The Arab Gulf states: End of the status quo?

10 Pages·1991·0.67 MB·English

by  Peter Mansfield

Asian Affairs
ISSN: 0306-8374 (Print) 1477-1500 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raaf20
The Arab Gulf states: End of the status quo?
Peter Mansfield
To cite this article: Peter Mansfield (1991) The Arab Gulf states: End of the status quo?, Asian
Affairs, 22:3, 284-292, DOI: 10.1080/03068379108730424
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THE ARAB GULF STATES:
END OF THE STATUS QUO?
PETER MANSFIELD
Lecture given to the Society on 10 April 1991. Educated at Winchester and
Cambridge, the author has spent the last thirty years writing and broad-
casting about the contemporary affairs and history of the Middle East. In
1955 he joined the British Foreign Office and went to Lebanon to study
Arabic at MECAS. In 1956 he resigned from the foreign service over the
Suez affair but remained in Beirut working as a political and economic
journalist. From 1961 to 1967 he was the Middle East correspondent of The
Sunday Times, based mainly in Cairo; since 1967 he has lived in London but
makes regular visits to the Middle East. His books include Nasser's Egypt,
Nasser: a Biography, The British in Egypt, The Ottoman Empire and its
Successors, The Arabs, Kuwait: Vanguard of the Gulf. And, most recently, A
History of the Middle East.
WHEN AT THE end of last year you did me the honour of asking me to
speak to you the only assumption I could make about the future of the
Middle East region - and the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula in particular -
was that nothing would ever be quite the same again. However it would
end, the crisis over Iraq's seizure of Kuwait was a seismic event with
lasting consequences. In one sense it has now ended with the liberation of
Kuwait but in another it still continues as the situation inside Iraq
remains unstable and unclear. Everything is unpredictable including
relationships between the states of the region.
Two weeks ago I would have said it was impossible that there should
be any reconciliation between Saddam Hussein and the Arab Gulf States.
But now Baghdad Radio has suddenly ceased referring to King Fahd as
Khai'n (i.e. Traitor) al-Haramain (of the two Holy Mosques) rather than
Khadim (i.e. Custodian) - his correct title. The Saudi media have
responded by cutting out all personal criticisms of the Iraqi President.
Clearly all things are possible.
Obviously to try to predict the future would be absurd. All we can say
for certain is that there will be change. We cannot know either the pace of
change - whether it will be over the next few months or several years - or
the direction, by which I mean principally whether the countries of the
region will become more intensely Islamic and more anti-Western -
although, contrary to a widespread belief, these are not necessarily the
same thing.
All I can do is suggest some points for your consideration. I am still
constantly amazed - although perhaps I should not be - at the extent to
which specialists in the Middle East and in international affairs are pre-
pared to make firm predictions - whether it is about the price of oil ($100
284
THE ARAB GULF STATES: END OF THE STATUS QUO? 285
a barrel in the event of war) or mass uprisings throughout the Islamic
World or even about the precise expectation of the length of survival of
Saddam Hussein. I much prefer the modesty of a leading U.S. Middle East
expert who said recently: "We cannot even read the lines - let alone
between the lines ".
Before turning specifically to the Gulf states and Arabia I would like to
make some general remarks about Islam and the West and Sunni and
Shia Islam. I apologise if some of what I say may seem obvious to this
audience but I feel these are points which are sometimes ignored by even
quite well-informed commentators.
My first point is that as a religion Islam is some 600 years younger
than Christianity. You might say the Islamic World is in something of the
same position as late mediaeval Christendom when the Church played a
leading political role. Because in addition Muslims never make much
distinction between the temporal and spiritual world we find that Muslims
- even those who are not at all devout - feel much more intensely Muslim
than we in the Christian (or post-Christian) West feel Christian. An illus-
tration of this is that, whereas any idea of launching a Holy Christian
Crusade today would be regarded as absurd, the call to Jihad is frequently
heard - even if it rarely has practical results.
A second point - related to the first - is that Islam regards itself as the
successor religion to Judaism and Christianity. The Prophet Muhammad
was the Seal of the Prophets - the bearer of the final message of God to all
mankind, completing and perfecting the work of his predecessors. All
Muslims believe that God has destined the world to accept Islam. So it is
that Muslims feel that, after the first centuries of the great triumph and
expansion of Islam, history has taken the wrong turning. In fact it has
been disastrous as the non-Muslim West has become infinitely more
powerful. I believe this is a cause for deep-seated shame and resentment
among all Muslims. Some take comfort in their belief that the West is
morally decadent and they point in particular to the decline in family
values. As a leading Moroccan Shaikh remarked to a friend of mine: "The
West may be winning militarily and economically but we are winning in
religion ". But most ordinary Muslims are not satisfied with this. There is
a tremendous desire to catch up with and match the power of the West
If what I say is true about Muslims in general it is even more true of
the Arabs. After playing their unique role in the early triumph of Islam
they handed over military power in the Islamic World to the Turks from
about the 12th Century.
