The rise of armed sectarian nonstate actors (NSAs) is one of the main consequences of the grand Saudi-Iranian contest over regional dominance unleashed in the wake of the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq.^[1] Albeit this contest predated the popular uprisings, its sectarianization^[2] after the uprisings led to the ‘return of the weak Arab state’^[3] and the concomitant rise of sectarian, ethnic, or tribal non-state actors. Whether in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, or Yemen local and transnational nonstate actors have assumed paramount domestic and geopolitical roles.

Two kinds of NSAs emerged as a consequence of this sectarianization of geopolitical contests: 1) armed, local or transnational, NSAs operating in a proxy capacity to advance the geopolitical interests of their regional patrons; and 2) others that pursue strictly local objectives but are nevertheless supported by regional states in a bid to accumulate more geopolitical capital. Hizballah, the plethora of groups organized in Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), and other NSAs in Syria and Libya are examples of the former type. The relationship between Iran and the Houthis in Yemen exemplifies the latter, however.

This explosion of local and transnational armed nonstate actors as a result of the return of the weak Arab state underscores another trend in regional dynamics: the changing nature of the system’s permeability, a process that began in earnest before the popular uprisings of 2011, but which has since intensified. The regime-induced, top-down, state-building permeability of the 1950s and 1960s,^[4] driven by Arab nationalist ideology, is replaced by a bottom-up state-destroying permeability driven by sectarian nonstate actors.

This new kind of permeability expressed by transnational nonstate actors is bound to complicate future prospects for state rebuilding in the Arab world in at least two ways.

• Demands for greater local autonomy by ethnic, tribal, or sectarian groups may have become irreversible and cannot be ignored any longer.
• The type of post-war state that will emerge in Libya, Yemen, or even Syria, may be captured by different NSAs vying for the political economic and ideological control of ethnic, sectarian, or tribal parts of the population – much like the one that exists in Lebanon, or has been emerging in Iraq since 2003.

Given the destructive local and transnational roles played by armed sectarian nonstate actors, two kinds of bargains, at both the domestic and regional levels, are required to restore a modicum of political stability in post-war reconstituted states. First, there must be democratic power-sharing arrangements that cross-cut sectarian, ethnic, and tribal cleavages with interest-based ones, whether along regional or socioeconomic lines. Only this will launch the difficult process of peacebuilding, and state building and rebuilding, along a democratic path, thus reversing the erosion of the state’s ideological and infrastructural capabilities.

Second, there must be a grand regional geopolitical bargain identifying or acknowledging spheres of influence among the main international and regional actors vying for influence in the Middle East as a means of reducing fear and perception of nefarious intent. This is especially true for Saudi Arabia and Iran. Describing the contest between Iran and Saudi Arabia in existential or sectarian terms misses each state’s real security concerns. Riyadh views Tehran in offensive realist terms. By contrast, Iran considers itself engaged in a defensive realist confrontation with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. From this perspective, transnational sectarian armed nonstate actors are instruments in Iran’s strategy to escape its regional isolation and deter potential American or Israeli attacks. Refusing to recognize Tehran’s newfound role in the Middle East and real geopolitical interests is a recipe for more wars in the region. By the same token, Saudi Arabia exerts substantial political influence in Lebanon, Iraq, and parts of post-war Syria as a balance to Iran’s overwhelming position in these crucial states. Moreover, Yemen will always remain Saudi Arabia’s security backyard. Consequently, Tehran may have to roll back its military and political engagement in Yemen – to alleviate Riyadh’s fears – in exchange for its reintegration into the system of regional states.

Only these dual bargains can help extricate the Middle East from the domestic and regional security dilemmas that have proliferated since the sectarianization of geopolitical contests after the popular uprisings.^[5]

[1] Bassel F. Salloukh, The Arab Uprisings and the Geopolitics of the Middle East, The International Spectator 48, June 2013: 32-46.

[2] Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel, eds. 2017, Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press

[3] Bassel F. Salloukh, 2017, Overlapping Contests and Middle East International Relations: The Return of the Weak Arab State, PS: Political Science and Politics 50: 660–63.

[4] Rex Brynen, Permeability Revisited: Reflections on the Regional Repercussions of the al-Aqsa Intifada, in Bassel F. Salloukh and Rex Brynen (ed.), 2004,  Persistent Permeability? Regionalism, Localism, and Globalization in the Middle East, London: Ashgate Publishing Limited,  125–48.

[5] Marc Lynch, The New Arab Order: Power and Violence in Today’s Middle East, Foreign Affairs 97, 5, September/October 2018, 116-126.

