Political Identities and Popular Uprisings in the Middle East

Shabnam J. Holliday, Philip Leech, Shabnam J. Holliday, Philip Leech

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781783484485
• eBook ISBN: 9781783484508
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Identity plays an important part in terms of how we imagine our relationship with the state and governing bodies. If we know who we are, then we can know and articulate what we want as political actors.

This book examines the relationship between identity and political dissent in the context of the Arab and non-Arab Middle East by focusing on recent uprisings and protests in the region. The case studies here - Iran, Palestine, Israel, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan – highlight a number of dynamics and different forms of resistance. These examples show how political identities are multiple, not static and that they are too complex to be reduced to superficial dichotomies of Islamism vs. secularism or Sunnism vs. Shi'ism. Through examining the relationship between everyday grassroots politics and the question of identity, as well as elite identity discourses, this volume presents a textured analysis of the region's dynamic political communities. This book explores how different identities must be navigated, negotiated and how they intersect at a time of dramatic change in the Middle East.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Shabnam J. Holliday and Philip Leech

In June 2009, streets across Iran’s cities were filled with protesters demanding to know, ‘Where is my vote?’ These protests developed into what, in 2009, became known as the ‘Green Movement’ and constituted the most serious challenge to the regime in the three decades of the Islamic Republic. Eighteen months later, in December 2010, the self-immolation of a street vendor named Mohammad Bouazizi sparked demonstrations across Tunisia. The next month, January 2011, it was the streets of Egyptian cities that were swollen with people calling for the end of Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorial rule. That same month, Jordanians, Algerians, Kuwaitis, Palestinians and Lebanese were also protesting against their governments. While in Yemen, a popular movement demanding the removal of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the longest serving head of state in the Arab world, began. In February, Libyans, Bahrainis, Moroccans and Omanis articulated their dissent against long-standing regimes and, in Iraqi Kurdistan – an autonomous, ostensibly democratic region in the north that had weathered the 2003 war and its aftermath relatively well – citizens campaigned against the regional government.

As the year progressed, no country looked to be immune and not even the harshest regimes appeared safe. In March, the Saudi government deployed troops in Riyadh, the capital, but faced demonstrations in its restive Eastern Province. By mid-March, protests had broken out in Syria. These were met by immediate, brutal repression by the regime’s police and security forces, but demonstrations continued to escalate through to the end of the month. Even in Israel, the archetype of a regional exception, popular demonstrations broke out on the streets of Tel Aviv over the summer.

In many of these countries, protests and popular dissent would continue or escalate. Some uprisings would ebb and flow in size and ferocity; for example, in the West Bank and Israel where, after a lull, demonstrators returned to the streets (in 2012 and 2013, respectively). In other contexts, the demonstrations would apparently shift their foci to different, or additional, grievances and targets as the political environment changed. In many cases, particularly in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Egypt, the outcomes would be tremendous turmoil, uncertainty and loss. Meanwhile, in May 2013, popular unrest erupted in Turkey, initially in opposition to a proposed building project in the historic Gezi Park but growing quickly to encompass a broad range of dissent against the government. Israelis took to the streets again in 2014 – this time many were demonstrating against the government’s Zionism.

It is clear from this very brief overview that streets across the Middle East and North Africa region have borne witness to protests and uprisings in recent years. However, contrary to the misleading terms ‘Arab Spring’, ‘Arab Awakening’ or ‘Arab Democratic Spring’, it was not Arabs alone who have been protesting for political or social change and/or against their governments. Rather, as the cases of Iran (preceding Bouazizi’s self-immolation by a year and a half), Iraqi Kurdistan, Israel and Turkey illustrate, the non-Arab populations of the Middle East have also witnessed, endured and participated in protests and uprisings of their own.

Undoubtedly, all of these examples differ considerably and, of course, each uprising emerged from its own unique historical and political context. Nevertheless, there are evidently commonalities among them, which suggest that studying the uprisings alongside each other can contribute to a better understanding of the broader politics of the region while at the same time highlighting the distinctiveness and particularities of each context. In other words, while this book rejects the notion that this broad collection of uprisings can be analysed as a single phenomenon – ‘a spring’, so to speak – it accepts the reasonable premise that where similarities, parallels or even common methodologies do exist, they are worthy of comparative analysis.

Such commonalities include the use of digital technology to facilitate protests, ‘the widespread participation of young people in addition to other subaltern groups, including mostly pious Muslims’ (Bayat 2014, xv–xvi), and political demands for change towards less authoritarian, or more democratic, politics. The role of political Islam also crosses the non-Arab and Arab divide. However, despite these commonalities, the majority of analyses focus on the Arab World (see, for instance, Dalacoura 2012; Pace and Cavatorta 2012; Ramadan 2012; Durac 2013; Gerges 2013; Howard and Hussain 2013; Lynch 2013), with few engaging with the uprisings in non-Arab cases (Dabashi 2012; Arjomand 2013; Sadiki 2015). By addressing cases in both the Arab and the non-Arab Middle East, this volume provides a more holistic analysis of the political dynamics across the region and contributes to scholarship that does engage with non-Arab cases.

