By Hilal Khashan*- Geopolitical Futures
Modern nation-states have failed to develop as tribalism and poor governance have prevailed
The rise of the modern nation-state and established universal values has led to a reduction in political violence in many places across the globe. The Arab region, however, has failed to make this transition and to redefine the role of religion in politics. The region still lacks critical thinking and utilitarian nationalism that can help unify a population, while outdated modes of interaction and cultural stagnation persist, dooming Arab attempts to navigate economic and political challenges. The use of political violence as a means of gaining and keeping power continues as regimes apply excessive coercion to eliminate the opposition and intimidate their people into submission.
Persistent Tribalism
Massive tribal migrations accompanied the emergence of Islam in the Middle East and North Africa from the 7th century onward. These tribes maintained their own social structures and resisted interaction with the state beyond paying taxes and providing recruits for the military. Violence frequently broke out in pre-Islamic Arabia, wreaking havoc on social relations and pausing only briefly while the Prophet Muhammad was still alive. Arabs prohibited fighting during the four sacred months on the religious calendar, a practice that persisted under Islam.
Collective interests did not develop beyond the family, clan or tribe. Life in the desert gave rise to a narrow definition of identity rather than a nationalistic one. Arab tribes shunned intertribal marriages, relegating the descendants of mixed marriages to a lower social status. Those born to non-Arab women often ranked at the bottom of the social order. Seeking to safeguard tribal ethnic purity prevented national unification and the rise of political community.
Arab Christians particularly suffered. Their vassal states in Iraq and Syria came under the influence of the two dominant regional powers, the Byzantines and the Sassanians. The Lakhmid dynasty in southern Iraq fought with the Persians against the Ghassanids and their Byzantine feudal overlords. However, the Lakhmids fought against the Muslim army in the battle of Qadisiyya in 636. Similarly, the Ghassanids sided with the Byzantines against the Muslims in the Battle of Yarmouk that same year. The Umayyads and Abbasids depended heavily on Arab Christian tribespeople to run the administration and did not impose Islam on them. Even though Syria’s Christians joined the Muslim conquest of North Africa that started in 647, the lines of religious and tribal divisions became permanent, triggering spates of religious persecution in subsequent eras.
Tribal sheiks reigned supreme in their closed communities, without worrying about dissent. Leadership was usually passed down based on heredity, but when there was no eligible next of kin, violence could tarnish the transfer of power. Once the sheik title was secured, the tribe’s council gave him an irrevocable endorsement for life by acclamation. Revoking acceptance was comparable to sedition, which is punishable by death in Islam. Arab monarchies still practice this type of political leadership, while republican systems disguise their tribal leadership style with a thin democratic veneer.
History of Political Repression
The gruesome murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 gave the world a glimpse into how the Saudi political system works, but other Arab countries have shown similar tendencies. For example, in 1965, Morocco’s King Hassan II ordered his intelligence apparatus to abduct opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka. They killed him and dissolved his body in acid. It was part of the king’s Years of the Lead campaign, which lasted from the 1960s to the 1980s, to eliminate all democratic opposition and purge the army in an unprecedented wave of terror.
Arab societies have a long history of political repression. While Islam condemned tribal fanaticism, it failed to stop tribal infighting. Tribal wars in pre-Islamic Arabia were a way of life, totaling some 1,700 conflicts. Conventional wisdom has it that Islam unified the tribes and ended their hostilities, but the fact remains that immediately after the Prophet Muhammad’s death, the rejection of Islam by many Arab tribes led to the two-year Ridda War (or war of apostasy) in 632, in which the caliphal state prevailed. After three more brutal wars over the prophet’s successors, Muslims were split into Sunnis and Shiites. Political rivals assassinated three of the four Rashidun caliphs who succeeded the prophet between 632-661 while in office.
In 695, Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malak appointed al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf – who previously defeated the anti-government insurgency in Hejaz – as the governor of Iraq’s restive Kufa district near Najaf, the most important Shiite city. A ruthless and fearsome enforcer of order, al-Hajjaj became known as “The Exterminator.” Upon assuming office in Kufa, he addressed Iraqi notables by saying, “I see heads that are ripe, and I am ready for the picking.” He mercilessly delivered on his threat, killing at least 130,000 Iraqis.
