The politics of social change in the Middle East and North Africa 9780691650920, 9781400875344, 9780691624327

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
FOREWORD (page vii)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (page xvii)
PART I THE LEGACY OF THE PAST AND THE CLAIMS OF THE PRESENT
1. THE INHERITANCE OF THE ISLAMIC COMMUNITY (page 3)
2. THE CHALLENGE OF THE MODERN AGE TO ISLAM (page 25)
PART II THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY
3. KINGS, LANDLORDS, AND THE TRADITIONAL BOURGEOISIE: THE DECLINING ELITE (page 41)
4. THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS AS THE PRINCIPAL REVOLUTIONARY AND STABILIZING FORCE (page 51)
5. PEASANTS: THE SILENT MAJORITY AT THE THRESHOLD OF POLITICS (page 79)
6. WORKERS: THE GROWING TIDE OF THE UNSKILLED AND UNEMPLOYED (page 105)
PART III THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES
7. AMENDING THE PAST: REFORMIST ISLAM (page 119)
8. RESURRECTING THE PAST: NEO-ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM (page 134)
9. TOWARD A NEW AGE OF CERTAINTY: COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM (page 156)
10. FROM UNORGANIZED INSECURITY TO ORGANIZED INSECURITY: NATIONALISM (page 196)
11. TRANSFORMING THE PRESENT: THE QUEST FOR FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY (page 214)
12. TRANSFORMING THE PRESENT: SOCIALISM FOR THE FEW, FOR THE MANY, OR FOR THE AGGRANDIZEMENT OF THE STATE? (page 235)
PART IV INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION
13. THE ARMY (page 251)
14. POLITICAL PARTIES (page 281)
15. TRADE UNIONS (page 318)
16. THE CIVIL BUREAUCRACY (page 340)
PART V THE COST AND CONSEQUENCES OF MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES DOMESTICALLY, REGIONALLY, AND INTERNATIONALLY
17. THE PRICE OF POLITICAL STABILITY (page 351)
18. REGIONAL RIVALRY AND THE PROSPECTS FOR UNITY (page 365)
19. THE INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION OF THE MIDDLE EAST (page 388)
INDEX (page 421)

Citation preview

THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

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The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa OCt By Manfred Halpern Consultant to The RAND Corporation

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

1963

Copyright © 1963

by The RAND Corporation Published 1963 by Princeton University Press All Rights Reserved L.C. Card Number 63-12670

Printed in the United States of America By The Haddon Craftsmen, Scranton, Pa.

For my Mother and Father

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FOREWORD

The Substance of This Book THE AREA from Morocco to Pakistan is in the midst of a profound revolution. This book attempts to analyze the causes and character of that revolution; examine the forces, groups, ideas, and institutions now in motion; and estimate the direction which

politics may take in the future in the Middle East and North Africa. I have not been content, therefore, merely to summarize recent

insights into the nationalist revolution now in progress in this area, or into the ensuing “revolution of rising expectations.” ‘These

two revolutions have been particularly dramatic in the Middle Fast and North Africa. The number of newly independent nations has almost tripled in this region during the past twenty years. The revolution of rising expectations is being accelerated by the pressure of a population that has tripled since the turn of the century but still cultivates only four percent of the region’s

total land area.

The revolution being examined here is broader and runs deeper than nationalism and its discontents. The five parts into which this book is divided define the scope of the Middle Eastern

and North African transformation. First, a way of life that endured nearly 1300 years is being destroyed by challenges for for which, as a system of faith and action, it was almost entirely unprepared. Second, a new social system with new social values is taking the place of the traditional society. Third, a new range [ vii |

FOREWORD

of ideological choices has opened up for a new kind of elite. Fourth, new political instruments are at the elite’s disposal. Finally, the fact that new men are using new means to attain new ends in their attempts to deal with the politics of social change entails revolutionary consequences at home and abroad. Only by

understanding the totality of this revolution will we be able to see why the cost of change, or of avoiding change, runs so high in the Middle East and North Africa. By concentrating on the comparative analysis of changing internal politics, this study is also intended to contribute to the understanding of international relations. In order to appreciate the opportunities, driving forces, and limitations of the interna-

tional system, it is not enough to attend to those dramatic moments when the interests of one nation clash with the interests

of another or to appreciate the changing structure of the international system. The world is steadily and rightly concerned with the difficult and still tenuous efforts of the great powers to make large-scale war too costly. But because a truce between the great powers persists, international relations are today being profoundly

transformed mainly through internal politics. The balance of power, and the orientation, health and stability of the international system, are vitally affected by the success or failure of local elites in dealing with the social, political, economic, intellectual, and psychological modernization of their countries. At the same time, no rulers can pursue these tasks in sovereign isolation. Increasingly, the choice which all of them face is whether to achieve such complex and difficult domestic goals through free international collaboration, or whether to suffer such social change to be directed through the subversive intervention of the stronger nations in the unstable and violent internal politics of the unsuccessful. In the latter case, domestic failure thus also

helps to enlarge the areas of hostile confrontation among the

great powers. :

Such an emphasis on the domestic forces that mold the atti-

tudes and interests of nations is perhaps especially required in approaching an area of the world where people often remain obsessed by the memories of particularly unhappy conflicts with outside powers and with each other; an area where the West has [ viii ]

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been late and often unskillful in adjusting itself to the changing pattern of international relationships; an area where both Middle Kasterners and Westerners have barely begun to deal with the political problems of social change. The Need for Policy-oriented Research — Based on Inadequate Data

It must be admitted at the outset, however, that anyone who presumes to analyze the changing forces at work in the Middle East and North Africa treads on uncommonly precarious ground.

The systematic study of comparative politics and the art of estimating future trends are themselves quite new.* Analyses that

focus on the changing present in the Middle East and North Africa for the sake of estimating future forces and trends are also

hampered by our lack of knowledge about this area’s past. Although the traditions of medievalism in Islam have been yielding

to the modern age only during the past century and their long , shadows still affect the vision of today’s Moslems, it remains difficult to assess that legacy in terms of its contemporary mean-

ing. We know much more about the Islamic community’s inherited theology than about the actuality of its past beliefs; much more about its inherited political utopias than its past political practices. “We do not know the social history of Islam,” writes the French historian Braudel, and he adds in despair, “Shall we ever know it?’”?

We are scarcely better informed about the present. As H. A. R. Gibb has written: “The historian of the Arab world in the twen-

tieth century . . . has at his disposal few—and in all cases incomplete—materials of a genuinely historical nature upon which 1 Qn the present state of comparative politics, see Harry Eckstein and David Apter, Comparative Politics: A Reader, New York, 1963. None of the most active and organized practitioners of the art of estimating, namely those in the American government, has yet published his reminiscences. 2 La méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen a lepoque de Philippe I, Paris, 1949, p. 637, cited by Robert Brunschvig, in “Perspectives,” Studia Islamica, 1953, p. 5. For a detailed inventory of our ignorance concerning the Ottoman Empire even during the last 200 years of its existence, see H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West, Volume 1, Part 1, London, 1950,

pp. 1-18, passim. .

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FOREWORD

to base his study of twentieth century trends. His facts hang in mid-air. But in all truth the situation is worse still. Even in relation to the twentieth century, political and diplomatic history has all but monopolized the interest of students or observers of the Middle East, to the exclusion of fact-finding studies on the actual phenomena and mechanisms of human life... . There is not one [volume] which traces the internal social and economic institutions [of Egypt] on the basis of the available documents. . . . The

full and true history of the British Occupation has still to be written. .. . There is surprisingly little on the development of the [Arab] cities and their populations, and nothing at all on the evolution of the modern professional classes: doctors, lawyers, journalists, school teachers, industrialists, and civil servants... .

Too often, also, the studies made by Arab writers other than novelists of the economic, educational, religious, and other institutions are tracts, more or less purposefully and skillfully designed to support a policy or a point of view.”*

Except that it takes too generous a view of political and diplomatic studies, this is a just complaint. There is scarcely a handful of books in any language that analyze the relationship

between social, economic, and intellectual forces and contemporary political trends in the countries of the Arab world— east or west of the Suez Canal—or among the Turks, Iranians, Afghans, and Pakistanis along the northern tier.* Fven without these materials to draw on, an essay such as the present one must be attempted. The policy-maker and the concerned public need an analytical foundation for judgment before all the returns are in. If one waits until all is known and the die cast, knowledge may do no more than let the dead bury the dead. 8H. A. R. Gibb, “Problems of Modern Middle Eastern History,” in Report on Current Research, Spring 1956: Survey of Current Research on the Middle East, edited by Anne W. Noyes, The Middle East Institute, Washington, D.C.,

ry Twenty years ago, no one had ever written a book on American policy in the Middle East and North Africa, nor could any American be found teaching the contemporary politics, economics, or sociology of that region of the world. From its belated beginnings, the political exploration of the Middle East and North Africa has not progressed as quickly or systematically as that of Eastern Europe or the Far East. For a further examination of this backwardness, see Manfred Halpern, “Middle Eastern Studies: A Review of the State of the Field with a Few Examples,” World Politics, October 1962, pp. 108-122.

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To this extent, therefore, the study is policy-oriented. From incomplete knowledge of present forces and trends, it projects probable estimates of the future, since no policy-maker in the West or in the Middle East can escape making commitments

upon this precarious ground. ,

The book, however, is addressed equally to those whose main concern is the increase of knowledge. There may be considerable advantage in giving priority to the construction of a broad outline

map that will give us an overview of major Middle Eastern patterns and dynamics. It will teach us where to find the gaps in our knowledge, what questions we need to ask first, and which detailed studies are likely to prove to be the most crucial. A map, however imperfect, forces us to make explicit and to expose to

criticism our basic assumptions about the lay of the land, its resources, and the direction of its traffic. The Question of Method

This study rarely pauses to make explicit the methodological framework of its analysis, or the concepts and hypotheses that underlie its conclusion. To show how political, social, economic, and intellectual systems may be linked with one another, and how change is related to stability is a task demanding separate treat-

ment and a language of its own. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that this study is not based merely on existing facts.

It does not say simply, for example, that the Middle East has few political parties, that there is some talk, though less effort, to form a few more, and that it would therefore be premature

to estimate just what political parties might be able to accomplish. The book goes further and asks what role parties must play if they are to be effective in creating a new political culture in the midst of rapid social transformation. What kind of structure must they build? What kind of functions must they be able to perform? What kind of problems are they likely to face? And then—returning to the existing political parties—how success-

ful are particular countries likely to be in achieving political stability and modernization given the help (or lack of help) of an effective popular movement? The advantage of this type of [ xi ]

, FOREWORD analysis—exploring the structural and functional requirements no less than the actualities of a situation—is that it allows a more

systematic treatment of the potentials of the situation, while it makes explicit the criteria of judgment involved. This study also relies upon a second and related method for drawing broad generalizations from incomplete data. It proceeds on the assumption that institutions, groups, behavior, or ideas performing functionally equivalent roles in a similar context are comparable. Since an army in the Middle East, for example, acts like a political party, much that we have learned about parties can be used to illuminate the role of an army under such conditions. More generally, we are here exploring some sixteen countries that have experienced similar problems in passing from an Islamic past into the modern age. In other respects, systematic contrasts can usefully be drawn between one and another of these countries. The concern for comparable roles and functions under similar

conditions of social change forces us to reject the stereotyped meaning of such familiar labels as “moderate,” “extremist,” “leftist,” or “rightist,” drawn from the history of a different culture, and to ask anew what the major historical issues are about which a Middle Easterner may be a moderate or extremist. It may be idle, for example, to call “conservative” a Middle Eastern regime that does not encourage innovation and, hence rendered

powerless to deal with a rapidly changing society, fails to conserve anything. In this part of the world, the meaning not only

of “socialism” but of “society” is changing, while “political parties,” “armies,” and “parliaments” play unexpected roles. Even locally bred ideas and institutions no longer mean what they

have always meant. Wherever Islam asserts itself as an active political force today, it is not in the form of a traditional religion but as a modern political ideology. The impact of Islam is therefore quite different from what it used to be. The two methods of analysis on which this book chiefly relies

can help us to enhance the range, accuracy, and relevancy of interpretation. They cannot fully compensate for our ignorance of facts, and much of what is said here still rests on selected examples rather than full and complete evidence. Such ex[ xii ]

FOREWORD

amples, nonetheless, are intended in every case to be a convincing

illustration that data in support of a particular hypothesis do exist. They are offered on the assumption that further research

light. |

would reveal corroborative evidence in other parts of the region. Every hypothesis, however, remains a hypothesis without sufficient proof, so that others may find it possible either to alter or to disprove what has been offered here as further evidence comes to

Subjects Omitted |

A number of topics vital to any thorough study of the politics of social change in the Middle East and North Africa has been omitted. I do not separately examine each Middle Eastern and North African country in detail to account for political developments within it, or to spell out all the variations between one and another. Many additional years’ work by many hands would be required to assemble the necessary materials for the first time, and many times the space occupied here would be needed to examine even the most significant issues and events. I have also had to overlook a number of area-wide phenomena

that help to mold the process of social change. The growing liberation of women—psychologically, intellectually, socially, economically, and legally—is bound to alter the whole style and substance of Middle Eastern relationships. The energy of other important segments of society remains circumscribed. The independently creative or critical intellectual as yet still rarely raises his head. The university is in most countries still hobbled by state control, overwhelmingly large classes, and extremely small salaries. The primary and secondary schools remain greatly

inadequate in number and quality. The press, with honorable exceptions, is frustrated by censorship or corrupted by venality

and sensationalism. The judiciary is increasingly free to deal rationally and fairly with criminal and civil cases, but usually powerless to enter with the same spirit into cases dealing with political liberty and social values. The great ease of communica-

tion within and beyond the region through books, radio, and rapid transportation is creating a new psychic mobility and re-

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latedness. These factors already deeply affect the changing political culture of the Middle East and also the chances for the

development of a stable plurality of autonomous centers of power. But none of them could be taken up here. To analyze the intellectual, moral, and psychological climate of the Middle East, as it affects the relationship between leaders

and followers, and between freedom and authority, is a task which, however useful to the present inquiry, demands a major

investigation of its own. Such a study would also give more explicit and systematic treatment than this one to the cultural diversities within the Middle East and North Africa. The Saudi Arabian, whose heritage is the proud, parochial freedom of the desert, obviously has a different cast of mind from the Egyptian, who has for so long been dependent on the tyranically corrupt rulers of a generous Nile; the trading Lebanese have different values from the mountaineers of land-locked Afghanistan. Such distinctions have already been assimilated within the range of problems and alternative courses examined under the topic of political modernization—the chief concern of the present book— but so far as these differences also affect styles and preferences of action, they must be given more attention at another opportunity.

The Place of Israel

_ Israel is not one of the states considered in this volume. At first, its exclusion seemed logical. This is not intended to be a textbook covering each country of this region, but a comparative study of the political modernization of a certain, interrelated portion of the Islamic community. Even the Arab-Israeli conflict is given only enough space to explain how it exacerbates or helps to distort the politics of social change in the area. Since nearly

95. percent of the population in the region from Morocco to Pakistan is Moslem in its religion and way of life,° it seemed unfruitful constantly to interrupt the flow of thought about the 5 The principal religious minorities among the 230,000,000 people who live in this region are: 10,000,000 Hindus, 7,000,000 Christians and 2,500,000 Jews. However, about 30,000,000 Moslems belong to various heretical sects, while in Iran the heretical Shia form of Islam is the state religion.

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FOREWORD

consequences of social change in Islamic society with the phrase “except in Israel.”

Yet as the book progressed, it became apparent that Islam shared many problems with Israel. Like Islam, Israel presents a society whose modern, Westernized elite will have to learn how to

assimilate an oriental majority. Both are intent upon creating secular states despite the presence of important religious political parties. One society faces the problem of converting Zionism, as the other must transform anti-colonialism, into a nationalism ap-

propriate to a generation that has known neither exile nor foreign rule. Israel is challenged by the task of making Judaism relevant to a modern environment quite different from the one that has nourished it, either in Europe or in oriental countries, for the past two thousand years, and thus finding new sources for moral judgment. Moslems face the same challenge in Islam. Israel must renovate Hebrew, as other countries must Arabic,

so that it can deal clearly with modern science, politics, and philosophy. Israel has the special opportunity of demonstrating whether large infusions of capital into an underdeveloped economy can succeed in raising both the political and economic standard of living. Its experiments with trade unions, cooperatives, and collectives are immediately relevant to the general social and economic problems of the area. Both Israel and the Arab coun-

tries, having declared their commitment to the ideas of the secular nation-state, will fall far short of that promise unless they come to treat the ethnic and religious minorities inside the state as equals. No book has yet been written on Israeli politics in a perspective akin to that of the present work. When that too-long-delayed task has been accomplished, it would be most rewarding to develop comparisons and contrasts between the transformation of

Israel and that of its neighbors. , Middle Eastern Geography: A Matter of Convenient Definition

This study draws material primarily from the following countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, [ xv |

FOREWORD

Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Af-

ghanistan, and Pakistan. I have ignored the sheikhdoms and principalities of the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf since most of these small tribal societies have not yet experienced the problems or developed the institutions that lie at the center of my analysis. The oil-producing states of Kuwait, Bahrein, and Qatar are rapidly entering the modern age, but so little pertinent

material concerning them was available that I had to exclude them from consideration. Throughout, I have used the term “Middle East” to refer to the entire area from Morocco to Pakistan. I do not mean to cause old “Near Eastern” or new “West Asian” hands any more dismay than necessary. This usage is merely a matter of present convenlence. Although I have sometimes reminded the reader of the area covered by referring to the “Middle East and North Africa,” I have used the less cumbersome term “Middle East” consistently to indicate the whole region under discussion. The phrase “Arab world” refers here to the area from Morocco to the Sudan and

thence to Iraq. The “Arab East” is separated at the EgyptianLibyan frontier from the “Arab West,” or the Maghrib of North Africa, which sometimes also receives separate mention.° ° Every book dealing with the Middle East must face the fact that the sound of Middle Eastern languages cannot readily be transliterated into the Roman alphabet. There is an excellent and accurate system of transliteration adopted by the Library of Congress, involving dots below letters, dashes above letters, and two kinds of apostrophes. This is a necessary device for assuring communi-

cation among scholars. But one has to know Arabic to recognize Koran in Qur’4n and Saladin in Salah al-Din. I have elected to use a simplified form of the Library of Congress system and to give the common spellings of wellknown names for the sake of the general reader.

[ xvi ]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTHING in this book can be blamed on a lack of opportunities.

After ten years in the Department of State, I had wished for a chance at last to describe in a single work the most significant forces and relationships of Middle Eastern and North African politics. I had hoped for a few years of comparative freedom from other work to re-examine the problems and my ideas about

them, and also to test these views during a fourteen months’ visit to two-thirds of the countries in this area. This book is the realization of hopes that once seemed almost extravagant. The generosity of two institutions has made this volume possible: The RAND Corporation and Princeton University. Apart from my field trip, the preparatory work for the book has been supported by Air Force Project RAND, a continuing program of research conducted by The RAND Corporation. The costs of book production, however, have been assumed by The RAND Corporation, out of its own funds. As a Consultant to The RAND Corporation, I have benefited from the assistance and criticism of several RAND staff members. Jeffrey C. Kitchen encouraged, and with Victor Hunt and Hans Speier helped to crystallize this project from the very beginning;

Alexander L. George greatly facilitated its completion. These four, together with Bernard Brodie, Herbert Goldhamer, Paul Langer, and Herman B. Fredman, helped to sharpen the analysis by their criticism of an earlier draft. Paul Kecskemeti and Victor Hunt commented extensively on two successive drafts. If this book possesses any merits, it is to a considerable degree because I tried [ xvii ]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

to come to terms with the persistent questions, objections, and suggestions offered by my RAND colleagues.

I am grateful to Princeton University’s Program in Near Eastern Studies for supporting the field research which is in part

reflected in this study. The Department of Politics willingly granted me leave to go overseas. The contributions and discus-

sions of the Program’s Faculty Seminar helped me to enrich several parts of the volume. In addition, several of my Princeton colleagues read large portions of the manuscript and sustained my morale while enlarging my understanding. I would thank, in

particular, Gregory Massell, Roger Le Tourneau, and Harry Eckstein. The absence of footnote references to the work of Harry Eckstein and the paucity of references to that of Marion J. Levy, Jr., make it all the more important to record here that their theoretical essays and my conversations with them have been of great help in giving structure to the present analysis. Princeton graduate and undergraduate students in several seminars and classes have made no small contribution to the clarity, focus, and accuracy of the study. Five of them continued to de-

bate its themes long after their association with the seminars ended. Their concerns—both those we settled and those we did not—are now part of this book. They are Eqbal Ahmed, Rifaat Abu el-Haj, Mohammed Guessous, Stuart Schaar, and Walter Weiker.

My former colleagues in the Department of State, both those who accept the perspectives presented below and those who still firmly oppose them, have formed a major stimulus to the development of my ideas. To all of them I owe much for their understanding and friendship. I am grateful for much intellectual and personal helpfulness

to individual members of the United States Air Force and of

some other official agencies. Custom requires that they, like my State Department friends, remain anonymous.

Many Middle Easterners and North Africans have generously contributed facts and insights, as well as friendship and hospitality. Though I might name a few of them, most live in circumstances that make individual mentions an uncertain kind-

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ness. I would like them to know that I cherish the remembrance of each and every one. A number of colleagues in universities other than Princeton read most or all of the manuscript and provided me with most

rewarding comments. I am indebted particularly to Jacob C. Hurewitz of Columbia, Malcolm Kerr of Oxford and UCLA, and George Lenczowski of Berkeley. An earlier and shorter draft was read with particular care and criticized most helpfully by Philip Thayer, Majid Khadduri, Paul M. A. Linebarger, and Thomas Cook of Johns Hopkins University, and Sir Hamilton Gibb of Harvard. Among intellectual influences that decisively affected this book

even before a line of it was written are C. Grove Haines, now Director of the Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins University, and Helen Kitchen, now Editor of Africa Report, a former State Department colleague, and editor of two thirds of this book. The former shaped the substance of my graduate education; the latter collaborated in much of the education that followed.

Nouri al-Khaledy helped to comb the excellent Princeton Library for Arabic materials, collaborated in some translations, and made astute comments. David B. MacNeil assisted in checking bibliographic references.

Ian C. C. Graham and William W. Taylor of The RAND Corporation’s Social Science Department, and David Harrop of the Princeton University Press, completed the editing of the manuscript in a helpful and perceptive way. My wife Betsy enriched six lives by her spirit, intellect, and strength—and in the Middle East and North Africa, by her sense of adventure—while this book ruled much of my existence. It was not only the book, therefore, that she helped make grow. If the book has virtues, none of these individuals and institutions can escape responsibility for them. For the faults that remain, of course, they bear no responsibility whatever. The opinions expressed below, taken as a whole, are mine alone.

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CONTENTS

tOGt

FOREWORD Vii The Substance of this Book Vil Inadequate The Question of Data Method1X XI The Need for Policy-oriented Research Based on

Subjects Omitted xii The Place of Israel XIV

Middle Eastern Geography: A Matter of

Convenient Definition XV

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XVii PART I THE LEGACY OF THE PAST AND THE CLAIMS OF THE PRESENT

1. THE INHERITANCE OF THE ISLAMIC COMMUNITY 3

The Present Setting: From Revolution to Revolution 3

The Political Community as a Religious Vision 5 The Political Community as a Historical Reality 5

Islam’s Supreme Political Achievement 8 The Polarities of Folk Islam: Isolation and Conquest,

Acquiescence and Rebellion 11

Ulema and Sultans: Antagonistic Collaboration

between Vision and Power 15 Unity through Factionalism 18 [ xxi ]

CONTENTS

Saints, Intellectuals, and Soldiers Testing the Limits

of the Islamic System 19 Islam as a Common Fate rather than a Common Faith 22 2. THE CHALLENGE OF THE MODERN AGE TO ISLAM 25

The Shattering of the Glass 25

The Problems of Reconstruction 30

The Age of Choice 35 PART I THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY

3. KINGS, LANDLORDS, AND THE TRADITIONAL

BOURGEOISIE: THE DECLINING ELITE 41

Prospects for Kings 41 “Feudalism” in the Middle East 43 The Frailty of the Traditional Urban Upper Class A5 4. THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS AS THE PRINCIPAL

REVOLUTIONARY AND STABILIZING FORCE SI

The Birth of a New Class 51

Conflicts within the New Middle Class 60

Other Classes 67 Prospects for the New Middle Class 73

The Relationship of the New Middle Class to

5. PEASANTS: THE SILENT MAJORITY AT THE

THRESHOLD OF POLITICS 79

A Majority in Misery 719 Fatalism and Its Other Face—Rebellion 87 Toward a Solution of the Peasant’s Problems Q7

AND UNEMPLOYED 105

6. WORKERS: THE GROWING TIDE OF THE UNSKILLED

PART III THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES

7. AMENDING THE PAST: REFORMIST ISLAM 119

The Failure of the Reformers of Islam 119 The Successful Reform of the Law of the Moslems 125

The Triumph of Secular Leadership 129 [ xxii ]

CONTENTS

TOTALITARIANISM 134

Tactics 140 Program 143

8. RESURRECTING THE PAST: NEO-ISLAMIC

Native Totalitarianism: The Sources of Its Appeal 134

The Fate of a Totalitarian Party 148

The Varieties of Islamic Totalitarianism 150 The Potentialities of Islamic and Post-Islamic Totalitarianism 153

TOTALITARIANISM 156 Islam and Communism 156 The Attractions of Marxism 159

9. TOWARD A NEW AGE OF CERTAINTY: COMMUNIST

The Attraction of the U.S.S.R. as a Model of Rapid Progress 162

The Attraction of Chinese Communist Models 165

Factors Hampering the Role of Communist Parties in the

Middle East: Small Membership 168 Shifting and Unrewarding Communist Strategies 170 The Burden of Soviet Discipline 175

Lack of Internal Cohesion in Communist Parties 177 A Mistaken Communist Image of Middle Eastern Society 178

The Competition of Nationalist Movements 184 ,

The Price of Rivalry 185

Factors Favorable for Communist Activities 186

The Potentials of Communism 192 10. FROM UNORGANIZED INSECURITY TO ORGANIZED

INSECURITY: NATIONALISM 196

The Meaning of Nationalism 196

Nationalism as a Necessity 201 The Nation as an Accident 204

The Limitations Popularity of The ofNationalism Nationalism 207 210 11, TRANSFORMING THE PRESENT: THE QUEST FOR 214 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY

The Radical Requirements of Democracy 214

Freedom and Authority in Traditional Islam 217 The Search for Democracy in the Middle East 221

The Authoritarian Road to Democracy 223 l Xxiii |

CONTENTS

The New Authoritarians and the Old 226 Toward Representative Government 229 12. TRANSFORMING THE PRESENT: SOCIALISM FOR THE FEW, FOR THE MANY, OR FOR THE

AGGRANDIZEMENT OF THE STATE? 235 The Tasks of Socialism in the Middle East 236

The Faces of Socialism 239 PART IV

13. THE ARMY 251 The Army’s Traditional Role 251 INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

From Praetorian Guard to Advance Guard 253 The Army’s Special Virtues as a Political Instrument 257 The Size and Composition of the Military Bureaucracies 261

Contrasts in the History of Middle Eastern Armies 265

The Circumstances of Army Intervention 270

Limitations of Army Rule 271 The Army as a Partisan in Conflicts Within the New Middle Class and with Other Classes _ 274

Making Army Regimes Unnecessary 275 Probable Problems and Trends During the Next Decade 278

14, POLITICAL PARTIES 281

Culture 282

Political Parties as the Chief Architects of The New Political

The Harnessing of Charisma 284

The Novelties of Voluntary Political Association 285

The Uses and Abuses of Ideology 287

Accountability in One-Party Regimes 291

Morocco and Tunisia: Modernizing Parties in Action 294

Egypt: Learning from Failure 304 Turkey: From the One-Party to the Multi-Party System 312

15. TRADE UNIONS 318 Obstacles to Effective Organization 318

The Trade Union under Governmental Control 320 The Trade Union as the Government’s Junior Partner 324 [ xxiv ]

CONTENTS | The Trade Union as an Independent Force 326 The Trade Union as Equal Partner of a Political Party 329 The Trade Union as a Sudden Avalanche 334

the Middle East 335 16. THE CIVIL BUREAUCRACY 340 The Role of Trade Unions in the Political Modernization of

From Oriental to Modern Bureaucracy 340 Recruiting Bureaucrats: Too Many and Too Few 343 The Changing Status of Bureaucrats 345

Middle East 346

The Role of the Bureaucracy in the Modernization of the

PART V THE COST AND CONSEQUENCES OF MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES DOMESTICALLY, REGIONALLY, AND INTERNATIONALLY

17. THE PRICE OF POLITICAL STABILITY 351

Problems of Decision-Making 351

To Set a Course 361

The Economic Cost of Political Stability 356

18. REGIONAL RIVALRY AND THE PROSPECTS FOR UNITY 365

Is There a Middle East? 365 Conflicts Within and Around National Frontiers 367

Nationalism vs. National Interests: The Struggle for Arab 370 Unity The Arab-Israeli Conflict 378 19. THE INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION OF THE MIDDLE EAST 388

The Vulnerability of the Area 388

Politically 393 Roots of Neutralism 403 Defending the Middle East Militarily While Losing it

The U.S.S.R. Enters Middle Eastern Politics 399 Opportunities and Limitations for Soviet Policy 406

The Relative Contributions of Neutralist and Pro-Western

INDEX 421

States to the Security of the Middle East 409

Limitations and Opportunities for Western Policy 414 [ xxv ]

BLANK PAGE

THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

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: | P.

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j i : i t ; } ae‘}i||{; $}:}-3}}id|{{+|re(;iiéa;js“4 :iBis | a4 + a A % 2 ‘xa bi i ¥ 4 4 . ~ f be {t;|i;% : ee ii | and the worker probably stints himself to send

If the worker brings his family with him, he often finds that industrial society pays scant respect to patriarchal values, that women and children, for example, being readier to accept lower wages, will in some occupations be given preference in employment. That the result is often a moral dissolution of which the outward symptoms are indolence, petty theft, gambling, and the smoking of hashish (alcohol has only recently become more

popular in this Islamic area) is to be expected. It is a story made familiar enough by earlier European experience. The distinguishing feature in most of the Middle East is that the destroying of old patterns does not seem to buy rapid industrialization as it did in nineteenth century Europe. This is not a wholly valid picture. Some companies, including several of the foreign-owned oil companies, have set the pace in wages and working conditions. Some countries have succeeded in actually applying their usually progressive social welfare legis-

lation to some of their larger or state-owned enterprises. But 2 Frederick H. Harbison and Ibrahim Abdelkader Ibrahim, Human Resources for Egyptian Enterprise, New York, 1958, p. 88.

3 Thus East Pakistan’s largest cities, Dacca and Chittagong, have 1,652 and 1,827 males respectively for every 1,000 females. (Husain, Human and

Social Impact, Vol. 1, p. 58.) * Ibid., pp. 155-165.

®°In one of the largest factories of East Pakistan, for example, half the workers’ houses “are of bamboo and thatch huddled close to each other. Narrow winding lanes containing heaps of garbage and sewage provide the approach to the houses. The rooms ... are congested and stuffy and lack adequate lighting and ventilation. Gunnybags are used as screens to secure some privacy in the family quarters which further restrict the entrance of light and air. There is no separate kitchen; a small space of about 3 feet wide

adjoining a hut is used as a kitchen which is exposed to rain. There is no drainage system of any sort... .” (Husain, Human and Social Impact, Vol. I, pp. 150-151.) The smaller factories, often economically marginal, usually provide worse conditions.

[ 106 J

. WORKERS these are exceptional instances. Most workers live under far different conditions. We must distinguish among workers:

(1) Those who comprise the largest single group of workers in most Middle Eastern countries are the landless rural workers.

They belong in this chapter no less than in the last. They are usually wage earners on large estates that produce cash crops. They have no special skills, there are too many of them,° and technological progress can only serve to decrease their chances for earning a livelihood. (2) Among urban workers there is a large group destined for technological extinction—the majority of employees of artisans." In earlier centuries, some of these men could reasonably hope to advance to respected middle class position, depending, of course,

on their skills and the importance of their crafts. Today, they suffer from competition with better, cheaper, mass-produced goods, and from the decadence of their own craft. Even many of their employers can eke out only a day-to-day existence. (3) There are employed workers, frequently the graduates of trade schools or men with army training, who possess modern skills. They are usually well-paid: an Egyptian mechanic makes about three times as much as a day laborer. The policies of some

of the larger Middle Eastern companies—company housing, recreation, clinics, canteens, jobs for the sons of key workers—

are intended to attract and hold this group of employees. Barring general economic crises, they have steady employment, for no Middle Eastern country has a sufficient number of them. Whether they will remain politically content, however, is uncertain.* They are often barred from positions above that of fore5S Except in certain regions of Iran, Iraq, and the Sudan. “Thomas B. Stauffer considered artisans to be a majority of the employed industrial workers in Egypt, even ten years ago one of the most industrialized countries of this area. (‘““The Industrial Worker” in Social Forces in the Middle East, pp. 86-88.) His figures, however, included both employers and employees

as artisans and since only the latter interest us here (the former are to be found among the middle class in Chapter 4), no estimate of numbers seems Pe Tueain’s survey in East Pakistan (Human and Social Impact, Vol. I, pp. 218-19) confirms this view: “A great majority of the workers would probably like to give their sons education up to a sufficiently high level so that they might qualify for white-collar jobs. There is no doubt that most workers would

[ 107 ]

THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY man.® Most trade schools in the Middle East—only belatedly given impetus by recent official concern with economic develop-

ment—still have only mediocre facilities, and on-the-job training remains a novelty among locally owned firms. At the higher levels, jobs are reserved for college graduates even when they are not, as in many Middle Eastern oil companies, still reserved for foreigners. Despite the spectacular progress that many of these workers have made during the past few years, the overriding question is how their status compares with their aspirations.

(4) A much larger group of urban workers are the unskilled

, or semi-skilled. Included under these terms are not only the rag-pickers and sweepers, but also those who work at machines but are not really machinists, being skilled only at moving the lever of a particular machine. All of these workers are readily replaceable by others; they have no certain status, only aspira-

| tions. Wherever Jabor unions are still weak and where neither

government nor employers are restrained by humane considerations, the supervision by company police and foremen (sometimes assuming the right of physical punishment), and the threat of dismissal for the mere expression of discontent often make life harsh for the worker. In the smaller enterprises, regulations regarding pay, hours, and safety conditions are often circumvented. Wages are usually set by custom or by personal arrangements, not by norms of output, productivity, or on a basis of equal pay

for equal jobs. The surplus of workers makes labor available regardless of such arbitrary employment practices.*® These workers live at the margin: even while working, most of them remain

undernourished, ill-housed, illiterate, and diseased. For most of

them, losing a job may well mean permanent loss of steady employment. like to give up factory work if they had sufficient education to enable them to secure office work of some kind. It is only because their standards of educa-

tion and their resources do not make it possible for them to take up some white-collar job or some business they seem to stick to factory work.” *° Frederick H. Harbison and Ibrahim Abdelkader Ibrahim, “Some Labor Problems of Industrialization in Egypt.” Agrarian Societies in Transition, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May 1956,

P r Marbison and Ibrahim, Human Resources for Egyptian Enterprise, pp. 94 and 136.

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WORKERS

The new recruits to the working force often discover that their entrance into the industrial age also marks the beginning of their superfluousness. In Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East, the smaller enterprises rely heavily on the employment of children

between the ages of ten and fifteen. Since children must labor to help support their families, they seldom retain the fruits of their work. Many of them quit their jobs and leave their families whenever they can. They and older recruits are frequently hired as low-paid apprentices, only to be fired when their apprenticeship ends and higher wages are due."* Labor is cheap, and few firms are therefore inclined to adopt policies for holding workers and improving their productivity. * (5) By far the largest group of urban workers are the unem-

ployed and unskilled.'"? For the majority of Middle Eastern - countries, estimates made for Morocco probably apply: one-fifth of all urban workers are chronically out of work, and many who do have jobs are probably underemployed.” As would-be work-

ers, they are even more desperate than the would-be salaried middle class for, unlike the latter, they have neither skills nor jobs.

Such are the workers of the Middle East. Considering their lot,

one can hardly expect them to act as a unified political force. Their most direct and immediate competition is with each other. Because there are too many of them for the jobs available, they 11 Thid., pp. 75-77.

12 This system of classifying workers, essential for illuminating their possible

political roles, prevents us, however, from utilizing statistics even when . these are available. Thus a manpower survey made in November 1957 by the Government of Egypt—a country with a higher proportion of workers than most in the Middle East—indicates that in a population of 23,603,000, there are 6,710,000 employed workers, of whom 3,648,650 are agricultural workers, 725,000 are employed in industry and construction, and 715,000 in commercial establishments. (See al-Gumhuriya, a semi-official Cairo daily newspaper, February 28, 1958.) However, these figures probably understate the number of agricultural workers (since only 644,000 of the total working force are listed as women, and far more women and children than that are certainly employed in farming alone). They do not allow us to assess which proportion of the less than 6 percent of the population employed in industry, con-_ struction, and commerce are skilled workers. If, in contrast to our estimate of the unskilled and unemployed as the largest single component of the urban proletariat, the Egyptian survey lists only 360,000 worker as unemployed, such a number appears to represent only an administrative accident. In common

[ 109 ] |

THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY have little with which to bargain. In one of the largest Egyptian

textile mills prior to 1952, job applicants waiting at the gate were screened by a personnel officer who passed by “applicants

who showed particular alertness or who might appear to be potential troublemakers. . . . Those applicants who had been previously employed in factories were summarily rejected because

the company had an unwritten but firm policy of engaging young workers with no previous industrial experience. . . . The objective, obviously, was to recruit and retain docile and submissive labor rather than efficient workmen.” The possibility of these workers becoming a unified political force is also inhibited by the survival of traditional hiring practices that reinforce ties of kinship rather than of class solidarity. “In Beirut, to hire an office boy one does not put an ad in the paper but informs the head clerk of the opportunity. When all his relatives have had the refusal of the job, the second clerk’s relatives have their turn, and so on until status and blood ties, or even village ties, have been exhausted. . . . A willing worker with good social security behind him has been recruited, and he will

have guidance and discipline even apart from the job, because his sponsor’s prestige is at stake... . [In the case of the ArabianAmerican Oil Company, this system of depending on different tribes for recruitment for different tasks] gave rise to something very like the caste system in India... .*°” Workers themselves in turn often perpetuate traditional attitudes in a changing society by migrating to that quarter of the city that contains members of their village or tribe. There they expect kinship solidarity to produce a job or at least sustenance while they are unemployed. Work in the city thus only partially with similar surveys, that category includes for the most part only that small minority of workers who once held jobs, have a definite skill, and registered themselves at an official labor agency as unemployed. 138 “The Atlantic Report: Morocco,” The Atlantic Monthly, August 1959, p. 18. It is estimated that 50 percent of the rural population is underemployed. 14 Harbison and Ibrahim, “Some Labor Problems of Industrialization in Egypt,” p. 117. 15 Thomas B. Stauffer, “The Industrial Worker,” pp. 88-90. Husain (Human

and Social Impact, Vol. 1, p. 129) found that about 43 percent of East Pakistani workers had relatives working in the same factory.

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WORKERS

creates a new style of life; in part, ancient loyalties are reinforced under the pressure of new obligations.*®

Important traditional attitudes and loyalties among workers are likely to persist for decades to come. There will be few opportunities for change. Frustration will mount. Even in countries that possess the resources and the will for making rapid economic progress, the increase in the number of jobs will not even come near absorbing the entire labor force, and continued unemploy-

ment will act to depress wages. To be sure, “not all who are poor are frustrated. Some of the poor stagnating in the slums of the cities are smug in their decay. They shudder at the thought of life outside their familiar cesspool. Even the respectable poor,

when their poverty is of long standing, remain inert. . . . It is usually those whose poverty is relatively recent, the “new poor’ [who] open their eyes to the transitoriness of the ‘eternal order,’ ... the disinherited and dispossessed who respond to every rising mass movement.”*”

For those workers who have newly discovered their poverty, extremist movements, in one form or another, are likely to seem an admirable panacea. Religio-political organizations like the Moslem Brotherhood and ultra-nationalist bodies like the So-

cialist National Workers Party of Iran readily cater to the aspirations of the disaffected. There are still other alternatives: communist movements that clamor for land and bread, or urban mobs seeking revenge against the powerful and rich.

_ The dying elites of the Middle East cannot be resuscitated. The social classes emerging or being transformed are being driven by © the sheer force of numbers, especially of the would-be workers, would-be peasants, and would-be middle class, toward the more radical or else more extreme political alternatives. Though this seems to be the bent of the area’s changing social structure, there *® Janet Abu-Lughod’s “Migrant Adjustment to City Life: The Egyptian Villager in Cairo,” is a brief but thoroughly and vividly detailed investigation illustrating this point. (This paper was presented to a conference on The New

Metropolis in the Arab World, sponsored by the Congress for Industrial

Freedom and the Egyptian Society of Engineers, Cairo, December 17-22, 1960.)

See also the forthcoming studies by Gene and Karen Petersen (American University of Beirut). 17 Bric Hoffer, The True Believer, New York, 1958, p. 31.

[111 ]

THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY is nothing inevitable about its final shape. The range of alternatives and instruments available for dealing with the modernization of the Middle East, and their consequences, is the substance of the ensuing discussion.

[112 ]

PART ITI THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES MIDDLE EASTERN MAN is freeing himself, or is being torn from, his traditional system of relationships to confront profound risks and great freedom. At a moment of history when the social and moral constraints of the past are dying and the bonds among individuals are more uncertain than ever before, he is being compelled to ask himself all over again: Who am I? Whom and what can I trust? As a result,

for the first time in Middle Eastern history, all strata of society are becoming involved in politics. No one can any

longer take for granted his status in life, or the share of material rewards he will get. Everyone is now concerned about where he goes from here, and in whose company. The spectrum of political alternatives we present here lacks the familiar progression from “left” to “right.” It derives from an unusual history and exhibits an unusual world. In the Middle East, a military dictatorship may turn out to be the first step toward democracy. A regime that does not encourage innovation may not be conservative: by its very

caution it may fail to conserve anything. In the midst of rapid and uncontrolled social change, even a regime that would ordinarily be called radical in the West may be moving too slowly. The very rate at which ideologies develop and

change in the Middle East is extraordinary. Before 1951, no regime in this area was at once neutralist, socialist, and authoritarian. By now, these views characterize the majority of governments, and in Algeria, opposition and government alike already accept these sentiments as a framework within which they will fight out their differences.

We have not included tradition in this spectrum of choices. To be traditional (a style of life now being challenged even in the Arabian Peninsula) is to remain unrelated to modern political choices.* The traditionalist tends to re1 There are fewer untouched traditionalists left than one might suppose. “The Iraq which came to the forefront of world attention on July 14 [1958] and the Iraq in which I spent almost two years are two totally different things,” writes Malcolm N. Quint. In the village of Umm alNahr, “one might well believe that time had gotten turned around and that he had somehow returned to some remote period before the birth of Christ. . . . The rice cultivators of Umm al-Nahr and of ’Amarah province in general are perhaps the most ‘backward’ of Iraq’s peasants.”

[ 114 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES gard his social, political, and economic environment as part of the natural order of things. If this “natural order’ permits him to speak of the pre-Islamic era as the Age of Ignorance,

it does little toward helping him cope with the modern world that threatens his undoing. Those who try by force and terror to resurrect Islam succeed only, as we shall see, in

transforming a traditional way of life into an extremist

modern ideology. Those who break with traditional Islam altogether must henceforth be their own prophets in reconstructing relationships between the sacred and the secular. If it is too late for traditionalism, it is too early for conservatism. Not enough of the past is left sufficiently viable to be conserved. Much already has come into being (from the area’s artificial frontiers to its extensive social security laws) that a conservative would not necessarily want to conserve. Much is of such uncertain value that conservatives cannot

yet play their customary role of confining politics to the realization of advantages within the limits of the prevailing consensus. No part of the political spectrum in the Middle East today holds conspiracy, subversion, coups, and revolution in ill repute. The premature conservative in the Middle East therefore tends to engage in ritualistic behavior—elaborately copying, while he can, the manner of the nouveaux riches of the West. Or else, defending the present as a mere speculator in vested interests, he tends to make the suppression of his competitors the principal task of government. (Not a few of the leading conservative politicians achieved their sudden yet insecure status and wealth by shrewd political rather than economic investments.) Being on the defensive, Middle Eastern conservatives also usually tend to ally themselves with the remaining traditionalist forces. They seem unaware that unYet even in this remote area, Quint finds it possible, in the best scientific spirit, to define “backward” without imposing his own standards: “I use

the word here as one of the clan leaders of Umm al-Nahr uses it

(mut’akhkhir) to mean isolated from Western innovations and institutions.”” How backward are peasants who already know themselves to be

backwards? (“The Idea of Progress in an Iraqi Village,” Middle East Journal, Autumn 1958, pp. 369-70.)

[ 115 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES controlled (no less than deliberate) social change will soon doom traditionalism entirely, or that the right kind of con-

trolled change could give them their only real chance to achieve stability with resilience.

The largest group of political leaders in the Middle East are moderates. It may not be easy for the West to recognize them as such. The attitude of moderates in the Middle East

is similar to that of moderates the world over. What is different are the issues and problems they can be moderate

about. The imbalances created by a far-reaching social revolution demand a gradualism relevant to telescoped time.

Even the more conservative moderates, devoting themselves to keeping the inherited past alive by adapting it to the changing present, make use of immoderate methods. Thus General Abboud (Sudan) and General Ayub (Pakis-

| tan), during 1958, used extralegal or non-legal methods to | re-establish a more stable social and political equilibrium in their countries.

There have been moderates in the Middle East who in many respects resembled the secular liberals of Western Europe, but their numbers have dwindled greatly. They did

not understand that theirs was a different problem. They did not recognize that they would first have to reduce their problems to moderate proportions and create within their society a strong vested interest in liberty before moderation could become more than a distant goal. Those who would prefer to call the present moderates of the Middle East extremists and radicals will have no terms left when they encounter extremists and radicals. In this analysis, extremists are defined as people who are impelled to turn all problems of life into issues of dogma and power and whose political alternatives therefore include (though expediency may suspend their use) conversion or death. Communists, ultra-nationalists, and neo-Islamic totalitarians are thus extremists. Radicals are all those whose concern is, not a priori with Islam or any established ideology, but with how man might strike permanent roots amid the Middle East's permanently continuing transformation. Unlike moderates, [ 116 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES radicals would not merely adjust to social change in order to reduce frustration; they believe that it is better and easier to transform all aspects of society deliberately and quickly than to be burdened continually with partial change. They are persuaded that remnants of the past tend “to reinstate the rest, and so continually act as a drag on the establishment of new habits. ... While it is dreadfully difficult to grajt one foreign habit on a set of old habits, it is much easier and highly exhilarating to learn a whole new set of habits, each reinforcing the other as one moves . . . with as little reminder of the past as possible to slow down the new learning, or make that learning incomplete and maladaptive.” Radicals, including those who would establish the conditions in which democracy could prosper, are, however, still scarce in the Middle East. Nasser and Bourguiba are among the moderates who are recent converts to domestic radicalism; Ataturk was one of the first.

A new kind of society is emerging among Moslems, and with it the need to make new choices. Most scholars in the West believe that this is a question involving the Reformation of Islam. In fact, the great change proceeding apace in the Middle East is not the deliberate reformation of Islam as a religious system but the transformation of Moslems as individuals and as members of a new society. All choices that

Moslems may make will be deeply influenced by the fact that the Middle East has been an Islamic community for thirteen centuries, but the range of choices is no different now from that facing Asians, Africans, Latin Americans, or perhaps even Americans. Those who concentrate on the reform of Islam today are offering only one particular alternative for the reform of Moslems.

Choices will not come easily. The searching, detached, yet concerned intellectual is still a new and rare individual in the Moslem Middle East.* The great majority of the polit2 Margaret Mead, New Lives for Old, Cultural Transformation— Manus, 1928-1953, New York, 1956, pp. 447 and 451. 3'This point is cogently argued by Wilfred Cantwell Smith in “The

Intellectuals in the Modern Development of the Islamic World,” in Social Forces in the Middle East, pp. 190-204.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES

ically active desire the fruits of modernization, but few understand the methods or appreciate the costs of producing

, such a harvest. In some Middle Eastern countries, this contrast between reach and grasp also characterizes the ruling elite. Yet in each country, one can already point to individuals and small groups—and in this part of the world, the minority invariably rules—who are intent upon becoming organizers rather than victims of social change, and who are therefore deeply concerned about political means and ends. Most of them lack the self-assurance that marked the found-

ing fathers of the United States. The new leaders of the Middle East cannot build upon inherited philosophy, customs, or institutions; nor is there, as yet, any consensus on how to alter the legacy of Islamic tradition. Commitment to various ideologies thus usually takes the place of inherited, inner-directed certainty, both as the frame of analysis and as the inspiration of action. In the seven chapters that follow, the role and content of ideologies in the Middle East have been stated with greater

precision than they have yet been articulated by Middle Easterners. This has been accomplished by analyzing and interpreting the actions of Middle Eastern leaders; by bringing

to the surface the latent implications of their public statements; and by reviewing critically the ideologies that have emerged in response to forces and needs already in being. The ideologies which concern us here are those most likely to attract the important decision-making groups during the next decade. These groups are drawn from the various strata of the new middle class.

[ 118 ]

CHAPTER 7 AMENDING THE PAST: REFORMIST ISLAM

i Q:. , The Failure of the Reformers of Islam} ISLAMIC HISTORY, from the perspective of the ulema, is the history

of a community in process of realizing a divinely ordained pattern of society.” To pursue righteousness, however, means resolving

the conflicts of existence or, at least, learning how to live with them with dignity, patience, and compassion. As we have seen, this was not infeasible during those centuries when Moslems had few new problems to solve, or else allowed practice to sanctify submission not only to God, but also to tyranny and community consensus. The practices thus ordained, however, belong to the pre-scientific, pre-industrial, pre-nationalist age. The principles

belong to the tenth century, when the ulema set limits to the de- : bate of basic questions. Although H. A. R. Gibb argues that “the future of Islam rests where it has rested in the past—on the insight of the orthodox leaders and their capacity to resolve the new tensions as they arise by a positive doctrine,”* he acknow]edges that “in the attitude and outlook of the ulema and their followers there is a disturbing weakness. They are losing touch with the thought of the age. Their arguments, however just, fail to carry conviction because they are expressed in thought-forms 1 The discussion of this topic, although our conclusions may differ, draws

especially upon Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Jslam in Modern History; and Modern Islam in India, London, 1946; H. A. R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam, Chicago, 1947; Gustave von Grunebaum, Islam, Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition. See Smith, Islam in Modern History, pp. 16-18 and 28n. 3 And Smith agrees, at least for the Arab world, in his Islam in Modern History, p. 152.

[ 119 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES which arouse no response in the minds of educated men. Even the very language which they generally use has an antiquarian flavor

that strikes curiously upon the ear and eye and strengthens the feeling that they have no message for today. Above all, their public pronouncements display a rigid formalism and reliance upon authority which, as the modernists see truly, are but feeble weapons. .. .*” The reformist ulema are trying to respond to the challenge of Western civilization at a time when orthodox Islam has already lost its fervor, influence, and clarity. “In accord with God’s com-

mand... Muslim society once erected a great civilization; but now this is seen as being attacked, without and within, and perhaps superseded, by a new power based not on God’s ordinance .. . a new society more successful, and perhaps in some aspects even more attractive. Islamic backwardness implies that some-

thing has gone wrong not only with the Muslim’s own develop- | ment but with the governance of the universe. . . . The challenge is no longer simply that the [Islamic] dream is unrealized. The new challenge . . . is in the fear of the recognition that the dream

may be invalid, [that] even if implemented, [it] would .. . be too weak in the world of today.*”

The attempt of the ulema to reform Islam has met with difficulties. Like their predecessors in the first centuries of Islam, they

acknowledge the usefulness of reason, provided, however, that it is employed in the service of dogma.® Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and Mohammed Abduh, among the greatest thinkers of reformist

Islam, were prepared near the turn of the century to accept the scientific theories of the nineteenth century. They departed far enough from orthodox Islam to welcome the idea that laws con-

trol the universe of nature. They objected only to science’s mechanistic concepts of causation and in their own works reassured Moslems that God was the author of these scientific laws.

* Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam, pp. 122-123. . ° Smith, Islam in Modern History, pp. 111-112.

® Only the reformist ulema go that far. Others continue to say, “Islam is not our property for us to offer it to others, with alterations suitable to the

requirements of the market.” (Maulana Maudoodi, as quoted by J. W. ial “View Points in Pakistan. I,” The Muslim World, April 1957, p.

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REFORMIST ISLAM

They felt that they were simply acknowledging that the world had become more comprehensible, while preserving their own religion since it now appeared that the whole universe was Islamic

in character: everything, even the stars, must submit to the laws of God.

Rereading the Koran, they discovered a verse that has since | been quoted more often by Moslem reformers, both secular and religious, than perhaps any other, commanding initiative and self-help: “Verily, God changes not what a people has until they change it for themselves.”” But this verse continues in quite a different vein, and the reformers do not quote its remainder: “And when God wishes evil to a people there is no averting it, nor have

they a protector beside Him.” Careful reinterpretation of the Koran also seemed to suggest to the reformers of Islam that the

most modern discoveries had long been foreshadowed in it. The verse, “He has created you by steps,” for example, was thought to anticipate the theory of evolution. The Koranic permission to marry four women, but to treat them with impartial Justice, was interpreted by some Islamic reformers to mean the contrary of what had always been assumed: since no man can

treat four women with equal justice, the Koran in fact commands monogamy. Unfortunately, the reinterpretation frequently sounded more incredible to modern ears than the original gloss. Even so, one cannot help feeling that the reformers were driven more by reason than by faith. Mohammed Abduh, for example,

was capable of writing, “If the reformers appeals directly to a morality or to a wisdom deprived of all religious character, he will have to build a new edifice for which there is neither material nor labor. But if religion is able to raise the level of moral-

ity,... if the adepts of this religion are very attached to it, if finally one has less difficulty in bringing them back to this religion than in creating something new of which they are not 7 Sura XIII, Verse 12, in Palmer translation, op. cit., p. 208.

8 Sura LXXI, Verses 12-19 read: “What ails you that ye hope not for something serious from God, when He has created you by steps? Do ye not see how God has created the seven heavens in stories, and has set the moon therein for light, and set the sun for a lamp? and God has made you grow out of the earth, and then He will make you return thereto, and will make you come forth therefrom; and God has made for you the earth a carpet that ye may walk therein in broad paths.” (Palmer, op. cit., pp. 501-502.)

[121 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES clearly conscious, why not have recourse to the religion, and why seek other less effective means?’ More serious is the fact that since Jamal ad-Din (died 1897) and Mohammed Abduh (died 1905), there have been almost no

reformist ulema or popularizers of equal stature or influence anywhere in the Islamic world. In the Arab world, the successors of these two reformers became increasingly divided among conservatives, extremists, and radicals.?° In Moslem India and now Pakistan, the brilliantly poetic philosophy of Mohammed Iqbal (1876-1938), reconstructing Sufism rather than orthodox Islam along modern lines, has remained an inspiration to many, but a practical guide to very few.” The reformist ulema have not altogether won the battle even among their own group. Education, as far as it is under the con-

trol of the ulema, is still bound up with authoritarianism, rote learning, and a rigid devotion to ancient authorities—providing only already known solutions to already formulated problems.

Where education is under secular control, religion is either neglected or enlisted in the service of the state. Where the influence of the ulema lingers, religion and science are still at odds, since even reformist Islam countenances only those scientific hy-

potheses that are consonant with revealed truth. Indeed, the ulema have no idea how great the issue really is since none of them have studied any of the major sciences of the twentieth century.’* As the Arab demand for social and physical science increases, most Arab intellectuals will be increasingly drawn to ® Quoted by Osman Amin, “The Modernist Movement in Egypt,” in Islam and the West, edited by Richard N. Frye, The Hague, 1957, p. 177. 10 Compare the views of the successive editors of the journal of the religious reformist movement in Egypt in Smith, Islam in Modern History, pp. 115-156. See also the recent discussion between Khalid Muhammad Khalid, From Here We Start, translated by Isma’il al-Faruqi, Washington, 1953; Muhammad alGhazzali, Our Beginning in Wisdom, translated by Isma’il al-Faruqi, Washington, 1953; Sayed Kotb, Social Justice in Islam, Washington, 1953. 11 His most significant work is The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Oxford, 1934. Among the most rewarding Western discussions of Iqbal are Smith, Modern Islam in India, pp. 98-127, 132-151; and Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam, pp. 74-84. 12 However, the work of a small number of outstanding young Moslem

scholars trained in modern science and history, and inspired both by their

faith and their critical mind may well be creating new foundations for Islamic reform. Among these university scholars may be mentioned Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Iranian Shia Moslem, and Dr. Yusif Ibish, a Syrian Sunni Moslem.

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REFORMIST ISLAM its pursuit—at the cost of ignoring a reformist Islam which has

so far failed to relate itself to the modern world. Like orthodox Islam, its reformist offshoot is directly con-

cerned with the social and economic problems of daily existence.”

It formulates its attitude with awareness, though seldom with a thorough understanding, of capitalist, socialist, and communist alternatives. Reformist Islam proposes its system as a middle road

between communism and capitalism, without the excesses of either. Its theories appear in a number of different forms. One school quotes the Koran to show that while private prop-

erty, unequal social status, and the accumulation though not the hoarding of wealth are justified,** in reality these are not important, for the treasures of earth ultimately belong to God,” and none are to be regarded as highly as God’s mercy.** Wealth must be spent with neither extravagance nor waste, and above all, with compassion for those in need.’” Usury (interest in any amount) is forbidden.*® This school tends at times to assume a passive, defensive stand, asserting that since Islam already includes the best of other economic systems, there is no need to tamper with it; that in fact, communism, socialism, and capitalism must be fought as perversions of ideal Islam. It supports the inherited system of landowning, whether it is based on the traditional political power of large landlords, on the fragmentation of lands brought about by the strict application of Islamic inheritance laws, or on lands divided only in usufruct under the same laws and leaving hundreds of heirs for each lot with little opportunity for enterprising management. It relies on philanthropy and the zakat, a religious levy of about 2.5 percent on annual revenues, in lieu of taxes for social welfare. In short reformist Islam sometimes substitutes religious piety for economic reform. There are times when reformist Islam sounds as if it were a

dynamic program for the modern welfare state. Consider a 13 See the Koran, Sura II, Verses 278-285 for a characteristic example of the Prophet’s interest in the economic details of daily life. 14 Koran, VI, 165; XIII, 26. 15 Ibid., XV, 20. 16 Tbid., XLII, 32. 1” Ibid., TX, 34; XVII, 29; XVII, 29; LXX, 24-25; LVII, 7. 18 Tbid., TI, 275-280.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES Ramadan sermon on “Islam and Communism” by Abd al-Azia

ben Abdallah, republished on June 27, 1951, in Al-Alam (Rabat), the newspaper of Morocco’s then leading nationalist party, Istiqlal: “Islam guaranteed the workingman’s living conditions before communism ever existed on earth. . . . Islam, how-

: ever, not only encourages the people to demand and struggle for their rights, but even prescribes in its holy verses that those who give up their natural rights expose themselves to severe chastise-

ment! ... Islam has given to the poor liens both on capital and on the rich. It has guaranteed to all social classes equity in the field of life. Islam protects the whole of the people from hunger and nakedness. Islam has condemned the monopoly of wealth in

the hands of any group to the prejudice of others. Islam has recommended liveliness and hard work and prescribed that no harvest can be obtained without tilling, no wealth without toil.” When it speaks in such a fashion, one can only conclude that reformist Islam has severed all connection with orthodoxy except that of language. Orthodox Islam looks upon the universe as a sacred unity of

| man and nature, reality and idea, consciousness and existence. Reformist Islam perceives a conflict between man and uncontrolled nature, secular reality and religious truth, man’s humanity and the increasing atomization of his social relations. It hopes to recapture Islam’s lost unity by a philosophic reconstruction of revealed truth. By shifting the emphasis from the letter to the spirit of the Koran, it seeks to convert Islam into a set of broad formulas

that make for pleasant social relations and emotional comfort. At worst, reformist Islam sometimes gives the impression of being

at work to save not the world or men, but itself.*? Reformist Islam’s present formulations lack one important attribute of a living religion—immediacy of assent. Reformists, for all their ex-

plaining and justifying, cannot yet offer a restatement of Islam that strikes a balance between “the broad and deep currents of a people’s psychology and the inescapable forces of social evolution.”*°

The reformist ulema are unlikely to succeed. From the Prophet 19 Smith, Modern Islam in India, p. 84. 20 Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam, p. 113.

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Mohammed forward, the orthodox interpreters of Islam have made themselves acceptable to the community by allying themselves with existing social institutions and so enlarging the consensus of belief. Indeed, the special strength of Islam’s orthodox and even its heretics has always been that for them all things— sacred, secular, legal, ethical, intellectual, emotional, political, social, economic—are and ought to be related. Today, social institutions are in conflict and the consensus is broken. From an Islamic perspective, the failure of the reformist ulema is that they

have managed no better than secular reformers in putting the pieces together again.

The failure of the ulema to produce a new intellectual synthesis | stems in part from an endemic weakness of orthodox Islam. Analytical philosophy has always seemed impious to the orthodox Moslem—a sacrilegious and ultimately doomed effort to lay bare God’s essence, meaning, and purpose. In the relatively static world of the past, this weakness in philosophical inquiry made Islam more tolerant than Christianity of theological differences within (and often even outside) the Moslem world, and thereby contributed to the stability and, within limits, the flexibility of the community. In the search for God, practice counted for more than reason. Now that practices, theories, and faiths are in conflict in the Middle East, the ulema, even when they consent to use reason, can only contribute additional opinions to the broken consensus.

By continuing to be tolerant as long as Islamic dogma is not

explicitly denied, the largest proportion of the ulema in the Middle East are likely to acquiesce, as they always have, in the policies of their secular rulers, but this time with uprooting and irreversible consequences.

The Successful Reform of the Law of the Moslems

| As the ulema stand aside, whether by choice or necessity, the very center of orthodox Islam—Shari’a law—is slipping beyond

the control of its guardians. Majid Khadduri has outlined the initial steps leading toward the secularization of Islamic law: “First, the adoption of Western legal rules and principles which [ 125 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES | are either not adequately covered by the Shari’a or not mentioned at all by the Shari’a; second, the adoption of Western law which

, is in principle in conformity with the Shari’a but is not dealt with in such detail as would fit the conditions of modern life as influenced by the West . . . ; third, the adoption of Western law which may take the place of certain Shari’a rules that have become obsolete; fourth, the separation of the devotional and religious provisions of the Shari’a from those regulating daily life.”**

The spirit with which secular law is being assimilated is even more significant than its structural form. Khadduri attributes the success of one of the leading architects of secular law, Abd alRassaq al-Sanhuri—the principal author of recent Egyptian, Syr-

ian, and Iraqi civil codes—to the fact that al-Sanhuri “wisely abstained from discussing controversial issues that might have brought him into conflict with the ulema and interrupted his work.” He proceeded “without going into a theoretical discussion on how the Shari’a generally should be modernized, or even trying

to give a rationale to his scheme. . . .”** His is a revolutionary work which is conservative in intent and style. He dares to revise

revealed law by individual judgment, but he seeks to maintain respect for law by artfully sustaining at least the verisimilitude of historical continuity. By avoiding a discussion of principles, however, the conservative modernists have not only succeeded in quietly imposing their own revisions, but have failed to set clear limits to the revolution

they began. In a community originally founded to perpetuate a revealed code of conduct as defined by the Shari’a, the Shari'a has by now ceased to be the primary source of ethics, and insofar as its rules survive in modern laws, it has ceased to be either divine or final. Even the last and strongest fortress of the original code—family law—has already yielded. By now, there are few Middle Eastern countries in which the laws bearing on polygamy,

divorce, child-marriage, private religious endowments (wagf), and inheritance have not been decisively altered. 21 Majid Khadduri, “From Religious to National Law,” in Mid-East: World Center, edited by Ruth N. Anshen, New York, 1956, p. 232. 22 Thid.

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REFORMIST ISLAM Once everyone was free to make judgments, it was clear that the Shari’a would have to give way. ‘There was no longer a single

highway into the future. The Turks did not bother to retain any part of the Shari’a. In 1959, at a congress of Arab lawyers for studying the unification of civil codes in Arab countries, the dele-

gates at times differed so sharply among themselves that the Beirut police were called in to restore order.** Even at the Arab citadel of Shari’a traditionalism, al-Azhar University in Cairo, Shaikh Khallaf could write “. . . the goal of the Law is only the welfare of men, and wheresoever lies the welfare of men, there is the Law of God.’** Thus divine law yields to man-made law, which is enacted not for a community of believers but for nations that neglect the traditional Islamic distinction among subjects on the basis of creed.

