Egypt and 'Family Values'

This will have to be my last post for a while as my wrist still hasn't healed and I need it for other things. Hopefully, I'll return eventually to finish this history.

Egypt was naturally a strategic battleground for the two European powers firstly because of its influence in the Arab world and later because of the important Suez Canal. As I have noted, it was the site of the first modern violation of the Middle East in 1798. Soon after this event, the Albanian Muhammad ‘Ali rose to power in Egypt and quickly recognised and acted upon perceived European technical and military superiority.

He thus began the major translation project from mainly European languages into Arabic (and Turkish, ‘Ali’s first language) and the training, usually in France, of Arab Egyptian future technocrats and military leaders. He also encouraged trade with Europe especially in the famed Egyptian cotton although the terms of trade generally fell in the favour of Europe by this time. The result was the slow infusion into Egypt of European ideas and goods along with the sought technologies and military ideas. Muhammad ‘Ali famously refused the translation of Machiavelli’s the Prince but merely on the basis that its ideas seemed, to ‘Ali, child’s play rather than due to the ideas being at all alien to him.

This infusion of European ideals and material into Egypt may be seen as a model of the process of European colonialism in the Arab world, as I mentioned in an earlier post. In seeking help from the very countries that appeared threatening such as the recent brief invader, Napoleon’s France, and its rival England, ‘Ali ended up inviting an interest that led to the realisation of the very threat feared. While not a direct colony, the materialism engendered by outside influence created demands which led to foreign debts to Europe thus creating a form of dependency. This contrasts with the model (also mentioned in an earlier post) of colonising countries ostensibly acting in the interests of religious and ethnic minorities.

In the case of countries like Egypt, the debt and dependency would later become an excuse for domination by Britain although a large portion of it was for the building of railways in 1850 and a canal in 1869 which were always mainly in the interests of Britain and France in any case.

An uprising in 1879 led by an Egyptian army officer, Ahmad ‘Urabi against the domination and government corruption and moral laxity finally gave a pretext for a full British invasion in 1881. The formally Ottoman ‘rulers’, the khedives of Egypt, were from then on mere puppets of the British, a position made plain by the easy removal of even the façade of Ottoman rule at the commencement of the First World War when the Ottomans took the axis side.

The court systems for Europeans and local non-Muslims and Muslims were made separate, a provision similar to but even more onerous on the local government than provisions that Europeans usually insisted upon wherever they ruled in their period of domination of the world. The Egyptian state thereafter had no jurisdiction over either non-Muslims or Europeans. A significant immigration (but of Greeks more than Britons) occurred into Egypt. The European lifestyle, dress, music and eating habits became fashionable among many Egyptians. Printing presses first set up under Muhammad ‘Ali came into their own. New large landholding, merchant and banking classes, also initiated in the time of Muhammad ‘Ali, came to prominence under the British.

With increased health care, the population also began to substantially increase with a reduced mortality rate preceding a falling fertility rate. An emerging middle class sought power and more leisure. Literature and other cultural and intellectual pursuits developed strongly in this period as did Islamic revivalism. Actual Islamic legal reforms didn’t occur until after independence, however.

Arab nationalist identity politics followed European trends; in the case of Egyptian Arabs their identity was at first defined as anti-Ottoman and eventually anti-British. The Wafd party gained prominence after the First World War and pseudo-independence was declared in 1922.

The region roughly known as Egypt today has managed to maintain a strong central government for much of its history and pre-history (even in the Ottoman period). As a result of its stability, Egypt has also generally tended to be able to be strongly influential in the region as a whole (as it remains).

Minorities are generally well integrated in Egypt. Local disputes have therefore generally tended to concern so-called ‘bread and butter’ economic and social issues rather than confessional issues.

Egypt has also tended to be fertile ground for the student of history because of both a tendency to bureaucracy and a dry climate which has helped to preserve many bureaucratic documents well.

The Cold War and the formation of Israel added their own pressures to the Egyptian state following the Second World War. President Nasser became a major inspiration for pan-Arabism in the Arab world and even briefly united Egypt with a Syria which later regretted wooing the President. The assassinated President Sadat is largely remembered today in Egypt as a traitor for his peace deal with the Israeli Prime Minister, Begin. President Mubarak has now been in power since the early 1980s (an unlikely period of rule for one man in a true democracy). The period of infitah (opening up [to trade with the West]) instituted in recent times has created some pressures for both political and economic liberalisation.

David Bromley suggests (in line with the view I expressed in my post on Syria, I think) that rather than being obstacles to democracy, Islamism and Arab nationalism in Egypt, too, have been the effects of other obstacles that have to do essentially with the ongoing unjust concentration of economic and political power in too few hands, mainly military elites'. Part of the reason for the inhibition of democracy is the willingness of countries and peoples like America and Americans to pay large military rents and tourism dollars to the rulers of Egypt as they pay oil rents to countries like Iraq producing similar issues.

Saad Eddine Ibrahim, a vocal democratic activist and scholar of development based in Egypt, has concluded surveys of the population issues of Egypt especially of the late 20^th Century which show a downward trend in fertility comparable with that of many other developing nations. He has also noted, however, particular issues for Egypt. Jacques Berque, writing in the 1960s, noted that the Egyptian government has seen overpopulation as a problem since the 1940s.

Ibrahim suggests the issue was on the agenda in the 1930s but was not unanimously viewed as a problem. This divide in perceptions is one of the issues which he sees as still relevant today in Egypt. There were divisions, too, over whether to allow development to play its role in the decisions of families to have less children (what Ibrahim himself appears to regard as the potentially too-slow way) or to intervene directly by encouraging direct family planning measures. He suggests both approaches should be applied together for optimal results. Conservative Islam apparently plays a part in making the idea of family planning a ‘hard sell’ in Egypt, particularly as many doctors who in other circumstances and countries might be expected to play a role in its promotion fall into the category of conservative Muslims. Ibrahim notes that Nasser favoured the development approach and in fact thought a powerful nation required a large population. That latter view he suggests remains popular today in many Muslim and Arab Socialist circles.

