by Emile Nakhleh

Does repression force Islamic parties to moderate? This is the key question Shadi Hamid raises in his seminal book on political Islam, governance, and Islamist “illiberal” democratic ideology.

Temptations of Power: Islamists & Illiberal Democracy In a New Middle East is a first-rate, thorough, yet controversial study of what drives [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Emile Nakhleh

Does repression force Islamic parties to moderate? This is the key question Shadi Hamid raises in his seminal book on political Islam, governance, and Islamist “illiberal” democratic ideology.

Temptations of Power: Islamists & Illiberal Democracy In a New Middle East is a first-rate, thorough, yet controversial study of what drives political Islam as well as the complex relationship between political Islam and repressive regimes. The focus is on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Tunisia’s Ennahda, and Jordan’s Islamic Action Front.

The book is a welcome primer on contemporary political Islam and should be a required reading for students, academics, policymakers, policy and intelligence analysts, and anyone interested in the contemporary Middle East and the rise of Islamic political parties and movements. The author focuses on mainstream Sunni Islamist movements, the largest and most established of which is the Muslim Brotherhood, traces Islamists’ brush with political power, and examines at length their performance once in power, as in Egypt and Tunisia.

Shadi Hamid, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution, has spent several years interviewing Islamic activists and political party leaders in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. He started writing the book before the eruption of the Arab revolutions in 2011 and interviewed numerous senior leaders and thinkers of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, including the deposed Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi. The author’s deep expertise in political Islam’s ideologies, politics, governing style, and tactics is clearly visible in this highly welcome book.

Key Arguments

The author advances several hypotheses, which should keep scholars of political Islam occupied for years to come. Perhaps his most controversial thesis is that regime repression has pushed Islamists “along a more moderate path.” He examines “two distinct phases in the Islamist narrative—one defined by the experience of repression and the other by the democratic openings made possible by the Arab revolutions.”

Islamists’ electoral strategies were carefully developed in order not to arouse the suspicions of the regime, the ruling party, or other non-Islamist parties. By running a limited number of candidates in any particular election, Islamists emphasized their motto of “participation not domination.”

While Islamists opted for elections and political participation in Egypt and Jordan, according to Hamid, they were far from being liberal democrats. The Muslim Brotherhood, for example, views itself not as a traditional political party but as a religious, social, and educational movement or organization.

Despite their active participation in electoral politics, “the goal of Islamist groups is the ‘Islamization’ of society, [which] goes well beyond the political realm.” The author expertly discusses the stages of Islamization, which the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups have pursued to Islamize the individual, the family, and the society at large. Once in power, Islamists have pursued a form of “illiberal democracy” by infringing on the liberties of others. In essence, moderation in the past four decades has not made Islamists liberal democrats.

Islamists have been more comfortable in opposition than in power. Rachid Ghannouchi, head of the Tunisian Enmahda, according to the author, warned Islamists that they would be “loved by the people before they get to power and then hated afterward.”

The book’s central argument, which is perhaps the most controversial as well, is that regime tolerance of the opposition, including allowing more political freedoms, did not necessarily lead to moderating policies promoted by Islamists. On the contrary, the author asserts, “increasing levels of repression, rather than resulting in radicalization, can have amoderating effect on Islamist groups, pushing them to reconsider and redefine their policy priorities.”

Islam, Politics, and Ideology

As governing parties, Islamists have sought popular support for their policies by moving to the center. The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) preached that “freedom and Islamization were not opposed but rather went hand in hand.” In the hundreds of hours of interviews, which the author conducted with MB activists and leaders, he sought to understand how and why Islamists adopted more moderate ideologies when they actually gained state power.

He challenges the prevailing view in academic literature, which states that Islamists moderate in response to “political participation and inclusion.” He tosses out the accepted “inclusion-moderation” hypothesis and the so-called “pothole theory of democracy” which maintain that when in power Islamists tend to focus on bread-and-butter issues and less on ideology. Hamid strongly argues that engaging Islamists, either on the part of the ruling regime or by outside actors, does not automatically push them to moderate.

This is a radical challenge not only to academic theorizing about Islamists’ political strategies but also to Western governments’ policies of Muslim world engagement, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Policy makers in Western countries have urged authoritarian regimes in the Arab Muslim world to open up their political systems and allow mainstream Islamists to contest the political space.  Regimes are told that as Islamists experience more freedom and less repression, they would move away from radicalization and extremism and move toward the moderate center.

By contrast, the author argues that, when faced with extreme repression and the threat of eradication by the regime, Islamists tend to moderate. Despite continued regime repression and the massive arrests and convictions of MB leaders, the Muslim Brotherhood’s commitment to democratic politics has remained unshakeable. The MB followed a similar policy during Mubarak’s repressive regime. In the 1980s and 1990s, the MB formed political alliances with other parties in order to elect some of their members to the national legislature—first, with the Wafd Party and then with the Labor Socialist Party. Later on, MB parliamentary candidates ran for elections as independents.

Despite Egypt’s “turn to repression” in the 1990s, the MB continued to participate in parliamentary elections and to reach out to the West with their message of moderation, pragmatism, pluralism, and inclusion. In response to regime accusations in the 1990s depicting the Islamists as “regressive and close-minded,” the MB submitted more detailed statements to the public and to the outside world emphasizing their commitment to pragmatism and inclusion. The MB’s 1994 statement included sophisticated analysis of their commitment to pluralism, inclusion, women’s rights, and minority (read Christian) rights.

The last chapter “The Past and Future of Political Islam,” offers a brilliant analysis of the political ideology of political Islam, the recent experiences of political Islamists, and the lessons the region and the international community should take from these experiences. Although the MB committed huge political and ideological errors in its first year in office under Mohamed Morsi, it would be naïve and shortsighted to see the experience as a failure of political Islam itself. Although Morsi’s failure resulted from policies of a specific Islamist party in a particular country under unique circumstances, it could offer instructive lessons to other Islamist political parties that aspire to govern.

Concluding Comment

Sophisticated as this book is, the author did not establish a convincing causal relationship between repression and moderation and whether Islamists’ moderation was a response to regime repression or a strategy for survival.

For example, why was the MB “forced” to moderate, as Hamid puts it? If MB Islamists were “forced to moderate by their circumstance,” did those circumstances include regime repression, popular calls for democracy, the fear of liquidation by the regime, or a desire to win elections? Did the Islamists’ moderation reflect liberal tendencies or an innate desire to survive under repression? Were the frequent compromises the MB in Egypt and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan made in response to regime repression a sign of moderation or a strategy for survival? Was the shift the Muslim Brotherhood made toward political participation in the mid-1990s tactical or strategic? These critical questions are too often left begging.

Hamid does an excellent job, on the other hand, in discussing the role of foreign actors, especially the United States, in the MB’s evolving stance on democratic politics.

Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook

by Emile Nakhleh

The Bahraini Arabic language newspaper al-Wasat reported on April 9 that a Cairo court began to consider a case brought by an Egyptian lawyer against Qatar accusing it of being soft on terrorism. The “terrorism” charge is of course a euphemism for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt, Saudi [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Emile Nakhleh

The Bahraini Arabic language newspaper al-Wasat reported on April 9 that a Cairo court began to consider a case brought by an Egyptian lawyer against Qatar accusing it of being soft on terrorism. The “terrorism” charge is of course a euphemism for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have designated a “terrorist” organization and have vowed to dismantle.

The two partners and the UAE also loathe Qatar for hosting and funding al-Jazeera satellite TV. The continued incarceration of the Al-Jazeera journalists and dozens of other journalists on trumped up charges is no coincidence.

The court case is symptomatic of the current Saudi-Egyptian relationship in their counter-revolution against the 2011 pro-democracy upheavals that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his fellow autocrats in Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya.

