Qatar has over the past three decades mediated several high-profile conflicts that have brought it unparalleled attention. It’s been said that this is remarkable given the commonly accepted assumption that small states, particularly from the Global South, are inherently limited in their power to act as third parties during conflict (Barakat, 2024). Qatar’s rise as a mediator didn’t happen overnight. According Wirtschafter (2024), Qatar started to play a regionally important role in the years after the the launch of Al Jazeera, “which gave the small Gulf state an outsized influence” .
Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Qatar is winning praise for its diplomacy skills. Vyacheslav Prokofyev/AP
Qatar’s strategic importance is further reinforced by its hosting of Al Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military installation in the region, and the presence of six major U.S. universities at Doha’s Education City.
A car sticker supports Qatar’s relationship with Turkey, which has deepened as a result of the blockade. Naseem Zeitoon/Reuters
“Al Jazeera helped create Qatar’s maverick image but also repeatedly got it into hot water. During the Iraq War, President George W. Bush, in a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, reportedly contemplated bombing the Doha headquarters of the broadcaster, which was airing video of the fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah that the Pentagon said was misleading. The White House dismissed the report at the time, and the British government denied it.”
As Kamrava (2012) wrote, across the Arabian Gulf “an authoritarian retrenchment and narrowing of political space has emerged.” This reassertion of the state’s dictatorial authority has, of course, taken different forms across the region depending on the state’s overall societal posture. In Qatar, for example, where anti-state sentiments are conspicuous in their absence, there have not been any discernible changes in the domestic political environment. In the UAE, however, the space provided to civil society organisations has been steadily narrowed by the state since the beginning of the regional unrest. In Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, repression was notably more draconian still.
Abouzzohour (2021) ponders what are the implications of the fact that no monarch was overthrown during or since the Arab Spring. Various experts have linked the latter to monarchs’ legitimacy, external support, and resource wealth. She suggests that while there is no consensus view, “it is clear that monarchs have repeatedly and successfully contained different types of opposition threats for decades prior to the Arab Spring and continue to do so 10 years later.”
The “Arab Spring”The Economist (2020). Expand map.
Ten years on from the “Arab Spring” The Economist (2020) write:
“What kind of repression do you imagine it takes for a young man to do this?” So asked Leila Bouazizi after her brother, Muhammad, set himself on fire ten years ago. Local officials in Tunisia had confiscated his fruit cart, ostensibly because he did not have a permit but really because they wanted to extort money from him. It was the final indignity for the young man. “How do you expect me to make a living?” he shouted before dousing himself with petrol in front of the governor’s office. His actions would resonate across the region, where millions of others had reached breaking-point, too. Their rage against oppressive leaders and corrupt states came bursting forth as the Arab spring. Uprisings toppled the dictators of four countries—Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. For a moment it seemed as if democracy had arrived in the Arab world at last. … Only one of those democratic experiments yielded a durable result—fittingly, in Bouazizi’s Tunisia. Egypt’s failed miserably, ending in a military coup. Libya, Yemen and, worst of all, Syria descended into bloody civil wars that drew in foreign powers. The Arab spring turned to bitter winter so quickly that many people now despair of the region. Much has changed there since, but not for the better. The Arab world’s despots are far from secure. With oil prices low, even petro-potentates can no longer afford to buy their subjects off with fat subsidies and cushy government jobs. Many leaders have grown more paranoid and oppressive. Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia locks up his own relatives. Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has stifled the press and crushed civil society. One lesson autocrats learned from the Arab spring is that any flicker of dissent must be snuffed out fast, lest it spread.
The London-based magazine concludes that, “The region is less free than it was in 2010—and perhaps [now even] more angry.”
Accompanying the above graphic, The Economist Intelligence Unit writes, “Saudi Arabia has embarked on four transformative “giga projects” (including NEOM, a planned mega-city; and Qiddiya, a planned “entertainment city”) that represent major technology, tourism, real-estate, sport, cultural and entertainment developments aligned with Vision 2030 objectives. Saudi Arabia also intends to “develop national and international connectivity through ventures funded by a combination of state and foreign investment.”
Writing in 2014, Fanar Haddad says, no other event—not even the Iranian Revolution of 1979—has had “as momentous and detrimental an effect on sectarian relations in the Middle East as the war on and occupation of Iraq in 2003” (p. 67). And lest we forget, that debacle was not about the spreading of democracy in any way, shape or form. As Ian Sinclair reminds us in an excellent piece (see: WMD? or actually oil) an October 2003 Gallup poll of Iraqis residing in Baghdad found a full one per cent (yes, 1%) agreed with the premise that the US/UK desire to establish democracy was the main motivating factor for the invasion, while “43 per cent of respondents said the invasion’s principal objective was Iraq’s oil reserves.”
Matthiesen (2013) was in Bahrain in February 2011 when the Kingdom’s “Arab Spring” protests began, and records the initially peaceful character of the demonstrations, and not only peaceful but explicitly anti-sectarian (“neither Shia nor Sunni” the demonstrators chanted at the start). It is easy to forget now, as Jones (2015, p. 242) writes, “there was a spirit of optimism at that point, and many hoped Crown Prince Salman would successfully negotiate a compromise” (i.e., transition to a more accountable regime).
This opportunity evaporated within a month, on the 14th of March 2011, with the intervention of Saudi troops across the causeway. As Jones (2015) writes in his review of Matthiesen’s work, “it provides an account of Bahrain’s counter-revolution, the National Dialogue and the establishment of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry.” Matthiesen notes that the head of the commission had said, “you can’t say justice has been done when calling for Bahrain to be a republic gets you a life sentence and an officer who repeatedly fires on an unarmed man at close range gets seven years.”
