Modern Politics

Reprinted from the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Summer  2001 (with changes in orthography to HTML standards).
Copyright 2001 by the Middle East Studies Association of North America

Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War, edited by Anthony Arnove. 216 pages, tables, index. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000. $16.00 (Paper) ISBN 0-89608-619-4

On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. Four days later the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 661 which imposed comprehensive sanctions on Iraq. The stated objective of the sanctions was to end the occupation and restore the power of Kuwaiti ruling family. In March 1991, this objective was met. In April, however, the UNSC passed a new resolution (Res. 687) which gave the sanctions a new lease on life and set new conditions for their removal. These conditions included recognition of Kuwait’s territorial integrity, acceptance of war damage liability, elimination of nuclear weapons materials, destruction of chemical, biological, and ballistic missile weapons, and acceptance of a permanent monitoring system implemented by the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The sanctions are still in effect and have entered their second decade.

Iraq Under Siege examines the impact of these sanctions and brings together the contributions of seventeen academics, journalists, and activists. It credibly analyzes the devastating impact of the sanctions on the population of Iraq. The book also examines the political and strategic factors which have kept the sanctions in place.

Naseer Aruri’s chapter deals succinctly with what he calls America’s war against Iraq, initiated by the Bush administration and continued by the Clinton administration. He argues that the core of this policy is the self-assumption of responsibility on the part of the US for oil pricing and rate of production in the Gulf, and for regional security and conflict resolution in the Middle East. Noam Chomsky’s analysis of the motives and consequences of the US policy on Iraq focuses on the importance of the region’s oil resources. This strategic asset has shaped US policy in the Middle East since the 1940s, according to which regional leaders should not be in a position to make decisions that may impact this asset.

What about the impact of the sanctions? Interestingly, back in 1990 the CIA had concluded that the sanctions will neither persuade Saddam Hussein to change his policies nor lead to internal unrest that would threaten his regime. Five years later, former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali came to the conclusion that the international community had failed to confront the ethical question of whether suffering inflicted on vulnerable groups is a legitimate means of exerting pressure on political leaders (p. 152).

The suffering which the sanctions had inflicted and continue to inflict on the vulnerable people of Iraq is highlighted by Peter Pellet. The inability of the government of Iraq and the UNSC to agree on modalities to provide relief to the people has led to a steep increase in hunger, disease, and death throughout Iraqi society. The impact was particularly devastating on children. While between 1960 and 1990 the under-five mortality rate had declined from 171 to 50 per 1000 live births, the ratio rose sharply to 125 in 1998. Such changes led UNICEF to estimate that some 500,000 preventable deaths of children under the age of five may have occurred between 1991 and 1998. Yet such human losses failed to deter Dr. Madeleine Albright from declaring that such mortalities were an acceptable price of the sanctions (p. 15). Nor did the death of over one million Iraqis discourage President Clinton from stating that the “sanctions will be there until the end of time, or as long as he [Hussein] lasts” (p. 27).

Abbas Alnasrawi
University of Vermont



Turkey Today: A Nation Divided Over Islam’s Revival, by Marvine Howe. 310 pages, notes, bibliography, index. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. $26.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-8133-3764-X

Turkey Today provides scenes from the social and political landscape of Turkey in the 1990s, mostly in relation to the issue of Islamic revival. Most of the material is based on the author’s observations from a journalist’s perspective and interviews conducted with a wide spectrum of local residents who are directly involved in the dispute over Islam. As the title suggests, the author approaches the issue in terms of the emergence of a nation-wide polarization between secularists on the one hand and Islamists who oppose secularism and Atatürk’s other revolutionary principles on the other. The introductory chapters portray a picture that posits a sharp polarity between Islamism and secularism, as if the whole country is divided neatly and antagonistically into these two camps. However, this reductionist assessment is defied by the later chapters themselves, which portray a much more complex and multifaceted picture illustrated with detailed observations and interviews. For example, the chapter titled “Other Islamic Faces” defies the claimed polarity by laying down a more complicated scene of Islamic thought and practice in Turkey, ranging from various Sufi orders to the School of Theology at Istanbul University, or from the official Islam of the Directorate of Religious Affairs to the Alevites, who are on quite amiable terms with Atatürk’s reforms and secularism.