The pro-autocracy partnership between the Egyptian military junta and the Saudi ruling family goes beyond their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and the perceived threat of terrorism. It emanates from the autocrats’ visceral opposition to democracy and human rights, including minority and women’s rights.

What should be most critical to them as they contemplate the future of their coalition of counter-revolutionaries, however, is the growing Western conviction that dictators can no longer provide stability.

The Egyptian Field Marshall and the Saudi potentate also abhor the key demands of the Arab uprisings and reject their peoples’ calls for freedom, dignity, justice, and genuine economic and political reform.

They are equally terrified of the coming end of the authoritarian paradigm, which could bring about their demise or at least force them to share power with their people. The Saudis and their Gulf Arab allies, especially Bahrain and the UAE, are willing to trample on their people’s rights in order to safeguard family tribal rule.

The Saudi-Egyptian partnership is also directed at the Obama administration primarily because of Washington’s diplomatic engagement with Iran.

According to media and Human Rights Watch reports, at least 16,000 secular and Islamist activists are currently being held in Egyptian prisons, without having been charged or convicted. This number includes hundreds of MB leaders and activists and thousands of its supporters.

Many of them, including teenagers, have also been tortured and abused physically and psychologically. These mass arrests and summary trials and convictions of Islamists and liberals alike belie the Saudi-Egyptian claim that theirs is a campaign against terrorism.

A brief history of Egyptian-Saudi relations

Egyptian-Saudi relations in the past 60 years have been erratic, depending on leadership, ideology, and regional and world events. During the Nasser era in the 1950s and ‘60s, relations were very tense due to Saudi fears of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Arab nationalist ideology.

The Saudis saw Nasser as a nationalist firebrand arousing Arab masses against colonialism and Arab monarchies. He supported national liberation movements and wars of independence against the French in North Africa and the British in the Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf.

The Saudi monarchy viewed Nasser’s call for Arab unity “from the roaring ocean to the rebellious Gulf” as a threat to their survival and declared a war on “secular” Arab nationalism and “atheist” Communism. They perceived Nasser’s war in Yemen against the tribal monarchy as an existential threat at their door and began to fund and arm the royalists there against the Egyptian military campaign.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the two opposite poles of the “Arab cold war” during the 1950s and ‘60s. Nasser represented emerging Arab republicanism while Saudi Arabia epitomized traditional monarchies. Nasser turned to the Soviet Union; Saudi Arabia turned to the United States.

In the late 1960s, Saudi Arabia declared the proselytization of its brand of Islam as a cardinal principle of its foreign policy for the purpose of fighting Arab nationalism and Communism.

It’s ironic that Saudi Arabia is currently supporting and funding the military junta in Egypt at a time when the military-turned-civilian presidential shoe-in Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is resurrecting the Nasserist brand of politics. In the next three to five years, the most intriguing analytic question will be whether this partnership would endure and how long the post-2011 generation of Arabs would tolerate a coalition of secular autocracy and a religious theocracy.

Saudi Arabia supported Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat’s war against Israel in 1973 but broke with him later in that decade after he visited Jerusalem and signed a peace treaty with Israel.

By the early 1980s, however, the two countries re-established close relations because of their common interest in supporting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and in pushing for the Saudi-articulated Arab Peace Initiative.

The Saudi King viewed President Hosni Mubarak warmly and was dismayed by his fall. He was particularly incensed by Washington’s seeming precipitous abandonment of Mubarak in January 2011.

The Saudi monarchy applauded General al-Sisi’s removal of President Muhammad Morsi and pumped billions of dollars into the Egyptian treasury. They also indicated they would make up any deficit in case American aid to Egypt is halted.

The Saudis have endorsed Sisi’s decision to run for president of Egypt and adopted similar harsh policies against the Muslim Brotherhood and all political dissent. Several factors seem to push Saudi Arabia closer to Egypt.

The Saudis are concerned about their growing loss of influence and prestige in the region, especially their failure in thwarting the interim nuclear agreement between the Iran and world powers known as the P5+1. Their policy in Syria is in shambles.

Initially, they encouraged jihadists to go to Syria to fight the Assad regime, but now they cannot control the pro-al-Qaeda radical Salafi jihadists fighting the Damascus tyrant.

The Saudis also failed in transforming the Gulf Cooperation Council into a more unified structure. Other than Bahrain, almost every other state has balked at the Saudi suggestion, viewing it as a power grab.

In an absurd form of retaliation against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from that country. The Saudis are engaged in tribal vendettas against their fellow tribal ruling families, which is out of place in a 21st century globalized and well-connected world.

The oil wealth and the regime’s inspired religious fatwas by establishment clerics have a diminishing impact on the younger generation connected to the global social media.

Despite the heavy-handed crackdown, protests, demonstrations, and confrontations with the security forces are a daily occurrence in Egypt. It’s becoming very clear that dictatorial policies are producing more instability, less security, and greater appeal to terrorism.

It won’t be long before Western governments conclude that autocracy is bad for their moral sensibilities, destructive for business, and threatening for their presence in the region. The Saudi-Egyptian coalition of autocrats will soon be in the crosshairs.

In order to endure, such a coalition must be based on respect for their peoples, a genuine commitment to human rights, and a serious effort to address the “deficits” of liberty, education, and women’s rights that have afflicted Arab society for decades.

Photo: Photo released by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) shows Egypt’s Interim President Adly Mansour (L) listening to Saudi Crown Prince Salman after his arrival in the Saudi Red Sea port city of Jeddah on Oct. 7, 2013. Credit: Xinhua/SPA

by Henry Precht

It seems a shame to let all that fol-de-rol from the Olympics be cast aside after such an abbreviated run. As Sochi revealed to us novices, there are always new, curious forms of sport that merit recognition.

One of those with growing multi-seasonal appeal to large groups of men and [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Henry Precht

It seems a shame to let all that fol-de-rol from the Olympics be cast aside after such an abbreviated run. As Sochi revealed to us novices, there are always new, curious forms of sport that merit recognition.

One of those with growing multi-seasonal appeal to large groups of men and women in the streets is the popular coup or revolution game. Worldwide, these outbreaks — while spontaneous and adopting local rules of engagement — must adhere to certain principles of revolution that have been set forth by seasoned scholars and pundits parachuting in.

Let’s see who garners the top medals in the twelve prescribed categories:

1. Revolution brings together people of disparate ideologies and goals who are united only in seeking to bring down an autocrat; after success only one faction survives and exercises autocratic dominance over the former allies

Gold Medal: Iran; Silver: Egypt; Bronze: Syria (pending)

2. Revolution begins with economic grievances, adds political complaints and, after success, continues in reverse order, i.e., political, then economic gripes

Gold Medal: Tunisia; Silver: Egypt; Bronze: Ukraine (pending)

3. Parliamentary or other opposition with highest potential for splitting off their territory from the nation

Gold Medal: Ukraine Silver: Taliban Bronze: Arizona

4. Outsiders support opposition forces who are (1) long term enemies or (2) become so

Gold Medal: Syria; Silver: Egypt; Bronze: Libya

5. Outsiders cannot remember who is fighting whom or for what purpose

Gold Medal: Thailand; Silver: Yemen; Bronze: Bosnia

6. Opposition pleads for religious or sectarian freedom, but proponents of those virtues do not listen and persist with oppression

Gold Medal: Israel; Silver: Bahrain; Bronze: China (in Tibet)