Today another of the unique problems noted by Ibrahim is the uneven distribution of the still burgeoning population leading to overcrowding in certain cities and regions (especially cities of the Nile valley). He suggests that this third issue, the other two being general underdevelopment and resistance to the promotion of family planning, was first recognised later than the first two (as late as the 1970s).

All of the three population issues have been impacted upon, Ibrahim notes, by two major inhibiting factors: the distraction of the government with things like a world war, disastrous regional wars, nascent independence and revolutions and the strength of the conservative social forces mentioned above. He also notes however that after having failed to lead by example for a long period, the leaders (especially Nasser in the end and later Mubarak) began to take their population issues (and especially family planning) more seriously. He suggests based on his surveys that the remaining inhibiting factor may remain relatively intransigent for some time.

He has surveyed government officials, social workers, doctors in family planning practices, religious leaders, local NGO leaders and the targeted women and discovered issues in each group with family planning but two notable ones. Ironically, since it was apparently a doctor who first noted the problem of overpopulation in Egypt many years ago, today the doctors (in family planning practices, no less) together with religious leaders are the least likely of the groups to regard overpopulation as a problem today. This is ironic, too, as al-Azhar (the greatest Islamic university in the region) issued a fatwa in the 1930s supporting birth control, a fact which appears to have escaped (or perhaps been ignored by) many of those surveyed even among the religious leaders.

More generally (and notably in the ranks of the government but not among social workers or local NGO leaders) apathy and sometimes even hostility toward government policy appeared to be prevalent (while not at the levels described for the doctors and religious leaders). Ibrahim thinks that a degree of buck passing, made possible by a convoluted and opaque government structure, has enabled conservative forces, especially with the assistance of a conservative, possibly Nasserist and poorly trained medical fraternity, to effectively block the provision of family planning advice.

Ibrahim argues that the local NGOs and their leaders as well as women are potentially strong allies of government policy. NGOs in particular, he suggests, need to be given more freedom to act in this area. The women’s main issues were questions of obtaining permission from others to use contraception. Interestingly, a large percentage of women, including a significant percentage of those who said in surveys that they considered contraception was morally wrong, were using contraception. A comparison could probably be made with the circumstances, attitudes and practices of Catholic women over the last half century.

Syria

And now for some more detailed recent state histories of special relevance. First, Syria.

Syria today notably has a small chunk (containing the ancient Christian Patriarchal seat of Antioch) removed from it in the North West (see map) which was given to Turkey by France in the 20^th Century as well as the even longer standing chunk in the South West (called Lebanon).

Incidentally, because of various Church schisms, Antioch today officially has five Patriarchs none of whom live in Antioch (three are based in Damascus and two in Lebanon).

The Golan Heights, too, also in the South West, is currently occupied (since 1967 and not completely relinquished, despite Arab reclamation of the Golan foothills, in 1973) by another state’s military and civilian forces (Israel’s).

Syria shares borders with Turkey in the North, Iraq in the South East, Jordan in the South, and Israel and Lebanon in the South West. The damming by Turkey of the Euphrates River (which later dissects Syria) has restricted the availability of water in Northern Syria but has been more of an issue for Iraq. Syria, too, has dammed the river (leading to the lake/dam we can see in the North) and Iraq is farther downstream again. Much of Syria’s electricity is, in fact, hydroelectric by means of this damming. The partly straight-line borders with Iraq and Jordan remind us of the arbitrariness of the Western carve-up of the region.

Syria, however, with its many Arab (and one Israeli) land borders, is obviously a hub of the northern Arab world for all its chunks removed, water issues and early Christian heritage. Syrians in the East especially and to some extent in the South East have close ties with neighbouring Iraqis. These Eastern Syrian and Western Iraqi people live in what is called the Jazira region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Syria also borders the Mediterranean and has three major Mediterranean ports, which are therefore naturally significant historically.

Around the northernmost of these ports lives a particular concentration of the ‘Alawite minority which is effectively a ruling class in Syria today as around the southernmost live a particular concentration of the Druze minority.

Historically, the two most significant cities and very different cities (along with Antioch and the three ports already referred to) have been Damascus, the current capital, in the south and Aleppo in the north.

Following the World War I Arab Revolt that began in 1915 and contributed to the British and French victory, the revolt’s Arab leader Sharif Feisal was elected by Syrian notables in Damascus to be King of Syria in around 1919. The area those notables intended Feisal to rule over when referring to him as King of Syria evidently encompassed French Syria and Lebanon and British Transjordan. By this stage, the French had taken charge of their intended area of influence that included his intended capital of Damascus and Lebanon and, further, had decided that he should not be permitted to assume a leadership role or indeed any role in ‘their’ territory. As compensation, the British allowed him to become King of Iraq (his brother, of course, became the Emir of Transjordan and eventually King of Jordan and had an interest in pretending to the rule of parts of nearby Syria, Lebanon and British Palestine).

The French at first ruled ‘their’ Syria as four provinces (five if you include Lebanon). The period 1920 to 1925 was marred as a result by thawra (Arabic for both revolt and revolution) leading to reduction from four provinces to one (two including Lebanon) and the Syrian republic in 1926.

Political parties developed from the late 1930s and Shuqri Quwatli was an early and influential president. Full independence from France was negotiated for both Syria and Lebanon in the period from 1943 to 1946 in the time of Quwatli who also served as president for a second time in the 1950s and was also a noted intellectual and activist.

In this period Syria hoped to continue to fully participate in friendly cultural and economic relations with France.

The period 1946 to 1954 was a volatile one for Syria, though, with the country experiencing around four significant coups. In fact, Syria was probably the most volatile region of the Middle East in the 20^th Century.

