The fall of colonialism in the Middle East coincided with the emergence of political forces prevalent in Europe at the time: nationalism and socialism. It seems to me that these two foundations, in various forms and subtexts, still have drastic influence within Middle Eastern political discourse. The implications of Arab nationalism are relatively obvious, having manifested themselves through the rise (and fall) of Pan-Arabism, the persistence of national & sub-national identities, and the emergence of Islamic nationalism. The lasting impact of Socialism, however, has been largely neglected.  While the concept of Arab socialism has practically vanished from regional discourse, its legacy has lasting and tangible implications for the current political climate.

Socialism was a substantive force in Arab politics during the upheavals of the 60’s and 70’s, when it was popularly held that governments could and should take a more active role in building an eqgalitarian society that provided ample opportunities for all its citizens. Politicians were elected (and in many cases, governments were overthrown) based on these ideals, and Arab nations began a great experiment in creating a more collectivist, equitable society. By building systems of legitimacy based on their ability to provide goods, services, and economic stability, Arab governments became caught within a framework that forced them to maintain their power solely through their ability to materially support their citizens. To this day, political legitimacy is gained (and lost) on the basis of a party’s ability to provide the greatest degree of patronage to the greatest number of people.

As a result of the grandiose promises of revolutionary Arab governments, coupled with the influx of oil wealth and other rent income to Arab states, Middle Eastern governments developed massive state powers that assumed a central role in the administration and management of day-to-day life at all levels of society. Through the provision of agricultural subsidies, opportunities for employment, and the nationalization of industry, Arab governments have effectively developed into massive systems of patronage and control. Even in the face of overwhelming pressure from international monetary institutions, the vast majority of government expenditure in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq is directed toward social welfare projects that modern capitalistic governments are not expected to produce, while employment and economic productivity have remained centralized within the state apparatus to a degree unparalleled in the Western world.

In the sense that Middle Eastern citizens expect to receive a certain level of support from their governments in terms of job creation, food subsidies, education programs, and health care coverage, all citizens of revolutionary states have retained a certain degree of socialist mentality. Even opposition parties, ranging across the political spectrum, include healthy doses of social welfare in their reformist agendas. This largely explains the success of Islamic political parties, many of which control social distribution mechanisms that far exceed the capabilities of the state. Hizballah’s meteoric rise in Lebanese politics, and Muqtada Al’Sadr’s political capital in Iraq may very well originate from similar sources. Under this line of reasoning, the mass followings these movements have gained may not be a result of their ideological dispositions at all, but simply a product of the political legitimacy gained through their ability to provide social services in a manner that traditional Arab government mechanisms are no longer capable of matching. Similarly, foreign powers who may not understand the value of social welfare programs in gaining political currency may be surprised at the lack of support their efforts engender; faced with a lack of water electricity or jobs, it’s no wonder most Iraqis preferred Saddam’s rule over the American occupation.

These socialistic tendencies have serious implications for the long-term stability of the Middle East. As revenue sources for Arab governments dwindle, and handouts from oil-rich neighbors dry up, entrenched political parties will be hard-pressed to maintain the same level of services that their backers have come to expect. As soon as no political party is able to provide basic support within the current structure, the existing systems of political legitimacy may very well vanish, and success of its replacement will be highly contingent on that system’s ability to afford and provide the expected degree of patronage.

Krak Des Chevaliers

“Krak Des Chevalier is a Crusader fortress in Syria and one of the most important preserved medieval military castles in the world. In Arabic, the fortress is called Qal’at al-Ḥiṣn (Arabic: قلعة الحصن‎), the word Krak coming from the Syriac karak, meaning fortress. It is located 65 km west of the city of Homs, close to the border of Lebanon, and is administratively part of the Homs Governorate.”

I think there’s a lot we can draw from the story of Krak Des Chevaliers. It has a fascinating history that parallels a lot of issues still facing the Middle East a thousand years later.

