Ethnic Conflict and International Politics in The Middle East

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title: Ethnic Conflict and International

Politics in the Middle East
author: Binder, Leonard.
publisher: University Press of Florida
isbn10 | asin:
print isbn13: 9780813016870
ebook isbn13: 9780813022208
language: English
subject Middle East--Politics and
government--20th century--
Congresses, Middle East--Ethnic
relations--Political aspects--
Congresses, Nationalism--Middle
East--Congresses, Islam and politics--
Middle East--Congresses.
publication date: 1999
lcc: DS62.8.E84 1999eb
ddc: 323.1/56
subject: Middle East--Politics and
government--20th century--
Congresses, Middle East--Ethnic
relations--Political aspects--
Congresses, Nationalism--Middle
East--Congresses, Islam and politics--
Middle East--Congresses.
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Introduction
The International Dimensions of Ethnic Conflict in the Middle
East.
Leonard Binder
Ethnicity, Religion, and the New World Order
The Emergence of New States at the End of the Cold War
Predictions and proposals for the development of a new world order
after the end of the Cold War have been based on the assumption that
the existing state system will persist, with the addition of a few
important breakaways from the defunct Soviet Empire, like Belarus
and Ukraine. In Central Asia, the virtual independence achieved by
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kirghizia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan
suggested the further decline of Russian influence, but left it
uncertain whether these states would become an effective part of the
Middle East system or would constitute a new regional subsystem. In
the Caucasus, the similarly attenuated independence achieved by
Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and later (and more attenuated)
Chechnya, stirred the imagination of the foreign policy elites of
several Middle East countries, but with little significant outcome as
yet. The questions raised by the sudden appearance of a significant
number of strategically located new players were complicated by the
expectation that the polarizing influence of both Washington and
Moscow would decline precipitously. At the same time, it was
expected that the influence of these newly independent nation-states
would have little significance outside of their own immediate
neighborhoods. The emergence of new states would increase the
complexity of some regional international subsystems, but the spread
of democracy and market-oriented economic reforms and the need for
foreign economic assistance were expected to help stabilize these
regions and minimize international conflict.
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conflict, there was a danger of escalation involving the superpowers,
the United States and the USSR intervened to stop it. Otherwise, if
local conflicts could be contained by one or more regional powers, it
was left to them. Jordan somehow managed its Palestinian problem.
Syria managed the Lebanese problem. Morocco managed the Western
Sahara problem. Iran helped control an Oman-Yemen conflict. Egypt
and Saudi Arabia avoided direct conflict along the Yemen border.
However, French intervention was required to get Libya out of Chad.
Both Libya and Egypt have incited ethnic conflict in the Sudan, and
all of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran have incited Kurdish separatism in
neighboring countries. It is therefore possible to argue that the
international system or regime did "manage" or even control regional
ethnic conflict but did not always seek to mitigate or end it.
The Declining Probability of Intervention.
The invasion and occupation of Kuwait now appears as though it was
a challenge to the Cold War regime in the region, but it may well
have been planned to take advantage of the mutual restraint that had
become an established Cold War pattern. In either case, Saddam bet
that the United States would not intervene, either to avoid
complicating its relations with the Soviet Union or to avoid another
Vietnam-type entanglement. Saddam ignored or misconstrued the true
political purport of Primakov's importuning, but it is doubtful that he
expected or rejected more vigorous Soviet support.
Despite the fact that the global situation underwent a radical
transformation during the Kuwait crisis, American intervention and
continuing threats against both Iraq and Iran stabilized the situation
in the Gulf. For the time being, at least, a relative stability prevails in
the region despite sharp conflicts, much violence, and the inability of
several governments (Algeria, Sudan, Turkey, Iraq) to maintain order
throughout their own territory.
There is, however, no regional security organization whose purpose it
is to maintain order or regulate conflict in the Middle East, despite
the combined influence of the Arab League, the Arab-Israeli peace
process, numerous UN resolutions, and the imposition of
international sanctions on Iraq and Libya and more limited
restrictions on Iran and Sudan.
Moreover, great power intervention–which formerly was structured
by the bipolar/Cold War conflict and, hence, was "balanced"–is now
centered on the potentiality of U.S. intervention–either unilateral or
UN sanctioned. There is, for now, little likelihood of NATO
intervention in the region, while Russia is more likely to use its
influence in the region as a trade-off for better

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The mithaq also gave rise to electoral laws that promoted a degree of
integrative voting behavior, even while stipulating sectarian security.
In virtually every electoral district (even those in which the
population was largely of a single sect) deputies were elected by
voters from more than one sect. For example, in the Chouf district,
the Druze deputy running for one of the Druze seats would be elected
by Maronite and as well as Druze voters. Unfortunately, the
elections (in 1992 and 1996) were marked by greater sectarian
exclusivity. One might conclude, then, that the mithaq served—and
perhaps pacts in general can serve—important purposes in a crisis or
other specific historical conjuncture.
The three decades—from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s—were the
"golden age" of Lebanon's "liberal" republic. The country enjoyed
aggregate prosperity and—except for the breakdown in 1958—
relative stability. Nevertheless, problems were evident. Growing
socioeconomic and regional inequalities hampered the development
of national unity and began to show dangerous signs of sectarian
coloration. Even though the mithaq had conceived of political
confessionalism as a temporary measure, it seemed to be becoming
more permanent—to the dismay of Muslims in general and in
particular, who felt increasingly disadvantaged. By the mid-1950s
Muslims generally no longer believed that Christians were a majority
and increasingly rejected the legitimacy of Christian and Maronite
domination. Lebanon's liberal politicians and intelligentsia
hammered away at the necessity of building a more durable national
unity: "two negations do not a nation make," wrote the Maronite
publisher Georges Naccache in 1949.14
In 1958 a prolonged governmental crisis led to a four-month civil
war. Interestingly, the 1958 "events" were not driven solely by
sectarian hostilities. Rather, they were precipitated by a "foreign
policy" dispute over whether the government of President Camille
Chamoun had violated the National Pact by allying Lebanon with "the
West." But before the disturbances were over (settled in large part by
an American military intervention), religious and sectarian fissures
had appeared: Maronite parties feared that Lebanon might be
absorbed by Arab unionist (Muslim) forces led by Egypt's President
Gamal Abd al-Nasser, who had recently created the United Arab
Republic with Syria. At the same time, there was intense rivalry
between strictly Lebanese coalitions, for and against President
Chamoun, each of which was multisectarian. Following the 1958
troubles, the reformist regime of Gen. Fuad Shihab tried to build a
"modern state" to alleviate the sectarian and regional inequalities that
the earlier regimes had perpetuated. Yet even Shihab had to play
confessional politics in his war on the traditional system, and he was

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unable to sustain the momentum of his reforms. A multisectarian
coalition of traditional politicians brought Shihabism to an end by
1970. While these developments were heavily driven by domestic
conflicts, they were also accelerated by regional instability: in
particular, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the growth of a Palestinian
resistance movement with an influential presence in Lebanon.
The second civil war (1975–90) may have been precipitated by
clashes between Palestinian fighters and Maronite militiamen, but its
origins cannot fully be explained as an essentially external extension
of the Arab-Israeli conflict into Lebanese territory. Institutionalized
confessionalism had only deepened the historic and cultural
differences among Lebanese communities, and these differences were
further magnified by decades of socioeconomic inequality. Since
1958 Maronites had seen the gradual erosion of their privileges and
were increasingly desperate to halt that trend. The underprivileged
Muslim masses, gradually loosening their dependency on their
traditional (leaders), looked elsewhere for inspiration. The
urban, coastal Sunni lower classes looked increasingly to Arab
nationalism and socialism. The , particularly disadvantaged,
found revolutionary leadership in Imam Musa al-Sadr, and came to
support Amal, and later the more militant, socially conscious
Hizbullah. Muslim support for the armed Palestinian presence in
Lebanon—keystone of the Arab cause—was widespread, but it only
increased fears among the Maronites, and they of course began to arm
themselves. The security dilemma played and replayed itself as
Muslim organizations sought Palestinian alliances in strengthening
their own military capability.
In her insightful memoir of the civil war, Jean Said Makdisi, a
Palestinian Christian married to a Lebanese, nicely sums up the
complexity of it all.15 She observes that the journalistic description
of a "civil war" between "rival Muslim and Christian factions"
became increasingly simplistic, neglecting ideological, class,
regional, and international dimensions. This happened while the
religious dimension itself became increasingly complicated. Was it
an offshoot of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, pitting mostly Muslim
Palestinians against Lebanon's Christian population? Or were the
Palestinians drawn into an essentially Lebanese sectarian conflict by
the Lebanese Muslims? Whatever the case, she writes, "the country
became more and more religiously segregated . . . I have felt
repeatedly that religion has worked rather like the stamp with which
cattle are branded . . . And so are we all, like it or not, branded with
the hot iron of our religious ancestry."
What Lebanon crucially lacked was a sufficiently strong government
and unified population to deal with the regional (let alone internal)
pressures;

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indeed, one can argue that the various interventions by Syria, Israel,
the PLO, Iran, and Iraq were actually sought by various Lebanese
factions seeking to enhance their internal leverage. Presidents ended
up acting like Maronite warlords (except for Elias Sarkis, who lacked
the sectarian base to act at all); the prime minister was captive to pro-
Palestinian and Arab nationalist Muslim constituencies; the armed
forces split into sectarian pieces; and the real authority of the
government shrank to a perimeter of just a few miles around the
presidential palace. At particularly desperate moments during the
civil war the Maronite Phalangists were threatening partition or
cantonization, and the Hizbullahis were calling for the
establishment of an Islamic state in Lebanon. Finally, in 1988, even
the last legitimizing thread of a single government was cut when two
rival prime ministers (one Maronite, one Sunni) emerged following
the inability of Parliament to elect a new president in 1988.
A New National Pact: The Agreement
The National Accord Document—concluded in , Saudi Arabia, in
October 1989 by surviving members of the 1972 Lebanese Chamber
of Deputies (with significant input from Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the
United States)—did not immediately end Lebanon's civil war. Its
principles, however, did finally lay the foundations for a somewhat
different Lebanese system. Was essentially a return to the
consociationalism of the past? And, if so, would this inspire
optimism or despair about Lebanon's future? There are no simple
answers.16 The document itself is quite detailed and nuanced.
On the one hand it marks a return to consociationalism, but with
important modifications; on the other, it calls for a phasing out of
political confessionalism. modifies the proportional formula to
the detriment of the Maronites and the advantage of the Muslims. The
Maronite president is stripped of much of his power, while the Sunni
prime minister and his cabinet are strengthened. So too is the
Chamber of Deputies and the office of its ( ) speaker. Under the
new arrangements, the Council of Ministers and the prime minister
no longer serve essentially at the pleasure of the president; only the
parliament can dismiss the prime minister. The judicial system is also
strengthened—with the establishment of a constitutional council and
the promulgation of a higher council to try presidents and ministers—
and administrative decentralization and local assemblies are
proposed. All of the above provisions are driven by an assumption of
the necessity for sectarian power sharing. Yet at the same time, the
formula calls for the eventual abolition of political sectarianism
"as a fundamental national objective," in accordance with a

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phased plan. Upon the election of the first nonsectarian Chamber of
Deputies, a senate will be created, "and all the spiritual families shall
be represented in it." Its powers "shall be confined to crucial issues."
Like its predecessor, the mithaq al-watani, the Agreement also
deals with Lebanon's external orientations. It prohibits the granting of
citizenship to the some 350,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon.
also calls for taking all steps to liberate Lebanese territory from
Israeli occupation. Most importantly, it endorses Lebanon's "special"
relationship with Syria. Considering the significance of the Syrian
presence in Lebanon, the document is brief but sweeping on this
point. After a two-year period, to begin when has been ratified, a
new president and government established, and the reforms envisaged
in approved, Syrian forces would redeploy eastward to the
heights of Mount Lebanon. Six years later this redeployment had not
been accomplished. The Syrian government contended that the
reforms—notably deconfessionalization—were still not fully under
way. Eventually, the Syrian and Lebanese governments together
would decide on the modalities of a complete withdrawal. "Lebanon
should not be allowed to constitute a source of threat to Syria's
security," and Syria should not constitute a threat to Lebanon. "Syria,"
the document concludes, "which is eager for Lebanon's security,
independence, and unity . . . should not permit any act that poses a
threat to Lebanon's security, independence, and sovereignty."17 The
1943 mithaq struck a balance between Lebanon's Western and Arab
orientations and set limits on its degree of alignment. The 1989
Agreement says nothing about relations with the West (unless Israel
be considered as such) but does insist more strongly on Lebanon's
Arab orientation. To many Lebanese the text of legitimizes a
hegemonic, or at least "protective," role for Syria in Lebanon. Syria,
of course, is not the only contiguous neighbor of Lebanon to have
sought such a position: Israel (with American backing) had carved
out a similar role for itself in the abortive Treaty of May 17, 1983,
while its army was occupying half the country, including the capital.
These provisions make it clear that is more than just a compact
between Lebanon's major political forces. Hence a paradox: if its
effective implementation depends on a Syrian role, the Syrian role
also delegitimizes the agreement in the eyes of many Lebanese.
in theory is more impressive than in practice. I find it
impressive, first, for its recognition of the need for permanent and
secure—if symbolic—representation of the "spiritual families." An
eventual bicameral legislature might be the political structure that
does the trick. And a strengthened judiciary for the protection against
arbitrary government infringement of an

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individual's (or, by extension, a community's) rights is another
institutional reform to be welcomed. Second, it is impressive for its
frank recognition that Lebanon should not be exclusively or even
primarily governed by political confessionalism. The authors of
were not the first Lebanese to be wary of sectarian power sharing:
even the 1926 constitution and the 1943 National Pact speak
reluctantly of this kind of proportionality as a temporary necessity.
Certainly can be read as a "restoration" rather than a
"transformation" blueprint, which is why many on the liberal-left side
of the spectrum are disappointed by it; but it can also be read as a
blueprint for strengthening the public sphere. Even in theory,
however, there are drawbacks. As noted above, unlike the old mithaq,
is not essentially homegrown; there is a Syrian hand in it, backed
by Saudi Arabia and the United States. One must also ask whether the
"adjusted" sectarian power-sharing arrangements do not actually
deepen confessionalism, notwithstanding the call for dismantling
confessionalism, and whether Syria and other foreign governments do
not, indeed, tacitly support confessionalism for their own purposes.
Ultimately, one's evaluation of in theory will be colored by the
realization of in practice.
In actuality the era after nine years has produced mixed results.
On the positive side, one cannot gainsay the value of some six years
of relative peace and quiet. This tranquillity has permitted a
significant economic recovery and development program to get under
way: annual growth rates have reached 8 percent; the Lebanese
currency has strengthened by 70 percent against the U.S. dollar;
central bank reserves have risen from $500 million to $2 billion; and
foreign (mostly expatriate Lebanese) capital is flowing in. When
$650 million in shares in Solidère, the company managing the
redevelopment of Beirut's destroyed central business district (and,
incidentally, owned by Prime Minister Hariri), were offered, they
were oversubscribed to a level of $920 million in just three days.18
Under Syria's watchful eye, a stable and deferential tripartite
executive leadership has emerged: Maronite President Elias Hrawi,
Sunni Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, and Parliamentary Speaker
Nabih Berri. None is able to dictate to the others, nor can any claim a
truly national support base—each is seen mainly in sectarian terms.
Traditional pluralism thus has been enhanced, apparently freeing
Lebanon from the heavy-handed dictatorial regimes common
elsewhere in the region. Moreover, some scholars would argue that
Lebanon displays at least rudimentary characteristics of a
public sphere—a prerequisite for a genuinely democratic order.19
Significant freedom of the press exists, notwithstanding Syria's
presence, and the judiciary system (developed during the French
Mandate period) has maintained considerable integrity.

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In important ways, however, the Agreement has been
disappointing. Lebanon's new presidential, government, and
parliamentary leaderships has failed to establish the committee called
for by to design the plan for abolishing confessionalism.
Moreover, national unity has proved as elusive as ever, with the
troika—president, prime minister, and speaker—tending to
act as sectarian and parochial , more than as national leaders.
Immobilism in policymaking remains a problem. The optimism
generated by impressive economic growth immediately following the
end of the fighting has been tempered by a subsequent slowdown, a
spiraling budget deficit, and rising cost of living. Sporadic labor
unrest and growing concern over lack of governmental attention to
severe social problems caused by the war reminds one of the
opposition rallying cries of the 1950s and 1960s—when economic
conditions, of course, were much better than they are in post–civil
war Lebanon.
What of the system of representation? There has been no
development of cross-sectarian or nationally based political parties.
Instead, local personalities dominate the scene, as in the past. While
made it possible for Lebanon to resume parliamentary elections,
the elections held thus far in 1992 and 1996 have been disappointing
for those who hoped that they would give a strong boost to political
system legitimacy. But in the first parliamentary election in
1992, what the Lebanese sociologist Ahmad Beydoun calls the
"mixedness and moderation" of elections in the mithaq era (1943–72)
was much eroded.20 This was due partly to the demographic sectarian
polarization resulting from population movements during the civil
war and partly to the manipulation of the 1992 electoral law by the
Syrian authorities in Lebanon. Increased sectarian chauvinism gave
rise to apprehensions that, for example, Maronite deputies could not
be truly representative of Maronite interests if they had to depend on
, Druze, or Sunni votes to get elected. Voter turnout in the 1992
elections was exceptionally low, around 16 percent or less in mostly
Christian districts of Mount Lebanon—owing to a widespread boycott
by Maronite Christian voters—and around 40 percent in the mostly
Muslim areas of the valley and the south. In the 1996 elections,
there were reports of widespread voting irregularities in Mount
Lebanon, where Christian opposition politicians were defeated by
candidates backed by the troika and by Damascus. The electoral law
had established the muhafaza (province) as the electoral district
rather than the much smaller (county), thus allowing Syria and
the incumbent Lebanese leaders a strong advantage over opponents in
creating winning lists. On the brighter side, however, in 1998
Lebanon held its first municipal council elections in more

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than thirty years: they were conducted on a nonconfessional basis and
featured competitive and broad political participation, including the
reappearance of some conservative Christian politicians.
Behind these structural flaws lurk the ominous new sociopolitical
realities of postwar Lebanon and the shadows of external
involvement. Sectarian identities had, if anything, hardened. There is
broad alienation among the Maronite Christians, who saw their once-
dominant share of power reduced and who deeply resented Syria's
manipulation of Lebanese politics. Many had rallied behind the
quixotic Gen. Michel Aoun in 1989, when he launched a futile "war
of liberation" against Syrian forces. Aoun then turned against his
former allies in the Lebanese Forces (Christian militia) when the LF
accepted the Agreement and Syria's privileged role therein.
According to Paul Salem, Aoun initially drew upon a populist protest
current that was not exclusively Christian; had he not then alienated
so many actual or potential supporters, perhaps he could have
mobilized a broad constituency against the civil war "militia system"
and the Syrian and Israeli intervention in Lebanon's affairs.21 Today,
Lebanon's Maronites feel marginalized and suffer from serious
fragmentation in their leadership. Some Maronite politicians yearn
for an exclusively Christian Lebanon, but others of a more pragmatic
nature seem prepared to accept the pluralist model as long as the
Christian way of life is not threatened.
Lebanon's are similarly divided among themselves, mainly
between the Amal Movement, the Party of God (Hizbullah), and a
centrist tendency identified with Shaykh Mohammad Mahdi
Shamseddine. While Amal is identified with Syria's interests,
Hizbullah has been influenced by Iran's Islamist government, and
some (but not all) of its leaders have called for making Lebanon an
Islamic republic. made modest gains under , but many think
that their demographic status (as the largest single sect) is not
adequately reflected in their third-place position behind the Sunnis
and the Maronites. The Sunnis, ironically, seem to have emerged as
the major winners from , despite the fact that their militia
presence during the civil war was not as strong as the Maronites, the
, and the Druze. A new fault line in Lebanon, therefore,
divides the Sunnis and the . The fourth major community, the
Druze, displays a traditional solidarity that, until now, has given them
influence well beyond their demographic strength; but they have not
benefited much from and are highly dependent upon Syria to
help them maintain such prerogatives as they have. Some observers
of Lebanese affairs expressed the hope that fifteen years of civil war
might finally promote national unity if only because the public would
have become disillusioned

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with the bitter fruits of sectarianism. But sectarian segmentation
seems to be very much a feature of Lebanon. If so, the
prospects for further development of the country's attenuated public
sphere are clouded.
Regional tensions, too, as before, inhibit the development of a public
sphere. Israel's continued occupation in south Lebanon, and Syria's
domination of political life in general, have made it impossible to
complete call for the disbanding of all militias: Hizbullah
remains active militarily as the self-appointed resistance to the Israeli
occupation, something that Syrian leverage, as well as the popularity
of the resistance movement among Lebanese (and not just
Lebanese), makes it impossible for the Lebanese government to
oppose. Furthermore, many Lebanese (especially, but not exclusively,
Maronites) resent Syria's hegemony and feel that it has violated the
very accords it had helped write.
Pacts and Ethnosectarian Conflict: Problems and Prospects
The Lebanese case suggests that consociationalism may be valuable
— even indispensable — in the early phase of state formation in a
deeply divided society. It may also perform a healing function in the
aftermath of a civil war. But if it becomes the sole or primary
modality for political organization, it will create many problems. It
certainly has for Lebanon. Nevertheless, of the four models
discussed, the consociational model holds substantial advantages for
a political culture such as Lebanon's. The "unity project" model
assumes more of a consensus than actually exists, and thus for its
implementation requires a greater preponderance of state power and
regime legitimacy than seems attainable. In modern Lebanese
politics, only the Shihabist experiment—the military-technocratic
regime (1958–64) headed by former army commander Fuad Shihab—
approximated the model. A "traditional patrimonial project" might
work if Lebanon today were like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Abu Dhabi
—or the Lebanon of a century and a half ago. Obviously, it isn't. The
corporatist model looks more appropriate. Indeed, in many ways the
political system of the liberal republic (1943–72) can be interpreted
as resting on several "pillars": notables, feudalists, merchants, and
bankers. But there is no place in this model for religious sectarian
elements, and we see no ideological "glue" or charismatic leader to
hold it all in place.
Consociationalism, power sharing, and pact building in a country like
Lebanon can perform important, if limited, functions at particular
historical conjunctures. But there are two problems with the "pacted
solution" in Lebanon in the era. One is that the formula seems
to be accepting and even deepening the heightened confessional
divisions generated by the civil

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war. The other is that its effective implementation depends on
outsiders: Syria above all, but also Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the
United States. The legitimacy of the formula is corrupted—in the
view of many Lebanese—by Syria's hegemony. Only Israel's
occupation of one-tenth of Lebanon's territory mitigates the Syrian
presence. One, however, must consider the counterfactual: if Syria
were not dominating Lebanon, would the arrangements provide a
stable and legitimate order? Were there a more developed public
sphere in Lebanon at this juncture, one might be able to answer "yes."
As noted above, there is the beginning of a public sphere—as
Habermas describes it—in Lebanon, but it needs to be stretched.
Unfortunately, both the domestic and the foreign indications suggest
that this will be difficult. If the formula—which is a formula for
"Consociationalism Plus"—degenerates into the frozen
confessionalism of the past, Lebanon can look forward to new
internal troubles, in addition to those that continue to rock the
country from outside. If consociationalism can pave the way for an
effective public sphere in Lebanon, then the future will be much
brighter.
Notes
1. Dankwart A. Rustow, A World of Nations (Washington: Brookings,
1967).
2. Ted R. Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical
Conflicts (Washington: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1993), 105.
3. Ibid., 28–33.
4. See Michael C. Hudson, "Arab Regimes and Democratization:
Responses to the Challenge of Political Islam," chap. 8 in The
Islamist Dilemma: The Political Role of Islamist Movements in the
Contemporary Arab World, ed. Laura Guazzone (London: Ithaca
Press, 1995).
5. Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in
Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
6. Nazih Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in
the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995); Robert Bianchi, Unruly
Corporatism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and
Volker Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria under Asad (London:
I. B. Tauris, 1995).
7. On this point, Ayubi (190–94) is an exception: he prefers to
classify consociationalism as a form of corporatism.
8. See Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative
Exploration (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977); Eric
A. Nordlinger, Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Center for International Affairs, 1972);
and Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985).

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9. Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992).
10. On this issue see Michael C. Hudson, "Democratization and the
Problem of Legitimacy in Middle East Politics," Middle East Studies
Association Bulletin 22, no.2 (December 1988): 157–71; and
"Obstacles to Democratization in the Middle East," Contention 5,
no.2 (Winter 1996): 81–105.
11. See chapter 2 of Meir Zamir, The Formation of Modern Lebanon
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985).
12. See Farid el-Khazen, "The Communal Pact of National
Identities," Papers on Lebanon, no. 12, October 1991. Oxford: Center
for Lebanese Studies.
13. For more on this issue, see Michael C. Hudson, The Precarious
Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1985); and "The Problem of Authoritative Power in
Lebanese Politics: Why Consociationalism Failed," chap. 13 in
Lebanon: A History of Conflict and Consensus, ed. Nadim Shehadi
and Dana Haffar Mills (London: Center for Lebanese Studies and I.
B. Tauris, 1988.)
14. Georges Naccache, "Deux Négations ne Font Pas une Nation"
(Two negations don't make a nation), L'Orient (Beirut), March 10,
1949, 1.
15. Jean Said Makdisi, Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir (New York:
Persea Books, 1990), 136–37.
16. See Joseph Maila, "The Document of National Understanding: A
Commentary," Prospects for Lebanon (Oxford: Center for Lebanese
Studies, 1992).
17. Text in working paper, appendix 3.
18. These figures are from Riad Tabbarah (ambassador of Lebanon to
the United States), seminar at the Georgetown University Center for
Contemporary Arab Studies, November 15, 1995.
19. E.g., Milhem Shaul (professor of sociology, Lebanese University),
personal communication, May 4, 1996.
20. Ahmad Beydoun, "Historical Fundamentals of the Lebanese
Electoral System: A Wisdom of Mixedness and Moderation," paper
presented to the Conference on Lebanon-Electoral Systems, Oxford,
January 19–21, 1996, 4.
21. Paul Salem, "Two Years of Living Dangerously: General Awn and
the Precarious Rise of Lebanon's 'Second Republic'," Beirut Review 1
(1991): 62–87.

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deals with NATO, or to consolidate its position in the former Soviet
territories of Central Asia, or in the Caucasus and Caspian regions
bordering on the Middle East itself. In the absence of an incentive to
balance other powers, the probability of U.S. intervention, short of a
threat to a vital national interest, will decrease.
The explanation of the relative stability of the Middle East region,
despite the absence of regional organization and the declining
probability (threat) of great power intervention, depends to a
considerable extent on certain of the characteristics of the region.
The Legacy of the Ottoman Empire
Most of the region is made up of successor states to the Ottoman
Empire. That empire, which originated in a small Anatolian
principality in the fourteenth century, developed into the most
powerful and extensive world empire by the end of the seventeenth
century, before falling into a long, slow decline, culminating in its
collapse in defeat at the end of World War I. Ideally, the Ottoman
Empire was the political instrument for the implementation of divine
will, as vouchsafed in the Islamic revelation, among all of mankind.
It was, in fact, a multiethnic, Islamic, authoritarian, patrimonial,
agrarian, military regime with a relatively centralized administrative
structure. In practice, provincial authority was decentralized, and a
good deal of power was widely distributed throughout a
heterogeneous population that was dispersed among diversely
structured communities.
Ethnic groups, urban and rural, often religiously homogeneous, were
recognized social units of the empire, each with its own rights and
privileges, as tradition and imperial decree determined. Naturally,
religious differences were second only to administrative and religious
function in determining social status. Ethnicity was about on a par
with sectarian affiliation and possibly less important than occupation
in fixing one's place in Ottoman society. Ethnic identity was more
localized, even if strongly felt. Where it merged with tribalism it was
perhaps more important, but only tribal leaders held high rank, and
then only locally, at the provincial or district level. Ethnic identity
was not unimportant, but it was no big deal. Theoretically, it was all
defined by the Millet system, but the practice was more complicated
and often based on custom and local politics. Ethnic conflict and
oppression were not unusual, but they did not become central to
Ottoman politics until the rise of nationalism in the late eighteenth
century. Thus, the rise of ethnic conflict in the region should be seen
in historical as well as political-cultural context.

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6
Religious and Ethnic Conflict in Sudan
Can National Unity Survive?
Gabriel Warburg
Sudan became independent, on January 1, 1956, and has been
embroiled in religious and ethnic conflicts ever since. Given its
diversity, history, and pre-independence politics, this is hardly
surprising. Thus Sudan provides us with an excellent example that
can shed light on the topic of this study, since it has been embroiled
in endless ethnic and religious conflicts and attempted contracts,
usually ending with failure.
My intention is to concentrate on the post-independence period; only
a brief historical introduction will have to suffice in order to
understand the present.
Ethnic and Religious Loyalties in the Nineteenth Century
The Turkiyya: 1821–81
Until the nineteenth century a Sudanese state did not exist, nor was
there Sudanese nationalism. The Sudan, as we know it today, started
to emerge as a political entity after its conquest by Egypt in 1820–21.
However, this conquest included only what we now call the northern
Sudan. The regions of the non-Muslim southern Sudan, which
constitute roughly one-third of the country, as well as the western
non-Arab Sultanate of Darfur, were only conquered in the 1860s and
1870s, during the reign of . Sudan constitutes an immense
geographical entity, embracing more than one million square miles
but lacking any uniting attributes in its ethnic or religious
composition. If we attempt to summarize this period, which is known
in Sudan as the First Turkiyya and in the West as the Turco-Egyptian
Sudan, the following observations seem in order: first, a semblance of
central administration and taxation were imposed. Second, an attempt
was made to replace
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Sufism, or popular Islam, by so-called Islamic orthodoxy imported
from al-Azhar. Third, Quranic schools, modeled on the Egyptian
kuttab, were established in central regions, challenging the traditional
Sufi schools. Fourth, Egyptian and European merchants opened Sudan
for international trade, including ivory and slaves. Fifth, Christian
and Muslim missionaries attempted, rather unsuccessfully, to
proselytize in the non-Muslim regions of the country. Finally, the
sources of the Nile were discovered.
Most Sudanese and European historians view the sixty years of
Turco-Egyptian rule as colonialism at its worst. Egyptian historians
and eyewitnesses, however, tend to be more generous toward their
country's role in Sudan.1
The Mahdist State: 1881–98.
The Mahdiyya ushered a completely new dimension into Sudanese
history, with rather important repercussions regarding the topic of our
discussion. It sought to revive pure Islam and lead all believers in the
correct path. It declared jihad against all those who failed to
recognize its holy mission, be they corrupt Muslims or others. In
other words, its first aim was to liberate the Sudan from its alien
rulers and to unite all Muslims behind the God-chosen deliverer,
Muhammad Ahmad ibn . In order to succeed, it needed
as much support as it could rally and it required time in order to train
its new recruits. The Mahdi and his Ansar (supporters) escaped from
the Nile valley, where they first announced their mission, in June
1881, and performed the hijra (migration) to the Nuba Mountains in
the western Sudan. There the authorities could hardly suppress them
and, not less important, the local population was ready for revolt. In
the years 1881–84 the Mahdi and his ever-increasing supporters
emerged victorious from their battles against the combined forces of
their enemies. In January 1885 they conquered Khartoum; beheaded
its British governor general, Gen. Charles Gordon; and brought the
Turco-Egyptian era to its end. There are numerous reasons that help
explain the unpredicted victory of a weak, primitively armed, and
untrained movement against well-equipped military forces. However,
in this discussion we shall look only at the ethnic and religious
aspects that helped the Mahdiyya emerge victorious.2
Ethnic "Contracts" during the Turkiyya and the Mahdiyya
The ethnic map of the Sudan is too complex to enable us to describe
it in detail. For the sake of my argument, the following details should
suffice. First, the narrow line of the Nile valley was inhabited by so-
called riverain tribes (awlad al-balad), who constituted the richest
and most educated part

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of the population. These were the first tribes to be conquered by the
Egyptians in 1820–21; they were the first to revolt against the high
taxes and other unwelcome measures; and they were the first to gain
posts within the administration and benefit from their collaboration
with the new rulers. This was especially true of the Shayqiyya tribe,
which, following an unsuccessful revolt, joined the Turkiyya as
irregular soldiers, helped in tax collection, and were granted fertile
lands and an exemption from taxes in return. However, within the
riverain tribes there were also leading slave traders who suffered
under the new regime, especially from its attempts in the 1860s and
1870s to suppress slave hunting, and hence escaped to the
southwestern regions of Sudan, where they built up private slave
armies in order to continue their trade. The most famous among them
was al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, whose slave army conquered Darfur
and handed it to the in 1875. The slave trade continued to
flourish in this area, despite the antislavery convention signed by
Egypt and Britain in 1877. Thus, most of the western tribes, such as
the Baqqara, the Fur, or the Nubas, whose livelihood was threatened,
waited for an opportunity to revolt. The opportunity arrived in 1881
when the Mahdi declared that slavery and slave-trade were permitted
by Islam and those who would join him were free to carry on as
before. We thus have a group of large and well-armed tribes who were
eager to join the Mahdi when he made his hijra in 1881 and settled in
their region. Not less important was the fact that many of the big
slavers, who belonged to the riverain tribes like the Mahdi himself,
joined the new movement together with their slave armies and their
commanders. The Mahdiyya thus gained strong political and military
allies, who joined it not purely because of its religious message.
However, they gave it the military strength required to overcome the
Turco-Egyptian army.
Another important aspect of this ethnic "contract" was the
appointment of the Mahdi's (caliphs, successors). His first
khalifa was , a minor shaykh of the , one of the
Baqqara tribes in the western Sudan. It might have been expected that
the Mahdi would appoint one of his own kith and kin to succeed him.
Instead he chose a stranger, one without any religious training, to
succeed him after his death. The reason most probably was political
and can be best explained by the ethnic "contract" that is our concern.
The khalifa was of crucial importance among the
Baqqara in western Sudan, where hardly anybody knew the Mahdi,
whereas his nephew Muhammad Sharif, whom he appointed as his
third khalifa, could bring him few new supporters. Another region
where the Mahdi required supporters was in the Red Sea Hills, where

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the non-Arab Beja tribes roamed freely. They, too, were hit by the
antislavery measures, imposed with the active help of British patrol
boats on the Red Sea. The deal between the Mahdi and the Beja was
forged with the help of , himself a slaver of Beja origin,
who commanded the Mahdist armies in the eastern Sudan until his
imprisonment in 1898.
Needless to say, not all the tribes were satisfied, since some felt
slighted by the advantages granted to their foes. Thus, the Shayqiyya
were disliked by other tribes for their role during the Turkiyya, while
the Baqqara were resented for their favorable position during the
Mahdiyya. So much so that the ashraf, the Mahdi's kinsmen, revolted
against the khalifa in 1891, following the Mahdi's death,
hoping to recuperate some of their losses. In order to strengthen his
position in Omdurman, where he had few supporters, the khalifa
forced his tribe to migrate from the west and settle in the
fertile Gezira, south of Omdurman, to the dismay and anger of the
original inhabitants of the area.
The southern, non-Muslim tribes did not play an active role in these
events. They suffered both during the Turkiyya and the Mahdiyya and
continued to be enslaved throughout these years. Only those among
the southerners who embraced Islam and joined the Egyptian army
played an active role within the ruling elite. This was true also during
the Mahdiyya, when most of the slave armies, now renamed
jihadiyya, became the elite corps of the Mahdist army. However, they
did so only after they had lost their ethnic and religious identities and
thus were no longer accepted by their own tribes.
Religious Conflicts and Alliances in the Nineteenth Century
The Islamization of Sudan was a long process, performed primarily
by Muslim traders (jallaba) and Sufi teachers, who arrived in Sudan
from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula. It was a very lax and
unsophisticated Islam, embracing many pagan beliefs, which it
encountered in the Sudan's tribal society. Hence, the clash with so-
called orthodox Islam, which was imported from Egypt by the
conquerors, was inevitable.
The following examples prove this point. The Khatmiyya Sufi order,
which spread its message in the northern Sudan, arrived in Sudan
shortly prior to the Turco-Egyptians. Not surprisingly both the
Egyptians and the Khatmiyya shaykhs soon realized that they could
benefit from their association and collaborate with each other. The
Egyptians needed local religious leaders who were close to their
concept of Islam. The Khatmiyya was in effect more "orthodox" in its
Islamic message than the older established Sufi orders. Moreover, the
Khatmiyya sought to displace Sufi groups who had preceded it into

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the Nile valley. Hence it made sense to collaborate with the Egyptian
conquerors to achieve this aim. As mentioned, the Shayqiyya tribe,
following their unsuccessful revolt against the conquerors, became
their closest and most loyal allies in the riverain Sudan. They were
therefore an obvious target for the Khatmiyya order, which soon
succeeded to gain the loyalty of most of the Shayqiyya shaykhs.
Another riverain tribe was the , who inhabited the region south
of the Shayqiyya, with their center in al-Damir. A holy family called
al-Majadhib had over the years forged a strong alliance with the
tribe's leaders. They established schools in the region and received
lands in return for their services. Following the revolt of the
in 1822, in protest against excessive taxes, many of them were
massacred and the survivors found refuge in neighboring countries.
Consequently, the Majdhubiyya too was ousted from the region and
was replaced by the Khatmiyya. The Khatmiyya also gained
economically under its Egyptian patrons, since it received lands and
subsidies from the government, and its leaders could live in relative
luxury in Egypt following the Mahdist revolt.
The case of the Mahdiyya is even more revealing. The Mahdi sought
his support first and foremost among the Sufi Shaykhs who had
suffered under the Turkiyya and lost much of their properties and
influence. Hence, with the exception of the Khatmiyya, he gained the
support of most Sufi orders. If we read his early letters, written
between 1881 and 1884, we'll discover that they are couched in Sufi
terminology and treat Sufism with respect. However, once the Mahdi
was sure of victory he changed the tune, since he did not need the
competition of the old established holy families any longer. Let us
recall , the Beja leader who joined the Mahdi after the
conquest of El-Obeid in 1883. The Mahdi handed him a letter to the
leader of the Majdhubiyya, who had settled in the Red Sea Hills
following his expulsion from the Nile valley. We thus have an
example that indicates how politics, economics, and religion go hand
in hand. The Majadhib and the Beja, who had suffered under the
Turco-Egyptians, joined forces with the Mahdi in order to regain their
previous positions. Furthermore, the advantages they gained as a
result of this coalition exceeded by far their real standing in the tribal
or religious maps of the northern Sudan.
The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan: 1899–1955
The policy adopted by the new government of Sudan, namely the so-
called Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, was enunciated by Lord
Kitchener, its first governor-general, in his "Memorandum to
Mudirs," which was sent to the British foreign office on March 17,
1899.3 First, he stated that neither the

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Egyptian nor the Mahdist governments had served the Sudan. Hence,
British officers should build up a new system of government, with the
collaboration of the "better class of native," which would be based on
low taxation, the toleration of domestic slavery, and the
encouragement of Orthodox Islam as opposed to Sufism. As for the
tribal population, here the declared aim was to encourage tribal
leadership, to delegate various government functions to the shaykhs,
and, finally, not to repeat the mistakes made in India, where too many
youngsters received education and hence its frustrated intelligentsia
soon clashed with its colonial masters.
Religious Conflicts and Contracts
When examining religious or ethnic policies and attempted
"contracts" during those years, we should bear in mind that the
condominium lasted for fifty-six years and hence suffered from
certain inconsistencies. Of these two aspects of policy, religion is
easier to examine and comprehend. First, the attempt to strengthen
orthodox Islam in order to replace Sufism failed as dismally in the
condominium as it did during the Turkiyya. Secondly, the pledge to
uproot Mahdism also failed, since the legacy of the movement was
too strong to overcome. Finally, the separation of church and state,
which was an axiomatic belief as far as the British were concerned,
was bound to fail in a country that had experienced its first
independence as a Mahdist state. Hence, the British administrators
were soon forced to change direction and began collaborating not
only with the Khatmiyya Sufi order but also with the neo-Mahdist
Ansar. They did not admit at the time that this would lead to the
politicization of Islam, but in the 1920s they could no longer ignore
it.
This shift in policy started with the outbreak of World War I, when
Great Britain was attempting to gain allies against Turkey among
Muslim leaders within its empire. The MacMahon-Hussein letters,
leading to the so-called Arab Revolt in 1916, are the best-known
manifestation of this policy. In Sudan the British had two obvious
candidates, namely the respective leaders of the Khatmiyya and the
Mahdists. They encouraged Sayyid , leader of the
Khatmiyya, to use his contacts in the Hejaz in order to gain
Hashemite support for the British and their allies. However, by far
more surprising and with far-reaching repercussions was their
encouragement of Sayyid al-Rahman al-Mahdi—the Mahdi's
youngest son who had hitherto been under government surveillance—
to gather the support of his Mahdist followers against the Turks. The
Mahdiyya, since it first appeared in 1881, had declared a jihad against
the Ottoman Sultan and his Egyptian prodigies. Hence

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it was easy to convince the Ansar, as the neo-Mahdists were called, to
fight the common enemy once again. However, British officials who
believed one could exploit the Mahdists when needed and then
discard them, had made a grave mistake. Pandora's box had been
opened and the Mahdists were once again in the saddle—from which
it was impossible to dislocate them. There were long and bitter
recriminations between British officials who accused each other of
having encouraged a fanatic Islamic movement that would be hard to
contain. This historical controversy is kept alive by present-day
politicians and scholars, both in Sudan and elsewhere, but the
prevailing view is that British collaboration with the neo-Mahdists
was primarily aimed against Egypt and its desire to unite the two
countries.4
This brings us to the second part of the puzzle, namely the Khatmiyya
Sufi order. The Khatmiyya had forged a close alliance with the
Egyptians during the nineteenth century and denounced the Mahdi as
a false "messiah" (mutamahdi). During the Mahdiyya most of the
Khatmiyya leaders lived in exile in Egypt; they returned to Sudan
only in 1899, after the Mahdist state had been destroyed. Two very
obvious conclusions can be drawn: first, that the Khatmiyya would
continue to view the Mahdists as their arch enemies and resent
whomever would encourage them; secondly, that Egypt, who had
encouraged the Khatmiyya in the 1820s, would once again try to win
its support. This did not happen immediately, since the British
officials also favored the Khatmiyya and regarded its leader, Sayyid
, as the most trustworthy Muslim leader in Sudan. But
once the Mahdists were favored as prospective allies, the Khatmiyya
was forced into the Egyptian corner. In fact, the dual administration
of Sudan enabled the antagonists to choose their respective partners,
thereby creating a "dual contract." Thus, after World War II, when
Sudan was about to be granted the right of self-determination to the
dismay of the Egyptians, who viewed unity as the only option, there
were two political-religious groups (or parties) in Sudan. First, the
pro-Egyptian camp, which was a coalition between the intelligentsia
and the Khatmiyya, organized within the National Unionist Party
(NUP). Second, the pro-independence camp, which was mainly the
Umma Party, supported by neo-Mahdism and backed by tribal leaders
from the western Sudan and the Gezira.
There is, however, a third element that fits into this religious-ethnic
puzzle, namely the non-Muslim south. Originally, the British decided
to close the south in order to keep Islam from penetrating that region.
The lingua franca of the south was English, not Arabic, and Sunday
became the official day of rest. It encouraged Christian missionaries
from a wide variety of denomina--

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tions to proselytize in that region and establish schools for their
adherents. There were even thoughts that the south should be
separated from the north and joined with British East Africa. This
would enable them to defend Britain's imperial interests against the
onslaught of Islam and Arab nationalism. However, these thoughts
never became official policy; in 1945, with Britain nearly bankrupt
and the Labor Party in power, a new southern policy was adopted that
would help the united Sudan gain independence.
Ethnic Policies and Conflicts during the Condominium
Tribal leaders were the favored candidates for Great Britain when it
sought to lay the foundations for the future independent Sudan. On
the one hand, Great Britain did not tolerate the involvement of
religious leaders in politics; on the other hand, it feared the
emergence of a secular Sudanese intelligentsia with political
ambitions that would lead to fanatic nationalism, as it had in India
and Egypt. The choice was therefore self-evident: the traditional
shaykhs had ruled their respective tribes for hundreds of years before
the Turco-Egyptian conquest; they would be trained to do so again. In
the early years of the condominium numerous halfhearted attempts
were made in order to boost tribal authority. Several ordinances were
promulgated to that effect, culminating in the Native Courts
Ordinance of 1932. However, since many of the tribes were either too
weak or too small to act as independent units and many of the
shaykhs were no more than poorly paid government officials, so-
called "indirect rule" had no chance to succeed in twentieth-century
Sudan.
There were, however, a few exceptions of significance for our
discussion. First, the sultanate of Darfur had been independent until
1916, when it was conquered by the British and made part of Sudan.
The Fur were non-Arab Muslims who had been ruled by their own
sultans for many centuries. Hence it seemed an ideal location for
indirect rule under a member of its royal family. The government
hoped thereby to overcome intertribal warfare, to save money, and to
prove that indirect rule was still feasible. In December 1928
, the son of a previous sultan, was appointed commissioner
(maqdum) in Zalingei in southern Darfur. In 1932 he was officially
titled amir, and his success to reestablish Fur authority was such that
the British announced their intention of reviving the Fur royal
dynasty. However, success was short lived since suddenly
died and was succeeded by his son Muhammad, "on probation."
Muhammad was reported to be a "half-baked effendi"; in other words,
he belonged to the pseudo-Westernized intelligentsia for whom the
British administrators had little patience.

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Furthermore, the ideology of indirect rule implied a reversion to solid
traditional leadership and not to unjust and corrupt effendis. Thus in
Darfur, which had the best conditions for the success of indirect rule,
it failed dismally, probably because the colonial officials could not
tolerate what they viewed as backward, inefficient, or corrupt. Hence
they interfered constantly in tribal administration and "guided" their
selected shaykhs in the "right" direction.
Indirect rule succeeded only where tribal society and leadership were
strong enough to withstand government interference. This occurred to
some extent among the Kababish and the Nuba, in Kordofan, and
among the Beja, in the Red Sea Hills. The reason was that many of
these tribes were at least seminomads and hence central government
had not yet destroyed their traditional leadership and their code of
tribal justice ( ). Of these, Shaykh , nazir of the
Kababish, epitomized to the British the freedom of desert life, which
granted him the right to rule in accordance with Kababish traditions,
unhampered by rules and regulations. In the case of the Nuba, the
ethnic contract implied their protection from the dominant
surrounding Baqqara tribes, who during the Mahdiyya had threatened
their independent survival. It also enabled them to preserve the Nuba
languages and their culture in the face of Arab superiority. Finally, a
Nuba territorial company was established in 1914, partly in order to
relieve British troops for service elsewhere, and partly in order to
withstand the impact of Islam and of Egyptian and Arab nationalism.
This brings us to the southern Sudan, where indirect rule was
introduced in practice long before it became government policy. The
logic behind this was quite practical. First, there were no funds
available to introduce proper government into this region. Hence, it
was decided to appoint a small number of British officers to rule this
vast region with little outside interference and leave the daily routine
of government in the hands of local chiefs. Secondly, as noted above,
the authorities feared that Egyptian merchants and soldiers would act
as Islamic missionaries in this non-Muslim region. It was therefore
decided in 1910 to establish Southern Territorial Companies, under
British command, and expel the Egyptian army units that had
previously served there. In reality this implied the ethnic segregation
of the south, with its own mini-army, a primitive educational system
run by Christian missionaries, and no real economic development.
Intertribal warfare continued unhampered until the late 1920s, and the
government revived tribal languages and cultures in the south so they
could withstand their northern Arab neighbors. British officers
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opment, including education; these were dismissed as ridiculous by
central government. Southern policy, as defined and implemented by
Sir Harold MacMichael in 1930, was hardly innovative; most of its
recommendations had been implemented before. However, once it
became official government policy, the separation of the south and its
treatment as a semi-independent unit could be realized without
interference from London or Cairo. In fact, the so-called southern
problem, which had existed ever since annexed its regions
to the Egyptian Sudan, was perpetuated and worsened as a result of
British colonial policy, which sought to separate the south from the
north ethnically and religiously. It is important, however, to
appreciate the fact that the south was never a united entity. It was as
diverse, both ethnically and culturally, as the rest of Sudan.
Therefore, its tribal map had to be taken into account whenever a
solution was attempted.
Another manifestation of ethnic policy significant to the post-
independence period was the migration of West Africans into Sudan
in increasing numbers following Great Britain's defeat of the Fulanis
in 1903. British administration in both Nigeria and Sudan created the
conditions under which the "Sudan road" started to flourish. To begin
with, pilgrims from West Africa (fallata) had to walk fourteen
hundred miles before reaching the railhead at El-Obeid. The motorcar
eased access somewhat in the 1920s, but the route was revolutionized
only in the 1940s with large-scale bussing across the continent
assisted by the British authorities. Since the bulk of these so-called
fallata believed in the Mahdi and regarded Sayyid
message as the Second Coming, their settlement as "slave laborers"
on the Sayyid's vast estates provided a tremendous boost for the
Ansar, both numerically and economically. Indeed, there is a famous
Sudanese saying attributed to one of the Muslim leaders: "Allah took
away our slaves but gave us the fallata."
The Independent Sudan Since 1956
There is no doubt that religious and ethnic conflicts have grown, both
in substance and in numbers, since Sudan achieved its independence
in 1956. The reasons leading to this growth are well known and are
basically similar to those in other African countries that have
achieved independence. The most obvious cause is the disappearance
of the foreign ruler against whom a semblance of national unity was
achieved. Even in Sudan, where sectarian and ethnic strife flourished
throughout the Anglo-Egyptian period, there was a moment of unity
after 1946, when all sects and parties demanded the end of colonial
rule and united in their demand for self-determination. On the

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The Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire
The breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the determination of the
boundaries of successor states was largely guided by the provincial
divisions of the empire; European imperialist interests, as developed
historically; and certain geographical features, such as mountains,
deserts, rivers, and, of course, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the
Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Aqaba. But that breakup was not based
on coherent, well-formulated, nationalist doctrines—pace Woodrow
Wilson, the Fourteen Points, and the principle of national self-
determination. While concessions to the idea of eventual self-
determination were the price of the approval of the mandate system,
that system legitimated the postwar modifications of earlier (1915)
imperialist agreements regarding the partition of Ottoman territories.
In practice, the entire region was to remain subordinate to Europe and
was to be developed in a manner that would sustain the European
balance of power and European economic dominance. Modernization
and Westernization were to be pursued to the extent necessary to
facilitate imperialist policy but not to a point that might diminish the
political value of alliances with the traditional elites. In other words,
no general principle of legitimacy was proffered as a basis for
legitimizing or rationalizing the division of the region into political
entities. The rationale was what made sense in terms of the joint
interests of European, nationalist, capitalist states seeking to stabilize
their world, diminish the chances of conflict among themselves, and
shift the burdens of their mutual accommodation onto other peoples.
While the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire generally followed
provincial boundaries, some provinces were grouped together (Iraq =
Baghdad + Basra + Mosul) and others were subdivided (Damascus,
Acre). As a result the region has been fragmented, especially the
Fertile Crescent, which includes Israel, the occupied territories (Gaza
and the West Bank, Golan Heights, South Lebanon), Lebanon, Syria,
Iraq, the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq, Jordan, and, if you will,
Kuwait and Bahrain. Other areas, such as the Arabian peninsula, have
been allowed to remain almost as fragmented as they were toward the
end of the Ottoman period.
The breakup of the region; the interposition of a clutch of would-be
sovereign states in the Fertile Crescent among the better-established
and internationally recognized states (Turkey, Egypt, and Iran); and
the combination of natural barriers, long distances, and the limited
contiguity of Middle East states, not to mention the culturally
alienating consequences of the division of imperialist authority into
English-speaking, French-speaking, and Italian--

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eve of independence even the southerners were seduced into trusting
their northern brethren that they would be allowed to govern
themselves within a federal state. However, these hopes were
shattered, and in August 1955 southern equatorial units in Torit
revolted and the civil war between north and south started. The local
reasons leading to this event are unimportant. What matters is that,
except for eleven years of peace between 1972 and 1983, civil strife
has tormented the country with various degrees of intensity, leading
to immense suffering, loss of life, displacement on a large scale, and
financial and economic hardships. Consequently, there are today large
segments of the political elite, both northern and southern, who
believe that partition is the best solution.
Islamic politics played a significant role in the deteriorating
relationship between north and south. Attempts to promulgate an
Islamic constitution and to implement the , have helped
exacerbate relations even further. In effect, none of the major Muslim
political parties have ever agreed to compromise on this issue.
However, it is noteworthy that neither the neo-Mahdist Umma Party
nor the Khatmiyya-supported Democratic Unionists (DUP) have ever
insisted on its promulgation, probably fearing the consequences.5 The
only Islamist political group that consistently attempted to establish
an Islamic state based on an Islamic constitution was the Muslim
Brotherhood, renamed the National Islamic Front (NIF) since 1985.
These "modern" Islamists were determined to enforce an Islamic
constitution but were too weak to do so without sectarian support of
either the Umma or the DUP. They included, however, a substantial
number of members of the officers' corps recruited since 1977 and
with whom they shared one interest, namely to consolidate the
privileged position of the northern Muslim elite inherited from
colonialist times. In concrete terms, their vision entailed the adoption
of Islam as the religion of state, the as the main source of
public laws, and Arabic as the official language. The exponents of
this view preferred to impose it democratically, by majority vote, but
did not refrain from coercion whenever the military was in power.
Although those advocating this vision never agreed on all its details,
they were united in their desire to keep the hegemony in the hands of
the Muslim Arabic-speaking riverain elite and to exclude the
peripheral regions, whether Muslims, Christians, or pagans, from the
centers of political and economic power.6 Conversely, those in the
marginalized regions who received a raw deal both under colonial
rule and since independence have advocated the redistribution of
wealth so as to compensate their historically neglected regions. They
also support the creation of a federal or confederal secular state in
which power is shared and

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which would enable other cultures and languages to flourish
alongside Islam and Arabic. These two visions have remained at the
center of the Sudan's constitutional conflict, and until 1986 all
northern political parties, except the communists, have rejected a
federal solution and insisted that the permanent constitution would be
Islamic and should be determined by a democratic majority. They
promised the non-Muslim and non-Arab minorities to preserve their
rights, allow them to use their languages, and to develop their
cultures on a status similar to ahl al-dhimma. Provided, however, that
the predominance of Arabic was preserved in educational institutions
and state offices and Islam remained unchallenged as the religion of
state. Under the third democratic government, in the years 1986–89, a
somewhat different approach was adopted that advocated a national
consensus as a precondition for the formulation of a permanent
constitution. A National Constitutional Conference was to undertake
this task. However, it was not even convened during the three years of
the regime's existence, due to the opposition of the NIF. The NIF was
aware of its weakness, should a constitution advocating multicultural
rights and the freedom of religions be promulgated. Lacking the
hereditary sectarian support enjoyed by the Umma and the DUP, the
NIF needed time in order to consolidate its grip on state power. This
was one of the reasons for its cooperation with Numayri from 1977 to
1985 and for the NIF-inspired military coup in June 1989.7
The elusive Islamic constitution has therefore failed to materialize,
despite the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Sudan and the
repeated commitment of its two main political parties (the Umma and
the DUP) and the even more extreme support of the Muslim Brothers
(NIF) to promulgate such a constitution should they attain power. The
answer to the puzzle as to why Sudan, dominated by three Islamist
parties, remained, in effect, secular until an Islamic constitution was
imposed on it in 1998 by an alliance between the military regime and
the NIF seems to lie in the nature of Sudanese Islam. As mentioned,
Islamic parties such as the Umma and the DUP refrained from
forcing an Islamic constitution on Sudan, fearing its disintegration. In
addition, the Islamic belief system, as practiced by the Ansar and the
Khatmiyya, was traditionally more relaxed and relied on the goodwill
and loyalty of their adherents rather than on a rigorous set of
orthodox rules as propagated and implemented by force by modern
Islamists.
Under the present Islamist regime, dominated by the NIF, leaders of
all opposition parties have been meeting since 1992 on a regular basis
in Cairo, London, and Asmara in order to coordinate policies
regarding the southern Sudan, Nuba Mountains, and other
"marginalized regions." On December

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12, 1994, an agreement was signed in Chukudum between the Umma
Party and the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA) that was
defined as a "milestone political agreement." In it, "the Umma party
has clearly recognized the right of Self-determination for Southern
Sudan, as well as the other marginalised peoples of Sudan." In fact,
all Sudanese political parties except the NIF now seem to be
committed to a "contract" with the non-Muslim and non-Arab
sections of Sudanese society in order to enable Sudan to remain
united.
Since 1989, when the present regime overthrew the democratically
elected government of al-Sadiq al-Mahdi and assumed power, with
Dr. Hasan al-Turabi and the NIF as its mentors, Islamism has been
ruling the country; and there does not seem to be any inclination to
enable ethnic or religious minorities to go their own ways. The NIF
believes that the failure of Islam in southern Sudan would be the
failure of Sudanese Muslims to the international Islamic cause and
that Islam has a holy mission in the African continent and the
southern Sudan is the beginning of that mission. To quote Bona
Malwal, a leading southern politician: "The Fundamentalists' attitude
to its future relations with the South is more straightforward than that
of most Northern Sudanese political parties. The Fundamentalists
wish to conquer the South and to impose Islam on the people whether
they like it or not . . . The regime sees success in Southern Sudan as a
first step in spreading its brand of Islam into Central Africa and
beyond."8
Yet both the NIF and the military rulers have declared their
willingness to allow the southerners the right to determine their
future through a referendum and have brought about a
decentralization which, in their view, will enable ethnic groups and
non-Muslims to achieve a measure of autonomy. Indeed, according to
Turabi, the will not be enforced in non-Muslim regions, and the
so-called process of Islamization will only be concerned with
fundamental values of Islam and not with old-fashioned customs that
have no place in a modern society. Moreover, since human rights are
now recognized as binding, throughout the world, they will enjoy a
similar status in Sudan, especially since they contain no elements in
contrast with Islamic morals. This includes Muslim women, too,
since in Islam they have enjoyed all rights since the days of the
Prophet. In present-day Sudan, there are more women than men
studying at universities. Because Islam, according to Turabi, unlike
Judaism, does not seek national flags, passports, etc., it is concerned
with the "hearts and the souls of its believers." When asked whether
there would be a separation between state and religion in Sudan,
Turabi responded that the newly adopted Sudanese system followed,
in many aspects, the mod--

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ern concepts implemented in Europe and the United States, namely:
"Matters concerning belief are the prerogative of the individual . . .
There is no compulsion as far as religion is concerned, as is stated in
the Koran."9 However, Turabi admitted that since most of the
Sudanese were brought up as Muslims, and their value system is
Islamic, it will naturally have an impact on matters that have nothing
to do with religion. Turabi accused the West, in general, and the
United States, in particular, of meddling in the Sudan's internal
problems and promoting trouble in certain regions. The Western
world was against Islam, and it was not interested in promoting peace
or democracy if it meant peace under an Islamic government.
However, no matter what the West did, Islam succeeded, because "we
are believers while they are not."10 At present, neither the
southerners nor the ethnic minorities in the western and eastern
Sudan seem to be convinced by these promises, which they view as
propaganda. They continue to resist the Islamist regime despite its
promises and the hardships they have had to suffer as a result.
Self-determination, however, is still regarded by the Muslim rulers of
Sudan as unacceptable. In a recent speech by Abel Alier, a one-time
president of the southern region under Numayri, held in Khartoum, he
stated that those in the north who claim that self-determination must
lead to separation have only themselves to blame, since they ruled the
country for forty years and had a chance to unite it. "Those who are
scared about separation today and interpret self-determination as
separation . . . are guilty of being in the habit of imposing their own
social values on others; they pay lip service to social diversities and
at the same time dig in for assimilation. These are the real
separatists . . . They are capable of driving the aggrieved people to the
wall."11
Concluding Remarks
The Islamist regime in Sudan has, for the first time since
independence, opted for an Islamic state, even at the risk of ending
national unity. In other words, despite its contradicting statements, it
seems to prefer the enforcement of an Islamic constitution by
majority vote, even if it alienates large segments of its citizens and
leads to partition. Abdelwahab El-Affendi claimed that the Sudan's
history illustrates that its government was an autocracy-seeking
system accepting democracy only by default.12 This was caused by
the forces striving for an Islamic state and those opposing them.
Those in opposition include the secular elite, which controlled the
social, political, economic, and intellectual life in the country; the
non-Muslims in the south; and a hostile regional and international
climate. El-Affendi viewed the emergence of the anti-Islamic SPLM
in the 1980s as paradoxically having succeeded in

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re-creating a Mahdist-like atmosphere favorable to the emergence of
a radical Islamic state. The root cause of the state's instability is in its
structure and institutions. The very existence of the state has
remained both precarious and tentative due to the cohesiveness of the
country's local communities, based on extended families and tribes
and enhanced Sufi brotherhoods. These have acted as self-sufficient
conflict-resolution mechanisms and have thereby made the state
largely redundant. Moreover, except for the Mahdiyya, the concept of
"state" was alien to Sudan. It was imposed from the outside and
therefore failed to achieve reconciliation with the tradition-based
institutions within society.
Numayri's regime was the only one that twice came close to
achieving this aim. First in 1972, with the conclusion of the Addis
Ababa agreement, which ended the civil war in the south, and second,
in 1983 with the implementation of the laws. Ironically, only an
autocratic regime could achieve this because it did not have to pay
heed to the aspirations of the minorities who opposed these steps.
Numayri could marshal the support he needed for the accommodation
with the south, both within the armed forces and the secular elite in
the 1970s, just as he could gather support for his Islamic path in the
1980s, especially among the more radical Muslim groups. But the
rise of this radical Islamic trend brought about the emergence of a
diametrically opposed movement in the southern Sudan, culminating
in the renewed hostilities since 1983 under the banner of a united,
secular, decentralized Sudan.
Thus, we are at present witnessing in Sudan a polarization between
the radical Islamist NIF and its allies, on the one hand, and the SPLM
and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which embraces all
other Sudanese political parties, on the other hand, with "[m]oderate
opinion being progressively squeezed into an ever-narrowing space in
the middle." The SPLM came near victory in the last years of
Numayri because of Numayri's weakened internal and international
position and the growing opposition to his policies among leftist and
secular northerners. The SPLM failed, however, because of fear
among northerners and non-Dinka southerners that an SPLM regime
would, in effect, be Dinka dominated, anti-northern, and anti-Islamic.
The more extremist the SPLM became and the more victories it
achieved on the battlefield, the more it embarrassed its northern
allies. Indeed, according to El-Affendi, it became clear that, being a
minority movement, the SPLM could never win at the ballot box, and
that in a united Sudan the Islamic trend was likely to triumph in the
end.
Francis Mading Deng, a former Sudanese ambassador and
distinguished

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scholar, has also expressed his views on this topic. Not surprisingly,
they differ from those of El-Affendi. According to Deng, if we
examine the realities of Sudan, we must admit that the atrocities and
violations of human rights, committed in the name of national unity
and of Islam, suggest that the basic pre-requisites for national unity
are lacking, and hence partition may be the answer. "While we take
pride in our racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity
as sources of enrichment, we have been torn apart by the question of
whether we should be an Islamic or a secular state. And yet those who
advocate the link between religion (Islam) and the state, and they
represent the overwhelming majority of the political leadership in the
country, do not recognize that this threatens the minority."13 Since
this majority rightly asserts that there are Muslims and Christians on
both sides of the dividing line and that Arabic is spoken in both north
and south, they claim that unity has to follow the wish of the
Democratic majority. Deng views the quest for unity as ambivalent
and unrealistic. The SPLM declared that it was fighting for a "New
Sudan that would remain united and be liberated from any
discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, culture, or gender."
According to Deng, this, like northern "proclamations" about the
universality of Islam and its tolerance to safeguard the rights of
minorities, was another example of "our tendency to cloud the truth."
In reality, the SPLM knew that it was more popular both in Africa and
the world to struggle for justice and national unity than it was to call
for separation; hence, "separation could then be a fall-back position."
In fact, the popularity of the SPLA's slogans convinced many
southern leaders, previously committed to separation, that the idea
was worth supporting, since, in the long run, "it made the objective of
separation far more possible than had previously been the case."14
The paradox reached its peak following the June 1989 coup, led by
, who declared initially that he was willing to let the
south go its own way.
However, by then the belief in the "united new Sudan" became so
compelling that many northern politicians sought to usurp the vessel
of the new Sudan and fill it with their own Islamic-Arab blend.
Within their new Sudan, the south would tolerantly be accommodated
in a corner, exempted from the Islamic agenda, in the faith that the
inevitable long-term outcome would be the total Islamization and
Arabization of the Sudan as a base for an ever-wider reach deeper
into the continent of Africa and beyond.15 According to Deng:
It is now becoming increasingly recognized that the tendency to
identify the north as Arab and Islamic and to contrast it with the
"animist,"

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"Christian" south presupposes a degree of racial, cultural, and
religious homogeneity that oversimplifies and falsifies a dynamic
picture of pluralism with internal differences and potential for
realignment across the dividing line. Historical and contemporary
realities tell us that while Arabic is spoken throughout the north and
Islam is the religion of the overwhelming majority, northerners still
see themselves largely in terms of "tribes," many of whom have
retained their indigenous languages, some of whom look racially
quite Negroid, and most of whom practice a version of Islam that is
far from orthodox."16
A similar complexity exists in the south, where one of the causes
leading to the collapse of the Addis Ababa agreement in 1983 was
tribal and ethnic conflicts within that region. Two southern leaders,
Abel Alier and Joseph Lagu, have personified this conflict between
the predominant Dinka and the smaller tribes in the equatorial south.
This has enabled President Numayri to redivide the south into three
separate regions by presidential decree, thus undermining ten years of
planning and building the autonomous government of the southern
Sudan. In a study of the causes leading to this collapse, Terje Tvedt
stated: "In the Southern Sudan, where ethnic groups as social
categories have been more important than social class, one of the
paramount problems in building up the administration has been one
of 'ethnic arithmetic'."17 The failure of the southern regional
government during the years 1972–83 is to some extent the result of
its inability to come to grips with the ethnic puzzle.
Last but not least, the religious and ethnic diversity has brought about
the constant involvement of the army in politics. It seems easier to
solve problems by force than to reach an accommodation or a
"contract" through negotiations. At stake are the nature of the state
and its centralist approach. Will the Sudan be secular or Islamist,
unitary or federal? Most northern elites have insisted on a unitary
system with unlimited democratic government that would enable
them to enforce their Islamist approach on the non-Muslim and non-
Arab minorities. Since 1977 the Muslim Brothers (later the NIF), led
by Turabi, have succeeded in gaining the support of the young
officers corps. Thus, they were able to gain power in June 1989, when
they feared that an accommodation between the Sudan government,
under al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, and the SPLA was imminent. Ideologically
they continue to preach for democracy, but only if it serves the
establishment of an Islamic state.18 The southerners have opted for
constitutional democracy that would guarantee the rights of the
minorities to live in accordance with their own religions and cultures
and would also safeguard their political and economic

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rights within a federal state. Which of these conflicting views will
emerge victorious is at present impossible to predict.
In conclusion, I would like to quote from a study on Islam and
democracy that deals with Sudan: "The conflict, in principle, is not
between Islam and democracy in Sudan. The Islamists have long
participated in democratic politics, and define their desired political
system in democratic terms. The real conflict is between different
options for defining the relationship between Islam and democracy in
the Sudanese context. The established relationship is the failed
system of sectarian politics. The option of a secular political system
seems improbable under current conditions. The kind of option
remaining is to create a nonsectarian system that is both Islamically
identifiable and able to include, voluntarily, secularists and non-
Muslim Sudanese."19
The basis of this assumption is that there is no conflict between Islam
and democracy but "between different options of defining the
relationship between Islam and democracy in the Sudanese context."
This raises two questions: first, can a majority force its religious
views, whatever they may be, on a minority? Secondly, is the status of
ahl al-dhimma, offered to non-Muslims in an Islamic state by
Islamists like Turabi, a democratically acceptable one? If it is, why
do Islamists like Muhammad or al-Sadiq al-Mahdi
claim that this status cannot be applied in a democracy, since it would
make non-Muslims into second-class citizens? Finally, it is not clear
whether Islamists, such as Turabi, are preaching the same "Islam" and
the same "democracy" as those advocated by their antagonists,
whether Muslims or non-Muslims. It seems, therefore, that we are as
far from a satisfactory solution in Sudan as we were in 1956, when
the country gained independence.
Notes.
1. Anders Bjørkello, Prelude to the Mahdiyya (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989); ,
(The lie of Egyptian colonialism of the
Sudan) (Cairo: lil-kitab, 1988).
2. P.M. Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898, 2d ed.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970); Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi,
(They ask you about the Mahdiyya) (Beirut: dar al-
qadaya, 1975).
3. PRO FO 78\5022.
4. On this controversy see my article, "British Policy towards the
Ansar in Sudan: A Note on an Historical Controversy," Middle
Eastern Studies 33, no.4 (October 1997): 675–92.

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5. Abdel Salam Sidahmed, Politics and Islam in Contemporary Sudan
(London: Curzon Press, 1997), 60–61.
6. Peter Nyot Kok, Governance and Conflict in the Sudan, 1985–
1995, Analysis, Evaluation and Documentation (Hamburg: Deutsches
Orient-Institut, Mitteilungen 53, 1996); also , "The
Elusive Islamic Constitution: The Sudanese Experience," Orient 26,
no.3 (September 1985): 329–39.
7. Kok, Governance, 121–23.
8. Sudan Democratic Gazette (SDG), no. 52, September 1994, 8.
9. Der Spiegel, no. 21, May 18, 1998, 190–96; quoted from page 194.
10. SDG, no. 55, December 1994, 8; quoting from Turabi's interview
in al-Wasat, November 7, 1994.
11. SDG, no. 69, February 1996, 10.
12. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, "Islam and Legitimacy in the Sudanese
State," paper presented to the Sudan Studies Association (SSA)
meeting, Lexington, Kentucky, 1990.
13. Francis Deng, "Crisis of Nationhood in Sudan," SSA (April 1993):
5.
14. Ibid., 6–7. See F. M. Deng, "We Must End the War," in Sudan, the
Forgotten Tragedy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute for
Peace, 1994), 12–13.
15. Ibid., 8–9.
16. Francis Deng, "War of Visions for the Nation," Middle East
Journal 44, no.4 (Autumn 1990): 598.
17. Sharif Harir and Terje Tvedt, eds., Short Cut to Decay: The Case
of Sudan (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1994), 88.
18. Hasan al-Turabi in Arthur L. Lowrie, Islam, Democracy, the State
and the West: A Round Table with Dr. Hasan Turabi (Tampa: World
and Islam Studies Enterprise, 1993), 21–22, 60–61.
19. John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 101.
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II
Iran, Islam, and the Persian Gulf
Part II deals with various dimensions of the Islamist challenge to
both traditional and nationalist regimes within the context of the
subregion that has become the major target of international
intervention.
In chapter 7, focusing on the tension—even contradiction—between
Islam and Iranian nationalism, Professor Menashri contrasts the pre-
revolutionary views and postrevolutionary policies of Ayatollah
Khomeini and his successors. Menashri shows that the Iranian ulema,
including Khomeini, were not lacking in patriotism, despite their
religious beliefs. But, during the revolutionary period they castigated
the Iranian nationalists, including the Shah, for their secular
nationalist views. Menashri then proceeds to show that, after the
revolution, the revolutionary leadership has become increasingly
pragmatic, having reached the point where the Iranian national
interest, rather than Islam, dominates decision making. The two
sentiments, if not ideologies, cannot be separated, but neither are they
politically compatible.
In chapter 8, Professor Herb asks whether or not it is rational for Gulf
to support Iranian foreign policy and otherwise challenge the
Arab majoritarian regimes they are subject to in order to improve
their political position. Herb comes to the conclusion that
"defection" is irrational, given that Iran is unlikely to subordinate the
national interest to the interest of Diaspora minorities, and that
Arab regimes in the Gulf are likely to cooperate against Iranian
intervention. Herb then surveys the situation of subordinate
communities in the emirates, in Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. He concludes
that only in Iraq, where the constitute a subordinate majority,
might it make sense to challenge the regime. Elsewhere, and in
general, accommodation is rational, and in spite of the influence of
culture, ideology, and a prevalent sense of deprivation, the majority
of the act rationally.

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speaking colonial systems, minimized the degree to which any
regional state might be able to assert its influence throughout the
region.
The System of Successor States
Alien imperial fragmentation of the region has been reinforced by
local heterogeneity, sectarian and linguistic differences, and the
reluctance of post-Ottoman elites (often themselves derived from
Ottoman elites) to give up any part of the "sovereign" power they
gained when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and they became heirs to
the authority of the imperialist powers.
International conditions within the Middle East were not conducive to
long-term, effective alliance formation because (1) states were not
able to help one another (due to lack of resources, long distances,
pressures from former colonial powers, etc.); (2) states did not trust
one another (there was no common principle of legitimacy); (3) it
was easy to foment domestic unrest because the great powers could
easily intervene, provide friends with arms, and embargo the sale of
arms to troublemakers; and (4) it was relatively easy to bolster the
defenses of buffer states or punish those who threatened buffer states.
The Arab League (founded in 1945) provided neither an effective
collective security system nor a regional security arrangement, and it
was unable to guarantee that regional treaties and alliances would be
honored.
Whatever stability was achieved was the product of intra-Arab
balancing to prevent the emergence of an Arab hegemon, the unequal
division of the burdens of the conflict with Israel among the Arab
states, the reliance of Iran and Turkey on the United States to protect
them from possible Soviet aggression or subversion, U.S. support of
Israel for both Cold War and domestic reasons, and the fear of
domestic revolution. In sum, local, not regionwide, balances
sustained by extra-regional influence and lack of trust encouraged a
kind of disorderly, even precarious, equilibrium based on military
weakness, anarchy, intervention, bipolarity, domestic strife, lack of
legitimacy, and the narrow social base of regimes.
Indications of Destabilization
But will this equilibrium now change due to the end of the Cold War,
diminished U.S. willingness to intervene, and the lesson of Boutros
Ghali's forced departure from the post of secretary-general of the
UN? The lesson is that the UN cannot set up a security system
(regional or global) that burdens the United States without at the
same time protecting U.S. interests. Desert

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In chapter 9, Professor Kepel argues that Islamist movements can
achieve power only when and where they can contrive a coalition of
(1) the Young Urban Poor, (2) the Intellectual Counterelite, and (3)
the Pious Bourgeoisie. In Iran, the Islamists succeeded in building
such a coalition, but in Algeria and Egypt they have failed. Kepel
further argues that the preconditions for such a coalition directed by
the Islamists are situational and not evolutionary, while success is not
predetermined, but a product of strategic choice. Kepel doubts that
the interests of these three key groups are convergent, and he
questions the social scientific soundness of predictions based on the
popularity of ideology alone.

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7
Iran's Revolutionary Politics
Nationalism and Islamic Identity
David Menashri
In search of a path to confront the challenge of modernism, Iran over
the past two centuries has fluctuated between extremes: from total
detachment from the West to enthusiastic emulation, then to utter
Islamization and animosity toward the West; from the legacy of King
Cyrus the Great to the tradition of Imam Ali; from an effort to base
Iranian politics on monarchical vision, pre-Islamic history, and
territorial nationalism to a supranational Islamic doctrine based on
the unity of the Islamic umma (community).1 Such contradictions
were best encapsulated in the distinctive visions of the two leading
figures of the last generation, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. From all accounts, Khomeini's
concepts prescribed the opposite approach to the shah's creed—as
against the shah's stress on Iranian nationalism, Khomeini's theory
ignored the existence of political boundaries within the Muslim
community.
For the new leaders of Iran, "Islamic Revolution" was not just a title
for a movement but an ideal they wished to put into practice
throughout the Muslim world: a revolution in all spheres of life,
Islamic in character and orientation. In the first two decades of the
Islamic republic, therefore, the clerics in command concentrated on
two main interrelated targets: first, consolidation, institutionalization,
and—as far as possible—perpetuation of clerical rule; second, and
more importantly, implementation of their ideology, which would
advance the country and further promote legitimization and stability.
Eventually, the seizure of power and the tightening of clerical grips
on authority proved much easier than accomplishing their main aim:
implementing Islam as a vehicle to advance the people and the state.
The return to Islam also prescribed the revolutionary regime's initial
attitude to both subnational minorities and supranational identities
and, thus, influenced its policy toward its ethnic minorities and
regional neighbors. Yet,

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like other ideological movements, upon assuming power and faced
with the complex demands of governance, the new regime had to
gradually adapt itself to the realities. As long as he headed an
opposition movement, Khomeini depicted a "new Iran" modeled on
purely Islamic design. The wholeness of the Islamic umma, an
ecumenical concept par excellence, was the ideal that followed
naturally. Once in power, Khomeini—and, even more so, his disciples
after him—knew they could not rule by means of revolutionary
slogans. They were now called upon to manage rather than theorize
about affairs of the state. While still avowing allegiance to their
revolutionary creed, therefore, a measure of realism was inevitable—
not from a newfound moderation, but from a pragmatism responsive
to the exigencies of their situation.
The inherent tension between vision and reality did not generate a
clearcut policy. It often led to ambiguity, dualism, and contradictions.
Eventually, Iranian policy became dualistic, complex, and intricate—
a general trend of pragmatism (mainly in economic and social policy)
coupled with some radical measures (such as in Islamization). While
elements within the revolutionary establishment (usually referred to
as "conservatives") continued to preach strict allegiance to dogma,
others (often called "pragmatists") recognized the need for greater
realism in applying dogma. The same conflict applied to their attitude
to questions of Iranian nationalism and Islamic identity. The Islamic
intent prescribed the new regime's approach to the national question.
Yet, realities forced a somewhat greater realism and an emphasis "on
reasons of the state" as against an "ideological crusade."2 Eventually,
"the primary political arena, even for avowed Islamic
'internationalists' who take over governments, soon becomes the
existing nation-state."3
It is the purpose of this chapter to examine such tensions and point to
the forces that shape Iranian attitude toward supranational (religious)
and subnational (ethnic) loyalties in the transition from the monarchy
to the Islamic regime.
Oppositionists' Vision: An Islamic Order
Tension between national and Islamic frameworks of identification
has been continuous in the modern Middle East. Attempts at
complete or partial unity of the Muslim world have been
unsuccessful, as have other supranational movements such as pan-
Africanism or pan-Slavism.4 In the Middle East, in spite of the
attraction of such concepts as pan-Islamism, pan-Turkism, and pan-
Arabism, the doctrine of the territorial state prevailed. The tendency
to abandon supraterritorial concepts in favor of the idea of the
territorial state became even more abundantly evident in the 1970s
(such as in Egypt in the

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transition from Nasser to Sadat). The Islamic revolution in Iran
sought to move the country in an entirely opposite direction: from
nationalism toward the Islamic umma.
The concept of territorial nationalism is relatively new in the Middle
East. Yet, in the twentieth century, as Khadduri has stressed, despite
"Islam's tacit or expressed disapproval," second to Islam, nationalism
"dominated the minds of the Arabs to a greater extent than any other
ideology."5 This was, however, less true of Iran, an independent and
state since the Safavid period. The adoption of in Iran led
to the separation of the Sunni and worlds on a territorial basis,
making it "easier for to become associated with nationalism, or
rather to become the vehicle for the expression of nationalist
sentiments."6 Moreover, there, "was lifted out of its purely
Islamic context and merged with the Iranian historical tradition." It
offered "a way of expression to this nationality," and "the Persian idea
was reincarnated in religious form."7 Thus, "religion and nationalism
have always interacted in Iran and have shaped its national identity
and character and, to varying degrees, its international behavior."8
Khomeini, "in developing an ideology which sees the world in terms
of an apocalyptic struggle between the forces of good and evil," has
"gone beyond traditional Ithna Ashari messianism."9
In fact, in its early days, at the turn of the century, the Iranian
constitutional (and, in a way, national) movement had the support of
the ulema (clerics). The "nationalism of much of the liberal
constitutional element was inextricably interwoven with devotion to
Islam."10 Yet, by and large, early Iranian nationalism has been
concerned less with the issue of nationhood than with freedom.
Questions of the oneness of the Iranian nation and the constituent
elements of its identity were not the major creed of the Iranian
intellectuals then. Instead they focused on demand for a constitution,
a campaign against corruption and criticism of internal decadence
and foreign encroachment. Iranian ulema, therefore, hardly felt the
necessity to pronounce on the question of nationalism. When they
did, however, they usually denounced it as "an imported heresy
undermining Muslim unity."11
The challenge to the national concept emerged when the Pahlavi
regime moved to base Iranian nationalism on new ideological
foundations, making it synonymous with cultural change,
Westernization, and secularism, or even striving to identify it with the
monarchy and the shah. The campaign against nationalism then
became part and parcel of the opposition to the regime (see below).
In exile, Khomeini seemed to disregard the national, sectarian, and
ethnic differences within the community of believers, as well as the
fact that

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are only a small minority in Islam. In his book Kashf-e Asrar
(Revealing of the secrets), written in the early 1940s, Khomeini still
provided a cautious defense of Iranian nationalism. While claiming
that modern states are "products of man's limited ideals" and
stressing that Islam meant to "remove the borders" between states,
establishing thus "one general state" (yek keshvar-e hamegani),12 this
utopian vision hardly proved any categorical denunciation of the
nation-state.13 Moreover, he even used at that time some patriotic
terminology, such as in addressing his readers as "dear compatriots"
(hammihanan), "young lovers of Iran" (Irandust), and "Iranians who
desire glory."14 Unlike in the later Velayat-e Faqih, he did not stress
Islamic unity. On the contrary, Kashf-e Asrar attests to the
profound hatred of Sunnis and their feeling of superiority. He speaks
of the Umayyid and the Abbasid dynasties as the worst (badtarin) and
most usurpatory (zalemanetarin) regimes and accuses their caliphs of
killing the Imams.15 Such views expressed by Khomeini well
into the 1960s were in keeping with the attitudes then current among
the mainstream Iranian ulema. The taqlid (literally, source of
imitation; the supreme religious authority) of that time, Ayatollah
Mohammad Hosein Borujerdi, for instance, seemed to view both the
monarchy and Islam as fundamental to Iranian nationalism and wrote
in defense of nationalist concepts.16
By contrast, from the late 1960s Khomeini expressed ecumenical
concepts. He considered the Iranian revolution a stage and an
instrument in attaining Islamic unity (moral, if not political) and as a
model for imitation by other Muslims: "Our movement is for an
Islamic goal, not for Iran alone . . . Iran has [only] been the starting
point."17 The concept of nationalism became alien to him, and he
viewed it as an "imperialist plot" to divide and weaken Islam.
Nationalism, he then claimed, was no better than tribal solidarity (
).18
From the same premise, he vigorously denied the existence of ethnic
or Muslim-religious minorities within the Islamic community and
consequently refused to guarantee them any specific rights. His
statement of December 1979, following the approval of the new
constitution, was typical:
Sometimes the word "minorities" is used to refer to people such as
the Kurds, Lurs, Turks, Persians, Baluchis and such. These people
should not be called minorities, because this term assumes that there
is a difference between these brothers. In Islam, such a difference has
no place at all. There is no difference among Muslims who speak
different languages, for instance, the Arabs or the Persians. It is very
probable that such problems have been created by those who do not
wish the Muslim countries

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to be united. . . . They create the issues of nationalism, of pan-
Iranism, pan-Turkism, and such isms, which are contrary to Islamic
doctrines. Their plan is to destroy Islam and the Islamic
philosophy.19
Khomeini further deplored that the Muslim world, in a futile attempt
to cure its ills, had embraced such alien ideologies as pan-Arabism
and nationalism; he proposed that it opt instead for the familiar,
indigenous, and tested solution: the return to Islam. He accused
imperialism of having "separated the various segments of the Islamic
umma from each other and artificially created separate nations . . .
Then each of these [nations] was entrusted to one of their servants."
He called for the "unity of the Islamic umma" and the establishment
of an Islamic government "to preserve the disciplined unity of the
Muslims."20 Moreover, he stated just prior to his 1979 takeover,
"Muslims are one family," even if they are "subject to different
governments" or "live in regions remote from one another."21
Furthermore, even being or Sunni "is not the question."22 In a
1980 message to the hajj pilgrims, he added: "I extend my hand of
friendship to all committed Muslims of the world and ask them to
regard as their dear brothers."23 Such a philosophy is manifest in
the 1979 constitution, which also reveals the difficulty of its
implementation. According to it, "all Muslims" are "one nation," and
the government must exert "continuous efforts" to realize "the
political, economic, and cultural unity of the Islamic world" (art. 11).
Yet, the same constitution also makes the "safeguarding of the
independence and integrity of the Iranian territory" the basis of Iran's
foreign policy (art. 152).
It should be noted that such views of Khomeini on nationalism did
not gain much support then among the leading Iranian ulema, mainly
those of the rank of (grand ayatollahs), with the
exception of Hosein . 24 As in many other fields, the
greatest ideological challenge was posed by Ayatollah Kazem
, the most prominent ayatollah in Iran on the eve of the
revolution.25 His point of departure was an Iranist one, and his views
lacked pan-Islamic motifs. He seemed to regard Islam as the cohesive
element of Iranian nationalism and the main instrument in
strengthening its national unity and sovereignty.26 As an Azeri and
liberal he supported "local rights" for minorities, although he too
objected to separatism or secession.27 Although all of Iran's people
have the right to autonomy within the framework of the Islamic
republic,28 he advised that "autonomy seekers" should delay their
demands "until the government is fully stabilized." Azerbaijan, he
added in 1979, "was part and parcel of Iran," and what was important
was "Iran and its territorial integrity."29
views were thus much closer to those of the political par-
-

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ties of the center and the liberal intellectuals than to those of
Khomeini. Thus, nationalism was an ideal for the National Front (as
the movement's name itself indicates), which generally viewed the
revolution as a movement of national rather than religious revival and
regarded Islam as an important instrument for forging Iranian
nationalism.30 One of their main slogans was "The entrenchment of
national sovereignty is the goal of the National Front." The Iranian
people, they argued, had "an Iranian national identity" as well as an
Islamic identity.31 While for Khomeini the bulwark against
imperialism was Islam, for them it was nationalism. Islam and
nationalism were the "two sides of the same coin," complementary
rather than contradictory.
Although the origins of Khomeini's concepts of the 1970s can be
found in Islamic and thought throughout the ages, none of
them had a significant following among the leading Iranian ulema of
recent centuries. Khomeini not only developed such ideas into a
comprehensive worldview but also made them the ideology of his
movement and, ultimately, and ideal for the Islamic regime in power.
How can one account for the profound change in his national concepts
between the 1940s and the 1970s? In a way, such convictions had
their philosophical roots in the legacy of the intellectual discourse of
the last century. Thus, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani formulated many
thoughts that Khomeini later made his own. In 1894, Abul-Hasan
Mirza (known as Shaykh ) in a tract entitled Ettehad-e Islam
(Islamic unity) urged Muslims to halt their decline by placing
themselves under the leadership of Abdulhamid, "this enlightened,
wise [Ottoman] Sultan, intent on unifying the Muslim world."32 Half
a century later, Ayatollah Abul-Qasem Kashani and the
Islam also stressed Islamic solidarity.33 So did a number of religious
teachers and preachers, who denounced the glorification of Iran's pre-
Islamic culture, asserting that the Sasanid state was based on social
injustice and moral depravity.34 If their pan-Islam often appeared
tactical rather than ideological, then this was typical of all Iranian
pan-Islamists.35 Khomeini's struggle, too, as Mangol Bayat pointed
out, was political, and his motives "had little to do with ideological
traditions." He "instituted political innovation in the garb of
traditional Islam."36
The atmosphere in Najaf—a major center for religious schooling in
which scholars and tullab (madrasa students) from different
nationalities gathered—was similarly supportive of fostering such
visions. It was there that radical neofundamentalism was advanced to
some degree by (the ) Ayatollahs Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr
and Muhsin al-Hakim.37 Although further study of such an influence
is still imperative, the fact that there was a kind of resonance is
beyond argument. Moreover, among Iraqi ulema there was

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greater tendency for ecumenism than elsewhere in the Muslim world.
Their situation compelled them to deal with relations more
frequently than their Iranian coreligionists, where constituted the
vast majority of the population.38 For Iranians this was a question of
foreign relations; for Iraqis, an existential issue right on their
doorstep.
Strident radical voices also came from the Sunni world and may have
influenced Khomeini as well. There is, after all, much similarity
between his "national" views since the late 1960s and those of other
intellectuals elsewhere in the Muslim world, such as
Mawdudi, Abul-Hasan Nadwi, and Sayyid Qutb. Mawdudi urged
Muslims to overcome the "diabolical conspiracy" of nationalism.
Nadwi propagated ideas similar to those disseminated by Qutb in the
Middle East. According to the latter, any loyalty, other than to dar al-
Islam (the abode of Islam)—to family, race, or territory—is
"tribalism of the period of ignorance ( )". God's real
chosen people, he argued, "is the Muslim community (umma),
regardless of the ethnic, racial, or territorial affiliation of its
members." Other Muslim intellectuals have similarly expressed
critical views regarding the concept of the nation-state.39
Khomeini's personal biography may have been yet another factor
making for an Islamic, rather than Iranian, identity. His family had
spent a long time in India; he spent a year in Turkey and lived some
fourteen years in Iraq; and he established contacts all over the
Muslim world. Clearly, in Najaf he became more internationalist than
ever before.
But whatever intellectual antecedents one may cite, Khomeini's
"new" ideology was to a great extent a response to emerging Iranian
realities as they evolved since the 1960s. While promoting excessive
Westernization, the shah worked to exploit religious sentiments to
reinforce national loyalty. He spoke of the "sanctity" of the homeland
(vatan), explained his mission in religious terms, and made use of
Islamic traditions to legitimize his reform program.40 Yet, at the
same time, he promoted secularization, separation of state and
religion, and restriction of clerics to matters of faith and ritual.
The shah's vision of the White Revolution and the Great Civilization
(tamaddon-e bozorg) was based on ancient Iranian culture and
Western science, not on Islam. In proclaiming the revolution in 1963,
he appealed for a triangular loyalty: God (Khoda), shah, and
homeland (mihan). When he formed the Rastakhiz (Resurrection)
Party in 1975, he demanded instead loyalty to the monarchy,
constitution, and the revolution.41 God no longer figured in the
list.42 The shah made the exclusion of Islam from official life clear
and loud on the fiftieth anniversary of his dynasty: "we, the Pahlavi

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dynasty, nurse no love but that of Iran, and no zeal but for the dignity
of Iranians; recognize no duty but that of serving our state and our
nation."43 He wished to make the monarchy, not Islam, appear as the
cohesive element of Iranian society: "We have always had differences
of race, colour, creed . . . but under the monarchy the divergencies
have been sublimated into one larger whole symbolized in the person
of the Shah."44 Yet, he reaffirmed his faith in Islam, often repeated
the story of how the saints of Islam appeared to him in his youth, and
used religious terms to describe his mission.45 In his book The White
Revolution, he wrote: "I was convinced that God had ordained me to
do certain things for the service of my nation . . . I consider myself
merely as an agent of the will of God."46 In 1973 he added: "A king
who does not need to account to anyone for what he says and does is
unavoidably doomed to loneliness." However, he was not entirely
alone, "because a force others can't perceive accompanies me. My
mystical force." Moreover, he went on to say: "I receive
messages."47 Such pretensions antagonized the ulema, as did his
emphasis on pre-Islamic history (for example, marking the 2,500th
anniversary of the monarchy in 1971; changing over from the hijra to
the imperial calendar in 1976; and oddly declaring the new year—
only five years after the 2,500th anniversary—as 2535). He presented
himself as an apostle of God, but in fact led anti-Islamic policies.
Since the pre-Islamic era, the Iranian state was based on the twin
pillars of kingship and religion. In a tract on rulership and statecraft
(probably from the sixth century), attributed to Ardeshir, he tells his
successor that "kingship and religion are twin brothers" and advises
him to be "attentive to the teaching of religion" and not to be "carried
by the glory of kingship to [display] disdain towards religion." He
warned, "a clandestine leader in religion and an official leader in
kingship can never coexist within a single kingdom, except that the
leader in religion expropriates what is in the hands of the leader of
kingship." This is so, he added, because religion is the foundation and
kingship the pillar, and the lord of the foundation has prior potency
over the entire office as against the lord of the pillar.48 It was the
"complete neglect" of such an observation by the Pahlavis, writes
Arjomand, "rather than any tendency within that aggravated the
rift" between the hierarchy and the Pahlavi state.49 Iran is a
country "with a basic tension between the national and religious poles
of its culture," adds Hunter, "politics based on either purely
nationalist or purely religious premise have triggered popular
reaction."50 Thus, while the shah had equated the monarchy,
nationalism, and the reform revolution, Khomeini and his
revolutionary movement, opposing him, anathematized all three.

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The Islamic Republic: Implementing the Doctrine
Since assuming power, the Islamic regime's doctrinaire rejection of
nationalism was gradually whittled down in the face of realities.
Though national considerations were alien to its dogma, the new
regime chose to act—toward the ethnic minorities and the Muslim
world—primarily from a perception of Iran's national interest. How
does their assertion that there was no difference between Muslims—
neither an ethnic nor sectarian affiliation—accord with the article of
the 1979 constitution laying down that only a of Iranian origin
can hold office as president?51 How can one reconcile the abhorrence
of national divisions within Islam with the insistence that the Gulf
must be called Persian?52 Khomeini was in fact in an awkward
position: "as the Iranian head of state he cannot disavow the idea of
the nation-state, but as a revolutionary Islamic leader he cannot make
his commitment to the national idea too strong or his commitment to
the umma too weak."53 In "so far as Khomeini chose to emphasize a
purely ideology, he alienated the Sunni Muslim world, in so far
as he emphasized a universal language, he weakened the appeal of his
vision to Iranian ."54
The ecumenical assertions typical while in opposition were toned
down after assuming power. True, Iran continued to attribute Middle
Eastern nationalism to imperialists' fear of Islam and their attempt
"to prevent the emergence of one Islamic umma, based on Islamic
culture." The Iranian leadership similarly maintained that Islam was
aimed for all peoples, not for any particular people (mellat), race
(nejad), nation (qawm), or territory (sarzemin) and rejected "any
divisions—cultural, political, racist, economic, geographical" within
the umma.55
Yet, nationalism, once viewed as a heresy, gradually reemerged as an
important ideal. No wonder, then, that during the war with Iraq
Khomeini himself used patriotic terminology. Thus, a week after the
war started he said, "the honor and the glory of the mihan (homeland)
and din (faith) are dependent on the war" and vowed to "fight the
attackers of our beloved homeland ( ) until death."56 Not
only are national poets (such as Ferdowsi, author of the national epic
Shahnameh) being taught at schools, but Iranian school textbooks
often use unprecedented patriotic language. One such example can be
found in the following passage in an elementary school textbook.
Under the title of "Love of Iran" (Irandusty) it says:
Iran is my home, Iran is the home of my brethren and sisters, the
home of my fathers, my mothers and my ancestors. Iran is my great
and precious home. Cherished Iran is my homeland. I love my
country (keshvar).

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Storm is no longer seen as a model of future U.S. methods of dealing
with regional crises. It is rather seen as a warning to avoid unlimited
commitments and as an admonition that the price of multilateralism
may be the dilution of American goals. At the very least, the United
States may be expected to carefully and deliberately scrutinize every
case in which intervention may be proposed. With less probability of
U.S. intervention, and almost no probability of independent Russian
intervention in the short run, can the Middle East powers support
their own weight in the sense of maintaining regional equilibrium
without outside support?
Both Iraq and Iran have recently emerged as potential regional
hegemons. The United States has acted to prevent either from
achieving such a goal, opposing Iraq's pan-Arab pretensions and
Iran's pan-Islamic pretensions because neither was willing to
accommodate U.S. interests–thus suggesting conditions under which
the United States might not be so willing to intervene against either
one.
There are credible indications that Turkey is contemplating a major
reordering of its international priorities for both domestic and
international reasons. The more Turkey becomes frustrated with the
payoff from its European-oriented policies, the more does an Islamic
or Middle East/Caucasus/Central Asian oriented policy look
attractive. There is a dispute among Turkish elites regarding the
weight and character of the Islamic aspects of the new regional
strategy, but both Erbakan's attempt to strengthen relations with Iran
and the generals' decision to engage in a major military operation in
northern Iraq point in the same general direction. Paradoxically, that
direction includes the transformation of a tacit recognition of
common interests with Israel into a highly publicized political and
military alliance. While specifically targeting Syria, Turkish-Israeli
cooperation has wider implications for both Turkey's Arab and
Islamic relations. Despite the significance of this alliance, Turkey has
resolutely sought to improve its relations with a number of Arab
states and with Iran. At the same time, Turkey has sought to
demonstrate that it is able to maintain excellent relations with the
United States without giving up its own autonomy. Certainly, Turkey
is more trusted by the United States than either Iran or Iraq; and it is
more trusted by both Iran and Iraq than is the United States.
U.S. petroleum interests are closely linked to the fate of the Saudi
kingdom, but that kingdom is extremely vulnerable to both domestic
and foreign opponents. It is fairly easy to conceive of situations in
which U.S. military efforts to secure the Saudi regime would be
ineffective or would even further exacerbate the threat.