7. Victorious opposition which has fought for religious freedom later oppresses its fellow citizens

Gold Medal: South Sudan; Silver: Iraq; Bronze: Turkey

8. Most outrageous assertions of guilt of opposition and purity of rulers

Gold Medal: Egypt; Silver: Saudi Arabia; Bronze: Russia

9. Opposition condemns rival party overreach while raking in cash from wealthy power centers

Gold Medal: Tea Party; Silver: Egypt; Bronze: South Africa

10. Highest level of distrust maintained towards its American partner in the struggle against revolutionaries

Gold Medal: Afghanistan; Silver: Israel; Bronze: Egypt

11. Most comfortable middle class opposition movement

Gold Medal: Venezuela; Silver: Turkey; Bronze: Scotland

12. Most determined to kill as many of its own people as necessary to hold or achieve power

Gold Medal: Syria; Silver: Al Qaeda in Iraq/Syria; Bronze: Chechnya

by Jasmin Ramsey

Almost 1,000 Egyptians have died, according to the official count, since Aug. 14 when Egypt’s armed forces began clamping down on Muslim Brotherhood-led protests against the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. That number well exceeds the 846 people who officials say died during the 18 days of protest [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jasmin Ramsey

Almost 1,000 Egyptians have died, according to the official count, since Aug. 14 when Egypt’s armed forces began clamping down on Muslim Brotherhood-led protests against the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. That number well exceeds the 846 people who officials say died during the 18 days of protest that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule in Jan. 2011.

The democratically elected Morsi, a leading member of the MB, has not been seen in public since Jul. 3. But Mubarak has been released from prison into house arrest while he faces retrial. Egyptian media has for the most part adopted the language of the army in framing the unrest — Muslim brotherhood members are alleged “terrorists” who are trying to destroy the country.

While the US, who the Egyptian media claims conspired with the Brotherhood, has cancelled military exercises with Egypt and urged both sides to halt violence, it has so far resisted calls for halting military aid to its strategically positioned ally.

The rapid turn of events in Egypt, from a revolution to perhaps a “counterrevolution”, has left US President Barack Obama in quandary. Having eventually supported the fall of Mubarak, the US looks hypocritical in continuing its relationship with the military as authoritarian rule is restored.

In an interview with IPS, Emile Nakhleh, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Islamic Strategic Analysis Program, explained why repression will not prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from continuing its existence as a rooted, cultural and political force. Continued repression could also push the Brotherhood’s younger members to embrace violence as a political tool.

The US should pursue its own interests in Egypt, which “do not necessarily equate with dictatorial repressive regimes,” the Middle East expert told IPS. “In the long run, democratically elected governments will be more stable than these autocratic regimes.”

Q: There are different accounts circulating, especially in the Egyptian media, about what the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) actually is. Can you provide some background?

A: The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 as a social, religious, educational, political and partly military movement. It was founded against British colonialism and with it came the fight for Palestine, starting in the early 30s. Its main ideology is as follows: Islam is the solution. And the 3 D’s in Arabic, which translate to Islam is faith, state and society. There is to be no separation between the mosque and state in any of these.

The Muslim Brotherhood spread more than any other party in the Middle East in the last 85 years. It focused heavily on Islam, but took all those other things into consideration. And then of course they got involved in politics. That put them in conflict with the monarchy at the time. In 1948 this conflict became violent. Muslim Brotherhood members assassinated the Egyptian Prime Minister and in turn, the regime assassinated the founder of the MB in 1949.

By the mid-90′s, the Brotherhood decided to forgo violence and move toward their original mission, Da’wa, to proselytize their doctrine by Islamizing society from below. They wouldn’t allow themselves to be removed by force; they saw what happened in Algeria in 1991 and redirected their ideology to society itself, modeled after that American baseball-feed ideology, you know, you build it and they will come. So you Islamicize society from below and once society becomes Islamicized, you can establish a position in government and become a Shari’a-friendly government.

This process started in the late 80s, when the MB entered 4 or 5 parliamentary elections as independents or in alliance with other parties, such as the Wafd Party and the Labor Socialist party. Why? Because the government passed Law 100, which prohibited religious parties from participating in politics.

In the 2005 election, the MB won 88 seats in parliament, the largest ever for the MB. But they ran as independents. They emerged as the largest opposition party in parliament after Mubarak’s ruling party. In their 85-year history, the MB has been banned and repressed by regimes — from King Faruk to Mubarak; that’s why they’re not going away. They’re part and parcel of the religious foundation of Egyptian society.

With every regime Egypt has had since 1948, the relationship with the MB has always initially been good and then soured toward the end. Gamal Abdel Nasser was the same. He reached out to the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954 and by 1955-6, when a plot to assassinate him was uncovered, the Muslim Brotherhood was repressed and exiled. Then in 1966 Nasser’s government hanged one of the MB’s conservative thinkers, Sayyid Qutb.

Q: Is that what’s happening now, with the army’s arrest of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mohamed Badie?

A: Qutb was actually more of a radical thinker than the mainstream MB. It’s also very interesting to note that a number of MB activists were exiled to Saudi Arabia where they established a more radical view of Islam. That view led Saudi Arabia to oppose Nasser’s actions in Yemen and other Arab nationalist projects.

Q: The Saudis welcomed the MB because they were Salafis?

A: The Saudis welcomed the MB with open arms because they were Salafis and because they were opposed to the secular Arab nation ideology that was preached by Nasser. The MB’s relationship with Nasser soured until 1970 when Nasser died and Anwar Sadat came to power. Sadat also began to court the MB as a countervailing force against leftist and Nasserist nationalist ideology.

The MB’s influence really began in the 1970s when they reconstituted themselves as a religious party that underpinned society. The constitution reflected Islam and allowed them freedom to preach and participate in associations, so much so that by the 1980s, the MB, through elections, controlled almost every professional association and university student council.

That scared the hell out of Hosni Mubarak, who also tried to court the MB in the beginning. It was, by the way, Mubarak who approved a change in the constitution to say Sharia is the source of legislation.

General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s game is thus very dangerous. It will fail because the MB is the most organized and the most disciplined in Egypt and because they have been used to repression from Farouk to Nasser to Sadat and to Mubarak. Sadat allowed the MB to reconstitute itself and invited MB exiles to return home, but by the late 1970s, the MB broke with Sadat because of his trip to Jerusalem and the peace treaty with Israel. At that time, the entire Arab world broke with Sadat.

Although Sadat warmed up to the MB, he never recognized them as a political party, only as a social religious element, which was great for the MB. This gave them freedom to penetrate the soft ministries, education and welfare, and establish all kinds of religious schools, alongside al-Azhar University. Because of that, religious education under their guidance began to expand tremendously.

Q: Should military aid to Egypt be stopped?

Aid should be cut off. We supported the removal of Mubarak so we can’t support the resurrection of a military dictatorship. The cut-off by itself is not enough. It should be accompanied by a high-level conversation about Egypt’s future in accordance with the ideas of Egypt’s January 2011 revolution. In Bahrain, we should make it very clear to the al-Khalifas that repression and exclusion of the Shia majority cannot continue.

Q: How much does Egypt need the US and how much does Egypt — especially the Egyptian army — need the US?

A: Don’t forget that most of Egypt’s military aid is spent in this country for weapons systems. But that’s not the main reason for the aid. U.S. military aid to Egypt has been a tool of American national interests, which are to maintain the peace treaty with Israel, give us priority over the Suez Canal and flights over Egypt, etc, and to help us with the war on terror, especially since 9/11.

There’s a side interest, too: Egypt’s role with the Palestinians and Hamas and the push for negotiations. The main interlocutor with Hamas over the years has been Egyptian intelligence folks like Omar Suleiman.

Q: Does the Egyptian military truly fear the US stopping aid?

A: The military would be devastated if the US stopped aid because of the training the US provides and also because of the prestige. All the statements by Egyptian officials contradicting this notion is just talk.

Q: What if Saudi Arabia steps in to support the military more than it is already supporting them, as it has offered to do?

