archives, United States Capitol, Washington, DC, 20 September 2001. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/ 2001/09/20010920-8.html. 8 Kristol, William, and Kaplan, Lawrence, “Our Mission Begins in Baghdad but It Doesn’t End There”, in The War over Iraq: Saddam’s tyrany and America’s Mission, New York, Encounter Books, février 2003.

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Kipling had described, in 1899, during an American imperial moment in the Philippines, what he described as the “White Man’s Burden”9 : (…) Take up the White Man’s burden In patience to abide To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple An hundred times made plain To seek another’s profit And work another’s gain Take up the White Man’s burden— And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better The hate of those ye guard— (…).

A century later, America’s imperial mission resumed. Yet, it had shifted from the “White Man’s Burden” paradigm to, arguably, the “Free Man’s Burden.” How to Define the American Empire? In “Power and Weakness,” the neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan stated that on major strategic and international issues, Americans and Europeans hold radically different worldviews and geostrategic cultures. From the very first lines of this article, Kagan asserted that, for a United States that still lives in the Hobbesian world (not in the Europeans’ “posthistorical paradise”), “the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depends on the possession and use of military force.”10 9 Kipling, Rudyard, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine

Islands”, The Times (London), 4 February 1899. 10 Kagan, Robert, “Power and Weakness”, Policy Review 113 (June–July 2002): 3–28. https://www.hoover.org/research/power-and-weakness.

It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share the same worldview, or even live in the same world. Indeed, on the paramount question of power – is it effective, is it legitimate, is it desirable – the points of view are, from one side of the Atlantic to the other, radically different. Europe is renouncing power or, to put it another way, it is turning away from it in favour of a closed world of laws and rules, transnational negotiation and cooperation. It enters a post-historic paradise

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The link between “possession and use of force” and “the promotion of a liberal order” is one element of the possible definition of the American empire. The timing of Kagan’s article, June 2002, is essential to appreciate this article: it is a milestone of the “vertigo of power”11 that characterized the definition of the great narrative of the American imperial moment between October 7, 2001 (the beginning of air strikes and cruise missile launches on Afghanistan) and May 1, 2003 (G.W. Bush’s speech aboard the USS Abraham—back from the Persian Gulf and heading toward San Diego—under the banner “Mission Accomplished”). In early 2004, after the US military had been in Iraq for a year and the war against the Taliban and the nation-building operations in Afghanistan were being followed by major US and world media, David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi published American Power in the 21st Century (Polity Press). Their aim was to take stock of the international policy of the United States nearly one year after the outbreak of the war in Iraq, on March 19, 2003, one year after the February 2003 diplomatic confrontation and media clash at the UN between the pro-invasion US Secretary of State Colin Powell and the (de facto anti-war) French Foreign Minister

of peace and relative prosperity (…). For its part, the United States remains a prisoner of history, exerting its power in the anarchic world described by Hobbes, where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military force. That is why on major strategic and international issues, Americans come from Mars and Europeans come from Venus. (p. 3) Robert Kagan then repeats and extends, several times, this article that made him instantly famous. In 2003 the 25-page article became a 100-page book. Under the title of Of Paradise and Power. America and Europe in the New World Order. Knopf, 2003, Kagan claims that “the United States did not change on September 11, 2001. They just became even more themselves ” (p. 85). In a subsequent edition, in 2004, at a time when the situation was rapidly deteriorating in Iraq, Kagan added a long 50-page afterword: American Power and the Crisis of Legitimacy. Vintage Books Edition, pp. 105–158. 11 Droz-Vincent, Philippe, Dizziness of Power: The ‘American Moment’ in Iraq, Paris, La Découverte, 2007. NB: this book is one of the most important for the analysis of US policy in Iraq and the Middle East: see below.

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Dominique de Villepin over the position of the UN in the upcoming military intervention, and almost three years after the attacks of September 11, 2001.12 Strikingly, almost all of the chapters were devoted to the discussion of the existence and effectiveness of an “American empire” at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Nearly half of the book (300 pages) is explicitly devoted to an analysis of the Bush administration’s empire policy. The first chapters are entitled: “Introduction: Whither American Power?”, by David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi; “1Empire? The Bush Doctrine and the Lessons of History,” by Michael Cox; “2- The First Failed Empire of the Twenty-First Century,” by Michael Mann; “3- Liberal Hegemony or Empire? American Power in the Age of Unipolarity,” by G. John Ikenberry. And the book ends with Chapter10—“Waiting for Armageddon: the ‘Mother of all Empires’ and its Middle East Quagmire,” by Abdelwahab El-Affendi. Beyond this specific book, at the beginning of the American intervention in Iraq, the foreign policy of the United States was also widely discussed in academic communities in terms of “empire” and “imperial project,”13 though the White House would never officially acknowledge it, despite the explicit terminology of the President’s advisors and other neoconservative thinkers.

Acknowledging the Empire The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the implementation of a new national security strategy by the Bush administration in September 2002 resulted in the publication of a large volume of books, essays, and articles—on the theme of “the American empire.” Chalmers Johnson noted, for instance, in The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (2004), that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 “radically transformed the vision of some of our leaders who consider that now the American republic is actually a real empire, the new Rome, the greatest power in

12 Held, David and Koenig-Archibugi, Mathias (eds.), American Power in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA, Polity Press, 2004. 13 Without precision, the expression “the Bush administration” means the two terms of George W. Bush, 43th President of the United States of America.

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history – a power that is no longer bound by any treaty, no law, no coercion, nothing that prevents it from using all its military power.14 ” The neoconservative backers of the Bush administration have been largely—though not entirely—heading in that same direction. Max Boot affirmed, as early as October 15, 2001, that “Afghanistan and other collapsed states of the same type are calling for the same forms of change and modernization that the British United Kingdom extended over its empire.”15 Charles Krauthammer and Tom Donnely (of the Project for the New American Century), two of America’s most influential neoconservative intellectuals, believed it was time to take the American imperial project out of the margin where it is currently maintained. Presenting Max Boot’s pro-empire book, The Savage Wars of Peace, in Foreign Affairs in 2002, Thomas Donnely explained that American leaders should take the country’s “imperial past,” particularly the “pacification wars ” of 1898 in Cuba and the Philippines, but also the Indian Wars—which for Thomas Donnelly represent relevant examples of small wars—as guides to an imperial present. The title of the article is particularly revealing: “The Past as Prologue: An Imperial Manual.”16 As for the English historian Niall Ferguson, one of the most fervent defenders of the American imperial idea, he considered that “the United States is not only an empire, but that it has always been – and that it is now a question of accepting the responsibilities of this empire and bringing down the old order.17 ” It was Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s top political adviser since 1993 and until 2007, the Deputy Secretary of the White House between 2001 and 2006, who best summed up this claim of the omnipotence of the American empire. A few days before the November 2004 elections, when projections and other polls gave the President a large lead against his competitor John F. Kerry, Ron Süskind, one of the famous journalists and columnists of the New York Times published a very critical article on the

14 Johnson, Chalmers, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, New York, Metropolitan, 2004, p. 3. 15 Boot Max, “The Case for the American Empire”, Weekly Standard, 15 October 2001. 16 Donnelly, Thomas, “The Past as Prologue: An Imperial Manual”, Foreign Affairs, July–August 2002, pp. 165–170. 17 Fergusson, Niall, Colossus: the Price of American Empire, New York and London, Penguin Books, 2004, p. 2.

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Bush administration (it is in this article that is published the famous anecdote of President Bush confusing Sweden and Switzerland in a working meeting devoted to the constitution of the file of the intervention in Iraq at the UN). Süskind highlighted in this article how a senior adviser to the White House (later, it will be revealed that it was Karl Rove), took him to task following several of his articles whose analyses he had not liked. Rove then explained why Süskind was wrong: “The counsellor then tells me that guys like me ‘belonged to what they call the ‘reality-based community’. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious analyses of observable reality. I nodded and muttered something about the principles of Enlightenment philosophy and empiricism… [Karl Rove] cut me off: ‘This is no longer how the world works today. We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you study this reality, wisely, as you wish, we act again and we create other new realities, which you can study as well, and that is how things happen. We are the actors of history (…). And you, all of you, all you have to do is study what we are doing.”18

A New Imperial Discourse of Concrete Actions on the Ground---Not Just a Moral Discourse As already mentioned, the goal of this “liberal empire” is democratization by force. The texts of neoconservative theorists, such as William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan in The War over Iraq (2003), for example, or the texts of the American presidency and vice-presidency (such as the presentation by Dick Cheney of the Greater Middle East Project at the G8 meeting in Sea Island, in June 2004) showed this desire for regime change leading to democratization through military tools, in both Iraq

18 Süskind, Ron, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush”, The New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004. Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/ 17/magazine/17BUSH.html. See also note 1 of this introduction.

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and Afghanistan.19 ,20 ,21 This is what Philippe Droz-Vincent called “the ‘American moment’ in the Middle East.”22 ,23 This American moment is a great novelty, argued Philippe DrozVincent: “The change is radical compared to the previous forms of the American presence in the region.”24 It is a novelty on two levels: ideological, as it produces a new discourse of action and not just a moral or ethical discourse, and material, as it generates geopolitical spaces at all scales: from the United States Agency for International Development action to daily life in Baghdad, through a reassessment of external interventions, to produce this democratization by force.25 A few years later, Droz-Vincent went further and explained that: this “‘American moment’ in the Middle East crystallizes, alongside the Iraqi obsession, around a transformative logic of the region, aiming at its democratization. The novelty introduced by the Bush administration is real. [It] does not only represent the return to grace of classic features of American diplomacy (a certain democratizing idealism) (…). The G. W. Bush administration developed far more radical ideas to reformulate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East around democratization. Democratic values are newly positioned at the center of American foreign policy.”26

19 Kristol, William, and Kaplan, Lawrence, The War Over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission, New York, Encounter Books, 2003. 20 Ehrenberg, John, Mcsherry, J. Patrice, and Sanchez, Jose Ramon (eds.), The Iraq

Papers, Oxford, OUP, 2010. 21 Williams, Andrew, Liberalism and War: The Victors and the Vanquished, London, Routledge, 2006. 22 Droz-Vincent, Philippe, “The American Moment in the Middle East”, in Spirit, May 2005, pp. 150–163. 23 Droz-Vincent, Philippe, The Vertigo of Power: The “American Moment” in the Middle East, Paris, La Découverte, 2007. 24 Droz-Vincent, Philippe, “The American Moment in the Middle East”, 2005, Op. cit., p. 151. 25 United States Agency for International Development; USAID (AU.S. International Development Agency) is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for economic development and humanitarian assistance around the world. Founded on September 4, 1961 by the Foreign Assistance Act, it is under the supervision of the President, the State Department and the National Security Council. See “USAID History” on the Agency’s website. 26 Droz-Vincent, Philippe, 2007, Op. cit., pp. 145–146.

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This “American moment” also led to a real aid to economic development and democracy. A whole series of institutions of the American administrations were reorganized to address on the ground the new issues of society building and democratization post-September 11, 2001, and post-March 2003: • The USAID program Democracy and Governance; • The Office for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (State Department); • the Democracy Group of the Bureau for Near Eastern Affairs (under the Undersecretary for Political Affairs); • the Human Rights and Democracy Fund (Department of State); • the MEPI—Middle East Partnership Initiative (State Department) • linkages with the UN and more specifically with the Community of Democracy Initiative (relaunched in November 2002); and • THE MEFTA—Middle East Free Trade Agreement (a bilateral free trade program). All these initiatives, among others, aimed to encourage “the Arab States to open up and to promote the development of the middle classes that will eventually bring demand for democratization.”27 If we take as an example the USAID program from March 2003 to March 2004, $5 billion was funded for “post-conflict programs of access to electricity, water, access to toilets, local governance, health, education and food.” The USAID report published on March 18, 2004—exactly one year after the bombing began over Iraq—stated that “45 contracts have been signed and put in place with American companies and NGOs.”28 Of this budget of 5 billion, 3.2 billion were actually used in that first year. Beyond the reconstruction of infrastructure (electricity, water, roads, schools, etc.), the details of the distribution of funding are indicative of the focus on the middle classes and on the roles of youth and women in the logic of emancipation of societies. Repairing of 2351 Iraqi schools, printing of 8.7 million books for primary school, training of 32,000

27 Droz-Vincent, Philippe, 2007, Op. cit., p. 154. 28 USAID Report, “USAID Accomplishments in

Iraq, from March 2003 to March 2004”. Online at https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/usaid-accomplishments-iraqmar-2003-mar-2004.

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teachers… The March 2004 USAID report highlighted the percentage of women involved in these programs: “76% of direct beneficiaries are women. In one year, USAID helped set up 17 centers dedicated to the protection and action of groups focused on women’s rights.” We must also stress the novelty of this element. Beyond the usual moral, idealistic, and vague discourses—and the justification of USAID agencies that defend their actions—there was indeed “a positive reassessment of external factors in the [processes] of democratization.”29 We are in a constructivist perspective, in the geographical and geopolitical sense of the term: the way actors create space—and not simply on the perceptual level. The Bush administration’s “Forward Strategy of Freedom” (National Endowment for Democracy, November 2003) was presented not as a mere new element in an overall strategy, but as the strategy itself. It was no longer just a question of waiting for the transition to democracy.30 It was about “exporting democracy.”31 To the question “how do you become a democrat?”, the Bush administration responds: with a “new transformational diplomacy” as theorized and presented by Condoleezza Rice in 2003: “With the liberation of Iraq there is a very clear opportunity to set up an agenda of actions in the Middle East that will strengthen security in the region and in the world. We are already seeing elements of improvement between Israelis and Palestinians regarding their peace process.”32 To use the title of Condoleezza Rice’s text in the Washington Post of August 7, 2003, it was a matter of “transforming the Middle East,” where they had a military presence of 150,000 soldiers based

29 Droz-Vincent, Philippe, 2007, Op. cit., p. 147. 30 The White House (Archive), “Fact Sheet: President Bush Calls for a ‘Forward Strategy

of Freedom’ to Promote Democracy in the Middle East ”, 6 November 2003: “The Administration has pursued a policy of promoting freedom and human dignity in every part of the world. We pursue this policy both because it is right and because it also addresses the fear, hatred, and inequality that contributes to terrorism and violence.” Online at: https://geo rgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-11.html. 31 Hermet, Guy, The Transition to Democracy, Paris, Presses de Sciences-Po, 1996. 32 Rice, Condoleeza, “Transforming the Middle East”, The Washington Post, 7 août

2003. Online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/08/07/tra nsforming-the-middle-east/2a267aac-4136-45ad-972f-106ac91e5acd/.

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in Iraq alone, to realize the American imperial logic through military nation-building.33

From the Ideological “Imperial Project” (2001) to the “Imperial Moment” on the Ground in Iraq (2003) Was (Also) the Invasion of Iraq a War for Oil? To prove that there is a “liberal empire” in the sense in which we have just defined it—i.e., a desire for foreign emancipation and liberation through transformational and liberating force—presupposes first of all to demonstrate that there was indeed this will, that it is not an a posteriori reconstruction serving to simply ennoble—or hide—less laudable goals. Indeed, one of the explanations that has most often been put forward to explain the 2003 invasion of Iraq was that it actually served to directly secure (and no longer indirectly through allied regimes) the large oil fields of the Middle East and to indirectly stabilize the Petro-monarchies in the service of the United States.34 Oil production figures for the early 2000s seemed to point in that direction. The world production of oil was then, according to figures from the International Energy Agency, the IEA, 77 million barrels per day. This constituted almost all the (potential) production capacity for this period (81 million barrels in 2002),35 with Saudi Arabia producing in average 10 million barrels/day, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, only 2.6 million barrels/day before the American intervention (Fig. 3.1). US oil consumption in 2002 was 21 million barrels/day (27.2% of total world oil consumption), with then more than half of it coming from the

33 Rice, Condoleeza, “Transforming the Middle East”. 34 See on this point the analysis of Kepel, Gilles, Fitna: War at the heart of Islam, Paris,

Gallimard, Coll. “Folio”, 2007. 35 IEA Annual Report (2004). https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/energy/world-energyoutlook-2004_weo-2004-en.

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Global Production Capacity vs. Effective Global Oil Production 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 45

1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

In Million Barrels Per Day

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Production Capacitiy

Global Oil Production

Fig. 3.1 Global production capacity vs. effective global oil production (Source Authors, modified from Carnot, N., & Hagège, C. [2004]. Le marché pétrolier. Economie prevision, 166[5], 127–136. Retrieved from https://www.cairn.info/ revue-economie-et-prevision-1-2004-5-page-127.htm)

Middle East.36 It is understandable that such a substantial level of dependence may generate a desire to directly control the fields of production and secure the productive needs of the American economy. Proponents of this approach as the main explanation of war by resources have also resurrected the infamous scenario requested from the US Department of Defense (DoD) in 1975 by Henry Kissinger: Oil Field as military objectives: a Feasibility Study, Congress Report (August 21, 1975). In this 110-page war game, imagined after the 1973 oil shock, DoD experts pondered over a scenario of deploying 60,000 US troops to Saudi Arabia “37 for several weeks, months, or even years ” and “the need to bring in American civilian workers to replace the failing natives.” The precision of this 1975 report included the detailed number of men

36 Carnot, Nicolas, and Hagege, Caterine, “The Oil Market”, in Economics and Forecasting, 2004–5, No. 166, pp. 127–136. The graph is taken from page 133 of this article. Online at: http://www.cairn.info.fr or on https://www.tresor.economie.gouv.fr/ Ressources/Economie-et-Prevision. 37 Voir une analyse récente de cette simulation de conflit (“war game”) de 1975, dans Willner, Samuel E, “The 1975 Congressional Feasibility Study on ‘Oil Fields as Military Objectives’: U.S.–Saudi Arabian Relations and the Repercussions of the 1973 Oil Crisis”, dans The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2018, pp. 121–136.

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needed, the types of aircraft, the US Navy ships mobilized to control the transit of oil tankers, etc. This was strongly echoed in 2003 at the time of the intervention in Iraq. The first lines of the report seemed indeed to particularly resonate in 2003: “Successful operations would be assured only if this country could satisfy all aspects of a five-part mission:– Seize required oil installations intact.– Secure them for weeks, months, or years. – Restore wrecked assets rapidly. – Operate all installations without the owner’s assistance. – Guarantee safe overseas passage for supplies and petroleum products.”38 Why the Invasion: The Main Categories of Classical Explanations Are Insufficient in the Case of Iraq Five main categories of explanations were proposed to explain the US intervention in Iraq by Charles-Philippe David. In his book “Within the White House. From Truman to Obama, the (unpredictable) formulation of US foreign policy,” David presented the major theses to explain the 2003 war and the massive intervention of the United States in the heart of an unstable Middle East.39 The following long excerpt from the book is of key importance. Why the invasion of Iraq? This is a question that has been much written about. And the explanations are as numerous as, taken separately, questionable. They can be grouped into five categories: so-called rationalist (or utilitarian), liberal-pluralist, bureaucratic or organizational, perceptual theories, and (...) decision-making theories. 1. Rationalist theories evoke several explanatory factors: the need for the affirmation of American power, the element of deep continuity in the policy towards Saddam Hussein since the Clinton years, the need to put an end to the unfinished war of 1991, access to oil and its control, and finally a failure of ‘bargaining’ between American and Iraqi decision-makers, particularly over the credibility of their intentions.

38 The full text of the report (with scans of the maps and troop deployment charts) is online at the Mount Holyoke website. College, Springfield, Massachusetts. https://www. mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/Petroleum/fields.htm. 39 David, C. P., Within the White House: From Truman to Obama, the (Unpredictable) Formulation of US Foreign Policy. Presses de Sciences Po, 2015.

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2.

3.

4.

5.

These theories, in my opinion, neglect, however, the importance of the gap created by the September 11 attacks on decision-making. Pluralistic liberal theories point to the role and influence of particular groups, mainly political actors and ideologues, as the fundamental reason why the usual pluralism has ceased to function within the political system. ‘Freedom in Iraq’ would therefore be an imperialist war and is explained by special interests that have taken advantage of the internal organization of powers in the United States. Pressure groups, notably the pro-Israel lobby but also the neo-conservative lobby and that of Iraqi exiles, are considered to have been particularly effective in choosing the invasion of Iraq. In many ways, however, this approach seems suspicious to those who have meticulously studied it. Bureaucratic theories claim that the invasion of Iraq is a consequence of the bureaucratic actors and players who led decision-makers to adopt this decision. As will be seen below, this thesis is partly inapplicable in the case of Iraq, because among the surprises, the influence was exerted from the top down, and not the other way around. It was the decisionmakers who convinced the organizations of the merits of the invasion despite their many reluctances. Perceptual theories believe that this decision was first taken in the minds of decision-makers, by the fear generated after September 11, by the desire to strike a blow, by Bush’s desire to complete the work of his father in 1991, by the (false) convictions that the risks posed by Iraq and on the promising prospects following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This theory thus includes analyses of the (numerous) misperceptions of decision-makers, of the need and correctness of intervening in Iraq, and of the analogies used to convince oneself of this construction and to persuade (or even instrumentalize) the American audience at the same time. In this vein, as we will see, the cognitive aspects of decision-making have certainly been striking. Finally, decision-making theories scrutinize all the mechanisms by which the choice of invasion was conceived and stopped. This analysis studies both cognitive and bureaucratic dimensions to offer the most accurate portrayal of what happened in decision-making. With this in mind, several explanations are offered. We thus find the particular role played by Bush and his motivations, the clashes between decisionmaking factions (realistic versus neo-cons), the design and implementation of a change plan brought and implemented by decision-making entrepreneurs, the complete bankruptcy of the mode of management of information and options (especially by the NSA), finally the predominance of a highly toxic group thinking. Our case study on Iraq … uses

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[these] decision-making theories … to try to offer the most complete and convincing interpretation.40

What “grand geopolitical narrative” ultimately structures the idea of creating a space for democratization by force? In Imperial Designs. Neoconservatism and the new Pax Americana, published at the very beginning of 2004, Gary Dorien, a specialist of the neoconservative movement, summarized this grand geopolitical narrative: In the very last months of the Cold War, just before the Soviet Union finally disintegrated, a group of neoconservative policymakers and intellectuals began to assert that the time had come to create a World Order dominated by the United States. Some of them called this idea ‘the unipolarist imperative’. Instead of cutting military spending, they argued that, on the contrary, US military power should extend to all regions of the world. It was a question of using the immense military and economic power of the United States to create a new Pax Americana (...). This ideology of the global predominance of the United States was first born under the presidency of George H. Bush, developed, and gained power from the election of [his son] George W. Bush and ended up structuring the foreign policy of the United States after September 11, 2001.41

By announcing the “end of the great stories ” in his book The Postmodern Condition. Jean-François Lyotard (1979), paradoxically, revives the reflection and legitimacy of the structuring importance of “great narratives” in the constitution of societies: “by simplifying to the extreme one considers as ‘postmodern’ disbelief with regard to metanarratives ( …): where can legitimacy reside, after metanarratives?”.42

40 Charles-Philippe, David, Within the White House: From Truman to Obama, the (Unpredictable) Formulation of US Foreign Policy, Press of SciencesPo, third edition fully revised, 2015, pp. 881–885. I do not repeat in this passage the many notes that refer each time to the books, authors, articles, etc., which give the sources of the five main categories of explanations put forward by Charles-Philippe David. It is I who number—for ease of reading—the five great explanatory theories of Ch-Ph. David. They are not numbered in the passage of the book. 41 Dorien, Gary, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana, New York, Routledge, 2004, p. 1. 42 Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: Rapport sur le savoir, Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1979, p. 7.

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A grand narrative is not a “concept.” A great narrative is a “history” (let us insist, a “history” in the sense of “a story that is told,” a “story”), a narrative that gives meaning to the world such as the narrative of scientific progress, the gradual extension of universal democracy, the process of civilization of morals (in the sense of Norbert Elias), the diffusion of Reason in social mechanisms (in the sense of Immanuel Kant and Jürgen Habermas). These stories give meaning to the world, but also legitimize knowledge and action. We find the same importance of great narratives in visions of the Middle East as produced by the Bush administration. As Karoline PostelVinay (2005) analyzed: The power of the United States is not measured only in strictly economic or military terms. It is also reflected in the ability of this country, at a given historical moment, to formulate a vision of the world and then impose it on the rest of the planet.43

The bush administration’s wording here is particularly radical. If the world lived, before 9/11, at the time of economic and political globalization, the attacks on New York and Washington had supposedly totally changed the situation. The great narrative of the “global war on terror” was launched on September 16, 2001, by the President during a discussion with the press,44 and was further developed in a speech to Congress on September 20. Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. (Applause)45

As highlighted by Richard Clarke—National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counterterrorism in the National Security Council from 1998 to 2003, and a critic of the Bush administration’s War 43 Postel-Vinay, Karoline, The West and Its Good Word, Paris, Flammarion, p. 15. 44 The White House (transcripts), “Remarks by the President Upon Arrival”,

16 septembre 2001. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/ 09/20010916-2.html. 45 The White House (transcripts), “Address to a Joint Session for Congress and the American People”. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/ 09/20010920-8.html.

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on Terror, as mentioned earlier—, this new reading of the world must now have the same explanatory and normative status as the great Cold War narrative: “Cold War America saw all foreign policy issues through the prism of conflicts between the two superpowers, just as we see the world today through the war on terror.”46 Finally, we note the particularly important formulation of G. W. Bush in his speech of September 20: the war begins against al-Qaeda, “but it does not stop there.” This idea that the American mission “does not stop there” is going to be particularly important in the formulation of the great narrative of the liberation of the Middle East world by the empire. It will be taken up, multiplied, and multiplied again, in Iraq: “Our mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there” write in a symbolic echo, two of the main neoconservative intellectuals, in March 2003, at the very moment when the war of liberation in Iraq begins.47 Firdos Square, Baghdad, April 9, 2003: The “Benevolent Empire” on the Ground The scene of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets, riding American tanks, tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad are breathtaking. Watching them, one cannot help but think of the fall of Berlin Wall and of the collapse of the Iron Curtain. We have seen History unfold events that will shape the course of the country, the fate of the people, and potentially the future of the region. Donald Rumsfeld, Press Conference from the Pentagon.48

Just a few minutes after the live broadcast on the main American news channels and Aljazeera of the fall of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square, in the southern districts of Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld, 46 Clarke, Richard, Against all Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2004; tr. fr Against All Enemies: At the Heart of the US War on Terror, Paris, Albin Michel, 2004. 47 Kaplan, Lawrence, and Kristol, William, The War Over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission, New York, Encounter Books, février 2003. 48 Source U.S. Department of State Archives—RUMSFELD Donald (Secretary of Defense), MYERS Richard (Chairman—Joint Chiefs of Staff), Pentagon Briefing, April 9, 2003. http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2003/04/200304100723 34nosnhojb0.1897852.html#axzz4XKcnnAiM.

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the Secretary of State for Defense and one of the main advocates of the American invasion of Iraq, summarized in the above-mentioned sentences the general logic of the intervention and the historical relationship that served as its basis. Three expressions are particularly interesting in his speech: “a liberated Iraqi population,” “mounted on American tanks,” and “One cannot help but think of the fall of the Berlin Wall.” They form the vertices of a triangle of meanings: • American military power projected abroad… • … allows today to liberate Iraq and democratize the country (and soon the Middle East region) by force… • … as it had already allowed during the Cold War (in the logic of interpretation of Rumsfeld, it was the power policy of the United States—the Cold War—that had made it possible to bring down the USSR). In this speech, the approach to the notion of an American “empire” in the Middle East appears again. Not “empire” in the sense of the historical entities of the past, but “empire” as the ability to build a new type of political space—absolutely and radically new—“an Empire for Liberty.”49 The empire is certainly linked to a “geography of domination,” but it is not limited to this domination: domination aims at emancipation—that is, the transposition of the structuring ideological principles of the US imperial center to the dominated (and therefore, henceforth, liberated) peripheries. “50 What is an empire, indeed, if not the need to imprint our values, our civilization and its achievements in the souls, bodies and institutions of another people?”51 In a document presenting the foreign policy of the United States for the year 2003—The National Security Strategy of the USA Report, published in September 2002—we can read on page 4: “The United States 49 On the analysis of the notion of “empire for liberty”, an expression used since Thomas Jefferson: Meachan, Jon, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Random House, 2013; Reynolds, David, America, Empire of Liberty: A New History, Penguin Books, 2010; and especially Immerman, Richard, Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz, Princeton Universty Press, 2012. 50 Harvey, David, The New Imperialism, Oxford Univeristy Press, 2005. 51 Ignatieff, Michael, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kossovo and Afghanistan,

Vintage, 2003, p. 32 (fr).

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will take advantage of this moment to spread the benefits of freedom. We will actively work to install hope for democracy, economic development, free market and free trade around the world.”52 Published exactly one year after the attacks of September 11, 2001, amid the public debate on the conditions for the intervention in Iraq against Saddam Hussein, at the very moment when Tony Blair presented the “indisputable evidence” of these weapons to the British Parliament, the Strategic Security Report was not one document among others. It was one of the elements where the strategic reflection on the implementation of an imperial project of democratization by force of the Middle East appears. All these claims fell under a “hat” that bars the entire page 21 of this report: a quote from George W. Bush from March 2002 (in a speech to the Inter-American Development Bank) that affirmed the link between the current situation and the Second World War: “During the Second World War, we fought to make the world a safer place, then we worked to rebuild it. Today, as we prepare to launch a new war to fight terror, we must work to make the world a better place for all these citizens.”53 The National Security Strategy Report constantly reaffirms, in its 32 pages, the conceptual triangle of the imperial project in Iraq: (a) the use of US military force, (b) is necessary to unblock closed societies and create open societies and democracy, (c) as it has already done in the past— during the Second World War, of the Cold War, etc. On April 9, 2003, Lieutenant Colonel Bryan McCoy, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 4th Marine Corps, woke up at a military base taken from the Iraqi army a few kilometers southeast of Baghdad. It has been 20 days since the invasion of Iraq began—on March 20, 2003—and the capture of Baghdad is very close. “There is little resistance. For now

52 Pentagon, The National Security Strategy of the USA Report, September 2002, p. 4. We can read a very good analysis of this geopolitical theme in Guenard, Florent, Universal Democracy, Paris, Seuil, p. 30. The whole of Chapter 1 of this book, “The Promotion of Democracy”, pp. 25–73 is devoted to the analysis of “Democratization Studies ”. 53 Pentagon, Op. Cit., 2002, p. 21.

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it’s cake,”54 he told Peter Maas, a New York Times Magazine reporter who followed the 3rd Battalion from Kuwait. A few kilometers away, along the Diyala Canal, in the agricultural outskirts South of Baghdad, Colonel Hummer, who heads marine Regimental Combat Team 7, mapped the advance in Baghdad in 27 sectors. One of the major elements on this map was the central area of the city: the four zones of the districts of ministries and embassies—the future “Green Zone” heart of the American and Western settlement in Baghdad. But, other goals were also indicated on this map by colored bugs. A white bug reported the Palestine Hotel, the place which had gathered most of the journalists who followed the operations in Iraq. For Colonel Hummer, the plan to enter Baghdad did not pose any particular problem. It was the “Three-Four” commissioned by Bryan McCoy that will go up from the southeast to the central districts. Hotel Palestine was on the way, but not a strategic goal. Yet it was an important point in the perception of war by the American society—as the general public followed the operations live on news channels, CNN and Fox News, in particular. McCoy, who wrote a monograph on wartime command—The Passion of Command,55 knew that the journalists were present in the Palestine Hotel—which is on the edge of the city center—and that Saddam Hussein’s troops were either invisible or had abandoned the center. Photographer Laurent Van der Stockt, who worked with Peter Maas in McCoy’s battalion, said one of the journalists who were in the Palestine Hotel, Remy Ourdan, from Le Monde, said that the city was empty, with no one in front of the journalists. At 4:30 p.m., as the M-88 rumbled into Firdos not far behind the lead tank, Leon Lambert [a 35-year-old gunnery sergeant] noticed the statue of Saddam. Installed a year earlier to celebrate the leader’s 65th birthday, it was

54 The story of the capture of Baghdad comes from: MAAS Peter, “The Toppling: How the Media Inflated a Minor Moment in a Long War”, The New Yorker—ProPublica, January 2011: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/10/the-toppling. See also on the website of ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-top pling-saddam-statue-firdos-square-baghdad. Another very accurate account of 3’s journeye Battalion of the 4the Marine Corps is located in Koopman, John, McCoy’s Marines: Darkside to Baghdad, Zenith Press, 2005. 55 Mccoy Bryan, The Passion of Command: The Moral Imperative of Leadership, Marine Corp Bookstore, 2006.

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the sort of totem that American troops had been destroying across Iraq. On the first day of the invasion, I had watched in the Iraqi border town of Safwan as a Humvee dragged down a billboard of Saddam. Erasing the symbols of regime power is what conquering armies have done for millennia.56

When the Marines settled for, a priori, only a few minutes in the Square Firdos, a small group of about fifty Iraqis also arrived. One of them, Kadom Al-Jabouri, asked the Marines to lend him a sledgehammer, and began hitting the base of the statue of Saddam Hussein in the center of the roundabout.57 After hesitating, McCoy gave permission to help the Iraqis tear down the statue, in front of the largest gathering of Western journalists installed at the Palestine Hotel. It was 5:15 p.m. and the geopolitical sense of the images of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s statue exploded. Peter Maas wrote: “The powerful pictures from Firdos were combined with powerful words. On CNN, the anchor Bill Hemmer said, “You think about seminal moments in a nation’s history ... indelible moments like the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that’s what we’re seeing right now.” Wolf Blitzer described the toppling as “the image that sums up the day and, in many ways, the war itself.” On Fox, the anchor Brit Hume said, “This transcends anything I’ve ever seen. ... This speaks volumes, and with power that no words can really match.” One of his colleagues said, “The important story of the day is this historic shot you are looking at, a noose around the neck of Saddam, put there by the people of Baghdad.”58

The power of images comes from their geopolitical sense. The great geopolitical narrative that stood out then, in the media around the world, is that of the liberation and emancipation of Iraqis by the power of the American empire. Yet at the same time, realities across Baghdad and more generally across Iraq were very different. It was the beginning of the collapse of society and the start of the first acts of a civil war in the making. 56 Maas, Peter, The New Yorker, 2011, Op. Cit. 57 The Guardian, 2013, March 9, “Saddam’s

Statue: The Bitter Regrets of Iraq’s Sledgehammer Man”: “Kadom al-Jabouri Became Famous When He Took His Hammer to the Dictator’s Statue. Now He Wishes He Had Never Done It”; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/09/saddam-hussein-statue-kadomal-jabourir-sledgehammer. 58 Maas, Peter, The New Yorker, 2011, Op. Cit.

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The Failure of the Imperial Moment in Iraq: Social Collapse (2003), the Battle of Fallujah (2004), and the Final Surge as the End of the American Moment (2007) 2003–2004: Social, Economic, and Political Collapse in Occupied Iraq The US army was particularly protecting the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad in the first days of the April–May 2003 intervention: oil was not the central objective of the intervention as we have already shown, but oil had nevertheless to be used to finance the reconstruction of a free and democratic Iraq. A new Iraq that will of course rely on American companies to rebuild itself. In the same vein, the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance—Coalition Provisional Authority (ORHA– CPA) believed that Iraqi employees would logically return to work once the military operations were over; that the ministries would resume their operations, naturally and on their own. It was this blind spot—the 2003 big politics without precise policy—that meant the fundamental difference between the desire to build democratic reality on the ground, and the immediate collapse of Iraq’s economy and society in a full-scale civil war. In a few days, the American provisional administrations (first that of Jay Garner—April 21/May 12—than that of Paul Bremmer—May 12, 2003/June 28, 2004) were quickly overwhelmed by the dysfunctions of civilian structures. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran explained, US forces and US and Western policymakers were like a deer in the headlights.59 “There is no current. Nothing works anymore,” reported Faez Ghani Aziz, a senior official who oversaw Baghdad’s power supplies in June 2003. “If the Americans had funded us, we would have been able to rebuild Iraq. The situation would not have been perfect, of course. But we would have done as in 1988 and as in 1991,” argued Falah Khawaja, Iraq’s Minister of oil, in 2003 and 2004. “But the U.S. didn’t trust the Iraqis to rebuild their oil industry. They preferred to rely on the Army Corps of Engineers, and on the contractors of Kellogg Brown& Root (KBR). For the first three months, from April to June 2003, the Iraqi Oil Ministry did not even have

59 Chandrasekaran, Rajiv, Op. cit.

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a budget. Each expense had to be validated by an American official,60 ” reported Greg Muttitt, in 2011. KBR’s target of a return to 3.1 million barrels per day quickly became unattainable and the reconstruction of the oil industry took a back seat as the security situation deteriorated. The so-called “de-baathification” policy promulgated by Paul Bremer and the ACP on May 16, 2003 further aggravated the de-structuring of the country’s institutions and fabric.61 A series of figures summarized this difference between the reconstruction discourse and actual realities: in April 2003 a budget of $1.2 billion was earmarked for the emergency reconstruction of oil installations. But former Rear Admiral David R. Oliver (then head of the Management and Budget for the Coalition Forces) reduced that budget to $800 million, then simply cut it. In April 2004, $200 million was finally included in the current year’s budget. Fred Kaplan, the journalist who had long been following the geopolitics of the United States, described the process of tipping into civil war, in an article that was taking stock of the situation in Iraq 10 years after the beginning of the invasion: “In the vacuum emerged the insurgency, which was never a unified rebellion [against US Forces] but rather a multiplicity of groups, harboring a multiplicity of resentments and ambitions, some of them against the interim government, some against the American occupiers, some against one another. The fighting intensified and widened, the American commanders (at least for the occupation’s first three years) had little idea what to do about it—and so it degenerated into civil war. The main parties in this bourgeoning civil war were Sunni and Shiite Arabs. Each faction had allies in neighboring states. [ Finaly] the internal clashes between Sunni and Shiite came to dominate local, [national] – then regional – politics ”. Two maps illustrate well the situation in Iraq at that time. The first one below, partly based on a map published by the New York Times on

60 Muttitt, Greg, Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Irak, The New Press, 2011, pp. 68–69. 61 Coalition Provisional Authority, Order Number 1: De-Ba’athification of Iraqi Society, CPA/ORD/16 May 2003/01. Online: http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/200 30516_CPAORD_1_De-Ba_athification_of_Iraqi_Society_.pdf.

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Fig. 3.2 Attacks recorded in Iraq during a month of civil war, in 2004 (Author Hamed Mohammed)

September 28, 2004 and titled “30 days, 2,368 attacks,”62 shows the national collapse in what journalists and international observers like Fred Kaplan called the “burgeoning civil war.” It also shows the end of the US imperial project in Iraq—at least in its original form. The second map illustrates the situation in Baghdad and shows the drastic reduction in diversity in the Iraqi capital between 2002 and 2006 (Figs. 3.2 and 3.3).

62 The New York Times, “30 Days, 2,368 Attacks”, September 28, 2004. https:// archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2004/09/28/international/29A TTACK-GRAPH.html.

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Fig. 3.3 Fading religious mix and the Sunni-Shia divide in Baghdad (Authors René-Eric Dagorn, Légendes cartographie; Editions Nathan)

The Battle for Fallujah (2004): Regaining Control by Stabilizing the “Sunni Triangle” In September 2004, the situation had become clear: the first phase of the American intervention achieved some of the military objectives— to bring down Saddam Hussein’s power, to be present militarily from part of Iraq—but it did not achieve the essential, the political objectives. The intervention had not created a process and dynamics that had led to the liberalization and democratic stabilization of the country. Would everything be over for Iraq? Seen from the United States, by the Bush administration and neoconservatives, it was still possible to take the situation in hand and revive the imperial project of democratization—to succeed in the imperial moment in Iraq. For this, it was first necessary to stabilize a particularly strategic place in the ongoing civil war: what American strategists called “the Sunni triangle.”

