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21. The Unmaking of Lebanon's Sectarian Order? The October Uprising and its Drivers

Author:
Tamirace Fakhoury
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
Last month, an unprecedented protest movement took hold of Lebanon’s streets and public squares. Dubbed as the October uprising, the timing of the movement roughly coincided with important anniversaries, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or other iconic historical events, including the October Revolution in Russia, leading many to draw comparisons. In the context of the 2011 Arab spring wave, many argued that Lebanon would stay isolated from the protest movements that gripped the region even though the country has witnessed previous protest cycles, such as the socalled 2005 Cedar Uprising. Still, eight years after the Arab protest wave, an unprecedented protest movement has materialised, spreading to various Lebanese cities from Tripoli to Sidon. In the wake of a proposed WhatsApp tax, people have been calling for the sacking of political leaders and the eradication of political sectarianism. Arguably, the protest movement may trace its roots back to a precursor wave of protests over a huge garbage crisis in 2015. Back then, the movement also decried the inept politics of sectarianism and corruption.
Topic:
Politics, Sectarianism, Domestic Politics, Protests, and Political Movements
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

22. Lebanese and Iraqi Protesters Transcend Sectarianism

Author:
James M Dorsey
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
The protests in Lebanon have evolved into more than a fight against a failed and corrupt government. They constitute a rare demand for political and social structures that emphasize national rather than ethnic or sectarian religious identities in a world in which civilizational leaders who advocate some form of racial, ethnic, or religious supremacy govern the world’s major as well as key regional powers.
Topic:
Government, Sectarianism, and Protests
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, and Lebanon

23. Emergence of Sectarian Indigenous Militant Groups in Pakistan and Politicization of Militant Thought

Author:
Maryam Azam
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
The rise of sectarian groups in Pakistan has sprouted many internal challenges for the state as well as for the society. The issue of sectarianism is directly linked with the security and harmony of Pakistani society as it has culminated into a grave internal security challenge causing violence and loss of human life. The institutionalization of these groups and their role in the political landscape of Pakistan reflects their complicated nature, objectives and the overall discourse on which these groups are built. Despite the fact that government in various time periods have banned these sectarian militant groups but they were able to operate in shadows or under the banner of different names and roles. This piece of research aims to explicate their multidimensional roles and their capacity to operate and affect the security paradox as well as society as a whole
Topic:
Security, Islam, Religion, Sectarianism, Sectarian violence, and Violent Extremism
Political Geography:
Pakistan, South Asia, and Punjab

24. Religion, Violence, and the State in Iraq

Author:
Marc Lynch and David Siddhartha Patel
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
Iraq was long neglected by Middle East political scientists, rarely treated as a comparative case for studies of democratization or social mobilization and generally viewed as an exceptional outlier case in studies of authoritarianism. Islamist movements in Iraq received little attention, despite the participation of a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated party in government as well as the fascinating array of Shi‘i Islamist movements and parties that have competed in elections and governed the country since 2005. The neglect of Iraq had many causes. Prior to 2003, Saddam Hussein’s security state offered little access to researchers of any kind, while the intense violence and insecurity in the decade after his overthrow deterred most scholars who were not embedded with coalition authorities or the U.S. military. Political opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq may also have led scholars to avoid research which they thought might somehow vindicate the Bush administration’s calls for democratization through regime change. In recent years, however, the study of Iraq has undergone a quiet renaissance. Iraq has become comparatively safer and more open to academic research than in the past, while other Arab countries have become closed to researchers or less safe. New outrages since the 2011 Arab Uprisings, such as the debates over intervention in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, have perhaps eased the unique stigma surrounding the post-2003 Iraqi project, while a younger generation of scholars may be less shaped by the politics of that moment. The failed states and civil wars of the post-2011 period arguably have made Iraq “less unique,” with its experience now viewed as offering valuable comparative perspective. The opening of the Ba‘ath Party archives to researchers, while problematic in some ways, has created the possibility for genuinely unique archival study of the inner workings of an Arab autocracy. And a generation of young Iraqi scholars has emerged writing about their own country’s politics and society. This has led to a rethinking of the relationships among religion, violence, and the Iraqi state before and after 2003. How much control did the Ba‘th regime have over society immediately before the invasion, and what role did violence play in that control? In what ways did the regime’s Faith Campaign in the 1990s influence the post-invasion prominence of religious actors? Why did sectarian politics and violence become so pronounced soon after the invasion yet later ebb? Finally, what dynamics within Iraq are missed by looking at the country through a lens that prioritizes sectarianism? In April 2019, POMEPS and the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University brought together almost two dozen scholars to discuss these and other topics. The authors come from different disciplines – political science, history, sociology, and urban studies – and employ a range of methodologies and sources of data. All of the authors have conducted research either in Iraq or in the Ba‘th Party Records at the Hoover Institution or both. The 14 papers in POMEPS Studies 35: Religion, Violence, and the State in Iraq exemplify the ways in which scholars are using new perspectives, data, and sources to offer insights into religion, violence, and the state in Iraq’s past, present, and future.
Topic:
Democratization, Religion, War, Sectarianism, Islamic State, Ethnicity, State, and Violence
Political Geography:
Iraq and Middle East

