Political-Military Relations and the Stability of Arab Regimes

Risa Brooks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136059889
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Arab leaderships have been remarkably stable since the 1970s, particularly given the frequency of military coups in preceding years. Nonetheless, the military remains a key force in most Arab states and political leaders must maintain its loyalty if they are to retain office. Regimes have used a range of methods to ensure the military's backing:

• In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has maintained political control largely through providing the military with private and corporate benefits; selective appointments and institutional checks, are also useful instruments
• Tribal relations underpin King Hussein's political control in Jordan. Transjordanians have not only been the main beneficiaries of political power, but have also occupied the key positions in the armed forces
• In Syria, President Hafez al-Assad has built his regime on the Alawi minority, while the vast security apparatus limits the spread of sectarian, class or ideological grievances in the military
• President Saddam Hussein has established multiple security agencies in Iraq designed to prevent conspiracies against his regime. Regular rotations and purges ensure that few officers are in place long enough to contemplate, let alone organise, a coup, while the severe punishments meted out to suspected plotters are a further disincentive to rebellion.

In this paper, Risa Brooks argues that the need for Arab regimes to maintain political control can undermine the combat potential of their armed forces. Centralising command, creating overlapping commands, politicising selection criteria and authorising involvement in economic activities all potentially compromise military effectiveness.
The fact that regimes have successfully managed political–military relations in the past does not mean that they will automatically do so in the future. Changing social or economic conditions could upset the equilibrium in political–military relations. Regime stability cannot therefore be taken for granted. Transition to new leadership is a looming issue for the key regimes in Egypt, Syria and Jordan; political–military relations will play a crucial role in how it is resolved. New leaders must gain and maintain social support if they are to consolidate power. The fact that so many Middle Eastern regimes face uncertain transitions raises the sobering prospect of profound instability and change in this strategically vital region. Maintaining political control is a continuous and evolving process. A breakdown in social support for the leadership, failure to detect a conspiracy within the military and economic or political change that threatens military prerogatives could all disrupt political–military relations. Current stability should not give rise to complacency.

chapter 1

The Stability of Arab Regimes

The first wave of military coups in the Middle East coincided with the independence of most Arab states after the Second World War.¹ In 1949, just three years after independence, Syria experienced three coups in rapid succession; until Assad took power in 1970, the country endured 14 serious attempts at a military takeover. In 1952, the monarchy was ousted in Egypt; a similar fate befell the Hash-emites in Iraq six years later. Between 1961 and 1969, according to analyst Eliezer Be'eri, 27 coups and attempted coups took place in nine Arab countries. As Be'eri puts it, ‘the continuous interference and the ascendance of army officers in the political life of their countries is the most specific feature of Arab history in this era’.²

By contrast, successful military coups have become virtually non-existent since the late 1970s. Political-military relations have been relatively calm and regional leaderships stable. Coup plots have persisted, but have rarely been executed; they have generally been snuffed out through T^ack-door' arrests, rather than put down by loyalist units on the streets of the region's capitals. Even in Iraq, where reports of arrests and subsequent purges are frequent, coup attempts rarely reach the point where men take up arms.

King Hussein, Mubarak and Assad have all proven adept at managing their relations with their militaries. King Hussein formally acceded to the Jordanian throne in 1953 following the assassination of his grandfather, King Abdullah, in 1951 and the abdication of his father, King Talal, in 1952. After dismissing the

Table I Arab Heads of State

Country	Head of State	Accession
Algeria	President Liamine Zéroual	January 1994; elected, November 1995
Bahrain	Emir Sheikh Isa bin Sulman al-Khalifa	Succeeded to the throne, 1961; took title of Emir, 1971
Egypt	President Hosni Mubarak	October 1981
Iraq	President Saddam Hussein	July 1979
Jordan	King Hussein I	May 1953
Kuwait	Emir Sheikh Jabir al-Ahmad al-Jabir al-Sabah	Chosen from among Royal Family, December 1977
Lebanon	President General Emile Lahoud	Elected by parliament, October 1998
Libya	Col Muammar Gaddafi	‘Leader of the Revolution’ since military coup, September 1969
Morocco	King Hassan II	March 1961
Oman	Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said	July 1970
Qatar	Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani	‘Palace coup’, June 1995
Saudi Arabia	King Fahd ibn Abdul Aziz al Saud	June 1982
Syria	President Hafez al-Assad	November 1970
Tunisia	President Zein al-Abdin Ben Ali	November 1987
UAE	President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan	Elected by Supreme Council, December 1971
Yemen	President Ali Abdullah Saleh	Elected by House of Representatives, May 1990

