Students: Focus countries
Focus country: Tunisia
The wave of popular protests and revolutions that swept the Arab world in 2011 brought the question of the relationship between Islam and politics to the forefront of contemporary debate and discussion. The case of Tunisia merits special attention, first because it is, arguably, the sole “success story” of the Arab Uprisings and, more importantly for our purposes, because it involves an instance where an Islamist political party, En-Nahda, enjoyed considerable success at the polls but subsequently relinquished power and joined a coalition with parties of the secular-left. This would appear, on its face, to weaken the “one man, one vote, one time” hypothesis.
En-Nahda (“Renaissance”), was established in 1989 as the successor to the Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI—Mouvement de la Tendance Islamique). However, various waves of government crackdowns meant that Tunisia’s Islamists were a marginal political force at best until being banned outright in the early 1990s. While Islamism was dormant in Tunisia for nearly two decades, En-Nahda’s chief ideologue, Rachid Ghannouchi, working from the safety of exile in Europe, grew in stature as a global Islamist thinker during which time much of his work was focused on resolving the apparent tensions between Islamic belief and modern democracy. The overthrow of the Zein Abedine Ben Ali regime in 2011, opened an opportunity for En-Nahda to vie for political power as Tunisia embarked on a political transition. While Ghannouchi has not assumed any formal political office since his return to Tunisia, he remains the ideological head of the En-Nahda Movement.
The role of secularism and Islam in public life became a central point of discussion in the run-up to the 2011 elections for the Tunisian constituent assembly. When the results came in, En-Nahda won over 37 percent of the popular vote, and 41 percent of seats, becoming by far the largest party in the legislature, although the balance between Islamist and secularist party seats was relatively balanced. En-Nahda proceeded to form a coalition government—popularly known as the “troika”—with the social democratic Ettakatol party and the center-left Congress for the Republic (CPR—“Congrès pour la République”)—with En-Nahda secretary-general Hamadi Jebali as prime minister.
What was immediately noteworthy in the Tunisian context was the contrast between En-Nahda’s respect for the opposition in Tunisia’s transitional and constitutional process relative to the more clumsy and ham-fisted approach of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt. Indeed, Ghannouchi and secular opposition leader of the Nidaa Tounes party, Beji Caid Essebsi, are credited with having invested their political capital and personal reputations to convincing their respective supporters and inner circles to pursue consensual political settlements. For his part, Ghannouchi challenged his own party to compromise by accepting the removal of a controversial reference to shari’ah in the new constitution and abandoning an article that referred to the status of women as “complementary to men.”
Like its regional Islamist counterparts, En-Nahda is far from a monolithic political party. In fact, operating and governing in a democratic context, En-Nahda has experienced considerable tensions between its political leadership and its regional support base. Here, debates have focused more on issues of transitional governance with supporters pressuring En-Nahda’s leadership on the role of unelected “technocrats,” on the drafting of a political exclusion law for members of the Ben Ali regime, and on preventing the targeting of religious-minded individuals by the authorities. Ultimately, En-Nahda proved willing to compromise and adapt to political realities on the so-called classical Islamist issues, such as the place of sharia in the constitution, the status of women, and the criminalization of blasphemy.
In January 2013, his failure to establish a technocratic government as promised prompted the resignation of Prime Minister Jebali who was succeeded by Interior Minister Ali Laarayedh. Since the 2011 elections, En-Nahda leaders had been controversially encouraging Salafi groups to renounce violence and join the political process calculating that participation in democratic politics would incentivize the Salafis to moderate their more radical views (i.e. the “inclusion–moderation” hypothesis). However, two high-profile political assassinations of members of the leftist Popular Front and escalating jihadi violence triggered a political crisis. Subsequently, Ghannouchi signed up to a road map for national dialogue that included the resignation of Prime Minister Ali Larayedh’s En-Nahda-led government as a prelude to negotiations on the formation of a technocratic government, the finalization of the constitution, and an agreement on general elections to be held by the end of 2014.
In the 2014 constituent assembly elections, secularist opposition party Nidaa Tounes won a plurality of seats, giving it the right to name a prime minister and lead a coalition government. En-Nahda’s vote share dropped to 28 percent. In January 2015, Habib Essid was nominated as Prime Minister and the following month he formed a unity government that included Ennahda, a controversial move given Nidaa Tounes’ campaign promise to remove Ennahda from power if elected.