Most of the Arabs were ruled for some four hundred years by
Ottoman Turks - first as the Islamic Great Power which could match the
combined strength of Europe including Russia but then in steady decline.
So it was that Cromer of Egypt divided the peoples of the world into
"governing races" and "subject races". I give you no prizes for guessing
which he regarded as the " governing race " par excellence. But the Egyp-
tians - despite the fact that their ancestors created the first great empire in
history - were a natural subject race. The Turks, on the other hand, he
286 THE ARAB GULF STATES." END OF THE STATUS QUO?
thought still just retained the aureole of a governing race, although
dimmed and faded.
In the course of the 19th Century about half the Arabs came under
some form of western colonial rule while the rest remained under the
declining power of the Ottomans. The dismemberment of the Ottoman
Empire created weak and unstable states just as happened after the col-
lapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Spanish Empire in Latin
America and looks like happening with the demise of the Russian Empire.
But the final humiliation for the Arabs, with their historical memories as
the creators of the first Islamic Empire, was the loss of Palestine to the
Zionists. These historical memories see Israel in the same light as the
Crusader states of the 12th and 13th centuries. Here a distinction must be
made. It is sometimes said that the people of the Arabian Peninsula have
little or no sympathy for the Palestinians. In some individual cases this
may be true - although it is often exaggerated - but the people of Arabia
all feel strongly about Palestine, regarding its loss as a deep shame for the
Arabs and Islam.
What I have said about the feelings of Sunni Arabs applies a fortiori to
the Shiites. In Iran the Shiites are the majority and politically dominant.
In the Arab World they are generally in a minority and even when they
are not - as in Iraq - the Sunnis hold most of the political power. This
makes Arab Shiites natural rebels against the recent course of history.
I believe this helps to illuminate the extreme ambiguities in the Arab
and Muslim attitudes towards the West. It goes some way towards
explaining the demonstration of support for Saddam Hussein from North
Africa to Pakistan and beyond. After all the fact that Saddam Hussein - a
secular nationalist who had ruthlessly suppressed his own Islamic mili-
tants and launched a war against the Islamic Revolution in neighbouring
Iran - could receive a wide response to his call for Jihad and be accepted
by many as a 20th Century Saladin requires some explanation. How can
we understand Shaikh Assad al-Tamimi, a leader of the Muslim Brothers
in Jordan, who supported Iran throughout the Iraq-Iran war but when
Saddam summoned a conference of Muslim divines in Baghdad in
December 1990 he (al-Tamimi) not only attended but called for Saddam
to be the new Caliph of Islam? Or what of the ineffable Kalim Siddiqi, the
Lucknow-born British Muslim who heads the Muslim Institute and has
been taken up by the media as a spokesman for the British Muslim
community? At the beginning of the Gulf crisis he was looking forward
with pleasure to a century of conflict between the West and Islam - which
he called the "the West's last enemy". Only after Saddam's defeat he
decided that the Iraqi was merely after all a secular Arab nationalist who
deserved to be defeated because, as the Pakistani fundamentalist thinker
Maudoudi once remarked, a "Muslim nationalist" is a contradiction in
terms like a " capitalist socialist" or a " chaste prostitute ".
Recently the South African journalist R. W. Johnson suggested (in The
Independent) that Islam was replacing Marxism and Maoism as the
leading Third World ideology - a doctrine of World Revolution. This idea
THE ARAB GULF STATES: END OF THE STATUS QUO? 287
lies behind much current Western thinking about Islam and for the
reasons I have given this is understandable.
However, the picture is not so simple. First, there is the obvious fact
that Islam is not the majority religion in much of the Third World and is
unlikely to become so. We think of India, China and the countries of the
Pacific Rim as well as Latin America. It is only in Africa that Islam is
clearly the fastest growing religion. But this is also the poorest and
weakest part of the Third World. The second point is that it is precisely
because so many Muslims feel the desire to catch up with the West
through acquiring the benefits of its education, science and technology
that they are prepared to ally themselves with the West rather than con-
front it.
