Showing posts with label middle east. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle east. Show all posts
Monday, August 17, 2015
Summer Readings
Our Universities: The Outrageous Reality, Andrew Delbanco
Public Research Universities: Why They Matter, AAAS
The Pope and the Planet, Bill McKibben
What Is Wrong with the West’s Economies?, Edmund S. Phelps
The Mystery of ISIS, NYRB
China: The Superpower of Mr. Xi, NYRB
Dual Enrollment: Is High School the Future of Higher Education?, AHA Forum
What Does It Mean to Think Historically?, Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke
How Long to the PhD?, Robert B. Townsend
How Do We Learn from History?, James J. Sheehan
After Waterloo, Marco D`eramo
The Failure of the EU’s Technocrats, AI
Escaping the Civil War Trap in the Middle East, K. M. Pollack and B. F. Walter
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Democracy, Identity and Foreign Policy in Turkey
E.Fuat Keyman, Sabancı University
Şebnem Gümüşçü, Middlebury College
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
The recent history of Turkey is dominated by the country's transformation into a modern democracy. Over the past few years Turkey has been increasingly recognised as a nation of economic, political and cultural significance as well as being a vital political connection between Europe and the Middle East. In this compelling volume, Professor Keyman and Dr. Gumüsçu put democratisation in Turkey under the microscope with an especial focus on recent transformations under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Accordingly, it explores to what extent Turkey's transformation under the AKP has led to democratic consolidation as well as asking if there is a disconnect between economic, cultural, and urban transformation, on the one hand, and democratic consolidation on the other? Furthermore, this book also takes the opportunity to explore several issues that have a direct effect on the consolidation of Turkish democracy such as globalization, foreign policy activism, the kurdish question, religious governance and civil society. By critically analyzing the dialectic between domestic transformations and global/regional dynamics, the book also discusses the ways in which Turkish transformation is affected by the Arab uprisings as well as how Turkey may inspire these countries.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Turkey's Transformation
3. Constructing Hegemony: the AKP Rule
4. AKP's Hegemony and Democratic Consolidation
5. Turkey's Proactive Foreign Policy under the AKP
6. Turkish Foreign Policy in the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings
7. The AKP, Arab Uprisings and the Kurdish Question
8. Secularism, Democracy and Identity
9. Civil Society and Democratic Consolidation
10. Conclusion: Turkey at the Crossroads: Democratization through the Strong EU Anchor
Sunday, November 02, 2014
Shifting Sands: The United States in the Middle East
Joel S. Migdal
Columbia University Press 2014
Joel S. Migdal revisits the approach U.S. officials have adopted toward the Middle East since World War II, which paid scant attention to tectonic shifts in the region. After the war, the United States did not restrict its strategic model to the Middle East. Beginning with Harry S. Truman, American presidents applied a uniform strategy rooted in the country’s Cold War experience in Europe to regions across the globe, designed to project America into nearly every corner of the world while limiting costs and overreach.
The approach was simple: find a local power that could play Great Britain’s role in Europe after the war, sharing the burden of exercising power, and establish a security alliance along the lines of NATO. Yet regional changes following the creation of Israel, the Free Officers Coup in Egypt, the rise of Arab nationalism from 1948 to 1952, and, later, the Iranian Revolution and the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979 complicated this project. Migdal shows how insufficient attention to these key transformations led to a series of missteps and misconceptions in the twentieth century. With the Arab uprisings of 2009 through 2011 prompting another major shift, Migdal sees an opportunity for the United States to deploy a new, more workable strategy, and he concludes with a plan for gaining a stable foothold in the region.
Joel S. Migdal is the Robert F. Philip Professor of International Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, and has been writing about the Middle East and state-society relations worldwide for more than forty years. Among his books are The Palestinian People (with Baruch Kimmerling), Through the Lens of Israel, Strong Societies and Weak States, and State-in-Society.