Furthermore, and critically, we offer analyses that examine popular uprisings and protests in terms of political identities. This book defines political identities broadly, as the ways in which agents (individuals or groups of people) identify themselves and their interests in relation to established power structures at the state and/or national level. This can be manifest in a number of ways; for instance, the state, social norms advocated by a governing power, various religious establishments, regional governments or a governing authority under occupation. This builds on the work of Steve Jones and Charles Tilly. Tilly argues that ‘identities are political, then, insofar as they involve relations to governments’ (Tilly 2005, 62). This relationship between people’s identities and their governments is echoed by Jones, who argues that ‘people’s identities … are always produced, at least in part, through representation and through their multiple relationships with the institutions of the state and civil society’ (Jones 2006, 58). The case studies in this volume demonstrate that political identities are complex, fluid and cannot be essentialised by shallow explanations or claims of broad sectarian conflicts, such as Islamism against secularism or Sunnism against Shi’ism. By studying the connections between the commonplace day-to-day experience of politics and issues of identity, alongside elite-driven identity discourses in these different contexts, we present a nuanced examination of recent events in the region. Put simply, our task is to explore how and/or why various identities have become meaningful, retained their significance and/or intersect with each other in the highly dynamic contexts of the contemporary Middle East.

More specifically, this book discusses particular examples of political identities as they are constructed and manifest in different case studies discussed here. While we note that there are numerous, variable, socially constructed political identities evident at any given time, the notion that ‘the Arab World’ can be reasonably separated from the broader region or that the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ should be understood in an ahistorical manner is rejected. Rather, with this book we highlight synergies that span the Arab and non-Arab Middle East and those that were evident prior to 2010. In light of this, the complexity of political identities in the context of these uprisings, protests and the events that followed is explored. In some instances, it is the way in which political identities are manifested at the time of uprisings and protests that is examined (Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Palestine, Israel, Yemen and Egypt). In other instances, it is the post-uprising scenario that is analysed while also providing a historical context (Tunisia and Syria). We hope that collectively we are able to provide further understanding of the Middle East and, importantly, illustrate that these uprisings cannot be simply considered an Arab phenomenon. While each is grounded in a specific context, there are certain generalities that cannot be avoided.

The timing of this volume is significant. It comes two to six years (depending on the particular protest or uprising) after the events outlined above, thus allowing for time for reflection. In addition to this, at the time of writing (September 2015), we see ongoing civil war in Syria and Yemen and attempts by many actors in the so-called ‘international community’ to deal with the impact of this violence on both their own states (those in Europe in particular) and on relations with each other (United States–Russia, for instance). Populations of the region are having to deal with the presence of the Salafi Da‘ish (Dawlat al-Islamiyya fi al-‘Araq wa al-Sham) – also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or simply Islamic State – and other nonstate entities that seek to reshape the region according to their own designs. Denounced by virtually every state in the region and beyond, Islamic State challenges state-based and/or nation-based political identities by calling for a caliphate, based on a particular understanding of Islam, which transcends the territorial boundaries of existing states. The activities of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the subsequent role played by Kurds in both these states in attempts to defeat Islamic State once again bring the ‘Kurdish issue’, often forgotten by policymakers, into the limelight. These events have also highlighted diverse political identities within and between Kurdish polities (see Watts, Chapter 3).

The desire to ‘defeat’ Islamic State, in addition to tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme, brought a thawing of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s relations with the United States and the European Union, and following the 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani, who was less hard line than his predecessor, Iranian diplomacy echoed the language of former president Mohammad Khatami’s ‘Dialogue among Civilisations’. Iran, United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China came together for a series of talks designed to end any prospect of an Iranian bomb in exchange for the incremental release of economic sanctions that had been imposed on the Islamic Republic by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States between 2006 and 2012. Despite vehement resistance from an unlikely de facto alliance comprising Israel, the Sunni Gulf monarchies led by Saudi Arabia and hard-line Republicans in the US Congress, in July 2015, an agreement was reached and passed by the US Senate in September 2015. At this time, there is no way of knowing whether relations between Iran and ‘the West’ will continue to improve or even whether the deal will last.

The rise of Islamic State, Iran’s new position in the international community and increasing public condemnation of Israel’s most recent military operation against the Gaza Strip in 2014 have called into question long-standing alliances in the region. In terms of political identities, Rouhani’s presidency represents an attempt by the Islamic Republic regime to recapture ‘the people’ of Iran following the 2009–2010 uprisings (Holliday 2016). As for Israel, the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right wing Likud Party, despite widespread Israeli opposition to the 2014 military bombardment of the Gaza Strip and the subsequent clampdown on Israeli peace activists, demonstrates a polarisation of political identities in Israel (see Daniele, Chapter 5). These contemporary events make the discussions in this volume all the more relevant as analysts and policymakers try to gain further understanding of politics on the ground.

