Hashemite Kings

Theirs is one of the sadder chapters in modern Middle Eastern history. Their place owes more to their failures than their accomplishments, though their survival in Jordan may yet turn out to be a bright spot. Most of us don’t even associate the name with the present King of Jordan and his late father. There was a time in the not so distant past when they were the central figures in a brazen plot to safeguard the survival of the British Empire, one that was never destined to achieve its purpose but, had it turned out better than it did, might have provided an orderly transition for Arab society into the modern era. That it didn’t ensured a new period of conflict that has no end in sight. The opportunity is lost now, but it’s worth remembering what went wrong.

The Hashemites claim direct descent from the Prophet through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali, the 4th Caliph to Sunni Muslims and 1st Imam to the Shia. These sorts of claims are common among Arab rulers but at least some of what follows is true. Abdullah II represents the 43rd generation of the line and the fourth Hashemite to occupy the throne in Jordan. Muhammad himself was the great grandson of Hashem, for whom the family is named. All this is important because Sharif Qutada Abu Aziz, seventeenth in descent from Ali, conquered Mecca in 1201. They accepted Mamluk suzerainty in 1258 and Ottoman in 1517 but the family ruled the Hejaz for over eight hundred years, right up through the Great War. That gave them responsibility to oversee the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage, and in the Muslim world you can’t get much more prestige than that. This family has been among the most prominent in the region for a long time.

They had one chance for greatness. In the years leading up to WWI the British Governor of Egypt saw them as a vehicle to extend influence all the way east through Mesopotamia and south to the Persian Gulf, a move that would make an increasingly unreliable Ottoman Empire much less critical as a buffer in the centuries old Great Game of jockeying between Britain and Russia. With British backing Emir Hussein, Guardian of the Holy Places at the time, would see his sons become kings in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. He himself would become King of all Arabs and be proclaimed Caliph. When war broke out the British sent T.E. Lawrence into the desert and got Hussein to agree. They never quite pulled it off. Whether through duplicity, the changing fortunes of war, or just poor bureaucratic coordination, the Brits also promised Palestine to Jews and Syria to the French.

As it turns out the weakest component of the deal was in the Hejaz itself. Hussein did proclaim himself both King and Caliph but the allies never backed him in his broadest claims and his neighbors didn’t much care for his pretensions. In 1925 ibn Saud from neighboring Nadj forced him out altogether and introduced Wahabis to the world. At the time nobody knew oil was there. One son, Faisal, did briefly take the throne in Syria but France never gave him the time of day. Once they got their League of Nations Mandate in 1920, they took Damascus by force and tossed him out, separated Lebanon from Syria and maintained direct control for as long as they could. In 1941 French colonial authorities allied themselves with the fascist Vichy government and installed a Nazi style regime. We can thank them for today’s Ba’ath party.


Faisal went on to Iraq in 1921 and with British acquiescence took the throne there, but even Winston Churchill despaired of effectively governing that fractious place. Thirty seven years later King Faisal II and his immediate family were brutally murdered and another Ba’ath party soon took over, the party that spawned Saddam Hussein. Whether Americans can do better in Iraq remains to be seen.

Only in Jordan did a new Hashemite monarchy take root and it has been tenuous even there. The British resolved their conflicting promises more or less by partitioning Palestine and installing Abdullah I as regent over the districts east of the Jordan River then known collectively as Transjordan. It wasn’t that great a prize. The population was estimated in 1922 at 225,000 and nearly half that was nomadic. Abdullah spent the years between wars building a state. Eight hundred years of family tradition in the Hejaz helped. He understood the tribal culture and how to bring competing factions into the government. From the beginning he reigned as a constitutional monarch. The first parliament was elected in 1929. By 1946 he was ready for full independence. Parliament elected him king and officially changed the name of what had been an emirate to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which it remains today.

