The horrific bombings of a peace rally in Ankara on October 10 were a terrible shock to a country already on edge. Despite government claims that Islamic State militants were behind the attacks, some Turks saw the government’s divisive nationalist rhetoric as an underlying cause of the violence. President Recep Erdoğan’s government, which has done much to poison the current political climate, appears to be betting that doubling down on security fears and Turkish nationalism will give it a boost at next week’s polls. That remains far from certain.

The challenges facing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the imminent parliamentary elections are considerable. Current polls suggest that the AKP will be unable to form a simple majority government after November 1, despite recent attempts to defame its political opponents. If that turns out to be true, the party will be forced to take up difficult coalition negotiations once again.

This time an alliance with the Kurdish-led People’s Democratic Party (HDP) will be an impossibility, as Erdoğan recently called the HDP “an extension of the terror group [PKK]”. Divisive rhetoric towards the left has also made a coalition with the country’s longstanding center-left party (CHP) much harder than before. Erdoğan’s only option might be the Nationalist Movement Party, which supported the government’s return to war with Kurdish forces this summer. Such an alliance would likely make Turkey a much more dangerous and unsettled place.

Many of the AKP’s current difficulties are of its own making. The government called off its ceasefire with Kurdish insurgents in July, leading to a rapid escalation of Turkey’s simmering ethnic conflict. The AKP belatedly joined an international coalition to fight the Islamic State group that same month, but immediately turned most of its military attention on Kurdish forces that it blamed for reigniting violence in Turkey.

Turkey’s floundering strategy in Syria has also backfired, leading to new refugee flows and putting the country on a collision course with Russia. All of this is against the backdrop of a determined government attack on media freedom and attempts to degrade independent political and civic institutions. Given Erdoğan’s increasingly personal dominance of the AKP, it is not surprising that dissention among traditional party supporters is increasing.

Since the government’s return to war with the PKK, anti-Kurdish provocations in Turkey have spiraled, making a post-election return to security and normal politics very difficult. For more than two years, Turkey and the Kurdish PKK insurgents had been cautiously entwined in a peace process designed to bring the longstanding rebellion to an end. Through this process Erdoğan had also hoped to secure Kurdish support for his broader political ambitions to enlarge the role of the presidency.

These hopes collapsed after Turkish inaction against atrocities towards neighboring Syrian Kurds led to domestic riots, followed by the surprisingly strong performance of the pro-Kurdish HDP in June’s parliamentary elections. The HDP’s electoral performance prevented the AKP from winning a parliamentary majority that could push the president’s constitutional agenda, and appeared to provoke the government to once again seek an impossible military solution to the Kurdish question.

Security has deteriorated further in recent months as a result of the evolution of the Syrian civil war. Two million Syrians have now taken refuge in Turkey, and there is the potential for more to come as Russia’s new air campaign targets areas close to the Turkish border. The AKP’s longstanding objectives in Syria, to support rebels seeking to overthrow the Bashar Al-Assad regime and to create a safe zone along the Turkish border, are now further away than ever following Russia’s September 30 intervention. The Syrian conflict is likely to lead to further instability across the Turkish border, whether through refugee flows, Kurdish activism, or militant Islamists, all of which will make the AKP’s job more difficult and may provoke punitive and unproductive responses.

On the domestic front, the last few months have seen further deterioration in media freedom, with increasing government pressure on independent institutions. This is largely the AKP’s doing, as many of Turkey’s finest journalists and editors have been arrested on dubious allegations of defaming the president, or broadcasting “terrorist propaganda” reflecting Kurdish political aspirations.

The Doğan media group came under physical attack twice by AKP supporters in September, and state prosecutions of independent media have significantly accelerated. Reporters Without Borders recently ranked Turkey in the bottom 20 percent of countries in the world for press freedom. A future AKP-led government would likely see additional attempts to undermine independent media and sources of opposition, leading to a deterioration in civil liberties, particularly for the Kurds and for Erdoğan’s perceived rivals, such as the once-favored Gülenists.

All of this has led to increasing dissatisfaction within internal AKP circles. Divisions within the party were on public display earlier this year, over a diverse set of issues including the AKP’s Kurdish policy, draft transparency legislation, and the independence of the central bank. Erdoğan has also fallen out with his co-founders in the party,former President Abdullah Gül and former Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinç, over concerns regarding democracy and the rule of law (in the case of Gül), and the Kurdish peace process. While it appears that the party is trying to maintain a show of unity in the face of an uncertain November electoral result, Erdoğan is increasingly retreating into an inner circle of supporters and has failed to bring the full party along with his controversial and self-serving political choices.

Despite these growing concerns, Erdoğan’s political charisma should not be written off. He continues to have wide support among a large and important portion of the Turkish public. His numerous supporters continue to see him as a strong leader reflecting many of their core values of nationalism, populism, and moral conservatism.

As his following has eroded both within his party and among the public, however, Erdoğan has sought to shore up support with increasingly intolerant rhetoric and actions that have created new enemies for the AKP, both real and imagined. In the process, Turkish politics has become increasingly illiberal, polarized, and violent. Regardless of the outcome of November’s election, the deepening fault lines created by the AKP’s pre-election choices will make their future governance of the country much more difficult.

Quinn Mecham is an assistant professor of political science at Brigham Young University. He has written for the Washington Post and is the author of numerous academic articles on Turkey and on political Islam.

For more than a year, the Bashar Al-Assad regime has been unable to amass troops in every contested area around the country. Strategic bombing campaigns have attempted to counter this waning military capacity, and over the last month, Russia has joined Assad in these efforts. Most Russian air strikes have targeted American, Turkish, and Gulf-backed rebels and those living under their control in northern and central Syria. Early evidence confirms accusations that the Islamic State is only a secondary target of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most recent foreign incursion, the primary aim of which is to bolster Syria’s increasingly depleted dictator by reversing territorial losses near the regime’s strongholds. As reporting from his recent visit to Moscow indicates, the military offensive is also meant to ensure that the Assad regime prevails as the most viable ruling force in Syria before embarking upon a negotiated political solution.

Russia’s military intervention is exacerbating the disastrous effects of the regime’s tactic of bombarding civilians living under opposition control. Since the civil war escalated in 2012, the Syrian government has consistently sought to make everyday life in rebel-controlled areas unlivable. One of the key tactics in its strategic arsenal is destroying any and all attempts by armed opposition groups to establish alternative systems of governance. Through aerial bombings and the infamous “barrels of death” (baramil al-mawt)—canisters filled with oil, explosives, and shrapnel—the Syrian government has repeatedly targeted markets, hospitals, schools, and burgeoning municipal councils operated by local civil society groups or armed rebels. In doing so, government forces kill many and terrify those who remain, destroying the fabric of society in areas outside of the Assad regime’s control.

Russia’s recent airstrikes have compounded these developments. Although the Kremlin has a penchant for attacking military targets of “moderate” rebels, Russian warplanes have repeatedly used cluster bombs and unguided explosives, which pepper wide tracks of land with deadly blasts whose inaccuracy threatens civilians. The outcome is that even when Russian planes target military positions, civilians and residential areas are often hit instead. Since early October, missiles have reportedly struck seven hospitals or medical facilities in rebel-held territory in Hama, Idlib, and Aleppo provinces. Relief workers on the ground believe Russian planes are deliberately targeting medical facilities. These bombardments come in the wake of twelve regime attacks on medical facilities in August. One opposition spokesperson believes that this is part of the Assad’s strategy to increase pressure on opposition groups by forcing those that live under their rule to flee. Such attacks ensure that only government-controlled areas can provide the stability civilians crave, increasing the likelihood that Assad remains a necessary part of any future political solution.

The regime’s bombing tactics have a tangible political and military impact. In order to establish their legitimacy and gain civilian consent for their rule, rebel groups have tried to mimic public services offered by the government. Replicating these functions has been a crucial tool through which the most successful rebel forces, including moderate groups but also Jabhat Al-Nusra and the Islamic State, have gained popular legitimacy. The Assad regime has consistently attempted to undo these developments in places like Aleppo, Idlib, and Daraa, mainly through aerial bombing campaigns. These efforts have destroyed public service infrastructures established by opposition groups. The ability of rebel groups to meet the needs of civilians under their control has been repeatedly curtailed. In the absence of a legitimate or functioning alternative, the Assad regime can confidently assert itself as the only political authority capable of maintaining order and providing a modicum of governance.

Cluster and barrel bombs send an unambiguous warning to those towns and neighborhoods still pondering their allegiances. Coupled with blockades and sieges, such efforts erode the rebels’ support base, violently pacifying many inclined to support their cause. This became especially clear earlier this month when regime planes reportedly dropped leaflets and civilians received text messages in opposition-controlled towns north of Homs after a series of Russian bombings in the area. The messages attempted to persuade townspeople to leave rebel-controlled territory, explicitly drawing attention to the tenuous nature of opposition rule. In devastating the governance and military capacities of the moderate rebel groups that remain, Russian military efforts will only exacerbate the continued hemorrhaging of veteran fighters and civilians into more radical and well-funded groups. Their goal is to leave Syrians no option but to choose between the Assad regime and jihadists, making the U.S. mission of supporting moderate forces an increasingly impossible endeavor.

Putin’s intervention may well tip the military balance of the war back in the Assad regime’s favor. However, its impact on civilians and the opposition’s ability to govern is equally significant and will ultimately prove far more devastating. Reports already indicate that tens of thousands of civilians in areas hit by Russian bombings are relocating. They may flee abroad or to regime-held territory, where Assad has consolidated control over international emergency food aid and used Iranian credit to provide basic necessities. By terrorizing civilians and destroying rebel groups’ attempts at local governance, Russian military assistance is helping Assad present his government as the only viable ruling force in Syria. If their efforts succeed, the recent bombing campaign will have fundamentally altered the outlook of the Syrian conflict. Putin’s revamped support for Assad may ensure that any potential political solution will occur on their preferred terms.

This article is reprinted with permission of Sada. It can be accessed online here.

José Ciro Martínez is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Brent Eng is an Amman-based Syria analyst.

It is useful to recognize that there is not a single United States in action in the Middle East, but several different versions of this powerful country. I have come to recognize this fact a bit more clearly during an extended stay this month at the University of Denver, with its impressive roster of scholars and practitioners-turned-scholars, along with discussions with Middle East experts in New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Boston.

The United States in its foreign policy in the Middle East often acts like a brutish imperialist, shooting and bombing to its heart’s content without caring much for the consequences on the ground. At other times it acts like a bumbling fool who is totally out of his depth and has no idea what to do in terms of calibrating political, economic and military policy, and stumbles from one crisis to another, most notably in Syria and Yemen. The United States also sometimes acts like a learned and realistic lawyer, diagnosing existing conflicts, and treating them with carefully focused interventions and negotiations based on the rule of law and equal rights for all concerned, which ends up producing a healthy situation, as in the Iranian negotiations.

At times the United States allows itself to be badly manipulated by others to the point where it tramples on its own values and principles; this is most evident in the case of Israel and Palestine, where Washington’s incompetent mediation over a quarter century is coupled with atrocious acquiescence in Israel’s death machine and colonization spree against the Palestinians. This America is also evident in its long record of supporting Arab dictators and autocrats.

There is another United States, though, which is now making its presence felt in some quarters of the country, but especially in Washington, D.C., and this is the country that functions with the mentality of an engineer. By this I mean that when the United States perceives a situation of crisis or deep problems and dysfunctions, as it does in the Middle East today, it uses the engineer’s approach of gathering facts, understanding the underlying situation, pinpointing the problems, and applying appropriate technical solutions.

I know of at least two major efforts underway by leading think tanks in Washington, D.C., the Atlantic Council and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, that employ the engineer’s best approach to dealing with the world. These two respected organizations have launched major projects to probe deep into the problems that plague the Middle East and that make U.S.-Middle Eastern relations so challenging and complex.

I know many of the smart, able and sincere individuals working on these and other projects that will certainly come to light, and I expect some fine pieces of analysis to emerge from their work. But I have also learned something important over the past forty-five years of watching and interacting with Washington, D.C. analysts and political personalities who deal with the Middle East, especially the Arab World. That is simply that the fine analysis and research that Americans in their engineering mode carry out about the Middle East are often rendered totally irrelevant and useless, because of one major flaw. It is that Americans, especially officials or former officials, generally refuse to factor into their analysis of the Arab World or of U.S.-Mideast relations how American foreign policies can negatively impact these conditions and relationships they seek to understand, and ultimately improve. They refuse to acknowledge any American responsibility for Middle Eastern conditions, however much or little that responsibility may be.

If the terrible situations across the Middle East perplex and discomfort the United States to the point where serious American institutions have launched major, multi-year research projects to find solutions to these ailments, I hope that the people involved will muster the personal courage, political honesty, and intellectual integrity required to do a really complete and useful job. If they cannot, or do not wish to, explore the consequences of continuing American support for Arab dictators and autocrats, or the impact of America’s broadly unquestioning support for Israel, or the direct and indirect consequences of the Anglo-American war in Iraq and continuing American militarism; if these issues are off the table, then the United States is not acting like the engineer whose work typifies the finest in the American tradition. Rather, it would be acting like the snake oil salesmen and quack doctors who are equally part of American life and tradition.

If these issues, on the other hand, are discussed honestly and with integrity, then we can all hope for a great leap forward in American policies in the region, and in American relations with the many societies and people in our countries. We will find out in the year ahead whether top thinkers and analysts in the United States are as good as we think they are, and the criterion in this case of their studies of the Middle East will simply be the issue of their honesty.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global


It is gratifying to see that our humanity is finally showing signs of life thanks to the generous reactions of German, Serbian, Austrian and other private European citizens, especially the Greeks and Italians, as the current refugee influx continues unabated. They follow the proud example of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt.

Our leaders are increasingly beginning to pay heed to how their voters tell them to behave and questioning their pandering to anti-immigration voices.

The negative narrative on refugees and migrants depicting them as terrorists, criminals and job-stealers is finally beginning to change, allowing more accurate depictions of reality to prevail: the clear economic and social benefits to the receiving countries and to their countries of origin. And the indisputable fact that most European countries, and other developed economies, need to open their doors to substantial immigration in order to fill their present and future workforce requirements of both skilled and unskilled workers.

All this is positive, but not enough.

What happened to international solidarity? Why is it taken as a given—by the refugees, the migrants, the receiving countries, and by everyone else on the planet—that Europe is the only destination for these needy masses? This is an international problem and has to be dealt with as such. All countries should take part in the solution. International solidarity must be rekindled. It is to everyone’s benefit.

And it is a problem that has to be placed in its right context, namely a much broader and long-term refugee and migratory trend of which the current flow is only a temporary spike.

And what has happened to our collective institutional memory? This is not the first time we face a refugee exodus of this magnitude. Remember the Vietnamese Boat People?

From 1975 onwards, thousands of them took to the sea, trying to reach neighboring countries and, from there, the United States, Canada, and other countries willing to accept them. Thousands died in the process, human traffickers made fortunes, and the countries of first asylum sealed their borders or were about to. Donor fatigue set in quickly.

The problem seemed as intractable as the current one. And yet, a group of enterprising staff from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) came up with a solution, the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA), which was approved by an international conference in 1989. It successfully brought to an end a longstanding drama that saw the death and suffering of an untold number by creating an orderly process that distinguished between asylum seekers and economic migrants, established procedures for the resettlement of acknowledged refugees and the humane return to their country of origin (with appropriate assistance) of economic migrants with no asylum claim.

It created a mechanism that brought together all concerned countries and the international community at large and successfully resettled thousands of refugees over a period of seven years. All of them are today productive members of the societies that took them in.

The 1989 CPA is a good example of how things can be done when there is the will and the means to ensure the protection of, and assistance to, those who flee, in a humane and dignified manner. For such an approach to be successful under the current circumstances a number of things, beyond the urgent holding of a conference, have to happen:

—A number of receiving/screening centers have to be set up urgently in strategic transit countries like Turkey, Greece, Italy, maybe Tunisia (Libya when conditions permit), with UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) jointly running them, screening and handling the refugees/migrants.

—A return to clear universally agreed procedures to establish refugee status, their resettlement and the return to countries of origin of, and provision of assistance to, economic migrants.

—Temporary stepping up of search and rescue capacity in key points of the Mediterranean.

—Coordinated and robust programs of apprehension of people smugglers (it’s hard to believe that the European Union and Mediterranean littoral states cannot put an end to these abhorrent crimes).

—Negotiated agreements with the countries of origin of those determined to be economic migrants, where returns are safe and possible, to accept the return of their nationals and support their reintegration (with appropriate donor assistance).

—A global commitment to fund the creation and running of the centers, to fund a stepped up and improved search and rescue system, to substantially help fund the expenses of the primary receiving countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Greece, and Italy (or see hundreds of thousands more people take to the roads to Europe) and to devise and fund much improved and targeted development interventions in the countries of origin of the economic migrants.

—The establishment of a massive information campaign aimed both at potential asylum seekers and economic migrants, explaining the procedures that are being put in place and the risks inherent in taking to the roads (including being returned to their country if they do not qualify as refugees).

—Proactively change the current negative narrative in actual and potential receiving countries based on social and economic facts.

Done right, these actions may prove that enlightened self-interest (both national and personal), humanity and international solidarity can be combined into a win-win outcome.

But all this will take time and only take care of the immediate problem facing us.

As mentioned earlier, what we are witnessing now has to be seen in a much larger context. UNHCR was created to provide protection and assistance to asylum seekers and refugees. It is currently overwhelmed, underfunded, and barely able to cope with its current enormous caseload. IOM—a largely technical agency outside the UN structure (but in strong partnership)—is equally stretched.

Apart from the loosely organized Global Forum on Migration and Development, there is no current formal international structure that deals with the long term implications of, and provides policy options for, future victims of man-made or natural (read climate related) calamities, both of which will define our daily lives to a greater extent and for far longer into the future than most of us care to think.

Until such a formal body is created, we need to give Sir Peter Sutherland, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Migration and Development, the mandate and the wherewithal to act as the catalytic focal point for action on how the international community learns from the lessons of the past and of right now in order to prepare for a difficult future.

Creating such a body is urgent. One way to start the process of doing so may be to decide on a greater integration of the work of UNHCR and IOM. This would include a concomitant change in their combined mandates to include the responsibility, with development partners, for proposing new long-term global policies for dealing with future flows. The Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul next year would be one good place to have a discussion/decision on this. Another good opportunity is the November meeting in Valetta between the heads of state of Europe and Africa to discuss the African refugee and migration flow.

Another crucial element that needs to change urgently is the current relationship between development aid and humanitarian assistance. The former needs to be recalibrated so that it betters addresses the root causes of humanitarian problems and thus also addresses some of the more developmental activities that humanitarian agencies currently find themselves engaged in, further weakening their funding for acute humanitarian needs. UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres is a tireless proponent of this thesis and needs all the support that he can get.

Finally, all of this has also to be seen in light of the different policy frameworks that the world is in the process adopting, before the end of this year. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a climate agreement, and the recently agreed Disaster Risk Reduction Agreement will all set our common agenda for years to come and form the overall envelope within which future crisis have to be considered and acted upon. If we successfully implement the seventeen SDGs we will stand an immeasurably better chance at dealing with future refugee and migration issues such as the current one—or worse.

If we don’t, remember that any one of us may one day become the victim of a disaster, manmade or natural, and be in need of refuge. Empathy and generosity by us today will greatly improve the chances of the same being applied to our calamities tomorrow.

Michael Møller is the director-general of the United Nations Office in Geneva.

In an important op-ed article published earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Henry Kissinger provided a fascinating window into the foreign policy mindset of American officialdom that he has so consistently mirrored for nearly half a century now. His important article, entitled “A Path out of the Middle East Collapse,” captures concisely two things that the world should grasp about American foreign policy—especially in the Middle East, where it has been actively engaged in warfare for over a quarter of a century, as its relations and interests frayed.

Rather than offering any path out of anywhere, Kissinger inadvertently clarifies the American role in the path that has brought the Middle East to this point of turbulence, violence, and occasional state contraction or collapse. I see several main problems in the text—and in the official American mindset in Washington that it reflects.

The first is the tendency to see Middle Easterners largely in terms of religious or ethnic groups, like Sunnis, Shiites, Maronites, Alawites, and Kurds, who wage existential battles for control of territory, resources, or power. The Middle East, in the Kissingerian worldview, is an urban wasteland defined by armed gangs.

Non-state actors and ethno-sectarian nationalisms have emerged as important actors of political contestation in the Middle East in the past 15 years, to be sure, but our region is defined by much more than feuding Houthis, Alawites, Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Mahdi Army, and other such groups. Even sovereign and powerful states like Saudi Arabia and Iran are defined in this mindset as Sunni or Shiite powers, rather than the sovereign and powerful states of Saudi Arabia and Iran with their varied populations that they are.

The second problem in that the Kissingerian view of the Middle East seems to have no place for—or it simply is blind to—the nearly half a billion individual men and women, mostly Muslims, who live here and shape these societies and states. They have done so for millennia, in fact, and these people all seek the same thing that Kissinger presumably seeks for Americans: a stable, decent society where citizens can live in peace and enjoy opportunities to develop their full human talents. In the eye of those who only see the Middle East defined by warring gangs, sects and ethnicities, no real human beings enter the picture. The Kissingerian Middle East lacks humans and their rights, because the Middle East he sees is somewhere between a professorial strategic analysis exercise for graduate students and a war game played on a board with dice.

My third problem is with the consistent American official view of Iran as a dangerous and untrustworthy brute that has, “jihadist and imperialist designs” across the region. Even after the United States negotiated with Iran an important agreement on nuclear capabilities and sanctions, this view still sees Iran using its allies Syria, Hezbollah, Iraq and the Houthis of Yemen to one day encircle the Sunni bloc of states comprising Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the smaller Gulf states. Kissinger sees these as two “rigid and apocalyptic blocs” that face off and threaten each other. This exaggerated and dramatized view cannot be taken seriously by anyone, other than those hundreds of policy-makers and policy-influencers in Washington who believe this intellectual wildness.

My fourth and biggest criticism of this way of seeing U.S. policy challenges in the Middle East is that it ascribes to the United States only noble and peace-loving motives, while totally—I mean totally—ignoring any of the consequences of U.S. military and political policies in the region in the past six decades, or since the U.S. CIA helped to overthrow the Mossadegh regime in Iran. It serves nobody any good to ignore how American and other foreign powers’ policies in our region contributed to the underlying problems that shattered the superficial calm—other than occasional Arab-Israeli wars—that had defined our region from World War Two to the Arab uprisings of 2010-11.

Such problems include how the United States, former USSR/now Russia, and assorted smaller powers long supported Arab authoritarian and brutal regimes, contributed to prolonging the Arab-Israeli conflict, waged wars that unsettled the entire region (2003 war on Iraq, for example), or set the example of ignoring international law and ethics but expecting others to respect those laws (drone assassinations, for example). The United States and other foreign powers, including Iran and Russia today and some major regional Arab powers that willfully and recklessly wage war or turn themselves into ugly police states, have all contributed their share to the “collapse” that Kissinger wants to help us escape. We did not become a landscape of gangs all by ourselves.

Kissinger’s several sensible observations are swamped by these gross political distortions and omissions, which are all the more dangerous and tragic because they are widely shared in policy-making circles in Washington. I fear that more wrong, fictitious, and incomplete analyses like this one will only exacerbate the violence and chaos we all suffer. What a terrible waste of a fine mind, and a great power.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

Jordan’s parliament is currently considering amending the government’s 2012 election law, and the Legal Committee is holding public hearings with political parties and other interested groups. For every election cycle, Jordan has had to draft a new election law bill. These are accompanied by a public debate, followed by declarations from parties as to whether they will take part in the upcoming elections or boycott them. The last election, which took place on January 23, 2013, was the second in a row boycotted by the Islamic Action Front (IAF), Jordan’s main opposition party and Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing.

The resulting parliament was so lacking in initiative that when King Abdullah II magnanimously allowed it to nominate the prime minister—a constitutional prerogative of the monarch—the new factions groped around aimlessly for a couple of weeks before nominating the incumbent prime minister, Abdullah Ensour, whom the king had appointed the previous fall. The 2012 election law that produced this parliament retained Jordan’s one vote system—which has consistently weakened political parties in favor of tribal candidates—but included twenty-five seats to be elected on a proportional basis nationwide. But after they won seats, MPs began changing parties, which have spent the past two and a half years merging, splitting, or forming into new coalitions without producing either a functioning majority or credible opposition.

The next parliamentary election needs to be held by October 2016, with the exact date yet to be set by parliament—unless its term is extended by the king, which he may do for up to two years. In preparation, the government completed a new election law bill at the beginning of September. Prepublication leaks indicated that it would abolish the one vote system for good in favor of a more proportional system. This led to premature celebration from political parties, including guarded support from the Islamic opposition. But the mood turned quickly once Ensour produced the bill on August 31.

Key provisions in the draft law include Article 8, which provides that, “The kingdom will be divided into electoral districts which are to include 130 parliamentary seats, according to a special bylaw to be issued for this purpose.” Article 9 further provides that “Candidacies for parliamentary seats assigned to electoral districts will be filled through proportional, open lists.” This means that a party or bloc must provide a list of candidates for each district, and the number of names listed can be no greater than the total number of seats available. Crucially, Article 9 continues, “The voter is to cast a vote for one of the lists first, and then vote for a number of candidates on that list.” Then once votes are tallied, Article 47 stipulates that the number of seats a party or bloc list gets is proportional to its vote total and that candidates winning more votes are elected from that list.

The draft legislation also contains other provisions of note: voters who are Christian, Circassian, or Chechnyan are free to vote in any province where there is a minority seat reserved for them, and candidates for these seats are allowed to run individually or on lists. And Articles 8 and 9 set a women’s quota of one seat per province, like the previous law also stipulated. This means at least 15 out of 130 members of the next parliament will be women, if not more. Because the total number of seats have decreased, women are likely to have a larger proportion of seats than before. The last election produced 19 women MPs out of 150: 15 from the quota, and four won competitively.

The positive welcome for the new election law ended as soon as the bill was made public. The most prominent criticism was that it eliminated the twenty-five nationwide proportional seats, seen by parties as a modest move toward fair representation. The new introduction of proportional allocation of seats at the provincial level could be more favorable to parties than the previous law, which was structured to facilitate the election of local tribal candidates. Yet by removing the national-level proportional seats, from the point of view of the parties, the government has negated the parties’ modest advantage in the district elections.

The bill also does not allocate seats by province; the current draft provides that seats will be allocated by a bylaw at a later date, presumably after the election law has already been passed. And previous elections have always over-allocated seats to rural areas in which tribesmen, who are the monarchy’s base, predominate. The three additional badia districts (“countryside” or desert areas in the north, center, and south) will also add to the East Banker total.

But none of the political parties, including the IAF, have any substantial support in rural areas. In the debate over the 2012 law, much was made over the increase in seats allocated to Amman and Zarqa, the two major urban areas, which contain large Palestinian populations that do not favor the tribesmen. But have parties done poorly in rural areas because the one vote system has corralled voters into supporting a local tribal candidate, or have tribal candidates consistently won because the parties have done such a poor job spreading their message among the population? Aside from the Islamists, whose support is disproportionately Palestinian, the only other opposition consists of leftist parties, who won only a handful of seats in 2013. In addition to their strident secularism and support for the widely detested Assad regime in Syria, these groups have no plausible program, advocating an expanded state role even though the current state budget is universally known to be unsupportable without foreign aid. Factions with weight in parliament, most notably the National Union Party, are loyalist parties whose makeup and program are not much different than that of any group of tribal candidates.

A third, more technical criticism, is that the new electoral structure will mainly bring about competition within lists, because after voting for a list voters are asked to vote within it. This could result in a different form of tribal electoral competition, as voters select list candidates who were endorsed by an informal “tribal primary” before election day.

Mustapha Al-Shanikat, an MP from the small Democratic Left party, expressed the political opposition’s mixed views on the new law in an interview in his parliament office. Describing it as “a kind of progress, but one which will not achieve much,” Shanikat admitted that the parties were weak and needed to build themselves up over time. He emphasized the need to have a law that tries to overcome tribalism, saying that having an open list system was harmful and that “due to the nature of our society, the election would be based more on political programs if parties chose the candidates.” Yet Shanikat also emphasized that “there are positives to Jordan’s political system: we have stability, no one is calling for revolution. We need incremental change.” The question is whether the next elections will even bring gradual change, or just hold things in place in a different way.

This article is reprinted with permission of Sada. It can be accessed online here.

Kirk H. Sowell is a political risk analyst based in Amman, Jordan. On Twitter: @uticensisrisk.

If you want to understand events in Israel and Palestine among these two peoples who are locked in a century-long battle, you have to understand the importance of generations. Ancient Israelites understood their generational struggles against their enemies, especially Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. So do Palestinians today against Zionism and Israel, but Israelis refuse to see themselves and their history in the eyes of young Palestinians who also battle for their existence and dignity.

In the Hebrew Bible, Deuteronomy 23:3 notes God’s command that: “An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation shall none of them enter into the assembly of the LORD for ever.”

Wow, ten generations…even, forever! Talk of holding a grudge. But that’s how national confrontational politics and God’s commands operated. Pain endures in the human spirit, and the pain of national affront endures a long time. The Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, and Amalekites who lived south and east of ancient Palestine—the Promised Land in the Hebrew Bible—mistreated, cursed, attacked and refused safe passage to the Israelites who trekked to Palestine. So for ten generations and forever, they were barred from entering into the Israelite community. There is no forgiving in this serious business of nationhood.

Well, this same generational factor is at play similarly among Palestinians today. It might well go on until the tenth generation. The Israelis will decide this, because the Palestinians also take their generations seriously, and are not going anywhere.

The young boys in Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine who regularly are killed, injured, colonized, and jailed by Israelis, and routinely fight back, these are our fifth Palestinian generation in the struggle against Zionism.  Israelis should be very worried that during the past five generations, three critical things have occurred that augur badly for Israel and Zionism. Palestinians have become more proficient at technical aspects of the struggle, including military dimensions at times; every generation has absorbed and strengthened its Palestinian national and personal identity, naturally and organically, by osmosis from its parents, just as Jews have done for millennia; and, people all over the world increasingly appreciate the justice of the Palestinian case and the criminal and cruel behavior of most Israelis. Five generations, count them:

The first Palestinian generation around 1900-1920, of my grandparents’ era, was the one that passively saw the duplicitous British colonial powers make conflicting promises to Arabs and Zionists about the future status of the land after the end of World War One.

The second Palestinian generation around 1920-1947 woke up to the threat of large-scale Jewish immigration in Palestine that aimed to create a Jewish state, or a Jewish “national home” as it was called then. Those Palestinians, of my parents’ generation, tried but failed to resist both the colonial controls of the British and the state-building plans of the Zionists.

The third Palestinian generation around 1948-1970, my birth generation, was stunned by the loss of Palestine and their own refugeehood and exile, or their occupation by the new state of Israel; they could only depend on Arab states’ support in the struggle for their Palestinian land and rights, which failed and reached a nadir in the losses of the 1967 June War.

The fourth Palestinian generation around 1968-2000, the generation of my children, started to mobilize through any means possible and fight back with small-scale guerrilla actions and organized political action through the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); the two intifadas of 1987 and 2000 marked serious popular resistance against Israel and Zionism, using non-violent and violent means, as well as the 1993 Oslo Accords’ failed attempt to achieve our national rights through diplomacy that would lead to statehood and an end of the Israeli occupation.

The fifth Palestinian generation since 2000 is on the streets of Palestine today, fighting and killing and doing anything it can to end this conflict and achieve its national liberty. This generation, including my baby granddaughter, was born or came to maturity during the Oslo years, which produced neither statehood nor an end to Zionist occupation and colonization.

So, since the birth of modern Zionism in the mid-1890s, five Palestinian generations have tried but failed to resist Zionist plans and the military brutality of the Israeli state. Every Palestinian family today among some nine million Palestinians can go through this timeline and remember its own history. Why do these successive generations not forget, and just roll over and surrender, or emigrate to distant lands? What is it about exiled people that makes them battle to the death, even unto the tenth generation?

Maybe it has something to do with Psalm 137:5? “How can we sing the LORD’S song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth If I do not remember you, If I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. …”

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

Elections for 60 of the bloc-list and 226 of the independent seats in Egypt’s new 596-seat unicameral parliament concluded on October 19. As it stands, 448 seats will be elected through independent candidate lists, another 120 seats will be elected through closed bloc or party lists, and the remainder appointed by the president. The remaining seats will be contested between November 30 and December 2. However, the Egyptian political system is overwhelmed by too many political parties, particularly secular ones of leftist and nationalist leanings. Most of these parties face serious hurdles in financing their candidates’ campaigning and establishing wider support bases while still maintaining distinct electoral platforms.

This can be resolved either by merging ideologically likeminded parties or forming alliances. Significant mergers have not happened since late 2013, when the Free Egyptians Party (FEP) successfully absorbed the Democratic Popular Front. Naturally, mergers can be difficult to forge when party leaders are opposed to ceding complete control. And alliances, which allow smaller parties to maximize gains by pooling resources and joint campaigning, have been tenuous at best in Egypt. Inter-party rivalries, disputes over electoral strategies and programs, and opposition within parties’ rank-and-file support bases also hamper cooperation.

Back in 2011 and 2012 several parties were successful in forging alliances such as the Democratic Alliance, Islamist Bloc, Egyptian Bloc, and the Revolution Continues. As with most electoral alliances, they have not endured between electoral cycles, but new ones have emerged to contest the 2015 polls. For instance, the For the Love of Egypt (FLE) coalition consists primarily of the Wafd Party, the FEP, and the Conservative Party, all center-right liberal forces. Likewise, the Leftist Alliance channels the more center-left socialist forces like Tagammu and the Socialist Popular Alliance Party.

However, underneath this superficial unity, most coalitions continue to suffer from accusations that some coalition members are dominating others or include Mubarak-era (felool) officials. Attempted coalitions, especially among smaller parties, have been further hampered by some party leaders putting principles before pragmatism and failing to realize the opportunity alliances present for them. For example, Ahmed Fawzy of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party (ESDP), argued bloc-list alliances are a “violation of the equal opportunity concept” and stifle true competition.

During the registration period, which ran from September 1 to 15, a proposed unification between the FLE and Egyptian Front alliances fell through due to early disagreements over candidate selection and accusations of partisan domineering. Both these alliances will now run separately, with the Egyptian Front cooperating with the much smaller Egypt List alliance, which consists of minor Nasserist parties. Additionally, the Tagammu party left the FLE after it was excluded at the last minute from the candidate selection. Such last-minute switching of alliances indicates that some parties are not wholly committed. This further damages their chances, as voters may become confused when looking up the alliances on the closed list ballots.

But these coalitions are also divided over structural issues, most notably how different-sized parties approach campaign financing. A key example is the withdrawal of the Egypt’s Awakening (Sahwet Misr) alliance from the elections following a failed lawsuit to the Higher Election Committee. They opposed candidacy registration laws that dictated prospective candidates must undergo official medical examinations. As many members of Egypt’s Awakening had already undergone tests in February in preparation for the postponed March election, they considered new tests—which would cost approximately 3,000 EGP ($375) per candidate—an unnecessary financial hurdle. The withdrawal of this alliance was a particular blow for the elections, as many of its members are viewed as more progressive and have greater grassroots ties to youth.

Likewise, former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, cofounder of the Egyptian Popular Current, has long stressed the difficulty his party—and others like Karama and Dostour (which at the last minute pulled out and decided to boycott the current elections)—would have in financing candidates to contest the majority independent-list seats in Egypt’s 205 electoral districts. He says they face an agonizing uphill struggle against stronger, richer parties like the FEP and Wafd, which include many Egyptian businessmen, such as Naguib Sawiris, who can finance their own independent campaigns.

These differences have further exacerbated inter-party divisions regarding the 2014 Electoral Law. Stronger parties like Wafd favor the current independent-to-closed-list ratio. However, smaller ones like those in the Egypt’s Awakening alliance favored increasing the number of bloc-list seats from 120 to 180—given financing individual campaigns for independent seats would be more costly. This has further hampered coalition building between smaller parties and a larger, resource-rich one (like Wafd and the FEP), a format that generally makes electoral alliances more effective.

This is reflected in the parties’ commitment to the bloc: Wafd and the FEP are fielding only thirteen and nine candidates toward the For the Love of Egypt list, respectively. By contrast, Wafd is fielding 260 independents nationwide, with the FEP fielding 227. If the FLE alliance collapsed, it would have had little impact on their overall ability to contest the parliamentary elections. But smaller parties would have been hit harder, especially in their ability to meet minority candidacy quotas for closed-list seats. Electoral laws reserve a number of list seats for women (56 seats), Copts (24), workers and farmers (16), the youth (16), Egyptians abroad (8) and those with disabilities (8)—and alliances make it easier for small parties to meet candidacy quotas. Because of these parties’ difficulties contesting the independent seats or meeting quotas on their own, the bloc-list alliances became the only viable route for them to maximize their electoral gains.

Moreover, most of the alliances are designed solely to contest the minority of seats set aside for closed lists and do not address the greater challenge of fielding independent candidates. An alliance designed for independent districts—a staggering 448 seats nationwide—would need greater commitment and direct coordination in campaigning and distributing resources evenly among candidates. Deciding on which members should put forth a candidate for a “winnable” district could prove problematic. For example, major urban districts like Giza and Cairo have more seats per district, but such areas have traditionally been where stronger parties like Wafd focus their efforts. Other parties might consider campaigning in these areas less effective and a waste of resources. In the smaller and arguably more-winnable districts, like some in Upper Egypt, smaller parties are more likely to bicker over which of their candidates to field. The Leftist Alliance is the only one designed to focus on independent seats, in which Tagammu is fielding 24 candidates and the Socialist Popular Alliance Party twelve.

Many fear that the next parliament will be dominated by businessmen from parties like Wafd and the FEP, reminiscent of the Mubarak days of the ruling National Democratic Party. As the smaller parties remain divided and struggle to contest many seats, likely only a handful of their candidates will appear in the next parliament.

This article is reprinted with permission of Sada. It can be accessed online here.

Christopher J. Cox is a freelance researcher and writer on Middle East affairs.

What would prompt a 13-year-old boy to stab another 13-year-old boy in Jerusalem? Incitement? Religious zealotry? A culture that glorifies martyrdom? How about the unintended consequence of forty-eight years of municipal policies designed to foster a stable, Jewish majority while preventing any linkages between the Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the West Bank?

Since 1967, all policy making in the city has directed at the singular goal of insulating Jerusalem from any possible future territorial compromise. While these policies have succeeded in cementing a physical and political separation between Jerusalem and the West Bank, they have also created a leaderless, under-educated, impoverished, and disenfranchised under-class from which these knife-wielding youth have sprung.

With Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, the reunification of Jerusalem was seen as both miraculous and tenuous. While to many Jews it felt as if divine guidance had brought the people of Israel back to the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, and the cemeteries of the Mount of Olives, there was also a palpable sense that international pressure could require the Jewish state to relinquish them. For Israeli authorities this required the immediate creation of facts on the ground. As founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion exclaimed in the heady days after the war, “We must bring Jews to eastern Jerusalem at any cost! We must settle tens of thousands of Jews in a brief time.”

Ben-Gurion believed the situation too urgent to await “the construction of orderly neighborhoods.” Yet that was precisely the strategy envisioned by the various inter-ministerial commissions tasked with planning the development of the city: a phased expansion of Israeli settlements that would gradually, but purposely, form an inhabited barrier between Jerusalem and the West Bank. The first step was to push the city’s boundaries beyond the walls of the Old City, beyond the Mount of Olives, east, north, and southward into the West Bank. With the stroke of a pen, seventy square kilometers of hilltops, valleys, and villages were drawn into Jerusalem’s sacred orbit, and incorporated into the urban master plan.

While this expansion created room for new settlements, it also added some sixty-thousand Palestinians, or “non-Jews” in municipal parlance, into the demographic balance sheet. A hastily conducted census revealed this minority constituted 26 percent of the population, with a much higher birth rate. This meant that securing a stable, Jewish majority would also require managing, or rather minimizing, the “non-Jewish” population in addition to increased migration.

Zoning policies were both the swiftest and sharpest arrows in the municipal quiver as they could both facilitate and constrain, often at the same time. For example, zoning certain areas as national priority zones allows the expropriation of privately owned land, whereas setting aside certain areas as “green areas” would preserve the un-built land until, as former Mayor Teddy Kollek explained, “we are ready to build there.”

One such hilltop between the West Bank village of Beit Sahour and the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher was designated as part of the city’s green belt until 1997, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered its Jewish National Fund-sponsored pine forest ploughed under in order to stop Bethlehem from spreading into Jerusalem. Today, the settlement of Har Homa boasts a Jewish population in excess of twenty-five thousand.

On the flip side, the absence of zoning was used to limit growth within the 13 percent of east Jerusalem territory designated for Palestinian use. As in any modern, urban landscape, construction in Jerusalem required new construction fit within established town planning schemes. While such plans existed for the burgeoning Jewish settlements, the municipality was reluctant to impose them on the Palestinian neighborhoods in deference to the residents “nationalist sensitivities.” Without such plans, however, it is virtually impossible to get a permit to build. Allowances existed for granting permits on the basis of spot planning schemes, but the lengthy and expensive permitting process often took years and applications were denied more than 50 percent of the time.

These constraints left growing Palestinian families with two choices: build without a permit and risk demolition, or move a few kilometers over the green line where housing was more abundant. Before the first intifada in 1987, most decamped to the more open and welcoming suburbs of Ramallah or Bethlehem. It was only during the Oslo years that these Jerusalem natives learned such choices ran afoul of Israel’s permanent resident policy.

Again, in deference to sensitivities of the local population, the State of Israel refrained from imposing citizenship on the Palestinians who came within the expanded borders. Instead, they became permanent residents of the country. As with any green-card style designation, permanent residency is contingent on actual residency. Moving abroad for more than seven years, obtaining a foreign passport, or simply taking a foreign spouse would indicate intent to reside elsewhere and negate the premise of residency. However, starting in 1996, the ministry of interior redefined abroad as anywhere that city ceased to be a resident’s “center of life.” Although this revised policy was contested and eventually repealed, the ministry of interior revoked eleven thousand Jerusalem residency cards between 1996 and 2009.

The unintended consequence of this more stringent compliance regime was that Palestinian Jerusalemites came flooding back to the city in a desperate attempt to preserve the right to live in their native city. Rents increased, families crowded into smaller and smaller spaces, and more built without the requisite permits. Housing demolitions accelerated: ninety-eight in 2014 alone. This influx brought further deterioration to the already pressured living conditions in the “non-Jewish” sector. Today, 74 percent of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and 82 percent of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem live below the poverty line. Unemployment is at 33 percent of the male workforce, and 26 percent of high school students drop out before the eleventh grade. This is unsurprising given that there is a shortage of 2,000 classrooms in East Jerusalem, and 43 percent of those that are available are deemed inadequate by national standards.

This legal, political, and territorial limbo leaves Palestinian youth in the city with few choices. Taking opportunities abroad, or even in the West Bank could result in permanent exile. Yet staying means ever shrinking horizons, a future defined by the Sisyphean struggle to keep from sliding further down the slope. Even marriage choices are constrained by municipal boundaries. A spouse from the West Bank means miles, upon miles of paper work just to apply for family reunification permits, which for women is almost never granted since “local customs” hold she follows her man into the hinterlands.

Add to this combustible mix ramped up efforts by rightwing settlers to insert themselves within Palestinian areas and the ground is prepared for explosion. Without the Palestinian Authority to keep a lid on things, as they do in the West Bank, it is wholly predictable that provocations—or even perceived provocations over the holy sites—become a catalyst for rage. While the daily indignities of life in Jerusalem are a shared, individual trial, the shrines are a collective responsibility—one of the few places beyond the reach of the ministry of interior or the municipality. In a city where there is no earthly future, it is unsurprising that martyrdom is enjoying renewed appeal.

Allison Hodgkins is an assistant professor of international security and conflict management in the Department of Public Policy at the American University in Cairo.

Driving near Beirut’s downtown area in the evenings, you can hear the crackling and see the fumes coming out of huge bonfires: Beirut takes its garbage just outside city limits, dumps it on the beach right by the water, and burns the refuse. To be sure, the government has been working hard, meeting above and (way) beneath the call of duty, looking for alternate dumping sites after the one just south of Beirut (in Na’meh) closed back in July precipitating the crisis.

With the exception of a few villages, the problem is that, across Lebanon, there has been no thorough separating, recycling, composting and then burying what’s left of the garbage collected. The You Stink movement rightly seeks a modern nation-wide plan for the treatment of waste in Lebanon. A totally corrupt political system stands in the way.

As protests in downtown Beirut enter their fourth month and the “national dialogue” goes into its fourth futile effort to reconcile major differences, clashes between protesters and police are increasing in frequency as are arrests of protesters and protest leaders. Yet violence has been minimal, if one compares Lebanon’s recent turmoil with the uprisings that hit its sister Arab countries in 2011. Lebanon’s army and police have resorted mainly to water cannons, truncheons and sometimes teargas canisters to stop protesters from breaking through their barriers to occupy public buildings or try to stop members of parliament from attending meetings in parliament that are notoriously going nowhere. Still, the manhandling of some protesters and the arbitrary nature of arrests and detentions have managed to further inflame the situation and spur protest leaders on to further action against the state.

The protest movement, despite inflamed passions and tactics, does not seem to be making any headway by way of recruiting more supporters to its ranks or forcing the hand of government towards any particular action in their favor. The heads of the main political factions in the country are also failing to either solve the problems that plague Lebanon’s service sectors or to concede anything meaningful to stem the tide of protest.

Lebanon’s current crisis, precipitated by the government’s inability to deal with garbage collection, is a prime example of the old concept of prisoners’ dilemma in international relations game theory. Briefly, two otherwise rational players, imprisoned, are offered a chance to be free if they cooperate—a win-win scenario. The players refuse to do so, each afraid of being tricked by the other into a win-lose possibility. The two are then stuck in a lose-lose scenario and remain in jail.

In the matters of state waiting for their decision, Lebanese politicians, from choosing a president to adopting a promotion ladder for senior security and military officers, to passing a new election law to allow for new parliamentary elections, seek above all to deny a win by their opponents. They are refusing to cooperate with one another and are deliberately derailing the decision making process. As a result of the current gridlock, the country’s basic services are grinding down to a complete halt. Water and electricity are being severely rationed and there seems no end in sight for the garbage collection and treatment dilemma—all issues ironically requiring cabinet level decisions and agreement among the main political/sectarian factions.

What makes matters worse, a protest movement by Lebanon’s youth, which at first blush seemed destined to unite the Lebanese population if not its politicians, is itself in a tailspin. In going for an all-or-nothing approach, it has failed to set any achievable goals. Barring further excesses by the authorities (which could still ignite a broader popular reaction) the youth movement currently risks dispersion of efforts and sputtering to an inglorious finish. The total stalemate risks sparking extreme actions by political actors from within the Lebanese system or from any number of outside forces seeking to take advantage of the prevailing chaos.

In a faint echo of the Arab uprisings of 2011, some Lebanese protesters have raised the popular, “The People Want the Fall of the Regime!” slogan that branded the 2011 season of turmoil. This slogan, however, is not only totally impractical in Lebanon (because of the lack of a power center one might conceivably topple) but also one which is diffuse, not agreed upon by all protestors and, most of all, provokes total derision and hostility from supporters of the various political and sectarian factions in the country.

When the photo of Nabih Berri, the speaker of parliament, was included on a banner calling for the removal of corrupt leaders, the supporters of Berri attacked the protesters with sticks and knives, destroying the banner and disrupting the protest. When demonstrators briefly prevented the speaker, among others, from reaching parliament, clashes got even more violent and the Lebanese Army (LAF) had to intervene to break the fight and arrest participants in it. On another occasion, supporters of Michel Aoun, the Christian member of the pro-Hezbollah March 8 movement, tried to join the protest to raise their own political slogans. This precipitated another clash with protesters who did not wish their movement to be hijacked by one of the political factions they were protesting against.

The protest goals and slogans, however, have proliferated and the protest scene itself is at once confusing and amusing. Protestors usually disappear during the day and gather again in the evening and stay out well into the night, exhibiting various displays of uncoordinated slogans, goals and tactics.

While the garbage issue remains the main motivator, as framed by the You Stink group, others have raised corruption more generally, sectarian politics in Lebanon, the failing economy and prevailing poverty. Along with the main You Stink movement, other groups include “We Want to Hold You (corrupt leaders) Accountable,” and “Youth Against the Regime,” along with sundry labor unions and regional municipal groups (the latter protesting attempts to dump Beirut’s garbage in their districts). Teachers have joined in, for example, to demand higher wages and families of kidnapped soldiers are protesting the lack of action on behalf of their loved ones.

One group of youths (men and women) decided to jump into the (dirty) waters of Zeitouna Bay, a posh area on the water front where the rich dock their yachts. The protesters wanted to make the point that an otherwise public area was being hijacked by the rich for wealthy yacht owners and restaurant goers. The demand in this case was for open public areas that can be enjoyed by poor and rich alike.

Still others, now informally known as the “Abou Rakhousa” group, want to use the downtown area—rehabilitated by the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s Solidaire project into lovely pedestrian-only areas for shopping and dining—into open markets for the less well to do. These individuals have taken to putting on display donated clothes and household items for the poor—bearing in mind that most of the protesters obviously come from middle class and higher income groups. Such initiatives, though well meaning, have outraged restaurant owners and their staff whose businesses have been totally disrupted by the protests and by what they termed as the “cheapening” of the areas in question, making them less appealing to foreign tourists.

