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Strife Feature | The Middle-East and the question of Qatar: Political Islam vs Secular Islam?

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By Guillaume Beaud

Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (on the left), and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates (on the right) are the two main actors behind the Qatar crisis (Credit: Associated Press, Saudi Arabia Press Agency)

Analysing events occurring in the Middle-East and North Africa always requires an analytical grid. Two of the most commonly mobilised are a confessional approach, the Sunni/Shia divide; and a social class approach that emphasises social fractures between traditional elites and civil societies. Initially, most upheavals are better understood through social struggles opposing regime elites and the population fighting for emancipation, welfare and political inclusion. The Arab Spring have generally echoed this analysis. However, my previous article[1] showed that analyses of the Arab Spring suffered from a political instrumentalisation of the Sunni/Shia divide, especially by weakened states and regional powers, to maintain the regime in power. Yet, the overuse of the confessional rhetoric made the Sunni/Shia divide materialize in the collective imaginary.

Nevertheless, the current Gulf crisis and the diplomatic and commercial isolation of Qatar highlights a third analytical grid, too often ignored: the opposition between partisans of political Islam and those of secular Islam. This paper focuses on regional power and political dynamics of the biggest crisis between petromonarchies since the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981, through the lens of two competing visions of Islam.

 

 The question of Qatar’s relations with Iran is secondary

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt have accused Qatar of an excessive “proximity” with Iran. However, this is largely incorrect; it is rather a pretext to hide their genuine motivations, and it also reflects the nature of their fear.

First, Qatar’s relations with Iran are pragmatic “working relationships”, due to their shared exploitation of a gas field.[2] Second, Qatar’s alleged support to “Iran-sponsored Saudi Shias” in the Saudi region of Qatif has not been proven. In reality, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are trying to mobilise anti-Iran and Sunni-Shia discourses, in an attempt to benefit from the increasing Sunni-Shia polarisation induced by the instrumentalisation of communitarian differences.[3] Yet, this rhetoric finds little resonance amongst other Red Sea monarchies. Kuwait holds an important 30% Shia minority, who entertains a close relationship with the Sunni al-Sabah monarchy, while Oman Kharidjites – the third branch of Islam – have historically acted as a mediating power between Iran and other Gulf states or the international community. Above all, although the UAE are concerned with expansionist Iran, especially since it lost three strategic islands to Iranian authority in 1971[4], the UAE trades in fact more with Iran than Qatar does.[5]  Its primary preoccupation is the fight against political Islam, embodied by the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

The Qatar crisis: Political vs Secular Islam?

In fact, the core issue lies elsewhere, in an inter-Sunni opposition between countries advocating political Islam and those fighting Islamist influence within their political sphere. The current Qatar crisis indeed highlights two distinct blocs.

On the one side, Qatar and Turkey. Since Saudi Arabia distanced itself from the Muslim Brotherhood after the 1991 Gulf War, Qatar is the main supporter of the organisation. Ever since, Qatar has been providing financial resources, political legitimacy and a significant media channel: Al-Jazeera, whose shutdown is one of the Saudis’ current demands. As for Turkey, its uninterrupted support to Qatar should not be reduced to realpolitik and pragmatic Turkish interests arising from the recently established Turkish air base in that country. While these considerations are important, Turkey also shares the vision of an Islam present in the public and political sphere.[6] Erdoğan’s AKP party is indeed an emanation of the Muslim Brotherhood.

 On the other side, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, followed by Bahrein and Egypt. While all Gulf monarchies – excluding Qatar – share a common fear of the instability that the revolutionary tendencies of political Islam may induce, the UAE has been the most prominent counter-revolutionary actor, as it has placed the struggle against political Islam as the priority of both its domestic and foreign policies.[7]

Moreover, Saudi Arabia has always fought the political Islam embodied by the Muslim Brothers. Indeed, although the kingdom is a de jure theocracy, it has been founded in 1932 on a non-negotiable agreement between the Saudi family and the Wahhabi religious establishment, stipulating that Islam would be restricted to culture and education, and would never go near political issues.[8] Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia has recently behaved less radically towards political Islam than the UAE, leading King Salman to lean on Muslim Brotherhood militias in Yemen. Salman indeed favours the Sunni/Shia rhetoric to oppose Iran, tempering his father Abdullah’s former hostility towards the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Historically, the opposition between partisans of political and secular Islam has developed following the Iranian Revolution in 1979. At the time, the Muslim Brotherhood – notably present in Egypt and within Gulf monarchies – sided with revolutionary Iran and its Islamic Republic. Fearing domestic instability, the GCC was established in 1981, officially to protect the Arabian Peninsula from the spread of the Islamic Revolution. However, the 1991 Gulf War marked a turning point: following Saudi Arabia’s military failure to defend Kuwait against Saddam’s invasion, Qatar decided to distance itself from Saudi tutelage and hegemony. It started to diversify its foreign links, building ties with the West – through economic and defence relations, but also by establishing strong artistic, cultural and academic ties – and entertained softer relations with Rafsanjani’s pro-business Iranian government.[9] Since then, Qatar has been seen as an outsider, who has played the card of geopolitical expansion, countering Saudi Arabia’s regional hegemony and supporting political Islam.[10]