At that point, the old relationship between the sacred and the secular, the expedient and the metaphysical, is forever shattered and must be built anew. Without the Shari’a, Islam possesses an all-powerful God without adequate guidance concerning his will, a holy book without agreed-upon interpretations, a religious emotion without clear ethical and social consequences, and authority in the community without traditional legitimacy. Those who would reform Islam strictly within the framework of the past lost their first and decisive battle when they themselves

amended the past, and thus opened the door to innovation. By now, enough change has taken place so that even the ulema are no longer agreed on what constitutes an Islamic state. Islam, never the single vision posited by the ulema, has by now almost as many faces (and many of these, new) as there are Moslems. Today, any attempt to assert one interpretation of Islam, however hallowed by the past or sensitively reconstructed, as binding on all cannot help but become merely a partisan effort. Insofar as Moslems who have broken with the consensus of kin and tra23 New York Times, September 7, 1959. 24 Quoted by Richard H. Nolte, “The Rule of Law in the Arab Middle East,”

The Muslim World, October 1958, p. 306. In a similar spirit, Sheikh Muhib al-Din al-Khatib writes that if the just and pious second Caliph of Islam, Umar ibn al-Khattab, were alive today, he would devote himself to enlarging the middle classes. “Thawratuna al-ijtima’iyah” (“Our Social Revolution’)

Majallat al-Azhar, Cairo, December 1957, pp. 481-487. |

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES dition still acknowledge each other as “Moslems,” it is by a common act of individual wills.” Certainly far more educated Middle Easterners than Western Orientalists have, proportionately, become indifferent to traditional Islam.** Middle Eastern leaders may still use, although with diminishing frequency, an Islamic vocabulary as the most widely understood and least controversial means of communication.*” But Islam—not as political patter, but as a unique and

ordained pattern for politics, economics, and society—is no longer practiced anywhere in the Middle East except in portions of the Arabian Peninsula. Even here, the substance, if not the form, is increasingly being diluted. The division among Moslems has gone so far that even those who still employ an Islamic vocabulary often can no longer understand each other. The delegates who arrived at the Islamic

Colloquium at Lahore, Pakistan, in December 1957 found a leaflet in their mail which read: “Dear Delegates to the Islamic Colloquium. . . . You are already aware that this is an Islamic country and our Constitution is based on the Holy Quran and Sunna. Kindly therefore take care not to injure the feelings of the Muslims of this Islamic country, in any way, by saying things against Islam, its history, its culture, and its law.”*®

On the following day, the President of Pakistan, General Iskander Mirza, in welcoming the delegates, declared: “Islam is too dynamic and too eternal to be imprisoned in the requirements of a passing age. As the intellect of man develops into new dimen2° A point made by Gustave von Grunebaum in a paper presented to the Islamic Colloquium at Lahore, December 1957. It is characteristic of the modern situation that in India, which then contained at least 100,000,000 Moslems, and still contains about 40,000,000, “the most important and far-reaching enactment passed within the last half century is the Shariat Act, 1937, [which] is applicable to every Muslim, regardless of the school to which he belongs, but there is no definition of what, for the purposes of the administration of justice, is the definition of a Muslim.” A. A. A. Fyzee, “Major Developments in Muhammadan Law in India, 1850-1950,” an unpublished manuscript of a talk presented to a Conference on Islamic Law, Princeton University, November 1958. 28 Thus Professor James Kritzeck, in “Portrait of Ahmad: A Report on a Typical Member of Egypt’s Rising New Middle Class,” writes, “Generally speaking, Ahmad is intellectually curious, but his lack of intellectual curiosity about his religion is sometimes exasperating.” (Commonweal, December 11, 1959, p. 320.) 27 When President Nasser in December 1958 decided to warn Iraq, whose

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sions with the discoveries of new avenues of knowledge and science, his understanding of life and religion is bound to grow in

similar proportions. .. . It is an irony of history that, while rejecting the institutions of organized priesthood, Islam has often

fallen into the hands of priests... . On the one hand, the Mullah has woven into Islam a crazy network of fantasy and fanaticism. On the other, he has often tried to use it as an elastic cloak for political power and expediencies.”*? Since then, it must be added, General Mirza has been ousted from the Presidency by another

general who thought him not radical enough in dealing with Pakistan’s problem and who abolished the constitution that had made Pakistan at that time the only formally designated “Islamic Republic” in the Middle East. The Triumph of Secular Leadership

For the Moslems who are now taking the leading roles in Middle Eastern life, the battle has moved from the realm of religion into the realm of politics. “Relief of distress is sought not in a revision of doctrine but in a redressing of history.”°° No one

attacks Islam. Ataturk, the most far-reaching of the secularists, did not challenge the Islamic faith, nor did any of the political leaders who came after him. There was no need to challenge it. Reformist Islam opened the sluice gate and was swamped by the deluge. Traditional Islam still has many adherents among the peasant majority and not a few townsmen. No political leader is likely to outrage their sensibilities by deliberately speaking ill of secular-minded leadership shares with him common origins and goals, that its neutralism was leaning too far toward the Sino-Soviet bloc, he declared that their attitude was contrary to the spirit of Islam. When references to Islam did not change Iraq’s policy, Nasser did not, however, deem it useful to enlarge on this theme. A real debate could only be supported on modern ideological grounds.

28 Rudi Paret, “Das Islamische Colloquium in Lahore: 29. Dezember

1957-8. Januar 1958,” Die Welt des Islams, N.S. Vol. v, No. 3-4, 1958, p. 229. 29 Ibid. “Mullah” is another term to designate one of the ulema. 30 Smith, Islan in Modern History, p. 111. Kenneth Cragg writes in a similar

vein: “Islam has always believed that the individual, not the community, is the source of ‘heresy.’ It is a corollary of this that social changes, not intellectual enterprise, must be the proper origin of religious redefinition.” (“The Modernist Movement in Egypt,” in Islam and the West, p. 160.)

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Islam. Almost all of them concentrate instead on eliminating particular Islamic institutions and customs that bar the way to the modern age. Their methods are many: financing secular schools and neglecting Koranic schools, favoring men with secular outlook in all government appointments, enlarging opportunities for

, women, making no allowance for easier working hours during the fasting month of Ramadan, generally rewarding new types of knowledge, values, and performance.** When traditional Islam

reacts by transforming itself into a religio-political totalitarian party, it can safely be challenged as a novel ideology rather than

as a hallowed way of life.*? There will still be battles, but this , particular war is over in the great majority of Middle Eastern states.

The secularization of political leadership turned out unexpectedly to be even easier in the Middle East than in Western Europe, where the distinction between the things of Caesar and those of God did not prevent Christians from fighting each other long and fiercely. The secularization of the masses remains the great unfinished business in the Middle East. Perhaps the speed of secularization among the decision makers should not have been unexpected. Few Moslem rulers in history have made it the

main business of state, as the Koran had intended, to enforce God’s eternal laws. Administrative, criminal, civil, and commer| cial law had almost from the beginning of the Islamic community been separated from the domain of the Shari’a, though this sepa-

ration was not formally and explicitly codified until the nine-

teenth century. Islam had also early reconciled itself to the separation between religion and the conduct of the state in foreign affairs once it acquiesced in the peaceful coexistence of orthodox Islamic states with Christian and heterodox Islamic nations.** Most Moslems have therefore long been accustomed 31 Even changes in clothes have consequences for Islam. When Ataturk in 1925 compelled Turks to adopt the hat, he made prayer more difficult since a headcover is mandatory and the worshipper’s head must bend over to touch the ground, and also made it harder to distinguish Moslem from non-Moslem. 82 See the next chapter.

33 The “principle of the peaceful relationship among nations of different religions, . . . perhaps the most revolutionary in Islamic legal theory, was for the first time embodied in a treaty signed in 1535 between Francis I of France and Sulayman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.” (Majid Khad-

[ 130 ]

REFORMIST ISLAM to obey secular-minded rulers, or to avoid the law of sultans and ulema by frequently resorting to private vengeance, arbitration by tribal chiefs, and the subversion of justice through nepotism, bribery, personal influence, and casuistry. The ulema have always been steadfast, but unheroic.** Many mosques have endowments, but there is no central churchly control over large properties to give added strength to a defense of sacred institutions. And not only the frequency of heresies and the popularity of non-orthodox mystic orders, but the very auton-

omy of social structures and functions discussed in the first chapter suggest that the Islamic community of the past was more united in the style of its certainties than in their substance. Yet even the end of certainty was eased by a number of historical factors. Few Moslems thoroughly understood the choices to

be made between traditional past and modern present since in fact they were ill-informed about either. Islam had fallen into political, economic, and spiritual decay prior to the arrival of Western imperialism.*° (Witness the efforts of Ottoman, Wahhabi, and Sanusi reformers, each in their own way, to rescue their own society.) As against such a way of life—the days of greatest Islamic unfolding had passed centuries earlier—modernity often

offered immediate advantages. Certainly, the great majority of Moslems had neither liberty nor property to lose in the death of the past. duri, “The Islamic System: Its Competition and Coexistence with Western Systems,” Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 1959, p. 51. See also his fundamental study, War and Peace in the Law of Islam, Baltimore, 1955, demonstrating that coexistence had been accepted in practice centuries earlier. ) 34 Mohammed Abduh, for example, the founder of the Egyptian Islamic reform movement, said in 1905, when Egypt was still under British occupa-

tion, “but the matter of the government and the governed I abandoned to the decision of fate, and to the hand thereafter to arrange.” (Quoted by Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt, London, 1933, pp. 63-64.) As a result, Egypt’s largest nationalist party, then led by Mustapha Kamil, went its separate way. See also H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West, Vol. I, Part I, p. 72. 35 “The Kingdoms and crowns that the Moslems have lost in the course of

history,” Pakistan’s President Ayub told his audience when he accepted an honorary doctorate of philosophy at Cairo University, “are far less important then the kingdom of the free and searching mind, which they lost in the process of intellectual stagnation.” (New York Times, November 11, 1960.)

[ 131 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES Men who were born in the twentieth century grew up in an Islamic society that had already begun to question its verities. They no longer faced the same conflicts of adjustment that confronted their fathers.*® In “the constant invasion of the barbarians,” that is, the continual generation of the young learning much about their world but little about this region’s own heritage, there lie many opportunities for startling individual transformations in the midst of rapid social change.

For Arabs probably more than for other Moslems, many Islamic memories remain precious for being also specifically Arab memories—perhaps the grandest of Arab memories. Nonetheless, it has become easier for all Moslems to discover and admire what

other Asians and Africans and Latin Americans are doing in quickly changing their traditional way of life.*’ Of the entire social and political inheritance of Islam, it is the force of consen-

sus which has remained the strongest moral imperative in the Middle East. It still holds sway over many through the compulsion of family or village opinion, reinforced by faith in the infalli-

bility of the consensus (ijma) of the charismatic Community of Believers.** Increasingly, however, this insistence on the hallowed consensus is itself becoming a force for change as the pressure for conformity comes no longer from one’s ancestors but from one’s peers. Novel ideas can be accepted in the name of national unity.

These new guides to conformity may now lead either toward See the analysis of the causes and consequences of that decay by various authors in Classicisme et déclin culturel dans I‘histoire de lIslam, Actes du Symposium International d’Histoire de la Civilisation Musulmane (Bordeaux, ~ June 25-29, 1956) organized by R. Brunschvig and G. E. von Grunebaum, Paris, 1957. 36 For some men, the conflict ceased even earlier. Steppat remarks concerning the founder of Egypt’s first nationalist party, Mustapha Kamil (died 1907)

that he “did not need to move away from Islam in order to turn toward

nationalism since he had never really submitted himself to Islam.” Mustapha Kamil was the grandson of a wealthy grain merchant, the son of a construction engineer trained in Mohammad Ali’s occidental schools; his mother was the daughter of an army captain. Although his father still hoped Mustapha might study at Al-Azhar, he did not oppose his son’s decision to study at a French law school instead. (Fritz Steppat, “Nationalismus und Islam _ bei Mustafa Kamil,” Die Welt des Islams, N.S. Vol. Iv, No. 4, 1956, pp. 333 and 242-243.

87 Tt is characteristic of that new spirit that while in the 1960’s, 600,000 among the 430,000,000 Moslems of the world continue to go to Mecca on

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REFORMIST ISLAM

responsible freedom or away from it. In any event, the most active politically are aware that Moslems, like their neighbors, have many new alternatives before them. To these choices we now attend. pilgrimage each year (only 200,000 of these, however, coming from countries beyond the Arabian Peninsula), the gatherings that excite the public imagination and help to shape history are secular affairs like the Bandung Conference of 29 Afro-Asian nations in April 1955. °° A concept explored by W. Montgomery Watt in Islam and the Integration of Society, London, 1961.

[ 133 ]

CHAPTER 8 RESURRECTING THE PAST: NEO-ISLAMIC

| TOTALITARIANISM

Native Totalitarianism: the Sources of its Appeal MANy MosLEms have been disenchanted by the twentieth century. Amulets and local saints have waned in popularity, religious brotherhoods and guilds have lost in solidarity, and the thoughts of reformist ulema have become less relevant. But the needs and emotions which inspired these expressions of Islam are not dead.

They reappear in twisted form in the various movements of neo-Islamic totalitarianism. In Egypt, the largest Arab state, such a movement has for decades been far more powerful and disciplined than the communist party. In 1948," the Moslem Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian Premier Mahmud Nugrashi; in 1952,

it was the only political party to avoid being immediately outlawed by the new military regime; and in 1954, its bullets missed in an attempt to assassinate President Nasser. Neo-Islamic totalitarian movements have played an important

role elsewhere in the Middle East as well. The Fadayan Islam assassinated Iranian Premier Razmara in 1951; the Khaksar movement assassinated Pakistani Premier Liagat Ali Khan in 1951. A similar Pakistani group, the Jama’at-i-Islam, in April 1958 won a majority of seats in the Karachi municipal assembly. Between 1953 and 1958, while Syrian stability wobbled under the pressure of the great powers and rival Arab states, the local

Moslem Brotherhood alternately joined and fought pro-Soviet 1'When the movement had close to a million members, as contrasted with about 5,000 for the Egyptian Communist Party.

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NEO-ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM

elements.* In Jordan, at different times during 1958, it both

| defended and opposed the King. Until Nasser and the Arab Socialist Resurrection (Ba’th) Party each began in the 1950's to fashion organizational links among groups in the various Middle Eastern states, these Islamic movements formed the only political groups other than the communists that were in area-wide communication with each other. To call them “fanatics”—for in their concern for Islam they do not hesitate to kill fellow Moslems—is to indicate primarily that we cannot fathom their ambiguous, destructive intensity.

To call them “extreme nationalists” is to mistake them for

secular politicians. No nationalist in the Middle East, however

extreme, is likely to join the leaders of Islamic totalitarian movements in saying that “my religion is dearer to me than my

family and clan. My religion is the first country that I take

shelter in,” or to assert that nations have become “idols,” and , that national unity should never be purchased at the expense of teligion.* To say that they advocate “the application of religious precepts in the government of Moslem countries’* is to confuse them with moral reformers. An acknowledgment of their anti-

communism must not lead to the conclusion that they have chosen sides in the cold war; they are anti-communist because they are anti-Western; they reject communism as a creation of the Westernized modern world. The neo-Islamic totalitarian movements are essentially fascist movements. They concentrate on mobilizing passion and violence to enlarge the power of their charismatic leader and the solidarity

of the movement. They view material progress primarily as a 2 During this period it reportedly had about 10,000-12,000 members, or 1988) many as the Syrian Communist Party (New York Times, February 20, 8 These thoughts were expressed by a leading member of the Moslem Brother-

hood, Sa’id Ramadan, in “Al-watan lillah” (“The Fatherland Belongs to God”), Al-Muslimun, Cairo, June 1953, pp. 30-32.

*A frequent designation, here taken from an Associated Press dispatch from Cairo, November 28, 1954, New York Times, November 29, 1954. For an illuminating discussion by a member of the Moslem Brotherhood of how sharply the rule of the Brotherhood would differ from the practice of both contemporary and traditional Moslem states, see Muhib al-Din al-Khatib, “Mata wa kayfa yaqumu al-hukmu al-islamy” (“When and How Islamic Rule Takes Place”), Al-Muslimun, Cairo, November 1952, pp. 44-47.

| [ 135 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES

means for accumulating strength for political expansion, and entirely deny individual and social freedom. They champion the values and emotions of a heroic past, but repress all free critical analysis of either past roots or present problems. As a movement resisting the changes of a multiple revolution in telescoped time, this Middle Eastern version of fascism is also

stamped, however, by a kinship with certain religio-political movements which spread in Western Europe at the beginning of its modern age. In the fifteenth century in Europe, as in modern

_ Islam, groups arose which joined in the call for a religious Reformation, but opposed the alliance of the leading reformers

with established secular authority. Instead, they adopted a militant social chiliasm—that is, they organized themselves for an immediate leap into the promised millennium.°

Islam shares with Christianity the sense of an inherent, preordained purpose in history ending in a cataclysmic judgment day. Moslems have indeed held to the vision of the millennium more constantly and deeply than most Christians, for Islam’s code of righteousness promises the good society here and now. Moslems have been perennially ready for the mahdi, the messenger of God, who would lead the community in a religio-political leap into immediate fulfillment of all spiritual and material needs — even before judgment day. The reconstruction of society through the “spiritualization of politics’® has been a permanent theme

of opposition politics in Islam. While European fascism was compelled to propagandize myths that were new to the majority of the population, neo-Islamic totalitarianism simply exploits the tradition of converting Islam in times of crisis into an apocalyptic vision of spiritual and political redemption. The Egyptian Mos-

lem Brotherhood, for example, calls itself simultaneously “a reformist movement, an orthodox path, a mystic reality, a political society, an athletic group, a scientific and cultural organization, an economic corporation, and a social idea.”” ° For a detailed exploration of such movements in Europe, see Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, London, 1957. 5° The phrase quoted is from Karl Mannheim (Ideology and Utopia, London, 1952, p. 191), who laid most useful conceptual foundations for a discussion of such movements. Opposition movements in traditional Islam have been explored in Chapter 1.

7 Anwar al-Jundi, Min Khutab Hasan al-Banna (From the Speeches of Hasan al-Banna), First Series, Damascus, 1938, pp. 14-15. Such a formulation

[ 136 ]

NEO-ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM Hasan al-Banna, the leader of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood until his death in 1949, embodied the principal elements

that have shaped the neo-Islamic totalitarian movement. He was a product of reformist Islam. He memorized the Koran, worked as Imam and preacher for the village mosque, edited religious texts, and finally graduated first in his class in religion and Arabic studies from Dar al-Ulum, a relatively modern religious school, in 1927. He was a product of sufi (mystic) Islam. In his youth he fasted in months additional to Ramadan, founded the Society for the Prevention of Sin, regularly attended meetings of the Hasafiyah sufi order, and at the age of 16 was admitted to its ranks. Born in 1906, he was a modern man uprooted but unable and unwilling to accept his new freedom. He began as an apprentice to his father, repairing that characteristically modern machine for measuring efficiency and routinization, the watch.° As he continued his education, however, he attended a school

which, unlike other Egyptian schools at that level, taught no foreign language. Despite his higher education, therefore, the role of clerk or bureaucrat was bound to be closed to al-Banna in

his country, where both business and government required English. Able, intelligent, and vigorous, he became a teacher of Arabic and, in his spare time, of religion. He lived in Ismailia, a town in the Suez Canal Zone. Also there were the headquarters

of the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company and a base from which British military power could radiate through his country.® Within Hasan al-Banna, the chiliastic, reformist, and uprooted

modern elements were all transmuted into the ideology of a modern political movement. The Moslem Brotherhood rejects sufism’s superstitions and corruptions, its reflection of social class divisions, its assumed un-Islamic origins, its factionalism, and its current acceptance of fatalism.’° Yet the Brotherhood made it easy for the Brotherhood to live at the same time in the traditional and the modern world. Whenever it was threatened by repression, it replied that it would confine itself to religious issues, meaning its propagandizing mission. Whenever it felt free to act, it declared it was concerned only with religion, since in Islamic tradition, religion comprehends all things.

8 His father belonged to an earlier generation of Islamic reform: he had

been educated at al-Azhar at the time of Mohammed Abduh. ° Hasan al-Banna, Mudhakkarat al-da’wah w-al-d@iyah, Cairo, 1957, pp. 5-82, passim. 10 Richard P. Mitchell, The Muslim Brotherhood, an unpublished doctoral

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retains sufism’s striving for the millennium, and many of its organizational forms. The Brotherhood rejects reform Islam for its arid rationalism, yet accepts any of its arguments that would purify Islam from the accretions of its decadence and show it thus to be better than the most modern of ideas. The Brotherhood is itself a symptom of uprootedness, yet cannot accept modern uprootedness as the precondition of modern liberation. Such an ideology, based on an immediate acceptance of the distant past and the distant future, but not of the present, appeals to a particular surplus in the population: the peasant, with only

a peasant’s skill and opinion, but no longer with any land; workers already replaced or easily replaceable by other workers; students without jobs; ulema, Koran-reciters, and other religious

officials whose status and opportunities are contracting under the impact of secularization; above all, as its hard core, white collar workers and members of the lower middle class who resent the monopoly of power and wealth of those who dominate the state, and who, without influence upon existing cliques and

parties, are keenly sensitive to the pressure for social and economic space among the masses below them.

All of these groups share a deep concern for improving their lot within the traditional framework of status and values rather than within the freedom of a changing society. Some are fundamentalists by conviction who hold that anything new or strange is by nature wicked. The great majority, however—and that is

why this movement has such great propulsion—has had no chance to acquire a stake in the modern world, and hence makes

a virtue of their necessity. |

For many Moslems, especially in provincial towns, modernization in fact provides the first opportunity to turn to the past. The spread of literacy and communication gives a larger number than ever before the chance to read the traditional literature— and so grow attached to pre-modern ideas and values. As a result,

theirs becomes a desperate attempt to gain upward mobility in a decaying social structure instead of the newly emerging sodissertation presented to the Department of Oriental Studies, Princeton University, December 30, 1959, (pp. 356-357), the most thorough first-hand and documentary exploration and analysis of this movement in any language.

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ciety." In a modern social structure, individuals can hope to raise or maintain their status only as individuals. Neo-Islamic totalitarian movements instead seem to offer the individual the

chance to rise, indeed to find salvation, by merging his fate entirely with that of a group striving to resurrect an idealized past.

Neo-Islamic totalitarian movements have also won support

on other grounds. They are admired as rare among Middle Eastern parties for the consistency of their programs and the apparent honesty and sincerity of their leaders.” Their opportunistic drive for power has allowed them to offer or accept temporary alliances with opponents with whom they share common enemies—for example, the Egyptian Brotherhood’s alliance

with King Farouk in 1946 and 1951, with factions of the antiFarouk Wafd Party in 1950, and in 1954 with General Nagib, who had earlier triumphed over both King Farouk and the Wafd Party. They have won adherents among Moslems frustrated by the failure of more liberal efforts to reform and maintain Islam

and who, in fear of secularism and modernism, endorse the movement’s puritanical intent to rescue a desecrated tradition. Some of the newly rich, and there were not a few who profited from the scarcity and inflation that followed World War II, have sought to purify and strengthen their social status by financing such movements of piety. Neo-Islamic totalitarianism have also won support from conservative politicians fearful of growing 11 Such a belated rekindling of tradition has also been observed elsewhere. In India, for example, the upper castes are becoming more and more Westernized and other castes are becoming more and more sanscritized; that is, they

try to rise by accepting an idealized and puritan image of what good and proper people traditionally did. (See M. N. Srinivas, “Sanscritization and Westernization,” in Society in India, edited by A. Aiyappan and L. K. Bala Ratnam, Madras, 1956.) In India, too, movements akin to the Egyptian Moslem

Brotherhood—the Hindu Mahasbha and the SSR—turn this quest in an unpropitious environment into extremist political movements. In Ceylon, Buddhism has inspired similar movements which came to the fore in the 1956 elections.

12 “Fiowever we may differ in opinion with them ... can anyone forget that the Moslem Brotherhood more than any other party saturated the soil of Palestine with sweat and blood? Can anyone forget that it is the Moslem Brotherhood which today is raising the flag of jihdd against the English in the Suez Canal Zone?” (The newspaper Beirut, January 22, 1952, cited by Ishak Musa Husaini, The Moslem Brethren: The Greatest of Modern Islamic Movements, Beirut, 1956, a valuable study.)

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pressures from the left and intrigued by the notion that the brotherhood’s organization of trade unions and students would at least serve to split these discontented segments of society. It has

the same attraction that the National Socialist party held for despairing conservatives in Germany—seemingly the last avail-

able remedy that would change many things in a crisis except the established social structure. Also, mere membership can offer

the boom of solidarity; mere power to obstruct, as through sabotage, can offer reassurance of strength to affect reality; mere adventurism can be a way of life.

Variations among neo-Islamic totalitarian movements, and conflicts for control within them, thus often arise between those who prefer the tension of absolute order to the tension of absolute

struggle, or between those who would assure popular docility through social welfare rather than through the fear of foreign enemies.

Tactics

This analysis of neo-Islamic totalitarianism began with a study

of the mood and circumstances which are far more responsible for its growth than the appeal of its program. Indeed, the program is the symptom of a mood rather than a carefully planned resolution. Most of the program is concerned with tactics that express its mood. That is why tactics, too, deserve exploration before we enter upon the substantive aspects of this movement’s program. Like fascism, neo-Islamic totalitarianism represents the insti-

tutionalization of struggle, tension, and violence. Unable to solve the basic public issues of modern life—intellectual and technological progress, the reconciliation of freedom and security, and peaceful relations among rival sovereignties—the movement is forced by its own logic and dynamics to pursue its vision through nihilistic terror, cunning, and passion. An efficient state administration is seen only as an additional powerful tool for controlling the community. The locus of power and the focus of devotion rest in the movement itself. Like fascist movements

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NEO-ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM elsewhere, the movement is so organized as to make neo-Islamic totalitarianism the whole life of its members.

The Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood has both a visible part (but often outlawed and hence underground) and an intentionally secret part in its movement. Its cells are organized in a hierarchy of groups which the Brotherhood calls “families” and “clans.” At each weekly meeting of the “family,” the group discusses not only organizational and ideological matters but also

the personal problems of its members. The members of the “family” also assume financial responsibility for each other.* All members in all branches at each meeting renew their sworn allegiance to the head of the organization: “I hear and I obey.”

Only when a member had passed an examination and thus became an “active member,” however, could he attend special meetings called by Hasan al-Banna himself. A portion of these members—about 40,000—were organized as “Rover-Scouts” and engaged in parades, athletics and streetfighting.*° This was merely the “General Circle.” There was also a secret circle. In 1949, the Egyptian prosecutor testified that the secret apparatus admitted only men whose entire life histories were known; each had to keep a daily record (submitted to headquarters each month) of his activities in the recitation and memorization of the Koran, sayings of the Prophet, _ and prayers, in morning and evening athletic exercises, and in courses in law, weaponry, and first aid." After swearing secrecy on a Koran and a pistol, the members of the secret apparatus were organized in groups of five. These elite corps phalanxes had as their motto: “Absolute obedience without question, without hesitation, without doubting, and with-

out shifting blame.”’” It has been estimated that the secret 18 Mitchell, The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 316-319. | “ Article 13 of the organization’s basic regulation, Qanun al-Nizam al-Asasi li Hay’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, published in Cairo, September 8, 1945. The figure is claimed by the Moslem Brotherhood magazine Al-Da’wah, Cairo, April 15, 1952, which speaks for the more activist faction. 16 The prosecution’s charge is reprinted in the newspaper al-Asas, Cairo, September 13, 1949.

17 Ahmad Amin, al-Sa’lakah wa al-Futuwwah fi al-Islam (Roguery and Chivalry in Islam), Iqra Series No. 111, Cairo, April 1952, p. 26.

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apparatus, organized in late 1942 or early 1943, numbered about 1,000 members by 1948.*°

Thus the movement permits those who feel superfluous to participate, through various levels of initiation, in a powerful mystery within a group which deems itself the elite among Mos-

lems. The powerless it thus keeps powerless by extinguishing their personality, but it also increases their sense of importance by creating an intense feeling of identification with the leader of the movement whose power, emotion, and style of living panto-

mime the yearning of his followers. Thus it stimulates an intoxicating sense of nihilism in which the willingness to sacrifice one’s self becomes more important than the object for which the sacrifice is made. Those who are sent to death as robots have the illusion of dying as martyrs. At meetings, this litany of slogans is shouted again and again:

Allahu ghayatuna God is our goal!

Al-Rasulu z@imuna The Prophet is our leader!

Al Qur’anu dusturuna The Koran is our constitution!

Al-jihadu sabiluna Holy War is our path!

Al-mawt fi sabil Illah asma Death in God’s service is our

amanina loftiest hope!

Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar God is greatest, God is greatest! It is hardly surprising that there is so much talk about “the art of death” among the members of the Egyptian Brotherhood.”

For all their talk about resurrecting the splendor and power of Islam, the neo-Islamic totalitarian movements hasten the death of all they hold dear by their very approach. They seem to champion the paternalistic, egalitarian values of the tribe against the exploi-

tation and normlessness of modern secular life. They seem to reassert the unity of law, morality, and society at a time when the old value system no longer finds general assent and the community is in fact living in diverging universes of understanding and 18 Mitchell, op. cit., p. 341. 18 Mitchell, The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 342-343. Hasan al-Banna recalled

‘as a youth of meeting a merchant who took him and other youths to a cemetery to read to them sad tales of pious men and ordered them to lie for a while in newly dug graves to contemplate their fate and repent. (Hasan

al-Banna, Mudhakkardat, p. 16.) me

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interests. But when Moslems were in fact linked by common bonds, they formed no secret societies to cement their solidarity. When they were in fact agreed on common values, they needed

no totalitarian dictatorship to enforce their consensus. They never even bothered to organize a hierarchy of priests. These are not zealots, as Toynbee uses the term, who merely will “not retreat,” who will “maintain an unbroken and unbend-

ing front” in the “observance of every jot and tittle of a traditional . . . law.’*° They recognize instead that they cannot stand where they are, yet will not allow growth, and consequently must dedicate themselves to death. Program

A neo-Islamic totalitarian movement has no real interest in a program. Its chiliastic expectation makes the very effort to-

wards producing a program irrelevant; the reformist Islamic : component makes its actual program irrelevant since its closed system of deductive procedure insures an inner coherence at the price of isolation from the world; its modern involvement, however, makes an effort to form a program inescapable. The result is a program of repression and death for the insider, aggression and death for the outsider. There is also talk about Islamic “socialism.” The “socialism”

of the neo-Islamic totalitarian movements is much akin to that

of the German Anabaptists of the sixteenth century and the German National Socialists of the twentieth century. The Anabaptists “tended to be uneasy about private property. . . . If in most of the groups, little attempt was made to introduce common

ownership, Anabaptists certainly did take seriously the obligations of charitably dealing and generous mutual aid.” But the ethics of “active brotherly love” and “great solidarity” apply only

within each group: “the attitude to society at large tended to be one of uncompromising rejection.”** The Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood was exceedingly active in

social welfare. It opened a number of free schools for the elimination of illiteracy and the fostering of religious culture; it set up 20 4 Study of History, Vol. vu, pp. 580-625. 21 Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, pp. 273-275.

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special courses for university students who had failed their general examinations; it built cemeteries for the poor, and collected alms and fed the poor during the holy months; it established small hospitals and dispensaries. It organized help in times

| of flood and fought malaria. It founded seven commercial companies, in printing, spinning, weaving, engineering—all with shares owned by members of the Brotherhood.” All these measures were designed exclusively to strengthen the organization by swelling its numbers, its treasury, and its morale. Its economic

program for society as a whole, however, is at once oddly specific and vague.

In the special issue of its newspaper al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun of September 5, 1948, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood, the organization’s program was spelled out in an extensive list of 46 planks. The economic program put first the organization of “the collection and spending of tithes and alms according to the spirit of Islamic legislation and using such money in indispensable charity schemes such as the creation of orphanages, asylums for the old

and disabled, as well as the reinforcement of the army.” Its second point forbade the collection of interest and its third promised “to encourage and increase economic enterprises and

employ therein the unemployed and to get rid of foreigners occupying any positions there.” Its fourth plank sought “to protect the public against the despotism of monopoly companies and to compel such companies not to be abusive and to get from them all possible advantages for the benefit of the public.” Its seventh point said simply that the Brotherhood proposed “to encourage and raise the standard of the peasant and the industrial workers.” The Syrian Moslem Brotherhood is somewhat more precise. It speaks of guaranteeing each worker his livelihood with minimum wages, and payments in case of sickness, and each peasant

a minimum amount of property—and of assuring for both workers and peasants a spiritual atmosphere.” The “socialism” of these organizations concentrates on foreign 22 Husaini, The Moslem Brethren, pp. 52-57. 23 Ahdafuna wa Mabadi ’una (Our Aims and Principles), a pamphlet issued

°y ee jomtral Committee of the Syrian Moslem Brotherhood, Damascus, 1945,

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NEO-ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM rather than domestic capitalists. They are opposed, for example,

to the granting of concessions to foreigners to exploit natural resources and would prohibit foreigners from acquiring real estate. By contrast, they believe that “the state, when in urgent need, should tap private wealth and the big utilities to the extent required by the highest needs of the nation, provided it does not

kill the principle of private property and economic competition.”** That so little socialism should have so much appeal was a reflection of the dire social discontent which existed. In Egypt, no other party (at least prior to Nasser) had promised so much,

and “socialism” had not been crystallized as an ideology anywhere in the Middle East. In an estimation of the long-range success of these movements, however, it must be noted that they lack any significant or coordinated program for the improvement of economic conditions. The primary operational objective is expansion of the power of

the movement both within the group and without. Within the

ranks of the Brotherhood, the dogmatic reinterpretation of Islamic purity sets no limit on the expansion of control over all aspects of the individual’s life. Unlike orthodox Islam, which acknowledged that all men were born equally frail, neo-Islamic totalitarianism makes absolute demands upon the spirit. Individual privacy is abolished through methods hallowed by the precedent of earlier Islamic tyrannies and improved by techniques

learned from the modern world—secret police, censorship, terror, propaganda. In contrast to the ten economic planks in the 1948 program, 30 deal with “Social and Cultural Aspects.” In its second plank under that heading, the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood is concerned “to find a solution to the position of women in order to raise their standards and to protect them in accordance with the Islamic spirit and to avoid such an important matter being dealt with by the perverse opinions of prejudiced writers.” Four planks later, it is still in the midst of keeping “women from the use of cosmetics and the display of beauty.” In Plank 9, it is positively

eager to “encourage marriage and procreation by all possible means and to make special laws for the protection of the family.”

It would close down all cabarets and dancing halls (Plank 24 Husaini, The Moslem Brethren, p. 57.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES 10); censor all plays and films (Plank 11); improve the wording

of songs (Plank 12); use cafes for teaching illiterates how to read and write (Plank 17). It would punish severely all those who deliberately disobey the Moslem commandments by not fasting

in Ramadan, by not praying, or by swearing (Plank 19); eliminate the use of foreign languages, foreign habits, and fash-

ions in the family (Plank 27). Finally, it would increase the number of hospitals, doctors, and mobile clinics (Plank 29); and improve the condition of the villages by enforcing better order, cleaning, providing good water supplies, and improving cultural and educational standards (Plank 30). Politically, the 1948 program demands “the dissolution of all political parties and the direction of all the population’s political

efforts toward a single aim: the review and modification of legislation in order to co-ordinate it with Islamic laws from all

points of view; ... to develop relations among all the Islamic countries . . . and prepare them for the real conception of the question of the Caliphate.” The movement itself would act as the intermediary—controlling, coordinating, mustering enthusiasm —between the people and the administration of the state.

_. This is not traditional Islam. The neo-Islamic totalitarian

movements find in the past—which was once a living, integrated whole—only those aspects which they want to look for. In this

fashion, the neo-Islamic movements actually contribute to the distintegration of the traditional society which they seem eager to revive. Hasan al-Banna’s own interest in Islamic theology was only one phase of his own spiritual transformation. The head of the sufi order that al-Banna joined “never allowed his educated followers to argue a great deal about the consistencies or inconsistencies of things or to repeat the arguments of the apostates and the free-thinkers or the missionaries before the people. He

would say to them: “Do these things in your private meeting places and discuss them among yourselves. As for the common people, in front of them, use practical and effective words which will direct them to the obedience of God.’ Al-Banna was deeply affected by this trend.”?° 25 Ibid., p. 28. Compare this with the Anabaptists who, “in general, attached little importance either to theological speculations or to formal religious ob-

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NEO-ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM

age. :

This same deliberate neglect of analysis also infuses the movement’s attitude toward contemporary ideologies. The characteristic response to democracy, socialism, and communism is that Islam includes all that is good in each of them and even surpasses

them, being free of what is bad in them.” In fact, there is no interest in modern ideas except for the techniques they might supply in enlarging the arsenal of power for fighting the modern

Indeed, in un-Islamic fashion, neo-Islamic totalitarianism |

relegates the consensus of the community to a secondary role, so that achieving agreement on principles cannot become an issue to agitate the general population. Complete authority is arrogated to the movement, or rather to an absolute leader who incarnates the movement. The leader embodies the principle, and identification with him is the substitute for thought. Neo-Islamic totalitarianism compensates for this diminution of the importance of the individual at home by exaggerating the importance of the Islamic community in the world abroad. It opposes the abstraction of the nation bound by geographic limits

which separate the believers from each other. It is not an extremist nationalist movement; it is anti-nationalist at home and abroad. Far beyond the recapture of Palestine, it advocates conquest and aggrandizement for the sake of the community of believers—an entity without territorial limits: “If the German Reich imposes itself as a protector of everyone who has German blood running in his veins, Moslem faith makes it the clear duty of every strong Moslem whose soul has drenched in the doctrines

of the Koran to consider himself the protector of every other Moslem whose soul has also been drenched .. . in Islam. The doctrine is everything. And is faith anything other than love and servances. In place of such practices ... they set a meticulous, literal observance of the precepts which they thought they found in the New Testament. In place of theology they cultivated the ‘inner Revelation,’ the direct inspirations which they believed they received from God—or, more often, which the leader of the group believed he received.” (Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, pp. 273-274.) Hasan al-Banna, in fact, frequently distinguished his own faith by calling it the “Islam of the Moslem Brotherhood.” (Husaini, The Moaslem Brethren, p. 62.) 26 Husaini, ibid., p. 33 and p. 160, note 112, cites three such typical responses in the writings of Hasan al-Banna.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES hate? Hereafter, we want the banner of Allah to fly high once more in those regions which were once happy in Islam and the voice of the Muw’azzin was heard praising God. But ill luck deprived them of the light... . Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, the Greek Islands—all these are Moslem colonies which must come back into the Moslem fold. The Mediterranean and the Red

Sea must be two Moslem lakes, as they were before... . Following that, we would want to issue our call to the world, and subdue every powerful man to it completely, that there may be no confusion, and that all religions may be Allah’s.”*" Given the resources of the Middle Eastern states, such a drive is unlikely to be spectacularly successful. It could be sufficiently destructive,

however, to undermine the stability of this area. The Fate of a Totalitartan Party The life cycle of a neo-Islamic totalitarian movement however, can be molded or cut short by forces that may not have the same

impact on an ordinary political party. The very dynamics of a neo-Islamic movement prevent it from attaining stability or permanence. Its organized furor is a symptom of the loss of the vitality of a revelation and community formerly accepted as natural. The movement is led, in the view of the masses, by a mahdi figure who has come to set history once again in tune with the fundamental order of the universe. Not only the personality of the leader but also the movement’s success necessarily become the touchstone of its genuineness. That is why its success, or its aura of success, implying sanctity, can quickly win adherents to

its bandwagon. That is also why failure, or the aura of failure, can bring about a disaffection just as sudden.

| The Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood demonstrates these generalizations quite well. So far in this analysis, the data concerning the Brotherhood are drawn predominantly from the 1940’s. What

_ happened afterwards? Its principal organizational strength, the disciplined hierarchic structure, became its principal weakness. By early 1949, the Moslem Brotherhood had grown so powertul that the Egyptian Government determined to have Hasan al27 The Call of the Moslem Brotherhood, Cairo, October 1938.

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Banna assassinated. He was killed on February 12, 1949. The severe police repression that followed handicapped the movement;

but it was the indecisive struggle for control of the position of “Supreme Guide” that proved most debilitating. As a result of this struggle, the organization became prey to the kind of infiltration which was calculated to hurt it most—infiltration at the top.

To spare itself further internecine struggle and to escape continued repression, the Brotherhood finally accepted King Farouk’s candidate as Supreme Guide. Judge Hasan al-Hudaybi was mar-

ried to the sister of the private chamberlain of the royal family, and had various other connections with the King’s entourage. Even after his new appointment in the fall of 1951, he remained a frequent visitor of the King.” As a result of having to obey Hudaybi as faithfully as it had | al-Banna, the Moslem Brotherhood was led to commit a number of grave tactical errors. Although the Brotherhood’s brave slogans

continued to attract support, the tame leadership provided by Hudaybi curbed the movement’s penchant for political conspiracy during the final years of King Farouk’s rule. “There is no secrecy in the Message,” said Hudaybi, “and no terrorism in religion.””* This loss of drive during a crucial period in Egyptian history left the field free for latecomers without elaborate political organiza-

tion—a handful of “Free Officers” under Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s | leadership.

After the military coup in 1952, the Brotherhood was exempted from the decree dissolving all political organizations. It had a number of adherents and sympathizers among the army officers who overthrew the royal house; the Free Officers, lacking any organized civilian support, apparently toyed for a time with the idea of making the Brotherhood their popular arm.*° Soon, however, the Brotherhood made another error. Hudaybi thought himself free to issue commanding advice to Nasser’s Revolution-

| ary Command Council, speaking out against two of its major achievements—the land reform law and the Anglo-Egyptian agreement leading to the British evacuation of the Suez base. As 28 Husaini, The Moslem Brethren, pp. 113-124. 2° Cited by Mitchell, The Muslim Brotherhood, p. 137. 30 Ibid., pp. 155-160.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES a result, the all-too-freewheeling Brotherhood was curbed again.

At this point, the movement fell prey to a disease that can readily beset a group that is desperately dependent on strong leadership because it knows no way of resolving conflicts peacefully. It split into three groups, Hudaybi’s conservative and antiNasser faction, a secret apparatus which trusted neither Hudaybi nor Nasser, and a faction prepared to oust Hudaybi and collaborate with Nasser. Quite possibly without Hudaybi’s knowledge, the secret apparatus attempted on October 26, 1954 to assassi-

nate Nasser. All six pistol shots missed, but over a thousand Brotherhood members were arrested, a few to be hanged and the rest sentenced to jail and hard labor.** Even today, the Moslem Brotherhood remains potentially among Nasser’s most important opposition. But encumbered by false leadership, it has missed its historic opportunity for the time being. The Varieties of Islamic Totalitarianism The Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood has been the largest native

totalitarian movement in the Middle East and it arose in the largest of Arab states. Estimates of its Egyptian membership in

the first five years after World War II vary from 300,000 to 1,500,000 in a country that then had an adult male population of about 7,000,000.** How representative is the Egyptian Moslem

; Brotherhood of other neo-Islamic totalitarian movements in the

area? No catalogue of such movements can be attempted here, but few Moslem states are without them. They are not homogeneous movements; some common tendencies are more predom-

inant in one movement than in another. In Maulana Syad Abul Ala Maudoodi’s Jama’at-i-Islami movement in Pakistan, for example, there was, until recently, much more emphasis on recruiting and placing into power a small elite. Only ulema, for example, 81 The Brotherhood was outlawed on January 13, 1954, and the regime also

found it necessary to dismiss thirty members of the police and seven army officers for their association with the Brotherhood. See Mitchell, The Muslim Brotherhood, pp. 182-192 for Hudaybi’s inability to discover the membership of the secret apparatus. 82 Seton-Williams, Britain and the Arab States, London, 1948, p. 88, estimates it at 300,000 to 600,000 members. The New York Times suggested 1,500,000 in a report on August 5, 1946, and 1,000,000 on December 9, 1948.

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are to be allowed to sit in parliament and on courts.** Sons of gentry whose family lost property and status after the partition of

the Indian sub-continent play a leading role within the movement, which has a membership of only a few thousand. The Khaksar movement of Pakistan, established in 1935 by Allama Mashrigi (who had secured the highest marks ever received by a student at Punjab University in mathematics, and later distinguished himself at Cambridge), is a para-military Islamic organization which, in contrast to the Jama’at-i-Islami, declares that it speaks both for the poor and for the infallibility of Islam.** The Khaksars were responsible for the assassination of Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan in 1951. The dynamics of neo-Islamic totalitarianism need not appear (any more than does modernity) only in their full, pure form. In

Saudi Arabia, for example, an earlier historical form (akin in name and purpose to one Hasan al-Banna formed in Egypt in his youth) is still in evidence—the “Society for Commanding Virtue and Forbidding Vice,”*? popularly known as the Mutawwr'un (“those who compel obedience”). As a governmental organiza-

tion created about 1926 (no voluntary organizations are permitted in Saudi Arabia), this group reports directly to the King. It can raid and search on its own and request the police to make arrests; apparently it can inflict corporal punishment on its own authority. Its activities are in line with the puritanical. doctrine of the Wahhabi sect, intent on curbing smoking, music, and dancing, though seldom, it is said, disturbing the pleasures of the rich or powerful. That Saudi Arabia is now increasingly being affected

by the transformations that have created tensions in Islamic society elsewhere is suggested by the report of some observers that the younger graduates in religious studies at the Wahhabi 83 See Maudoodi’s Islamic Law and Constitution, a collection of Maudoodi’s oe

speeches and essays, published in Karachi, November 1955. Also Freeland Abbott, “The Jama’at-i-Islam of Pakistan,” Middle East Journal, Winter, 1957, pp. 37-51. By contrast, the Syrian Moslem Brotherhood has ascribed the “netrification” of Islam to the failure of the ulema to maintain contact with

the people. (New York Times, February 19, 1955.) ,

84 Khaksar means “humble” and the organization’s symbol is the long-

handled spade. (See Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India, pp. 235-

245.) Leonard Binder has published a detailed and penetrating analysis of Religion and Politics in Pakistan, Berkeley, 1961. 85 Hayat al-amr bil ma’riif wa al-nahy ’an al-munkar.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES Institute in Riyadh are becoming more fanatical in their views. They fear that their prestige and authority are on the decline. Even in Turkey, officially the most secular of Islamic countries,

religion has not ceased to be a political issue, and the likelihood is that it will yet provoke much more conflict before it subsides. Honest, democratic balloting makes the Turkish peasant the kingpin of the electorate, yet he has been intellectually and socially more isolated from the Ataturk revolution, and has changed less than any other part of the population. Appeals to religion may yet become a major substitute for eliciting or retaining rural support, especially if the almost steady increase of economic benefits to the peasants that began during the past decade should cease, either because Turkish planners find good cause to reallocate the distribution of resources, or else because the economy falters.

The growth of religious brotherhoods (dervish orders) with hallowed traditional names but highly modern purposes during the past few years has been increasingly reported in Turkish

newspapers and exposed in court trials. A marriage of convenience between them and certain political parties which attack the reforms of Ataturk can by no means be excluded. In Iran, the Mullah Ayatollah Kashani has exploited religion with obvious political cynicism. When in 1950 a member of the

Fadayan Islam (Devotees of Islam) assassinated Premier Ali Razmara, Kashani publicly and proudly claimed responsibility.

The new Prime Minister, Mosadeq, released the assassin of Razmara from prison without trial, while Kashani, as Speaker of

the Iranian Parliament, pledged himself to support Mosadeq. When Western opposition to Mosadeq was patently growing, Kashani turned against Mosadeq a month before the Premier’s overthrow in 1953. Since then, one of Kashant’s sons has worked actively with the Shah, another against him. Kashani himself at times worked with and against local communists, with and against

the U.S.S.R. Clearly, neo-Islamic totalitarianism is not only a faith but a commodity. Political brokers will work with it, and perhaps, as in Kashani’s case, because it seems of all political counters at once the most familiar, fascinating, and profitable. Elsewhere in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Egypt, a number of neo-Islamic groups have accepted financial support

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NEO-ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM

and entered into tactical alliance with the communists against common domestic and foreign foes. Their common interest in undermining existing authority, the cynicism of both in employing any means deemed useful, and the fanatic conviction of each that it alone will ultimately triumph over both enemies and collaborators has rendered such temporary, opportunistic alliances possible. With communists as with its conservative allies, however, the neo-Islamic movement is only temporarily responsive to bargaining, and only tactically responsive to arguments. Arguments against its position are disqualified by the mere fact that they belong to or defend a world which its followers cannot accept and are committed to change. The Potentialities of Islamic and Post-Islamic Totalitarianism

In the 1930’s and 1940’s, the choice for most Moslems who had retained their traditional values, but were discontented with their society, lay between nationalist regimes committed to the status quo and neo-Islamic resurrectionists. The political success of reformist nationalists in the 1950’s assuaged discontent and captured popular imagination, in part by mobilizing the same emotions and satisfying the same demands for dignity and power that the neo-Islamic movements had in their own fashion raised

earlier. The influence of the neo-Islamic movements has, as a result, declined. The potential following for such movements, however, continues to grow as nationalist reformers speed the process of modernization and thus inescapably incite the political consciousness of ever larger number of tradition-bound men by involving them in untraditional and unresolved problems.

Some contemporary reformist nationalists, confronted with this growing pressure to cope with the demand of the uprooted for new and more secure roots, may well be tempted to accept

the presence of an uprooted mass as an unalterable fact, and be tempted to maintain that mass in a continual state of emotional and political mobilization rather than engage it in the tasks of social reconstruction. Such a policy of expediency only could

result in mounting unsolved social and economic problems, [ 153 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES domestic demagoguery and repression, and foreign adventurism.

The end effect upon the country could be as damaging as that from rule by neo-Islamic totalitarianism. Ultra-nationalism is not the only secular approximation to neoIslamic totalitarianism. Middle Easterners who no longer accept

the beliefs of Islam, but who are no more ready than the neoIslamic totalitarians to live without dogma and political magic, have been creating secular fascist organizations. Thus in 1952 Davoud Mochi Zadeh, whose father had been hanged after World War I as the leader of a terrorist neo-Islamic group, organized the

Socialist National Workers Party of Iran (Sumka), inviting Iranians “to the suppression of self and to struggle against com-

munism and the rotten world of democracy.” Like the PanIranian Party, his group also called for the unification of the Caucasus, Afghanistan, much of Turkestan, and other neighboring areas into a Greater Iran.°°

Similarly the Syrian National Social Party of Syria and Lebanon believes Syrians (rather than Arabs) to be the supreme “folk” of the Middle East. This party, organized along strictly hierarchic lines, has repeatedly engaged in violence in order to

try carving out a Syrian homeland that would reach from the

, Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. In Egypt, Ahmad Husain’s Misr al-Fatat represented until 1952 the secular fascist equivalent of neo-Islamic totalitarianism.** Such native totalitarian movements—whether Islamic or post-

Islamic—will probably continue to sprout in the Middle East until their roots can no longer find inviting soil. For Moslems to be propelled into the midst of a historical and social revolution when resources for experimentation, or even for minimal security, are still lacking cannot help but create a profound feeling of

anxiety. It is precisely the strength and importance of neo-Islamic totalitarianism and its fascist and ultra-nationalist counterparts 88 New York Times, July 7, 1952. 87 See J. Heyworth-Dunne, Religions and Political Trends in Modern Egypt, Washington, 1950, pp. 103-105; Walter Z. Laqueur, Communism and National-

ism in the Middle East, New York, 1956, pp. 247-252. For references to similar groups in Turkey, see Kemal H. Karpat, Turkey’s Politics: The Transi-

tion to a Multi-Party System, Princeton, 1959, pp. 262-270, 282-292, and 371-376.

[ 154 ]

NEO-ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM

that they directly respond to these anxieties. It is precisely the danger of these movements that they respond with anxiety, deepening the existing abyss between leader and mass, believer and non-believer; unable to still anxiety except by resorting to dogma and the sacrifice of the individual; unable to still frustration except through solidarity in violence.

[155 ]

CHAPTER 9 TOWARD A NEW AGE OF CERTAINTY: COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM

::

+) Ri: Islam and Communism TWO OPPOSING VIEWS Of Islam’s relationship to communism were

until recently predominant—neither of them valid. One view held that Islam was a firm barrier to communism, and the other that Islam resembled communism so much that Moslems could easily accept it. Until the early 1950’s, it was the pervasive view, especially among Western governments, that communism could not take

' root where Islam was strong. Thus, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs concluded in 1948 that its analysis “confirms what has long been known, namely that nothing in the history of the peoples, their psychology, or current stage in governmental

and institutional development is particularly conducive toward receptivity to Communist propaganda or growth of Communist strength as such. This holds true for each of the main linguistic areas—Arabic, Turkish, Iranian—and main religions—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.””

The other view carries to an extreme the analogies drawn by A. J. Toynbee, Reinhold Niebuhr, and H. R. Trevor-Roper, among others, between the expansionist ideologies of Islam and 1 Committee on Foreign Affairs, The Strategy and Tactics of World Communism, Supplement II, B. Communism in the Near East, Government Printing Office, 1948. For Moslem agreement with this point of view, see Mahmud Ahmad, Economics of Islam, Lahore, 1947; Mirza Muhammed Hussain, Islam and Socialism, Lahore, 1949; M. Siddiqi, Marxism and Islam, Hyderabad, 1951;

“The Challenge of Communism and Islam,” The Muslim Sunrise, Fourth Quarter, 1952; and Muhammed Rafi-ud-Din, The Fallacy of Marxism, Lahore, Institute of Islamic Culture, 1953.

[ 156 ]

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM Bolshevism.” Proponents of this view observe that both the com-

munist party and orthodox Islam claim absolute and universal validity for a philosophy which explains the process of reality in all its aspects. Further, both are puritan in character, filled with missionary zeal and spiritual fervor, and demand the submission of the individual to the community and complete devotion to the articles of faith. Both movements have their prophets, saints, scriptures, and demonology, and are less tolerant of the schismatic, the heretic, and the apostate than of foreign sects. Both differentiate between unjust wars and holy wars. If compelled to do so, both acknowledge the possibility of co-existence and neutralism, but only as a qualification of the commandment to pursue and extirpate evil, and to convert the pagan in all those regions of the world that are not yet part of their domain, a crusade felt to be in tune with destiny.

Such an interpretation has some merit, as we shall see, but not in this simple form. Indeed, if stated this baldly, these seeming similarities between Islam and communism are all the more

likely to give rise to bitter opposition between them since, at least to this degree, the two movements can understand each other’s threat. The orthodox Islamic reply to communism, how-

ever, labors under certain difficulties. The ulema who attack communists as hostile to Islam cannot point to contemporary at-

tacks on Islam by Middle Eastern Communists. To postpone direct attacks on religion until they actually achieve control of the state—lest they deprive themselves of mass support while they still need it—is a tactic well established in communist theory and practice. The ulema, moreover, face an audience that is increasingly deaf to appeals in defense of traditional re“An actual study of the way in which these two closed societies resemble

each other, and hence might produce the same kind of political élan and foreign policies, has not yet been attempted, yet would prove most fruitful in

revealing both contrasts and similarities between traditional and modern

ideological empires.

3For attacks against Islam after the communists acquired power, see

Alexander G. Park, Bolshevism in Turkestan, 1917-1927, New York, 1957; R.

Pipes, “Muslims of Soviet Central Asia,” Middle East Journal, Spring and Summer, 1955; A. Bennigsen, “Traditional Islam in the Customs of the Turkic Peoples of Central Asia,” ibid., Spring 1958, pp. 227-333; Chantal Quelquejay, “Anti-Islamic Propaganda in Kazakhstan Since 1953,” ibid., Summer 1959, pp. 319-327.

[ 157 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES ligion, and unlikely to be moved, except perhaps favorably, by the knowledge that Shari’a law and other traditional institutions have been stamped out in Soviet Central Asia, even though this audience may give thought to the human price that was paid for rapid development. Often, an audience that is more receptive to the arguments of the ulema is also eager to oppose all modern ideas, whether democratic or communist, on the valid ground that both undermine Islamic orthodoxy. The communists seldom attempt to capitalize on the seeming similarities between Islam and communism. To do so would endanger the communist claim to be a materialistic, scientific, historical movement. There is one exception. Like early Christianity,

early Islam was also in part a protest against the abuse, corruption, and inequality of wealth; like Christianity, it insisted on love, compassion, and equality among all believers.* As religious

dogma adjusted itself to the worldliness of empire and the tremendous riches accumulated by the Companions of the Prophet, excessive devotion to the egalitarian spirit of the original revelation came to be considered a kind of left-wing deviationism.° Communist critics have therefore been able to declare that the history of Islam and its institutions, soon dominated by the very powers which had at first opposed the Prophet, contradicts its original assertion of equality and fraternity. They assert that com-

munists alone have the courage now to fulfill Islam’s original promise of social and economic reform.® *For examples, Koran, Suras XVIII, 29; LXX, 24-25; LVII, 7; Il, 275-80; XV, 20; IX, 34.

5 Abu Dharr, the only Companion to oppose the trend of his time and to advocate the limitation of wealth to the immediate needs of the family, and the sharing of the rest, was sent by the third Caliph into forced residence in the desert. A book published in 1948 and based on his ideas was carefully studied by the ulema of al-Azhar University, who acknowledged Abu Dharr’s piety but banned the book. Their fatwa (legal interpretation) noted that Islam

respects property, and sets no limits to the legal accumulation of wealth

except in demanding certain specified contributions for charity and the defense of the state, and in encouraging spontaneous offerings. This fatwa also justified the prevailing practice of land tenure and sharecropping. Orthodox Islam had justified the historical development of the Islamic community too long to be

able now to take an independent lead in analyzing the social and economic consequences of that development.

6 Such propaganda appears to have found some response: “Islam’s lofty principles, social and economic,” said Shaikh Abd al-Karim al-Mashta, one of Iraq’s ulema, “are the same as those adopted by Russian and the Socialist

[ 158 ]

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM There are indeed profound differences between Islam and com-

munism, but such differences cannot automatically or without distortion be counted upon to constitute barriers. Materialism and revolution are part of the spirit, though not the letter, of the Islamic inheritance. Those orthodox Moslems who by virtue

of their wholehearted attachment to a traditional revelation patently cannot assimilate communism (or any other modern ideology) are now irrevocably diminishing in number and influence. They can doubtless still be mobilized into political action by playing on their fear or hatred of those who will not acknowl-

edge the eternal holiness of the Koran, but only at the price of mobilizing the same sentiment against all change and modernization. Islam in this sense can by now afford only a temporary and opportunistic barrier against communism.

There is one conceivable religious barrier which does not rest on the remnants of traditionalism or the propagandistic ex-

ploitation of them. That barrier lies in the possibility of a renaissance of Islamic culture “in which the ultimate meaning of existence shines through all finite forms of thought and action;

the culture is transparent, and its creations are vessels of a spiritual content.”’ Such a renaissance does not seem close in the Middle East. The Attractions of Marxism The barriers to communism that are specifically Islamic derive from the social rather than the religious aspects of Islam. To the degree that tradition survives, the Middle East is unready to re-

ceive modern ideas, including communism. There is not only erosion at work, however, to break the barriers of tradition. Islam

actively prepares the field for communism when its continuing claim as a total way of life is mocked by its failure to solve the major contemporary problems of individual belief and social countries. They are the same principles that the Iraqi Communists want to apply here. . . .” Arab News Agency despatch, January 30, 1959, cited by Walter Z. Laqueur, “Arab Unity versus Soviet Expansion,” Problems of Communism, May-June 1959, p. 46. ™The definition is from Paul Tillich (The Protestant Era, Chicago, 1957), who acknowledges that such a culture still remains to be recovered in the West.

[ 159 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES action. Communism is peculiarly attractive for Moslems who are prepared above all to look for a modern revelation as total in its concepts, emotional appeal, and the social control it exercises as was Islam in the past. For Moslems thus transfigured by the crisis of their society, the similarities which have been previously noted do indeed become important, and communism becomes attractive

both because of the fundamental similarity of its form and the fundamental difference of its content. These points began to be made for the first time in the early 1950’s.° Since then, only one writer has produced major analyses _ that relate the appeal of communism, Marxism, the communist

parties, and the actual models of the Soviet state to Middle

pant in 1955.° | Fastern politics since the U.S.S.R. entered as an active partici-

The matter thus deserves further exploration. Of the various components of communism, Marxism has a particular attraction

for Moslems at a time when their society, in process of change, 1s

becoming more unstable and unpredictable. At such a stage in history, Moslems who have preserved certain moral values of their religion despite their rebellion against the social irrelevance and intellectual inadequacy of their father’s faith, and who are anxious to regain and enlarge the sense of community which was an intrinsic part of Islam, may well turn to Marxism.*® Marxism may appear to such Moslems to be a complete guide to a way of life. It seems to provide more modern answers than Islam to the

fundamental questions concerning reality, and a sense of cooperating (through shared rituals, beliefs, and actions) with 8See Manfred Halpern, “Implications of Communism for Islam,” The Muslim World, January 1953; Bernard Lewis, “Communism and Islam,” International Affairs, London, January 1954; Kenneth Cragg, “The Intellectual

Impact of Communism Upon Contemporary Islam,” Middle East Journal, Spring 1954. ° Walter Z. Laqueur, Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East, New York, 1956, and The Soviet Union and the Middle East, New York, 1959.

10 “Fascism and Nazism, with their naked appeal to greed, hate, pride, and envy could in the long run address themselves only to the evil instincts of man, and were correspondingly limited. Communism, while exploiting these to the full, has also perverted to its service some of the noblest aspirations of the human race—as peace, social justice, the brotherhood of man—and has used

them with deadly effect. We shall fail to understand and meet the threat of communism if we do not recognize its attraction for the best, though not the brightest, as well as for the worst spirits.” Lewis, “Communism and Islam.”

[ 160 ]

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM

the inevitable development of history toward a universal, classless, and prosperous community.’ Marxism’s appeal arises not only from its dogma but equally from its dialectical, historical, and tactical ambiguities. Moslems do not find it difficult to assent to a Marx who, discouraged by the “fetishism of commodities,” the alienation of labor, and the reification of society under capitalism, sought to bring about a new society of free individuals in which alienated, distorted relationships of material production no longer determined the pat-

tern of human life. In a society in which toil has never been thought to have either intrinsic dignity or instrumental value for individual purification or salvation, Marxism offers the utopia

of satisfaction on the basis of need rather than performance, stressing economic security primarily as a means toward the achievement of human freedom.

To Moslems previously accustomed to a monistic view of life, Marxism therefore appears not as a materialistic approach rejecting spiritual values but rather as a new monistic philosophy projecting spiritual values upon a materialist base. Rejecting an Islam which, in their view, united the people only by binding the

oppressed classes to the oppressor by submission, they would now save the community by subverting its present world view. Once Mohammed, they say, had to overcome the ties of kinship and an ancient polytheism in order to establish the community of believers. Now only Marxism seems radical enough to organize the community to deal with widespread want, toil, and injustice in the face of the first genuine historical opportunity to overcome them.” For the majority of Middle Eastern converts to Marxism, the doctrine itself as a system of thought and a pattern for action 11 A statement such as this is clearly Islamic in spirit though obviously not

in content: Marxist-Leninist theory “enables the Party to find the right orientation in any situation, to understand the inner connection of current events, to foresee their course, and to perceive not only how and in what

direction they are developing in the present but how and in what direction they are bound to develop in the future.” (History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [Bolsheviks|]), New York, 1945. 12 See also Donald G. Macrae, “The Bolshevik Ideology: The Intellectual and Emotional Factors in Communist Affiliation,’ The Cambridge Journal, December 1951.

[ 161 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES almost certainly has never been an object of detailed examination, study, and acceptance. By osmosis rather than by direct contact with its literature, Marxism’s analysis of the causes and character of poverty, exploitation, and imperialism has become widely accepted in the Middle East. Though the Marxist analysis of imperialism is only partly true, it has won great popularity because it is in part true and because its truth (whatever the ad-

ditional explanations) was dramatically experienced in the Middle East during a century of Western imperialism. Moreover, the modern West itself has failed so far to produce explanations of imperialism more convincing or at least equally simple. The Attraction of the U.S.S.R. as a Model of Rapid Progress

But Marxism can also show another face, and hence attract yet another group, or reinforce its appeal among those to whom ends justify means or who find it plausible to see a dialectical relationship between these contrasting images of the future. Communism in Soviet practice has become a system in which the state is the sole reservoir of power and capital. The state ra-

tionalizes its production and bureaucratic apparatus under authoritarian leadership, places special emphasis on the requirements of urgent industrialization and military preparedness, and justifies its political, economic, and intellectual exactions by an ideology that is totalitarian. Such a system, seen from the outside, is attractive to people who are in a hurry to achieve progress and see no hope of accomplishment except through the use of force by a minority. The Soviet model thus seems to offer a prototype for the kind of revolution that will bring order in the

present chaos. Middle Easterners attracted to this model are prepared to justify the police state on the grounds that contemporary Middle Eastern governments are also prepared to use repressive force, but without accompanying it by social reform. There also exists the widespread assumption among Middle East-

| [ 162 ]

13 Most Middle Eastern countries have experienced only Western imperialism, and every country that experienced Russian or later Soviet intervention —~ —Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan—has also known Western intervention.

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM ern Communists that the evils and errors of Soviet leadership will not, of course, be repeated when Soviet techniques are introduced

in this area. Besides, those who are under the whip now will escape further whipping; they will be cracking the whip. The political and economic models provided by the U.S.S.R.

are likely to have far more appeal in the Middle East than are those of Western Europe and the U.S., at least in the next decade.

Like the U.S.S.R. a few decades ago, the Middle East is economically backward. Like the U.S.S.R., it seeks to achieve progress, status, and power in a hurry. Most Middle Eastern countries similarly begin with a lack of capital—hence would find it use-

ful to force savings, use the state to direct investments, meanwhile keeping the standard of living of most consumers low. Also striking a responsive chord is the idea of a single political party dedicated to the subversion of the traditional order and, subsequently, the constant mobilization of the population in support of government objectives.

The appeal of such solutions does not necessarily mean that Middle Eastern reformist nationalists will adopt a pro-Soviet orientation. Actually, it is Titoist Yugoslavia that has become one of the most attractive models for these reformist nationalists in recent years. It impresses many Middle Easterners as a country at once European in style and status, yet still in process of over-

coming its economic underdevelopment. It is radical in its political, social, and economic approach, but willing to experiment,

and it is eager to discuss political means and ends with less experienced Asians and Africans who could not expect equally open exchanges with other kinds of communists. For Egypt, certainly, Yugoslavia has become the chief model of successful neutralism and rapid progress in internal reform. Increasingly, modernizing countries are also learning from each other, whether from Nehru’s India or the Turkey of Ataturk and his successors, from Bourguiba’s Tunisia, Touré’s Guinea,

or Nkrumah’s Ghana. Indeed, any comprehensive theory of social, political, and economic development of underdeveloped areas—a theory as yet attempted by no one, though desperately required—would surely have to proceed by viewing the development of the U.S.S.R. and the Middle East in a common analyt[ 163 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES ical framework, rather than imposing, whether propagandistically or analytically, the accepted descriptions of earlier ideologies in one country on later practice in another.