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s sectarian/political leaders have reacted in a variety of ways: total apathy from Hezbollah, which does not wish to be involved as long as its interests are not threatened and its symbols besmirched in any way; the March 14 Sunnis and their Christian allies have opted to lay low and neither confront nor appease the protest movement, while Prime Minister Tammam Salam, head in hands, has expressed total frustration and deep alarm at the political void and paralysis of the system he putatively heads.

The sectarian consensus-based system in Lebanon is a product of social and regional factors, which prevailed in 1943 and made the republic of Lebanon possible. For many years, this system prevented rebellions and defections from the union of its component parts. This “National Pact” arrangement broke down in 1975, however, and has been wobbly ever since, especially as the region became more and more complicated. The Lebanese system has now hit rock-bottom and cannot survive without a serious shake-up of some sort. From the following scenarios, only the first one is prescriptive; the other two are developments that might take place if things don’t improve soon.

The most rational and practical way out would be for the protesters to unite, impose better discipline on all the free-lancers who have joined their ranks, and focus instead on one clear issue to start with: the garbage crisis. They should present a well-studied plan for the whole country and launch a nation-wide peaceful lobbying campaign to get the plan adopted by the council of ministers. This would be totally in line with what civil society groups are supposed to do in democratic societies and would stand a good chance of bolstering their flagging popular support in the country.

The political factions would in turn benefit from responding positively to such an approach, demonstrating that they could coalesce behind a plan that actually serves the interests of their various constituents. They could also use a potential success on this front to tackle the other service and political problems one by one, building on the collaboration achieved on the garbage issue.

Desperate in his bid to become president of Lebanon before becoming far too old for the job, Michel Aoun is inching closer to calling a popular uprising of his own. In his last speech to his followers on the occasion of his 1990 ouster from the presidential palace by the Syrians, he called on his supporters to shake things loose via elections—meaning a popular election of the president that would place him in that office and the adoption of a proportional system of representation which would favor his party winning more seats in parliament, hence giving him the authority to act. The implication of civil disobedience and/or violence is very clear in his speech, however, since the majority of factions have already rejected his proposals at dialogue sessions.

A military intervention cannot be ruled out despite the fact that military coups are not normally practical in Lebanon for the same reason that the downfall of the regime demand is not. The system is too fragmented and even army officers individually belong to one political or sectarian faction or another and could, if push comes to shove, be recalled by that faction causing the army to break in half as it did in 1976.

The continued chaos, however, is becoming a strain on the military and security structures which could lead to a serious deterioration in national security. Hezbollah, preoccupied in an ever more consuming war in Syria, can itself ill-afford to be drawn into internal security concerns and may eventually lose patience with the current chaos and seek a joint effort with the LAF to take over the government and make decisions outside the normal consensus-based system Lebanon has followed since its creation as a state.

Regardless of what options are taken up, the turmoil in Lebanon seems destined to continue for some time to come.

Nabeel Khoury is non-resident senior fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council. On Twitter: @khoury_nabeel.

There is something terribly inaccurate in discussing the latest upsurge in violence between Israelis and Palestinians as another upsurge in violence. How many time have we heard that phrase in the last eighty-five years, since the early 1930s that marked the start of communal attacks between Zionist Jews and Israelis, on the one hand, and Palestinian Arabs on the other?

There is something both comic and tragic about the American secretary of state telephoning the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and asking them to restore order. Order? What order? The Israeli occupation, colonization, exploitation, siege, and subjugation of Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem since 1967 order?

It is equally pitiful to hear that members of the “Quartet” comprising the United States, UN, Russia, and the European Union will travel to the area this week to see if they can restore order. Order? What order? The order we witness during this month of October to date? The month is less than half finished and it has seen four Israelis killed by Palestinians and sixty-seven injured, while twenty-seven Palestinians were killed by Israelis and 1,400 injured. Israelis troops kidnapped another four hundred mostly young Palestinians and have held them in most cases without pressing charges.

The order and calm that Palestinians experience living under the constant threat of Israeli guns saw Ahmad Sharaka, a thirteen-year-old, die after he was shot in the neck with live ammunition by Israeli forces that opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators. Palestinians typically throw stones to express their refusal to be perpetually occupied or herded like cattle in their penned up areas. This killing of Ahmad Sharaka happened just outside Beit El, a Jewish-only settlement near Ramallah, a settlement that the entire world recognizes as an illegal crime because it contravenes the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition of a conquering power moving its civilians into the territory it occupied in war.

It is a crime against rational language and thought to speak of “restoring calm” and “reducing the violence” in a situation like this where the Israelis are the occupiers, tormentors, colonizers, and mass killers of mostly defenseless Palestinians who are largely leaderless and unprotected by international law. The recurring killings and injuries by both sides—remember, the kill ratio is around 6 to 1, and the injuries ratio is around 21 to 1 in favor of Israel—reflect the deep imbalance and injustice that define this situation.

The Palestinians in Jerusalem especially, but also in other places where they live under Zionist occupation or rule, find themselves without any leadership, protection, or rights. After decades of this condition, desperate individuals have little to live for. They risk death by killing individual Israeli soldiers, occupiers, or settlers mostly, by any available means, usually kitchen knives or cars. Having been dehumanized by Zionist-Israeli modern history that refuses to come to terms with the Palestinians’ national rights to live in peace and sovereignty in their own land, more and more Palestinians who undertake such killings have started to reflect their dehumanized condition by acting like animals in the jungle.

Israeli troops, vigilante settlers, and urban lynch mobs, for their part, kill Palestinian Arabs in many ways—shooting them in the back with rifles and pistols, burning them alive in their beds at home, beating and shooting them to death in city streets, pouring kerosene down their throats and lighting it—but the double tragedy is also that all these Zionist-Israeli death innovations continue to prove ineffective in quelling the Palestinian need to live free. The Israelis have tried every possible means of turning the Palestinians into passive and captive invisible people who have no rights, who have no thoughts, who have no lives, who are worth no more than a piece of dirt.

But the Zionist-Israelis are stumped, because everything they have tried since the 1940s has not worked—occupation, ethnic cleansing, massacres, curfews, walls, drones, massive military destruction, siege, semi-starvation, forced exile, regular assassinations, mass incarceration, blowing up homes, refusing permits to build new homes, limiting access to water sources, restricting commerce flows, withholding collected tax monies, expanding Zionist colonies and settlements, Judaizing Jerusalem and other Palestinian places—everything Israel has tried to turn the Palestinians into passive and docile cretins has not worked. But the heavily armed Israelis keep killing, and killing, and killing, and then they also complain that the Palestinians who resist being killed, exiled, and colonized are engaging in incitement, and then they get back to killing some more.

One day soon we will see a young Palestinian girl of perhaps fifteen years old sneak into an Israeli air force base and attack an F-16 jet fighter with a kitchen knife. That will be the signal to all that there is no order to restore in Palestine and Israel in these conditions, other than the order of the insanity of free-for-all killing—until another day when more sensible leaders, supported by an ethical rather than a derelict international community, come along and seriously work to shape a new order that recognizes the equal national rights of Israelis and Palestinians.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

Well, well, so it has now come to this in the Arab-Asian-Islamic realm: Americans bomb hospitals in northern Afghanistan by mistake. Russians bomb northern Iran by mistake. The United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and others in the region assist assorted Syrian rebels to overthrow the Assad regime in Damascus. Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah assist the Assad regime to beat back the assorted rebels. Iraq, Kurdish forces and Iranian-backed militias fight directly against ISIS, or the “Islamic State,” while ISIS torments and threatens everyone around it, and destroys ancient monuments.

Some ten million refugees and internally displaced persons from Syria, Iraq and Yemen wander around trying only to remain alive until the next day, many risking their lives in desperate journeys by sea to anywhere that will take them in. They don’t necessarily seek a better life; they only want to make it with their children to the next day, and many never make it.

The hapless Lebanese government cannot agree on picking up garbage, while increasingly strident young Lebanese activists accuse the government of having become stinking itself, like the garbage. The always wondrous Egyptian government pursues the most anti-democratic and restrictive human rights policies seen in the region for half a century or more, but it still receives accolades and aid from many Western and Arab states, with the Russians knocking on the door to assist as they can.

Iran does not have time to do anything much other than desperately keep the Assad regime afloat in Damascus, and receive an endless stream of Western corporate delegations looking to do business in the country as sanctions against it are lifted. Yemen is steadily sinking into a nearly irreparable state of de-development and chaos at the receiving end of the Saudi-led war against it, which has liberated areas in Aden and the south that were not really contested in any serious way. The war has also seen Saudi, Emirati and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) soldiers being killed by the dozen, creating real pain at home, but still with no clear “victory” or political resolution in sight.

Israel and Palestine, plagued by catastrophic leaderships, have succumbed to the primordial human emotions that see them both engage in terrible killings, for different reasons, yet always with the same result: intensifying their mutual dance of death. Theirs is not a war in the classical sense any more. Today, individual men and women—angry, scared, vulnerable, dehumanized—kill other individual men and women, often on the spur of the moment, almost reflexively or unconsciously. A voice in their head tells them to kill that Palestinian or Israeli, thinking it will make them and their families safer—but the exact opposite is the result. An irrational rage takes over their minds, and they look for the nearest Israeli or Palestinian to kill, with a knife, a car, a rifle or fire in the victim’s home at night. A few days later, they might be the ones killed.

There is, amidst the chaos and violence that engulfs so many parts of the Middle East, a clear pattern that only fools would ignore—and indeed the fools among Arabs, Americans, Israelis, Turks, Iranians, Russians and some Europeans who engage in the tortured Arab lands engulfed in military conflict indeed do ignore this pattern of repeatedly confirmed reality.

It comprises two related principles that have been validated across thousands of years of history in this region: a) there can be no lasting military solution to political problems that are created by human beings, and their cruelties and poor policies; and b) the lack of military solutions to political disputes is screechingly amplified when foreign military powers send their armies into the local conflicts, such as we are seeing in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Those conflicts in particular also remind us that external powers who wage war with their armed forces are always prepared to see the local battleground countries totally destroyed if need be. They do this because they say they need to protect their interests or assert their honor, or some such foolhardiness that is the way of powerful countries that use their power in foolish ways.

It is a waste of time right now to analyze how to chart a political course out of the suffering and destruction in Syria and Iraq especially, but also in Yemen. Young men with their big guns from many countries have statements to make, honor to uphold, principles to assert, and, in all this, gigantic delusions to display in public for all the world to see, and laugh at.

But they do not hear the laughter from the noise of their big guns. When they finally learn these ancient lessons of history about the futility of military solutions to political disputes, and the savage consequences of foreign military adventures, they will calm down, and maybe— inshallah—grow up. Many of us may still be alive to see that day. Many others will not. The age of the young warriors is upon us, to our great misfortune.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

Editor’s note: “A Special Tribute to Éric Rouleau” will be held October 13 at the American University in Cairo, hosted by AUC’s Middle East Studies Center, the Institut Francais of Egypt, and the Al-Tanany Publishing House, on the occasion of the Arabic translation of Rouleau’s book Dans les coulisses du Proche-Orient: Mémoires d’un journaliste diplomate (1952-2012).

Éric Rouleau died on February 25, 2015. Born in Egypt, he covered the Near East for the daily Le Monde for three decades before being appointed ambassador to Tunisia then Turkey. No other journalist was as influential in France or the rest of the world. No one contributed to changing the Western vision of the complicated east, better yet, to making it understood, as much as he did.

I wrote in the preface of Rouleau’s book, Dans les coulisses du Proche-Orient: Mémoires d’un journaliste diplomate (1952-2012):

“The tram had just taken off from Heliopolis, otherwise known as the city of the sun, which was a new suburb in Cairo. Just like every morning, the young man would sit comfortably in his seat, waiting to reach the prestigious faculty of law in Giza. While the tram drove along brand new shops, thieves breaking into a storefront caught his eye. He jumped from his seat and, upon seeing the culprits escape in a car, hailed a taxi that tried to catch them in vain.

“Forgetting all about his classes, he rushed to the English daily Egyptian Gazette where he worked in the evening. The editor-in-chief, who was impressed and somewhat amused by Rouleau’s account, stopped the scheduled articles and changed the front page headline to “Theft in Heliopolis,” by our “star journalist.” On that day in 1943, a star was born in Cairo.”

The journalist was not yet known as Éric Rouleau, but as Élie Raffoul. He was only 17 years old—a golden age for many people. A few weeks before this incident and despite his father’s advice, he had given up a better paying job as a pencil pusher at an insurance company and opted for the Egyptian Gazette. At the same time, he pursued his law education each morning. Tenacity, flair and a bit of luck borne out of being in the right place at the right time were to mark his career.

He emigrated to France in 1952, worked at Agence France-Presse (AFP) and then joined Le Monde. For several decades, between 1950 and 1980, as part of his work for the French daily, he covered the news of the Arab countries. But, he also focused on Israel, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Africa during its decolonization, Ethiopia, and even the distant Pakistan. He became the most famous journalist of the most renowned French daily.

His colleague and lifelong companion Jean Gueyras said: “The sun never sets on Éric Rouleau’s empire,” just like the British Empire and the empire of Charles V, where the expression initially originated.

But, how does one end up in the Rue des Italiens in Paris when they are born in a suburb of Cairo? How does a transition from the Egyptian Gazette to Le Monde happen? It seems that the supposedly unbridgeable gap that separated them could be surmounted after all.

In fact, Rouleau was francophone, just like many Egyptians, whether Christians, Jews, or Muslims, or members of any of the diverse communities that coexisted in Egypt, including Greeks, Italians, French, and Syrian-Lebanese.

Thousands of renowned names brightened the sky of Egypt’s francophone literature, which have been unfairly forgotten. They included Edmond Jabes, Albert Cossery, and Georges Henein. Those who tried their luck with surrealism rubbed shoulders with Paul Eluard and Max Jacob and spoke a unique French that was unusual at times, with accents that rolled the R’s and expressions that were literally translated from Arabic.

It was hard to imagine their love for France, their second home, which inspired so many Egyptians at the time. On June 10, 1940, Rouleau could not believe his eyes and ears. At the dinner table, his father burst into tears when he heard over the radio about the French capitulation. For this man who was born in Aleppo and educated at the francophone schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, France was the land of liberty and justice.

“What preoccupied my father most in his life was the Dreyfus affair whose twists and turns he knew in detail,” Rouleau recalled. “He spoke of it often and much. He proudly described public gatherings and protests in which he participated to defend the Jewish captain accused of spying for Germany. He recited texts by Jean Jaurès, Emile Zola, and Victor Hugo whom he honored, and he peppered his words with quotes from the fables of La Fontaine.”

A few decades later, Rouleau was awarded the Légion d’honneur. “I was ecstatic because it was President François Mitterrand himself who was rewarding me for ‘serving France.’” Rouleau recalled. “I thought I saw my father standing in the first row of figures who attended the ceremony at the Elysée Palace.”

Egyptian, Francophone, and Jewish

Many people shared this passion for France. During the same era, Henri Curiel and his brother Raoul—who were also francophone Egyptian Jews—headed to the French consulate to enlist in the fight against Nazi Germany. But the officer in charge rejected their enlistment with disdain. In Cairo, people listened to Radio London and General Charles de Gaulle supporting a free France rather than Marshal Pétain’s France. In October 1943, French and Egyptian people from all confessions created the Friends of France “to concretize their attachment to a country with a soul and fate they never stopped believing in.”

Élie Raffoul was not only Egyptian, francophone and francophile, but he was also Jewish. Yet how can one define a Jew? Anti-Semites tried in vain by inventing a race whose people they often reduced to religion. Israel has failed, too, in that regard. After all, how can one use the same term to describe believers and non-believers and people claiming to have a more or less vague Jewish culture, and others who reject it? Is a person Jewish by choice or is it the anti-Semite who makes the Jew, as Jean-Paul Sartre put it?

Just like many young people, Rouleau faced an adolescent crisis and decided to become a rabbi, but he soon quit and lost his faith. Although the world of Talmudic studies definitely had a lot to lose, the field of journalism won considerably.

Now turned atheist, Élie did not abandon his Jewish roots, but tried to understand their meaning. At the time, incredible as it might seem, Zionists enjoyed complete freedom of action in Egypt. The Jewish Agency was well-off in Cairo and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, the Jewish National Fund, established in 1901 and destined to develop land for Jewish settlement in Palestine, welcomed grants in synagogues. “Most often, the donors had no political incentive and only wanted to give alms,” Rouleau recalled.

Rouleau later turned to the Hashomer Hatzair movement, the “Youth Guard,” an extreme leftist Zionist movement. “The hundreds of adolescents who joined the movement participated in sports competitions, took Jewish history classes, and engaged in philosophical debates where the labor movement ideologists were prominently present,” he said.

Rouleau learned about Marxist thought, but he left the movement a year later, as his beliefs collided with its narrow nationalism and indifference to the conflicts raging in Egypt, even those against the colonial power. “I could not believe that all Egyptians were anti-Semitic, and I had no intention to emigrate,” he said.

Egypt’s Jews felt they were Egyptian, and the Zionist siren song never bewitched them. In his book Un homme à part that was dedicated to Henri Curiel, Gilles Perrault beautifully wrote, “Apart from the Zionist minority, no one felt the need for a Jewish state or the urge to chant “L’an prochain à Jérusalem” when it was enough to take the 9:45 a.m. train to get there.”

The Arab-Israeli conflict made the lives of Egyptian Jews impossible. They were the victims of waves of judeophobia in the Arab World, and of the Israeli government’s attempts to use them as fifth column. As a result, many were forced to emigrate to France, the real Promised Land.

Nowadays, criticism of Zionism is often equated to hidden anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, during the first half of the twentieth century, the majority of Jews around the world were apathetic if not hostile to the Zionist project. Rouleau took himself for an Egyptian, and he was united with his compatriots beyond religion.

In 1943, he started studying law and ventured into the field of journalism. At the time, Egyptian universities acted against the enemy hated by all, the treacherous Albion—the United Kingdom—which was the omnipotent colonial power that been occupying the country since 1882. People could still feel the burning humiliation of February 4, 1942, when the tanks of His Britannic Majesty surrounded King Farouk’s palace, and forced him to dismiss the prime minister and appoint a government in favor of the alliance with London.

For some time, nationalist Egyptians had their eyes set on Germany and impatiently hoped Erwin Rommel’s tanks that drove at breakneck speed to Alexandria would finally arrive—in the name of the old principle “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But after Rommel’s defeat in El-Alamein in the autumn of 1942 and the Soviet victory in Stalingrad, the left was on a roll.

“I attended public gatherings and protests staged on campus. I encountered Marxists who differed from others through associating national liberation with social rebellion and citizen equality with antiracism,” said Rouleau. “Copts and Jews fought in their ranks just like Muslims. Some evenings, we convened in a room that was occultly directed by the Democratic Movement for National Liberation—a movement founded and led by Henri Curiel. In fact, it was a public forum where speakers met to debate current international affairs. The organizers avoided addressing domestic problems for fear of provoking the vigilant political police. Although they were considered outlaws, communists were practically tolerated then.”

In February 1946, this unrest materialized with the formation of a national committee for workers and students, and with waves of protests against the British presence. It was a political and social unrest similar to the uprising that would flare up in Egypt in January–February 2011. Rouleau actively participated in these activities, and he saw one of his young friends shot during a protest.

Cairo to Paris and Beyond

The creation of the Israeli state in May 1948 would decide in a couple of years the fate of Jews of Egypt and the Middle East. King Farouk’s government reproached Rouleau for his links with the extreme left that were indeed real and his connections to Zionism that were not. He was forced to choose between prison and exile, either way giving up his nationality.

Under duress, he chose exile, but like many individuals in exile, he cherished Egypt all his life. At the age of just 24, equipped with light luggage and rich experience, he left for France. He was not discouraged by the year he spent unemployed, and he finally found a job at the Arab radio transmission department of AFP. At the time, newspapers did not have many correspondents abroad and had little means to know what was happening. Therefore, people had to tune into local radio stations to remain in the know.

In October 1954, he made his first scoop. He announced Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had escaped an assassination attempted allegedly by the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1955, Rouleau started collaborating with Le Monde. Once again, Egypt and the crisis between Nasser and the west gave him the chance to sign his first front page article “The Aswan Dam Will Still Be Built, Cairo affirms” (Le Monde, July 22-23, 1956).

A few days later on the evening of July 26, he reported Nasser’s speech to AFP in which he announced, bursting into laughter and perhaps surprised at his own boldness, the nationalization of the Suez Canal company that would fund the construction of the Aswan Dam since Western investors did not pursue it. The AFP management, taken aback by this news and thinking that Nasser would not “dare” do that, held back the information for a while and only decided to broadcast it when rival stations did.

For Élie, known thereafter as Éric Rouleau in his articles, these years were years of learning. He traveled a world booming with events to report stories. He published his first major series over three days, entitled “Israel, état occidental?” He met Mustafa Barzani, the historical leader of the Iraqi Kurds, with whom he built exceptional ties. Barzani opened Rouleau’s eyes to the importance of the Kurdish demands in the Near East.

Rouleau visited Iran where he wrote about “the other side of the story,” noting that the regime in place was authoritarian and megalomaniac. His writings dismayed some of his fellows who were “tolerant” of the shah allied with the West. He went on to cover the coup in Turkey on September 12, 1960 and the execution of the prime minister. Rouleau then arrived in the former Belgian Congo that was undergoing decolonization.

The maneuvers of the former colonial power and the United States led to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the independence hero, on January 17, 1961. He wrote about the uprising in the wake of Lumumba’s death and, from Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), he sent an article entitled “Les troupes lumumbistes déclenchent une offensive contre la province de l’Equateur et du Kasai” that appeared on the front page.

Every day, at his own peril, he had to take the road to reach Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to send his articles to Paris. At the time, articles were dictated over a telephone line.

The Arab World was also a stage of historical events in those days. It witnessed the creation of the United Arab Republic that united Egypt and Syria in February 1958, the Republican coup in Iraq in July 1958, the advent of the republic in northern Yemen and the outbreak of the civil war there in 1962. But, how could he write about Arab countries when he was not allowed to enter them because of his Jewish origins?

He had been considering abandoning the Middle East section of Le Monde, when something unexpected happened. Was it luck yet again? Nasser personally invited him to visit Cairo in early summer 1963. Rouleau detailed this return to his homeland in the first chapter of Dans les coulisses du Proche-Orient.

After receiving legitimacy from the most popular representative of Arab nationalism, the Middle East’s doors suddenly opened to him. In the decades that followed, he met all the leaders of the Arab nation, from King Hussein to Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadhafi, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Hafez Al-Assad. Although his articles mainly focused on Egypt, Israel, and Palestine, Rouleau’s career led him to explore other horizons. He notably covered the fall of Greek colonels, the coups in Turkey and the twists and turns of the first phases of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Having the flair of a good journalist, he never missed a story. In June 1967, he reported from Cairo following the Israeli attack. In 1970, he covered the massacres of Palestinians at the hands of the Jordanian army in Amman. He returned to Cairo on September 28, 1970, the day Nasser died unexpectedly. In 1974, he focused on Nicosia, following the coup attempt against President Archbishop Makarios (Cyprus and Greece were always part of his empire at Le Monde, as he considered them, in his own British vision, part of the Middle East which included Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey).

Rouleau was often warmly welcomed and received honorific treatment. He stayed at the most luxurious hotels where the people in charge waited to meet him, confide in him and reveal their stories. This provoked the jealousy of some fellow journalists.

One country constituted an exception to this hospitality—Israel. Although he managed to interview David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres, as he mentioned in his memoirs, he was dismissed as an “Egyptian agent” by rightwing leader Menachem Begin, and the whole establishment there had the same opinion. Jean Gueyras recalled that in Paris, “he was harassed by the Israeli embassy through daily letters from outraged readers addressed to the director of Le Monde.”

For the leaders of the Jewish state in the 1970s, Rouleau was more than an enemy. He was a traitor haunted by “self-hatred.” However, what they could not understand was that, on the contrary, he was the holder of Jewish principles that they were seeking to bury—principles that rejected narrow nationalism and embraced solidarity with all the oppressed.

One of his friends, Chehata Haroun, an Egyptian-Jewish lawyer who remained in Egypt until his death, demanded the following epitaph be engraved on his tomb:

“I am black when the blacks are oppressed.

I am Jewish when the Jews are oppressed.

I am Palestinian when the Palestinians are oppressed.”

“Éric Rouleau, Le Monde”

Rouleau had the urge to narrate his return to his childhood home in Heliopolis at the end of the 1960s. Accompanied by his wife Rosy, he knocked on the door and was warmly welcomed by the tenants to whom he told his story. To his surprise, they burst into laughter, as they were Palestinians. The irony of the situation was clear. He became friends with these uprooted people who had neither home nor country, and he felt neighborly ties between them.

Rouleau had always studied the devastation caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict on the coexistence between communities and the spirit of tolerance. He wished more than anyone else for fair peace to be achieved, and a Palestinian state to be established. He believed this would ensure security across the whole region. As he mentioned in his book, he played a mediating role between Israel and Arab countries several times, swapping his journalist’s hat for a diplomatic hat. In 1970, Rouleau tried to organize a visit by then-president of the World Jewish Congress Nahoum Goldman to Cairo. However, his initiative failed because Labour party leaders vetoed the visit. He thus concluded that every peace initiative ever proposed had been sabotaged by Israeli officials—especially after the Oslo Accords.

Rouleau owed his influence and reputation to his talent, his knowledge of Arabic, and his listening and communication skills. But, he also has none other than Le Monde to thank. The newspaper’s circulation was still limited then, with 140,000 copies in 1946 and 475,000 in 1969.

During these decades, this daily from the Rue des Italiens would include the international political analyses. Its foreign news bulletin, which was anonymous and published on its cover page, was decrypted by all chancelleries. It represented journalism in real time before television emerged, before the rise of satellite channels and even before infotainment which only considered events that could be staged worthy of showing. Back then, it was the written press that determined the importance of news and which did not need spectacular images to circulate.

However, in the 1980s, the media scene changed. It became possible to watch “live” coverage of wars and Olympic Games. Written press was in a quandary, and Le Monde was wracked by succession disputes.

In 1985, Rouleau transitioned to a diplomatic career at the request of President Mitterand. He was appointed ambassador, first to Tunis—then headquarters of the Arab League, and the city where the Palestinian Liberation Organization sought refuge after its expulsion from Beirut in 1982—and later to Ankara. After this time, only diplomats would benefit from his culture, analyses, and countless connections. Ironically, Rouleau himself noticed that the number of his readers dropped from hundreds to two, and even sometimes one—the president of the Republic.

During the first meeting of French ambassadors held in Paris after his appointment, each of the diplomats introduced themselves and their country of assignment—for example the Ivory Coast, Jordan, Argentina, etc. When it was his turn, he stood up and said: “Éric Rouleau, Le Monde.” There was silence, then the audience broke into laughter. Freud believed that slips of the tongue expressed unconscious desires. Did Rouleau consider himself the ambassador of the daily newspaper? Or did he see himself as ambassador to the world, monde in French, as he crossed from north to south? Or, might he have simply meant that he was our ambassador to a planet whose glitches he would help us solve?

Alain Gresh was editor-in-chief of Le Monde Diplomatique, and he is the founder and the editor of the online magazine OrientXXI. On Twitter: @alaingresh.

This essay, originally published in Orient XXI on February 27, 2015, English translation by Orient XXI’s partner Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, is republished by permission of the author.

There is a tradition that states that the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) once gestured toward his Persian companion Salman and said:

لو كان الإيمان عند الثريا لناله رجال من اهل فارس

“Even if faith were near the Pleiades, men from among the Persians would attain it.”

This tradition points to a few fundamental truths about Persian history and identity. In the ancient world, the Pleiades constellation represented the universe’s beauty and mystery, and its distance in the sky was a reminder of the vastness of creation. In invoking the Pleiades, the Prophet (PBUH) was testifying to the power of the Persian’s faith—that there was no obstacle large or far enough to prevent the Persians from attainment of true knowledge.

We can also read this tradition as a testament to the Persian tradition of scientific and cultural achievement—that if anyone were able to grasp at the Pleiades, it would of course be the Persians. In the Prophet Mohammed’s time, Persia was a fading imperial power, holding on to the glories of its civilization as it prepared to embrace a new era. Even today, Iran is caught between pride in its ancient and complicated history and the ambitions of its religious regime.

In the pre-Islamic world, the Persian Sasanian Empire, founded in 224 ad and extending from Turkey and Egypt to the Indian subcontinent, was a cultural and political force rivaling that of ancient China, India, Greece, or Rome. The Sasanians were envied by the Romans for their advanced military technology, Sasanian artists and musicians were welcomed by the royal courts of imperial capitals, and the Sasanian government was widely praised for its humane and effective style of rule. The Persians of the ancient world could even lay claim to one of the world’s monotheistic religions: Zoroastrianism, a faith based on the teachings of Zoroaster, who lived over 3,000 years ago.

By the seventh century ad the golden age of the Sasanians had long since passed away. When Muslim Arabs arrived shortly after the death of the Prophet (PBUH), Persians came to accept Islam and adjust to life under Arab rule. The Persian language adopted its own version of the Arabic script and borrowed heavily from Arabic vocabulary. Ancient fire temples were converted into arched mosques with beautiful, serene courtyards. The Persians of greater Iran adopted the political ideals represented by the Islamic caliphate and became participants in another Golden Age, one with far more geographic breadth and cultural diversity than the Persian kingdoms of ancient times.

During the medieval flowering of Islamic civilization, Persian people and Persian culture helped raise the Islamic World to greater heights of scientific and artistic power. As Europe struggled in its Dark Ages, Persia produced some of the Islamic World’s most famous scientists, mathematicians, theologians, and poets. Al-Ghazali, the theologian, scholar, and mystic often referred to as one of the most important Muslims after the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), was from a city near Mashhad in present-day Iran. The legendary polymath Avicenna (or Ibn Sina), the greatest scientist and medical scholar of his age and author of over four hundred texts and a master of the Greco-Roman and Indian scholarly traditions, made time to compose poetry in his native Persian. Hafez Shirazi is still one of the world’s most famous and influential poets, and Persian poetry left an indelible stamp on South Asian literature and art. Omar Khayyam is well known not only for his quatrains but also for his astronomical and mathematical genius. Al-Khawarismi gave us algebra and introduced the zero into mathematics.

In the later Middle Ages, newer Islamic dynasties like the Mughals, the Timurids, and the Ottomans took their cue from Iranian art and literature to cultivate their own civilizations. The flowing Nastaliq script of written Persian, known for its beautiful long and sloping letters, was adopted by the Urdu language and revered by Ottoman artists, who used it as an inspiration for their own styles of calligraphy. Persian architecture set a new standard for physical beauty in houses of worship in the Islamic world.

But even in the Islamic Golden Age, Persians held some nostalgia for the purity and power of their culture and history. The poet Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, an epic of Persian legends and history from the dawn of time until Islam, was written around the year 1000 ad, and Ferdowsi was careful to avoid Arabic influence on his vocabulary—he wanted a Persian epic to be represented in undiluted Persian prose.
With the rise of the Safavid dynasty in the sixteenth century, Persia experienced another great shift. The Safavids installed Twelver Shia Islam in their kingdom, and Persia became a majority Shiite country as well as a locus of Shiite religious scholarship. The ancient city of Qom was Safavid Persia’s crowning intellectual jewel, a site of religious pilgrimage, which became the largest center for Shiite Islamic scholarship in the world. Under Safavid rule, Persia grew in religious prestige as its reputation as a center of aesthetic innovation declined.

By the 1800s, Persian artistic and intellectual elites no longer delighted in the poetry of the Shahnameh or studied the mysticism of Al-Ghazali but instead sent their sons to French finishing schools or took long vacations to European museums and salons. Iran’s 1905 Constitutional Revolution laid bare the corruption of the crumbling Qajar dynasty: in the early twentieth century, Persia was vulnerable to Soviet expansion and colonial European influence, caught between larger powers. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who came to power in the aftermath of a 1921 coup, was able to rescue Iranian pride of place from a geopolitical morass. His modernization programs—Western-style university education, better healthcare, the development of railways and infrastructure—helped the nation to join the developed nations of its era as a peer. The shah was aware of his peoples’ need to feel pride in a uniquely Persian heritage, and he capitalized on that need to bolster support for his regime. It was Reza Pahlavi who insisted that foreign nations refer to Persia by its ancient name of Iran. In doing so, the shah was intentionally evoking thousands of years of Aryan lineage and framing the modern Iranian state around its ancient ethnic identity. The shah’s son went by the honorific Aryamehr, or “light of the Aryans”; while the name might sound antique, it was an innovation meant to remind Iranians of their roots, to restore the dignity of the concept of a specifically Iranian, rather than Islamic, government.

The shah’s regime represented a step forward for Iran in many ways, but at the same time, Pahlavi’s secular and authoritarian rule alienated the country’s more religious current. In 1971, the Pahlavi government spent vast amounts of time and money to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian Empire founded by Cyrus the Great. It was a lavish affair, with food catered from Paris and giant tents equipped with the latest technology. The event was broadcast on international television. As the shah paraded his wealth and lineage in front of the world, some Iranians grew angry: the religious right called the celebration “The Devil’s Festival,” Shiite clergy and the religious faithful were marginalized by the shah’s secular regime, while many leftists in Iran protested the methods of the shah’s secret police and what they saw as the increasingly repressive tone of political discourse. The Islamic Revolution of 1979, which installed the powerful yet polarizing Khomeini as supreme leader, was a new and different articulation of Iranian identity.

Khomeini’s claim to rule was based on his interpretation of the concept of “the guardianship of the jurists,” a Shiite doctrine articulated in the late nineteenth century which gave varying degrees of civil authority to religious scholars trained in Shiite Islamic law. Khomeini drastically expanded popular understanding of the doctrine, enforcing his own interpretation of “guardianship,” and giving himself, as the country’s premier religious leader, unchecked authority over Iran’s political affairs.

When the Islamic Revolution of Iran replaced the shah’s elegant but fallen regime, some Iranians rejoiced at the prospect of Iran’s resurgence as an Islamic power. Others dreaded a move that they felt would divorce Iran from the rest of the world. Iran’s Islamic Revolution was a worldwide media sensation: in 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini became not only the leader of a nation but TIME magazine’s “Man of the Year” and the singular face of Islamic rule worldwide. While Khomeini’s “guardianship” did not extend politically beyond Iran’s borders, his words and actions sent a message of an ambitious and wide-reaching claim to Islamic leadership; a new caliphate, but with Shiite practice.

Khomeini combined the Persian imperial ambition of the shah with the more recent Shiite authority of his intellectual ancestors in Qom. This was an Iranian empire like no one had ever seen: insular, combative, and eschewing cultural exchange in favor of a claim to universal truth. It took on a pugilist’s stance, not an embracing one. Many Muslims around the world were dismayed by Khomeini’s sudden claim to speak for them and what seemed like callous disregard for other Islamic traditions and ways of life. Muslims who followed theological traditions very different from the Twelvers’ and lived in countries with rulers who were nothing like Khomeini were disturbed to have their religion so closely linked with Khomeini’s image, and to witness Khomeini embrace the role as the supreme leader not just of Iranians but of the entire Islamic world.

In 1980, and after miscalculating the extent of the political struggle that followed Khomeini’s return to Tehran, Saddam Hussein launched his abortive attempt to topple Khomeini. For two years and until Saddam’s troops were pushed back into Iraq, none of the Arab Gulf states supported him. Unfortunately, Khomeini vowed revenge and launched a counterattack on Iraq. He also miscalculated and the Iraqi people, Sunni and Shiite alike, united in opposing Khomeini’s aggression. Only then did the Arab Gulf states come to the aid of Iraq.

Khomeini’s intention may have been to unite Muslims under a single banner, but, like Saddam, the aftermath of his actions thirty years later have only served to further divide the Muslim world.

Today, the lofty beauty of the Pleiades can seem very far indeed from the reality of daily life in Iran. The country is marked not by worldliness or even by religion but by isolation; in contrast to the traveling artists of the Sasanians and the multilingual scholars of the Islamic Golden Age, many famous and well-respected Iranian artists today have trouble even getting on a plane to another country. Khomeini’s imperial ambitions have restored Iran’s Islamic identity, but they have also doomed the country to a cramped and narrow existence. Interaction between Iran and its Muslim neighbors is limited and often hostile. In the aftermath of Khomeini’s death, Iran’s leaders have chosen to expand its nuclear program, a move that further damaged Iran’s relationships with the international community. The sanctions arising from Iranian leaders’ decisions have severely strained the country’s economic and political opportunities and forced its citizens to close themselves off from much of the outside world. And yet clerical authorities in Iran still tend to act as if they lead the Islamic World; issuing ultimatums, intimidating their neighbors, and inciting dissidence and revolution.

Iran has the right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but brinksmanship policies and the construction of secret facilities do nothing to serve the country’s best interests; nor do these policies allay the world’s suspicions. The best way to move forward fairly on this issue is for Iran’s leaders to follow the policy set down by the shah in 1974. The establishment of a Weapons of Mass Destruction free zone in the Middle East will ensure a level playing ground for all nations in the region. Iran’s leaders claim to support the zone. That support should not be by lip service only.

Iranians can be proud of their history and heritage. Arabs have the greatest respect for the faith and culture of Iranians, as well as the indelible Persian contribution to the marvels of Islamic society. But like all worthwhile achievements, Persia’s greatest masterpieces were the product of cooperation and education, of learning from and with people of other backgrounds. Just as Arabs, Africans, Europeans, and Asians continue to be enriched by Persian knowledge and culture, Iran has been greatly enriched by its Arab, Asian, and European partners. Pushing away these interlocutors, dividing Muslims with bombastic claims to religious leadership, threatening their neighbors with false claims to Bahrain, and refusing all rational solutions to the dispute over the Emirati islands, will not restore the former glory of Iran; it will do just the opposite. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei’s meddling in Iraq is the cause of the daily killings and suffering that the Iraqi people are enduring. The situation in Syria, in which the Iranian government has chosen to support the butcher Al-Assad, is a case in point. Ruhollah Khomeini was famous for his claim as the champion of the mustazafin. Today, Khomeini’s successors have chosen to support the oppressor, not the oppressed.

Khomeini wore the black turban that signified his pride in his long and noble Arab lineage. Khamenei, Khatami, and even Nasrallah wear it also. But the Iranian leadership’s meddling in Arab countries is backfiring. Arabs will not be forced to wear a political suit tailored in Washington, London, or Paris. They also reject even the fanciest garb cut by the most skillful tailor in Tehran.

The Iranian leadership has the opportunity to share so much of Iran’s heritage and wisdom with other Muslims. But if they wish to gain the respect of other countries, they must first show respect to the traditions, heritage, and political identity of their peers. The Islamic conversation is richer with the Iranian voice in it—but theirs cannot be the only voice we hear.

A version of this article originally appeared on October 22, 2013. 

Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States and to the United Kingdom, is chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. This essay is adapted from Prince Turki Al-Faisal’s remarks to the National Iranian American Council in Washington, DC, on October 16, 2013.

During the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency, in response to Iranian feelers about opening discussions, the United States decided that there could be no bilateral dialogue with Iran—about cooperating to stem the flow of drugs from Afghanistan, for example—before resolution of issues around Tehran’s nuclear program. Following Hassan Rouhani’s election as president in 2013, the Iranian side took a similar position, saying that priority would go to nuclear issues and that discussion of other matters must await an agreement between Iran and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (P5+1).

For better or worse, the United States and Iran decided to put their bilateral eggs into a very difficult (nuclear) basket. Rather than look at issues where interests could push the two sides toward shared benefit, they made their relationship dependent on finding agreement on a complex issue loaded with technical problems and political symbolism. Now that the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group have reached a historic agreement in Vienna—restricting Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief—can the two countries begin the dialogue they should have started decades ago? If they can, how should they talk, and what should they talk about? The whole relationship remains fragile, and could still wreck itself on the mutual obliviousness, missteps, miscalculations, bad timing, and bad luck that have a way of sabotaging U.S.-Iranian openings.

One of the perverse effects of the long Iranian-American estrangement has been the two sides’ inability to talk about issues that concern both, even when such talks would benefit both. In a reasonable world, American and Iranian officials would have begun talking decades ago about such issues—not as friends but as states with interests. Even after 2009, when President Obama announced his desire for a “new beginning” with Iran based on mutual interests and mutual respect, starting a dialogue proved very difficult.

Why has talking been so hard? I would suggest the following:

—A legacy of mutual mistrust. Each side remains deeply suspicious of the other, and the prevailing attitude is that the other side is devious by nature (“deception is part of the [Iranians’] DNA,” according to one senior American official) and that there is always a hidden and nefarious purpose behind even the seemingly innocuous actions and statements of the other side.

—Fear of the unknown. After more than thirty years of trading insults, threats, and accusations, neither side was capable of doing anything else. Although such exchanges produced no benefit, both sides at least knew how to do them. What they could not do was change the relationship into something more productive. Doing so would have meant venturing into unfamiliar territory.

—Personalities. President Obama’s first term as president coincided with much of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s second term. The latter, thanks to his dubious reelection in 2009 and his thoughtless rhetoric, had become part of the problem between the two countries. By 2010, anything—reasonable or unreasonable—associated with Ahmadinejad had become poisonous in Washington. People simply stopped listening.

—Domestic politics. The Islamic Republic was born and shaped in an atmosphere of virulent anti-Americanism and its survival has depended on keeping the political pot boiling with wars, crises, and turmoil. Although Iran’s issues are not central to domestic U.S. political dialogue, among certain groups they evoke a powerful negative response. When necessary, Iran’s past misdeeds and Ahmadinejad’s provocative rhetoric will reinforce the Islamic Republic’s image as a center of terrorism, violence, religious bigotry, and oppression. Anyone advocating changing Washington’s confrontational approach is called naïve, delusional, and worse.

As the United States and Iran explore areas of cooperation and talk about issues such as Afghanistan, narcotics trafficking, the environment, and public health, they also need to deal with the base legacy issue: trust and mistrust. If we disregard this issue, the “ghosts of history” will haunt the effort and cripple efforts to change how the parties deal with each other. In 2012, for example, when sailors from the American destroyer USS Kidd rescued Iranian fishermen from Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea, the Iranian government’s public response was both incoherent and ungracious. In the prevailing toxic atmosphere, a simple “thank you” was apparently more than the system could bear.

As long as we ignore the ghosts, the whole process will remain fragile, and any ill-considered statement or action will send the two sides back into the futile arena of hostility. We cannot undo the damaging acts and statements of the past decades; but we can at least recognize them and limit the harm they do.

The parties must take constructive steps. The Islamic Republic needs to renounce and distance itself from the U.S. embassy hostage taking of 1979–81. Possible measures include:

—Quietly removing former hostage takers from key roles in the administration.

—Ending or limiting the annual demonstrations commemorating the events of November 4, 1979. (President Mohammad Khatami did so during his time in office.)

—Making some gesture toward the former American hostages or their families.

—Ensuring security for future visiting or resident American officials.

The Islamic Republic should cooperate with investigations into acts of terrorism in Germany, Argentina, Washington, and elsewhere that allegedly involved Iranian agents. Tehran should return Dawud Salahuddin, the alleged assassin of Iranian dissident Ali Akbar Tabatabai in Maryland in 1980, to American officials.

The Islamic Republic should ease conditions of those American (and dual-national) citizens it has detained without due process or trial. The Islamic Republic should cooperate with American authorities to determine the whereabouts and status of former FBI employee Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007.

The American government should clarify and demonstrate that it is not in the regime change or overthrow business. Attitudes and suspicions will not change quickly, but practical steps include:

—Limiting the U.S. activities of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), including its payments to former officials to speak and lobby on behalf of the group.

—Ending any activity that would suggest the United States is supporting Iranian ethnic or regional separatist movements.

—Denouncing acts of terrorism that target Iran.

—Controlling language. President Obama’s 2009 statement, for example, that he was speaking to “the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” had a significant impact and signaled a major, if symbolic, change of U.S. policy.

The American government should, like the Iranian side, acknowledge the uglier aspects of its past policies and actions: the 1953 coup d’état against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh; the shooting down of Iran Air 655 by the Aegis cruiser USS Vincennes in 1988; and support both overt and covert for the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq war. If possible, for example, it would be helpful to withdraw or downgrade quietly the medal given to the captain of the USS Vincennes.

Old grievances should not be left to fester, but should be aired via “truth and reconciliation” mechanisms, such as scholarly conferences, neutral investigations, and meetings of retired former rivals. If his health permits, former President Jimmy Carter should visit Iran (just as former President Khatami has visited the United States).

Both sides should also acknowledge the positives in the relationship: the contribution of Iranian-Americans to U.S. science, culture, and the economy; the American scholars who have taught Persian language and history to American students; American support for Iran’s struggle for pride and independence, including the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11 and the Azerbaijan crisis of 1945–46; and American mediation during the oil nationalization dispute of 1951–53.

For effective talks, it is important to get the basics right. These principles should help us keep our footing on the uncertain ground we will have to traverse:

—Move carefully. Pay homage to the “ghosts in the room” that haunt the relationship. Avoid overreach. Grand gestures will be misread and seen as threatening.

—Respect the power of symbolism. Handshakes, telephone calls, civil encounters, all carry enormous symbolic value, whatever the substance.

—Respect the importance of words and concepts. For the Iranian side, concepts of “justice,” “rights,” “mutual respect”—for historical and religious reasons—carry enormous importance. Avoid condescending phrases such as “you might not understand…” and “change their behavior,” which belie professions of mutual respect.

—Keep as much as possible out of the public realm and the media. Public exchanges encourage the most extreme positions involving phrases like “not one inch” and “never.”

The two sides should create channels and mechanisms beginning with the assumption that if they talk instead of shouting at each other, the sky will not fall. In creating channels for dialogue, both sides should work quietly and avoid the message that anyone is doing anyone a favor.

The U.S. should end its “no-contact” policy with Iranian officials, a relic of the era when Americans and “Chicoms” avoided each other. American and Iranian representatives everywhere should be able to talk.

There should be regular dialogue at the highest-possible level that allows for private discussions. There should also be regular meetings of experts.

The United States and Iran should send official delegations to participate in conferences in each other’s country.

Washington should ease travel restrictions on members of Iran’s United Nations mission in New York.

In conducting political dialogue, both sides must overcome the fear that “if we propose X or say yes to Y, we’ll look weak.” As in any relationship, the two sides should recognize that some interests clash and others coincide. Where they clash, the emphasis should be on avoiding violence and recognizing that the other side is not going to change its policies simply because “we” wish it to. In this area, for example, it would be useful to establish a diplomatic and military hotline between the two capitals, and create mechanisms for avoiding incidents at sea or in the air in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Doing so will require a new level of professionalism from Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval units.

Where interests coincide, the parties should explore the possibilities for joint action. Iran and the United States cooperated effectively during the 2001–02 talks on Afghanistan, but that cooperation vanished in the wake of President George W. Bush’s 2002 “Axis of Evil” speech. The United States needs to recognize that Iran can be part of solutions to crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Although interests may not be identical, there are enough shared goals—such as countering extremist groups like the Taliban and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and preventing the splintering of Iraq and Syria—to justify regular consultation between military and civilian officials.

In the past, the Iranian side has deflected requests for consultations by suggesting they be held in Tehran. Washington should now be ready to call the Iranians on these suggestions, and explore where the process leads.

Some ideas about the agenda for talks:

—Technical Assistance. Make the rain fall up. There needs to be mutual benefit. Rather than duplicate the old pattern of “the U.S. gives and Iran receives,” we should seek those areas in which Americans can benefit from particular Iranian expertise. An example is the Mississippi Delta medical project, which has profited from the experience of Iran’s khaneh-ye-behdasht (rural health house) project to deliver primary health care to one of America’s poorest regions. Another possibility is that American medical professionals could benefit from Iranian expertise in treating victims of poison gas, an area in which the U.S. side has little experience.

—Exchanges. There is likely to be a huge demand for Iranians to study in the United States in engineering, health, petroleum, computers, and so on. Barriers such as a visa and security clearance systems from hell and financial restrictions should come down. The United States should no longer treat Iranian grandmothers as security threats. Americans should be able to teach, and pursue studies and research in Iran.

We should speed up the pace and numbers of exchanges of educators, writers, artists, journalists, filmmakers, athletes, musicians, religious leaders, and scholars. The United States should reopen the American Institute for Iranian Studies in Tehran. America should explore ways of restarting the Fulbright program both for teaching and research.

The United States should institute exchanges outside of the federal executive branch by sending bipartisan delegations from Congress and from state and local governments.

—Representation and Properties. As part of the official dialogue, both sides should upgrade their representation in the other’s capital. American and Iranian diplomatic personnel should staff existing interest sections in Tehran and Washington respectively.

Beyond issues of representation, the two sides should address the question of diplomatic properties. Both hold valuable assets in Washington and Tehran. If the United States ever does open an office in Tehran, there may be too many evil spirits in the old embassy buildings. A new relationship needs an exorcism, or better, a new start in a place free of bad memories.

—Petroleum. By all accounts, Iran’s petroleum industry is aging and in need of investment. Investment plans were shelved after the revolution and the oil income, with minimum investment, went to immediate needs of food and munitions. U.S. firms and U.S. technology have a major opportunity to participate in modernizing Iran’s oil industry if Iran makes the necessary investment decisions.

Easing restrictions would also open possibilities for energy cooperation with Persian Gulf neighbors and with U.S. firms’ participation, such as reviving the Sirri-Dubai gas project that was stopped by U.S. congressional action in 1994.