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The “Sunni triangle,” as was thought in American geostrategy (see e.g., the CIA Factbook of 2003),63 was a space of about 5000 km2 forming a triangle between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, west and northwest of Baghdad. The triangle linked, approximately, Baghdad to the southeast, Al-Ramadi to the west, and Tikrit to the north. It was one of the most densely populated regions of Iraq, with about 8 million inhabitants, or about a quarter of the total population of Iraq, 32 million inhabitants in 2003. Above all, the city of Fallujah, in the heart of this triangle, was one of the main strongholds of Saddam Hussein’s former army. It did not disappear by the simple incantatory magic of the announcement of the army’s dissolution in May 2003. It became underground, regrouped in some of its strongholds (Baghdad, Fallujah, and the so-called “Sunni triangle” in general). Importantly, all adapted its ideology. Now, it was the idea of a Sunni resistance that served as the backbone of this former army. Seen by the identity-based system of thought, dominant in Iraq, this resistance of the Sunni Arab Iraqis (about 20% of the population, or 6–7 million Iraqis) is both directed against the Shiites (mainly present in the southern half of Iraq and represents 60% of the population, 18–20 million in 2003) and against some of the Kurds (10% of the population, 3 million in 2003, mainly present in the northern third of the country). This “resistance,” organized by Saddam Hussein’s former officers, was also directed against the US occupation army. Seen from Washington, it was this former underground army that has become a resistance based on a religious ideology, which constituted the blocking point in Iraq. The Shiites, the majority in the country, by then controlled large segments of the government bodies. The Kurds had strengthened since the invasion a de facto independence in northern Iraq. By weakening the “Sunni resistance,” it would still be possible to revive the process of transformation and liberalization of Iraq. It was this vision that led to the Battle of Fallujah in November and December 2004. The aim was to target and weaken the Sunni guerrilla—and above all to separate this guerrilla from the Sunni civilian population. During the months of June and July 2004, the post-2003 Iraqi authorities had asked civilians to leave the city. The transfer of power had just taken place between Paul Bremer’s APC (April 21, 2003–June 28, 2004) and 63 CIA Factbook, 2003: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/about/cover-gal lery/2003-cover/.

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the Iraqi Interim Government (in place from June 28, 2004 to May 3, 2005, then replaced, after the elections of January 30, 2005, by the Iraqi Transitional Government formed in May 2005). Bombing began in August 2004, targeting guerrilla groups and Sunni resistance leaders, particularly the Jordanian jihadist Abu Musaab alZarqawi, leader of the al-Qaeda group in Iraq.64 10,000–12,000 soldiers of the US army, helped by 2000 men of the new Iraqi army, fought for two months with the 3000–4000 men of the Sunni guerrilla. The main offensive, mainly neighborhood-by-neighborhood control of the city, was launched at the beginning of November 2004. The control of the bridges over the Euphrates started on November 7 and 8, with gradual seizure of the neighborhoods of Fallujah that took place between November 9 and the beginning of December.65 The human toll was relatively moderate for the United States (95 dead in the US army, 8 in the Iraqi army, 4 in the British army for 2500 dead in the guerrillas, but with an estimated 5000 civilians killed). The civilian toll and material damage were enormous—the city was largely in ruins. The PBS American public television channel used in its reporting the following headline: “In Fallujah, al-Qaeda is gone – but so is everything else.”66 Above all, the Iraqi society became totally divorced from the ideology of a benevolent liberating power. The accusations of white phosphorus bombing, made by the Washington Post in November 2004, were largely confirmed on the ground,67 and reported the world over. So, was the 2004 battle of Fallujah a “victory”? The answer could only be no. It amounted at best to a temporary, tactical gain, but not to a strategic victory. Not only were the political conditions of the imperial moment not improved, but they rapidly became markedly degraded. It was no coincidence that Fallujah

64 Abbou Moussab al-Zarqawi (1966–2006) was not killed until two years later, the June 7, 2006 during an American raid on Bakuba, 50 km north of Baghdad. 65 Ricks, Thomas, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003–2005, NY

and London, Penguin, 2007. See in particular pages 350 et seq. 66 PBS, “In Fallujah, al-Qaïda Is Gone—but so Is Everything Else”, October 7, 2016. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/fallujah-isis-gone-everything-else. 67 Spinner Jackie, “U.S. Forces Battle Into Heart of Fallujah”, The Washington Post, 10 novembre 2004. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/11/10/us-for ces-battle-into-heart-of-fallujah/9a7515e2-48fb-4e10-b025-36c56223959e/.

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will be, after 2011, one of the most important points of support in Iraq for terrorist group ISIS, amidst rapidly increasing sectarian tensions and military escalation. “The Surge” (2007): The End of the American Imperial Moment in Iraq From the political failure of the Battle of Fallujah, the Bush administration and neoconservative strategists came to realize that the “imperial moment” was lost. It was then a matter of gradually leaving Iraq. In a televised speech on January 10, 2007, President G. W. Bush announced a new strategy in Iraq: “America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels.” He added during the State of the Union address on January 21, 2007: In order to make progress toward this goal, the Iraqi government must stop the sectarian violence in its capital. But the Iraqis are not yet ready to do this on their own. So we’re deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq. The vast majority will go to Baghdad, where they will help Iraqi forces to clear and secure neighborhoods, and serve as advisers embedded in Iraqi Army units. With Iraqis in the lead, our forces will help secure the city by chasing down the terrorists, insurgents, and the roaming death squads. And in Anbar Province, where al Qaeda terrorists have gathered and local forces have begun showing a willingness to fight them, we’re sending an additional 4,000 United States Marines, with orders to find the terrorists and clear them out. (Applause.) We didn’t drive al Qaeda out of their safe haven in Afghanistan only to let them set up a new safe haven in a free Iraq.68

Concretely, it was a matter of relying on a new American military leader, General David Petraeus, and on certain units of the Iraqi police and army, of Sunni obedience, as part of the desired Sahwa (or “awakening,” in Arabic) of the Arab Iraqi Sunnis. These armed forces, sometimes numerous—the Sahwa numbered between 70,000 and 90,000 men—were joining US operations to control the Sunni triangle and in 68 George W. Bush, State of the Union address on January 23, 2007. https://george wbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/stateoftheunion/2007/.

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the Diyala province (East of Baghdad), in order to secure the capital city and its greater region more durably. US troops were also increasing, but in a rather limited way (from 13,000 in May 2006, to a maximum of 17,000 men in May–June 2007). It should be noted that the troops of the Western coalition in Iraq were simultaneously declining, due to a general war fatigue among all of Washington’s allies. They went from 20,000 men in May 2006 to 12,000 in May–June 2007. David Petraeus’ deputy principal, Colonel Peter Mansoor, summarized the change in “surge” strategy as follows. What matters is not the military technology being used. “What counts on the long duration of a military operation is, every day, the routine way of behaving at the checkpoints; and politically understanding the tribal system. Daily meetings with tribal organizations and clan powers in urban neighborhoods, integration of Sunni minorities into the police force, reversal of alliances to cut off al-Qaeda from Sunni support … these are the important changes in Iraq between 2007 and 2010.69 ” As the seasoned observer Peter Mansoor concluded: “Understanding the society in which military intervention takes place is a decisive key to the evolution of military affairs.”70 But it would eventually be widely recognized too late. Peter Beinart in “The Surge Fallacy” (The Atlantic, September 2015), showed that the “surge” certainly worked, militarily, but only because the Sunni leaders in Iraq understood that, being a minority against the Iraqi Shiite majority, the American army could be an instrument allowing them to keep some political control: Under the leadership of General David Petraeus, U.S. troops began focusing less on killing insurgents and more on protecting Iraqi civilians, in hopes of reducing the insecurity that allowed the insurgency to thrive. American troops, working alongside Iraqi ones, went to live among the Iraqi people. Fortuitously, these changes coincided with a shift among some Sunni leaders. By 2007, many had grown alienated by the harsh fanaticism of the al-Qaeda jihadists who had taken up residence in their midst. More important, some Sunni leaders realized that they could not defeat the more numerous Shia.

69 Mansoor, Peter, Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Irak War, Yale, YUP, 2013. 70 Mansoor, Peter, “The Softer Side of Would”, in Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2011.

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Driven out of large sections of Baghdad, they came to see American troops as the only force capable of saving them. In a daring about-face, Petraeus’s forces began paying the very Sunnis who had once fought Americans to fight al-Qaeda instead. That August, seeing a drop in Sunni attacks, the Shia militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr agreed to a cease-fire. The decline in violence was astonishing: In 2007, the war took the lives of 26,000 Iraqi civilians. In 2008, that number fell to just over 10,000. By 2009, it was down to about 5,000 (…) But [this] forget something crucial. The surge was not intended merely to reduce violence. Reducing violence was a means to a larger goal: political reconciliation. Only when Iraq’s Sunni and Shia Arabs and its Kurds all felt represented by the government would the country be safe from civil war. As a senior administration official told journalists the day Bush announced the surge, “The purpose of all this is to get the violence in Baghdad down, get control of the situation and the sectarian violence, because now, without it, the reconciliation that everybody knows in the long term is the key to getting security in the country—the reconciliation will not happen. (…) [A]lthough the violence went down, the reconciliation never occurred.”71

Conclusion: On the “Impotence of Power” or Powerlessness of Power in the Middle East72 The American imperial intervention in Iraq between 2003 and 2007 illustrated key principles of contemporary geopolitics. 1. The multiplication of actors, state actors and even more so, nonstate actors, was visible at all levels and stages of the conflict. From the onset, there has been a multiplication of key state actors (The United States and the United Kingdom supporting the war; France, Germany, and Russia against it), of international organizations (the UN through the Security Council and specialized organizations, such as the UNHCR), terrorist groups (e.g., al-Qaeda in Iraq, Shiite militias, ISIS), the importance of key individuals (from Saddam Hussein to the Ayatollah Sistani, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), and of 71 Beinart, Peter, “The Surge Fallacy”, The Atlantic, September 2015, pp. 13–15 (quote from p. 14). 72 Badie, B., Rethinking International Relations, Elgar Publishing, 2020, p. 9. www.elgaronline.com/view/9781789904741/9781789904741.xml.

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infra- and supra-state actors (such as Kurdish local governments, and the religious leadership of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, inter alia). 2. Small actors can instrumentalize powerful symbols, like terrorist networks did very efficiently, were able to act very effectively in the geopolitical space despite their very limited demographic weight. 3. New actors—and the new geopolitical spaces created by these new actors, such as the “Sunni triangle” or the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria”—have been added to older spaces (e.g., Iraq as a nationstate), but have not erased them. 4. All the tensions could be interpreted both as an uncontrollable increase in disorder and/or chaos, but also as the possibility of an open situation capable of leading to a new, rejuvenated Iraqi political scene. 5. Arguably, it was yet another such principles, “the powerlessness of power,” that was most visible in the Iraq war from 2003 to 2007. The rise of new players is taking place in parallel with the decline in influence of the “big” traditional players. “The powerlessness of power,” the title of Bertrand Badie’s (2020) essay, has become one of the most important ways to understand contemporary international relations and geopolitics. This is not to say that power is gone or irrelevant. This means that power is no longer capable of achieving the political objectives assigned to it. The conflicts in Afghanistan (since 2001), Iraq (since 2003), and Libya (since 2011) have shown that the power imbalance—the annual budget of the US military was $ 700 billion, while the “budget” of the Taliban long oscillated between $5 and 6 billion—no longer turns into a definitive victory for the most endowed actors. In Afghanistan, after nearly 20 years of war whose objective was to destroy al-Qaeda and drive the Talibans from power, after 1200 billion in direct military costs, the death of 60,000 Afghan civilians and 60,000 Afghan soldiers and police, that of 2300 American soldiers and more than 1000 dead in Western armies, Donald Trump’s administration has negotiated the return to power of the Taliban. And we found this same impotence of power in Iraq, where pro-Iranian Shiite parties have been contributing to a government partly financed by the US budget. Conceived by the Neoconservatives and first carried out by the Bush administration, the “imperial project” of democratization by force, as we

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analyzed it, did not turn into an imperial reality on the ground. In today’s world, marked by new modes of operation, post-colonial ideas of nationalism and independence in the Global South, new sectarian identities, and new modes of expression, it is no longer possible to transform a society by force. In the face of foreign power, in Afghanistan as in Iraq or Yemen, societies do not submit, they rebel.

CHAPTER 4

The Quasi-Legal Foundations of Rebel Oil Governance: The Case of the Houthis in Yemen Ariel I. Ahram

Introduction Oil and civil wars have a complicated and variegated relationship (Cotet & Tsui, 2013; Di John, 2007; Ross, 2006, 2015; Watts, 2005). For the most part, the key variable is who has physical possession over oil. Wars in petrostate typically involve armed confrontation over production fields, pipelines, terminals, and refineries. Many rebels and criminal groups are involved in covert oil smuggling (Ocakli & Scotch, 2017). Yet focusing exclusively on physical components of resource control overlooks rebel efforts to claim oil ownership, including the right to convey oil legally. Contesting ownership is a key element in rebel oil governance (Ahram, 2022a). Such governance is embedded within broader measures regulating property rights and access to natural resources within rebel-ruled

A. I. Ahram (B) School of Public and International Affairs, Arlington, Texas, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_4

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areas. Examining the case of the Houthis (Ansar Allah) in northern Yemen, a pro-Iran armed movement which took over the country’s capital in 2014, this chapter finds that rebel oil governance is a component of rebel diplomacy and broader measures of rebel governance (Arjona et al., 2015; Coggins, 2015; Cunningham & Loyle, 2021; Duyvesteyn et al., 2016; Huang, 2016; Mampilly & Stewart, 2021). Rebel oil governance provides plausible lawfulness to otherwise contraband goods. This allows seemingly illicit rebel goods to enter licit global supply chains. It also facilitates the redistribution of oil rents to new allies, both at home within rebel constituencies, and abroad, with key rebel allies. The chapter proceeds in three sections. The first discusses how sovereignty and ownership constrain the use of oil to finance war and hamper rebel efforts to monetize oil. States typically dismiss rebel claims to oil as mere fraud, a continuation of plunder by other means. Ownership risk dissuades foreign purchasers from doing business with rebel groups. This handicap diminishes, though, amidst ruptures of sovereignty when states’ claims to legitimacy and legality are contestable. The emergence of rebel oil governance offers the chance to assert sovereignty and, with it, access rights to resources. Second, the chapter presents a focused case study detailing how the Houthis mounted legal claims to oil in the context of their rebellion, creating a counter-state. Yemen is a valuable case to appreciate rebel oil governance in action because it is such a meager oil producer. The fact that rebels went to such lengths to claim oil ownership is indicative of the significance of these symbolic assertions, apart from physical production. Finally, the chapter considers how rebel oil governance affected the course of conflict and conflict resolution by bolstering the cohesion of rebel elites and eliciting foreign support. The Crimi-Legal Logics of Rebel Oil Governance Civil wars in oil-producing states often involve armed confrontation over oil infrastructure, such as oil fields, pipelines, refineries, and export terminals. Case studies of rebel groups in Nigeria (Boas, 2011; Courson, 2011), Indonesia (McCarthy, 2007; Schulze, 2007), Syria, and Iraq (Al-Tamimi, 2015; Do et al., 2018; Le Billon, 2015), and Colombia (Dunning & Wirpsa, 2004; Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2019; Richani, 2005), among other contemporary conflicts, detail how rebels try to derive financial benefit from the oil. But oil is physically difficult for rebels to loot (Lujala, 2010). Keeping up oil production, unlike other commodities like

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alluvial diamonds, requires human and financial capital often beyond the means of rebel groups. Attacking oil while it is in transit, such as hijacking oil-bearing lorries and ships or bunkering (siphoning off) pipelines is usually a more rewarding tactic (Ocakli & Scotch, 2017; Ralby & Soud, 2018). Extortion of oil facilities is also very common (Walsh et al., 2018). Some research suggests that rebels who have access to oil or other natural resources are prone to abuse civilians (Fortna et al., 2018; Haer et al., 2020; Weinstein, 2005; Whitaker et al., 2019). Such findings accord with criminal or greed-based theories of rebellion (Collier, 2000; Humphreys, 2005), which paint rebels as primarily motivated by the desire for plunder. Symbolic elements that enable or constrain rebels from exploiting oil are often overlooked. One of the key obstacles which rebels face derives not from oil’s physical characteristics, but its symbolic status as property of the state. Popular sovereignty over natural resources, especially oil, is a bedrock of contemporary international commercial law (Gümplová, 2018; Wenar, 2015). States are the presumed stewards of this popular sovereignty, with national oil companies (NOCs) as states’ legal agents. NOCs, among other key tasks, assure purchasers of the title to oil (Karl, 1997; Luong & Weinthal, 2006; Noreng, 1994). This certainty of ownership rights is essential to the complex energy financing markets, which include insurance issuances, swaps, and futures trading. Uncertainty about resource ownership impedes long-term investment (Bohn & Deacon, 2000; Granovetter, 1992; Metcalf & Wolfram, 2015). Reciprocally, the conferral of trust from foreign firms and public agencies in NOCs reinforces their sovereign status. NOCs are thus instruments for the defense of incumbent regimes (Cheon et al., 2015; Englebert & Ron, 2004; Merrill & Orlando, 2020). States use oil rents to enhance their security services and buy-off opposition (Paine, 2016; Ross, 2013). They can also entice powerful foreign allies that provide weaponry or military protection (Colgan, 2013; Kim, 2019; Meierding, 2021; Waldner & Smith, 2020). Rebels, in contrast, cannot dispose of oil licitly. International oil companies, incorporated under US or European law and answerable to shareholders, are generally wary of risking lawsuits by purchasing oil of uncertain provenance. They regard rebels’ pretension to own oil as fraud or plunder (D. l. Dam-de Jong, 2015; D. Dam-de Jong & Stewart, 2019). Rebels must operate in an opaque and fragmented black market to sell their oil, often in collusion with criminal actors to help them get goods to the international supply chain (Beckert & Dewey, 2017; Mayntz, 2017).

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But civil wars and revolutions are, by definition, characterized by ruptures in sovereignty and normative instability. Conflicting authorities offer contradictory decisions on the permissibly of expropriation “in name of the people” (Arato, 2019; Rule & Tilly, 1972; Sambanis & SchulhoferWohl, 2019). Previously criminal behaviors like property seizures are not only possible but even prescribed (Humphrey, 2002). At the same time, states and intergovernmental organs reconsider their conferral of recognition (Fabry, 2010; Griffiths, 2017; Lawson, 2019, p. 175; Talmon, 2013). These outside actors reassign who has the right to access and dispose of natural resources like oil. Rebel oil governance is part of the broader regulation of economic activity within rebel-held territories and the economic flows that connect the rebel zone to other spaces (Kubota, 2019; Stys et al., 2020; Wennmann, 2007). Schultze-Kraft describes a distinctive “crimi-legal” logic undergirding these efforts, involving “fluid combinations of legal and illegal and/or criminal means are used to exercise political authoritylegal, appropriate resources and, ultimately (re)produce political order” (Schultze-Kraft, 2018, p. 102). Such modalities render the distinction between legal and illegal goods moot. They allow legal and illegal spheres of commerce to merge (Gregson & Crang, 2017; Nordstrom, 2000). Rebel oil governance rests on the legal side of the ledger. The appropriation of state assets is legitimated both by the laws of the rebel legislature. At the same time, rebels’ gestures to international law proclaiming themselves as the rightful and legitimate bearers of the popular will (Bozcali, 2020; Furlan, 2020, p. 17). These legal regimes provide civilians subsidies approximating what is available in state-controlled areas. They can help attract and consolidate popular support for the rebel cause, a kind of performance legitimacy (Podder, 2017). Furthermore, by appointing new managers, rebel oil governance also enables the formation of new coalitions and patronage networks linked to natural resources (Saylor, 2014, pp. 22–33). In the international market, rebel oil governance offers foreign buyers a more or less plausible legality for what would otherwise be contraband. Rebel oil governance promises what Michael Ross calls “booty futures”—future access to resources in return for current support (Ross, 2013).

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Oil and Houthi Rule in Northern Yemen The following presents a case study of civil war in Yemen and specifically the Houthi rebellion in the north. Yemen—and the Houthis in particular—can be considered the least likely case to see the emergence rebel oil regime (George & Bennett, 2005, p. 121; Gerring, 2007). Firstly, Yemen has a minor oil producer, with a meager 300,000 barrels per day in 2010, before the war. Secondly, the Houthis have ruled most of northern Yemen, including the capital and largest city Sana’a, since 2014, but have yet to control any of Yemen’s major oil fields, nor have they obtained recognition from any major powers. A qualitative, case-based approach offers thick historical and geographical contextualization to uncover the social significance of oil and ownership in the Yemeni conflict (Le Billon, 2012, p. 57). The emergence of the Houthi-rule enclave came after three years of the tumult surrounding efforts to oust Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In September 2014, defying the international community, Houthi forces stormed Sanaa and forced the resignation of interim president Mansur Abd al-Rabbo Hadi. Three months later the Houthis abrogated the old constitution, installing a new regime under the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC). The Houthis ruled nearly half of the Yemeni territory and the majority of its population, concentrated in the capital city. Houthi forces continued to wage war against the Government of Yemen (GoY), which had reconstituted under Hadi in Aden with support from a Saudiled Arab military coalition. The Houthi movement began in the 1990s in the highlands area north of Sana’a. Hussein al-Houthi launched the religio-political revival of Yemen’s Zaydi community and loosely defined a political party, known as Ansar Allah. The Zaydis adhered to a branch of Shi’i Islam that differed from the predominantly Sunni population in central and southern Yemen. The Zaydis suffered specific religious discrimination and attack, especially from Saudi-backed Wahhabi groups that proselytized in the north. Still, the broader context of economic neglect and political oppression was visible in many other areas of Yemen as well. The Saleh government and Houthi supporters fought sporadically through the 1990s and 2000s. Iran provided the Houthis with ideological and some material support. Saudi Arabia and the United States backed Saleh with military and economic aid (Freeman, 2009; Salmoni et al., 2010). Yemen also faced a separatist insurgency in the south, the rise of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,

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and massive unemployment and endemic poverty. As the popular protests against Saleh intensified began in 2011 and become more violent through 2012, these challenges escalated and compounded (Alley, 2010b). Oil was a crucial issue during the regime transition. Yemen is a small producer, but oil revenues had significant impact where so many lived at subsistence. The two most important fields were in Marib in the north, which was connected by pipeline to Hodeida on the Red Sea, and Masila in Hadramawt which connected to ports on the Gulf of Aden (See Map. 4.1). Oil exports comprised more than 70 percent of government revenue. Most Yemenis received a portion of oil rents in the form of wages as part of the profligate civil service rosters and subsidized consumer fuel and electricity. Oil also enabled Saleh to expand his patronage network. Saleh’s closest supporters in the Yemeni military and the General People’s

Map 4.1

Oil and gas production in Yemen (Source US Department of Energy)

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Congress (GPC) party received privileged access to oil service concessions and rights to sell the extracted crude oil. Favorite clients, often connected by blood or marriage, could also buy subsidized fuels wholesale and then divert them to the international market. They were also positioned to demand kickbacks from foreign firms (Alley, 2010a, pp. 99, 389; Lackner, 2019, pp. 257–258). At the popular level, disaffected tribes could sometimes extort the government for revenue shares by threatening oil pipelines (Hill, 2017, p. 52). This mode of rent allocation came at a steep price, especially as export volumes declined through the 2000s (see Fig. 4.1). The cost of importing and subsidizing fuel, exacerbated by corruption, absorbed exorbitant portions of the budget. Diesel smuggling alone siphoned off an estimated $3.5 billion. The IMF and international donors, including the United States, repeatedly hectored the Saleh government about the corruption and urged more responsible management of oil revenue. Reform efforts, though, were always half-hearted (Colton, 2010; Salisbury, 2011, pp. 5, 12–13). Saleh always found it politically infeasible to cut off the patronage trough and the international community found it geopolitically inauspicious to place demand real accountability of their client state. Competition over oil rents accelerated as Saleh struggled to remain in power. Attacks on the Marib-Red Sea pipeline in March 2011 prevented Yemen Oil Production, 2010-2020 Thousands of barrels per day

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Fig. 4.1 Yemen oil production, 2000–2020 (Source Author, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.bp. com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-eco nomics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2021-full-report.pdf)

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the export of valuable light, sweet crude, the revenue from which was used to buy heavier crude to feed the Aden refinery. With the Aden refinery shuttered, the prices of consumer fuels and food (which was closely tied to overland transport costs) skyrocketed. Saudi Arabia and several Gulf states donated crude to keep Yemen’s refineries operational in a humanitarian gesture (Salisbury, 2011, pp. 5, 12–13). Vice President Mansur Abd al-Rabbo Hadi assumed power in February 2012 when Saleh resigned under pressure. But many, including the Houthis, questioned Hadi’s legitimacy. The Houthis accused Hadi and the provisional government of being a stooge of US and Saudi interests. Saleh, likewise, still did not readily accept being sidelined and seemed to bide his time awaiting a return to power. In March 2013, Hadi convened a series of meetings with representatives of Yemen’s societal, tribal, and sectarian factions. The National Dialog Conference (NDC) Outcome Document, intended as a framework for constitutional negotiation, repeatedly affirmed that hydrocarbon resources were the property of the Yemeni people. The NDC statement also called for the elimination of monopoly contracts and reorganization of the Ministry of Oil and the NOC to improve transparency and performance. The working group dealing with southern separatism proposed a federal system in which federal and provincial authorities jointly manage hydrocarbon development (Yemen National Dialogue Conference, 2014, pp. 6–9, 186). The potential of devolving managerial authority over oil complicated the demands of the Houthis in the north. Hadi unilaterally announced the formation of six federal provinces after the NDC’s closing in 2014. The Houthis objected that their region would be cut off from the inland oil wealth of Marib and from the Hodeida ports that served the oil sector (Brandt, 2018; Thiel, 2015). Moreover, the Houthis pointed out that Hadi had already exceeded his designated term as president and did not have the authority to promulgate such administrative changes on his own. Diesel fuel prices were again soaring in August 2014 after the Hadi government, bowing to IMF pressure, cut the fuel subsidy. The Houthis linked the issue of energy subsidies to national sovereignty and rallied popular opinion against Hadi. The Houthis initiated massive protests in Sana’a as their troops encircled the city (Lackner, 2019, p. 232). At the end of September Houthis forces and Saleh loyalists seized the capital. Hadi was placed under house arrest and forced to resign on

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January 22, 2015. He later escaped, rescinded his resignation, and reconstituted the government in Aden. On February 6, the Houthis announced the installation of the SRC, headed by Mohammed al-Houthi, cousin to senior Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Saleh loyalists from the GPC served as junior partners in the body. The SRC claimed emergency prerogatives, nullifying parliament, the interim government, and the constitution (Lackner, 2019, p. 51). The combined Houthi-Saleh forces stormed Hodeida and advanced on Taiz, Marib, and Bayda. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and other Arab states, launched a massive military campaign to defend GoY. The United States kept a strategic distance from Yemen, encouraging Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies to provide for their own collective security. Still, even as the United States avoided direct military action against the Houthis, it provided weapons, logistical support, and intelligence to Saudi Arabia and its allies (Hokayem & Roberts, 2016). The UN imposed an embargo aimed to block Houthi financing and access to arms. GoY forces and their allies rallied to defend Marib and the south. The Saudis, determined to prevent an Iranian-backed group from gaining a foothold on its southern flank, blockaded Houthicontrolled areas, cutting off weapons as well as foodstuffs, medicines, and fuels. The Houthis, with increasingly military support from Iran, responded by attacking shipping and firing missiles into Saudi Arabia itself. The Yemeni population, especially in the Houthi-controlled north, meanwhile, endured a humanitarian catastrophe of hunger and disease. By 2019 many in the United States had become alarmed by the deteriorating conditions in Yemen. Saudi Arabia’s military campaign, and its larger attitude toward human rights generally, was seen as reckless and callous. A remarkable bipartisan majority in Congress passed bills calling for halting US funding. Still, President Donald Trump vetoed this legislation (Abramson, 2019; Riedel, 2020). Yemen plunged fully into a full-on rupture of sovereignty by the middle of 2015. Multiple armed groups consolidate discrete territorial control and juridical authority (Clausen, 2018; Eleftheriadou, 2021; Philbrick Yadav, 2018). The Houthis insisted that they were now Yemen’s sole government. Still, the United States and every other major power refused to recognize the Houthis as the legitimate government in Yemen. Only Iran maintained diplomatic recognition of the Houthi government. Hadi’s GoY in Aden, meanwhile, enjoyed international recognition but limited control on the ground. The southern separatists made an uneasy alliance with GoY and held much of Aden and its vicinity. The UAE

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built military ties to the separatist movements. Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups seized and emerged into portions of Hadramawt. In Marib and Mahra, tribal forces and military leaders espoused allegiance to GoY but operated more or less autonomously (Ahram, 2019; Dahlgren & Augustin, 2015). The Houthis used their self-appointed standing as sovereigns to reorient the distribution of oil rents, even though they did not physically control oil production sites. Houthi commissars were embedded in government offices. Houthi fighters and party sympathizers were added to the civil and military service rosters (Eaton et al., 2019, p. 23). Through 2016, the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) continued to operate in Sana’a in its original headquarters just west of the old city. The Sana’a CBY had Yemen’s only terminal connecting to the SWIFT inter-bank communications system. The SWIFT network was the backbone of global financial transaction, as it allowed bank-to-banks fund funds transfers. Since the inauguration of the war on terror in 2001, US and European powers had treated SWIFT as a financial chokepoint, monitoring and selectively blocking financial flows to countries or entities under sanction (Ahram, 2022b; Farrell & Newman, 2019). Hadi urged the United States to block the CBY from paying salaries to personnel in the north, claiming that the money financed the Houthi war effort (Bisswell, 2020; Kerr, 2016). At the same time, GoY tried to deposit oil revenues from the Masila fields in Saudi banks instead of the CBY. UN officials, however, objected that cutting off finances to the north would exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. Finally, in September 2016, Hadi received permission from the United States and other international agencies to relocate operational control of CBY to the Aden branch and reconnect to SWIFT. Saudi Arabia deposited $2 billion in the Aden branch accounts, essentially gifting the proceeds of Saudi oil sales to GoY. Portions of those funds, though, were still remitted back to Sana’a, per UN-brokered agreements (Bauer & Pelofsky, 2017). The Houthis, marginalized from global commercial networks, still found ways to use legal authority over oil imports to build new elite patronage networks. The port of Hodeida was the north’s crucial lifeline for fuel and other goods. Whereas smugglers previously exported subsidized goods, now the profits came from bringing goods into the blockade zone. The UN mediated an agreement whereby revenues from tolls and tariffs at the Hodeida port would be held for use in paying salaries in the area. The Houthis effectively abolished the predominance of the state-owned Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC) in the oil import

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business in June 2015. Previously, only a few private companies, all with close ties to Saleh, had licenses to import fuel alongside the YPC. The Houthis auctioned off import and distribution licenses, opening up the market to a bevy of new entrants, almost all of which had close ties to the rebel regime leadership (UN Security Council, 2018, pp. 39, 199; 2019, pp. 37–38, 126–128). The expansion of Houthis’ power and patronage network, though, caused friction within their coalition of rule. A new Supreme Political Council replaced the SRC in 2016, with seats split evenly between Houthi and Saleh’s GPC representatives. But the relationship between the Houthis and Saleh was defined by common enemies more than shared goals. The Houthis asserted their power through the paralegal channels of the commissars and revolutionary committees (Lackner, 2019, pp. 162– 164). Saleh and the GPC complained of repression and corruption. GPC affiliates were refused licenses or charged extra fees to unload at Hodeida. Tanker trucks and filling stations of rival firms were sabotaged. Journalists who exposed corruption in the oil sector were murdered. By some estimates, the revenue from black-market oil sales was worth more than $1 billion dollars (Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, 2018, pp. 5–6; UN Security Council, 2018, pp. 39, 199; 2019, pp. 37–38, 126–128). Saleh and his supporters were in open revolt by 2017 and Saleh himself was assassinated in December (al-Hadaa, 2017; International Crisis Group, 2017). GoY tried to divert the shipping traffic from Hodeida to the southern ports, disputing the Houthi’s legal authority to license oil imports. In 2018, GoY required all fuel importers to get licensed in Aden. Applicants had to provide three years of bank records, something which few Houthialigned firms could do. GoY appealed to the UN to regard any ship without Aden’s authorization to be violating the sanctions. The Houthis, in turn, pressured merchants to disregard the decree. Instead, merchants were instructed to finance their purchases with letters of credit issued by the CBY in Sana’a rather than Aden-issued banknotes (Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, 2019, p. 12). By December 2019 Houthi authorities had confiscated YR 600 million in Aden-issued currency. They used these “new” riyals to purchase fuel and cooking gas from government-held areas in Marib, according to some sources. Facing their own liquidity crisis, Houthi authorities pressured civil servants and merchants to accept an electronic payment system tied to mobile phones instead of cash (Bisswell, 2020). The number of Hodeida importers fell to 14 by late

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2019. However, the strongest ones, invariably those with the closest ties to the Houthis, remained. Tamco, which held about 30 percent of the market, wholesaled oil derivatives to a company associated with the spokesman for Abdulmalik Houthi (UN Security Council, 2021, p. 38). Even parastatal companies that had no previous involvement in oil dealings were drawn into the oil trade under Houthi rule. In 2017, Houthis appointed a new CEO to the state-owned Kamaran Industry and Investment Company, which dealt with consumer goods like tobacco. The company moved into oil trading, making an insider deal with a Sana’abased firm whereby it paid import duties on fuel imports but allowed the private firm to resell at a significant markup. The company began paying disbursements to Houthi leaders, parliamentarians, foundations, and militias (UN Security Council, 2021, pp. 35, 207–219). But while Houthi leadership reaped rewards from this rebel oil regime, residents in the north suffered further misery. Faced with the double effects of blockade and maladministration, prices for electricity, fuel, medicine, and food skyrocketed in the north. Some turned to solar power. Neighborhoods collectives emerged to distribute scarce fuel canisters. Meanwhile, street hawkers sold adulterated and low-grade gasoline and diesel, leading in some cases to explosions and fires (Hill, 2017, p. 293; Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, 2018). Distinctions between the private and public sectors and the licit and illicit markets were blurry, especially in the consumer energy sector. The Houthi government established a tight central grip over functional market regulation and exploitation. Businesspersons had to comply with their rules, legal or not, in order to function (Huddleston & Wood, 2021). Oil also played a role in solidifying the Houthis’ alliance with Iran, the only country to recognize the Sana’a government. Iran, a massive oil producer in its own right, had little need to access Yemeni oil. Tehran’s relationship with the Houthis was driven primarily by the strategic logic of harassing Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, supporting a potential ideological protégés (Juneau, 2016, p. 658; Vatanka, 2020). The Houthis also sought out energy investment and foreign reserve assistance from Russia, another major oil exporter, and Iran’s main foreign backer, but with limited results (Fitch & al-Kibsi, 2015). There is evidence that the Houthis were integrated into Iran’s network of oil rent distribution, spearheaded by officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). US officials charged the IRGC and Lebanese Hezbollah with providing the Houthis training and weaponry and smuggled in small

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crafts from the Horn of Africa or overland from Oman. The Houthis also partnered in IRGC’s efforts to thwart US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports. The IRGC-linked firms dominate significant portions of the Iran hydrocarbon industry (Coville, 2017; Harris, 2013), especially those involved in refined derivatives. IRGC leaders reaped benefits through their connection to oil service firms, contractors, and consultants. The same IRGC-affiliated individuals and firms which US officials accused of delivering weapons to Yemen were also involved in chartering oil tankers (The Iran Primer, 2020). One tanker unloaded at Hodeida with a manifest falsified to hide its Iranian lading, according to UN investigators (UN Security Council, 2019, pp. 129–130). Military and legal battles continued as coronavirus struck Yemen in 2020. In February and March 2020, as the pandemic began, Houthi forced advance on Marib, although they ultimately failed to capture the oil fields (International Crisis Group, 2020). The Houthi-controlled CBY in Sana’a diverted about $200 million dollars derived from port traffic that was supposed to pay the region’s civil servants. GoY delayed dozens of oil tankers heading for Hodeida as retaliation. The Houthis announced fuel rationing and blamed GoY and its allies for exacerbating the humanitarian calamity (Human Rights Watch, 2020). UN observers, however, concluded that both the Houthis and GoY had manipulated relatively minor shortages to political ends (UN Security Council, 2021, pp. 38–39). Conclusion The Houthi case poses an extreme but still a highly instructive case of how rebel oil governance emerges and functions. There was very little oil at stake in the Houthi’s claim to legal ownership. Yet the Houthi’s efforts to elaborate a legal apparatus for oil are indicative of how important symbolic representation is, even in conflict settings. Symbolic manipulation, at least as much as physical properties, is key to value production in global supply chains (Huber, 2018). Far more trade in oil occurs in symbolic form— through chapter and increasingly electronic futures trading—than ever physically changes hands (Johnson, 2015; Manera, 2013). Yet much of the discussion of resources in civil wars has focused on questions of material incentives and physical possession while ignoring symbolic claimmaking related to ownership and legality. Ruptures in state power are seen

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as opportunities for criminals to exploit. Rebel’s claims to resource ownership are dismissed as mere fraud, plunder by other means. Certainly, many armed groups make no legal claims. They limit their economic activities to the illicit sphere. They smuggle goods across borders surreptitiously, avoiding notice from state surveillance. They may rely on the simulacra of statehood—counterfeit or misleading documentation that allows rebel goods to move undetected through legal border crossings. Sometimes they bribe state officials, drawing government agents into the pantomime (Bozcali, 2020; Gallien, 2020; Gallien & Weigand, 2021; Sweet, 2020). None of these measures, though, require outright claims to ownership that challenges state authority. Rebel oil governance, in contrast, makes this challenge explicit and overt. These regimes are part of the broader attempt to substantiate rebel rule normative and juridically (Bryant, 2021; Weber, 1995). The Houthis certainly adopted some of the tactics of organized crime and smuggling. But they were not content merely to be criminals, nor simply one of the myriad armed actors operating in Yemen. Rather, the Houthis in 2014 proclaimed themselves Yemen’s legitimate rulers. Such measures reorient global and local supply chains. The Houthi oil governance dictated who received sinecures, manages funds, could wholesale or collateralize oil, and could demand kickbacks. These allocations crucially affected the cohesion of the rebel elite, rewarding those close to the Houthis while ultimately excluding Saleh’s GPC. Internationally, the rebel oil regime proved a linkage point to the Houthi’s sole significant foreign ally, Iran. The importance of such symbolic claims to oil ownership, often divorced from physical control, is evident in other recent conflicts. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, self-proclaimed government-in-exile for Western Sahara, has repeatedly asserted its jurisdiction in the subsoil and offshore oil fields. Several international oil firms have withdrawn from deals with the Moroccan government after SADR threatened to sue anyone doing business in illegally occupied territory (Campos, 2008; Irwin, 2021; Naili, 2021). Similarly, the Venezuelan opposition led by Juan Guaidó, has made juridical claims for rights to the country’s oil and PDVSA, the Venezuelan NOC. With diplomatic recognition from the US, Colombia, and other states, the opposition successfully installed its own slate of managers over several PDVSA’s foreign subsidiaries, including the US-based Citgo. Even so, all of Venezuela’s oil field remains physically under the control of the incumbent Maduro government (Seelke

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et al., 2021). The obverse is also true. Rebel groups that possess sizeable amounts of oil, such as the Haftar factions in eastern Libya (Ahram, 2020), struggle to export because their claims to legal ownership were rejected or regarded as invalid. Even as rebels craft legal justifications for why they—and not the government—should enjoy the legal rights of oil ownership, incumbent regimes decry rebels as criminals and fraudsters. These measures go far beyond physical interdiction. States appeal to international bodies for support, seeking boycotts of rebel goods. Firms risk boycott and litigation for doing business with rebels. The concept of rebel oil governance expands understanding of how oil and resources more generally influences rebel behavior and conflict dynamics. Physical competition for resource production often occurs in parallel to normative and symbolic contestation over ownership and access rights. Rebels evince different strategies for managing resources with varying combinations of physical control and legal rights. The legal dimensions have an independent impact on the cohesion of rebel groups and their ability to attract foreign support. By claiming legal rights, rebel groups counteract the effects of weaponized economic interdependence that systematically blocks their access to global oil markets (Drezner et al., 2021; Meierding, 2021, 2022). Such measures bear more broadly on rebel endurance and durability, even in contexts like Yemen, where the material and monetary resource bases for rebellion seems slight.

