Syria part 2 – The Hafez al-Assad years

Hafez al-Assad became Syria's president in 1970, after a "corrective movement" ousted his Ba'ath party rivals. It might initially have seemed that he would prove to be just another here-today-gone-tomorrow leader of Syria. However, he successfully managed to crush his rivals within the Ba'ath and co-opt or eliminate any threats outside it. Assad allied Syria with the Soviet Union and organised the domestic political scene on Soviet principles, with the Ba'ath as the leading party. The country's economy came increasingly under state control, much to the chagrin of the country's traditionally entrepreneurial business elite.

Externally, Syria joined Egypt in attacking Israel in 1973. Although this war saw Syria suffering another defeat, with the enemy ending up occupying more territory than when the war started, the relatively credible performance of the Syrian armed forces went some way to restoring national morale. By focussing on the early, successful stages of the conflict, Assad was even able to present the 1973 war as a kind of victory.

At home, Assad faced a violent challenge to his rule from the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brothers. They had social and religious axes to grind with him. The Syrian Muslim Brothers drew their support from the country's petit bourgeoisie, people who were being squeezed by the increasingly statist economic policies of the regime. On the religious side, they were angered by the secular orientation of the Ba'athists and by Assad's own religious affiliation. Assad was a member of the minority Alawite faith, seen as not truly Muslim by many members of more mainstream Muslim sects. That Assad's regime was seen to be favouring Alawites over the majority Sunni Muslims must have been particularly galling.

The Muslim Brothers waged a violent campaign of assassinations and bombings against Assad's regime, and he repaid them in kind. Violence escalated through the 1970s and 1980s, climaxing in 1982 when the Muslim Brothers staging an uprising in the city of Hama (which they hoped would trigger a mass revolt across the country). Assad crushed the Hama uprising in a bloodbath that saw more than 10,000 people killed. In so doing he permanently ended the Muslim Brotherhood's insurgency and deterred serious opposition for decades by showing how far he would go to retain power.

In retrospect, the Muslim Brothers were probably doomed to fail. Their Hama uprising failed to ignite a wider revolt, and the reasons for this are not difficult to discern. Their narrow social and religious vision meant that they alienated completely the large number of Syrians who are not Sunni Muslim Arabs. Even with the Sunni, they had little to say to people outside the petit bourgeoisie. So that was the end of them. They continue to maintain a ghostly presence as a party in exile (where they belatedly accept that their violent campaign was a mistake), but are believed to have next to no organised presence within Syria.

While all the excitement with the Muslim Brothers was going on, Assad was also beginning a Syrian involvement in neighbouring Lebanon that would go on for decades. Lebanon erupted into civil war in the 1970s. Syria initially intervened in a vaguely peace-keeping role to assist a Maronite Christian militia who looked like they were about to be defeated. Over time, however, Syria aligned with and against every possible Lebanese faction.

Now, why did Syria intervene in Lebanon? I think there were two factors at play. First of all, Assad was probably using the civil war as a pretext for projecting power in a country that he, like many his compatriots, saw as a natural sphere of Syrian influence. Secondly, he wanted to dampen down the Lebanese situation so that its instability did not provoke Israel into intervening there.

In the first of his goals, Assad was to prove remarkably successful, making Lebanese politicians dance to the Syrian tune whether they liked it or not. However, he failed in his second – Israel launched a mini-invasion of Lebanon in 1978 and then invaded for real in 1982. This saw more military defeats for Syria, but Israel was unable to turn military power into political success. Syria retained its hegemonic role in Lebanon and used its Hezbollah allies to harass and ultimately humiliate the Israeli occupiers.

Syria's alliance with the Hezbollah, the radical Islamist party of Lebanon's Shia community, flowed from Assad's alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Secular Syria and Islamist Iran made for odd bedfellows, but it made a good marriage of convenience between two countries otherwise without many friends in the region. The alliance with Iran became especially important to Syria after the disappearance of its other external patron, the USSR.

The fall of the USSR led some to think that the Assad regime would follow it into oblivion. This proved not to be the case. The loss of Soviet support meant that Syria had to abandon the pipe-dream of one day achieving military parity with Israel, but Assad was able to maintain himself in power and continue projecting Syrian suzerainty over Lebanon.

From Hunting Monsters

Part 3 coming soon.

After Mubarak: Part 2 - The Spectre of the Muslim Brotherhood

One fear consistently expressed about a transition in Egypt is that it would lead to a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood and the institution of an Iranian-style Islamic Republic. This apocalyptic scenario was implicitly or explicitly evoked by Mubarak and his defenders, with the old man painted as the only thing stopping the mad mullahs from going on a maniacal rampage. A takeover by the Muslim Brothers and an Islamic Republic is not particularly likely in Egypt, however. One thing seen elsewhere is that while Islamist parties have considerable appeal in Muslim and Arab countries, they never seem to really command majority support from voters. So long as Egypt adopts some kind of electoral system with a significant measure of proportional representation then a parliamentary majority for the Muslim Brothers is unlikely. Of course, if Egypt ends up with a non-proportional electoral system, particularly one that gives significant rewards to the largest party, then the country could find itself with an accidental parliamentary majority of the Muslim Brothers.