It would be quite an understatement to say that since 1947 Jordanian politics have been dominated by Israel and the Palestinian question. Those issues are far to complex to go into in depth here, but they have affected Jordan more than any other Arab state. Only Jordan welcomed Palestinian refugees and offered them full citizenship. Her population swelled as a result. The kingdom survived a series of coup attempts in the 1950s, annexation of Palestinian territory west of the Jordan in 1950, the effective loss of that territory to Israel in 1967, and an attempt by Yasser Arafat to create his own Palestinian state inside Jordan in 1970. Martial law was in effect for three decades ending only in 1989.

Jordanian Kings continue to follow the English model in devolving power from the monarch to parliament. They have moved in fits and starts but so did the English. They allow political parties to operate and elect members to parliament, some of them in opposition. They have signed a series of international covenants on rights including economic, social, cultural, civil, political, women’s, and children’s rights, all of which contradict traditional Islamic law to one degree or another. They have an independent judiciary which attempts to navigate between modern civil and Islamic law. They signed a peace treaty with Israel over intense internal objections that could yet cost them their crown.

Political scientist and journalist Fareed Zachariah has observed that liberal democracy follows economic prosperity, not the other way around. Following that principle and despite intense criticism Jordan is attempting to implement commercial reforms ahead of political reforms. Abdullah II recognizes that Islamic tradition as well as hatred of Israel and all things western represent giant obstacles to bringing Jordan into the modern age. He is attempting to allow limited political freedom while encouraging commercial development. That means observing international law, respecting contracts, and promoting trade. It worked in Singapore, it worked in South Korea, and it is working in China. Maybe it can work for Muslims. To that end Jordan has joined the World Trade Organization and agreed to its attendant requirements and restrictions. It has entered into a free trade agreement with the United States that requires further accommodation with Israel. If all this works in Jordan they will have transformed a people. We shall see.

Atatürk

Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) realized what was happening to the Ottoman Empire as a young army officer and devoted his life to reforming a nation. He rose to prominence as a hero at Gallipoli in 1915 and went on to become the last Muslim general to achieve significant success in the field when he rallied troops to drive an invading Greek force out of Anatolia in the aftermath of WWI. Greeks had seen an opportunity to recover territory lost a thousand years earlier and they very nearly succeeded. The result was massive slaughter and deportation for Greeks and Turks alike. It generated a visceral level of animosity that survives today. They called it a “population exchange.” I hope people who are advocating partition of present day Iraq are paying attention but I doubt it. It also gave Kemal enormous stature. He used it to build the modern Turkish Republic, send the last Ottoman Sultan into permanent exile, abolish the Caliphate, and drag Turks kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.

Few men in history had more effect on his people than Kemal did. He transformed the law, changed the way people dressed, their attitudes, their lives. He gave women rights they had never dreamed of under Ottomans or any other Muslims. He adopted economic measures that brought prosperity to a level Turks had never seen before. He even restructured the language. He recognized more clearly than perhaps anyone else ever did that Islam had failed to adapt to the modern era. He was determined to do something about it. He understood there was a difference between culture and faith, resolved to change the former and did. Today’s Turkey is a very different society from the time of the Ottomans. It is still Islamic but is no longer stuck in an unchanging age. It has its critics and is no paragon of Jeffersonian democracy but Turkey may soon join the European Union, an unthinkable step for any other predominantly Muslim country.

The depth and breadth of Kemalist reforms in Turkey were astonishing. To Kemal to modernize meant to Westernize and he did it with uncompromising zeal. To improve literacy he replaced Arabic script with a Latin based alphabet specially designed for the Turkish language, tossing out over a thousand Arabic words and phrases in the process. He reasoned that this would also help in learning European languages and be a boost for commerce. He made education compulsory, secular, free, and coeducational. He banned religious oriented dress in public places, including the Fez for men and the veil for women. They cannot be worn in Parliament or in the classroom. He gave women the right to vote and Turkey became the first country in the world with a female Supreme Court Justice. He abolished Islamic courts and adopted a civil code based on the Swiss model. He outlawed polygamy and concubinage. For the first time in any Muslim country women enjoyed equal rights in divorce, child custody, and inheritance disputes. Even today it is rare to see female doctors, lawyers, engineers, executives, and creative artists in most of the Islamic world, but not in Turkey.

