[BLANK_AUDIO]. Welcome to lesson nine in our course on the emergence of the modern Middle East, and today we will be discussing Middle Eastern stateness. Islamic revival and the Arab Spring, our discussion on these subjects is a discussion of the Middle East post 1967. 1967 and the Arab failure in the war with Israel was the beginning of a new era. The defeat in the war with Israel was not just a defeat in the battlefield, but it was a failure of Pan-Arabism to bring the power, the prestige, and the prosperity that it had promised. Pan-Arabism now appeared to be an empty vessel. The vacuum it left behind was filled by two simultaneous, but essentially contradictory trends, one was the entrenchment of the territorial state, and the other was the rise of political Islam, and the rise of political Islam was very much a challenge to this, secular concept of the territorial state. First, lets discuss the entrenchment of the territorial state. The defeat of 1967 was the acceleration of the decline of the pan-Arab movement which had actually begun a few years before 1967, such as with the break up of the United Arab Republic as we have seen in 1961. The old dichotomy between progressive Arab regimes and reactionary Arab regimes, as they were referred to before 1967, was now completely irrelevant. Both the progressives and the reactionaries as they were called were defeated by Israel. This was now the time for the victory of the narrow state interest. Raison de Tempe as the French call it. If pan-Arabism has indeed in such decline, it only made sense to now emphasize the narrow state's interest rather than seeing some kind of collective Arab imperative that the state's ought to follow. Egypt is the leading actor in this new change. The war of attrition that Egypt fought for two years against Israel after the 67 war was a war that was very costly to Egypt, and to the people of Egypt, in their own home ground. That is, in the Nile valley in the delta, where the price of war was felt for the first time very immediately. And in Egypt, after succeeding Abdel Nasser, in 1970, one of the first decisions made by Anwar Sadat, was to change the name of the country, from the United Arab Republic, to the Arab Republic of Egypt. In Arabic, Gumhuriyyat Misr al-Arabiyya and the order here, is important. Misr Egypt comes first and Arabia, Arab, come second. This was not about semantics, but about a redirection and a reorientation of Egyptian politics. This was an Egypt first policy, therefore it was in the service of Egypt's state interests. That Sadat first went to war with Israel and then chose to make peace with it, without reference to the wished of the Arab Collective in any serious way, of all the Arab states, Egypt of the Nile was the most self-evident, natural, territorial state. Egypt was a separate, clearly defined political entity with a relatively homogenous population. And Egyptians had an authentic collective sense of belonging to the Egyptian state well before the advent of pan-Arabism. After all, Egyptianism had emerged in the latter part of the 19th century, long before pan-Arabism became a term that was used in every Arab home in the 20th century. However, this trend was less obvious in other countries, but in other countries, artificial as they may have been, a similar attempt at territorialism was made all the same. First, let's look at Saddam's Iraq, in Baath Iraq that lasted from 1968 until 2003 until Saddam was overthrown by the U.S. invasion. In Saddam's Republic of Fear, as it was called, the ethnic or sectarian minorities, the Kurds and the Shi'is, although the later were a minority in the political, but not the numerical sense. The Kurds and the Shi'is were crushed into submission by the institutions of violence of the Iraqi Baath Party. Cohesion the name of Iraqi-Arab nationalism, and leadership of the Arab world with which neither Kurds, who were not Arabs. Nor Shi'is for whom Arab nationalism was just another version of Sunni domination, neither of these could identify with this kind of Arab nationalism, and therefore Arabism was not a solution for Iraqi cohesion. But nor was Iraqiness, which was an illusory concept, thrust upon the public from above. Saddam, through state sponsorship of historical theories, the arts and archaeology, endeavored to foster a sense of national Iraqi uniqueness and pride, through the creation of an intimate relationship. Between the people and the territorial pre-Islamic history of Babylonian Iraq. But these Babylon-Iraq manipulations could not erase or even paper over the predominant sectarian identities within the Iraqi state. Iraqi artists, poets, novelists, and playwrites were all encouraged by Saddam to derive their inspiration from the civilizations and cultures that flourished in ancient Mesopotamia Iraq, from remote antiquity to the modern age. That is, anchored in Iraq's pre-Islamic, Babylonian past. [BLANK_AUDIO]. The