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. . . I love Iran and the free nation (mellat) of Iran with yearning and
faith (iman.) . . . I study well so that when I grow older I strive in the
path of Iran and Iranians' advancement and progress and so that I get
to know better the ways to assist my compatriots. . . . Should it one
day happen that Iran is in danger, what would my life be worthy
compared to it? In that time, I will defend my homeland like the
"victorious holy fighters" (mojahedan-e piruz). I will then repel the
enemy frustrated and defeated. I will devote myself to the assistance
of my free nation. I will choose martyrdom (shehadat) for the sake of
protecting the glory and the independence of my country and will
give away my life wholeheartedly.57
Under the title, "O Iran, O the Land of the Fearless" (sarzemin-e
daliran), another story similarly combines national and Islamic
motifs and avows to defend Iran against all foes and conspiracies.58
Inevitably, the new regime in power could not ignore the ethnic
divisions at home or disregard the existence of nation-states within
the world of Islam. The myth of Iran as a unified entity
notwithstanding, the reality is quite different. Iran has always been a
multicultural society, divided into a number of ethnic minorities
inhabiting mainly the peripheral areas: Azeri Turks in the northwest,
Kurds in the west, Arabs in the southwest, Baluchs in the southeast,
Turkomans in the northeast. Nearly half of its population is made up
of minority groups.59 They were integrated to varied degrees into the
social, economic, and political system but still posed a challenge.
Their significance, as Keddie says, "is closely related to their
numbers, their mode of life, and their location within Iran."60
Minority groups sought greater autonomy than the shah's regime
(basing itself on Western national concept) was willing to grant. Soon
they realized that the new regime (from its Islamic perspective) was
similarly unwilling to grant them the kind of local autonomy they
were seeking.
The ethnic minorities differ in their history, sectarian affiliation,
strength, and active struggles, but several common features made
them a challenge: they are concentrated mainly in peripheral areas,
with ties with parallel ethnic groups across the border (Azeris, Kurds,
Arabs, Baluchs, Turkoman); they fostered separatist movements in
the past, some of which led to short periods of independence (the
Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, the Turkish Republic of Azerbaijan);
their local-ethnic loyalty often overshadows the national, let alone
supranational loyalty; and—no less important—they all feel social
and economic deprivation and are indignant because the process of
development has bypassed their areas. The modernization process has
accomplished no more than a surface integration and has not
prevented continued backward--

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ness in the periphery.61 That some of them are largely Sunni (mostly
Kurds, Baluchs, and Turkoman) has further complicated their
interrelationship with the central government.
The primary factor shaping the Islamic regime's attitude toward the
minorities has not been their ethnic identity or religious affiliation
but their perceived challenge to Iran's political stability, territorial
integrity, and national cohesion. The constitution stipulates personal
equality "regardless of ethnic and tribal origin" but ignores their
demand for an autonomous status. Their struggle at the early stages
of the revolution was violently suppressed. Thereafter, less violence
was used, but the government still viewed developments in their
regions with caution. The Kurds and Azeris presented the most
crucial challenge. Both had links with similar groups across the
border in times of significant developments: the Kurds bordering
with Iraq in time of war; the Azeris bordering with the newly
independent Republic of Azerbaijan with the challenge of possible
instability, population migration and infiltration of irredentist
influences. Serious challenges were visible in other regions inhabited
by ethnic minorities as well: the Arab-inhabited region close to the
Gulf (especially during the Iran-Iraq War), or that of the Baluch (one
of the less-developed regions of the country).
The minorities demanded autonomy rather than secession. At the
outset of the revolution, for example, the slogan of the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP) was "democracy for Iran, autonomy (khod-
mokhtari) for Kurdistan." Their religious leader made
it clear: "We are Iranians. We want a federal republic."
Qasemlou, the KDP leader, similarly stated: "Let the central
government have control over the army, defence matters, foreign
policy and finance, [but] let us have authority over local
administration and domestic policies."62 Even this was more than the
regime would approve. Whatever hopes the Kurds initially
entertained completely faded by the time the regime was stabilized.
After two years of active struggle, the balance in Kurdistan—as in
other ethnic fronts—shifted in the government's favor. Already in
1980, to quote Qasemlou, the Kurds no longer had "any illusions
about Khomeini."63 Qasemlou added that Kurdistan was worse off
under the Islamic rule than under the monarchy.64 The government
continued to take advantage of the internal rifts, not only among
Iranian Kurds but also between the Kurds of Iran and their brethren in
Iraq.
More recently, in the struggle that evolved in August–September
1996 on the Iraqi Kurdish front, Tehran took the side of the Talabani
faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, against the Barazanis, who
were supported by Iraq. From the Iranian perspective there seems to
be no ideological prefer--

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ence to the Talabanis over the Barazanis. In fact, the more tribal and
traditional Barazanis may even appear closer to its doctrine than the
Talabanis, with their more liberal pretensions. But the latter reside
closer to Iranian territory and were willing to cooperate with Tehran
—and, among others, to contain their own brethren, the Iranian KDP,
in their bases inside Iraq.65 The interplay between Islamic regime
and the Kurds—in Iran as well as Iraq—was based more on politics
and interests than pure dogma.
The Azeris, who were much better integrated into the Iranian state,
did not lead an open confrontation against the Islamic revolution.
Whatever unrest was evident in the early days of the revolution was
suppressed by the government's law-enforcing units and frustrated by
instructions to his Azeri disciples to maintain calm. The
use of force by the revolutionary guards to disperse a rally in support
of in Qom in December 1979 marked the beginning of a
series of violent clashes, especially in Tabriz. supporters
seized the Tabriz radio station and broadcast allegiance to him.
People paraded through the streets to demonstrate their devotion to
him: "We are your soldiers, " and "Death to Khomeini."
They viewed , not Khomeini, as "the leader of the world's
Muslims."66 Resentment was again expressed (in 1982, when
the government led another campaign against ), but not of
a scale that might threaten regime stability. Yet, as in other ethnic
centers, social unrest could be easily mixed with ethnic protest. The
emergence of an Azeri independent state and the growing national
sentiments there also carried the potential of influencing Iranian
Azeris. In the spring of 1996 there were several demonstrations in
Tabriz (mainly at the university). Some of their demands had clear
ethnic color, such as the request for establishing Azeri schools in
Azerbaijan. Iranian apprehension of the "import" of Azeri
nationalism into Iran was probably one reason Tehran did not allow
officials from Baku to visit Tabriz in their political capacity.67 In a
similar line, when two deputies addressed the Majlis in Azeri,
wrote that delivering speeches in the Majlis in Arabic, Kurdish, or
any other "local language" is unacceptable. It is erroneous politically,
wrong from the point of view of "preserving the national unity," and
contradicts the constitution. Solidarity with the Muslims of
Azerbaijan is good, the paper said, but why speak in Turk-Azeri?68
In the early 1990s, several riots and acts of opposition became
evident in Iran—some of them in minorities' regions or related to
minority issues. In February 1994 disturbances in Zahedan were
followed by the bombings of Zahedan's city hall and the mosque
in March; an attempt on the life

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of an Imam in Meshhed in April; and a blast near Iran's most
important mosque, the Imam Reza mausoleum in Meshhed in June.
Observers stressed both the sectarian aspects of these incidents
(instigated by rumors that a Sunni mosque has been destroyed in
Meshhed) and their link to economic difficulties in Baluch-Sunni
areas.69 The challenge of the ethnic minorities was not removed, but
the actual violence that typified the early days of the revolution has
been somewhat mitigated since the early 1980s. The ethnic groups
gained new hopes with the election of Mohammad Khatami as Iran's
president.
Ideological retreat at the expense of national interests was abundantly
evident in Iran's regional policy. Over time, the plea for unity made
room for vaguer appeals for brotherhood (baradari), "unity of the
word" (vahdat-e kalam), and "unity of purpose" (vahdat-e hadaf).
Khomeini called for solidarity and appealed to "avoid divisions" and
preached for "empathy with one another." But he stopped short of
demanding unity, as his older theories would have required. Some of
his disciples continued taking his earlier views altogether literally,
proposing an all-Islamic committee to administer Mecca and Medina,
formation of an Islamic army, creation of an Islamic common market,
formation of an Islamic court, or making Arabic the lingua franca of
the Muslim world.70 But, except for the last point, it is difficult to
say whether such proposals were made from motives of Islamic
solidarity or were aimed at serving the more particular interests of
the Iranian state.
Eventually Ayatollah took the entire argument forward to
the point of making a distinction between positive and negative
nationalism. He approved positive (mothbat) nationalism—that is, the
"defence of the borders of the state vis-a-vis foreigners"—and
rejected only negative (manfi) nationalism, which denies the
nationalism of others and seeks to create a schism among Muslims.71
A similar trend was evident in leaflets distributed among the 1987
hajj pilgrims. They presented Khomeini as the "leader of the call" (
) for the "unity of the Muslim world" and the leader who
had always appealed to all Muslims to rise "in a united front" (safa
wahida) against their enemies. But it was made clear that the unity
Iran was preaching was based on ideological ( ) and emotional
( ) foundations only.
An analysis of Iran's politics—all around its borders—demonstrates
the degree to which the regime distanced itself from the initial
Islamic creed in favor of pragmatic policies. In fact, with very few
exceptions, whenever the ideological convictions clashed with the
interest of the state—as prescribed by the ruling elite—it was the
interests that ultimately shaped policy.
This was clearly evident in Iran's nonsupport for the 1991
uprising

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in Iraq. For all their affinity with Iran, their struggle
against Saddam Hussein and the regime, their pledge to form an
Islamic republic and their plea for the (underprivileged)—
the of Iraq deserved Iranian support. Yet, Tehran did not come
unequivocally and substantially to their aid, and with good reason: it
feared that they would fail and Iran's support would harm its interests
—a clear sign of preference of interests over dogma. While deploring
the suppression of the , Iran preferred to view the events as an
Iraqi internal issue. Stressing such a policy of expediency, ,
while wishing that "an Islamic and truly popular government . . . will
come to power" in Iraq, maintained that an Iranian intervention was
"not recommended."72 Iran may have wished to support the , but
was apprehensive of making its support public. Iraqi Kurds, by
contrast, seemed to have better chances to succeed, but Tehran had
little incentive to help them achieve such an aim: their success could
have negative influence—again, from an Iranian perspective—on its
own Kurds. Here too, the pragmatic interests of the state seemed
more powerful than the dogmatic philosophy of the revolution—yet
another sign of realpolitik.
Similarly, the Iranian 1992 move to ascertain its sovereignty over the
three islands in the mouth of the Hormuz straits—Abu Musa, the
Greater Tumb, and the Lesser Tumb—confirm that Iran's policy was
motivated in the main by realism and was more faithful to its national
interests than to its professed dogmatic creed. Evidently, it wished to
control the islands not as means to "export" Islamism but to advance
its strategic interests. Tehran claimed—using patriotic jargon—that
the islands "are integral parts" of its territories.73 Rejecting the Gulf
Cooperation Council's position over Abu Musa, which based itself on
Arab historical claim, Tehran stressed that "if geographical
demarcation" were to be decided by historical arguments, Bahrain
"and many other places," belong to Iran.74 Foreign Minister Akbar
Velayati cautioned that such a claim on their part only "spells trouble
for themselves," since Iran would not tolerate foreign infringement
upon its territorial integrity.75 Mohammad Javad Larijani (member
of the Supreme National Security Council) similarly warned, "Iran
will not allow aggression against its territorial integrity."76 After all,
Iran claimed, its sovereignty over the three islands was "based on
historical, legal and geographical facts."77 Islamic dogma did not
have much to do with its claims.
Neither did Iran's policy vis-à-vis its Afghan neighbors show any
marked ideological purity. Khalilzad, writing about the first decade of
the revolution, argued that "the ideological factor" is "insufficient as
a guide for understanding Iran's Afghan policy." More than "Islamic
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internationalism that has played an important role," he maintained.
Yet, even being alone "was not sufficient to gain Iranian
support." Iran's strategic interests led it to "follow a cautious policy
designed to avoid a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union and
pro-Soviet Afghan forces."78 This policy has been even more visible
since the takeover in October 1996 by the Taliban. On the face of it,
the Taliban were ideologically closer to Iran than Rabbani—that is,
their adamant opposition to the West and support for strict
Islamization. Yet, Taliban was supported by Pakistan and was thus not
trusted by Iran. Tehran condemned Islamabad for an ill-fated effort to
organize the Taliban and to establish them in Kabul. They were, thus,
depicted by Iran as an "Afghan pustin [fur cloak]" which has been
sewn by America, paid for by Saudi Arabia, and is being worn by the
Pakistani army.79
Similarly, in dealing with the Muslim republics of the former USSR,
the main focus was on expanding interests rather than winning souls.
This, too, remained a significant goal, though not to the point of
disrupting interests. Thus, referring to Rafsanjani's 1993 tour to five
of the republics, the Iran Times pointed to "the relative paucity of
anything to do with Islam" as one of the "curiosities" of the trip. In
fact, "Rafsanjani seemed determined to show himself as
statesmanlike rather than ideological."80 Again, Iran proved faithful
to its interests first and foremost. It wished to avoid instability and
disorder, to bar the spread of negative influences (mainly from
Azerbaijan), and to control population movement across the borders.
It was careful not to antagonize Moscow and to maintain good
relations with the republics' governments. That none of their leaders
was an ideal Islamic ruler, and that they maintained close ties with
Turkey, the United States, and Israel, did not prevent close ties.
Moreover, the effort to expand Iran's ideological influence was most
visible in Tajikistan, the closest to Iran culturally; its most
problematic relations were with Azerbaijan, the only republic.81
As the attitude toward the latter shows, Iran "wants stable regimes" in
the new republics and needs "to contain the contagion of the ethnic
revivalist movement" and prevent the spillover of the Armenian-
Azerbaijani conflict into Iran.82 Rafsanjani made it clear: Iran "will
never tolerate insecurity near its borders."83 Iran also feared that an
independent Azeri republic across the border might stimulate similar
aspirations among its own Azeris. The Azeri nationalist vision of a
"greater Azerbaijan" added to its concern, as did its worry that the
opening of the borders would lead to immigration of Azeri refugees
into Iran.84 Needless to say, the "inflammatory statements" by the
president of Azerbaijan, Abulfaz Elchibey, regarding "Southern"
Azerbaijan, and about his country's relations

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with Turkey, infuriated the Iranians. Already upon his election an
Iranian paper lashed out at Elchibey for his hostile stance against
Iran: his past call for the unification of the two Azerbaijans and his
more "recent irresponsible remarks."85
The Iranian approach to the Azeri-Armenian crisis best illustrates
such an attitude. While officially Iran adopted a neutral position and
engaged in mediation, Baku viewed its policy as simply pro-
Armenian. Eventually, also, Iran served as an important supply route
to Christian Armenia.86 The ensuing tension between Iran and
Azerbaijan became clearly visible during Velayati's visit to Baku
(March 1996), which ended in a tense press conference filled with
mutual accusations. The dispute was over Iran's relations with
Armenia and Azerbaijan's relations with Israel. While Velayati
focused on attacking Israel, Hasanov reiterated that "Iran's relations
with Armenia should be of more concern to the Iranian people." It
was Armenia, he reminded Velayati, that "occupied the Azeri soil,"
not Israel.87
True, its ideology and ambitions "obliged" Tehran to demonstrate its
"revolutionary presence" throughout the world. But as the problems
facing the regime multiplied, the tendency toward pragmatism
became more marked. The regime did not retreat from its radical
doctrine voluntarily, nor did it fully abandon the revolutionary vision.
But it has become more mindful of both the possibilities and
limitations and calculates the risks in formulating policy. Actual
policy thus succeeded somehow to combine the initial ideological
conviction with a healthy does of regard for its national interests
whenever the two clashed. This became even more visible with the
election of President Khatami.
Epilogue: The Khatami Presidency.
Khatami's stress on civil society, the right of the people (including
minorities), and freedom brings him closer to the century-old
aspirations of Iran's constitutional-national movement rather than to
Khomeini's revolutionary creed of the 1970s.
By Iranian standards Khatami is liberal, and his writings and
statements reveal devotion to Iranian interests and dialogue with
other civilizations.88 Since coming to power he seems determined to
pursue a pragmatic policy, though it is not yet clear how much
latitude his domestic rivals would allow him to promote his policies.
His accent on "the interests of the system" or "proper governance"
inescapably leads to some dogmatic deviations. Basing his argument
on Khomeini's verdicts, Khatami stressed the centrality of interest
(maslehat) in shap--

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ing politics.89 According to Khomeini, he said proper governance is
one of the primary commands of Islam.90 It should be noted that
from the same premise, Khomeini (in 1987–88) went as far as
sanctioning the state's authority to even "destroy a mosque" or
suspend the exercise of the "five pillars of faith" if state interest
(selah-e keshvar) so dictates.91 Like Rafsanjani,92 Khatami
reiterated the need to abandon empty slogans, opting instead for
practical solutions.93 In his view, demonstrating economic and
political strength will advance Iran's revolutionary values far more
than slogans.94
Khatami's program combined faith and state: "The great Iranian
nation has a great Islamic and national heritage." Despite "religious,
ethnic, and linguistic variations" Iran enjoys "a particular solidarity
and unity." The recognition of these "varieties and differences" is
"necessary for social solidarity and consensus."95 When asked on the
eve of the elections to identify "the most important issue" in his
program as president, he responded: "Frankly, there are so many
complicated issues that one finds it difficult to say which is the most
important . . . However, if you press me to select the most important
issue, I would say that the most tangible gains of our revolution are
our independence, our national sovereignty, and our national
interests."96 To Sunni Majlis members he then said: "Every Iranian,"
irrespective of religion and ethnic beliefs, must have a chance for
progress and development. Kurds, Lurs, Baluchs, Bakhtiaris, Sunnis,
and "are all Iranians and all must strive for making a developed
and powerful Iran."97 In fact, Khatami led an extensive campaign in
minorities' regions (including statements of support in Azeri).
Minorities voted for him overwhelmingly.
Khatami's pragmatic approach encompassed foreign policy, too. After
his election he made several courageously pragmatic statements.
True, he often hedged such a discourse with significant conditions
and statements of dogmatic devotion. But taking them all together,
they attest to an aptitude for change and persistence. In his view,
"foreign policy does not mean guns and rifles" but utilizing all
legitimate "international means" to convince others.98 Iran, he said,
wants relations with all the nations "which respect our independence,
dignity, and interests."99 Addressing the Islamic Conference
Organization (December 9, 1997), he stated: "Today, the replication
of the old [Islamic] civilization is neither possible . . . nor desirable."
Reiterating that this is "the era of preponderance" of Western
civilization, he proposed dialogue as the means toward mutual
understanding and genuine peace "based on the realization of the
rights of all nations." True, pragmatic statements made by Khatami
were "balanced" by the conservatives' radical expressions.
continued the customary harsh tone, blaming the hidden hands

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of arrogance for keeping Muslims apart. The West, in "its all-rounded
invasion," has "targeted our Islamic faith and character." It has
"intensely and persistently exported to our countries the culture of
laxness and disregard for religion and ethics."100
A year after the election no major breakthrough can be yet traced, and
the results of the struggle to shape the revolutionary policy are far
from being clear. Yet, while "the old guard continues to dominate,"
clearly a "smell of change is in the air."101 Rather than any
ideological conviction, the main stimuli for change rest in the
growing domestic difficulties. The experience of the last year
testifies to Khatami's awareness of the challenge and eagerness to
produce change. But it also attests to significant restrictions to
produce a dramatic change. As Islamic Iran enters its twentieth year,
it appears much maturer, with the urge for pragmatism gaining more
popular support. The stabilization of the regime seems to depend less
on the degree of its return to Islam than the degree to which it
resolves the social, economic, and political problems that initially
fueled popular discontent.
Conclusions
In general, Iran's pursuit of its goals is based on its revolutionary
ideology, a measure of realism, and considerations of its national
interests, as they were defined by the ruling elite. Even though
national considerations were alien to Khomeini's principles and his
theory of foreign relations, his regime nonetheless often chose to
conduct policy from a perception of Iran's national interest. In many
ways, thus, "Iran is moved by the same impulses that move other
states, and it uses the same rationalizations."102 While the shah
wished to base Iranian nationalism on an essentially secular
perception and pre-Islamic past, the revolutionary regime viewed
Islam as its decisive cohesive element. In ideological terms, this still
allows Iran to serve as the nucleus of a large Islamic order. But in the
pursuit of such an order Iran often operated within the constraints of
realpolitik. Until now, in most cases when the interest of the state and
the ideology of the revolution have clashed, the first emerged
triumphant.
Can the Iranian-particular national legacy and its Islamic heritage
coexist? One hundred years ago, proponents of the national creed in
the Muslim Middle East did not view their vision as necessarily
contradicting Islamic loyalties. Al-wajeb al-dini (roughly, religious
obligation) and al-wajeb al-watani (national obligation) seemed
complimentary rather than contradicting. Neither did the proponents
of the constitutional revolution deem these two as conflicting. Iran's
unique identity—Persian in a mostly Arab region and

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in a largely Sunni Middle East—and its distinctive history also
allowed for a workable balance. The shah and Khomeini, each in his
own way, attempted to upset this equilibrium. Yet, the shah could not
totally separate Iran from the tradition of Ali, as much as Khomeini
could not totally break the links with Iran's pre-Islamic history and
traditions.
The Islamic revolution attracted the world's attention to the centrality
of religion in the fabric of the Iranian society. However, the
experience of the revolutionary regime in two decades in power
reveals that one cannot detach Iran altogether from its attachment to
its distinctive cultural and national traditions, or from the influence
of its encounter with the West over the past two centuries. It appears,
therefore, that Iran will continue to shift between the various poles
until it finds the proper balance between its Islamic heritage and its
pre-Islamic tradition, between Islam and the West, between religion
and state, and between the legacy of Cyrus the Great and the tradition
of Imam Ali. Modern Iranian history shows that rather than asking
whether these two last legacies can coexist, it would be more
appropriate to ask if it is at all possible to totally separate them.
Notes
1. For a detailed discussion of some of the aspects examined here, see
my "Khomeini's Vision: Nationalism or World Order?" in David
Menashri, ed., The Iranian Revolution and the Muslim World
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990), 40–57; and "Khomeini's Policy
toward Ethnic and Religious Minorities," in Milton J. Esman and
Itamar Rabinovich, eds., Ethnicity, Pluralism and the State in the
Middle East (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). For more recent
Iranian politics, see my Revolution at a Crossroads: Iran's Domestic
Politics and Regional Ambitions (Washington: Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, 1997).
2. R. K. Ramazani, "Iran's Foreign Policy: Both North and South,"
Middle East Journal 46, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 395.
3. Roy P. Mottahedeh, "The Islamic Movement: The Case of
Democratic Movement," Contention 4, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 108.
4. Referring to supranational movements in general, Smith argues
that all such movements have failed, at least partially. National
movements, by contrast, proved successful. Anthony Smith, Theories
of Nationalism (London: Duckworth, 1971): 213–14, 228–29. See also
his Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York
University Press, 1979).
5. Majid Khadduri, Political Trends in the Arab World: The Role of
Ideas and Ideals in Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970),
8.
6. Ann K. S. Lambton, Qajar Persia (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1987), 279–80.

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With the end of the Cold War and the diminished significance of
counterbalancing the weight of pro-Soviet Arab states, Israel's
importance for American security has declined. Israel may be able to
play an important role in preventing the emergence of a regional
hegemon, but Israeli power is local rather than regional, despite its
ability to strike an occasional blow in Iraq and Tunisia. Israel's role is
now often conceived of as diminishing the possibility of the
emergence of a regional hegemon by strengthening and expanding an
alliance of moderate and pro-American states. If that group of states
is to include both Syria (plus Lebanon) and Palestine, peace must
come first. If regional and domestic developments prevent Israel
from proceeding with the peace process, Israel's value to the United
States may diminish further.
Syria, which despite its frequent opposition to the United States has
been a central player in maintaining the dynamic and fragile
equilibrium of the region, now finds itself seriously threatened and
possibly overextended. Syria is threatened not only by Israel but also
by Turkey and Iraq. Neither Israel nor Iraq appears ready to attack in
the immediate future, but Turkey threatened an invasion in the fall of
1998 and forced Syria to deport Abdallah Ocalan, the leader of the
PKK rebels. Each has the future potential and each will become more
interested when Iraq is freed of UN sanctions and returns to the
regional game. If regional equilibrium breaks down and if
multilateral or U.S. intervention is unlikely, anything that is possible
is possible.
To some extent, the stability of the region has been due to the degree
to which the role of buffer states or territories or buffering practices
has been sustained by a variety of agents. But the role of buffer states,
buffer territories, and buffering agents is now more greatly
challenged because, of course, supporting buffering policies costs
money and resources. Ultimately, it was the United States or NATO
that paid much of the cost of buffering, but as the cost goes up and
the payoff goes down, this form of stabilizing action is likely to
diminish. Syria, Iran, and Israel continue to threaten Lebanon's buffer
status. Jordan's buffer status was gravely threatened during Desert
Storm, and Iraq is likely to return to the same policies as soon as it
can. Kuwait's buffer status has been similarly compromised. The
buffering function of the Kurdish zone is now being called into
question. The emergence of a Palestinian state will end the phase
during which the occupied territories were part of the cordon
sanitaire separating Israel from the Arab states, and the Palestinian
government will have to make its own policy in this regard. Sudan
has been liberated from its role as the arena of Egyptian-Libyan
rivalry and confrontation, but it has failed to solve its own political
and economic problems. Since the emergence of the Islamic regime
in the Sudan in 1989, Islamic prin--

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7. This was done, among other ways, through the legend that Husayn,
the son of Ali, married Sharbanu, the daughter of the last of the
Sasanid kings, Yazdgird III. See Roger Savory, "The Export of Ithna
: Historical and Ideological Background," in Menashri,
Iranian Revolution and the Muslim World, 14. See also Eugene
Aubin, "Le Chiisme et la nationalité persane," Revue du Monde
Musulman 4, no. 3 (1980): 458, as quoted by Savory.
8. Shireen T. Hunter, Iran and the World: Continuity in a
Revolutionary Decade (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1990), 10.
9. Savory, 35.
10. Richard Cottam, Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1979), 135, 145.
11. Hamid Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1982), 120–22.
12. Ruhollah Khomeini, Kashf-e Asrar (Tehran: n.p., 1979), 337.
13. R. K. Ramazani, "Khomeyni's Islam in Iran's Foreign Policy," in
Adeed Dawisha, ed., Islam in Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984), 17. Reprinted in Ramazani, Revolutionary
Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1986), 20.
14. Khomeini, Kashf-e Asrar, 424.
15. Ibid., 285–86.
16. For Borujerdi and Ayatollah Mohammad Musavi Behbahani's
allusion to the Iranian military as the army of Islam, see Shahrough
Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State
Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1980), 78.
17. Ruhollah Khomeini, Islam and Revolution: Writings and
Declarations of Imam Khomeini, trans. and annot. Hamid Algar
(London: KPI, 1985), 48–49; an interview with al-Mustaqbal, January
13, 1979; Radio Tehran, May 7, 1979; Daily Report, Middle East and
North Africa (DR), May 8, 1979.
18. Al-Safir (Beirut), January 18, 19, 1979.
19. Radio Tehran, December 17, British Broadcasting Corporation,
Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), December 19, 1979.
20. Khomeini, Islam and Revolution, 48–50. Similar views were
expressed by Ayatollah Hosein Montazeri in interviews with
Kayhan (Tehran), January 16, 18, 1979.
21. Al-Safir, January 18, 1979.
22. Radio Tehran, February 13; SWB, February 15, 1979.
23. Radio Tehran, September 12; SWB, September 15, 1980.
24. Al-Nahar (Beirut), January 7, 1979.
25. For their ideological differences, see my article " Leadership:
In the Shadow of Conflicting Ideologies," Iranian Studies 13, nos. 1–
4 (1980): 119–45.
26. , August 14, 1979.
27. Radio Tehran, July 30; SWB, August 1, 1979.
28. Le Monde (Paris), July 17, 1979. See similarly his interviews in
, May 31, August 14; Bamdad, December 3, 1979.
29. Radio Tehran, August 14; SWB, August 15, 1979. See also, ,
May 31, 1979.
30. See, for example, Khabarnameh-ye Jebheh-ye Melli (Organ of the
National Front), No. 7 (October 30, 1978); No. 21 and 22 (November
21 and 22, 1978).

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31. Radio Tehran, May 1; DR, May 3, 1979.
32. Shaykh Qajar, Ettehad-e Islam (Bombay: n.p., 1894), 74–75,
in Enayat, 122.
33. Farhad Kazemi, "The Islam: Fanaticism, Politics and
Terror," in Said Amir Arjomand, ed., From Nationalism to
Revolutionary Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1984), 158–76.
34. Enayat, 123–24.
35. Cottam, 153.
36. Mangol Bayat, "Mahmud Taleqani and the Iranian Revolution," in
Martin Kramer, ed., , Resistance, and Revolution (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview, 1987), 67.
37. Marvin Zonis and Daniel Brumberg, Khomeini, the Islamic
Republic of Iran, and the Arab World, Harvard Middle East Papers,
1987; Chibli Mallat, The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer
as-Sadr, Najaf and the International (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), 1–19, 45–46.
38. Amazia Baram, National Integration and Exclusiveness in
Political Thought and Practice in Iraq under the , 1968–1982
(Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1986), 385, 437–38.
39. James Piscatori, Islam in a World of Nation-States (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 101–16; Emanuel Sivan, Radical
Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1985), 15–129.
40. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Enqelab-e Sefid (Tehran: n.p., 1967),
20–21, 120–24; Kayhan (Tehran), November 17, 1976.
41. , March 3, 1975.
42. Loyalty to Islam was nevertheless embodied in the loyalty to the
constitution, which made the official religion.
43. Kayhan International, March 23, 1976. See Marvin Zonis,
Majestic Failure: The Fall of the Shah (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991), 82.
44. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Mission for My Country (London:
Hatchinson, 1961), 327.
45. Ibid., 54–58; R. K. Karanjia, The Mind of a Monarch (London:
Allen & Unwin, 1977); Kayhan (Tehran), November 7, 1976; Oriana
Fallaci's interview with the Shah, New Republic, December 1, 1973,
15–21.
46. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Enqelab-e Sefid, 21.
47. Oriana Fallaci, "The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran," Chicago
Tribune, December 30, 1973, in Zonis, Majestic Failure, 150.
48. Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic
Revolution in Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 76.
49. Ibid., 80.
50. Hunter, Iran and the World, 10.
51. For the disqualification of a presidential candidate (Jalal al-Din
Farsi) in the first presidential campaign (1980) because his father was
an Afghan, see Menashri, Iran: Decade of War and Revolution (New
York: Holmes and Meier, 1990), 120.
52. Khomeini even rejected Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali's proposal to
name it the "Muslim Gulf"; Kayhan (Tehran), May 29, 1979.
53. Piscatori, 111.
54. Zonis and Brumberg, 74.

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55. Fourth-year high school textbook for social science ,
1986–87 edition), 132–40.
56. , September 29, 1980.
57. Fourth-year textbook in Persian for elementary schools (1981–82
edition), 194–95.
58. Fifth-year textbook in Persian for elementary schools, (1982–83
edition), 34–35.
59. Different, often contradictory, statistics on ethnic minority groups
are quoted. At the outset of the revolution, Nikki Keddie writes that
scholarly literature was in agreement that the Persian group is
"approximately 45 per cent," making it thus "a country without a
compact majority"; Nikki R. Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World:
Resistance and Revolution (New York: New York University Press,
1995), 134–35. Similarly, see Ervand Abrahamian, "Communism and
Communalism in Iran: The Tudah and the Firqah Dimukrat,"
International Journal of Middle East Studies 4, no. 3 (October 1970):
292–93. Hunter, claiming that only "about 35 percent of Iran's
population is composed of other linguistic groups," still held that
"Iran's ethnic and linguistic diversity undermines its national unity";
Iran and the World, 11. For a rough estimate of their numbers on the
eve of the revolution, see Patricia Higgins, "Minority-State Relations
in Contemporary Iran," Iranian Studies 17, no. 1 (Winter 1984): 48.
60. Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World, 134–35.
61. For a historical review of the monarchy's failure to integrate
minority groups, see Leonard M. Helfgot, "The Structural
Foundations of the National Minority Problem in Revolutionary
Iran," Iranian Studies 13, nos. 1–4 (1980): 195–214.
62. Menashri, A Decade of War and Revolution, 89–91, 138–41.
63. Le Monde, December 13, 1980; al-Hawadith (London), April 3,
1981.
64. "Voice of Iranian Kurdistan," November 16, 1980, DR, November
19, 1980. Also his statements in "Voice of Iranian Kurdistan,"
October 9, SWB, October 10, 1981. See similarly Hoseini in
Le Monde, January 14, 1982.
65. On the different Kurdish Iraqi factions, see Ofra Bengio, The
Kurdish Revolution (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuhad, 1989), 33–39. For
the developments in 1996, see Ofra Bengio, "Iraq," Middle East
Contemporary Survey 20 (1996), 337–45.
66. Radio Tehran, December 6, 1979, SWB, December 8, 1979; New
York Times, December 6, 1979; International Herald Tribune and
Daily Telegraph, December 7, 1979; Bamdad, December 8, 1979.
67. Brenda Shaffer, "Epilogue," in David Menashri, ed., Central Asia
Meets the Middle East (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 228–36.
68. , January 24, 1990.
69. Agence France Presse, February 2, DR, February 2, 1994. For the
Sunni challenge, see Laurent Lamote (pseudonym), "Domestic
Politics and Strategic Intentions," in Patrick Clawson, ed., Iran's
Strategic Intentions and Capabilities (Washington: National Defense
University, 1994), 15–17.
70. This was raised by Ayatollahs Meshkini and Mohammad Reza
Golpaygani, Kayhan (Tehran), January 3, 1983, and endorsed by the
resolutions of the Friday Imams' Congress (ibid., January 4, 1983).
71. Radio Tehran, November 6, 8, DR, November 9, 10; Kayhan and
November 7, 1987.
72. Islamic Republic's News Agency [IRNA], March 18, DR, March
19, 1991. Prominent figures such as Mehdi Karubi, Musavi
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said that the future of Iraq should be determined by its own people
only; , March 10, 16, 30, respectively.
73. Jahan-e Islam, September 13, DR, October 14, 1992.
74. Jomhuri-ye Islami, September 17, DR, September 17, 1992.
75. IRNA, November 16, DR, November 17, 1992.
76. IRNA, October 2, DR, October 5, 1992. See similarly, Jahan-e
Islam, September 13, DR, October 14, 1992.
77. In an Iranian communiqué of February 1993, IRNA, February 9,
DR, February 10, 1993.
78. Zalmay Khalilzad, "Iranian Policy toward Afghanistan Since the
Revolution," in Menashri, Iranian Revolution and the Muslim World,
235–41.
79. Jomhuri-ye Islami, October 23, DR, October 23, 1996. Tehran
Times (October 2, 1996) wrote that the takeover in Afghanistan "was
designed in Washington, financed in Riyadh, and logistically
supported by Islamabad." Its aim, the paper added elsewhere
(September 28, 1996), was "to establish a so-called fundamental
Islamic regime." See also statements by Velayati (Tehran TV, October
30, DR, October 30, 1996) and Meshkini (Tehran Times, October 27,
1996).
80. Iran Times, October 29, 1993.
81. A detailed discussion of Iran's policy can be found in Central Asia
Meets the Middle East. See mainly articles on Iran by Hunter and
Menashri and on Turkey by Philip Robins and William Hale.
82. Ramazani, 404–5.
83. IRNA, October 28, DR, October 29, 1993.
84. For such Iranian concerns, see , January 18, 1992; ,
October 30, November 3, 1993.
85. Shireen Hunter, "Iran and Transcaucasia in the Post-Soviet Era,"
in Menashri, Central Asia Meets the Middle East, 115–17; Abrar,
June 28, DR, June 29, 1992; Tadeusz Swietochowski, "Azerbaijan's
Triangular Relationship: The Land Between Russia, Turkey, and
Iran," in Ali Banuazizi and Myron Weiner, eds., The New Geopolitics
of Central Asia and Its Borderlands (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1994), 130.
86. Galia Golan, Russia and Iran: A Strategic Partnership? (London:
The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1998); Respublika
Armeniya (in Russian), May 14, 1997, as quoted in DR.
87. For the angry remarks traded in the press conference of Velayati
and Azeri Foreign Minister Hasan Hasanov, see Iran News, March 5,
1996.
88. See his books and edited volumes of his lectures: Zamine-haye
Khizesh-e Mashruteh (Tehran: Paya, n.d.); Bim-e Mowj (Tehran:
Sima-ye Javan, 1995); Az Donya-e "Shahr" ta Shahr-e "Donya"
(Tehran: Nashr-e Ney, 1997); Hope and Challenge: The Iranian
President Speaks (Binghamton: State University of New York Press,
1997); fi al-Din wal-Islam (Beirut: Dar al-Jadid, 1998).
89. Tehran Television, May 10, 1997 [DR].
90. Ibid., May 19, 1997 [DR].
91. , January 7, 12, 1988, and Kayhan (Tehran), January 7, 1988.
92. In 1992, Rafsanjani was quoted as suggesting to his rivals to
substitute intelligence ( ) for slogans ( ); Kayhan (London),
April 16, 1992.

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94. Ibid.
95. The text of the statement issued by Khatami's office, Salam,
March 25, 1997 [DR].
96. Tehran Television, "Roundtable with Election Candidates," May
20, 1997 [DR].
97. Abrar, April 23, 1997.
99. Ibid., May 10, 1997 [DR].
100. IRNA, December 9, 1997.
101. Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1997.
102. Hunter, Iran and the World, 13, 42.

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8
Subordinate Communities and the Utility of Ethnic Ties to a
Neighboring Regime
Iran and the of the Arab States of the Gulf
Michael Herb
The communities of the Arab states of the Gulf are an example of
a common, sometimes combustible, combination in international
relations. The lack political power in their home countries, even
where they are a majority. The communities, however, have a
potentially valuable ally in Iran, a large and powerful country
that faces the Arab regimes across the Gulf. In this chapter I ask the
following question: if we assume that the communities of the
Arab Gulf act strategically, what sort of aid will they seek and accept
from Iran in their efforts to improve their political status in their
home countries?1 I am particularly concerned here with threats of
violence made by a community with Iranian backing, or made by
Iran on behalf of the community.2
Despite the obvious power and influence of Iran in the Gulf, I find
that the communities have strong reasons to eschew aid from
Iran. I further argue that this is generally true of many, though not all,
similarly situated ethnic communities. This is counterintuitive, for
the additional political resources provided to the communities by
their tie to Iran would appear to increase their leverage in
negotiations with their home-country regimes. This extra leverage
should allow them to secure a larger share of political goods from
their home-country regimes.
The reason that the Gulf usually eschew aid from Iran lies in the
double-edged nature of threats. One possible response to a threat is
appeasement: the threatened party may make concessions to prevent
the other party from carrying out a threat. Yet the threatened side may
also choose a different strategy: it may attack the source of the threat.
Thus, making a threat is a dangerous endeavor: the threat-maker may
provoke a response that causes it grievous harm rather than reap the
concessions it had hoped for. Subordinate ethnic communities, like all
political actors, must anticipate the reac--

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tion of those they threaten before making a threat. If the likely
response is repression, and not appeasement, the community may do
well to abstain from making the threat. I will argue that, for a number
of reasons, threats posed by subordinate communities on the basis of
ethnic ties to a neighboring state very often elicit repression, and not
appeasement, from the home-country regime.3 This is the case for the
of the Arab monarchies of the Gulf, and to a lesser extent Iraq,
and this is reflected in the strategies adopted by these
communities.
Writings on the communities of the Arab Gulf states generally do
not view the actions of these communities as being informed by
strategic imperatives. Instead, actions are seen as the result of (1)
ideology and (2) susceptibility to Iranian provocation. That the
communities need to reach some sort of accommodation with
their home-country regimes, and that they should regulate their ties
with Iran in light of this need, is recognized only implicitly, if at all.4
One writer, discussing Iranian efforts to instigate terrorism by the
, argues that the "extremism which is prevalent in the Middle
East rests on a very broad popular base and can be tapped with
impunity [by Iran] to produce violence on order."5 Another author
argues that the will resist the Arab regimes even without Iranian
help, and without much reference to the consequences of such
opposition for the community. The Arab regimes, it is said, do not
realize that no degree of religious pretense, socio-economic
cooptation, and political manipulation will resolve their majority
or minority problem . . . The perceive their accumulated
grievances in terms of their historical experience as the most
deprived group (mahrumin), and also in terms of the emotional and
spiritual promise of salvation (najah), and the establishment of
justice by the Mahdi before the Day of Resurrection (qiyamah). This
is, in my view, the fundamental force that underlies .6
Attributions of ethnic conflict to feelings of deprivation are not
limited to discussions of the Gulf . Other writings on ethnic
relations in the Middle East, and more generally, attribute ethnic
violence to feelings of deprivation experienced by ethnic
communities.7
The ethnic contracts model of ethnic conflict, by contrast, argues that
ethnic violence grows out of uncertainty and the fear it engenders.8 It
is not the unfairness of ethnic domination, in itself, which causes
ethnic conflict. Violence instead grows from differing information,
differing measures of the probable result of a conflict, and difficulties
in making credible commitments

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to abide by the provisions of ethnic contracts. The latter is often
exacerbated by violence by extremists. The communities of the
Arab Gulf states are, in differing degrees, deprived communities, and
their imputed ideological leanings seem to militate against any
resignation to this fact.9 The ethnic contracts model, however,
suggests that the might well reach an accommodation with their
regimes, one that recognizes their subordinate status, but one which
they might not desire to upset by accepting or seeking Iranian aid in
subverting their home-country regimes.
We can thus outline two competing explanations for the political
strategy of the communities. One finds the chief motivation for
the actions of the in ideology and in feelings of deprivation. The
other explains the actions of the (and subordinate ethnic groups
more generally) as the result of calculations of community interest,
informed by the limitations of the community's bargaining resources
and aware of the dangers of uncertainty. In the remainder of this
chapter I do three things. First, I lay out the constraints on the
bargaining position of the , in an effort to identify the types of
strategies that might make sense for the communities in the Arab
states. Second, I examine the strategies of the communities of
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai, and Iraq. From this we can
hazard some conclusions on which of the two viewpoints mentioned
above best describe political action in the Gulf. Finally, I briefly
compare the experience of these communities with that of other
subordinate ethnic communities in the Middle East, and elsewhere,
with the goal of arriving at some general statements on the political
behavior of such communities.
The Constraints on the Communities in the Arab Gulf States
When the communities of the Arab Gulf states consider the use
of Iranian aid in threatening their home-country regimes, they must
weigh the probable response of these regimes. When faced with such
a threat, the home-country regime's potential costs of repression lie in
the possibility that the subordinate community might make good on
its threats: (1) it might overthrow the home-country regime; (2) it
might secede, or achieve regional autonomy, by force of arms; (3) its
co-ethnic neighbor might rescue the community by force of arms.
For the home-country regime, appeasement also has its potential
costs: appeasement, especially in the form of power sharing or
employment of the subordinate group in sensitive state organs, raises
the potential amount of harm the group can do. Repression, by
contrast, removes resources from the control of the subordinate
community.

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The of the Gulf monarchies (though not Iraq) cannot reasonably
hope to overthrow their rulers or to secede, with or without Iranian
aid. This is not to say that either of these things is flatly impossible,
for they are not. But they are improbable, even in Bahrain. This is a
consequence of several factors.
1. The ruling families have displayed a remarkable degree of
resilience in the past decades. It does not appear that any group,
Sunni or , has the resources to overthrow them. This is a result of
the character of their regimes, which are composed of extended
families. The rules and norms of these families promote cooperation
among their members and the exclusion of others from control of the
regime. As a result, these monarchies prove surprisingly resilient.10
2. The regimes have excluded the from their armed forces, and
particularly from the officers corps. This exclusion ranges in severity
from a "quarantine" in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to a less systematic
limitation in Kuwait.11 Throughout the monarchies no officers
are in a position to lead a coup against the Sunni regimes.
3. None of the communities in the monarchies lives in an area
amenable to secession. Most of the live in urban areas, and the
of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, precisely because they live
on top of the oil, cannot reasonably hope to gain autonomy from the
rest of Saudi Arabia.12
Iran has not made a credible commitment to rescue the of the
Arab Gulf states, nor to inflict major harm on the monarchies if they
do not treat their communities better. The American presence in
the region renders any Iranian threat to invade a GCC state not
credible.13 Iran could do damage to shipping in the Gulf, or to GCC
oil installations, yet chaos in the Gulf would severely damage Iran
itself. Iran has shown little inclination to put its national interests on
the line for the sake of the communities in the monarchies.14
This sharply limits the threat to the monarchies posed by the and
lowers the potential costs of repression. Very frequently the regimes'
best strategy, in the face of Iranian-supported violence by domestic
, is repression of the threat.
These constraints force the to seek their share of political
resources within the framework of the political systems in which they
live. Most of these resources come from the state and are under its
control. The cannot seize them, nor credibly threaten to. These
resources include employment opportunities in state institutions,
admission to universities, spending on infrastructure and public
services in areas, a share of state con--

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tracts, seats in the parliament (in Kuwait) or the majalis al-shura
(elsewhere), and so forth. The communities cannot easily adopt a
policy of withdrawal from the larger society and are consequently
vulnerable to repression by the regimes.
The communities, and others likewise situated, also must
concern themselves with nongovernmental reactions of members of
the dominant ethnic communities. Private individuals and
organizations have the power to impose costs on the through acts
of exclusion—from business opportunities, professional groups, and a
myriad other spheres in which ethnic communities intermingle.
Ethnic polarization breeds this sort of exclusion, and subordinate
communities that accept aid from foreign powers court ethnic
polarization.
The Communities in the Arab Gulf States
Before discussing the types of strategies adopted by communities
in the Arab Gulf states, a few observations on the general ethnic
situation in the area are useful. The Gulf are divided, by
nationality, between Arabs and Persians. of Persian origin make
up the larger part of the communities of the UAE, Kuwait, and (it
seems) Qatar.15 The majorities of Iraq and Bahrain are
predominantly Arab, with some Persians, while the minority in
Saudi Arabia is very largely Arab.
Five of the six ruling families of the GCC monarchies are Sunni—the
exception, the Omani ruling family, is Ibadhi. The regimes, however,
do not stress Sunnism as the cornerstone of their identity. The ruling
families make much of their Arabness, and of Islam. Most of the
ruling families stress their noble Bedouin origins. All have dynastic
claims to legitimacy, in the sense that they attempt to identify the
state with the family. While some of these identities involve Sunnism
(noble Bedouins are Sunni, the Arab/Persian split has an imprecise
sectarian undertone), the ruling families do not assert Sunnism as the
primary component of national identity. (The Al Saud, however, are
associated with a particular interpretation of Sunni Islam—
Wahhabism.) The GCC states are not Sunni in the sense that the
Turkish state is Turkish or the Israeli state Jewish. The states are
instead dynastic and gain their sectarian coloring through their ruling
families.
While I focus in this chapter on the ethnic cleavage in the
Arab Gulf states, this is not the only, or even always the most salient,
ethnic cleavage. Many are also Arabs and often identify with
Sunni Arabs more than with Persians. All under discussion
here are also nationals of the states in which they live, and they may
identify strongly with the specific

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ciples have been exploited to facilitate a concentration of power and
win a modicum of support against both Egypt and Libya; but with
increased autonomy comes increased burdens.
Thus, to the destabilizing impact of the absorption of buffers into
unstable alliance systems must be added the instability of a number
of state authorities: Sudan; Libya under international sanctions;
Algeria engaged in a civil war; Saudi Arabia challenged by
fundamentalists and sectarians; Iraq where the lid has been kept on,
in part at least, by external pressures; Afghanistan also engaged in a
civil war, to which may be added Azerbaijan and Armenia in the
Caucasus.
Another source of potential instability is the rise of international
Islamic movements challenging existing regimes and often attacking
their established foreign policies. The effectiveness of the
international efforts of such movements and organizations, and the
importance of Iranian and Sudanese policies in supporting such
movements, may be exaggerated; but even if the international aspect
of the Islamic resurgence is overblown, there is no doubt that Islamic
movements pose formidable challenges in particular countries,
including Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine.
Alternative Stabilizing Regimes: Regional Security vs. Great Power
Deterrence
To counter these destabilizing developments, we can list the
imposition of sanctions against Iraq and Libya, the attempts to isolate
Sudan, U.S. guarantees to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, U.S. and allied
forces stationed in the region, U.S. warnings and commitments to
protect its petroleum interests, and U.S. support of the peace process.
There is, however, no denying that the U.S. positions in both the Gulf
and the Israel-Palestine arenas have deteriorated. Besides, there is
little reason to believe that progress in the peace process will have a
major impact on stability in the Gulf, even though the stabilization of
the Gulf might have beneficial effects on the peace process.
In the light of the increasing destabilization of the regional
international situation and the decreasing role of the global system in
enhancing regional stability, it follows that the regional powers are
likely to become more and more exposed to the consequences of
international and domestic disorder. If no regional security
arrangement is set up, and if no international guarantees are provided,
some Middle East states are likely to disappear and others will
become subject to regional hegemonic authority.
The dangers and threats discussed are obviously of greater concern to
rulers than to their Arab and Muslim subjects, many of whom would
be happy

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Fig. 1. Estimates of the percentage of the citizen populations of

the Arab states of the Gulf.
Source: James Bill, "Islam, Politics and in the Gulf," Middle
East Insight 3, no. 3 (January/February 1984): 6.
state-level nationalism put forward by the local rulers. It is, however,
indisputable that the sectarian difference is deeply rooted in
these societies, and is the most salient ethnic fault line among the
citizen populations.
In the following sections I discuss the position of the
communities in several of the Gulf monarchies. To understand the
nature of their ties to Iran I discuss the particular situation of each
community in its home country. This situation is determined largely
by domestic political considerations, and particularly by the nature of
the political alliances entered into by the ruling families to facilitate
their rule. There is a pattern that emerges in examining the nature of
ethnic accommodations between the dynastic monarchies and the
communities: where the make useful allies, they tend to secure
more rewards from the ruling family.
Saudi Arabia
For all the reputed revolutionary fervor of the , the
community in Saudi Arabia has displayed only modest opposition to
the Al Saud, particularly when we take into account the weight of the
social, economic, and political discrimination under which the Saudi
labor. The have no presence in the security forces or
military; only two of sixty members of the majlis al-shura are
(and this is seen as a symbol of inclusion); have diffi--

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culty gaining admission to the kingdom's universities; have
suffered from the imposition of a hiring ban at ARAMCO.16 The
Saudi in short, are an oppressed minority. Despite this, the
informal ethnic contract between the and the Al Saud has
remained in place since the 1920s, with the exception of the period
following the Iranian revolution.
The roots of the unfortunate position of the in Saudi Arabia lie in
the political alliances the Al Saud have entered into to maintain a
monopoly of power in their kingdom. The Al Saud have long
associated their rule with the Wahhabi interpretation of the Hanbali
mathhab of Sunni Islam.17 Adherents to this doctrine often display a
good deal of hostility to .18 The Al Saud have appeased the
Sunni Islamists by allowing them a prominent voice in public affairs
(though not control of state power, which remains firmly in the hands
of the family). The emergence of Arab nationalism as the chief threat
to regional monarchies in the 1950s and for several decades thereafter
induced the Al Saud to further cultivate Sunni Islamists as a
counterbalance to leftists and secularists. In such a circumstance, the
Al Saud had little reason to improve the situation of the kingdom's
: while the Sunni Islamists made useful, if prickly, allies, the
had relatively little value as allies, while any overt cultivation of the
would offend Wahhabi opinion.
The ethnic contract between the Al Saud and the thus had the
following nature: the could be , if they wished, without
threat of death, forced conversion, or expropriation. They could not,
however, fully participate in public life, could not publicly practice
their religion, and would have little recourse against state-sponsored
discrimination on the basis of their religion.
This informal ethnic contract, however unsatisfactory on grounds of
justice (by most measures of that elusive quality), continued
throughout the decades between 1929 and the Iranian revolution. The
made few public protests against the political hegemony of the
Saudi state or the pervasive discrimination they suffered. Some
did display a sympathy for Arab nationalist appeals, for in Arab
nationalism the found an ideology that both lessened the distance
between them and Sunni Saudis, and at the same time challenged the
House of Saud. Yet this found expression in small clandestine groups
of limited importance.19
The events in Iran in 1979, however, partially unraveled the implicit
ethnic contract of the preceding decades. In 1979, during the Muslim
month of Muharram, the of the Eastern Province held public
processions in defiance of bans on these ceremonies. The
processions, and the efforts by the regime to stop them, led to severe
rioting. This outbreak of pro--

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test against the Saudi regime, the most serious since the founding of
the kingdom, followed two unexpected signals of the weakness of the
Saudi state. The collapse of the Iranian monarchy, a juggernaut up to
the mid-seventies, threw into doubt the stability of all regional
monarchies. Second, in November 1979 a band of Sunni zealots
occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca, one of the holiest sites in
Islam. The Al Saud base their legitimacy, in part, on the protection of
the holy cities, and the occupation of the mosque dealt a vicious blow
to their prestige and power.
The based their acquiescence to Saudi rule on the premise of the
stability of the regime, and in 1979 the regime no longer appeared
stable. The rioting of 1979 can be explained as the product of simple
contagion from Iran, but its timing has a rational basis as well. If the
were to test the regime, this was the best time in decades to do it.
As it turned out, the signals of the Al Saud's weakness were faulty:
the regime was, and is, far stronger than the shah's. The Al Saud
deployed the national guard, made up of Sunni Bedouins loyal to the
ruling house, against the rioters, with the expected result. The
could not challenge the Al Saud by force. Yet the won some
rewards for their efforts. After crushing the rebellion, the regime
poured resources into the Eastern Province in the 1980s, dramatically
improving the infrastructure and public services of the areas.20
The Al Saud, however, did not substantially improve the status of the
in other respects, and the remained as excluded as before
from political and social life of the kingdom. The concessions made
by the Al Saud did not have a high cost for the dynasty. In the early
1980s the ruling family did not lack for money. The received no
concessions that strengthened their political position in the kingdom.
Indeed, at the end of the decade the regime imposed restrictions on
employment at ARAMCO, where many worked in the
earlier years of the oil boom.21 The enjoyed a certain leverage
against the regime at ARAMCO, and the hiring ban removed this
lever.
Iran had little direct hand in the riots of 1979 and 1980, but for the
remainder of the decade Iran sponsored opposition groups
outside of Saudi Arabia, broadcast appeals to the Saudi , and
generally did what it could to provoke the community against the
Al Saud. This was the period of the Iran-Iraq War, in which Saudi
Arabia sided with Iraq. The inside Saudi Arabia, however,
remained quiet. Iran did not promise, and could not promise, to help
the in any really substantial way against the Al Saud, and it
appears that the recognized the high costs and scant returns of
participation in regional politics on the side of Iran.22

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At the end of the Gulf War, in 1991, the internal situation for the
improved somewhat. Iraq had reclaimed from Iran the title of chief
regional threat to the monarchies. Inside the kingdom a sizable part
of the Sunni Islamist right went into overt opposition to the regime.
This cast some doubt on the wisdom of the Al Saud's previous
appeasement of Islamist opinion. The regime has made some effort to
cultivate the political opponents of the Sunni Islamists, who in the
kingdom today consist of liberals and . In 1993 the Al Saud
quieted the opposition abroad by promising limited
improvements in the position of the in the kingdom, and, it is
said, by buying off the leaders of the opposition. The concessions
made by the Al Saud amounted to a lifting of some restrictions on the
community and a few symbolic gestures of inclusion. In most ways,
however, the agreement amounted to a formalization of the ethnic
contract between the and the Al Saud.23
In 1996 it appeared that the may have been, with help from Iran,
responsible for the bombing of the Khobar Towers, in the most
significant instance of terror in the kingdom's recent history.24
Yet by mid-1998 the investigation appeared to have foundered over
insufficient evidence and the improvement of relations between Iran
and Saudi Arabia.25 In this case, the subordinate community appears
to have benefited from an improvement in relations between its
home-country regime and its co-ethnic neighbor.
The evidence of the Saudi , in their relations with the Saudi
regime, suggests that the recognize the limitations of their
political situation within Saudi Arabia. The Al Saud have not had
much need of the as allies in domestic politics, and this has
contributed to the poor deal that the have received from the
regime. Yet, notwithstanding the oft-cited proclivity to rebellion,
over the past decades the Saudi have shown a willingness to
enter into ethnic contracts and to eschew almost all Iranian-inspired
subversion.
Kuwait
The pattern of relations between the Kuwaiti and the Al Sabah
family was set in 1938, the year that dynastic control over the
Kuwaiti state crystallized and the emerged as allies of the Al
Sabah against the dynasty's challengers. In that year a group of Sunni
urban notables attempted to seize control of the Kuwaiti state by
setting up a parliament. The electorate of this majlis, which for a
period of some months essentially ruled Kuwait, did not include the
.26 As a result, the sided with the Al Sabah against the
growing power of the Sunni notables. The even demonstrated in
the

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streets—with the blessing of the Al Sabah—against the majlis before
its closure in 1939.27
In the decades after 1938 the Al Sabah continued to cultivate the
as a counterweight, first to the Sunni merchant notables, then to Arab
nationalists. The , who lacked the political resources to contest
control of the state, nonetheless had the demographic weight (at
around 25 percent of the citizen population) to make useful allies of
the Al Sabah. When the Arab nationalists surpassed the Sunni
merchant notables as the main challengers to the Al Sabah in the
1960s, the maintained their allegiance to the regime. Unlike the
of Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, the Kuwaiti mostly are of
Persian descent. While Arab nationalism offers Arab a way to
claim membership in the Arab political community as equals, Arab
nationalism only further excluded Kuwaiti citizens of Persian
descent and made them particularly useful to the dynasty as a
counterweight to the Arab nationalists.28
The period from 1938 to 1979 saw what we might reasonably call an
informal ethnic contract between the and the Al Sabah, in which
the provided a measure of useful political support for the Al
Sabah, while the ruling family, in return, ensured the inclusion of the
in the Kuwaiti political community and gave the a share of
the oil wealth and business opportunities that came with the oil age.
Most notably, the received full political rights, including the
right to vote and run in parliamentary elections. In the parliament the
served the useful purpose of diluting the representation of both
Sunni merchant notables and Arab nationalists in the parliament.
In this period, up to 1979, the issue of Iranian aid to the Kuwaiti
against the Al Sabah did not arise. Kuwait enjoyed generally good
relations with Iran. The shah did not seek to destabilize the emirate,
and, from the Kuwaiti point of view, a friendly Iran played a crucial
role as regional counterweight to Iraq.
The 1979 revolution, and the subsequent war between Iran and Iraq,
undid the previous calculations of the Kuwait regime toward Iran,
toward Iraq, and toward Kuwait's . Only a notoriously thin stretch
of Iraqi territory separates Kuwait from what were the frontlines of
the Iran-Iraq War. During the war Iraq placed increasing pressures on
Kuwait for support; Kuwait eventually loaned Iraq billions of dollars
and allowed Iraq to ship war materiel through its port. In no small
way, Iraq pulled Kuwait into the war on its side, raising the costs to
Kuwait of an Iranian victory.
From the point of view of the regime, the revolution and then the war
transformed the from useful allies into a potential threat. The
specter

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of an Iranian victory, which came into view at times during the war,
haunted the Al Sabah and poisoned the ethnic atmosphere within
Kuwait. The Al Sabah removed the from their posts in the
military and security forces. The community also lost many of its
parliamentary seats: the number of deputies sank from ten in
1975 to four in 1981 and 1985.29
The Kuwaiti , despite their sympathies for Iran and the loss of
many of their privileges in Kuwait, in large part remained loyal, or at
least acquiescent, to the Kuwaiti regime. While the community,
particularly those outside the elite families, did evince a good deal of
enthusiasm for the revolution, it was from abroad, and not
Kuwaiti , who carried out most of the numerous acts of terrorism
in Kuwait during the 1980s. A few Kuwaiti did, however, carry
out terrorist acts, and this was enough to cast doubt on the loyalty of
the rest of the community.30
The Iraqi invasion again turned the situation on its head. Iran reverted
to its more customary role—in Kuwaiti eyes—as regional
counterweight to Iraqi ambitions. The community, previously of
suspect loyalty, joined with Sunni Kuwaitis in rejecting Saddam's
claim. While the might have been suspected of sympathizing
with Iran in the 1980s they could hardly be suspected of having any
sympathy for Saddam.
By the late 1990s the place of in Kuwaiti political life had
returned, in large part, to what it was before 1979. The , there
should be no doubt, remain a step or two farther from political and
economic power than urban Sunnis, and share a sense of not quite full
inclusion in the political community. Nonetheless deputies sit in
the parliament, one in the dress of an Iranian cleric, and the
receive a share of the oil wealth. Indeed, one finds today no signs
whatsoever of Iranian-inspired subversion. Instead the Kuwaiti
act as useful facilitators of Kuwaiti relations with Iran, reaping
the profits of a period of relatively good relations that are based in
part on mutual bitter experiences at the hands of Saddam. The
Kuwaiti today have little reason to accept or seek Iranian aid
against the Al Sabah. Such a move would result in the loss of their
substantial political privileges in Kuwait, with no hope of any
countervailing benefit. The ethnic contract between the and the
dynasty delivers real benefits to the , and the have little
reason to upset the contract by impugning their membership in the
Kuwaiti political community.
Bahrain
In Bahrain, unlike Kuwait or even Saudi Arabia, the dynastic regime
and the have not come to an accommodation. compose
around 70 percent

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of the citizen population of Bahrain but have very little voice in its
government. hold some cabinet posts, but the regime denies
them positions in the more important ministries and resolutely
excludes them from the military, police, and security forces. Since
1993 the have carried out a campaign of protests against the
ruling family. These protests have involved a good deal of violence,
mostly on the part of the regime, and have led to mass incarcerations,
torture, and a very serious alienation of a large segment of the
population from the Al Khalifa. Iran's role in the protests is the
subject of debate, as we shall see, but it has not in any case been very
large.
It would be a serious error to view Bahraini politics solely through
the prism of the ethnic divide. The Sunnis themselves fall
into several groups, and among the only the "tribal" elements
have displayed a strong and consistent support for the Al Khalifa.31
Sunnis have long made up an important part—in some periods, the
most important element—in Bahraini protest against the ruling
family. This was particularly true in the 1950s, when a united
opposition led a serious challenge to Al Khalifa (and
British) rule.
have led the recent protests, and the regime's repressive response
has focused on the community. Nonetheless many Sunnis have
joined their voices in demands for a parliament, and Sunnis were
among the tens of thousands of Bahrainis who have signed petitions
demanding the resumption of parliamentary life.32 The conflict in
Bahrain thus should not be misunderstood as simply Sunnis vs. .
It is instead a conflict between a Sunni ruling family, with their Sunni
and foreign allies, against a wide spectrum of Bahrainis, mostly
but including some Sunnis.
The opposition has accused the regime of deliberately exacerbating
the sectarian divide in the population, in a purposeful effort to
polarize and Sunnis. Strategically, the community has a
strong interest in avoiding this polarization: domestically the do
not wish to alienate Sunni supporters of reform (whose support they
need), and internationally the do not wish the conflict to be
portrayed in sectarian terms. Opposition literature reflects this
realization.33
The mere fact of Sunni dominance over a majority does not
explain why the community resorts to violence against the
regime. Both sides incur a substantial cost in this struggle, and, as
Fearon points out in regard to war, skipping the violence and going
straight to the settlement leaves both sides better off in most
situations.34 That one side might lose relative to their starting
position, or relative to an abstract notion of a just settlement, is not
the point—if that is to be the result anyway, why spill blood and
spend treasure getting there?

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It appears that the Al Khalifa and the Bahraini opposition have
differing evaluations of the utility of pressure on the regime in
bringing about concessions. The opposition believes that continued
protests can impose such high costs on the regime that it will yield,
while the regime calculates that it can absorb the costs of the protests
long enough to exhaust the opposition.
rule, or the overthrow of the ruling family, does not appear to be
possible in Bahrain. The Al Khalifa enjoy the loyalty of their security
forces, which are in large part composed of foreign mercenaries.35
Should the regime show signs of collapse, the Al Saud would send the
Saudi national guard across the causeway to save the Al Khalifa. No
measure of aid from Iran, short of an invasion, could give the the
resources necessary to overthrow the Al Khalifa. rule is not a
goal the Bahraini are likely to achieve.
Lesser goals, however, may be achievable. In the early 1980s, when
revolution looked possible (even though it later was shown not to be)
some groups refused compromise with the regime and demanded
its removal.36 In the recent wave of protests, however, the main
opposition groups have instead sought the resumption of
parliamentary life under the 1973 constitution.37 Such a goal is worth
considerable sacrifice on the part of the community.
Thus far, however, the regime has not conceded a parliament. The
Bahraini constitution (modeled after the Kuwaiti) leaves political
power largely in the hands of the ruling family. The military and
security forces, in particular, remain under the direct control of
shaykhs of the ruling family. In Polyarchy, Dahl argues that
authoritarian elites faced with a choice between repression and
liberalization will liberalize with greater likelihood if they can secure
guarantees of political and economic resources after the liberalization
takes effect.38 The Al Khalifa can secure such guarantees: the cost of
opening the parliament is not open ended.39 Yet the dynasty, thus far,
appears to have calculated that it would prefer to avoid even a partial
diminution of its power.
To the internal costs of capitulation for the Al Khalifa, we also must
add the costs that can be imposed by the dynasty's main external
sponsor, Saudi Arabia. Bahrain is the poor man of the GCC, and the
Al Saud spend a considerable sum subsidizing the Al Khalifa.40 The
Al Saud have a long and inglorious history of opposition to
parliamentary experiments in the smaller Gulf states, one dating back
to the Kuwaiti majlis of 1938. There is little doubt that they would
strongly prefer not to see the revival of constitutional life in Bahrain.
Resisting popular demands, however, drives the Al Khalifa ever
farther into Saudi vassalage. By negotiating with their opposition the
Al

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Khalifa would move, at least incrementally, farther out of the clutches
of the Al Saud and toward policies dictated more by Bahraini public
opinion and less by the interests of the Al Saud.
For the reformist opposition, overt Iranian involvement in its struggle
with the Al Khalifa has very high costs. The Al Khalifa rule a small
country with limited resources, one dependent on the help of outside
powers. Those outside powers—the United States, Britain, and Saudi
Arabia—have suspicious relations with Tehran. The Bahraini regime
can avoid pressure for reform by these powers if it can define the
conflict as one of "resisting Iranian subversion" of the Arab
monarchies, a particular nightmare of official Washington. The
regime has a very strong strategic incentive to identify and publicize
any connections between the opposition and Iran, and indeed to
invent such ties. In June 1996 the regime claimed that Iran had
sponsored a coup attempt by Bahraini , and the opposition reacted
with the charge that the regime invented the episode in order to
influence Western opinion.41 The actual truth of the matter is still a
subject of debate.
While the opposition has strong reasons to avoid any overt aid from
Iran, covert aid is potentially another matter. Yet the costs of
revealing links to Iran probably overcome the possible benefits that
Iranian aid could provide. In short, given the fact that the opposition
cannot overthrow the ruling family, or reasonably hope that Iran will
do the job, the opposition has sought reform. In this project, aid from
Iran is not very useful.
Western support for the Al Khalifa is not necessary to prevent the
emergence of an Islamic Republic of Bahrain, for such a thing is
unlikely. Instead, such support merely reinforces the absolutist camp
among the GCC dynasties and supports the Al Khalifa's efforts to fan
the flames of ethnic hatred in Bahrain.42 This cannot be in the
interest of Bahrain's Western protectors, and in this context the tacit
American support for the ruling family's absolutism damages
American interests in the region.43
Dubai and the Lower Gulf States
The communities in Qatar and the UAE have not been the subject
of any extensive comment, either in English or in Arabic. A measure
of the paucity of information can be found in the wildly varying
figures on the size of the Qatari population, which range from 18
to 80 percent.44 This lack of information has several causes, the main
one of which is the apparently cordial relations between the regimes
and their communities. In Qatar and the UAE we find none of the
sectarian strife that characterizes Bahrain or Saudi Arabia.45 By the
logic of the ethnic contracts model, the

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lack of public conflict over the status of the in these societies
suggests not that the ethnic contracts are necessarily fair, but instead
that neither side—and particularly the —calculates that overt
expressions of discontent will win any gains.
The UAE is the only GCC state to have an active border dispute with
Iran. In the early 1970s, when the shah resolved a large number of
border conflicts with its neighbors—including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Oman—he also occupied several islands (Abu
Musa and the two Tumbs) in the lower Gulf claimed by Ras al-
Khayma and Sharjah (two emirates of the UAE). This dispute has
festered ever since and flared again in the early 1990s when Tehran
tightened its grip over the islands.46 This significantly impeded the
rapprochement between Arab and Persian sides of the Gulf in the
aftermath of the two Gulf wars.
The substantial community of the UAE, which is largely Persian
in descent and centered in Dubai, has not overtly sided with Iran in
the dispute, and there appears to be no question of Iranian-sponsored
subversion by the against the UAE ruling families. Instead,
several of the emirates, especially Dubai, have maintained strong
economic ties with Iran in the midst of the international hubbub over
the islands.47 The community of Dubai carries out much of this
trade with Iran, with the strong encouragement of the Dubai
government. This is, in part, a consequence of the role that Dubai
seeks to play in the regional economy, as the premier entrepôt of the
Gulf. To this end, the community has a valuable role in
facilitating economic ties between Iran and the Dubai, a role which
reaps for it economic and political benefits in the UAE. In this regard,
deterioration in relations between Tehran and the UAE threatens the
livelihood of the UAE community, and it has a strong incentive
to promote good relations.
Iraq.
The political situation of the community of Iraq differs greatly
from that of the of the Gulf's Arab monarchies. This is in large
part a consequence of the instability of the Iraqi regime and the real
—if somewhat distant—possibility that the Iraqi could bring an
end to the Sunni monopoly on political power in Baghdad. This
makes aid from Iran potentially useful for the Iraqi , and it
increases the degree of threat that the pose to the Sunnis.
constitute 60–65 percent of the Iraqi population. The Iraqi
are very largely Arab, and many descend from Bedouin tribes that
settled in southern Iraq in the nineteenth century. The Sunni
population of Iraq is

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to see extensive changes in the prevailing political order in the
region. But the need to expend more local resources in order to
achieve regional stability, and the decreasing availability of global
resources for that purpose, will worsen the economic situation of
Middle East populations and make their rulers even less popular than
they are now.
As an alternative to the Cold War arrangement and the specter of
anarchy without balance or cooperation, the United States and a few
other states–possibly acting via the UN headed by a cooperative
secretary-general particularly well versed in peacekeeping
operations–might adopt a regional deterrent strategy whereby they
would punish local aggressors. Acting negatively, because there may
be no regional support for an indigenous security system, the illusion
of a cooperative equilibrium might be sustained. In fact, the resulting
equilibrium would be based on a form of deadlock arising from
economic and military weakness, external deterrence, free riding, risk
avoidance, and the need to use scarce resources against domestic
opposition groups. Deterrence of threats to the status quo are
relatively cheap when the regional powers are poor and militarily
weak.
It would appear that U.S. policy is already drifting toward replacing
the idea of a new regional order (part of a new world order) with a
policy of deterrence that maximizes U.S. detachment from the region.
The components of such a policy are dual containment in the Gulf;
sanctions imposed on Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Iran; crude pressure
applied (often by members of Congress as well as the president) on
Saudi Arabia, Israel, and others; punitive strikes against Iraq and
Libya; threats of punitive strikes against Iran; limited military
interventions; and the maintenance of a strong military presence in
the region.
This array of deterrent measures has been the American response to
its inability to maintain an effective military force in Saudi Arabia;
Turkey's unwillingness to serve any longer as the instrument of an
American-orchestrated regional balance; Russia's willingness to trade
Middle East "assets" for restrictions on NATO; the inability of the
United States to shake the Saddam regime; the possible reversal of
the peace process; Israel's increased vulnerability; Syria's catatonic
negotiating policy; and Egypt's diminished role as regional
peacemaker. Where once the United States had a number of allies
willing to cooperate, or so it was thought, in establishing a regional
order that would become an integral part of a world order, not a
single Middle East state now seems willing to follow the United
States in organizing regional collective action.
Will the regional powers, faced with the high costs and meager
rewards of

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divided between Kurds and Arabs, with the Kurds occupying the
northern mountains. There are also Christian and other minorities, so
that the Sunni Arab population of Iraq is probably in the
neighborhood of 15 percent.48
Sunni Arabs have dominated the Iraqi regime from the creation of the
country in the 1920s. This is a consequence, most directly, of Arab
Sunni predominance in the military, which dates back to the early
days of the monarchy and before.49 Various regimes have risen and
fallen in the coups since 1958, but none have altered Sunni Arab
control of the army. Nonetheless, have held important posts in
various regimes.50 Several held the prime ministership in the
later years of the monarchy. The Communist Party, which played a
major role in Iraqi politics in midcentury, was composed in large part
of . Even most of the leadership was in the early 1960s,
though Sunnis predominated when the party returned to power in
1968.51
The participation of so many in various governments and
opposition groups discourages a purely sectarian view of the
distribution of power in Iraq. No regime has been overtly sectarian in
its ideology (as distinct from its political practice), and political
struggles within and between various regimes and opposition groups
have not had a consistently sectarian coloring. While Sunni control of
the army has not been any sort of accident, it likely results less from
a consciously sectarian strategy than from a tendency to favor
officers from the towns and tribes of regime leaders. Thus Batatu
argues that Saddam, "by dint of the relative thinness of his domestic
base and the repressive character of his government . . .has been
driven to lean more and more heavily on his kinsmen, or members of
his own clan, or old companions from his underground days."52
Similarly the Slugletts argue that the importance of the sectarian
division in Iraqi society is often exaggerated.53 On the other hand,
the cleavage plays an important role in regime politics. A
member of a Sunni tribe that launched several coup attempts against
Saddam explained his tribe's support of Saddam during the 1991
rebellion in the south as a product of ethnic fear.54
The attitude of the current regime to the sectarian issue might be
compared with that of the Bahraini regime. Both make copious
symbolic gestures to sectarian unity and include in nominally
important positions in the government. Yet both regimes have an
interest, at the same time, in raising the sectarian issue in their own
community to induce Sunni solidarity against their opponents.55
In deciding whether or not to accept Iranian aid against the Iraqi
regime, the Iraqi face a difficult choice. While a challenge to
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might succeed, in propitious circumstances, the costs of failure are
also high. The paid many of these costs, in fact, in 1991. The
costs of explicitly drawing on Iranian support and still failing might
be higher still.56 Yet the possibility of escaping Sunni domination
makes it more likely that groups will seek Iranian aid against the
regime, though a policy of accommodation, even with the current
regime, might be more prudent.
Predicting the future course of Iraqi politics is a hazardous endeavor:
however there are scenarios in which the —with Iranian help—
could upset the Sunni lock on political power in Iraq. At the same
time, none of the scenarios appears all that likely. The uncertainty
clouds the picture, raising the odds that extremists can tip the
situation into sectarian polarization.
There are several ways in which the might capture political
power: by overthrowing the regime in Baghdad, by establishing their
own state, by accepting annexation into the Iranian state. The last
possibility is the most distant: as Arabs, the Iraqi have little
interest in living in a state dominated by Iranians, and the
international context makes a successful Iranian annexation unlikely.
Secession, too, seems to be a remote possibility. The topography and
ethnic makeup of Iraq tends to militate against the formation of a
splinter state in southern Iraq. The Kurds, unlike the , have made
several attempts to establish autonomous areas under Kurdish control
in northern Iraq—indeed, the Kurds have received, at times,
significant Iranian support in this endeavor. Kurdish aspirations to
autonomy derive from the mountainous, and thus more easily
defended, topography of their home areas in northern Iraq. The
areas in the center and south, by contrast, are flat and facilitate
central government control. The potential for a successful
secession from Sunni Iraq is further made difficult by the
demography of non-Kurdish Iraq. The make up between 75 and
80 percent of the Arab (non-Kurd) population of Iraq. Baghdad itself
has a majority. A state that encompassed most of Iraq's
population would leave little room for a militarily viable Sunni state.
The history of relations with Baghdad reflects the military
difficulties facing an effort to secede. Since the strengthening of the
Iraqi central state in the 1930s, the have mounted few large-scale
rebellions against Baghdad, particularly in comparison with the more
geographically advantaged Kurds.57 Between the mid-thirties and the
rebellion of 1991 the attempted no large-scale uprisings against
Baghdad, although there were occasional small-scale protests and
much covert violence. The 1991 rebellion occurred immediately after
the Iraqi army's defeat, which made it the most propitious time to
revolt in decades. Yet without substantial outside assistance the
rebellion failed.

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If the establishment of separate Sunni and states in Iraq does not
seem that likely, the emergence of a regime in Baghdad appears
somewhat more plausible. The have potential allies in the Kurds
and Iranians. Although Saddam's regime, in 1998, looks more durable
than observers imagined after the eviction from Kuwait, the regime
could still come to a messy end, and this could weaken the ability of
the army to respond to rebellions in the north and the south. On the
other hand, Sunni domination of the army and the Iraqi state has
proven quite resilient, surviving the fall of the monarchy and the
subsequent coups. It will probably survive the end of Saddam's
regime, whenever that may occur. The Sunni military and political
elites recognize the clear sectarian danger posed by an armed
movement, and it is reasonable to suppose that this tends to
strengthen Sunni solidarity.
The situation of the Iraqi can be compared to that of their
sectarian counterparts in the GCC states. In the monarchies the
can have little hope of overthrowing Sunni political predominance.
Recognizing this, the communities tend to seek an
accommodation—an ethnic contract—within the bounds of the
existing political situation. In Iraq the political situation is murkier,
and it is at least conceivable that the could put a permanent end
to the Sunni monopoly over political power, perhaps with Iranian aid.
But this possibility, while it may offer hope to a group long
discriminated against, also increases the threat the group poses to the
dominant political group. In such a situation, sectarian polarization
becomes more likely, imposing serious costs on the community,
while not offering much prospect of a resolution favoring the .
Comparisons
The of the Gulf Arab states are but one example of a more
general phenomenon, that of the division of an ethnic community
between neighboring or proximate states, with the community ruling
one state but politically subordinate in another. The common ethnic
tie across borders raises the possibility of cooperation aimed against
the subordinate community's home-country regime. Ethnicity thus
becomes not merely an issue of domestic political arrangements, but
also of international affairs.
I have listed in table 1 some of the more prominent situations of this
sort in the Middle East and Muslim Europe. Several groups, like the
of the monarchies, have little hope of successful rebellion,
autonomy, or of rescue by a state controlled by their own ethnicity.
Accepting aid from a co-ethnic neighbor courts ethnic polarization
and repression, without providing the community with the resources
to escape the consequences. The Arabs of

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Table 1. Cross-border ethnic groups in the Middle East and
Muslim Europe
Subordinate community Co-ethnic neighbor
Limited or no opportunity for rebellion, secession,

autonomy, or rescue
Israeli Arabs Arab states
Arabs of Alexandretta (Turkey) Syria
Azeris of Iran Azerbaijan
Egyptian Copts The EU, the U.S.
Muslims of Bulgaria Turkey
Foreign labor in the Gulf Respective home
countries
Jews of Arab countries Israel
Possibility of rebellion, secession, autonomy, or rescue
Albanians of Kosovo Albania
Palestinians of Jordan Palestinian Authority
Palestinians of the West Bank and Arab states
Gaza
of Lebanon Iran
Turks of Cyprus Turkey
Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenia
of Afghanistan Iran
Uzbeks of Afghanistan Uzbekistan
Indian Muslims Pakistan
Israel, for example, cannot hope to overthrow the Jewish state or to

secede from it. Given Israel's military might, conventional and
unconventional, the neighboring Arab states cannot credibly threaten
to invade Israel and defeat the Jewish majority. The Israeli Arabs thus
must seek to improve the status of their community within the
existing Israeli political framework. This is much harder to do if the
community accepts aid from countries with which Israel is hostile.
The Serbs of Croatia serve as a warning to communities that attempt
to draw on the help of a neighbor in freeing themselves from their
home country. Serb politicians encouraged and aided the Serbs of
Croatia to carve out autonomous Serbian areas of Croatia. Eventually,
however, international pressure on Serbian politicians increased, and
Serbia abandoned the Serbs of the Krajina region to the Croatian
army and agreed to a peace with Croatia that returns the Serbs of
eastern Slavonia to Croatian sovereignty. In other places ethnic
communities have done somewhat better. The Armenians of Nagorno-
Karabakh used aid from Armenia to break away from Azerbaijan,

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and Turkey separated the Turks of Cyprus from the Greek Cypriots.
Both communities paid a high cost in violence and destruction.
Neither breakaway state is recognized by the international
community, and Azerbaijan may yet try to recapture Nagorno-
Karabakh, as Croatia reduced the autonomous Serb enclaves on its
territory.58
Some subordinate ethnic communities can hope to successfully rebel,
secede, or be rescued by a co-ethnic neighbor. This is by no means an
unmixed blessing. If such communities negotiate a settlement with
the regime, it may well give them better terms than less threatening
communities. Yet the security dilemma can make it impossible to
work out such a contract: the two sides may not be able to make a
credible commitment that they will abstain from doing harm to the
other, and one or both sides feel that failure to act first will seriously
damage their chances of winning any eventual struggle. Mutual threat
can lead to ethnic war, and while one side or another may "win," both
bear enormous costs. It is in such cases that extremists have the most
power to destroy ethnic contracts by negating mutual guarantees.
Most often this is accomplished by acts of violence designed to instill
fear in one or the other communities and thereby provoke repression,
counteraction, and a spiral into ethnic war. The subordinate
community consequently often has a strong interest in self-policing,
in preventing any acts of violence which damage the status of the
community as a whole.59 Self-policing is more likely to be effective
where (1) the regime and the ethnic community work out an
accommodation, and (2) ethnic violence will not spiral out of control
as the result of individual acts of terror. Where ethnic polarization
plainly cannot succeed in overturning the ethnic balance of power,
ethnic contracts have much more resilience in the face of extremist
action.
Only in quite limited circumstances do ethnic communities register a
clear gain from the presence of a threatening co-ethnic neighbor. The
Russians of the Baltic states are one example. These Russians do not
threaten the Baltic regimes so much by what they might do, but
instead by what Russia might do to help them. Appeasement of the
Russian minorities makes Russian involvement less likely, while
repression puts wind in the sails of Russian nationalist politicians and
raises the threat of a disastrous intervention. It helps in this that the
Russian minorities, by and large, do not want to be rescued, for the
Baltic economies are far sounder than Russia's.60 The Baltic
governments thus tend to appease, the Russian minorities benefit, and
everyone avoids the cost of ethnic polarization.
Finally, it is worth noting that it is in some respects to the advantage
of a subordinate community that it cannot pose a serious threat to the
dominant

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ethnicity. A community that can plausibly threaten to rebel, secede, or
seek rescue poses an enormous threat to the home-country regime.
While the home-country regime may respond to this potential threat
with appeasement, it is also quite possible that the regime and the
subordinate community will fail to negotiate an ethnic contract which
will provide security guarantees for both sides. In the absence of this,
the security dilemma often propels both sides toward escalating
violence, especially if extremists deliberately try to exacerbate ethnic
polarization. From this issue the sort of vicious ethnic wars that have
blighted the ex-Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Nagorno-Karabakh. While
the subordinate community might win such a war—as have the
Armenians of Azerbaijan, at least thus far—such a victory comes at
enormous cost. Where the level of threat is lower, as in the Gulf
monarchies, the security dilemma does not come into play.
Conclusions
On first glance it would seem that subordinate ethnic communities
would stand to gain a great deal by the proximity of a state controlled
by members of their own ethnicity. Power resides largely in states,
and a group able to draw on the power of a neighboring sympathetic
state would appear to have an advantage over a group lacking such a
tie. In practice, while this is occasionally the case, more often it is
not. The subordinate community, because of its ethnic tie to a
neighboring state, often poses a threat to the home-country regime.
The home-country regime often responds to this threat with
repression rather than appeasement. Only rarely can subordinate
communities avoid paying most of the costs of this repression. The
of the Arab Gulf monarchies cannot overthrow the regimes,
secede, or reasonably hope for rescue from Iran. In this situation, the
communities drawing on Iranian support for subversion of the home-
country regimes invites repression, not appeasement.
For all the reputed fanaticism of the , and their hatred for
oppression, the political history of the communities of the Arab
Gulf monarchies suggests that these communities are aware of the
weakness of their position, and that this is reflected in their political
strategies. On a few occasions extremists have sought support
from Iran in carrying out violent attacks against their home-country
regimes. These instances have not provoked ethnic polarization and
spiraling ethnic violence. Neither have they helped the in
bargaining with the ruling families. The scarcity of these acts of
violence over the past decades, and in the face of real political
deprivation, suggests that the communities recognize the political
constraints of their situa--

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tions, and that pragmatism usually overcomes any ideological
predisposition the may have for martyrdom in the pursuit of lost
causes.
Notes
1. There are well-known analytic dangers in treating communities of
individuals as rational actors. It is, however, often a useful device to
ask what the interests of a community (or those of its members) may
be, so that we can discern whether or not collective action problems
prevent the community from realizing those interests.
2. I am thus excluding situations in which subordinate ethnic
communities facilitate cooperation between their home country and a
neighbor: in these situations, it would seem, ethnic communities
often do benefit from the presence of a co-ethnic neighbor.
3. It is sometimes even the case that the mere existence of the ethnic
tie, absent any actual action on the part of the subordinate
community, poses a threat to the home-country regime and results in
the repression of the ethnic community. Japanese-Americans during
World War II are an example.
4. The most prominent exception is an article by Joseph Kostiner, "
Unrest in the Gulf," in , Resistance, and Revolution, ed.
Martin Kramer (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987), 173–86.
5. Shahram Chubin, "The Islamic Republic's Foreign Policy in the
Gulf," in , Resistance, and Revolution, ed. Martin Kramer
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987), 169. See also Shahram Chubin and
Charles Tripp, Iran–Saudi Arabia Relations and Regional Order,
Adelphi Paper no. 304 (1996), 33–35.
6. R. K. Ramazani, " in the Persian Gulf," in and Social
Protest, ed. Juan R. I. Cole and Nikki R. Keddie (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1986), 54.
7. Milton J. Esman and Itamar Rabinovich, "The Study of Ethnic
Politics in the Middle East," in Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in
the Middle East, ed. Esman and Rabinovich (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1988), 19–20.
8. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, "Containing Fear: The
Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict," International Security
21, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 41–76. See also James D. Fearon, "Rationalist
Explanations for War," International Organization 49, no. 3 (Summer
1995): 379–414.
9. Some analyses of political ideology note the quietist strain in
thought, which coexists with the revolutionary aspect that came
to the forefront with the revolution of 1979. To the degree that the
quietist strain is also given weight, the utility of ideology, alone, in
predicting political behavior meets with some immediate
difficulties, for it must be explained why one aspect determines
action in one place and time, and the other elsewhere.
10. For the full version of this argument, see Michael Herb, "All in
the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle
Eastern Monarchies" (Albany: State University of New York Press,
forthcoming, 1999).
11. Gregory F. Gause, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security
Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (New York: Council on Foreign
Relations, 1994), 97–98.

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12. The of Bahrain make up the larger part of the rural
population, but the very modest size of the state—the smallest of the
GCC countries—makes regional autonomy a non-issue.
13. Iran has occupied the Emirate islands, but this is not a measure of
capability to invade, say, Abu Dhabi. Even absent the American
presence, it is by no means clear that Iran could successfully invade a
GCC state: Iran, unlike Iraq, has little recent history of such
things, and the GCC states benefit from the natural water barrier of
the Gulf.
14. In some situations a subordinate group can deliberately provoke
repression by their home-country regime precisely in order to force a
co-ethnic neighbor to protect them. Since Iran does not have the
capacity to protect the communities in the Arab states, such a
strategy would not seem merely irresponsible—as it would for
communities that stand some chance of being rescued—but instead
inexplicable, which is a different thing.
15. Both the Persian and the Arab communities are ithna ashari
, followers of the twelfth imam.
16. On the majlis al-shura, see R. Hrair Dekmejian, "Saudi Arabia's
Consultative Council," The Middle East Journal 52, no. 2 (Spring
1998): 213. The U.S. State Department provides a useful yearly
summary of the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia in its Country
Reports on Human Rights.
17. Adherents of the doctrine refer to themselves as the muwahhidun,
or Unitarians, believers in the unity of God. The founder of the school
of thought was Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab, whence the term
Wahhabism came.
18. In the 1920s, before their 1929 defeat, the ikhwan sought to
convert, by force, the of the Eastern Province to Wahhabi Islam.
See Jacob Goldberg, "The Minority in Saudi Arabia," in and
Social Protest, ed. Juan R. I. Cole and Nikki R. Keddie (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), 231–36, and John S. Habib, Ibn
Saud's Warriors of Islam: The Ikhwan of Najd and Their Role in the
Creation of the Kingdom, 1910–1930 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978),
122–23.
19. Goldberg, " Minority," 238–39. He notes that the "were
intimidated by the power of the Saudi regime, and they conducted
their affairs in a highly subdued and cautious manner."
20. R. K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in
the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988),
41; Richard F. Nyrop, ed., Saudi Arabia: A Country Study, Foreign
Area Handbook Series (Washington: American University, 1984), 51–
52; Goldberg, " Minority," 243.
21. U.S. State Department, Country Reports on Human Rights: Saudi
Arabia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1993).
22. Kostiner, " Unrest."
23. Riad Najib El-Rayyis, Riyah al-sumum: wa duwal al-
jazira harb al-khalij (Poisonous winds: Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf states after the Gulf War) (London: Riad El-Rayyis Books,
1994), 197–214.
24. At least one report suggested that the bombing reflected a
breakdown in the 1993 agreement between the Al Saud and the
opposition, though it is also possible that the bombers had entirely
different motivations. Washington Post, November 1, 1996.

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25. New York Times, "US-Saudi Inquiry into 1996 Bombing is Falling
Apart," June 21, 1998.
26. The best surviving written record of the majlis, recorded by its
secretary, Khalid al-Adsani (himself of a prominent Sunni family),
reveals a deep bias against the , many of recent immigration to
Kuwait. Khalid Sulayman al-Adsani, Muthakkirat Khalid Sulayman
al-Adsani, rahimahu allah, sikritir majlis al-umma al-awal
wa al-thani (The memoirs of Khalid Sulayman al-Adsani, Allah have
mercy on his soul, the secretary of the first and second legislative
bodies of the nation) (photocopy of unpublished manuscript in
possession of author, n.d.).
27. Ibid., 90. On the period, see Herb, "All in the Family," and Jill
Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait
and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
28. Abd al-Ridha Ali Assiri, Al-kuwayt fi al-siyasa al-duwaliya
(Kuwait in the context of modern world politics) (Kuwait:
n.p., 1993), 171–72.
29. Ibid., 172–74; , Al-sulta fi duwal al-khalij
(Legislative power in the states of the Arab Gulf), Manshurat
majallat dirasat al-khalij wa al-jazira no. 14, Kuwait, 1985,
388.
30. The bombings of the American and French embassies in 1983 and
the attempted assassination of Emir Jabir in 1985 were carried out
mostly by foreign , but Kuwaiti were responsible for the oil-
installation bombings of 1986. See Assiri, Al-kuwayt fi al-siyasa al-
duwaliya, 432–52; Kostiner, " Unrest," 180–82.
31. On the ethnic and sectarian divisions in Bahraini society, see Fuad
I. Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1980), 1–4.
32. See the extensive comment on the current unrest by the Bahrain
Freedom Movement at
ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Bahrain.
33. The relatively radical opposition organization that came to
prominence after 1979, the Jabha al-islamiya li-tahrir al-bahrayn
(Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain—IFLB), decried the
sectarian "trap" laid for it by the regime, explicitly recognizing that
the sectarian issue helped the regime more than it harmed the
opposition. Faysal Marhun, Al-bahrayn: Qadaya al-sulta wa
(Bahrain: Matters of state and society) (London: Dar al-safa, 1988),
223.
34. Fearon, "Rationalist explanations for war."
35. British officers have headed the security forces and the officers
and men are a cocktail of nationalities, from Pakistan, Britain, Saudi
Arabia, and elsewhere. Those who are Muslims are not .
36. Marhun, Al-bahrayn, 26, 245.
37. al-madani: Taqrir al-sanawi 1995 (Civil society: The
1995 annual report) (Cairo: Markaz Ibn Khaldun li'l-Dirasat al
), 191.
38. Dahl, Polyarchy, 14–16, 36, 46–47.
39. For a fuller discussion of the nature of parliamentary
constitutions in the Gulf monarchies—and in particular Kuwait—see
Herb, "All in the Family," chap. 6.
40. In the IMF's Government Finance Statistics Yearbook grants (of
unspecified origin, though Saudi Arabia is the only candidate) come
to $100 million a year since 1984, following even greater sums in the
years immediately following the Iranian revolution. Oman and
Bahrain shared, between 1984 and 1994, a GCC subsidy, for
armaments, of $1.8

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billion, though apparently only Saudi Arabia paid its share. Saudi
Arabia sustains the BAPCO (the Bahrain oil company) oil refinery by
providing 80 percent of its oil. Helen Chapin Metz, ed., Persian Gulf
States: Country Studies, Area Handbook Series (Washington: Federal
Research Division, Library of Congress, 1994), 352; Anthony H.
Cordesman, After the Storm: The Changing Military Balance in the
Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), 558, 629.
41. For the government's view, see Al-wasat, June 10, 1996. Certainly
it is clear that the regime hoped to use the putative coup attempt to
garner international support in its struggle against its domestic
opposition. For the oppositions' view, see the Bahrain Freedom
Movement's log of events in Bahrain for June 1996.
42. Chubin and Tripp also discuss the implications of the Bahraini
conflict for American policy. Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp,
"Iran–Saudi Arabia Relations and Regional Order," Adelphi Paper no.
304 (Oxford: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1996), 35.
43. In May 1996 the chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff,
General Shalikashvili, met with the Bahraini crown prince and
announced that the United States was "most supportive of Bahrain's
efforts to ensure its stability," a reference to U.S. support for the
regime's repression of Bahraini dissidents. Reuters, May 29, 1996.
44. The lower figure comes from James Bill, "Islam, Politics, and
in the Gulf," Middle East Insight 3, no. 3 (January–February
1984), while the higher is mentioned, along with Bill's figures, in
Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran, 277. The lower figure is almost
certainly closer to the truth.
45. Oman has only a very small population, part of it Indian
Ismaili sects.
46. There are a number of accounts of the dispute, including
Hooshang Amirahmadi, ed., Small Islands, Big Politics: The Tombs
and Abu Musa in the Persian Gulf (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1996). See also Rouhollah K. Ramazani, The Persian Gulf: Iran's
Role (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1972), 56–68;
Cordesman, The Gulf and the Search for Strategic Stability, 417, 425.
47. This is also reflected in the continued economic ties between
other emirates and Iran. Sharjah and Iran continue to share the
revenues of an oil field near the largest of the three islands, even
while various Arab capitals and Tehran exchange hostile barbs over
the issue of sovereignty. Middle East, February 1994, 29.
48. CIA 1996 World Factbook; Bill, Islam, Politics and ; Joyce
N. Wiley, The Islamic Movement of Iraqi (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne
Rienner, 1992), 9. Yitzhak Nakash, The of Iraq (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994), 25–44. All figures on Iraq's ethnic
composition are estimates.
49. Abd al-Karim ,a politician of the monarchical era,
discusses the sectarian problem and the role of the army in Mushkilat
al-hukm fi : wa al-hukm al-
dimuqrati fi al-Iraq wa al-hulul al-dururiya lil-taghallub alayha
(Problems of government in Iraq: An analysis of how sectarian
factors prevent democratic government in Iraq and of necessary
solutions to overcome them) (London: n.p., 1991), 335–42.
50. Amazia Baram argues that the rising percentage of in high
political positions in the regime in the 1980s signaled a
weakening of the sectarian character of the regime. The argument
may be overstated, but it is not insignificant that some did

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international deadlock, find their own way to stability, cooperation,
autonomy, peace, and economic development? Do they understand
that all or most will collectively share the cost of disorder if they
cannot find a way to share the cost of regional cooperation? Will they
gamble that the benefits of a regional security system can be made
available to most, if not all, the states in the region?
And, more to the point of immediate interest, will the underlying
ethnic and religious conflicts emerge as the major obstacles to
regional cooperation, or will ethnic and religious solidarities now be
permitted to replace the inherited post-Ottoman state system with
larger and more broadly based political units that can command
greater legitimacy and therefore find it less dangerous and more
beneficial to build a regional regime of long-term cooperation?
Ethnic Politics in the Regional Context
Traditional Roots of Ethnic Identity
Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, ethnic competition in
the Middle East has encouraged the assertion of extreme claims to
primordiality stretching back to biblical and prebiblical times.
Prophetic truth, divine promises, holy covenants, and miraculous
signs are commingled with images of tribal nomads led by noble
patriarchs and heroic warriors. Relations with hostile ethnic groups,
or rather tribes, were mythically defined as derivative of trials
imposed on the chosen community by the Divine Chooser. Other
ethnics are merely the passive objects of the only meaningful
historical events–those related to revelation and the career of the
community chosen to receive the message.
But these imagined original communities, comprising equal parts
kinship and privileged belief, are the products of reconstructed myth
rather than historical reality. In fact, contemporary ethnic politics is a
product of the ethnic politics that has long been integrated into the
political and legal systems of the imperial states governing most of
the area until the end of World War I. Under the Ottoman Empire,
ethnicity was subordinated to sectarianism and religious identity as a
basis of civil status. Ethnic solidarities were expressed through local
traditional leaders and were rarely manifested as regionwide
politicized social movements.
The model of the mosaic society, so deplored by contemporary Arab
nationalists, was in many ways an accurate characterization of
Middle Eastern society. Theoretically, or rather, theologically, Islam
is egalitarian, but Otto--

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hold high positions; at the same time, Sunni Arab control of the core
state organs never fell into any doubt. "The Ruling Political Elite in
, 1968–1986: The Changing Features of a Collective Profile,"
International Journal of Middle East Studies 21, no.4 (November
1989): 447–93.
51. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary
Movements of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978),
182, 968, 1017, 1042–44, especially 1078–79.
52. Hanna Batatu, "Iraq's Underground Movements:
Characteristics, Causes and Prospects," Middle East Journal 35, no. 4
(Autumn 1981): 592.
53. Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq since 1958: From
Revolution to Dictatorship (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990), 190. They
follow this, however, with the less convincing assertion that the
"fundamental" division in Iraqi society is between the "haves" and the
"have-nots."
54. Interview with al-Damin al-Juburi in Al-hayat, April
25, 1993.
55. opposition publications recognize the danger of sectarian
polarization and do not attack Sunnis as such. In this, the Iraqi
opposition follows a strategy similar to that of the of Bahrain.
See Joyce N. Wiley, The Islamic Movement of Iraqi (Boulder,
Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 148.
56. On Iran and the Iraqi , see Gregory Gause, "The Illogic of
Dual Containment," Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (March–April, 1994):
56–67.
57. In 1920 the , with support from many Sunnis, revolted in
response to the declaration of the British Mandate over Iraq. One
observer has discerned an aborted effort at "state formation" by these
leaders. In the mid-thirties, however, a newly strengthened Iraqi
army established its military supremacy in the south. Nakash, of
Iraq, 7, 72, 120–25; Marr, Modern History of Iraq, 65–67.
58. On Nagorno-Karabakh see David Rieff, "Case Study in Ethnic
Strife," Foreign Affairs 76, no. 2 (March–April 1997): 118–33.
59. On self-policing among ethnic communities, see James D. Fearon
and David D. Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," APSA 90,
no. 4 (December 1996): 715–35.
60. William Maley, "Does Russia Speak for Baltic Russians?," World
Today 51, no. 1 (January 1995): 4–6.

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9
Toward a Social Analysis of Islamist Movements
Gilles Kepel
Islamist movements have been increasingly active around the world
since the mid-1970s, but their political fortunes have proved quite
diverse. Only in Iran has an Islamist movement managed to engineer
a revolution, seize power, and consolidate it after successfully
crushing all the other participants in the mass upheaval that toppled
the shah's regime in 1979. In Algeria, the Islamic Salvation Front
(FIS) came close to seizing power in 1990–91, but it could not resist
the military coup that interrupted the parliamentary elections in
January 1992. Since then, a civil war has plagued that country. In its
course, Islamists split into warring factions, and the ruling regime
managed to stay in power—while no takeover by the militants is
foreseeable as of late 1998. In Egypt, which seemed to be the hotbed
for such movements because Islamist activism had run high since the
1970s—it was the birthplace of the Muslim Brothers in 1928—they
were unable to topple the state in spite of Sadat's assassination in
October 1981. Though Islamists had a relatively strong support base
among various layers of Egyptian society, they proved unable to oust
the Mubarak regime, notwithstanding heavily publicized outbursts of
violence in the Nile valley, mainly in Upper Egypt, where tourists,
Copts, and state officials were the prime targets.
In most other Muslim countries Islamist militants try to play an
active part in politics. State attitudes toward them range from
complete ban—as in Syria, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, or Libya—to co-
optation into the administration at the highest level and control of
state power—as in the Sudan or Afghanistan. Most states, however,
are located in a "gray zone," whence they try to accommodate or co-
opt the less radical of the militants while pressuring the ones with a
strong social agenda. Such countries as Jordan, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Pakistan, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen, and Lebanon have allowed
Islamist parties to contest parliamentary elections, win seats, and
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ruling coalitions. In most cases, however, such tactics were used to
defuse the potential political danger of a united Islamist movement
and split up its ranks so that it could not come to power with its own
agenda. When it did so, as was the case with the Turkish Refah
Partisi, the experiment could not last more than a few months.
What accounts for such discrepancies in the political fates of the
various Islamist movements of today? Why did some seize power
while others remained as but an opposition force, split ranks, or
simply failed to resist state repression? We should start to address
this simple question if we wish to avoid the normative literature that
steadily blurs our analysis of that phenomenon. For some, Islamists
are the embodiment of all evil, while others view them as the true
representatives of civil society. For both sides, they tend to
impersonate some End of History for the Muslim World—whether for
better or worse. Quite to the contrary: they are simply a phenomenon
that came to life under precise circumstances and may not necessarily
survive their change. They are also subject to the political
vicissitudes of any social movement. In that respect, the political
success or failure of an Islamist movement in a given country hinges
on the kind of social mobilization that it is able to engineer. My
contention is that such a mobilization proves successful when it can
gather, within a single cluster, three different components that we
may define as the Young Urban Poor, the Intellectual Counterelite,
and the Pious Bourgeoisie. In the following pages, we shall endeavor
to construct them as ideal-types in a Weberian perspective—with
each of them functioning simultaneously in interaction and
contradistinction with the other two. We shall build up each group as
a peculiar compound made out of three elements: an actual social
background, a proposed political agenda, and a unique political
resource, effective only if combined with the resources of the other
two groups. As such, our three groups identified above are constructs
for the sake of research and elucidation of a global social
phenomenon; they should not be taken for a mere description of
discrete empirical objects.
We shall notice that each group's background and agenda partially
contradict those of the other two, and that the very characteristic of
Islamist ideology is an attempt to defuse such contradictions and
reconcile otherwise diverging agendas during the time needed to oust
the incumbent power elites. Success of Islamist social mobilization
means that our cluster remains united, takes the lead to gather other
dissatisfied social groups, and that the power elites, labeled as "un-
Islamic," "impious," etc., become isolated, lose legitimacy, and then
lose power. Conversely, failure means that contradictions between the
three components get out of hand, that their political resources

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cannot be united, and that the power elites stay in power by splitting
the ranks of the Islamists, luring some figures of the Pious
Bourgeoisie and the Intellectual Counterelites into symbolic
participation in the power system and keeping the Young Urban Poor
at bay.
Those three components of the Islamist movement are unique to the
last quarter of the twentieth century. They emerged as dissatisfied
groups with the major social breakdown in the Muslim world
beginning in the mid-1970s. The nature of each group's
dissatisfaction is particular, and so is the kind of contradiction that
opposes each of them to the ruling class. Though the three groups
may all call for the advent of the Islamic state (dawla islamiyya) and
the implementation of laws, each has its own understanding of
such demands.
The Young Urban Poor expect from the future Islamic state the
promise of a major social upheaval that will bring them everything
they feel deprived of—jobs, decent lodgings, and respect. To them,
equals social justice.
The Pious Bourgeoisie, on the other hand, envisions the Islamic state
as one it will control after its rival, the incumbent ruling class, has
been brought down. In that scenario, the Young Urban Poor are
manipulated into using their unique political resource—that is, to
exert their social violence by taking to the streets—in order to
conclude the takeover process. laws, in this case, do not
connote social upheaval but are perceived as sanctifying the future
leadership of the Pious Bourgeoisie, the day it will be on top of the
Islamic state's social hierarchy. The Young Urban Poor would be paid
back with moral, instead of social, rewards (bashing the "corrupt on
earth," the "impure," forcefully veiling women, etc.). They could also
be sent to their "martyrdom" to fight the "enemies of God" on the
frontier, as happened to the Iranian bassidji—an efficient means to
rid the domestic political scene of them.
As for the Intellectual Counterelites, they exist in such a capacity as
long as they are in a position to produce the Islamist discourse that
will serve to mobilize side by side the Young Urban Poor and the
Pious Bourgeoisie. If they manage to address both groups, they do
play a pivotal role for the enduring cohesion of the Islamist cluster—
and they maximize its chances to seize power. Conversely, if their
discourse is too overtly conservative, or too radical and frightening,
they lose access to one of the two groups, they hamper the
mobilization process, and minimize the chances for takeover.
Such a challenge was perceived quite early on by the ruling elites, all
the more so after the success of the Iranian revolution. In most
countries, they focused their efforts at the splitting of the Islamist
cluster: frightening the

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pious bourgeois and petit-bourgeois into thinking that they might be
the first to be wiped out by the social wrath of the disfranchised
should an Islamist revolution occur.
In the following pages, I will at first attempt to construct the ideal-
types of the three components of the Islamist movements of today. I
will then look at the interplay among them and at their relations with
the state and the ruling class in comparative perspective, in the
context of the three experiences of Iran, Egypt, and Algeria—a
contrasted spectrum of paradigmatic Islamist success and failures.
The Three Components of Islamist Movements
The mid-1970s was a watershed period for the Muslim world. The
skyrocketing oil prices brought about tremendous change in the
distribution of wealth within Muslim countries—many of which
export it, while most others benefit from the indirect effect of this
bounty. This wealth, however, was unevenly distributed, and it
created long-term social disruption. As new wealth boosted
consumption, it made inequality not only more visible but also more
difficult to accept, as was the case in Iran, where the upper class close
to the palace had ostensibly creamed off oil revenues. In socialist
Algeria, the oil boom, while it enriched the ruling nomenclature, was
also put to use subsidizing imported consumption goods, which
created the illusion that such goods would be forever available to the
bulk of the population. This policy had devastating consequences
after the fall of oil prices in the mid-1980s put an abrupt end to those
subsidies. In Egypt, labor migration to the neighboring oil-exporting
countries of the Arab peninsula became a mass phenomenon.
Amongst its many outcomes was the emergence of a new middle
class of returning immigrants who had made money in Saudi Arabia
or Kuwait. They owed nothing in this regard to the Egyptian state and
their rapid upward social mobility often translated into outward signs
of piety that emulated the religiosity prevalent in the oil kingdoms
and sheikhdoms where they had acquired their new wealth.
The Young Urban Poor
Apart from the many changes linked to oil prices, the mid-1970s in
the Muslim world witnessed a structural and dramatic transformation
in demographics and in related variables such as age distribution,
urban versus rural distribution, literacy, and modes of access to the
political system. The demographic explosion of the post–World War
II period gave birth to an unparalleled youth cohort—with more than
50 percent of the population below the age of twenty.

