The following are summaries of papers presented by members of the Middle East Working Group on a program of panels at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Boston, MA, August 31, 2002. The panels were organized by Augustus Richard Norton of Boston University and Louis J. Cantori of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
U.S.-EGYPTIAN RELATIONS
Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid, Cairo University
The events of September 11 changed some dimensions of the close relationship between Egypt and the United States as new issues became, more than ever before, issues of concern for public opinion and the governments of the two countries. As the United States became more interested in a show of solidarity by its allies and friends, Egyptian officials initially were reluctant to air their differences with the United States and more willing to get along with Washington on some issues over which the countries had differed in the past.
The first sign of change was immediately noted a few weeks after September 11. When the United States called for an international coalition to support a military campaign against the Taliban, President Hosni Mubarak went public to argue that a successful fight against terrorism requires no large-scale military campaign, but rather limited security operations following skillful intelligence gathering. He was also critical of the proposal to establish a worldwide coalition, saying that such an idea would be extremely divisive.
The U.S. administration did not like public disagreement on this issue. This ill-feeling on the part of the United States was conveyed to President Mubarak, probably by President Jacques Chirac of France, who came to the United States to express his sympathy to the American people and met President Mubarak later. President Mubarak changed the tone of his statements over this issue and stressed Egypt’s solidarity with the United States in its fight against terrorism but added that Egypt would not send troops to Afghanistan. Egypt was probably not asked to send troops, but it is almost certain that Egypt provided assistance to the United States in the form of intelligence sharing and granting overflight rights to U.S. warplanes.
The Egyptian government then strove to minimize differences with the United States over most issues. President Mubarak himself would not talk about such differences, leaving the matter to Ahmed Maher, his new foreign minister, who was less fond of making inflammatory statements than Amr Moussa, his predecessor. Egypt went even further, ignoring negative elements in U.S. ideas about the Middle East, preferring to focus on what it sees as “positive ideas” and to work with the U.S. administration to give shape to such ideas. President Bush’s speech on June 24, in which he said that the United States would not deal with Yasser Arafat, was found by President Mubarak to be quite balanced. Despite calls by the Arab summit to sever links with Israel, the Egyptian government continued to exchange visits with Israeli officials, many of whom were from the Labor party. The head of Egyptian intelligence services also went to Israel a number of times and met with senior Israeli officials.
Finally, new issues surfaced in Egyptian-U.S. relations following the September 11 events. Lack of democracy in the Arab world as a cause of terrorism was added to the issues of contention between the Egyptian and U.S. governments. American commentators, including many friends of Israel, attributed the resentment of U.S. foreign policy in the region not to continued U.S. support of Israel, despite its illegal occupation of Arab lands. They argued that Arab governments, which lack legitimacy – particularly those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia – encourage their media to denounce the United States and order the use of textbooks that disseminate hatred of people of other religions as a way of gaining popularity. U.S. success in the “war against terrorism” would be ensured if democracy prevailed in Arab and Muslim countries.
Within this context, the second sentencing of Saad Eddin Ibrahim came to support the arguments of those who consider authoritarianism in Arab countries to be the cause of anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli feelings. The message sent by the U.S. government to Egypt in August 2002, expressing U.S. frustration at the lack of a satisfactory resolution of Saad’s case, added to the feelings of tension at the lack of U.S. concern about anything in the region except what happens to its friends. Egyptian critics of the U.S. record on democracy noted that violations of the rights of Muslim Brothers did not cause a similar reaction on the part of the U.S. government. This was seen as another example of double standards. Whether Saad’s arrest and trial were fair or not, Egyptian writers saw in the U.S. rebuke yet another example of the U.S. use of assistance to punish Egypt for its policies.
Continued lack of concern by the U.S. government for the feelings of Arab peoples led the Egyptian president to take the further step of publicly expressing misgivings at U.S. policy in the region, when he said in late August and repeated a month later that a possible U.S. war on Iraq would only inflame an already tense situation. Thus despite his reluctance to engage directly in a public debate about U.S. policies in the region, the unilateralist approach taken by the Bush administration on many world issues including those of the Middle East is pushing the two governments towards a public clash that would widen if the United States undertakes a war against Iraq to change its regime.
It is highly unlikely, however, that the two governments would allow their clash on any question to threaten a close relationship. The United States would like Egypt to continue to act as a “moderating” power in the Middle East. The Egyptian government would not like to risk whatever economic and diplomatic support it gets from the United States and would do its best to toe the U.S. line, except when U.S. wishes are seen as jeopardizing regime survival. For this reason, advice from some quarters in the United States about the human-rights situation in Egypt or an unpopular military action against Iraq would simply be ignored by the Egyptian government, if not mildly critiqued by its own spokesmen.
Egyptian officials and public alike are not surprised that such differences exist, as U.S.-Egypt relations are viewed by them as “friendship.” Friends could have their differences but remain friends. U.S. policy makers and commentators, on the other hand, expect Egypt to act more like a country dependent on U.S. economic and military assistance. If there are differences, they should be limited to what Washington considers issues of marginal importance. Egypt may possess some influence in the Arab world, but the U.S. administration, leading the world’s sole remaining superpower, is ill at ease in dealing with Egypt, a country of the South, as a friend. The future therefore harbors many difficulties for the relationship.
IRANIAN FOREIGN POLICY
Bahman Baktiari, University of Maine
The events of 9/11 reverberated around the world including inside Iran, sharpening the already tense internal power struggle between reformists and hardliners, and exposing the contradiction between popular sympathy for Americans and official hostility towards the United States, especially by hardliners. Nevertheless, the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the subsequent U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan placed Iran’s foreign policy at a crossroads.
An understanding of Iran’s foreign policy requires an analysis of the complex interaction between domestic and international factors. It is difficult to overlook Iran’s strategic value. The impact of this factor on Iranian rulers is clear when one examines Iranian policy toward the fragile states of the Caucasus and Central Asia, some of which are endowed with large untapped energy reserves. Iran’s neighborhood also features oil-rich U.S. allies, a recalcitrant Iraq, a pro-American regime in Afghanistan, a politically troubled, nuclear-armed Pakistan, and a secular Turkey allied with Israel. This regional picture places Iran in a difficult position.
On the one hand, Iran’s strategic location pulls its foreign policy toward short-term cooperation with the United States, yet Iran’s foreign policy in the Middle East, in particular toward the Palestinian issue and Israel as well as its nuclear program, places Iran and the United States on a collision course. Hence, Iranian rulers have struggled to find the right balance between Iran’s strategic interests and the Islamic Republic’s ideological commitments. In the end, how Iran articulates the goals of its foreign policy in the aftermath of 9/11 and whether it can succeed in balancing its foreign policy will depend to a large extent on what happens inside Iran between the conservatives and the reformists. The outcome of this internal struggle will have a significant impact on the direction of Iranian foreign policy.
Democratization, Reform and Foreign Policy
Since the election of a reformist president in 1997, one of the most crucial intellectual debates that has emerged in Iran is how to define the national interests of the Islamic Republic. As stated by R.K. Ramazani, “Definition of the national interest requires taking into account world views of leaders as well as their foreign policy” (Iran at the Crossroads, Palgrave, 2001). The Islamic Republic today stands on the verge of a post-Islamic condition in which the appeal, energy and symbols of Islam are exhausted, and in its place are emerging ideas of democracy, an indigenous conception of human rights, and a focus on individual freedom and choice. Here is a country that was the inspiration for the coming age of political Islam a generation ago. Its inception was a bold move that many Muslims at the time saw as the initial step on a path that would be distinct from both capitalism and communism, ideologies they associated with the West. Now it is demonstrating the potential to be the inspiration for reformers in other Muslim countries.
The reformist Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, asks the question posed by so many other Islamic thinkers: How can a society whose identity is religious guarantee freedom, democracy and social justice? The solution is not Islam in itself. Alone, as an ideology of government, it cannot solve the problems of a world that, for better or worse, is dominated by the West. In one lecture, Khatami declared bluntly: “We Muslims once had a dominant civilization and were shaping human history in a way that we are no longer capable of today. We want to regain our place in history and, if possible, build a future that is different from our present and even our past, without rejecting those who are different from us, and without ignoring scientific thought and the practical achievement of humanity.” For Khatami and his reformist supporters, democratization of the Iranian society and state is indispensable to the protection of Iran’s complete political independence and territorial integrity as a modern nation-state. In a sense, the reformists’ vision of Iran’s national interest is similar to the concept of “democratic peace” in the theory of international relations.
Paradoxically, however, Iran’s constitution also embodies principles that give significant power to the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The president is aware of this, and in his speeches on foreign policy, Khatami frequently reminds his audience that “the general policies of the system are determined by the leader. His eminence has determined the three fundamental principles of wisdom, honor and interest as the foundation for our foreign policy” (February 10, 2002). In December 1997, in their opening speeches before the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Tehran, the president and the supreme leader disagreed on almost every point: a dialogue of civilizations as opposed to a clash of cultures, adoption of what is good in the West as opposed to a disavowal of everything that is Western. For Khamenei, vigilance against fitna is a prerequisite, particularly when Iran “is under siege at home and abroad.” For Khatami, however, “destroying freedom in the name of religion and national interest represents two sides of the same coin, both symptomatic of the historical ailment that we suffer from, due to centuries of despotic rule that has shaped our temperament to become irreconcilable with freedom.”
In many respects, the gradual moderation of Iranian politics since Khatami’s election in 1997 is a reflection of whose view has taken hold in Iran. As much as the harsh rhetoric of Khamenei may give the impression that Iran is still pursuing an ideologically driven foreign policy, the actual record is different. In fact, in the past decade, Iran’s foreign policy toward the Persian Gulf and Caspian Basin is becoming more pragmatic, and Tehran is working hard to improve relations with its Arab neighbors and the Muslim peoples of the Caspian. Neighboring Arab governments have praised Iran’s new direction, not least because it has eased fears that Iranian-backed militants might interfere in the internal politics of other countries, particularly the Persian Gulf monarchies that are home to sizable populations that follow the Shiite branch of Islam dominant in Iran.
Iran’s Response to September 11
The events of September 11 drew domestic and international attention to the geopolitical significance of Iran’s location between two of the world’s key energy depots: the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. As the United States prepared to launch its military strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan, analysts predicted, that with a common enemy, Washington and Tehran could finally be on the brink of turning a page on decades of animosity. From their immediate condemnation of the attacks to their covert cooperation with the United States, Iranian leaders acted prudently by looking at how Iran’s national interests can best be served.