occupation of Kuwait in 1990, was intended to serve the Iraqi states narrow strategic needs. Even if the justifications were based on pan-Arabism, and virtually all the Arab states favored maintaining the old state order, that is to recreate Kuwait that was invaded by Saddam Hussein, and to recreate the state order despite its colonial origins. And the Arab States, generally speaking, supported the United States war against Iraq to dislodge its forces from Kuwait and reestablish Kuwaiti independence. In the heyday of pan-Arabism, one could hardly believe in a war that the United States would wage with Arab support against another Arab state. In actual fact, irrespective of whether the regime was more or less pan-Arab, or more or less territorial, or even Islamist. The modern trappings of the Baath regime were a mere pretext for secretarian Sunni domination of Iraqi society. The real political foundations of the regime had nothing to do with Saddam's Babylon Iraq, invented historical manipulation. The iron-fisted grip of Saddam in Iraq began to loosen however after Iraq's expulsion from Kuwait by the US in early 1991. Kurdish and Shi'ite uprisings of the spring of 1991 were suppressed, but the regime could not prevent the de facto autonomy, that was established with US support in the Kurdish region, after the overthrow of Saddam by the US military invasion in 2003. The Kurdish regional government, though part of a new Iraqi federal structure, developed into a quasi-independent state in all but name and achieved a level of stability and prosperity far above the rest of the country. The toppling of Saddam was, in fact, the overthrow of the Sunnis, who had been in control of Iraq for more than a millennium. From the early days of the Muslim Caliphate, to the Ottomans, and then in the British constructed state of Iraq. The new post Baath-Iraq was no longer defined as an Arab state but as a more decentralized Arab-Kurdish federation. The Kurds took their separate course, but the Arabs of Iraq remain deeply divided between Sunnis and Shia's. The U.S. invasion of Iraq swept away the comforting fantasy of a non-sectarian society. For the first time in the modern history of Iraq, the Sunni Arabs' were forced to confront the loss of their ascendant power as a community. The empowerment of the Shi'ite majority was an insufferable defeat for the Sunnis, who have essentially refused ever since to acquiesce in the new reality. Sunni disaffection is at the root, of the on again, off again violent struggle, if not to say civil war in Iraq. Ever since the U.S. invasion which has claimed the lives of many thousands on both sides. Despite all the conflicting subnational and supernational identities, some sense of Iraqness and identification with the states has in fact coalesced over the almost 100 years since Iraq was founded. This sense of Iraqiness has not been entirely erased from the consciousness of Iraqis despite the profound religious and sectarian cleavages. Thus the Shi'ites of Iraq have shown no inclination to wed their Arab state to the Iranian state of their Persian co-religionists. And ethnic tensions between Persians and Iraqis are part of the Iraqi-Iranian reality. Another example of this developing stateness, is that of Syria. For Syria there was a very sour taste of Arab union that hadn't worked between Syria and Egypt between 1958 and 1961. And there was a very strong desire in Syria, despite all the flair about Arab union and Arab nationalism, a very strong desire to protect their, independance. From the mid 1970s, the uniform fabric of Baath pan-Arab ideology in Syria started to show shades of territorial Syrian, and pan-Syrian nationalism. It seems that Hafiz al-Assad, like Saddam Hussein, had reached a conclusion, but since it was not realistic to expect complete Arab unity to be quickly achieved. It was necessary to satisfy the popular need for a more permanent political basis of identification. Than a Syrian entity that was deemed illegitimate by pan-Arab party doctrine. And as such, necessarily temporary, while Hafiz al-Assad officially remained faithful to the party's long term vision of Arab unity, the Syrian leadership searched for a formula. That would bridge the gap between party ideals of Arab unity and political reality. Just as Egypt had shifted away from the conflict of Israel, Syria was desperately in need of a new strategic alignment that would encompass Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinians, and enable the Syrians to establish some kind of parity with Israel. Thus, the old motif of Greater Syria was given a new lease on life by the Baath regime in service of Syria's state interest, it's raison d'etre, in later years. It did not disappear, it actually became part of Baath political thinking together with a more traditional pan-Arabism that was coupled with notions of a more narrowly defined territorial nationalism, based on Syria's