The Modern Middle East (43 page)

In Libya, the personality of Muammar Qaddafi also overshadowed all institutions, both civilian and military. In contrast to Iraq, however, to the bitter end the Qaddafi state considered itself to be embroiled in a revolutionary, transformative process that started with the 1969 coup. To this end, Colonel Qaddafi periodically engaged in a new grand experiment to enhance and perpetuate the underlying populism of the body politic. Recent Libyan political history illustrates the point, with a variety of “people’s” organizations—the General People’s Congress, revolutionary committees, later replaced by the Ministry of Mass Mobilization and Revolutionary Leadership, and the like—created to take over such formal institutions of power as the cabinet and the legislature.
⁵¹
Given its economic structure and a much smaller population base, the Libyan state found it easier to engage in populist experiments of various types than either the Iranian or the Iraqi state. Few Libyans, of course, bought into the state’s theatrics, especially as Qaddafi’s behavior and initiatives became more bizarre and erratic as his reign was drawing to a close, as when he sought to claim leadership over the revolution that was gathering steam to overthrow him. Not surprisingly,
therefore, in Libya as in the two other countries repression was a frequently used option in the state’s exercise of authority.

Equally pervasive in all three states was the leader’s cult of personality. With political centralization in the person of the leader comes the cultivation of charismatic authority, in some cases more successfully than in others. The leader enjoys charismatic legitimacy during his rule (Khomeini), or is constantly trying to portray himself as charismatic (Saddam Hussein), or was at some point highly charismatic but later refuses to acknowledge his loss of charisma (Qaddafi). But by nature charisma is hard to come by, is impermanent when it does exist, and is insufficient by itself to run a modern state. Therefore, the inclusionary states of the Middle East have created personality cults instead, portraying the leader as larger than life in every possible way. Monuments, art, postage stamps, giant portraits, and national holidays commemorate the leader’s accomplishments large and small.
⁵²
In Iraq, “al-Hussein” missiles were used in the Iran-Iraq War, which the Iraqi government referred to as “Saddam’s Qadisiyya” after the 637
A.D.
battle in which Arab armies decimated Persian forces.
⁵³

But there is more to the cult of personality in inclusionary states than the mere glorification of repressive autocrats. Through the leader, in his image and in his name, the masses are pulled into the political system, forcibly if need be. The deeds, accomplishments, and agendas of the leader, and by implication of the larger state, are used to mobilize the masses in support of various stateled projects. Thus the people are given what they are told is a historically significant project in which to participate. People are made to feel indispensable to the political process. In this way, the inclusionary state hopes to reinforce the emotional ties that bind “the masses” to their leader (the state). Projects have included experiments in mass empowerment (the
jamahiriya
polity in Libya); “liberation” and “national” wars of various kinds (against historic enemies by both Iraq and Iran; against Kuwait by Iraq; against Israel by Iraq, Iran, and Libya); and the elimination of foreign and domestic enemies (the
munafiqin
[regime code word for the Mujahedeen opposition group], the “Great Satan,” and later the author Salman Rushdie by Iran).

Perhaps the most important feature distinguishing inclusionary from exclusionary states is the former’s conscious and ceaseless efforts to manipulate cultural norms and symbols for political purposes. Of all three nondemocratic state types in the Middle East, inclusionary states are the most actively involved in crafting and influencing cultural values that support their political agendas. They often reinvent tradition. Sultanistic states, by and large, do not craft cultural norms but selectively magnify existing ones
and manipulate them for political purposes. Exclusionary states deal with culture at best only implicitly, playing by its rules and defying them only at great cost. The overt and deliberate manipulation of cultural values makes inclusionary states and most sultanistic regimes the least susceptible to liberalization pressures.