—Civil Aviation. A settlement would open possibilities for Iran to modernize its aging fleet of Boeing civil aircraft and to buy replacement parts for its Airbuses. This area could prove difficult, however, if Iran uses civilian aircraft to reinforce its allies in Syria and Lebanon.

—Terrorism. A difficult issue. In this area, the best we may get is to “agree to disagree.” No one is going to admit wrongdoing. Each side will claim that it has been the victim of terrorism and will hint that the other side was responsible in some way. We should not let exchanges descend into public confrontation and trading accusations. Perhaps the best way of dealing with the issue in the near term is to create neutral “commissions” to look into complaints. The tone of communications will be crucial here, as we saw in the fiasco of the accusatory letter President Bill Clinton sent to Khatami in 1999—inviting better relations while accusing the Iranians of a terrorist strike on Americans in Saudi Arabia.

—Finishing the Hague Tribunal. The Hague tribunal, set up in the wake of the Algiers Accords of 1981, should finish its work. Thirty-four years is more than enough time. Most of the remaining cases reportedly involve cancelled U.S. military sales and military materiel paid for but never delivered to Iran. While Iran is not going to get the original military equipment it ordered, there should be a settlement that delivers either the blocked funds or some civilian equipment of equal value.

Good nuclear deal or bad nuclear deal, in the last two years the United States and Iran have traveled far beyond their long and futile impasse. A three-decade freeze in relations is beginning to break. Rather than trade insults, accusations, and threats, American and Iranian officials now hold meetings they describe as “productive” and “positive,” adjectives unheard for thirty-six years. The sources of mistrust and dislike remain and will be overcome only with patience and forbearance on both sides. The unfortunate history of the last fifty years cannot be undone. But it can be acknowledged and balanced against current interests that outweigh the need to repeat endlessly empty slogans and lists of grievances both real and imagined.

A version of this article originally appeared on July 14, 2015.

John Limbert is the Class of 1955 Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. During a thirty-four-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, he served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran from 2009 to 2010, and as ambassador to Mauritania between 2000 and 2003. From 1979 to 1981, Limbert was among fifty-two Americans held hostage after the seizure of the U.S embassy in Tehran. He is the author of Iran: At War with History, Shiraz in the Age of Hafez, and Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the other negotiators from the P5+1 (permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) have framed the nuclear deal with Iran as a necessary measure to inhibit Iran’s ability to build a nuclear arsenal or quickly reach nuclear weapons breakout capacity. Arab leaders, members of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), support nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Consequently, in principle, they would support any technically sound agreement. Yet, there is profound concern palpitating the region and for good reason.

The agreement is far from sufficient in dealing with the Middle East’s nuclear issues. It delays, but does not close the door on, potential Iranian breakout. Furthermore, the agreement completely ignores the nuclear program in Israel, the only non-NPT party in the Middle East. Equally disconcerting is that the “let’s be realistic” approach adopted in justifying the agreement is testimony to a continuing and dangerous policy of nuclear nonproliferation procrastination and exceptionalism in the Middle East, which exacerbates and perpetuates security asymmetries. This procrastination in the short run may respond to some extra-regional, but not Arab, security concerns and is ultimately detrimental to all.

The agreement with Iran has the potential to become a major diplomatic accomplishment or a historic strategic miscalculation, exacerbating an already tumultuous security paradigm. If fully implemented and enforced, the specific measures outlined—such as major reductions in the number of Iran’s centrifuges and its stockpile of nuclear materials—would substantially curtail Iran’s nuclear capacity to weaponize for the stipulated fifteen-year period.

However, there are justifiable concerns about what Iran may do at the conclusion of this period, when its nuclear program is no longer bound by the terms of an agreement. It is noteworthy that all Arab countries are parties to the NPT and have relatively limited peaceful nuclear programs. The agreement’s enforcement period provides time for policy change in Iran, where changing political dynamics and cleavages have been so clearly displayed in the 2009 election protests and the differing approaches of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the incumbent Hassan Rouhani. Nonetheless, the complexities of Middle East dynamics augur against any consensus among analysts in projecting where the region or Iran will be in the future.

There is no basis upon which to assume that the risk of nuclear proliferation in the region will have subsided at the conclusion of the agreement with Iran. In fact, it is more likely that the asymmetries between the capacities of Arab versus non-Arab states in the region will have increased. Israel, a non-NPT party presumed to have nuclear weapons and with confirmed nuclear technology and capacity, would remain beyond any regional or international nonproliferation effort. Iran, albeit an NPT party, would then have the right to enrich and repossess nuclear material, pursuant to the NPT itself (Article 4, Paragraph 1), thus creating an asymmetry in breakout time if it decides to weaponize. Such asymmetry could spark an all-consuming and destabilizing regional war that would intensify international security concerns.

A third point of concern, particularly for the majority of the Arab Gulf states, is how Iran will use the expected enhanced international and regional engagement after the removal of sanctions. Many Arab states wonder whether Iran will embark on a more aggressive, assertive regional foreign policy, emboldened by its reacceptance into the international community. Iran’s evident and openly pronounced influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen is a case in point.

In addition to these intra-regional concerns, the Arab states are equally uncomfortable toward U.S. policies in the Middle East, particularly regarding present and future security policies in the Arab Gulf region. Consequently, offering a U.S. nuclear umbrella or sophisticated hardware and defense systems will not suffice or respond to Arab concerns. Nor will tactical responses—such as a more assertive United States in Syria or more U.S. support in Yemen. Neither of these approaches will respond adequately to Arab concerns over and above what the Arabs received in security assurances and guarantees from President Barack Obama at Camp David, and the Arabs accepting them as enough would be a major mistake.

I am not suggesting that the United States drop the agreement or that Iran should be held to a higher standard than others. However, dealing with nuclear nonproliferation in the Middle East should not be a choice between “realism” and “nothing at all.” It requires a principled determination to deal with nuclear nonproliferation in the region as a whole, the courage of conviction to address these issues throughout the region without prejudice or exception, and the maturity and wisdom to accept concrete steps in an incremental process, provided they are within a serious, transparent, and publicly announced strategy.

I believe this can be done by engaging simultaneously on the following tracks to recalibrate the regional political balance:

1. Arab countries need to be more forceful in efforts to create a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East before the fifteen-year termination of the Iran nuclear deal. These efforts would provide not only for a continuous Iranian commitment in this regard, but would also include the Israeli program and resolve the problem of deepening security asymmetries.

2. The international community, particularly the United States, must engage Israel in a more rigorous effort to have it revisit the logic of its nuclear program. One wonders how George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn can initiate the debate about the utility of nuclear weapons for the United States, yet the issue cannot be raised with Israel.

3. Arab countries—and all members to the NPT—should insist on their right to enrich and reprocess nuclear material under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, even if they do not all have an intention to do so in the near future.

4. Arab countries should also agree on the establishment of a regional nuclear fuel bank under international safeguards.

5. Arab states should take the initiative in providing political solutions to regional hotbeds, particularly Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Use of force is a legitimate means; it is not, however, an end in itself.

If Iran shifts its stance toward more constructive foreign policy, the Arab World should engage it in a regional dialogue about the future of the Middle East. The dialogue would then extend to Israel, as stipulated in the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. Needless to say, this dialogue would require more intensive efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of a two-state solution, albeit the prospects for success are not promising.

A version of this article originally appeared on The Atlantic Council’s MENASource blog.

Nabil Fahmy, a former foreign minister of Egypt, is dean of the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo.

Most of the debate in the West on the Iran nuclear deal has focused on questions related to Western security interests in the Middle East. Will a deal ultimately prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? Will it significantly inhibit a nuclear arms race in the region? How will Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Countries be affected, and to what extent will Iran be able to expand its regional influence after the lifting of sanctions? Almost ignored in this discussion, however, are the effects that a nuclear accord might have on internal Iranian politics and society. Specifically, how might a final nuclear agreement between Iran and the West influence the prospects for democracy and democratization within the Islamic Republic?

June 2009 is a key reference point in the struggle for democracy within Iran. Fearing a return of the reformists to power, the Iranian regime falsified the presidential election results that would have removed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the presidency. As a result, a nonviolent mini-revolt known as the Green Movement demanded a vote recount, greater political transparency, and more broadly, the democratization of Iran. Protests rocked the country for six months before they were violently suppressed. According to the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Green Movement posed a greater threat to the internal stability of the Islamic Republic than the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

As a result of this event, Iran’s post-revolutionary social contract lay in tatters. Until this point, Iran’s clerical leaders were able to carefully manage public demands for political change and factional rivalry via an electoral process that though never “free” was perceived to be “fair,” in the sense that the integrity of the ballot box was guaranteed. After the stolen election of 2009 and the ensuing crackdown, this consensus no longer existed. The base of support of the Islamic Republic narrowed considerably as a deep crisis of political legitimacy set in.

Six years have passed, however, since this critical moment in Iran’s post-revolutionary history. While the legacy of the Green Movement continues to haunt the Islamic Republic, in recent years a set of political developments, at the international, regional, and domestic levels, have coalesced to limit the prospects for political change and to bolster authoritarianism in Iran. Collectively, these developments have closed the door for democratization in the short term. If the social and political conditions that produced them were to change, however, these doors to democratization could be reopened.

At the international level, Iran’s dispute with the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany (P5+1) has negatively affected the prospects for democracy in several ways. The broad sanctions placed on Iran have had a greater impact on ordinary Iranians than they have had on the regime. In particular, civil society and the middle class, which forms the core support base for the democratic opposition, have borne the brunt of Iran’s collapsing economy. Rather than focus on political organizing, a focus on simple survival has taken priority. It is precisely for this reason that some of the most vociferous defenders of a nuclear deal with the West are Iranian civil society and human rights activists.

Secondly, Iran’s ruling oligarchy has successfully deployed a nationalist narrative to justify its nuclear policy internally. Tensions with the West are portrayed through the long history of foreign intervention in Iran. Iranians have been told by their rulers that once again Western powers are bullying Iran, threatening to bomb them, and applying a double standard in attempting to dictate Iran’s internal energy policy. These arguments have resonated across the ideological spectrum. Today many secular Iranians who wouldn’t ordinarily support the Islamic Republic make an exception when comes the nuclear impasse with the West for reasons of national pride.

Thus, by casting itself as the defender of national sovereignty, Iran’s leadership has benefited from the nuclear standoff with the West. After a nuclear agreement, the manipulation of this issue to boost the regime’s legitimacy will be a far more difficult task. This point has been indirectly acknowledged by the editor of Shargh, a leading reformist newspaper, who has noted that if “there’s less tension internationally, there’ll be more stability internally,” implying that a nuclear deal would help create better social conditions for democratization.

A set of regional events has also indirectly bolstered authoritarianism in Iran. The post-Arab Spring regional chaos, marked by sectarianism, the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the spread of Salafi-jihadism, and the collapse of Libya, Syria, Iraq, and now Yemen, have scared Iranians away from demanding political change. As one Iranian blogger has noted, “People now think twice about taking action to change the system because they know change might result in a disaster.”

These regional events have reinforced a preexisting Iranian disdain for violence and revolutionary change. Iranian political culture has been deeply scarred by the upheavals of the 1979 revolution, the bloody Iran-Iraq war, and the post-September 11, 2001, chaos that engulfed neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the American occupations. Prominent reformist journalist and Green Movement supporter Saeed Leylaz, who was sentenced to prison after the 2009 events, aptly summarizes how recent regional chaos has reduced demands for political change. Reflecting the new temper among Iranian democrats, he now takes the position that “if we want to emphasize our own points of view over those of our competitors within the system, the result will be another Syria.”

All of this has shaped domestic Iranian politics in negative ways for democratization. In 2015, several trends are now discernible. The first trend is unrelenting state repression. The crackdown that followed Green Movement protests has been ongoing and arguably the level of suppression is greater today than it was in 2009. The hardline-controlled Iranian judiciary continues to hand out heavy sentences to civil society activists; censorship and executions are at record levels; and women and minorities are subject to ongoing harassment, marginalization, and discrimination. In a press conference that coincided with the second anniversary of his election, President Hassan Rouhani admitted that since coming to power there has been “little opening” for advancing his campaign promise to increase social and political freedoms. He blamed rightwing “pressure groups” for this, while reminding his supporters to be patient because “changes cannot take place overnight.”

The second trend pertains to the ongoing and deepening crisis of legitimacy facing the Islamic Republic. This is the Iranian regime’s Achilles’ heel. While foreign crises help direct attention away from it, this dominant feature of Iranian politics fundamentally shapes state-society relations today.

Evidence of this legitimation crisis is abundant. For example, in February, the Iranian judiciary suddenly banned Iranian media from publishing comments by or images of former reformist President Mohammad Khatami. Why a two-time president who occupied the second-highest office in the country for eight years suddenly posed a threat to political order is a revealing question. Part of the answer lies in the fact that as a reformist politician and Green Movement supporter, Khatami remains a popular and influential figure. With parliamentary elections scheduled for 2016, Iran’s clerical elite are starting to panic. There is great fear that the control of the parliament could be lost to reformist parties. In fact, Ali Saeedi, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s special representative to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, openly acknowledged this fear in a recent speech. Likewise, the head of the powerful Guardian Council, Ahmad Jannati, went a step further and announced that when it comes to the ideological screening of candidates for parliament, “those who have an (ideological) background that is unknown and after investigation this still remains unclear, the Guardian Council does not have the right to approve them.” In other words, there is an assumption that every Iranian citizen is guilty (of regime disloyalty) until proven innocent.

At the level of society, there is irrefutable evidence of Iranians displaying behaviors and pursuing lifestyles that explicitly reject the values and norms of the Islamic Republic. Widespread secularization exists, especially among young people and among the sizable urban and middle classes. This is most visible in terms of avoiding the key Islamic rituals of prayer and fasting. The Ministry of Health recently announced that 150 alcohol treatment centers would be opening in Iran in response to a growing societal epidemic. This is noteworthy because the Islamic Republic officially bans the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol. After the 1979 revolution, there was a major attempt to construct a new Iranian Muslim citizen that rejected Western and secular values. The colossal failure of this project is hard to miss.

Even the supreme leader has publicly acknowledged that the Islamic Republic faces a crisis of legitimacy. During the last presidential election, fearing a low voter turnout, he appealed to Iranians to turn up at the ballot box including those who “for whatever reason [do] not support the regime of the Islamic Republic.” He instead appealed to their sense of (secular) nationalism, arguing that a high voter turnout would send a strong message to Iran’s enemies. In a more recent speech on the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader expressed a fear of liberal values penetrating Iran. He specifically chastised those who were distorting Khomeini’s legacy by claiming he was “liberal-minded, which under no conditions existed in his political, intellectual, and cultural behavior.”

A nuclear deal could help put Iran back on the road to democratization. One of the most controversial aspects of the agreement is the sunset clause. This is the provision that states that for fifteen years Iran will have a limited nuclear program under strict international inspection but after this time period, these restrictions will be lifted. Western critics have pointed to this clause to argue that this “paves Iran’s path to the bomb”—all the country has to do is wait out the clock. Ignored in this debate, however, is that in the coming fifteen years, the Islamic Republic will face increasing challenges from within society that will affect its future political stability and possibly its political trajectory.

The biggest challenge will be the likely death of the supreme leader, who turned 76 last July. Given the enormous power his office wields and the fact there is no senior cleric with sufficient political and religious authority that can replace him, the inevitable departure of Ali Khamenei will produce an enormous internal crisis for the Islamic Republic. When this will happen and how it might play out is unknown, but Khamenei’s passing will create a unique crisis of governance that democratic forces will be able to exploit.

Thus, over the medium term, Iran’s democratic prospects seem brighter. Not only is there a long tradition of democratic activism stretching back to over one hundred years, but the preconditions for democracy that social scientists generally agree upon already exist in Iran. To wit: high levels of socioeconomic modernization (literacy, mass communications, and a modern economy), a suitable class structure (the existence of a sizable middle class), and a proper political culture (norms, habits, and values that are democracy-enhancing). Equally important are the demographic numbers that are favorable to democratization. Specifically, young people now constitute the majority of Iran’s population. They are highly educated, globally connected, politically secular, and deeply alienated from Islamist rule, and what’s more, they desire substantive gradual, nonviolent political change.

A version of this article originally appeared on July 7, 2015. 

Nader Hashemi is an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics and director of the Center for Middle East Studies in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies, and co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future and, most recently, The Syria Dilemma. On Twitter: @naderalihashemi.

Even before the dramatic announcement of a final nuclear deal between Iran and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) in Vienna, speculation began about the economic bonanza that could result from the lifting of sanctions against Iran and its reintegration into the global market.

In post-sanctions Iran, reinvigorated oil revenues, a rising middle class of consumers with a taste for global brands, and an already growing tourism industry are predicted to create major moneymaking opportunities for European and North American companies seeking to do business in the Islamic Republic. With the country’s vast natural resources and educated population of nearly eighty million, it is no surprise that the Middle East’s last untapped market has foreign investors salivating over potential profits.

Amid all the excitement over the Iran negotiations, there was scant discussion of Iran’s dismal human rights record. The lifting of sanctions presents an opportunity not only for big profits, but gains in the country’s human rights standards. Foreign corporations, and the governments that regulate their activities both at home and abroad, stand to play a major role in attaching human rights norms to the renewal of economic ties.

Over the past decade, the application of human rights standards to business has increased in global importance, starting in 2005 with the appointment of a United Nations expert on business and human rights, and a resulting framework of guiding principles. While the initial focus of this growing practice within international law was to encourage state accountability for human rights violations committed by (third party) private actors, the question of what responsibilities corporations have in upholding these same standards has also become increasingly important.

As a chronic human rights abuser, Iran has no shortage of violations that potential investors and governments should be aware of. Among the problems that stand out are a soaring execution rate, discriminatory laws against women, persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, the targeting of journalists and dissidents, and the dismantling of labor unions.

While the terms of the nuclear deal do not tie human rights reform to the lifting of sanctions, the opportunity to do so in another way remains. Corporate actors looking to invest in the country can be as responsible for encouraging and upholding human rights as governments. And governments, ultimately charged with the monitoring and oversight of corporate actors under their jurisdiction, should establish and enforce the regulation needed for model corporate behavior.

As a start, foreign investors looking to partner on tourism ventures can insist that any business relationship be conditioned on gender parity in the workplace. This can counter recent initiatives, such as the Reducing Women’s Work Hours Bill (introduced by the outgoing Ahmadinejad administration and passed by parliament in late 2014), aimed at curtailing women’s participation in the workforce.

Companies seeking to invest in Iran’s oil and gas sector could qualify such deals on stringent environmental and labor standards. Investors exploring the potential for construction of hotels, shopping malls, and retail chains should link their investment to better rights protection for Afghan refugees, who are often tasked with this manual labor. And companies seeking to enter Iran’s telecommunications market must be apprised of the state’s monitoring of communications and use of this information in the repression of its citizenry, before making any decision to partner in this sector.

Just as the startup scene in Iran is being lauded as a hub of innovation and source of potential solutions to social and economic problems in the country, big business should lead by tethering their investment to human rights standards that will set the tone for socially responsible investment in a post-deal Iran. Some states, like Namibia, Brazil, and Japan, have already taken the initiative by incorporating discussion of Iran’s adherence to human rights standards in ongoing bilateral talks concerning increased business and trade ties, and advising corporate actors within their jurisdictions accordingly.

In a world where corporations regularly turn a blind eye to state surveillance and other human rights violations, such talk might sound overly idealistic. But there are cases where the reintegration of a country’s economy into the global market has gone hand-in-hand with (relative) progress in human rights. A closed and oppressive regime, the Burmese junta moved toward democratic and social reforms on the promise of renewed business ties with the outside world. The result has been not only economic, but political liberalization. In Iran, where a corrupt kleptocracy of clerics and militias controls much of the economy, the promise of lucrative trade with the West might, ironically, provide incentives for political reform.

Aside from the human rights implications, enforcing market-wide standards is also good business: studies show that global buyers are becoming more mindful of their consumerism, and are willing to pay more for products and services provided by companies that are committed to positive social and environmental impact.

Many argue that doing any business with Iran will extend the lifeline of a repressive political regime. The removal of sanctions will effectively eliminate the legal tools for preventing investment in Iranian businesses. The best way forward is for both corporate actors and governments to link human rights reforms with the promise of renewed economic ties with the Islamic Republic.

A version of this article originally appeared on July 19, 2015.

Gissou Nia is a human rights lawyer who most recently served as deputy director at the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, and prior to that as the executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. She has also worked on war crimes and crimes against humanity trials at the International Criminal Court and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She has contributed to the Huffington Post, Foreign Policy, and CNN. On Twitter: @GissouNia.

The deal to regulate Iran’s nuclear program is a significant political success for the Iranian regime. It will dramatically ease sanctions against the country, and gradually allow Iran access to some $100 billion in frozen financial assets. And, it demonstrates the Iranian regime’s ability to successfully negotiate a long, complicated, and fraught process with Western powers and arrive at a relatively favorable result. Yet, the deal imposes an acute dilemma on the regime.

The deal presents Iran with a historic opportunity to alter its regional and international positioning of the last thirty-five years. Iran can now initiate a dialogue with the West with the objective of arriving at a new relationship between the two whereby their interests in the region do not collide.

The case is strong on both sides. For the West, Sunni militant Islamism is now the primary threat emanating from the Middle East. Iran is the sole Middle Eastern country with the military, intelligence, logistical resources, and, crucially, the willingness to commit ground forces in battles against groups such as Jabhat Al-Nusra, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and others (and with a record of doing so). Also from a Western perspective, Iran could be a stabilizing force in potentially explosive countries, not only Iraq but also Lebanon.

Economically, Iranian and Western interests could be aligned. Oil contributes less than 40 percent of Iran’s gross domestic product. Reasonably priced oil will not be detrimental to Iran, provided that the country benefits from favorable trade agreements.

A rapprochement does not necessarily fly in the face of Western values. Despite its theological political system, Iran is by far more democratic than almost all Western allies in the Middle East. Plus, Iran is an old, rich, and highly sophisticated civilization; it has the cultural aspects that appeal to, resonate with, and get the respect of the West.

From Iran’s perspective, a rapprochement with the West presents the country with potentially lucrative economic opportunities. In addition to the obvious benefits, this will be of high value to the regime. The current Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, has managed to absorb some of the anger that his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had stirred among wide groups of the country’s upper middle class. And yet, many Iranian strategists know that the dissatisfaction that young compatriots have with the regime has not subsided. They remember that only six years ago, Tehran witnessed major demonstrations that seemed the seed of an uprising. Significant economic improvements could be highly beneficial to the stability of the Islamic Republic, especially given the looming moment of transition, as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 76, leaves the scene.

Strategically, a rapprochement with the West would inevitably lessen the importance of the West’s (and especially America’s) alliance with the Gulf states. This would give Iran a much wider manuevering space in the Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean. Also from the Iranian perspective, there are soft factors that make such a rapprochement appealing. Like all old nations with illustrious histories, Iran craves respect, not from the countries it sees as lesser, “nouveau riche” ones, but from those it deems its peers, the big Western nations.

Despite all of these reasons, a rapprochement with the West would pose an excruciating dilemma for the regime. Iran’s 1979 revolution, the legitimacy basis and anchor for the current regime, was more than a populist uprising against an oppressive king, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Despite its different constituents, the revolution quickly gave rise to a colossal social movement that came under the overarching umbrella of the political project that Ayatollah Khomeini had envisaged. This project was not particularly focused on the shah; Khomeini was also equally indifferent toward the wants of his people; he was almost dismissive of the social and economic needs that many observers believed were the real triggers of the Iranian revolution. For Khomeini, the shah was a minor figure in a “corrupt global power structure” led by the United States (“the Great Satan”) and perpetuated by “the sinful West.” In his view, the revolution was a religious wave emanating from the heartland of Islamic Shiism, heralding a return to Islamic rule as he understood—and defined—it. That wave was supposed to reach Shiite-majority Iraq, the entire Gulf, and to extend to parts of the eastern Mediterranean, the home of large Shiite communities. And for a moment, in the early 1980s, Khomeini even thought that his Islamic model could transcend Shiite Islam and inspire new thinking in major Sunni Muslim countries such as Egypt, one that could inspire other Islamic revolutions. Khomeini’s project was not about local or regional politics. He believed he was resuscitating the one true form of governance anchored on the one true legitimacy, the one mandated by God.

Khomeini also shunned Persianness. For him, Iran was first and foremost an Islamic country. Its specific cultural features (language, arts, crafts, cuisine, and crucially Iranians’ veneration of their rich history) were at best marginal ornaments around the country’s defining identity: Islamism, at worst falls into sinfulness that ought to be corrected. Focusing on Islamism and eschewing Persianness gradually led to a distorted view of Iran’s history and regional positioning: undermining the cultural factors that underpinned its centuries-old intellectual hegemony over its immediate neighborhood and accentuating its religious and ideological worldview.

In this view, the Islamic Republic’s support for groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, stance against the United States and Israel, condescension toward modern Western modes of thinking and lifestyles, and antagonism against the Arab monarchies of the Gulf, do not just stem from political calculations or strategic objectives and interests. They are rooted in the intellectual foundations upon which the current Iranian political structure was built.

Though some Iranian leaders in the last two decades have tried to instill in the Islamic Republic a more humanistic social contract and worldview, none has ever sought to demolish the foundational principles that Khomeini had erected. In different ways, “reformers” such as Mohammad Khatami, Mehdi Karroubi, and Rouhani, have wanted to evolve the system, widen the interpretation of what an “Islamic Republic” means, and solidify the regime’s legitimacy, particularly after it became clear to them that, three decades after the revolution, demographics and social changes were putting strong pressures on the political structure. This means that the division within Iran’s political elite between “hardliners” and “reformers” is not about the nature of the state, its position in the world, and its grand objectives; it is primarily about the permissible degrees of pushing the boundaries that Khomeini had laid down.

A rapprochement with the West and pursuing a new regional positioning for Iran, one in which its interests are aligned with the West’s, would be tantamount to removing the pillars upon which the Islamic Republic has relied for over three decades. Even if the strategic and internal political cases for that shift of strategy and positioning are compelling, it would take a totally different worldview and a dramatically charismatic set of leaders to affect that change. None of these factors exist today within the Iranian leadership.

Such a shift would also be very painful. The vast majority of this generation of Iranian leaders look to Khomeini as more than just a revolutionary leader who created the regime they preside over. For them, Khomeini was the man who rejuvenated Shiite Islamism after at least two centuries of political and social marginalization. He was the man who came to represent the will and aspirations of tens of millions of Shiites, in and outside Iran. To the Islamic Republic of Iran, Khomeini is not the country’s George Washington but the Iranian Saint Peter. Casting aside his views as obsolete and deviating from his legacy and policies would transcend the realm of political and strategic thinking. For many influential Iranian decision-makers this would be tantamount to betraying their own faith, what they sincerely believe is God’s will.

Iran’s classic mercantile mentality could prevail. Many Iranian decision-makers might try to leverage the opportunities that the deal offers, without deviating from the “righteous path” they believe Khomeini put them on. That will mean taking half measures: cooperating with the West in Iraq and Afghanistan, against militant Sunni Islamism, and in some trade agreements, while at the same time continuing to support “resistance groups” such as Hezbollah and Hamas and projecting Iran as a regional Shiite power. As it happens in the bazaars of Shiraz and Esfahan, half measures conclude some transactions; traders return home quite happy with the day’s profits. But half measures hardly make a mere trader a shabandar: a chief merchant who secures his political legitimacy over trade in a region and thereby acquires colossal wealth and prestige.

It might take a new cadre of leaders in the Iranian political structure to see that Khomeini’s legacy has brought them nowhere. Some might understand that the anger that triggered the 2009 demonstrations remains. And that military and political successes in troubled countries such as Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq do not assuage the frustrations of the groups with the greatest potential in Iranian society.

The deal offers Iran a golden opportunity to evolve, with dignity and huge benefits, from the system that has held it down for the last three decades, and shape a new present and future for its society and for itself in the region. But for that to happen, Iran will have to escape the inhibitions of its taboos. So far, its leaders seem neither willing nor able to do that.

A version of this article originally appeared on July 23, 2015.

Tarek Osman is a political economist focused on the Arab World and is the author of Egypt on the Brink. He was the writer and presenter of the BBC’s 2013 radio series “The Making of the Modern Arab World” and the 2015 radio series “Saudi Arabia: Sands of Time.” He is the political counselor for the Arab World at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. On Twitter: @TarekmOsman.

While unprecedented diplomacy has changed the face of United States-Iran relations over the past two years, the opposite has plagued Iranian-Saudi Arabian relations. A diplomacy deficit between the two regional powers has exacerbated volatility across the Middle East. According to a well-connected Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) analyst, President Barack Obama was frank with his Saudi counterparts on this issue, telling them: “We’re solving our problems with Iran. You should do the same.” Instead, misperceptions about Iran’s regional ambitions and its domestic powerbrokers have caused Riyadh’s leaders to shun regional integration and collective security in favor of unnecessary attempts to counter Iranian power.

To hear some Saudis tell it, relations between Tehran and Riyadh were trouble-free until Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in 1979. “After the 1979 revolution, Iran started to interfere in internal Arab affairs of countries around them,” a Saudi official told me at a conference this year. “Before the 1979 revolution, there was no conflict between Sunni and Shia. We want to live in peace and harmony, but Iran will not allow the region to do so.” Putting aside this generous historical interpretation of Iranian-Saudi and Sunni-Shiite relations, Saudi officials routinely emphasize both publicly and privately that Iran should stay out of “Arab affairs.”

This overtly sectarian policy toward Iran (where are the Saudi government protests against Turkey openly intervening in “Arab affairs”?) is at worst racist and at best dishonest. Riyadh’s zero-sum mentality fuels misperceptions that could cause it to miss the best opportunity in over a decade to build durable regional security.

Saudi misperceptions about Iran’s regional ambitions cannot be overstated. “Iran seeks to be a hegemon. This is the real source of instability in the Middle East,” another Saudi official told me. “Iran is trying to occupy Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Yemen. If it truly demonstrates its desire for peaceful relations, we will of course reciprocate—but not until it ceases its occupation of Arab lands.” With the possible exception of Israel, no other country in the world shares Saudi Arabia’s extremist reading of Iran’s regional policy.

From Iran’s perspective, it has long suffered from strategic loneliness because it is a majority Shiite, Persian state in a Middle East dominated by Sunnis and Arabs. It has no obvious regional partners or allies. Despite this, Iran is not striving to become a regional power, as Saudi officials suggest—it is a regional power, based on its size, demographics, resources, and culture alone. From monarchist to mullah, decision-makers in Tehran have believed for decades that Iran is first among equals when it comes to regional security issues.

However, Iran has also learned the hard way that neither hard power nor soft power alone can produce regional acceptance of Iranian power. In the 1970s, the shah understood that conventional military superiority and record oil revenues could not establish a sustainable position as a regional powerbroker. Iran also needed its Arab neighbors to accept Iranian power. To that end, he sought legitimacy in the region by either befriending regional governments or seeking to resolve outstanding issues of tension. The shah succeeded up to a point, settling border problems with Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and improving bilateral relations with Egypt after President Anwar Sadat realigned the country with the Western bloc. Yet, he did not fully gain acceptance of Iran’s regional power status because he neglected soft power: bridging the Sunni-Shiite and Persian-Arab divides.

After the revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic’s leadership recognized the shah’s neglect of soft power and sought to bridge regional divides through political Islam. In doing so, they traded successes and failures with the shah: Iran’s blend of political Islam and anti-imperialism won it valuable support on the Arab street, but simultaneously destroyed relations with many Arab monarchs and strongmen—Saudi Arabia above all else—who feared political Islam more than the shah’s military and economic power. Today, a cornerstone of Iran’s regional power status continues to be its support for Arab and Muslim constituencies that seek to push back against perceived marginalization at home and in the region.

From Palestine to Lebanon, Iraq to Yemen, Iranian support has been directed to ethnic and religious groups whose domestic persecution predates the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iran. Rather than pushing for an overthrow of the existing political systems in these respective countries, Tehran believes it can achieve its strategic objectives by committing varying degrees of money, weapons, intelligence, and political advice to these communities. Contrary to Saudi assertions, Iranian decision-makers do not need to interfere in “Arab affairs” because they know they can outsource the fight to marginalized constituencies who have self-motivating grievances. As Iran’s allies in these respective countries empower themselves domestically, Tehran’s hand is strengthened as it jockeys with Riyadh over regional power.

Iran’s regional power is already a reality. Saudi Arabia fears that Iran’s reintegration into the global political and economic systems will tip the regional balance of power in Tehran’s favor. “Sunni Arab countries do not want to see the emergence of close relations between the U.S. and Iran,” a Saudi official told me. “Saudi Arabia does not want Iran to become a U.S. ally.”

Saudi misperceptions about Iran’s regional policy powerbrokers are no less pronounced. “Divide and conquer is an Iranian strategic approach, so why should we play into Iran’s hands by trying to improve relations?” another Saudi official told me. It would be useless to talk to President Hassan Rouhani or Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, he said, because “they are not the real powerbrokers.” Instead, he believed Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “wield the real power in Iran.” It is frightening for a regional power and a neighboring country to have such a fundamental misunderstanding of decision-making processes within Iran.

Contrary to Saudi assertions, political power in Iran runs through a complex and multilayered structure. Most decisions are made in conjunction with diverse and sometimes competing power centers. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) is responsible for defining the country’s defense and security policies and priorities. In a 2011 book, President Rouhani explains that key decisions are made in a small circle of SNSC members, including mainly Ayatollah Khamenei and the heads of the three branches of government.

The current secretary of Iran’s SNSC, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, is a former defense minister in the Mohammad Khatami administration, an ethnic Arab, and perhaps most importantly, enjoys the confidence of Ayatollah Khamenei. He was appointed Khamenei’s representative on the SNSC in 2013, which should be noteworthy to Saudi Arabia given his demonstrated regional policy preferences: in 2004, he brokered and implemented a security agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and was awarded the Order of Abdulaziz Al-Saud by the late Saudi King Fahd Abdulaziz Al-Saud—the only Iranian minister to ever receive such an award. At that time, Rouhani was Khamenei’s representative on the SNSC, Zarif was Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, and Soleimani had held his position as commander of Iran’s Quds Force for approximately six years.

The apex of Iran’s cordial relations with Saudi Arabia came at a time when the same Iranian officials were driving Tehran’s policy a decade ago. And since late 2013, Shamkhani, Khamenei, Rouhani, Zarif, and Soleimani have once again been working together in an effort to improve ties with Iran’s Arab neighbors. For the past two years, Iran has publicly promoted a narrative that its own national security goals require peace and cooperation with regional powers, which in turn requires a certain degree of accommodation between Iran and the West.

From Palestine to Lebanon, Iraq to Yemen, Iran’s philosophy in the region is that everyone should be included in the process. Even in Syria—the one example where Iran is backing the regime rather than a marginalized minority—Iranian decision-makers have long acknowledged the need for political solutions based on negotiated settlements between domestic political actors and regional powers. It is Saudi Arabia that has rejected such negotiations, instead issuing preconditions to diplomacy and preferring to exclude Iran politically, diplomatically, and militarily.

For its part, Iran has tried to repair relations with Saudi Arabia from the outset of Hassan Rouhani’s presidency. One month after taking office, he called for closer Iranian-Saudi ties, hailed the kingdom as a friend and brother, and said improving relations with neighboring countries is a top priority. Last year, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian travelled to Saudi Arabia to meet with then-Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal. One month later, Zarif took the initiative to visit his Saudi counterpart at the United Nations General Assembly. Zarif again extended an olive branch by traveling to Saudi Arabia for the late King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud’s funeral. According to two European Union officials, Iran has also tried track-two diplomacy efforts in their respective European capitals but Saudi Arabia is not prepared to take them seriously.

Simply put, Tehran’s efforts to repair relations have not borne fruit because Riyadh does not want them to. In the meantime, Iran is unlikely to impose heavy costs on Saudi Arabia for its policies because Iranian decision-makers believe the Saudis are already paying heavy costs for their own mistakes. If Iran takes action against Saudi Arabia, it will only help justify false arguments against Tehran emanating from Riyadh. Perhaps more importantly, Iran’s regional policy powerbrokers will continue to leave the door open for diplomacy because they know that if Iran’s regional power is not accepted by neighboring countries, Iran cannot guarantee its own security.

Saudi Arabia is correct when it points out that regional stability—elusive over the past four years—requires Riyadh’s participation. If the new cast of Saudi characters running the kingdom believes that stability can be achieved without Iran playing an equal role, they are doomed to repeat the ideological mistakes that plagued the region throughout the 1980s, when Iran sought to export its revolution and Saudi Arabia bankrolled Saddam Hussein’s eight-year war against Iran. With a nuclear deal completed, the time is ripe for Saudi Arabia to find a face-saving way to switch gears and reciprocate Iran’s offers of engagement.

Saudi officials told me that a big overture from Iran could help jumpstart a thaw between Tehran and Riyadh, but when I pressed them for specifics, they reverted back to unrealistic talking points: withdrawing Iranian support for Bashar Al-Assad in Syria as a precondition to, rather than an outcome of, negotiations. A more fruitful approach would be quietly commencing high-level diplomacy between the two countries in an effort to accommodate legitimate Iranian security objectives in return for Iranian policy modifications. Trading concessions of equal value can serve as a force for regional stability by breaking down the hostility and misperceptions that paralyze bilateral relations.

For Riyadh, this would include recognition that: one, neither Saudi Arabia nor global powers can contain Iran indefinitely; and two, it can better influence Iran by helping integrate the Islamic Republic into the region’s political and economic structures rather than trying to keep it out. Adopting a policy of integration would better reflect the region’s natural balance, which in turn would make it more stable. Saudi Arabia’s current winner-take-all approach has left it in a weaker position, while its policy of détente changed Iran’s pattern of conduct as recently as 2004. There’s no reason to believe that it will produce different results today.

For its part, Tehran must alleviate Saudi concerns by detailing how its regional ambitions do not, and will not, outstrip its post-sanctions role and resources. Iran should also detail steps to reduce its use of asymmetric warfare as a political tool in the region as Saudi Arabia takes steps to reintegrate the Islamic Republic. Together, these measures will demonstrate Tehran’s commitment to being a regional power that is a force for stability and collective security.

This approach was advocated by Saudi Arabia as recently as 2004. At the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, Saud Al-Faisal announced “an urgent need for a collective effort aimed at developing a new and more solid framework for Gulf security.” He went on to say: “A regional security framework that includes all the countries of the region is the best guarantee for peace and stability in the Gulf. Such a framework should be based on four pillars: the GCC, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran.” He continued, “Iran should play a vital role in maintaining the security of the region. To do so our Iranian friends need to come to terms with the requirements of developing high levels of political, economic, cultural, and security cooperation with their neighbors based on common interests and the mutual refrain from interference in the domestic affairs of others.”

The Iran that Saud Al-Faisal was describing eleven years ago is the Iran of today. Second chances don’t come often. Ending the Iranian-Saudi cold war, and building a collective security framework for the Middle East—one in which security is built and sustained together rather than at the expense of one another—is the only option that has not truly been tried. It is also the option most likely to succeed.

(Author’s note: The conference was held under the Chatham House Rule, which requires that identities of speakers not be revealed. Accordingly, I have not identified speakers by name in this article.)

A version of this article originally appeared on June 17, 2015.

Reza Marashi is research director at the National Iranian American Council in Washington, DC. He previously served in the Office of Iranian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Atlantic, and National Interest. On Twitter: @rezamarashi.

Some say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is obsessed with the Iranian nuclear issue. Some say he just cares deeply about it. Whatever the case, the feeling draws on the historical passions of many others, including Netanyahu’s own father.

Benzion Netanyahu, a history professor, tutored his son on his own life’s work, an encyclopedic history of the Spanish Inquisition. In 1492, with the Reconquista of Spain from Muslim rulers, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella embarked on a campaign to expel Jews from the country. For centuries, Spain had been the world’s leading center of Jewish life and host to a celebrated coexistence among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. But Ferdinand and Isabella unraveled that coexistence. Spain’s Jews were banished, penniless, to Amsterdam or Salonika, or else faced the torture chambers of the vicious Tomas de Torquemada.

Benzion Netanyahu wrote a nearly 1,400-page book on the Spanish Inquisition and its narrative of deceit and hostility toward the Jews. The choice of research topic was no coincidence. The elder Netanyahu was a disciple of Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the school of Zionism that birthed, eventually, Israel’s Likud party.

Jabotinsky advocated a Jewish polity that would seek, unapologetically, maximalist territorial goals and stand proudly in the face of the inevitable international opposition and local resistance. For Zionists from the Left, anti-Semitism was a curse of being stateless, to be cured once Jews were sovereign in their own land and normalized among the peoples of the earth. For Jabotinsky and the elder Netanyahu, nothing would cure Jew-hatred. The only option was for Jews to stand steadfast against it. The goyim hated the Jews, and they always would. What mattered was the resilience of Jewish fortitude.

In 1937, Jabotinsky visited Warsaw to speak to the city’s Jews. “Liquidate the diaspora,” he told them, “or the diaspora will liquidate you.” The message: Jews should leave at once for the Land of Israel, or else lie exposed to a hostility that could one day boil over. Jabotinsky’s words were not met with great enthusiasm. Yet, by 1945, most of those in the room likely were dead. Of Poland’s 3.3 million Jews, 90 percent were massacred in the Holocaust. Again, history had confirmed the dark prophecies of Jabotinsky’s—and Benzion Netanyahu’s—worldview.

This outlook is hardly one held by only Jabotinsky, Benzion, or Benjamin Netanyahu. It resonates throughout much of Israeli society and the Jewish diaspora. Nearly every Jew—whatever their own family tree—bears personal stories of persecution in their own family tree. Beyond the Holocaust, these stories may draw from as far back as the Spanish Inquisition or as recent as the mid-century pogroms of the Arab World, or the anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union that continued well into the 1980s. This history of persecution continues to animate Israeli politics.

Benjamin Netanyahu has found a ready audience for his worldview—and has been elected three times by Israeli voters. Netanyahu is not Barack Obama. He believes that human nature is rotten: the Palestinians will not make peace with a Jewish state; the Arab Spring will be won by the extremists; and the Iranian regime will build a nuclear bomb and leverage it to try to destroy the Jewish commonwealth.

That latter threat has consumed Netanyahu. On almost all issues—economic reform, religion and state, even the West Bank—Netanyahu has shown flexibility for the paramount goal of personal political survival. But the question of Iran’s nuclear program is an issue above political considerations. For that, it seems, Netanyahu would even give up the acclaim of the prime ministership. This, he believes, is the issue of our time. Other foes, whether Arab nationalism or jihadism, may menace Israel. Yet today, none has similar momentum or capabilities to the Iranian regime. The specter of a Palestinian demographic majority between the river and the sea preoccupies much of Israel’s establishment, given the potential consequences for the state’s character. But Netanyahu believes, rightly or wrongly, that the status quo can be managed. The march of the Iranian regime, on the other hand, must be broken.

The complexity, in history and today, is that the Iranian people are not the enemy. Jewish tradition views the ancient Persians—in contrast to the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, or Romans—as relatively benign. The Persian ruler, Cyrus, permitted Jewish exiles to return from Babylon to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. In the Book of Esther, a tale of Jewish salvation from annihilation by a Persian monarch, the story’s chief villain, Haman, is, according to Jewish tradition, not even Persian but Amalekite, part of a mythical nation that will pursue the Jews until the end of days. In the ancient text, the Persians may be decadent and gullible, but unlike the Amalekite Haman they are not hostile, and even show tolerance in running their multinational empire.

In modern times, too, Israel and Iran enjoyed warm diplomatic and people-to-people relations before the Islamic Revolution in 1979. An older generation of Israelis, particularly those with Iranian family roots, remembers the country fondly. Relations between Jews and Palestinians have been toxic for nearly a century. In contrast, some Israelis’ attitudes toward Iran are more like those of Americans toward Cuba: nostalgia for a long-lost past and regret about the politics that cut short the cultural connections.

Still, there are points where Jabotinsky and Netanyahu’s reading of history meets reality—and confirms Jews’ worst fears. For more than three decades, the Islamic Republic’s leaders have paraded their followers through the streets with shouts of “Death to Israel!” They have stomped Israeli flags and rolled missiles through streets as part of demonstrations against Israel. Motivations for this anti-Israel speech are both ideological and cynical. Ideologically, the revolution’s leaders viewed Israel as an illegitimate affront to the Muslim collective. Cynically, hostility toward Israel serves the geopolitical needs of the Iranian regime, which seeks a position of power in the Arab World. It helps the regime bolster its soft power among an Arab public hostile to the Jewish state.

The regime’s hostility is not just limited to words; it’s propped up non-state proxy groups like Hezbollah and Hamas along Israel’s borders. The umbrella of a nuclear-armed Iran might allow these groups to make further gains and cause greater suffering to Israelis and many others in the Levant. Of course, Israelis also face the risk that the Iranian regime would actually attack Israeli cities with nuclear bombs. This is what social scientists call a “low-probability, high-impact event.” In all likelihood, Israel could deter or destroy an incoming nuclear missile. But, if not, the impact would be cataclysmic. For this reason, whatever the likelihood of an apocalyptic scenario, Israeli policymakers like Netanyahu treat it seriously. To date, that thinking has not led Netanyahu, ever risk-averse about military engagement, to pursue a strike on Iran. But Israel has not been shy in the past: in 1981, the government led a strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor, and is allegedly responsible for a 2007 strike on a reactor in Syria.

The nature of the Iran deal requires trust: trust in the Iranian regime to comply, and trust in the international community to enforce. Netanyahu, along with many Israelis, trusts neither.

Both the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition teach that the Jews are “a people that dwells alone.” Zionism originated, in part, to temper this sense of powerlessness. Sovereignty has supplied a sense of efficacy lost for centuries. Still, the sense of isolation persists, as Zionism runs up against its geopolitical limits. Israel is a small country, and the Jews a small people. Unlike Americans, Europeans, or Arabs, Israelis cannot count on civilizational allies on a Huntingtonian map.

It is simplistic to embrace the Benzion Netanyahu narrative in its entirety, and dangerous to apply it crudely to the Iranian nuclear issue. But the opposite is no wiser. Israel must survive in a world where hostile parties—that will always be present in some measure—have greater access to catastrophic means, including nuclear weapons. However obsessive Netanyahu’s views on Iran, the realities of Jewish history and Israeli geopolitics cannot be dismissed.

A version of this article originally appeared on June 30, 2015.

Owen Alterman is a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. By Karen Armstrong. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2014. 528 pp.

“Whoever took religion seriously?” one exasperated American official remarked of the 1979 Iranian revolution. To him, as to many contemporary observers, the establishment of an Islamic republic in the country seemed atavistic: the modern age is a secular one, so why had mass protests ushered in a theocracy? Karen Armstrong, who cites the U.S. official in Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, sees no such contradiction. Rising religious fervor is often a reaction to secularization, the two go hand in hand. And, in the secular world, religion has served another purpose: as a scapegoat bearing the blame for conflict and violence. It turns out that no one stopped taking religion seriously.

It is this latter perspective on religion that Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic nun and author of several other books on religious topics including A History of God, The Bible: A Biography, and The Case for God, wants to challenge. “In the West the idea that religion is inherently violent is now taken for granted … a view that, eerily, is expressed in the same way almost every time: ‘Religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history,’” she writes. This may strike some as overblown; I have never heard anyone say this, and certainly don’t recall anyone suggesting that the First World War or Second World War were religiously motivated. Nevertheless, many do accept a diluted version of this argument. Rising sectarian tensions, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the spread of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to other Muslim countries have certainly led many to conclude that in the Middle East religion has bred division and motivated followers to commit great acts of violence.

Armstrong’s exoneration of faith is an impressive work of scholarship, a dense yet sweeping review of almost five thousand years of human history, from the handsome King Gilgamesh, who ruled Uruk in what is now southern Iraq in the third millennium bc, to the U.S.-led “War on Terrorism.” The thrust of her argument depends on three points: firstly, that the modern, Western conception of religion—as a “coherent system of obligatory beliefs, institutions, and rituals, centered on a supernatural God, whose practice is essentially private and hermetically sealed off from all ‘secular’ activities”—is both historically and culturally unique. It does not conform to pre-modern Western understandings of religion as something inseparable from the rest of human existence, or to the Arabic concept of din, which refers to a whole way of life, or the Sanskrit term dharma, which is a total concept, covering laws, justice, morals, and social life.

Second, Armstrong argues that violence is the result of two things, human nature and social organization, both of which are distinct from religion. “War gives us a resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble,” she writes. A soldier in battle experiences an intensity of emotion that is comparable to a religious encounter. Violence is also an inevitable consequence of human civilization. To support this assertion, Armstrong employs a quasi-Marxist perspective to analyze the way in which the transformation of society from hunter-gatherer to agrarian to industrial has depended on the use of force. The development of agrarian societies rested on the ability of a small elite to coerce the mass population into a life of toil and drudgery. This systemic violence afforded the elite sufficient leisure time to develop the science and arts that would drive human progress. Similarly, the formation of the modern nation-state was wholly dependent on the development of disciplined, well-organized armies.

Third, Armstrong argues that “like the weather, ‘religion does lots of different things.’” Its nature has changed through history. Faith often reflects the underlying structure of society, and although it sometimes justifies systemic violence, it has often checked it, too. The same texts and scriptures have been used to support very different actions, at different times and by different people. For instance, for centuries, the story of Imam Hussein’s death in 680 ad inspired Shiite Muslims to withdraw from political life, while more recently it has inspired political protests against tyranny.

