Sunday was another bloody day in the Middle East. In Egypt, the establishment commemorated the success of the Egyptian army 40 years ago in crossing the Suez Canal and taking back most of the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian territory occupied by Israel in 1967. But the commemorations, which were lively and joyous in Tahrir Square and other sanctioned demonstrations, were marred by smaller counter-demonstrations (still often in the thousands) by the Muslim Brotherhood against the army, complaining about the July 3 military coup that removed elected president Muhammad Morsi from power. The military effectively strangled these protests, sometimes with excessive use of force. The Brotherhood cadres sometimes deployed guns and violence. In some places, such as Ramsis Square, angry anti-Brotherhood crowds tried to attack the Muslim fundamentalists, and the army had to step in to protect the Brotherhood. Over 50 protesters were killed.
Egypt is deeply divided, and can only heal if the military hardliners relent and allow a place for the Muslim Brotherhood in electoral processes. At the moment they seemed determine to ban the organization. Likewise, the remaining Muslim Brotherhood leadership appears so wedded to attempting to restore Morsi that they risk their followers’ lives in fruitless demonstrations that impede any further bargain between the two sides. I can’t imagine protests against the army on October 6 are likely to make the Brotherhood more popular in Egypt.
Then in Iraq, where bombings left dozens of Shiites dead on Saturday, on Sunday the bombings shifted north to the mostly Sunni Arab province of Ninewah. Presumably the Sunni radicals are trying to bait the Shiites into taking them on, and are trying to regiment Sunnis behind their leadership.
Iraq got where it is because its elites and workers refused to compromise or make a grand bargain after the fall of the old regime in 2003. They gradually drove the Sunni Arab population into despair, into supporting or joining the guerrillas. Once a guerrilla insurgency is established and institutionalized, it typically goes on for a decade or more, and only about 20% are militarily defeated.
Egypt would be most unwise to drive the Brotherhood to create an insurgency. In today’s world, weapons and C4 explosives aren’t that hard to get hold of and small cells can disrupt large events. Iraq should stand as an object lesson to other countries in the region as to what can happen if divisions are allowed to fester.
No one thinks it can happen to them. As an Algerian, UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, tried to warn the Iraqi elite in late spring of 2004 that you can fall into a civil war without meaning to, piecemeal. The elite was furious with him for comparing Iraq to divided and violent Algeria. By now Iraq has surely outstripped the violence that beset Algeria in the 1990s. Brahimi is now trying to warn the Syrians that yes, it can get worse.
Reprint edn., from my article in Truthdig, where you can find the hyperlinks giving the documentation. I thought these findings by Joyce Battle from the documents she FOIA’ed ad posted at the National Security Archive worth revisiting given the current controversy over Syrian use of chemical weapons:
In the 1970s, Iraq under Baath Party dictator Brigadier General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr had grown close to the Soviet Union, with which it signed a treaty of friendship in 1972 and from which it began importing arms. In 1973, al-Bakr supported the Syrians in their war with Israel.
The ensuing poor relations with Washington were not repaired until 1983. Persistent allegations are made by some observers, including journalist Christopher Hitchens, that then-President Jimmy Carter put Hussein up to invading Iran in September of 1980. These allegations seem implausible on their face, and there is no documentary proof for them. A former National Security Council staffer for Gulf affairs, Gary Sick, has told this author that Hussein’s invasion of Iran came as a shock to the NSC in 1980. Sick’s impression of continued frost between Washington and Baghdad is borne out by documents published by the National Security Archive, housed at George Washington University.
The turning point came in 1983, as the Reagan administration reevaluated its policy toward the Middle East. Note that it does not appear to have been deterred by a small matter such as Hussein’s propensity to massacre townspeople like those at Dujail. The threat that Khomeinism posed to U.S. interests in the region had been underlined by the rise of Shiite radicalism in Lebanon. The U.S. suspected extremist Shiites of blowing up the U.S. embassy and killing 63 persons in Beirut on April 18, 1983. Hussein’s invasion of Iran had been stopped dead in its tracks by Iranian military and irregular forces, and by 1982 Iran was beginning an effective counterattack. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini desperately wanted Baghdad. Ronald Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld (then also CEO of G.D. Searle & Co.), began worrying about the implications if the Iranians succeeded in taking it, as did the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Casey.