Just as the acceptance of Marxism does not always redound to the benefit of the U.S.S.R.—Marxism historically, like Islam, has shown itself capable of many forms and deviations—even the acceptance of specific Soviet models need not favor Soviet aims.

In the case of such imitation or creative adaptation as those undertaken by Ataturk and Bourguiba, at least, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Western cause was served instead. Indeed, accepting all the Soviet models mentioned so far would not call for a totalitarian, but only an authoritarian regime. ‘The attractiveness of a totalitarian regime—one which, in contrast to

an authoritarian regime, abolishes privacy—stems from three rather different considerations: (1) In justified or unjustified fears of foreign or domestic menace, an authoritarian regime can easily persuade itself that its police must henceforth probe private

thoughts rather than merely enforce public behavior, (2) for reasons of ideological loyalty or on the pragmatic assumption that the regime could not survive without Soviet help or against Soviet pressure, an authoritarian regime may feel compelled to follow Soviet footsteps; or (3) an authoritarian regime may decide to speed up its campaign to instill production-mindedness within a single generation. Only the last motivation demands further explanation. The Middle East, like the U.S.S.R. at the time of the Bolshevik revolu-

tion, is a peasant society, and peasants work in tune with the seasons—working hard three to six months in most of the Middle East; then they rest and sit and wait. The discipline of the indus-

trial work week is alien to them, and demands an entirely new

spirit and sense of values. Such a new discipline can be established gradually. To change men’s rhythm of life and their souls in a single generation in an environment that can, for the

most part, afford to grant few immediate rewards for such a change of spirit requires a profound governmental concern with men’s discipline, enthusiasm, loyalty, values, fears, and intentions—in short, totalitarian methods. There are other ways to progress, but they require either more resources or more time. [ 164 ]

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM The Soviet practice of communism, which is obviously irrelevant for the needs of industrial countries, is an alternative for underdeveloped countries—the one that exacts great and grave sacrifices.

Should totalitarian and Soviet-oriented regimes actually emerge

in the Middle East, a major difference even within this group is bound to become apparent. Not all so-called underdeveloped countries have significant untapped resources. Some are poor in

every resource except labor. In Egypt, which would probably double its present per capita income of about $150 per year yet not hope to escape poverty, communism would face tasks quite different from those it would confront in oil-rich and land-rich Iraq. Whether Soviet communism is a useable model for poor countries is doubtful. The Attraction of Chinese Communist Models

When Walter Lippmann asked Chairman Khrushchev in 1959 about the relevance of communism to poor countries, Lippmann recalled that “I did not feel that he was willing to face the some-

what speculative question. . . .”** When Mehdi Ben Barka, a leader of a radical party in a relatively poor country, Morocco, was recently asked a similar question, he replied that there appeared to be a great distinction arising in the communist world, with the U.S.S.R. representing the “communism of the rich” and China the “communism of the poor.” It is doubtful that the Soviet Union is a relevant model for a country such as Iraq which has excellent resources for economic progress if it will only utilize them wisely and efficiently. One could even argue that, once the world’s technology has achieved major breakthroughs in food production and processing, cheap

energy, automation, and birth control, the Soviet or Chinese model will not be relevant for any country. Certainly, most of the countries of the Middle East lack the prerequisites for rapid industrial growth which Russia possessed when the Soviets came to power. “When the Soviets started, they already had the boots, 35. Walter Lippmann, The Communist World and Ours, New York, 1959, p.

[ 165 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES and the straps to pull on, whereas contemporary Asia is, rela-

tively speaking, still barefooted.” The U.S.S.R. may well be a | model for rapidly converting a good start into high accomplishment through exclusive state control over economic activity, and a ruthless use of controls to move the entire population and all resources in the “right” direction. But unlike most of the Middle East, it could make such a start and achieve its present development without having to confront with full force the problems of initial acceleration of savings, of expanding agricultural output to overtake rapid population growth, and of finding productive employment for urban and rural labor expanding at a frighten-

ingly rapid rate. Much of Soviet development is a product of improvisation—as the scarcity of both pre-revolutionary Marxist and post-revolutionary Soviet writing on the modernization of

underdeveloped areas implies, and a close examination of its history demonstrates. But for those tasks which will make or break Middle Eastern economic development, the U.S.S.R. has had neither to improvise policies nor develop doctrines.*° By now,

having become a highly industrialized, powerful nation, the U.S.S.R. has by its very achievement ceased to be an innovating model of special relevance to underdeveloped areas. That is why Middle Easterners have in recent years been increasingly fascinated by the “communism of the poor.” China appears to have several political and social attractions that the U.S.S.R. either no longer or else never possessed for some Middle

Easterners. It is clearly Asian and not primarily European. It has overcome its inferiority and its inferiority complex, but it is not yet an advanced industrial and military power demonstrating its strength as such in the Middle East. Indeed, it is located at a much more reassuring distance than either the U.S.S.R. or the West. There was a time—perhaps it was still true a year or two ago—when the U.S.S.R. could speak to the Middle East, as the

United States could not, in words that suggested that it knew what it felt to have been an underdog, to have been put on the 1° Most of the points made in this paragraph and all quotations, are drawn from Oleg Hoeffding’s “The Soviet Union: Model for Asia? State Planning and Forced Industrialization,” Problems of Communism, NovemberDecember 1959, pp. 38-46, an excellent analysis of the principal economic

| issues and facts involved.

[ 166 ]

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM defensive, to have been exploited, yet now to be the elder brother of the poor. It may still seek to retain that image, but the advent

of the Sputniks and its own assertions and demonstrations of power have altered the Soviet posture decisively. China for a time assumed the former Soviet mantle in Middle

Eastern eyes. Its demonstration of what a country rich in poor people can accomplish by marshaling its labor seemed to be especially impressive. Commented the Moroccan Ben Barka,

voicing perspectives almost certainly shared by many other Middle Easterners: “China presents itself as the country which has the greatest similarities with our own by virtue of its past, by the tremendous backwardness which it has had to overcome, and also by the errors committed at the morrow of its liberation... . Certainly the conditions under which the progress of China has been realized deserves to be fully analyzed [since] the economic and social, technical and cultural development of such a country poses the same problems as ours: problems of direction, planning,

democratic participation of the masses involved in production, and problems also of foreign aid... .*%” Yet the image of China has changed almost as rapidly as that of the U.S.S.R. Both first came dramatically to the attention of Middle Eastern leaders in 1955—the U.S.S.R. as an alternate supplier of arms, economic aid, and diplomatic support at that time to Egypt; China as a prominent member of the Bandung

Conference of 29 Afro-Asian nations. By 1958, when the U.S.S.R. seemed as deeply involved as a partisan in Arab rivalries

as Western powers before it, its special luster began to wane.” So did China’s when it allowed the leader of the outlawed Syrian

Communist Party to condemn the United Arab Republic at a public ceremony in China attended by the U.A.R. Ambassador. And China later alarmed all Arabs, regardless of their partisanship, by attacking along a disputed border with India in 1959. This was an obvious breach of the Bandung spirit of peaceful 16 Problémes d’Edification du Maroc et du Maghreb, Quatre Entretiens avec

El Mehdi Ben Barka, collected by Raymond Jean, Tribune Libre, No. 52, Paris, 1959, p. 50. 17 See the exchanges of sharp criticism between Cairo and Moscow over

Iraq at the end of 1958 and early 1959.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES collaboration among all Afro-Asian nations, non-intervention in each other’s affairs, and negotiation of all differences.**

Although the glitter of China, no less than that of the U.S.S.R., was soon dimmed, the study of the Chinese effort to

conquer poverty continues. If Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt come to resort, as well they may, to the formation of short-term conscripted labor battalions, the models are likely to be Yugoslav—but modified in the light of an examination of the errors of China. What counts are not so much the specific models that

are borrowed as the system of action and thought of which they become a part. In the Middle East today, even the most reformist governments point with proud awareness to the fact that Islam in all its history has been largely free of religious inquisitions or political brainwashing. Traditional Islam never developed a cohesive social, political, and moral structure hierarchically interlocking peasant and Emperor, as in China or Japan. Islam always respected the privacy and inner freedom of the believer. For these reasons, it

is argued, Islam is less prepared for total social controls than Japan in the nineteen thirties or China today.

Such historical traditions, however, are not likely to deter forever leaders who have eclectically tried and joined various concrete models, yet failed to outpace the growth of their popu-

lation. The majority of the people of the Middle East live in countries that are even poorer, per capita, than China was a decade ago or is now. If non-totalitarian roads fail, acceptance of the path of Chinese communism may well become in the Middle Fast the politics of despair of the left just as neo-Islamic totalitarianism has become the politics of despair of the right.

Factors Hampering the Role of Communist Parties in the Middle East: Small Membership

So far, our analysis suggests that communism, in its various aspects, must be counted as one of the serious political competi18 There was also considerable inclination among Middle Easterners in 1959 who had earlier thought of China as a useful countervailing force against

both Soviet and American influence in the area to suspect that the more violently aggressive communist faction in Iraq was inspired by Chinese, rather than Russian, example and support.

[ 168 ]

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM tors in the Middle East—an alternative stimulated far more than hindered by an Islam in crisis. It also suggests that, as an ideology or a Cluster of practices, its appeal has special attractions and special limitations. These attractions and limitations also affect the fortunes of the local communist parties. The communist parties in the area from Morocco to Pakistan are all still quite small. Iran’s Communist Tudeh Party became

the largest in Middle Eastern history when it grew to about 40,000-80,000 members in 1953, but by 1963 it had been reduced to less than 2,000.° The leading communist parties of the Arab world today are in Syria, with 1,500 members, and in Iraq, Egypt, and Morocco, with about 1,000 members each. In Egypt, the largest Arab country, seven small and outlawed communist

factions have sometimes managed to coalesce into, at most, three major splinters; hence particular communist individuals have been more influential than any organized communist group. In Syria, which has long had the largest communist party in the Arab world, the party has remained outlawed before, during, and after Syria’s membership in the United Arab Republic. A nationalist communist faction, including the former editor of the party

newspaper, split off from the Syrian party in August 1959. In Lebanon, where outlawed communists have been consistently freer to operate during the past decade than anywhere else in the Arab world, they have been no more successful than any other local political party in breaking through the religious-ethnic allocation of all government positions to gain important influence. The fortunes of both communist parties in Iraqg—one pro-Soviet, but apparently divided between a revolutionary and a constitutional faction, the other loyal to Iraqi nationalism—have waned since the excesses of the pro-Soviet group alienated government

and people during 1959. The illegal parties of Jordan, Sudan, and Pakistan have, respectively, about 200, 1,500, and 3,500 members.

In Arab Africa, no communist party now has important influence, and all of them are now outlawed. In Morocco and 19 Ajl figures on communist party strength in this chapter are based on | Intelligence Report 4489, World Strength of the Communist Party Organizations (Unclassified), Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State, January 1963, and earlier editions.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES Tunisia, the parties shrivelled from about 10,000 each to about one-tenth that size from 1946 to 1961. Freedom from French control was the principal interest of politically active Moroccans and Tunisians, and a party whose membership was predominantly

French, whose principal target was “U.S. imperialism,” and whose policy toward local independence was changeable and ambiguous could not fail to lose numbers and influence. A similar fate has now befallen the Algerian Communist Party. In Libya, the party is yet to be reformed after its small remnant of Italian

members was exiled in 1951. In Turkey, consistent repression since 1925 and a broad popular sense of menace from the north has kept communist activities limited to a few cells. In Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, political repression has not yet permitted any political party to arise. Why are most of the communist parties of the Middle East still

so small? The particular fortunes of most of these parties are detailed in the work of Laqueur.”® Problems that have bedevilled

the development of all political parties in the Middle East are discussed in Chapter 14. Here we must discover the peculiar handicaps that face the communist parties in competing with others in the Middle East. Shifting and Unrewarding Communist Strategies

The communist party has been handicapped by its own strategy. This fact becomes perhaps most apparent in a brief review of

the many major changes in communist party strategy in this region from 1917 to the present in response to the changing world power balance, the forced pace of change within the U.S.S.R., and the social transformation in process everywhere in

the world. Between 1917 and 1921, Soviet leaders not only favored world revolution but saw their foreign comrades make progress in that direction in, among other countries, Turkey and Iran. In Turkey, local communist forces, though of dubious orthodoxy, were supporting Ataturk’s armies. In Iran, commu20 Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East. In Israel, where the party has about 2,000 members, of whom 500 may be Arabs, its total appeal has never exceeded 5 percent of the popular vote. It has been crippled by its anti-Zionist orientation in the Zionist state.

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nists were attempting to establish separate states in Azerbaijan and Gilan.** By 1921, however, it had become clear to Soviet leaders that they lacked the strength to sustain the efforts of these

foreign communist movements. Within the U.S.S.R., this retrenchment was reflected in the New Economic Policy; outside, it showed itself in an eagerness to improve relations with neigh_ boring Middle Eastern governments at the expense, if necessary, of the local communist parties. In Iran and Turkey, communists by the thousands were thus left to the hangman. When, in September 1928, at the Sixth Comintern Congress, international communism shifted again to an emphasis on revolu-

tionary activity, little response was possible in the area from Morocco to Pakistan. The two strongest communist movements had been decimated; the rest were as yet unimportant. The reversal of communist strategy in 1934—-so helpful in the West,

where fascism was recognized as a threat and where some liberal forces were ready to enter into a united front with communists to fight fascism—turned into a handicap in the Middle

Fast. To unite with their British or French overlords against Germany and Italy was not attractive to Moslems who, when not neutral toward such a seemingly distant struggle, were drawn to

the proposition that the enemy of their enemy might be their friend. Between 1934 and 1939, communists in the Middle East did succeed in drawing local or foreign resident Christians and Jews into their ranks—only to make it more difficult to attract Moslems during those two short years, 1939-1941, when their first real opportunity arrived.

The year 1939, which in the West marks the desertion of communists from the battle against fascism, gave the party its first opportunity in the Middle East to woo followers with the area’s most popular themes. In the light of the Nazi-Soviet pact, it became possible to recruit members to fight against British and French imperialism without regard to the war in Europe. Still, this chance netted the communists little. Religious and ethnic 21 Tbid., pp. 205-211; George Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran, 1918-1948, Ithaca, 1949, pp. 48-62; Dankwart A. Rustow, “The Communist Impact on Turkey and Iran, 1918-1954,” an unpublished paper delivered to the Panel on International Communism, American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 11, 1954.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES minorities loomed too large among the communist core; where British and French influence counted, governmental repression erew in reaction to the new communist line. Moreover, the opportunity lasted for only two years. With the German invasion of the U.S.S.R. in 1941, World War II became to the communist a “patriotic war.” By opposing any political activities against British and French imperialism that might hurt the war effort, the communists destroyed all chance of linking themselves with local nationalist movements until 1946. Since 1946, there has been evolving, gradually and not without contradictions, the present strategy of the communist parties —giving priority to the formation of a new broad popular front against the one menace facing the world—“American imperialism.” There remained uncertainty in communist ranks, at least between 1946 and 1954, as to whether to limit collaboration to left-wing groups or collaborate with all nationalists. This problem was rendered more difficult by the ideological ambiguities of both

clique and mass parties of the Middle East, and by the secret, non-party structure of the most successful local revolutionary groups.” There remained uncertainty at least until 1952 also as to whether domestic revolution was still part of the new strategy

or whether such revolutionary activity must be eschewed lest nationalists be frightened away from collaboration with communists against “American imperialism.””*

| How confusing a period this was, and how little the communist parties were able to profit from their new freedom to concentrate on themes closest to Middle Eastern hearts—“national 22 Thus “the Egyptian revolution of 1952 was described in a contemporary Soviet work, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, as the action of a ‘reactionary officers group linked with the USA’ which had embarked on ‘savage repression of the workers’ movement.’ Writing in 1953, L. N. Vatolina, an expert on Egyptian affairs, observed that since the revolution there had been increased

persecutions of communists, democrats, and trade unionists, and that the

peasants had been cheated of their rights by a purely ‘demagogic’ measure of land reform. In 1954, however, A. F. Sultanov said that the land reform law, while not solving the agrarian question, was undoubtedly a progressive measure. In 1956 I. A. Dement’yev said that Egypt, since becoming a republic, had been able to institute social reforms and to adopt an independent foreign policy; and a short work entitled Independent Egypt, published in the same year, represented the revolution of 1952 as the turning point in Egyptian history, as a result of which Egypt had become a ‘bourgeois democratic state.’” (The Mizan Newsletter, A Review of Soviet Writing on the Middle East, February

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COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM liberation” and “anti-imperialism’”—is dramatized, indeed almost

caricatured, by the fortunes of the Tunisian Communist Party. In 1946, it was one of the largest in the Arab world. By 1951, it had lost about four-fifths of its original membership of 10,000. Yet here was a country with a strong, and at that time unsatisfied,

drive for national independence. Here also was a country with few resources and growing poverty, where more than half of all Tunisians who have any cash income were having to spend 90 percent of it on food, and with Algeria’s high birth rate but without Algeria’s safety valve of free immigration to France.

Communist strength in Tunisia in 1946 was the harvest of an earlier and now discarded strategy. As a result of its support (albeit belated) of the French resistance effort, it had achieved a predominantly French membership. With such a cadre, it now proposed to campaign for Tunisian liberation from France. In February 1946, the Tunisian Communist newspaper L’Avenir

had still attacked Tunisian leaders like Habib Bourguiba for allegedly collaborating with fascism, and had endorsed a French

evolutionary program that would not lead to Tunisian selfgovernment in any foreseeable future. By August, communists were no longer in the French government, and L’Avenir apologized for its previous attacks and called for “an end to the colonial regime.”*4

Though the major turn in communist strategy in Tunisia came in the fall of 1946, zig-zags persisted in Tunisia (and, of exactly the same kind, elsewhere in North Africa) for another year and 1959, p. 4, published by the Central Asian Research Centre in association with St. Antony’s College, Oxford, Soviet Affairs Study Group.)

] 23 Between 1946 and 1951 the communists engaged in guerrilla activities in Greece, Iran, India, Burma, Malaya, and the Philippines but not in Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, or Lebanon, where the communists had more members proportional to the population, than in India.

24 Though more limited and less publicized, the conflict between its

European and colonial policies can involve the U.S.S.R. and its world communist movement no less than the U.S. in ambiguities and contradictions. The U.S.S.R. has so far even seen fit to borrow trouble (or been forced by its own restricted freedom of movement into such difficult maneuver) by making the party in metropolitan Europe the intermediary for instructions to parties in colonial and even former colonial areas. Thus the Algerian Communist Party apparently was unable to escape the onus of control from Paris until early 1958, when it cemented connections with the Italian Communist Party. See L’Unita, February 8, 1959.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES a half. The Central Committee of the Tunisian Communist Party,

meeting on August 3-4, 1946, had called for a revision of the Franco-Tunisian Protectorate Treaty of 1881. Two months later, however, the communists noticeably played down the theme of national independence. The third balloting on the new Constitution was being conducted in France, and the communists wanted to present the best possible face to France. A year later, in October 1947, the communists proposed a new draft to replace the

Protectorate Treaty but, contrary to Bourguiba’s nationalists, called for Tunisia’s inclusion in the French Union rather than complete independence.” The Third Congress of the Tunisian Communist Party in May 1948 formalized and elaborated the new line of national libera-

tion and anti-imperialism, but placed it into a context alien to nationalist concerns and tactics. The communists made the United States the primary target of attack, giving only second rating to

“its valet, French colonialism,” while continuing to stress the unity of interest between the French and Tunisian “working class.”*° Prior to 1951, the party’s tactics succeeded, moreover, in exposing its ideological preconceptions to the detriment of its larger strategy of marshaling support against U.S. power and influence. It took pains publicly to defend the Soviet recognition

of Israel. It attacked the Arab League, which was supporting and subsidizing the efforts of Tunisia’s nationalists, as a “bank-

rupt” association of “feudal lords” and “imperialist tools.” It attacked Arab neutralists as individuals who lacked courage to associate themselves with the Soviet “camp of peace.” It opposed

the final U.N. decision leading to neighboring Libya’s independence, which was endorsed by Tunisia’s nationalists, because

it would not put an end to “Western imperialist control” over that country. On September 4, 1948, in the pages of L’Avenir, the new Secretary General of the party, Maurice Nisard, noted that many comrades were discouraged, but declared that opportunities for them would increase. 25Not till April 1949 did the Tunisian Communists reject the concept of the French Union. 26 A similar priority of targets was, of course, enunciated by communist parties throughout the Middle East, and where specific reference to “working

class unity” with a metropolitan European area was irrelevant, references to :

“proletarian internationalism” played the same role.

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COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM

Even though it was still voicing sectarian slogans which it would be compelled to yield after 1951, the party was already paying a price for its new pursuit. It was losing old members. In April 1948, Ali Djerad, one of the party’s founders and then

still its Secretary General, was expelled from the party as a “left-wing sectarian.”*’ Djerad, who is said to have spent a year

in Moscow and two years in Moslem communities in the U.S.S.R., was opposed to the postponement of preparations for communist revolution inherent in the policy of collaboration with

nationalist parties. He favored instead reliance on the urban proletariat and emphasis on the organization of a revolutionary cadre. By 1951, to be sure, Arabs had come to equal and perhaps to exceed Europeans in membership, but only because Europeans saw no future for themselves in the new line and were leaving the party. In January 1952, governmental repression for the first time hit the Tunisian Communist Party. By December of that year, lack of funds forced the party to give up its drab secondfloor apartment headquarters in Tunis. The decay of the Tunisian Communist Party in 1952 left for several years only three communist parties in all the region from Morocco to Pakistan important enough to deserve the attention of politically concerned Moslems—in Iran, Syria, and the Sudan. The Burden of Soviet Discipline

The communist parties of the Middle East suffer from being under Soviet discipline. This burden is of two kinds. First, it limits their appeals to others in this highly nationalist region. The significance of the frequent, abrupt, and major changes of communist line entirely in response to the needs of the U.S.S.R. has

not escaped most political leaders in the Middle East. No other party leader in this area finds it necessary, as do communists, to attend congresses in the capital of a major foreign power to reaffirm his devotion to a common international strategy. No other 2” The task of cleansing the party internally to carry the new line effectively became even greater after 1951, when the exclusive concentration of communist

parties on foreign policy matters served to harden factional differences in a number of parties. The Iraqi party, as a matter of fact, found it impossible, because of internal disputes, to make the 1951 shift until 1953, and then only at the cost of leaving two factions behind.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES

Middle Eastern political party has ever been specifically and publicly defended by the Premier of a major foreign power against purely local criticism as were Arab Communist parties recently by Premier Khrushchev.”®

Middle Eastern leaders may make unduly optimistic assumptions about their own strength when they opportunistically collaborate with local communists. They may also entertain unduly optimistic hopes about the personal independence of particular communists whom they have long known as cousins, classmates, or fellow opportunists. In exploiting these two assumptions lie two of the principal opportunities for communist successes in the Middle East. But few, if any, Middle Eastern leaders have doubts about the discipline that ties communist parties as such to Moscow. A few politicians, misled by earlier Middle Eastern perspectives, have tried to use the communist party as a broker for

securing the support of the U.S.S.R. for their own political career. (This may well have been the gambit attempted by Deputy

Premier Khalid al-Azm of Syria in his drive for the Syrian Presidency just before others cut the ground under him by joining Syria to Egypt.) For the great majority of leaders, however, the risks in terms of prestige and political freedom of cooperating with a party that is directly tied to a foreign power continue to preclude such an adventure. Secondly, the burden of Soviet discipline has, again and again, spelled the near suicide of local communist parties. In part, that is already evident in the preceding brief account of the effects on

parties of the many changes in strategy since 1917. Shaping policy in line with Soviet rather than local requirements has particularly hurt parties that have hitherto been among the most influential in the Middle East—the Iranian and the Syrian.

Twice, in 1921 and 1946, the Iranian party was deserted by

the U.S.S.R. at the cost of many communist lives after the U.S.S.R. no longer found it prudent to protect the separatist regional regimes which communists, obviously with Soviet encouragement, had established as springboards for further local triumphs. In 1953 the Communist Tudeh Party failed to seize power, despite its considerable strength, and allowed Premier 28 New York Times, January 28, 1959.

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COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM

Mosadeq to be overthrown instead by conservative forces. The

Soviet Union may well have deterred the Tudeh Party from acting in a situation so fraught with opportunity but also with grave dangers, considering that the U.S. and the U.K. were clearly prepared to enter the struggle by supporting countervailing forces in Iranian society.** Moreover, it did not seem likely that the Soviet Union would have been able to capitalize on this victory by expanding into the rest of the Middle East. On the

contrary, the expansion of Soviet influence on that scale and only : after inescapably violent conflict would much more likely have

served to frighten neighboring states into closer ties with the West. The consequence of abstention, however, was a drop of communist membership to less than five percent of its former size. In Syria, the communists had been growing in influence during

the 1950’s. Among other reasons, this occurred because the U.S.S.R. had given them the most popular slogans anyone could

voice: national liberation, anti-imperialism, Arab unity. But what the U.S.S.R. had given in principle it took away in practice at the most critical moment. When the majority of Syrian political leaders agreed to union with Egypt in 1958, the communists

stood opposed. They obviously could not continue to support national liberation, anti-imperialism, and Arab unity at a point when these slogans proved most popular in explaining a move designed specifically to curb Soviet and communist influence.

Lack of Internal Cohesion in Communist Parties

Communist ideological convictions have not always been strong enough to transcend religious or ethnic differences. Such differences have repeatedly created internal conflicts and even schisms, or at least limited the appeal of the communist party in almost every Middle Eastern country.*° French and Arab Com2° Tudeh’s acquiescence would only echo the arguments of the Greek Communists, the most experienced in guerrilla warfare and its consequences in the Near East. In 1951, they declared that it would be “cynical adventurism’ even to prepare for revolution now. They argued that, while the task of isolating the U.S. internationally remains undone, communist revolutionary at-

June 1951.) ;

tempts can only serve to induce U.S. intervention. (KKE Draft Program, 80 Thus, the principal Arab Communist, Khalid Bakdash, told his Syrian

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES

munists have been unable to collaborate effectively in North Africa; Arab and Kurdish Communists have pursued separate ways in Iraq; the communist parties in the two regions of Pakistan have remained autonomous. Unlike European communist parties, the communist party in the Middle East has no permanent clientele or predominant sway among the proletariat. The proletariat is only beginning to come into being and to become conscious of itself as a group.** Party membership—both its hard core and its sympathizers—is drawn largely from the new middle class. Hence Middle Eastern communist parties are in constant competition with other parties for the same clientele. Repression or failures, encouragement or suc-

cesses therefore affect their size and internal cohesion more quickly and more deeply than they could any class-bound communist party in Western Europe. A Mistaken Communist Image of Middle Eastern Society

The communists are handicapped by the image of the Middle

Fastern social structure imposed on them by their ideology. Until 1954, Soviet scholarship on contemporary politics and social change in the region from Morocco to Pakistan had suffered from a prolonged neglect.** Since then, the volume of production has increased, but few notably concrete and discerning analyses have come from the pen of any Soviet or Middle Eastern communist writer.** The most significant change in perspective followers: “We must clearly understand that most of our difficulties, the shortcomings of our work, and our lack of progress, in relation to the possibilities and readiness of the people, stem from the weak education, intellectual, and theoretical level in our ranks.” (“Report to the Central Committee,” January 1951, translated by Harold W. Glidden, Middle East Journal, Spring 1953, p. 220.) 81 See Chapter 6 on the character of the Middle Eastern working class and Chapter 15 on the role of trade unions. 82 See W. Z. Laqueur, “The Shifting Line in Soviet Orientalogy,” Problems of Communism, March-April, 1956, pp. 20-26. 33 Rudolf Loewenthal has produced three useful bibliographies: “Russian Materials on Africa,” “Russian Materials on Islam and Islamic Institutions,” and “Russian Materials on Arabs and Arab Countries,” all published by the Institute of Language and Linguistics, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 1958. See also Roger Swearingen, “Asian Studies in the Soviet

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COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM evident in substance since about 1946 and in quantity since 1954

is a new appreciation of the role of the middle class. “Serious mistakes have occasionally been committed in appraising the role

of the national bourgeoisie in the anti-imperialist movement of the countries of the East,” said the Soviet theoretical journal Kommunist in May 1955.** Scholarly analysis was now to catch up with the political verdict rendered in 1951: “Even certain representatives of the big bourgeoisie, whose interests have also been infringed by the policy of the American imperialists, are far from being happy at the loss of national independence. They have been forced to assent that the working class stands in the van of the struggle for the restoration of this independence under the banner of the unification of all the forces of the nation. ‘To unite these forces, an alliance between the working class—fighting for its own unity—and the middle strata is necessary, as always emphasized by the classics of Marxism-Leninism.”*°

It is one thing, however, to turn on a world-wide scale to the strategy of political alliance with the “middle strata,” including

even the “national bourgeoisie,” in order to concentrate the broadest possible attack on the U.S. position in the cold war. Such are the transcendent requirements of the U.S.S.R. as a national state. But useful as it may be as a strategy of Soviet foreign policy, it is quite another matter to accept this formulation as a true image of Middle Eastern social classes and social forces. Such a distortion also serves to foil the elementary requirements of political strategy. It cannot clearly identify friend and foe, indeed, not even identify the class from which most communists are drawn. Union,” Journal of Asian Studies, May 1958, pp. 515-537, and O. Edmund Clubb, “Soviet Oriental Studies and the Asian Revolution,” Pacific Affairs, December 1958, pp. 380-389.

34 “For a Further Upsurge in Soviet Eastern Studies,” Kommunist, May 1955, pp. 74-83. See also Ann K. S. Lambton, editor, Islam and Russia, A Detailed Analysis of An Outline of the History of Islamic Studies in the U.S.S.R., by N. A. Smirnov, London, 1956. 35 Jacques Duclos, Secretary of the French Communist Party, in For a Lasting

Peace, for a People’s Democracy, Bucharest, November 2, 1951. See also Bernard S. Morris and Morris Watnick, “Current Communist Strategy in Nonindustrialized Countries,” Problems of Communism, September-October, 1955, pp. 1-6.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES Of the four pillars on which communist strategy was now to rest—workers, peasants, petit bourgeoisie, and national bourgeoisie—the workers constitute at most, seven percent of the total population of the more industrialized countries and many are unskilled and unemployed—hence not yet conscious of them-

selves as “workers” in a Marxist sense. Workers have recently been gaining rapidly in importance as a political force in the Middle East, but nowhere (except in part in Iraq and the Sudan) as a result of communist activities. In any event, the emphasis placed by local communists on the working class as the principal force of revolution long antedates the emergence of a Middle

Fastern proletariat as an important social or political force. Peasants—the proletariat’s “principal allies in our country”— constitute the great majority—70 to 80 percent—of the local population, but with them the communists have so far achieved almost no contact.®®

There are members of the “national bourgeoisie” who would ally themselves with the communist party.*’ In contrast to its role

in the West, the “national bourgeoisie” in the Middle East has been quite insecure in its position, socially, economically, and politically, even when it stood closer to the ruling institution than it usually does now.** Political opportunism is rife among this class, and communists will not find it more reliable in a political crisis than others have.*® 86 Bakdash’s complaint remains justified: “Nearly 75 percent of its activity, whether in propaganda, organizing, or daily work, has been confined to petty bourgeois elements in cities and villages on the one hand and selected workers on the other. But the broad masses of workers and fellahin have received hardly any attention and have been the object of little of our political and organizing activity. ... We have little experience in working in the rural areas and have little knowledge of the subject.” (“Report to the Central Committee,” January 1951, pp. 208 and 213-214.) 37 “National,” as defined by the communists, is any member of the bourgeoisie, however rich, who has “not sold out to U.S. imperialism.” 38 See Chapter 3.

89 Nor will the national bourgeoisie find the communists any less opportunistic. “In No. 1 of 1956 Sovetskoya Vostokovedeniye deplored the fact that ‘the dialectical conception of the dual nature of the national bourgeoisie has been replaced by a one-sided conception of it as the faithful ally of imperialism in the struggle against the working masses.’ But in No. 4 of 1959, Voprosy Istorii, the Deputy Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, R. A. Ul’yanovkiy, complains that in Soviet orientalists’ work during 1958, ‘a sufficiently penetrating light has not yet been thrown on such questions as the essential

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COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM The petit bourgeoisie—composed of the smaller scale entre-

preneurs, traders, artisans, shopkeepers, salaried employees, and somewhat more prosperous peasants—exists, but not in the form and context recognized by Marxist-Leninist theory. Those of its members who own their means of production are far from being as independent politically as they often are in the West. They are deeply dependent on, and sensitive to, the contracts and policies of government, family connections, and established and relatively static commercial clienteles. For the same reasons, the property owning petit bourgeoisie has neither the numbers, strength, nor cohesion of purpose to act as a class. There is a partial awareness among Middle Eastern communist leaders that the four social classes who make up the pillars of contemporary communist strategy do not possess the character or play the role that strategy assigns to them. In his Report to the Central Committee, Bakdash wrote: “The main attention of our organizations is directed toward the creation of a lot of sound and fury around the Party and its slogans rather than toward the building up of bases and foundations among the workers and the masses of the fellahin, especially the poor among them. . . . How did this situation come about in our Party? ... Like most Communist Parties in extremely industrially backward countries like ours, our Party grew up in a milieu far removed from Marxism— a milieu without any previous traditions of a labor movement or of socialist thought. . . . Owing to the circumstances of imperial-

ist domination, feudal tyranny, and the weakness of the class struggle, it was natural that this noise should first attract those circles referred to as ‘enlightened’ from among the intellectuals,

students, and certain enlightened workers. ... Therefore... the general milieu and atmosphere in which our Party works are not yet proletarian, but are still petty bourgeois in character.’*° opposition between the working class and the national bourgeoisie, class distinctions among peasants, the part played by the national bourgeoisie in the exploitation of the peasantry, the connection of the national bourgeoisie with foreign capital, the political parties of the bourgeoisie their ideology, strategy, and tactics at the present stage, and their attitude toward the socialist camp and towards the international communist and workers movement.” (Mizan Newsletter, May 1959, p. 11.) 40 Bakdash, “Report to the Central Committee,” January 1951, pp. 208-209. Italics his.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES The communists recognize that their leadership and core in the Middle East** are drawn primarily from what they call “the petty bourgeoisie, and in particular, from the revolutionary inclined intelligentsia.”** From this recognition, that their very core is not yet constituted as it ought to be, the communists draw only

one practical lesson: they must concentrate on recruiting workers, even to the extent that the constitutions of a number of

parties in the area demand a longer probationary period for recruits who do not come from the working class. “As Lenin and

Stalin teach us, the principal force of the patriotic democratic revolution is the working class... .”** It is obviously advantageous to broaden one’s following among the masses, and especially among a group that is likely to give increasingly vigorous and organized voice to its discontent. But the injunction to recruit workers is not merely pragmatically motivated. Marxist dogma concerning the role of the working class in shaping history compels this drive for labor support.

Yet this emphasis on the working class entails several unreconciled conflicts. For, as Bakdash points out, it is a “wrong idea” for communist workers “to think that they represent the working class in the Communist Party and in other Party bodies. The truth ... is that they represent the Communist Party among the workers. . . . The representative of the workers is the Communist Party as a whole, for it is the party and vanguard of the working class. ... Every member of it. . . represents the working class and its higher interest. . . .”“* From that perspective there is no need for workers within the communist party at all. There is another unresolved issue. The so-called “revolutionary inclined intelligentsia” that now constitutes the core of Mid-

dle Eastern communist parties is more than a mere stratum or portion of the petit bourgeoisie. It is part of a social class that #1 And elsewhere in underdeveloped areas, as Morris Watnick made clear in “The Appeal of Communism to the Peoples of Underdeveloped Areas,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 1952, pp. 22-36. 42“The Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies; Resolution of the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International,” adopted September 1, 1928, International Press Correspondence, December 12, 1928, p. 1670.

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#3 Bakdash, “Report to the Central Committee,” January 1951, p. 207.

Italics his. 44 Bakdash, “Report to the Central Committee,” January 1951, p. 213.

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM

has all the historical attributes of a class and its own distinct class interests—a new middle class that is coming to dominate, and in several countries is already dominating, social, economic, and political life.’ A party which is kept by its ideology from freely acting as the champion of this new middle class, and must instead speak for the Kremlin’s shifting interpretations of the interests of the working class, operates under a distinct handicap.

The party’s interest in the working class is not even an unadulterated advantage in wooing the latter group. For them, the communist appeal is blunted in the realm of foreign affairs by the

fact that Moscow is conceded supremacy by all communist parties as interpreter of working class interests. In the realm of domestic affairs, communist party programs do not differ materially from those of any party of the new middle class committed to rapid economic progress. Both will need to harness and discipline the worker, discourage his immediate consumption, and increase

his productivity.** If such a forced march into the modern age ultimately also benefits the workers, both communist and noncommunist parties will be equally able to claim that, dialectically, they represented the “higher interests” of the workers all along. So far, communist analysts have not acknowledged that social change in the Middle East is coming about by revolution from the

top, made by small groups representative of the new middle class and, if with working class support, then harnessed to the leadership and interests of the new middle class. Even writers within the Soviet bloc who would amend if not revise Marx have

retained this ideological preconception that both distorts communist perception and mars communist capabilities in the Middle East: “. . . Traditional Marxist theory,” writes one of Poland’s

chief planners, “probably attaches too little importance to the intelligentsia, especially its role in production. .. . A Marxist 4° This point is argued in detail in Chapter 4. *6 Neither communist nor non-communist leaders in the Middle East, however, have so far frankly acknowledged this point. By contrast, see an alternative to such a forced march proposed by the Indian socialist parliamentarian and trade union leader, Asoka Mehta, in “Asia: Industrialized Democratically,” Dissent, Spring 1955, pp. 152-162, and “Asia: The Peasant’s Way,” Dissent, Summer 1955, pp. 213-220.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES analysis of this phenomenon is undoubtedly necessary. . . . [But

| the] very essence [of the intelligentsia] prevents it from being an independent force; it can only express the opinions and wishes of the working class... . It can help, but it is not the social force which can bring about social changes. The best proof of this are the numerous backward countries . . . which have a progressive intelligentsia on a high level but it is helpless because there is no working class which could support, realize, and transform the progressive ideas of the intelligentsia into an organized social movement.”*’

Communist parties could drop their blinders only at the cost of revising their fundamental ideological assumptions—namely that philosophy and history need the working class as their instrument, and that they must maintain their ties to the U.S.S.R. The same ideology that limits their present vision and strategy binds them to the U.S.S.R. as the center and guide for the international

revolution of the “working class.” | There is one irony in this, and it may gradually have con-

sequences. It has been well-argued that the Soviet revolution, led

by a would-be middle class, has now succeeded in firmly ensconcing that middle class into power. If the U.S.S.R., as a result of a resolution of the cold war and an expansion of its economy were to draw freely the intellectual and political conclusions that

are apparent in its own development, then the terms of the ideological and political contest in the Middle East and other underdeveloped areas would, of course, be transformed too. At this point, however, the Soviets still insist on seeing and saying less, including in the Middle East, than already meets the eye. The Competition of Nationalist Movements Nationalism has not only sensitized Middle Eastern politicians to foreign influence in domestic affairs but also pre-empted the field of mass organizations. How solid and pervasive this national-

ism may be and how much it sets a limit to alignment with a foreign nation are controversial questions each deserving a 47 Oscar Lange, Some Problems Relating to the Polish Road to Socialism, Warsaw, 1957, pp. 27-29.

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separate examination.** One thing is clear. The largest movements of the Middle East are those concentrating on nationalist

aspirations. Hence men eager for political action or personal careers are likely to join, instead of communist parties however nationalistic in pretense, the great parties which have already

attracted their friends and relations. Whenever such a movement has been strong and united, it has seen no reason to bargain for the additional support of a small band of communists. In such circumstances, the present strategy of the communist party contributes to the perpetuation of its weakness. By emphasizing its own endorsement of nationalist objectives and underplaying its evaluation of bourgeois nationalism as a mere phase in the tran-

sition toward communist-controlled regimes, the communists swell the membership of the dominant nationalist movement without enhancing their own separate influence. The Price of Rivalry

The communists challenge the power of regimes that nowhere in this entire region are gentle with rivals for power. This is the simplest and one of the strongest and most enduring barriers to communist advances in the Middle East. Since it involves the very survival of existing political elites, the weight of this proposition is greater than any interest in improving relations with the U.S.S.R., its impact more direct than any ideological arguments. To be an effective barrier, however, certain conditions must first be satisfied. The ruling elite must be internally united, lest communists be sought as allies in intra-elite competition. The ruling elite must be politically sophisticated, lest it either accept communists as merely more radical nationalists or confuse all opposition elements with communists. The ruling elite must also, through constructive work, be able to avoid the kind of instability that breeds opposition and renders its own rule ineffective. These necessary preconditions greatly restrict the reliability of repression as a barrier against communist expansion. As a result of the handicaps under which they operate, com48 The influence of nationalism is discussed in Chapter 10, the problems of foreign orientation, in Chapter 19.

[ 185 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES munist parties have so far played only a relatively small role in

the turbulent changes affecting the Middle East and North Africa. The other side of the ledger, however, also needs examination. The advantages that can accrue to the communist parties from the appeal of Marxism as a philosophy of knowledge and revolution, and from Soviet communism in practice as a model

of organization and rapid material progress have already been explored. There are also advantages that specifically affect the fortunes of communist parties.

Factors Favorable for Communist Activities Smallness in membership is no grave handicap to the achievement of power. Minorities have always dominated politics in the

Middle East: both traditional expectations and the scarcity of modern skills grant extraordinary influence to small numbers of individuals. Groups of fewer than 50 overthrew Egypt’s King | Farouk under Nasser’s leadership in 1952, engineered the union of Syria with Egypt in 1957, and, in 1958, curbed the powers of the absolute Saudi monarch. Fewer than 50 organized the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, and established military rule in the Sudan and Pakistan during 1958, and brought an end to Syrian-Egyptian union in 1961. In each case, this small revolutionary core could count on the disciplined support of at least the larger portion of the army. Ironically, this most revolutionary of eras is marked, not by popular revolutions, but by coups d’état. In each of these instances, the coup came first, the attempt to organize mass support, if at all, afterwards. At present, communist capabilities for penetrating such small conspiratorial groups are inhibited by the very size, military exclusiveness, and secrecy of this nucleus, and also by communist strategy which calls for unity with nationalists rather than immediate violent efforts to take their place.

These inhibitions have not eliminated communist opportunities. Iraq in the winter of 1958-1959 became a dramatic demonstration of how a hitherto quite small, suppressed, and splintered communist party could come suddenly to play a vital role. Many

outside observers, however, tended to exaggerate communist [ 186 ]

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potentials in Iraq during that period. They tended to ascribe to successful communist propaganda an anti-Western outburst that had in fact been largely stimulated by long-pent-up resentment against the alliance of the reactionary Nuri regime with the West, and immediate and not entirely fanciful fears of possible Western

intervention against the new junta. They suspected only communist influence at work in a political situation in which the new ruler, General Kassim, carefully sought to bring all major political forces in balance against each other because he trusted none of them. They overestimated communist capabilities, and were

surprised when communist violence—in great part the fruit of undisciplined party factionalism and experimentation—quickly served to diminish the party’s influence. In the highly unstable politics of the Middle East, communist

opportunities are increased by the fact that numbers do not yet necessarily count.*® But the extraordinary alertness to communist

infiltration which this volatile situation requires also demands, especially in the West, a particular sensitivity to the causes and potentials of collaboration between communists and nationalists in the Middle East. A peculiar Western pessimism, namely that in contacts between communists and others, one must always suspect that it is the non-communist who will become infected, can

lead to premature Western reactions which may only serve to

harden such contacts in the face of what is only too easily interpreted by nationalists no less than communists as foreign intervention.” To call a party subversive is, however, not to brand it evil in * This is also true in the realm of intellectual influence. In Pakistan, for example, “Urdu literature . . . has witnessed remarkable development during the last two decades. The emergence of leftist writers like Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the Jate Sa’adat Hassan Manto (died 1956), Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, and many others is indicative of the direction in which Pakistan’s intellectuals are moving. These men have a wide audience. Each of the two recent collections of Faiz’s poems have had a greater sale than any other book in Pakistan. Manto and Qasmi figure on every shelf and their Quarterly Journal is eagerly awaited in universities and offices. In recent years, some of them have started writing in local dialects, which may prove to be a movement of great significance. They are sensitive and brilliant men who believe in Communist theory and are convinced of its justice in practice. In a situation of extreme confusion and frustration . . . an ideology that is modern, that has an economic program to offer, and earnest, creative men to take up its cause, stands a fair chance of

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES the Middle East where nearly every party is subversive. In the U.S., it is relatively easy to identify a party that may be committed to the overthrow of constitutional government by force and violence, and easier still to marshal public opinion against such a group. In the Middle East and North Africa, almost every party, ruler, and dynasty now in power seized control by overthrowing the previous regime. In this region of the world, constitutions are numerous, legitimacy validated by a broad consensus is rare, and respect for freedom under law, rarer still.

This common resort to subversion strikes down more than governments. Political activity by itself also subverts faith and society in the Middle East. To become politically active means that a Moslem—who had once been certain about the single web that connected the meaning of life with its rituals, patterns, and loyalties—must separate the ideological from the metaphysical,

the political from the divine. To take this step affects the very roots of Islam: to be active now is to uproot. In the Islamic past, the actions of most rulers were inspired by secular motives, but all of them took care to veil them, for the sake of popular sup-

port, in appropriate metaphysical terms. Today a nationalist ruler eager to make his country progress cannot escape inducting his entire people into secular activities. There is not even escape from subversion by resorting to either

conservative or fundamentalist reactionary policies. The late Premier Nuri al-Said of Iraq, attempting to maintain existing institutions by repression, became, in effect, a more potent propasuccess.” (Eqbal Ahmad, Pakistan an Islamic State?, an unpublished seminar paper, Princeton University, January 14, 1959, p. 24.) 5° It is at least possible that Western treatment as pro-communist of leaders of the Syrian Arab Socialist Resurrectionist (Ba’th) Party who opportunistically collaborated with communists from time to time between 1954 and 1957 may have helped to prolong this alliance. This same party was later to be a prime mover in uniting Syria with Egypt in order to prevent communist predominance, and its Iraqi branch one of the principal opponents of communist influence in Kassim’s Iraq. By the time of the XXI Party Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in Moscow, Khalid Bakdash, the Syrian Communist chief, called the Ba’th “adventurers who resemble the right-wing socialists in Europe and rely upon the Yugoslav renegades have begun to play a very dirty game in the Arab East, the role of a gang isolated from the people, a gang of adventurers, spies, and saboteurs of the Arab Liberation Movement.” (Moscow Radio, Soviet Near Eastern Service, February 2, 1959.)

[ 188 ]

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM gandist for change than an effective reformist regime might have

been. The Moslem Brotherhood, by radicalizing traditional values, selecting out of a once integrated whole those principles which will now best serve aggression and defense, thus destroys both past and present. The communist party is merely another subversive party.

The communist party is therefore capable of winning sympathy not only within the realm of the ambiguity created by its own advocacy of nationalism and anti-imperialism, but also within the large realm of tolerance resulting from the fact that most political parties play similar roles and use similar methods, and that ideologies are not yet clearly differentiated. Almost all parties are

marked by conspiratorial activity and violence when out of power, repressive measures when in power.

Communist infiltration of other parties and the building of fellow traveling organizations are also facilitated by the fact that ideological distinctions on the left have only recently been put to the test in the Middle East and hence remain somewhat blurred. In the West, prolonged scholarly study, as well as bitter debates, served to clarify and differentiate liberal democratic, democratic

socialist, and communist positions. Furthermore, decades of practical experience in actual political competition tested and sharpened these distinctions. This sorting out is still incomplete in

the Middle East, though in the Arab East, communist violence in Iraq during 1958 and 1959, contrasting with Nasser’s rapid crystallization of socialism during that period, helped to bring home the vital distinctions. The survival of traditional loyalties sometimes helps to obfus-

cate party differences. Just as Druze mountaineers will loyally follow the heir of one of their leading feudal families, Kamal Jumblatt, in support of the socialist party he created, so the leader of the Syrian Communist Party, Khalid Bakdash, can rely on the

vote of his fellow Kurds whose knowledge of communist doctrine is quite uncertain. Middle Eastern communists, like Middle Eastern tax evaders with cousins in important positions, can still sometimes avoid jail in the midst of repressive measures or gain “furloughs” from their jail sentence. Fven the most damaging truths about the communist party— [ 189 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES that it is the willing arm of a world-wide conspiracy led by a foreign state—can be beclouded, though not removed, by the fact that other parties in the Middle East have been known to be

subsidized and influenced by certain Western nations, or by neighboring Middle Eastern states. Indeed, this accusation does not always stimulate a response unfavorable to the communist party. Certain Arab leaders of 1917-1921 were clearly prepared

to draw on British support in order to free themselves of Ottoman rule, and others, like Nuri al-Said, remained in permanent alliance with the U.K. to strengthen themselves against domestic and regional rivals. In the same manner reliance on the U.S.S.R. may be sought by Arabs today on opportunistic as well as ideological grounds.**

Repression, being common as well as commonly ineffective in the Middle East, has served further to obscure the difference be-

tween communists and others. Because communists and other parties share common persecution and common immediate objectives—to overthrow the government in power—contacts become frequent in a context conducive to sympathetic personal

and political exchanges. The resulting confusion about differences among the parties has not solely benefited the communists, of course. Confusion has also been created in communist ranks, and a wide gap persists between its small hard core and a rather unreliable membership of fellow travelers, sympathizers,

and opportunists. But on balance, such a confusion in political values, methods, and policies cannot benefit parties seeking to create or conserve stable institutions as much as it can the communist party. The communist party is a relatively more disciplined move-

ment than most other parties, more capable of self-denial in postponing final rewards, less corrupt, more hard working, and more intent upon demanding hard work from people at large. Although the communist party is one of the most puritan of Middle 5tJIn Malaya, many joined the communist party precisely because it was known to be an instrument of the U.S.S.R. Without foreign support, they reasoned that their guerrilla war could not succeed. They deserted the party when they discovered that Soviet support was not forthcoming. (See Lucian

ton, 1956.) |

Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya, Its Social and Political Meaning, Prince-

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COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM Eastern political movements, this point should not be overstated. It applies much less to its membership, which suffers from considerable turnover, than to its hard core. Some non-communist parties—for example, Tunisia’s Neo-Destour—have achieved more élan and discipline on more democratic foundations. The word relatively needs to be underscored. Still, in many countries

of the Middle East its greater discipline is apparent. What accounts for it? However mistaken it may be, communist doctrine is one of the few modern doctrines so far popularized in the Middle East that provides historical justification for sacrificing the present for the sake of a materially better future—the not too distant future if Soviet example be a guide. Democratic socialism has so far had

difficulties, both in theory and practice, in showing a way to progress relevant to any but the most highly developed areas of the world. Democratic capitalism has shown itself to be similarly confined. An authoritarian state socialism is communism’s principal competitor in the Middle East.” Part of the inspiration for the latter doctrine is nationalism. It is the most popular of all in the Middle East and it, too, is capable of inspiring great and prolonged sacrifices. But state socialism cannot succeed without invidiously destroying, rewarding, or disciplining segments of a society that expected to be rewarded

equally under the standards of nationalism. This conflict of interests often confuses, or renders powerless, or fragments the leadership of state socialist regimes which usually have neither sufficient experience nor ideology to guide them. The communist party, however, possesses an ideology which, despite all its distortions, ambiguities, and sudden reversals, at least addresses itself to the problems of social change and the

requirements of political power and organization. In its dogmatic assertion of truth, its demands for disciplined solidarity among its members, and its opportunities for manipulating men and events, communism grants its members, much like the neo-

Islamic movements, great and immediate rewards rare in the present Middle Eastern environment. It frankly exposes exploitation, even if it will not insist on forcing its remedies on a local 52 For a more detailed analysis of this alternative, see Chapter 12.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES government when such activities would embarrass the foreign policy objectives of the U.S.S.R. It is aware that the population as a whole must be mobilized, but once in power, the communists would exceed any other party in ruthlessly compelling sacrifices

from workers and peasants. It is boldly anti-imperialistic, and Says it supports the right of any nation to pursue independent foreign and domestic policies, yet nothing in Soviet ideology or action so far would justify such an assertion except as an example of cynical opportunism. Parties which would offer effective competition to the communists, however, cannot content themselves with exposing the hollowness or the price of communist virtues. They must be able to offer greater and more solid virtues of their own.

The Potentials of Communism

What are the chances that communist parties will be able to seize power in the Middle East? The preceding discussion has suggested that the barriers the communist party faces are not all high or solid, but neither are its advantages all unqualified. For the most part, the discussion thus far has been concerned with factors rather than forces. We

must now look at both the Middle East and the communist parties in motion. The role and character of Middle Eastern communist parties are changing. Present communist strategy places a premium on non-violent action as most likely to marshall broad support for

eliminating or neutralizing American influence in the area. However, to postpone revolutions intended to alter the structure of society, and meanwhile allow participation only in violent actions that are dedicated to “national liberation,” is a course bound to change the character of communist parties. A hard core with faith and discipline will probably remain orthodox. But as time passes, will the communist party continue to attract men eager for a quick and radical overturn of society when it has in *3]T have explored the relationship between the Communist parties and political violence in this region in greater detail in Chapter 12 of Communism and Revolution, edited by C. E. Black and T. P. Thornton, Princeton, 1964.

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COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM fact become a movement that will not revolt in order to achieve

sole control until that day when the United States has been isolated internationally and can no longer intervene effectively?

For a time, aided by the propaganda of its enemies, the communist party will undoubtedly be able to attract such men on the strength of an earlier reputation. But how long will it be before the composition of its membership is likely to change as the revoJutionary-minded are drawn off to other parties?

Already changes of marching orders have during the past decade caused important factional splits within nearly every communist party in the area. Three factions usually emerge: (1) Those who joined the party because they wanted a revolution and are therefore intent on having one. (2) Those with the same idea who, prevented by Soviet policy from fulfilling it in the present, insist at least on making preparations now for revolution in the

future. (3) Those who concentrate on gaining the broadest possible local support for the foreign policy objectives of the U.S.S.R., eschewing all talk or action that might frighten away bourgeois elements with the specter of revolution. Only the last is orthodox. The persistence of this last strategy over a long period of time

is likely to have several consequences, none useful to the communist party. The frequency and bitterness of factional splits in the party may well increase. The violent encounters, even in jail, among three such factions that rendered the Iraqi Communist party impotent between 1951 and 1953 and led to the emergence of two separate parties in 1960 is an illustration of what is possible. Such breaks may be avoidable. The most revolutionary of the three factions will often be able to blame its inaction on local realities and so find it possible to remain united with the rest. The

second faction, provided it is prudent enough to stay underground, may often be given a limited freedom by the third, and orthodox faction, in part as a sentimental or precautionary warrant of its own sustained revolutionary fevor. And as long as the party as a whole is gaining in strength and influence, the leaders of the unorthodox factions may easily find it possible opportun-

istically to repress their differences in order to share in their [ 193 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES party’s victory.°* Nonetheless, these are fundamental differences.

If the United States is not successfully isolated and revolution must therefore be further postponed, splits in the communist movement are likely to become more common and more profound. Such a development could bring in its wake a novel situation.

The communist faction least likely to act under Soviet instructions is most likely to engage in revolution and involve Western interest. In the midst of cold war tensions, such an eventuality could produce either dangerous confusion or startling detachment. It will also create increasing opportunities for Communist China to support the revolutionary communist faction in areas where it never had influence before. It will pay to be well-informed about factionalism in communist parties.

The evolution of the communist movement in turn suggests that the two principal threats of communist control in the Middle East will increasingly arise from two sources. One is opportunism on the part of particular nationalist leaders. They may gamble in the midst of a revolutionary situation on their ability to enlarge the control of their own faction over a pluralistic revolutionary movement by drawing on communist support while intending to prevent the capture of the movement by communists from within. The other threat lies in the opportunity on the part of the communists to appear to be the most dynamic, yet consti-

tutional, opposition party. To offer themselves, not as a revolutionary movement, but as the party that will be more effectively nationalist, anti-imperialist, and reformist than any party now in power gives the communists greater respectability than ever before, and considerable drawing power. How readily a communist

party can succeed when it has no important competitors in the realm of social reform was demonstrated in Guatemala prior to 1954 and Malaya prior to 1956. The changing power constellation in each country, and espe_ Cially the range of actual communist competitors, thus deserves constant attention. Who competes with whom is more important 54 The recent history of the Indian Communist Party illustrates this possibility particularly well. (See John Kautsky, Moscow and the Communist Party of India, New York, 1955.)

[ 194 ]

COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM than who represses whom. The main repressive force, the army, is

no longer an obedient servant of constituted authority. In many countries, it now attracts the most ambitious and able of the new middle class, and thus already reflects the political divisions of Middle Eastern society. In short, there is no firm barrier to the Communist party—neither its own shortcomings nor the repression from existing authority are enough—except a competitor with a better program and more effective organization.

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CHAPTER 10 FROM UNORGANIZED INSECURITY TO ORGANIZED INSECURITY: NATIONALISM

iaQi 1 The Meaning of Nationalism WHAT IS NATIONALISM and why is it the most popular political

ideology of the Middle East?* The external factors that molded it are clear enough. The Middle East’s encounter with a freer, more productive, and more powerful Western civilization compelled its peoples to try to discover anew their own identity and purpose and to seek more effective means for saving or regaining

their integrity and cohesion. Both Ottoman rule and Western imperialism hastened the growth of nationalism in most of the Middle East, sharpened its intensity, and shaped many of its political tasks. Although part of the Middle EHast’s environment, even some of its major roads to national self-discovery and selfassertion, has been fashioned in interaction with influences from abroad, the people of this area have, nonetheless, had to find their way themselves. A highly selective memory of Islam and each local cultural heritage is also part of contemporary nationalism. These traditions, however, cannot define the core of nationalism, for they belong to a pre-nationalist age. Nationalism was invented 1The pioneers in the analysis of nationalism are themselves keenly aware that such questions remain open. “What has given great vogue to nationalism

in modern times?” asked Carlton Hayes toward the end of The Aistorical Evolution of Modern Nationalism, only to reply, “We really do not know.” (New York, 1931, p. 302.) After writing more than a dozen studies of nationalism, Hans Kohn welcomed Louis L. Snyder’s The Meaning of Nationalism (New Brunswick, 1954) as “the first introduction” and “starting point” to an “interdisciplinary inquiry” of nationalism which has become “urgent and important.” (Foreword, p. ix.) Analytical studies of Arab, Turkish, Iranian, or Pakistani nationalism remain scarce.

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in modern times.” The particular historical events that lie at the origins of Middle Eastern nationalism cannot explain its present fervor. We must search more deeply to understand the role and significance of the nationalism of this region. The argument of this chapter is that nationalism is the principal political manifestation of social change in the Middle East. Nationalists exist because there is social change, and hence the

basic problem confronting nationalists is not nationalism but social change. This framework of analysis and action is relevant not only to the Middle East but to other areas, both Western and non-Western, for all of us now live in a world in which traditional

ideas and relationships are being questioned, and nationalism has become the first universal faith.

There has, of course, always been a sense, even a pride, of community. Common kinship, culture, and religion served in the past to cement people. Common language, culture, environment, religion, or race remain the most popular criteria for defining the attributes of nationhood. Yet look closely merely at the countries

of Northern Africa from Egypt to Morocco and these criteria turn out to be nearly irrelevant. Although the great majority of the people in each of the five territories are Arabs by culture and language and Moslem by religion, they continue to live as five distinct nations within boundaries that, except perhaps for Egypt, 2“The word ‘patriotism’ first cropped up in the eighteenth century, and ‘nationalism’ only in the nineteenth. In French, nationalisme is to be found once in 1812; the oldest example of ‘nationalism’ in English dates from 1836, and then, remarkably, with a theological significance, namely for the doctrine that certain nations have been chosen by God.” (“Patriotism and Nationalism in European History” in Johann Huizinga’s Men and Ideas, New York 1959, p. 99.) In Egypt, the discussion of the difference between patriotism and religion and the meaning of nationalism seems to have begun in 1880 when Shaikh Husain al-Marsafi, in al-Kalim al-Thaman (The Eight Words), tried to explain such words as watan (fatherland), ummah (nation), and siydsah (politics) “which are on the tongues of the present-day younger generation.” Two decades later, Mohammed *Umar, in his Hadir al-Misriyin (The Present State of the Egyptians), (Cairo, 1902) still endeavored to explain to his readers the distinction between “nationalism” and “religion.” (J. Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt, London, 1938, p. 287, note 2.) For traditional terms employed to define the Islamic community see Louis Massignon, “L’Umma et ses synonymes: notion de ‘communauté sociale’ en Islam” in Revue des Etudes Islamiques, Années, 1941-1946 (published 1947), pp. 151-157. Also see Haim cited here in note 12.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES have little geographical or historical significance. National interest, not culture, language, or religion, will determine whether they will unite in the future or remain apart. If by language and culture the people of Northern Africa are intimately connected with the Arabs east of Suez, and by religion with 430,000,000 Moslems from Nigeria to the Philippines, by race they are connected with half the world. The Tunisian, for example, has been created, in generous parts, out of Berber, Phoenician, Roman, Vandal, Jew, Arab, Italian, Spaniard, Turk, Negro, and Frenchman, and Tunisia’s neighbors are, by race, almost as cosmopolitan or even more so. Yet their racial mixture will not let them

fashion links that their nationalism cannot countenance. Racial distinctness, however, proves no barrier. Those blue-eyed, blond,

or red-haired North Africans who speak Berber—a language which seems to have no kinship with any other living tongue in

the world—are no less nationalist than other Moroccans and

Algerians who have discovered—and this discovery is essential —that the social tissues of the past are irreparably torn. What are the essentials of nationalism? Are the state and the nation inseparably connected? The state alone, as a legal, administrative entity, has never been stable, efficient, or heroic enough

in the Middle East to inspire any devotion. Egypt has been a state ever since the state was first invented; it discovered itself as

a nation only about three-quarters of a century ago. Like the other states of Arab Africa, it became most conscious of being a nation during the period when it lacked an independent government. Does nationalism begin with the rediscovery of the glories of a

people’s past? In Algeria’s case, there is no Algeria to be rediscovered. This object of bloody nationalist struggle did not exist until a foreign nation created and unified it and gave Algerians,

after 1848, their first century of history as a separate people. Nowhere are the principal nationalist leaders characteristic representives of the traditional culture. Is nationalism merely a sudden awakening to a fact that was always true—to a prose one had always spoken? Most Middle Eastern countries rediscovered their own past from the work of

Western scholars and learned the language of nationalism in [ 198 ]

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French and English rather than through their own tongue. That does not warrant the common assumption, however, that the Middle East, in adopting nationalism, is taking over a “Western” ideology. The West, entering the modern age earlier than the Middle East, developed nationalism sooner too. Nationalism, like inductive scientific thought, was at first as alien to the traditions of medieval Islam as it had been to medieval Europe. But nationalism, like science, is ultimately bound to no particular civilization and its various forms can be assimilated by any peo-

ple that sheds its previous closed system of thought or social

structure. , Is strong nationalist pressure required to achieve independ-

ence? If so, Libya—which had independence thrust upon it by

the United Nations—would not be independent today. Is a strong pervasive sense of nationality required to operate a state in the modern world? If so, the Sudan—divided into an Arabized,

Moslem north and a largely pagan, negroid south—could not have survived until now. Is the growth of effective nationalist strength directly related to the length of a people’s exposure to modern social change? If so, Tunisia and Morocco could not both have achieved independence in the same month of 1956. Tunisia, open to European and Ottoman influences for three centuries, possessed a sturdier middle class and a better organized working class upon becoming independent than most of the countries of the Arab East. Morocco preserved its independence and most of its medievalism from the encroachment of both Europe

and the Ottoman East until the twentieth century. Less than five decades later, its nationalist and its labor movement had shown as much strength, determination, and skill in ending French control as had the nationalist and labor movements in Tunisia. Faced with these apparent inconsistencies, Europeans have sometimes concluded that Middle Eastern nationalism is not real, while Middle Easterners have often concluded that nationalism,

albeit in a different guise, had been there all the time. H. L. Featherstone examined A Century of Nationalism and concluded that “nationalism is not capable of scientific definition.’® 3H. L. Featherstone, A Century of Nationalism, New York 1939, p. 6. Particularly good, critical reviews of attempts at definition are to be found in

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When Gamal abd al-Nasser came to power in one of the world’s oldest states as the leader of one of the world’s most articulated nationalist movements, he cried, “If anyone had asked me in those days what I wanted most, I would have answered promptly: to hear an Egyptian speak fairly about another

Egyptian. To sense that an Egyptain has opened his heart to pardon, forgiveness, and love for his Egyptian brethren. To find an Egyptian who does not devote his time to tearing down the views of another Egyptian. ... The word ‘T was on every tongue. It was the solution to every difficulty, the cure for every ill. I had

many times met eminent men—or so they were called by the press—of every political tendency and color, but when I would ask any of them about a problem in the hope that he could supply a solution, I would never hear anything but ‘T.’”*

Had even Nasser concluded that Egyptian nationalism is not real? On the contrary, his very complaint is an authentic voice of nationalism. Nationalism has become the most appealing rallying cry of this age of social change because it allows man to crystallize and express the tension between the self he could once take for granted and the self he now asserts all the more painfully and vociferously because he is not sure what he is, what he is worth, and how he may be secure. The transformation of all previous bonds of kinship, culture, and religion has converted the matter of being into a problem. Nationalism allows modern man to join with all who share his uncertainties in the quest for a new solidarity, for a definition of himself and his group. Obviously a man will love his own folk more dearly than any other (“nationalism” has always existed in this sense), but who are a man’s “own folk” to be in this new age? Is a man born in Fez to give his first loyalty to his wife and children (to one wife or to several, to his daughters no less than his sons), or to his father, his tribe, to Fez, to Morocco, to the king, to the Istiqlal Party, or to its offshoot, the National Union of Popular Forces, to North Africa, to France, Louis L. Snyder, The Meaning of Nationalism, op. cit., Frederick Hertz, Nation-

ality in History and Politics, a Psychology and Sociology of National Sentiment, London 1944, and Chapter I of Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, New York 1953. * Gamal abd al-Nasser, Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution, Washington, 1955, pp. 35-36.