In 680, the first Umayyad caliph, Muawiya, passed away and was succeeded by his son, Yazid. As is common in Arab tradition, Yazid sought the support of a descendent of the prophet, Imam Husayn bin Ali, who felt the caliphate belonged to him instead. Fearing for his life, Husayn left Mecca for Karbala in Iraq. On his way, he met a sympathizer returning from Iraq who urged Husayn against going there, saying, “their hearts are with you, but their swords are against you.”
The Umayyad Empire (661-750) had 14 caliphs, four of whom were killed by rivals. The Abbasid Empire (750 to 1258) had 12 out of 57 caliphs killed while in office. Most of the others lacked real power; slave soldiers controlled the state, and many regions established separate dynasties, namely the Mamelukes in Egypt and Syria. The Mamelukes’ rule (1250 to 1517) saw 140 military coups and the assassination of 20 sultans as brazen power determined who would claim the throne.
In 711, the Umayyads conquered the Iberian Peninsula, and in 756, they established the Andalusian Umayyad dynasty, which dissolved in 1031. Tribal factions fought among themselves, dividing the Muslim-dominated areas of Spain and Portugal into 22 petty kingdoms. They paid tribute money to King Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile and sought his help against rival Muslim kings. Granada, the last Muslim kingdom, fell to the Aragon and Castile alliance in 1492.
In 1933, the pan-Arab Iraqi government ordered the army to attack the Assyrian Christians in northern Iraq, who were accused of affiliating with the British and harboring irredentist tendencies. The Simele massacre killed 3,000 Assyrians and destroyed more than 60 villages. In 1939, pro-British Prime Minister Nuri al-Said reputedly ordered the assassination of 27-year-old King Ghazi, who planned on annexing Kuwait, then a British protectorate. In 1958, a military coup in Baghdad ended the monarchy and brutally killed 23-year-old King Faisal II, along with the crown prince, the prime minister and scores of their entourage. In 1980, Syrian President Hafez Assad responded to an attempt on his life by ordering the killing of 1,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood held in Palmyra’s notorious military prison. In 1982, in retaliation to the anti-Alawite Sunni insurgency in Hama, the army’s Defense Battalions laid siege to Hama before destroying the city center and killing more than 20,000 residents.
In 1991, Algerian Islamists seemed on the verge of dominating the Algerian parliament. A few days before the decisive second round of elections in January 1992, the army staged a coup that precipitated an 11-year civil war. More than 200,000 people lost their lives as the crackdown defeated the radical Islamists but failed to address the root causes of Algeria’s political crisis.
In Egypt, King Farouk could have stopped the 1952 junior officers’ coup with the help of the powerful Royal Guard, but he instead abdicated the throne to avoid bloodshed. His republican successors showed much less regard for human life and political freedom, locking up thousands of pro-democracy activists and failing to address basic needs. Current President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi took repression to new heights, imprisoning or marginalizing army officers and politicians who supported his 2013 military coup.
The violent fallout of the 2011 uprisings in Libya and Yemen and the rejection of public demands for political reform and democracy are more indications of the disintegration of the Arab regional order. These types of Arab divisions run so deep that they cannot be resolved on their own and present a real risk of protracted conflict.
Failure to Govern
Tribalism prevented the Arab state from establishing roots and fostering a strong sense of national identity. Arab regimes made no effort to involve the local populations in political affairs, not even to draft and implement public policy. States commissioned local functionaries to levy taxes and recruit conscripts, but average people feared the state and the succession of sprawling empires that dominated the region. Arab societies did not develop because of government repression, intimidation and exclusion from the market economy, into which they only recently entered as consumers, not producers.
In modern times, the Arab region has witnessed numerous regime changes, ostensibly aimed at eliminating corruption, ending repression, spreading freedom and bringing about prosperity. Incompetent and self-serving regimes were overthrown, but their successors fared no better, proving themselves morally deficient and equally detached from the people.
The West imposed the concept of the centralized nation-state on Arab societies, but it failed to take hold because it did not connect with the region’s cultural and social realities. Arab societies remain fragmented and bound by local bonds of association. For most Arabs, the nation-state is a vague idealization that does not relate to how they interact with their fellow citizens, let alone the political system. Poor governance has prevailed, undeterred by what goes on in politically developed countries.
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*Hilal Khashan is a Professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. He is a respected author and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs. He is the author of six books, including Hizbullah: A Mission to Nowhere. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019.) He is currently writing a book titled Saudi Arabia: The Dilemma of Political Reform and the Illusion of Economic Development.
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