Arab Legion's British commander, General Sir John Glubb, in 1956, King Hussein began to ‘Arabise’ the country's army, appointing native-Jordanian officers to principal commands. The bulk of the armed forces comprise members of the East Bank Jordanian tribes (also commonly referred to as Transjordanians or Bedouin).³ King Hussein appears to have gained the upper hand over his armed forces early in his rule. He weathered a strong challenge in 1957 from leftist officers led by the pro-republican army commander Ali Abu Nuwar, as well as a wave of coup attempts backed by Egypt and Syria. A decade later, the King faced a military apprehensive about his decision to form a military pact with Egypt and enter the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. In the turbulence leading to the suppression of Palestinian militants in 1970, King Hussein faced military opposition over his reluctance to sanction a crackdown. When he finally ordered the militants' violent suppression – the regime's ‘Black September’ – the military firmly backed him. None of these events led to widespread military defiance, and King Hussein survived to celebrate his forty-fifth year in power on 2 May 1998.

Aside from the hereditary monarchies, Egypt is one of the few Arab states to have transferred power without a coup – from Gamal Abdel Nasser to Anwar Sadat in 1970, and from Sadat to Mubarak in 1981. Nonetheless, since the July 1952 coup against King Farouk that brought the Free Officers to power, there have been episodes of military dissent and the discovery of nascent coup groupings. In the 1960s, Nasser faced a challenge from the military under Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer; the balance of political power shifted in Amer's favour, culminating in what was later reported as an abortive coup attempt in 1967 following the war with Israel. Sadat reportedly pre-empted a coup attempt when he ousted his leftist opponents in 1971. The most strident domestic challenge since the 1970s has come from militant Islamists, who reject Egypt's secular regime and seek to establish a state based on Islamic principles. Although there are suspicions that fundamentalist elements in the military participated in Sadat's assassination in 1981, these groups generally operate outside the state's formal structures. They thus pose a primarily indirect threat. Internal disunity has handicapped their effectiveness, and their violent tactics have alienated potential supporters. However, if militants garner sufficient popular support, they could lay the groundwork for a military-backed movement against the government. That they have failed to provoke a movement of this kind testifies in part to Mubarak's effective management of relations with the armed forces.

Assad's accession in Syria in 1970 marked the end of a series of coups and counter-coups since independence in 1946. Initially, these rebellions were fuelled by clashes between competing sectarian and class interests as civilian groups joined forces with factions in the military. By the 1960s, however, coup-making had become enmeshed with the intrigues of Ba'ath Party politics as factions of the Party elite competed for dominance, while Sunni Muslims and other minorities in the political apparatus and military were purged. After 1966, a power-struggle developed between Assad and his chief competitor within the Party, Salah Jadid; by early 1969, Assad had marginalised Jadid and his supporters and, in November 1970, seized power. Years of political infighting and the steady attrition of minority groups meant that sectarian and ideological factionalism were greatly reduced, both in Assad's regime and in the military.

The elimination of competing factions in the military has been crucial to Assad's ability to maintain power. There have nonetheless been turbulent periods in political-military relations. Syria's intervention in the Lebanese civil war in the mid-1970s, in particular the decision to turn against the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), caused friction with some elements of the military, which saw it as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. During the regime's lengthy battle with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which culminated in a bloody confrontation in Hama in 1982, there were reports that soldiers had deserted or joined the insurgents, presumably out of disillusion with the mass repression, or because of sympathy with the rebels.⁴ Nevertheless, the bulk of the forces remained loyal to the regime.

Arguably the strongest challenge faced by Assad's regime has come from his brother Rifaat, whose Defence Companies, a 35,000–55,000-strong unit of the armed forces, played an important role in the suppression of Islamist opposition in the late 1970s and 1980s. Rifaat's part in crushing the Hama uprising and his command of the Defence Companies increased his already substantial influence, allowing him to pursue his own foreign and domestic policies, even when they were at odds with those of the regime. When in late 1983 Assad fell seriously ill, Rifaat organised a bid for power, leading to a three-month stand-off on the streets of Damascus until, in May 1984, Rifaat was sidelined. The Defence Companies were stripped of their formal title and high profile in regime security.⁵ Despite periodic arrests and murmurs of coup plotting, Assad has maintained a firm grip on the military since coming to power.

Coups have become less frequent in the Arab world. Nonetheless, although its public role differs over time and between regimes, the military remains a pivotal constituency in most Arab states. The Egyptian military shed its ideological trappings after the debacle of the 1967 war, but was initially a prominent symbol of the regime; as the ‘vanguard of the revolution’, the arm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Table
• Glossary
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Stability of Arab Regimes
• Chapter 2 Maintaining Power
• Chapter 3 Political Control and Military Capabilities
• Chapter 4 Challenges to Stability: Leadership Succession
• Conclusion
• Appendix Extracts from the Constitutions of Egypt, Jordan and Syria
• Notes