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to the Arabs, to Islam, to God, to humanity, to himself alone?° This problem never arose with such scope and complexity before the modern age. The hierarchy of loyalties was clear. Ideally, and usually also in practice, it began with one’s loyalty to the head of

the family, who determined the next link. Now loyalties are in

competition and the nation itself, even in the Middle East’s sovereign states, remains a promise rather than fulfillment.

Nationalism as a Necessity Yet the price of nationalism has so often run high, especially

since all neighboring states are using the same, but non-convertible, currency of nationalism, that one is entitled to ask—is nationalism necessary?® Certainly it is not an ideology sufficient to be an end in itself; but its popularity is justified and justifiable on the ground that no other vital steps toward controlling social change can precede it. Before the modern age began, small and ascetic communities in static balance, making and meeting no new demands, had no cause for nationalism. Today, however, such balance is threatened everywhere, even in such strongholds of tradition as the Arabian Peninsula, by the impact of competing domestic aspirations and foreign pressures. Communities cannot help but mobilize themselves. As the modern age continues, it may become possible to create grounds for greater courage—for autonomous individuals, freely associating themselves with others, with groups varying as the purpose varies, and for the emergence of units larger than nations. To strive beyond nationalism may be

too much to ask of most men so soon after the soul-shaking transformation of traditional society began. 5 The nationality law of the United Arab Republic, for example, having to

grapple directly with the definition of “Arab” no less than “Egyptian” or “Syrian,” derived its definitions from past, present, and future. It defined an Arab as a person who enjoys the nationality of the UAR, Arab territory as the Egyptian and Syrian regions. The Minister of Interior in Cairo may grant Arab nationality to a person born in Arab territory to a foreign father provided the father was born in the Arab homeland, defined by law as the area between the Atlantic Ocean and the Persian Gulf where the majority of the people speak Arabic or embrace Islam. The president of the UAR can grant Arab nationality to any foreigner who has rendered outstanding services for the state or for Arab nationalism, and to heads of Arab religious sects. (alAhram, Cairo, June 25, 1958.) 6 For a recent assessment ending in doubt on this score, see Elie Kedourie’s

Nationalism, London, 1960. : [ 201 ]

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES Nationalism also has the virtue, in the Middle East as elsewhere, of constituting recognition of the minimum necessities of political participation in the modern world. Organization must precede reform: the “Political Kingdom” must be established first

before, in Albert Camus’ phrase, men who have been rescued from destiny can deliver themselves from chance." In a world in

which family and tribe are no longer stable or large enough, where the traditional Islamic state based on dominance and sub-

mission may be large but not stable enough, and where the community of true believers is undermined by the decay of a traditional faith, nationalism can establish a new and effective unit for collective bargaining with other groups.

To these needs Middle Easterners are particularly sensitive, since most of them obtained their national independence within the memory of living men. They know that, however beneficial colonial rule might have been in introducing a modern structure of administration and economy, the foreigner never intended fully to integrate the local population with the people of his own imperial country nor allow the local peoples freely to find their own roots. The persistence of colonial rule in most countries of the Middle Rast until the end of World War II therefore delayed

the resolution of the imbalances between aspiration and resources, education and jobs, population growth and opportunities, revolution and consensus, that make the present problem so total in scope.

When the opportunity at last arrives for the mobilization of ™ The reference to the “Political Kingdom” is drawn from the opening address by Ghana’s Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah to the All-African Peoples’

Conference in Accra, December 8, 1958: “My first advice to you who are struggling to be free is to aim for the attainment of the Political Kingdom— that is to say, the complete independence and self-determination of your territories. When you have achieved the Political Kingdom, all else will follow. Only with the acquisition of political power—real power through the attainment of sovereign independence—will you be in a position to reshape your life and destiny.”

The passage in Albert Camus reads: “[Lucretius] has to admit, however, that atoms do not aggregate of their own accord, and rather than believe in a superior law and, finally, in the destiny he wishes to deny, he accepts the concept of a purely fortuitous mutation, the clinamen, in which the atoms meet and group themselves together. Already, as we can see, the great problem

of modern times arises: the discovery that to rescue man from destiny is to deliver him to chance. That is why the contemporary mind is trying so desperately hard to restore destiny to man—a historical destiny this time.” (The Rebel, New York, 1956, p. 30.)

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NATIONALISM

the entire community to deal with the imbalances produced by social change, nationalist rule may turn out to be no better, or even worse, than colonial rule. In a world desperately in need of supra-national authority to enforce international law, it may even _ seem a dubious premise to suggest that the mere persistence of the nation-state in the Middle East is a major advance. It is true that the national state is increasingly being transcended by the creation of larger units, voluntarily (as in Western Europe) or under duress (as within the Soviet bloc). What has not been so obvious is that if the Sudan (the size of all European NATO nations com-

bined, containing peoples speaking more than a hundred different languages) remains united, it will be succeeding as Europe has not yet succeeded in building a nation equivalent in size and

variety to that of a continent. Similarly, the success of Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria in holding together so many large heretical

Moslem and non-Moslem, Arab and non-Arab communities within their respective boundaries, and for almost all Middle Eastern states to have achieved cooperation among tribes and clans which for centuries had been fighting each other are no mean accomplishments. In the Middle East, nationalism already

represents unification, albeit incomplete, of different languages, | tribes, races, and religions. It is a nationalism already equivalent structurally to that force striving for European unification, ahead of it in some areas, behind in others.?®

There are, of course, a number of states in the Middle East that are independent but not yet nationalist. The state of Lebanon, for example, is based on the co-existence of ethnic and religious groups, Saudi Arabia on the co-existence of tribes. Such co-existence has always been precarious, and is especially so in

modern times when kinships and religious groups lack the cohesion to speak for all their members. Such a balance is forever

shattered when too many individuals begin to want to attain status on the basis of universalistic standards of skill and talent, regardless of birth, and when political and economic institutions cannot achieve efficiency and stability on any but such standards. These standards, which tear the web of traditional bonds, can be satisfied only within a larger unit which can shelter the individual ® The forces for regional, rather than national, unity or disunity are dealt with as the main concern of Chapter 18.

[ 203 ] ,

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES while he establishes new relationships and reward him for transcending parochial values. Even these nations will need to enter the age of nationalism.

The Nation as an Accident However necessary nationalism may be as a principle of organization, the membership of each particular Middle Eastern nation

is largely accidental. Common territory, race, culture, religion, and language are useful elements in the making of any nation, but none are essential. The word nation derives from nascere, to be born. The crux of the matter, however, is not birth into a kinship group—that is no longer enough—but into a new community of experience. The crux of the matter is the experience of men who start from the common background of a closed traditional society, and discover that the social transformation that is the modern age leaves them defenseless within and without, as individuals, believers, and members of groups, unless they fashion a new solidarity. For the common experience of the past was the

repetitive experience of a closed universe. The common experience of the modern age is the experience of constant change and diversity in a world in which all questions may be opened and no answer is final.

Those who are born into this condition of life will be encumbered or aided by many accidents. The territorial frontiers in the Middle East that, in most instances, have for less than half a century marked off a particular people’s experience with the modern age from that of its neighbors have almost all been arbitrarily drawn by foreigners. What may begin as an artifice, however, soon develops its own institutional network, and hence its own political and even sacred magnetism. Such a framework of political and economic institutions exercises a strong, independent

force in developing loyalties and reconciling rival allegiances within a territory—much more so than is often conceded by nationalist ideology with its emphasis on will, spirit, and myth. Its greater institutional inheritance may well help to explain why

Turkey takes its nationalism more for granted than the Arab world, where institutions and cadres had to be created anew. [ 204 |

NATIONALISM Even within a few decades, however, most Middle Eastern states,

regardless of their artificial or recent origin, have sprouted a nationalism different in tone or intent from that of neighbors of the same race, language, original culture, and religion. A nation may be formed from a group anywhere between a single tribe

and humanity. There is nothing predestined about the size or composition of the group that may form a nation; only the process itself and its consequences are predictable.

If, upon actual analysis, such factors as language or religion turn out to be useful but not essential in the formation of nations, one can still learn a good deal about nationalism by asking why

nationalists have talked so much about them. In men’s search for new roots, nationalism is now a better answer than tribalism, but not as complete an answer as tribalism once was. People in a nation are, at best, only in utilitarian or symbolic contact with each other. Closer relations are possible, but these one can enter only as an autonomous individual. Despite the multiplication of oaths and mass meetings, the sense of belonging to a nation never quite matches the secure sense of kinship and the patterned relationships within a tribe—hence all the hunting in this modern

age for additional links among men who in fact are bound by little beyond their common fate. Only those who do not yet feel linked as individuals would look so hard for bonds; only those not yet secure would be so anxious; only those not yet sure about how they compare to their neighbors would worry so much about prestige.

What they find in the past may well link them—but only in the context of their common fate. If all of them have always spoken Arabic, it only means that they now face the common

task of escaping its ancient, implicit images and concepts, modernizing its vocabulary, and narrowing the gap between written and colloquial Arabic that now impedes the growth of literacy.” If all of them shared in the historical experience of living under Arab or Islamic institutions, they now share the burden of transforming or discarding them. If they have always lived within the same frontiers, they now share the problem of 9 See Eli Shoubi, “The Influence of the Arabic Language on the Psychology

| [ 205 ]

of the Arabs,” Middle East Journal, Summer 1951, pp. 284-302, and the

THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES prospering together by finding modern methods for utilizing the

resources their territory offers. If they were once expert in propitiating uncontrolled natural forces which they did not comprehend, they must now become skilled in understanding uncontrolled social forces that cannot be propitiated. Pride in the past can be a strong cement for unity but it is no substitute for any of these tasks.

Indeed, nationalism, despite the seeming reassurance of its interest in the past, actually generates new anxieties. It must derogate older loyalties—especially those to family, village, tribe,

and the community of believers—before it can fulfill itself. It must capture not the sole but certainly the supreme loyalty of all people within the state. In this battle for loyalties, the nationstate, joined by all the forces of social transformation, often succeeds in destroying the old more readily than in creating new in-

stitutions that will assure solidarity, safety, and welfare as satisfyingly as did traditional structures in a traditional world. Partial successes entail their own kind of conflict and confusion:

a civil servant who gives special consideration to his young nephew is no longer sure whether he did right, or whether his young nephew can be counted on to return the favor. Government itself, the integrating mechanism of the nation-state, has only in a few Middle Eastern states begun to give some assurance of legitimacy and stability.

Modern political leaders may try to cement the nation-state by evoking the emotions of unity that once existed in the Islamic

or the Arab tribal community, only to pay the price of undermining the national status of the Christian Arab or the nonArab Moslem.*® For the sake of easing social communication, such leaders thus obscure the very novelty of nationalism, for nationalism arose in this area in large part because the Islamic and tribal community failed. replies thereto: Charles Issawi, “The Arabic Language and Arab Psychology,”

ibid., Autumn 1951, pp. 525-526, and Abou Hadeed, “Psychology and the Arabic Language,” ibid., Winter 1952, pp. 112-114. -. 10 Rfforts to bridge differences between Christian and Moslem Arabs, for example, are likely to be successful only if the “true religion” referred to is in

fact neither traditionally Christian or Moslem: “True nationalism can in no case be incompatible with true religion, because it is in essence nothing except

[ 206 |

NATIONALISM The Popularity of Nationalism if nationalism is merely a novel crystallization of new tensions

in human relationships, why is it more popular than any other Middle Eastern ideology? The fervor of Middle Eastern nationalism draws not only upon the compulsions of necessity but also

on fundamental psychological mechanisms. In the midst of all the uncertainties as to status, ideas, and goals that accompany the transformation of Middle Eastern society, no other ideology demands fewer commitments. Nationalism can assert itself without at the same time demanding loyalty to any particular form of government or society, economic organization or values, or any particular religious beliefs. No other ideology presents as cheap a bargain. It offers and demands the most intense form of “togetherness” even before there has been a genuine encounter of

individuals and issues. Thus one of the basic attractions of nationalism is precisely that it is nothing more than an organization of insecurity.” Identification with the movement of nationalism is stimulated by the feeling, often enough a reflection of reality, that neither the individual nor his nation has yet attained status in the world.

To define one’s self in terms of the group—even though this group is composed of men no more secure than one’s self—is nonetheless to benefit from the organization of insecurity. Each can then agree what he is even before any has discovered, or in the midst of transformation rediscovered, who he is. As this fictitious, corporate personality emerges, not only is there the greater strength of number, but also number renders faceless and hence acceptable deeds that no individual would dare commit for himself. It allows people to expand their power by concerning themselves, not so much with the morality of what is a spiritual movement which aims at the regeneration of the inner force of a nation and the realization of its mental and spiritual potentialities. . . . It neither opposes nor contradicts any religion, but accepts them all. ... As for true religion, it emanates with nationalism from the same spring.” (Costi Zurayq, Al-wai al-Qawmi [National Consciousness] Beirut, 1938, pp.

Mt The phrase, as indeed the title of this chapter, is borrowed from Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, New York, 1949, p. 129.

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THE RANGE OF POLITICAL CHOICES

being done, but who does them. And identification with the nation makes it possible to express all the anxiety, frustration, and

hatred that accompanies the transformation of Middle Eastern society, yet to direct these emotions, not against one’s self or one’s

own group which might well be destroyed by them, but against the foreigner. There is not only a psychological attraction to nationalism, but also its appeal as an idea. If an idea is to be successful, especially

in a period of transition, it must not seem so novel, so alien, that it prevents communication. Here nationalism has a peculiar advantage. It can more readily exploit the symbols and emotions of the tribal and heroic past than any other movement save that of neo-Islamic totalitarianism, yet, unlike the latter, give them modern secular content.” The range, tone, and style of most Middle Eastern discussion of the unique character of each regional nationalism mirror— this is one of the ironies of nationalism—the discourse of national-

ists everywhere in the world.** We have therefore neglected to repeat its manifest content here and concentrated instead on its latent meaning. Its content, however, is changing. Although, as late as the 1950’s, one could still easily find examples of writings that put Islam above the nation, that still asked what “Arabism”

was, or inquired whether Arab nationalism transcended the boundaries of any particular Arab nation,** a new trend has been clearly observable in more recent years. The newest nationalist writings—especially those inspired by Nasser in Egypt, Bourguiba in Tunisia, and Ben Barka in Morocco—are activist and

reformist in character, and self-critical rather than apologetic, 12 Sylvia G. Haim, in “Islam and the Theory of Arab Nationalism” (Die Welt des Islams, N.S., Vol. IV, 1955), examines the transformation of a number of Islamic concepts and concludes that although nationalism “introduces into Islam features which may not accord with strict orthodoxy, it is the least incompatible, perhaps, of modern European doctrines with the political

, thought and political experience of Islam.”

18 See such summaries as Nicola A. Ziadeh’s “Recent Arabic Literature on Arabism,” Middle East Journal, Autumn 1952, and Hazem Zaki Nuseibeh, The

Ideas of Arab Nationalism, Ithaca, 1956. For readers who know no Arabic,

, Inside the Arab Mind: A Bibliographic Survey of Literature in Arabic on Arab

Nationalism and Unity, compiled and annotated by Fahim I. Qubain, Arlington, Middle East Research Associates, 1960, can provide an excellent and concise view of nationalist discussions. 14 For such a sampling, examine Abi Nu’man al-Muhajir, “al-Asabiyah al-

[ 208 ]

NATIONALISM

ageressive, or romantic.” A similar change can also be observed in Pakistan. In large part, this change of spirit reflects the arrival of a new

class. For nationalism appeals not only as an idea but as the ideology of a class. Nationalism first emerges in the Middle East when the traditional bourgeoisie finds sufficient frustrations and incentives in a changing environment to try to oust the foreign overlord and run the country in its own interests. A different spirit of nationalism emerges somewhat later when a new salaried or

would-be salaried middle class arises and no longer finds it possible to achieve its interests on any but a national scale, and deliberately sets out to mobilize society for common tasks. Nationalism is popular in several varieties. There are countries where the nation-state is being treated as a community organized to strengthen the individual—and the modern age began, after all, with the rediscovery of the individual—to explore himself and relate himself to his world to the fullness of his capacities. It is diffi-

cult to speak confidently of countries in the Middle East where

the foundations for such a life may soon be secure, though a majority of them seem to be striving in this direction at least some

of the time. Sometimes nationalism becomes a resting place, a useful formula for linking the masses to the reassuring sentiments

of the past and the new elite to the reassuring vested interests acquired in the present without allowing a vague sense of dread to become a conscious recognition that nationalism is a symptom

of change. (Iraq before the revolution of 1958 exemplified this

tenuous phase.) Frequently nationalism remains among the

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ooo THE STRUCTURE OF THE MILITARY BUREAUCRACY (cont'd)

Country Selection and Promotion of Men Selection and Promotion of Officers

Morocco Former Moroccan members of French Moroccans trained as former NCO’s army and former members of guer- in French and Spanish armies or as rilla Moroccan Army of Liberation. officers in French and Spanish mili-

tary academies.* Now also at Moroccan Academy. Promotions by ability and political reliability.

Algeria The army of independent Algeria is

composed of men recruited since 1954 for guerrilla warfare. Their alle-

giance has been molded in part by their service in particular military districts in Algeria, or else by training in exile in Tunisia. Algerian Premier Ahmed Ben Bella announced plans

in 1963 to reduce the army from 135,000 to 35,000 men.

ce Tunisia Former members of guerrilla fighters Tunisians trained as former NCO’s in and French army and now selection French army or as officers in French among conscripted of loyal Neo- Military Academy. Promotions by Destour Party youth members. Pro- ability and political reliability. motion by education, ability, and political reliability.

Libya

Egypt Enforced universal conscription for Written examination for admission to

three-year periods. Promotion by ex- Egyptian Military Academy. Promo-

amination. tion initially by examination, higher ranks by political reliability and length of service.

Syria Universal conscription and volun- Graduation from Military Academy.

teers. Promotion by seniority and Promotion by political reliability and

proficiency. length of service. Sudan Life-time volunteers who until recent Written examination among gradu-

years tended, like former conscripts, ates of secondary schools for admis-

| to come largely from Negroid pagan sion to military college. Until 1954, tribes of southern Sudan. all officers were northern Moslems.

Saudi Arabia Three-year volunteers with occasional Volunteers from among families with impressments. Special selection for political and social prestige. Promo-

ability and political reliability for tion by personal influence, political

Royal Guard Regiment. reliability, length of service, efficiency.

Yemen Lifetime volunteers with occasional Volunteers from among families with impressments. Some non-commis- political and social prestige. Promosioned ranks are retained by inherit- tions by personal influence. ance within specific families.

Lebanon Volunteers for prolonged periods. Christians, graduates of French mili-

tary schools, predominate in numbers over Moslems and Druses.

£ An unusually large number of officers are drawn from Berber-speaking tribes unlike the Moroccan population at large of whom only about one-third are Berber-speaking; the rest

speak Arabic.

[ 264 |

THE STRUCTURE OF THE MILITARY BUREAUCRACY (cont'd)

Country Selection and Promotion of Men Selection and Promotion of Officers

Iraq Conscription.

Jordan Three-year enlistments. Promotion by education and time in grade.

Tran Unevenly enforced conscription for Graduation from Military Academy. two-year periods. Promotion by edu- Promotion by personal influence and

cation and time in grade. political reliability.

Turkey Enforced universal conscription for Graduation from Military Academy.

two-year periods. (All high school graduates are required to train for 18 months as re-

serve officers.) Promotion by seniority.

Afghanistan Unevenly enforced conscription for Graduation from Military Academy.

two-year periods. Promotion by personal influence.

Pakistan Seven-year volunteers, three-quarters Senior officers British-trained, usually of them drawn from Punjabis, sec- Pathan or Punjabi (both West Pakiondly Pathans (both West Pakistani) stani). Junior officers commissioned are given physical, aptitude, and in- during World War II. Thereafter telligence tests before admission. four-day tests and interviews before admission to Military Academy.

Contrasts in the History of Middle Eastern Armies

Although the armies of the Middle East have much in common, this does not prevent different kinds of personalities from rising to the top—martinets and moderators, men relying on charisma and men with powers of organization, good strategists

but mediocre tacticians, shrewd tacticians with no sense of strategy. Officers do not come in a single mold and hence each army regime has a distinct character. The histories of the armies also vary as much as the histories of the nations they represent. The contrasts between Turkey and Syria are especially instructive. Turkey has had every reason to take pride in its military tradition and strength. Its army under Kemal Ataturk created modern Turkey in the face of military intervention by Western armies and maintained it in the face of threats from the U. S. S. R. Its prestige has helped it to secure better arms, better pay, better clothes, and better food than it had had for hundreds of years. After 1924, the army as an institution [ 265 ]

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION left the political arena. It believed it could afford to do so because its own men were solidly established in the top positions of the

executive and the Grand Assembly.” Social reform, economic progress, and international recognition were patently the fruits of its success. By making it obligatory for all fellow officers active

in politics to resign from the army, Kemal Ataturk also neutral-

ized the latter as a ready springboard for further coups. Later regimes compelled all high school graduates to serve 18 months as reserve Officers and so linked civilians to an army that served as a school for citizenship, literacy, and obedience.

The Turkish army would probably have been content with its veto power if its professional strength had been kept up and if the broad objectives of Ataturk had suffered no retrogression.

Its re-entry in politics in May 1960 was due not to its own ambitions but to Premier Adnan Menderes’ attack on the inherit-

ance of Ataturk. He had made concessions to religious traditionalism, curbed political freedom, and weakened the economy. Above all, he attempted to utilize the army as a police force for destroying the opposition party. To maintain its neutral role in

politics, the army overthrew Menderes. Within less than two years, it had succeeded in establishing firmer constitutional, if not yet also political, foundations for Turkish democracy, and cautiously withdrew once more to its barracks and its accustomed role as “Guardian of the Revolution.” The Syrian army, by contrast, has suffered from many political

and military handicaps. For centuries Syria had been governed as a province or a possession of other empires. For only ninety

years, and that thirteen centuries ago, was it the seat of an imperial realm under the Umayyad dynasty. When it finally achieved its independence in 1943, its frontiers were those arbitrarily drawn decades earlier by Europeans. A sense of military loyalty and mission was difficult to create in such an entity.

Under Ottoman rule until the end of World War I, Syrian officers served in Ottoman armies only outside their own country. 17 For figures demonstrating the preponderance of the military until 1937, see Frederick W. Frey, “The Two-Edged Sword: The Army in Turkish Politics” (mimeographed), June 1960, drawing upon his larger study of Turkish parliamentary politics now being completed.

[ 266 ]

THE ARMY

Under the French mandate, Syrian officers were outranked by French officers, and the enlisted men were deliberately recruited by the French from linguistic and religious minorities. While the French remained in charge, the politically most active urban Arab Moslems were clearly discouraged from applying for military service since they were also the most nationalist Syrians.*®

To turn this Syrian army into a truly national instrument after 1945 was an immense task that was far from completed when, in 1948, it was called upon to fight the Israelis. Defeat stimulated the Syrians to grant the army henceforth the largest appropriation in the national budget. By the end of 1951, the country had 23,000 men under arms but was probably capable

of defending itself only against an unlikely invasion by the Lebanese.

Profound discontent with civilian incompetence and corruption gave rise to a succession of military coups between 1949 and 1953. But the rapid changes in military rule from General Husni Za’im to Colonel Sami Hinnawi to Colonel Fawzi Silu to Colonel Adib Shishakli and the early collapse of military power proved that the Syrian army was also still too weak to impose its will on the nation’s civilian population.*® The failure of these four military dictators after 1953 convinced the more radical military factions that the army could probably assure its predominance

by going one step further—breaking the social and economic

position of the traditional elite and relying entirely on the political movements of the new middle class. By early 1955, there seemed to be agreement among army leaders on this objective. The extreme right had been eliminated.” An uneasy 18 One son of a landed family of Hama, attracted by the free education at the nearby military school (much as a number of now prominent civilian Americans were drawn by its technical excellence and free tuition to West Point), emerged to become Nasser’s principal ally in Syria, namely Colonel Sarraj. (Most of the material in the last two paragraphs and this footnote is drawn from an unpublished manuscript by R. Bayly Winder, “The Modern Military Tradition in Syria,” prepared for the Faculty Seminar of the Program in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, March 5, 1959.) 19 The first two army coups are analyzed by Alford Carleton, “The Syrian Coups d’Etat of 1949,” Middle East Journal, January 1950, pp. 1-12. All of them are dealt with by Nicola A. Ziadeh, in Syria and Lebanon, New York,

1957, pp. 93-172, passim. |

70In April 1955, Col. Adnan Malki, the assistant chief-of-staff and G-3 of the Syrian Army and one of the principal army adherents of the socialist Ba’th

[ 267 ]

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION collaboration had been stimulated among moderate, leftist, and communist army elements by the growing pressure upon Syria

by Western and neighboring pro-Western states. Between 1955 : and 1958, civilian leaders could no longer play politics without consulting the army. The intervention of the army in politics did not cure the ills of Syrian society. By 1958 the dominant army faction had strength left only for a desperately idealistic remedy—to try preserving the influence of the reformist pan-Arab group in Syria by uniting the country with Egypt. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man may become king. Army leadership, however, can provide no political remedies unless it can transcend the political and social divisions of the country sufficiently to act as its vanguard. Since the break-up of the United Arab Republic in 1961, the army in Syria, as during the mid-1950’s, once again resembles a divided but armed parliament.

In nine Middle Eastern countries, independent civilian rule had preceded the creation or modernization of the army, and so provided an opportunity for fashioning the military as a civilian instrument. In Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, and Pakistan, however, the government proved unable to exploit the advantage it initially enjoyed. In Jordan a large number of officers are already in jail or in exile; it is only as a unified body that the army has not crossed the line to stand against the King. Libya’s army is still in process of creation, and hence its role is not yet fixed. It may intervene in politics if the country does not soon agree upon a new ruler to govern after the death of the aging, childless King. In only two countries of this region, Tunisia and Morocco, do armies remain subordinate to civilian rule. Beginning in 1956, the

civilian leadership of Tunisia’s dominant Neo-Destour Party carefully selected the officers of the army, the national guard, and the police from among politically reliable elements of the guerrilla resistance movement. In 1957, officers trained in the Arab East who might sympathize with Nasser were eased out. However, in party, was assassinated by a member of the Syrian National Social Party, representing the extreme right. This act provided the justification for a successful purge of the right wing of the army.

[ 268 ]

THE ARMY early 1963, President Bourguiba foiled a conspiracy, joined by a number of army officers, to overthrow him, allegedly for moving in the direction of more socialism. The Tunisian army may well intervene in politics again if it did not approve of President Bourguiba’s successor. The main body of the Moroccan army was recruited by French officers among Berber-speaking mountain tribes in a country that

is predominantly Arab in language and culture. After independ-

ence in 1956, this army, though still largely commanded by French-trained Berber officers, was enlarged from 20,000 to 30,000 men by the addition of guerrilla fighters of the Moroccan Army of Liberation. It is under the control of the King instead of being responsible to a civilian cabinet. Until recently, the army has had no political temptations, hence no political tests. If the

hitherto constitution-minded King, Hassan II, should find his power threatened, however, he would probably not hesitate to

engage it as a partisan in his behalf, perhaps at the cost of splitting it politically.**

The example of the Pakistani army, which seized control of the government in 1958, illustrates that even the most professional army can in a brief time be transformed into a political body. Prior to the coup, the Pakistani army had been carefully recruited. Regiments were often composed of the sons of earlier

recruits. Its officer corps had been selected from the leading families of martial tribes. The status of officers was as high as that of the top echelon of the civil service. For several years after Pakistan became independent in 1947, army officers lived better than most civilians, enlisted men better than civilian workers.”? But the rapid change in the relative position and character of social classes in Pakistan, especially during and after World War

II, was soon mirrored in the composition of the officer corps. Elements from the new middle class entered in large numbers through emergency commissions granted to civilians during World War II, by promotion from the ranks, and since 1947 by 21 “There are regular reports of dissension between the younger, more nationalist officers recruited since independence and their seniors who have served the French.” (The Economist, March 4, 1961.) 22 In 1957 there were over 3,000 applications for 80 officer candidate vacancies at the Pakistan Military Academy.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION national examinations. The sons of prominent families who once constituted the core of the officer group have since risen to the

, top, but they no longer directly shape the perspectives of the battalions. From a way of life, the army was converted into a job.

Inflation of numbers as well as currency began to sap the perquisites of status. Paternalism, when it survived, became favoritism. As the new middle class entered the army, however, its new values also increasingly became important in the army even though the coups of the generals—Mirza and Ayub—in 1958 still reflect only this transition in social structure rather than its conclusion. When the status of classes, professions, and politics itself are still embattled, it is unlikely that the army, as the strongest and most modern institution, will remain apolitical, When the ruling institution owes its survival exclusively or predominantly to the army, or lacks the strength to confirm its own successor, armies are not likely to remain outside of politics.

The Circumstances of Army Intervention Political intervention by armies that have long been apolitical

tends to differ, in the first stages, from intervention by armies whose officer corps has already become a latent or disguised political party. A previously unbroken record of loyalty to author-

ity usually means that the coup is staged by the commanding general, urged on perhaps by a faction within the civilian regime.

The break with the past is therefore not sharp, at least at first. The general usually has little need to consult many of his fellow officers before taking action, and because of his attitude toward politics he tends to be inexperienced and disdainful of all political acts except those that depend on charisma and command.”

His initial conservatism, however, is likely to yield in time to

apolitical. |

pressures from an Officer corps that has become conscious of its political opportunities and a public that has certainly ceased to be 23 For a detailed exemplification, see Helen Kitchen, “The Government of General Abboud,” and “The Army” in the special Sudan issue of Africa Special Report, January 1959, pp. 3-4, 17, and 5; also Peter Kilmer, “A Year of Army Rule in the Sudan,” World Today, November 1959.

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THE ARMY An army’s intervention in politics may reflect the entire range of middle class ideology. During the single year 1958, the army

acted in Lebanon to fashion a compromise among competing political and ethnic groups that might once again assure the army’s own political neutrality. The army intervened in the Sudan

to support a moderate regime that could no longer be sustained by the army’s civilian friends. It intervened in Pakistan to bring about those political, social, and economic reforms that previous regimes had been unwilling to undertake. It intervened in Iraq to alter the entire social structure.

Limitations of Army Rule

As a ruling power, an army has several extraordinary advantages. Because of historical circumstances, Middle Eastern armies often tend to produce more able, honest, and decisive leadership than any other institution. Because of its vantage point and the values for which it stands, an army can also speak more convincingly than most other institutions about the changes

that a society requires to defend itself..* For men in a hurry who want to make a forced march into the modern age, the army

can impose a revolution from above. Armies in power, however, are often subject to the vices of their virtues. The special problems they face in relating themselves to the rest of the body

politic and in ultimately yielding again to civilian control deserve analysis in some detail. An army’s weapons are its strength; but when the army is speaking for the new middle class, arms are most effective domestically if they remain unused. An army symbolizing nationalism

and social change that spills the blood of any whom it cannot successfully label as anti-colonialist and reactionary risks splitting its own following and its ties to the rest of society. It cannot afford

to become a Praetorian guard once again. The army’s strength also lies in its discipline, but its leaders usually are less skilled than politicians in gaining consent by means other than direct 24 Guy J. Pauker, in “Southeast Asia as a Problem Area in the Next Decade,” World Politics, April 1959, pp. 325-345, makes a similar diagnosis and prescription for that part of the world.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

command. Its system of communication is very efficient for messages that move from the top down; it works less well for those that start at the bottom. An army often shows special skill in making contingent plans for the most effective use of men, machines, and organization. This capacity, however, has been warped in the Middle East by a tendency toward conspicuous consumption: most rulers of the area have habitually ordered more arms from the Soviet bloc and the West than they could effectively absorb. This tendency has also been reinforced by continued military dependency. Military planners in the Middle East cannot yet firmly calculate requirements since they cannot be certain that they will be able to buy from the great powers what they need, or how soon their potential enemy will be able to offset such purchases. These persisting obstacles to rational military planning and the resultant excessive military spending do not make Middle Eastern armies the ideal sponsors and supervisors of economic planning.

It is an army’s business to calculate sacrifice and to make such sacrifice dutifully. But to calculate who shall pay for economic development by remaining poor or working harder, and what moral price must be paid for forceful change in traditional institutions, takes reason and courage of a different sort. The army’s esprit de corps is due in large part to its separation from civilian society, its training in a unique style of Ife, its special uniform, its monopoly of weapons .How readily will such a body encourage wider participation in political activities or feel obligated to account to outsiders for its stewardship? Politics is not warfare, and the army’s virtues would remain virtues only if society as a whole were converted into a garrison state. The problem of conversion is a serious one.

Having experienced the effectiveness of a hierarchic, disciplined organization, army leaders turned politicians often have trouble organizing their newer and far larger constituency. It was perhaps natural for Nasser to suppose “that the whole nation was ready and prepared, waiting for nothing but a vanguard to

lead the charge against the battlements, whereupon the nation would fall in behind in serried ranks .. . as the ordered advance proceeded toward the great objective. .. . Crowds did eventually [ 272 ]

THE ARMY

come, and they came in endless droves—but how different is the reality from the dream! The masses that came were disunited, divided groups of stragglers.”*? But when a whole society is in

process of revolution, there can be no “serried ranks.” Social unity can be built only by dealing with the problems of society; it will not jump into being by command.

Efforts by Middle Eastern military leaders to form mass parties, with the exception of Turkey, have so far failed. One reason is a grave shortage of vital skills. The traditional hierarchy

of valued occupations has not yet changed and is still out of balance with modern needs. There are too many lawyers and clerks, and too few organizers and managers, especially at a time

when the vast majority to be mobilized are illiterate and premodern in values and skills. Neither in Egypt nor Syria, where attempts by army leaders to form effective political mass movements have so far failed, are there sufficient experienced cadres for such a task. Even officers with political experience are usually skilled only in agitation and conspiracy among small groups, not in persuasion, mediation, and organization among large ones.

It is the charismatic leader (frequently a military man) who is still the most attractive political remedy in the Middle East. For most Middle Easterners, in fact, the issue has not yet become

military vs. civilian rule. The question for the mass remains: which leader has the more powerful charisma? When men “renounce loyalty to the tribe and the divinities of the tribe, their responsiveness to sacredness, their readiness to discern sacred-

ness does not necessarily die; instead it seek new objects... . The nation becomes the charismatic object [and] the political leaders who live in the modern sector of their respective societies, and who are usually less immediately involved in a traditional way

with the sacred, are legitimatized in their own eyes by their permeation with the sacredness of the nation.”*® Great and powerful as the uses of charisma are, the elite drawn from the middle class cannot avoid isolation from its constituency 2° Nasser, The Philosophy of the Revolution, pp. 32-33.

26 Edward Shils, “The Concentration and Dispersion of Charisma: Their Bearing on Economic Policy in Underdeveloped Countries,” World Politics, October 1958, pp. 3-4; p. 2.

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if it relies only on charismatic leadership. Rulers and ruled no longer share the same moral or intellectual universe. There will be no common universe unless the new middle class creates it. The army’s monopoly of force also is no longer as efficacious as it was in the Islamic past when, subject only to the challenge of

superior arms, it could dominate a stable social system. Force today cannot, by itself, hope to remold the relationships of individuals and social classes, once thought natural and Godgiven, into a new balance capable of motion. The Army as a Partisan in Conflicts Within the

. New Middle Class and with Other Classes

Among all the limitations of army regimes, there is one that

is far-reaching and that cannot be transcended. The army in politics cannot become an institution above the battle. It intervenes as a partisan, representing a new class with whom the majority in the country does not yet share a common conscious-

ness. It is itself a most sensitive mirror of internal conflicts

within the new middle class, reflecting the fissures of partisanship and ideology that differences in age group, education, and opportunity can create. It will be unable to avoid factionalism within the ruling junta unless the whole junta, or its dominant

faction, is securely anchored in a well-organized movement representing at least the new middle class.

Since the army constitutes a ready-made symbol of national unity and strength, the presence of the army may easily veil the need for establishing regular institutions for discussions, decision, and review, and for articulating a framework of means and ends that can serve as ideology. Civilians cannot shroud the requirements of politics as easily. Forceful efficiency alone can produce

only a temporary stability which is soon destroyed by the continuing pressures of uncontrolled social change. By itself, military rule can be no substitute for the art of politics.

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THE ARMY Making Army Regimes Unnecessary

The final touchstone of achievement for an army regime is its success in making its continued existence unnecessary. This it can accomplish by transforming itself into a civilian regime or, much less likely, yielding supremacy once again to civilian institutions. Armies have been created for preventing or making war, and for holding societies together domestically by force if all other cement fails. For governing itself, and achieving other

social and economic ends, mankind has evolved a number of more useful, if at times equally authoritarian, institutions. To create an environment in which these institutions can at last

function invariably has been the announced purpose of all army / regimes derived from the new middle class. In the Middle East, this conversion to civilian government may be easier than in other cultures. Most officers turned politicians, as we have seen, joined the army not so much in pursuit of the military life as in pursuit

of a career in the most powerful, dynamic, and expanding bureaucracy the country offered. How can army regimes (and their constituency) make sure of

such a conversion? The Middle East cannot yet duplicate the conditions which have contributed to the evolution of military

rule in Latin America. In Latin America, strong, property owning, and industrially productive upper middle classes and

parties and trade unions increasingly act as countervailing forces to the military. In several Latin American countries, there are also expanding economic opportunities which make an army

career relatively less attractive to the most ambitious than it formerly was. In the Middle East, the evolution toward more lasting civilian rule faces greater obstacles.

In Turkey, the example created by Ataturk in transforming army rule into civilian rule, and the existence of several respon-

sible democratic parties carried enough weight to persuade General Gursel to end his military regime by November 1961— eighteen months after his own coup.” If the new parliament fails to function effectively, however, there is little question that the 27 See Dankwart A. Rustow, “The Army and the Founding of the Turkish Republic,” World Politics, July 1962, esp. pp. 543-552. See also Daniel Lerner

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION military “Guardians of the Revolution” will take new political initiatives.

In Egypt, Nasser has so far, with great political skill, eliminated the Revolutionary Command Council—the core of his fellow conspirators—as the principal organ of government. In its place he has substituted a civilian cabinet, retaining only a portion of former Council members for its portfolios. In addition, he has created, after several abortive attempts, a parliament of freely proposed candidates who could not be formally nominated until they had been carefully screened by him prior to a free election. With this cadre of secondary leaders, linked in part to the people and not disloyal to him, and with a partially reformed bureauc-

racy, Nasser has made major progress toward civilian involvement in government. At the same time, he has converted many army officers into government administrators, diplomats, trade union supervisors, and directors of government owned corporations.

In Iraq, General Kassim’s relationship to civilian institutions from 1958 until his overthrow in 1963 consisted only in the precarious business of playing political parties off against each other. In Pakistan and the Sudan, the ruling generals have eliminated all

parties and made no effort to form any of their own, relying largely on the civilian bureaucracy to mobilize popular support. Establishing autonomous civilian institutions, however, is only the first step toward the end of army rule. The army is not likely to be tempted to confine itself once again to its proper business until all major professions of the new middle class, and especially the army, have a secure status in society and the body politic, and the nation has secure status in the international community. It remains all too easy for the army to insist on an extraordinary

role for itself in the Middle East as long as there are no sure barriers to the renewed outbreak of Arab-Israeli hostilities, while Arab rivalries remain chronic, and while Western nations remain and Richard D. Robinson, “Swords and Plowshares: The Turkish Army as a Modernizing Force,” World Politics, October 1960, pp. 19-44. In Iran, Colonel Reza Khan established a new royal dynasty in 1925, but civilian government has been for most of the period since then, and is now, deeply indebted to army support.

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, THE ARMY tempted to try to regain lost positions in the area by military intervention. Furthermore, Soviet intentions toward its Middle Eastern neighbors remain uncertain, the Soviet bloc and the West freely compete in supplying local arms, and Middle Easterners remain acutely anxious to show their strength after centuries of foreign rule. Spectacular success at the foreign and domestic tasks of government is probably the surest guarantee that a military regime will transform itself, and that the rest of the army will become a professional interest group, or at least no more than a political veto group. Failure, even the threat of it, readily reinforces the original nature of a military regime as a hierarchy of organized violence. The modern age has increased the difficulties, even for Middle

Eastern armies that would prefer to return to the barracks, of attempting to define their proper sphere of occupation. They know that they cannot hope to defend themselves for long against ageression by the great powers, even in a war involving conventional weapons. They may recognize that the most effective prolonged defense for them against such encroachments is probably

guerrilla warfare, but preparations for the latter appear neither impressive nor prudent for internal political stability. They cannot plan for weapons systems adequate to meet the challenge of their local neighbors because a single lucky purchase can upset existing balances. Even armed internal repression for the first

time runs counter to the acknowledged ideology of the new middle class leadership. At such a point in history, the professional task of Middle Eastern armies becomes obscure and even uninviting. The thought of switching the emphasis in army training to literacy, patriotism, and vocations, and in military tasks to engineering and construction, is only now beginning to be heard. There is likely to be a permanent end to army intervention only when the body politic has achieved a new solidity and cohesion

which, in organizational terms, means a new middle class that has established firm links with workers and peasants. The new middle class, by itself, will be unable to keep the army out of politics as long as the latter remains its better organized, better trained, better armed segment. [ 277 ]

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION Probable Problems and Trends During the Next Decade

So far, the armies of the Middle East have been under relatively conservative or moderate leadership. Army-led governments have generally concentrated on ridding the country of evils associated with imperialism, corruption, and inefficiency. These

regimes have moved only gradually into programs of basic reforms aimed at creating a new society.

Such moderation has especially characterized the regimes of the generals in power today— including Ayub (Pakistan), Shehab (Lebanon), and Abboud (Sudan). Their strength is based, not merely on seniority, but on their successful transmigration in spirit and skill from the outlook of traditional landowners and tribal chiefs, who once were the generals of the Middle East, to the perspective of the new propertied middle class. These generals have had a rare incentive for making this transition and develop-

ing a moderate conservative orientation. Their vested interest, the army, is an institution whose mission rests on ancient principles, whose relative strength gives these leaders a sense of security, whose membership and purpose gives them a national perspective, and whose character demands the perpetuation of such conservative values as discipline, hierarchy, honor, competence, and hard work. At the same time, their relative detachment from their social background by virtue of service in the army, and their inescapable interest in technology and in maintaining the army’s (and the country’s) strength, has made them realize that they must make great alterations in existing conditions if their interests are to prosper. Such a perspective may not be enough, however. The small propertied middle class in the Middle East usually does not appreciate how many radical and rapid changes will be required in their society before a much

being.**® |

larger and stabilizing propertied middle class can come into To many Western observers, it has seemed that colonels such

28 Thus, few sharecroppers are likely to get farms of their own under General

Ayub’s land reform, because farms of less than 500 acres—and in many instances, farms of larger acreage—are exempt from expropriation. Most of the officers who now support the general, though by no means all Pakistani officers, come from such farms.

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THE ARMY

as Nasser constitute one extreme fringe among the officers who have come to the fore as politicians in the Middle East during the twentieth century; and generals such as the late Nuri al-Sa’id

of Iraq, the other. Such a view of alternatives is bound to be shortsighted. Especially if army rule is politically and economically unproductive, there is little reason to suppose that new mid-

dle class leadership in the Communist Party, in neo-Islamic totalitarian movements such as the Moslem Brotherhood, or in secular fascist movements such as the Syrian Social National Party could not ultimately achieve a similar degree of hierarchy, organization, discipline, emotional commitment, and readiness for violence, and so challenge army regimes through mass demonstrations—or through infiltration of the armed forces, or through alliances with a faction of army officers.

Communist, fascist, and neo-Islamic colonels and generals have so far only briefly crossed the horizon. To speak only of communists: Turkish Communist armies fought in support of Ataturk until 1921. Ten Pakistani army officers, including Major Generals A. Khan and W. Ahmed, and Brigadier M. Latif, were tried in March 1951 for participating in what the government al-

leged to be a communist conspiracy to seize control of the country. Colonels Yussif Sadiq and Khaled Muhi ad-Din were accused of communist sympathies by Nasser and excluded from the Revolutionary Command Council in 1953. (Khaled Muhi ad-Din, after having been allowed to become editor of al-Massa, was imprisoned by Nasser on March 9, 1959.) Over 650 Iranian

officers accused of conspiring with the Tudeh Party or the U. S. S. R. were arrested in the fall of 1954, and several score of

them were sentenced to death. General Afif Bizri, thought by many to be a communist sympathizer or a party member, became Chief of Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian armed forces in August 1957, while Lt. Col. Mohammed Jarrah, who had similar views, became Assistant Chief of the Gendarm-

erie at the same time. Both retained their offices until early 1958. In Iraq, after the July 1958 coup, a number of officers with communist sympathies held important positions in the government for a time.

Particular military regimes may be able to deal effectively [ 279 ]

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION with subversion by extremists. However, the military itself is not immune to subversion. Army leaders can fail again and again as politicians without the army’s ceasing to be the principal source

of political leaders reflecting various strata and ideologies of the new middle class. At present, army officers in most Middle Eastern countries are drawn almost entirely from the new literate middle class. Enlisted men are almost entirely drawn from illiterate tribesmen and peasants, and have no chance of promotion from the ranks. As literacy spreads and universal conscription is increasingly enforced, the divisions of society will be increasingly reflected through all the ranks of the army. If these divisions remain unbridged, and the army’s leadership and its rank-and-file divide to fight in opposing causes, the army may suffer a prolonged eclipse both as a political and as a military institution. In that event there may be no segment of society to

take the place of the new middle class, no institution to take the place of the army—no group that by its common interests

and norms can set limits to personal leadership, yet give continuity to authority. There would be a vacuum instead into which the individual opportunist or fanatic can move.

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CHAPTER 14 POLITICAL PARTIES

IT HAS BEEN customary to assume that political parties are not

as important in the Middle East—or in other underdeveloped areas—as individual leaders and that few political parties matter at all. This view still had some validity during the 1940’s. During the 1950’s it became outdated. It is now quite apparent that individual leaders, however impressive their charismatic powers, will be unable to construct a single and enduring “political culture’* unless they build effective political parties. A number of Middle Eastern leaders have perceived this need—and variously illuminated its ramifications by their failures and their successes.

There is no substitute yet devised for political parties as agents of modernization—te., in creating and maintaining a new political culture. The common polarities of many past analyses of Middle Eastern parties have been one-party regimes vs. multi-party regimes, oligarchical regimes vs. parliamentary

regimes. But in the present historical period of rapid social change, the important distinction in the character of parties is whether they remain centered upon individuals or crystallize instead around an ideology, that is, whether party life is moving from a conflict of cliques to a conflict of orientations. The im-

portant distinction in the function of parties is whether they mean to secure the supremacy of a single individual, interest, region, or class, or whether they mean to initiate all individuals for the first time in the modern age into a common political cul1“Fvery political system,” writes Gabriel A. Almond, “is embedded in a particular pattern of orientations to political action.” This pattern, never as explicit or systematic as any particular ideology, or necessarily as overt as a political party, he terms a “political culture.” (“Comparative Political Systems,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 18, 1956, p. 396.)

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ture. Parties organized in defense of particularistic economic, ethnic, or regional interests, or small cliques temporarily joined by calculations of personal advantage and pretending to the name of parties, are dealt with only as they tangentially or by default affect the process of modernization. The totalitarian parties committed to the rejection of the present in the name of a dogma that envisages a preordained leap into the past or future

have already been discussed in Chapters 8 and 9. We have ignored the otherwise useful distinction between dictatorial parties whose monopoly is ensured through open or disguised coercion, and the dominant party whose monopoly rests on its successful rallying of the politically active majority during the struggle for

independence—not on coercion or the deliberate exclusion of competitors. The latter type (exemplified by India’s Congress Party) does not now exist anywhere in the Middle East and North Africa. That even the former type of party is capable of moving

toward democracy is exemplified in this chapter especially in the discussion of Turkey and Tunisia. This chapter is concerned primarily with that kind of political party—now favored in the Middle East—which sees itself as a non-totalitarian, yet predemocratic instrument of political modernization. Political Parties as the Chief Architects of the New Political Culture The Islamic community from the seventh to the twentieth cen-

tury was an aggregation of autonomous communities which never achieved a common sense of citizenship. In the modern age, when all strata of society are being affected by political issues, and the terms of all issues are new, the need has become

all the more acute for institutions that can effectively initiate diverse groups into a common state and society: for example, Arabs, Kurds, Sunni Moslems, Shia Moslems, Nestorian Christians, Syrian Orthodox Christians, Armenian Orthodox Christians, Yazidis, Sabaeans, Baghdadis, army officers, Diwaniyah tribesmen,: Istiqlal party members, unskilled workers—which is

merely an incomplete way of saying all Iraqis.2 Schools can 2 This point can be put more abstractly. Especially in a period when all traditional relationships have been undermined or at least put into question, there

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POLITICAL PARTIES provide basic knowledge and teach prospective citizens how to think, and so prepare for participant politics, mass media can in-

form and influence their audience, but they cannot become vehicles of organization; armies leave civilians outside their ranks; parliaments demand intense political activity by a small number of individuals; elections restrict political opportunity to a few occasions. No other existing institution in the Middle East is capable of instilling a sense of citizenship and organizing public

participation in political decisions as effectively as political parties. Only a party can be in daily contact with the constituency, teach, propagandize, or put pressure upon that constituency to adopt new ideas and patterns of action. Only a party can stimulate involvement in campaigns for literacy and higher production no less than particular political issues, and gather new talents and thus regularize recruitment into the new elite.

Political parties have peculiar advantages as instruments of social change. They are a form of organization unknown in traditional Islamic society. Hence insofar as they are not novel disguises for restricted traditional cliques, but rather truly voluntary associations operating in a public realm, they cease being organically related to the old social structure and so can move themselves and others beyond the established order. Only parties can link leaders and masses in almost daily con-

tact. The problem of contact is all the more acute because it arises in the modern age in paradoxical form: the involvement of

the masses in politics sharpens the authority of leaders and of personal forms of authority—for none is as readily comprehensible and reassuring—yet never has personal political contact been as difficult to achieve as in a mass society.* A political party offers an opportunity for binding together four forces which

can resolve this paradox and create a viable political culture: is bound to be dire need for learning new “orientations of functional significance to the operation of a system of complementary role-expectations.” This defini-

tion of “socialization” is drawn from Talcott Parsons, The Social System, Glencoe, 1951, pp. 207-208. In this sense, our analysis focuses on political parties as the chief agents of “political socialization”’—a phrase which might well head this chapter if popular political discourse were not so likely to suggest a quite different and highly ideological reading quite unrelated to its useful and precise meaning in a more clinical prose. 8 Cf. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties, p. 168.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

charisma, ideology, organization, and accountability to an increasingly larger constituency. There is no escape from discussing

these separately and in sequence, but they are effective only in combination—both because they reinforce each other and also act as checks and balances against each other. The Harnessing of Charisma

In times of social crisis, when customary institutions and values are threatened, losing potency, and can no longer attract implicit assent, men often search for charismatic leaders. They put their trust in the seemingly magically heroic personality, rely-

ing upon his policies above all because they accept the man. In periods of social change, the charismatic leader may often serve as the model of the new human being required by the newly evolving pattern of life, and succeed in encouraging, by his very example, a rapid transformation of existing attitudes. It may well be fortunate that at a moment when almost everything is changing or in doubt, and experienced, knowledgeable men are still scarce, people find it possible at least to unite behind an inspiring

leader. Pakistan’s political development was doubtless greatly handicapped by the death of several of its most inspired leaders soon after the country achieved independence, and by the country’s inability quickly to discover successors of equal charismatic appeal. This special gift of seeming grace in leaders, however, appears

as readily in fanatics and adventurers as it does in saints and politicians. Unless bound to countervailing forces, charismatic leaders can destroy individual judgment, indeed, individuals and institutions. To perpetuate a new sense of direction requires more

powerful magic than the luck that may attend a particular personality. The problem of Middle Eastern governments in the modern age is to routinize charisma by attaching it to secular

institutions, at least until these are accepted as legitimate.* 4 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, translated

by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, New York, 1947, p. 363. For the ensuing discussion of the routinization of charisma, Weber (esp. pp. 363-392) has, of course, been indispensable. For a different society analyzed from a similar perspective, see David E. Apter, The Gold Coast in Transition, Princeton, 1955, esp. pp. 294-324.

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POLITICAL PARTIES Charisma by its very nature cannot assure stability but can only originate the foundations upon which stability may be established.

Part of the leaders’ charisma needs to become routinized in bureaucracy—a set of offices that is not really institutionalized until it can survive the rise and fall of political leaders and political parties. Bureaucracies, however, are in touch with citizens only as they execute orders. Only parties can organize enthusiasm

on the basis of a solidarity of interests with citizens outside the government. The routinization of charisma in political parties

becomes possible as the leader makes consistent use of that organization, speaks in its name, and lends it his mantle. In the Middle East, leaders and parties who successfully win national _ Independence together have several signal advantages in this respect. To both leader and party a charisma will then already adhere, validated for both by heroic triumph in behalf of the community and its homeland. Both will already be experienced In maintaining an organization under conditions of adversity. Both, upon victory, are likely to possess a relatively unresented

monopoly of control to give them confidence and time for routinization. That even they sometimes fail to establish enduring institutions may well be due to weaknesses of organization,

ideology, and accountability to a larger constituency. It is to the problems of organization that we turn next. The Novelties of Voluntary Political Association

The political party is still a novel instrument of collaboration

in the Middle East. It is a voluntary organization in a region that hitherto had known only organizations based on kinship, religion, force, economic survival, or on coalitions of personal interests. Organizing a party of autonomous strangers to deal with public affairs is a new and unfamiliar art. Following upon the establishment of a number of secret political societies in the second half of the nineteenth century, the first important cadre parties began to emerge in the Middle East only in the first decade of the twentieth century. The Young Turks Associations were

united in 1908; the National Party was founded in Egypt by Mustafa Kamil in 1907. The first mass party in the Middle East [ 285 ]

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

was the Egyptian Wafd, formed in the fall of 1918 by Sa’ad Zaghlul—but by the late 1930’s it had lost its contact with the masses.

Few men join political parties until traditional social and political units become uncertain sources of concrete satisfactions, of useful, and above all hallowed ideas, and of solidarity. For a

Middle Easterner to become a member of any party is thus to pay dues to a new age. Organizers and members may not be altogether at ease with each other. Organizers are likely to be almost entirely drawn from the salaried new middle class. If they

confine their recruitment to other members of that class, they will leave the majority of the population to potential political rivals. They will also fail to establish a single political culture, and hence fail as agents of modernization. It is also difficult to organize well when the organizer entered a new age only a few years ahead of most members. The middle class is still so new that it is just beginning in most countries to overcome the cultural barriers between urban and rural inhabitants, between those

literate in the ideas of a new world and those literate in tradition, , or illiterate in both. It is not easy to attract stable support at a time of rapid transfiguration of the individual, of the relevance of his accustomed eroup loyalties, and of the truth of his values. In this uncertainty, membership in “devotee parties”? such as the Moslem Brotherhood or the communist party (which, through its front organizations, is adjusted to exploit various degrees of faith) offers a cer-

tainty and solidarity—a sacred movement—more akin to ties of kinship and religion than parties that are secular and pragmatic.

There is not only the task of recruiting but also the problem of restricting membership. While a party must mobilize more than one class to become a mass party, it is not in its interest, as Nasser learned to his chagrin in Egypt, to enlist the entire nation. If everyone is in the party, why should anyone bother to be in it? A conflict of strategies therefore arises and is seldom consciously

resolved. If the party contains a multitude that lack discipline and understanding of issues, it will be ineffective. A comprehen> The phrase is Duverger’s, Political Parties, p. 70.

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POLITICAL PARTIES

sive nationalist party may not be eager to purge itself lest it encourage the growth of rivals; yet if it accepts all who favor “nationalism” and anti-imperialism,” what will serve to inspire the party by distinguishing it from all other patriotic inhabitants? The Uses and A buses of Ideology

Truisms do not constitute programs. Parties in the Middle East

will not be capable of inducting their followers into a new political culture or of guiding change effectively unless they become ideological parties. This sounds at first glance like a recipe

for profound mischief. Daniel Bell comments: “What gives ideology its force is its passion. . . . A social movement can rouse people when it can do three things: simplify ideas, establish a claim to truth, and, in the union of the two, demand a commit-

ment to action.”® Similarly, Professor Shils observes: “It has been the belief of those who practice politics ideologically that they alone have the truth about the right ordering of life—of life

as a whole, and not just of political life.”’ By assuming that “politics should be conducted from the viewpoint of a coherent,

comprehensive set of beliefs which must override every other consideration,” ideologists make impossible the pursuit of “civil politics” based on the “virtue of the citizen who shares responsibility in his own self-government” with the understanding that no virtue is final and that every virtue costs something in terms

of other virtues.® |

A passion for dogmas that will once and for all fix loyalties and

shape decisions has often been the bent of ideological politics. Much political doctrine in this part of the world, as elsewhere, consists of basic symbols of sentiment and identification whose function it is to arouse shared emotions of enthusiasm, faith, and _ loyalty, and plausibly to explain situations which leaders have not been able to predict or control in a fashion that can sustain S Daniel Bell, “The End of Ideology in the West,” Columbia University Forum, Winter 1960, pp. 4-7. TEdward Shils, “Ideology and Civility,” The Twentieth Century, July 1959,

PS Ibid., pp. 1, 4, and 6.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION morale.? For some time to come such emotionally inciting and arational doctrines may well remain an inescapable aspect of Middle Eastern mass politics. Whenever they are allowed to become the core of political ideologies, they can easily produce a mood that becomes a substitute for constructive action, as in ultra-nationalism, or engender a spirit of dogmatic rigidity in the midst of rapid change, as in neo-Islamic totalitarianism, or be used to justify, as in communism, the sacrifice of all other values for dogma’s sake.

Yet there is a distinction to be made which is not merely analytical but reflects concrete differences in actual Middle Eastern practice. There is another aspect of ideology—the explicitly formulated framework of means and ends, the rational, experimental, and programmatic element in political ideas." The practice of, among others, Turkey’s Ataturk and Tunisia’s Bourguiba demonstrates that the two aspects of ideology—the rational

and the passionate—can both be utilized politically, but in a style and combination which minimizes the corruption of reason.

Ataturk sought deliberately to stir and stimulate passion in politics. The political tasks which his society faced were enormous and the sacrifices and efforts involved were unlikely to be contributed merely as the result of cool calculation. The principles of Ataturk’s revolution—nationalism, secularism, populism, etatism—attracted the deep emotional and intellectual commitment of many. But these principles never became political myths to be both believed and admired without question.“* They were

strong and clear enough to set broad limits (for example, ° This formulation is drawn in parts from C. E. Merriam, Political Power, New York, 1934, pp. 113ff, Lasswell and Kaplan, Power and Society, pp. 116123, and Levy, The Structure of Society, p. 169. 10 This aspect of ideology is sometimes excluded by definition. Erich Fromm, for example, has usefully distinguished two meanings of the term rationalization. Sociological rationalization refers to the way in which a social process becomes organized and systematized. Psychological rationalization is the construction of plausible excuses for one’s action. When the latter is socially patterned, adds Fromm, it becomes an ideology. (In Dissent, Winter 1954.) We have adopted essentially the same distinction, but defined the term ideology differently on the premise that in political practice, ideology usually contains both kinds of rationalization, and that the crucial question is—how much of each? 11 Ataturk at one time also encouraged the invention of the “sun-theory” according to which all the world’s languages owed their origin to Turkish—but

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POLITICAL PARTIES nationalism was to be non-expansive, secularism was opposed to

archaic religious practices but not to religious faith). As the

trine. :

fruits of decades of earnest and, at least within the emerging new middle class, open discussion, they remained flexible and never received final codification as a comprehensive and coherent doc-

Ataturk felt no compulsion to arrogate to the newly emergent

secular state a sacred and totalitarian task—to create a new faith. As a result, he became neither the prisoner of his own doctrine nor the executioner for its sake. He remained free to learn, experiment, and change. Growing discussion and participation among politically alert Turks became possible at least without being permanently confined to an authorized political grammar and vocabulary. Passion in Turkish politics was being harnessed primarily to buttress Ataturk’s charismatic position and to support each individual, concrete act of policy. Passion attached itself less intensely to the less-crystallized, and indeed still-evolving symbols of the revolution and its ideology. Hence Ataturk remained free, within broad limits, constantly and with an open mind to weigh strategies and costs in transforming his society.

An ideology that passionately fuses political myth and political requirements can devour even its adherents. A party that offers merely a set of political planks may not possess enough that is relevant to an age in which not only political power but the sense, spirit, and survival of the whole society are at stake. There are Middle Eastern parties whose program, implicitly or explicitly, expresses the aims of a vested interest group, or of a traditional class, or else the perpetuation and opportunistic exploitation of existing popular preconceptions. None of these will save a party, or a country, for long. Egypt, for most of the years between 1907 and 1952, was alternately controlled by parties offering one of these three kinds of program, and so failed to deal with social change. None of these parties—however large some grew during this period—have survived. In Iraq, most parties this was a temporary and uncharacteristic aberration of new-found pride. (See Bernard Lewis, “History-Writing and National Revival in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Affairs, Jane-July 1953, pp. 218-227.)

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

organized during the Mandate period gradually died after the achievement of independence in 1932. They had differed only on

how independence was to be won, and most of them had little desire to come to grips with internal changes thereafter.”

If a political party accepts the task of becoming one of the principal agents of social transformation, its success depends upon the adoption of an ideology in tune with rapid change—a framework of values, methods, and direction concerned with all issues of modernization, and therefore without a final comprehensiveness, a final coherence, or a final intensity. Such an ideology, given the Middle East’s scarcity of expert analysts and

practitioners in problems of social, political, and economic change, is seldom likely to be the intellectual creation of a single

man. In practice it is more likely to emerge as the product of

| continual and intense discussion and bargaining among leading members of the new middle class. Organization and accountability to a larger constituency must accompany the tempting powers of charisma and ideology if the vital encounter with political realities is to be maintained. In today’s Middle East, however, there is a tendency to infuse

ideology with too much passion and also, obversely, to ignore the task of clarifying political doctrines intellectually. The daily, unexpected exigencies of power that confront any elite, whatever the class from which it springs and the ideology it cherishes, are bound to muffle the clarity and consistency of thought and expression of party leadership. One particular obstacle to ideological clarification looms large—the dominant role of nationalism among ideologies. When independence is gained, as it is in most

states of the Middle East, by a single party uniting many different political and social views under one nationalist banner, there is often a reluctance to split such a large and comprehensive

political vehicle by refining its ideological orientation. Every politician everywhere in the modern age prefers to speak in the name of all the “people.” In an area of great scarcities and inequalities, and in an era of a plurality of rapidly, but unevenly, changing values, populism can be a mask for almost any pro12 Khadduri, Independent Iraq, pp. 31-35.

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POLITICAL PARTIES gram, or else a nostalgic emotionalism for no program but im-

mediate satisfaction. An ideology concerned not only with nationalism but also with social reform cannot help identifying domestic enemies.

As long as landowners dominate the state and exploit the majority of its people, for example, there will be no opportunity for important reforms. As long as education remains under religious control, only the past will be memorized. As long as ex-

tremist movements such as the Moslem Brotherhood and the communist party are not decisively kept out of power, the freedom to choose future courses may come to an end. Bribery and

nepotism may be endemic, but it takes political courage to name names. A call for sacrifices to be made for future investments will find many unwilling to subject themselves to an equality of wants. Thus, however prudently and shrewdly a party may proceed in transforming society, it cannot avoid making domestic enemies. And however reluctant it may be to publish this fact by formalizing its ideology, a party’s leadership will find it difficult to win and keep the kind of following it requires unless its path and purpose are made clear. Accountability in One-Party Regimes A party that perceives itself as an agent of modernization may act to establish a one-party state on the grounds that only a single

party can make sure that it is a truly national organization. A plurality of parties at this stage of development is likely to give scope to movements representing only particularistic economic, religious, ethnic, or regional interests, and hence prevent agreement on long-range planning; only a single party can sustain a determined course of economic development for a sufficiently long time to secure the foundations of national unity and pros-

perity; only a strong, single, national party can keep the army subordinate to civilian administration and the bureaucracy alert and efficient, only a single, well-organized party can marshal public opinion, which is by no means any longer feeble in the Middle East, or protect itself against coups by a score or less who can otherwise still overthrow Middle Eastern governments; only

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION a party with a clear monopoly of control can undertake those farreaching reforms in the social, economic, and political structure which are needed to remove the barriers to democracy.