Before Kemal changed it Turks didn’t even commonly have surnames. Kemal had been simply Mustafa until a math teacher assigned him the sobriquet Kemal, which means perfectionist. He was awarded the name Atatürk (father of Turks) when a surname law was passed in 1934. He was no European toady however. On the contrary he was a nationalist who promptly put an end to the capitulations, special privileges in trade and civil law that had been granted favored European powers for centuries. In Atatürk’s Turkey the rule of law would, at least in theory, apply equally to everyone.

None of this was easy to implement and it hasn’t been easy to maintain. It was only the sheer force of Atatürk’s will and personal prestige that made reform possible. Even today there is an uneasy truce between Islamists and secularists, though radical Islam doesn’t enjoy anything like the level of popular support it does elsewhere. When an Islamist party took control of parliament in the 2002 general elections much of Turkey held its breath, fearing the army would intervene as in the past. The generals refrained however and for their part the Islamists have respected constitutional requirements that the government be secular. But there is no question Turkey is a representative democracy, European complaints about human rights abuses not withstanding. When Americans sought permission for troops and equipment to transit Turkey en route to Iraq for the 2003 invasion it was parliament that said no. After an embarrassing delay, equipment for the highly mechanized 4th Infantry Division was reloaded onto ships for the long trip through the Suez Canal to Kuwait, arriving too late to participate effectively.

In truth the Atatürk legacy is mixed. In retrospect it isn’t clear whether all of the reforms were really necessary. Some of them remain hotly disputed. Kemalist style authoritarianism isn’t exactly a hallmark of the best in modern society. Economic growth in Turkey has been generally strong but irregular. Agriculture still represents a disproportionate share by the standards of the industrialized world. And there is this never ending animosity. Atatürk can’t be blamed for the Armenian genocide of WWI but Turkey has never acknowledged or atoned for it and his treatment of the once large Greek population in Anatolia was positively Stalinesque. Roughly 1.5 million Greeks were forcibly expelled from what had been their home for millennia and about 500,000 Turks were deported from Greece. That both governments saw the resulting homogeneity as a stabilizing factor didn’t minimize the suffering. Neither side did much to ease the pain for newcomers. Their descendents are still mad about it.

Kurds are mad too. They have never reconciled themselves to being a minority in a country dominated by Turks. Other ethnic groups got their own nation in the decline and breakup of the Ottoman Empire. They don’t see why they can’t have theirs too. Of course Kurds represent sizeable minorities in Iraq and Iran as well and they aren’t happy there either. Still Kurds do have real grievances. Turks have brutally suppressed their separatist movement, even forbidding Kurdish music and language instruction for Kurdish children, mild perhaps in comparison to Saddam Hussein but still repressive by modern humanitarian standards.

Atatürk is widely revered in Turkey, roundly despised almost everywhere else in Islam. It is doubtful his model will be replicated in other places. More is the pity. Had he come to power in an Ottoman Empire with its provinces in Asia Minor still intact the world might be a more peaceful place today, but of course one never knows. Turkey wants membership in the European Union and they will have to adopt further reforms to get it. They are already the most democratic state in the Middle East save maybe Israel. Arabs would do well to put aside their distaste for Kemalism and take note. Whatever else may be said about him he did transform a people and most of them are better off for it materially and, I would argue, spiritually. Their neighbors to the south lag far behind by every conceivable measure.

Tempting Fate

Herodotus tells us that King Croesus of Lydia consulted the Oracle at Delphi on whether to make war with Persia. The Oracle famously replied “If you do, a great nation will be destroyed.” Croesus took that as a yes and attacked. Lydia was defeated and became part of a young and expanding Persian Empire. Croesus lived out his life as a guest at the court of Cyrus the Great, the same Cyrus that later conquered Babylon and, although Herodotus doesn’t mentioned it, freed the Jews from captivity and financed the building of the Second Temple. One can only wonder what oracle Saddam Hussein was consulting when he baited the United States. He is just the latest petty tyrant to get crosswise with Americans and lose his kingdom for his pains. The list is long and growing and none of the losers are anybody’s house guest. What do you suppose ever happened to Mullah Omar?