Potter (2014) writes that in the wake of the Arab Spring, “in the Persian Gulf monarchies, there was a continuing standoff between Sunni and Shia in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and a widespread fear [be it imagined or tangible] of Iranian irredentism.” Jones (2015, p. 243) suggests that the central thesis of Matthiesen (213) is that some such monarchies have “deliberately stoked sectarianism, both as a means to fight the perceived Shia threat, as well as to divide and rule.” Proving intent is difficult acknowledges Jones; “Who can say whether leadership is foolish or wicked, or indeed both? But the outcome is the same.”
The schism (divide or split) between Sunni and Shia Islam emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, and disputes arose over who should shepherd the new and rapidly growing faith. Some believed that a new leader should be chosen by consensus; others thought that only the prophet’s descendants should become caliph. Muslims who wanted to select his successor, or Caliph, by following the traditional Arab custom (Sunna, ‘the way’) formed into a group known as Sunnis and elected Abu Bakr, a companion of Mohammed, to be the first caliph, or leader of the Islamic community. Others insisted the Prophet had designated his cousin and son-in-law Ali as his legitimate heir. This group was called Shia Ali, or ‘Party of Ali,’ (from which the word ‘Shia’ is now derived).
While the main responsibility of Sunni Caliphs was to maintain law and order in the Muslim realm, as descendants of the Prophet, Shia Imams (spiritual leaders) also provided religious guidance and were/are considered infallible — see, e.g., Axworthy (2017), Harney (2016) and Hubbard (2016). According to The Council on Foreign Relations (2023), Shias believe that Ali and his descendants are part of a divine order while Sunnis are opposed to political succession based on Mohammed’s bloodline.
Words matter
Framing the term “sectarianism” is fraught with both controversy and difficulty. It stems from the notion of a sect: a group with distinctive religious, political, or philosophical point of view and/or set of (ritualistic) practices. Most often the term has a religious connotation, such as a small group (minority) that has broken away from “orthodox” (mainstream) beliefs. According to Potter (2014, p. 2) Western writers typically, and mistakenly, characterise Sunnis as “orthodox” Muslims, and Shia as being “heterodox.” Sectarianism has come to have a negative connotation, denoting a group that sets itself off from society and thereby raises tensions. Haddad (2014, p. 67) notes that the term “sectarianism” does not have a definitive meaning, and prefers to view such groups in Iraq as “competing subnational mass-group identities.” It follows then that ‘sectarian’ identities, much like ethnic ones, are constantly changing and being both renegotiated (Smith, 2000) and reimagined (Anderson, 1983). I agree with the sentiments of Haddad (2014), until scholars are able to satisfactorily define “sectarianism,” a more coherent way of addressing the issue would be to use the term “sectarian” followed by the appropriate suffix: sectarian hate; sectarian unity; sectarian discrimination, and so forth.
The map below gives details on the confessional divides on and around the Arabian peninsular. Although the data used to compile the map is dated the work is based on that carried out by Dr Michael Izady) and later used by The Financial Times of London is the latest as far as know. The Table that follows gives more recent figures but not geographical spread. As will become apparent when consulting the table and notes, the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) relies heavily on the U.S. State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Reports (that are submitted to the House of Congress annually in accordance with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998). Those said reports paint a common theme: virtually all Gulf citizens are Muslim, but official demographics published by these countries do not delineate along confessional lines so, local media and think-tank reporting is relied upon.
To gain a deeper understanding of the region’s “sectarian” politics the following are worth investigating: Potter (2014) and Matthiesen (2013).
* Includes gnostic Alawites & Alevis. ** Dated; see Table below. Expand map.
Table: Religions in 2023 (%)
Country
Sunni
Shia
Other
Bahrain a
28
54
18
Kuwait b
66
17
17
Oman c
47
7
46
Qatar d
66
12
22
Saudi Arabia e
81
9
10
The UAE f
67
7
26
Iran
17
81
1
Iraq
35
61
4
Jordan
93
2
5
Egypt
90
< 1
10
Yemen
44
55
1
a
The US state department’s 2023 IRF report on Bahrain estimates the total population to be approximately 1.5 million with Bahrainis numbering around 720,000 (June 2023 – compare with Arabian Gulf data). The Bahraini government does not publish statistics that delineate its the Shia and Sunni Muslim populations but, “estimates from NGOs and the Shia community state Shia Muslims represent a majority (55 to 70 per cent).”
b
The IRF Report on Kuwait The U.S. government estimates the total population at 3.2 million (midyear 2022). U.S. government figures also cite the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI), a local government agency, which reports that the country’s total population was 4.8 million in 2023. As of June, PACI reported there were 1.5 million citizens and 3.3 million noncitizens. PACI estimates 74.7 percent of citizens and noncitizens are Muslims. The national census does not distinguish between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the media estimate approximately 70 percent of citizens are Sunni Muslims, while the remaining 30 percent are Shia Muslims (including Ahmadi and Ismaili Muslims, whom the government counts as Shia).
c
The IRF Report on Oman states that around 41 per cent of the Sultanate’s population constitutes foreign guest workers. Regarding the national Omani citizens, it is estimated that 45 per cent are Sunni, 45 per cent are Ibadi and most of the remainder are Shia (like its neighbours, the Omani government does not directly publish religious confession breakdowns). Note that the ARDA percentages in the Table above differ from those provided by the IRF.
d
According to the IRF Report on Qatar, as of 2023 Qataris made up approximately 11 per cent of the country’s total population and that “most citizens are Sunni, and almost all others are Shia.”
e
The IRF Report on Saudi Arabia estimates that around 85 per cent of Saudis are Sunni. The remainder are Shia, but in the oil-rich Eastern provinces of the country, this latter group comprises a substantial fraction (see: Oil’s corruptive capacity).
f
The 2023 IRF Report on the UAE suggests that approximately 11 per cent of the country’s population are Emiratis, of whom more than 85 per cent are Sunni. Most of the remainder, according to the report are are Shia citizens, “who are concentrated in the Emirates of Dubai and Sharjah.”