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CHAPTER 5

Wars Against Terror in Oil Lands, Russian Interventions, and Chinese Energy Policies: The Case of Northern Iraq and Syria Amal Abdullah, Islam Aburok, Samiea Elmardy, Mahmood Alhosain, Massaab Al-Aloosy, and Laurent A. Lambert Introduction From being a commodity coveted by foreign nations and forming the basis of their economic structure, to bankrolling central state development as well as foreign policy adventures, oil has fundamentally shaped

Disclaimer Amal Abdullah, Islam W. Aburok, Samiea Elmardy contributed to section three of the chapter. Massaab Al-Aloosy and Laurent A. Lambert co-wrote section two, the introduction, and the conclusion. Mahmood Alhosain and Laurent A. Lambert contributed to section one. M. Al-Aloosy (B) Gulf International Forum, Washington, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Abdullah · I. Aburok · S. Elmardy · M. Alhosain · L. A. Lambert Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_5

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Iraq’ and Syria’s modern history and geostrategic fate. In this chapter, we critically reassess the evolution of the American strategic interests and outcomes in these oil lands, against the background of the American WoT that has been waged in these two countries with the continuous presence of American troops on the ground. Finally, we generate econometric forecasts of Iraqi oil production and export for the medium to long-term future based on three different scenarios of energy import policies in China, i.e., the most influential foreign player in Iraq’s oil market and today’s largest importer of crude in the world. The Fragile Context of Syria, from Small Oil Exporter to Energy Pauper Although not as endowed in oil as neighboring Iraq or the Arab monarchies of the Gulf region, Syria has nevertheless two substantial oilproducing regions. The first oil fields with commercial quantities were discovered in the 1950s and 1960s, around the Swaidia area in the Northeastern governorate of Al-Hasakah, and a second phase of oil production began in the 1980s in the Euphrates Valley, stretching from Deir Ezzor to the Syrian-Iraqi border.1 Production from this region was about 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the mid-1990s,2 then it temporarily increased to 600 thousand bpd. But by the end of 2010, while the first Arab Spring revolutions started in North Africa, Syrian production had already been declining for some years and returned to the official level of 400,000 bpd. It is worth mentioning here that all these figures come from the Syrian regime alone, and that during the successive rules of Presidents al-Assad father and son, there has been little to no transparency, with e.g., no independent commissions capable of verifying the declarations of the government as to oil production levels, the trade and sales, and, more importantly, the allocation of the national oil company’s revenues. According to two interviewed engineers working in the Syrian oil sector, Syria’s oil production was substantially higher than the last declared number, most of which comes from oil wells in Northeastern Syria. Yet for the subsequent civil war period, all parties to the conflict agree on

1 Butter, David, Energy Issues Still Play an Important Part in the Conflict Carnegie Middle East Center, April 2014, https://bit.ly/2vWSLiQ. 2 Ibid., p. 5.

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one point, oil production fell considerably, plunging the country into an unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis. Oil production has always been an important resource in the Syrian economy, as it represented, until 2011, 10% of the country’s exports in value and 30% of government revenues.3 Locally, oil derivatives had traditionally been widely used, especially gasoline and diesel for transportation and heating by households, for factories, government facilities, and civilian infrastructure that rely on refined oil for power generation and water distribution. Therefore, the structural and fundamental role of oil in local life and other sectors in the country started to be felt when the Syrian government unilaterally decided to cut subsidies on diesel in 2007, negatively impacting agriculture. The latter, a nationally important and locally vital economic sector in several regions of Syria, was direly affected by the lack of irrigation capacities, especially as drought years succeeded one another, and by the more general lack of energy for machineries and facilities. The Syrian economy suffered from the tinkering of the oil-based energy sector and agriculture, and many Syrian families and farming communities were severely affected, leading scores of them to abandon agricultural activities and move to urban centers, where popular discontent, civil unrest, and anti-regime demonstrations would start in 2011.4 In late 2012, as a result of the military escalation of what was initially a peaceful popular revolt, the Syrian regime lost the largest part of its oil production areas to various opposition groups.5 Syria features sizable oil reserves in the now de facto independent region of Northeastern Syria, in Deir Ezzor and Al-Hasakah.6 During the early phase of the civil war, in 2013, tensions escalated between the regular opposition forces and the 3 World Bank Group, Economics of Post-Conflict Reconstruction in the Middle East and North Africa, April 2017. 4 In addition to lifting support for oil fuels, there were an additional reason, which is drought and climate changes that struck Syria between 2006 and 2010, where the number of affected people is estimated at 300 thousand Syrian citizens. Lister, Charles R., The Syrian Jihad Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and Evolution of an Insurgency, Oxford University Press, New York, 2015. 5 Zwijnenburg, W. Scorched Earth and Charred Lives: Human Health And environmental Risks of Civilian-Operated Makeshift Oil Refineries in Syria, Netherlands, PAX, 2018. 6 Stein, Aaron, and Emily Burchfield, The Future of Northeast Syria, Atlantic Council, August 2019, retrieved from https://bit.ly/2XwEXdO.

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emerging terror group ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS), which came from the chaos of post-invasion Iraq and spread across the two countries, leading to the start of an armed conflict featuring a high-intensity seven-month battle. The result was ISIS’s control over the whole oil area, up until 2017, when it lost most of the oil wells following thousands of air strikes from an international coalition and land operations by the United States of America and their Syrian (essentially Kurdish) allies in that area, led by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The latter, a pro-independence Kurdish military and political entity, had been fighting terror cells coming from Iraq for some years, largely—though not exclusively—in Kurdish-majority areas. As a result of the airstrikes and land operations, an important number of oil wells in Northeastern Syria were damaged or destroyed. ISIS fighters themselves sabotaged some oil and other civilian infrastructure when they were militarily defeated.7 Most of the affected wells were in the Deir Ezzor Governorate, the last stronghold of ISIS in Syrian territories.8 However, after the SDF took control of most of the installations, they started repairing some of the damaged facilities to resume production and sales. If oil had not been the main driver of war for the SDF or for ISIS, it undoubtedly represented an important asset that could enable them to finance their war efforts (Map 5.1). In late 2013 and at the beginning of 2014, during the emergence of ISIS as a major player on the military scene in Syria, the organization managed to control a large share of oil and gas wells in the Northeastern regions of Syria and to manage all operations from production to commercialization. ISIS obtained not only a strategic advantage but also unprecedented material gain by running the operations.9 In 2014, the operations of the international coalition led by the US began against ISIS10 ; coalition airstrikes targeted many small oil refineries managed by ISIS.

7 Revkin, Mara Redlich, “What Explains Taxation by Resource-Rich Rebels? Evidence from the Islamic State in Syria”, The Journal of Politics 82, no. 2 (2020): 757–764. 8 Meliksetian, Vanand, The Battle for Syria’s Oil Region, Oil Price, December 2018, accessed on March 2020, retrieved from https://bit.ly/2VqwwOF. 9 Al-Ali, Tariq, ISIS, Part Two, “Structure and Funding Sources”. Beirut, Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2019. 10 International Alliance to Eliminate ISIS, The Official Website, https://bit.ly/33z T7fp.

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Map 5.1 Syria’s oil and gas fields (Source Authors, partly based on Energy Consulting Group)

Eventually, the deterioration of Syrian oil installations, production and economic revenues were not caused only by airstrikes, but included several other factors. First, the mismanagement and misuse of these wells and oil installations by all the military parties that once controlled them (e.g., war profiteers, Al-Qaida-linked terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra, its terrorist rival ISIS, the SDF) and who wanted to obtain rapid benefits from it disregarding what could be the appropriate flows of extraction and safe production processes. Second, the absence of maintenance operations, which were not seen as important by the parties to the conflict. Third, the absence of modern and efficient technologies and equipment in the extraction and refining processes, especially once the initial infrastructure had been damaged and then poorly repaired or simplified. The

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extraction processes were carried out by basic means and without protections, causing damage to workers, the environment, and, presumably, the integrity of the oil reservoirs.11 Despite this dynamic and complex setting, with regularly changing actors in the oil industry, the demand for local oil always remained strong in Syria. In the Northeast, interviewees explained that some residents of the oil-rich areas locally refined it by themselves for domestic use by the most rudimentary methods, while other residents went to work in local refineries run by fighting groups simply to obtain a livelihood. Once, the Al-Hasakah governorate alone featured more than 3000 local oil refineries,12 and in the Deir Ezzor Governorate, often called the “Syrian Oil Capital,”13 the number was unknown, but many residents were reported to have ventured into what was a totally unregulated industry. During 2017 and 2018, oil production kept on decreasing even further, though, due to the convergence of several dynamics, whether economic or due to the targeting by coalition forces or the ground advances of the US-SDF forces as part of the military campaign aimed at eradicating ISIS. Oil production reportedly decreased to 20.5 thousand barrels per day in 2018, as can be seen in the following figure. The losses of the oil sector in Syria since the outbreak of the war were estimated at $74.2 billion14 as oil fields, pipelines, and oil facilities were severely damaged (Fig. 5.1). At present, although the situation is far from settled, US oil firms can have some access to Eastern oil wells through the US local partner, the SDF.15 The other section, which is controlled by Bashar al-Asad’s regime, is located at the other end of the Euphrates River, in the fields 11 Almohamad, Hussein, and Andreas Dittmann, “Oil in Syria between Terrorism and Dictatorship”, Social Sciences 5, no. 2 (2016): 20. 12 Zwijnenburg, W, Scorched Earth and Charred Lives: Human Health and Environmental Risks of Civilian-Operated Makeshift Oil Refineries in Syria, Netherlands, PAX, 2018, https://bit.ly/3a5b0oA. 13 Ibid. 14 The Arena of Conflict Over Syria’s Oil is the Biggest Winner? Politicians Post,

November 2019, accessed on February 2020, retrieved from https://bit.ly/34ATpD6. 15 For example, within the US administration, there are contradictory statements. US President Donald Trump has stated more than once that his country will benefit from Syrian oil by protecting these wells, while the US Department of Defense says: that oil imports go directly to the SDF that benefit from them with respect to Its military

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Fig. 5.1 Decline in average daily crude oil production in Syria (2010-2021) (Source Authors, based on OPEC data retrieved via CEIC data, Syria crude oil production https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/syria/crude-oil-produc tion)

of Alwarad and Altayim. However, their production is low compared to the wells located Eastward.16 This complicates matters further for the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad, which is trying, with the help of Iran and Russia (two oil exporting countries with companies operating internationally despite sanctions), to either military control or reach a political settlement to ultimately control most if not all the oil production in Syria. The Damascus regime remains in urgent need to obtain fuel to

operations, service matters and expenses for the so-called “self-management”. BBC Arabic, The War in Syria: Who Gains Syrian Oil Profits, 2019, https://bbc.in/2thbfgh. Delevingne, Lawrence, Trump Suggestion of Taking Syrian Oil Draws Rebukes, Reuters, October 2019, retrieved from https://reut.rs/34yqEqL. 16 Alrazaq, Adnan Abed, Syrian Oil Fields 8 Years of Change on the Hegemony Map 2019, AlArabi Aljadeed, https://bit.ly/37Sjka6.

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meet the dire needs of the local market, which has been facing a crippling energy crisis for several years due to the conflict as well as US and international sanctions. In parallel, the Damascus regime and even more so the Syrian people suffer from these stiff economic sanctions imposed since 2012, limiting the country’s capacity to import oil refined products.17 Meanwhile, the SDF are exporting some oil to three main destinations: the areas controlled by the Syrian regime forces (despite the open conflict), the areas controlled by the Syrian opposition forces in the North (despite strong political disagreements and power rivalries), and finally to Northern Iraq, which is predominantly inhabited by Kurdish populations. Wells in Northeastern Syria could probably reproduce 400,000 barrels of oil per day if they received enough investment and reparations.18 Amidst a decreased provision of oil flowing to the international market and especially to Europe, following the Russian-Ukraine war and EU economic sanctions, the US authorities are more interested than ever to see increased flows of oil generate incomes for its Syrian partners and provide new supplies to Turkey and Europe, thereby mitigating the energy leverage Russia could exert over them when it comes to energy security. The Iraqi Oil, Grand Geopolitics and Production Challenges Iraq has been an oil producing country of international interest for over a century, with Iraqis regularly struggling to develop and protect a sovereign oil sector. After the collapse of the USSR and a sweeping democratization wave across many of its former Socialist allies during the 1990s, Saddam Hussein’s Presidency (1979–2003) remained one of the few (Arab) Socialist regimes in a state of cold war with Washington. This diplomatic adversity spilled over onto the international oil market and economic warfare. The Iraqi President more than once used oil as a weapon to influence the prices on the global market to pressure the international community to lift the crippling economic sanctions that his 17 Oil Price.com, US Willing to Shoot the Syrian Officials to Protect the Oil, accessed on January 2020, retrieved from https://bit.ly/2UkOVNM. 18 Delevingne, Lawrence, Trump Suggestion of Taking Syrian Oil Draws Rebukes, Reuters, October 2019, accessed on March 2020, retrieved from https://reut.rs/34y qEqL.

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country had been suffering from since its 1990–1991 short-lived occupation of Kuwait. The result, at times, was a tighter market that increased supply risks among oil importers such as the United States. In other words, Iraq temporarily was a small “swing producer,”19 at times purposefully limiting its oil production and exports, at others increasing it again, while most other oil countries generally prefer to produce in a continuous manner, and as much as possible. Simultaneously, politics in the United States witnessed the rise of the Neoconservatives movement which questioned the containment policy toward Iraq and called for a more assertive one,20 and repeatedly, and especially following the terrorist attacks in 2001, for a change of regime. The new hawks in Washington, dominating the Georges W. Bush administration, believed the Iraqi oil output in the market could decrease the prices of this precious commodity, something which was seen as important because of increasing oil demand from the US economy, which then strongly relied on imports, and from developing countries such as China and India. The economic benefits of accessing the vast Iraqi oil reserves also constituted an incentive for the British government, which considered that Iraqi oil was “vital” for the UK’s future energy security.21 Moreover, the Neocons believed that lower oil prices could add political pressure on undemocratic or unfriendly regimes in Middle East countries as their budgets were largely reliant on oil exports. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and other Gulf countries would be pressured to reform their political and economic systems,22 a dual liberalization that should ultimately benefit the US, the world’s largest economy and leader of the democratic camp, at least in the American psyche. 19 Al-Aloosy, Massaab. 2022a. “Perilous Growth: Bulging Population Endangers Iraq’s

Future.” The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, https://agsiw.org/perilous-gro wth-bulging-population-endangers-iraqs-future/. Morse, Edward L., and Amy Myers Jaffe. Strategic Energy Policy: Challenges for the Twenty-First Century, Council on Foreign Relations, 2001. 20 Lagon, Mark, Subject: Iraq. Project for a New American Century, 1999, https://web. archive.org/web/20030212225110/; http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqjan0799. htm. 21 McSmith, Andy, and Paul Bignell, Iraqi Oil Supply was Considered to be ‘Vital’ to British Interests. The Independent, 2011, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pol itics/iraqi-oil-supply-was-considered-to-be-vital-to-british-interests-2270072.html. 22 Alkadiri, Raad, and Fareed Mohamedi, “World Oil Markets and the Invasion of Iraq.” Middle East Report 227, 2003.

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The Failed 2003 Liberation of Iraq’s Oil Not long before the 2003 US-led invasion, Iraq’s oil policy had a serious impact on the market and became a factor in the broader calculations of the Georges W. Bush administration, not only to better control the international market but also, as touched upon in Chapter 3, to finance post-invasion reconstruction projects. This role, in the absence of any real formal and detailed plan of post-invasion reconstruction, would eventually fail to take shape because of social, administrative, economic, security, and political issues, including the dismemberment of two of the very few working Iraqi institutions (the Baath party and the Iraqi army), as well as the stiff sectarianism of the new political elites, the corruption and incompetence of domestic political actors, and the peaks in violence which have regularly plagued the country since the invasion. US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (2001–2005) had once expressed that Iraqi oil revenues would reach between $50 and $100 billion over the next two to three years following the invasion because the oil infrastructure would be rapidly restored to pre-1990 level and Iraq would then increase its production to 7–8 million barrels per day (mbd) by 2020.23 As a matter of fact, Iraq’s oil production declined after the war and its oil revenues did not exceed $15 billion per year, i.e., several times less than anticipated.24 Despite improvements in recent years, at the time of finalizing this book, in Spring 2023, the Iraqi production is well below 4.5 mbd,25 and the oil exports in Northern Iraq have been stopped due to political disagreements between authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan, the central government in Baghdad, and the Turkish government. This situation is all the more problematic for the Iraqi economy as Iraq’s leaders, before and after the invasion, never diversified the economy and the country is almost completely dependent on oil. According to the World Bank, oil constitutes “99 percent of export 23 Luft, Gal, Iraq’s Oil Sector One Year After Liberation. Brookings Institute, 2004, https://www.brookings.edu/research/iraqs-oil-sector-one-year-after-liberation/. 24 Luft, Gal, Iraq’s Oil Sector. 25 Al-Aloosy, Massaab. “Iraq’s Corruption and Rule of Law Deficits Nourish a

Worsening Drug Problem.” The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, March 17, 2022, https://agsiw.org/iraqs-corruption-and-rule-of-law-deficits-nourish-a-worsen ing-drugproblem/. Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Iraq Facts and Figures, https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/164.htm.

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earnings, and 90 percent of the state’s revenue, a much higher percentage than other Middle Eastern oil producers.”26 International companies in the oil and other sectors have long hesitated to invest the massive investments needed for reconstruction in the country because there was not enough security, no firm legal and constitutional procedure, and thus no guarantee of profitability of any investment in post-2003 Iraq. In addition, the long inability of the Iraqi government to ratify a consensual, nationwide oil and gas law (one petroleum law was proposed in 2007, but never accepted by the Iraqi Parliament), not only discouraged international investment but prolonged Baghdad’s dispute with the authorities of Kurdistan because it is not agreed upon which authority has the legal means to grant rights for exploration and extraction in that semi-autonomous region. Beyond this important governance issue, the matter of security has long remained a major barrier to Iraq’s economic development. In 2012, after several years of US military Surge made some gains in the pacification of Iraq, the International Energy Agency (IEA) then estimated that Iraq’s oil production could reach more than 8 mbd by 2035, becoming the second-biggest supplier after Saudi Arabia and generating $200 billion revenue a year for Iraq.27 Yet this was rapidly followed by the rapid rise of terror group ISIS and the spread of Shiite militias, precipitating both Iraq and Syria into new civil armed conflicts.28 While a US-led international coalition launched thousands of air raids against ISIS over both Iraq and Syria, the field operations of the US in these countries exposed the US to repeated attacks by Iran’s allies and proxies that had been called from many countries to, officially, fight (Sunnite) terror groups and/or protect holy cities and shrines (Ghaddar & Smyth, 2018; Hashem, 2015; Sadjadpour, 2018). Yet these increasingly powerful Shiite militias have kept on improving their use

26 Al-Aloosy, Massaab. “Latent Potential of the Iraqi Energy Sector.” Gulf International Forum, April 15, 2022, https://gulfif.org/latent-potential-ofthe-iraqi-energy-sector/. Dourian, Kate, Iraq Looks Forward. 27 Thomson, Mark, Iraq Oil Output to Double by 2020: IEA, CNN , 2012, https:// money.cnn.com/2012/10/09/news/economy/iraq-oil/. 28 Al-Aloosy, Massaab. “By Violent Means: Iraq’s PMF Descent From Popularity to Corruption and Repression.” The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, Aug 11, 2022, https://agsiw.org/by-violent-means-iraqs-pmf-descent-from-popularity-to-cor ruption-andrepression/.

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of mortar attacks, drones, and explosive devices against not only ISIS, but also toward other Sunni groups, including US partners, as well as American troops and installations in both Iraq and Syria. These deadly anti-American attacks and the general level of insecurity across Iraq’s Western and Northern oil regions have prevented investments in the oil industry and kept American forces largely on the defensive.29 Iraq’s oil production thus never reached the particularly high levels predicted by US policymakers and international organizations alike, thereby affecting the financial stabilization and reconstruction of a country so fundamentally dependent on oil exports. For most of the past two decades since the invasion, the infrastructure of Iraq, and especially the oil sector, has overall remained in a general state of under-performance and the economic activity and government revenues continue to be a hostage the non-optimization of oil exports. The problems besetting the Iraqi oil sector can also be linked to misuse and ineptitude among successive Iraqi administrations. Even after years of reconstruction attempts, electric supplies, a necessity to run refineries and pumping stations, was estimated to be 32 gigawatts but only 16 megawatts were generated because of inefficient grid capacities and damaged infrastructure.30 In addition, the flaring of natural gas during oil production is another problem; the Basrah Gas company estimated the value of flared natural gas in Iraq to be $7 million a day with damage not only to the Iraqi economy but to the environment as well.31 ,32 In parallel, Iraq has been so short on natural gas and particularly on electricity that it has been importing supplies from Iran for over a decade. The dependence grew to such an extent that when the Trump Administration decided to impose new economic sanctions against Iran after the US withdrawal of the Iranian nuclear deal, Iraq desperately requested— and obtained—a special waiver to be able to keep on importing almost

29 Al-Aloosy, Massaab. “Parasitical Elitism in a Sectarianized Political System with a Rentier Economy: Power and Practice of the Iraqi Political Elite after 2003.” Politics and Policy 2023. 30 Dourian, Kate, Iraq Looks Forward to Energy Independence. The Arab State Institute in Washington, 2019, https://agsiw.org/iraq-looks-forward-to-energy-independence/. 31 Dourian, Kate, Iraq Looks Forward. 32 Warne, Penelope, Iraq’s Oil Potential

Still Mainly Untapped. Energy Voice, 2018, https://www.energyvoice.com/promoted/173305/iraqs-oil-potential-still-mainlyuntapped/.

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a third of its electricity and gas needs from Iran. Despite the growing casualties among US troops by Iran-affiliated militias’ shelling in Iraq, this request was renewed several times, including after the change in US administration (Reuters Staff, 2021).33 Some positive developments have been occurring in Iraq’s energy industry in recent years, though at a frustratingly slow pace for most Iraqis, after some reforms were undertaken and, most importantly, following the growing investments of foreign companies into Iraq’s infrastructure and oil and gas sector. After several years of plateauing and limited growth, Iraq’s oil production started to significantly increase by 2014 (CEIC, 2020). Of particular importance, the relationship between China and Iraq reached new heights on oil, especially after Iraq signed five key agreements, including the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), in the fields of economic, technological, military, diplomatic, oil, and energy cooperation in 2015. Since then, these key investments have been multiplied, as shown in table 4 (Annex 1) (Fig. 5.2). These foreign investments, on the industrial level, are not so surprising given that Iraq’s estimated total proved crude oil reserves, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019, stands at 147.2 billion barrels, i.e., being thus some of the largest reserves in the world.34 And other estimates indicate that Iraq has vast reserves of what is considered “cheap oil,” meaning it lies on shallow wells and can be easily extracted, for lower production costs, thus with higher returns on investment than elsewhere.35 The main companies currently operating in the Iraqi oil sector are BP PLC (UK), China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (China), PJSC Lukoil Oil Company (Russia), Total Energy (France), Exxon Mobil Corporation (USA), and Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Malaysia). Yet, this list is particularly ironical from the US perspective. China, France, Malaysia, and Russia, now major players 33 Al-Aloosy, Massaab. “Iran’s Proxies and Iraq’s Parliamentary Elections: Ideological Rhetoric without Political Substance.” Gulf International Forum October 9, 2021 https://gulfif.org/irans-proxies-and-iraqs-parliamentary-elections-ideological-rhe toric-without-political-substance/. 34 BP. BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2019, https://www.bp.com/content/ dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/ bp-stats-review-2019-full-report.pdf. 35 Ashwarya, Sujata, “Post-2003 Iran–Iraq Cooperation in the Oil and Gas Sector: Initiatives, Challenges, and Future Scenarios”, Contemporary Review of the Middle East 4, no. 1, 2017.

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Thousands barrels per day

IRAQ ANNUAL AVERAGE OF DAILY OIL PRODUCTION 4423

4533

4614

2016

2017

2018

3986

2428

2446

2469

2008

2009

2010

2773

2011

3079

3103

3239

2012

2013

2014

2015

Fig. 5.2 Iraq annual average of daily oil production (Source Authors, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019. Retrieved from: https://www.bp. com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-eco nomics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2019-full-report.pdf)

in Iraq’s oil and gas sector, had strongly opposed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. They were thus not expected then to reap much benefits—if at all—from a “liberated Iraq” in terms of oil concessions and energy contracts. Nowadays, against a background of high security risks for American companies due to threats from remaining ISIS cells and pro-Iran militias and, since the Russian-Ukrainian war and higher international energy prices, these investments from other large international actors seem particularly promising for Baghdad and its foreign partners. So, when the oil minister announced in May 2022 that production could reach 6 mbd by the end of 2027, his bold declaration was received with less circumspection than usual. In August 2022, Baghdad approved plans to enable BP to spin off its operations in the supergiant Rumaila oil field with the creation of a new joint-venture company, Basra Energy Ltd, that will hold BP’s stakes in this unique field and be jointly owned and operated by China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), an aggressive market player in the Iraqi energy sector. Analysts believe that Iraq now has the economic capacity and greater industrial window of opportunity to enter

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a new phase of oil-financed infrastructure and economic development.36 Arguably, a new period in which the shots are not called nearly as much by Washington than by other, more (re-)emerging powers in the region, with important ambitions. China’s Energy Policies, Foreign Infrastructure Development, and Implications for Iraq Amidst an economic slowdown in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a new, international infrastructure development program, known today as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), or also “The New Silk Road”—referring to Asia’s ancient intercontinental commercial roads and network. The “belt” makes reference to the routes on land (the Silk Road Economic Belt); whereas the “road” refers to the sea routes that link China with Southeast Asia and Pakistan’s coastline. The BRI consists of six main economic corridors and one maritime route. Every corridor starts in Beijing, in Eastern China, and the six destinations are Moscow, Astana, Ankara, Gwadar port, New Delhi, and the Malaysia-Indonesian peninsula. The whole project spans 65 countries across four world regions (Xavier, 2018). The BRI can be seen as a globalization dynamic in the world’s commodity markets, with a clear aim to increase the trade between China and the main hydrocarbons exporting countries of Africa, Europe, and Asia. According to the Director of the Strategic Development Department of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Lu Ruquan, the BRI represents energy flows between China and major oil producers in the world which denotes that countries can be part of BRI even if the road does not pass within their territory (Rakhmat, 2019). A set of reasons prompted China to adopt this project, such as generating new impetus for China’s Economy, finding new markets for trade, and widening the power of China’s currency. It also ambitions to achieve stability in the region, find ways to tackle the overcapacity of the Chinese industry, and, last but not least, significantly secure energy supplies since energy consumption in China will keep on increasing in the next decades. Accordingly, this transformational megaproject will lead to changes in 36 Watkins, Simon, “Could Iraq Dethrone Saudi Arabia As Largest Oil Producer?” Oilprice.com, 2002, https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Could-Iraq-Det hrone-Saudi-Arabia-As-Largest-Oil-Producer.html.

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policies within China, specifically those regarding energy, which will in turn affect the energy markets of top oil exporting and importing countries alike, as China has become the world’s largest importer of energy commodities. This section will highlight how China’s grand energy strategy, including its energy transition policy and its BRI infrastructure development, is expected to affect the oil and gas exports of the Republic of Iraq by 2027, 2030, 2035, and 2050. Ever since the 1980s, China and Iraq have enjoyed good bilateral relations, with China building infrastructure, even during the country’s periods of instability and socioeconomic problems following the 2003 invasion and subsequent civil war periods. Today, Iraq is once again one of the top ten largest crude oil exporters in the world, and it has been the third main oil provider to China in the years prior to the deep COVID19 disruption of the energy market in 2020 and 2021 (Calabrese, 2019). China’s interest in Iraq has escalated due to several reasons, especially in the presence of the US-China trade war. Some authors have list these reasons as follows: China could use Iraq as a way to pressure Washington in the region; Iraq has a strategic geographical location of in the world, at the crossroads of Asia, Europe, and Africa; Iraq is one of the largest markets for Chinese products in the Middle East; Iraq should develop a significant political role in the region due to its demography; and most importantly, Iraq holds a significant energy wealth with which it can assist China in securing its energy supplies (Al-Obaidi, 2019). Therefore, China has notably announced that it will help Iraq in the reconstruction and development of its oil infrastructure, while further increasing its broader economic relations. Iraq is considered an essential pillar in China’s diversification policy of energy suppliers. Since the beginning of the announcement of this project, many countries showed their interest in it and the increase of global trade. Some authors have investigated the political and geopolitical implications of the OBOR. Kennedy (2015) argued that the BRI is like a “financial carrot” that will promote greater cooperation between China and other countries, especially in Central Asia. In addition to the economic benefit, he argues, the initiative will enhance Beijing’s political and diplomatic leverage over participating countries. Mustafic (2016) analyzed the oil demand of China under the development of the BRI and tried to answer several questions such as how the BRI will ensure energy security and what is the main incentive behind this initiative. Both studies converge in that the BRI

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underlies China’s geostrategic plan to expand its upper-hand diplomatic position over many regions and key countries. Regarding the methodology of this section, we followed the scenario analysis approach that is regularly used academically for energy markets and energy-related, including renewable energy technology portfolio and CO2 emission reductions in China’s electricity sector (Cai et al., 2007; Chen et al., 2009; Kishita et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2012). This paper followed the method conducted by Li et al. (2018) to investigate the diversification of the energy suppliers and energy security mix in China for the second scenario. Vivoda (2009), who assessed the relationship between the diversification of sources for imported oil and the energy security of oil importers, provided a useful qualitative analysis approach that enabled us to expand our analysis of all the factors affecting this relationship so that the policy implementation of diversification of energy sources suppliers for oil-importing countries can be successful. The following two tables provide a useful summary of the scenario-building and quantitative forecasting that was undertaken. The annex provides a detailed description of the methodology utilized to generate the main findings of section 4.

Scenario Analysis and Framework The following two tables respectively introduce three scenarios of energy strategy that China could realistically follow and the variables and indicators for our scenario-based energy forecasting (Tables 5.1 and 5.2).

Results of the Energy Scenarios Analysis The paper conducted a multi-scenario approach for three main scenarios: the energy transition, energy (suppliers) diversification, and the businessas-usual scenario. Based on pre-COVID19 crisis data, the results indicated that under the rapid transition scenario, the oil exports of Iraq in 2050 would be 71% lower than oil exports in 2017. This would likely be a major issue for oil-exporting Iraq, which strongly depends on that single commodity for government revenues and the general economic activity in the country. On the other hand, according to our evaluation matrix, this rapid transition constitutes the most environmentally friendly Chinese policy among the three scenarios.

The rapid energy transition is based on the idea of transforming the energy sector to net zero-carbon by the second half of the century, to be in line with China’s climate commitments

The following policies are a part of China’s approaches to adapt the energy transitions. They are part of the China Renewable Energy Outlook (2018) 1. National Energy Administration goals 2. 13th Five-Year Plan 1. Rising energy consumption and rising clean energy production 2. Increase energy efficiency investments 3. Chinese promoted shift from coal to gas

The concept

Related policies and programs

Source Authors

Process and policies components

Scenario 1 Rapid energy transition

The framework of scenario analysis

Variables

Table 5.1

The business-as-usual scenario is based on the current energy policies of China and how they affect the trade between China and Iraq in terms of oil, especially under the OBOR. This scenario assumes China will not make big changes in its policies According to the OBOR agreement, China’s policy is going toward enhancing the economic capacity of Iraq in terms of oil and infrastructure

Scenario 3 Business as usual

The energy diversification in China is based on adopting two significant policy and strategy 1. Oil import diversification policy 2. Portfolio diversification in the financial field 3. The energy cooperation strategy proposed by the B&R 1. Enhance supplier diversity 1. Developing the energy sector of Iraq 2. Enhance spatial diversity 3. Improve technology 2. Developing and investing 4. Developing transport routes of in the infrastructure of energy Iraq 5. Diversification of settlement 3. Enhancing economic currency diversification

Energy diversification implies a greater diversification of the suppliers of energy supplies and the Chinese energy portfolio, but no radical changes in the fundamental energy mix

Scenario 2 Energy diversification

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Variables and indicators for the scenario-based energy forecasting

Source Authors

Forecasting variables and indicators The following variables and related indicators were utilized to asses changes due to the energy transition in China and Iraq and make forecasting for 2027, 2030, 2035, 2050 A. Oil (To measure the change in oil indicators) 1. Change in oil imports of China (%) 2. Change in oil revenue of Iraq according to change in oil prices and exported amounts (%) 3. Change in Co2 emissions from oil industries (%) 4. Change in share of renewable resources from the energy generation % 5. Change in Iraq’s oil exports to China (%) B. Infrastructure 1. Change in Iraq’s oil production currently and after the war, then compare it with its production before the war (the increase in the productivity indicates increasing in infrastructure investment in Iraq

Table 5.2

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Under the second scenario, energy diversification, the oil exports of Iraq will increase gradually because China’s oil imports will increase, at least in the short to medium term. It may plateau and eventually decrease, at least in terms of shares of the energy mix. Finally, in the third scenario, “business as usual,” the oil exports will increase the same as in the second scenario, with the only difference being that it is the least environmentally friendly scenario. Although Iraq may benefit from it, important question marks remain as to the long-term environmental cost of such a Chinese policy when it comes to climate change in Iraq. Overall, the BRI could be considered a good industrial and economic opportunity for Iraq, not just in terms of oil development and exports, but also in terms of the development of the country’s job market and infrastructure. The latter has remained largely underdeveloped since the US invasion while the agreements made between China and Iraq, especially in 2019, have promoted and supported more effective collaboration and actual investments that rely on the concept of oil for construction.

Conclusion From allowing Saddam’s regime to plunge the country into foreign adventures to making the world’s main two superpowers and rivals the main actors of Iraq’s oil over the past decade, Iraqi oil has been the driver for many rivalries and conflicts in the country, both armed and non-armed. This chapter shed light on the changing role of the United States, China, and Russia in the oil activities in Iraq since the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent military intervention in Syria, a decade later. Both interventions were supposedly meant to fight terror (an un-existing program of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; the terror group ISIS in Syria) but deeply challenged their respective territorial governance and generated negative short to long-term political and economic consequences, oil production included. Oil has largely contributed to the design of the US-led large-scale invasion of Iraq in 2003, on geostrategic and economic grounds, while much lower reserves in Syria may have caused a much smaller footprint in the country, essentially located in the Eastern oil region of Syria, amid US fatigue of conflicts in the Middle East, increasing US shale oil resources being exploited, and a gradual abandonment of the WoT approaches to hostile governments as they have repeatedly failed to unfold as planned. Yet “planning” might not be the right term to describe US ambitions

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and its misfunctioning occupation of Iraq. In the end, several countries, including the main geopolitical adversaries of the US—China and Russia—have been able to exploit the US failure in these countries. So far, these two American interventions proved unsuccessful to eradicate the terror groups, despite the costs of thousands of lives, millions of refugees, and trillions in US expenditure. These have thus been military and security failures and strategic mistakes of a magnitude that only time will enable analysts of international affairs to accurately assess. So far, China, and to a lesser extent Russia, Malaysia, Iran, and France, though all initially hostile to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, have managed to become the main and indispensable industrial actors in the Iraqi oil sector over the past decade. Especially, the strong Chinese and French diplomatic and industrial activities in Iraq, and the Russian military and industrial activities in Syria, have led to this paradoxical situation of the US finding itself in a weak strategic position and withdrawing over time, both diplomatically and militarily, despite its previously vast network of local military bases and two decades of air campaigns. This chapter also generated mid and long-term forecasts of Iraqi crude exports toward China based on three different Chinese energy policy scenarios that all highlight how Baghdad’s industry is, and should remain, significantly linked to the evolution of Beijing’s energy policies for its own development. Against a background of current Iraqi gas and electricity dependence on neighboring Iran’s exports (up to nearly 40% of Iraq’s needs as of 2022), it seems fair to state that the countries which have benefited the most from the invasion of Iraq and operations in Syria are those of the Russia-Chinese-Iranian diplomatic axis, which is now diplomatically facing the US and its allies on the global stage, and more territorially in Ukraine, Syria and the Straits of Taiwan. Their joint naval drills in the Gulf of Oman in March 2023 and their increasing military cooperation to establish advanced armament supply chains since 2022 seem to show that countries like Iraq and Syria (and also Ukraine, arguably) have served as armament laboratories and territorial catalysts for industrial and military cooperation. All of it has so far been largely turned against American interests and influence in these countries and more broadly, in the Eastern hemisphere. With so far little success in countering this axis and this trend, one may wonder if there is even a strong desire in Washington to remain influential in previously invaded countries. And if so, we may wonder, at what cost?

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Finally, it is worth concluding that because of the general ineptitude and corruption of the political elite in both countries, neither the ordinary Iraqis nor the Syrians have had the chance to reap the benefits from their country’s energy wealth. To the contrary. As ironical and cynical as it may sound, it was perhaps a blessing in disguise that these countries’ oil exports have not increased as significantly as they could have, in the past two decades. Beyond the clear environmental risks that it would pose for our planet, additional oil revenues to the central governments in Baghdad and Damascus, most likely, would have been, partly or fully, subject to confiscation by corrupt politicians and businessmen. Indeed, the old fundamental problems of bad governance and lack of effective democracy have remained deeply entrenched, and there has never been any sight of a “greater Middle East” in the oil-rich lands of Iraq and Syria.

