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A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS
 MARINA AND DAVID OTTAWAY

MICHEL ELTCHANINOFF

A Tale of Four Worlds

The Arab Region After the Uprisings

Inside the Mind of

Marine Le Pen

3
HURST & COMPANY, LONDON
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by
publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and in certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison
Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America

© Marina and David Ottaway, 2019

First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by
C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of Publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or
under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries
concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights
Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
A copy of this book’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is on file with the Library of Congress.

ISBN 9780190061715
 To
Jamal Khashoggi and others like him fighting
for a freer Middle East
 CONTENTS

Map of the Region ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: A Deeply Changed Region 1

1. The Unraveling 11
2. Why the Arab Spring? 31
3. The Changing Geopolitics of the Middle East 51
4. The Search for a State in Iraq and Syria 75
5. The Gulf Monarchies Face the Twenty-First Century 103
6. Egypt: The Triumph of State over Citizens 133
7. The Maghreb: A World Apart 161
Conclusion: Some Final Reflections 189

Notes 203
Index 227
 Black Sea

TUNISIA TURKEY
A t l a n t i c O c e an

SYRIA I RA N
MOROCCO
Mediterranean Sea LEBANON
GAZA & the
IRAQ
WEST BANK
JORDAN
BAHRAIN
ISRAEL
ALGERIA KUWAIT
AR N
H ER
A
SA ST
E

L I BYA
W

EGYPT QATAR UAE

O M AN

M AUR I TAN I A SAUDI ARABIA

Red
Sea

Y EME N
S U D AN

Gulf of
Aden

I n d i an O c e an

0 625
km © S. Ballard (2019)
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Innumerable people contributed to this book by sharing their thoughts

and reactions to the changes unfolding after 2011, giving generously
of their time when we descended on them asking for appointments in
the midst of turmoil. Their combined input shaped our analysis and
conclusions, although many would not agree with them. We could
not reconstruct a list of all the people to whom we talked over many
years and many trips in order to thank them individually. But it is a
sad commentary on the political situation in many of these countries
that, were that possible, we would do them no service by mentioning
their names.
Many people at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars in Washington, D.C., also provided invaluable support as
we were working on this book. We want to thank in particular Janet
Spikes, Michelle Kamalich and Katherine Wahler in the library for
their help. A succession of research assistants gathered documents
and bibliographies, wrote memos, and checked facts for us: Adena
Moulton, Yasmeen Ali, Taha Poonawala, Sarah Nadler and Marigny
Kirschke-Schwartz contributed to the book from its early to its final
stages. Finally, the staff of the IT department at the Center came to our
rescue more than once, saving us from despair by retrieving parts of
the manuscript our own stupidity had caused to vanish.

xi
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Above all, we are grateful to Jane Harman, president and CEO of

the Wilson Center, for offering both of us positions as fellows after we
retired from our respective formal careers, Marina at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace and David at The Washington Post.
The Center has provided a congenial atmosphere conducive to writing,
making no demands on our time and giving us complete flexibility as
well as precious support.

xii
 INTRODUCTION
A DEEPLY CHANGED REGION

The Arab region is in the midst of its third epochal transformation

in the past 100 years, triggered by the wave of uprisings that swept
through it in 2011. The earlier transformations were precipitated
respectively by the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the Great
War and the rise of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism in the 1950s
and 1960s. The present period is equally momentous; the region is
being transformed profoundly and will never go back to what it was.
New elements have been injected into the politics and economics of
various countries that have already made them different from what
they were.
The post-uprising story in the Arab region has concerned the
consolidation of four separate worlds with different characteristics,
concerns and distinct dynamics. In the Levant, the Sisyphean task of
state-building that started after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire
has returned as the dominant problem. In the Gulf countries, where
no uprisings took place except for a quickly repressed one in Bahrain,
the example of what was happening elsewhere accelerated efforts to
modernize, consolidate their identities and define their position in
the world of the twenty-first century. In Egypt—a world unto itself
because it is so different from other Arab countries—President Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi has restored the raw authoritarianism of the military
1
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

state built by President Gamal Abdel Nasser half a century ago, and is
dreaming that he can ignore current realities and develop Egypt into a
new country of grandiose projects and shiny new cities in the desert.
Only in the Maghreb has the aftermath of the uprisings aligned to some
extent with the demands of citizens: political systems have become
somewhat more inclusive, though certainly not fully democratic, and
the specter of rising Islamic radicalism has been tamed in part by the
integration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the political process.
The real import of what is happening has been obfuscated by a
widely accepted narrative which holds that the uprisings of 2011 were
aspiring democratic revolutions that failed because of brutal repression
by authoritarian regimes and the rise of counter-revolutionary forces.
This narrative misses the real significance of what is unfolding in the
region. It is true that the hopes of many youthful participants in the
massive demonstrations that took place in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco,
Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria were not realized. Even in Tunisia,
the only country where Western analysts hold on to a shred of hope for
democracy, the youth are completely disillusioned and have become
politically passive. But focusing on changes that did not take place risks
missing the importance of the changes that are taking place.
The outcomes are not necessarily “good,” to use a value-laden word.
Certainly, we are personally appalled by the increased authoritarianism
of the new Egyptian regime, by the war the Syrian government has been
waging against its own people, by the increasing domination of Iraq by
neighboring Iran, and by many other trends. But the task we have set
for ourselves here is to analyze and explain to the best of our ability the
consequences of the uprisings, not to condemn or approve them.
This book will not deal with all countries in the region—something
which would require several volumes—but only with those where the
transformations have gone far enough that we can make some sense
out of often confusing events, detect emerging trends and reach some
conclusions. In this vein, we have chosen not to write about Yemen or
Libya because we fail so far to see what the likely outcome of the present
chaotic situations there will be. Similarly, we are not dealing with
Algeria because that country is trapped in a time warp while waiting
for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to die, and we cannot extract much
from the swirling speculations concerning what might come next.
2
 INTRODUCTION