Author: Bassel F. Salloukh is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut. His recent publications include the co-authored The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon (Pluto Press, 2015), “The Arab Uprisings and the Geopolitics of the Middle East” in The International Spectator (June 2012), the co-authored Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), and the co-authored article “Elite Strategies, Civil Society, and Sectarian Identities in Postwar Lebanon” in International Journal of Middle East Studies (November 2013). His current research looks at post-conflict power-sharing arrangements, the challenge of re-assembling the political orders and societies of post-uprisings Arab states, and the geopolitics of the Middle East after the popular uprisings.

In the aftermath of invasion and regime change in 2003, Iraq’s political field was deliberately and overtly restructured around an informal version of consociationalism, the Muhasasa Ta’ifia (sectarian apportionment) system. This exclusive elite pact was designed to empower people and parties who claimed to be acting as representatives of three allegedly distinct communities, Shi’a, Sunni and Kurd.^[1] The empowerment of those wielding sectarian rhetoric left Iraq with a post-invasion civil war, endemic corruption, institutional weakness and the widespread alienation of the populous from the governing elite.

The planning for the Muhasasa Ta’ifia system was done in the early 1990s, by a disparate group of exiled Iraqi politicians.  It was then imported into the country, along with those exiles that went on to form Iraq’s new ruling elite, under American force of arms. At various points in its history, the functioning of the Muhasasa Ta’ifia has been defended and extended by US, Iranian and Saudi Arabian intervention.

The System

Plans for the Muhasasa Ta’ifia system were agreed upon by the Iraqi opposition at a conference in October 1992. Here a number of councils and committees were established to act as a government-in-waiting. Most importantly, positions on these governing bodies were allocated according to the ‘Salah al-Din principles’, with a ‘virtual census’ upon dividing jobs according to the conference’s assessment of the percentage of the population that were Shi’a, Kurdish and Sunni.^[2] An assertion of religious and ethnic identities was placed at the centre of this agreement. The seven major parties that came to dominate Iraqi politics post – 2003 were the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Iraqi National Council, the Iraqi National Accord, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Dawa Islamic Party and the Iraqi Islamic Party. They all agreed to work within the Muhasasa Ta’ifia to solidify and expand their grip on Iraq.

In June and July 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American civilian body running the occupation of Iraq, created the Iraq Governing Council, (IGC) the first political body after regime change designed to represent the Iraqi population during the occupation. The predominance of a sectarian understanding of Iraq was so strong that the process of its formation was an act of ethno-sectarian balancing.

The seven parties that formed the majority of the ICG’s membership were then given the job of picking ministers to run Iraq’s government. Not only had the Muhasasa system been used to pick Iraq’s first post-2003 governing body, it had given economic power to those parties promoting ethno-sectarian division. Each party appointed Ministers who controlled the resources and payroll of their ministries, accelerating the sacking of existing civil servants, justified through de-Ba’athification, whilst hiring those linked to their parties and the sectarian communities they claimed to represent.

After the IGC was formed in 2003, during the interim government of 2004, and after each national election in 2005, 2010, 2014 and most recently in 2018, the Muhasasa system has dictated that ministries and their resources were awarded to the ethno-sectarian parties in governments of national unity. Each party has used its ministers to exploit government resources. They expand government payrolls to employ their members and followers. As a result, access to government employment, dominant in the Iraqi job market, is only guaranteed by pledging alliance to one of the political parties promoting the Muhasasa system. Iraqis seeking government jobs are interpolated as members of exclusive ethno-sectarian communities, Sunni, Shi’a or Kurd. The extent of this practise can be seen in the rapid growth of the state payroll that swelled from 850,000 employees a year after regime change to between seven and nine million in 2016.

The external players

Although the US and their formerly exiled allies set up and imposed the Muhasasa Ta’ifia system, both Iran and Saudi Arabia have at times intervened to ensure it works in their interests. Major General Qassem Suleimani, the Commander of the Quds Forces of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, is the central coordinator of Iran’s presence in Iraq. Dr Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s former National Security Adviser, has proclaimed that Suleimani is ‘the most powerful man in Iraq without question. Nothing gets done without him’.^[3] Suleimani has been in Baghdad and actively involved in the process of government formation in 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018. Of equal importance, he has been central in defending the Muhasasa system when it has been in crisis, during the ‘Charge of the Knights’ in 2008, the strong showing of the anti-Muhasasa, Iraqiyaa coalition, in the 2010 elections and in the aftermath of the fall of Mosul to the Islamic State in 2014. Clearly, Iran sees Muhasasa as the best vehicle for empowering its client Shi’a Islamist parties and keeping the Iraqi state weak enough to secure its own interests.