Monday, October 27, 2014
The Arab Uprisings Explained
Edited by Marc Lynch
Columbia University Press 2014
Why did Tunisian protests following the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi lead to a massive wave of uprisings across the entire Arab world? Who participated in those protests, and what did they hope to achieve? Why did some leaders fall in the face of popular mobilization while others found ways to survive? And what have been the lasting results of the contentious politics of 2011 and 2012? The Arab uprisings pose stark challenges to the political science of the Middle East, which for decades had focused upon the resilience of entrenched authoritarianism, the relative weakness of civil society, and what seemed to be the largely contained diffusion of new norms and ideas through new information technologies.
In this volume, leading scholars in the field take a sharp look at the causes, dynamics, and effects of the Arab uprisings. Compiled by one of the foremost experts on Middle East politics and society, The Arab Uprisings Explained offers a fresh rethinking of established theories and presents a new framework through which scholars and general readers can better grasp the fast-developing events remaking the region. These essays not only advance the study of political science in the Middle East but also integrate the subject seamlessly into the wider political science literature. Deeply committed to the study of this region and working out the kinks of the discipline, the contributors to this volume help scholars and policymakers across the world approach this unprecedented historical period smartly and effectively.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
The Prospects for Arab Democracy
Stephen Grand
Brookings Insitution Press, 2014
The book puts the Arab Spring in comparative perspective. It reveals how globalization and other changes are upending the expectations of citizens everywhere about the relationship between citizen and state. Separate chapters examine the experiences of countries in the former Eastern bloc, in the Muslim-majority states of Asia, in Latin America, and in Sub-Saharan Africa during the recent Third Wave of democratization. What these cases show is that, at the end of the day, democracy requires democrats.
Many complex factors go into making a democracy successful, such as the caliber of its political leaders, the quality of its constitution, and the design of its political institutions. But unless there is clear public demand for new institutions to function as intended, political leaders are unlikely to abide by the limits those institutions impose. If American policymakers want to support the brave activists struggling to bring democracy to the Arab world, helping them cultivate an effective political constituency for democracy —in essence, growing the Tahrir Square base —should be the lodestar of U.S. assistance.
Advance Praise for Understanding Tahrir Square
"Judicious and far-ranging examination of how the experience of democratization from Central and Eastern Europe to Latin America, Asia, and Africa can help inform our understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing contemporary movements in the Middle East. A timely and practical guide for democracy activists as well as policymakers who want to support their aspirations."
—James B. Steinberg, Dean, The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, and former Deputy Secretary of State
"With rigor and clarity Grand assembles an enormous amount of insight and information about democratic transitions from around the world and highlights important possible applications of this comparative experience to the daunting challenges that democracy faces in the Arab world."
—Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
"Understanding Tahrir Square is not just a name of a book. It is a long-forgotten fantasy, a desperate wish, and a dilemma more complicated than a daytime soap opera. So, if you really have a weird urge to still try to understand Tahrir Square, get an 8-ball, or better, try your luck with this book."
—Bassem Youssef, Host, Al Bernameg (“The Jon Stewart of Egypt”)
Monday, January 20, 2014
Year Four of the Arab Awakening
Marwan Muasher
CEIP, December 2013
How will history judge the uprisings that started in many parts of the Arab world in 2011? The label “Arab Spring” proved too simplistic from the beginning. Transformational processes defy black-and-white expectations, but in the end, will the awakenings be more reminiscent of what happened in Europe in 1848, when several uprisings took place within a few weeks only to be followed by counterrevolutions and renewed authoritarian rule? Or will they more closely resemble the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union, after which some countries swiftly democratized while others remained in thrall to dictatorship?
Whatever the case, it is clear that the process of Arab transformation will need decades to mature and that its success is by no means guaranteed. The movements driving it are more unanimous about what they are against than about what they are for. But the debate to define this awakening has begun.
Transforming the movements sweeping the Middle East into coherent and effective forces of change will take time. In all of history, no such process has taken only two or three years to mature, evolve, and stabilize. The question over the long term is whether the present changes, however uncertain and difficult, will lead to democratic societies. The coming year will offer signs that indicate whether countries of the Arab world are heading toward democracy and pluralism or away from them.