There have been external and internal factors producing that volatility. A major external factor among other external influences in this period was the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. Under the various influences, the armed forces became politicised.

Hafiz al-Assad was an army pilot in this period. The major parties in Syria in this period were the Muslim Brothers (which today mostly draws support from populations centred on the major cities of Damascus and Aleppo), the Ba’ath Party and the Syrian Socialist National Party.

Relations with Israel have continued to be tense especially over the issue of the control and management of water sought by Israel in the vicinity of the source of the Jordan.

In the early period of independence, the West, too, attempted to reassert control in Syria. The British set up the short-lived Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO), not including Syria, by means of the so-called Baghdad Pact as a local bulwark against the then burgeoning influence of the USSR.

Egypt’s President Nasser also sought influence in Syria and inspired his version of Pan-Arabism with its defiance of the West. Finally, in 1958 the Syrian parties agreed to disband themselves and an independent Syria uniting Syria with Nasser’s Egypt under Nasser. Quwatli deferred to him on 1 February 1958.

Nasser put a lot of resources into strengthening Egypt’s armed forces and especially the army as a response to the threat of a well-armed Israel (and a well-organised Israeli arms industry) and earned respect in Pan-Arab circles during the 1956 defence of Suez. This goes some way to explaining the Syrian keenness for the 1958 union. He was nevertheless an authoritarian who would brook no opposition parties, officially considering them too divisive. Lebanese nationalist politicians in this period were also certainly not in sympathy with the West.

Jordan’s ruler, too, was finally persuaded not to participate in the Baghdad Pact (although he took some convincing, locally). Nevertheless, neither he nor the Lebanese were persuaded to unite with Egypt and Syria under Nasser’s rule.

The union with Egypt lasted for just over a mere three years and it appears that the CIA was likely involved in destabilising the union. However, other forces, both external and internal, contributed to the destabilisation leading to the split. The Syrians simply decided that they had made a big mistake uniting with Egypt, re-formed their disbanded parties and peacefully disunited from Egypt.

The old guard of the Ba’ath Party that had decided on union were no longer credible in Syria at this point. Part of the reason was that Nasser was considered to have become too involved with the USSR. He had become so involved essentially because the West had made itself unavailable to him. At first he had bought arms from Czechoslovakia rather than the Soviets but finally he bought MiG aircraft among other things from the Soviet Union directly. Then Western-promised finance for Nasser’s Aswan Dam project failed to materialise at very short notice so he probably felt forced to replace it with Soviet finance.

Nevertheless, only the Muslim Brothers opposed the infisal (separation) in 1961 (this despite the fact that they had originally been the only opponents of the union a mere three years before).

After the infisal, various relative freedoms not permitted or restricted under Nasser returned (if briefly) such as freedom of the press, of party formation, of expression and of economic activity. Certain Nasserist land reforms were also reversed.

The Muslim Brothers are banned today (with the exception of one faction within it). The Ba’ath Party (under new leadership, however, the old guard having been discredited) became the dominant party.

While the period 1961 to 1963 was a ‘honeymoon period’ for the new Syrian regime, by 1970 there had been around another four coups against it. With each successive coup, the recently regained freedoms were seemingly further eroded and more political power was concentrated in military hands, especially ‘Alawi ones. The ‘Alawi minority had responded for many years to perceived political oppression in Syria by joining the Syrian military with the result that, having achieved a critical mass in the politicised military, they were now potentially in a position to deal out some oppression of their own.

The Ba’ath Party, meanwhile, had become obscurantist in its discourse and its upper echelons had become infiltrated by Mossad agents. One in particular became number three in the party at a time that enabled him to provide useful information to Israel for its prosecution of the 1967 war against Syria, Egypt and Jordan. He was eventually uncovered.

Syria, who performed worst of the Arab side in it, regarded the Six-Day War of 1967 as a particular disaster. Israel had not been expected to defeat the Arab armies with such ease so its easy success was shocking to Syrians as much as to any other Arabs. A flood of refugees from the Golan Heights was noticeable in Damascus.

Syrian policy at the time was also to defend the interests of the PLO against Jordan as much as against Israel. Hence the regime was short of neither Arab nor non-Arab enemies.

In 1970 two events of significance for the region produced an end to the period of coups, however, and a relatively stable regime in Syria, one internal and one external: the coming to power of Hafiz al-Assad and the expulsion of PLO elements from Jordan.

Assad remained in charge as Syrian President until his death and the accession of his son, the optometrist/eye doctor, Bashshar al-Assad, in the year 2000, who remains President today.

Hafiz’s takeover was called a ‘corrective movement’ rather than a revolution. He was a shrewd man, which led to him being labelled “difficult” by people like Henry Kissinger, the West being evidently unaccustomed to dealing with shrewd Arab politicians. He had the eponymous Assad Dam constructed (mentioned above – besides the damming producing hydro-electric power, the dam became a significant fishery).

He also helped the Arab side fight the Israelis to a virtual standstill in the 1973 October (or Ramadan or Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)) War thus limiting the Israeli air of invincibility in the region.

Syria and Egypt both also regained some actual territory.

Under Assad’s stewardship, Syria also regained an improved relationship with most Arab countries (if not the world).

Syria and Lebanon in particular have had a close relationship in the past and may be expected to in the future. Damascus and Beirut are, after all, only 50 kilometres apart. Nevertheless, relations have been strained in the latter part of the 20^th Century and the early 21^st Century mainly due to the recent occupation. Syrian forces initially entered Lebanon (over basically the third quarter of the 20^th Century) to protect the Lebanese from local factions, Israel and a brief US occupation. The US occupation was possibly undertaken to prevent the Israelis from using nuclear weapons as they had threatened in the past when confronted with the possibility of losing a war.