One possible impediment to better relations between the U.S. and Iraq was the latter’s use of chemical weapons. The 1925 Geneva Protocol, which forbade the use of chemical weapons, specified that it “shall be universally accepted as a part of International Law, binding alike the conscience and the practice of nations.” The Reagan State Department was well aware that Hussein had begun using chemicals against Iranian troops at the front, and by Nov. 1 was actively considering [PDF] what punitive measures might be taken against Iraq.
Nevertheless, Reagan sent Rumsfeld to Baghdad in December 1983. The National Security Archive has posted a brief video of his meeting with Hussein and the latter’s vice president and foreign minister, Tariq Aziz. Rumsfeld was to stress his close relationship with the U.S. president. The State Department summary [PDF] of Rumsfeld’s meeting with Tariq Aziz stated that “the two agreed the U.S. and Iraq shared many common interests: peace in the Gulf, keeping Syria and Iran off balance and less influential, and promoting Egypt’s reintegration into the Arab world.” Aziz asked Rumsfeld to intervene with Washington’s friends to get them to stop selling arms to Iran. Increasing Iraq’s oil exports and a possible pipeline through Saudi Arabia occupied a portion of their conversation.
The U.S. and Iraq were well on the way toward a restoration of diplomatic relations (broken off in 1967 by the colonels’ regime that preceded the Baath) and a military alliance against Iran. The State Department, however, issued a press statement on March 5, 1984, condemning Iraqi use of chemical weapons. This statement appears to have been Washington’s way of doing penance for its new alliance.
Unaware of the depths of Reagan administration hypocrisy on the issue, Hussein took the March 5 State Department condemnation extremely seriously, and appears to have suspected that the United States was planning to stab him in the back. Secretary of State George Shultz notes in a briefing for Rumsfeld in spring of 1984 [PDF] that the Iraqis were extremely confused by concrete U.S. policies toward Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and combating Khomeini. “In each case,” Shultz observes, “Iraqi officials have professed to be at a loss to explain our actions as measured against our stated objectives. As with our CW statement, their temptation is to give up rational analysis and retreat to the line that US policies are basically anti-Arab and hostage to the desires of Israel.”
Rumsfeld had to be sent back to Baghdad for a second meeting, to smooth ruffled Baath feathers. The above-mentioned State Department briefing notes for this discussion remarked that the atmosphere in Baghdad (for Rumsfeld) had worsened for two reasons. First, Iraq had failed to completely repulse a major Iranian offensive and had lost the “strategically significant Majnun Island oil fields and accepting heavy casualties.” Second, the March 5 scolding of Iraq for its use of poison gas had “sharply set back” relations between the two countries.
The relationship was repaired, but on Hussein’s terms. He continued to use chemical weapons and, indeed, vastly expanded their use as Washington winked at Western pharmaceutical firms providing him materiel. The only conclusion one can draw from available evidence is that Rumsfeld was more or less dispatched to mollify Hussein and assure him that his use of chemical weapons was no bar to developing the relationship with the U.S., whatever the State Department spokesman was sent out to say. As former National Security Council staffer Howard Teicher affirmed, “Pursuant to the secret NSDD [National Security Directive], the United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing US military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required.” The requisite weaponry included cluster bombs. Whether it also included, from Washington’s point of view, chemical weapons and biological precursors for anthrax, Teicher does not say.
Teicher adds that the CIA had knowledge of, and U.S. officials encouraged, the provisioning of Iraq with high-powered weaponry by U.S. allies. He adds: “For example, in 1984, the Israelis concluded that Iran was more dangerous than Iraq to Israel’s existence due to the growing Iranian influence and presence in Lebanon. The Israelis approached the United States in a meeting in Jerusalem that I attended with Donald Rumsfeld. Israeli Foreign Minister Ytizhak Shamir asked Rumsfeld if the United States would deliver a secret offer of Israeli assistance to Iraq. The United States agreed. I traveled with Rumsfeld to Baghdad and was present at the meeting in which Rumsfeld told Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz about Israel’s offer of assistance. Aziz refused even to accept the Israelis’ letter to Hussein.” It might have been hoped that a country that arose in part in response to Nazi uses of poison gas would have been more sensitive about attempting to ally with a regime then actively deploying such a weapon, even against its own people (some gassing of Kurds had already begun).