Saudi Arabia’s role in Iraq has been more informal and covert. Initially, Saudi intervention was constrained by a strong American presence. Support for the post-war insurgency and one side in the civil war came from senior religious figures in the kingdom, with societal actors supplying resources and encouraging a sizeable number of Islamic radical ‘Jihadi tourists’ to fight and die in Iraq.

However, in the run- up to the second election of 2005, the Saudi government leant its considerable financial support to establishing a specifically Sunni electoral coalition, Jabha al-Tawafuq al-Iraq (the Accord Front). This coalition successfully mobilised the Sunni section of Iraqi society, interpolating them specifically as Sunnis and juxtaposing them against the Shi’a and Kurdish sections of society, integrating them into the Muhasasa Ta’ifia system as minority players.

Conclusions

The dominance of Iraq’s political field by the Muhasasa Ta’ifia system has greatly weakened the Iraqi state, while the widespread political and personal corruption it encourages has reduced the state’s ability to deliver public goods. From at least 2015 onwards, this has produced a large protest movement within Iraqi society, calling for the removal of religion from politics and the creation of a civic state. It is this popular alienation that led to such a low electoral turn out in the May 2018 elections. However, parties that have benefitted from Muhasasa have simply ignored popular pressure for change and formed yet another government using the system. In doing so, they were strongly supported by both the United States and Iran.

[1] On exclusive elite pacts see Stefan Lindemann, ‘Do inclusive elite bargains matter? A research framework for understanding the causes of civil war in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Crisis States Discussion Paper 15, Crisis States Research Centre, LSE, February 2008, http://www.lse.ac.uk/international-development/Assets/Documents/PDFs/csrc-discussion-papers/dp15-Do-Inclusive-Elite-Bargains-Matter.pdf. On its application to Iraq see Toby Dodge, Iraq; from war to a new authoritarianism, 2012,  Abingdon: Routledge, 2012.

[2] Ibrahim Nawar, ‘Untying the Knot’, Al-Ahram Weekly, No. 625,  February 2003, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/archive/2003/625/sc5.htm.

[3]Martin Chulov, Qassem Suleimani: the Iranian General “Secretly Running” Iraq, The Guardian, July 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/28/qassem-suleimani-iran-iraq-influence.

Author: Professor Toby Dodge is a professor in the International Relations Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also Research Director for Iraq, in the DFID funded Conflict Research Programme. His main areas of research include the comparative politics and historical sociology of the Middle East, the politics of intervention, the evolution of the Iraqi state and state-society dynamics and political identities in Iraq. His publications include Inventing Iraq: The failure of nation building and a history denied (2003), Iraq’s Future: The Aftermath of Regime Change and Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism (2013).

Lebanon is a battleground of Saudi-Iranian rivalry. Both provide aid. While Iranian aid to Hizballah creates a military fighting force, Saudi aid is notable for its economic impact. Iranian aid is already widely discussed^[1] so this article will focus on the risk of Lebanon’s over-dependence on Saudi development aid funding.

 The goal of Hizballah’s network of religious institutions, schools, youth associations, health clinics, women’s associations and of course its military wing is to build a ‘resistance society’. The all-encompassing range of services offered to Lebanon’s majority Shi’a community entrenches sectarianism. Hizballah funding is necessarily opaque.^[2] Iran is said to fund Hizballah through cash and charities, training and logistical support. Bashar al Assad’s Syria is a crucial geographic conduit for Iranian aid, which goes a long way to explaining the movement’s support for the regime’s survival. Another source of funding is from wealthy Shi’a donors within Lebanon and the overseas diaspora. Finally, Hizballah allegedly runs various licit and illicit business ventures inside and outside of Lebanon. Recent media reports suggested that the movement is facing financial difficulties due to the cost of fighting in Syria and Iran’s economic difficulties in the face of renewed US sanctions.^[3]

In the 1980s, Rafiq Hariri emerged as the main conduit of the Kingdom’s aid to Lebanon. After Hariri’s assassination in 2005 his son and current Prime Minister, Saad Hariri took over. Saad Hariri pursued no holistic goal such as ‘resistance society’. Hariri did not overcome political fragmentation within his own Sunni community as Hizballah did among the Shi’a, he simply put himself at the head of the disparate communal scene. The Hariri Foundation’s schools and health centres have played a role in parliamentary elections since 2000. Hariri became a typical confessional political boss, furnished with extraordinary resources through his own wealth and Saudi largesse. Saad Hariri’s military ambitions appear to have been limited to funding a largely ineffective force run under the guise of a private security company.^[4]