25. Pursuing Sustainable Development under Sectarianism in Lebanon

Author:
Mona Christophersen
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Peace Institute (IPI)
Abstract:
The 2030 Agenda calls for inclusiveness, which can contribute to stability and peace as well as development in Lebanon. However, while Lebanon’s power-sharing model was instrumental in ending fifteen years of civil war, it is outdated as the country embarks on a process to achieve the 2030 Agenda and advance the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although sectarianism is impeding political processes and development in Lebanon, the SDGs can provide an opportunity for the country to address some of the political model’s limitations. Based on two weeks of field research, this paper explores how Lebanon is confronting challenges related to the environment, education, economic growth, poverty, and gender, all while hosting more than a million Syrian refugees. This paper is part of the International Peace Institute’s (IPI) SDGs4Peace project, which seeks to understand how the 2030 Agenda is being rooted at the national and local levels and to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The project focuses on five case studies: the Gambia, Greece, Guatemala, Lebanon, and Myanmar. Implementation of the 2030 Agenda provides each of these countries an opportunity not only to buttress existing aspirations but also to build new partnerships that transcend traditional approaches.
Topic:
Politics, Sectarianism, Sustainable Development Goals, and Peace
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

26. Britain’s Post-Colonial Foreign Policy Towards the Persian Gulf Security (1971-1991): An Alternative Approach

Author:
Esra Cavusoglu
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Institution:
Sakarya University (SAU)
Abstract:
British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf in 1971, started a new era in the region with new political order and new security map. Iran and Saudi Arabia emerged as the guardians of the status quo to be filling the power vacuum left by the British in behalf of the West. Britain adopted a new post-imperial role in the region along with new post-colonial foreign policy in the post-withdrawal context. British policy towards the regional security is analysed in this article with central focus on the shift emerged in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution in the British policy. After 1979, Iran, no longer a Western ally, has been defined as the major internal threat for the regional security following the major external threat of the Soviet expansion in the British foreign policy. This paper argues that the shift in the British policy came along with a sectarianist approach towards the region. The sectarianization emerged with the securitization of the Gulf based on “Iran threat” within the determinants of the Anglo-American alliance on the regional security. The sectarianist discourse adopted by the British foreign policy was employed as an effective tool of the securitization of the Gulf that was deepened during the regional conflicts, the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Military Strategy, and Sectarianism
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, Iran, Middle East, and Persian Gulf

27. The Shia armed groups and the future of Iraq

Author:
Kardo Karim Rached and Ahmed Omar Bali
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security and Defence Quarterly
Institution:
War Studies University
Abstract:
In this article, we try to identify the impact of the Shia militias in Iraq on the future of this country. We maintain that these armed groups will be a destabilising factor for Iraq and its neighbours, and they will worsen and deepen the sectarian division in the Middle East. We assess these different groups from different perspectives, for example, using the Weberian theory that the state is the only entity that has a monopoly of violence, Ariel Ahram’s model of state-sponsored and government-sponsored militias, and finally the devolution of violence to these armed groups.
Topic:
Non State Actors, Sectarianism, Armed Forces, Islamic State, and Shia
Political Geography:
Iraq and Middle East