Iran, which nearly went to war with the Taliban in 1998, reportedly offered to help in rescuing downed U.S. pilots, while stepping up its aid to Iran-based Afghan opposition fighters seeking to wrest control of the key western city of Herat. This covert aid was seen as crucial in securing the collapse of Taliban rule in the north which set off a domino effect of militia defeats across the country. President Khatami insisted there were “no secret contacts” with the United States, but ahead of the bombing campaign he did host two visits by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Straw’s role at the time was “essentially as an intermediary” between Tehran and Washington, “in order for both sides to reach some kind of understanding” (Financial Times, September 25, 2002).
On the ground in Afghanistan, the Iranian-backed anti-Taliban Northern Alliance was quietly urging its new friends in Washington to cooperate with Tehran. “Coordination between the United States and Iran is a difficult issue, given certain diplomatic constraints,” Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said in October 2001. “Of course it would have been a much better situation if there had been normal relations between the United States and Iran.” A breakthrough after years of tentative steps towards détente, U.N. diplomats said, came in Bonn in December during the interAfghan talks. Egged on by the United Nations and Germany and out of the media spotlight, U.S. and Iranian diplomats were “working side by side, cooperating in a way that no one thought possible.” The result was today’s Afghan government, a coalition of royalists loyal to Hamid Karzai and former king Mohammad Zahir Shah, and elements of the Northern Alliance.
In the reformists’ view, the war in Afghanistan opened a door for Iran, presenting an opportunity to gain the benefits of good relations with Washington without sacrificing the goals of the revolution. The reformists’ hope for a rapprochement with the West was clearly on display in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, when the statements coming from the government conveyed heart-felt sympathy and sincere disgust. The restraint displayed by Tehran as the U.S. led coalition geared up for the first round of its War on Terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan provided further indication that perhaps the long-awaited thawing of U.S.-Iran relations was in the offing. Immediately after the attacks, about 2,000 people gathered in Tehran on September 18 to hold a candlelight vigil in recognition of the victims. People chanted against terrorism and expressed their sympathy with America. On September 17, a reformist parliamentarian named Ahmad Burqani visited the U.S. interests section at the Swiss embassy in Tehran to sign the book of condolences. Tehran’s Mayor Morteza Alviri and Municipal Council head Mohammad Atrianfar also sent a letter to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: “ Tehran’s citizens express their deep hatred of this ominous and inhuman move, strongly condemn the culprits and express their sympathy with the New Yorkers.”
Unfortunately, President George W. Bush dropped a bombshell on Iran in January 2002. By lumping it into an “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea, he essentially slammed the door on any chance of détente. Iranians from across the political spectrum closed ranks in the face of Bush’s belligerent rhetoric. Hundreds of thousands turned out for rallies in February to celebrate the Islamic Republic’s twenty-third anniversary. President Khatami chastised U.S. leaders as immature, while marchers carried placards saying “Bush Is Dracula,” and demonstrators burned effigies of the American president and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Coupled with increasing U.S. military presence in Uzbekistan, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, Iran felt surrounded. Meanwhile, U.S. officials continued to talk of an impending military confrontation with Iraq, some even mentioning Iran as the next target. In response, Ayatollah Khamenei described Mr. Bush as “bloodthirsty,” while President Khatami said he “spoke arrogantly, humiliatingly, aggressively and in an interfering way.”
The change in U.S. attitudes was partly driven by the suspicion that Iran had tried to undermine the new Afghan administration and continued to arm some warlords, including Ismail Khan in Herat and Rashid Dostum in Mazar-e-Sharif. On that score, officials in Washington failed to reconcile their accusations with the fact Iran had pledged more financial assistance to the new regime than any other country, a move that drew praise from the United Nations. Iran’s interest in a viable democratic government in Afghanistan reflects significantly the societal transformation in Iran itself over more than two decades. During the earliest phase of the revolution, the crusading zeal of radical Islamists in Iran underpinned the Iranian plan of November 10, 1981, for a new government in Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, at the time of Iranian efforts to export the Islamic revolution, the plan in effect called for the establishment of an Islamic Republic of Afghanistan ruled by clerics as in Iran. The Khatami-led democratic movement in Iran today inspires a very different kind of Iranian interest in a new Afghan government. Iran has consistently called for a multiethnic representative government in Afghanistan.
The U.S. change of attitude toward Iran was influenced mostly by the Israeli seizure on January 3 of the Karine-A, a ship loaded with arms said by Israel to have originated in Iran and bound for the Palestinian Authority. The discovery suggested that Iran was stepping up its support for radical groups in the Middle East.
Faced with a growing list of its alleged efforts to hamper the War on Terrorism and having been cast along with Iraq as a malignancy best cut out of the international body, Iran reacted. The internal debate shifted to the benefit of the anti-reformist elements, who received the public backing of the Supreme Leader Khamenei in early May 2002. Ayatollah Khamenei announced in no uncertain terms that talks with the United States were not in the offing. The declaration came on the heels of reports that Khamenei had authorized the Supreme National Security Council to assess the merits of starting talks with the United States and the threat posed to Iran in light of President Bush’s “axis of evil” speech. On May 21, reformists and hardliners in the parliament engaged in debate about opening a dialogue with the United States. Khamenei weighed in two days later, shortly after the release of the State Department’s report on terrorism, in which Iran was singled out as “the most active state sponsor” of terrorist activities. Khamenei railed against the reformists: “These people who talk about negotiations with the United States are unfamiliar with the ABCs of politics and the ABCs of honor,” adding that talks would be “treason and stupidity.”
In the end, while Khatami has improved relations with Europe and much of the Arab world, relations with the United States remain hostage to the more conservative elements of Iran’s power structure. The Bush administration has given up on the reformers’ ability to fundamentally transform the regime from within. Instead, it is moving toward encouraging regime change in Tehran, placing its hopes in the popular movement of Iranians who support democracy. Hence, the post-September 11 environment has created more daunting challenges for the leaders of the Islamic Republic and, for the time being, has slowed down the political life envisioned by Khatami. What has emerged in Iran today is the frequent use of the word after. What comes after the war against terrorism? After the war with Iraq? After Khatami?
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BIG BANG? ARAB POLITICS AFTER 9/11
Michael Barnett, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Imagine a fictional moment at the American Political Science Association meetings held in late August 2001. A roomful of Middle East experts on a panel is invited to speculate about where the region is likely to be a year from then. Most imagine some variation of the current situation. Yet one dares to offer a fantastical scenario: Acting in the name of Islam, Saudi nationals attack the United States, which responds by going after the terror network; the Bush administration uses this War on Terrorism as a pretext to go after Iraq; meanwhile, there is a downward spiral in the Israeli Palestinian war, leaving hundreds dead on both sides. Amid a combination of chuckles and rebuffs, the other members of the panel quickly conclude that such a scenario was virtually unthinkable but argued that in this unlikely event it was virtually certain that it would shake the region to its roots and force a major realignment in alliance patterns. Why did the conjunction of these events not lead to the regional meltdown most would have predicted?
The presumption that these “fictional” global events would have led to a regional meltdown is based on the claim that systemic global forces cascade on regional dynamics. The post-September 11 global context can be divided into its material and normative elements. At the material level, there is little doubt that in the short term American power will only increase. American primacy has few rivals or future contenders. At the normative level, the decades-long drift towards a deepening multilateralism has been abruptly jarred by recent events. But it was not 9/11 that represented the “shock”; it was the response adopted by the Bush administration. It resembles in many respects the Reagan foreign policy. American officials have an unshakable belief in military power; the convictions of their cause and the necessary response; the need of the United States to act unilaterally if necessary, as its allies will eventually fall in line, either because they have little choice or because the results will bring them along; and a belief that this is a Manichaean world where there is no middle position.
The renewed primacy of global strategic politics and the American campaign against terrorism are quickly reshaping the dynamics between the international system and regional subsystems. For some regions, the autonomy that expanded with the collapse of the Cold War has contracted palpably. During the Cold War there was little discussion of regionalism, in large measure because superpower dynamics smothered regional autonomy. The end of the Cold War meant that regional states had a greater opportunity to develop their own neighborhood. This provided the context for the much discussed “new regionalism” and the opportunity for states to pursue regional projects unhindered by global strategic interference. The international campaign against terrorism, terrorism’s transnational character, and the American “with us or against us” response have meant that states are being forced to make strategic calculations once again based on which way the global (American) winds are blowing.
The Arab Middle East has felt these dynamics as much as any region. The fact that many of the hijackers came from the region and that many of the terrorist groups on America’s “most wanted” list have Arab roots has meant that the Arab world finds itself under extreme pressure from the United States and the international community. The Arab world is now construed as a place of danger for the rest of the world, and Arab states are being asked to clean up their own house (simultaneously rooting out terrorist cells and promoting the rule of law) and to be prepared to fall into line to help to make the world safe for the United States. The Arab states have shown themselves to be remarkably pliant and unwilling to offer a strongly dissenting line even when provoked.
Even before September 11, the region had stopped seeking “Arab” solutions in any meaningful sense. In Dialogues in Arab Politics: The Search for Regional Order (1998), I argued that Arab politics can be understood as an ongoing debate by Arab states about the norms of Arab politics and the relationship of those norms to their Arab identities. This debate involved a consideration of the meaning of Arab unity, ways to confront Israel, and relations with the West. I traced this debate over the regional order from Arabism’s emergence in the early part of the twentieth century to its demise at century’s close. I concluded that while Arab leaders and societies continued to be oriented toward each other in a nominal way, especially during moments of perceived threats to the Arab nation, for all practical purposes the Arab state system had abandoned the “Arabism” that made it a distinctive regional order.
The post-September 11 American suspicion of the region and depiction of it as a place of danger has certainly been felt throughout the region. What is remarkable, though, is that these developments have not significantly changed the debates over the desired regional order. There has been little appreciable movement toward normative integration on any level, however, because Arab states have stopped envisioning an Arab order as some sort of sanctuary. Despite the strong pressures from the outside and evidence of growing identification across the Arab region with Arab issues such as Palestine (aided considerably not by Arab leaders but by the media), there has been remarkably little attempt at sustained inter-Arab cooperation and only nominal calls for Arab unity.