The book also does not provide detailed histories of how events
unfolded in each of the countries we discuss. Such histories have
already been told in many published accounts, including in some
of our earlier writings. Instead, after a brief overview of the major
events to help orient the reader, we will look at what we believe are
the most important issues and trends that have emerged in each of
four parts of the Arab region—the Levant, the Gulf countries, Egypt,
and the Maghreb. The four have always been quite distinct, despite
the commonality of language and religion. But their differences
have often been ignored, deliberately for political and ideological
reasons by supporters of a pan-Arab ideal, or because of ignorance
and a tendency to simplify by outsiders. Pan-Arabism was a powerful
ideology that strongly influenced the entire Arab world in the days of
Egyptian President Nasser. It provided a common discourse among
countries that had been separated by colonial tutelage of one type or
another as well as a rallying mantra for the Arab street that was truly
incensed by the international community’s decision to give away, in
their eyes, Arab land to create the state of Israel. Pan-Arabism is today
a dead ideology with no prophet to defend or promote it, while the
differences between sub-regions are becoming more salient. It would
indeed be tempting to talk about the end of the Arab world, except
that entities of which intellectuals have proclaimed the end at one
time or other—God, ideology, history, globalization and nationalism
among others—have shown a strong proclivity to revive.
We need to return briefly to the two previous waves of epochal
transformation. The first was triggered by the fall of the Ottoman
Empire as a result of its defeat in World War I, and of the deliberate
attempts by the great powers of the day, above all Britain and France,
to reshape the Middle East to suit their colonial appetites and interests.
The plans of the colonial powers were partially thwarted by the
formation of the League of Nations and by the people whose fate the
great powers were trying to decide. As a result, the final map of the
region was very different from the one France and Britain envisaged
during the war. Under the leadership of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk,
Turkey emerged as a larger and more powerful country than Britain
and France wanted, and the colonial powers were forced to settle for
temporary League of Nations mandates over newly created countries
3
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

rather than permanent control over full-fledged colonies and exclusive

zones of influence. But even as the specific plans of the great powers
failed, the region was changed forever.
The second upheaval, in the 1950s and 1960s, could be broadly
defined as one of decolonization. For many countries—including
Egypt, which was at the center of the storm—decolonization is
technically the wrong word, in the sense that they were not colonies.
But most countries in the region were not fully sovereign until this
time, when they shook off the remaining constraints. Egypt finally
wrested control over the Suez Canal Zone from Britain in 1956.
Algeria won its bloody independence war against France in 1962, and
the last Arab states gained complete sovereignty after Britain withdrew
from the Persian Gulf in 1971.
This was a period of big dreams and bold policies and of a new,
independent Third World on the rise. The dominant figure was Nasser,
who inspired an entire generation of young Arabs with his ideals
of pan-Arabism, Arab unity, Arab socialism, and rapid economic
development driven by the state. Arab unity in reality was reduced
to a few short-lived experiments in joining countries with conflicting
interests and separate identities, most notably the United Arab
Republic formed by Egypt and Syria. Arab socialism also failed to
bring about the expected economic great leap forward. Instead, it
left behind a permanent legacy of heavy-handed state control over the
economy, inefficient welfare systems, a propensity for mega projects,
and a stultifying bureaucracy that choked entrepreneurship in a sea of
red tape and corruption. In addition, militaries became the dominant
political force in many countries.
Like the two previous waves of change, the present one was
precipitated by a specific event—in this case, the wave of uprisings—
but the underlying pressures had been building for years, not only in
the countries where people took to the streets in protest, but also in
those that remained outwardly tranquil. Before the discontented rose
up from Tunisia to Yemen, Arab countries were struggling on many
fronts. They sought to manage the contradictions between increasingly
educated populations impatient for change and rulers whose dictatorial
style had not altered for decades; to meet the ever-rising demand
for jobs from unemployed youth and hundreds of thousands of new
4
 INTRODUCTION

university graduates every year; and to define their role in the global
economy and international system. Not all countries experienced the
same tensions to the same degree—the problem of Yemen was daily
economic survival, not carving out a role in the international system,
for example, and the wealthy Gulf Arab states had been able to assuage
discontent with their extensive welfare systems. But most countries
were facing the challenge of adjusting to rapid change domestically
and internationally.
Some adjustments have already taken place since 2011, none more
clearly than in the relationship between citizens and governments.
No ruler suddenly converted to democracy and came to believe in
government by the people and for the people. The majority of regimes
remain highly authoritarian. In fact, Western-style democracy is not in
the immediate future for most countries. Tunisia is an outlier in this
respect, though the outcome there still remains uncertain. But even
governments that do not intend to surrender any of their power to the
popular will are making adjustments, because they no longer take the
passivity and compliance of their citizens for granted. Citizens may
not have lost all fear of their governments, as some overly optimistic
activists declared when they first took to the street, but governments
have acquired a new fear of their citizens. People who defied police
and military states once may do so again. So all Arab regimes are trying
to stave off this possibility according to their inclination and the means
at their disposal—by repression, by economic concessions, even by
offering circuses in the form of cinemas and concerts, and a relaxation
of social norms, as in Saudi Arabia.
The geopolitics of the region has also changed substantially since
2011. Regional powers, as well as Russia and the United States, have
weighed in to try to shape post-uprising outcomes in their favor. Gulf
countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,
have become particularly aggressive in their attempts not only to
determine the fate of Yemen but also that of the Levant states and
Egypt; they have indulged in direct military intervention or in political
pressure and financial incentives to sway the outcome of local political
struggles. Iran has also taken advantage of the chaos by accelerating a
long-standing policy of standing up proxies to infiltrate itself directly
into the body politic of Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. And Russia
5
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

has managed to become once again an important player in the Arab

region by intervening militarily in Syria. Meanwhile, the United States
has seen its influence diminishing because of the failure of both the
Obama and the Trump administrations to develop coherent policies
that address the new geopolitics of the Middle East.
Our analysis of the post-uprising era has as a background our
personal experiences living in and traveling to the Middle East over
the past half-century. We lived in Algeria for three years beginning at
its independence in 1962. The Arab world was then in the midst of
the second wave of transformation we mentioned above. It was alive
with visions of rapid development and of a heroic Third World struggle
against Western colonialism and imperialism as countries tried to
consolidate their statehood and identity. Pan-Arabism was a far more
important inspiration for politics and policies than Islamism.
We came back to the region in 1981, with a four-year stint in
Cairo, during which we traveled extensively. Nasser had been dead for
ten years, Islamism was the rising ideology, and the early dreams of
pan-Arabism and economic great leaps forward had faded everywhere,
leaving behind them a legacy of authoritarian regimes and sluggish
growth. Some Gulf countries had become enormously rich through
high oil prices, but they were not pointing a way to prosperity that other
countries might follow, only showing the benefits of a combination of
large oil or gas deposits and small populations. Leaders were more
interested in preserving the status quo—and their own power—than
in building a brave new world. Many countries were stagnating, none
more so than Egypt, which had lost its pre-eminence in the region
after the death of Nasser and President Anwar Sadat’s decision to make
peace with Israel.
Then in 1981, just as we were starting our new life in Cairo, Sadat
was assassinated before David’s eyes, and any vision that Egyptian
leader had had for his country and the region died with him. His
successor, Hosni Mubarak, was a cautious man, more focused on not
rocking the boat than on taking any bold new initiatives; he was also
ready to turn a blind eye to the growing social and economic problems
overwhelming Egyptian society. We left Egypt in 1985, convinced that
the tensions evident just below the surface were bound to explode in
the near future. It took twenty-six more years before they did—an
6
 INTRODUCTION