Students of modern politics will be most interested in the final chapters, in which Armstrong applies these three principles to understanding the rise of Islamic extremism in the Middle East. That Islamic fundamentalism has tended to become an agent of violence has less to do with the content of Islamic belief or scriptures, she argues, and much more to do with the way in which secularism was introduced in the region. Unlike in the West, “modernity” arrived in the Middle East as a result of colonial subjugation, which was militarily and systemically violent. Organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt flourished as the country’s economy modernized rapidly and unequally, and were radicalized into violence in response to aggressive secularization. When the ulema or other established authorities are co-opted by government, “self-appointed religious leaders and more simple-minded radicals would step into the breach,” she writes. Men such as Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood’s propagandist, were radicalized in Nasser’s jails, just as decades on, the leadership of groups such as Al-Qaeda would develop their views in prisons throughout the Arab World.

Terrorism is almost as hard to define as religion, but one undisputed feature is that it is always about power. “Terrorism is fundamentally and inherently political, even when other motives—religious, economic, or social—are involved,” writes Armstrong. Contrary to popular belief, suicide bombing is not deeply rooted in Islamic tradition—it is a twentieth-century tactic deployed by people of different nationalities and faiths. Armstrong cites interviews with would-be suicide bombers that found most are motivated by the desire to become heroes, or to give their lives meaning through battle and not simply by religious devotion. In fact, she argues that most of those involved in the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States were not religious before joining Al-Qaeda and were under-educated theologically. “The problem was not Islam but ignorance of Islam,” she writes. A similar argument is often made of Western fighters who have joined ISIS: several of those who fled from the United Kingdom, for instance, actually ordered the book Islam for Dummies before their departure.

It is in this final section that Armstrong’s political purpose for writing Fields of Blood becomes clear. The scapegoating of Islam is a convenient way of absolving responsibility for the state-sponsored terror carried out by Western governments: military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan; drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen; the continued exploitation of the global poor. It is certainly important that Western governments and their populations acknowledge their role in fueling terrorism, and accept responsibility for the many thousands of civilians who have died in this heavy-handed, vague, but apparently all-encompassing “War on Terrorism.” However, it is perfectly possible to do this while still accepting that religion has played a role.

One problem is that having emphasized how hard it is to define religion, and how it is mistaken to think of it as a discrete practice, Armstrong then shapes her definition to fit her argument. If religion can be all encompassing, why can’t motivations be both political and religious? When she asserts that Al-Qaeda’s actions bear little resemblance to “normative Islam,” does this mean their motivations are not religious? To argue this, she would need to deploy a much narrower definition of religion than the one she advances in the introduction.

Armstrong ascribes one of the most devastating, violent acts of the twentieth century to secular impulses. “Born of modern scientific racism,” she writes, the Holocaust “showed what can happen once the sense of the sacredness of every single human being—a conviction at the heart of traditional religions that quasi-religious systems seem unable or disinclined to recreate—is lost.” While the Holocaust was not religiously motivated, her formulation of this point is problematic. If religion is so hard to define, how do you define “quasi-religious” in this sense? And if, like the weather, religion does lots of things, how can she assert that the sacredness of all individuals is at the heart of traditional faiths? Most religions, after all, distinguish between believers and non-believers, a distinction that has served at times to justify acts of aggression against the latter. As Armstrong correctly points out, the human rights movement and its intellectual roots in Western liberalism has a checkered and at times violent history, but what is it today if not an assertion of the principle of the sacredness of every human life—regardless of nationality, gender, or faith? The problem seems with the implementation, not the idea.

Having said this, Armstrong’s exploration of the role of faith in human civilization makes for a rewarding and thought-provoking read. Her reminder that both sides of the “War on Terrorism” have inflicted suffering on innocent civilians, and that Western governments must acknowledge this, is a timely one. If only commentators spent less time arguing over how “Islamic” ISIS is and more time unpacking the terrible, violent political dynamics that have created it, for instance. The thing is, you can subscribe to a very different history of religion and yet come to the same conclusion.

Sophie McBain is a journalist based in Cairo. She previously served as an assistant editor at the New Statesman. She has written for the New Republic, FT Weekend, Guardian, Monocle, and Spear’s. From 2008 to 2011 she worked as communications assistant for the United Nations Development Programme and a consultant for the African Development Bank based in Tripoli, Libya. On Twitter: @SEMcBain.

Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat’s Egypt. By Abdullah Al-Arian. Oxford University Press USA, New York, 2014. 320 pp.

Abdullah Al-Arian carefully reconstructs the history of Islamic student activism on Egyptian university campuses in the 1970s and the subsequent integration of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyya into the Muslim Brotherhood. His primary goal in Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat’s Egypt is to explain how Egypt’s leading Islamist movement successfully reconstituted itself in the 1970s after more than a decade of repression and political exclusion. The book is based on a rich and diverse set of sources including newspaper accounts, memoirs, interviews, published oral histories, student publications from the period (for example, pamphlets, conference programs, and student wall magazines that were posted on university campuses), in addition to Brotherhood publications. The author makes an important contribution to the scholarship on Egyptian politics and society, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islamist politics more generally.

When President Anwar Sadat began releasing Brotherhood leaders from prison in the early 1970s, the movement was battered and beaten. Yet within the short span of a decade it reemerged as the leading social and political opposition force in the country. How did this happen? Al-Arian’s answer focuses on Islamic student activism and particularly Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyya. He convincingly argues that the group’s dynamism, social activism, political engagement, and its subsequent absorption into the Brotherhood breathed new life into the movement, enabling the Brotherhood to successfully return to prominence in the 1980s.

While acknowledging the critical importance of the 1970s for the Brotherhood, few Western scholars analyze the specific history of the period. Most focus on the more extreme offshoots of the Islamic movement during this period; distinguishing his work from that of Gilles Kepel and Emmanuel Sivan, for instance, Al-Arian concentrates on the much larger number of individuals who would join the Brotherhood in the 1970s.

Al-Arian provides essential background in his discussion of Shabab Al-Islam, a student group that emerged in the first years of Sadat’s presidency. The group was overshadowed by more prominent student groups but was important for reintroducing Islamic ideas and activism on university campuses after many years of absence during a period in which leftist ideas dominated student politics. Al-Arian examines the group’s complex relationship with the Sadat regime, which attempted to co-opt it as part of a general effort to repress communist, Marxist, and Nasserist ideas among Egyptian students.

Al-Arian shows how the Brotherhood leaders emerged from prison in 1971 to find an increasingly diverse Islamist field, one in which they were no longer necessarily dominant. In addition to a number of radical groups influenced by Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood encountered a public sphere that included popular preachers such as Abdel Hamid Kishk and Muhammad Al-Shaarawi, popular Islamic intellectuals such as Mustafa Mahmoud, and a new president who was increasingly adopting Islamic language and symbols to justify state policy. Here Al-Arian adeptly analyzes the internal debates within the Brotherhood about whether and how to reconstitute the movement in this new landscape of multiple Islamist actors and ideas, increasing societal Islamization, and a regime that had a vastly different orientation to Islam. Through this analysis we are reminded that one cannot fully understand the Brotherhood’s development without simultaneously examining the historical and political context in which it operated. Al-Arian’s account accomplishes this and by doing so he not only contributes to a deeper analysis of the Brotherhood but also to a richer understanding of Egyptian politics during this period.

The heart of the book is Al-Arian’s chronicle of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyya’s rise as the most successful Islamist student organization in the 1970s. Many of the group’s leaders would go on to leadership positions within the Muslim Brotherhood: Essam El-Erian, Abul Ela Madi, Ibrahim Al-Zaafarani, Helmi Al-Gazzar, and the group’s brightest star, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh. Al-Arian introduces us to these young student activists, particularly Aboul Fotouh, and the student movement they created. He analyzes the group’s ideology and mode of operation, including its cultural and religious programs, awareness campaigns, and important summer camps. By 1977 Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyya had become so popular that the group dominated student union elections across the country. But by the end of the decade, it found itself within the crosshairs of the regime.

Although Al-Arian tells us that the student activists and the Brotherhood both benefited from their merger, the Brotherhood arguably benefited more. Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyya members were not allowed to join the Brotherhood as a group but were required to join individually and pledge allegiance to the general guide. The Brotherhood demanded loyalty and wanted to maintain control of its organization. The young activists who would move into senior leadership positions in the Brotherhood were ultimately unable to wrest control of the organization from its more conservative leaders, arguably with devastating consequences for both the Brotherhood and Egyptian politics. A number of student activists from this generation ultimately left the movement, like Madi and the others who founded Hizb Al-Wasat, or were marginalized or driven out, such as Aboul Fotouh. It is reasonable to suggest that the Brotherhood would have been more interested in establishing a genuinely democratic Egypt following the 2011 uprising (and less interested in dominating politics single-handedly) if leaders such as Aboul Fotouh and Madi had managed to gain control of the organization earlier.

Samer S. Shehata is associate professor of Middle Eastern politics at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt; and the editor of Islamist Politics in the Middle East: Movements and Change. He has contributed to the New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon, Foreign Policy, and many other publications. 

Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London. By Mohsin Hamid. Riverhead Books, New York, 2015. 240 pp.

Shortly after September 11, British-Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid submitted an article for an American publication. He wanted to capture the fears of his family, based in Pakistan, after this world-altering day and ahead of the U.S. invasion in Afghanistan. But according to Hamid, the piece was published without a passage he had included in the original: on the grievances of Muslims in the greater Middle East that might explain the motivations behind the attacks. “This was my first experience of what I would come to recognize as growing American self-censorship,” he recounts in his latest book, Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London.

It was a sensitive time. Then, the narratives of 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terrorism were resolutely framed by Westerners, particularly non-Muslim Westerners. Over the past decade, however, it has become increasingly clear that the United States is not the only victim of terror. Iraqis and Afghans have been killed in great numbers by extremist militants as well as by Western forces. In Pakistan, Hamid’s home country, terrorist attacks alone have killed an estimated twenty thousand civilians over the last decade. Meanwhile, some sources tally the civilian death toll from U.S.-led drone strikes at nearly a thousand.

Since 9/11, space has also gradually opened for writers like Hamid whose diverse voices lend a new perspective on the sociopolitical experiences of Muslims in the West and the East. Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist, set in 2000, captures the political and personal contradictions of a young Muslim man who is shaped by his experiences in both Pakistan and the United States. Now in Discontent and Its Civilizations, a collection of personal essays and writings on policy topics, he challenges the predominant narrative of 9/11—the United States and Americans as victims. In one essay, Hamid’s mother remarks about the day: “It is terrible, what happened. But now they are so angry. They talk about a war on terrorism. But they never seem to think what they do terrifies normal people here.” “Normal” is the key word: Discontent is an attempt to describe differing views as the norm, as part of the experience of today’s globalized world, and not just a fictional representation from one of Hamid’s novels.

Hamid has collected his articles spanning the years from 2000 to 2014 when he lived variously in New York, London, and Lahore; he resided in the United States just before 9/11, in Britain during the 2005 Tube bombings, and at the height of terrorist and drone attacks in Pakistan. Even when the War on Terrorism is not always the focus of his writing, its overbearing presence is felt. He recounts a humiliating experience at the Italian embassy where, in order to get a visa to visit his Italian girlfriend, he had to obtain a letter from her defining their relationship. Other essays span from personal stories of being stopped at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport for further inspection before boarding a flight, to his views of Osama Bin Laden’s capture and the American drone policy in Pakistan.

Part of what makes Discontent an important addition to policy literature is that it offers an opening to Muslim experiences amid a xenophobic backlash in the West—experiences, perhaps, that can only receive a reasonable airing now after the passage of time. One of Hamid’s stories is about his decision against reporting a suspicious Pakistani character on the Tube, written a year after the London attacks; it was a choice made against the backdrop of anti-Muslim hysteria he had experienced. He doesn’t think the man on the train is a serious threat and suspects that his odd behavior—even if innocent—may prompt authorities to arrest him if Hamid had reported it. The story suggests a different sense of responsibility—the responsibility not to act—in the face of the “see something, say something” paranoia of the time. Today, it’s possible to read this incident not as a political statement against the West, but as an example of one Muslim man’s compassion to another Muslim. It is not evidence of “civilizational” unity, but simply of one’s experience. Familiar to them both is the practical struggle of being of a certain race and religion in a Western country.

These stories serve to help the reader develop a relationship with the author. In one sense, Hamid does this by organizing the essays in a non-chronological way, in three sections. The first section, titled “Life,” is meant to be a personal look at Hamid’s youth, his experiences with marriage and fatherhood, and his relationship with the three cities where he has resided. The second section, “Art,” is a collection of his musings on writing and literature. The last, “Politics,” puts forth his opinions on Pakistan, the U.S. War on Terrorism, drones, and so on. The arrangement is crucial. It is an effort to help the readers recognize the author as an individual rather than part of a collective (as a Muslim, as a Pakistani), and then to accept his views on the world as legitimate experiences, not marred by bias because of his nationality and religion.

As such, Discontent is not just a Muslim writer ranting about the War on Terrorism. These essays depict the personal and political experiences of a global hybrid. Hamid challenges the notion of a world defined by 9/11 as the only reality. If 9/11 was seen as solidifying civilizational boundaries, globalization has been tearing them down. Globalization is what allows Hamid to be at once American, British, and Pakistani. Even terrorism in today’s world seems to defy cultural categories. As he writes in one of his essays, what civilization is being targeted when a terrorist bombs Pakistan?

If anything, Hamid’s book suffers from the possibility that readers will misrepresent its significance—that it is one voice among many. “Our civilizations do not cause us to clash. No, our clashing allows us to pretend we belong to civilizations,” he tells us. As countries battle not just with each other, but with themselves, we see renewed efforts to “reclaim” nations and civilizations: bringing back America, or Pakistan, or Britain, and so forth. In such a context, it is tempting to view Hamid’s voice as the rational voice for the Muslim collective. But it is up to the reader to recognize his book as an individual’s perspective, not as a representation of a civilization. After all, civilizations are just a construction of our own making.

Rozina Ali is senior editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. From 2010 to 2013, she served as deputy editor for management thinking at the Economist Intelligence Unit in New York. She has contributed to Al Jazeera America, Foreign Policy, Guardian, New York Times, and Salon. On Twitter: @rozina_ali.

–

اقرأها بالعربية

Political Islam is in crisis. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and largest Islamist organization operating in the Arab World, is banned in Egypt and designated a terrorist organization in the most influential Arab countries. Tunisia’s Ennahda Movement, arguably the Islamist group in the region with the most developed political thinking, lost the parliamentary election in October 2014 and has been repeatedly forced to distance itself from the militant Islamists now threatening Tunisia. Morocco’s Justice and Development Party, known as PJD, may be the first Islamist party to lead a governing coalition in the country, but its leaders well understand the monarchy’s supreme position in the kingdom’s political system.

Today, it is the extremely violent Islamist groups who are demonstrating the most impact. Jihadist organizations in Iraq and Syria control a geographical area larger than some European countries, wreaking havoc throughout the Middle East in the name of the religion. They are trying to revive a seventh-century state in the second decade of the twenty-first century, yet without the moral, historical, and cultural features that had made the original one a seed for a rich civilization. For many, this is a surreal phenomenon. For others, it is the result of decades of lethargy, intellectual decline, and failing socioeconomic policies in large parts of the Islamic World and notably in the Arab region.

In this evolution of politicized religion, Islam itself has become suspect. Large sections of today’s highly connected observers, especially in the West, have come to see Islam as a religion that tolerates, if not embodies, violence. Economics aside, fear of Muslims is at the heart of the anti-immigration sentiment across Europe. There is a strong feeling in many quarters that Islam is an intellectual opponent of humanism and liberalism.

The most venerable Islamic institutions, the seats of theological learning, have so far failed to address these challenges. It does not help that the thinking found in such places has been shaped by the heritage of the last ten centuries, a period in which they were not subjected to the social pressures for change that Western religious institutions had faced. The result: the largest, richest, and most prominent Islamic institutions continue to inhabit an intellectual world that has not changed much in the last three hundred years.

The Rational Religion

The contemporary failures of political Islam stem from the struggle over the past hundred and fifty years to find a common ground between Islam and modernity—not with the tenets of the belief, the rituals, or the values associated with the religion, but rather the political, legislative, and social roles that Islam came to play in society and that many believe are integral to the essence of the religion.

In the past ten centuries, as the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, and parts of southern Europe and Asia Minor became the boundaries of an Islamic World, Islam emerged as the most influential social determinant in these “Islamic lands.” Despite different understandings of Islam that appeared in each of these places and that helped shape very different cultures, Islam (or how it came to be interpreted in each region) was the decisive factor in legitimizing political rule, organizing society, passing laws, and identifying the state (any state) as Islamic.

This changed in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. The arrival of European colonial powers in the Middle East exposed to Arab and Muslim publics the shocking disparity between their knowledge and means of power and that of the Westerners. This realization triggered a determination, at least within some of the elite, to escape that lethargy and catch up with the West. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Mohammed Ali dynasty in Egypt, several Ottoman sultans such as Mahmoud II, Persian shahs such as Naser Al-Din, and North African rulers such as Tunisia’s Hussein Bey modernized their armies, overhauled agrarian systems, introduced modern manufacturing, and supported changes in social norms.

The reforms, which included the general introduction of modern European-style education, diluted the political and social role of religious institutions, weakened the economic influence of religious endowments, and resulted in the replacement of religious authorities in royal courts, political circles, and judiciary positions by secular professionals. Modernity was unmistakably curtailing the role of Islam in society.

Not surprisingly, authorities in major Islamic institutions condemned this modernity. They opposed introducing secular education, gender mixing, and Western forms of financing; translating Western works of art and importing cultural phenomena such as theater; and moving away from traditional ruling and governance systems. These were apostasies to be rejected, and if need be, fought.

Some religious scholars, however, understood that the wave of modernity was unstoppable and indeed crucial for the development of their societies. They argued that modernity does not negate Islam. For them, Islam was a “rational religion” that had saved the Arabs from ignorance. In their view, the social manifestations that were superimposed on Islam in the previous centuries were creations of local cultures, poor interpretations of the religion’s rules and teachings, and deviations of reasoning. The most influential strand of this line of thinking was led by Jamal Al-Din Al-Afghani and later by his disciple Mohammed Abdou. They promoted a view of Islam as a “message” that had inspired a rich civilization, added to the human accumulation of knowledge and reservoir of culture, brought peoples from vastly different backgrounds together, borrowed from other traditions (from the Hellenic to the Persian), and nurtured tolerant and often areligious philosophies such as those of Al-Razi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna). This school framed Islam as a “reference” that was supposed to guide Muslim societies as they embarked on their inevitable (and in this view needed) modernization. The objective was to welcome in Muslim societies the tools (including the thinking) that had allowed the West to progress, without losing the religious and cultural features that defined Islamic identity.

Al-Afghani and Abdou became celebrity intellectuals in parts of the Islamic World. But their ideas never gained wide appeal, or acquired a huge momentum within the largest sections of Muslim-majority societies. Though in the late nineteenth century Al-Afghani had briefly been a close advisor to the Ottoman sultan Abdel Hamid II, this school of thought never had any serious state sponsorship. The ideas of Al-Afghani, Abdou, and their followers, thus ensconced in intellectual ivory towers, and disconnected from the lives of the vast majority of Muslims, remained limited in their impact. The school failed to reach, let alone convince, a critical mass of Muslims and convert them to its view of how Islam can be situated in a modern (or modernizing) society.

Another modernization project saw no place at all for Islam in society. In Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s, Kamal Atatürk sought to purge all of Islam’s political and social manifestations from the new state he created on the ruins of the Ottoman caliphate. For Atatürk and his followers, Islam was at best a faith that individuals could respect and practice in their private lives as long as it exerted no influence on the state or maintained a conspicuous presence in society; at worst, its heritage was an obstacle to progress. In Tunisia three decades later, in the 1960s, Habib Bourguiba put forward similar thinking, but with a twist. Bourguiba did not position his modernization program in opposition to Islam. He did not argue that society should sever its links to Islamic heritage altogether. Instead, he emphasized that Islam was, at heart, a faith and a set of values; that Muslim societies needed the inspiration from these values to escape the lethargy of past centuries, but that they should not tolerate the religion’s political and social manifestations. For him, the “bigger jihad” (self-exertion) was in embracing the means that would allow Muslims to catch up with the world. And if that meant sacrificing the features that most Muslims associate with Islam’s presence in society (from sharia law to praying and fasting during Ramadan), then that was an acceptable price.

Atatürk’s state and Bourguiba’s regime lasted for decades. But they proved extremely lacking as political models. The electoral successes of Turkish Islamist parties from the early 1990s up to the present time demonstrates that Atatürk’s state was a top-down imposition of a system by a highly secular elite over a society in which large segments longed to express their piousness and connect their centuries-old Islamic heritage with the modernization they were willing to embrace. The uprising in Tunisia in late 2010 and the subsequent rise of the Islamist Ennahda Movement betrayed the rot that country’s secular state had become, and revealed that large sections of middle-class and poor Tunisians continued to see a key role for Islam in their lives, society, and state. The lesson of Turkey and Tunisia is clear: it is impossible to eradicate Islam’s political and social manifestations from a Muslim-majority society.

Some Arab nationalists sought an approach between the school of Al-Afghani and Abdou and the experiment of Atatürk. The Arab nationalist project, especially in its heyday under Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, was centered on the idea of a secular, socialist renaissance that would “free the Arab World,” bring social equality to masses of poor Arabs, and “resurrect the Arab will.” Islam hardly featured in this vision. But the faith and Islamic heritage were nonetheless conveyed as “the civilizational umbrella” overarching Arab nationalism. The wording was intentionally vague; it left it to the nationalist leaders (or their propagandists) to promote or marginalize Islam as they saw fit. Still, the approach was an attempt at advancing modernization without rejecting society’s connection with Islam. Unlike in Atatürk’s model, Islam was neither the intellectual opponent of modernization nor the obstacle to progress. But, unlike in the Al-Afghani–Abdou model, Islam was not the main identity to be preserved nor the framework against which new ideas would be measured.

This approach, too, failed. Military defeats and poor economic performance aside, the variants of Arab nationalism (Nasserite or otherwise) proved unable to deliver on the huge expectations stirred in the 1950s and 1960s. The crushing of the dream weakened the notion of Arabness. It created a colossal, and for many a painful, vacuum in the Arab psyche. Nothing was more effective at filling it than a return to “our real identity”: Islam.

Several factors helped. The exponential increase in oil prices in the 1970s triggered a huge wave of migration from non-oil exporting Arab countries to the Gulf states. Millions of Egyptians, Jordanians, Moroccans, Palestinians, Syrians, and Sudanese went to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates at a time when these countries were much more conservative than they are today. This coincided with a gradual but unmistakable change in the role of the state in poor Arab countries. These states were increasingly unable to meet the obligations they had assumed in the 1950s and 1960s: free education and healthcare, and highly subsidized food and energy.

In the span of two decades, these developments caused a transformative change in the composition of the middle classes of several large Arab countries such as Egypt and Syria. Traditionally conservative social groups were climbing the social ladder; strict values (and religious doctrines such as the Saudi-funded Wahhabism) were exported from the Gulf to the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. The look and feel of Arab societies were being altered: from a dramatic rise in the percentage of veiled women to conspicuous changes (many would say deterioration) in the quality of Arab culture, art, and entertainment. Some Arab regimes, most notably that of President Anwar Sadat in Egypt, gambled on the conservative religious trend to weaken the nationalist legacies of their predecessors and rivals and consolidate their legitimacy. They empowered Islamist groups in universities, professional syndicates, and in the mass media at the expense of secular Arab nationalists.

The fall in 1979 of the shah of Iran’s highly Westernized regime in a fiery Islamic revolution inspired hard-line Muslims to dream of removing secular political systems and returning society to the “righteous path.” The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, also in 1979, provided the Islamist movement with tens of thousands of battle-hardened fighters. Several countries, led by the United States, worked to turn the Soviet adventure into a struggle in which Islamic fighters fought to expel the “atheist Soviet Union from Islamic Afghanistan.” A decade after the Soviets withdrew, those victorious fighters returned to their home countries to use their way of jihad—guerrilla war—against the “infidel regimes soiling the Islamic lands.”

All of this gave strong momentum to longstanding Islamist political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood as well as to militant organizations and militias that emerged in the Arab World in the 1980s and 1990s. None of these groups, however, was concerned with putting forward thinking that addresses the challenge of reconciling Islam’s social and political manifestations with secular modernity. On the contrary, they seemed to represent different versions of Islamism that negated the experience of Arabs and Muslims in adapting to modernity over the previous century.

Islamists who opted to work through existing political systems managed to build solid constituencies; establish expansive support and services networks catering to the poor and the lower middle classes; and even in some cases develop large and sophisticated economic and financial empires and media platforms. But their Islamism was primarily concerned with social features (for example more mosques and less gender mixing) and legislation (strengthening the influence of Islamic jurisprudence on civil and criminal laws, opposing modern financial products, and resisting social reforms, for example in women’s rights).

Militant jihadists, for their part, worked toward overthrowing regimes. They also sought to bring about social revolutions to Islamicize their societies (in the way they defined Islam and its political and social manifestations). For them, modernity was an affront not only to their Islamic heritage but to Islam itself. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the militants consisted of bands of jihadists fighting isolated and unsuccessful guerrilla wars in different parts of the Arab World. They justified their acts of often extreme violence on the notion that if sections of society were unwilling to adopt, implement, and live by the rules of Islam (as the militants defined them), then they were effectively rejecting Islam and becoming apostates. The Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, arguably the godfather of contemporary militant Islamism, viewed these Muslims as living in jahiliya (ignorance) as the entire world did until the Prophet Mohammed brought God’s message to mankind. Qutb’s thinking became the intellectual framework for those bent on fighting ruling regimes and their own people for “rejecting God’s rule.”

The Islamists, whether working within existing systems or using violence to overthrow them, have failed. Neither approach has succeeded in taking control of a single Arab country. By the early 2000s, all Arab countries seemed secure under hereditary monarchies or secular military-backed republican regimes. Most Arab Islamist groups became aware that to have any serious presence in politics, even at the margins, they needed to assure ruling regimes that they posed no threat and were willing to operate by the rules like other legal or tolerated opposition groups. They began to cautiously contest elections, making sure that they did not overly mobilize their constituencies or flaunt their financial resources lest they trigger an anti-Islamist backlash. The situation was different for the jihadists. Their repeated confrontations with the secular regimes (most notably in Egypt and Algeria throughout the 1990s) left them decimated and unable to operate. Some of them immigrated to Europe, where they used the protections afforded by political liberty to launch media campaigns against rulers back home. Others relocated to militant-friendly strongholds such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they grouped into new structures such as Al-Qaeda.

Arab Awakening

Misrule, corruption, and economic stagnation eventually took a toll on the secular regimes of the Arab World. Some of them were quickly swept aside by the uprisings that began in Tunisia in late 2010 and spread throughout the Middle East. The so-called Arab Spring started a decisive political and strategic transformation of the region. It catapulted Islamist groups to the upper echelons of power. Islamist groups came to control parliaments in Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Tunisia, and to a lesser extent, Libya; in the case of Egypt, they ascended to the presidency.

The positioning and rhetoric of these groups changed substantially. Since the mid-2000s, they had begun to put forward Islamism as a frame of reference for their societies. This meant taking lighter-touch approaches on how traditional interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence should influence politics, legislation, and economics. Several prominent Islamic scholars, most notably Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the Ennahda Movement in Tunisia, repeatedly invoked the compatibility of Islamic jurisprudence with the tenets of democracy as they are understood in the West. By effectively accepting the notion of secular states governed by man-made laws, some scholars seemed to have resolved the dilemma of dual loyalty to the Ummah (the global community of Muslims) and to one’s own nation-state. The Muslim Brotherhood put forward social and economic initiatives inspired by case studies from Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey. Here, the Islamists were (and without challenging ruling regimes) positioning themselves as providers of social support networks serving the poor and needy and, subtly, as potential managers of their countries. Increasingly the leadership of these groups seemed forward-looking: traditional Islamic scholars were replaced by younger leaders drawn from the Islamists’ business and social services networks. Several Arab Islamist groups selected young females as spokespersons. The Islamists took every opportunity to put themselves and their organizations online, adapting to the immense social changes brought by the revolution in communication technologies.

All of this improved the standing of the Islamists at home and abroad. Islamists seemed to want to transcend the divide between Islamism and the secular modernity that their societies had experienced in the previous hundred and fifty years. Their ascendance into government through free elections after the Arab uprisings marked the beginning of a promising new attempt at resolving the Islam–secular modernity conundrum.

The promise proved short lived. Most of the Islamists exhibited inexperience, even incompetence, in governance. They found themselves having to handle severe social problems and economic challenges after decades of mismanagement, ineptitude, and corruption on the part of ousted regimes. Some Islamists such as Morocco’s PJD and Kuwait’s Islamic Constitutional Movement did not envisage changing their countries’ political systems. In Tunisia, Ennahda was more ambitious. Coming to power in arguably the freest election in the Arab World in the previous half-century encouraged Ennahda’s ambitions to try to merge its Islamist thought (influenced by its leaders’ intellectual work in the previous twenty years as well as by decades of exile in Britain, France, and Italy) with the country’s secular heritage. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood went further. It sought to control key state institutions, widen its economic influence to the most lucrative sectors in the country, and imbue legislation and public life with assertively Islamist tones and connotations. The Muslim Brotherhood rise was accompanied by an air of imperiousness, having finally taken the helm of power after decades in the wilderness of political repression and exile.

But the Islamists coming to power resulted in a deep social polarization. Across the Arab World, large segments of society became apprehensive about what they perceived to be an Islamicization project. Especially in countries with rich secular heritages such as Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, many feared that the Islamists’ rise would bring not merely gradual changes in the political and economic structures but a complete transformation of the identities, social dynamics, and look and feel of societies. The fears were only heightened when austere, apolitical, and once marginalized groups such as the Salafists (those who revere the salaf—the predecessors, a reference to the earliest communities of Muslims in the seventh century) emerged as a social and political power to be reckoned with.

To be sure, many Arab secularists stoked the polarization. For them, the rise of the Islamists was a painful experience. The older generations of secularists saw it as the final blow in a succession of failures throughout the past half-century in which they were used and abused by regimes run by monarchists, Arab nationalists, and militarists. Young secular activists felt that they played a significant role in triggering the Arab uprisings only to find themselves facing Islamist groups that were by far richer, much better organized, and enjoyed significantly larger social constituencies. As the secularists were dealt one electoral defeat after another, many felt they were fighting in an unfair game.

The social polarization was exacerbated, of course, by the fears of religious minorities. For some years even before the ascent of the Islamists, Arab Christians and other minorities looked with trepidation on emerging trends: the strengthening of the role of sharia in civil and penal codes, constitutions brought into closer conformity with Islamic law, the emergence of known militant Islamists in political life, unmistakably strong Islamist rhetoric in domestic discourse and in foreign policy, and a palpable feeling that diversity and “un-Islamic” lifestyles were becoming unwelcome.

The fears were hardly quelled by the spread of shockingly violent jihadist groups in the region. Offshoots of Al-Qaeda, such as Jabhat Al-Nusra and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), espoused more or less the same ideology as the militant jihadists of the previous few decades. But their resources became significantly larger at a time when the Arab state system that emerged in the aftermath of the First World War and collapse of the Ottoman caliphate was finally crumbling. The demise of central rule in Iraq and Syria undermined the nation-state in the eastern Mediterranean, gave space for sectarianism to flourish, and allowed non-state actors—and especially the militant Islamist groups—to entrench themselves in parts of the region.

The chaos convinced national security establishments in the Arab World that Islamists were part of a larger effort (some are convinced of a “conspiracy”) to redesign the region: divide some countries, redraw the borders of others, and crucially, undermine the secular Arab nation-state. For these Arab national security establishments, fighting the Islamization project in all of its forms—whether in politics or on the battlefield—became a national mission to “save” their countries.

Five years after the Arab Spring, political Islam in the region, despite a brief moment of ascendancy, has returned to its earlier status: marginalized, mistrusted, or persecuted. The potential for a reconciliation of Islam with secular modernity has gone unfulfilled.

In Tunisia, social polarization, the spread of Salafism, and the coalescing of secular forces from the old Bourguiba establishment against Ennahda forced the Islamist movement to hand over power to a technocratic government. Ennahda’s political opponents formed a formidable political bloc that received significant financial backing from inside and outside Tunisia and secured victory in the country’s 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections. Ennahda retreated from its ambition of promoting its progressive views about how Islam can be a frame of reference for a modernizing society, and became concerned with defending its ideology and differentiating it, to any listener, from the militant Islamism that has spread in Tunisia. In Egypt, the Islamist­–secularist divide evolved into a confrontation between Egyptianness (the traditional understanding of the nation’s identity and way of life as held by the middle and upper middle classes) and what large social segments perceived as an aggressive Islamicization project led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Large demonstrations in the summer of 2013 championed a military intervention that ejected the Muslim Brotherhood from power.

“Islam Is the Solution”

The experience of the past five years has made reconciliation between Islam’s social and political manifestations and secular modernity even more problematic. For many Arabs, these manifestations have now become associated with Islamists and the notion of political Islam, which they have come to mistrust as rarely before. From the perspective of the Islamists, the rejections they experienced, and the fierce and often bloody crackdowns to which they were subjected, clearly showed that large segments of society (including self-described liberals) were willing to sacrifice democracy to deny them power. A desire for revenge has been gaining ground within some Islamist groups, and especially amongst their young cadres. In this view, large sections of Arab societies are not opposed to Islamists but to Islam itself.

This view drives many Islamists to draw the wrong lessons from the Arab Spring. Highly influential Islamists now reduce the history of the last century and a half to a mere confrontation with the secularists. To them, the Arab uprisings signaled the failure of Arab liberals and socialists, and marked the beginning of the Islamists’ age. Secularists had ruled the Arab World (and Turkey and Iran) since the region’s first encounter with modernity in the nineteenth century, the reasoning goes, and they had failed. The displacement of Islam as the basis for political legitimacy, and relegating it to being a mere component of a rich social fabric, was an affront to God’s rule. To the Islamists, it was now the time for them to enter power and correct what had gone wrong. Their rise to power was the dawn of a new age of Islam. When the Islamists instead found themselves ejected from power, they viewed it as a strike against Islamic rule and even a rejection of Islam. Few of their leaders paused to consider why large sections of the Arab public had turned against them so rapidly. The rhetoric focused on the Islamists’ confrontation with the powerful nationalist institutions that fought them. They seemed oblivious to legitimate concerns that accompanied the rise of the Islamists, such as deep social polarization, weakened national security, and lack of preparedness in confronting acute economic challenges.

Equally problematic, especially after what appeared to have been a serious evolution of Islamist thinking before coming to power, is that the Islamists in ascendance did not provide any answers to some of the most difficult questions Islamism has always triggered. Islamists have always looked at episodes in Islamic history as ideal epochs. The first three decades in Islamic history have always been regarded by most Muslims as the purest era of the “rightly guided” leaders. Other Islamists look at the ninth century (the Abbasid dynasty, when the Islamic caliphate was, arguably, the most powerful and richest state in the world, and the preeminent center for science and the arts) as the “golden age” of the Islamic civilization. Islamists who invoke Islamism’s acceptance of “others” (and especially Christians and Jews) cite Islamic rule in Iberia (the Andalusian era) as an example of how Islamic regimes could (and should) maintain an inclusive and harmonious society. Many Islamist thinkers reflect on the second half of the nineteenth century as the time when Islamist reformers (such as Al-Afghani and Abdou) put forward ideas that incorporated modernity without sacrificing the “Islamic nature” of the state and the “Islamic identity” of society.

The problem is the Islamists’ backward-looking perspective. Apart from the romanticizing of these eras (which were hardly examples of utopian social harmony), they all were the products of social, political, economic, and cultural circumstances that are vastly different from the ones that have shaped today’s Middle East. Invoking these “ideal” historical epochs could, at best, inspire, but at worst, mislead. In reality, they do not correspond at all to the present. These, and other episodes of Islamic history, will always be integral parts of Islamic heritage; they will always be important anchors of the cultures of societies with Muslim majorities; they will continue to enrich the identity of anyone associating him or herself with Islam (as a faith and/or a cultural background). But they will not guide political and economic systems in today’s world.

Islamists also continue to clutch to a naïveté that is inconsistent with their long and rich experience. Many Islamists invoke al-Imam al-fadel (the righteous leader), al-madina al-fadila (the ideal city), and the notion that “Islam is the solution.” Several Islamist groups continue to use these slogans to mobilize the public, especially in elections. In the early twentieth century, some founding fathers of political Islam derived these terms from medieval schools of Islamic philosophy and tried to imbue them with meanings that relate to twentieth-century Arab societies. These attempts had some merit in the 1920s and 1930s. Perhaps they were acceptable in the 1970s when Islamism was recovering from its marginalization and persecution under Arab nationalism. They could have been passable in the 1990s when Islamism was refashioning its thinking. But after the Islamists’ long experience in the last eight decades, and especially the serious social turmoil they have recently been embroiled in, such emotionally charged terms have become meaningless, if not delusional. These terms could be effective sound bytes, but they, and the thinking behind them, have nothing to offer to societies confronting serious social and economic difficulties in need of tangible and implementable solutions. Today, Islamists, let alone the jihadists, lack the intellectual tools (and perhaps the will) for another attempt at resolving the Islamism–secularism dilemma.

Islamism in the modern age thus seems to have come full circle, back to where it was in the nineteenth century. Some Islamists are looking back to the “tenets of the rational religion,” trying to merge them with modernity, openness to change, and highly flexible understandings of what an Islamic frame of reference means. Others are looking back in anger, rejecting modernity, seeing secularism as a threat destroying Islamic heritage, and insisting on a combative Islamism that rejects moving forward and repudiates the “other.” Today, as it was a hundred and fifty years ago, the Arab World, the heart of the Islamic World, is undergoing an immense political and social transformation. The difference is that today’s transformation is significantly bloodier, and therefore more intense and painful. Also today’s Arab secularists have by far less respect for genuine liberalism than that of their intellectual predecessors a century ago. In this context, it is understandable that jihadism is the most potent form of Islamism operating today.

As a result, no serious attempt at solving the Islamism–modernism dilemma is in sight. Feelings are inflamed, societies are deeply polarized, the most promising Arab and Muslim youths are disillusioned, and large sections of the secularists and Islamists in Arab and Islamic societies are severely disconnected, eyeing each other with distrust, and often contempt.

Time will have to heal the wounds that have been opened in the past five years. It must be hoped that secularists will finally recognize that, irrespective of the level of force and oppression they employ, it is impossible to extinguish Islamism from Muslim-majority societies. It must be hoped, too, that new leaders will emerge within the Islamist camp, with innovative thinking that will have absorbed the Islamists’ multiple mistakes.

Tarek Osman is the author of Egypt on the Brink and the forthcoming Islamism: What It Means for the Middle East and the World from Yale University Press. He was the writer and presenter of the BBC documentary series “The Making of the Modern Arab World” in 2013 and “Saudi Arabia: Sands of Time” in 2015. He has appeared as a commentator on international news networks including CNN and Al Jazeera English, and has written for Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, and Project Syndicate. He is the political counselor for the Arab World at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. On Twitter: @TarekmOsman.

The armed group, the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) has made calculated use of public brutality and indoctrination to ensure the submission of communities under its control. A terrorist group, as designated by the United Nations Security Council under Resolution 2170, it has become synonymous with extreme violence directed against civilians and captured fighters.

This report is based on first-hand victim and witness accounts describing the impact of ISIS’s rule on their lives. Based on over three hundred interviews with men, women, and children who fled or who are living in ISIS-controlled areas in Syria, we bring to light the voices of Syrians ISIS has sought to silence.

In addition, the report is informed by the publications, photographs, and video footage distributed by the armed group. The material disseminated by ISIS actively promotes their abuses and crimes. This is in marked contrast to the government of the Syrian Arab Republic and other belligerents who conceal evidence of their violations and abuses. While this report addresses ISIS conduct, this should not obscure that other parties to the conflict continue to commit egregious violations against civilians and captured belligerents.

By publicizing its brutality, ISIS seeks to convey its authority over its areas of control, to show its strength to attract recruits, and to threaten any individuals, groups, or states that challenge its ideology. The group has attacked journalists and activists trying to communicate the daily suffering of those living under its yoke. Those still living inside ISIS-controlled areas are often too frightened to speak out, fearing retribution.

The Rise of ISIS in Syria

Initially, ISIS was one faction among hundreds of other armed groups in Syria. In April 2013, it began to develop into a well-organized, dominant armed force in control of large swaths of populated areas in Syria and Iraq, posing a significant threat to peace and stability in the region.

Its origins lie in the establishment of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in 2004. After merging with other Iraqi jihadist groups in 2006, AQI rebranded itself as the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Although degraded by the 2006–2011 U.S. counterterrorism campaign in Iraq, the group took advantage of the instability in the region to further recruit and mobilize, a process that accelerated with the outbreak of the Syrian conflict. In 2011, ISI members joined local radical militants in Syria as part of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat Al-Nusra (Nusra Front) armed group to fight against government forces.

Following a split with Jabhat Al-Nusra in April 2013, the newly established ISIS appropriated most of Al-Nusra’s capabilities and manpower. Prioritizing the construction of a “state” over fighting the Syrian government, ISIS consolidated its authority by stifling dissent and targeting local community leaders, other armed group commanders, and activists. This triggered mounting resentment, which led to armed confrontations with other major armed groups in early 2014. Following a withdrawal to its strongholds in northeastern Syria, the group consolidated its military control and financial capacity.

ISIS’s resources were eventually reinforced significantly by the group’s gains in Iraq in July 2014. Since then, the group has steadily expanded its control over natural resources and territory in eastern Syria. Sporadic fighting in the Kurdish regions of northern Syria escalated into a protracted, intense sub-conflict between the Kurdish armed group People’s Protection Units (YPG) and ISIS.

The group’s ideology and financial capabilities found resonance among socially and economically desperate communities. Locally, it exploited the gradual empowerment of the most radical armed groups and the existing social fragmentations along sectarian and tribal lines to secure a new network of alliances among local and external supporters.

Until the group’s successful campaign in Iraq, the threat it posed to regional stability was underestimated by the international community. The failure to find a political solution or any other alternative to stop the violence in Syria and to relieve the population’s suffering left a dangerous vacuum that was filled by radicals and their foreign backers.

The external support provided to all belligerents in Syria has contributed to the radicalization of armed groups, ultimately benefitting ISIS. Charity organizations and wealthy individuals funded radical entities willing to promote their ideologies and serve their agendas. Arms and support provided to armed groups deemed as moderate have repeatedly fallen into the hands of more radical actors, including ISIS.

The arrival of large numbers of foreign fighters has contributed to the group’s expansion as the most extreme and experienced individuals have joined its ranks. Until very recently, the international community and neighboring states failed to put in place efficient measures to prevent access to the conflict area.

ISIS functions under responsible command and has a hierarchical structure, including a policy level. The group has established a command and control system under Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi, who holds absolute power and is supported by a number of entities including a military council. ISIS also depends on a network of regional and local emirs and military commanders to enforce tight discipline among its ranks and ensure full control of its territory. In recent months, the group has also relied on its centralized military leadership to coordinate large redeployments of fighters and equipment to different frontlines. Despite the recruitment of thousands of Syrians to its ranks, the ISIS leadership structure is still largely dominated by non-Syrian fighters.

The armed group’s military capabilities have grown. It has extensively employed brutal tactics, including the use of explosive weapons, mass civilian casualty attacks through suicide or remote-detonated car bombs, and the execution of fighters captured during military operations. The group has also relied on its increased mobility and firepower capabilities to surprise its opponents and ensure local superiority. Its military strategy also includes the negotiation of local agreements with various groups as part of a divide-and-rule policy.

ISIS initially relied on military hardware looted from the other Syrian armed belligerents including materiel provided by their external backers. The group significantly boosted its military capabilities after its successful campaign in Iraq. Its financial independence has further allowed the group to acquire military hardware through local markets.

ISIS simultaneously battles Syrian government forces, anti-government armed groups, and Kurdish forces on a number of distinct fronts. Throughout 2015, ISIS captured strategic areas in central Syria, including Tadmur, which includes the ancient ruins of Palmyra, in May 2015, and Al-Qaraytain, in August 2015. These successes allowed access to new resources, including oil fields east of Homs and armament depots near Tadmur.

ISIS was also able to open better lines of communications with its positions in the central and southern governorates. There the group has significantly increased its presence and activities, often by absorbing new loyalties among local militant groups operating far beyond its strongholds.

In April 2015, ISIS attempted to seize the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in the southern suburbs of Damascus, attacked rebels in eastern Aleppo governorate, and expanded in areas in Suweida and Daraa governorates. While these operational gains and losses have led to the deaths of many ISIS fighters, including commanders, more have joined the group, many clandestinely crossing Syrian borders.

Since January 2015, ISIS has suffered a string of losses in northeastern and eastern Syria at the hands of the YPG, which has been supported by the international coalition airstrikes and armed militia including Assyrian and Arab tribal groups. The anti-ISIS international coalition efforts have proved effective only when conducted alongside ground operations by the YPG.

In Al-Raqqah and other areas it controls, ISIS operates a primitive but rigid administrative system that comprises the Al-Hisbah morality police, the general police force, courts, and entities managing recruitment, tribal relations, and education. The group sustains the areas under its control by maintaining some basic services in a highly repressive environment.

On June 29, 2014, ISIS proclaimed itself a caliphate initially based on, but not limited to, territories it controls in Syria and Iraq. Its creation had formed an integral part of the group’s rhetorical and military expansionist aims since the outset of its activities. For those inclined to join the movement, the existence of the newly self-proclaimed entity served as an additional motivating factor to join the group. New recruits were not only expected to engage in military activity but also help with building the emerging “state.” This declaration demonstrates that the group envisions a long-term plan and has undertaken military operations toward this end.

At the core of ISIS’s propaganda strategy is an effective use of modern communications, particularly social media for purposes of recruitment and fundraising. Many new recruits, from the region and beyond, have been influenced by widely disseminated violent images of executions, beheadings, and stonings.

Impact on Civilian Life

I told the guards that my cousin was imprisoned only because he had said something that ISIS considered to be blasphemous. I said this was not correct, and that it should be for God to deliver his own sentence. This made the guards very angry. They pushed me violently, forcing me to the ground and beating me. I was whipped four hundred times and imprisoned for several weeks.

—Interviewee from Aleppo

The ISIS emir answered me in a harsh tone: “Why? Do you have your house here? Do you have your village here? This is not your village and you have no house. I don’t want to see you talk about a house here. You don’t belong here. By tomorrow not one of you will remain here or come back here.”

   —Kurdish interviewee forced from his home in northern Aleppo

Civilians, including men, women, and children, and ethnic and religious minorities, who remain in ISIS-controlled areas, live in fear. Victims and witnesses that fled consistently described being subjected to acts that terrorize and aim to silence the population. ISIS has systematically targeted sources of dissent, detaining and threatening activists, non-governmental organization workers, and journalists with death. Most have fled and ceased reporting from ISIS areas.

In areas under the armed group’s control, civilians have experienced a relentless assault on their basic freedoms. ISIS enforces its rules summarily, inflicting harsh penalties discriminating against those who transgress or refuse to accept their self-proclaimed rule. ISIS has obstructed the exercise of religious freedoms, the freedom of expression, assembly and association, which are guaranteed by international law. The group has systematically enforced its edicts through its Al-Hisbah morality police to conduct constant surveillance within local communities. Children have been asked to inform on their parents’ compliance with ISIS rules. Civilians who fled described a rapid imposition of strict social instructions followed by brutal enforcement. ISIS has attacked social and cultural practices—including weddings, musical events, and traditional ceremonies—deemed incompatible with their self-proclaimed beliefs in both urban and rural areas, demonstrating their intent to eradicate these aspects of Syrian culture.

Many residents of ISIS-held areas complained of the brutality of violent acts perpetrated under the guise of corporal hudud punishments based on the group’s radical interpretation of sharia law, including lashings and amputations, for offenses such as smoking cigarettes or theft. Victims of ISIS punishments described being subjected to a system based on the principle that “you are guilty unless you can prove your innocence.” Corporal punishments are imposed during public events in an effort to deter those who may oppose the group’s rule and to spread terror among the civilian population.

Humanitarian actors supporting the population’s access to food have been unable to reach some six hundred thousand people in ISIS-controlled Dayr Al-Zawr and Al-Raqqah governorates since May and July 2014, respectively. In Al-Hasakah governorate, ISIS obstructed the importation of medicine by doctors and medical personnel. One interviewee said that, in April 2014, “once ISIS took over, people who left ISIS areas to get medicine risked being arrested by ISIS.” Doctors and nurses described fleeing due to the restrictions on their professional activities imposed by ISIS. By preventing the supply of humanitarian aid, the group reinforces the dependence of civilians on the services it controls.

The group deploys its fighters and materiel in close proximity to civilian areas. Since the start of the international coalition’s aerial attacks on ISIS (Operation Inherent Resolve), civilians living in Manbij in Aleppo governorate described how ISIS fighters began to position themselves in civilian houses and farms. Airstrikes on ISIS positions have led to some civilian casualties. In one instance, a civilian whose relatives were killed in a coalition airstrike was forced to flee because he complained to ISIS about its presence near his home.

Where ISIS has occupied areas with diverse ethnic and religious communities, minorities have been forced either to assimilate or flee. The armed group has undertaken a policy of imposing discriminatory sanctions such as taxes or forced conversion—on the basis of ethnic or religious identity—destroying religious sites and systematically expelling minority communities. Evidence shows a manifest pattern of violent acts directed against certain groups with the intent to curtail and control their presence within ISIS areas.