The response to these Western intrusions and accusations has been varied. At the level of Arab public opinion, the American campaign in Afghanistan, its war against terrorism, and its nearly reflexive backing of Israel have won few “hearts and minds.” Yet these sentiments have not led to any “no-alliance pledge” like the one that emerged following the Baghdad Pact of 1955. At best, Arab states have refused to sanction or join any American military campaign against Iraq (at least under current conditions). Nor have these events led to a significant tightening of inter-Arab strategic relations. Instead, Arab leaders have been quite interested in figuring out how they can get Washington to alter its policies toward the region. Most of the major Arab actors have demonstrated a keen interest in seeing a greater coordination between them and Washington. Certainly because of the anti-Western sentiment there is a limit to how far they can go, but there has been no widespread demand for the prohibitions against relations with the West (that is, the United States) that characterized the early decades of the Arab state system, and there has been no tangible movement toward the coordination of Arab military relations.
Then there is the matter of Israel. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of a most remarkable year is that the combination of September 11 and the Oslo War [second intifada] has led Arab states not to strike out, but to strike a pragmatic pose. Certainly Arab states are coordinating their Palestine policy in ways not seen in quite some time. Yet the results of their coordination hardly resemble the one-upmanship that once defined their policies. Instead, it more closely parallels their pre-1947 policies, when they expressed stern but moderate opposition to events in Palestine but feared keeping pace with the most extreme demands of their publics. In general, on matters of Arab unity, the West and Israel, there has been some change, especially at the level of rhetoric, but what stands out is how little change there has been, given what might have been expected.
To understand why requires understanding two important features of regional politics. Before September 11 there were few concrete policies on the books or in the ministries for producing greater Arab regional integration. Arab leaders (and societies) had given up trying to build an Arab order that had already proven to be a false grail, associated with far more defeats than victories. By the early 1990s, Arab leaders had abandoned the idea of an all-Arab order and had begun to think of alternative regional arrangements with non-Arab partners. Events since September 11 make it clear that few want to disturb the dead.
The other feature is the primacy of regime survival, which permeates virtually all their policies. This imperative largely accounts for the rather pragmatic and moderate response to the Oslo War. The risks associated with a more aggressive foreign policy outweigh the benefits. This is evident in Arab leaders’ attitude toward “leadership.” During the first decades of the Arab state system, the title of “leader” was coveted because of the belief that the symbolic capital associated with such a title could be converted into domestic political points. To be a leader, though, generally meant taking a stand that was more royalist than the king. This position was not without considerable risks. An Arab leader who talked the talk might also be expected to walk the walk. To be stationary when movement was expected could very well mean a tremendous loss of credibility, which, in turn, could carry real domestic costs. The costs have outweighed any expected political dividends, producing a more tempered foreign policy.
These developments are particularly evident in the Palestine policy. Certainly Arab leaders have strategic and emotional reasons for taking a strong stand against Israel and for presenting themselves as defenders of Palestine. Although the associated political dividends have declined over the decades, recent events have renewed the luster of that position. Most public opinion polls in the region suggest a growing identification with the cause of Palestine and a desire to see something done to protect the Palestinians and deliver a Palestinian state. The dilemma for Arab leaders is that there are risks associated with doing too much or too little. To promise harsher policies than can be delivered risks suffering a loss of credibility or having to follow through with policies that might be counterproductive if not self-destructive (memories of the 1967 war loom large). But to be perceived as not sufficiently involved also carries considerable political risks.
To navigate these rough waters, Arab leaders have, on the one hand, increasingly asked for harsher action by the international community against Israel and, on the other, restated what they believe would be an acceptable resolution to the Israel-Palestine crisis. This is clearly present in the Arab summit’s general endorsement of the Abdullah plan. The fact that this plan originated from Saudi Arabia, which traditionally has tried to keep its head down on Arab-Israeli matters, suggests how fearful Arab leaders have been that public opinion might get ahead of them. It also is notable that Arab leaders reaped some political rewards from being associated with a peace plan at a time when Israel was perceived as delivering lethal blows to the Palestinians.
Whether Arab leaders’ pragmatism will continue, given the widely reported popular discontent, remains to be seen. Any number of future scenarios might tip the balance, most notably, an American attack on Iraq. Under such circumstances, Arab leaders would have a strong incentive to take a more forceful posture and would feel the sting from their societies if they did not.
A MOMENT OF INCLUSION: REACTIONS IN THE ARAB WORLD
Sonja Hegasy, Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin
The Arab debate on cultural globalization may provide us with a better understanding of Arab reactions to the attacks of September 11, which caused so much furor in the West. The globalization debate that started in the mid-90s prepared the ground for a societal consensus in the region. A majority of Arab intellectuals have depicted globalization as pure cultural and economic imperialism, and their position has trickled down into daily newspapers and public opinion. Thus, the attacks were interpreted as a (“justified”) result of a merciless globalization process. The attacks generated admiration not because of malicious joy, but because people felt that someone had mastered globalization in all its aspects: technically in the elegance of the planes, economically by speculating on the New York Stock Exchange, and culturally because it was their elite students who had successfully studied in the West. The fact that Mohammed Atta and his companions had blended in so well in German and U.S. society and had even obtained honors degrees, plays an important role in understanding the consensus of the Arab street. For a short moment, they felt included in a world that usually excludes them from knowledge-based technologies and, more important, from recognition. “Sleeper” became a word of honor. The reactions to September 11 highlighted the paradoxical grievances towards globalization processes that include and exclude at the same time.
The German sociologist Rudolf Stichweh showed that the rise of the term “exclusion” in the 1990s comprised two theoretical concepts: It replaced theories that use “class” to describe social inequalities, and it took the place of the concept of poverty. Stichweh points out that poverty is not only meant economically, but also designates lack of proximity to the decision-making center. Someone who is poor has no access to the respective centers and therefore is excluded, which perpetuates his or her marginal position. The Arab globalization debate centers mainly around the term “exclusion” in this new sense, describing their societies as excluded by processes of globalization, which results in poverty and the withering away of one’s own voice.
After 200 years of interaction and integration between Arab and Western societies, a majority of Arab intellectuals now display a distinct resistance to globalization. This position has won so much resonance for three reasons: a) Anti-globalism comes at a time of severe identity crisis, which demands a clear demarcation line; b) Defining oneself as the victim of a global onslaught helps to rally people together (anti-globalism is a new form of nationalism); c) It paradoxically combines refusal of Western cultural products with the desire to share in them.
The position of these Arab intellectuals reflects the hybridization of cultures they criticize so severely. But they tend to ignore the transnational identity that has emerged and transferred part of the Arab societies into the global context. They turn a blind eye to the gains of cultural globalization and the richness of recent Arab production. In doing so, they continue a project of the West that they deeply reject – the exclusion of modern Arab and Muslim artists and the formulation of a one-way conception of world order. But authoritative voices have emerged, even in times of the American War on Terrorism. What Edward Said calls “adversarial internationalization” is an unintended creation arising from the encounter between two adversaries, the post-colonial world and the quasi-imperial world. The former enemies have now become rivals, creating a cultural amalgam of scholarly works posing some of the most interesting contemporary intellectual challenges.
The emergence of the post-colonial voice is part of the globalization process that cannot be denied. For example, in the course of events following the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, intellectuals and artists from the so-called “periphery” have become political authorities whose opinions are in demand. Recall the debate triggered by the article “The Algebra of Infinite Justice” by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy published in The Guardian, in which she commented on the atrocities (September 24, 2001). Roy dared to write that Osama bin Laden was the dark twin of George Bush and that one should not forget that neither of the two is more acceptable than the other – surely not what the West wants to hear. The role of the news channel al-Jazeera during the American War on Terrorism has furthermore proven that Arab journalists can establish a counter public even in times of “globalization-Americanization at war.” Today al-Jazeera is included among the global media players. Attempts to discredit it for having shown videos of Osama bin Laden have not been fruitful. From now on, no journalist working on the Arab world can disregard its authoritative voice. The satellite telephone, as part of the technological revolution connected with globalization, has catapulted news reporting from an Arab perspective into every American home.
Constituting identity through self-exclusion is a widespread form of reaction, but one should be aware of the price a society pays for this strategy. Moreover, the rhetoric of self-exclusion is a dubious intellectual exercise. It partly prepared the ground for the reactions in the Arab world to the attacks. Speaking of a “society under attack,” Arab public opinion was instantly thinking of itself and not of the New Yorkers.
THE PERILS OF A SECULAR FOREIGN POLICY: THE CASE OF TURKEY
Elizabeth S. Hurd, Northwestern University
“Turkey’s secularism acts to deflect the rising tide of fundamentalism.” – President Clinton, to then-Prime Minister Tansu Çiller, October, 1993.
President Clinton’s statement has set the tone for U.S. policy toward the Middle East up to the present. His assumption, however, that a strict separation between religion and politics is the solution to fundamentalism in the Middle East is mistaken. Militant secularism acts not to deflect but to incite Islamic fundamentalism. Instead of pressing for secular reform at any cost, U.S. foreign policy should support open and democratic political systems in the Middle East. Such systems will and should include Islamist parties. Upcoming Turkish elections provide a good test of U.S. policy in this area.
The aspirations of Islamist groups such as the Taliban for a fundamentalist political order are dangerous, and their political agendas must be opposed. However, there are Islamist parties and positions that fall outside the range of hearing of the West simply because they are neither secular nor fundamentalist. They represent a third option. Such parties draw on Islamic tradition to build agendas that are Islamist without being fundamentalist. There is a tendency to group these moderate Islamists with their fundamentalist counterparts and to seek to ban them from political participation. As moderates are forced out of public life and face limited options for political expression, more violent and intractable forms of Islamic fundamentalism thrive. These unintended consequences are the perils of a secular foreign policy.
Given the realities of the post-9/11 world, it is time for U.S. foreign policy to catch up with the potential of a nonsecular yet nonfundamentalist option in the Middle East. Today more than ever, it is critical that the United States not be perceived as standing for opposition to Islam. The key determinant of U.S. support for a particular party or regime should not be whether they declare themselves to be Islamist, but whether they tolerate a range of perspectives on the relation of religion to public order. The case of the Refah (Welfare) party in Turkey illustrates what is at stake. Banned every few months in Turkey, Refah most recently has been reincarnated as “Justice and Development,” headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan (jailed as a religious fundamentalist in the 1990s after reciting a poem deemed seditious. He was mayor of Istanbul at the time and could be banned from office again). With elections scheduled for November 3, 2002, the party is leading in the polls, a development which has “rattled both secularists and generals in Turkey.”1 In fact, many doubt that the army would allow Justice and Development to take power even if it wins the election. There are precedents for such intervention, and the United States needs to take a stand to ensure that it does not occur again.