 

The Arab Spring: crystallising oppositions 

The Arab Spring and the subsequent Muslim Brothers’ electoral successes in Egypt and Tunisia intensified the opposition of most Gulf monarchies. Indeed, Qatar – especially through Al-Jazeera’s international soft power – and Turkey supported Muslim Brothers across the Middle-East and especially during Mohammed Morsi’s election in  Egypt  in 2012; whereas Saudi Arabia and the UAE played an effective role in Morsi’s overthrow by Marshal El-Sisi in 2013. On one hand, most Egyptian Muslim Brothers found exile in Istanbul. On the other, Saudi Arabia offered asylum to former secular dictators Hosni Mubarak (Egypt) and Ben Ali (Tunisia). The UAE’s radical stance was demonstrated when it broke its relations with Tunisia after the Ennahda Party – preaching political Islam – became the country’s first political force, although the UAE were Tunisia’s second trading partner.[11]

Moreover, Libya has been affected by the Qatar-UAE indirect confrontation since Gadhafi’s overthrow in 2011. Indeed, the NATO-led military intervention induced proxy military opposition, with the UAE supporting non-Islamist militias on the ground, while Qatar assisted groups advocating political Islam.[12] [13] Today, the UAE and el-Sisi’s Egypt strongly back the self-proclaimed Marshal Haftar, who controls Eastern Libya. On the other hand, Tripoli’s “Governement of National Accord”, recognised by the UN and experiencing increasing Islamist influence, enjoys Qatar’s support.

Therefore, following the political breakthrough of the Muslim Brotherhood’s democratic-revolutionary Islamist tendencies and their call to overthrow Gulf monarchies (except Qatar, of course), petromonarchies amplified counter-revolutionary discourses to preserve their geo-economic interests and liberal economies. This also induced virulent domestic debates about the role of religion in the social and political life. Today, Saudi Arabia experiences gradual tension between the State and movements close to Muslim Brothers and Salafism. Thus, Saudi Arabia increasingly exploits the lens of the Sunni-Shia divide, in order to gather the Sunni majority around the monarchy against Iran and Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority. Further interesting point, Morsi’s visit to Ahmadinejad in 2012 demonstrated that the opposition between political and secular Islam could overcome the alleged Sunni/Shia divide.

Donald Trump’s visit at the Riyad Summit strengthened the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and preceeded the isolation of the Qatar and its Cheikh Tamim ben Hamad Al Thani, already isolated on the left side of the picture (Credit: Jonathan Ernst, Reuters)

 

The impact of Trump’s new approach

The shift from latent and indirect tensions to a regional consensus to isolate Qatar is not an isolated decision. At the end of May, the visit of President Trump to Riyadh officialised a change in the US relationship paradigm with the Gulf monarchies. Indeed, the Obama administration was characterized by (1) eroding US/Saudi special relationship, (2) American rapprochement with Iran and with Qatar, who hosts the Al-Udeid air base, the US largest base oversea and an operational hub for coalition strikes in Syria. Donald Trump has taken an opposite stance. His Middle-Eastern “Strategy” could be resumed in opposing Iran and, more broadly, countries advocating the role of Islam in the political sphere. Trump therefore re-initiated close relations with the Saudi Arabia/UAE/Egypt axis. Trump affirmed its unilateral support to Saudi Arabia and concluded a $110bn arm deal with that country.[14] Additionally, Trump firstly met the Russians before his election actually thanks to the UAE as intermediaries. As for El-Sisi, he was the first world leader to congratulate Trump on Twitter after his election. Thus, the shifting American approach towards the Gulf induced (1) a change in the balance of power favouring Qatar’s long-lasting opponents, and (2) the interest for the latter to mobilize the questionnable Sunni/Shia rhetoric when accusing Qatar of proximity with Iran, to align with Trump’s anti-Iran rhetoric.

Guillaume Beaud is a final-year French student reading for a BA in European Studies. His research areas include geopolitics of the Middle-East, Iran, radical Islam and European foreign policy.

Bibliography:

– France Culture: La Question du Qatar, Affaires Etrangères, Christine Ockrent. 10th June 2017: https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/affaires-etrangeres/la-question-du-qatar

– Lacroix, Stephane (2010), « Les Islamistes Saoudiens : une insurrection manquée », Presses Universitaires de France.

– Kazerouni, Alexandre (2017), Le miroir des cheikhs, musée et politique dans les principautés du golfe Persique, Presses Universitaires de France.

 

 

 

[1] Strife Feature | Sunni-Shia Conflicts: From A Trick To A Reality

[2] The so-called « South Pars/North Dome » gas field.