Chapters detailing politics and social life in Turkey around issues of Islamic practice, faith, and ideology benefit from detailed interviews with various people ranging from top level officials (secularists as well as Islamists), to students with headcoverings and volunteer activists of secularist grassroots organizations. These provide first-hand accounts of the experiences and views of those who are directly involved in and are parties to the debate over the role and place of Islam in Turkey.

Howe also introduces other topics such as the Kurdish question, Turkey’s foreign relations, and the presence of other minority religions such as the Jewish and Greek Orthodox communities, but the relevance of these issues to the main theme of the book remains obscure. Particularly, the chapter on Turkey’s archaeological and biblical past is a brief narrative on tourist sites in Turkey; but how these sites are involved in the politics of Islam is quite ambiguous. In sum, the book starts with a claim to present the current dispute over Islam, but the attempt to cover the broad and general picture of life in Turkey results in too many divergences and leaves the account too superficial and general. The author not only fails to provide any analysis or a deeper examination of the debate over Islam, but also neglects even to state explicitly the relevance of some of the chapters to the main theme of the book. While the personalized style of the author makes this controversial and politically charged topic quite accessible to the uninformed reader, it also brings in too many distractions. Most of the interviews tend to get too personal with irrelevant comments and judgmental remarks about the personality and appearance of the interviewee.

Illustrated with detailed observations and interviews, Turkey Today may be a good source of information for uninformed readers who are curious about the general social, political, and cultural terrain in Turkey. Nevertheless, the simplified conclusions drawn and the lack of analysis make the book a rather poor source for either teaching or scholarly research purposes.

Alev Çinar
Bilkent University


Revolutionary Iran: Civil Society and State in the Modernization Process, by Masoud Kamali. 311 pages, index. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998. $74.95 (Cloth) ISBN 1-84014-449-1

Written in the tradition of historical sociology, the core theme of Revolutionary Iran is “why the clergy did not take the political power in the Constitutional Revolution (1905-09) when Iran was a traditional society, but succeeded in a modern Iran (1977-79)” (p. 1)? To answer this question, Kamali attempts to analyze the social roots of the two aforementioned revolutions and the socio-cultural changes that occurred in between these two watershed events. His main hypothesis is that “while the ulama participated in the Constitutional Revolution in order to influence the political system and reinforce their position in civil society of Iran, in the Islamic Revolution they participated in order to gain total political power and to reconstruct Iranian society as to conflate the political and civil spheres of the society” (p. 8).

As one may deduce from the above paragraph, the author uses ‘civil society’ as his main conceptual tool. He claims that Iran has had both a ‘modern,’ as well as a ‘traditional,’ civil society, with the latter dating back to the establishment of the Safavid dynasty in 1501. Kamali insists that this type of civil society consists of “communities and institutions rather than individual citizens and their associations” (p. 11). He identifies the ulama and the bazaris as the two main influential groups in this peculiar type of civil society and maintains that as sources of authority and bases for social mobilization, they played a major role in the 1979 revolution. Kamali further maintains that the urban ‘dispossessed’ constituted the backbone and the foot soldiers of the Islamic revolution.

Walking on the empirical and theoretical ground already traveled by Shahrough Akhavi and Said Amir Arjomand, Kamali endorses their thesis that the secularization drive undertaken by the Pahlavi kings both seriously undermined and eventually provoked the opposition of Shiite clerics. Nevertheless, Kamali’s footing is much less solid when he argues that the clergy had a powerful vision of an alternative society that enabled them to emerge as leaders of the civil society. Kamali’s account of the 1979 revolution flies in the face of the fact that this was a revolution without either a clear theory or a blueprint, whose substance, pace, and outcome caught almost everyone―including clerics—by surprise. The author provides hardly any proof that average Iranians are aware of the ruminations of clerics, let alone accept them as undisputed leaders of the civil society in a fragmented and heterogeneous polity such as Iran. The reader may be baffled as to why the author, who according to his introduction was a leftist political prisoner at the time of the 1979 revolution, refrains from engaging in any critical evaluation of the clergy even when he acknowledges their sometimes reactionary and non-democratic positions. Would it have done irreparable harm to his theory if Kamali had acknowledged the fact that the Shah’s state and the clerics also had common interests, that is, countering the Left? At one point, Kamali quotes Napoleon: “History is a myth men agree to believe.” Is it not the task of scholars, however, to unravel those myths and ‘histories’ rather than add to them?