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They came of adult age from the 1970s. Among the most salient
characteristics of these new youths was their mass migration from a
countryside that could feed them no longer toward cities where they
expected a better life. Those newcomers could not reach the heart of
the cities and became foreign to their traditional social networks and
political culture. They dwelled in a new space between the urban and
the rural worlds, jamming shantytowns, informal neighborhoods, or
housing projects in the outskirts of the cities.
This young "rurban" population epitomizes the major social
breakdown of the current quarter century.1 Though spatially,
politically, and socially "marginalized," they have become the actual
demographic "center" of contemporary Muslim societies. They
shared three unique characteristics: they were generally poor,
significantly more literate than their parents, and had no memory of
the struggles for independence on which most of the ruling elites in
the Muslim world had built their legitimacy. At the time these youths
were reaching adulthood, they usually had scarce job opportunities.
Finally, the Young Urban Poor remained impervious to the ruling
elites' rhetoric of legitimization, tracing back to the 1950s or early
sixties. They did not consider the incumbent rulers legitimate—all
the more because they never had a say in choosing them. In their
view, the ruling class was accountable for today's problems rather
than yesterday's glory; and as far as the most burning of those
problems were concerned—jobs, housing, and respect—the state
simply did not deliver. The Young Urban Poor were not politically
integrated, they did not relate to the state system: they were out.
Their social protest was expressed in cyclical waves of riots, usually
targeting the city centers from which they were excluded, and
focusing on symbols of state authority such as official buildings,
public means of transportation, and traffic signs. Most countries in
the Muslim world have experienced such riots—as a reaction to cuts
in government subsidies of necessary staples following pressure by
the IMF, to police brutality, to "anti-social" changes in the legislation,
etc. Egypt witnessed the January 1977 "bread riots" and the 1986
"auxiliary police mutiny" and subsequent riots. In Algiers, the riots of
October 1988 reached their symbolic climax when demonstrators
took down the Algerian flag and raised in its place an empty bag of
semolina—the main ingredient for couscous, the national dish, then
in short supply.2
Whatever the sparks that began such revolts, they shared common
outcomes. They were militarily crushed within a few days, failing to
be politicized enough to develop into long-term revolutionary
upheavals. In the "couscous flag" episode the revolt could bring down
the national flag, putting into question the legitimacy, political
ideology, and nationalist symbolism of the

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ruling class. It fell short, however, of replacing it with another flag
with a comparable array of political connotations, such as the red flag
of communism or the green banner of Islam. The "couscous flag"
symbolized a social revolt that used a merely negative semantic
register (hunger), but it carried no long-term alternative vision of
Algerian society.
Algerian dialect dubbed the Young Urban Poor "hittistes," a newly
coined term blending the Arabic for "wall" (hit) with the French
suffix "iste." The hittistes are the unemployed and disfranchised
youths who lean idly against walls all day—as if to prevent their
collapse—the way Algerian humeur noir has it. A phony job that
mimics the failed grand promises of nationalism and independence.
Another common way of referring to the Young Urban Poor in Arabic
is shabab (youths).3 One can remain a shabab in one's forties, as long
as one has not reached social adulthood; that is, getting a job that
pays enough to get out of the parents' house and start a family. This
endless "youth" mainly connotes the marginalization and poverty that
stigmatized the bulk of the generations that arrived on the
job/unemployment market from the mid-1970s.
In other words hittistes, or shabab, are the embodiment of a socially
dissatisfied group alienated from the state system. They are, however,
devoid of political conscience per se. Their political resource lies
exclusively in the potential threat they present, once organized, to the
powers that be. If they take part in a major upheaval, they will be
significant because of their numbers and determination. "The lower-
class participants in a revolution cannot turn discontent into effective
political action without autonomous collective organizations and
resources to sustain their efforts," writes Theda Skocpol.4 In the
Islamist movement, the Intellectual Counterelites attempt to provide
the organization, and the Pious Bourgeoisie, the resources.
The Intellectual Counterelites
Within this "new youth" of the 1970s, a sizable minority acquired
modern education, whether at high school, college, or university
levels, in local institutions of learning and, for some of them, in
foreign universities. Modern education was a top priority for
governments of independent countries in the Muslim world. The
number of graduates, however, far exceeded the available
corresponding employment opportunities. Many of the degrees
obtained locally were below international standards because of
understaffing in schools, poor infrastructure, and obsolete instruction
techniques that still relied heavily on rote learning. Hence, the better
openings were provided to U.S. or European graduates whenever
competence made the difference. As for key posi--

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tions of power in the state bureaucracy, in the army, or any structure
linked to the preservation of the prevalent social order, kinship,
lineage, and connections often took precedence over merit.
In Algeria, more than thirty years after independence, real power
remains in the hands of the Arabic-speaking ethnics of the eastern
highlands region and their scions, dubbed as "BTS" (an acronym for
the cities of Batna, Tebessa, and Souk Ahras, which form the vertices
of a triangle south of Constantine). In contrast, young graduates from
Kabyle and western Algerian stock know they will not have
comparable access to central positions of power, whatever their
scholarly achievements. In most monarchies, whether feudal,
traditional, or "modern"—such as in the Arab peninsula, Jordan,
Morocco, or imperial Iran—belonging to the extended royal family
has always been the irreplaceable path to political power and the best
economic bids and contracts, from which the commoners are
frequently excluded.
This nepotism and regionalism, which stems from the neopatrimonial
character of most states of the Muslim world, have developed from
the 1970s into a system where elite rotation is almost frozen. Not
only have prevailing authoritarianism and widespread cronyism
precluded democracy and popular participation in the political
system, alienating the mass of the Young Urban Poor, they have also
frustrated would-be elites. Among those, the most bitter and vengeful
are the average to well-educated youths who have believed in the
official rhetoric of development and meritocracy, and whose families
have often made significant financial sacrifices for their education.
When they came of age, they discovered that the state's discourse was
nothing but deceit and that their future would neither match their
investments nor correspond to their expectations.
It is within this "relatively deprived" group that the intellectual
Islamist counterelites are to be found. This group has played a pivotal
role in the emergence of the movement because its members both
coined the new Islamist ideology of the 1970s and attempted to reach
the bulk of the disfranchised youth, mobilizing them and
"conscientizing" them through a network of benevolent associations
funded by the Pious Bourgeoisie.
The new Islamist ideology of the 1970s is the outcome of different
traditions that trace back to movements that emerged in the late
1920s. In the Sunni part of the Muslim world, such movements
belonged to two major trends. The first was actualized by the Society
of the Muslim Brothers, founded in 1928–29 in Egypt by
schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna (ob. 1949). It advocated the advent of
an Islamic state once colonial domination would be done away with,
and eloquently summed up its view of the legal system it longed

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for with its famous slogan al dusturuna (The Quran is our
constitution).
The Muslim Brothers needed no such thing as a man-made body of
laws and were content with the implementation of laws. To
achieve their aims, they built a network of social and benevolent
associations that aimed to mobilize the urban lower-middle class of
the times, the effendis. Though the Muslim Brothers became one of
the major political groups in Egypt, they were eventually defeated
and crushed by the Nasser regime in 1954, and they suffered two
decades of persecution that provided "martyrs" for the movement in
its second cycle, from the mid-1970s onward. Most prominent among
those was Sayyid Qutb (executed in 1966), who wrote what is
considered to be the contemporary Islamist manifesto,
(Signposts), a radical critique of the "impious" independent states and
a call to build the Islamic state on their ruins. The Brothers'
intellectual lineage was to bear much fruit throughout the Muslim
world. In the Indian subcontinent, the Brotherhood inspired
(ob. 1979), who founded the islami (Islamic
society) in 1941.
Whereas movements related to the Muslim Brotherhood filiation
focused on the toppling of the "impious" state, advocating political
activism that would lead to Islamization "from above," another
Islamic trend born in the late 1920s in India preached Islamization
"from below," through a radical break in daily life with the mores of
the surrounding impious society. Known as the tablighi
(shortened in tabligh, meaning informing about Islam), it developed
extensive networks of resocialization of the faithful. Adepts lead an
"Islamic" life, strictly abiding by all the rules stipulated by the holy
book and emulating the model set by the Prophet. They were not
interested in toppling the state, but rather in expanding communities
of true believers through proselytizing. Together with the Muslim
Brotherhood and their sundry offspring, they contributed to the
maintenance of an Islamic mode of behavior in the modern world.
The 1970s generation and their followers actually used this legacy to
build up the Islamist doctrine that challenged the powers that be of
their time, creating an alternative worldview.
In Iran, the central component of the Muslim world, a number of
young intellectuals developed an original approach to the Islamic
creed that relied on a number of assumptions they had derived from
Marxism. Exemplified by the mujahideen organization, founded in
1963, whose leaders "were convinced that true Islam was compatible
with the theories of social evolution, historical determinism, and the
class struggle," they engaged in armed struggle against the Pahlavi
regime on behalf of "the masses."5 The best-known

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writer to advocate this approach was Ali (1933–77), who
criticized the "reactionary Islam" of the caliphs, used to "narcotize
the masses," and called for a "true Islam" to bring about the liberation
of mankind.6 To him, such figures as Ali, the fourth caliph, and
Husayn, his son, who was killed by the "impious ruler" of the time
and thus became a martyr, symbolized popular resistance to
oppression. The best-equipped interpreters of this "true Islam" were
not the clergy, in his view, but the rawshanfekran—or "enlightened
thinkers," such as himself—who had mastered Islam and the cultures
of the modern world. had obtained a degree in Paris and
translated much "third-worldist" literature into Persian, notably
Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, a title he rendered with the
Quranic term which was to gain considerable fame during
the Iranian revolution. He wrote, "in order to be able to obtain mutual
understanding with the masses and not to be separated from them, not
only must the enlightened persons rely on Islam but also honestly
believe that the elements of this religion do not invite people to think
of the past instead of the present. These elements are based on jihad
and (justice)."7
Both the mujahideen and followers of belonged to the self-
proclaimed "enlightened," or the Intellectual Counterelite, who
attempted to "obtain mutual understanding" with the "masses" that
were socially different from them. In order to reach out to them, they
had to resort to the language of Islam because it was what the masses
could understand, according to . The "enlightened" believed
that such a reappropriation of Islamic culture was the sole means to
mobilize the bulk of the Iranian disfranchised against the Pahlavi
regime, but it did not prove sufficient. popularity did not go
far beyond the young intelligentsia, falling short of mobilizing the
as a whole. At the same time, the mujahideen were never a
mass movement, except for a short period of time after the
revolution, before being destroyed by Khomeini's followers. Social
breakdowns of mujahideen militants arrested by the shah's police
show that they were "formed predominantly of the young generation
of technically educated intelligentsia born into traditional and
religiously inclined middle-class families."8 Evidence for Egyptian
militant Islamists arrested by Sadat's police in 1974 presents striking
social and educational resemblances, with more than 80 percent of
the defendants being students, roughly half of whom were enlisted in
engineering or medical schools.9
Throughout their opposition to the state, the young Intellectual
Counterelites used the language of Islam for a number of converging
reasons: its intellectual categories could be understood easily by the
masses of

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man society was certainly a ranked society. At the top was the
Ottoman elite, within which ethnicity was secondary. The Millet
system–which was sustained in part by the , in part by state law,
in part by political practice, and in part by popular culture–extended
the differentiation by religion and sect to ethnic, linguistic, tribal, and
local groups. Religious ranking placed Muslims first, and possibly
Arabs first among Muslims. Descendants of the Prophet enjoyed a
special respect, and others who could claim lineal descent from other
historically important religious figures were also held in high regard,
in what was actually a very complicated jumble of statuses. Among
non-Muslims, the "people of the book" (Jews and Christians) were
obviously ranked above others, but the minority communities in
Istanbul were especially favored. Minority communities were, in
many cases, real communities relying on local leaderships comprised
of religious dignitaries and plutocratic elites acceptable to the
Ottoman authorities. Traditional sultans, kings, shahs, and khedives
generally ruled minority communities by means of recognized
traditional minority or clergy, thus enhancing traditional
authority and often using such groups as sources of wealth, in
dealings with foreigners, and as a means of weakening indigenous
nationalist, modernizing, or democratizing movements. Premodern,
prenationalist, traditional sultans generally did not try to manipulate
ethnic and religious minorities of neighboring countries against their
own governments. Alliances might be made with traditional of
Kurds, Berbers, Arabs, Persians, Azeris, and Armenians inhabiting
border regions; but it would be an exaggeration to say that
manipulation of foreign minority allegiances and the encouragement
of ethnonationalism was a central part of foreign policies of Middle
East rulers prior to the middle of the twentieth century.
The basic form of the ethnic contracts governing the relations
between the empire and the mosaic of ascriptive communities
required that the community remain loyal and provide whatever
resources the center or the provincial authorities required. In return,
the central or provincial authorities would protect the subordinate
community, recognize its traditional leaders, protect its landed
property and wealth, and sustain whatever prescriptive rights and
customary status it may have gained from previous interactions with
the Ottoman authorities. The Ottoman authorities were supposed to
uphold these protections, even in the case of intercommunal disputes.
Imperialism and the Politicization of Ethnicity
European imperialist states competed with one another for influence
within the Ottoman Empire and for control over the fragments of the
empire that

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the Young Urban Poor that they wished to mobilize, they themselves
came from "traditional" backgrounds where they had been
accustomed to such worldviews, and, above all, they saw Islam as the
means par excellence to demonize the "secular" state, to create the
"other" to be fought against. In his book Signposts, Sayyid Qutb
epitomized that opposition against the modern "ungodly" state in the
Muslim world. He dubbed it jahiliyya (ignorance), using the classical
Islamic term that meant the pre-Islamic "barbarity" of the pagan Arab
peninsula, which the coming of Islam had done away with. Twentieth-
century jahiliyya was to be likewise destroyed by the Islamist
movement.
Reaching out to the "masses" proved difficult, if only because the
social objectives of the Young Urban Poor and of the young
intellectuals were not similar. In Sunni countries, such as Egypt and
Algeria, Islamist militants developed a network of social services
such as dispensaries, cheap transportation, after-hours schooling, and
vocational training, workshops, job centers, etc. They built on that
network to set an example of what their social understanding of Islam
was. They did so in deprived areas the state had forgotten or where it
was mainly present through its security forces. The Islamist elites
hoped to gain a political constituency from their social work.
Originally, they thought they were strong enough to reach out to the
masses alone, and they imagined they could bypass the ulema. The
most radical militants nicknamed the ulema "pulpit parrots,"
considering that they had betrayed their sacred mission of
interpreting Islam and sold out to the regime. In Egypt in the 1970s
one of the most prominent ulema was taken hostage and executed by
the so-called al takfir wal hijra Islamist radical group. In 1981, the
manifesto of Sadat's assassins, The Neglected Duty, referred in its
own title to the imperative of preaching jihad against the impious
ruler, a duty the ulema had forgotten and "hidden," according to the
radicals. Hostility between the religious clerics and the young
Islamist intellectuals ran very high until the mid-1980s.
In Iran, in spite of the somewhat violent criticism of the "narcotic"
Islam of the traditional clerics contained in writings, and of
the suspicion that many clerics hold of bizarre "Marxist"
Islam, a faction of the clergy led by the Ayatollah Khomeini
chose to side with the "enlightened" young intellectuals and borrowed
many of their concepts and much of their rhetoric. Khomeini himself
had taken a non-compromise oppositional stance, marked by his exile
to Najaf, Iraq, after his participation in the 1963 anti-shah movement,
a strategy that no comparable Sunni cleric emulated.
By late 1977, when the revolutionary process was set in motion, the
Iranian clergy under Khomeini's guidance proved the key element in
mobilizing the Young Urban Poor and bringing them to confront the
shah's regime. Neither

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the "enlightened" intellectuals nor the militant Islamist organizations
had been able to build up a constituency by themselves among the
poor.
The Intellectual Counterelites were crucial for giving the Islamist
movements of the 1970s and 1980s their ideological character. The
resource they possessed was "cultural capital," but they were not, by
themselves, sufficiently strong to pose a social threat to the regimes
they opposed, and they attempted to mobilize the Young Urban Poor
to that effect. For the sake of efficiency, the clerics' cooperation
proved crucial, not only in mobilizing the urban poor but also, and
especially, to reach to the social group that possessed the financial
resources to fund the movement: the Pious Bourgeoisie.
The Pious Bourgeoisie
The third component of Islamist movements is somewhat more
heterogeneous than the first two. The Pious Bourgeoisie does not
belong solely to the social cohort of the youths. Some of its members
are old enough to remember how the ruling class actually came to
power. They recall how they were excluded from participation in the
power system after independence, as was the case in Egypt and
Algeria in the 1960s, when socialist policies were implemented and a
nomenclature, which would evolve later into a state bourgeoisie, was
formed. In Iran, they had memories of the events of 1953 and 1963,
which paved the way for the absolute power of the shah and of a
privileged upper class of cronies who creamed off the oil revenues, to
which the traditional middle class, symbolized by the bazaar
merchants, had little access. This older segment of the Pious
Bourgeoisie had close links to the ulema, most of whom came from
traditional families. In Egypt and Algeria many of them had been
close to political-religious movements of the pre-independence
period such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Association des
Oulémas, founded in 1931 by Sheikh Abdel Hamid Ben Badis in
Constantine.
These organizations advocated moral reform and the advent of an
Islamic state to replace colonial domination, but their conservative
social agenda did not challenge the class structure or private property.
They had hoped to play a major role in the independent states, but
they were marginalized by Nasser (who violently crushed them in
October 1954) and Ben Bella, who resented the fact that they had
waited some two years before joining the FLN in the war it had
waged against the French since November 1954. They were bashed as
"enemies of progress," while the Pious Bourgeoisie, whose interests
the Muslim Brothers and Algerian ulema advocated, saw their
properties sequestered or nationalized and their economic positions
hampered by legal procedures.

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The Pious Bourgeoisie was to gain new prominence after the failure
of socialist policies was acknowledged by state authorities—in Egypt
in the mid-1970s with Sadat's infitah ("open-door economic policy")
and in Algeria with Chadli Bendjedid's liberalization in the mid-
1980s. Though they were courted by and, for some, co-opted into the
power structures, they would not identify with the ruling groups,
whom they considered parasites constantly levying taxes while
proving increasingly incapable of equipping the country with an
infrastructure that could match the population growth, or even
maintain law and order.
In Iran, the bazaar was dissatisfied with strong state intervention that
favored "a tiny upper class consisting of the state bourgeoisie and an
industrial-financial class often tied to multinational corporations,"
which benefited from "limited licensing, quotas and tariff walls [that]
have encouraged the growth of inefficient monopolies at the expense
of small business and consumers."10 The regime further antagonized
the bazaar in the second half of the 1970s when it blamed it for rising
inflation, profiteering, and corruption, launching price-control
campaigns targeted at the bazaaris who were singled out as a class of
criminals. As one author put it, "the government was attempting to
direct popular resentment away from the state and against bazaaris
instead . . . and they suffered bitterly.11
The Iranian Pious Bourgeoisie, which was neither uprooted nor
impoverished, as opposed to the young urban disfranchised,
nevertheless participated, by 1978, in a movement whose final aim
was the overthrow of a regime that had alienated it. They portrayed
their movement as Islamic, not only because the mosques were the
only remaining venues for political mobilization that had managed to
resist SAVAK repression, but also because most bazaaris remained
traditionally religious, paying their tithe and alms taxes to the
mullahs. To them, reference to Islam was a clear-cut means of
differentiation from the imperial regime, which they demonized as
"impious." It would also prove an efficient way to join forces with
other social groups within the movement.
Apart from the older segment of the Pious Bourgeoisie, the mid-
1970s brought to life a younger group of businessmen and
professionals who were making money thanks to their connections
with the oil-rich countries of the Arab peninsula. As opposed to their
elders, most had a modern education, like the Intellectual
Counterelites with whom they had shared their formative years.
Unlike the Intellectual Counterelites, however, they had managed to
plug into the international monetary and economic network that was
boosted by the oil boom. They filled positions in the worldwide
Islamic bank--

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ing systems, in the various transnational Islamic organizations such
as the World Muslim League or the Organization of the Islamic
Conference and their many agencies, or immigrated to Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, etc. Their wealth and upward social mobility were not
dependent on the Algerian or Egyptian state system: they were the
product of their stay in countries where the socially conservative
understanding of Islam preached by Wahhabi ideologues is dominant.
They displayed ostensible signs of piety, and their wives adopted a
fashionable Islamic clothing style and shopped in "Islamic" air-
conditioned malls. They generally promoted an Islamic bourgeois
way of life that endeavored to set social standards and trends that
contrasted with the ruling class's Westernized demeanor. In his 1992
novel, Zeth, Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim noticed that maids and
doormen in Cairo no longer addressed their middle-class house
mistresses with the fashionable French term Madame but would
customarily use in its stead the Islamic deferential term Hagga
(someone who has performed pilgrimage to Mecca).
Both the older and younger components of the Pious Bourgeoisie are
in conflict with the ruling elites over issues of political power. They
see no justification for authoritarian systems that give prominence to
military nomenclatures, ethnic or tribal kinship, and grant privileges
to a ruling social group that has turned out as a form of racketeering
state aristocracy. It is against such regimes that they promise a
bourgeois revolution. The Islamic parlance that such a bourgeois
revolution uses is rooted in the peculiar cultural origins of the Pious
Bourgeoisie; it is also a means to reach out to other social groups to
widen political mobilization against the ruling class. Within the
Islamist movement, the specific asset of the Pious Bourgeoisie is its
financial and economic capital: it can channel funds to Islamist
benevolent associations set up by the Intellectual Counterelites that
mitigate the many social shortcomings of the state and organize the
Young Urban Poor.
In both Egypt and Algeria a striking and symbolic success of this
benevolent Islamist network was its capacity to rescue earthquake
victims—Tipasa in 1989 and Cairo in 1994. In each case, food, tents,
medical care and assistance, and other costly commodities were
provided in no time under the aegis of the Islamic Salvation Front
and the . Both advertised their benevolent activities as a
foretaste of the social priorities of the future Islamic state, much to
the dismay of state authorities whose own rescue services proved late,
inefficient, and plagued by corruption.
Each of the three components of Islamist movements possesses its
own peculiar resource: the Young Urban Poor are a potential social
threat that can play a decisive role in taking to the streets to bring
down those in power.

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But they will do so only if organized, otherwise their revolt would
remain short lived and would be crushed by the state security forces.
The Intellectual Counterelites provide cultural capital as their own
resource: they can articulate the dawla Islamiyya (Islamic state)
project that sets the political goal of social mobilization. But they are
more of an age cohort with a common cultural capital than a cohesive
social group. They represent no major social threat by themselves,
and they have no direct access to sources of funding. They exist as
long as they can provide the potential ideological substratum that will
bridge the gap between the differentiated social agendas of the Young
Urban Poor and the Pious Bourgeoisie. They are likely to be
disintegrating as a group in the case of a successful revolutionary
takeover (as in Iran) or of a major split in the movement (as in
Algeria). Their members might then side, according to each
individual's preferences, with either one of the two social groups. As
for the Pious Bourgeoisie, they possess financial capital, but they lack
the ideological resources for mobilization, and they constitute no
potent social threat by themselves.
Hence, the three components of the Islamist cluster need to coalesce
until the Islamist movement seizes power. The role of the intellectual
group is crucial at this stage. It is they who provide the ideological
discourse that can reconcile the antagonism between the final social
agendas of the Young Urban Poor and the Pious Bourgeoisie. This
coalition is always at risk of being broken, particularly if it loses
momentum: a brief review of the diverging fates of the Iranian,
Egyptian, and Algerian Islamist movements in their attempts at
seizing power will illustrate the volatile and contingent character of
such an alliance.
Success and Failures
One of the main reasons for the political success of the Iranian
Islamist movement—in contrast to the failure to date of both its
Egyptian and Algerian counterparts—may lie in its timing. The actual
process of confrontation with the state developed within a little more
than a year, in 1978 and early 1979. In Egypt, Islamists have been
politically active for two decades, both among the disfranchised and
the Pious Bourgeoisie. The two groups never really united, however,
giving the state apparatus ample time and experience to exploit their
divisions and contradictions. In Algeria, the development of FIS
followed a rather fast pace from 1989, but the Islamist party made a
number of tactical mistakes that prevented it from capitalizing on its
strength to overthrow the FLN regime. The regime in turn remained
fully in charge of the

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political timetable at the national level, while the Islamist militants
lost momentum as the country plunged into civil war.
The Iranian Paradigm.
In Iran, there was neither time nor opportunity for the contradictions
within the movement to be exposed. Not only did its various
components remain united, but they were also able to attract other
social groups, isolating the shah and the upper class dependent on
him. It was only after the imperial regime was overthrown on
February 11, 1979, that a process of political cleansing took place.
The secularist and liberal movements were eliminated first, after
Khomeini hurled the young disfranchised against them. Then the
classe dangereuse of those Young Urban Poor, in turn, was moved
aside from the central domestic political scene, as scores of them
were flung into their death on the battlefields in the war against Iraq
—much as the sans culottes had been lured away from Paris
faubourgs and into the military campaigns of the Thermidor regime.
Though the Islamic republic governed in the name of the ,
invoking their "martyrdom," allotting subsidies to their families, and
making them into a political clientele, the reality of power
increasingly belonged to the Pious Bourgeoisie. As for the former
Intellectual Counterelites, those who had agreed to be co-opted were
integrated into the Islamic state system as clerks, scribes, and
propagandists, while the others were jailed, executed, or fled to exile.
The brevity of the period of confrontation between the Iranian
Islamist movement and the shah's regime was a major reason for the
Islamists' success. The Iranian state had radically antagonized the
bazaar and, having severed all links with the Pious Bourgeoisie, it
could not buy time, make symbolic openings, and try to co-opt some
of its leaders—the successful strategies developed over the years by
the Egyptian and Algerian rulers. The rapid pace of the overall
political mobilization against the government was in turn largely due
to the inclusiveness of its ideological message. In contrast to what
happened in the Iranian scenario, the Egyptian Islamist counterelite
was unable to bridge the gap between the bourgeois and the
disfranchised Islamist groups, allowing the government to play one
against the other. In Algeria, the Islamist coalition functioned under
the aegis of FIS between March 1989 and the coup of January 1992,
but it fell short of isolating the FLN regime as the Iranian movement
had isolated the Pahlavi regime. Eventually, the civil war split up the
movement, with the hittistes backing the radical Groupe Islamique
Armé (GIA) splinter faction, which aimed at toppling the powers-
that-be arms in hand, while the Pious Bourgeoisie propped up the
Armée Islamique du

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Salut (AIS), which was to look for a political compromise with the
military as a way out of a seemingly endless conflict, and eventually
signed a truce in October 1997.
The differences in the nature and efficiency of the Islamist
ideological messages in each country are largely due to the different
relations that took shape, within the Islamist Counterelites, between
the secular educated on the one hand, and the Islamic clerics on the
other. In Iran they sealed a powerful alliance, which ultimately turned
out in favor of the clergy. In Egypt their antagonisms developed into a
violent clash in the aftermath of Sadat's assassination, though some
attempts were made to find a working agreement from the mid-1980s.
These attempts at reconciliation have been largely unsuccessful to
date because of the intensity of their mutual criticisms. In Algeria,
when FIS gained prominence in 1989, there were very few
institutionalized and respected local ulema they could relate to
because of the scarce and sparse Algerian religious field; hence,
secularly trained FIS leaders designed Islamist ideology on their own,
something which would eventually limit its force of attraction.
In 1960s Iran, while Ali and his disciples, together with the
mujahideen organization, were translating a number of Marxist
concepts and worldviews into Islamist parlance, Ayatollah Khomeini
still retained a very traditional and conservative view of society.
Secular trained Islamist intellectuals and clerics remained worlds
apart: and his kind scorned the "reactionary Islam" of the
mullahs, while the clerics turned a more than suspicious eye on those
who interpreted the Quran with Marxist concepts. In 1970, with the
publication of Velayat-e Faqih: Hokumat-e Islami (The jurist's
guardianship: Islamic government), Khomeini incorporated into his
own writings part of the vocabulary and concepts that the secular-
trained Islamist intelligentsia had coined. Throughout the 1970s he
was to refer increasingly to the
dichotomy, which paralleled the Marxist opposition between
oppressed and oppressors, and he championed the cause of the
. As a cleric tied to the bazaari class, Khomeini could use
such language without frightening the Pious Bourgeoisie: he
circumscribed the extent of the hated mostakbirin class to the shah
and his cronies, whereas the would quietly include the
wealthy bazaar merchants. But Khomeini's rhetoric stressed the plight
of the shantytown dwellers, who symbolized par excellence the
victims of an immoral government that deserved to be overthrown.12
To the Young Urban Poor, who had always been despised and ignored,
Khomeini became the hero who spoke on their behalf. He became the
key

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to their massive mobilization that was to decisively overthrow the
Pahlavi Empire. To the bazaaris, Khomeini was a social guarantor: as
long as he remained the leader of the Islamist revolutionary
movement, they were confident that their interests would not be
harmed—and they therefore joined the movement with their networks
and their funding. As far as the "enlightened" thinkers were
concerned, Khomeini carefully dispossessed them from their ideas,
which he clothed in his own clerical garb, something they were to
discover only after the success of the revolution.
The Lasting Divisions of Egyptian Islamists
In Egypt, one of the main reasons for the inability of Islamist
militants to turn Sadat's assassination into an upheaval that would
establish an Islamic republic in the Nile valley lay in the enduring
class divisions within the movement. The ideological war waged by
the most radical of Islamist intellectuals against the ulema in the
1970s had alienated them; it also made the Egyptian Pious
Bourgeoisie reluctant to back an initiative that might unleash
unpredictable social violence, such as the intraconfessional riots of
the Cairene neighborhood of Al Zawiya al Hamra in June 1981 and
the upheaval of Assiut in October of the same year. The Muslim
Brothers themselves criticized "extremists" who compromised the
future of Islamism in Egypt because they scared the middle class.
Husni Mubarak's government policy toward its Islamist opposition
has relentlessly exploited those divisions. In the first half of the
1980s the leading ulema replied at length to Sadat's assassins
manifesto, calling its author an ignoramus; they also took part in
televised programs staged by the government, which featured debates
between the shaykhs and the jailed militants, some of whom recanted
their "misinterpretation" of Islam. The regime did its best to portray
the Islamist movement as a whole as hostage to its radicals. State
information agencies depicted Islamists as bloodthirsty fanatics who
planted bombs, killed tourists, and whose most emblematic
wrongdoing was to lure the daughters of middle-class families into
Islamic communes.
This strategy relied heavily on the collaboration of the ulema, which
asked for rewards in the domains most important to them: morals,
law, and culture. They were given quasi-unlimited airtime on state-
controlled television; they intervened whenever they felt a bill of law
seemed to contradict , and generally managed to kill it; and they
relentlessly attacked the secularist intellectuals, their competitors in
the cultural field. They censored a number of books because of their
allegedly anti-Islamic contents. One of their prime targets, essayist
Farag Foda, was eventually killed by radicals as an "apos--

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tate." One of the leading ulema, Muhammad al Ghazali, testified at
the trial of Foda's assassins, making it clear that a Muslim who
opposed the implementation of laws was an apostate who
deserved capital punishment. Another of their bêtes noires, Professor
Nasr Abu Zeid, was denied tenure at Cairo University by his
supervisor, a graduate from Al Azhar University, because, as an
alleged Marxist, he was an "apostate" and was therefore not entitled
to write about Islam. A judge later built on this decision to declare
Abu Zeid's marriage void; as an apostate, he could not stay married to
a Muslim wife, and so they fled the country to stay married.
While the ulema were regaining a central position in the intellectual
and legal fields, after decades of having been marginalized to the
benefit of their secularist competitors, a number of them, particularly
at the intermediate and lower level, got closer to the Islamist
militants.13 This convergence restored relations of confidence that
were broken from the late 1970s after a had been abducted
and killed by a radical Islamist group, causing an antagonism that had
culminated with the bitter words that followed Sadat's assassination.
Such reconciliation could have helped unify the Egyptian Islamist
movement, reassuring the Pious Bourgeoisie.
The year 1986 marked a renewal of Islamist violence in Egypt. Since
then, tourists in the upper Nile valley have been killed and villages
have come under siege. The Islamist militants of the
who took to arms usually were village kids who had studied at the
local colleges and universities, such as Assiut or Minia, and who were
compelled to return and live in their villages because of the lack of
jobs that corresponded to their expectations and skills. Social tension
increased as the oil-exporting countries accepted less and less
Egyptian labor, as a consequence of the drop in oil prices in the mid-
1980s at first and then as a result of the Gulf War of 1990–91. In the
derelict peripheries of Cairo, some enclaves were described as
ephemeral "Islamic republics," where the took the law
into their own hands until they were disbanded by massive police
intervention. There again, the classes dangereuses were a blend of the
truly disadvantaged and of proletarianized students or former
students. Bombs exploded in Cairene cafes, some public figures were
attacked and killed, and the symbols of violence became widespread.
The haphazard violence did not succeed in shaking the foundations of
the Egyptian state; it had little cumulative effect and could not
develop into a process that would lead to political takeover. As a
result, the divisions within the Islamist movement remained. The
disfranchised youths of the upper valley and the rundown urban
peripheries had no patience for the moral agenda

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of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, which paid mere lip service
to their pressing social needs. Frightened by the prospect of
uncontrolled violence, the Pious Bourgeoisie gave no significant
support to the confrontational tactics of the . Instead,
they chose to engage in electoral politics, so as to position themselves
as a moderate alternative to the Mubarak regime and to reassure the
West. If they were to be in power, law and order—albeit Islamic—
would be restored, making Egypt a safer place for the international
business community. The state did not allow free elections, however,
and placed all sorts of obstacles to hamper Muslim Brotherhood
candidates.
The Egyptian Pious Bourgeoisie was left in a quandary: in order to
compel the powers that be to open the political game for the Muslim
Brotherhood, they needed to exert political pressure. Without the
mobilization of the Young Urban Poor on their side, however, they
could hardly exert enough of that pressure. The young disfranchised,
in turn, would not move without the Muslim Brotherhood sponsoring
a social agenda, something which in 1998 was still scaring the latter.
The outbursts of the Young Urban Poor violence channeled by the
were bound to be crushed if they failed to reach out to
the networks, clout, and funds of the Pious Bourgeoisie. The two
groups have a widely different social culture, and the divided
Egyptian Islamist ideologues have failed to date to bridge this social
gap in the name of Islam.
Algerian Islamists from Unity to Warring Factions
The Algerian Islamist movement came much closer to seizing power
than its Egyptian counterpart, though it was far less seasoned. From
March 1989 to the December 1991 elections, the Front Islamique du
Salut could unify the agendas of the hittistes and the Pious
Bourgeoisie behind the prospect of an Islamic state. The Islamist
party capitalized on each success: huge street demonstrations
attracted the Young Urban Poor, who voted for FIS candidates from
the ranks of Intellectual Counterelites and the Pious Bourgeoisie at
the June 1990 municipal elections. Those newly elected FIS notables
developed a social policy, fighting profiteering and restoring some
ailing public services, like garbage collection, while the baladiyyat
Islamiyya (Islamic municipalities) implemented Islamic prohibitions
—compelling female employees to wear hijab, closing down bars,
canceling raï music concerts, separating women from men in public
spaces, etc. The government froze the municipalities' budgets to
hamper their action, however, and prepared an electoral law in view
of the 1991 legislative elections that aimed at limiting the number of
FIS representatives. In protest, the Islamist party launched in June
1991 an

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The Dissolution of Cold War Ethnic Contracts
The reemergence and the persistence of intense ethnic conflict in
Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and sub-
Saharan Africa took us by surprise, and the international community
has not yet come up with a general strategy for a peaceful and
institutionalized method of resolving transitional crises caused by the
dissolution of both national and international ethnic arrangements
that had been sustained by the structure of Cold War international
politics. The ethnic conflicts that arose in the context of the
dissolution of the Soviet Union have been handled, for better or for
worse, by Russia and its former dependent territories. But beyond the
boundaries of the former Soviet Union, ethnic conflicts in
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Central Africa, and northern Iraq have been
added to the conflicts in Cambodia, Cyprus, and Palestine as
responsibilities of the international community. For most of the Cold
War, despite the heterogeneity of political discourse, ethnic self-
determination was firmly subordinated to the stabilization of the
status quo. The fact that this rule was broken in the exceptional cases
of Vietnam and Afghanistan merely underlines the fact that the rule
was the outcome of a combination of Cold War strategies in which
either protagonist might be guilty of miscalculation or overreaching.
But with the end of the Cold War, the benefits accruing from
maintaining a stable international system of states are deemed to be
insufficient to warrant the material cost and moral ambiguity of
intervention.1 As a consequence, the great powers readily refer such
matters to the community of states, reserving for themselves only
such issues that impinge on "vital" interests, such as Chechnya or
northern Iraq. The international community, of course, speaks with
many tongues. Thus far, no consensus has emerged on the preferred
criteria for the solution of ethnic conflicts–neither the stability of the
state system nor national self-determination. Such intervention as has
been sanctioned since the end of the Kuwait war has been justified by
the need for humanitarian assistance.
Russia and the Former Soviet Territories
Instead of being viewed as a characteristic feature of the new order,
ethnic conflicts have been seen as an unanticipated cost of breaking
up the Soviet system while attempting to restore the unity of those
states illegitimately partitioned as a result of the Cold War. Given a
little time, the reunified states would provide added stability to the
new order to make up for some of the losses due to the need to
integrate the secessionist states. The involvement of Russia in local
conflicts in the Caucasus region and in Central Asia was not
anticipated, or, at least, not anticipated to be so politically significant
in Mos--

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were seized in war or encouraged to rebel in the name of religious
freedom and national independence. Greece was the most successful
example of the emergent model of how to break up the Ottoman
Empire while preventing the adjacent empires of Russia and Austria
from gaining the lion's share. There were no ethnic lobbies pressing
for recognition or political influence throughout the empire until after
the rise of European nationalism. The encouragement of nationalist
sentiment was directed at the non-Muslim communities, and Muslim
ethnic populations were encouraged to support the sultan against the
enemies of Islam. Even the assertion of Arab interests against the
dominant Turkish elites of the Ottoman Empire arose late, and its
exponents were fragmented into a number of secret societies,
associations of intellectuals in exile in Paris and elsewhere, and
provincial lobbies in the Ottoman parliament advocating
decentralization.
The "awakening" of East European and Balkan peoples to an
awareness of their ethnoreligious identity and the possibilities of
secession from the Ottoman Empire–along with the outside chance of
establishing sovereign and independent nation-states, was a result of
the encouragement of competing European powers and their
continuous military pressure on the empire. Arab nationalism was
similarly encouraged, though at a much later date and with less
conviction. It was only after World War I and the partitioning of the
Ottoman Arab lands between Britain and France that Arab
nationalism emerged as a significant force. And even then Arab
nationalism focused on getting rid of the British and French rather
than upon the unification of the Arab nation. Where there was no
similar international pressure the demand for independence was
weaker. For example, there was no similar movement among the
Kurds until after World War I, when the victorious powers, including
the United States, became interested in the petroleum of northern
Iraq. In Iran, however, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, encouraged
separatism among Iranian Azeris and Kurds. Great Britain also
encouraged a number of tribal federations and the Arabs of Khuzistan
to challenge the authority of the government in Tehran.
British and French colonial rule in the Middle East also encouraged
the politicization of ethnic and religious groups. By favoring
religious minorities or subordinate ethnolinguistic communities like
the Berbers, or sectarian communities like the Iraqi tribes, these
colonial rulers exacerbated ethnic tensions; but it is worth noting that
neither the Moroccan Berbers nor the Iraqi have opted for
secession, and even the Kurds are not of one mind on the matter of
national self-determination. Unlike the Kurds, the Berbers in
Morocco and Algeria are hardly engaged in their own trans-na-

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insurgent strike that crossed the legal line that FIS had always been
careful to respect. It failed: FIS main leaders were jailed and
elections took place in December while they were in prison. FIS once
again won a landslide victory in the first round but was unable to
resist the coup that interrupted the elections before the second round
that would have consolidated its victory. President Chadli was
dismissed and replaced with the Higher State Committee, and FIS
was eventually banned in March 1992. These developments paved the
way for the ongoing civil war. In its course, the Islamist movement
split up, putting an end to the coalition of social groups that FIS had
successfully engineered, casting a gloom on its political future.14
The Algerian case lies halfway between the Iranian and the Egyptian
examples. The Pious Bourgeoisie and the Young Urban Poor
coalesced into a powerful Islamist movement in Algeria, as opposed
to Egypt; but they were unable to complete the process of political
takeover, unlike in Iran. FIS was unable to resist the military coup
because the Algerian state was far less isolated within its society than
the shah had been in Iran in 1978–79. In the Iranian case, "in a
moment of enthusiasm," social groups took part almost unanimously
in the revolutionary process, under the leadership of the Ayatollah
Khomeini. In Algeria, though FIS drew a majority of votes and
mobilized in full the Pious Bourgeoisie and the Young Urban Poor, it
was unable to reach out to other social groups. The main groups it
failed to mobilize are the secularist part of the urban middle classes,
many of them French speakers; the organized workers, particularly
the oil workers, whose strike in Iran had deprived the shah of
monetary resources; and the ethnic Berbers living in Kabylia. Though
a minority, these social groups were crucial to the potential tumbling
of the state apparatus because they had access to its vital institutions
as mid-ranking civil servants, professionals, junior officers in the
army, etc. Most did not benefit directly from the political system and
were neither part of its nomenclature nor its BTS ethnic backing, but
they ultimately decided against FIS and willy-nilly backed the coup
as a "lesser evil" than the Islamic state.
In Iran, before the revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini had been
politically astute enough to limit the scope of the hated mostakbirin,
the "arrogant" oppressors, to a small group that included mainly the
Shah's cronies. He was cautious not to antagonize the other social or
cultural components of Iranian society, and actually gathered around
him some secularist aides. It was only after the revolution, when the
Hizbullah ascertained its grip, that Khomeini widened the range of
the "enemies of God," among which the secularists and the monafiqin
(hypocrites) mujahideen were soon to be singled out and bashed.

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In Algeria, there was no such single charismatic leader to emulate
Khomeini's political astuteness. FIS had two major public figures,
Abbassi Madani and Ali Benhadj, which eventually proved to be one
too many. Madani was mainly a spokesperson for the Pious
Bourgeoisie, to which he belonged. He had led a previous career in
the "religious wing" of the ruling FLN party—dubbed "barbefelene"
("FLN" plus "beard") by Algerian humorists—and was eventually
jailed in 1982 for pressing for the implementation of laws.
Benhadj, born in 1956, was for his part the disfranchised youths' hero.
They thought of him as one of their own: he shared their living
conditions and articulated his Islamist political discourse with their
vocabulary and ways of thinking. The two leaders were
complementary. Benhadj mobilized hordes of young hittistes, who
hungered for a radical social upheaval that he depicted in terms.
Madani, on the other hand, reassured the merchants and the
international business community: though the Islamic state would
definitely be more just than the corrupt FLN state, Islam nevertheless
sanctified profit and private property. Social hierarchies would not be
overthrown, laws would help implement public order,
goldsmiths and other wealthy FIS contributors would have economic
returns on their political investments, and the Islamic state would sell
its oil at market prices.
Benhadj's scope of enemies of God was much wider than
prerevolutionary Khomeini's mostakbirin; they actually encompassed
most social and cultural categories that the Young Urban Poor
disliked and who were not strongly identified with Islam. Apart from
the state nomenclature, they included those Algerian urban low-
middle classes that had some access, albeit minimal, to a
Europeanized lifestyle, symbolized by French language and culture.
In Algeria today, the pervasive influence of French TV networks,
available to most people thanks to widespread dish antennas, has set
consumption models outrageous for the bulk of the poor because they
will remain forever out of reach. Benhadj did not hesitate to target all
those he called "children of France," those who had "suckled France's
poisonous milk": they would be eliminated "culturally and
intellectually" from the future Algerian dawla Islamiyya, just like the
French themselves had been expelled from Algeria after the war of
independence.15 Such statements and many others in the same style
frightened scores of people who had achieved some kind of social
stability—had an apartment, a regular job, liked to speak French, and
watch French TV. This sociocultural group was far more widespread
than the ruling nomenclature. They feared they would become a
sacrificial lamb to the wrath of the hittistes once the Islamic state
became reality. They knew about the fate of their likes in Iran after
the revolution.

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FIS failure to neutralize, or at least not to antagonize the non-Islamist
sociocultural groups accounted for its incapacity to resist the January
1992 coup. This political failure undid the coalition process that had
so successfully gathered the Pious Bourgeoisie and the Young Urban
Poor under FIS leadership from 1989. The hittistes had agreed to
channel their rage into the electoral process, and they had voted in
FIS notables, all to no avail. Repression as of 1992 cracked down on
the poor neighborhoods, whose plight became worse. The poor took
their fates into their own hands, which gave birth to the informal
splinter Islamist group Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA), which, until
early 1995, successfully drove the security forces out of many
popular Algerian urban and rural areas. Its militants did not obey the
former FIS hierarchy, which they held responsible for the failure of
1992. They had their own agenda of social upheaval and immediate
justice on earth. Though they were originally perceived as liberators,
the armed GIA militants were soon confronted with the lack of
financial resources in the "liberated Islamic zones" and started to
prey on the only groups that retained some wealth: the local petty
notables who usually had sided with FIS. The Islamist shopkeepers,
bakers, and craftsmen were the victims of extortion on an ever-
increasing level by groups of thugs who claimed they collected zakat
(alms) for jihad.16 By the beginning of 1995, this behavior became so
widespread that, even among the Pious Bourgeoisie, people voiced
their belief that an agreement between the former FIS and the
military would be better than the doom inflicted by "Islamist" thugs.
As of the spring of 1995, scores of GIA activists were turned in to the
police, who reclaimed many formerly "liberated zones" by petty
bourgeois Islamist notables. They eventually took part in the
November 1995 presidential election that voted in General Zeroual,
in spite of FIS calls to boycott. Since then, the Algerian regime has
managed to lure some socially conservative Islamist figureheads into
government—such as Mahfoudh Nahnah and members of his Hamas
(Harakat Mujtama [Movement for a Society of Peace])—into
parliament. It managed to do so despite the fact that in the Algerian
system neither government nor parliament is the locus for real power,
which remains in the hands of the senior military officers.
More significantly, AIS leaders signed a truce in October 1997—
though this may have been out of the exhaustion of their guerrilla
activities, as they did not receive any political offer from the regime
in the summer of 1998. Finally, the Algerian regime passed a law
enforcing "total Arabization" as of July 1998, imposing fines for
users of Berber or French languages in public matters. In both cases,
these were symbolic gestures toward the Pious Bour--

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geoisie, offering a cultural token in lieu of structural reforms in the
power system that would widen the regime's support base.
As for its confrontation with the radical GIA, the regime made
shrewd use of its own weaknesses. While GIA displayed its strength
by aiming at heavily publicized targets (foreigners, secular
intellectuals, police precincts) and committing acts of violence in
France (hijacking a French airliner, setting up rings of bombs in
French trains and subways, etc.), the Algerian government publicized
the most horrendous aspects of such violence and helped create a
feeling of terror and rejection in the bulk of the Algerian population.
The regime lambasted AIS and former FIS together with GIA,
picturing them all as partners in the same plot. AIS leaders and FIS
leaders in exile were quick to strike back and accuse the military of
infiltrating and manipulating GIA so as to taint the repute of all
Islamists. Whatever the actual truth of the matter, GIA's blind
violence, claimed and advertised mainly through their London-based
publication Al Ansar, compelled the bourgeois elements of the
Algerian Islamist cluster to adopt defensive tactics. The more they
dissociated themselves from GIA and the radicals, the clearer it
appeared that they had lost leverage on the Young Urban Poor. This
showed the weakening of the Algerian Pious Bourgeoisie in the wake
of the civil war: the fact that they were not able to control Islamist
violence meant that a significant component of the movement was
beyond their reach. In this respect, they just could not deliver
politically. As of late 1998, my contention is that the Algerian state
managed to resist the foreseeable Islamist victory of early 1992 and
to keep an upper hand in the ongoing civil war because the movement
fell short of engineering an enduring united social mobilization. In
FIS days, Benhadj's radical parlance kept the non-Islamist middle
classes at bay; in the first years of the war, the Pious Bourgeoisie and
the Young Urban Poor went apart, one backing AIS, the other
identifying with GIA. Their political agendas became heavily
differentiated, and instead of joining their resources, they used them
to fight each other. The regime then could frighten the Pious
Bourgeoisie into thinking that they would be an easy prey for the
social rage, frustration, and violence carried on by GIA. Later, as of
1995–96, the government made some symbolic openings to reconcile
the Pious Bourgeoisie while using a big stick against the Young
Urban Poor. Due to the fact that those in power had retained all
control of the main source of national wealth—oil and gas exports,
which account for more than 90 percent of all exports—they did not
feel hard pressed to make too many concessions and widen their
support base. In the short term, the regime has regained a position of
strength; and it may permit some level of "manageable" radical
Islamist violence that

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entitles it to maintain its authoritarian character. The Islamist
scarecrow has come in handy. Whether this makes a viable long-run
policy remains highly questionable.
Conclusions
This bird's-eye view of the fate of the Islamist movement in the three
paradigmatic cases of Iran, Egypt, and Algeria might allow us to set
up a model for analyzing its developments worldwide in the last
quarter of the twentieth century. Because the movement toppled the
ruling regime in one of the three countries, had been in existence for
so long in another, and fell a bit short of seizing power in the third, its
characteristics and features became particularly manifest—enabling
us to construct the Young Urban Poor, the Intellectual Counterelite,
and the Pious Bourgeoisie ideal-types, and to study how their
interplay determined, in our understanding, political success or
failure of the movement as a whole in given circumstances. But such
a model will prove operative—provided it sheds some light on the
three aforementioned cases—on the condition that it can be applied to
the fate of Islamist movements in other countries as well, where
political antagonisms did not reach the climaxes of Iran, Egypt, or
Algeria. Can it allow the analyst to construct an interpretive
framework that gives significance to otherwise blurred political
action of social actors? For instance, how can the peculiar nature and
interplay of our three components of the Islamist cluster in Turkey
explain the political fortunes and misfortunes of Refah Partisi? How
did the political systems of countries as different as Jordan, Malaysia,
and Indonesia manage to defuse the Islamist challenge through an
early co-option of the Pious Bourgeoisie at the expense of the Young
Urban Poor?
Another dimension has to be taken into account: the transnational
level. Though we focused on issues of domestic policies in our
survey, access to international networks of funding, media, charity,
etc., is a powerful means to gain support and fuel mobilization. It can
provide standards to emulate for some groups or social threats to
others.
This social analysis of the Islamist movements of today is nothing
but an attempt at putting such movements in perspective, some
twenty-five years after they first appeared in postcolonial states. I
tried to point out that their reference to Islam was in effect the sole
means through which two social groups with altogether diverging
agendas—the Pious Bourgeoisie and the Young Urban Poor—could
mobilize side by side. I also attempted to show that the function of
the Intellectual Counterelites was to produce the Islamist ideology
that would make them coalesce in order to seize power.

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Though any ideology tends to portray itself as the core truth or the
essence of social relations, the historical and comparative perspective
that we used helped us perceive that neither this coalition nor this
ideology are eternal. They are but the product of peculiar social
conditions, determined by such variables as demography, social
mobility, type of state power, availability and distribution of wealth,
etc. When some of those variables are subject to significant change,
social conditions get modified, and this may have a destabilizing
effect on the Islamist cluster. When state power fell into Islamist
hands, as happened in Iran, Islamist ideology changed from a
revolutionary tool to a means to freeze the new social order topped by
the Pious Bourgeoisie. Such a phenomenon was well documented all
along history and was particularly blatant in the case of twentieth-
century communism. In this regard, the landslide victory of
antiestablishment candidate Mohammad Khatami in the Iranian
presidential election of 1997, brought to office by a majority of the
very youth that had no other political experience than the seventeen-
year-old Islamic republic, may call into question the future of
Islamist ideology in this country. Some other variables have changed
over the elapsed quarter of a century: population increase has slowed
down; migrations from the countryside to large cities is less
widespread; and Islamism, which looked like a Utopia two decades
ago, now has a record of twenty years—a mixed record of success and
failure, which on the one hand makes it more established, but on the
other hand may also break its spell.
Notes
1. The term rurban (rurbain) was coined by Farhad Khosrokhavar—
see his L'Utopie sacrifiée: Sociologie de la révolution iranienne
(Sacrificed utopia: Sociology of the Iranian revolution) (Paris:
Presses de la FNSP, 1993).
2. See M'hamed Boukhobza, Octobre 1988: Evolution ou rupture
(October 1988: Revolution or break) (Algiers: Bouchene, 1991).
3. On the issue of shabab, see, inter alia, M. Seurat, L'État de
barbarie (The state of barbarism) (Paris: Le Seuil, 1989), 128 ff., who
put this term in historical perspective within Muslim societies.
4. Theda Skocpol, "Rentier State and Islam in the Iranian
Revolution," Theory and Society 11, no. 3 (May 1982): 266.
5. Quoted in Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 92.
6. Ali , What Is to Be Done: The Enlightened Thinkers and an
Islamic Renaissance, ed. Farhang Rajaee (Houston: IRIS Press, 1986),
21.

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7. Ibid., 28.
8. Abrahamian, 130, 166 ff.
9. G. Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993), 220.
10. Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 19.
11. Ibid., 104.
12. On this process, see E. Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the
Islamic Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993),
45–54.
13. This phenomenon is described at length in Malika Zeghal,
Gardiens de l'islam: Les oulémas d'Al Azhar dans l'Egypte
contemporaine (Guardians of Islam: The ulemas of al-Azhar in
modern Egypt) (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1996).
14. A valuable analysis of FIS development is provided by Séverine
Labat, Les islamistes algériens entre les urnes et le maquis (Algerian
Islamists between voting and resistance) (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1995).
15. Interview with Slimane Zeghidour, Politique Internationale (Fall
1990): 156.
16. This process is described in Luis Martinez, "Les Eucalyptus: Un
quartier d'Alger dans la guerre civile" (Les Eucalyptus: An Algiers
neighborhood during civil war), in G. Kepel, ed., Exils et Royaumes
(Exiles and kingdoms) (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1994). Also,
Meriem Vergès, "La Casbah d'Alger: Chronique de survie dans un
quartier en sursis" (The Casbah of Algiers: A chronicle of survival in
a neighborhood in suspension), ibid.; and L. Martinez, Les groupes
islamistes entre guerilla et negoce (The Islamist groups between
guerilla conflict and negotiation) (Paris: Cahiers du CERI #2, 1995).
Also, Remy Leveau, ed., Algerie: Vers la guerre civile? (Algeria:
Towards civil war?) (Brussels: Ed. Complexe, 1995).
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III
Turkey, the Kurds, and Central Asia
In chapter 10, Ian Lesser considers the internal and external
consequences of the intensification of concern with ethnicity,
religion, and nationalism resulting from the end of the Cold War, the
deterioration of Turkey's relationship with the European Union, and
the increasing volatility of its economy. Lesser sees all three issues
growing in significance, strongly impacting on the viability of
Turkish democracy, and deeply influencing the evolution of Turkish
foreign policy. Lesser's analysis raises two major questions: Has
religion emerged as the most important domestic problem,
overshadowing the economy? Has the Kurdish question become the
most important foreign policy problem, overshadowing Turkey's new
regionalist response to its rejection by the European Union?
In chapter 11, Graham Fuller argues that the policy of denying
Kurdish ethnicity has failed, that the PKK has won the ideological
argument, and that Turkey can cut its losses only by means of a
pluralist political solution recognizing Kurdish identity. Fuller does
not guarantee the integration of the Kurdish community within the
larger Turkish society, but he believes Turkey has important political
assets that can attract the Kurds, including a set of workable
representative political institutions, a relatively strong economy, ties
to Europe and the developed world, and the capacity to transform the
largest community of Kurds into a pole of attraction to neighboring
Kurdish communities.
In chapter 12, Professor Olcott draws upon the Cold War debates
regarding the political implications of Central Asian Islam. She finds
parallels in both the hopes and fears associated with the potential role
of Islam in the newly independent "nation-states" of this region.
Despite the claims of much of the scholarship of the Cold War period,
Islam was not the driving force that produced independence; and the
successor regimes continue, to a sur--

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prising extent, to be ruled by Soviet-era elites. Is there any reason to
believe that Islam will now become a potent political force? To
answer this question, Olcott interprets the data from recent surveys to
show that Islam, especially in Uzbekistan, is gaining strength in a
cultural and social sense but is not yet a significant political factor,
challenging the relatively fragile regimes that now hold power.

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10
Ethnic and Religious Strains in Turkey
Internal and External Implications
Ian O. Lesser
Since the formation of the republic, the evolution of Turkish society
and politics has been driven by the tenets of Ataturkism. On the
internal scene, this has meant a strong attachment to secularism and
the unitary character of the state. Very little attention was paid to
ethnic or regional identity, although cleavages along these lines have
always existed within the Turkish "space," whether Ottoman or
republican. On the external front, the Turkish elite has been guided by
the twin principles of Western orientation and non-intervention. With
the end of the Cold War, and with growing intensity over the past few
years, the Ataturkist tradition has come under severe strain.
Longstanding assumptions about the nature of Turkish state and
society are being challenged —gently in some cases, not so gently in
others.
The leading forces for change on the Turkish scene are Islam and
Turkish nationalism. Indeed, it is often difficult to distinguish where
one phenomenon ends and the other begins, such is the extent of their
interaction and interdependence in current Turkish politics. The
electoral successes of the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party, its rise to
national power as the leader of a coalition government in July 1996,
its exit from government under military pressure in July 1997, and
subsequent banning greatly intensified debate inside and outside
Turkey about the future of Turkish secularism and the meaning for
external policy. It also points to the popular attractiveness of Refah
and its successor movements as political phenomena that draw on
both Islamic and nationalist currents. Even with the ban on Refah and
continued pressure on Islamist politicians, the sentiments that
brought Refah to power will be a force to be reckoned with on the
Turkish political scene for some time to come. If a post–Refah
Islamist movement on the pattern of the new "Virtue" Party
consolidates its position, and perhaps wins a national election
outright, then the implications for Turkey's identity and orientation
could be

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tional politics. In fact, the politics of each group is dominated by the
political circumstances of the state in which they reside. Moroccan
Berbers, subjects of a stable monarchy, are still represented through
traditional patron-client relationships. Algerian Berbers, though
strengthened by their geographic concentration, have formed political
parties or joined existing parties that value ethnic pluralism, civil
rights, and state authority over Arab nationalism and Islamic
fundamentalism.
Where colonial powers had some say, they generally encouraged
ethnic and religious minorities through their traditional and locally
established and recognized leaders (patron-client stuff) to demand
more influence and a greater political role than had been the Muslim-
dominated practice: examples are Assyrians in Iraq (Britain); Berbers
in Algeria and Morocco (France); Maronites in Lebanon (France);
Druze and Christians in Syria (France); Southerners in Sudan
(Britain).
Although pan-Arabism was vaguely popular among early Arab
nationalists, it did not capture the imagination of the educated youth
until the rise of the Party in Syria and Iraq and until the political
triumphs of Gamal Abd al-Nasser following the 1956 Suez War.
Despite the establishment of the Arab League in 1945, most of the
founding states were at best apprehensive of attempts to integrate the
Arab states. The recent rise of political Islam as the ideology of
choice is sometimes explained as a consequence of the failure of
Arab nationalism, but the fragmentation of Arab ethnonationalism is,
and has been, as much a product of inter-Arab rivalry as of colonial
and postcolonial great power influence in regional politics.
The Transnational Responses of Indigenous Majority Communities
In the years immediately preceding the demise of the Ottoman
Empire, pan-Turkism emerged as an alternative ideology, competing
with Turkish nationalism and various formulae for a reformed
Ottomanism. Pan-Turkism dreamed of replacing the lost Balkan
territories, and possibly the defecting Arab lands, with a new empire
in Central Asia, including Azeris, Turkmen, Kazakhs, Kirghiz,
Uzbeks, if not also the Tajiks. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in
World War I and the success of the Russian Communist revolution of
1917 ended all hopes for the realization of such aspirations. As a
consequence, Turkey played only a small role in whatever efforts
were made to weaken Soviet influence in Central Asia by
encouraging ethnic and religious separatism among the Turkic people
of that region. With the demise of the Soviet regime, the decline of
Turkey's importance for NATO security, and the rise of ethnic
separatism among subordinate ethnic communities of the former-

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profound. If, as seems quite possible, future Islamist movements will
not be allowed to organize and campaign unhindered, then the
implications could be equally significant.
At the same time, another potentially important force for change
exists in the form of growing ethnic awareness within Turkish society
—most dramatically in the case of the Kurds—accompanied by the
rise of ethnic and geographically based lobbies. These forces are
making themselves felt in foreign as well as domestic policy settings.
The result is a deepening identity crisis affecting the prospects for
Turkish democracy and Turkey's relations with the West and the
Middle East. Turkish Islamists will also have to come to terms with
ethnic issues, especially the Kurdish crisis, in ways that will test the
compatibility of the Muslim and nationalist vocations.
The following discussion explores the interaction of Islam,
nationalism, and ethnic identity in Turkey, and the internal and
external implications of Turkey's deepening identity crisis.
The Islamic Revival: Sources and Prospects
The past decade has seen a marked rise in religiosity in Turkish
society, coupled with the steady rise of Islam as a political force. On
the cultural side, this is in part (but only in part) a question of
perception, as demographic trends have brought large numbers of
relatively conservative and observant migrants to the cities of
western Turkey. Members of the Western-oriented Turkish
establishment view this highly visible trend with alarm. But the issue
of Islam in Turkey goes far beyond the number of headscarves to be
seen on the streets of Istanbul. It is arguable that Turkish society as a
whole, including the new middle class, is rediscovering Islam as a
cultural support, an expression of economic and class frustration, and
not least, a political outlet. Turkish observers are now less inclined to
associate the Islamist movements with "provincialism, illiteracy,
poverty and backwardness," recognizing aspects of the phenomenon
that are modern, urban, and appealing to the educated middle class.1
The crisis of legitimacy among the traditional centrist parties
(Motherland, True Path), closely associated with the perception of
pervasive corruption, provided an opening for Turkey's very dynamic
Islamist Refah Party (RP). In the December 1995 elections, RP
gathered slightly more than 21 percent of the vote, enough to give it
the largest bloc in parliament. By July 1996, the collapse of the
Motherland–True Path coalition in the face of corruption charges
against Prime Minister Tansu Ciller paved the way for a new coalition
arrangement led by Refah's Necmettin Erbakan. Within a year, grow--

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ing polarization between Refah and its supporters on the one hand,
and the military and secular social forces on the other, together with
mounting corruption allegations against Tansu Ciller, made the
Refah–True Path coalition untenable. Faced with evidence of Refah's
deepening inroads into key government ministries and growing
assertiveness among Refah's radicals, the Turkish military presented
Erbakan with a list of demands aimed at limiting Islamist activities,
above all in the educational sphere. These demands suggested not
only a desire to rein in Refah's behavior, but also to "roll back"
decades-old trends, accretions of Islamic influence, and content that
emerged in the Ozal years or earlier.2 Refah's unwillingness or
inability to comply with the list of demands issued by the National
Security Council served as the catalyst for parliamentary defections
bringing down the Refah–True Path government and installing a new
center-left coalition. Refah was subsequently banned for
anticonstitutional activity, and some of its more prominent and
radical leaders face prosecution. The alternative to Refah's political
departure from power was very likely a military coup. Some
observers believe—perhaps correctly—that a successor movement to
Refah could still win another general election outright, provided it is
allowed to function as a legal party.
Why was Refah so successful? In short, it flourished for the societal
reasons noted above, together with the fact that it was in many ways
the most modern and best-organized political party in Turkey. It
certainly benefited from the widespread corruption and malaise
among the traditional political class.3 Dissatisfaction with the state's
ability to manage economic problems and provide adequate social
services also played to Refah's strengths. Indeed, Refah in power
adopted an overtly populist economic agenda, playing to a
widespread (and accurate) perception of growing inequality in the
distribution of income and opportunity—a by-product of Turkey's
high rates of growth over the last decade. Polls suggest that religion
was not the leading issue among those expressing a preference for
Refah, but the rise in religious awareness is among several factors
contributing to the movement's growth.4
Refah was also given a boost by events outside Turkey, especially the
conflicts in Bosnia and Chechnya, both highly emotive issues in
Turkey, as well as the clear desire of the European Union to hold
Turkey at arm's length despite the Customs Union agreement.5
Developments in these areas have raised the consciousness of many
Turks—including parts of the secular elite—with regard to Turkey's
Muslim identity. The European attitude to conflicts along Muslim-
Christian lines and the evident European discomfort with the idea of
Turkey as part of Europe has deepened the perception of Turkish

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"otherness" and encouraged the view that the West has "let Turkey
down." Affinity with Muslim communities and their problems in the
Balkans and the Caucasus has played a strong role here, but so too has
Turkish nationalism. Turkish history and Turkish interests, quite
apart from religion, are engaged in these regions.
Mainstream politics has also played a role in the religious revival.
Since the 1950s, prominent politicians have reached for the religious
card. Indeed, Erbakan had been in a coalition before, during a
previous period of Islamic political revival in the 1970s. The Ozal
years saw a steady legitimization of religious references and
alignments in mainstream politics, often in ways that openly
challenged the secular tradition. Ciller, Yilmaz, and other "secular"
politicians have played a role here too; the religious vote is simply
too large to ignore, and the center-right parties have substantial
Islamist wings. One observer has described this as an admission of
the failure of "trickle-down" secularism.6 That is, the failure of an
elite attachment to secularism to overcome a strong residue of
traditional, as opposed to state, religion. With the demonstrated
appeal of Islamist politics on the electoral scene, mainstream
politicians will find it increasingly useful to draw on religious and
traditional themes.
The rapid expansion of religious schools since the mid-1980s,
allegedly with substantial foreign (largely Saudi) support, has
produced a cadre of graduates with quite different attitudes to those
prevailing among the traditional secular elites. These students, once
barred from entry into government administration and the military
academies, have now found places in Ankara's bureaucracy,
particularly in the interior ministry. The longer-term effects of this
development on Turkish society and public policy are difficult to
judge, but in the context of the 1997 political crisis, the Turkish
military singled out the growth of Islamic schools as a leading threat
to the secular character of the state. There are potentially very
significant implications for key institutions, including the military
itself. Purges of "Islamist sympathizers" within the junior ranks of
the Turkish officer corps have become more frequent and more
extensive over the past few years.
Given the Turkish military's acknowledged role as standard-bearer of
the Ataturkist tradition and ultimate guarantor of Turkish secularism,
it is natural that throughout the 1997 crisis with Refah, Turkish and
foreign observers speculated on how far the military establishment
would allow Erbakan and Refah to go without contemplating another
direct intervention in politics. To the extent that a consensus existed
on this issue within the upper ranks of the military, it seems to have
centered on the inviolability of the constitution

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with respect to secularism. This principle has also driven the legal
actions against Refah and its leadership. Attempts to alter
fundamentally the country's relationship with the West (for example,
withdrawal from NATO) might also have provoked a military coup.
It is, however, a measure of the new ethnic and religious realities in
Turkey that the military could not be sanguine about the results of
any direct intervention. The situation is more complex and the risks
higher than in past decades. An outright coup under current
conditions risked bringing a combination of the Turkish state's many
opponents—Islamists, Kurds, Alevis, leftists—into more active and
perhaps violent opposition. The prospect of having to "face the
masses," perhaps on the pattern of recent experience in Algeria,
cannot have been appealing to the military leadership.
Although the upper echelons of the officer corps remain staunchly
secular, sentiment at lower levels and in the ranks cannot be so easily
judged. Islamists assert that opinion within the large conscript army
reflects trends within Turkish society as a whole and points to
electoral successes in areas with large military establishments.7 As a
result of these factors, the progressive hardening of the military's
stance toward Refah manifested itself largely in a public relations
campaign (briefings, revelations) aimed at elites, coupled with strong
pressure on key parliamentarians. In sum, the military forced Refah
out of government in a deliberate but indirect fashion—a "soft coup."
Turkey's secular forces now seem committed not simply to
containing, but actually to rolling back the religious trends in society
and politics.
Among some secular observers in Turkey it was fashionable to
describe Refah's rise as the least dangerous of alternatives, given the
extent of the movement's popular support. It is argued that while
Refah in power brought certain risks, keeping Refah from a governing
role raised the prospect of more explosive Islamist opposition in the
future. By leading a coalition, it is further argued, Refah was "tamed"
in the give and take of parliamentary politics. To the extent that Refah
was unable to address pressing problems such as the economy and the
Kurdish insurgency, its leadership may have been discredited and its
successors may perform less well in future elections.
An alternative view holds that Refah used its governing role to
enhance its popularity with key segments of the electorate with an
eye toward the next general elections, while strengthening its
bureaucratic presence in Ankara. Having been forced from power and
banned, frustrated Islamic activists may be less inclined to temper
their rhetoric on internal and external matters. The result may be that
the Islamist movement in Turkey may become a more radical, if
more marginal, outlet for right-wing religious sentiment. This ten--

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dency could be reinforced by generational changes within the Islamist
leadership, changes that could shift the balance between ideology and
pragmatism in Turkey's Islamic politics. If Virtue remains as a legal
party and contests subsequent elections, it might benefit from being
able to assert that its predecessor was forced from power through
undemocratic means.
The fact that Refah spent a year in power may owe a great deal to
fortune and tactical politics, and its departure from power could be
ascribed, at least in part, to similar factors. But this should not
obscure the fact that its ascendancy came in the wake of solid
electoral successes and long-standing pressures in Turkish society.
The continuing failure of the centrist political class to coalesce and
provide an effective counterweight is only in part the result of a clash
of personalities.8 More significantly, it represents the failure of the
traditional political class to provide solutions to the social and
economic challenges facing Turkish society and to accommodate
popular demands for greater transparency, equity, and sense of
identity in Ankara. These elements are now "permanently operating
factors" on the Turkish domestic scene. They suggest that the Islamist
phenomenon is still a force to be reckoned with, for the military, the
secularists, and Turkey as a whole.
The Nationalist Impulse
A second leading force in Turkish politics and policy today is Turkish
nationalism. Indeed, much of the Refah rhetoric was highly
nationalistic, and that of Virtue even more so.9 The nationalist tide
has been rising elsewhere in Turkish politics, within mainstream
parties as well as on the extreme right. But Refah did a better job of
articulating the nationalist message and linking it to traditional
sources of legitimacy. Indeed, the Islamic-nationalist synthesis may
have special resonance given the fact that these elements were closely
linked in the Ottoman experience. Turkey's Ataturkist ideology—
perhaps too rigid a term for what is a rather loose collection of ideas
about modernization and Westernization—has from the outset drawn
on Ottoman and Quranic traditions. Describing the rise of
Ataturkism, Ernest Gellner suggests that "the new faith, like the old,
is linked to the state, constitutes its legitimization and is itself in turn
justified by the strength which it bestows on the state."10 Here, too,
the phenomenon has internal and external sources and implications.
On the internal side, considerable impetus for the recent development
of nationalist sentiment has come from the deepening Kurdish crisis.
As the tide of Kurdish identity and nationalism has risen, the unitary
character of the Turkish state, one of the pillars of Ataturkist
ideology, has become a more overt aspect of discourse across the
political spectrum. The expression of eth--

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nic identity has been one of the great taboos in modern Turkish
history, "central to the foundation of Turkish nationalism" and the
ideological foundation of the state.11 Other influences in the rising
tide of nationalism include the expanding role of public opinion in
Turkish policymaking, including foreign policy, fueled by a very
active print and television media. It is noteworthy that two major
Turkish foreign policy crises in 1996 were shaped, almost from
beginning to end, by the central role of the television media. The
hijacking of a Turkish Black Sea ferry by Chechen sympathizers
ended without bloodshed or a clash with Russia, but could well have
led to both. The incident was given visibility and significance by the
media and stirred emotional, nationalistic responses within Turkey.
Television journalists lowered to the deck of the ship actually led
negotiations with the hijackers.
In the same fashion, the confrontation between Greece and Turkey in
the Aegean over the islet of Kardak (Imia) was fueled by media
interest and actions. In both crises, the traditional foreign
policymaking elites in Turkey believed that events had spun out of
their control and were carried along by the media and public opinion.
The overwhelming thrust of the reportage, public demonstrations, and
political rhetoric was nationalist, with right-wing religious and
Turkish nationalist parties in the forefront. All sides continue to be
keenly aware of the potential for nationalist opinion to inflame future
crises, not least over Cyprus, the nationalist issue par excellence.
Erbakan's August 1996 tour of selected Muslim states (all non-Arab),
including a much publicized visit to Iran and agreement on a $23
billion gas supply arrangement, was motivated by national interest as
much as religious affinity.12 Turkey faces a looming energy deficit
and has been exploring a wide range of options aimed at increasing
the country's energy security. The gas deal with Iran was formulated
before Erbakan came to power and cannot be understood simply as an
expression of Muslim solidarity. That said, Erbakan was quite explicit
about his desire to move Turkey toward a more balanced foreign
policy, including closer ties with Middle Eastern neighbors, with an
emphasis on economic cooperation.13 The post-Erbakan coalition led
by Mesut Yilmaz, with its emphasis on a "regionally-based foreign
policy," is likely to continue the tendency toward greater
independence and assertiveness in Turkish foreign policy, albeit with
less explicit attention to the Islamic dimension.
The Kurdish Crisis.
Despite the dominant nationalist ideology, Turkey is a multiethnic,
multicultural society. This reality—and the challenges of cultural and
political adjustment it presents—is most evident in Turkey's
continuing Kurdish cri--

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sis. Perhaps 20 million of Turkey's roughly 65 million population are
of Kurdish descent. Most do not live in southeast Anatolia, although
this region is heavily Kurdish and the center of Kurdish activism.
Until recently, the issue of Kurdishness was a nonissue for most
Kurds and almost all Turks. Ethnic identity, including Kurdishness,
was not a bar to full participation in Turkish society so long as it
remained unstated. The prevailing Ataturkist ideology allowed little
scope for the notion of a distinctive Kurdish identity, although by the
1980s the pressure for recognition of Kurdish language and cultural
rights had become much stronger.
The Ozal years saw the beginning of an opening on Kurdish cultural
issues. Unfortunately, this was also accompanied by a sharp increase
in violent separatist activity by the PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party).
Since the mid-1980s the insurgency and counterinsurgency in
southeastern and eastern Turkey has claimed some 20,000 lives and
severely complicated Turkey's relations with its Middle Eastern
neighbors and the West.14 With enormous and costly efforts, and a
significant toll in human rights, the Turkish security forces have—for
the moment—gained an upper hand in the region. In this they have
been aided by the progressive depopulation of southeastern Anatolia,
the result of economic and forced migration, and the displacement of
much of the fighting over the border into northern Iraq. But the
political aspects of the problem are no closer to resolution.15 Some
Turkish analysts fear that success in combating the security problem
in the southeast will simply force the Kurdish struggle into urban,
western Turkey, where the potential for wider polarization and
friction between Kurds and Turks is latent but serious.
In some respects, the prospects for a political approach to the Kurdish
problem have worsened, as Turkish society already shows signs of
polarization around the question of Turkishness versus Kurdishness.
Indeed, this tendency has both fueled and been fueled by the rise of
nationalism noted earlier. Only Refah has so far managed to cross
over this divide by offering the Islamic identity as a unifying
principle for Turks and Kurds. The party was also effective in voicing
the grievances of Kurdish supporters in eastern Anatolia and in major
cities.16 Erbakan even went so far as to raise the possibility of direct
negotiations with the PKK, something no mainstream Turkish
political leader has been prepared to do (this idea was quickly vetoed
by the military). Ultimately, the nationalist element within the
Islamist movement, and the need to assuage the security
establishment in Ankara, may prove difficult to reconcile with a more
flexible attitude toward Kurdish rights and a political solution to PKK
terrorism.
To a degree, the political crisis in Turkey and the polarization
between Islamists and secularists has overtaken the Kurdish crisis as
the leading issue

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on the domestic scene. Indeed, Turkey's military leadership
announced in the midst of the confrontation with Refah that, in their
view, Islamism has replaced Kurdish separatism as the leading threat
to Turkish national security. Yet, the conflict in southeastern
Anatolia, and the broader question of Kurds in Turkey, remains a
critical issue for the future of Turkey, with external as well as internal
implications. Tension with Turkey's Middle Eastern neighbors,
including Iran and, above all, Syria, over alleged support for the PKK,
may work against any closer relationship with states on Turkey's
borders. Kurdish separatism, active and potential, is a factor in the
stability of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, as well as Turkey. Erbakan's
proposal for a quadripartite conference to address the Kurdish
problem, in particular the situation in northern Iraq, recognized this
reality while revealing a degree of naïveté about the geopolitical
forces at play. Turkey's neighbors regard the PKK as a source of
leverage over Ankara, and the prospect of cross-border ethnic issues
being "managed" in this manner has produced understandable alarm
among Western governments. At the same time, failure to meet
Kurdish cultural and political aspirations within Turkey, even well
short of autonomy or independence, will continue to severely
complicate Ankara's relationships in the West. This is particularly
true in Europe, where the Kurdish issue is closely associated with
general human rights concerns about Turkey and has been a factor in
negative attitudes toward Ankara's aspirations for full European
Union membership.
Who Are the Turks?
There is a growing tendency toward ethnic and "biographical"
identification at all levels of Turkish society. The Kurdish issue is the
most dramatic aspect of this trend. But in broader terms, it has
become acceptable, even fashionable, to discuss ethnic, sectarian, and
geographic origins (for example, Laz, Avar, Alevi, or "Caucasian").
Alevis make up perhaps one-fifth of Turkey's population, and the
assertion of Alevi identity could emerge as an important factor in
Turkish democracy and stability. Many Alevis tend to regard Refah-
Virtue, and Islamism in general, as a "reactionary force threatening
progressive, democratic and left-leaning Alevi culture."17 In this
context, among others, the growth of ethnic cleavages within Turkey
could raise new sources of opposition to Islamic and nationalist
politics. Alevi areas in Istanbul have also been the scenes of clashes
with the police, ostensibly over mysterious acts of violence against
Alevis but drawing on deeper currents of social grievance. It is worth
noting here that Turgut Ozal, with reference to his own Kurdish
origins and suggestions of a more open attitude toward ethnic and

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religious expression, contributed substantially to the erosion of
taboos in these areas.
Ethnic identifications, long dismissed and in some cases suppressed
as incompatible with the Ataturkist notion of national cultural unity,
have begun to play a noticeable role in public opinion on foreign
policy questions, to the point where it is now possible to speak of
"Bosnian," "Caucasian," or "Cypriot" lobbies.18 The Turkish elite is
torn in its reaction to this trend. On the one hand, it flies in the face of
key aspects of the Ataturkist tradition and complicates the business of
policymaking in sensitive regions. On the other hand, Turkey's
Balkan lobby is effective precisely because its members are drawn
heavily from the old Ottoman administrative class, many of whose
descendants remain prominent in Turkish government and society.
There is also a growing sense that a certain amount of this
identification is healthy and modern.
Consequences of Turkey's Dual Identity Crises
Turkey is in the midst of an identity crisis with both internal and
external dimensions. The internal dimension concerns the rise of
ethnic awareness and pressures within Turkey and the development of
potentially explosive cleavages between the secular and religious
strands in society. The internal crisis of identity also complicates a
long-standing problem of identity in Ankara's foreign policy and has
opened the way for external involvement on behalf of Turkey's Kurds.
There can be little doubt that Turkey's recent economic history has
contributed to the unease about new cleavages and social frictions.
After a decade of consistent economic growth (for many years the
highest in the OECD), Turkey has entered a period of wildly
fluctuating economic performance, which has taken a toll on the
public optimism of the Ozal years. A new class of wealthy and very
visible entrepreneurs has flourished in Istanbul and elsewhere, while
high inflation and unemployment have had a severe effect on the
everyday life and aspirations of most Turks. Rapid urbanization and
high population growth rates (highest among Kurds and in the
southeast) have introduced pressures common across the southern
Mediterranean and the Middle East. In the early years of the
Republic, the Turkish population was perhaps 15 million. By the end
of this century, Turkey's population will approach 70 million. In this
context, it is hardly surprising that many of the traditional Ataturkist
notions about the organization of society, the economy, and politics
are under strain.
Turkey's internal identity crisis (what does it mean to be a Turk at the
end of the twentieth century?) reinforces an existing tension between
the Ataturkist

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image of Turkey's place on the international scene and the reality of
Western and Middle Eastern views. Turks like to think of themselves
as a bridge between East and West (the Muslim world and the West)
in cultural, political, and geopolitical terms. The West, especially
Europeans, more often view Turkey as a barrier against Middle
Eastern instability.19 Indeed, today many Europeans and Americans
are inclined to see Turkey as "part of the problem" in terms of
economic and political development and human rights behavior. In
this view, Turkey remains all too Middle Eastern, despite its Western
aspirations. Progress on democratization and human rights, in
particular, is inextricably linked to the Kurdish situation within
Turkey as well as in northern Iraq. From the Turkish perspective,
there is an extraordinarily high degree of suspicion regarding longer-
term Western aims vis-à-vis the Kurds. Even many mainstream
politicians and observers are convinced that the United States and
Europe wish to encourage the creation of an independent Kurdistan
centered in northern Iraq but inevitably including some part of
Turkish territory. The Gulf War, which many Turks saw as an
opportunity to solidify Turkey's position within the West, actually
had the effect of demonstrating Ankara's value as a "Middle Eastern"
ally while further complicating a delicately balanced series of
relationships on Turkey's southern and eastern borders.
Leaving aside the important substantive issues at stake in Turkey's
relations with its Middle Eastern neighbors (water, territory,
terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, oil pipelines), it is also clear
that Ankara faces a difficult environment on ideological grounds.
Secular nationalists in the Arab world recall the experience of
Ottoman domination and are wary of Ankara's role in NATO and an
increasingly explicit security relationship with Israel. Islamists in
Iran and the Arab world not surprisingly view Ataturk as a leading
figure in their demonology. The result has been very limited room for
maneuver in Turkey's Middle Eastern relations, except on a rather
narrow economic front. Deeper ethnic and religious cleavages in
Turkey would further complicate these relations, with considerable
potential for interference (real or perceived) in Turkey's internal
affairs. Ankara, for its part, would not be reluctant to retaliate against
such interference. Syria represents the greatest risk through its
continued support for PKK operations in Turkey and northern Iraq.
Open conflict between Turkey and Syria over this issue is not out of
the question.20 Indeed, the quest to contain the Kurdish insurgency
and to pressure Syria has emerged as the driving force behind a more
active Turkish policy toward the Middle East as a whole, including
frequent cross-border operations in northern Iraq, a tougher stance
toward Damascus, and strate--

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Soviet Union, pan-Turkism has been revived and proposed as an
alternative to a new Islamic foreign policy. While the core idea of a
union of Turkic states is unlikely to be seriously pursued, it is already
apparent that Turkey, Iran, Russia, and even the United States are
willing to support certain ethnic groups in the region against others
when it suits their foreign policy purposes. Russia is insisting on the
right to be consulted on all proposed changes in the region. Turkey
and Iran are determined that any changes in the region will not be
allowed to impact their own domestic ethnic politics. The United
States seems to want to maximize the autonomy of the Central Asian
states as a way of increasing its potential points of access while
preventing any one state from dominating the region–and its oil.
Pan-Iranism had a brief ideological life among a small group of
Iranian fascists, but has fizzled and seems unlikely to gain new life.
Like pan-Turkism, its essential aims are irremediably irredentist,
evoking images of Nazi-era expansionism. For Turkey such aims are
directed at Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Mosul province. For pan-
Iranism, the irredenta are Bahrain, parts of Afghanistan, parts of
Central Asia, Caucasian Azerbaijan, and the border regions of Iraq.
Many Turks and Persians may harbor such sentiments, but they are
only likely to become significant aspects of foreign policy when
opportunity knocks, as it did in the defeat of the Saddam Hussein
regime in Desert Storm.
Nasserist Egypt did attempt to play the ethnic and religious card in
foreign policy, first in encouraging Arab nationalist rebellion against
traditional rulers and ulema. Sunnis in Lebanon and Yemen, the
Mirghaniyya in the Sudan, Arab-Sunnis in Khuzistan and Iraq–all
were encouraged to challenge the legitimacy of Nasser's enemies in
those countries. For the most part, Egypt attempted to gain political
advantage by cheap talk–especially via Radio Cairo. In the end,
however, every serious military action undertaken to achieve a
general Arab goal turned to disaster, partly because of the strength of
Nasser's enemies, partly because of the distance over which Egyptian
power had to be deployed, and partly because of the incompetence of
both the administrative and military instruments of Egyptian power.
The expedition to Yemen ended after five years without a victory. The
union with Syria failed, and the remnants of the Egyptian army and
bureaucracy withdrew in defeat. The attempt to overthrow the Iraqi
regime of Abd al-Karim Qasem failed. The defeat in 1967 ended
hopes of maintaining the leadership of the Arab and Palestinian
struggle against Israel.
In the early 1970s, Iraqi Kurds were supported for a while by Iran and
Israel against the Iraqi government. Israel also supported
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gic cooperation with Israel. Reinvigoration of relations with Iran,
based on economic cooperation, would also be useful to Ankara in
relation to the Kurdish issue. Turkey will have a leading stake in the
political evolution of northern Iraq and probably will not hesitate to
place its security interests above humanitarian concerns in the case of
the Kurds. From the Turkish perspective, arguably including Turkey's
Islamists, reassertion of Iraqi control in the north would be an
acceptable outcome if the perceived alternative is the consolidation
of a de facto Kurdish state. Turkish policymakers would prefer to
manage the problem of Kurdish separatism in this manner rather than
rely on international (that is, Western) approaches to the management
of ethnic tensions on Turkey's borders.
Turkish nationalism, ethnic identification, and the rise of the
Caucasus lobby also pose considerable risks for normally cautious
Turkish policy toward Russia and the former Soviet Union. There is
the potential for unpredictable interactions on both sides of the
border, exacerbated by Russian fears of pan-Turkism and a range of
functional disputes, from conventional arms control to energy. To
what extent will Turkic peoples in the Caucasus and Central Asia
view Turkey as a cultural and political beacon?21 Will Ankara wish
to take the political and strategic risks of deeper involvement, and
could policymakers be pushed in this direction by Turkish public
opinion? These remain open questions. Initial elite and popular
enthusiasm for opportunities in the Turkic republics of the Caucasus
and Central Asia has clearly given way to greater realism. Cultural
affinity remains an important factor and may yet prove capable of
stirring more active Turkish involvement in places such as Chechnya
or in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Further afield, in
Central Asia, lack of economic clout, inadequate infrastructure for
transport and communications, and sensitivity about rivalry with
Russia and Iran—less cautious actors—will probably combine to
limit Turkish engagement. Nonetheless, Turkish interests are engaged
in the region, especially with regard to energy supply and transport.
Rising nationalism in Turkey and in Russia, where the Refah
phenomenon is taken as evidence of a mounting Islamic threat in the
south, could alter perceptions about the costs and benefits of a more
active role for Ankara.
Questions of ethnicity, religion, and nationalism, leading forces in
Turkey's internal evolution, are also the leading sources of risk—and
some opportunity—in Ankara's foreign policy. This is especially true
in relation to Turkey's Middle Eastern neighbors. But relations in
Eurasia and with the West will also be affected, as the central status
of the Kurdish issue in European and U.S. attitudes toward Turkey
suggests. Finally, stability in the Balkans and Aegean

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will be influenced as Islamist and nationalist politics in Turkey
reinforce existing fears about Turkey's orientation and potential
regional role. These currents could increase the risk of conflict where
ethnic and religious cleavages are already a flash point in relations, as
on Cyprus and in Greek Thrace, where the status of the Turkish-
Muslim minority is a source of friction.
Overall Observations and Conclusions
Turkey is experiencing a growing tendency toward ethnic and
religious identification within society and on the political scene —a
trend at odds with the Ataturkist ideology that has guided the
evolution of Turkish society and policy since the formation of the
republic. A related and equally powerful phenomenon has been the
growth of Turkish nationalism, a tendency shared by secularists and
Islamists alike, and with direct implications for Ankara's policy in the
Middle East and elsewhere. These implications include more
complicated relations with the West and the Muslim world and
greater potential for Turkish involvement in regions where its
interests and public opinion are engaged. As a result, post–Cold War
Turkey is emerging as a more unpredictable but potentially more
important actor in regional affairs.
To what extent can outside powers or international society as a whole
affect the evolution of ethnic and religious politics within Turkey?
This is not simply a theoretical question, since international opinion
and policymakers have taken a keen interest in the Kurds and
associated human rights issues, as well as the future of Turkish
secularism.
Turkish reaction to international involvement (norm setting,
brokering of ethnic contracts, guarantees, etc.) will be driven by the
balance of two competing tendencies within the Turkish elite, and
more broadly. First, Turkey has had a strong stake in being a member
in good standing of the leading Western clubs (NATO, Council of
Europe, etc.). It has been inclined to seek multilateral approaches to
issues and conflicts in adjacent regions (Bosnia, northern Iraq). If
anything, this quest for approval and a Western foreign policy
"context" has acquired even greater importance for Turkey's secular
elites in the wake of the recent political turmoil, widely seen as
damaging to Turkey's image in the West. Whether this tendency can
continue to shape Turkish policy in the same way under conditions of
stronger Islamic identification at the public level is unclear. A second
tendency flows from the growth of Turkish nationalism, coupled with
closer attention to sovereignty concerns, a trend extending to
Turkey's secular elites and given impetus by the deterioration of
relations with the European Union. The net result is likely to be some
continued Turkish willingness to envision international—preferably
regional—

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solutions to ethnic and religious frictions on its borders, but not in
any substantial form within Turkey itself.
Finally, many Turks would argue that reconciling ethnic and religious
tensions within Turkey—and by "Turks"—is precisely the challenge
that Turkey must face for itself if its democracy is to deepen. Turks
are aware that they are far from unique in confronting issues of
ethnicity, nationalism, religious revival, and identity. The way in
which these issues are handled elsewhere in the Middle East, in
Russia, as well as in the West, will be an important contributing
factor in Turkey's own evolution. Ataturk's famous dictum that
"Turks resemble themselves" suggests a degree of uniqueness and
singularity that may prove hard to sustain as Turkish society evolves.
Editor's note: Ian O. Lesser is a senior analyst at RAND in Santa
Monica. The opinions presented here are his own and are not
necessarily those of RAND or its research sponsors.
Notes
1. Sencer Ayata, "Patronage, Party and State: The Politicization of
Islam in Turkey," Middle East Journal 50, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 52.
2. For example, the expansion of the imam hatip schools and the
flourishing of tarikats, underground religious orders.
3. This revolt against the established political class is, of course, to be
seen elsewhere around Europe and the Mediterranean, not least Italy,
where it has been the defining political current over the past few
years. The phenomenon is also at work closer to home. In this sense,
Refah's rise was perhaps part of a broader trend in contemporary
Western politics.
4. See Metin Heper, "Islam and Democracy in Turkey: Towards a
Reconciliation?," Middle East Journal 51, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 32–
45. A USIA poll taken after Refah's entry into government suggested
that more Turks now view themselves and their country as part of the
Islamic world, with roughly a third characterizing themselves as
"Islamists." Birol Yesilada, "The Refah Party Phenomenon in
Turkey," chapter prepared for publication in Birol A. Yesilada, ed.,
Comparative Political Parties and Party Elites: Essays in Honor of
Samuel J. Eldersveld (forthcoming), 17–18. See USIA, Opinion
Analysis, "Turk's Shift Toward Islamist Orientation, Staunch
Secularism Declines," cited in Yesilada.
5. On the question of Turkish relations with the European Union, see
Turkey and European Union: Nebulous Nature of Relations (Ankara:
Turkish Foreign Policy Institute, 1996). The 1998 Luxembourg
decision of the European Union not to include Turkey in the list of
near-term candidates for membership reinforced the tradition of
holding Turkey at arm's length.
6. A formulation suggested to the author by Heath Lowry.
7. Philip Robins, "Political Islam in Turkey: The Rise of the Welfare
Party," JIME (Japanese Institute of Middle Eastern Economies)
Review 28 (Spring 1995).

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8. Public disenchantment with the behavior of centrist politicians and
its effect on support for Refah is noted in Sabri Sayari, "Turkey's
Islamic Challenge," Middle East Quarterly 3, no. 3 (September
1996): 35–43.
9. See the discussion of diversification versus increased emphasis on
Turkish interests in Heinz Kramer, "Turkey under Erbakan:
Continuity and Change Towards Islam," Aussenpolitik 47, no. 4
(1996): 379–88.
10. Ernest Gellner, Encounters with Nationalism (Oxford: Blackball,
1994), 83.
11. Heath Lowry, "Challenges to Turkish Democracy in the Decade of
the Nineties," unpublished paper, 18, quoted in Soli Ozel, "On Not
Being a Lone Wolf: Geography, Domestic Plays, and Turkish Foreign
Policy in the Middle East," in Powder Keg in the Middle East, ed.
Geoffrey Kemp and Janice Gross Stein (Lanham, Md.: American
Association for the Advancement of Science and Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 1995), 182.
12. The Yilmaz government put the Iranian gas agreement on hold,
and the arrangement may well be superseded by approval for the
construction of a new pipeline to carry Turkmen gas across Iran to
Turkey.
13. See "Foreign Policy under Turkey's New Coalition Government,"
Turkish Embassy, July 1996. This was hardly a new tack for Turkey.
Iraq was Turkey's largest trading partner before the Gulf War. The
political and economic isolation of Iran and Iraq has never been
popular in Ankara.
14. Figures include civilians, PKK, and the security forces. The bulk
of those killed have died in the period since 1992. See Kemal Kirisci,
"The Challenges of Terrorism: A Turkish Perspective," paper
prepared for Trilateral RAND-BESA-FPI Colloquium, May 20–21,
1996, Tel Aviv, 3.
15. See Kemal Kirisci and Gareth M. Winrow, The Kurdish Question
and Turkey: An Example of Trans-State Ethnic Conflict (Portland,
U.K.: Frank Cass, 1997); and Henri J. Barkey and Graham E. Fuller,
Turkey's Kurdish Question (Washington, Carnegie Commission on
Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1997).
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. See Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of
Nevada Press, 1991), 104.
19. See Ian O. Lesser, "Bridge or Barrier: Turkey and the West After
the Cold War," in Turkey's New Geopolitics: From the Balkans to
Western China, ed. Graham E. Fuller, Ian O. Lesser, et al. (Boulder,
Colo.: Westview, 1993).
20. See discussion of Syria's "covert war in Turkey" in Sukru
Elekdag, "2 1/2 War Strategy," Perceptions (Ankara) 1, no. 1 (March–
May 1996): 46–50.
21. An optimistic assessment of the prospects is offered in Graham E.
Fuller, "Turkey's New Eastern Orientation," in Turkey's New
Geopolitics.

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11
Turkey's Restive Kurds
The Challenge of Multiethnicity
Graham E. Fuller
The challenge of Turkey's Kurds represents one of the most
interesting and significant cases of ethnicity and state modernization
in the Middle East today. Turkey faces a predicament involving a
large ethnic minority that represents a prototype of similar problems
in many other countries in the region, indeed in the world. As in
many other states, the roots of Turkey's problem go back to the
formation of the modern state; but the intensive emergence of the
Kurdish issue today stems in part from Turkey's own process of
democratization and the demands that arise from it. Turkey indeed is
blessed with the existence of a number of meaningful and functional
democratic institutions—nearly all of which are currently suspended
when it comes to the Kurdish context—which could eventually be
part of the solution. If Turkey, better institutionally equipped than
most other regional states to handle a minority problem, is unable to
manage its Kurdish problem, the outlook for other states in handling
similar ethnic or sectarian problems is bleak indeed.
The Kurdish population of Turkey is today emerging as the single
greatest challenge to the stability and well-being of Turkey as a
democratic country. The 12 million Kurdish population of Turkey,
roughly 20 percent of the country's population, is engaged in a quest
for its own identity and a demand for official recognition of that
identity that directly challenges the seventy-five-year history of the
Turkish republic as a unitary state. There is some question as to
whether the Turkish state is yet ready to move toward official
recognition of a multiethnic state and the changes in the
constitutional structure that such a shift requires. If Turkey is not
ready to begin this formal transition, then its future stability faces
major uncertainty. The fifteen-year guerrilla war waged by the
Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) damages the state and society in
significant ways: the economy, rule of law, civil rights, demo--

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cratic process, freedom of the press, political reform, and Turkey's
international reputation and standing.
Turkey's Kurdish problem is of singular importance, not only to
Turkey itself but also to Turkey's neighbors of Iran, Iraq, and Syria,
where significant Kurdish minorities—perhaps 8 million more—also
live. Significantly, the Kurds represent the biggest ethnic group in the
world that is without a state. This phenomenon is of generic interest
to all those interested in problems of ethnicity and separatism on the
global level today, for the future of the Kurds will be fraught with
meaning, whichever way their situation is resolved. If their quest for
official recognition and minority rights is not recognized, the
implications are indeed serious: the Turkish state will be compelled
to face a rising long-term Kurdish struggle for those rights that will
challenge if not destroy the very basis of Turkish democracy and the
liberal state. Over the long run, Turkey would face the growing
likelihood of a long-term Kurdish struggle for secession that could
inflict heavy loss upon Turkey's territorial integrity. Conversely, if
Turkey's Kurds are in fact able to achieve satisfactory arrangements
that preserve their cultural and political identity within the state, the
implications for Turkey are also great: transition to an officially and
structurally multiethnic form of state and preservation of the
territorial identity of Turkey that would otherwise be under certain
long-range threat. Such a transition would be a model of major
importance to a region that is broadly afflicted with similar problems.
Roots of the Conflict
The Kurds are one of the ancient peoples of the Middle East;
references to them and their homeland go back at least to Xenephon.
Kurds were a clear and distinct element within the Ottoman Empire,
and, as with other peoples and regions within the empire, they
sometimes rebelled against central authority. But the Kurds, as a
Muslim people within the empire, had full legal status along with all
other Muslims. Indeed, there was no such concept as a "minority"
among Muslims in the empire; in legal terms all Muslims were equal,
language and culture were incidental. The only legal "minorities"
were Christians and Jews, who, by law, were in fact religious and not
ethnic minorities. Thus, despite periodic challenges by regional
Kurdish leaders to improve the terms of their relationship with
Istanbul or to gain greater autonomy, the question of "Kurdish
independence" was irrelevant until the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire after World War I. Such Kurdish rebellions as there were
represented typical regional efforts over much of the empire to gain
maximum autonomy from the center.

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The situation changed dramatically with the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire, when the Kurds were promised autonomy under the Sèvres
Treaty with the possibility of attaining full independence in keeping
with other such self-determination goals of the Versailles Peace
Conference. In the end, promises of autonomy under Sèvres were
rendered moot by Ataturk's subsequent victorious expulsion of allied
forces from Turkey followed by the signing of the Treaty of
Lausanne, which dropped all reference to Kurdish autonomy. The
Kurds, who had participated actively in Ataturk's struggle for
Turkey's national independence, found themselves included in the
new Turkish entity that immediately declared itself a unitary state
that entirely excluded the concept of Muslim ethnic minorities.
Indeed, Ataturk's remarkable nation-building project, founded on the
ashes of the old multinational empire, aimed at creating a
homogeneous population infused with common nationalist ideals.
The word Kurd, and any official recognition even of the existence of
Kurds as a people, was henceforth dropped from nearly all usage. A
number of benighted "academic" exercises by dubious scholars even
attempted to "prove" that there was no such thing as a distinct
Kurdish people or language.
Among the various ethnic groups of the world, the Kurds as people
have demonstrated a delayed national emergence into a nationalist
movement. The reasons are diverse. Geographical division and
isolation heads the list, with ethnic Kurds divided up among Turkey,
Iran, Iraq, and Syria.1 Each of the Kurdish minorities in these four
distinct countries have naturally been subject to different types of
regimes, historical experiences, political and cultural policies, and
different dominant languages; they thus gradually assumed partially
differing political cultures that have since hindered any kind of
uniform Kurdish "national development" —to the point where any
discussion of a "pan-Kurdish" movement is well outside the realm of
reality over the near to medium term. And, unlike earlier periods of
Middle Eastern history, modern Middle Eastern borders are
bureaucratically more sharply delineated and sealed off than at any
time in the history of the world, discouraging crossborder
relationships.
Kurds also live in what are considered the isolated, remote, and less
developed regions of each of the states within which they live.
Dialect differences considerably complicate, but do not completely
hinder, mutual communication. Kurds do not even share a common
language among the states that dominate them: Turkish, Arabic, and
Persian could not be more distinct from one another. Finally, Kurdish
society, living in considerable enforced isolation, has not undergone a
modernization process to the extent of other major nationalities in the
region. As a result, Kurdish society tends to retain many

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feudal and clan features that have hindered the development of a
modern social structure, while state policies have ensured that the
Kurds do not engage in "nation-building" processes that by now
might have strengthened a sense of ethnic or national solidarity. This
process among the Kurds is still young.
While the Kurds in modern Turkey were thus denied any public
Kurdish identity virtually from the outset, they were not the object of
ethnic discrimination in other senses. As long as individual Kurds in
the country accepted the public Turkish identity, there were literally
no limits on how high a Kurd could rise within the system, including
the presidency and top military ranks. One's Kurdish origin might be
known, but it was never discussed; the price of political and cultural
success was cultural silence about one's origins if they were non-
Turkic. This arrangement contrasted sharply with Iraq, where Kurds
were officially recognized and had full linguistic and cultural
freedom, but were treated as a minority within the system, rarely
gained broad entrée into the corridors of power, and, of course, were
subject to one of the most brutal and arbitrary dictatorships in the
world under the Party, which has engaged in virtual genocide
against them under Saddam. Turkish Kurds were never a "minority"
with certain rights, they were "Turks" with full rights.
Nonetheless, those few Turkish Kurds that did seek ethnic recognition
and pursued nationalist cultural and political goals were quickly
crushed by the state and charged with separatism. With a few
significant exceptions, major uprisings were few, and Turkey pursued
a policy of assimilation on several levels. Kurds who lived in western
Turkey had 100 percent Turkish education, thereby weakening any
Kurdish cultural ties. The most ambitious efforts involved the gradual
involuntary relocation of hundreds of thousands of Kurds over time
out of the southeast into central and western Turkey. That process is
still under way today, whereby one-half to two-thirds of the Kurdish
population in the southeast has now been transferred to western
Turkey, with the hope and expectation that they will soon become
assimilated into the Turkish population and over time lose all trace of
their distinct Kurdish identity. The key question is whether this
Kurdish identity has been truly abandoned or lost, and how
permanently.
Enter the PKK.
Despite periodic uprisings in various parts of the southeast over the
past seventy years, no Kurdish movement had succeeded in
maintaining a sustained opposition to the Turkish state until 1983,
when the PKK was formed. The

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PKK grew out of the many Turkish leftist guerrilla and terrorist
movements that nearly tore Turkey apart in the 1970s. Beginning in
1983, under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK launched a
guerrilla war against the state that has survived to this day, operating
mainly from within the country. The conflict has brought massive
numbers of Turkish troops to be stationed in the southeast, at an
operational cost of perhaps five to seven billion dollars a year. The
ability of the PKK to survive for more than ten years in the field has
been the single most dramatic expression of Kurdish nationalism in
the history of modern Turkey and today makes it the most important
front of Kurdish nationalism.
PKK headquarters are based in Damascus, from where Ocalan directs
operations. Ocalan himself has long reflected his early Marxist-
Leninist background, in which leftist revolutionary rhetoric and "pan-
Kurdish" separatist themes were central, and the leadership
authoritarian, reflecting some degree of a personality cult. The PKK
has been very harsh in its guerrilla methods. The PKK has not shrunk
from employing violence against its enemies within the Kurdish
population itself, although Ankara has worked hard to encourage
some kind of infrastructure among the Kurds to fight against the
PKK. In particular, a system of "village guards" has been recruited
and handsomely paid to fight the PKK in what is an economically
deprived region; these guards, and anyone affiliated with them,
including their families, have been targeted by the PKK in what has
been a bloody conflict involving tens of thousands of casualties. The
majority of Kurds take no formal sides, even while sympathizing with
the PKK.
Given changes in the world, the PKK has gradually shifted its rhetoric
away from leftist terminology to one that has officially dropped all
references to pan-Kurdism and even to separatism. Instead, the PKK
now emphasizes solution within the borders of Turkey, dialog, human
rights, democratic representation, constitutional rights, elections, and
federalism. Some of this change in political line can be attributed to
the growing domination of the Turkish military in the southeast over
the past four years, especially the presence of the army, gendarmerie,
village guards, and "special teams" (quasiofficial vigilante groups
well paid by the state and generally linked to the extreme Turkish
nationalist party, the National Action Party). Cities and towns that
were once under strong PKK influence by nightfall are now more
secure; vigorous military campaigns have considerably weakened the
ability of the PKK to dominate the countryside, and the organization
has also been under assault in the mountains on the Iraqi side of the
border, which have been frequently visited by Turkish army and air
force assault. The major ques--

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tion is the extent of damage to the PKK's permanent infrastructure
and its ability to recruit. If the massive Turkish military presence is
withdrawn, will the PKK quickly return to dominate the political
scene in the southeast? Unless the political situation changes
dramatically, the best guess is that the PKK will not go away.
At least one plausible interpretation is that the PKK political line has
softened over the past few years partly as a result of serious setbacks
on the military front. But it is clear, too, that the PKK is hoping to
move to a political phase of the struggle in an effort to win greater
legitimacy, and in the hope of eventually gaining through political
means what it has not, and cannot, gain on the battlefield. The PKK's
hope is that the cost—economic, political, moral, and diplomatic—
will eventually compel the Turkish government to negotiate and
move toward granting the Kurds what the PKK wants.
Kurdish Identity and the PKK
Kurdish intellectuals and political activists in Turkey all tend to
emphasize one key theme: the process of building a sense of Kurdish
national consciousness (bilinclendirme). This is a key political and
social goal in a state where the political order has denied for nearly
seven decades the existence of a separate Kurdish ethnicity and
strongly hindered ethnic self-consciousness. This process of building
such a "national" Kurdish consciousness is of course directly contrary
to the goals of long-standing Turkish policy that seeks integration,
assimilation, and the eventual disappearance of any meaningful
separate Kurdish identity. Turks rightly fear that the growth of a
Kurdish identity will only lead to escalating demands upon the state
to grant the Kurds concessions or special arrangements that only
serve to reinforce differences rather than national commonality. They
fear that however initially modest and innocent such special
arrangements might be, they will inevitably lead to further demands
and potentially even to the threat of outright separatism.
The process of building a sense of ethnic identity is of course the
critical element in the creation of any "nation," whether it takes the
form of a separate state or not. Several factors have contributed to
this growing sense of Kurdish identity inside Turkey today. First, the
language has remained alive and in vigorous (but, unlike Iraq,
nonwritten) usage in the southeast; it has also survived among large
numbers of Kurds who have migrated either voluntarily or
involuntarily to western parts of Turkey. There are few data to
indicate the degree to which the language has been retained or lost
among the Kurds in the west, but few have suggested that the
language, as a key vehicle of identity, is dying out.