A: The Egyptian military doesn’t want to be beholden to Saudi Arabia. One of Sadat’s primary goals in reaching out to the US was to reestablish relations with the US after the October 1973 War, specifically so Egypt could acquire that training and prestige. Threatening to halt aid will be met with tremendous consternation by the Egyptian army.

Q: So the US stops the aid. Then what?

A: It’s a 2-way street. Consider our national interests, but it’s also in Egypt’s interest to maintain the peace treaty, by the way. Even Morsi wasn’t going to touch it. And when there was terrorism in the Sinai, he worked with the Israelis in fighting it.

The president’s speech in Cairo in 2009 was important because, at least rhetorically, it reflected the belief that the Islamic world is diverse and there is a distinction between the majority and the minority who are the radicals. We need to engage mainstream Muslims. He believed in that and has been interested in engaging mainstream parties that have been elected through peaceful and fair processes. That’s why he accepted to work with the MB and the Freedom and Justice Party.

Q: There was an article article in the New York Times on July 10 suggesting that the ouster of Morsi was actually planned from early on. What’s your take?

A: Morsi appointed el-Sisi himself and el-Sisi turned against him. Elements of the old regime and the so-called Egyptian liberals, who never accepted the election results, plotted from day one to undo Morsi. That’s not to say that Morsi did not make mistakes. He reneged on most of his promises. He promised to include women and Egyptian minorities in the country’s decision-making processes and he did not. But the old guard and the military never forgave Morsi for finally removing Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. So even after Morsi’s hard work, he brought in el-Sisi. Well, el-Sisi pretended that he supported Morsi but in fact he didn’t. There’s an unholy alliance between the military, the old regime and Egypt’s so-called liberals against Morsi. It’s also a fact that the revolution removed Mubarak but it did not remove the regime. So after Morsi came to power, the ministries and their bureaucrats began to torpedo his program. There were lines in Cairo after the flow of oil was restricted and somehow they disappeared shortly after Morsi was toppled.

And then el-Sisi called on people to go to the streets and give him a “mandate” to act in the national interest and remove Morsi. In January 2011, people went into the streets to remove Mubarak, and in 2013, by el-Sisi’s request, they removed Morsi. Very soon they are going to discover that this is a military dictatorship and they’re going to go into the streets again.

Q: Why is the military so revered in Egypt?

A: In addition to everything else, they have a first-rate propaganda machine. They have a tremendous public relations operation. They are masters at what we call strategic communication with the public. They probably control more than 30% of the Egyptian economy, much like China, Pakistan and Iran

The military claimed during the Nasser regime and then under Sadat that it did a great job in its wars with Israel and it was the politicians who actually undermined their missions. They are always blaming someone else. So it has emerged as symbol of national sovereignty. Nasser gave that impression when he took over the Suez Canal in 1956.

Every president since the end of the monarchy in Egypt has come from the ranks of the military. So they remove their military uniform, don a suit and become president. Morsi was the first president since 1954 who didn’t come from the military and the military didn’t trust him. I’m not a defender of Morsi, he made many mistakes, but this was the first freely, fairly, democratically elected leader since Egyptian independence. All the others were selected through sham elections with a lack of viable political opposition.

Q: What do Saudi Arabia’s explicit calls to back up the Egyptian military financially in battling the Muslim Brotherhood say about US-Saudi relations?

A: The Saudis are terrified of the MB as a reform movement. Now Saudi Arabia is also playing a dangerous game. A coalition of Arab autocrats is trying to stifle democracy because they do not like these revolutionary movements and are terrified of seeing them in their own countries. That’s why the Saudis sent troops to Bahrain to control the Shia, they said. When no one bought this argument, they said they were battling terrorism. And they say they are trying to kill it in Egypt, which is the main Arab country. If it’s killed there, they will feel more comfortable in their rule.

But this is not about the MB in Egypt or the Shia in Bahrain. Its about reform movements and opposition to repressive regimes in those countries.

Q: What options does President Obama have at this point?

A: The president had to face a new reality with the Arab Spring. He decided on going with the pro-democracy movements and that’s why he supported the removal of dictators in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Now, he has been a bit silent on Bahrain, even though the American ambassador has spoken out. I think the United States has got to create a clear balance between national security and our democratic values and it has to communicate such a balance to the American people and to peoples in the region clearly.

We should still pursue our own interests, but they do not necessarily equate with dictatorial repressive regimes. In the long run, democratically elected governments will be more stable than these autocratic regimes.

Q: Which means the US should be willing to make some sacrifices in the short-term?

A: I think so, yes. You can’t have a cookie-cutter approach to the whole region. For Bahrain, you should emphasize that if the ruling family wants to maintain its rule, they should seriously engage in dialogue with the opposition, should stop human rights abuses, release political prisoners from jail and provide the Shia majority equal access to employment in government sectors, including the military and security services.

Q: Won’t these autocratic regimes worry that implementing reforms will present more challenges to their rule?

A: They believe that they can maintain power through repression, but they should know by now that staying in power can’t be guaranteed without popular support. Look at what we’re seeing in Egypt, in Syria, in Libya…

What concerns me is that in Bahrain and Egypt, our personnel are being threatened; our ambassadors are being vilified in the media, which in Egypt and in Bahrain are the mouthpieces of the regime. The autocratic regimes in both countries run sophisticated PR campaigns. The al-Khalifa in Bahrain believe the US supports Bahrain’s Shia! The Egyptian military and some liberals believe the US supports the MB and Morsi.

So this lack of clarity in our positions is generating personal threats to our diplomatic personnel, journalists and private citizens in those countries.

Q: Is Egypt becoming a military state?

The military regime is making it clearly so. Arresting the General Guide of the MB, at el-Sisi’s instructions, which no previous regime has done, signals that the military regime is here to stay.

I worry about Egypt. I really think by moving to reinstate military rule, the el-Sisi regime is inviting more violence.

Something worries me more. In the last 20 years, the MB and other mainstream Islamic political parties have supported man-made democracy and rejected al-Qaeda’s calls, including its calls against participating in this election. And now, with democracy being torpedoed by the military, this is something that the younger generation is going to tell the older leadership within the MB — that we tried democracy and it failed and the only alternative is violence.

We might see the rise of a youthful generation in the MB that no longer believes in democracy as a viable political system.

Q: Where is the Egyptian revolution heading?

A: El-Sisi has presented himself as a guardian of national sovereignty, not a new Mubarak. It’s going to be a while before the so-called liberal and mainstream Egyptians begin to see the reality of the new military regime in Egypt. And in the meantime, the youthful members of the Muslim Brotherhood are going to turn to violence if their peaceful protests continue to be violently repressed.

Q: So far the only country where the so-called Arab Spring has had seemingly stable results is Tunisia, where a moderate Islamic government remains in place. What do you see in Egypt’s future?

The toppling of Morsi in Egypt doesn’t mean the failure of Islam or Islamic politics. It represents the failure of a particular leader in a particular country at a particular time. In Tunisia, Moncef Marzouki and Rachid Ghannouchi avoided the mistakes that Morsi made. The ruling party, Ennahda, has tried to be more inclusive and consult with other groups and parties and be more open. That’s why by comparison, Tunisia has succeeded despite the killing of two senior opposition members.

To be fair, the MB and Morsi inherited a very dysfunctional economy. The economy in Tunisia was much better by comparison. And frankly, there’s no way in hell that any party in Egypt would have been able to address Egypt’s economic issues in 1 year. If the military stays in government in the next year and they also don’t address Egypt’s severe economic problems, including unemployment and tourism, people are going to ask again, what have you done for us? That’s why I argued earlier this year that if they had just waited for Morsi to finish his term, he would have never been re-elected. We should never worry about the first election; we always should look at the 2nd and 3rd elections.