2014 will see the countries of the Middle East moving in different directions, with some making strides toward genuine democratic transitions while other governments perpetuate timeworn policies that allow them to avoid addressing the very real social, political, and economic challenges they face.
...
Continues at:
Friday, October 25, 2013
Friday, August 23, 2013
The Mubarak System in a New Guise
22.08.2013
Power Struggle in Egypt
The Mubarak System in a New Guise
It is not a religious conflict that is currently being waged in Egypt; nor is it a struggle representing the supposed clash of civilizations. What is going on in Egypt is nothing more than a battle for political power. A commentary by Jan Kuhlmann
People's worst fears for Egypt have come true. The country's security forces have turned against the supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi with the utmost brutality. Even if the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi supporters did provoke the military and the police, and even if armed, radical groups are to be found within their fold, it was the Egyptian army that allowed the situation to escalate.
In light of the bloodbath, statements by the Egyptian transitional Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi that the security forces "acted professionally" come across as cynical. The same could be said of the Egyptian media's attempt to justify the bloodbath as a "fight against terrorism". This marks a return to the old rhetoric from the era of the overthrown dictator Hosni Mubarak.
The choice of words, however, reveals all too clearly what awaits Egypt in the near future. This is not a move towards greater democracy, but rather a march in the direction of a new military dictatorship – the old Mubarak system in a somewhat altered guise. It is not a religious conflict that is being waged here, nor is it a struggle representing the supposed clash of civilization. What is going on in Egypt is nothing more than a battle for political power.
State within a state
The Egyptian military is comparable to a state within a state. The army is, to all intents and purposes, independent of politics. It decides the size of its budget and how to spend it. It owns a number of companies and controls a large economic empire. The generals are not concerned with promoting democracy but with safeguarding their power and privileges. Of like mind, the old political and economic elite in Egypt has reached out to the military; the aim is to deal a deathblow to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Even in the West, some have expressed the view that although the use of violence against Morsi's supporters cannot be endorsed, it was nevertheless necessary. After all, so the logic, the action was taken against Islamists, the supposed forces of evil.
When Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey ordered the violent eviction of demonstrators from Taksim Square and Gezi Park in Istanbul, many observers were appalled – and justifiably so. Yet, those who condemned Erdogan at the time should feel obliged to raise their voices much louder now. We cannot demand freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate only for those who share our Western, liberal world view. These rights should also be upheld for those whose values may stand in conflict with our own. Otherwise, we are simply operating with double standards.
We should not forget that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were the winners in the freest ever democratic elections held in Egypt. It is completely understandable that they now feel cheated out of their victory.
A disparate group
For its part, the Muslim Brotherhood has contributed to the chaos. Its political leadership has failed in every respect. It was unable to reach out to its political adversaries on the left and from the secular camp. All the talk of martyrdom by the Islamists is now only exacerbating tensions. Nevertheless it is a mistake to demonise the Muslim Brotherhood as being a force for radical Islamism that seeks to set up an Islamist religious state. The reality is far more complex.
There are various groups within the organisation – moderates as well as radicals – vying with each other for power. Over the past 20 years, more moderate members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been conducting serious debates on democracy and how it would function in an Islamic country. The commitment by many of them to free elections and democracy is real. The military coup against Morsi and the brutal crackdown on his supporters is likely to strengthen the hand of those in the organisation wanting to pursue a more radical course.
This does not bode well for the future of Egypt. The past few weeks have shown just how polarised the country is. The Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists stand on one side; their opponents on the other. The sense of mutual distrust is immense. Both sides have been unable to approach each other in a spirit of dialogue. A culture of compromise is lacking. The military coup and the violence perpetrated by the security forces have considerably widened the gap. At the moment, it appears as if the last chance for political dialogue has been missed.