The narrative of a Sunni-Shia war is so prevalent it is now accepted without challenge – but Abdul-Azim Ahmed argues it is misleading to the point of inaccuracy.
‘But what about the great divide that is currently ripping apart the Middle-East?’
The question was asked to me at the launch of an exhibition about Muslim and Jewish relations at Cardiff University. The questioner was an elderly gentleman, clearly an academic, who had just finished reading part of the exhibition. I asked him to clarify.
‘The Sunni and Shia divide, that tore Islam asunder from the earliest days after the Prophet up to today’ he explained. As we continued our conversation, I discovered that this Professor of Chemistry felt the exhibition was intellectually dishonest for not acknowledging the impact of the division.
It is a view that is increasingly common. Namely, that much of the conflict in the Middle-East and to some extent North Africa, can be summarised as a struggle between warring factions within Islam -the Sunni majority and the Shia minority. You can read about it in respectable titles such as TIME magazine, The Spectator, even the New Statesman – all of whom covered it with front-page features, illustrating the conflict with stereotypical images of Arabs that tapped into centuries of Orientalist depictions of Muslims.
The Sunni versus Shia narrative has been featured in almost every newspaper I cared to check. Most recently, The Independent published a piece with the headline ‘The vicious schism between Sunni and Shia has been poisoning Islam for 1,400 years – and it’s getting worse’. The article of course mentioned the idea of the ‘Shia Crescent’ (a crescent-shaped area of land where there is a high Shia population) that is so ubiquitous in analysis it is almost cliché, not to mention being almost entirely useless as a tool for understanding geopolitical relationships.
The Sunni-Shia thesis essentially posits that a 7th century conflict of leadership amongst Muslims is the source of current Middle-Eastern unrest. The conflict led to two distinct theological groups emerging, the Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah (People of the Example of the Prophet and the Majority – conveniently shortened to ‘Sunni’) and the Shi’at Ali (the Party of Ali or ‘Shia’). The story goes that the two groups have been locked in a 1400 year conflict that has spanned continents, nation states and empires, and reaches its modern zenith in Syria, Bahrain, and the cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The problem with this thesis is that it is wrong. Not just partially wrong (as political analysis is, of course, always subject to interpretation) but so misleading, so inaccurate, and so detached from reality that it cannot be described as anything other than myth.
Even more problematic is that this myth has become so pervasive that gentlemen such as the professor I met consider it inconceivable to talk of Islam without talking of the Sunni-Shia conflict. Religious journalism has never been so dismally let down.
An Ancient Conflict?
The most common myth associated with the Sunni-Shia thesis is that Islam has been rent asunder by the sectarian conflict since its inception. This is simply reading history through solely modern eyes.
There was of course a dispute about religious authority following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Historical specificities aside, the Sunni and Shia divide was largely a political one. There were no direct theological implications until the 10th and 11th centuries when orthodoxies began to settle and a Sunni Islam became distinct from a Shia Islam, led in separate directions as they developed distinct legal and interpretative traditions.
The lines have always been blurred between Sunnis and Shias, and they are so blurred that it is often difficult to make a distinction at all in the early centuries of Islam – for example, both Sunnis and Shias celebrate and claim for their own many of the same historical figures. Many of the Imams of Twelver Shiism are regarded as pious and orthodox by Sunni Muslims. Identities were fluid too, so that the revolution that put the Abbasid’s in power in the 9th century started as strongly Shia but ended as ardently Sunni.
Paul Vallely, writing in The Independent, argued that ‘the division between the two factions is older and deeper even than the tensions between Protestants and Catholics’. He is certainly correct that the division is older. But deeper? More significant? Certainly not historically, nor theologically. Sunni and Shia divergence in practice is really only intelligible to those very familiar with Islam in general.
There are differences in notions of orthopraxis (how and when to pray, for example). There are differences too in how scripture is assessed and interpreted – important yes, but historically, these have been the topic of scholarly dispute rather than military dispute. There have been times when Sunnis and Shias fought against each (the 7th century not being one of those times, importantly), but there have also been times when Shia have fought against Shia and Sunni have fought against Sunni.
The argument that Sunnis and Shias have been at each others throats since the 7th century is wrong in every way possible.
A War of Two Nations
So, if the claim of a Sunni-Shia conflict is historically incorrect, what about in the modern context?
What journalists and those who buy in to the Sunni-Shia narrative are doing is essentially replicating unquestioningly the rhetoric of two particular nation states. Saudi Arabia and Iran are perhaps the two most significant powers in the Middle-East, and since the Iranian Revolution in the 1970s, both have been vying for ascendency. Saudi Arabia especially has been exporting anti-Shia theology in a bid to delegitimise Iran and isolate it from other Muslim-majority nations.
Both nations recognise that amongst Muslims, any claim to legitimacy and authority to rule must be expressed in religious terms. Murtaza Hussain, a journalist at The Intercept, argues that Iran however, is less eager to push sectarian rhetoric than Saudi – ‘Iran’s statements are much more conciliatory because they know they can never achieve their goal of leading a largely Sunni Muslim world if they are openly sectarian’.
Conflict in the Middle-East is very much about resources and influence; it is of course however marked by religious rhetoric — rhetoric however that should rarely be taken at face value.
The Syrian Civil War
What about in nations such as Syria, where a Shia government is fighting against a Sunni populous? Surely here the claim of a Sunni-Shia conflict has merit?