Riyadh did not just sponsor Hariri’s clientelism but also Lebanon’s Central Bank. In the midst of the Israeli war with Lebanon in 2006, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait deposited $1.5 billion to support the Beirut Central Bank’s currency chest. In 2008 the Central Bank received another $1 billion from Saudi Arabia. These funds proved vital to the maintenance of the Lebanese pound’s peg to the dollar, which has been in place since 1997 but has come under increasing pressure. In 2017 Lebanon’s government debt stood at 153 per cent of GDP, the third highest rate in the world. Its current account deficit of 25 per cent of GDP was also among the highest globally. The country needs to constantly attract capital inflows to maintain the peg.  But why do investors keep pouring money into this questionable financial proposition?  A 2008 IMF working paper found that Lebanese investors perceive an ‘implicit -guarantee’ by donors – and Saudi Arabia has historically been the most prolific among them.^[5] The expectation that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states would provide funds to stabilise the currency during a crisis has helped the country weather a succession of financial storms.

A recent weakening of Saudi support for Lebanon’s economy therefore puts the country’s financial system in grave danger. Hariri seems to have fallen out of favour with Riyadh. His construction company Saudi Oger began to collapse in 2015 after a new guard of Saudi royals under now Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman slashed state contracts and was wound up in 2017.^[6] This eroded Hariri’s ability to dole out patronage. Riyadh also created doubt over its commitment to support Lebanon’s financial stability when, in February 2016, it withdrew a promised $3 billion aid package to the Lebanese army over perceived Lebanese government unwillingness to distance itself from Iran.^[7] The Lebanese Central Bank had to turn to increasingly adventurous financial ‘engineering’, at one point offering 40 percent interest on a one-year loan to attract the foreign currency it needed to maintain the dollar peg.^[8]

In November 2017, Saudi Arabia brought Lebanon to the brink of both military and economic crisis. Just when Hariri was in Riyadh to ask the Kingdom to support donor conference, the Saudi rulers appeared to strong-arm Prime Minister Hariri into a televised resignation, in which he accused Hizballah of plotting to assassinate him.^[9] The episode prompted fears of Riyadh forcing a confrontation of its local clients with Hizballah. Rumours swirled that Riyad was going to impose an economic blockade on Lebanon akin to the action taken against Qatar in 2017. This would have strangled Lebanon’s fragile economy. France worked to resolve the political crisis and Riyadh stepped back from the brink. At a donor conference in Paris in April 2018, Saudi Arabia restored a previously pledged credit line of $1 billion to Lebanon.^[10]

To conclude, Saudi and Iranian aid to Lebanon is similar in some respects: Both countries finance the confessional clientelism of local allies. Yet Saudi Arabia also plays a pivotal economic role, creating a different kind of risk. While Iranian weapons increase the danger of military confrontation, Lebanon’s dependence on Saudi economic aid means that Riyadh can destabilise the Lebanese financial system at any time.

[1] For an overview of Iran’s role in Hizballah’s history, see: Augustus Richard Norton, Hizballah: A Short History, 2007, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 29-46. For Hizballah’s view on the relationship, see: Naim Qassem, Hizbullah: The Story from within, 2007,  London: Saqi: London, pp. 387-393.

[2] Matthew Levitt, Hezbollah finances: Funding the party of god, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, February 2005, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/hezbollah-finances-funding-the-party-of-god

[3] Ibrahim Bayram, Hezbollah turns to charity amid economic woes, An Nahar, August 2018, https://en.annahar.com/article/847815-hezbollah-turns-to-charity-amid-economic-woes

[4] Borzou Daragahi and Raed Rafei, Private force no match for Hezbollah, Los Angeles Times, May 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/12/world/fg-security12

[5] Axel Schimmelpfennig and Edward H. Gardner, Lebanon – Weathering the perfect storms, IMF Working Paper, 08/17, January 2008, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2008/wp0817.pdf

[6] Matthew Dalton and Nicolas Parasie, With Saudi Ties Fraying, Lebanese Premier’s Construction Empire Crumbles, Wall Street Journal, November 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-saudi-ties-fraying-lebanese-premiers-construction-empire-crumbles-1511519402

[7] Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Hezbollah signals no end to Saudi crisis; central bank reassures on currency, Reuters, 26 February 2016, https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-saudi-lebanon/hezbollah-signals-no-end-to-saudi-crisis-central-bank-reassures-on-currency-idUKKCN0VZ1KO

