What's really wrong with the Middle East

Four key issues for the region

AN EXCELLENT ANALYSIS
By Brian Whitaker

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This is a shortened version of a talk given to the Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies Society at Exeter University on 26 January 2015.

  

I’ve called this talk “What’s really wrong with the Middle East”, which is also the title of a book I wrote shortly before the uprisings started in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. Of course, with a title like that we could easily be here all night, so I’m just going to talk about four aspects which I think are particularly relevant at the moment, and which Arabs will eventually have to grapple with in order to move forward.

1. Stability and change

Shortly after I started work as the Guardian's Middle East Editor, George W Bush became president in the United States; the neoconservatives gained control of American foreign policy and began talking about change in the Middle East.

The neocons had an almost missionary zeal to liberate the Middle East – what Bush was later to call his “forward strategy of freedom” – and this of course was intensified by the events of 9/11 and the “war on terror”.

Change was certainly needed and the neocons were not the only people saying so. The UN, for example, produced a series of reports, the Arab Human Development Reports, which were written and compiled by Arabs and explained the nature of the problem in great detail.

Reporting on these things at the time, I didn’t doubt that change was desperately needed but I felt the neocons didn’t really understand what they were dealing with and were also rather presumptuous in thinking it was America’s job to sort the problem out, and in imagining that America was actually capable of doing so.

The neocons did however make one useful contribution. By talking about change in this way they challenged the much-cherished idea that the important thing in the Middle East is to maintain stability, almost at any cost. In the words of George Bush:

“Sixty years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe – because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. 

“As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo.”

Some of the neocons took this to extremes, talking excitedly about “creative destruction” and “total war” – and after the Americans got their fingers burned in Iraq, the mood started to swing back more in favour of stability again.

I’m mentioning this here because we are in a similar situation now. When the Arab uprisings began they were generally welcomed but since then the picture has become very messy. Western governments have grown nervous and the mood has swung back from desire for change to desire for stability – which as we have seen in the battle against ISIS basically means allying ourselves with Gulf monarchies which are the region’s main counter-revolutionary forces. In the long run this can only make things worse.

This brings me to the Black Swan theory, an idea put forward by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a Lebanese-American risk analyst.
Swans, obviously, are one of the largest birds and normally white. So a Black Swan event, as described by Taleb, is huge – often cataclysmic – and unexpected. Although it’s unforeseen at the time, hindsight suggests it ought to have been predictable.

Part of Taleb’s argument is that stability can be dangerous, and that it’s better to have a degree of instability because in that way small failures come to light and can be corrected – thus strengthening the system and protecting it from disaster.
Taleb originally wrote about Black Swan events in connection with financial markets but in 2011 he also wrote an article linking his theory to events in the Middle East:

"What the world is witnessing in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya is simply what happens when highly constrained systems explode.

"Complex systems that have artificially suppressed volatility tend to become extremely fragile, while at the same time exhibiting no visible risks …

"Although the stated intention of political leaders and economic policymakers is to stabilise the system by inhibiting fluctuations, the result tends to be the opposite …

"Such environments eventually experience massive blowups, catching everyone off-guard and undoing years of stability or, in some cases, ending up far worse than they were in their initial volatile state. Indeed, the longer it takes for the blowup to occur, the worse the resulting harm in both economic and political systems."

The conclusion I draw from this is that we should be wary of arguments that prioritise stability. Looking at the mess in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen today, it’s tempting to say that this is what change brings, though it’s actually the result of a long period of artificially maintained stability. 

Alarmingly, we also see other Arab regimes, most notably in the Gulf, still playing the stability card as an excuse for resisting change, and being supported by western governments as they do so. Sooner or later, the Black Swans will arrive there too.

2. Regimes and society

This brings us to the question of what sort of change needed. The Arab countries have been plagued by regimes and leaders that go on for years and exist basically to preserve the status quo in order to keep themselves in power. 

The American neocons talked a lot about regime change – which led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the removal of Saddam Hussein. Since then we have seen other regimes overthrown in popular uprisings.

But one of the neocons’ biggest mistakes was to become over-fixated on regimes and, as we saw in Iraq, they imagined that if you removed a dictator and held elections things would be fine – which of course they weren’t.

That, basically, was what prompted my book, “What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East” – with an emphasis on the word “really”. The key point of the book is that in the Middle East we are not only dealing with authoritarian regimes but authoritarian societies too, and it’s difficult to change one without also changing the other.

The problem was very neatly encapsulated in a remark by an Egyptian friend who said:

“Egypt has a million Mubaraks”

In other words, the Mubarak way of doing things was not confined to the country’s president; it is found throughout Egyptian society, in businesses and schools, even within families. 