Again the reality is more complicated. It was only in 1973 that modern Shias formally accepted Allawis (the religious sect to which the Assad family belong) as a branch of Shia-Islam. Musa al-Sadr, a senior Shia cleric in Lebanon, issued the fatwa, which brought centuries of ambiguity to an end. Until then — the Allawis were an unknown quantity. The religion was certainly influenced by Islam, but much else too, and Orthodox Sunnis and Shias both were sceptical of the high secretive tradition. Al-Sadr’s fatwa was as much motivated by politics as by piety — but it should underscore the fractured nature of religion and power in the Middle-East — a fracturing that is most clear in Syria today.
Journalists who consistently frame the conflict in sectarian terms also add to a pressure for religious groups to adhere to a particular political standpoint.
‘It’s called legitimacy by blackmail’ says James Gelvin, an academic and author who has researched the Middle East and Arab Spring. He explains to me the relevance of a Shia identity for Syria’s Assad Regime; ‘What the Syrian government has done is make itself stable by identifying the government with a particular sect, what they have done is forced other members of that sect into support of the government.’ It is a common tactic not only in Syria but in Bahrain also; ‘What that means of course is that the government tells minority communities, ‘if you do not support us, you’re dead, the majority will do something to you’’.
When journalists in the West repeat the ‘legitimacy by blackmail’ narrative in newspaper reports, they make the job of important bridge-builders, such as an Allawite Shia who doesn’t support the Assad regime, even more dangerous.
The same tatic is used by cheerleaders of the conflict, framing the Syrian Civil War as one between to Sunnis and Shias so as to garner theological support from certain quarters or to delegitimise claims of authority in other quarters. Muhammad Reza Tajiri, a Shia scholar in the United Kingdom, believes ‘the Syrian conflict certainly did not start on sectarian grounds, but as a result of opportunism from ‘scholars’ of both sides, the sectarian ideological issue is now inseparable from the conflict’.
Misleading Analysis
But it is clear that sectarianism is an element of the conflict; a devil’s advocate may argue that describing the conflict as Sunni-versus-Shia isn’t inaccurate. To truly appreciate how misleading it can be, try the following thought experiment.
Imagine a newspaper in the Middle-East, let’s say reporting in the 1990s. It is covering The Troubles of the UK and Ireland, specifically the Manchester Bombing of 1996. The headline of this piece is ‘The vicious schism between Protestant and Catholic has been poisoning Christianity for 500 years – and it’s getting worse’.
You begin reading the first few paragraphs of this article which professes to trace the history of the conflict between Britain and Ireland. It then locates the source of this conflict as beginning with Martin Luther nailing the Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenburg.
The article concludes that the only way to resolve the dispute over Northern Ireland is sitting the Archbishop of Canterbury down with the Archbishop of Westminster to hammer out points of theological divergence, perhaps beginning with Transubstantiation. Only then, the author argues, can we hope for peace in Western Europe.
This bizarre article would never address the core of the issue, nor the problems being faced, nor offer any real solutions or clear ways forward. In fact, by choosing and forcing the narrative of a Christian sectarian conflict, it obfuscates the issue so drastically that it is useless.
It is the same with the Middle-East. Sectarianism is an aspect of Syria, but should the Muslim world come to some consensus about who should have been leader after the Prophet Muhammad, the difference at the centre of the original Sunni-Shia divide, the conflict in Syria would not cease.
Despite this, it isn’t uncommon to find articles talking about Syria, Bahrain or Pakistan, beginning with a discussion about 7th century Islam and disputes of who should be the next leader, Abu Bakr or Ali. Clearly this is neither insightful nor informed.
Alternative Understandings
If sectarianism is the wrong paradigm by which to understand conflicts in the Middle-East? How should they be understood?
‘The region has been economically stagnant’ believes James Gelvin, who has written extensively on the economic and social factors that led to the Arab Spring; ‘there is a largely young demographic, an unemployed youth, living amongst regimes that are incredibly oppressive’. Murtaza Hussain agrees that the problem is a combination of ‘economic failure’ and ‘identity politics’.
There is an emphasis sometimes put on the Saudi Arabia-versus-Iran cold war, but there are other pressures too. Most recently, the fracturing of relationships highlights how Qatar has emerged as a major player in the region. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have increasingly been hyping up tensions and rhetoric (a very Sunni-versus-Sunni conflict, to use the sectarian lens). Turkey too has very carefully developed links with post-Arab-Spring states, positioning itself as a potential moral voice for Muslims globally. The United States, which supports the Egyptian army with $3 billion annually, and Russia, which is propping up a beleaguered Assad Regime in Syria, also have deep interests in the region.
Conflicts are messy. Tony Blair’s speech in late April showed this most clearly. He advocated supporting intervention in Syria, but creating ties with Russia to fight Islamist threats. Yet Russia is supporting Assad, the same regime fighting the rebels Blair suggests offering support. His policy would quite literally force Britain and other Western nations to support two sides of the same war.
If experienced statesman like Blair can’t provide a coherent narrative without stumbling over themselves, we should certainly be wary of newspapers that simplify the problems of the Middle-East using the Sunni-versus-Shia schism.
Perhaps best to conclude then with James Gelvin:-
“In terms of the Middle East, the straw people always grasp at first is religion. They don’t do that in the case of the West. If there is a problem, it’s not a national problem, it’s not an economic problem, it has to be nailed on religion. It’s facile, simplistic and lazy analysis.”
References
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso Books.
Haddad, F. (2014). Secterian relations and sunni identity on post-civil war Iraq. In L. G. Potter (Ed.), Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf (pp. 67–115). Oxford University Press.
Louër, L. (2014). The State and Sectarian Identities in the Persian Gulf Monarchies: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait in Comparative Perspective. In L. G. Potter (Ed.), Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf (pp. 117–143). Oxford University Press.