Between September and October 2013, ISIS fighters attacked three Christian churches in Al-Raqqah governorate, destroying the Greek Catholic church, occupying Al-Shuhada Armenian Orthodox church in Al-Raqqah city, and burning an Armenian church in Tel Abyad. As ISIS spread throughout eastern Syria, Christians and their places of worship continued to be attacked. In September 2014, ISIS fighters destroyed an Armenian church in Dayr Al-Zawr.

On February 23, 2014, ISIS published a statement addressing Christians that had fled Al-Raqqah establishing conversion to Islam and the payment of a jizya tax as conditions for their return. The forced conversion of several Assyrian Christians has been documented.

Father Dall’Oglio, an Italian Jesuit priest and a peace activist who had been exiled from Syria in 2012 after criticizing the government, was abducted in Al-Raqqah city by ISIS on July 29, 2013. His fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

ISIS began to forcibly displace Kurdish civilians from towns in Al-Raqqah governorate in July 2013. After demanding that all Kurds leave Tel Abyad or else be killed, thousands of civilians, including Turkmen and Arab families, fled on July 21. Its fighters systematically looted and destroyed the property of Kurds, and in some cases, resettled displaced Arab Sunni families from the Qalamoun area (Rif Damascus), Dayr Al-Zawr, and Al-Raqqah in abandoned Kurdish homes. A similar pattern was documented in Tel Arab and Tel Hassel in July 2013. As ISIS consolidated its authority in Al-Raqqah, Kurdish civilians were forcibly displaced from Tel Akhdar and Ayn Al-Arab (better known by its Kurdish name, Kobane) in northern Aleppo governorate in March and September 2014, respectively. As a direct consequence of ISIS conduct, which runs contrary to international humanitarian law and amounts to the war crime of displacing civilians, the demographics of northeastern Syria have been altered.

Perpetrated as a widespread and systematic attack against the Kurdish civilian population, these acts amount to the crime against humanity of forcible displacement. According to former residents, attacks on Shiite husaynias and homes in Al-Raqqah caused mass displacement, while others converted “to survive.” The complete destruction of the Uwais Al-Qarni Shiite Mosque and the desecration of seventh-century tombs on May 31, 2014 in Al-Raqqah were carried out as part of an assault against Shiites in the area. Sunni mosques constructed around tombs or shrines of religious figures have been considered idolatrous and also destroyed by ISIS.

ISIS carries out large-scale victimization through the systematic imposition of harsh restrictions on basic rights and freedoms indicating an underlying policy. The brutal nature and overall scale of abuses is intended to reinforce the group’s absolute monopoly on political and social life to enforce compliance and conformity among communities under their control. Imposition of severe measures disguised as religious edicts has formed part of the attack against the civilian population, in addition to the perpetration of armed violence against civilians, mistreatment of persons taking no active part in hostilities, and violence against identified communities.

In attacking churches, historic monuments, and buildings dedicated to religion and culture, which did not contain any military objectives, ISIS violated its obligations under customary international humanitarian law. Targeted as such, ISIS has perpetrated the war crime of attacking protected objects. These crimes were committed as part of ISIS’s attack on the civilian population in Al-Raqqah, Dayr Al-Zawr, and Aleppo governorates, deliberately inflicting terror. The result of these attacks has been the expulsion of large segments of these communities and the subjugation of those who remained.

Attacks on the Civilian Population

Both victims’ hands were tied to each side of the improvised cross. I went to read the placards. On the first one it read, “This is the fate of those who fight against us.” I realized that my 7-year-old son was next to me, still holding my hand and watching this horrifying scene. He later asked me, “Why were they there? Why was their blood on the heads and bodies?” I had to lie to him and say they were waiting for ambulances to come and rescue them.

—Witness to the displayed bodies of ISIS victims, Dayr Al-Zawr

ISIS declared through mosques that hudud, in this case for looting, would be implemented against someone in [a public square]. At the designated time on the following day, a man was brought to the square, blindfolded. A member of ISIS read the group’s judgment. Two people held the victim tight while a third man stretched his arm over a large wooden board. A fourth man cut off the victim’s hand. It took a long time. One of the people who was standing next to me vomited and passed out due to the horrific scene.

—Witness to an amputation in Al-Raqqah

ISIS has beheaded, shot, and stoned men, women, and children in public spaces in towns and villages across northeastern Syria. ISIS employs the practice of takfir, declaring someone to be a heretic, in order to justify attacks on any individual or group it perceives to be a challenge to its dominance. Many of those executed were accused of being affiliated with other armed groups or collaborating with the government. In public declarations made before the executions, ISIS has designated such people as kufar or infidels.

The mutilated bodies of male victims are often placed on display, a warning to the local population of the consequences of failure to submit to the armed group’s authority. One man, a witness to the killing of a 16-year-old boy in Al-Ashara (Dayr Al-Zawr governorate), said the boy’s body was hung on a cross in a public square “for people to see what it looks like to be punished by ISIS.”

Executions have been recorded in Aleppo, Al-Raqqah, Idlib, Al-Hasakah, and Dayr Al-Zawr governorates. They follow a consistent pattern. ISIS, often through the Al-Hisbah morality police, informs residents of the time and place of the execution and urges them to attend. Those found on the streets nearby are taken by force to witness the killings. Before executions, ISIS fighters announce the victims’ “crimes.” Following the killings, the corpses are placed on public display, often on crosses, for up to three days, serving as a warning to local residents. Witnesses saw scenes of still-bleeding bodies hanging from crosses and of heads placed on spikes along park railings.

Interviewees have remarked that executions have become common and that there are “always” heads and bodies on display in the squares and roundabouts of the larger towns. The growing desensitization underpins the trauma of the civilian population.

ISIS also carries out amputations and lashings in public spaces in its areas of control. Men have had their hands amputated for allegedly committing theft. The group has also amputated the fingers of men caught smoking. Men have been lashed for being in the company of women who ISIS considers to be “improperly” dressed, for smoking, not attending Friday prayers, trading during prayer times, and for having tattoos.

ISIS regards the Yazidi Kurdish community as infidels and their religious practices “deviant.” On May 29, 2014, ISIS attacked Al-Taliliyah (Al-Hasakah governorate), which used to contain a Yazidi Kurdish community. The village had been taken over by internally displaced persons, most of whom were women and children, from Al-Safira (Aleppo governorate). ISIS fighters—mainly foreign fighters who did not speak Arabic and so could not understand the protestations of those they were killing—believed their victims to be Yazidi Kurds. The executions halted only when an Iraqi fighter arrived and translated to the other ISIS fighters that the civilians were Sunni Arabs.

ISIS has set up detention centers in former government prisons, military bases, hospitals, schools, and in private houses. Former detainees described being beaten, whipped, electrocuted, and suspended by their arms from walls or the ceiling. Witnesses to public executions remarked that the victims often bore signs of prior beatings. Detainees are held in dirty and overcrowded cells. Many spent long periods of time in handcuffs. Detainees interviewed stated that neither they nor their cellmates received medical treatment. One detainee recalled a Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighter being left in his cell beaten, with his hands cuffed behind his back and an open fracture on his leg.

ISIS has sought to control the flow of information in the areas it holds. Scores of Syrian journalists and human rights activists have been abducted, disappeared, tortured, and executed. Their targeting largely failed to attract widespread media attention. As early as June 2013, ISIS began to abduct and torture Syrian journalists in Aleppo and Al-Raqqah governorates. Former prisoners stated that the most brutal treatment inside ISIS detention centers was meted out to those suspected of being part of other armed groups, local media workers, and fixers working with international journalists.

One journalist, abducted in June 2013, was beaten in the ISIS detention center in Jarablus (Aleppo governorate) and accused of being a spy. Another Syrian journalist, held in an ISIS detention center in Al-Raqqah governorate in January 2014, was beaten and, upon release, was threatened with death if he photographed or filmed any of the armed group’s activities, with one fighter telling him, “We will make sure you will never again be able to do anything on top of the earth.”

In October and November 2013, journalists working for international television channels were killed in Aleppo city. Since that time, media workers have disappeared in ISIS-controlled areas; their fate and whereabouts remain unknown. On or about August 19 and September 2, 2014, ISIS executed two American journalists. On September 13, 2014, the group executed a British aid worker. All three had been abducted and detained in Syria. The group filmed the executions, attempting to impact international policy and the anticipated aerial attacks on their positions.

Journalists and activists working to document the violations and abuses suffered by their local communities under ISIS have been denied their special protection under international humanitarian law and have been disappeared, detained, tortured, and killed.

As an organized armed group exercising effective control over territory, ISIS has an obligation to ensure humane treatment. By regularly using violence to life, torture, mutilation, and cruel treatment, ISIS is violating binding international humanitarian law. Its commanders can be held individually responsible for the ensuing war crimes.

Subjecting persons to mutilation, by permanently disfiguring or disabling them through the removal of appendages, amounts to the war crime of mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture. Displays of dead, mutilated bodies are deliberate acts intended to humiliate and degrade the victims and their families, amounting to the war crime of outrages upon personal dignity.

By orchestrating systematic harm against a civilian population, ISIS has demonstrated its capacity and intent to willfully apply measures of intimidation and terror, such as violence to life, and inhuman treatment inflicting great suffering and injury to bodily integrity.

ISIS has committed torture and murder as part of an attack on a civilian population in Aleppo, Al-Raqqah, Dayr Al-Zawr, and Al-Hasakah governorates, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The war crime of murder has been committed in Idlib governorate. The group has further committed the crime against humanity of enforced disappearance in Al-Raqqah and Aleppo governorates.

Violations Against Women

A 19-year-old university student committed suicide because her parents forced her to marry a man from members of ISIS. Many families marry their daughters (including those under 18) to ISIS members because of their fears to be arrested or killed.

—Interviewee from Al-Raqqah

After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the sharia amongst the fighters … who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one-fifth of the slaves were transferred to the IS’s authority to be divided as khums [spoils of war].

—Dabiq (ISIS publication)

In ISIS-controlled areas of Syria, women and girls have largely been confined to their houses, excised from public life. ISIS regulations dictate what women must wear, with whom they may socialize, and where they may work. Women and girls over the age of 10 must be fully covered when venturing outdoors. One woman, who had fled from the ISIS stronghold of Manbij (Aleppo governorate), described her clothing being checked at multiple checkpoints as she moved about the town. She explained, “You can hardly see your way. . . . I fell many times. It is hard to breathe. You are walking in the street but it feels like a prison cell.” Women and girls are not permitted to be in the company of men outside of their immediate family. For women whose male relatives are dead, missing, or fighting, the simple act of going to purchase food has become a hazardous undertaking.

ISIS rules exacerbate the subordinate role of women in society, reinforcing patriarchal attitudes. Failure to abide by these rules is punishable by lashing. Punishments may be carried out by the Al-Hisbah morality police but increasingly they are the responsibility of the all-female brigade, Al-Khansaa, which assists in monitoring adherence to dress codes and enforcing punishments.

These enforcement brigades act in violation of international humanitarian law and perpetrate the war crimes of outrages upon personal dignity, torture, and cruel treatment against women. The psychological and physical harm caused by ISIS’s treatment of women, the onerous instructions imposed on their dress code, and restrictions on their freedom of movement demonstrate discriminatory treatment on the basis of gender.

Unmarried women—whom ISIS considers to be females over the age of puberty—pose a particular threat to the armed group’s enforced social order. Parents of unmarried women and girls are terrified of their daughters being forced to marry ISIS fighters and as a result, early marriage is on the rise. Their fears are not unfounded. There are distressing accounts of fighters taking girls as young as 13 away from their families, resulting in violations of international humanitarian law and acts that amount to war crimes of cruel treatment, sexual violence, and rape.

ISIS has executed women, as well as men, for unapproved contact with the opposite sex resulting in charges of adultery. In Al-Raqqah governorate, ISIS executed eight women on these grounds on three separate occasions in June and July 2014. Most were stoned to death, ostensibly for adultery. Others interviewed indicated that the women had been discovered helping fighters from other armed groups. According to footage released by ISIS, the women were made to stand, while veiled with their hands bound to their sides, in a shallow grave, while men hurled large rocks at their heads until they collapsed and eventually died from their injuries. Stonings, perpetrated by ISIS and allied clans, have recently been documented in Dayr Al-Zawr and Hama governorates. In August 2014, ISIS detained and beheaded a female dentist in Al-Mayadin (Dayr Al-Zawr governorate) who had continued to treat patients of both sexes. These killings violate binding international humanitarian law and amount to the war crimes of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, murder, and sentencing and execution without due process. The killings and acts of sexual violence, perpetrated by ISIS as part of its attack on the civilian population, constitute the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, rape, and sexual violence.

During its early August 2014 attack on Sinjar in northern Iraq, ISIS abducted hundreds of Yazidi women and girls. Some abductees have been taken into Syria and sold as “war booty” in markets in locations across Al-Raqqah. Regarded as chattels, these women and girls are imprisoned in houses and are being held in sexual slavery. As of mid-2015, ISIS held over one thousand Yazidi women and girls in sexual slavery. Sold and re-sold, girls as young as age 9 are subjected to repeated rapes and beatings.

While some women appear to have been sold to individual men living in Al-Raqqah, others are held in ISIS rest houses in urban areas in the governorate. Those held by ISIS are suffering rapes by multiple fighters returning from the battlefront. The systematic sexual violence and enslavement—perpetrated by ISIS and by the men who have bought them at public auction—is continuing.

ISIS has publicized its own intentions regarding these violations, stating, “After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the sharia amongst the fighters … who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one-fifth of the slaves were transferred to the IS’s authority to be divided as khums [spoils of war].” The group, in its magazine, welcomes the enslavement of the Yazidi women, declaring one of the signs of the hour [apocalypse] to be when “the slave girl gives birth to her master.” In sexually enslaving Yazidi women and girls and forcing them to bear the children of ISIS fighters, the armed group views the offspring as belonging to the father, superior to the mother, and prevents another generation of Yazidis from being born.

ISIS attacks on Yazidi women and girls now being held inside Syria are violations of international humanitarian law and amount to the war crime of sexual slavery, sexual violence, rape, and forced pregnancy.

The enslavement of Yazidi women was undertaken as part of ISIS’s attack on civilian communities considered to be infidels. Their treatment in unlawful confinement and stated motivation behind their capture and enslavement demonstrate the intent of ISIS to forcibly impregnate and thereby affect the ethnic and religious composition of the group. Undertaken as part of a widespread and systematic attack, these acts amount to the crimes against humanity of enslavement, rape, and sexual violence. The nature of attacks on the Yazidis, taken together with ISIS’s public statements over social media, suggests a denial of this religious group’s right to exist.

Violations Against Children

I saw at least ten armed ISIS members aged 13–14 years old. These boys served as guards at ISIS headquarters and at checkpoints. They were armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades.

—Interviewee from Al-Hasakah

People who were caught eating during the fast of Ramadan were lashed in the streets. An ISIS member approached a 14-year-old boy after seeing him drinking water, then dragged him to the middle of the crowd in the street, announced his “crime” and lashed him seventy-nine times.

—Interviewee from Al-Raqqah

Children have been the victims, perpetrators, and witnesses of ISIS executions. Boys under the age of 18 have been executed—either beheaded or shot—for alleged affiliation with other armed groups. ISIS fighters under 18 years of age are said to have performed the role of executioner. A 16-year-old fighter reportedly cut the throats of two soldiers, captured from Tabqa airbase in late August 2014, in Slouk in Al-Raqqah governorate. Children are often present in the crowds at the executions and cannot avoid seeing the publicly displayed corpses in the days that follow. One father from Dayr Al-Zawr stated that the first time he saw the body of a man hanging from a cross in Al-Mayadin in late July 2014, he stood for several minutes, transfixed by the horror of the scene, before realizing that his 7-year-old son was with him, also looking at the body. That night, his son was not able to sleep and woke up repeatedly in panic. His father described feeling immense guilt for exposing his son to such cruelty.

The public execution of 15-year-old Mohammed Qatta, a coffee seller in Aleppo, on June 9, 2013 was an early demonstration of the brutal way in which ISIS punishes and uses terror to ensure discipline among children, in particular boys. Collected information reveals that ISIS prioritizes children as a vehicle for ensuring long-term loyalty, adherence to their ideology, and a cadre of devoted fighters that will see violence as a way of life. The formation of new “cub” training camps has been documented.

Education is employed as a tool of indoctrination, designed to foster a new generation of supporters. In many areas, the school curriculum has been amended to reflect ideological priorities and weapons training. It has established training camps across areas under its control. Since September 2013, Al-Bouhtri School in Al-Bab (Aleppo governorate) has been used as an ISIS recruitment and military training facility for boys under the age of 18. The sharia youth camp near Tabqa (Al-Raqqah governorate) reportedly trains over three hundred fifty boys between the ages of 5 and 16 years for combat roles. The armed group also deliberately aims propaganda at children. In Al-Raqqah city, children are gathered for screenings of videos depicting mass executions of government soldiers, desensitizing them to extreme violence. By using, conscripting, and enlisting children for active combat roles, the group is perpetrating abuses and war crimes on a massive scale in a systematic and organized manner.

Following the abduction of 153 Kurdish boys, aged between 14 and 16, on May 29, 2014, the group detained them in a school in Manbij (Aleppo governorate), screened videos of beheadings and attacks, and subjected the boys to daily instruction on militant ideology for a five-month period. Those who disagreed were punished with severe beatings. Upon their release, they were told they had completed their religious training. Parents of the boys described fearing that their sons were deliberately groomed to inject ISIS’s worldview into their Kurdish communities.

ISIS has instrumentalized and abused children on a systematic scale. The deliberate nature of violations against children is apparent. By exploiting schools to indoctrinate children, the armed group fails in its obligations to ensure education and the protection of children from the dangers arising in war. In training and using children for combat roles, ISIS has violated international humanitarian law and perpetrated war crimes on a mass scale.

Violations Committed During ISIS Military Assaults

The exhibition of heads (of the captured soldiers) by ISIS took place in the center of the town. It seems that they were killed just a short time earlier, as the signs of blood were still apparent.

—Interviewee from Al-Raqqah

The senior judge came and said, “We do this in front of your eyes, so you can go back and tell your children and your neighbors that this is how kufar end up, this is what they will eventually face.”

—Witness to an execution of a Kurdish fighter in Al-Raqqah

By mid-2014, ISIS had besieged the 17th Division’s base in Al-Raqqah city and the Tabqa airbase, two of the last Syrian army positions in Al-Raqqah governorate. When the 17th Division base fell on July 25, 2014, the armed group committed large-scale violations of binding international humanitarian law and the war crime of murder and mutilation, killing the soldiers captured inside and later beheading many of their corpses. Residents of Al-Raqqah city and Slouk described that, in the days that followed the attack, ISIS displayed the bodies and heads in the town squares. Videos, some recorded by the group, showed children looking at the mutilated corpses.

By August 23, 2014, the group had launched its final assault on Tabqa airbase. As it became apparent that the base would fall to ISIS, some soldiers fled across the desert. While a few made it to the safety of army positions many miles away, others were captured and killed. Two soldiers, captured outside the base, were brought to Slouk and executed in a public square between August 28­­­–30. ISIS read the judgment, declaring that the soldiers, who were Sunni, were traitors and kufar before cutting their throats. Two more captured soldiers were executed publicly in Tabqa in late August 2014.

After killing the soldiers captured near the base, ISIS mutilated their bodies. The group placed the decapitated heads of some of the soldiers on public display in squares and on roundabouts in Tabqa and Al-Raqqah cities, terrorizing the local population. Other soldiers, injured during the attack on the base and weakened from lack of water, died in the desert.

More than two hundred men, most captured still inside the Tabqa airbase, were stripped to their underwear and forced to walk into the desert. A video of this forced march was recorded and later distributed by ISIS. A later video showed hundreds of bodies lying dead in the sand, bearing gunshot wounds to the head.

In mid-July 2014, ISIS fighters seized the Shaar gas field in eastern Homs, allegedly killing three hundred fifty people in close quarters after capturing the area. Among those killed were technicians and other staff working at the gas fields and their family members, including children. The body of a doctor who was killed in the attack was found on July 27 in his medical clinic, with his hands tied and shot at close range. Civilian residents of nearby villages, such as Al-Mahfoura, were also killed in the attack.

Al-Raqqah, Dayr Al-Zawr, and Al-Hasakah governorates, with dominant tribal communities, have posed a particular challenge to ISIS rule. The massacre of the Al-Sheitat tribe in Dayr Al-Zawr in August 2014 was perpetrated in a struggle for control of oil resources near the town of Mohassan. One survivor described seeing “many heads hanging on walls while I and my family escaped.” Individuals living nearby reported seeing freshly dug mass graves. Published video indicates that ISIS fighters conducted a mass execution of fighting-age male members of the Al-Sheitat tribe. On November 6, 2014, it was reported that the ISIS commander, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, issued a statement, granting members of the Al-Sheitat tribe permission to return to their homes, upon the condition that they do not assemble, surrender all weapons, and inform on all “apostates” to ISIS. All “traitors” would be killed.

In 2014, ISIS besieged the predominantly Kurdish region of Kobane, cutting off supplies of food and electricity into the area. The group had launched several attacks, which had been successfully repelled by the YPG, Kurdish forces fighting inside Syria. On September 15, 2014, buoyed by its recent successes in Syria and Iraq, ISIS launched a multi-front attack on the Kobane region with heavy weapons, artillery, tanks, and thousands of fighters.

Between September 15 and October 5, ISIS advanced quickly through the countryside, amidst heavy clashes with the YPG. By the first week of October, the group entered the city, seizing some of its outer neighborhoods. As ISIS moved toward Kobane, more than two hundred thousand persons were displaced as they fled ISIS attacks. Most of those interviewed stated that they feared executions, rape, and abductions that ISIS reportedly committed against the Yazidi Kurds in Sinjar, Iraq, during the ISIS attack there in September 2014. Close to four hundred villages were emptied. Some of those who did not flee—who were too old, too infirm, or who had remained to protect their property—were executed by ISIS. Others were taken by force to Tel Abyad in Al-Raqqah governorate where they were detained and beaten. On release, they were forced to leave the area. Houses in rural Kobane were systematically looted by ISIS fighters, with goods and livestock transported to markets in Al-Raqqah governorate.

ISIS has executed Kurdish fighters captured during its attack. In mid-September 2014 in Tel Abyad, ISIS executed a female Kurdish fighter before a group of detained civilians from Kobane. Before cutting her throat, a fighter told the crowd, “She has fought us for three months with the kufar, and now we will behead her in front of you, and then, when you leave, you will tell your children, and neighbors, that this is the end and the fate of kufar.”

In one of its largest attacks to date, the group infiltrated Kobane city on June 2015 and killed more than two hundred fifty civilians in forty-eight hours. Also in June 2015, ISIS executed men in the Roman amphitheater of Palmyra accused of fighting or collaborating with government forces or armed groups.

In carrying out mass killings of captured fighters and civilians following military assaults, ISIS members have perpetrated egregious violations of binding international humanitarian law and the war crime of murder on a massive scale.

Criminal Responsibility

The testimonies collected reveal that ISIS seeks to subjugate civilians under its control and dominate every aspect of their lives through terror, indoctrination, and the provision of services to those who obey. ISIS has sought to entrench its militant extremist ideology by indoctrinating children and suppressing freedom of expression. Surveillance, coercion, fear, and punishment are used to inhibit any dissent. Discrimination on the basis of gender is used to implement rigid social norms.

As an armed group bound by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and customary international law, ISIS has violated its obligations toward civilians and persons hors de combat, amounting to war crimes. In areas where ISIS has established effective control, ISIS has systematically denied basic human rights and freedoms and in the context of its attack against the civilian population, has perpetrated crimes against humanity.

Since its establishment, ISIS has acted toward a common purpose. The level of organization, character of its ranks and membership, and long-term vision indicate a cohesive and coordinated group. The military operations carried out by ISIS have been motivated by the group’s desire to seize natural resources in northeastern Syria and to subdue the civilian population living in areas under its control.

ISIS functions under responsible command and has a hierarchical structure including a policy level. The group has demonstrated its capacity to impose a policy on its members and ensure the coordinated implementation of decisions made by its leadership. With the capacity and means to attack the civilian population on a large scale, ISIS has carried out mass victimization against civilians, including segments of the population on the basis of gender, religion, and ethnicity. According to the evidence collected, there are reasonable grounds to believe that ISIS has carried out attacks in accordance with an organizational policy.

ISIS has perpetrated murder and other inhumane acts, enslavement, rape, sexual slavery and violence, forcible displacement, enforced disappearance, and torture. These acts have been committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population in Aleppo, Al-Raqqah, Al-Hasakah, and Dayr Al-Zawr governorates. This attack has emerged from April 2013 to the present day and is manifested through the coordinated campaign of spreading terror among the civilian population. The terror inflicted on the civilian population is clearly evidenced by witness and victim accounts. The abuses and crimes committed led to the intended submission of the civilian population. This terror was inflicted through a systematic imposition of restrictions on basic rights and freedoms and through the widespread commission of international humanitarian law violations and war crimes, including sentencing and executions without due process, killing, mutilation, rape, sexual violence, forced pregnancy, torture, cruel treatment, the use and recruitment of children, and outrages upon personal dignity.

The abuses, violations, and crimes committed by ISIS against Syrians have been deliberate and calculated. The commanders of ISIS have endorsed and directed harm against the civilian population under their control. The commanders of ISIS have acted willfully, perpetrating these war crimes and crimes against humanity with clear intent of attacking persons with awareness of their civilian or hors de combat status. They are individually criminally responsible for these crimes.

This essay is adapted from Rule of Terror: Living Under ISIS in Syria, a Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, originally issued on November 14, 2014. The commissioners are Karen Koning AbuZayd, Carla Del Ponte, Vitit Muntarbhorn, and Paulo Pinheiro (chairman).

Karen Koning AbuZayd is a commissioner of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. She served as commissioner-general for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from 2005 to 2010. Based in Gaza, she oversaw education, health, social services, and microenterprise programs for four million Palestinian refugees. From 2000 to 2005, she was deputy commissioner-general of UNRWA. Previously, she worked for nineteen years in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Carla Del Ponte is a commissioner of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. She was the attorney general of Switzerland from 1994 to 1999, and served as the Swiss ambassador to Argentina from 2008 to 2011. She was a prosecutor for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 1999 to 2003, and for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 1999 to 2008.

Vitit Muntarbhorn is a commissioner of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. He was the chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Ivory Coast in 2011. An international law professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, he was awarded the UNESCO Human Rights Education Prize in 2004. He served as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from 2004 to 2010 and as special rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography from 1990 to 1994.

Paulo Pinheiro is the chairman of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. He was one of seven members of the Brazilian Truth Commission created in 2012 to examine human rights violations during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. He is also visiting adjunct professor of international relations at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. Previously, he served as commissioner and rapporteur on children at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States from 2003 to 2010, and as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar from 2000 to 2008. He was the Brazilian federal secretary of state for human rights from 2001 to 2002. He was the UN special rapporteur for Burundi from 1995 to 1999.

Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has been extremely successful in maintaining a high degree of anonymity and secrecy. He achieved this first in his role as leader of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) from 2010 and now as the emir and caliph of Islamic State (IS)* as he declared it on July 4, 2014. He rarely appears in public. Until recently he made few public statements, whether in writing, audio recordings, or videos. This is largely a consequence of advice from his security staff, who is well aware that any kind of public profile might present foreign intelligence with leads as to his whereabouts. It was a careless, boastful video, shot in the desert, that led American assassins to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in 2006.

However, I have been able to piece together an idea of the man through interviews—including speaking to a valuable source who is very close to the IS leadership and was in prison with Al-Baghdadi for two years—and various Arabic online sources. What follows is therefore a mosaic, and many fragments are, for the moment, missing. However, when assembled, this information paints a striking portrait of the world’s most dangerous man.

Personal Life

Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Duaa, Doctor Ibrahim, Awwad Ibrahim, Al-Shabah (the phantom), and “the invisible sheikh” (due to his habit of wearing a mask when addressing his commanders), was born in 1971 in Samarra, fifty miles north of Baghdad. His real name is Ibrahim Bin Awwad Bin Ibrahim Al-Badri Al-Qurayshi. He is from the Bobadri tribe, largely located in Samarra and Diyala, which includes the Radhawiyyah, Husseiniyyah, and Adnaniyyah tribes, as well as, crucially, the Prophet Mohammed’s Quraysh tribe. One of the key qualifications, historically, for becoming caliph is to be a descendant of the Prophet. Commentators have pointed out that Al-Baghdadi used a miswak (cleaning twig) to clean his teeth before delivering his famous sermon at the Great Mosque of Al-Nuri in Mosul on July 4, 2014, declaring the caliphate. In this he was emulating the Prophet Mohammed’s reported practice. Thus he was linking himself through word, gesture, and blood lineage to the Prophet, as well as referencing the Salafist desire to return to the lifestyle of the first Muslims.

According to a biography posted online by the Islamic State’s Al-Hayat Media Center and widely circulated among jihadist websites, Al-Baghdadi is from a religious family that includes several imams and Quranic teachers. His mother is from a distinguished family within the Bobadri tribe. He attended the Islamic University of Baghdad, receiving a BA, MA, and PhD. His doctorate focused on Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic culture and history. His religious credentials are taken to confer legitimacy on his claim to be not only a military and political leader but also a religious guide. This is something even Osama Bin Laden could not lay claim to. Both Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s current leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, had more secular professional backgrounds. Bin Laden was involved in the construction industry, while Al-Zawahiri was a surgeon.

People who have met Al-Baghdadi describe him as quietly spoken and serious. A contact close to the IS leadership, whom I cannot identify for security reasons, was imprisoned with Al-Baghdadi in the U.S. detention center Camp Bucca, Iraq, for around two years from 2004. He said Al-Baghdadi always had a serene smile on his face and was “calm and self-possessed.” This person, who had also been in Osama Bin Laden’s coterie, said that Al-Baghdadi reminded him of the late Al-Qaeda leader. The same source told me that Al-Baghdadi is extremely charismatic and that, sitting in a room with him and listening to him talking, “it is very difficult not to be influenced by him, his ideas, and his beliefs.”

Al-Baghdadi can also be ruthless and menacing. My contact told me that when Al-Baghdadi was released from prison, he told the American guard at the gates that he would be seeing him again. “We will find you on the streets somewhere, someday,” he threatened, “either here or in New York.” Enemies are not forgiven or forgotten by this quiet leader: after Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi was assassinated in 2010, two of the eleven members of the Shura Council convened to choose a new emir did not approve the choice of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. One of them, Jamal Al-Hamdani, was murdered shortly afterward.

As a military leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi is shrewd and calculating. Though he has never fought abroad—unusual in a global jihadist leader—he has extensive battleground experience. He is an intelligent opponent too, having carefully evaluated and analyzed the experiences of “successful” longstanding jihadist organizations like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. He recognizes the effectiveness of hijra (flight); he will immediately order full withdrawal from a battle that cannot easily be won, concluding that hijra is key to the survival of Al-Qaeda affiliates from Somalia to China.

Al-Baghdadi understands the value of a well-run organization. Like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in its late 1990s heyday in Afghanistan, under Al-Baghdadi, ISI and then IS have adopted a complex, hierarchical, administrative, and decision-making structure, with departments and committees for everything from kidnapping to salaries and propaganda.

Comparisons with Osama Bin Laden are inevitable and frequent. Al-Baghdadi is held in as much esteem as Bin Laden was among Sunni fighters for his prowess as a military and religious leader; this is something Al-Zawahiri has not been able to achieve. Al-Baghdadi did not embark on his journey to the leadership with the benefit of wealth, like Osama Bin Laden. His progress has been due to his reputation alone, which appears to have won him praise and loyalty among the extremists. He has claimed that he, rather than Al-Qaeda’s present leader, is the true successor to Bin Laden’s legacy and the person most likely to fulfill his agenda. A Syrian fighter with IS once said, “Sheikh Al-Baghdadi and Sheikh Osama are similar. They always look ahead, they both seek an Islamic state.” Speaking to the same reporter, a non-Syrian fighter added, “The group Al-Qaeda does not exist anymore. It was formed as a base for the Islamic State and now we have it, Al-Zawahiri should pledge allegiance to Sheikh Al-Baghdadi.”

The indications are that Al-Baghdadi has, or has had, two or three wives. He first married when he finished his PhD, and his first son was born in 2003. According to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, his first wife is called Israa Rajab Mahal Al-Qaisi. He married Saja Hamid Al-Dulaimi in 2010 or 2011. Saja’s former husband was jihadist commander Fallah Ismail Jassem, of the Iraqi insurgency Jaish Al-Rashideen (Army of the Guides). He was gunned down by the Iraqi army in the province of Anbar in 2010, according to media reports. Saja is from an extremist family whose members all adhere to Salafist-jihadist ideology. Her father was a commander in the Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS), killed in battle with the Syrian Army in September 2013. It has also been reported that her sister, Duaa, carried out a suicide attack on a Kurdish gathering in Erbil, and her brother is reportedly facing execution for a series of bombings in southern Iraq.

The Al-Dulaimi tribe, from which Saja hails, is one of the largest tribes in the Arab World, with over seven million members. This is of immense significance in a country where tribal networks are a dominant sociopolitical factor; the U.S.-orchestrated Awakening campaign, which began in 2006, saw a significant (if temporary) reversal of fortune for Al-Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers (Iraq), when tribal leaders were persuaded to turn against the jihadists. Jihadist leaders have a tradition of making political marriages to ensure tribal support. Osama Bin Laden’s fifth wife, for example, was a young Yemeni woman from Taiz: Amal Al-Sadah. Taiz is Yemen’s second largest city and, by marrying Amal, Bin Laden secured the protection of her tribe for Al-Qaeda members migrating to Yemen. According to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Al-Baghdadi married another Al-Dulaimi, Asma Fawzi Muhammad, sometime in the 2010s. It is not known if this marriage has endured. The Al-Dulaimi connection, along with Al-Baghdadi’s own extensive tribal network, may ensure greater loyalty and protection.

Saja’s identity was revealed when she was photographed during an exchange of prisoners. At some time in 2014 the Al-Qaeda group Al-Nusra kidnapped a group of Syrian nuns in the town of Maaloulah. They were subsequently swapped in a deal with the Damascus regime. Among the female prisoners released by Bashar Al-Assad’s government was Saja. Abu Maan Al-Suri, an Al-Nusra member, told reporters that Al-Baghdadi’s wife had been imprisoned along with her two sons and a younger brother. In November 2014, Saja was arrested crossing into Lebanon with two sons and a daughter, the latter, Al-Baghdadi’s child. According to a source interviewed by the New York Times, Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, and American intelligence coordinated in Saja’s capture, in the belief that she will have a lot of valuable information. The Lebanese government also sees members of Al-Baghdadi’s family as useful bargaining tools should any of their nationals be seized by Islamic State.

A large amount of rumor and disinformation designed to paint Saja as a less high-value prisoner has followed her detention, including the suggestion that her marriage to Al-Baghdadi lasted only three months and that she is now married to a Palestinian by whom she is pregnant. Saja and her 10-year-old daughter have remained remarkably tight-lipped about their relationship with Al-Baghdadi; at one point Saja told interrogators that her husband was dead. The real status of Saja’s marriage to Al-Baghdadi is unlikely to be revealed by her. In any case, her position is now compromised—the same New York Times article quotes an American intelligence officer who captured one of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi’s wives in Iraq: “We got little out of her . . .and when we sent her back, Zarqawi killed her.” Saja’s high status among the jihadi brides suggests that she is far from ostracized by her husband or his close associates. This situation would be unlikely if the couple were divorced—and the idea that she would have absconded for another man is simply ridiculous.

Becoming Radicalized

In the 1990s, Al-Baghdadi lived at the mosque in Tobchi, an impoverished suburb in east Baghdad. Locals recall him arriving; they say the young man was quiet and polite. He gained his first experience as a preacher at the small mosque, taking prayers and the occasional sermon when the imam was away.

Like Osama Bin Laden, Al-Baghdadi enjoys sport. In Bin Laden’s case, this was basketball; Al-Baghdadi loves football, according to Daily Telegraph interviews with his contemporaries. By some accounts he was an impressive striker. It was not all fun and games, though. Tobchi locals remember him espousing fundamentalist values, losing his temper when he saw men and women dancing together at a wedding, and, finally, falling out with the mosque when its owner became associated with the political Islamic Party—his extremist ideology held that political parties are sacrilegious. The mosque owner’s tribal allegiances worked to squeeze Al-Baghdadi out, and he began preaching at the Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal Mosque in Samarra, which was frequented by several hardliners. It was around this time that he began to be known as Sheikh Ibrahim, the most common name for him in jihadist circles before he became Caliph Ibrahim.

Al-Baghdadi moved to a small town called Qaim, in Anbar province, following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Angered by the invasion of his country by foreign soldiers, he adopted the pseudonym Abu Duaa and became part of an insurgent extremist group, probably under the umbrella of Jaish Ansar Al-Sunna (Army of the Followers of the Teachings). It seems highly likely that it was here he became associated with Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and his group Al-Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Jihad), which was also based in Anbar province. However, it is known that he did not at this point offer any form of allegiance to Al-Zarqawi.

In late 2004, he was arrested for “militant activities” and imprisoned without trial by the Americans in their Camp Bucca prison, deep in the desert. It was here that my source first met him, having been interrogated in Abu Ghraib prison first and then sent on to Bucca—a process my contact says was normal American practice at the time. If he was not entirely radicalized before prison, Al-Baghdadi certainly became so during his incarceration, where he met many Al-Qaeda men. As a Quranic teacher, Al-Baghdadi gave classes and lectures to many prominent Iraqi and foreign extremists in Camp Bucca.

He was released in 2006, according to my source—conflicting accounts, including official U.S. intelligence reports, have him in jail until 2009, but this is not possible given the chronology below. He co-founded a new extremist group called Jaish Ahl Al-Sunna wal Jamaa (Assembly of the Helpers of Sunna), which was active in the areas around and including Diyala, Baghdad, and Samarra, where he was a regular preacher in the mosque. Al-Baghdadi was the head of the sharia committee of Jaish Ahl Al-Sunna wal Jamaa.

He was close to some leaders of Al-Qaeda in Iraq but did not give his bayat (allegiance) to Al-Zarqawi or his successor, Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir. Al-Baghdadi liked and greatly respected the latter; he described him to my source as “a wise leader” because he sought to avoid conflict between the various jihadist groups then fighting in Iraq. It was Abu Hamza who persuaded the Jordanian Al-Zarqawi to give his bayat to Osama Bin Laden and who took his oath of allegiance on behalf of the Al-Qaeda leader. Abu Hamza then gave a special kind of bayat to Al-Zarqawi, whereby he pledged loyalty to him as a military, rather than a spiritual or religious, leader.

When Al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006, Al-Baghdadi brought his group under the Majlis Shura Council (MSC) umbrella, at Abu Hamza’s invitation. The MSC incorporated Al-Qaeda and would soon be repackaged as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). Al-Baghdadi was on the sharia committee and the central advisory (Shura Council) of the MSC. When ISI was inaugurated it was considered necessary to have a native Iraqi leader, because local people, as well as indigenous insurgents, were becoming indignant about the large numbers of foreign jihadists mustering in their country. The first indigenous leader went by the kunya (honorific) Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi; he was from the same Qurayshi tribe as Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, and Al-Baghdadi gave him his bayat. Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir—a non-Iraqi—was made the chief representative of the foreign jihadists on the consultative Shura Council. Al-Muhajir and Al-Baghdadi had a close relationship based on mutual respect. Al-Muhajir recommended that Al-Baghdadi, who was by then already the general supervisor of the ISI’s sharia committee, be promoted to deputy leader of ISI.

When Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi was killed in a U.S. air strike in 2010, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was chosen as the group’s emir by the Shura Council, meeting in Ninevah in northern Iraq. Even though there were older, more experienced jihadists also under consideration, nine of the eleven men on the council decided in Al-Baghdadi’s favor. In little more than a decade he had gone from quiet, pious obscurity to becoming the leader of one of the most feared terror groups in history. Yet those who know him affirm that he has always disliked the limelight and would never have pushed himself forward as a leader.

Bold Leadership

Like all successful leaders, Al-Baghdadi knows how to seize the moment. He decided to exploit the chaos in neighboring Syria to establish a branch there, creating the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) almost overnight in 2013, seizing territories before the regime or the opposition knew what was going on. ISIS thus established a stronghold in Al-Raqqah, a city that was soon under its full control.

From the outset, Al-Baghdadi’s military style was robust and confrontational, favoring hit-and-run strikes and full-on raids. With breathtaking daring, the newly configured ISIS set about robbing banks and commandeering oilfields in the Syrian province of Dayr Al-Zawr. Al-Baghdadi knew that Al-Qaeda under Osama Bin Laden had, in its heyday, been very wealthy and extremely well equipped. Such circumstances greatly increase a group’s recruitment potential (it can pay its fighters) and its reach (via a much more sophisticated arsenal and intelligence). In Bin Laden’s case, much of the money at Al-Qaeda’s disposal came from his own personal fortune and connections in the Gulf. Al-Baghdadi decided not to rely on Arab sponsors (although Islamic State certainly has them) but simply to seize millions from whatever source came within his range.

Next, Al-Baghdadi squared up to the new Al-Qaeda leadership. He ignored orders from Al-Zawahiri to limit his operations to Iraq, effectively mounting a leadership challenge for the growing global jihadist army mustering on both sides of the border. It seemed clear that Al-Baghdadi intended to wrest control of the Global Jihad Movement (a pan-Islamic rather than predominantly Sunni movement), which Al-Zawahiri had co-founded back in 1998, from the aging fugitives in the Hindu Kush.

In contrast to his placid demeanor, Al-Baghdadi fully understood and exploited the power of extreme violence. Using the Internet and social media platforms, IS’s slick propaganda wing launched a grisly campaign disseminating images of massacres, beheadings, public executions—some by young boys—and amputations. Al-Baghdadi’s background as a scholar of the Quran and jurisprudence lent some authority to his organization’s harsh justice. With the populations of both Iraq and Syria exhausted by lawlessness and fear, Al-Baghdadi is aware that any kind of judicial system might be viewed by them as a relief, at least initially. The Taliban was welcomed after the Afghan civil war for much the same reasons.

The boldest move of all came when Al-Baghdadi proclaimed the establishment of the caliphate at the beginning of Ramadan 2014 and then declared himself the caliph, leader of all the world’s Muslims, in the Grand Mosque in Mosul, which IS had overrun days before. Statements since attest to an unlimited vision of world domination, with Rome, as well as Mecca and Medina, in the new caliph’s sights. Is he a visionary or a megalomaniac crackpot? Most of the Western and international media know where they stand on that one; the jury is still out in much of the Arab World.

Popularity

Most successful popular movements have a charismatic leader who acquires legendary status—in their own very different fields we might think of Che Guevara, Malcolm X, or Gandhi. At the height of its success, Al-Qaeda became almost synonymous with Osama Bin Laden. Even though jihadist groups are careful to train two or three deputies for every man in a leadership role, Al-Qaeda has undeniably suffered from the loss of its poster boy and his replacement by the dour Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

Al-Baghdadi’s boldness, defiance, steadfastness, and reputation as a clever battlefield strategist (borne out by his many military successes) have won him thousands of admirers across the Muslim World. For example, polls show that 92 percent of Saudis approve of the caliphate. As with Bin Laden, Al-Baghdadi’s face—and the black and white shahada (I testify) flag that IS has made infamous—can be found on a whole range of merchandise, from t-shirts to mugs and badges, all of which were freely available on Facebook at the time of writing.

Al-Baghdadi also benefits from the support of an extensive tribal network. Al-Baghdadi’s influence in his own tribal group—the same group as that of his predecessor, Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi Al-Qurayshi—is such that its elders immediately gave their bayat to the self-proclaimed caliph and the Islamic State as soon as it was born. Tribes from Samarra and Diyala had earlier supported ISI under Abu Omar, out of loyalty to Al-Baghdadi.

After Al-Baghdadi took over the leadership of IS, his first public utterance was a written eulogy for Osama Bin Laden on May 9, 2011; four audio messages are all that followed for the next two and a half years. Al-Baghdadi’s video debut—the Grand Mosque sermon in which he declared the Islamic State and himself as caliph—was streamed the next day on the Internet, went viral on Twitter, was archived in the cloud, and afterward digitally disseminated to the world’s media. Apart from that, his absence from the world’s television and computer screens creates a mystique.

This is what we know of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi: he is a man of calm and pious manner and appearance but is calculating in his use of extreme violence; he is a shrewd and intelligent military tactician; he is a scholar of both law and scripture; he is a persuasive talker and preacher whose deliberate eschewing of publicity only enhances his charisma; and he is a careful manipulator of tribal loyalties, unafraid to topple others and take control himself.

Like Osama Bin Laden, he has been the subject of tributes by the poets of the jihadist world. September 2013 saw him praised in this nasheed. It was first posted on the IS YouTube channel (since deleted) and then widely circulated on the Internet. It seems to sum up the status and popularity the man enjoys, as well as the way he is perceived by the thousands of extremists who support Islamic State:

They have closed ranks and pledged bayat to Al-Baghdadi,
For he is our emir in our Iraq and ash-Sham [Syria].

For the Caliphate of God: I am its symbol.
Its glory has been decreed by our blood.
They have promised each other to protect the Caliphate.
From corner to corner
They have not held back from giving their lives for its survival.

They have closed ranks and pledged bayat to Al-Baghdadi,
For he is our emir in our Iraq and ash-Sham.

They have pledged bayat to our emir,
They are your heroic knights and our own weapon.
For he is the one to whom bayat is pledged in our land of Iraq and our land of ash-Sham
And the land of all the Muslims.
He is our emir.

They have closed ranks and pledged bayat to Al-Baghdadi,
For he is our emir in our Iraq and ash-Sham.

Preserve the soldiers of Allah, oh our custodian.
The cross has returned to our land and our homes.
We offer our lives on our skulls,
We will vanquish oppression
While our enemies lie low.

They have closed ranks and pledged bayat to Al-Baghdadi,
For he is our emir in our Iraq and ash-Sham.

Excerpted from Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate, by Abdel Bari Atwan, published by the University of California Press. © 2015 by Abdel Bari Atwan.

* The Islamic State also has been known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Abdel Bari Atwan is editor-in-chief of Rai Al-Youm and founder and former editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. He is the author of The Secret History of Al-Qa’ida; After Bin Laden: Al-Qa’ida, the Next Generation; and most recently, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate. He has contributed to the Guardian and Scottish Herald and appears regularly on the BBC’s Dateline London. On Twitter: @abdelbariatwan.

What are the root causes of radicalism? Admittedly, this is a very broad question. Yet, it requires serious thinking if we really want to understand why so many young people from diverse backgrounds become extremists and join violent movements. Today organizations associated with political Islam, such as Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Hamas, and Hezbollah, have become a focus for such discussions. Yet, world history is full of different flavors of extremism and radicalism not necessarily related to religion. With organizations from the not-so-distant past like the Red Brigades in Italy, the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, and the Irish Republican Army in Britain, ideological and ethnic terrorism with secular roots is not an alien concept to the West. Investigations into what causes radicalization and who joins terrorist groups should therefore go well beyond political Islam and improve our understanding of conditions that lead to extremist violence.

The question about the root causes of radicalism has generated a very polarized and so far inconclusive debate. Generally speaking, two major views have emerged. In one camp, there are those who see ideology, culture, and religion as the main drivers of radicalization. In the opposing camp, social and economic factors such as lack of education, unemployment, and absence of upward mobility trump other causes. The correlation between deprivation and radicalism is strongly rejected by the first group focusing on ideology for a simple reason: most terrorists are neither poor nor uneducated. In fact, the majority of terrorists seem to come from middle class and ordinary backgrounds. Terrorism is therefore almost exclusively perceived as a “security threat” with no discernible socioeconomic roots or links to deprivation. As a result, while the second group wants to prioritize development, education, and good governance to struggle against radicalism, the first group defines the fight against terrorism as a security issue with a single-minded focus on ideology.

Both camps make valid points with major implications for policymakers. Yet, attempts to create a single typology of terrorism or generic profiles for terrorists are not helpful. Radicalization is too complex of a phenomenon and it has multiple causes. An ideal breeding ground for recruitment emerges when various social, cultural, economic, political, and psychological factors come together. Dismissing the economic and social roots of radicalization on the grounds that most terrorists have middle class backgrounds is simplistic and misleading. It is equally wrong, however, to argue that ideology, culture, and religion play no role in the radicalization process.

The key to understanding who joins violent movements is to go beyond social and economic factors or pure ideology. The challenge is to see the interaction between cultural and economic factors without focusing exclusively on ideology or development. In other words, instead of cultural or economic determinism, we have to avoid deterministic, mono-causal explanations and focus on how ideological and socioeconomic factors interact. Only by adopting such an inclusive methodology can the two camps find common ground and come up with more effective prescriptions for policymakers in the fight against radicalism.

The place to start is to accept that ideology becomes much more important when socioeconomic aspirations are on the rise. This is why the concept of relative deprivation—rather than absolute deprivation—deserves more attention. Unlike absolute socioeconomic deprivation, which looks at the consequences of abject poverty or absence of formal education, relative deprivation is all about aspirations and expectations relative to opportunities. Relative deprivation is a growing problem in a world where aspirations and expectations remain unfulfilled and therefore contribute to a process of individual or collective radicalization.