While unable to ignore the forces of culture completely, exclusionary states relate to prevailing cultural values only implicitly, capitalizing on such pervasive phenomena as personalism, patrimonialism, lack of formality, and familism.
⁵⁴
Except for Atatürk and Iran’s two twentieth-century monarchs, Reza and Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, no exclusionary leaders in the contemporary Middle East have tried systematically to alter the cultural basis of social relations or politics. Atatürk succeeded by coercion; Muhammad Reza Shah was overwhelmed by culturally rooted forces. Other exclusionary states have had at best an uneasy relationship with the entrenched cultural forces of their country. The Algerian state’s neglect of “Arabist” students (giving preference to francophone ones) led to increasing political tensions beginning in the 1980s.
⁵⁵
Sadat’s refusal to acknowledge the pervasive social influence and powers of Islamists cost him his life. Hafiz and Bashar Al-Assad both relied extensively on an inner circle of fellow Alawis to guard against the ambitions of the predominantly Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

In contrast, inclusionary states set out to create the individual and the whole society anew. The state actively promulgates its self-ascribed mission of safeguarding the nation’s revolutionary heritage, even if that heritage has to be constructed overnight. Ideological indoctrination and cultural transformation take place through the theater of the street, where the individual sheds his previous identity and assumes a new, corporate one in common with his fellow countrymen. Culture becomes political, politics becomes collective, and the individual and his society are transformed. Qaddafi’s nationwide experiments, designed to create a new Libya, have already been alluded to. In Iran, the Islamic Republic initially sought to create an ideal
homo Islamicus
from the state’s all-encompassing program of religious and political transformation.
⁵⁶
As with so many other phenomena related to culture, the degree or success of this transformation is impossible to measure. But it does take place, with some apparent success.

Incorporated into the political process, social groups are left with little autonomy to pursue agendas of their own, including pressing for liberalization measures. What appear as spontaneous eruptions of public support are often highly choreographed demonstrations organized by the state. “People power” may be glorified, but power emanates down from the leader and not
up from the masses.
⁵⁷
The state placates those who demand political participation with what looks like street democracy. Those who are not sold on the ideals of the regime are repressed. The manipulation of culture gives inclusionary states an added advantage over exclusionary states in terms of political stability. By actively promoting subjective, ideological, and emotional links with society in addition to the institutional bonds that already exist, inclusionary states are better able to deflect tension and to resist the emergence of pressures from within society. After all, rebellion is more easily justified against such modern-day pharaohs as Sadat and Mubarak than against imams, national saviors, and leaders.

Somewhere between exclusionary and inclusionary systems are the Middle Eastern sultanistic states. Invariably authoritarian, these monarchies rely on a combination of coercive and administrative institutions (e.g., the National Guard and the bureaucracy) to maintain power. Also key to the political formula is the traditional legitimacy of the ruling family, which is deeply rooted in the history, cultural heritage, and lore of the country. Not only does this traditional legitimacy distinguish sultanistic states from exclusionary and inclusionary ones, but, in the Middle East, its resonance and strength differentiate one group of monarchies from another. For the oil monarchies of the Arabian peninsula—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—historical tradition is an important source of legitimacy. This legitimacy is further reinforced by the state’s access to vast oil riches and the resulting royal benevolence toward society. Consequently, with the exception of Bahrain, where sectarian fissures run deep, the state has by and large been able to placate societal demands for major political changes. Nevertheless, in both Bahrain and Kuwait, for quite different reasons, there have been periodic demands for and episodes of political participation, especially in times of acute economic stress (in the 1930s and 1980s) or political crisis (after the Iraqi invasion of 1990–91).
⁵⁸
Nevertheless, in neither place has free and meaningful political participation been sustained over a long period, and authoritarian policies have been reinstated soon after the end of the crisis. In Bahrain, in fact, in response to popular protests stemming from the Arab Spring, state repression against the country’s Shiʿa majority reached unprecedented levels in 2011 and 2012.