However, it seems that the Brotherhood is already taking steps to ensure that it does not end up having to rule Egypt. Its leaders have said that they will not be fielding a candidate in presidential elections, an indication that they seem happy enough to remain in opposition. In parliamentary elections they may well follow the example of their fellow in Jordan, where the Islamists fielded sufficiently few candidates that it would have been impossible for them to win a majority. It seems, oddly, that Islamists like being in opposition. This may be because they have spent so long there that they do not have any kind of realistic government programme (the Muslim Brothers in Egypt have a tendency to say "Islam is the answer" when asked any awkward question).

The other reason why the Muslim Brotherhood may choose to lose is the example of what happened elsewhere when Arab Islamists won elections. In 1992 in Algeria an Islamist party looked like winning that country's first ever free elections. The military responded with a coup that plunged the country into a horrific civil war, receiving the full backing of western powers in this attack on democracy. In 2006, when Islamists unexpectedly won elections to the parliament of the Palestinian Authority and formed a government there, the international community responded by cutting off its financial support of the PA and, in the USA's case, attempting to subvert it. It is easy for Islamist parties to conclude, therefore, that political power is a prize that internal and external actors will prevent them from exercising, so it is better just to be a big opposition party rather than the party of government.

One other factor making an Islamic Republic on the Iranian model unlikely is the differing nature of Islam in Egypt and Iran. Iranian Muslims are mostly Shia, while in Egypt Sunnis predominate. Sunni Islam does not feature the kind of hierarchical clergy found in Shia Iran, so there is no monolithic clerical caste to assume the kind of leadership role the ayatollahs in Iran did. It is also noticeable that the Muslim Brotherhood is a mostly lay organisation, with relatively little involvement by Muslim clergy. That is not to say that it could not theoretically impose its vision on society, but it would not be putting Iranian-style Ayatollahs in the driving seat.

In any case, it seems like the Muslim Brothers look more to Turkey, hoping to be like that country's government of friendly Islamists who are no more threatening than European Christian Democrats or the various God Botherers who infest American politics. You may not like these people, but your not liking them does not make their participation in politics illegitimate.

From Hunting Monsters

The Biter Bit

I have been reading about electoral systems in the Middle East. These are typically used by regimes to mimimise the amount of seats won by the opposition in elections (usually in conjunction with other measures, like throwing opposition activists or candidates in jail, banning some of the opposition parties, or straightforwardly rigging the election results). My current favourite regime manoeuvre is one used in Egypt at one point. They had a list system of proportional representation, but with a high threshold of 8% - any party getting less than that proportion of the vote got no seats in the parliament (this at a time when the opposition was rather fragmented). The stroke of genius was a ruling that any votes for parties getting less than the threshold were to be counted as votes for the goverrning party.

Turkey either is or is not in the Middle East, depending on who you talk to. They are having some interesting political stuff at the moment. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to make Abdullah Gul, one of his party colleagues the country's president. As the president is chosen by the parliament, and as Erdogan's Justice & Development party has a handsome parliamentary majority, there should be no problem here... except that Justice & Development is an Islamist party, and Turkey's army does not like the idea of an Islamist president and prime minister.

Some have apparently taken to complaining that although the governing party has a massive majority in parliament, they achieved this on on something puny like only 30% of the popular vote. Amusingly, they managed this because the country has a comedic electoral system specifically designed to weaken the Islamists.

More Morocco action!

There is an interesting enough article about Morocco on the Guardian website, which I think appeared in the most recent Observer: Morocco's turning tide

It does the usual PHEAR TEH ISLAMISTS thing of questioning the pro-democratic bona fides of the Morocco's largest and semi-banned Islamist party while asserting that they are seen by 'many' as "potentially very dangerous". Meanwhile, the journo gets on famously with a minister of the supposedly pro-democratic government that does not allow free elections.

The one great thing I have learned about Morocco in Spy School is that the country has really serious problems about which not much is being done, with their being a real likelihood that the country is going to blow up in the next couple of years. Deadly stuff.

À qui le Maroc?

I am reading about Morocco at the moment, to prepare for an assignment from Spy School. In particular, I have been reading about the Justice and Charity group, a political party blocked from taking part in the country's comedic electoral process. They are an Islamist group, led by the septuagenarian Sheikh Abd Assalam Yassine, a former Sufi mystic. He seems like an interesting fellow (and has a great beard). If you want to get a sense of his ideas, you could do worse than read his Memorandum to him who is concerned, an open letter issued in 1999 to the then newly enthroned King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

If you are reading Yassine's letter and are not too familiar with Moroccan affairs, here is some context:
1. The previous king, Hassan II, was an authoritarian cockfarmer (who had Yassine confined to a lunatic asylum for writing a similar letter to him in 1974).
2. The Makhzen referred to in the letter are the cronies of Hassan II - the regime's old guard.
3. Tazmamart was a horrific jail in the desert into which Hassan dumped his regime's enemies, leaving them to rot in spectacularly horrendous conditions.
4. The government of alternance referred to is a spectacular coup of Hassan - he managed to co-opt some hitherto oppositional forces and form them into a supposedly oppositional government, though of course the king retained the right to appoint and sack key ministers and control the broad directions of state policy. Under Mohammed VI the alternance has remained in place, conveniently attracting hostility that might otherwise go towards the king.