existing borders. Thus archeological finds of the Roman era in Syria gave a great boost to a Syrian sense of national pride. And were presented as evidence of the pre-Islamic historical greatness of Syria. There wasn't even an effort to present these finds as part of the Arab heritage but rather as part of Syria's past. Occupation of large parts of Lebanon in 1976 by Syria and the interstate arrangement between these two states did not bring about any change in the boundaries. Syria continued to preserve the boundary between Syria and Lebanon. Even though this was regarded in Baath ideology as something very artificial that shouldn't really be there. And Greater Syria became a question more of strategic need rather than an ideological conviction. It was all about serving the strategic needs of the Syrian state, and Syria had indeed become a player in its own right. It was now a stable and a powerful country, the fountainhead and beating heart of Arabism in theory. But the emphasis was on Syria far more than it was of Arabism. Jordan and the Palestinians have also had their development of stateness and territorial identity, each one of these in their own particular way. Palisteniansts was quite unique, created in the crucible of 1948, the Nakba, the defeat by Israel, and as opposed to other Arab states,. Searching for some kind of usable past to give a measure of historical content to their auth, artificial territorial creations. For the Palestinians it was all about the loss of territory that served as the backbone of the cohesive collective memory. The loss of Palestine is what gave the Palestinians their territorial identity. The loss of Palestine, being the backbone of their collective memory. As for the Jordanians, their Jordanian-ness was defined against the ultimate Palestinian other. Especially after the civil war between the Jordanian government and the PLO in September, 1970. Since September, 1970 there has been a very deliberate promotion in Jordan, of a particular Jordanian identity based on a common past even if it is a bit of historical invention. The Jordanian identity was therefore portrayed as having existed as a separate identity, in Ottoman times in the 19th century, and though this wasn't really so, it became part of the Jordanian national narrative. And therefore, if this is to be true, the foundation of the monarchy was based on self-determination of the Jordanian people. That was an existent people in the 1920s, and not a colonial fiat. As it had actually been in reality, like other Arab states seeking to create a territorial identity, Jordan was also in search of a usable past. And thus, Jordan was described as a wellspring of civilization ever since the Roman conquests, through the ancient Nevetians of Jordan and the Muslim conquests of the seventh century, which all became part of Jordanian history. Jordanian-ness was also founded on the uniqueness of the tribal monarchical compact as the core of Jordanian national identity, the special association between the tribes and their support for the monarchical regime in Jordan. Jordan's relative cohesion in comparison to the other Arab states of the fertile crescent has also contributed to its surprisingly long-term stability. No less an artificial creation than its neighbors, and many would argue even considerably more so. Jordan has had a much better political record, and this better political record is definitely related to Jordan's being a homogeneous society in religious terms. More than 90% of the Jordanians are Sunni Muslim Arabs. Since 1948, it has become increasingly Palestinian, and Palestinians presently constitute a majority of just over 50% in Jordan of the East Bank alone. That is not taking into account the West Bank territory occupied by Israel, since 1967. But as tense as relationships are between Jordanians and Palestinians, the distinctions between them are latter-day 20th century ones, they are skin-deep in comparison to the far more profound fault lines, such as between Sunnis and Shi'ias that date back centuries. Tribalism amongst Jordan's East Bankers is a strong and very relevant social marker. But tribalism in Jordan has actually been mobilized far more in the service of the state than against it. In fact, the Jordanian state has become their political patrimony, that is the political patrimony of the Jordanian tribes. They have no other patrimony, and they will fight to defend their own. Therefore in Jordan it was not just a top-down exercise like in Iraq, but a bottom-up one, too. Whereby the tribes actively adopted the Jordanian identity as their own, to the extent that they have actually become the main standard bearers of what can be termed Jordanianism. For more than a decade, Abdullah the second who has been in power since 1999 has promoted the idea of Jordan first. Jordan first being an example of the uninhibited war at willingness to advance territorial identity.