In recent months, Jihadist attacks that killed more than 60 tourists at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis and a resort in Sousse have drawn attention to Tunisia’s susceptibility to ISIS-inspired extremism with its tourism sector accounting for almost 15 percent of the Tunisian economy. The attacks prompted a security clampdown by the state including the deployment of army reservists to tourist areas and the shuttering of 80 mosques. However, in spite of a fragile security situation, Tunisia remains the political bright hope of the 2011 Arab Uprisings. As noted in the textbook, the more deliberative path followed by En-Nahda, combined with that country’s more pluralistic political environment, seems to be enabling slow but solid progress toward democracy.
Focus country: Yemen
While Islamist politics in Yemen are complex and multifaceted, tribal connections have traditionally been the focal point around which political, economic, and social lives are constructed. This blend of Islamism and tribalism underpins some of the Islamist currents in Yemen, including the Islah party, which includes a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated faction, as well as the Houthi movement, a Zaydi Shia movement based in the north that has fought a number of conflicts with the central government since 2003–2004. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), arguably Al-Qaeda’s most active franchise, is also based in Yemen and has been the target of a sustained U.S. drone campaign since 2010.
In early 2011, pro-reform demonstrations broke out in Yemen, mirroring protests across the region. Protestors in Yemen initially articulated similar demands to those articulated in Egypt and Tunisia, reproaching the Saleh regime for rampant unemployment and increasing poverty, as well as authoritarianism and political repression. However, the character of the Yemeni protests—and the manner in which they have unfolded and developed—can only be fully understood in the context of the idiosyncrasies of Yemeni domestic politics as well as the anxieties of its regional neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia. The geographical and political fault lines that divide Yemen’s northern and southern regions, which have frayed in the 25 years since Yemeni unification, soon manifested themselves on a larger scale.
While the demonstrations at the political center initially adopted a character very similar to those in Egypt and Tunisia, with the leaders of the Islamist Islah party reluctant to participate in the protests, demonstrations in peripheral regions soon reflected simmering regional and sectarian differences. In the south of the country, for instance, the protests developed an anti-northern and secessionist dimension. In November 2011, President Saleh eventually stepped down after long, internationally facilitated negotiations, and his replacement, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, was ratified in a popular referendum. Meanwhile, the Houthi movement in the north used the chaos of the uprising to consolidate and expand its power. Confrontations in the north turned violent as the Houthis laid siege to the Salafist Dar al-Hadith religious school in the village of Dammaj at the end of 2011.
In September 2014, a Houthi militia linked up with allies of the Saleh family and rapidly moved south, overrunning an army affiliated with al-Islah, and capturing the capital Sanaa. In the aftermath, President Hadi was compelled to sign a power-sharing agreement with the Houthis. Hadi subsequently resigned from his office in January 2015 after Houthi rebels raided his residence and placed him under house arrest. As the Houthis moved further south, they came into conflict with both AQAP and hostile tribal communities. The Houthi expansion beyond their traditional areas of operation and control, and capture of the political center, caused considerable alarm among Yemen’s regional neighbors, who have tended to characterize the Houthis as an Iranian proxy. Citing a request for outside intervention by Yemen’s deposed President Abd-Rabu Mansour Hadi, the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan launched airstrikes in an attempt to shore up the political center. The conflict has prompted the Saudis to rekindle their relationship with the MB-affiliated faction of the Islah Party in an apparent attempt to marshal anti-Houthi forces.
The situation in Yemen today exemplifies the increasing political emphasis on a Sunni–Shia sectarian divide in specific national contexts (also in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Bahrain) as a mobilizational tool in a larger regional cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Hamas—Updater
Palestinian politics continues to be beset by factionalism and periodic open conflict with Israel, amid failed efforts to achieve reconciliation between key Palestinian groups. In recent months, the breakdown of the Palestinian unity government, recurring labor strikes in the vital health and education sectors, the slow pace of reconstruction after its 2014 conflict with Israel, ongoing tensions with a hostile Egyptian regime, and increased Salafi–jihadi activity in the Gaza Strip have further isolated Hamas and complicated its political calculi.
Hamas’ fortunes declined in the aftermath of the military coup that deposed Egyptian President Morsi in July 2013. The al-Sisi regime has brutally suppressed the Brotherhood in Egypt and is equally intolerant of its Palestinian offshoot. The Egyptian military has gone to great lengths to dismantle Hamas’ expansive network of tunnels that connected Gaza to Sinai and that were a significant conduit for both civilian goods and weapons thus depriving Hamas of one an important tax revenue stream.
In April 2014, a deal was reached to form a Palestinian unity government—a cabinet of independent technocrats jointly chosen by Fatah and Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the deal and urged international governments to not recognize the unity government. However, much to Netanyahu’s chagrin, the U.S. announced that it would work with the new interim government.
