Is your Government Legitimate?

Misleading Legitimacies (May 4, 2009)

 

Note: This essay on misleading legitimacies is a worldwide problem that is spreading chaos and instability.  Thus, this essay can sustain more than one chapter.  The first part will focus on the Arab and Islamic legitimacies in the Arab World.      

 

Absence of legitimacy in any society creates a sense of weightlessness in the emotions and orientations of citizens that may spread havoc.  The lack of credibility in authority, institution, and even an eminent personality in matter of moral standing can subject society to be doomed to the rule of the jungle: those perceived to be the strongest in military forces or in organizational stabilities feel legitimate as tyrants to exercise their violent tendencies and commit massacres and drive society into chaos.

 

            I like to start with two examples not directly related to the Arab World. We have the case of Indonesia in the 1960’s.  As Sukarno secured the Independence of Indonesia, the most populous of the Moslem world, Islam was oriented toward a secular State and was the most tolerant.  The colonial mines of raw materials were nationalized and Sukarno was a pillar of the non-aliened States and normal relations with the Soviet Union and China were progressing without any serious popular opposition. Sukarno was endowed with popular legitimacy because he satisfied the sense of dignity of his people. In fact, Sukarno had the foresight to combine the doctrines of nationalism, Islam, and communism under the acronym NASACOM but it did not gel well in the short time of his legitimate authority.   As the USA was bracing for a long protracted war in Vietnam, then the US Administration decided to secure the total adhesion of the neighboring States with Vietnam to its ideology; the same bipolar pronouncement “You are either with us or against us”.  Thus, Suharto was propelled by a military coup and from October 1965 to the summer of 1966 over 600,000 of the Indonesian intelligentsia was executed in universities, the administrations, in the Capital Jakarta, and even in remote villages.  By the end of this dictatorship that lasted over 20 years Islam re-emerged with a different sense of urgencies, more radical, and more zealot.

            Let us consider the case of legitimacy in Iran. Mossadegh PM tried in 1951 to have a deal with British Petroleum for half its profit on its exploitation of Iran’s oil  BP refused and Mossadegh nationalized this oil company by a vote in the parliament.  Britain encouraged the US Administration to lead a military coup that brought back the young Shah to power in 1953 for 25 years of tyranny, security harassments, lavish expenditures on personal aggrandizement, purchasing the largest military hardware in the region, and fighting off the powerful Mullahs.  The Shah succumbed to Khomeini when President Carter refused to support his “precarious” legitimacy.  Iran reverted to an extremist conservative Chiaa Islam.

            The concept of Arab nationalism is at least two century old and its resurgence was based on two critical factors.  First, as the Ottoman Empire waned in culture and civilization by the 18th century the cultured intelligencia in Syria and Lebanon immigrated to Egypt for an environment more suited to their literary creativity and publishing. The climate of openness to various civilizations in Egypt sent a choc wave to the Ottoman Empire that was reverting to Turk nationalism; the successive political turbulence in Turkey considered the nations outside the boundaries of Turkey as nominal dominions that were not worth the investment in time or money.  The parties and free minded people who proclaimed the need to revert to Arab culture and Arab language were persecuted and hanged.

            Second, Iran of the 18th century has consolidated the power base of its Empire on the Chiaa sect that attacked the Caliphate legitimacy of the Ottoman Sultan.  Many non-Sunni sects proselytized a return to conservative fundamentals of Islam (for example, the Wahhabit of Najd in the Arab Peninsula and the Yazd in Yemen) were censuring the dominant concept of Caliphate. This second chock wave in religious fundamentals of governing focused the attention of the Sunni Moslem toward Mecca and the Hashemi dynasty, supposedly descendent of the Prophet Muhammad.  During the First World War, the British colonial power exploited this spiritual revolt into convincing the Arab Moslems into revolting and fighting the Ottoman Empire with lavish promises that it had no intention of keeping.

            Consequently, the spirit of Arab nationalism started in earnest during the First World War when the colonial powers tried to ally the “Arab” Moslems against their co-religionist Moslems in Turkey. The colonial powers had no intentions of permitting the “Arabs” to instituting any sustainable State economically, politically, or strategically. King Faissal of Mecca was promised Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan but the French mandate chased him out. The British mandate allocated Faissal the “throne” of Iraq but Faissal was overturned and died at the age of 50.