Revolutionary Iran would have benefited from more disciplined and diligent editing, for there are instances in which identical phrases appear more than once (see pp. 1 and 62, 31 and 45, 145 and 156, and 160).

Mehrzad Boroujerdi
Syracuse University



Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity, edited by Joseph Kostiner. 344 pages, endnotes, bibliography, index. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000. $59.95 (Cloth) ISBN 1-55587-862-8

Based on papers presented at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University in 1995, Middle East Monarchies tries unpacking the puzzle of how and why some monarchical regimes in West Asia and North Africa have survived the post-independence wave of republicanism and others have not.

Divided into three sections dealing with “Context,” “Case Studies,” and “Challenges,” the contents of Middle East Monarchies yield a bag of mixed fruit. Most of the case studies in this volume will offer old or thin gruel for seasoned researchers because most of these contributions are concerned only with their country studies, not with comparisons to other cases in the region or to political theory. Other essays, however, take comparative perspectives on theories of monarchical government, yielding interesting insights into the longevity of current dynasties in the region. Political sociologists in particular will appreciate the contributions of Lisa Anderson, Gabriel Ben-Dor, Gregory Gause, and Fred Halliday, whose essays critically discount personality and cultural reasons for monarchical regime longevity and offer instead a variety of political-economy approaches to the problem with more heft and explanatory power. For these authors, rentier fossil fuels income and the eagerness of foreign patrons to protect that asset offer the most convincing explanations for the persistence of monarchical regimes in the region.

Yet, for all their efforts, still more interesting questions are begged by this volume that are barely touched on by the contributors. Could the longevity of Middle Eastern monarchies be better understood by comparing them with the general collapse or destruction of monarchies elsewhere on the planet? Only Halliday casts his eye further than the field of Middle East exceptionalism to consider this question (pp. 292-99). Given that the presidents of many so-called republican regimes in the Middle East are grooming their sons as uncontested future heads of state, the contributors to this volume could also be asked what, if any, are the substantial differences between monarchies and republics in the Middle East? Unfortunately, while some authors such as Bernard Lewis (p. 21) and Joseph Kostiner (p. 11) mention this issue, only Ben-Dor substantially considers whether the difference between monarchies and republics are substantial, preferring that “monarchy was in the past―and still is today―part of the problem of legitimacy and arbitrary rule in the Middle East” (p. 81).

Although several of the essays in Middle East Monarchies will be of interest to students of contemporary government in the Middle East, the relatively high cost of the cloth bound version of this book will dissuade all but research libraries from adding it to their collections. Specialists interested in dynastic government will enjoy the lion’s share of this volume, which should be read in tandem with Michael Herb’s more current All in the Family for a good grasp of how and why monarchies survive in the region's volatile political currents.[1]

Jefferson Gray
University of Chicago

[1] All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democratic Prospects in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (Albany, NY, 1999).



Middle East and North Africa: Governance, Democratization, and Human Rights, edited by Paul J. Magnarella. (Contemporary Perspectives on Developing Societies) 240 pages, tables, maps. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999. $65.95 (Cloth) ISBN 1-84014-913-2

Like many edited volumes, the quality of essays that make up Middle East and North Africa is uneven. Magnarella provides an interesting, albeit short, introduction in which he postulates that adherence to human rights in the Middle East is lacking, despite the commitment of governments to international conventions. The introduction seems to suggest that the crux of the chapters will be exclusively on human rights, the title of the book notwithstanding. But, some of the essays, such as Fred Lawson’s on Syria, spend more time on describing the political system than on assessing the human rights situation.

Manochehr Dorraj’s essay on the compatibility between Islam and democracy provides a good overview of the debate between liberal and conservative interpretations. The author analyzes the thinking of some Muslim scholars to conclude that there is no categorical answer to the question but that one should rather ask: “Which Islam? Who interprets it?” He makes the important point that “Islamic democracy is going to have its own unique attributes and characteristics” and that “Muslim societies have to go through their own process of resolving the contradictions and tensions that emerge on the path of political and economic development.” In short, Muslim countries must “define their own variant of democracy” (p. 34).