Established in 1970 as an Islamist party with a rural constituency in the 1990s, Refah began to appeal to the urban lower middle classes. In March 1994, Refah won 19.09 percent of the vote in municipal elections, with the two leading center-right parties obtaining about 20 percent each. Refah won the mayorships of 30 main cities, including Istanbul and Ankara. Refah’s Dr. Necmettin Erbakan became prime minister in a coalition government with Çiller’s True Path party to form the first religious-secular coalition government in Turkey’s 73-year republican history. The Turkish military’s reaction to the Refah victories echoed Atatürk’s anti-Islamism. In 1997, the military forced Erbakan out of office. In this action the army enjoyed the backing of Turkey’s secularist establishment, including much of the military, civil service and intelligentsia, “whose secularism was based not simply on a belief in the separation of religion and the state but on an anti-religious secular ideology/belief system which was as rigid, militant and intolerant as it claimed ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ was.”2 This establishment compromised Turkey’s commitment to democracy to prevent Islamists from participating in politics and society.3 In February 1998, the Constitutional Court banned the Welfare party, expelled Erbakan from Parliament, banned him from political participation for five years, tried him for sedition and seized the party’s assets.4
From a strictly secularist perspective, Refah’s successor, “Justice and Development,” is worrisome. It challenges the sacred/secular divide by supporting a role for Islamic cultural tradition in the public sphere. It threatens Western-inspired boundaries between public and private, sacred and secular, global and local.5 However, if it follows in the footsteps of Refah, critics have little to fear. Although it was often associated with an opposition to secularism, Refah did not advocate a radical stance against the West, democracy or even some aspects of secularism. “Their action was inscribed not in the production of a logic of refusal of the system, but instead in a logic of participation.”6 The party’s success is attributable to its enlistment of both critical Islamist elites and the poor urban masses, a constituency that otherwise is likely to support Islamic extremists. Refah “contains within its ranks the peripheral groups, the urban underclasses who, in a context of frustration and despair, can easily turn toward terrorism and crime.”7
The potential of Justice and Development to grant a political voice to the urban poor and other traditionally marginalized groups is a great asset that the West ignores at its own risk.8 It is important not to go back to the militant secularism of Atatürk, in which “progress is conceived and posed in oppositional terms to the local Islamic culture.”9 Such secularism encourages a strong backlash, often mobilized using Islamic symbols and institutions. If the West is perceived as standing behind the repression of Justice and Development, the potential for terrorism increases. The promise of Justice and Development lies in its distinction from anti-Western Islamist groups in places like Egypt and Algeria. In the latter cases, authoritarian secularism, combined with a sense of powerlessness, the legacies of Western imperialism and U.S. hegemony and support for Israel, has led to a bitter reaction against Western power. “If channels of upward social mobility and political participation are repressed and the social ascent of Islamist elites thus blocked, the Islamist movement will, in most likelihood, evolve toward a logic of reaction and/or to a logic of violence, one evident in the Egyptian and Algerian cases.”10 Rather than blindly supporting secularist political solutions at any cost, it is the responsibility of the international community to encourage pluralistic democracy, even if this means support for a “religious” party.
Militant secularism fans the flames of Islamic fundamentalism. U.S. complicity in the constriction of legitimate political space in the Middle East has led to violent opposition by Islamist groups. This undermines American objectives of democracy, stability and peace in the region and globally. It threatens U.S. interests by setting up a situation in which the only way to be Islamic is to be antiWestern. If the United States and the West stand for political pluralism, then we need to be open to positions on religion and politics that deviate from the Western norm. We need to criticize the Turkish secular establishment not only for muzzling Kurdish separatists but for infringing on the freedom of expression of nonsecular political parties. A recent statement by Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Eçevit serves as a warning of possible military interventions to come: “There is speculation that Justice and Development will end up as the first party . . . . If that comes true, Turkey will be faced with questions over its regime.”11 Military intervention against democratically elected Islamists is not the solution. There needs to be space for religion in public life, as long as no single approach is allowed to monopolize public space. As Algerian historian Mohammed Arkoun argues, “The tyranny of faith in militant Islam is no more acceptable than the tyranny of reason.”12 If we fail to heed this advice to temper our foreign policy in order to encourage moderate Islamists and curb militant secularists, we risk a cycle of violence with no end in sight.
DECLINE OF THE “RADICAL” STATE: JORDAN AND SYRIA
Ellen Lust-Okar, Yale University
The political dialogue on the streets of Jordan and Syria has been remarkably similar since September 11, 2001. People were initially appalled by the horrendous events of 9/11; then they were haunted by a period of heightened insecurity; and now many are engaged in increasing criticism of the regimes. The first responses are not surprising. Arabs and Muslims throughout the region criticized the horrendous attacks on New York and Washington. Similarly, people throughout the Middle East feared that the United States would respond violently and hastily. Yet the similarities in the criticisms voiced in Syria and Jordan nearly one year after the attacks are unexpected. The two countries have historically had very different relations with the United States; thus one might have expected that Jordanians and Syrians would voice different criticisms and concerns. This is not the case.
In both Jordan and Syria, the events of September 11 took place in an atmosphere of increased domestic tension. Both King Abdullah and President Bashar, succeeding their fathers, faced the challenge of consolidating power. Both initially took steps toward political liberalization but, apparently finding that path difficult, moved toward more repressive policies. By September 11, 2001, both countries had witnessed increased repression – the dissolution of parliament and more stringent temporary laws in the case of Jordan, and the arrest of activists and repression of political salons in the case of Syria.
Although both states faced challenges, one would have anticipated that the U.S.-led War on Terrorism would have different effects on the political discourse in these states. There are significant historical differences between the foreign relations of Jordan and Syria. Jordan has been a “moderate” state, closely linked with the United States. Syria, in contrast, has been a “radical” state, at least until the early 1990s, and, although it has moved somewhat closer to U.S. interests, it remains on the list of terrorist states. While King Abdullah has been in close contact with President Bush, President Bashar has remained somewhat more distant. Indeed, President Bush named Syria, with North Korea and Iran, as an international threat in his State of the Union speech.
The challenges for the heads of state in responding to the crises following September 11, then, were different. King Abdullah needed to demonstrate and justify his support of the United States, even in the face of continued Israeli repression of Palestinians and unwavering U.S. support for Sharon. In Syria, President Bashar needed to defend his state from the Bush administration’s verbal attacks on its support of Hizballah and other forces. In terms of the national dialogue, the debates were much as we would expect. King Abdullah defended his support of the Bush administration’s War on Terrorism (although not its potential war on Iraq), saying essentially, “We have faced the same enemies.” In the meantime, the Syrian regime has continued to defend its independence. Regarding Hizballah, the regime has argued, “Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder.” The regime has also taken great strides to argue that the regional conditions will not threaten or shake the Syrian regime.
Despite these differences in the official discourse, however, informal discussions are much less distinct. In both cases, hardliners have argued that, in these difficult times, political reform would be too difficult. In both cases, moderates and reformers have argued that these justifications are empty. In neither case has the War on Terrorism rallied significant popular support in favor of the regime.
This is not surprising in Jordan, where the regime is a partner in, rather than a target of, the War on Terrorism, but it is significant in Syria. Indeed, in Syria a fairly common perception is that the Syrian and U.S. governments are close, if not closer than ever. U.S. officials suggest some justification for this. U.S. cultural programs have never been more welcome in Syria than they are on President Bashar’s watch, and the United States has never been more willing to foot the bill for such programs than it has since 9/11. In the past year, the number of cultural programs and the level of cooperation with some cultural and education ministries rose dramatically. In addition, U.S.-Syrian intelligence sharing also improved. Both U.S. officials and Syrians acknowledge that the Syrians have provided important information on Al Qaeda-linked members.
In this situation, then, the expectation that U.S. verbal hostility toward the Syrians might help alleviate some of the domestic tension in the state (through the “rally around the flag effect”) is misguided. Few Syrians appear to believe that the United States is an imminent threat to Syria. Indeed, one military officer reportedly said, “Why should the U.S. attack us? They have free access to our military bases every day?” The notion that Syria has a significantly different relationship with the United States than Jordan – that it is “radical and independent,” while Jordan is “dependent and moderate” – is questionable for a vast majority of Syrians.
This is significant. The belief that the Syrians and Jordanians – as well as other regimes in the region – are so closely tied to the United States as to be seen almost as its handmaidens erodes the legitimacy of these regimes. If the hostile verbal rhetoric helps to rally the American public in support of its government, it does the opposite in the Middle East. The Syrian and Jordanian publics are not convinced that the United States stands as a threat to the very regimes they see it as supporting. They are also unimpressed (to put it mildly) by what they consider the reliance of their governments on the United States – a regime so willing to support what they see as the terrorism of Sharon against the Palestinians while bemoaning the attacks of 9/11.
This is not entirely new. There has long been widespread criticism of U.S. policies. What is ever more apparent is the extent to which members of Arab societies, whether traditionally seen as supporters or enemies of the United States, view their regimes as intricately tied to and supported by America. Given current U.S. policies – and the attitudes in Arab societies toward these policies – this should not be a comforting thought to the ruling elites.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RULE OF LAW IN ARAB POLITICS
David Mednicoff, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The Bush administration apparently learned the “lesson” from 9/11 that its concerns about human rights and the rule of law in Arab countries should be subordinated to its military operations in the Middle East. It was not always thus. Certainly, American policies aimed at fostering Arab legal and political reforms have generally taken a back seat to supporting the stability and cooperation of “friendly” regimes. Nonetheless, the 1990s witnessed at least some concern in Washington about Arab governments’ records with respect to rights and legality.
It is no secret that Arab regimes have been comparatively resistant to popular accountability and political liberalization. Less well-known is that wide-ranging political debate and indigenous activism for human rights and greater political transparency have occurred in contemporary Arab societies absent violent state repression. Unfortunately, such repression has usually been present. Worrying about geopolitical stability, access to cheap oil or the Islamist nature of some political opposition, Washington has ignored or condoned governmental violence against outspoken critics, notably in allied Arab countries.