However, one thing is certain: whoever wants to establish stability and democracy in Egypt must integrate the Muslim Brotherhood into the political system. The organisation is too large and too strong to be simply pushed to one side. Ostracising the Muslim Brotherhood and throwing its leadership in prison will only provoke a new wave of violence in Egypt.
Jan Kuhlmann
© Qantara.de 2013
Translated from the German by John Bergeron
Editor: Aingeal Flanagan/Qantara.de
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
The Changing Map of Middle East Power
Volker Perthes
German Institute for International and Security Affairs
May 7 2013, ProjectSyndicate.com
BERLIN – The eruption of the Arab revolts in late 2010 and early 2011 put power relations among Middle Eastern countries in a state of flux, and both winners and losers have emerged. But, given that the strengths and weaknesses of most of the actors are highly contingent, the regional balance of power remains highly fluid.
As that balance currently stands, Egypt continues to be one of the region’s most influential actors, with the success or failure of its political and economic transition affecting how other Arab countries develop. But Egypt is weighed down by domestic concerns, including a plummeting economy and a security situation in which the military is used for police tasks.
The expansion of Egypt’s soft power will depend on the ability of its first democratically elected government, led by President Mohamed Morsi, to take difficult decisions and forge domestic consensus. Success in establishing effective governance would establish a model that many of Egypt’s neighbors would seek to emulate, at least partly.
In this respect, Turkey is a good example. Turkey’s power rests primarily on its vibrant economy. Its impressive military strength is of limited use as an instrument of power, and its political clout has been overestimated, particularly in Syria. A rapprochement with Israel and, more important, a lasting peace with its Kurdish population, would boost Turkey’s regional influence.
Israel also remains an overall winner, despite the changing strategic environment and its virtual lack of soft power in the region. The impending fall of Israel’s most reliable enemy, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, concerns Israel almost as much as the loss of its ally, Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak. With Israel’s economy and deterrent capability stronger than ever, however, no regional player poses a genuine security threat to Israel in the short term.
Meanwhile, Qatar’s diligent efforts to expand its influence over the last two decades have paid off, with the country developing considerable power of attraction. Since 2011, Qatar has scaled up its involvement in its neighbors’ affairs, backing the Libyan revolution, the Egyptian government, and the Syrian opposition.
But the Qataris may be overplaying their hand. Qatar has money, but no other hard power, and it has been criticized for its interference in Syria and its support for the Muslim Brotherhood. If Qatar fails to use its resources wisely, it may lose the legitimacy that it needs to underpin its patronage.
Meanwhile, Syria’s civil war highlights the loss of that country’s once-considerable influence in the region. Instead, Syria has become the object of a geopolitical struggle among other regional actors. But the efforts of the Gulf states to arm the Syrian opposition are insufficient to set the conflict on a definitive course, especially given the heavy weapons that the Assad regime has at its disposal. And the opposition has not been able to appropriate the reputation and clout that Assad has lost.
In fact, regardless of the balance of power between the regime and its opponents, Syria probably will not reestablish a strong, centralized government for decades, if ever. At best, Syria will emerge from the current conflict with a decentralized or federal state; at worst, the country will go the way of Somalia. Either way, Syria is currently firmly in the loser’s camp.
Iraq could have been a winner, had it been able to translate the recovery of its oil industry and the withdrawal of US troops into political stabilization and regional influence. But, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government widely considered to be another authoritarian and sectarian regime, Iraq has not been able to gain any soft power.
Moreover, the chances that Iraqi Kurdistan will achieve de facto or de jure independence are greater than ever. Iraq’s Kurds may even be able to extend their influence into Kurdish-populated northern Syria, thereby becoming a more influential regional player than the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
Neighboring Iran seems to be the quintessential survivor. It has coped with the international community’s increasingly stifling sanctions, while maintaining its nuclear program and continuing to participate in the diplomatic process with the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany). Iran has strengthened its influence in Iraq, and has helped to keep the Assad regime, a key ally, in power much longer than expected.