28. Insight on Syria: A Quagmire of Warring Religious Groups? Why the Western View is Misguided

Author:
Melani Cammett
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
opular discourse, especially in the West, presents the current conflict in Syria as part of an age-old struggle between the Sunni and Shi’a communities within Islam. Despite the sectarian trappings of the conflict, these divisions are not the root cause of the war in Syria. Rather, the hyperpoliticization of sectarian identities is one of the outcomes—and an increasingly salient one as conflict progresses. The origins of the Syrian war lie in much more mundane political and economic grievances. Despite steady economic growth and an extensive public welfare infrastructure, the vast majority of the population was excluded from the fruits of development and faced thwarted aspirations for social mobility and political expression. Rising poverty rates, endemic corruption, the poor quality of social services and government repression—factors present to varying degrees elsewhere in the Middle East—constituted a critical background to the Syrian uprising, even if they do not predict precisely why and when individual protestors took to the streets. More proximately, the evolution of a peaceful uprising into a full-blown civil war was sparked by the regime’s response to the initial waves of demonstrations. On March 13, 2011, several teenagers in rural Dara’a in southern Syria spray-painted the slogan of the uprisings, al-sha’ab yurid isqat al-nizam, or “the people want the fall of the regime,” on walls in their town. Government security forces arrested the young men and tortured them, inciting peaceful demonstrations by family members calling for the boys’ release. Syrian forces then cracked down violently, spurring other protests across the country.
Topic:
Civil War, Religion, Sectarianism, and Violence
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

29. Sociopolitical Movements and the Development of Non-Violent Civil Resistance: A Conversation with Ches Thurber

Author:
Ches Thurber and Austin Bowman
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
Ches Thurber is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University. He was previously a research fellow at the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism at the University of Chicago and at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. His current book project, Strategies of Violence and Nonviolence in Revolutionary Movements, examines why political movements seeking to overthrow the state embrace strategies of either armed insurgency or civil resistance.
Topic:
Security, Islam, Non State Actors, Sectarianism, Social Movement, Conflict, and Interview
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, Syria, North America, and United States of America

30. Islam in a Changing Middle East: New Analysis of Shia Politics

Author:
Marc Lynch, Ali Kadivar, Elvire Corboz, Farzan Sabet, Shirin Saeidi, Kevan Harris, Diana Zeidan, Toby Matthiesen, Laurence Louer, Marsin Alshamary, Hussein Abou Saleh, and Morten Valbjørn
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
POMEPS Studies 28: New Analysis of Shia Politics The study of Islamist movements has often implicitly meant the study of Sunni Islamist movements. An enormous amount of political science scholarship has dissected the ideology, organization, and political strategy of Sunni Islamist movements.However these academic communities that study Sunni Islamism often proceed without any interaction with the academic communities that study Iran or Shi’a politics in Arab countries. Studies of Iran and of Shi’a movements similarly often proceed in isolation from the literature on the Arab world or Sunni Islamist movements. This is unfortunate, because Sunni and Shi’a Islamist political dynamics engage many similar theoretical or intellectual issues and could offer each other critically important comparative perspective. Therefore, on October 13, 2017, POMEPS convened an interdisciplinary workshop of scholars of Shi’a politics to discuss these questions and to probe the similarities and differences between the two academic communities. We are delighted to publish this collection of essays resulting from that workshop. The essays range widely, both thematically and geographically, and together offer a deeply informed and often surprising portrait of political changes across very different contexts. They also reveal the profound methodological and intellectual divides between the academic communities studying Sunni and Shi’a Islamism. The essays in this collection range broadly over these issues and represent a starting point for the development of a research community. In the coming years, we hope to see much more attention paid to the comparative study of Sunni and Shia Islamism across diverse contexts. Bridging these linguistic, analytical, methodological and political divides would be an important step forward in the broader understanding of Islamist politics.
Topic:
Government, Islam, Politics, Religion, Sectarianism, Islamism, Revolution, Welfare, Sunni, Shia, Monarchy, and Alawites
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Lebanon, Syria, and Gulf Nations