Photo Credit: Charles Roffey

by Mitchell Plitnick

The comedy of errors that is US involvement in Egypt is reaching new heights. The Obama administration continues to be torn by conflicting preferences and concerns. This week its blunders reached new heights after it blessed the trip of Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to Egypt. The [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

The comedy of errors that is US involvement in Egypt is reaching new heights. The Obama administration continues to be torn by conflicting preferences and concerns. This week its blunders reached new heights after it blessed the trip of Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to Egypt. The ensuing farce was inevitable.

The GOP Senators are somewhat less obstructionist than others in their party; they have not always opposed Barack Obama’s policies simply because they were his policies. While many of the current Republican crew are virtually absolute in opposing anything Obama does, McCain, in particular, has only done that most of the time. But they are certainly not Obama’s allies, and, while the administration made it clear that the duo were not their representatives in Egypt, it was almost certain they would only complicate matters. So, they did.

By hypocritically (even if accurately) labelling the military’s ouster of President Mohammed Morsi a coup, McCain and Graham further aggravated the box of Obama’s indecision. If anyone believes the good Senators are sincere in their call for the interim government to engage with the Muslim Brotherhood, they need only recall McCain’s description of them in 2011: “I think they are a radical group that first of all supports Sharia law; that in itself is anti-democratic — at least as far as women are concerned. They have been involved with other terrorist organizations and I believe that they should be specifically excluded from any transition government.” Does anyone seriously believe his views have changed so much in two years?

Moreover, while Graham and McCain made it clear they consider Morsi’s ouster a coup, they also support continuing aid to Egypt, which would be forbidden under US law if there was indeed a military coup.

But McCain and Graham are only one side of the coin. On the other is US Secretary of State John Kerry and his ill-advised statement that the military acted to “restore Egyptian democracy” when they ejected a duly elected president. In other words, we had the administration’s lead diplomat angering the Muslim Brotherhood with his statement, and GOP senators infuriating the military and its current government with their own. A nice double whammy.

As I pointed out last week, this sort of snafu is the result of indecisiveness on Obama’s part regarding how to respond to the events in Egypt. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) represents the old Egypt, the one the US had a very cozy relationship with, and their announced agenda in the wake of deposing Morsi was for a new transition to a civilian government. But despite that, SCAF still ousted a democratically elected president in a military coup. The Muslim Brotherhood was one of a number of so-called moderate Islamist governments coming to power in the region in recent years, and might have represented a worrying trend for the Western interests of a potential region-wide alliance of states including Tunisia, Turkey and possibly others as change continues in the Arab world. The Brotherhood shot themselves in the foot by trying to impose their will on Egypt and attempting to re-establish a nearly dictatorial presidency and failing to take significant action on the economy. It seems, from current polls, that the Brotherhood has a lot less support in Egypt than they once did. But they were ousted in a coup, and while their protests are not winning over hearts and minds, neither is the harsh crackdown by the government.

What the US is seeing now is the potential for the Brotherhood to rebound from this major setback by taking up their familiar position of a besieged minority. Indeed, one of the greatest obstacles to reconciliation in Egypt is the Brotherhood’s willingness to embrace that familiar role again, and the government’s apparent willingness to use excessive force, which will enable the Brotherhood to regain some of the sympathy it has lost, if not now, at least in the long-term.

The military and Brotherhood seem both to be pursuing their agendas while remaining completely deaf to the interests and legitimacy of the other side. Indeed, while the Brotherhood is casting the military as just the latest in a long line of military usurpers in Egypt, the SCAF is portraying its adversary’s actions as a part of a “war on terror”, with the Brotherhood in the role of al-Qaeda. That will resonate in the West, which has a tendency to view all Islamists with the same lens. But such abject demonization is likely to have lasting and divisive effects, not only in Egypt, but throughout an Arab world already seething with conflict.

The words of McCain and Graham have perhaps chilled some of the US’ cozy relationship with the SCAF, but the SCAF leadership is well aware of the fact that the Senators do not speak for the Obama administration. In the end, their work will make Obama’s job a bit harder, mostly because they made the entire United States look foolish and poorly organized.

Kerry’s words, however, will prove to be a much greater impediment to US diplomacy in Egypt. By legitimizing the coup, Kerry may well have eliminated any chance for US mediation toward the goal of a truly inclusive government — the only alternative to anti-democratic rule by iron-fist or more spiralling chaos in Egypt. With the Brotherhood’s supporters continuing their protests, while apparently engendering only minority support among the Egyptian populace for such actions, and the military government continuing — and perhaps soon escalating — its crackdown on the Islamist forces it has recently characterized as terrorist elements, true mediation is needed now more than ever. But the waters are now so poisoned that the US and EU may be unable to help even with pure motives.

Considered together, the words of Kerry, Graham and McCain reflect the confusion of US policy in Egypt. It is an absence of policy, caused by a conflict between a desire to see the Middle East move toward moderate Islamist politics on the one hand and the understanding that a return to dictatorship, and the accompanying crackdowns on Islamists, is not going to bring the stability that, above all else, the West most desires. Those conflicting impulses have paralyzed US policymaking and brought about the comedy of errors we are now witnessing.

Ironically, the Brotherhood and related parties throughout the region were already marginalizing themselves and screwing up their chances at power. All the US and the Egyptian military had to do was let them hoist themselves on their own petard. Even now, freeing Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders in Egypt and allowing the people to vote again can well be expected to produce a very different result than it did in 2011. The deafness of all sides to the other — and the refusal to allow political processes to take their own course — has narrowed the options on all sides, leaving few good ones for anyone, especially the United States.

by Mitchell Plitnick

It’s time to ask some tough questions about US policy regarding Egypt. The most pressing being what that policy is, exactly?

I agreed with the easily assailable decision by the Obama administration to refrain from labelling the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup. It still [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

It’s time to ask some tough questions about US policy regarding Egypt. The most pressing being what that policy is, exactly?

I agreed with the easily assailable decision by the Obama administration to refrain from labelling the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup. It still is my belief that doing so might be consistent with US law, but would not be helpful to Egypt. Instead of taking funding away from the military which, since it now directly controls the Egyptian till, would simply divert the lost funds from other places (causing even more distress to an already reeling Egyptian economy) it would be better to use the aid as leverage to push the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) toward an inclusive political process that would include drafting a broadly acceptable constitution and, with all due speed, re-installing a duly elected civilian government.

Yet, despite rhetoric supporting just such an outcome, the United States has done nothing to push for such an Egyptian future. The withholding of four F-16 fighter planes means nothing; the SCAF knows they will get the planes in due course and they have no immediate need for them. Mealy-mouthed statements from US officials calling for “all sides” to show restraint are boilerplate and meaningless, all the more so in the wake of the massive violence last weekend, where scores of Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were slaughtered.

What is the US’ desired outcome? Surely, the Obama administration is not comfortable with the level of violence we are currently seeing in Egypt. And equally surely, however much SCAF might be the familiar partner — the one we know and who can be counted on to cooperate with US policy initiatives — the administration must realize that a renewal of the sort of military dictatorship embodied by Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak cannot be re-installed permanently in Egypt anymore.

But it is also clear that the United States was not at all comfortable with the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt, or the rise, swept in by the Arab Awakening, of the moderate, anti-Salafist version of political Islam the Brotherhood represented. (Before there is any confusion, I do not believe the West did anything to hasten the downfall of Morsi in Egypt, nor to create the agitation against similar regimes in Tunisia and Turkey. But neither do I believe that Morsi’s failure elicited anything but satisfaction in Washington.)