The two remaining Middle Eastern monarchies, outside the Arabian peninsula, Jordan and Morocco, have neither the vast amount of petrodollars nor the long historical tradition of the oil monarchies. While Jordan and
Morocco both rely on rentier economies, their access to rent revenues is not through oil but mostly through worker remittances from abroad for Jordan and the exploitation of mineral resources for Morocco.
⁵⁹
Compounding the economic difficulties of relatively small rent revenues are the lack of a historically resonant tradition of monarchy, especially in Jordan, and the problems of crafting a popular lore of monarchical legitimacy based on local tradition and heritage. This problem is not as acute in Morocco, where, as we saw in chapter 2, dynastic rulers from as far back as the sixteenth century justified their position on grounds of being descendants of the Prophet (
sherifs
).
⁶⁰
To this day, both the Moroccan and the Jordanian monarchs claim to be
sherifs,
and the king of Morocco has the additional title of Commander of the Faithful (Amir al-Muʾminin).
⁶¹
Still, institutionally, both monarchies appear to be on more tenuous ground than their counterparts in the Arabian peninsula. Since the 1960s, Moroccan politics has been characterized by serious internal challenges to the state, in the form of assassination and coup attempts against the king (in 1971 and 1972) and occasional riots and mass unrest (in 1973, 1981, 1984, 1989, and 1991). In an effort to co-opt the opposition, in 1997 King Hassan started
alternance,
bringing opposition parties into the establishment and starting a controlled process of opening up the political system. The pace of reforms continued with his passing in 1999 and during the reign of his son and successor, Mohammed VI, in the 2000s, significantly on the king’s own accord rather than being imposed on him from the outside. This prompted two scholars to comment in 2008 that “the change that has taken place in Morocco is real.”
⁶²
With Mohammed VI as a “model of the authoritarian modernizer,” throughout 2011 and 2012 Morocco remained relatively quiet as revolutions brewed in a number of neighboring countries.
⁶³

In Jordan, meanwhile, prior to the Arab Spring the foundations of the monarchy were threatened time and again: in 1955 by widespread demonstrations; in 1956 and 1968 by attempted coups; in 1958 by the overthrow of King Hussein’s cousin, King Faisal, in Iraq; in 1970 by the Black September civil war; throughout the 1970s by tensions with the PLO; in the late 1980s by extensive “bread riots”; and in the early 2000s by the rise of religious radicals. The unrest of the late 1980s ushered in a limited degree of political opening, meant to support contentious economic policies rather than to reform monarchical autocracy. Through the December 1990 National Charter, the government gave the opposition a limited degree of elbow room in return for recognizing the legitimacy of the monarchy. Throughout the 2000s, however, mounting economic difficulties and increased political discontent led to increased narrowing of political space.
⁶⁴
Not surprisingly, despite initial quiet, the reverberations of the Arab uprisings eventually reached the Hashemite Kingdom in 2012, when economic austerity measures sparked antigovernment, and at times even antiregime, protests with unprecedented frequency.

Apart from obvious economic differences, two important dynamics account for the different levels of political stability in the oil monarchies versus Jordan and Morocco. The first dynamic is historical, dealing with the radically different patterns of state formation in the two groups of monarchies. The second dynamic, which is political, is directly linked to the first. In oil monarchies, state formation resulted in the evolution of three power sources through which the state rules: a corporate royal family, which relies on traditional authority; the civil service, through which a welfare state is maintained; and the
mukhaberat
and the armed forces, which ensure the security of the state against internal and external threats and are personally controlled by the royal family.

The same three power centers also emerged in the civic myth monarchies, but with substantially different characters. Especially in Jordan, the royal family relies not on traditional authority but on an “imagined” tradition, a myth based more on the state’s reinterpretation of history than on factual heritage and reality. Also, the civil service does not act as an agent of the welfare state. It simply provides employment for the middle classes and facilitates the penetration of the
mukhaberat
into opposition groups. Finally, the royal family’s personal control over the armed forces is not as extensive and complete as is the case in the oil monarchies. The state, therefore, is far more sensitive and vulnerable to potential challenges from within and without. When faced with such challenges, the state’s traditional response has been either to clamp down on the opposition or to liberalize. Given the global political and economic context of the 1980s and 1990s—a time when a powerful Middle Eastern monarchy was swept away by revolution, military juntas in South America abandoned the presidential palace and returned to the barracks, East European communist states collapsed one after another, and the “wave” of democracy seemed unstoppable—the civic myth monarchies of the Middle East felt compelled to opt for liberalization as a survival strategy. Unlike the other nondemocratic states of the region, they have not had the institutional capabilities to continually resort to repression. Liberalization, limited and controlled as it may be, has become structurally necessary. For whatever reason, the Moroccan monarchy seems to have taken this lesson to heart much more than the Jordanian monarchy.