As a conceptual tool, relative deprivation is useful in bridging the gap between the diverging camps concerned about socioeconomic factors versus ideological ones in the radicalization process. As the gap between expectations, opportunities, and accomplishments widens so does the possibility for ideological radicalization. It is precisely when people develop high expectations, aspirations, and hopes for upward mobility that we have to pay more attention to the potential for frustration, humiliation, and ideological radicalization. In addition to studies focusing on how rising expectations may cause revolutions, there is a growing body of literature that looks at “frustrated achievers” with high ambitions and high levels of individual dissatisfaction.

Dismissing the importance of socioeconomic factors as potential drivers of radicalization can therefore be a faulty approach in the context of developing societies. Improving educational standards without increasing prospects for employment, or providing jobs and economic benefits without creating outlets for political and social participation, create a combustible environment where frustrated achievers are increasingly tempted by radicalism. Education without employment, or employment without a sense of political empowerment, fuel the dynamics of humiliation, alienation, and frustration. This is why the growing numbers of educated but unemployed youth are particularly alarming for those who are concerned about the rise of frustrated achievers in the Arab World—and among Muslim minorities in Europe, where there are additional identity issues exacerbating the problem.

Based on this methodology focusing on relative deprivation and frustrated achievers, it makes sense that a small country like Tunisia, which has comparatively high levels of educational attainment in the context of the Arab World (but also very high unemployment rates) provides disproportionately high numbers of recruits to ISIS. Similar dynamics of relative deprivation are at play in Europe, where significant portions of Muslim populations are young, frustrated, and relatively educated but often unemployed and uprooted from any sense of belonging.

A small country like Belgium—with serious national identity, unemployment, and Muslim integration problems—provides the perfect example of a toxic breeding ground where, like Tunisia, a disproportionately high number of ISIS recruits have emerged. In that sense, concepts such as relative deprivation and frustrated achievers provide excellent analytical tools shedding light on links between socioeconomic factors and ideological radicalization.

It would be reductionist to look only at the Muslim World or at Muslim minorities in analyzing the problems of relative deprivation and frustrated achievers. We live in a global context and globalization itself further complicates the problem of relative deprivation. Poverty is no longer an absolute concept in the context of globalization. Globalization creates an acute awareness about opportunities available elsewhere. But the absence of opportunities relative to expectations is particularly acute in the Arab World and larger Islamic World. Socioeconomic decay in the Islamic World often creates considerably more frustration than in other parts of the developing world for historical and civilizational reasons.

One can argue that culture and the religion of Islam add a further layer of complexity to relative deprivation in the Islamic World. Particularly in the Arab World, a sense of nostalgia for the golden age of Islam—during which Arab civilizations far surpassed Europe—is deeply ingrained in the political culture. Unlike other developing regions of the world, Arab countries have a historic, cultural, and civilizational sense of rivalry with the Christian West. Geographic proximity further complicates this picture. Europe is often a historic point of reference in terms of social, economic, and political success. Feelings of a historic sense of superiority combined with the more recent memories of colonial subjugation and military defeat create a dangerous sense of victimization, resentment, and injustice in much of the Arab World. All these factors significantly compound the level of frustration of a great civilization nurturing great expectations and aspirations.

In a sense, Islam as a civilization is a frustrated achiever. Islam created a great civilization that once surpassed the West in terms of its scientific, artistic, economic, and military achievements. Today, however, the Islamic World collectively shares a sense of frustration and humiliation because it has little to boast about in terms of economic, political, and cultural success. Yet, Islam still has high expectations and aspirations fueled by past accomplishments. Millions of Muslims share these mixed feelings of pride and shame. The mix of these cultural, religious, economic, and political dynamics lead to frustration among growing cohorts of urbanized, undereducated, and unemployed Muslim youth who are able to make comparisons across countries. The scale of youth frustration is compounded by a demographic explosion, growing expectations, weak state capacity, and diminishing opportunities for upward mobility in most parts of the Islamic World. It does not take much of an analytical leap to see that these socioeconomic and political problems have also been the driving forces behind Arab revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

A New Political Vocabulary

An effective strategic campaign against the root causes of radicalism in the Arab World and Islamic World at large should take the socioeconomic dimension of collective frustration very seriously. Little can be done in the short term about deeply rooted cultural and psychological grievances. But quite a lot can be done in the social and economic sphere with a program emphasizing development and good governance. An agenda based on human development with equal emphasis on education reform, democratic reforms, and socioeconomic advancement can address the ideological as well as economic root causes of radicalization.

Take the question of fighting the power of political Islam, for example. Most states in the Islamic World are often unable to provide adequate social and economic services. The capacity gap within Muslim states such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Pakistan creates a vacuum that is frequently filled by grassroots Islamic organizations that provide goods and services in crucial areas such as health, education, and housing. The absence of effective public services opens the field for the rise of Islamist networks with their own political agendas. Yet, economic development alone will not stop radicalization.

Democratization should also be considered as an effective antidote against more radical forms of political Islam because in addition to socioeconomic decay, the absence of liberties such as freedom of speech and assembly brings a political dimension to relative deprivation in the Arab World. In other words, there is a growing gap between political aspirations and the realities on the ground. The combustible mix involving the growing numbers of educated but unemployed youth in the Arab World needs to be given priority attention in the fight against political and ideological radicalization. It is, after all, the educated youth who have the highest political aspirations and expectations, and thus, it is they who are the most frustrated when their expectations are unmet. The growth of unemployment among the educated often creates a class of frustrated achievers who may end up becoming radicalized militants looking for a political cause to hang on to. Repressive political systems exacerbate these dynamics. In most authoritarian Muslim countries, the mosque is the only institution not brutally suppressed by the regime. And when the mosque is the only outlet for mass politics, the outcome is predictable: the Islamicization of dissent. As dissent turns Islamic, what naturally follows is the politicization of Islam.

Political Islam thus slowly evolves into a resistance movement against injustice, state oppression, and Western support for repressive regimes. As authoritarian governments become more repressive, a vicious cycle of violence and counter-violence emerges. Once political Islam is pushed underground, it turns more radical, aggressive, and resentful. It is therefore absolutely necessary to provide legitimate political outlets other than Islam and the mosque for opposition movements in the Islamic World.

The case for socioeconomic development and democracy in the Islamic World should not be made in the context of counterterrorism. There is no point in denying that counterterrorism is primarily about security measures. Terrorist networks would not be deterred by anything less than the strongest security measures involving the use of force. The debate about the root causes of terrorism, however, should go beyond counterterrorism. The root causes debate is about fighting the conditions that create terrorism, not terrorists themselves. This is why we need a new political vocabulary, one that goes past the narrow confines of terrorism and counterterrorism when we are analyzing the root causes of the phenomenon.

The prioritization of “radicalization” as a “process” over terrorism provides a better paradigm and framework for a number of reasons. First, radicalization more accurately reflects the political and ideological dimensions of the threat. No matter how diverse the causes, motivations, and ideologies of terrorist organizations, all attempts at premeditated violence against civilians share the traits of violent radicalism. Second, while terrorism is a deadly security challenge, radicalism is primarily a political threat against which non-coercive measures should be given a chance. There is nothing preordained in the potential transition from radicalism to terrorism. Most terrorists start their individual journey toward extremist violence first by becoming radicalized militants. All terrorists, by definition, are radicals. Yet not all radicals end up as terrorists. In fact, only a minority of radicals venture into terrorism. Focusing on the journey of radicalization amounts to preventing terrorism at an earlier stage, before it is too late for non-coercive measures. This effort at prevention can be conceived of as a first line of defense against terrorism.

Moreover, radicalism, unlike terrorism, has social dimensions involving large segments of society. One can identify radicalized societies where acts of terrorism find sympathy and even some degree of support. Yet, there are no “terrorist” societies. The relative popularity of certain terrorist networks in the Islamic World can only be explained within the framework of radicalized societies where extremist violence finds a climate of legitimacy and connivance. Such radicalized societies are permeated by a deep sense of collective frustration, humiliation, and deprivation relative to expectations. This radicalized social habitat is easily exploited by terrorists.

As far as the economic background of terrorists is concerned, it is important to remember that effective terrorist groups rely on a division of labor between young and uneducated “foot soldiers” and ideologically trained and well-funded elite operatives. While terrorist masterminds and operative leaders tend to come from professional or middle class backgrounds, the foot soldiers are often poor and uneducated. One should also not be confused by the fact that at the highest level, the implementation of terrorist activity requires proficient organizational skills and sophistication. The poorest and least educated can be recruited and radicalized by terrorist masterminds. Yet, they would make ineffective terrorists in a complex operation. Indeed, the more complex an operation is, the greater security risks it entails, and the more likely the participants are to be elite—the result of a careful screening process. All these factors only reinforce the importance of addressing the question of relative deprivation, frustrated achievers, and radicalism as a social milieu. At the end of the day, what we should really be focusing on is not the decision of a particular individual to become a terrorist. Rather, we should be looking at the social conditions that make dissident movements more likely to turn to terror and—more importantly—the circumstances under which such dissident movements receive popular support.

This is why the economic and social context within which radicalism takes root is profoundly important. Without societal support, most terrorist movements are doomed to fail. It is not a coincidence that prosperous and democratic countries have an easier time overcoming terrorism compared to impoverished and politically unstable countries where terrorism becomes a systemic problem. The most successful terrorist groups usually seek failing or failed states in which to set up shop. Failed or failing states such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and Sierra Leone easily turn into terrorist havens and are often engulfed in a vicious cycle of civil war, political violence, and radicalism.

When thinking about terrorism, we have to remind ourselves that it is primarily within a radicalized social, economic, and cultural environment that the engineers of terrorism can freely recruit thousands of frustrated achievers. Addressing the root causes of terrorism requires prioritizing human development and tackling relative deprivation. The challenge is to avoid an exclusive focus on either economic development or ideology. The best policy prescriptions will be ones that include a combination of both.

Ömer Taşpınar is professor of national security strategy at the U.S. National War College and director of the Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution. He was previously an assistant professor in the European and Eurasian Studies Department of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He is the author of Political Islam and Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey; and Winning Turkey: How America, Europe and Turkey Can Revive a Fading Partnership. On Twitter: @otaspinar.

Somalia has long been a byword for a failed state. Amid the civil war in the early 1990s, the central government ceased to exist. Apart from pockets of relative stability in the north (in Somaliland and in part of Puntland), the people of Somalia have been living in a perpetual state of crisis, struggling for daily survival under the constantly changing influences of warlords and clan militia leaders, corrupt temporary authorities, and brutal Islamists.

In 2012, hope finally arose for Somalis, with prospects to move away from state failure and onto a path of state building and stability. Under strong international pressure, the Somali political elite agreed on a provisional constitution and the formation of the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS). This government has gained international recognition and funding and, supported by African Union troops, stands as the best chance Somalis have seen to achieve peace.

New faces hailing from the business community, civil society movement, and the diaspora took the helm. They included President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and federal parliament Speaker Mohamed Sheikh Osman Jawari, who came into power in 2012 following a surprise vote within the new parliament, that stalwarts of the Somali old guard were seen as sure to win. The year 2015 is viewed as a “make-or-break” year, given the transition timeline set in the provisional constitution that calls for the popular adoption of a final constitution and holding new elections across the country by 2016.

Yet, many Somalis and international partners have been losing confidence in the process. There have been three cabinet changes in three years, due to political infighting, primarily power struggles between the president and successive prime ministers, in the context of ongoing clan tensions. The current political settlement remains very fragile, and security conditions are dire. There are serious questions about whether peace efforts can withstand a serious escalation of the nation’s protracted crisis. 

The Quest for Security

The most important change the Somali people expect from the current transition is better security. Large parts of Somalia are still outside government control and function under the threat of unsanctioned violence by non-state actors, rather than rule of law. Without doubt, the FGS is held in place because of the presence of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), currently the dominant military force in Somalia.

Current AMISOM strengths are authorized for just over twenty-two thousand; countries providing troops are Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Ethiopia. It is responsible for protecting Somali government institutions and is at the forefront of the military offensive to reclaim territories across south and central Somalia. In support of FGS forces, AMISOM has made significant advances in regaining territory from the Al-Shabab group, starting in Mogadishu, and in south and central Somalia, by the borders with Kenya and Ethiopia, the crucial port of Kismayo, and, most recently, the militant stronghold of Barawe.

The largest threat to security continues to come from Al-Shabab. The group has been on the defensive, but still controls major parts of Somali territory, mainly outside of urban areas (though it keeps a presence in them). Al-Shabab has successfully implemented its strategy of guerilla warfare with attacks on government and foreign targets across the country. It has also launched attacks outside Somalia, most notably on crowds watching the televised FIFA World Cup final in Kampala in 2010, the Westgate Shopping Mall killings in Nairobi in 2013, and the Garissa student massacre in 2015. These attacks are designed to prove that the group is a viable fighting organization, and to ensure a steady flow of support from jihadists and extremists in the Horn of Africa and foreign supporters. They also aim to demonstrate (successfully) the weakness of the Somali security apparatus and to undermine the international security presence. The capital Mogadishu itself is so vulnerable that Al-Shabab has managed to attack the presidential palace Villa Somalia and the parliament despite AMISOM protection. Al-Shabab has targeted the offices of the United Nations and other international organizations, hindering efforts to rebuild key Somali institutions.

The security environment also continues to be weakened by clan disputes and conflicting personal interests, involving corruption related to vast networks of patronage and fighting for financial gain. These tensions persist within various institutions, including the national army, the police, the security agencies and intelligence services, as well as various guard forces and sub-clan militias loosely aligned with the government.

Local militias have also been consolidating their influence, particularly in proximity to the Ethiopian and Kenyan borders, amid the lack of local government structures and central government presence. This influence has undermined the processes of forming new federal states and local administrations in areas where tensions with the federal government were already high.

Somalia’s resilience has also been tested by a continuing humanitarian crisis. The question of food security persists in the country, which has endured famine on numerous occasions in the last twenty-five years. While the situation has improved since 2011, an estimated three million people remain in need of humanitarian assistance and more than eight hundred fifty thousand in need of emergency food supplies.

Somalia’s food security troubles are strongly rooted in the realities of conflict and lack of governance structures. The population keeps growing, with high birth rates, and experiences displacement due to ongoing fighting in the south and central parts of the country. People remain fragile to shocks, mainly from drought and floods, as local institutions don’t exist or are unable to cope with these problems. If food is scarce, food prices rise, and distribution patterns are abused—all showing lack of regulatory and security support.

The ongoing conflicts have crippled the Somali economy. Economic institutions are very weak. Somalia remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Gross domestic product per capita is about $300, annual internal revenues at only around $80 million. The key lines of income are from remittances (around $1.3 billion per year) and external economic aid (around $1 billion annually for all official development assistance).

The Islamist Factor

Political Islam is a relatively new phenomenon in Somalia. The religious identity has a variety of dimensions that have evolved during the era of state collapse and that now have a profound effect on the political process. Exploring these dimensions and taking them into consideration for policy and polity in Somalia is crucial for governance during the transition period and for bringing peace to the country.

The emergence and downfall of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) played a large role in shaping the current political scene in Somalia. The ICU was a group of sharia courts that temporarily created a rival administration to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2006. Several conditions explain its rise: 1) Somalis identified with ICU’s commitment to Islam, which during decades of dire living conditions became a source of hope and strength; 2) ICU’s approach to government was close to what Somalis knew as the traditional justice system run by elders and local religious leaders; and 3) Somalia’s business community saw ICU as a potential bulwark of stability for commerce to resume.

ICU bolstered its position by temporarily bringing a rare degree of stability to south-central Somalia, primarily in Mogadishu. This came at the height of the U.S.-led “War on Terrorism”; fearful of growing extremism in the Horn of Africa, the United States (encouraged by the TFG) sponsored an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to battle the forces of the ICU (which also had made revanchist provocations toward Ethiopia at the time). As the mainstream ICU was militarily weak, most of the defense came from their most well-organized fighting arm, Al-Shabab, whose young and energetic members had been hungry for a cause. These events split the ICU into several factions. Some joined the TFG forces they had fought against while other leaders split off to cling to regional power.

As a side result of the Ethiopian intervention, Al-Shabab won a popular reputation for defying a foreign invasion and gained an independent identity. Despite its brutal conduct in enforcing an extreme interpretation of sharia law, the population initially welcomed the organization for bringing some order and stability. The group has also been successful in raising resources. Al-Shabab has been particularly effective at playing on the political aspirations of smaller and less-privileged groups by forming alliances for territorial control and taking advantage of various sorts of taxation, including through charcoal exportation from the south and on road connections between cities and towns. The group also continues to receive funding from abroad, including from the Somali diaspora.

In the last few years, Al-Shabab attracted many recruits who enlist for financial gain (including many young men with no prospects in life), and more ideological jihadists who arrived from abroad to join their ranks. Yet, its ideology and politics do not have true support across Somalia. Civilians have become weary of Al-Shabab’s brutality and ultimate failure to govern. Al-Shabab’s popular support has faded, but moderate leadership among the clans has failed to fill the vacuum and forge stable and lasting governing structures where Al-Shabab had lost support.

An additional element in the development of political Islam in Somalia is the role and influence of groups emerging from the Muslim Brotherhood. President Mohamud and his closest allies come from Damul Jadiid (New Blood), a faction of Al-Islaah, which is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Somali wing. The group’s activities focused on promoting moderate Islamism; it has led one of the few successful drives for education and civil society activity in the war-battered country. These initiatives have created leaders, given Damul Jadiid a degree of credibility, and strengthened the footing for Islamism as a political movement in the peace- and state-building process in Somalia.

Damul Jadiid’s loose alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood has implications on Somali politics in the broader region. The current government continues to strengthen relations with the Islamist government of Turkey, and to receive resources from Qatar, known supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is also important to note that while 2012 brought fresh hope for a state-building process, a drive for secularization did not come with it. On the contrary, many of Somalia’s leaders favor political Islam, indicating that it will be the dominant ideology for the foreseeable future.

Perils of Foreign Involvement

External forces have staged significant interventions in Somalia over the last two decades. On a number of occasions, outpourings of humanitarian support have helped save many Somali lives, such as the first U.S. intervention in 1992 in support of the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM). However, too much interference in the political process and numerous international mistakes in developmental and humanitarian attempts have also fueled clan conflict. These included shortsighted policies such as backing different warlords in the 1990s. The U.S. misinterpretation of its role in Somalia amounting to forced intervention eventually led to the Black Hawk Down episode, deaths of U.S. soldiers, and the American retreat from the country. America’s enabling of the Ethiopian military intervention, furthermore, helped put Somalia into the hands of extremists.

Following these failures and collapse of state institutions, for many years international actors treated Somalia as a hopeless case. It took several mediation processes, transitional governments and road maps, and joint initiatives from the United States, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) countries, and European countries to reach the 2012 political settlement. Somalia’s adoption of the provisional constitution and the selection of a new government in 2012 won the country new international confidence. Many conferences and meetings on the Somalia issue, in London, Brussels, and elsewhere, have attracted leaders from around the world. Western governments (including the United States) officially recognized a Somali government for the first time in two decades. These commitments to Somalia’s transition process have been translated into an agreement called the New Deal Compact, adopted in September 2013. The breakthrough document outlines a path for prioritization and coordination in state building and achieving a peace settlement, and has a financial pledge attached of almost $2.5 billion.

Progress toward implementation of the compact has been slow. Somalis and international experts have questioned whether an international template rather than a Somali-grown and -owned process is the most appropriate to guide the federal government and to meaningfully address root causes of the conflict. The ultimate implementation plans will most likely be last-minute elite compromises, limiting popular buy-in and broad stakeholder consultation. Meanwhile, frustrations with the process are building in the international community, mainly due to Somali inability to agree and work together.

Many Somalis in turn question the sincerity of the international community’s promises and its ability to deliver on them. In fact, containment seems to be the international default policy—global actors are primarily interested in making Somalia stable enough to prevent the return to widespread fighting and the growth of extremism. There is little political will to go beyond that containment by investing enough resources (including political, diplomatic, and human) to truly focus on growth, development, and setting a better governing environment for Somalis taking the helm.

Geopolitics has been a blessing and a curse for Somalia. The country has the longest coastline in Africa, with direct access to the world’s key shipping and trade routes through the Gulf of Aden. The territorial waters carry enormous fishing capacity and the potential for offshore oil and other resources. Access to the Indian Ocean, as well as potential trade routes to the modernizing and growing populations of central and eastern Africa, all create prospects for economic development. All of this could one day benefit a strong country on the path to development.

But these factors are also considered potential threats by Somalia’s neighbors, particularly Kenya and Ethiopia. These countries have deeply rooted interests in the shaping of the Somali state and the direction of its political process. As a result, these governments constantly seek to influence political development in Somalia, including the establishment of border militias, often contrary to Somali state-building interests. This is strongly linked to the historical background of the Ogaden War of 1977–78 when the Mohammed Siad Barre regime switched its allegiance to the United States and the West and attacked Ethiopia.

Somalia’s attempt to take over Somali ethnic territory in neighboring countries still casts a shadow over its relations in the Horn of Africa. Large Somali populations and swaths of ethnic Somali territories in Ethiopia and Kenya are constant sources of concern and increasingly identified as internal security threats. Somalia’s neighbors know that without a viable Somali state they will not be able to contain extremism in the region; on the other hand, they don’t want Somalia to become too strong in the future. The ultimate policy of Somalia’s neighbors will strongly influence the course of political development in Somalia.

Power-Sharing 4.5

The Somalia case is unique among other conflicts in Africa as it is driven neither by ethnicity nor religion. Nor is it underpinned by ideology. Somalis are people who mix traditional African, nomadic, pastoral, and Islamic cultures and despite decades of dire conditions, they are good humored, proud, and resilient. Yet when Somalis search for a unifying identity, their allegiances are being manipulated for political power and financial gains from clan, militia, and other political leaders. Somali federal authorities publicly condemn the manipulation, and profess a strong Somali national identity as their goal, but accept it for everyday political purposes.

Clan allegiance, which underlines both the social and political fabric of Somalia, arguably remains a force that blocks change and peaceful development. In an environment with little opportunity for financial gains and development, holding power is equated with personal gain, and perceived as such across the political leadership. The main method of conflict management between the Somali clans is the so-called 4.5 Clan Power-Sharing Formula (formally first defined during a national reconciliation conference in 1996–97). The 4.5 refers to the four major Somali clans (Rahanweyn, Dir, Hawiye, and Darood) and the additional 0.5 refers to space allocated for minorities. This breakdown determines the distribution of positions in government and political institutions. Seats in legislature are assigned based on this formula and it also serves as the unwritten rule used to balance civil servants compositions across ministries.

Since its adoption, the formula has remained central to political governance in Somalia. Supporters point out that while the formula may be imperfect, it has allowed for a broad consensus among clans, paving the way for many deals and preventing major clan warfare as seen in the early years of the conflict. Yet the formula has provoked major controversies. It has been labeled as contrary to the principles of democracy and an obstacle to free, fair, and transparent elections. Many politicians, community leaders, intellectuals, and academics have dismissed it as ineffective due to its inability to prevent recurring violent clan disputes. The governments formed after the adoption of the 2012 provisional constitution (and election of the current federal parliament) were established on the basis of the formula despite the constitution’s vision of politics based on policy and merit rather than clan allegiance. The realities on the ground show that this vision is still a distant prospect.

Several short-lived peace agreements of the past fifteen years have shown the inability to sustain compromises and address conflict root causes. The lack of political will for compromise results from the characteristics of the Somali political elites. Being a political leader in Somalia is a balancing act between clan identity and allegiance, armed groups and warlords, and external influences, as well as ability to create financial gains for personal (and closest constituency) interest. Somali elites have become very resourceful and extremely skilled in playing this game, Machiavellian at its heart. But often they display a stunning tendency to outmaneuver themselves, with their inability to share power. It creates a need for constant manipulation and preventing agreements necessary for the early stages of reconstructing the Somali state. These elites may win short-term gains, but the people they represent, and prospects for stabilizing and developing Somalia, are victims of the system.

2016 and Beyond

To achieve the promise of the 2012 agreement, Somalis must take strong measures to address security, justice, governance, economic, and ultimately political issues that hinder progress, the majority of which will need to take root primarily at the local level to succeed.

The dominant role of local militias in many areas clearly shows that the security strategy must be aligned with a strong push for political agreements in territories where new local authorities can be established following AMISOM’s military offensive. This means not only prioritizing a “stabilization” policy in reestablishing security and territorial control, but putting much more emphasis on advancing political settlements ensuring rapid establishment of local government. That approach should also form the core of the strategy to defeat Al-Shabab.

The fact that extremists continue attracting support in Somalia cannot be ignored in exploring political solutions to the conflict, especially in considering the need to develop political parties and groups that can accommodate some of the conservative Islamist politicians into the political mainstream. Al-Shabab cannot be eradicated solely through security operations—a political process that will consider elements of political Islam to be paired with the “stabilization” policy will be key.

A similar effort must be made with the economy. One of the economy’s few successes is livestock production (mainly in the north). Somalia has developed mobile banking (out of necessity, as no banks exist) and telecommunications systems. However, for Somalis to buy into the political transition, they must see “peace and stability dividends”—change in the form of job creation, basic livelihood improvement, and the production and trade of goods. In particular, if careful attention is paid to farming and the livestock export business, these areas can experience quick, bolstering improvements—especially when local-level investments are made.

Standing up local governments is also essential for Somalia’s progress in delivering services and relief to stranded populations. Traditional mechanisms such as councils of elders (gurti) can play important roles. Civil society organizations such as women’s associations, youth groups, religious organizations, and other local groups should be engaged to fill gaps while institutions are being established. Because these groups already have community trust, they can be valuable in defining community priorities, resolving disputes, and making resource allocation decisions. Building viable local governments will also mean relying on the traditional Somali system of governance called xeer, which consists of contractual agreements and customary laws that define the rights and responsibilities of an individual in relationship to his or her family, neighborhood, and clan. Balancing traditional rules and customs with new government initiatives through community institutions can lead to improved service delivery at the most basic level. And it will be crucial for delivering some visible change to the lives of people on the ground.

Today, more than 70 percent of Somalis are under the age of 30. Yet prospects for good education and employment are bleak; and moreover, these seem to be secondary issues for Somalia’s political leaders. Inspiring a new generation of leaders could be an important catalyst for change. Despite increasing attempts by young activists to participate in the political sphere, members of the country’s old generation continue to hold a majority of the key positions of power. The risk in marginalizing the youth is clear: without political outlets or livelihoods, young people are ripe for recruitment by local militias and extremist groups.

For local governments and economies to grow, mechanisms for justice and arbitration must be developed. Establishing a justice system is complicated in the Somali context due to the parallel existence of a secular law system, sharia law, and the xeer system—the traditional method of resolving disputes with the help of clan elders. Combining this with modern approaches to allow for better dispute management, increased trust in the judicial system, and the application of a written law remains the challenge. It’s a process that will take time and require compromises. Still, progress for indigenous state building will occur as populations (and businesses) put trust in hybrid judicial mechanisms and experience a gradual decrease of corruption and impunity.

Questions about post-conflict reconciliation and war grievances hinder Somali social cohesion, and need to be taken into consideration in the formation of local and regional policies. While justice and reconciliation processes are very important in a transition from civil war, they cannot be seen in Somalia through Western models and understanding of peace and justice. Even though a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was envisioned in the 2012 provisional constitution, the process of establishing the commission has not even started, and is generally seen by Somalis as an instrument imposed by the West. To quote a prominent Somali politician, elder, and scholar: “Somalia needs not truth and reconciliation, but forgiveness and conciliation, and this will appear closer to traditions of the society.” In the Somali context this approach is strongly linked to the reestablishment of local government, which will require compromise among groups who have fought sometimes for decades. A governance model also needs to identify spaces for thousands of citizens (many very young) who know only fighting as a way of making a living and need a new role in their lives. Traditional consensus building and cross-clan elder support can help achieve these steps. These mechanisms should be preserved and woven into permanent structures of governance, allowing for the quickest integration of societies.

The Challenge of Governance

Creating a sustainable governing structure is the key to escaping Somalia’s vicious circle of state failure. The adoption of a federal constitution through popular vote would amount to a peace agreement that could end decades of turmoil. But there are many obstacles in the way.

The process needs to include agreements on power sharing between state and federal authority. This comprises allocation of natural resources, resolutions to questions regarding federal and state tax income, and an outline of an electoral system that will establish future political authority.

The provisional constitution mandates that institutions reach agreements on some of the most contentious issues facing Somalis, but provides only general guidance on how to achieve this. This has proven to be a major obstacle; disputes are ongoing among key political actors on institutional prerogatives.

Apart from political elite deal making, the process of finalizing a revised constitution should arise from participatory political agreements and be at the center of a national dialogue that can lead to a strong mandate. Achieving broad and fair representation in the process is a major challenge. It is not clear which groups will be granted representation in a national dialogue, and agreement on representation will be difficult given the tight mandated timelines. While implementation of the constitution is a priority, it needs to be a central component of a broader peace process that adjusts to the realities of gradual agreements and settlements.

Among those in the Somali political class, the concept of a federal Somalia has been discussed extensively over the years and remains the preferred solution for shaping the future state. Most players agree that this power-sharing model can best accommodate all the diverse regional and clan interests. However, federalism itself is a puzzle to many Somalis—it raises as many negative feelings as positive ones. Many argue that federalism is a foreign concept, unknown to Somalia, and that a federal Somalia would be much weaker than a unitary nation. These critics argue that the federal states will be at the mercy of more powerful regional actors and their proxy militias, allowing external influences on Somali affairs to persist, and could be a breeding ground for more internal infighting.

The federal government’s first priority is to form federal units, to represent various interests throughout the constitution-making process leading up to elections by 2016. Several processes have been ongoing (in the Jubas, in Bay-Bakool, Galmudug), with various degrees of progress and success, marred by political crises.

Within these circumstances, debates continue around the extent to which the creation of the federal member states should come from a bottom-up process—driven by local communities, clan elders, and local authorities—or a top-down process driven by the federal government.

Timing is also a factor. Federations are not born in days, but develop over decades. Yet Somalia cannot afford to wait, since a federal structure providing fair representation is essential to the shaping of a final federal constitution. Currently, there is only one functioning state: Puntland. As such, it plays a key role in reaching agreements on formation of other states, future elections, and the political process for reviewing the provisional constitution. Puntland’s relations with Mogadishu are central to achieving these agreements, yet they remain difficult.

Elections could be a key step in legitimizing Somalia’s new political system, but its hard to see how the government can enable safe and secure voting across the country for “one man one vote.” Somalia is far from establishing an electoral system, an electoral commission, and viable political parties governed by laws. The absence of organized federal structures also prevents agreement on an election system by all potential representatives. Some hybrid systems including selection rather than direct election, or different voting methods in different territories, are being debated.

The likelihood of missing the 2016 deadline for holding elections has sparked a new political crisis, with strong suspicion the president is seeking automatic term extension beyond current mandate. Whatever the outcome of the electoral dispute, progress in changing the politics of Somalia will require a more participatory process for establishing political authority—and eventually a vote across the whole country.

Keys to Moving Forward

The adoption of the provisional constitution in 2012 and the signing of the New Deal Compact in 2013 were steps in the right direction, yet the progress still needed is enormous. To many, Somalia continues to be an unreliable state on the brink of total collapse. If peaceful developments are to occur, key change factors are needed for policy and political processes. These are changes that will ensure checks and balances, and will mitigate the risks of reverting to a collapsed state. They would also add momentum and political will to move Somalia out of perpetual crisis.

Creating a critical mass for political consensus. Given the complex web of interests and parties, it will be extremely difficult to gather sufficient political backing for a common agenda. The existing power divisions also make clear that it is highly unlikely that one group can emerge with enough influence to dominate the others and take the political helm.

What is required is a sustained attempt to create a critical mass of political will, converging interests toward the success of key policy decisions. There must be a strong consensus to advance the processes agreed upon in the provisional constitution, to find agreements with enough support, and to push through the stages of implementation. Importantly, this critical mass for progress has to be sustained in time to block potential crises and attempts at hindering the process.

This means finding commonalities among the interests of various parties and agreeing to make compromises. It could involve much stronger international pressure. It could require larger media campaigns aimed at rallying popular support, and building coalitions and agreements to isolate those obstructing progress. As momentum for changes occurs, all involved players must redouble their efforts to make deals in a comprehensive and inclusive manner that will eventually lead to strong backing for a peace settlement with agreements on power sharing and state structure.

Rethinking clan politics. Clan identity and boundaries of territorial influence are defining factors of Somali politics. Though enshrined in Somali history and culture, the clan system may also be the largest obstacle to escaping the current cycle of state failure. Breaking down clan barriers will be a key element in building a critical mass for political consensus. As Somalia considers change factors for the next generation, a consensus to start rethinking the role of the clan in social and political life will be required. This in turn entails strengthening the Somali national identity.

Renewing approaches to international and regional interests. Somalia strongly relies on external assistance for the execution of core state functions. It is clear that Horn of Africa regional politics and broader international considerations influence events on the ground, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Given the significance and high stakes of international involvement in Somalia, one could argue that a renewed and recharged approach is needed. Signing the New Deal Compact with donor governments was an important step that created a blueprint, but achieving its goals is nearly impossible in the timeframes proposed. In order to change that, much more political will would be required from external actors, to leverage more pressure for progress. Also needed are increased investments in security and operational conditions for the federal government and its international partners; this could take the form of more fortified central perimeters for key institutions—a “green zone”—along with an increased engagement of intelligence and special operations in support of securing Mogadishu.

The renewed international approach should include a long-term political engagement strategy, based on an immediately increased political and resource investment. The strategy should be viewed as a geopolitical investment into a strategically positioned country that can become a useful ally. This approach could benefit objectives of many states, including the United States, United Kingdom, as well as other countries of the European Union, Turkey, and the Gulf states. This would be a marked shift from the current policy of containment and troubleshooting and would be enormously beneficial to the growth and development of Somalia.

In addition, a renewed regional approach to political engagement is needed in East Africa. The key external players in Somali politics are the countries of IGAD, an eight-nation trading bloc. Frequently, IGAD’s policies are not in the best interest of Somalia. A smart international political approach must take the interests of these countries into consideration. Some security and border guaranties could be made, in exchange for a shift of policies allowing Somalia to stabilize and develop. In essence, this would be a political decision to shift from a policy of containment to a policy of opportunism and accelerated progression that can yield better results both for the country’s development and for achieving true progress in the fight against extremism and terrorism.

Searching for leaders. In order to eliminate individual as well as group and clan corruption on all levels of political and society relations, an individual commitment to change must come first. Somalis deserve to have leaders who can rise above personal and temporary interests for the sake of directing the country on a path away from state failure and toward stability and growth. Many countries that emerged from deadly conflict did so with the guidance of powerful central leaders. In Somalia, this is essential.

Leaders with enough charisma to grasp hearts and minds must convince people of the sacrifices and patience needed to create change. They must reach a hand through clan divisions. Such leaders can garner a true following and help foster political agreements. Somalia has not seen leaders of such stature, but history shows it is transformational moments like the one Somalia is experiencing that sometimes create them. At the same time, a spirit of responsible leadership has to spread among the hundreds of individuals in positions of influence and authority. Everyday leaders, the silent heroes, who shy away from personal gain first, can promote the process of building institutions and managing disputes peacefully; in turn, they can be an example for grooming the next generation of leaders. It is time for Somali change champions to step forward. Without visionary political acts and previously unheard-of progress in achieving political consensus among Somalis, it may be impossible to break out of the cycle of crisis.

Marcin Buzanski is a principal at the IGD Group. Previously, he was the project manager coordinating the Inclusive Political Process support project in Somalia for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 2012 to 2014. He was a crisis governance and state-building consultant with UNDP headquarters from 2010 to 2012, supporting programs in Africa, the Middle East, and South and East Asia. He has also served as a consultant with the United Nations and UNDP in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Liberia, and Kazakhstan and worked for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) from 2004 to 2007.

The British wartime alliance with the sharif of Mecca would be concluded after months of increasingly anxious negotiations, with both sides driven by wartime fears. Sharif Hussein had reason to believe the Young Turks sought his overthrow. Moreover, to realize his ambitious goal of carving an independent Arab kingdom from Ottoman domains, he needed Great Power support. The British feared their recent string of defeats to the Ottomans would encourage colonial Muslims to rebel against the Entente Powers. War planners in Cairo and Whitehall hoped that an alliance with the custodian of Islam’s holiest shrines would neutralize the appeal of the Ottoman sultan-caliph’s jihad at a moment when Britain’s military credibility was at its lowest point since the start of the war.

On the eve of the Arab Revolt, the Anglo-Hashemite alliance offered far less than both sides originally believed they were securing on first entering into negotiations. The British were not the invincible power they had appeared to be in early 1915 when first setting off to conquer Constantinople. The Germans had inflicted terrible casualties on the British on the western front, and even the Ottomans had dealt them humiliating defeats. Sharif Hussein and his sons had every reason to question their choice of ally.

Yet the Hashemites were in no position to bargain. All through their correspondence with Sir Henry McMahon, the high commissioner in Egypt, Sharif Hussein and his sons had presented themselves as leaders of a pan-Arab movement. By May 1916 it was apparent that there would be no broader revolt in Syria and Iraq. The most the sharifs could do was challenge Ottoman rule in the Hijaz. Success depended on their ability to mobilize the notoriously undisciplined Bedouin to their cause.

Arguably, the alliance survived because the Hashemites and the British needed each other more in the summer of 1916 than ever. Sharif Hussein had strained relations with the Young Turks to the breaking point; he knew they would seize the first opportunity to dismiss—even murder—him and his sons. The British needed the sharif’s religious authority to undermine the Ottoman jihad, which officials in Cairo and Whitehall feared recent Turkish victories had strengthened. Whatever the results of a Hashemite-led revolt, the movement would at least weaken the Ottoman war effort and force the Turks to divert troops and resources to restore order in the Hijaz and possibly in other Arab provinces. For their own reasons, both the British and the Hashemites were in a hurry to launch the revolt.

It fell to Sharif Hussein to fire the opening shot of the Arab Revolt from his palace in the holy city of Mecca. On June 10, 1916, the emir of Mecca took up a rifle and fired once at the Ottoman barracks to initiate the uprising. The Hashemites were at war with the Turks in the name of the Arab peoples.

British and French war planners came to view the Arab Revolt as a distinct asset in the Great War. As early as July 1916, the War Committee had based new strategic objectives for its forces in Egypt on the strength of early Hashemite gains in the Hijaz. The committee instructed the commander in chief in Egypt, Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray, to establish British control along a line extending across northern Sinai from El-Arish on the Mediterranean to the tiny port of Aqaba on the eastern head of the Red Sea. British war planners maintained that these measures would “threaten communications between Syria and the Hijaz, and encourage Syrian Arabs” in support of the Arab Revolt. So began the fateful link between the Hashemite revolt in Arabia and the British campaign in Palestine that, between them, would ultimately spell the downfall of the Ottoman Empire.

“A Shocking Document”

In correspondence exchanged between November 5, 1915 and March 10, 1916, Sir Henry McMahon concluded the alliance with Sharif Hussein. The weeks that passed between their letters were punctuated by British defeats in both the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia. McMahon’s letter of December 14 followed both the British cabinet’s decision to evacuate the Suvla and Anzac positions in Gallipoli (December 7) and the beginning of the siege of Kut Al-Amara (December 8). The high commissioner’s letter of January 25, 1916 followed the final evacuation of Gallipoli (January 9). Unsurprisingly, McMahon’s last letter, dated March 10, noted British victories over the Sanussi tribesmen in Egypt and Russian victories in Erzurum without mentioning the impending surrender at Kut. He must have felt his hand weakened by this string of British defeats.

Knowing that he was negotiating with a beleaguered Britain, Sharif Hussein drove a hard bargain. Instead of seeking recognition of Arab independence, the emir increasingly wrote of an “Arab kingdom” and of himself as its chosen leader. Yet the emir of Mecca consented to significant territorial compromises. He claimed “the Iraqi wilayets” as integral parts of the future Arab kingdom but consented to leave “those districts now occupied by the British troops” under British administration for “a short time” in return for “a suitable sum paid as compensation to the Arab kingdom for the period of occupation.”

French claims to Syria were harder for the emir to accept. The Syrian provinces, he insisted, were “purely Arab” and could not be excluded from the Arab kingdom. Yet in the course of their exchange, Sharif Hussein conceded he wished “to avoid what may possibly injure the alliance of Great Britain and France and the agreement made between them during the present wars and calamities.” However, he warned McMahon, “at the first opportunity after this war is finished . . . we shall ask you for what we now leave to France in Beirut and its coasts.” The remainder of the correspondence focused on the material needs for a revolt: the gold, grain, and guns to sustain the future Arab war effort against the Turks.

Sir Henry McMahon could not have done better. He succeeded in concluding an agreement with the sharif of Mecca excluding Syrian territory claimed by the French and the Iraqi provinces the British wished to retain. The fact that the boundaries of the territories conceded in the Hussein–McMahon Correspondence were vague was an advantage in wartime Anglo-Arab relations. In the interest of Anglo-French relations, though, a more precise agreement on the postwar partition of Arab lands was needed.

The British government was bound to seek French agreement on promises made to Sharif Hussein. The foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had previously recognized France’s special interest in Syria. In October 1915, after authorizing McMahon’s territorial concessions to Sharif Hussein, the Foreign Office requested that the French government send negotiators to London to put some clearly defined boundaries to French claims in Syria. The French foreign minister designated the former consul general in Beirut, Charles François Georges-Picot, to negotiate with Sir Mark Sykes, Lord Kitchener’s Middle East advisor, in drafting a mutually acceptable postwar partition of Arab lands.

The fact that the British and French were dividing amongst themselves lands that Sharif Hussein was claiming for the future Arab kingdom has led many historians to denounce the Sykes-Picot Agreement as an outrageous example of imperial perfidy—none more eloquently than Palestinian historian George Antonius: “The Sykes-Picot Agreement is a shocking document. It is not only the product of greed at its worst, that is to say, of greed allied to suspicion and so leading to stupidity: it also stands out as a startling piece of double-dealing.” Yet for Britain and France, whose past imperial rivalries had nearly led them to war, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was an essential exercise for France to define precisely the territories it claimed in Cilicia and Syria and for Britain to stake its claim in Mesopotamia—the lands Sir Henry McMahon tried to exclude from his pledge to Sharif Hussein.

There are many misconceptions about the Sykes-Picot Agreement. A century later, many still believe the agreement set the borders of the modern Middle East. In fact, the map as drawn by Sykes and Picot bears no resemblance to the Middle East today. Instead, it defined areas of colonial domination in Syria and Mesopotamia in which France and Britain were free “to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire[d].”

In the “blue area,” France laid claim to the eastern Mediterranean coastline stretching from Mersin and Adana, around the Gulf of Alexandretta and southward through the shores of modern Syria and Lebanon to the ancient port town of Tyre. The French also claimed an extensive part of eastern Anatolia to a point north of Sivas and to the east of Diyarbakır and Mardin—all towns comfortably inside the modern Turkish Republic. In the “red areas,” the British secured recognition of their claim to the Iraqi provinces of Basra and Baghdad.

The vast lands between the blue and red areas were divided into separate zones in which Britain and France would exercise informal influence. Zone A placed the major inland cities of Syria—Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and Damascus, as well as the northern Iraqi city of Mosul—under indirect French control. The British claimed informal empire over Zone B, which spanned the deserts of northern Arabia from Iraq to the Sinai frontiers of Egypt. These two zones were to be part of “an independent Arab State or a Confederation of Arab States . . . under the suzerainty of an Arab chief”—a formula that fell well short of Sir Henry McMahon’s pledges to Sharif Hussein.

The one area on which the British and French could not agree was Palestine. They could not resolve their conflicting claims and anticipated that Russian ambitions would further complicate negotiations. Sykes and Picot decided to paint the map of Palestine brown, to distinguish it from the red and blue areas, and proposed an “international administration” whose ultimate shape would only be decided in negotiations with Russia, the “other Allies, and the representatives of the Shereef of Mecca”—the only explicit mention of Sharif Hussein in the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

In March 1916, Sykes and Picot traveled to Russia to secure their Entente ally’s agreement to their partition plan. In addition to their earlier claims to the straits and Constantinople, confirmed in the 1915 Constantinople Agreement, the tsar’s ministers sought British and French recognition of the annexation of the Turkish territories that the Russian army had recently overrun—Erzurum, the Black Sea port of Trabzon, the shattered city of Van, and Bitlis—as the price for their acquiescence to the terms of Sykes-Picot. With Russia’s support secured by May 1916, the Allies had achieved a comprehensive agreement on the postwar partition of the Ottoman Empire. And for the moment, they managed to keep the whole matter secret from their Arab allies, Sharif Hussein and his sons.

The twelfth of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points assured the Arabs, along with the other subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire, “an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.” Political activists were at work in Syria and Mesopotamia debating different political visions, freed from the constraints imposed by decades of Ottoman political repression. In Egypt, political elites knew precisely what they wanted. After thirty-six years of British occupation, they wanted Egypt’s total independence.

A group of prominent Egyptian politicians approached the British authorities in Cairo to request permission to present their case for independence at the Paris Peace Conference. Sir Reginald Wingate, British high commissioner, received the delegation led by veteran politician Saad Zaghloul two days after the armistice with Germany, on November 13, 1918. He heard the delegates out and promptly declined their request to attend the peace conference in no uncertain terms. The Paris Peace Conference was to decide the fate of the defeated powers and in no way concerned Egypt. When Zaghloul and his colleagues persisted in their efforts, they were arrested on March 8, 1919 and deported to Malta. The following day, Egypt exploded in demonstrations that rapidly spread nationwide and across the different social classes in a common demand for independence.

Egyptians in town and countryside attacked every visible manifestation of British imperial power. The railways and telegraph lines were sabotaged, government offices burned, and government centers confronted with huge crowds of protesters. The British dispatched soldiers to restore order, but soldiers are blunt tools for crowd control, and casualties began to mount. The Egyptians accused British soldiers of atrocities—of using live fire against demonstrators, burning villages, and even committing rape. By the end of March, eight hundred Egyptian civilians had been killed and a further sixteen hundred injured in the violence.

To restore the calm, the British allowed Zaghloul to return to Egypt and lead a delegation to Paris in April 1919. Before the Egyptian delegation reached Paris, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George had persuaded his French and American allies that Egypt was an “imperial and not an international question.” The day the Egyptian delegation reached Paris, President Wilson recognized Britain’s protectorate over Egypt. The delegation was never granted a formal hearing by the peace conference. The war might have ended, but British rule in Egypt had not.

No Peace

After the war’s end, Emir Faisal presented his case for Arab independence to the Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919. In light of the extensive territory Sir Henry McMahon had promised Sharif Hussein in their famous correspondence, Faisal’s position was very moderate. He sought immediate and full independence for Arab kingdoms in Greater Syria (corresponding to the territory of the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority) and the Hijaz, then ruled by his father, King Hussein. He accepted foreign mediation in Palestine to resolve conflicting Arab and Zionist aspirations. And he acknowledged British claims to Mesopotamia, while expressing his belief that these territories would eventually join the independent Arab state he hoped to persuade the peacemakers to create.

While accepting less than the Hashemites believed their British allies had promised, Faisal demanded more than the British could deliver. Prime Minister David Lloyd George needed French consent to secure British claims to Mesopotamia and Palestine. And from the very outset of the war, France had named Syria as its price. Unable to reconcile these rival claims, Britain backed its essential ally, France, and left Faisal to fend for himself.

On November 1, 1919, the British withdrew their army from Syria and handed the country over to French military rule. The Syrian General Congress, an elected body convened by Faisal’s supporters with representatives from the different regions of Greater Syria, responded on March 8, 1920 by declaring the independence of Syria with Faisal as their king. But Faisal’s Syrian kingdom was not to survive. The French dispatched a colonial army from Lebanon to take control of Damascus. Encountering the remnants of Faisal’s Arab army in a mountain pass on the road between Beirut and Damascus, the French easily defeated the token force of 2,000 defenders at Khan Maysalun on July 24, 1920 and advanced into Damascus unopposed to overturn Faisal’s short-lived Syrian kingdom. Faisal carried the dashed hopes of the Arab Revolt into exile with him.

The fall of Faisal’s government in Damascus left the Palestinians to face the British occupation—and the Balfour Declaration—on their own. Notables from Palestinian towns and cities had played a key role in the Syrian General Congress, and the townsmen and villagers they represented made their views known to the American commission of inquiry sent in the summer of 1919 by the Paris Peace Conference. Between June 10 and July 21, the King-Crane Commission traveled across Greater Syria to gather evidence and assess public opinion about the region’s political future. It was clear that a strong majority of Palestinian Arabs wished to be ruled as part of Faisal’s Arab kingdom.

Moreover, the King-Crane Commission reported that the Palestinian Arab population was “emphatically against the entire Zionist program” and that “there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed than upon this.”

Tensions ran high in 1920 as Jewish immigration, encouraged by the Balfour Declaration, accelerated. Between 1919 and 1921, over 18,500 Zionist immigrants flocked to Palestine’s shores. Rioting broke out in Jerusalem in the first week of April 1920, leaving five Jews and four Arabs dead and over two hundred people injured. Worse violence followed in 1921, when Arab townsmen intervened in a fight between Jewish communists and Zionists in the port of Jaffa during May Day parades. In the ensuing riots, forty-seven Jews and forty-eight Arabs were killed, and over two hundred people were injured. The contradictions raised by the Balfour Declaration—in its declaration of intent to create a national home for the Jews that would not adversely affect the rights and interests of the indigenous non-Jewish population—were already apparent.

The political elites in Iraq watched events in Egypt and Syria with mounting concern for their own future. They had been reassured in November 1918 when the British and French issued a declaration pledging their support for “the establishment of national governments and administrations” in the Arab lands through a process of self-determination. But the Iraqis grew increasingly suspicious as the months passed without any tangible progress toward the promised self-government. News in April 1920 that the Great Powers had agreed in San Remo to award their country to Britain as a mandate confirmed the Iraqis’ worst fears.