All the chapters in the book demonstrate that democratization in the Middle East has failed and has thus not resulted in respect for human rights. Of course, some countries are worse than others, as shown in Judith Yaphe’s essay on Iraq, “The Republic of Fear.” Her chapter reminds readers of the atrocities the regime committed against Iraqi citizens and more brutally against the Kurds and Shi’a Muslims. Unfortunately, one cannot compare the Iraqi human rights situation with that prevailing in Syria because Lawson’s chapter does not provide any assessment.

Michael Fischbach offers a good chapter on Jordan, and shows not only the progress in the area of human rights but also the limitations on democratization. It is unfortunate that the period that the author covers ends in 1997. Mamoun Fandy and Dana Hearn’s chapter on Egypt does an excellent job in showing the conspicuous discrepancy between the Constitution/political discourse on human rights and practice. One is astonished—or perhaps not much—by the repression that exists at all levels in Egypt. Rolin Mainuddin deals with countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, though the focus is only on Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. His core argument is that “democratization and liberalization threaten their [dynasties’] privileged positions. They would prefer the status quo of absolute monarchy over even a transition to constitutional monarchy” (p. 127). One is rather puzzled, though, by the author’s statement that “with bilateral military arrangements with the West, the Gulf sheikhdoms face demands for domestic political change” (p. 138).

The editor’s own chapter on Turkey argues that despite a democratic order, coupled with pressure from Europe, Turkey has not succeeded in guaranteeing human rights, especially for Kurds. Magnarella was also astute in compiling two chapters on Israel, one by Russell Stone dealing with human rights within Israel proper and one by Ilan Peleg on human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The two chapters show quite clearly that the so-called ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ is not immune to criticism when it comes to human rights issues.

M. Mahmoud Mohamedou’s last chapter on the Maghreb countries suffers from serious weaknesses and contradictions, particularly in regard to Algeria, and his analysis draws from secondary sources and some fanciful figures. While the author is correct about the setbacks of democratization in the region, his conclusion that society is retreating while the state is expanding (p. 235) fails to do justice to the societal forces that have wrested important concessions from the authoritarian regimes.

While Middle East and North Africa deals with an important subject, it suffers from unevenness in the quality of essays the editor put together. In general, they are quite informative and could have served as a useful undergraduate textbook on the subject; unfortunately, because of the blatant flaws in some of them, educators should be selective in assigning chapters from this text.

Yahia H. Zoubir
Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management



New Frontiers in Middle East Security, edited by Lenore G. Martin. 274 pages, bibliography, index. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1999. $49.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-312-21414-6

National security in the Middle East has usually been measured in terms of arms imports and strategic guarantees provided by great powers. Nevertheless, military buildups have frequently failed to provide national security. Since most of the real threats facing the region come from non-military sources, Martin has adopted an integrated approach to studying Middle East security. In her edited volume she has examined regional security through five interrelated variables: military capabilities, political legitimacy, ethnic and regional tolerance, economic capabilities, and the availability of natural resources.

A number of contributions focus on issues of domestic political stability and legitimacy. Madawi al-Rasheed sees the controlled educational system of the Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia as creating sociopolitical cohesion, while at the same time providing the ideological ammunition for ‘Islam’ to become the prime medium of political protest in the country. Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid examines the political legitimacy of five principal Arab states: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and Saudi Arabia, ranking them based upon variables such as political prisoners, domestic political violence, freedom of press, orderly change of government or regime, management of external threats, and crime rates. Farhad Kazemi and Augustus Richard Norton argue that most of the Middle Eastern regimes face discontent over rising expectations, inefficiency of rulers, and “sugar-coated authoritarianism” (p. 89). Sencer Ayata and Ayşe Güneş-Ayata examine the religious and ethnic struggles confronting Turkey in terms of the dual tensions between the state’s secular identity and the Islamization of Turkish society, and between the state’s nationalist self-conception and the revival of Kurdish identity.