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PART II

Indirect Consequences of the War on Terror and Legacy

CHAPTER 6

Violence, Political Instabilities and Large-Scale Migrations in the MENA Region: Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni Cases in Regional Perspective Rima Kalush and Laurent A. Lambert

Introduction Since the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ broke out in 2014, the international press and academic literature on large-scale migrations across and around the Mediterranean Sea and towards Europe have generally portrayed them as the consequence of failed Arab democratisation attempts and subsequent conflicts (e.g., Fakhoury, 2016; Karagiannis, 2016; Monden,

R. Kalush (B) Migrant-Rights.Org, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] L. A. Lambert Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_6

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2019), compounded by bad political governance and economic difficulties in origin, transit, and host countries of the broad Middle East and North Africa region (see e.g., Teitelbaum, 2017; Tsourapas, 2019). While acknowledging the significant role of the 2010s post-revolution conflicts in driving migration—with over 1.3 million asylum seekers coming to Europe in 2015 alone—this chapter highlights the oft-neglected role of the War on Terror (WoT) in destabilising several countries and diffusing armed violence across the region, thereby contributing to the flows of asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and other migrants over the past two decades. Acknowledging that the WoT has also stoked latent fears against Muslim migrants and linked migration to security threats, the second aim of this chapter is to show how European Union (EU) and Arab states’ policies towards asylum and migration have become more restrictive, making migration journeys more complex, dangerous, and deadly. The case of Afghanistan and Iraq, the first two direct targets of the WoT in 2001 and 2003 respectively, continue to account for some of the largest forced migrations globally, and readily illustrate our main argument. This study will thus focus on less documented yet important countries as to how the WoT contributed to a new geography of massive flows of forced migrations, namely, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Though these cases are distinct, they illustrate common patterns of the compounded effects of the WoT in driving migrations: the diffusion of high-intensity, armed violence weakens the state directly or indirectly by negating its supposedly legitimate monopoly of violence over its territory, and the subsequent political instability caused by rival armed non-state actors disrupt the functioning of the state and the economy. In turn, this instability further spreads fear and disrupts public finances, administrations, and infrastructure, which will drive medium or large-scale intra- and international migrations. In the second section of the chapter, we highlight the impact of the WoT on external actors, including the migration and border policies of the EU, and its subsequent impact on migrants’ journeys and conditions through Turkey and Libya, as well as the Gulf states. Finally, with the case of Yemen, we shed light on how the WoT and the consequences of supporting the KSA and UAE in officially ‘fighting terror’ there have produced one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world and complex migration flows, largely dominated by internal displacement. Altogether, these sections demonstrate that the mass migrations from the MENA are not simply an outbound migration towards

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Europe due to the collapse of several Middle Eastern economies and states—they are also the consequences of trans-national dynamics, and the WoT and its effects have constituted strong and protracted drivers of migration. To avoid ambiguities, a note on terminology is essential. The term ‘migrant’ lacks an internationally accepted legal definition and in recent years has become especially divisive and politically loaded. The United Nations (UN) usage refers to ‘someone who changes his or her country of usual residence, irrespective of the reason for migration or legal status ’ (UN DESA, 1998). We use the term ‘migrant’ to refer broadly to all human movements, no matter their underlying cause or intent. Our usage thus includes asylum seekers and refugees, and those migrating for better opportunities.1 The terms ‘sending’, ‘origin’, and ‘source’ country refer to the countries from which migrants departed; ‘receiving’, destination’, and ‘host country’ refer to the country that migrants travel for a significant amount of time; while ‘transit country’ describes a country crossed by the populations and in which they may stay—for days, months, or even years—often to gather enough resources and continue their journey, sometimes because they prefer to put an end to their perilous journey and focus on establishing themselves safe enough. However, the complexity, rapid changes, and unpredictability of migrations often blur the borders between these terms. For example, migrants often settle in perceived ‘transit’ countries with no clear intent of an onward journey and may only decide to leave when the economic or security situation becomes untenable. Thus, while migration routes may appear as fixed lines colourcoded onto maps created by border agencies, journeys at the individual level are often far more fragmented and less solid than depicted.

1 The term ‘refugee’, which was widely used to describe the migrants during the 2015 crisis, has a narrower legal definition than the term ‘migrant’. Refugee status is obtained after an application is made in a country that grants this legal status based on the 1951 Refugee Convention. Although a majority of migrants crossing the Mediterranean and the Balkan routes over the past decade meet the criteria for refugee status, fearing for their life and unable to obtain state protection in their country, not all migrants that journeyed towards Europe during that period were legally considered refugees. Those perceived as economic migrants, for instance, would not be entitled to refugee protection. For a comprehensive and updated review of the debates surrounding the status of refugees, see Reyhani (2022).

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I---The Multiple Push Factors Behind MENA Migrations In the shadow of civilian uprisings and political revolutions that ignited in Tunisia in 2010 and rapidly spread across the Arab region, large-scale migrations emerged from and into crises. Political and economic instability across the broader Middle East triggered an unprecedented wave of coerced movements, with millions of people escaping regime violence and armed conflict. In 2015, the UNHCR declared that ‘worldwide displacement was at the highest level ever recorded’, with citizens of war-torn Syria accounting for the largest share of both internally displaced persons and refugees (UNHCR, 2015a, 2015b). While the migration or refugee crisis often narrowly refers to this sudden surge in the sea towards Europe in 2015—when around 1.8 million entries to the EU were recorded (Frontex, 2016, p. 63)— the media and political narratives have greatly simplified the complexity of the driving forces at play and the diversity of coerced movements. First of all, the majority of forced movements took place within the MENA region itself and often remained within national boundaries (Hammond, 2015; Rogelj, 2017; Zupari´c-Ilji´c & Valenta, 2019). Between 2010 and 2019, the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in the MENA region tripled to 12.4 million. By the end of the decade, just over 7.8 million refugees had crossedborders, but with the majority being hosted in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. These countries served as both destination and transit points for potential onward journeys. Second, security breakdowns and increased violence in the last decade, during and after the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, undoubtedly prompted a sudden increase in internal displacements and cross-border migrations. But while conflicts emerging from the Arab revolutions and the rise of militias and extremist groups in civil conflicts are primary drivers for these large-scale displacements, the reality of migration movements is far more layered. Understanding the roots of this violence and instability, and its impact on migratory routes requires us to adopt a longer time scale and wider geographical scope: the civil conflicts themselves are, to different degrees, part of a legacy and geography of the War on Terror, which not only gave rise to terror groups such as Al-Qaida in Iraq, Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, or Daesh (known also as the ‘Islamic State’), but also directly displaced millions through protracted bombardment campaigns and instability.

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Violence and Political Legacy of the War on Terror The armed violence and political and economic instability across the broader Middle East triggered by the WoT have coerced mass migration movements years before the Arab Spring revolutions started. The violent and protracted legacies of the WoT are most evident in Afghanistan and Iraq, with secondary and tertiary displacements due to damaged infrastructure, poor state services, poverty and terrorist attacks still ongoing. In the two years preceding the Arab Spring, the EU’s border control and coastguard agency, FRONTEX, recorded Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, and Somalis as the main nationalities of undocumented migrants entering the EU via the Eastern Mediterranean route, as shown in the map below (Fig. 6.1). These are all nationals from countries that the US either launched air campaigns in (Afghanistan and Iraq) or in which the US supported the military interventions of other countries in the name of fighting terrorism (e.g., Somalia in 2005, and Gaza in 2008, via Ethiopia and Israel respectively).

Fig. 6.1 Trends in the nationalities detected for illegal border crossings on the Eastern Mediterranean route (Source Frontex, years 2008 to 2009, Retrieved from: https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_Analysis/ Annual_Risk_Analysis_2010.pdf)

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Throughout the following decade, the US-led air campaigns against ISIS in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as against Al Shabab in Somalia and Al Qaeda in Yemen and Libya, have also produced hundreds of thousands of displacements (Map 6.1).2 The interface between the War on Terror and conflicts elsewhere in the region are often both direct and indirect—for example, in Yemen, where American military support for the Saudi-led Gulf coalition bombardment of Yemen, in addition to the US’ own drone campaigns against AQ, have produced one of the world’s largest internal displacement crises. On the Turkish-Syrian border, the Turkish army adopted the language of fighting ‘terrorism’ to legitimise its 2019 so-called ‘Operation Peace Spring’ against the YPG, a pro-independence Kurdish group and Washington ally against ISIS (BBC News, 2019). Over 200,000 people were initially displaced due to the intervention, and a series of displacement crises ensued that would eventually affect over a million people (Stanicek, 2019). Vine et al. (2020) draw out the link between the violence and fear beget from the WoT and some of the world’s largest mass movements since World War 2: Like other wars throughout history, the U.S. post-9/11 wars have caused millions of people—the vast majority, civilians—to fear for their lives and flee in search of safety. Millions have fled air strikes, bombings, artillery fire, drone attacks, gun battles, and rape. People have fled the destruction of their homes, neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, jobs, and local food and water sources. They have escaped forced evictions, death threats, and largescale ethnic cleansing set off by the U.S wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in particular. (Vine et al., 2020)

2 In Somalia, despite repeated denials of ‘collateral damage’, humanitarian organisations and international NGOs have recorded a number of military air strikers that have led to the deaths of civilians. See e.g., www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/04/somaliazero-accountability-as-civilian-deaths-mount-from-us-air-strikes. In the case of Iraq, NY Times reporter Azmat Khan studied 100 airstrikes in Iraq and established in 2017 that one in five strikes was resulting in a civilian death, a rate that was 31 times higher than what the military had claimed. Further investigation of 1300 declassified cases identified the reasons for civilian deaths. See https://www.nytimes.com/ 2021/12/19/magazine/victims-airstrikes-middle-east-civilians.html.

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Map 6.1 Middle East and Northeast Africa map of WoT wars, mass migrations, with main destinations, as of 2020 (Source Vine et al. [2020, p. 3])

As of 2020, it was estimated that at least 37 million people were internally displaced or migrated across borders due to what Vine et al. (2020) called ‘the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001’, which are all, except for the Philippines, located in what American Neoconservatives and Bush Administrations called in 2002 the ‘Greater Middle East’. After a decade of WoT military invasions, economic destabilisation of so-called ‘rogue states’, and proxy wars against terror groups in several other countries, the region was then further disrupted by failed democratisation attempts and the subsequent violence that erupted in several countries, such as Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The compounded push factors have driven millions of civilians to flee their homes, both within and outside their national borders. It is critical to underscore that these movements were often not linear nor simple, as they often did not have a single cause. A confluence of factors and different triggering events may cause displacements one year, while the next year, ceasefires may beckon mass returns. If violence again resurges, returnees may be forced to leave again, or new displacements may be caused in other parts of the country.

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Some significant return movements in countries debilitated by the WoT took place over the past decade, for instance to Iraq and Somalia, but there were also many secondary and tertiary displacements in these same countries. Protracted conflicts also damaged housing and collapsed infrastructure, as well as reduced social cohesion make returns difficult (IDMC, 2021). In many Sunni places in Iraq, for example, electricity is still less available and reliable than it was prior to the US invasion. These conditions may not always completely prevent people from returning, but when returns take place in these unstable contexts, they may only offset future displacements. Thus, the drivers of transnational migrations are also far more complex than they appear on their faces. Though violence and political instability drive migration, migrant journeys have nevertheless increased towards countries where conflict was deepening during the past decade, in particular towards Yemen and Libya. In the latter, migrations continued in large numbers even amid the protracted civil conflict. In Yemen, the highest yearly arrivals to date occurred in 2016, one year after the Saudi-led coalition’s airstrikes further exacerbated violence in the country. The reasons underlying this apparent paradox are multi-fold: one theory behind this trend is that widespread armed conflict leads to breakdowns in border security that can facilitate irregular migration and smuggling by reducing the barriers to entry. Another explanation is that migrants are not fully aware of ongoing conflict or the extent of security deterioration, sometimes due to misinformation from smugglers. Still, others are desperate enough to knowingly risk the conflict, either because the situation in their country is no better, as is the case for many Somalis leaving to Yemen, or due to the acuteness of economic distress, as was the case of many Sahelian migrants headed towards Libya. Since some are also seeking onward journeys, the proximity of these countries to their final destinations (Libya to Europe, and Yemen towards Gulf petro-monarchies) is an additional factor. Above all, worsening push factors drive people to take risky routes towards risky destinations. Over the course of the last decade, most migrations to these two conflict zones originated from African countries experiencing regime violence and poverty—for example, communal violence in Ethiopia, conflict in South Sudan, repressive dictatorship in Eritrea, multiple insurgencies in Nigeria, general economic distress, and the lack of viable alternatives.

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The geography of migration is also constantly rearranging in response to internal drivers and to external constraints, such as visa regimes and border practices. For example, between 2014 and 2015, Syrians joined migration routes through Libya due to growing visa restrictions in other MENA countries and border closures in Europe, during which smuggling schemes were further developed. The next section sheds light on how increasingly ‘securitised’ border and migration policies have shaped migration trajectories.

II---Effects of the Migration Policies of the EU, Turkey, and the Gulf States on Migrations from Libya, Syria, and Yemen As much individual agency as migrants have, their choices are ultimately constrained by the migration, asylum, and border policies of states. The European Union (EU) and the Gulf states have been two major influencers in shaping migration pathways in the MENA region. In the EU, policies affecting migrants fleeing from or through MENA are guided by a securitised approach to migration that was reinforced by the WoT and the fears of potentially radical Muslim populations it has propagated. These policies have been exported to origin and transit countries, including Turkey and Libya, who in turn use the fear of, and high priority given to, migration as a bargaining chip to achieve their own political goals. Meanwhile, Gulf states become increasingly more hostile to refugee populations, while simultaneously causing more forced migrations in the name of ‘fighting terror’.

From European Dream to EU Policing The European Union (EU) has functioned as both a magnet for asylum seekers and as an increasingly active controlling agent that has made migration and asylum-seeking more difficult, increasingly illegal—and increasingly to the benefit of criminal networks and militias, corrupt officials, and rentier seeking attitudes. While mass movements towards the EU in 2014 sparked a groundswell of efforts to ‘manage migration’ by several member states and the bloc at large, these efforts were built on the legacy of securitised migration policies established in previous decades. Scholars identify the 2001 terror attacks as one of two pivotal junctions

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in transformations in global refugee and migration governance, the other being the end of the cold war. As Ihlamur-Öner (2019) notes, the refugee regime in Europe began to decline in the 1990s, with temporary protection measures privileged over a permanent settlement, and by ‘funding the containment of refugee crises where they occur…and shifting responsibility for processing asylum claims to transit countries ’. Undocumented migration, even for asylum-seeking, came to be framed as a security issue. ‘Securitising’ an issue identifies it as a threat, and places its governance outside the bounds of established norms and rules; it justifies ‘extraordinary means’, in both governance and funding (Ihlamur-Öner, 2019). The discourse borne out of the WoT lent the framing of ‘terror’ to justify almost any action in the name of national security. Terror attacks on European soil—including the March 2004 Madrid and July 2005 London—further concretised the linkage between migration and terror, and migration and international crime more broadly (De Haas, 2007). Media reporting also consistently linked the threat of Muslim refugees to both national security and cultural identity, particularly in the aftermath of attacks committed by refugees pleading allegiance to terror groups, such as those in Wurzburg and Ansbach, Germany in 2016 (Cadena, 2020). As Cadena (2020) observes, EU states regarded ‘the refugee crisis as a security issue rather than a humanitarian crisis’. In light of the sharp rise in arrivals to EU borders in 2014 and 2015, securitisation of the crisis justified—and provided the budget for—efforts to suppress migrant mobilities at every juncture, including through deepening controversial partnerships with third countries and organisations (Greenhill, 2016; Hintjens, 2019). The externalisation of European borders has extended to virtually every potential point of origin and transit, and is pursued through a number of projects and institutions. European engagement with Libya and Turkey, for example, formed part of the larger EU Agenda on Migration, born in 2015. By 2016, these efforts succeeded in reducing the number of arrivals to European shores, with figures plummeting from 1,039,332 to 363,660 (Squire et al., 2017). But while successfully distancing the crisis from Europe’s own borders, the humanitarian catastrophe and its underlying drivers remain far from resolved. Efforts to ‘contain’ migration by closing pathways and providing funding for countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey to host refugees have coerced migrants to take risky routes and led to the proliferation of trafficking and smuggling markets, while empowering rogue actors to further destabilise the region.

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Countries hosting large migrant and refugee populations also have their own political and economic incentives for crafting migration and refugee policies that may not be rights-based, and at odds with international obligations. Countries seek their own benefits from European externalisation, whether in the form of rent-seeking such as Jordan and Lebanon (Tsourapas, 2019) or by exploiting the fear and securitisation of migration as a political bargaining chip. The country studies selected in this section thus illuminate some facets of the migration transformations taking place across the region; in Turkey, where efforts to stem the flow of refugees, predominantly from Syria, contended with increasing hostility from host populations, and in Libya, where fragmented security dynamics and direct EU engagement has enabled grave abuses against migrants.

Mass Migrations and EU---Turkey Relations The high priority given to migration once the issue became ‘securitised’ is reflected in decades of EU-Turkey politics. Migration was a key negotiation point against the backdrop of Turkey’s attempted accession into the EU in the 1990s and 2000s. Europe wanted to contain irregular migration out of Turkey, and Turkey was willing to do so in order to join the union. Among other fields of cooperation, the EU began to provide financial and technocratic support to institutionalise Turkey’s migration governance,3 including stricter smuggling and trafficking legislation in 2003 (Üstübici, 2019). But by the time the Syrian crisis emerged, the motivations for Turkey’s cooperation with the EU on migration had changed, with the prospect of EU membership having dimmed long ago—not in the least due to anti-Muslim sentiments among populist currents in Europe. Turkey’s own diplomatic ambitions weighed heavily on its migration policies and significantly influenced the movements of Syrians fleeing war. Though millions of Syrians also fled to Lebanon and Jordan, Turkey soon became host to the largest Syrian refugee population in the world. Under the belief that the Syrian crisis would be resolved relatively quickly and the movements would be temporary, Turkey adopted an ‘open door’ policy in 2011 that enabled millions of Syrians to enter Turkey without a 3 For example, Turkey’s National Plan for Asylum and Migration and National Plan on Integrated Border in the pursuit of Management were developed by twinning projects with EU member states.

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visa.4 The policy aligned with Ankara’s regional ambitions, as it projected an image of humanitarian and political importance, stepping in where other countries would not. Turkey also took advantage of the EU’s desire to limit the transit of Syrian refugees and entered into a Readmission Agreement in 2013, under which it would take back third-country nationals who had transited through Turkey and entered the EU through undocumented channels. The trade-off for the agreement was a dialogue on visa-free travel for Turkish citizens (Üstübici, 2019). EU and Turkish policies significantly shaped migration options and routes for both Syrians and other refugees in the region. While the early settlement of refugees was largely received well by Turkish citizens, economic anxiety and xenophobia gradually mounted as the Syrian population grew. As more refugees relocated away from border towns and into cities, the situation no longer seemed temporary. Without the ability to work formally or enter school, and facing increasing hostility from local populations, many began to look onwards for more permanent solutions. To escape this ‘living death’, as one Syrian described the situation, crossings towards Europe began to increase in 2013 and 2014 (Squire et al., 2017). Many Syrians headed through Libya and the Central Mediterranean Route due to the low acceptance rate for asylum seekers and the long, risky land terrain through Eastern Europe. But when Germany suspended the Dublin Regulation for Syrians in August 2015,5 allowing refugees who had registered in other countries to seek asylum in Germany, journeys through the Eastern MediterraneanWestern/Balkan route increased significantly. The arduous journey was now more worthwhile, as Syrians could apply for asylum in a country where they believed they would receive a better reception. Refugees and migrants of nationalities, particularly Afghans, Pakistanis, and Iraqis, also began to join these routes. Local economies of migration (e.g., lifejacket shops, and special hotel packages targeted at migrants crossing) developed in the Turkish cities of departures, primarily Izmir and Bodrum, a 4 Turkey is a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention but with geographical limitations, and Syrians were not granted refugee status but rather treated as guests and eventually provided “temporary protective status.” 5 The Dublin III Regulation requires EU countries that are the point of entry to examine migrants’ asylum claims.

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short and relatively straightforward journey towards the Greek Islands of Lesbos, Chios, Kos, and Samos. For a time, Greece and other intermediary Eastern European countries began to facilitate transfers and arrange buses between borders in what observers called ‘a de facto humanitarian corridor’ (Reitano & Tinti, 2015).6 Eventually, ‘illegal’ but tolerated crossings via the so-called Western Balkan route reached nearly 800,000 in 2015, a seven-fold increase from 2014 (Frontex, 2017). Efforts to contain migrants in Turkey were still ongoing throughout the duration of this ‘humanitarian corridor.’ The EU-Turkey Joint Action Plan, signed in November 2015, entailed the establishment of new visa requirements for Syrians and other refugees in Turkey and increased information sharing between Turkish authorities and the EU. It also included allowing some Syrians to obtain work permits, in theory enabling Syrians to improve their livelihood prospects and reduce incentives to migrate.7 Both agreements provided a total of USD6.6 billion in funding to support the 3.5 million refugees in the country at the time. (Reitano & Tinti, 2015).8 However, countries along this route began to tighten their borders in late 2015 and early 2016 following a series of terror attacks that were claimed by groups such as AlQaeda in Yemen and ISIS in Syria. Migrants continued to make their way from Turkey towards Europe, but became more reliant on facilitators and smugglers for the European leg of the journey.9 Terror attacks in Turkey also influenced the country’s internal migration policies: the Istanbul terrorist attacks in 2015 (as well as the attempted coup in 2016) reversed the government’s relatively lax approach towards border control. The visa-free policy ended, refugees were routinely prevented from crossing, a security barrier was constructed on the border, and a decree was issued allowing for the deportation of individuals with protected status. Thousands of Afghan nationals were forcibly deported to Iranian borders over the years, and the general sense

6 Though beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worth noting that the smuggling/facilitation market fluctuated in response to border openings/closings. 7 In practice, Syrian access to the formal labour market has been heavily restricted. 8 Most funding provided via the agreement was channelled through international organ-

isations and NGOs, rather than directly transferred to Turkish government institutions. 9 Macedonia, which borders Greece, closed its borders to migrants and refugees without valid travel documents, except for Syrians and Iraqis, in January 2016. Austria and Germany had also stopped accepting new asylum seekers in the same month. Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia also introduced tighter restrictions in March 2016.

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of insecurity worsened for all migrants in Turkey (Üstübici, 2019). Ironically, the legacies of the War on Terror were simultaneously causing at the same time more forced migrations (e.g., Al-Qaida and ISIS benefiting from the chaos caused in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Syria), and further legitimising the policies to contain them (with increased police patrolling and deportations of undocumented migrants). In March 2016, the Eastern Mediterranean/Balkan route effectively closed completely with the signing of the EU-Turkey Statement. The agreement entailed the return of all migrants from Greece who were deemed to not be in need of international protection, the return of all those intercepted in Turkish waters, and the resettlement of one Syrian from Turkey to the EU for every Syrian returned to the country. The effect on migration movements was immediate and significant; arrivals on the route dropped markedly, with daily journeys declining from 10,000 on one day in October 2015 to just 83 on March 21, 2016 (Liszkowska, 2020). Those that arrived at Greek shores were returned to Turkey, where they were likely to face deportation unless they were Syrian, though this exemption was not always upheld. Turkish patrols also intercepted migrants at land and sea. Such push-back policies in contravention of international norms were justified through official statements and media reporting linking migration to terrorism and wider security threats. This Euro-Turkish cooperation had taken place alongside renewed discussions on EU membership and visa liberalisation for Turkish citizens. But as dialogues stalled and as the large refugee population continued to generate domestic unrest, Turkey ‘weaponised’ the fear of migration in its diplomacy. Concerned about the escalating military situation and a new wave of refugees following its military Operation Peace Spring, Turkey sought NATO support for a no-fly-zone and the defence of its borders. With no positive response forthcoming, Erdogan demanded a renegotiation of the EU-Turkey deal, claiming that Europe had not provided all of its promised funding, and also failed to uphold the dialogue on EU accession and visa liberalisation. He called for a donor conference to raise the $26 billion needed to finance his resettlement plan, threatening to send Syrian refugees to European countries if the funding was not forthcoming (Lang, 2019). In February 2020, the government effectively suspended the deal and introduced a different kind of ‘open-door policy’ that encouraged tens of thousands of refugees to head towards the Greek border, organising buses for them to the land post at Kastanies. The bleak repercussions were live-streamed by Turkish media, with thousands

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of migrants assaulted by Greek riot police as they attempted to cross. The EU largely supported Greece in its refoulements and suspension of the asylum process. The spectacle resulted in a renewed commitment to the deal and new financial assurances from Germany and France.10 In the aftermath of the incident, all migrants were returned from the border area to the respective Turkish cities they had allegedly been bused from by the Turkish government (Stevis-Gridneff, 2020). As of 2020, Turkey hosts four million refugees, 3.6 million of whom are Syrians, and who remain without full refugee status. Still, the country is largely perceived as a ‘transit’ country, with over 100,000 attempted sea-crossings intercepted by Turkish authorities in 2020 and roughly 20,000 successful arrivals, most of whom were Afghan and Syrians fleeing war. Though its spending on refugees still exceeds foreign assistance, the EU-Turkey deal was renewed in March 2021. While visa-free travel for Turkish Citizens remains a chimera, Turkish President Erdogan can still exploit the threat of migration in other foreign policy ambitions. With the recent hosting of over 20,000 refugees from Ukraine in Turkey following the Russian invasion, Ankara’s refugee politics will likely remain at play for some years to come.

EU-Libyan Engagement The EU, and particularly Italian, entanglement in Libya is the most widely visible and criticised form of EU externalisation. Between 2014 and 2020, the EU spent over 338 million euros on migration projects in Libya, including 92 million euros to manage both land and sea borders (European Union, 2020). But, as with Turkey, EU engagement with Libya is part of a longer history of migration management that preceded the 2011 uprisings. The Gaddafi regime had used migration policies to alternately pander to African and European countries—dangling the prospect of visa-free entry into Libya’s labour market to the one, and threatening to ‘open the flood gates’ to the other. Economic sanctions were crippling the country in the early 2000s, with Libya considered a ‘rogue state’ by Washington and featured in the ‘Axis of Evil’ list of countries introduced

10 Greece suspended asylum applications during this time, preventing upwards of 40,000 migrants from entering the country over a two-week period. Some who did manage to cross were eventually resettled in camps.

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by President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union speech.11 In an effort to normalise relations with the international community, Gaddafi leveraged rising sea crossings from Libya to Italy (which were, in part, linked to smuggling operations involving his own regime). The bargain established the foundations for the migration policies and practices that would be deployed after Gaddafi’s fall. Between 2003 and 2005, Italy financed the construction of three detention centres for irregular migrants in Gharyan, Kufra, and Sebha (Andrijasevic, 2006; Project, n.d.) and migrants were also pushed back at sea through joint patrolling by Italian and Libyan authorities. Italy provided Libya with training and financial support to monitor land and sea border, and even transferred some migrants Italy to Libya (Bob-Milliar & Bob-Milliar, 2013). The 2008 ‘Friendship Pact’ between the two countries cemented this cooperation and effectively linked Italian investments to Libyan commitments to combat irregular migration (HRW—Human Rights Watch, 2009). Subsequent EU-Libya agreements, pushed through by Italy, provided millions to support the management of Libya’s borders. In exchange, Libya restricted migration from African countries and launched mass deportation campaigns targeting both documented and undocumented migrants alike. Migrants paid the price for what was often a volatile partnership: One year, cruel public spectacles such as the abandonment of migrants in the Sahara served to prove Libya’s commitment to European partners (Bob-Milliar & Bob-Milliar, 2013). In another, Gaddafi threatened his counterparts in Rome in an effort to extort a billion-dollar migration deal (BBC News, 2010). The last ‘negotiation’ occurred in 2011 as Gaddafi attempted to end the NATO intervention and doubled-down on recurrent promises to ‘turn Europe black’, a threat that preyed on European preoccupations with both security and cultural identity and which is often pointed to as a harbinger of the migration crisis (BBC News, 2018). Though Italy/EU–Libya dynamics would prove to be more a continuation than a sharp break from the past, arrivals from Libya did rise significantly in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution and onwards, reaching its peak between 2014 and 2016 with between 150,000 and 180,000 arrivals per year. Most arrivals came from third countries, including migrants from Syria, Niger, and Eritrea, who often embarked on the dangerous journey 11 See Bolton, J. R. (2002). Beyond the axis of evil: additional threats from weapons of mass destruction. The Heritage Foundation. May 6, 2002. www.heritage.org/defense/rep ort/beyond-the-axis-evil-additional-threats-weapons-mass-destruction-0.

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through Libya due to the closure of borders to asylum seekers in other MENA countries and in Europe (see previous section). The sheer number of arrivals was enough to cause panic, and to justify contravention of the refugee convention and humanitarian norms, in addition to the mistreatment of migrants both at reception and at sea. As De Haas (2007) and Ihlamur-Öner (2019) explained, the migration–terror nexus is also part of a broader association to transnational crime, more particularly trafficking and smuggling. European migration policies and statements tended to privilege criminal smuggling and trafficking cartels in their efforts to curb migration. For example, FRONTEX’s Operation Sophia, launched in 2015, focused on ‘disrupt[ing] the smuggling and trafficking business. In its 5-year span, it destroyed over 500 smuggling vessels. The inability of smugglers to recover expensive wooden vessels cemented the shift to flimsy rubber boats, which, with Frontex’s now-limited range of search and rescue patrolling, posed an even greater danger to migrants (International Organization for Migration, 2020)’. In 2016, both arrivals to Italy and migrant deaths actually increased (Baldwin-Edwards & Lutterbeck, 2019). The 2017 MoU signed between Italy and the then-Government of National Accord (GNA, in Tripoli) again sharply decreased arrivals. The agreement, which explicitly referenced the 2008 MoU, included training and equipment for the Libyan Coast Guard, as well as European Union co-funded projects to improve conditions in Libya’s migrant detention centres. The MOU also mentioned financial support for areas affected by irregular migration and healthcare support for detention centres.12 Officials framed the MoU in the model of the EU-Turkey deal but unlike Turkey, Libya lacks meaningful central authority; Following the 2011 NATO bombardments over Libya and the death of Gaddafi, a security vacuum led to the rapid emergence of non-state armed actors, such as tribal militias, political militias, terror groups, and the establishment of two competing governments in the Eastern and Western parts of the country.13 So, while the MoU was officially signed with the GNA, 12 The MOU also included protections for Italy’s energy infrastructure. 13 Although only the government based in Libya’s official capital city, Tripoli, obtained

international recognition from the United Nations, the Eastern government of Libya obtained the support of a number of countries, including Egypt, Russia and several Arab states, especially after it successfully fought against jihadi groups. Led by warlord Khalifa Haftar, a former military commander of Muammar Gaddafi, the Eastern government

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the partners in reality were largely militias and security forces nominally integrated under the Ministry of Interior. Migration has also been weaponised by the two governments vying for international recognition: for example, fearing that the 2017 Italian MoU granted credibility to the GNA, the rival Eastern government led by General Khalifa Haftar threatened to repel all foreign vessels encroaching on Libyan seas. Following the international community’s muted response to Haftar’s 2019 attempted invasion of Tripoli, the GNA’s Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj issued a warning in an Italian newspaper that potential mass displacement of migrants and nationals would have consequences for Europe. With the establishment of an interim government of national reconciliation in 2021 and a certain degree of political stability and peace in Libya, European governments have been steadily returning to Tripoli and are already looking for increased engagement on migration and border security. Libyan incentives to defer to European migration interests also include securing financing for security apparatuses (Boffey, 2019), as well as its own lack of state capacity to manage complex migrations (Barry, 2019). While most funding is channelled through international organisations, and the EU claims not to fund detention centres, the funding nonetheless ends up in the hands of rogue actors (Rubeo, n.d.). In 2019, Associated Press (AP) investigated the matter further and its reporting included the following excerpt: The EU has sent more than 327.9 million euros to Libya, with an additional 41 million approved in early December [2019], largely channelled through U.N. agencies. The AP found that in a country without a functioning government, huge sums of European money have been diverted to intertwined networks of militiamen, traffickers and coast guard members who exploit migrants. In some cases, U.N. officials knew militia networks were getting the money, according to internal emails (...). The militias torture, extort and otherwise abuse migrants for ransoms in detention centers under the nose of the U.N., often in compounds that receive millions in European money, the AP investigation showed. Many migrants also simply disappear from detention centers, sold to traffickers or to other centers. rapidly positioned itself as the legitimate Libyan government based on the claim it could effectively fight terrorism and political Islam altogether, and restore peace and order in the country.

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Source: AP News, 31 December, 2019.14

Since the signing of the MoU in 2017 and 2020, over 40,000 people had been intercepted and returned to Libya (HRW, 2020). The dramatic drop in arrivals is linked to both the MoU itself and the establishment of Libya’s Search and Rescue zone in mid-2018, which was also supported by the EU. According to the UNHCR, there are credible allegations of Libyan authorities profiteering from trafficking and detention (UNSMIL, 2018). U.N. experts have also found members of the coastguard to be directly involved in the trafficking and abuse of migrant workers. The EU, as well as the United Nations Security Council, had sanctioned some of these actors in June 2018—including the notorious Abdel-Rahman Milad ‘Bija’, who operated the coastguard unit-cum-mulitia in Zawiya. Bija was targeted for organising smuggling as well as his unit’s repeated use of violence towards other smugglers and migrants, including with ‘the sinking of migrant boats using firearms’, according to the Security Council (UNSC, 2018). He was detained in Libya, under international pressure, for only four months. In 2019, following the renewal of the MoU with Libya, he was seen participating in an official meeting with his Italian counterparts, evidencing the extent to which migrant deterrence policies triumphed over human rights and international obligations.

Criminalisation and the Fear of Radicalisation/Terrorism Towards the end of the last decade, the European policy narrative has dropped the adage of ‘saving lives’ and shifted towards criminalising migrants themselves for ‘illegally’ crossing as well as NGOs conducting private search and rescue operations (Ben-Arieh & Heins, 2021).15 Asylum-seeking, which is protected by international law, has effectively been criminalised. Meanwhile, funding for border externalisation and containment strategies persists in several forms, including border controls and joint operations as well as technical and humanitarian support. For 14 AP News. (2019). Making Misery Pay: Libya Militias Take EU Funds for Migrants. 31 December. Retrieved from: https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-tripoli-ap-topnews-international-news-immigration-9d9e8d668ae4b73a336a636a86bdf27f. 15 They were forced to sign a code of conduct on maritime rescue backed by the EU, had their boats impounded, restricted from operating.

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example, the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) initiative aims to ‘address the root causes of conflict, forced displacement and irregular migration, and thereby contribute to better migration management ’. As of 2021, its value was EUR4.5 billion and it has launched a number of projects and activities across the region. In addition to funding, more subvert containment strategies do involve improving the situation for refugees in other countries. For example, international pressure lobbied for Syrian refugees to obtain work permits in Lebanon and Jordan, and subsidised food, housing, and cash support were provided to help governments deal with large refugee communities. These are critical interventions, but the extent to which they are improving refugee livelihood, particularly in the long term, remains debatable. Because such policies are tied to efforts to restrict mobility, their metric of success is not respect for human rights or human security, but a reduction in secondary movements. Concurrently, the EU’s own resettlement program has witnessed significant transformations that are changing people’s movements. More refugees are being granted temporary protection status rather than the right to stay. Some asylum seekers found conditions in Europe to be so poor that they self-deport or enlist smugglers to help them leave. In Denmark, Syrian migrants are already facing forced returns despite Syria still clearly not being a safe country. Additionally, the entrapment of migrants in precarity occurs on EU territories as well, with migrants periodically stranded by sudden border closures in rough conditions.16 These overt violations of international and regional law have been justified by linking migration to security threats, as intensified by the WoT and terror attacks in Europe. Ironically, such hard-line migration policies and reductions in refugee protections are actually more likely to pose a threat to security. As Ihlamur-Öner (2019) notes, ‘research shows us that not having access to education, not having the right or chance to work and the absence of freedom of movement are the main conditions conducive to radicalization’. There is far greater likelihood of people being radicalised in the shanty refugee camps abroad than when accepted through asylum.

16 E.g., More than 5000 people were stuck at or near the border and at one point several tried to storm the fence. Four thousand more arrived by sea from the Aegean islands at Piraeus port.

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KSA and the Gulf States: Labour Migrations, No Refugees, and Forced Yemeni Returns Most displacements occurred within national boundaries and contiguous borders, with only 14% of Arab refugees hosted in Europe.17 Nonetheless, out of a purported concern of ‘burden sharing’ during the height of the refugee crisis, European media frequently questioned the zeroacceptance rate of Syrian refugees in the wealthy Gulf states. In response to criticism from the international community, Saudi claimed to host 2.5 million Syrians in a non-refugee status, but verifiable data is lacking (De Bel-Air, 2015). While remaining open to economic inflows of ‘temporary’ migrant workers, none of the Gulf countries are signatories of the 1951 Refugee Convention and for the most part, do not recognise or resettle asylum seekers within their borders. At the time of writing this chapter, only Qatar has recently adopted a political asylum law, which still falls short of a comprehensive asylum regime and international standards. Instead, and in parallel to European efforts at containment, Gulf countries have been among the largest donors and humanitarian organisers in Syrian refugee-hosting countries over the past decade (UNHCR, 2015a, 2015b). A major reason behind the richer oil-exporting countries’ closed migration model—where access to asylum, permanent residence, and citizenship is tightly restricted—is to limit access to the welfare state, maintain cohesive national identities, and ensure perpetuity of the current national social contract, which has long been explained by the rentier state paradigm (Alimukhamedov et al., 2018). Compared to EU countries, the migration systems of the six GCC states—Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait, are more accessible but rigid, to simultaneously facilitate the flow of foreign labour while preventing permanent residence. The region is highly dependent on migrant workers, who represent between 40 and 90% of national labour markets and work in all sectors, from infrastructure development and maintenance to the health sector, education, and even the police and the armed forces. The region attracts migrants primarily from Asia, and especially South and Southeast Asia, but also 17 It is unclear how many unrecognised refugees are currently in the Gulf, since they are not registered as refugees.

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from Europe,18 other Arab countries and North America, and increasingly from the African continent.19 Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates host respectively the third and fifth-largest migrant populations in the world. The employer-tied visa regime, known as the sponsorship system (or ‘Kafala’, in Arabic), governs virtually all foreign workers and ensures that control over these populations is maintained.20 Even migrants who have lived in the region for generations lack access to permanent residency, with only limited exceptions. Thus, most foreign workers are vulnerable to economic shocks and political instability.21 The coerced return of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is the most recent example of this impermanence, but incidents of mass deportations and expulsions abound, often in contravention of the principle of non-refoulement. While the region had some traditions of hosting populations fleeing a conflict, as it did with e.g., Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, or even with Kuwaitis in 1990—it has done so without ever granting them the status of refugee. Saudi Arabia, for example, hosts the largest population of displaced persons in the Gulf but approaches these refugee communities through ad-hoc policies that include renewable ‘special visas,’ rather than providing permanent solutions. For example, Saudi has selectively extended special protected status to small groups over the years, including Yemenis, Rohingyas, and Syrians, primarily through royal decrees. Many 18 Migrant workers from Western countries generally occupy higher-income jobs and are often referred to as “expats.” However, with the exception of some entrepreneurs and free zone area businesses, they are governed by the same kafala system. 19 While Arabs workers dominated the first wave of migration, there was a strategic shift to Asian labour migration in the 1980s, in an effort to quell rising pan-Arabism sentiment and widen the distinction between nationals and migrants. In the 2000s, labour recruitment expanded deeper into Africa for cheaper labour, and in response to growing demands for rights from Asian-sending countries. The region already had a long history with both the Asian subcontinent and Eastern Africa, with third and fourth generations common, and also their descendants, very few of whom were naturalised and others who still have less than equal status. 20 The kafala system, as it applies to labour migration, is a colonial import, established during the British protectorate era to control populations’ labour activities and politicallysensitive migrations within the Empire. 21 Only recently has permanent residency and special visas been made available to wealthy expatriates with large investments in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar and high levels of proven net worth.

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Syrians who did flee to the Gulf did so by obtaining sponsorship from friends and family. As the conflict became protracted, they were, in some cases, integrated into these temporary visa programs. But like all temporary protection programs, there is significant vulnerability to forced return. For example, thousands of Rohingya refugees were accepted into Saudi Arabia nearly 40 years ago, but they and their descendants remain stateless, as the Kingdom only provided a few dozen with citizenship. Other Rohingya entered the Kingdom with ‘false’ Bangladeshi passports or overstayed Hajj visas. While many were regularised in 2005 (but not given refugee status), the Kingdom has recently sought to deport an estimated 54,000 to Bangladesh (Ullah, 2020), and there are reports of Rohingya rounded up and subjected to indefinite detention in conditions akin to torture (ADHRB, 2019). As of yet, there are no known reports of such forced returns of Syrian refugees, but the same state impermanence affects all of the non-nationals across the region. The reasons underlying migrants’ decisions to move are multiple and it is important to un underscore that migrant journeys are generally fragmented, with decisions about onward journeys and returns changing alongside access to information and fluctuating contexts, such as new regulations and border controls. But the lack of stability and legal protection for migrants in the Gulf states, including those fleeing conflicts and persecutions, helps to explain the ‘geographical paradox’ of those asylumseekers who did embark on the very-long distance migrations towards Europe despite the often greater linguistic and cultural, and religious proximity to the wealthy Gulf states (Alimukhamedov et al., 2018).