So we have a model of governance – authoritarian but also paternalistic – which starts with the family and is replicated at every level, all the way to the top. The head of state himself is modelled on the traditional Arab father figure: in concept, if not reality, he is wise and benevolent, commands respect, and makes all the important decisions on behalf of his children.
To quote the Syrian-born sociologist Halim Barakat:

“Rulers and political leaders are cast in the image of the father, while citizens are cast in the image of children. God, the father, and the ruler thus have many characteristics in common. They are the shepherds, and the people are the sheep: citizens of Arab countries are often referred to as ra’iyyah (the flock).” 

It’s worth keeping this in mind when you see someone like General Sisi being elected in Egypt. He does have genuine popular support among a certain section of the population because he fits their image of what a president is supposed to be like.

When I started the research for my book I decided not to talk to any politicians or officials but to do a series of extended interviews with fairly ordinary, but educated, Arabs. Before doing the interviews I sent them 10 short statements about problems in the Middle East and asked them to choose one or two to discuss.

As it turned out, there was one statement that almost everyone wanted to talk about. It said:

“The family is a major obstacle to reform in the Arab world.”

This was not totally surprising because previously on my travels I had often heard Arabs complaining about their families – particularly young people who were not allowed to make their own choices regarding careers, marriage partners and so on.

One Iraqi blogger described the difficulties he had negotiating with his family over what subject he should study at university. He wanted to do something artistic but in many Arab families subjects like art and literature are considered rather suspect, and the most acceptable subjects are medicine, business studies and engineering.

The result was that he ended up studying architecture. It was not something he particularly wanted to do, but it contained an artistic element and his family were satisfied because he was studying it at a university where architecture was classified as a branch of engineering.

3. Unity and diversity

Arab countries have a huge problem with the concept of diversity, and this applies to both society and governments. I have written two books looking at different aspects of this – one as it relates to sexual nonconformity and the other religious nonconformity.

The basic problem is that while diversity is nowadays viewed positively in many parts of the world – as something that can benefit societies and enrich them – in the Arab countries it is still viewed mainly in a negative light. There are several reasons for this. 

Firstly, Arab states are not particularly homogenous. Most of them were created during the last century and their boundaries were determined – sometimes quite arbitrarily – by imperial powers. [I should perhaps add that people tend to make rather a lot of this fact – that it’s all the fault of Sykes and Picot, etc. But the Middle East isn’t unique in this respect and there are actually very few totally homogenous nation states anywhere in the world.]

Anyway, tribal, ethnic and religious differences were something that Arab governments had to reckon with after independence. But they dealt with it badly, mainly through suppression and denial of differences rather than integration. 

Syria, for example, is known as the Syrian Arab Republic despite having a substantial Kurdish population. The Assad regime, partly because it was dominated by members of the Alawite sect, also promoted a monolithic version of Islam in which sectarian divisions were not recognised. 

The problem of accepting diversity can also be linked to an important concept in Arab societies: the need to avoid fitna, or social discord. Avoidance of fitna does bring some benefits but it tends to result in a sort of make-believe harmony where differences are kept out of sight as much as possible. It’s also an easy if short-sighted option, because it means differences need not be addressed unless they lead to a crisis.

Another important concept which helps to explain attitudes towards diversity is the ummah, or community of believers. This has collectivist associations – the idea that everyone should pull together and not let the side down, so the wishes and rights of individuals tend to be subordinated to whatever is thought to be the collective good. Expressions of individuality are therefore frowned upon, and even viewed as selfish behaviour.

Going further along that track, we also have the growth of identity politics where people are expected to uphold various social and religious traditions – traditions which may actually be more imaginary than historical. This creates additional pressure to conform, and means that those who don’t conform are liable to be regarded as betraying their identity and culture.

All these factors sustain the idea that it’s perfectly legitimate for government and society to impose conformity, whether we are talking about sexual behaviour or religious practices. We see this at the government level in laws against apostasy, blasphemy and homosexuality, and at the social level in sectarian strife and the persecution of sexual nonconformists.

What we don’t see is any real leadership by Arab governments in the form of efforts to promote tolerance or address the underlying problems. In Egypt, for example, communal violence between Christians and Muslims is very common, and the government’s usual response is to try to calm things down without properly investigating the causes and how similar problems might be prevented in future. The basic approach is to keep rival factions separate rather than developing ways for them to live together.

We have also seen this on a grand scale in Iraq where there have been huge shifts of population, emphasising the country’s division into sectarian enclaves.

The question of how to deal with diversity is especially relevant today because of organisations like ISIS. The basic ideological problem with ISIS and similar movements in other parts of the world is that they claim a monopoly on religious truth and seek to impose it on others through force.