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Lebanese Maronites until at least 1985. Algeria has supported the
Polisario movement against Morocco in the Western Sahara. Iran
supports groups in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf region, and
also supports the Hizbullah in Lebanon. Iran supports rebel
groups in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan supports Pushtun groups
in Afghanistan. Uzbek and Tajik groups in Afghanistan are supported
by a variety of states, including Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Saudi
Arabia, and India. Pakistan supports rebel Muslims in Kashmir. Syria
supports the PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party) in Turkey. Turkey, Iran,
and the United States support various Iraqi Kurdish groups. Syria,
Egypt, and Jordan are all involved in trying to win allies and
influence among the Palestinians. Iraq has supported Iranian Kurds,
Lebanese Maronites, and Jordanian Palestinians.
In fact, in a system that is either stable or stalemated, for the reasons
already discussed, ethnic politics has become one of the most
ubiquitous instruments of foreign policy, even though it bypasses
diplomacy, involves intervention in the affairs of other sovereign
states, and is rarely acknowledged. This popularity is partly the
consequence of the fact that ethnic policies are low risk, provide
plausible deniability, are low cost, and, because no two situations are
exactly alike, retaliation in kind is often difficult or meaningless.
By contrast, only a few countries are in a position to engage in
encouraging domestic radical Islamic movements in other regional
countries against established governments. Exporters of Islamic
revolution are effectively limited to Iran and Sudan. Afghanistan is
said to play a role in this, but usually through the export of veteran
mujahideen. Saudi Arabia played this game in several places,
including Egypt and Yemen, and most recently in Afghanistan, but it
now restricts its largesse to more peaceful tabligh groups (which
inform about Islam and aim to strengthen its practice and
proselytize).
Target countries are, of course, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq,
Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Lebanon. In all of
these countries there exists an Islamic extremist opposition that
challenges the legitimacy of the regime, but the number of opposition
movements far outruns the resources of the intervening countries.
Only Iran is a serious player. For the rest, it appears that Islamic
extremism is, on balance, much more a domestic political matter than
is ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflict is much more sustained by
international political tensions within the region.
The bottom line is that ethnic conflict within the region cannot be
controlled without the management of regional political conflict.
Ethnic conflict is held in check by the constraints on international
violence in the region, but those constraints do not appear to be
permanent. Religious conflict,

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Second, events in Iraq have served to invigorate and strengthen the
awareness of the Kurds in Turkey as being part of a larger Kurdish
grouping. The influx of over half a million Kurds fleeing from
Saddam Hussein into the border areas with Turkey in 1991 after the
Gulf War led to the Western-administered Operation Provide
Comfort, which provided emergency housing and food to this vast
number of refugees. This situation provoked widespread international
coverage of the Kurdish situation in Iraq, as well as on the Turkish
side of the border. The Turkish government became openly involved
in Iraqi Kurdish politics and for the first time received Iraqi Kurdish
leaders and Jalal Talabani in Ankara for regular
discussions on a frequent high-level basis.
Third, Turkish President Turgut Ozal personally broke the ban on
explicit discussion of the Kurdish issues in public and included the
admission that he himself had Kurdish blood. Ozal moved to lift at
least some of the bans on the use of Kurdish in publications, public
speech, and public songs. Unfortunately, many of these new freedoms
allowing for a Kurdish-language press were gradually reduced and
challenged in courts over time. Nonetheless, the genie was out of the
bottle by 1991; the word Kurd began to appear in public usage—a
major breakthrough. Most Turks still prefer to refer more cautiously
to a "terrorism problem," a "PKK problem," or a "southeast problem"
rather than to a Kurdish problem. But the Turkish press is gradually
writing with slightly greater openness on the topic (depending on
which paper) as are private TV stations in long talk shows. The media
nonetheless runs risks in doing so, since it is open to eventual
prosecution for promoting "separatist propaganda" that can bring high
fines, court proceedings, and even jail terms to writers and
institutions that sponsor such articles and discussions. Turkey,
however, can no longer return to innocence on the subject.
Fourth, Western states and international media began to devote more
attention to the Kurdish problem by name as human rights groups and
advocates for democracy in Western countries began to draw
attention to the plight of the Kurds in Turkey, often simplistically
urging separatism for the Kurds rather than a more measured
examination of the problem and its alternative solutions. Pressures
from the West are growing, especially after Turkey's access into the
European Customs Union and long search—so far unsuccessful—for
acceptance into the European Union. This quest for membership has
heightened European attention to ongoing Turkish violations of
human rights that stem from the Kurdish problem—political
prisoners, torture, and restriction of journalists and the free press on
the Kurdish issue.
Fifth, PKK operations over the years have intensified the national
strife

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over the Kurdish problem. Life for the Kurds nearly everywhere has
grown much more difficult as a result of the state's struggle against
the PKK. More than 2,000 villages and hamlets have been evacuated
or destroyed in the southeast in the campaign to flush out PKK
supporters and infrastructures, pushing more than a million refugees
out of the region. All Kurds are now scrutinized with suspicion that
they might be PKK supporters. As with the Palestinians, the Kurds
are being pushed into a greater sense of national self-consciousness
through suffering and hardship. Many of their sons are going off to
fight with the PKK, coming back home and often retroactively
bringing a sense of national consciousness to their parents, who may
have been quite apolitical earlier. Deaths of Kurds either with the
PKK or those who get caught in the crossfire heighten awareness of
their predicament. And Turks, whose own sons are drafted and sent to
the southeast, are highly anxious about the ongoing conflict in which
dozens of bodies return each month from the front for burial all over
the country. The conflict is thus heightening a sense of polarization
within the country between Turk and Kurd, even in cities in the west,
like Ankara, Izmir, and Istanbul, where sudden new awareness of who
is a Turk and who is a Kurd—previously never much considered—is
sharpening the debate.
Sixth, for well over a decade Kurds have been encountering each
other in ever greater numbers abroad—in Western Europe and the
United States—where Iraqi, Turkish, and Iranian Kurds can now meet
with impunity. The more open environment of the West provides
Kurds with the stimulus, the opportunities, and the varieties of media
to explore Kurdishness and become more deeply aware of their own
culture. It is also in Europe—in Germany and Sweden in particular—
where Kurds are actually able to obtain education for their own
children in Kurdish in government-supported schools. Certainly, the
growing explosion of ethnicity elsewhere in the world has also
contributed a considerable demonstration effect to a new Kurdish
ethnic self-consciousness.
In the course of this process, the PKK, for better or for worse, has
probably now become the preeminent symbol of Kurdish nationalism,
transcending Turkey itself. The PKK is widely recognized among
intellectuals as virtually the only "modern" Kurdish movement—
modern in the sense that it has an ideology and a vision that
transcends regionalism, traditionalism, or clan structures to envision
a modern political Kurdish society. The PKK is also "modern" in its
willingness to use extreme violence and kill many Kurds, as well in
the process of building a new future. This modern ideological
outlook, as opposed to traditional or even feudal power structures that
dominate so much

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of the Kurdish world, has strong appeal to intellectuals in particular.
The PKK is now the dominant force among the several million Kurds
in Europe, regardless of country of origin. It dominates the Kurdish
media in Europe as well— newspapers, book publishing, and, above
all, via its own "Med-TV," a pro-PKK station that broadcasts out of
England by satellite, which can be seen in Turkey by anyone equipped
with a satellite dish. Med-TV, beamed especially at Turkey, offers
programs in both Turkish and Kurdish, news coverage on Kurdish
affairs, music, arts, and PKK propaganda. It is ironic that the
shortsighted policies of the Turkish government in effect compel
their own Kurds to listen to Med-TV rather than offer them their own
Kurdish-language radio and television within Turkey.
Thus, it is the PKK that has done more than any other single
organization in Turkey to build and strengthen a sense of Kurdish
identity. The PKK is not the sole contender: the pro-Kurdish HADEP
party in Turkey is gaining a foothold (see below); there is also a
significant Kurdish Socialist Party in exile, operating out of Sweden
and headed by Kemal Burkay, that fosters a peaceful but socialist
vision of a future Kurdish entity within Turkey. Kurds tend to view
the PKK with a combination of fear, respect, and admiration. Even
Kurds who dislike the PKK, its leadership, and many of its methods
will state that they nonetheless do not want to see the PKK be
defeated militarily, because it will take away the only pressure point
that Kurds possess that might wring out concessions from the
government. Kurds distrust the government's position that the
insurgency and terror must first be defeated before there are
discussions about Kurdish rights and reforms; once the insurgency is
defeated, they reason, grounds will no longer exist for the
government then to grant concessions.
Turkish Government Policies
The policies of the early republic laid the seeds for later Kurdish
dissatisfaction by insisting on the single national Turkish identity for
all, thereby denying the existence of other ethnic groups and
languages. Today many Turkish intellectuals and statesmen recognize
that state policies created a problem that must be solved, but there is
little agreement about what to do.
It is clear that whoever has the power to define the problem has, by
definition, said a great deal about the nature of the solution. The
Kurdish problem in Turkey today is primarily defined as one of
terrorism, automatically requiring the sole response of a military
solution. The government has treated nearly all Kurdish activities—
political or cultural—as separatist and hence illegal. There is no
question that the PKK is, among other things, engaging

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in genuine guerrilla warfare and terrorism. The Turkish government
also claims, rightfully, that no government should tolerate terrorism,
but, by now, it has chosen to describe almost all Kurdish cultural or
political activity as "support to terror and separatism." The struggle
against the PKK—an organization that indeed quite openly did call
for separatism in its early years—has thus come to dominate the
entire Kurdish issue and polarized the problem.
The government has further compounded the problem by denying any
role to those very institutions that are best positioned to assist in a
domestic solution: the media, civil society, and the democratic
process. It is one of Turkey's greatest strengths, among nearly all the
countries of the Middle East and the Balkans, to have a well-
developed civil society, a remarkably open and diverse press, and an
established democratic process with a track record. In the case of the
Kurds, however, these great strengths are virtually inoperative. Since
the Kurdish problem by now is largely defined as a security problem,
the Turkish press is leery of exploring the subject very closely, fearful
of legal charges and exorbitant fines. The press thus engages in
significant self-censorship on this issue, with occasional but
important exceptions, generally limiting itself to government
bulletins; they thereby deprive society of broad examination and
debate on the subject. Turkey's strong civil society would be able to
offer much toward a solution of the Kurdish problem, but there are
few private organizations, outside of a few daring human rights
groups, that will risk engaging in the issue.2
Turkey's relatively open and democratic political system
unfortunately operates rather ineffectively when it comes to the
Kurdish issue. In fact, nearly one-third of the national parliament is
made up of Kurds—clearly no discrimination here—but almost no
Kurdish parliamentarian dares to address this sensitive issue that is
termed a "security problem" and is thus dealt with almost exclusively
by the military and the security services. Kurdish representatives,
with a few bold exceptions, therefore limit themselves to seeking a
better deal for their respective districts rather than discussing the
Kurdish issue itself. The parliament has not undertaken any national
debate on the subject of Kurdish policy—the single most pressing
issue on Turkey's agenda today.
The Kurds and Electoral Policies
The Turkish government and the courts have permitted in recent
years the establishment of three successive "Kurdish parties" to
appear on the political scene, but their avowal of Kurdish national
goals—even while not publicly supporting the PKK—led to the
closing of the first two, and even the pros--

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ecution of several of their leading members. The third and latest
Kurdish successor party, the People's Democratic Labor Party
(HADEP), has fared somewhat better. It participated in the national
elections of 1996 but did not pass the minimum vote requirements for
entry into parliament; nonetheless, HADEP has conducted its pro-
Kurdish policies more cautiously but nonetheless openly and the
government has so far permitted it to operate and has accepted its
legitimacy on the national scene, even though many have accused it
of being the "PKK Party." HADEP should fare better in subsequent
elections.
Interestingly enough, Kurdish voters in the country have so far not
flocked to HADEP to represent them. First, most are well aware of
the short lives of the past two Kurdish parties and are not confident
that HADEP will long be permitted to survive. Second, large numbers
of Kurdish voters in the southeast have been transferred from their
home villages where they are registered, thus losing the vote on a de
facto basis for the time being. Third, and much more practically, in
the big cities of western Turkey, where there are huge Kurdish
populations, more votes went to Turkey's Islamist or
"fundamentalist" Welfare Party than to HADEP for two reasons. First,
since the Welfare Party is perceived as an antiestablishment party, it
has in recent years received a lot of the protest votes from the Kurds.
Second, the Welfare Party actually is in charge of the municipalities
of Istanbul, Ankara, and many other major Turkish cities as a result
of local election victories over the past several years; Kurdish voters
are aware that it is Welfare, and not HADEP, that will be delivering
the municipal services to their areas. Turkey's shifting electoral scene
deserves close watching in the years ahead to perceive how much
Kurdish votes may gradually shift to HADEP.
The emergence of a strong Kurdish political party has immense
implications for the future of the Kurdish problem. First, it is now
counterproductive for elements in the government to attempt to
smear HADEP as the "PKK Party" because it would suggest that the
several million votes the party attracted in the last election actually
were cast for the PKK—at a time when the government dismisses the
PKK as essentially a "handful of terrorists" without any popular
support. Second, if the HADEP gains greater support and legitimacy
among Kurds, it is well on the way to becoming a rival to the PKK
itself. From one point of view this is the bad news for the Turkish
government since it spells an end to any hope that the country could
avoid division into Turkish and Kurdish camps. Kurdish nationalism
would thus be vindicated and expressed via a vibrant HADEP. On the
other hand, HADEP operates within an open and democratic
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or violence, nor does it call for separation. Thoughtful Turkish
policymakers thus could see benefit in allowing HADEP to emerge as
the major alternative to the PKK, thereby funneling off most Kurdish
support from the PKK to the more moderate and democratic HADEP.
Either way, the Kurdish presence becomes an official political reality,
which Turkish governments historically have sought to avoid. This
could be the beginning of the de facto solution of the problem.3
There is much to be said in permitting the HADEP to emerge as the
leading Kurdish voice in Turkey. In principle, even the PKK
leadership cannot criticize HADEP as a "creature of Ankara" since
HADEP has firm nationalist credentials. Second, if Turkey allows
free-and-open elections among the Kurdish population in Turkey, pro-
PKK candidates in principle will emerge. In fact the PKK has never
been subjected to an electoral test of popularity, and no one knows
how it might fare in open elections. The PKK itself claims that it is
ready to end the armed struggle and to move to the political arena. It
has declared two unilateral ceasefires that the government has twice
ignored. Elections would be a significant test. It is possible that the
PKK may have both created the groundwork for a Kurdish national
movement and forced the state to recognize that movement, but that
the PKK itself might not be the party to most directly profit from new
Kurdish freedoms at the ballot box. Would the PKK and HADEP join
forces, or would significant differences in approach and policies
emerge?
The PKK would like to be accepted as the sole interlocutor for
Turkey's Kurds. It has created a Kurdish Parliament in Exile (KPE),
based in Brussels, that claims to represent a broad cross section of
Kurdish groups apart from the PKK. In fact, the KPE is PKK
dominated, and so far it has not been able to win the support of any
European government as the official spokesman for the Kurds. The
KPE may yet be able to emerge as an important transition
organization between the PKK as a guerrilla force and the PKK as a
political force. If the PKK maintains its political and organizational
strength, which exceeds its military strength, it could evolve into a
significant political voice. No Turkish government is likely to engage
in negotiations with an exile group, however, nor would that process
be as valuable as a more democratic process in which Turkey deals
with an elected Kurdish party that may come to include PKK
members—even if not specifically so identified.
The government is, of course, opposed to any such course of events
because it fears that Kurds and elections might produce a snowball
effect in which separatism would emerge triumphant. Turkish
observers speak frequently about the "slippery slope": if a few
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or media in Kurdish—are granted to the Kurds as a distinct people,
then they will proceed to demand more and more until they call for an
independent state. Objectively speaking, no one can guarantee that
the Kurds, given a free choice, may not vote to secede from Turkey
and to establish their own independent state. But this dilemma exists
in all multinational states; only when the state can successfully
accommodate minority desires, concerns, and interests can the state
survive in its present form. Turkey's experience will not be unique.
Indeed, the very basis of the traditional "nation-state" (that is almost
never an ethnically homogeneous nation) may be at risk in most of
the world.
Turkey's Political Forces Come of Age
Turkey's experience with the challenge of multiculturalism represents
an undeniable shock in a country that has already been undergoing
major change in other respects, as well over the last five to ten years.
Most of the basic tenets of Ataturkism—the official state ideology—
are under challenge. In foreign policy, Ataturk's rather isolationist
and cautious policies dominant until the 1980s have given way to a
totally new vision. The proximate cause of change is that Turkey's
geopolitical position in the world has been revolutionized with the
collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving Ankara with new foreign policy
options in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia where none
had existed before. These openings are transforming Turkish foreign
policy from a traditional isolationism and European orientation to
one of greater international activism—and potential conflict. Five
new Turkic states have suddenly emerged onto the world scene as a
historic first, making a new "pan-Turkish" outlook a distinct new
potential strand in foreign policy. The growth of pan-Turkish
elements has a direct effect upon nationalist views at home. As
Turkish nationalist and even "pan-Turkish" views attain prominence
in the intellectual discourse of the country, it is not surprising that
Kurds should reflect with concern upon this. It is also the Turkish
nationalists who are naturally most opposed to any expression of
Kurdish nationalism, thus heightening a sense of polarization.
At the same time, increasing economic and political liberalism in
Turkey over the past decade helped bring about the emergence of the
Islamist Welfare Party, another dramatic departure from the intensely
secularizing legacy of Ataturk. Islam in politics has been anathema to
the state from the outset, even though such prohibitions have been
gradually whittled away over the past thirty years. In June 1996 Refah
came to power as the head of a minority coalition—following
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percent. One year later the military, increasingly unhappy with Refah
policies, forced the party to resign, opened a court case against it for
violation of the constitution, and banned it. It was immediately
replaced by a new Islamist party—Fazilet, or Virtue—with new top
leadership, but essentially a successor to Refah. Despite talk about
rising above ethnicity for reconciliation with the Kurds on an Islamic
level, Refah in power was unable to break new ground with the Kurds,
partly because it perhaps had too much else on its controversial
political platter. Time will tell whether the Islamists really have
something new to offer in approaching the Kurdish problem. In
principle, they could.
All these changes and challenges to the traditional establishment
views only set the stage for the third major challenge to the long-
established Turkish order: that Turkey is not truly an ethnically
homogeneous state and thus will have problems attempting to be an
entirely unitary state. Any one of these new ideological challenges
places pressures upon the system; three simultaneous challenges
make the Kurdish problem all the more volatile in today's
environment.
What Do the Kurds Want?
There is no uniform vision among Kurds as to what they seek from
the Turkish government; different Kurds have different aspirations
and visions of the problem—typical of any ethnic/nationalist
movement. Large numbers of Kurds want to be able to freely express
their identity in cultural and political forms in some fashion, but
some Kurds are better integrated into Turkish society than others;
some have more to lose than others; some see change as bringing
greater benefits to them; some fear the price of confrontation and
conflict; some just want to get on with life without any sense of
politicization. Above all, this is a dynamic process; the Kurds' views
of themselves and their needs are evolving, indeed evolving rather
rapidly, as the political environment and forces for change within
Turkey intensify.
At a basic level, most Kurds will have practical, nonpolitical wishes
at the top of their list of immediate concerns. For those who live in
the southeast, the immediate goal is to stop the conflict and allow life
to return to normal. People want the security forces to withdraw,
especially the highly politicized quasi-official "special teams" and
the less-disciplined gendarmerie. People want the army to withdraw
so that villages are no longer "cleansed" and destroyed, and so that
fields can be worked in safety. There is no body of information that
can provide accurate and reliable insight into the preferences of most
villagers. Even the mere expression of such preferences in the past
was unrealistic and dangerous in view of government policies. Some
have also

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suffered from PKK attacks and political pressures in a conflict
sometimes reminiscent of the struggle in Vietnam to keep the
Vietcong forces out of villages. In most cases villagers are caught in
the middle. Still, there seems to be a general perception among most
Kurds that the PKK, for all its violence, is at least "fighting for the
Kurds"—which cannot be said for the huge military and security
presence fighting to retain state control in the region. Thus, in the
southeast the first need is for an end to conflict, to destruction of
villages and forced relocation.
More politically sophisticated Kurds in the southeast seek greater
regional autonomy, including the ability to choose one's own regional
governors. Actually no region in Turkey enjoys this privilege so far.
Reformers in Turkey are pressing for the right of all provinces to
choose their own governors rather than to accept state-appointed
officials. Such a step is part of a broader package of decentralization
and democratization of government that is long overdue in a state that
is excessively centralized—part of a pattern of most states in the
world. Other desires are for cultural autonomy, the right to use
Kurdish in their own media—press, radio, television—and the right
for education in Kurdish. Turkish opponents of education in Kurdish
are afraid that such a step will drive a wedge between the
communities, fostering divisions rather than national integration.
This debate is familiar in other states as well. All Kurds know is that
to succeed in Turkish society one must have knowledge of Turkish.
Indeed, outside of rural areas in the southeast, ignorance of Turkish is
a relatively limited problem as roads and communication continue to
move the language into the region. But are Kurds willing to have the
Kurdish language perish?
Kurds who have migrated voluntarily or involuntarily to cities and
towns all over western Turkey will have different perspectives.
Again, at the basic level, Kurds want to ensure they have adequate
municipal and social services, a problem shared with large numbers
of other poor Turks. Kurds not surprisingly tend to concentrate in
certain sections of the larger cities and towns, thus not losing their
sense of regional and ethnic identity. Elections so far indicate they are
likely to be driven initially by bread-and-butter issues. As basic needs
are met, however, ethnic groups in general naturally tend to reflect
more on issues of identity and equality within the society in which
they live. At the most basic level Kurds say they want the freedom to
state that they are Kurds without penalty or discrimination. They too
want the right to enjoy media in their own language. They seek state
recognition and equality as a people within Turkey.
Turkish critics of the PKK and Kurdish nationalist activists
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that these are a small minority of fanatics or "terrorists" that do not
reflect the views of most of the Kurdish population. First, assertions
on this issue are notoriously difficult to demonstrate, and nationalist
feelings are in a state of evolution. In 1996 the sense of Kurdish
identity and nationalism in any political form was far more developed
than it was ten years earlier. Indeed, nationalist feelings can grow
"retroactively" in the sense that Kurds who may have felt themselves
integrated and apolitical a decade ago (under entirely different
circumstances) today are coming to realize that they are indeed
Kurds, and why shouldn't they have a right to express their ethnic
culture without prejudice or penalty? Many Kurds occupying senior
positions within the government, once considered to be "fully
integrated," are now beginning to talk about their new sense of
Kurdishness and the need for cultural rights. Is it really possible to
argue that the broad political processes now under way in Turkey—
and in today's world—are going to militate against the growth and
development of Kurdish national feelings? Why should these feelings
diminish in the years ahead, unless the state is able to satisfy a large
number of these Kurdish demands that it currently finds
unacceptable?
Turkish hard-liners are right, of course, that the political and guerrilla
activists among the Kurds are a minority among a broader mass of
less-politicized Kurds. But such a situation is common in nearly all
countries of the world (including the American Revolution) in which
minority visionaries and activists are the ones who eventually propel
the broader population forward into demands and actions that had not
previously seemed possible. The process of politicization of the
Kurds in Turkey is proceeding apace—as in so many other countries
of the world. Turkish authorities will be misleading themselves if
they believe they can write off Kurdish political activism as a small
minority that can be handled simply through security measures.
Although the Kurds are of course a minority within Turkey, many
Kurds resent the assumption that they are speaking simply of minority
rights within the country. They point out that they are a strong
majority in the southeast—although the proportion of Kurds versus
Turks will vary sharply from province to province—and that they
should be allowed to operate as the majority national group in those
areas.4 These arguments reflect the more politically sophisticated
challenges made by some Kurdish nationalists—especially the PKK
—that the Kurds require a constitutionally recognized binational
federal system that will include a Kurdish parliament in Diyarbakir
that parallels the one in Ankara.
Such a federal proposal would require drastic reworking of the
present Turkish state structure and involves many problems and
complexities. The

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in the sense of the Islamic resurgence, is less tied to international
relations and its management is more a question of domestic politics,
except where Iranian and Sudanese foreign policies are concerned.
Regional stabilization via a regional security system or by NATO or
other great power commitments to maintain order will reduce the
rewards accruing to those who encourage ethnic conflict, thus
lowering the political and material costs of devising and sustaining
ethnic contracts and, perhaps, permitting ethnic conflict to become
more of a domestic issue.
Transnational Nationalism: Arabs and Kurds.
Ideal Typical Cases of International Ethnic Conflict
The Middle East, especially the eastern part of the region, or the
mashriq, has some unique features that render it of particular interest
in an inquiry into the national and international dimensions of ethnic
conflict.
The ideal typical case of transnational ethnic conflict may be where
two mature nation-states, each based on a different ethnic community,
live side by side, find some reason to fear one another, and start
beating one another's brains out. One thinks of Serbs and Croats,
French and Germans, Jews and Arabs, Arabs and Persians, Armenians
and Azeris. Of course, conquest, migration, and the intervention of
other powers, among other things, soon muck up this neat picture. But
if one starts with this suggested ideal type, one might think of ethnic
conflict as typically international and exceptionally national.
An alternative and possibly more realistic ideal type recognizes that
there are no pure nation-states. Virtually every state has minority
nationals or ethnics, and they are often ethnically or historically
related to the majority community in a neighboring nation-state. This
second ideal type directs us to look for internationalized ethnic
conflict wherever two nation-states are contiguous, where different
ethnically defined elites dominate in each country, and where there
are substantial minorities of the neighboring (dominant) ethnic
community in each country.
In this type of case, conflict may arise over boundaries if the ethnic
minority is near the border. Conflict may arise over the treatment of
the minority. Conflict may arise over attempts to redefine the identity
of the minority. The minority can become hostage or the subject of
blackmail. In the Middle East, we find classic cases in the
relationships between Iran and Iraq, Syria and Turkey, and Armenia
and Azerbaijan. At present, the Israeli situation, with its Arab
minority, is asymmetrical, but some proposed solutions for the

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first and most obvious problem is what to do about the majority of
Kurds who no longer live in the southeast region. Many of these
Kurds, uprooted from their villages and transferred under pressure (or
by dint of circumstance) would go back to their homes, but perhaps
large numbers would not. A number of Turkish leaders, going back to
the beginning of the republic (and including former president Ozal),
had often speculated that the only long-range solution to the Kurdish
problem is to move them gradually out of the southeast and settle
them all over the rest of the country so that they eventually lose their
Kurdishness and blend indistinguishably into the broader Turkish
population. This process has been under way to some degree for many
hundreds of years. If a Kurdish autonomous region emerges, will
Kurds be more tempted to move back? Might there be some kind of
homogenization process of Turkish and Kurdish areas? Or would
Kurds in the west be content simply with legal recognition and
political and cultural expression of their Kurdishness? Or will they
eventually agree to assimilation?
While such a process of natural assimilation may have much merit, it
raises very important questions about identity and ethnicity in our
post–Cold War era. Are ethnic groups generally willing (to the extent
that one can speak of them collectively) to be "assimilated" into a
broader culture? The process is under way everywhere, and in future
centuries the world could even find its ethnic population reduced to a
dozen or so basic ethnic categories, the smaller ones having been
swallowed up—perhaps without much concern—into larger and
increasingly mixed ethnic communities. Within the next half century,
at a minimum, the character of the international order will emphasize
a return to heightened senses of ethnic identity. As global
homogenization moves ahead, reactions will emerge, causing greater
focus on identity and community. Where economic and social
development is uneven and unfairly distributed—nearly everywhere
—these lines of distribution frequently coincide with ethnic lines that
intensify the feeling of ethnicity.
Finally, in today's world more than ever before, smaller nationalities
are encouraged—by international emphasis on human rights,
democratization, and a sense of empowerment over the ability to
determine one's destiny—to improve the lot of their own ethnic
groups, usually engraved in a legal context as "rights." Nor is the
problem limited simply to internal Turkish politics and trends since
the calculus of the Kurdish problem in Turkey might seem fairly
straightforward. But Turkey's Kurds do not exist in a vacuum; they
observe similar ethnic struggles unfolding among Kurds in Iraq and
Iran, with whom their links are growing. Turkey's Kurds are thus
unlikely to be exceptions to a broader international trend of
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The global trends of ethnicity and regionalism are generally
damaging to the rigid and centralized power structures that exist in
most of the world. But developments in the European Union raise
interesting alternatives for Turkey's own future political evolution.
Regions everywhere are wresting new authorities from centralized
governments as both economies and administrative orders devolve. A
few farsighted Turks have noted that as Turkey grows more closely
into the economic order of Europe, greater regionalism within Turkey
may become more "natural." What today seems like an unacceptable
assault against the powers of the state by the Kurdish regions might
become more acceptable in a newer order when Turkey can join a
"Europe of regions."
The External Dimension.
While this chapter focuses on the Kurdish problem in Turkey, the
issue cannot be discussed in isolation from the politics of Kurds in
Iraq and Iran as well. It was the flight of Kurds into Turkey from
Saddam's vengeance in 1991 that was one of the major factors in
heightening the profile of the Kurdish problem everywhere. There is
little doubt that the existence of the de facto autonomous Kurdish
region has also helped accelerate (although not create) the
intensification of the PKK movement in Turkey itself. The Kurdish
problem can never be resolved in Turkey, Iran, or Iraq in isolation
from the Kurds in the remaining countries.
Many in Turkey oppose any kind of Kurdish entity at all in northern
Iraq, since they see it as the nucleus of a future regional Kurdish
state. Yet it is almost inconceivable that Iraq will ever hold together
as a state unless it moves toward some kind of federal solution that
can protect Iraqi Kurds from the gross abuses that have characterized
Baghdad's policies for so many decades. Indeed, many Iraqi Kurds
have openly stated that they would prefer association with Turkey
because Turkey is more politically advanced and possesses a
democratic structure that will preserve Kurdish political and cultural
security. If Iraq's Kurds are not themselves accorded a political
solution within the Iraqi state for their aspirations, Iraq will always
be in turmoil and, furthermore, a source of destabilization for
Turkey's own Kurdish region. In short, any future solution must
contemplate settlement of both Iraq's and Turkey's Kurdish problems.
As problematic as Turkey's Kurdish dilemma is, it is more
susceptible to solution via Turkish democratic institutions than is the
Iraqi problem. If Turkey can arrive at some kind of regional
autonomy for its Kurds, the chances are considerable that
southeastern Turkey will represent a magnet for all the

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Kurds of the region: it will be the largest Kurdish region, the most
economically and politically advanced, and tied in to Europe—all
features of great attraction to Iraqi and Iranian Kurds. If Ankara can
achieve an enlightened solution for its own Kurds, it will become the
major voice in all Kurdish regions of the Middle East. This in itself is
a threat to the internal stability of Iraq and Iran, which are still in the
throes of primitive political orders and harsh domestic policies.
In the short run, however, Ankara may be tempted to make common
cause with Baghdad and Tehran in jointly combining to crush all
Kurdish political activity in the region. These states otherwise share
very little in common, so any such cooperation would be both
ineffective and ultimately a failure. The major hope for regional
stability is that Turkey will lead the way toward enlightened internal
solutions to minority problems that afflict the entire region.
Conclusions
Turkey is essentially undergoing the growing pangs of a state that in
many senses has been highly successful over the past three-quarters
of a century. The Turkish government and state apparatus will be
under increasing pressures to liberalize its policies toward its Kurdish
population in the decades ahead. These pressures include human
rights demands from the West, diplomatic pressures, and economic
and political forces of globalization that press for conformity to
international standards. The process will not be an easy one. Growing
nationalist and Islamist forces are opposed to subordination to the
West. The older (and considerably successful in its day) Ataturkist
ideology will fade only slowly.
Finally, the processes of modernization and globalization themselves
present both advantages and problems. Turkey is geopolitically
located in an area of considerable political turbulence on all sides,
which will not permit Ankara the luxury of quiet and peaceful
development on its own. Its opponents in Russia, Greece, Iraq, Iran,
Armenia, and Syria are all happy to lend support of one kind or
another to Turkey's enemies as a means of pressure against Ankara.
Furthermore, no one can make guarantees to anyone about the future
territorial integrity of any multinational state and the forces they will
face. But if Turkey moves fairly quickly to handle its Kurdish
problem via political means—in full recognition that the issue
involves matters of ethnic identity and minority rights and not simply
terrorism or security—then the problem is probably soluble within
the borders of today's Turkey.
Turkey should be able to meet its Kurdish challenge—something that
can-

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not be as readily said about its neighbors, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, all of
which have yet to develop pluralist mechanisms that could help
resolve their ethnic and sectarian problems. Turkey enjoys the major
advantages of a relatively mature society, a functioning if turbulent
democracy, a developing civil society, considerable political maturity,
an above-average record of international responsibility on many
levels, and a potentially strong economic base with much
administrative and economic skills widely distributed among the
population.
The dissatisfaction of the Kurdish populations in the region can
furthermore work to Turkey's benefit in the future. Turkey's Kurds
are the most populous and vibrant in the area and have links with
Kurds in neighboring countries and the West. If Diyarbakir becomes
the center of a new Turkish Kurdistan, it is likely to be attractive to
all other Kurds in the region whose own political future is unfolding
in failing states. If Turkey can face with confidence the reordering of
the state to meet new international realities, Turkey's own Kurds are
likely to be the major players in the entire region of "greater
Kurdistan," a strong boost for Turkey's own geopolitical position in
the region. It will be the Turkish solution that will come to pressure
the other states in the region—which require not only new ethnic
policies themselves but also the establishment of an entire new
democratic order, which has so far eluded them.
Despite the seriousness of Turkey's Kurdish problem, there are
grounds for much optimism about Turkey's ability to find a solution
before it becomes too late. And it could become too late at some
point if the population becomes totally alienated by continuing
efforts to "solve" the problem militarily. The clock is ticking, which
many in Turkey do not seem to realize as they fail to recognize the
true ethnic character of the problem—and the solution. Turkey
possesses the necessary political, institutional, societal, and
international mechanisms to manage the crisis. Whatever the Turkish
experience will be, it will be of immense relevance to the other states
in the region, as well as to Turkey's allies.
Notes
1. The division of the Kurds between Iranian and Ottoman empires
goes back four hundred years; subsequent divisions of the Ottoman
Empire's Kurds into Turkish, Iraqi, and Syrian elements date from the
end of World War I.

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2. To their credit, past Turkish cabinets have included a minister of
state for human rights, who, while a government appointee, has
pursued with considerable dedication issues of rights and due process
in the country. The office has simply not been given much clout,
although it has been permitted to report publicly on violations,
including in the Kurdish regions.
3. This rosier prognosis was much dimmed in the summer of 1996,
when a skirmish over a PKK flag raised by a few extremists at a
HADEP meeting led to the detention of much of the party leadership
and cast serious doubt over whether the HADEP can now be a serious
political alternative to the PKK.
4. At that point, of course, the Turkish population living in the
Kurdish-majority area then becomes subject to the need for cultural
protection as a minority within the region.

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12
New States and New Identities
Religion and State Building in Central Asia
Martha Brill Olcott
Since the late 1970s there has been growing Western fascination with
the republics of Central Asia and how they will balance their Islamic
"past" with their Soviet, and now post-Soviet, "present." The study of
these Central Asian societies immediately fell victim to twin
confusions: Western preconceptions about Islam and the Soviet
Union. This chapter is an attempt to work through some of these
confusions, at least as far as they relate to the process of Uzbekistan's
efforts to reconcile its national and religious identities in the early
post-Soviet period.
In this chapter I discuss Western and Soviet preconceptions about
religion and ethnicity in Soviet Central Asia and how actual events
contradict them. Views of these events are provided by a set of open-
ended interviews conducted in rural Uzbekistan in 1992. I use these
presumably more accurate views of Uzbek life to speculate on how
religious and ethnic identities may be reconciled in Uzbekistan and
what implications this might have for state building in Central Asia.
The study of Central Asia has been politicized from the onset, with
scholars bringing to the region a strong preconceived sense of what
would be best for Central Asians. In large part, initial Western
preoccupation with this region was because of a perceived Islamic
threat growing just beyond its borders. Much of early Western
scholarship on Central Asia (and particularly that influenced by the
research of the late French scholar Alexandre Bennigsen) saw Islam
as somehow "naturally" Central Asian, and as such presumed it to be
the most likely vehicle for ridding the region of the "unnatural"
Communist ideology that held it "captive."1 It was this thesis that
brought Bennigsen's research to the attention of U.S. policymakers,
who were attracted to stimulating Central Asia's Islamic forces in the
hope of destabilizing the USSR.

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To what degree U.S. strategists designed clandestine projects around
these assumptions is still an interesting subject for speculation at
cocktail parties in any number of national capitals. It is certainly true
that we did support various Islamic groups in neighboring
Afghanistan in their fight against the Soviets during these same years.
What is more significant, though, is that Islam did not prove to be a
major destabilizing force in Soviet Central Asia. Even more
important, in the last years of Soviet rule the Central Asians made
clear to all concerned that they did not consider Communism to be a
particularly alien ideology. Three of Central Asia's current presidents
made an easy transition from Communist Party first secretary to
Soviet-era republic president, and four of the region's five Soviet-era
presidents have made the further transition to being popularly
supported leaders of independent countries.
Part of the reason they succeeded is that the marriage between Islam
and Communism—or, more precisely, between the region's past and
its present—was clearly a more comfortable one in Central Asia than
anyone credited it with being. The people of these countries place
high value on cultural continuity. As a result, Communist, and now
post-Communist, rulers have felt some obligation to both conform to
and shape the populations' cultural expectations. Even under the
Soviet system local officials tried to temper the application of
official policies that offended local sensibilities. This was especially
true of officials working outside of the republics' capitals and the
more Europeanized of the secondary cities.
Even in Central Asia's capital cities public observance of religious
rituals was tolerated to a greater extent than in Russia or most other
Christian areas. For example, in 1983, Uzbekistan's Communist Party
chief, Sharaf Rashidov, was carried through the streets wrapped in a
simple shroud as part of his official burial, rather than in an open
coffin with his Soviet medals pinned to his chest, as was the norm for
leaders of his status. In a society as routinized as the Soviet's, such
seemingly simple deviations from the norm have great symbolic
significance. Similarly, the fact that Muslims everywhere but in
Turkmenistan were all able to continue to circumcise male children,
as well as publicly celebrate their circumcision, was of enormous
importance to the community.
The practice of Islam was of course transformed by the decades of
Soviet rule, a system in which there was no separation between
"church" and state, and atheism was an important feature of the
official ideology. Mosques and religious schools required state
licensing, which was almost never given, and it was illegal to
"propagate" religion. Any parent who taught his child to recite
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law. These official policies forced most religious believers
underground, and what went on out of sight was generally tolerated.
Periodically, the regime went to war with the religious establishment
and with believers. The time of greatest confrontation was during the
period of collectivization (1928–39). The Communist Party also went
on an ideological offensive under Khrushchev and again during
Gorbachev's early years. This last drive was explicitly anti-Islamic,
and the pervasiveness of tradition in Central Asian societies was
singled out as one of the major causes of this region's economic
backwardness.
Official attitudes toward religion began to change as part of
Gorbachev's efforts to obtain public support for his reforms; by 1988,
the new policy of toleration toward religion was extended to Muslims
as well as to Christians. Central Asia's Communist Party leaders went
from being critics of Islam to becoming its champions. By 1991 the
major Muslim feast days had become national observances and, in
some cases, official holidays. Local communities were allowed to
build their own mosques and open their own religious schools. While
state supervision of religion did not totally disappear, it now became
an exclusively republic-level concern.
Most Central Asians showed little interest in examining the
motivations of the leaders who extended the Islamic establishment its
new privileges. Leaders of the officially recognized Islamic
establishment and those who ran previously illegal (and unregistered)
religious institutions were more interested in consolidating their
gains and enhancing Islam's public position than in weeding out
genuine believers from those soon-to-be former Communists who
were seeking political advantage.
Certainly the peace that Central Asia's official Communist
establishment made with the official and unofficial Islamic
establishments must have been a contributing factor in helping
maintain the atmosphere of public order that characterized life
throughout almost all of Central Asia in the two years before the
USSR's formal collapse. Although there were two major violent
clashes in Central Asia during this period, in Fergana (Uzbekistan) in
1989 and in Osh (Kyrgyzstan) in 1990, both were interethnic rather
than intercommunal in origin, as were the preceding riots in Alma
Ata.2
Islamic issues may have been under the surface in the clashes
between young people and local authorities in Dushanbe (Tajikistan)
in February 1990. They certainly did emerge as central to the
demands made in the massive public demonstrations that occurred
following the failed Communist Party putsch of August 1991, which
resulted in the ouster of Tajikistan president and Communist Party
leader Kakhar Makhamov.

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The Tajik case is the only instance of mass public political
disturbance in Central Asia. Everywhere else in the region
independence came quietly, and came about because it was imposed
from the outside. Four Central Asian republics declared their
independence between the time of the failed August putsch and the
Belovezh Accord of December 8, 1991, which effectively ended the
USSR. The fifth, Kazakhstan, did not do so until December 16, 1991.
However, these declarations were as much bargaining ploys in a fight
for the distribution of power between Moscow and the republics as
anything else. The leaders of the Central Asian republics fought hard
to hold the union together up until the very end, and public opinion in
Central Asia seems to have supported their efforts.
Since the states have become independent, the region's leaders have
once again had occasion to reassess their attitudes toward religion.
Now, of course, there was no longer a Moscow standing above them
instructing them on what they should or should not think about these
questions. Obviously, Moscow's opinions could not be fully ignored;
the new Russian government remained a source of potential
destabilization in the region and the only potentially effective force
the leaders could appeal to in order to help quell popular unrest.
All of these leaders realized Islam had to play a role in the state-
building process in their respective new nations. Even before
independence was formally attained, each of Central Asia's republic
leaders placed the Islamic establishment under direct government
supervision, making clear that religion must answer to the needs of
the state, and not the reverse. It was not entirely obvious, though,
what role religion should play, and there has been considerable
variation in the region concerning the policies that have been adopted
toward religion. Four of the states have granted Islamic holidays the
status of state holidays, although Kyrgyzstan has accorded the major
Christian feast days identical status. These same four states have
granted Islam a special status in their constitutions. Though all
formally claim to be secular, only Kazakhstan has refused to grant
Islam any of the trappings of an official state faith.
The Politicization of Ethnic and National Identity
Before we turn to a discussion of Islam in Uzbekistan, it is important
to understand some of the assumptions that Western analysts made
about what nationalism is and how it operates in the Central Asian
context. Linked to this are a number of assumptions about ethnicity
and its relationship to nationalism. As with religion, the politics of
Cold War relations colored our understanding of these concepts and
how they played out in Central Asia.

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Soviet scholarship on Central Asia was dominated by the need to
legitimate the existing political divisions of the region as "natural"
ones. While nationalism was considered just about the most serious
form of political "deviation" possible, threatening the internationalist
nature of the state, "advanced socialist society" was still
characterized by ethnic divisions. Early Soviet conceptions of
ethnicity were based on Stalin's original division of Soviet society
into nations, national communities, and peoples. The creation of the
modern Soviet state was designed to reflect these divisions, and
between 1924 and 1936 Central Asia was divided by stages into five
republics, each of which was theoretically a sovereign member of the
Soviet Union.
Despite these early conceptions there was still a tendency to look at
the region as a whole, stressing regional similarities over national
differences. Even our Russian counterparts, upon whom we relied
quite heavily for understanding what was going on in these regions
(while simultaneously distrusting the information they gave us), also
understood these states as a single whole, although one which
excluded Kazakhstan for certain purposes. Until 1995 they referred to
the region as Middle Asia and Kazakhstan; it was clear, though, that
the Kazakhs too were "Middle Asians" and that it was the presence of
so many Russians in the republic that gained Kazakhstan its special
treatment.
With time and distance, the limitations of our earlier studies have
become more apparent. It is now clear that these republics were
already very distinct even before the international community
recognized them as separate states. One can even make a strong
argument that in the pre-Soviet period there were strong differences
between many of Central Asia's principal peoples. While Turkmen,
Kazakhs, and Kirghiz all identified themselves primarily in tribal
terms, they each viewed their tribal systems as distinct from those of
the other two peoples. This was true even for kin tribes common to all
three groups. By contrast Uzbeks and Tajiks generally identified
themselves with the feudal city-states they lived in, and which
formed the core population of the Russian colony of Turkistan. There
were certainly competing political currents at work in Central Asia at
the time of the revolution, yet there is much in the Western literature
on Central Asia that would argue to the contrary. Many scholars
working in the region brought to their studies a sense of romanticism,
infusing their works with a sense of "what might have been."
Certainly included in this is the ideal of a single Central Asia, the
Turkistan that would have emerged if the Bolsheviks had not
intervened.
One of the real advantages in dealing with alternative histories is that
you can never be proved wrong. However, it is impossible to know
what would

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disposition of Israeli settlements might create a new Jewish minority
in an Arab country after most have been eliminated.
But in the cases of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, and the
Kurds, we have unique examples of transnational nations, or
ethnonational groups that constitute contiguous geographical
majorities divided by multiple state boundaries. But these two
examples share a fundamental difference. The Arab nation enjoys a
multiplicity of sovereignties, while the Kurds are ethnic minorities
wherever they are found.
Multistate Nationalism: The Arab Case
There are twenty-one states that are members of the Arab League and
can plausibly claim to be ethnically Arab to some extent. As a
consequence, there is hardly any matter of foreign and domestic
policy of any consequence that does not impact on the definition of
Arab identity. The most important issue is, of course, that of the
legitimacy of the plurality of Arab nation-states; but almost as
important are the integrity of those states, their insulation from
intervention by other Arab states, and the right of each to demand
support or cooperation from the others. Of just about the same
importance is the question of whether any Arab state has the right to
give priority to any alternative political identity, such as Islam.
One of the consequences of the multiplicity of Arab states is that
Arab ethnic strategies are international, even when they are partitive
and not pan-Arab. Indeed, several states may share an ethnic strategy,
and a common ethnic strategy could become the basis of coalition
formation. It is also possible for an organization, like the Arab
League, to adopt an ethnic strategy that facilitates expansion of the
league by declaring states such as Somalia, Djibouti, and Mauritania
to be Arab states. The obverse of the coin is that ethnic contracts may
also be entered into by several Arab states at once, such as the special
status granted to Lebanon and Palestine under the Arab League
charter.
The Palestinians also present a rather special case, because the
dispersion of Palestinians as refugees challenges the idea of Arab
unity and presents several Arab states with parallel problems of
relating to a subordinate Arab ethneme.7 The Black September
incident in Jordan in 1970, the suppression of the Palestinians in
Lebanon in 1976 by Syria and in 1982 by Israel, the expulsion of
Palestinians from Kuwait after Desert Storm, and the more recent
symbolic expulsions of Palestinians from Libya after Oslo illustrate
the failure to work out viable ethnic contracts. While a partial result
of this la--

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have happened in Central Asia if there were no Russian Revolution.
Although a number of alternative futures were certainly possible in
1917, the Bolshevik revolution not only did occur, the "Reds" were
victorious, and it is impractical or even dangerous to predicate
current policy recommendation on "what might have been" if they
had not. It is one thing for policymakers or leading intellectuals in
Central Asia to invoke the cause of a united "Turkistan"; it is quite
another to posit that this is the "natural" state of affairs independent
Central Asia will cleave to, as some fringe or émigré groups who
have this as their cause would imply.
In the early 1960s, when a new program for the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union was being debated, there were still ideologues who
argued quite earnestly that national and ethnic distinctions would die
out with the upcoming victory of Communism. But by the 1970s it
was already quite clear to virtually all concerned with official
ideology that national and ethnic consciousness was firmly rooted in
Soviet reality.3 This was not surprising since every Soviet citizen
went through adulthood with his nationality stamped on line five of
his passport.
While Soviet policymakers were arguing over what autonomy to
allow these various ethnic communities, Soviet scholars were busy
trying to explain the continuing survival of distinct ethnic and
cultural communities after more than a half century of Soviet rule.
The major theoretical works on the subject were written by Iulian
Bromlei, director of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of
Sciences and Central Committee adviser on nationality affairs.4 His
premise was that all of human society was divided into ethnic
communities, and that under socialism they could live in conditions
of mutual respect. By contrast, in capitalist societies the conditions of
competition led to nationalism and nationalist excesses.5
During the Gorbachev years even this formulation began to seem
utopian. All of the USSR's major ethnic communities developed
movements of national autonomy and in many parts of the country
mass-supported independence movements developed as well. Central
Asian intellectuals took advantage of the relaxation of censorship to
try to right the wrongs of Soviet history, publishing long-suppressed
works and rehabilitating long-dead political heroes. National revival
movements in Central Asia took no quarrel with Soviet-era national
categories and raised little objection to existing national boundaries
as well.
Potentially this is a very destabilizing development, as fights over the
past are capable of stimulating or exacerbating interethnic tensions.
Yet there is an awareness of this in the region, for in contrast to some
engaged in Western

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scholarly debate, those in the newly independent states of Central
Asia seem content for the moment at least to work within the
constraints posed by current territorial boundaries. In the future, of
course, all this could change, but for now the battles over disputed
territories in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan pose unattractive
examples to Central Asia's potential hegemonists. The state most
likely to play this role in the future is Uzbekistan, which has potential
territorial claims on each of the region's other states.
In part because of the seeming irrationality of Central Asia's
boundaries, many have assumed these states to be more fragile than
other new post-Soviet entities. Certainly none of the Soviet successor
states has boundaries that were intended to be international, or which
allocate "national homelands" according to any sort of ethnically
rational principle. However, to make the argument that the Central
Asian states in general (and Uzbekistan in particular) will prove short
lived because of their current boundaries is to take the Central Asian
experience out of context.
Few modern states are "ethnically pure," and many of the Central
Asian states are more mononational than is the norm. Uzbekistan, for
example, is more than 70 percent Uzbek, and less than 10 percent of
its population is European in origin. The areas just beyond its borders
are heavily Uzbek, but the Uzbeks are in the minority, and these areas
are also more ethnically mixed than is Uzbekistan itself. It remains to
be seen, though, how easy it will be to transform Uzbek ethnic
identity into a state identity or into civic patriotism.
It seems quite unwarranted to assume that this is a difficult task.
Another argument often made by Western and Russian observers is
about the fragility of national identity in Central Asia in general and
Uzbekistan in particular. The Uzbeks, it is sometimes said, had their
nationalism, "given to them" by the Soviet social engineers, and these
"traditional people" really prefer to think of themselves in regional or
ethnoconfessional terms. This school of thought argues that before
the revolution Central Asia was merely a collection of "tribes" and
"feudal city-states," and as a result Central Asia's various peoples
have little historical reason to identify with a modern nation-state.
Such statements, though frequently encountered, also lack any sort of
comparative perspective about the nature of ongoing events in the
Soviet successor states. Those living in the Central Asian republics
have no less complex identities than any other former Soviet citizens,
and people seem to simultaneously identify with kin groups, their
region of residence, their faith, their ethnic community, their new
nation and their old one.
Much has been written in recent years about the role of "tribalism"
(in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan) and "regional-clan"
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Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) as signs of these peoples' lack of "political
maturity" and "proof" that they are ill suited for the world of nation-
states. The elimination of the Communist Party and its associated
structures created a real political and social vacuum in all of these
states, and this, combined with the social stress associated with
independence, certainly helped reinvigorate primordial ties and
tradition-based institutions everywhere in the former Soviet Union.
Traditional society was not as fully destroyed in parts of Central Asia
as in many Slavic areas, and consequently traditional values and
institutions can be expected to play a larger role here in the state-
building process.
It is certainly true that it will be a real challenge to form stable
nation-states out of the former Soviet republics. However, with the
exception of the three Baltic nations—all of whom had previously
enjoyed the international status of states and had begun their
statehood with relatively sound economics and high per capita private
and institutional international assistance—it is risky to try to second-
guess which states are the likely success stories and which the
presumptive failures.
It seems foolish to argue that the Uzbeks do not have a well-formed
sense of statehood but the Russians do. Today's Russian elite is no
more united on the question of Russia's "natural" boundaries than the
Uzbek. Given the war in Chechnya and the lingering Russian
nationalist claims to much of Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus, the
Uzbeks arguably have a more stable sense of their statehood. They
are also less tied to race-bound definitions of membership in their
ethnic community. Anyone who claims to be Uzbek is generally
accepted as Uzbek, including the children of mixed Uzbek-Russian
marriages who can speak their "native" language. Speaking Russian,
though, is no test of "Russianness," and children of ethnically mixed
marriages are often not accepted as Russian, depending upon what
their other "half" is.
Research on the development of nationalism in the new states of
Central Asia should be the subject of rigorous empirical analysis.
However, that is often easier said than done. Initially, research was
further compounded by general ignorance about what was going on in
these five republics. Today we are better able to study at least some of
these societies than we were during the Soviet era. Although, even
today it would be a mistake to describe most of them as truly open
societies. In the past they were for all intents and purposes
completely closed. Now at least they have become like most non-
European societies; scholars are reasonably welcome, as long as they
are not seen as actively trying to destabilize the situation and do not
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Two of the five new Central Asian states are relatively accessible to
Western scholars. Kyrgyzstan is probably the easiest of all to do
research in, although even in Kazakhstan one can arrange reasonably
good field conditions. However, security apparatuses in both these
states are expanding their scope of activity, and even in these
countries Western scholars run the risk of endangering the local
colleagues who help facilitate their work. In the other three societies
conditions are far less attractive for Western scholars. Tajikistan is
like a seesaw pitching between civil war and anarchy, which makes
doing any sort of serious investigation impossible. In Turkmenistan
the research environment is even less hospitable than during the
Soviet period, when some local and Moscow-based scholars were
able to do rather effective fieldwork, even if their conclusions had to
be reshaped to reflect the prevailing ideological concerns. Research
conditions were initially loosened a bit when Uzbekistan was still an
inefficiently run police state, but they have become far tighter since
the security forces mastered their jobs. Here the consequences for
one's local facilitators can be dire.
Even in those Central Asian states where formal censorship no longer
exists, research conditions remain enormously politicized. The fusion
of scholarship and social engineering remains inextricably a part of
intellectual life in these new states, in some ways probably more than
in Russia. Central Asia's scholars take seriously their role in the state-
building process, and many have as their first priority "getting-it-
right." They define this in different ways, depending upon the country
involved and the political platform a particular scholar is advocating.
Take Kazakhstan for example; those historians who favor continued
strong ties with Russia are also actively engaged in repopularizing the
works of nineteenth-century Kazakh intellectuals who promoted
similar programs (some of these scholars are even the descendants of
early proconstitutionalist bilingual Kazakh nationalists). Those who
want a more Central Asian–oriented Kazakhstan are pressing for an
official history that stresses the road of the Great Horde, which
dominated southern Kazakhstan and did not assimilate with the
Russians in the nineteenth century. The Great Horde also dominated
Kazakhstani Communist Party life in the last decades of Soviet rule,
and this version favors the current political incumbents.
Adding to this, Western scholars often have their own political
agendas, and though sometimes they are not conscious of it, they can
themselves become caught up in the state-building process. One
group of scholars have become "democratic institution-builders" and
have traveled to the region as consultants for the various U.S.
government–funded democratic initiative groups to help organize
political parties and various "rule-of-law" projects.

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Most working outside of Kyrgyzstan have had relatively short field
careers, and one who was not quick enough to "take the hint" even got
his jaw broken before abandoning his efforts.
There is yet another group of scholars engaged in a different sort of
political activism, although many among them would claim to not
have an overt political agenda. These are the people who want to help
the Central Asians "right past wrongs." The Western scholarly
community that studied Central Asia was very adversarial, in much
the same way that the community of Sovietologists was, and this has
carried over into the generation of younger scholars working in the
field.
Those working in the field saw Soviet rule of these areas as a "wrong"
that needed "righting." This position held that not only was
Communism "unnatural" but it was also implicitly a vehicle for
Russian domination of non-Russians. Scholars took sides in the
region's various territorial disputes. Russia's historic claims to
northern Kazakhstan were generally seen as less valid than those of
the Kazakhs, while those who studied Tajikistan were convinced that
the Tajiks had been wronged by the Uzbeks and that the Tajiks, not
the Uzbeks, were entitled to rule in Samarkand.
In some ways, we Western scholars became more nationalist than the
Central Asians. When these states became independent, we were
often critical of leaders like Kyrgyzstan's Askar Akaev or
Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbaev, who urged their citizens to pursue
bilingualism and pursue a multinational heritage. In our research we
often sided with those nationalist leaders defending linguistic or
cultural purity. In our enthusiasm for making our own hard-won
language skills seem more relevant, we were confusing advocacy for
research. We were directly intervening in the political process in
states where we were merely guests; and oftentimes we were unaware
of whose political agendas we were actually serving.
There are some of these same hidden agendas in the study of Islam in
Central Asia, although they are not yet as well developed as the
linguistic and cultural issues. The revitalization of Islam in Central
Asia is a very contentious problem, especially for those who live
there. Secularized intellectuals who come from the region often
understand this question in terms of what it will likely mean for
them. This is especially true of women scholars or men with
professional wives. National leaders are often conscious of Western,
and especially U.S., interest in and potential support for regimes that
are to keep the Central Asians from turning into "bad" Muslims. At
the very same time, though, local officials who are mindful of the
environment in which they are working may be pursuing policies of
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Here, too, the lack of carefully done and conceptually well-thought-
out scholarship originating in the region is a real disadvantage. Islam
must be understood before it can be "contained," presuming that we
even have the right to try and "contain" it. At the moment, we still
know very little about the religious practices of those living in the
various Central Asian states, not to mention how popular, widespread,
or well-funded clandestine religious group are in the region.
Uzbekistan: The "Heart" of Central Asia
This chapter focuses most particularly on the choices made in
Uzbekistan and examines their soundness. The goal of Uzbekistan's
current leadership is to create a secular state, but one in which Islam
enjoys a place of privilege. Initially enormous concessions were
made to the religious establishment. Local (mahalle) officials were
given substantial discretionary powers in the regulation of the
religious life in their communities, and as a result hundreds of new
religious schools were opened and thousands of mosques were built.
State schools substituted religious instruction for the previously
mandated courses in "scientific atheism," and religious programs
began to air on state-owned radio and television stations.
At the same time, in the five years since independence the Karimov
government has tried to assert greater control over the nation's
religious leadership. While making great public ceremony over the
refurbishing of Islamic shrines, such as the rededication of the grave
site of the founder of the Naqshabandiya Sufi order (Muhammad al
Bukhari), Uzbekistan's president has tried to keep careful control over
the nation's religious leadership.
The country's chief religious leader at the time of independence was
fired, technically by his own colleagues, and he was driven into exile
in Saudi Arabia. His successor, a more moderate figure, was also
eventually dismissed. The nation's two most prominent alternative
religious leaders, the heads of independent medresseh (religious
schools) in Tashkent and Andijan, are also gone. The former was
ousted and the latter simply "disappeared" from the Tashkent airport.
Concerted efforts have been made to identify the followers of
Uzbekistan's alternative religious leader. A series of arrests and trials
were held in 1997–98 of some of these people, dubbed "terrorists"
and "drug dealers," but generally without convincing legal evidence.
Karimov's secular opponents have also been driven into hiding or
exile, but he has repeatedly received criticism for doing this from
Western leaders and international human rights organizations. His
actions against these religious leaders have generally been met with
silence by Western foreign ob--

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servers, as president Karimov has rather successfully cast these
people as being representative of the "bad Islam" that has made its
presence felt in Central Asia since the beginning of the civil war in
Tajikistan.
The relationship of Islam of Tajikistan's civil war is a much-debated
question among Western scholars. What most agree on, though, is
that while radical Islamic groups did not cause this war, they have
certainly helped sustain it. To most Western policymakers this is
sufficient to make President Karimov's actions seem justified, as
from their point of view Islamic radicalism is inconsistent with the
goals of democratization and the introduction of a pro-Western
market-driven economy in the region. It is also inconsistent with
secure Western investment in Central Asia's considerable strategic
resources.
The fact that this is a Western preference, or even that it is President
Karimov's own preference, does not necessarily make the strategy
viable. The political situation in Uzbekistan is quite different from
that of Tajikistan in 1991. Like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan does have
powerful regionally based clans; however, unlike Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan's president has managed to secure control of the levers of
economic and political power through his successful manipulation of
the slow-moving privatization process and reconstruction of
Uzbekistan's sophisticated security apparatus.
As long as Karimov is physically strong, his vision for Uzbekistan is
likely to remain unchallenged. However, he has been reluctant to
share much political power with his own administration. Therefore,
when he begins to tire physically from the burdens of ruling, he will
become more vulnerable. His vulnerability will also increase if his
economic reform program falters enough to produce a substantial
drop in the standard of living, or if it succeeds well enough to
produce an independent economic elite.
President Karimov is betting on being able to stabilize Uzbekistan's
economy and to create a foundation for Uzbek patriotism before he
dies or his rule is challenged. Islam and ethnicity are the two
ideologies from which a stable Uzbek national identity can be built.
However, it is far from clear who will be empowered to define them.
For now, President Karimov and the ruling elite have claimed an
unchallenged right to this; but if the state-building process falters,
recent history suggests that it will be the religious elites who will
hold the political advantage. When Birlik leader Abduhrahim Pulatov
had his skull cracked in front of a police station in Tashkent there was
no public outcry.6 However, when Andijan's Qari Abduh Wali
disappeared in transit in Tashkent's airport, there were demonstrations
held in Andijan.
The Uzbek regime is currently able to defuse this protest, but it is
more difficult to predict what will occur in the future, especially
since the regime

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is now trying to crack down on "Islamic dress" of both men and
women. While political coalition building is an unpredictable
process, certain things can be presumed. Alternative elites must have
some criteria for rejecting the legitimacy of political incumbents, and
those who are able to foment religious-based social unrest will be
attractive potential allies for the secular groups currently excluded
from power. The most vocal of these are the secular democrats, who
publicly proclaim an unwillingness to make common cause with
Islamic activists. Far more silent, and potentially more dangerous, are
the remnants of family-based patronage networks who wielded
clandestine economic and open political influence in Soviet
Uzbekistan. Some of these have been accommodated by the Karimov
regime, but others have not, and their influence is still deeply felt in
many of the same parts of the country where the religious revival is
proceeding most rapidly.
Uzbekistan is the home of Central Asia's major religious centers, and
historically it has always been at the heart of any religious revival in
the region. If President Karimov and his successors succeeded in
creating a nationalism based on a concept of "managed Islam," it will
become easier for neighboring states to succeed with their stated
preference of secular societies as well. Similarly, if the Karimov
government were to be replaced by a more theocratically oriented
state, then the stability of the neighboring states would be called into
question as well.
The Uzbek Village Study
With the financial support of the National Council for Soviet and East
European Societies, I set about studying the revival of Islam in rural
Central Asia in 1991–93, when the confusions associated with
independence made it easier for senior scholars to do ambitious
fieldwork-based projects. During that time I made some dozen trips
to Central Asia and journeyed through much of the region by car. One
of my goals was to set in motion a three-country multi-generational
study on religion and politics in rural Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and
Kazakhstan.
The intent was to interview thirty families (three generations in each)
in each of these Soviet republics. I worked with local scholars to
design the research instrument. Our goal was to share the results
between us (and presumably with the "relevant" authorities in each
country—arrangements about which to this day I remain blissfully
ignorant).
The complexities of Central Asian life then intervened. The war in
Tajikistan began (there were massive demonstrations the night our
Tajik colleague flew home from our final meeting). The Tajik portion
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fact, we lost touch with our Tajik colleague for four years and
presumed him dead. The Kazakh portion of the study was completed,
but the original seven-item open-ended questionnaire ended up with
fifty questions and was administered on a less systematic basis than
planned.
The Uzbek portion went on more or less as planned. Thirty families
were interviewed in five different regions of Uzbekistan (Namangan,
Fergana, Samarkand, Surkhan Darya, and Khorezm). In every case
two family members were interviewed, and in some three. All the
interviews were done in Uzbek, although I used Russian-language
transcriptions in my analysis. One hundred eight of these interviews
reached me in America; the entire Khorezm sample "disappeared" in
transit.
The questionnaires used in the study were designed in collaboration
with Uzbek scholars. The format was designed to pose groups of
related questions about the respondent and his or her history and
family; attitudes toward Uzbekistan and its newly declared
independence; social issues of current importance; and Islam, both as
a growing social phenomenon in Uzbek society and as a religion. The
questions were put in no particular order, but rather posed in a way
meant to imitate the flow of natural conversation to encourage
respondents to enlarge upon their answers. These interviews were
conducted in the local language by at least one interviewer who came
from the region (although not usually the village) being studied.
The conversations, which took place in homes and in chaikhannes
(teahouses), were recorded on small tape recorders. The tapes were
made with the permission of the respondents and were later
transcribed and translated into Russian. In most households,
interviews were taken with two generations. Respondents were
identified by name; however, in the interests of neutral inquiry the
names are here omitted.
Using Uzbek interviewers had many advantages but also some
disadvantages, the results of which are visible in the resultant
questionnaires. Using Uzbeks allowed not only linguistic access but
also cultural access, permitting us to suppose that the answers given
in these loosely formatted interviews are as close to frank as may be
obtained in a society still suspicious of outsiders. Having local
partners also permitted the questions to be shaped in a way that
reflected common social concerns, rather than forcing foreign
patterns of concern upon respondents. The presence of a foreigner is
itself a distraction. Although I worked extensively with the Uzbek
interviewers in two pretest villages, and visited all but one of the four
villages that are part of the final database, I was not present during
the actual interviews.
For all its advantages, permitting the Uzbek partners to conduct the
inter--

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views did create some problems with the comparability of data from
village to village. The four interviewers used were not equally
conscientious. Transcripts of some interviews, especially those in
Fergana Oblast, show some instances when interviewers seemed to
lead respondents, or even, in a few cases, perhaps to intimidate. In
two of the regions, Surkhan Darya and Samarkand, the interviewers
were well known to those interviewed, which made the respondents
seem more at ease and less fearful that the interviewer might be on a
furtive mission from "the center." Even in the cases where they knew
the interviewer, however, many respondents seem to have assumed
that the information they were giving would be shared with
governmental authorities. This assumption made some of the
respondents nervous, particularly those of the older generation. In
several cases grown children share information with the interviewer
that their parent chose to suppress. Many of the respondents, though,
seem simply to be flattered that "the government" might be interested
in their opinion. It is not clear whether or not the information
contained in these interviews was ever shared with the Uzbek
government. If it was, I have no knowledge of it.
Within each oblast a rural rayon was selected that was deemed to be
most ordinary, while in each community an effort was made to draw
up a representative sample by occupation and age rather than a
random sample. However, the communities themselves were
generally selected because someone involved with the study had
some type of family connection to the place. This put local
authorities at ease, and the interviewers restricted themselves to
homes where they thought they would be admitted. In most of the
villages the kishklak (village) chairman or mahalle elder was invited
to be interviewed, and a few are included in the study. Similarly, it
seems clear that the most disaffected members of targeted
communities are underrepresented in this study; among those
disaffected would be leading Islamic activists.
Tova, Namangan
The town of Tova, from which the first group of responders are
drawn, has 2,000 families, some 10,000 residents. It is located just
outside the city of Namangan in the Fergana valley, which was the
center of Islamic revival in Uzbekistan in the 1990s. Our host in Tova
was a professor from the local teacher-training institute, who during
Soviet times was a specialist in "scientific atheism."
These interviews portray a community that markedly seems never to
have been alienated from its Islamic roots. Religion played an
especially conspicuous role in the lives of the seven respondents
whose ancestors had been cen--

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mentable situation has been to maintain pressure on Israel and on the
international community, there is good reason to believe that the
basic problem was the unwillingness of host countries to allow the
Palestinian organizations to influence their foreign policies.
Multistate Nationalism: The Kurdish Case
The largest Kurdish minorities are found in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and
Syria. There is, of course, no independent Kurdish state, although
there was a brief attempt to create one at the end of World War II and
some Kurds enjoy a measure of independence in the UN-patrolled
area of northern Iraq at the present time. Instead of exercising
sovereignty over several territories, the Kurds are everywhere a
minority, and segments of the ethnic community are forced to deal
with different governments. Arrangements made with particular
governments impact indirectly on the Kurdish communities in
neighboring states. There are also direct relations among the diverse
Kurdish communities as they try to influence one another, or try to
work out cooperative arrangements, or try to shift burdens. There
may be good reason to believe that the strategies of the four main
Kurdish minorities vis-à-vis their respective governments have a lot
in common, though these policies are parallel rather than convergent.
Egypt, Nasser, and Arab Nationalism
The politics of Arab ethnicity centers on the issue of Arab
nationalism and the aspiration of some to unite all Arabs in a single
nation-state. But the rhetoric of Arab national or cultural unity that
has filled so many published volumes is not reflected in the actual
practice of Arab states. The issue of Arab national strategies hardly
arises before the end of World War II and the gradual achievement of
independence, or a facsimile thereof, over a decade and more, by a
dozen or so Arab states. This period was dominated by Egypt and by
President Nasser, who from 1957 on became the major political
exponent of Arab cooperation in international affairs. But Egypt and
Nasser actually sought to prevent any move toward Arab unity that
would not serve Egyptian national interests. Just as the United
Kingdom long sought to prevent the political unification of the
European continent, so did Nasser oppose the unification of the
Fertile Crescent without Egypt.
Within the Fertile Crescent, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan each aspired to
become the Prussia of the Arab world, while Lebanon and Saudi
Arabia sought to prevent the unification of the Arab states. During the
period of Egyptian dominance, rival Arab states soon learned that
they could only attain their

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tral to the religious life of the community. An example is no. 94, born
in 1956, who reveals that her grandfather was a noted Sufi leader who
served the Khan of Kokand's family and had hid in Tova after the
Bolshevik revolution. She describes her life as "subordinate to the
laws of Islam," recalling how as a child the "godless ones" who ran
the local Soviet school had forced her to eat when it became known
that she was fasting during Ramadan. While she married a man also
raised in a religious home (both her husband's grandfathers made hajj
before the revolution), from high school on she ceased the public
practice of her faith; but she now notes with pride that "today both
young and old go to the mosque to perform namaz (prayers), and
although many people do not pray five times each day, everyone tries
not to miss the morning namaz." The household of no. 94 is clearly
religious; her mother-in-law, a retired schoolteacher born in 1925, is
now taking formal religious instruction with an otun-buvi (female
mullah).
No. 102, a medical assistant born in 1959, is the son of a well-known
mullah (from Fergana Oblast). He described how his father was
driven by religious faith to spend the years of World War II collecting
and distributing aid to people evacuated to Uzbekistan. Though he
lacks formal religious education, no. 102 now attends the local
mosque each day.
No. 103, a mechanic born in 1950, and one of two brothers
interviewed who were descended from generations of mullahs on
their mother's side, notes that, while he is not a religious person, "as a
Muslim I am obligated to know the basic rules and requirements."
Similarly, no. 97, a bookkeeper born in 1957, who describes herself as
coming from an old and devout Namangan family, says that, although
she lacks a religious education, her goal in life is to become a teacher
of Uzbek literature. She sees this as her way of maintaining the
family tradition of learning and of transmitting ancestral values from
generation to generation.
Each of the above respondents was raised in a family that placed
some importance on the transmission of at least a minimal amount of
formal religious knowledge, although none had a religious education
outside of the home. At the time of the interviews, all were engaged
in formal religious training or organized religious observance; but
none appears to have been willing during the years of Soviet rule to
have risked the official ostracism or even criminal prosecution that
daily public observance of religion would have likely brought them.
This reluctance was true even though some from religious families,
such as no. 94, feared that religion would die out entirely during her
lifetime.
Once the practice of Islam ceased to be an act of political dissent,
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the people of Tova raced to embrace the public worship of their faith.
Moreover, though religious education was conducted only
clandestinely throughout the Soviet period, there was no shortage of
people capable of providing both young and old with religious
instruction as soon as the official policy changed.
There is little evidence in Tova that the return to religion is a fad; it
seems to be sustained. Certainly, for most of the people, religion
played a significant role in their lives "even in the old days." Take for
example no. 93, a teacher born in 1954 who, by his own admission,
lacks religious education; nonetheless, he maintains, "although I am
not a religious person, there are some suras and ayats [sections and
sentences from the Quran] which I think one must know." No
different is no. 98, a state farm worker born in 1943 who claims it is
"too late" for him to gain formal religious training, although he "of
course" observes the rites of uraz (fast) and namaz. He makes this
assertion in a way that leaves little doubt that this has been his
lifelong practice. There is no parallel for the Christians in rural
Russian areas.
The threshold of minimal religious observance was much higher in
Tova, and in the Fergana valley more generally, than in other parts of
Uzbekistan. By 1992 Tova was an Islamic community, with the local
religious institutions at the center of community life. Most
respondents saw Islam as the only real source of morality in society,
the only way to reverse the growing social decay of the late Soviet
years, when alcohol and drug addiction had become common among
unemployed youths, and divorce and child abandonment were no
longer alien to Uzbek culture.
Although virtually everyone interviewed thought that the return of
Islam to public life was a very positive phenomenon, there was no
consensus about how great a role should be ceded to local religious
leaders. As a result, the religious revival was creating new divisions
within the community. While virtually everybody supported the
principle of freedom of religion, after seven decades of living in the
atheistic milieu of Soviet society, most of those interviewed
internalized the basic premise of secular society: that there must be a
separation of church and state.
In describing their lives, the residents of Tova show just how
completely the state has sought to monopolize the religious question,
even introducing religious instruction in the state schools. This was
done under pressure from the religious activists; but as respondent
no. 93 observed, public religious instruction has persuaded wavering
students to abandon more formal religious instruction. This issue has
provoked a fierce debate within the community—and throughout the
country—about the proper role of religion in in--

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dependent Uzbekistan. This debate seems to be mirrored in
communities throughout the country.
Kuva, Fergana.
The second group of interviews comes from a group of three villages
in the Dehanabad agricultural district in the Kuva rayon of Fergana
Oblast. They are not far from the old Uzbek market town of Margilan.
Margilan was the center of Uzbekistan's "second" or "black-market"
economy, functioning virtually as a state within a state.
This legacy makes Margilan a perfect locus for a religious revival. It
was also the home of the spiritual leader who served as a major
impetus for the development of the politicized strains of
contemporary Central Asian fundamentalism, Hakim Qari.
The Kuva sample consists of eighteen families and a total of twenty-
eight interviews, twenty-three of which are with men. The oldest
person interviewed was born in 1911; the youngest person
interviewed was born in 1972. All but three of those interviewed were
born in the three villages that make up the Kuva sample. Here, too, it
is surprising to see how integral Islam remained to the lives of those
interviewed. Twenty of the twenty-eight questioned described faith
and prayer as a lifelong central pillar of their lives; five of them
claimed to have had some sort of formal religious training; the
remaining fifteen received some religious instruction at home.
Respondents spoke of the return of religion and the mosque to the
center of communal life. Every mahalle now has its own mosque, and
almost all of the mosques were built through local initiatives and
community efforts. The people took advantage of opportunities
created by a newly benevolent state to bring back their religion,
although it was not clear if the state could successfully step in and
reassert control.
Where the impetus for the change comes from is clear from the
interviews. No. 31, born in 1912 and the elder of one of the mahalles
visited, described the process of erecting a mosque in his community,
which began following a visit by a religious activist from outside the
community:
Once a young fellow by the name of Ibrahim came to our village
from Fergana, and asked, have you begun to build mosques? I
answered, no we haven't. So he said, don't waste time, if the raikom
[the local governmental committee] won't help, if the chairman won't
agree, then find me, I'll do something, but for now take this 100
rubles. That's how construction began here . . . [Then] the villagers
came to me and said, we need a mosque, and we are agreed that
people will help as they can. They began to gather

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money. One man gave 25 rubles, another 50 rubles, another 1,000.
The kolkhoz gave a car and a cart. All of the villagers helped in the
construction of the mosque. One was a watchman, another made food,
a third group did the construction, a fourth group carted the building
materials here from all over . . . Without a doubt the mosque has a
great and positive influence on the whole of our life, particularly a
moral and formative influence. While services are going on in the
mosque a lot of attention is paid to questions of raising the young,
how to achieve a good environment in the family, resolve conflicts,
and wish success on labor initiatives.
Three years after Ibrahim's visit, various respondents described the
mosques as full to overflowing on Fridays and on holidays, and "it
has become common that on Fridays many students skip classes or
don't come at all, because they are going to Friday prayers in the
mosque." The pensioners of the community now pass their time going
from mosque to mosque at prayer times, while separate groups of
men and women gather in the evening near the mosques to learn to
read Arabic and recite prayers. Many young men have taken to
wearing full beards, while hijab dress is no longer uncommon and is
increasing in popularity.
Yet the question of how much Islam is enough troubles the
community. While many of those interviewed argue vociferously that
the population is not sufficiently interested in religion, that most
people are unwilling to live in strict accordance with Islamic ideals,
nearly as many people feel that far too much authority has already
been ceded to mullahs and other holy men.
What these interviews demonstrate, though, is that many are
uncomfortable with the usurpation of privilege of those who claim to
speak in the name of the faith. While every respondent spoke in one
way or another about the primacy of the state over religion, many in
Kuva were willing to cede to religious authorities privileges
previously thought to belong exclusively to the state. But there is real
concern about how much supervision, if any, the local authorities can
effectively maintain over the religious schools. There is also
disagreement over how and what people should be taught in state-
supported schools. Several interviewed believe that state education
should lay the foundation for advanced religious training.
Certainly there is a void in the community that religious groups are
intent on filling, and the state is inadvertently helping them. The fall
of the Communist Party reduced the overall power of the state and
left the local community with a greatly enhanced capacity of self-
government. President Karimov, a strong authority figure in his own
right, has even formally recognized this by giving the mahalle some
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belonged to the state. For example, as of 1994 the mahalle is arbiter
of social welfare benefits from the state, which presumably is
intermixed with charity collected by religious authorities.
In general, the commitment to a secular state—although supported by
the majority of those interviewed—was much weaker in Kuva than in
the other four communities. Interview conditions in Kuva were better
than in Namangan, and it may be that the sample in Kuva is
representative of general opinions in the Fergana valley.
Katta Turk, Samarkand
The Katta Turk agricultural district in the Chelek rayon of Samarkand
Oblast was the site of the third set of interviews. Fifteen families
were interviewed: thirteen pairs of fathers and sons, one mother and
daughter, and one father and daughter. The oldest resident
interviewed was born in 1915, the youngest in 1960. The interviewer
in this case was a woman born in the village.
The area around Samarkand is dense with villages; but, unlike in the
Fergana valley, the worlds of village and city do not mix easily here.
This region is home to both Uzbeks and Tajiks, although the village
of Turkipoen, from which this sample was drawn, is an almost
entirely Uzbek settlement. Samarkand is further separated from the
tradition-bound world of the Uzbek villages by a four-lane limited-
access highway. The residents of Turkipoen are not comfortable going
to Samarkand. Proximity to Samarkand, the home of Soviet-era party
boss Sharaf Rashidov, caused the community to suffer dis-
proportionately during the anticorruption campaigns of 1984–88.
Re-Islamization in Turkipoen and elsewhere in the region is
proceeding far more slowly than in the communities of the Fergana
valley. The discussions suggest that this is true of the Samarkand
region in general. Islamic life never died out in Turkipoen, but it is
certainly characterized by greater discontinuities than the kishklaks
(villages) of the Fergana valley.
Only eight of the thirty people interviewed received some form of
religious instruction prior to 1989; for six of these eight, knowledge
about Islamic teachings and practice is limited. It is striking how
"Sovietized" the older generation in the Samarkand region has
become. While many of those interviewed in Namangan and Fergana
spoke of reciting namaz or reading the Quran at home, such claims
were very uncommon in Turkipoen. In this community, people are
grateful to find anyone able to recite prayers over the dead, bless a
newly circumcised boy, or sanctify the union of a young bride and
groom. Here, as might be expected, the most Sovietized generation
are those raised in the Stalin or Khrushchev years.

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Of course, there are exceptions to this breakdown of religious
continuity. The city of Bukhara has remained a center of formal Sufi
learning; the grave of Naqshabandiya-founder, Baha ad-din
Muhammad Naqshaband (1318–1389), is a shrine for Muslim
believers; the same is true for the grave of Ismail Abdullah al-Jufi,
810–870, known as Khoja Ismail al-Bukhari, located in Kharang, not
far from Samarkand and Turkipoen. Shrines like Khoja Ismail
became of increasing importance after Soviet authorities sharply
curtailed the number and role of public religious institutions.
Two of the respondents received religious instruction in the 1970s,
although there still seems to have been no underground religious
school in the community. Both men were first exposed to Islam
during lengthy stays at a hospital or sanitarium. No. 70, a welder and
mechanic born in 1956, decided to seek "formal" religious training as
a result of a hospital stay during which he had encountered a mullah
from the nearby shrine of Khoja Ismail al-Bukhari. Until his hospital
stay, no. 70 had no idea there was religious instruction going on at
this nearby shrine. This is not surprising, since the mullah seems to
have been using the facilities of a state-funded technical school where
he worked as the medresseh. The second man (no. 72), a welder born
in 1956, had his first encounter with religion at a sanitarium in
Margilan where religious believers regularly recited daily prayers.
Despite their earlier distance from Islamic practice, the people in
Turkipoen are clearly delighted with the return of Islam to public life.
Most of the respondents in the sample convey a sense that under the
Karimov government religion has returned to its proper place. To
quote no. 72, "religion has its own place in independent Uzbekistan.
People have acknowledged their religion, their Muslimness, they
have returned to Islam. Earlier people didn't take time off during
Kurban-khait and Ruza-khait, and now these are state holidays.
Muslims need this now, of course."
Virtually all of those interviewed spoke very positively of the return
of religious institutions to the village. Several respondents mentioned
that they and various members of their family were learning how to
read the Quran or to recite namaz. Those interviewed also talked
about how it has become common for people to gather on Fridays and
holidays to pray together in crowds where people under thirty are the
overwhelming majority. This enthusiasm of the young for worship
augurs well, they say, for the future of Islam in the community.
At the same time, though, Turkipoen's religious rebirth is proceeding
slowly, especially by comparison to the communities in the Fergana
valley. Only five or six of the sixteen mahalles in the village have
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there is a shortage of mullahs. In part, this is because the mahalle
leadership has not always been firmly behind the task. They have
often claimed resistance at the next highest level of government as
their excuse; and the mullahs who live in the community have been
either too few in number or have lacked the authority necessary to
move the mahalle leadership. If the mahalle leadership fails to
embrace mosque-building, then khashar, or obligatory contributions
from all the members of the mahalle, will not be available.
In contrast with the state of projects in the village of Turkipoen, the
activities of believers around the shrine of Khoja Ismail al-Bukhari
seem to have increased tremendously since the change of official
policy toward Islam. At the time of the interviews, there was a Quran
school and at least one medresseh at the site, which drew pupils and
students from surrounding villages, including some from Chelek. At
least one of the schools at the shrine was teaching revivalist Islam.
The reconstruction of al-Bukhari's grave-shrine was going forward,
largely through public subscription, and the mosques and prayer
houses flanking the site were attracting overflow crowds on Fridays
and holidays. Not everyone in the community was comfortable with
the work being done at Khoja Ismail. No. 75, a factory worker born in
1923 who spent a good part of his adult life working in Siberia,
complains of the rote nature of the religious education and
observance taught at Khoja Ismail. Others express suspicion about
where the collected alms are going.
There is a strong sense that "religion must know its place." No. 66, a
high school math teacher born in 1960, makes this point:
Let the religious people believe in religion, but they should not
interfere in governmental matters. It is written in one of the
constitution's clauses, for example, that religion may not be
propagandized, and that you can't interfere in governmental affairs.
An artist, for example, let him perform, or a poet. I am against them
interfering in government matters. Or a mullah, let him do his work,
read the prayers, the janaza—burial ceremony. Every Uzbek who says
he's a Muslim, let him do his rituals, but not interfere in government
affairs. Or a worker or a clerk. If all of them become politicians, and
everyone is analyzing, they will think up all sorts of things, and in
general might change the course of the government, which would
make them hard to administer.
Baisun, Surkhan Darya
The fourth set of interviews was done in the district of Baisun,
Surkhan Darya Oblast. All those interviewed were connected to a vast
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begin some ten miles from the district center. A total of twenty-eight
interviews survive, twenty four with men and four with women;
seventeen families are represented in the sample. The interviews were
conducted by someone originally from the town of Baisun. The oblast
of Surkhan Darya borders on both Afghanistan and Kurgan Tiube
province of Tajikistan and was the poorest region visited.
The state farm we studied consisted of some 8,000 people who lived
in five predominantly Uzbek villages and three predominantly Tajik
ones. Most spoke both Uzbek and Tajik and read Uzbek, although
only the Tajiks were literate in Tajik. Scholars write about the keen
ethnic rivalry between the Tajiks and Uzbeks, but I saw no immediate
evidence of it in Baisun and its environs, nor is there much evidence
of it in the interviews. The Tajiks and Uzbeks I met were welcome in
one another's homes and attended one another's family gatherings.
The two groups intermarried as well, although the property exchanges
involved in marriage created powerful economic incentives to remain
entirely within one's own community.
For all their own ethnic harmony, however, the proximity of the civil
war in Tajikistan terrified the respondents in this sample (the war was
only of passing interest to respondents in other sites). The people of
Baisun feared the war could have both direct and indirect impact on
their village. All the respondents feared the arrival of refugees from
Tajikistan; a wave of Uzbek refugees might spark a spontaneous and
violent deportation of local Tajiks by the Uzbeks of Surkhan Darya,
while the arrival of Tajik refugees would simply put an additional
burden on a population already stretched too thin.
The people interviewed also feared the developments in Tajikistan
might be a harbinger of what was to come in Uzbekistan in general,
and in their own community in particular. Life in Baisun is very
similar to that in Kurgan Tiube, save that the ethnic balance between
Tajiks and Uzbeks is reversed.
The people who lived in Baisun were part of the ecclesiastically
dominated world of Bukhara up until 1920. In fact, one of our
respondents was born a subject of the emir, as were the parents of all
the older generation we interviewed; a few of these had ancestors who
were mullahs. This was also a place where many fled during the civil
war; hence it is a region that suffered dis-proportionately during the
collectivization drives of the 1930s.
Despite all the difficulties, some people in the community continued
to acquire at least a little religious education, generally from their
parents, learning secretly at home. However, there were other ways
for those who were highly motivated to piece together some sort of
religious education. No. 19, born in 1957, supplemented his home
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Tashkent: "however, thanks to my father, I read the Quran [to be sure,
without understanding the content of the texts] and the hadiths.
Studying Arabic in courses I paid for at the university allowed me to
come to understand the content of the religious texts."
While many respondents complained about how the Soviets took
power and what they did during their first decades in power, it is also
clear that seven decades of Soviet rule created new forms of political
loyalties. Some of those interviewed were angry at the breakup of the
USSR, showing the complexity of loyalties.
Nonetheless, respondents were generally quick to point out that once
it became possible for people to complain about various Soviet
policies, many in Baisun were quick to express their anger about the
various injustices of the Soviet system. Several such complaints
focused on religion and the many "ways of the past" that Soviet
policies destroyed, only to replace them with new ways that were
worse. These interviews also reveal profound differences of opinion
about what precisely has gone wrong in Baisun and how it ought to be
remedied.
The "women's question" came up far more frequently in Baisun than
it did anywhere else. Many in Baisun understood the destruction of
traditional family life to be the root cause of most of the social and
moral problems in the community. More than any other problem area,
issues surrounding the social and economic integration of women
illustrate the tension in the community between advocates of secular
and religious worlds. What emerges repeatedly in these
questionnaires is that now that the people of Baisun are free to
reintroduce the study of Islam and Islamic practices into their
community, many are seizing the opportunity to do so, to the obvious
discomfort of those who would prefer to live in a more secular
society.
For many respondents there is almost a euphoria associated with the
return of religion to the community. For example, no. 17, born in
1936, begins his interview with a recitation from the Quran. He then
adds: "Praise Allah that religion has come back to us, our traditions
and values, that mosques are opening again, that everyone who wants
to can get a religious education in Bukhara, Tashkent, Samarkand,
Namangan. This is all thanks to the fact that Allah gave us freedom,
and we have become independent of the atheists." He goes on to argue
that Muslim states have better laws than other states, and that
Uzbekistan should look to religion for solutions to both its social and
economic ills.
It is the potential takeover of the education of young people, however,
which most frightens Islam's critics in Baisun, who warn that some
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are using their newfound freedom to undermine the stability of the
state. They also express fears about the ignorance of the local clerics
and their greed. No. 19, a teacher born in 1957, warns that the goal of
many of these mullahs is to destroy the state and introduce a religious
regime in its place:
I think that either the Baisun authorities or the oblast hakimiate [local
governing body] must establish control over the activities of the
mosques, although I am not against religious education. More the
opposite, in fact. There is nothing bad in the Quran or the hadiths
(you have no doubt read the hadiths of Imam al-Bukhari or Imam al-
Termizi), and there is nothing amiss there. But everything depends
upon the hands it falls into, who is teaching and how. I mean, look
how our Bolsheviks and Communists distorted the teachings of Marx.
They destroyed everything that was positive, all the best that there
was in Marx's theories. The same thing is happening with religious
education. In the mosques there are mutavals and khatibs [clerics,
lecturers] whom I cannot call educated people. These are very
ordinary people, the sort who become fanatics, indeed uncivilized
ones. Unfortunately religion today is in the hands of spiritually and
morally impoverished, backward people. They are not capable of
doing anything positive for society, because they are too narrow in
their views, and they don't understand much, even about religion.
That's why control is necessary.
It is clear that no. 19 is the advocate of a strong state. While not all
the respondents see the new religious schools as primarily designed
to undermine the state, common to all these responses is the
conviction that the state must control religion because the community
will not. In most secular societies the rise of Islamic activism is
feared because of its potential to infringe on the rights of
nonbelievers. In Uzbekistan, the concern of people hostile to the
advance of Islam is that religion will usurp the rights of the state.
Far from being bothered by the idea of strong state authority, the
residents of Baisun seem actually to be reassured by it. This is
equally true of secular and religious community members.
The Uzbeks of this sample have as their priority stability and security,
of which they see a strong state to be the necessary guarantor.
Preoccupation with stability is not strange in a place like Baisun,
which is located only a few score miles from the battlefields of
Tajikistan. As one respondent says: "By October 1992 a steady stream
of refugees were coming through the villages of Surkhan Darya, each
refugee an eyewitness to some horrible act of intracommunal
violence."

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own goals, including that of domestic stability, by weakening Egypt
or blocking its initiatives. Thus the politics of Arab ethnicity were
transformed into the problem of preventing any Arab state from
gaining an advantage from exploiting the consensual aspiration for
Arab unity. The Palestine question and the Lebanese question were
subordinated to this problem, and Egypt's defeat at the hands of the
Israelis in 1967 was seized upon as the opportunity to tie Egypt's
hands.
But far from allowing the unification of the Arab states of the Fertile
Crescent, which was also opposed by Saudi Arabia, the 1967 war
focused attention on self-determination for the Palestinians, that is on
the creation of yet another Arab state to reinforce the idea that Arab
ethnicity is actually a composite of a number of culturally and
historically significant ethnemes. Some or all of these ethnemes
might seek their own national self-determination on grounds justified
by their own ethnic theories–thus negating the single Arab nation-
state ideology, paralleling the orthodox argument refuting the claim
that there could be only one universal Islamic state under a single
Arab caliph.
While the rivals for the "Prussian role" in the Fertile Crescent were
considering whether or not to welcome Egypt into their own
subregional game, Egypt came to understand its position as the
"pivot" of the Arab world. In 1958, Egypt allowed itself to be enticed
by Syria into an ill-fated union that embroiled it in Fertile Crescent
affairs and required a heavy investment of political and material
resources. Egypt's full union with Syria was reluctant because Nasser
understood that Egypt had to conserve its meager resources in order
to be able to apply them in several different directions.
The 1956 war with Britain, France, and Israel was a sharp reminder
that Egypt was a frontline state in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Egypt was
also mindful of both the vulnerability and the potential wealth of
Saudi Arabia, as well as the even greater vulnerability and lesser
wealth of the neighboring Libyan monarchy. The real prize to be
gained by seizing hegemony over the Arabs was to exercise leverage
over Saudi wealth while sharing as little of it as necessary. The 1956
war also reaffirmed Egypt's understanding that the United Kingdom
still sought to maintain its influence in the region through Baghdad,
Amman, Tripoli, and Khartoum, even if Riyadh was left to the United
States. Thus countering the pan-Arabism of the Fertile Crescent
countries and intimidating Saudi Arabia went hand in hand with a
policy of weakening "imperialist" influences in the Arab world.
Egypt feared isolation, and it was particularly suspicious of British
influence in Libya and the British role in encouraging Sudan to opt
for indepen--

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Most of the respondents fear that, notwithstanding the horrors in the
neighboring republic, grassroots support for a Tajik-style revolt are
being laid by local religious activists. They are also fearful that the
government of Uzbekistan will not prove capable of the wisdom or
resolve necessary to contain the threat. No. 19 suggests that, on the
contrary, many governmental officials are providing fuel for the local
religious activists by their corrupt practices and abuses of authority:
"Have the events in Tajikistan really taught us nothing? It really looks
as though they haven't. Today the hakimiate is attracting sycophantic,
poorly educated people, but what we need are people with modern
education, who are able to think, to rethink in a new way the
processes which are going on in society, including in the mosques and
medresseh. Otherwise, the regime of today will meet the same fate as
did the communist regime."
In many ways the residents of Baisun were the most pessimistic of
the four communities. In most of the rest of the republic,
independence was still a novelty and something in which respondents
did not yet fully believe. By contrast, the residents of Baisun were
nearly close enough to hear the artillery in their neighbor republic,
and thus certainly close enough to the swelling civil war to be able to
imagine what such guns might sound like in their own region. In
Baisun, independence was already a reality, and the only real question
that remained was whether Uzbekistan's government would prove
equal to the tasks that independence had suddenly and unexpectedly
dumped in their corporate lap.
The study revealed real divisions within each of the four communities
we examined, divisions which seem certain to grow deeper and more
bitter over time. However, it was only in Baisun that the respondents
seemed to understand the fragility of the foundations upon which the
current stability of their community was built.
Religion and State Building in Uzbekistan
What the interviews substantiate is that there are two processes of
Islamic revival occurring simultaneously in Central Asia:
revitalization of traditional Muslim practices and exploration of the
practical potential of Islamic literalism. The latter process has far
fewer participants and seeks, as in other states of Muslim heritage, to
minimize the difference between the religion's tenets and the civil
administrative practices of those belonging to the faith.
Ultimately, the fact that the secular side can bring only promises of a
better future—which Communism also promised, making people now
skeptical—means that the leaders of Central Asia are probably right
to fear the spread of Islam. What they seem not to understand,
though, is that Islamic

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activists are not simply agents of instability but a sign of the
existence of instability in society. The increased popularity of Islamic
activists results from the inability of the current elite to control their
economies, their societies, and their states. This is what makes Islam
the competing power center they take it to be. The spread of political
Islam is a symptom, not a disease. Unless some unanticipated miracle
succeeds in bringing comparative prosperity to Central Asia, it seems
likely that the appeal of Islam will continue to grow, placing further
stress on the present societies and their presidents. The
unexpectedness of independence and the newness of the idea that the
nation-state is the "natural" political form means the reserves of
civic-based patriotism will not be deep in this region.
At the same time, Islam in Central Asia has yet to fully emerge from
the disadvantaged position it was reduced to by Soviet authorities. As
prominent religious leaders in the region freely admit, seven decades
of restricting access to religious education cannot be compensated for
in a few short years. Though thousands of new mosques and religious
schools have been opened throughout Central Asia, there are still only
four or five seminaries of any consequence (three of which are in
Uzbekistan), and their activities are still closely scrutinized by
secular authorities.
Central Asian religious leaders all agree that the low level of
religious education in Central Asia makes it impossible to think of
the creation of Islamic governments in the region for at least two or
three decades. Secular leaders like Islam Karimov have interpreted
such statements to mean that Islam must be contained now, at its
present level, in order to cut off political Islam before it can grow.
Doing so, however, requires the existence of a self-confident and
competent state.
The failure of the new secular society to provide for its citizens either
materially or spiritually is vivid in these interviews. The survey
suggests that rural society in Uzbekistan is under great stress;
because Uzbekistan is arguably the most successful of the new states
in Central Asia, conditions are probably even worse elsewhere.
This study did not explicitly address the popular legitimization of
Uzbekistan as an independent nation-state. Yet it is clear from the
interviews that most of the respondents understood these economic
shortages in political terms. For all their support of President
Karimov and their enthusiasm about Uzbekistan's future as an
independent state, only a few respondents said that life in 1992 was,
on balance, better than it had been in the past; several specifically
cited the Brezhnev era as Uzbekistan's "golden era." No. 40 was
perhaps the most direct, and most bitter; he doesn't know what
independence

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has brought, he says, but he knows what it has taken away—salt,
meat, oil, flour, and rice. By now many of these shortages have been
remedied, but most Uzbeks still do not have resources adequate to
meet their immediate needs, let alone for measured improvements in
their personal lives.
The civil war in Tajikistan has been about division of power, and it
acquired religious overtones in part because some portions of the
republic's impoverished, disaffected population found meaning and
support in Islam. It also acquired a religious dimension in part
because other groups in the republic, who had more to lose, knew the
threat of Islam to be a useful rallying cry, as well as an internationally
acceptable justification for foreign military intervention and the use
of force.
If the example of Tajikistan has any explanatory power, then the
inability or disinclination (or both) of Central Asia's leaders to pay
the price necessary to improve the lives of most of the Central Asian
population will only increase the strength of the appeal of Islam,
making it more likely that the civic authorities, or outside powers,
will feel it necessary to resort to coercion or force to contain that
appeal. However, because the use of such force will only demonstrate
more vividly the failure of secularism, its effect is likely to further
radicalize and politicize Islam.
Post-Communist societies are facing a difficult challenge, having to
create a new political order at a time when all property within society
is being divided up as well, which can make all of them seem
confusing places; the five new Central Asian states, however, can
seem even more confusing than most. For these republics, the
breakup of the Soviet Union has meant the beginning of
decolonization. The old colonial-era administrators are still largely in
place, but their political agenda has changed. A large number of
"colonizers" still live in the region, but their social and political
status is now sharply diminished.
However, unlike many of the newly decolonized states of the 1950s
and 1960s, the Central Asian societies are as modern as they are
underdeveloped. The entire region is electrified and more than 90
percent of the homes have televisions; the entire population is literate
in the local language and a great many of them in Russian. Part of the
society, and all of the elite, were raised in a secular society and have
lived in the modern world. Moreover, this elite is a larger proportion
of the population than was the case in most other decolonizing states.
By the same token, the traditional village and clan leadership
structure was partly destroyed and partly usurped during the seven
decades of Soviet rule. Still, life in rural Central Asia remains very
different from life in the city; certainly it would be impossible to live
in most of the countryside of Central Asia as a member of a modern,
secular world.

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It is this discrepancy that produces the contradiction between the
goals of society at large and those of the ruling elite. It also creates
the underlying rift between the traditional society of the masses and
the far more secularized one of the elites—potentially destabilizing
society as a whole. The ruling elites of Central Asia are fully
secularized, without exception. As such, they feel themselves to be a
particular target of the fundamentalists and are fearful or indignant of
the changes to their lifestyles that greater empowerment of religious
activists would produce in their societies.
No elite group likes to be pushed from power, but there is real reason
to question the ability of these men to preside over societies capable
of making the transition from socialist Soviet republics to secular or
even Islamic modernist states. All of Central Asia's rulers were
socialized to believe that social engineering can work. In the privacy
of their offices most would claim that the Soviet experiment failed
because of the message and not the method. With the possible
exception of Tajikistan's Rakhmonov, each of these men remain
convinced that he is capable of creating a new secularly based
nationalist ideology, which offers Islam an honored place but not a
decisive role in the political life of their newly independent state.
To date, of course, no one at the top of these societies believes that
this new order has yet been created, and only one among them would
risk a democratic-style popular election to allow his vision to be
freely challenged by the electorate. This was clearly demonstrated by
the refusal of Presidents Niyazov, Karimov, and Nazarbaev to risk
presidential elections, as well as by President Akaev's hesitation on
the point and Speaker Rakhmonov's careful ballot rigging to assure
himself presidential victory. Each would justify their manipulation of
democratic principles on the exigencies of the moment, and most
would freely say that the Central Asians are simply not suited for
democracy, that all they respect are strong-arm tactics. Nazarbaev,
Karimov, and Niyazov have even been quoted to this effect on several
occasions. But their invocation of the "Asian" character in their
defense of strong-arm tactics may in fact be a tacit admission of the
fragility of the political systems they are trying to erect and the
philosophy of nationhood upon which they are being erected.
It is too early to expect state and society to be comfortably married in
any of the new Central Asian states. But the challenge they face is
already becoming clear. It seems not to be the fragility of the Soviet-
created nationalities, which have now received further legitimization
by becoming sovereign and internationally recognized independent
states. And it is not that these Soviet-legitimated ethnic communities
will fragment. The challenge is that they will prove difficult to
transcend.

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While each of the Central Asian states claims to be multinational, all
but Kazakhstan have given the community whose name the country
bears a place of special privilege. As yet, even Kazakhstan has failed
to make much headway through official efforts to create a civic
patriotism that transcends ethnic loyalties, and the nation's large
Russian population remains apathetic if not disaffected. Russians are
still leaving Kazakhstan, the perceived "foreign" country they live in,
to resettle in their "historic" homeland.
While the breakup of the Soviet Union was not intended to create
ethnic-based nation-states as its successors, in Central Asia, at least,
that has largely been the case. There are virtually no transnational
movements of any consequence within the region, and the current
level of cooperation between these states is more the product of
economic interdependence than of their strong sense of religious or
cultural affinity. Ironically, this cooperation is still facilitated by the
fact that Russian remains the bureaucratic language in all five new
states. Once leaders emerge who prefer using their own languages to
do business, the easy exchange which these men now enjoy will no
longer be possible; of Central Asia's four Turkic languages, only
Kirghiz and Kazakh are mutually comprehensible, and the Tajiks
speak a Persian language.
If the current elites are at all successful with their programs for
developing national ideologies, then religion is likely to prove no
more unifying than language. It still remains to be seen how ethnicity
will accommodate religion, or if it can. Historically, though, there has
been no single "face" of Islam. Islam was not a transnational force
during the Soviet period, and it still shows little sign of becoming
one. The leaders of each of Central Asia's new states were quick to
put the local religious establishment under direct state control. How
effective this will prove to be in the long run is still unclear, but for
the moment such measures have helped encourage the development
of Islam on parallel tracks throughout the region.
Kazakh and Kirghiz leaders are quick to point out that their peoples
were never devout Muslims and their nomadic ancestors placed no
real premium on seminary training. Their historical memory may be
somewhat—although far from entirely—flawed, but it is certainly
true that traditional Islamic practices proved themselves to be far less
deeply rooted among these populations during the Soviet period, and
the fundamentalist revival of the 1970s and 1980s were almost
entirely absent here. Even in these two countries Islam is undergoing
a profound and seemingly lasting revival, with the younger
generation demonstrating interest in learning about the faith of their
ancestors and not simply practicing their rituals. However, there is
little evidence that Islamic activists will provide any real challenge to
the secular underpinnings of society.