            The Syrian Nation spirit spread in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. First, the Syrian could not conceive why the urban societies in Syria should succumb to nomadic sovereigns selected in Mecca; second, as the Arabic civilization has died 5 centuries ago, even before the advent of the Ottoman Empire, it was necessary to dust off the previous civilizations to Islam and re-invent a national culture and civilization that reflected the urban spirit of fertile Syria.  The Arabic formal language was fundamental to maintain, encourage, and solidify as the motherland language while maintaining the ethnic languages. 

In 1936, the Syria National Social Party was founded by a Christian Orthodox Antoun Saadeh from Mount Lebanon. This political and ideological party focused on regional unities by adding Iraq to the Syrian Nation and uniting Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. The other nations would include the Arab Peninsula, the Nile nations, and then the northern Arab nations in Africa such as Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.  Antoun Saadeh recognized that this region is Moslem by a large margin and wrote a well researched book “Islam (submission to One God): One message Christ and Muhammad” The mandated powers of France and Britain were highly worried of this wild fire being disseminated in the Middle East. Thus, the mandated powers did the utmost to discredit this new ideology by rekindling confessional emotions and sectarian communities and spreading false information on the affiliations of its founders. The founding leader Antoun Saadeh was to be executed without trial by a military court.

In 1945, the Baath political party was founded by Michel Aflak, another Christian Orthodox in Syria.  This new party excited the Arabic nomadic romantic spirit. By 1946 half a dozen States in the Arab World were recognized by the UN such as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia of the Seoud dynasty. The Baath party took roots in Syria and Iraq and was ruled by Sunnis; this party was swept away when Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt came to power and galvanized the Arab populations into the feeling of a new identity and recapturing its dignity. The Baath Party was ready to include any new State recognizing Arabic as the State language into the Arab Nation. As one Arab State after another were recognized independent by the UN then Sunnis tried to galvanize the populations into uniting under a vast nation, from Morocco to Sudan to Yemen to Iraq, all in all 21 States reunited under the Arab League.  The Sunnis were enthusiastic for any Arab unity since they form the vast majority in this region; they ultimately contemplated to re-institute the Caliphate.

When the military coup of Gamal Abdel Nasser recaptured power in Egypt it dethroned the King.  Many Egyptians believed that “The Moslem Brotherhood” was behind this coup: the “Moslem Brotherhood” had legitimacy among the Egyptian population and had infiltrated the army. Then Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1955 run by Britain and France.  It happened that in the same period the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to crush a revolt again communism.  The US Administration was in a serious predicament; if it allowed France and Britain to capture Egypt by a military alternative then what message it would be sending to the under developed States?  That the ideologies of capitalism and communism are the same enemies to the new recognized States. Eisenhower pressured France and Britain to withdraw and Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged politically the victor and the symbol of Arab regained pride and dignity.  The first move of the newly established “legitimate leader” was to crush his serious challenger to legitimacy, mainly the “Moslem Brotherhood” party.

Many political parties in the Arab World sensed the pulse of the emotional feeling of the masses; a few fought back this unpractical nation with the lame tool of rationality and others countered with the logic that nationality and religion were outmoded by the advent of communism.  In fact, every military coup that was supported by communists turned against the communists in no time.  Gamal Abdel Nasser set the tune and the tone; the Arab masses listened to their legitimate leader regardless of his set backs, pitfalls, critical errors, and his one party dictatorship ruling.  The legitimate leader could be forgiven for crushing liberties, freedom of opinions, and sending thousands in prison and hundreds dieing under torture.

In 1965, the Palestinian Resistance under the leadership of Fateh’s Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar) started re-taking its destiny and responsibility for the forgotten Palestinian aspiration to a motherland.   Gamal Abdel Nasser understood that his legitimacy is being challenged for failing to deal with the Palestinians rights of return to their lands.  This feeling of challenge to legitimacy was one of the main implicit factors that pressured Gamal Abdel Nasser to ask the UN peacekeeping forces to vacate Sinai in 1967 and the follow up crushing military defeat by the tiny Zionist state of Israel.  (To be continued in Part 2).

 

Note 2: The theme was extracted from Amine Maalouf’s book “Le Dereglement du Monde”