Nowhere in the Middle East where single-party states have emerged, as in Egypt or Tunisia, is the situation a regression from democracy simply because no effective constitutional democracy had preceded such regimes. In contrast to the totalitarian neo-Islamic and communist parties, no one-party regime now in power in the Middle East justifies its right to govern alone in terms of dogmatic assumptions concerning the laws of historical development.” The arguments for taking an authoritarian road in the Middle Fast may be strong—but what are the odds that a political party so oriented will actually move in the direction of more democracy rather than more authoritarianism? The great obstacles involved have been explored elsewhere in this book.** One optimistic note may be sounded, however, which stems from the very

structure and substance of this analysis. If a party chooses to face the problems of modernization and social change, and hence

accepts the task of creating a new political culture, it will find that one requisite for its success is the institutionalization of accountability to an increasingly larger constituency. If a party is to be effective as an agent of modernization, it will need to attract as its nucleus a cadre of politically sensitive and skilled men, not merely party hacks awaiting favors. It will need to listen to experts and, for the very survival of their craft, allow them to debate, even if it does not always accept their advice. If a 13 Middle Eastern communist parties have their own reasons, however, at this point of the area’s political evolution for being explicitly opposed to the one-party state. Thus the Communist Baghdad daily, Sawt al-Ahrar, on Novem-

ber 11, 1959, simultaneously defended the one-party system of the U.S.S.R. while opposing the formation of a single national party under the leadership of General Kassim. In the Soviet Union, it asserted, deducing from dogma rather than fact, that there are no longer any classes requiring separate defense of their interests by separate parties. Inspired by a concern for tactical advantages rather than freedom, it observed that Iraqi “democracy springs from... . the nature of the multitude of its classes, interests, and aspirations.” 14 Chapter 11 attempts to translate the polemics of these non-totalitarian, yet pre-democratic parties into political theory—an art still neglected in the area itself—and to explore viable relationships between freedom and authority in the Middle East. Chapter 17 relates this issue to the requisites and probabilities of political stability.

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POLITICAL PARTIES regime intends to be effective in creating a new political culture,

it will also need to reach out for mass support, and teach new standards and patterns of political behavior. Such efforts will inevitably involve more flow of ideas and demands from the top to the bottom than the reverse, and much distortion and propa-

ganda will accompany that flow. However, if contact is to be maintained, the leadership will have to know what conceptions, expectations, and criticisms are in fact current among the masses

so that their own communications relate to real emotions and

concerns. If the local party branches meet regularly, much autonomous discussion of political issues is bound to be gener-

ated. This dialogue will be uneven, but, in contrast to earlier political relationships, almost constant. It is quite unlikely, given the rapidity of social change and the varieties of its expressions in the Middle East, that any leader should ever be so omnipotent as to manipulate this dialogue entirely to his own satisfaction. These points must not be exaggerated. Manipulation of cadre and ideas alike is becoming, if anything, a more refined art, distorting the process of political accounting to the constituency in many countries, not only in the Middle East. To turn skepticism into cynicism, however, is to miss certain potentialities. From a recognition of these requisites under single-party regimes, grew, as we shall see in the following section, the parliaments of Tunisia and Egypt, and the multi-party system of Turkey.

We shall now take a brief look at several case histories: (1) political parties that come closest to possessing all the attributes they require—charisma, organization, ideology, and accountability to a larger constituency—namely those of Morocco and Tunisia, yet parties which in their contrasts with each other help illuminate the relative weight of each factor; (2) a political party

that failed in its first attempts because it neglected most of these requisites, and is now trying again with these in mind, namely that of Egypt; and (3) a multi-party parliamentary regime that evolved from a one-party regime, namely that of Turkey. These cases will reveal many of the difficulties and potentialities of oneparty regimes. Other types of political parties are neglected here since it is one of the basic estimates of this volume that clique parties will almost certainly not succeed in modernizing the Mid[ 293 ]

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION dle East, and multi-party systems which precede the attainment of a modern political culture are unlikely to endure.”

Morocco and Tunisia: Modernizing Parties in Action In Morocco, the Istiglal Party was until about 1958 referred to simply as “al-hizb” or “the party” rather than the Istiqlal, as was the tendency in French and English newspapers.*® From its in-

ception the largest of Moroccan political organizations, the Istiqlal—which grew out of nationalist movements of the 1930's and was formally organized in 1944—has seen itself as “a means of political, social, and cultural education . . . a true school where

the human being learns to serve his country and his fellow patriots.”*? It does not want all Moroccans to join, however. Members must undergo probationary periods, and are not finally

accepted until their candidacy is reviewed by both local and regional bodies. Nonetheless, by 1958, the Istiglal had about 1,600,000 members in a country of 10,000,000 inhabitants. Istiqlal leaders themselves acknowledge that about 250,000 of the party’s members are active and well-informed, and about 80,000-90,000 are militants capable of organizing local activities, explaining the party’s purposes, and making major sacrifices of time and money to the party’s cause.*®

The Istiqlal organization is based on cells of between 25 and

400 members, sub-sections, and sections divided among 17 regions which are each supervised by an inspector and a regional 15 Jn Iraq, where since 1960 a number of parties have come to share similar perspectives toward political modernization—and where a modern political culture is thus already in existence among factions of the new elite—coalition government might prove a feasible mode of attaining further political modern-

ization.

16 Aj] the material in the first three paragraphs of this section is drawn from Political Change in Morocco, a doctoral dissertation by Douglas E. Ashford (Princeton University, September 18, 1959), one of the most detailed expositions of political institutions and their activities we possess for any Middle Eastern or North African country. A condensed version was published by the Princeton University Press in 1961. 17 From the Istiqlal Party newspaper al-Alam, December 29, 1955, cited by Ashford, p. 481.

18 Tt is particularly remarkable that its proportion of membership to the total population among that third of Morocco which speaks Berber is almost as large (13 percent) as among the Arabic-speaking inhabitants (19 percent).

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POLITICAL PARTIES committee. The three officers of each cell elect the officers of a sub-section, two of whom from each sub-region represent the

section committee and in turn elect one member to sit on the

regional committee. The regional inspector, appointed by national headquarters, reviews all elections. A Political Committee of about 40 members has in recent years acted as the Istiqlal’s governing body, while its formal supreme authority, the Congress, meets rarely and does not initiate issues and decisions. Of all these institutions, the inspectors are perhaps the closest in

touch with both the top and the base of the party. It is their job to organize new sections and sub-sections, review the admission of new members and all disciplinary actions, supervise the submission of reports from the subordinate levels, and guide the party’s major campaigns. They are salaried officials, earning about $300 a month, and are equipped with a car and clerical assistance. Once a month they convene at party headquarters in Rabat for two or three days to hear reports from the top party leadership and Istiqlal members of government. “These reports . .. do not appear to be passively reviewed, but are open to questioning and debate.” In turn, these inspectors meet about once a

month with their sections to explain the subjects covered at | Rabat. In addition, central and regional cadre schools have trained several thousand militants for two- or four-week periods since 1956, in part to fill gaps created by the departure of skilled Istiqlal members for government positions. Although efforts are being made to have at least one literate officer per cell, known as the instructor, who can read the party’s Internal Bulletin to the cell and give literacy lessons, normally only every fourth or fifth cell now has such an officer.

These links of organization and accountability—themselves not without charismatic overtones, since similar (if less bureau-

cratic) patterns of operation had been practiced before independence under conditions of great danger, clandestineness, and although the former are largely rural. Ashford also estimates that if only 10 percent of the members pay dues regularly, the party would have an income

of slightly under $500,000 a year, not counting special contributions from wealthy donors.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION repression’*—are further reinforced by the frequent speeches and

rallies of the heroes of the party, especially Allal al-Fassi, throughout Morocco. In a country that had been isolated from the main currents of European, Ottoman, and modern Arab thought at least until the first decade of the present century, and then was governed until 1956 by France without free Moroccan participation, the building of a party of such magnitude and organization is an extraordinary accomplishment.” Nonetheless, in January 1959, the Istiqlal split, and the Democratic Istiqlal Party, restyled later that year as the National Union

of Popular Forces (NUPF), emerged from its ranks. The new party, no less than the old, believes in “collective direction, discussion at the base, and the extension of national responsibilities

to all levels of the population.”** The novel element in the National Union, as its leader, Ben Barka, declared, is that “the NUPF marks the changeover from organizations centered on personalities to those based on ideologies.” This had been the weakness of the Istiqlal. It contained leaders like Allal al-Fassi, ’alim and descendent of an ’alim™* of Fez. Fez,

one of the oldest cities of Morocco, had changed its culture and faith even by the middle of the twentieth century far less than Rabat, not to speak of Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city, which 1° Thirteen of the 16 inspectors Ashford interviewed had been imprisoned for some period during the nationalist struggle between 1952-1955. 20 There are other Moroccan parties, but these are all quite small and play

only a minor role. It is characteristic of the emerging political consensus of Morocco that all parties feel compelled to oppose “feudalism” and favor “socialism.” However, the Popular Movement—led by Captain Mahjoubi Ahardane, one of the principal organizers of the Army of Liberation, and Dr. Abdelkrim Khattib, a Casablanca surgeon married to the daughter of the hero of the Riffian War, Abd al-Krim—speaks primarily for the mountain Berbers and rural countryside, especially in the Riff. During the Riffian disorders in the fall of 1958, both leaders were arrested for a time. (For their program, see the Ahardane interview with Vie Francaise, Casablanca, April 24, 1959). The Democratic Party of Independence, led by Mohammed Hassan Wazzani, speaks for the more conservative, but secular urban elements. Its course, like that of the still smaller Unity Party, led by Mekki Naciri, has often been opportunistic. (For the present program of the former, see Vie Francaise, Casablanca, April 17, 1959). 21 Mehdi Ben Barka, the organizer of the new party was also one of the Istiqlal’s principal organizational innovators. 22 La Vigie Marocaine, Casablanca, January 26, 1959. 23 *glim is the singular of ulema, signifying scholars of Islamic tradition. Al-

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POLITICAL PARTIES had been a mere village at the turn of this century.** The Istiqlal also contained French-educated Ahmed Balafrej, its Secretary

General, son of an upper-class Rabat family and founder of Istiglal-supported, coeducational, secular, and higher level free schools. One of its most generous financial supporters was Mohammed Laghzaoui, a self-made businessman who, after independence, was appointed Director of National Security under the King’s sole authority, and who was expelled from the Executive Committee of the Istiglal in 1958 for allowing the police to intervene ruthlessly in Istiqlal’s public demonstrations. Until 1959, the Istiglal also held Mehdi Ben Barka, who spoke for labor and youth.”° Son of a policeman, Ben Barka trained at Algiers University before he became a professor of mathematics and subsequently president of independent Morocco’s Consultative Assembly. Thus the Istiqlal could not speak with a single, clear, and

emphatic voice on the political destiny of post-independent Morocco.

Although the Istiqlal had frequently declared that “independence is not an end but a means,” and had sponsored “Operation

Labor,” a cooperative farm project, and the building of the “Unity Road,” these slogans and actions were largely initiated by those who subsequently broke away because they discovered that such efforts marked the outer limits of the existing Istiqlal consensus.

The new National Union of Popular Forces proclaimed that “there is no contradiction whatsoever between the interests of the

various classes among the Moroccan people.”** It is a more closely knit alliance than the Istiqlal, being composed primarily of the younger members of the new middle class and the majority of the trade union movement.** It has especially attracted those Fassi’s father taught at the famous Karouine University at Fez; Allal al-Fassi himself, having passed the examination for ’alim but having been denied the title for refusing to declare himself loyal to the French Protectorate, taught Islamic subjects unofficially to large audiences. 24 Roger LeTourneau, Fés Avant Le Protectorat, Casablanca, Société Marocaine de Librairie et D’Edition, 1947, especially p. 585, note 1, and pp. 453-471; 481-494; 585-624. 25 See “Mehdi Ben Barka, le rebelle,” Le Monde, January 30, 1959. 26 See the Manifesto of its Constituent Congress, September 6, 1959.

27 Its National Administrative Committee of 33 contains several of the principal trade union leaders, five teachers, three journalists, three administrators,

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION members of the Istiqlal who organized armed resistance against France while al-Fassi and his fellow-leaders were in prison or exile, and these include particularly men who arrived in the city only recently from the rural countryside. It is on this base that

Ben Barka intends to broaden the National Union into an al-

liance of workers and peasants with the new middle class.” As a result, the ideology of the new National Union is much more explicit than that of the old Istiqlal. It is based on “leader-

ship, planning, and democratic association” and on “austerity and work.”*® In the wake of this split, the perspectives of the rump Istiqlal have also become crystallized. Although al-Fassi still speaks of social and economic progress, he now focuses his

attacks on the National Union by accusing it of constituting a “heresy,” while rallying the remains of the Istiqlal around the “defense of Islam and tradition against ‘secular materialism,’ if not monarchial faith against revolutionary spirit.”*° He also concentrates much attention on the need to liberate Mauritania, Ifni, Rio de Oro, Ceuta, and Melilla. By early 1960, the increasingly sharp contest for control of the

government between the National Union and its various opponents, including the Crown Prince and the army, was being kept in bounds only because King Mohammed V still remained

the supreme legal, traditional, and charismatic arbiter of the public realm. When, upon the death of Mohammed V, Crown Prince Hassan became both King and Prime Minister, he reafone lawyer, six businessmen, almost all of them in their forties or younger (Ben Barka was born in 1920), rather than in their fifties like Istiqlal leader al-Fassi. The Istiqlal Party had apparently become dominated by the “older generation,” at least from the viewpoint of a country in which half the people are under 20 years old. Ashford found that, of the delegates to the August 1956 Congress of the Istiqlal, two-fifths were in the 20-30 age group, another two-fifths in the 30-40 age group, but that the bulk of both these groups had joined before 1952. Only 11 percent of the delegates had joined during or after

the resistance period (1952-1956). At the Fourth Annual Congress of the National Union of Moroccan Students held at Agadir, August 22-28, 1959, only 3 of the 110 delegates present spoke for al-Fassi, and two of these were graduates of Karouine, the traditional Moslem University. (See al-Ayyam [Casablanca weekly], August 27, 1959, and al-Tahrir, Casablanca, August 28, 1959.) 28 Problémes d’Edification du Maroc and du Maghreb, p. 30. 29 Manifesto of the Constituent Congress of the National Union. 30 See al-Istiqlal, the French-language newspaper of the party, January 31, 1959, quoted by Ashford, Political Change in Morocco, p. 582.

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POLITICAL PARTIES firmed his father’s promise that Morocco would move toward constitutional and more representative government. Formally speaking, progress in that direction may be noted. In actuality, however, the King is attempting to become the country’s chief modernizer while avoiding dependence on any political party. It remains an open question whether and at what price parties of this caliber may be prudently ignored. The Neo-Destour (New Constitution) Party of Tunisia seems almost to be a twin of the Istiqlal, yet it has experienced none of the travail of the Istiglal. The comparisons are instructive. The Neo-Destour, like the Istiglal, was founded in the 1930's, is organized on the basis of cells and, until recently, federations, with a corps of internal party inspectors. In 1959, it contained about 350,000 members in a country of 3,650,000 inhabitants, or about 25-30 percent of all adult males. About 100,000 of these members, from 18-25 years of age, were organized in youth : groups, disciplined enough to be called upon at times to reinforce the police at public demonstrations. Furthermore, about 300,000 Tunisians, many in addition to their individual membership in the Neo-Destour, were members of the General Union of Tunisian Labor, the Tunisian Union of Artisans and Merchants, the National Union of Tunisian Farmers, the National Union of Tunisian Women, the General Union of Tunisian Students, and

the Tunisian Boy Scouts—all affiliated with the Neo-Destour. Unlike the Istiqlal, however, the Neo-Destour’s control over its affiliated organizations has never been seriously challenged, and its membership is distributed evenly in proportion to the population everywhere in the country.** This may be partially due to

the fact that Tunisia is a more homogeneous country than Morocco. Only a few thousand Tunisians speak Berber in contrast to the Arabic-speaking majority; in Morocco, about one-

third of the population speak Berber, and many parts of the 31 Based on unpublished figures presented by Douglas Ashford to the Princeton University Conference on Current Problems in North Africa, December 15, 1959. For two excellent recent discussions of the Neo-Destour Party, see Clem-

ent Henry Moore, “The Neo-Destour Party: A Structure for Democracy, World Politics, April 1962, pp. 461-82 (based on his forthcoming doctoral dissertation), and Keith Callard, “The Republic of Bourguiba,” International Journal, Winter 1960-1961.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION country are mountainous, making communication difficult. The Neo-Destour’s advantage may also stem from Tunisia’s earlier

political evolution. In Tunisia, the split in the umbrella-like nationalist movement (akin to India’s Congress Party) took place

in 1934 when the Neo-Destour broke away from the Destour Party. In Morocco, this same splitting did not take place until 1959.

The charismatic character of the Neo-Destour’s leader, Habib

Bourguiba, who is also President of Tunisia, has never had to suffer serious competition.** In Morocco, King Mohammed V

had far greater charismatic appeal than any Istiqlal leader. Within the Istiqlal, al-Fassi has never been more than first among equals. Moreover, the Istiqlal was forced by pressures from with-

out and weaknesses within to forego certain vital sources of charisma. With most of its top men arrested or in exile after 1952, the Istiglal leadership was unable to retain control and inspiration of the entire resistance movement against France. While Bourguiba became the “Supreme Warrior” of Tunisia’s resistance, leadership in Morocco at the crucial historical moment devolved on only a portion of the Istiqlal and the charismatic sanction flowing from the activities of this period therefore

has to be shared with other organizations—in rural areas with the Army of Resistance, in urban areas with trade unions and separate terrorist groups.

The Neo-Destour, in contrast to the Istiqlal, did not have to wait to be called to power in an independent country, nor then share its power with other parties, and always at a lower level than that of a royal house. On the contrary, the Neo-Destour, from the beginning of independence, when it was voted into power in a free election, has been entirely in control of government, and Bourguiba has been the uncontested leader of both party and government.** No other party matters; both the Old 82 The royal Beylical family had lost its popular appeal sometime before its deposition as Tunisia’s ruling house by Bourguiba in 1957. 83 A Secretary General of the Neo-Destour, Salah Ben Youssef, contested Bourguiba’s power briefly in 1955, and lost. His timing, at the very least, made it a hopeless attempt. He opposed negotiations with France and demanded a return to violence at a point when Bourguiba’s diplomacy had clearly placed independence within grasp. Exiled to Egypt, he was accused of making attempts

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POLITICAL PARTIES Destour Party and the Communist Party are moribund. Until recently, Bourguiba has been the chief executive and legislator, with power also to appoint and transfer judges. Almost from the beginning of independence, Bourguiba has discussed political problems in regular weekly “fireside chats” on the radio, and in many visits to all parts of the countryside. His party and its front organizations are continually active in explaining, mobilizing, supervising, and recruiting. Each party cell, containing between 50 and 1,000 members, continues to be part of a party intelligence network that was shaped under conditions of repres-

sion and clandestineness of the pre-independence days. No position is filled in the civil service or army, no job in any govern-

ment controlled enterprise, and no scholarship granted without approval of the party, even if party membership itself is not essential. The party not merely links the people to the government, it cannot be ignored. To prevent slackness in the face of sheer size, and corruption and abuse in the face of such power, Bourguiba has been strict— but humane. There is little corruption in Tunisia; neither is there an atmosphere of police terror. Much has been accomplished by the sheer spirit of trust and devotion. Most of the leaders share a

similar intellectual and social background (much more so than

the leaders of the Istiqlal), and have known each other for decades under the most trying political, economic, and personal pressures. Unlike the Istiqlal, the party has kept itself young and

disciplined. Thus in late 1958, Bourguiba abolished the headquarters of the regional federations, where old fighters had tended

to relax into sinecures or abused their influence, and replaced them with young inspectors responsible to the national center.

Much has also been done by prevention. The 15 Regional Governors, almost all of them quite young, are never sent to a region in which they have been born or raised. They may acquire no real estate or business interests in their area without permission of the Secretary of State for Interior. And those who disagree

do not necessarily remain in the wilderness. When the newsto assassinate Bourguiba, and several of his accomplices have been sentenced to death in recent years by Tunisian courts. In 1961, he was himself assassinated while in Germany.

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paper L’Action was suspended in the summer of 1958 for its | sharp criticism of Bourguiba’s foreign and domestic policies, one of its editors, Mohammed Masmoudi, was also dropped from the Neo-Destour’s Political Bureau and removed as Ambassador to

France. By year’s end, however, he was back in the Political Bureau and made Secretary of State for Information.** Similarly,

Ahmed Ben Salah, after disagreeing with Bourguiba and so seeing himself ousted as Secretary General of Tunisia’s trade unions, soon returned to the fold to receive a cabinet appointment.

In fact, it is in Neo-Destour’s relationship with labor that its

strength and character are most apparent. The trade union’s membership is almost as large as that of the Neo-Destour Party (about 250,000) and, indeed, over half of the dues-paying members of the Neo-Destour are also members of the General Union

of Tunisian Labor (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail—

UGTT). In Morocco, the trade unions were for four years autonomously allied with the Istiqlal, having been organized in 1955 before the Istiglal had quite reconstituted itself as a disciplined organization after the years of repression; in 1959, the trade union movement became an equal partner of the Istiqlal splinter, the National Union of Popular Forces. In Tunisia, on the other hand, they have always remained the Neo-Destour’s junior partner. The Tunisian union cannot avoid recognizing Bourguiba’s power: he controls the Neo-Destour Party and no leader matches his popularity; he controls the police, the press, and could influence the courts. Few jobs are to be had without Neo-Destour approval. There are also positive reasons for the alliance. In contrast to Morocco—where the new middle class had to share its leadership of the Istiglal with men who received a traditional Moslem education, descended from notable families, or possessed major business interests—both the Neo-Destour and the Tunisian 34 Masmoudi renewed his newspaper criticism of Bourguiba in the summer of 1961 after the French massacre of largely ill-armed and unarmed demonstrators against the remaining French military base at Bizerte caught the Tunisian President off guard. This time Masmoudi was dismissed from the party and all official positions for having resorted, as Bourguiba told the Tunisian people, to public criticism rather than discussion within the party.

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trade unions were under almost exclusive control of the new middle class. These two organizations therefore find it easier than parallel organizations in Morocco to share the same perspectives

on the need for unity, reform, and austerity. When they differ, there is ample opportunity for continuous discussion. All trade union and Neo-Destour factions are represented in the latter’s Political Bureau. Trade union leaders head the Ministries for Commerce and Industry, Agriculture, Education, and Social Affairs. Thus they consult and are consulted: they also know first-hand the tough realities of Tunisian life and share in responsibility for its successes and failures. They remain junior partners, but they also know that there lies behind the appearance of the Neo-Destour as a mass party that explicitly disavows class struggle, as in the disavowal of Morocco’s new National Union of Popular Forces, the reality of a class alliance between the new middle class and the workers.*® The trade unions recognize that they cannot compete against the charismatic personality of Bour-

guiba and the superior organization of the Neo-Destour. The Neo-Destour knows that it could not maintain a superior organi-

zation or a united country without the support of the trade unions. The Neo-Destour is committed ideologically to account for the

use of power to an increasingly effective constituency. On November 8, 1959, Bourguiba kept his promise to hold free elections for an Assembly that for the first time in Tunisian history would possess legislative and financial powers. Although only Neo-Destour members, including 16 trade union figures, were elected, the arena of discussion and action has been broadened. Extraordinary power has been employed to fashion a new political culture, and now power is being relaxed in the confidence of a new consensus.

The Neo-Destour’s experiment has benefitted from several special advantages. Tunisia has a cultural homogeneity rare in North Africa or the Middle East. It has been continually open 35 In contrast to Morocco, the Tunisian traditional bourgeoisie and many Moslem religious leaders stand discredited as a result of their collaboration with France. In Morocco, most of the traditional bourgeoisie did not thus discredit itself and retains considerable influence, while religious leaders could be found in both the French and nationalist camps.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION for centuries to currents of thought coming from all shores of the Mediterranean. Its prolonged struggle for independence was carried on under unified leadership which succeeded in enlisting the

majority in well-organized and sacrificial campaigns. But the Tunisian experiment may yet fail. Being still fresh and novel as an experiment, it could suffer severely by the early death of so capable and charismatic a guide as Bourguiba. Even more serious is the great shortage of economic resources in the face of a rapidly growing population. The Neo-Destour, under such pressures, might suffer a split between its party and its trade union affiliate.

Such a split need not by itself mean the end of stable government. If the competition to satisfy the sheer necessities of life does

not become unbearable, if the military does not become partisan in its own cause, and if a split within the Neo-Destour does not exclusively pit a new middle class party intent upon austerity for the sake of long-term gains against a workers’ party intent upon immediate rewards—all grave “if’s’”—a fruitful encounter could ensue. If both splinters accept, albeit in different degrees, a common consensus resting on socialism, nationalism, and guided democracy, they may be able to acknowledge each other’s presence in the political realm since they could thus concede legitimacy to each other.

Egypt: Learning from Failure

Egypt elected its first consultative Assembly of Notables in 1866 and organized its first open political party in 1907—each the earliest of its kind in the Arab world. Nonetheless, its parliaments and parties experienced few periods of sustained freedom and effectiveness and were forced to yield to military rule in 1952. ‘The reasons seem clear.

First, all critical powers affecting Egypt’s social and economic structure, no less than all its foreign and domestic relations, always remained under the control of the king, and the king was usually under the influence of the British Residency. The result was a constant but unevenly balanced struggle between the king’s friends and those political leaders who wished to serve non-royal [ 304 ]

POLITICAL PARTIES

interests, whether those of the nation or their own. The first Egyptian ruler to find warrant in the Koran for the thought that he should govern with the advice of his people,*° the Khedive Ismail, established the Assembly of Notables to serve his own needs. He required domestic support against increasing foreign pressures, and needed the appearances of a constitutional monarchy to receive more favorable European loans. Although this Assembly, composed largely of village notables, thoughtfully discussed the administration of agriculture, finance, and justice, Isma’il kept a strict rein. The Assembly could receive no petitions,

and had to meet in camera.*" When, in 1878, a petition signed by 1,600 was presented to the Khedive stressing the absolute necessity of modern representative institutions for the sake of orderly communal life, the Khedive, with British and French advice, responded by firing both the chief petitioners and dismissing the Assembly. Thus the road was left open for the only

remaining force, the Egyptian Army under Colonel Ahmed Arabi, to stage a coup for the first time in modern history in behalf of nationalism and reform. British occupation of Egypt in 1882 put an end to this first army coup, though it was to fail at Suez in 1956 to put an end to the second. A new advisory Legislative Council and Assembly were established in 1883. Yet when, on March 2, 1907, the Khedive Abbas II received a petition for the creation of a really effective Assembly, he replied that this request “was too important to be dealt with by . . . the Assembly.”*®

The Constitution of 1923 opened an era that might have been more liberal—two-thirds of the Parliament could now override the King’s veto—had that constitution also marked a willingness on the part of the King and the British to accommodate themselves to major changes in Egyptian political, economic, and social relationships. This was not the case, and consequently a structure suited to bargaining and compromise was destroyed both by outright battles among irreconcilable forces and by the means used to avoid such battles. As parties inside and outside

86 Sura 42, Verse 38. |

87 Jacob Landau, Parliaments and Parties in Egypt, New York, 1954, pp. 9-22. 88 Ibid., p. 53.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION parliament strove for fundamental alterations in the system—at least in ending British influence and curbing the King’s—the King reacted by revising the liberal constitution, or ruling without constitutions, rigging elections, curbing the freedom of press, assembly, and speech, and, with his resources as largest landowner in the nation, bribing party factions and parliamentarians. It is unlikely under such circumstances that an effective party system could have come into being, whether inside or outside of parliament. But the parties that grew up also contributed faults of their own. The first to arise, Mustafa Kamil’s National Party, concentrated on a foreign issue—the removal of British controls —and in the domestic realm confined itself to constitutional and educational reforms designed to give greater scope to the new professional groups. Apart from a single appeal for industrialization, there were no allusions to economic questions.*® “It is more than doubtful if Kamil or his chief adherents, most of them members of well-to-do families, actually appreciated the great social gap between the rich and the fellahin, with no influential

middle class to bridge it. As is manifest in their official programmes, they were not particularly concerned with Egypt’s social problems; and up to 1907, towards the end of his life, Kamil himself, in his speeches and articles, exhibited but little interest in the lot of the fellahin.”*° The Wafd party, beginning in the fall of 1918, became under Saad Zaghlul’s leadership the first truly national party in Egypt with an organization sufficient even outside the principal cities to

win any election. Though its leadership drew from a broader component of society than the National Party—including professional men, landowners, industrialists, and members of the intelligentsia—it focused its attention just as exclusively on ending British controls and limiting royal prerogatives. When the first of these goals came within much closer reach

through the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, the Wafd lost its élan and much of its hold on the salaried and would-be salaried new middle class and the urban workers. To the growing pres89 Charles Issawi, Egypt, An Economic and Social Analysis, London, 1947,

i. © Landau, Parliaments and Parties in Egypt, p. 118.

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POLITICAL PARTIES sure for domestic reforms, the Wafd responded most gingerly.**

While the new middle class began to conspire against such a system, especially within the army, or, together with urban workers, joined the Moslem Brotherhood and other anti-parlia-

mentary groups, the Wafd leadership split. Factions or new parties emerged within its body, some favoring the special interests of landlords or industrialists, some seeking safety in the face of pressures from below in continued dependence on Great Britain, or else trying to channel social discontent into even more

intense anti-British campaigns. Others tried to use the system while it endured at least to enrich themselves or to plead vainly for major social reforms.

The other parliamentary political parties in Egypt had made

no effort at all to recruit broad support. The pro-British and usually pro-royalist Constitutional Liberal Party, founded in 1922, and the always royalist Union Party, founded in 1925, had sufficient social and economic power not to require mass support

in order to function within a system manipulated by men like themselves. Indeed, with their policies, they had no hope of gaining such support.

The army coup of July 1952 was designed to clean away a system that had been neither effective nor representative. Sweep-

ing away the hollow or corrupt forms of the past was simple enough. The task which thereafter faced the Revolutionary Com-

mand Council—a small group of officers headed by Colonel Gamal Abd al-Nasser, with General Mohammed Nagib as their intended figurehead—was far more difficult. The new regime set out to accomplish all that the old had neglected: to fashion beyond the evident charismatic appeal of the new leaders a disciplined, enthusiastic political organization able to come to grips with the problems of social change and willing to account for its actions to the Egyptian constituency. In the beginning, it had not anticipated having to plan and act in this fashion. Like the Syrian military dictators between 1949 41 Tt established free primary and secondary education, but failed to build enough schools to accommodate the majority of children of school age. It legalized trade unions, but continued to restrict their freedom of action. It opened rural reconstruction centers, but did not touch land reform.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION | and 1954 (Za’im, Hinawi, Silu, and Shishakli), the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council looked for support first to those political parties which seemed nearest in ideology and most eager to cooperate. The military regime maintained contact with the Moslem Brotherhood, permitting its existence when all other

parties were dissolved. For a long time, the new government continued to negotiate with the Brotherhood’s leaders, looking for some way of integrating the movement into the junta’s ruling system.*”

All these attempts proved futile and even dangerous to the regime. The old parties had been corrupt and corrupting; the newer ideological parties had ambitions of their own, and were not eager to have their most appealing planks adapted by military officers who would yield only second place to civilian politicians.** Yet Nasser could not survive if he could reach for support only as far as his small Revolutionary Command Council. Within a small executive committee in which one cannot decisively measure one’s own political strength, or that of any rival, cohesion 1s bound to be unstable. Hence Nasser (like all other modern Middle Eastern leaders, whatever the strength of their charisma) was compelled to organize a political movement of

his own, both as a steadying balance to the small nucleus of equals to whom he originally owed much of his success, and as an instrument for recruiting secondary leaders and mobilizing broad support.

In January 1953, therefore, Nasser dissolved all political parties and founded the Liberation Rally.** Its purpose was to #2 See Anwar al-Sadat, Revolt on the Nile, New York, 1957, especially Chap-

ters 3, 4, 7, and 10. Also al-Ahram, Cairo, December 12, 1954. Part of the material and formulations in this and the following six paragraphs of this section are drawn from an unpublished seminar paper by Shimon Shamir, “The Failure of Single National Parties under Government Leadership in Egypt and Syria in the Last Decade,” Princeton University, Fall 1958. See also Shamir’s “Five Years of the Liberation Rally in Egypt,” Hamizrah Hehadash, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1957, pp. 261-78. 43 This has twice been the fate of the Arab Socialist Resurrectionist Party of Syria—first under Shishakli in Syria, later under Nasser in the United Arab Republic. Both times much of their thunder was stolen; then, as they sought to profit from it, the military ruler formed his own party. 44 The program of the new party was published in al-Ahram, Cairo, January 16, 1953. Mohammed Nagib’s Egypt's Destiny, pp. 184-185, contains an English translation.

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POLITICAL PARTIES cement support for the regime, mold a “new” Egyptian individual and a united, proud, and productive Egyptian society, and mobilize the nation for raising its standard of living. Officers carried the “message of the revolution”—unity-order-work—to villages and tribes, universities, trade unions, mosques, Coptic churches,

and Jewish synagogues. They preached self-reliance, productivity, efficiency, and self-sacrifice, and called for a recovery from the servile qualities attributed to long imperialist occupation. The

Liberation Rally organized its own youth movement and rfe-

organized the trade unions. |

The early days of the Liberation Rally were spontaneous, ascetic, and idealistic. Officers personally settled local blood

feuds and sometimes forbade the audiences to whom they spoke to cheer them.*® “Liberation Medical Missions” composed of volunteer doctors and nurses and military medical staffs freely treated villagers once a week. “Liberation Classes” by volunteer teachers taught reading to illiterate adults. In collaboration with

the Supreme Council for National Production, the Liberation Rally also published during its first year a plan for “The Popular

Mobilization for Economic and Social Reform” involving the organization of investments, experts, and cooperatives in order to

build a new system, “fifth to the fascist, capitalist, communist, and socialist systems.”*°

Yet the Liberation Rally failed. After 1955, it was scarcely mentioned in the government controlled Egyptian press. Its necessary educational and economic ventures were being continued under governmental auspices. The reasons for this failure are worth analyzing. First, there was a shortage of shrewd, enterprising, disciplined organizers. This is a scarce talent in all fields of endeavor in a society which, until recently, had no room for

the innovator and saw no need for organizing what did not already exist. As a result, the Liberation Rally reorganized itself repeatedly but vainly in its first few years of existence, while control over local branches was frequently lost. Secondly, there was a scarcity of political skills and experience. 45 A similar attitude toward applause characterized the early days of General Kassim’s regime in Iraq. 46 ql-Ahram, Cairo, July 27, 1953.

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6

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

Unlike the Tunisian Neo-Destour Party, Nasser’s Liberation Rally could not draw upon the loyalty and cohesion of a movement tested in the battle for power. In Egypt the leadership had triumphed alone as a result of a successful conspiracy. The need for a party arose afterwards. Yet instead of building a reliable

core first, favored by the authorities in return for its talented services, the regime tried to mobilize millions in a few weeks. Vast crowds were assembled to repeat in unison the oath of the Liberation Rally. Entire trade unions and other organizations joined through the signature of their presidents or secretaries. Then everyone went home as before while spokesmen for the Rally announced that five to six million members joined in the ~

first wave. ,

Finally, no one attempted to define the movement’s ideology and the member’s tasks except in terms so broad that no Egyptian

inside the movement could readily distinguish himself from Egyptians without. Thus, no one was ideologically attracted to the Liberation Rally; on the contrary, the Rally came to incorporate people who remained uncommitted.**

After 1955, the Liberation Rally became an instrument for neutralizing rather than mobilizing labor unions, student groups, and other potentially independent political groups, while membership in it became a screening device for checking and select-

ing all political appointees. Single party movements can thus become tools for preserving the new status quo. They can accomplish this task, however, only at the cost of failing as instruments of political modernization.

In 1958, after the merger of Syria with Egypt, Nasser set out 47 In all these facets of political mobilization, the Syrian military dictator, Colonel Adib Shishakli, had earlier failed even more quickly than the Egyptian regime. Shishakli, who came to power in November 1951, did not form his Arab Liberation Movement until October 1952, and by then his position had already been weakened. He had never enjoyed the popularity of Nasser and his

colleagues, who appeared as liberators, whereas Shishakli was seen as the fourth of a series of military dictators. Syria was also a far more divided country than Egypt. Shishakli’s platform, even more so than that of the Liberation Rally, failed to distinguish clearly between partisan and opponent: “Let all those who believe in God, in their country, and in the Arab idea come forward to us, but let those whose hearts are not pure abstain from placing obstacles in our way, for they will be crushed.” (New York Times, October 25, 1952.) In 1954, Shishakli’s regime was overthrown, and his party disappeared.

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once again to build a new party—the National Union—as an instrument that would concentrate on mobilizing popular support

for the tasks of internal reconstruction—the doubling of the national income of the United Arab Republic in ten years and the establishment of a “cooperative, socialist and democratic society.”** In 1961, after Syria broke with Egypt, Nasser was compelled to reorganize his movement for a third time.

The “Arab Socialist Union” which he set in motion in 1962 constitutes more than another administrative reshuffle. It is the sum of many lessons learned. The Liberation Rally welcomed all

active citizens so that they might become organized in a mass movement. The National Union, by combining open nominations, official screening of nominees, and free elections of all local committees, hoped to fashion a transitional organization which, while capable of rallying mass support for specific local and national

tasks, would generate and train the nucleus of a future cadre party. In each village, town, and province committees of the National Union supervised and organized Egyptians in activities

ranging from building schools with volunteer labor to writing prize essays on the nation’s aims. The results, however, were uneven. In some villages and towns the committees effectively substituted their power for that of the traditional leading families. In others, these families managed to fill the committees with their own clients and followers.*®

Stung by the ability of anti-socialist and locally powerful elements to overthrow the government of the Syrian Region of the United Arab Republic, Nasser abandoned what he came to regard as the dangerously, or at least inadequately mixed, composition of the National Union. The rapid forward movement into socialist planning outlined in the “National Charter” of July 1962 also required a more disciplined, ideologically sensitive political movement. The Arab Socialist Union, therefore, has 48 ql-Ahram, Cairo, July 2, 1959.

*°In one Egyptian village visited by the author, the established local headman had picked himself, plus two members from each of the three rival factions into which the village has been traditionally divided, for the required seven in the executive committee. His group had been elected. What was new in the village, however, was that the headman had been unable to dissuade an opposi-

tion slate, led by a teacher, from running. Indeed, he found himself, after

election, appointing most of his opposition to sub-committee chairmanships. —

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION been organized from the beginning as a cadre party. A control committee will decide who is fit for membership—selecting probably no more than ten percent of the nation. Not less than half of all its committees will be composed of workers and peasants—

thus reflecting the movement’s social concerns, leaving little room for traditional landed or bourgeois elements to enter, and making it easier for the educated salaried middle class to control the organization. Villages, factories, and towns will be allowed to

vote in order to decide who among the members of the Arab Socialist Union should hold specific offices. Nasset’s repeated efforts thus amply demonstrate that a charis-

matic leader committed to rapid modernization cannot avoid trying to solve the problems of political organization, ideology, and accountability. Turkey: From the One-Party to the Multi-Party System Turkey’s extraordinary achievement in deliberately and peacefully evolving from a dictatorship in the 1920’s to a multi-party system in the late 1940’s demonstrates that such a transition is not a utopian expectation.®® Nowhere else in Asia or Africa has

modernization so far maintained its momentum except under one-party rule (as in Tunisia) or under a multi-party system in which the ruling party is not threatened by defeat (as in India). Only the Turks have sustained an effort to modernize while main-

taining at least two parties that expected, from time to time, to yield power to each other. There are good reasons why this Turkish experiment has so far survived several major crises. Some of its strong foundations were originally created by the good fortunes of history, others by the perceptive strength of leadership.** But the first conclusion one may draw is that in Turkey, as everywhere else, democracy did not arrive as a gift from above: it had to be struggled for _5°The first detailed and critical exploration of this particular achievement and its unfinished tasks is at last available in Kemal H. Karpat’s penetrating book, Turkey’s Politics: The Transition to a Multi-Party System. 51 The character of Ataturk’s leadership has been described earlier in this chapter; the historical foundations that have given Turkey more political stability than most other Middle Eastern countries are discussed in Chapter 17.

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POLITICAL PARTIES and is still being severely tested. After being in power for more than two decades, the Republican People’s Party showed courage and resiliency in moving toward democracy after World War

II. It was being faithful to Ataturk’s promise, but it was also responding to a changed international environment in which many dictators had fallen and there were new advantages both in looking and in being democratic. And its change in course was at least equally the result of a clear perception of domestic realities. The Republican People’s Party could either allow some free scope to an opposition composed of landowners fearful of Republican attempts to pursue land reform, businessmen chafing at government controls, ambitious but politically frustrated leaders of its own party, workers and urban consumers dismayed at the constantly rising cost of living, religious conservatives, Christian and Jewish minorities recently hit hard by a confiscatory tax, and poor peasants whose expectations had at last risen but remained unsatisfied.°’ Or it would be forced to embark on a much harsher dictatorsip than ever before, yet with few prospects of being able to contain these dissidents either within its own ranks or outside.

The leadership of the new Democratic Party in 1946 was drawn almost entirely from the experienced ranks of the Republican People’s Party. The initial tolerance of the Republicans may

well have rested on the assumption that their former allies neither |

would nor could soon organize a strong, or boldly opposing, | party from among such disparate elements, and thus for long be content to remain an innocent ornament of democracy.°* Within a few months, however, the Republicans became frightened by the new democracy and rigged the elections of 1946 to defeat the rapidly gaining Democrats. Democracy was to become all the

more strongly felt and rooted in Turkey for having had to be : wrested over a four-year period from the dominant regime by heavy but skillfully organized political pressure. In 1950, the Republican regime became the first Middle Eastern regime in modern history to allow itself to be defeated in a free election. 52 See Dankwart A. Rustow, “Politics and Islam in Turkey 1920-1955,” in Islam and the West, edited by Richard N. Frye, Hague, 1957, p. 91. 58 Karpat, Turkey’s Politics, pp. 152-153.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION A second conclusion to be derived from Turkey’s experience is the reaffirmation that democracy is never finally won but must always be vigorously sustained if it is to survive. Between 1954 and 1960, under the Democratic Premiership of Adnan Men_deres, the Turkish government once again restricted freedom of speech, public assembly, and the press, and curbed the activities of opposition parties and the autonomy of universities. The chief underlying cause for this retreat would seem to be that Turkey had adopted democracy before it was well-launched on a course of self-propelled growth, and before its new urban consensus had yet been adopted by the rural countryside.** Despite its enormous gains, the Turkish economy cannot yet envisage the day when it will prosper without large infusions of foreign credits. Despite

the secularization of most of the Turkish middle class, the majority of the people remain far more familiar with the habits and outlook of traditional Islam than with those of Ataturk. Menderes himself reflected some of the limitations of a society

whose economic structure and political majority had not yet quite the capacity to sustain a steady course of modernization. He was the first Turkish ruler to seek the support of the majority,

but he neglected and ultimately alienated Turkey’s educated men. By temperament alone, Menderes was an energetic, high-

living, back-slapping man of action who felt ill at ease with men of ideas. Projects interested him more than the plans of which they might (or might not) be a part. He spread roads, tractors, silos, subsidies, and credits through much of the countryside, but he neglected to accompany these new advantages with

new ideas or new forms of organization. He could not provide them himself, and thought it might dilute his own influence if he were to rely on the large number of intellectuals that such a trans-

formation of the traditional countryside required. Thus, twothirds of the people were still illiterate by 1960, and the building of new minarets was subsidized by the Menderes government as deliberately as the erection of factory chimneys. 5¢ By contrast, note the roots of the British Parliament in a pre-industrial age, the slow extension of the franchise, and the century given to British society, in-

stead of decades, to prove its resilience in adjusting to socio-economic upheaval. (Leslie Lipson, “The Two-Party System in British Politics,” American Political Science Review, June 1953, pp. 337-358.)

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POLITICAL PARTIES By developing the countryside, Menderes created a new eco-

nomic group intermediate between city and peasantry, but he could not avoid damaging them by repeated economic crises, nor meet all their new aspirations. Farmers bought out, or thrown out of jobs, by those who could afford the newly available tractors thronged to the cities without finding steady employment.

The inflation caused by the pace of investments hurt urban pocketbooks. New opportunities for private businessmen increased, but too often only if bribes were paid. The major gains in industrial and agricultural production that were scored were the rewards of foreign aid (and to some extent, good weather )

far more than of domestic savings, and remain as yet too insecure and uncoordinated to serve as a firm ground for steady future advance. By 1954, corruption plainly began to take the place of ideas, and opportunism the place of organization. In 1957, Menderes

was returned to power in an election which—there is reason to believe—he won by fraud. By 1960, he had become a repressive ruler ready to stamp out all opposition. In May 1960, the army took over the reins of government, and ousted Menderes. Yet this military intervention was not the setback for Turkish multi-party democracy that it seemed to be at the time. On the contrary, the army intervened because its es-

tablished role of political neutrality was in danger. Either it must willingly become Menderes’ tool for repressing all opposition, or it would have to intervene at its own initiative to protect both Turkish democracy and is own position above parties. The

latter alternative was an easy choice for an army whose ranks had produced Ataturk and, by its victories, the new and independent Turkey. Within eighteen months after its coup, however,

the army restored multi-party democracy to Turkey, for it recognized that such a system had already proved its strength and worth. The existence of a multi-party system had given an opportunity

to institutions other than political parties to establish a vigorous autonomy—especially to the universities and the press—and for the educated middle class to become conscious of its own strength.

From all these together came the momentum of organized pro[ 315 J

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION tests to the Menderes regression that prepared the way for army intervention. In the rest of the Middle East, the army intervened in politics during the 1950’s in order to establish, through au-

rest. | thoritarian rule, the conditions for rapid modernization and

broader political participation. In Turkey, the army re-entered

politics briefly in 1960 in order to preserve and enlarge the

multiple foundations on which democracy had already come to

Between 1946 and the final few years of the Menderes regime, the Republican Peoples Party and the Democratic Party had actually offered still relatively little choice to Turkish voters.°° The leadership of both parties shared a heritage of common beliefs reinforced by decades of earlier collaboration with each other. The

Democratic Party fought for greater political and intellectual freedom between 1946 and its victory in 1950; the Republicans were obliged to fight against repressive policies under the Democratic Party regime. The Democrats advocated greater freedom for individual entrepreneurs against the etatism championed by

the Republicans. Since the Democratic victory led to greater elbow-room for only a few favored businessmen while governmental planning, not without errors, remained the controlling force, the Republicans now favor more skillful planning for a more mixed economy. The Democrats were the first to put full steam behind a belated Republican policy of helping the peasants,

and hence won predominant support among the latter. By the late 1950’s, however, the Republicans were beginning to catch up with Democrats in rural areas by speaking more boldly in favor of assistance to the peasants.”

The coup of 1960 decisively enlarged the frontiers of the governing consensus. The basic values of the Ataturk Revolution

are to be preserved, but the new army regime recognized that Turkey now faces problems that never confronted Ataturk and 55 Ajl leftist parties were outlawed in 1946. Since “leftism,” in the definition held by Turkish governments prior to the coup of 1960, included “a good many

ideas which in the West are generally accepted or at most can be labelled

‘liberal,’ ” it followed that all were “bound to defend one set of ideas and this in itself is the very denial of the multi-party system.” (Karpat, Turkey’s Politics, i. co Ibid. pp. 386, 390-392, 397-398, 416-417.

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POLITICAL PARTIES therefore must come up with new answers. The army regime attempted to set in motion reforms which would change the charac-

ter of the debate among political parties. Parties will not be allowed to oppose the development of a secular, democratic society dedicated to rapid modernization. But they will no longer be confined to the extreme center in debating alternate roads to

progress. Multi-party democracy in Turkey will therefore face still harder tests in the future.

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CHAPTER 15 TRADE UNIONS

19

eae vee Obstacles to Effective Organization AT FIRST GLANCE it seems unlikely that trade unions could play

a significant role in an area where most people are peasants, in-

dustry is underdeveloped, and the workers themselves predominantly unskilled and unemployed. Indeed, in the sixteen countries under consideration here, trade unions are non-existent in three (Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya), outlawed or else too small to be more than sporadically active in six (Jordan, Saudi

Arabia, Sudan, Iran, Syria, and Pakistan’), and sizeable but subservient to government guidance in one (Egypt). In Lebanon

they owe their modest strength (about 5,000) to the spirit of traditional guilds and the traditional division of labor among various religious and ethnic groups. In Algeria, Turkey, and Iraq, trade unions are growing in importance, but only in Tunisia

and Morocco are they already organizationally and politically strong.” _ 1 They are outlawed in Saudi Arabia, where membership figures are unavailable, but where 13,000 out of 15,000 oil workers struck for three weeks in 1953 for union recognition and other grievances, and where minor work stoppages and demonstrations have occurred since. In Pakistan, where they are tolerated but not yet legalized, unions have about 160,000 members, most of them in East Pakistan. Iranian and Jordanian trade unions, operating under similar conditions, have about 80,000 and 4,000 members each. Syrian unions have about 30,000 members. The Sudan is discussed in detail in this chapter. 2In Algeria, the Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens, affiliated with the National Liberation Front, has about 75,000 members. Turkish trade unions, containing about one-fourth of all industrial workers, possess about 220,000 members. The Iraqi case is detailed in this chapter. For a valuable analysis of trade union problems in an area of the Middle East outside the purview of this analysis, see Willard A. Beling, “Recent Developments in Labor Relations in Bahrayn,” The Middle East Journal, Spring 1959, pp. 156-169.

[ 318 |]

TRADE UNIONS This weakness among most labor organizations will probably continue. The growth of population is likely to swell the ranks of the unemployed, the underemployed, and the unskilled—who all need protection most but have the least strength to bargain for it. Industrialization, which would increase the number of skilled,

literate, and employed workers—the core of any trade union movement—is likely to make rapid strides only in a few countries of the Middle East during the next decade.

Whenever governments are sympathetic to labor unions, and

that will hardly be the case soon in more than a minority of Middle Eastern states, their attitude is often likely to resemble that of a recent government of Syria: “In the field of labor and laborers, we are now carrying out extensive studies through which we intend to bring about legislation and measures which will safeguard the workers’ rights and will promote the projects of the employer, so that the workers will not obstruct national production and the employers will not exploit the workers in an unlawful manner. Before anything else, we aim at bringing about

harmony between the worker and the employer. Through the alliance of these two elements we shall begin our industrial life,

so that it will be possible for us to avoid social and economic crises which have shaken the foundations of civilized states.”* At the same time, it is often customary for such governments to ease

the relationship between government and trade unions by subsidizing the latter.* If workers are dissatisfied with the paternalism 8’ Colonel Fawzi Silu, Premier of Syria, speaking over Damascus Radio, March 4, 1952. *A decree published by Premier Silu on February 4, 1952, grants government aid to trade unions to meet administrative expenses, provided this aid does not exceed 50 percent of the organization’s ordinary expenses. Additional

funds are to be made available for union projects, after receiving approval from the Ministry of National Economy, to assist workers in emergencies, organize ethical and technical studies for workers, fight illiteracy, engage in publicity, and construct workers’ houses, clubs, and trade union offices. More recently, al-Ayyam, Damascus, published the following figures on

January 12, 1959, regarding annual subsidies given to trade unions by the

Syrian Ministry of Social Affairs. (The figures are given in Syrian pounds):

General Federation of Labor £& 35,000

United Damascus Federation of Labor 12,000

Aleppo Federation of Labor 12,000

Homs Federation of Labor 5,000 Hama LatakiaFederation Federationof ofLabor Labor 4,000 1.500 [ 319 |

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION of private employers, the best they can hope for is a paternalistic government.”

The Trade Union under Government Control Since 1952 Egyptian trade unions have relied on the Ministry of Social Affairs as a friend “who will extend to us expert advice.”® Their experience during these years illustrates some of the problems that trade unions encounter when they lack adequate independent sources of strength.

In 1947 there were only 91,604 trade union members in Egypt.” By 1955, these numbers had increased to 373,000 and represented the unionization of nearly all industrial enterprises employing 50 or more workers, all transport and railroad workers, and almost all larger trading and commercial establishments.

This growth has made the Egyptian trade union movement the largest and strongest in the Arab East. With respect to union strength in medium and large-scale enterprises, it probably exceeds that of India, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and most of Latin America.® Nonetheless, trade unions represent only 20 percent of the industrial, commercial, and service workers of Egypt, and less than one percent of its agricultural workers. In this sense they are far weaker than the trade unions of Tunisia and Morocco (the Arab West), and until recently, of the Sudan.

Government support has been the chief instrument of trade union achievement; government control and restrictions, its main obstacle. Because Egyptian governments have never exercised protective control over enterprises employing fewer than 50 workers (and the great majority of these hence retain the spirit of paternalistic family-owned enterprises), trade unions have made little headway in organizing this majority of urban workers. Dependent on government initiative, encouragement, and protection, trade unions have been quick to acknowledge 5See also A. Aziz Allouni, “The Labor Movement in Syria,” Middle East Journal, Winter 1959, pp. 64-76. 8 As phrased by the President of the General Federation of Labor and quoted in al-Musawwar, Cairo, February 8, 1957. 7 William J. Handley, “The Labor Movement in Egypt,” Middle East Journal, July 1949, p. 279. 8 Harbison and Ibrahim, Human Resources for Egyptian Enterprise, p. 217.

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their subservient position. In 1930, when the royal house was supreme in Egyptian politics, the unions elected Prince Abbas

Halim president of their confederation. In 1942 they chose Fouad Serageddin, the Secretary General of the Waid Party, whose government had legally recognized labor’s right to organize, as “honorary president” of many trade union federations.

Since 1952 they have responded readily to Nasser’s guidance. Prior to 1952, when the government became the union’s patron, many local unions had responded to paternalism in industry by electing management officials to union office.

Egyptian trade unions were organized at the turn of the century by skilled workers of European origin. Since earlier legis-

lation in 1890 had destroyed guild protection, the new and less familiar form of organization began to attract Egyptian member-

ship. By 1911, there were 11 unions with about 7,000 members. , Growth was slow, however, because both British and subsequent

Egyptian rulers in the country regarded labor primarily as a threat to political security. Through most of the first third of this

jurisdiction of the police. : century, labor problems were considered to be within the

On September 6, 1942, a Wafd government for the first time enacted legislation to recognize trade unions in an attempt to win labor’s political support against the King. The government continued, however, to restrict many union activities. Thus, in response to landlord interests, it forbade the organization of any agricultural workers. Subjected to repression by King Faruk in

the mid-forties after the ouster of the Wafd, labor’s strength suffered further by a division in its ranks principally between two anti-royal factions: the modern, secular coalition of liberal Wafd-

ists, leftists, and communists on the one hand, and a religiopolitical movement opposed to both King and Wafd, namely the 9“Whether he had any real interest in or understanding of labor unionism and whether the existing union leadership was really loyal to him are questions which have never been answered. Yet the formation of the federation under the Prince was significant in that it indicated that Egyptian leadership of unions had no ideological objective, that unionism had survived government re-

pression, and that any viable labor movement would seek acceptance by the ruling regime.” (Harbison and Ibrahim, Human Resources for Egyptian Enterprise, p. 176.)

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION Moslem Brotherhood, on the other.*° Governmental repression

of labor continued during the period 1945-1948, which was marked by frequent strikes and work stoppages, and eventually

culminated in a declaration of martial law at the outbreak of

the Palestine war. | The overthrow of King Faruk in July 1952 opened new op-

portunities for Egyptian labor. Under a new Labor Code,” strikes are still outlawed, unions cannot engage in political activities, and trade union officials must be regularly employed as workers, and hence cannot give full attention to union activities.” Records of membership, minutes of meetings, and financial accounts are open at all times to government inspection. With the permanent displacement of landlords as the ruling class, however, trade unions were henceforth permitted to organize farm workers. Whenever three-fifths of the workers of an enterprise join the union, the union can require the employer to deduct union dues from all workers.” Thus, ten years after the de jure recognition

, of the right to organize, trade unions became financially secure. | Since unions are not free to strike or to engage in collective

| bargaining, the new code also established the basic conditions of employment,* including not only minimum wages, hours, and conditions for the employment of women and minors but also provisions for company-financed housing, clinics, transportation,

recreation centers, and stores. Workers cannot be discharged without substantial reason, and lay-offs cannot take place without government permission. Having made so many gains under the legislation of the new

regime and under the organizational guidance of army officers

loyal to Nasser, labor unions in 1954 backed Nasser with a 10 An important portion of the first faction was organized in 1946 as the Workers’ Committee of National Liberation, later known as the Workers’ Congress. Most of its leadership were arrested within the year. 11 Decree 319/1952, Official Gazette 157 bis, Government Press, Cairo, December 8, 1952. An English translation is found in the Egyptian Economic and Political Review, Cairo, international edition, April 1957, pp. 44-47. 12 The implications of this last rule are discussed more fully in the section on the Sudanese labor union in this chapter.

13 By law, trade unions must spend one-third of their income on social welfare activities among their members. 14 Harbison and Ibrahim, Human Resources for Egyptian Enterprise, pp. 157-166 discuss these in some detail.

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TRADE UNIONS general strike against Nagib’s efforts, opportunistically supported by Wafd, Moslem Brotherhood, and communists, to make himself the actual and not just the nominal leader of Egypt. There-

after, in its industrial disputes, labor could frequently count on arbitration favorable to its interests. The government also took the initiative in planning and administering schools in trade unionism, labor laws, and vocational skills. Nevertheless, labor leaders who failed to consult the government or took an independent course found themselves ousted or arrested. Both the relative strength of the labor movement (Nasser’s regime by 1959

still lacked the support of a dues-paying, organized political movement of equal size) and the relative weakness of the labor movement (Nasser could not hope to spur industrial development without a reliable and disciplined labor force) called for more decisive measures. On April /, 1959, a new Labor Law was promulgated which once again improved conditions of labor,

among other things, reducing the nine-hour working day to , eight.» This law proposes to reorganize the 1,300-1,400 local trade unions under the jurisdiction of a small number of federations, one for each profession or trade. Tripartite boards composed of workers, employers, and government officials will determine wages, conditions of work, and standards of productivity for each industry. In this manner, presumably, the unions will be able to extend their gains. (The workers in privately owned transport lines and foreign-owned petroleum industries are now the best organized and best paid.) These boards, one may suppose, will now equalize conditions of work, especially for those Egyptian-owned industries where paternalism continues

to characterize most relationships and labor-management relations are least stable.** Through participation in these official boards, labor unions will thus have considerable influence beyond the enterprises they have so far organized. Labor’s increased influence, however, has brought upon itself increased governmental control. The new law confirms an earlier 15 Law No. 91, U.A.R. Official Journal, April 7, 1959. -

16 See Harbison and Ibrahim, Human Resources for Egyptian Enterprise, pp. 194-204 for a discussion of the typologies now characterizing employeremployee relationships in Egypt.

[ 323 ] ,

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION law that was designed to harness labor: only active members of the National Union—the U.A.R.’s only legal political movement —may serve as officers of trade unions.*’ As coordinator of the reconstructed trade unions, Lieutenant Colonel Khaled Fawzi took the place of Major Ahmed Abdullah Toema. The revolution of the military vanguard of the new middle class is assigning the workers a more significant role in the national mobilization and modernization of Egypt, but there is no question about who remains in charge. The Trade Union as the Government’s Junior Partner

The government of Tunisia has also harnessed labor unions to its purpose. Yet the relationship between the Tunisian General Union of Labor (UGTT ), the Neo-Destour, and the government differs markedly from that obtaining in Egypt. Labor unions in Tunisia have a long record of strength, courage, and political sophistication. Having first gained trade union experience in Tunisian branches of the French-controlled General Confederation of Labor (CGT), founded in 1924, the Tunisians established their own separate federation in the summer of 1937. The alliance of trade unions with the Neo-Destour thus began over two decades ago with the common purpose of achieving national independence, and this was greatly facilitated by the fact that almost all employers were French.

From the very first, labor unions and the Neo-Destour Party possessed an interlocking leadership drawn almost exclusively from the new middle class. The political and ideological sophistica-

tion of the UGTT was enhanced, moreover, by its battle against the remnants of the communist-controlled CGT trade unions.

In this struggle the UGTT quickly succeeded in becoming Tunisia’s principal labor federation and in reducing the member-

ship of the CGT from 25,000 in 1948 to 5,000 in 1956 when Tunisia became independent. Moreover, in several crucial periods of nationalist agitation, when the Neo-Destour was outlawed but

the UGTT was not, the latter carried much of the organizational burden of the political struggle and at all times was one 17 Law No. 8, U.A.R. Official Journal, April 3, 1958.

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TRADE UNIONS

of its principal participants. In Egypt, by contrast, the struggle for national independence was, until 1952, in the hands of landowning, commercial, and industrial interests that were reluctant to organize the underlying population, and called upon it for support primarily in the form of mobs. After 1952, Egyptian nation-

alist leadership passed to the army, an organization more selfsufficient than any other. As a result of its experience and skill, the UGTT now contains 150,000 members or 70 percent of Tunisia’s employed industrial,

commercial, and service workers, despite the fact that about 350,000 or almost 50 percent of all Tunisian workers are unemployed or underemployed. It is financially independent, and

no rumor of corruption has been raised about the use of its funds. Even so, it has accepted the role of junior partner in Bourguiba’s governing apparatus. It abstains from strikes; it does not press for higher wages; it does not favor class warfare; it accepts austerity and sacrifice as the price of economic development. In September 1956, the UGTT’s leader, Ahmed ben Salah,

called for more radical social and economic reforms than the government was prepared to countenance. He sought the nationalization of land and industry and the establishment of government-directed cooperative farms. However, the UGTT moderated its demands after a temporary split within its ranks, induced by

the government, had forced Ahmed ben Salah to resign. | Nonetheless, the UGTT has also had its rewards. Ahmed ben

Salah, soon after his resignation as Secretary General of the UGTT, was appointed by Bourguiba as Secretary of State for Public Health and Social Affairs and given sufficient support to do an outstanding job, and later, to become Minister for Economic Planning. His successor as Secretary General, Ahmed Tlili,

is a member of the Neo-Destour’s ruling Political Bureau, and also Mayor of Gafsa. Deputy Secretary General Habib Achour also sits on the Neo-Destour Political Bureau, as does the Treasurer of the UGTT, Abdullah Farhat, who is, in addition, Bourguiba’s principal administrative assistant. Indeed, a majority of top-ranking labor leaders are leading members either in NeoDestour or in government.

The rank and file of the UGTT has benefitted, not by an ex[ 325 ]

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

tensive social security program, which the government is too poor to provide, but by official support of union efforts to improve working conditions and to remedy individual grievances. The UGTT has been active, through its own banks, in building housing projects and organizing marketing and consumer cooperatives. It has sponsored adult education for literacy and _ technical skills. It has persuaded the government to finance relief

projects for the unemployed, to build vacation camps for employed workers, and to hasten the “Tunisification” of jobs in government and private employ. By early 1960, there was talk of union participation in factory production councils. The UGTT has good reasons for remaining content with its status as junior partner. The Neo-Destour Party is much larger than the union, even though probably half of its membership of 250,000-300,000 overlaps with that of the UGTT. It has no leader to rival Bourguiba in his popularity among the people and in his power over the government. It. recognizes the necessity of austerity and knows from long and intimate experience the sincerity of the present political leadership. Hence it consults, and is consulted.”®

The Trade Union as an Independent Force

The difficulty for labor unions in the present evolution of the Middle East is that trade union independence often invites repression. Recent events in the Sudan make this clear.”®

Only two percent of the Sudan’s population of 10 million are

non-agricultural wage earners. Of these about half (100,000) had by 1955 joined 157 local unions, most of which were affili-

ated with the Sudan Workers Trade Union Federation. The

largest group were the 25,000 members of the Railway Workers

Union. Next in size were unions organized by tailors, public 18 For a further analysis of this partnership, see Chapter 14. 19 The principal source for developments up to 1955 is Saad ed Din Fawzi, The Labour Movement in the Sudan, 1944-1955, London, 1957. It is also the only book on any labor movement anywhere between Morocco and Pakistan. Helen Kitchen’s “Trade Unions: Communist Stronghold” in the special Sudan issue of Africa Special Report, January 1959, pp. 12 and 16, is an excellent analysis that includes more recent events.

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TRADE UNIONS works employees, hotel and domestic servants, and employees of the post and telegraph services. A high proportion in most trade unions were unskilled and illiterate.

The impetus for organization came in the beginning from railway workers. The first fifteen of the twenty workers to organize in 1946 were graduates of the technical school in Atbara, the headquarters of the railway company.

During these early years the union prospered through the benevolence of a colonial administration controlled by the Brit-

ish Labour Party. In contrast to most trade unions of the Middle East, it was free to strike, even in essential industries. Between 1947 and 1952, 1,750,000 man-days were lost through strikes, occasioned chiefly by wage disputes and secondly by the

discharge of workers. The unions were also allowed to add to their strength through federation. The government, which employs 60 percent of all non-agricultural workers, showed great respect for union demands, and private employers generally followed suit. In addition, labor legislation regarding pay, hours,

paid vacations, and retirement and other benefits compared favorably with that of Western Europe.*° On December 3, 1958, less than a month after the army coup

of General Ibrahim Abboud, the Sudan Workers’ Trade Union

Federation and all its affiliated unions were suspended and have ) not been permitted to function since. What had gone wrong? The communists had gained control of the executive council of the Federation soon after its creation in 1949, but had lost it in 1953 when they misjudged the political temper of the country. Denouncing the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement that would shortly make the Sudan independent as an imperialist plot to “impede political freedom,” they called for a three-day general strike. Not supported by the union members, the communists were left isolated. By June 1956, a new non-communist Sudan Government Workers’ Trade Union Federation (four-fifths of all organized labor is composed of government employees) had gained the

allegiance of the local unions, including the Sudan Railway Workers. The rapid growth of the non-communist Federation— 20 Kitchen, “Trade Unions: Communist Stronghold,” p. 12; Fawzi, The Labour Movement in the Sudan, pp. 123-126.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION founded only in April 1956—may have been due more to official government intervention than to the skill of its own leadership.