For the authoritarian regimes of the Arab region, the “lesson” of September 11 is that they can get away with stifling dissent with little fear of fallout from the United States. Washington needs whatever Arab cooperation it can find to attempt the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Hence, other Arab rulers can trust that American concern for their support will constrain complaints about their political inclusion or human rights. Undoubtedly, some Arab governments will use the War on Terror as an excuse to continue or step up their harsh treatment of pluralist voices, such as Egypt’s publicized prosecution of the prominent scholar Saad Eddin Ibrahim.
Yet both the American government’s “lesson” that its Middle Eastern geopolitics trumps the rule of law and Arab governments’ “lesson” that they can repress dissent cost-free are misguided. Longer-term study of the dynamics of contemporary Arab politics yields two alternative lessons. First, the violent anti-American Islamism that Washington wishes to curb stems in part from a lack of avenues for legal political expression in regimes with strong ties to the United States. Second, to some extent, this lack of legal political expression follows from Arab regimes’ emphasis on repression and threatens their stability.
On the first point, Arab political activists in recent years have generally chosen peaceful social mobilization within legally prescribed bounds whenever possible. Even when couched in Islamic terms, this activism is often framed in the language of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Arab opposition movements are unlikely to adopt anti-American messages unless the United States both deviates sharply from its own legalist, democratic ideals and tolerates the repression of Arab dissent. Indeed, Washington’s previous military campaign in Iraq in 1991 strained the efforts of Arab activists who articulated their concerns in terms of human rights and the rule of law.
The above points emerged in a recent study I made of indigenous human-rights activism in Morocco and Tunisia (to appear in International Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 7, 2003). I looked at the contrasting trajectories of human-rights movements in each country from the mid-1980s through the late1990s. During this period, Morocco’s King Hassan grudgingly allowed human rights movements, while Tunisian President Ben Ali created increasing impediments to these movements. Incidentally, the dominance and influence of Islam did not create insurmountable obstacles to the local adaptation of international human-rights norms in either country.
My study suggested that human-rights activism was most salient in the late 1980s and early 1990s, after which anger at America’s policies in Iraq tended to tarnish political doctrines associated with the United States. Nonetheless, Morocco’s strategy of legalizing rights groups has been more successful than Tunisia’s at fostering activism around legalist ideas and overall political legitimacy, according to the U.N. Development Program’s Arab Human Development Report 2002 (p. 22). Despite the decreased overall Moroccan popularity of legal-reform movements – given heightened concern about American global policy – the success of indigenous activism still spawned groups with more focused agendas like women’s status, electoral procedures and judicial reform. Morocco in 1999 managed a peaceful political succession, and its government comprises a larger number of different political parties than any other Arab government.
Tunisia’s human-rights activism, on the other hand, was forced underground in the past decade. Ben Ali used the threat of Islamist opposition to repress dissent in general. Tunisia’s closed society was recently the site of a synagogue bombing thought to be the work of Al Qaeda. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, states with similar strategies for repressing rights and with closer ties to Washington than Tunisia has, bred most of the September 11 attackers. An American policy committed to Arab political reform, especially when coupled with greater American consistency for the rule of law globally, seems best at preventing the conditions under which violent anti-Americanism flourishes.
Arab governments’ “lesson” from 9/11, that domestic political repression is cost-free, is also mistaken, both in terms of these countries’ populations and their prospects for survival. Researchers have demonstrated that Arab regimes’ comparatively large budgets for internal security and defense have retarded economic and social growth. In countries already facing formidable obstacles to material prosperity, repression has hurt development just when the pressures of globalization and the skewing of Arab demographics towards a young, largely unemployed population weigh especially heavily.
In an era of increased global transparency and interconnectedness, governments cannot subsist on repression without quantifiable social progress. The Arab authors of the U.N.-sponsored Arab Human Development Report 2002 concluded that “the legitimacy and strength of states and their institutions are inextricably linked to their capacity to mobilize and be mobilized in the fight against poverty” (p. 13). Washington’s policy of questionable international legality and efficacy to dislodge an Arab ruler is likely to signal to Arab regimes that their social and political liberalization can be put on hold. This will dash hopes for, and channel resources away from, the truly pressing problems of the region and further undermine the already beleaguered Arab activists for legal, peaceful political reform.
The tragic events of the fall of 2001 have, with few exceptions, removed what little consistent American attention there was to endorsing or encouraging home-grown alternatives to the repressive policies of Arab regimes other than Saddam’s. This, in turn, has freed these regimes in the name of stability to crack down even more on civil society and legal reform. Yet the real lesson of September 11 is that people prohibited from political participation by Arab states and American negligence will become active in other, much more destructive, ways.
PALESTINIAN POLITICS AND SEPTEMBER 11
Mouin Rabbani, Palestinian-American Research Center, Ramallah, West Bank; Sara Roy, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University.
A year before the September 11 attacks, the uprising in Palestine led to a severe disruption of existing political arrangements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In this context, the repercussions of 9/11 on Palestine have not been those of a calamitous external event jolting an otherwise stable political system. Rather, there has been a convergence of global, regional and local upheavals whose main impact has been to reinforce and accelerate processes that had already been set into motion, arguably as far back as the beginning of the Oslo process. It was during Oslo, particularly with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), that the structure of Palestinian politics underwent dramatic changes.
The Oslo process and the establishment of the PA did little to reform the domestic Palestinian political order or reinstate a political process or consensus. To the contrary, the emergence of an authoritarian state and autocratic system that actively opposed any challenge to its rule marked the end of any viable political dialectic at the popular level. Thus, Palestinian politics during this period no longer were characterized by ideologies competing for dominance but by the lack of any political ideology whatsoever, let alone one that was shared.
The Impact of 9/11
The events of September 11 had a pronounced impact on the character of the Palestinian Israeli conflict. Of crucial significance for Palestinian domestic politics has been the American definition of its response to the September 11 attacks. From the outset, it was not limited to a settling of accounts with the Al Qaeda network or to a larger effort encompassing Al Qaeda’s sponsors and allies. Rather, the United States declared global war against a phenomenon – terrorism – with particular emphasis upon combating Islamic radicalism and other threats to American interests in the Middle East. Incoherent and inconsistent as this agenda and its implementation have been, it nevertheless resonated powerfully with Washington’s and Israel’s prevailing approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the Palestinians, being “either with us or with the terrorists” posed a particularly stark choice. If they failed to perform in the “war against terror” by terminating the uprising against Israeli military occupation, it would perform against them through a further solidification of Israeli rule.
It is worth recalling that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, many Palestinians – and not a few others – believed that its primary impact would be the speedy establishment of an independent Palestinian state as a result of international and particularly American intervention. The centrality of the Palestine question to Arab and Islamic concerns, and the belief that the current Bush administration could not successfully assemble a grand coalition as the previous one did during the Gulf War without a similar quid pro quo on resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, generated this perception. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was among those who shared this view, at one point going so far as to compare post-9/11 Israel to pre-war Czechoslovakia, thus casting Bush in the role of Neville Chamberlain and the Arabs in that of Nazi Germany. Yet subsequent events revealed such sentiments to be entirely misplaced. As the recent debate over Iraq has demonstrated, the Bush administration has little affinity for coalition building, and conceives of the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an outcome of its campaign rather than a precondition to its successful prosecution.
Within this vortex, the main impact of 9/11 has doubtlessly been the politico-military campaign for Palestinian regime change, which has resulted in the thorough paralysis of the PA. Already prior to September 2001, Israel had launched a concerted war of attrition against the PA in response to its failure to end the uprising. This had been supported politically by the United States through its restriction of contacts with the Palestinian leadership. As Israel’s local campaign was subsequently embraced by Washington as part and parcel of its own global one, the efforts to change the policies of the PA developed into an explicit policy of changing its structure altogether. Arafat had failed to perform the assigned task of decisively confronting militant Palestinian paramilitary formations and would therefore have to be replaced by those who would – Palestinians if possible, Israelis if necessary.
The predicament confronting Arafat and the PA reflects a broader change within the domestic Palestinian political environment. The very paramilitary formations they are being asked to dismantle largely emerged as a result of the uprising and operate with varying degrees of autonomy from the formal Palestinian leadership. While the relationship between the PA and the Palestinian factions is a complex one involving shifting levels of influence and defies simplistic characterizations that suggest either strategic control or open opposition, in the absence of realistic prospects for a genuine political settlement, the PA is ultimately unable as well as unwilling to exercise command authority over them.
The absence of a credible political process (combined with dramatic socioeconomic declines) has, since the beginning of the uprising and even more since 9/11, had a pronounced impact on Palestinian politics. The Palestinian political arena is characterized by the following (emerging) realities, among others:
- The growing international isolation of the Palestinian leadership and the formalization of the Sharon agenda.
- The apparent unwillingness of the United States to pursue seriously a political resolution of the conflict.
- Sharon’s eradication of the concept of territory under full Palestinian control (area A) and the reactivation of direct Israeli rule.
- The continued militarization of the intifada and marginalization of Palestinian civil society.
- The absence of a national liberation movement that could create institutions to support a strategy of resistance, national reconstruction and participation.
- The total rejection by Palestinians of security arrangements for Israel and piecemeal interim arrangements.
- The continued destruction of the PA’s infrastructure including its security forces, and the absence of a clear hierarchy and chain of command.
- The growing marginalization of Arafat both internally and externally.
- The strengthening of armed and cross-factional militias that seek political power and the end of occupation through intensified militia warfare.
- The rise and widening influence of the radical Islamists, in part resulting from their loose alliance with the radical nationalists (a pretext for transfer).
- The unprecedented granting to Islamists of veto power in political decision making.
- The increasing decentralization and fragmentation of Palestinian politics.
- The creeping establishment of a new political stage with no PA, continued colonial military occupation and the organization of long-term resistance led by young, underground, armed, refugee-based militias that may be more democratic but are more extreme and religiously oriented, who could take the Palestinian-Israeli conflict back three decades, perhaps further (see Graham Usher in The Nation, April 29, 2002, p. 6).