Jones, J. (2016). Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t [Book Review] Journal of Islamic studies, 27(2), 242–243. https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etv108
Matthiesen, T. (2013). Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t. Stanford University Press.
Potter, L. G. (Ed.) (2014). Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf. Oxford University Press.
Smith, A. D. (2000). The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism. University Press of New England.
It is a truism to say that American dependence on oil has long influenced US foreign policy especially from the post–WWII era of geopolitical competition, through post Cold War era deregulation, to today with fist-bumping and bemoaning the Saudis to pump more and more oil until the cost of living for the working classes of the west eases (economically speaking it is counterintuitive for the seller, likely to result in unintended consequences if the oil-rich Gulf were to kowtow, and be disastrous for the Paris Accords). But there’s an argument to be made that “energy security” for the buyers will likely lead to “political instability” for the sellers.
As Mundy (2020) writes in “The Oil for Security Myth and Middle East Insecurity” (for MERIP, the Middle East Research and Information Project) since the 1970s, the Middle East has been the location of a third of all recorded wars between states, nearly 40 per cent of all internationalised civil wars and seven out of ten wars of occupation. With the launching of America’s global war on terrorism, a third of all new armed conflicts have emerged in the Middle East since 2000; that number has grown to half since 2010. The Middle East’s share of all terrorism related events worldwide, as defined by the Global Terrorism Database, has likewise increased from 10 percent in the 1970s to over half since 2010.
As Mead (2019) wrote in a review of “Lords of the Desert: The Battle Between the United States and Great Britain for Supremacy in the Modern Middle East” (Barr, 2018), the British Labour government that took power in the summer of 1945 soon concluded that keeping as much of the Middle East’s oil as possible under British rule—and thus within the sterling zone—offered the best, perhaps the only, hope of maintaining the United Kingdom’s place in the first rank of world powers. This conviction became the lodestar of post war British policy. At first, the prospects looked good. Pro-British monarchs ruled in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, and the Gulf kingdoms. There were, however, two problems with the plan: Arab nationalists wanted no part of British rule, and the United States was willing and able to displace the United Kingdom as the dominant regional power.
From The Times, a long time ago.
“Shadow Wars,” reviewed
Steve Donoghue
2016. The Christian Science Monitor
Anyone who’s seen the videos — and everyone has seen the videos — will have the same set of questions. The videos show schoolgirls being herded out of their classrooms by armed men who shout their organization name loudly and clearly for the video cameras. They show markets and nightclubs with flashing police sirens outside, forlorn groups of bystanders standing around hoping for news of loved ones inside. They show priceless ancient ruins being dynamited. They show journalists kneeling in the desert, squinting in the sunlight moments before they’re beheaded.
They show a naked, strident barbarism that seems like it belongs in a different age. The names are as familiar as the videos: al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIS. And the questions that arise inevitably are always the same: Who are these people? Where did they come from? What do they want?
Christopher Davidson is a reader in Middle Eastern Politics at Durham University, author of the landmark study “After the Sheikhs,” and his big new book, “Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East” comes closer than any recent popular study to offering definitive answers to those and other questions.
The patterns were set during the great imperial heyday of Continental gamesmanship, when British satraps all throughout the Middle East often propped up the most fiercely conservative Islamic fundamentalists because they made more effective regional buffers against the forces of Russian encroachment.
And the further along Davidson’s book progresses, the more those patterns come to look unbreakable. The Western powers intervene, meddle, support, subsidize, and double cross, constantly using the rhetoric of good stewardship while caring only about securing oil and land bases to parry the ambitions of the other regional chess masters, primarily the Russians. In all cases, long-term strategies are forgotten in the cloak-and-dagger mania of short-term tactics, and the result is a word that crops up all throughout Davidson’s book: blowback – unintended consequences that are intensely predictable in hindsight.
So an American Secretary of State can on a Monday deliver a stirring address about the sanctity of human rights in “the developing world” and on a Tuesday declare that the local dictator is a close personal friend of the family and must remain in power to ensure the stability of the region. So the United States can funnel covert funding and training to jihadist guerrilla forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s in order to use them as catspaws against the Soviets, without sparing much concern for the fact that the jihadis in question hated America as fervently as they hated the Russians – without, in other words, even trying to envision blowback that might involve one of those jihadi guerrilla fighters, Osama bin Laden, going on to strike at his American benefactors. Even when the warning signs are tragically explicit, they often go unheeded, as Davidson chronicles in theaters of operation stretching from West Africa to Central Asia.
The pattern holds firm everywhere from Syria to Qatar to Yemen to Libya to Somalia to Nigeria: Great Britain or France or the United States will pick some “partner” in a volatile region like Iraq, bet all the markers on that partner being a willing agent of democratic reform even though that partner is very visibly a power-bloated monster, and then, years down the line, express pious horror when that partner turns out to be a power-bloated monster.
In the mass of historical and geopolitical information Davidson assembles in these pages, some notes sound again and again. One of these of course is the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011, in which enormous and almost entirely peaceful popular protests swept through the Arab world. Since the movement posed a direct threat to the status quo, it predictably received tepid response from those holding power in the region – most certainly including the United States.
Another of these recurring notes is something of longer-standing centrality to American foreign policy: Saudi Arabia, staunch ally, trade partner, and arms market to the United States, turns up repeatedly playing a game of its own, harboring, sponsoring, and financing Islamic terrorists in their operations against the United States. Running through virtually every tale of Middle Eastern violence and treachery Davidson relates is at least some strand of Saudi complicity; American policymakers might be familiar with this most dangerous of double standards, but it’s a good bet the general American public – which in poll after poll seems unaware of the fact that 15 of the 19 al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked America on September 11 were Saudi nationals – would be alarmed by it. For its unsparing probity, Davidson’s book ought to be required reading with both groups.