On July 8th, 2014, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) conducted its third incursion into the Hamas-administered Gaza Strip in six years (or “Operation Protective Edge” as it was known in Israeli military parlance). More than 2,000 Palestinians and over 60 Israelis were killed in the ensuing hostilities. As in previous incursions, a large proportion of the Palestinians killed in the conflict were civilians, prompting international condemnation. Militarily, Hamas was able to showcase a much-improved capacity since the Gaza War of 2008–9 (“Operation Cast Lead”) and scored some tactical victories—including the temporary closure of Ben Gurion International Airport. Moreover, Hamas’ repeated refusal to accept ceasefire proposals gave it the upper hand in the war-termination process. Hamas’ popularity was enhanced in the immediate post-ceasefire period.
The Palestinian unity government ultimately never took hold in the Gaza Strip, having failed to offer solutions to ease the blockade of Gaza, provide timely post-conflict reconstruction assistance, nor secure a long-term commitment to paying Hamas’ more than 40,000 civil servants. Hamas interpreted the slow pace of the reconstruction process as an attempt to undermine its support. The unity government resigned unilaterally in June 2015 having failed to schedule elections that had been pledged by the end of 2015 and citing an inability to operate in the Gaza Strip with Hamas refusing to cede control. Moreover, intra-factional tensions were exacerbated by media reports of indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas.
While ISIS affiliates and supporters make up a very small portion of Gaza’s population, Salafi–jihadi groups with loose links with ISIS have become more prominent in southern Gaza. These groups perceive Hamas as unacceptably moderate and have launched low-level attacks against internal targets in Gaza, along with launching rockets at Israel. A number of Gaza-based jihadi groups reportedly switched their loyalty from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the wake of the public divorce of ISIS from Al-Qaeda. While this “pro-ISIS” camp remains small and internally fragmented, Hamas undoubtedly fears that growing dissatisfaction in Gaza and increasing Salafi–jihadi activity in neighboring Sinai holds the potential to serve as a recruiting tool for extremist groups sympathetic to ISIS.
Iran—Country updater
Since coming to power in June 2013, President Rouhani has disappointed many reformers who were perhaps overly optimistic about a widening space for political activity and improvements in human rights. Nevertheless, Rouhani has undoubtedly attempted to soften the regime’s ideological edges and worked behind the scenes to reverse some hardline policies. For instance, he has dismayed hardliners by giving some prominent roles in government to members of minority groups and women, appointing Iran’s first female ambassador since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Rouhani has also removed hardliners appointed by former President Ahmadinejad to overhaul Iranian state universities and reinstated faculty members who had been purged for opposing hardliners.
In September 2013, Rouhani further distanced himself from former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by referring to the Holocaust as a “reprehensible” crime against the Jewish people during an interview with CNN. Rouhani subsequently invited Iran’s only Jewish lawmaker to accompany his delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Rouhani has since twice pledged more than $150,000 in government funds to the country’s only Jewish hospital and has agreed to allow Jewish schools to be closed on Saturday to mark the Sabbath.
Green movement leaders and their reformist supporters continue to be excluded from political life, with former President Mohammad Khatami’s name having been banned from mention in the media and reformists such as Khatami as well as opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, his wife Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi being euphemistically referred to as “the leaders of the sedition” in media and official discourses.
The nuclear issue remains the top foreign policy issue for the Islamic Republic with the Iranian economy under grave pressure from international sanctions—a situation that has been compounded recently by legacies of economic mismanagement and corruption and, more recently, by plummeting oil prices. Nuclear negotiations have gained considerable momentum under Rouhani’s—and, ultimately, Khamenei’s—direction, although hardliners remain critical of the talks. While Supreme Leader Khamenei and other Shia clerical leaders have declared their ethical opposition to nuclear weapons based on principles of Islamic law, Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar notes that:
[Khamenei’s nuclear fatwa] does not automatically deprive Iran’s military doctrine of the nuclear option, as Iranian officials argue. Nor does it conceal the Iranian government’s “true” apocalyptic goals, as some U.S. conservatives claim. It does not make Tehran any less or more rational than other players. Iran’s development and deployment of religious ideology is meticulously tailored around regime security and factional interests. “Sharia” is a means to control the state not the goal of the state.
The rise of ISIS and political instability in neighboring Iraq have prompted Iran to provide substantial military aid to the Baghdad government, including sending military advisers, deploying elite squadrons, and increasing support for Shia militias trying to roll back ISIS gains on the ground. Rouhani has said that threats to Shia holy sites in Karbala and Najaf would constitute a “red line” for Iran and Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli has added that, “if something like this happens, there will be no limit to our operations.” The territorial losses of the Assad regime in Syria have also generated alarm in Tehran. In response, Iran has dramatically extended its material aid to Syria’s regime and has trained and provided supported for Shia Islamist foreign fighters including, but not limited to, Lebanon’s Hizbullah. There is some question over the degree of control that Tehran exercises over Shia militias operating in Syria, with some militias reportedly spawning warlords with their own fiefdoms and independent ambitions and agendas.