The new American alliance might have been a public relations debacle if Iran succeeded in its 1984 attempt to have Iraq directly condemned at the United Nations for use of chemical weapons. As far as possible, Shultz wanted to weasel out of joining such a U.N. condemnation of Iraq. He wrote in a cable that the U.S. delegation to the U.N. “should work to develop general Western position in support of a motion to take ‘no decision’ on Iranian draft resolution on use of chemical weapons by Iraq. If such a motion gets reasonable and broad support and sponsorship, USDEL should vote in favor. Failing Western support for ‘no decision,’ USDEL should abstain.” Shultz in the first instance wanted to protect Hussein from condemnation by a motion of “no decision,” and hoped to get U.S. allies aboard. If that ploy failed and Iraq were to be castigated, he ordered that the U.S. just abstain from the vote. Despite its treaty obligations in this regard, the U.S. was not even to so much as vote for a U.N. resolution on the subject!
Shultz also wanted to throw up smokescreens to take the edge off the Iranian motion, arguing that the U.N. Human Rights Commission was “an inappropriate forum” for consideration of chemical weapons, and stressing that loss of life owing to Iraq’s use of chemicals was “only a part” of the carnage that ensued from a deplorable war. A more lukewarm approach to chemical weapons use by a rogue regime (which referred to the weapons as an “insecticide” for enemy “insects”) could not be imagined. In the end, the U.N. resolution condemned the use of chemical weapons but did not name Iraq directly as a perpetrator.
When the Dujail case [against Saddam Hussein] is resolved and the tribunal trying Hussein goes on to other crimes, sooner or later the issue of chemical weapons use must arise. Iran is already furious that the tribunal seems unlikely to charge Hussein for his battlefield deployment of this weapon. When the issue arises, it will be difficult for Donald Rumsfeld to avoid sharing the docket, at least symbolically, with his old friend, Hussein. Rumsfeld helped to forge the U.S. alliance with Iraq that lasted from 1984 until Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August of 1991. He did so in full knowledge that the Baath regime was using mustard gas—which severely burns the lungs—against the Iranian children sent by Khomeini to launch “human wave” attacks. One Iranian survivor commented that with each flaming breath he takes, he wishes the gas had killed him. The pogrom against the Shiites of Dujail was a horrible crime. Far more horrible ones, in which the U.S. government was intimately complicit, were to follow.
The Egyptian military’s obvious determination to crush the Muslim Brotherhood involves serious human rights violations, apparent in the appalling scenes of the siege of members in a mosque on Saturday. A separate question, which any political pragmatist would ask, is, can it work?
If we look at long term attempts to limit political expressions of religion in modern history, it is a mixed bag. But mostly, no, it doesn’t work in the long run.
Saddam Hussein in Iraq attempted to suppress Shiite religous parties such as the Islamic Call (Da’wa) Party, the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq, and the Sadr II Bloc. He made membership in Da’wa a capital crime and executed thousands. He also suppressed the Sunni fundamentalists, which is why the Bush administrations charges that he hooked up with al-Qaeda were so funny. Now Iraq is ruled by the three Shiite parties (the prime minister is from Da’wa) and they are being contested by the Sunni fundamentalists. It is true that the US overthrew Saddam, but if eradication had been successful, these groups could not have come back so quickly and taken over.
Zine El Abidin Ben Ali attempted to uproot the Renaissance (al-Nahda) Party in Tunisia, and organizationally speaking largely succeeded. But the party came back to win the 2011 elections for the constituent assembly. Not wiped out.
The Baath Party in Syria tried to eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood at Hama in 1982, and after. Political Islam now rules parts of northern Syria. It may lose out, but it is unlikely to go away.
Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi tied to repress political Islam in Iran. It came to power in 1979 and still rules.
The Soviet Union tried to destroy political Islam in Afghanistan and failed, despite igniting a war in which a million people died.
The Kemalist regime in Turkey tried to forcibly secularize the country for decades. The Islamically tinged Justice and development party came to power in 2002 and has ruled ever since.
Algeria’s generals did in the 1990s to The Islamic Salvation Front exactly what Gen al-Sisi plans to do to the Muslim Brotherhood. 150,000 or more died, and the generals largely prevailed. The Algerian state and society are still fragile.
It seems to me that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that religiously based political movements are almost impossible to eradicate by force. Families transmit religious commitments, to which political entrepreneurs in each generation can appeal.