But rising political polarization in the region could undermine Iran’s standing. As regional conflicts are increasingly defined along Sunni-Shia lines, it is becoming more difficult for Shia-dominated Iran to gain influence in Sunni-majority countries. And Iran’s support for Assad’s brutal regime in Syria is damaging further its once-considerable soft power in other Arab countries.
Saudi Arabia can also be counted as a survivor, as it copes with deep strategic insecurity stemming from Iran’s efforts to undermine its position, social unrest in its neighbor and ally Bahrain, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt. Saudi leaders have also become increasingly suspicious of their American allies, on whom the country’s security depends.
At the same time, the Saudi leadership is facing significant domestic challenges, including vast economic disparities, inadequate services, growing frustration with the lack of political freedom, and a difficult succession process within the royal family. Nevertheless, though Saudi Arabia’s soft power is waning, its massive oil wealth will likely ensure that it remains a regional heavyweight.
Non-state actors also play a crucial role in the Middle East’s balance of power. Religious minorities have become more insecure. The once-oppressed Kurds are gaining ground. Of the main transnational political groups, the Muslim Brotherhood has been the clearest winner.
But success brings new challenges. Islamist-led governments must deliver on the socioeconomic front, while building democratic institutions. (Ironically, they will be able to claim success in having built a better state only when they accept their first electoral defeat.) Indeed, the challenge facing all of the region’s current winners is to translate today’s gains into credible, long-term power.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
The Arab Spring: Between Past and Future
Tarıq Ali
New Left Review 80
Reply to Asef Bayat
‘Dynasty and government’, Ibn Khaldûn wrote in his introduction to The Muqaddimah, ‘serve as the world’s marketplace, attracting to it the products of scholarship and craftsmanship alike.’ The 14th-century scholar was constructing a new methodology for understanding history, based on a study of the Maghreb and a critique of the work of Arab historians of preceding centuries. Replace ‘dynasty and government’ with Washington or the ‘international community’ and what he goes on to write is not inapposite for modern times:
Wayward wisdom and forgotten lore turn up there. In this market stories are told and items of historical information are delivered. Whatever is in demand on this market is in general demand everywhere else. Now, whenever the established dynasty avoids injustice, prejudice, weakness and double-dealing, with determination keeping to the right path and never swerving from it, the wares on its market are as pure silver and fine gold. When it is influenced by selfish interests and rivalries, or swayed by vendors of tyranny and dishonesty, the wares of its market-place become as dross and debased metals. The intelligent critic must judge for himself as he looks around, examining this, admiring that, and choosing the other. [1]
Looking around at the Arab world, two years after the uprisings that exploded across it in the spring of 2011, how should we judge the outcomes—fractious political scenes in Egypt and Tunisia, simmering strife in Yemen, armed anarchy in Libya, civil war in Syria, governmental crisis in Lebanon, crackdown in Bahrain, boosted regional weight for Riyadh and Qatar? Are there any patterns to be discerned in the Arab present? Asef Bayat’s ‘Revolutions in Bad Times’ is a thoughtful contribution to a preliminary balance sheet. [2] Bayat offers a categorization of oppositional strategies—reformist, insurrectionary, ‘refolutionary’—set in a broadly comparative, historical framework. In one sense, he argues, this is indeed an age ripe for revolution: the bankruptcy of liberal democracy and lack of government accountability in face of soaring levels of inequality and deprivation, sharply exacerbated by the financial crisis, have created a political impasse that would seem to demand revolutionary change. Yet the hold of neoliberal ideology and the defeats suffered by earlier revolutionary currents—anti-colonial, Marxist-Leninist, Islamist—have undermined the possibilities for it: both ‘means and vision’ are lacking. As a result, he argues, the opponents of the dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia adopted a strategy of ‘refolution’: mass mobilizations that aim to compel the regime to reform itself, rather than to overthrow it. It was only where intransigent regimes responded with armed force—Libya, Syria—that ‘refolutionaries’ were compelled to pass over into outright insurrection (with NATO backing) and the violent overthrow of the regime.