At the end of June 1920, Iraq erupted in nationwide rebellion against British rule. Disciplined and well-organized, the insurgency threatened the British in Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, but the center of operations lay in the same Shiite shrine towns of the Middle Euphrates that had risen against the Ottomans during the Great War. As the uprising spread, the British were forced to move additional troops into Mesopotamia to suppress determined Iraqi resistance on all fronts. Reinforcements from India were rushed to bolster the sixty thousand troops yet to be demobilized from the Mesopotamia campaign, raising British forces to over one hundred thousand by October. Using aerial bombardment and heavy artillery, the British re-conquered the Middle Euphrates region with scorched-earth tactics that crushed the resistance. “In recent days there has been bloodshed and the destruction of populous towns and the violation of the sanctity of places of worship to make humanity weep,” one journalist in Najaf wrote in October 1920. By the time the uprising was crushed at the end of October, the British claimed that 2,200 of their own forces and an estimated 8,450 Iraqis had been killed or wounded.

Sharif Hussein, now king of Hijaz, followed events in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq with a deepening sense of betrayal. He had copies of every letter exchanged with Sir Henry McMahon and felt the British had broken every promise they contained. Having aspired to be king of the Arabs, Hussein was now confined to the Hijaz—and he wasn’t even secure there. A rival monarchy in central Arabia, led by Abdulaziz Al-Saud, better known in the West as Ibn Saud, threatened to overrun the Hijaz. To add insult to injury, Ibn Saud enjoyed a treaty with Great Britain and received a generous monthly stipend from the British treasury.

The British too were concerned about the future of the Hijaz. While they had secured a formal treaty with Ibn Saud back in 1915, their relations with the Hashemites had been concluded in the form of a wartime alliance. Once the war was at an end, so too was the alliance. Unless the old king of the Hijaz concluded a treaty with Britain, Whitehall would have no legal basis to protect his territory. But to get King Hussein to sign a treaty, they had to get him to accept the postwar settlement hammered out at San Remo. In the summer of 1921, T.E. Lawrence was given the impossible mission of negotiating the terms of an Anglo-Hijazi treaty with the embittered King Hussein.

By the time Lawrence met with King Hussein, Britain had gone some way toward redeeming Sir Henry McMahon’s broken promises. Winston Churchill, now secretary of state for the colonies, had convened a secret meeting in Cairo in March 1921 to determine the political future of Britain’s new Middle Eastern mandates. At that meeting, the British dignitaries agreed to install King Hussein’s son Faisal as king of Iraq and Abdullah as ruler of the as yet undefined territory of Transjordan (which was formally separated from Palestine in 1923). With Hashemite rulers slated for all of Britain’s mandates bar Palestine, Churchill could claim to have worked within the spirit, if not the exact lettering, of McMahon’s wartime undertakings.

Between July and September 1921, Lawrence sought in vain the formula for reconciling King Hussein with Britain’s postwar position in the Middle East. Hussein refused to confine his own ambitions to the Hijaz. He objected to the separation of Syria and Lebanon from the rest of the Arab lands and their placement under French mandate. He rejected the British mandates in Iraq and Transjordan, even if they were to be nominally ruled by his sons. And he refused to sanction the pledge to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. As King Hussein could accept nothing in the British postwar settlement, there was no scope for an Anglo-Hijaz treaty of alliance. Lawrence returned to London empty-handed.

The British made one last attempt to conclude a treaty with the Hijaz in 1923, but the bitter old king refused—forfeiting British protection at the very moment Ibn Saud was preparing to conquer the Red Sea province. On October 6, 1924, King Hussein abdicated in favor of his eldest son, Ali, and went into exile. King Ali’s reign ended in late 1925 when the Saudis completed the conquest of the Hijaz. Like the Ottomans before them, the Hashemites made their last stand in Medina, surrendering the holy city in December 1925—nearly seven years after Fahri Pasha’s capitulation.

Legacies of the Great War

In the end, the Ottoman front proved more influential in the First World War than contemporaries ever imagined. Allied war planners, believing a quick victory over a weak Ottoman Empire might precipitate the Central Powers’ surrender, found themselves drawn into a series of campaigns that lasted nearly the full length of the war. The battles in the Caucasus and Persia, the failed attempt to force the Dardanelles, the reversals in Mesopotamia, and the long campaign through Sinai, Palestine, and Syria diverted hundreds of thousands of men and strategic war materiel from the primary theaters of operations on the western and eastern fronts. Rather than hastening the end of the conflict, the Ottoman front served instead to lengthen the war.

Much of the Allied war effort in the Middle East was driven by what proved to be an unwarranted fear of jihad. While colonial Muslims remained largely unresponsive to the Ottoman sultan-caliph’s appeal, the European imperial powers continued to assume that any major Turkish success or Allied setback might provoke the dreaded Islamic uprising in their colonies in India and North Africa. Ironically, this left the Allies more responsive to the caliph’s call than his Muslim target audience. Even a century later, the Western world has yet to shake off the belief that Muslims might act in a collectively fanatical manner. As the “War on Terrorism” after September 11, 2001 has demonstrated, Western policymakers continue to view jihad in terms reminiscent of the war planners from 1914 to 1918.

The First World War was itself tremendously influential in the making of the modern Middle East. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, European imperialism replaced Turkish rule. After four centuries united in a multinational empire under Ottoman Muslim rule, the Arabs found themselves divided into a number of new states under British and French domination. A few countries achieved independence within frontiers of their own devising—Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia stand out in this regard. The imperial powers, however, imposed the borders and systems of government of most states in the region as part of the postwar settlement.

The postwar partition of the Ottoman Empire was the subject of intense negotiations between the Allies that ran the length of the war. In hindsight, each of the partition agreements only makes sense within its wartime context: the Constantinople Agreement of 1915 when the Allies anticipated the quick conquest of Istanbul; the Hussein–McMahon Correspondence in 1915 and 1916 when the British needed a Muslim ally against the Ottoman jihad; the Balfour Declaration in 1917 when the British wanted to revise the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement to secure Palestine for British rule. These outlandish agreements, which were only conceivable in wartime, were concluded solely to advance Britain and France’s imperial expansion. Had the European powers been concerned with establishing a stable Middle East, one can’t help but think they would have gone about drafting the boundaries in a very different way.

The borders of the postwar settlement have proven remarkably resilient—as have the conflicts the postwar boundaries have engendered. The Kurdish people, divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, have been embroiled in conflict with each of their host governments over the past century in pursuit of their cultural and political rights. Lebanon, created by France in 1920 as a Christian state, succumbed to a string of civil wars as its political institutions failed to keep pace with its demographic shifts and Muslims came to outnumber Christians. Syria, unreconciled to the creation of Lebanon from what many Syrian nationalists believed to be an integral part of their country, sent its military to occupy civil war Lebanon in 1976—and remained in occupation of that country for nearly thirty years. Despite its natural and human resources, Iraq has never known enduring peace and stability within its postwar boundaries, experiencing a coup and conflict with Britain in the Second World War, revolution in 1958, war with Iran between 1980 and 1988, and a seemingly unending cycle of war since Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the 2003 American invasion of Iraq to topple Hussein.

Yet the Arab-Israeli conflict, more than any other legacy of the postwar partition, has defined the Middle East as a warzone. Four major wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors—in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973—have left the Middle East with a number of intractable problems that remain unresolved despite peace treaties between Israel and Egypt in 1979 and between Israel and Jordan in 1994. Palestinian refugees remain scattered between Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan; Israel continues to occupy the Syrian Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms in southern Lebanon; and Israel has yet to relinquish its control over the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank. While Israel and its Arab neighbors share primary responsibility for their actions, the roots of their conflict can be traced directly back to the fundamental contradictions of the Balfour Declaration.

The legitimacy of Middle Eastern frontiers has been called into question since they were first drafted. Arab nationalists in the 1940s and 1950s openly called for unity schemes between Arab states that would overthrow boundaries widely condemned as an imperialist legacy. Pan-Islamists have advocated a broader Islamic union with the same goal. In 2014, a militia calling itself the Islamic State tweeted to its followers that it was “smashing Sykes-Picot” when it declared a caliphate in territory spanning northern Syria and Iraq. One century after Sykes-Picot, the borders of the Middle East remain controversial—and volatile.

The centenary of the Great War attracted little commemoration in the Middle East. Aside from Gallipoli, where Turkish and Anzac veteran associations have long gathered to remember their war dead, the struggles and sacrifices of the global armies that fought on the Ottoman front have given way to more pressing contemporary concerns. Revolutionary turmoil in Egypt, civil war in Syria and Iraq, and enduring violence between Israelis and Palestinians preoccupied the Middle East on the hundredth anniversary of the start of the Great War. Yet as the war is remembered in the rest of the world, the part the Ottomans played in that conflict must be taken into account. For the Ottoman front, with its Asian battlefields and global soldiers, turned Europe’s Great War into the First World War. And in the Middle East more than in any other part of the world, the legacies of the Great War continue to be felt down to the present day.

Excerpted from The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920, by Eugene Rogan. Copyright © 2015 by Eugene Rogan. With permission of the publisher, Penguin Books.

Eugene Rogan is professor of modern Middle Eastern history and director of the St. Antony’s College Middle East Centre at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Arabs: A History; and Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire; and co-editor of The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. His most recent book is The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920.

In 416 bc, during the Peloponnesian War, representatives of the powerful city-state of Athens gave the people of Melos an ultimatum: the small island in the Cyclades either had to join the Delian League, an alliance controlled by Athenian imperialism, or be destroyed. Members of the League had to follow the military strategy of Athens against archenemy Sparta and pay an annual tribute. In his history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides describes the encounter between the Athenian envoys and the Melos authorities. The envoys were asked why Melos must join the League; after all the island had remained neutral during the first twenty years of the war and did not represent a danger for Athenian democracy. But for the representatives of Athens, anyone who is not with them was against them. “The strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak accept what they have to accept,” the Athenians responded. It was a matter of obedience, a question of who is the master of the game. Catastrophe soon befell Melos, an Athenian lesson for any others who would dare to disobey.

This is essentially what happened in the negotiations between the Greek government elected in January 2015 and Greece’s partners and creditors, mainly Germany. The government was elected on the basis of a program that would put an end to the austerity that the same forces had imposed on previous Greek governments with disastrous results: fall of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 25 percent; an economic decline greater than that of the United States during the Great Depression; unemployment among young people nearing 60 percent; political and social destruction.

The new government stated upfront that it had no intention of challenging the rules governing the eurozone countries, the nineteen European Union (EU) nations (out of twenty-eight) that have adopted the euro as their common currency. “My government is planning, and I am planning, to compromise, compromise, and compromise, but we’re not going to be compromised,” the then-Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis repeatedly affirmed to his colleagues. Varoufakis simply wanted a revision of the agreements in order to give space and time for development. Almost all serious economists agreed, including Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, winners of the Nobel Prize in economics, that Varoufakis’ proposal was the only realistic plan that could pull Greece out of its economic crisis.

However, from the beginning of negotiations that would last five months, Greece’s creditors had exactly the opposite goal. “I’ve lost count of how many times we faced the threat of closure of our banks because we rejected a program which had demonstrated its inefficiency,” Varoufakis wrote in Le Monde Diplomatique in July. “The creditors and the Eurogroup closed their ears to our economic arguments. They wanted us to surrender.” In the end, and while there was not a single euro left in the Greek treasury, the Greek government was faced with an ultimatum comparable to that faced by Melos twenty-five centuries ago. The main difference was that this time the weak faced not a mighty fleet and the swords of the strong, but the European Central Bank and other powerful economic weapons of the European Alliance. Greece’s dilemma was to either reject the ultimatum, which would result in the collapse of Greek banks followed by economic and political chaos, or sign up for yet another devastating austerity program.

The shock therapy imposed on Greece as well as on other countries of the European south has been presented—to international and especially German public opinion—as programs of free help and salvation. In fact they are loans; and even in 2010 when the first memorandum was signed between Greece and its lenders, the loans carried high interest rates (although in subsequent programs those punishing rates were reduced). The main issue is that in reality countries such as Greece, and Portugal, were not rescued. Naturally, the Greek government and others took advantage of entry into the euro currency in the early 2000s to shamelessly borrow at low interest rates. In the case of Greece, these loans were used for making corrupt weapons purchase deals (basically with French and German companies) or for financing political clientelism and Pharaonic projects—at the time, Greece was preparing to host the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. These projects were being realized with the participation of companies originating from the northern, industrialized countries of Europe, Germany being at the top of the list.

However, when the global economic crisis in 2008 dried up the sources of low-cost borrowing capital, not only were the Greek and other governments exposed, but also German, French, and northern banks that had lent them money without serious safeguards. When the question was raised whether to save Greece or their own banks, Paris and Berlin did not hesitate for a moment: they rescued their banks. They disregarded the effect of austerity measures on countries that were obliged to sign the infamous memorandums and to accept that the hated troika—the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and European Commission—would have a decisive role in shaping their national economic policies. Since then, various IMF representatives have publicly stated that in the case of Greece it was clear from the outset that the debt was so large in relation to GDP (120 percent) that the draconian measures were doomed to fail.

The whole dirty deal is one of the largest debt transfers in history: Greek bonds were transferred from the exposed private banks to European Union member states and the IMF, against an IMF statute that prohibits lending to countries with unsustainable debt. However, for the voters in the creditor countries who did not understand the fraudulent transaction, a scapegoat was invented: the lazy and disorganized southern Europeans who cannot put their financial houses in order. In a speech in the summer of 2011, German Chancellor Angela Merkel accused the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the Greeks of working less, retiring earlier, and enjoying more vacation time. In fact, it is the German citizens who have more privileges in these areas, not to mention wages that are much higher in Germany. In the case of Greece, the defamation campaign took on racist overtones, as the Greeks were accused of all the evils of the world, from laziness to stupidity. It is also worth noting that, according to official European data for 2014, Greeks work a lot more hours per year (2,042) than the Germans do (1,371). It is true that productivity is lower and corruption is higher in Greece than in Germany, but it takes two to tango: Greek officials and Siemens, one of the largest German companies, are starring in the biggest corruption scandal of the last decades in Greece.

As the “salvation” programs had other purposes than what was publicly claimed, the result was disastrous. Apart from the recession and the unemployment they caused, even in the case of Greece’s debt, which was assumed to be its main problem, it actually increased from 120 percent when the crisis started to 180 percent as a percentage of GDP. Besides, about 93 percent of the loan money never really landed in Athens: it was used to repay the previous loans.

The lenders justified the negative effects of the austerity programs by arguing that Greece did not move forward with the agreed fiscal discipline measures and consolidation of its public sector. These charges have nothing to do with reality. In accordance with the report of the European Commission on Greece for 2014, Greece’s total public sector employment declined from 907,351 in 2009 to 651,717 in 2014, a decrease of more than 255,000 representing a drop of more than 25 percent. As for public deficit, Greece has reduced its fiscal deficit from 15.6 percent of GDP in 2009 to 2.5 percent in 2014, “a scale of deficit reduction not seen anywhere else in the world,” Karl Whelan, economics professor at University College Dublin, wrote on his blog. “Stories about Greeks retiring early appear to have had a major impact on the hardline attitude of the German public towards Greece over the past few years.” In reality, he added, “Greece has undertaken the most significant pension reform in Europe.”

There are two reasons that the German leadership and some of its allies in the north do not want to accept the results of their policy. One is economic and the other political. On the economic front, the German government and other northern governments benefit from the eurozone crisis. According to a recent survey by Germany’s Halle Institute for Economic Research, the savings of the German budget are estimated to be more than 100 billion euros (or in excess of 3 percent of GDP) during the course of 2010 to 2015. “The balanced budget in Germany,” explained the Halle Institute, “is largely the result of lower interest payments due to the European debt crisis. Research shows that the debt crisis resulted in a reduction in German bond rates of about 300 basis points. A significant part of this reduction is directly attributable to the Greek crisis. When discussing the costs to the German taxpayer of saving Greece, these benefits should not be overlooked, as they tend to be larger than the expenses, even in a scenario where Greece does not repay any of its debts.”

This estimation takes into account neither the benefits for German exports from the rate of the euro that remains weak because of the crisis, nor the direct German profits from the interest on the loan given to Greece, estimated to be about a half billion euros as of September 2015.

The Halle Institute report contains another very important conclusion: “Faced with crisis, investors look for safe investments (flight to safety). During the debt crisis within the euro area, Germany benefited disproportionally from this effect: Any time there was bad news about Greece, yields on German government bonds fell, and any time there was good news about Greece, German government bond yields rose.”

That conclusion introduces us to the political basis of German behavior: hubris. François Mitterrand, president of France when the Berlin Wall fell, was afraid that a big Germany in the middle of Europe might seek political dominance once again. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher believed so, too. German author Günter Grass believed his country would return to its old hubris, its arrogance, feelings of superiority, and eventually abuse of its power.

The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and the introduction of the common currency later was intended to prevent recurrence of Europe’s bloody history, to ensure the integration of Germany so that it would not seek again to dominate Europe. At the same time, the common currency and the measures supposed to accompany it, aimed to reduce the differences between the rich countries of the north with the poorer regional countries and those in southern Europe. Neither target has been achieved. Rich countries took advantage of what to their economies was effectively a weak euro to further strengthen their industry and exports, while the poor ones were forced to use what to them amounted to a relatively strong currency and became de-industrialized. Since balancing mechanisms like currency devaluation do not exist in the eurozone, helping the poor is left to the goodwill of the powerful.

Based on its skills of discipline and organization, Germany managed to prevail. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the German government implemented austerity policies and fiscal discipline, long before other European governments. When the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, by the time it crossed the Atlantic and reached Europe in 2009 through Greece, Germany had its economic situation in order along with fiscal reserves. It was the Aesop fable of the foresighted, hardworking ant and the careless, unprepared grasshopper. After unification the most populous and financially strongest country in Europe, Germany, was in an advantageous position. Since the turn of the millennium and the introduction of the euro, Germany’s trade surplus has almost quadrupled and now stands at 217 billion euros ($236.4 billion). The common currency, which was originally meant to bind Germany to Europe, has had in the end the opposite effect. Thanks also to the Greek crisis, an account surplus of 7.5 percent of GDP gives Berlin absolute superiority. After reunification, Germany also managed to take almost all ex-communist countries of Eastern Europe under its control, using its own economic power and taking advantage of the satellite mentality that still pervades countries that were under Soviet rule.

The Semi-Hegemon

From the first moments of the European Common Market, the economic union that preceded the EU, Germany was the strongest country economically in Europe. However, the postwar German strategy was based on consultation with European allies, to echo the leading German intellectual Thomas Mann: we should never again seek a German Europe but a European Germany.

Nonetheless, when in 2009 the euro crisis erupted, at the Berlin chancellery there was a politician who did not belong to the war generation, as did her predecessor in the leadership of the Christian Democrat party, Helmut Kohl. She had not been nurtured by the ideas of the European Union either. Angela Merkel was 35 years old when the wall fell and managed to pass from East to West Germany. In the People’s Republic of Germany there was really never a substantial criticism of Nazism (which was attributed to the capitalists of the West) and of course they had no idea about the plans of a united Europe, as they had grown up with COMECON, the Warsaw Pact, and had their eyes looking toward Moscow.

Merkel is a politician who hesitates to decide. She never says a clear yes or no; she says yes and no. But if you have the money and the other side is waiting for you to lend it, this leadership weakness transforms itself into a strategic advantage. The other countries of Europe began to depend on Berlin’s hesitations and decisions. “Today all of Europe speaks German,” Volker Kauder, the conservatives’ German parliament floor leader, triumphantly concluded in his speech at a party conference of Merkel’s Christian Democrats in Leipzig. “This is not a monetary union,” the Financial Times wrote in May 2012. “It is far more like an empire.”

The change in Germany’s approach to Europe has been dramatic. Previous German leaders sought to avoid isolation at all costs when it came to important negotiations, but Merkel has completely rejected that approach. “I am rather alone in the EU, but I don’t care,” she said to a group of advisors, according to the weekly magazine Der Spiegel. “We are in Europe what the Americans are in the world: the unloved leading power.”

Again in the twenty-first century, Europe is trying to cope with the same problem that gave birth to so many tragedies: the German question. Germany is too strong in Europe, but too small to rule over Europe by itself. History is repeating itself. After victories over Denmark, Austria, and France, the Kaiserreich that Bismarck founded in 1871 was soon dominated by the German hubris we see and hear almost daily these days: a feeling of being superior to others, to know better and to be better. Germany was acting like a “semi-hegemon,” German historian Ludwig Dehio said when describing Germany’s position in Europe after 1871. The then-powerful Germany, yet too small to rule Europe alone, had to form alliances that ended up in the First World War. The apotheosis of hubris, Hitler used his powerful war machine to dominate but was unable to defeat the Allies in the second war Germany had provoked in a century.

Nevertheless, unlike the United States after the Second World War, Germany the semi-hegemon is not taking full responsibility for its new role. It has a significant say in the fates of millions of people from other countries, but it only wants the benefits of that. Germans are not at all ready for an American-style Marshall Plan.

They deny Greece and other heavily indebted eurozone countries the possibility of a debt trim, forgetting that it was German debt’s drastic haircut in 1953 that allowed the German economic miracle to unfold. They refuse to issue Eurobonds that would serve the countries of the south, even to provide salary increases to German workers to facilitate consumption and imports in Germany. This is a skimping, selfish empire, but one ready to point fingers at the weak. A lawyer by profession, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has imposed Germany’s own dogma: if you apply austerity and respect the given rules, you will do well. If you question or try to change them, you will suffer. It is as simple as that.

Within this environment, the new Greek government tried as of January 2015 to challenge the German austerity doctrine. The response was clear from the beginning, according to the Greek finance minister: “In fact, they had one goal: to humiliate our government and force us to capitulate. Even if it meant the definitive inability of lending countries to recover their money or failure of the reform agenda that only we could convince Greeks to accept.”

The election result was treated with the same hubris. Schäuble said, according to Varoufakis: “When there’s a program that everybody has agreed to, that’s it. Elections cannot change anything, because, then, every time there’s an election everything will change.” This view was expressed publicly by several allies and satellites of Herr Schäuble.

The negotiations lasted for months, but while the Greek economy was paralyzed, the German government benefited from actually having lower interest rates with every new episode of the crisis. As the Halle Institute report said, “The effects are symmetric and amount to 20 to 30 base points a day for important events, such as the time in January of this year when the likelihood of a Syriza party victory in the elections became high, or a little later when the new [Alexis] Tsipras government refused any further talks with the troika.”

At the end of June, an exhausted Greek government stated its readiness to capitulate. It insisted only on a small debt restructuring without a haircut, through the exchange of shares. It had accepted nine-tenths of the requirements of partners and lenders, asking for a small return, in order to present to the Greek public opinion something that seemed like a fair deal. As a response, it received a disastrous program in the form of an ultimatum: “Take it or leave it.”

Prime Minister Tsipras had few options. He was almost forced to ask the Greek people in a referendum if they were willing to accept such a disastrous agreement. He hoped that he would use the result as a bargaining chip. He received retaliations as a response. In the negotiations that followed, Berlin would not accept even an offer of drastic austerity measures worth more than thirteen billion euros that Athens had drawn up in collaboration with Paris. Merkel’s government threatened a temporary exclusion of Greece from the euro and demanded the transfer of Greek state assets worth fifty billion euros to an obscure trust fund controlled from Germany and Schäuble personally. It was like a proposition coming from a hit man, not from an EU minister.

Finally Greece had to surrender to almost all German demands. As the Athenian envoys said in Melos long ago, “The strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak accept what they have to accept.” Melos was eventually destroyed, but Athens lost the moral superiority that every decent hegemon needs to rule. And never recovered after that.

Stelios Kouloglou is a member of the European Parliament representing Greece. He is an independent documentary maker whose films have included Confessions of an Economic Hit Man; Oligarchy; and The Godmother. He was editor-in-chief and anchorman of the Greek national television’s current affairs program Reportage Without Frontiers from 1996 to 2012. He has served as a political analyst for Le Monde Diplomatique and as a foreign correspondent in France, Russia, and Yugoslavia. He is the founder of the Greek news portal TVXS (TV Without Frontiers). On Twitter: @SteliosKoul.

How to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons is perhaps the single greatest diplomatic challenge of our age. A particularly serious concern arose in 2002 when evidence came to light that the Islamic Republic of Iran was conducting secret nuclear activities. Iranian leaders steadfastly denied any intention to build a bomb, insisted on Iran’s sovereign right to peaceful nuclear energy, and threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Western powers demanded strict compliance with NPT requirements, and stepped up pressure on Iran with economic sanctions and warnings of military intervention.

European negotiations with Iran began in 2003 and eventually expanded to include all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council as well as Germany—known as the P5+1. The United States began participating directly in the negotiations in 2013, the highest level of talks since the Iranian revolution and U.S. embassy hostage crisis in 1979. On July 14 came a dramatic announcement at Vienna’s Coburg Palace: the parties reached agreement on a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The agreement permits but restricts Iran’s uranium-enrichment activities for a period of fifteen years, and allows for intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It extends for five years and eight years, respectively, United Nations embargoes on sales of conventional weapons and ballistic missiles to Iran. The deal lifts crippling international economic sanctions that have curbed Iran’s oil exports and access to global financial systems, and frees an estimated $100 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

What does the deal mean for Middle East peace and democracy in Iran? Will it lead to a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington? Eight Cairo Review contributors discuss these and other questions in this special edition of Tahrir Forum.

Overcoming a Hard Legacy by John Limbert

With the announcement of a nuclear deal in Vienna, a three-decade freeze in relations between the U.S. and Iran is beginning to break. A former American diplomat with a deep knowledge of Iran explains the way forward. 

Why Arabs Are Concerned by Nabil Fahmy

The proposed nuclear deal with Iran is far from sufficient. It delays, but does not close the door on potential Iranian breakout. There is profound concern among Arab leaders, and for good reason. 

Beauty of the Pleiades by Turki Al-Faisal

Arabs have the greatest respect for the faith and culture of Iranians, as well as the indelible Persian contribution to the marvels of Islamic society. But like all worthwhile achievements, Persia’s greatest masterpieces were the product of cooperation and education, of learning from and with people of other backgrounds.

Democracy in Iran by Nader Hashemi

The debate on the Iran nuclear deal has largely ignored the effects that an accord might have on politics and society within the country. An Iranian scholar considers what the future might hold. 

Human Rights Is Good Business by Gissou Nia

Amid all the excitement over an Iran deal, there has been scant discussion of Iran’s dismal human rights record. The lifting of sanctions presents an opportunity not only for big profits, but gains in the country’s human rights standards.

Tehran’s Post-Deal Dilemma by Tarek Osman

A major success in Tehran’s foreign policy, the nuclear deal imposes an acute dilemma on the regime at home. So far, its leaders seem neither willing nor able to resolve the challenges facing them.

Ending the Iranian-Saudi Cold War by Reza Marashi

A diplomacy deficit between Iran and Saudi Arabia has exacerbated volatility across the Middle East. Ending the Iranian-Saudi cold war, and building a collective security framework for the Middle East is the only option likely to succeed. 

Behind Netanyahu’s Obsession by Owen Alterman

Some say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is obsessed with the Iranian nuclear issue; others say he just cares deeply about it. Jewish history influences the leader’s policies today.

As he tells it, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, born Mark Hanson in Walla Walla, Washington, hails from a family of seekers. His journey to Islam began at age 17, when a head-on automobile accident led him to serious reflection on the meaning of life. In a spiritual quest over the ensuing decades, he converted from Christianity to Islam and studied with Muslim scholars in Britain, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Morocco, and perhaps most notably, with Sheikh Murabit Al-Hajj and Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah of Mauritania. Today, Yusuf is widely regarded as one of the leading Western scholars of Islam and one of the most influential Muslims in the United States.

In 1996, Yusuf, 55, co-founded the Zaytuna Institute, which in 2009 became Zaytuna College, located in Berkeley, California, America’s first Muslim liberal arts college. As Zaytuna’s president, and in the classroom as a professor, he is on a mission to upgrade the quality of Islamic education, revive the classical teachings and sciences of the faith, and prepare Muslims for the modern world. Zaytuna offers a rich curriculum designed to integrate Islam and Arabic with the Western canon. “Mr. Yusuf dazzles his audiences,” the New York Times wrote in 2006, “by weaving into one of his typical half-hour talks quotations from St. Augustine, Patton, Eric Erikson, Jung, Solzhenitsyn, Auden, Robert Bly, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, and the Bible.” Earlier this year, Zaytuna became the first accredited Muslim institution of higher education in the country.

Yusuf has also been a passionate opponent of U.S. policies in the Middle East as well as a vocal critic of Muslim extremists—condemning the September 11 attacks as an act of “mass murder, pure and simple.” Cairo Review Managing Editor Scott MacLeod interviewed Yusuf on August 27, 2015, in his office at Zaytuna College, located in Berkeley’s tranquil Holy Hill neighborhood, known for its small theology schools and seminaries.

CAIRO REVIEW: What does the Muslim faith mean to you?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I essentially see Islam as a culmination of the Abrahamic traditions. I came out of the Abrahamic traditions. I was an Orthodox Christian. My father was Roman Catholic, Irish Catholic, my mother was half-Greek and half-Irish, so her father, who was an Archon in the Greek Orthodox Church, raised us Greek Orthodox and my father didn’t have a problem with that. My mother was very open-minded and she raised me to believe that religion, for most people, was largely an arbitrary phenomenon because they tend to take the religion they were born into. So, if we were in Sri Lanka we would be Hindus or Buddhists or in Poland we might be Jewish or Catholic. I really took that to heart. I did go through the various religions when I was 17, and Islam was the last on my list. There is something very troubling about Islam for a lot of Westerners because it’s the similar that’s not similar. We have about fourteen hundred years of conflict, with few bright spots: Sicily during Roger II, or Frederick II, the Peace and Friendship with Islam, Eternal Enmity to Rome. Then Spain, during a very brief, shining moment, the Convivencia, when there were Jews, Christians, and Muslims living together relatively harmoniously. But I think for most Western people there’s just a lot of prejudice that’s there. I was fortunate that I was raised in a household that—my mother had antibodies towards racism, sexism, prejudice, so we were raised not to look at things with a prejudicial eye as much as anybody is capable of doing that. When I studied Islam, I felt this has my Abrahamic faith with a lot of the things missing that bothered me about the Abrahamic faith. It was, for me, a very good fit.

CAIRO REVIEW: What does it mean that you’re a Muslim and not a Christian?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Everything that I loved about Christianity I got to bring into Islam. I didn’t see Islam as an abandonment of my Christian upbringing. I saw it as a fulfillment of it. I really didn’t have any conflict there. The Ten Commandments, I got. Jesus is a prophet as opposed to an incarnation of the divine, but one of the highest honored prophets. Mary is still a virgin in the Islamic tradition. The love of Jesus is in the Quran, but also the justice of Moses. So the Quran, although it appeals to the better angels of ourselves and asks us to be more Jesuit in our attitude towards the neighbor, it also allows for the redressing of wrongs. Muslims get that choice between the Mosaic justice and the turn-the-other-cheek of Christianity. I really felt that Islam was a fulfillment of that Abrahamic trinity of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Final Testament.

CAIRO REVIEW: In the sweep of this history of fourteen hundred years, how has Islam benefited individuals, societies, and humanity?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Most people are unaware of the incredible contribution that Islam has made to human civilization. We call our numerals Arabic numerals. Many of our stars have Arabic names because the great Muslim astronomers were the ones that wrote the most advanced books on astronomy. When I went to Turkey I was so struck by how much of European civilization came from the influence of the Ottomans. John Locke, who wrote the treatise on toleration, was a student of Edward Pococke, at Oxford, who happened to be the foremost authority on Islam at the time. Locke was very interested in Islam. I think there’s a clear indication that Locke was influenced by the Ottoman way of dealing with multiple religions. The first Edict of Toleration in the West was in Transylvania, which [had] a heterodoxic Christian ruler working under the Ottomans who decided on tolerating other Christian sects. The Ottomans never persecuted the Protestants, so Protestants would flee to Ottoman Turkey from Catholic countries where they were being persecuted. The Jews, when they were being persecuted in Spain, went to Turkey, and Bernard Lewis highlights that in his book on Islam and the Jews. One of the most ironic things to me is that St. Thomas Aquinas, who really becomes the chief spokesperson and greatest theologian of the Catholic Church, Augustine notwithstanding, he was heavily influenced by Muslim theologians and he has them in his bibliography. He was influenced by Averroes, by Avicenna, by Al-Farabi, by Al-Ghazali. And you can see things in the Summa that are directly lifted from Muslim theological treatises. The Catholic Church itself has a debt to Islamic theology. A lot of people don’t know these things and it’s unfortunate, but there are many Western scholars who do know these things. California historical textbooks, because of Muslim advocacy, have actually begun to change that. And there’s pushback, obviously, from some of the more either secularist or fundamentalist Christians that don’t like the fact that Islam could be presented in any good light.

CAIRO REVIEW: You have fantastic epochs in the Islamic civilization. What went wrong?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Well, that’s the question that Bernard Lewis posed, “What went wrong?” In some ways, we could ask the same questions about the West. I find it ironic that the moral capital of our civilization is so low at a time when we’re condemning Muslim civilization. ISIS [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria], for instance, is a pure outgrowth of a war that even the Pope declared unjust, that was waged by our administration on the Iraqi government. Yet we don’t take any responsibility for that. These are just “crazy Muslims” that arose out of a completely insane situation where a repressive regime was removed. But I would say that more things have gone right in the Muslim culture. You’re living in Cairo, so you know the family is far more intact in the Muslim World than it is in the West. We are now witnessing the disintegration of the family in the West. One of the things that really strikes me—I was just in Turkey, and people just look normal. And when I come back to my country, I feel like I’m in a freak show. What I realized recently was I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that in the Muslim World children still grow up with two parents and the mother is actually home so they get all the attention they need when they’re young and they don’t need to do all these attention-grabbing antics when they get older. Whereas in the West so many people don’t get that attention when they’re young so they spend the rest of their life looking. “Look at me, I have to tattoo my whole body to get people to look at me because I didn’t get the gaze of the significant other when I was a child so now I need the gaze of the insignificant others as an adult.” So I think a lot of what we’re seeing in the West, to me, is profoundly troubling, and in the Muslim World there are a lot of things that are actually positive so I’m not totally convinced that this whole question, “What went wrong?” is even a valid question. What’s happening in the Muslim World, the media’s magnifying glass has focused on one area that is definitely dysfunctional and having really severe crises, but there are many other areas of the Muslim World that are actually functioning quite well.

CAIRO REVIEW: For example?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Every year I spend a month in Turkey and I feel so much safer, it’s one of the cleanest countries I’ve been to, it has all of the modern amenities that I find in my own country, and it has really nice people. Istanbul is rated almost every year as the number one spot to visit on the planet for tourists because of its beauty, because they have incredible cuisine, they have amazing history. Malaysia is an amazing country. Multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious. The Malay Muslims live with the Chinese, live with the Orang Asli, the aboriginal peoples. And then Africa, Morocco, with all the problems that it has, is another country that I love to visit. There’s a lot of problems but it’s not one of the Arab countries that imploded. A lot of the Arab countries have real problems. Some of them are economic. Some of them have to do with the fact that dictatorship and oppression have been part and parcel of those countries for a long time. Oppression is a horrible thing to live under. Unfortunately, if you’ve ever read Albert Memmi’s The Colonizer and the Colonized, those cycles are difficult to break.

CAIRO REVIEW: This is what I’m getting at.
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I think in some ways they are failed states, to lesser and greater degrees. Civilizations, like people, have ages. They have youth, they have middle age, and old age, and in many ways these are decrepit societies perhaps waiting for a reincarnation to be reborn because societies do get renovated. They are renewed. We’re a relatively new civilization and yet we’re, I think, looking pretty world-weary of late. But the American civilization has been a very dynamic civilization because it’s a relatively new civilization. Europe is, I think, having a lot of troubles. The whole planet, in some ways, is going through this. There’s a whole set of philosophical problems: the collapse of traditional societies, the collapse of traditional worldviews, the introduction of Western philosophical ideas, the Enlightenment, secularity. These have been introduced in the Muslim World that emerged in very different environments than they did in the Western world. The Western world had a gross reaction against religion because of a lot of the repressive tendencies of religion. In the Muslim World, knowledge was not the domain of religion itself. There was no priesthood to keep knowledge limited to a select group of people. For that reason, Muslims did not have this crisis of religion as a repressive force as it did in the West. Secularity, which is a reaction to that, laicism, which is the extreme reaction, did not occur to the Muslims. That’s why the imposition of secularity on them has been very traumatic for these societies because they are deeply religious societies. They’re still theocentric societies. That’s shifting. I agree that there are shifts happening in the youth because of the Western culture that is incredibly pervasive because of all the new technology. People are now exposed to things. Thirty years ago in Cairo they were watching Bahibbak Lucy, I Love Lucy, reruns, or something. Now they’re streaming from YouTube whatever they want to watch from the West. If you’ve watched The Square it’s very clear the incredible influences of these technologies even on the quote-unquote Arab Spring. These are complex questions.

CAIRO REVIEW: If we look at countries with major Islamic heritages—Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia—many are very problematic places and societies today.
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Historically, to use Saudi Arabia as an example, in Saudi Arabia two hundred years ago, a movement emerged which was a puritanical movement which was a radical departure, it was more of a protestant movement against a kind of Catholic Islam. It was more of a protest movement against a traditional Islam. People say Islam needs a reformation; this is what we’re witnessing. People that say Islam needs a reformation don’t know how bloody the Western Reformation was and how horrible it was and how it fragmented Western culture, and because of it, secularism arose as a treatment. William Cavanaugh would argue against that in The Myth of Religious Violence, but generally secularism came as this so-called arbiter between these religious conflicts. The truth is that secularism has a history that actually outdoes religion in its severity and barbarity. I mean, nobody has been as bloody as the secular ideologues, Stalin and Hitler.

CAIRO REVIEW: In these countries with Islamic heritage, why have things deteriorated so much?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: If you want to get to core reasons, one of them is that there was a collapse of the school systems in the Muslim World. Ibn Khaldun already in the fourteenth century is arguing that there was an ossification that had penetrated these school systems to where they were no longer thinking creatively but rather just simply rote memorization. There are many places outside of Western civilization where that is the norm, where you just regurgitate information and parrot it back to the teacher. So that is one aspect of this idea of what they call taqlid in the Islamic tradition, which is blind imitation. Toynbee argues that civilizations rise or fall based on how they respond to challenges and the response has to come from what he called a creative minority. Historically, the Muslims had these creative minorities and they were able to deal with their challenges, but these creative minorities diminished until they became just individuals that weren’t able to really address the crises that were confronting them. In the West we still have a lot of creative thinkers. One of the things that really strikes me about the West that I don’t see in the Muslim World is that [when] I go to the bookstores in the spring and in the fall when they release the new books, I’m always amazed by the amount of serious literature and study. In the Muslim World, crises come and go and there are no books that analyze them. Most of what’s published in the Arab World, the best stuff is just critical editions of books that were written a thousand years ago.

CAIRO REVIEW: Why have these Islamic societies fallen into such states of decay?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: A couple of things. One is taqlid, and the ossification of the creative process in the traditional school systems. Another aspect is, if you’re familiar with Eckstein’s Congruence Theory. Eckstein said that whatever the ruling model of a society is, it’s only successful to the degree with which the model is replicated in the other social institutions of the society. If you have a patriarchal society, or you have an authoritarian society, like a dictator, then you need teachers that behave like dictators. You need parents that behave like dictators. One of the things that strikes a lot of my Muslim friends as odd when they come to America is the idea of asking children what they want for dinner. They just think that that’s really a weird thing to do because you just give children food. But part of asking the child is enfranchisement. It begins early and you enculturate them into the idea that they are a sovereign citizen of the household and they participate in decisions and choices. That type of enculturation of democracy that happens organically in our culture, it’s so far from happening in the Muslim World. That’s why if you get rid of the dictator but the models that enable the dictator to be successful are still replicated in all of your social institutions, you’ve changed nothing. You’re only going to wait for the next dictator to come and act it out.

CAIRO REVIEW: How did this happen?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Cultures decline and fall. The decline and fall of Islam was the rise of Europe. Don’t forget that Europe rose with the introduction of all the Islamic sciences that came into it with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the fall of Granada in 1492. This is the transformation of the West. This is when all these great works were translated into Latin. The translation movement was amazing. It stimulated Europe and they took it and they’ve been going for five hundred years now. But the truth is the Muslims were going for a thousand years before that. People forget, when you look in terms of the long-term vision of it, what happened in the Muslim World will happen here, it’s only a matter of time. The Romans had their time. Civilizations have their time. They decline and fall. Does that mean that Islam declines and falls? No, this is where the conflation of Islam with the so-called Islamic civilization is a fallacy. For instance, I’m here in California and we’ve started a Muslim liberal arts college that is filled with people that were born in the United States of America. This might be the seed. It might be, I’m not saying it is, but Islam has historically moved to different places. It left the Arab World a long time ago and it moved to different places. The Turks had it and they declined and they fell. They’re trying to have their own renaissance in a way and it might happen because they have a lot of really interesting thinkers and they’re very sharp and they have a very dynamic culture.

CAIRO REVIEW: You mentioned The Colonizer and the Colonized. Is that part of what’s at play?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: It’s part of it. I think Muslims have a profound chip on their shoulder. I call it the “post-colonial traumatic stress syndrome.” The trauma of being colonized, especially when you were as great as the Muslim civilization was. They live in the ruins of greatness. If you’re in Cairo, it’s very hard to ignore the Mamluk majesty. It’s very hard to ignore the incredible past that they had; even the pyramids and the Pharaonic history. They live in the ruins of greatness. And, when they were colonized, beginning with the Napoleonic invasion, and then with the coming of the English and Lord Cromer, I think they really grappled with the collapse. Unfortunately, they identified the crisis with a lack of know-how. Most of the Muslims really believed that the reason that we were colonized was because the West got ahead of us. Hence, they direct all of their young people to study things like engineering and medicine because if we could just get the know-how and learn how they do these magical things, we’ll once again restore our greatness. The problem with that is that the real foundation of any civilization is morality. That’s where the real crisis is in a lot of the Muslim World, public morality. I think in some ways the private morality and generally sexual morality and things like that, family, those things are more stable in the Muslim World. I’m not naïve of all the hanky-panky that goes on everywhere, but generally you find that. Partly it’s because of the segregation that occurs and the opportunities are not as available.

CAIRO REVIEW: You’re saying that this corrosion is not because of Islam, but because there’s not enough Islam?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: That’s my thesis. Western people think that religion is a scaffolding that we built our civilization with and now that it’s built we can get rid of the scaffolding. I think there’s a very strong argument that it is the civilization, and if you get rid of it you’re left with buildings that are devoid of meaning. I think that’s what a lot of Western people are struggling with. The Muslims don’t have that crisis. Their crisis is that buildings are derelict but they still have meaning in them. And they don’t have the wherewithal to renovate. Renovation is a beautiful word, because in the Islamic tradition people are called to renovate, to renew.

CAIRO REVIEW: Are Islam and democracy compatible?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: There are a lot of people in the West that are asking, “Are democracy and corporatism compatible?” Democracy is a very fragile form of government and there are strong arguments now in the West that we’ve lost our democracy. That we don’t really have that much say, that we’re more kind of happy farm animals. They take care of us and we provide income tax dollars and consume their corporate products. Democracy is a contested term and if you mean by that, can Muslims vote and participate in the government, I think Turkey is an example of where Muslims clearly have worked within democratic institutions successfully. Malaysia is another example. It’s different; it’s not Western democracy. One of the things about the West is that we love to create others in our own image. When we were Christians we went around proselytizing Christianity, trying to form people into a Christian version of ourselves. Hence Amazonians singing Latin psalms. But, now that we’ve abandoned Christianity and we’re liberal democrats and consumers, the idea is to go and proselytize liberalism and consumerism. Part of our egocentricity and ethnocentricity is that we want to create the world in our own image. For instance, the Gulf states, like the Emirates, or Qatar, or Kuwait, for example, are places where the people being ruled are actually quite content with their rulers, by and large. Al-Nahyan has a very, very high rating amongst their people. It’s not a democratic environment, but it’s a type of benevolence, a benevolent paternalism, that works for them—setting aside labor problems of people coming from very impoverished areas. I’m not convinced that democracy has to be this universal way of governing ourselves. I would be perfectly content to live in a constitutional monarchy. I’d be perfectly content to live in a place like the Emirates. I could live in the United Arab Emirates and not have a problem with it. I spent four years in the Emirates so I’m speaking from real experience. I think we have to be very careful in trying to recreate the world in our own image. I think other places have to determine what’s right for them and if that’s democratic, then fine. I’m not an Islamist by any stretch of the word, but when an Islamist government was elected in Algeria, they were overthrown. One of the French commentators said sometimes we have to subvert democracy in order to save democracy. And this is the odd thing about it. If you give Muslims an election, very often they will actually vote in the Islamists because they actually believe that they represent God and that we should follow God and if they are going to apply Islamic law then we should vote for them. There’s a lot of Muslims that believe that.

CAIRO REVIEW: My definition of democracy would be more the values than institutions, like the right to individual liberty, the culture of tolerance, the culture of community decision-making rather than top-down decision-making, treatment of minorities, treatment of women.
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I think all the things you said, I think people would be shocked at how progressive Islam is in a really proper understanding of it.

CAIRO REVIEW: Can you explain that?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: For instance, women’s rights. One of the things that only recently they are acknowledging is the fact that women that work at home actually are contributing to the GDP. This is very recent. In the Islamic tradition, the jurists of Islam, thirteen hundred years ago, argued, and this is actually considered canon law in Islam, that women are entitled to be paid for their domestic service in their homes. They can actually charge their husbands for their domestic service if they choose. It’s a choice for them. That was understood, that they don’t have to serve a husband. That’s only very recently even an idea in the West. A lot of divorce in our country is over domestic chores, because you have two-income families and then the husband comes home and expects the wife to do the laundry and make the dinner. That stuff was dealt with centuries ago in the Muslim World. I think, in terms of minorities, in some ways the West has surpassed the Muslim World. There is full enfranchisement. There’s a lot to be desired undeniably, and there’s still a lot of racism in our culture, but I think Europe and America and Canada have done amazing things in that area. Unprecedented. It’s quite sad that there’s so much racial tension in our country because for the first time America is a society that was really beginning to overcome some of this. There’s a lot of historical baggage. In the Muslim World, minorities were always protected but they were seen definitely as subjects and second-class citizens, but they were protected. I think there is a reading of Islam, and that’s certainly the one that my teacher, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, has—he argues recently [that] the whole concept of jizya is only one among different possibilities. So the idea of a poll tax for non-Muslim minorities is one. The other model is what they call the Constitution of Medina, where the Prophet fully enfranchised the Jewish tribes and that was the first model. It was replaced by the jizya model. He argues that it was never abrogated and I think there’s a solid argument for that. He does feel that that’s the most appropriate way, that minorities should be fully enfranchised.

CAIRO REVIEW: Would you argue that Islam has a space for these democratic values?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I think they are certainly compatible with Islam. I think there are definitely areas—for instance, pornography, violence—when we argue that freedom also means the freedom to corrupt people, this is where you’re going to get into some entanglements amongst the Muslims. In the West, even though these are recent ideas, is the idea that the pornographer has the right to be a purveyor of smut in the society and that’s his individual right. The Muslims would say that if harm overrides benefit, if the social harm is greater than the social benefit of something, then in Islamic law it’s prohibited. And, certainly with pornography, the evidence of the social harm is immense. I’ve read a lot in this area. Oddly enough, Muslim civilizations tended to be a lot more tolerant of what until recently was called sexual deviancies. Muslim cultures had a greater tolerance of these things, even though they are prohibited. The actual cultures tended to be tolerant. One of the interesting things that has always struck me as odd is [that] nobody has ever looked at the Muslim transvestites. They call them mukhannathoon; we find them in India, in the Arab World, West Africa. They go to the weddings and they are men that behave like women. Muslims have always recognized that there is a spectrum of behavior amongst peoples and I think they’ve been a lot more tolerant to human foibles and idiosyncrasies than a lot of Western cultures, which demand a type of conformity. But puritanism tries to stamp that out and a lot of what we’re seeing today is the rise of this puritanical Islam that is very repressive and makes it very difficult for people that are not in that.

CAIRO REVIEW: Is that legitimate? Is it Islam?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Arguably there are elements that are Islam. Undeniably. But the way that it is practiced and the cruelty with which it is practiced are very alien to Islam and to the Muslims. This Graeme Wood argument [in the Atlantic magazine], that he made using Bernard Haykel and a few other people, that what ISIS is practicing is Islam, I think that argument is a very fallacious argument for anybody that knows the Islamic tradition.