The astonishing thing is the list of regimes willing to tempt the same fate. What could possibly be worth that risk? Two of them are predominantly Islamic states headed by presumably rational dictators who would have more to gain as responsible members of a global trading community than as international pariahs. They have nothing to fear from outside their borders unless they become threats themselves, but especially if Americans feel threatened they have a great deal to fear. So why don’t they follow the lead of Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi and defuse the danger? Instead they seem determined to agitate until they provoke the response Saddam got, maybe even go so far as to sponsor an attack on America itself, oblivious to what happened in Afghanistan.

Of the two, Syria is harder to understand. President Bashar Assad’s goal appears to be reconstitution of greater Syria as it was in the Ottoman Empire. That would bring what are now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories together again under control of the Baathist regime. But that doesn’t explain why he would play with fire by contributing to the insurgency in next door Iraq. He isn’t even subtle about it. The Syrian mufti, a regime appointee, has been openly calling for volunteers to cross the border into Iraq and join in the fray. Assad is probably correct in his calculation that Americans have their hands full at the moment. We are in no position to make an aggressive intervention in Syria, but when Iraq gets back on her feet as she undoubtedly will, Assad will have some bills to pay. Iraqis will remember. He has his enemies in Lebanon too, some left over from the recently ended Syrian occupation, and some new ones from their role in sponsoring Hezbollah. He isn’t making any friends in Jordan either. That increasingly prosperous country wants no part of his fascism and I doubt whether Hashemite King Abdullah is amused.

Israel has to represent the greatest danger for Syrian belligerence. Israelis refrained from retaliating directly against Damascus for its support of Hezbollah in the most recent dust up but there is no guarantee they will in the future. The Syrian Army would be grossly over matched. Their only allies would be in Iran and Iran would have to cross Iraq to get there. Syrians are trying to pick a fight they are bound to lose. It’s hard to see how the Assad regime survives. Their capacity to act contrary to their own best interest appears to be limitless. They are unnecessarily antagonizing neighbors on four borders at the same time, not counting America. Do these people have a death wish?

Iran is a lot scarier than Syria but also easier to explain. Princeton Orientalist Bernard Lewis thinks President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad genuinely believes an eschatological end time is near, that Imam Mahdi is about to emerge and lead the world into the perfect Islamic society prophesied in the Koran. He also thinks the real power in Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is more cynical than Ahmadinejad, more concerned with his own aggrandizement. Lewis may be right. A driving desire to perpetuate themselves in power is certainly a common thread that runs through American Supreme Court Justices, Roman Catholic Popes, and politicians of every stripe. It’s that Lewis may be wrong that worries me. If the Ayatollahs share Ahmadinejad’s zealotry they could very well lead us all to Armegeddon. Even if they don’t, they could make the catastrophic mistake of believing they could escape the consequences of a major strike in the West by a proxy like Hezbollah.

The Mahdi prophesy comes directly from the Koran so it cuts across all branches of Islam. Details vary a bit from group to group but Iran is predominately Shiite and mostly Twelvers so that narrows it down some. Twelvers believe there were only twelve legitimate Caliphs, all direct male descendents of Muhammad’s son-in-law and heir, Ali. The last of them didn’t die but went into hiding to escape assassination. He is still there, waiting for the right moment to reemerge as the Mahdi. The moment will come at a time when the faithful are under siege at every corner. Ahmadinejad is not alone in believing the time is now. That’s the problem. Most Muslims, as do most Christians, adopt the more prudent view that the last days may not necessarily be just around the corner. If Iran’s leadership has abandoned that particular caution they may be prepared to take risks no sane person would venture. When they get their bomb, and I believe they will get it, they might actually use it. The Mutual Assured Destruction deterrent that kept us from a nuclear holocaust in the Cold War may not work with these folks.