While Saudi Arabia has made much of alleged Iranian support for the Houthi insurgency in Yemen in recent months, Iran’s financial support for the Houthis in Yemen appears to be limited and Yemen does not loom large in Iranian foreign policy priorities. Moreover, it is apparent that Iran’s actual relationship with the Houthis is more pragmatic than ideological insofar as there is little natural affinity between Yemeni Zaydi Fiver Shi’ism and Iranian Twelver Shi’ism. For the time being, the nuclear negotiations in Geneva remain at the forefront of political priorities in the Islamic Republic.
In July 2015, lengthy and complex negotiations between Iran and the international community—led by the United States and the European Union—produced an agreement that strictly limited Iran’s use of nuclear technology in return for a lifting of international economic sanctions on Iran.
Saudi Arabia—Country updater
King Abdullah died in January 2015 at the age of 90. His reign had brought about marginal advances for women but his initiatives were largely symbolic. In early 2014, Saudi authorities unveiled a sweeping terrorism law and a series of related royal decrees that criminalized virtually any expression or association critical of the government and its understanding of Islam. The law targeted a number of non-violent dissident groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood as well as atheists or those who “question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.”
Since ascending to the throne, 79-year-old Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has made changes in the leadership of the Kingdom by removing Abdullah’s choice for crown prince in favor of his nephew, Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef, replacing the long-serving foreign minister, and promoting his son as Minister of Defense in command of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. These changes appear to herald the long-awaited generational shift within the House of Saud but are likely as much about retrenchment as reform. Salman inherited a host of pressing challenges ranging from plummeting oil revenues, the rise of the ISIS, and a regional cold war with Iran. The Saudi strategy of mitigating the influence of Islamists in electoral politics, countering Iran and the threat of domestic Shia mobilization, and combating jihadism is likely to continue under Salman’s rule.
The regime has devoted considerable energy in recent years to curbing Muslim Brotherhood political activism at home and abroad. Domestically, this has typically involved the purging of Saudi universities of Brotherhood-affiliated clerics and officials. In March 2014, however, the Kingdom went a step further by declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, equating it with widely designated terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, Hizbullah, the ISIS and the al-Nusra Front. Internationally, Egypt has been the frontline for the regime’s political and ideological struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood with the Kingdom providing significant financial aid to the regime of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. However, since King Salman’s ascension to the throne, the Kingdom appears to be moderating its views on the Brotherhood whether to facilitate a rapprochement with Qatar and Turkey in an anti-Iranian axis or to renew engagement with the Brotherhood-affiliated Islah party in Yemen as a potential counter to the threat posed by Zaydi Shia Houthi rebels in that country.
Saudi airstrikes against Houthi rebel positions in Yemen since March 2015 reflects a widening regional rivalry with Iran that is also being played out in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The Kingdom has been keen to reduce the Houthis to Iranian proxies and play to underlying sectarian tensions as it attempts to reassert its influence in the Gulf. However, it is apparent that Iran’s actual relationship with the Houthis is more pragmatic than ideological insofar as there is little natural affinity between Yemeni Zaydi Shi’ism and Iranian Twelver Shi’ism. Ultimately, the month-long Saudi-led air campaign against the Houthis—“Operation Decisive Storm”—did not produce the decisive victory it promised. In April 2015, Saudi Arabia announced that the intervention’s focus would shift from military operations to the political process.
The dramatic rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq poses a significant domestic threat to the Kingdom with more than 2,000 Saudi nationals thought to have joined its ranks. In February 2014, King Abdullah issued Royal Decree 44, which provided for penalties ranging from three to 20 years in prison for, “participating in hostilities outside the Kingdom.” Starting in September 2014, Saudi Arabia joined a U.S.-led coalition conducting airstrikes against ISIS strongholds in Syria, a move that was deeply unpopular with many Saudis. In November, ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, mapped out a list of targets for attack in Saudi Arabia, with the Kingdom’s Shia minority predictably at the top of the list. In May 2015, ISIS claimed responsibility for two suicide bomb attacks on Shia mosques in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province that killed at least 25 people in an obvious attempt to exacerbate sectarian tensions in the Kingdom.
While the apparent signaling of a generational shift within the House of Saud is a significant development, we should remain cautious about any temptation to interpret the recent political changes under King Salman as constituting movement towards “reform.” Reform in the Kingdom is likely to continue at a similar glacial pace as it did under King Abdullah.
