Two Causes of Arab Political Incoherence

BEIRUT -- How much are the Arabs responsible for their own political dysfunction, national fragmentation and rampant violence, and how much of their troubles can be blamed on foreign interference and military interventions in the region? Two recent articles in quality American journals highlight how low-class Arab politics that are widely dissatisfying to their own citizens can reflect both indigenous autocracy and foreign mischief-making.

In an article in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs entitled "The price of the surge: How US strategy is hastening Iraq's demise," former US National Security Council official and current Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Steven Simon methodically discredits the year-old "surge" of additional American troops. He sees it as a short-term fix that will have negative long-term consequences for Iraq, because it promotes forces that can degrade national integrity.

He notes: "The surge may have brought transitory success... but it has done so by stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism. States that have failed to control these forces have ultimately become ungovernable, and this is the fate for which the surge is preparing Iraq."

He sees the American surge being anchored in the "retribalization" of Iraq, because it pays cash to induce Sunni insurgents who used to fight the United States to switch sides and work alongside the US and the Iraqi government to fight Al-Qaeda-allied terrorists and other nationalist insurgents. Strengthening tribes tends to splinter national cohesion and weaken the power and even the legitimacy of the central state -- a state that was painstakingly if hastily created in much of the Arab world after WWI by incorporating the tribes into state structures and payrolls.

Similarly, the surge strategy is promoting competing local warlordism by arming and "empowering tribes and other networks without regulating their relationship to the state," thus allowing them to compete with one another for local control and "what is mostly criminal revenue."

Sectarianism is on the rise also, Simon argues, because Sunnis who have been bought back into national politics may see the US strategy as aiming to have them challenge Shiite supremacy, which will spark long-term sectarian strife.

"When it withdraws from Iraq," Simon concludes, "the United States will be leaving a country more divided than the one it invaded -- thanks to a strategy that has systematically nourished domestic rivalries in order to maintain an illusory short-term stability."

For those who ask why the Arabs cannot run stable, peaceful countries, this article offers at least one explanation that highlights the negative consequences of continuing foreign-armed interference.

The second article notes instead the indigenous Arab causes of political tensions and potential extremism. It was published in the January issue of the Journal of Democracy, by Michael McFaul of Stanford University and Tamara Cofman Wittes of the Brookings Institution, and is entitled "Morocco's elections: The limits of limited reforms."

The authors argue that Arab instability often reflects the lack of democracy. The parliamentary elections in Morocco last September, they argue, offered important insights into what might happen when Arabs are given a chance to engage in democratic politics -- along with the dangers of autocratic leaders perpetually controlling and limiting democratic transformations from the top.

They said there are three interesting results emerging from those elections: First, when they were allowed to enjoy free and fair elections, Moroccans did not sweep Islamists into power, as had been widely expected. Many dissatisfied citizens chose other options to express their concerns, including not voting or casting spoilt ballots.

Second, the dominant Islamist party in Morocco, the Justice and Development Party, should not be seen as a threat to democracy, but its intentions can only be truly tested if it is allowed to share genuine power.

Third -- and most importantly in my view -- the authors argue that, "limited reform has a limited shelf life." Opening parliament to democratic and free elections while keeping all other powers in the firm grasp of the king does not advance democracy. Voters were not fooled to rush to embrace a parliament that enjoys "few core powers of governance," and they registered their discontent by staying away (only 37 percent of registered voters cast ballots) or by spoiling about one-fifth of all cast votes.

If Arab regimes shun outright rigging of elections, and instead "configure the political system to contain the impact of popular Islamist parties... the regime may compromise the democratic legitimacy of the process by distorting the link between the ballot box and the parliament chamber, making each new government look much the same as the one before."

The authors conclude that democratic reforms could lose legitimacy, and tightly managed liberalization may push Arabs away from peaceful politics and toward extremists.

Home grown dysfunction and state collapse at the hands of foreign armies are equally deplorable, but they remain concurrently active in the Middle East today.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

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Released: 23 April 2008
Word Count: 807