Israel soon departed Lebanon, however, and the forces that had invited the Syrian forces immediately wanted Syrian forces to depart also. The Syrians chose not to until 2005-2006 and thus outstayed their welcome for many years with a significant portion of the Lebanese population.

In this environment, Syria has recently been accused of a host of assassinations in Lebanon over a half a century (leading ultimately to the withdrawal of the Syrian forces). The actual assassins have not been determined in all cases and in some cases may have had CIA or Israeli assistance – potentially equally ruthless actors in the region with motives at least as clear as Syria’s, to foment discontent with Syria being an obvious one.

As some of the early alleged Syrian assassinations were occurring mid-century, the CIA is now known to have been orchestrating the Iranian coup against Mossadegh, to illustrate what they were capable of in this region at that time (and may still be).

Certainly the family of Rafiq al-Hariri generally believes the instigators of his 2005 assassination were Syrian as he was clearly opposed to the Syrian influence in Lebanon during his lifetime (he was accompanied by a large retinue that was consequently also killed).

This multiple assassination led directly to the protests that led to the Syrian withdrawal in the same year. Assassinations have unfortunately continued in the aftermath of the withdrawal. The powerful al-Hariri family also blames Syria for this assassination and several of the earlier and later assassinations (quite insistently), as do other powerful families in Lebanon (less stridently, perhaps, though).

Consequently, Syria’s relations with some quarters in Lebanon are still quite strained. Syria itself tends to blame Israel while Israel predictably accuses Syria, in turn. The al-Hariri family would evidently prefer that Syria not be dealt with although even most anti-Syrians accept the need to continue to deal with Syria reasonably.

Some other Arab states also have some problems with Syria, ironically buying into the ideas of the US and Israel. The line of Israel and the US is that Syria remains at least an associate member of the ‘Axis of Evil’ (formerly the ‘full members’ were Iran, Iraq and North Korea according to the now infamous 2002 State of the Union address of George W. Bush).

They are also believed (and by some Arab states, too) to deal closely with Iran, as a fellow Shi’a power, and with Hizbollah in Lebanon, forming a dangerous "Shi’a Crescent" in the region opposed to Sunni regimes and herein lies the problem for the Arab states.

That analysis is probably too simplistic, however, and may well therefore one day appear as simplistic as the Domino Theory and Communist Unity Theory of the early part of the Cold War is now considered to be. Nevertheless it plays a role in regional relations.

Internally, Syria still faces problems with the local Muslim Brothers and over the claim of the remainder of the Golan Heights.

Since 2000, the president has been Bashshar al-Assad. He was expected to represent a ‘new broom’ on his ascent to the role on the death of his father, as new generations of royals of a similar age have sometimes been in the recent past in the region and food-wise, at least, Syria has recently become potentially self-sufficient and there was, indeed, a flowering of freedom of expression in the early years of his rule.

Nevertheless, he followed it with a familiar period of oppression reminiscent of the crackdown in China followed the Mao-authorised “hundred flowers” movement.

With regard to the major issues with Israel, Turkey is attempting to mediate between the two countries.

Despite all its difficulties, however, Syria has held a major place in both the Arab world and the Middle East since at least the time of the ‘Umayyad caliphs and has also been fairly termed Pan-Arabism’s “throbbing heart”. Syrian political parties have led the way in the politics of the Arab world and Damascus and Aleppo have been sui generis cultural hubs. The agricultural regions in the east of the country also sustain Syria well. In short, Syria remains in a reasonable position to positively, complexly and significantly contribute to the region.

The next part of this post is a similar history but told from a more party political and ideological perspective.

Following Syrian independence, a parliamentary system was set up. There were two kinds of party: movements, really, that were community rather than ideology based set up initially and then (mostly beginning in the 1950s) ideological parties.

The two major movements were designated the Nationalist Bloc and the People’s Party (Hizb ash-Sha’b).

The Ba’ath Party was the first local ideological party beginning in the early 1940s. The other three major parties were the Communist Party, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Muslim Brothers) and the Syrian Nationalist Socialist Party (the SNSP).

Much of the debate in these early years was over response to the ‘disaster’ of 1948 (the formation of Israel). Another minor disaster had been the ceding by France to Atatürk’s Turkey of the Arab region of northern Syria around Antioch.

Following a short period of relatively free elections the army became politicised and the legal-constitutional system and its reform became dependent upon its support.

The weak but militant SNSP which still operates in the current Ba’ath state championed the idea of a greater Syria which basically encompassed the entire Fertile Crescent – an example of the regionalism mentioned in earlier posts another version of which was represented by the brief union of Egypt and Syria.

Against this, the Brothers were more pan-Arab or pan-Islamist in their outlook and were thus legally less favoured than the SNSP as too radical.

The first ideological party, the Syrian Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party (the Ba’ath Party), was also the most successful party in the earliest period. It was formed from a couple of other early parties and was led at first by two or three Damascene and other Syrian Christians and Muslims.

Michel ‘Aflaq, a Christian, was one of them and became the major ideologue. His ideas tended to be too nebulous in reality. Despite its usual slogan in both Syria and Iraq of “Arab unity, liberation and socialism”, no regime in either country has ever really lived up to any of these ideals.

The first opportunity for some Arab political unity came with a 1958 invitation to Nasser to merge Egypt and Syria (the year of the Ba’athist coup in Iraq and the consequent collapse of the 1955 NATO-like, British-formed and pro-Western ‘Baghdad Pact’ alliance). The result, however, was more a takeover even though the title of the new state, the United Arab Republic, suggested a degree of real unity. Nasser had hoped to persuade more Arab states to invite him in with the inclusive title. By 1961 the politicians who had invited him into Syria, however, already wanted him gone. Nasser had insisted that all parties but his dissolve themselves which they had initially happily done. Nevertheless they had continued to exist in a subterranean form while Nasser vainly attempted to court the support of the West and Israel. Former ‘Baghdad Pact’ countries remained suspicious of Nasser so further unity was not possible. Several still valued their Western alliances.