Groups like ISIS will keep on appearing until that idea is effectively challenged. But the difficulty here is that Arab states are in no position to challenge it, because most of them also seek to impose a particular version of religion on their people. This official acceptance of compulsion in religion does nothing to discourage others from doing the same unofficially but, instead, tends to legitimise it. 

4. Sovereignty and globalisation

The fourth issue I want to talk about is sovereignty. In 1945, the Arab states that were independent at the time – Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Yemen – got together to form the Arab League, with the aim of promoting cooperation and unity. This was 12 years before the Treaty of Rome which led eventually to the formation of the European Union.

If we compare the two, cooperation among European countries has developed considerably since then but the Arab League hasn’t progressed. In fact, it has become a by-word for ineffectiveness.

We can see the reasons for this in the Arab League’s charter, where aspirations towards cooperation and unity are constantly qualified, and even negated, by the demands of national sovereignty.

For example, Article VII of the charter begins by stating, rather unnecessarily, that unanimous decisions are binding on all member states, but then adds that majority decisions are binding only on those states that have accepted them. Article VII ends by saying that in both cases – whether unanimous or not – decisions shall be implemented in each country “according to its basic rules”. This amounts to a licence for each country to ignore or implement decisions in whatever way it chooses, with no mechanism for reconciling differences of interpretation.

That was understandable in the context of the time, when many countries were still struggling for independence, but world has moved on since then. We are now in an age of interdependence where national sovereignty is being eroded everywhere, including in Britain. Interdependence has created a growing need for international law and international standards, and in order to secure agreement, individual countries have to make concessions and sacrifice some of their sovereignty.

Arab countries recognise this up to a point, and it’s not particularly contentious where practical matters are concerned. Air travel, for example, would be a lot more chaotic and dangerous without international standards.

The problem, though, is that Arab regimes like to cherry-pick. In the social, cultural and political sphere, as soon as international standards are mentioned issues of sovereignty and cultural distinctiveness raise their head. The reality, though, is that this is often just a smokescreen to fend off complaints about abuses and mis-rule.

There was an interesting example in 2008 when a quarrel broke out between the EU and the Mubarak regime in Egypt. It began with a resolution from the European parliament criticising Egyptian human rights abuses. Compared to what might have been said, the criticisms were relatively mild and, as the director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, later remarked, its content was “too true to be refuted”.

But the response from Mubarak’s National Democratic Party was one of unmitigated fury. “The age of capitulation is over and Egypt no longer accepts the language of foreign dictates,” the parliamentary speaker said, and went on to complain about “western hostility against Islamic values”.

The fact is the European countries were perfectly entitled to raise this issue, because Egypt was a party to the Barcelona Declaration, which aims to develop security, stability, trade and cultural cooperation in the Mediterranean region, and also to promote democracy, good governance and human rights.
Egypt had been receiving 30 million euros a year under the Barcelona process, supposedly for the purpose of developing human rights and good governance – so it could hardly complain if other signatories questioned what was being achieved with the money. 

Egypt also has an association agreement with the EU which provides important economic benefits but also covers cooperation in other areas, including “political dialogue” and “respect for human rights and democracy”. Again, this was something that the Egyptian government signed of its own accord, no doubt for the economic benefits, but it could scarcely plead ignorance about the other aspects since they were spelled out in the agreement.

International agreements such as UN conventions involving human rights present Arab regimes with a dilemma. On one hand they are reluctant to accept the principle of universality, arguing for exceptions to be made on cultural or religious grounds, while on the other they feel a need to demonstrate respect for human rights by signing up to UN conventions. 

This, basically, is a case of having the cake and eating it. Becoming a party to the various human rights conventions bestows an aura of respectability without necessarily creating any serious obligations in terms of compliance – firstly because the conventions themselves lack effective enforcement mechanisms and secondly because the parties to a UN convention can often choose to ignore parts of it simply by registering their “reservations”.

The most common and problematic of these reservations is one that says they agree to be bound by the treaty except where it conflicts with Islamic law. Since Islamic law is not codified and is subject to a variety of interpretations by different scholars, this basically means they are excusing themselves from any parts of the treaty that they happen to dislike.

Conclusion

I‘ve talked about four different and rather broad issues. I’d just like to end by trying to draw them together.

One of the core problems of the Middle East, as I see it, is authoritarianism. In order to move forward, that needs to change. But we should also recognise that political change can’t really be divorced from social change.

To that I would add a couple of cautionary notes. One is that we should be wary of sovereignty claims being used selectively to protect human rights abuses. The other is that we should be wary of stability arguments being used to impede change – and we have seen an awful lot of that recently from the British government in connection with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

As far as change itself is concerned, acceptance or at least tolerance of diversity seems to me the most important need at the moment – especially in the field of religion, because so much of the conflict at the moment is based around sectarianism. If that could be changed, the Middle East would be a very different place.