The question of the US response to the coup in Egypt is not simply about Egypt. It is about the region more broadly. It is about Tunisia, the Gaza Strip, Syria and Turkey. The desire to pivot away from the Middle East, as well as Obama’s disdain for Bush-style “democracy promotion”, meant the US wouldn’t do much about the spread of political Islam. But when Morsi and, now, the Tunisian Ennahda Party, stumbled badly, they certainly didn’t mind.

The Turkish AKP seemed, at first, to have integrated some liberal values, including neo-liberal economics, with Islamist politics, but that too has frayed in 2013. US discomfort with Turkey was certainly sharpened by Turkish support for the Hamas government in Gaza. But it struck harder as Morsi’s Egypt and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s became closer and, using the historic prestige both countries have in the Muslim world, staked out regional leadership roles. There was every possibility that similar Islamist governments could emerge in Jordan and Syria, along with Libya. In time, the Gulf States could also see similar uprisings (as Bahrain already has) that, if successful, might give rise to Islamist governments. The possibility of that sort of regional unity must have given pause to policymakers in Washington, Jerusalem, London, Paris and even Moscow.

So it is not surprising that the US is lobbing rhetoric, rather than substantive pressure, as SCAF seeks to hammer the Brotherhood back into submission; back into an outlaw role. The declaration by SCAF Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that the crackdown on the Brotherhood was part of a renewed “war on terror” was hardly lost on Western observers. Nor was the accompanying action against Hamas in Gaza, which is of a piece with the domestic battle against the Brotherhood. The US may feel that the SCAF is going too far with its tactics and risking long term instability, but they cannot object to the goal of neutralizing the Brotherhood and similar organizations in the region as a political force.

This is all a serious mis-read of the realities in the Middle East. Morsi brought the strife upon himself, with his bungling governance, his transparent attempt at a power grab and ignoring his campaign promises to create an inclusive government an restrain his own party’s Islamist leanings. The June 30 protest was a very real statement of dissatisfaction.

But since June 30, history has been re-written in Egypt. The Brotherhood was somehow cast as having been an illegitimate ruling party all along. Their electoral victory was supposedly a reflection of the fact that they were the only group that was organized and thus took advantage of hastily scheduled elections. This, of course, completely ignores the fact that the Brotherhood was not the only Islamist party to garner significant support. In fact, 368 of the 508 parliamentary seats went to Islamist parties. Only 115 were garnered by the liberals, centrists and leftists combined. The Egyptian people, having been burned by half a century of secular(ish) dictatorship, wanted to try something new. When that didn’t work, they protested and moved in a different direction. It’s called democracy.

And while June 30 certainly represented widespread dissatisfaction with the Morsi government, the numbers quoted have been called into serious doubt, and it is not at all clear that those demonstrating also supported a coup. What is clear is that the Brotherhood still has significant support in Egypt, along with major opposition. Driving them underground and labelling them terrorists is unlikely to produce a stable Egypt. A better tactic would have been to allow popular disenchantment with the Brotherhood to continue to grow and express itself in the ballot box.

In the last analysis, the US is largely standing by and watching rather than using the leverage it has with the SCAF to push for an inclusive political transition. The hope is surely that a stable Egypt will emerge after a death blow has been dealt to political Islam, not only in Egypt but throughout the region. That hope seems a bit too ambitious. The words of Professor Fawaz Gerges seem to encapsulate the larger view well:

The military’s removal of Morsi undermines Egypt’s fragile democratic experiment because there is a real danger that once again the Islamists will be suppressed and excluded from the political space. The writing is already on the wall with the arrest of Morsi and the targeting of scores of Brotherhood leaders. This does not bode well for the democratic transition because there will be no institutionalization of democracy without the Brotherhood, the biggest and oldest mainstream religiously based Islamist movement in the Middle East… As the central Islamist organization established in 1928, the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood’s first experience in power will likely taint the standing and image of its branches and junior ideological partners in Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and even Tunisia and Morocco. Hamas is already reeling from the violent storm in Cairo and the Muslim Brothers in Jordan are feeling the political heat and pressure at home. The Syrian Islamists are disoriented and fear that the tide has turned against them. The liberal-leaning opposition in Tunisia is energized and plans to go on the offensive against Ennahda. Even the mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gulen Movement in Turkey are watching unfolding developments in neighboring Egypt with anxiety and disquiet. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to pen the obituary of the Islamist movement.

The US is allowing stability to be sacrificed in the hope that political Islam will be dealt a death blow. It is possible, of course, that its ability to affect SCAF’s behavior is limited, but this seems unlikely. SCAF is dependent on its good relations with the US and Europe; it won’t simply ignore significant pressure from Washington. More likely, that pressure is as absent in private as it obviously is in public. The US will probably pay a long-term price for such a short-sighted strategy. Par for the course in the Middle East. One can only hope that the recent efforts by the European Union, including a visit to Morsi by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, bodes some sort of change in Western policy with Egypt.

Lobe Log contributor Emile Nakhleh, an expert on political Islam and Middle Eastern society, recently provided a fascinating primer on Bahrain to the Bahrain Mirror (Arabic version), an e-newspaper run by Bahraini dissidents. As discussed in the Mirror’s introduction, prior to becoming the CIA’s former chief regional analyst, Dr. [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Lobe Log contributor Emile Nakhleh, an expert on political Islam and Middle Eastern society, recently provided a fascinating primer on Bahrain to the Bahrain Mirror (Arabic version), an e-newspaper run by Bahraini dissidents. As discussed in the Mirror’s introduction, prior to becoming the CIA’s former chief regional analyst, Dr. Nakhleh conducted field research in Bahrain from 1972-73 as the first US scholar to do so, with complete access to the country’s societal benchmarks. This ultimately resulted in Nakhleh’s book, Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society, one of the most important references on Bahrain to date. Following is the unedited interview, which has been translated into English from Arabic by the Mirror.

Bahrain Mirror: Does the “Urban Tribalism” model that you discussed in your Bahrain book in the 1970s still
apply today?

Dr. Emile Nakhleh: Despite the passage of 40 years since I researched and wrote my book on Bahrain, the tribal model, unfortunately, still applies to the rule of Al Khalifa family in the country. The hopes that Bahraini citizens—Shia and Sunni—had pinned on the elections of the Constituent Assembly and the National Assembly in 1972-73 and on the constitution which the late Amir Shaykh Issa bin Salman Al Khalifa promulgated in 1974, were dashed two years later. By 1975, the Al Khalifa reverted to its autocratic rule of the country without any input from the citizens. After 1975, when the National Assembly was dissolved and the constitution was frozen, the ruling family continued to view the country and its people as part of Al Khalifa domain.

In fact, many of the key posts—including in the Royal Diwan, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Justice, etc—are currently held by children and grand children of the early founders of Al Khalifa rule. Bahrainis have generally expressed loyalty and allegiance to the head of the Al Khalifa tribe because of at least four reasons. First, Bahrainis generally liked and respected Shaykh ‘Issa. Second, the people were committed to the nationalist idea of an independent Bahrain. Third, many human rights activists in the 1970s, both Shia and Sunnis, remained hopeful that Shaykh ‘Issa would resurrect the National Assembly and re-instate the constitution. Fourth, most human rights activists and a majority of Bahrainis did not view calls for political reform and government accountability as a reflection of a sectarian divide in the country. On the contrary, most activists called for freedoms of speech and assembly and an accountable and transparent government for all Bahrainis. My field research at the time showed that many Bahraini business people resented the pervasive political and financial control that Shaykh Khalifa, the Prime Minister and brother of the Amir, exercised over contracts, dealerships, and projects—from hotel construction to land reclamation and development.

