In addition to the important, uniting phenomena of ethnicity, language, and religion are the curse and the blessings of a common historical heritage. Much of the Middle East, with the exceptions of Iran and Morocco, experienced centuries of Ottoman rule, generally from the mid-sixteenth century up until the waning years of the nineteenth century. The Ottomans’ hold on the Middle East was often tenuous and frequently interrupted. Over the centuries, however, for better or for worse, from their capital in Istanbul they managed to leave their imprint on such far-off places as Cairo, Tripoli, and Tunis. Once the Ottomans were gone, the British and the French took their place, leaving on their colonial possessions their own distinctive marks. Perhaps the biggest relic of British rule, aside from the drawing of artificial national borders, was the institution of monarchy, which they secured in almost all the lands they ruled, from Egypt to Jordan, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula. The French colonial inheritance was less political and more cultural, although in the Levant they left behind republican systems that mimicked their own. For the French what mattered most was the superiority of their civilization, and they ensured its posterity by making French the lingua franca of the Maghreb. Today, urban Moroccans, Algerians, and Tunisians speak and study in French with as much ease as they converse in Arabic. This, of course, is the case with millions of others in francophone Africa as well.
Nevertheless, the powerful forces uniting the Middle East—religion, ethnicity, and language—have at times also been sources of division and conflict. In many historical episodes subtle differences in dialect or ethnic identity have served as powerful catalysts for the articulation of national or subnational loyalties and even political mobilization. The Middle East, it must be remembered, is far from monolithic and homogeneous. Its differences have been a source of both strength and inspiration and, at times, violent bloodletting; witness the tragedy of Lebanon or the torment meted out to the Kurds.
In studying the Middle East, it is often tempting to overlook the region’s rich diversity in geography, politics, and culture. Any book purporting to examine the political history of the modern Middle East is bound to remain at a certain level of generalization and not pay the necessary attention to the many, multifaceted differences within the various Middle Eastern countries and communities. This book, I am afraid, is no exception. I have taken care throughout to highlight the existence of differences, both between and within the countries and the peoples discussed, and I hope that the reader remains mindful of them as well. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to apologize to those groups whose identities or destinies may not be as thoroughly covered here as they should have been.
When the “modern” era of the Middle East begins is a matter of some debate. For our purposes here, I have taken it to be in the 1920s, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when state systems as we have come to know them today began to be established throughout the region. But the political and historic phenomena that the Ottomans represented had roots far deeper in Middle Eastern and Islamic history than the early decades of the twentieth century. I decided, therefore, to go further back, much further back, and briefly retell the story of the Middle East since the appearance of Islam and how it shaped subsequent historical events in the region. Islam dramatically altered the life and historic evolution of the Middle East, but its appearance by no means marks the beginning of Middle Eastern history. As chapter 1 makes clear, this was an arbitrary starting date, for I had to draw the line somewhere, and I chose to do so with Islam’s beginning. Had this been a work on the complete political history of the Middle East, it would have had to start with the earliest days of human civilization, along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates in modern-day Iraq.
In addition to simple convenience and an arbitrary starting date, a deeper logic guides the choice of the chapters that follow and the topics they discuss. Politics and history are both dynamic and changeable processes. Thus the examination of either one in a snapshot is incomplete without attention to successive past developments. Contemporary political issues in the Middle East are deeply rooted in past historic and political events: consider, for example, three of the most central issues, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, economic development, and the nature of prevailing state-society relations within each country. The present manifestation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict resulted from the outcome of the Arab-Israeli wars, which were a product of competing varieties of nationalism, shaped by the machinations of Western colonial powers, who had gone to the Middle East once the Ottomans collapsed, and so on. The same line of inquiry could be applied to current state-society relations in the Middle East or to each country’s level of economic development.
On the basis of this logic, the book is divided into two parts, one focusing on political history and the other on some key issues that resonate throughout the region. Part I lays out the historical context for the Middle East. It begins with a sweeping chapter on the history of the Middle East from the earliest days, when geographic considerations and military conquests led to the establishment first of cities and then of civilizations around them, up until the demise of the region’s last major imperial power, the Ottomans. Chapter 2 continues the historical narrative, concentrating on the period between the two world wars and looking at the nature and trials of independence and state building. The emergence and rapid spread of nationalism throughout the Middle East is discussed in chapter 3, and the two resulting Arab-Israeli wars in 1967 and 1973, each spectacular in its own way, are examined in chapter 4. Nationalism, state building, and political consolidation (or lack thereof) led to one of the most dramatic developments in the contemporary Middle East, the Iranian revolution of 1978–79, which is discussed in chapter 5. Revolutions and wars are seldom far apart, and both the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War and the so-called Second Gulf War in 1990–91 and its aftermath are covered in chapter 6. This chapter ends with a discussion of the causes and consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in April 2003 and its eventual withdrawal from the country in 2011.