Lewis expects them to acquire the bomb too, and to use it with “no return address,” as though Americans would wait for proof of origin before retaliating against a nuclear explosion in an American city. He may be right again. Muslim extremists aren’t known for their wisdom. But there are several reasons to hope for a less cataclysmic outcome. One is that the Iranians are smarter than Lewis thinks and the instinct for self preservation will carry the day. That may be a faint hope for today’s cast of characters but if the Iranian public can overthrow a Shah they can overthrow an Ayatollah. There are certainly signs of internal unrest and despite election rigging there are reports that some of the more repressive measures from the early days of the Islamic Republic have been eased a little. Also, security experts seem to think Iran is still a few years from building a bomb and even further from an effective means to deliver one. Given time there is always hope the danger will fade, but this is a powder keg that has been around a while. Iran never called itself Persia. That was the Greek name. They have been at war with the west more or less continually at least since the days of Croesus. I can’t think why we should expect that to change anytime soon. The difference is that now it is Persia interpreting prophesies and bent on self destruction. None of it is very comforting is it?

Death of a Civilization

Islam has a new icon. Every media outlet from al-Jazeera to the Dallas Morning News is proclaiming Hezbollah’s Sheik Hassan Nasrallah man of the hour. His accomplishment? Provoking Israel to a massive campaign of destruction that has left Lebanon’s budding democracy a shambles, it’s once thriving tourism industry in ruins (again,) its infrastructure in rubble, a thousand of its citizens dead (all of them women and children apparently,) and a third of its population refugees. So low has Islam sunk that such men are her heroes, men known best for their hatred, men for whom victory is survival surrounded by carnage among the innocent, men whose goals are murder and mayhem, men who live to kill Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists or, failing that, fellow Muslims, men whose stature is measured by the misery they inflict on those around them.
Pundits like to call the War on Terror an existential conflict and for Islam it is. A way of life is being lost. It hasn’t gone quietly. It was baptized with the sword and never learned to live peacefully with its neighbors. Now it is going the way of the Byzantine society it replaced. A culture that defines itself in the dark terms of war cannot survive the modern age. The world has become entirely too small.
Islam can no longer even govern itself. The first obligation of any government is to provide for the common defense and in the Arab world governments don’t necessarily make fundamental decisions of war and peace. Those are often left to the most radical elements who always choose war. Unable to organize themselves to take, occupy, or defend territory from conventional forces they have adopted a strategy of provocation. They entice stronger enemies to retaliate and then hide themselves among civilian populations with the bizarre goal of producing maximum casualties among their own people. They imprison non-combatants in crowded apartment buildings and fire rockets from courtyards so that not even the most accurate return fire can avoid so-called collateral damage. Around the world Muslims watch bloody images on their TV screens and whip themselves into frenzies of support. Even those whose loved ones suffer the most join in the insanity.
The strategy might actually work if it were used in a defensive war of attrition with an enemy who valued human life and wished to spare a civilian populace the worst consequences of war, or one who might eventually grow tired of the cost. Americans withdrew from South Vietnam and ceded it to a far weaker enemy. The Soviet Union gave up similarly in Afghanistan. But in a triumph of delusion Muslim extremists are using it in what is essentially an offensive campaign. Hezbollah’s objective is the destruction of Israel. If Israelis thought they might be close to acquiring the means to achieve it they would destroy Hezbollah regardless of cost. For now they are content to allow Lebanon to descend into chaos. But Hezbollah has tasted Pyrrhic victory and rejoiced in it. They can be expected to rearm and try again in the never ending cycle of self destruction we have watched for so many years among Palestinians.
Sheik Nasrallah basks in the glow of infamy, his Iranian sponsors delightedly provide him with new financing and new weapons, Lebanon slowly picks herself up, and Israel licks her wounds in preparation for the next time. Does anyone seriously doubt there will be a next time? Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We have been here before. This is madness.