The Saudi Arabians during the recent crisis tirelessly pointed out that
just as they, although extreme Islamic conservatives, were ready to call
upon the West to help develop their oil industry in the 1940s they had no
hesitation in asking for military assistance in the 1990s. In fact the alliance
between the U.S. (and other Western countries) and several Muslim coun-
tries held together mainly because it was based on the Muslim side on
perfectly rational judgements. Moreover the understanding went far
beyond the governments of these countries. Often despite appearances it
extended among the general public.
This is not to deny that the situation created some startling contradic-
tions. In Amman we saw huge demonstrations in favour of Saddam and
against the United States. On the same day many of the young demonstra-
tors could be seen queuing at the U.S. Consulate to try to obtain their
Green Card to work in the United States. In the streets of Algiers young
Algerians were chanting "Mitterand assassin" when we know that many
were hoping desperately for French residence permits. Of course they were
hoping both to improve their circumstances and to acquire the knowledge
and skills which will help to modernize their nation - and so to catch up
with the West. Perhaps Pakistan provided the best example in the recent
crisis of what must be an agonizing contradiction. Here the prime minister
Nawaz Sharif had to perform a supremely difficult balancing act. He
joined the anti-Iraq alliance and sent a token force but anti-western feeling
forced the resignation of his own Defence Minister. On the other hand, he
stood firm against the demand of another minister that he should change
sides in the conflict. But above all it was the Pakistani army which took an
anti-Western line in the dispute - in spite of 50 years in which the Pakis-
tani military has relied on U.S. military aid to balance the Soviet support
for India. It is true that recently the U.S. has cut its aid to Pakistan in
protest at what it believes to be Pakistan's efforts to develop nuclear
weapons - the so-called " Islamic bomb ". Hopes expressed by some of the
Pakistani military of replacing U.S. support by an alliance with Iran seem
rather forlorn. There are signs that as a result of Saddam Hussein's swift
defeat, Nawaz Sharif s balancing-act has succeeded at least for the time
being, although he is now faced with the task of applying the full Sharia
law in Pakistan against the opposition of secular and women's rights
288 THE ARAB GULF STATES: END OF THE STATUS QUO?
groups and without damaging relations with the West. He strongly main-
tains that he does not see Pakistan as fundamentalist.
As far as the attitude of the Muslim states of the Gulf region is con-
cerned, there were several positive features in the Kuwait crisis which
contradicted the gloomier forebodings. The alliance against Iraq held
together. There were no mass uprisings in Muslim countries nor were
there widespread acts of terrorism against Western interests of the kind
that were threatened by Iraq and its supporters. There is a wry satisfaction
in the fact that it is Iraqi embassies which have been attacked in recent
days. More specifically, the Saudi Arabian government gained consider-
able self-confidence from its political role in the crisis and especially from
the experience gained by its untried military forces. Finally, both Turkey
and Iran acted throughout constructively with restraint and realism.
Fears that Turkey might seize the opportunity to pursue Pan-Turkic
ambitions, which were raised by President Ozal's visit to Soviet Azerbai-
jan and Khazakhstan, were not realized. There were even suggestions that
Turkey might revive Ottoman claims to the Vilayet of Mosul (advocated
by the former U.S. Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger as a reward for
Turkey's steadfast support for the anti-Iraq alliance) but in the event
Turkey emphasized the need to maintain the integrity of Iraq. Iran, on the
other hand, resisted both the temptation to take advantage of the weak-
ness of Iraq or to take Iraq's side in the conflict as President Rafsanjani
skillfully deflected the pressure from Islamic extremists to join an anti-
Western jihad. In fact one of the remarkable features of the politics of the
Gulf region is the way in which Rafsanjani, while proclaiming unswerving
loyalty to the principles of the late Imam Ayatollah Khomeini, has quietly
reversed many of his extremist policies - an approach which is not
unknown in contemporary British politics.
There are therefore a number of factors which favour the future stabil-
ity of the Gulf region despite the fact that the future of Iraq remains so
uncertain. But there is one general problem - and a huge one - which
affects all Muslim countries in the modern age and especially the Arab
States. This concerns the nature of their governments.
Before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a remarkable consensus was
developing among the intelligentsia and better educated in the Arab
World that the relatively poor performance of the Arab countries in the
development of their human and material resources was due to the lack of
democracy - that is, democracy in the broadest sense of individual human
rights, popular participation in government and free political institutions.
In a striking article in Al-Ahram weekly the Egyptian Nobel prizewin-
ner Naguib Mahfouz recently made the point that "stability is not
enough". He asked what use it was if political stability was based on
poverty, ignorance, backwardness and the lack of human rights.