object lesson in the fallacy of believing that terrible social conditions

inevitably lead people to revolt.
In the following years, we continued watching events in the region
closely as part of our work. Marina helped launch and then directed
the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, which included the opening of an office in Beirut, Lebanon, in
2006. With other colleagues, she conducted a dialogue with Islamist
party leaders in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world, discussing their
readiness to accept man-made laws enacted by parliaments rather than
those handed down by Allah. And, as discontent across the Arab region
started bubbling up in the late 2000s, she and her colleagues extended
the dialogue to new secular actors, listening to activists debate the
merits of organizing through social media versus creating classic
opposition parties and independent labor unions. This issue played out
during the uprisings, during which social media instantly summoned
crowds, but strong organizations, from the Tunisian labor unions to the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, had a lasting impact on change.
David had started work on a book taking him back to the countries
where we had lived, including Algeria and Egypt, to document the
differences between then and now. As part of our respective work,
we again visited Egypt together in early 2010 to find a country deeply
troubled by the maneuverings of a visibly ailing President Mubarak to
hand over power to his son Gamal. We were immediately struck by the
vast extremes of wealth and poverty that had opened up in Egyptian
society, symbolized by the new high-priced gated communities with
names evoking California and Florida which have sprung up around
the ancient, decaying capital.
It was easy to see that trouble lay ahead, but we did not imagine the
depth and breadth of what was to transpire a year later. As a matter of
fact, neither did those Egyptians who were to emerge as leaders of the
uprising. Ahmed Maher, who would become one of its most important
organizers, confided to us in January 2010 that he and his colleagues
believed that they might be able to mobilize 50,000 people nationwide
for a one-time demonstration but doubted they could achieve much
more. As it turned out, hundreds of thousands came out in Cairo’s
Tahrir Square alone and remained there for nearly three weeks until
the military removed Mubarak from power.
7
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

After the beginning of the uprisings, we continued to travel to

various countries several times a year, discussing the situation with
old acquaintances, building new networks of contacts, interviewing
activists and seeking to develop a sense of where events were leading.
We returned repeatedly to countries in turmoil or fearful of it,
including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, the United
Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan. We saw and wrote
about the wave of initial optimism sweeping over millions of Arabs,
particularly alienated intellectuals and discontented youth. Their
enthusiasm and optimism proved to be short-lived. A struggle for
power between Islamists and secularists broke out in both Tunisia and
Egypt. Then came the onset of counter-revolutions and civil wars and
the failure of the first attempts at Islamic rule in Egypt and Tunisia.
Sectarian and religious strife tore apart Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya,
putting states and borders at risk of dissolution. The uprisings had
sprung wide open ethnic, tribal and religious fissures in Arab society
long suppressed by authoritarian rulers and police states.
Although disappointment and even despondency set in, it became
clear to us that the region would never return to what it had been
before.The old Arab order was gone.The consequences of the uprisings
pointed toward profound alterations in political and societal behavior
that would likely endure. The Sunni-Shiite hostility of early Islamic
history had re-emerged as a twenty-first-century power struggle
between Iran and Saudi Arabia for hegemony in the Levant and the
Gulf. The competition between Islamists and secularists in Egypt and
Tunisia had brought into the open a long-standing conflict that only
authoritarian rule had managed to suppress. And the uprisings had
birthed a new revolutionary tradition in Arab political culture, one not
easily suppressed by even the most authoritarian ruler.
The organization of this book reflects the issues we have seen
developing in this period of intense transformation, and extensive
efforts to document and understand them on our part. After
sketching a brief outline of how the uprisings unfolded in Chapter 1,
we review in Chapter 2 why they occurred, in a skeptical assessment
of conventional explanations and, above all, of romantic views of
the role played by idealistic young people. Chapter 3 discusses the
importance of regional and international players in shaping events,
8
 INTRODUCTION

although all uprisings started as purely domestic affairs. The following

four chapters outline the different dynamics of change and the
dissimilar outcomes in the four sub-regions identified above. The
last chapter summarizes the principal and likely irreversible changes
brought about by the uprisings in each region. It also discusses some
of the key factors that have determined those changes and which seem
destined to continue shaping future developments. Crucial among
them are the problems of the state itself, not just the problems of
governance, and the often overlooked importance of a state project in
determining how a country evolves; the conflict between Islamists and
secularists that colors the politics of most countries in the region; the
importance of leadership by individuals and organizations in shaping
the outcomes of crises engendered by sociopolitical conditions; and
the central role of regional and international actors in the domestic
politics of most countries.
The break-up of the Ottoman Empire led to the emergence of
new countries that a century later remain embattled but nevertheless
provide the framework within which the Arab world still functions.
The rise of pan-Arabism and Arab socialism in the period of
decolonization determined the shape of these countries’ political and
economic systems, with consequences visible to this day. The legacies
of this third period of upheavals are just becoming apparent, and we
intend to focus upon specific iterations of these in each of the four sub-
regions, because the idea that there is one Arab world with common
characteristics, always fictitious, has become completely untenable.

9
 1

THE UNRAVELING

Sitting in his office in a building that would be torched by an angry

mob a year later, a senior member of the Egyptian ruling National
Democratic Party assured us in January 2010 that Egypt had nothing
to fear as President Hosni Mubarak approached the end of his natural
life: the transition from the aging president to his son and designated
heir, Gamal, would be smooth and uneventful, even as it created a
republican dynasty like the one in Syria. The Egyptian people, he went
on, were “docile.” In any case, the military and the security forces were
fully capable of protecting order and stability. A year later, Mubarak
had been deposed, his heir apparent was in prison, the National
Democratic Party ruled no more and our despondent interlocutor had
withdrawn into academic life.
It was not just Egyptians who set their passivity aside. Tunisia had
already erupted in protest, and in the following month hundreds
of thousands of disaffected citizens also rose up in defiance of their
government in Morocco,Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, and for a while
even Iraq. Four Arab leaders who had ruled unchallenged for decades—
Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s
Muammar Gaddafi and eventually Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh—fell
from power as a result of protests. It was easy at first to romanticize
these popular and peaceful insurrections as the spontaneous cri de
coeur of young people whose dignity and hopes had been dashed by