The Case of Yemen and Saudi Arabia Migration transformations in Yemen have been deeply affected by its geographic location, peculiar relationship with Saudi Arabia, and the WoT campaigns over its territory. Historically, Yemeni migration to Saudi was distinct from that of other labour migrants: Until 1990 North and South Yemenis could easily obtain visas at any port of entry, self-sponsor themselves and own their own businesses. By 1986, over 1.2 million Yemenis worked in the Kingdom and their remittances were vital to their poorer homelands (Okruhlik & Conge, 1997), and Yemenis comprised the largest expatriate group in Saudi Arabia, representing around 27% of all foreigners. These privileges were revoked following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait when Yemen stood neutral towards Iraq and against a

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military coalition to liberate Kuwait. 800,000 Yemenis were expelled or fled the Kingdom and exemption from sponsorship rules were revoked. Mass deportations from Kuwait and the UAE soon followed as well (Semnani & Sydney, 2020; Thiollet, 2014). While Saudi Arabia remained an important employment destination for Yemenis, entry was thereafter heavily restricted. Yemenis thus shifted to irregular migration channels, largely through the mountainous border regions, and generally became undocumented workers. Many were consequently caught up in the Kingdom’s mass deportation campaigns, which generally targeted Yemenis, as well as Ethiopians who travel through the same routes. For example, etween 2013 and 2014, over 600,000 Yemenis had returned via the Saudi border, 96% of whom had been forcibly repatriated before (IOM, 2018). Similar mass deportations recurred throughout the decade. For instance, in 2019, authorities detained over 60,000 people for crossing the border into Saudi Arabia illegally, 51% of them Ethiopians and 46% of them Yemenis. Some literature links the reduction in overseas employment opportunities to the acute economic crisis that gave way to the 2011 uprising in Yemen, which only further weakened Yemen’s economy and entrenched dependence on remittances (see e.g., Semnani & Sydney, 2020). Mobility in and through Yemen has thereafter also been shaped and constrained by Saudi Arabia, not only through its migration flows, but by its regional ambitions. In 2015, a Saudi-led coalition intervened militarily when the internal conflicts of the post-Arab Spring revolution of Yemen turned particularly violent, and the Northern Houthi rebellion took over the capital city of Sanaa. The intervention significantly exacerbated violence and large-scale devastation across much of the country, in particular with airstrikes on civilian infrastructure and cities, forcing people to flee their homes and cities in droves. The coalition has been supported materially and politically as part of the US’ Global War on Terror. Human Rights Watch estimates that the United States has supplied Saudi Arabia and the UAE with ‘billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, training and logistical support’, while shielding the coalition from international scrutiny (HRW, 2022). Even as the UN declared Yemen ‘the worst humanitarian disaster in history’, US arms sales to Saudi Arabia have continued in the name of ‘countering the threat posed by Iran’ (Reuters, 2021)—and therefore protecting the country from the threats to it, ‘an important partner in the Middle East’ (Zengerle & Stone, 2021), posed by third actors such as Al Qaeda and the Houthis.

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As of 2020, over 4 million Yemenis were internally displaced. Less than 15,000 Yemenis were hosted in Jordan, and even fewer had made the journey to Europe (Relief Web, 2021). Yemenis have had few options to migrate, with borders to Saudi Arabia and Oman increasingly militarised and closed off. Financial barriers and travel regulations present obstacles to resettling further abroad, while poor conditions in relatively accessible countries in the neighbouring Horn of Africa offer no promising relief. In fact, in 2019 Yemen hosts over 250,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, predominantly from Somalia (UNHCR, 2020). While not all those displaced may choose to leave if they could, interviews with Yemenis suggest a significant contingent would migrate if given the option (Semnani & Sydney, 2020). At the Saudi borders and across the broad Middle East region, the Neoconservatives’ dream of a pacified, democratic, and relatively prosperous Middle East is nowhere to be found.

Conclusion The specific reasons and ways people move within and from the Middle East have transformed since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The geographies of migration in and across the broad region have been reshaped by internal dynamics (with fears of potential terrorists infiltrating a country) as much as by external actors: dozens of million of persons have been forced to flee inter-state violence (chiefly, the War on Terror and its declinations), civil conflicts and economic insecurity (especially after the failed Arab Spring democratisations). Meanwhile the contours of their migratory routes are largely drawn and redrawn by the European Union and the Gulf states, as well as smugglers, corrupt officials, and populist decision makers, playing on collective fears. While migrants and networks are adaptive, externalisation has undoubtedly been shaping the way migrants are able to move. With the Balkan route effectively closed and the route through Libya more difficult to access, migration in 2020 began to swing, slowly, through Tunis and routes towards Spain. The demographic profiles of those arriving also changed, from predominantly Syrians and Eritreans in the early half of the decade to increasingly Tunisians and Bangladeshis.

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European policy dominance remains acute, even in the writing of this chapter—the names of the migration routes are defined by Frontex and much of the discourse is shaped by the terminology of migration management. Adopting this frame of reference conceals the reality of migration journeys, which as we have shown, are often driven by fear, are not linear nor always pursued with a specific final destination in mind. Two decades of policy evidence has shown that externalisation has only exacerbated migrant vulnerability and offsets future movements, while creating streams of revenues for smuggling networks and related organised crime, at the expense of the rule of law and even state governmentality in North Africa and Middle East. Yet, migration policies are unlikely to move out of the realm of securitisation. Instead, this approach to migration come to be the norm among conversative and liberal governments in Europe alike following the start of the WoT, which, willingly or not, placed Muslim populations in a symbolic position of potential deadly enemy. It became evident when, in January 2017, President Trump issued an executive order blocking for 90 days the entry to the United States for refugees and travelers with passports from seven Muslim-majority countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria. Ironically, all these countries had faced either military interventions under the WoT or destabilizing economic warfare via severe sanction regimes within the previous 20 years. Mass displacements coupled with the far-reaching effects of restrictive migration policy exports may be sowing the seeds of further instability. The E.U. is, of course, not the only actor involved in the migration governance crisis; countries within the region have also constituted destabilising forces that trigger mass migrations, both as a result of migration policies, military campaigns, proxy wars and regional ambitions. Meanwhile the key drivers of migration—such as poverty, armed violence, and climate change,—remain poorly attended to. They may even be further aggravated by migrant containment policies. Despite limited infrastructure and state resources, Libya, Syria, and especially Yemen host large Internationally Displaced Populations (IDPs). Additionally, Libya and Yemen have also functioned primarily as transit and destination countries, while Syrians form the largest group refugees in both the MENA region and in the world, surpassing in just a few years the number of Palestinians holding that sad leadership. Although these macro and structural trends have been major drivers of migrations, the agency of migrants and refugees is not to be denied.

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The decision-making process for each migrant and each family is generally complex and layered. It is mediated by an external environment of visa regulations, border patrols, forced repatriations and expulsions, and other tools of migration management. At times, migrants may be able to adapt to fluctuating regulations, and at others, they effectively become entrapped—at least until funding or different routes become available. What is clear is that deterrence does not work when people have compelling reasons to move. And for millions of Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, and Yemenis, the War on Terror campaigns, subsequent violence and economic upheavals, post-Arab Spring political crises and conflicts, have clearly been compelling reasons to move both within and away from a destabilized Middle East.

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Zengerle, P., & Stone, M. (2021). Saudi gets first major arms deal under Biden with air-to-air missiles. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middleeast/us-state-dept-okays-650-million-potential-air-to-air-missile-deal-saudi-ara bia-2021-11-04/ Zupari´c-Ilji´c, D., & Valenta, M. (2019). “Refugee crisis” in the southeastern European countries. In The Oxford handbook of migration crises (p. 367). Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 7

Overcoming Jihadism in Arabia: Preventing Violent Extremism Policies in the Gulf Monarchies Heba Khoder

Introduction Amid political instability and armed violence severely affecting Iraq and Syria, the Sahel region, and Afghanistan, the United Nations Security Council warned in 2015 that “terrorism in all forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security.” After a dozen years of War on Terror (WoT) with disappointing results, the Security Council also recognized in that same resolution that terrorism “will not be defeated by military force, law enforcement measures, and intelligence operations alone,” thereby emphasizing the need to address the conditions conducive to its emergence and spread

H. Khoder (B) American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_7

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(United Nations Security Council, 2015). This recognition that preventative measures are integral to and critically important for fighting terrorism has led to an influx of resources and particularly money spent on efforts of all sorts (academic, governmental, non-governmental, etc.) to address the conditions that are thought to lead an individual to radicalization in countries across the globe. Combating terrorism by addressing radicalization and extremism has become a universal feature of national strategies, resulting in the emergence of many policies and practices directed toward countering and preventing violent extremism. Many of these soft-power approaches, initially under the larger field of counter-terrorism, have diverged over time from traditional security measures, incorporating strategies from the fields of education, peacebuilding, psychology, psychiatry, poverty alleviation, social work, public health, religious studies, and the like. Nevertheless, every country tends to adopt such laws and strategies keeping in view its national circumstances, traditions, and values as well as its strengths and weaknesses. Regardless of the nation, region, and culture involved, counter-terrorism and Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE), in both practices and studies, need to focus firmly on the underlying political, socioeconomic, and cultural dynamics that cause terrorism in the first place (Kegley, 2002). Among these, is what we commonly refer to as extremism, which in turn, could be considered as the result of many factors that need to be identified. In countering terrorism and extremism, governments must also realize the need for cooperation at all levels (Cristiani et al., 2017) in dealing with the causes of global terrorism that has emerged, specifically, out of the so-called lslamist form of extremism. This global threat posed by terrorism, religious radicalism, and extremism has become evident across the world and the Arab region is certainly no exception. The Gulf countries joined the struggle early on as some of these countries came under several violent attacks by AlQaeda and other terror organizations as early as 1992 and continuously throughout the 2000s and 2010s. The so-called “Islamic State” (IS, aka “Daesh” or ISIS), through three of its provinces, claimed a series of attacks in the Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region during 2015. The majority of them occurred on Saudi Arabian territory, and even cyber attacks from abroad have targeted its security and stability. Consequently, these attacks forced the Gulf states to prioritize terrorism and extremism among the main concerns to be addressed on the policy agenda of most member states as we will see.

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This chapter’s main objective is to describe these attempts to develop and implement PVE policies, compare the patterns and perspectives and address their relationship to counter-terrorism, religious radicalism, and extremism mainly after the rise of ISIS in 2012, within and out of the chaos of Iraq and Syria. The chapter is part of a larger research project that relies on the use and triangulation of three complementary sources of information. The first set of data is gathered from key informants selected from the main ministries such as the Ministries of Interior, but also from parliamentary committees, academic establishments, research centers, and specialized international institutions. Additional secondary data is derived from a careful review of relevant primary documents; these include major newspaper reports and public official statements, conferences proceedings as well as the author personal participation in several of the annual conferences related to the subject matter in the GCC. Some of the GCC countries have formed an emerging model by creating a series of interesting and innovative initiatives that have culminated over time into the establishment of several institutions/organizations and partnerships with international entities as well as the development of national policies and programs to address violent extremism. A survey of these organizations and their outputs is presented. This mapping allows to identify the specific types of strategy developed and understand how it is different in terms of its parameters—political, diplomatic, military, social, cultural, or else and possibly find the optimal mix for implementation. This is done to ultimately examine the contributions of all these initiatives to the larger work being done in each state as it lays the foundation for much-needed future evaluation studies on these strategies and policies in terms of their impacts and effectiveness as well as for a discursive analysis of both extremism and terrorism in each of the GCC countries. The treatment of this subject from a policy and governance perspective has not received nearly enough attention among both academic and religious scholars. A short synopsis of the GCC context is followed by a detailed account of the PVE policies and initiatives as well as the institutions and organizations in each of the GCC member states. A preliminary comparative analysis is then presented. There is a noted shift in the policy literature in general, in terms of focus and data analysis, toward a more cross-national and international perspective. This research attempts to fill the gaps in the literature on the PVE policies and practices taking place outside of the Western world by

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identifying their characteristics, discussing its uniqueness, and analyzing the GCC context-specific PVE policy tools. The findings provide valuable information that could enhance counter-terrorism policy formulation in other countries of the region and beyond.

Setting the Context The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a political and economic alliance of six countries: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. All current member states are monarchies including three constitutional monarchies (Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain), two absolute monarchies (Saudi Arabia and Oman), and one federal monarchy (UAE). Established in 1981, the purpose of the GCC is to achieve unity among its members based on their common objectives and their similar political and cultural identities (Al Hassan, 2015). Mainly motivated by common Islamic beliefs and a Gulf Arab identity, the common threat of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, and global politics relating to the Cold War, the council is a regional entity that aims at enhancing cooperation and strengthening ties among the member states. The 1981 Abu Dhabi Declaration maintained that the creation of the Council was dictated by historical, social, cultural, economic, political, and strategic imperatives setting economic integration and social cohesion as its ultimate goals. Each of the GCC member states has been undergoing massive development in the past few decadess by investing into the diversification of the national economy, providing the foundation for sustainable economic growth, and improving its public services and infrastructure. While each of the GCC members’ constitution designates (Sunni) Islam as their official religion, the countries tend to protect religious minorities as long as religious worship does not conflict with public policy or morals. In Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, however, concerns were repeatedly raised by international human rights organizations as to the under-privileged social, economic, and political conditions of the citizens of the Shiite Muslim sect in parts of these countries. The GCC constitutions also state that people of all origins are equal before the law (United States Department of State, 2020). The legal system is consistently a mix of Islamic law, essentially for family affairs, and civil law, often for everything else. Although the constitutions allow for religious

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freedom (with significant provisions in the case of Saudi Arabia), political parties in any forms are still banned across the whole sub-region. One of the first major developments in counter-terrorism regional efforts among the GCC member states was the Muscat Declaration on Terrorism in August 2002 (Steadman, 2018). While the declaration received little press coverage internationally, the Declaration was significant as a coordinated effort to combat terrorism. Strategies related to Countering and Combating Terrorism and religious radicalism have been on top of the council’s agenda and have been identified as some of the main areas of concern especially with respect to terrorism financing in the GCC. In 2004, the 23rd meeting of the GCC interior ministers, a more comprehensive agreement than the 1990 one, was signed as a mechanism to activate the “Security Strategy to Combat Extremism Associated with Terrorism” (Al Othaimin, 2016). It constituted a legal and regulatory framework for unified Gulf and national legislation on counter-terrorism. In the implementation of the GCC agreement to combat terrorism, and to enhance efforts of the GCC member states, a permanent specialized security committee specialized in counter-terrorism was formed in 2006 with regular annual meetings. The agreement prohibits arms supply in aiding terrorism. Prior to the expansion of terrorist groups such as AlQaeda and ISIS, the primary mandate of the GCC organization before the rise of terrorism was mainly development, cooperation, and partnerships between different Gulf countries. In fact, after the expansion of such terrorist groups, there was an evident shift toward regional security and safety and fighting violence, extremism, and terrorism. The GCC has been stepping up their counter-terrorism capabilities and measures as individual states as well as collectively through joint exercises and coordination, as threats, in and emanating from the Gulf, from extremist groups had heightened since the 9/11 attacks. The need for GCC intervention and stance against terrorism became increasingly important for the GCC as the hijackers of 9/11 were composed of 15 Saudi Arabian nationals and two UAE while the other two terrorists were from Lebanon and Egypt. The overwhelming Gulf nationalities among this group intensified the need for a Gulf response, in addition to the national ones. In most recent US reports, GCC members were praised

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for strengthening regional and international counter-terrorism cooperation, and for closely working with their US counterparts (Simonelli, 2020; Steadman, 2018; Wehrey, 2013). On an international level, the GCC states have been witnessing various political and security movements at the highest levels to develop common strategies and cooperation with the international community to eradicate terrorism, especially as three countries of the Council—namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain—had been targeted by a number of terrorist attacks. At the level of political moves, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain joined the international coalition led by the US against the organization of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS), one of the largest terrorist organizations in the region, through the provision of political and logistical assistance to the alliance. The US military presence increased across the region in each of the member states (Degang, 2010). For instance, the headquarters of the US Central Command was moved from Saudi Arabia to Qatar in 2002, and Al Udeid air base became one of the largest bases abroad from which the take-off of the military airplanes (for intelligence gathering, fighting missions and logistical purposes) en route to Afghanistan since October 2001, or to Iraq since 2003. For several years, this air base also been providing to the US, NATO, and some GCC allies the benefit of the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) for command and control air power throughout the region, and especially toward Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Bahrain was the home port of the Fifth Fleet with as large as a 60-acre military base in Manama (Degang, 2010). The GCC countries also supported the UN Security Council Resolution No. 2199 of 2015, which passed unanimously on drying up the sources of terrorist’s financing and to tighten control over the terrorists and trapping financing of IS and the Nusra Front organization. The decision called for preventing the trade of goods and valuable material in Syria and Iraq and areas controlled by terrorist organizations, strengthening the prohibition on the funding sources received by such organizations, while stressing the obligation of governments to ensure that no funds, financial assets, or economic resources go for the benefit of the terrorist groups linked to any of these organizations. In addition, the GCC countries have adopted local steps through religious, media, and social awareness campaigns to educate communities about the dangers of drifting behind the terrorist misleading ideas that

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seek to spread conflict among the people of a homeland and undermine the unity of the community, as well as urging them not to respond to such ideas. The member states have been involved in developing effective responses to violent extremism and ideology, and providing resilience in vulnerable communities by reinforcing efforts by the UN and the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum and its operational arms—the Hedayah Center in Abudhabi, the Global Communities Engagement and Resilience Fund—and other relevant institutions, such as the Mohammed Bin Naif Counseling and Care Center in KSA, by exchanging best practices and by providing technical and financial support to the expansion of these institutions and other related activities.

Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) in the Literature The definition of terrorism, and therefore violent extremism, remains plagued by fluidity, opacity, and politicization (Ditrych, 2014). PVE describes both the longer-term, preventive strategies that address potential macro socioeconomic and political factors, and the specifically designed targeted interventions that take place at both the community and individual levels—include psycho-social counseling for at-risk individuals as well as detainees (Zeiger, 2016). Despite its impressive growth, PVE has struggled to establish a clear and compelling definition as a field of study and practice. It actually has evolved into a catch-all category that lacks precision and focus that reflects problematic assumptions about the conditions that promote violent extremism. It incorporates the soft or preventive strategies, policies, and programs that identify and challenge the “push and pull” factors of radicalization and recruitment. The emphasis on prevention within the PVE research and policy has led to the study of wider contextual and societal issues that give rise to radicalization and violent extremism known as “push” factors; these include: poor governance (such as corruption, limited opportunities for participation and a weak rule of law), discrimination and marginalization of individuals and communities, human rights violations, perception of injustice or mistreatment of certain groups, rejection of growing diversity in the society, inequalities and lack of economic opportunities as well as unresolved conflicts (Zeiger, 2016). These factors create conditions that extremists and terrorists groups can exploit to garner support for their

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cause. Addressing these factors mean that governments and organizations have to go beyond their reliance on policing and intelligence to address radicalization and violent extremism. In addition to addressing “push” factors, recent research has also sought to understand the individual processes, or “pull” factors, involved in the radicalization process. Many theories have been developed seeking to explain these factors (Patel, 2011). However, what seems to be the emerging consensus among researchers is that there is no one model of radicalization. How individuals come to adopt violent extremist ideas and practices is a complex and individualized process that can be influenced for example by the person’s history, environment, and identity (Zeiger, 2016). In sharing some of the lessons in international cooperation in counter-terrorism, Cordesman (2006) argues that there are multiple struggles to defeat terrorist movements, of which the international ones that cut across national lines, cultures, political systems, and religion is the most important. Combined with a national defense policy, international cooperation has proven to be critical to defeat terrorism. In fact, some of the efforts in recent years to enhance regional cooperation have emphasized the importance of public–private partnerships between the state, community, media, and business, among others. In terms of research, organizations that had traditionally been dominated by traditional hard conceptions of security (NATO) have taken interest in PVE research as PVE is more increasingly viewed as a transnational issue.

Methodological Approach and Data Collected The method of identifying potentially relevant organizations was guided by the fact that many of the most influential actors involved in the field attend the same conferences and, in some instances, share institutional affiliations with one another. A by-product of such a research method is that the actors (individuals and institutions) are identifiable by virtue of their embeddedness within a network and accordingly, it becomes necessary to establish what type of role they play in the network. In other words, it was necessary to label the various actors/institutions in accordance with their ontological type. The identified types include: (i) Government-affiliated, (ii) Intergovernmental forum/body, (iii) International forum of experts, (iv) Think tanks/Research & Consulting, and (v) University-affiliated. For those institutions that met the criteria set

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out above, we summarized their vision, role, and their main objectives in the Table 7.1. A main methodological consideration is that while some of the organizations’ websites are vast storehouses of information, others lack sufficient documentation of their work. Instead of seeking to compare the institutions, at least at this stage, the chapter’s primary objective is to map PVE activities in the GCC region. The basic information such as where the organization is headquartered, date of establishment, and size and scope contribute to our understanding of the lay of the land in terms of who is responsible for cultivating the field of PVE in the different states. This mapping represents the skeletal structure of what has the potential to become a rich and detailed survey of the state of PVE research and policy at the regional level in the Middle East and North Africa. The two criteria for selecting the institutions to study are: (1) operating or headquartered in the GCC region and in the case of international partnerships, ones that involved, at the very least, intimate collaboration with regional public entities or indigenous civil society actors. For example, Hedayah in the UAE is an offshoot of the Global Counterterrorism Forum, headquartered in Abu Dhabi and a steering committee comprising co-chairs from Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and the UAE; (2) characterized by an explicit PVE mission. This criterion poses even greater conceptual difficulties than the geographic criterion. By explicit, PVE mission should mean more than an occasional article dealing with the issue of terrorism. One might exclude, for example, an independent think tank such as The Emirates Policy Center (EPC), where the sporadic attention given to the issue of terrorism falls short of constituting the kind of mission this larger work focuses on. Another data collected for the purpose of the current paper is an initial overview of the main PVE policies and programs in each of the six countries. This was also complemented with the identification of international agreements, public engagement efforts, and courses or programs at local universities as visible in the Table 7.2.

Policies and Institutions in the GCC Based on the above, this section provides a summary of the PVE national strategy, when existing, and the major resulting policies and initiatives as well as the main institutions engaged in PVE in each of the six member states.

Kuwait

Qirdawi Center for Islamic Moderation Al-Hekmah Center for Studies, Research and Counceling

Think Tank/Research Institution

Inter-Governmental

International forum International

International expert forum International Collaborator

Inter-governmental

International expert forum

International Hub on Behavioural Insights to Counter-Terrorism Inter-Agency National Counter-Terrorism Committee U.S.-Qatar Counterterrorism Dialogue Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund Global Counterterrorism Forum UN Office of Counterterrorism

International expert forum

Government Body

Semi-Government Institute

International expert forum

University Affiliated

Doha Project’s Education for Justice Initiative The Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue National Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Committee Save the Dream

Qatar

Type

The Center of Social and Economic Statistical Studies in Qatar University

Organization name and year of establishment

In November 2018, Qatar pledged 75 million dollars for it to be provided

Online Youth Consultation on PVE m through Sports (2021) The International Conference on Studying the Reasons behind Extremism Launching event on December 7, 2020

Publications/conferences

List of Organizations and their types and main work on PVE in each of the six GCC member states

GCC State

Table 7.1

186 H. KHODER

UAE

GCC State Government Body

Ministry of Education

Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) (launched 2011)

The international Center for Moderation University of Kuwait

The concept of Violence and its impact on the Society—Conference The ‘Wasitiya’ Publications

Violence as a manifestation of Extremism—curriculum

Publications/conferences

(continued)

Campaigns against violent extremism and terrorism International forum of 29 countries 1. The Hague–Marrakech (incl. Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Qatar, Memorandum on Good Practices for Saudi Arabia, UAE) a More Effective Response to the FTF Phenomenon 2. Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) Working Group 3. The Initiative to Address Homegrown Terrorism, 2017 4. Memorandum on Good Practices for Juvenile Justice in a Counterterrorism Context 5. Annual Ministerial Plenary Meetings

University Affiliated

Think Tank/Research Institution

The Higher Council for reinforcement Government Body of Moderation Ministry of Foreign Affairs Government Body

Type

Organization name and year of establishment

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GCC State

Table 7.1 Type Think and do tank Pillar I (as per CTITF strategy); GCTF-Inspired; Steering Board incl. Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, UAE

Research and Consulting Privately funded Non-profit

Organization name and year of establishment

Hedayah, Abu Dhabi (est. December 2012)

Tabah Foundation, Abu Dhabi, Dir: Habib Ali Aljifri (founded August 2005)

(continued)

1. Capacity Building Programs 2. Dialogue and Communications—provide a platform to strengthen ties, improve and streamline CVE strategy communications within CVE community 3. Research and Analysis 4. STRIVE Global Program (funded by EU) 5. Research conferences, Workshops, Launching publications, etc. 1. Tolerance & Coexistence in the 21st Century Symposium 2. Publication: Beyond Flak Attack, which calls for an appreciation of the role of media and how Muslims can change the story if the story is not reflective of Islam’s nature 3. Tabah Futures Initiative: Islamic Education in the UAE (research report, 2018) 4. Lecture: Parallels between Far-Right Extremism and Muslim Religious Ideological Extremism (September 2017) 5. Has played its part in promulgating the Amman Message

Publications/conferences

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GCC State

1. Provides strategic communications expertise 2. Anti-youth recruitment campaign on social media 3. A Joint Twitter campaign with Al-Azhar Observatory to emphasize the values of mercy and tolerance

Independent think tank

Annual conference

Joint UAE-US initiative

Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS), Abu Dhabi (founded April 2014)

Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies (FPPMS) (est. 2014–ongoing) Sawab Center (est. 2017)

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(continued)

“Killing in the Name of God” Terrorism Groups: Structures, Trajectories and Ends (workshop, 2015) 1. Mounting Threat: Future of Terrorism in Europe (workshop, 2017) 2. Lack of Vision: Challenges of Rehabilitating Areas Liberated from Terror Organizations (workshop, 2017) 3. Misleading Ideology: How does the Terrorist Mindset Manifest on Social Networking Sites? (workshop, 2016) 4. Anticipated Shifts: Repercussions of Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) (lecture, 2016) One of its significant outcomes was the Marrakech Declaration

Independent think tank

Emirates Policy Center, Abu Dhabi (founded September 2013)

Publications/conferences

Type

Organization name and year of establishment

7

189

Bahrain

KSA

GCC State

Table 7.1

Think Tank

Governmental International Group—KSA is a Member Think Tank/Research Institution Think Tank/Research Institution Inter-Governmental

ORC L’orient Research Center—Dubai (2011)

Emirates Fatwa Council (2018) Group of Friends of Preventing Violent Extremism Center to Combat Extremism Samit Center for Studies The Arab-Islamic Collaboration to Combat Terrorism The center of Intellectual War in The Ministry of Defense Mohamad Salma Center for Global Peace Ma’an program (FOR SCHOOLS)

Inter-Governmental

Government Body

Training Imams and Speakers

The Higher Council for Islamic Affairs

Inter-Governmental/International with D.A.R.E

Government Body

Government Body

Type

Organization name and year of establishment

(continued)

National program “Ma’an” launched by Shaikh Rashid in 2011, based on the awareness and education approach to combat violence and addiction Resolution 23 of 2009 (speeches and lectures, based on the principles of good citizenship) Moderation in the Religious Discourse

Publications

Yearly conference on radicalization and terrorism in cooperation with the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC Publications Religious Rulings and Publications

Publications/conferences

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Government Body Government Body

Government Body

The General Mufti of the Sultanate

Conference on the role of youth in preventing violent extremism with UNDP Bahrain ‘Islam in Oman’ Campaign The Forgivingness, understanding and tolerance- a message of Islam in Oman Resolving Extremism and reinforcing Tolerance and Forgiveness

Government Body

Government of Oman The Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs

Publications

Think Tank/Research Institution

Issa Bin Mohamad Center for Moderation Information Center for Women and Children

Publications/conferences

Type

Organization name and year of establishment

Based on the author’s data collection

Oman

GCC State

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National PVE Policies

Inter-agency national counter-terrorism committee within the Ministry of the Interior consisting of representatives from more than 10 government ministries and official institutions

The National Anti-Terrorism Committee

Qatar’s counter-terrorism policy

Qatar Several legislations, laws, decisions, and regulations related to combating violent extremism and terrorism and drying up its sources No significant PVE policy Vague sources

Kuwait

Resolution 23 of 2009

Committee to combat extremism, terrorism and money laundering

Bahrain

Prevent Strategy

Anti-terrorism law

Prevention, rehabilitation, and recovery strategy

KSA

No significant PVE policy Vague sources

Several legislations and laws against terrorism

Oman

No. (97) of 2004 regarding international judicial cooperation in criminal matters Federal Law No. (9) regarding combating terrorist crimes, which adopts a comprehensive vision of the concept of terrorism

Federal Decree-Law No. (1) of (4002) regarding combating terrorist crimes

UAE

Table 7.2 National PVE policies, international agreements, public engagement initiatives, and related PVE courses in each of the GCC member states

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International Agreements

Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration

Global Counterterrorism Forum

Qatar

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Various Violence and Terrorism Agreements

Kuwait Education Reform Program

KSA

A permanent committee to combat terrorism International Group of Friends Convention on of Preventing the Elimination of Violent All Forms of Extremism Racial Discrimination Various Violence International and Terrorism Convention on Agreements the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

Bahrain

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination The Islamic Military Coalition to Fight Terrorism

Oman

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(continued)

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

A decree by law criminalizing the acts related to contempt for religions and their sanctities, combating all forms of discrimination, rejecting hate speech, and criminalizing discrimination between individuals UAE government’s cybercrime law Group of Friends of Preventing Violent Extremism

UAE 7

193

Table 7.2

Group of Friends of Preventing Violent Extremism UNOCT and the Shura Council of Qatar cooperation against terrorism and violent extremism UN Office of CounterTerrorism Contribution Agreement with Qatar International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

CHECK BELOW CHECK BELOW

United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre

Bahrain

Kuwait

Qatar

(continued)

International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism Various Violence and Terrorism Agreements CHECK BELOW

KSA

UAE

CHECK BELOW

CHECK BELOW

Various Violence Various Violence and Terrorism and Terrorism Agreements Agreement

Oman

194 H. KHODER

Universities courses and initiatives

Public engagement Initiatives

Kuwait

Bahrain

Qatar University to develop counter-terrorism financing training

Conference on the role of youth in preventing violent extremism with UNDP Bahrain University of Bahrain—BA in Islamic Studies

The Arab Convention on Combating Terrorism GCC agreement Multiple domestic Campaigns Youth Against campaigns against violent Extremism extremism and terrorism

Qatar

Every day, there are about seven different activities aimed at reducing overt and covert support for extremism in thousands of schools across the Kingdom

Teaching schoolchildren

Lecturer for students about the dangers of extremism and the effects of terrorism and violence

KSA

Islam in Oman campaign

Oman

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(continued)

CVE and Education Training

Prominent UAE officials and religious leaders continue to publicly criticize violent extremist ideology and highlight the dangers of violent extremism

UAE 7

195

Social & Economic Survey Research Institute | Qatar University Master’s Program in Religions and Dialogue of Civilizations at Qatar University

Survey Research Institute at Qatar University conference on studying causes of extremism

Qatar

(continued)

Based on data collected by the author

Table 7.2 Kuwait

Bahrain Kingdom is also set to introduce philosophy and critical thinking modules to address the country’s dearth of ability in these areas after decades of curricula built on rote learning

KSA

Oman

Abu Dhabi Plan of Action for Education and Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)

UAE

196 H. KHODER

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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Considered as one of the world’s leading nations in fighting terrorism and terrorist funding nowadays, the Kingdom has collaborated closely with its partners on all fronts. The Saudi government has fundamentally restructured its activities over the last decade to counter national security threats and deter terrorist attacks. Saudi Arabia announced the establishment of a multi-nation Islamic Military Counterterrorism Alliance in 2015, with a joint operations center in Riyadh. The Alliance now has 41 members, with its first meeting in Riyadh in 2017. The Presidency of State Security whose functions are directly supervised by the king to streamline and improve counter-terrorism efforts released a counter-terrorism royal decree in 2014. Terrorist activities, including involvement in terrorist groups (be they Sunni or Shiite Muslim groups) and participation in any armed hostilities outside the Kingdom, would not be accepted, according to the declaration. The recently restructured department merged counterterrorism and intelligence activities into one organization and became independent from the Ministry of Interior. The PRAC approach (Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Aftercare) outlines the Saudi policy for combating terrorism and radicalization. The plan identifies ways to tackle the dissemination and appeal of radical agendas while also outlining Saudi authorities’ priorities and challenges (Al Qurtuby & Aldamer, 2020; Boucek, 2008). The policy consists of three distinct yet intertwined interventions/objectives aimed at preventing people from being engaged with terrorism, encouraging the recovery of extremists and others who become involved with them, and offering aftercare programs that help people reintegrate into society after they are released from custody. The Ministry of Interior is in charge of promoting national welfare, and much of the services. The policy is built around a decentralized effort to fight terrorism, extremism, and the cultural infrastructure that promotes and breeds violent Islamist extremism. A number of government departments and agencies, in addition to the Ministry of Interior, have been active, including the Ministries of Islamic Affairs, Endowment, Da’wah, and Guidance, Education and Higher Education, and Social Affairs. In fact, one of the most important aspects of the Saudi policy has been to enable these numerous ministries and government institutions to participate in the initiative to educate the public about Saudi

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Arabia’s Counterterrorism Strategy. The program has so far yielded positive results, with Saudi officials citing an 80–90% success rate (Boucek, 2008). Also, as part of its PVE strategy the government focused on increasing public awareness campaigns and conducting outreach, counterradicalization, and rehabilitation programs. Some of these efforts involved seminars that refuted radical Islamic interpretation and ideology, public awareness campaigns aimed at reinforcing the values of the Islamic faith and educating Saudi citizens about the dangers of extremism and terrorism, particularly stemming from Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Methods used included advertisements and programs on television, in schools and mosques, and at sporting events. In the 2010s, the Saudi government expanded these programs to address the rising threat to youth from recruitment efforts from groups like ISIL and to dissuade its citizens from engaging as foreign fighters in Syria. The Ministry of Interior continued to operate its flagship de-radicalization program, Alssakina Campaign for Dialogue, and its extensive prison rehabilitation program to reduce recidivism among former inmates. Meanwhile, the Saudi government continued its reforms to modernize the educational curriculum, including textbooks used in religious training and which have long been criticized for intolerance of other religious traditions. The religious curriculum in K12 has been revisited and edited to reflect a more moderate interpretation of some of the Quranic verses and prophetic Hadiths (teachings). All along the past decade, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs has continued to re-educate imams, prohibiting them from inciting violence, and continued to monitor mosques by implementing a uniform Khutbah (Sermon) for Friday prayer to be delivered by all Imams (Preachers). This increased state-centrality in the religious sphere could also be seen as an opportunity to rapidly foster a more inclusive and tolerant religious culture, with Shiite Muslims’ greater integration into the society, national narrative and political landscape becoming a powerful barrier against the appeal of anti-system Shiite radicals, be they from the Kingdom or abroad. The State of Qatar A vulnerable small state with a small population, Qatar’s successive foreign policies have been based on a few key principles including strengthening international peace and security by encouraging the peaceful resolution

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of international disputes. After dealing with regional issues first and foremost, Qatar has been focusing on creating new policies and different organizations to deal with international terror-related threats and risks both in parallel and in cooperation with the United Nations. In addition to its counter-terrorism policies associated with money laundering and terrorism financing, Qatar has reinforced its commitment to fight extremism by introducing two counter-terrorism laws in 2014. The first, focused on cybercrime, which gives the government new powers to monitor and stop terrorist groups from promoting their activities or recruiting for their causes online. The second expands the ability to closely monitor the transactions of charities based in, or with links to, Qatar. The country also serves as a founding member of the Global CounterTerrorism Forum (GCTF). Via bilateral and multilateral cooperation, it continued to take the requisite steps and procedures to fight terrorism and counter violent extremism. In 2011, the government’s authorities were recognized as regional leaders in improving educational standards and curricula, which included civic instruction that criticized violent extremist views. In 2012, The Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue organized a lecture series, with the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the Qatar Foundation, to help Qatari teachers “equip students with the skills and understanding to interact and communicate effectively and respectfully with other cultures.” The Government also contracted a Doha-based private institute to study best practices in countering narratives used by terrorist groups to recruit members. Their first of three research papers, published in February 2012, focused on EU engagement programs to reduce violent conflict. In 2014, Qatar hosted the March GCTF workshop on developing a plan of action for community-oriented policing as a tool for countering violent extremism. The state of Qatar participated in the Global Countering Violent Extremism Expo hosted by the Hedayah Center. Qatar hosted many conventions concerning world peace and fighting terrorism, including the “Afghanistan Peace negotiations 2020” between US representatives and the Taliban, at the request of the US government and to show its concerns and commitment to mediation. Qatar continues to join forces with its international allies to form a powerful alliance in the PVE arena, while still actively promoting its long-standing peace and tolerance approach. The state introduced several related laws such as Law No. (27) to help spread awareness among the public. In 2020, the US Department of State released its Country Reports on Terrorism for 2019,

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stating that during the US-Qatar Counterterrorism Dialogue in 2019, Qatar declared fulfillment of their 2017 Memorandum of Understanding largely complete and committed to set shared counter-terrorism priorities for 2020. Kuwait In 2004, a ministerial committee chaired by the Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs was formed to develop strategies to combat terrorism and extremism. It held conferences in the spring to promote moderation and tolerance among Kuwaiti youth. Through an outreach program, the group formulated on a long-term plan against terrorism and extremist ideology. The same ministry worked with the Ministry of Information to shut down some weblogs that encouraged extremist ideology. In 2005, Kuwait’s Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs opened its World Moderation Center, a special agency responsible for implementing an initiative to combat extremism and spread moderation among Muslims through education, training, international dialogue, and research. Since 2010, government officials routinely made statements denouncing violent extremism. In his opening remarks to the 31st GCC Summit on 4, the Emir strongly condemned terrorist acts, expressing support for regional and international efforts in the fight against terrorism in all its forms. Kuwaiti television stations ran advertisements discouraging youth from engaging in terrorist activity, emphasizing the negative effects that extremism has on the families and social groups of radicalized youth. The Al-Salam Center, established by the Government in 2009, is a treatment facility modeled after the KSA’s rehabilitation center—to rehabilitate religious extremists, including Kuwaitis repatriated from Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. The facility is located in a secured area within Kuwait’s Central Prison and is governed by a board of government officials, medical experts, and a religious scholar. In 2011, Kuwaiti officials used the occasion of Bin Ladin’s death as an opportunity to reiterate Kuwait’s commitment to fighting terrorism. Prominent politicians said the event was a chance for Muslims to retake the message of Islam from terrorist organizations, who had distorted religious teachings, and instead promote moderation and tolerance (Alzubairi, 2011; Congressional Research Service, 2021). Responding to limited calls to eulogize the terrorist leader, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs instructed mosques that no such funerary events should be held.