In the summer of 1957, it agreed to negotiate with the communist-controlled Federation for the reunification of all Sudanese labor, and acquiesced in the creation of a reunification committee that contained 20 communists and only 3 non-communists. The non-communist Federation soon had second thoughts and withdrew, but the communists, strengthened by the prestige of their

efforts on behalf of labor unity, in 1958 recaptured control of the Railway Workers’ Union and other local unions embracing altogether more than 70 percent of trade union membership.**

Since the Sudanese trade union movement is probably the only Middle Eastern labor union federation controlled by communists,** it is worth discovering how they came to play such

a large role in its rise and decline. The chief reason for communist influence in trade unions in the Sudan—the communist party probably has no more than 750 members**—has to do with

the problem of recruiting trade union leadership. Can workers who are fully employed effectively lead labor unions? In Egypt,

: where the law requires union officials to be full-time workers, unions have been unable to secure greater union independence.”*

It is doubtful that unions led by amateurs rather than professionals can do much to promote local causes let alone those of national importance. In the Sudan, where there was no law against union leadership by the new middle class, educated com-

munists were elected because no union had the money to pay a full-time official (dues are normally delinquent). In addition the communists had resources of their own, and government pressure on the government-employed union leader often handicapped the union in competing with communists. Finally, many “1 Kitchen, “Trade Unions: Communist Stronghold,” p. 16.

22 Probably the only such: the communists have lost control of the trade union movement in Iraq, and elsewhere control only certain union locals or splinter “Federations.” 23 World Strength of the Communist Party Organizations, Intelligence Report No. 4489 R-11 (Unclassified), Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State, January 1959, p. 41.

24If the new Egyptian law of 1959 (discussed above) creating fewer and more effective union federations results in paid full-time trade union leaders, these will, presumably, be expected to act as links between government and trade union rather than as independent heads.

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TRADE UNIONS of the non-communist trade union pioneers left their unions for

management positions. No party in the Sudan other than the communist has consistently concerned itself with daily labor prob-

lems. In general elections, the two principal Sudanese parties have thus far relied on the sectarian loyalties of workers to the two major religious brotherhoods, which are the backbone of these parties.*> Neglected by those for whom they had loyally

voted, the workers have turned increasingly for support to secular, neutralist groups in national politics and to the communists, who made sure to appear little more radical but much more energetic than other nationalist groups. In the end, the conservative groups called in the army to reorganize a regime that had become unpopular. Communist leadership of Sudanese trade unions at that point provided only the excuse for a control measure that the new military regime would almost certainly have taken in any event.

The Trade Union as Equal Partner of a Political Party

The Moroccan trade union movement acquired skill, convictions, and solidarity by having to struggle both against colonial repression and communist control of unions during the decade preceding national independence. After 1956, given much greater freedom to organize and strike, the Union of Moroccan Labor (Union Marocain du Travail—UMT) swelled its membership

to become the largest and strongest trade union in the entire Middle East and North Africa. In a country of ten million, it has

about 600,000 members, about 10,000 of them agricultural workers, and thus holds in its ranks almost all employed industrial, commercial, and service labor. Such growth and strength suggests that we may not yet have taken fair measure elsewhere in the Middle East of the true potential of labor organization. Repression by and dependence upon 25 Thus in the first Sudanese general elections in 1953, Atbara workers still voted in a solid block for candidates backed by their sectarian leader while one

of the most prominent executive officers of the Labor Federation received only negligible support in his own headquarters area. (Fawzi, The Labour Movement in the Sudan, p. 101.)

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

governments, the limitations of junior partnership, or simply missed political opportunities are specific causes of trade union weakness in this region. They are not inevitable, however, simply

because of the underdeveloped character of these countries. Repression, involuntary dependence, and reluctant acquiescence are likely to remain the most common forms of Middle Eastern political behavior, but the Moroccan situation shows that such obstacles to free trade unionism can be overcome even in underdeveloped countries. It is easy to underestimate this possibility. One would never have supposed that trade unions should be of such importance so

soon in Morocco—hard to believe that they should count for more here than in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iran, or Pakistan. Only

| Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen had been more isolated than Morocco from the modernizing reforms of Europe of the Otto-

: man Empire. Morocco had never been part of the latter, and while it became alert to the economic and cultural advantages of the modern age in the latter part of the nineteenth century, its internal weaknesses left it defenseless before European imperialism. Its European administrators did not succeed in gaining firm control over all tribes until the end of the first quarter of the

twentieth century. Nationalist reactions did not come until the third decade. Yet by the end of the fifth decade of the century, labor, allied with the National Union of Popular Forces, has become one of the most important civilian political forces in the country.*°

Labor unions were first established in 1938 when French workers set up branches of the Conféderation Général du Travail

in Morocco. By 1949, it had 80,000 members, of whom fourfifths were Moroccans. Already by 1947, two General Secretaries were elected by the Confederation—one French, one Moroccan, and the latter was a member of the nationalist Istiqlal party.

After 1950, Moroccans took the initiative in forming local unions. By 1952, the Confederation had 250,000 members, only one-tenth of these being Europeans.

The capture of the trade unions by Moroccans and their 26 See also Chapter 14.

[ 330 ]

TRADE UNIONS utilization for nationalist purposes was a signal achievement. It took place in the face of Protectorate decrees that forebade Moroccans to form their own trade unions (thought acquiescent on the right of Moroccans to join trade unions), and clearly restricted election to top leadership in all unions to Frenchmen. The leading Frenchmen in the Confederation, moreover, were usually communists, with obvious ambitions of their own. On December 7, 1952, a trade union demonstration of sym-

pathy for the murdered Tunisian trade union leader, Ferhat Hached,?” was dispersed with unusual violence by Casablanca police. The next day, the Confederation and its branches were dissolved (only a few all-European locals were permitted to continue) and many of its leaders arrested. When trade union leaders were granted amnesty in September 1954, they did not need to mourn the interval as a setback. Their followers had maintained spirit and organization by engaging in clandestine political and terrorist activities designed to oust the French and bring back ~ King Mohammed V (exiled in August 1953) to an independent Morocco. Having regained freedom to act almost a year before the leaders of nationalist parties were permitted to return from jail or exile, the union leaders strengthened their organization even before the established Nationalist Party leaders recovered

full control over their following. ;

With the support of the American Federation of Labor and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, but before

the Protectorate had authorized its formation, an independent nationalist Union Marocain du Travail (UMT) was established in March 1955. The former communist leaders of the Confederation were all rejected for being communist and French, and hence

foreign twice over. Led by Mahjoub ben Seddik, a man of the middle class by birth and marriage, and Taieb ben Bouazza, a self-educated former mine worker, the union rapidly gained strength. By early 1956, it had about 400,000 members. Soon after the country’s independence in March 1956 had reunited the French and Spanish Protectorate zones, the UMT was able to organize many new unions and to establish training schools 27Tt is commonly believed that Hached, the Secretary General of the Tunisian UGTT, was killed by French terrorists.

[ 331 ]

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION for cadre and organizers. By 1959 and in the face of greatly increased unemployment, it had grown to about 600,000, collecting an estimated $600,000 a year in dues. Its locals are usually organized directly by teams sent out by UMT headquarters and usually comprise all the employees of a single enterprise. Each local elects its own leaders, but the UMT is likely to intervene if the slate is unsympathetic to current UMT objectives.

A decree of July 1957 gave the union the right to organize farm workers, and rent or buy machines, seeds, plants, animals, and feeds in order to organize farm cooperatives. The union has organized almost all urban workers and has even formed a youth group of about 5,000-10,000 members. Its further growth now depends largely on organizing agricultural workers, a difficult task in view of the large number of seasonally employed migrant workers.

In addition, the UMT was represented at almost all negotia-

tions leading to Moroccan independence, and was given 10 of 76 seats in the Consultative Assembly. Ben Seddik, the UM'T’s General Secretary, became the Assembly’s Vice President. UMT

representatives also sit on the Superior Council for economic planning and its various commissions, on labor courts, the Central Commission for Prices, the Bureau for Labor Placement, and the committees of the Fund for Social Aid. Its internal growth has been more vigorous than that of any of the political parties, and in securing workers’ rights by legislative action it has far outstripped the accomplishments of politicians.** As in most Middle East countries, the UMT’s task of organizing had been simplified by the clustering of urban industrial and commercial activity. Half of all such establishments in Morocco

are located in Casablanca; nearly three-quarters are in four towns—Casablanca, Rabat, Safi, and Meknes. As in many Middle Eastern countries, organizing trade unions in a nationalist

era is facilitated by the fact that most modern enterprises are owned by foreigners, in this instance French. 28 See also Ashford, Political Change in Morocco, especially pp. 270-301. The largest segments of unorganized employees are workers for artisans and sales clerks and white-collar clerks in the smaller enterprises. Those in department stores are fully organized. The largest group of urban workers left unorganized are those who are not employed at all, perhaps 500,000 of them.

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TRADE UNIONS

Its vigor, growth, and independence, however, have more particular causes. As a part of a European trade union movement, it had access to first-hand trade union experience. It learned how to distinguish its own ends from those of communists within its

ranks as well as those of the more conservative leaders of the dominant nationalist Istiqlal party, some of whom were in exile or jail when vital decisions had to be made. Its solidarity is due not only to its trade union activities, but to its participation in the violent battle for national independence, and subsequently to its success in effecting major domestic reforms. After the resto-

ration of the King, it regained organization momentum even before any of the political parties could get under way. Even when its leaders held influential positions in the guiding councils of the Istiqlal party, it maintained its separate identity by voicing more radical foreign and domestic policies than the Istiqlal itself, and often had the satisfaction of seeing these ultimately adopted by the Istiqlal. When Ben Barka seceded from the Istiqlal in 1959 to establish the National Union of Popular Forces, he took with him the great majority of the UMT. A few of the oldest trade union locals remained loyal to the leadership of the rump Istiqlal: most dockers

and some miners who were more concerned to preserve their present relatively high status than to fight national political battles, and the older generation of teachers who owed their education and jobs to the “free schools” established years before by Istiqlal leaders. But the greater part of the UMT chose to become

an equal partner in a party that speaks for labor and the more radical members of the new middle class.

The National Union of Popular Forces is committed to austerity and increased production, not higher wages or the redistribution of wealth. Although King Hassan II’s insistance on

monopolizing political power in Morocco has caused labor prudently to reduce its links with political movements, its extraordinarily rapid evolution has probably already served to demonstrate its permanent political importance.

[ 333 ]

INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION The Trade Union as a Sudden Avalanche How much eagerness for trade union organization there may lie beneath the repression and restriction imposed by government

was also revealed after the July 1958 overthrow of the Nuri regime in Iraq. Labor’s first reaction was easily explicable in traditional terms. Ignorant of the relation between wages and production, workers demanded extraordinarily high pay, and when

this was not forthcoming, they became violent, or stole, or simply waited patiently for the better life now that the tyrant was dead. Trade unions were authorized by law for the first time in Iraq on December 18, 1958, although strikes (starting in 1930) had

broken out in earlier years among railway, port, and oil workers.2® Within less than a year, among a population of 6.000.000, fifty unions came into being, one for each trade, craft, industry, profession, and service. All of them together claimed a

membership of 250,000. Communists, once again benefitting

from their avowed championship of labor, took the lead in organizing many of these unions, and brought the Central Federation of Trade Unions under their control. Three factors have temporarily reduced the role and growth of the trade union movement of Iraq since the middle of 1959. The

sovernment’s arrest of the Federation’s communist leadershiv helped to break communist control but split the trade union movement. The revolution attracted many rural inhabitants to Baghdad, where most modern enterprises are located; but there the regime’s failure to deal quickly with economic issues produced almost fifty percent unemployment in the industrial and commercial sector and made it harder for unions to organize. The temporary outlawing of all political parties also made it more difficult to focus discussion and action on labor issues.

The political direction of Iraq remains uncertain at this writing. That organized labor, only sporadically on the scene before the summer of 1958, will henceforth play a major political 22 Mahmud M. Al-Habib. “The Labor Movement in Iraq,” Middle Eastern Affairs, March 1956, pp. 137-143.

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TRADE UNIONS role is scarcely to be doubted. Since all Iraqi political organizations begin with almost equal inexperience, labor’s role—as an independent or dependent force—is yet to be determined.

The Role of Trade Unions in the Political Modernization of the Middle East

In most countries of the Middle East, trade unions remain weak. There is a great and growing surplus of semi-skilled and unskilled labor. The productivity of illiterate, untrained workers new to the discipline of industrialization is low. The traditionally Middle Eastern “feudal” relations persist in many modern enterprises in which highly personalized obligations are owed to the master, but few by the master to his servant. All these factors continue to keep workers from joining unions or, if they do join, prevent them from matching the strength of the employer.*°

Nonetheless, the preceding analysis suggests that it is not economic backwardness but political opportunities that are decisive in shaping the fortunes of trade unions in the Middle East.

This is true if one asks merely how traditional trade union interests—-wages, hours, working conditions, and the right to organize—are to be attained. Local unions, commonly drawn from the employees of a single enterprise, can seldom hope to triumph by strikes and collective bargaining. Better working con-

ditions can be won only by political success—by securing the right to create strong federations of unions so that, having become a movement to be reckoned with, unions can achieve in national politics what most of their affiliates are too weak to gain in economic bargaining at individual plants. ‘To gain support for national legislation regarding minimum terms and conditions of labor, to ensure the enforcement of such laws, to be able to press for favorable government conciliation or arbitration when free collective bargaining is not yet possible—all these demand con-

centration on political strategy, and cannot be successfully treated as autonomous economic issues. 30'These weaknesses are discussed by Yusif A. Sayigh in “ManagementLabour Relations in Selected Arab Countries: Major Aspects and Determinants,” International Labour Review, June 1958, pp. 519-537.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION It is also true that political opportunities and strategies are the primary causes of trade union progress at this stage of Middle

Eastern evolution in a larger historical sense, and not only in the light of the concrete examples we have examined. In a Mid-

dle East in transition, no important issue can be successfully solved in isolation. Those who are under the illusion that the order of things is still fixed, or who worry only about particular wages for a particular job, will find that all crucial decisions, including their social, economic, and political status in life, will have been made for them. Middle Eastern trade unions have many alternatives. They can remain impotent and so earn the occasional rewards of docility. They can allow themselves to be subverted by extremist political movements until the unions are destroyed together with the extremists who used them or are betrayed by the very triumph of extremism. They can acquiesce in dependency upon a sympathetic government or party, or they can choose to ally themselves with a political party. They can be company unions, communistcontrolled unions, government unions, or partners of political parties. But they cannot stay out of politics and hope to change wages and hours, much less the status of labor.** The pressure upon unions to concentrate on gaining increased wages is strong. Earnings are, in general, exceedingly low. Yet

there is another painful fact: the misery of Middle Eastern humanity cannot be cured by beginning with higher wages. The

area’s most dire economic need is to raise production: there simply is not enough to go around. Higher wages unaccompanied

by improved skills, health, and adjustment to the discipline of industrial work will probably not increase productivity, but only raise consumption.

Is labor (or any other class) to act merely as a separate interest concerned with immediate rewards in a period in Middle Eastern history when the price of rapidly creating a new stability and prosperity will patently demand both material sacrifices and new forms of collaborations? ‘The majority of trade unions in the 31 For a different point of view, see George E. Lichtblau, “The Politics of Trade Union Leadership in Southern Asia,” World Politics, October 1954, pp. 84-101.

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TRADE UNIONS

Middle East have chosen to put economic growth and social

change ahead of wage gains. They intend to concentrate on . creating a “disciplined, stable, contented, and loyal industrial force” by cooperating with the government in plans to expand the economy, help adjust workers psychologically and socially to

industrial life, restrain consumption, increase production, and mitigate distrust of the government.” This is not an easy task for labor leaders. Few of them have

worked their way up as workers and peasants to the rank of labor leaders. Hence between the new middle class leadership and the largely illiterate, semi-skilled and unskilled following there is a profound cultural gap, which is much easier to bridge with union victories that bring concrete gains than with talk of social transformation.

Trade union leaders may become too energetic in protecting the government against demands on industry when most enterprises are owned or guided by the government, and the rising costs of industry tend to become the rising costs of industrialization. A labor union that has had no opportunity to fight economic

or even nationalist battles, and hence has no victories to look back upon, may never turn into a genuine trade union at all, but remain simply another bureaucratic arm of the state. Such a

union, far from providing a safety valve for labor protest, is | likely rather to drive protest to express itself in absenteeism, in

quitting employment without notice, in simple reluctance to work, in passive or open insubordination, in sabotage, sporadic work stoppages, or, in desperation, in supporting extremist move-

ments.** The necessary balance between national and trade union interests demands extraordinary statesmanship of the rel-

atively inexperienced labor leaders responsible for exploited workers in a region of great scarcities and inequalities. Labor, even as an interest group, however, has a direct stake 32'This sentence embodies the views of Asoka Mehta, a leader of the Indian Praja Socialist Party and Member of Parliament, who plays an influential role in India’s second largest labor union, Hind Mazdoor Sabha. (See

his article, “The Mediating Role of the Trade Union in Underdeveloped Countries,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, October 1957.) It probably reflects also the views of the present leaders of the Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian, and Egyptian trade unions. 33 Harbison and Ibrahim, Human Resources for Egyptian Enterprise, p. 207.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION in rapid economic progress. Only such progress can reduce the

, surplus of workers, reduce the misery of their present existence, diminish the political and economic power of employers whose profits depend on the present system of exploitation, and put a greater premium on labor’s cooperation in economic development.

Labor unions that have had the political courage and opportunity to choose their allies are in a position to ask for immediate payment in return for their support. They can insist on a greater equality of sacrifices, and hence a realignment, if not an increase,

in wage scales. They can demand opportunities for improving skills, conditions of safety and health, greater justice (i.e., more universalistic criteria) in hiring, firing, and supervision—all conditions now gravely lacking in most enterprises.

Trade unions that enter political alliances in the unstable environment of the Middle East may find their allies ousted from

government, but such setbacks are unlikely to last long. Any Middle Eastern government that means to make rapid economic progress on any except totalitarian terms requires the coopera-

| tion of labor. The ability of labor unions to bargain with governments or parties is enhanced by the fact that they are relatively disciplined mass organizations in an environment in which mass political parties are still new. When free to organize, Middle Fastern trade union federations, like Middle Eastern mass parties, often include manual workers, the skilled and the unskilled, and members of the secular intelligentsia—an alliance, in short, of the new middle class, the workers, and the peasants. Though almost as broadly based as parties, the unions’ relatively more limited range of classes and interests and the impact of common problems in a common environment can make it a more cohesive body than many a political party.** Yet in the Middle Fast, where increasing the number of jobs and the drive for indi°¢In estimating the strength of power constellations, the geography of trade unionism matters a great deal. The membership of the Neo-Destour Party in Tunisia is distributed evenly throughout the country. Its trade union affiliate is strong primarily in urban areas. In Morocco, the Istiqlal party probably has a greater following than the trade union in the city of Fez; in Casablanca, the reverse may be true. In Iran, trade unions between 1946 and 1949 were confined almost exclusively to the capital and the oil areas where superior forces could readily be marshalled against them.

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TRADE UNIONS vidual and national independence require fundamental changes in society, the concerns of workers are scarcely less encompassing than those of political mass parties. A Middle Eastern government as keenly interested in guarding against totalitarian rule as in rapid social and economic progress

would derive vital advantages from encouraging the growth of trade unions that have such broad social concerns. Close and genuine alliance with such unions would not only ease the task of

mobilizing a crucial segment of the population for national reconstruction, it would also set limits to authoritarian rule by assuring continual discussion and bargaining among a significantly large group of political leaders who share a common framework of values.

This is not a utopian solution, as the Tunisian and Moroccan

examples illustrate. That government leaders and the party they control will usually possess the stronger hand in such alliances is highly probable, since trade unions in most countries have lacked political opportunities for strengthening themselves. Government and party leaders who misuse their superior strength

in relation to trade unions may not immediately bring about labor dissidence and strife. They will be building instead a political structure that is temporarily and superficially stable, but one whose inner life is likely to dwindle into an apathy that will, at best, delay the explosion of discontent. The leader who succeeds perfectly in controlling labor organizations will also have come much closer to creating a totalitarian state.

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CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL BUREAUCRACY

BUREAUCRACIES in the Middle East not only administer laws, but, in the absence of parliamentary institutions, usually fashion

them. They not only license, supervise, and tax, but often also organize and manage major financial, industrial, and agricultural enterprises. They ought therefore to be the most permanent, the most expert, the most efficient institutions of the state. From Oriental to Modern Bureaucracy

Few bureaucracies in the world have been in existence as long as those of Iran and Egypt, or even those in the areas occupied until recently by the Ottoman Empire. This weight of tradition is the first burden of most Middle Eastern bureaucracies. For centuries, bueaucrats were the personal representatives of a personal ruler. They operated at the ruler’s whim. When at some distance from the ruler, and while they could maintain that distance, they had whims of their own and acted upon them. Their main task was to enforce the ruler’s will and to collect

taxes. When it seemed unavoidable, they engaged in public works, for public welfare was then as unknown a concept as that of citizenship. In the best of times, when the ruling institution had received its due, the bureaucrats left society to live its own life." Such a bureaucracy, unenterprising except in a personal cause

and dedicated to the past rather than to the future, did not give way to a modern bureaucracy until the late nineteenth or early 1H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West, Vol. 1, Part 1, pp. 156-160, 204-216. See also Chapter 1.

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THE CIVIL BUREAUCRACY twentieth century. Three new types of bureaucrats can be distinguished.”

One group of bureaucrats brought old habits to new tasks and opportunities. With their passion for governing others much stronger than their desire for personal independence, they gladly accepted employment in European controlled administrations.

“Each of their number is willing, like the private soldier in an army, to abdicate his personal freedom of action into the hands of his general, provided the army is triumphant and victorious, and he is able to flatter himself that he is one of a conquering host, though the notion that he has himself any share in the domination exercised over the conquered is an illusion.”*

Under European rule, opportunities were of course limited. In Egypt, for example, less than one-fourth of the higher posts were filled by Egyptians in 1920.* For many bureaucrats and would-be bureaucrats of a traditional cast of mind, the coming of independence greatly enlarged the possibilities for place hunt-

ing. Educated men came into the government,’ but the spoils system on which it was based continued to reinforce the initiative

for personal enrichment. In most Middle Eastern states during the 1930’s and 1940’s, and in some of them still, government

had no larger purpose than stabilizing political fortunes by rewarding its friends and placating its enemies through government employment. As numbers swelled, incompetence became easier to conceal.

With several people filling the same vaguely defined job, the sense of responsibility and the test of competency became equally

vague. In Egypt, one inquiry found that in many departments “the number of those not qualified for their tasks had reached 40 or 45 percent.”® 2 Occasionally, the three kinds succeeded each other; sometimes all three were blended in the same person, but in various proportions: for the moment, it seems best to keep them analytically distinct. 3 John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, pp. 159160, speaking of a similar tradition but in a somewhat different context. * Great Britain, Egypt, No. 1 (1921) Report of the Special Mission to Egypt

(Col. 1131), p. 35, cited by Morroe Berger, Bureaucracy and Society in Modern Egypt: A Study of the Higher Civil Service, Princeton, New Jersey, 8 Bevger, Bureaucracy and Society, p. 42 found that 77 percent of his sample of higher bureaucrats possessed a B.A. degree or its equivalent. 6 Republic of Egypt, Civil Service Commission, Report of the Commission

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION The modern age has also produced a new kind of bureaucrat —a man trained in the classical and humanistic heritage of his former European overlord. The Civil Service of Pakistan, in part the successor of the Indian Civil Service, is the outstanding example of this kind.” Honesty, vigor, and intelligence have been

its hallmarks. Its ideals have kept it from subordinating human to technocratic elements, but its detachment from the cultural traditions of its own people, though a necessary precondition

for the organization of change, has developed far enough to hinder its communication with those it governs. Its predispositions have tended to make it suspicious of both rational planning and empiricism, especially in such intellectually and morally alien fields as economics and politics. It is thus handicapped in dealing with the nation’s principal problems—economic develop-

ment and social and political transformation. __ “The chasm thereby created between the nature of the problems faced and the philosophical apparatus a nation can muster to face them is at the root of difficulties of many Asian nations which have turned in desperation to military dictatorships. Of all sectors of the public bureaucracy, the military, by virtue of its mission, has more quickly discarded both the intuitive disposition

of the masses and the . . . literary-generalist tradition of the civil bureaucracy.”®

The third type of bureaucrat, one who confronts modern tasks with relevant skills—and without him neither military nor

civilian politicians can succeed—is as scarce as the skilled farmer, the skilled worker, the skilled entrepreneur, and the skilled politician. The Middle East will not have enough of any of these for sometime to come, and it will not be able to enter the modern age until it has enough of them.° As we have already seen, the army often becomes impatient on Budgetary Proposals for the Fiscal Year 1953-1954 (in Arabic), Government Press, Cairo, 1953, pp. 12-13, cited by Berger, Bureaucracy and Society,

» I See the excellent discussion by Ralph Braibanti, “The Civil Service of Pakistan: A Theoretical Analysis,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. Lvm, No. 2, Spring 1959, pp. 258-304.

8 Ibid., p. 287.

9A knowledgeable account of the consequences of shortages of qualified personnel is Peter G. Franck’s “Economic Planner” in Social Forces in the Middle East, pp. 137-161.

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THE CIVIL BUREAUCRACY

and intervenes. The military bureaucracy has a tradition of resisting, not merely by inaction, but by independent assertion against its rulers. Trained to initiate action, it is not hindered by respect for the traditional procedures of civilian institutions. Its prestige is often greater than that of civilian organizations because it is never as pliable and its leaders are never as anonymous as the civilian bureaucrats. Yet while military leaders, supported

by their own military bureaucracy, may be able to organize a more rapid “take-off” into the modern age, they will be able to maintain momentum only if they build effective civilian institu-

tions. In fact, if they are faithful to their slogans of national mobilization and reform, they will need to refashion a civil bureaucracy even sooner than the more conservative civilian regimes. There are substitutes for armies in civil government, but none for bureaucracies.

Recruiting Bureaucrats: Too Many and Too Few

The most remarkable fact about contemporary Middle Eastern bureaucracies is that they function as well as they do. Foreign

or traditional rule ended in the majority of Middle Eastern states only after World War II. That day found most states with a bureaucracy inadequate both in size and skill for solving the problems of modernization. Morocco and Tunisia are only the

most recent examples of the scope of the task involved in the “Moroccanization,” “Tunisification” (or earlier) the “Egyptianization” of a civil service. In Morocco, for example, in 1955, a year before independence, 33,000 out of 51,000 civil servants in the central administration were Frenchmen, who had almost exclusive control of the higher positions. An additional 10,000 Frenchmen held posts

in public corporations and utilities. Nationalist leaders themselves acknowledged that there were probably no more than 2,500-3,000 experienced Moroccans to take over the French| held posts. Yet by the end of 1958, 21,000 French civil servants had left the administration and 7,500 Frenchmen the public corporations and utilities.*° That a country 85 percent illiterate could build a cadre of civil servants quickly enough to maintain 10 Ashford, Political Change in Morocco, pp. 118-124.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION and indeed expand governmental services, and at a time when all

sectors of Moroccan life were equally short of skills, is an extraordinary accomplishment.

Similarly, in Tunisia, Frenchmen occupied 13,500 out of 18,400 civil service positions in 1955, the year before independence. By 1959 there were only 1,800 Frenchmen left, including 1,200 French school teachers, in a bureaucracy that had grown

to 23,000. While Tunisia continues to suffer greatly from a shortage of experienced planners and experts, the change was made without a breakdown in vital services. And while civil service salaries and fringe benefits have been reduced for all ranks since independence, the integrity of the new civil service has been exceedingly high by any standards. The distance between a scarcity of bureaucrats to a surplus is, however, surprisingly short. By 1947, for example, twentyfive years after Egypt became independent, about one-third of all Egyptians who had at least a primary school certificate were

already employed by the government. Almost two-thirds of Egyptian higher civil servants recently interviewed said that they

had entered the bureaucracy because there was limited opportunity elsewhere, had had inadequate funds to start their own business, or had regarded government as the only place of work for an educated person. To these might be added 23 percent who entered the civil service because it promised security, presumably in contrast to other employment.** Those who found such se-

curity may now feel more insecure than ever. The number of opportunities outside the civil service has not grown in most countries of the Middle East; the number of men with skills similar or perhaps superior to those of civil service incumbents and with similar, but more pressing, economic frustrations has grown enormously.” In the past, the threat of insecurity to the

bureaucrat came only from above—from the intrigues of his masters. Now for the first time, there is a growing threat from below.

11 Berger, Bureaucracy and Society, p. 71. 12 For more detailed analysis of this point, see Chapter 4.

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THE CIVIL BUREAUCRACY

The Changing Status of Bureaucrats To the great illiterate majority of the Middle East’s population, the civil servant, however lowly his rank, is a remarkable man. He can read and write, he makes more money than most, and he is in daily contact with the powerful. To his peers outside, he is an

object of envy and criticism. But for the first time in Middle Eastern history, the bureaucracy no longer has a near monopoly of literacy and education but must make its actions acceptable to an ever-growing number of people who resemble bureaucrats in all but their frustration. Middle Eastern bureaucrats are themselves becoming more concerned about their own status. They cannot, however, easily form a united front to defend themselves. The various ranks differ profoundly in outlook. It is symptomatic of this difference that when the Moslem call to prayer is sounded, the lower ranks rise

to obey it, the higher ranks tend to stay at their desks. Their pay varies widely. In East Pakistan in 1958, for example, the lowest paid government employee (Class IV) earned about $200 a year; a probationer with a B.A. degree started at about $900 a year.

This pay scale, characteristic of most of the Middle East, places the average civil servant’s earning far above the average per capita income in his country. Yet it usually also falls considerably short of providing him with the kind of life he knows members of his group can lead in the more developed countries.

And since most of his ideas, attitudes, tastes, and skills are derived from these more fortunate lands, his deprivations hurt.

A Pakistani professor can buy books, newspapers, travel to an occasional meeting, or he can get married. He cannot do both. More than half of a sample of higher ranking bureaucrats in Egypt declared that they could not live on their income, and 70 percent of them did in fact have outside incomes.** The inflation that normally accompanies rapid economic development in these areas particularly affects the fixed incomes of civil ser13 This distinction was observed in Egypt by Berger, Bureaucracy and Society, p. 13, in Pakistan by Braibanti, “The Civil Service of Pakistan,” p. 301. 14 Berger, Bureaucracy and Society, p. 106.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION vants. Yet in an increasing number of Middle Eastern countries,

it has recently also become dangerous to earn extra money by exploiting one’s special powers or to accept bribes.*° The Middle Eastern bureaucrat no longer receives the kind of

recompense that once placed him absolutely above his fellow men. He can no longer bask in the reflected glory of an absolute ruler. His skills are not as rare as they once were. Because of the tenure system, which has recently come to a few Middle Eastern countries, bureaucracies may be institutionally and in member-

ship more stable than political parties, but the rapid change in political leadership tends to make bureaucrats more timid. Political purges have not yet come to an end. The Role of Bureaucracy in the Modernization

of the Middle East The Middle Eastern bureaucrat remains vulnerable in his status and incomplete in his skills, but his role has never been as

important in history as it is today. In the past, his task was to maintain an empire. Today it is to alter both society and the body politic. To fit himself for such work, he must simultaneously reform himself and his world.

To improve administrative procedures within the bureaucracy remains a dire necessity. Responsibilities are seldom clearly defined, data for effective planning and budgeting are often lack-

ing, and in-service training is rare. But modernizing also demands a new range of values, imagination, and willingness to take risks. This is not an age for the conservation of routine and

security. What role can bureaucrats play? |

In the present Middle Eastern environment, conservative questions produce revolutionary answers: Whose interests would be

served by the creation of a talented, honest, independent civil service? Obviously, the traditional elite of kings, landlords, and 15Jn the United Arab Republic, a decree of June 17, 1958, obliges all civil

servants to declare their own financial position and that of their wife and children, as of either January 1946 or the date of entry into service. During 1959, a number of important Egyptian officials, including the Minister of Wadaf, the President of the Industrial Bank, and the Director of the Cairo Muncipality, were compelled to resign on charges of corruption.

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trading bourgeoisie could survive such a bureaucracy no better than it did the emergence of modern armies. Such a new civil service can come into its own only with the achievement of politi-

cal power by the new middle class. Sharing the latter’s interest in national mobilization and transformation because it is a very part of that class, its values make it a partisan of that class as well as its instrument of government.

This point must not be made in reverse. Present membership in the bureaucracy is no guarantee of such partisanship. In most countries, there are some whose values belong to an earlier age. There are careerists with no concerns but their personal survival. There are many, especially at higher levels, whose thinking is closer to Thomas Babington Macaulay’s than to Harold Laskr’s: both Englishmen have had an enormous influence in the education of Middle Eastern officials.‘* Even bureaucratic partisans

of the new middle class may differ on the means and pace of transformation. Some of them, discouraged by the moral slackness and organizational inefficiences in economic and non-economic realms of life, have pressed for broader interventions or withdrawn from government altogether. In the transformation of society by revolution from the top, a willing bureaucracy may be asked to do what it is unable to accomplish—to take risks, to marshal public opinion, in short, to

be politically enterprising.*’ Yet in most of the Middle East, bureaucrats have no tenure of employment. Except in Turkey, the new middle class attained power only during the past decade, 16 Macaulay wrote: “We must... do our best to form a class who may be

interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in

morals, and in intellect.” (Minute of February 2, 1835, text in H. Woodrow, Macaulay’s Minutes on Education in India Written in the Years, 1835, 1836,

1837, Calcutta, 1862, p. 115, cited by Braibanti, “The Civil Service of Pakistan,”

p. 265.) Harold Laski, in such works as Authority in the Modern State, New Haven, Connecticut, 1927, and Liberty in the Modern States, London, 1930, obviously had a different class structure and political purpose in mind. 17 For an analysis of the difficulties when bureaucrats are deliberately transformed into politicans, see Khalid B. Sayeed, “Pakistan’s Basic Democracy,”

Middle East Journal, Summer 1961, pp. 249-263; Harry J. Friedman, “Pakistan’s Experiment in Basic Democracies,” Pacific Affairs, Jane 1960, pp. 107125; A. T. R. Rahman, Basic Democracies at the Grassroots: A Study of Three Union Councils of Kotwali Thana, Comilla, Comilla, Pakistan Academy for Village Development, 1962.

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INSTRUMENTS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

and in Iran its fortunes were reversed in 1953. In a number of countries the factional battles among members of the new middle class persist and are marked by coups and counter-coups. Politi-

cal leaders, under constantly changing pressures, continue to fashion constitutions and laws that are meant to be only partly enforced or may be intended instead to impress, exhort, surround controversial issues with ambiguities, or by sheer pronouncement create an illusion of activity. Before bureaucracies in the Middle East can play useful roles in the modernization of their society, there must be enterprising and enduring politicians. Only when politicians have taken the initiative and issued clear-cut directives can bureaucracies ad-

minister them in the general interest. Bureaucrats cannot substitute for politicans. Only when there is promise of an enduring regime is the bureaucracy likely to show the courage of proposing and criticizing measures appropriate to the direction established by politicians.

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PART V THE COST AND CONSEQUENCES OF

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES DOMESTICALLY, REGIONALLY, AND INTERNATIONALLY

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES NO Middle Eastern and North African nation will be able to cope successfully with rapid social change unless it can build stable political authority. Stability, however, can no longer be attained merely through the use of power alone. Only power which addresses itself to the problems of social

change can hope to build enduring foundations for authority. The first of the political consequences of social change we examine in this final part of the book, therefore, is the high cost of political stability. The transformation of Middle Eastern society, however,

has not only domestic consequences. Social change has also become a major influence, and often the decisive factor, in the regional and international relations of the Middle East. The main threats to stability and peace in the area today stem from domestic and regional conflicts produced or exacerbated by the uprooting of the entire structure of society. The greatest danger, internationally, is not open aggression initiated from abroad but covert foreign intervention in internal political warfare initiated by Middle Easterners. This entire section of the book may therefore be viewed as an analysis of those domestic but frequently

crucial factors which mold the intentions, capabilities, vulnerabilities, and probable future role of Middle Eastern countries in their external relations. The two concluding chapters are, however, in no way intended to constitute a systematic presentation of the area’s regional and international relations. Only a separate volume could hope to describe adequately such complex issues as the decline of Western imperialism in the Middle East and North Africa, the changing relations among the great

powers in the area, the volatile history of friendship and enmity among Middle Eastern nations, or such major unresolved issues as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead, we concentrate on the regional and international consequences of Middle Eastern social change—a perspective which policy makers have often neglected at great cost.

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CHAPTER 17 THE PRICE OF POLITICAL STABILITY

Problems of Decision-Making

AT STAKE in Middle Eastern politics is the transformation of man and his society. Whether people shall obey the hallowed interpretations of God’s final revelation or use their individual judgment, whether they shall wear hat or fez, marry four wives or one, join trade unions or not, lose their land or gain more,

have a parliament or a dictator, be Arabs rather than Syrians— all these are now political issues. All such questions have become issues Of power and freedom, and the chief business of governments and parties.

Khrushchev is right: “In his mind, the social and economic revolution now in progress in Russia, China, and elsewhere in Asia and Africa is the status quo.”* Obviously Khrushchev will not, and the West need not, accept every specific form that status

quo will take. But it is vital that Khrushchev not be alone in

recognizing that all that now exists in the Middle East is changing and that the task for all concerned with the status quo, including conservatives, is to decide what is essential and worth savinge—defining “essence” here as Aristotle does, as “that which can persist through change.” This is a heavy burden for the nascent political institutions of the Middle East. None of the countries under discussion possesses procedures for orderly government succession sufficiently strong and stable so that one could confidently expect any turnover to 1 Reported after his interview with Khrushchev by Walter Lippmann, The Communist World and Ours, p. 13.

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MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

take place in a predictably lawful fashion. As a result, much political capital is devoted to investments and reinvestments in power rather than to the broad distribution of dividends. Yet frequent changes at the top continue, and in the absence of autonomous institutions for creating and altering political consensus, the Middle East’s development continues to be abrupt and unsteady.

There will be no early or easy achievement of political stability, though the will clearly exists. Middle Eastern leaders are committed by nationalist ideology and pragmatic necessity to affirm in every way their moral connection with their entire people. But this means living in two worlds at once. In order to mobilize the new middle class, Nasser, like other leaders, can use the modern, secular language of his Philosophy of the Revolution. In order to mobilize a larger audience, he must be able to reach men most of whom, if they have read or memorized any

book at all, know the seventh century Koran. In such a communication, there can be no complete rationality, no complete honesty. Opposition leaders can easily profit from the difficulty the masses have under these circumstances of distinguishing be-

tween the plausible and the possible. Political leaders cannot know how much support there is for any given policy, or how much it would take to get support. “Hence calculation is impos-

sible, and the flow of political interaction involves under-reaction and over-reaction, violence and apathy, alternations of periods of political latency with sudden and violent shifts in power.” Only a few years ago it was possible, in describing decisionmaking in foreign affairs in Washington, to say that “the effort that must go into ‘selling’ a policy that requires wide support, the difficulty of getting some kinds of problems ‘recognized’ 2 Gabriel A. Almond, “A Comparative Study of Interest Groups and the Political Process” in American Political Science Review, March 1958, p. 275.

Especially for this chapter, but also for other parts of this book, I have

profited much from Lucian W. Pye’s The Policy Implications of Social Change in Non-Western Societies, Center for International Studies, Massachusetts In-

stitute of Technology, April 1957, and an essay by Dankwart A. Rustow,

Politics and Westernization in the Near East, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, March 1956.

[ 352 ]

THE PRICE OF POLITICAL STABILITY except at the top, and the competition for the attention of these decision-making levels all combine to put obstacles in the way of any attempt at systematic policy making. Some issues . . . are the subject of massive concentration, while others are neglected almost entirely. There is a tendency to bounce from the crest of one crisis to the crest of another, and a bias toward postponing final choice among possible decisions that are mainly reactions, the children of events rather than their master. At the same time there is also a tendecy to decide as little as possible. If wide consent is necessary, decisions will almost inevitably tend to deal with only one aspect of a problem . . . rather than with the whole complex of threats [or] solely on technical grounds, without a full look at the political context or consequences. It is here, in what might be called the discontinuity of policy development...

that we are most likely to find the reason why America is so often surprised by the turn of international events. Most of our troubles . . . seem to derive . . . from the problems we have never really faced as a nation... .”* This is also an excellent description of the decision-making problems of Middle Eastern governments in both foreign and domestic affairs. Although most people in the world manage to

live with only partial answers and to survive by having only partial escapes, the leaders of the Middle East cannot hope to survive with such small pains. Their countries have entered a new historical era and need Founding Fathers who know how to

build a stable authority and a consensus capable of achieving purposeful change.

The obstacles to a clear apprehension and execution of choices, however, are likely to remain high in the Middle East. A society built largely on face-to-face relationships has not yet established a firm consensus on the requirements of impersonal

or public authority—on public purpose, public interest, and public duty.* Having traditionally perceived historical movement 3 Roger Hilsman, “Congressional-Executive Relations and the Foreign Policy Consensus,” American Political Science Review, September 1958, p. 739. * See, for example, Burton C. Marshall’s sensitive testimony on Pakistan, in Hearings before the Subcommittee for Review of the Mutual Security Programs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 86th Congress, First Session, January 21 and 22, 1959, esp. pp. 8-10.

[ 353 ]

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in terms of the changing power and influence of persons, and more recently in terms of the conspiracy of small groups or Great Powers, many Middle Easterners still have difficulty analyzing politics in relation to changing socio-economic and intellectual forces. They see themselves instead caught in a world they did not make, and therefore they say “no” more often than “yes” in the hope of freeing themselves. “No” is an important word in the formation of personality and its creative force should not be overlooked. No therapeutic results, however, arise merely from acting out frustrations unless learning in fact takes place or the environment changes. If the threats to personality amid scarcity and uncertainty remain too great, “no” can perseverate and become an ideology of spite. saying “no” for the sake of constructive freedom will demand

tremendous will and imagination. Although the traditional system of social action of which it was a part has crumbled, Mid-

dle Eastern family life continues to produce individualists readier, on the whole, for rivalry than cooperation—a tendency reinforced by the sharpened competition in many countries for

food, housing, education, and jobs.° A long historical past in which men living under tyranny and exploitation learned to hold their tongue in order to save their head, or even to acquiesce in

what they detested, is also not readily overcome. The Middle Fast’s present rebellion against “the evil secretion . . . of prolonged impotence” has not yet, in all instances, led to a new self-confidence but rather to its first liberating but unstable cry of bold outward assertiveness. It is the extremist rather than the radical who is likely to find >In the field of child psychology, it has been observed that each of the children who comes to school, to a degree, believes that no person, not even his father or mother, can be implicitly trusted; that every statement he hears has to be weighed. Never the simple reaction, ‘that’s true,’ or ‘It isn’t true.’ Never the simple remark, “That’s interesting.” Always, ‘Why did he say it? Why did he want me to hear it?’” (Alford Carleton, “The Interaction of Education

and Public Responsibility,” in The Evolution of Public Responsibility in the Middle East, edited by Harvey P. Hall, Washington, Middle East Institute, 1955, p. 88.) On the deliberate incitement of sibling rivalry, see Hamed Ammar,

Growing Up in an Egyptian Village, London, 1954, pp. 107-114. See also Fereidoun Esfandiary, “Is It the Mysterious—or Neurotic—East?” New York Times Magazine, March 24, 1957, pp. 13 and 70-72; and Raymond D. Gastil, “Middle Class Impediments to Iranian Modernization,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Fall 1958, pp. 325-329.

[ 354 ]

THE PRICE OF POLITICAL STABILITY it easier to make recruits under these conditions. Radical leadership in the Middle East cannot draw help from any local secular tradition except one dedicated to the pursuit of power. It has only

recently become acquainted with the secular moral, political, and social tradition of others, and has barely begun to gain fresh

insight from its own rich history of religio-political heresy, heterodoxy, and rebellion. Extremist leaders, by contrast, need only mobilize passions, fears, frustrations, and confusion, and in return for submission, promise land, bread, or glory. There is yet another inheritance that lies heavy upon a present which demands planned and continuous effort. Observers have noted that the Arab mind, for example, “whether in relation to the outer world or in relation to the processes of thought, cannot throw off its intense feeling for the separateness and individu-

ality of the concrete events. .. . It is this, too, which explains— what is so difficult for the Western student to grasp—the aversion

of the Muslims from the thought processes of rationalism... . The rejection of rationalist modes of thought and of the utilitarian ethic which is inseparable from them has its roots, therefore, not in the so-called ‘obscurantism’ of the Muslim theologies but in the atomism and discreteness of the Arab imagination.”® Although others have thought that this quality of mind typifies

all Oriental civilizations,’ it may be doubted whether it 1s, at least in certain essential respects, exclusively Arab or Oriental. Indeed, studies of various aspects of working-class life and culture have suggested that, in its essence, “it is the “dense and concrete’ life, a life whose main stress is on the intimate, the sensory, the detailed, and the personal. This would no doubt be true of working-class groups anywhere in the world.” Living

for centuries in an environment of great uncertainties and scarcities, Moslems may well share with the poor anywhere a great skepticism that the concrete experiences of each separate

York, 1946.

6H. A. R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam, p. 7. 7 See, for example, F. S. C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West, New

8 Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, London, 1957, p. 88, cited by Seymour Martin Lipset, “Democracy and Working-Class Authoritarianism,” American Sociological Review, August, 1959, p. 493.

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day can be abstracted by thought or manipulated except by a fortuitous or merciful act of power. Although the new middle class of the Middle East 1s intent

upon making life more predictable and rewarding, the population groups growing most rapidly are the unskilled poor and the educated unemployed. The insecurity of their new existence gives

them reasons to perpetuate on new grounds their accustomed vision of life as a series of sudden and discontinuous moments. Their new knowledge of the potentialities of the modern age, however, gives them reasons for the first time for resenting their style of life. As a result, they demand change, but their political intervention still tends to flame suddenly and violently into mob action, rather than to glow steadily in permanent, patient com-

mitment. Their God sustained their patience (and gave them the will to rebel) in the past. With the decay of traditional faith, that burden (and opportunity) now falls increasingly on men. The temptation to avoid recurrent crises of power by impressing the impatient masses with spectacular rather than solid action will therefore remain great especially for Middle Eastern decision-makers who cannot rely on a well-organized, well-disciplined, politically educated mass organization of their own. The Economic Cost of Political Stability The political leaders of the Middle East will find it difficult to

offer many rewards for patience for followers and opposition alike even as they strive to create a society capable of stable and sustained motion. It has been suggested that “the economic difference between a traditional and a modern society is merely a question of whether its rate of investment is low relative to its rate of population increase—say, under 5 percent of national in-

come—or whether it has risen to 10 percent or over. With a capital-output ratio of about 3 to 1, a society that invests more than 10 percent of its national income will outstrip any likely population growth; and a regular increase in output per head can then be assumed.”® It is doubtful that most Middle Eastern coun°“[W. W.] Rostow on Growth,” The Economist, August 19, 1959, p. 410.

[ 356 ]

THE PRICE OF POLITICAL STABILITY tries will be able to muster such savings from domestic sources during the next decade. Perhaps only four can make a serious beginning in that direction—Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan. In 1963, however, it appeared that they first lacked primarily the political will to dare face all the far-reaching structural changes in politics and society which economic development entails; the second still lacked primarily stable political strength; the third, sufficient skills; and the fourth lacked at least a large enough initial infusion of capital to achieve that rate of growth.” The majority of Middle Eastern countries belong to the domain of Alice’s Red Queen, where everyone will have to run very fast if he is merely to stand still. The largest and most overpopulated Arab state, Egypt, must build the world’s biggest dam, the High Aswan Dam, if it is to increase its cultivated land by one-

third in ten years—while its population grows by one-fourth during the same period. In Egyptian industry, even a doubling of present industrial employment would hardly absorb the prob-

able annual increase in the total labor force. Yet the trend in

Egyptian industry, in common with the rest of the world, and for the sake of competing in international markets, is toward intro-

ducing labor saving machinery. Present industrial production in Egypt’s large factories can probably be doubled with hardly any increase in employment.** Indeed, it may soon prove feasible to displace most of the clerks by machines.

Discontent breeds more quickly than economic opportunities —faster even than people. Hard disciplined work combined with austere consumption may raise the ceiling of poverty from $100

yearly per capita income to $200 within a decade in several countries of the Middle East. Such a goal, which is not likely to be achieved by all and surpassed only by a few, contrasts patently and painfully with the probable increase in American leisure and American per capita income from $2,300 to $3,300 during the same period. Hard, disciplined work and austerity, moreover, 10Tn the Sudan, about 120 million acres are thought to be suitable for agriculture and another 80 million for stockraising. Only about 7 million acres are now being cultivated in any one year. (Aglan, The Economic Limitations to Future Development, Khartum, 1953.) 11 Harbison and Ibrahim, Human Resources for Egyptian Enterprise, pp. 22 and 136-138.

[ 357 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

directly conflict with the cardinal traditional values of Middle Easterners, namely leisure and immediate gratification. In modern times also, hard work alone has ceased to be a match for technological inventiveness combined with non-human energy. As a result, even the most dramatic economic achievements within the present capabilities of Middle Eastern countries may leave great dissatisfaction.

Yet if job opportunities do not significantly increase, a new closed society may well come into being in which those who hold jobs, especially among the new middle class, try to freeze their hold by converting themselves into a dominant caste of functionaries keeping the rest of their society at bay. A battle against such rule and the resultant instability would have none of the saving grace of the instability that characterized the traditional closed system of Islam, where rebellion helped to re-

constitute authority. Rebellions against such an elite would convert the new states into battlegrounds in which the sheer necessity of survival engendered the warfare of all against all. Nationalism would then indeed have proved to be a temporary phase, yielding not to a larger sense of community but to none at all. In such a struggle, the great majority might well continue to be merely passive victims, that is, men who in this environment commonly weaken to die of disease before they die of starvation. We need suppose only that at least as many as were inspired to acts of terroristic violence by the battle for national independence, or later by a vision of the millennium, would then enlist in the fight for the sheer necessities of life. The army, as the

guardian of domestic peace, might well then also split into factions, just as it has done many times before. Such possibilities are not far-fetched. There are, to be sure, imaginative ways of treading water without drowning. One can build projects that appear to be symbolic demonstrations of things to come; cut inefficiency and end cor-

ruption; and set high standards of simplicity, austerity, and equality. It is also possible, at higher cost, to build proud armies and discover or perpetuate menacing enemies, without actually going beyond the brink and sacrificing bodies.

In fact, treading water effectively and for a long time may [ 358 ]

THE PRICE OF POLITICAL STABILITY well be one of the higher tests of statesmanship in the Middle East. There are no simple ways out. Birth control cannot be made retroactive. The provision of inexpensive, effective birth control devices is obviously essential; but birth control will not prove acceptable until there has been a revolution in the structure

of values and society. Islam has no theological objection to birth control, but births will not diminish as long as the survival of a family cannot be purchased except by plentiful free labor, as long as status can be attained in few other ways than by the production of male children, as long as the position of women remains fundamentally unchanged, as long as the individual is less

important than the family or tribe. In short, birth control—or any other single development—is unlikely to be widely acceptable until economic and social and intellectual change allow it to be part of a cumulative process of change. No change can proceed effectively in isolation. In Nuri’s Iraq, for example, there were wide economic opportunities (6,000,000

empty acres, a surplus of water, adequate oil revenues, and a small population), but political courage set limits to economic planning. Had Nuri parcelled out the 6,000,000 new acres to the 300 or so families who then dominated Iraq, he would have asked for revolution; had he parcelled it out among the thou-

sands of sharecropping families to convert them into economically independent owners, he would have led his country through a revolution, peacefully and constructively. Instead, he delayed until he lost his life at the hand of revolutionary forces whose strength he had underestimated. Problems arise even when there is both courage and imagination—as in the Gezirah scheme of the Sudan. Here, a com-

bination of free enterprise, cooperative organization, and government guidance produced a prolonged rise of incomes. Cotton, however, brings uncertain prices in the world’s markets,

and there is a limit to what an economy based principally on

cotton may earn. Among Gezirah farmers accustomed to a | steady rise in incomes and thus all the more baffled and discontented when they reached a ceiling, communist organizers were

able to make headway more quickly than among any other group of farmers in the Middle East. [ 359 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

Even a major advance is not enough; only continuing progress assures political stability. Economic development itself is a revolutionary influence, and can have constructive results only as it overturns established patterns of thought and action, maintains its momentum, and establishes new and solid foundations for growth. For this reason, political leaders who have so far succeeded in buying time for a small price may be resting upon illusions. If left unremedied, the increasing imbalance between population and resources, and between aspirations and satisfaction, daily increases the price of buying time.

All these qualifications merely enhance the importance of economic development. Without such development, it is not simply that nothing can happen. On the contrary, it becomes much more likely that the forces of extremism will find increased

opportunities. With sufficient economic development, opportunities arise for a whole range of alternatives—witness prewar and postwar Japan, prewar and postwar Germany, the U.S.S.R. , and the United States. But only with economic development sufficient to alleviate political, social, and economic imbalances will there also be a chance for stable, progressive, and ultimately democratic government. Although economic development is, by itself, insufficient, its paucity cripples activities in all other fields in the Middle East.

| Yet where shall the money come from? Some productively multiplying activities may require much labor, of which there is a great surplus in most of the Middle East, but relatively little money: more intensive agricultural production, irrigation sys-

tems, roads, and buildings may fall into this category. Such efforts may produce good results, especially if consumption 1s not allowed to rise greatly and new investments are made wisely.

However, unless the country is richly blessed in resources, this cannot be the road to an American, Japanese, or Soviet level of life.

Countries that lack adequate capital or resources, or both— most countries of the Middle East—have four alternatives. The first is to be content with the life of the poor, preaching asceticism and voluntary sharing. The growing pressure of population upon existing resources, the incitement of the vivid example of prog[ 360 ]

, THE PRICE OF POLITICAL STABILITY ress in other parts of the world, and the ideological commit-

ments of the dominant new middle class all make this an impractical alternative, for it is in fact an option for losing ground economically and politically. The second possibility is to try for modest gains through the intensive use of surplus labor,

prudent discipline, equal justice, and soul-satisfying words, until new levels of technology—in cheap energy, cheap conversion of sea water into water for irrigation, inexpensive birth

control, efficient food production—permit the building of a

qualitatively different way of life at a smaller moral, economic, | and political price than today. By such efforts, it may be possible for example, for Egypt to double a $150 annual per capita income into a $300 annual income. But it is a recipe that constantly skirts the edge of totalitarianism, both in the possibility of failure and in the effort to avoid failure. The politics of despair that leads to communism, neo-Islamic totalitarianism, or ultra-nationalism is a powerful third alternative. Its potentiality is enhanced by the fact that the most rapidly growing segments of Middle Eastern society, including the new middle class, are those which have lost or not yet attained status, prestige, and jobs. If the undogmatic elements of the salaried new middle class are to build the new society and new body politic

required for their survival, they will, in most countries of this region, need to have available a fourth alternative—capital and

skills from abroad. These must be available, moreover, in quantities sufficient to compensate for the sums the country itself

cannot muster for the necessary take-off into self-sustaining growth.

To Set a Course Middle Eastern Jeaders face one vital task, however, for which no foreign supplies can compensate: to establish clear directions for bringing about enough change to control the changes which have already taken place—that is, to create new institutions with enough resiliency to deal with continuing social change. How demanding a task this is may be measured by the model of Turkey. No Middle Eastern state is likely ever to have as easy

[ 361 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

a transition. When Ataturk began his revolution in the early twenties, he faced a population that was culturally more homoge-

neous than that of the majority of Arab states,” conscious of age-old (and very recent) military threats from its northern and western neighbors, and hence readily responsive to appeals for national unity. It was the most self-confident part of the Ottoman

Empire, for its army and bureaucracy had ruled the rest. The . majority of peasants already owned their land at the time of the revolution, and more land was available. Because of lack of communications they were physically and even psychologically out of touch with the battles for reform and secularization in the

cities. The regime could therefore postpone coming fully to grips with the problems of the majority of the population for about two decades. The principal revolutionary force, the army, had been favored as a career by the most intelligent, ambitious, and patriotic sons of both the old and new elite. More disciplined than any politi-

cal party, more modern than any other institution of the state, its morale and its standing in the country were assured by its victories after World War I over various Western armies that had sought permanently to cut off parts of Turkey. Except for a minor revision of the frontier with Syria, the majority of the political leadership could think of no unsatisfied territorial ambitions. Domestically, however, in common with other politi-

| cally active elements in the country, the army’s leadership had participated in a century of discussions and rebellions for reforms, so that Ataturk’s revolution was not a radical departure for many of those chiefly affected by it.

Ataturk himself was a brilliant organizer, an educated propagandist, and a charismatic personality without personal ties to any group which might obstruct healthy change. He never allowed his ideology to become rigid, but rather let it evolve as a broad guide to pragmatic action. In the realm of foreign policy, he skillfully enlarged his independence in the early twenties by

doing what Nasser is doing now—drawing arms from the U.S.S.R. in order to free the country from past dependence on the West, and then striking a new balance. Since that took place 12 Cf. the discussion of neighboring Syria in Chapter 11.

[ 362 ]

THE PRICE OF POLITICAL STABILITY in a more innocent international age and one about which the United States has few memories, Turkey was not precluded from quietly maintaining its flexibility during World War IT and from

gaining full recognition after 1947 of its international status as a member of NATO and the Western community. No other country in the Middle East can today duplicate any but a small portion of Turkey’s advantages. Yet even Turkey did not accomplish all that was necessary. After 1954, the government lost contact with most of its educated class and began to resort to repression.’ In 1959, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization reported that “a truly heroic program of land use adjustment is required” to change the “spiralling destruction” of Turkish agriculture, and to begin to meet Turkey’s needs for future investment.’* It required a second major revolution, beginning in the wake of a military coup in 1960, to project more solid social, economic, and political foundations for Turkey’s

modernization. | Most of the rest of the Middle East and North Africa will have to make progress on harsher and more difficult terms. Most leaders in this region today are unlikely to survive for long unless they succeed in making progress of wider scope with greater speed and with fewer resources. Even their most constructive roads to modernization may give the appearance, therefore, of seeming much closer to communism than to democracy. Such a view, however, whether by Middle Easterner or by Western or Soviet observers, would be a great and misleading over-simplification. Modern political science, pioneered by the West, has so far developed no adequate analytical discrimination, not even sufficient terms, for differentiating among alternatives in those

parts of the political spectrum where most Middle Eastern choices will be made. There are vital distinctions to be made among political colorations that seem to share the same intensity and yet are far apart—among moderates trying to cope with im-

moderate problems, extremists resorting to totalitarianism to avoid dealing with roots, and radicals using authoritarian means to mobilize enough strength to establish new roots for a society. 13 See Chapter 14. 14 New York Times, September 11, 1959.

[ 363 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

In the Middle East, we shall need to acquire the unaccustomed habit of examining the adequacy of moderation with scepticism, and develop a sensitivity to the vital differences between extremist

and radical movements. The latter, though moving insecurely across terrain unfamiliar to the West, are altogether alien to extremists in their avoidance of violence in the service of dogma while creating more solid foundations for human dignity. Such vision is important especially since, if time passes without suffi-

cient help, the non-totalitarian leaders in the Middle East are almost certain to find their tasks beyond their strength.

[ 364 |

CHAPTER 18 REGIONAL RIVALRY AND THE

PROSPECTS FOR UNITY |

Is There a Middle East?

For thousands of years, men have sought to impose unity upon

the Middle East from within and from without, but all past empires crumbled in the absence of secure frontiers and internal

cohesion. The Middle East has no natural boundaries to mark

it off from the rest of the world. Most of its mountains and deserts act not as outer frontiers but as internal obstacles to regional communication; its great rivers and inland seas are not barriers but traditional routes of interchange and invasion.

In the twentieth century, neither native nor foreigner has been able to bring the Middle East under a single rule. Islam— once the principal cement—no longer binds the region politically. Indeed, the spread of Islam has contributed to its diversity. More than half of the world’s 430,000,000 Moslems live east of Karachi, and there are as many Moslems living under Indian rule or in sub-Saharan Africa as in all the independent states of the Arab East. Where Islam’s new center of creativity may lie

and whether it still has power to affect the political realm remains | to be seen. Today, political leaders between Morocco and Pakistan speak of their own national interests, or of Egyptian, Arab, or Afro-Asian aspirations. Not one of them speaks or acts as if the “Middle East” as a unit were the object or inspiration of his policy.

Even the term “Middle East” is of recent invention and foreign

[ 365 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES , importation. It was fashioned by the British before the first World War to cover the area between the “Near” East (namely Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, the Levant—roughly Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine—and also Egypt) and the “Far” East. The “Middle East” lay between these two areas, and consisted of Arabia, Mesopotamia (now Iraq), Iran, and Afghanistan.* But this term melted and expanded as distances changed and cultures met. The

nearest East (Greece, Bulgaria, and lately Turkey) became linked increasingly with Europe while a large new country, Pak-

istan, linked itself for political and religious reasons predominantly with the Middle East. In the age of the airplane, the Near

and the Middle East, never culturally distinct, began to seem equally close to London no less than Washington, and increasingly the more ample and ambiguous “Middle East” has come to be the favored designation.

“North Africa,” a term which traditionally excluded such northern African states as Egypt, Sudan, and Mauritania, has also been altered in scope, overlapping or fusing with the “Mid-

dle East.” For centuries the broad stretches of Libyan desert along the shores of the Mediterranean separated Libya from both Egypt and the Arab West (Maghrib). Now, however, the Libyan and Saharan deserts are becoming economically valuable and offer no barriers to communication by radio or plane. Through these great deserts now run new paths of interaction among the Middle East, Arab Africa, and Black Africa.’

There is no way to define the Middle East simply, permanently, and with precision. The very fact that it spills over and also interlocks with other regions is an essential part of its true definition and of its significance. Its lack of natural frontiers and its location as a bridge between three continents have made

the area from Morocco to Pakistan for thousands of years a crossroads for the world. 1For lucid discussions of the problems of defining the “Middle East,” see C. M. Woodhouse, Britain and the Middle East, Paris, 1959, pp. 10-20; G. Etzel Pearcy, “The Middle East, An Indefinable Region,” Department of State Bul-

letin, Washington, March 23, 1959; and Roderic H. Davison, “Where is the Middle East?” Foreign Affairs, July 1960, pp. 665-675. 2 See Friedrich-Wilhelm Fernau’s Arabischer Westen: Der Maghrib in Bewegung, Stuttgart, 1959, for an excellent discussion of these recent changes in relationships.

[ 366 ]

REGIONAL RIVALRY AND PROSPECTS FOR UNITY Now that the people of the Middle East are reasserting their right to help shape their place and role in the world, and yet common ancestry, religion, and proximity count for less than in the past, the concept “Middle East” is likely to change its meaning again. Middle Eastern nations may discover new grounds or rediscover old foundations for regional unity. Or they may find greater kinship instead with countries on other continents that

may be ideologically or politically closer to them than their immediate neighbors.

Conflicts within and around National Frontiers Unity will not come easily. Just as the Middle East as a whole lacks clear-cut grounds for regional political unity, almost every country in it suffers from similar difficulties. The thousand miles

that separate the two wings of Pakistan from each other are merely a more obvious mark of the gaps and fractures that characterize other countries in this region. The 1,500,000 inhabitants of Lebanon, a country half the size of New Jersey, practice 18 distinct faiths and most of them believe themselves to

be entitled to “a due proportionality” in the assignment of Official posts.* Two-thirds of all the Jordanians are ex-Palestinians, annexed to their surprise in 1948 by a dynasty which

| most of them despised for being pro-British, Bedouin-linked, and a supporter of the status quo. In the Sudan, that quarter of the population which lives in the south is neither Arabic-speak-

: ing nor Moslem, but divided among several scores of different tribal groups and languages. About one-sixth of Iraq’s people are not Arabs but Kurds; slightly more than half of all Iraqi Arabs are not orthodox but heretical Shi’a Moslems.

Even the countries that need not cope with such religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity suffer, with the rest, from profound divisions between the modern-minded and the traditional,

the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate, between radicals, extremists, and moderates, between those whose horizon is bound by ties of kinship and those who have dedicated themselves to the nation.

8 Woodhouse, Britain and the Middle East, p. 8. , [ 367 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

The very frontiers of each nation in the Middle East remain

uncertain. Most frontier lines in this region were drawn by Europeans in an effort to compromise among rival European interests as these asserted themselves about forty years ago. Almost all the rest reflect the fortunes (or misfortunes) of wars fought since then. It is not surprising, therefore, that no area of the world faintly approaches the Middle East in the multiplicity and intensity of its current unresolved border disputes: Morocco demands the annexation of Mauritania and Rio de Oro, sometimes under its control in earlier centuries; these two areas would

quadruple Morocco’s size. Morocco and Tunisia both claim certain portions of Algeria lost as that territory expanded under French hegemony. Portions of the Libyan-Egyptian frontier remain unmarked, while rival claims exist along the border be-

tween Egypt and Sudan. A war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1934 fixed only a portion of the frontier between these two countries. Yemen has employed troops recently to dramatize its claims to British-held Aden and the Aden Protectorate. Saudi Arabia remains in dispute over frontiers with a number of British-protected sheikhdoms and principalities along the rim of the Arabian Peninsula. Recent conflicts between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the sovereignty of islands in the Persian Gulf has caused Saudi Arabia to propose that this body of water henceforth be known as the “Arabian Gulf.” The problem of the borders between Israel and the Arabs has occupied more sessions of the UN’s Security Council than any other single issue. Both Egypt and Iraq during the past six years

have employed subversion, intensive propaganda, and troop movements to persuade neighboring countries to unite with them.

The anti-government forces in the Lebanese civil war of 1958 were able to draw on outside help in part because “a tribal structure of society is prevalent which creates bonds of identity within ethnic groups, the realities of which are in some cases not diminished by the existence of a political frontier, the demarcation of

which is, in some places, the subject of disagreement or uncertainty.”* Unresolved border issues between Iran and Afghanistan involve an area near the Helmand River. Between Pakistan and “First Report of the United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon, UN Document S/4040, July 3, 1958, p. 4.

[ 368 ]

REGIONAL RIVALRY AND PROSPECTS FOR UNITY Afghanistan, the latter’s claim to “Pushtunistan”—an undefined

border region reaching in the most extreme view as far as Karachi—has frequently embittered relations. Pakistan’s dispute

with India over Kashmir continues unresolved.’ Clearly it is wrong to argue, as Middle Easterners frequently do, that it is only the imperialists who are keeping them apart.