Situated in a prime cross-cultural location, some structure has existed on the Krak Des Chevalier’s land for two thousand years or more, with each new civilization building on the remains of the last. The beginnings of the current structure was built there for a Syrian emir in 1031 C.E., and conquered by invading Crusaders in 1099 and again in 1100. The Crusaders added an additional outer wall, three meters thick, a moat, and underground storage facilities large enough to supply its 2000-strong garrison for five years. For the next 150 years or so, practically every Arab/Muslim leader of any renown attempted to reclaim the fortress and failed. Nur-Al-Din conquered all the surrounding coutryside but couldn’t break through their outer defenses. Salah-Al-Din captured their castellan, to no avail. Finally, 162 years later, Sultan Baibars successfully sieged the castle and claimed it as his own.

I don’t know much about Sultan Baibars, but I’m willing to guess that the circumstances surrounding this victory have significantly less to do with superior military prowess than with the unavoidable consequences of the Crusaders’ greatest strength; their ability to protect and isolate themselves from their surroundings. Those Crusaders were perfectly defended and armed to the teeth; the odds of their survival in any specific military confrontation were probably quite high. But, alone and independent in a hostile land, sooner or later they had to succumb to their surroundings; it was an inescapable eventuality.

It’s fairly easy to draw the analogy here to Israel. A powerful, isolated, impregnable force establishes itself in a foreign land, with a staunch refusal to assimilate into its surroundings. As people realize that sheer military superiority is totally insufficient to protect Israel from its angry and dispossessed surroundings, it’s become increasingly clear that Israel’s status as regional hegemon is untenable. Its only option for long-term survival is to learn to understand, respect, and integrate with its surroundings. This, of course, is totally incompatible with the inherent political philosophy of Zionism, implying that Israel is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the Crusaders that came before it. The argument is even more powerful considering the fact that Krak Des Chevaliers successfully protected itself for more than twice as long as Israel’s entire existence.

I think it might also be interesting to consider the lesson of the KDC for Arab countries as well. Protecting our borders from outside influences, while a understandable short-term goal, is not a sustainable long-term philosophy. The “holding pattern” strategy is inherently reactionary; incapable of moving larger objectives forward; the Middle East must learn to better interact with the outside world in order to retain (or, frankly, regain) its status, importance, and viability. Paradoxically, we must be willing to integrate ourselves into the greater whole if we wish to maintain our individuality.

As a new crisis (or technically, the reemergence of an old crisis) flares up in Lebanon, it may be useful to reexamine the role that Lebanon has historically played in Middle Eastern politics, and its implication for the current political climate.

Lebanon finds itself uniquely situated to represent practically every faction spanning the Arab political landscape. One has only to look at the Lebanese conflicts of the past 30 years to observe the interplay of conflicting subgroups, be they Christian & Muslim, Sunni & Shi’a, secular &. religious, Pan-Arab & Nationalist, etc.

What this implies to me is that the conflicts in Lebanon can be analyzed as a microcosmic stage for larger regional issues. The political events unfolding in Lebanon seem to mirror those experienced by the entire Middle East. Based on the events in the past few years, including the Israeli invasion of 2006 and the violence between Hizballah and the Lebanese government, I’ve identified several key factors to be extracted for wider policy analysis. While this is by no means an exhaustive list or an in-depth analysis, I hope this will at least get the conversation started.

• The continued disintegration of the Arab identity.

Since the collapse of Pan-Arabism after the Six-Day War, Arab identity has slowly fractured from a broader, regional perspective into more localized sub-identities. At the height of Nasser’s influence, most citizens of the former Islamic Empire proudly identified themselves as Arabs, with no other basis of identification other than religion and clan. As a result of the loss of Arab prominence and importance on the world stage, it is far less fashionable to refer to oneself in such super-national terms. Instead, citizens of the various Arab countries had come to affiliate themselves with their national identities: Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian, etc.

The same phenomenon occurred in the Palestinian liberation movements, which moved away from a Pan-Arabist approach to restitution. Having lost faith in the armies of neighboring Arab nations to solve their problems, the Palestinians came to rely instead on Palestinian nationalist organizations such as the PLO and PFLP. It was the presence of these sub-identities in Lebanon that contributed widely to the sectarian violence of the Civil War. In recent years, we’ve witnessed the further disintegration of these identities into further sub-groups, this time at the supra-national level. As citizens lose faith in their illegitimate national rulers, people are increasingly likely to identify with their local village, ethnic sub-group, or religious sect. This has played out horribly on the Lebanese political stage, but has also reared its head into surrounding countries, most notably in occupied Iraq.