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In 2014, Kuwait began issuing weekly circulars to all mosques with approved language for Friday sermons and instructions to avoid extremist or sectarian language. It began broadcasts of “Kuwait Youth Radio,” which included public service announcements promoting social cohesion and religious tolerance, and also announced the formation of the Higher Commission for the Promotion of Moderation, the main goal of which was to counter violent extremist ideology through education. Media reported that an agreement was reached in September between the MOI and the Ministry of Awqaf (Islamic endowments) and Islamic Affairs to form a joint committee to monitor Friday sermons to ensure imams were not addressing any political or sectarian issues. Over the reporting period, the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs referred 16 imams for investigation and deported one Egyptian imam under the Mosques Charter, which prohibits promoting sectarianism, radicalization, and incitement. (United States Department of States, Country Report on Terrorism 2014, 2015). Kuwait’s Ministry of Education continued to implement a program to fight what it viewed as extremist ideologies at public schools through teacher-training and student-counseling programs. The Kuwait Moderation Center, which operates under the supervision of the Ministry of Religious Endowments, sponsored a variety of programs designed to promote religious tolerance, including establishing working groups to reduce sectarian conflict, holding symposia on protecting the rights of non-Muslims in a Muslim society, and a program in the school system to promote diversity and tolerance and combat sectarianism. Additionally, The Moderation Center continued a program to enable the social institution of the traditional family salons (‘diwaniya’ in Arabic) to invite religious scholars to join in discussions with attendees and counter the potential presence of radicalizing influences. The center also sponsored radio programs to promote tolerance among youth. In 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sponsored a workshop titled “The Concept of Extremism and its Reflection on Society.” More effective measures are needed to prevent charitable donations being routed to regional terrorist groups or support for educational and religious advocacy efforts that encourage discrimination and violence (Kuwait, 2020; U.S Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism, 2019). Kuwait is also a member of the Defeat ISIS Coalition’s CIFG and the TFTC. In collaboration with other TFTC member states, in 2019 Kuwait imposed one round of sanctions against individuals and entities affiliated with the Iranian regime’s terror-support networks in the region. That

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same year, Kuwait served as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. Kuwait remained an active member of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Small Group, participating in a number of ministerial-level meetings throughout the year. The United Arab Emirates The UAE was a founding member of the GCTF established in 2011 and gathering today 29 countries. As early as 2005, the UAE government founded the Tabah Foundation as a research and consulting, privately funded non-profit organization. It has worked on Tolerance & Coexistence in the twenty-first Century and called for an appreciation of the role of media and how Muslims can change the story if the story is not reflective of Islam’s nature. It has generated several publications and led initiatives such as Islamic Education in the UAE research report, 2018 and had regular public lectures such as “Parallels between Far-Right Extremism and Muslim Religious Ideological Extremism” in 2017). Tabah has contributed to the promulgation and diffusion of the Amman Message which is the determination in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to clarify what constituted true Islam and what does not (Browers, 2011). L’Orient Research Center (ORC) was established in 2011 as a think tank focusing on country risk and geopolitical prospective research related to the Arabian Gulf and the wider Middle East. ORC functionally works as a support platform for decision-making covering a range of international and regional issues from the point of view of the countries of the region. With regards to the PVE, they have developed a cumulative knowledge and deep understanding in that domain. The center organizes a yearly conference on radicalization and terrorism in cooperation with the Middle East Institute in Washington and has produced many papers on UAE’s new approach toward this issue. The following year 2012, UAE launched Hedayah, a “think and do” tank focused on understanding and preventing violent extremism. It provides a platform to strengthen ties, improve and streamline CVE strategy communications within the CVE community and conduct research and analysis. In 2014, the UAE adopted new counter-terrorism laws, criminalizing joining or forming terrorist organizations. The following year, a federal Anti-Discrimination law was passed, criminalizing any act that promotes religious hatred or which insults religion through any form of expression.

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The same year, the UAE released a comprehensive list of 83 organizations it considers terrorist groups. Referencing the list designating terror groups, the Foreign Affairs Minister stated that the UAE’s threshold for extremism is “quite low.” Further, he provided strong comments on how ISIL extremists in Syria and Iraq were distorting the global image of Islam, claiming these extremists were “trying to hijack our religion.” The Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies (FPPMS) was established in 2014. It is an annual conference bringing together more than 200s representatives of various religions, international human rights organizations, and a wide range of scholars, thinkers, and researchers to deliberate on ways to reach peaceful intellectual outcomes in the forms of recommendations. They also discuss means to create a global peaceful movement, similar to the pre-Islamic “Alliance of Virtue”, which opposes violence, radicalism, and extremism through peaceful coexistence and conviviality. One of its significant outcomes was the Marrakech Declaration which was issued in conferences in Morocco by muslim scholars, activist, and politicians concerned with addressing widespread persecution and violence against minorities. The Marrakech Declaration offered a legal format drawing from Islamic traditional charters to advocate for minority rights as well as equal citizenship in the muslim region. The Declaration was an important step toward shedding light on the crossover of global human rights law and religious Islamic tradition (Hayward, 2016). The Future for Advanced Research and Studies (FARAS), Abu Dhabi, was founded in 2014 as an independent think tank and has held several workshops. The Sawab Center, a joint US-UAE initiative was created in 2015 to counter messaging and combating online propaganda from extremist groups. Further, a National Tolerance Program was approved in 2016, appointing the world’s first tolerance minister. Most recently, a Council for Fatwa was established in 2018 to issue Islamic rulings and ensure compliance of religious messaging, with the aim of “eradicating all extremism and ill-motivated practices.” Bahrain As the result of being attacked several times by various extremist groups, the small Kingdom of Bahrain (780 km2 ; 1,501,611 inhabitants) established several policies on countering terrorism. These policies encompass laws under the umbrella of “Protecting the Society from Terrorist Acts.” The policies focus on criminalizing acts of hijacking, hacking, or

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disrupting land air or marine transpiration units. An example of such policies is Law No. (58) of 2006 with respect to protecting the society from terrorist acts. Other policies also include laws on suppressing and countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism, such as the Manama Declaration on Combating the Financing of Terrorism in 2012. The following year, the Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs (MOJIA) headed Bahrain’s efforts to counter-radicalization and violent extremism, in part by organizing regular workshops for clerics and speakers from both the Sunni and Shia sects. The MOJIA also undertook an annual review of the schools’ Islamic Studies curricula to evaluate interpretations of religious texts. A major challenge though, will be to stop a radicalized fringe group from among the Shiite Muslim demographic majority to keep on fueling an anti-system discourse, while improving the social, economic, and political integration of this social group in the country, as well as their capacity to legitimately express their concerns and ideas. The Sultanate of Oman Oman has so far been the country the least affected by terror groups, both in terms of indoctrination/recruitment, or in terms of terror attacks. In 2014, the late Grand Mufti of Oman had published an essay in October calling on all Muslims to reject extremism and promote tolerance, themes he again amplified in his popular and widely broadcast weekly television program over the years. Many countrywide awareness campaigns were initiated over the last few years, though mainly for a short period. Oman signed several international agreements including the global agreement on eradicating all types of racial discrimination (2016), the Islamic Military Cooperation to fight Terrorism (2017), among others (“United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies: Ratification Status for Oman”, 2020).

Discussion and Findings By analyzing the data collected on the various PVE institutions, policies, and programs aiming at countering Violent Extremism in the GCC, the differences and dissimilarities between the six states were identified and discussed. It has become evident that KSA, Qatar, and the UAE have already built their reputation and developed their policies in the PVE domain,

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each according to their own political positions and agendas as well as their actual involvements on the international scene. Qatar has done so through generous donations to many international organizations aiming at addressing the issue. It has also been an active supporter of various UN initiatives, including some aiming at addressing PVE through sports or via education. Some of its own, already-built establishments, such as the Qatar foundation, have all contributed in some way to various programs targeting PVE over the past ten years. Qatar, therefore, proposes itself through its diplomacy and already established institutions as a regional leader in counter-terrorism and PVE. KSA and UAE have used both local and international expertise and all available counter-terrorism capabilities to identify, monitor, and determine the seriousness and priority of any threats. All three countries have recognized that terrorism must be combated on more than just a defense and protection level. It must also be combated by strengthening the rule of law, fostering citizenship rights, cultivating a culture of conciliation and coexistence, welcoming others, opposing sectarianism, and resolving poverty and unemployment problems. Regarding Kuwait, the government seems to be most focused on internal affairs rather than working on establishing itself on the global or regional level as a PVE leader. Oman was most active in 2015–2016, yet since then, probably due to the poor health of the late Sultan Qaboos, and the general lower domestic threat compared to neighboring countries, comparatively little has been done and written on the subject matter; this is reflected in the data and in the small number of activities related to PVE in the last few years, as well as the near absence of recent PVE policies or programs in the country. Bahrain seems to be active, but much less than the UAE and Qatar. It appears from the various sources that it is targeting a local audience (it does have a sectarian issue needing attention), more than showing it is working at an international level (Wehrey & Dunne, 2014). There is no doubt that most of the GCC states have committed to fighting terrorism in terms of financing and money laundering and supported PVE, yet the scope and number of initiatives greatly differ between them. While policy concerns might differ in both their visibility and intensity, this initial research clearly showed that most governments have adopted an integrative approach to counter-terrorism as well as to prevent violent extremism. In the 2010s, since their strong security and PVE measures have largely prevented ISIS to infiltrate their countries,

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there was no need to use some of the most urgent and important counterterrorism measures that are being used in other countries, like Egypt, Iraq and Syria, to dislodge ISIS, or other terrorist groups, from some physical strongholds. In addition to economic disruption and constriction on funding as some of the key elements of the countries’ war against terrorist groups, these governments took measures such as denying any spaces in which a group can organize, plot, and exploit the resources or population, thereby squeezing their resources, constraining a group’s reach and strategic ambitions, disrupting the recruitment of fighters, and securing borders. By adopting a “holistic” approach to combatting violent extremism, these efforts were also focused on halting the spread of hate, intolerance, and promotion of violence via Internet and various social media as well as preventing the use of religious centers or gatherings to radicalize and recruit. A religious gathering is restrained to public spaces with a permit, designated mosques, or religious centers or establishments that have a license from the government. This comprehensive approach also upholds the importance of research, education, diplomacy, and soft power to handle the threat of terrorism. It also indicates the value of strategic planning, human resource management, and often crisis management. It strongly recommends the coordination among the main stakeholders including theme experts, security analysts, policymakers, researchers, and calls for wide international collaboration. However, it should be noted, something different and peculiar in the GCC region has caught my attention and led me to investigate further and deeper this issue. It was about another, not so obvious, strategy/plan that relates to the existing discourse, prominent narratives, the discursive construction of concepts—all within the realm of religion, specifically associated with the Islamic discourse. Generally speaking, in the GCC, the religious discourse is being revisited in an unprecedented and systematic way and the process is mainly focused on creating a grand counter narrative and working on the discursive construction of various concepts- especially the ones associated with Islam as an established religion.

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Conclusion While traditional alliance partnerships as well as security measures are vital in the process of countering violent extremism, other, more preventive policy tools are now evident in the GCC and are equally important. These include monitoring and, if needed, reforming the existing dominant religious discourse, revisiting the different narratives, re-educating the public and community faith leaders, training public administrators and more openly communicating with policy researchers and theme experts. This research constitutes a first building block for further research that would examine how the role of the GCC countries in countering extremism is constituted and would ask: How is each state in the GCC region building its identity and image as a counterterrorist state through this discourse? That has two components: the first is mapping the existing discourse as all policy is situated within a larger textual web of discourse. It is through mapping discourse emanating from the Gulf monarchies on violent extremism, that we will be able to identify the “basic discourses” or prominent themes guiding their understanding of violent extremism and answer the question of How do countering violent extremism policies in the GCC construct the policy problem of extremism? Additionally, the future research aims to illuminate the link between problem definitions and policy solutions by asking: How does this problem definition of violent extremism shape the policies adopted by the Gulf monarchies? In fact, conducting a more comprehensive search for details of the publications, social media footprint, conferences, and other initiatives variously referred to as policies, strategies, and programs of all the institutions included in this chapter would be part of a larger study. This approach is deemed useful in the beginning to map out the various institutions rather than their activities in each of the GCC countries; as such, this collected data would be used to compare the member states in both quantitative and qualitative terms which is likely to lead some initial insights into the field of PVE and its peculiar dynamics in the GCC region. The second component is studying how the different initiatives and programs as well as institutions and organizations are contributing to changing the existing discourse and shaping the identities and introducing concepts and re-conceptualizing current concepts (mostly religious) from

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a policy perspective to determine how PVE policies are often socially constructed and whether the decision-makers are actually doing their own discourse analysis when needed. Another area of research is to investigate the efforts to “reform” the dominant religious discourse, change the existing narrative and create a shift in the discursive construction of concepts and address their relationship to counter-terrorism, religious radicalism, and extremism mainly after the rise of ISIS in 2012. Violent extremism thrives, in part, when there is a radical ideological message. There is an absolute need to counter the message once it is out there, emerging in the public sphere, and, if possible, to prevent it from gaining ground among those most susceptible to follow through. But counter narratives succeed or fail based on their credibility. After decades of post-independence national propaganda on state TV and radio stations, no government and no public official in the countries of the broad Middle East can deliver a credible counter narrative to radical ideologues in the same way as a truly independent public intellectuals or religious scholars. It is one thing to facilitate or provide a platform for peaceful religious messages but it is also important to engage the youth and other community members in the process and give them agency. Yet, this might require at times to open up a bit more the political spaces, which are tightly monitored and policed so far, precisely to counter radical groups and discourses. Finetuning the necessary political space to enable credible peaceful voices to emerge while maintaining at bay radical discourses from the public media-scape will undoubtedly constitute one of the key challenges of the years to come in the GCC monarchies. Governments all over the world, not just in this region, have embarked on a mission that might seem impossible at times but with a clear vision and persistence and greater collaboration between scholars and policymakers, with the involvement of peaceful citizenries, winning the ideological war against terrorism and successfully preventing violent extremism to spread and thrive becomes not only a moral obligation and ethical duty; it becomes increasingly possible—Don’t they say: Politics is the art of the possible.

References About GCC Objectives: The Concepts and Foundations. (2021). Retrieved June 19, 2021, from https://www.gcc-sg.org/enus/AboutGCC/Pages/StartingP ointsAndGoals.aspx

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Al Hassan, O. (2015). The GCC’s formation: The official version. Retrieved June 19, 2021, from https://studies.aljazeera.net/en/dossiers/2015/03/201533 011258831763.html Al Othaimin, I. (2016, September 22). Gulf countries united against terrorism. Retrieved June 18, 2021, from https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/163871 Alzubairi, F. (2011). Kuwait and Bahrain’s anti-terrorism laws in comparative and international perspective. University of Toronto. Boucek, C. (2008). Saudi Arabia’s “soft” counterterrorism strategy: Prevention rehabilitation, and aftercare. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526105813.003.0014 Browers, M. (2011). Official Islam and the limits of communicative action: The paradox of the Amman Message. Third World Quarterly, 32(5), 943–958. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2011.578969 Cordesman, A. (2006). The lessons of international co-operation in counterterrorism. The RUSI Journal, 151(1), 48–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/030 71840609442002 Cristiani, D., Nicholas, S., Grice, F., & Irrera, D. (2017). In S. Webb (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of global counterterrorism policy. https://doi.org/10. 1057/978-1-137-55769-8 Degang, S. U. N. (2010). The US military bases in the gulf cooperation council states: Dynamics of readjustment. Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (in Asia), 4(4), 2010. Ditrych, O. (2014). Tracing the discourses of terrorism. Identity, genealogy and state. Palgrave Macmillan. Hayward, S. (2016). Understanding and extending the Marrakesh declaration in policy and practice (pp. 195–203). US Institute of Peace. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep12248 Kegley, C. W. (2002). The new global terrorism: Characteristics, causes, controls. Prentice Hall. Kuwait—United States Department of State. (2020, December 1). Retrieved https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2019/ from kuwait/ Kuwait—United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2014. (2015, June 19). Kuwait: Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy. (2021). Congressional Research Service. https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f Patel, F. (2011). Rethinking radicalization. Brennan Center for Justice. Qurtuby, S. A., & Aldamer, S. (2020). Terrorism and counterterrorism in Saudi Arabia. Contemporary Review of the Middle East, 8(1), 56–76. https://doi. org/10.1177/2347798920976286 Simonelli, C. (2020, August 13). Cooperation and contention: GCC efforts to counter the financing of terrorism. Retrieved June 18, 2021,

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from https://gulfif.org/cooperation-and-contention-gcc-efforts-to-counterthe-financing-of-terrorism/ Steadman, L. E. (2018, May 04). Grading counterterrorism cooperation with the GCC states. Retrieved June 19, 202, from https://www.usip.org/public ations/2018/04/grading-counterterrorism-cooperation-gcc-states United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies: Ratification Status for Oman (2020). Retrieved from: https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/Treaty BodyExternal/Treaty.aspx?CountryID=130&Lang=EN United Nations Security Council: S/RES/2199 (2015). (2015). UNSC. https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.3.e4541.figure2f U.S Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2019/ Wehrey, F. (2013). Combating unconventional threats in the gulf. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.4.e7720. figure2f Wehrey, F., & Dunne, M. (2014). U.S.-Arab counterterrorism cooperation in a region ripe for extremism. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Zeiger, S. (2016). Counter Narratives for CVE in South East Asia. Retreived from: https://capve.org/en/dokumenty/issledovaniya-i-stati/issledovaniya-istati/counter-narratives-for-cve-in-south-eastasia-sara-zeiger-hedayah-2016

CHAPTER 8

Trump and Netanyahu’s Failed Palestine Sell-Out: ‘A Hate Plan, Not a Peace Plan’ Alain Gresh

Introduction Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu beamed as President Donald Trump revealed his ‘deal of the century’ to an audience of delighted ultranationalist and/or religious Jews and Christian evangelicals at its White House launch on 28 January 2020.1 The audience shared a mystical fervor at mentions of the Bible, Judaism’s holy sites, and the miracle of the 1 Officially titled “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People”, the Trump proposal can be retrieved from: https://trumpwhiteho use.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf.

Copyright ©2020 Le Monde diplomatique. Reproduction authorized by the author and Le Monde Diplomatique. This article was initially published in French. A. Gresh (B) Orient XXI, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_8

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existence of the state of Israel. The harmony between the two countries was complete: when Trump referred to an architect of the plan, David Friedman, as ‘your ambassador,’ it was hard to tell if he meant the US ambassador in Jerusalem or Israel’s man in Washington. Unsurprisingly, there were many mentions of the Palestinians, as the plan concerns their future and the future of their land. However, not only did none of their representatives attend, but the plan was devised without them. It was drafted by Americans—all committed Zionists—and Israelis who at best are ignorant of Palestinian aspirations and at worst hold them in contempt, as confirmed by their intention to grant about 40% of the West Bank to Israel. This type of event smacked of a time, a century ago, when top-hatted diplomats carved up the Middle East over dinner without involving the people whose lives were affected.

Imperialistic Genealogy of the ‘Deal of the Century’ On 2 November 1917, British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour addressed the issue of Palestine in a letter. The Balfour Declaration said, ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.’2 Less often quoted is the qualification that followed: ‘it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.’ At the stroke of a pen, 90% of the Palestinian population were deprived of their political and national rights. They were not consulted then, and they have not been consulted now, nor has their national identity been recognized. This attitude has a name—colonialism. In 1917 it was the norm. The British and French empires thought they would last forever and had the unchallengeable right to determine the destinies of Asia and Africa’s ‘inferior’ peoples. A century later, the colonial system has collapsed, mourned only by those nostalgic for the presumed ‘duty to civilize’ claimed by that champion of colonial expansion, French statesman and twice prime 2 The Balfour declaration is a letter written in 1917 by British Lord Balfour to British Baron Rothschild for him to inform the Zionist Federation of the Empire’s support for the creation of a Jewish state in British-controlled Palestine, without any agreement or consultation with the Palestinian population. The text of the letter can be retrieved from: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp.

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minister Jules Ferry,3 or the ‘white man’s burden’ evoked in Rudyard Kipling’s verse.4 Yet every paragraph of Trump’s ‘vision’ shows that same attitude, though he knows the colonial era is over: hence the need to assert that his position is balanced, since it includes the Palestinians’ right to a state of their own. But, in fact, there’s nothing new in this; that right was recognized in June 2002 and Netanyahu accepted it in a speech in June 2009 delineating its parameters.5 These have been adopted in the Trump plan: whatever its size and shape, the future Palestinian state would have no attribute of a genuine state, least of all sovereignty. By way of justification, the plan’s drafters explain that ‘sovereignty is an amorphous concept that has evolved over time. With growing interdependence, each nation chooses to interact with other nations by entering into agreements that set parameters essential to each nation’—an odd assertion coming from two states that demand the unfettered right to act in their own national interest. The demilitarized Palestinian state would have no control over its borders or its air and maritime space. Even the bridges and tunnels that link its enclaves and are supposed to guarantee the ‘continuity of the Palestinian territory’ would be under Israeli oversight. Every decision taken by the Palestinians would be conditional on the ‘security of Israel.’

‘A Significant Concession’ The US has recognized Israel’s right to annex large portions of land it occupied after the war of June 1967—all the settlements plus the Jordan Valley—but the Palestinian state would occupy around 60% of the West Bank, which the Trump plan presents as a major concession: ‘Withdrawing from territory captured in a defensive war is a historical rarity.

3 Ferry, J. (1885). Les fondements de la politique coloniale (28 juillet 1885). Assemblée Nationale de la République Française. Retrieved from: https://www2.assemblee-nation ale.fr/decouvrir-l-assemblee/histoire/grands-discours-parlementaires/jules-ferry-28-juillet1885. 4 Kipling, R. (1899). The White Man’s Burden. The Kipling Society. Retrieved from: www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_burden.htm. 5 Kershner, I. (2009, July 14). Netanyahu Backs Palestinian State, With Caveats. New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/world/middleeast/ 15mideast.html.

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It must be recognized that the State of Israel has already withdrawn from at least 88% of the territory it captured in 1967. This Vision provides for the transfer of sizeable territory by the State of Israel—territory to which Israel has asserted valid legal and historical claims, and which are part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people—which must be considered a significant concession.’ In the view of Trump and Netanyahu, a thief who robs you of $300 should be praised for promising to return $200. Because even in this future Bantustan—only to be recognized as a state in four years’ time if Israel agrees—the Palestinians would have to obey their masters’ will. A single example shows the logic of subservience underpinning the plan. Since the occupation of 1967, the Palestinians have not been free to build homes where they choose. The Israeli army has destroyed hundreds of houses on many pretexts. In their future ‘state,’ the Palestinian authorities would be able to grant construction permits, but dwellings ‘in the areas adjacent to the border between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine, including without limitation, the border between Jerusalem and Al-Quds, will be subject to the State of Israel’s overriding security responsibility.’ Glance at the map and it is clear there are no zones not ‘adjacent to Israel.’ These restrictions are, of course, put forward in the name of security, a word used 167 times in the text (around twice per page)—but only referring to Israel, which has the region’s most powerful army, nuclear weapons, and air power to bomb Lebanon, Syria and now Iraq, and of course Gaza. In 2019, 133 Palestinians were killed, 28 of them minors, compared to 10 Israelis, one a minor. And yet the Trump document explains, ‘It is unrealistic to ask the State of Israel to make security compromises that could endanger the lives of its citizens.’

‘Woe to the Vanquished’ Rewriting history, the document only mentions Israel’s ‘numerous defensive wars, some existential in nature.’ Was the unilateral invasion of Egypt in 1956 defensive? Or the 1967 war, condemned by French President De Gaulle because Israel ‘fired the first shot?’ Or the invasion of Lebanon in 1982? The Trump vision can be summed up by the phrase Vae victis ! (Woe to the vanquished). Palestinian political prisoners who have committed, or even conspired to commit, crimes of violence would not be freed, even after peace. Refugees would not be able to return to their original

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homes, would not receive compensation, and would only be allowed to settle in the Palestinian state with Israel’s approval. Palestinian leaders, but not Israel’s, are also required to ‘educate’ their people to abandon ‘the language of hate,’ which naturally does not exist in Israel… Only half of all Israeli Jews back the expulsion of Israel’s Arab citizens. Finally, the Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as ‘the nation state of the Jewish people,’ legitimizing the Zionist view of history and the idea that Palestinians are interlopers, and making precarious the status of almost two million Israeli Arabs, the ‘Palestinians of 1948,’ who are already second-class citizens. A territorial exchange would force 400,000 outside Israel’s borders, strengthening the dream of ‘ethnic purity’ gaining ground in Tel Aviv. In a powerful article, ‘Don’t call it a peace plan,’ Daniel Levy, an Israeli negotiator on the Oslo Accords, wrote, ‘Terms of surrender and peace plans are not the same thing. But even terms of surrender have more chance of being durable if they are constructed in such a way as to maintain a semblance of dignity of the defeated party.’6 The vision proposed by Washington was, he concluded, ‘a hate plan, not a peace plan.’ In recent history, several US presidents, from Ronald Reagan in 1982 to George HW Bush in 1991, have come up with so-called peace plans. But Trump is the first to explicitly reject UN resolutions, in particular Security Council resolution 242 of November 1967, which declared ‘the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.’7 Perhaps this plan will not outlive Trump’s time in the White House. Besides confirming Jerusalem as Israel’s ‘eternal and indivisible capital’—a decision that will be hard for any future president to revoke—it also aims to create a joint US-Israeli committee, before November’s US presidential election, to define precisely what territory Israel can annex with US approval.

6 Levy, D. (2020). Don’t Call It a Peace Plan. The American Prospect, 30. Retrieved from: https://prospect.org/world/dont-call-it-a-peace-plan-israel-palestine-trump/. 7 United Nations. (1967). Security Council Resolution 242. Retrieved from: https:// peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/SCRes242%281967%29.pdf.

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Mixed Reactions to the Deal What can the Palestinians do? They have managed to ensure that the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the African Union reject the plan.8 The public in places such as Morocco, where tens of thousands demonstrated against it, have shown their disapproval. But few Arab governments were willing to openly challenge the US, and some, especially in the Gulf, would like to back the plan, as indicated by their ambassadors’ attendance at the launch. Several western governments, including France, welcomed Trump’s efforts, obeying a US instruction received before they could study the plan. The Palestinians meanwhile could not win the necessary UN support for a Security Council resolution—not to condemn the plan but simply to reiterate principles ratified many times. Palestinian divisions, and the lack of approval for both the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah and Hamas in Gaza, complicate delivering any concerted response. Having threatened to suspend security cooperation with Israel, PA president Mahmoud Abbas once again climbed down and has made limited diplomatic gestures, hoping that the plan will simply die for lack of Palestinian interlocutors. The main obstacle to the plan is Palestinians’ unanimity over their unwillingness to compromise on their rights or land, and their refusal to concede defeat. Neither Israel nor the US can prevail over this form of resistance, especially as at least half the inhabitants of the historical territory of Palestine are Palestinian.

Conclusion In 1989 US historian David Fromkin’s book A Peace to End All Peace examined how the European powers carved up the Middle East after the partition of the Ottoman Empire, and opened up Palestine to Jewish colonization, harming the aspirations of the Palestinians. He noted that ‘the principal British fantasy about the Middle East—that it wanted 8 DW. (2020). Arab FMs Reject Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian Plan. DW English. https:// www.dw.com/en/arab-league-rejects-trumps-israeli-palestinian-peace-plan/a-52225651.

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to be governed by Britain, or with her assistance—ran up against a stone wall of reality.’9 This ‘fantasy’ led to millions of deaths. A century later, Trump’s ‘vision’ is a similar fantasy, and just as dangerous.

9 Fromkin, D. (1989). A Peace to End All Peace (p. 445). Deutsch.

CHAPTER 9

Geopolitical Polarization, Natural Gas, and Regional Energy (Dis-)Integration in the Middle East and North Africa Laurent A. Lambert and Majd Shath

Introduction In early April 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the start of the so-called “Great Lockdown” crisis, US oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil informed the government of the Eastern Mediterranean Island of Cyprus that they would be delaying a planned offshore drill by a

L. A. Lambert (B) · M. Shath Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar e-mail: [email protected] M. Shath e-mail: [email protected] M. Shath Birzeit University, Birzeit, Palestine

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_9

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good year and a half (Christou, 2020). If this decision could appear as a wise decision based on concerns for both public safety and energy economics at a time of lower energy demand, there actually was much more behind it. This delay conveniently permitted the American company to relieve the tensions which had dangerously been rising between, on the one hand, the governments of the (Greek) Republic of Cyprus and Greece, and, on the other, Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, concerning their respective sovereignty claims over areas rich in newly discovered gas resources. Against this contentious background, and benefiting from a period of heightened diplomatic tensions between Washington and several Middle Eastern nations as we will see, the (Greek) Republic of Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, and Israel decided to organize themselves into a structured, chartered international gas forum, called the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), which was rapidly joined by Italy, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and then legally elevated to a regional international organization, with the diplomatic backing of the USA, France, and Italy. The EMGF is headquartered in Egypt, a Mediterranean country in the Middle East, although there was already an international gas forum based in the region, the Doha-based Gas Exporting Country Forum (GECF). So, what does this new gas forum with the diplomatic status of an international organization imply for gas trade dynamics and inter-state relations in that region? Is it going to increase cooperation or competition? Being launched with the support of the Trump administration (2017–2021) during a period of high diplomatic tensions between the US and several Middle Eastern countries, is the new gas forum a reflection of such tensions? Or even a tool for Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ policy towards Iran? Has it been contributing to tensions? Or rather, can we expect it to provide a useful vehicle to address regional tensions via energy diplomacy? To address these interrelated questions, we will first review the literature on the drivers, expected benefits, and debates surrounding regional energy integration, with a particular interest in energy trade in the Middle East and neighboring Eurasian regions. The second section will take stock of the key developments in terms of the region’s commercially viable gas reserves and infrastructure being developed or planned and what we will call the institutionalization of tensions. Finally, the article will critically analyze the drivers of tensions surrounding natural gas in the region and compare the GECF and the more recent EMGF to answer

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the following question: what have been the factors driving the bipolarization of the region’s gas geopolitics? Or in other words, what factors have been driving regional tensions surrounding natural gas and what we consider to be actual dynamics of regional energy dis-integration?

Demand, Cooperation, and Tensions Around Natural Gas in the Middle East and Beyond Regional Energy Cooperation, Integration, and Economic Benefits The relation between economic integration, infrastructure, and economic growth has been researched for several decades and is well documented. After a number of studies on regional integration by researchers of International Relations in the 1960s and 1970s, who largely highlighted its positive effects in terms of sustaining “islands of peace” in a world featuring many conflicts (Nye, 1971), considerable research in economy and especially political economy was undertaken on the matter during the 1990s. It is now established that an unambiguous relationship exists between economic integration and economic growth, with a positive correlation at the regional scale (e.g., Blomstrom & Kokko, 1997; Canning, 1999; Moreno et al., 1997; Vamvakidis, 1998). Much scholarship on regional cooperation and regional integration has been specifically devoted to regional energy cooperation/integration, generally highlighting their positive economic and environmental outcomes (e.g., Castile et al., 2008; Gandara, 2007; Schiff & Winters, 2003). In theory, regional energy cooperation and integration programs aim to optimize the use of a region’s energy resources among some or all of its members, for greater economic outcomes. Regional resources can be perceived as a regional pool (though never becoming a “common”, in the sense of freely accessible or belonging to everyone), to be exploited for a shared but differentiated interest, under rules and regulations decided by a sovereign authority. For instance, instead of flaring the natural gas that resurfaces when oil fields are being exploited, developing countries such as Nigeria or Iran could embark on additional projects with neighboring countries that are not similarly endowed with this resource to create new outlets for their gas surplus, while providing cheaper and more reliable energy provision to their neighbors. This can create a mutually benefitting energy trade that could nurture a positive interdependence between national energy markets and their respective

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governments, therefore creating economic and political incentives for regional peace. Regional energy cooperation and regional energy integration, though often confused, do not refer to the same regionalization paradigms. The former is generally made via bilateral (in this case state-to-state), timelimited and well-regulated agreements. Regional energy integration, by contrast, is developed through the gradual formation of a single and gradually deregulated market. In other words, regional energy cooperation is a circumstance-dependent cooperation among sovereign national energy sectors, wherein there might be little economic competition, while regional energy integration requires an advanced form of liberalization, the gradual merger of pre-existing domestic markets and a transfer of responsibilities towards a trans-national body in charge of supervision and regulation. While those against regional energy integration portray it as a considerable, dangerous, and unnecessary loss of sovereignty over a strategic sector, those in favor of it see it as a step forward in regional cooperation, bringing in more institutional and economic efficiency for trade, and thus, advancing the agenda of full economic integration. Regional energy cooperation in Western Europe by the late 1950s served de facto as a first step for countries to move towards ending state monopolies, gradually reforming their sectors, and joining a competitive regional market, i.e., the rising E.U. gas and power common markets. All along this process, Western Europe, once a region known for large-scale and particularly destructive conflicts that spilled way beyond its borders, has become a model of regional cooperation, featuring high levels of stability, peace, and prosperity. From a liberal economic perspective, integration theorist Balassa (1961) defined regional integration as either a process of removing discriminations among regional member States, or as a situation of absence of such discriminations, for economic optimization purposes. However, this technocratic approach to regional integration can be seen as solely “commercialist” and limited in ambitions (Vacchino, 1981), not only by opponents to the regional liberalization merger of markets, but also by those who give greater importance to developing regional solidarity via trade (see e.g., Lizarazu, 2008; Torres, 2004). One could argue that economic optimization and greater regional solidarity are not necessarily mutually exclusive and could constitute the joint aims of a project of regional energy integration. Again, the European Union’s energy integration project has been able to provide both economic and peace dividends

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in a region formerly known for regular military conflicts with wide-spread, inter-continental repercussions. Nurturing regional solidarity is an objective all regional integration treaties, constitutions, and charters refer to, but which can even more successfully drive a regionalization process when a group of countries unites because of a perceived external threat, such as the USSR for Western Europe during the Cold War (1947–1991), or Revolutionary Iran for the Gulf monarchies following the 1979 socalled Islamic Revolution (Lambert, 2013). However, the exact role of inter-State affinities or homogenous political philosophies in driving a dynamic of regional energy integration remains highly debated. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) states that independently of any ideological perspective, regional energy integration dynamics are fundamentally political, and an unfavorable public opinion or political disagreements among member countries over a project can become an insurmountable barrier to regional energy dynamics (UN-DESA, 2005). However, the World Energy Council (2005) put forward a totally different perspective, based on the example of the Western Mediterranean dynamics of energy integration. With the example of the Maghreb countries’ gas pipelines supplying Europe, the World Energy Council (WEC, 2005) argued to the contrary that it is “market availability”—rather than inter-State affinities or similar political philosophies—that constitutes the ultimate driving force towards energy cooperation (WEC, 2005, p. 10). Indeed, the Western Mediterranean had witnessed a stable market of gas trade under long-term contracts during several decades, as well as some ad hoc LNG spot trading, despite strong cultural and political differences among Western Mediterranean countries: France and Italy feature secular liberal democracies, Algeria is an Arab Socialist republic, Morocco and Spain are parliamentary monarchies, and, until not so long ago, Libya held a different and unique system (the ‘jamahiriya’, or Republic of the masses), under the colorful revolutionary Guide and military dictator Muammar Al-Gaddafi. But this specific case has changed since then. In 2021, two countries of the West Mediterranean regional gas trade, Algeria and Morocco, experienced a strong degradation of their bilateral relations and their gas trade was disrupted, with piped Algerian gas exports being simply cut. This event happened because of bilateral tensions rising very high following a series of bilateral issues. The lethal border skirmishes that led to the cut in gas trade followed President Trump’s recognition of the Western Sahara region

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as part of Morocco, in exchange for Morocco’s normalization of relations with the state of Israel. This came against the background of a long-standing Western Sahara dispute; a region considered as a Moroccan region with special status by Rabat; but considered as a country under Moroccan colonial occupation, according to Algiers, which supports the Front Polisario independentist organization (Dworking, 2021). To benefit from Washington’s support in that file, Morocco has long labeled these independentists as members of a terrorist organization. Beyond the sovereignty issue and the debate on the drivers of integration, it is worth noting that few studies have investigated over the past half century the negative impacts or limits to regional energy integration. It includes the often under-estimated techno-economic and legal complexities as well as under-estimated integration costs (Eynon et al., 2000; Lerner, 2003; Turvey, 2006). It is also within the empirically grounded literature addressing the environmental issues of large energy infrastructures—especially large dams (e.g. WCD, 2000)—that some of the rare theoretical critiques can be found to the otherwise overwhelmingly positive discourse promoting regional energy cooperation and integration (see e.g. Castile et al., 2008; Gandara, 2007; Schiff & Winters, 2003; WEC, 2005). In the field of geopolitics and international relations, the literature generally shows how regional energy integration can alleviate or even settle the geostrategic perils of energy dependency. Eastern Mediterranean countries for instance, rely heavily on hydrocarbons in their energy mix, most of which is imported. Figure 9.1 indicates this cost of importing hydrocarbons, which can in turn help us understand the expected economic benefits at stake with the development of natural gas resources. But there again, the absence of studies on the tradeoffs and issues arising from developing and ultimately depending on natural gas is also problematic. The Weaponization of Natural Gas Energy industries have historically been part of modern inter-state relations and geopolitics (Grigas, 2014; Lambert et al., 2022; Yergin, 1991, 2011). Despite an international effort to limit the consumption of hydrocarbons resources for environmental reasons, they still represent strategically important commodities for any modern economy, as oil is needed for all forms of air transportation and most road and sea transportation vehicles. Also, over the past two decades, there has been a strong rise

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Fig. 9.1 Economic incentives for developing National Hydrocarbon Resources: Cost of Hydrocarbon Imports in the Eastern Mediterranean in 2018 (Sources Author’s compilation, based on World Integrated Trade Solutions [WTIS]. [2020]. Global trade statistics database. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https:// wits.worldbank.org/Default.aspx?lang=en; IEA. [2020]. World energy balances: Overview. Paris. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://www.iea.org/rep orts/world-energy-balances-overview; OECD. [2021]. Harmonised system 2017 [Edition 2020]: International trade by commodity statistics [database]. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://doi.org/10.1787/e35fae2f-en)

in global demand for natural gas, which has been increasingly used in power generation and for industrial purposes. The shipping of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) via tankers has doubled in volume over the same period, as the shipments of countries like Qatar, Australia, and the USA have increasingly competed against the previous monopolies and oligopolies over gas supplied by pipeline. In the European context, for instance, these piped deliveries had provided strong geopolitical leverage to Moscow over Europe (O’Sullivan, 2017), with at times, the drop or total cut in deliveries due to diplomatic issues. Grigas (2017) called it Russia’s “weaponization of natural gas”.