One of the saddest aspects of the Kuwait crisis was that, at least
temporarily, it diverted the attention of many Arab intellectuals from this
cause as they were attracted to the chimera of the new Saladin in Iraq.
There was the extraordinary - and deeply depressing - phenomenon of a
THE ARAB GULF STATES: END OF THE STATUS QUO? 289
number of Arab contemporary thinkers of the highest quality from Jordan
to the Maghreb describing Saddam Hussein not only as a symbol of Arab
resistance but also of progress.
The trouble seems to me that the same Arab intellectuals who have
been calling for greater democracy have been reluctant to discuss what
they mean in terms of political institutions and forms of government. In
particular they have been coy about tackling the question of how far
democracy is compatible with Islam, whether Islam in the modern world
tends to encourage tyrannical forms of government and whether a secular
state is an essential precondition for democracy. Colonel Qaddafy has
solved the problem by declaring that there is no problem because the
word democracy is not Greek in origin after all but Arabic. On the other
hand one of the leaders of the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front in
Algeria has declared bluntly that democracy is a form of blasphemy. The
shaikh's view does something to explain the coyness of the Arab intellec-
tuals. In a sense democracy and a secular state are forms of blasphemy
because they suggest that men's will rather than God's will is supreme in
this world. A related problem is that of an independent judiciary - which
is something that Arab political reformers usually demand. But an inde-
pendent judiciary is also something which the fundamentalists require
although they mean something rather different. This is that the only laws
that should be applied are those of the Holy Sharia as interpreted by the
Qadis according to the norms of the 7th Century AD. In effect what the
Arab reformers wish to do is to reopen the door of "ijtihad" (personal
interpretation of the divine law) which is usually considered to have been
closed in the 14th Century (although this is much less certain in Shiite
Islam). Thinkers such as Avicenna, Averroes, al-Ghazali or Ibn Khaldoun
would never have been shy about discussing the merits of different forms
of government and the need for the separation of powers within the
Islamic state.
There is one special problem facing the advocates of democracy in the
Arab World but which again they are reluctant to confront openly. This is
the fact, demonstrated by experience, that when the rulers of an Arab state
take steps towards genuine liberalization by allowing free elections to
representative institutions it is usually the Islamic fundamentalists -
Muslim Brothers or their equivalent - who make the initial gains. This is
what has happened already in Jordan and Algeria. This is partly a popular
reaction against corrupt or authoritarian rule, partly because the non-
Islamic parties are divided and disorganized and partly because the funda-
mentalists have shown that they are better at caring for the social needs of
the people at grassroots level than the state authorities. The trouble is that
there is good reason to believe that the fundamentalists are anti-
democratic and disinclined to share power within a pluralistic system as
democracy requires, although there is a tenable view that the best course
is to give them some share in the government at the state or municipal
level so that they learn the need for compromise through experience.
I have to say that I do not believe that Turkey's secular republic has
290 THE ARAB GULF STATES: END OF THE STATUS QUO?
wholly solved the problem of compatibility between democracy and
Islam. For many Turks there is still a contradiction between the secular
state and their Islamic identity. One indication is the recent growth in
popularity of the Islamic militant parties. President Ozal is attempting to
bridge the gap by making concessions to Islamic feeling while at the same
time asserting that Turkey's destiny is inside Europe. However, my own
view is that the contradiction between Islam and secularism would
become an uncontrollable problem if Turkey were accepted as a full
member of the European Community - although I do not think this is
likely to happen.
One might say that Iran has taken precisely the opposite course to
Turkey. Here the Islamic Revolution which established what has been
called a "mullocracy" is gradually and tentatively being secularized by
President Rafsanjani and his colleagues, although one should point out
that even when Ayatollah Khomeini was at the height of his authority
there was a genuine element of pluralist democracy in the Iranian Majlis.
It is certainly much too early to say but it is at least possible that Iran is
discovering a means of synthesizing Islam and democracy.
Finally, let us turn to the Arab Gulf States, while bearing in mind all
these problems of rinding a healthy political system in a modern Muslim
nation state. In the past they have enjoyed certain important advantages.
Ottoman rule was either loose and sporadic or, in the case of Saudi
Arabia, non-existent. Similarly the western colonial powers which govern-
ed most of the rest of the Arab World did not intervene in their internal
affairs. They are singularly lacking in post-colonial complexes. Also it has
to be said that in recent years any demand for reform or modernization of
the political system has to some extent been stifled by the affluence created
by oil revenues. All in all the system of tribal democracy headed by a
ruling family has served these countries well. One only has to compare the
amount of orderly social and economic progress (indeed of genuine
modernization) and the development of a new educated middle class that
they have achieved with that in most of the Arab republics.