Many of them privately described him as “Mr. 10 percent, 40 percent, or 50 percent” depending on the perceived percentage they thought he got from specific contracts. Pro-reform dissidents maintained the Al Khalifa tribe ran Bahrain as a fiefdom without accountability to the public. After the Iranian Revolution in 1978-79, Shaykh Khalifa and his security forces justified their control as a way to thwart what they perceived as Iran’s support of Shia activism on the Arab side of the Gulf.

Mirror: How will the Arab Spring touch the Gulf Arab states? The 2001 National Charter promised a new reformist constitution, but unfortunately, the people were disappointed because the Amir (renamed King after 2002) reneged on the reform promises he made to the people in 1999. What trajectory will the pro-reform movement take and what impact will it have on the country?

Dr. Emile Nakhleh: Despite the tribal and dynastic nature of rule in Bahrain, the Arab Spring has touched the country, whether the ruling family likes it or not. Demands for dignity, respect, equality, and freedom of expression know no national boundaries. In a sense, the ruling family has been fortunate in that the key demands of the Bahraini opposition initially did not call for regime change. They focused on establishing a nationally elected parliament with full legislative powers, re-instating the 1974 constitution, replacing the Prime Minister, an independent judiciary, a transparent and accountable government, and an end to discriminatory practices against the Shia majority, especially in employment in the security services, the armed forces, hospitals, universities, and government-controlled corporations and financial institutions.

Those demands were neither sectarian nor driven by Iran. Continued regime repression and unlawful arrests of demonstrators have caused some protesters to raise the slogan of “regime change.” Whereas popular upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and now in Syria from day one called for regime change, in Bahrain the regime change demand is very recent. If wise heads and pro-reform leaders within the ruling family do not prevail, and if the King and the Crown Prince remain marginalized, Al Khalifa rule would become much more tenuous, violence would spread, more Bahraini blood would be shed, and radical elements would become a stronger voice within the pro-reform opposition. What is more troubling is that the authority of the King and his son the Crown Prince is slowly eroding and the anti-reform faction within the ruling family, whether the older generation represented by the Prime Minister or some of the younger senior ministers represented by the so-called “al-Khawalid,” are becoming more rabidly anti-Shia and more influential.

This faction is following the Saudi guidelines on how to oppose democratic reforms. Once Saudi troops entered Bahrain under the guise of the GCC security agreement, Bahrain for all intents and purposes fell under Saudi suzerainty. While the Al Khalifa old guard has welcomed this intervention, pro-reform elements within and outside the ruling family resented the Saudi military presence and accused the Prime Minister of engineering it. Although the Saudi military presence might serve Saudi Arabia’s anti-Iran and anti-Shia policy, in the long run it will bring immense harm to Bahraini stability, society, and government. Egypt’s more powerful military and security services failed to silence the youthful awakening at Tahrir Square. Bahraini security forces would equally fail to silence the opposition. The window for genuine dialogue between the King and the opposition over meaningful political reform is rapidly closing. Once the window closes, Bahrain will find itself in real economic and political trouble, and Al Khalifa leadership would lose the bay’ah of its people–Sunni and Shia.

Mirror: How do you assess US-Saudi troubled relations over democracy and reform in the region and how do you
envision the relationship to evolve?

Dr. Emile Nakhleh: Saudi-American relations over Arab Spring uprisings upheavals and democratic transitions
became soured since the US President endorsed the pro-democracy movement in Egypt and urged the Egyptian dictator to abdicate. Because of their close relations with Mubarak, the Saudis were angered by the US position and claimed the President was too quick to “throw Mubarak under the bus.” President Obama’s position was that the US would support a leader as long as he enjoys the confidence of his people. Once he loses that, he should go. That was the case with Mubarak in Egypt, Saleh in Yemen, Ben Ali in Tunisia, Qadhaffi in Libya, and now Assad in Syria. The Saudis find it difficult to accept any meaningful role for the people in determining what type of government they should have and who the country’s leader should be. Despite the decades-old strategic relationship between Washington and Riyadh, the Saudi leadership has yet to get over what happened to Mubarak.

This strategic relationship is grounded in a shared American-Saudi view about regional stability, strong military cooperation, oil exports, and Iran’s perceived hegemonic posture in the Gulf region. The US and Saudi Arabia work closely in the military-to military area, coordinate regularly on Iran, and generally see eye to eye on Syria. They disagree on government response to unrest in Bahrain and on the harsh crackdown by Al Khalifa against the Shia majority. Washington did not support the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain and believed such a step would inflame the situation further and would foment sectarianism. Riyadh has not shown any willingness to start a genuine dialogue between Al Khalifa and the opposition, nor does it to envision any meaningful role for the Shia majority in government. Because of concern over Iran’s nuclear program, the horrendous violence in Syria, the presence of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and the 2012 presidential election campaign in the US, the uprising in Bahrain was put on the backburner, at least for the time being. Washington, however, has consistently pushed the Bahraini government, albeit ever so gently, toward a dialogue with the pro-democracy movement and has encouraged the Crown Prince to play a more active role in promoting such dialogue. On the other hand, the US maintains a robust military presence throughout the Gulf and coordinates with Gulf governments in fighting terrorism in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, and in countering potential destabilizing actions by Iran.

The US so far has not used its considerable leverage with Al Khalifa to force a dialogue with the opposition. As many analysts had anticipated, the Saudi military intervention has failed to quash the uprising despite the virulent attitude toward the Shia community. On the contrary, it has energized the opposition despite continued regime repression, has empowered the anti-Shia hardliners within the Al Khalifa family, and has indirectly marginalized the King and his son the Crown Prince.

Mirror: Has Saudi Arabia used US dependence on Saudi oil and the huge US arms sales to the Kingdom to blackmail the US into taking a seemingly more tolerant attitude toward the Al Khalifa harsh tactics against pro-democracy activists? Is it possible to divorce US-Bahraini relations from Saudi-American relations?

Dr. Emile Nakhleh: Saudi Arabia has not attempted to influence US foreign policy toward the Bahraini uprising through blackmail. Such an attempt, if ever done, would be futile and will certainly backfire. As the US becomes self-sufficient in energy, as the war in Afghanistan winds down, and as Iran searches for a negotiated compromise with the international community over its nuclear program, the US would begin to explore strategies to reduce its military presence in the region.

Budgetary and fiscal decisions within the US government could also reduce US American military presence in the Gulf, to include the Fifth Fleet. According to some reports, in a decade and a half from now Saudi Arabia is expected to need between 6-8 million barrels of oil a day for domestic consumption, mainly in power generation and desalination. Consequently, the Kingdom would have less oil to export and less oil revenues. Within the same timeframe, the Saudi government would need more money to provide for the welfare of its citizens, especially in unemployment assistance, education, and health. With less money to spend and a potentially more peaceful relationship with Iran, The Saudi government would be less inclined to spend on massive arms purchases from the US or anywhere else. The government also would be unable to spend billions of dollars on pacifying the restive segments of its population, as King Abdallah did in response to the Arab Spring in 2011. If these projections materialize, the Saudi government would be forced to minimize its support for Sunni hardliners in Bahrain.

Al Khalifa would then be forced to respond to their people’s calls for democracy and justice without Saudi support. Currently, US-Bahraini relations seem to be tied closely to US-Saudi relations because of the pervasive Saudi economic and security influence in Bahrain. As the balance of power changes in the region over the next decade, and as the US reviews its strategic interests and commitments in the region, Al Khalifa would need to explore strategies for genuine reform and economic and social justice. The main challenge would be whether Al Khalifa would have the luxury of time to wait until then. The window of dialogue might close much sooner. If that happens, calls for regime change would trump calls for dialogue. Bahrain has assumed more significance than its size in the past two years because of the power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia; once, this struggle abates, Bahrain would again revert to being a small player in regional power configurations.

