Is the Military Bulwark against Islamism Collapsing? Part I

 

by David Bukay

 

1^st part of 2

 

The Military in Politics

In 1975, Freedom House ranked only 25 percent of the world's countries to be "politically free." Three decades later, the proportion had increased to 46 percent, with 122 electoral democracies.[1] Democracy may have taken root in Eastern Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and much of sub-Saharan Africa, but the Middle East has largely been left behind. Except for Israel, Middle Eastern countries have long histories of authoritarianism, influenced by both culture and religion. In modern years, this has manifested itself in the rise, if not of direct military rule, then of states supported by militaries focused more on inward threats than on external enemies. Middle Eastern militaries, whether in Algeria, Egypt, or Turkey, have served as the main bulwark against the spread or empowerment of Islamists. However, Western policymakers must prepare for the day that the regional militaries will switch sides, casting their lot with Islamists rather than more secular autocrats.

 

Background

Beginning in the 1960s, many academics analyzed how Asian and African states changed from traditional societies to modern, developed nation-states.[2] Other scholars focused on the nature of control and political survival in these new states.[3] In the Middle East, during this period, the military became the predominant power within emerging nation-states. First in Turkey, then in Iran and Egypt, and later in Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, military leaders seized power and established or abolished monarchies. Military leaders also retained predominant power in Syria, Algeria, and Tunisia. In Jordan and the Persian Gulf emirates, more traditional leaders survived only by forging close ties with the military and establishing vast security services.

In some countries, the military coexisted with traditional Islam and even Islamists. During the Cold War, in Saudi Arabia and Iran, Islam was seen as a force resistant to communism. Indeed, while demands for U.S. apologies for the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq are now a staple of the Islamic Republic, the irony is that Iranian Islamists and the Central Intelligence Agency found themselves sharing opposition to the populist premier because of his closeness to the Iranian communist party. So long as extremists—the Muslim Brotherhood or Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's followers, for example—were contained, Islam was a positive, non-threatening force. With time, however, Islam grew to threaten military stability and rule. The ramifications of this shift in power politics are great.

After World War I, Arab leaders created nation states alongside British and French mandates. This process was gradual and came at the expense of the pan-Islamic alternative. Pan-Arabism grew to become the dominant ideology even as Arab leaders divided Arab-speaking areas into separate countries. Almost a century later, pan-Arabism is on life-support, paid lip service to only at Arab League meetings and among some intellectuals and artists. A similar rise in Islamist sentiment has come at the expense of ethnic identity in Turkey, Pakistan, and Somalia. For the masses, Islamism is simply more attractive. In Algeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, Islamist movements continue to threaten regime survival as these states rely increasingly on the military or, in Somalia's case, militias, to prevent an Islamist takeover.

 

Political Development in the Middle East

In Arab countries today, the "street" has little political significance. Whereas the nation-state was alien to Middle Eastern political culture, authoritarian regimes and patrimonial leadership have long been part of the regional heritage, in which religion demanded submission to God and the leaders who claimed to be his representatives on earth; culture demanded similar submission to tribal and political leaders.

Patrimonialism makes authoritarian regimes resistant to democratic reform.[4] Many political leaders today thrive on personality cults. In most Arab countries, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Iran, ordinary citizens feel compelled to display portraits of national leaders in schools, offices, and sometimes even private homes. In Turkey, the same phenomenon occurs with the Atatürk cult. As they developed, Arab states became marked by political corruption, a high level of army involvement in shaping and managing policy, weak political institutions, a lack of democratization, and an absence of formal decision-making institutions. Together, these led to arbitrary, centralized government leadership and a maximization of the role of the military in politics that placed them almost in hierarchical command.[5]

There may be constitutions, political parties, and parliaments, but these are insignificant and often lack influence. In Tunisia, for example, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali defeated two opponents in October 2004 elections with 94.5 percent of the votes cast. Likewise, in the September 2005 Egyptian elections, Hosni Mubarak defeated his two main opponents, Al-Ghad party leader Ayman Nour and New Wafd party leader, Nu'man Guma'a, winning 88.6 percent of the vote.