[3] Doug Bandow ‘United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia threaten US interests and Mideast Peace with attack on Qatar’, Forbes, 13th September 2017.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2017/09/13/united-arab-emirates-and-saudi-arabia-threaten-u-s-interests-and-mideast-peace-with-attack-on-qatar/#8e845aa6f60e

[4] Disputed islands respectively known as Abu Musa, the Greater Tunb and the Lesser Tunb, located close to the Ormuz strait.

[5] The Observatory of Economic Complexity, MIT.

[6] Onur Ant and Ghaith Shennib, ‘Saudis are after the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey is in the way’, Bloomberg Politics, 3rd July 2017.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-03/saudis-are-after-the-muslim-brotherhood-and-turkey-s-in-the-way

[7] Ashraf El-Sherif, ‘The Muslim Brotherhood and the Future of Political Islam in Egypt’, Carnegie, 21st October 2014 http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/10/21/muslim-brotherhood-and-future-of-political-islam-in-egypt-pub-56980

[8] Robert Baer, ‘Why Saudi Arabia is helping crush the Muslim Brotherhood’, New Republic, 27th August 2013 https://newrepublic.com/article/114468/why-saudi-arabia-helping-crush-muslim-brotherhood

[9] Kazerouni, Alexandre (2017), Le miroir des cheikhs, musée et politique dans les principautés du golfe Persique, Presses Universitaires de France.

[10] Max Fisher, ‘How the Saudi-Qatar Rivalry, now combusting, reshaped the Middle East’, The New York Times, 13th June 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/world/middleeast/how-the-saudi-qatar-rivalry-now-combusting-reshaped-the-middle-east.html

[11] Marc Cher-Leparrain, ‘The United Arab Emirates have it in for the Muslim Brotherhood’ Orient XXI, 17th February 2017, http://orientxxi.info/magazine/the-united-arab-emirates-have-it-in-for-the-muslim-brotherhood,1724

[12] Giorgio Cafiero, Daniel Wagner ‘How the Gulf Arab Rivalry tore Libya apart’, The National Interest, 11th December 2015. http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/how-the-gulf-arab-rivalry-tore-libya-apart-14580?page=show

[13] Ian Black ‘UAE’s boldness in Libya reveals new strains between west and its Arab allies’, The Guardian, 26th August 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/26/uae-boldness-libya-strains-with-west-arab-allies

[14] Rachel Revesz, ‘Donald Trump signs $110 billion arms deal with nation he accused of masterminding 9/11’, The Independant, 21st May 2017 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-arms-deal-saudi-arabia-110-billion-911-terrorism-international-law-war-crimes-a7747076.html

Image sources

Image 1: Saudi Press Agency via AP

Image 2: https://www.cfr.org/blog/what-trump-gets-right-about-middle-east

ISIS and its conduct of war: interview with Professor Dr. Albert A. Stahel

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By: Annabelle Vuille

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Professor Dr. Albert A. Stahel is the founder and head of the Swiss think tank Institut für Strategische Studien [Institute for Strategic Studies]. He has taught strategic studies at the Military Academy of the ETH Zürich and holds the title of honorary professor in the same field at the University of Zürich. His research findings have been featured in over 400 publications of Swiss and international scientific journals, as well as in specialised literature and book chapters.

Annabelle Vuille: What would you say is the primary factor making ISIS such a severe threat?

Prof. Dr. Albert Stahel: I would say that it is no single, but rather a triad of factors. Firstly, there is the Caliphate that has a profound impact on the Islamic world. Secondly, ISIS has been able to seize control of significant swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. Finally, its reach goes far beyond the borders of the Middle East and has spread to various regions across the globe. It is this combination that makes ISIS such a real threat.

In a recent lecture at the University of Zurich, you mentioned that ISIS is a symbiosis between Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party and Al-Qaeda in Iraq. How should we imagine the evolution of this connection?

The starting point was 2010. Following the death of its leaders, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was left without a functioning command structure. On the other side were the former officers of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime. Lacking a formal base they were looking for an organization that would not only grant them influence in Iraq but also enable them to wage real war. This opportunity presented itself in the prison cells of Abu Ghraib, where they learned a lot about AQI and could subsequently assume control. Leadership of this new Islamic State was to be given to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – a possible member of the Prophet’s tribe and someone with a good reputation as being highly knowledgeable of Islam. On a side note, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is not his real name but merely an alias.

Ba’athism is a secular ideology and yet, ISIS is officially led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who was appointed Caliph Ibrahim. One of your hypotheses is that ISIS exploits religion for the purpose of expanding its powerbase – Realpolitik + Religion. Could you explain how ISIS instrumentalises religion?

The foundation of Al Qaeda in Iraq was Islam in the form of Salafism and Wahhabism. This element remained even when the organization evolved into the Islamic State. Today, ISIS exploits religion to influence the people in their surrounding environment, and to attract believers not only in Iraq and Syria, but also in Europe. Whether or not such a strategy will prove successful will depend on the ability of ISIS to stabilise itself in the form of an internationally recognised state.

