Precious oil and export markets, wars in Lebanon and the Persian Gulf, peace talks at the White House, terrorist eruptions: more now than ever, Arab affairs are the West’s affair. And yet as we find ourselves increasingly enmeshed in its politics and economics, the Middle East remains a mystery to most of us, a world of dimly understood connections and impenetrable complexities. The Arab world at last becomes accessible in this book. The only book to include developments since the Gulf War and the historic pact between Israel and the PLO, Inside the Arab World gives us a com¬plete and detailed picture of the region as it is today, as well as a clear sense of how Arab affairs have evolved and where they may lead. Despite its abundance of oil, the Arab world has failed to produce a single successful economy. Michael Field, a recognized expert and long¬time reporter on the Arab states, explores the cultural, political, and geographic reasons for this failure. Ranging from Algeria to the Gulf states to Egypt and Syria, he considers the frag¬mentation of society, the people’s tolerance of bad government, corruption, and the deaden¬ing economic effect of Arab socialism. But he also shows how the region—influenced partly by exposure to Western media, partly by reforms imposed by creditors—is changing now, taking its first cautious steps toward democracy, whose opportunities so far have been most firmly grasped by Islamic fundamentalists. Timely, thorough, and highly readable, this book offers much-needed insight into the Arab world as its politics and policies increasingly engage our own.
Michael Field is the author oiAHundred Million Dollars a Day: Inside the World of Middle East Money and The Merchants —The Big Business Families of Arabia.
Contents
Preface / vii Part I: Failure / 1 1 The Arab World – t... / 3 2 Deception and Division: 1914—48 / 25 3 Hope and Disaster: 1948—70 / 50 4 Despair: 1970-93 / 67 5 The Corruption of the State / 91 6 Economic Stagnation / 112 7 The Collapse of Algeria / 126 8 The Search for a Reason / 148 Part II: Reform / 171 9 The Demand for Legitimate Government / 173 10 The IMF’s Medicine / 195 11 Structural Reform 208 12 Political Islam / 228 13 Islamic Government / 251 14 Steps Towards Democracy / 272 15 Society and Democracy / 312 16 The Problems of Saudi Arabia / 322 17 Pressures for Peace / 345 18 Peace / 371 19 A Pragmatic Arab World / 390 20 The West and the Arabs / 406 Index / 425
PREFACE
This book has its origins in two articles I wrote for the Financial Times in November 1987 and January 1990. The first, headlined ‘The Agony of the Arab World’, dealt with the reasons for the Arabs’ political and economic failure during the previous seventy years, and the other, ‘Living in Fear of the Mosque’, discussed economic reform and its political consequences. In this book I follow roughly the sequence of logic of those articles, but I also discuss Arab-Israeli peacemaking, the political and economic problems of Saudi Arabia and the changes there have been in the relations of Arab countries with each other and with the West since the end of the Gulf war.
My research was done in three visits I made to the region specifically for the book, in the trips I made before I wrote the Financial Times articles and in many other trips during the past twenty-seven years. Hundreds of people have helped me during this time and here I should like to thank some of them. I am leaving out the names of all those to whom I have spoken in Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Iran because I believe that many, or all, of those who are not in government would rather they were not mentioned. Otherwise, working from west to east, I should like to thank: In Morocco: Rachid Cherkaoui, Karim Bin Brahim, Abdelghani Sbihi, Fouad Akalay, Aziz Bideh, Nadia Salah, Pierre Saia, Khalid Belyazid, Abdelmounaim Dilami, Jack Aubert, Nicholas Hopton.
In Algeria: Yusuf Salmane, Mili Badr Eddine, Miloud Brahimi, Kamal and Anissa Bouslama, Omar Belhouchet, Taher Djaout, Ahmed Bedjaoui, Christopher Battiscombe, John Baggeley, Leila Hamoutene, Ali Lakdari, Christopher Webster, Francis Ghiles. In Tunisia: Haseeb Ben Ammar, Abdul-Baki Hermassi, Moncef Murad, Ismail Boulahia, Salah Hanachi, Moncef Kaouach, Moncef Cheikh-Rouhou, Fatma Felah, Harold Cool, Robert Glass.
In Egypt: Hazem Beblawi, Mansour Hassan, Dr Ali Dessouki, Saad Ibrahim, Mohammad Sid Ahmed, Yousuf Boutros Ghali, Ismail Sabri Abdullah, Mohammad Fayek, Ahmed Fouda, Paul Balabanis, Sam Skogstad, Sven Burmester, Alan Goulty, Ahmed El-Gindi, Ibrahim Zaki Kinawy, Marc Schwarz, Mohammad Hafez. In Israel and the occupied West Bank: Ibrahim Dakkak, Radwan Abu Ayyash, Daoud Kattab, Hugh Carnegy, Alex Brodie, David Winn, Daoud Abu Ghazaleh, Shlomo Avineri, Ariye Naor, Reuven Merhav, Dore Gold, Ehud Yaari, Tom Phillips, John Herbst, David Kimche, Nimrod Novik.