Back to the Memorandum. Yassine skilfully attempts a reverse cooption, saying to Mohammed "You seem like a nice fellow, unlike your late cockfather. Here is what you would do if you really are as nice a fellow as you seem". Like most open letters, it is intended for general consumption as much as reading by its addressee. The implicit message is that if the king does not act as outlined, then he is in fact no more than a creature of the Makhzen or a chip off Hassan II's block.

What Yassine actually requests of Mohammed VI is the usual - sacking the Makhzen, cleansing the regime of its corruption (identified by the sheikh as a major barrier to attracting foreign investment), and instituting serious democratic change. Yassine also contrasts the enormous foreign debt with the massive personal wealth of the king (Hassan had essentially set up the crown at the centre of the state's economy, sucking its proceeds into his private coffers in a weird parody of Arab socialism). Noting that the king's personal wealth is roughly equivalent to the foreign debt, Yassine hits on a handy solution to the problem - let the king pay the debt out of his own funds!

This is perhaps the most problematic part of Yassine's programme. The king's wealth is not in the form of gold bars or on deposit with the gnomes of Zurich, but instead exists as a business empire spanning Morocco. While this wealth belongs to the king rather than the people, in practice the king's investments are the equivalent of a series of state industries. And were these enterprises sold off to raise monies to pay the debt, Morocco would doubtless find that domestic savings were completely insufficient to purchase them. Instead, foreign investors would be the only people who could afford to buy them, even at the depressed prices this kind of fire sale would command. Yassine is basically offering international finance control of the Moroccan economy in return for immediate repayment of the debt.

That aside, Yassine comes across as a serious and thoughtful figure with a rather droll sense of humour. His views on the Western Sahara seem considerably more flexible than the Moroccan establishment's mainstream. Although he is implicitly in favour of that occupied country remaining part of a radically reformed Morocco, he can countenance their leaving should the corrupt ancien regime remain in place.

Yassine leads the largest party in Morocco, albeit one blocked from participation in the official political process. As Islamists, they are easily presented as The Enemy to the governments of Europe and North America, who have difficult understanding that not all Islamists like to fly planes into buildings. While it would be naïve to expect to much of the Americans, it is still shocking that the European Union is still unable to engage with parties like Yassine's which are almost always the most popular in their countries. There is of course some dialogue between the "think-tank community" and and North African Islamists, and a former EU commissioner last week talked of the need for constructive engagement with Hamas in Palestine, but official Europe is still not interested in official communication with the Islamists. Official Europe looks likely to continue to bolster authoritarian regimes rather than support democratic elections that would put Yassine and his analogues in power. In the long run, this is probably unwise. The current Arab regimes (monarchies and republics) are so lacking in legitimacy that their rotting from within and collapsing in a 1989 style disintegration has to be seen as likely, if not inevitable. Europe could help promote democracy among its southern neighbours. Or it could have a lot of explaining to do when the ancien regimes are swept away

One final fascinating fact that I have not been able to integrate into the preceding concerns Yassine's daughter, Nadia. She is seen as likely candidate to succeed him as the Justice & Charity group's leader when he dies or steps down. She was recently arrested under some weird Moroccan state security law after she suggested that maybe the country did not have to be a monarchy in the future.

Milestones

Out in Spy School today, our lecturer was talking about how well-known Islamist thinker Sayyid Qutb reckoned that in the coming ideal Islamist society men and women would be equal. "But what about those countries were women aren't allowed to drive?" inquired a student.

I don't think anyone should be allowed to drive.

The Islamists - our new friends?

I posted over on the Dublin School about something I read in an online newsletter, which was relevant to both the Spy School course on Political Islam some of us are taking and also, by extension, my last post. I suspect that even less people read the Dublin School than read Hunting Monsters, so I am going to redo the post here.

Basically, I read the latest issue of the CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch newsletter, put out by the Centre for European Policy Studies. The editorial discusses an emerging dialogue between Europe and Islamists of the Middle East & North Africa. On both sides the governments are being bypassed, with oppositional Islamist groups from the Arab world talking to think tanks and policy oriented NGOs. The discussions seem interesting, partly because they are happening at all, indicating that in coming years the Arab authoritarians will find it harder to prop themselves up with European support. At the same time, it is striking how frank the parties to this dialogue are about the fundamental differences in outlook that divide them.

The article also reproduces a piece by Dr. Saad el-Deen al-Katany, the parliamentary leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in which he sets forth the need for dialogue between Islamists and the West. I found this interesting because Dr. Al-Katany is attempting to drive a wedge between the West and the Arab world dictators it backs, calling on us prove we are not lying when we say we love democracy. Again, it looks like the Islamists are seeing the advantages of talking our language back to us.

There is also a reprinted interview with Belarus President, Alexander Lukashenko, one of the world's great scary leaders.

You can download the newsletter or subscribe to updates here: CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch