Government and Politics of the Contemporary Middle East

Continuity and change

Tareq Y. Ismael

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317662822
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This exciting new edition of the successful textbook for students of Middle Eastern politics provides a highly relevant and comprehensive introduction to the complexities of a region in constant flux. Combining a thematic framework for examining patterns of politics with individual chapters dedicated to specific countries, the book places the very latest developments and long-standing issues within an historical context, introducing key concepts from comparative politics to further explore the interaction between Middle Eastern history and the region's contemporary political development.

Presenting information in an accessible and inclusive format, the book offers:

• Coverage of the historical influence of colonialism and major world powers on the shaping of the modern Middle East.

• A detailed examination of the legacy of Islam.

• Analysis of the political and social aspects of Middle Eastern life: alienation between state and society, poverty and social inequality, ideological crises and renewal.

• Case studies on countries in the Northern Belt (Turkey and Iran); the Fertile Crescent (Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, Israel/Palestine); and those West and East of the Red Sea (Egypt and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council), moving through an historical examination to close analysis of the most recent developments and their political and social impacts.

• Extensive pedagogical features, including original maps and further reading sections, provide essential support for the reader.

A key introductory text for students of Middle Eastern politics and history at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate levels, this new edition has been extensively updated to also become a timely and significant reference for policy-makers and any motivated reader.

1 Introduction: Middle East politics Patterns of continuity and change

DOI: 10.4324/9781315767239-1

The Middle East as an area of study

To readers new to an examination of the lands and peoples of the Middle East, defining the region as an object of study can often prove problematic, even confusing. This is largely a product of its definition being equivocal with regard to geographic boundaries, shifting linguistic and cultural frontiers, and the longstanding historical transmutation brought about by its legacy with regard to classical antiquity (Greek, Roman, Byzantium) and monotheistic religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). A principal characteristic in the definitional puzzle is the major role played in its being elucidated by foreign constructs and not by the self-styled and empirically grounded views of regional peoples. The foreign observer can provide discernable insight, especially when informed by professional specialization and a commitment to empiricism, but it has been more often informed by outside interests focused on security concerns and the legacies of supposed differences from European norms that has seen the region characterized as Europe’s ideational “other.” Although it is distinguishable from Europe chiefly by religion, and from the Far East by culture, the Middle East, located roughly between southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean, has no tangible geographic periphery. Historically, its meaning has been determined by political rather than geographic factors and, therefore, has changed corresponding to the growth of Western interest in and involvement with the region and its peoples. Indeed, the term “Middle East” originated in 1902 with Alfred Taylor Mahan (1840–1914), an American naval strategist who identified the importance to Britain of securing and maintaining the region en route to India. The term gained wide circulation during the Second World War when the Middle East Supply Center was established by the United States and the United Kingdom as a logistical base for the allied war effort. However, the term did not initially have any definite geographical boundary; for Mahan, it was the area between the Near East (Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley) and the Far East (China and Japan), and served as a flexible strategic concept reflecting the early twentieth-century geopolitical struggle between the British and Russian empires. In other words, the Middle East was invented as a formulation of Anglo-American security discourse conceptually useful through the decline of the Ottoman Empire, through the Cold War and with the increasing importance of petroleum across the twentieth century. Nevertheless, as a modern conceptual and geographic unit, the Middle East is commonly delineated as: The Fertile Crescent, the Arabian Peninsula, the Nile Valley of Egypt and the Sudan as well as the Northern Belt of Turkey and Iran and the Arab Maghrib states of North Africa.

The politics of the Middle East varies in its particulars by state, though as the Arab revolts of 2011 reminded observers, the region can be studied as a unit on the basis of shared thematic traits. First, the majority of Middle East states—minus Israel, Turkey, and Iran—share an Arabo-Islamic heritage that defines cultural norms and colors the social environment. Indeed, these cultural forms have proven to be the most vital in terms of political and social mobilization, with first pan-Arabism and later Islamism forming powerful ideologies across the region. Second, all of the states of the Middle East share the burdens of post-colonialism; and, in varying forms, continue to struggle with the exigencies of imperialism and neo-imperialism. In this vein, modern state-building in the Middle East has been an attempt to elucidate national programs often at odds with the pressures of successive great powers, now embodied in the immense influence of the United States. From the legacy of the repressive infrastructure created by the former colonial regimes, the Middle East region has sustained—with little exception—patterns of oppressive authoritarian rule.

The Middle East is a critical area of academic study, whose significance ranges from historic to religious to geostrategic domains of scholarly and popular attention. In the historic frame, the Fertile Crescent (more precisely, modern Iraq) is a primary site of the agricultural revolution and development of cultivation as well as the first human settlement—and later the world’s first cities—perhaps as early as 10,000 BCE. The archeological riches found in the region provide evidence of the oldest recorded human cultural artifacts, such as the epic tale of Gilgamesh, the first known work of literature. Likewise, the Fertile Crescent is the site of the world’s earliest legal codes, including the Laws of Eshunna, Mosaic Law and the Hammurabi Code. Finally, the Middle East region gave birth to monotheism as a coherent system of theology; it was the birthplace and remains the spiritual center of the world’s core monotheist religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—which today comprise over three billion believers worldwide. To this day, the region represents a major pilgrimage site for the world’s monotheistic believers, with Mecca and Medina in Arabia, southern Iraq’s shrine cities, and the historic Jerusalem as well as a great many other sites in Palestine, featuring prominently for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. As the historic birthplace of organized monotheism, the early history of the Middle East has shaped the minds of people, nations, and empires to this day. Nowhere does this ancient legacy impose itself more than in duels over historical and religious claims to Palestine/Israel. In pre-modern and modern history, the monotheistic religions of the Middle East have formed the ideational core of culture, grand political projects, wars, and social organizations.

The significance of the contemporary Middle East is not merely in its historical contributions or religious legacy but in its worldly significance in geostrategic and economic matters. For much of human history, what is today called the Middle East, was the corridor by which early homo sapiens left Africa, establishing it forever more as a land bridge between the three continents. ¹ It has served as a nexus for human transit, migrations that allowed for global commerce, cultures and ideas to shape the world. While the region’s significance in trade and commerce only grew with construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, it is also at the center of global commercial air traffic. Moreover, its strategic significance escalated in the twentieth century with the discovery and exploitation of vast petroleum reserves. As a hinge of the global economy the Middle East has been a key battlefield—both literally and figuratively— across modern history. At present, the United States—as the last remaining superpower—has an unprecedented military and economic role in the region, with a network of military bases and deep security and commercial relationships with virtually every state in the region. Three Middle East countries— Israel, Egypt, and Jordan—are among the top ten recipients of official U.S. economic/military aid.

The academic study of the Middle East is all the more crucial given the vast degree of misinformation that permeates public understanding in the West, most often through the mass media and popular culture. For instance, the claims which led the United States to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003— possession of WMDs, ties to al-Qa’ida, and nuclear ambitions—have proven to be objectively false; and yet, regular polls of Americans find their perceptions are still fixed to the pre-war claims by the Bush administration. Similarly, public perceptions of Muslims and other peoples from the region remain problematic. Why study the Middle East? The region represents a point of origin for human civilization and dominant systems of thought (such as monotheistic religions). Moreover, in an oil-dependent world, the Middle East has geostrategic paramountcy that has resulted in deep Western involvement in the affairs of the region. Following the longstanding exploitative nature of Western penetration of the region, this text is meant as a presentation of the predominant themes of Middle East politics. Its thematic frames for the study of the Middle East, as introduced in the first part of this book, are: First, the “burden of history”—that is, a historical sketch of the Middle East generally, but more precisely a consideration of how historical encounters with the great powers and colonialism shaped, and continue to shape, the nature of postcolonial states and societies in the region and, second, the role of Islam in Middle East society and politics, particularly in terms of how Islam has colored the social and politico-cultural backdrop of the region, and how Islam has interacted with modern efforts at state-building. Part II of the text is a survey of the key states in the region, using the thematic framework provided in Part I.

Social geography of the Middle East: Patterns of continuity

The predominant theme of Middle Eastern development in the twentieth century was a dedication to state-building projects that attempted to mitigate the religious/ethnic particularities of society in favor of a nationalistic vision. This has been an uneven project, as the claims of ethno-religious nationalism have frequently been pitted against the claims of national minorities. Nevertheless, with a few notable exceptions, Middle East state-building— particularly in the case of secular nationalist regimes—achieved a significant measure of social cohesion.