How does the aspect of religion influence ISIS’ conduct of war?

War is something that is not related to religion. Waging war is embedded in the tradition of humanity and has its roots in Greek philosophical thought. ISIS uses a combination of terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and conventional manoeuvre warfare. When confronted with a real army ISIS employs conventional warfare, but it can also turn to guerrilla warfare to target the logistics of its enemies. Additionally, terrorism is the means most used within cities against the Shia regime in Iraq, or against the people in Europe.

You touched on these three dimensions of warfare, which is a point also made by Jessica Lewis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). She argues that ISIS employs a form of hybridized warfare, which, as you mentioned, is comprised of terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and conventional manoeuvre warfare. Where do you see its greatest advantage?

The combination of these three dimensions is not a novel strategy but one that has frequently been used in history, for example in the Second World War. Success in war does not solely hinge on having a powerful conventional army. One also needs the ability to disrupt the logistics of the opposing force and, potentially, terrorise the enemy’s population and its regime. The recognition of this fact and the effective use of these three modes of war are that make ISIS such an agile opponent.

Let us delve a bit deeper into the aspect of guerrilla warfare. In April 2015, you published an article highlighting that Saddam Hussein had been inspired by the concept of guerrilla warfare coined by the Brazilian Carlos Marighella. How did it impact Saddam Hussein’s strategy in the 2003 Iraq War and has it transcended to the Islamic State?

In an interview given just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein mentioned that he was fascinated by the writings of Carlos Marighella. One of Marighella’s main ideas is for the creation of small, militia-like forces that are capable of operating behind enemy lines. This is exactly what Saddam Hussein intended when he created the Fedayeen – the only forces that actively resisted the intervention of the Americans and their Coalition of the Willing. What is interesting is that the Fedayeen not only survived the occupation, but have now also become an integral part of the new armies under the Islamic State.

How would you assess the influence of Marighella in guiding the operations and tactics of ISIS? Is this what gives ISIS its operational strength?

According to Marighella, there are three phases of guerrilla warfare strategy: phase one is releasing urban guerrilla forces in large cities; phase two is releasing guerrilla forces in the hinterland; and phase three is fighting the opposing army with your own conventional forces. These three phases are, however, not mutually exclusive and can be applied simultaneously and in various combinations. In Syria, for example, ISIS is currently engaged in phases one and two, whereas in Iraq one can witness all three phases. It is not necessarily this phase-centric strategy that gives ISIS its operational strength, but rather the fact that its leaders are highly intelligent military minds. They know how to wage war, how to organize their forces, how to establish and run a government, how to finance their war efforts, and how to control their subjects. Most importantly, however, the leaders of ISIS are capable in clearly assessing the situation in each theatre of war and tailoring their strategies accordingly.

ISIS has expanded its bases from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria to Yemen and, most recently Libya. With each sphere hosting unique terrain and opposing forces how do you judge ISIS’ strategies in these differing domains?

Firstly, the main bases of ISIS remain in Iraq and Syria. However, with its most important enemy the United States focusing on combatting the situation in these two domains, ISIS has recognised an opportunity to divert attention to its satellites in Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen. Therefore, this expansion is intended to ensure that the Americans are engaged on multiple fronts. Concerning its strategies, ISIS differentiated between its main and secondary theatres of war. Thus, Afghanistan and Libya terrorism is the most frequent means of combat, whereas in Iraq ISIS employs conventional manoeuvre warfare.

In your experience, how can such an agile opponent be weakened or even defeated? How would the US-led coalition have to adapt its approach and strategy?

Currently, ISIS controls approximately one third of Iraq and half of Syria. The only way that the US-led coalition could defeat or even weaken ISIS is therefore to seize and subsequently reoccupy these territories. This can, however, only be achieved through a huge conventional army and the problem is that the United States remains reluctant to put boots on the ground. In all of the decisions submitted to Congress, Barack Obama excludes the possibility of engaging ground troops and instead, looks towards mercenaries like the Kurds to get the job done. However, they are not the real army that is needed; ISIS can only be defeated with a conventional army – any other approach will prove ineffective.

Saudi Arabia recently announced that it is willing to send ground troops to Syria in the fight against ISIS. How effective do you think such a strategy would be in securing an operational advantage?

I think it would certainly be a good idea. However, it is important to note that by sending troops to Syria, Saudi Arabia is ultimately engaging in a realm that is not particularly friendly toward its regime. Thus, the effectiveness of such a strategy will depend on the support extended by the Americans, both politically and militarily. Whether or not Barack Obama will give his blessing is very difficult to assess. By backing Saudi Arabia, the United States would prove itself willing to take the risk of a direct confrontation not only with the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but also with Russia.

In one of your recent lectures you mentioned that ISIS might be a factor that the international community will have to accept and live with for another decade. Why is this so and what impact will it have on the Middle East?