11
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

their dictatorial rulers. But the protests soon gave way to distinctly
unromantic violence and in some cases civil war. In the space of a few
years, the Middle East in general, and the Levant in particular, was
transformed from a region of seemingly unchangeable regimes and
rulers only removable by death to one where not only leaders and
regimes were in question, but also states and borders.
Domestic turmoil invited more involvement in the affairs of
Arab countries from Russia, as well as from new emerging regional
powers—Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The United States, which
under the Obama administration had pulled out of Iraq, reengaged
cautiously, seeing no alternative to resuming the training of its military
in the face of the takeover of a large swath of the country’s northwest
by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).1 Also, despite the lack
of appetite from the president, Congress, and the general public for
another Middle East adventure, the United States eventually found
itself deeply involved in Syria in an operation to retake Raqqa, the
Islamic State’s declared capital. As for Russia, whose activity in the
region had been practically non-existent since the dissolution of the
Soviet Union in 1991, it saw the Arab world’s turmoil as an opportunity
to demonstrate that it was still a global power; it intervened militarily
in Syria, resumed the sale of arms to Egypt, courted Saudi Arabia, and
inserted itself into Libya’s civil war.
Regional powers were also anxious to assert their influence. Iran,
which had embarked since its 1979 Islamic Revolution on a path of
expansionism in the Arab world, found new opportunities in the
turmoil, activating networks and proxies it had nurtured over more
than three decades. Turkey found its regional policy of “no problems
with neighbors” stymied by the new reality of unstable neighbors at
loggerheads with each other and sometimes with their own populations
as well. As a result, it too became increasingly interventionist. Saudi
Arabia also made a bid to become a regional power, abandoning its
traditional cautious diplomacy, actively promoting the overthrow of
leaders in Libya and Syria, and sending its military abroad for the first
time to Bahrain and Yemen. At the same time, it was also facing many of
the internal challenges the uprisings had created for all governments.
The following brief overview of events unleashed in December
2010 by the self-immolation of a distraught street vendor in Tunisia is
12
 The Unraveling

meant as a reminder to readers of the breathtaking speed with which

the Middle East and North Africa unraveled after decades of political
immobility. It leads to two important observations about the course of
events.The first is that the unraveling was propelled in each country by
a unique set of underlying causes and dynamics.While the first uprisings
in Tunisia and Egypt increased the willingness of the discontented to
rise up in other countries, events unfolded very differently in each case
and led to widely differing outcomes. For example, uprisings in some
countries where social media played a major role in bringing people
into the streets led to regime change, but in other countries where
the same means were used, protest was nipped in the bud or quickly
degenerated into civil war. The second observation is that although
each uprising had its internal causes, in the end most became entangled
in a web of regional and international interventions that changed the
nature of the conflict. For example, while there is no evidence that
the Houthi rebellion in Yemen started as a sectarian conflict driven
by Iran, it was eventually transformed into a proxy war between Iran
and Saudi Arabia, the former backing Shiite tribes and the latter Sunni
ones.2 And while neither Russia nor the United States provoked the
uprising in Syria, the two old Cold War adversaries ended up once
again competing for allies and influence there.

A Tidal Wave, then Nothing

Anybody trying to predict whether and where an uprising might break
out in the Arab world would surely not have chosen Tunisia and even
less the small inland town of Sidi Bouzid.3 Tunisia was a seemingly
quiet country with a thriving tourism business, particularly in the
cold of winter when Europeans yearned for warmer climes. It was
easily overlooked between Algeria, its western neighbor indelibly
marked by a decade of war in the 1990s against Islamist forces, and
Libya, its eastern neighbor where the colorful and unpredictable
Muammar Gaddafi periodically set off fireworks that attracted world
attention. Tunisia was by comparison uneventful, despite its corrupt
and repressive government. Although without abundant oil or other
natural assets, it had developed a reasonably balanced economy, and
international organizations considered it to be one of the best economic
13
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

performers in the region. To a casual visitor, Tunisia came across as a

country that provided a decent living to many of its citizens, at least
in the capital and other population centers along the coast. The cars
that crowded its roads were predominantly relatively recent, small
European models, not the combination of flashy luxury vehicles and
impossibly old and battered ones functioning by miracles of ingenuity
commonly found elsewhere in the region. Nor did Sidi Bouzid appear
to be a place from where events might reverberate across the entire
Middle East. It was an innocuous farm market in the hinterland, fairly
modern in appearance, reasonably tidy and without a shantytown or
other obvious signs of extreme poverty.Yet Tunisia and Sidi Bouzid led
the way.
On 17 December 2010, a young unlicensed street fruit seller—
furious, frustrated and humiliated because the police, and a policewoman
to boot, had confiscated his wares—set himself on fire. He was not the
first Tunisian to commit an act of self-immolation; similar episodes had
occurred in the previous months in various towns with only a brief
mention in the Tunisian media and without political repercussions of
any kind. But this particular suicide triggered demonstrations which
spread steadily to nearby towns and provincial centers, reaching the
capital on 27 December. The unrest did not spread spontaneously but
was aided greatly by the efforts of the local and regional branches of
the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT). The top leadership
of the labor confederation was closely aligned with the government,
but many of its mid-level cadres and local militants maintained the
left-leaning tendency of its early days. Smarting over the failure of the
UGTT to back striking miners a few years earlier, many mid-level
cadres were determined to atone for this stain on the organization’s
reputation. So they seized on the protest in Sidi Bouzid and went to
work to turn it into a nationwide movement, spreading the protest
from the hinterland to regional centers and eventually to Tunis.
Once the crowds took to the streets in Tunis, they never left. Two
weeks later, on 14 January, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali flew off
to Saudi Arabia, purportedly to escort his family to safety prior to
returning, but he never came back. Setting an example that would
be followed in other countries, the army had refused to intervene
on his behalf to restore order. Left in charge, the police festooned
14
 The Unraveling

the Avenue Habib Bourguiba in downtown Tunis, the center of the

demonstrations, with an impressive amount of concertina razor wire,
but this did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowds, and they
did not even attempt to clear the streets.
The next country to explode was Egypt. On 25 January, protesters
descended on Tahrir Square, a huge traffic choke-point consisting of
interconnecting roundabouts in the heart of Cairo. (For expatriates,
learning to cross Tahrir Square safely has long been a rite of passage
in the process of cultural adaptation). The daily crowds there were
protesting the never-ending rule of President Hosni Mubarak and
his plan to install his son as successor. The young organizers of the
protest proved very good at mobilizing the public and keeping the
crowds in Tahrir Square day and night, but they appeared to have no
real plans for what to do next. In the vacuum, all sorts of committees
were formed on the spot by a hodgepodge of activists, while politicians
who had never before shown even remotely radical tendencies sought
to reinvent themselves as leaders of the uprising. As one seasoned
Egyptian diplomat told us, “The Tahrir revolution was made by the
youth on behalf of their parents,” who fully expected to step in and
take over. The youth had no intention of making way for their elders,
but they had no leadership of their own, either.
The uprising quickly brought together a mixture of militant secular
activists, old politicians with new ambitions and eventually Muslim
Brothers, dragged into the fray by their younger members even
as leaders were initially hesitant. Finally, the military acted, not by
intervening against the crowds, but by forcing Mubarak to resign on 11
February. A military committee, the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces, took control. Nobody called the military’s intervention a coup
d’état, although it had all the trappings of one. Even the demonstrators
welcomed the military, adding a new slogan to the multitude of chants
rising from Tahrir Square—“The Army and People are one.”
The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt appeared to unfold along
utopian lines. There was no mass violence, no soldiers shooting on
the crowds, no massive number of casualties.4 Presidents were not
slaughtered by angry mobs, but forced out peacefully—Ben Ali to
gilded exile in Saudi Arabia, and Mubarak initially to his villa in
the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and later to a hospital room
15
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