In this Introduction, first we ground our discussion in existing debates on identity politics in the region. In so doing, we highlight what the case studies tell us about political identity during periods of political dissent, even in cases where this has not led to meaningful political change. After all, in many cases, in some ways, there is a continuation of the previous status quo. Second, we position this volume in relation to existing debates regarding the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ and protests and uprisings in the region. In so doing, we accept that the most relevant theoretical framework for understanding these dynamics is grounded in critical approaches to politics and International Relations (IR). Simply put, this is because critical approaches see political agency – what people do – in the broader political context that people inhabit, with control over resources forming part of that context. While there is obviously some variation across the chapters – both in terms of each author’s particular interpretation of this approach and/or the level of emphasis put on theoretical explanations – the question of how to appropriately interpret the relationship of agency and structure in this context is the leitmotif of this volume. This volume contributes to critical approaches to studying the Middle East by highlighting that it is the essential question of agency-structure, rather than the arbitrary distinction between the ‘Arab’ and ‘non-Arab’ Middle East, which sets this volume apart.

IDENTITY POLITICS

The issue of political identity is a common theme in analyses of the Middle East. As Michael Barnett and Shibley Telhami (2002, 1) note, these analyses have looked at the impact of colonialism in the context of Arab nationalism (Hudson 1977; Ben-Dor 1983; Noble 1984), changing alliances in the region (Evron and Bar-Simon-Tov 1975; Taylor 1982; Owen 1992; Vatikiotis 1971) and the decline of Arab identities (Lewis 1992; Salamé 1988; Corm 1983; Ajami 1977/8; Sid-Ahmed 1995; Salamé 1990). There is also a body of literature looking at the construction of Arab nationalism and the uncomfortable relationship between state identity and pan-Arabism (Jankowski and Gershoni 1997; Barnett 1998; Kienle 1990; Mufti 1996). However, while much of this focuses on the Arab Middle East, there is also a considerable number of accounts that focus on and examine the contested nature of national identities in nation- and/or state-specific literature (Barnett 2002; Elling 2013; Holliday 2011; Ismail 1998; Jamal 2011; Lukitz 2005; Maloney 2002; Natali 2005; Pratt 2005; Rafael and Yôḥānān 2005; Saleh 2013; Segre 1980; Sheyholislami 2011; Vali 1998; Yiftachel 2006; Zisser 2006). The relationship between identity politics and the Middle East is also examined in the context of IR. This is seen for instance in the work of Raymond Hinnebusch (2003, 2013) and in the work of Telhami and Barnett (2002) – all of whom refreshingly embrace the region as a whole; Telhami and Barnett’s work has chapters on Iran (Maloney 2002) and Israel (Barnett 2002) in addition to case studies on Arab states.

Uprisings and protests in the Arab world during the second decade of the twenty-first century have reinvigorated the long-standing debate about the role of Arab identity in politics. Christopher Phillips neatly summarises this debate by highlighting the various positions regarding the role of Arab identity in politics. Prior to 2011, ‘the orthodox position considered Arabism a spent force following the military defeat and later death of Arab nationalism’s champion, Gamal Abdul Nasser’ (Phillips 2014, 141). In addition to this stand, Philips notes, ‘revisionist scholars noted that the orthodox position failed to explain the continued polarity of “Arab” causes, such as Palestine, or the persistence of Arab identity in polls. They nuanced their interpretation of Arabism, suggesting that while Nasser’s unitary Arab nationalism may be dead, Arab identity retains a political and cultural salience’ (Phillips 2014, 141–42). In line with this revisionist approach, Phillips himself argues that domestically, the everyday institutions of Arab regimes continued to reproduce Arab identity alongside state and religious identities (Phillips 2013). Marc Lynch (2006) has argued that Arab transnational media strengthened this ‘New Arabism’.

The Arab uprisings, according to Phillips, initially proved the ‘New Arabists’ to be right (Phillips 2014, 142). Indeed, in the context of what Lynch refers to as ‘the Arab Uprising’, he suggests that the ‘Arab Uprising’ reflected a new generation that had come of age, which through social media and satellite television had internalised a new pan-Arabist identity (Lynch 2013, 8). Certainly, it cannot be denied that Tunisians who took to the streets inspired Egyptians, Yemenis, Bahrainis, Syrians, Omanis and Kuwaitis, all fellow citizens in predominantly Arab states. However, as Phillips argues, domestically, long-term trends are not clear-cut and ‘while New Arabism helped spread unrest, it may yet weaken’ (Phillips 2014, 143). In support of the revisionist approach, the case studies here show that Arab identity continues to exist alongside other identities. Fur...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Halftitle
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Divided We Stand? The Heterogeneous Political Identities of Iran’s 2009–2010 Uprisings
• 3 The Spring in Sulaimani: Kurdish Protest and Political Identities
• 4 Underlying Fragility: The Absence of Hegemony and Popular Demonstrations in the West Bank 2011–2012
• 5 Israeli Grassroots Activism: Recent Waves of Protests and Heterogeneous Political Identities
• 6 From Ba‘thist Nationalism to New Syrian Identities: How the Emerging Syrian Civil Society Defines Itself
• 7 Political Identities and the Uprising in Yemen
• 8 In Want of the People. Tahrir as a Revolutionary Reconstitution of the Egyptian National–Popular Subject
• 9 The Tunisian Uprising, Ennahdha and the Revival of an Arab-Islamic Identity
• 10 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• List of Contributors