Bayat borrows the term ‘refolution’ from the Cold Warrior Timothy Garton Ash, who coined it to describe the liberalization underway in Poland and Hungary in the spring of 1989. Bayat admits, though, that the political processes in Tunisia and Egypt have not aimed at fundamental economic transformations, comparable to those that negotiations in central Europe were bringing about. In that sense, he argues, Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003 or Ukraine’s Orange version in 2004–05 are closer approximations, albeit lacking the liberatory charge unleashed throughout Egyptian society by Tahrir Square. Bayat concludes by borrowing Raymond Williams’s idea of the ‘long revolution’ as a possible strategy for ‘meaningful democratic change’. How should this contribution be assessed?
Terminologies
Bayat rightly stresses the lack of means and vision for a revolutionary overthrow of these regimes, but also the depth and scale of the insurrectionary energies released in Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia. Whether or not it is helpful to transpose the neologism of ‘refolution’ to capture these realities is another matter. Its original coinage referred to a very different process. Garton Ash was gushing over the negotiations taking place between state and opposition representatives in Budapest and Warsaw, where ‘enlightened’ apparatchiks were staging an ‘unprecedented retreat’, offering to share power, signing up for the road to parliamentary democracy and crying ‘Enrichissez-vous!’ (even Garton Ash confessed that the prospect of Communist bosses turning into capitalist ones, as he put it, afforded him a moment of unease). [3] With the exception of Romania and the DDR, the mobilizations in Eastern Europe were on a relatively small scale; the cosy confabulations in the spring of 1989 were a long way from the televised announcements by uniformed spokesmen of the SCAF and the cracked heads of Tahrir Square.
Nor does ‘refolution’ tackle the great rallying cry of 2011: ‘The people want the downfall’—not the reform—‘of the regime!’ There is an obvious risk in this terminology of confounding tactics—which, for any determined and effective political movement, will be flexible by definition—and goals. However the slogans and the spirit of the crowds in Cairo, Suez, Alexandria were very clear. It was not only Mubarak who had to go but also his torturers—including the sinister Omar Suleiman, whom the Obama Administration at one stage touted as Mubarak’s successor—and the Interior Ministry forces that had brutalized the country for decades. The military alone was not targeted, despite the role of a corrupt and collaborationist High Command that had been on the US payroll since the defeat of 1973. The decision by the protest leaders in February 2011 to refrain from trying to split the Army, despite the fraternization of junior officers and soldiers with the crowds, was probably a tactical miscalculation of the balance of forces, rather than springing from any illusions in the institutions of the Mubarak state. ‘Refolution’ in Bayat’s sense, if it means anything, is more applicable to the Bolivarian Republics in South America, a model firmly rejected by the Brotherhood and Ennahda, and with tragically little backing from young officers.
Bayat’s terminology offers little purchase on the social and political-economic content of the Arab revolts. Here the analogy with central Europe in 1989 breaks down completely. The Comecon states, eastern counterparts of Western social-democracies, were in essence social-dictatorships, for the most part heavily urbanized, with large-scale industrial sectors and social, educational and cultural provisions that benefitted a majority of the citizens, as G. M. Tamás discusses elsewhere in this issue. [4] Increasingly, through the 1970s and 80s, leading factions of the bureaucracies were won to market nostrums. Once the deal was done with the pro-capitalist oppositions, shock-therapy spending cuts and privatizations destroyed existing social structures and closed down much of the native industry, as Western firms stamped out competition. By contrast, import-substitute industrialization was always much more limited in the Arab republics, and workers were never valorized as they were under state socialism. Rural poverty is entrenched; vast slums surround the major cities; youth unemployment is desperately high. Egypt had disbanded much of its limited welfare state and embarked on a programme of privatizations under Sadat. Social provision is skeletal, mainly consisting of food and fuel subsidies; the mosques—Bayat’s ‘free riders’—provide most of the healthcare and education obtainable by the poor. Neoliberalism has famously served to benefit regime cronies. Social unrest and strikes have been repressed, time and time again, but they never completely disappeared. How to articulate political and economic demands remains a key strategic problem for the protest movements.