In Syria today, this infisal (separation) is now generally viewed with a degree of shame although some Syrians and the Ba’ath Party have attempted to justify it on the alleged basis that it permitted further discussion on a larger Arab unity including with Iraq that Nasser’s union allegedly caused problems for.

The Ba’ath Party formally came to power in 1963 with the support of the army. The senior ranks of both the Party and the army had recruited a large number of members of the northern ‘Alawite minority and the leadership of the state has recently been largely the preserve of the allegedly Shi’a ‘Alawites.

In the period of rule from 1963 to 1970, the party also developed an anti-intellectual tendency that led to the emigration of Michel ‘Aflaq to Iraq. Meanwhile, the tendency to recruit for senior positions from a minority group was repeated in Iraq where the Sunni minority almost always filled the most senior state roles.

Post the 1967 loss to Israel and the loss of territory including the Golan Heights, the Syrian government, which had recently rejected unity with Egypt, lost a further degree of legitimacy in the eyes of its population.

The al-Assad family beginning with Hafiz who ‘reigned’ as President until his death in 2002 came to power in 1970. His optometrist son, Bashshar, succeeded him and still rules as President, as I've mentioned above.

Officially, the loss of the Golan Heights continues to be a minor set-back in the ongoing war with Israel. An air-force ace, Hafiz was an admirer of Nasser and copied him in building a large dam and in maintaining a police state and the rule of the military/army. He established stability and promoted economic development by opening up trade while maintaining a somewhat socialist system. Internationally, his relations were ironically better with Egypt and the Soviet Union (while it existed) than with his own Ba’ath Party colleagues in Iraq. His son’s relations with the US and Israel continue to be quite bad but may be improving.

Internally, relations with the Muslim Brothers (among other objections, as a basically Sunni group they had religious objections to the ostensibly Shi’a ‘Alawite faith practiced by the ruling class) have not always been good (but were especially bad in the 1980s).

Factors in the Making of the modern Middle East

I want now to explain how the Middle East actually 'hangs together' today, so to speak (having considered what ideas have been and are around), and how that may also have a bearing on the rest of the world. While answering the question that we in the West seem to want answered (i.e. is the East a threat to the West?) I want to now consider in the course of this discussion how the West most certainly has threatened the East. L. Carl Brown famously wrote that the Middle East has been the most penetrated region in the world and this surely cannot fail to have had a critical negative impact upon it.

As I examine how well states are doing the job of ruling in the next few posts, I will naturally expose problems for which the solutions devised internally may well have to be major and possibly revolutionary changes. Some of the most important issues faced include issues of economic and social development, equality of resource allocation and treatment of women and minorities.

At the same time, there will be external pressures for change that result from a Globalised world and the interests of other states (both within and outside the region) conflicting with regional and local interests. Issues of relative democratisation and disparities of wealth between countries may also bring pressures to bear in the region.

For our purposes, as discussed at the outset of this blog, I consider the Middle East to include Arab and to some extent pseudo-Arab North and North East Africa, Arab and Israeli West Asia, Turkey and Iran (some include parts of the Caucasus, as I've also mentioned). Turkey is an especially interesting case because it may be able to play a special role of linking the Arab or certainly the Islamic world with the European world. Iran and Israel complete the roll call of the non-Arab states in the region.

The Arab world itself is, of course, geographically and historically divisible into various regions with unique characteristics. The least truly Arab area of the ‘Arab’ world, though with some claim to Arab status, is the North East African sub-region encompassing the Comoros Islands, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea. Farthest west is the Maghreb which includes Western Sahara (a disputed region), Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Mauritania. Nilotic Egypt, centred on one main river as it is, has tended to be relatively stable as a unified state when compared with Nilotic Sudan un-centred as it is on various Nile tributaries. These areas are far superior to the remaining Arab areas in terms of both Arab population numbers and land area. The Arab areas that remain are West Asia and the Arabian Peninsula.

Besides these differences, there are, as I mentioned, differences that have come about because of oil wealth being divided unequally. There are also a number of pronounced similarities that I would like to discuss now. Modern pan-Arab nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon dating to the end of the Ottoman period. The Arab League was actually formed under the auspices of Britain in the 1940s. Regionalism has been too pronounced for the political unity first proposed in the 40s and current until the 60s, however, to be realised as European political unity is being much more in the European Union, for example.

There is obviously linguistic and also cultural and much historical contiguity in the Arab region. Foreign intervention has been overlaid over the common factors to produce divisions. Geography has also played a role, especially before the opening of the Suez Canal, however, in producing two zones with differing external and intra-zone trade interests, the Red Sea Eastern Zone and the Mediterranean Northern and Western Zone. Today this sense of two zones is less evident in government policies. The question of modernity, arguably especially on a Western model, versus tradition further divides governments from each other and their populations.

Globalisation generally is felt as an external threat from the West following a long line of others including from the possibly less hated Ottomans by many in the Arab region. There also remain major differences in the Arab world both within and between a variety of religions and between many tribal, ideological and ethnic identities.

In many ways, the governments of Egypt, Turkey and Iran have been best at managing the most diversity in the Middle East as a whole albeit often by the use of quite repressive measures. The legitimacy of political institutions of especially the Arab Middle East today was largely artificially created by Western powers and the weakened Ottoman power in the last century and this in itself is a potential problem for it. Democracy has not yet flourished in the region and that includes in Israel and Turkey. Most of the borders of the Fertile Crescent were essentially drawn up in line with the initially secret 1916 French-English Sykes-Picot Accord to serve essentially French and English interests. Israel was allowed to be created in the region specifically as a Jewish state at a time when Jews made up only around 33% of the population of the territory of the new state. Iraq continues to have an uncertain future today.