There are three major linguistic/cultural groups in the region: Arab, Turkic, and Persian and a large number of minority groups including Jews, Kurds, Berbers, Alawites, Druze, Yazidis, and Assyrians. The population of the Middle East is estimated to be in excess of 350 million people, of which Arabs make up nearly two-thirds. The most significant non-Arab populations include Turkish people, largely found in the Turkish Republic on the Anatolian peninsula; Persians, who make up half the population of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Berbers, who, although concentrated in Algeria and Morocco, can be found across northern Africa; Kurds, who are spread across the Turkish Republic, the Republic of Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Arab Republic of Syria; and Jews, who are now concentrated in Israel. ² Among the estimated 14 million Jews globally, more than six million are living in the Middle East, ³ with a further six-and-a-half million living in north America. Within the Jewish ethnic community there are several subgroupings, generally tied to their assumed provenance or geographic ancestral homelands in the Jewish Diaspora. The Diaspora refers to the Jewish exodus from Palestine following the Roman destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in 70 CE. These groupings include the Ashkenazim, who are comprised of European Jews who originated in the Rhineland of Germany and who later expanded into Eastern Europe ⁴ ; the Sefaradim, who are Jews extracted from the Iberian Peninsula, initially the Spanish provinces of the Roman Empire, until their expulsion following the Spanish Reconquista of 1492, whereupon they received safe harbor and resettled throughout the Ottoman Empire; and the Mizrahim, who are Jews from across the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The Ashkenazim represent the significant majority of world Jewry, with estimates ranging from over two-thirds to some 80 percent. However, it is notable that within Israel they are now a minority of the Jewish population, ⁵ leading to alterations of the social and political composition of Israeli society. Moreover, within the territories controlled by Israel following its 1967 conquest of the West Bank and Gaza, the Jewish population of the former Palestine Mandate is itself now estimated at 50 percent, making Jews a minority. ⁶

The dynamics of the diverse ethnic and religious groups found throughout the entire region, especially as they themselves are often subdivided into smaller subgroupings and sects, is a mosaic that confronts those new to the study of the region. The social solidarities and historical salience of such groups is without question. It is their politicization, especially with the collapse of Ottoman sovereignty and the infusion of European power, which impacts the state development that we will engage with in this book. In order to understand the political dynamics of the Middle East, it is essential to discern the distinctions between groups as well as see their similarities. What determines ethnicity in the Middle East is the combined nomenclature of language in the region. On the other hand, what determines religious identification is a declaration of belief. Thus, Kurds are predominantly Muslims but not Arab; Christians may be Arab or Kurd; Jews are predominantly Ashkenazi but may be Arab, Kurdish, Turkish, or Persian. The existence of Arab Jews and Arab Christians often confuses those new to the region with the diversity being almost endless; the focus, therefore, should be directed to the political mobilization of such markers rather than any supposed primacy of any given identity. Economic class, tribal affinity, marriage ties, and political ideology have all played prominent roles in the social engagement and political development of the peoples of the region.

Religion has played an important role in the affairs of the Middle East for centuries and has provided not only a basis for national and cultural unity but also a source of diversity. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, all of which originated in the Middle East, are the dominant religions, although cognate faiths of minority sects and faith-based groups of a dizzying array also exist. In the Middle East, as elsewhere, religion interacts with the social factors of ethnicity, ideology, and nationality in often contradictory ways, both syncretic (e.g. Judaism and Zionism; Iran and Shi’ism) and oppositional (e.g. confessional politics in Lebanon and Iraq). In the Middle East, Islam is numerically and socially the most influential religion. It is important to note, however, that the majority of Muslims globally reside outside the Middle East. Of the 1.57 billion Muslims in the world, less than one-quarter are found in the Middle East, though it is where the largest concentration of Muslim majority states reside. In a majority of states in the region, Muslims make up at least 95 percent of the population. More than 60 percent of the global Muslim population resides in Asia, with Indonesia (203 million, Pakistan (174 million), Bangladesh (145 million), and Nigeria (78 million) along with the Muslim-minority population of India (161 million) all larger than Egypt’s population (78 million). ⁷ Since early in its history, Islam was divided into two major sects, the Shi’i and the Sunni. The Shi’ite sect is found predominantly in Iraq, Bahrain, and Iran, but it also forms a significant minority in most other states and has a number of sub-sects (e.g., Imami, Isma’illi and Zaidi). In addition, there are a number of Islamic heterodox and offshoot sects, which include the Druze, Ibadhi (modern Kharijite), Alawi, and Ali-Ilahi/Ahl-I Haqq. With the overthrow of the Pahlavi dyna...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on authors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: Middle East politics: patterns of continuity and change
• PART I Dynamics in Middle East politics
• 2 The burden of history: from empire to nation states?
• 3 The legacy of Islam: continuity and change
• PART II The Northern Belt
• 4 The Republic of Turkey
• 5 The Islamic Republic of Iran
• PART III The Fertile Crescent
• 6 The Republic of Iraq
• 7 The Syrian Arab Republic and the Lebanese Republic
• 8 Israel and Palestine
• PART IV West and east of the Red Sea
• 9 The Arab Republic of Egypt
• 10 The Arab Gulf states and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
• Index