Outsiders are by no means innocent bystanders, however. Fach of the great European powers has tried, at one time or another, to dominate the region but, barring that possibility, has preferred to see the Middle East weak and divided and so open to all traffic. It was on this principle that the powers agreed to

prolong the flickering life of the Ottoman Empire until the early part of this century, and to divide most of its territories after World War I into non-self-governing states.

Between the two world wars, there was not sufficient local will or strength to alter the state boundaries and political arrangements imposed from outside. Three of the seven independent nations of the Middle East of that period (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Irag, and Turkey) were too remote in space and time to think in regional terms; most of the rest were

unable to play an independent role despite their formal sovereignty. Only Turkey was fully sovereign, and it had no regional interests. The new Turkey wanted none of the old Ottoman international entanglements; it had officially rejected Islam as a bond within Turkey and without; its aim was to become a part of Europe with whom it no longer had any major unresolved quarrels. There were no large Turkish communities outside its

frontiers striving for aid or rivalry; it had little need of the resources of the Middle East for the survival of its own population. The contrast between Turkish nationalism and the unsatis-

fied hopes and unresolved issues of Arab nationalism could scarcely be greater. ° If Turkey is the only Mildle Eastern country that escapes mention here, it is only because it appears to have settled its frontier disputes prior to 1959. In the early 1920’s, it exchanged Greek and Turkish populations and in 1923 it willingly yielded all its claims to Ottoman territories; in 1939, it gained Alexandretta from Syria; in the early 1950’s, the U.S.S.R. renounced its claim to the Turkish provinces of Kars and Ardahan, while Turkey had already ceased to express political interest in the Turkic-speaking populations of the U.S.S.R. In 1959, the Cyprus dispute was apparently settled.

[ 369 ]

, MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES Nationalism vs. National Interests: | The Struggle for Arab Unity

| The Arabs, founders of the Islamic Empire in the middle of the seventh century, ceased to control it as a single empire by the

middle of the eighth century. Since that time the Arabs have remained disunited, although Arabs by language and culture constitute the majority in all countries fom Iraq to Morocco. When the calls to unity began to be heard again in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Arab spokesmen were in fact divided among champions of Arab supremacy among Moslems, champions of Islamic supremacy in Arab states, champions of secular nationalism, and champions of rival dynastic claims over various parts of the Arab world.® These differences persisted until

after World War II. The Arab League, founded in 1945 as the first collaborative association among Arab nations, remained ineffective as quarrels persisted between the Hashimite dynasties of Iraq and Jordan and the non-Hashimite dynasties and rulers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

During the 1950’s, however, several developments funda- mentally altered the significance of the passion for unity and rivalry in the area. Movements led by the new middle class won control of several states from the traditional elites. Soon after the emergence of this new type of leadership—Nasser was the first of these among the Arabs—the U.S.S.R. entered the Arab world in 1955 for the first time in history as an alternate source of political, economic, and military aid.” For the first time, the

intra-regional conflicts of the Middle East came to have an ideological content and far-reaching international implications. Regional and international issues began awkwardly and dangerously to coincide. The movement for socialist, authoritarian 6 For a discussion of this early period, see C. Ernest Dawn, “Ideological Influences in the Arab Revolt,” and Harold W. Glidden, “Arab Unity: Ideal and Reality,” in The World of Islam: Studies in Honour of Philip K. Hitti, edited by James Kritzeck and R. Bayly Winder, London, 1959, pp. 233-248

and 249-254.

TOnly along the northern tier of the Middle East—directly along its own frontier—had the U.S.S.R. ever played a similar role. During the early 1920’s, it supported Kemal Ataturk with arms, King Amanullah of Afghanistan with

| money and diplomatic support, and Reza Shah of Iran with diplomatic aid.

After 1928, even these efforts to woo governments came to an end as the

| [ 370 ]

Comintern returned to an emphasis on overthrowing governments by revolution.

REGIONAL RIVALRY AND PROSPECTS FOR UNITY nationalism found increasingly strong popular support even in countries governed by status quo oligarchies. The majority of the latter, seeking for countervailing external support against a local movement that meant to undermine their social and political system, their accustomed role in the region, and their ties

with the U.K. and France, turned to the West. The West, anxious to maintain and, if possible, improve its position in this region in the midst of the cold war, thought it prudent to extend such help. When the Western powers thus committed themselves

anew to the status quo governments of the Middle East, the leading reform-minded nationalist governments turned for external support to the U.S.S.R. With such augmented strength, these nationalists wished first to break the Western monopoly of influence and prerogative in the area, and then free themselves from dependence on any single great power.

The first results of these moves were, however, an intensification of the arms race among Middle Eastern nations and an increase in threats and actual outbursts of violence among Arab factions. The new conjunction of issues helped to set off the French-British-Israeli invasion of Suez in 1956, the American intervention in Lebanon, and the return of British troops to Jordan in 1958. Yet by the end of 1958, these alarms and excursions had demonstrated that, while the old pattern of forces in the Middle East had been irremediably altered, the new pattern established certain new barriers against political adventurism. The United States had shown itself ready to curb even its closest allies when

they sought by force to regain traditional prerogatives in the Middle East. The United States had also proved that it would intervene to protect the independence of Middle Eastern states,

while at the same time becoming more skeptical about the wisdom of intervening merely to rescue unpopular but proWestern regimes. And the power of both the Western states and the U.S.S.R. to intervene in the Middle East had shown itself to

be limited by the undeniable weight each bloc could exert against the other, yet not necessarily on the sensitively nationalist Middle East itself.* 8 The international implications of these developments are treated in detail in the final chapter.

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The Iraqi coup of 1958 served to dramatize that the major remaining obstacle to Arab unity is no longer foreign influence but disagreement among the Arabs themselves. Under General Kassim a reformist nationalist regime came to power that was stimulated by many of Nasser’s ideas, yet refused to join with

him in a common Arab state. Men who agreed at last on the social content and purpose of nationalism found themselves interpreting in different fashions the national interests of each separate Arab state. An earlier generation of Arab “nationalists” had adjusted itself to an unresolved tension between Arab nation-

alism and dynastic and clique interests. To the new reformist nationalist, the clash between nationalism and national interests seemed to come as an unexpected shock. In Iraq itself after 1958, the clash among reformist national-

ists provoked repeated bloody disorders and attempts on the life of General Kassim. The factions were many. The more moderate supporters of Iraqi “solidarity” with the Arabs (as opposed to Arab unity, federation, or confederation) argued that Iraq had not yet had an opportunity freely to develop its own political institutions or freely plan the full development of its own national economy. Why not build up a multi-party democracy that would reflect the genuine differences of opinion and cultures that exist in Iraq, and discover first the true measure of Iraq’s wealth and power instead of forcing Iraq prematurely into

the centralized structure of another Arab state? More extreme Iraqi nationalists sought to unite Arabs under Iraqi hegemony by laying claim to the oil-rich Sheikhdom of Kuwait and pressing Syria and Jordan to unite with Iraq.

The so-called pro-Nasser groups in Baghdad were not all of one mind either. The Iraqi branch of the Syrian Socialist Resur-

rectionist (Bath) Party fought hard to bring Iraq into the Egyptian-Syrian union. At first glance, that policy seemed merely a continuation of its established line. The Ba’th Party had

been chiefly responsible for tying Syria to Egypt. After the Egyptian-Syrian union had been consummated, however, Nasser had not trusted this Syrian-based party either to become the core

of the “National Union,” the sole political movement of the United Arab Republic, or to survive as the National Union’s [ 372 ]

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competitor. If the Ba’th now strove for Iraq’s inclusion in the UAR, its hope seemed to be that its victory in Baghdad would allow it to strike a new and different bargain with Nasser regarding the distribution of power in a united Arab state. The Arab nationalists in Baghdad who fought unhesitatingly for com-

plete unity with the UAR in 1958 had by 1961 also drawn certain lessons from Syria’s experience. Most of them expected Iraq to arrange in advance that proportion of its revenues which would be allocated to the central Arab government. The majority of politically active men in the Arab East doubtless recognized by the early 1960’s that the quest for Arab unity was no longer a matter merely of settling relations among Arab

governments. Popular movements have arisen that respond willingly to leaders of neighboring Arab states, or at least to similar programs. Many Arabs now quite readily treat the struggle for unity, hegemony, or separatism among the Arab states, even when it involves political violence, as an acceptable phase of an internal Arab revolution rather than an inadmissible form of combat among sovereign states. But the simple enthusiasm of

1956, when Nasser was still the only successful champion of Arab unity, is gone. Today, even supporters of Nasser in the most artificial Arab state, Jordan, tend to draw distinctions between Egyptian hegemony and Arab unity. They would yield their separate statehood only in return for a clear statement of their autonomous rights.

Western leaders, content that no aggressive nation would soon dominate these crossroads, began in the face of these developments to adopt a policy of sympathetic impartiality—one might almost say neutralism—toward Middle Eastern rivals. Soviet leaders viewed these divisions with satisfaction. “It is said

that Arab nationalism supposedly stands above the interests of the separate Arab states and above the interest of the different classes of the population of Arab countries,” observed Chairman Khrushchev. “Undoubtedly the interests of the majority of Arabs

are indivisible in the struggle against the colonial yoke. But after a country has freed itself from foreign domination, the interests of the people cannot be ignored. The interests of all the

Arabs cannot coincide. Therefore attempts under the flag of [ 373 ]

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nationalism to ignore the interests of separate classes of the population and the interests of the working people are futile.” He thought that leaders who would try to “foist” Arab unity on

people may “fade” or be “thrown completely overboard.” Clearly the U.S.S.R. is not in favor of any movement for enduring unity that might stabilize a portion of the non-Soviet world; the reservations of the Western powers, especially since 1958, seem to apply only to movements aggressively hostile to the West and intent upon imposing unity on others by force. It would be quite wrong, however, to expect the story of Arab unity to end at this point. By now, there are ancient obstacles that the drive for Arab unity need no longer face. The map of the Arab world of the Middle East and North Africa has changed its

meaning. In the past, the great deserts and the mountains of

| this region, and the parochial pride of kinship groups kept men separate from each other, and the authority of empires radiating from oases and rivers soon diminished with distance from the capital and decayed in the rivalry of family and tribes. It was Islam’s remarkable achievement that it had the power to give a

similar cultural and religious cast to this region. It could not, however, keep the many separate clusters of population from preserving a high degree of cultural political autonomy.” Today, the clusters of population and the nearly empty spaces between them have an entirely new significance. The clusters everywhere consist increasingly of men uprooted from parochial ties and eager for new leadership. The spaces between them are easily filled by the rapid communication of news and ideas, and

the rapid movement of men. Within hours, a coup or even a speech will reverberate throughout the region.

This quest for new institutional bonds within a region possessing few locally sanctified frontiers can be expected to continue

during the next decade probably without achieving final solutions. The 1960’s are likely to see important changes in the relative strength of Arab countries as some prove themselves success® Khrushchev’s speech to an Iraqi economic delegation on March 16, 1959, translated from Izvestiia by the Mizan Newsletter, April 1959. ‘© Most instructive in this connection is the contrast between the frontiers of the countries of the area and the distribution of the population shown on the map in the front of the book.

[ 374 ]

REGIONAL RIVALRY AND PROSPECTS FOR UNITY ful in dealing with internal social change, and others fall behind, and hence become either more adventurist or more vulnerable to subversion and pressure from outside. The change in the relative position of Iraq and Egypt may be especially dramatic. Egypt contains over half of all the Arabs of the Arab East, or

over one-third of all Arabs if we add all of North Africa. So many Arabs located in so strategic a position cannot readily be isolated: they are bound to take a leading role in Arab affairs.

Egyptian actions, however, will almost certainly reflect the disturbing imbalance between modern aspirations, inadequate resources, and a soaring population. For Egypt, Arab unity is an issue involving not only political status but economic survival. As long as Egypt must endure its discontent, its style of leadership —regardless of the individual in charge—is likely to be volatile and, at times, inflammatory. Since the emergence of socialist and nationalist regimes in Iraq, and of voices for regional unity in North Africa, Nasser no

longer has a regional monopoly of leadership for Arab unity under the banners of reformist nationalism. Even by 1962, however, he retained several advantages over all other contenders. He held the prestige of having been the first reformist nationalist to come into power in the Arab world, the first to engage in largescale land reforms, the first to secure a large supply of arms, the first to extend political and economic support to movements elsewhere akin to his own. He survived both a European and Israeli attack, and avoided entangling his political fortunes with those of local communist parties. No one rules nearly as many Arabs as he. No one among his Arab contemporaries has been in actual charge of any government for as long as he. Iraq, although it contains less than one-tenth of all the Arabs,

has far greater potentialities than Egypt. It contains probably more varied untapped resources than any other country in the Middle East. Within a relatively short time, it could become one of the wealthiest, most stable, and most influential countries in the region. Similarly, in North Africa, the partners who might bring about

North African or Arab unity may well change character and place. Tunisia, one of the most modern of all the Arab countries [ 375 ]

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politically, has been losing some of its former prominence as other, larger African states, both north and south, achieved independence. States scarcely vocal in the past, Libya and the Islamic

Republic of Mauritania, are likely by virtue of oil or mineral wealth to play an increasingly more influential role provided they succeed in building adequate political institutions. Will the radi-

cal rebel army of Algeria and the conservative royal army of Morocco allow their two countries in the future to move in similar directions? Even if these states do not find it possible to cement North African unity during the next decade, it is certain that none of them will wish to purchase unity at the cost of bowing to the control of another Arab state. With the majority of peoples and nearly half of the states in the Arab League now located in Africa, and Africa itself coming alive with a multitude of newly independent states, the problems of Arab unity must be resolved in an entirely new context. The three circles of Egyptian interest of which Nasser has written—

the Arab, African, and Islamic—will from now on pose for Egypt and other Arab countries problems of balance as delicate as those which face Great Britain, for example, in living simultaneously with NATO, the Commonwealth, and movements for European unity. Just as Middle Eastern leaders confront multiple revolutions in domestic politics, so they are challenged in regional politics at

least during the next decade by circumstances which derive simultaneously from five different historical eras. The first of these is obviously coming to an end. The few Arab communities remaining under foreign control or protection—the sheikhdoms and principalities of the Arabian Peninsula, including Bahrayn

and Qatar, which are wealthier than most independent Arab states—are likely soon to be free to collaborate as they choose with other Arab states. While the second of these historical eras, characterized by regimes such as those of Kings Husayn and Saud, overlaps with the age of Nasser and Ben Bella, the rivalry among Middle HRastern states will continue to have strong ideological overtones—status quo against reform. As long as such states coexist, the Arab League is unlikely to find much common meeting ground except on anti-imperialism (provided no power [ 376 ]

REGIONAL RIVALRY AND PROSPECTS FOR UNITY is mentioned by name), on Palestine (provided the issue remains the future of Israel and not that of “Arab Palestine,” now largely

incorporated into Jordan), and on cultural collaboration (provided the proposals do not raise conflicts over how to deal with social change). During the 1950’s, the Middle East entered a third modern historical period in its regional relationships: a majority in the Middle East came to be ruled by reform nationalist governments. The latter, sharing a common political language and orientation,

collaborate and compete with each other primarily on grounds of national interest. Such an era may well have greater potential than those which preceded it for cementing basic common interests through negotiations. In this era, it may prove feasible to lay the ground for a common development bank combining local

resources and skills, or even for confederative ties in which Middle Eastern countries that join with others still retain a guaranteed voice in the shaping of common enterprises. This era, however, is likely to overlap even within the decade with a fourth period filled with more menacing possibilities. If

the rate and character of development in Iraq, Sudan, Iran, Syria, Libya, and certain of the sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf live up to their potentialities, and were to contrast with the obvious and high barriers to progress in countries like Egypt and Algeria, the Middle East could become divided regionally among rich countries and poor countries, and hence most likely between moderate and extremist regimes.

Only the character of the fifth stage in Arab relationships emerging within this coming decade remains uncertain. The erowing potentials for conflicts among national and ideological interests, and among the rich states and the poor, could make the Middle East more than ever a breeding area of subversion, assassinations, and local wars. Foreign powers may be able to | keep each other from intervening directly, but scarcely from in-

tervening subversively under such conditions, and the power with the least interest in regional stability would have the greatest advantage. There is another alternative. The richer and more stable Arab countries could decide, by an act of imaginative statesmanship, [ 377 ]

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to take the lead in fashioning bonds that would, by a common sharing of resources and enlarged freedom of regional migration, overcome the perils to rich and poor alike of living in an economic and political slum. (The poorer states may be just as imaginative, but others may be less likely to follow their leadership.) If such an initiative is too much to hope for, then outsiders interested in the progress and stability of this area will have much more to compensate for than they ever imagined, not only economically, but in preventive and constructive political action. The Arab-Israeli Conflict Although one can readily write almost an entire volume on the travails of the Middle East before it becomes necessary to turn to

the Arab-Israeli conflict, this Middle Eastern issue will remain for some time to come the most volatile source of potential regional conflict, burning up resources and energies that could otherwise enormously ease the social and political transformation

of the area. :

There is little hope in the present decade of writing an analysis of the Arab-Israeli dispute that will strike all readers as objective or any partisan as rendering justice.** What follows is not intended to be a full-fledged analysis of this conflict nor an attempt finally to resolve it. Our purpose is limited: to show why passions run so deeply, why renewed fighting is so likely, and how the tensions it generates affect, or are affected by, social change. But if the Arab-Israeli conflict interests us in the present study only as

| it touches the politics of social change, this does not mean that we shall be able impartially to stand above the battle. On this dispute as on all other issues, we judge the political wisdom of Middle Eastern leaders by their ability to meet the demands of social change. The analysis that follows, though it is not built on familiar pro-Zionist or pro-Arab lines, may therefore validly be called partisan. 11 For the period from 1936-1948, The Struggle for Palestine, New York, 1950, by J. C. Hurewitz remains the best account. For the earlier period, the reader should compare George Antonius, The Arab Awakening, New York, 1946, and Elie Kedourie, England and the Middle East: The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1921, London, 1956.

[ 378 ]

REGIONAL RIVALRY AND PROSPECTS FOR UNITY Certainly claims and counter-claims are irreconcilable on this issue. If Jewish religion and culture came to its first flowering in

Palestine, it is also apparent that the Arabs have inhabited the land for more than a thousand years. If, in the Arab view, Great Britain’s MacMahon Note of 1915 first promised political control of Palestine—then still an unconquered part of the Ottoman Empire—to the Arabs before Great Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised it as a “national home” to the Jews, the history of promises nonetheless does not end there. The MacMahon Note and the Balfour Declaration were merely the first steps in a series of contradictory British declarations and policies toward Zionists and Arabs in Palestine.

Zionists, who had originally been promised by others only a “national home” in Palestine, finally used arms to create an inde-

pendent state. The majority of Arab states who made war on | Israel in 1948 to prevent the carrying out of the UN resolutions on the partition of Palestine, recognizing their present weakness, now say they favor a return to the terms of these resolutions.” But this conflict does not have its origins in an encounter between Jewish and Arab nationalism. Zionists sowed the seeds, tended the plant, and reaped the harvest of Israel. Their energies alone, however, were not sufficient to make Israel grow. During the late 1920’s, more Jews left Palestine than entered it. After 1933, however, Central and East European Jews were compelled —whatever their views on Zionism—to seek refuge in Israel in order to save their very lives; after World War II, many liberated survivors from extermination camps went to Israel because the doors were either closed or barely ajar in the rest of the world. The failure of Western society to prevent aggression and secure

individual freedom in Europe helped to make the survival of Jews a major Middle Eastern problem. As a result, the Arabs—whose record of peaceful coexistence with their Jewish neighbors has over the centuries generally been superior to that of Europe—found themselves in a battle which eventually produced about one million Arab refugees. The Arab 12 By defeating the Arab armies, Israel was able to establish armistice lines |

such that a third of its present territory exceeds the area it would have gained under the UN resolutions.

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defeat also left a deep emotional scar. This defeat came at a moment when the Arabs had anticipated one of the most important victories in their increasingly successful struggle against all foreign rule in the Middle East. Thus it had all the traumatic impact that the newly nationalist and sensitively proud United

States might have experienced if Great Britain had succeeded in recapturing New Jersey (Israel is no larger) in the War of 1812. After their defeat, the Arabs found themselves with a neighbor that continued to have the strength to defeat all of them together. Israel’s collaboration in the British and French attack on Suez in 1956 seemed to confirm their worst fears that this state was the spearhead of renewed Western imperialism.

By 1963, the evolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict had produced the following factors which both the partisans of a final solution and the seekers for a modus vivendi would have to take into account: Israel was created chiefly by men in fear of their lives, in rebellion against persecution, and in realization of socialist and nation-

alist principles. Israelis have demonstrated extraordinary skill in economic and political development, and in diplomacy, and in winning two wars. Hence they are most unlikely to yield willingly any major portion of their territory or readmit any politically dangerous number of Arab refugees. Politically and psychologically they seem to be better prepared so far than any of their neighbors to withstand prolonged periods of sacrifice. The United States is no more likely to let Israel fall a victim to aggression than it was to let neutralist Egypt be defeated by America’s

NATO allies, Great Britain and France, and by Israel in 1956. In short, Israel is here to stay. The scars of defeat have not yet healed in the Arab world. The

Arab Moslem states west of Libya, and south of Egypt feel the

pain with less intensity, and the non-Arab Moslem states of Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan do not feel it at all. But in the states that actually participated in the war of 1948 there is no question but that any leader who signed a peace treaty with Israel would be assassinated upon the morrow. The example of King Abdullah’s assassination in Jordan in 1951, following his “secret” peace negotiations with Israel, is fresh in people’s minds. In short, there will be no peace treaty in the foreseeable future.

[ 380 ]

REGIONAL RIVALRY AND PROSPECTS FOR UNITY As a result, the Arab refugee problem is likely to continue to fester. Egypt is likely to continue to hamper Israeli traffic through

the Suez Canal on the grounds that, under the Convention of 1888, it is entitled to bar transit with any nation with whom it remains technically at war.** This issue, and the presently dormant issue of Israeli transit from its port of Elath through the Gulf of Aqaba (whose narrow Straits of Tiran are claimed by

Egypt and Saudi Arabia as domestic territorial waters), can readily flare into conflict with world-wide repercussions.

There remains, above all, the continuing threat of renewed warfare. War between the Arabs and the Israelis can all too readily break out again. The eventuality most feared by the Arabs is probably the least likely to occur within the next decade, given the probable continuation of adequate foreign aid to Israel and the stability of Israeli domestic alignments: namely, a deliberate Israeli policy of expansionism to compensate for discontent at

home. Unlimited freedom of Jewish immigration into Israel,

which will undoubtedly remain an essential principle of this | state, has caused particularly grave fears among Arabs who do not believe that Israel, which now contains 15 percent of the world’s Jews, can maintain many more within its borders. Yet, in practice, the rate of migration is unlikely to assume the

same proportions or pose the same economic burden as it did during the first decade of Israel’s existence. Only Africa and the Soviet bloc are likely sources of immigrants. It is conceivable that more of Morocco’s 200,000 Jews might wish to go to Israel;

Algeria’s Jews are French citizens and most emigrants, when Algeria became independent, preferred moving to France. Tunisia pursues a policy of political and social integration, and erants religious autonomy to its 50,000 Jewish citizens. Most of Libya’s Jews have already left for Israel. The arrival of Jews from the Union of South Africa would be no burden, rather it would constitute an important infusion of capital and skills into Israel. For reasons of domestic and foreign policy, the U.S.S.R.

seems unlikely to permit unlimited emigration of any of its 183 On August 4, 1951, the UN Security Council voted 8 to 0, with three abstentions, for a resolution calling upon Egypt to end restrictions to Israeli traffic based on this argument. The Council did not attempt to pass on the legal issues involved, but argued that “neither party can reasonably assert that it is actively a belligerent.”

| [ 381 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES citizens during the next decade. Only a few of the Eastern European Communist states have permitted Jews to leave. Without reducing its standard of living to the Middle Eastern average, Israel has the economic and political capabilities for making the sacrifices that would make it largely self-supporting during the next decade. Already, Jewish financial contributions from abroad amount to only eight percent of Israeli expenditures. Technological advances, especially in the field of water utiliza-

tion, and a not unlikely continuation in the present rate of growth of industrial production and exports could allow Israel to feed quite adequately 4,000,000 people—or twice its present population. This is the number expected by Israeli officials to live in the country twenty years hence. There are more threatening causes of war between Israel and

the Arab states. Any of the many border incidents of each year could snowball into general hostility. If the rule of King Husayn

: should end in chaos, with no strong Jordanian group able to succeed him, a grave danger looms. A Jordanian faction could invite Egyptian or Iraqi troops to enter, and so incite Israel to enter also in order to prevent the establishment of an enlarged and strengthened Arab state at its most exposed frontier. In invading the West Bank of Jordan, Israel would be unlikely to assume the dangerous and ultimately impossible task of assimilating half a million. Jordanians, including many Arab Palestinian refugees living there, or the bloody task of ousting them. Israel

would be much more likely to declare itself ready to quit the West Bank as soon as the United Nations agreed to make that area a Demilitarized Zone. For some years to come, there will not be sufficient Arab forces to prevent such an Israeli move.

Despite much public talk to the contrary, no important Arab leader today believes that his country could hope to defeat Israel

during the next several years. Nonetheless, no reduction of tensions is possible while domestic frustrations and a sense of inferiority persist among Arabs and incite rival leaders to establish

leadership and unity upon a ready anti-Israeli platform. Moreover, failure by Arab governments to cope with the growing number of the educated unemployed and the unskilled unemployables could stimulate Arabs to embark on belligerent adventures

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abroad, however slim the odds may be for victory. Arab disunity, therefore, cannot spell safety for Israel. If it delays the day of a coordinated Arab attack on Israel, it does so only at the price of perpetuating social and economic frustrations that may well encourage separate, but hardly less destructive, adventurist attacks. But can two or four million Israelis in any event hope always to remain militarily superior to sixty or one hundred million Arabs? Arab unity may not bring any greater security for Israel: a united Arab world may be a more belligerent and more powerful enemy. But only Arab unity would make it possible for the majority of Arabs independently to mobilize sufficient resources to allow them to concentrate on constructive domestic action. Although the Israelis know that war holds more disastrous possibilities for them than for the Arabs since a military defeat for

Israel would mean national extinction, they have so far spent little effort on communicating to the Arabs their sense of common

problems in the face of social change or, until recently, on persuading the great powers to institute effective guarantees against ageression in the Middle East. Instead, Israelis continue to strive for military superiority over the Arabs. They believe, and under existing circumstances they may well be right, that a mere balance

of power is not sufficient to deter Arabs from curbing Israel’s access to the Tiran Straits or to Jordan water (1.e., to expanded exports and food production), or from accepting the risks of war itself. This striving after military superiority, however, is itself one of the chief causes of tension in the Middle East. It is also a source of temptation for Israel again to resort to preventive war while its military superiority remains, at least in order to postpone having to confront more powerful neighbors in the future. By contrast to all these incitements to war, there are no sure local barriers to war. Rapid changes in weapons, technology, and

unpredictable changes in the ability of any Middle Eastern country to purchase weapons abroad make reliance on selfdefense alone not only damagingly expensive but also highly uncertain. The essential margin of safety will have to come from forces outside.

So far, the United Nations has been unable to develop a police force that could guard the peace as effectively all along [ 383 ]

| MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES the Arab-Israeli frontiers as it does along the Gaza Strip. The

Israelis oppose such a scheme because they are uncertain whether a defense dependent on the will of a growing AfroAsian bloc in the UN and all the great powers is as reliable as an undiminished capacity to defend themselves. The Arabs do not wish to see their hope for revenge so obviously nullified by a wall of UN soldiers. Other small states with unsatisfied regional aims look with disfavor upon a UN instrument capable of preventing them from employing convincing threats of force. There have been moments during the 1950’s when it seemed that the U.S.S.R. and the West might find it possible to lessen the risks of war in the Middle East by agreeing on a program of limiting arms shipments to those nations which participated in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. American voices have been raised in favor of such a proposal since 1954,** and President Eisenhower endorsed such measures in his address to the UN General Assembly on August 13, 1958.*° The U.S.S.R. endorsed

them in several official notes and conversations beginning in April 1956;** Israeli government leaders endorsed them beginning in 1959.** Arab governments, however, remain opposed to an agreement among the suppliers of arms. The scope and sincerity of the endorsements and objections have never been tested. Yet it is not inconceivable that such an

agreement could establish useful precedents in spirit and procedures for arms limitations and inspection programs in other parts of the world. For at least the next decade, however, the Arabs and Israelis already possess sufficient jets and tanks in stock to make war again, nor can locally developed capabilities

for more advanced technological warfare be overlooked. A program of limiting new arms shipments from abroad would ‘For one of the most cogent statements on this issue, see Charlton Ogburn, Jr., “Divide and Rue It,” Harper’s Magazine, December 1957.

For an earlier official statement in a similar vein, see Vice President

Richard M. Nixon’s New York address, December 6, 1956, United States Policy in the Middle East, September 1956-June 1957, Department of State

Publication 6505, August 1957, pp. 12-13. | 16 See The New York Times, April 18, 28, and May 5, 1956. 17 See Premier David Ben-Gurion’s interview with the London Times, November 13, 1959.

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probably serve in the short-run only to lessen tensions rather than capabilities. That would still be an achievement.

It would require much more to eliminate the chances of war. One possibility would be to translate into permanent treaty terms the position which the United States first enunciated

and which the great majority of states supported during the Suez crisis of 1956. They voted to employ the machinery of the United Nations—both the good offices of its Secretary Gen-

eral and the strength of a United Nations Emergency Force— to arrange an immediate cease-fire in order to end a military intervention which had been designed to alter another nation’s government and frontiers. But just as the United States succeeded in preventing timely UN action on the movement of insurgents from Honduras to overthrow the communist-dominated Arbenz regime in Guatemala in 1954, so the U.S.S.R. may

frustrate on other occasions common action by the United Nations if the aggressors are not Western or pro-Western nations. The U.S.S.R., moreover, exploited this particular crisis to issue threats of its own. In messages to the British and French governments, it declared itself “fully determined to apply force in order to crush the aggressors and restore peace in the East”;

in these and simultaneous messages to the United States, it added references to its possession of “rocket weapons,” and “atomic and hydrogen weapons.” It also offered to send “volunteers” to Egypt.** By itself, the action of 1956 stands as a fragile UN precedent.

Yet the Middle East is the only area of the world in which the frontiers of the U.S.S.R., NATO, and neutralists directly touch each other, and hostilities among countries, encouraged by arms shipments from the West and the U.S.S.R., can easily involve the great powers in regional wars. Here would seem to be common

danger enough for the U.S.S.R., NATO, and neutralists alike to encourage agreement among them on procedures for averting,

stopping, or at least localizing all aggression. Since about the 18 Texts in The New York Times, November 6, 1956. In 1958, Chairman Khrushchev acknowledged to a group of Indian editors and reporters that “if one speaks of the participation of volunteers of other countries in the development of events in the Near and Middle East, then that would denote a real

war.” (The New York Times, August 5, 1959.) , [ 385 ]

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early 1960’s there seemed to be relatively too much calm in the Middle East, and there was too much tension between the U.S.S.R. and the West, to make such an agreement seem feasible.

One other external barrier to the outbreak of Middle Eastern wars, especially between Israel and the Arab states, seems conceivable—one erected by the United States. In early 1957, there was a moment when it seemed that the United States might take such a stand. In one of the first statements issued by the White House on the Suez intervention, the President “recalled that the United States, under this and prior Administrations, has pledged itself to assist the victim of any aggression in the Middle East. We shall honor our pledge.”*® Some observers therefore thought

it possible that the United States might issue a declaration stat-

ing that it would be prepared to employ its armed forces, if necessary, to secure and protect the integrity and independence

of any nation in the Middle East requesting such aid against overt armed aggression by any nation. It would require the capacity to intervene in time—especially before Arab or Israeli planes had inflicted havoc on their enemy. It was argued in this connection that American military power, intended to be a sufficient deterrent to Soviet aggression, should certainly be ade-

quate to act as a deterrent to aggression by Middle Eastern states or their larger neighbors. However, the doctrine that emerged specified only one aggressor, international communism.

It did not suggest, as many hoped it would, that the United States, as a leader of the free world, cannot allow any country this side of the Sino-Soviet bloc, whether neutralist Egypt, pro-

Western Israel, or Communist Yogoslavia, to fall victim to ageression, whatever its source. The limitations of the American

pledge were noticed especially below the northern_tier region of the Middle East, which had just experienced aggression on the part of Great Britain, France, and Israel, but never on the part of the U.S.S.R. As a result, there are neither external nor internal barriers to

renewed warfare in the Middle East. Good fortune and daily acts of prudence may yet preserve the peace. If present forces 19 White House News Statement, October 29, 1956, quoted in United States Policy in the Middle East, p. 137.

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REGIONAL RIVALRY AND PROSPECTS FOR UNITY and trends persist, however, then the United States will probably not be able to avoid being drawn again and again into regional conflicts with little advance warning and against all its hopes.?° Meanwhile the fear of enemies infects all regional relationships and energies and inhibits constructive action by Middle Easterners and outsiders alike. 20On May 8, 1963, however, President Kennedy at his press conference publicly affirmed a position which his diplomats had earlier and in greater detail impressed privately on Arab and Israeli leaders: “The United States supports social and economic and political progress in the Middle East. We support the security of both Israel and her neighbors. We seek to limit the Near East arms race, which obviously takes resources from an area already poor

and puts them into an increasing race which does not really bring any great security. We strongly oppose the use of force or the threat of force in the Near East. And we also seek to limit the spread of Communism in the Middle East, which would, of course, destroy the independence of the people.

The Government has been, and remains, strongly opposed to the use of force, or the threat of force in the Near East. In the event of aggression, or preparation for aggression, whether direct or indirect, we would support appro-

priate measures in the United Nations and adopt other courses of action on our own to prevent or to put a stop to such aggression, which, of course, has been the policy which the United States has followed for some time.”

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CHAPTER 19 THE INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION

OF THE MIDDLE EAST

#9 Gt The Vulnerability of the Area

THERE is no power vacuum in the Middle East and North Africa. No outside power can any longer move in uninvited without meeting determined resistance on the part of local forces, the opposite camp in the cold war, and the majority of states in the international community. In the past, the great powers could

dispose of Middle Eastern problems; now they must deal with Middle Easterners. The governments of this region possess a strength and freedom which they never had before.

Part of the reason is external: years before the U.S.S.R. thought it useful to champion Middle Eastern nationalism, the former Western imperialist powers had conceded independence to the great majority of countries in this area. The entrance of the United States as the principal Western power in the Middle East hastened the shift from domination to freer bargaining in economic and political affairs. The subsequent emergence of the U.S.S.R. as an alternate supplier of military, political, and economic aid, and the growing weight of the Afro-Asian bloc in the United Nations enhanced Middle Eastern confidence and maneuverability.

Internally, too, there is less cause for a power vacuum. The

rule of dynasties and cliques dependent on the fortunes of individuals has, for the most part, already given way to governments dependent on armies or parties representing the interests [ 388 ]

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of at least the salaried middle class if not broader masses. Individual leaders matter as before, but they can hope to endure only if they convincingly represent the interests of emerging new social classes. It is the interplay of Middle Easterners attempting to transform their society that now holds the stage in the politics of this region. Outside powers can still influence its future, but

only as they collaborate with local groups able to meet the demands of this fundamental revolution.

British-French military intervention in Egypt in 1956, and even the invited entrance of U.S. troops into Lebanon in 1958, illuminated the new limitations on the exercise of power by outsiders in the Middle East. These Western actions demonstrated (1) that there are points beyond which it becomes imprudent to challenge the national interests of Western states or the national independence of any nation, and (2) that military or covert intervention is an unreliable and ineffective device when employed in disregard of the historical forces transforming Middle Eastern society.’ In Egypt, Nasser became a far more popular hero as a result

of the armed intervention by Britain, France, and Israel which was designed to end his rule. Some observers, conscious only of

the overwhelming military superiority of the attacking forces, ascribe this result to pressure from other powers which prematurely halted the invading forces. However, the result of successful intervention would have been disastrous. Reoccupation of the Suez Canal was bound to be met with continued sabotage by Egyptians who had succeeded once before, in 1953,

while negotiating for an earlier British withdrawal from this area, in making the Canal Zone unsafe for sustained operations.

Had the French and British thereupon been tempted to seize Cairo and Alexandria, they could have succeeded. But this step would have turned the largest Arab country into a larger Algeria, with thousands willing to convert their miserable life into heroic death. Few candidates would have been prepared to risk assassination and the disdain of the majority of the world living in 1] have enlarged upon this point in The Morality and Politics of Intervention,

ee by The Council on Religion and International Affairs, New York,

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Asia, Africa, and Latin America to govern Egypt in behalf of absentee Western powers.

In Lebanon, civil war was the fruit of a Western-supported attempt to secure a Christian-dominated, pro-Western government in a politically and culturally divided country where Moslems rather than Christians were becoming the majority. Even

the landing of 10,000 American troops could not sustain a Lebanese regime that lacked adequate popular backing. Instead, the United States finally decided to use its influence to persuade the pro-Western government that had invited American troops to yield power to an alignment of Lebanese leaders more closely reflecting the balances of power in a still divided community. Though the Middle East has ceased to be a military, political, or social vacuum, the actions of Middle Eastern states in inter-

national affairs remain largely shaped by four weaknesses of which they themselves are acutely aware. Although they are now sovereign, independent states, they know that they remain dependent on the great powers for capital, arms, and technical skills. Although the great majority of them are united by com-

mon history, culture, language, and religion, they are rent by

so many regional conflicts that they have not yet been able to strengthen themselves by sharing their resources or by dealing, as a unit, with the great powers. There are also divisions within each country, far deeper than in any Western nation, between the very rich and the very poor, the powerful and the powerless, religious traditionalists and secular modernists, radicals, moderates, and extremists, so that most Middle Eastern countries have

not yet achieved a popular consensus on the methods and objectives of government. Finally, the nations of the Middle Fast are uncertain and inexperienced in dealing with a world in motion, having until quite recently lived in a world that was sure of its truths, rituals, and institutions because it knew itself possessed of God’s final revelation. The sensitivity and volatility of Middle Easterners in the face of such difficulties are compounded by the fact that most of the

people of this area are young (half of them are under 20), almost all of them are poor, and the few who have power or jobs are unsure, in an environment of rapid movement and great [ 390 ]

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scarcity, both of themselves and the security of their position.

Weakness tends to corrupt no less than power. It greatly increases vulnerability to suspicions, resentments, subversion, error, and accident.? Given all these Middle Eastern problems and grievances as a natural focus for resentment, and the ancient unconscious defense mechanism of all communities for channel-

ing domestic hostilities against outsiders, it is surprising that relations between Middle Eastern and foreign nations proceed with such frequent periods of calm. Between the two World Wars, the weakness of Middle Eastern

countries did not loom as a major world issue. The U.S.S.R. displayed remarkably little interest in the area, neglecting to open embassies in the Arab world except temporarily in remote

Saudi Arabia and Yemen during the late 1920’s; no ambassadors were exchanged with Egypt, the largest Arab state, until 1944. International rivalry for influence in the Middle East was

confined to Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, with the two democratic nations clearly predominant until shortly before World War II. Between the wars, the urban masses sometimes intervened dramatically in politics, but only sporadically

and as mobs. The customary elite of kings, landowners, and bourgeoisie seemed firmly in control, and most of its members welcomed alliances with the West. The elite’s willing acceptance of support from abroad partially masked its weakness. It lacked sufficient strength on its own to end the conflicts of rival dynasties and individuals or, later, to meet the mounting domestic pressure from below. In relying on foreign friends, this elite was not disloyal to its inherited code which derived from an age in which not the nation but personal and tribal feuds stood at the center of politics, and any enemy

of one’s enemy was acceptable as friend. As this elite drew closer to Western powers, however, its social and economic distance from its own masses became wider. Its fortunes grew and its style of life became pseudo-European. The West reinTo this thought, Eric Hoffer adds: “Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. . . . When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness wherever they see it. The self-hatred of the weak is likewise an instance of their hatred of weakness,” (“The Awakening of Asia,” in The Reporter Magazine, June 22, 1954, p. 17.)

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forced this system of rule based on a calculus of personal loyalties by intervening in behalf of sympathetic political factions, granting special favors in trade, credits, and investments. The pseudo-European posture of this elite raised certain illusions in the West. Since this group held a monopoly of social, political, and economic power, and yet was responsive to the West, it was easy to conclude that the West had succeeded in communicating with all who counted in the Middle Hast. In no country were there more than five hundred of such men; and thus it seemed that the Western position was secure. Evolution, it was imagined, would come slowly as others gradually entered this limited circle, and improved its skills but not its perspectives.

Yet this symbiotic relationship between the Middle East’s traditional elite and the West has by now been destroyed almost everywhere by the grave limitations it placed on the freedom of — action of both partners. In countries in which Western nations sought to advise such elites to make reforms which would relieve discontent, it was often discovered that these status quo regimes were in fact truly dedicated to the status quo. Where the more liberal professional groups among the local bourgeoisie themselves pressed for free parliamentary government and speedier

evolution toward complete national sovereignty, the Western European nation with dominant influence in the country usually

sought to delay such grants. As a consequence, the more reactionary groups in the traditional elite came to be discredited by the repressive measures which they employed to compensate for

the unpopularity of their international alignment and domestic exploitation; the bourgeois liberal groups became discredited by the repeated failures of their initiatives. When, after many delays,

reforms were finally adopted, they were popularly regarded as efforts to save regimes that had become too weak to resist making concessions. ‘The reputation and influence of the West suffered

along with those of the rulers with whom it was so intimately connected.

Above all, in concentrating its attention on the tangle of personalities in the perennial and seldom consequential game of musical chairs among the elite, both the latter and the West failed to take seriously the forces shaping a new social class [ 392 ]

INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION

with an interest in substituting an entirely new game under entirely new rules. For a long time, the representatives of this new class were dismissed as a minority of vocal agitators. When they finally came to power in Iran with Mosadeq in 1951 and in

Egypt with Nasser in 1952, the status quo elites of the area sought increased protection from the West. By this time, however, the United States was beginning to take the leading Western role in the Middle East,* and thus the West responded in a new fashion.

Defending the Middle East Militarily While Losing it Politically

The 1950’s mark the end of the age of political romance in the Middle East—that is, when Great Britain could rely on the men of the desert who were able to pledge the word of their families and henchmen, and the United States had only friends because it had no national political interests, but instead had only private philanthropic concerns in the area. At a moment when the political revolutions of the Middle East began, American policymakers were to retain for some time yet their inclina-

tion to perceive in Middle Eastern politics only the clash of personalities and cliques, and the flow of power into power vacuums, or to trace all the West’s difficulties in the area either to the creation of Israel, or to sympathize above all with Israel’s burden in nation-building. Instead, the United States found cause in events elsewhere to give particularly urgent attention to the requirements of defense in the cold war. The United States believed that the Korean war which broke out in 1950 conclusively demonstrated that the U.S.S.R. would attack wherever and whenever Western strength was not clearly and sufficiently in evidence. Because of the decline of British power in the Middle East, this area

threatened to become a gap in that strategic position by which 3’The assumption of a major American role in the eastern Mediterranean began in early 1947, when Great Britian asked the United States to assume responsibility for protecting Greece against communist guerrilla forces and Turkey against Soviet threats, a burden which Great Britain found itself financially unable to carry any longer. For developments in American policies leading to the Truman Doctrine of 1947, see William Reitzel, The Mediterranean: Its Role in America’s Foreign Policy, New York, 1948.

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MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

the West sought to inhibit Soviet aggression—that global ring of strategic bases which would have to be knocked out (during the 1950’s, by manned planes) before the U.S.S.R. could attack without fear of retaliation. The United States concluded therefore that a Middle East Defense Organization, even if organized on more modest terms than NATO, would be the most effective way of enhancing the internal security of the area and the will (and over time the capacity) to resist external aggression.

The effort in 1951 to unite all the countries of the area in a Middle East Defense Organization failed. The West attributed

this failure primarily to a fact with which it had long been familiar, but which it had hoped Middle Eastern countries would be able to transcend in the face of a larger threat: the intensity of regional conflicts and rivalries.* But the West underestimated

the weight of the other major cause for this rejection—the growth of nationalism opposed to any new links between unequally strong partners, especially with a West still so influential

in the internal affairs of the Middle East. This sentiment was already so strong in the area that even the government of King Farouk’s Egypt felt compelled to reject the idea of a Defense Organization two days after it had been proposed.

As the nationalism of the salaried middle class gathered strength, especially after Nasser’s Egyptian coup of 1952, the West discovered that this movement intended to subvert the traditional elite (with whom the West, by virtue of earlier commitment, was still allied). It also clearly intended to put an end to all special Western prerogatives in the area, doing this at a time when continued fighting in Korea symptomized the seriousness of the “cold” war. The ensuing drama of cross-purposes and misunderstandings illustrated how policies fail that do not successfully accommodate themselves to the needs of two different, yet simultaneous, his*The Arabs themselves tried to meet the problems of regional defense by ratifying the Arab Collective Security Pact. (For its text, see J. C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, a Documentary Record, Princeton, Van Nostrand, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 242-245, 311-314.) It pledged its members to consult in times of danger, to coordinate their armed forces and resources, and to aid without delay any member subjected to aggression. It came into force in April 1952, yet no Joint Defense Council or Permanent Military Commission was ever established in pursuit of this Pact.

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INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION torical demands— in this case, the social revolution of the Maid-

_ dle East and the cold war. The United States had no intention of Opposing nationalism and reform in the Middle East. Indeed, it looked with considerable favor on the emergence of reform politics under the leadership of the new middle class and during 1954, for example, successfully influenced a more reluctant Great Britain to yield its former military rights in the Suez Canal

Zone and its former property rights in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Yet in pursuit of Western defense in a nuclear age, it soon found itself more closely allied than before with the regimes of the Middle East supporting the status quo. The new nationalists had no intention of joining in the campaigns of the cold war, yet, in satisfying their own aspirations, they soon found themselves inviting the U.S.S.R. for the first time in history to participate in the politics of the entire Middle East.

This is how the events unfolded: Foiled in its efforts to

collaborate in defensive arrangements with the Middle East as

a whole, the West looked for individual nations that might prove receptive. Nasser was willing to accept Western arms in order to assume the leadership in strengthening the Arab Collective Security Pact.° He made it clear that he would not enter any formal alliance with the West, but vouched that Arabs in their nationalist pride could be counted upon to defend themselves against any aggressor. The West remained unconvinced, however, that the U.S.S.R. would be deterred by any scheme that lacked military bases to demonstrate the Western presence. The West feared that its acceptance of Nasser’s leadership would

alienate its more traditional friends, and was unsure that Israel’s defense could be integrated with such an arrangement. There were, moreover, more willing partners. Turkey, already NATO’s eastern anchor, became the West’s

principal agent in persuading Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan to join in a series of agreements beginning in April 1954 that culmi-

nated in November 1955 in the Baghad Pact. This Pact

°> See preceding footnote. |

5 The “Northern Tier’ defense concept was first suggested by Secretary Dulles after his return from the area in a “Report on the Near East,” Department of State Bulletin, June 15, 1953, pp. 831-835. On April 2, 1954, Turkey signed a security treaty with Pakistan. On February 24, 1955, Turkey signed the :

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MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

linked all the nations of the Middle East’s “Northern Tier,” except Afghanistan, with Great Britain and, for almost all practical purposes, with the United States.

This lining up of pro-Western nations, no less than the reactions of the Middle Eastern neutralists, had unintended consequences. Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan were concerned in varying measure to deter possible Soviet aggression, but they had no illusions that military planning and arms shipments under the Baghdad Pact would make them strong enough, even a decade hence, to stem a Soviet attack. They interpreted this alliance primarily in local terms. The Pakistanis welcomed the United States as the first great power, accompanied by its Middle Eastern friends, to promise them strength against the neighbors they feared most, namely India and Afghanistan. Iran looked forward now to receiving assistance for building a vastly greater armed

force and a much more prosperous economy in order to become, as in earlier centuries, the leading power along the North-

ern Tier. Iraq joined with three immediate gains in mind. By virtue of a bilateral agreement with Great Britain signed at the same time as the Baghdad Pact, Iraq regained control over the two major British airbases in Iraq, an achievement similar to

rival Egypt’s earlier recovery of its rights in the Suez Canal Zone. By virtue of the Baghdad Pact, Iraq also ceased to be solely dependent on Great Britain, enlarging its maneuverability

by adding to its supporters the United States, a country not always in agreement with its European ally on Middle Eastern

issues. Above all, Iraq believed it had now earned implicit Western backing for fulfilling a long-standing dream—incorpo-

rating Syria and Jordan into a Fertile Crescent Union under Iraqi leadership. All of the Northern Tier countries expected henceforth also to be sustained by Western aid in maintaining their domestic power structure. Baghdad Pact pledging cooperation “for their security and their defense,” and on April 4, Great Britain adhered to this pact, followed by Pakistan on September 23, and Iran on October 20, 1955. The United States subsequently joined the Military, Economic, and Counter-Subversive Committees of the Baghdad Pact, and in 1958 entered into new bilateral defense agreements

with Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan. But the United States never signed the Baghdad Pact itself.

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INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION

Among all of them, Turkey most closely adhered to the original purpose of the Pact, and was least affected by its transmutations. Turkey had already moved far in reforming its

traditional social structure, had no vital regional ambitions, and already possessed considerable social, political, and military strength.

Thus a defensive scheme that took too little account of regional rivalries and social revolutions was transmuted by them even before it took final shape. Middle Eastern rivalries and revolutions for the first time became connected with the cold war and helped to shape its course. This linkage took place in early 1955, and within days the pressure began to build up which was to impel Nasser to turn to the U.S.S.R. by midsummer.

On February 24, 1955, Iraq signed a security treaty with

Turkey and laid the foundations for the Baghdad Pact in the , hope of becoming the first among other Arab adherents to a Western-oriented organization. On February 28, an Israeli force

estimated at half a battalion attacked and destroyed the Gaza garrison headquarters of the Egyptian army, killing 38 and

wounding 31 Egyptians. During March, Iraqi and Turkish troops marshalled along Syria’s frontier, eager at least, so it | appeared, to create pressure in favor of a new regime willing to unite with Iraq. On April 22, Adnan Malki, the Deputy Chief

of Staff of the Syrian Army, who was the principal military supporter of the neutralist and socialist Ba’th Party, was assassinated by an adherent of the fascist, and self-styled pro-American

Syrian National Social Party. (At a subsequent trial, the prosecution blamed the American Central Intelligence Agency for having organized the assassination. ) To Nasser, then the principal spokesman of reform nationalism, the adherence of Iraq to a Western-sponsored defense organ-

ization meant that Egypt’s traditional rival in the Arab world would henceforth become the area’s chief recipient of arms while he could buy them neither for cash nor credit from the West. The developments within Syria and along its frontiers apparently suggested to Nasser that Iraq would use its enhanced

power and influence to win hegemony in the Arab world for [ 397 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

itself and the forces of the status quo. The Gaza raid and its demonstration of Egypt’s utter military weakness raised not only

issues Of power and prestige, but also of Nasser’s survival as Egyptian leader. If Nasser could not improve on King Farouk’s military performance against Israel, the army officers who constituted his sole organized political support would no longer permit him to rule.‘ Sometime between March and June 1955, as a result of these domestic and regional considerations, Nasser initiated and concluded negotiations with the U.S.S.R. to become the Arab world’s

largest recipient of outside arms. In December 1955, within two months after the conclusion of the Baghdad Pact, Afghanistan—the only Northern Tier country outside the Pact—re-

acted to Western military support for Pakistan by accepting

| Soviet support in its quarrel with Pakistan over the border territory of “Pushtunistan.” More concretely, it received a $100,000,000 commercial loan from the U.S.S.R. and credits for about $30,000,000 for the purchase of Soviet arms. Syria and Yemen entered into an arms agreement with the U.S.S.R. in February 1956. Extensive Soviet economic agreements with these and other Middle Eastern nations were to follow. Western attempts to stem these reactions by enlarging the area of the Baghdad Pact made matters worse. The visit of the Chief of the British Imperial General Staff to Jordan in January 1956 to win that country’s adherence to the Pact succeeded only

in toppling three Jordanian governments within a week. The visit further helped to bring about by March the dismissal of Glubb Pasha, British Commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, and, within a year thereafter, the end of the Anglo-Jordanian treaty and British base rights in Jordan. A new American initiative in early 1957—offering military and economic aid to countries declaring themselves against international communism

under the Eisenhower Doctrine—won only Lebanon to the 7The defeat of the Egyptian army by Israel in 1956 did not raise the same issue. It was possible to salvage pride then by asserting that no one could expect Egypt simultaneously to defeat Great Britain, France, and Israel. 8In exchange, Nasser paid in cotton—Egypt’s principal revenue crop—for which demand in the West had been steadily declining since the end of World ‘War II, and especially so in the year 1955.

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ranks of committed pro-Western states. Moreover, this step split the various Lebanese religious and ethnic groups and helped

to bring about a civil war, with American and Syrian military intervention in it, and Lebanese renunciation of the Doctrine before the year’s end.

The U.S.S.R. Enters Middle Eastern Politics

During 1955, the U.S.S.R. had broken through and jumped

over the Middle East’s Northern Tier. It had established its presence in the Middle East as a force to be reckoned with, without employing either its armed forces or the apparatus of international communism, but at the invitation of independent, nationalist governments. The Soviet assumption of a major role in general Middle East-

ern politics—after it had been thwarted during the late 1940's in Greece, Turkey, and Iran—caught most of the West by surprise. Yet the more obvious question might well have been— why did the U.S.S.R., the only great power immediately bordering on the Middle East, committed to the expansion of com-

munism, and confronting a society in the throes of social | revolution, delay its entrance for so long? The most plausible answer would seem to be that, until early 1955, the U.S.S.R. lacked the revelent perception, the necessary capabilities, or an issue directly touching the strategic balance of strength of the great powers in the Middle East. Almost until the end of the Stalin period, the U.S.S.R. pursued the policy that all who were not for the U.S.S.R. were against it. There was the “camp of socialism and peace” and the

“camp of imperialism and war.” Neutrals like Nasser and Nehru were denounced as “hidden lackeys of imperialism.” ‘The

change came gradually.° During the last years of the Stalinist era, between 1951 and 1953, it had already become firm strategy to strive for close relations with all who would oppose “U.S. imperialism.” Yet the Communist Tudeh Party of Iran during this period shifted repeatedly between political support ° The changing strategy of the international communist parties after World War II is discussed in Chapter 10.

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MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES and opposition, while the U.S.S.R. gave only occasional verbal

support, to the Mosadeq regime which had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and was facing serious political and economic pressures from the West. For more than two years after Nasser’s coup of 1952, Soviet comment about it “varied between an attitude of cautious reserve and bitter hostility”*® On February 8, 1955, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov still spoke pessimistically about the terms of competition facing

the U.S.S.R. in the Middle East: “We cannot say that the National Liberation Movement in the countries of the Arab East has

attained the strength and momentum which this movement achieved in a number of other Asian countries. The countries of the Arab East, particularly those that command oil reserves, still

depend to a considerable extent on the Western powers who have laid their hands on the oil and other natural resources.”™ By October 1, this old Stalinist had been forced to confess his errors, and especially his rigidity and pessimism.* The world had changed, and communism required a more flexible strategy.

The question of war and peace has been given a new meaning. The U.S.S.R. has apparently recognized that wars are no longer likely harbingers of revolution, for nuclear weapons can destroy all civilization and leave no one to organize a communist or any other kind of society. Soviet society has changed.

It has more self-confidence in its own long-term progress. It has produced a middle class in government, party, science, and industry that seems more eager to enhance present gains than risk them in adventurous gambits. The U.S.S.R. has also seen Asia and Africa burst into independence with a will of their own. The Bandung Conference of 29 Afro-Asian nations in April 1955 was a powerful demon-

stration that agreement is possible among the pro-Western, 10 See Laqueur, in the most thorough analysis available on The Soviet Union

and the Middle East, pp. 151-152 and 194-197, and the Egyptian examples

cited there. 11 The New York Times, February 9, 1955.

12 See The New York Times, October 2, 1955. A year earlier the U.S.S.R. had begun to reorganize and encourage research on contemporary problems of the Middle East—a field it had neglected even more than the West.

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INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION

‘Communist, and neutralist nations of this region of the world, but only if it acknowledges the right of all to pursue independent foreign and domestic policies.* Moreover, in demanding an end to “colonialism in all its manifestations . . . social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom . . . abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country,” the Afro-Asian countries at Bandung were defining their independence in terms drawn from democratic rather than communist totalitarian ideology. In championing the “Spirit of Bandung,” the U.S.S.R. is being cynical. Soviet communism, when it is free to impose its will as in Hungary or Poland, leaves no room for the pursuit of independent foreign or domestic policies. But in its new approach, the U.S.S.R.

at least acknowledges the importance of this spirit to the uncommitted areas of the world and, indeed, their deep commitment to independence. This is accepted as the inescapable starting point from which Soviet persuasion and pressure must begin.

Soviet policy, especially since 1955, therefore focuses all energies on isolating the United States. The immediate objective is to separate the U.S. from allies and neutralists alike until it loses the capabilities for effectively counteracting the moves of the U.S.S.R. and international communism—so that communism may advance without risking the gains it has already made. These changing Soviet perceptions and intentions were translated into action in the Middle East in response to a new kind

of challenge in this region. What moved the U.S.S.R. to accept Nasser’s invitation only partially overlapped with Nasser’s fears and hopes, and was only partially intended to cope with the enhanced military capabilities of four Middle Eastern states. These four states gathering under the Baghdad Pact might now improve their defenses, but would never be able to threaten the U.S.S.R. militarily. What the Baghdad Pact symbolized, however, was much more important: American power was entering an area in which declining British power had been giving steadily less concern to 18 For the text of the Bandung resolutions, see The New York Times, April 25, 1955.

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MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES the U.S.S.R. This infusion of new and greater Western strength, serious enough in its general significance, appeared to Soviet: eyes to have had a particularly threatening mien. The U.S.S.R.,

like many observers in the dark, imputed to its enemies an elaborate pattern of calculated shrewdness. It apparently suspected that Iraqi and Turkish military pressures on neutralist Syria, the assassination of the neutralist and socialist Syrian. Deputy Chief of Staff, and Israeli exposure of the military weakness of the leading Arab neutralist nation were all part of a scheme to carve a gigantic U.S. base area out in the middle

Fast under the cover of the Baghdad Pact.” For the U.S.S.R., the changes in strategy, challenge, and opportunity coincided. The new Soviet readiness to support all who were not in the Western camp and were intent instead upon “preserving their freedom,” and their “right to pursue

independent foreign and domestic policies” allowed the U.S.S.R. to play a decisive part in changing the structure of power in the Middle East. With its new flexible policy of sup-

porting all who are not in alliance against it, the U.S.S.R. could now cement relationships even with nations that had yet

to develop a communist party (e.g., Afghanistan) or kept most of its communists in jail (e.g., Egypt). With the new rerespectability deriving from its acceptance of more traditional

modes of international relations, the U.S.S.R. made itself welcome as an alternate supplier of arms, economic assistance, and diplomatic support. Like the local communists striving for the broadest possible mass movement against “American imperialism,” the U.S.S.R. demanded no ideological concessions.

Unlike the West, the U.S.S.R. required no military commitments; it imposed no tests of economic need or administrative efficiency. No visible strings were attached to its aid but one —-move away or stay away from political commitments to the United States. 14 On April 16, 1955, the U.S.S.R. published its first major official declara-. tion on general Middle Eastern politics: It objected to “the pressure exerted by

the United States and Great Britain to draw the Arab States into a military organization which would be an extension of the Atlantic Pact” and declared that “the Soviet government would not remain indifferent since the setting:

[ 402 ]

up of military bases in this region directly affects the security of the U.S.S.R.”

INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION

Roots of Neutralism | As a result of this new Soviet course of action, the Western

monoply of external supply, support, and influence in the Middle East was broken. For the first time, non-communist nationalists could look abroad, other than to the West, for help that promised to be effective. For Arab nationalists, it opened

the prospect of finally being able to expel Western powers from their remaining special positions in the area, and perhaps

to settle scores with Israel. Middle Eastern neutralists saw

themselves in a position to obtain assistance from both sides by playing them off against each other.

Yet it would be wrong to suppose that the particular pressures and reactions which made 1955 a turning point in the Middle East’s foreign orientation were also its fundamental causes. The basic forces and trends at work, had the West faced them squarely, could have been turned in a different direction.

Neither neutralism nor a pro-Western orientation among , Middle Eastern countries is primarily a response to the cold war. Both are reactions above all to local social change. Either neutralism or a pro-Western orientation may be an at-

tempt to exploit Soviet-Western rivalry in order to gain new support or elbow room for regional adventurism and draw public attention away from domestic maladjustments, or to meet the issues of survival, progress, and status in the midst of rapid change. The neutralists take advantage of the cold war in order to gain assistance from both sides and free themselves from dependency on any large power; the pro-Western states try to score similar internal and regional gains by reaping the profits of alignment. In almost every country of the Middle East, neutralism was clearly more popular than alignment with the West even before

the U.S.S.R. made such a policy profitable. Western states from the Crusades onward had repeatedly attacked and seized Middle Eastern states. Russia never attacked the Arab states; the Northern Tier states which have been invaded by Russia have also been invaded by Western European states. The West in 1955 still had a decisive voice in the foreign [ 403 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES and domestic policies of more than a dozen sheikhdoms and principalities along the rim of the Arabian Peninsula, and re-

| tained great political influence in at least nine independent Middle Eastern states. It controlled the most important enterprises in the domestic economy in seven Middle Eastern states. It was the major purchaser and supplier of goods in all states of this region, the sole purchaser of their oil, and the sole source for capital, technicians, and arms. Since this special position of Western Europe in the Middle East was often the heritage of military intervention, a tradition resurrected in the Suez intervention of 1956, it is not surprising that the West, including its leading member, the United States, is often more suspected

and feared than the U.S.S.R. and, having demonstrated so much power, is also blamed for many things it has not done or could not have prevented.*° Under these circumstances, increased relations with the U.S.S.R. appeared to most Middle Easterners to provide merely a counterweight to the remaining

position of the West in the area, and a leverage for escaping dependence on any single power in the future.

There are also other reasons for a neutralist orientation

which Middle Easterners share with a majority of Asians and Africans. None of the nations in the Middle East and North Africa has yet achieved in sum the internal cohesion, political stability, prosperity, military power, or international standing

of the great industrial powers. In fact, the gap between the economic prosperity and military strength of the industrial states and most of the underdeveloped nations continues to widen. In an age so keenly sensitive to nationalism and rapid progress, the acquisition of sovereignty has not succeeded in stilling a sense of dependency that feels and smells like colonial15 This tendency to see history as conspiracy and hence to miss its basic issues, forces, and trends, is not unknown to the West, and remains a pervasive

attitude among Middle Eastern leaders. It is a legacy of Islamic tradition in which almost all political loyalties were in fact personal, and almost all personal relationships deeply colored by a struggle for power. It is reinforced by political repression which has made almost all contemporary political leaders victors through conspiracy, and the acute sense of being unable to control one’s own destiny or that of one’s country in the face of much more powerful forces. It becomes tempting, therefore, to assume that a hidden conspiracy is at work.

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ism.‘° The poor and indebted therefore strive to preserve and enlarge their freedom of action by dividing their obligations

among divided creditors. Above all, in an age of transition when loyalties have become confused and the basis of authority uncertain, few Asian and African governments feel confident, or even able, to make firm political and military commitments to nations far more powerful than themselves. They are genuinely fearful about another World War. They see little escape from being destroyed by armies or radiation—or at least being politically and physically devastated by a prolonged cut-off of food, fuel, and capital from abroad—if they are neutrals in such a war; they see no escape from destruction if they have granted military bases to their allies. They see no reason, therefore, to add the divisive issue of foreign entanglements to their already difficult task of achieving national unity. In their view, rival systems of alliances in Asia and Africa tend to sharpen regional and hence global conflicts rather than resolve them. They would rather be free to act to avoid war as actual or potential mediators than to stand fast as allies dependent on one of the big powers.

Neutralism clearly gained in strength in the Middle East,

and in Asia and Africa generally, since Soviet arms and credits became available. The presence of the Soviet bloc as an alternate source of supplies made neutralism more viable and

the greater willingness of the Soviet bloc than the West to supply more arms with fewer strings made neutralism more at-_ tractive. Neutralism by now marks the policy of the majority of governments in the Middle East and, except for Turkey, the

sentiment of the majority of the politically active population even in states governed by pro-Western regimes. What does this shift mean for the security of the Middle East? 16 Even a Turk, whose nation had achieved more progress and status than

most others in the Middle East, could still write with concern in 1959: “.. simply to get technical products (radios, automobiles, ice-boxes, even factories) which have been made in other countries cannot be counted as achieving technology, as possessing it. . . . This difference between buying technical products and being able to make them resembles the difference between a nation and its colony.” (Professor Miimtaz Turhan, Garblilasmanin Neresindeyiz [Where Are We in Westernization], Istanbul, 1959, p. 35. The translation is by Dean David Garwood, Robert College, Istanbul.)

[ 405 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES Opportunities and Limitations for Soviet Policy

As a result of the Middle Eastern shift to neutralism and greater Soviet power and flexibility, the U.S.S.R. has been able

to deal itself into the game of Middle Eastern politics. By its material support of predominant Middle Eastern opinion, the U.S.S.R. has gained respectability and influence very much greater than it ever possessed before. As long as it is willing to pay the political and economic price—and its capacity is growing—it will be able to continue in the game. The West’s monop-

oly as the only foreign partner of the Middle East has ended. This has been the Soviets’ gain.