• The continued ascendancy of politico-religious movements

In response to both the fragmentation of Arab identity, and the diminished position and stature of the Arab World, religious-based political movements have resurfaced strongly in recent years. The Muslim revival has served as a powerful reactionary force against the secular nationalism of the 60’s, as well as the Western post-colonialism of the 80’s and onward. The disenfranchisement of a large segment of the population from the poverty-inducing methodologies of the globalizing West, as well as from the intellectually-isolated theories of Pan-Arabist philosophies from the middle class elite, has made this religious reaction an enormously powerful force in the internal politics of practically every Arab country. Its inherent clash with existing political doctrines has created a highly unstable power dynamic.

The rise to prominence of Islamic political parties such as Hizballah and Amal in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Muslim Brotherhood elsewhere, has been a definitive milestone in Arab political development. If Lebanon is any indication, the clash of ideologies between the religious reactionaries and their secular counterparts will not play out peacefully in the coming years. Far from being a manifestation of the Huntingtonian concept of a civilizational clash, however, this conflict is a demonstration of the historical latency of both secular democracies and “Islamic” movements in Middle Eastern culture.

• Arab solidarity in the face of external threat

One aspect of Arab identity politics that has been proven time and again in Lebanon is the ever-persisting sense of Arab solidarity when faced with an outside foe. The Israeli invasion of 2006 is the most poignant example of this phenomenon at work. Enduring continued sectarian strife in the early months of 2006, Lebanon was sharply divided between those supporting the continued strength of Hizballah on the national stage, and those calling for its disarmament. These divisions vanished when Israeli troops crossed into Arab territory and tried to assert themsselves militarily over the indigenous populace. Expecting these rival sects to fight amongst one another, Israel applied a “pressure-cooker” strategy, aimed at forcing these opposing political ideologies to face each other. The ensuing result could not have been further from that goal, as Lebanese of all stripes rallied behind their defenders, creating a sense of national unity unseen since before the civil war.

This situation strongly mirrors our current situation in Iraq, considering that all rival factions, though certainly antagonistic toward one another, are first-and-foremost concerned with ending the U.S. occupation of their land. There are strong implications here for the future of Pan-Arabism as well, which will be explored in future discussions.

• The Fragility of Existing Power Structures

This isn’t exactly a secret, but the inability of the Lebanese government to react in the face of unexpected turmoil, either in the form of external pressure from Israel, or internal pressure from its own citizens, demonstrates once again that the governments of the Arab world, regardless of their position on the democratic spectrum, are still highly susceptible to external forces. This was again demonstrated in Lebanon during the recent successful uprising against Syrian military occupation.

This fact is both promising and troubling, because the fragility of existing dictatorial powers is a strong indication that popular domestic movements have the ability to overthrow their rulers, but this does not necessarily imply that all such movements will be benign. Indeed, the current state of affairs of most Arab countries is a direct result of opportunistic leaders taking advantage of this political vulnerability. And with the lack of a solid people’s movement in many countries, the still-burgeoning Muslim reaction could be a very strong threat to the internal stability of any nation.

• Resilience and the Potentiality For Change

Perhaps more than anything, Lebanon has demonstrated that there is practically no hardship so great that it cannot be overcome. Despite the continued presence of war, destruction, division, and unrest, the country remains resilient and willing to pull through. They have withstood foreign occupation and ravaging civil war, and even with a sharply divided populace and a delegitimized government, the people of Lebanon remain true to their country and optimistic for future progress. Their continued willingness to reach out to their neighbors and their confidence in treading new grounds is a beautiful manifestation of the human spirit and the will to thrive. Echoed across the region, we notice that in the face of every obstacle, the Arab peoples remain united in the aspiration that they will someday regain their former greatness If Lebanon is any indication, that greatness is still out of reach, but clearly visible on the horizon.