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It is far less certain that this will be the case in the other three Central
Asian societies. Much of course will depend upon the outcome of the
war in Tajikistan and in neighboring Afghanistan. The emergence of
stable Islamic regimes in either of these two countries would have a
profound effect upon the development of politics in Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan has never been a fully secular society, but from the time
of the Russian conquest to the present, the state has managed to
dictate the relationship of religion to society.
The leaders of independent Uzbekistan will only succeed at
sustaining this trend if Islamic modernism continues to prevail in
society and they can convince the population that the ruling elite are
credible modernists. Uzbekistan's fundamentalists are still relatively
few in number, but they are a transnational force within the region, as
most are close friends and graduates of the same schools in
Uzbekistan rather than merely coreligionists. Though by their own
admission they are still unlikely to make a successful claim to power,
they are likely to be increasingly more credible critics and
increasingly more capable of undermining official claims of
legitimacy. They need not succeed, however, because Uzbekistan's
secular elite are far more experienced politicians than their religious
critics. An alternative secular elite might well be able to take
advantage of religious-inspired protest to come to power. Should they
do so, they will inevitably try to outmaneuver their religious allies. In
doing so, they will have the weight of history on their side. The
Uzbeks are a Muslim people, but throughout their varied history the
state has guided religion to find its "proper place." The relationship of
Islam to the state (or the ruler) has varied over time and is still being
worked out in independent Uzbekistan, but it is unlikely the basic
balance of power will change. The Uzbeks accord Islam a pride of
place in their ethnic consciousness, but they also appear equally
comfortable with political ideologies that presume an independent
secular state. Uzbekistan has always been at the center of Central
Asia's religious life, and the way in which its leaders resolve these
questions of the role of religion in state identity is sure to have great
resonance in neighboring states.
Notes
1. See Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay,
Islam in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1967) and Alexandre
Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National Communism in
the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) and their Muslims of
the Soviet Empire: A Guide (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1986).

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2. There were riots in Alma Ata in December 1986 when longtime
Kazakhstan Communist Party First Secretary (and CPSU Politburo
member) Dinmuhammad Kunaev was replaced by an ethnic Russian
from outside the republic (Gennady Kolbin).
3. See Martha Brill Olcott, "Yuryi Andropov and the 'National
Question'," Soviet Studies 37, no. 1 (January 1985): 103–17.
4. Iulian V. Bromlei, Etnos i etnografiia (Moscow: Nauka, 1973) and
his Sovremennye problemy etnografii (Contemporary problems of
ethnography) (Moscow: Nauka, 1981).
5. For an exhaustive discussion of Soviet theories of nationality and
ethnicity, see Alexander J. Motyl, ed., Thinking Theoretically about
Soviet Nationalities (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
6. Birlik (Unity), formed in the late 1980s, was the first
nongovernmental political group in Uzbekistan. It was registered as a
social movement but not as a political party in independent
Uzbekistan. It has been considered an opposition group since 1992–
93.

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IV
Jordan-Palestine-Israel
In chapter 13, Professor Brand presents a uniquely detailed and subtle
analysis of the cleavages and tensions within and between the
Palestinian migrants and the indigenous East Bank Jordanians.
Weaving together both the sociological and historical elements, she
argues that Hashemite policy has increasingly exploited this
apparently dichotomous division to prevent the emergence of a united
opposition and to maximize the monarchy's freedom to pursue a
peace policy.
In chapter 14, Professor Muslih traces the rise of the Hamas
organization, as a competitor to the PLO, from the beginning of the
Intifadhah to the current impasse in the peace process. The
competition between Hamas and the PLO is ideological, strategic,
and sociological, but Muslih shows that the context of this struggle is
international—both global and regional. In fact, one of the major
differences between the PLO, a nationalist movement, and Hamas, a
religious movement that rejects nationalism, is that PLO strategy is
directed at achieving an accommodative arrangement with the
international system.
In chapter 15, Professor Lustick starts his essay with an insightful
critique of the theoretical literature on ethnonationalism. Setting the
culturalists against the rationalists, he asks why it took so long for
nationalism to appear on the historical scene if the underlying
sentiment is so natural and original; and why does nationalism have
such staying power and such comeback success if it is constructed,
inauthentic, and irrational. Lustick attempts to solve this riddle by
proposing a theory of ideology, drawing upon the work of Etzioni,
Gramsci, and some of his own work. Lustick seems to agree that
nationalism is irrational in that it is initially based on unquestioned,
virtually subconscious beliefs imbedded in a culture—which he calls
hegemonic beliefs. When events occur that lead to the self-conscious
questioning of hegemonic beliefs, then nation--

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alism may become the ideological tool of a political elite bent on
maintaining political solidarity in the face of external threats. Lustick
applies this analytical structure to the Israeli case, contrasting the
generally held beliefs regarding the legitimate boundaries of Israel in
the period before 1967 with the views propagated by the Likud
government after 1977.

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13
Al-Muhajirin w-al-Ansar
Hashemite Strategies for Managing Communal Identity in Jordan
Laurie A. Brand
Since the annexation of the West Bank in 1950, the population of the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has been marked by the presence of
two major communal groups: the Transjordanians and the
Palestinians.1 Internally, this division is sometimes referred to using
terminology from the time of the Prophet Muhammad: the
Transjordanians are referred to as al-Ansar, evoking the inhabitants
of Medina who welcomed the Prophet and his followers, while the
Palestinians are called al-Muhajirin, a reference to those who fled
Mecca for Medina with the Prophet.2 While such an analogy may
have a certain applicability, its positive construction does not capture
the tension in the relationship which, over the years, has rendered the
question of communal identity and intercommunal ties second in
sensitivity perhaps only to the size and composition of the military
budget. Tensions between the two communities are long standing and
have periodically surfaced, most recently since 1989, when the
country's struggle with a severe economic crisis triggered its
embarkation upon a new path, that of political liberalization.
Despite the long history of the relationship and the recent increase in
verbal and written references to it, domestic Palestinian-
Transjordanian relations and tensions remain underexplored.3 One
problem with existing works is that they have generally been written
from a standpoint sympathetic to Palestinian nationalism, which
generally implied or involved an antagonism toward the Jordanian
state and toward Transjordanians more broadly, if only implicitly.
Another major problem is that existing analyses have tended to treat
Jordanian-Palestinian relations as a direct function of PLO-Jordanian
relations, so that the basis of discord is attributed largely to the realm
of foreign policy. Such an approach not only misses the domestic
dynamics of the relationship but also oversimplifies or misconstrues
the foreign policy positions of the two communities.

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dence without any strings attaching it to Egypt. Egypt had hoped to
win Sudan over to a union, but it was unable to persuade any but its
traditional anti-Mahdist allies. Even the small, educated, elite, and
the professional military aspired to run their own state, despite the
symbolic impact of the Egyptian revolution of 1952. Besides, as the
British and the anti-Egyptian groups pointed out, Sudan has an ethnic
minority of non-Muslim non-Arabs in the south, which sets it apart
from other Arab states and requires unique policies.
In fact, the Nasserist foreign policies of the period, aimed at securing
Egypt's security and irrigation needs in Sudan, holding Saudi Arabia
hostage, subordinating the Palestine issue to Egypt's hegemonic
aspirations, and balancing the Fertile Crescent states against one
another while forcing the great powers to broker their Middle East
transactions via Cairo failed completely or in substantial measure.
Both Libya and Sudan have become thorns in Egypt's side. After the
Khartoum summit of 1967, the Yom Kippur war of 1973, and the
isolation of Egypt by the second Baghdad summit of 1979, Egypt
became a Saudi client as well as an American client. After the 1979
summit, Egypt's influence in the Fertile Crescent declined, but by that
time the split between the Syrian and the Iraqi parties had
become so deep that even partial Arab unity could only be achieved
by war or violent subversion.
The Frustration of Pan-Arabism
There can be no doubt that throughout the last half century the state
system established in the Middle East by the victorious allied powers
after World War I has prevailed over the ideological and political
struggle to redefine the Arabic-speaking peoples as a single political
community and to condition every other aspiration upon the
achievement of a unified Arab nation-state. Nor has the intra-ethnic
competition and contention been lost on other ethnic-national
communities in the region. Turkey, Iran, and Israel realize how Arab
unity might profoundly alter the balance of power in the region, and
they appreciate the advantages accruing to their own regional policies
by the opportunity to ally with one or more Arab states against other
Arab states.
Thus Arab ethnic politics, like all other ethnic politics, has its intra-
ethnic strategic competition as well as its external strategic
dimension; but the Arab ethnic "system," in both its external and its
internal aspects, is not exclusively Arab. That Arab ethnic political
system is open to participation by both ethnic and nonethnic players,
by state, international, subnational, and nongovernmental
organization players, and even by religious movements. It is clear
that ethnic solidarity cannot be taken for granted. The definition of a
given ethnicity and the determination of the political obligations that
are the con--

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This chapter stresses the interaction of both internal and external
factors as it attempts to demonstrate how the relationship, and the
consequent tensions, have periodically been used by the leadership to
serve the goals of regime reconsolidation or maintenance. To do so,
the chapter examines changes in the relationship, particularly since
1989, in the context of the sensitive and disruptive processes of
economic liberalization, political liberalization, and peace making.
All three of these processes have posed challenges to the regime, and
all have had potentially communally divisive as well as horizontally
(social class) mobilizational potential. Despite the kingdom's history,
to be explored briefly below, there is no necessary reason why the
fault lines should (have) continue(d) to be intercommunal, as opposed
to socioeconomic; that is, the possibility for transformation exists. It
is here that the leadership and certain political developments have
come together to lead the emphasis to continue to be on communal
affiliation. To the extent that the Hashemites have succeeded (by no
means a given from the start) in what is here argued to be a deliberate
strategy is due in part to backdrop, in part to skill, and in part to luck
or fate. That said, the contention here is not that the Hashemites alone
control peoples' sense of affiliation and belonging or that Jordanians,
whether of Palestinian or Transjordanian origin, are nothing but
puppets made to dance by an all-seeing and eminently clever regime.
The end of war after more than forty years of a struggle that
concerned both existence and identity, and in which a large part of
one's identity was constructed in opposition to the external enemy,
has led to a reexamination of national goals and identity across the
region. In Jordan it has forced both communities to rethink who they
are and to contemplate who they will be without the ambiguous
relationship with "the other" that has characterized the post-1948, but
most clearly the post-1967, period. Hence, the regime has had to
devise ways to use and react to the impact of broader regional
developments beyond its control.
The history of Palestinian-Jordanian ties is long and complex, and the
presentation here does not attempt or claim to survey
comprehensively its unfolding over the years. That is properly the
topic of a book. The discussion proceeds in the following way. It first
examines the bases of communal identity and intercommunal
tensions in Jordan. It then suggests some reasons for regime use of
the intercommunal divide over the years. From there it considers how
the regime has managed to balance or disturb communal relations
since 1989, during the politically treacherous period of economic and
political liberalization, as well as the move toward Jordanian-Israeli
peace.

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Defining Communal Identity in Jordan
In most countries, national as well as subnational identities are in a
state of continuous adjustment, if not reconstruction, and Jordan is no
exception. In the kingdom the question of what or who is a Jordanian
has been in flux at least since the annexation of the West Bank in
1950. Answers to questions such as "Who is a Jordanian," "Who is a
Palestinian," or "What constitutes Jordanianness or Palestinianness"
would certainly differ today from the response of even five or
certainly ten years ago.
The reason for the original presence in Jordan of large numbers of
Palestinians was the 1948–49 Palestine war, during which more than
700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes. Some
70,000 went directly to the East Bank of the Jordan River, which at
the time had an estimated, largely indigenous, population of about
440,000. Shortly thereafter, in 1950, following the enactment of a
series of preparatory administrative measures, Jordan's King
Abdallah annexed the central part of Palestine that had not fallen to
Jewish/Israeli forces during the war. This piece of territory, which
came to be known as the West Bank, included some 440,000 original
inhabitants, in addition to 280,000 refugees from the part of Palestine
that had become the state of Israel.4 In addition to annexing the
territory, the king extended Jordanian citizenship to all these
Palestinians. The formal political basis for the slogan "the unity of
the two banks" and for the contention that Jordanians and Palestinians
were two branches of the family was thus laid. So was the basis for
the increasingly problematic definition of Jordanian and for making
clear distinctions between the members of this "single family."
It was therefore at this stage that the line between Transjordanian and
Palestinian was most easily discernible, but not without
complications. For example, there were also the Circassians, who
came to the East Bank from the Caucasus region, largely in the 1880s,
who have been fiercely loyal and close to the regime, but who were
not natively Arab or Transjordanian. There were also the merchant
families and bureaucrats of Syrian and Palestinian origin, as well as
numerous families from Lebanon and Syria who had come to
Transjordan over the years.5 From the perspective of the newly
arrived Palestinians, these distinctions were largely insignificant.
However, from the perspective of at least some native
Transjordanians these were outsiders (as was the ruling House of
Hashem, at least in the eyes of some).6
Transjordanian Identity
To the extent that the question of identity among Transjordanians has
been explored, the existing literature focuses almost exclusively on
tribes.7 There

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is no question that the (large clan or tribe) as a basis of
affiliation and source of prestige and patronage has played a central
role in the identity of a majority of the kingdom's native East Bank
citizens. Anyone who doubts the continuing, if evolving, importance
of the tribe in Jordan needs only examine the outcome of the 1993
parliamentary elections. By focusing its strategies of recruitment and
rewards on the tribes over the years, the regime further reinforced the
salience of tribal ties to East Banker identity. The importance of tribal
identity is not questioned here; however, the studies that stress it tend
to ignore other elements of an East Bank or Transjordanian identity
(with the possible exception of references to loyalty to the monarch)
and why it has taken so long for a separate Transjordanian identity to
crystallize. Studies have often taken the concept of tribe as
unproblematic and unchanging, despite the fact that various tribes
and regions have had very different relationships with the regime.
Such studies assume that by appropriating certain Bedouin symbols,
the state thereby secures loyalty and broad-based tribal identification
with it.8
Part of the problem in trying to construct a more complete picture of
the evolution of a national identity among Transjordanians is that
little research in the past has focused on Jordanian domestic politics.
Among those political scientists or policy analysts who have written
about the East Bank, the territory's indigenous population was
assumed to be of little importance, except insofar as it provided the
personnel for the army and the security bureaucracy. Such an
approach had two main sources. One was the writings of Zionists, for
whom the existence of a supposedly empty East Bank that might
someday serve as a repository for most of the remainder of the
Palestinian population in historical Palestine was very convenient.
The other source was some Palestinian and other Arab writers
associated with Arab nationalist or leftist parties, who, because of
hostility toward the Hashemite regime and its policies, also preferred
to write about the East Bank's native inhabitants as if they were
largely nonexistent or inconsequential.
Transjordanians bear some of the responsibility as well, for they have
to date provided little in the way of critical accounts of their own
history. Only recently has a group of young Transjordanian scholars
emerged who have begun to research, write, and thus in effect reclaim
their history.9 Yet, their own history is also part of the problem. Since
1948, the fate of the East Bank, like it or not, has been inextricably
tied to that of the Palestinians and Palestine. For reasons that deserve
to be more thoroughly explored, what occurred in the post-1948
period, and certainly the post-1967 one, can perhaps best be described
as the subsuming of a Jordanian national movement by the Pales--

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tinian national movement, and perhaps even the (temporary)
subsuming of Jordanian history by Palestinian history.
In any event, an underexplored yet central element in the identity of
many Transjordanians has been participation in the state apparatus.
Building on a pre-1948 base of military recruitment among the
indigenous population, Abdallah and Husayn after him viewed the
Transjordanians as more loyal and reliable than the recently uprooted
and newly enfranchised Palestinians. To secure and reinforce their
loyalty, however, the state employed such instruments as subsidies to
key tribes and preferential recruitment into the armed forces and later
the state apparatus itself. This was far more basic in importance than
simply establishing patron-client ties. As the bases of tribal
(particularly southern tribal) economy changed with the imposition of
the British administration, state employment became the means of
economic survival for substantial and key parts of the tribal
population.10 Hence, a large part of what it meant for many
Transjordanians to be "Jordanian" (to the extent that they were
thinking in such terms) meant also simply to have a means of making
a living and was associated with service in the state, especially in the
military or security services.
This is not to ignore the presence of Transjordanians among the ranks
of the opposition to the regime, for they were prominent in the pan-
Arab or nationalist parties of the 1950s. At that time, however, and
until a good deal later, such Transjordanians viewed the Hashemite
kingdom as an illegitimate or artificial entity; hence, they were
generally loath to associate themselves with it precisely because of
the close relationship between the king and the West. The extent of
their disaffection with the regime or of their belief that other issues
were of greater national (that is, Arab) importance is clear from the
fact that in the 1960s the Palestinian resistance movement succeeded
in recruiting Transjordanians into its ranks, primarily from among
leftists opposed to the monarchy or northerners, many of whom
continued to identify with Syria and who resented Hashemite rule. It
is worth emphasizing at this point that whether pro- or anti-
Hashemite, the Transjordanian commitment to liberating Palestine
has been very strong. This has not meant, however, that
Transjordanians necessarily had the same strength of feelings of
support toward the Palestinian resistance movement (especially as it
grew in numbers and power and eventually appeared to challenge the
regime) or toward Palestinians in general.
While the 1970s produced an "East Banker first" trend, the last few
years appear to have witnessed the development of a different or
deeper sense of Transjordanianness, expressed outside of, although
not usually (if increas--

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ingly) in opposition to, the state.11 While the only clear political
program of this group may be "Jordan for Transjordanians," it is not
as yet clear where they draw the lines between themselves and others.
As noted above, who is a "pure Transjordanian" is not always clear,
and the issue becomes more blurred with the current generation as the
number of intermarriages between Transjordanians and Palestinians
increases. Like many nationalisms, this is a movement with
discriminatory overtones. This issue is explored in greater depth
below; but, in brief, one can say that the relationship between this
nationalism and communal tensions in the kingdom has most often
expressed itself in the form of opposition to the role of Palestinians
and Palestinian institutions in Jordanian affairs.
One should also note here the north-south distinction among
Transjordanians. Historical development led to close economic ties
between northern Transjordan and Syria (or Nablus in Palestine),
while the south had close ties with the Hejaz ( and Aqaba) or
with southern Palestine (Hebron). The southern tribes (with their
affiliation to the region from which their monarch came) were the
first to be recruited into the various security and armed forces. Hence,
although there have been some notable exceptions, northerners have
been slightly more suspect. This regionalism increases in salience
when there are tensions between Jordan and Syria (some northerners'
natural leaning); of similar importance are the ties and influence the
Saudis have continued to maintain with the southern tribes. Regional
considerations such as these also play a role in determining where
one does one's military service, to which governorate one may be
posted as governor, and at which period one may be chosen to
become prime minister. This is but one of several balancing acts in
which the king must engage, and although Palestinians have little
interest in such calculations, they are just as key to maintaining
regime stability as are the regime's manipulation or management of
Jordanian-Palestinian relations in the kingdom.
All this is to suggest that the sense of identity among Transjordanians
is far more complex than a mere projection of loyalty from the tribe
to the state or monarch level would imply. An essential, although not
sole, remaining piece of the puzzle requires a full study of the
relationship between the Palestinian national movement and the
Jordanian national movement (the opposition) to explain why more
separate and articulated Jordanian national structures did not emerge.
Given the great importance of the as well as the close
identification between large portions of this community and the state
apparatus, it could be argued that there was little "space" left for civil
society development. Here, suffice it to say that such structures were
extremely lim--

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ited and that the relatively small ranks of the Jordanian national
movement (not to be confused with the relatively recent articulation
of a more parochial Transjordanian nationalism) generally operated
in cooperation with, but also in the shadow (whether by choice or
force of circumstance) of the PLO.
Palestinian Identity in Jordan
From the time of their first mass arrival in 1948, there have been a
number of important distinctions among Palestinians in the kingdom,
and these distinctions have evolved over the years.12 For the
purposes of this study, the population today may be divided into
several groups.13 The first comprises refugee camp dwellers or those
who have recently left the camps. Here, as a rule, whether one is
dealing with 1948 or 1967 refugees, the sense of Palestinianness
(implying primary political and emotional attachment to Palestine) is
of a nature that makes a concomitant sense of Jordanianness (except
for the convenience of having a passport) uncommon: indeed, at least
until the July 1988 disengagement, the Palestinian identity of this
sector was in part defined in opposition or hostility to a Jordanian
identity, although years of residence also made Jordan home, if not
the homeland. The only recent change one may observe here is that
many of the 1948 refugees, disgruntled with the PLO for making a
deal with Israel that does not offer them the possibility of return, and
more sympathetic to the king after the liberalization and his 1990–91
Gulf policy, came to view Husayn (if not the rest of the state
apparatus) much more favorably.14 This, however, is very much in
flux, as we shall see later in a discussion of some recent specific
examples.
A second group comprises the Palestinian middle class of small
merchants and lower-level government employees. Here again, the
sense of Palestinian identity is strong, but as a group that has
achieved a certain economic success and integration, the hostility to a
Jordanian identity has been less pronounced, except of course among
those who played some role with the Palestinian resistance
movement. This group has also in the past few years come to feel
more comfortable expressing a form of attachment to Jordan (if not
identifying themselves as Jordanians).
A third group comprises those Jordanian Palestinians who migrated
to the oil states of the Gulf, especially Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to
work.15 These Palestinians largely viewed their Jordanian passports
as a convenience, not as a basis of identity or belonging. Indeed, they
generally avoided Jordanian government offices in the Gulf unless
absolutely necessary and usually limited their interaction with Jordan
to one annual visit during the summer.16

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Following their return from the Gulf in 1990–91, in the wake of
Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, this group had difficulty
adjusting to life in the kingdom. Many felt little sense of attachment
to or understanding of Jordan as a country (although many, at least
immediately following their return, expressed admiration for the
king), and stories of their being taken advantage of by other citizens
were common. They possess a strong sense of Palestinianness, but
with a certain sense of separate identity (not the least important
element of which was hatred of Saddam Hussein) that set them apart
in important respects from the kingdom's other Palestinian citizens.
The final group includes those Palestinians who have achieved
notable success in business and, in some cases, in the bureaucracy as
well. Following the strife of 1970–71, this Palestinian bourgeoisie
appears to have accepted political quiescence in exchange for the
regime's provision of a stable atmosphere conducive to making
money. Indeed, rather than viewing the largely Transjordanian-staffed
army and security forces as the sole pillar of regime support, the
argument should be made that this group came to represent a second
pillar (particularly as the country reaped the benefits of the oil boom
in the Gulf). Some of its members come from West Bank families
that threw their lot in with Abdallah at the time of the annexation. It
is among such elements that one may find Palestinians who see no
dilemma or contradiction in identifying themselves as both
Palestinian and Jordanian.17
Certainly the fact of residence in the East Bank has played an
important role in Palestinians' sense of identity, for, as noted above,
many of those Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship who lived in
the Gulf, particularly the long-term residents who had also enjoyed
notable business success, felt no affinity toward Jordan and generally
had a strong sense of Palestinianness.18 Conversely, birth and
residence in the East Bank of the children of the Palestinian middle
and upper classes has without doubt contributed to generating a sense
of Jordanianness or an attachment to Jordan among the younger
generation. Most are still clearly aware and proud of their Palestinian
heritage; however, whether because of length of residence or despair
of seeing a solution to the Palestine problem that would allow for
their return (or both), many see their future in the East Bank. Not
surprisingly, the instances of intermarriage between Palestinians and
Transjordanians of this younger generation are clearly more
numerous than was previously the case, if largely limited to middle
and upper socioeconomic strata in the capital. What it means to be a
Jordanian among these young Palestinians is also very likely different
from what such an identification means for Transjordanians. It may
well be a kind of "Amman is Jordan" sense of identity, in part because
of

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class, in part because of urban background, and in part because
Amman has the largest concentration of the Palestinian upper and
middle classes in the kingdom.
The Bases of Communal Tension.
The mere existence of subethnic groups is not sufficient for the
development of intercommunal tensions. Any number of axes of
identification may be activated, or all may remain dormant. In the
case of Palestinians and Transjordanians, there are several clear
historical bases for these tensions, although it seems unlikely that
Abdallah or Husayn in his early years had the creation of communal
fault lines as a goal. The history of the incorporation of Palestinians
and Palestinian land into the kingdom is the most important of these,
or at least the one that predates and lays the bases for the others.
Following the 1948 war, Abdallah annexed the rump of Palestine and
forbade the use of the word Palestine on government documents, or
even for youth or community groups.19 Palestinians were also given
Jordanian citizenship en masse, in contravention of the Arab League
decision that Palestinians should retain their original nationality (and
not be enfranchised by the states that came to host them after 1948).
King Abdallah's territorial designs on Palestine and his dealing with
the Zionists over the final disposition of the territory were viewed as
traitorous acts by most Palestinians.20 The purpose behind Abdallah's
policy, of course, was to lay the groundwork for the effective
integration of the East and West Banks, for dismantling or
remodeling the bases of identification with the state in a way that
would, if not blur the distinctions, then at least lead to the acceptance
of the monarchy based in Amman.
Given the Hashemite goal of ruling successfully over both
Palestinians and native East Bankers, it appears the ultimate intention
was not the "Transjordanization" (or exclusion) of Palestinians or the
"Palestinization" of Transjordanians, but rather the "Jordanization" of
both communities, if only superficially.21 It is an important
distinction to make when evaluating the relationship, not only
between the two communities, but also between the communities and
the regime. For, implicit in the notion of a Jordanian identity was a
conservative variety of pan-Arabism. That is, as the regime
developed, being a citizen of the kingdom was not defined in
exclusivist terms. The territory had welcomed Circassians, Chechens,
Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, and Palestinians and was to be a place in
which all could live together. At the same time, such an approach
provided the bases for legitimizing Hejazis—the Hashemites—as
rulers in a territory not even broadly defined as their home (or their
own). Hence, for the ruling family, being a Jordanian has not meant
tracing ances--

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tral ties back to long present or resident tribes or clans. To be a
Jordanian was (indeed, had to be) being an Arab (or Arabic-speaking,
as the Circassians and Chechens became) and to be loyal to a larger
Arab nation and the Hashemite monarchy. This Hashemite-promoted
sense of Jordanianness is quite different from the currently emerging
Transjordanian nationalism.
Of course, most Palestinians were not buying the Hashemite claims
or discourse, and the annexation of the West Bank was not the end of
Jordanian state policies that many Palestinians viewed as antithetical
to their interests. Following Abdallah's assassination, King Husayn's
regime was associated with pro-Western policies, antagonism toward
a more radical pan-Arabism, and the 1970 battles against the
Palestinian resistance known as Black September. Thus, despite the
fact that Jordan was the only Arab state to enfranchise Palestinians en
masse, Palestinian gratitude was quite limited, largely because of the
historical record of Abdallah and Husayn—as many Palestinians
would have viewed it—in thwarting Palestinian nationalism and
combating the forces that were sympathetic to it. More generally and
more recently, Palestinians argue that they have played a major role
in building the country yet remain second-class citizens because of
underrepresentation in parliament and discrimination, both in access
to state employment and treatment by the bureaucracy.
Again, it should be stressed that Palestinians have never been uniform
or united in their approach to the Jordanian regime. Even before the
incorporation of the West Bank into Jordan, some prominent
Palestinian families and notables lined up as supporters of King
Abdallah rather than al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the leader of the
Palestinian nationalist movement under the British mandate. With
British support, these families were critical to the convening of a
series of conferences in late 1948 and early 1949 in the West Bank
that called for the incorporation of the West Bank into Abdallah's
realm. Gradually, they and other powerful families were integrated
into the governing circles in Amman.22 Some of their sons also
entered the Jordanian military during the early period. This group has
come to form the core of the community referred to above that sees
no contradiction between identifying oneself as Palestinian and
Jordanian at the same time. It was a privileged socioeconomic group
from the beginning, and it managed to maintain and reinforce its
position in the subsequent period.
The founding of the PLO in 1964 and the subsequent institutional and
ideological blossoming of Palestinian nationalism provided a
concrete form of alternative attachment for the many Jordanian
Palestinians who had not made peace with the regime. As a result,
despite the promises of PLO Chair--

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man Ahmad Shuqayri not to recruit in the kingdom, from the very
beginning the PLO constituted an alternative pole of allegiance for
the Palestinians in Jordan, whether on the East or West Bank.
The conflict between the institutional requirements of Palestinian
nationalism and the Jordanian state eventually culminated in Black
September in 1970. But even in this conflict, which is generally
considered the lowest point in Palestinian-Jordanian relations, the
battle lines were not clearly marked between communities. For
example, Palestinian members of the Jordanian army did not mutiny,
and large sectors of the Palestinian community remained aloof from
the fighting. Conversely, as noted above, some northern
Transjordanians (long hostile to the Hashemites) and others fought
along with the Palestinian resistance. Nayif Hawatmeh, the head of
the Democratic Front of the Liberation of Palestine, which was
particularly successful in recruiting from the north, is from the
northern city of Salt. That these Transjordanians may have been
fighting against the Jordanian regime as much as fighting with the
Palestinians is beside the point. What is important is that they saw
their identity and interests in opposition to the state, not in opposition
to the Palestinians or the PLO.
Regime Response to and Use of Intercommunal Tensions, 1980–89
The fighting in 1970–71 left deep scars of distrust between the two
communities, and in its wake regime policy could have taken any
number of courses. The leadership could have chosen policies
intended to build confidence between the two communities. What
took place, however, perhaps as part of a strategy for regime
consolidation—a defensive or punitive reaction—or perhaps as a
largely preventative move, was a state policy to throw more obvious
weight behind the Transjordanian sector, particularly through a policy
of preferential recruitment into government jobs. In addition, in the
first cabinet formed after Black September, Jordanians of Palestinian
origin were completely absent. This, of course, was in addition to the
fact that the upper, if not the lower, levels of the army had long been
a largely Transjordanian preserve (universal conscription was not
introduced until 1976).23 Hence, any bureaucratic procedure, like
renewing a passport, obtaining a driver's license, or securing
registration of a new business, required Palestinians to interact with
an increasingly Transjordanian bureaucracy. To the present,
Palestinians complain bitterly about having unequal access to
government jobs, appointments, and scholarships—a policy put in
place following the events of 1970–71. Palestinians' sense of lack of
power in confronting a system in which tribal ( ) ties enable
many Transjordanians to cut red tape, but in which

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sequence of ethnic identification must be established either through
political process or by the strategic use of violence, or, as is most
often the case, both.
State-centered Arab nationalism and the pan-Arab variant have been
weakened as "ideological strategies" by the rise of Islamic
fundamentalist movements. While these movements vary in their
goals, structure, and appeal, they share an attachment to the ideal of
the Islamic state. At the present time it is doubtful that schemes for
the achievement of Arab unity, of whatever level or scope, can
effectively challenge the Islamic resurgence. In fact, the merger of
two Arab states may do no more than multiply the Islamic "threat."
Consider, for example, whether "Islamist" political power has been
increased or diminished by the actual merger of North and South
Yemen, or would be by the merger of Syria and Lebanon, or Syria and
Jordan, or by the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait, by the union of Egypt and
Sudan, by the achievement of Maghreb unity, or even by the union of
Syria and Iraq.
In all of these cases, at this particular juncture, it is doubtful whether
such partial Arab unions could produce regimes strong enough to
control or repress Islamist movements or whether such unions might
not alienate segments of the population that have not been politically
active and that might now turn to Islamic movements as the leading
opposition groups for support. Arab nationalist unions could lead to a
strengthening or a radicalization of the Islamist movements, and even
induce other opposition groups to form alliances with them, as seems
to have been the case in Algeria. There is little doubt that the Islamist
movement in Algeria developed from a relatively weak base. As
various opposition factions, within and without the government, cast
about for allies, Islamist groups increased in size, proliferated,
differentiated, competed with one another, with the radicals and
extremists gaining as the government adopted an uncompromising
line. Much depends on how the Arab governments respond to the
Islamist challenge, and that response often depends upon the ethnic
and sectarian demography of the elites and nonelites of those
countries.
Syria and Iraq
The division between Syria and Iraq has probably been the greatest
political obstacle to the realization of the pan-Arab goal. Such a
union has been opposed and feared by both Egypt and Saudi Arabia
(as well as by all the non-Arab states in the region), and its failure has
weakened the popular appeal of both governments. The emergence of
Iraq immediately prior to its seizure of Kuwait revived the issue and
drove Assad's Syria into closer cooperation with

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Palestinians, who generally cannot draw on such ties, feel
demoralized and humiliated, continues to be a major source of
resentment.24
Following the civil war, the next significant development was the
1974 Arab League recognition of the PLO as the sole legitimate
representative of the Palestinians, which directly challenged King
Husayn's claim to the loyalty of Jordan's Palestinian citizens. For
domestic and regional reasons, Husayn was forced to acquiesce in
this designation, which he nonetheless clearly opposed. While it is
difficult to imagine the king's having responded differently to the
public problem of the Arab League vote, the fact that the
development exacerbated intercommunal tensions can probably be
attributed to regime efforts to encourage various expressions of
dissatisfaction with the PLO's new status. For, if the dissatisfaction
regarding being closed out of state employment has been a constant
theme among Jordan's Palestinians, the suspicions regarding
Palestinian loyalty to Jordan constitute a common Transjordanian
complaint. Husayn's support for the Arab League resolution gained
him little favor among his already suspicious Palestinian citizenry,
while among Transjordanians it played into the sentiment that had
certainly been sparked by 1970, of anger with Palestinian
separateness from or opposition to the regime. That is, it called into
question again, only four years after Black September, the loyalty of
Jordan's citizens of Palestinian origin. The sole, legitimate
representative designation also played a role in the king's decision
(which came in its wake) indefinitely to suspend the activities of the
Jordanian parliament, which had seats for both East and West Bank
representatives.
Perhaps the most tense moment in relations in the post-1970 period
came in 1988 when Husayn announced Jordan's administrative and
legal disengagement from the West Bank. This move was clearly
aimed at the PLO, part of the ongoing competition for the loyalty of
the West Bank residents after the Israeli occupation. Yet it had
domestic consequences as well. The disengagement deprived West
Bankers of their Jordanian citizenship (if not their passports) en
masse; however, the citizenship of a number of East Bank
Palestinians who belonged to the Palestine National Council was also
withdrawn.25 As a result, the rest of the East Bank Palestinian
community wondered whether they, too, might be deprived of their
citizenship or other rights. Hence, it led to further distrust of the
regime by the Palestinians. Transjordanian response was mixed in
this case, as some felt the disengagement was a betrayal of the goals
of Arab or Islamic unity. Others saw the move as a justified response
to the May 1988 Arab League summit's failure to acknowledge and
continue to support the Jordanian role in the West Bank.

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Nevertheless, when the details of the disengagement were made
known and it became clear that mass disfranchisement of East Bank
resident Palestinians was not planned, the transformed political
equation meant a changed approach by some Palestinians to the king.
For, by in effect releasing the West Bank from the Hashemite realm,
the king had finally renounced claims to the loyalty of the
Palestinians of the West Bank, the territory over which he and the
PLO had vied for influence since 1964. He thereby opened the way
for future Palestinian negotiations with Israel over this territory.
Thus, it was a move that ultimately garnered for Husayn increased
support among some of his East Bank Palestinian subjects, again, at
least temporarily.
Before concluding this section, mention must be made of the role that
support for the armed forces and the strategies involved in ministerial
appointments have had in affecting intercommunal tensions. With
regard to the army, it was noted earlier that this largely
Transjordanian force has been a vital source of employment and a key
base of regime support. The king reportedly has little interest in
economic issues, the only exception being his concern with keeping
levels of military spending high enough to keep this critical
constituency satisfied. Indeed, over the years, obtaining grants-in-aid
(at least some of which went to the military and the security services)
from the Arab oil states was a key part of the king's foreign policy
agenda.26 The king has long made a policy of undertaking periodic
visits to "see the troops." Speeches given to the military have often
had important policy content as well. These visits are highly
publicized in the national media and are associated by both
Transjordanians and Palestinians with the king's close relationship to
a key Transjordanian constituency. Hence, they can and have been
used to send messages to both communities, if at times in a less than
explicit way.
The choice of prime minister (as well as cabinet ministers) is also
viewed as sending important domestic and foreign policy signals. The
appointment of Zayd , for example, the king's boyhood friend
and long-time confidant, has on two occasions been used to signal a
turn to improved relations with Syria. At the same time, distaste
for the PLO is well known and hence his appointment may be seen as
sending a signal to both the PLO and the domestic Palestinian
population. It is no coincidence, for example, that since 1970 there
has been only one prime minister of Palestinian origin, Tahir al-
Masri. Other appointments have been used to balance domestic north-
south rivalries (Badran and from the north, Majali, Kabariti,
and, most recently, Tarawineh from the south). The outlier has been
the king's cousin Zayd bin Shakir, who, like the king, is not a
Transjordanian, and who has been called upon twice to serve at
critical moments when the king was in

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need of a prime minister who was, in effect, above criticism. As
noted earlier, Jordanians of Palestinian origin are on the whole
uninterested or feel unaffected by the north-south divide. They did,
however, respond positively to the appointment of Tahir al-Masri,
just as some key Transjordanian constituencies were clearly
displeased with it. The point in all these cases is that the king is well
aware of both communities' perceptions of these matters. Indeed, he
and his policies have helped create them over the years; and he
continues to use them as a way of managing the two, or managing
other domestic problems.
Hashemite Strategies
It is useful at this point to discuss more explicitly the strategies that
the regime has used in the past as a way of addressing the fact that it
rules over two major communal groups. The support of the army and
the use of government appointments to reinforce constituencies or
send domestic messages has been noted above. A central question is
why would the Hashemites follow a policy of preserving communal
fault lines rather than building national unity. The argument made
above is that they have attempted to create a national identity overlay
—the Hashemite version of Jordanian identity—to serve as an
overarching sense of attachment. It can be activated (although
probably not to the extent they would always like) during periods of
national crisis (as in the Gulf War). However, well aware of the
possibilities for discontent emerging from below, from the
economically disfranchised sectors of society, they have worked to
prevent the development of cross-communal (horizontal) integration.
In other words, the stoking of communal flames is a policy
instrument to be used when there is a possibility that some challenge,
generally, but not exclusively, economic, could lead to a broad-based
Jordanian-Palestinian opposition to the regime, perhaps along the
lines of the nationalist wave that emerged in the 1950s.
Whether the regime had been actively working toward such an
outcome before 1970 is not clear. The 1970–71 battles, however,
certainly demonstrated that not only did a severe fault line exist, but
also that there was a substantial portion of the Palestinian population
that was not inclined to throw its lot in with that of the Palestinian
resistance. Hence two possible programs presented themselves. The
first was to play, when necessary, on the antagonisms between the two
communities. The second was to try to build on the disaffection of the
upper levels of the Palestinian bourgeoisie with the Palestinian
resistance's behavior in the kingdom. The way to secure this support
—active or passive—probably initially appeared to be in the realm of
maintain--

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ing domestic stability so that the business community's capital and
investments appeared safe. This is not to say that elements of this
community were not of a Palestinian nationalist inclination, nor that
they were necessarily converted monarchists. It does appear,
however, that this increasingly successful and wealthy group was
unwilling to put political demands on the regime regarding domestic
policy, even if they may have at the same time made contributions to
the PLO. Hence, regime policy on the popular level would have
sought to encourage suspicions between Palestinians and
Transjordanians in order to prevent the emergence of resistance from
below; but, the Palestinian business community would have been
perhaps equally loathe to see such revolution from below, especially
in the context of a national business climate that provided a sense of
security to the medium to large businessman. It is precisely this
(overwhelmingly Palestinian) business community and its power that
some Transjordanians fear will, as economic liberalization proceeds,
usurp their position as the most solid political base of the regime.
Backdrop to the Post-1989 Emergence of Tensions: Economic
Crisis and Political Liberalization
By the mid-1980s the Iran-Iraq War and the changing structure of the
international oil market had led to a regional recession. Jordan had
long relied heavily on grants from the oil states, free oil, and
remittances from its expatriates in the Gulf to remain solvent. The
value of the dinar began to drop in late summer 1988—in part as a
result of the loss of Palestinian financial transfers following the
shock of the disengagement, and in part because of the impact of a
massive overextension of export credits to Iraq during the war. By
late January 1989, Jordan could no longer service its foreign debt and
was forced to call in an IMF team to work on a rescheduling
agreement. The agreement was typical of those concluded between
the IMF and other countries, with the imposition of goals related to
budgetary austerity and shrinking the involvement of the state in the
economy. Given that the communal division of labor in the country
can be crudely categorized as Palestinian private
sector/Transjordanian public sector, and that the austerity measures
target, among other things, a shrinkage of the state sector and an
encouragement of the private sector, it is not surprising that
Transjordanians began to express fears regarding their economic
future.
On the political front, the tensions between Palestinians and
Transjordanians—as opposed to those between the state and the PLO
—remained beneath the surface until the disengagement briefly, but
publicly, reopened the

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wounds of Black September. However, only with the initiation of the
liberalization process in the summer of 1989 was freer expression in
public of what had long simmered beneath the surface permitted.
While the liberalization meant a retreat in the more coercive state
practices—practices that Palestinians felt were disproportionately
used against them—it could not erase the memories or change
overnight the legacy of decades of martial law. At the same time, the
diminished role of the security forces and greater empowerment of
the average citizen (Transjordanian and Palestinian alike) through
participation in free(r) elections seemed to threaten a key traditional
source of Transjordanian power and position. Hence, for different
reasons members of both communities took advantage of the
increased freedom to give more public vent to their anxieties and
resentment. Their expression, not surprisingly, was often framed with
negative reference to the other.
Let us now turn to an examination of several important post-1989
events or periods to see how the intercommunal issue has been
managed.
The 1991 Gulf War
The retreat of some of the more repressive aspects of the state in the
wake of the liberalization made it easier for many Palestinians to feel
more comfortable with a Jordanian identity, or at least feel a closer
identification with the part of Jordanian identity that involved support
for the king. These sentiments developed largely as a result of the
king's anticoalition stance during the Gulf War, a position that briefly
led Palestinians and Jordanians to march side by side in
demonstrations in support of their monarch. By the summer of 1990,
even for Palestinians who had rejected any identification with Jordan
or loyalty to the king, a Jordanian identity no longer meant denial of
the right to a Palestinian identity, nor was it coincident with a state
well known for the efficiency of its internal security apparatus and
whose headquarters and prison in Amman had been known as funduq
filastin (the Palestine Hotel).
The regime saw itself as in need of broad-based transcommunal
support during this period. There are no indications that the regime
sought to undermine horizontal solidarities. Indeed, it had a strong
interest in encouraging solid support for its policies during a regional
political crisis that had arrived on the heels of the domestic economic
downturn. As a result, communal tensions diminished for a brief
period.
Gulf Aftermath
The outpouring of emotion against the U.S.-led coalition and in
support of the king that transcended the communal divide was of
short duration. Saddam

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Hussein's swift defeat and the war's compounding of Jordan's
economic problems refocused people's attention on the domestic
situation. Inflation adversely affected all, but certainly took a heavy
toll on the fixed wages of the largely Transjordanian state sector. The
influx of some 200,000 Jordanians (most of them Palestinians) from
Kuwait (and, to a lesser extent, the other Gulf states) in a very short
period of time exacerbated what was already a serious unemployment
problem, strained a variety of state services, and drove up food and
housing prices. Crime also apparently began to rise, although it was
unclear whether the numbers were really rising or whether, as a result
of the more liberal press at the time, crimes were simply being
written about more often and openly.
Hence, the socioeconomic fallout from the 1991 Gulf War
strengthened the perception among at least some Transjordanians that
it was the Palestinians who held the kingdom's wealth and who were
therefore in a position gradually to increase their political power. In
the wake of the war, the investment and building by Palestinians may
well have saved the country from a worse recession than it in fact
experienced, but it also produced new symbols of the power of the
Palestinian bourgeoisie (for example, the massive expansion of
commercial building on Wasfi al-Tal or Gardens Street). Again, this
happened against the backdrop of the two processes of political
liberalization and economic reform described above which, at least in
theory, aimed at forcing a retreat of the (largely Transjordanian)
security apparatus and threatened to privilege the (largely
Palestinian) private sector at the expense of the (largely
Transjordanian) civil and military bureaucracy.
As a result, what has gradually come to take fuller, and in some cases
institutional, form is what was first described to me in 1986 as the
Jordanian Likud; that is, the nationalist (in the parochial, not the pan-
Arab sense) wing of the Transjordanian community. While this strain
is by no means unified—they are most clearly united in their
antagonism toward Jordanian Palestinians, but they differ primarily
in their position on the peace process and on the Hashemites—several
tendencies may be noted.27
Perhaps the first on the scene was the party of ,
the former secretary-general of the Public Security Department.
Majali stated his party's position on the Palestinians in the following
way:
We seek to distinguish between our Jordanian brothers of Palestinian
origin who belong to our joint political identity in the framework of
the constitution and . . . national unity . . . and between those who are
demanding a separate identity and a separate state. To them we say
that

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Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine. And what is between us is
not defined by national (watani) unity, but by relations in a pan-Arab
(qawmi) framework. They are not a part of our national political
identity, but rather are brothers who carry another political identity,
and they follow a different political system and constitutional
content . . . The Palestinian who lives among us and wishes to
maintain his Palestinian national identity, that is, his Palestinian
political identity, has the right to live without discrimination, with the
same rights and obligations, but he does not have the right to work in
Jordanian political institutions.28
The main thrust of Majali's party's concern appears to be with the
lack of integration of Palestinians into Jordanian institutions. It is
based on a concern or a criticism of dual loyalty. Alternatively, it is
constructed as one of Palestinian opportunism: their willingness to
take advantage of the citizenship and safe haven that Jordan has
provided without offering political loyalty in return. The fact that the
rest of the historical record might not incline Palestinians to feel
loyal or feel at all guilty about not having such feelings does not enter
into the discussion.
Prominent Jordanian nationalist figures who differ in the degree of
open hostility manifested toward Palestinians are columnist Fahd
Fanek (who does not speak of disfranchising the Palestinians, but
does not support the idea of equal opportunity for them in Jordan),
and former parliamentarian Ahmed (who at the time of
this writing was facing charges of incitement from the general
prosecutor for making anti-Palestinian statements). charges
Palestinians with having ruined the country and openly states that he
would be relieved if they all left.29 In line with concern over
the large number of Palestinians in the kingdom, Transjordanians
have periodically expressed the fear that Jordan was being considered
as a place of permanent resettlement for Palestinians—not just for
currently resident ones but also for those from Syria and Lebanon,
which would truly tip the communal balance.30 While some of these
Transjordanians may have considered themselves opponents of the
peace process in 1991, some of the more pro-Hashemite among them
did support, or did not oppose, the Jordanian-Israeli treaty. The likely
reason behind their favorable attitude toward the treaty is their belief
that confederation with the Palestinian entity (which would lay the
basis for Transjordanians being overwhelmed numerically by
Palestinians) would no longer be an option and that some Jordanian
Palestinians might be permitted to return to live in Palestine. On the
other hand, they are critical of the deal the PLO struck with Israel,
arguing that the PLO has sold

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out the qadiyah (cause) and has thereby precluded the possibility of
return for large numbers of Palestinians. The Transjordanian
nationalist line is that they would like nothing better than to see a
solution that upholds Palestinian rights by enabling Palestinians (all,
or as many as possible) to return to Palestine. Without questioning
the sincerity of their concern with the Palestine cause, their insistence
on a solution that provides for maximum Palestinian return is at very
least self-serving, for it would presumably allow for the departure of
large numbers of Palestinians from Jordan as well.
Many Transjordanian nationalists realize, however, that most
Jordanians of Palestinian origin are unlikely to be allowed by Israel
to return to their homes in Palestine. Hence, a "solution" has been
developed called "political return." Although there are variations on
this theme, political return would mean the political disfranchisement
of (depending upon whom one listens to) some or all Jordanians of
Palestinian origin.31 Majali's formulation sounds the mildest,
advocating the noninvolvement in Jordanian politics only of those
Palestinians who are unwilling to be politically Jordanian. More
extreme formulations call for mass political disfranchisement, but
with the possibility of continuing to own property.32 (This could be
merely a practical matter, since the mass expropriation of Palestinian
property in Jordan or the threat of such a development would likely
break the country economically, given the percentage of the wealth
held by Palestinians.) These Palestinians would then be given
Palestinian citizenship and would exercise their political rights in
Palestinian elections, across the river. Not surprisingly, it is a concept
that most Palestinians find outrageous.
As these sentiments have been voiced, the Jordanian leadership has
officially remained largely aloof, with the exception of the instances
noted below, which indicate that when it is felt such expression must
be suppressed, the powers that be are capable of doing so. The fact
that the leadership has chosen not to do so may be argued to derive
from either or both of the following considerations. The most positive
construction is that the greater freedom of expression guaranteed the
media since the beginning of the liberalization process enables the
newspapers and tabloids to be a more accurate reflection of popular
sentiment, whether the regime approves of or is pleased by such
expressions or not. The other, more cynical, explanation is that the
leadership has an interest in allowing the airing of such antagonisms
—in part to gauge the relative balance of forces, but, more
importantly, to keep Palestinians and Transjordanians at loggerheads.
This second argument is all the more convincing because of the
economic crisis through which the kingdom is passing, since
economic dissatisfaction has great potential to forge

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horizontal alliances.33 Keeping the two communities at arm's length
by encouraging the expression of dissatisfaction with "the other" and
encouraging (or not discouraging) the belief that "the other" is the
source of one's own economic woes undermines the possibilities of
class solidarities emerging, which might threaten the regime.
The Sensitivity of the Peace Process.
At the beginning of the Madrid process in 1991 the Jordanian
delegation served as an umbrella for the Palestinians, who had been
denied by the Israelis and the Americans the right to a separate
delegation. Although any foreign policy move in the Jordanian-
Palestinian relationship has domestic Jordanian ramifications, this
decision had more to do with foreign policy considerations: the king's
desire to be a central player and his concern to move toward peace,
given U.S. pressure in the postwar environment. Indeed, on just such
an issue, on which there is both strong nationalist and religious
sentiment, the regime risked triggering not only opposition but the
formation of horizontal alliances.
Early the previous summer, however, the king had chosen the
moderate Tahir al-Masri, a Palestinian of Jordanian origin, as prime
minister, the first prime minister of Palestinian origin in decades, and
effectively, the designate to take Jordan to peace talks. No
Transjordanian would have wanted to be in such a position. Indeed,
Foreign Minister (from the northern city of Salt)
resigned before the Madrid conference and was replaced by Kamel
Abu Jabir, recognized as a Transjordanian but also known for having
strong family ties to Palestine. Masri did take the country to Madrid,
but shortly thereafter he was forced out of office by a no-confidence
vote spear-headed by an alliance of Islamists and Arab nationalists
(who opposed Madrid) and representatives of the Transjordanian
bureaucratic elite, who, although not opposed in public to the peace
process, nonetheless opposed Masri for his liberalism and his
Palestinian origins.34 Masri was replaced by the king's cousin Zayd
bin Shakir, a conservative army man, deemed acceptable by both the
Transjordanian political elite and other social conservatives.
The peace talks proceeded, but as time passed and the Palestinian
wing of the delegation began, quite naturally, to operate as a separate
delegation, reports of lack of coordination were increasingly voiced
on both sides. The tensions were clear in Jordanian editorial
commentaries on the PLO's failure to coordinate sufficiently with
Jordan in the ongoing negotiations and in opinion pieces by
Transjordanian writers expressing concerns about the economic
impact of the peace process. The situation continued in this way until

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the mid-August 1993 announcement of the Oslo agreement between
the Israelis and the PLO. King Husayn was clearly angry about having
been kept in the dark regarding these sensitive negotiations, and
displeasure over this most extreme example of lack of coordination
began to be voiced regularly, on both an official and popular level. By
the end of the year, tensions were so high between Husayn and Arafat
that the king, in a January 1, 1994, speech to a group of military
officers in effect issued the PLO an ultimatum on coordination.
The 1993 Parliamentary Elections
The announcement of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement and the
subsequent signing of the Oslo Accords and the Declaration of
Principles came as Jordan was about to enter the official campaign
season for the 1993 parliamentary elections. Even before the signing
of the Oslo Accords, most observers seemed convinced that the
Jordanian parliament to be elected in November 1993 would likely be
the one to approve or reject a Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty. Rumors
had it that much, if not all, was ready on the Jordan-Israel track, and
simply awaited forward movement on the Israeli-Palestinian track.
As a result, the king saw the need to ensure that he would have a
parliament friendly to approving such a treaty. One important step in
that direction seemed to involve cutting the number of Islamists in
the parliament.
This was to be achieved through a change of the electoral law to a
one-person, one-vote system, which certainly simplified the process
but also put an end to the vote swapping that had aided the Islamists
in 1989. At the same time, this modification promised to strengthen
the tribal factor, thus ensuring a conservative, Transjordanian centrist
plurality in the next parliament. The change also, therefore, further
emphasized the Transjordanian presence in a system that was already
heavily weighted against the urban areas, where the greatest
concentrations of Palestinians are found. In addition to this concern
for Palestinians domestically, the PLO-Israeli agreement and its
provision for elections in the West Bank in the near future suddenly
raised again the issue of Palestinian dual loyalty and possible dual
voting. That is, some noted that Palestinians residing in the East Bank
might have the opportunity to vote in both the Jordanian and
Palestinian elections, or that these Palestinians would vote in Jordan,
determining the composition of its parliament for the next four years,
and then return to Palestine. As a result, the idea of postponing the
elections was floated and received substantial support, at least from
some Transjordanians. In the end, the elections were held as
originally scheduled. Nevertheless, Palestinian participation was not
as great as had

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cow. Russia's involvement in the ethnic conflicts of the "Near
Abroad" has come to signify its claim to the restoration of its great
power status and its right to be consulted regarding similar problems
elsewhere in the world. Hence, the end of the Cold War has not
produced a diffusion of power so much as a diffusion of interest. This
diffusion of interest, in the absence of any international consensus on
how to handle "volatile" (as opposed to stabilized or "contained")
ethnic conflict, will likely lead to a double standard, depending upon
where the conflict arises and whose vital interests are affected.
U.S. Policy: Global Hegemony and Regional Access
American policy seers did anticipate some problems in the
management of regional conflict, especially in the Middle East and
South Asia. It was hoped that those problems could be dealt with by
preventing the emergence of regional hegemons. It appears, therefore,
that the dominance of a regional power and the possible limitation of
American access to these regions were more feared than the
possibility of the disintegration of the order bequeathed by the
defunct bipolar system. It now turns out that some regional balances
of power in the emergent new order are threatened by the dogged
pursuit of an ethnic–or close religious cognate–principle of state
sovereignty. This is especially true in the Middle East and in adjacent
areas of East Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
Since the structure of the new global balance is still being debated,
the disturbance of the assumptions on which strategic proposals have
been based has thrown such planning into disarray.
Devising and Enforcing New Ethnic Contracts
The European powers working through NATO and the UN have been
able to gain only a tenuous control of the situation in former
Yugoslavia. While the powers remain formally committed to limiting
the use of violence in Bosnia and to establishing the rules for the new
ethnic contract devised at Dayton, the outbreak of new violence in
Kosovo threatens to undermine the fragile situations in Macedonia
and Albania. The imposition of this new ethnic contract, based on the
forced cohabitation of Muslims and Croats and the recognition of a
Bosnian Serb political entity with its own territorial enclave, is
unlikely to succeed without international enforcement. Nor can we
expect that the new Russia will subordinate its own short-term
interests in order to guarantee long-term ethnic contracts among its
former border republics and autonomous regions. There is little
reason to believe that the great powers are ready to guarantee a new
or even a renewed set of ethnic

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Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Hypothetically, a union of Syria and
Iraq could be dominated by either one, but realistically Iraq is likely
to dominate any union of the two that might occur in the near future
and is not imposed by non-Arab powers. The ethnic strategy of such a
united regime would depend upon whether the Iraqi elite or the
Syrian were dominant.
Thus, an Iraqi-dominated union of Syria and Iraq would probably
prefer to ally with Sunni Muslim elements in Syria against the pro-
Iranian and Alawi elites of Syria and Lebanon (and Iraq, of
course). An Iraqi-dominated union would inherit many of Syria's
grievances against Turkey, especially regarding boundaries and the
Euphrates water. But these disagreements could be counterbalanced
by a common interest in controlling the Kurds, complementary
interests in Iraq's petroleum exports, and, suspicion and hostility
toward Islamist movements, both Sunni and . An association with
such a strong Arab nation-state would appeal to both Jordan and to a
Palestinian state, but both would fear annexation, and the Islamist
opposition in both Jordan and Palestine would probably split over
whether a larger Arab political entity favored Islamist goals in the
long run. Radical Islamists have not, however, been known for their
extended patience, as we have seen in both Algeria and Egypt.
There is far less likelihood of a Syrian-dominated,
antifundamentalist, Ba'thi alliance of the two countries. Absent the
collapse of the Saddam regime and the partition of Iraq, there is little
probability that the Sunni elite of Iraq would submit to the dominance
of Damascus, especially under an Alawi-oriented leadership. Stranger
things have happened, of course, and the alternatives of an Islamist
threat or an anti-Arab threat might change a lot of minds.
The Sudan
Over the past forty years, since the Sudan opted for self-
determination and independence from Egypt, its relations with Egypt
have swung wildly, from good to bad to correct, but never indifferent.
Egypt's interest in the Sudan, apart from the presumed right of
conquest and resentment at Britain's usurpation of that right under the
Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1898–1956), is first the Nile waters
and second the security of Egypt's southern boundary. The Sudan's
interest in Egypt is the consequence of the extreme poverty of this
vast country and the ethnic diversity of its widely dispersed
population.
Though formally ruled by a small political and military elite
established in the capital, the Sudan's political center is hardly more
than an island of relative political civility in a great sea of ethnic
conflict, regional warfare, and tribal competition. When Sudan looks
to Egypt, it looks for economic

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originally been expected, in part because of the PLO-Israel
agreement, but also in part because of the extremely negative reaction
to their possible participation expressed by Transjordanian
nationalists during the postponement discussions.35 The elections
secured for the king a center-right plurality in parliament. In this
instance, the regime did not hesitate to emphasize and use the "tribal"
factor to ensure the acceptance of what would be the most important
foreign policy move in years—a Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty.
Jordan's Peace Treaty
Statements exacerbating intercommunal tensions—regarding the
impact of the Palestinian treaty on Jordan, Palestinian ingratitude,
and so on—were on the rise in the press beginning in late spring
1994. This continued and intensified until just before U.S. Secretary
of State Warren Christopher appeared in the kingdom just prior to the
historic Jordanian-Israeli bilateral meetings on Jordanian soil.
Suddenly, closing the ranks, portraying to the outside world an image
of a Jordanian domestic front united behind the king, became critical.
Using the opportunity offered by a request from members of
parliament to meet with the king to be briefed on developments in the
peace process, Husayn made a speech in which he first addressed the
question of intercommunal relations and stressed the importance of
national unity, making clear his and the government's position on
questions of expression of intercommunal tension:
Events have taken us unaware and we may all fail if we do not
maintain our national unity in this period more than in any time
past . . . I am not exaggerating when I say that I have suspicions that
there are those who are working, whether deliberately or not, toward
planting the seeds of discord (sedition) in this country among its
people . . . I have said it before and I will say it again: any person who
attempts to harm the national unity will be my enemy until Judgment
Day.36
A survey of the press following the king's speech reveals that the
inflammatory articles and topics of the previous period immediately
ceased. The respite, however, was brief. The Washington meeting
between the king and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin elicited the clear
and vocal wrath of the Islamist (as well as a number of independent
and leftist) deputies. Several Friday sermons by Palestinian Islamist
members of parliament not only condemned the peace process but
also raised intercommunal tensions, with Transjordanians taking
offense that Jordanians of Palestinian origin were criticizing the king
when the PLO had been the first to make its separate peace with Is--

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rael.37 Indeed, one had the sense that the negative Palestinian
reaction almost forced some Transjordanians into a stance supportive
of the king. It was clear that there was opposition to the new
agreement, opposition based on religion and on political ideology,
both of which have appeal across the communal divide. One way to
prevent the broad-based, cross-communal opposition from emerging
on political or religious grounds was to allow, if not encourage,
criticisms that focused on Palestinian rejection of Jordan's right to
have a treaty, even though the PLO had already taken the first step. At
the same time, the uproar over the article in the Washington
Declaration that gave the Hashemites a special role in the Islamic
holy places in Jerusalem first angered Palestinians, who saw this as a
potential infringement upon the sovereignty of a future Palestinian
political authority. The Palestinian reaction then triggered
Transjordanian anger and the intercommunal tensions were once
again back in the open and in the pages of the semiofficial press.
Conclusions
Jordan's population, Palestinian and Transjordanian alike, has been
experiencing three processes—political liberalization, economic
restructuring, and the arrival of peace with Israel—any one of which
would be sufficient to create unrest among a given citizenry. In the
case of Jordan, the danger is compounded because the perception of
who is likely to win and lose in the first two processes appears to
coincide with the intercommunal fault lines: economic and political
liberalization appear (at least to a significant core of Transjordanians)
further to empower the Palestinians at Transjordanian expense. As if
that were not enough, the peace process is forcing a clarification of
the political relationship between Palestinians and Jordanians in
general, and of the political identity of the two communities living in
the East Bank in particular. The ambiguity of the past may have at
times been uncomfortable, but the process of clarification has
unleashed forces that many in the regime and in the population at
large understood to potentially threaten the stability of the country in
this sensitive period.
What this chapter argues, however, is that the emergence of such
tensions or the intensification of their expression, while certainly
affected in part by developments beyond the control of the Jordanian
leadership, have nonetheless at times been shaped and used by that
same leadership. Rather than promoting the development of an
integrated citizenry equally endowed with (or deprived of) political
and economic rights, the Hashemites and those around them, it is
argued here, have at times exploited the existing divisions and
tensions between Transjordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian
origin.

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This strategy has generally been used to prevent the emergence of
horizontal solidarities that might threaten the regime or regime
policy, foreign or domestic. Keeping poor to middle class Palestinians
worried about such issues as political enfranchisement and their
political or economic futures in the country because they are of
Palestinian origin helps prevent the emergence of alliances along
class lines with Transjordanians who also see their economic futures
in jeopardy. This has certainly been the case during the better part of
the post-1989 period; when structural adjustment and austerity
policies have increasingly squeezed average Jordanians, whether
Palestinian or Transjordanian. Likewise, focusing on the differential
impact of the peace process (one community's gain is the other's loss)
obstructs the formation of a united front of opposition across
subethnic lines.
On the other hand, when the regime has been in need of bolstering its
position or presenting a united face to the outside world, expressions
of communal antagonism have been suppressed, and the regime may
even have actively promoted cross-communal solidarities. The
examples of the solidarity expressed during the Gulf crisis as well as
the regime's apparent suppression of expressions of anger and
antagonism just prior to Christopher's visit in June 1994 are relevant
examples here.
The question remains, however, as to exactly what mechanism(s) are
involved if indeed the leadership has deliberately engaged in
managing communal tensions for political ends. Attempts at quelling
such tensions are made very directly and openly, generally through
speeches by the king or the crown prince. Does the order come from
the king, or from the diwan, to allow restrictions on discussion of
intercommunal tensions to be lifted? Certainly the semiofficial press
has been used to criticize the PLO in the past. The answer is further
complicated when placed in the context of a relative liberalization of
the media that existed during much of this period. Were the media
simply allowing the expression of views that had been rejected for
publication before by the editors or the censors? Informal testimony
indicates that select groups of Transjordanians may be periodically
convened by top regime members (not necessarily members of the
royal family) and given what are in effect anti-Palestinian pep
talks.38 The clearest evidence that something has been at work
beyond free operation of the press and coincidence is the timing of
the exacerbation of tensions or their receding to the background. In
any case, if the past is any guide to the future, it suggests that,
whether directly or indirectly, the regime will continue to use this
form of the divide-and-rule strategy to prevent the development of a
broad-based, cross-communal opposition movement. Whether the
strategy will continue to be suc--

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cessful, however, remains an open question as political and economic
frustrations mount, as Jordanian society grows in complexity, and as
issues surrounding succession loom large.
Author's note: I gratefully acknowledge research support—from
Fulbright-Hays, the American Center for Oriental Research
(Amman)/USIA, CAORC, SSRC, and the School of International
Relations at USC—which has enabled me to make numerous trips to
Jordan for fieldwork since 1984. The question and issues surrounding
identity in this paper were first developed in my "Palestinians and
Jordanians: A Crisis of Identity," Journal of Palestine Studies 24, no.
4 (1995): 46–61. Parts of the first half of this chapter are based on
that discussion.
Notes
1. The term Transjordanian is used for purposes of precision. In
Arabic the terms used are urdunni, sharq urdunni (East Jordanian), or
urdunni urdunni (Jordanian Jordanian) as opposed to urdunni filastini
(Palestinian Jordanian). The traditional distinction made in English
between the terms East Banker (meaning Transjordanian) and West
Banker (meaning Palestinian) oversimplifies the distinction.
2. See, for example, speeches by King Husayn and Crown Prince
Hasan that dealt with the problem of intercommunal tensions in ,
June 16, 1994, and al-Dustur, July 10, 1994.
3. For some of the discussions that appeared during the flare-up in
early summer 1994, see Tahir , "Al-Ghayrah al-Qatilah" (Deadly
jealousy), al-Dustur, June 20, 1994; Hamadah , "Muntada al-
Shabab w-al-Watan al-Jamil" (The Youth Club and the beautiful
homeland), al-Dustur, June 20, 1994; Muhammad al-Subayhi, "
bayna al-Urdunniyyin w-al-Filastiniyyin" (On relations
between Jordanians and Palestinians) al-Dustur, July 11, 1994; and
the speech by Crown Prince Hasan to a meeting of the Council of
Higher Education, , June 21, 1994.
4. Laurie A. Brand, Palestinians in the Arab World: Institution
Building and the Search for State (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988), 9.
5. For details regarding the Syrians in Transjordan, see Mary Wilson,
King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 64–65, 72, 91.
6. Ibid., chap. 5, 6.
7. Perhaps the most extensive work done on this topic to date in
English is that of Linda Layne, Home and Homeland: The Dialogics
of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994). See also Schirin Fathi, Jordan—An Invented
Nation?: Tribe-State Dynamics and the Formation of National
Identity (Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 1994); and Andrew
Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral
History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1997). Layne in particular takes "the tribe" as the
most central feature in a Jordanian identity.
8. Layne does discuss the distinction between Bedouin and non-
Bedouin tribes (12–16). Nonetheless, later in the book she seems to
lose sight of the fact that the sense of

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is articulated by a broad range of groups. For example, on page
117 she talks about the Christians and the Saltis as a "non-tribal
constituency." Yet there are numerous East Bank Christian families
that certainly consider themselves and exercise the power of ,
e.g., Hamarneh, Halasa, , etc. In addition, there are Salti
Muslim , e.g., Nsour and Dabbas.
9. These young scholars include Mustafa Hamarneh, , Tariq
Tell, and Muhammad al-Masri. Hani Hourani, on the other hand, is
one of the very few writers of the previous generation to have written
serious, critical works about Jordanian society and the economy.
10. See Mustafa Hamarneh, "Social and Economic Transformation of
Trans-Jordan, 1921–1946" (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University,
1995); and Riccardo Bocco, "Etats et tribus bedouines en Jordanie—
Les Huwaytat: Territoire, changement économique, identité politique"
(States and Bedouin tribes in Jordan—the Huwaytat: Territory,
economic change, and political identity) (Thèse de doctorat d'État,
Institute d'Études Politiques, Paris, 1996).
11. See Arthur Day, East Bank/West Bank: Jordan and the Prospects
for Peace (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1986), 61.
12. The percentage of Palestinians among the East Bank population is
the subject of a great deal of speculation and misinformation.
Palestinians have traditionally argued for higher numbers (between
60 and 70 percent), while the Transjordanians have contended that the
numbers are smaller. The regime has, during periods of popularity of
the "Jordan is Palestine" slogan on the other side of the river, been
particularly sensitive about high estimates of Palestinian population.
It has hence encouraged the line that their numbers are as low as 35
percent. See Valerie Yorke, "Jordan Is Not Palestine: The
Demographic Factor," in Middle East International, April 16, 1988,
16–17. Informal evidence from surveys conducted by Jordan
University's Center for Strategic Studies and the New Jordan
Research Center tends to confirm that the balance is within a couple
of percentage points of 50–50 percent.
13. The classification system used here builds on that originally
presented by Peter Gubser in Jordan: Crossroads of Middle Eastern
Events (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983), 16–17.
14. See Laurie A. Brand, "Liberalization and Changing Political
Coalitions: The Bases of Jordan's 1990–91 Gulf Crisis Policy,"
Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 13, no. 4 (December
1991): 32–33.
15. See Bilal al-Hasan, al-Filastiniyyun f-il-Kuwayt (Palestinians in
Kuwait) (Beirut: PLO Research Center, 1974), 11 n.
16. From the author's discussion and interviews with Palestinians in
Kuwait in spring 1984 and fall 1986.
17. The word urdustiniyyah, a combination of urdunniyyah
(Jordanian) and filastiniyyah (Palestinian), has been used by some
from this group to define their identity.
18. From the author's personal experiences with Palestinians during
research trips to Kuwait in spring 1984 and fall 1986.
19. See Brand, 163–65.
20. Although the scholarly confirmation of such contacts did not
come until decades later (see, most prominently, Avi Shlaim,
Collusion across the Jordan [New York: Columbia, 1988]), there had
long been rumors about Abdallah's dealings with the Zionist
leadership, as

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well as stories about the role of Jordan's British-commanded Arab
Legion during the Palestine conflict.
21. I am grateful to Jamil Mahadin, a Transjordanian architect, for a
discussion in which the seeds of this idea were planted. Wilson
provides additional evidence for such an argument: "The designations
Palestinian and Transjordanian were discouraged, and finally
outlawed in official usage just before the 1950 elections, in an effort
to weld a single Jordanian identity" [emphasis added] (Wilson, 190).
22. See Pamela Ann Smith, Palestine and the Palestinians 1876–1983
(New York: St. Martin's, 1984), 75–111.
23. Fathi nicely summarizes the extent of Palestinian participation in
the Jordanian armed forces over the years (Fathi, Jordan—An
Invented Nation, 140.)
24. This is made clear in the path-breaking study conducted by the
Center for Strategic Studies, Jordan University, in late summer 1994,
" hawla al-Urdunniyyah al-Filastiniyyah" (Opinion
survey on Jordanian-Palestinian Relations) (Amman: Center for
Strategic Studies, February 1995). This survey confirmed many of the
impressions that people had had regarding the extent and sources of
intercommunal tension.
25. According to the kingdom's disengagement from the West Bank,
those Palestinians who resided in or whose normal residence was the
West Bank as of July 31, 1988, could continue to carry Jordanian
passports (renewable at two-year intervals) but were no longer
considered Jordanian citizens.
26. For further discussion of the role of economics in Jordanian
policy considerations, see Laurie A. Brand, Jordan's Inter-Arab
Relations: The Political Economy of Alliance Making (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995).
27. Until 1996, aside from party, there was no other
institutional manifestation of this position. However, in late summer
1996, a group representing some of the more extreme elements in this
current and calling itself al-Watani al-Urdunni was
established (although as of late spring 1997 it had not been officially
licensed), and began publishing a newspaper entitled Al-Mithaq. A
more "centrist" grouping was founded in February 1997 with the
merger of eight parties of clear Transjordanian coloring. While those
who call themselves Jordanian nationalists generally share a certain
anti-Palestinian sentiment, they diverge on other issues. Some have
developed into virulent anti-Hashemites, some continue to support
the monarchy, some have clear sympathies for Syria. They also seem
to weaken their own potential internal front by establishing criteria
for what constitutes "pure Transjordanianness."
28. "Fi Nadwa hawla Mafhum al-Wataniyyah al-Urdunniyyah
" (A discussion of the understanding of Jordanian
nationalism by parties), al-Dustur, May 11, 1993.
29. See the interview with that led to the incitement charges,
"Innahum " (They are playing with fire), Shihan, June 29,
1996.
30. See Jordan Times, May 24, 1993.
31. This position has been articulated by Jordanian scholar and
political activist Tareq Tell in several discussions and meetings in
which I have been present.
32. in Shihan, June 29, 1996.
33. After the government of Kabariti announced its
intention to lift the subsidy on bread in early July 1996, an alliance of
a variety of political figures and organi--

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zations from across the communal divide formed a front to work
against the price hike. Hence, the possibility, and therefore the threat,
of a broad front to address economic issues clearly exists.
34. See the series of articles in the Jordan Times by Lamis Andoni
evaluating the experience of the Masri government, November 23, 24,
27, 1991.
35. , "Sense of Alienation Casts Shadow on Palestinian-
Jordanians' Will to Vote," Jordan Times, November 8, 1993.
36. Al-Dustur, July 10, 1994.
37. See Ayman Safadi, "Brotherhood Insists on Addressing Politics,"
Jordan Times, August 2, 1994. Reportedly, one deputy issued a
religious ruling that legitimized "shedding the country's blood," while
another criticized the armed forces, a long-standing taboo.
38. This was reported to me by a member of the younger generation
of one of the prominent tribes.

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14
Hamas
Strategy and Tactics.
Muhammad Muslih
The eruption of the Intifadhah in December 1987 led to the formation
of a new political organization called Hamas—an acronym for the
Arabic Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, or the Islamic
Resistance Movement. The term Islamic was indicative of Hamas's
orientation. It also reflected the reassertion of political Islam as an
organized force in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas's main goal, as
articulated in its charter of August 18, 1988, was the uprooting of
Israel and its replacement with an Islamic state to be established over
the entire territory of Mandatory Palestine. With specific reference to
the status of Palestine, article 11 of the charter asserted that the land
is an "Islamic trust (waqf) upon all Muslim generations until the Day
of Resurrection" and that it is not right to give up any part of it.
The charter also rejected peace negotiations and initiatives and
considered territorial compromise as being equivalent to "giving up
part of the religious faith itself" (art. 13). Finally, the charter asserted
that jihad (struggle) is the only solution to the Palestine problem
because "when an enemy occupies part of the Muslim lands, jihad
becomes obligatory on every Muslim" (art. 16, sec. 5).
Although Hamas was born during the Intifadhah, its roots can be
traced to the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamic movement in
Gaza and the West Bank since the 1948 Palestine war. The Muslim
Brotherhood was founded in March 1928 in , Egypt. Its
founder, Hasan al-Banna, stressed the principle of an Islamic state.
He called for the prohibition of infidel (non-Muslim) political parties
but accepted interpretive ideological differences, provided that the
main underpinnings of Islam were maintained. Before his
assassination in 1949, al-Banna ran twice for elections in Egypt on
behalf of his party.1 Al-Banna's example was followed by
Brotherhood branches in Egypt and elsewhere. Members of these
branches have participated in

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elections and have been involved in setting up civil society organs
since the foundation of the movement. For example, the Brotherhood
in Jordan has been active as a political party since the fifties, with
some members occupying parliamentary seats as well as senior
positions in the Jordanian government.
The main goal of the Muslim Brotherhood was to establish an Islamic
society based on Islamic law ( ). The Brotherhood's involvement
in Palestine goes back to 1935, when , Hasan al-
Banna's brother, visited Palestine and met with al-Hajj Amin al-
Husayni, the leader of the Palestine national movement at the time.
The Brotherhood carried out propaganda activities on behalf of the
Palestine cause in Egypt. It also participated in the Palestine revolt of
1936–39. After World War II the Brotherhood became more actively
involved in the Palestinian cause, not only spreading the call to Islam
but also training Palestinian scouts, sending Egyptian volunteers,
helping Palestinian paramilitary organizations, and actively
participating in the Palestine war of 1948.2
All these activities enhanced the Brotherhood's popularity in
Palestine. By the end of the Mandate period there were about twenty-
five Brotherhood branches in Palestine with a membership of up to
20,000 activists and with all branches under the Cairo-based
leadership of the Brotherhood. Links between the Brotherhood and
the Palestinians were particularly strong in Gaza, a 140-square-mile
area of Palestine that adjoined Egypt and which passed to Egyptian
rule in 1949. For the Brotherhood in Gaza and the West Bank, the first
priority was reforming the Muslim individual. The group maintained
that true Islam, as a system of politics and social life, was the only
solution to the Palestine problem, as well as for other problems in
Arab societies.
In the pre-1967 period, the Brotherhood's relationship with the
Jordanian government was characterized by frequent disputes as well
as by cooperation and mutual support. For example, in 1954 the
Brotherhood demanded the ouster of British officers who served in
the Jordanian army. It also opposed the Jordanian government's
approval of the sale of alcoholic beverages. Yet in 1957, the
Brotherhood supported the Jordanian government during its
showdown with the pan-Arab forces that were inspired by Egypt's
president Gamal Abd al-Nasser. On balance, however, the
Brotherhood's relationship with the Jordanian government was
nonconfrontational and this encouraged the king to allow the
Brotherhood to organize and carry out its social activities without too
much government intervention.
By contrast, the relationship between the Brotherhood and the
revolutionary government of Naser was hostile. After the movement
opposed the 1954

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Evacuation Treaty between Britain and Egypt, the relationship
between the movement and the Egyptian government continued to
deteriorate. The turning point came afterward when the Egyptian
government accused the Brotherhood of conspiring to assassinate
Naser. Consequently, the movement was banned in Egypt as well as in
Gaza. The ban severely limited the movement's ability to organize.
Other factors also limited the ability of the Brotherhood to grow and
develop, most notably the ascendance of secular Arab nationalism
and the strong appeal of Arab unity and Arab socialism in the fifties
and sixties.
After the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967, the Brotherhood faced the
problems of how to preserve and expand its base in the face of the
emerging Palestinian resistance movement, whose dynamism in
confronting the Israeli occupation had far greater appeal for the
overwhelming majority of Palestinians. A few general observations
concerning the strategy of the Brotherhood during the first two
decades of Israeli occupation are worth underscoring for their bearing
on the growth of the movement.
Despite the fact that the Brotherhood had significant differences with
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), particularly differences
over the secular nationalism of the PLO and the PLO's search for a
diplomatic settlement with Israel, the leadership of the Brotherhood
refrained from declaring their movement as an alternative to the PLO.
This was the case because the Brotherhood was conscious that an
open challenge to the PLO was hopeless in view of the PLO's
dominant influence in Palestinian politics.
In its endeavor to expand its constituency, the Brotherhood adopted a
nonrevolutionary strategy that emphasized social reform as well as
religious and moral education as instruments in the fight against
Israeli occupation. As far as popular appeal was concerned, this
strategy put the Brotherhood at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the PLO,
which opted for a strategy of armed struggle.
Several developments reinforced the Brotherhood's standing in Gaza
and the West Bank in the 1970s. The first was the merging of the
Brotherhood societies in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan into a
single organization called the Muslim Brotherhood Society in Jordan
and Palestine. With the leadership based in Jordan, the Brotherhood
societies in the occupied Palestinian territories could now draw on
resources in Jordan, particularly financing, guidance, and support.
Another development was also internal. This was the establishment of
the Islamic Center in Gaza in 1973 under the leadership of Sheikh
Ahmad Yasin, a dynamic preacher who later was incarcerated by the
Israeli occupation authorities, but only after he was able to bring all
religious institutions in the occupied territories under the domination
of the Gaza-based center.

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resources and for political support for the Khartoum establishment.
From time to time, under Ghaddafi, Libya has attempted to compete
with Egypt in either undermining a government thought to be too
aloof or in supporting a Sudanese government believed to be willing
to cooperate. At times, Egypt and Libya seemed to be engaging in
their own battles through their Sudanese surrogates, thus exacerbating
the already endemic instability of that country.
There is little wonder, then, that some segments of the Khartoum
establishment should seek to exclude foreign influence, assert
administrative and political authority, banish any opposition groups
that might seek Egyptian or Libyan support, and mobilize the rest of
the population in a jihad against the unbelievers in the south who seek
to secede from the Sudanese Dar al-Islam. The alliance between
Turabi's Islamic movement and the military elite is not oblivious of
the self-contradiction between invoking an ethnic/nationalist
principle of sovereignty while suppressing the ethnic claims of the
southern peoples.
There are strong ethnic attachments between (at least southern)
Egyptians and northern Sudanese, but there are also important ethnic
and identitive differences. Ethnic differences and similarities are
strikingly relative in this particular relationship, because all those
concerned do recognize subtle differences of language, culture,
physical characteristics, historical background, social structure, and
sectarian affiliation. These differences are not so great as to preclude
the possible emergence of a common ethnic identity throughout the
Nile Valley. The fact is, however, that the ethnic differences and the
ethnic concerns of Egyptians and Sudanese have diverged rather than
converged over the past four decades.
At least some Sudanese have given up on the idea that the adoption of
a common Arab nationalist identity can overcome the problem of
ethnic diversity that besets their people. Political disunity is freely
blamed on ethnic fragmentation, and local ethnic identities are far
more deeply felt and are far more politically important than the
remote idea of a common Arab destiny in which the Sudanese, in any
case, would play a small and subordinate role. So it was not so much
the common ethnic identity of Egyptians and Sudanese that accounts
for the willingness of some leaders to opt for an Egyptian alliance. It
was far more likely the hope that Egypt would provide, directly or
indirectly, the material and administrative resources necessary to
overcome Sudan's fissiparous ethnic forces.
Not surprisingly, Egypt has come to realize that it does not have the
resources to sustain a Sudanese government–even a friendly and
responsive one. It is cheaper for Egypt to maintain correct relations
with a somewhat

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The third development was the 1978–79 Islamic revolution in Iran.
One result of this revolution was that more Palestinians were now
motivated by Islam, not only as a sociopolitical system but also as an
instrument of political action in the fight against Israeli occupation.
This made it easier for the Brotherhood to challenge the secularist
ideas of the PLO and proceed with its organizing activities among the
Palestinians in the occupied territories. In the meantime, the Israeli
authorities remained mute with respect to the Brotherhood, allowing
it to gain more access to the Palestinian population through building
mosques, schools, clinics, and even to increase its control over the
Islamic waqf (religious endowments), an institution which in Gaza
alone held about two thousand acres of agricultural land in addition to
hundreds of residential and commercial buildings. Also in the period
between 1967 and 1987 the number of mosques in Gaza rose from
200 to 600 and in the West Bank from 400 to 750.3 All this led some
people to believe that Israel was deliberately encouraging the
Brotherhood to grow in order to undermine the more activist PLO and
its supporters in the occupied territories. Israel's systematic policy of
repressing PLO activists helped reinforce this belief.
Although the Brotherhood's expanding network of social services
allowed it to grow and recruit more followers, its continued
adherence to a policy of no military engagement with the Israeli
occupation led to dissatisfaction within its own ranks. One result of
the dissatisfaction came in the early 1980s when Fathi al-Shiqaqi and
Awda, two Palestinians who grew up in Gaza refugee
camps, broke away from the Brotherhood and established the Islamic
Jihad, an organization that was deeply influenced by the ideology of
Ayatollah Khomeini and that adopted armed struggle as a principal
instrument of political action.
By 1987, the year that witnessed the explosion of the Intifadhah
(uprising) against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, a
debate was going on within the Brotherhood over the future strategy
of the movement in the face of a status quo characterized by three
things: a relentless process of Israeli colonization; the impotence of
Arab governments in the face of a hegemonic Israel; and the PLO's
failure to get any concessions from Israel, even though it did probe
the outermost circumference of concessions to Tel Aviv after the 1982
Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Two trends inside the Brotherhood
emerged during the debate: a reactive and a proactive trend.
Representatives of the proactive trend, also known in Arabic as
tajdidi (renewal trend), argued that the Brotherhood should shed its
image of passivity by revolutionizing (tathwir) the masses.
To achieve this goal, a two-pronged strategy was suggested: (1) The
expan--

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sion of the core organizational units or usar (families) of the
movement by including in the upper echelons of the hierarchy
representatives of partisan groups (al-Ansar), supporting groups (
), and the Islamic student blocs (al-kutal al-tullabiyya);
(2) The resort to strikes, demonstrations, and military struggle
against Israeli occupation. The most passionate advocate of this
strategy was Sheikh Yasin, who was supported by younger members
of the Brotherhood. By contrast, those advocating a reactive or
"classical" policy (siyasa klasikiyya) believed that the Brotherhood
should refrain from any bold initiatives because the time was not yet
ripe for a confrontation with the forces of occupation. Advocates of
this view, most of whom belonged to the older generation of
Brotherhood leaders, stressed that the best strategy was to continue
educating the Muslim generation in preparation for armed jihad.4
Eventually, the proactive group decided to create a separate
organization from within the ranks of the Brotherhood. This
organization was to act as a military wing of the Brotherhood. From
their perspective, such a step had two advantages: it would enable the
Brotherhood to take part in the Intifadhah while sparing the
movement the retribution of Israel. It was in these circumstances that
Hamas emerged toward the end of 1987. Its effective leadership
consisted of a few men, most notably Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, the
founder of the Islamic Center; Dr. , a physician
living in Khan Yunis; and Dr. Ibrahim al-Yazuri, a pharmacist living
in Gaza city. All leaders were based in the Gaza Strip, although they
had connections with other activists in the West Bank and in Jordan.
The fact that Gaza was the base of Hamas was very much the product
of two related factors: (1) the more disruptive impact of Israeli
occupation on Gaza created an environment more receptive to the
activism of Hamas; and (2) Gaza's lower status, in comparison with
the West Bank, in spite of its political activism and its large
population (about 800,000), in the overall Palestinian political
equation during the Israeli occupation. Gazan political activists not
only resented the lower status of their city, but they also sensed that
in order for them to have a say in Palestinian politics they should be
in control of their own political organizations. Despite the hidden
tension between Gaza and the West Bank, however, the question of
getting rid of Israeli occupation prevented a rupture in nationalist
ranks.
The actual courses pursued by Hamas since its establishment fall into
two broad stages: from late 1987 to the fall of 1993 Hamas tried to
make a number of clear policy decisions with respect to the
Intifadhah, the PLO, the peace process, and other local and regional
developments; from the fall of

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1993 to the present, it tried to muddle through the challenges of Oslo,
or the Declaration of Principles (DOP) signed by Israel and the PLO
in September of 1993.
Stage I
This stage was marked by three developments: the explosion of the
Intifadhah, the Gulf crisis and war of 1990 and 1991, and the
launching of the Arab-Israeli peace process in the fall of 1991. In
response to the Intifadhah, Hamas pursued a three-pronged strategy:
it participated in the Intifadhah, affiliated itself with the Unified
National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) without compromising
its organizational independence, and attempted to consolidate and
expand the network of civil associations under its control. A key
objective behind this strategy was to compete with the PLO from a
position of strength. By 1993, Hamas scored an appreciable measure
of success in trying to achieve these goals.
First, the popularity of Hamas increased. This was evident in three
areas: the rising number of supporters who joined not only Hamas but
also its mother organization, the Muslim Brotherhood; Hamas's
ability to achieve some important gains in union and student council
elections in Gaza and the West Bank, particularly the Bir Zeit
university student council elections of November 1993; and Hamas's
success in introducing an Islamic agenda in the social and cultural
spheres such as women's behavior, women's dress code, and the
inculcation of Islamic values through Hamas-run schools, mosques,
and religious study circles.
With respect to the Gulf, events in this region following Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein's decision to invade Kuwait in August
1990 presented Hamas with one of its most difficult challenges. As
one observer suggested: "One could characterize Hamas's position as
one of embarrassment: its leadership was caught between public
opinion favorable to Saddam Hussein, on the one hand, and its
financial dependence on the Gulf states, on the other."5
Although on the ideological level Hamas portrayed the Gulf crisis as
another episode in the fight between Islam and a U.S.-led crusade,
and although it stressed the need to solve the crisis within the
framework of the "Arab family," on the practical level Hamas's
position was far from clear. On the one hand, communiqués issued by
Hamas expressed compassion for the Kuwaitis, but, on the other
hand, the same communiqués were ambiguous with respect to the
question of Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.
The clearest statement on the future of Kuwait came in Hamas's
communiqué number 63 of August 29, 1990, which simply stressed
the "right of

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the people of Kuwait to determine the future of their country."
However, when the U.S.-led alliance launched war against Iraq in
mid-January 1991, Hamas expressed its sympathy for Iraq without
aligning itself with Saddam or endorsing Iraqi actions in Kuwait. The
Hamas position here was not so much against Kuwaiti independence
as it was against the U.S.-led intervention, largely because of
Washington's pro-Israel's policies since the 1948 Palestine war.
In general, as far as the Gulf crisis was concerned, Hamas managed
not to alienate popular Palestinian support or lose the goodwill of the
Arab governments of the Gulf. This helped Hamas score a measure of
success in its competition with the PLO, which aligned itself with
Saddam, thus weakening its standing internationally and on the Arab
level. Several Gulf governments, particularly the government of
Saudi Arabia, quietly welcomed the position of Hamas during the
Gulf crisis because they believed it would allow them to manipulate
intra-Palestinian differences.
The peace process showed more than anything else Hamas's desire to
maintain an independent line for ideological as well as for power
politics considerations. To understand Hamas's strategy in this regard,
it is necessary to examine Palestinian political trends as they
interacted on the eve of the holding of the Madrid peace conference
in October 1991. The Gulf War and its aftermath catalyzed a heated
debate among the Palestinians that resulted in loud calls for political
and organizational changes within the PLO. Along with this, the
PLO's grip on Palestinian politics began to loosen. Two schools of
thought emerged: one that represented old Palestinian thinking and
one that presented new thinking. The central concerns of the two
schools were (1) the Palestinian options after the war, (2) the strategy
that should be adopted toward a Middle East peace conference, and
(3) the issue of Palestinian participation in the conference.
The Old School of Thinking
Those who belonged to the old school argued that, in view of its weak
position after the Gulf War, the PLO should refrain from trying to
take any bold initiatives. Rather, it should adopt a wait-and-see
attitude and simply react to American and other initiatives in the
area. To strengthen its negotiating position in any American-
sponsored peace conference, advocates of this approach argued that
the PLO should restore its prewar Arab alliances and reinvigorate its
1988 peace strategy. This strategy was based on the recognition of
Israel, the acceptance of Security Council Resolution 242, and the
creation of a Palestinian state confederated with Jordan and confined
to the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem.