The price which the U.S.S.R. has so far had to pay for this gain has been small. What is a fair price for surplus arms? The US.S.R. has shown itself quite willing in renegotiations with Egypt and Syria to lower the price of arms already delivered. Political support frequently costs nothing, especially when extended to an area in which the U.S.S.R. has no prior commitments and little interest in stable institutions. Soviet economic

aid to the Middle East, although more extensive than its mil- , itary aid, has been dramatic rather than large. Its credits have

usually been announced as seven to twelve year loans, and _ have been extended at politically crucial moments. By 1962, Soviet postwar economic loans to this area had amounted to about one billion dollars, but probably only about one third of it had actually been drawn.*’ American postwar economic as-

sistance to the Middle East and North Africa totalled nearly three and a half billion dollars by June 1962, most of it already utilized.** But the U.S.S.R. appeared as an alternative supplier

to the West—and that was its great attraction. The U.S.S.R. has three main avenues for scoring gains in the 17 The Sino-Soviet Economic Offensive in the Less Developed Countries, Department of State Publication 6632, released May 1958, pp. 21-23. Since 1958, the U.S.S.R. has extended new credits to Egypt for building the High Aswan Dam, and to Iraq for general economic development. 18 This figure does not include any assistance extended through Smith-Mundt

assistance in educational exchange, or indirectly through UN refugee and relief organizations. In estimating the total Western contribution, consideration should also be given to loans extended by Great Britain, West Germany, and the World Bank, of which the U.S.S.R. is not a member.

[ 406 ]

INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION new political game now in progress. It can win political opportunists to its banners. The political careerist who once thought of making his fortune by collaborating with the West now finds Soviet buyers on the market. A wealthy landowner ambitious for the presidency became one of the chief Soviet instruments in Syria in 1957. Political opportunists may move far before they

are checked by the zealous concern of the great majority of the area’s new middle class for their national independence. secondly, the U.S.S.R. may rely on the greater respectability of the communist party, which now asserts itself as a non-violent, reformist opposition party associated with a seemingly benevolent foreign state and striving for power by parliamentary means. While this strategy may have some promise

in India, Indonesia, or Japan, it suffers in the Middle East from the near absence of freely elected parliaments. In fact, in none of the countries under discussion are Soviet-oriented com-

munist parties legally recognized. Despite their illegality, the Syrian and Iraqi communist parties and, to a lesser extent, the Jordanian party, have benefited to some degree from the new Soviet posture, but not sufficiently to overcome distrust in the genuineness of their nationalism or to match the vigor of political rivals also striving for a monopoly of power. This new Soviet strategy is attuned above all to scoring gains

over the longer run. Fostering neutralism is a backward step undertaken with the hope of achieving a position from which to make two steps forward.’* This strategy carries inherent limitations and risks, however. Even the most optimistic Krem- | lin planner cannot be sure of returns on a policy that relies so heavily on negotiation, persuasion, economic and military aid, and on the assumption of growing Western weakness. There is, for example, no one-to-one relationship between economic penetration and political penetration in a world in which both the West and the U.S.S.R. remain available as alternate suppliers. Attempts to exploit economic dependency for political leverage are bound to cause the threatened nation to apply for help to the rival supplier with scarce chance of being

, [ 407 ]

19J%n 1949, the French Communist newspaper L’Humanité had called the strategy of fostering neutralism “the minimum program of the imperialists.”

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES turned down.” Economic aid that is effectively employed, more-

over, enhances the forces of political stability in the Middle _ East, regardless of its original source. The present Soviet policy involves a course of action which can only be successful if the U.S.S.R. honors the rules of the game. Just as pressure from pro-Western and Western states between 1954 and 1956 helped to move Syrian and Egyptian

neutralism in a pro-Soviet direction, so communist-inspired violence in Iraq during 1958 and 1959 helped to persuade the neutralist Iraqi government to reduce its dependence on the U.S.S.R. If local governments discover that the U.S.S.R. is work-

ing through its diplomats, technicians, agents, or communist parties to overthrow them, or gained the kind of special power in the area that was so resented when the West exercised it,

their reactions will be such as to cost the U.S.S.R. all the advantages it had gained by its diplomatic and economic efforts.“ Should one country in the area awaken too late to this threat, the rest, while the present balance of power among the great nations persists, are all the more likely to move for safety toward the Western camp.

Fntering Middle Eastern politics not for the purpose of effecting immediate ideological conversions but to bring about a change in the world’s balance of power has mired the U.S.S.R. as deeply as the West in the sharp rivalries and conflicts of the

region. It has, for example, supported Iraq against Egypt at the height of the conflict between Kassim and Nasser over the 20 The need for replacement parts for machinery and weapons gives some political leverage to the original supplier. Once bargaining comes to involve the very independence of the state, however, opportunities for extending basic political and economic support are again opened to all competitors. 21 “It appears that bloc technicians are under orders to avoid political discussion and to refrain from any activity that might be misinterpreted, and there is little surface evidence that bloc personnel engage in espionage, propaganda, or subversive activities. . . . Social contacts with the local population are usually limited. Soviet aid missions are conscious of maintaining good public relations. .. . However, on the basis of known facts about bloc espionage tactics, some of the aid personnel in most countries can be assumed to be professional agents, [but Soviet] technicians are under some degree of surveillance in most areas.” (From an unclassified Intelligence Report No. 8256. A Comparison of U.S. and Soviet Bloc Personnel in Less-Developed Countries, published by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State, June 6, 1960, pp. 6-7 and 11.)

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future of Arab nationalism. It has supported Morocco against Tunisia in their rivalry over North African leadership. As a result, the U.S.S.R. has already lost much of the glamour it possessed when it first entered the area, and indeed has created local suspicions and resentments.

Nor has the U.S.S.R. aligned itself unequivocally on the side of social change. It has not hesitated to give economic and military assistance to the traditional Imamate of Yemen or to offer aid to the kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran, and Ethiopia in order to woo them away from the West. The distinction the U.S.S.R. drew for a time between Iraq and Egypt was based on Soviet hopes in the realm of foreign policy, not on vital differences in ideology between Nasser and Kassim.

The U.S.S.R. has been willing to risk little for the sake of procuring the triumph of local communist parties lest the repercussions destroy over-all Soviet gains.

Beyond these limitations, there are major risks inherent in present Soviet policy that have already been discussed in earlier chapters. The U.S.S.R. is now more liable to become involved

in regional wars between recipients of Western arms and recipients of Soviet arms. By asking communist parties to give priority to the task of organizing the broadest possible movement for opposing the foreign policies of the West, the U.S.S.R. risks

transforming the character and élan of a revolutionary movement that is deliberately kept from making revolutions. It is this latter danger which has split communist parties in many coun-

tries of the Middle East, has caused a public debate between communist leadership of the U.S.S.R. and China, and perhaps dissension within the Kremlin itself.

The Relative Contributions of Neutralist and Pro-Western States to the Security of the Middle East

On the surface, there would appear to be grounds for Soviet optimism that it can score major gains over the longer run in

the Middle East. The pro-Western orientation of part of the Middle East, no less than the neutralism of the rest, derives from a sense of weakness rather than strength. The neutralists [ 409 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES have been concentrating on eliminating the remnants of special

Western positions in the area. Some of the nations now proWestern may well follow suit. No Middle Eastern neutralist state

has as yet the independent strength or detachment to try, like India, to lessen the burden of the coincidence of unsatisfied Afro-Asian aspirations and the Soviet-Western encounter by

acting as mediator in the cold war. On the contrary, many Middle Eastern neutralists fear, second only to a worsening of the cold war, a lessening of it on terms that would leave them without external leverage for ending all remaining Western

prerogatives, curb their freedom to acquire arms, or reduce their chances of acquiring economic assistance. However great

their sense of moral superiority over the larger nations on problems of international power, most of the Middle Eastern neutralists are as eager for armaments as their alliance-bound neighbors. Neither neutralist nor pro-Western nations in the Middle East shrink from using the threat of violence, or violence itself, to achieve objectives within their own region. This sense of weakness and distrust also stems from a lack of adequate domestic progress—a vulnerability which encourages Soviet hopes, often enough expressed, that others will find both ideological and pragmatic reasons to join the Soviet camp once the historical reasons for the growing strength of the Soviet bloc have become apparent to all. To weld the anti-colonial and

communist reactions against “capitalist imperialism” into a single movement led by the U.S.S.R. may well look like a feasible project.

The neutralists of the Middle East, however, believe themselves to be protected by certain safeguards. First, they consider themselves to be covered by their own policy of making sure that both the West and the U.S.S.R. remain on hand competing for advantage among them, each ensuring that the other shall not gain predominance in the area. Second, they assume that Soviet technicians and diplomats are not engaged in plotting the violent overthrow of Middle Eastern governments, but will act instead in line with present Soviet policy of appearing as the champion of peaceful coexistence and Afro-Asian nationalism. Third, they are confident that, if their independence [ 410 ]

INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION is threatened by one side in the cold war, the other side, joined by the force of world opinion, will assuredly foil such threats. Most neutralists also rely on three internal forces—an acutely sensitive nationalism, a major effort to develop a socialism of their own, and a prudent monopolization of domestic political power. These safeguards are clearly of unequal weight but together they constitute the most comforting form of insurance now being bought by nations that cannot hope to defend themselves by their own military strength.

This neutralist assessment neglects one essential guarantee of the safety of their independent role: the military strength and political moderation of the Western coalition. The presence of the U.S.S.R. may enhance the maneuverability of Middle Eastern states in local disputes with their rivals or the West. But if it

were unhampered by Western power, the U.S.S.R. would scarcely stand in defense of the national independence of these states.

Would Middle Eastern states be more secure if they joined in military alliance with the West? Here the answer appears to be contingent: such an alliance can be as irrelevant, inadequate or prudent as neutralism, or it can provide better safety than neutralism. The security of the Middle East, far more than the security of Western Europe, depends not only on its ability to defend itself against outright foreign aggression but also against

domestic subversion by extremist movements. As long as the Middle East remains vulnerable to both menaces, insurance against ageression is not enough, whether written in neutralist or pro-Western terms. The discrimination between neutralist and pro-Western coun-

tries can be a distinction without a difference. In common American usage, a neutralist nation is one that will not stand up and be counted with us against communist expansionism. This looks like a simple and obvious test. Actually, even the nations gathered in NATO are not agreed among themselves on all the circumstances that would cause them to go to war with the Sino-Soviet bloc. Fundamental changes in weapons technology about every five years, and hence in the capacity [ 411 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

and will to go to war, may alone be sufficient to prevent any treaty commitment from remaining final or even relevant. It was

not a neutralist but a leader of the Western coalition who said that “since the advent of nuclear weapons, there is no longer any

alternative to peace.” “A soldier,” continued President Eisen-

hower, “can no longer regain a peace that is useable to the world.”*?

A policy of high military preparedness against possible SinoSoviet encroachments does not mark the policies of pro-Western nations alone. Neutrals, too, have a keen interest in defending

their own territorial integrity. As in the case of pro-Western nations, neither the motives nor the enemies need be single. India, which spends about 40 percent of its regular budget and {8 percent of its total expenditures on defense, also has long been engaged in creating situations of strength along its own northern tier. Perpetuating relationships dating to the days of British India, although encouraging internal reforms in these areas, New Delhi seeks to maintain its influence over the internal affairs, foreign policies, and trade of neighboring Nepal, Sik-

kim, and Bhutan. Although unable, despite these efforts, to match the strength of China, India intends to maintain a military superiority over Pakistan, at least two and a half times as great as the strength of the latter. It is true that Pakistan, a member of both the South East Asian Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization (formerly known as the Baghdad Pact) spends more than India on defense, 39 percent of its total expenditures. There is general agreement, however, both within Pakistan and without, that this high level of preparedness is also stimulated by Pakistan’s unresolved conflicts with India rather than by any hope of countering communist China. Willingness to permit Western bases on one’s soil does not clearly distinguish neutralists from pro-Western nations. Denmark has allowed no troops from other NATO nations to be

stationed on its soil. Several NATO nations are reluctant to

permit missile bases on their territories. By contrast, Saudi Ara-

bia has until recently granted the United States military air facilities and Libya has furnished a major air base in exchange 22 Department of State Bulletin, October 4, 1954, p. 354.

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INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION

for money and American support in their sometimes difficult relationships with other non-communist countries. These two countries, however, have insisted on maintaining their political neutralism in the United Nations and elsewhere. Certainly neutralist and pro-Western orientations are unrelated to ideological differences. Anti-communists, democrats, dictators, reformers and traditionalists are by now to be found in both camps—which is one reason why there is no neutralist bloc and the West finds it sometimes difficult to characterize the “free world.” _ A pro-Western orientation can make a difference. As long as prevailing military technology gives the West the ability to deter general war by virtue of its possession of military and naval bases at a short distance from the Sino-Soviet bloc, participation in the base structure of the Western coalition remains an impor-

tant contribution to the defense of all countries. Even if no

bases are granted, a pro-Western country is more likely than a

neutralist one to contribute to the security of the region by easing rights of access, transportation, and communication for the West in a crisis or limited war. Such an orientation can also make it easier for Western governments to gain access to local leaders and to enter into more intimate consultation on critical foreign and domestic problems. It is likely to give a country greater backbone if it comes under Soviet diplomatic pressure. A pro-Western orientation alone, however, is not a sufficient indication of how willing any country may be, even when it has the right to call for military assistance, to chance a war in reply to a Soviet military threat. It is also no indication of how willing or able a country may be to deal with underlying problems of internal political stability. _ Given the overlap in motives, behavior, and problems on the part of both neutralist and the pro-Western states in the present stage of Middle Eastern political development, it may well mislead the West to convert any contingent differences into a dis-

tinction in principle. Since neutralism is so pervasive and nationalism so sensitive in the Middle East, yet the area’s vulner-

ability still so great, here even more than in the rest of the world, concrete acts of mutually rewarding collaboration de[ 413 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

serve to be held in higher regard than declarations of loyalty. Because the West cannot allow an erosion of the non-communist world, it has a stake in protecting neutralist states no less than

pro-Western states. It cannot prudently help to safeguard the internal strength and external security of the one group while

neglecting the other. |

Sometimes it may be prudent to neglect making choices. The government that accepts an alliance with the West in order to perpetuate an unpopular regime or win backing for its regional rivalries may not be preferable to a government that is successfully immunizing itself against subversion by extremists, but relies for its external safety on the present balance of international power. At other times, especially in periods of danger, it may be necessary to accept the best bargain without championing it as the best principle.

| Limitations and Opportunities for Western Policy If the U.S.S.R. clearly ended the Western monopoly of influence in the Middle East after 1955, it was also apparent that,

by 1960, the U.S.S.R. had already made the maximum gains it can hope for on the basis of its present policies. Other countries may yet turn to neutralism, but no Middle Eastern neutralist state sees any reason to put an end to Western prerogatives in the region in order to yield such prerogatives to the U.S.S.R. Therein lies the locally-imposed ceiling to Soviet ambitions.” To make decisive new gains, the U.S.S.R. must push beyond neutralism by stimulating the growth of pro-communist regimes to follow upon the anticipated failure of present Middle Eastem governments in meeting the issues of the social revolution now in process. This policy, so heartily advocated by the Chi28 “Ry deliberately ignoring the need for a concrete historical approach to nationalism, Western reactionary propaganda is now trying to describe as ‘nationalism’ the policy followed by the countries of Asia and Africa that have recently won national independence, or are advancing towards that goal. But the fact is that their policy is a manifestation of the national-liberation movement of the oppressed peoples of Asia and Africa. ... What is the purpose of describing this great progressive movement as ‘nationalism’? Is it not meant as a foundation for the wholly false conception that communist internationalism and ‘Asian nationalism’ are irreconcilable?” (Observer, “Internationalism

and the Movement for National Tala] New Times, July 1956, p. 4.)

INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION

nese Communists, is fraught with perils. The U.S.S.R. cannot cease supporting the present neutralist regimes, much less undermine them, without driving them closer to the West. The U.S.S.R. can succeed in such a strategy only if, at the same time, it has isolated the United States, split the Western coalition, and overcome Western political and military capacity to move to the aid of other states. The challenge to the West is therefore plain.** It must not allow itself to be isolated in Middle Eastern policies. It must maintain

the strength of the Western coalition so that the U.S.S.R. will not be tempted to alter its policy to that of a strategy of revolution and war. It must, above all, help Middle Eastern nations succeed in establishing their changing society on a new and stable base.

Unlike the U.S.S.R., the United States can be content with a Middle East that has the will and strength to pursue genuinely independent foreign and domestic policies. Middle Eastern nationalism cannot help being “anti-Western” in the context of changing a heritage derived from the West’s past relationship

with the area. But Middle Eastern nationalism is likely to become “anti-Western” in terms of the cold war, or the fundamental values of the West, only if the West refuses to transform the style and character of its earlier relationship with the Middle

Fast. Here the West has options.” Can the Middle East and the West discover overlapping national interests and hence areas of collaboration? There would seem to be two important common concerns—oil and the creation of secure, resilient foundations for responsible independence. Of these, oil represents by far the easier problem.” 24 Readers may wish to compare the analysis of the Middle East’s international orientation offered in this chapter with two recent studies that drew on extensive expert discussion: John C. Campbell’s Defense of the Middle East: Problems of American Policy, published for the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 1958; and Peter Calvocoressi, British Interests in the Mediterranean and Middle East, (Report by a Chatham House Study Group), London, 1959. 25 The two different meanings of “anti-Western” in Middle Eastern politics —often confused in discourse on the area—help to illustrate why the com-

petition between the U.S.S.R. and the West is a non-zero-sum game. The participants register gains and losses on different scales. The different implica-

tions of neutralism for the U.S.S.R. and the West are obviously another il-

lustration. 26 George Lenczowski’s Oil and State in the Middle East, Ithaca, 1960, is the most recent, most thorough, and most detached analysis of this issue. Brigadier

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MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

_ By now, it has become much clearer than before to all concerned that the oil-producing states of the Arab world and Iran are as dependent on oil revenues for economic progress essential to their political stability as Western Europe is dependent upon them for fuel.”” The more the subsistence economy of the Middle

Rast is transformed by national development programs, the larger the constituency touched by a loss of oil revenues.”®

To deny this fuel to its consumers for political reasons is demonstrably becoming self-defeating as well as ineffective. It is still possible to conceive of extremists preferring to drown in oil, but no projection of regional trends or analysis of still unresolved differences with the West makes it in the least plausible to suppose that there is likely cause that would allow such extremists to build a united front of oil producing countries in the Middle East and North Africa to deny oil to the West. Arab oil quickly substituted for Iranian oil when production ceased for nearly two years after the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian

Oil Company in 1951.2° Western hemisphere oil helped to supply Western Europe without major hardships after the Suez Canal—though not Middle East oil production—was blocked in 1956. Since then it has become evident that North African oil, located more closely to Europe, promises almost as rich and certainly more accessible supplies.*° In the field of oil, moreover, the U.S.S.R. can be played off

against the West in only limited fashion by Middle Eastern and | S. L. Longrigg’s Oil in the Middle East: Its Discovery and Development, London, 1954, is a detailed historical and economic study by a former adviser of the Iraq Petroleum Company. Benjamin Shwadran’s The Middle East, Oil, and the Great Powers, revised second edition, New York, 1959, is more critical of oil companies and governments. “7 Western European oil consumption amounted to 27,000,000 tons in 1938,

115,000,000 tons in 1956, and is expected, despite the availability of other sources of energy, to reach 340,000,000 tons in 1975. At present, 80 percent of Western Europe’s oil imports come from the Middle East. (Lenczowski, Oil and State in the Middle East, pp. 28-29.) 28 During 1958, the six principal oil producing territories of the Middle East earned an estimated $1,274,000,000 in oil revenues, with Kuwait leading with $415,000,000, followed by Saudi Arabia with $300,000,000; Iran with $246,000,000; Iraq with $235,000,000; Qatar with $57,000,000; and Bahrayn with $11,000,000. (Ibid., p. 362.) 22 Now Iranian oil, over Arab objections, is being delivered to Israel. 80 A. J. Meyer estimates that within the next five to ten years Algeria and

[ 416 ]

INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION North African states. By assisting countries of this region (Syria, for example) in making geological surveys, drilling for oil, and

building refineries, the U.S.S.R. can improve their bargaining position with the oil companies. At the same time, however, the U.S.S.R. must impose a ceiling on Middle Eastern and North African claims because it is striving ever harder to sell its own surplus oil in markets now buying oil from the Middle East and

North Africa. It has no need for Middle Eastern or North

African oil; no capacity for transporting it. Its competition can directly touch the income of Middle Eastern and North African States.

The oil situation is complicated in the Middle East and North Africa by the unavoidably sensitive relationship between private corporation and sovereign government, foreign ownership and

local participation. These relationships will continue to present difficult, and sometimes tense, problems. The history of the past few years, however, has demonstrated that there are clear

limits to the exploitation of oil as a political instrument by either the West or the Middle East and North Africa. This lesson, and the steadily increasing importance of the area’s most valuable economic resource for both Western buyer and Middle

Eastern and North African seller, should make it easier to arrange reasonably satisfactory bargains regarding prices, royalties, and the control of production.** The growing recognition of greater interdependence, yet also greater freedom from duress by either side, holds improved potentials for expanding collaboration in this and related economic fields. Libya together may develop an output equivalent to two-thirds of current Middle Eastern production, and at costs as low as the latter. (“Some Implications of North African Oil,” Current Problems in North Africa, The Princeton University Conference, December 1959, p. 60.) 81 However, the richest oil producing country in the Middle East—Kuwait— is so unique in its political and economic structure that it eludes all estimates of its probable policies on the basis of comparative analysis. Writes Woodhouse

in Britain and the Middle East, p. 29: “Kuwait is smaller than Northern Ireland; it produces about half of the oil consumed every day in Great Britain; it has larger proved oil reserves than the entire North American continent; and the Kuwait Investment Board is the largest single investor of the London Stock Exchange.” How does one chart the future course of the world’s most extensive welfare state with the world’s most diversified capitalist investments governed by a tribal sheikh?

[ 417 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES The most serious mutual concern which the Middle East and

the West share is how to make this region internally and externally secure. This constitutes a vital overlap of interests. The Middle Eastern states still lack the strength and skill to solve

the problems of peace, stability, and welfare unassisted. The West cannot afford to let anarchy or expansionist totalitarianism triumph in a region where Europe, Asia, and Africa meet. No nations in history, however, have ever tried to achieve as large and pressing a goal under similar handicaps. The majority

of the people of the Middle East are poorer in resources and skills than the Chinese, yet they are no less eager to make progress. In the midst of unfinished revolutions and in the midst of competition with a totalitarian power, the West must help the Middle East fit itself into a stable system of world political and economic development as yet unattained.

The majority of politically active Middle Easterners have decided to draw upon both the West and the Soviet bloc for sup-

port to achieve the goals of their national revolution. What inspiration and support they will draw upon to set their independence on solid domestic foundation and thus accomplish their social revolution remains an open question. For the time being,

the West has retained a vital link even with the neutralists of this area. For the majority of politically active Middle Easterners, the West remains the main source of values, knowledge, material assistance and inspiration, and a closer approximation of the style of life they want to live than the U.S.S.R. Middle Easterners may borrow techniques from the U.S.S.R., but exceedingly few bother to learn Russian, and fewer still know anything about Soviet culture. They have studied even Marxism primarily in the West and from Western sources. Their criticism of Western actions is usually based on Western values. They have usually asked the West first for arms, or for money for projects like the Aswan Dam before they have turned to the U.S.S.R.

Some opportunities for fruitful cooperation between the West and the Middle East have already been missed because the Middle East reacted in the present with a distrust born of the past and the West acted as of it were poorer and less secure [ 418 ]

INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION

| than the Soviet bloc. Moreover, there are things the West cannot offer to the Middle East. It has no single book that explains all historical change and what to do about it. In reality, of course, no one does. There have been times when even Soviet leaders admitted this: “It should not be forgotten,”

said Khrushchev in 1960, “that Lenin’s propositions on imperialism were advanced and developed tens of years ago when the world did not know many things that are now decisive for historical development. . . . We live in a time when we have neither

Marx nor Engels nor Lenin with us. If we act like children who, studying the alphabet, compile words from letters, we shall not go very far. Based on Marxist-Leninist teaching, we must thoroughly study life, analyze the present situation, and draw conclusions that are useful to the common cause of communism.”** However impressive the Soviet example of rapid economic growth may be, there are no ready-made models for starting out with fewer resources and different values. Fven the competitive struggle with the U.S.S.R. therefore requires no distortion of the Western heritage; it is not necessary

to meet communist dogma, or the traditional dogma of the Middle East, with a Western dogma of our own. It should be the special strength of the West that it holds to no revealed truth in the secular realm. It can therefore offer an honest comtadeship in a common search for relevant truths for a rapidly changing world. This could be one of the West’s most valuable offerings to a Middle Eastern leadership predominantly pragmatic (and hence eager to experiment) and authoritarian (and hence tempted to stop experimenting too soon). The Middle Eastern challenge to the West now is compounded

of familiar and unfamiliar demands. Taking valid measure of the present international balance of power, the U.S.S.R. confronts the West in the Middle East not with the violence of revolution and war but with competition in diplomacy, economics,

and ideas. As a result, the West is being asked to respond in 82 In 1939, Stalin said, “We have no right to expect of the classical Marxist

writers, separated as they were from our day by a period of 45 or 55 years, that they should have foreseen each and every zigzag of history in the distant future of every country.” (Both quotations cited in The New York Times, June 25 and 26, 1960.)

[ 419 ]

MIDDLE EASTERN CHOICES

terms that are in fact closer to its own interests and traditions than to those of the U.S.S.R.—terms which permit the West to concentrate on its longer run interests in building a resilient world order rather than its immediate position in the cold war. | If the West loses such a competition it may even be said that it will have deserved to fail. The question remains open whether the West will meet the necessary but difficult prerequisites to the continuation of this kind of competition: maintaining sufficient strength to deter agression and sufficient skill to alleviate conflict.

The West is also confronted in the Middle East by the bitter face of poverty and ignorance and deep eagerness to overcome both. This affects the quality of human life no less than the political fortunes of nations. Here the question is whether the West will be able sympathetically to tune in on the unfamiliar and revolutionary forces transforming an alien civilization—whether it can learn to collaborate effectively with alien revolutionaries who will often reflect in their own personality the contradictions, intensity, and frustrations of a society in upheaval. It will cost much to attain modest results.

The most relevant choice for the sake of the security and welfare of the Middle East and ourselves is not whether the West should ally itself with one Middle Eastern country rather than another, or commit itself exclusively to a particular reformer as once it used to commit itself to a particular defender of the status quo. The challenge is to recognize the full scope of the revolutions now transforming the Middle East and to help all its nationalists cope successfully with rapid social change.

[ 420 ]

INDEX

a®

+6) Ri.

Abbas, Ferhat, 58 American Federation of Labor, 331 Abbas II, Khedive of Egypt, 305 Ammar, Hamed, 87n

Abbasids, 7 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, 237, 400,

Abboud, Ibrahim (General), 116, 327 416

Abduh, Mohammed, 120-122, 131n Aqaba, Gulf of, 381

Abdullah (King), 380 Arab Collective Security Pact, 394n, Abu Dharr, 158n 395 Abu-Lughod, Janet, 111n Arab League, 370, 376-377

Achour, Habib, 325 attacks on, 174

Aden Protectorate, 368 (See also Arabs, Middle East and o

Afghani, Jamal ad-Din, 120, 122 Nationalism )

Afghanistan Arab refugees, 379-380

accepts aid from U.S.S.R., 398 Arab Socialist Resurrectionist (Ba’th)

border disputes with Pakistan and Party, 96, 135, 154, 188n, 235,

Iran, 368-369 239, 242n, 267n, 308n, 372-373 |

Aflaq, Michel, 209n, 240-242 program of, 240-241

Africa, relationship to Arab world, “Arab World,” geographical definition

366, 375-376 of, xvi

Agriculture, 79-104 Arabi, Ahmed (Colonel), 254, 305 | (See also particular countries) Arabian-American Oil Company, 110

Ahmad, Eqbal, 187n Arabian Peninsula, 114

Ahmed, Mahdi Mohammed, 15 Arabic

al-Ahram, 311 modernization of, xv, 205

al-Alam, 124 transliteration of, xvi n al-Azhar, University of, 127 Arabs

Algeria, 114 132 after 1848, 198 unity and rivalry among, 6-7, 367Alderson, A. D., 254 attitude toward Islam of, 6-7, 11, Army of Liberation of, 255 368, 370-378

Communist Party in, 170, 173n Arasteh, Reza, 63-65

conditions of peasants in, 84 Aristotle, 351

future of, 376 Army (See Military)

Jews in, 381 Arnold, G. L., 67

trade unions in, 318 Aron, Raymond, 75n Algerian Manifesto, 58 Asabiyah, 12, 15

352 Egypt)

Ali, Liaqat Khan, 134 Ashford, Douglas E., 294-295

Almond, Gabriel A., 231, 233, 281n, Aswan Dam, 79, 357, 418 (See also

| 421 |

INDEX Ataturk (Kemal, Mustapha), 29, 36n, __Bizri, Afif, 279 66, 117, 129, 130n, 225, 227-229, Bourgeoisie, 45-50, 69, 71-72, 74n,

239, 243, 254, 265-66, 285, 288- 180, 236-238, 303n, 306, 391-393

289, 306, 313, 316-317, 362 Bourguiba, Habib (President), 58,

Authoritarianism, 217, 221n 117, 173-174, 208, 243, 269, 300authoritarian road to democracy, 304, 325 223-226, 229-234, 281-284, 291- Bowman, Herbert E., 56

317, 348, 361-364 (See also Braibanti, Ralph, 342

Parties, Radicalism, and Turkey) Braudel, ix difference between old and new Brotherhoods, 14-15, 27, 137, 152 authoritarians, 226-229, 391-393 Bureaucracy

(See also Totalitarianism) functions of, 340

Authority (See also Caliphs, Kings, in politics, 347-348

and Rebellion) Middle Eastern traditions of, 340-

in the contemporary Middle East, 341

42-43, 70, 185-189, 213, 216-220, modern forms of, 342 280, 311-312, 351-353, 358, 361 new roles for members of, 346-348 in traditional Islam, 5, 6, 8-22, 130- pay scale in, 345 131, 218, 340

Averroes, 21

Avicenna, 21 Caliphs (See also Authority, Kings,

278 abolition of,6 26 Azerbaijan, 171 early, Azm family, 8 powers of, 7-8, 12-18, 251-253

Ayub (General), 66, 116, 131n, 261, and Rebellion)

Azm, Khalid, al-, 176 Camus, Albert, 202

Carlton, Alford, 354n

Central Treaty Organization (See Baghdad Pact, 395-398, 401-402, 412 Baghdad Pact) Bahrayn, Sheikdom of, 376 Charisma, 273-274, 284-285, 308, 312 Bakdash, Khalid, 177n, 180-182, 188n China, relevancy as a model for Mid-

Balafrej, Ahmed, 297 dle East of, 18, 165-168, 194, 418

Bandung Conference, 132n, 167, 400- Clemenceau, 66 |

401 Cohn, Norman, 143, 146n

Banna, Hasan al-, 137, 141, 142n, Colonialism, sense in the Middle East

146, 149 of, 404-405

Ba’th Party (See Arab Socialist Resur- Communism, 66, 156-195, 286-288,

rectionist Party) 291

pegouns (See Nomads) and Islam, 218of, 94 CMs satel, oin, attractions for156-159, peasants

ben Barka, Mehdi, 58n, 165-167, 208, factionalism in, 177-178, 193-194

243, 290, 298 future in Middle East of, 192-195

pen Boa Mohammed? 76 erowing respectability in Middle

ben Mansour Neliai ' East of,96162, 407 en Mansour Nejjai, Ahmed Hajj, ben Salah, Ahmed, 302, 325 abor unions; and, 324, 327-329, ben Seddik, Mahjoub, 331 331, 334-335 , ben Youssef, Salah, 300n planning and the attractions of, 67,

Berbers, 198, 299 , 162-168, 183 ;

Berger, Morroe, 54n, 253n, 258n, relation to Moscow of Middle

341n Eastern, 170-171, 189-190

Binder, Leonard, 72 role of communist parties, 168-195 Birth Control, 357, 359 strategy of, 170-175 Bitar, Salah al-, 240 (See also U.S.S.R., China, Yugo[422]

INDEX Communism—Continued Economic Development—Continued

slavia, Marxism, and particular demand for, 28-29, 159-168, 238countries ) 239, 243-244, 359 : Community of Believers, 7, 11, 132, in traditional Islam, 13, 20, 24, 70-

218, 252 71

founding of, 4 (See also Islam) prospects for, 77-78, 97-104, 360-

purpose of, 6 361, 363-364 Consensus Education, Xili Congress Party (See India) Economist, 48

as a force for change, 75, 131-133, control by ulema of, 122

294n, 339 effects of classic education on modconcept of, 3, 5-24 ern Middle Easterner, 74

problem of creating or maintaining, effects on Islamic tradition by mod-

114, 125, 127, 142-143, 204, 210, ern, 29

355 reform of, 27 |

214-218, 232-234, 304, 317, 351- effects on old class relationships, 49

Conservatives, 115-116 self-educated among lower middle Constitutions, role of, 222n, 223n, classes, 72

231in, 260 (See also particular countries)

Cragg, Kenneth, 129n, 219n Egypt

Critchley, A. Michael, 85, 88n Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, 306

Anglo-French Israeli invasion of, 245, 389

Decision-making, problems of, 351- “Arab Socialist Union” of, 311-312

364 Army Coup of July 1952, 254, 307, Democracy 394 authoritarian road toward, 223-226, British influence in, 304-307 _ 229-234, 281-284, 291-317, 348, civil servants in, 341, 344, 346n

361-364 Communist Party of, 169

definition of, 214 composition of Army officer core

popularity of, 221-223, 313-314 in, 258 radicalism of, 214-216, 223 cultivated areas of, 79

Djerad, Ali, 175 economic potentials of, 357, 361 Drug Addiction, 91n Egyptian Socialist Party, 235

Druses, 96 expenditures for military 1954-1959,

Duverger, Maurice, 57 255 (See also table, 364-365) food consumption in, 80

Economic Development jobs for educated in, 65

and landlords, 43-44, 81-83, 100 King’s political role in, 304-307 and new middle class, 50-55, 59-67, land reforms in, 96-97, 100-104 70, 77-78, 97-98, 104, 346-348 Liberation Rally of, 308-310

and peasant, 68, 79-104 Moslem Brotherhood in, 134, 137and planning, 60-61, 67-72, 77, 102- 138, 141-144, 148-150, 308 104, 162-168, 247, 253n, 272, National Union of, 285, 306, 311

314, 346-348, 355-361 nationalization of private enter-

and political stability, 4, 356, 364- prises in, 72 :

365 peasants in, 80-81, 98-99

and social change, 28-30, 37, 55- political evolution in, 229, 289, 292-

59, 75-78, 106, 314, 355-356 293, 304-312 : 69-70, 72, 237-238, 306 relations with Israel of, 381, 397-

and traditional bourgeoisie, 45-50, population growth in, 79-80

and workers, 68, 105, 111, 335-339 398 : | [ 423 |

INDEX

Egypt—Continued Gilan, 171 relations with U.S.S.R. of, 397-398, Glubb, Pasha, 398

400 Gluckman, Max, 92

Revolutionary Command Council Greek philosophy in Islam, 32-33

of, 308 Grunebaum, G. E. von, 13n, 119n,

role in Arab affairs of, 375 (See 128n

also Arabs) Guilds, 14-15, 27

role of army in, 254, 276, 279 Gursel (General), 275

socialism in, 243-245 trade unions in, 245, 320-324

Wafd Party of, 47, 48, 139, 286, Hached, Ferhat, 331

306-307, 321 Haim, Sylvia G., 208n

workers in, 105-106, 110 Halim (Prince), 321

(See also Nassar and United Arab Hamid II (King), 26, 254

Republic) Harbison, Frederick H., 110, 321n

Eisenhower, Dwight D. Hashmite Dynasties, 372

address to UN General Assembly Hassan II (King), 298-299, 333 on Middle East arms embargo by, Hayes, Carlton, 196n

384 Hebrew, renovation of, xv

Doctrine, 386-398 Hesse, Hermann, 30 on peace, 412 Heyworth-Dunne, James, 197n

Extremists, 116, 360, 363-364 Hilsman, Roger, 352-353

Hinnawi, Sami (Colonel), 267 Hoeffding, Oleg, 166

Factionalism, 6-7, 18-19 Hoffer, Eric, 111, 391n

Fadayan Islam, 134 Hoggart, Richard, 355 Faiz, Faiz Ahmad, 31-32 Hourani, Akram, 96, 240, 242 Farhat, Abdullah, 325 Hourani, Cecil, 231n Farouk (King), 149, 186, 321, 394 Hudaybi, Hasan al-, 149

Fascism, 135, 154-155, 242n Huinzinga, Johann, 197n

Fassi, Allal al-, 296, 298 Husain, A. F. A., 106n, 107n

Fatalism, 24, 34, 87-95, 111, 220-221 Husain, Ahmad, 154

Fawzi, Khalid (Colonel), 324 Husaini, Ishak Musa, 139n

Fawzi, Saad ed Din, 326n Hussayn (King), 227, 376, 382

fellah (See Peasant) ,

Featherstone, H. L., 199

Fertile Crescent Union, 396 Ibish, Yusif, 122n

“Feudalism,” 43-45, 335, 391-393 ibn Khaldun, 12-13, 210

Fisher, Sidney N., 8 Ibrahim, Ibrahim Abdelkader, 110,

Franco-Tunisian Protectorate Treaty 321n

of 1881, 174 Ideologies

Freedom, 10, 16, 18-22, 27, 29, 33-37, defined, 288

40, 55-59, 67, 71, 74-76, 114, role of, 118, 287-291 117, 131-133, 200, 210, 217-219, types of, 114-118, 309, 363-364

222n, 223-226, 339 (See also (See also particular ideologies)

Democracy ) ijma (See Consensus)

Fromm, Erich, 288n | Imperialism, 35, 43, 45, 162, 196, Fyzee, A.A.A., 128n 202, 327, 369 (See also particular , countries and Nationalism) India

Gaza Strip, 384 Congress Party of, 282

Gezira Tenant Union, 96 defense against China by, 412 Ghazzali, al-, 17, 30, 252 multi-party system in, 312

Gibb, H.A.R., 1x-x, 90, 119-120, 355 relationship with Pakistan, 412 [ 424 ]

INDEX

Individualism, 217-221 Islam, 5

Institutional reform, 250-364 birth of, 4-7

(See also particular countries) communism and, 156-159, 218

Intellectuals concept of consensus in, See Conamong salaried middle class, 55 sensus impact of science on, 122 concept of millennium in, 136 in traditional Islam, 19-22 decay of traditional system of, 20-

scarcity of in Middle East, xiii, 117 21, 25-35, 119-120, 240 (See also particular countries) definition of orthodoxy in, 9-10 Intelligentsia, 51, 56-57, 62n, 182 dynamics of the traditional system

International Confederation of Free of, 10, 22-24

Trade Unions, 331 flowering of culture in, 22-23

Intervention in Middle Eastern inter- folk version of, 11-15, 24, 87-95 nal affairs, 371-373, 389-390 freedom in, 215-219 (See also Free-

Iqbal, Mohammad, 122 dom) Iran heretics in, 10, 14-15, army in, 41, 279 ideal form of, 5

23

border dispute with Afghanistan, intellectuals within the traditional

368 system of, 19-22 (See also Intel-

communists in, 171, 176 (See also lectuals )

Tudeh Party, below) philosophers in, 20-21, 355-356 Fadayan Islam in, 152 reformation of, 25-37, 117-133, 159,

government of, 42 188

peasants in, 82-84, 359 saints within, 19-20

plight of college graduates in, 64-65 socio-political traditions of, 4-33,

prospects for economic develop- 340 ! ment, 357, 359 soldiers and their traditional role

111 128

Shah of, 41, 42, 227 in, 19-21, 251-253

Socialist National Workers Party of, Islamic Colloquium in Lahore, 26, Tudeh Party of, 169, 176, 279, 399 Islamic League, 26

Iraq Islamic Socialist Party (See Syria) Army coup of 1936, 254 Islamic World Congress, 26 communists in, 96, 169, 175n, 186- Isma’il, Khedive of Egypt, 305

187, 193, 334 Israel

control of nomad in, 84 armed strength of, 255n

coup of 1958, 58n, 186, 334, 372 communism in, 170n economic opportunities in, 357, 359 compared with Islam, xiv-xv employment for educated in, 65 conflicts with Arabs, 350, 368, 378-

infant mortality in, 85 387 (See also Arab refugees) parliament in, 230 potentiality for self-support by, 382 nationalism in, 203, 209, 282 effects of Arab unity on, 377, 383

political party organization in, 289- War of 1948, 379

290 Issawi, Charles, 216-217 Popular Resistance Forces in, 28 , potential as a leader in Arab affairs

of, 375 Jama’at-i-Islam, 134 (See also Pakis-

relationship of military to civilian tan)

in, 276 Japan, similarities and contrasts of

rural poverty in, 99-100 Middle East with, 10, 44, 168

Security Pact with Turkey, 397 Johnson, J. J., 54n trade 334-335 womenunions in, 28 in, army in, 268 Jordan |

(See also Kassim, Nuri) foreign relations of, 380, 382, 398 [425 ]

INDEX

Jordan—Continued Lebanon, 203

government of, 42 Civil War of 1958 in, 50n, 368, 390 neo-Islamic movement in, 135 Communist Party in, 169

Judiciary systems, difficulties of, xiii, political actions of military in, 271

17 socio-political structure of, 70n,

(See also particular countries) 203, 214n, 368

Jumblatt, Kemal, 96, 189 trade unions in, 318

U.S. intervention in, 389-390 Lenczowski, George, 415n

Karouine University, 27, 58 Le Tourneau, Roger, 58

Karpat, Kemal H., 312n Levy, Marion J., 28n, 220-221 Kashani, Mullah Ayatolla, 152 Lewis, Bernard, 6, 160n Kassim (General), 28, 66, 96, 99, Lewis, William H., 93

187, 227, 276, 372, 408 Liberation Rally, 308-310

Kemil, Mustapha (of Egypt), 131in, Libya, 199

132n, 306 Jews in, 381

Kennedy, John F. (President), on military in, 268

U.S. reaction to any Arab-Israeli prospects for economic develop-

conflict, 387 ment in, 357 258, 261 U.S. bases in, 412 Khaksar movement (See Pakistan) Lippmann, Walter, 165

Khadduri, Majid, 125-126, 130n, 257- role in future Arab affairs of, 376

Khrushchev (Premier), 165, 176, 351, Lukacs, Georg, 60n

373-374, 385n, 419 Lyoussi, Caid Lahcen, 95

Kings, 41-45, 391-393 (See also Caliphs and Authority)

Kinship groups, 14 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 347 blood kinship opposed to faith, 7 Macdonald, D. B., 89 loss of effectiveness of, 28, 217-218 Malki, Adnan (Colonel), 267n, 397

Kohn, Hans, 196n Mamluk Dynasty, 8, 89 Koran, 5, 29, 352 Ma’mun, Caliph, 13

effect on peasant rebellion of, 94 Mannheim, Karl, 136n, 207n modern reinterpretations of, 27, Mardin, Serif, 73n_

121, 123 Marx, Karl, 66n

Kritzeck, James, 128n Marxism

Kuwait, 372, 417n attractions to Middle Easterners of, 159-162

Middle Eastern transformation in-

Labor (See Workers, Peasants, and terpreted by, 59, 60n, 178-184,

particular countries) 419

Labor Unions : Mashriqi, Allama, 151

role in social change, 335-339 Masmoudi, Mohammed, 302

318-319 120n, 150

summary of organizational strength, Maudoodi, Maulana Syad Abdul Ala,

Laghzaoui, Mohammed, 297 Mauritania, role in future Arab Lambton, Ann K., 44, 81n, 87n affairs of, 376

Landau, Jacob, 306 Mead, Margaret, 117

Landlords, 43-45, 47-48, 81-87, 102, Mecca, pilgrimage to, 132n

391-393 Mehta, Asoka, 183n, 337n

Lange, Oscar, 183-184 Menderes, Adnan, 266, 314-316

400n Middle Class

Lagueur, Walter Z., 60n, 160, 170, Merchants, historical role of, 46

Laski, Harold, 347 armies as the political vanguard of, Law, reform of, 26-27, 125-129 257-259, 274 [ 426]

INDEX

Middle Class—Continued Mohammed V (King), 95, 298, 331 bureaucrats and, 346-347 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 400

127n Morocco lower middle class, 72-73 army of, 255, 269

development of new salaried, 52-60, Moroccan Union of Agriculture, 96

prospects for, 73-78 civil servants in, 343-344 structure of, 62-70, 74n Communist Party of, 169

would-be middle class, 62-67 difficulties of peasants in, 83

(See also Bourgeoisie) future of, 376 |

Middle East and North Africa Hassan II (King), 298-299, 333 border disputes in, 298, 367-369 Istiqlal Party in, 294-299, 333

contracts and similarities with Jews in, 381 |

Africa and Asia, 3-4, 139n; Bal- The National Union of Popular kans, 97n, 163, 168; China, 18, Forces in, 96, 297-298, 302, 330,

165-168, 194, 418; India, 312, 333

320; Japan, 10, 44, 168; Latin nationalism in, 200-201 America, 56n, 275, 320; Russia, political parties in, 293, 296n

56-57, 162-165, 238, 418; United private Moroccan enterprise in, 47n States, 357; Western Europe, 10, student movement in, 298n 23, 34, 44, 55, 98-99, 136, 140, trade unions in, 318, 329-333 146n, 147, 236, 246, 314n, 418 under French Protectorate, 93

cultural diversity of, xiv, 365 Union of Moroccan Labor (UMT), geographical definition of, xv-xvi, 329-333

365-367, 374-376 work force of, 109

investment rates in, 356-357 Mosadeq, Mohammed (Premier), 152, scholarly knowledge, state of, ix-x 177, 260n, 393

unity in, 7, 201-206, 267, 370-378 Moslem, definition of, 5n, 9-10

(See also Arabs) Moslem Brotherhood, 48, 111, 134,

Middle East Defense Organization, 137-150, 189, 213, 235, 279, 286,

394 291, 308,ticular 311, 332 (See also parMilitary countries) : as instrument of reform in Middle Rast, 253, 258, 271-274

average pay in (See table 263) Nagib, Mohammed (General), 139,

conservative leadership of, 278 258, 307, 323

distinctions among officers, 261n, Nasr, Seyyed Hussein, 122n

265, 270 Nasser, Gamal abd al-, 29, 56, 58, 60,

middle class’s relationship to, 257- 66, 117, 128n, 134, 149, 200, 208,

259, 274 212, 227, 228n, 239, 243-246,

modern professional tasks of, 277 256, 260-261, 272-273, 276, 279,

modernization of, 69 286, 307-312, 321-322, 352, 362, Es) of (See tables 263, 264- 370, 372-375, 389, 393, 397, 399 totalitarian ideologies in, 279 Nationalism, 3, 191, fenige

tradition of ruleof, by,253-261 19-21, 251-253 FUinte On 379-378 transformation an nationa rest, a

weaknesses of, 254-257 and national unity, 201-206, 367

Mill, John Stuart, 224-226, 229-231 limitations of, 210-213, 290-291

34] , problems of definition, 196-201

Mirza, Iskander (General), 128 psychological attractions of, 207-

Mitchell, Richard P., 137n 208

Moderates, 116, 123-125, 278, 392 reasons for its popularity, 196-197, Mohammed (Prophet), 4, 6, 125, 251 207-210 Mohammed Ali (of Egypt), 69, 255 transformations of, 208-209, 358

[ 427 |

INDEX

Nationalism—Continued Pan-Islam, 26, 115

types of, 209 Parliaments, 229-233, 268, 303, 305(See also Ultra-Nationalism and 306, 314n

separate countries ) Parsons, Talcott, 282n

Tunisia ) Peasants

Neo-Destour Party, 96 (See also Parties, 273, 281-317

Neo-Islamic Totalitarian movements, attitudes of, 28-30, 68, 87-98, 114n

94, 134-155, 288 (See also Islam, folk version of,

Neutralism, 362-363, 385, 399, 403- and Fatalism)

405, 409-414 conditions of urban workers con-

New Middle Class (See Middle Class) trasted to, 105

Newman, William J., 223n difficulty of revolt among, 91-93

Niebuhr, Reinhold, 156 disease among, 85-86

Nkrumah, Kwame, 202n economic insecurity of, 79-87

Nolte, Richard, 80n land reform, 96-104 Nomads, 89n , migration to cities, 88n, 91n, 95,

conflict with city, 29 105

victory of urban society over, 84 political organization among, 95-97 Nuqrashi, Mahmud (Premier), 134 relation to landlord, 43-45, 81-85,

Nuri al-Sa’id, Pasha, 75, 188, 190, 86-87 226-227, 230, 279, 359 (See also particular countries) Phillips, Doris G. Adams, 88n Political Culture, 233, 281, 283

Oil companies, foreign owned Political Socialization, 282n

working conditions in, 106, 110 Popular Resistance Forces (See Iraq)

Oil politics, 415-417 Population pressures, vii, 25, 79 (See

Opportunists, 53, 176, 194, 280, 407 also Map and particular counOttoman Empire, 8, 23, 43, 89, 252, tries)

254, 257 Populism, 290-291

army of, 21 Provincial Towns, attitudes in, 138

defeat of, 26, 255 Psychology, of Middle Easterners, reformers in, 131 xiv, 3-4, 22, 24, 28-37, 40, 48-49,

52-78, 87-95, 102, 105-106, 111,

| 114-118, 130-133, 136-140, 154Pakistan 155, 159-168, 187-192, 196-213, absence of charismatic leadership, 273, 352-356, 363-364, 418-420

284 | “Pushtunistan,” 369, 398

basic democracies scheme in, 347n Pye, Lucian W., 352n border disputes with Afghanistan, 369

civil service in, 342, 345 Qatar, Sheikdom of, 376

communist influence in, 187 Quint, Malcolm N., 114n famine of 1942-1943, 83 Jama/’at-i-Islam, 151

Kashmir dispute with India, 369 Radicals, 116, 124, 287-289, 297-298,

Khaksar movement in, 134, 151 299-304, 311-312, 316n, 317,

loss of cultivated land in, 80 363-364

military forces in, 269-270, 279 Rahbar, Muhammad Daud, 27 neo-Islamic movements in, 134 Ramadan, Sa’id, 135

relations with India, 412 Razig, Ali Abd al-, 26 teacher pay in, 345 Razmara, Ali (General), 134, 152 workers in, 106n, 318n Rebellion, 48n

Palestine War, 256-257 (See also Is- contrasted in traditional Islam and

rael, conflict with Arabs) the modern Middle East, 358 [ 428 ]

INDEX

Rebellion—Continued Socialism—Continued

folk Islam and, 11-12, 14, 15, 28, nationalism and, 241-244, 372-373

87-95 trend toward nationalist and author-

individual and, 353-356 itarian ideology of, 191, 250, intellectuals and, 19-20 371-372 (See also particular

saints and, 19-20 countries )

soldiers and, 20-21, 280 South East Asian Treaty Organization, ulema and, 16-18 412 workers and, 112, 324, 331, 337 “Spiritualization of Politics,” 136

Reza Shah of Iran, 41, 227, 255 Stalin, Joseph, 161n, 399, 419n

Rostow, W. W., 356 Stauffer, Thomas B., 107n, 110 Rustow, Dankwart A., 352n Stendahl, 53

| Sudan, 199 Saaty, Hassan el-, 54n communists in, 327-328 Steppat, Fritz, 132n

Saints economic potentials in, 102, 357, loss of prestige of, 27 359 roles in Islam, 19-20 Gezira Scheme, 102, 359

Salaried Middle Class (See Middle national unity in, 203

Sanhnn bd Rassagal-, al, 126 Ramyay Workers Union of, 326, ; al-Rassaq

Sarraj (Colonel), 267n trade unions in, 326-329, 362 Saud (King), 26, 376 Suez Canal, 381, 389 (See also Uni-

Saudi Arabia versal Suez Canal Company) government Sufism, 91, 122 (See abor unionsof, in,42 318n Suhrawardi, 21 also Islam)

Society for Commanding Virtue Sulzberger, C. L., 61n | and Forbidding Vice in, 151 Syria, 203 unity in, 203 agricultural situation in, 81, 99 US. air facilities in, 42, 412 army in, 266-268, 279

Wahhabi Sect of, 151 capitalists in, 72

Scholar-Legists (See Ulema) communists in, 96, 169, 177, 279 Secularization, 129-133, 188, 219-220 control of nomad in, 84

Serageddin, Fouad, 321 Islamic Socialist Party of, 235 samt enmon,. 50.to-h/, 132. 218 Moslem Brotherhood in, 134-135, Tha, J, 45, LU, , 144-145

reformation of, 125-129 . .

Shehab, Fuad (General), 278 National Social Party of, 154, 279

Shils. Edward. 273. 287 national unity in, 211-212

Sy oe wares , parliamentary representation in, 47n

Shishakli, Adib (Colonel), 267, 310n workers rights in. 319-320 Silu, Fawzi (Colonel), 267, 319 Svrian-E ie Union. 186 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 10n, 117n, °Y"@2-"8ypuan “inion, 119n, 120n, 129, 220n

Social Change in the Middle East, ss definition of, vii-viii, 25, 36-37, Temran, University of, 63-64 76, 114, 351, 420 lich, Paul, 159

Social classes Tito (Marshal), 163

S5n, 62-63 oema, Ahme ullah,

defined in relation to social change, teen Anmed, wt bdullah. 324 differences among, 29, 40-112, 237- Totalitarianism

738 appeal of, 286, 355-356

Socialism difference from authoritarianism of, communism and, 247 — =-:103, 164, 228, 292n, 339, 363Middle Eastern versions of, 236-248 364 [ 429 ]

INDEX Totalitarianism—Continued United Kingdom, 44, 177, 190, 254,

infiltration into armies by, 279 389, 393, 395

(See also Communism, Extremists, United Nations, role in Middle East,

Fascism, Neo-Islamic Totalitar- 383-385

ianism, and Ultra-Nationalism) United States

Toynbee, Arnold, 8-9, 143, 156 assistance to Middle East by, 406

Trade Unions (See Labor Unions and attitude toward Israel, 380, 386-387

particular countries) intervention in Lebanon by, 371,

Trevor-Roper, H. R., 156 389-390

Trow, Martin, 69 limitation on actions in Middle East Tudeh Party (See Iran) by, 371, 388-389, 413-414

Tunisia, 199, 312 Middle Eastern attitudes toward,

army of, 255, 268 391, 415, 418-420

civil servants in, 344 opportunities in Middle East for, Communist Party in, 173-175 415-420

Jews in, 381 policy toward the Middle East by, labor unions in, 302, 318, 324-326 371, 384, 386-387, 393-402 Neo-Destour Party of, 58, 293, 299- strategic challenges in the Middle

304, 324 East involving, 194, 350, 361,

52n 415, 418-420

parliamentary representation in, 363-364, 378, 388, 393-402, 410-

role in Arab unity, 375 Universal Suez Canal Company, 137, Union of Tunisian Farmers, 96 237, 245

Turhan, Miimtaz, 405n Universities

Turkey, 36, 395 inadequacies of, Xili

agricultural problems, 363 modernization of curriculum in, 27 as a model for institutional change (See also particular universities ) in Middle East, 288-289, 312-317, U.S.S.R.

361-363 aid for Middle East by, 406 312-317 the Middle East, 69n, 170-172,

changing party system in, 235, 293, interpretation of social change in

communists in, 170, 279 | 178-184, 399-402, 409, 414-415

coup of 1960, 316 limitations on actions in Middle Democratic Party of, 313 East by, 371, 388-389, 407-409,

the Menderes regime in, 314-316 414-415 military, 254, 265-266, 275-276, Middle Eastern attitudes toward,

315, 362 — 160-162, 190, 371, 391, 395, 405nationalism in, 204, 369 406, 418 Republican People’s Party of, 313 opportunities in Middle East for,

role of religion in, 129, 130n, 152 406-409

(See " myaffairs 318 policy toward174, Middle Eastern C6 pains SO EOE by, 173n, 370, 373374, 384, 385-386, 388, 391, 398402

videcliaing. otticree of, 26-27 strategic challenges in the Middle relationship to traditional rulers, East involving, 399-402

15-18, 131 (See also Communism and Marx-

role in modern world of, 26, 119- ism )

122, 129, 150-151, 157-158, 303n Ultra-Nationalism, 153-155 . Umayyad Dynasty, 6-7, 266 Violence (internal political), 76-78,

United Arab Republic, 169, 268, 311, 173n, 177n, 186-190, 192n, 358,

373 (See also Egypt) 377n, 389, 397, 410 [ 430 |

INDEX

Wafd Party (See Egypt) Workers—Continued

Warriner, Doreen, 44n, 82n, 86n, 87n, political weakness of, 110

101-102 poverty of, 105-109

Watnick, Morris, 51, 182 | (See also Peasants, and particular

Watt, W. Montgomery, 133n countries ) Western Powers

earlier special position in Middle

East of, 403-404, 415n Yemen, 255

policy toward Middle East, 187, Young, T. Cuyler, 54n 400° 373, 388-389, 391-393, 415- Youth, 29, 65-66, 390 6 pro-Western orientation of Middle Yugoslavia, as a model, 163, 168 Eastern nations, 391-399, 403,

409-414 .

5 ] ticul tri Zadeh, Davoud Mochi, 154 “Wortcrainten 336 Zaghlul Saad, Pasha, 286, 306

Women, xiii, 28, 106 Za’im, Husni (Colonel), 267 Workers Zakat, 123 attitudes of, 355-356 Zeitouna University, 27

child labor, 109 Zinkin, Maurice, 88 communism among, 180-183 Zionism (See Israel) distinctions among, 107-109 Zurayq, Costi, 206n

[ 431 ]

19: |

PUBLISHED RAND BOOKS

a°

Arrow, Kenneth J., and Marvin putational Methods in Science and

Hoffenberg. A Time Series Analysis Mathematics, Vol. 1. New York: of Interindustry Demands. Amster- American Elsevier Publishing Com-

dam: North-Holland Publishing pany, Inc., 1963.

Company, 1959. Bergson, Abram. The Real National

Baker, C. L., and F. J. Gruenberger. Income of Soviet Russia Since 1928.

The First Six Million Prime Num- Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Unibers. Madison, Wisc.: The Micro- versity Press, 1961.

card Foundation, 1959. Bergson, Abram, and Hans Heymann,

Baum, Warren C. The French Econ- Jr. Soviet National Income and

omy and the State. Princeton, N.J.: Product, 1940-48. New York: CoPrinceton University Press, 1958. lumbia University Press, 1954. Bellman, Richard. Adaptive Control Brodie, Bernard. Strategy in the MisProcesses: A Guided Tour. Prince- sile Age. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

ton, N.J.: Princeton University University Press, 1959.

Press, 1961. Buchheim, Robert W., and the Staff

Bellman, Richard. Dynamic Pro- of The RAND Corporation. Space

gramming. Princeton, N.J.: Prince- Handbook: Astronautics and Its Ap-

ton University Press, 1957. plications. New York: Random

Bellman, Richard. Introduction to Ma- House, Inc., 1959. trix Analysis. New York: McGraw- Davison, W. Phillips. The Berlin

Hill Book Company, Inc., 1960. Blockade: A Study in Cold War

Bellman, Richard (ed.). Mathematical Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Optimization Techniques. Berkeley University Press, 1958. and Los Angeles: University of Dinerstein, H. S. War and the Soviet

California Press, 1963. Union: Nuclear Weapons and the

Bellman, Richard, and Kenneth L. Revolution in Soviet Military and Cooke. Differential-Difference Equa- Political Thinking. New York: tions. New York: Academic Press, Frederick A. Praeger Inc., 1959.

1963. Dinerstein, H. S., and Leon Gouré.

Bellman, Richard, and Stuart E. Drey- Two Studies in Soviet Controls: fus. Applied Dynamic Program- Communism and the Russian Peasming. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton ant; Moscow in Crisis. Glencoe, IIl.:

University Press, 1962. The Free Press, 1955.

Bellman, Richard E., Robert E. Kal- Dorfman, Robert, Paul A. Samuelson,

aba, and Marcia C. Prestrud. Jn- and Robert M. Solow. Linear Provariant Imbedding and Radiative gramming and Economic Analysis. Transfer in Slabs of Finite Thick- New York: McGraw-Hill Book ness, Modern Analytical and Com- Company, Inc., 1958.

Dresher, Melvin. Games of Strategy: Supply: Economics, Technology, and

Theory and Applications. Engle- Policy. Chicago: The University of wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Chicago Press, 1960.

Inc., 1961. Hitch, Charles J., and Roland Mc-

Dubyago, A. D. The Determination of Kean. The Economics of Defense in Orbits. Translated from the Russian the Nuclear Age. Cambridge, Mass.: by R. D. Burke, G. Gordon, L. N. Harvard University Press, 1960.

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1961. — York: Columbia University Press,

Edelen, Dominic G. B. The Structure 1954. of Field Space: An Axiomatic For- Hsieh, Alice L. Communist China’s mulation of Field Physics. Berkeley Strategy in the Nuclear Era. Engle-

and Los Angeles: University of wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,

California Press, 1962. Inc., 1962.

Fainsod, Merle. Smolensk under Soviet Janis, Irving L. Air War and EmoRule. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard tional Stress: Psychological Studies

University Press, 1958. of Bombing and Civilian Defense.

Ford, L. R., Jr., and D. R. Fulkerson. New York: McGraw-Hill Book

Flows in Networks. Princeton, N.J.: Company, Inc., 1951. Princeton University Press, 1962. Johnson, John J. (ed.). The Role of

Gale, David. The Theory of Linear the Military in Underdeveloped Economic Models. New York: Mc- Countries. Princeton, N.J.: PrinceGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., ton University Press, 1962.

1960. | Johnstone, William C. Burma’s Foreign

Galenson, Walter. Labor Productivity Policy: A Study in Neutralism. Cam-

in Soviet and American Industry. bridge, Mass.: Harvard University

New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

Press, 1955. Kecskemeti, Paul. Strategic Surrender:

Garthoff, Raymond L. Soviet Military Lhe Politics of Victory and Defeat. Doctrine. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University

Press, 1953. Press, 1958. :

George, Alexander L. Propaganda ‘Kecskemeti, Paul. The Unexpected

Analysis: A Study of Inferences Revolution: Social Forces in the Made from Nazi Propaganda in Hungarian Uprising. Stanford,

World War II. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Calif.: Stanford University Press,

Peterson and Company, 1959. 1961.

Goldhamer, Herbert, and Andrew W. Kershaw, Joseph A., and Roland N. Marshall. Psychosis and Civilization. McKean. Teacher Shortages and Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1953. Salary Schedules. New York: Mc-

Gouré, Leon. Civil Defense in the Graw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Soviet Union. Berkeley and Los 1962. Angeles: University of California Kramish, Arnold. Atomic Energy in

Press, 1962. the Soviet Union. Stanford, Calif.:

Gouré, Leon. The Siege of Leningrad, Stanford University Press, 1959. 1941-1943. Stanford, Calif.: Stan- Krieger, F. J. Behind the Sputniks: A

ford University Press, 1962. Survey of Soviet Space Science.

Gruenberger, F. J., and D. D. Mc- Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs

Cracken. Introduction to Electronic Press, 1958. Computers. New York: John Wiley Leites, Nathan. On the Game of Poli-

& Sons, Inc., 1963. tics in France. Stanford, Calif.:

Hastings, Cecil, Jr. Approximations for Stanford University Press, 1959. Digital Computers. Princeton, N.J.: Leites, Nathan. The Operational Code

Princeton University Press, 1955. of the Politburo. New York: McHirshleifer, Jack, James C. DeHaven, Graw-Hill Book Company, Inc. and Jerome W. Milliman. Water 1951.

Leites, Nathan. A Study of Bolshevism. for War: The Economic AlternaGlencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1953. tives. New ‘York: McGraw-Hill Leites, Nathan, and Elsa Bernaut. Rit- Book Company, Inc., 1951. ual of Liquidation: The Case of the Selznick, Philip. The Organizational

Moscow Trials. Glencoe, Ill.: The Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik

Free Press, 1954. Strategy and Tactics. New York:

Lubell, Harold. Middle East Oil Crises McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.,

and Western Europe’s Energy Sup- 1952. plies. Baltimore, Maryland: The Shanley, F. R. Weight-Strength Analy-

Johns Hopkins Press, 1963. sis of Aircraft Structures. New

Markowitz, H. M., B. Hausner, and York: McGraw-Hill Book ComH. W. Karr. SIMSCRIPT: A Simu- pany, Inc., 1952. lation Programming Language. En- Smith, Bruce Lannes, and Chitra M. glewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Smith. International Communication

Inc., 1963. and Political Opinion: A Guide to

McKean, Roland N. Efficiency in Gov- the Literature. Princeton, N.J.: ernment through Systems Analysis: Princeton University Press, 1956. With Emphasis on Water Resource Sokolovskii, V. D. Soviet Méilitary Development. New York: John Strategy. Translated and annotated

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1952. Anatomy of Soviet Political Black-

Mead, Margaret. Soviet Attitudes to- mail. New York: Frederick A. Praeward Authority: An Interdisciplinary ger Inc., 1961. Approach to Problems of Soviet Speier, Hans. German Rearmament Character. New York: McGraw- and Atomic War: The Views of GerHill Book Company, Inc., 1951. man Military and Political Leaders. Melnik, Constantin, and Nathan Leites. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson and

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struction in a Nuclear Age. 2 vols. Yalu: The Decision To Enter the New York: The Macmillan Com- Korean War. New York: The Mac-

pany, 1961. | millan Company, 1960.

The RAND Corporation. A Million Williams, J. D. The Compleat StrateRandom Digits with 100,000 Nor- gyst: Being a Primer on the Theory

mal Deviates. Glencoe, Ill.: The of Games of Strategy. New York:

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Scitovsky, Tibor, Edward Shaw, and Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UniverLorie Tarshis. Mobilizing Resources sity Press, 1960.