Turkey—Country updater
While the so-called “Sledgehammer” coup plot trial collapsed in March 2015 when a court cleared 236 military officers accused of conspiring to remove former Prime Minister Erdoğan from power in 2003, the AKP has undoubtedly made significant strides toward the normalization of civil–military relations. Over the past few years, the AKP has turned its attention to mitigate what it sees as undue Gülenist influence in the police and judiciary. Tensions have played out in recent years in the form of aggressive police and judicial investigations of corruption targeting the AKP and its allies. The AKP has characterized these investigations as being driven by members of the Gülen community. While Fetullah Gülen has continuously denied any involvement, the AKP has responded by legislating to protect itself, abolishing judicial institutions it sees as being unduly pro-Gülen, and demoting Gülenists in Turkish law enforcement.
Although the Gülen movement was considered a natural ally of the AKP in the early years of the Erdoğan administration, simmering tensions first started to boil over in February 2012. In a move that was widely interpreted as part of a Gülen movement–AKP power struggle, Hakan Fidan the head of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (“Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı”—MIT) and a close confidant of Erdoğan was subpoenaed as part of an investigation into the legality of secret talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The government quickly passed legislation that shielded Fidan by requiring the judiciary to seek the prime minister’s permission to investigate intelligence officers. The AKP subsequently moved to dismantle Gülenist networks in the police and judiciary by demoting pro-Gülen police officers and abolishing special-authority courts seen as dominated by Gülenists.
Critics have long accused the AKP of stifling dissent by intimidating journalists who are critical of the government. In November 2013, a pro-Gülen Turkish daily Today’s Zaman revealed draft AKP legislation to close Turkey’s private prep schools, one-quarter of which are run by the Gülen movement and are a major source of recruitment and finance, sparking what a number of analysts referred to as an “open war” between the AKP and the Gülen movement. In early March 2014, parliament voted on the bill and closed the prep schools, striking a significant blow to the Gülen movement. In December 2014, police raided the offices of Today’s Zaman and arrested 24 journalists on suspicion of forming an illegal organization and plotting to seize power. In March 2015, parliament approved a controversial homeland security bill that gave the police sweeping new powers, amid widespread concern that the measure would be used to stifle political dissent.
The AKP continued to win substantial electoral victories, gaining 43 percent of the vote in the March 2014 municipal elections—although the elections were marred by substantial electoral fraud. In August 2014, Erdoğan won the first direct popular election for president, succeeding Abdullah Gül, while Ahmet Davutoğlu succeeded Erdoğan as Prime Minister. However, the AKP suffered a significant setback in parliamentary elections in June 2015, when it failed to win the 330 seats it was seeking to submit constitutional changes to a referendum that would create an executive presidency that would hand Erdoğan control over the budget and infrastructure projects. The pro-Kurdish leftwing People’s Democratic Party (HDP) cleared the 10 percent threshold at parliamentary elections, depriving the AKP of its majority. Erdoğan was widely criticized for exerting undue influence on the election, since the President is constitutionally required to remain politically neutral.
The rise of ISIS has created some concern in Ankara, primarily because Turkey fears the potential for Kurdish groups to carve out a rump state on its south-eastern border. The embattled Kurdish enclave of Kobane, which was besieged by ISIS from September 2014 to January 2015, became a powerful symbol of Kurdish nationalism and a rallying point for Kurds in Turkey who accused Erdoğan and Davutoğlu of effectively siding with ISIS against the Kurds. There has been much speculation about a possible Turkish military intervention to prevent the Kurds from consolidating their gains in northern Syria ever since the Syrian conflict began in 2011 and, thus far, Turkey has prioritized weakening Kurdish forces over fighting against ISIS.
With civil–military relations largely normalized, Erdoğan and Davutoğlu have turned much of their attention to other political forces seen as threatening to the AKP project and stability more generally. In recent months and years, the Gülen movement, Kurdish nationalists, and the potential for further Gezi-like protest movements have come to the forefront and the response of the AKP leadership has included legislating to provide political protection, demotions of pro-Gülen bureaucrats, the abolition of institutions seen as Gülenist-dominated, and undermining Kurdish nationalist aspirations through a passive-aggressive foreign policy in Syria. The AKP’s relatively poor showing in recent elections—and Erdoğan’s implicit participation in the campaign—made him as accountable as the AKP’s leader Ahmet Davutoğlu for the loss of their majority. While negotiations to form a government are still ongoing at the time of writing, the numbers would indicate that, barring an early general election, an AKP-led coalition is the most likely scenario.