Mirror: How do you assess the pro-democracy forces and the democracy movement in Bahrain?

Dr. Emile Nakhleh: Like every Arab protest movement in the past two years, Bahrain’s pro-democracy uprising started peacefully demanding genuine political reform and government accountability. Like every regime where protests occurred, Al Khalifa resorted to violence and repression. As the government crackdown turned harsher and bloodier, and as the Al Khalifa Sunni government began to whip up the flames of anti-Shia sectarianism and shoot and beat peaceful protesters and torture prisoners, some in the pro-democracy movement began to question whether the ruling family was at all interested in reaching a compromise with the opposition. Calls for justice and dignity in Duwwar al-Lu’lu’ in Manama were not different from those in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

The responses of the Egyptian dictator and the Al Khalifa, however, differed significantly. Mubarak was convinced to abdicate before much blood was shed , while Al Khalifa, especially the Prime Minister, continue to cling to power. Although the Bahraini pro-democracy movement is indigenous and genuine, it is not monolithic. It consists of numerous Shia and Sunni religious and secular groups ranging from al-Wifaq to al-Wa’ad, al-Minbar, and al-Haqq, among others. As confrontations with government became more violent, some within the opposition began to opt for violence as a justified response to government repression. Others rejected violence and responded positively to some government calls for dialogue. There is also a generational divide within the uprising, with the youthful generation becoming more supportive of violence and opposed to dialogue. Al-Wifaq seems to have lost some of its influence, and the Sunni secular movements are becoming more marginalized.

The democracy movement is divided ideologically and generationally. Some factions still hope for a democratically reformed Bahrain under the umbrella of a “constitutional” Al Khalifa monarchy but without the current Prime Minister. Others, who consider the establishment of a constitutional monarchy as highly improbable, have come out for regime change. Despite the deep disagreements within the democracy movement over which strategies to pursue, most factions agree the current situation in Bahrain is unsustainable. The Al Khalifa dynasty can no longer maintain its grip on power as it did before February 2011.

Mirror: How do you assess the regime use of Iran as a scare tactic to gain Western support for its crackdown against the opposition?

Dr. Emile Nakhleh: The democracy and human rights movement in Bahrain has never been about Shia or about Iran despite regime claims to the contrary. Calls for political reform and labor rights started decades ago while Iran was still under the Shah. Most Bahraini Shia do not turn to Iranian Grand ayatollahs as their marja’. In fact, Bahraini Shia for the most part have followed Iraqi religious leaders in Najaf and Karbala as their source of emulation. Since the advent of the Arab Spring, the Al Khalifa government has parroted the argument of their Saudi benefactors that Iran was behind the protest movement in the Gulf Cooperation Council states. The West believes human rights advocates in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere are indigenous groups and not necessarily directed or controlled by Tehran. While continued unrest on the Arab side of the Gulf could benefit Iran’s short-term interests, the current Iranian regime is wary of pro-democracy protests lest they spread to Iran.

The Islamic Republic would not want to see a repeat of the June 2009 massive protests that followed the elections. Iran has already lost much of its influence in the Arab world because of its support of the Assad regime in Syria. Even Shia Hezbollah has lost much of its luster in the Arab street that was built following the 2006 Lebanon war because of its support of Assad. The Bahraini government’s argument that Iran is behind the unrest has not gotten any traction among policymakers in Washington, London, and other Western capitals. The West’s disagreements with Iran and international sanctions against that country are driven by Iran’s nuclear program, not by its perceived support of domestic unrest in Sunni Arab countries. The specter of the so-called Shia Crescent that was raised by Saudi Arabia, Mubarak’s Egypt, and Jordan a few years back has all but faded. In fact, many analysts in the West t now argue that a “Sunni Crescent” is on the ascendancy in the Arab world, and that Iran is becoming more isolated in the region.

As the Arab Spring turns two, job creation offers the key promise of success in post-autocratic societies. While other important lessons could be gleaned from the unprecedented Arab upheavals, economic growth is the most shining one. Unless Washington and other Western capitals understand the criticality of the economic factor and assist [...]]]> via Lobe Log

As the Arab Spring turns two, job creation offers the key promise of success in post-autocratic societies. While other important lessons could be gleaned from the unprecedented Arab upheavals, economic growth is the most shining one. Unless Washington and other Western capitals understand the criticality of the economic factor and assist in fostering an entrepreneurial environment in these societies, the lofty promise of the Arab Spring will quickly dissipate.

Job creation and economic growth are the litmus test of the success or failure of the Arab Spring. The economies of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya have not rebounded from the upheavals of 2011. The new governments remain bogged down in domestic political tumult and endless debates over the role of Islam in governance. They have yet to provide a hospitable environment for entrepreneurship and innovative start-up initiatives.

Democratic governance will not succeed until the new governments are able to provide jobs to their young job seekers. Arab societies will prosper when the youthful generation, men and women, believe they can attain a hopeful economic future. Political dignity cannot be sustained if the economy remains anemic with high unemployment rates among youth.

Last year the World Economic Forum judged the Middle East North Africa region would need to create 75 million jobs in the next decade just to keep employment with current levels. The private sector, not government, is the primary engine that could attain such an ambitious goal.

New enterprises will not grow if archaic statist laws in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen remain inhospitable to free market enterprises and continue to shackle potential investors. Young entrepreneurs who are willing to take risks in harnessing innovative technologies to start new businesses must have the freedom to explore regional and international avenues in search of capital for their projects without oppressive state interference in their activities and foreign connections.

According to the World Bank, job creation opportunities exist in many fields including transportation, restaurants, health care services, energy and water, commerce, care giving and childcare, printing and publishing, and consumer goods manufacturing.

The good news is that the failure rate of new start-ups in Arab countries in the past half-decade has been relatively small. What is particularly encouraging is that women now own and manage numerous enterprises in the region, ranging from traditional textiles to manufacturing. Maintaining this trend requires a new relationship between the state and the citizenry. Government accountability, transparency, and freedom to do business should underpin the new social contract as post-autocratic societies transition to democracy and private enterprise.

The entrepreneurial environment in the Arab world is currently ripe for growth and expansion. Technology, passion, and people power are driving youthful enterprises in all kinds of fields. Wael Ghoneim, the famed Egyptian Google executive who played a pivotal role in mobilizing for Tahrir Square in January 2011, said the newly acquired freedom to “imagine, dream, and innovate” was at the heart of the rising entrepreneurial spirit among the youth in the Arab world.

A fundamental challenge facing the new governments in the next five years, however, would be to dissuade bright, creative, entrepreneurial Middle Eastern youth from leaving their countries and seeking opportunities in Europe, North America, Australia, and other developed countries. A serious brain drain will be detrimental to the economies of the Arab world.

Economic resurgence offers the West numerous opportunities as well. Enterprising Arab youth have begun to explore new start-up opportunities, which require capital, investment risk taking, freedom from state control, and opportunities to travel abroad.

Western governments will be well advised to maintain a small footprint in domestic Arab economic development. Economic linkages, however, could be done through engaging credible, indigenous civil society and business organizations. Examples of these organizations include Abraaj Capital, ArabNet, and WAMDA. Young Arab entrepreneurs know very well that if they want to dream and create, they will have to connect with their counterparts in the US and other Western countries.

As we move beyond the second anniversary of the Arab Spring, Washington’s long-term relations with the region could become grounded in new concepts of stability and security that are defined by the private sector and entrepreneurial communities of interest. Policy and intelligence analysts should deepen their expertise in the domestic dynamics in new Arab societies. Relying solely on old analytic assumptions often misses the boat, as the failure to anticipate the Arab Spring has shown.

Photo: Passengers wait to board a train at Sadat Station in Cairo, Egypt. Credit: Asim Bharwani/Flickr