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This approach was also called by its sponsors the policy of
"reconciliation before initiation," that is the policy of reestablishing
good relations with the governments of Egypt and the Gulf before
taking new initiatives with respect to the peace process. Among the
chief advocates of this approach were Yasir Arafat, PLO Executive
Committee members Mahmud (Abu Mazin), Yasir ,
Sulayman al-Najjab, and Faruq al-Qaddumi. The advocacy of this
policy by Arafat and his supporters stemmed from their belief that,
without Arab support, any Palestinian initiative would be doomed to
failure. They also believed that reconciliation with the Arab
governments would return the PLO and the Palestinian cause to the
mainstream of Arab and international politics.
Three representative examples of this policy can be provided. One
instance occurred in April 1991, when al-Tayyib , the
Palestinian ambassador in Amman and a member of the PLO Central
Council, announced that the PLO Executive Committee would issue a
White Book that would elucidate the PLO position and its mediatory
efforts during the Gulf crisis. Although the proposal may have been
prompted in part by a desire to refurbish the image of the PLO in
Egypt and the Gulf countries, it was also meant to be a token of the
PLO's interest in reconciliation with these countries. A similar
purpose may be seen in such initiatives as Arafat's numerous calls,
both publicly and through quiet diplomacy, for reconstructing what he
called the "minimum of Arab unity" and for drafting an Arab
"declaration of principles."
Another example of the PLO's efforts to seek reconciliation was the
organization's stepped-up effort to rebuild its bridges with Egypt and
patch up its old differences with Syria. With regard to Egypt, the PLO
efforts took the form of meetings of consultation and coordination on
the Middle East peace conference between senior Egyptian and PLO
officials, including meetings between Egyptian Foreign Minister
and PLO Executive Committee member Mahmud .
Thanks to the mediation efforts of the Libyan leader
, the PLO attempts culminated in the summit meeting between Arafat
and Mubarak in Banghazi, Libya, in August 1991. The meeting had
the dual purpose of returning the Egyptian-Palestinian relationship to
where it was before the Gulf crisis and restoring the Arab credentials
of the PLO by using Egypt as a gate through which to return to the
fold of the Arab states of the Gulf. In a way, Arafat was implicitly
asking Mubarak to repay an old favor that he did for him when he
made a historic visit to Egypt in December 1983, following the
Syrian-supported rebellion against Arafat in Tripoli, Lebanon. The
visit helped end Egypt's iso--

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lation and paved the way for its reintegration into the Arab and
Islamic worlds after long being condemned for signing a separate
peace agreement with Israel.
As for Syria, the PLO's attempt to improve relations with President
Hafiz al-Assad after many years of feuding, was motivated by three
objectives: (1) to use Damascus as a channel to the Gulf states; (2) to
thwart attempts by the United States and the governments of the Gulf
aimed at excluding the PLO from the peace process; and (3) to
coordinate with Syria a common stand in advance of the planned
Middle East peace conference.
It was within this context, therefore, that high-level Palestinian
delegations, led by Faruq Qaddumi, visited Damascus. Some
observers have pointed out that it was the Syrian government and not
the PLO which took the initiative in starting this process. According
to this view, the Syrian government was prompted by the need to
regain some of the credibility it had lost in the eyes of its people
because it had joined the U.S.-led anti-Iraq coalition, and by an ever-
present desire to control the PLO. The possibility of doing that
seemed more realistic in view of the fact that Arafat and the PLO
were weakened after the Iraqi defeat.
Whatever the case may be, the Syrian government and the PLO have
been drawn closer together by a common interest in reaching areas of
mutual understanding on the strategic level with regard to the peace
conference. The same applied to Jordan. The three parties wanted to
make sure that no Arab state would reach a separate peace with Israel,
or reach an agreement with the Jewish state regarding functional
areas, before Israel committed itself to withdraw from Arab land on
all fronts. Reports indicated at the time that an agreement concerning
this matter was reached during an Arab meeting held in Damascus
during the third week of October 1991. There was another reason
behind the rapprochement between Syria and the PLO. Assad needed
a fig leaf for his acceptance of peace talks with Israel, and Arafat
needed Syria to counter attempts to marginalize the PLO.
A third instance indicating PLO interest in reconciliation was the
more conciliatory PLO attitude toward a regional peace conference
and toward the conditions laid by the United States and Israel. Since
April 1991, the PLO has allowed a Palestinian delegation from the
occupied territories to meet with Secretary of State James Baker
several times, despite the fact that Baker was publicly opposed to a
Palestinian state and to any role for the PLO. In April 1991, the
Palestine Central Council recommended the "opening of new
horizons" for restoring the dialogue with the United States that was
suspended earlier. Also in June of the same year Arafat accepted
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posals regarding the participation of Palestinians from the occupied
territories in a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, thus dropping
his insistence on independent Palestinian representation. Almost
three months later the Palestine National Council (PNC), the
Palestinian parliament in exile, authorized Palestinian participation in
the peace conference but stopped short of sanctioning Palestinian
participation on the basis of Israel's conditions, which were that (1)
any Palestinian delegation to the peace process must be formed by
non-PLO Palestinians from the occupied territories; (2) no member of
the delegation will have any direct connection with East Jerusalem;
and (3) all members should have no formal links with the PLO.
The New School of Thinking
The trend that this school represented can be divided into two broad
perspectives, one secular and one Islamist. Representatives of the
secular perspective included Palestinian intellectuals, dissident Fatah
members, and leftist Palestinian groups. The Islamist perspective was
represented by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Advocates of the two perspectives differed in size, strength,
affiliation, as well as in political outlook and programs. Moreover,
they did not constitute a single coalition or organized group. All
operated independently of one another. Nevertheless, they did share
the belief in the need to energize the PLO, through the charting of
new directions and the introduction of political and organizational
changes.
A number of Palestinian intellectuals and PLO officials were strong
advocates of this perspective. Many intellectuals criticized the PLO
position on the Gulf crisis calling on the organization to come out
"publicly, repeatedly, and forcefully against the invasion of Kuwait
and in favor of Iraqi withdrawal."6 Others, while not supportive of
the PLO's policy, were more interested in proposing alternative
approaches in an attempt to improve the Palestinian situation. For
some, the political and psychological disarray created by the Gulf
War necessitated a change in Palestinian politics. A key assumption
of this argument was that the PLO pursuit, since 1974, of a two-state
solution through a peace strategy based on Arab support was no
longer relevant. According to this perspective, the Palestinians should
realize that the Arab governments are ineffectual and that the PLO
should focus on how the United States could help promote a lasting
peace.
In this regard, some Palestinians proposed a new negotiating strategy
based on President Bush's own principles of fairness and the
exchange of territory for peace. Others maintained that the
Palestinians should obtain clarifica--

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tions regarding the U.S. interpretation of resolution 242 and a
guarantee that a Middle East peace conference will produce a
comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli settlement. They
also stressed the need for written U.S. assurances that during the
transitional phase Israeli settlement activity in Gaza and the West
Bank would cease and sovereignty over land, water, and other
resources would be in Palestinian hands. As a condition for
participation in a peace conference, official Palestinian figures,
including Faysal al-Husayni and Hanan , have repeatedly and
consistently demanded such guarantees during their discussions with
Secretary of State James Baker in the summer of 1991.
As far as Palestinian representation was concerned, Palestinian
intellectuals wanted the PLO to play a role in selecting the
Palestinian delegation. However, as it became clear that the United
States and Israel were adamant in their rejection of such a role, many
of them came to the conclusion that substance was more important
than procedure and that the Palestinians should not rock the boat,
even if that meant accepting a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation
without the participation of the PLO. Their position on this issue was
harmonious with that of senior Fatah leaders, like Mahmoud ,
who argued that the PLO should allow the Palestinians in the
occupied territories to negotiate a settlement with Israel.
Palestinian political activists, both inside and outside the occupied
territories, also joined the debate over alternatives. Some of them
even initiated new and bold proposals. Two proposals stood out:
internal reform and marhaliyyah, or the concept of stages in
establishing a Palestinian state. While Palestinians of all political
persuasions always have recognized the need for political reform, this
time the call was voiced publicly both inside and outside the PLO.
The ideas of and Khalid al-Hasan deserve special mention.
was a senior Fatah activist in the West Bank. The Israeli
occupation authorities jailed him at one point for his political
activities. He was released from prison on January 24, 1991,
whereupon he started working for the pro-Fatah Jerusalem Arabic
daily al-Fajr.
In his articles, proposed that PLO institutions should include
Palestinians from the occupied territories, in addition to those outside
them. To achieve this, suggested the dissolution of the PNC,
the holding of elections under international supervision in order to
pick new PNC delegates, and the formulation of a provisional
government or government in exile with equality in representation
between Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories. A
similar sentiment was expressed by the Unified Leadership of the
Intifadhah when it called for setting up a new PNC in order to widen

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the basis of participation. Moreover, the thrust of proposals
was well received by a number of prominent Palestinians living under
Israeli occupation, including Faysal al-Husayni, Hanna Siniora, and
Musa al-Budayri. A parallel call for organizational reform was made
by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and
the Palestinian Corrective Movement, an anti-Arafat group based in
Damascus.
Khalid al-Hasan, a founder of Fatah and the head of the Foreign
Affairs Committee of the PNC, put forward ideas similar to those of
. His ideas need to be considered not simply because of his
senior position and intimate connections with the Gulf governments,
but also because they had the support of an important segment of
Palestinian opinion. Besides calling for democratization and for
putting an end to what he called the "tyrannical line of Arafat," al-
Hasan strongly recommended that the Palestinians do two things:
form a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation and set up a provisional
government. An independent Palestinian delegation, al-Hasan argued,
would be incapable of achieving results in bilateral negotiations, even
if it was accepted by Israel, because of four factors. First, the
diplomatic balance would be overwhelmingly against it; second,
resolution 242 does not apply to the PLO but to the actual occupied
territory and, by implication, to Jordan; third, if Jordan attended the
conference alone—and it was willing to do that if it had to—it would
discuss only Jordan and not Palestine; fourth, the maximum
negotiating position for an independent delegation would be self-rule,
while for a joint delegation it would be the exchange of land for
peace, which means the acquisition of land by the Palestinians.
With regard to the provisional government, al-Hasan proposed that it
be headed by either Walid al-Khalidi or Anis al-Qasim. The rationale
behind forming such a government was to end the Arab and
international isolation imposed on the PLO as a result of Arafat's pro-
Saddam position during the Gulf crisis. In making these proposals,
Khalid al-Hasan may have been motivated by a desire to challenge
Arafat while Arafat was in a position of weakness. But regardless of
his motive, his ideas on a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation
found support within the PLO and in the occupied territories.
Equally significant was the idea of marhaliyyah. Since 1974 the
Palestinians have demanded the establishment of a Palestinian state,
confederated with Jordan, in the West Bank and Gaza. They rejected
the idea of autonomy proposed in the Camp David Accords. Around
March 1991, the situation started to change. For the first time, some
Palestinians in the occupied territories, notably , publicly
advocated the idea of an interim phase. They dropped the word
autonomy because it was associated with the restrictive

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interpretation of the Likud government, which insisted that autonomy
would apply to people but not to territory. Instead, and a few
others used the term self-government, or self-governing
arrangements, a phrase reportedly introduced by Baker and used in
his letter(s) of assurances to the Palestinians. Although the concept of
marhaliyyah stirred a heated debate among the Palestinians, more and
more people, including senior PLO officials, came to the conclusion
that it was in the interest of the Palestinians to accept the idea of an
interim phase.
In short, the diminished regional stature of the PLO and the galloping
pace of Israeli settlement activities have converged to make
marhaliyyah a painful but acceptable option for many Palestinians,
including many in the PLO leadership. Indeed, in April 1991 the
Palestinian delegation that was negotiating with Baker was authorized
by the PLO to accept the idea of an interim phase without American
or Israeli guarantees that the proposed phase would be followed by an
independent Palestinian state.
The two major groups that championed the Islamist perspective were
Hamas and Islamic Jihad. As for Hamas, the launching of the peace
process brought with it opportunities and challenges. Hamas's
response to the process was to a great degree shaped by three factors:
(1) Hamas's desire to promote its political agenda as outlined in its
charter; (2) its desire to cultivate its connections inside and outside
the occupied territories; and (3) its determination to achieve political
ascendancy in the occupied territories at the expense of the PLO. The
way in which these goals were pursued had a formative influence on
subsequent Hamas positions and behavior in the sphere of
organization and policymaking.
In its endeavor to achieve these goals, Hamas based its drive on the
ontological-theoretical framework of analysis outlined in its charter
of 1988. In making the liberation of Palestine in its entirety—"from
the (Jordan) river to the Sea"—its top priority, Hamas hoped to
undermine the more pragmatic strategy of the PLO which was willing
to accept a state in Gaza and the West Bank as a permanent settlement
for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whether it believed it could
achieve this goal or not, Hamas was acutely aware of the imperative
to avoid a confrontation with a more powerful PLO that drew
considerable support inside and outside the occupied territories. At
the same time, however, Hamas sought to strengthen its status vis-à-
vis the PLO. On the political level, it strove to do this by expanding
its network of civil society organs and by calling for the formation of
a new PNC through UN-sponsored elections in the occupied
territories.
If elections cannot be held, argued Hamas, then the movement's
mem--

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hostile Sudanese regime, so long as it does not threaten to decrease
Egypt's share of the Nile. Moreover, an embattled Sudanese
government, which fails to end the civil war in the south and which
expends its meager wealth on military hardware, is by definition a
government that will fail to develop the Sudanese economy. Such a
government will not be able to produce the conditions that will
require a larger share of the Nile. Only an attempt at riverine
blackmail by Sudan could then induce Egypt to intervene militarily or
to adopt an ideological strategy that insists on the common ethnicity
of Egyptians and Sudanese. Even then, Khartoum has already
preempted the well-worn ethnic card by asserting a much broader
common Islamic identity both transcending the Nilotic affinity and
inculpating the Egyptian government for being irreligious. At the
same time, Sudan has greatly diminished the probability of Egyptian
military assistance in case of increasingly serious threats from
Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Uganda.
The essence of the ethnic strategy of the present Sudanese
government is that it seeks to monopolize domestic political power
while denying the legitimacy of ethnic claims and isolating domestic
ethnic groups from all foreign sources of support. The very limited
success that government has enjoyed is more the consequence of the
weakness of its neighbors and the high cost of effective intervention
in such a large and underdeveloped country than it is the consequence
of its ability to achieve its strategic goals. The Islamic strategy
identified with Turabi has thrown Egypt on the defensive, just as
American sanctions have weakened Ghaddafi, but Sudan's southern
neighbors are becoming more emboldened and more active.
Equatorial Sudan is, like Kurdistan, another area of ethnic conflict
that is at least as much an international as a national problem. The
international aspects derive not only from great power concern for the
non-Muslims in the south, and not only from the interventions by
Egypt and Libya, but also from the competition among Sudan,
Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea for influence in the area. The Sudanese
hard line, which is also an Islamist line in the south, is at least partly
based on the apprehension that a truly autonomous south might either
secede or unite with one or more of these equatorial countries. And
like the Kurdish area, the state of warlike anarchy that exists in the
midst of such military weakness, political ineptitude, and abject
poverty has perpetuated a stalemate or a state of stable disorder.
It is difficult to predict which of the several players involved will be
the first to gain an advantage and force a resolution. It is most likely
that some form of international intervention will be needed to impose
a resolution acceptable to world opinion. But until clear and
predictable (that is, guaran--

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bers should make up to 40 percent of the 490 members of the PNC.
While these demands reflected an interest in representative
institutions, the more immediate and compelling objectives were
more complex than that. Two motivating factors can be cited. First,
the call for elections can be interpreted as signaling the start of a
more assertive challenge to the PLO for the control of the Palestinian
resistance movement. Based on purely rational calculations, the
Hamas leadership might have estimated that the cards were now
stacked against the Arafat leadership because it lost much of its Arab
and international support owing to its pro-Saddam position. Second,
by demanding elections, Hamas may have been motivated by a belief
that it stood a good chance of winning following the victory its
candidates had scored in the Hebron Chamber of Commerce elections
of June 1991. Control of the PNC, or even a significant number of
seats in that body, promised to offer Hamas a suitable arena in which
to play out its political ambitions and help shape the PLO's principles
and strategy.
The high point of Hamas's activism came when it called for the
escalation of the Intifadhah. This meant activating armed struggle
and resorting to more activist measures against Israeli occupation,
such as more strikes and the boycott of Israeli products. The
escalation proposal underscored the mood of the constituency of
Hamas. Born and raised in the oppressive climate of Israeli
occupation, and frustrated with a stagnant political process, they
concluded that militant activism was the only viable alternative.
Their reasoning was that ending the occupation through armed
struggle had to come before social and religious reform. For Hamas's
activists, the Intifadhah and armed action were the only viable
alternatives. In brief, Hamas believed that the PLO's policy of
dialogue and nonviolent resistance was futile. The call to escalate the
Intifadhah may also be seen as a step aimed at projecting the image
of a movement whose legitimacy rested on superior performance and
an uncompromising nationalist ideology.
Thus in this stage, Hamas grew in membership. It also succeeded in
adopting a high profile at a high level of politics. In the process, it
gained political legitimacy and enhanced its position through its
adoption of an activist line and its expansion of the network of social
services in the occupied Palestinian territories. On the social level,
Hamas also scored an appreciable degree of success in enforcing the
Islamic social code.
But as Hamas continued to adopt a radical position toward the peace
process, its strategy automatically ran into problems. Both the
majority of Palestinians in the occupied territories and the PLO opted
for a policy of peaceful accommodation with Israel. This was evident
in the political program of the

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September 1991 twentieth PNC, which endorsed the following: (1)
Palestinian participation on the basis of Security Council Resolution
242 in the United States-Soviet–sponsored regional conference
involving Israel and the Arab states; (2) acquiescence to Israel's
demand that the PLO should not participate directly and visibly in the
peace conference; (3) Palestinian acceptance of the idea of an interim
phase before statehood.
Stage II
With the signing of the DOP, Hamas found itself facing new
challenges. The movement was against Oslo. Yet public support for
Oslo among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank was constantly
high, ranging between 70 to 80 percent from September 1993, the
date of the signing of the agreement, to the early part of 1997.
Hamas's response to Oslo passed through four phases.
In the first phase (fall 1993–spring 1995), Hamas followed a strategy
that took three forms. The first form was illustrated in Hamas's
continued pursuit of its policy of enhancing its position in Palestinian
civil society. It gained ground in physicians' and engineers' syndicates
in Gaza, Ramallah, and other towns in the occupied Palestinian
territories. This achievement was significant because the syndicates
were a bastion of Fatah in the 1970s and 1980s. To gain ground,
Hamas showed pragmatism and flexibility. For example, in the Bir
Zeit University student council elections, Hamas formed a coalition
with political groups whose ideology was diametrically opposed to
that of Hamas, namely the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (DFLP). The Hamas-leftist coalition won 52 percent of the
vote, securing all nine of the council seats, of which Hamas took four.
Some of Fatah's supporters at the Bir Zeit University literally cried
when they learned about the result of the elections. The loss was a
major challenge to Arafat, not only because it came two months after
the DOP, but also because Bir Zeit University traditionally had been a
Fatah stronghold. Hamas's alliance with the left did not mean that the
movement has traveled leftward along the political spectrum. It
rather meant that Hamas was willing to put power politics ahead of
ideology in its attempt to weaken Arafat and the forces that supported
the DOP.
The second form of Hamas's strategy was manifested in the search for
more direct means with which to undermine the DOP. Here the
contest was between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). In
this contest, Hamas stood between two options. One was to stage a
rebellion against Arafat, but this was dismissed for two reasons: first,
the balance of power was decisively in favor

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of Arafat and, second, any confrontation with Arafat would lead to a
Palestinian civil war. Hamas was by no means interested in starting
such a war. The second option available to Hamas during this phase
was to put obstacles in the way of implementing Oslo. This was the
option that Hamas chose. Its principal instrument of action was acts
of violence against Israeli targets.
Hamas's real objective was to weaken the Labor-led government of
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin through dramatic acts of violence in
the hope that the weakening of Rabin would lead to the weakening of
Arafat and therefore to the disruption of the Oslo process. However,
in the larger scheme of its attempt to undermine Oslo, Hamas
consciously avoided attacks against Israelis in the self-rule areas that
came under Arafat's control after the signing of Oslo in September
1993. Hamas realized that waging war against Israel from the self-
rule areas would lead to a confrontation with the Palestinian
Authority (PA), and this was something for which Hamas was not
prepared.
In the second phase, which started in the summer of 1995, Hamas
escalated its attacks against Israeli targets both inside Israel and in
the Palestinian areas under Israeli control. Two such attacks stand out
not only because of their indiscriminate violence, but also because of
their adverse effects on the Palestinians and on the relations between
Israel and the PA. The first attack took place on July 24, 1995, near
Tel Aviv, when a suicide bomber killed 5 Israelis and injured 33
others. This marked the first Hamas attack inside Israel since January
1995. In the second attack, which took place on August 21, 1995, a
Palestinian detonated a suicide bomb on an Israeli bus in Jerusalem,
killing himself, 1 American, 3 others, and wounding 106 individuals.
Hamas claimed responsibility for both attacks, saying that its primary
aim was to bring down the Rabin government. In response, Rabin
suspended the talks with the PA and imposed a three-day closure on
Gaza and the West Bank. Throughout Jerusalem, thousands of right-
wing Jewish demonstrators calling for Rabin's resignation clashed
with the Israeli police. In light of Hamas's claim of responsibility for
the two attacks, the PA halted talks with the group and arrested a
number of Hamas activists, including and Rashid al-
Khatib.
Hamas attacks had serious repercussions. They put Arafat on the
defensive vis-à-vis Israel, which accused him of laxity in fighting
terrorism, but equally important they caused resentment and
disapproval among the vast majority (close to 78 percent) of
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.7 This last point needs
emphasis for two reasons. First, it showed widespread support for the
peace process among the Palestinians. Second, it also demonstrates
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Hamas attacks, particularly Israeli closures which wreaked havoc on
the social and economic life of the Palestinians.
Equally significant was the impact of the attacks on Hamas itself, as
well as on its relations with the PA. Coming under intense pressure
from Israel, but at the same time exploiting the widespread public
disapproval of Hamas activities, Arafat was successful in engineering
splits within Hamas. A number of Hamas activists started to break
away from the organization, either because Arafat courted them or
because the attacks and their impact had alienated them. In August
1995, a newly formed Hamas group, called the Islamic National Path
Movement, emerged. This group, funded by the PA, accepted Oslo as
a fait accompli and called on Hamas to end its attacks. This was the
seventeenth Palestinian political grouping to be formed in 1995
following agreement between Israel and the PA in June 27, 1995,
concerning the holding of Palestinian elections in Gaza and the West
Bank.
But as Hamas took a more radical stance, some of its members began
to reconsider their position. For example, when Hamas decided to
boycott the Palestinian elections scheduled to take place in January
1996 in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, some of
its leading members switched sides and opted to take part in the
elections. These included and Khalid al-Hindi, two
moderate Hamas activists from Gaza. Hamas expelled some of them,
including al-Faluji. Looking for more ways to weaken Hamas, the PA
sponsored the establishment of the Islamic Jihad al-Aqsa Brigades
and Palestine's Islamic Salvation Front in the latter half of 1995.
These were PA measures designed to win over to its side Hamas's
sympathizers. Thus by the end of 1995, Hamas barely had a chance to
catch its breath and get rolling. Pressures on the movement were
coming from all directions: Israel, the PA, and outside actors. The
strategy of measured confrontational activities came up for
reconsideration. This brings us to the third phase in this stage.
The main feature of the third phase, which started in December 1995
and barely lasted for more than three months, was Hamas's attempt to
reach a modus vivendi with the PA. On December 13, 1995, eight
Hamas members (including , Muhammad Abu
, and Mahmud al-Zahhar) traveled from Gaza to Khartoum,
Sudan, for four days of talks with Diaspora Hamas leaders in
preparation for negotiations with the PA in Cairo. Immediately
afterward, Hamas and the PA concluded four days of talks in the
Egyptian capital (December 17–21, 1995). Press reports indicated
that the talks were positive but failed to resolve some important
differences, particularly the cessation of armed attacks by Hamas
against Israeli

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targets. However, my discussions with senior Hamas members in
Gaza and the West Bank revealed that the result of these and of other
Hamas-PA meetings was a commitment by Hamas to refrain from
attacks against Israel. The PA relayed the understanding to the Israeli
government.
This explains why a period of relative quiet prevailed before the
Cairo meeting, but it did not last long. On October 26, 1995, Islamic
Jihad leader Fathi Shiqaqi was assassinated in Malta en route to
Damascus from Libya. The Islamists blamed the Israeli Mossad and
they protested the assassination in Gaza and Hebron. While Israeli
officials neither affirmed nor denied the Mossad's responsibility, they
welcomed the killing, thus leading Hamas and other Islamists to
conclude that Israel did not respect cease-fire understandings.
An event with more far-reaching consequences took place almost two
months later, when, on January 5, 1995, the number one person on
Israel's most-wanted list, Yahya (nicknamed al-Muhandis, or
the engineer), thought to be behind many of Hamas's major
bombings, was killed in Gaza when his booby-trapped cellular phone
exploded. Kamal Hamad, a Gaza entrepreneur who was allegedly an
accomplice of the Mossad, gave the booby-trapped telephone to
and later fled to the United States with Israeli help. Hamas and
the PA blamed Mossad. More than 100,000 Palestinians attended
funeral in Gaza and hundreds of Jordanians visited the home
of Hamas leaders in Amman. These events set the stage for the fourth
phase of Hamas's strategy.
The fourth phase started in February 1996 and was set in motion by
the assassination of Shiqaqi and . Hamas always believed that in
situations involving Israeli attacks on its activists, a response in kind
had to take place. Shiqaqi and were no ordinary members. They
were high-profile individuals active in the cause of the Islamist
movement. True, Shiqaqi was a leader of Islamic Jihad, but his
assassination was interpreted by Hamas as an Israeli attempt to
deliver a devastating blow to the Palestinian Islamists in general. As
for , a Hamas activist who had a talent for bomb making and
was guided by the idea of sacrifice and devotion, his spectacular
bombing activities against Israeli targets made him a mythical hero
in the eyes of many Palestinians. Thus Hamas felt that it had to take
action in response to the assassinations. The question, of course, was
what sort of action?
There had been some signs of vacillation among members of the
political leadership over this matter. This was a result of two factors.
One such factor was the different orientations of the Gaza-based
Hamas organs, the West Bank–based organs, and the Diaspora-based
organs. The second factor was

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the leadership vacuum that resulted from the detention of a most
senior Hamas member, Musa Abu Marzuq, by U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) on entry to the United States at Kennedy
Airport on July 25, 1995. Abu Marzuq, a permanent U.S. resident who
had lived in Virginia for fourteen years, was placed on the INS
terrorism list on suspicion of being a principal decision maker and
fund-raiser for Hamas.
In the absence of Abu Marzuq, local Hamas leaders in Gaza and the
West Bank could not determine whether the return to bombings was
useful or not. They also were unprepared to take a clear position on
how to respond to the holding of Palestinian elections scheduled to
take place on January 20, 1996. For example the Hamas leaflets
distributed in the first half of January 1996 called on the Palestinians
to boycott the elections. By contrast, Hamas members, most notably
Sheikh Sayyid Abu Musamih, a leading Hamas figure in Gaza, denied
that Hamas had anything to do with those leaflets and insisted that his
organization would honor its agreement with the PA and refrain from
urging Palestinians to boycott the elections.
The participation as candidates in the elections of several Hamas
affiliates caused further confusion, and by the end of the election day
Fatah won by a landslide, garnering not only the presidency, which
was won by Arafat, but also 71 out of 88 Palestine Council seats.
Besides the nonparticipation of Hamas in the elections, one
interesting aspect of the election results was that Fatah candidates
returning from exile (the so-called imported leadership) won without
exception. By contrast, many local Fatah members lost. One possible
explanation for this development is that candidates comprising the
"imported leadership" relied on the PA's institutions, including the
security apparatus.
Over the next few weeks Hamas leaders, both inside and outside the
Palestinian territories, were debating what to do by way of a response
to the assassination of . Two perspectives surfaced during the
debate. First, there was the perspective of those who wanted to stick
to the truce with Israel and follow a wait-and-see policy. Advocates of
this view, including Mahmud Zahhar of Gaza, Amin Maqbul of
Nablus, and Jamil Hamami of the Jerusalem-Ramallah area, seemed
to believe that a bombing campaign in retaliation for the
assassination would invite a disproportionate Israeli response, thus
alienating Hamas and provoking a confrontation between the
organization and the PA. However, advocates of the second view,
most of whom were affiliates of Hamas military wing
al-Qassam (the Qassam Brigades), opposed the idea of
restraint on several grounds: it would reflect weakness and vacillation
on the part of Hamas, it

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would embolden Israel, and it would compromise Hamas's credibility
in the eyes of its supporters.
In the end, advocates of the latter view prevailed. Indeed, there were
signs privately confirmed to this author by PA and Israeli official
sources that the military wing of Hamas was going its own way,
benefiting to a certain degree from the absence of Abu Marzuq, an
influential leader reportedly able to infuse the movement with
moderation and provide direction in moments of crisis. Hamas's
retaliation was almost a certainty that was lost neither on Israeli
leaders nor on foreign observers. New York Times reporter Serge
Schmemann reported from Gaza on January 6, 1996, that the
assassination of had "created a potentially serious problem for
Arafat by raising the profile of the Hamas opposition and the
expectation of retaliation."
Thus by January 1996, Hamas radicals, particularly the Qassam
Brigades, appeared to be in charge of the situation. Their underground
cells, scattered in different areas in Gaza and the West Bank,
particularly in Israeli-controlled areas, were busy preparing for
military strikes of proportions never witnessed before by Israel. On
February 25, 1996, two suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Askhalon
killed twenty-six Israelis, prompting the Israeli government to
impose an immediate and strict closure on Gaza and the West Bank,
not even permitting food to move in or out. Another suicide bombing
in Jerusalem claimed eighteen lives. On March 4, a fourth suicide
bombing in Tel Aviv left another fourteen Israelis dead.
These attacks shook Israel, making Israelis feel that their personal
safety was at risk. In response, the Israeli government arrested some
1,000 Palestinians and took additional closure measures restrictive
enough to put 1.3 million Palestinian Arabs under town arrest.
Palestinians, including PA officials, were prevented from moving
between the West Bank and Gaza or among different villages in the
West Bank. Besides paralyzing the Palestinian territories, the closure
measures impoverished an already fragile Palestinian economy,
causing a sharp rise in unemployment and shortages of essential
food-stuffs and medical supplies.
The Hamas bombings of February–March 1996 eventually weakened
the organization and its established network of civic associations. The
scope, intensity, and impact of the bombings on Palestinian life
emboldened the PA to take steps that would not only neutralize the
activists of Hamas but would also enfeeble its sources of strength.
This time, the PA's ultimate objective was to cripple Hamas as an
organized political force. Here the PA used three modes of political
action. The first was intimidation. Immediately after the bombings,
the PA carried out an estimated 1,000 arrests in the self-rule areas,

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including the arrest of many prominent Hamas figures. There were
credible reports of torture during detention, which in almost all cases
was carried out without arrest warrants and without an indictment
being filed against the detainees.
Despite the PA's heavy-handedness, Arafat knew that he had to show
signs of conciliation because his power rested not only on his
nationalist credentials and his victory in the elections of January
1996, but also on a mix involving the use of strong-armed techniques
and the ability to court and give patronage. Thus on June 16, 1996,
Arafat personally released top Hamas member Jamal Mansur, who
spent eighty days in solitary confinement in the PA's Nablus police
stations. Arafat also authorized the release, in stages, of some Hamas
and Islamic Jihad detainees arrested following the suicide bombings.
The second method used by the PA against Hamas was that of "divide
and rule." The strategy behind this method was to atomize Hamas by
courting potentially co-optable members. The principal aspect of this
strategy was the PA's attempt to win to its side cooperative elements
from within the ranks of Hamas by exploiting the divisions and
different orientations within the movement. The PA found several
groups of sympathizers, groups that had broken away from Hamas
with PA support. One such group was the Islamic Salvation Party,
whose leader, , was given the post of minister of
transportation. Another group was the Islamic National Committee
for the Defense of Land. This PA-subsidized committee comprises
Fatah loyalists as well as defectors from Hamas. A third group co-
opted by the PA was the Islamic National Unity Party led by Khadir
Muhjiz.
After the Israeli-Palestinian Protocol concerning the redeployment in
Hebron (January 1997), Arafat moved even faster with his policy of
courting potentially cooperative elements within the traditional
political elite of Hamas. Hamas's influence in Hebron had long been
strong, mainly because of the relatively great degree of religiosity in
this traditional Arab city. To govern the city, one of the many things
Arafat had to do was co-opt a group of Islamist individuals prepared
to cooperate willingly with the PA. In return for such cooperation,
Arafat offered those individuals political positions in his
administration. For example, the Palestinian leader co-opted al-
Shaykh Talal Sidr, a senior Hamas member in Hebron, helped him
establish the Palestinian Islamic Front (al-jabha al-Islamiyya al-
Filastiniyya), and appointed him minister of sports and youth.
The choice to cooperate with Arafat was easy and fairly convenient
for Sidr and a few other members of Hamas who found opportunities
to work for the PA. Their primary justification was that more could be
achieved for the

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Palestinian cause by working with the PA rather than by opposing it,
because, from their perspective, Oslo was a fait accompli. Behind this
rationale, however, there were other considerations. Some of the
cooperative Islamists realized that the only way they could have a
position of power in local society was to sue for peace and
cooperation with the dominant Palestinian power in the self-rule
areas, namely the PA. The leadership of the PA was, after all,
Palestinian and had the legitimacy of many years of national struggle
behind it.
In addition, some Islamists, although they initially opposed Oslo,
found that Hamas was powerless to undermine it and compete
effectively with the PA leadership for influence. Indeed, some Hamas
activists made explicit calls for reconciliation with the PA, insisting
at the same time that the movement should maintain its
organizational independence.8
The third method that Arafat used to weaken Hamas was to undercut
the activities of the organization in the social sphere. Hamas's
management of its own mosques, schools, clinics, and zakat
(almsgiving) committees was one of the principal sources of its
influence. Hamas needed these associations to strengthen its
influence. Without running its own mosques, Hamas could scarcely
hope, for example, to raise new recruits or spread its message through
hand-picked (preachers) who delivered pro-Hamas sermons.
Control over schools and clinics made more people go to Hamas for
badly needed social services, especially in Gaza, where poverty was
rampant. To finance these social welfare activities and support its
poorer members, Hamas relied on foreign sources of funding. It also
relied on zakat committees. Arafat followed a policy of either
controlling or policing the activities of these associations. He
appointed sympathetic to the PA; he controlled the zakat
committees; and in many instances he exercised direct control over
Hamas schools and clinics through the appointment of PA loyalists.
There were also external reasons for the weakening of Hamas. Both
Israel and the United States had sufficient influence to make Arafat
take harsh measures against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Eventually,
Arafat obliged because he had no alternative but to move forward and
implement Oslo, otherwise his political survival would be in
jeopardy. Therefore he had to strike against radical Islamists.
In the name of enhancing the peace process, President Bill Clinton
co-chaired the Conference of the Peacemakers, a one-day
antiterrorism summit held at Sharm al-Shaykh, Egypt, on March 13,
1996. The unprecedented gathering brought together leaders from
thirty-one countries, including fourteen Arab countries. The summit's
promotion of antiterrorist coordination on the regional and
international levels, its adoption of steps aimed at pre--

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venting terrorist organizations from engaging in recruitment,
supplying of arms, or fund-raising, and its adoption of practical steps
to identify and determine the sources of the financing of these groups
all led to at least one important development. This was the focus of
the United States and Israel on Hamas and their determination to cut
its funding. Perhaps this was the main reason why Abu Marzuq was
arrested in the first place. As a result of all these developments,
Hamas lost much of its power. Except for some isolated incidents and
foiled attempts, Hamas had been quiet ever since the suicide
bombings of February and March 1996.
Conclusions
Less than a decade after its emergence, Hamas was thrust into the
center of Palestinian politics. In the relatively brief span between
1987 and 1997, the political and social profile of the movement was
transformed and its leadership could not afford to watch the
unfolding events in the Arab-Israeli theater from the sidelines. Hamas
was too much of a spoiler of the peace process to be ignored by
others, including the Palestinian mainstream, the Israeli government,
and the U.S. administration. One suicide bombing was potent enough
to obstruct the peace process or even to undermine it altogether.
The record of Hamas also demonstrated the fundamental limitations
of its strategic position. In the first place, it underscored the extent to
which Hamas was a prisoner of its own limited resources. Although
the movement had its own agenda, and sabotaging the Oslo process
was at the top of this agenda, the Hamas leadership could not avoid
being drawn into relations of accommodation with the PA, and even
into situations of alliance building with the Palestinian left. True,
Hamas was bold enough to challenge other actors, but it also was too
weak and cautious to ignore them.
The limitations of Hamas's strategic position had other implications.
The position of the movement peaked sometime in the early years of
the Intifadhah and then took a dive after Oslo from which it never
fully recovered. Three interrelated fundamental reasons underlay this
reversal. The first had to do with the absence of a national leader for
Hamas. The series of challenges around the entire perimeter of Gaza
and the West Bank required a leader who could manage to maneuver
the movement through them all to a sustainable degree of stability
and growth. An effective Hamas leader on the national level was
better able to pursue a coherent policy in the second stage of Hamas
development, keep the movement's objectives and priorities steadily
in view even while making necessary tactical detours, and respond
with carefully crafted policies to the changes in the environment.
This task was left to

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teed) alternative solutions are placed before the participants, it
remains irrational for any player to propose a reasonable
compromise.
The Palestinians.
The Palestinians also present a regional ethnic problem, though not in
the same territorial sense as in Kurdistan and Equatoria. The
Palestinians in the occupied territories, in Israel, in Jordan, and in
Lebanon, do constitute a fairly compact demographic agglomeration
of some 4.5–5 million people. A West Bank/Gaza state might include
about 40 percent of the Palestinians in this demographic bloc. Add
the Palestinians residing in Jordan, assuming a unified or confederal
Jordanian-Palestinian state and we have almost 75 percent of the
demographic bloc, leaving a nearby Diaspora of about 27 percent of
the Palestinian population in Lebanon and Israel.
While these numbers don't look too bad when one considers the
proportion of world Jewry in Israel or the affinity between Palestinian
nationalism and Arab nationalism, the sort of solution implied (a
combined state or a federal state, or even a three-state contractual
arrangement) will not be easy to achieve. Both King Abdallah and the
Israeli political elite will be very wary of sharing sovereignty with
the PLO and the Palestinian people. This wariness will be increased
by consideration of the ideological orientation of the Palestinian
Hamas, not to mention the Syrian-backed radical Palestinian
nationalist opponents of the PLO, such as the PFLP.
The dominant ideological strategy adopted by the majority of
Palestinians is a modified form of Arab nationalism, according to
which the two forms of nationalism are reconciled either territorially
or sequentially–with the realization of partitive nationalisms
preceding the more comprehensive nationalism, or via praxis–with
the more revolutionary and successful form shaping the laggard or
retrogressive forms. Nevertheless, the territorial scope of Hamas
ideology far exceeds Palestine and mocks the very idea of a territorial
compromise with Israel or an accommodation with the Hashemite
dynasty.
Requiting the national aspirations of the Palestinian people no longer
articulates with the ideological dominance of Arab nationalism
throughout the region. Palestinian nationalism looks to many like an
anachronism that is useful only because it keeps Israel and its
Western allies off balance and may lead to the establishment of a
political base from which new Islamist political offensives may be
launched. As a consequence, there is a debate within Hamas regarding
which is the better strategy to follow in the short run: try to impede
the peace process in order to prevent Arafat from gaining power and
possible Israeli support, or support (tacitly?) the peace process in
order to

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a collective leadership based in Amman and elsewhere outside the
Palestinian territories and, in some instances, to local leaders on the
town and neighborhood levels.
The second reason was the effects of a collective leadership, which
were indecisiveness, slowness, and ambiguity, especially in the 1996–
97 period. It is important in this respect to note the different
orientations within Hamas. The resort of the Qassam Brigades to
more radical measures in the winter of 1996 was an indication that
politicians inside Hamas were losing ground to the military wing.
Also, Arafat's ability to co-opt some prominent Hamas members
illustrated the contending trends inside the movement.
A third reason was the Palestinian environment itself. A majority of
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank consistently supported Oslo
despite the ups and downs in the negotiations with Israel and delays
in the implementation of whatever was agreed upon between Israel
and the PA. The persistence of support for the peace process seriously
limited Hamas's ability to challenge the PA from a position of
strength.
These factors suggest the following observations about Hamas's mode
of operation.
1. Hamas's policy, even its most radical aspects, had been over the
past year essentially defensive, stemming more from a sense of
weakness than from an ideological drive. Hamas has shown that it is
not averse to striking a modus vivendi both with the PA and with
Israel. When the PA responded with firmness to Hamas military
escalation against Israel, Hamas has used the slogan of reconciliation
to dissuade the PA from taking undesired action against the
movement.
2. In situations involving a choice between incurring short-term
danger to advance long-term interests or seeking to avoid the former
at a risk to the latter, Hamas did not always opt for the second course.
This was illustrated in the early 1996 decision to escalate military
attacks inside Israel. Yet at the same time, when Hamas was
pressured by the PA, it deliberately maintained a low profile and
played for time. This tendency was illustrated in the military
quietism of Hamas since the summer of 1996.
3. As a corollary of the general disposition of Hamas, the leadership
of the movement has pursued over 1996 a political style characterized
by a preference for caution over maximization of potential gains if
the price of gains was a confrontation with the PA; a tendency to issue
contradictory statements simultaneously from Gaza, Amman,
Damascus, and Beirut; a willingness to make sharp tactical reversals;
and limited concern with the principle of consistency.

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In view of the above, more Hamas voices probably will be raised to
stress the need for a policy of adaptation to Oslo. These probably will
be countered by reiterations of the traditional Hamas argument that
the movement's natural place is on the side of opposition to Oslo.
Whether Hamas will find a third way remains an open question.
Israel's release of Hamas's leader, Shaykh Yasin, in September 1997
has not meant that the field for military activism has become wider.
On the contrary, the field has become much narrower.
Author's note: This essay is largely based on field research in Gaza
and the West Bank, including interviews with Hamas members.
Notes
1. Ahmad Moussalli, "Modern Islamic Fundamentalist Discourses,"
in Civil Society in the Middle East, ed. Augustus R. Norton (Leiden,
Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1995), 101–3.
2. See chapter 1 of Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the
West Bank and Gaza (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994)
for a concise summary of the Brotherhood's history in Palestine.
3. Ziad Abu-Amr, "Hamas: A Historical and Political Background,"
Journal of Palestine Studies 22, no. 4 (summer 1993): 8.
4. Author's interview with Hamas representatives in Gaza, Ramallah,
and Nablus.
5. Jean-François Legrain, "A Defining Moment: Palestinian Islamic
Fundamentalism," in Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis,
ed. James Piscatori (Chicago: American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, 1991), 75.
6. Walid Khalidi, The Gulf Crisis: Origins and Consequences
(Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991), 23.
7. Center for Palestine Research and Studies (CPRS), Results of
Public Opinion Poll #22 (Nablus, West Bank: The Center, March
1996), 29–31.
8. See, for example, the statement of Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, a senior
Hamas member, in al-Hayat, May 21, 1997, 5.

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15
Hegemony and the Riddle of Nationalism
Ian S. Lustick
It has been commonplace to view nationalism as the greatest, most
powerful single force in the modern world. It is indeed remarkable to
consider how resilient nationalist movements are and how capable
they have been of sustaining loyalties, eliciting sacrifice, and
surviving prolonged failure. Leaving aside the question of when
nationalism and nation-states arose in Europe, we may agree that
their beginnings roughly coincide with the disintegration or
contraction of the empires European national states created. Much of
human history for the last century and a half can be told in terms of
five imperial disintegrations followed by five waves of nationalist or
ethnic mobilizations.
The first of these waves was the struggle of Latin American
nationalist movements against the Spanish and Portuguese empires.
After World War I a second wave of Eastern European, Balkan, and
Middle Eastern movements crystallized in response to the collapse of
the German, Austro-Hungarian, Tsarist, and Ottoman empires. With
the relatively rapid, though often tumultuous, move toward
decolonization by Britain, France, and the Netherlands after World
War II, an even larger number of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern
nations arose to fill the independent state frameworks left behind by
the colonial powers. A fourth wave of national mobilization began in
various Western European and other OECD countries in the 1970s as
ethnic minorities in regions such as the Basque country, Catalonia,
Brittany, Wales, Scotland, Quebec, and Corsica, whose political
significance as such had long since been presumed to have
disappeared, expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of their political
incorporation into larger state frameworks. A fifth wave of new and
renewed nationalist movements has appeared on the scene in response
to the attenuation and the collapse of the Soviet empire—in Cen--

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tral Asia, the Baltic states, Eastern and Central Europe, and in many
regions of Russia itself.
However, if nationalism, that is to say appeals to the ethnic heritage,
cultural history, and/or linguistic distinctiveness of groups, is so
potent and irresistible a political force, so natural and intrinsic or
"primordial" a factor in human affairs, then these questions arise.
1. Why did human history take so long to produce it and to displace
other identities (imperial, monarchical, tribal, feudal, class, and
religious)?
2. Why are "religious" identities supplanting or rivaling nationalism
in many areas of the world, including, especially, the Middle East?
3. Why are borders of states, which do not at all match nations, so
stable?
4. Why are there so few nation-states when there are so many
ethnically identifiable nations, or groups claiming to be nations and
having all the right signs?
5. How could the United States be so successful without anything that
can seriously be considered as "American nationalism"?
6. Why can the same group of people (Arabs in Israel, for example)
experience a change in their national identity so rapidly and so many
times?
7. Why do nations born in struggle against others so often emulate
their antagonists?
Each of these questions arises from frustration with the ability of
primordialist theory to account for the flexibility, timing, rapid
transformation, and chameleonlike aspect of contemporary
nationalist movements. A truly impressive amount of research has
been done during the last decade and a half to address these
questions. The result of this research has been to replace the old
conventional wisdom with a new version. The old conventional
wisdom was that ethnic and other "ascriptive" identities were
mobilized in the modern era because of the incompleteness of
modernization, the psychological and other strains of the transition
from "tradition" to "modernity," and the refuge available in old,
bedrock, "real" communities of homogenous peoples.1 The new
conventional wisdom, whose most often cited source is Benedict
Anderson's 1983 book Imagined Communities, is that identities are
not "given"; they were not stamped upon a discoverable set of groups
in a "primordial," prepolitical period of human history. Rather they
are artifacts, changeable constructions of kindredness elicited under
particular circumstances and discarded, adjusted, or traded for others
under other circumstances.
It is worth taking a closer look at this new conventional wisdom. Its
fundamental claim, reflected in hundreds of articles, dissertations,
books, and grant

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proposals over the last fifteen years, is that identities of groups or of
individuals do not have a status more fundamental than the choices
individuals make about who they are. Cultural identities, in other
words, whether politicized or not, do not exist independent of
political processes that, consciously or accidentally, make them
publicly relevant as norms that give some temporary order to a
fluctuating array of practices, images of selfhood, and sensations of
solidarity. From this constructivist perspective there is no "primordial
identity"—no elemental, indestructible, authentic self that survives
once all artificial and essentially false or inauthentic identities are
abandoned or stripped away. Multiple identities there may be, but not
organized in an ontological hierarchy that explains the emergence of
putatively ancient, ascriptive, and especially kinship-oriented
sentiments of attachment in response to the psychological and other
strains of social mobilization.2
This school of thought has been strengthened by the types of
deconstructionist, postmodernist, and poststructuralist theorizing that
have gripped literary and cultural studies since at least the early
1980s. These approaches challenged, indeed denied, any attempts to
identify the "essential" meaning of a text by discovering its real code
or the real intent of the author. Instead, the goal of scholarship is to
show the variety of meanings that can be elicited from any text or
work of art depending on the frame of reference constructed around it
and depending on the proclivities, skills, and cultural orientation of
the observer. For social scientists, first anthropologists and then
sociologists, historians, and political scientists, this theoretical
disposition suggested that it was incorrect to seek explanations for
changes in identity, for the reappearance of faded and seemingly
nonmodern affinities, or for a puzzling stability in cleavage patterns
despite the onslaught of modernity, by seeking the "real," primordial,
or "authentic" stratum of collective self-identification. By stressing
instead the constituted character of identities, social scientists could
adopt an approach to peoples similar to that adopted toward texts in
literary criticism. They could ask questions about the path taken to
arrive at beliefs in particular identities, about the strategies and
practices that promoted these and not other possible identities, about
the interests they served, and about the implications of change in
economic, political, or international spheres for the stability of
particular identities as frames of reference for elites or publics.
These assumptions and insights opened up significant new
opportunities for studying relationships among cultural change,
political interest, ethnicity, nationalism, and national conflict. They
suggested the inadequacy of imagining conflicts between culture
groups as boxing matches between antagonists with separate
identities permanently engraved on the map of the world.

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Instead questions could be asked about the conditions under which
the identities that separated antagonists in the past have been, or
could be, traded for identities within a new "national" or other type.
Instead of viewing nationalism as the natural result of a
modernization process that brings peoples into the final act of history,
constructivism encourages appreciation of the never-ending-story
aspect of identity formation and the likelihood that other substantive
bases for political mobilization (including race, gender, religion, and
class) will, under discoverable circumstances, displace the "national"
as that identity for which people will sacrifice the most. These
concepts and assumptions also encourage a focus on links between
intrastate or intracommunal political competition and conflict
between states or communities, and on political entrepreneurship; for
example, the way particular kinds of elites, positioned to benefit from
virulent forms of nationalism, contribute to chauvinism and conflict.
Constructivists promised, and to an important degree delivered, a
more nuanced understanding of political dangers and opportunities
latent in different situations than their predecessors who attributed
national or ethnic conflict to the inexorable eruption of primordial
hatreds. The constructivist approach to the formation and
transformation of political identity led to work on the capability and
even propensity of individuals and groups to instrumentalize
identities at their disposal in response to shifting circumstances.
Emphasis has also been placed on the role of political elites as
entrepreneurs able to invest their energies and enthusiasm in
alternative identities attuned to changing incentive structures and,
more likely, if adopted by their constituencies, to favor their own
political prospects.3 Such work often goes hand in hand with
accounts demonstrating that a given political community, crystallized
around one identity, was organized in the past and could be
reorganized in the future according to a different identity, including
an identity that now counted as "other."
But these conclusions—that identities are constructed, that
individuals have repertoires of identities, and that elites can produce
different groups by shaping which identities within these repertoires
are elicited and made effective—are themselves not entirely
satisfying and in some ways raise as many questions as they answer.
For example, if identities, including national identities, are so fluid
and fundamentally artificial, then these questions arise.
1. Why has nationalism been so consistent a response to the breakup
of empire?
2. Why have nationalist solidarities been so potent and long lasting?
Particularly if we assume that there is nothing real behind national
identities,

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no "real" anchor in social, economic, or cultural reality, and if elite
interests are as changeable and elite manipulation as effective as this
perspective encourages us to believe.
3. What accounts for the stability we observe in political identities,
including national identities?
4. Why has nationalism in particular been so powerful and so regular
in its contradiction of the expectations of social theory (for example,
Marxism but also modernization theory)?
5. What explains why culturally based identities, including
nationalism, are sometimes stable despite shifting circumstances and
efforts by ambitious elites to change them?
6. What explains the rapidity with which identities that seem well
established can disappear when the conditions said to affect those
identities change so much more slowly?
These questions baffle constructivists, who generally prefer not to
address them. But along with the questions listed previously,
challenging the primordialist view, these are the questions we must be
able to effectively address. Contemporary scholarship on collective
identities, and the political authority structures those identities
support and are sustained by, is now at a point where we must either
satisfy ourselves with new, and somewhat inconsistent, bits of
conventional wisdom—about the irrelevance or nonexistence of
primordialism, the infinite malleability of identity, the threat of bad
"ethnonationalism" as opposed to the promise of good "civic
nationalism," the inevitability of nationalism as a political basis for
modern life, and the surprising but deeply rooted renascence of
religious appeals—or search for a new, coherent theoretical position.
It is from this position that we may then proceed to salvage truths
attached to the primordialist ideas many have discarded and link
them to the constructivist insights that too often lead beyond the
bounds of disciplined observation.
The position I have in mind would help accomplish three tasks: (1)
clarify exactly what we mean by nationalism, as opposed to other
formulas of political mobilization; (2) probe particular relationships
between nationalism and historically specific cultural, political,
social, and economic transformations; and (3) assess the extent to
which political elites can and cannot manipulate the content of
politically relevant identities to suit their parochial and changing
interests.
We can accomplish these tasks by applying a theory of the
institutionalization of norms capable of facilitating the consolidation
and exercise of political power. I devise this theory by binding a
coherent concept and partial

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theory of ideological hegemony to the traditional approach to
political compliance based on coercive, utilitarian, and normative
mechanisms.4
To Solve the Riddle: A Theory of Hegemonic Compliance
To build the necessary conceptual apparatus, let us begin with simple
definitions of two basic but commonly confused terms: state and
nation. A state is an institution that enforces property rights. Where
there are no property rights, no stable expectations about what is
mine and what is not, there is no state. Where there are vague or
uncertain property rights, the presence of a state is vague or
uncertain. Where systems of property rights conflict, there is a battle
over which institution, if any, will be able to assert itself as the state
in a particular area or over a particular group of people.5 For my
purpose here the important thing to note about the concept of state, so
defined, is that it is an organized apparatus, an entity which to one
extent or another is bureaucratic and hierarchical.
A nation is a large community whose members are full members
simply by virtue of their mutual recognition of one another as sharing
ascriptive cultural bonds more important than any other. By "large" I
mean sufficiently populous so that no one member can personally
know all the other members of the nation. By "ascriptive" I mean
characteristics that are impossible or extremely difficult to change,
there being no a priori reason to exclude religion, language, territory,
ethnicity, or race as identity features which may emerge as the
markers of national membership in any particular case. This
definition emphasizes the democratic aspect distinguishing national
and ethnic solidarities from other kinds (such as many religious,
tribal, kinship, or corporate identities) since membership in the
community designates equal status within it and does not entail a
position within a hierarchy of personal valuation.
With these two basic terms defined we can move toward a theory of
compliance and institutionalized political rule to help answer the
questions about nationalism and collective identity posed above. In
1961 Amitai Etzioni suggested a list of what we may think of as three
mechanisms capable of producing compliance to the decisions of
organizations (including states): coercive, utilitarian, and normative.6
While I will here go well beyond and in some ways contradict the
theoretical propositions Etzioni advanced in connection with this
typology, the list is still a valuable starting point.
The crudest of these mechanisms is simple coercion or the direct
threat of coercion. For states this means that taxes and soldiers (the
two most fundamental needs of any state) are elicited from target
populations by force or the direct threat of force—grain taken from
recalcitrant peasants at bayonet point,

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sailors impressed into the navy, conscripts drawn from a population
by threat of incarceration, and so forth. A more efficient means of
eliciting compliance is utilitarian—bribes, trades of services
(including the enhanced protection of property rights or the grant of
more property rights), for higher or more dependable flows of taxes
and recruits. In Etzioni's classic formulation the most efficient means
of eliciting compliance is via normative mechanisms—beliefs among
the target populations that it is right to comply, that it is one's duty to
do so, regardless of whether fear of punishment for refusal to comply
is present, and regardless of calculations that may be made about the
balance of costs and benefits entailed in compliance. This kind of
belief, a normative basis for compliance, is what is almost always
meant by, but seldom specified to be, the meaning of legitimacy. In
other words, what separates a legitimate from an illegitimate state is
the presence of beliefs in the minds of those within the purview of
that state that they should, for reasons of right and duty, comply with
its orders.7
In Etzioni's formulation a major source of strain in an organization
(such as a state) is "incongruence" between the type of mechanism
actually used (for example, coercion) and the type formally appealed
to (for example, normative). In my formulation, however, a Guttman
scale relationship exists among the different compliance mechanisms
such that (1) utilitarian techniques of rule can only work efficiently if
coercive control is believed to be available should utilitarian
mechanisms fail, and (2) normative appeals cannot work in the long
run to stabilize political rule unless those from whom compliance is
elicited can reckon it to be in their interest to comply. In other words,
just as latent coercion undergirds effective rule via utilitarian
mechanisms, so do positive utilitarian calculations enable emphasis
to be shifted to normative appeals.
It is here, however, that I must make an even more important
departure from Etzioni's model. Etzioni argued that his was an
exhaustive list of types of power or types of compliance mechanisms.
There are three, he claimed, and only three. I add a fourth—
ideological hegemony. I consider presumptively true beliefs about
contingent socioeconomic arrangements or about the absolute truth,
value, or relevance of different kinds of interventions in the public
domain, as fundamentally important sources of power to some, and of
disempowerment to others. When they can be constructed and when
they are maintained, ideologically hegemonic beliefs provide states
with an even more efficient mechanism for eliciting compliance than
normative appeals to the legitimacy of state laws and decrees.
This is not a new idea. In presenting it I follow in a tradition going
back to the "noble lie" in Plato's Republic, but with twentieth-century
roots in the

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work of Antonio Gramsci. The basic claim is that beliefs can be held
by masses of people who do not experience them as beliefs. That is to
say these beliefs are not entertained as contingent on the presence or
availability of supporting evidence. Nor can such beliefs simply be
discarded when evidence contradicting them is presented.
Ideologically hegemonic beliefs, as I use the term, are beliefs which
have no corollary attached to them, implicitly or explicitly,
stipulating the conditions under which they could be abandoned. Such
beliefs constitute a part of the framework within which, and the lens
through which, events are perceived and judgments made. Hegemonic
beliefs are what serve as the "givens" of a political community, even
if they are not, and especially if they are not understood as such.
While normative appeals work to elicit compliance from individuals
who judge that demands by the state are consistent with the formula
of legitimacy that they accept as linking them to the state, ideological
hegemony elicits compliance by burying it beneath the surface of
calculated decision. Habits, culture, and treatment of dissent as
evidence of insanity or criminality rather than contrary opinion—
these are the stuff of hegemonic politics. Hegemonic beliefs, as
Gramsci put it, appear not as claims about the world but as "common
sense." Hegemony is politics naturalized to be experienced as culture.
To recapitulate by way of two illustrations: coercive compliance
produces tax revenue by pointing bayonets at citizens who do not
wish to pay. Utilitarian compliance produces tax revenue by trading
services appreciated as valuable by taxpayers for the payment of their
taxes. Normative compliance produces tax revenue by eliciting
judgments that, despite the possibility and even attraction of doing
otherwise, paying taxes is one's duty, the right thing to do. Ideological
hegemony produces tax revenue by transforming payment into a
natural part of life, a habitual, routine activity which taxpayers cannot
imagine avoiding and which they do not experience as the result of a
choice or decision on their part. In a very different sphere, one might
ask, Why did Germans slaughter Jewish children during the
Holocaust? An explanation based on coercive compliance would
contend that einsatzgruppen soldiers and concentration camp guards
acted out of fear of punishment if they did not. An explanation based
on utilitarian compliance would attribute murderous behavior to
acceptance of rewards and privileges for doing so that more than
compensated for the effort involved. An explanation based on
normative compliance would stress the strong commitment to Nazi
ideology of those personnel recruited for performance of their duty to
kill Jews. An explanation based on ideological hegemony, similar to
that advanced by Daniel Goldhagen, would be that those involved in
the mass slaughter were

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accelerate the establishment of a quasi-sovereign Palestinian entity
within which they may gain power, or at least protected bases, from
which to pursue their own goals?
The Maghreb
Maghreb unity expresses the idea of a dispersed or a manifold Arab
nationalism, emphasizing the cultural differences between the
western and the eastern Arab regions, rather than the ideological
problem of the articulation of various forms of Arab nationalism.
Doubtlessly, Maghrebi intellectuals have been influenced by the
historical political separation of the eastern and western caliphates,
by the weakness of Ottoman control of the Maghreb, by Morocco's
independence of the Ottoman Empire, and by the influence of French
colonialism and the proximity of France to the Maghreb.
There are also a number of political motives that have induced
Maghrebi intellectuals to differentiate between western and eastern
forms of Arabism. Eastern Arab politics have been volatile, regimes
have been frequently overturned, some eastern leaders have claimed
political precedence over all other Arab rulers, and some have
claimed the ideological mantle of Arabism. Some Maghrebi
intellectuals would eschew entanglement in the mashriqi morass,
others are put off by the fact that mashriqi intellectuals all but ignore
the history and culture of the Maghreb, and others feel a closer tie to
European culture. But probably the most important motive behind the
desire of several western-educated Maghrebi intellectuals to
distinguish the political destiny of western Arabism is because of the
need to accommodate indigenous Berbers and to enhance their loyalty
to the modern state. The emphasis upon Maghrebi culture includes
elements of Berber culture that are putatively shared among all
Maghrebis.
At least this formula seemed to be an appropriate one to sustain Arab
cooperation while fending off demands for pan-Arab integration. This
regional cultural formula also made sense for Algeria, rather more
than for Tunisia, where the Berber population has been largely
dispersed, or has intermarried, or has been depoliticized. It also
makes more sense for Algeria than for Morocco, where the traditional
formula still works, even if not as well as in the past. But its
suitability for Algeria depended upon the vision of Algeria as a
progressive socialist and corporatist state that was tolerant of cultural
differences, so long as political, economic, and military power
remained centralized in the hands of an enlightened and westernized
administrative elite. From this position, Algeria could present itself
as an ally to similar powers in

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operating within an "eliminationist" frame of reference with respect
to Jews within which it could not occur to them that Jews could be
human beings or that the systematic eradication of Jewish children
could be considered anything but the natural behavior of responsible
members of the German volk.8
One more adjustment is needed in Etzioni's compliance theory.
Instead of simply observing the results of different choices by states
to employ different compliance mechanisms, analysis can be based
on the expectation that states or those who control states, whether out
of competition with rival states or competition with rival elites within
a state, will try to develop increasingly efficient compliance
mechanisms. This will entail shifting the compliance mechanisms
they rely on from coercive to utilitarian, to normative, toward
hegemonic. On the basis of this theoretical expectation we may
proceed to consider nationalism as a formula for legitimacy. It is a
particular kind of appeal designed to elicit compliance. Nationalist
appeals arise and succeed under particular conditions. Within some
communities, regions, or periods, nationalism has such spectacular
success as a political formula that it becomes ideologically
hegemonic; that is, rendered invisible as a political resource and
transformed instead into a sentiment and mode of political
association experienced as natural and permanent.
Questions that then become crucial pertain to the conditions under
which beliefs attain hegemonic status, can be maintained and
defended as hegemonic, or lose that status once it has been attained.
Ideologically hegemonic conceptions provide stabilizing distortions
and rationalizations of complex realities, inconsistent desires, and
arbitrary distributions of valued resources. They are presumptions
that exclude outcomes, options, or questions from public
consideration. Thus they advantage those elites well positioned to
profit from prevailing cleavage patterns and issue definitions. That
hegemonic beliefs do not shift fluidly with changing realities and
marginal interests is what makes them important. That they require
some correspondence to "objective" realities and interests is what
limits their life and the conditions under which they can be
established and maintained.
Hegemonic beliefs achieve and lose their status as such as a result of
struggles over discursive formations—"wars of position" in
Gramscian terms. This kind of struggle entails political competition
over what ideas and values will be accepted by leading strata as the
givens, the commonsense categories, identities, exclusions, and
irrelevancies that can naturalize otherwise parochial and ultimately
contingent beliefs. Though subtle, nonviolent, and conducted as much
in the press and in educational and religious institutions

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as in the political arena, these struggles are of far-reaching political
importance. For whatever particular interpretation of reality is
contained in the set of conceptions enshrined as hegemonic will
decisively advantage certain groups by privileging their particular
preferences and attitudes as unassailable assumptions of community
life. By linking particular conceptions and preferences to
commonsensically established myths, symbols, and categories,
hegemonic ideas camouflage particular distributions of power.
In The Modern Prince Gramsci discussed the patterns such struggles
display and the factors that determine the outcome of competition
among hegemonic projects. The result of his effort, though limited, is
suggestive of a partial theory explaining the conditions under which
beliefs are more or less likely to gain, retain, or lose their status as
hegemonic. The first of three elements in this theory is the effect of
what he called "incurable contradictions," and what I have called
"gross discrepancies" between prevailing conceptions and "stubborn
realities." Although the central tenet of Gramscian thinking is the
susceptibility of people to accept contingent, or even false and
counterproductive, beliefs as commonsensically valid, Gramsci also
emphasized the difficulty of sustaining beliefs that too explicitly,
directly, and systematically are contradicted by immediate
perceptions. This may be thought of as a hypothesis about the
impossibility of "absolute distortion" in the achievement and
maintenance of hegemonic status for particular beliefs. Implicit here
is the notion that only by arranging at least a modicum of satisfaction
for the groups from whom consent is required and a minimum
correspondence between objective conditions and ideological pictures
can hegemonic conceptions fulfill their primary function; namely, the
containment and political neutralization of latent tensions which, if
unleashed, would threaten the power of those whose interests the
conceptions serve.9
In this regard, Gramsci suggests that counterhegemonic ideas (the
second factor in this theory), offering a more comforting and
"parsimonious" mystification of both "stubborn reality" and elements
of irreducible self-interest will be a necessary component in the
overthrow of an existing hegemonic conception or an important
factor in the failure of some other contender for that status.10 The
point is that no politician confronted with beliefs honored or
advanced as hegemonic is likely to treat them as problematic unless
some other schema has been made available in terms of which the
belief can be understood or articulated as an interpretation of reality
and the imperatives of national life, rather than as the direct and
unavoidable expression of immutable facts and ultimate values. It is
thus reasonable to expect that change in the status of hegemonic
beliefs, and the outcome of struggles to establish

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beliefs as hegemonic, will be linked to the availability and
mobilization of new ways of thinking and not simply to the
accumulation of evidence.
The third factor in this theory of hegemonic construction and
deconstruction is political and ideological entrepreneurship, seen as
the transmission belt carrying ideas with hegemonic potential
forward into the political arena, challenging other rivals or
established hegemonic beliefs, superseding them, replacing them, or
failing to do so. This kind of politics is practiced by (1) imaginative
leaders who are not risk averse, (2) intellectuals, and (3) the
organizations they build or control. Of course most people who
challenge basic assumptions of their community's political life fail.
Whether because of their own shortcomings, the solidity of prevailing
beliefs, or the ineffectiveness of their ideas, their likely fate is to be
dismissed as either cranks or criminals. Still, the inventors and
promoters of hegemonic projects are people who understand the
decisive importance of "reclothing" political questions in cultural
forms.11 By shaping the cognitions and values of elites and masses
these entrepreneurs seek to (re)define, for their own purposes, the
allowable boundaries and the appropriate stakes of political
competition.12
Following on Gramsci, then, I suggest a preliminary and partial
theory of the establishment or breakdown of hegemonic constructions
based on a combination of three elements. To overthrow an
established ideologically hegemonic conception or explain its
breakdown requires the presence of all of the following: (1) a severe
contradiction between the conception advanced as hegemonic and the
stubborn realities it purports to describe; (2) an appropriately
fashioned alternative interpretation of political reality capable of
reorganizing competition to the advantage of particular groups; and
(3) dedicated political-ideological entrepreneurs who can operate
successfully where fundamental assumptions of political life have
been thrown open to question, and who see better opportunities in
competition over basic "rules of the game" than in competition for
marginal advantage according to existing rules.
Obversely, to establish a belief as hegemonic, or successfully defend
its status as such, requires at least substantial correspondence
between the claims of the belief and the political realities it purports
to describe; the absence of a widely accepted basis for an alternative
interpretation; or the absence of political entrepreneurs capable of
profiting from its overthrow or breakdown.
Nationalism and Struggles for Hegemony in the Twentieth-
Century Middle East
Hegemony operates in scholarly circles as it does in political
systems. In the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, historians
and social scientists con--

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cerned with nationalism tended overwhelmingly to frame their
research as investigations of a force or sentiment that seemed to be so
pervasive and natural a feature of modern life as to be interesting
only as an explanans, not as an explanandum.13 Born at Valmy,
nationalism appears in these interlocking literatures as both the
solvent that would eliminate old and inefficient "ascriptive" affinities
and the "glue" that would produce or help peoples discover a more
satisfying and/or more efficient basis for political solidarity. As a
feature of the Enlightenment it is depicted, along with state expansion
and industrialization, as an integral part of the overarching
transformation of life from tradition to modernity. The interlocking
consequences of these processes served as the master narrative for
what was happening and would happen to humankind in this epoch.
Among scholars of the post–Ottoman Middle East, this disposition
carried over and lasted somewhat longer than elsewhere. Even those
such as Elie Kedourie, who bore a certain nostalgia or reverence for
the ancien régime, considered that Islam had faded or would soon
vanish as a political basis for organizing Middle Eastern peoples.
Whether for good or for bad, American, European, and Middle
Eastern scholars believed, and often took it for granted, that
nationalism would prevail in the region. Social scientists, and
especially and most explicitly political scientists, asked not whether
nationalism would prevail as a dominant normative basis for eliciting
compliance and establishing political stability in the Middle East, but
rather what form of nationalism would prevail, when, and how.14
How early did "real" nationalism emerge in the Middle East?15
Would the future belong to the nationalism of the Turanist movement
in Turkey; the extravagant, racialist versions of Persian nationalism
associated with the Pahlavis and the qawmiya pan-Arabism of
Baathists and Nasserists; or would the Middle East produce its own
territorially based nationalist movements organized around
communities fitting within large but not continental size states—
Anatolian centered nationalism in Turkey and wataniyya nationalisms
in the Arab world?16 Would these national states, regardless of their
geographic scope, be Islamic, liberal, or socialist in tone and
coloration?17 Questions were asked about how and when "national
independence" and then "national integration" would be accomplished
and under whose auspices, not about whether nationalism was the
only available framework for advancing the Middle East toward
effective government.
The Islamic revolution in Iran, however, and the rise of powerful,
impossible-to-ignore Islamist movements in almost every Middle
Eastern country, helped trigger a dramatic shift in scholarly frames of
reference. Nationalism

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in the Middle East, or at least in Middle East–oriented scholarship,
was transformed. From an unproblematic background assumption
about the type of political formula that would legitimize political
authority in the region, nationalism became a highly problematic type
of appeal whose future was in doubt—a political formula of dubious
strength and of decreasing interest to ambitious elites. Research
agendas changed accordingly, albeit years or even decades behind
events on the ground. Instead of investigations of the prognosis for
different versions of nationalism, scholars evaluated the viability of
any nationalist basis for political authority against Islamic or (taking
Israel and Lebanon into account) religious solidarities. In the cultural
context of most of the Middle East Islam was transfigured, from one
element determining the tone and substantive content of nationalism
in different countries, periods, or regions, or among different groups,
to an alternative which itself could rival or even supplant nationalism
as a basis for political community and as a formula for the
stabilization of state power.
Using the conceptual and theoretical apparatus presented above, the
currently dominant account—an account that I find more satisfying
than any other—can be expressed as follows. In the centuries
following the Islamic conquests the political formula of Islamic
empire became hegemonic in southwest Asia, Egypt, and the
Maghreb. Islam surrounded and afforded a legitimizing resource to a
series of imperial states, the last of which was the Ottoman Empire.
Over a long period of decline, however, the hegemonic status of
Islam as a political formula was undermined. Losing Islam as a
hegemonic resource, imperial rulers and reformers shifted to various
normative (Ottomanism, pan-Islamism, pan-Turanism), utilitarian
(the Dual Kingdom formula, new patron-client ties with rural and
urban notables), and coercive techniques, none of which succeeded in
producing the efficient extraction of resources necessary to survive in
a world of competitive powers on the scale of Britain, France, the
United States, Germany, and Russia. The demise of the Ottoman
project as an ideologically hegemonic order, and then as a real state,
can be attributed to its gross inability to respond to the external
challenge of European imperialism; the ambitious efforts by
intellectual, military, professional, and other (secularly oriented)
entrepreneurial elites to fashion alternative visions of the
Ottoman/Turkish political community; the struggles by these elites to
build and command their own state projects; and the intrusion of new
"nationalist" ideas that these elites in the Arab lands, the Balkans, and
in Anatolia itself could use to achieve state power on the ruins of, or
with the disappearance of, the Ottoman Empire.
Though their own hegemonic theories of nationalism and
modernization

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encouraged Western observers to believe that the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire signaled the very end of Islam as a serious political
force and its replacement by nationalism, these judgments were false.
Beliefs about Islam as the framework of the polity had lost their
hegemonic status, but they survived nonetheless, along with elites
who could, under changed circumstances, present one version of
Islam or another as an attractive alternative to socialist, nationalist,
or liberal formulas. Nor did nationalism, however popular it became
as an idiom of anti-imperialist mobilization and as an internationally
sanctioned and attractive formula for intellectuals, military men, and
political leaders, become established throughout the area as
hegemonic—naturalized as the basis of political community in the
way that Islam had been for centuries. To be sure, within certain
groups and for certain periods, nationalism can be said to have
achieved ideologically hegemonic status. Within Republican and
especially military circles in Turkey, among dedicated Nasserists and
Baathists, within the mid- to upper echelons of the FLN and the neo-
Destour, within the Jewish state created by Zionism, and even among
the rank and file of some of the Palestinian organizations, no
politically ambitious person could speak publicly as if he thought his
audience had any doubts about the authentic and permanent national
character of the political community.18
The analytic cost of these misjudgments is well reflected in one of
the most effective schemas developed for the organization and
comparison of national movements in the Middle East. I refer to
Clement Henry Moore's theory of nationalist consciousness,
presented in his Politics in North Africa book.19 Moore treats the
dialectical relationship between European colonial control and
mobilization within each colony by Middle Eastern elites opposed to
that control as the primary determinant of the character of
postindependence national regimes and their capacity to meet
successfully the multiple challenges associated with modernization.
In this "colonial dialectic" Moore identifies three stages, or
"moments," of "nationalist consciousness," each typified by a
particular kind of elite. The first "liberal assimilationist" moment is
expressed by scions of the upper class whose access to European
education leads to nationalism as an emblem of modernity and
civilizational equality. While planting the nationalist seed, these
elites reject their own uneducated masses, ape European ways, and
suffer isolation and disillusionment when both the masses and the
Europeans reject them. Second moment elites are nationalists whose
consciousness is shaped by their resentment of the colonial presence
and of European culture and their embrace of the traditional symbols
and forms of authority of the masses. But

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their relationship to tradition (to Islam in most of the Middle East) is
instrumental—exploiting old solidarities to achieve cultural and
political independence from Europe, but without reorganizing power
to include the masses in an egalitarian nationalist movement. The
third (and final) moment of nationalist consciousness is achieved by
the intellectuals, army officers, and professionals of lower middle
class origin. They reject the presence of colonial power as the second
moment did but as the first moment did not. They reject the
traditional symbols, identities, and prejudices of the masses as the
first moment did and the second moment did not, but they also
accept, as neither the first nor second moments did, modern
(European) organizational forms and fundamentally egalitarian
principles of nationalism to achieve a broad-based mobilization of
the nation and genuine participation in politics for the masses.
Although few cases display each moment in discrete and regular
sequence, and although often independence comes before the
completion of the dialectic, Moore suggests a kind of ideal typical
process leading from the failure of prenationalist "primary
resistance" (Emir Abd-el-Kader in Algeria, Umar Mukhtar in Libya)
to the consolidation of a nation-state under the leadership of a third
moment mass nationalist party benefiting from the legitimacy of
having freed the nation from colonial domination and founded its
independent state. Variation in outcomes (for example, coherent
Tunisian and Turkish national states vs. a patron-client based Islamic
monarchy in Morocco vs. a brittle and unstable Algerian republic) are
explained by the character of preexisting social structures, the
amount of political space permitted by colonialism for organized
political opposition, and the timing of decolonization in relation to
the unfolding dialectic.
In Moore's account all outcomes are considered as breakdowns on the
path to, or forms of, a genuine (third moment) "nationalist"
consciousness taken as the only sort of political identity open to
Middle Easterners over the long run. In this sense the national aspect
of the region's future was (without Moore having specified or
acknowledged it as such) hegemonic for him as a researcher. The
hegemonic status of his belief in nationalism as natural and
inevitable, while giving his work clarity and elegance, also places a
stringent limitation upon it. His model of the colonial dialectic and
three moments of nationalist consciousness, presented as an
explanation of the most likely historical path from European colony
to national state, takes the national state form as the terminal
condition of Middle Eastern political life. Such an approach rules out
the possibility of a continuing dialectic involving Islamic or
otherwise non-nationalist moments of political consciousness.

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It is of course true that in most of these states nationalist appeals did
predominate, and that in each case appeals to national identities and
values provided some measure of normative assistance to coercive
and utilitarian techniques of governance. Yet in the region as a whole
nationalism was not embedded in the culture and discourse of public
life so deeply as to make alternative appeals seem absurd to the
masses or irrelevant to potential counter-elites. In any event,
regardless of the status of nationalism as the taken-for-granted
formula for political legitimacy in the region after World War I, it is a
separate matter to ask about the status of specific nationalist projects
in specific countries or about the relative success or prospects for
success of different versions of nationalism. These are, indeed, the
questions about which Moore's theory has the most to say.
But if one is to use the theory to focus on the variable political
success of different formulas for stabilizing states and for making
their rule more efficient, then what is needed is a category of political
technique beyond the ability of elites to explicitly elicit sacrifices and
compliance using national appeals. One needs, indeed, a concept and
theory of hegemony. As I have noted, among certain ruling groups
and wider strata in Middle Eastern states nationalist ideas did achieve
hegemonic status—in Turkey, for example, under Ataturk, Tunisia
under Bourguiba, arguably Egypt under Nasser, and Israel under Ben-
Gurion. In these systems discourses of nationalism were so well
institutionalized that culture as well as ideology protected these
regimes from the consequences of their policy failures and rising
levels of dissatisfaction—maintaining the political ostracism of elites
representing potential counterhegemonic projects who might
otherwise have been able, more quickly, to mount effective
challenges.
Yet even in those countries, and within those circles, where
nationalism was hegemonic, its status as such could not be
maintained. The triple conjunction of gross disparities between what
the nationalists (of all stripes) promised and what they delivered, the
availability of widely understood religious notions of political
identity, and the presence of ambitious and talented Islamist (and
Jewish fundamentalist) elites able to use those ideas to explain
nationalist failures and advance their own solutions, opened "wars of
position" over the meaning of political identity in polities throughout
the Middle East. Among the results were revolution in Iran, a culture
war and assassination of the prime minister in Israel, civil war in
Algeria, harsh repression in Tunisia, an Islamist prime minister in
(Kemalist) Turkey, and assassination, violence, and an anti-Islamist
slowdown in democratization in Egypt. Thus only a theory pertaining
to the conditions under which a formula for political legitimacy is
more or less likely to become hegemonic, or be maintained

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in that status, can explain some of the most interesting patterns of
Middle Eastern political life in the last two decades.
It is partly because nationalism as the future was hegemonic for the
theorist, partly because Moore's theory itself lacked a concept of
hegemony, and despite a dialectical aspect that could
straightforwardly have been extended to explain subsequent, non-
nationalist moments of political consciousness, that Moore failed to
anticipate Islamist and Jewish religious mobilization based on a
nonnationalist or antinationalist consciousness and a rather sudden
and rapid decline of nationalist projects throughout the region.
Accordingly, the full value of Moore's schema can be appreciated
only if his terminology is recast to incorporate distinctions among (1)
conditions for the hegemony of a type of political formula, of which
nationalist and religious fundamentalist are both examples, which can
support and be supported by what Gellner called the "entropizing"
aspects of social mobilization, industrialization, and mass political
participation; (2) conditions for the hegemony of the national type of
political consciousness within a particular epoch or under very
general economic, international, and political circumstances; and (3)
conditions for the hegemony of a type of nationalist consciousness
within a particular political system.
Distinguishing between questions concerning 1 and 2 is crucial for
scholars such as Gellner, Anderson, Hobsbawm, and Greenfeld in
their investigations of the logic, timing, or prerequisites of
nationalism from a long-term historical perspective.20 On the other
hand, distinguishing between questions 2 and 3 is what preoccupies
most contemporary analysts of Middle Eastern affairs. Their task has
been to map and explain competing strains of nationalist mobilization
within particular political communities and religion-based rivals to
nationalist mobilization.21 The usefulness, indeed the necessity, of
hegemonic analysis for accomplishing this kind of task is nicely
illustrated by patterns of political conflict and change within Israel.22
In 1949 the State of Israel could lay convincing claim to having
achieved the central objectives of classical Zionism. Jewish
independence in the Land of Israel had been attained and enjoyed
wide recognition in the international community. Distinctive social,
scientific, cultural, and economic achievements were a source of both
pride and reassurance. Zionism had created, or revived, a new Jewish
personality and, perhaps, a model society. Enough of Jerusalem lay
under the state's control for the Israeli government proudly to declare
the city as the capital of the country. All Jews, anywhere in the world,
enjoyed rights to citizenship upon arrival within the borders of the
Jewish state. Nor did any power enforce limits on Jewish
immigration.
In the first two decades of independent statehood, Israeli politics was
domi--

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nated by competition among rival leaders and factions within the
Labor Zionist movement—the political force that had been largely
responsible for Zionist achievements. In order to share opportunities
with Mapai to govern the country, the "Activist" or militantly
irredentist wing of Labor Zionism abandoned its espousal of
territorial maximalism. The religious parties, preferring political
spoils to political messianism, became Labor's junior partners. Herut
and other "Land of Israel" oriented groups were marginalized within a
"State of Israel," whose politics revolved around issues of security,
economic progress, immigrant absorption, and attendant processes of
social adjustment. The liberation or redemption of biblically
promised territories, or religious commitments to advance the
coming of the Messiah through political action, were ideas that
virtually no one discussed as politically significant.
A crucial feature of this political landscape was the hegemonic status
achieved by the Armistice Lines of 1949—the "Green Line." Not only
the vast majority of Israeli citizens (both Jewish and Arab), but
virtually the entire non-Arab world accepted Israel's 1949 boundaries
—bigger than the United Nations' Partition Plan borders but
considerably smaller than any historically based description of the
Land of Israel—as the Israeli state's permanent and legitimate
frontiers. Although the anthems and the official documents of
Menachem Begin's Herut Party (forerunner to the Likud) proclaimed
loyalty to the Revisionist dream of a Jewish state throughout the
entire land of Israel (including both banks of the Jordan River), by
1965 the party responded to the disinterest and skepticism of Israeli
voters by paying only lip service to its traditional program.23
The crucial point here is that the hegemonic status of the 1949
Armistice Lines as Israel's legitimate and permanent borders was a
key structural support for the Ben-Gurionist state-centered, secularly
oriented, Israeli-Jewish national project—a project epitomized by
Ben-Gurion's concept of mamlachtiut (Jewish, or Hebrew, étatism).
However, only by taking into account both passionate ideological
attachments to the idea of the whole land of Israel present within
every major segment of the pre-1948 Zionist movement, as well as
the military superiority enjoyed by Israel over both Jordan (in the
West Bank) and Egypt (in the Gaza Strip), and the ideological
transformation of Israeli politics after 1967, can one appreciate how
great a political achievement was the pre-1967 exclusion of the
territorial issue from the Israeli national agenda. As exultation and
amazement after the June victory replaced the fear and depression
that had preceded it, the limits Ben-Gurion and his allies had placed
on the state's geographic shape (and on the state's

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other regions of the Arab world and the Third World, proposing a
transregional coalition of progressive states, each dominant within
their own part of the world and each sustaining the other in the global
arena. But this vision no longer obtains, as Algeria has sunk into a
deep political and ideological crisis leading to a civil war between the
FLN regime and the Islamic extremist opposition.
Algeria has been transformed from the ideal typical anticolonial
model revolution into the paradigm case of an Islamist revolution.
This second revolution perfects the idea of a popular rising rooted in
the indigenous culture of a nonwestern people; and it corrects the
mistakes perpetrated by a westernized elite more interested in
transforming tradition than in realizing the full potential of a stifled
authenticity. The Algerian Islamic revolution is thus a completion of
the earlier revolution, which failed to disentangle itself from the
bonds of colonialism.
The Algerian Islamic revolution is not the product of an alliance of
convenience between an organized, hierarchical clergy and a
radicalized intelligentsia such as that which overthrew the shah of
Iran. The Algerian state has not collapsed, but it has not been able to
crush the extremists or win over the population. So despite the
strategic value of notions like Maghreb unity, both Morocco and
Tunisia would avoid contamination with the Algerian virus. Neither
regime would be acceptable as partners by the Algerian extremists.
And with the decline of the idea of Maghreb unity as a device to
insulate the Maghreb from the religious excesses of the mashriq, the
cultural centrality of the Berber communities has also lost much of
its strategic usefulness. The recent Algerian government decision to
ban both sectarian and ethnic parties is a case in point.
The Algerian Islamic revolution, far more than the Iranian, has
further undermined the already weak idea of pan-Arabism in the
Maghreb, and it has gravely diminished the significance of the
concept of intra-Arab regional cultural differentiation.
Comprehensive Arab nationalism, in the parlance of the Party, is
not now capable of blocking the advance of the Islamic resurgence.
But given the localizing tendencies of the Islamist movement, there
will be a continuing inclination for the region to remain politically
fragmented and for the number of existing states to remain stable.
Islamic movements do help one another across national boundaries,
but the major responsibility for opposing secular governments has
thus far been undertaken by indigenous political groups. Only in
Afghanistan have foreign volunteers made a substantial contribution,
and that was largely as a consequence of

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metaphysical significance) lost their hegemonic status. The dramatic
expansion of Jewish control over the very heart of biblical Israel
brought the question of Israel's rightful size and shape, and its
potential world historical or cosmic significance, back to the center
of its political life. Mythologies of the land of Israel and the
emotions, appeals, and symbols associated with geulat haaretz
(redemption of the land), Eretz Yisrael hashlema (the completed land
of Israel), and atchalta dgeula (dawn of redemption) were once again
mobilizable on behalf of expansionist political programs.
These myths and beliefs (alternative interpretations of political
reality) afforded unprecedented opportunities for revisionist and
religious Zionist elites to deprive the Labor Party of its forty-year
domination of Zionist and Israeli politics. Nor did it take very long
for these politicians to realize how fundamentally the Six-Day War
had changed the contours of the political terrain. By emphasizing,
instead of suppressing, irredentist sentiments they could launch a war
of position over the proper conception of the State of Israel—a
struggle whose outcome promised opportunities to remove the chiefs
of the Labor Party from the commanding heights of the polity and
replace them with Revisionist, religious, and "Activist" candidates for
leadership.
Revisionists were extremely well positioned to launch such a
struggle. They had always celebrated a Jewish state whose territorial
expanse would correspond to the world-historic destiny and regional
if not global power potential they ascribed to the Jewish people. The
results of the 1967 war seemed to confirm that the path to national
greatness lay in territorial expansion and the elevation of those who
had been most faithful to this principle (the Revisionists) to national
leadership. With the expansion of the territory controlled by the
Jewish state an accomplished fact, Menachem Begin's record of
espousing this expansion could no longer be used as convincing
evidence that he was too reckless to be trusted with the premiership.
Using his impeccable credentials as a whole Land of Israel loyalist
and his substantial oratorical talents, Begin donned a yarmulke
(orthodox Jewish head covering) and made religiously traditionalist,
populist, and hard-line anti-Arab appeals to Israel's emergent Oriental
Jewish majority (Sephardim).
Leaders of the militant "young guard" faction of the National
Religious Party also found in the territories issue a road to national
prominence. They envisioned a geographically "completed" State of
Israel acting as the instrument and sign of a culminating Messianic-
Redemptive process. The results of the war were interpreted as a
giant step forward in the process, a process which could be facilitated
by political leaders sensitive to the cosmic implications of policies to
be implemented in and toward the territories. Exploit--

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ing their intimate links to Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook and their
instrumental role in establishing and supporting Gush Emunim, these
men tapped a painful sense of inferiority and unfulfilled mission
experienced by a generation of religious Zionist youth. They
represented young orthodox Israelis who were proud to have served in
the army for the first time in substantial numbers during the 1973 war
and who were anxious to prove their worthiness by winning the whole
Land of Israel for the Jewish people, as the previous secular-sabra
(born in Israel) generation had won Jewish statehood.
The third group of political entrepreneurs to raise the banner of the
whole Land of Israel were hundreds of second echelon personalities
within the Labor Zionist apparatus—"Activists" who had been forced
to lay aside their territorial maximalism in order to participate in
governing the country and who had, even so, never achieved positions
of supreme leadership in the military or civilian branches of the state.
They saw in the post-1967 resumption of settlement and pioneering
activities in the West Bank and Gaza an opportunity to revive the
slumbering national genius of the Jewish people and trigger new
waves of immigration, making Zionist ideology and "pioneering"
commitment again respectable, instead of a favorite subject for satire.
They explained the powerful emotional response of Israeli Jews
visiting east Jerusalem and other portions of the territories as an
expression of the normalness of the Jewish people's existential
attachment to its patrimony and as a mystical but organic bond that
would build and redeem the Jewish people while the people itself
built and redeemed the land.24 This group was the animating force
behind the Movement for the Whole Land of Israel (established in
August 1967). After its demise, the ascendancy of the Likud, and the
latter's alliance with the National Religious Party, they either joined
Gush Emunim as nonreligious fellow travelers, supported Moshe
Dayan in his alliance with the Likud, or formed small ultranationalist
parties such as Tehiya (1979), Tzomet (1983), and Moledet (1988).
These latter parties have seen themselves as candidates for national
leadership and hoped to achieve it by an uncompromising
commitment to the whole Land of Israel, a sharpening conflict with
the Arab world (including the "transfer" of large numbers of
Palestinians out of the country), and the need, eventually, to establish
a pur et dur regime capable of protecting Israel's sovereignty and
security within its enlarged borders.
The Six-Day War thus set the stage for a war of position over the
shape of the state, the fundamental meaning to be attached to the
state's existence, and the normative basis for the Israeli-Jewish
political community. From 1967 to 1977 ideological and political
entrepreneurs from each of the various

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streams of Zionist political life refashioned available ideational
resources to develop hegemonic projects centered on the substantial
expansion of the boundaries of the state. Then, following the May
1977 elections, an annexationist alliance among these groups, led by
the Likud, took power and embarked upon a wide-ranging effort
hegemonically to institutionalize beliefs that the size and shape of the
State of Israel corresponded to a conception of the whole Land of
Israel that included as its irreducible core all the territory of Palestine
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Begin's objective was nothing less than the hegemonic establishment
of a new Zionist paradigm, supported by a new history of the
independence struggle, a new relationship between religion and
politics, and a new emphasis on the land, people, and Bible of Israel,
rather than on the boundaries, citizens, and laws of the State of Israel.
If in the first decade following the 1967 war a set of hegemonic
conceptions that had protected the power of the Labor establishment
for two decades was displaced, after 1977, those whose ideas had
been trivialized by formerly hegemonic notions sought to do the same
to their antiannexationist opponents. The heroes and honored myths
of one Zionist subculture represented the villains, falsehoods,
jealousies, and bombast of the other.25
Nonetheless Likud leaders were aware that the hegemonic project of
their main ally—the religious/Messianists grouped within Gush
Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful)—was enormously more ambitious
than their own. Gush's ambition was to eliminate nationalist, secular
Zionism (including Revisionism) as a candidate for hegemonic status
in Israel and to replace it with their own militantly religious
conception of Zionism's nature and purpose. In the meantime Gush
Emunim shared with revisionist Zionism, and with the "Activist"
school of Labor Zionism, a primary commitment to the expansion of
the geographical contours of the state. For Gush Emunim territorial
expansion was crucial as the decisive stage in a world-historic and
divinely ordained "process of Redemption" (tahalich hageula).26 But
although the Likud understood the divergence between its integral
nationalist vision and the religious fundamentalism of Gush Emunim,
it needed the latter to implement its annexationist policies, the
cornerstone of which was the massive settlement of Jews in the
occupied territories.
From 1977 to the end of the second Likud government in 1984, and
during the third Likud government (1990–92), the beginning and end
of government policy was to create conditions that would incapacitate
any future government's effort to disengage from these territories.
Abandoning the relatively small-scale policies of settlement
implemented by previous Labor-led

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governments, Begin's governments undertook a wide-ranging,
multifaceted campaign to encourage Jews to settle in all parts of the
territories, encourage Arabs to emigrate from them, and strip as many
legal, administrative, and psychological meanings as possible from
the pre-1967 Green Line.27 Although economic and military
rationales were commonly invoked for settlement construction, its
ultimate purpose was to set in motion more fundamental
demographic, ideological, cultural, and psychological processes.
Accordingly, drastic increases in expenditures on settlements were
accompanied by policies in the educational, broadcasting, judicial,
and administrative spheres designed to accelerate the disappearance
of the Green Line from the practical life and ordinary language of all
Israelis.28 After coming to power, the Likud changed the
government's terminology for settlement in the occupied territories,
substituting the term hitnachalut (evoking biblical injunctions and
promises to "inherit" the land through settlement) for hityashvut, an
emotionally neutral term.29 The terms occupied territory or West
Bank were forbidden in news reports. Television and radio journalists
were effectively banned from initiating interviews with Arabs who
recognized the PLO as their representative.30 Early in 1983 the
Television Board ruled that settling the West Bank and Gaza Strip no
longer constituted a "subject of public controversy," thereby
permitting advertisements for settlements to be broadcast as "public
service announcements." In 1980 and 1986 laws were passed
outlawing any nonscholarly meetings between Israelis and PLO-
affiliated Palestinians, whether in Israel or abroad, forbidding
expressions of support for the PLO, including representations of the
Palestinian flag, and declaring as ineligible for participation in
parliamentary elections any political party not recognizing Israel's
character as "the state of the Jewish people."
This effort to establish its own ideological position as bounding what
would be considered legitimate was reflected in the rhetoric of Likud
politicians and in the party's tactics in the 1984 election campaign.
During the 1984 and subsequent campaigns the Likud and its allies
began promoting themselves as composing hamachane haleumi (the
national camp). By so doing they reversed Ben-Gurion's campaign of
hegemonic ostracism against the right by suggesting that those who
questioned the principle of Eretz Yisrael hashlema, including the
Labor Party, were no longer fit to be considered members of the
national community.31
The long-run purpose of these policies was to transform Israeli
beliefs, allegiances, and interests—to reshape the cognitive map of
Israelis to conform with an image of the country which included the
territories as no different from other regions of the state. If this were
accomplished all future gov--

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ernments would be prevented from publicly entertaining "land for
peace" options with respect to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
As is readily apparent from the assassination of Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish fundamentalist, the state expansion project
advanced by the Likud-religious-Labor Activist alliance did
institutionalize Israeli rule of those areas so deeply that Israeli
democracy is put at risk by government policies to achieve territorial
compromise.32 But the annexationist project, and the radical version
of Jewish nationalism associated with it, did not succeed in
establishing themselves as hegemonic within Israel itself.
Presumptions about the greater significance of the Land of Israel as
opposed to the State of Israel, about the future of the territories as
integral parts of the State of Israel, and about the divinely or
historically chosen destiny of the Jewish people to stand against the
world in its struggle for the whole land of Israel, never replaced
arguments about these topics within the discourse of leading
politicians or most ordinary Israeli Jews. This failure of hegemonic
construction was due in part to the vigorous struggle of
antiannexationist Israelis against the political and cultural policies
sponsored by successive right-wing governments; due in part to
international forces which, if they did not impose a territorial
compromise on recalcitrant Israeli governments, did force them to
explicitly defend and justify every move they made; and of course
due to the fierce and prolonged struggle of Palestinians to destroy—
via the Intifadhah—the notion that Israelis could feel as comfortable
in the West Bank and Gaza as within Israel proper.
The Kulturkampf continues in Israel. It will continue until either an
anti-annexationist coalition risks democratic breakdown by
permanently disengaging Israel from the West Bank, and thereby
from the revisionist/fundamentalist hegemonic project within
Zionism, or until the passage of time, the settlers' untiring efforts,
and probably the "transfer" of most Palestinians from the West Bank
and Gaza, remove political compromise with the Palestinians as a
"discussible" option within Israeli politics. In these respects Israel
strongly resembles many of its Muslim-Arab neighbors. In Egypt,
Jordan, Palestine, and elsewhere, Islamist projects, representing an
array of pietistic, fundamentalist, and chiliastic appeals, have helped
unseat nationalisms as potent hegemonic formulas, have made it
extremely risky for non-Islamist governments to remove them from
the scene, but have not succeeded in supplanting national and secular
definitions of the political community as the natural and
unchangeable order of things. Instead, no political formulas reign, in
Israel and in most of the Middle East, on a hegemonic basis, forcing
governments to employ less efficient techniques for eliciting
compliance (in--

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cluding widespread coercion and crippling economic policies) and
affording significant opportunities to radical political and cultural
entrepreneurs who may reasonably seek to turn their dreams and
fantasies into political realities.
Solving the Riddle.
The conundrum identified at the beginning of this essay juxtaposed
two seemingly contradictory claims about nationalism. One claim, or
belief, is that national identities are real, perhaps primordially so, that
nationalism is so pervasive, so regularly a feature of our world, and
so liable to take precedence over class identities that when it fades we
should expect it to return, and when it returns we should normally
expect it to prevail. The second, opposing claim is that national
identities, as other identities, are artifacts of political choices made
by individuals or groups. Interests are real, at least perceived
interests, and choices made among these interests produce identities
which may or may not be national and, if national, will have a
substantive content reflecting the parochial interests of those who
foster particular versions of the nationalist message rather than the
"authentic" nature of the nation as history or God produced it.
In the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Middle East we have seen
that Islam and nationalism, in their various guises, are not themselves
"real," in the sense that any one of them is the authentic identity of a
discernible group. We have seen how, as the constructivists would
have it, identities come and go in response to political circumstances,
the efforts of elites to survive and exploit those changing
circumstances, and the empathic capacities of masses of Middle
Easterners to respond to their alternative visions. In many countries,
including Israel, we see ongoing political (and often violent)
struggles over just which identity, which vision within the
community's repertoire is to be honored.
But all is not fluid. Amid the mélange of appeals and discursive
maneuvers real identities do exist—two kinds of real identities. One
is a certain overlap in the repertoire of available tropes that makes
certain kinds of appeals possible. Arabic speakers, for example,
living in the Middle East, can see themselves as members of an Arab
national community, of individual homeland national communities,
or as members of an Islam-based community. Buddhist, Puerto Rican,
or Russian identities, on the other hand, are not available. In another
sense, some identities have, among certain groups and for some
periods of time, been established as hegemonic and thus experienced
as "real" by substantial numbers of Middle Easterners. The reality
that hegemony can create the sense of something as given and
permanent

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and immanently real (even though it is not) is the political fruit of the
practice of hegemonic politics. Explaining how some identities and
the institutions associated with them last much longer than the power
structures that fostered them, understanding why identities can seem
to lose their potency so suddenly, and clarifying the particular
dynamics of struggles over community boundaries and community
identity—these are the analytic payoffs of a theory of ideological
hegemony.
Notes
1. Clifford Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution: Primordial
Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States," in Old Societies and
New States, ed. Clifford Geertz (New York: Free Press, 1963), 105–
57; Walker Connor, "Self-Determination: The New Phase," World
Politics 20, no. 1 (October 1967): 30–53; Connor, "Nation-Building
or Nation-Destroying?" World Politics 24, no. 3 (1972): 319–55; and
Connor, "The Politics of Ethno-Nationalism," Journal of
International Affairs 27, no. 1 (1973): 1–21.
2. See, for example, Craig Calhoun, Critical Social Theory (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1995); Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under
Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauçescu's Romania
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); and Joanne Nagel,
"Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and
Culture," Social Problems 41, no. 1 (February 1994): 152–75.
3. Arthur N. Waldron, "Theories of Nationalism and Historical
Explanation," World Politics 37, no. 3 (April 1985): 416–33.
4. I frame the problem here in ways that are closely related to David
D. Laitin's approach to the relationship between sociological and
economic treatments of culture, though I have sought to go well
beyond his use of the concept of hegemony to solve the puzzle that he
poses. See David D. Laitin, Hegemony and Culture: Politics and
Religious Change among the Yoruba (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986).
5. This definition is taken from Ian S. Lustick, Unsettled States,
Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and
the West Bank/Gaza (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 3–4, 37.
6. Amitai Etzioni, A Comparative Analysis of Complex
Organizations: On Power, Involvement, and Their Correlates (New
York: Free Press, 1961), 4–22.
7. For an apt characterization of political legitimacy as the premium
placed on compliance by individuals who would otherwise prefer not
to obey, see Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic
History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 11.
8. Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1996).
9. Antonio Gramsci, "The Modern Prince," in The Modern Prince and
Other Writings, ed. Louis Marks (New York: International Publishers,
1957), 154–55. For a fascinating attempt to establish the extent of
"exploitation" which can, or cannot, be contained by hegemonic
conceptions, see Adam Przeworski, "Material Bases of Consent:
Economics

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and Politics in a Hegemonic System," in Political Power and Social
Theory: A Research Annual, vol. 1, ed. Maurice Zeitlin (Greenwich,
Conn.: JAI Press, 1980), 21–65.
10. For a similar characterization of Gramsci on this point, applied to
the development of an Irish nationalist counterhegemonic project, see
David Cairns and Shaun Richards, Writing Ireland: Colonialism,
Nationalism and Culture (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University
Press, 1988), especially 13–21.
11. Gramsci, Modern Prince, 147, 183.
12. In this they show their understanding of Gramsci's primary
dictum: "Whatever one does, one always plays somebody's game, the
important thing is to seek in every way to play one's own game, i.e. to
win completely." Gramsci, Modern Prince, 152.
13. Gale Stokes, "The Undeveloped Theory of Nationalism," World
Politics 31, no. 1 (October 1978): 150–60.
14. See Majid Khadduri, Political Trends in the Arab World
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), 255–56. Manfred Halpern,
The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 196–213; Leonard
Binder, The Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (New York:
John Wiley, 1964), 14–17; and Eli Chalala, "Arab Nationalism: A
Bibliographic Essay," in Pan-Arabism and Arab Nationalism: The
Continuing Debate, ed. Tawfic E. Farah (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 1987), 18–56.
15. For this genre see George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1946) and Sylvia Haim, Arab Nationalism
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962).
16. Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1981); Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern
Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1961).
17. Khadduri, Political Trends in the Arab World; Albert Hourani,
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798–1939 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1962); Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), 159–69.
18. This latter formula can be treated as an operational definition of
ideological hegemony, applied to discrete beliefs within a particular
political community.
19. Clement Henry Moore, Politics in North Africa (Boston: Little
Brown, 1970).
20. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Ernest
Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1983); E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780:
Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1990); Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).
21. In the European and general comparative context, a good recent
example of this kind of analysis, focusing on liberalism and
nationalism, is Ernst B. Haas, Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress:
The Rise and Decline of Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1997).
22. The following section is distilled from my presentation of the
Israeli case in Unsettled States, Disputed Lands, 352–95.
23. Ofira Seliktar, New Zionism and the Foreign Policy System of
Israel (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 92; and
Rael Jean Isaac, Israel Divided: Ideological Politics in the Jewish
State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 41.

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24. "Livnot ulehivanotba" (to build and to be built by) was a prestate
Labor Zionist slogan.
25. In a 1963 letter to the Israeli author Haim Guri, David Ben-
Gurion called Begin "a thoroughly Hitlerite type," who, if raised to
power, would "put his thugs into the army and police headquarters
and will rule just like Hitler ruled Germany." See the Hebrew version
of Michael Bar-Zohar's biography, Ben-Gurion (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved,
1975–77), 3:1547. See also Myron J. Aronoff, "Establishing
Authority: The Memorialization of Jabotinsky and the Burial of the
Bar-Kochba Bones in Israel under the Likud," in The Frailty of
Authority, Political Anthropology, ed. Myron J. Aronoff (New
Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1986), 5:105–30.
26. Both the Likud and Gush Emunim have considered themselves to
be in the position of exploiting the other for the sake of different
long-term objectives. What has allowed them to work together has
been that on the decisive political question of the geographical shape
of the state Gush Emunim and the dominant Herut core of Likud have
shared a fundamentally similar "state idea." On the ideology of Gush
Emunim and the complex relationship between Gush Emunim and the
Likud, see Ian S. Lustick, For the Land and the Lord: Jewish
Fundamentalism in Israel (New York: Council on Foreign Relations,
1988), especially 37–52. For the notion of the Likud/Gush Emunim
hegemonic project as a "competing state idea," see Saul Cohen, The
Geopolitics of Israel's Border Question, Jaffe Center for Strategic
Studies, Tel-Aviv University, Study No. 7 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 1986), 46; Baruch Kimmerling, "Between the Primordial and
the Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity: Eretz Israel or the
State of Israel," in Comparative Social Dynamics, ed. Erik Cohen,
Moshe Lissak, and Uri Almagor (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983),
262–83.
27. On the objectives and mechanics of the Likud's annexationist
program, see Ann Mosely Lesch and Mark Tessler, Israel, Egypt, and
the Palestinians: From Camp David to Intifada (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1989), 194–222; Ian Lustick, "Israel and the
West Bank after Elon Moreh: The Mechanics of De Facto
Annexation," Middle East Journal 35, no. 4 (Autumn 1981): 557–77;
Meron Benvenisti, The West Bank Data Project: A Survey of Israel's
Policies (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1984),
19–63; Geoffrey Aronson, Creating Facts: Israel, Palestinians and
the West Bank (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies,
1987), 59–116; Ilan Peleg, Begin's Foreign Policy, 1977–1983:
Israel's Move to the Right (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 95–
142; Bernard Avishai, The Tragedy of Zionism: Revolution and
Democracy in the Land of Israel (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux,
1985), 311–13.
28. Concerning the energetic efforts of Likud governments to
promote the larger "map image" of the state in Israeli schools and
atlases, see "David Levy's Geography Lesson," Jerusalem Post,
editorial, August 20, 1986; David Arnow, "Maps Matter," Forum 3,
no. 1 (Autumn 1990): 17–18; Davar, May 31, 1988. For the concept
of "map image" and its role in the construction of a hegemonic image
of the shape of a state, see John Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster
Question 1917–1973 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 11–25.
29. Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial
Dimensions of Zionist Politics (Berkeley: Institute of International
Studies, University of California, 1983), Research Series no. 51, 174.

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30. "Witch Hunt," editorial, Jerusalem Post, April 5, 1982, and
Jerusalem Post, April 20, 1982. Report by Agence France Presse,
October 27, 1981, JPRS, 79364, November 3, 1981, 37.
31. Concerning this and related shifts in Israeli political discourse,
see Hanna Herzog, Contest of Symbols: The Sociology of Election
Campaigns through Israeli Ephemera (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Library, 1987), 84–85; and Kimmerling, "Between the
Primordial and the Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity: Eretz
Yisrael or the State of Israel," op. cit., 262–83.
32. Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands, 366–438.

