Arab
Nationalism in the 20th Century: From Triumph to Despair by Adeed Dawisha, 352pp,
Princeton, £19.95
Most isms ultimately lead to war, and Arab
nationalism is no exception. Nationalist movements have an in-built tendency
towards extremism and xenophobia, towards self-righteousness on the one hand
and demonising the enemy on the other. History is often falsified
and even fabricated to serve a nationalist political agenda. It is interesting
to note how frequently the phrase “forging a nation” is used, because most
nations are forgeries.
Indeed, some nations are based on little more than a
mythological view of the past and a hatred of foreigners. Arab nationalism
shares some of these negative traits with other nationalist movements, but
there is one basic difference: it is not the ideology of one nation-state, but
of the entire region.
Adeed Dawisha has given us a timely, illuminating and
highly readable overview of the history of the Arab national movement, from its
origins in the 19th century to the present. His book combines an analysis of
the ideas of Arab nationalism and their roots in European thought, with a
fast-moving political narrative, full of dramatic ups and downs.
Dawisha is a professor of
political science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He grew up in Iraq during the heyday of Arab
nationalism, and he brings to his task a rare personal insight, as well as
mastery of the voluminous Arabic sources on the subject. There is a great deal
of new material here which not only brings events alive, but also leads to
fresh assessments and a better-informed understanding of the politics of one of
the world’s most volatile and violent regions.
In the debate on the origins of Arab nationalism,
Dawisha sides with the revisionists against the more conventional historians,
led by George Antonius. In The Arab Awakening, Antonius articulated the
orthodox view that, during the 19th century, a national identity took root
among the Arabic-speaking populations of the Ottoman empire, and that during
the first world war this idea developed into a fully fledged revolutionary
movement. Dawisha argues that the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire was
originally proclaimed in the name of Islam, not in the name of Arabism or the
Arab nation. Religious identity was more important than national identity. The
Arab revolt therefore ought to be excised from the chronicles of Arab
nationalism.
It was only in the aftermath of the first world war
that the “Arab nation” emerged as a pertinent concept and Arab nationalism gradually
took the form of a political movement. Education played a vital part in
glorifying the past, in raising political consciousness and in kindling a
nationalist spirit in a generation of young Arabs. Intellectuals rather than
politicians were at the forefront of the movement. They borrowed the
nationalist idea from Europe and they used it to try to chart a new path for
the Arab nation.
But the Arab national movement did not sweep all
before it. There were formidable obstacles along its path. First, there were
conflicting identities and competing loyalties to tribe, sect, region, and
religion. Second, there was always tension between Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian and
other regional identities, and the larger, all-encompassing Arab identity. The
third (and perhaps most ironic) obstacle to the concept of a coherent Arab
nation was the linguistic diversity in the land of Araby.
The most powerful competing alternative to the idea
of a secular Arab nation was the concept of a united Muslim umma or community.
Islam was the other great supranational ideology with a claim to the allegiance
of the great majority of Arabs. Islam had a broader catchment area than
pan-Arabism, because it did not differentiate between Arab and non-Arab. The
Muslim umma was a unity in which ethnicity played no part.
Iraq in the inter-war era was in the vanguard of the
movement towards Arab unity. Proponents of pan-Arabism, like Sati’ al-Husri,
hoped to turn Iraq into the Prussia of the Middle East, into a nationalist
prototype for the rest of the Arab world. Yet Iraq itself was a severely
fragmented country. It was an artificial state, cobbled together by Britain out
of three ex-Ottoman provinces, and bereft of any ethnic or religious rationale.
Iraq lacked the essential underpinnings of a national
bond. The Kurds in the north aspired to political independence in Kurdistan.
Being non-semitic and speaking an Indo-European language, the Kurds had little
in common with the Arabs of Iraq, apart from their Sunni Muslim faith. It was
impossible to bring them under the umbrella of “the Arab nation”, because they
considered themselves ethnically distinct from the Arabs.
In their struggle for independence, however, they
were repeatedly frustrated because they had no friends but the mountains. The
Shiites in the south tended to view Arab nationalism as a Sunni project
designed to reduce them to an insignificant minority in an expanded Sunni Arab
domain. Over half the population was Shiite, yet the politically dominant group
were the Sunnis, who constituted barely a third of the population. Iraq thus
provided a foretaste of the problems that were to dog the Arab national
movement throughout its history.
In the face of such deep and pervasive divisions, it
was a well-nigh impossible task to achieve the two basic objectives of the Arab
national movement: unity and independence. A third objective was added in the
aftermath of the second world war: to keep Palestine in Arab hands. The first
Arab-Israeli war in 1948 was the crucial phase in the struggle for Palestine.
Arab unity, it was hoped, would be forged on the anvil of war against the
common enemy.
It was the great test for the newly independent Arab
states, and they failed it miserably. The inability of these states to
coordinate their diplomatic and military moves was in itself a major factor in
the loss of Palestine. The hopes that shone so brightly when the Arabs embarked
on this “battle of destiny” against the Zionist intruders gave way to
disillusion and despair over the dismal wreckage of Arab Palestine. It was the
first time that the Arab states let down their Palestinian brothers, but it was
by no means the last.
If 1948 was the nadir of Arab nationalism, in 1958
the movement reached its highest peak. In February of that year, the United
Arab Republic was established by the merger of Syria and Egypt. On July 14, a
bloody military coup destroyed the monarchy in Iraq and transformed the country
into a radical republic. Iraq was expected to join the UAR. The pro-western
regimes in Jordan and Lebanon teetered on the brink of collapse. For a brief
moment, the jubilant masses believed that those they considered to be the
enemies of Arab nationalism were about to fall like a row of dominoes. It was a
revolutionary moment in the Middle East, but the revolution did not spread.
With hindsight, 1958 was the great turning-point in Middle East history in
which history failed to turn. Since 1958, it has been downhill all the way.
The power generating Arab nationalism was eventually
turned off in June 1967. The armies of the confrontation states were roundly
defeated in the six-day war, their territory was occupied, their economies were
in ruins and the bluster of Arab nationalism was completely deflated; 35 years
on, the Arabs have not yet fully recovered from the crushing defeat they
suffered in the second “battle of destiny”. Nor have the Israelis recovered
from the spectacular military victory that launched them on a course of
territorial expansion. Hence the impasse on the Arab-Israeli front today.
After tracing the rise and fall of Arab nationalism
in the 20th century, Dawisha passes his final verdict. It is characteristically
balanced and fair-minded. There are lights as well as shadows in the picture he
paints. On the one hand, he recognises the contribution that pan-Arabism, in
its heyday, made to the regeneration of Arab self-confidence and sense of
dignity after long years of subjugation to colonial rule. On the other hand, he
notes that by the end of the 20th century little was left of the goal of Arab
unity but the debris of broken promises and shattered hopes.
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