pending trial. The utopia would not last long. The new uprisings that
broke out elsewhere in late February and early March were quickly
pre-empted or repressed by governments now fully alert to the cost
of complacency, or else they quickly degenerated into civil wars and
foreign interventions.
Beginning in February, protests spread like wildfires from country
to country until they seemed destined to engulf the entire region,
from Morocco to the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. In Tunisia,
almost a month had separated the first act of protest from the ouster
of Ben Ali. In Egypt, it was a little less than three weeks from the
first gathering of crowds in Tahrir Square to the military’s decision to
oust Mubarak. Over a month separated the beginning of the Tunisian
uprising from the onset of the Egyptian one. But Yemen’s uprising
started only two days after Egypt’s. Once Mubarak was ousted on 11
February, the floodgates of discontent seemed to open wide. Protests
broke out in Bahrain on 14 February, in Libya on 15 February, in
Morocco on 20 February, in Iraq on 25 February, and in Syria on 25
March. However, in a few countries, such as Algeria, Saudi Arabia and
Jordan, protesters called with limited to no success for a “day of rage.”
In Saudi Arabia, a lone man took to the streets in Riyadh on 11 March
in response to a social media call. In Iraq, crowds turned out to express
their rage in several cities, and when they elicited no response from
the government, they turned out again in a “day of regret” for having
elected such unresponsive officials, but then they desisted.
The floodgates closed as suddenly as they had opened. Countries
where citizens had remained quiescent in the first months of 2011 did
not see uprisings later. A number of factors help explain this abrupt
end to what had appeared an unstoppable wave bound to sweep the
entire Arab world. First, although in all countries conditions were
present that created resentment and anger among the citizens, not all
had an opposition with enough organization and leadership to launch
an uprising, let alone sustain one. In one case, that of Algeria, the
population had seen a decade of reciprocal killings between radical
Islamists and the military, and knew how terrible the consequences of
an uprising could be. A second factor was that the element of surprise
that had favored protesters in Tunisia and Egypt was gone. Regimes
that had witnessed the overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak were quicker
16
 The Unraveling

to react and more cunning and ruthless in their responses. Thirdly,

uprisings stopped being purely domestic affairs, with some countries
experiencing foreign intervention almost immediately. Fourthly, the
early successes of Islamist parties polarized all countries, tempering
widespread socio-economic discontent with fear of domination
by Islamists. Finally, in the Levant, the division between Sunnis and
Shias replaced the citizens versus government dynamic with one of
sectarian strife.
Only two countries in addition to Tunisia and Egypt saw a complete
change of regime early on. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was captured
and killed in October 2011 after several months of civil war and foreign
intervention led by a coalition of NATO and Arab militaries. In Yemen,
the overthrow of President Ali Abdullah Saleh was a much slower
process. An assassination attempt in June 2011 almost cost him his life.
Patched back together in a Saudi hospital, he was allowed to return to
the country in the fall, promising repeatedly to resign but not doing
so until February 2012. Despite months of political maneuvering,
including an unsuccessful national dialogue in 2013, the confrontation
between pro-democracy forces and the regime eventually turned into
a war between the Houthi rebels and a government kept in power by
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Saleh plunged into the war
on the side of the Houthis and was finally killed in December 2017
by his own allies. The removal of the two strong men left the state in
shambles in both countries.
In other Arab countries, the old regimes remained in power. Some
did so by outmaneuvering their adversaries and buying off discontent.
Other regimes survived through extreme repression and the support
of external allies. In Syria, for example, President Bashar al-Assad did
not hesitate to bomb his own cities and towns, but in the end what kept
him in power was help from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and fighters
from Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah Party, as well as Russian intervention
and the deployment of its air power.
The next two sections will explore the different patterns for
survival used by regimes that were challenged by their citizens but
managed to stay in power.

17
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

Outmaneuvering the Protesters: Morocco, Jordan, and the

Gulf Monarchies
Some incumbent regimes, forewarned by the fate of Ben Ali and
Mubarak, responded remarkably quickly to the first signs of protest
and even acted to forestall protest before it occurred. Interestingly,
the governments most willing to take steps to pre-empt trouble were
the monarchies rather than the republics. Morocco was the first and
most successful example of a proactive monarch stopping an incipient
uprising in its tracks and without recourse to the police or the army.
On 20 February 2011, days after Mubarak was forced from power,
Moroccans took to the streets in several cities, most importantly
Casablanca, the gritty and violence-prone port city that had been an
epicenter of unrest in the past. The protest, immediately dubbed the
February 20 Movement, did not appear to have strong organization
or leadership, falling instead into the realm of the quasi-spontaneous
uprisings that were becoming the hallmark of the Arab Spring at the
outset. The crowds were not particularly large, either. But previous
episodes of unrest, as well as the example of the consequences of
inaction by the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, caused King Mohammed
VI to react swiftly, promising change from the top to stymie demand
from the bottom.
Morocco had been in a cautious top-down reform mode since
the mid-1990s, when the late King Hassan II had begun to revise
the constitution, free some political prisoners, investigate the
disappearance of opposition figures, and reach out to political parties.
He had even allowed the left-leaning Socialist Union of Popular Forces
to lead the government for a time. After decades of relying heavily on
repression, King Hassan’s actions clearly marked the start of a new era
in Moroccan politics.
Acceding to the throne after his father’s death in 1999, Mohammed
VI continued the new trend, investigating past human rights abuses,
setting up a truth and reconciliation commission and enacting a new
progressive personal rights code that enhanced women’s status. The
monarchy also opened political participation to an Islamist political
formation, the Party for Justice and Development (PJD), ideologically
rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. As a result, in 2007 the PJD