That is correct. Essentially, one must recognise that ISIS has a government, a territory, and citizens. Thus, according to international law and the three-element-doctrine of George Jellinek, ISIS constitutes a state. If the international community and the United Nations accept this fact, it would not only nullify the famous Sykes-Picot Agreement but also ultimately lead to the disintegration of two artificial states: Iraq and Syria.

Is there any other relevant aspect or issue pertaining to ISIS and its conduct of war that we haven’t discussed today, and that you would like to mention?

I would say that we are currently at a crossroads. Either the situation will further deteriorate and ISIS will continue to exist or, if the coalition makes a definite decision to commit ground troops, then we could see ISIS defeated. The man who will ultimately decide on the future fate of ISIS sits in Washington DC.

 

Professor Dr. Albert Stahel was interviewed by Annabelle Vuille, a series editor at Strife and MA candidate in the Department of War Studies, in Zurich in February 2015. This is an edited version of the transcript.

Review: 'The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East' by Efraim Karsh

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Reviewed by: Bradley Lineker & Samar Batrawi

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Efraim Karsh. The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East. London & New York: Bloomsbury/ Continuum, 2015. ISBN: 978-14-72-91046-2. Pp. 236. Hardcover. £21.99.

The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East is the latest book from Efraim Karsh, professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and King’s College London. While situated in his wider project of challenging the supposed orthodoxies inherent in the study of the region, Karsh’s core argument in this book is the alleged need to shift explanations for the region’s instability away from external pressures and instead place them squarely upon ‘Middle-Easterners’[i] themselves.[ii]

While the simplicity of the book’s title intimates that this argument is embedded into a straightforward package, the ambiguity of the subtitle (for the uninitiated, it reads: ‘a complex discourse in a complex geographical region’) hints at the dichotomy between the stated aim and the text’s actual structure and content. On the one hand, Karsh manifestly fails to give a voice to the apparent orthodoxy inherent to scholarship on the Middle East – which considerably weakens his claim to disprove it – and on the other hand, Karsh, instead of taking an approach based on assessing the work of other scholars, chooses to try and prove how this other position is incorrect by retelling the history of the modern Middle-East across a paltry 192 pages of generously-spaced text. While these two dichotomies would be themselves enough to mar the text, together, with the book’s polemical style, Karsh’s blithe historical determinism, the use of a narrow selection of English-orientated sources, and the seemingly random selection of chapter topics, they mortally undermine any attempt to construct a convincing platform to change approaches to the Middle East.

Situated within the same paradigm of Karsh’s other work, then, this book is at best a  sketch of the professor’s reading of the formation and present make-up of the modern Middle East, book-ended between an argument that does not explicitly resonate in the detail of the text; at worst, it is a disjointed collection of chapters written to support a charged political stance without enough meaningful evidence-based discussion, aesthetically covered by a singular-deterministic narrative on a region known for its complexity. Indeed, ‘Middle Easterners’ (as Karsh calls them[iii]) are subject to sweeping and unverifiable generalisations, such as the following assessment:

‘[f]or Western observers, the passage “from dark into light” that was the “Arab Spring” meant transition to a liberal, secular democracy. For Middle Easterners it meant a return to the Islamic sociopolitical order that had underpinned the region for over a millennium[,] as the schizophrenic state system established in its place after World War I failed to fill the void left by its destruction.’[iv]  Perhaps the most toxic misunderstanding of ‘Middle Easterners’ and Muslims in Karsh’s book is illustrated by his casual replacement of the word ‘Islamist’ by ‘Islamic’, equating the collective, organised, and political Islam, denoted by the word ‘Islamist’, with the personal religious devotion designated by ‘Islamic’.[v]

The book begins in the early 20th century[vi] and is thereafter divided thematically into 8 other chapters that follow a loose chronological structure and which range from the Israel/Palestine conflict,[vii] American policy in Iran,[viii] Soviet engagement in the Middle-East,[ix] an assessment of American policy since 2001,[x] as well as a breezy chapter on today’s Middle East. While historical in scope, the book is stylistically a right-leaning polemic tentatively based in international relations discourse. Indeed, one of the core historical premises used by Karsh is that Islam was born in fire[xi] and that this ‘imperial aggressiveness,’[xii] and the wider predisposition towards violence,[xiii] survived the fall of the Ottoman Empire ‘to haunt Islamic and Middle Eastern politics … [in] the twenty-first century.’[xiv]