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The gas weaponization discourse and the 2022 Russian gas cuts to several EU countries, following the EU sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that year, reflect the geopolitical role attributed to natural gas pipelines in contemporary geopolitics. Yet, in some contexts, because of geographic proximity and the existence of pipeline infrastructure which strongly lowers transportation costs, piped gas deliveries can be favoured despite complicated or even hostile bilateral relations at times. For instance, Algeria had long remained a gas supplier of Morocco despite major territorial disputes in the South, and Qatar has remained to this day an important gas provider to the United Arab Emirates, despite severe diplomatic tensionss arising between these neighbors over the past decade (Lambert & Lee, 2018a). Despite several cuts in natural gas deliveries to Ukraine, Russia had also long remained the main gas provider to Europe prior to the 2022 crisis, due to its extensive gas infrastructure, powerful institutions (giant energy companies, joint-ventures, and lobbies), and lower commodity prices (Fig. 9.2). Dargin (2008) explained the economic rationale behind the natural gas cooperation in 1999 and the 2000s between Qatar (a country with vast gas reserves but then limited financial capacities to build the needed infrastructure), the UAE (a country with vast capital to invest and a fast growing demand in natural gas), and Oman (another neighboring country with growing gas demand). He contrasted this successful

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case with the situation of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, two other neighboring countries, which have not benefited from Qatar’s giant gas reserves, due to long-standing diplomatic tensions and the Saudi veto over the construction of a Qatari pipeline on its soil. After similar regional diplomatic tensions escalated in 2017 with the approval of US President Donald Trump and Qatar found itself blockaded by its Arab neighbors in June of that year, Qatar decided not to weaponize its natural gas trade, and kept on selling it to its then hostile neighbor, with the commercial status quo ante prevailing. As a rational actor focused on long-term perspectives, Qatar simply wanted to preserve its reputation as a reliable gas provider during a period of increasing competition in what was then an over-supplied international market. In other words, when it comes to natural gas geopolitics and strategy, business and reputational interests can sometimes trump diplomatic grievances and foreign policy disputes. This rational choice theory despite old grievances is exactly what could long explain the gas provisions from the Socialist Republic of Algeria to the Conservative Kingdom of Morocco in the Western Mediterranean for many years, despite the strong disagreement over the fate of the Western Sahara/Southern Moroccan territory. At least until the Trump administration disrupted the status quo on this file as above mentioned. Like elsewhere, Middle East grievances from a previous century can lead to suboptimal outcomes of regional gas (under-)development and, in some cases, even tensions around the resource despite a promising case for energy cooperation and trade. In the Eastern Mediterranean context of the Syrian Civil War, several media owned by the government of Russia have repeatedly aired theories that America’s involvement in the conflict was due to the regime of Bashar Al-Assad’s resolute opposition to a pipeline providing natural gas from the Middle East, and especially from the US-supportive State of Qatar, and bound to Turkey and the European Union via Syria (see e.g. RT, 2017). According to this narrative, disagreements over this proposed regional energy cooperation led to the civil war. This discourse—which probably holds some elements of truth— seems very convenient for the regime of Bashar Al-Assad to blame onto others for the revolution and camouflage the systemic corruption and popular disenfranchisement which fueled the 2011–2012 popular revolts and subsequent civil war. Indeed, gas resources politics can generate interstate tensions and fierce state propaganda which, in turn, can further exacerbate tensions.

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East Mediterranean Gas, New Dynamics, and the Institutionalization of Tensions Geopolitical Background and the Role of Natural Gas in East-Med Tensions Following offshore natural gas discoveries in Egypt half a century ago, offshore gas exploration only slowly took off in the area. The rare exploration operations did not produce any substantial discoveries of commercially viable gas resources largely because, at that time, East Mediterranean waters had remained relatively unwelcoming to extensive oil and gas exploration. Lebanon was suffering from a devastating civil war (1975–1990); Israel did not sign any peace treaty up until 1979 with Egypt, and until 1994 with Jordan, thereby technically remaining at war with most of its Arab neighbors until then. Meanwhile Greece, the Republic of Cyprus, Turkey, and the Turkish Republic of Cyprus have simply never recognized each other’s maritime borders since the 1974 Turkish military intervention on the divided island. Put it simply, the East Mediterranean area was until the 1990s a highly disputed area wherein wars, territorial disputes, and conflicts had long made it the Middle East’s crisis hotspot and a generally unattractive place for costly gas exploration investments. Especially as gas was then not as demanded—and expensive—than it eventually became during the 2000s and 2010s. By then however, natural gas was starting to be preferred over crude oil by public authorities and private companies as a cleaner and cheaper source of energy for various industrial purposes, and particularly to meet the fastgrowing demand of power generation and water desalination (Dargin, 2008; Lambert & Lee, 2018b). In 1999 and 2000, gas discoveries off the shores of Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip had raised hopes and ambitions in the area (Karbuz, 2018). Elsewhere in the Middle East, as in Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, the UAE, and Qatar, among others, the world’s largest energy companies were increasingly granted exploration rights to look for natural gas, generally with the host government’s aims to decrease growing costs of domestic energy consumption, improve energy security, and boost the industrial and economic development of the country with a cost-efficient fuel and some exports. Egypt temporarily managed to do so, and it remained until 2015 a net gas exporter. But due to the maturation of

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its gas reservoirs and decline in production on the one hand, and a fastgrowing domestic demand on the other, Egypt became a net gas importer by 2015, receiving then supplies from countries of the region. This included Israel and Qatar, with which it had diplomatic relations ranging from difficult to antagonistic, accusing Qatar for instance of supporting and funding Egypt’s opposition, which Cairo would conveniently label as “terror groups”. Egypt’s liquefying gas infrastructure has largely been under-used during the second half of the 2010s due to its lack of exports. But in 2015, the discovery of the large Zohr field appeared to most observers as a potential game changer. The 845 bcm gas field, the largest natural gas field ever discovered in the Mediterranean, has been expected to restore Egypt’s place as a gas exporter (Karbuz, 2018). With natural gas taking almost 50% of its primary energy consumption and 77% of its power generation needs (Ratner, 2016), the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum has drawn up an ambitious policy to develop the resource for its domestic market and revitalize its exports of LNG towards Europe. To hold better chances to secure enough gas supplies for its liquefaction plant (wherein gas is cooled to take less volume for shipping purposes) and that it can export it in a competitive manner towards the European market, Egypt decided to gather several regional producers and potential producers in a forum. But it had regularly criticized Qatar, which hosts the largest gas forum in the Middle East and in the world, with various accusations, including state sponsoring terrorism as already mentioned, so it could not join and depend on the Doha-based gas forum. In 2020, the Egyptian government, eager to more rapidly develop its offshore gas resources, decided to host instead ministers and highranking diplomats from Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority (but not its rival administration of the Hamas, in Gaza), to sign the Cairo-based East Med Gas Forum (EMGF) foundation charter, thereby creating a new forum for natural gas producing countries. This diplomatic move was not an obvious one solely dictated by industrial or technocratic needs as we will see. This international gas forum was the second to be based in the region, as already mentioned, 19 years after the launch of the Doha-based Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), which has been serving more than twice as many gas exporting countries, including several of the world’s largest gas producers.

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When Geopolitics Dictates Politics and Policies Ever since the Arab counterrevolutions of the 2010s, wherein autocratic rulers toppled down the democratically elected but incompetent rulers of post-revolutionary governments of the Arab Spring, as in Egypt, Tunisia, and Sudan, diplomatic relations between Egypt, headed by Marechal Abdelfattah Al-Sissi, and Qatar, ruled by a constitutional monarchy supporting popular revolts, have soured. At one moment, in June 2017, Egypt contributed to the multi-country boycott and blockade of Qatar, alongside the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. Is this what can explain the above-mentioned formation of an Egypt-based second international gas forum in the Middle East? Was it first and foremost an alternative to the one based in Qatar? This seems particularly plausible as it appears that the EMGF was formed to organize some form of systematic response to the existing GECF, both in terms of natural gas competition for the shares in the European energy market, but also as a political cold war, as countries of each forum share very different affinities. Greece, Israel, and Cyprus have signed a trilateral agreement to build a new pipeline across the Mediterranean. This did complicate further the Israeli and Greek relations vis a vis Turkey and Russia, as it threatens the above-mentioned role of Russian gas supplies to Europe, and Turkey’s ambitions as an energy hub and corridor. The pipeline will also have to cross maritime borders unilaterally claimed a few years ago by Turkey, and that the European Union swiftly declared illegal (Koutantou, 2020). The substantial discoveries of natural gas in the Mediterranean and Black Seas in recent years have been claimed by Turkey as changing its foreseeable energy future. As of 2018, half the electricity in Turkey was powered by natural gas, which required around 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas annually, but for which Ankara relied at 60% on Russian gas, and 20% on Iranian gas. Turkey was logically not seen by the anti-Iranian Trump administration and the Israeli government, both in favor of the ‘maximum pressure’ policy against Teheran, as a country standing on the right side of a sharply divided Middle East. Even the remaining 20% of Turkey’s needs were coming Qatar and other LNG exporters, while Qatar too, was seen at that time by Israel, three Gulf states, Egypt, and temporarily by the Trump administration, very negatively as already mentioned: too close to political Islam organizations (chiefly, the Muslim Brotherhood), too diplomatically open towards Iran (a country with which it shares a long maritime border and the world’s largest gas basin), and accused

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of financing terror groups in Syria and Egypt. Qatar’s shared gas basin with Iran constitutes its main source of wealth, and the origin of Qatar’s independent economic, industrial, and diplomatic choices. A situation strongly resented by neighboring countries and leading to the 2017–2021 blockade of Qatar under the pretext of fighting the funding of terrorism in the region and Iran’s influence, with the initial approval of the Trump Administration. Across the East Mediterranean waters, several large sub-sea gas fields were discovered in 2018 and further exploration had taken place since then, though this only triggered more tensions between the different governments of the area. For instance, the government of Turkey has repeatedly sent warships to the long-disputed territorial waters of the divided island of Cyprus, to affirm Turkish Cypriot sovereignty over the area and newfound resources. The government of Turkey intended to prevent any fait accompli of their exploitation by oil and gas Italian major ENI which had been authorized to drill there by the other (Greek) Cypriot government, which is recognized by the United Nations. Several countries in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond have since worked together on new projects of exploration and production (E&P). It was in this particularly polarized geopolitical context that they launched in January 2020 the new gas forum, the EMGF, officially to foster cooperation and jointly develop policies and strategies for it.1 But from outside the Eastern Mediterranean, the French government, worried at the increasing weight of Turkey in the region, supported this new initiative. After just a few months, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) jointly declared requesting from Turkey “to fully respect the sovereignty and sovereign rights of all states in their maritime zones in the eastern Mediterranean [and collectively] strongly condemned Turkey’s military interference in Libya”.2 Turkey diplomatically retaliated by accusing these states of forming an “alliance of evil ” (Aydınta¸sba¸s et al., 2020). This terminology, reminiscent of the early years of the War on Terror and the Bush Administration’s “axis of evil ” terminology concerning hostile states, illustrated perfectly well the high levels 1 See the official website of the EMGF, at https://emgf.org/. 2 Joint Declaration adopted by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus, Egypt,

France, Greece and the United Arab Emirates (11.05.2020). https://www.mfa.gr/en/ current-affairs/statements-speeches/joint-declaration-adopted-by-the-ministers-of-foreignaffairs-of-cyprus-egypt-france-greece-and-the-united-arab-emirates-11052020.html.

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of polarization in the region and how the imagery of the WoT was pervasive in the delegitimization discourses on all sides of the divided region. Escalations in Maritime and Diplomatic Disputes Over Gas Resources Long before any natural gas discoveries were made in the Levant basin, localized disputes and tensions in the region were present due to the geopolitical reasons mentioned earlier, including maritime border demarcations. At the time of writing this chapter, no complete and mutually agreed upon maritime borders were demarcated between (Greek) Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Cyprus, (Greek) Cyprus and Libya, (Greek) Cyprus and Turkey, Turkish Republic of Cyprus and Syria, and Israel and Palestine’s Gaza area. Tensions about maritime borders is one of the key obstructions for natural gas development, especially in the tension hotspots located between Turkey and Cyprus, and, until the Biden administration decided to support a framework agreement, between Israel and Lebanon. Turkey and Cyprus Long after the launch of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognized only by Turkey, maritime disputes in the Mediterranean between Turkey and Cyprus, which is backed by Greece and the European Union, have been rising in recent years. Between the years 2003 and 2010, Turkey has condemned every maritime border agreement that Cyprus made with its neighbors, claiming that Nicosia does not represent all the Cypriots living on the island, therefore, it is not legitimate to make any maritime agreements with other countries. Moreover, Turkey claims that parts of Cyprus’s Exclusive Economic Zone fall into its own continental shelf, and other parts belong to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (Sukkarieh, 2021). The escalation in tensions between the two countries reached its highest level in 2018, when Cyprus accused Turkish military ships of obstructing an exploration vessel operated by Italy’s energy giant ENI in the Cypriot EEZ, which later caused ENI to abandon its contract with Cyprus to explore Block 3 of the Cypriot EEZ (Kambas, 2018). In 2019, Ankara unilaterally proclaimed its maritime borders in the Mediterranean Sea via a bilateral agreement with Libya’s Tripoli government. Greece and Cyprus replied that it violated the latter’s maritime

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sovereignty and rights, and obtained the European Union’s diplomatic support against Turkish claims. Subsequently, in response to the Turkish position, and amidst a general period of rising tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus, Greece, and Italy performed a naval exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the participation of French forces in August 2020 (Reuters, 2020). This kind of diplomatic tensions, that could one day lead to military incidents at sea, constitute a reason why full regional energy integration has never been achieved in this region, despite much potential. Israel and Lebanon These two neighboring countries have technically been at war since 1948, as no peace treaty or border demarcation agreement has ever been signed between the two countries. However, Aboultaif (2017) argued that discoveries of natural gas reserves in the Levant Basin was the main driver, or trigger, behind a period of high tensions over maritime borders between Israel, Cyprus, and Lebanon. In the case of Israel and Lebanon, the discovery led by US company Noble Energy of the Leviathan field in the Israeli waters in late 2010 is arguably the point where the Israel and Lebanon border dispute became more acute (Aboultaif, 2017). According to Staniˇc and Karbuz (2020), the areas of overlapping territorial seas and EEZ between Lebanon and Israel represents about 850 km2 and hold a significant natural gas resources potential. Most of the time, Israel and Lebanon remain in a state of cold war, with no violence and as little diplomacy as possible. Yet the powerful political party and Shiite militia Hezbollah is particularly hostile to any normalization with Israel and repeatedly warned of military reprisals towards any attempt to violate what it considers Lebanon’s sovereignty. The 2010 gas discovery changed the nature of the dispute. It included very valuable resources of energy, while Lebanon’s economy had been particularly struggling and on the brink of collapse, and Israel remained adamant for energy security in a region largely unstable and often hostile to its position of non-recognition of a Palestinian state and occupation of Arab lands and maritime areas, according to UN resolutions. As a clear illustration of such tensions, on July 2, 2022, Israel shot down three drones sent by the Hezbollah to fly over the gas-rich disputed maritime zones.

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Drivers of Tensions Surrounding Natural Gas in the Region The Demographic Factor and Boom in Regional Natural Gas Demand Amidst rapid demographic growth, most governments of the MENA region, including all the East Mediterranean countries, have been struggling to provide for the basic needs and employment opportunities of their young populations. For instance, the Egyptian economy has been in need to annually generate half a million additional jobs to absorb new entrants into its job market over the past two decades due to its sustained demography.3 It has, so far, largely failed to provide that magnitude of opportunities. Assaad et al. (2019) noted that, following the 2008 global economic crisis and the post-revolutionary crisis of the early 2010s, the economic recovery of the decade has “essentially been a jobless recovery”, with “employment (…) not keeping up with population growth despite the recovery in GDP growth rates ” (2019, p. 4). Even the oil-rich monarchies of the Arabian Gulf are facing daunting youth unemployment issues, which are particularly pronounced in Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. Overall, the countries of the Arab region suffer from unemployment due to several factors, including strong demographic growth, limited government job creations, a mismatch between university curricula and skills looked for in the private sector, the oft-neglected lack of opportunities for people with handicaps while the region knows every year dozens of thousands of new, maimed war victims (Cabibihan et al., 2021), and national economic structures that are not attracting enough productive investments (Hertog, 2022), inter alia. All these reasons for underperformance incentivize governments to consider unexploited offshore hydrocarbons resources as important possibilities to rapidly revitalize their weak economies, create jobs, and obtain foreign currencies. Mills (2020) also identified the strong regional demographic growth as a key driver for increasing demand especially in natural gas for power generation, desalination, and related industrialization initiatives (Mills, 2020). In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, annual demand growth rates for natural gas in the Middle East were indeed greater

3 See e.g., PRB. (2001). Population trends and challenges in the Middle East and North Africa. https://www.prb.org/populationtrendsandchallengesinthemiddleeasta ndnorthafrica/.

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than any other region in the world, except for Eastern Asia. However, with the rising use of renewables for the generation of power, several studies have shown that the increase in gas demand in the Middle East could slow down, and even plateau within 10–15 years, especially as governments have started their energy diversification while also rethinking their subsidy policies (Gengler & Lambert, 2016; Mills, 2020; Pulhan et al., 2020). This energy transition might be an important development to consider, as the higher value of natural gas today might not last for decades. We might well be witnessing dangerous tensions and risks of conflicts for a resource which might not generate so much economic return in the future. Non-mutually Agreed Operations and Pipeline Politics Exacerbate Old Tensions The fact that old disputes over maritime borders in the Eastern Mediterranean became further entrenched by natural gas discoveries in recent years complicates the situation and has so far lowered the chances of reaching a full diplomatic agreement between e.g., Turkey and Cyprus, or between Lebanon and Israel despite a November 2022 framework agreement, while keeping possible a military confrontation in the future if these issues are not judiciously resolved. Moreover, the continuing status quo of unresolved tensions and relative instability, which has long been fueled by the saber-rattling rhetoric of war on terror (e.g., against Algeria and Qatar) and “maximum pressure” policy (e.g., against Iran and its Syrian ally), might act as a deterrent for some international oil and gas companies, who are looking to invest in a relatively secure area, with manageable levels of risks for their investments. I.e., without the diplomatic and military tensions which have been rising in the East Mediterranean over gas resources, especially after drilling boats were sent to start operations without any firm and precise agreements between the states claiming sovereignty in these waters; eventually leading to military ships having to patrol the area to express—or counter-claim—a country’s effective sovereignty or right to exploit the area’s resources. If the creation of an international forum could logically be seen as a viable solution to reduce such tensions by creating a space for dialogue between countries sharing or claiming some resources, it is worth noting that the EMGF suffers from a number of flows that hamper it to do so or even to coordinate gas trade in the sub-region. The main ones are:

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(1) the specific list of member countries (and of non-member countries) of the new forum that is, we shall argue, reflecting regional diplomatic fault lines; (2) the fundamental issue of duplication of an international gas forum in the Middle East and limited gas reserves among EMGF member countries as we will show; and (3) the economically inapropriate economic period for the launch of an energy gas forum in 2020, when gas prices were too low to sustain new gas infrastructure, and now the murky long-term outlook for starting natural gas projects because of Europe’s accelerated energy transition since the invasion of Ukraine (Lambert et al., 2022). The disputed sovereignty over East-Med resources is a major reason why the launch of the new regional gas institution is contributing to a bipolarization trend in the region, not the least with non-members Turkey, Turkish Cyprus, Lebanon, and Libya. The following short analysis of these disputes highlights that they reflect pre-existing geopolitical tensions in the region as well as border and sovereignty issues between and among countries of the region and beyond, including the United States and France on the side of the EMGF, and Russia and Iran on the side of the un-necessarily politicized GECF. The Problematic Compositions of the New Gas Fora in a Period of US-Sponsored Polarization The establishment of the EMGF involved the participation of Egypt (hosting its headquarters), Israel, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority, but not the rival Palestinian representatives of Gaza, where the gas resources are located. Despite the many conflicts, territorial disputes, and historical grievances between states in this part of the world, all these countries have already established diplomatic relations between themselves, and have been nurturing them, despite ups and downs, for a few decades. However, Lebanon and Syria, which could have benefited from a gas forum to slowly develop diplomatic ties with Israel, are not part of it. Turkey and Turkish Republic of Cyprus, which could have negotiated with Greece and the Republic of Cyprus, are not part of the forum either. The internationally recognized government of Libya, which could have improved its very difficult diplomatic relations with Egypt (which has long supported the Libyan opposition warlord Khalifa Haftar), has not been invited either. In other words, this forum appears, as it is, more as a club of carefully selected East Mediterranean potential exporters of

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gas, based on geopolitical affinities, rather than as an inclusive forum wherein all gas-holding countries could discuss—and potentially improve, if not solve—territorial and maritime issues around the resource, between good willing forum members and with the potential arbitration from its authorities. In addition, as Italy and France are member states and the USA is an observer state, along the EU and the World Bank Group, the absence of very large gas producers, like Qatar or even Russia, cannot be explained by their distant geography from the Eastern Mediterranean waters, where they already have economic stakes in some gas projects. Following a purely technocratic rationale, these governments should have been involved, as they already contribute in the area’s gas trade, providing important volumes to the region as already developed, because they own large and experienced gas companies able to operate or co-own infrastructure in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, and because they have accumulated large amounts of capital in their sovereign wealth funds that could help finance the Mediterranean’s most promising gas projects. Instead, the EMGF has gathered countries based on geopolitical orientations and excluded others on similar grounds. For example, Israel and the United States under President Trump may have stood against the idea of accepting the potential membership of Iran in such a forum; while Egypt and the UAE were (then) boycotting Qatar, as already developed; and since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea region, France, Italy, and the US would not have seen positively the presence of Russia in a project meant to provide Europe with new sources of energy supplies and, ideally, avoid the weaponization of natural gas. Nevertheless, the role of the UAE in this new gas forum seems unclear. On one hand, it has long been an observer in the Qatar-based GECF and has been receiving all year long cheap supplies of natural gas from Qatar via pipeline (to preserve its own gas production for more lucrative overseas exports). But on the other hand, it was also one of the countries blockading Qatar (except for gas, again) and supporting the formation of the Cairo-based EMGF. Was it precisely to decrease the leverage of Qatar on the regional gas market? Was it to decrease the power of the whole Doha-based forum and its energy diplomacy altogether?

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Duplication of a Gas Forum Despite Limited Reserves Among EMGF Member Countries While two countries of the East Mediterranean area have found gas reserves which are substantial enough, all other countries of the area own only small reserves. And this probably is what constitutes the greatest anomaly of this new international forum of gas exporting countries, as visible in Fig. 9.3. Except for a few gas fields, all these gas fields feature small gas reserves. To put things in perspective, even a country like the UAE, which is not part of the world’s top ten largest gas holding countries, features natural gas reserves of 5.9 trillion cubic meters (BP, 2019), i.e., almost twice as large compared to the whole Eastern Mediterranean sub-region. The total verified gas reserves of the countries of the EMGF are relatively small, especially compared to that of other gas exporters of the Middle East or to leading gas exporters like Russia or Iran, which all belong to the other international gas forum located in the Middle East region, the GECF, as can be seen on Fig. 9.4. The formation of the EMGF thus appears to be clearly driven by geopolitical factors, first and foremost. It is highly unlikely that Eastern

Fig. 9.3 Major gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean (in billion cubic meters) (Author’s compilation. From: Karbuz, S. [2018]. Geostrategic importance of east mediterranean gas resources. In A. Dorsman, V. Ediger, & M. Karan [Eds.], Energy economy, finance and geostrategy [pp. 237–255]. Springer; Salameh, R., & Chedid, R. [2020]. Economic and geopolitical implications of natural gas export from the East Mediterranean: The case of Lebanon. Energy Policy, 140)

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Fig. 9.4 Selected National Natural Gas Reserves in 2019 (in trillion cubic meters) (Author’s compilation. Sources Salameh, R., & Chedid, R. [2020]. Economic and geopolitical implications of natural gas export from the East Mediterranean: The case of Lebanon. Energy Policy, 140, 111, 369; BP. [2019]. BP statistical review of world energy 2019; United States Geological Survey [USGS, 2010a, 2010b]. *Estimateds)

Mediterranean countries will significantly compete in the very remote Asian market, wherein Qatar, the UAE, or Australia have much larger resources to provide, and less distance-associated costs to deliver their cargoes. The goal has been to compete in the European market. Maybe the best demonstration of that is a recent trilateral project agreement, which was signed as soon as the Leviathan gas field started production: the construction of a pipeline, expected to cost around 6 billion Euros, would be led by Public Gas Corporation of Greece (DEPA) and Italy’s Edison. It is expected—if ever implemented—to supply up to 4% of Europe’s annual gas needs (Psaropoulos, 2020). If this project was announced at the favorable time of strong structural European dependence on Russian gas, it also came at a time of tensions in the Mediterranean Sea and might further generate political instability at Europe’s southern borders. As Europe has long hosted refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants fleeing destabilized and war-torn countries from the south and east of the Mediterranean, everything that may destabilize that region any further could well generate higher costs for Europe to pay in the future. Arguably, the importance of the natural gas in this sub-region does not stem from the quantity of it, but from the close location to Europe and the role that these discoveries of natural gas could play in the

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future, economically and geopolitically wise. And following its invasion of Ukraine, followed by gas cuts towards several European countries, the natural gas prices temporarily skyrocketed around the world. In March 2020, the US Henry Hub gas index was only around $1.79/MMBtu (EIA, 2020), yet following the invasion of Ukraine, it reached nearly $5/MMBtu in March 2022. This, then, constituted an added reason why Europe was looking for additional (and cheaper) sources of natural gas from the international market. However, a new gas forum like the EMGF holds, again, very limited gas resources and thus does not seem to be able to provide significant industrial added value, except for the national interests of Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, and Israel, provided the prices of gas remain high enough and the energy transition does not accelerate. But even then, these interests are partly based on gas resources located in disputed waters. These sovereignty disputes are very unlikely to be settled via this alternative gas forum—which itself illustrates and enshrines the above-explained bipolarization. This disputed sovereignty over the East-Med resources is a major reason why the launch of the new regional gas institution is arguably contributing to a bipolarization trend in the region—not the least with non-included Turkey, Lebanon, and Libya. Our overview of these disputes highlighted that they reflect pre-existing yet magnified geopolitical tensions in the region as well as border and sovereignty issues between and among countries of the broad MENA region and beyond, including the United States and France on the side of the EMGF, and Russia on the side of the GECF.

Conclusion Although economic theory has long argued that economic actors are primarily driven by their desires to maximize their profits, as a perfectly Cartesian homo economicus, energy resources have represented much more than a tradeable commodity, and have been playing a significant role in the Middle East’s geopolitics, inter-states relations and diplomatic tensions for over a century. Also, only a fool might believe that the geopolitical pressures against a state or a group of states in that region would not affect their policies concerning politically-laden commodities like natural gas. Even in the East Mediterranean sub-region, which is vastly less endowed in oil and gas reserves than the Arabian Gulf sub-region, securing natural gas supplies is now seen as key to energy

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security, but also as a significant source of inter-state tensions and geopolitical tool in the region. This chapter particularly paid attention to the launch of a new international gas forum in the Middle East, the Cairobased East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), with the support of the Trump administration during its ‘maximum pressure’ policy against Iran (a continuation of the War on Terror under a different name), 19 years after the launch of another gas forum, the Doha-based Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). Comparing the two fora, this chapter highlighted that the vastly smaller gas resources of the EMGF cannot explain alone an industrial need for such a new and restricted international forum of gas exporters, except for geopolitical reasons. The EMGF was launched during the Trump years of polarization of the region, marked by acute US sanctions against Iran and Russia, two key actors of the Doha-based GECF, and during the commercial blockade of Doha by four US partners in the region in the name of fighting terrorism. We conclude that this new and alternative gas forum could be considered as a sign of, and as a contributing factor to, the bipolarization of regional gas geopolitics due to external forces. The two gas fora and the majority of their most important member countries are representing two blocks of countries that were diplomatically and politically opposed on several issues across the region, especially during the Trump presidency. Since the transition to the Biden administration and withdrawal from Afghanistan, which included major support from Qatar (now ranked by the White House as a “major non-NATO ally”), the tensions between several countries of these two international gas fora have receded. This may eventually lead to some minor cooperation between the two fora, yet even that will necessitate time as the two groups of countries are still holding important grudges against each other. On the theoretical level, this chapter provides an interesting example of overall negative outcomes of regional energy integration dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean sub-region, as it was apparently developed for the wrong reasons, despite a literature that has overwhelmingly promised positive outcomes of optimized energy trade, economic growth, and “islands of peace”. The sub-regional dynamic at play in the Eastern Mediterranean was objectively peculiar and not inclusive. It involved only some countries, based on diplomatic alignments and amidst heightened regional tensions and rivalries under the Trump administration and its maximum pressure policy towards Iran and its supposed allies, amid a

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regional environment marked by deeply entrenched geopolitical antagonisms and diplomatic disputes. Worth noting here, there has not been so far any “weaponization” of natural gas by Middle Eastern states (i.e., no disruption of supplies, something which has only been the objective of non-state armed groups, like ISIS), but there was, arguably the “weaponization” of a gas forum in the divided Middle East. On the recommendation level, the authors call for a decrease in tensions, as a lack of coordination between these two blocks could send negative signals to the international gas market (where prices were temporarily abnormally high following the invasion of Ukraine) and increase price volatility. Natural gas production in the Eastern Mediterranean could support energy security to all riparian states, and a small decarbonization away from crude oil consumption, provided there are new and effective mechanisms for these countries to enable some technocratic and diplomatic communication on gas matters, to decrease the levels of political tensions, and find a modus vivendi which appears as a win-/-win, even if the settlements of long-held grievances are not completely reached. The Biden administration’s desire to calm the region to enable his country to finally pivot from the Middle East and towards the Indo-Pacific while containing Russia in Europe is now an opportunity to do so. We can anticipate Teheran’s refusal to attend any meeting in which Israeli representatives would officially be invited, and we may also expect the US, France, and Italy to avoid meetings with Russia to prevent it from gaining more access to Mediterranean opportunities at a time of containment. But beyond these specific difficulties, signs of goodwill and exchanges of delegations, as well as some forms of gradual increase in communication and cooperation between the two fora could contribute to decreasing tensions in the region. This potential cooperation could positively affect not only the regional gas market, but also the global market, which will need additional energy supplies because of demographic growth and the de facto partial isolation of Russia from international energy markets (Lambert et al., 2022). As a net importer trying to become independent from Russian energy supplies, neighboring Europe could possibly benefit from Mediterranean gas operations and trade, however small are the quantities these countries can realistically produce and export. The EU should thus play a greater role in de-escalation and peacebuilding, rather than taking any sides, as Europe would probably not benefit from greater energy security

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levels at home, nor political stability at its southern borders, in case of any escalation in violence in the Eastern Mediterranean sub-region or the broader Middle East. Although the Biden administration is not following the Trump strategy of maximum pressure, or the general WoT approach towards Teheran, political islam and terrorism, the potential for diplomatic tensions and violence outbursts remains. Since the 2022 full war in Ukraine, Europeans know all too well the high price to pay because of the weaponization of gas and divisive policies in places marked by territorial disputes and old grievances.

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CHAPTER 10

Conclusions Laurent A. Lambert and Moosa Elayah

In early 2001, prior to the 9/11 attacks and the War on Terror (WoT) that followed, only the Palestinian Territories and some rural areas in Sudan and Yemen were featuring armed conflicts within the Arab Middle East and North Africa. The situation in the Western Sahara/South of Morocco was overall calm, Algeria had virtually completed its transition to a post-civil war new order, and only Somalia and Afghanistan, then both considered on the outskirts of the MENA region, were facing particularly difficult times after the fall of their respective internationally recognized government, the decade prior. Twenty years of WoT after, nearly two thirds of all Middle Eastern and North African countries are either facing a situation of civil war (e.g., Libya, Syria, Yemen), of frequent armed incidents or armed conflicts (e.g., Iraq, the Palestinian Territories, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan), or are dangerously close to economic collapse while hosting millions of vulnerable refugees and/or internally

L. A. Lambert (B) · M. Elayah Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar e-mail: [email protected] M. Elayah e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4_10

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displaced people (i.e., Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, and to a lesser extent, Jordan and Turkey). Tellingly, the vast majority of these dozens of million refugees and IDPs originate from the region, chiefly Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, i.e., countries of various American interventions in the name of fighting terror. Meanwhile, in the global terrorism index 2022 of the Institute for Economics and Peace, Afghanistan ranked first and Iraq second, as they were by far the countries most affected by terrorism in the world.1 Syria, a country which still hosts US troops to fight terror groups like Daesh/ISIS, ranked five, out of 178. Unfortunately, the year before, the ranking was overall similar, and it has been so for several years. At the time of writing this book, no one can anticipate what will happen in the short or medium term, as the situation on the ground seems far from settled. But the WoT’s outcome becomes clear if put into perspective. The United States has never fought for so long a war (more than 20 years, as it is still legally continuing), and the political structures of the Middle East never had been so fundamentally challenged—and in a few countries, destroyed—since World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a century ago. With these failures to rebuild states and nations that were supposed to become pro-American, as it had done in Germany and Japan after World War 2, this is also the image of the United States and its influence in the region and the world which has become a matter of speculation. The US government has repeatedly announced, since the Obama administration, a change in geostrategic priorities with a de facto relegation of the Middle East region. A trend which has accelerated—despite great difficulties—under the Biden administration at the time of writing this book. In clear terms, the War on Terror, under its various forms, has completely failed in eradicating terror organizations and in building more stable, more democratic, and more pro-American states in that region. And with the catastrophic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the WoT leaves a tarnished and much-diminished image of the United States’ role in the broad area. At the very least, the Pax Americana is no more in the region, and the American hegemony has left the place to a Post-American Middle East. 1 The Global Terrorism Index 2022 ranks countries of the world according to four quantitative annual terrorism activity indicators: the numbers of terrorist incidents, of fatalities and of injuries caused by terrorists, and the total property damage caused by it. Retrieved from: https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/global-terrorism-index/.

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Understanding the reasons behind the failure of the WoT and this new geopolitical regional order constituted the main goal of this book. As developed in the first section, the post-9/11/2001 imperial project of state- and nation-building has transformed the countries where the United States directly intervened into failing, more unstable and/or adversary places: the Taliban are now ruling over fragile Afghanistan again, with Al-Qaida allies and the Haqqani network as part of their government. More importantly maybe, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been able to shrewdly maneuver its way amid all these crises and further spread its influence and power regionally. Sanaa and large swathes of Yemen are now under the control of the Iranian-influenced Houthis rebels. Baghdad is now under the influence of hardline Shiite parties and pro-Iranian militias and critically dependent on Beijing and Teheran for its economic activity and its own energy provision. And the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad is now heavily dependent on Russian and Iranian military, diplomatic and economic support, while remaining in a state of strategic Cold to Mild War with Washington and its regional allies, via the Lebanese Hezbollah and Shiite militia groups. Finally, the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” toward Iran and its polarization of the Middle East, at play in the launch of the US-supported East Mediterranean Gas Forum to counterbalance the larger Doha-based Gas Exporting Countries Forum, because it included Iran and Russia, has led to a certain fragmentation of the gas industry landscape in the Middle East and a once dangerous rise in tensions around gas resources in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, as explained in chapter nine, shortly before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia actually made gas cooperation in the MENA more needed than ever (Lambert et al., 2022). It might have been impossible to imagine a worse geopolitical outcome two decades ago, when the idea of the WoT was announced. Ironically, chapter seven shows that where the US did not intervene violently, as in the Arabian Gulf monarchies, the policies of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), which were locally designed and only supported by the Obama administration, were overall successful. Yet even there, the fight against terror had its limitations and serious shortcomings, with several thousand citizens of Gulf countries—mainly from Saudi Arabia—joining ISIS over the past decade. The idea of fixing the Middle East—which reflected a neo-colonial approach—is now totally discredited, and the last attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the Trump Administration without truly involving the Palestinians as key actors in the

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process, as analyzed in chapter eight, was doomed from the start. Sadly, the subsequent rise in violence in Palestinian and Israeli cities at the time of writing this conclusion is simply unsurprising. But the most concerning aspect from a Middle East perspective has been the human toll and humanitarian impact of the whole strategic folly and failure of the USA named War on Terror. Both militarily and politically, the WoT has generated vast humanitarian consequences. Chapter six highlighted the region’s unprecedented migration flows of the past two decades, that have largely been generated by the successive military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Syria, among others. The populations of refugees and IDPs in the Middle East have increased and reached all-time high proportions, with between 38 and 60 million persons forced to leave their home due to the WoT operations (Vine et al., 2021), and with more than two dozen millions of them still living in tents and temporary shelter far from home, often in awful conditions. Against this background, the EU’s major project of migration control, especially in Libya, and the (US-equipped) Saudi-Emirati disastrous military intervention in Yemen in the name of fighting pro-Iranian “terror”, have only added to the political and economic misery in MENA countries. For these vulnerable and disenfranchised millions of individuals and families of Afghanistan and the Middle East and North Africa, clearly, the American vision of a “Greater Middle East” that should be constituted of stable, democratic states, and more prosperous societies, never materialized. Despite vast sums of money injected in development projects and despite undeniable education gains for girls and minorities in Afghanistan, the WOT has overall led to such disastrous situations in Afghanistan and across the region, that millions have been fleeing their country however perilous is the journey.

The Four Why.s of the WOT Failure from a Middle East Perspective As mentioned in the introduction, there is an abundant and detailed literature on how some policies of the WoT failed. This book, however, took the perspective of the retrospective why, and essentially from a Middle Eastern perspective. We share our conclusions via the four following main points, acknowledging that other elements have also played a role, such as the US political tensions between succeeding administrations at the White

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House, a general war fatigue among NATO allies, and denunciations of “forever wars” on social media, inter alia. The following points, nevertheless, reflect what was of major importance and direct consequence for the broad Middle East region, in terms of transforming it over the past two decades into a region that is today less stable and certainly not free from terror groups or enemy states of the USA. 1. The US Authorities mis-read the geostrategic moment In late 2001, the US and their allies easily won the first battles against the Taliban and captured or killed dozens of terrorists from Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, with then the support of the international community (Iran and Russia included), only to realize within a few years their lack of lasting accomplishments and strategic victory. The White House had too rapidly believed that they had won the Afghan war or was close to it. Based on this flawed analysis, the Bush administration believed it could also easily win the peace as well as the hearts and minds of the population, with generously funded state- and nation-building programs across Afghanistan and the region, while antagonizing neighboring Iran and other countries (including Russia with pro-US ‘color’ revolutions in former Soviet nations). This major analytical mistake about Afghanistan and its neighborhood, first, and then about Iraq and its neighborhood (which also includes Iran), a year and a half after, led to asymmetric and bloody armed conflicts that the US imperial project, despite its formidable conventional military might, could not win anymore. It was taken by surprise on two main fronts and not militarily fit for purpose to win over Islamic and tribal militias and Internet-savvy terror networks. Meanwhile, the US didn’t recognize until too late the rising strategic challenge being posed by three powers of increasing influence in the Middle East, namely China, Iran, and Russia. These three nations have increasingly benefited from the American difficulties there, its deteriorated image in many countries, and its gradual strategic withdrawal from the region without any capable pro-US force to replace it, as chapter two and five illustrated well with the case studies of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

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2. The US Authorities poorly and inconsistently defined its enemies, main mission, and policies If the unrecognized, simply organized, and economically poor regimes of the Afghan Taliban and Yemeni Houthis seem to have locally won the WoT against the US so far, alongside the hardliners of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the above-mentioned near-peer competitors of the US, it has largely been by occupying the political spaces the US had left vacant due to deep policy flaws and inconsistency. While the first course in any public policy program introduces students to the public policy cycle, which starts by a clear policy formulation, the Bush administration had by contrast very hastily planned its reaction to the 9/11/2001 attacks. The invasion of poorly known Taliban Afghanistan started less than a month after the attacks, without updated maps of the entire country and without having a single Pashtun-speaker among some of its national intelligence agencies. Worse, it had never decisively proclaimed any lasting definition of its enemy: Was it Al-Qaida or all terror groups? Shall it always include the hosts and sponsors of terror groups as well? Shall all enemy states be included? Did that end with the original “Axis of Evil” list (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea) or did that include Cuba, Libya, and Syria, as added later in 2002 by John Bolton? And what about Venezuela and Nicaragua, as added by the same Bolton in 2018? Over the past 20 years, the official enemy designation shifted from only Al-Qaida in mid-September 2001 to, at times, include all the above, as in 2018, during President Trump’s term in office. And there also was a lot of ambiguity as to how the Government of Pakistan should be treated under the Presidencies of Bush, Obama, and Trump. Beyond the fundamental issue of clearly and consistently defining the enemy until it is defeated, there could be no understanding about the why.s of the failure of the WoT if there was no mentioning of the oftenchanging goals and priorities of the US foreign policy in the Middle East, or even in a single country. As chapters two and three illustrated well, the inconsistent set of US ideological goals crashed into Middle Eastern field realities, where state- and nation-building proved much harder, slower, and costlier than initially anticipated. Additionally, the two administrations of Georges W. Bush (2001–2009) never devised a sufficient set of clear, detailed, coherent, stable, and complementary post-war policy documents. Instead, they rushed the US military forces into the very

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simple yet time-proven trap of Al-Qaida’s ideological leader, Ayman alZawahiri, by triggering a powerful yet hubris-blinded superpower into asymmetric warfare in the mountains of tribal Afghanistan. It was there that the British and Soviet empires had been militarily defeated in the previous two centuries, and it was precisely to trigger there the Americans, and for that same purpose, that Al-Qaida had meticulously prepared the 9/11/2001 attacks. After some changes in priorities following the transition from the Bush administrations (2001–2009) to the Obama administrations (2009– 2017), with the latter being eager to disengage from the region, in theory after a military surge to gain the upper hand for diplomatic negotiations, the return of Republican national security advisor John Bolton at the White House in 2018 under President Trump let a seasoned commentator to observe that “the spirit of George W. Bush has once more begun to inhabit the White House”.2 This renewed spirit included the fact that the most hawkish US form of unilateralism didn’t mean having either an elaborate policy for the new Latin American countries who were simply being added to a new Axis of Evil list, or for the already failing US efforts in Afghanistan, let alone for the Greater Middle East project. There are now many official US reports on the wars and post-war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq that show the lack of a clear and consistent strategy and clear directives that could have enabled more realistic nation-building efforts.3 This latest, fundamental geostrategic mistake is exactly what has rendered the formidable military might of the US, once a hyperpower in a unipolar world, decreasingly capable to change the complex political situation on the ground, thereby illustrating Bertrand Badie’s (2020) paradox of the contemporary powerlessness of power.