However, there can be no doubt that a political system based on the
traditional Majlis at which the ruler's subjects can petition him or his
representatives for their needs or grievances will not for ever be sufficient
for these increasingly complex and varied societies. The growing middle
class is bound to require greater participation in the decisions of govern-
ment. The traditional informal process of consultation will hardly be
enough. In theory the answer can be found in the institution of the Majlis
al-Shura or Consultative Council which is entirely within the most ancient
Islamic tradition and all the rulers of the Gulf states have either instituted
such a Council or are considering how to do so. But it is not easy to find a
satisfactory means of selecting the Council's members. The sudden intro-
duction of elections by universal suffrage would be considered too radical
a break with tradition. The powers of the Majlis cannot easily be defined.
The fact is that in Saudi Arabia, the most important of the Gulf states, the
Majlis al-Shura has still to be created although it has been promised for
THE ARAB GULF STATES: END OF THE STATUS QUO? 291
more than a decade. I believe that the essential reason for this is that the
King finds the task of choosing its members among the notables of his
far-flung kingdom almost impossibly difficult. More difficult than
knowing who should be included would be deciding who to leave out.
To some extent all these problems are exemplified by the reconstitu-
tion of Kuwait - something which is likely to be more difficult than the
country's reconstruction. It is no good denying that the al-Sabah family
have been receiving highly critical treatment in the western media and that
some of it has been their own fault, although some has been extremely
unfair. (I think especially of a recent television programme on the al-
Sabah which claimed to expose corruption and incompetence among
members of the family on the basis of some government dossiers which
had been left by the looting Iraqis).
Two extreme views have been expressed about Kuwait's political
future in the western media. One is that Kuwait has a perfectly adequate
system of government which is traditionally suited to the Arabian Penin-
sula. The decisions of the Amir as the accepted tribal ruler will generally
be accepted by his subjects.
At the other extreme a number of western commentators have implied
that it is the Amir's duty, since his country has been liberated principally
by western democracies, to turn himself into a constitutional monarch on
the Scandinavian model, introduce universal suffrage (including votes for
women) and allow the creation of political parties. Both these extreme
views seem to me highly unrealistic. Obviously the Amir cannot be an
absolute ruler even if he should wish to. But equally the immediate intro-
duction of a West European type of parliamentary system would be
doomed to failure. The 1962 constitution introduced after independence
was the result of lengthy debate by a Constituent Assembly which was
formed by the exceptionally wise Amir Abdullah Salem. (No doubt he was
encouraged by British officials in the Gulf but he provided the impetus
and was by no means reluctant.)
The parliamentary system that was devised was a compromise
between Islamic and tribal tradition and western democratic principles.
For example, political parties were not allowed but it is unlikely that they
would be suited to a small city-state like Kuwait.
The system broke down twice - in 1976 and then again in 1986 after its
restoration in 1981. It is incorrect to assume that it was a simple matter of
the Amir or the al-Sabah refusing to allow parliament to encroach on
their powers - although this was certainly one element of the problem. In
both cases the Amir and the Crown Prince (also prime minister) decided
that the system was not working because some members of parliament
were making the function of government impossible through their highly
personal attacks on individual ministers, usually with the backing of sec-
tions of the press. The ministers under attack were by no means always
members of the al-Sabah family. Equally it is untrue that the parliamen-
tary opposition has always been on the side of liberal reform. It was
parliament which consistently rejected proposals to allow Kuwaiti women
292 THE ARAB GULF STATES: END OF THE STATUS QUO?
to vote or to extend the very limited franchise qualification for men. It
may be a small point but it is perhaps significant that it was parliament
which, against the wishes of the Amir, imposed a total ban on alcohol even
for the non-Muslim population and foreign embassies. Moreover, it
would be unlikely, to say the least, that the present opposition which
ranges from conservative businessmen through secular Pan-Arabists to
various shades of Sunni and Shiite Islamic militants should all be agreed
on the reforms in Kuwait's political system that they want or even on the
general direction they should take. There is no doubt that the al-Sabah
family will have to give up some of its former preponderance in the state
but the extent to which they do this will have to be decided by compro-
mise, bearing in mind that Kuwait's identity as an independent state is
closely bound up with the al-Sabah.
The search for such a compromise will be watched with concern and
some apprehension by the other ruling families in the Arab Gulf states.
The reconstitution of Kuwait's political system will have an important
effect on the future of the Gulf region and as such deserves sympathetic
interest. No one can believe it will be easy.