However, at times, it appears that Karsh has constructed – with a remarkably fine-tooth comb – a specific historical narrative, coloured by patterns of thinking that have emerged in the post-American intervention world, to support his own political stance on the modern Middle East. His own narrative, as he openly admits, is to expel the influence of foreign powers on the Middle East;[xv] to thereby pointedly blame indigenous groups for the relative instability. This is mirrored in the detail used to prove fairly basic points, which does not, as he surmises, facilitate reader understanding but rather seems self-serving and out of place. This is certainly evident in his discussions of the birth of Israel and the conflict with the Palestinians: the former is accorded significant attention and detail – to promulgate a specific founding narrative – whereas, in the case of the latter, he makes no mention of the forced displacement in 1948, excepting one cryptic defensive paragraph that makes the bold claim that Palestinians left despite the wishes of the Jewish forces.[xvi] Moreover, in the sub-section ‘Courting Hitler’, Karsh lists every Arab overture to the great enemy of ‘perfidious Albion’[xvii] in the 1930s and 1940s in a way that is inescapably spiteful, especially upon reflection of the way his argument unfolds in the rest of the book. For instance, while Arab overtures towards Hitler are judged in moral terms,[xviii] Karsh upholds the same patterns of behaviour – of playing one great power off against another – as the accepted norm in international relations in his depictions of the Cold War (he essentially glorifies Egypt on this regard)[xix]. Finally, Karsh often criticises the Middle East’s preponderance to harmful religious exclusivism, while, often within the same sentence, arguing that Israel is an example against this trend – despite evidently being an entity enthused with patterns of institutionalised religious exclusivism.[xx]

While ultimately lop-sided to Karsh’s political paradigm, the book does manage to provide a decent overview of some of the events that it covers: such as the politics behind the post-First World War fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire’s possessions in the Levant and ancient Mesopotamia, as well as a good American-based summary of the intelligence failure during the Iranian Revolution. However, even the book’s strongest sections are marked by the fact that the issues they cover are always better covered elsewhere in more specialised studies.

 

Bradley Lineker is currently a fully-funded ESRC doctoral candidate in the War Studies Department, King’s College London, where he studies refugee shelter provision in Jordan. He has extensive experience working as a consulting research analyst with the UN and the private sector on contexts like Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia and Syria. Follow him @BradleyLineker.

Samar Batrawi is a doctoral candidate at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, where she studies social movements in Palestine. She has worked for the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling in Palestine, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation in London, and the Clingendael Institute for International Relations in The Hague. Follow her at @SamarBatrawi.

 

 

Notes:

[i] Karsh, The Tail Wags the Dog, p. 2, p. 157.
[ii] Ibid., pp. 1-2.
[iii] Ibid., p. 157.
[iv] Ibid., p. 183.
[v] Ibid., p. 188.
[vi] Ibid., p.9.
[vii] Ibid., pp. 31-48, pp. 49-62.
[viii] Ibid., pp. 63-80.
[ix] Ibid., pp. 81-102.
[x] Ibid., pp. 153-174.
[xi] Ibid., p. 188.
[xii] Ibid., p. 155.
[xiii] Ibid., p. 187.
[xiv] Ibid., p. 155.
[xv] Ibid., p. 2.
[xvi] Ibid., p. 59.
[xvii] Ibid., p. 19.
[xviii] Ibid., pp. 35-37.
[xix] Ibid., pp. 1-2.
[xx] Ibid., p. 189.

 

 

 

 

Oil, patronage and corruption in the MENA region: the case of Saudi Arabia

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By Ibrahim Gabr:

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Saudi Arabia is a country built on oil. By looking at the country through the theoretical lens of the resource curse, we can gain more insights into the relation between political patronage and this ‘resource curse.’ By examining a case study of patronage in Saudi Arabia, as well as the resource curse and the political patronage and corruption which are associated with it in the Kingdom, it is proposed that economic diversification represents one of the most critical policy avenues for this resource-dependent government. In the context of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the Kingdom has brought about the deep entrenchment of monarchical regimes that use patronage so as to secure the loyalty and quiescence of their domestic populations without making any legitimate efforts towards democratic reform.

On the basis of these realities, and in the context of the resource curse, a clear and negative causal relationship exists between a country’s degree of economic diversification and the amount of patronage which occurs in its society. Examining the regional level for a common denominator which serves to perpetuate patronage within the reason, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), as a centralizing force in the MENA region, is potent in allowing these regimes to perpetuate their unhealthy and undemocratic reliance on patronage as a pathway to regime stability. Thus, there is a certain extent to which the boom-bust cycle of the energy market, which is what lies at the crux of the resource curse, facilitates this type of patronage-based governance. On this basis, in spite of significant and publicly-disseminated promises of reform, the occurrence of an endogenous or exogenous shock in the international energy market could completely derail the Monarchy’s plans. With this, it would appear that patronage, in the context of the MENA region’s oil-producing states, is likely to continue well into the foreseeable future.