One of the most profound recent external influences on much of the Middle East (apart from Western rule or influence) has been Ottoman rule of the Arab region and parts of eastern Europe (from the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople (captured by Mehmet II) from almost the beginning) from the 13th Century (in the case of Anatolia and Eastern Europe) to the 16th and 17th Centuries (in the case of the Arab World) until the European-forced contractions of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

The Empire was quite fluid, linguistically speaking. Arabic remained the first language of most people in the Arab region of the empire. The Ottomans themselves initially used Persian as their language of literature and Arabic as their language of law and religion. The rulers were however, after all, Turkish and so they also spoke Turkish. Therefore Turkish became a third language of the ruling class and the first language of the military and administration. The bureaucracy was meticulous and has consequently provided a large amount of material for today’s historians and other researchers in Turkish.

Formally, the Ottoman law was based on Hanafi Islamic jurisprudence and provided by a system of muftis (experts who were formally qualified to issue legal opinions) and Qadis (the judiciary) down to muezzins (who formally call Muslims to prayer), all public servants provided from the ranks of the Islamic ulema, and the regime’s legitimacy also derived in part from its political control of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. The sultans adopted the title “Servant of the Two Holy Mosques” for themselves with reference to their control of the main mosques of the first two cities. It was illegal, however, to issue a ruling (fatwa) against the Sultan (Sultana?) under the sedition law formally making him (her?) above the Islamic law, although rulings against the government were permissible. Mosque-building was a priority throughout the Empire as was construction of walls in Jerusalem.

Legitimacy, as always, derived also from the ability to maintain an orderly society. Within that society, trade guilds, or taifas, affiliated with Sufi taifas helped the government to maintain that order by providing an orderly system of feedback between the government and the various valued economic groups in the society. The hat makers’ guild has thus historically been responsible for the enormous head dresses of some Sufi orders.

Local autonomy within the Empire was reasonably common provided the local leaders were loyal to the Sultan. Elements of his rule tended to be oppressive, however, although he was an equal opportunity oppressor including the Turks in his oppression and perhaps even singling them out for more oppression than other ethnic groups. The Ottomans were also formally tolerant of the other religions and sub-religions practiced in the Empire but were, in fact, somewhat biased in favour of their version of orthodox Sunni Islam. Under the so-called millet system, local religious leaders were permitted to lead autonomously (and were generally also therefore considered answerable to the Sultan for the behaviour of) their flocks. They also represented them to the larger community and leadership structure. In original Qur’anic Arabic millet meant specifically a religious community but in Turkish it had come to refer also to national communities. Efforts to promote a more equal system for non Sunni Muslims began in the 19th Century.

From around 1830, the Ottomans began to modernise as they witnessed the increasing technology and techniques of organisation being employed in European wars and the increasing threat to themselves from Europe. As the army modernised in response to the external threat, Muslims including Arabs were conscripted into the services which had been previously formed from non-Muslim slaves garnered from around the Empire. Slaves in the army had always traditionally been able to advance socially to quite lofty levels in Ottoman society by means of good service in the army.

Suleyman Qanuni (the Lawgiver), or "the Magnificent" in English usage, adopted a modernised legal system and it ultimately permitted a great deal of legal impunity to European traders and expatriates who had first been permitted to live and trade in the Empire in his reign (the thin end of a giant wedge as it turned out). Europeans began noticing especially Christian minorities in the Empire and their treatment by the authorities was soon used as a pretext for European intervention in the region. Each European state seemed to pick out a favourite cause. The British, for example, chose the Druze (not being able to find an analogous religion to the Church of England in the Ottoman Empire) while the Catholic French had a close association with the Maronite Catholic Christians.

The Arab provinces, after early on being ruled centrally, soon came to be more autonomously ruled under the Ottomans. This was natural for reasons of geographical isolation in outlying provinces such as those in North Africa, for example, but local ruling dynasties (even Druze and Maronite Christian ones) were soon also established in areas such as Mount Lebanon and Palestine, for example.

Arab notables were ranked in the Ottoman tradition and often also had an Ottoman identity (especially before the Nahda). The highest rank was pasha, or governor of a province, responsible directly to the Grand Vizier, or Prime Minister, of the Sultan. Pashas were generally at first generals and bureaucrats who had received training centrally in the military/bureaucratic schools of the capital of the Empire.

The Arabs as a race had a special significance in the Empire, too, as in some sense the race that originated Islam. They also constituted a large portion of the total population of the Empire especially once the European colonies were lost. There were more Arabs than Turks, for example. The Arabs also experienced the Nahda in the 19th and 20th Centuries, as I've mentioned at length in earlier posts. The concomitant rise of Turkish nationalism was thus matched by a new Arab nationalism in this period. As conditions continued to worsen for them in the 20th Century, they thus became gradually less prepared to continue to live within the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

Some of the provinces had sub provinces with another level of rule. For example Mount Lebanon, Jerusalem, the Hijaz and Yemen were sub provinces. In these sub provinces, dynasties of rulers tended to form. The Hijaz was ruled by the family of the Sharif of Mecca, claiming descent from Hasan, Muhammad’s grandson. The Sayyids of Hadramawt in Yemen (near the current Omani border) claimed descent from Muhammad’s only other grandson, Husayn, and commanded similar prestige. However the ruler of Yemen was traditionally the current Imam of the local Zaydi Shi’a School. These sub provincial rulers, while formally responsible to their pashas, might occasionally appeal decisions of the pasha higher up the chain by force of personality.

Syria and Iraq were both rich regions of the Empire and Syria was additionally important to the Ottomans for being on both major pilgrimage routes and the so-called Silk Road.

In Egypt, one of the largest provinces with no sub provinces, the pasha continued to be forced to pay some attention to the opinions of remnants of the former Mamluk dynasty for some time. Muhammad ‘Ali put an end to that one day soon after becoming pasha by giving them a particularly treacherous banquet after which he had them all massacred. He also contended with and managed the prestige of al-Azhar.