In Jordan: Dr. Jamal Shaer, Adnan Abu Odeh, Ahmed Mango, Kamal Abu Jaber, Touma and Ginny Hazou, Rami and Elian Khoury, Patrick Eyers, Jonathan Owen, Dr Sari Nasr, Jafar Salem, Michel Marto, Jawad Anani, Maher Shukri, Raja Halazon, Hosni Shiyab, Leith Eshbeilat, Bassam Saket, George Hawatmeh, Fahd Fanek. In Saudi Arabia: Teymour Alireza, Omar Aggad, Abdullah Dabbagh, Ibrahim Touq, Abdel-Aziz Al-Orayer, Prince Fahd bin Salman, Prince Sultan bin Salman, Prince Abdel-Aziz bin Salman, Prince Abdullah bin Faisal bin Turki, Prince Bandar bin Abdullah bin Abdel-Rahman, Turki Khaled Sudairi, Daham Al-Shammary, Abdel-Rahman Zamil, Dr. Ali Namlah, Jafar Askari, Tarek Al-Malki, Khaled Maeena, Dr Abdullah Nassier, Mohammad Salahuddin, Aidarous Kazmi, Ismail Nawwab, Abdullah Mouallimi, Jim Williams, Ahmed Al-Malek, Andrew Thompson.
In Yemen: Abdel-Aziz Al-Saqqaf, Ahmed Al-Gemozi, Dominic Simpson, David Katz, Eric Watkins, Omar Bazara, Allan Furman, Yahya Al-Qassim, Sultan Al-Sha’ibi, Tamam Bashraheel, Abdel-Wahad Sharaf, Abdullah Said Abadan. In Kuwait: Saleh Al-Falah, Ismail Shati, Sheikh Khaled Nasser Al- Sabah, Siraj Al-Baker, Abdlatif Al-Hamad, Sulaiman Mutawa, Anwar Mulla, Abdullah Nibari, Jasim Al-Qatami, Isa Majid Shaheen, Shaker Madooh, Abdullah Alghanim.
In the United Arab Emirates: David and Frauke Heard, Faraj Bin Hamoodah, Muncif Bin Hamida, Abdullah Mazrui, Zaki Nusseibeh, Sheikh Nahayyan bin Mubarak Al-Nahayyan, Hussein Nowais, Khalaf Otaiba, Anwar Sher, Abdel-Khaleq Abdullah, Khalaf Habtoor, Mohammad Shams, Mahdi Tajir, Abdullah Saleh, Sulaiman Mazrui, Anwar Gargash, Robin Allen, Mahdi Sajjad. In Oman: Kamal Sultan, Nigel Harris, Deepak Attal, Saad Al-Jenaibi, Ahmed Farid Al-Aulaqi.
In London: Fouad Jaffar, Abdullah Alireza, Dr Ghazi Algosaibi, Sin-clair Road, Jamie Bowden, George Joffe, Charles Gurdon, George Kanaan, Mohammad Ramady, Tim Smith, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Said Sukkar, Jameel Al-Sanea, Keith McLachlan.
1
Failure
1
The Arab World
Failure and reform — the Arab peoples — minorities — Sunnis and Shias — Arab economies — oil states
The Arab world has not been a happy or successful place in the last fifty years, and the misery and disenchantment of the people has recently become acute. As one of the Arab ambassadors in London put it to me, ‘the people have lost faith in their governments. There is a sense of failure, which has opened a gap between the rulers and the ruled. It has led to a lack of self-confidence in Arab culture, and hostility to foreign influences. For years the Arab world has not been at ease with itself’.
When he made these remarks the ambassador, who represented Algeria, had particularly in mind the disastrous recent events in his own country. The obvious corruption of Algeria’s political system in the 1980s had led the mass of the people to reject the Government and embrace the revolutionary Islamic Salvation Front, not because they were necessarily devoutly religious but because the Islamists were the only powerful and organized opposition party. The results during the years since 1988 had been that the Government’s belated but genuine attempt to introduce democracy had led to riots, mass arrests, the cancellation of elections, the assassination of the President and the imposition of what amounted to military rule. For the Algerian estab-lishment, the people associated with the Front de Liberation Nationale, which had won the country’s independence from France, the whole experience was politically (and financially) threatening, and also disil-lusioning. The ambassador and many like him wanted to believe that they were creating a new, just, powerful and successful society and it hurt them to be told by their people that they had failed.
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Michael Field
Inside the Arab World
Harvard University
Harvard University Press Inside the Arab World Michael Field
Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 1995
Other books by the author A Hundred Million Dollars a Day - Inside the World of Middle East Money The Merchants — The Big Business Families of Arabia
This book is printed on acid-free paper, and its binding materials have been chosen for strength and durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Field, Michael, 1949- Inside the Arab world / Michael Field, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-45520-7 (alk. paper) 1. Arab countries—Politics and government—1945— 2. Arab countries—Economic conditions. I. Title DS63.1.F54 1995 909'.0974927—dc20 / 94-25822 CIP