The nature of the resource curse and economic diversification as a solution

Many countries which have abundant mineral, gas and oil wealth have suffered from poor economic performance, and entrenched autocratic or dictatorial regimes. The notion of the curse is premised on poor policy because it is a corollary of states misusing the rents, which are accrued from their resource wealth and widespread corruption.[1] Much of this has to do with the fact that natural resources, in developing world contexts, are difficult to manage. As some of the countries’ governments do not have far-reaching administrative powers, they are often dependent on foreign oil companies, and have regime-based needs that are different from those of the population; they thus misuse their mineral and oil wealth and thus preclude the country’s economic or political development.[2]

In this context, the resource curse is thus a problem that tends to plague states that are newly beginning to produce oil or other mineral wealth, and absent optimal fiscal management, can continue to haunt them across decades of production. In other cases, like that of Saudi Arabia, a wealthy and long-standing oil-producing regime, the consequences of the Oil Curse have more saliently pertained to leading to the entrenchment of sub-optimal forms of governance, and to less effective production paradigms. Writ-large, the oil curse’s enduring reality is thus one of sub-optimal natural resource management which precludes both longitudinal economic development and governmental reform. In this context, economic diversification emerges as the key to eliminating patronage in these resource-driven contexts. Because patronage prevents democratization from emerging in these countries, the democratic corollaries of economic diversification are important in building a middle-class capable of pushing for democratic reform.[3] Contra-existing dynamics wherein these patronage-based regimes are capable of buying off important domestic stakeholders, because of wealth concentration, the pursuit of diversification allows for such a middle-class, educated in nature, to make a whole-hearted push for democratization, and the decline of patronage which is attendant to it.[4]

Saudi Arabia – high dependency/high patronage

The degree of political patronage and rent-seeking which exists in the country is perhaps one of the most significant in the MENA region. As noted by one regional commentator, the Saudi regime has completely obviated any shift towards economic reform, and has preferred to embrace policies which allow it to maintain a significant degree of control over the international oil market all the while engaging in significant patronage-based expenditures at home. Thus, because the Saudis do not have a legitimate program for the purposes of economic diversification, examining their case requires understanding how the country has sought to perpetuate its policy of regime stability through patronage by stabilizing its ability to meet expenditure needs in the contexts of an international energy market that still functions on the basis of a boom-bust logic.[5]

With this in mind, stabilizing expenditures has always been one of the most significant problems faced by oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia. Due to the boom and bust nature of the oil economy, these countries require strong fiscal policies that are simultaneously responsive, responsible and transparent in nature. With this in mind, some of the best approaches to stabilizing these expenditures lie in creating sources of control, which are external to the state. Thus, one option is to use cash transfers to redistribute oil revenues throughout the population. In doing this, it then becomes possible to create a population that has a stake in the oil economy, and which is thus responsive in pressuring the government to stay responsible. In a similar regard, another option is to privatize domestic oil ownership, and thus create a structure in which the domestic private sector exerts similar fiscal pressure on government so as to create some aura of legitimacy for a government that would be otherwise nothing more than based on its ability to provide rents through patronage.[6]

These solutions are important because stabilization funds have simply not been efficient in precluding the oil curse or the economic suffering which occurs during bust portions of the boom-bust cycle. As all of these oil curse-related variables relate to improper fiscal management of the oil economy, stabilization programs are nothing more than a Band-Aid on a wound that is already infected. Given that some of these countries lack structures of governance needed for proper fiscal management, there is thus no way for their stabilization funds to be well-maintained or appropriately-managed. As such, these do not represent a reliable fix for either the problems of the oil curse or the boom-bust cycle.[7] Even where the potential for such structure exists, in wealthier contexts like Saudi Arabia, the insularity of the regime, combined with its ability to use patronage to buy off potential opponents, creates a context of insularity which detracts from the potential for reform.

In terms of the Saudi Arabian context, its stabilization is, to a very large extent, ensured by the volume of the oil which it exports, and its influential position in terms of international oil diplomacy. In truth, the Kingdom has done very little to diversify or stabilize its economy, especially when compared to a country like Qatar or the UAE. Instead, the Kingdom has relied on its sheer volumes, and the rents captured by the ruling family and dispersed throughout the population, so as to maintain stability in the contexts of downturns. With this, the Saudi strategy has always been to use volume and wealth for stabilization, rather than to embrace the type of domestic economic differentiation and diversification which might represent a solution or buffer vis-à-vis the shocks of the international energy market. Thus, it would appear that Saudi Arabia has not made a legitimate attempt to move away from the dependence on oil which lies at the heart of its patronage-based political system.

The perpetuation of patronage: the US as a facilitating institution

The relationships between the USA and KSA have themselves taken on characteristics analogous to those of client-patron relations. As MENA region oil powers like Saudi Arabia have such strong protectors, in this case in the form of the American hegemon, they do not necessarily face significant exogenous pressure for reform. Indeed, America and Saudi Arabia, as an example, are trapped in a dyad of mutual dependency wherein the Saudis can count on the Americans to protect them from regional or even domestic threats. Simultaneously, the Americans are guaranteed relatively open access to oil markets in periods of crisis inasmuch as they are aware that the Saudis can increase production so as to maintain price stability throughout the international system. Thus, this mutual dependency reinforces these MENA region states’ abilities to maintain regimes premised on patronage even in a context where economic diversification would represent a far superior long-term solution to the structural economic and political issues which they face.