And what about the answers to those fundamental questions – Who are these people? Where did they come from? What do they want? “Shadow Wars” makes the answers painfully, damningly clear. What the book doesn’t do is offer any way out of the old patterns it describes, since arbitrary withdrawal causes just as much blowback as arbitrary involvement. But if some future solution is discovered, it’ll be thanks to the path-clearing of books like this one.
Shadow Wars: Reviews
Hilal Khashan
2017. American University of Beirut
Davidson of Durham University seeks to answer the question: Why has the Arab quest for democracy been bogged down in a murky quagmire while “parts of Europe, Latin America, and even Africa once managed to cut the shackles of authoritarianism.” The answers he provides, however, implicating the United States and Britain in all Arab political problems, do not satisfy.
Individually, many of the examples Davidson provides make sense, for example, that the U.S. military establishment became concerned about reductions in spending after the drawdown of U.S. troops from Western Europe. It is difficult, however, to accept that the need “to protect U.S. defence spending” was the primary reason for President George H.W. Bush’s decision to go to war against Iraq in 1991. This reductionist analysis suggests sensationalism.
The author dwells at length on the mischievous role of the West in the region’s “deep state” counterrevolutions, which aborted the “Arab Spring.” There is no denying that the foreign policy of Washington and its Western allies is muddled at best, but to assign to them such overpowering influence relieves Arab dictators from their own responsibility and failure. Similarly, he asserts that Washington had a role in the creation of the Islamic State (ISIS) and criticizes the Obama administration’s lack of resolve to destroy it. But he insults the reader’s intelligence when he claims that the many accounts of ISIS barbarity “were poorly sourced, and some were definitely made up.”
The book would have benefited from more editing and factual review (Egyptian president Anwar Sadat expelled all Soviet advisors in 1972, not 1971) and, considering its voluminous size, should have an index. But most seriously, the book is too thin on analysis. Davidson grounds his book in a neoclassical counterrevolution theory whose building blocks are not particularly appropriate for studying the evolution of Arab societies during the past two centuries. The theoretical inadequacies of Shadow Wars weaken its arguments and impede convincing conclusions.
John Waterbury
2017. New York University, Abu Dhabi
According to Davidson, for more than a century, the intelligence and military establishments of the United Kingdom and the United States have been leading a hidden struggle against implicitly progressive forces in the Middle East, driven by a desire for geopolitical advantage and the control of oil. Notwithstanding the declaration of a “war on terror;’ Davidson believes that the preferred instruments of the Americans and the British have been Islamist movements: the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and, most recently, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). The Americans and the British have often found themselves fighting their own proxies, but they knew that would happen, Davidson claims. They therefore fight halfheartedly, he contends, so that such groups continue to survive. Nearly all of Davidson’s sources are in the public domain: he uncovers no original evidence for his argument and instead assembles familiar pieces into an unfamiliar shape. The results are unconvincing. For example, if Western powers fostered ISIS in order to drive a Sunni wedge between Iran and Syria, why did they bother to topple Saddam Hussein, who already played that role? More troubling, Davidson’s analysis denies agency to Islamists, Middle Easterners, and pretty much everyone else: in his view, we are all merely pawns in the shadow wars.
Douglas Little
2017. Clark University, Massachusetts
The meteoric rise in 2014 of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has spawned a dizzying array of articles and books seeking to place this latest Middle East horror show into historical perspective. Among the most ambitious, provocative, and tendentious is Shadow Wars by Christopher Davidson, a lecturer in Middle East politics at the University of Durham. Davidson at-tributes the emergence of ISIS and other extremist groups to “the long-running policies of successive imperial and ‘advanced capitalist’ administrations” in Britain and America and “their ongoing manipulations of an elaborate network of powerful national and transnational actors across both the Arab and Islamic worlds” (pp. viii–ix). Shadow Wars synthesizes the writings of William Blum, Robert Dreyfuss, Mark Curtis, and like-minded critics of British and American policies to create what might be called a unified field theory of Western imperialism in the Middle East, suggesting along the way that many recent grisly terrorist actions in Iraq and Syria may actually have been “false flag” operations designed to legitimate military intervention by the United Kingdom and the United States. After I finished reading this information-packed, but often eye-glazing 700-page monograph, I said to myself: If Naomi Klein and Robert Ludlum had decided to coauthor an account of recent events in the Middle East, they would have produced something like Shadow Wars.
Although Davidson has made good use of the WikiLeaks “Cablegate” database of leaked US diplomatic documents along with some on-the-ground interviews, he relies mainly on secondary sources rather than archival materials to tell his story. Frequently, he veers off into the acronym-laden political underbrush, where Islamic splinter groups de-bate how many infidels can dance on the head of a pin. Once one clears away Davidson’s forest of thick description, his master narrative looks something like this. After 1945, British and American officials, frequently working in concert, cultivated ties with Islamic groups, first to counteract Arab and Iranian nationalists who threatened Western control of Middle East oil during the 1950s and 1960s and later to defeat Soviet forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s. So far this is a familiar story already well-told by scholars like Joel Gordon, Mark Gasiorowski, and Steve Coll, but Davidson presses beyond the end of the Cold War to argue that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s intervention in the Balkans during the 1990s was not intend-ed merely to defend a motley crew of Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims but also to serve as a dress rehearsal for military intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya early in the 21st century. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, US president George W. Bush and UK prime minister Tony Blair, with help from pro-Western Muslim autocrats in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf shaykhdoms, launched a global crusade against terrorism designed to undermine Islamic reformers, reinforce the neoliberal Washington Consensus, and rev up the military-industrial complex on both sides of the Atlantic via massive amounts of defence spending and arms sales.