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American assistance and the original mobilization against a Soviet-
supported regime.
The Kurds and Other Buffer Zones
While the Kurdish region, or Kurdistan, has functioned as a de facto
buffer zone, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria have each managed their
own Kurdish minority and have, more or less, maintained sovereign
control of their own territory. Even though all four covet more of the
Kurdish territory, each has exercised a measure of restraint for fear of
losing control of their own Kurdish problem or because they may
provoke a neighbor to incite a Kurdish uprising on both sides of the
border. Iran, and to a lesser extent Syria, which has a much smaller
Kurdish problem, have been able to manage their Kurds better than
have Turkey and Iraq. Turkey has almost continuously pursued a
policy of denying political recognition of Kurdish political and
cultural claims and suppressing Kurdish opposition movements. Iraq
has followed a mixed strategy, alternating attempts at accommodative
arrangements with periods of suppression and genocidal violence.
The self-restraint system was challenged by Iranian-Israeli
instigation of the Iraqi Kurds before 1975 and by halfhearted attempts
to do the same during the Iran-Iraq war (1980–88). There were also
incidents of Turkish "hot pursuit" of PKK rebels into Iraqi territory
and long-term Syrian support of the PKK, including the provision of
asylum and even training bases on Syrian territory. More recently,
self-restraint has almost evaporated, with the U.S.-imposed no-fly
zone now north of the 36th parallel, the all but complete exclusion of
the stationing of regular Iraqi forces in that zone, the frequent and
extended "seek and destroy" intrusions of Turkish forces into the
western part of Iraqi Kurdistan–above and beyond the familiar hot
pursuit operations, the tentative cooperation of Kurdish factions with
either Turkey, Iran, or Baghdad, and the continued involvement of
Syria in support of the PKK.
As a consequence, the area of northern Iraq (at least) has turned into a
zone of low-level conflict and anarchy, just as parts of Lebanon were
during the fifteen-year-long civil war. But just as Lebanon remained a
buffer between Israel and Syria for most of that period, so does the
Kurdish region of northern Iraq continue to serve as a buffer; and
though one player may seize and hold a portion of another's territory
for a longer or shorter period (on the excuse of self-defense against
hostile Kurds), as long as some intervening areas are held by local
Kurds, and there is conflict among Kurdish factions but no formal
annexation of territory, and actual control fluctuates, buffering

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16
Afterthoughts
Leonard Binder
Despite the diversity of views held by the contributors to this volume,
I believe that it is possible to argue, on the basis of the weight of the
historical evidence presented, that the ethnic behavior of individuals
in the Middle East is a rational response to a context in which
ethnicity has been politicized largely as a consequence of the
establishment of ethnonational states throughout the Middle East by a
coalition of Western great powers. This context has determined the
rules of the game for governing elites and, consequently, for
individual citizens. Moreover, since the regional powers have never
succeeded in regulating their own affairs, whether by balance of
power, regional hegemony, or concert of the largest states, there is
little reason to believe that the regional powers can find a way to
subordinate the ethnic imperative, which is at once their raison d'être
and their raison d'état. The Middle East regime has been externally
stabilized more or less since 1918 and continues to be so, for good or
ill, under a Pax Americana. This stabilization bolsters ethnic regimes
and puts nonethnic initiatives at a grave strategic disadvantage.
Charles Tilly tells us that state formation in Europe, and consequently
elsewhere during the period of European dominance, was the result of
two large processes: "The first is the extension of power and range of
a more or less autonomous political unit by conquest, alliance,
bargaining, chicanery, argument, and administrative encroachment,
until the territory, population, goods, and activities claimed by the
particular center extended either to the areas claimed by other strong
centers or to a point where the costs of communication and control
exceeded the returns from the periphery . . . Yet we cannot ignore a
second large process, consisting of the more or less deliberate
creation of new states by existing states."1 A third associated process
de--

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scribed by Tilly is one whereby "small groups of power hungry
men . . . inadvertently promoted the formation of national states and
widespread popular involvement in them."2
The contemporary Middle East state system was created in much the
same way, but what Tilly refers to as "creation" played a much larger
role than intraregional conquest. Middle East states were created on
the model of European nation-states. Because the principle of ethnic
and sectarian diversity had already been legitimated under the
Ottoman system, because nationalism had already emerged as a
challenge to the integrity and the organization of the Ottoman empire,
and because the principle of national self-determination adumbrated
by President Woodrow Wilson had become widely accepted as the
legitimate basis of state formation, all the newly created states had
some sort of ethnic justification. Nevertheless, ethnicity and national
self-determination were limited by the interests and capabilities of
the great powers, so that Arabs were divided, Armenians delivered to
the tender mercies of the Soviet system, Kurds divided and
guaranteed minority status in at least four states, and Jews granted a
measure of autonomy as a protected and privileged minority under
the Balfour Declaration.
In his chapter, Ian Lustick tells us that "much of human history for
the last century and a half can be told in terms of five imperial
disintegrations followed by five waves of nationalist or ethnic
mobilizations." This historical assertion is then used as a jumping-off
point for his critique of both the primordialist and the constructivist
theories of ethnicity. He asks the primordialists why it took so long
for nationalism to appear if it is so natural; and he asks the
constructivists, if it is ideologically epiphenomenal or "artifactual,"
why has nationalism been so consistent a response to the breakup of
empire? For Lustick, the answer to both questions lies in the reasons
why governments are obeyed, and these reasons, linking ideology and
material circumstances, change from time to time. Though generally
eschewing rational choice explanations, Lustick goes on to argue that
political authorities act rationally to the extent that they prefer less
costly methods of securing compliance to more costly methods, and,
of course, the least costly methods entail the employment of cheap
talk, especially the sort of cheap talk that claims to be self-evident
truth. At certain historical junctures, nationalism appears to be the
cheapest talk available.
Whether nationalism undermined imperial authority or merely
replaced it, the disintegration of empire transformed the international
system of states, and, to the extent that some sort of order, or balance
of power, prevailed in the old system, it would have to be replaced if
any sort of order were to prevail in the new international arena. It is,
however, questionable whether na--

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tionalism has shaped the emergent world order or even the regional
order in the Middle East. If nationalism has become, in many cases,
the ideology of choice—that is, hegemonic—it is nevertheless
strongly influenced by international strategic choice.
Lustick's emphasis on the problem of "compliance" and the related
problem of legitimacy becomes all the more important when it is
recognized that the boundaries of the successor states were not the
product of nationalist thought so much as the problem for nationalist
thought. The problem of the legitimacy of the successor regimes is
the primary subject of Shibley Telhami's paper.
Perhaps the most interesting point made by Telhami is that, despite
the division of sovereign authority among the Arab states, there is
such a thing as Arab public opinion, and within that amorphous whole
there is a significant part which may be called elite Arab opinion. To
the extent that Telhami is right, it follows that an Arab public opinion
that transcends political boundaries and establishes the criteria of
legitimacy by which individual Arab regimes are judged is, itself, an
international phenomenon and not an aggregate of national
phenomena. It would furthermore be true that Lustick's "compliance"
problem, and its solution by means of the manipulation of hegemonic
beliefs, is more a part of international ideological processes than
domestic politics. Telhami goes even further in suggesting that the
manipulation of Arab public opinion was a conscious goal of
American policy during Desert Storm.
Telhami argues that transnational elite Arab opinion sets limits to any
projection of possible regional coalitions, which under neorealist
assumptions might be limited only by the logic of the balance of
power and "national" interest. Specifically, he denies that the
coalition that was contrived as part of Desert Storm can be
resuscitated. He predicts that none of the Arab states will break ranks
to support an American vision of a new regional order, unless Israel
is constrained to implement the Oslo agreements in a timely fashion.
He doubts that the region can be organized along the ethnic divide
between Arab and non-Arab. He suggests that Iran and Iraq will
eventually evade American efforts to contain them and that both will
challenge the existing regional "order" militarily as well as
ideologically. And, in keeping with his dynamic understanding of the
formation of public opinion, when Iraq and/or Iran create new facts
on the ground, they should influence both Arab and Islamic public
opinion.
Telhami does not predict that the states of the Middle East will
develop regional institutions, or even tacit understandings or game
rules, for the reso--

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lution of conflict or the management of threats or the regulation of
interethnic/religious tensions. He limits his discussion to coalition
formation, or the next phase of balancing power or challenging the
balance. In the next phase, it is likely that the American role will be
greatly diminished as its dependence on Middle East oil declines and
as the expected efficacy of the use of American military force
declines. We are left to draw the conclusion that in the proximate
future, the Middle East regional system will be defined by regional
power and interests much more than by extraregional interests.
Neither does Telhami confront the issue of Islam versus Arabism—
apparently assuming that the ethnic structure of regional relations
will persist.
Gilles Kepel, however, does confront the issue of Islamism, as do
Menashri, Warburg, Olcott, and Muslih. But the last four are more
concerned with the frequent asymmetry whereby ethnicity embraces
religion, while religion scorns ethnicity. Kepel, like Lustick, sees the
issue as one of "compliance," and like Telhami, as one of legitimacy.
As a problem of legitimacy, it is a transnational phenomenon,
affecting public opinion throughout the entire region. As a
compliance problem, it is a strategic issue that is defined by the
social and political situation in each country.
In Kepel's view, the nonsimultaneity of Islamist attempts to seize
power has allowed various interest groups to draw conclusions
regarding whether or not it is in their interest to ally with such
movements. Kepel believes that it is possible for Islamist elites to
assemble, or to gain the leadership of, a winning coalition of forces,
as in Iran. It is, however, impossible to re-create Iranian conditions,
and, therefore, to replicate the strategy of the Iranian clergy.
Nevertheless, Kepel believes that the same or similar social forces
are present in Egypt and Algeria, but the state as well as the
Westernized intelligentsia have learned enough from Iran and
elsewhere to prevent the successful formation of similar coalitions in
those two countries. Implicit in Kepel's analysis is the possibility that
alternative coalitions might be formed, representing alternative
interests, which might succeed in seizing power. Such alternative
coalitions might justify themselves on the basis of either nationalist
or religious doctrines, or both. In fact, Kepel believes that there is no
reason to assume that the Islamic resurgence will continue to achieve
successes, if that is what we can call the Iranian, the Afghan, and the
Sudanese regimes. The outcome of ongoing political struggles in
Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and elsewhere is not preordained either
historically or theologically.
Michael Hudson ponders the meaning of the fifteen-year civil war
that destroyed Lebanon's limited democracy, only to return to a
facsimile of the confessional system whose rejection started the
downward spiral. If only the

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Lebanese, and many political pundits, knew then what they have since
learned! But the fact of the matter is that the fault does not lie with
the Lebanese themselves. The whole of the region, as malintegrated
as it was and remains, is constructed on the assumption that there is
some kind of ethnic formula that justifies the division of the region
into a semblance of nation-states. The Lebanese system was an
anomaly. Moreover, it was vulnerable to external intervention, under
constant Syrian pressure, and a victim of the Palestine conflict. Even
more remote states like Iran, Iraq, and Egypt found it easily possible
to intervene in Lebanese affairs. It is not, therefore, surprising that it
took an international coalition to restore some semblance of order, if
not autonomy, to Lebanon. The Agreement is a small victory for
the Middle East regional system, even if not for Lebanese
sovereignty.
Gabriel Warburg manages to convey some idea of the extent of the
ethnic and religious heterogeneity of the Sudan, going far beyond the
dichotomy of the Mahdiyya and the Mirghaniyya, the one identified
with the renewal of the slave trade (rather than Islam) and the other
with the reassertion of Egyptian imperialism by means of orthodox
Islam and al-Azhar. Each of these models of the exploitation of
religion for political purposes reflects upon the character of the
present regime. But Warburg does not take that direction. Instead, he
is content to show that the present situation recapitulates the
Sudanese past, in which political authority has consistently failed to
cope with ethnic, religious, and tribal diversity. There is, however,
some change in the Sudanese situation from the international
perspective that may be worth noting. Instead of remaining an arena
of alien intervention, especially by Egypt and Libya, Sudan has
become a destabilizing factor and a source of threats to Egypt, Libya,
Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.
It is too early to predict that the PLO will fail to establish a stable
government, but, as Muhammad Muslih shows, the cards are now
stacked against Yasir Arafat, and Mr. Arafat is not doing enough to
help his own cause. After Oslo, and after Arafat decided to move the
leadership of the PLO to Palestine, it was expected that he would
receive enough support from both the United States and Israel that his
authority would be unchallenged by other Palestinians. Both Hamas
and the rejectionist Palestinian organizations (supported by other
Arab states) would have to relent in the face of the overwhelming
support of the Palestinian masses—who may have been just as sick of
the Intifadhah as the Israelis. But Arafat's authoritarianism, his
reluctance to confront Hamas, his suspicion of the Palestinian
intelligentsia, and his cronyism have diminished his standing and
lowered expectations. The Palestinian political class wishes to limit
his authority. The Likud govern--

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ment refuses to grant him any boons that might enhance his stature.
He is compelled to entreat both Husni Mubarak and King Husayn to
intercede on his behalf. He has declared himself willing to cooperate
with the United States, but the United States remains unwilling to put
real pressure on Binyamin Netanyahu.
Egypt and Jordan may want to see the peace process moved forward,
and a stable, independent Palestinian state established, but the same
cannot be said for other Arab states and Iran. Some Arab states may
be indifferent, but enough are hostile to counterbalance Egypt and
Jordan, even under present conditions, when Iran and Iraq are
prevented from exercising their full weight in regional affairs.
Consequently, even during this transition period, Palestine contributes
to regional instability and predatory intervention, in part, at least,
because it lacks an effective government.
Both Turkey and Iran have been able to establish central institutions
well enough rooted in the political culture to have provided
considerable stability even during crises leading to profound political
change.
Turkey, in spite of its own religious wars, the profoundly mismanaged
Kurdish problem, and the overt political intrusiveness of the military,
seems to have developed a workable set of political institutions.
These institutions, albeit not without some modification, have been
reestablished more than once after profound political upheaval has
led to their suspension. In the eyes of both Ian Lesser and Graham
Fuller, these institutions are important assets, strengthening the
Turkish government both domestically and internationally.
It may seem surprising that Iran should be included among those
states that have successfully weathered the storm of independence
and institution building, and thus contributing to the stability of
regional politics. Of course, Iran has undergone a revolution that has
had a profound cultural and political effect. The creation of new
religious authorities has limited the authority of representative
institutions. Considering, however, the limitation of democracy under
the shah, the arbitrary authority of the monarchy itself, and the
ambiguity which characterized constitutional government under those
conditions, it is questionable whether the change has impacted very
much on the structure of regional international relations. It is true
that we have to thank the revolution for the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq
War, and it is also true that Iran has changed its alliance patterns and
broken off its partnership with the United States, but such changes are
not inconsistent with the idea of a stable structure of regional
relations capable of providing the raw material upon which a system
of regional security arrangements or conflict manage--

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ment institutions might be constructed. As David Menashri points
out, the constitution of the Islamic revolutionary republic carries over
much of the constitutional experience of Iran; and the emergent
foreign policy of Iran has begun to reflect the national interest of Iran
rather than some abstract interest of Islam.
Despite their differences, both Syria and Iraq are stereotypical
models of minority regimes that attribute their legitimacy to their
representation of a presumed majority ethnic interest. In both cases,
the majority in question is the majority of all Arabs, most of whom
are Sunnis—though the Syrian elite is predominantly non-Sunni, and
the Iraqi Arab Sunnis are a minority of the Iraqi population. In both
cases, minority seizure of power was possible by means of an alliance
between minority members of the officer corps and the Party. An
essential part of the legitimacy claims of both regimes remains their
commitment to alter the boundaries of Arab states so as to realize an
ethnonationalist ideal. Legitimacy claims are essentially teleological,
and they determine the principles upon which foreign policy must be
based. Domestic politics must similarly be subordinated to the
nationalist goals of the regime—goals which can only be fulfilled by
transcending the limits of the existing state.
It is interesting to note the contrasting views held by many specialists
as well as laypersons regarding these two countries. Adeed Dawisha
reinforces the view that Iraq is an assembled state, an artificial
contrivance, which may have to be ruled by force because there is no
logical or moral basis to such a political entity. By contrast, Syria is
often thought of as the core of an idealized eastern Arab state—
without which no other Arab state could claim historical and cultural
legitimacy. In point of fact, both regimes are clearly the product of
their respective colonial experiences.
In the Iraqi case, Britain tried to assemble a set of territorial assets
and have them ruled over by a client monarchy—which the British
invented—that was of necessity dependent because it was both alien
to its own ethnic base and because that ethnic base was a minority,
even if a hegemonic minority. In the Syrian case, the French devoted
assiduous efforts to disassembling Syria, to weakening the power and
moral authority of the Sunni majority, and to empowering the ethnic
and religious minorities by various means, including recruiting them
disproportionately into the Troupes Spéciales du Levant. Of course,
French colonial policy was more concerned with facilitating their
own administration rather than shaping independent Syria, but those
policies had lasting effects. Among the interesting consequences was
the subordination of the Sunni bourgeoisie to military authority, and
the rise

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of a Sunni fundamentalist movement directed at restoring Islamic
orthodoxy to power—and with it the Sunni Arab majority. Syrian
military rule has not been overthrown; it has been accepted as
legitimate despite its shocking use of violence against its own people.
As Moshe described it, the Syrian polity has been reassembled,
not according to the vision of the Sunni Arab ethnic community, but
according to the vision of Hafiz al-Assad and, some would say, the
vision of Gamal Abd al-Nasser as exported to Syria between February
1958 and September 1961.
From the perspective of their foreign policy preferences, it appears
that it would be rational for the Iraqi regime of Saddam to prefer a
merger with one or more Arab states having majority populations of
Sunni Arabs—provided, of course, that the Iraqi elite would retain its
hegemonic position in the newly amalgamated state. Syrian
preferences under Assad might tend toward a merger with an even
more heterogeneous Arab state, such as Lebanon, which might further
enhance the public good provided by the present stable regime and
the successful policy of integration described by Moshe .
The two may be further contrasted in terms of their probable
influence on an emergent regional system. As a consequence of its
invasions of Iran and Kuwait, whether provoked or not, Iraq is
already perceived as the most destabilizing state in the Gulf and in
the eastern Arab area. Assad's Syria, though it has established its
hegemonic control of Lebanon and actually occupies part of the
country, though it is allied with Iran, and though it has treated Arafat
harshly while appearing to take a strong stand against Israel, is
generally believed to be a stabilizing force in the region. But when we
look at the region as a whole, stability appears to be the product of a
balance rather than a ruler's state of mind. At the present time, for
good or ill, the tension between Syria and Iraq is the centerpiece of a
manifold balance of power, which with some assistance from the
United States prevents transnational ethnic tensions from boiling
over. But Syria and Iraq are not evenly balanced when set against one
another, leading to the Syrian-Iranian alliance, leading to the Israeli-
Turkish alliance, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, the Israeli-
Jordanian peace treaty, and so on.
The Jordanian monarchy was invented like the Iraqi monarchy, but it
took longer to evolve. The British purposes were to partition
mandatory Palestine and to mollify the Hashemite clan. Once
separated from Cisjordanian Palestine, the further disaggregation of
Transjordan was no longer necessary. There is little doubt that part of
the reason for this partition was to limit or contain the scope of the
newly legitimated Zionist enterprise and the tension that it was
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helped divide the Arabic-speaking population of Palestine into two
protoethnic groups whose relationships have been complicated by the
flight of large numbers of Palestinian refugees into Jordan, and by
Jordan's occupation of the West Bank and part of Jerusalem from
1948 to 1967. Hashemite policy has vacillated over whether to try to
integrate Palestinians and Jordanians. A policy of integration might
provide benefits from enlarging the kingdom and enhancing Jordan's
role as an exponent of Arab nationalism. But it might also incur the
costs of ruling over an angry, radical, displaced, and dispossessed
community while challenging the nationalist aspirations of Egypt,
Iraq, and Syria and the antinationalist and anti-Hashemite sentiments
of Saudi Arabia.
Returning to the theme of the way in which decolonization shaped
ethnic conflict within the region by determining which ethnic groups
or subgroups would become dominant, it must be admitted that the
resources of the Hashemite regime upon the attainment of
independence were meager. The prospects for the survival of the
regime were hardly as good as those of Lebanon or the Sudan. That
the regime has survived, and may even continue to survive after the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state, may be attributed
to the support Jordan receives internationally and regionally because
of the vital function it serves—given the existing balance of power
and territorial arrangement within the Middle East.
Martha Olcott's analysis of the situation prevailing in the Soviet
successor states of Central Asia is especially relevant for the purpose
of tracing just how the process of decolonization shapes ethnicity and
competing political identities. The remarkable thing about the
independence of the Central Asian states is the absence of deep
acrimony toward Russia when compared with attitudes in the
Caucasus and the Baltic regions. It is also noteworthy that the new
rulers are frequently drawn from local elites and party officials who
were part of the Soviet regime. And a third important consideration is
that Moscow remains deeply involved with the affairs of the Central
Asian states.
The borders of the successor states remain the same as they were
under the Soviets. As in parts of the Middle East, the end of
imperialism produced a system of states based on an ethnic principle
that does not coincide with existing beliefs and the facts. This result
compels rationally acting individuals to act within an ethnopolitical
arena, whether they hold strong ethnic feelings or not. At the same
time, the anomalies associated with Soviet administrative interests
seem to justify political demands to redraw ethnic boundaries, to
revise ethnic contracts, and to reconsider the distribution of ethnic
rents.
In the midst of this transitional turmoil, the issue of Islam has arisen.
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Olcott sees it, there is a continuing tendency among scholars and
political experts to exaggerate the influence of Islam and the
potential consequences of the cultural relegitimation of Islam in
Central Asia. What evidence there is for an Islamic revival in the
region points to a reaffirmation of identity, a renewed identification
with other Muslims, an increased religious orthopraxy, and a stronger
sense of community. At the same time, however, in the absence of a
workable ethnic formula for the region, and anticipating the failure of
the successor leaderships to deal with the economic and social
problems of these states, one can expect that some Muslims will call
for an Islamic political movement that will solve the ethnic problem
by an appeal to Islam's transcendence of cultural diversity, and the
economic problem by appeal to the utopian character of a state.
Judging by what little we know of Islamist movements in the region,
it is likely that any successful religious movement in Central Asia
will include some tacit ethnic appeal.
The Kurds of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and the of the Gulf
and Iraq, are both large, unassimilated, nonsovereign, and relatively
concentrated populations. Both are thought to constitute security
problems for their "host" governments. The Kurds are a problem
because they want autonomy, and after they get it they may demand
independence. The are a problem because they may feel a loyalty
toward Iran, and they may act to advance Iranian interests rather than
those of the country of their citizenship. Moreover, as Michael Herb
points out, the Iraqi are numerous enough to aspire to
independence or even to a reversal of political status with the Sunni
community.
Under the traditional Islamic authority of the Ottoman Empire, both
groups were recognized to have distinctive ethnic and/or religious
characteristics, and their leaders were accorded recognition as millet
representatives to facilitate government control and administrative
relations. Such traditional arrangements accepted the fact that there
are differences among ethnic and sectarian communities, and might
have produced tacit ethnic contracts, though they did not diminish the
authority of the ruler. But the successor states are not multinational
empires. They are presumed to be nation-states, based on the
precedence of one ethnic group, and virtually none of the states of the
Middle East have found a way to work out new ethnic contracts that
will satisfy the interest of subordinate ethnic groups in political and
economic equality.
Herb argues that the ability of Iran to manipulate sentiment in
other countries is sharply constrained by the vulnerability of those
communities, and, in the case of Iraq, by the cultural and
organizational differences between the Iranian and others.
Nevertheless, Iran is presumed to have a

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will continue to the benefit of Ankara, Baghdad, and Tehran, but at
the expense of the population of the area.
Domestically, each of the four sovereign states will continue to deal
with their own Kurds by policies composed of repression, co-
optation, and instigation/provocation intended to maintain internal
control while keeping their neighbors off balance. Kurdish
nationalists are repressed, traditional leaders are co-opted, and
foreign-educated intellectuals are instigated–not a hard-and-fast rule,
but a rule of thumb.
How do the Kurds themselves respond to these regional policy
strategies? What strategies do they select? Again, the rule of thumb is
that the Kurdish nationalists in exile preach rebellion, secession, and
national self-determination. Those in situ preach political
compromise, cultural autonomy, and pro rata quotas. Traditional
leaders usually choose mixed strategies based on whether the greatest
threat is, at the moment, from rival traditional leaders; urban,
educated Kurdish nationalists and intellectuals; a repressive central
government; exiled Kurdish extremists; or neighboring regional
governments. The exiled Kurdish elites–intellectuals for the most
part, but of varied social backgrounds–can choose among strategies
of conspiracy and terrorism, or appeal to the sympathies of world
opinion, or, now, to the organization of popular social movements in
Germany, the heart of the new Europe.
The strategy of calling for a sovereign Kurdish nation-state, including
Turkish, Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian, and Caucasian territories, generally
comes from abroad and has little international appeal–even though an
independent Kurdistan might enhance the stability of the region in
case one of the three major states with a Kurdish minority collapses
from within or suddenly gains hegemonic power within the
subregion. Complete subjugation of the Kurds by each of the
sovereign states could aggravate local international rivalries,
boundary claims, and disagreements over the sharing of the bounty of
regional rivers–and it could increase the incentive to settle these
questions peacefully through negotiation and compromise.
Afghanistan was a classic buffer region, and recognized as such by
both British and Russian statesmen. Although the British made
several incursions into the Pushtun areas in the southern part of
modern Afghanistan, and the expansion of the Tsarist empire
incorporated both Uzbek and Tajik areas to the north, both imperialist
powers agreed to treat the tribally ruled areas that neither controlled
as a buffer zone or state in their treaty of 1907. That treaty also
included an agreement to divide Iran into three zones: the northern
exclusively safeguarded for Russian imperialist influence, the
southern re--

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special interest in communities wherever they are, and possibly
to enjoy some influence over them. There is no such sovereign patron
of the Kurds. The ruling authorities in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria do
not cooperate with one another in their Kurdish policies. There is a
convergence of policies and not a common policy. All are opposed to
Kurdish independence and to the creation of a Kurdish nation-state.
But all are willing to export their problems to their neighbor. At
times, they are prepared to support Kurdish independence or
autonomy demands directed against neighboring countries despite the
logical and political contradiction; at times, to control their own
Kurdish problems, they are willing to intervene in a neighboring
country to punish or pursue Kurdish troublemakers. But they have not
been able to coordinate their Kurdish policies, nor do they seem very
interested in doing so.
Fuller suggests that Turkey is missing a chance to become the
regional patron of the Kurds. Since the largest group of Kurds resides
in Turkey, were Turkey to grant the Kurds some form of political
recognition, and encourage the development of Kurdish cultural and
political institutions, Turkey might then be able to use its Kurds to
mobilize the entire transnational community to support its interests
over those of Iran and Iraq while reducing Syria's influence over
Turkey's own Kurds. In advocating such a policy, Fuller notes that it
could backfire, in the sense that Turkish Kurds might increase their
demands for economic and political payoffs to the point where the
Turkish government would find it difficult to accommodate them. It
is also likely that Iraq and Iran would not remain passive in the event
of such a reversal of the tacit arrangements under which all four
states have functioned.
These arrangements have not worked flawlessly. The four countries
have intervened in one another's affairs, and they have not restricted
their Kurdish policies to their own Kurds. Nevertheless, collectively
they have prevented the emergence of an effective, transnational,
Kurdish national movement within the region. They have also
maintained the Kurdish region as a buffer zone, separating the four
countries, preventing direct clashes between their armed forces, and
rarely joining in military operations with Kurdish forces. But the
arrangement is a tacit one, without guarantees, without consultative
institutions, and without any enforcement provisions. Any participant
is free to defect at will, and may be expected to do so if the short-
term reward is high enough and the capacity of the others to inflict
sanctions low enough. The fact that the arrangement works as well as
it does is testimony to the fact that it serves the interests of the
participating group sufficiently so that it is virtually self-enforcing.
At the beginning of this conclusion I suggested that the ethnic politics
of

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the Middle East is given to a rational and systematic explanation. I
believe that that there is an impressive convergence in the views of
the participants in this project and that the case studies contributed by
my colleagues provide us with a consensual understanding of Middle
East ethnic conflict.
I believe that the case studies show that most social groups in the
Middle East enjoy more than one ascriptive option. Usually their
options include one or more ethnic choices and one religious choice.
If forced to choose a single option, individuals are compelled to
violate the complex synthesis of identitive consciousness and they are
forced to weigh each of the composite elements analytically. The
undifferentiated mix tends to be socially inclusive, while selection
tends to exclude marginal members of the group. Consequently,
efforts to politicize ascriptive identities result in, if they do not
intend, the allocation of priority or exclusivity to one component of
composite identities—thus providing political rents to elites that
control the symbols of that component (for example, religion,
development, the state, the military, entrepreneurs, the intelligentsia,
tribal leaders).
No Middle East regime is truly ascriptively neutral, basing political
participation and civil rights on
universalistic/humanistic/individualistic considerations alone. At
least one ascriptive group is favored above all others, and in some
cases there is a system of ethnic rents that privileges additional
groups differentially. Ruling elites are usually drawn from a single
dominant ascriptive group, and they may be supported by a
consociational elite cartel of subordinate ascriptive group leaders
who have accepted quasi-contractual cooperative deals with the
dominant core group. (Lebanon is not unique in this characteristic,
even though such arrangements have not been formalized in other
countries to the same extent.)
These structures of ascriptive hierarchy, whether retained from
tradition or re-created by military juntas, may be changed in either of
two ways: a new ascriptive group becomes dominant, or the structure
of factions within the dominant ascriptive group is realigned. In some
cases a new group emerges at the same time, or even because it has
succeeded in an internal realignment. The new role of the in
Lebanon is a possible case in point. But usually most changes are of
the second variety, entailing only a shift within the dominant ethnic
group. Countries where the first type of change has occurred include
Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. Countries where the second type
of change has occurred include Egypt, Iran, Algeria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Israel, Sudan, and Jordan. In group one, the new elites
are, for Lebanon, the religious authorities; for Yemen, non-Zaidi
urban groups; for Libya, non-Sanusi, Fezzani, and Tripolitanian
groups; and for Syria,

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groups. In group two, there has been a realignment of elite elements
in Egypt rather than a change; in Iran, the same has occurred, bearing
in mind that the ulema were part of the ruling establishment before
the revolution; in Algeria, the current struggle began between two
segments of the state elite and will probably end with a compromise
or the succession of a new state elite drawn from urban and
professional Arabs; in Iraq, provincial (Takriti) Sunni Arabs have
taken over from the old Ottoman Sunni elite; in Afghanistan, the
Pushtuns continue to dominate even under the Taliban; in Israel, the
Ashkenazi Jews, though challenged, remain dominant even among the
religious groups; in Sudan, the alliance between the military and the
National Islamic Front is a realignment among factions of the
dominant ethnic group; and in Jordan, the East Bank notables and
tribal leaders have retained their positions of influence.
The leading ethnic faction, in each case, is constrained to form at
least minimum winning coalitions with the leaderships of other
communities while upholding the dominance and special privileges
of its own ascriptive community. At the same time, to solidify its
hold on power, the ruling elite faction of the dominant ascriptive
community must also be seen to be supporting the position of that
ethnic group within the region as a whole. This is especially true for
the Arab states of the Mashriq, but also for Iran regarding
minorities, for Turkey regarding Turkish minorities in the region and
in Europe, and for Israel regarding Jews everywhere.
Thus the ethnic structure of politics permeates all levels of politics in
the Middle East, local, national, and international. Furthermore, even
when political change occurs, the ethnic structure of political power
does not change very greatly. As a consequence, perceptions of the
national interest do not change fundamentally, and regional foreign
policy, despite short- or medium-term disturbances, reverts to the
ethnic norm determined by the structure of the regional system.
Notes
1. Charles Tilly, The Formation of Nation-States in Western Europe
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), quoted in Nationalism,
ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (Oxford: Oxford
2. Ibid.

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Contributors
Leonard Binder is currently the ISOP professor of Middle East
studies in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. He was
president of the Middle East Studies Association, member of the
influential Comparative Politics Committee of the Social Science
Research Council, fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences, and chair of the political science departments at
the University of Chicago and UCLA. He is the author of books on
Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Middle East nationalism, and liberal Islam. He
is also editor, coauthor, and contributor to volumes on Lebanon, the
state of the art in Middle East studies, and political development.
Laurie A. Brand is associate professor of international relations at the
University of Southern California. She is the author of Jordan's Inter-
Arab Relations: The Political Economy of Alliance Making and
Palestinians in the Arab World: Institution Building and the Search
for the State. Her latest book, Women, the State and Political
Liberalization: Middle Eastern and North African Experiences, is
forthcoming.
Adeed Dawisha is professor of government and politics at George
Mason University. He is the author and editor of several works on the
Middle East, including The Soviet Union in the Middle East: Policies
and Perspectives (with Karen Dawisha); The Arab Radicals; and
Syria and the Lebanese Crisis.
Graham E. Fuller is currently a senior analyst at the RAND
Corporation, Washington, D.C. He has published many books and
articles on the Middle East and the politics of Islam; his books
include Algeria, The Next Fundamentalist State?; A Sense of Siege:
The Geopolitics of Islam and the West; Turkey's Kurdish Problem; and
The Arab (forthcoming).

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Michael Herb is assistant professor of political science at Georgia
State University. He is the author of All in the Family: Absolutism,
Revolution and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies,
forthcoming from the State University of New York Press in 1999.
Michael C. Hudson is professor of international relations and the Seif
Ghobash professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University. He has
authored and edited several books on Middle East comparative
politics and regional conflict, including Arab Politics: The Search for
Legitimacy; The Arab Future: Critical Issues; The Palestinians: New
Directions; The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in
Lebanon; and, most recently, Middle East Dilemma: The Politics and
Economics of Arab Integration.
Gilles Kepel is director of Graduate Studies on the Arab and Muslim
World, Institut d'Études Politiques, Paris. He is also a senior
researcher at the CNRS-CERI, Paris. He has written extensively on
political Islam in both French and English, and his latest books are
Allah in the West: Islamic Movements in America and Europe and
Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh.
Ian O. Lesser is a senior analyst at RAND in Santa Monica and a
former member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. He
has written extensively on Mediterranean affairs. His most recent
books are A Sense of Siege: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West,
with Graham Fuller, and Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century,
edited with Zalmay Khalilzad.
Ian S. Lustick is professor of political science at the University of
Pennsylvania. His books on nationalism, ethnicity, and Middle
Eastern politics include Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain
and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza and
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. His
current research focuses on Jerusalem, Jewish identity in Israel, and
applications of complexity and evolutionary theory to problems of
group identity and identity change.
Moshe is professor of Middle Eastern studies and director of the
Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, the Hebrew
University, Jerusalem. His writings on Syrian politics and Middle
Eastern affairs include Asad, the Sphinx of Damascus; Palestinian
Leadership on the West Bank: The Changing Role of the Arab Mayors
under Jordan and Israel; Syria

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and Israel: From War to Peacemaking; and Syria under Assad:
Domestic Constraints and Regional Risks.
David Menashri is associate professor and chair of the Department of
Middle Eastern and African History and senior research fellow at the
Moshe Dayan Center, University of Tel Aviv. He wrote and edited
several books on Iranian affairs, including Education and the Making
of Modern Iran; A Revolution at a Crossroads: Iran's Domestic
Politics and Regional Ambitions; and Iran: A Decade of War and
Revolution.
Muhammad Muslih is associate professor of political science at C. W.
Post College, Long Island University. He is the author of The Origins
of Palestinian Nationalism; Political Tides in the Arab World
(coauthored with Augustus Richard Norton); The Political Programs
of the Palestine National Council; and numerous monographs and
articles on Arab politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict. He recently
completed a book on the Golan and is currently conducting research
on how Arab intellectuals view U.S. policies in the Middle East.
Martha Brill Olcott is professor of political science at Colgate
University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. Her writings on politics and religion in Central
Asia include Central Asia's New States: Independence, Foreign
Policy, and Regional Security and The Kazakhs.
Shibley Telhami holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and
Development at the University of Maryland, College Park, and is a
nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Among his
publications are Power and Leadership in International Bargaining:
The Path to the Camp David Accords and International Organizations
and Ethnic Conflicts (with Milton Esman).
Gabriel Warburg is professor emeritus at the Department of Middle
East History, University of Haifa. He authored and edited several
books on the history and politics of the Nile valley, including Egypt
and the Sudan: Studies in History and Politics and Historical Discord
in the Nile Valley.

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served for British imperial intervention, and the central zone reserved
as a buffer. In Iran, the British made concerted efforts to develop
close relations with the Turkic tribes in the vicinity of Shiraz and the
Arabs of Khuzistan and the Shaykh of Muhammera. The Russians
extended their protection to the Qajar ruling dynasty and were
particularly interested in the Azeri population of the Tabriz region.
Thus both Afghanistan and Iran were compelled to adopt ethnic
strategies leading to implied contracts granting virtual autonomy to
ethnic and tribal groups in order to comply with the wishes of
imperialist powers. There can be no doubt that Britain and Russia
interfered in the affairs of Iran and Afghanistan, even if Afghanistan
might not have qualified as a sovereign state for much of the period
under consideration. Their interference was a major influence in
shaping the ethnic politics of both countries, to the point that both
were content to see the near collapse of the central government, so
long as the buffer function was maintained and their influence over
their respective ethnic clients was maintained.
Reza Shah the Great sought to diminish, or at least counter, the
influence of Britain and Russia by encouraging Germany to become
involved in Iran during the interwar period. Nevertheless, early in
World War II, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate, and the United
States joined Britain and Soviet Russia in occupying most of Iran,
excluding Tehran. Tehran remained the seat of the residual but
ineffective government of Pahlavi Iran. Afghanistan was not
occupied, but Soviet influence expanded to the point that the United
States, succeeding Britain as the counterweight to Russia in Central
Asia, agreed to recognize Russian imperial precedence if Russia did
not threaten to annex any part of Afghanistan or encourage ethnic
defiance of the authority at Kabul. Afghanistan remained a
multiethnic buffer right up to the pro-Communist coup of 1978, while
Iran moved wholly into the American sphere from 1953 to the
revolution in 1978. Nevertheless, it can be argued that Iran continued
to serve as a Cold War buffer for much of the period, with the USSR
recognizing American precedence in much the same way that the
United States recognized the Soviet position in Afghanistan. There is
little wonder, then, that among the first tasks of the revolutionary
governments of both Iran and Afghanistan was that of isolating the
major ethnic minorities from foreign influence.
It takes no great leap of the imagination to see the similarities
between these two situations and the role forced upon Lebanon as a
consequence of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the response of the
superpowers to that conflict in the Middle East. Lebanon, too, became
a multiethnic, multiconfessional

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Index
, Mahmud, 314
Abd al-Kader, 346
Abd al-Nasser, Gamal, 21, 22, 26, 27, 51, 53, 56, 60, 94, 100, 133,
188, 191, 347, 367
Abdallah, king of Jordan, 83, 281, 283, 286–88, 304
Abdulhamid II, 79
Abu Mazin. See , Mahmud
Addis Ababa Agreement, 124, 126
al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 136
Afghanistan, 2, 5, 16, 22, 23, 35, 37, 38, 47, 93, 153, 181, 246, 267,
275, 371
(Jordan), 295, 305
Akaev, Askar, 254
Al Sabah, 163–65
Al Saud, 159–63, 167, 177
Albania, 3
Alevis, 213, 217
Algeria, 10, 16, 21, 23, 29, 30, 34, 35, 51, 93, 94, 130, 181, 184, 187,
190–96, 200, 201, 204, 206, 213, 346, 347, 356, 363, 371
Amal, 101, 106
Ansar, 111, 115, 116, 119, 121, 127, 203, 279, 311
Aoun, Michael, 106
Arab League, 10, 13, 21, 25, 287, 290
Arab Nationalism, 26, 41, 357
Arab-Israeli conflict, 27, 38, 41, 45, 48, 56, 57, 101
Arabs, 19, 20, 24–28, 38, 44, 45, 54, 55, 69–71, 73, 79–81, 133, 134,
140, 159, 170, 171, 173, 326, 333, 353, 361, 366, 367, 372
Arafat, Yaser, 33, 52, 299, 314, 315, 318, 320–30, 364, 367
ARAMCO, 161, 162
Armenia, 1, 4, 16, 24, 146, 173, 220, 242, 251
al-Asad, Hafiz, 91, 108
Ascriptive, 19, 333, 334, 337, 343, 371, 372
Ashkenazi, 372
Assyrians, 21, 61, 62
Ataturk, 64, 219, 222, 223, 226, 232, 236, 347
Ataturkism, 209, 214, 236
Awda, , 310
Azerbaijan, 1, 16, 22, 24, 135, 140–42, 145, 146, 153, 173, 175, 220,
251
Azeris, 19, 20, 21, 24, 140–42, 145
Bahrain, 12, 22, 23, 58, 93, 144, 157–59, 164–69, 177–80
Balfour Declaration, 361
Balkans, 2–4, 212, 223, 233, 236, 344
Baluchis, 134
al-Banna, Hassan, 187
al-Banna, , 115, 119, 141, 308
Barazani, , 65, 71, 230
Barazani, Mulla Mustafa, 65, 71, 230
al-Bashir, , 125
, 21, 28, 30, 35, 67–71, 74, 77, 81, 83–91, 94, 144, 151, 180, 227,
366
Begin, Menachem, 349, 350, 352, 353, 358
Belarus, 1, 252
Belovezh accord, 248
Ben Badis, Abdel Hamid, 191
Bendjedid, Chadli, 192

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buffer region (rather than a sovereign state) sustained in a suspended
state of anarchy by Syria and Israel, whose main interest was in
avoiding conflict with one another. Both Syria and Israel were more
concerned about maintaining a good working relationship with their
own ethnic or confessional allies than in strengthening the central
government at Beirut. Both recognized that a strong central
government might continuously switch sides rather than suffer most
of the costs of buffering on behalf of Israel and Syria.
Conclusions
It is apparent from these brief sketches that, in the Middle East, at
least, it is virtually impossible to conceive of an effective and/or
rational ethnic strategy that does not include an international
dimension. In fact, it is frequently the case that international conflict
causes ethnic conflict, rather than ethnic conflict causing
international conflict. From this point of view, the assurance problem
endemic in an anarchic/self-help system such as the international
system is the obstacle to the working out of enforceable ethnic
contracts in the Middle East. The regional ethnic problem does not
stem from the parallel between ethnic politics and international
politics, but rather from the origin of ethnic conflict in international
conflict. The international dimension renders "national" (state level)
ethnic contracts virtually unenforceable because not all of the parties
to the dispute are parties to the ethnic contract. There are some
exceptions to this rule–such as the Egyptian Copts, the Moroccan and
Algerian Berbers, the Iraqi Christian communities, and the Iranian
Zoroastrians–where, it seems, the level of international interest is
quite low.
It follows that ethnic conflict in the Middle East cannot be resolved
in the absence of a regional or global regime that is able to offer
economic support, political guarantees, and military muscle to help
enforce duly negotiated ethnic contracts. Presumably, this is what the
European powers, the United States, and some regional powers have
agreed to do in the Israel-Palestine case, based on the parties'
acceptance of the Oslo agreements. The enormous amount of
diplomatic effort invested in that peace process, and the considerable
amount of military force deployed in the region, is at least suggestive
of the scope of such an undertaking. Given the number of similar
disputes in the region, and competing needs in other regions, and the
dubious record achieved by international interventions in recent
years, it is difficult to be optimistic about the prospects for the
establishment of mechanisms for the international guarantee of
agreed solutions to national ethnic conflicts.

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Berri, Nabih, 104
bin Shakir, Zayd, 291, 298
Black September, 25, 288–90, 294
Bosnia, 3, 93, 211, 221
Bourgeoisie: commercial, 95; new (Syria), 88; Palestinian, 286, 292,
295; Pious, 130, 182, 183, 187, 191–205; state, 191, 192
Bourguiba, Habib, 347
Burkay, Kemal, 232
Caucasus, 1–3, 11, 14, 16, 22, 212, 220, 236, 281, 368
Central Asia, 1–4, 11, 14, 21, 22, 38, 152, 153, 207, 220, 236, 245–76,
368, 369
, Camille, 100
Chechens, 287
Chechnya, 1, 2, 211, 220, 252
China, 4, 223
Ciller, Tansu, 210
Circassians, 281, 287
Civil society, 42, 97, 146, 178, 182, 233, 243, 284, 308, 319, 321
Civil wars: Afghanistan, 16; Algeria, 16, 35, 181, 195, 200, 203, 206,
347; Jordan, 290; Lebanon, 36, 92, 98, 100, 101–7, 363; Palestinian,
322; Sudan, 32, 120, 124; Tajikistan, 253, 256, 267, 270, 272
Cold War, 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 13, 15, 17, 38, 43–45, 207, 209, 221, 223,
240, 248
Confessionalism, 99–102, 104, 105, 108
Consociational, 97, 98, 107, 371
Consociationalism, 92, 96, 98, 102, 107–9
Constructivism, 335
Copts, 39, 96, 181
Corporatism, 108
Cyprus, 2, 174, 215, 221
Dayan, Moshe, 351
Declaration of Principles (DOP), 52, 299, 312, 321
Democracy, 1, 6, 108, 141, 176, 187; in Central Asia, 273; in Iran,
365; in Israel, 354, 358; in Lebanon, 92, 97, 98, 363; in Sudan, 123,
126–28; in Turkey, 207, 210, 217, 222, 223, 225, 230, 243
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), 318, 321
DFLP. See Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Dinka, 124, 126
DOP. See Declaration of Principles
Druzes, 21, 78, 79, 81, 83–85, 88, 90, 92, 99, 100, 105, 106
Eastern Europe, 2, 332
Egypt, 10, 12, 16, 17, 22, 23, 26–32, 47–49, 51–53, 56, 58, 79, 81, 83–
85, 87, 93, 94, 100, 110, 112–14, 116, 117, 130, 132, 181, 184, 185,
187, 188, 190–94, 196–200, 204, 206, 307–9, 314, 328, 344, 347, 349,
354, 358, 363–65, 368, 371
Elite(s), 1, 12–14, 19, 20, 24, 28–31, 33, 34, 35, 113, 120, 123, 124,
126, 143, 148, 165, 167, 182, 183, 185, 187, 193, 208, 211–13, 220,
252, 256, 257, 271–75, 278, 298, 334–36, 340, 342, 344, 345, 347,
350, 355, 360, 366–68, 371, 372; Arab opinion of, 56, 57, 362; cartel,
94, 96; counterelites, 130, 182, 183, 186, 187, 189, 191–96, 199, 204;
Hamas, 327; Iraqi, 30, 74, 367; Islamist, 190, 363; Kurdish, 37;
Sunni, 30, 73, 74, 172; Syrian, 30, 79, 81, 82, 84, 366; Transjordanian,
278, 298; Turkish, 14, 20, 209, 211, 215, 218, 221
Entrepreneurship, 335, 342
Erbakan, 14, 210, 212, 215–17, 223
Ethnic contracts, 3, 4, 9, 19, 24, 25, 39, 42, 74, 118, 156, 161, 163–65,
169, 172, 174, 175, 221, 368, 369
Ethnic rents, 8, 368, 371
Ethnicity, 1, 4–7, 11, 18, 19, 28, 32, 125, 149, 172, 175, 176, 240, 241,
245, 248, 249, 256, 274, 276, 334, 337, 356, 360, 361, 363, 368; Arab,
26, 27, 74; Kurdish, 207, 220, 222, 224, 225, 229, 231, 237; theories
of, 6, 361
Etzioni, Amitai, 277, 337, 338, 340, 356
Faisal, King, 61, 62
Fatah, 316–18, 321, 325, 327
Fazilet, 237
FLN. See Front de Liberation National
Foreign policy, 1, 4, 7, 8, 23, 49, 56–58, 366, 367, 372; of Iran, 5, 129,
135, 141, 147, 366; of Iraq, 76, 367; Islamic 22; of Israel, 45, 58; of
Jordan, 279, 291, 298, 300; of Lebanon, 100; of Turkey, 207, 215,
218, 220, 236; of the U.S., 43, 53, 54, 58
Free rider, 8
Front de Liberation National (FLN), 35, 191, 194, 195, 201, 345

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Front Islamique du Salut, 199. See also Islamic Salvation Front
Fuad Shihab, 100, 107
Fundamentalism, 4, 5, 21, 262, 331, 352, 358
Gaza, 12, 33, 59, 307–12, 317–19, 321–26, 328, 331, 349, 351, 353,
354, 356
GCC. See Gulf Cooperation Council
Georgia, 1, 4, 251
Ghaddafi, , 31, 32, 314
Gorbachev, Michail, 247, 250
Gramsci, Antonio, 277, 339, 341, 342, 356, 357
Gulf, Persian. See Persian Gulf
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), 49, 95, 144, 158, 159, 167–69, 172,
177
Gulf War, 43–45, 48–50, 55, 60, 62, 71, 75, 163, 177, 198, 219, 223,
230, 292, 294, 295, 313, 316
Gush Emunim, 351, 352, 358
Habermas, Jurgen, 97, 108, 109
HADEP, 232, 234, 235, 244
al-Hafiz, Amin, 85, 288, 308, 325
al-Hakim, Mohamed Baqir, 69, 72, 136
Hamas, 33, 202, 277, 307–331, 364
Hariri, Rafic, 104
Hashemite, 33, 115, 277, 279, 280, 282, 283, 287–89, 291, 292, 295,
296, 301, 305, 367, 368
Hawatmeh, Nayif, 289
Hegemonic beliefs, 339, 340
Herut, 349, 358
al-Hizb al-Qawmi al-Suri, 81
Hizbullah (Lebanon), 23, 101, 106, 107, 200
Hoseini, , 141, 152
Hrawi, Elias, 104
Husayn (king of Jordan), 283, 285, 287, 288, 290, 291, 299, 300, 303,
365
Husayn ibn Ali, 150, 189
al-Husayni, Amin, 85, 288, 308, 325
al-Husayni, Faysal, 80, 81, 83, 178, 317, 318
Hussein, Saddam, 10, 17, 22, 30, 41, 44, 50, 64, 67, 69–74, 76, 144,
165, 170, 172, 227, 230, 241, 286, 312, 313, 318, 320, 367
Imperialism, 19, 46, 54, 85, 135, 136, 344, 364, 368
Imperialist, 12, 13, 19, 27, 37, 38, 54, 134, 345
Indyk, Martin, 50, 54
Instrumental, 7, 346, 351
Instrumentalist, 6, 7
Intelligentsia, 35, 84, 85, 100, 115–17, 189, 196, 363, 364, 371
Intervention, 2, 4, 10, 11, 13–15, 23–25, 32, 38, 40, 42, 45–47, 54,
100, 106, 129, 144, 174, 192, 198, 212, 213, 272, 308, 313, 364, 365
Intifadhah, 277, 307, 310–12, 317, 320, 329, 354, 364
Iran, 4, 5, 10, 12–15, 17, 20, 22–24, 26, 28, 30, 35–38, 48, 51, 56, 58,
59, 63, 64, 67–70, 72–74, 93, 94, 102, 106, 108, 129, 130, 131–54,
155, 156, 158, 160–69, 175–77, 179–81, 184, 187, 188, 190–92, 194–
96, 200, 201, 204, 205, 215, 217, 219, 220, 223, 225, 226, 240–43,
293, 310, 343, 347, 362–65, 367, 369–72
Iraq, 2, 4, 5, 10, 12, 14–17, 20–24, 26, 29, 30, 36, 41, 43, 44, 47–50,
53, 54, 58, 59, 61–76, 81, 83, 93, 102, 129, 137, 139, 141, 144, 151–
53, 156–59, 162–64, 169–72, 177, 179, 180, 190, 195, 216, 217, 219,
221, 223, 225–27, 229, 230, 240–43, 293, 313, 315, 362–71
Islam, 18, 20, 21, 23, 31, 76, 80, 111, 118, 131, 162, 186, 188, 189,
190, 192, 193, 196–99, 201, 204–7, 343–46, 364, 366, 369; Arabism
and, 117, 363; Central Asia and, 245–48, 254–75; Hamas and, 307–
12; in Iran, 133–53; nationalism and, 85, 136, 355; and political
ideology, 5, 21, 25, 94, 108; , 63, 92, 177, 179, 205; in Sudan, 112–
16, 121–29; Sunni, 159, 161; in Syria, 85–88; in Turkey, 209, 210,
222, 223, 236
Islamic, 11, 14, 41, 53, 56, 63, 78, 79, 80, 86–88, 94, 95, 102, 106,
111, 113, 118, 120–28, 131–45, 147–53, 168, 178–83, 187–202, 209–
17, 220–23, 237, 245–48, 255–59, 261, 263–65, 268–71, 273–75, 290,
301, 307–12, 315, 316, 319, 320, 323, 324, 327, 328, 344, 346, 362,
363, 366, 367, 369, 372; constitution, 120, 121, 123, 128; extremism,
23, 25; foreign policy, 22; fundamentalism, 21, 29, 331; government,
59, 69, 72, 90, 123, 132, 136, 139, 141, 142, 153, 195, 196, 271, 275;
identity, 5, 32, 131, 133, 142, 149, 151, 216, 310, 343; movements,
16, 23, 29, 31, 35, 116, 149, 192, 307; politics, 120, 214, 217; regime
(see Islamic, government); republic, 131, 135, 139, 144, 176, 195,
197, 198, 205, 206; resurgence, 5, 16, 24, 29, 35, 41, 210,

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Islamic (continued)
212, 259, 270, 363, 369; revival (see Islamic, resurgence); revolution,
5, 23, 35, 69, 131, 133, 142, 149, 151, 310, 343, 366 (see also
Revolution); state, 27, 29, 120, 124, 127, 183, 187, 191, 195, 199,
201, 307
Islamic Jihad, 310, 316, 319, 323, 324, 327, 328
Islamic Salvation Front, 193, 323. See also Front Islamique du Salut
Islamism, 52, 55, 94, 122, 132, 144, 197, 205, 217, 344, 363
Islamist, 4, 5, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 42, 43, 55–57, 93–95, 106, 108, 120,
121, 123, 124, 126, 129, 130, 163, 181–84, 186–91, 193–206, 209,
210, 212–14, 216, 221, 222, 234, 236, 242, 300, 316, 319, 324, 327,
343, 347, 348, 354, 363, 369
Israel, 9, 12, 13–17, 22, 25, 27, 28, 33, 36, 39, 43–45, 47–49, 54–59,
93, 102, 103, 107, 108, 145, 146, 173, 219, 277, 278, 281, 285, 291,
296, 297, 299–301, 307, 309, 310–13, 315, 317, 318, 320, 322–26,
328–31, 333, 344, 347–59, 362, 364, 367, 371, 372
Jerusalem, 53, 56, 151, 301, 304, 316, 317, 322, 323, 325, 326, 348,
351, 358, 359, 368
Jews, 9, 19, 24, 61, 62, 66, 225, 339, 348, 351–54, 361, 372
Jihad, 31, 111, 115, 189, 190, 202, 307, 310, 311, 316, 319, 323, 324,
327, 328
Jordan, 10, 12, 15, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 33, 44, 45, 56, 91, 93, 94, 95,
107, 181, 187, 204, 277, 279–306, 308, 309, 311, 315, 318, 319, 349,
352, 354, 365, 368, 371
Karimov, Islam, 255–57, 263, 265, 271, 273
Kashani, Abul-Qasem, 136
Kazakhstan, 1, 248, 249, 252–54, 257, 274, 276
KDP. See Kurdish Democratic Party
, , 72, 143, 144, 147
Khatami, Mohammad, 143, 146–48, 154, 205
Khatmiyya, 113–16, 120, 121
Khomeini, Ruhollah, 69, 70, 72, 74, 129, 131–39, 141–43, 146, 148–
51, 189, 190, 195, 196, 200, 201, 310
al-Khuri, Bishara, 98
Kirghizia, 1
Kook, Tzvi Yehuda, 351
Kosovo, 3
KPE. See Kurdish Parliament in Exile
Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), 71, 141, 142
Kurdish Parliament in Exile (KPE), 235
Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), 15, 23, 36, 207, 216, 217, 219, 223,
224, 227–35, 238, 239, 241, 244
Kurds, 5, 19, 20, 23–26, 30, 36, 37, 41, 62–65, 67, 68, 70–75, 94, 134,
140–42, 144, 147, 170–72, 207, 210, 213, 216–21, 224–44, 361, 369,
370
Kuwait, 2, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 25, 29, 43, 44, 46–49, 53, 54, 94, 108,
157–59, 163–65, 172, 178, 184, 193, 285, 295, 304, 312, 313, 316, 367
Kyrgyzstan, 247, 248, 253, 254
Labor Party, 45, 117, 234, 350, 353
Labor Zionism, 349, 352
Lausanne, Treaty of, 226
League of Nations, 64, 82, 91
Lebanon, 12, 15, 21–23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 33, 36, 38, 45, 78, 79, 81, 87,
91, 92–109, 181, 281, 296, 310, 344, 363, 367, 368, 371
Liberal democracy, 97
Likud Party, 46, 59, 278, 295, 319, 349, 351, 352, 353, 354, 358
Macedonia, 3
Mahdi, 63, 106, 111–16, 119, 122, 126, 127, 156
al-Mahdi, Muhamad Ahmad ibn , 63, 106, 111–16, 119, 122,
126, 127, 156
Mahdiyya, 111–16, 118, 124, 127, 364
al-Majali, , 291, 295–97, 305
Mapai, 349
Maronite(s), 21, 23, 87, 92, 98–102, 104–7
al-Masri, Tahir, 291, 298, 303
Mawdudi, Abul , 137, 188
Millet system, 11, 19
al-Mirghani, Sayyid , 115, 116, 127
Mirghaniyya, 22, 364
Mirza, Abul-Hasan, 136
Modernization, 79, 140, 214, 224, 226, 242, 333, 335, 336, 345
Mojahedin, 205
Moledet, 351
Montazeri, Hosein , 135, 150
Morocco, 10, 20, 21, 23, 34, 35, 93, 94, 95, 181, 187, 346
Movement for the Whole Land of Israel, 351
Mubarak, Husni, 181, 197, 199, 314, 365

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Mukhtar, Umar, 346
Muslim(s), 3, 5, 9, 19–21, 23, 28, 30, 32, 55, 63, 78–81, 85–90, 92,
99–102, 105, 110, 111, 113, 115–27, 131–37, 139, 142, 143, 145, 148–
53, 161, 172, 178, 181–91, 193, 197–99, 205, 206, 210, 211, 215, 219,
221, 225, 226, 246, 247, 254, 260, 265, 266, 268, 270, 274, 275, 304,
307–9, 311, 312, 354, 369
Muslim Brotherhood, 120, 188, 191, 199, 307, 308, 309, 312
Nahnah, Mahfoudh, 202
Nasser. See Abd al-Nasser, Gamal
Nation, 1, 8, 20, 24–28, 30, 37, 42, 99, 100, 109, 132–35, 137–40, 178,
226, 227, 229, 255, 288, 337, 355; Arab, 67, 69, 70, 71; -building, 42,
226, 227, 356; Iran, 133, 138–40, 147; -state, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140,
151, 207, 236, 251, 252, 271, 274, 332, 333, 346, 361, 364, 369, 370;
Syria, 81, 93, 85, 87, 90
National, 8, 24, 26–28, 32, 35, 39, 42, 59, 61, 70, 77, 79–90, 94, 95,
98–100, 104, 121–23, 135–49, 162, 167, 185, 195, 203, 209, 217, 226,
227, 229, 231–33, 239, 245–47, 249–51, 280–84, 291, 293, 328, 329,
332–37, 341, 345–51, 353–55, 372; aspirations, 33, 71, 72, 74, 75;
identity, 81, 109, 133, 136, 159, 232, 245, 248, 251, 256, 281, 282,
292, 296, 303, 333, 335, 336, 347, 355; integration, 90, 151, 238, 343;
interest, 11, 26, 73, 129, 139, 144, 146–48, 158, 215, 218, 362, 366;
movement, 56, 80–83, 132, 146, 149, 235, 274, 282–85, 308, 345,
370; self-determination, 2, 12, 20, 27, 37, 361; unity, 83, 99, 100, 105,
106, 110, 119, 123, 125, 135, 142, 152, 292, 295, 300, 327
National Action Party, 228
National Front, 136, 150
National Democratic Alliance (NDA), 124
National Islamic Front (NIF), 120–26, 372
National Pact (Lebanon), 42, 98, 100, 102, 104
National Religious Party, 350, 351
National Unionist Party (NUP), 116
Nationalism, 8, 11, 24–26, 40, 94, 131–39, 142, 143, 148–51, 160,
186, 207, 210, 216, 220–23, 248–52, 257, 277, 284, 303, 332–37, 340,
342, 343, 345–48, 354–57, 361, 372; Arab, 4, 5, 20, 21, 26, 29, 33–35,
41, 67, 80, 81, 85, 90, 101, 117, 118, 161, 164, 309, 357, 368; Iranian,
5, 129, 131–36, 148; Jewish, 354; Jordanian, 305; Kurdish, 72, 228,
231, 234, 236, 239; Palestinian, 33, 45, 279, 288, 289; Sudanese, 110;
Syrian, 84; Transjordanian, 285, 288; Turkish, 21, 209, 212, 214, 215,
220, 221 343; Uzbek, 251
Nationalist, 12, 19, 20, 33, 68, 76, 84, 85, 133, 134, 138, 145, 174,
185, 209, 210, 214–17, 221, 226–28, 235–38, 242, 250, 252, 273, 277,
283, 292, 293, 295, 296, 311, 320, 327, 335, 340, 343–48, 352, 355,
357, 361–63, 366, 368; Arab, 18, 21, 22, 29, 31, 67, 79, 80, 94, 102,
161, 164, 282, 298; Iranian, 129; Kurdish, 37, 238, 239; leaders, 82,
254; movement, 79, 82, 226, 237, 277, 288, 332, 333, 343, 346;
Syrian, 81, 82; Turkish, 215, 228, 236
Nazarbaev, Nursultan, 254
NDA. See National Democratic Alliance
Netanyahu, Binyamin, 45, 58, 59, 365
NIF. See National Islamic Front
Numayri, , 121, 123, 124, 126
NUP. See National Unionist Party
Ocalan, Abdullah, 15, 228
Oman, 10, 95, 169, 179
Operation Provide Comfort, 58, 230
Oslo, 25, 39, 59, 299, 312, 321–23, 328–31, 362, 364
Oslo Agreement, 39, 59, 299, 362
Ottoman, 11–13, 18–21, 34, 61, 65, 77–79, 91, 97, 115, 136, 209, 214,
218, 219, 225, 226, 243, 332, 343–45, 361, 369, 372
Ottoman Empire, 11–13, 18–21, 34, 61, 97, 225, 226, 343–45, 369
Ozal, Turgut, 211, 212, 216–18, 230, 240
Pahlavi, Mohamed Reza, 38, 131, 133, 138, 150, 151, 189, 195, 197
Palestine, 2, 15, 16, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 33, 39, 41, 45, 53, 56, 57, 59,
62, 81, 91, 277, 281–90, 294, 296–99, 303–5, 307–32, 352, 354, 358,
364, 365, 367
Palestinian, 4, 9, 10, 15, 22, 26, 30, 33, 44, 49, 52, 55, 57, 59, 101,
102, 277, 279–311, 313–31, 345, 353, 364, 365, 368
Palestinians, 23, 25, 27, 33, 44, 49, 52, 54, 59, 101, 103, 231, 279,
281–91, 293–99, 301–5, 307–32, 351, 353, 354, 358, 364, 368
Parti Populaire Syrien, 81, 84, 85
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), 71, 141

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Peace process, 10, 15–17, 33, 39, 41, 45, 57, 58, 277, 295, 296, 298,
300–302, 311–16, 319, 320, 322, 328–30, 365
Peres, Shimon, 58, 59
Persian Gulf, 12, 23, 46, 47, 60, 129, 176, 179
PFLP. See Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Pious Bourgeoisie. See Bourgeoisie
PKK. See Kurdish Workers Party
Polisario, 23
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), 33, 321
PPS. See Parti Populaire Syrien
Primordial, 7, 8, 252, 333–56, 358, 359
Primordialist, 6, 333, 336, 361
Public sphere, 97, 104, 107, 108
Pushtun, 23, 37
Qari, Hakim, 262
Qasem, Abd al-Karim, 22, 53
Qassam Brigades, 325, 326, 330
Qatar, 108, 159, 168, 169, 178
Quran, 188, 196, 261, 264–66, 268, 269
Qutb, Sayyid, 137, 188, 190
Rabin, Yitzhak, 300, 322, 354
Rafsanjani, Hashemi, 72, 145, 147, 153
Rantisi, al-, 311
Rational choice, 6, 7, 40, 361
Refah Partisi, 182, 204
Region, 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29,
33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59,
75, 92, 104, 112, 114, 116, 118, 123, 126, 141, 148, 158, 168, 173,
187, 207, 216, 220, 224, 225, 228, 231, 238, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244,
245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 251, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 264, 267,
270, 271, 272, 274, 275, 280, 281, 284, 312, 343, 344, 346, 347, 348,
362, 363, 364, 367, 368, 369, 370, 372
Regional, 8, 23, 28, 30, 33, 34, 35, 42, 54, 68, 70, 82, 94, 100, 101,
107, 123, 126, 149, 161, 162, 164, 165, 169, 176, 179, 225, 249, 251,
277, 280, 284, 290, 293, 294, 319, 321, 328, 350, 370; affairs, 221,
365; arrangements, 4; autonomy, 157, 177, 238, 241; balance, 3, 7, 17;
coalition, 43, 362; conflict, 3, 4, 5; cooperation, 18; distribution, 43;
equilibrium, 14, 15; experts, 50, 53; games, 15; hegemony, 44, 48,
360; identity, 209; influence, 5, 13, 48; order, 7, 17, 362;
organizations, 11; peace, 17, 48, 315; policy, 37, 143; politics, 7, 21,
365; power, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17, 39, 41, 43, 90, 360, 363; regime, 18;
relations, 363; security, 10, 13, 16, 18, 24, 48; stability, 16, 17, 242;
stabilization, 24; states, 9, 224; subsystem, 1; system, 363, 364, 367,
372; threat, 163
Regionalism, 187, 231, 241, 284
Regionalization, 5
Religion, 1; in Central Asia, 245–48, 257–70, 274, 275; and ethnicity,
363; in Iran, 133, 137, 138, 147–49, 150n.16, 151n.42, 161, 189; in
Iraq, 69; in Israel, 348, 352; in Jordan, 301, 335, 337; in Lebanon, 93,
95, 101; and politics, 19, 364, 371; in Sudan, 114, 115, 120–26; in
Syria, 80–82, 84–87; in Turkey, 207, 211, 212, 220
Religious, 3, 11, 22, 35, 42, 52, 56, 61, 63, 69, 70, 72, 73, 78, 81, 82,
87, 88, 89, 98, 100, 101, 107, 111, 112, 114, 115, 119, 125, 126, 127,
132, 133, 138, 141, 147, 148, 149, 156, 190, 192, 196, 201, 209, 211,
215, 218, 225, 245, 272, 275, 301, 306, 307, 310, 312, 333, 337, 344,
347, 348, 350, 351, 354, 356, 364; activists, 261, 270, 273; appeals,
336; authorities, 134, 263, 264, 365, 371; beliefs, 129; believers, 247,
265; cleavages, 94, 219, 221; community, 41, 77, 79, 97, 269;
conflict, 18, 74, 92, 93, 95, 110; doctrine, 363; education, 86, 260,
261, 266, 267, 268, 269, 271; elites, 256; establishment, 247, 255,
274; fundamentalism, 5, 352; groups, 20, 116, 255, 263, 372; identity,
18; institutions, 247, 261, 265, 309; instruction, 255, 260, 261, 262,
264, 265; leaders, 113, 117, 255, 261, 271; minority, 19, 20, 21, 122,
134, 366; movement, 28, 191, 277, 369; observance, 260, 261; parties,
349; people, 266; politics, 41, 221; reform, 320; regime, 269; revival,
136, 212, 222, 257, 261, 262; schools, 212, 246, 247, 255, 263, 269,
271; sentiments, 137, 213, 298; tensions, 94, 222, 363; vote, 212
Revolution, 13, 38, 63, 83, 84, 85, 129, 135, 136, 137, 138, 141, 143,
144, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153, 164, 165, 167, 176, 180, 181, 186, 193,
200, 206, 249, 251, 293, 347, 356, 357, 358, 365, 372; American, 239;
Bolshevik (1917), 250, 260; Communist (1917), 21;

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Egyptian (1952), 28; Iranian (1979), 93, 134, 161, 183, 189, 205;
Islamic (Iran, 1979), 5, 23, 35, 69, 131, 133, 142, 149, 151, 310, 343,
366; Islamist, 35, 93, 184, 197
, Zayd al-, 291, 298
Russia, 2, 3, 4, 17, 20, 22, 23, 38, 153, 174, 215, 220, 222, 242, 246,
252, 253, 254, 333, 344, 368
Russian, 1, 4, 14, 21, 37, 38, 45, 153, 174, 220, 248, 249, 250, 251,
252, 254, 258, 261, 272, 274, 275, 276, 355
Sadat, Anwar, 47, 133, 181, 189, 190, 192, 196–98
al-Sadr, Musa, 101, 144, 169, 179, 314, 318, 325
Sarkis, Elias, 102
Saudi Arabia, 10, 16, 17, 23–29, 48, 49, 53, 58, 92–95, 98, 102, 104,
107, 108, 129, 145, 157–64, 167–69, 176–79, 184, 193, 255, 285, 313,
368
Sectarianism, 5, 18, 87, 107
Shah, Reza, 38
Shamseddine, Mohammad Mahdi, 106
, 135, 142, 183, 189, 190, 196, 197
, , 189, 190, 196, 197
, Kazem, 135, 142
, 30, 41, 61–66, 68, 69–76, 88, 92, 94, 100, 101, 105, 106, 129, 134,
135, 137, 139, 144, 145, 147, 148, 155–72, 175, 177–180, 188, 190,
205, 369, 371, 372
al-Shiqaqi, Fathi, 303, 305, 310, 324
Shishakli, Adib, 83
Shuqayri, Ahmad, 289
Soviet Union, 2, 4, 10, 20, 22, 44, 145, 220, 236, 245, 249, 250, 252,
272, 274, 275
SPLA. See Sudan Peoples Liberation Army
State Department, 50, 177
Sudan, 5, 10, 15–17, 21–23, 28–32, 41, 42, 93, 94, 110–28, 181, 323,
364, 368, 371
Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, 122, 125, 126
Sufism, 111, 114, 115
al-Sulh, Riyadh, 27, 153
Sunni(s), 22, 89, 369; in Gulf states, 155, 158–66, 169, 170, 172,
178n.26, 180; in Iran, 133–135, 137, 139, 141, 143, 147, 149,
152n.69; in Iraq, 30, 41, 61–67, 70–79, 369, 372; in Lebanon, 92, 95,
96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104–6; in Muslim world, 187, 190; and Nasser,
22; in Syria, 81, 82, 84–88, 90, 366, 367
Syria, 5, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 21–27, 29, 30, 36, 39, 42, 49, 53, 58, 60,
77–91, 93–96, 99, 100, 102–8, 181, 217, 219, 223, 225, 226, 242, 243,
281, 283, 284, 291, 296, 305, 314, 315, 366–71
Syrian Nationalist Party, 81
, 42, 98, 99, 102, 103, 105, 106, 364
Tajik, 23, 37, 248, 257, 267, 270
Tajikistan, 1, 23, 145, 247, 252–54, 256, 257, 267, 269, 270, 272, 273,
275
al-takfir wa-l hijra, 190
Takriti, 372
Talabani, Jalal, 71, 141, 230
Tehiya, 351
Transjordanians, 279, 281–84, 286, 287, 289–91, 293, 295–97, 299–
302, 304
Tribal, 11, 18–20, 30, 38, 42, 64, 66, 72, 77, 89, 94, 113–18, 126, 134,
141, 142, 166, 193, 249, 282, 283, 299, 303, 304, 333, 337, 364, 371,
372
Tribalism, 11, 137
al-Turabi, Hasan, 31, 32, 122, 126–28
Turkey, 5, 10, 12–17, 21–24, 26, 28, 30, 36, 58, 59, 63, 64, 73, 81, 93,
115, 137, 145, 146, 153, 174, 181, 204, 207, 209–44, 343, 345, 347,
357, 365, 369, 370, 372
Turkiyya, 110–15
Turkmen, 21, 223, 249
Turkmenistan, 1, 246, 253
Turkomans, 61, 62, 140
Turks, 22, 63, 79, 115, 134, 140, 174, 211, 216–19, 222, 227, 229–31,
238, 239, 241
Tzomet, 351
Umma Party, 116, 120, 122
United Nations, 349
United States, 4, 5, 10, 13–15, 17, 20, 22, 23, 27, 38, 39, 43–49, 56–
58, 102, 104, 108, 109, 123, 128, 145, 168, 179, 219, 231, 315–17,
321, 324, 325, 328, 329, 333, 344, 364–67
Uzbek, 23, 37, 245, 251, 252, 256–58, 260–62, 264, 266, 267
Uzbekistan, 1, 23, 181, 208, 245–276
Velayati, Akbar, 144, 146, 153
Versailles Peace Conference, 226
Wahhabi, 161, 177, 193

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Wahhabism, 159, 177
Walt, Stephen, 52, 53, 60
Waltz, Kenneth, 50, 60
Welfare Party, 222, 234, 236
West Bank, 12, 33, 45, 59, 279, 281, 286–91, 299, 303–12, 317–26,
329–31, 349, 351, 353, 354, 356, 358, 368
Wilson, Woodrow, 12, 303, 305, 361
Yasin, Ahmad, 309, 311
al-Yazuri, Ibrahim, 311
Yilmaz, Mesut, 215
Yugoslavia, 2, 3, 175
Zionism, 62, 85, 345, 348, 349, 352, 354, 357, 358
Zionist, 44, 304, 349–52, 358, 367
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contracts in the Middle East, given their failure to respond to the
challenges in the Balkans and in the Russian periphery.
Rather than serving as a catalyst, facilitating the process of working
out the new world order, these ethnic challenges have revealed the
limits on collective international action and the potential rewards for
those who defy international norms. Insofar as the major global
powers emerging from the Cold War have a common position, it
might be the preference for a pattern of regional self-enforcing ethnic
contracts that neither require great power guarantees nor rely upon
regional arrangements that effectively exclude great power influence.
Failing such a compound solution, there is some expectation that
collective action under the auspices of the UN might be able to
contain regional conflict if not guarantee international (especially
ethnic) contracts. Failing a successful collective intervention via the
UN, the United States, Russia, and China have, all three, evidenced a
willingness to intervene to prevent the emergence of a locally, not to
speak of a regionally, dominant power (for example, Iraq, Iran,
Georgia, Armenia, Vietnam).
The Middle East: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism.
Among the least surprised by the outbreak of ethnic strife in the
shatter zone of countries ringing the former Soviet Union have been
those who are well versed in Middle East history and politics. If
ethnic conflict was suppressed, or simply nonexistent, in the Soviet
marchlands, it was central to the international politics of the Middle
East throughout the Cold War. Now that studies of ethnic conflict are
attracting more interest, however, in some parts of the Middle East,
alternatives to ethnic nationalism have arisen to challenge
conventional understandings and expectations.
Even without the rise of new, Islamist/fundamentalist challenges,
Middle East ethnic politics were noteworthy in that the most
important of such movements have had profound international
implications. In the Arab and Kurdish nationalisms, the Middle East
can claim two multistate movements, the like of which are found
nowhere else. Pan-Turkism may be moribund, but the emergence of
independent Central Asian republics has renewed the possibility of
such a foreign policy option. While the uncertain prospects for an
Arab-Israeli peace suggest the possible reduction of tension between
Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms, the resolution of that conflict
might have the opposite effect on the politics of Arab nationalism.
Moreover, if that resolution is ever realized, it is unlikely to end the
regional dispersion of Palestin--

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Notes
1. See Leonard Binder, "The Moral Foundation of International
Intervention and the Limits of National Self-Determination,"
Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 2, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 325–59.
2. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, Ethnic Fears and Global
Engagement: The International Spread and Management of Ethnic
Conflict, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of
California, Policy Paper #20, January 1996.
3. At the risk of committing pedantry, I would distinguish between
primordiality as referring to something like Freud's "group
psychology" as opposed to Kant's grounding of the theory of
knowledge in the nature of the human mental apparatus. Lake and
Rothchild are probably correct in asserting that many "primordialists"
conflate the natural or biological and the aboriginal or primeval.
4. Lake and Rothchild, 6.
5. See James D. Fearon, "Ethnic War as a Commitment Problem,"
manuscript, University of Chicago, June 1993.
6. In an early version of their paper, entitled "Explaining Interethnic
Cooperation," James Fearon and David Laitin cite Robert Bates as
arguing that the "preexistence [of local governments, traditional
political systems, kinship ties, markets and trading networks] reduces
the cost of organizing. Moreover, the uniformity of language within
groups . . . means that . . . organizers will prefer intragroup
organizing." See Fearon and Laitin, "Explaining," presented at the
Annual Meeting of the APSA, 1995, 6. The reference does not appear
in the published version in American Political Science Review 90, no.
4 (December 1996): 715–16. Bates's article, "Modernization, Ethnic
Competition, and the Rationality of Politics in Contemporary Africa,"
which is an important contribution to the rational choice theory of
ethnic politics, is in Donald Rothchild and Victor Olorunsola, eds.,
State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas (Boulder:
Westview, 1983).
7. Ethneme is a term used to describe an ethnic subgroup that is so
distinct from the larger group that it might eventually evolve into a
separate group.

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I
Arab Nationalism
Cooperation, Conflict, and Domination
In part I, the trans-state but intranational issues of Arabism are
discussed with special emphasis upon the subregion of the Fertile
Crescent. Inevitably, and appropriately, the Arab-Israeli
conflict/peace process plays a significant role in the ethnic politics of
this subregion, as does the politics of minority ethnic and religious
communities. Part I also includes a discussion of ethnic and religious
politics in the Sudan, which shares the politicized heterogeneity and
relatively weak "stateness" of the Fertile Crescent countries. The
Sudan might equally suitably have been included in part II, which
gives special emphasis to the tension between Islamic revivalist
movements and ethnonationalism.
In chapter 2, Professor Telhami marks the end of the "prolonged
victory party" celebrating the achievements of Desert Storm and the
gradual emergence of a new, transnational, and nonstatist Arabism.
Telhami predicts this new Arabism, centering on the Palestine issue
and the American presence in the region, will become the measure of
the legitimacy of Arab governments; it may even become more
important than the balance of regional power in determining the
future structure of regional alliances and institutions.
In chapter 3, Professor Dawisha describes Iraq as an artificial state
whose population lacks the ethnic or religious unity all but requisite
in sustaining a modern state. Dawisha shows how the tractable
problem of Arab-Sunni and relations, and the intractable
problem of the Kurds, have dominated both the domestic and the
international politics of Iraq. The integration of the
community has been at least a partial success, but the Kurdish
problem is a virtual genocide waiting to happen when Saddam's hands
are free.
In chapter 4, Professor outlines the history of the emergence of
an

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integrated political community in Syria, in the face of sectarian and
ideological differences and a heritage of communal centrifugality.
credits the sagacious leadership of President Hafiz al-Assad,
who has emphasized nation building and inclusiveness over
ethnonationalism and sectarian hegemony.
In chapter 5, Professor Hudson compares the political institutions and
the distribution of power produced by the agreement of 1989
with that resulting from the Lebanese National Pact of 1943. He asks
whether either of the two successfully solved the problem of
integrating the many diverse sectarian communities into a unified
civil society—and whether either achieved the necessary degree of
legitimacy. His answer is a qualified negative. Hudson concludes that
has most of the defects and few of the virtues of the national pact
when measured against the requisites of democratic legitimacy or
those of an equitable and stable ethnic contract.
In chapter 6, Professor Warburg describes the daunting complexity of
ethnic, tribal, and religious diversity of the Sudan and the perplexing
ineptitude of every regime since the early nineteenth century in
attempting to manage or even control, let alone accommodate,
Sudanese diversity. The multipolarity of Sudanese politics has
become transformed into a violent two-dimensional conflict between
Islamist and non-Islamist forces. At the same time, external
intervention, once paramount in sustaining dominant coalitions, has
diminished. As a consequence, the Sudan has emerged as a regional
source of instability, worrying its neighbors because of its inability to
deal with its own problems.

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2
Power, Legitimacy, and Peace-Making in Arab Coalitions
The New Arabism
Shibley Telhami
Since World War II, patterns of international coalitions in the Middle
East have been largely affected by three central variables: the role of
the superpowers, the regional distribution of military and economic
resources, and transnational Arabist and Islamist forces that even
today remain central for the legitimacy, and thus stability of
governments in the region. Two dominant issues have in turn helped
define the core interests of the central regional and external actors:
oil and Israel. Oil has been a significant factor in superpower policies
and in changing the regional distribution of power; and Israel has
been a significant factor for U.S. policy, for regional power, and for
defining the tactics of transnational forces in the region. Since the
Gulf War of 1991, significant transformations in all key variables and
issues have occurred that are likely to alter the shape of regional
coalitions as the twenty-first century approaches.
In my attempt to anticipate future trends in regional coalitions, I
describe the dynamic relationship between these variables and issues.
In particular, I propose a framework that reconciles realist theories of
alliance with notions of legitimacy and examine the impact of
possible Arab-Israeli conciliation for U.S. policy and for the
formation of regional coalitions. I suggest that Arab-Israeli
reconciliation could profoundly affect U.S. foreign policy and the
patterns of regional coalitions.
The Dominant Role of the United States in the 1990s
In the months before Iraq invaded Kuwait, the moods of both publics
and governments in the Arab world were unmistakably gloomy about
the consequences of the end of the Cold War and the decline of the
USSR for the Arab world. As usual, Arab interpretations focused
largely on the implications for the Arab-Israeli conflict. Here many
agreed with the verdict of Iraq's

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leader, Saddam Hussein, in a speech he delivered at the conference of
the Arab Cooperation Council months before he sent his army to
Kuwait: "Given the erosion of the role of the Soviet Union as the key
champion of the Arabs in the context of the Arab-Zionist conflict and
globally, and given that the influence of the Zionist lobby on U.S.
policies is as powerful as ever, the Arabs must take into account that
there is a real possibility that Israel might embark on new stupidities
within the five-year span that I mentioned."1
Although it is now clear that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was more
consequential for Arab politics than the end of the Cold War, the
predictions about an era of Pax Americana, about stronger U.S.-
Israeli relations, and about unprecedented Israeli influence in the
Middle East were very close to the mark—so much so that one has to
wonder how Iraq could have assumed that its invasion of Kuwait
would stand, given Hussein's verdict that "the U.S. will continue to
depart from the restrictions that govern the rest of the world."2
It is ultimately impossible to understand what has transpired in the
Middle East since the Gulf War without understanding the role of the
United States and how both leaders and publics in the region view
that role. There are, to be sure, regional and local contexts that define
the interests and the priorities of Middle Eastern states, but the
options available to each state, and public perceptions of these
options, have been greatly affected by the American role.
To begin with, consider that the parties that most feared American-
Israeli hegemony in the Middle East with the end of the Soviet-
American rivalry, Jordan and the Palestinians, were at first more
sympathetic to Iraq than others in the region. But these same parties
were also the first to move to make historical peace agreements with
Israel following Iraq's defeat.
One way to read this dramatic shift in Arab-Israeli relations
following the Gulf War is to see it simply as an instance of
capitulation by desperate leaders. The defeat of Iraq left many Arabs,
especially Jordanians and Palestinians, vulnerable and without allies.
Prior to the war their fear of Israeli intentions and of U.S. regional
hegemony led them to gamble on Iraq's military potential as a
counterweight. The Palestinians especially faced a situation where
their loss of strategic allies was matched by the loss of financial
backers as many of the Gulf Arab states stopped their flow of funds to
the PLO. In this environment the Palestinians accepted Israel's terms
for an agreement without getting much in return.
But this picture fails to account for features of the Palestinian-Israeli
and the Jordanian-Israeli agreements that are at odds with the prewar
fears of Israeli and American objectives: the fears that Israel would
annex the West Bank, "transfer" some Palestinians into Jordan, and
turn Jordan into a Pales-

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tinian state. Instead, Israel, which itself secured important Arab
concessions, has recognized Palestinian nationalism, withdrawn from
most West Bank cities, and entered into a peace agreement with
Jordan that diminishes the prospects of turning Jordan into a
Palestinian state.
In general, Arabs who feared American hegemony in the Middle East
feared two things: An American disengagement from the Arab-Israeli
peace process and unrestrained Israeli aggression against the Arab
world. Although what has emerged by now is stronger American
support for Israel than ever before, the context of this support is very
different from what many in the region feared. To be sure, the
seemingly unlimited U.S. backing of Israeli operations in Lebanon in
April 1996 was exactly what many had anticipated. But the surprising
fact that the Palestine Liberation Organization moved to erase from
its charter clauses offensive to Israel—even while Israel's operations
in Lebanon were resulting in dozens of civilian Lebanese casualties in
the spring of 1996—was just one reminder of how interests of the
parties in the region have changed.3 And despite unwavering support
for Israel, the United States ultimately sent its secretary of state to
the region for a full week (and to skip a summit meeting with Russian
leaders) in order to mediate a cease-fire. Moreover, American interest
in projecting strong support for Israel partly stemmed from the U.S.
desire to see an electoral victory in the May 1996 elections by Israel's
Labor Party, which took a more compromising approach to its
relations with the Arab world.
Although the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War have helped
further consolidate the Israeli-U.S. relationship, American interest in
resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict remained. Thus the Bush
administration made this issue a top priority as it initiated the
"Madrid process" of negotiations between Israel and the Arab states.
Instead of acquiescing to the designs of the Israeli government of
Yitzhak Shamir to ultimately annex the West Bank, the Bush
administration confronted that government more than once. Even
more, the Bush administration helped engineer the defeat of the
Shamir government and the election instead of the more conciliatory
Labor Party; the administration's withholding of loan guarantees from
the Israeli government was widely seen to have affected Israeli
elections. In this case, American action was central in affecting
Israeli public opinion in ways that ultimately shaped Israeli foreign
policy.
Yet, despite U.S. intervention in the Israeli elections in May 1996, the
United States's preferred candidate for prime minister, Mr. Peres, lost
the election to another leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, whose expressed
views were at odds with the peace process under way. Given Israel's
superiority as a re--

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gional power, and the lessened significance of the Arab world in
American thinking, the calculations of Likud-led Israeli government
became especially consequential.
Arab-Israeli Peace and U.S. Policy in the Persian Gulf.
It is often assumed that American policy in the Persian Gulf is
obviously driven by oil interests alone. How else can one explain the
increasing military presence by American forces at the very same
time that the military budget is being cut elsewhere? How else can
one explain the massive U.S. intervention to reverse the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait?
Yet it would be a mistake to make this assumption: objective facts
prove the contrary. The United States spends more than $50 billion a
year on military presence and planning each year.4 What does the
United States get in return for this investment? First, American
imports are only worth about $11 billion from the Gulf region and
exports a little less. Beyond individual anecdotal cases, there is no
solid evidence that U.S. military presence helps U.S. business, unlike
what is assumed by regionalist theorists of imperialism: The
European Union exported $26.7 billion in comparison to the United
States's $10.1 billion in 1994. While the United States had a $1
billion trade deficit, the Europeans managed an $8 billion surplus.5
Aggregate trade figures are also telling: total trade with the Gulf for
the European Union and Japan amounted to more than $80 billion
compared with less than $22 billion for the United States.6 American
dependency on Persian Gulf oil in particular, and on oil imports in
general, is also much less than those of Europe and Japan. So, at a
minimum, there is a peculiar divergence of approach between the
United States and its Western European allies that cannot simply be
explained by the degree of dependence on oil.
Pure calculations of costs and benefits from oil are also telling. First,
there is probably little connection between U.S. military presence and
oil prices, as supply and demand are usually the biggest factors in oil
pricing. Even if there was some connection between military presence
and pricing, this relationship cannot possibly begin to account for the
extent of the American commitment: even if the price of oil doubled
from current levels, the additional costs of all U.S. oil imports will
still be smaller than the military expenditures. In addition, most oil
experts do not believe that the market would allow the doubling of oil
prices, even if there existed a unified oil cartel. In short, oil alone
cannot explain the U.S. policy in the Gulf or the extent of U.S.
military presence there.
Similarly, it is useful to consider the notion that oil alone explained
U.S.

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intervention in the Iraq-Kuwait crisis of 1990–91. The assertion that
U.S. political and military dominance in the region was necessary to
secure the flow of oil is challenged by considerable evidence about
patterns of trade in the Middle East; states in the region sell oil and
import goods independently of ideology, as markets tend to be their
guide. The behavior of Japan and some European allies, considerably
more dependent on oil than the U.S., was illustrative here too. Their
early reluctance to support a military initiative against Iraq, even
with the U.S. carrying the bulk of the burden, generated American
resentment. If interest in oil logically entailed Western intervention,
how can this behavior be explained?
The Bush administration could not have ignored preexisting public
perceptions that the Persian Gulf was "vitally" important—
perceptions solidified by the Carter Doctrine in 1979 and whose basis
was not merely the intrinsic value of oil, but also potential Soviet
control of it following the invasion of Afghanistan. In 1990, the
consequences of the Soviet demise had not yet been internalized. A
second presupposition in the American reaction was that a powerful
Iraq would threaten American interests, especially Israel. Had former
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat invaded Libya following the Camp
David Accords, the United States would have been unlikely to wage
war on Egypt. Without these two presuppositions, it is doubtful that
the American reaction to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would have
been significantly different from those of most industrialized allies.
While no one would contest the continued importance of Gulf oil to
Western economies, it is obvious from the above that the intrinsic
value of oil, by itself, cannot explain either U.S. perceptions of threat
in the Gulf or the perceived need for military force to address these
threats. The United States never perceived the Persian Gulf as
"vitally" important because of oil alone, but also because of perceived
threats from the Soviet union—and to Israel.
The consequences of the Soviet demise on the postulation of U.S.
interests is slowly emerging. What remains in U.S. perceptions of
serious threats in the Gulf is a combination of lagging ideas,
continued perceived threat to Israel, and the resulting Iranian and
Iraqi opposition to an American presence that would be unnecessary
without these threats. For now, these combine to make an American
presence and commitment realities: the Middle East remains one of
two primary arenas in U.S. military planning, and the establishment
of the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf adds a sense of permanence to
U.S. deployment. Yet the budgetary debate in the United States will
put substantial downward pressure on the military budget, even with

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Republican control of Congress; the establishment of the Fifth Fleet
itself was probably more the result of navy versus air force
competition for diminishing resources than it was the consequence of
a significant strategic plan.
At the same time, the continuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict has
increased the degree of American involvement and concern in the
Gulf. As long as tension continues on that front, significant
reductions in the American presence will remain unlikely. On the
other hand, in the event of a comprehensive Middle East peace, U.S.
notions of interest in the Gulf will change, and neither dual
containment nor a strategy of preventing regional hegemony will
survive. While some American military presence in the Gulf is likely
to continue for some time to come, regional peace could be followed
closely by significant reductions. In short, Arab-Israeli peace, which
is a prelude to a comprehensive regional peace, is a primary
requirement for eventual reductions in U.S. military presence.
The Distribution of Power in the Arab World
One central question pertaining to the future of coalitions in the
Middle East is the extent to which these coalitions are now driven by
the distribution of military and economic power within the Arab
world. Prior to the 1967 war, military power was an instrument of
influence within the Arab world, not so much for the ability it
conferred to intimidate other Arab states, but mostly because it
allowed states who had it to claim the ability to balance Israeli
military might. Egypt held a decisive advantage in this category until
its peace with Israel, and Iraq claimed this capability for a brief surge
of regional influence between the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988
and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Beginning with the mid-1970s,
the rise of the oil states and weakened Arab militaries in relation to
Israel increased the relevance of economic power in the Arab world,
especially given the surplus capital that oil-producing states acquired
and were able to employ as an instrument of policy. Saudi Arabia in
particular arose as a more powerful state. Since the Gulf War, the
open roles in regional security for the United States and Israel and the
continued presence of U.S. troops in the region have further reduced
the significance of the distribution of conventional power within the
Arab world.
At the same time, the decline of oil revenues, the rapid increase of
populations, and the heavy costs stemming from the Iraq-Kuwait
crisis have considerably reduced available foreign aid from oil-
producing states, especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In contrast, the
United States has continued to be the biggest aid provider to the Arab
world, especially to Egypt, Jordan, and

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the Palestinians. Add to this the reduced relevance of the Palestinian
issue in Arab politics, and the increasing acceptance of Israel in the
Arab world, and one gets a sense that few issues could possibly unite
Arab states. Is the term Arab world especially meaningful?
Similar questions could be asked even about subgroupings within the
Arab world, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council. Given the threats
demonstrated by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the member
countries' commonality of interests in the economic arena, one would
have expected that the Kuwait crisis would have consolidated their
alliance. Yet, despite their continued suspicions of their bigger,
poorer Arab brothers, which have prevented them from implementing
the Damascus Declaration that envisioned a central role in Gulf
defense for Egypt and Syria, mistrust within the GCC states has
reduced the grouping's military significance; and the U.S. military
presence has been exploited by smaller GCC states to assert
independence from Saudi Arabia. Even normalization with Israel was
employed as an instrument to compete for favors with the United
States.
This environment of Arab politics, added to the perceived irrelevance
of Arab public opinion during the Iraq-Kuwait crisis, has contributed
to the emergence of an attitude, at least within the U.S. policy
community, which I have called "GulfWar Syndrome." It places little
importance on the value of Arab public opinion for the behavior of
Arab states and assumes instead that, given its extraordinary leverage
in the region, the U.S. government could provide incentives to get
Arab governments to cooperate, while Arab governments, in turn,
will find ways to get their own publics to go along.
The bombings against U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in 1995–96 served
as a rude reminder that much of the threat to U.S. interests in the
region comes from internal sources about which the U.S. knows little.
These events have raised questions not only about the extent of
stability of Arab governments, but also about the potential
relationship between this instability and the foreign policies of Arab
states: is some of this instability due to public frustration with
foreign policy issues, or is it entirely driven by domestic issues? Are
the causes of instability particular to each state, or are there
regionwide causes? Is this instability consequential for the foreign
policies of Arab states? To address these questions broadly I will
revisit the notion of political legitimacy and its relationship to power
in the Arab world.
Power and Legitimacy in Middle Eastern Coalitions
The debate in Washington following the Gulf War in 1991 about the
relevance of Arab public opinion for Middle East politics is
revealing. In a hear--

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ians or diminish the international tensions to which that dispersion
gives rise. The redefinition of Arab nationalism is likely to be driven
by the expansion of the momentarily contained Iraqi crisis into one
which will engage Turkey and Iran, Iraq and Syria, and, of course, the
Kurds who dwell among them.
The bimodal division of the region and the limits set upon the use of
military force in the Middle East during the Cold War were not the
only reasons why conflicts have remained local rather than regional.
Regionalization was also inhibited by geographical, historical,
ideological, cultural, and economic factors, as nearly all the
textbooks tell us. But the constraints on the regionalization of
international conflict in the Middle East have been diminished as a
result of the end of the Cold War, while the "Islamic resurgence" has
weakened some of the ideological support for the segmentation of
regional conflict. The regionalization of Desert Storm was an
American success, but that very success has set limits upon any
future unilateral action. At the same time, the rise of Islam as a
political ideology has diminished the legitimacy of Arab, Turkish,
and Iranian nationalisms.
It seems likely that the patterns of ethnic conflict in the Middle East
will undergo profound change just at the time when we are learning
that the international community is not very well set up to deal with
such conflicts. It seems further likely that the emergent confrontation
between ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism will take
on more serious international dimensions than heretofore. To some
degree, the Islamic revolution in Iran has permitted Iranian foreign
policy to transcend the limits of Iranian nationalism, only to confront
the limits of sectarianism. Similarly, in Afghanistan an Islamic
revival sparked by opposition to a Soviet supported coup permitted
the temporary transcending of ethnic rivalries; but now the ethnic
pendulum has swung the other way. In Iran, ethnicity influences
Islamic identity without opposing it as in Afghanistan. In East Africa,
the Islamist regime in Sudan appears to be bent on supporting
Muslim groups against their ethnic rivals as a means of gaining
regional influence.
In sum, the vaguely conceived plans for establishing a stable balance
of power in the Middle East, which might be regulated by the United
States and its allies from afar, are unlikely to be implemented in the
Middle East in the immediate future. Instead, the altered
circumstances of the region need to be reexamined in the light of the
new political alignments and the new structures of power coming into
being.

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ing of the House subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, for
example, Martin Indyk, then-director of the Washington Institute on
Near East Policy, presented the following interpretation:
We are stronger for one very important reason, and that is the reality
of power. I think that anger in the Arab street is real. It is produced by
a number of different factors. But in the end, what matters is not
whether they hate us or love us—for the most part, they hate us. They
did before. But whether they are going to respect our power. And I
think what will have a massive impact throughout the Arab world was
the way in which Saddam Hussein was defeated.7
This interpretation ultimately won the day in Washington as an
alternative to another view advocated by many regional experts who
have been described as "Arabists" and whose influence diminished
when predicted public upheavals in the Arab world following the
GulfWar did not materialize. Although much of this debate between
the regionalists and the self-described realists has been partly colored
by the Israeli-Arab dispute, it has contained the roots of a potentially
informative intellectual dispute: What is the relationship between
"legitimacy" and power? My intention in this section is to identify
some of the analytical assumptions of each group and to assess their
validity in the context of Middle East politics.
Neorealists vs. Neoconservatives
The critique of Arabists in the State Department intensified during
the Reagan administration when it was championed by
neoconservatives who identified themselves as realists. It is
important to note, however, that substantial differences exist between
the positions of this group and those of some realists, especially
neorealist scholars. While neoconservatives, for example, tended to
perceive a domino effect in international politics, neorealists
expected a balancing of states; while the former feared Soviet power
in the 1980s, the latter advocated détente; while neoconservatives
feared the behavior of "crazy" governments in the Middle East,
neorealists saw Middle Eastern governments less as unique and more
as "rational actors." These differences continued during the Gulf
crisis, when most neoconservatives advocated the use of force against
Iraq, while neorealist scholars like Kenneth Waltz argued that it was
unnecessary.8
Yet, despite these differences, there has been an important thread
binding the two groups: the emphasis on the value of military power
and coercion in international politics. Where regionalists and
comparativists emphasized such

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domestic variables as legitimacy and public sentiments, realists
questioned the causal relevance of these variables for the behavior of
states, even if they sometimes agreed descriptively with the accounts
of the regionalists.
For neorealists, the concept of political legitimacy was not especially
useful for two reasons. First, posited as a domestic variable,
legitimacy was not seen as especially useful for explaining patterns
of international relations such as alliances in the Arab world; instead,
realists found sufficient explanatory power in the distribution of
military and economic capabilities, and in the balancing tendencies of
states to explain alliance formation. Second, legitimacy was seen as
being irrelevant for the realist paradigm, even in the domestic
context: Given effective means of coercion, why would a government
need legitimacy? And without such means, how can a government
hope to survive for long? In the Middle Eastern context, if
governments have had one impressive record it has been their
remarkable ability to survive under circumstances that normally
defeat governments elsewhere. In short, realists had no need for
legitimacy, except perhaps as a dependent variable to be explained by
the popular internalization and rationalization of objective power
realities.
Yet, an assessment of the application of this view in the Middle
Eastern context reveals both that a legitimacy-free account fails to
provide a full explanation of patterns of Arab alliances and that
legitimacy can be posited as a concept compatible with and
complementary to a realist view.
Legitimacy and Power
Much of the literature on legitimacy focused on the public's point of
view.9 For realists, since the primary actors are states, the need for
legitimacy must be addressed from the state's point of view; what
value to the state does legitimacy add, given the state's coercive
capability? Two consequential functions for legitimacy could be
posited as far as the state is concerned.
First, legitimacy increases the efficiency of coercive capabilities; a
decrease in legitimacy increases the use of coercive resources, which
in turn depletes these resources. The extent to which the government's
resources are being pressed in Algeria is just one example: as the
required resources to meet the challenge increase, income generation
through coercive measures decreases.
Second, legitimacy provides a "protective belt" during times of crisis
and major transition, when instruments of coercion are temporarily
absent or are insufficient to maintain power. If Egypt's military was
devastated by the defeat of the 1967 war, something other than pure
coercion enabled President Nasser to survive the crisis. One wonders
if the shah of Iran could have sur--

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vived a comparable military defeat. Similarly, given the wide gap
between the expectations of the Palestinian public and the terms of
the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles agreement, it is
doubtful that Chairman Arafat's ability to muster majority support
among Palestinians could be explained without reference to his prior
legitimacy. Although such "legitimacy" by itself cannot account for
long-term survival, it does buy leaders time in cases of crisis and
transition.
If legitimacy can be posited in a manner consistent with the realist
paradigm, its explanatory relevance for alliance formation or for state
behavior is not obvious. Many attempts to explain alliances without
reference to legitimacy as a primary causal variable have been made.
In general, Arab alliances have been conceived as resulting from
considerations of balance of power or balance of threat.10 Although
these accounts have contributed a great deal to our understanding of
Middle East alliances, they have left some important questions
unanswered.
First, scholars of Middle East politics have observed what has been
termed as the Arab "competition for leadership." Neither balance of
power nor balance of threat can account, for example, for Libya's or
Egypt's ambitions for Arab leadership. Put differently, the
competitive drive in Arab politics, to which some Arab states reacted
in a "balancing" manner, is not explained by realist accounts. Second,
as Walt readily discovered, balance of power theory, which requires
objective measures of military and economic power of each side,
cannot explain the patterns of Middle East alliances. Instead, Walt
substituted "threat" for power in his formulation—a concept that is
perception-based and is thus outside the realist presuppositions about
the consequences of the distribution of power. It therefore raises as
many questions as it answers: What is the source of the perception of
threat if not objective measures of power?
If the concept of threat cannot stand on its own, the concept of
legitimacy can fill the gap. In the absence of electoral legitimacy in
the Arab world, most symbols of legitimacy are social, cultural, and
religious; they are thus transnational (Arabism, Islamism). Arab
governments are thus dependent for their legitimacy not only on what
happens within their borders but also on how the transnational
symbols of legitimacy are affected elsewhere in the region.11 Arab
governments have felt the need to compete for the control of
transnational instruments of legitimacy; it is this competition that
regionalists have identified as the competition for Arab leadership.
As a consequence, the closer the dependence of Arab states on the
same symbols of legitimacy, the more competitive they may become:
the Ba'thism of Syria and Iraq; the

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Arabism of Nasser and Abd al-Karim Qasem; the recent competition
over "Jerusalem" among several Arab leaders.12
Viewed from this perspective, one important commodity of
competition in Arab politics has not been military power (which
explains why Walt abandoned that scheme), but instruments of
legitimacy. Indeed, even the buildup of military power during the
pan-Arab era of Gamal Abd al-Nasser was employed less as a direct
coercive instrument in Arab politics and more as an instrument to
legitimize the claim of leadership on the question of Palestine, a
central symbol of the pan-Arab movement.
In short, legitimacy, posited in ways that are compatible with a
minimalist neorealist paradigm, can help explain not only individual
foreign policy decisions but also patterns of interstate relations in the
Middle East that were not sufficiently accounted for by the
distribution of power alone.
If realists have not paid enough attention to legitimacy, regionalists
have tended to overestimate the value of public sentiment in
explaining the behavior of both the public and the state. Even though
public sentiment on transnational issues is often correctly identified,
the behavioral consequences of this sentiment are overstated. Some
of the gap between sentiment and behavior is usually explained by the
direct coercive capabilities of the state, which have substantially
increased since the 1950s. If this was the primary variable over the
years explaining the large gap regionalists identify between public
sentiment and state policy, then realists are certainly right about the
minimal value of legitimacy for state behavior. There are, however,
other reasons for the gap between sentiment and behavior. Primarily,
there are three intervening variables linking events, public sentiments
about them, and consequent behavior: the sources of public
information about a given issue; the ranking of that issue in public
priorities; and the assessment of the future outcome.13
If regional experts were accurate in describing a high level of
resentment of U.S. policy in the Middle East prior to Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait, they have underestimated the importance of information
packaging in mitigating the impact of events on public behavior.
Since members of the alliance against Iraq understood that Iraq's
primary leverage rested with its potential ability to mobilize Arab
public opinion, they were not about to make that task easy. As a
consequence, a sophisticated and well-coordinated information
campaign portrayed a uniform picture of events in much of the Arab
world, which included a large number of Islamic theological books on
the crisis, funded by members of the alliance. Significantly, the
appearance of a collective position among three key Arab actors
(Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) presented

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an important cue for Arabs looking for external signals by which to
evaluate Arab interests. Deprived from conveying their story
effectively in much of the Arab world, the Iraqis had little chance to
mobilize the Arab public.
But even if the Iraqis had succeeded in igniting regional sentiments,
it is doubtful that these sentiments would have had the behavioral
consequences Iraq expected; how the public ranks a given issue in its
priorities substantially affects its behavior. Since the Gulf crisis
raised more than one issue (violation of sovereignty of an Arab state;
hope for redistribution of wealth; foreign intervention on Arab soil;
possible leverage in the conflict with Israel), even if all Arabs shared
similar sentiments on each issue individually, the relative weight of
each issue varied significantly from one community to another:
neighbors of Kuwait were bound to place the violation of sovereignty
principle at the top of their agenda, while Palestinians were more
lured by the prospect of favorable movement in their conflict with
Israel. In short, identifying the public sentiment on any given issue
does not automatically tell us about the weight of that issue in
explaining behavior.
Finally, public behavior partly depends on an assessment of the
prospects for success. Where Iraq's leadership was popular in the
Arab world its popularity partly stemmed from an assessment of the
promise to deliver through military leverage what diplomacy could
not: justice for Palestinians and Arab independence from foreign
influence. But, in line with realist thinking on this issue, U.S.
policymakers assumed that support based on such promise would
dissipate when it appeared to be a hoax. They assessed that the
massive defeat of Iraq would turn admiration into blame, as people
do not generally support losers.
The conclusion that one can draw is that coercive power can be used
effectively not only to minimize the behavioral consequences of
public sentiment, but also to manipulate and shape that sentiment.
Even those who placed the greatest emphasis on military power did
not ignore the need to keep sentiments in mind while projecting
perceptions. Mr. Indyk, for example, whose neoconservative position
I cited at the outset of this essay, added the following:
Having demonstrated [our dominance], the expectation will be that
we are going to be the new imperialist. That is why I referred to the
need to avoid the image of Pax Americana. And to the extent that we
feed that perception by, for instance, keeping a large scale ground
presence in the Gulf, we will have problems because that kind of neo-
imperialism is simply not acceptable. So we have to be very
conscious of the way in which we play a very strong hand, but it will
be a strong hand.14

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Yet, if coercive power can be used to affect public sentiment over
given issues, it is not clear whether or not it has the capacity to affect
basic notions of legitimacy and collective identity. Has Arabism, as a
criterion of legitimacy in most Arab states, been dealt a mortal blow
by the Gulf War and by the Israeli-Palestinian agreement? Is
Islamism emerging as a more powerful symbol of legitimacy because
of the diminishing prospects of Arabism? Are statist symbols of
legitimacy gaining strength at the expense of transnational symbols?
Or are transnational notions of legitimacy and collective identity so
basic in the Arab world that, even if electoral politics takes hold in
the region, their relevance will continue?
Although a full discussion of these questions is beyond the scope of
this chapter, I will offer some thoughts on the continued importance
of transnational issues for government legitimacy in the Arab world.
Internal Politics and Transnational Issues in the Arab World:
The New Arabism.
Whether or not one takes seriously notions of core "identity" and the
way Arabs and Muslims define themselves, there are practical
reasons for the continued import of Islamist and Arabist trends in the
region.15 Although states and local identification with states have
been significantly strengthened in the past half century, there remain
some reasons to challenge the state. First, the terms "government"
and "state" remain nearly synonymous in much of the region with
unpopular regimes, which entails a weakening of identification with
the state. Second, economic performance has been particularly dismal
in the region as a whole, with continual decline in per capita GNP
over the past fifteen years in what amounts to one of the worst
economic performances of any region in the world. These trends hold
for both rich and poor states in the region. In the rich oil-producing
states, where there is continued reliance on oil for more than two-
thirds of income, reduction in oil revenues coupled with one of the
fastest population growths in the world has meant a continued decline
in income that is not likely to be reversed if demographic trends
continue. The net outcome of these trends is the relative shift of
resources away from the state and toward private wealth, thus
reducing the capital available to the state to buy loyalty and mute
opposition. The result is increasing demand for political
participation. Even with full Arab-Israeli peace it is unlikely that
these trends will be reversed in the short term.
Third, spreading the responsibility and therefore the blame for the
dismal record through political democratization has not worked,
largely because, as in the Algerian case, regimes are interested in
liberalization only insofar as

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it is conducive to protecting their hold on power—an outcome they
cannot guarantee. Repression is thus likely to continue—perhaps even
increase with a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This entails
that forces of internal opposition are likely to intensify in the region,
with the primary vehicles for mass political mobilization continuing
to be social—primarily Islamist. Although some of the opposition
may be driven strictly by religious issues, political and economic
issues drive most opposition with Islamic organizations providing
one of the few outlets for mass political mobilization. Although
within each state the nature of these forces will be different, and
Islamist groups will by no means be monolithic, mobilizational
rhetoric and the commonality of interest among oppositional forces
across the region will have the consequence of generating a
transnational force challenging the existing order.
Yet governments in the Middle East have been very good at one
thing: preserving their hold on power. With poor economic
performance and the absence of electoral legitimacy, governments
may need their own transnational mechanism to defend against
opposition. One conceivable outcome is the revival of the Arabist
rhetoric as a way of creating a coalition among besieged Arab
governments, this time possibly targeting Iran—with the support of
Israel and the United States in case of Arab-Israeli peace, or
increasingly challenging these two if conflict persists.
What makes this outcome a strong possibility is the emergence of
what may be called the "New Arabism" as an independent
transnational movement in the Arab world. It is important to
differentiate this emerging movement from Nasser's Arabism of the
1950s and the 1960s.
Whereas the spread of Nasserism was state led, the new Arabism is
being driven by market demand and supply. Two important trends
account for the new movement. First, disaffected intellectual elites
have found a way of asserting their political power independently
from the state, in which they have few opportunities for meaningful
participation. The most visible and consequential aspect of this
phenomenon is the powerful "taboo" that has emerged against dealing
with Israel, especially in Jordan and Egypt, even as both governments
move to normalize relations with it. In this regard, issues of foreign
policy, especially those of Israel, Jerusalem, and Palestine, remain
natural issues of opposition, since challenging the state directly
remains dangerous and since these issues are unifying issues for
elites across state borders. Moreover, secular elites that have been
more troubled by the Islamist opposition than by state repression find
these issues of foreign policy convenient for

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acquiring popular legitimacy while differentiating themselves from
their governments.
The second trend, globalization, is no less important—especially in
the information arena. The irony of trends in the Arab world in the
sixties, seventies, and eighties is that, while transnationalism and
interdependence became the norm in much of the world, vulnerable
Middle Eastern states made sure the trend moved in the other
direction as they sought to assert their own identities, especially in
the information and media arenas. But globalization is finally
catching up with the Arab world: the impact of the new regionwide
media is becoming more significant by the week. Such media as the
Middle East Broadcast Company (TV), al-Sharq al-Awsat, and al-
Hayat (newspapers) have become significant forces in shaping elite
and middle-class opinion in the Arab world. While most of these
enterprises are owned by Saudis, and many operate from Europe, they
remain mostly driven by profit: the bigger the market the better. In
this sense, at least, the political themes advanced in these media must
be unifying themes. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains at the
heart of the political agenda, especially since there is a decided
attempt not to criticize governments directly. For many of the
intellectual and business elites in the region, reading al-Sharq al-
Awsat or al-Hayat has become the equivalent of reading the New York
Times among American intellectual elites.
These two trends have combined to bolster a transnational Arab
identity, create more assertive nongovernmental coalitions, and
maintain the focus on the issue of Israel and Palestine, especially
when the peace process enters its frequent periods of stalemate.
While these trends are potentially troublesome for Arab governments,
they are also potential allies against the Islamist trends.
Conclusion: Alternative Scenarios
While some of the important trends in Middle East politics have their
roots in internal economic and political issues that have little to do
with foreign policy, Israel, or the United States, future coalitions in
the region will be greatly affected by the dominant influence of Israel
and the United States. While the latter have much leeway in the
pursuit of foreign policy, there are some significant constraints that
limit their options.
Recent events in the region, for example, have signaled the end of the
extended victory party that the United States has had since the defeat
of Iraq. The fear of Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait and the
significant move--

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ment in the Arab-Israeli peace process have helped generate
unprecedented American influence in the region, making U.S. policy
choices simpler and easier to implement. In particular, American
policy in the Gulf has successfully focused on a unilateral military
strategy to defend the sources of oil against external threats; on the
increased presence of troops, equipment, and naval vessels in the
region; and on escalating the international pressure on Iran and Iraq,
which were seen as the most serious threats to Gulf stability.
Vulnerable Gulf states have been more willing to accommodate
American forces, and key Arab states like Egypt and Syria have gone
along with U.S. policy largely because the Middle East peace process,
in which they had much invested, seemed unstoppable.
The two bombings against American troops in Saudi Arabia in
November 1995 and June 1996 and the internal instability in Bahrain,
the main naval base for U.S. forces in the Gulf, have highlighted the
internal threats to Gulf security against which American military
presence is helpless—possibly even counterproductive. At the same
time, setbacks to the Arab-Israeli peace process following the 1996
Israeli elections have helped bridge some of the divisions within the
Arab world and create an environment that will make it more difficult
for the United States to implement its current policies toward Iraq
and Iran and to expand the presence of U.S. forces in the region. In
addition, political change within Turkey has made the continuation of
the stay of U.S. forces necessary for Operation Provide Comfort in
northern Iraq for an extended period an open question.
At the same time, increasing U.S. efforts to isolate Iran through the
D'Amato Act, which punishes foreign companies that invest more
than $40 million in Iran's gas and oil resources, is being seriously
challenged by U.S. allies around the world—while humanitarian
concerns for the hardship being endured by the Iraqi people have
resulted in the partial lifting of economic sanctions on Iraq.
On the Israeli side, the foreign policy options available to Israel seem
wide if one takes into account the relative military superiority that
Israel enjoys in the region and the solid support that Israel will
continue to get from the United States. In this sense, domestic Israeli
politics are central to Israeli foreign policy. The ideological
differences between the current government of Binyamin Netanyahu
and the previous government of Shimon Peres are consequential for
"comprehensive" Arab-Israeli peace, which requires, above all, a
Palestinian-Israeli agreement on final status and a Syrian-Israeli (and
thus Lebanese-Israeli) peace.
Still, a number of factors limit Netanyahu's options. Foremost, he
cannot

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ignore the Oslo agreements, which have gone too far to be reversed
but not far enough to be viable. Even the Israeli public is unlikely to
support the reoccupation of Palestinian cities, and Mr. Netanyahu is
on record saying he will not reverse what has been done. At the same
time, the current situation in the Palestinian territories is not
sustainable, either economically or politically; so the old
annexationist view of Likud would at a minimum have to be altered.
Moreover, the very same public mood in Israel that has led to Mr.
Netanyahu's election strongly reflects a desire for Palestinian-Israeli
separation. Increasing Jewish settlements on the West Bank makes
separation more difficult. So far, no new vision has emerged on the
shape of final settlement with the Palestinians to reflect the realities
on the ground, but Mr. Netanyahu will have to advance one quickly.
On the strategic front, Israel's non-Arab options in the region are
severely limited, as the Islamic government in Iran remains an
unlikely partner and Israel's strategic cooperation with Turkey is
likely to remain limited. Syrian-Saudi-Egyptian cooperation is likely
to continue as a way of minimizing internal opposition—thus
limiting the prospects of deep divisions within the Arab world. And
Israel must also contend with the element of time: Iraq will not
remain isolated forever, and Iran, despite international constraints,
will likely succeed one day at acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
Notes
1. "Speech to the Arab Cooperation Council," FBIS-NES-90-039,
February 27, 1990, 2.
2. Ibid.
3. Although a dispute over this issue arose following the election of
Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister of Israel in 1996, the
Palestine National Council voted in Gaza in April 1996 "to revoke the
clauses in its 32-year-old charter that called for an armed struggle to
destroy the Jewish state" (New York Times, April 25, 1996, 1). The
vote was 504 in favor of amending the document and 54 against.
Fourteen members abstained, and 97 of the 669 members of the
council were absent. The vote was over the two-thirds required to
amend the charter. Prime Minister of Israel Shimon Peres declared
that "ideologically, it may be the most important change in the last
hundred years." Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced, "It
is really a historic milestone on the road to reconciliation and peace
between the people of Israel and the Palestinians" (ibid.). The PNC
resolution consisted of two parts "drawn up to satisfy the Israeli-
Palestinian agreement." The first part declared that the PNC "decides
to amend the Palestinian national covenant by canceling clauses
which contradict the letters exchanged between the PLO and the
Israeli Government." The second ordered a new charter to be drafted
within six months. The PNC never drafted

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The Theory of Ethnic Conflict
The Multiplicity of Theoretical Paradigms
Insofar as ethnic conflict in the Middle East is dependent upon the
international politics of the region, it may be expected that such
conflict will exhibit some unique features. But if ethnic conflict
everywhere is the consequence of aspects of human nature, then
Middle East conflicts should reflect those common characteristics. If,
however, ethnic conflict is shaped by the ethos of particular ethnic
identities, then the character of ethnic conflict should reflect the
particular combinations of ethnicities that happen to confront one
another.
The fact is that there is not much consensus among specialists
regarding the nature of ethnicity and the origins of ethnic conflict. It
is widely acknowledged that ethnic loyalties tend to be very strong
and that such loyalties are often manifested in extremely virulent
conflict. Ethnic conflicts are often characterized by a high degree of
emotionalism sometimes leading to the commitment of atrocities and
even genocidal acts. Many observers believe that ethnic loyalty
involves some degree of irrational behavior, or at least a willingness
to sacrifice oneself for the good of the larger group. Others argue that
ethnic martyrdom is a manifestation of altruism and deserving of
admiration. But most observers see little good coming out of an
ethnic narcissism that conduces to the demonization of the other. At
the same time, ethnic sentiment is often praised as the moral
foundation of an integrated and caring political community, perhaps
the only type of community capable of sustaining a true democracy.
Theories of ethnicity vary considerably, and their variety challenges
the ingenuity of those who might seek an intellectually benign and
ideologically neutral synthesis. Nevertheless, in a recent IGCC policy
paper, Lake and Rothchild adopt a classification scheme based on
three of the many available definitions of ethnicity in an effort to
overcome the lack of consensus among scholars and specialists in the
field.2 The three chosen by Lake and Rothchild are the primordialist
definition, the instrumentalist, and the constructivist. The
primordialist postulates that ethnic sentiment and the solidarity it
produces are an original part of human nature, and hence natural,
inevitable, and nonrational.3 The instrumentalist postulates that
ethnicity is one among many possible or available instruments that
can be used by groups to gain control of resources and improve their
material circumstances. The instrumentalist accords with the rational
choice perspective, provided that it addresses the question of why an
ethnic strategy was preferred over other

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a new charter, with the argument that a new constitution should be
drafted instead. Following Mr. Netanyahu's complaints about the
issue, further Palestinian steps on this issue are likely to be part of
additional Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
4. This figure is from William W. Kaufman, Assessing Base Force:
How Much Is Too Much? (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1992), 89.
5. These numbers are extracted from the Directions of Trade
Statistics Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund,
1995).
6. Ibid.
7. Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearings: Post-War Policy Issues in
the Persian Gulf (1991), 102d Congress, 1st sess., 120. Washington:
U.S. Government Printing Office.
8. Kenneth N. Waltz, "A Necessary War?," in Confrontation in the
Gulf: University of California Professors Talk about the War, ed.
Harry Kreisler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 59–
65.
9. See, for example, Max Weber, Economy and Society (New York:
Bedminster Press, 1968); Michael Hudson, Arab Politics: The Search
for Legitimacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); and
Ronald Rogowski, Rational Legitimacy: A Theory of Political
Support (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).
10. See Alan R. Taylor, The Arab Balance of Power (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1982) for a work explaining Arab
alliances based on balance of power considerations, and Stephen M.
Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1987) for one based on balance of threats assumptions.
11. Two important factors may be cited for the effect of ideology on
competition among states: the extent to which it is the primary source
of legitimacy (especially in the absence of electoral legitimacy) and
whether it is transnational.
12. There are instances where, in the short term, ideology brings
states together: Syria's Party, which lacked legitimacy at home,
found the alliance with the popular Nasser very useful for its own
legitimacy, but not for long. In addition, to the extent that ideology is
not the primary factor in alliance politics (Walt), ideologically
similar states sometimes come together, or grow apart, for reasons
that are independent of ideology. What is posited here is that,
everything being equal, if two states are dependent for their
legitimacy on the same transnational ideology, they are likely to
become competitive.
13. Shibley Telhami, "Arab Public Opinion and the Gulf War,"
Political Science Quarterly 108, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 437–52.
14. Hearings, 120.
15. On the issue of core identity, see Michael Barnett, "Institutions,
Roles, and Disorder: The Case of the Arab States System,"
International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 3 (September 1993): 271–96;
or Barnett, "Identity and Alliances in the Middle East," chap. 11 in
Peter Katzenstein, ed., Culture of National Security (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1996).