CAIRO REVIEW: The Arab Spring gave so much hope to the young generation. Part of the failure is that the Islamist movements have not been successful. How do you read that? Why hasn’t the Islamic movement brought about a just society?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: First of all, I think it’s akin to the Spring of Nations which happened in 1848 with the revolutions in Europe that were quickly squelched by the authoritarian regimes. But, over time, that gave rise to major changes that happened with World War I. That might be what it will take, a horrible World War III, and then from those ashes will emerge more equitable societies. I would hate to see that but I think it’s very possible. The Hapsburgs, the Hohenzollern, the Romanovs, they all collapsed but they should have reformed in 1848 when people rose up against these ossified, petrified regimes, but they didn’t. The same is true with the Ottomans, with Abdul Majid who made incredible reforms with the Tanzimat and then Sultan Abdul Hamid, for whatever reasons, suspended the constitution. I mean, he had his justifications for doing it but it was suspended, the parliament was shut down. So, those reforms were not fulfilled and then comes the Young Turks and the overthrow of the Ottoman caliphate. I think these things eventually are going to play out. I don’t know how brutal it’s going to be but people can’t take tyranny, and they rise up. Aristotle, in his book of politics, has a section on revolutions, and I think his descriptions of why revolutions occur are as valid today as they were when he articulated them two thousand five hundred years ago. It’s very clear that when you have diseased societies, the disease has to come to a head, like the boil that brings all the pus out of the body. So I think this was just the beginning, it’s a kind of bloodletting and if they don’t make the reforms that are necessary, it’s going to happen again. This happened back in the 1950s. People forget because they don’t read history, all this happened in the Arab World in the 50s. They had these great revolutions, Gamal Abdel Nasser came, everything was going to be different. It was going to be a great society. And that spread like wildfire. They overthrew the government in Iraq, the king. They tried to overthrow the monarchy in Morocco several times. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. And it was squelched and those revolutionaries became the very same thing that they had overthrown. King Farouk was much better than Gamal Abdel Nasser. Egypt was better off during Farouk’s rule.

CAIRO REVIEW: Where is Islam in all this?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I think Islam is just enlisted as an impressed sailor on this mutinous ship. That’s how I view it.

CAIRO REVIEW: Is there a role for Islam in governance? Does the world need another caliphate?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: No. Well, let me qualify that. I would want that the rulers of the Muslim World, especially if you have very large populations of Muslims, that they recognize the authority of Islam in the state, especially for those things that directly affect people. The single most important aspect of the sharia after personal law of marriage and things like that are the commercial laws. If you look at all Islamic books on Islamic law, the vast majority of them relate to commercial law. And those commercial laws, if they were implemented today, we would have far more just societies, because much of it is the prohibition of these commercial transactions that exploit people. So, I think there is definitely a role for commercial law. In terms of the penal codes of Islam, most of them are at the discretion of the judge. The punishments of Islam, these ideas of cutting off the hand and stoning the adulterer and crucifying, what ISIS is doing, they say that in eight hundred years of Ottoman rule, they never stoned anybody. These were not applied because, like the Jewish tradition, to actually apply them would take basically a confession. It’s almost impossible to determine. For instance, for fornication, you have to have four witnesses that actually see penetration, basically legal fiction. It’s not going to happen. Pregnancy can be explained away if they do. According to the Shafi’i madhab, repenting from the sin actually removes the hadd, punishment. So a person can actually be forgiven if they sincerely repent from the sin. So even the penal codes would not be a problem in most modern applications of them.

CAIRO REVIEW: So ISIS has declared a caliphate.
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: It’s bogus. It doesn’t mean anything.

CAIRO REVIEW: They’ve taken territory.
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: No, no, it’s completely bogus. First of all, the caliphate has to be agreed upon by Muslims and that’s in the most authoritative text, in Al-Bukhari, which all Sunni Muslims accept. In Al-Bukhari, Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, the second caliph, says, “If anyone claims to be caliph, do not accept his caliphate until all the Muslims agree on it.” That’s right in the text. I could declare California as the land of the caliph and I’m the caliph, come and take bay’ah with me. It’s bogus, it doesn’t mean anything.

CAIRO REVIEW: But a lot of stuff is happening there. They’re creating a lot of chaos.
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: You know what? A lot of stuff is happening with drug dealers just south of the [American] border. They’re cutting off heads. They’ve killed thirty thousand people. A lot of them were beheaded. They have a drug caliphate there. Why doesn’t anybody talk about that? Americans don’t know a lot about that. Every once in a while they read about people disappearing in Juárez or something like that. There’s bad things happening all over the planet.

CAIRO REVIEW: True, but huge numbers of Muslims are being adversely affected by ISIS.
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Yes, it’s horrible. Also, huge numbers of Muslims were being adversely affected by Shia militia which gave rise to ISIS. They were a response to these Shia militia that were totally out of control that were tyrannizing the Sunni villages. Initially, if you read the most accurate reporting on this, initially, a lot of these villages welcomed ISIS in. In fact, in The Week they have an article about this, that initially Iraqis wanted ISIS because they were bringing some semblance of order back to an anarchistic situation. Then ISIS revealed themselves to be the demons that they are and now people are turning against them. We created that vacuum. The United States of America, my country. We created that vacuum. Even Bush the First did not take out Saddam because, like Kissinger, he knew what political vacuums bring. They bring chaos and anarchy. Bush Senior wouldn’t go in. They could have gone in and finished it but they didn’t want to create that vacuum because they thought it was too volatile, especially in the region. But these neoconservatives were planning on taking out Saddam and Iraq in the 90s and writing about it. They got into power and they fulfilled their wish. They created and wreaked havoc.

CAIRO REVIEW: What does the world do with ISIS now? Should the United States intervene?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I’m a libertarian when it comes to that. I think America has done enough intervention.

CAIRO REVIEW: We can’t have a humanitarian intervention?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I don’t think we’re capable of it.

CAIRO REVIEW: Who’s going to stop ISIS then?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I think the Muslims have to deal with it. I think the Arab states do. It’s embarrassing. They have armies. I think they should be intervening. I think they should send their own troops in there. But they would demand that they have more just governments and they treated their soldiers better. Because they’re worried that they’ll go in there and they’ll join the opposition. That’s a fact. But they’re the ones who should be doing it. I don’t think it should be left to the Turks. The Turks will probably have to get involved because it’s threatening their borders and as the terrorism increases. And then they have the Kurdish problem as well. No, I think this whole idea of America being the global policeman, it’s over. We’re almost bankrupt, if we’re not already bankrupt. We’ve got trillions of dollars in debt. We can’t afford these budgets anymore. Americans are living in a fantasy world. They really are. Look at the debt that China holds on us. If you want a security threat to this country, it’s the trillions that are in Chinese coffers. They’re buying up all the real estate in California because they have all these dollars and they’re just dumping it on real estate because it’s a hedge against inflation. So, I think we need to take care of our country.

CAIRO REVIEW: How would you explain Muslim extremist violence?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: It can’t be summed up in some short sound byte, unfortunately. It comes from a profound misreading of the Islamic tradition. Revelation is very dangerous. Historically, the Catholics developed a system to ensure that common people did not read the Bible on their own. Protestantism said no, common people should read the Bible on their own. This led to horrible religious wars and the fragmentation of Christianity, which led to the rise of secularism to be an arbiter so that people who were interpreting the Bible on their own were demilitarized. You could have your own church on the corner of the street, but don’t get violent about it. Well, in the Muslim World, this is what has happened. You have people reading primary sources, the Quran and Hadith, without the requisite tools to read those sources, and they are very dangerous without those tools. I’ll give you one example. In the Islamic tradition, the Prophet, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him, prohibited burning people. He said only God can punish with fire. That’s in Sahih Al-Bukhari, which is considered an absolutely sound hadith. In fact, the full hadith says, “Burn this person and that person as a punishment for them burning some other people,” but then he came back and said, “No, don’t do that,” because he was given a revelation not to burn and he said, “I told you to burn, but don’t burn, because only God can punish with fire.” That hadith stands but there are other traditions that say, for instance, that Ali burnt people for apostasy in Palestine. That hadith is also sound. But the narrator of that hadith, whose name is Ikrimah, was in a group that was against Ali. So even though the hadith has soundness, it has a problem. So ISIS takes that hadith and burns this Jordanian [captured air force pilot], claiming that they have an authoritative source to do this. They don’t. It’s just ignorance. And then to top that, there’s no application of lex talionis in war. That’s agreed upon by Muslim scholars. Even their application of lex talionis was not correct because in war there’s no qisaas, there’s no killing people for killing people because war is war; the point is to stop the cycles of violence. It’s a gross ignorance. Look at them, they’re all kids. There’s no old people there who have studied. I mean, I’m almost 60, this tradition takes years to learn. I don’t even feel that I’m qualified or adept and I’ve been studying it seriously for many, many years. Historically, you have what are called shuyukh, which literally means “old men,” like senators, from senatus, which is Latin for old. There’s a reason why you can’t be a senator until you are 30; you’re hoping some wisdom will kick in.
CAIRO REVIEW: Where are the scholars?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I’ve been to so many conferences condemning this stuff. The media ignores us. There are books written on this.

CAIRO REVIEW: But are Muslim populations listening to these scholars?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: A lot of the Muslim populations, particularly in the Arab World, they’ve been poisoned against the scholars, largely from the Islamists. It’s a competing narrative, because most of the scholars are against political Islam. So the Islamists have painted the scholars as lackeys and basically supporters of tyranny and as these traditionalists that just want to calm everybody down. Unfortunately, there is a war going on, a war of ideas, and the traditionalists have been losing it.

CAIRO REVIEW: After 9/11, the idea of a clash of civilizations took hold and this became a narrative in the West. What did you make of that at the time?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Duncan MacDonald said that the three great civilizations on this planet are the Sinic, the Islamic, and the Christian. Until they find a way of living together harmoniously, we’re always going to be faced with the threat of these civilizations clashing. He wrote that in 1906, I think. We’ve been clashing for a long time. I think partly there are forces working on the world that don’t mind those clashes because they make a lot of money out of them. We have a huge armaments industry, the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned this country about. I think they need bogeymen to scare people into having half their taxes going to military budgets. I’m as cynical as believing that they really don’t mind. I think they have some sociopathic tendencies that human suffering doesn’t seem to bother them a whole lot.

CAIRO REVIEW: What about on the Islam side?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: The Arabs are a very proud people. Palestinians have been humiliated for so long that they feel the one thing they can do, “We can kill ourselves and we’re not afraid of dying and you Jews have to build walls.” I think there are issues that relate to the psychology of the people themselves. Osama Bin Laden said we’ve been living in humiliation for eighty years. I think humiliation has a lot to do with the violent reactions. In the African American community, I learned this from personal experience. They have something called stepping on toes. It’s an insult to step on toes. You will sometimes get a violent reaction if you do it, even inadvertently, because it was a way of dissing somebody. There’s a lot of stepping on toes going on around the planet and people get violent. Even the pope said if somebody makes fun of his mother, he would get violent with them. Do you remember that quote? That’s an Argentinian speaking, not an Italian. I think a lot of it is about that. It’s just honor. It’s not really a word that we use anymore. We forget that we used to have dueling. Dueling was outlawed in the 1840s. These were before libel suits, we demanded satisfaction. We had a vice president who killed a [former] secretary of the treasury in a duel. That’s pretty amazing. It was over honor. People take these things very seriously even if we don’t anymore.

CAIRO REVIEW: What about your concern about Islamophobia in the West?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Phobia is an irrational fear. In some ways there’s a valid and legitimate concern about terrorism because we’ve seen a lot of examples of Muslims behaving badly. However, we do forget that one out every four people is Muslim and these terrorists represent an incredibly insignificant number of people in relation to the overall numbers of Muslims. The Ku Klux Klan, which was clearly a terrorist organization in the United States at one point, had about three to five million members. I would argue there’s not anywhere near that number of terrorists in the Muslim World. You’re dealing with tens of thousands, maybe. Even ISIS, they haven’t reached huge numbers. I think people have to keep things in perspective. I’m concerned with a rightwing element in this country that has a very clear agenda. Partly, there are elements that are very pro-Israel and Zionist, and are worried about Muslims having a greater voice in relation to Middle Eastern politics and the support of Israel because America has a really unconditional love affair with Israel since Truman. That’s a concern and it’s a legitimate concern from the Jewish community. But there are certain rightwing elements within that community that have used 9/11 as an opportunity to really paint the Muslims as this fifth column in the United States and to create a lot of fear about that. And they have allied with fundamentalist Christians that see Islam as a kind of competing corporation for consumers of their religious goods.

CAIRO REVIEW: What does that mean for American Muslims?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I think it endangers us. It’s interesting that ISIS has issued fatwas against scholars who have spoken against them publicly. I guess that came from the khutbas against them, which some of us have given. Then I’ve got these rightwing people saying that I’m a stealth jihadist. There have been several books where they’ve put that in there. I think it threatens me personally; I don’t feel like I did before. It’s a serious concern with me. I think a lot of our mosques feel it now. A lot of Muslims feel that their mosques are no longer these safe havens. Which is really sad because, again, America is one of the few places that really was beginning to become an exemplar for a multireligious, multicultural civilization. That’s very sad for me.

CAIRO REVIEW: Why have you spoken out publicly against ISIS?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I gave a khutba that went viral, called “The Crisis of ISIS.” It was seen all over the Middle East. It was translated into Arabic. It was tweeted by even some of the heads of state. I guess they didn’t like that too much. I drew blood first.

CAIRO REVIEW: What was your message?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: That they have nothing to do with Islam.

CAIRO REVIEW: We have ISIS saying that they represent Islam and we have you saying they have nothing to do with Islam.
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: There are insane Christians that say they represent Christianity. Did Rabbi Kahane represent Judaism? Baruch Goldstein, who killed all those people in the masjid: did he represent Judaism? There are a lot of people who claim to represent something. They don’t represent anybody but themselves.

CAIRO REVIEW: But the image of Islam…
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Has been tainted greatly. Partly the media is to be blamed. The great antichristic media. They have been so egregiously derelict in their duty in the way that they’ve portrayed Islam.

CAIRO REVIEW: Talk about that a little more. What have the media done wrong, and what could they have done?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: One, they have to educate people about what’s happening in the Middle East, and why these things are happening. For instance, Mark Twain visited Palestine a hundred years ago and wrote about it. Just read his memoirs. Palestine was not like it is today. So what changed? Somebody like Gertrude Bell lived in Iraq as an English woman and went into the governor’s office without any protocol. What changed? The idea that this [ISIS] somehow represents Muslims and Islam is insane. We live in this temporal idolatry of now and there’s no historical context given to these things. Nobody ever gets an idea of what’s going on. Muslims and Jews weren’t always fighting. It’s a lie. It’s a historical lie, but how many times have I heard that canard reiterated: “Oh, it’s always been like this.” It’s not true. It wasn’t always like that. I recognize that we’re dealing with a largely inattentive, relatively uneducated, and highly distracted population. So, it is hard to get in-depth. If you go to Great Britain for instance and look at the BBC coverage of some of these issues, it’s just a lot more nuanced. That’s a fact. Even Haaretz, even the Israeli media, is more nuanced. We just have a cartoon worldview here that really bothers me.

CAIRO REVIEW: Is there a role in changing this imbalance for the Islamic scholars?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Definitely. That’s not the main reason that we’re doing what we’re doing, but part of the reason is to educate Muslims here that can play that role. That’s definitely one of the aims of Zaytuna College. Yes, I do think we need educated spokespeople.

CAIRO REVIEW: Tell me a little more about Zaytuna College and the reasons why you founded the institution.
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I come out of a liberal arts tradition. My father was a humanities professor. When I went and studied overseas, it really struck me how similar traditional Islamic education was to what we call the liberal arts. I was really flabbergasted by the emphasis on literature, the emphasis on logic, the emphasis on rhetoric, grammar. I think the liberal arts has disappeared from the Muslim World to a large degree. I was fortunate to study with some truly great scholars, but the West African school is one of the few places where it’s still there. There is some in Turkey as well. There is some at Al-Azhar, but it’s lost. Part of it is to revive that tradition but also with contextualizing it in the modern world. Today in ethics class we’re grappling with nominalism, and essentialism, and philosophical debates about ethics, command-theory ethics versus deontological, consequential ethics. Grappling with these things and where does Islam fit into all of this? Getting them to think about these things. Today I introduced to them their thesis they have to write and I told them they could write on any ethical problem. For or against, I don’t care. If you want to write for gay marriage in the Islamic tradition, like Scott Kugle is arguing for, and you want to put forward that argument, and it’s well written, I won’t agree with you but you can write on that. So, it is trying to get them to think creatively and deeply about problems that we’re facing as modern people with a religion that is fourteen hundred years old.

CAIRO REVIEW: You were born Mark Hanson. How did you become Sheikh Hamza Yusuf?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: I come from a family of seekers. There’s a metaphysical bookstore in San Francisco, Fields Bookstore, which was opened in 1931, and that was my uncle who opened that. He had books on Sufism and Islam there back in the 30s. My grandmother left the south with that uncle, her brother, because they were interested in Buddhism in the 1920s and they didn’t like the racism in the south so they actually moved to San Francisco which at that time was considered one of the most open-minded places. My mother was a seeker. My father was definitely a seeker, more in philosophy. Plato and Aristotle were his focus in his seeking, he really came out of that tradition. All my brothers and sisters were like that, too. The real catalyst was a car accident when I was 17, which was a head-on collision. That forced me to confront mortality in a way that I hadn’t done before that. Everybody will confront mortality at a certain point in their life but sometimes it takes much longer than others. It happened to me very early on.

CAIRO REVIEW: So it’s really an American story?
SHEIKH HAMZA YUSUF: Yeah, I thought that if I ever wrote an autobiography, I thought of calling it “American in Mecca.” Or “Renegado.” The Europeans who fled to the Muslim World and became Muslim—they called them renegados.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali has led a diplomatic career of rare distinction. He served many years as the Egyptian minister of state for foreign affairs, before becoming the first Arab and first African secretary-general of the United Nations from 1992 to 1996. Now 93, the elder statesman has donated his library of books and papers to the American University in Cairo.

The collection includes fifteen thousand volumes, as well as personal papers, photographs, and miscellaneous objects. Roughly three-quarters of the collection consists of texts on international relations, politics, and human rights, while the rest spans a range of topics with a heavy concentration of works on Coptic art and architecture. The collection includes many first editions and out-of-print works, volumes that the university would normally not be able to acquire.

It took a six-person team led by Mohamed Abu Bakr, chief conservationist at the AUC Library, five days to pack the collection into 241 boxes and transport it from Boutros-Ghali’s home along the Nile River in Giza to the AUC campus in New Cairo. “It’s about his whole life,” said Eman Morgan, manager of new collections at the library. “There’s enough to write his own story here.”

Boutros-Ghali distinguished himself with repeated calls for tolerance and peace in a world struggling with multiculturalism. He was privy to some of recent history’s great turning points. He was a senior foreign ministry official in the years following President Anwar Sadat’s opening to the West and Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. His term at the United Nations followed the end of the Cold War with the fall of the Berlin Wall and breakup of the Soviet Union. As the sixteenth UN secretary-general, he dealt with the breakup of Yugoslavia as well as the Rwandan crisis—and faced complaints that the UN did not do enough to stop the genocide there. He presided over the organization’s fiftieth-anniversary commemoration.

On display in the library’s exhibition room are stamps that some member states issued to mark the occasion. Among them, Ghana’s features Boutros-Ghali’s portrait. His UN tenure was not without controversy, however. His bid for a second term as secretary-general was blocked by the United States; in his 1999 book, Unvanquished: A U.S.–U.N. Saga, Boutros-Ghali said the Bill Clinton administration opposed his independence and recounted how his leadership of the UN became an issue in Clinton’s own reelection campaign in 1996.

Marginalia, inscriptions, and book slip-ins hidden throughout the collection give a fascinating glimpse into an influential statesman’s life. One unremarkable form card announced the gift of a book, Israel: A Developing Society, to Boutros-Ghali on the occasion of a visit to Tel Aviv University on December 19, 1980. His visit, however, would have been anything but ordinary—it came only a year after Egypt and Israel ended decades of enmity. A short note from Bernard Lewis, a leading historian of the Middle East and professor at Princeton University, inscribing his book Islam in History, refers to a passage defending Boutros-Ghali’s “vision and courage” in negotiating peace with the Jewish state and guiding Egypt’s alignment with the West.

Another inscription came from Cuba’s revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro. In spidery handwriting in Castro’s book, The World Economic and Social Crisis, he politely refers to their disagreement over the Cuban leader’s views on the subject. “For my respected adversary,” wrote Castro. The collection includes inscriptions from famous allies in Egyptian diplomacy, too. There is a heavily illustrated volume, The Arts of Persia, by R.W. Ferrier, signed by the Iranian Empress Farah Pahlavi on her visit to Cairo in July 1990. When Boutros-Ghali was minister of state, Sadat honored the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who died of cancer in a Cairo hospital, with a state funeral.

Boutros-Ghali hails from a patrician family steeped in Egypt’s Francophile past; his grandfather was Egypt’s first Coptic prime minister. While the collection includes many English and Arabic editions, the majority of the works are in French. Inside many of Boutros-Ghali’s childhood books the owner is identified as Pierre, the French form of the prénom Boutros. Among them is a rare 1855 edition of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

Could we have predicted that the dreams of the Arab Spring would become such a nightmare of violence and even collapse across the Middle East? “We cannot understand our own world unless we understand something about how it came to be,” Lisa Anderson, AUC president and political scientist specializing in Middle East studies, said in a September lecture on the AUC campus. “When a state is stressed, the patterns of the cracks that appear are best understood through the lens of history.” It is no wonder that most of the Tunisians who have joined the Islamic State are from the neglected hinterlands, argued Anderson—challenges to central authority have historically come from outside the capital, and the Arab Spring was ignited in the town of Sidi Bouzid in the far southwest of the country. Similarly, history helps explain Libya’s collapse into conflict, Anderson said—it was unsurprising that the uprising against Muammar Gadhafi began in the eastern city of Benghazi, “where opposition to the government was a long tradition and where a measure of political cohesion could be sustained.” But the revolt was poorly coordinated with western Libya, she noted, whose revolutionary movement ultimately fractured along the lines of old rivalries.

The Republic of South Sudan plunged into violence and instability after breaking away from the Republic of Sudan and winning its independence in 2011. The civil war between supporters of President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar has killed some ten thousand people and displaced more than two million others. The authoritarian nature of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and disputes over oil-rich regions are often cited as factors in the crisis. Khalid Medani, associate professor of political science at McGill University, points to another critical yet often ignored element in the conflict: the erosion of communal land rights. Speaking at an AUC symposium in June, South Sudan: Past, Present and Visions of the Future, co-sponsored by AUC’s Middle East Studies Center and the Global Studies Consortium, Medani said that the SPLM government allocated large tracts of land to foreign investors without oversight or regulation, and defined the right to land as based on tribal rather than communal affiliation. “This forces people to compete over land and hardens and reifies ethnic identity,” he explained. As a result, he added, young men joined insurgent groups and militias, and perpetrated massacres and mass sexual assaults “out of fear and greed, to displace, depopulate, and take over scarce resources.” According to Medani, it is essential that South Sudan “reduces the incentives for conflict by diversifying the economy, reducing poverty, especially in rural areas, and safeguarding communal land rights.”

My first encounter with Prince Saud Al-Faisal, who passed away in Ramadan this year, occurred forty years ago. Newly appointed as Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister after the assassination of his father, King Faisal, he came to visit my father, Ismail Fahmy, who was Egypt’s foreign minister at the time, at our beach house in Alexandria. Decades later when I served as foreign minister myself, it was moving to hear the prince state publicly, with obvious emotion, that he was proud to have worked with father and son. In every encounter we had as the foreign ministers of our respective countries, he broke protocol and precedent to be especially courteous and cordial.

My admiration for Prince Saud went beyond his refined civility. He showed steely backbone in standing firm against policies he objected to. He took a results-oriented approach to diplomacy, and came up with creative new ideas, pushing boundaries on intractable issues. He astutely agreed to proposals when less-than-ideal options were on the table. He showed great wisdom and professionalism in dealing with pressing issues without losing sight of the big picture or strategic objectives.

Many will remember Prince Saud’s strong positions and sustained efforts in support of Egypt after the June 30, 2013 revolution—emulating the support King Faisal gave to Egypt with the oil embargo after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. He was instrumental in negotiating the 1989 Taif Agreement, which ended fourteen years of civil war in Lebanon. Also to his credit was the Saudi peace initiative adopted by the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002 as the Arab Peace Plan.

Prince Saud often asked Egypt to pursue its proposal for a WMD-free Middle East, yet despite American double standards on the issue urged us (unsuccessfully) against boycotting talks on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 2013, Saudi Arabia stunned the diplomatic community by refusing to accept a seat on the fifteen-member United Nations Security Council because of its ineffectiveness and the double standards of its members. Prince Saud listened patiently and seriously to my ultimately unsuccessful arguments to convince Saudi Arabia to reverse its decision.

Prince Saud’s wisdom was evident in our handling of the Arab position on President Barack Obama’s aborted endeavor to bomb Syria in 2013. On this tactical step Saudi Arabia and a number of Arab countries supported using force. Egypt and others did not. I had a meeting with Prince Saud, where it was evident that our positions were close on everything but the bombing. In our discussions I also emphasized to everyone’s astonishment that Obama would ultimately not bomb Syria. We drafted mutually agreed language that put the responsibility clearly and forcefully on the Syrian regime, but stayed short of paving the way for the United States to bomb Syria under the guise of an Arab League resolution à la Libya. For many months afterward Prince Saud would joke with me about my correct reading of American politicians.

Such tactical disagreements never affected relations between our two countries or their officials. In fact, they were catalysts to numerous phone calls and consultations between us on a wide range of things concerning our respective national developments and the ever-turbulent Middle East, with a view to building a better future for the region. Prince Saud Al-Faisal was a statesman diplomat and he will be missed.

Nabil Fahmy, a former foreign minister of Egypt, is the dean of the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo. He served as Egypt’s ambassador to the United States from 1999–2008, and as envoy to Japan between 1997 and 1999.

Relations between Muslims and Christians in Egypt are unique in the region. Sectarian divides along geographic and political (save Islamist groups) lines do not exist the way they do in some neighboring countries. And yet there remains the riddle of deep institutional and societal challenges—and sectarian violence.

By the end of this year, an Egyptian parliament will convene for the first time in more than two years. Among the transitional provisions of the 2014 constitution is Article 235, which states that the new House of Representatives is tasked with “issuing a law to regulate constructing and renovating churches, in a manner that guarantees the freedom to practice religious rituals for Christians.”

The construction, renovation, and maintenance of churches in Egypt have faced serious constraints for a long time, chiefly because the establishment of a new church requires a decree from the president, a legacy of Egypt’s Ottoman era. Legislative reform regarding the construction of places of worship would be a positive step and a sign of progress in the way the Egyptian state deals with its Christian minority. The past five years however, have demonstrated that the country continues to face interreligious concerns, both institutional and societal, that eclipse the easing of restrictions for Christian places of worship.

One of the most recent decrees permitting the building of a church was issued by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi last February in the aftermath of the murder of Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants, a gesture meant to honor the loss of the village. Of the twenty-one victims, thirteen hailed from the village of El-Aour in Minya. On March 27, shortly after construction had started, a group of Muslim residents protested against the establishment of a church in the village. That night, a group of unknown assailants attacked the construction site and nearby Christian-owned properties.

Following the attack, a reconciliation meeting, overseen by the governor of Minya, was held between representatives from the village’s Muslim and Christian communities. A decision to change the location of the church was reached.

That same month in the village of El-Galaa, construction of another church was delayed by attacks, even though Christian residents “accepted most of the conditions imposed by the Muslim side during several customary reconciliation sessions held under the aegis of the security apparatus,” according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

“Reconciliation” meetings are customary when dealing with such incidents in Egypt. They are usually supervised by the security apparatus and function outside of any existing laws. EIPR documented forty-five cases in an extensive report, characterizing such practices as ones that have “evolved into a parallel judicial system.”

Many skeptics of Egypt’s sectarian issues point to the fact that Christian ministers in cabinets have become commonplace and that Muslims and Christians live “side by side.” Such assertions are true, and Egypt has avoided the sort of sectarian state policies that have seemed inevitable in countries like Lebanon. However, in some respects, Christians are dealt with as a separate community governed by different laws.

Historically, the state has had a close, if sporadically contentious, relationship with the Coptic Orthodox Church. While prominent, the church’s own role in public life has fluctuated throughout Egyptian history. It has often stood as the Christian community’s representative to the state, and is still tasked by the government to determine the personal status laws of its followers.

In recent history, the church’s relations have not been stable. In 1965, President Gamal Abdel Nasser attended the opening of Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Abbaseya and even allocated 100,000 Egyptian pounds to its construction. In his speech at the event, Abdel Nasser preached concepts of equal opportunity and treatment, and cultivated a close relationship with Pope Cyril VI.

Yet only fifteen years later, amid a dramatic increase in sectarian violence and a major personal rift between Pope Shenouda III and President Anwar Sadat, the latter moved to depose the pontiff and exile him to Saint Bishoy’s Monastery in Wadi El-Natroun after accusing him of attempting to establish a Coptic capital in Upper Egypt.

Such inconstancies put the Coptic Orthodox Church in a precarious position, between its primary spiritual role and the political one that it must undertake under the current state structure.

Equality can only be achieved through equal treatment. Though reforms like the one called for in Article 235 play an important role in making it easier for Christians to practice their faith, they don’t address equal treatment (there had initially been talk about a unified law for all places of worship, but this has now been ruled out). Practices like extrajudicial reconciliation meetings bolster impunity when it comes to sectarian violence and rebuff the rule of law. Diminishing the church’s role in public life is an important step in equality, but this must come at the behest of the state and the church itself, and it must be coupled with continued encouragement for Copts to participate in political life, independent of a religious institution.

Establishing the proper rule of law, and de-politicizing the church, is also the only way to stem Egypt’s rising sectarian violence. Such violence has been a constant in recent decades in Egypt. The Esshad project, which tracks such incidents, has recorded more than 280 instances since June 2013. Egyptians must be treated as individual citizens, and not as the flock of their church or, for that matter, their local mosque. An important part of that is removing religious institutions, and the baggage that comes with their political standings, from the equation when dealing with private citizens. The consideration of religious affiliation, even if not maliciously, undermines the equality called for in Egypt’s own constitution.

This past week the Samalout city council announced that construction of the church in El-Aour would begin again, this time at the new location. But even before the church has been built, it has served as a reminder that Egypt’s sectarian problems go beyond building churches.

Basil El-Dabh is a Cairo-based writer and editor. He was formerly Politics Editor at Daily News Egypt, and his work has been featured in the Middle East Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. On Twitter: @basildabh.

In response to the media hype accompanying its recent military intervention in Syria, Moscow has once again reverted to talk of protecting the Syrian state and religious minorities against terrorism and foreign-backed jihadi groups. In his recent speech at the United Nations General Assembly, President Vladimir Putin of Russia defended Russia’s military role in Syria as an obligation to fight the Islamic State that “was initially forged as a tool against undesirable secular regimes” and is now “seeking dominance in the Islamic world.” Two days after Putin’s speech, Russia launched its first air strikes in Syria, which the Russian Orthodox Church called a “holy battle” that recalls the suffering of Christians in the region.

In the same vein, Moscow has been stressing that it is not committed to preserving Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, but rather its recent strikes were an attempt to “avoid total disaster in Syria.” But Moscow has a vested interest in keeping Assad in power, and establishing a primary military presence in Syria gives it a foothold to rescue the Syrian regime if or when it faces the risk of collapse.

Furthermore, Russia’s military presence in Syria also serves long-term objectives related to its own expansionary military doctrine. Recent air strikes come as Moscow moves away from the “conservative” military doctrine that prevailed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Russia reduced its defense budget from 30 percent of GDP to about 4.5 percent. Putin began wide-ranging reforms to strengthen Russian military capabilities, including a $283 billion project to modernize the army’s military hardware. Just two months ago, Russia also amended its naval military doctrine to prioritize confronting NATO. This prompted it to preserve a permanent presence for its fleets in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, where the Syrian cities of Tartus and Latakia are its only outlets. In this sense, the military expansion in Syria is part of a bigger Russian expansion that includes establishing military bases in several countries, including Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Seychelles, Singapore, and Belarus.

Russia does not conceal its tendency to challenge what it describes as Western attempts to “dominate global affairs,” most recently in Syria and Ukraine. The new Russian military action in Syria is partly a response to its exclusion from the U.S.-led international coalition to fight the Islamic State (IS). This motivated Moscow to establish its own anti-IS alliance within the region of Syria under the regime’s control, opposed to the “illegal” alliance that is built on “false foundations” because it excludes Assad. After it failed to bring neighboring countries—in particular Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar—together in a single alliance with Iran and the Syrian regime to confront the Islamic State, Russia has begun to send military reinforcements to Syria on its own. It quickly went further, appearing to target the “moderate” rebel groups in Syria, including the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army, despite claims that all airstrikes are against the Islamic State.

The Russian military presence in Syria can also help it strengthen the countries’ current modest economic ties and establish long-term ones. Although Damascus has always had good political relations with Moscow, trade between the two only became significant after the outbreak of protests in 2011. According to official Syrian figures, trade between Russia and Syria amounted to about $1 billion in 2010, yet it rose to about $2 billion in 2011. Even though the fierce war raging in Syria has obstructed further commercial trade, both countries desire stronger economic relations. For example, in April the two sides officially announced plans to open agricultural trade through Tartus and Latakia.

In July, the Russian Union of Gas and Oil Industrialists also announced that after “the situation becomes stable” in Syria it seeks to invest at least $1.6 billion into energy contracts. In 2013, the Syrian government signed a twenty-five-year contract with the Russian Soyuzneftegaz company for oil and gas drilling and exploration in an area off the Syrian coast. It seems the Russians are serious about following up on such energy contracts, as evidenced by the mid-September visit of a Russian delegation of experts in the fields of oil and electricity to Damascus. For his part, Syrian Minister of Petroleum Suleiman Al-Abbas promised this delegation that “Russian companies will have a major role in the investment opportunities available in the future.”

Russia—a country that relies heavily on the export of natural gas—is well aware of the importance of Syria’s location as a possible site for a network of oil and gas pipelines to Turkey and then Europe. This threatens Russia’s own hegemony over the export of gas to the European continent (Russia’s share of total European gas imports exceeds 64 percent). Russia seems to be rushing towards investing in Syria’s energy sector because it would rather have a share in its energy development than compete with it.

Russia may be hoping that its military presence and economic projects in Syria will increase the Syrian regime’s dependency on Moscow, which would have greater influence on the regime’s political and military decisions. Several incidents suggest that the Assad regime—while closely coordinating military and diplomatic moves with Russia—has not fully submitted to Russia’s vision on the conflict and rejected a number of Moscow’s political demands. The Syrian regime undermined Moscow’sefforts to form a national unity government in Syria by indicating their unwillingness and persecuting all opposition—even the internal opposition that called for dialogue with the Syrian government and maintained close ties with Russia. In April, the Syrian regime obstructed the Moscow 1 and Moscow 2 conferences, which Russia organized to include the “constructive opposition” (the Syria-based opposition that does not demand Assad’s departure), by banning some of the invited opposition members from leaving the country.

Assad’s ability to obstruct these initiatives shows how weak Russian influence is within the agencies of the Syrian regime. If it wants to be able to play a role in the Syrian conflict, Moscow believes its only choice is to support Assad militarily and forgo political solutions, which the Syrian regime has excelled at thwarting. The Syrian regime, suffering successive military defeats, is losing its ability to maintain centralized control since the number of local and foreign pro-regime militias that operate outside the framework of the Syrian army has increased. In light of this military vulnerability, Russia hopes that increasing its military influence in Syria will give it the political leverage to get Assad to make genuine concessions in negotiations with the United States and regional countries—and ultimately reach a settlement that can fully safeguard Russian interests in Syria. This could allow it to exploit newfound U.S flexibility on the fate of Assad, but only if it can deliver on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s most important question: “We’re prepared to negotiate… Is Russia prepared to bring [Assad] to the table and actually find the solution to this violence?”

This article was translated from Arabic. It is reprinted with permission from Sada and can be accessed online here.

Salam Al-Saadi is a Palestinian-Syrian journalist and researcher focused on political and economic affairs in the Middle East, particularly in Syria.

Nobody should be surprised that the two oldest and most virulent sources of political tension and nationalist resistance across the Arab World have both spiked in the past week. These two are the indigenous Arab resistance against foreign powers that enter the region with their armies to control developments here; and, Palestinian resistance against Zionist colonial expansion and claims on Palestinian Arab lands that have gone on without interruption since the 1930s or so.

Numerous other tensions and problems plague our region, most of which are purely home-grown and have nothing to do with foreign invaders, occupiers, or colonizers; these include corruption, political autocracy, resource mismanagement, lack of citizenship rights, sectarian stress, and others. But the two chronic threats of Zionism and foreign militarism remain the central causes of the Middle East’s political violence.

They are also directly linked to the core political problem that not a single Arab citizenry throughout the last century enjoyed the opportunity to practice meaningful self-determination. With the exception of the nascent democratic process in Tunisia, not a single Arab society saw its citizens shape their own democratic system and forge a social contract between themselves and their government.

Fighting constant foreign militarism and Zionist subjugation and colonization of Palestine and some adjacent Arab lands will take years to happen—but until it happens, we should not expect any serious breakthroughs towards either domestic or regional calm. Why? Because the same human impulse for freedom, dignity, and self-respect shapes the emotions and behavior of tens of millions of Arab men and women across the region. Proof of this comes in the repeated uprisings and resistance of Palestinians against Zionist and British control in Palestine since the 1930s, and more recently the last five years of uprisings in the Arab world against autocratic regimes. When foreign forces enter the picture, such as the Americans and British in Iraq, or the Iranians and Russians in Syria, they can expect serious local resistance against them.

Events in Palestine since the 1950s have also indirectly contributed to many of the political weaknesses in Arab states. Zionist and Israeli gains in Palestine gave Arab military regimes an excuse to rule with an iron fist and prevent any democratic transformations. Iraq and Syria are good examples of this problem, as is the chronic rule since 1952 of military men in Egypt who have been broadly and consistently incompetent in the governance sphere. This links with the threat from foreign powers, who have long supported merciless Arab autocracy. Initially this came from Western powers like the United States, the UK and France, and the Soviet Union, and more recently from Iran and Russia.

Palestinian spontaneous demonstrations usually are in response to provocative Israeli attempts to colonize more Arab land or intrude into sacred areas like the Aqsa Mosque. In the past week there have been at least four Israeli killings of Palestinian youths and four Palestinian killings of Israelis. Some 500 Palestinian protesters have also been wounded, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent society.

Such eruptions of political violence and Palestinian nationalist resistance are routine because they reflect a natural phenomenon—in this case the Palestinian refusal to remain permanently occupied and colonized by Zionist Israel. The Israelis have tried to suppress the Palestinians by using harsh military power, forced exile, mass imprisonment, and other brutal means since 1947-48, and especially since 1967; but they have been no more successful in achieving a calm status quo than did the violence that the American military used in Iraq, the Soviets used in Afghanistan, or the Syrian government now uses against its own people.

Israeli violence inevitably triggers Palestinian resistance. A new poll by the respected Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research found that 42 percent of Palestinians feel that armed struggle is the only path to Palestinian statehood, and 57 percent support a return to an armed intifada in the absence of peace negotiations.

On the wider Arab stage the same reality sees millions of humiliated and fearful citizens fight for their freedom against their own brutal governments as well as the foreign powers that support them or attack them in some cases.

When these two things happen together, as they do this week, we should recognize their centrality in the region’s troubles. More troubling yet are the signs that some Arab countries are looking at closer military ties with foreign powers and also exploring normalizing relations with Israel—a seriously misguided policy approach that will see only greater problems ahead. It is senseless Arab diplomatic amateurism to seek assistance or security from the very two forces—Israel and foreign military powers—that have sparked so much of the Middle East’s violence and instability during the past century.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global


The two speeches at the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week by the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president captured the depressing, stalemated, and increasingly violent condition of the century-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israelis must judge the policies and strategy of their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Most of the rest of the world sees him as an extremist, out-of-control scaremonger whose policies affirm Zionist colonial expansionism and consolidation in occupied Arab lands, with the repeatedly reconfirmed support of a majority of Israeli voters.

My concern here is with the sad speech by Palestine Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) President Mahmoud Abbas. In his decade in office since the death of former President Yasser Arafat, Abbas has repeatedly failed at every moment when he could have achieved several critical goals: to rally the scattered Palestinian people so as to bolster the leadership’s negotiations with Israel and others; to achieve a united nationalist political program that envisages peaceful coexistence with Israel in adjacent states, based on the Arab Peace Plan that has been repeatedly reaffirmed by all Arab states; to generate widespread Arab, Islamic and international support for a unified Palestinian leadership and political strategy; and, to promote developmental policies and political agreements that improve the quality of life of Palestinians living under Israeli control in the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, and also of Palestinian refugees living in nearby Arab countries often under difficult conditions.

These are not easy goals to achieve, I admit, in view of persistent Israeli policies that seek to prevent them at all cost. But Abbas’ failures on all these fronts have been so frequent, and his antidote of relying on gimmicks, showmanship, and symbolic advances has become so routine, that one must place on his shoulders a large amount of the blame for the fractured condition of millions of Palestinians today. Leadership in the end, requires men and women in elected positions of authority to rise above the routine daily constraints and humiliations that define so many Palestinians’ lives, and work diligently, intelligently, and politically to reduce those pressures. In his decade in office, Abbas has only deepened and perpetuated the misery that defines the lives of so many of his countrymen and women.

His announcement this week at the UN that the Palestinian Authority would no longer feel bound by the obligations of the 1993 Oslo Accords, if the Israelis for their part continued to ignore key parts of those agreements, should have been made twenty years ago, in 1995—when it became obvious two years into the Oslo process that Israel had no intention of ever stopping its settlements or allowing a sovereign Palestinian state to come to life. For Abbas to threaten abrogating the accords is the act of a weak and desperate actor who places his own political standing above the life conditions of his own people. This is because: Nobody really takes his statement seriously; if he were to do this it would allow Israel to increase its measures designed to push more Palestinians to leave their homeland and become refugees abroad; daily life prospects for several million Palestinians would deteriorate even further as a result of economic strangulation; some desperate Palestinians would gravitate towards renewed armed struggle against Israel, leading to more episodes of savage Israeli attacks like the one against Gaza last year; donor fatigue among those states that provide the bulk of aid that keeps Palestinians alive and in school would further worsen living conditions and political prospects for millions of Palestinians; and, American presidential candidates would support Israel’s every step and military attack.

The Palestinian people should never have reached this situation where their elected president has to threaten a move that promises to make their lives even more miserable than they are today—and to add insult to injury the decision to make such a move is made without any credible consultations among the scattered Palestinian people. For to cement his hold on political power within his restricted area of operations around Ramallah, Abbas has allowed the PLO to wither and lose its status as the legitimate national representative of the Palestinian people everywhere.

Obtaining non-state member status at the UN or having the Palestinian flag raised along 1st Avenue in New York are symbolic gestures that pale in comparison with the tangible suffering and statelessness that Palestinians experience under the triple weight of a vicious Israeli foe, an incompetent Palestinian leadership, and a largely uncaring and increasingly distracted world.

There is no doubt that foreign countries will support the Palestinian quest for statehood, and for citizenship and a normal life for those millions of Palestinians who lack these things. Yet, such global support will only materialize when the Palestinians themselves take decisions that are based on much, much more than autocratic showmanship, pleading, brooding, whimsical surprises, and symbolic advances that lack any substantive achievements.

The behavior of the Israeli leadership is criminal. The behavior of the Palestinian leadership is incompetent. The Palestinian people deserve much better than this on both counts.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global


Although the Yemen conflict looks more successful from a Saudi perspective than it did a few months ago, it is still a stalemate. A de facto southern entity had arguably been in existence since Yemeni unification in 1990, but the Saudi-led war in Yemen has deepened the dissolution of what remains of the Yemeni state and, in effect, created two capitals. The nominal Yemeni president, Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi, who had been heading a government in exile from Saudi Arabia, has been in Aden since Eid El-Adha in late September 2015. It remains to be seen whether Hadi has enough Saudi support and loyal armed men to remain in the south for much longer.

Saudi Arabia sees Iran as responsible for all its security threats, including the Houthis in Yemen. As it argues, by restricting Sunni groups’ strategic options in Yemen and elsewhere in the region, Iran makes the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda more attractive to locals. This is partly a problem of perception. Saudi Arabia overstates Iran’s capacities and does not believe its own propaganda that it is able to counter it. It is also partly a problem of Saudi Arabia’s own making. The kingdom has no strategic approach to national security, preferring short-term tactical alliances and the comfort of familiar, ill-researched, and exaggerated assumptions about what Iran and its allies are up to—and what they ultimately want. These tactical motivations encourage shifting alliances that can alienate friends and create bigger problems for the kingdom, in Yemen and elsewhere.

The current Saudi leadership has been more decisive regarding Yemen than other major foreign policy issues such as Syria and Iraq. Yet it is still not clear what the ultimate goal of the Saudi-led air war over its southern neighbor actually is. Over the six months since the Saudi-led coalition began its military campaign in March, even the official goals the Saudi military spokesman announces to the world’s media have changed. Saudi Arabia’s key stated aim is still to back Hadi as president and consolidate his control over the entire country—but it seems that the Kingdom now envisages a loose, albeit somehow unitary, state that accommodates but does not appease the Houthis or the secessionist Southerners with whom Riyadh has a temporary alignment.

In the meantime, this focus on President Hadi—and the concurrent vacuum created by the Saudi intervention—has allowed Al-Qaeda, a force with a greater proven ability than the Houthis to hurt Saudi Arabia, to gain territorial strength in Yemen. And if, as Saudi Arabia plans, the Houthis are forced to retreat from Sanaa, oil-rich Marib, and Taiz back toward Saada, the Houthis will also become the border threat Saudi Arabia claimed they were during the 2009–10 Houthi insurgency.

The Saudi air force cannot even secure its primary goal, maintaining Hadi in power in either Aden or Sanaa. And if Saudi ground troop numbers in Yemen remain limited—likely given troops’ modest fighting experience and the domestic political backlash from casualties—this war could run on and on without defeating the Houthis, leaving them to pose a real danger to Saudi southern border security. Even if Emirati and Qatari troops, and possibly some Egyptian forces, join the limited numbers of Saudi troops, they will remain focused on defending Hadi and his allies rather than eliminating the Houthis as a military force. Egypt is believed to have sent approximately 700 ground troops to Yemen, but its willingness to do more on the ground is constrained by its cool relations with Riyadh over the Muslim Brotherhood and Syria. Neither former King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud nor his close friend Abdel Fattah El-Sisi really thought through what their shared commitment to a joint Arab regional fighting force would mean in terms of how many Egyptian soldiers would be required to fight in Yemen, and both subsequently backed away from having a large number of Egyptian troops in Yemen or anywhere else in Arabia.

Prior to the Arab Spring, Riyadh was close to the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islah Party. But in March 2014 King Abdullah declared the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Saudi Arabia’s public enemy number one, wherever they existed, seeming to portray the MB as an even greater threat than Iran. This helped solidify Saudi relations with the Egyptian military, which had forcibly taken over the reins of power from the Brotherhood. But applying a uniform anti-MB policy weakened Saudi Arabia’s weight in Yemen. The Al-Ahmar family, who held significant leadership positions in Islah and within the Hashed tribal federation, went from being the recipients of Riyadh’s generous patronage to being personae non grata. Under King Salman, a necessary pragmatism toward the MB throughout the region ensued, although it has only had a substantial impact in Yemen, where the MB is both a strong armed and political force. So when the Saudi-led war began, Islah and the Hashed leadership were back on Riyadh’s payroll.

Saudi Arabia’s aerial war in Yemen and its provision of armored vehicles to pro-Hadi forces do not come cheap. Although Saudi Arabia has easy access to bonds and international credit lines, oil revenues continue to be relatively low while the large, young population maintains high expectations for government spending. Reports suggest capital expenditure is already drying up and that the January 2016 budget will better reflect these fiscal realities. Perhaps surprisingly, anecdotal evidence also suggests that despite an overall increase in the military budget, spending on big-ticket military items is also decreasing, which may limit the use and export of weaponry to Yemen. Mohammed bin Salman—the defense minister, deputy crown prince, and favored son of the king, in charge of Saudi Arabia’s campaigns in Yemen—has other things on his mind, and is concentrating efforts on issues that (to him) matter most.

Some members of the Saudi elite discreetly criticize Mohammed bin Salman’s war strategy (or lack of it) in Yemen. Most security strategy is coordinated by the new Council of Political and Security Affairs, formed in January 2015 and headed by his cousin Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, also the interior minister. The council, which also includes Mutaib bin Abdullah, the head of the National Guard, meets fairly regularly to discuss political and security affairs. Ostensibly Mohammed bin Nayef heads this body, making him a kind of undeclared prime minister (a title formally held by the king). However, while he retains great power over domestic security (and international and domestic respect for his role in it), he does not seem to have the authority, despite being heir apparent, to direct Saudi external policy, particularly over Yemen. In Syria Mohammed bin Nayef seems to retain the authority that the United States encouraged him to assume over the funding, arming, and intelligence of rebel groups, but a key security and intelligence ally was sacked recently and it is not clear if he can retain even tactical weight in this file. He certainly is not able to coordinate strategy, whether in Syria, Iraq, or Yemen.

Mohammed bin Nayef is widely believed inside the Kingdom to have opposed the Saudi decision to launch an air war in Yemen. But there is little to suggest that the crown prince will think it worth trying to influence the king against his favorite son, so Mohammed bin Salman’s short-sighted policies in Yemen are likely to persist. Riyadh will continue to “keep on keepin’ on”—both in this hot war in Yemen and with fighting several proxy conflicts at the same time.

This article is reprinted with permission from Sada. It can be accessed online here.

Neil Partrick is the editor of and main contributor to Saudi Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation (IB Tauris, forthcoming January 2016). On Twitter: @neilpartrick.