In other contributions the focus is on economics. Sohrab Shahabi and Farideh Farhi argue that the Arab-Israeli peace process, “even if ultimately unsuccessful, has taken away from the Arab rulers the ever-present alibi or political asset they had for gaining the emotional and political support of the Arab masses” (p. 155). As a result, the ability of the regimes to survive depends upon successful economic reforms. Underscoring this issue, Roger Owen examines the economic options facing the Middle East at the regional and global levels. Contrary to popular perceptions, Hillel Shuval convincingly argues that though problematic, the tensions arising out of shortage of water are manageable. Examining the Israeli-Syrian water conflict he suggests that if the dispute over water rights “is converted to financial terms, the annual amount of money involved is hardly enough to justify bringing an end to the peace negotiations or starting a ‘water war’” (p. 208).

The last chapter, by Yair Evron, deals with the military aspect of Middle East security, examining the basic features of the security regimes that existed between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The absence of formal peace did not prevent the states of the region from reaching a modus vivendi over each other’s redlines.

Both the approach and the issues raised in this book are valid and pertinent, making it an interesting, in-depth, comprehensive contribution to the understanding of the Middle East security.

P. R. Kumaraswamy
Jawaharlal Nehru University



Russia and the Middle East: Towards a New Foreign Policy, by Talal Nizameddin. 296 pages, bibliography, index. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. $49.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-312-22538-5

Russia and the Middle East provides “a better understanding” of post-Soviet Russia’s policy in the Middle East (p. 9). Chapters two and three deal with Soviet activities in the period between 1945 and 1991. Chapter four examines the debates which preceded the formulation of Yeltsin’s “national foreign policy” (p. 71). Primakov, in particular, is credited with “creating a coherent and steady policy” which led to the normalization of Russia’s relations with the West and the Middle East (p. 102). Succeeding chapters analyze Moscow’s efforts to improve relations with Israel (chapter five); Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the PLO (chapter six); Saudi Arabia and Iraq (chapter seven); and Turkey and Iran (chapter eight). In dealing with them, Russia ran into problems arising from such complex regional issues as the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. The author concludes (chapter nine) that Moscow’s policy in the Middle East is designed “to ensure stability, to minimize US influence, and to allow fair access to trade and general economic relations.” He judges these aims to be rational and reflective of Russia’s status as a great power (p. 270).

While Nizameddin’s conclusions are warranted, some of his underlying assumptions are not. He argues that, after 1991, “‘national’ interests were for the first time in the history of Russia being promoted as a legitimate and absolutely necessary framework for conducting foreign policy” (p. 254). Was this not true of Imperial Russia as well? And, rhetoric aside, Stalin’s European policy during the 1930s was based on realpolitik, not on Marxism. Nizameddin notes also that, after 1991, the “bipolar world…[was replaced by] one based upon regions of priority and interests” (p. 254). Yet even during the Soviet period, the Kremlin clearly distinguished between the respective importance of the various parts of the world. Then, as now, the US and Europe, China and East Asia, and only then the Middle East, topped the list of Moscow’s geographic priorities.

Moreover, the background section contains sweeping generalizations which are not always supported by facts. Stalin’s policy in the Middle East is presented as a series of “blunders” (p. 255), although his backing of Israel accelerated the withdrawal of the British troops from Palestine and led to political upheavals in several Arab states, providing an opening for the Soviet entry into the Arab East. Conversely, Khrushchev’s policy is described as a success (p. 255), even though Moscow’s clients persecuted the local Communists and refused, with one short-lived exception (Egypt), to sanction the establishment of Soviet bases on their territory (pp. 30-31). When Nizameddin does broach the subject in the context of the expanding Soviet naval presence in the Mediterranean, he refers to Syria as the USSR’s “only friendly base in the region” (pp. 34-35). Since Moscow never obtained a military base in Syria, the meaning of the statement is not clear. Similarly, the author frequently describes some Arab states as Soviet ‘allies,’ but the nature of such ‘alliances’ is never explained.

In spite of its shortcomings, Russia and the Middle East provides a good introduction to post-Communist Russia’s policy in the Middle East. It will inform the general reader and can be used in undergraduate and graduate seminars on the foreign policy of the Russian Federation.

O. M. Smolansky
Lehigh University