The historical processes discussed in chapters 1 through 6 have had profound consequences for the contemporary politics of the Middle East, especially with regard to the overall nature of state-society relations in each country and the relationships between states. Part II discusses four of the most important current political manifestations of longer-term historical processes: the evolution of state institutions and the challenges they face; the question of democracy; the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; and the challenges of economic development. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the defining features of the region’s contemporary politics. But it represents some of the most salient phenomena whose scope and consequences go beyond mere diplomacy, economics, or politics. These are the core issues that have shaped and defined contemporary Middle Eastern politics. They have had ramifications not only for the countries involved but for the region and the world as well.
The popular yearning for democracy, in fact, and the intransigence of incumbent authoritarian states on giving up power rocked the Arab world beginning in late 2010, when the region witnessed a series of historic uprisings that continue to change the region’s political landscape in ways that few had predicted. This happened to correspond with the publication of the book’s second edition. For months after the uprisings began, I resisted the temptation to start work on a new edition, hoping to wait long enough for the outcomes of what came to be known as the Arab Spring to become evident before putting pen to paper. But spring turned into summer and fall, and then winter, and the turns and twists of the fateful events of 2011 continued to unfold across the region in ways that defied all predictions and analysis. As the second anniversary of the start of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions approached, I could no longer delay work on updating a book that was becoming rapidly outdated.
As I write, history is still being made. In Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, draft constitutions have sparked intense debates over such fundamental questions as the role of religion in poli
tical life in general and in legislation and personal-status law in particular. In Tunisia and Libya elections for the national legislature and the executive are yet to be held, and the ultimate shape of those institutions are far from determined. In Egypt, the newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, is fending off accusations of crafting a new dictatorship from the country’s judges and from old and new protesters in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square. In Syria, a bloody civil war continues to rage, whose direction and outcome at this point are far from certain. And for the first time demonstrators in Amman are openly calling for the fall of the Hashemite monarchy.
Keenly aware of the perils of writing on history as it unfolds, I go about this third edition with a larger-than-usual measure of humility. History, and especially Middle Eastern history, often plays tricks on those who try to predict its future course. So I make no such attempt here. Instead, in chapters 7 and 8, I focus on the causes of the revolutions of 2011 and examine the dynamics that have given them the characteristics they have so far assumed. In chapter 7 I look at the institutional and political evolution of seemingly immovable states beginning in the 1950s and the 1960s and lasting into the 2000s. In chapter 8, on repression and rebellion, I examine moves toward democratization initiated both by states and by social actors, most of which were aborted in the 1990s and the 2000s, and which eventually precipitated the mass uprisings of 2011.
Chapter 9 examines the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It begins with a discussion of how the two competing national identities have given resonance and force to the conflict through a mutual negation of “the Other.” The chapter then looks at the situation on the ground, examining how the two sides’ denial of each other’s rights affects their daily lives and circumstances. There are, on a few occasions, glimmers of hope in this long and bloody conflict, as figures from both sides have embarked on the difficult task of reconciliation and peace. The chapter ends with a discussion of some of the maneuvers and the progress made so far in the elusive “peace process.”
Chapter 10, on economic development, examines three features of the political economy of the Middle East: the pervasive role of the state; its pursuit of economic policies designed to minimize its extractive role in relation to social actors; and its limited abilities to control or even regulate many economic activities.
The book ends with a brief discussion of some of the more important challenges the Middle East is currently facing or is likely to face in the coming decades. The last century has brought to the Middle East progress and change on multiple fronts, from the creation of impressive edifices of the state to the transformation of arid desert lands into massive urban areas and even agricultural lands (in Saudi Arabia). But problems also abound—from economically unsustainable rates of population growth and chronic food insecurity to hazardous levels of pollution of environmental resources, to name only a few—and their magnitude is amplified by official neglect or mismanagement. Sooner or later, state or private agencies need to substantively address the many challenges facing the Middle East, or the future will be more troublesome than the past.
PART I
A Political History of the Middle East
AS HOME TO SOME OF THE world’s earliest civilizations and the birthplace of three great religions, the Middle East offers a rich tapestry of human life and deeply ingrained traditions. At the same time, the region’s political history, both classic and modern, has been punctuated by the rise and fall of great powers, colonial domination, the birth or creation of new countries, and uneven marches toward political and economic development. The multiple consequences of these developments for the Middle East have been particularly pronounced since the early decades of the twentieth century. In reality, however, they can be traced as far back as the second half of the 1500s, when the Ottoman Empire began expanding its domain, and, in many ways even before that, all the way back to the early development of Islam in the seventh century A.D.