Current calls by Israel and the United States for political reform within the PA will fall on deaf Palestinian ears in the absence of a meaningful political process that will end the occupation and allow people a return to normalcy. During the Oslo years many Palestinians, including prominent intellectuals, had demanded an end to PA corruption and called for greater democratization and changes in the structure of the Authority. At that time they were labeled opponents of the peace process and some were imprisoned, policies openly lauded by American officials including Vice president Gore. Indeed, during the Oslo years, the non-democratic nature of the PA was openly and actively encouraged by Israel and the United States in the implementation of policies designed to insure Israeli control (e.g. settlements) and preclude Palestinian rights.
Something more forceful is now required. The United Nations must move to protect Palestinians in the territories and insist on its historic responsibility in resolving the conflict. Member states must persuade the United States to support U.N. initiatives and refrain from using its veto power. A U.N. Peacekeeping Force should be introduced to separate the sides. The United Nations should set a timetable and process for the phased withdrawal of all Israeli forces and settlements in the territories. The United Nations should set up a trusteeship over the West Bank and Gaza while facilitating democratic elections in the territories for a new Palestinian government. Once that government is established and basic infrastructure and institutions are rebuilt, the United Nations would work with the government to establish a sovereign state on those territories. A U.N. force should remain to assure security for Israel and for the new Palestinian state. Thereafter, the United Nations would establish the venue and framework for negotiations between Israel and Palestine to resolve all outstanding issues based on U.N. resolutions and applicable international law. The process must be seen as fair, even if the outcome will not yield all that is desired by either side.
ISLAMIST PARTIES AND REGIME RESPONSES: JORDAN AND YEMEN
Jillian Schwedler, University of Maryland, College Park
How did moderate Islamists, those who seek reform by working within existing political systems, react to the September 11 attacks? In Jordan, the Islamic Action Front’s (IAF) response reflects longer trends in Islamist-government relations. Months before the attacks, the Jordanian government postponed the parliamentary elections scheduled for November 2001 and began issuing temporary laws (since parliament was not in session), ostensibly to insure the security of the state. More than 100 such laws have since been issued, including such “security”-related measures as an increase in insurance rates and a ban on civil servants’ right to sign petitions. In August 2002, the government announced that the elections, already a year overdue, would be postponed until Spring 2003. The government is very uneasy about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the possibility of a U.S. invasion of Iraq; that is why it has allowed so little political dissent.
Hours after the September 11 attacks, the IAF issued a statement condemning them and expressing sympathy toward the American people. A statement a few days later reiterated this view, emphasizing that the IAF, which was committed to working within Jordan’s democratizing political system, viewed the attacks as crimes that were patently un-Islamic. As Washington moved toward launching its attack on Afghanistan, statements shifted toward criticism of the military response. While the IAF did not express support for Bin Laden, it raised questions about Washington’s actions and its evidence against Al Qaeda.
This restrained response was not surprising. The IAF had worked very hard to remain on good terms with the regime, building on a solid relationship established over the past half-century. The party was not about to risk this relationship – albeit somewhat less solid under King Abdullah’s rule – over an extremist like Bin Laden. Nevertheless, IAF leaders were sensitive to the growing international concern about political Islam. Though the group had long been critical of the Taliban’s repressive tactics, it saw the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan as illegal and unjust. At the same time, the IAF had prior to September 11 been frustrated with the Jordanian regime over limits on expressing solidarity with Palestinians and criticism of the United States and Israel. The IAF organized a few small demonstrations, many indoors, though a couple of IAF-affiliated imams pointedly criticized the United States in mosque sermons.
For its part, the only change in the Jordanian government’s behavior since September 11 has been at the rhetorical level – the current wave of repression clearly predated the attacks. Each time the government arrests demonstrators, closes another media outlet, and generally moves further from the political openings that marked Jordan in the early 1990s, the appropriate cabinet minister adds that the government is committed to fighting the War on Terrorism.
In Yemen, the response of the Islamist Yemeni Reform Group (YRG) to September 11 must also be placed in a broader context. Since the October 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Aden harbor, President Ali Abdullah Salih has been allowing FBI agents considerable freedom to investigate the attack. The goal has been to locate “Afghan Arabs” – Arabs who trained with Islamist militants in Afghanistan – who had found refuge in remote parts of the country. Of these, a dozen or so had formed the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army (AAIA) and were responsible for a series of bombings around Aden and in the Hadramawt in the 1990s. In December 1998, the AAIA kidnapped 16 foreign tourists, four of whom were killed during a government rescue attempt. The AAIA leader was captured and executed in October 1999, though two offshoots of the group claimed responsibility for the Cole attack.
It is within this context of Yemeni-U.S. cooperation in rooting out Islamist militants that the YRG’s muted response to the September 11 attacks can be understood. The YRG is a coalition of businessmen, Islamist groups and prominent tribal leaders formed from many long-time supporters of Salih. The tribal connection is important, as the chair of the YRG also heads the tribal confederation of which Salih’s tribe is a member. In fact, the ruling General Popular Congress (GPC) and the YRG together formed a conservative northern bloc that cooperated to offset the influence of the progressive Yemeni Socialist party (YSP), with whom the GPC had negotiated the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990. While the YRG has seen its share of power decline in recent years, it maintains close relations with the regime.
Following the events of September 11, Salih called a gathering of prominent political figures and the heads of all major parties and told them that there were to be no public displays either of support for Bin Laden, Al Qaeda or the Taliban, or of opposition to the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan. Like most Islamist groups, the YRG immediately condemned the attacks as un-Islamic and sent its sympathy to the American people. Like that of the IAF, its criticism of the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan were not framed as support for the Taliban or Al Qaeda, but as questioning the evidence connecting the attacks to Bin Laden and, in particular, critiquing the potential toll on innocent Afghan citizens. Also like those of the IAF, these criticisms were visible in party publications but not manifest in public demonstrations. The YRG has been engaged in a struggle for political influence with the ruling GPC, which trounced the YRG in the 1997 elections. While few consider the elections deeply meaningful, the YRG has nonetheless been very critical of the regime for its blatant manipulation of the system, yet has sought to maintain close relations with the regime.
Why did September 11 have so little effect on relations between governments and moderate Islamists in the Middle East? These regimes have been using the War on Terrorism as an excuse to repress freedom of expression and crack down on militant Islamists, but they are not targeting moderate Islamist parties. In the case of Jordan and Yemen, this is because these moderate Islamists have historically been extremely important to the rule of these otherwise non-democratic regimes. Many of those who later formed the YRG fought to defend North Yemen against attacks from the National Democratic Front based in South Yemen. Despite its conflicts with Salih and the GPC, the YRG is clearly a pro-regime party. Likewise in Jordan, the IAF has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, which served as the regime’s ally not only against leftists and nationalists in the 1950s and ’60s, but also in 1970, when the regime had a showdown with militant Palestinian groups that had set up bases in East Bank Jordan. Thus, the post-September 11 political climate has shown the remarkable durability of relations between moderate Islamists in Jordan and Yemen and their respective regimes.
KUWAIT: ISLAMIST-LIBERAL POLITICS
Kristin Smith, Harvard University
Following the attacks of September 11, Kuwait came under increased U.S. pressure to crack down on the political and financial activities of Islamist extremists. This was widely expected to benefit the liberal camp in Kuwait, which has been locked in a bitter rivalry with the Islamist movements over political influence and business networks. Yet despite an initial outcry over the participation of Kuwaitis in the Al Qaeda network and a number of campaigns denouncing Islamist influence in the state, the Kuwaiti liberals have failed to capitalize. The Islamists have emerged with greater unity and with their institutional and political strength intact.
What explains the inability of the Kuwaiti liberals to use the changed international context in the wake of September 11 to shift the domestic balance of power in Kuwait? I will argue that Islamist influence has grown over the past 25 years and liberal influence has eroded, due to the specific dynamics and development of Kuwait’s evolving rentier “democracy,” which allows a broad scope for public discussion and political organization under the controlling influence of the ruling Al-Sabah family, who can manipulate the political arena through their power over oil revenues. Specifically, over the past 25 years the Al-Sabah have promoted Kuwait’s tribal constituencies and Islamic societies as counterweights to leftist Arab nationalists and the liberal merchant elite. In this benign environment, the Islamists have succeeded in sinking deep roots into Kuwaiti society through social organizations and business networks, and have used this considerable institutionalization to effect a growing Islamization of Kuwaiti civil society. Moreover, the continued malaise at the heights of the political system – as illness saps the vitality of both the emir and crown prince – opens broader scope for popular institutions such as the parliament, thereby increasing the importance of the Islamists to governance.
The Liberal Campaign and the Battle Over Islamic Charities
The changed international context of the global campaign against terrorism provided liberal politicians with the opportunity to act against what they see as mounting Islamist encroachment on their social lives, economic networks and political power. Through the parliament, NGOs and social societies, the liberals went on the offensive, seeking to press the Kuwaiti ruling family and the international community at large to move against Islamic groups in the country. Most remarkable was a goodwill visit to the United States and Britain by a delegation of Kuwaiti NGOs to voice support for the war against terrorism, during which they made an open appeal for active American intervention into Kuwaiti domestic politics to support the liberal reformers in their action against the Islamists.
The big battle, however, was fought over the issue of Islamic charities. Kuwaiti liberals have long suspected that the charitable associations affiliated with Islamic political movements in the country divert part of their funds to support violent Islamic opposition groups abroad and Islamist parliamentary campaigns at home. They thus eagerly supported the U.S. campaign to closely monitor these organizations and urged the Al-Sabah to crack down on the charities.
Thus far, however, the ruling family has taken a cautious approach to the charities that does not indicate any decisive break with the Islamists. The government did order the closure of a number of unlicensed charities and the removal of the ubiquitous kiosks pitching Islamist charitable causes. However, the oversight of the charities organized under a new Supreme Council for Charities has been done with the full cooperation of the Islamic charities. Information Minister Sheikh Ahmed Al-Sabah went out of his way to praise the work of the charities and to explicitly caution the liberals against exploiting the situation to attack the Islamists.
The Islamist Counterweight to the Liberals
Why were the Islamists able to withstand the liberal campaign against them? The apparent strength of the Islamic groups in Kuwait is in fact a product of active social engineering by the ruling Al-Sabah over the past 25 years. In an attempt to constrain the rising influence of both leftist Arab nationalists and the influential merchant class, in the 1970s the ruling family undertook two important moves. First, they began to reach out to Kuwait’s Islamic societies, which until this point had been largely sociocultural groupings not much involved in politics. Second, they naturalized many of the Bedouin tribes, bringing an important new constituency into Kuwaiti politics, while at the same time realigning electoral districts to give the Bedouin sector more political weight within the Kuwaiti parliament. As Kuwait’s Islamist movements became more involved in politics, they found a fruitful political constituency in the relatively economically disadvantaged and culturally conservative Bedouin.