18
 The Unraveling

obtained the largest number of votes in the elections, under a law

carefully engineered to ensure no party could obtain a majority.
Despite this cascade of reforms, which in no way diminished the
king’s power, the monarchy still faced threats.The PJD was a moderate,
reformist Islamist party willing to play by the political rules and
recognize the king as Commander of the Faithful, thus a religious as
well as a political leader. But more radical Islamist movements operated
in the country as well. The existence of a jihadi brand of Islamism had
become clear in May 2003, with several vicious suicide bombings
in Casablanca that left close to fifty people dead and many buildings
severely damaged. And the presence of another religious movement,
al-Adl wal-Ihsan, believed to have a following larger than the PJD’s,
contributed to a climate of uncertainty. It had never engaged in acts of
violence, but it steadfastly refused to recognize the king’s legitimacy as
a religious leader or to participate in elections, raising questions about
its long-term intentions.
In this climate of uncertainty, the king seized the initiative as
soon as the demonstrations started, announcing on 9 March that he
had set up a committee to write a new constitution enhancing the
powers of parliament and strengthening the role of provincial and local
government. A second committee would act as liaison between the
constitution’s drafters on one side of the table and political parties,
labor unions, business associations, and human and civil rights groups
on the other. In theory, this body was there to ensure that all voices
were heard in the preparation of the new document. In reality, it was
rarely consulted.
The draft of the constitution was presented to the public on 17
June, submitted to a popular referendum on 1 July, and approved by
98.5 per cent of the voters, with a turnout of 73 per cent.This turnout
was extremely high for Morocco, where only 37 per cent had voted in
the 2007 parliamentary elections. In November, elections were held
under the new constitution, and, as expected, the PJD received the
largest number of votes. The king abided by the new constitutional
stipulation that the prime minister must come from the winning party,
and tasked PJD leader Abdelilah Benkirane with forming the new
cabinet. The PJD became the first Islamist party anywhere in the Arab
world to lead a government, and the breakthrough had taken place in a
19
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

monarchical country. In the space of about nine months, the king had
succeeded in silencing the protest, strengthening his reputation as a
reformer and absorbing the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate in Morocco
into the legal political process. Overall, the king had escaped the
street with minimum loss of his own power and no perceptible loss
of legitimacy.
No other Arab leader managed to replicate the extent of the
Moroccan king’s success, but several others did contain or pre-empt
protest. Jordan started experiencing demonstrations at about the same
time as Morocco. In response, King Abdallah II appointed committees
to look into the controversial election law, which was thought to favor
entrenched local elites, and to consider constitutional amendments.
Some changes were introduced in both the law and the constitution. But
Abdallah took no decisive steps, trying instead to deflect discontent by
replacing his prime minister three times in eighteen months and other
ministers with a great deal of regularity. However, the most important
factor in stopping protests and strengthening the king’s position
vis-à-vis the street was probably the very real threat to the country
emanating from the civil war that had broken out in neighboring Syria
and threatened to spill over into Jordan.
Only one Gulf Arab monarchy, Bahrain, experienced something
resembling a real uprising, and it responded with force, as we will
discuss in more detail later. Saudi Arabia was on edge about the
possibility of unrest, having seen the rise of al-Qaeda in the kingdom
and being deeply aware of the continuing presence of radical Islamic
elements. With a political system lacking even the basic mechanisms
to act as a shock absorber to protest, the ruling al-Saud family sought
to keep the peace by distributing what it had in abundance—money.
Within weeks of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, King Abdallah of
Saudi Arabia had committed to measures costing $37 billion, offering
something to everybody. State employees got a 15 per cent pay raise.
Billions of dollars were lavished on increased social security assistance,
job creation, education benefits, unemployment compensation,
housing and health care. Religious institutions received large grants
for projects ranging from encouraging the memorization of the Quran
to building new regional headquarters for the Commission for the
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the feared religious
20
 The Unraveling

police. The only step that could even remotely be considered political
reform was the announcement that women would be allowed to vote
and run for office in the next elections for the powerless municipal
councils, which were scheduled for several years in the future.5
Other Gulf monarchies in Oman, the United Arab Emirates and
Qatar also announced minor political reforms as well as new benefits
for their populations, although they had shown little sign of rebellion.
Kuwait, the only Gulf monarchy with a real, albeit completely
dysfunctional, parliament, saw scattered street demonstrations, but its
emir handed out $3,580 and free food for one year to every citizen.
This ensured that protest would essentially be contained to its normal
pattern of seemingly unending conflict between the ruling al-Sabah
family and parliament, with the emir periodically disbanding the
parliament, or the parliament forcing the resignation of the prime
minister appointed by the emir. Both happened again in response to
the protests, which degenerated into a squabble over the election law
and the fate of stateless residents.The Kuwaiti monarchy came through
basically unscathed.6

Repression, War, and Outside Intervention: Bahrain and Syria

No regime managed to survive a domestic uprising by using force
and repression without considerable support from the outside. The
exception is Egypt, where the military stepped in and supplanted
civilian authorities.

Bahrain: The Monarchy Survives

The uprising that started on 14 February in Bahrain evolved immediately
into serious conflict between the government and the protesters, but
the crisis was nipped in the bud within a month by the intervention
of Saudi Arabia, which sent armored personnel carriers filled with
soldiers and tanks across the 16-mile-long causeway linking the island
to the Saudi mainland to support the besieged Bahraini monarchy.
From the beginning, the uprising had a strong sectarian flavor. The
country is controlled by a Sunni dynasty, the House of al-Khalifa, dating
back to the eighteenth century. But the large majority of its citizens are
21
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

Shia, and signs of discontent had been evident among them for years.
Shias had formed the best-organized political society in Bahrain—
political parties are not allowed—and had won most parliamentary
seats that were filled by election rather than appointment.
To the al-Khalifa as well as the al-Saud, the turmoil was purely a
Shia uprising, not a pro-democracy one, and thus it was bound to have
the support of Iran—although there was scant evidence this was the
case at the time. The fear of a sectarian uprising backed by Iran led
the al-Khalifa government to repress the demonstrations quickly. The
government even tried to deprive protesters of a place to congregate
by bulldozing away the large Pearl Roundabout that was their main
gathering place and replacing it with a simple intersection that offered
no space for demonstrators to gather, as visitors seeking to revisit
the scene of the demonstrations now find out after a futile search.
As protest continued, Saudi Arabia, with the backing of the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC), rushed to the rescue of the besieged al-
Khalifa family. The same Arab countries that had supported military
intervention to overthrow Gaddafi instead intervened to maintain the
status quo in Bahrain. As a result, the al-Khalifa monarchy emerged
intact, although more dependent than ever on Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates, while the influence of the Shia population on
the politics of the kingdom was further curtailed. Bahrain was the
only Arab country where repression backed by neighboring countries
succeeded in putting an end to an Arab Spring uprising.