Even the Soviet Union, with its official atheism campaigns, could only weaken but not destroy the power of the Orthodox and Muslim religious establishments. The Orthodox Church is now one of the pillars of the rule of President Vladimir Putin, and he had members of the punk rock band Pussy Riot sentenced to hard labor for desecrating a church with a protest performance, to make the hierarchy happy. Most ex-Soviet Muslims are not very religious, but in Chechnya, Daghestan and the Ferghana Valley of Uzbekistan, Sunni radicalism has emerged.
Not to mention that the Egyptian government banned the Brotherhood in 1948, as a result of which it assassinated Prime Minister Mahmoud al-Nuqrashi; and in 1954-1970 because it tried to assassinate Col Gamal Abdel Nasser. Anwar El Sadat rehabilitated it because he wanted to offset the Nasserist Left, then Hosni Mubarak used it to deflect the Muslim extremists of al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya and the zegyptian Islamic Jihad. It always came back.
The only places where hard line repression of political Islam had medium-term success (Syria, Iraq, Algeria), very heavy losses of life were involved. And even that did not always work (Afghanistan)
So the Egyptian generals are likely trying something that can’t be done in the long term, and can only be accomplished in the short term by genocidal techniques.
There are sizeable Christian minorities in several Middle Eastern countries with Muslim majorities, but the numbers of Christians may be diminishing.
This Spring, Duke’s Department of Religion in conjunction with the Duke Islamic Studies Center invited Herman Teule, Professor of Eastern Christianity at Radboud University in the Netherlands, to examine and discuss the current situation of one such group — the Christians of Iraq.
When many people think of Iraq, the Christian population usually doesn’t come to mind. It’s the post-war sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims that makes most newscasts.
In fact the Christian population once thrived in Iraq, despite being in the minority. Unfortunately, since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003, their population has crashed. According to the latest figures from the CIA World Factbook, the number of Christians may have dropped by as much as 50%. Teule estimates an even more dramatic decline of 70% — from 850,000 pre-war to 250,000 today. Even more staggering is the decline in the number of church buildings – about 57 are left of the approximately 300 that were in existence before the dictator was overthrown.
The history of Christians in what is now Iraq goes back 2,000 plus years. The oldest church — the Assyrian Church of the East — dates to the 2nd century AD, before the birth of Islam. The Chaldean Catholic Church dates back to the 16th century and was firmly established in the 19th century when a number of Assyrians “accepted the authority of the Pope and split from the Assyrian mother church.” These two churches, together with the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church (which have their center in Syria and Lebanon respectively), and the Armenian Church, are the main Christian churches in Iraq today.
Teule began his talk with a brief history of these four main churches and their leaders, and characterized their relationships with the state (for good or ill), including with Saddam Hussein’s regime. Here are some excerpts:
Church and State
Teule also looked at the development of a Christian political movement in Iraq, during the 20th century, which became strong enough to hold its own.
By 1979 various Christian factions came together to create the first secular Christian political party in the region — the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM). “Ideologically,” Teule explained, the theory was that “Assyrian should not be limited to one specific community,” but “Assyrian should refer to a common ethnic identity” of all the four or five church communities in Iraq.
“In this way they created in Iraq a third ethnic group, next to the Arabs and to the Kurds,” he said. “On the one hand it was a way of overcoming the traditional ecclesiastical divisions. On the other hand it was also the expression of a wish to play… a new political role in Iraq, which was different from the past when politics was also under the responsibility of the religious leaders,” said Teule. “The struggle for ethnic, non-religious, and non-Arab but Assyrian identity made the ADM the natural ally of the Kurds who were striving for the recognition of a Kurdish identity and for the recognition of Kurdish political rights.”
Through the 1980s, Teule noted, Christian political parties were not only recognized as a group that warranted respect, but were also allotted no less than 5 of 111 seats (2 to the ADM and 3 to other Christian political parties) in the Iraqi governing body – an over-representation of their actual population. This foothold gave Christians a relatively significant say in the leadership of the country.