Over time, the Islamists have been able to use the favorable treatment and support from the Al-Sabah to build a network of institutions from which they have challenged the primacy of Kuwait’s liberal elite. For example, with the political and economic support of the Kuwaiti government, in 1977 they opened the Kuwait Finance House, Kuwait’s first Islamic bank, from which they were able to promote the application of the Sharia in public life and compete with the liberal merchant oligopoly in the realm of finance.
Through institutions such as the Kuwait Finance House, Kuwaiti Islamists have been able to build a popular network of charities, businesses and social organizations that both reflect and reinforce the widespread appeal of Islam in this conservative Gulf society. They have also succeeded in drawing upon these networks to gain influence in many ministries and in the parliament, where with the support of traditionalist MPs they can often marshal a tribal-Islamist-populist coalition comprising a majority of the parliament. The influence they wield in these important institutions gives them access to jobs and financial resources that can be further used to garner support for the movement, particularly among Kuwaiti youth.
There is evidence that this has led to an increasing Islamization of civil society in Kuwait and a corresponding erosion of liberal values. Concerned with the growing trend toward Sharia-compliant financial intermediation, Kuwait’s largest bank, the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), has been conducting surveys through their marketing department for ten years. The surveys document the decline in the percentage of Kuwaitis polled who describe themselves as “liberals” to a current standing of under 15 percent. By contrast, the percentage of self-described “Islamics” has been growing so much that a new category – “modern Islamic” – had to be created by NBK to account for the shift from “moderate” to “Islamic.” The two categories of Islamics now account for some 55 percent of those answering the survey (sample, 1,000; margin of error, 3 percent).
Conclusion
With the support of the ruling Al-Sabah and through the slow buildup of Islamic institutions undertaken by Islamist political groups, Islamic rhetoric and populism have become deeply rooted in Kuwait. The expansion of participation, through the broader inclusion of Bedouin and the middle class more generally, has not worked to the benefit of Kuwaiti liberals, who have failed to keep pace with the Islamist social message. In short, the liberals simply lack the popular domestic base to use the changed international context to sway the ruling family to their side. The ruling family undoubtedly will continue to balance the two sides against each other, and should act against the most extreme elements of the Islamist movement proven to be connected to international militants. But they will not implement the broader split with the Islamist movement sought by liberal Kuwaiti activists. Having nurtured a counterweight to liberal merchant influence, the Al-Sabah are unwilling – or perhaps unable – to dismantle it. The Islamists in Kuwait are now indispensable to their rule.
EGYPTIAN DOMESTIC POLITICS: CONTINUITY OR CHANGE?
Denis Sullivan, Northeastern University
In the aftermath of September 11 and the Bush administration’s global War on Terrorism, Egyptian officials for most of the past year have not been able to refrain from a somber “I told you so” attitude. Throughout the 1990s, and even before, the Egyptian government led its own internal “war on terrorism” yet faced only occasional criticism from the United States. Now the government of Egypt [GOE] feels its actions are better understood in U.S. government circles, especially given the fact that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda owe much of their success to Egyptian militant Islamists who serve in leadership roles in that terror network.
I have argued for years that the non-violent Islamists, led by the Muslim Brothers, as well as militant groups such as Jihad and al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, have indeed posed a significant challenge to the GOE. They have sustained this challenge through both non-violent and violent opposition. Islamists also frequently work at cross purposes, the Muslim Brotherhood seeking to reform the political process and open up politics to opposition movements and the militants seeking a wholesale overthrow of the regime and system. While the non-violent Islamists’ goal of political reform is reasonable and worthy of international support, many of the same voices calling for political liberalization also work for more conservative changes and a closing off of society into a more homogeneous, restrictive Islamic order. All in all, while a challenge to Mubarak and his regime has existed for years, there has not been a significant threat in the form of a credible force that could mount a coup or revolution.
An examination of the GOE’s tactics before September 11 and afterward indicates that the GOE has continued to follow routines and abuses of power since 9/11 that it had before 9/11. The GOE continues,
- to imprison and torture Muslim Brothers and to force them to submit to the regime.
- to use Emergency Law and military courts and other extra-legal means to repress non-violent political activities.
- to use the parliament (Magles al-Shaab) to pass laws that make a mockery of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including freedoms of expression, assembly and association.
- to defame and destroy Saad Eddin Ibrahim, 27 of his colleagues and co-defendants, and the “democracy project” they collectively have worked on for years.
September 11 has given the Mubarak regime cover in the form of President Bush’s own global War on Terror. The Bush approach has given justification to Mubarak’s continuing campaign to crack down on Islamists, both moderate and militant. The pace continues at roughly the same level as before September 11, and the goal remains the same: divide and conquer all opposition, Islamist as well as secular, and ensure that all Islamists, both militant and non-violent, are considered as one and the same.
While there has been very little change in the pace and the approach to destroying Islamist opposition, Egyptian politics have turned somewhat Kafkaesque on the issues of human rights, Islamism and democratic advocacy. For instance, the Islamic opposition in Egypt could say that Mubarak is now cracking down on them because of U.S. pressure and that, therefore, Mubarak is caving in to Washington, even though in reality there has been no significant change, and the crackdown has been going on for years. This opposition would portray their plight this way to gain sympathy from ordinary Egyptians who might more readily support Islamists now if it is also a way to defy the Bush administration, which Egyptians know supports Ariel Sharon and which is on a war footing against Iraq.
The GOE’s own rhetoric and policies lend further credence to such a scenario, as the government is already championing those same two points – actively condemning Sharon and being most sympathetic to the Iraqi people and their plight. Mubarak also is actively criticizing the Bush administration’s pressure to “respect human rights more.” That is what Bush officials said when they told Egypt it would not be qualified for an increase in American aid because of Egypt’s handling of the Saad Eddin case.
Who will win this public-relations war cannot be known at present. But if Islamists can withstand the abuse of the GOE and still turn it against their enemies by gaining public sympathy (this remains a big “if”), so too can Mubarak spurn the United States in a very public way even as he continues to abuse human rights at home. He will be doing precisely what the United States has asked him not to do. But the United States will not be in a good position to pressure Mubarak to stop such abuses, as Washington needs Mubarak’s support for other projects like the looming war against Iraq, and perhaps one day for reviving the moribund peace process.
Just as the United States is at a loss as to how to condemn Mubarak further, so are Egyptian democracy advocates, mostly because they too seek to defy American pressure. Condemning Mubarak would sound like agreement with the United States at a time when few Egyptians support U.S. policies in the Middle East or the world. Thus, democracy advocates seek to avoid being labeled as puppets of the United States (Mubarak would make this label stick, even if the Islamists didn’t do it for him). Yet, these democracy advocates still seek human rights, freedom and meaningful participation in Egyptian politics. How can they achieve these when the United States has so mismanaged its relationship with Egypt, a country that should serve as a key ally in the greater cause of peace (with justice) for various peoples of the Middle East?
U.S. ASSESSMENTS OF ARAB THREATS SINCE 1945
Salim Yaqub, University of Chicago
Since emerging as a superpower in 1945, the United States has had to concern itself with the political views and aspirations of the inhabitants of the Arab world. Indeed, one of the main challenges facing U.S. officials has been preventing the mobilization of Arab opinion from impeding the pursuit of U.S. strategic goals in the Middle East. One possible American response to the problem is to formulate policies that are, or appear to be, compatible with the main currents of Arab opinion. Another is to marshal sufficient military, economic and diplomatic power to override Arab opposition. Any U.S. policy initiative is likely to contain elements of both accommodation and imposition, but over the last quarter century the United States has increasingly tended toward the latter approach. Whereas calculations of Arab public opinion were once a significant factor in the formulation and conduct of U.S. Middle East policy, they carry far less weight today.
This transformation is related to changing American assessments of the likely consequences of disregarding Arab opinion. There are four conceivable ways in which Arab actors might retaliate against U.S. policies perceived as violating fundamental Arab interests. The manner in which the U.S. government assesses each of these four threats reinforces its tendency to disregard Arab critiques, to favor imposition over accommodation, and to seek military rather than diplomatic solutions to regional disputes.
The first conceivable Arab reaction is for Arab governments to mount a collective response: embargoing oil shipments to the West, boycotting American products or forging alliances with great-power rivals of the United States. In the early postwar decades, and especially in the 1950s, U.S. officials worried that such a concerted retaliation might occur, and this concern had a discernible effect on American behavior toward the Middle East. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s strong opposition to British, French and Israeli aggression against Egypt in late 1956 stemmed largely from his fear of alienating Arab public opinion.
Eisenhower’s relative deference to Arab opinion was closely related to the particular circumstances of the era: the emergence of a powerful pan-Arab nationalist movement and the mounting of a vigorous Soviet campaign to woo Arab nations. Over the next few decades, these circumstances changed. Pan-Arab nationalism sharply declined as an international force, with a little help from the Israelis in 1967. The U.S.-sponsored Egyptian-Israeli peace process of the mid to late 1970s subtracted Egyptian power from the Arab-Israeli equation, permitting Israel greater freedom of action. A decrease in the global demand for Middle Eastern oil in the 1980s, due to conservation measures in the West and to the exploitation of non-Middle Eastern reserves, virtually ruled out any repetition of the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74. The disintegration of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s and early 1990s was another decisive blow to would-be challengers of American hegemony. Thus, by the turn of the twenty-first century, the Arab nations had few means at their disposal to pressure the United States to modify its policies. When, in April 2002, Saudi officials hinted that they might use the oil weapon to compel a more favorable U.S. policy on Palestine, the threat was dismissed as laughable.
The second way in which Arab actors might retaliate against the United States is for militant organizations to lash out on their own against American targets. This threat, of course, has actually materialized. Indeed, there seems to have been a rough correlation between the loss of strategic options on the part of Arab governments and the emergence of terrorist organizations willing to act violently against American civilians and other targets. But this phenomenon, too, has had little deterrent or coercive effect on the United States. As gruesome as such terrorist attacks can be, they almost never jeopardize the fundamental security of the United States. To the contrary, their very brutality serves to harden American attitudes and reinforce Washington’s inclination to ignore Arab critiques.