The rank and file Arabs of the Empire, however, who generally lived tribal lives but had also been influenced by European nationalist ideas, began to feel oppressed by things like the new requirement of conscription as the Empire fell under threat. At the same time, the virtual independent dynasty formed by Muhammad ‘Ali from 1805 provided a model for further moves in the direction of fuller independence generally for Arab peoples and Wahhabism in Central Arabia provided another somewhat popular moralistic and much less secular and pluralist model.

The main rival of the Ottomans was the Ja’fari Shi’a Safavid regime in Persia. The rivalry was mainly expressed in the relatively peaceful practice of monumental building (notably in Isfahan) and in trade (especially with Europe). This rivalry may have contributed to some extent to Sunni/Shi’a rivalries that exist today, however. The other main rival of the time in the region (which competed in similar ways) was the Mughal Empire in South Asia.

The other major influence on the Middle East in recent times and an ongoing one was and is, of course, European. The first direct encounter with a European military excursion was the brief French occupation of parts of Egypt under Napoleon from 1798 to 1801 ended by British actions.

Europe and the Middle East had interacted since at least the Middle Ages, however, as discussed previously. Southern Iberia and parts of Eastern Europe had been conquered and European Crusaders had briefly conquered parts of the Middle East especially in the Eastern Mediterranean. Besides military contacts, trade missions were also engaged in, notably by the Italian city states of Genoa and Venice but also by Marseille and even British missions occurred (hence the knowledge of ‘Eastern types’ displayed in the works of Shakespeare, for example).

In the time of Suleyman the Magnificent, the European traders had been virtual supplicants hoping to trade with the great Ottoman trading power. European technology and learning was not at that time more advanced than in the Middle East and, in fact, was probably significantly less advanced. The balance of power began to shift, however, around the time of the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492 just before Suleyman’s reign commenced in 1494. Europe began to flourish in terms of pure knowledge and also in technological terms. Competition in trade was finally evened out and began to favour the Europeans especially with the mastery of the high seas of several militant European nations. By the late 18th Century (and especially by the early 19th Century once Napoleon’s ambitions within Europe were dashed), England and France had become the pair of nations to beat in terms of colonial and mutual world trade domination ambitions and rivalry. They were both interested in the Red Sea and Mediterranean trade routes that had for centuries been of especial interest to the Arabs and the Ottomans.

Napoleon first established a relationship with the Sharifs of Mecca and then engaged himself briefly in Egypt, as I've mentioned above. By 1860, France had established an Algerian colony (at first merely at Algiers on the coast) that officially ended only in 1962. The British had occupied Aden and South Yemen generally in 1839 (and continued to do so until 1967) in support of their trade with 'British' India. A number of other Arabian states now forming the United Arab Emirates had relations with Britain in the 19th Century leading to their name in English for some time being the Trucial States.

Turkey and Iran have for various reasons been less affected directly by European influence than the countries of the Arab world. Nevertheless oil has been the curse for Iran that it has been for many of the Arab countries that I discuss below. In its case, the Shah suffered for not responding to calls for consultation with powerful class coalitions over his reformist agenda in his country (especially over land reform and engagement with the West) essentially because oil wealth reduced his incentive to seek a religious legitimacy that he ultimately found he needed. The result was of course a popular revolution sponsored by powerful authoritative classes. As discussed below with respect to some Arab countries, then, Islamism (in this case sponsored by a powerful ulema class) was the result of and not the cause of obstacles to democratisation the first being oil wealth and another being Western interests.

A justified suspicion of the West and its ideas including as they did the ‘divide and rule’ tactics which had supported Western hegemony also contributed to a suspicion of the very rational and liberal democratisation which many politicians of the West now claim to seek for the Middle East while they blame Islamism as an obstacle to it.

Iran has had a history of class distinctions not shared by Turkey which makes Turkey a very different type of country. As oil has not been the crutch it has been in Iran, Turkey has been more disposed than Iran to significantly industrialise (to the great benefit of many Turks). Turkey has also assumed (more or less grudgingly, perhaps) something of the role of a US-friendly buffer state between Europe and the Arab world that has not been a position available to Iran.

Iran and Turkey are, however, both relatively well-defined as nation-states when compared with most Arab states and Israel. In the case of Turkey, while being internally relatively homogenous, ethnically, externally Turkic peoples also exist in the region bordering Turkey so there is no exact correspondence between the state and the nation. In Iran, the situation is more or less reversed; while the Persian diaspora is relatively contained, several minority ethnic groups are significant within Iran as they are too in many Arab countries. The borders of both of these non-Arab countries were also largely determined by local forces whereas the borders of most Arab countries were essentially determined by the English and French.

In Sudan, too, a country to the immediate south of Egypt, whose name means black in Arabic but whose authoritarian government definitely promotes an Arab identity, the government is centralised and complex issues remain to be resolved. Sudan was actually invaded by Muhammad ‘Ali with the support of the British in 1899 after a period of control by the Mahdi (mentioned in an earlier post) and his supporters and formally became Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. After 1922, full control passed to the British until 1955. Problems left unresolved by the British in their many years of deliberately non-interventionist but dominating occupation have been argued to be the seeds of the many problems there today.

The Maghreb’s recent history has been mixed. Tunisia and especially Algeria were not well served by the so-called French ‘protectorates’. Libya has now been ruled since 1969 by Muammar al-Qaddafi despite both democratic and socialist pretensions. Morocco is a modernising monarchy with relatively strong union power. Mauritania was also quite progressive before recent set-backs to this progress.

The fairly brutal and persistent French occupation of Algeria proved to have arguably the worst consequences over the longest period for stability. The occupation was famously opposed in the middle of the 19th Century by Amir ‘Abd al-Qadir. The French colons were allowed to occupy and exploit the best land in the country confiscated from the locals. In the cities, they tended to settle next to the centres (Kasbahs) of old Algerian cities, whence the word Kasbah came to refer to the “Arab quarter” of Maghrebi cities. The French novelist and philosopher, Albert Camus was famously a French colon born in Algeria.