The rocket attack on the Shrine of Sayyida Zaynab in the suburbs of Damascus on Friday has intensified the sectarian overtones of the Syrian civil war and exacerbated Sunni-Shiite tension in Iraq and elsewhere. Shrapnel killed the venerated caretaker of the shrine. ( Sayyida Zaynab [d. 682 AD] was the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad). The attack appears to have been launched by radical Sunnis influenced by the austere Wahhabi school of Islam predominant in Saudi Arabia, which despises shrines as idolatrous in a somewhat Protestant fashion. The shrine is guarded by several hundred Shiites from Lebanon and Iraq, including Hizbullah fighters.
There were a number of demonstrations over the weekend in Pakistan by outraged Shiites protesting what was done to their holy sites. (Pakistani Shiites, something like 15% of the population, are under attack by Taliban and other radical Sunnis in that country). Likewise, Iranian leaders vociferously condemned the attack.
The war in Syria is not primarily a religious one, though it obviously has a strong sectarian dimension. The same is true of the alarming and ongoing violence in Iraq. These are not religious struggles because they are not over theology. People have organized themselves to fight on one side or another on many grounds, with religious heritage or identity only one of them. The Syrian revolution began with protests by Syrians in the smaller cities of the center and south of the country against unemployment and lack of water for irrigation, as well as against the seedy practices of the Baath police state. Most of the protesters were Sunni but most of them were not protesting on behalf of Sunni theology. It so happens that the militantly secular Baath socialist, Arab-nationalist party is dominated in Syria by the Alawite sect, which technically falls on the Shiite side of the Sunni-Shiite divide. But it is not orthodox in its beliefs, and few orthodox, Twelver Shiites of Lebanon, Iraq or Iran would mobilize on behalf of the Alawite form of Islam, with which they feel no kindred spirit.
Lebanon’s Hizbullah is supporting Damascus not because it likes the secular Baath Party or because it believes that President Bashar al-Assad and his ruling clique are orthodox Shiites, but rather because Syria is the land bridge over which Iran ships rockets and other munitions to Hizbullah. Without the land bridge, Hizbullah could be cut off from weapons shipments by the Israelis and then just crushed. Iran is supporting Damascus because the Syrian elite is willing to make that alliance (Iran has few friends in the Middle East) and because it allows Iran to project its power into the Levant, including into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government has declared neutrality toward the two sides in Syria, though Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tilts toward Damascus (ironic because for years he blamed al-Assad for every bombing in Baghdad). One of al-Maliki’s nephews was killed while guarding the shrine of Sayyida Zainab, on June 1 of this year. The USG Open Source Center noted that Iranian “Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani has published his message that reads in part, ‘I received the news of martyrdom of your nephew while he was guarding the mausoleum of Imam Ali’s gracious daughter, Lady Zeinab (P); I pray to Almighty Allah to accept this dear martyr, and to resurrect him along with the martyrs of the advent of Islam.’ He wished for God’s great reward for Maleki family for suffering the pain for this loss, adding, ‘I plead to the Unique One to grant victory to the other Mujahids [holy warriors] who defend the mausoleum of the Infallible Household of the Prophet (P) over the enemies of religion.’
Iraq’s Shiite religious authorities mostly urge neutrality, as well, except for Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, who sides with the rebels, i.e. he is siding with the largely Sunni Free Syrian Army against the Baathist, quasi-Shiite Syrian ruling clique. Baathists in Iraq killed Sayyid Muqtada’s father and two eldest brothers, and he says he sympathizes with the oppressed Syrian masses rising up against their Baathist police state. This stance alone should signal us that Syria is not only about religion or sect.
The London-based pan-Arab daily, al-Quds al-`Arabi (Arab Jerusalem), published an excellent article today on the differences between the Iraqi Shiite authorities of Najaf, who are neutral on Syria, and the Iranian ayatollahs of Qom, who openly call for volunteers to go fight on the side of the Syrian government. Those who recruit volunteers for Syria in Iraq and Iran say that the Qom fatwas authorizing Shiites to go fight have provoked a big increase in volunteers.
In contrast, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf has refused to give a fatwa or formal legal ruling authorizing his followers to join the fight in Syria.
Many Iraqi Shiites have gone off to fight in Syria, basing themselves on the fatwas of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose agents are making inroads in Najaf and in Iraq in general, targeting the younger generation and hoping to convert them to a belief in the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent, the Khomeinist doctrine that clerics should rule Shiite society. Most high Iraqi Shiite authorities reject the ‘Guardianship of the Jurisprudent,’ saying that clerical authorities should not rule. An agent of one of the Iraqi grand ayatollahs has referred to the anti-regime fighters as in ‘rebellion.”