 Conclusion

In the end, the case of Saudi Arabia demonstrates a clear causal relationship between significant energy reserves, the occurrence of the oil curse, low levels of economic diversification, and the perpetuation of political patronage and corruption. Tangibly, efforts which have been made to bring about diversification and thus endogenous economic growth across these countries have been modest. The likely reason for this continuing reality is that, even in the context of high state expenditures in a boom-bust market, the logic of patronage which underlies the stability of these oil-producing MENA-region regimes is one that is beneficial to their long-term political viability. Thus, absent an endogenous or exogenous shock, either in the form of an Arab Spring analog or a massive global energy disruption, the future of these states, as it pertains to the perpetuation of patronage, is likely very bleak indeed. While some states in the region have already taken anticipatory reforms to preclude the denouement of such revolutionary patterns in their own territories, such exogeneities remain a perpetual vulnerability, and thus dramatically shape the risk profile of the region.

 

Ibrahim Gabr is currently an honours undergraduate student in political science at McGill University in Canada.

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Notes

[1] M.L. Ross, ‘The political economy of the resource curse’, in World Politics, 51:2 (1999), pp. 297-322.
[2] M.L. Ross, The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
[3] A. Gelb, Oil Windfalls: Blessing or curse? (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1988).
[4] Ibid.
[5] M. Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
[6] M.L. Ross, ‘Will oil drown the Arab Spring? Democracy and the resource curse’, in Foreign Affairs (September-October 2011).
[7] Ross, The Oil Curse.

Additional Sources

Alexeev, M. & R. Conrad, ‘The Elusive Curse of Oil’, in The Review of Economics and Statistics, 91:3 (2009), pp. 586-598.
Alhajji, A.F. & D. Huettner, ‘OPEC and Other Commodity Cartels: A Comparison’, in Energy Policy, 28 (2000), pp. 1151-1164.
Fasano, Ugo & Zubair Iqbal, GCC Countries: From Oil Dependence to Diversification (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2003).

Carrots or sticks? The future of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East

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By Lorena Fortuno

The role of the United States:  Changes in Middle East Foreign Policy

Since the early stages of the Cold War, one of the main policy goals of the United States has been to promote and maintain its influence in the Middle East in order to gain access to a stable oil market. Another, as Nicholas Kitchen said, has been to respond to significant domestic pressures by forming an ideological commitment to the state of Israel.

These interests have for many years led to a foreign policy strategy to prevent any hegemonic power, regional or extra-regional, from gaining control of the area, betting on a regional balance kept in place by deterrence, alliances and occasional interventions.

After the Cold War, the world witnessed a strengthening of extremist Islamic factions, mainly as a rejection – often violent – of the sustained rule of U.S. sponsored or tolerated authoritarian regimes in Middle East.

Following 9/11, the U.S. Middle East strategy adjusted to include G.W. Bush’s “War on Terror” and “Freedom Agenda” as a more aggressive plan to guarantee stability in the region as well as domestic security. Nonetheless this strategy backfired, as it created a great contradiction between nation-building and the pursuit of domestic interests.

The Obama Administration – An emerging doctrine?

After a highly interventionist approach from the Republicans, President Obama brought a new approach to foreign policy that, in George Freidman’s words, can be read as a symbol of maturity: he argues that foreign policy is made by reality, not policy papers or presidents.

The “Arab Spring” presented a further challenge for the U.S. leadership, but the Obama administration’s approach remained focused on national interest priorities, while still seeking to maintain influence through diplomacy and soft power.

Being a hegemonic power, the U.S. faces diverse and complex threats, but nonetheless Washington’s priority has been to manage or mitigate emerging conflicts in the Middle East by searching for a regional balance through diplomatic means, addressing strongly only those that challenge its main interests and otherwise leaving events to take their own course.

This position may be perceived as weak by some American allies and by voters and some factions within Washington, but as Friedman argues, this might be “less a form of isolationism than a recognition of the limits of power and interest”.

2012 Elections:  Effects on Middle East Foreign Policy

Assuming there is an emerging doctrine and a new approach to world leadership and foreign policy, how much could it be affected by this year’s presidential elections?

Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate, recently implied during a speech at the Virginia Military Institute that the current administration’s strategy has led to a loss of American leadership and influence throughout the world and he maintains that if elected, his approach would be more military-based and active.

Arguing that allowing the balance of power and events to take its course only delays American intervention, Romney proposes what Friedman describes as “active balancing” to maintain and defend American interests abroad and reinforce national security.

But is this approach realistic? According to Romney, global resentment and anti-American sentiment fuel terrorism and anti-American groups. Could he intervene actively in Middle Eastern conflicts without intensifying these sentiments?

Would he be able to take a tougher approach towards preventing the buildup of Iran’s nuclear capability without creating further instability in the region?

What do you think?