The third possible response – much in the news these days – is that an Arab “rogue” state might acquire weapons of mass destruction with which it could threaten U.S. allies in the Middle East or U.S. forces deployed in the region. This threat is far more serious than that of scattered acts of terrorism, but it, too, tends to reinforce Washington’s inclination to rely on unilateralism and force. In each of the first two scenarios, the threat has failed to deter the United States from doing what it will. In the third case, the possibility that an Arab adversary might finally acquire a deterrent capability goads the United States into an even more extravagant unilateralism, as it prepares to launch a war opposed by most governments of the world.
The fourth conceivable consequence of American policy is that pro-U.S. Arab regimes might be swept from power in a wave of popular outrage. As it prepares for military action against Iraq, the Bush administration is probably giving careful consideration to this possibility. Yet Cassandras have been warning for years about the imminent collapse of Arab regimes, and the predictions have yet to come true. Pro-U.S. Arab governments have demonstrated a staying power that few observers could have predicted a generation ago; therefore, much of the rhetoric about the explosiveness of the Arab “street” is no doubt discounted in Washington. Circumstances could arise that would make the warnings more credible, but, for the moment at least, the Bush administration appears to be confident that it can work its will with minimal concern about regional consequences.
The very nature of potential Arab threats against the United States – their weakness or their extremism or both – reinforces Washington’s inclination to favor force over negotiation, unilateralism over multilateralism, and imposition over accommodation. In recent weeks, some challenges to these impulses have materialized within the United States. This is an important development, reinforcing the observation that the most effective potential impediments to the use of force in the Middle East lie here at home rather than in the Middle East.
EVALUATING MIDDLE EAST FOREIGN POLICY SINCE 9/11
Anthony F. Lang, Jr., Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs
Since the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, there have been many attempts to evaluate the foreign policies of the Middle East, usually amounting to condemnations for refusing to support U.S. goals in the region. Guided by political and moral theory, an alternative form of evaluation might assess foreign policy by laying out criteria that support the creation of a just and peaceful regional and international system.
Before laying out specific criteria for evaluation, structural features of the international system need clarification. The most important of these is the existence of the sovereign-state system. States have been, and continue to be, the most powerful political agents in international affairs. The sovereign-state system gives to states the capacity not simply to act but to act militarily, a structural feature not available to other agents in the system. Transnational organizations also have power to change the system, although usually not militarily. Groups like Amnesty International, Greenpeace and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) can force change by advancing new norms. The example of Al Qaeda suggests that some transnational movements may be challenging the sovereign state’s monopoly on violence, although legitimate uses of violence remain with the state.
The second structural feature concerns the sources, goals and constraints on foreign policy in each specific regional and national context. While these sources tend to have short-term interests driving their participation in the policy formulation process, larger, more normative goals that animate the foreign policies of states should not be ignored. Hans Morgenthau, the theorist of the “national interest,” argued persuasively in The Purpose of American Politics (1960) that foreign policies are also driven by national purposes – the historically grounded values they seek to advance in international society.
Foreign policy also faces certain normative constraints, however. These constraints (rules) provide the limits that prevent any single agent from imposing its agenda on the system as a whole. In fact, the more powerful the agent, the more carefully its foreign policy can be evaluated on these grounds, since the powerful are often the ones that provide the rules.
In light of these features of the system, three criteria suggest themselves: 1) Does the state in its foreign policies protect and advance the interests of its citizens 2) Does the state’s foreign policy promote the peaceful settlement of disputes and the just distribution of resources across national boundaries? 3) Does the state’s foreign policy contribute to the creation of rules and norms that lead to a just and orderly regional and international system?
States have a responsibility first and foremost to their citizens when it comes to the conduct of their foreign policy. Too often this responsibility is not articulated as a moral norm and so is perceived as an amoral or even immoral pursuit of national interests. Importantly, this obligation extends not to any single class of individuals or to any single generation of the community. A monarchy such as Saudi Arabia, for example, must be evaluated primarily in terms of how its policies provide protection from outside enemies and the means to meet citizens’ individual socioeconomic needs. Since September 11, the Saudi government has sought to protect its citizens by reaffirming its alliance with the United States. At the same time, it has sought to further protect itself through its oblique suggestions that it does not support preemptive military action, thus seeking to protect itself from an attack by Iraq. But, in terms of providing goods to its citizens, the Saudi regime seems less capable. While it retains one of the highest per capita GDPs of the region, Saudi Arabia is endangering the long-term economic health of its system by depleting its mineral wealth without developing corresponding industries and opening its system up to free trade.
Because a state exists in a community – international society – its foreign policies cannot simply be evaluated based on the obligation to protect and provide for its own citizens. A second criterion concerns the ways in which a state’s policies support the peaceful settlement of disputes and the creation of a just distribution of resources across national boundaries.
Consider the example of Egypt. Egyptian foreign policy, when seen across the last 40 years, has progressively evolved toward resolving disputes peacefully rather than militarily. In its most serious political disputes with its neighbors – Israel, Sudan and Iran – Egypt has consistently sought to achieve resolution through diplomacy. Too often, U.S. analysts refuse to recognize that in comparison to the conflicts engaged in by Egypt in the 1960s and 1970s, its policies since the end of the 1973 war have been largely addressed through peaceful means. Some have argued that this is a reflection of Egypt’s weakness rather than a conscious decision. While there may be some truth to this, Egyptian political leaders, with a military potential similar to Iraq’s, could well have pursued a militaristic policy. Instead, it consciously adopted a policy of diplomacy and negotiation.
A second dimension of this criterion is policies that seek to advance a just distribution of resources. In Iran, for example, international economic policies have focused primarily on protecting oil revenues. These policies, while certainly helpful to Iranian citizens, have not contributed to the distribution of resources throughout the region or more broadly. In contrast, soon after the 1973 oil shocks, oil-producing states distributed the wealth that accrued to them through loans to developing countries. While those policies might be called into question now, they did distribute resources more broadly. Guided by its Islamic ideology, Iran should perhaps channel its wealth into a robust foreign-aid program to states in the region.
The final criterion by which we can evaluate foreign policy in the region is the contribution of the state to the advancement of certain norms and rules that structure long-term relations: international law, cultural codes of communication, or institutions that structure relations. These rules do not arise from wise legislators defining the law, but from continued interactions of agents in a political system.
The policies of Israel can be considered according to this criterion. While Israel has certainly protected its own citizens, its policies have undermined the institution of long-term rules that could govern relations for itself and others in the region into the future. By refusing to abide by U.N. resolutions and by actively campaigning against the United Nations itself, Israel has squandered its ability to shape the rules of the system in a productive way. Palestine can also be criticized according to this norm. Palestinian leaders have worked hard to protect their citizens, not always successfully. But in its reliance on balancing allies and engaging in negotiations sporadically, Palestine has also failed to institute norms that can govern future relations. For years, Palestine sought to find legitimacy in the United Nations. By turning toward the United States and Europe, and failing to act through the United Nations, Palestine has forfeited some of its ability to shape the rules of the system. Although these two states cannot shape these rules in the same way a superpower can, the attention paid to their conflict and its persistence make them important agents in shaping shared understandings of norms.
This essay has suggested some ways in which Middle East foreign policy since September 11, 2001, might be evaluated. These suggestions should not be seen as the final word on the subject and should be read in light of the perceptive analyses offered by the contributors to this journal. They should also be seen as part of the process by which knowledge advances in the social sciences and humanities – the patient and long-term process of dialogue and debate, prompted by concrete proposals to which responses are welcomed. In that spirit, the suggestions offered in this journal may prompt a greater dialogue about how to evaluate foreign policy in both the Middle East and beyond.
1 Daniel Simpson, “Turks May Face Long Road to the European Union,” The New York Times, August 4, 2002. “Polls currently show the party with 20 percent to 30 percent popular support, at least double that for its closest rivals.” Only parties that win at least 10 percent of the vote are awarded parliamentary seats in Turkey, so popularity at this level can bring a majority if most votes are split among a large number of parties. David Holley, “Turkish Secularists See Red Over Islamists’ Rise,” The Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2002.
2 John L. Esposito, “Islam and Secularism in the Twenty-First Century,” Islam and Secularism in the Middle East, John L. Esposito & Azzam Tamini, eds (New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 7.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., p. 8. Erbakan’s ban expires in 2003.
5 Nilüfer Göle, “Authoritarian Secularism and Islamist Politics: The Case of Turkey,” Civil Society in the Middle East, Augustus Richard Norton, ed. (New York: Brill, 1995), p. 40.
6 Ibid., pp. 38-9.
7 Ibid., p. 39. Refah also brings in the Kurdish vote, “timidly in discourse, but forcefully in election results” p. 41.
8 This is particularly true given Turkey’s economic downtown: “Already in a deep recession, the Turkish economy took a further dive last February, leaving some 600,000 Turks without jobs. Unemployment has risen by 42 percent in the past year, while the Turkish lira has shed half its value. IMF austerity formulas such as tighter controls on unions and social spending come at a particularly vulnerable time. Suicides, domestic violence, prostitution and petty theft are all up.” Ian Urbina, “U.S. Bows to Turkey,” The Nation, November 12, 2001.
9 Göle, “Authoritarian Secularism,” p. 22. During Ätaturk’s rule, the state attempted to impose a forced program of secularization including a ban on tarikats (religious brotherhoods) and the state suppression of all related Sufi activities. Tekkes (lodges) and türbes (shrines of saints) were ordered closed by the state. Although the tarikats subsequently went underground until the transition to a multiparty system after World War II permitted their partial reassertion, a “silent suspicion” of the Atatürk regime arose among rural people who sympathized with popular Islam. See Elizabeth Özdalga, The Veiling Issue, Official Secularism and Popular Islam in Modern Turkey (Great Britain: Biddles Ltd, Luildford and King’s Lynn, 1998), pp. 17-32.
10 Göle, “Authoritarian Secularism,” p. 39.
11 Holley, “Turkish Secularists See Red Over Islamists’ Rise.”
12 Robert D. Lee “Introduction” to Mohammed Arkoun’s Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon Answers, Robert D. Lee, trans., ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994).
Middle East Policy is fully accessible through the Wiley Online Library
Click below to subscribe to the online or print edition of Middle East Policy and gain access to all journal content.