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3
The Assembled State
Communal Conflicts and Governmental Control in Iraq
Adeed Dawisha
On a pleasant spring day in Cairo in 1921, as Winston Churchill, the
minister at Britain's Colonial Office, drew sketches of the great
pyramids, his advisers assembled the modern state of Iraq from three
provinces of the defunct Ottoman Empire: Baghdad, Mosul, and
Basra. The new creation was to be a monarchy, and Faisal, the third
son of the sharif of Mecca, was offered the crown.
Faisal's new country was an artificial state, created as part of the
reorganization of British interests in the Middle East. It was bereft of
any ethnic or religious rationale and therefore completely lacking the
essential underpinnings of a national bond. Basra and the south were
overwhelmingly ; Baghdad and the central part of Iraq were
primarily Sunni; and Mosul and the north contained substantial non-
Arab populations, primarily Kurdish, and to a lesser extent
Turkomans. Added to this mix were smaller but influential
populations of Jews and Christians, who were mainly city dwellers
except for the Christian Assyrians, who lived in villages to the north
of Mosul.
The various ethnic and sectarian divisions were exacerbated by a vast
cultural divide between city and tribe. It was thus difficult to imbue
this disparate human mosaic with a feeling of shared destiny and with
a sense of nationhood. To create from the many and diverse parts of
Iraq's population a coherent and unified whole became a major (and
some say still not achieved) goal of successive Iraqi governments.
Twelve years after becoming king, Faisal still would lament the Iraqi
condition:
There is still—and I say this with a heart full of sorrow—no Iraqi
people but unimaginable masses of human beings, devoid of any
patriotic idea, imbued with religious traditions and absurdities,
connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil, prone to anarchy, and
perpetually ready to rise

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against any government whatever. Out of these masses we want to
fashion a people which we would train, educate, and refine . . . The
circumstances, being what they are, the immenseness of the efforts
needed for this [can be imagined].1
The Breadth of the Divide
During the seventy years that began with Faisal's assumption of
power and ended with the major antigovernment insurrections in the
wake of Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, the two main fissures in Iraqi
society that have had a major impact on the country's political
development as well as its internal stability have been those of Arab
versus Kurd, and Sunni versus .
This does not mean that other conflicts did not exist. On a number of
occasions other groups confronted each other or became involved in a
struggle with the state. In 1932–33, the Christian Assyrians, from
whose ranks the British recruited their auxiliary troops, called the
Levies, and who therefore were vastly unpopular in Iraq, had been
demanding an autonomous enclave within Iraq. In the summer of
1933, a skirmish between Assyrians and Iraqi soldiers resulted in
thirty Iraqis and a number of Assyrians killed. In the wake of this
incident, Kurds, who themselves had been assaulted by Assyrians in
the past, attacked two Assyrian villages, killing some one hundred
inhabitants. A few days later, an army company entered a third
Assyrian village and massacred the entire male population.
Like the Assyrians, Iraqi Jews were a minority, but unlike the rural
village-dwelling Assyrians, Iraq's Jewish community was a
prosperous and highly developed urban community, which in the
1940s numbered between 120,000 and 150,000. The Jewish situation
changed with the rise of Zionism in Palestine. There were a few
attacks against Jews, in addition to general harassment of the
community, which coincided with the 1936–39 Arab revolt in
Palestine.
The worst incidents occurred in June 1941, when during a two-day
riot 179 Jewish men, women, and children were killed and several
hundred wounded. The farhud, as the pogrom was called, was
perpetrated by students, individual soldiers, bedouins, and members
of the futuwwah, a paramilitary youth movement. While not the only
reason, the farhud played a significant part in the Jewish exodus from
Iraq in 1951.2
Another example of intracommunal strife was the 1959 Kurdish
attack on the Turkomans in the city of Kirkuk, which had been the
most Turkish of Iraqi cities under the Ottomans. Even by 1959 the
Turkomans constituted more than half of the city's population. Kurds
had been migrating steadily

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into the city from surrounding villages, however, and by 1959 they
formed more than one-third of the population. The deadly feud
between the two communities was long-standing, mirroring the bitter
relations between Turks and Kurds in Turkey. In July 1959, in a
squabble over celebrations of Iraq's 1958 revolution, Kurdish
communists, soldiers, and tribesmen, carrying weapons, attacked
Turkomans, shouting, "The Turkomans have slaughtered all our
Kurdish brethren!"3 It took the government three days to restore
order, by which time 120 homes and businesses were ravaged,
between 31 and 79 were killed, some buried alive, and 130 injured.4
While all these instances of communal conflict in Iraq were indeed
very serious, involving the loss of life and livelihood, it still remains
the case that, as stated above, the two consequential and long-
standing fissures in Iraqi society have been those of Arab against
Kurd and Sunni against .
Arab versus Kurd, Sunni versus
It is important to note that while the two schisms have been relatively
enduring, they are by no means symmetrical. They differ contextually
as well as in their essence. The divide in Iraq is essentially a
conflict between Arab and Arab. emerged as a result of a
dispute within the early Muslim community over the succession to
the Prophet Muhammad. The Sunnis, who formed the majority,
believed that God's guidance passed from the Prophet to the Muslim
community as a whole, basing their belief on a saying by the Prophet:
"My community will not agree upon an error."5 The Sunnis have thus
accepted the progression of Islamic history from the Prophet to all of
his successors, the Khalifas, as long as they were able to make their
claim effective.6
The , on the other hand, believe that succession to the Prophet
should have devolved onto his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and
subsequently to all his heirs. They go further by endowing a kind of
religious infallibility onto Ali and all his descendants, who are
recognized as the Imams of the community. The twelfth Imam
disappeared in the ninth century, and believe that he want into
concealment, to reappear later as the Mahdi, when he would restore
peace and justice to the world.
While in Iran and Iraq the are a majority, generally in the world
of Islam has been the minority sect. And like other minorities,
have been persecuted throughout Islamic history. Hence the bond
among is intense, leading in the case of Iraqi to a strong
affinity with their Iranian coreligionists. This affinity has been
strengthened by the existence in Iraq of the two holiest cities in
Islam, Najaf and Karbala, which

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have attracted Iranian pilgrims throughout the ages, constituting
almost an open flow of humanity.
It is important to note, however, that while the communal ties
between the of Iraq and Iran are very strong, Iraqi are
separated from their Iranian coreligionists by an ethnic and linguistic
divide that has proved too powerful to be overcome by sectarian
proximity. Iraqi thus have exhibited little enthusiasm for
political links with Iran or for a separate state of their own.
Furthermore, until the brutal suppression of the uprising against
Saddam Hussein in March 1991, little blood had been shed in the
conflict between Sunnis and . It has been on the whole a political
and socioeconomic struggle over the allocation and distribution of
wealth and political power among the various elements of Iraqi
society.7
The case of Arab against Kurd is vastly different. Constituting some
20 percent of the Iraqi population, the Kurds have proved to be the
most difficult minority to assimilate into the state of Iraq. Of a
different ethnic stock, and speaking an Indo-European language, the
Kurds's sense of a separate identity is much stronger than that of the
. In fact, the Kurds have a fully developed sense of nationhood
that has been frustrated by the various states and their governments,
in which the Kurds constituted significant minorities, as well as by
the Kurds's own clannish and tribal rivalries. Furthermore, this sense
of nationhood has been acknowledged by the outside world in the
twentieth century. As early as 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres called for
the establishment of a separate and independent Kurdish political
entity, stipulating that the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey could apply for
admission to the League of Nations within a year. This, however, was
frustrated by the emergence of Mustafa Kemal in Turkey, who would
not ratify the treaty and who proceeded to establish effective military
control over the Kurds of eastern Turkey.
Residing mostly in the rugged and mountainous terrain of northern
Iraq, the Kurds, until about the 1920s, had been able to lead a
relatively autonomous existence. Indeed, when intermittently in the
nineteenth century the Ottomans made an effort to assert their
authority over the more inaccessible parts of their empire, they
precipitated major uprisings in the Kurdish areas in 1837–52 and
1880–81. Up until the collapse of their empire, the Ottomans could
hardly claim to have had their authority accepted in the Kurdish areas
in what are now northern Iraq and eastern Turkey. No wonder,
therefore, that since it first evolved in the 1920s, the Iraqi state and
most of its governments have had the "Kurdish problem" as one of
their most enduring and difficult predicaments.

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The problem was recognized by the British early in their mandate
period, prompting them in 1922 to promise the Kurds a form of
autonomy within the kingdom of Iraq. Kurdish leaders, however,
insisting on more than autonomy, called for a general revolt. The
British deemed the situation serious enough to engage the Kurds in a
series of military campaigns that included the bombing of the
Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya.
Neither the state's coercive power nor its government's efforts to
partially satisfy the Kurds's demands for independence or, at a
minimum, true autonomy was able to pacify the Kurds over the next
two decades. Indeed Kurdish opposition intensified with the
emergence of the charismatic leadership of Mulla Mustafa Barazani.
The new leader organized a number of revolts in the 1930s until, at
considerable cost to the government, he was defeated and put under
house arrest in Sulaimaniya in 1936. Escaping in 1943, he
immediately raised another revolt demanding complete Kurdish
autonomy. The Iraqi government, on the other hand, became
convinced that this was only the first step toward independence.
Rather than negotiating, the government embarked on another costly
campaign, which this time was eventually to lead to Barazani's
expulsion in 1945. From then until the fall of the monarchy in 1958,
no significant eruptions in the Kurdish areas occurred.
What is clear about this narration of events is how seemingly
intractable the Kurdish problem was. Even in its formative years,
with the British in authoritative positions, the state was unable to
reach peaceful accommodation with the Kurdish minority. The ethnic
divide was too powerful a stumbling block. Consequently
governmental overtures were always halfhearted, and deep down the
Kurds always desired a state of their own, having been constantly
aware, and made aware, of their ethnic uniqueness in an essentially
Arab society.
That is why the case is different. Iraqi speak Arabic, and
they share the same ethnic characteristics of the Iraqi Sunnis. Unlike
the Kurds, they have not been isolated from the other inhabitants by
difficult and inaccessible terrain. While their demographic
concentration has been in the south of Iraq, the growth of modern
transportation and communication, as well as the rapid expansion of
universal and secular education, brought about increased communal
interaction. This is especially exemplified in the growth of
multicommunal cities at the expense of the countryside. Thus the
never demanded autonomy or political independence; they simply
wanted a shift in the political and socioeconomic balance that was
(and had been since Ottoman days) heavily in favor of the minority
Sunnis. On a number of occasions (1927, 1932, 1935) the drew
up manifestos articulating their de--

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mands of the Sunni-dominated central government. These included
greater participation in the government, parliament, and the civil
service; the teaching of jurisprudence in law schools; changes in
the taxation system in the rural south; and government investment in
health and education in areas.8
Eruptions did occur, especially as a result of frustration with
inadequate responses by the Sunni-dominated central government.
Riots and disturbances, as well as tribal rebellions, occurred in the
late twenties and thirties, culminating in the tribal uprising of 1935–
36. The suppression of the tribal revolt by the Iraqi army, coupled
with an effort to politically satisfy the tribal sheikhs by increasing
their representation in parliament, effectively put an end to further
violence.
Around this time, the , one of whose main impediments was lack
of education, also began to benefit from the considerable expansion
of secular education, which, incidentally, emphasized the "oneness of
Iraq" and the "Arab," rather than the sectarian, characteristics of the
Iraqi population. Thus, by the 1940s droves of educated , feeling
themselves to be equal to the dominant Sunnis, were occupying
governmental and civil service positions. Their social mobility
helped accelerate the erosion of the social and cultural barrier that
had separated the two sects. For example, "Sunnis began giving their
daughters in marriage to , when only a few decades before the
impediments to such intermarriage seemed insurmountable."9
Moreover, the exodus of the Jews from Iraq in 1951 opened the door
for the to make their presence felt in Iraq's commercial life.
Along with this came improvement in their political status. Between
1947 and 1958 four became prime ministers, whereas not one
attained the position before 1947. Moreover, in the first decade of the
monarchy occupied 17.7 percent of ministerial positions, but in
the last decade of the monarchy, their share of ministerial
appointments had gone up to 34.7 percent.10 While their share of
political power still was not commensurate with their demographic
numbers (there are twice as many as Sunnis), the
undoubtedly were making great improvements in their political and
socioeconomic situation in the years of the monarchy.
This meant that by the end of the 1950s the on the whole had
been almost fully integrated into Iraq's body politic. To be sure,
friction between the two sects, especially pertaining to
grievances about the continued domination by Sunnis of Iraqi
politics, continued to hover under the surface. Moreover, even though
some of the richest Iraqis were , the community as a whole was
socioeconomically still considerably inferior to the Sunnis.

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Nevertheless, while these differences would in the future cause a few
eruptions, these were infrequent and limited in their scope and
purpose. The bottom line was that as a group not alienated ethnically
from the rest of society, the were loyal citizens of Iraq who
sought to improve their sociopolitical status in the country, but not to
extricate themselves from it. On the other side of the coin, the ruling
Sunnis came to share that perception, ceasing to believe, as some of
them had done in the 1920s, that affinity with their coreligionists
in Iran was stronger than their loyalty to the Arab state of Iraq.
The same attitude was not extended to the Kurds. The ethnic divide
proved to be too powerful a barrier to the full and true integration of
Kurds into Iraqi society. Indeed, the increasing emphasis on Arab
nationalism and the "unity of the Arab homeland" in the 1950s and
1960s only went to further the mistrust and suspicion between Arab
and Kurd. Thus in the decade that followed the demise of the Iraqi
monarchy in 1958, successive nationalist governments in Baghdad
waged a relentless and almost continuous war against the rebellious
Kurds who wanted nothing to do with, indeed were thoroughly averse
to, any notion of joining the larger "Arab nation." It was estimated
that by the mid-1960s about two-thirds of the Iraqi armed forces were
in the north fighting the Kurds. This time the task of subduing the
Kurds was made more difficult by the active military and logistical
support extended to the Kurds by the shah of Iran.
The Era
It was in this situation of military and political impasse that Saddam
Hussein and the came to power in July 1968. Notwithstanding
a halfhearted effort at accommodation in 1970, the new rulers, Arab
nationalists to the core, pursued the military struggle against the
Kurds. Like the earlier confrontations, this particular onslaught
proved to be a costly failure, especially because at this time the Kurds
were supported actively and massively by the shah of Iran, who took
advantage of the ethnic divide within Iraq in order to extract some
territorial compromises from the Iraqi regime. By 1975, 16,000 Iraqi
army personnel had been killed, and the war was having a damaging
impact on the economy.11 Left with no options, Saddam Hussein and
the Iraqi acceded to the shah's territorial demands in return for
his withdrawal of support to the Kurds.
The agreement, signed in Algiers in March 1975, was a disaster for
the Kurds. It precipitated the almost immediate collapse of the
Kurdish insurrection, allowing the Iraqi army to quickly move into
strategic positions and seal

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the border with Iran. In less than a month the Iraqi regime would
announce the end of the Kurdish revolt.
But the termination of the conflict did not bring about its resolution.
If anything, the Iraqi rulers accentuated the psychological distance
between Arab and Kurd by embarking on measures designed to stop
further insurrections. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were forcibly
deported to the south of Iraq or to the central plains of the north, and
every village along the border with Iran was destroyed. These
measures reflected Baghdad's inveterate suspicion that the non-Arab
Kurds would never give up on their nationalist aspirations.
apprehension escalated after the eruption of the Iran-Iraq War
in September 1980, since they feared that their rallying cry for a great
Arab struggle against the ethnically different Persians would fall on
deaf Kurdish ears. Thus, as the war dragged on and Kurdish guerrilla
resistance increased, harsher and harsher Iraqi measures were
undertaken in Kurdistan. Villages were destroyed with alarming
regularity and their inhabitants either killed or resettled. Chemical
weapons were used, including in the best-known case of the village of
Halabja, where some 5,000 Kurdish men, women, and children were
killed. This whole campaign came to a grisly climax in the 1988
Anfal operation, in which, according to Kurdish sources, government
forces razed some 1,276 villages, killing anywhere between 100,000
and 182,000 people and bulldozing their bodies into mass graves.12
There were, to be sure, efforts on both sides throughout rule to
compromise and accommodate one another's interests and concerns.
In retrospect, however, it is clear that these never had a chance of
success. All such efforts were dwarfed by the huge ethnic divide and
irreconcilable nationalist aspirations that separated the two sides.
Consequently, all efforts at accommodation were anemic, pursued
without much conviction, and opposed by many in both camps.
At the time of the takeover of power in 1968, the ,
ethnically Arab and by now fully integrated in the body politic of the
state, could expect none of the problems experienced by the Kurds
under the . Indeed, many youths had joined the party in the
1950s, and a number of them had attained leadership positions (five
of the eight members of the party's Regional Command in 1963 were
). Thus, in contrast to its deep-seated mistrust of the non-Arab
Kurds, the regime, which came to power in 1968, itself
fiercely Arabist and secularist, harbored little, if any, prejudice
toward the . On the contrary, and especially in the post-1973 oil-
price hike, the regime pursued an economic program
specifically designed

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to bridge the gap between rich and poor, which mostly benefited the
. As such, relations between the and the regime were
on the whole harmonious, and unlike the Kurds, the were not
perceived as a threat to either the regime or the unity of Iraq—until,
that is, a frail, old cleric led a popular revolution in 1978–79 and
instituted an aggressively irredentist Islamic government in
neighboring Iran. Contemptuously rejecting the concept of borders
within the Islamic world, Ayatollah Khomeini resolutely dismissed
Iraq's frequent overtures for friendly relations, mounting instead a
bellicose verbal onslaught against "anti-Islamic secularism."
The huge appeal of the first Islamic revolution in
contemporary history was bound to have an effect on at least some
. Disturbances and demonstrations began to occur in
areas of Iraq, escalating into isolated terrorist acts that culminated in
March 1980 in a bomb attack on Tariq Aziz, the only Christian
member of the Iraqi leadership. The response of Saddam Hussein and
the regime was swift and deadly. They executed the most
influential Iraqi cleric, Imam Mohamed Baqir al-Sadr, along
with his sister, and expelled 35,000 Iraqi , supposedly of Iranian
descent, to Iran. This fear of the negative extraterritorial impact on a
section of the Iraqi population, which actually forms a majority,
probably was the most potent cause for Iraq's invasion of Iran in
September 1980. A week before the invasion, Saddam Hussein
declared that "the ruling clique in Iran persists in using the face of
religion to foment sedition and division among the ranks of the Arab
nation despite the difficult circumstances through which the Arab
nation is passing" and added that "the invocation of religion is only a
mask to cover Persian racism and a buried resentment of the
Arabs."13
Saddam Hussein and his regime adopted a multipronged policy
to counteract the Iranian threat. They were sadistically ruthless
when they felt they needed to be. In May 1983, ninety members of
one of the most influential religious families in Najaf, al-Hakim,
were arrested and held hostage in retaliation for speeches made by the
cleric Mohamed Baqir al-Hakim, who heads an "Iraqi government in
exile" in Tehran. When he refused to cease his attacks, six members
of the family were executed in front of other relatives, and of the
remaining eighty-four, only five elders were eventually released.14
Along with the stick, Saddam and the offered a number of
carrots. They accelerated the implementation of various social
welfare programs aimed at poor , which included the expansion
of subsidized housing and free education and medical services in
areas of high concentra--

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alternatives. The constructivist postulates that ethnicity is neither
entirely natural and unchangeable nor merely a matter of rational
choice. The central postulate of the constructivist position is that
ethnicity itself is constructed, but that ethnicity cannot be invented ex
nihilo and strategically manipulated without regard for historical
experience and the distribution of beliefs and interests among target
populations.
Lake and Rothchild assert that the instrumental and the constructivist
are not mutually exclusive, but their argument subordinates the
constructivist to the instrumental, or rational choice, theory since
"individuals may rationally choose an identity within the limited
range that is socially available to them. Given some identity,
individuals or groups can also rationally choose strategies that are the
best means to their ends."4
It is, therefore, possible to bring all three definitions under the
rational choice umbrella by arguing that the wider the range of ethnic
identities available in any given political context, the more likely is it
that some construction of ethnicity will be found to be instrumentally
useful by any group; and the wider the range of identities available,
the higher the payoff to any leader who can successfully limit the
identities selected by his target group. Thus, the claim of the
primordial definition is itself a strategy for limiting choices, while
the constructivist legitimates putting a pragmatic spin on ethnic
identities and expanding the range of choices. Limiting choices or
expanding choices can both be rational ethnic strategies.
The instrumentalist conception of ethnic politics accords well with an
attempt to integrate an explanation of regional ethnic politics with
regional international politics. Of course, the exponents of the
primordial and the constructivist views will argue that the disorder
and confusion of regional politics is the result of the influence of
irrational ethnic conflict and the blindness of history. Here it is both
ironic and appropriate to note that many observers of ethnic conflict
have compared interethnic politics to the anarchy and universal
distrust of international relations. But among these observers are
those who believe that there is enough order in international anarchy
to justify rational foreign policy strategies.5 The question, then, is
whether the irrationality of domestic ethnic strife dominates the
rationality of the regional balance of international power or whether
the rationality of the regional order dominates ethnic politics in the
Middle East.
Propositions Orienting the Analysis of Middle East Ethnic Conflict
My own position, not necessarily shared by all those contributing to
this volume, is that regional ethnic politics and regional international
politics are

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tion. Correspondingly, government funding for holy places was
significantly raised, with mosques being furnished with power
generators and air conditioning, in addition to marble work and
crystal chandeliers.
The ' most concerted effort, however, was in consistently
emphasizing Arabist symbolism, thereby drawing a clear ethnic
divide between the "Arab" of Iraq and the "Persian" of Iran.
Indeed, as the months and years passed and the war became
stalemated, an important consolation for the regime was that Iraqi
unity among the Arab population was able to withstand Khomeini's
sectarian enticements. Despite vigorously using religious symbolism,
the Iranians failed in their effort to induce the dislocation of Iraq.
National ethnic unity proved a more potent force than sectarian
affinity.15 Seemingly in recognition of this, new members were
elected to the Regional Command of the Party in 1982, perhaps
the most difficult year in Iraq's war effort against Iran, giving the
a majority at the highest level of the party's political structure.
Herein lay the difference between and Kurds. As non-Arabs, the
Kurds could not even enter, let alone attain leadership positions in,
the ruling party in Iraq, whose official name was the Arab socialist
Party. Indeed, the mere citation of Kurdish identity was
immediately deemed by the to be promoting "separatism,"
"chauvinism," and "racism," a criminally traitorous act.16 But
attesting to one's had no such negative connotations, for Iraqi
were as Arab as their Sunni counterparts.
The difference in the positions of the two communities, and the
impact this difference would have on the communities' own
perceptions of their role and status in the country's body politic, can
be illustrated by the following statement on the relationship between
Iraq and Arab unity made by Saddam Hussein:
The Iraqis are now of the opinion that Arab unity could only take
place after a clear demarcation of borders between all countries. . . .
Arab unity must not take place through the elimination of the local
and national characteristics of any Arab country. . . . The question of
linking unity to the removal of boundaries is no longer acceptable to
present Arab mentality . . . We have to take into consideration the
change which the Arab mind and psyche have undergone. . . . Any
Arab would have wished to see the Arab nation as one state. . . . [But]
the Arab reality is that the Arabs are now 22 states. . . . Therefore,
unity must not be imposed . . . unity must give strength to its
partners.17
The statement is replete with references to Arabs, their unity,
mentality,

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condition, and future and is adamant about Iraq's position within the
larger Arab nation. It is addressed to Arabs, be they , Sunnis, or
Christians. Thus, a is made to feel relevant and included. To a
Kurd, on the other hand, the statement is nothing less than an
affirmation of his or her complete excision from Iraq's body politic.
Kurds are not mentioned, not even as an afterthought. After all, they
are not Arabs; they are not, and can never be, part of the "Arab
nation." What is more, as a reflection of the thoughts and ideology of
the ruling party, this statement, or some variation of it, must have
been made a thousand times by party leaders.
The Post–Gulf War Period.
The above statement by Saddam Hussein was made in the 1980s. It
could be argued that such a statement no longer has any validity in
light of the events that occurred in the aftermath of the Gulf War,
when simultaneous insurrections against the government of Saddam
Hussein erupted in the northern Kurdish areas and the southern
areas. In both cases, rebels raised slogans that could be characterized
as "separatist" as they defeated security forces and took
control of a number of important cities. Similarly, the government's
brutality in regaining control over rebellious areas did not suggest
that Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants conceived of any
differentiation between and Kurdish motives.
The two cases of insurrection are, however, different. The Kurds
never wavered from their aspiration, time and again publicly
articulated, for the minimum requirement of autonomy. Kurdish
attacks on Iraqi security forces and army units were focused and
organized, suggesting a clear, preplanned strategy aimed at the
liberation of "Kurdistan." Indeed, at no time did Kurdish leaders shy
away from their absolute commitment, emotional as well as political,
to the establishment of a homeland for their people. Consider, for
instance, the speech delivered at the height of the Kurdish
insurrection by the Kurdish leader in which he declares,
"we have lost one martyr after another, village after village has been
burnt, all for the sake of liberating the Kurds and Kurdistan. But,
because there was a lack of unity, for seventy-one years we weren't
able to fulfill our hopes. Today we are united. In one week we
liberated this land from Zakho to Khanaqin."18
It is certainly true that Kurdish national aspirations have been
historically subverted by intra-Kurdish conflict. The 1996
confrontation between the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) under
Masoud Barazani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) under
Jalal Talabani is but the latest round of intra-Kurdish strife that has
gone on throughout this century. It is, however,

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important to recognize that, mirroring the way in which Arab national
aspirations have been undermined by intra-Arab divisions, intra-
Kurdish conflicts are caused primarily by local and tribal animosities
and personal rivalries, not by a variance in Kurdish attachment to
Kurdish nationalism and to the long-term goal of creating a Kurdish
homeland.
In the south, the brandishing of slogans might have convinced
some observers that the mounted a rebellion as separatist in its
goals as that of the Kurds. Angry young men carried portraits of
Khomeini, , and Rafsanjani. They screamed slogans
demanding the institution of an Islamic and/or republic. In the
southern city of Basra, they burned bars and casinos and proclaimed
the establishment of a ( ) republic.
It now seems certain, however, that the bulk of these activities and
sloganeering was perpetrated by the thousands of militiamen who
crossed the border from Iran in the wake of the spontaneous eruption
of the insurrection in the south. Most of these fighters were expelled
Iraqi belonging to the Iranian-trained Badr Brigade. Closely
linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards Organization, the Badr Brigade
was the military wing of the Supreme Islamic Council, headed by the
Iraqi exiled cleric Mohamed Baqir al-Hakim.
There is little evidence of clearly articulated, or intently pursued,
ideological goals among the indigenous Iraqi . In contrast to the
Kurdish effort, the insurrection was wholly spontaneous,
thoroughly disorganized, and utterly lacking in purposeful leadership.
A fatwa, a religious edict, was indeed issued by Grand Ayatollah
Khomeini on the third day of the insurrection, when chaos and
anarchy reigned. But the edict, and a second one issued three days
later, was hardly separatist or even revolutionary in its message. It
was clearly aimed first and foremost at stemming the anarchy and
protecting the people and their property, rather than introducing a
grand design for an Islamic or government.19 Among the
indigenous Iraqi population, therefore, the primary goal of the
rebellion was to get rid of Saddam Hussein and his cronies, not to
establish a separate political entity.20
Research Categories
The analysis of communal conflicts in Iraq, be they ethnic or
sectarian, should provide us with insights that would allow us to
produce at least some tentative answers to questions posed in four
research categories.
Ethnic Regimes
In the case of Iraq, the dominant political group has been the Arab
Sunni community, which constitutes about 25 percent of the Iraqi
population. The

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community has been able to maintain its political dominance through
a variety of methods. Initially, it provided the bulk of Iraq's
professional, military, bureaucratic, and business elites. Later on, as
we have seen, it appeased the most populous community in Iraq, the
, by gradually bringing them into the political process while all
the time maintaining control over the sensitive sectors of the state,
especially the military and security apparatuses.
Along with these efforts, and throughout the life of the Iraqi state, the
Sunni political elite tried to minimize the danger of societal
dislocation by constantly downplaying sectarian divisions in Iraq,
emphasizing instead the more inclusive notions of "Arabism" and the
"oneness of Iraq."
Comparable efforts at accommodation and inclusion toward the
Kurds were far less purposeful, frequently disingenuous, and
generally replete with mistrust and suspicion. The reason for this
could be attributed to the awareness by both communities of the zero-
sum nature of their ethnic/national divide. The historical record
clearly shows that, in contrast to relations, there were far
fewer constraints on the leaders of Arabs and Kurds to keep them
from resorting to force against each other.
Transnational Ethnic/Religious Communities
The extraterritorial dimension is relevant to both the Kurds and the
. The Kurds are spread among a number of states. In relation to
Iraq's immediate security interests, the most relevant extraterritorial
Kurdish communities are those who reside in Iran and Turkey. In the
case of the , it is Iran that provides the extraterritorial dimension.
As we have seen, Iran has challenged Iraq's sovereignty by
endeavoring to exploit the ethnic and sectarian divisions within the
country. Whether in its material and logistical support for the Kurds
in the early 1970s that forced the Iraqis to cede territory to Iran, or in
its efforts to woo the away from the Baghdad government during
the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran used Iraq's societal divisions as an
instrument to achieve Iran's own national interests. Here again, Iran
succeeded when it exploited the potent Arab-Kurd ethnic divide, but
its sectarian appeals fell on deaf ears in Iraq.
Nevertheless, it is fair to argue that the transnational communal link
allowed Iraq to become a target for Iran's irredentist ambitions,
regardless of the latter's degree of success in achieving its goals.
Ethnic/Religious Strategies
In the Iraqi case, the emphasis on "Arabist" symbolism was the most
efficient strategy adopted by the Arab Sunni political elite toward
Iraqi . Provid--

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ing a sense of ideological inclusiveness generally paid great
dividends, the most striking and dramatic example of which was
behavior in the Iran-Iraq War. Under extreme religious and moral
pressure from their coreligionists in Iran, Iraqi stuck to their
Arab ethnicity, ensuring the survival of Iraq's political and geographic
integrity.
The problem for Iraq's governments was that the very strategy that
aimed at integrating the (who after all are the most populous
community in Iraq) tended to undermine governmental strategies
toward the Kurds. Baghdad's emphasis on Arabism, regardless of its
context, was bound to exacerbate the sense of exclusion among the
Kurds, who in any case had always had a powerful sense of their own
separate identity. On both sides of the divide, therefore, ethnic
strategies were nebulous, never pursued with much enthusiasm, and
never perceived as genuine by the other side.
Ethnic/Religious Contracts
The Arab Sunni political elites endeavored to resolve ethnic and
religious conflicts by trying to meet the political demands of the
and Kurds. However, as we have seen, these efforts were hardly
symmetrical. In the case of the , successive Baghdad
governments encouraged the upward socio-economic mobility of the
population and time and again responded to the demand for
a greater share of political power by extending political rewards to
the community. Thus, as mentioned above, the share of
ministerial positions under the monarchy rose from 15.8 percent
during 1932–36 to 34.7 percent during 1947–58. Similarly, Saddam's
regime rewarded the for rejecting Khomeini's appeals,
when, in the summer of 1982, the representation of in the upper
level of the political leadership increased from 24 percent to 50
percent.21
To the Kurds, political representation in Baghdad meant little, for in
reality they desired nothing less than autonomy and independence.
For Iraq's political elites, who at no time had been truly sympathetic
to Kurdish national aspirations, these were not political demands to
which they could realistically accede. To be sure, in moments of great
frustration with the debilitating war effort against the Kurds, gestures
of seemingly great magnanimity by the Baghdad government were
made (for example, 1966, 1970, 1991). Ethnic contracts that resulted
were halfhearted, made under duress, and opposed by significant
segments in both communities, however; consequently, they were
never pursued purposefully or sincerely. The worth of these contracts
is encapsulated in the words of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a senior
member of Saddam's regime. Al-Douri, in a meeting with pro-
government Kurds

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after the Kurdish insurrection that followed the Gulf War, said,
"Sometimes we deal with the Kurds peacefully, other times we go to
war with them. Now is the time for negotiations. But when this is
done and the Americans withdraw, three days will be enough to tackle
the Kurdish problem."22
Conclusions
In the case of Iraq, the evidence suggests that the ethnic dimension is
far more potent as a force for societal discord as well as societal unity
than the sectarian dimension. As we have seen, the Arab-Kurd divide
seems intractable, with the two communities having been polarized
throughout almost the whole of this century. Because of their
different ethnic origin, language, and culture, the Kurds have never
felt, and probably will never feel, included in an essentially Arab Iraq
that sits in the middle of a larger Arab region. Consequently, it is
unlikely that the Kurds will ever give up on their aspiration of
establishing political and economic control over Kurdistan, the land
of the Kurds, their perceived political and geographic homeland. If
past behavior is anything to go by, then it seems equally unlikely that
any government in Baghdad would genuinely accede to such an
eventuality.
Sunnis and have had problems, at times significant ones. But by
no stretch of the imagination can these be called irreconcilable,
because they do not constitute, nor have they constituted in the past,
mutually exclusive national aspirations. Problems, when they have
existed, have been generally solvable, not least because it has not
been difficult to make the feel included in the country's body
politic. Thus, while the ethnic Arab-Kurd divide seems to
approximate a zero-sum game, the sectarian conflict is
certainly not.
In the final analysis, the case of communal conflict in Iraq evolves
around two terms that have tended to define the essence of political
participation in that country. The first is identity, whether in the way
one perceives his or her own identity, or in the way others perceive
that identity. The second is inclusion: to what extent does one feel,
and is one made to feel, that he or she is an intrinsic part of society
and its ideological roots and belief system. It seems clear from the
foregoing analysis that in the Kurdish case, the two terms are
mutually exclusive. In the case, they need not be.

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Notes.
1. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary
Movements of Iraq (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1978), 25–26.
2. Reeva S. Simon, Iraq Between the Two World Wars: The Creation
and Implementation of a Nationalist Ideology (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986), 158–61.
3. Batatu, 917.
4. Majid Khadduri, Republican Iraq (London: Oxford University
Press, 1969), 124.
5. Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000
Years (New York: Scribner, 1995), 226.
6. Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, 1985), 5.
7. See Yitzhak Nakash, The of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), chap. 4.
8. Ibid., 122.
9. Batatu, 47.
10. Ibid.
11. Christine Moss Helms, Iraq: Eastern Flank of the Arab World
(Washington: Brookings Institution, 1984), 184.
12. Kanan Makiya, Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and
the Arab World (New York: Norton and Company, 1993), 166–68.
13. Adeed Dawisha, "Invoking the Spirit of Arabism: Islam in the
Foreign Policy of Saddam's Iraq," in Dawisha, ed., Islam in Foreign
Policy (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 122.
14. Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 107.
15. Hanna Batatu, "Iraq's Underground Movements:
Characteristics, Causes and Prospects," Middle East Journal 35, no. 4
(Autumn 1981): 592. This assessment is shared by other specialists
cited in this paper, e.g., Dawisha, Helms, Marr, and Sluglett.
16. Makiya, 153.
17. Helms, 114.
18. Makiya, 88.
19. Ibid., 74–75.
20. Nakash, 276–77.
21. Marr, 282.
22. Makiya, 86.

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4
Syria
Creating a National Community
Syria has been an independent republic for a half century (officially

since April 1946, and in practice a few years earlier), and it has been
a political entity since 1918. During these periods, despite obstacles
and setbacks, systematic attempts have been made by various regimes
to create a cohesive Syrian national community. Notwithstanding
significant achievements, notably in the last decade, this complex
process is still far from complete and may yet suffer serious reverses.
My aim is to examine the attempts at creating a national community
in Syria, notably under the authoritarian and, since 1966, minoritarian
regime that first assumed power in 1963, and, particularly,
under the long-standing autocrat, Hafiz al-Assad (1970– ).
Before concentrating on this period it is worthwhile to briefly survey
the historical attempts to construct a Syrian national community.1
The Ottoman Era
Throughout its history, from the end of the Umayyad Empire until the
end of the French Mandate, present-day Syria was almost never a
single political entity. Throughout most of this period it had no
indigenous central authority capable of attracting the loyalty and
obedience of the entire population. Rather, it formed part of vast
empires whose centers were far beyond its borders. The country was
also divided into a number of provinces, each being governed
separately from the imperial center. Its population was highly
heterogeneous; within it there existed gaps and frictions among
various religious sects, social classes, tribal groups, and even between
the inhabitants of different towns, such as Damascus and Aleppo.
Some of these groups and sects tended to live their own lives in
autonomous bodies, such as religious communities or nomadic tribes,
and would not submit to central authority. Many
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inhabitants lacked a strong sense of an all-Syrian territorial identity.
There was no common ideological consensus among the various
sections of the population.
This situation was particularly evident during the long period of
Ottoman rule, which in many ways was responsible for shaping the
sociopolitical regime in modern Syria. The only social group that
usually identified itself with the sultan and the empire consisted of
the members of the Ottoman establishment in the provinces: ulema
and other religious functionaries, as well as senior officials and
members of the diwan. In other words, full participants in the
Muslim-Ottoman political community.
One of the major aims of the Ottoman reform movement in the
nineteenth century was to extend this small circle of membership in
the Ottoman political community and include in it other sections of
the population, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In order to achieve
this goal, the Tanzimat leaders and the "Young Ottomans" strove to
replace the old Ottoman-Muslim basis of the state with a new
Ottoman-patriotic and nonreligious framework.
At about the same time as the Ottoman reformers were active in
Istanbul, and pushing their ideas out into the provinces, there
emerged in Beirut a small cultural-ideological group that possessed
ideas similar to those of the Tanzimat. After the events of 1860 in
Lebanon and Damascus a number of Syrian Christian intellectuals,
mainly Orthodox and Protestant, sought to establish a new kind of
relationship with their Muslim-Sunni and Druze neighbors.
As it happened, the activities of that cultural movement, as well as
the reforms introduced by the Ottoman government, in the Syrian
provinces cultivated, directly or indirectly, the idea of political
community in Syria. Roads were built, printing presses established,
and newspapers published, all of which promoted social intercourse
between various sections of the population. Modern secondary
schools (rushdiye) were established by the government for the first
time. Among their aims was to foster patriotic feelings and "to lessen
the mutual ill-feeling . . . between the two sects."2 Various
administrative measures taken during that period also contain germs
of Syrian territorial unity, with Damascus at its center.
But apart from its administrative importance, the city of Damascus
had in yet another respect a status superior to all other Syrian
provincial centers. It was an important Islamic center — the seat of
the Banu Umayya Mosque, of well-known madrasas and
distinguished ulema. Damascus was also the assembly point of the
yearly pilgrimage caravan (hajj) to Mecca.
In addition to the city, the province of Damascus also became at the
same

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time a potential nucleus of a larger Syrian entity. In 1876 four
notables from the vilayet of Syria were chosen to represent the vilayet
in the newly opened Ottoman parliament. At about the same time, the
activities of the Syrian cultural group increased and took on a
political coloring. In 1875 a number of young Christians, followers of
Bustani, formed in Beirut a small secret society that demanded an
autonomous Syria together with Lebanon and the recognition of
Arabic as its official language. These demands were set out on
posters displayed in Syrian towns. On them one saw phrases like
"sons of Syria," "Arab pride," and "degenerate Turks." This secret
society, which apparently also included Druzes and Sunnis, was
possibly in league with Midhat Pasha, and their common aim was to
make Syria autonomous, as was Egypt.
At this stage, however, the Ottoman authorities intervened at the
order of Sultan Abdulhamid II and arrested some members of the
secret society and later banished Midhat Pasha from Syria. This
brought to an end the joint efforts of the Ottoman reformers and
Syrian-Arab patriots to create a new Syrian political community. But
even without Abdulhamid's actions, the chances of attracting many
Syrians to this new idea were, at that juncture, very slim.
Indeed, the basic loyalty of the majority of the population was still to
family, tribe, or religious community. Throughout the nineteenth
century the Ottoman reform movement did not succeed in
transforming these traditional and semiautonomous groups into a
unified modern society. Similarly, the modern notions of patriotism
propagated by the Young Ottomans or the Bustani group were
entertained by only a small group of intellectuals.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, while national
communities were emerging in Egypt and Mount Lebanon, attempts
at modernization in Syria contributed to further widening of the gap
between Muslims and Christians and consequently to creating violent
conflicts between the two communities.3
By the eve of World War I two political-ideological movements were
to be seen within the Muslim elite of Syria: one was a pro-Ottomanist
movement, the other an Arab nationalist movement, and they
appeared to be — as Ernest Dawn has shown — in conflict.4 Apart
from drawing their membership from the upper class of the
population, both movements possessed other common features: both
were imbued with a strong Islamic feeling and were devoid of
territorial attachment to Syria. These characteristics were particularly
true of the pro-Ottomanists, who regarded themselves as Ottoman
subjects/inhabitants of Damascus, Aleppo, or Beirut, and not as Arabs
of Syria. For example, the nine notables who were elected in 1876,
from the Syrian vilayet to the

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closely integrated in the Middle East, and that the regional dominates
the domestic. For this position to be sustained, the following
propositions would also have to be true.
The first proposition is that psychological interpretations of ethnic
politics and ethnic conflict are largely speculative and ideological.
For the most part such theories rely on unfalsifiable propositions
regarding the consciousness of the members of ethnic groups or the
collective consciousness of ethnic groups. Such propositions are often
used to explain ethnic group behavior that is deemed irrational but
may only be immoral or simply desperate.
The second proposition is that rational political explanations of
ethnic competition and conflict are usually quite adequate for
purposes of political analysis, even if they fall short of conveying the
fullest cultural or emotional character of ethnic confrontations.
The third proposition is that ethnic identity is constructed rather than
primordial.
The fourth proposition is that intra-ethnic competition may center on
alternate ethnic identities, leading their various exponents to adopt
strategies that will lead to the adoption of their own ethnic
construction.
The fifth proposition is that the political organization of ethnic
groups has the same purposes as other groups and is similarly subject
to the logic of collective action and the free rider problem.
The sixth proposition is that the resources available to ethnic groups
are primarily cultural, linguistic, social structural, and
epistemological. Accordingly, the costs of ethnic organization or
mobilization are relatively cheap.6
The seventh proposition is that the emergence of modern nationalism
in the wake of the development of imagined ethnic communities has
transformed every ethnic community or group into a potential nation,
an irredenta, or a secessionist movement.
The eighth proposition is that the state, and the nation-state in
particular, has appropriated the idea of the national community and
incorporated it into a general political strategy concerned with the
recognition of some groups, the denial of recognition to other groups,
the selective allocation of ethnic rents, the promotion of selected
cultural models, and the support of preferred languages.
The ninth proposition is that the modern state has developed an ethnic
strategy as part of its general foreign policy, adapting that strategy to
the structure of the ethnic situation both at home and in selected
foreign countries.
The final proposition is that in many cases, ethnic strategies at the
foreign policy level are not symmetrical or reciprocal in nature; but
in some circum--

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Ottoman parliament did not form a single bloc in the parliament,
either Syrian or Arab, and never raised any matter concerning Syria.5
On the other hand, the members of the national societies, most of
them Syrians, regarded themselves first as Arabs and demanded
autonomy or independence for all Arab lands. Nevertheless, while
putting forward these demands, the Arab nationalists probably
thought of "bilad al-Sham" as the center of the great Arab state and of
Damascus as its capital.
Between the Two World Wars
It was only after World War I that the sense of Arab-Syrian identity
became more evident with the formation of a separate political unit in
Syria under the rule of Amir Faysal. It is interesting to note the way
in which the terminology changed at this moment: first Faysal's
entity was called the Arab-Syrian government, and finally it was
called the Kingdom of Syria. Indeed, the Syrian congress (formally
the national congress) decided in 1920, according to , to
abandon temporarily "the policy of the Great Arab State which was
the ultimate goal of the Arab revolt and to adopt a policy of a united
Syrian kingdom."6 This kingdom was to consist of geographical Syria
within its natural boundaries and to be Arabic in its language and
culture.
It would seem, then, that the Arab national movement at the time of
Faysal's kingdom took up Bustani's original ideas of a Syrian-Arab
entity in greater Syria. In fact, however, there were fundamental
differences between those two conceptions. First, the Arab national
movement in Syria was essentially pan-Arab and not pan-Syrian, and
it regarded Syrian unity only as a step toward all-Arab unity. Second,
the Arab national movement had an Islamic coloring, unlike Bustani's
Syrian group, which was secular in principle.
It is possible that Faysal personally was for separation of religion
from state; this can be deduced from his well-known slogan, "ad-din
li-llahi wal-watan " (religion is for God and the country for
all).7 However, the majority of the Syrian congress members had a
more conservative approach, and they subjected Faysal to severe
criticism for his liberal policy. In the draft constitution prepared by
the congress, Islam was indeed declared as the religion of the Syrian
state.
These two divergent and mutually contradictory streams of Muslim
and pan-Arab nationalism, on one hand, and of secular and pan-
Syrian patriotism, on the other, continued to influence political
thinking in post-1920 Syria and formed the basis of the two rival
conceptions of that time.
The notion of secular and pan-Syrian patriotism was carried on into
the

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program of the Syrian Nationalist Party (al-Hizb al-Qawmi al-Suri, or
PPS), which was founded in 1932 by Antun . It stood for the re-
creation of a Syrian nation, for the establishment of a Syrian entity in
geographical Syria, and for the separation of religion from politics.
But just as had happened in the nineteenth century, these ideas
remained confined mainly to members of minority groups,
particularly Christians and , while the majority of Sunni Arabs
in Syria rejected them.
The latter continued to hold the ideas of pan-Arab nationalism that
were now adopted by the national Bloc (the Kutla) in Syria, and later
also by the Party.
Unquestionably, the sense of Syrian-Arab identity did not completely
fade away among the political elite of mandatory Syria. On the
contrary, it may have increased to some extent owing to the following
factors: first, the creation of a Syrian state and local institutions—
such as a cabinet and parliament—all of which provided the
framework for a separate Syrian entity. Second, the concentration of
the nationalists' efforts upon the struggle against French rule, and this
at the expense of their basic pan-Arab tendencies. Third, the
emergence of separate and viable political entities in Iraq and Egypt.
These countries not only refused to see Syria as the center of Arab
unity but also successively took upon themselves the leadership of
the Arab national movement.
Yet, despite all these unifying factors, national identity in Syria
remained immature and certainly weaker than in Egypt and perhaps
even than in Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine. The major reason for this
lack of cohesion was of course the deliberate policy of the French
mandate, which sought to undermine the basis of Faysal's great
attempt to set up an independent and united state in Syria and to
create a Syrian-Arab political community. The French went even
further, cutting off from the main body of Syria important districts,
such as Tripoli, the , and Sidon, which were annexed to Greater
Lebanon in 1920; they likewise lopped off Jabal Druze and Jabal
Ansariyya, which became separate "states" in the early 1920s; and
they did the same to the Jazira and Sanjaq of Alexandretta, which
were given special administration. One of these, Alexandretta, they
cut away altogether, ending by surrendering it to Turkey in 1939.
Similarly, the French authorities promoted religious and sectarian
divisions within the population and refrained from repairing or
unifying the educational system. In 1938, for example, only 31
percent of the Syrian pupils, most of them Muslims, attended state
schools, compared with 49 percent

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who attended private schools (both nonsectarian and Christian) and
20 percent, mostly Christian, who went to foreign-run and Christian
schools.8
In addition, the French mandatory did very little to improve the poor
conditions of the lower classes of the population or to diminish the
socioeconomic gap between them and the upper class. At this point it
should be stressed that Syrian national leaders themselves shared
responsibility for failure to repair the gaps and divisions within
Syrian society and for the weakness of Syria as an entity.
The leaders of the nationalist movement themselves belonged to the
Syrian upper class—those hundred or so families of big landowners,
merchants, and proprietors who had constituted the political elite in
Syria for more than a century. It was in their vested, but narrow,
interests to maintain the socioeconomic status quo already
crystallized under the Ottomans. This is no doubt why they refrained
from embarking on any policy of social reform.
Similarly, the approach of the nationalist leaders to the issue of
religion and state was influenced by the conservative views of some
of their members. Admittedly the national movement contained
prominent Christian personalities such as Faris and Faiz al-Khuri,
Edmund Rabbath, Edmund al-Humsi, and others, and some of them
held very important posts. The program of the Kutla as well as the
Syrian constitution also contained principles of freedom of
conscience and of worship, religious tolerance, and national
patriotism.
In fact, however, not all those principles were put into practice. A
commission appointed by the League of Nations to study the personal
status of certain non-Sunni communities reported in 1934: "The
commission regretted to note that the application of Syrian
legislation prescribing equality before the law is still sometimes
impeded through the absence of a spirit of tolerance on the part of the
autochthonous authorities."9
Four years later, in 1938, the Syrian nationalist government, under
the pressure of the ulema, refused to apply the new law of personal
status, which gave legal expression to the principles of freedom of
conscience and equality before the law.10
Other factors that helped impede the process of creating a Syrian
national community were likewise connected with the pre-1920
habits of the political elite; these were the strong regional tendencies
among the urban oligarchy and the powerful pan-Arab trends within
the Syrian national movement. Thus, the Kutla formed a solid bloc as
long as the struggle against the French was in progress; but after the
treaty of 1936 the national bloc started to splinter along regional and
personal lines. For example, the People's Party of Aleppo, with
Rushdi al-Kikhya and Nazim el-Qudsi, revolted against the leadership

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of ; again the Republican Party of Jamil Mardam of
Damascus broke off with Shukri al-Quwwatli and al-Jabiri of the
Kutla, which later became the National Party.
None of these politicians was able to become the national Syrian
leader, or a focus of authority, unity, and loyalty for the population—
such as were Zaghlul and Nahhas in Egypt, and perhaps even Faysal
in Iraq.
Consequently, Syrian statesman tended to cast their eyes beyond the
borders, toward Iraq and Egypt; for example, the Aleppo faction of
the national movement developed a pro-Iraqi tendency, whereas in
Damascus pro-Egyptian orientations were fashionable. The other side
of this coin is that Syria became the prey of unity efforts—projects
conceived by her Arab neighbors in the early 1940s, such as King
Abdallah's greater Syria project or Nuri Fertile Crescent plan.
When Syria became independent in 1946 it was then by no means a
nation-state, nor did it have a coherent political community to rely
upon. An illustration of the diversified character of Syrian society in
that period can be found in the description of the Syrian parliament in
1947 by Habib Kahaleh, one of its members: "I look around me and
see only a bundle of contradictions . . . Men whom nothing united,
sharing no principles . . . some were illiterate, others distinguished
men of letters; some spoke only Kurdish or Armenian, others only
Turkish; some wore a tarbush, others a kafiyeh."11
Changes Since Independence
Yet once the French had gone, Syrian leaders were in a better position
to embark upon the appallingly difficult task of achieving national
unity. This process started on a large scale, only under the military
dictatorship of Adib Shishakli in the early 1950s; it gained
momentum paradoxically during the period of the union with Egypt
and has been making significant progress ever since the
revolution of 1963.
One of the first steps taken by the Syrian government after
independence was to reduce, and eventually abolish, communal
representation in the parliament, which the various minorities had
enjoyed under the French Mandate. A further step in this direction
was to abrogate certain jurisdictional rights in matters of personal
status, which were granted to the and the Druzes by the French
authorities. These regulations, which sparked agitation among all the
minority communities, were accompanied by a series of military
measures directed to destroy the centrifugal forces in the hilly
regions of the Druzes and , and establish a centralized rule in
Damascus.
The crushing of the Druze revolt in 1954 became a turning point in
the

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balance of power between the central government and the mountain-
dwelling heterodox communities. The authorities in Damascus for the
first time were able to achieve a decisive military superiority over the
wayward minorities through the use of sophisticated weapons and
methods. The seclusion and autonomy of those communities came to
their end; and from then on they began to take an increasing part in
the political life and struggles for power that occurred both in the
army and within the parties. Thus a growing number of and
Druzes became involved in the process that had already begun among
other minority groups.
Like many of their Christian countrymen, they began to join political
parties, particularly those which stood for secularism and social
change, such as the PPS and the ; young members of the
and Druze communities enlisted in the military service in great
numbers and consequently came to play a growing part in Syrian
politics and social life.
Other major developments in the Republic of Syria during that period
also contributed to the repair of socioeconomic gaps between the
various classes of the population. During the time of Syria's union
with Egypt (UAR, 1958–61) and under the regime (since 1963),
there occurred far-reaching socialist reforms; namely, the
appropriation of large tracts of land from big landowners, allocating
them partly to landless peasants and partly to newly established
agricultural cooperatives; nationalization of big private enterprises
while promoting a state-owned public sector in industry and
commerce; and the great improvement of workers' conditions.12
All of these reforms amounted to a sociopolitical revolution in Syria
perhaps unparalleled in the Arab Middle East. It destroyed the old
ruling class and political elite of big landowners, merchants,
industrialists, and leaders of the nationalist parties. Instead, there
emerged a new political elite composed of young army officers and
politicians, members of new and radical parties. Simultaneously, the
way was opened to upward sociopolitical mobility of the middle and
lower classes of the population—workers, peasants, and intelligentsia
—Sunnis and non-Sunnis alike. These classes have been for the last
generations the core of a political community the new Syrian elite has
been trying to mold.
But, during the 1950s and beyond, there was no consensus within this
ruling elite about the link between Syria and Arab unity and the
relation between state and religion in Syria. On the one hand, the PPS
was still standing for a separate Syrian secular nationalism, although
it now conceded the idea that Syria might lead some Arab grouping.
On the other hand, the was a pan-Arab party that regarded Arab
unity as one of its first goals; and

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although in theory it supported the separation of religion from state,
the considered Islam a vital element in Arab nationalism.
A third ideology, embodied in the Syrian communist party, was also
gaining influence during the mid-1950s among the army and the
intelligentsia. The party stood for a socialist revolution and for a
separate and secular Syrian entity. As in the past, however, the pan-
Arab party had a better chance of winning. In the 1954 election, the
emerged as the third most numerous party in the parliament,
with 16 deputies out of 142. Within the army, too, the won the
upper hand, and its faction managed to successively defeat the rival
PPS (SSNP) and communist factions. With the help of the veteran
nationalist parties, the led Syria in 1958 into the historic union
with Egypt (UAR), having been motivated not merely by its pan-Arab
ideals but also by national-strategic considerations.
New Trends under the Regime
However, the union with Egypt (1958–61) became a highly traumatic
experience for the (and for many other Syrians) since they
were barred from senior government and military positions while the
country was under strict Egyptian control. This experience obviously
contributed to cultivating or enhancing the concept of a Syrian-Arab
nation-state among political activists who, in 1963, became the
backbone of the revolution and its new authoritarian regime.
Yet this regime, headed until 1966 by Gen. Amin al-Hafiz, a Sunni-
Muslim, practically rested on the support of young (and Druze)
military officers who emerged in 1966 as the new rulers of Syria, and
had, or developed, vested interests in a "separate" Syrian nation-state.
Led by Gen. Salah Jadid and influenced by PPS-SSNP concepts or
Marxist ideas, these officers and their Sunni comrades also
carried out strict secularist and socialist reforms for the first time in
Syria's modern history.
Their aim was to create a new Syrian national community composed
predominantly of the lower and middle-lower classes: peasants and
workers, as well as the army, public employees, the intelligentsia, and
especially members of the younger generation. They established a
strong authoritarian government and used the growing state
educational system, the media, and the Party to mobilize public
support and indoctrinate the people in the following concepts: Arab
nationalism, Syrian patriotism, socialism, and secularism, as well as
anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism. As it happened, the regime
succeeded in gaining the support of certain sectors of the population
—mainly peasants, workers, and the youth. In part, these sectors
identi--

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fied with these concepts and owed the regime their socioeconomic
progress, thus developing vested interests in its survival and growth.
By contrast, however, other sections of the population, notably the
traditional middle and upper-middle classes, mostly Sunni Muslims
(as well as Christian priests and liberal groups) strongly opposed the
regime, particularly the secularist and socialist reforms, while
deeply resenting its military minoritarian domination.
Indeed, many Sunni Muslims in Syria considered the Ba'thist regime
not only illegitimate and oppressive but also heretic and anti-Islamic.
According to them, especially the conservatives, the minority—
a heterodox, if not infidel sect, socially and culturally backward—had
seized power in Syria by armed force, imposing harsh measures that
severely hurt Muslim religious feelings and socioeconomic interests.
For instance, in addition to the appropriation of land, banks, and
middle-sized businesses, the regime strictly restricted religious
education, as well as the activities of Muslim ulema, and attempted to
reduce the Islamic character of the state. Thus, the new 1969 Syrian
constitution omitted the previous clause declaring Islam to be the
religion of the president. The wording of his oath was accordingly
changed from "I swear by Allah Akbar" to "I swear by my honor and
faith." The only reference to Islam was the following vague phrase:
"Islamic jurisprudence is the chief source of legislation."13
To be sure, these unprecedented secularist policies, compounded by
harsh socialist measures, caused deep alienation among many Sunni
Muslims—notably ulema and members of the old urban middle
classes—from the "ungodly" and "heretic" "neo" regime and its
leadership.14 They vehemently rejected the regime's version of
a new Syrian national community. The result was widespread protests
and riots.
Assad's Era
Well aware of the Sunni alienation brought about by Jadid's regime,
Hafiz al-Assad adopted new policies aimed at regaining the
allegiance of the Sunni Muslim population and expanding the basis
for the new Syrian national community. This he did by changing or
mitigating the measures of his predecessor and restating Syria's pan-
Arab orientation, while promoting national-patriotic unity and
economic development.
For example, regarding the Islamic issue, Assad reinstated in June
1971 the old presidential Islamic oath, lifted restrictions on Muslim
institutions, encouraged the construction of new mosques, and raised
the salaries and prestige of Muslim dignitaries. He also endeavored to
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image as a faithful Muslim through a religious ruling by the Mufti of
Damascus, as well as by other means.15
At the same time, Assad's new regime introduced fresh economic
measures aiming at revitalizing the small and middle-sized private
enterprises, encouraging foreign investments and expanding trade. It
also used state organs to foster popular consensus. In external affairs.
Assad sought to improve Syria's relations with most Arab nations,
notably Egypt, and to advance Arab unity by word and deed.16
Yet, during the 1970s and early 1980s, these efforts at nation building
encountered major obstacles, and only partially achieved their goals.
Like his Ba'thist predecessors, Assad's major failure has been to win
the acquiescence, let alone the allegiance, of some sections of Sunni
Muslim urban society, notably the conservative-religious elements.
This was owing not only to the character of his military and
security support base, but also to certain policies he adopted, which
triggered a furious Muslim reaction and resulted in brutal military
suppression.
Thus, for example, in early 1973 the Islamic clause—stipulating that
Islam is the religion of the president—was deleted from the draft of
the permanent Syrian constitution. This provoked violent Muslim
disturbances and demonstrations in several towns against the
"secularism and sectarianism" of the "fanatical regime," and
against Assad, the "enemy of Allah."17 The Islamic riots were put
down by an iron hand with great bloodshed; but Assad also reinstated
the Islamic clause in the permanent Syrian constitution. However, a
few years later, Assad's military and political support of the Christian
Maronites in their war with Muslims in Lebanon in 1976 caused a
fresh cycle of violent actions in Syria by the Muslim Brothers against
his regime.
Fueled in part by economic difficulties, stemming also from Syrian
involvement in Lebanon, those riots developed into an open Islamic
rebellion against Assad in the early 1980s. In reaction, the regime
used ferocious measures against the Muslim rebels, and in February
1982 Syrian military units shelled large parts of Hama—the center of
the Islamic rebellion—killing between 10,000 and 30,000 people,
including women and children.18 This brutal suppression of the
Hama revolt undoubtedly neutralized the Islamic opposition to
Assad's regime, but it also further alienated other Sunni Muslims,
conservatives and liberals alike.
This terrible event apparently deepened Assad's awareness of the
essential role of Islam and the Muslim majority population in the
construction of a Syrian national community. Consequently, since the
late 1980s he has revived and expanded his initial efforts to gain the
allegiance, or at least to

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secure the acquiescence, of Sunni Muslims. He continued to present
himself as a good Muslim and increased his signs of goodwill toward
Islamic institutions and sages. For example, many more mosques
were built, new Quranic schools opened, Islamic cultural activities
expanded, and women were able again to wear the traditional veil
(hijab). Furthermore, a few thousand Muslim Brothers, who had been
jailed, were released, while others who had fled abroad were allowed
to return to Syria. Simultaneously, attempts were made by the regime,
including some prominent ulema, to underline the pluralist and
enlightened character of Islam in Syria.19
In this regard, the regime emphasized that the have been an
integral part of the , while the have been closely associated
with the Sunnis within a wider Islamic community, and that Islam is
an essential element in the Syrian national community. Tangible steps
were also taken by Assad toward integrating more Sunni Muslims
into his regime and fostering their interests in its survival and
success. Thus, large numbers of Sunni Muslims have been appointed
or elected to various positions, including senior posts in the
government, military, public service, parliament, the Party, and
various professional and sectional (or corporativist) organizations.20
Such steps have been adopted by Assad's regime, not only toward
Sunni Muslims but also other Syrians, such as Christians and Druze,
although not on a communal or religious basis. The domestic strategy
of this regime has been to secure the allegiance of most Syrians,
especially the influential groups in the society, economy, military, and
bureaucracy. This goal has been pursued by promoting the vital
interests of various groups and linking them to the regime in a
patron-client relationship. Most of these groups are professional,
sectional, or functional—such as the peasants union, various trade
and professional unions, the chambers of commerce and industry,
women and youth associations, and the like. All of these
organizations are structured hierarchically and are directly
answerable to Assad or to his lieutenants.
Unlike the previous rulers, who cultivated the public sector
and advanced the lower classes of peasants and workers, Assad has
also encouraged the private sector and promoted the urban and rural
middle and upper-middle classes—the new bourgeoisie.21 He has
devoted special attention to productive economic groups in this
sector, like the new business community and the agricultural
entrepreneurs, which have contributed to the national economy and
have benefited from economic progress and their close ties with the
regime.22 Many members of these new groups are Sunni Muslims, as
are members of the traditional middle classes who also have been
encouraged to conduct their private business. These groups, known as
the "new class" (al-Tabaqa al-Jadida)

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in Syrian society, have become a major element in Assad's support
base, alongside the veteran support groups: the military, the
bureaucracy, and the party (and tacitly also the community).
Most of these groups consist not only of members of the various
religious and ethnic communities but also many lower-class people—
rural and urban—who over the years have undergone a process of
socioeconomic or political mobility.
This fairly wide support base has been cultivated by Assad not only
as a means of controlling, by way of patronage, the most influential
sections of the population, but also of safeguarding his regime and
blurring its authoritarian-minoritarian character while highlighting its
pluralist and nonsectarian aspects. To this end, the Syrian parliament,
which recently increased the number of its members, consists of
deputies from all sectors and communities, including peasants,
businessmen, tribal chiefs, and religious notables.23 While one-third
of the members have been elected as "independent" deputies, two-
thirds represent the Party—the leading party and six small
parties known as the National Progressive Front. Two new
"opposition" parties have also been represented in the Syrian
parliament in recent years.
The functioning of these parties, and of the parliament itself, has been
underlined by Assad's regime not only to demonstrate its pluralist
nature but also to highlight its legitimacy.24 For the same purpose
Assad initially established other national institutions: national
referenda (1971), municipal elections (1972), and a permanent
constitution (1973). On top of this institutional infrastructure he
created the supreme institute of the presidency (1971), which has
been invested with far-reaching executive and legislative powers.25
However, this supreme leader has to be elected by national
referendum, which is meant to stress its populism and legitimacy. In
sum, all these measures are designed to present him and his rule as a
focus of the new Syrian national community.
The crucial question is: to what extent has Assad succeeded in
achieving these goals? No definite answer is possible, but there is no
doubt that his authoritarian rule has managed to achieve
unprecedented political stability in Syria (and, since the late 1980s,
also significant economic development). He has done this by means
of stick-and-carrot tactics, on the one hand employing instruments of
coercion and on the other providing economic benefits and
sociopolitical status to core groups in the population.
Yet, stability in a country previously torn by conflicts probably could
not have been attained without the skills and qualities of Assad as a
natural leader and shrewd politician. Most notable are his firmness,
pragmatism, and patience, as well as his ability to draw lessons from
his mistakes. These skills,

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scribed regions, such as the Middle East, those policies are
symmetrical, reciprocal, and integrated into gamelike interactions.
The Regional Context of Ethnic Conflict
The Cold War Ethnic Regime in the Middle East
Many observers agree that the collapse of bipolarity caused the
breakdown of several ethnic arrangements that were dependent upon
that international structure, but they do not propose that every stable
historical structure of international politics will support a set of
ethnic contracts that reinforce the existing balance. In other words,
the fact that bipolarity and the Cold War produced a situation in
which it was in the interest of the great powers to stabilize a number
of ethnic trouble spots does not mean that any successor international
system or regime will do the same. Despite early suggestions that the
emergent new world order would be especially concerned with
settling "peripheral" conflicts like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and
the Bosnian morass, more recent events have indicated that the
international community lacks a common voice.
Thus, if the negotiation and guarantee of ethnic contracts as a means
of settling crisis situations was a good provided by the great powers
in the recent past, it is likely that regional states will have to rely on
their own resources in the future. But it requires a considerable leap
of faith to suppose that regional international regimes will be able to
provide a similar good for themselves. Before taking that leap, it
might be prudent to look back at the legacy of bipolarity–whether that
legacy is considered as assets, liabilities, or a mixture of both.
Looking back at the Middle East, we discern a geographically
segmented system, constituted of a number of local balances, buffer
states, and partitioned states, sustained by bipolar threats to intervene
if any power sought to radically change the regional situation.
Foreign and regional powers were mobilized to prevent the
emergence of an Arab hegemon or even the partial unification of
Arab states. Kurdish unity was discouraged, but Kurdish unrest
encouraged. The Palestinian Diaspora was tightly controlled but
permitted limited action against Israel. Jews were encouraged to
move from Muslim states to Israel.
Wherever the government was unable to maintain the subordination
of ethnic groups via a combination of ethnic contracts and force,
those territories were either cordoned off or partitioned as in
Lebanon, equatorial Sudan, Western Sahara, Cyprus, Palestine, and
even Jordan. If, as in the Arab-Israeli

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together with his policy of creating an infrastructure of national
institutions, have contributed to consolidating a strong and fairly
wide basis for a national community.
Undoubtedly, many Syrians, particularly Sunni Muslims, have
passively accepted or adjusted to Assad's twenty-eight-year-old
regime and see no better alternative to it, including an Islamic
regime. For, as we know, the Islamic opposition—the major challenge
to Assad's regime—was smashed in 1982, and this traumatic event
has served as a well-remembered lesson to many Syrian Muslims. In
fact, several leaders of this Islamic opposition, living in exile, have
recently sought rapprochement with Assad's regime. Other Syrians,
born and brought up in the independent state of Syria, under the Ba'th
rule, have probably developed Syrian-Arab national-patriotic
feelings. They have also been influenced by their state education and
by seeing their country's transformation under Assad's rule into a
more modern state and regional power.
True, in Assad's Syria there are still sizable groups that are
potentially antagonistic to the regime, namely, traditional middle-
class Sunnis who continue to resent the minoritarian regime;
liberal professionals who oppose its repressive measures; and the
urban proletariat and poor fellahin (farmers), who suffer economic
hardship. But most of these groups are either disorganized or partly
neutralized by economic benefits.
On the other hand, growing sections of the population—including
Sunni Muslims in urban and rural middle and upper classes—have
been satisfied with Assad's rule, thanks to their socioeconomic
progress and political mobility. Many of them respect Assad's
leadership and some of them do not consider the as usurpers of
power, but as an integral component of the Syrian national
community. A growing number of Sunnis have indeed established
political and economic ties, as well as social and marital links with
, particularly those who have moved to urban centers and have
been integrated into the socioeconomic fabric.
In conclusion, during Assad's rule an increasing number of Syrians—
Sunnis, , Christians, and Druze—have participated in a process
of national integration whose main components have been the ideas
and symbols of Arab nationalism, Syrian patriotism, and the
legitimacy of the regime. This process has been augmented by
political stability, economic improvement (with a new capitalist
orientation), and limited socioreligious pluralism. These trends
toward a creation of a nation-state or national community are likely
to persist in Assad's lifetime—and perhaps even beyond.

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Notes
1. This survey is derived from my article "Attempts at Creating a
Political Community in Modern Syria," Middle East Journal 26, no. 4
(Autumn 1972): 389–404.
2. FO 78/1586, Damascus, January 10, 1861.
3. See Moshe , Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine 1840–
1861 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 226 ff.
4. E. Dawn, "The Rise of Arabism in Syria," Middle East Journal 16,
no.2 (Spring 1962): 163.
5. A. L. Tibawi, Modern History of Syria (London: Macmillan, 1969),
150.
6. , Yawm Maysalun (The day of Maysalun)(Beirut: Dar al-
Ittihad, 1947), 83.
7. Ibid., 77.
8. A. H. Hourani, Syria and Lebanon (London: Oxford University
Press, 1946), 93–95. See also P. S. Khoury, Syria and the French
Mandate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 311 ff.
9. League of Nations, Permanent Mandate Commission 27th Session
(1935).
10. A. H. Hourani, Minorities in the Arab World (London: Oxford
11. P. Seale, The Struggle for Syria (London: Oxford University
Press, 1965), 32.
12. For details see R. A. Hinnebusch, Authoritarian Power and State
Formation in Syria (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989).
13. Al-Thawra (Damascus), May 3, 1969.
14. Tibawi, 415–17; E. Rouleau, "The Syrian Enigma: What Is the
Baath?," New Left Review 45 (Sept.–Oct. 1967): 64; al-Hayat
(Beirut), May 5, 1967; al-Nahar (Beirut), May 9, 1967.
15. Moshe , Asad, the Sphinx of Damascus: A Political
Biography (London, New York: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1988,
1990), 150–51.
16. , 74 ff., 109 ff. Patrick Seale, Assad: The Struggle for the
Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), 169 ff.
17. M. , "The Emergence of Modern Syria," in M. and A.
Yaniv, eds., Syria under Assad (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), 32.
18. , 159 ff.; Seale, 320 ff.
19. Al-Wasat (London), May 13, June 3, 1996, articles by Ibrahim
Hamidi; al-Shira (Beirut), December 11, 1995, article by Hasan
Sabra; al-Sabil (Jordan), June 21, 1996.
20. Al-Wasat, ibid.; R. A. Hinnebusch, "Assad's Syria and the New
World Order," Middle East Policy 11, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 11–12.
21. For a comprehensive survey and analysis, see R. A. Hinnebusch,
Peasant and Bureaucracies in Syria (Boulder, Colo.: Westview,
1989).
22. Al-Hayat (London), September 5, 1995, July 2, 1994; Die Zeit
(Germany), September 15, 1995; V. Perthes, The Political Economy of
Syria under Asad (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), 109 ff.; al-Thawra
(Damascus), June 2, 6, 9, 1990; Financial Times, May 10, 1994.
23. Al-Wasat, May 13, 1996; al-Hayat, July 2, 1994; al-Thawra, ibid.
24. Al-Thawra, ibid.; al-Hayat, July 2, 1994; Perthes, 166–69.
25. , 48–52; Perthes, 130 ff.

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5
From Consociationalism to the Public Sphere
Recent Evidence from Lebanon
Michael C. Hudson
The dreary authoritarian landscape of contemporary Middle Eastern
politics was marked—until 1975—by the exceptional case of
Lebanon. In the 1960s this country was singled out by many political
scientists as a success story for democracy in a region generally
inhospitable to such politics. Its success rested in large part on a pact
—the mithaq al-watani of 1943—which set forth a power-sharing
arrangement to alleviate the deep divisions between the nearly evenly
divided Christian and Muslim portions of the population. In 1975 the
country was plunged into a fifteen-year civil war—one marked by
extensive external involvements—that left some 150,000 dead. A new
pact was concluded in October 1989 in , Saudi Arabia. The
Accords eventually helped bring the civil war to an end and served as
the basis for a "new republic" of Lebanon. This chapter attempts to
analyze and compare the strengths and weaknesses of these two
pieces of political engineering that were designed to manage (if not
solve) the problem of conflict in Lebanon's deeply divided society—a
society divided between Muslim and Christian, and subdivided
between the main Christian and Muslim sects (Maronite, Orthodox,
Sunni, and ) and the Druze, an offshoot of Islam.
Ethnic-Religious Conflict and the Crisis of Legitimacy
It has become almost commonplace to observe that Middle Eastern
political systems today are beset by a profound crisis of legitimacy.
This crisis is the product of a broad range of socioeconomic, cultural,
and exogenous pressures, as well as the low capacity of political
structures. Of all these factors none is more debilitating than ethnic
and religious conflict. Such conflicts inflame or reignite the
fundamental problems of identity and authority the late Dankwart
Rustow, among others, insisted must be solved for legitimacy

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and lasting stability to be achieved.1 To one degree or another
virtually every Middle Eastern political system has been afflicted by
these problems—and I include Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Israel,
as well as the Arab countries. The failure to integrate ethnosectarian
communities (usually but not always minorities) into "normal"
politics has led to an increase in protest and rebellion regionwide
since the early 1970s, as Gurr has shown quantitatively.2 Lebanon has
been perhaps the best-known example, but Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan,
Somalia, and Sudan have been scarcely less (in some cases, more)
egregious. And even the relatively "modest" cases have been serious:
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, and Bahrain.
Religious conflict, too, has become almost ubiquitous, usually taking
the form of Islamist revolutionary or protest movements pitted
against a relatively less religious incumbent regime. Not primarily
targeted at ethnosectarian minorities, these conflicts are waged to
reform the whole society—and beyond. Again, the list of serious
conflicts is familiar: the Iranian revolution, the Islamist coup in
Sudan, the Islamist challengers versus established regimes in Egypt,
Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon (where there were also
Christian challengers to capture what was left of the state). At a lower
level of conflict (let us call it "tension") we would note the situations
in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, Libya, and Morocco. These conflicts
—whether ethnosectarian or religious—take a variety of forms. In
some cases the dominant solidarity group is using the state's power to
attack a subordinate solidarity group; in others an illegal opposition
using ideologized religion is trying to overturn incumbents; in still
others, hostile societal solidarity groups fight each other while the
state tries to mediate.
How bad is this situation in the Middle East? Grosso modo, it looks
serious indeed. But as Gurr's comparative data on the ethnic conflict
dimension show, it is not dramatically worse than several other
regions.3 Indeed, it looks better than Africa and similar to Europe and
Latin America. If the trend in ethnic conflict in the Middle East has
been rising, the same trend is true globally. As for the intensity of
conflicts, Middle Eastern cases vary widely: if none approach the
gentility of the Scots in Britain or, so far, the Quebecois in Canada,
none (except perhaps Afghanistan) seems to be quite as ferocious as
Burundi or Bosnia. We should bear in mind that there have been cases
of prolonged reasonably successful conflict management even in
some countries (like Lebanon) that seem almost synonymous with
ethnic anarchy. Having acknowledged these mitigating points, one
can hardly avoid concluding that the failure to integrate ethnic and
religious tendencies is perhaps the most serious of the several
problems that feed into the region's crisis of governance.

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Regime Responses and Systemic Models of Conflict Management.
We may be critical of how Middle Eastern political elites are failing
to manage the rising tide of ethnic and religious tension/conflict, but
that does not mean they are not trying. In fact, the ruling
establishments have devised several strategies for coping with these
pressures. Before we prescribe new structural solutions we should
evaluate those that have already been tried. With respect to the
Islamist challenge, regimes and leaders have pursued a variety of
strategies that can be arrayed across a spectrum from inclusion to
exclusion: (1) forced exclusion, or liquidation, is what Syria
employed against its Islamist challengers and Algeria is now
attempting; (2) marginalization is what Egypt and Tunisia have tried
against theirs; (3) preemption is the strategy of the rulers of Saudi
Arabia and Morocco, who seek to monopolize Islamic legitimacy; (4)
limited accommodation is practiced by Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and
Kuwait; and (5) full inclusion (as a "normal" political force) is
currently not practiced at all, although Algeria tried it briefly in its
"democratic spring" from 1989 to 1992.4 Similar strategies have been
employed at various times by various regimes toward ethnosectarian
communities like the Kurds, the Berbers, the southern Sudanese, the
, and a number of smaller ethnosectarian, tribal, or regional
communities. These, however, are relatively short-term policy
alternatives.
On a deeper, systemic, constitutional level, a number of other
structures and processes have come into existence functionally to
manage ethnosectarian and religious cleavages. One we might call
"the unity project": a regime, often revolutionary, seeks to impose
ideological homogeneity on society. In the 1950s and 1960s we saw
the "Arab national project" and Arab socialism. Nasser and his
imitators insisted on the exclusivity of a particular nationalism, to
which other solidarity groupings had to cede priority. Depending on
the tolerance and skill of the unification leadership, accommodations
can be arranged with ethnic or sectarian communities who fall
outside the officially defined boundaries, but these accommodations
are hard to maintain. The short-lived Kurdish accommodations with
Arab nationalist regimes in Baghdad are a case in point. And when an
alternative unity project emerges, with universalistic pretensions
exceeding the merely ethnic or sectarian, a very unstable situation
may develop. The attempts in Syria to accommodate, yet still
subordinate, Islam (and political Islam) are a well-known case in
point. At present we see the "Islamic project" ascendant in Iran and
Sudan and embedded in the platforms of Islamist movements from
Arabia to Morocco. The logic is identical: exclude or subordinate all
other identifications to Islamism. And the constituency for which the
appeal has most resonance

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is also similar to the constituency of the old Arab national project. On
the whole, the unity projects, be they transnational or religious, have
not evolved stable arrangements for the accommodation of "deviant"
ethnosectarian communities.
Second is what would be called "the traditionalist patrimonial
project." Although of very different ideological coloration, this model
shares the homogeneity principle of the unity project. Homogeneity
in these cases, however, is oriented to the king, amir, sultan, or
shaykh whose family rules the country. In one happy family under the
benevolent and watchful eye of the ruler, religious opposition is
unacceptable because the ruler embodies religion in its best earthly
form. To the extent that the monarch claims special Islamic
legitimacy, as in the cases of Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia
noted above, this model is resistant to the pressures of populist
Islamist opposition movements. The patrimonial model can be quite
accommodating toward ethnosectarian communities, depending on
the liberality of the ruler. As a rule, minorities in the Middle East
have been happier under royal authority, as exemplified in Jordan,
Morocco, and Oman; but this is not the case with all Middle East
monarchies. If, as some analysts argue, Syria is a "neopatrimonial"
system, one might add that ethnosectarian minorities are comfortable
with President Assad, although this might not be the case with the
Sunni religious majority. A distinctive subtype of this model are the
"rentier monarchies" of the Gulf Cooperation Council, in which (as
Crystal and others have argued) a virtual social contract has been
concluded between ruling families and their subjects, according to
which a political free hand is granted in exchange for the gift of
generous socioeconomic benefits.5 Independent political action,
especially if it is organized along religious or sectarian lines, violates
the contract and the solidarity of the family-state.
A third model we may describe as corporatist. As explicated by
writers such as Bianchi, Ayubi, and Perthes, we see the managers of
the state cobbling together a coalition of the "leading" socioeconomic
forces to promote their respective interests and co-opt or prevent
populist challenges.6 "Understandings" between the political
leadership with the captains of industry, the rural landed elite, the
commercial bourgeoisie, and the co-optable leaders of labor produce
a corporate cohesion (via a depoliticization of primary sectors) that
satisfies key interests under one "national" ideological facade or
another. The ideological coloration can be populist (as in European
fascism and Nazism), but the political reality is unmistakably elitist.
Where does ethnic or religious conflict—and conflict management—
figure in such a system? In the view of most theorists of corporatism,
these concerns are absent

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in the model.7 In the view of the managers of the corporate state,
ethno-sectarian power sharing is also marginal to the basic problems
of economic growth and social stability. "Copts" do not appear once
in the index of Bianchi's book. The figure somewhat more
prominently in Perthes's book, but the author takes pains to minimize
what he feels is the exaggerated conventional wisdom about Assad's "
" regime. Instead, he demonstrates the extent to which Assad,
through informal means, has included Sunnis, along with other
communities, in the Syrian power structure. As Syria moves at its
own very deliberate pace toward a degree of economic liberalization,
the business community is not at all eager to assert an autonomous
political role, preferring instead to accept the incremental advantages
of the loosening of the state's control over the economy. Ethnic and
religious problems fall on the "security" side of this Janus-faced state
and are thus beyond debate.
The fourth of the structural models I have identified—
consociationalism, or power sharing—is the one most explicitly
directed toward the management of communal conflict. Lebanon
before 1975 and after 1990 approximates this model.
Consociationalism seeks to remove ethnosectarian rivalry—and
attendant insecurity—from the normal political process. Through
written constitutions or unwritten pacts each of the major ethnic or
sectarian communities is assigned a specific share of political and
administrative offices.8 Typically, an elite cartel representing the
various communities runs the country. Conditions for successful
consociationalism include the following: cohesion of communal
elites, the ability of those elites to lead their respective "flocks," and
the ability of communal elites to get along with each other. Lijphart
and others also observe that success will be facilitated by a certain
amount of common external pressure to help bind the elite cartel
together and by relatively low internal (that is, socioeconomic) loads
on the system. Given all the conditions associated with its successful
application, consociationalism seems suitable only for a limited and
relatively mild subset of ethnic conflict environments. There are
several reasons for this. Government by elite cartel is insensitive to
"mass" concerns (including demands for democratization) that may
cut across segments; that is, the "loads on the system" may not be low
enough. Grand coalitions are vulnerable to paralysis and may be
unable to articulate and implement "public" (as opposed to segment-
oriented) policies. The rationale for a given power-sharing formula
may lose its original legitimacy. External pressures may split apart
rather than hold together the elite cartel—as the Lebanese case all too
clearly showed. Hanf, nevertheless, is a strong advocate of
consociationalism for Lebanon, as are a number of other analysts.

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The Missing Model: Liberal Democracy
It will not have escaped notice that "democracy" does not appear on
the above listing of regime responses and systemic strategies for
coping with ethnoreligious conflict—or, indeed, for developing
legitimacy and effective governance in general. The liberal
democratic model takes the individual as the unit of analysis, not the
ethnic or religious community. While it does not deny the existence
and importance of such groupings, it insists that collective choice be
made within what Habermas called "the public sphere," an arena in
which the pluralistic associational groups that make up "civil society"
may debate and compete for the votes of the majority.9 "Liberal
democracy," as opposed to raw majoritarian democracy, also
provides, of course, protections for individuals and minorities against
possible tyranny of the majority through bills of rights and the like.
Although the past two decades have witnessed certain "openings"
toward liberal democracy in the Middle East, it must be admitted that
the liberal democratic model remains more an ideal than a reality.10
None of the systemic, structural models just described—unity,
traditional-patrimonial, corporatist, or consociational—have any
place for a public sphere. In the first two models, whatever passes for
public space is in fact an outlet only for the regime's publicity; there
is none of the autonomy that an arena for public debate and
contestation requires. The other two are segmented, one informally
and the other formally. In both cases, however, real power, influence,
and communication is nonpublic: they are exercised through hidden
channels of wasta (mediation) and clientelism. These four ways of
organizing political life have proved to be ill suited for managing
religious and ethnosectarian conflict. Indeed, they are not well suited
for governance in general. They lack the transparency and openness
that a public sphere provides. Being authoritarian to one degree or
another, the top leadership exercises great power but at the same time
is hindered by the system in exercising it wisely. Why? Although all
four models are mukhabarat-rich (that is, the state has powerful
security apparatuses), they are, paradoxically, "information-poor,"
because they discourage alternative sources, perspectives, and debate.
Thus, even the best-intentioned leaders may act stupidly or heavy-
handedly.
These days it is easy—even fashionable—to criticize governance in
the Middle East. It is also obvious that there has been a clear decline
since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the ability of Middle Eastern
states to manage ethnoreligious conflict. But what does political
science have to offer to ameliorate these conditions? If the "missing
model"—liberal democracy—offers the best prospects, how is it to be
achieved in the Middle Eastern context? If

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it is unachievable, are there more modest, realistic ways of making
the existing models more effective in the management of religious
and sectarian conflict as well as other public issues? From the
standpoint of liberal political science, all four models may be bad,
but some may be better than others. The consociational model in
particular is the one that appears closest to genuine democracy, and it
is the one most explicitly "engineered" to deal with deeply divided
societies.
If one were searching for a case study in order to investigate these
matters, Lebanon comes immediately to mind. Lebanon certainly
exhibits the pathologies of a society deeply divided along sectarian
and religious lines, a feebly legitimized political order, and a
government famous for its incapacity. But Lebanon is even more
interesting as a case because of its political structure. To some, it is
one of the few countries in the Middle East—and the only one in the
Arab world—to which the adjective "democratic" could be at times
justifiably (if loosely) applied. Others would demur, arguing instead
that Lebanon exemplified the consociational model. The difference
between the two is important. For three decades after independence,
this consociational structure (embodied in the National Pact) was
widely seen as the cause of the country's success in managing
sectarian tensions. Then a civil war broke out and lasted fifteen years.
The war came to an end with the renegotiation of the pact in the
national accord document of 1989, better known as the
Agreement (named for the Saudi Arabian city in which it was signed).
Is Lebanon a good example of how to manage ethnoreligious
divisions—or, on the contrary, is it just the opposite? If it is a success
story, is consociationalism responsible? If it is a horror story, is
consociationalism responsible? Were the Lebanese and the foreign
governments that engineered the Accord applying the correct
historical lesson by renegotiating an essentially consociational—and
not a liberal-democratic—formula?
Lebanon's Mixed Experience
Lebanon has been viewed by some analysts and valued by many
Lebanese as a kind of consociational confederation of sectarian
communities, lacking a higher national loyalty and a strong,
supraconfessional state. Other analysts, and other Lebanese, have
preferred to understand Lebanon as a secular, liberal project, in which
the individual, not the sectarian solidarity group, is the basic political
actor. A consociational-confessional Lebanon is the legacy of
France's involvement and its collusion with the Maronite clergy.11
The mithaq al-watani—contrived by the independent republic's
founding fathers, Bishara al-Khuri (a Maronite Christian) and Riyadh
al-Sulh (a Sunni Muslim), in

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1943—further institutionalized confessionalism even as it sought to
lay the foundations for an ultimately secular Lebanese nation-state.12
Khuri and Sulh were moderates in their respective communities, and
the pact they concluded was based on mutual compromises. In order
to secure Muslim participation in the political process (hitherto
withheld), the Maronite leader promised to eschew any future
"special relationships" with France or the Christian West in general.
The Sunni leader promised to desist from any future political
integration with the Muslim Arab countries. Both leaders agreed that
Christians would hold a preponderance of high positions in
independent Lebanon but that Muslims would be guaranteed solid
minority representation. The powerful presidency would be allocated
always to a Maronite; the clearly less powerful prime ministership
would go to a Sunni; the speaker of the chamber of deputies would be
a Muslim and the deputy speaker a Greek Orthodox Christian.
The small but influential Druze community would customarily be
accorded a prestigious cabinet portfolio such as defense. By custom,
electoral laws would allocate seats in the Chamber of Deputies on a
6:5 basis in favor of Christians, and the same proportions would hold
in the allocation of major civil service positions.
In 1943 these arrangements seemed equitable, given what was
thought to be the demographic weight of the Christians and their
historic claims. But little more than a decade would pass before the
Lebanese Muslims felt that there was no longer any demographic
logic to Christian, especially Maronite, hegemony. Because these
arrangements ultimately failed to prevent Lebanon's collapse into
sectarian fitna (anarchy), one is justified in questioning the efficacy
of pacts in preventing eruptions of ethnosectarian strife. The mithaq
and the system that arose from it imposed a rigid power-sharing
formula that could not be modified to take account of changing
demographic and social conditions.13 It led to immobilism in
policymaking and impeded the growth of national unity and a
stronger state. It also tended to institutionalize the dominance of a
political class of traditional families and notables. The defects proved
to outweigh the advantages. Nevertheless, there were positive
consequences as well. Considering the difficult circumstances that
faced the newly independent country—notably the deep alienation of
the Muslims—the mithaq possibly served as a "life support system"
to get the country over the crisis of its birth. The country then did
enjoy three decades of relative stability. The pact also had the
advantage (in comparison to the Agreement, forty-six years
later) of being homegrown, an arrangement reached by Lebanese
politicians themselves, without the decisive involvement of outside
parties, either from Syria, other Arab countries, or Western countries.

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Ethnic Conflict and International Politics in the Middle East
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Ethnic Conflict and International Politics in the Middle East
Edited by Leonard Binder
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Copyright 1999 by the Board of Regents of the State of Florida
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
All rights reserved
04 03 02 01 00 99 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ethnic conflict and international politics in the Middle East / edited by Leonar
d
Binder.
p. cm.
Papers presented at the Workshop on Ethnic and Religious Conflict in the
Middle East, held in 1996, and sponsored by UCLA.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8130-1687-8 (alk. paper)
1. Middle East—Politics and government—20th century—Congresses.
2. Middle East—Ethnic relations—Political aspects—
Congresses. 3. Nationalism
—Middle East—Congresses. 4. Islam and politics—Middle East—Congresses.
I. Binder, Leonard. II. University of California, Los Angeles. III. Workshop
on Ethnic and Religious Conflict in the Middle East (1996: UCLA).
DS62.8.E84 1999
323.1'56—dc21 98-45875
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State
University System of Florida, comprised of Florida A&M University, Florida
Atlantic University, Florida International University, Florida State University,
University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North
Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
http://www.upf.com
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management" than they have been with demonstrating that regional
and national politics in the Middle East are seamlessly woven
together by ethnicity. As hoped, the papers presented at the seminar
have provided a timely and objective analysis of an unfolding
situation worthy of publication and dissemination to a wider
audience. For this, I am grateful to all those who participated in the
workshop.
Finally, I would like to thank Yona, my wife of more than half a
century, for her indispensable contribution to the successful
completion of this project. She attended many of the workshop
sessions, read and criticized half a dozen drafts of my introduction,
spent many lunches and evenings in conversation with contributors,
and, above all, gave good advice and encouragement when both were
needed.
This book is dedicated to my grandchildren, Shulamith, Aviva, Ariel,
and Galia, who were of no help whatsoever, but then, they are not
responsible for the result either.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Note on Translation and Transliteration x
1. Introduction: The International Dimensions of Ethnic 1
Conflict in the Middle East
Leonard Binder
Part I. Arab Nationalism: Cooperation, Conflict, and 41
Domination
2. Power, Legitimacy, and Peace-Making in Arab 43
Coalitions: The New Arabism
Shibley Telhami
3. The Assembled State: Communal Conflicts and 61
Governmental Control in Iraq
Adeed Dawisha
4. Syria: Creating a National Community 77
5. From Consociationalism to the Public Sphere: Recent 92

Evidence from Lebanon
Michael C. Hudson
6. Religious and Ethnic Conflict in Sudan: Can National 110
Unity Survive?
Gabriel Warburg
Part II. Iran, Islam, and the Persian Gulf 129
7. Iran's Revolutionary Politics: Nationalism and Islamic 131
Identity
David Menashri
8. Subordinate Communities and the Utility of Ethnic Ties 155
to a Neighboring Regime: Iran and the of the Arab
States of the Gulf
Michael Herb
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9. Toward a Social Analysis of Islamist Movements 181
Gilles Kepel
Part III. Turkey, the Kurds, and Central Asia 207
10. Ethnic and Religious Strains in Turkey: Internal and 209
External Implications
Ian O. Lesser
11. Turkey's Restive Kurds: The Challenge of 224
Multiethnicity
Graham E. Fuller
12. New States and New Identities: Religion and State 245
Building in Central Asia
Martha Brill Olcott
Part IV. Jordan-Palestine-Israel 277
13. Al-Muhajirin w-al-Ansar: Hashemite Strategies for 279
Managing Communal Identity in Jordan
Laurie A. Brand
14. Hamas: Strategy and Tactics 307
Muhammad Muslih
15. Hegemony and the Riddle of Nationalism 332
Ian S. Lustick
16. Afterthoughts 360
Leonard Binder
List of Contributors 373
Bibliography 377
Index 389
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Acknowledgments
This book is the product of a workshop/colloquium sponsored by the
Department of Political Science and the von Grunebaum Center for
Middle East Studies at UCLA. The purpose of the workshop was to
consider the implications of recent changes in Middle East regional
ethnic consciousness for the achievement of regional stability. The
workshop was supported by grants from the UC Institute on Global
Conflict and Cooperation, the Office of International Studies and
Overseas Programs at UCLA, the U.S. Department of Education
(indirectly), the von Grunebaum Center for Middle East Studies, the
Center for International Relations at UCLA, and the Rand
Corporation. Additional financial support, for the purpose of
preparing the manuscript for publication, was granted by the IGCC,
ISOP, the von Grunebaum Center, and the Center for International
Relations. I am grateful, indeed, to each of these organizations and to
David Lake, John Hawkins, Irene Bierman, Dick Rosecrance, Jerry
Green, and Stephan Haggard for their generous response to my
requests for grants, extensions, and administrative assistance.
I am also grateful for the staff support provided by the von
Grunebaum Center and the Department of Political Science at UCLA.
Special thanks are due to Jonathan Friedlander and to Abdulkader
Sinno. Jonathan Friedlander, administrative officer of the Middle
East Center, contacted each of the participants, arranged their travel
and lodging, managed the finances of the project, and more—and all
of this with good humor and infinite patience. Abdulkader Sinno, a
Ph.D. candidate in political science at UCLA, presided at the
workshop, provided assistance to our visiting lecturers, taped the
proceedings, edited the rough drafts of the papers, checked the
references, arranged for the preparation of the manuscript, helped
prepare the bibliography and the index, and maintained
correspondence with the contributors and the publisher. The success
of the workshop owes a great deal to the devoted efforts of these two.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the editorial staff of the
University Press of Florida. They were friendly, helpful,
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efficient, and courteous through the process of submission,
evaluation, and approval of the manuscript. It is obvious to me that
they supported the project and pressed to get it approved in record
time.
The idea of exploring Middle East ethnic conflict in an international
context might appear to be of self-evident importance, given the
prominence of transnational ethnic hostility and the frequency of the
resort to war or warlike acts, such as terrorism, within the region. For
the most part, however, ethnic conflict in the Middle East has been
studied under the rubrics of nationalist ideology or of the status of
minorities.
The idea of the study of the international dimensions of ethnic
conflict was presented to me by my erstwhile colleague, Professor
David Lake, when he invited me to participate in the IGCC Working
Group to help plan the project on the international spread and
management of ethnic conflict. The ideas that became the basis of
this book, and which grew into the introductory chapter, were initially
presented at the first meeting of the IGCC Working Group, in May of
1994. Later, when it became apparent that the IGCC project was not
going to devote special attention to regions such as the Middle East, I
suggested that the von Grunebaum Center undertake parallel research
into regional ethnic conflict. The von Grunebaum Center agreed, and
as the scope of the project grew I went back to the IGCC and received
generous support and encouragement from Lake and his associates.
The Workshop on Ethnic and Religious Conflict in the Middle East
met weekly in the spring and fall quarters of 1996 to discuss and
critique presentations by specialists in Middle East studies and
related fields. UC faculty members, and other academic and policy
specialists from regional institutions and think tanks, and graduate
students in political science, Middle East studies, and Islamic studies
participated in the workshop. Invited lecturers were asked to consider
the arguments presented in the general prospectus, but they were
encouraged to work out their own ideas, based on their own
scholarship, rather than to attempt to accommodate my framework. I
believed then that the common empirical-historical foundation of
regional ethnic conflict would render our diverse points of view
mutually intelligible without reducing our understanding to the two-
dimensionality of a forced paradigm. I believe that the result is rich
in insights, originality, and diversity, while still advancing our
understanding of ethnicity as an integral component of the regional
system of international relations.
Ethnic conflict is not so much a problem to be solved by the regional
system as it is a condition that has shaped the regional system itself.
For this reason, our collective efforts have been less concerned with
"spread and
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Note on Translation and Transliteration
Except where otherwise indicated, all the translations in this book are
by the contributors. Specialized Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish,
Hebrew, or other terminology is usually defined at first mention in
every chapter.
A rudimentary system of transliteration from Middle Eastern
languages has been used. All diacritics except the ayn and hamza
have been omitted. Otherwise, the system used by the International
Journal of Middle East Studies is employed. Non-English words are
italicized except when widely used in English, such as Imam or
ulema.
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