The article’s sources day that about 50 Iraqi Shiites go off to fight in Syria every week, in part to protect the shrine of Sayyida Zainab.
So a revolution and civil war that is not primarily religious in motivation has developed a significant religious dimension. The killing of Sayyida Zaynab’s shrine keeper will afford political entrepreneurs a further pretext for injecting Sunni-Shiite differences into the fighting.
Just as, in Christianity, Protestants prefer Paul and Catholics privilege St. Peter, among the first generation of Christian leaders after Jesus of Nazareth, so in Islam there are two great branches. Sunnis believe that after the Prophet Muhammad, the elite of the community selected in turn four Orthodox Caliphs or vicars of the Prophet, who needn’t have been from his family. In contrast, Shiites asserted a dynastic principle. Since the Prophet Muhammad did not have a son who survived childhood, the Shiites favored his cousin and son-in-law, Ali b. Abi Talib, as the rightful first successor (Imam) of the Prophet, and believed that his descendants through Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, should have been the vicars of the Prophet afterwards. The two branches only agreed on religious authority once, when what later became known as Sunnis selected Ali as the fourth Caliph. Ali’s sons, Hasan and Husain, are considered Imams by the Shiites but just as saints of a sort by Sunnis. Ali also had a daughter, Zaynab, who supported her brother, Husain, and who stood up to the Umayyad king after he had had Husain killed for leading an uprising against him in Iraq.
“A 92-year-old man in Iraq marries a woman 70 years his junior. Muslai Mohammed, one of the most prominent figures in his village, decided to get married three years after the death of his first wife, who died aged 58.
“I remained alone when my wife died, there was nobody to share anything with. I wanted to have a good time, have some pleasure, but there was nothing. Then God brought her to me, for my pleasure. Is that good or bad?,” he said.
Muna al-Jabouri, his new wife, said: “I accepted (to marry him) when I saw his pictures and realised it was my fate.” Report by Katie Lamborn.”
The change of government in Egypt produced starkly different reactions in various Middle Eastern countries, which tells us something about the situation there.
With the exception of maverick member Qatar, the Gulf Cooperation Council, grouping six conservative Gulf oil monarchies, cheered loudest for the military coup made by Brig. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi against elected President Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood (provoked by a mass movement against Morsi). Even Qatar reacted correctly, congratulating the interim appointed president, Adly Mansour, on his new office. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait went much further in warmly welcoming the change in government, with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah being the first Arab ruler to weigh in. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait were so enthused that they offered altogether on the order of $9 billion in aid to the new government. Qatar had given billions to the Muslim Brotherhood government of Morsi.
Since political Islam is an important underpinning of some of the GCC states, you would think they might have been happy about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Save for Qatar, they weren’t. Saudi Arabia has long had a love-hate relationship with the Brotherhood. Since 9/11, they have been suspicious of it as a radicalizing force in the region (ironic because people say the same thing about their Wahhabi, fundamentalist form of Islam). Perhaps more important, the Saudi regime views Egypt as its strategic depth, seeing the Egyptian military as providing a crucial security umbrella. Deposed President Morsi’s willingness to establish diplomatic ties with Iran alarmed the Saudis, and they did not like Morsi’s rather open alliance with Qatar, Saudia’s rival.
The United Arab Emirates is only 18% Arab with regard to residents as opposed to citizens, and even that 18% is afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood, which in the UAE is viewed as a dangerous cult. The Brotherhood, as a fundamentalist organization, challenges the tribal ties of UAE society and the charisma of its leaders is an unwelcome rival to the authority of the emirs. Brotherhood members in the UAE were recently tried on conspiracy charges. Likewise, the emir of Kuwait sees the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood as rivals for authority and the Kuwaiti government and the press supportive of it are obviously pleased at Morsi’s removal.
Basically, the Gulf Cooperation Council is happy about a reversal in Brotherhood fortunes because it is seen as a republican, revolutionary and cult-like group. The emirs mostly don’t like it. And the GCC, made up of small weak and very wealthy states, is happier with the Egyptian military in a commanding position, since they see it as their own night watchman.