Syria: Destroying the State to Save the Regime

The swift transition in Yemen and Libya from political protest to
civil war and the subsequent disintegration of the state seem to
have an obvious explanation. In both countries, there was no real
institutionalized state, only rulers, and when the rulers lost their grip,
the fiction of the state was laid bare. We will never know whether the
Bahraini state would have survived the overthrow of the monarchy,
because Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries made sure the ruling
family remained in place.
It is more difficult to explain the speed with which Syria unraveled as
a result of the political challenge to the regime because Syria appeared
22
 The Unraveling

to be a real state, not a fragile conglomeration of tribes like Yemen

or Libya. In the end, what doomed Syria was the president’s decision
to save the regime no matter the cost to the state. The outcome was
a destroyed state that may never really be put back together again,
and a hollowed-out regime dependent on Iranian and Russian military
support for survival and unable to govern parts of the country,
possibly permanently.
We will discuss Syria in greater detail in a later chapter, but it is
worth examining it briefly here as an example in which an attempt to
put down an uprising by force made the country dependent on outside
powers—Russia and Iran in this case—as well as bringing the state to
the brink of disintegration. In this sense, Syria is not different from
Libya or Yemen, except that the regime survived.
Like all countries of the Levant, the modern Syrian state was created
at the end of the Great War by colonial powers and had a difficult
beginning. Syrian nationalists believed in a “Greater Syria,” including
present-day Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon in addition to what
the colonial powers decided to call Syria. But these nationalists lost
out to the Western powers, who instead divided Greater Syria among
themselves under the supervision of the League of Nations. Britain was
given mandates over what are now Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian
territories, while France got the mandate over today’s Syria and Lebanon.
Except for the minority Alawites, who saw France as a potential
protector,7 Syrians did not take peacefully to French rule and the
country remained rebellious. It was still unsettled when the mandate
ended formally in 1936, after a mere sixteen years. For decades after
independence, the country saw a continuous power struggle among its
fragmented political elite, including a series of coups d’état. Eventually,
it stabilized under the Ba’ath Party and above all under Hafez al-
Assad, an Alawite who ruled from 1971 until his death in 2000. His
son Bashar succeeded him. For most of the years under the al-Assads,
Syria remained stable due to an Alawite-Sunni alliance. Hafez built
a ubiquitous military-police state that succeeded in achieving a fair
amount of economic growth under a crony socialist system.
In other words, Syria was no Yemen or Libya, but a country with
a strong government that had weathered various rebellions over the
years and always prevailed by using ruthless means. Challenged by an
23
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

uprising, Bashar immediately turned to force. There is no indication

that he considered other solutions. When schoolchildren sprayed
anti-regime graffiti on school walls in the town of Daraa near the
Jordanian border, many were immediately arrested. And when parents
tried to secure their release, their requests were summarily denied.
Demonstrations then spread to Damascus and rapidly on to other
towns and cities. By late April, it was clear that the government would
employ any means to restore order. The army laid siege to cities,
bombing and starving out the civilian population in rebel redoubts
and using chemical weapons without a second thought. Inevitably,
the moderate opponents of the regime, those demanding democratic
reform, lost influence to more radical groups convinced that al-Assad
could only be removed through violent means.
By the end of July 2011, army officers who had refused to become
part of the repression had defected and were helping to organize what
became known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA). But the FSA remained
a weak, extremely divided force, made up of squabbling factions
that often fought each other and proved ineffectual in standing their
ground once under siege. On the other hand, two radical Islamist
organizations, first Jabhat al-Nusra and then the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria (ISIS), quickly demonstrated their effectiveness in the
northwest of the country and the Euphrates Valley respectively. Taking
advantage of the government’s weakness, Syria’s Kurdish population,
which occupies the area along the border between Syria and Turkey,
established its de facto autonomy.
In short, the 2011 uprising quickly fragmented Syria into a gigantic
mosaic of government-controlled areas, territories under Jabhat al-
Nusra or the Islamic State, self-governing Kurdish “cantons,” and
myriad fiefdoms controlled by factions of varying degrees of Islamic
and secular persuasions. Al-Assad simply did not have the force
necessary to hold the country together. What saved his regime was
the support it received from Iran and the militias it controlled, most
importantly Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and from Russia. Paradoxically, the
United States, which theoretically opposed al-Assad, contributed to
his survival by helping to defeat ISIS in the name of fighting terrorism.
Al-Assad still rules, but hardly governs the fragmented country. He
is totally dependent on his outside supporters. The price paid by the
24
 The Unraveling

Syrian civilian population has been horrendous. In 2016, the United

Nations estimated that, out of a pre-war population of 22 million,
about 4.8 million were refugees in other countries and well over 6
million more were internally displaced. Estimates of the overall death
toll ranged from 347,000 to 482,000.8 And it is open to question
whether it is still possible to talk of a Syrian state in any meaningful
sense of the word, rather than a country of that name that continues
to exist because in the contemporary world countries are not allowed
simply to disappear.

Revolutions that Failed, or the Beginning of Epochal Change?

There has been a lot of discussion, and hand-wringing, over the
failure of the so-called Arab revolutions of 2011. In the final analysis,
conclusions as to whether the uprisings should be called revolutions,
and whether they succeeded or failed, are based on varying assumptions
and often highly personal value judgements. It all depends on one’s
definition of revolution and of success and failure. We do not have to
adopt the extreme caution of former Chinese Foreign Minister Chou
En-Lai (Zhou Enlai), who asserted that two centuries were not long
enough to determine the success or failure of the French revolution,
in order to conclude that a few years are certainly not adequate. A
revolution is not an event, but a protracted process. It is also dangerous
to assume that these “uprisings”—a safer, less controversial term for
what happened in many countries that year, which we are using in this
book—had clear goals shared by all, or that participants would agree
about their success or failure. But it is clear from the previous short
narrative of what happened in different countries that the uprisings had
far-reaching consequences, often unanticipated by the participants.
Democracy certainly did not blossom, but regimes were overthrown
and states collapsed, possibly irremediably. Other regimes survived
but had to change their usual practices and procedures to do so. One
way or another, most countries that experienced uprisings and even
those that did not were profoundly impacted, as we will seek to show
in later chapters.
While we have focused so far on the differences between the
uprisings in various countries, we need to flag here four consequences
25
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

common to all of them.The first, which will be discussed in Chapter 3,

is the intervention of regional and international powers and the
extent to which the political process unfolding in individual countries
stopped being a purely domestic affair. A second consequence was the
rise of Islamist organizations to a central role in Arab politics, whether
as actual actors, legitimate or not, or as specters haunting the rulers
of various countries. This triggered a violent reaction from secularists
and a debilitating polarization of society. A third consequence was the
increase in the importance of sectarianism in those countries with
mixed Sunni-Shia populations. Finally, the uprisings brought to the
fore the weakness of the state in many countries. While we will return
to these core issues when discussing individual countries and sub-
regions, a few initial observations are in order here.
Within a year of the first protests, Islamists seemed to be emerging
as the main beneficiaries, even though they were not the instigators
and in fact often hesitated to participate. Certainly their slogans,
such as “Islam is the Solution,” were not heard in the squares of Arab
capitals as loudly as demands for dignity and jobs, or most often simply
for regime change. Still, whenever citizens had a chance to register
their preferences at the ballot box, they leaned heavily toward Islamic
parties, which garnered the plurality of votes for new parliaments
in Tunisia and Morocco and an overwhelming majority in Egypt,
where they also won the first post-uprising presidential vote. Radical
and violent Islamic organizations such as ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and
innumerable smaller similar-minded groups dominated the opposition
in Syria and Iraq. ISIS overran a third of Iraq and as much or more
of Syria, magnifying its power far beyond what it would ever have
achieved through the ballot box.
But the triumph of Islamist organizations did not last. Just as the
secular uprisings seemingly headed for a grand sweep of the entire Arab
landscape came to an abrupt halt, so, too, did the Islamist victories, be
they through the vote or force of arms. We shall later be examining
in far greater detail the consequences of their initial successes in
various countries. Suffice it to note here that the backlash generated
by Islamist victories helped to make democracy deeply suspect, or
outright impossible, in most countries because of secularists’ fears
that Islamists would win elections. Furthermore, extremist Islamic
26
 The Unraveling