Missing dimensions
Equally important, Bayat’s abstract political categories—reform, revolution, something in between—exclude any analysis of the broader balance of forces in play. If the Arab uprisings began as indigenous revolts against corrupt police states and social deprivation, they were rapidly internationalized as Western powers and regional neighbours entered the fray. In his desire to find analogies for the Arab present in the European past, Bayat underplays the concrete impact of Western imperialism across the region. The current borders of the Arab states were drawn by the victors of the First World War and included a declaration by the British Cabinet—which its only Jewish member opposed—pledging to facilitate the establishment of a national home for European Jews in Palestine; thus setting in train the expropriation, uprooting and expulsion of large sections of the native Palestinian population to clear the ground for the state of Israel. There can be no adequate analysis of outcomes in the Arab world today without a consideration of the role played by the most powerful military and diplomatic force in the region, the US; and given the hold of America’s Israel lobby over US foreign policy, there can be no adequate assessment of the US role without bearing in mind the Israel–Palestine question.
The reasons why despotic regimes have persisted across the Arab world, long after the dictatorships of the Cold War era were dismantled across Latin America, Africa and much of Asia, lie largely in the intertwining logics of Washington’s jealous guardianship of the region’s oil and Israel’s grip over its Middle East policy. Free elections risked bringing Islamists to power who might act on their pro-Palestinian rhetoric. The nature of Arab-world exceptionalism in face of the growing ‘third wave’ of democratization was starkly demonstrated in Algeria, where the Arab Spring might be said to have started in 1988. Following a week of mass protests, the FLN regime agreed to hold first municipal and then, in 1990, national assembly elections, just as the massive US military build-up to the First Gulf War was igniting popular anger across the region. The largest Islamist party, FIS, won a landslide in the first round of the national assembly elections, having led huge anti-war demonstrations not long before. The Algerian military cancelled the second round, on the advice of Washington and Paris. A brutal and corrupting civil war ensued with mass atrocities carried out by both sides, to the point of attrition, while the masses retreated to an embittered passivity. Conservative estimates of the number killed range between 100,000 and 200,000, without a word of protest from the Western powers. The country has still not fully recovered from that ordeal.
With some variations, the populist-nationalist regimes that had come to power in the 1950s and 60s in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Algeria were structured—tragically—on a version of the Soviet model: a de facto single-party state, a grotesque personality cult glorifying the president of the day and a regime monopoly on politics and information. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the presidents-for-life as bad copies of the original. As they assembled to pose for the cameras at annual Arab summits, like so many veteran cars at a rally, they were cruelly satirized by the exiled Iraqi poet, Muzzaffar al-Nawab. Meanwhile the Mukhabarat (secret police) summits engaged in more serious business: collaborating with Mossad, comparing notes on dissidents, competing for renditioned victims from NATO countries and, occasionally, roaring with laughter as they described the effects of torture on the victim. Neither the Mukhabarat chiefs nor their US/EU sponsors detected the scale of the coming insurrections.
...
Full-text available at:
Monday, March 04, 2013
The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East
Charles Tripp, University of London
This book is about power. The power wielded over others – by absolute monarchs, tyrannical totalitarian regimes and military occupiers – and the power of the people who resist and deny their rulers' claims to that authority by whatever means. The extraordinary events in the Middle East in 2011 offered a vivid example of how non-violent demonstration can topple seemingly invincible rulers. This book considers the ways in which the people have united to unseat their oppressors and fight against the status quo and probes the relationship between power and forms of resistance. It also examines how common experiences of violence and repression create new collective identities. This brilliant, yet unsettling book affords a panoramic view of the twentieth and twenty-first century Middle East through occupation, oppression and political resistance.