 

The Rise of the Military

Throughout Islamic history, prominent heroes have come from the military. Squares, buildings, and universities are still named after the twelfth-century Kurdish warrior Salah ad-din al-Ayyubi (Saladin). Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser may have been a dictator, but he did enjoy popular appeal. So, too, did Syrian president Hafiz al-Assad and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Today, however, the heroes of the masses are often Islamic leaders. Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini captured the imagination of the Third World. After the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, polls suggested that Hezbollah secretary-general Hasan Nasrallah was among the most admired Arab political leaders.[6] If, through most of the twentieth century, the dominant political trend in the Middle East involved the waning of the traditional tribal elite and their replacement by the military, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the defining trend appears to be the replacement of authoritarian military leaders like Egyptian president Mubarak by Muslim movements.

In many countries, the military provides a bulwark against unconstrained Islamism. Indonesian president Muhammad Suharto used the military and an iron fist to constrain Islamist movements in the world's most populous Muslim country.[7] In Turkey, the military has long served as the guarantor of the constitutional separation of mosque and state, stepping in most recently in 1997, suspicious of the agenda of Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan. In Syria, the military protects a relatively secular and minority 'Alawi regime against a majority Sunni population susceptible to Islamist populism. When the Muslim Brotherhood grew too vocal and active in Syria, President Hafiz al-Assad ordered his army to raze its stronghold in Hama, killing perhaps 20,000 civilians. After Islamists won the 1991 elections in Algeria and, as is often forgotten, promised to change the constitution to prevent future polls, the Algerian army intervened. H. Osman Bencherif, the Algerian ambassador to the United States later explained, "It was the lesser of two evils: Democratic principles would be violated by cancelling the second round just as they would be seriously threatened by a theocratic, authoritarian, Islamist takeover. The army took a difficult step, but one that saved Algeria from an even worse fate."[8] A new study by Steven Cook confirms the connection between the military establishment and the stability of the regime.[9] Conversely in Lebanon, where the military is weak, Hezbollah has constrained political development as it tries to impose Shi'i norms and a radical foreign policy onto Lebanese society.

 

What If Middle Eastern Militaries Switch Sides?

Islamism seeks to replace the modern mechanisms of state with an Islamic social and cultural framework. In some cases, the military either declares its neutrality or joins with the Islamists to topple the secular order. This happened most clearly in Iran where the army's declaration of neutrality enabled the triumphal return of Khomeini in February 1979, and also in Sudan when, in June 1989, Hasan 'Abdullah at-Turabi's National Islamic Front cooperated with the military to take over the regime. After the Egyptian army defeated the active Islamic insurgency in the late 1990s, the Egyptian government moved to co-opt many of the Muslim Brotherhood's potential recruits by Islamizing education and society.[10] While many commentators persist in describing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Fatah as secular, especially in juxtaposition to Hamas, the fact is that the late PLO chairman Yasser Arafat Islamized Fatah through the 1990s.[11]

Since the 1960s, the Pakistani military has allied itself with Islamists. Pakistan was founded nominally on the basis of religion, but the country's founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was more secular than religious in orientation. Pakistan is an ethnically diverse country, and first Pushtun nationalism—manifested in the Pushtunistan struggle of the 1950s and 1960s—and then Bangladesh's secession in 1971 spurred the Pakistani leadership to promote Islam as an antidote to ethnic nationalism. Indeed, this was the major motivation behind Islamabad's support for the Taliban.[12] In recent years, the Pakistani government has struck deals with the Taliban in both North Waziristan and Swat.[13]

While the Syrian government defeated an Islamist insurgency in the 1980s, and the Egyptian and Algerian governments defeated Islamist insurgencies in the 1990s, the chance for a secular regime to emerge victorious today is not as certain.

Turkey provides a troubling example. The Turkish military long served as the defender both of Turkish secularism and democracy.[14] But, as part of the European Union accession process, Turkey's Grand National Assembly passed a reform package that loosened the power of the military in the domestic political sphere by, for example, placing the country's powerful National Security Council under civilian control.[15] With the military no longer in a position to protect secularism, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has moved to consolidate Islamist control, not only in political circles, but over ministry bureaucracies, the educational system, and the media.[16] Should the Turkish government decide to abandon the European Union accession process—and its commitment appears to be wavering—then it will already have succeeded in marginalizing the one force that would prevent it from casting aside Kemalism for an Islamist state.

David Bukay

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.