While Davidson’s interpretation of the War on Terror reads like a chapter from Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, his explanation of the causes and consequences of the Arab Spring is bewildering. Spontaneous grassroots revolts against pro-Western kleptocracies in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen and anti-Western autocracies in Libya and Syria were discredited and eventually crushed by an unholy alliance of military officers in Cairo and oil shaykhs in Riyadh and Doha with the blessing of the administrations of Barack Obama and British prime minister David Cameron, who paid little more than lip service to democracy and human rights. Indeed, in the case or Libya, Davidson implies that Washington and London conspired to bring down Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi through “a fake Arab Spring” in order reopen the richest oil fields in North Africa to multinational corporations based in the US and UK.
Davidson’s analysis of the emergence of ISIS is downright bizarre. In a chapter entitled “The Islamic State: A Strategic Asset,” he asks, “qui bono?” (who benefits?). The answer, of course, is American and British corporate interests and their allies in Saudi Arabia, all of whom agree that “the rise of the Islamic State has been spectacularly good for business” (p. 406). Furthermore, according to Davidson:
“Although the new caliphate’s savagery may seem unconscionably nihilistic, it nonetheless serves an equally important purpose for those on the outside, as even after the Arab Spring the surviving Western-backed autocracies have been able to confirm their status as the Middle East’s “moderates,” just as they were during the War on Terror and, before that, against the threat of international communism.”
— 405–406
Later in this chapter, Davidson claims that the Obama Administration intentionally ignored warnings about ISIS until mid-2014 in the hopes to drive a Sunni wedge into the “Shi‘i crescent” that stretches from Damascus to Tehran. One of his chief sources for this is Michael Flynn — Barack Obama’s onetime director of the Defence Intelligence Agency and, more recently, Donald Trump’s short-lived National Security Advisor — who told Al Jazeera in 2015 that “there was a decision in the US government knowingly to support such extremist groups” (quoted on p. 421). As for Obama’s drone strikes and covert operations against ISIS, Davidson regards them merely as proof that the United States was “trying to find the right balance between being seen to take action but yet still allowing the Islamic State to prosper” (p. 422).
This is not the only time in Shadow Wars where Davidson suggests that there is a dark conspiracy at work in the Muslim world. He claims that Western intelligence agencies exaggerated reports that Serbian paramilitary units killed 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the “Srebrenica massacre” (the quotation marks are Davidson’s) in order “to provide a casus belli” for NATO intervention in 1995 (p. 135). Davidson notes without editorial comment that “Libyan bloggers” identified the man lynched in a ditch outside Sirte in October 2011 as prob-ably “one of Gaddafi’s many very realistic body doubles” (p. 297). Davidson implies that the sarin gas attacks on Syrian rebels at Ghuta two years later were carried out not by the regime of Bashar al-Asad but by the rebels themselves (p. 330). Most controversial of all, Davidson suggests that there is evidence of “camera trickery” and other video “inconsistencies” (pp. 425, 500) in two of the most gruesome acts committed by ISIS, the beheading of James Foley and the burning alive of Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot Mu’adh al-Kasasiba, adding for good measure that some “experts” believe that pictures of the graphic murder of a Japanese hostage were enhanced by a set of “Photoshopped images” (p. 503).
What then are we to make of Christopher Davidson’s unified field theory seeking to explain a century of war, revolution, and terrorism in the Middle East? He presents solid evidence that the Western powers did employ Islam as an antidote to radical Arab nationalism during the Cold War. He reminds us that although US and UK policy-makers have always insisted that their interventions in the Muslim world were never about oil, crises like the Suez War in 1956 and Operation Desert Storm in 1991 were almost entirely about oil. And he reveals the hypocrisy of American and British leaders, who have talked the talk of democracy from the age of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq in Iran (1951–53) through the era of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt (2012–13) while refusing to walk the walk. Today, ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo is indeed the second coming of Mohammad Reza Shah in Tehran 65 years ago.
Yet Davidson’s explanation of more recent developments, frequently couched in adverbs like “worryingly” and “intriguingly” and “sinisterly,” seems off the mark. Despite Davidson’s insistence that ISIS is little more than a band of “useful idiots” and social media addicts serving the interests of malevolent Persian Gulf royals and multinational corporations, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his extremist followers are in reality accidental opportunists who have taken advantage of America’s greatest geopolitical blunder in one hundred years to unleash a reign of terror. Far from being a valuable “strategic asset” for the Western powers and their clients in the Middle East, ISIS is a grave strategic threat whose reliance on 21st century social media and 7th century barbarism promises to keep Donald Trump, Prime Minister Theresa May, and their successors awake at night for many years to come.
The plot thickens
Déjà vu – Tehran then half a century later (manufacturing the story e t c)Books by BarrNasser & MosaddeqOperating in the shadows.
Iraq (et al.)
Two books, together, tell a compelling tale,
Two Telling Tales
In the first, Rutledge (2005) traces the origins of America’s addiction throughout the twentieth century and explains how America’s relations with the Middle East were developed through its quest for energy security. America’s motorisation and its consequent demand for oil at predictable market prices was and continues to be an important influence on US policy towards Iraq – especially given the uncertainties relating to what has so far been the securest source of Middle East oil – Saudi Arabia. Ian Rutledge argues that the war in Iraq was neither a war for ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’ nor was it a plot to ‘steal Iraq’s oil’, but rather an attempt to establish a pliant and dependable oil protectorate in the Middle East which would underwrite the soaring demand from America’s hyper-motorised consumers. In this work, Rutledge undertakes an in-depth analysis of the motorisation of US society and explicitly links this to America’s foreign policy adventures, past and present.