Table of Contents
1. State capture and violent resistance
2. Contesting public space: resistance as the denial of authority
3. Imposition and resistance in economic life
4. Body politics: women's rights and women's resistance
5. History wars: contesting the past, reclaiming the future
6. Symbolic forms of resistance: art and power.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
The Paradox of Islam’s Future
RAYMOND W. BAKER
Trinity College, Connecticut
Political Science Quarterly
pp. 519-566
RAYMOND W. BAKER argues that although violent extremism flows from radical Islamic movements, the Islamic mainstream has effectively adapted to the globalized world and will shape the future of Islam in ways open to principled accommodation with the West. He claims that mainstream assertiveness, unencumbered by Western interference, provides the most effective way to counter destructive radicalism.
ISLAM TODAY PRESENTS ITSELF CLOAKED IN A PARADOX. By all
economic and political measures, the late twentieth century was a time
of dramatic decline for the Islamic world, particularly its Arab heartland.
The deterioration continued through the first decade of the twenty-first
century, accelerated by the American shattering of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sober voices from the Islamic world now regularly and accurately describe
their current state as the worst in the 1,400-year-old history of Islam.
Not surprisingly, Western analysts routinely speak of Islam’s decline, particularly
in terms of its political dimensions. Only Marxism rivals “political
Islam” in the number of times it has been pronounced dead, dying, or in
some obscure “post” state. Yet, again and again, Islam appears at grave’s
edge to renew itself in unexpected ways. It does so today in the form of a
worldwide Sahwa Islammiyya or Islamic Awakening that has been in the
making for a generation or more.
Precisely in these times of unprecedented material vulnerability, Islam of
the Awakening has emerged as a powerful wave of world-historic change
that is sweeping through communities of Muslims around the world. Islam
has established itself as the only transnational force able to resist America’s
homogenizing power on a global scale. It has inspired the most successful
Arab resistances to the American-backed expansion of the Israeli state.
Extraordinary popular revolutions in the spring of 2011 in Arab lands,
though not led by Islamists, evinced a distinctive Islamic coloration. Everywhere
the Islamic presence in public life has been strengthened in the wake
of uprisings. The ordinary Muslims who made these revolutions, notably
in Egypt and Tunisia, framed their mobilizing calls for freedom and justice
in an Islamic idiom rarely appreciated or even understood in Western
commentary. As people took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands,
calls celebrating the greatness of God mingled with those demanding
the end of tyranny. This improbable assertiveness of Islam in so many
unexpected ways is the central and little-understood paradox of Islam in
our time: How at a time of such unprecedented weakness has Islam made
itself such a powerful transnational force? How has an Islamic world in
decline and under attack succeeded in initiating a centrist, global wave
for renewal? By what alchemy does Islam translate the visible weaknesses
of Muslims into a formidable wave of Islamic resistance?1
THE MAINSTREAM AND THE ISLAMIC AWAKENING
The simple and straightforward answer to all three questions is the constantly
renewed capacity of the Islamic mainstream, the Wassatteyya,
to energize and guide the Islamic Awakening. The Islamic mainstream
draws as no other force on the inherent strengths of the revelation. It is
mainstream Islam that is safeguarding the faith in these difficult times.
It is the mainstream that will ultimately shape the future of Islam and
Islamic societies. The obsessive focus of the West on contemporary Islamic
extremism has obscured and at times even obstructed and delayed this outcome.
The horrific violence used to combat extremism has had the effect
only of augmenting its role at the expense of the mainstream. Military
invasions and occupations radicalize the Islamic world in destructive ways
and temporarily crowd out the mainstream. In the end, when calm returns
to Islamic lands, mainstream Islam will more effectively assert itself.
Consistent with well-established historical patterns the mainstream will
reabsorb the extremists into a re-centered and inclusive Islamic body.
What exactly is the Islamic Wassatteyya and how does it work these
effects? It is most useful to start with the provisional definition that the
Wassatteyya is what its adherents say it is...
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