groups bent on imposing their physical and ideological rule would

quickly alienate large segments of the population in all countries. In
many instances, public approval swelled for governments to resort
to the military and police to contain, or better yet crush, Islamists
of all shades and persuasions. This cleared the way in some countries
for the reconsolidation of the police state, the hallmark of so many
Arab countries before the uprisings. And, as we shall see, the new Arab
military-police state was even more repressive and ubiquitous than the
old one.
The rise of the Islamists had other corrosive effects. Bargaining
and compromise, essential to democracy, became impossible except
in Tunisia and Morocco. Even the ballot-box victories of moderate
Islamists were enough to turn the secular elite of many Arab countries
against democracy, because elections exposed for all to see their
parties’ organizational weakness and lack of popular appeal. By
contrast, Islamists stood out as highly organized and well-established
in society, reaping the rewards of decades of work reaching out to the
public through preaching and charity. In many countries, secularists
concluded that it was easier to accept the rigging of elections under
a police state than to do the hard work of gaining popular support to
compete against the Islamists.
In defeat and retreat, secular elites in Egypt gladly accepted
repressive military rule over that of the Muslim Brotherhood. In
Tunisia, they rallied behind Beji Caid Essebsi, a ninety-year-old stalwart
of the first post-independence government under President Habib
Bourguiba (1956–87), while in Morocco they welcomed the king’s
maneuvers to keep the Islamic PJD in the government but restrict
their power. Politics took on an “us vs them” dimension that did nothing
to promote pluralism and democracy. Still, Tunisia and Morocco saw
moderate Islamist parties govern in coalitions with secular parties.
Even in Algeria, which had experienced ten years of warfare between
radical Islamists and the military in the 1990s, more moderate Islamist
parties participated in elections, entering the parliament and even the
government. The inclusion of Islamists in government coalitions is
a phenomenon limited to the Maghreb; in other countries, keeping
them out of politics altogether was the goal. In either case, Islamists
have now taken center stage in Arab politics.
27
 A TALE OF FOUR WORLDS

In the Levant and the Gulf, sectarianism emerged as an equally

divisive force, serving to undermine enthusiasm for democratic rule.9
Bitter Sunni-Shia rivalry in the Gulf became the equivalent of the
secular-Islamist fault line in Egypt and the Maghreb. Sectarianism,
we tend to forget, only affects the minority of Arab countries with a
mixed Shia and Sunni population. Half of all Arabs (roughly 200 out
of 400 million) reside either in Egypt or the countries of the Maghreb
(including Libya), where there is little sectarian strife simply because
there are so few Shias. In the countries of the Levant and the Gulf,
on the other hand, Sunni-Shia sectarianism is a central feature of
politics, and has also encouraged the emergence of identity-based
politics among all kinds of minorities of different faiths and ethnicities,
including Christians, Zaydis,Yazidis, Turkmen and Kurds.
Arab regimes intent on blaming Iran for their problems argue
that Shias and Sunnis lived peacefully together for most of the nearly
fourteen centuries of Islam, and that present problems are the result
of political machinations by Shiite and Persian Iran. Their thesis
conveniently forgets that the two rival sects were born from strife
over the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed. This strife
never disappeared completely, but it flared up with great vehemence
in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution in Shiite Iran. This engendered a
burning ambition on the part of that country’s new clerical rulers to
export Shiism, together with Iranian influence, deep into the Sunni-
dominated Arab world, arousing an equally burning desire on the
part of Saudi Arabia to export its own brand of fundamentalist Sunni
Islam, which outsiders, but not Saudis, call Wahhabism. Sectarianism
is now prominent in the Levant and Arab Gulf countries, driving not
only domestic politics but also the foreign policies of the two giants
aspiring to regional hegemony, Iran and Saudi Arabia. This political and
religious conflict did not start with the 2011 uprisings, as we have
discussed above, but the political turmoil that the uprisings caused
has made it worse. In turn, this enhanced sectarianism has led to a
new confrontation between Islamists of all denominations and the old
secularist forces that still exist in the Middle East and North Africa.
The internationalization of domestic politics; the emergence
of Islamists as major players, resulting in a bipolar confrontation
with secularists; and the enhancement of sectarianism are three
28
 The Unraveling

consequences of the uprisings which are now driving the political

dynamics of each individual Arab country. Finally, there is the collapse
of the state in many countries that has led to the fragmentation of
society and polity. Together, these cross-cutting trends are generating
a powerful new dynamic, leading to protracted change. Seeking to
understand these processes, which certainly are not linear and do
not follow a predetermined course, is more important than reaching
arbitrary conclusions about whether Arab revolutions have failed, or
even taken place at all.

29
 2

WHY THE ARAB SPRING?

In the early days of the uprisings, a romantic narrative of an “Arab

Spring,” and a David-and-Goliath confrontation between idealistic
young people and authoritarian governments, came to prevail among
observers. This narrative was appealing but never stood up to scrutiny.
It is true that idealistic young people triggered the uprisings, but the
initiative quickly passed to better-organized political forces. It was the
labor unions in Tunisia that managed to channel the anger sparked in
Sidi Bouzid into a nationwide uprising. It was the military in Egypt that
seized the initiative and forced Mubarak out of power, and the Muslim
Brothers who parleyed their ability to organize and mobilize people
into election victories. And in the Gulf, it was the monarchies that had
been spurred by the fear of revolts into accelerating reforms. Why the
uprisings occurred and floundered is not a question that lends itself
to a simple answer. But the process of change they triggered, which
for better or worse is reshaping the old Arab order, goes far beyond
anything the protesters had in mind. Understanding why people
took to the streets is thus only one part, and probably not the most
important, of any explanation for why the Arab world is now in the
midst of a major transformation.
We can detect several categories of problem behind the 2011
explosions of discontent. Deterioration in the relationship between
regimes and citizens, as well as in socio-economic conditions, certainly

31
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