The French language was taught compulsorily in all public schools as the predominant teaching language leading to a cultural rupture between the Arab middle classes taught French in these school and the other classes taught only Arabic in the traditional Islamic elementary and other private schools. This pattern was also repeated in other French colonies. Incidentally, the brutal occupation ultimately didn’t help the colons adapt to normal life well. Following the bloody Algerian independence war, many of the privileged colons in Algeria later became the snooty and therefore hated pied noir in France after their forced exile from unrealistic privilege in Algeria.

The area known as the Fertile Crescent was first affected subtly by the West as the Ottomans sought to reform their government in response to a perceived Western threat. Part of it (now roughly Syria and Lebanon) was briefly occupied by the Albanian Ottoman ruler of another part of it, Egypt, Muhammad ‘Ali and his son and successor, Ibrahim.

From the 1860 Lebanese civil war (produced by the power vacuum that followed Ibrahim’s withdrawal) until 1914, Western interest and influence became more direct and increased. Ostensibly, the initial interference was to protect minorities in the area of Lebanon during the war and its outcome was that the Europeans determined (with the Ottomans) that the ruler of the Lebanese portion of the Crescent should be an Ottoman Christian citizen from outside the local area. The rural Syrian and Lebanese silk industries were also affected by the decision of Europeans to make silk locally, leading to an influx of Christian former rural silk producers into the cities. Eventually, mission schools and European novelties became prominent in the Crescent as the influence increased.

As in Egypt, under these influences health outcomes improved and transport, culture and literature also underwent developments as railways and presses went into overdrive (in the case of the latter, producing a lively range of books and journals for a new class of voracious idea-consumers, especially in Syria). While the relatively direct Ottoman control of the presses in Syria-Lebanon saw emigration of many Syrian journalists to the more liberal Egyptian regime, clubs and societies proliferated in Syria.

Education in mission schools created a division similar to the one caused in Algeria mentioned above once a more comprehensive national system was adopted, only in reverse. The new public school system became the Arab-speaking majority system unlike in Algeria where it was French speaking middle class system, while the private system became the European-speaking system favoured in this case by the religious minorities supported by the Europeans following the civil war. Thus the region entrenched a cultural rift between groups based on religion under the influence of European ‘protection’.

During and after the First World War, the French and English decided to formally divide up the region between them as ‘protectorates’. In 1915, Britain agreed to post-Ottoman Arab self-determination with the Sharif of Mecca in the Hussein-McMahon agreement as it sought Arab assistance in the war while secretly making the Sykes-Picot agreement with the French.
Also during the war, the Balfour declaration supported the setting up of a Jewish homeland in the region. Finally, the Treaty of Versailles implemented only British and French aspirations even against objections of US negotiators espousing the principles of the Wilson '14 point plan', regarded as naïve in the Old World, which favoured national self-determination.

The British and French Mandates survived until the 1940s. Pressure then continued to be exerted following the war both by the old colonial masters and the new powers, the US and the USSR, under the influence of the Cold War. Iraq (the remaining part of the Fertile Crescent), in particular, has had the dubious distinction of ‘benefiting’ from large oil reserves. States that have ‘benefited’ from oil rents have ironically tended to feel less external or internal pressure to democratise, as I've mentioned, as low taxes and oil-funded social welfare have lessened internal incentives to ‘rock the boat’ and Western oil dependency has generally inhibited powerful countries from exerting external pressure. There is little change to these circumstances in Iraq today.

The division of the Fertile Crescent by the English and French and more local divisions in Arabia have had the effect that the Arab nation has been formally divided at least partly from outside in the East of the Arab world and partly internally. As a result further nationalist forces have sprung up that have produced their own dynamics. The forces are divided between local, regional and pan-Arab affiliations along with pan-Islamic(ist?) ones. Even many Saudi Arabians have Saudi as well as their famed Muslim and Arab identities and Kuwaitis discovered a local identity (as invaded and demoted peoples are prone to do) following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. Equally, Palestinian identity has been forged by circumstances created by the creation of Israel.

All of these Arab parties continue to regard themselves as part of the larger Arab nation, however. This identity was arguably first spurred on as a result of the loss by the Ottomans of their Eastern European territories to nationalist independence movements and, ironically, also Turkish nationalism. Much later, both the formation of Israel and the leadership of especially Nasser in Egypt (despite the historically self-contained nature of Egypt) produced a general pan-Arabist resurgence that was, however, dealt a severe blow following the defeat of the Arab forces in the Six-Day War of 1967 by Israel.

The states of the Fertile Crescent thus suffer in terms of their legitimacy in many Arab eyes from a sense of only being a part of the whole Arab state appropriate to at least their Eastern region. Having emerged from French and British rule in the mid 20th Century, at first (and perhaps still) whether they had become truly independent from those countries was also doubtful. Iraq formally achieved independence first in 1933 (informally, though, it was only really achieved with the Ba’ath-backed coup of 1958). The French relinquished their formal control in the region in 1946 and then followed the remainder of the British ‘possessions’ to Israel and what is now Jordan and Israeli-occupied Palestine.

These twin issues of pan-regionalism and suspicion of external influence quite apart from the Israeli influence have caused significant conflict in the recent history of the Crescent. Added to these problems, inexperience at self-rule was also a serious issue and Western-trained elites actually tended to resist change from the dependent status. Jordan, Israel/Palestine and Iraq were (and arguably are) of course in the British sphere and Lebanon and Syria were (and arguably are) in the French sphere and at least part of such affinity as exists today between Lebanon and Syria is probably connected with a shared history as French mandates. The US, too, continues to exert its own less subtle form of influence.