From its inception, Islam has shaped politics and society in the regions where it is dominant, especially the Middle East. Even in those historical periods when political authority in the Muslim lands was fragmented or nonexistent, Islam continued to be a powerful social bond and a potential source of communal solidarity. The Ottomans united much of the Middle East under their own imperial banner, but their control over their far-flung territories was often tenuous and indirect at best. Despite the existence of the institution of beyliks (provincial governorships appointed by the Ottoman court), in much of the Middle East meaningful local political institutions never had the opportunity to emerge. The Ottoman “state” operated most manifestly in Istanbul and in the Anatolian heartland and seldom reached deep into the societies of the vast territories over which it ruled.
The collapse of the Ottomans in the early twentieth century resulted in the large-scale introduction of European colonialism into the Middle East beginning in the 1920s and officially lasting until the late 1940s, although in some cases British domination of local politics did not really end until the early 1970s. European colonialism took place under historical circumstances radically different from those that had existed during Ottoman rule. Nevertheless, the basic pattern of relationship between the colonial states and their subject societies—one of detachment, minimal contact, and top-down flow of power—remained largely the same.
The emergence of sovereign, independent states in the Middle East in the 1940s and 1950s dramatically altered domestic power equations and the traditional foundations for state-society relations in each Middle Eastern country. These ostensibly modern states were thrust unprepared into a competitive international environment in which they had to foster rapid economic and industrial development and, most importantly, satisfy the growing nationalist aspirations of their populations. These nationalist yearnings emerged in response to domestic social and political developments and as a result of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the latter itself serving as a catalyst for much regional conflict and instability. Not surprisingly, the political history of the modern Middle East as it unfolded in the twentieth century was one of wars, conquests, political turmoil, and extremism. Whether the current century, with a wave of regional uprisings at the end of its first decade, will hold a different future for the region remains to be seen.
1From Islam to the Great War
Since the Middle East is home to some of the world’s earliest civilizations, it is difficult to choose a starting point for examining its political history, for no matter how far back the investigator searches, there still seem to be deeper layers of historical and political developments that influenced the course of later events. For convenience, and admittedly somewhat arbitrarily, I have chosen the dawn of Islam as the starting point of this book. This has some justification: Islam as both a system of beliefs and a historical-political phenomenon has distinctively marked the Middle East, and its rise and evolution created dynamics that continue to shape the destiny of nations today.
The rise, evolution, and spread of Islam in the seventh century A.D. were greatly influenced by the geography of the region in which it was born. Islam is not unique in this respect, for any religious or political phenomenon is shaped and influenced by its geographic circumstances. Thus the chapter begins with a brief survey of that larger context. It then traces Middle Eastern history from the birth and expansion of Islam to the rise of the Ottomans and, after nearly five centuries, their ultimate collapse and replacement by European colonial powers. Islam was born in the Arabian peninsula, a place nearly as harsh and inaccessible today as it was in the seventh century. The area was linked to the outside world primarily by the merchant caravans that left the Hijaz region (in western Arabia) for trading posts in Damascus and farther north along the Silk Road. By the time of the rise of Islam, many civilizations just north of the Arabian peninsula had already gone through cycles of birth, death, and regeneration—the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Hittites chief among them—although two formidable dynasties continued to exist and, in fact, thrive.
The Sassanids, concentrated to the northeast of the Arabian peninsula along the two sides of what is now the Iran-Iraq border, were gradually restoring to the ancient Iranians some of the glory they had lost with the collapse of the Achemenid dynasty at the hands of Alexander the Great. The other great civilization was the Byzantine Empire, whose size and powers were as impressive as the great city that bore its name. Between the Sassanids and the Byzantines lay the ruins of a few other ancient civilizations, by then long abandoned, the most notable of which were the Babylonians. With these potential intermediaries long gone, frequent quarrels erupted between the two regional giants, steadily weakening both in the process. In 330 A.D., Constantine the Great made Byzantium the capital of the Roman Empire and changed its name to Constantinople, the City of Constantine. Islam appeared in 610 A.D. and expanded dramatically after the Prophet’s death nearly twenty-three years later. This expansion was greatly influenced by the conditions in which Islam found itself and the heritage of the peoples and the regions it conquered along the way.
THE SETTING
By the time Islam appeared in the Arabian peninsula, the two other civilizations in the region, the Byzantines in the north and the Sassanids in the east, had come to adopt variations of two monotheistic religions, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, respectively. Several forms of Christianity prevailed elsewhere in the Middle East: the Coptic Church in Egypt, the Jacobite Church in Syria, and the Nestorian Church in Iraq. Parts of eastern Iraq were also Zoroastrian, as was almost all of Iran, where the tradition of divine kingship did not die out until after the Arab conquest, and even then not very thoroughly.1 Jewish and pagan communities were also scattered throughout the area, including in the Arabian peninsula, where a majority worshipped local deities.2
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