In the second (Rutledge, 2014) In 1920 an Arab revolt came perilously close to inflicting a shattering defeat upon the British Empire’s forces occupying Iraq after the Great War. A huge peasant army besieged British garrisons and bombarded them with captured artillery. British columns and armoured trains were ambushed and destroyed, and gunboats were captured or sunk. Britain’s quest for oil was one of the principal reasons for its continuing occupation of Iraq. However, with around 131,000 Arabs in arms at the height of the conflict, the British were very nearly driven out. Only a massive infusion of Indian troops prevented a humiliating rout.
“Enemy on the Euphrates” is the definitive account of the most serious armed uprising against British rule in the twentieth century. Bringing central players such as Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell vividly to life, Ian Rutledge’s masterful account is a powerful reminder of how Britain’s imperial objectives sowed the seeds of Iraq’s tragic history.
“Iran–Iraq War” (1980–1988)
As Liu (2018) has said, there is no simple explanation for America’s conflicting actions, and the superpower played an integral though contradictory part throughout the Iran–Iraq War. Its actions ultimately benefitted neither Iran nor Iraq, but rather “the U.S. itself and its material interests in the Middle East.” Ultimately, American involvement, Liu continues, “exacerbated the already bloody conflict … and further contributed to lasting political insecurity in the region.”
“Desert Storm”
1. The military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; 2. The aerial bombing campaign against Iraq from the 17th January, 1991 onwards.
“Iraq War” (2003–2015)
Pilgrims at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf. Emily Garthwaite for The New York Timessome 1,000,000 Brits vehemently protested against Bush and Blair’s unwarranted invasion intentionsDuplicity UnleashedThe placard that say it all/oil
References
Barr, J. (2012). A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914–1948. W. W. Norton.
Barr, J. (2018). Lords of the Desert: Britain’s Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East. Simon & Schuster.
Coll, S. (2004). Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Penguin Publishing Group
Coll, S. (2024). The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq. Penguin Publishing Group.
Curtis, M. (2003). Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World. Vintage.
Curtis, M. (2004). Britain’s Real Foreign Policy and the Failure of British Academia. International Relations, 18(3), 275–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117804045193
Davidson, C. (2016). Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East. Oneworld Publications.
Little, D. (2017). Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East. The Middle East Journal, 71(2), 328–330. https://www.jstor.org/stable/90016332
Mead, W. R. (2019). Lords of the Desert: The Battle Between the United States and Great Britain for Supremacy in the Modern Middle East. Foreign Affairs, 98(1) 201–201. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26798040
Rutledge, I. (2005). Addicted to Oil: America’s Relentless Drive for Energy Security. I.B. Tauris.
Rutledge, I. (2014). Enemy on the Euphrates: The British Occupation of Iraq and the Great Arab Revolt, 1914-1921. Saqi Books.
Writing for The Intercept_ in early 2016, Jon Schwarz said that, “due to a peculiar correlation of religious history and anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the Persian Gulf’s fossil fuels are located underneath Shiites.” The fields of Qatar and the UAE aside, this geological and confessional observation rings true, see the first of the following two maps:
As the first of the two above maps, crafted by Dr Michael Izady, clearly reveals (especially when expanded), much of Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth is located in a small sliver of its territory whose occupants are predominantly Shia. The second of the two maps is particularly revealing (expand to appreciate Izady’s cartographic skills); where else in the world does the United States of America have quite so much military presence? The U.S. has been indelibly wed to the House of Saud (et al.), for better or for worse, since the 1940s to date. After the 11 September 2001 attacks came an increased fear of nonconventional weapons and asymmetric warfare which rose to a crescendo with the 2002 Iraq disarmament crisis and the alleged existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq that became the primary justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It should be well noted that neither American nor British armed forces ever actually found any such weapons in Iraq during their years of occupation following the overthrow of Saddam Husain.
Schwarz points out that prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr lived in Awamiyya, the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields (just north-west of Sunni-ruled, Shia-majority Bahrain). Should this be of consequence? No, in a perfect world this confessional happenstance should be of no consequence, but:
W.M.D. or oil…
Oil and Finance: The Epic Corruptionpp. 88–89Learsy, R. J. (2011). Oil and Finance: The Epic Corruption. iUniverse.
As Schwarz (2016) recalls, Winston Churchill once described Iran’s oil as “a prize from fairyland far beyond our brightest hopes.” In that same essay for The Intercept_ Schwarz adds that the UK was “busy stealing” the said natural resource. One can add to that loot, Iraqi and Arabian Gulf oil too:
It is said that one of the Saudi royal family’s principal concerns is that one day Saudi Shiites will secede, with their oil, and ally with Iran who are just across the Gulf (Schwarz, 2016). This fear has only grown since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq overturned Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni regime, and empowered the pro-Iranian Shiite majority. Nimr himself said in 2009 that Saudi Shiites would call for secession if the Saudi government didn’t improve its treatment of them. The same tension explains why Saudi Arabia helped Bahrain, an oil-rich, majority-Shiite country ruled by a Sunni monarchy, crush its version of the Arab Spring in 2011.
APAPSunnis and Shiites praying together on Sunday in Beirut, Lebanon, in protest of the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Hassan Ammar/AP.
Robber barons
Robber baron is a term first applied as social criticism by 19th century muckrakers and others to certain wealthy, powerful, and unethical 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared in that use as early as the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic magazine.
The term combines the sense of criminal (“robber”) and illegitimate aristocracy (“baron”) in a republic and, it is said, derives from Raubritter (German: robber knights).
By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. Those practices included unfettered consumption and destruction of natural resources, influencing high levels of government, wage slavery, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and/or trusts that control the market, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.
“Like the railroad barons of the first Gilded Age, most of today’s superrich made their money not by inventing flying cars or robots but by controlling commercial networks and information.” — Michael Lind, The Tablet