Unsurprisingly, Jordan, a pro-Western Sunni monarchy with along history of domestic conflict with Jordan’s small Muslim Brotherhood, was supportive of the change in Egypt. Jordan has applied to join the GCC, and provides security services to them, and they provide aid to Amman.
But what is amazing is that Iraq and Syria, who are in conflict with the GCC, also were positive toward the events in Egypt. Iraq’s Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki promptly sent congratulations to interim President Adly Mansour. A member of Nouri’s party said, “The reason behind the downfall of Morsi is that he became subject to the control of the Salafists. This proves that the Arab street rejects extremist religious rule.” The Shiite government of Iraq faces opposition from hard line Sunnis, and so was happy to see the back of Morsi. But what is ironic is that al-Maliki’s own Islamic Call (Da’wa) Party is a manifestation of political Islam and is center-right. The Sunni-Shiite divide in Iraq is coloring Baghdad’s reception of these events.
The Baath government of Syria, which the GCC is trying to overthrow, was also happy about the uprising in Egypt. Syria’s secular government faces an uprising on the part of its own Muslim Brotherhood (though the anti-government sentiment is widespread among Syria’s secular Sunnis and Sufis, as well). Morsi, after angering the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood by being coy about that country for months, finally called for a no-fly zone over that country. So Bashar al-Assad is having some Schadenfreude right about now; he is still there, and Morsi is gone.
Iran hasn’t taken a strong stand. Tehran was happy about Morsi’s overtures on opening an embassy, but Iran’s Shiite ayatollahs are suspicious of Sunni Muslim fundamentalism. That Egyptian Shiites had been recently lynched, and Morsi had not spoken out forcefully against the horrible murders, didn’t endear him to Tehran. Some Iranian intellectuals denounced the idea of a military coup. But many felt that Morsi had over-reached and been too hard line. (You wonder if their criticism of Morsi is code for criticism of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei).
On the other side of the ledger, Turkey has been a vocal critic of the change in Cairo, in fact Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has denounced the “putschists” in Cairo and called for the immediate release of Dr. Morsi. Erdogan leads a modern political party of the center-right, slightly tinged with Muslim themes, and Turkey in general has suffered from numerous military coups. Turkey has been conducting vigorous diplomacy at the European Union and elsewhere against the legitimacy of the Adly Mansour government.
Tunisia’s democratically elected, center-right Muslim religious government, headed by PM Ali Larayyedh, also expressed dismay at Morsi’s overthrow. The Renaissance or al-Nahdah Party sees Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as way too much like Gen. Zine el Din Ben Ali, who had come to power in a coup in 1987, and whom the Tunisians overthrew in the name of democracy in 2011. Some Tunisian secularists have begun speaking of starting their own Rebellion or Tamarrud movement against the fundamentalist Renaissance Party, which has disturbed the government. Even the secular President, long-time human rights activist Moncef Marzouki, denounced the coup in Cairo.
Algeria, whose government is secular and is suspicious of Muslim religious groups in politics, did not send congratulations to President Mansour and expressed hopes Egypt would return quickly to stability. Algeria’s government in late 1991 cancelled the electoral victory of a Muslim fundamentalist party, throwing the country into years of bloody civil war. Algiers doesn’t think al-Sisi knows what he is getting himself into.
Israel must be pleased, having good relations with the military and being very suspicious of Morsi and the Brotherhood. But they haven’t said much publicly. But the secular PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas warmly welcomed the events. Morsi was a strong supporter of the PLO’s rival, Hamas.
The reactions in the region are all over the place, and there are few patterns. Countries that are at daggers drawn over Syria were nevertheless supportive of Morsi’s overthrow.
There are two main conclusions here. Countries’ leadership looked at their own situation when they considered what happened to Morsi. Those who would want to be rescued from an ascendant Muslim Brotherhood in their own country– the GCC, Iraq and Syria — tended to support Adly Mansour and Gen. al-Sisi.
Countries whose rulers saw themselves as participating in Morsi’s brand of democratic fundamentalism–Turkey and Tunisia– angrily denounced the events as an illegitimate coup.
Turkey and Tunisia, it seems to me, although they are outliers on the overthrow of Morsi, are in the vanguard of Middle Eastern politics. The region can only flourish if governments make a place for Muslim democrats. The lesson the latter must learn, from the overthrow and from the regional reaction, is that once elected, you still have to govern democratically.
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