2 Heilbrunn, J. (May 8, 2018). Sorry Europe, President Trump doesn’t have an Iran plan. The Spectator World. https://usa.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/sorry-europe-presidenttrump-doesnt-have-an-iran-plan/. 3 See e.g., Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. (2021). What we need to learn: Lessons from twenty years of Afghanistan Reconstruction. United States Government. https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessonslearned/SIGAR-21-46-LL.pdf.

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3. Over-estimation of US capacities; under-estimation of the enemies’ As the first chapters have shown, the hubris and political delusion in the Bush administration reached alarmingly high levels under the leadership of key figures such as Vice-President Dick Cheney or Karl Rove, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House (2001–2006), Director of the White House Iraq Group (2002–2004), and principal adviser to President Georges W. Bush. In early 2004, he claimed that “[w]e are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality”.4 At that time, Al-Qaida leaders Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri had not been captured; the Taliban in Afghanistan had already proven their resilience on the ground, had taken control of some of the lucrative traffic of opium, and were fighting back for their return to power, with a strong presence in the South of the country; Iraq was rapidly sleeping into a civil war as formerly secular Iraqi rebellion leaders were coordinating attacks on US troops with foreign Sunni jihadists; Syria provided temporary refuge to some Iraqi insurgents; and Iran was supporting and influencing various Shiite political parties and militias in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and beyond, and would eventually resume its nuclear program. We can clearly say now that not only were the US authorities not achieving their own over-ambitious plans at that time, but they were largely in denial of the true extent of their failures and that US troops were being fought back hard by a large and diverse group of resilient enemies. The latter were more resilient than expected and, despite their ideological oppositions, they sometimes managed to collaborate as they shared the common goal of breaking the American hegemony over the region, for their very own survival initially, and then to evict the Americans from the area by causing it losses too heavy to bear in a democracy. During the many years of the WoT, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and later Libya and Syria kept on siphoning American military budgets and 4 SUSKIN Ron, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush”, The New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/ magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html. In that press article, published before the November 2004 election, Karl Rove was not named directly. It’s in 2014, in the review Mother Jones, that journalist Ron Suskin revealed the name of K. Rove see: ENGELHART Tom, “Karl Rove Unintentionally Predicted the Current Chaos in Iraq”, Mother Jones, 19 June 2014. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/ us-karl-rove-iraq-crisis/.

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human resources at a daunting scale, over the long term and at very heavy costs, as the expenditure has largely been financed via public borrowing. As detailed in the introduction, the economic costs have been colossal, in trillion dollars, and will be felt by the US government for decades, due to the costs of health care of veterans, families, and pensions for disabled service men and women. It didn’t lead, though, to a situation of imperial military overstretch leading to collapse (Kennedy, 1987), as expected by jihadists. But the military failures, civilian victims, and systemic corruption fed by foreign aid and military occupation became unacceptable to the public in the region and in the US, especially as American citizens saw an increasing number of civilians and military men and women suffering with life-long traumas, amputations, or premature death. By that time yet, the US military was already deeply engaged in several conflicts in the Middle East. Though terribly costly, the US could not rapidly withdraw anymore without losing its credibility and international status. It needed some forms of lasting achievements. Hence the military surge in Afghanistan, which failed to achieve lasting results as the Taliban knew they needed to wait for the already announced American withdrawal. The Taliban victory was also made possible with the discreet help of foreign powers that the US hegemony had coalesced against itself: Pakistan, whose secret services were decreasingly trustful of, and trusted by, the US to the benefit of arch-rival India while it could certainly not keep an Indian-friendly Afghanistan on its Northern border; Iran, which initially helped Americans in 2001 to invade Afghanistan, only to find itself placed in 2002 on the Bush Administration’s “Axis of Evil” list; as well as Russia and China, as the former sold modern armaments to the Taliban and as both countries provided early diplomatic goodwill gestures and commercial reassurances to the conquering rebel movement in early 2021. If both Russia and China have long and deeply resented the Taliban’s religious extremism, both countries managed to better read the geostrategic moment than the White House. Moscow and Beijing understood that the defeat of the USA in Afghanistan could lead to the removal of US military bases and installations from the whole area and that the Taliban represented a much lower menace, especially if some trade arrangements could be put in place to create some commercial dependency in a post-conflict setting. And while the Taliban, some other insurgents, and various enemy states managed to repeatedly collaborate, America’s unilateralism regularly generated frictions or even tensions with its allies.

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4. A failed public diplomacy Despite the widespread international support of the USA following the 2001 terror attacks, including in the Middle East, the reputation of the US rapidly deteriorated there and beyond. By late 2002, it became increasingly clear that the US would invade Iraq with or without a green light from the United Nations Security Council, thus violating international law and causing a heated and divisive debate at the United Nations between the US-led coalition and some of its own allies in Afghanistan, such as France, Germany, and several other EU member countries. Additionally, the US leadership wrongly anticipated to be welcome to Iraq as liberators by the oppressed Iraqi people, as defended by VicePresident Dick Cheney, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, and their academic mentor on the region, the sulphurous historian Bernard Lewis.5 Yet decades of Shiite clerics’ and secular Baath party’s staunch anti-US propaganda, the disastrous legacy of the US-led international embargo over Iraq (1990–2003), Washington’s continuous support to Israel, the lies about the Iraqi program of weapons of mass destruction, the broadcasted images of lootings in un-securitized invaded Baghdad, the graphical images of torture emanating from the Abu Ghraib and Bagram prison camps,6 as well as the arrestation and deaths of many civilians at the hands of the US-led coalition and private companies (like the infamous Blackwater group), led to a distrustful relationship between the US—and especially its army—and the Iraqi people. It rapidly deteriorated into a feeling of oppression and alienation among vast sections of the Iraqi and Arab societies as various survey polls have monitored over the years.

5 Late medial historian Bernard Lewis has been a controversial figure in academia. He

has been heavily criticized for his Orientalist, outdated and generalizing views on Muslim populations, especially in the Arab Middle East. See on the Iraqi invasion file Cookson, J. R. (2018, May 21). The Legacy of Bernard Lewis. The National Interest. https://nat ionalinterest.org/feature/the-legacy-bernard-lewis-25909. 6 780 men and boys were deported to the camp of Guantanamo Bay, where over a hundred persons were interrogated by the CIA in what was officially reported as torture (Frank, 2018; Higham & Stephens, 2004; Singh, 2013; Taguba, 2008; Tayler & Epstein, 2022). In the end, though, only two prisoners have ever been convicted of any crime. Twenty years after its opening, the prison camp is still functioning and costing the US its credibility as to the defense of human rights in Afghanistan and the MENA region (Higham & Stephens, 2004; Taguba, 2008; Tayler & Epstein, 2022).

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Meanwhile, the “invasion” narrative of Baghdad, one of the most powerful symbols of the Arab Muslim heritage, was very skillfully used against the Americans by its ennemies. It was regularly reinforced by the graphic images and appalling reports of torture, of innocent victims being gunned-down at home, of the large-scale destructions of urban areas in Iraq (especially in Sunni urban areas) and in other countries of the region. This was shrewdly utilized by media- and technology-savvy Jihadists to generate a strong and lasting resentment towards foreign military presence—though, ironically, many of the jihadists were foreigners too. The occupation of Iraq only became a net gain to the strategy of the theoreticians of “global jihad”, as part of an elaborate propaganda war. While the US tried to stop the damage done by the videos of destruction and random arrests and the critical voices on Arabic media outlets, most particularly from the Al-Jazira news channel,7 the damage to the US reputation nevertheless became permanent and benefitted its enemies within and without the region as was developed in the book introduction. Even President Obama’s emphasis on “countering violent extremism” to replace the more aggressive approach and terminology of “war on terror”, has not managed to repair the image of the US in the Middle East. His drone policy particularly, supposed to provide surgical strikes against well-identified targets while keeping a lighter footprint in the region, actually led to the deaths of thousands of Afghan, Pakistani, Iraqi, Syrian, and Yemeni civilians, among others.8 Generally denied, or simply not investigated, the few acknowledged victims of these drone strikes, which have logically fuelled much anti-American resentment in rural areas of these countries, were generally dismissed as tragic but exceptional collateral damage. Yet the processing of data of incidents by investigative journalists has repeatedly shown that it was nothing but exceptional, with one in five drone strikes ending up killing a civilian (Khan, 2021; 7 The Doha-based Aljazeera Arabic tv news channel rapidly became the main source of critique of the US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Though US officials were invited to and did talk and debate on the channel, the US tried to decrease its influence across the region, including by bombing its offices in Iraq and by launching its own tv channel in Arabic (Al-Hurra, ‘the free one’, in Arabic). 8 The New York Times has published several articles which have demonstrated that coalition air strikes have been causing many more civilian deaths than initially anticipated, at a rate calculated to be 31 times higher than officially acknowledged. See e.g., the elaborate and meticulous reporting of Khan and Gopal (November 16, 2017) as well as Khan (December 19, 2021).

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Khan & Gopal, 2017). It was revealing that even the last drone strike of the US in Afghanistan’s capital city during the chaotic withdrawal of August 2021, didn’t kill any terrorists but took the life of civilians. A week after the American press revealed the affair, the U.S. military finally admitted their mistake that had killed 10 persons, including seven children and, ironically, an Afghan humanitarian professional who had long worked for an American aid NGO.9 This whole story was itself abundantly mediatized worldwide as the US were leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban after 20 years in the country. The whole sequence gave to the withdrawal process and, by extension, to the whole War on Terror, the appearance of an Afghan fiasco. It was worse than that.

The Uncertain Post-American Middle East The jihadist quest for a never-ending war with the West never really unfolded as planned (Roy, 2006). Though the US eventually became resented in all the countries it militarily intervened in, jihadists never could durably capitalize on it as developed in Chapter 5. Their life-stiffening moral constraints, death cults-like support for kamikaze missions, and heavy retaliation towards any supposed moral deviance made them rapidly resented by the populace wherever they managed to temporarily establish their control. While there are more than 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, jihadist movements were never joined by millions, nor even hundreds of thousands of foreign volunteers. At the peak of their recruitment, several thousands of foreigners joined the Sunni jihadist movements in the Near East campaigns, but this rapidly dwindled after the self-titled “caliphate” of ISIS fell, in 2017. By then, there were mostly people fleeing the so-called caliphate, disenfranchised by the propaganda of a new Islamic geopolitical renaissance. Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri, and Daesh leaders after them, had vastly over-estimated the potential appeal of a global jihad against the military occupations of Muslim lands, and even more so how long the attracted Muslim fringe groups would support their new state under the heavy bombing of an international coalition. Paradoxically, after 20 years of guerrilla warfare and their military victory in August 2022, the Taliban have been facing the same problem 9 Aikins, M. (2021, September 10). Times Investigation: In U.S. Drone Strike, Evidence Suggests No ISIS Bomb, New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/ world/asia/us-air-strike-drone-kabul-afghanistan-isis.html.

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than the Americans in 2002, or that their enemy Daesh/ISIS in Iraq and Syria in 2015. The Taliban believed that the hardest had been done (winning battles and re-establishing their rule) and that peace and stability shall eventually be won, only to gradually realize that even if the war had been won, the peace may be harder to win for them too. The 2022 US and IMF sanctions against the Taliban regime, including the freezing of Afghanistan’s financial assets abroad have been pushing the country to the brink of total economic collapse. At the time of writing this conclusion, more than 95% of the country is food insecure and for months, people have been queuing in front of banks to withdraw a minimum of cash to pay for food. There is no clarity as to whether Afghanistan will fall back into a period of deep political instability and civil war, wherein warlords, important opium traders, and Al-Qaida-linked groups could thrive and transform Afghanistan into a major platform of trans-national drug smuggling, weapons trading, and terrorist activities. In Yemen, too, the Houthis Islamist militia works hard at presenting itself as the sovereign government of Yemen, by developing a narrative of sovereignty and legitimate oil governance, amid the ongoing war and devastation, in what actually remains one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. In Syria and Iraq, surviving cells of ISIS are expected to keep on fighting the national governments of these countries and also clash with Iran-aligned Shiite militias. The latter have grown in influence, especially in Iraq, but equally failed to transform this military advantage into sufficient parliamentary seats and political clout at the time of writing this conclusion. If by now it is clear that global jihadism cannot take control of the region, nor even keep whole countries under their tight control for long, it is also clear that Islamist terror groups are a regional feature that is not expected to disappear anytime soon despite the very vast military means utilized for that purpose by the US and its partners during two decades. Against this fractured political landscape, actors from outside the region have been gradually replacing the political and economic spaces abandoned by the Americans.

Joint Threat from China and Russia to the US Role in the Region At the time of writing this conclusion, the important state visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia in December 2022, which included a high-level China-Arab States forum, followed a few months after by the China-brokered reconciliation deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran,

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in April 2023, have been widely commented as further proof of Washington’s loss of political clout in the region to the favor of other international powers. This had indeed followed the refusal by the Saudi and Emirati leadership to increase oil production at the demand of the US President Joe Biden at a time of high oil prices, and while the two Gulf states followed instead the Russian proposal to decrease oil production quotas as part of OPEC+ policies to stabilize the level of crude prices. Although it is too early to draw definitive conclusions, these symbolic developments indicate that things have changed in the region, including what used to be one of its main stability partnership since the post-World War 2 deals with Saudi Arabia and later with the other Gulf petro-monarchies: in essence, US protection against the free flow of crude oil. And none of these changes seem to currently benefit the US and its place in the world order. Within and without the Middle east region, the US government acknowledged that it is facing various threats from so-called “near-peer competitors” to an extent unseen since the Cold War.10 This tougher competition from China and Russia had become one of the key ideas of the 2018 Department of Defense’s National Defense Strategy (NDS) of the United States. Produced every four years, the NDS replaced the US Quadrennial Defense Review and now gives broad strategic direction to the department of defense (DoD) and armed forces. Realistic and straight to the point, after nearly two decades of ill-defined policies and sandcastles in the skies, the 2018 NDS recognized the stiff and increasing competition from China and Russia, the weakened military standing of the US, and that the narrow focus of the uniquely long and costly War on Terror across the world was ill-placed and debilitating on the strategic level and tactical levels. Today, we are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding. (….) Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security. China is a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China Sea. Russia has violated the borders of nearby nations and pursues veto power

10 US Department of Defense. (2020). Statement of Matthew P. Donovan SASC confirmation hearing to be under-secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, March 10, 2020. https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Donovan_03-10-20.pdf.

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over the economic, diplomatic, and security decisions of its neighbors. (...) Iran continues to sow violence and remains the most significant challenge to Middle East stability. Despite the defeat of ISIS’s physical caliphate, threats to stability remain as terrorist groups with long reach continue to murder the innocent and threaten peace more broadly. This increasingly complex security environment is defined by rapid technological change, challenges from adversaries in every operating domain, and the impact on current readiness from the longest continuous stretch of armed conflict in our Nation’s history. Source: US Department of Defence (2018).11

Shortly after the start of President Biden’s administration, and amid the most acrimonious presidential transition in recent US history, the new administration could have easily taken its distance from Secretary Mathis’ 2018 NDS on many issues. Yet, its first major strategic document, the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance,12 is remarkably in line with all the points mentioned above. And regarding the Middle East more particularly, the Biden Administration goes even further, clearly stating that “we do not believe that military force is the answer to the region’s challenges ” (Biden, 2021, p. 11). Published less than two months before the May 2021 deadly week of armed conflict between Israel and the Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, the words of the US administration have clearly not influenced all the Middle East’s longest political issues, grievances, and deeply entrenched problems. Yet Washington is not supportive anymore of military threats to settle each and every issue in the region. The May 2022 assassination of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper was even condemned by the White House and showed that the time of quasi-systematic full support of Israeli military actions was over. The logic of systematically transforming the region by force or the threat of it, has largely been discredited and abandoned to more multilateral approaches and, whenever possible, negotiations. The US supported meetings in 2021 and 2022 between Saudi and Iranian officials to develop a modus vivendi, something which constitutes a major difference with the previous American administrations over the past two decades, from the 11 US Department of Defence. (2018, p. 1). Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-DefenseStrategy-Summary.pdf. 12 NSC-1v2.pdf (whitehouse.gov).

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Bush administration’s Axis of Evil approach towards Iran, to Obama’s cautious threats, negotiations, and on and off sanctions, to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy towards Iran. The 2022 National Defense Strategy reinforces this new approach, which is much less aggressive and ambitious than the WoT. It aims to achieve its goals via three main ways: integrated deterrence, campaigning, and actions that build enduring advantages.13 This is very far from the imperial philosophy of reshaping a region by force or the threat of it, extending US core values of democracy and liberalism to many other nations, and eradicating terrorism worldwide. Despite clear diplomatic fatigue, Western diplomats are still trying to convince the Iranian leadership to commit again to a form of Obamaera Iranian nuclear deal (technically, the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”) and peacefully contain its nuclear ambitions, even if the country has been engulfed in a troubled period of mass demonstrations and civic disobedience against the regime following the killing of a young female Iranian by the morality police due to her supposedly non-conform wearing of the compulsory hijab. In parallel, the Taliban regime, which is under heavy international sanctions, has kept a line of communication opened via mediators in Doha. Also, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, and Lebanon have managed to de-escalate their maritime demonstrations of force in the Eastern Mediterranean. The problems are certainly not solved and there are still two international gas fora in the MENA region and not enough cooperation, yet there is no longer an imminent risk of armed conflict surrounding offshore gas drilling operations. Remarkably, during the Fall 2022 World Cup hosted in Qatar, the previously hostile leadership of neighboring countries Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates went to Qatar to mark the end of hostilities between and among the Gulf monarchies. And this is largely due to the push of the Biden administration in that direction, and the 2022 elevation of Qatar as “Major NonNATO Strategic Ally” by the White House. This highlights too, that the White House’s regional policy shift from a two-decade long and counterproductive paradigm of constant military engagement and diplomatic

13 US Department of Defense. (2022). Fact Sheet: 2022 National Defense Strategy. https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/28/2002964702/-1/-1/1/NDS-FACT-SHE ET.PDF.

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tensions towards a new paradigm, marked by greater roles for negotiations and military disengagement, has been understood by several MENA countries as an opportunity to decrease tensions, if not solving old issues.

New Priorities As articulated in March 2021, Joe Biden’s foreign and military policies have abandoned most of what remained of the WoT and the geostrategic center of gravity is being reoriented towards other world regions. Only Iran was considered an important state opponent in the region, worth the attention of Washington, yet for which a lower level of military presence was established. The United States should not, and will not, engage in “forever wars” that have cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. (...) [W]e position ourselves to deter our adversaries and defend our interests, working alongside our partners, our presence will be most robust in the Indo-Pacific and Europe. In the Middle East, we will right-size our military presence to the level required to disrupt international terrorist networks, deter Iranian aggression, and protect other vital U.S. interests. Source: Biden (2021, p. 15).14

In line with President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” strategic orientation,15 announced a dozen years prior, the Biden administration has been reorientating its forces and diplomatic capacities towards the Indo-Pacific region, wherein the US has already positioned 300,000 service men and women, and to a much lesser extent towards Europe, where the focus is about Russia, especially since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.16 While the strategic departure of most American troops from the Middle East and towards the Indo-Pacific region and Europe might sound like a relief to the ears of many in the region, the US public might well wonder

14 Biden, J. R. (2021). Interim National Strategic Security Guidance. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf. 15 Lieberthal, K. (2011). The American Pivot to Asia. Foreign Policy, 21, 20–35. 16 US Department of Defense. (2022). Fact Sheet: 2022 National Defense Strategy.

https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/28/2002964702/-1/-1/1/NDS-FACT-SHE ET.PDF.

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if this is a durable change or yet another temporary shift that may not survive much longer than the Biden Presidency. For now, one of the very few positive elements of legacy from the WoT catastrophe, alongside the greater scrutiny of offshore banking centers and the greater state prevention of violent extremism in Gulf monarchies, has been the deeper appreciation by some leaders in the Middle East region of the limits of military tools and the value of diplomatic settlements achieved via negotiations, rather than threats or coercion. The 2021 normalization of diplomatic relations between Qatar and blockading Arab neighbors, and the 2022 thaw in ties between Israel and Turkey, for instance, show a change in Middle East inter-state relations and strong departures from the polarizing Bush administrations’ emphasis on “with us or against us” geopolitics. Nevertheless, the legacy of the Trump administration’s 2021 divisive policy in the Maghreb region is still negatively impacting the sub-region, as explained in chapter nine. Finally, and to conclude, with all its military might and policies of pressure and threats, the US has solved no major diplomatic or security issue in the Middle East region in over 20 years and the security level in the MENA countries, and from the region towards the US, is no better than prior to the so-called “forever wars”. The latter had to come to a halt, and the War on Terror might well be remembered as a period of actual US terror among the populations of the broad Middle East. These wars have even failed to secure more oil and gas supplies for the international market, as the 2022 international energy crisis blatantly revealed. Yet the unilaterally decided withdrawal from the region, decided under President Obama, after a surge in troops and violence, has only produced disappointment among traditional allies. Israel, Egypt, and the Gulf monarchies have decided in Spring 2022 not to abide by the US sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. Twenty years of unilateralism at all costs and this strategic withdrawal could certainly not entice these allies to antagonize a new and growing regional hegemon, Russia, when Washington decides to become more distant. China, after becoming the main importer of the region’s oil and gas exports, has become a key broker of diplomatic agreements. In the end, the War on Terror, as such or under different names, was a two-decade period of grand, ill-prepared, and delusional policy aims, American unilateralism in regional decision-making, failed American diplomacy and welcomed Asian alternatives to it, failed counterinsurgency with massive violence, large-scale destruction, and unprecedented levels of forced migrations

10

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from and across a transformed Middle East that will need decades to reconstruct itself and heal from deep scars and profound trauma.

References Badie, B. (2020, originally published in 2005). Rethinking international relations. Elgar Publishing. www.elgaronline.com/view/9781789904741/978 1789904741.xml Biden, J. R. (2021). Interim National Strategic Security Guidance. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC1v2.pdf Frank, T. (2018, March 23). Fatima Boudchar was bound, gagged and photographed naked. John McCain wants to know if Gina Haspel’s okay with that. Buzzfeed. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/thomasfrank/fatimabouchar-was-bound-gagged-andphotographed-naked-john Higham, S., & Stephens, J. (2004, May 21). New details of Prison abuse emerge. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/ 2004/05/21/new-details-of-prison-abuseemerge/7346e4cb-47f8-42ab8897-38a021a1bd0c/ Kennedy, P. (1987). The rise and fall of the great powers: Economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. Random. Khan, A. (2021, December 19). Hidden files bare military failures in deadly strikes, New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/ 18/us/airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html Khan, A., & Gopal, A. (2017, November 16). The uncounted. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/16/magazine/ uncounted-civilian-casualties-iraq-airstrikes.html?mtrref Lambert, L. A., Tayah, J., Lee-Schmid, C., Abdalla, M., Abdallah, I., Ali, A. H., ..., & Ahmed, W. (2022). The EU’s natural gas Cold War and diversification challenges. Energy Strategy Reviews, 43, 100934. Roy, O. (2006). Globalized Islam. Columbia University Press. Singh, A. (2013). Globalizing torture: CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition. Open Society Justice Initiative. Taguba, A. M. (2008). U.S. army report of abuse of prisoners in Iraq. MacMay. Tayler, L., & Epstein, E. (2022). Legacy of the “Dark Side”: The costs of unlawful U.S. Detentions and Interrogations Post-9/11 Human Rights Watch. January 9, 2022. Watson Institute, Brown University. https://watson.brown.edu/cos tsofwar/papers/2022/DetentionandTorture Vine, D., Coffman, C., Khoury, K., Lovasz, M., Bush, H., Leduc, R., & Walkup, J. (2021). Creating refugees: Displacement caused by the United States’ Post9/11 wars. Costs of War Project. http://tiny.cc/ajbtuz

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Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Annex A: Detailed Description of the Methodology for Chinese-Iraqi Energy Forecasting

First Scenario: The Energy Transition Scenario In 2015, during the negotiations for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, China declared its commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reduce its carbon intensity by 60–65% from 2005 levels (Anthony, 2016). This bold declaration put pressure on China to vastly increase its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, as China has become in recent years the world’s largest emitter of Carbon Dioxide (CO2 ). Accordingly, Beijing has adopted an energy transition strategy to move forward its clean energy generation capacities and to sharply decrease its oil demand by 2050. It represents a shift in its energy system as it goes beyond the replacement of one source of fuel to another cleaner source, such as simply replacing thermal generation from coal to gas to generate electricity. The strategy of energy transition involves deep changes in the technology, infrastructure, market, production equipment, and consumption patterns (Oxford Institute, 2018). This is very likely to negatively affect China’s demand for oil, compared to any business-as-usual scenario. First, we introduced a group of indicators for the energy transition in China in the coming years. According to the 13th five-year plan, China aims to largely change its consumption of energy from coal to gas since the capacity of the latter should reach 220 billion cubic meters, with a share from the total consumption of energy amounting to 10%, while the share of coal is expected to decrease below 58%. On the other hand, in © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 L. A. Lambert and M. Elayah (eds.), The Post-American Middle East, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29912-4

267

268

ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

Table A1

Power generation by different sources from 2012 to 2017

Unit: TWH

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Total Share of renewables Coal Gas Oil Other fossils Nuclear Hydro Wind Solar Biomass Other renewable

4987 19.9% 3713 110 6 97 98 856 103 4 30 0.48

5372 20% 3981 116 5 119 112 892 138 8 37 0.28

5680 22.7% 4027 133 4 139 133 1060 160 24 44 0.54

5740 24.2% 3898 167 4 162 171 1113 186 39 53 0.15

6023 25.7% 3946 191 3 191 213 1175 241 67 65 0.12

6417 26.4% 4150 205 N/A N/A 248 1195 303 117 79 N/A

Source China Energy Outlook 2019

2017, the Chinese power generation increased significantly, with a high percentage of renewable energy, reaching 26.4%. Table A1 shows the power generation by different sources of energy, and it indicates a significant decrease in using oil resources versus other clean sources (Outlook, 2018). This Energy Transition scenario investigates the future changes that will affect the imports of Iraq’s oil due to changes in the energy transition policy in China. The analysis of the scenario is based on a group of assumptions. First, the oil demand of China will be considered equal to the amount of oil imports. Second, data will be taken from the China Renewable Energy Outlook 2018, as it is expected that the oil demand by 2027 will rise by 17% above the 2017 level before decreasing to about 71% of the 2017 level by 2050. Thirdly, to identify the volume of imports of China from Iraq in 2027 and 2050, we calculated the average of imports of four years from 2014 to 2017, assuming that China will import from Iraq in an overall constant average, equal to the overall oil imports from all exporting countries. Figure A1 shows the volume of China’s oil imports from all oilexporting countries to China, prior to the exceptional period of the COVID-19 that started in the country and severely disrupted its energy market in 2020. The volume of imports will continue to increase towards 2027 to reach more than 160 billion barrels per year, i.e., 17% more

Fig. A1 China’s oil imports from all countries

Billion barrels per year

ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

269

200 150 100 50 0 2017

2027

2050

Fig. A2 Iraq’s oil exports to China

Billion barrels per year

Year

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 2007

2017

2027

2050

year

than the volume in 2017. By contrast, it will dramatically decrease in 2050 to reach about 40 billion barrels per year. There will be a very rapid transition towards clean energy and away from oil and its derivatives. Meanwhile, the rapid energy transition in China will be reflected on the volume of China’s imports from Iraq. As shown in Fig. A2, the trend of imports from Iraq has the same trend of overall oil imports of China, the average of four years (2014 to 2017) of China’s imports from Iraq equal 8.9% based on the expected 15 billion barrels to be imported in 2027. In 2050 the imports will sharply decrease to reach less than 4 billion barrels per year. Moreover, Fig. A3 shows an increase in the oil revenue of Iraq in 2027 before dramatically decreasing in 2050.

ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

Fig. A3 Iraq’s oil revenues from China

US$ per year (Trillions)

270

2.00 1.50 1.00 0.50 0.00 2017

2027

2050

year

Second Scenario: Energy Diversification of Suppliers Under this scenario, we forecast the changes in the mentioned indicators of oil and infrastructure based on the concept and policies of energy diversification. It implies a greater diversification of the sources (essentially the exporting countries) and providers (essentially energy companies) of energy supplies and of the Chinese energy portfolio, but no radical changes in the fundamental energy mix (i.e., the different energy products being consumed). It is based on the policies of oil import diversification and diversification of a portfolio in the financial field. It is adopted by the energy cooperation strategy proposed by the Belt & Road Initiative. Achieving the diversification of energy in China could be reached through the following processes: enhance suppliers’ diversity, enhance spatial diversity, improve technology, developing transport routes of energy, and diversification of settlement currency. In the beginning, before conducting the forecasting for the selected indicators, we investigated the energy diversification in China at two levels: that of the diversification of energy suppliers, and that of the energy security mix. Diversification of Energy Supplier We investigated whether China has diversification within its energy suppliers BRI or not by using what is known as the Herfindahl-Hirshman index (HHI) to evaluate the dependency of energy supply (Li et al., 2018). En HHI = Si2 (A1) i=1

ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

271

Since Si is the energy export share of country i from the total volume of China’s energy import. Thus, we use this index to evaluate the diversification of oil sources in China. Then, to test the robustness of the results, we normalize the HHI index to compare between different years with different sources of oil sources in China as the following H H I∗ =

H H I − 1/N 1 − 1/N

(A2)

Since N is the number of energy exporting countries to China, in our study (countries exporting oil to China), we compared the value of HHI* for two years, one before the BRI (year 2011) and one after the BRI (year 2017) to evaluate if the BRI has created a diversification in oil sources in China. The results in Table A2 indicate indeed a diversification in oil import sources in China since the value of HHI is between 1/N and 1, the value of HHI* sets between 0 and 1. Accordingly, as shown in Fig. A4, an increase in Iraq’s share of oil imports of China is expected. Although there is a diversification in oil import suppliers, nevertheless, Iraq’s share will increase gradually to reach 18% in 2027 and 24% in 2035. Then, it should reach a peak of 35% in 2050 in this scenario. On the other hand, it is expected that the pattern and value of studied indicators of oil, including the volume of China’s oil imports from all countries, the volume of Iraq’s export to China, and Iraq’s oil export revenue will have, overall, the same trend and values of increase as in the scenario of business as usual. This can happen because the diversification of oil suppliers to China should not affect its oil demand, in quantity. The energy security mix is one of the significant fundamentals of energy diversification billers. We investigated the energy diversification through this concept using the index of Shannon-Weiner (Li et al., 2018). To use this index, we considered that China has four main categories of Table A2

Diversification index of energy import suppliers in China

Before IBR (2011) After BR (2017)

Oil HHI

Oil HHI*

N of oil-exporting countries to China

0.09 0.07

0.070 0.058

48 45

Source Authors’ calculations based on data from Statista

272

ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

35% 30%

Percentage

25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2027

2030

2035

2050

Year Fig. A4

Share of Iraq from all China’s oil imports

energy sources, crude oil, natural gas, coal, and other sources, including waterpower, nuclear power, and wind power. The index is formulated as: E4 SWI = −

i=1

pi ln( pi )

(3)

Since pi is the share of type i from the consumption by total energy sources that include gas, oil, coal, and other resources. To evaluate diversification in energy sources in China after the launch of the BRI, we compared the value of SWI before and after the launch and the value of SWI increased from 0.90 in 2011 to 1.12 in 2017. The increase in value indicates diversification in energy sources by China. Accordingly, we forecasted the change in the share of each source from all energy consumption in China. As shown in Fig. A5, the share of coal from energy consumption will decrease dramatically over time from 60% in 2017 to about 17% in 2050. In Contrast, the share of both renewable resources and natural gas will increase noticeably since their share will up from 14 and 7% respectively in 2017, to 35% and 21% in 2050. Moreover, oil demand will stay high and increase from 19% in 2017 to 27% in 2050, in this diversification scenario. The existence of a well diversified energy consumption mix in China strongly suggests that China is moving toward a new paradigm of energy policies in the future, which includes a diversification of energy resources. This

ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

273

Energy consumption %

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2017

2020

2025

2030

2035

2040

2045

2050

Coal Year Crude oil Natural gas Water power, nuclear power, wind power Fig. A5

Energy consumption by source

could constrain the total oil export potential and opportunities of a country like Iraq.

Third Scenario: Business as Usual Scenario This base scenario provides information about current and known energy policies in China and assumes that non-conventional oil resources can help the energy industry overcome the daunting challenges of (conventional) peak oil. It analyzes how these policies affect the relationship between China and Iraq in terms of oil trade, especially after Iraq has signed five key agreements in 2015, as mentioned before. Therefore, the scenario covers the period from 2015 to 2020 and provides a projection for the years 2027, 2035, and 2050. It states that the relationship between both countries has been improved noticeably after 2003 due to China’s contribution in the reconstruction of Iraq. This improvement in cooperation has enhanced Chinese commercial investment in Iraq, especially in the field of oil. On the other hand, the amount of crude oil imports of China from Iraq reached $23.7 billion in 2019, with a percentage of 9.9% from 90.1%

274

ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

of the total crude oil imports of China from the top 15 exporting countries to China (Workman, 2020). Moreover, the last statistics of the first quarter of this year show a noticeable increase in oil exports from Iraq to China comparing to the average of 2019, and China emerged as the biggest buyer for the Kurdish crude. In addition, the amount of Chinese imports among imports from the Iraqi southern port of Basra increased to 3.6 million barrels per day in average in February 2010 compared to 3 million barrels in January earlier that year (Di Paola, 2020). According to the results of forecasting the changes in our indicators specified in Table 5.2, we expect a gradual increase in the amount of China’s imports from all countries in 2027 and 2030, respectively. Then, the amount will reach its peak in 2050, something which sharply contrasts with the results of the above-mentioned energy transition scenario. As a result of the increase in imports in China, Iraq’s oil exports will increase in this business as usual scenario. Then, it should reach an unprecedented high volume in 2050 and the revenue of Iraq from oil exports to China could vastly increase as well. Regarding the improvement of infrastructure, Iraq has increasingly made efforts to improve its civil and industrial infrastructure, which is the main variable that enhances the capacity of Iraq to boost oil production. To measure improvements in the infrastructure in Iraq due to its partnership with China under BRI and the changes in Chinese energy policies in line with this initiative, we forecasted the change in Iraq oil production and compared it with the past values before the BRI. The production in 2005 decreased due to the war of 2003, which damaged most of the infrastructure, including the oil infrastructure significantly. But years later, the production rose rapidly, especially in 2015, which is the year of signing the BRI agreement between China and Iraq. Since then, China has widened its investments in oil infrastructure in Iraq. Table A3 shows a group of these investments until 2019 and the freeze due to the COVID19/global lockdown economic crisis. In the future, irrespective of the energy policies in China, we expect a rise in the oil production of Iraq under the BRI.

Evaluation Matrix As shown in Table A4, the criterias include total value, economic value, and environmental value that have been set to assess three proposed scenarios. Then, one selects the best scenario according to the highest

ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

Table A3

275

Chinese investment in Iraq after 2015

Year

Company

Project

Description

2018

Geo-Jade Petroleum Corp

Naft Khana and Huweiza

2018

United Energy Group (UEG)

Sindbad

2018 2018

Zhenhua Oil China Oilfield Services Limited (COSL)

Eastern Baghdad Missan

2018

Power Construction Corp. of China (PowerChina) and Norinco

Fao

2019

CPEEC

Halfaya

2019

Hilong Oil Service and Engineering Co.

Majnoon

Naft Khana (Diyala) and Huweiza (Missan) oil blocks Sindbad block in the southern province of Basra Oilfield development Drilling and well completion integrated services contract in the Missan oilfield Announced plan to construct a 300,000-bpd oil refinery that will include a petrochemical plant Build and operate natural gas processing facilities Develop and complete 80 oil wells

Source The Middle East Institute

score. These criteria are set based on the expected value of two indicators, Iraq’s oil exports and revenues of oil exports, which should benefit Iraq after being a part of BRI with China. As illustrated below the matrix, each criterion was weighted according to its relative importance for achieving the highest value for Iraq. The criterion with a higher score is more important than others. In addition, the criteria have been classified with a rating scale ranging from low, medium, and high. Each scenario is given a score for each criterion based on their expected results and outcomes of forecasting. Economic value was given the highest score (most critical), followed by the total value with a lower score (medium to highly critical). While the environmental criteria is given the lowest score (the least critical). Based on the total scores, the scenario of energy diversification is the scenario with the highest added value to be obtained by Iraq as being a part of the BRI. In addition, the business-as-usual scenario shows a good added value for Iraq. The major difference between the two scenarios is the environmental impact. While the energy transition

Total score

Environmental value (1)

8

The value of Iraq’s oil exports and revenue will decrease (Low total value) Score: 1*2 = 2 The total value will not achieve economic improvement (Low economic value) Score: 1*3 = 3 It is expected that China moves toward renewable and clean resources. Therefore, Iraq could try to follow the change in energy policy by looking for more renewable resources (High environmental value) Score: 3*1 = 3

(Low = 1, medium = 2, High = 3)

Total value (2)

Economic value (3)

Scenario 1 Energy transition

Scale

Evaluation matrix

Criteria

Table A4

The value of Iraq’s oil exports and revenue will increase (High total value) Score: 3*2 = 6 The total value will achieve economic improvement (High economic value) Score: 3*3 = 9 China will diversify its energy sources and a dramatic decrease in coal and increase in its renewables. Therefore, this encourages Iraq to use environmental-friendly technologies (High environmental value) Score: 3*1 = 3 18

Scenario 2 Energy Diversification

17

The value of Iraq’s oil exports and revenue will increase (High total value) Score: 3*2 = 6 The total value will achieve economic improvement (High economic value) Score: 3*3 = 9 The current energy policies of China still support using oil with a slight increase in the share of renewable resources. Therefore, Iraq will not change its environmental policy (Medium environmental value) Score: 2*1 = 2

Scenario 3 Business as usual

276 ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

ANNEX A: DETAILED DESCRIPTION …

277

should certainly improve the environment in both Iraq and China, and probably for the whole world, it is not the scenario that generates the best economic value for Iraq.