[8] The Economist, Lebanon’s economy has long been sluggish. Now a crisis looms, August 2018, https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/08/30/lebanons-economy-has-long-been-sluggish-now-a-crisis-looms

[9] David Ignatius, Saudi Arabia forcibly detained Lebanon’s prime minister, sources say, Washington Post, November 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/saudi-arabia-forcibly-detained-lebanons-prime-minister-sources-say/2017/11/10/b93a1fb4-c647-11e7-84bc-5e285c7f4512_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f855aa7d2a8a

[10] John Irish, Marine Pennetier, Lebanon wins pledges exceeding $11 billion in Paris, Reuters, April 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-economy-france/lebanon-wins-pledges-exceeding-11-billion-in-paris-idUSKCN1HD0UU

Author: Dr Hannes Baumann is a lecturer at the University of Liverpool. His research interests are in international political economy, development, and the politics of ethnicity and nationalism. His current research project is the first comprehensive study of the politics of Gulf investment in non-oil Arab states. He is the author of Citizen Hariri: Lebanon’s Neoliberal Reconstruction.

For many, the archipelago of Bahrain is at the epicentre of the geopolitical and sect-based struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Situated 16 kilometres from the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, linked by the King Fahd Causeway, and 768 kilometres from the west coast of Iran, with a Sunni minority ruling over a Shi’a majority, it is easy to see how such conclusions are reached. Bahrain’s geographic location and demographic makeup mean that political events on the island often take on additional meaning within the context of the rivalry between the island’s two more powerful neighbours.^[1]

A brief glance at the country’s past reveals a history of social unrest and political upheaval, viewed anxiously by many in Manama and Riyadh. These concerns are furthered when coupled with allegations of perfidious Iranian interference across Shi’a communities in Bahrain, long viewed as 5^th columnists by the Sunni ruling family. Long-standing Iranian claims to Bahrain increase fears amongst regime loyalists. In Kayhan, an Iranian newspaper with close links to the government, an editorial suggested that Bahrain remained ‘an inseparable part of Iran’, dating back to the 18^th century.^[2]

Whilst a history of protest in Bahrain is found far earlier than 1979, there is little doubt that revolutionary fervour in Iran had a dramatic impact on the island. In the years after the revolution, elite military units from Iran provided support to a number of organisations across the region including Hizballah in Lebanon and the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain, who undertook a coup d’etat in 1981. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the group’s actions and their Iranian sponsor created conditions that helped the narrative of nefarious Iranian behaviour take hold.

With the apparent rising influence of Shi’a groups across the Middle East, captured by the concept of the ‘Shi’a Crescent’,^[3] many in Bahrain were concerned about the repercussions for the island’s equilibrium amidst shifting geopolitical currents. An unpublished government report documented the extent of such fears:

the marginalization of Sunnīs and the lessening of their role in Bahrain is part of a larger regional problem […] Thus there is a dangerous challenge facing Bahraini society in the increased role of the Shīʿa [and] the retreat of the role of the Sunna in the Bahraini political system; namely, the problem concerns the country’s [Bahrain’s] national security, and the likelihood of political regime change in the long term by means of the current relationships between Bahrain’s Shīʿa and all the Shīʿa in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia’s eastern region, and Kuwait.^[4]

When protests began in February 2011, the very survival of the Al Khalifa regime appeared at stake. The protesters were initially driven by a widespread demand for greater political representation and they were quick to stress their non-sectarian nature. As the protests escalated, a regime crackdown began which featured the cultivation of a narrative that positioned Iran as the driving force of unrest.^[5]

One month after protests began, the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council forces under the guise of the Peninsular Shield Force, crossed the King Fahd Causeway into Bahrain in support of the government. The force supported the regime’s crackdown on opposition movements, in an attempt to prevent increased Iranian involvement on the island, but also to prevent democratic aspirations from spreading into the Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Allegations of Iranian involvement in the uprisings were later rejected by the Bassiouni Independent Commission Inquiry. Upon receiving the report, King Hamad delivered a speech asserting that Iran was responsible for “supporting anti-government protests”.^[6]

The years that followed were characterized by a process that is now commonly referred to as sectarianization, the manipulation of sect-based identities in an attempt to ensure regime survival which involved widespread restriction of civil society, mass arrests of Shi’a protesters and the banning of Al Wefaq. Whilst sectarian identities were seen as a threat to political stability in Bahrain, the sectarianization process circumvented calls for political reform and ensured the loyalty of Sunnis on the island and beyond by locating events within the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, along with a broader meta-narrative of perfidious Iranian manipulation that runs across the Gulf.^[7] Amidst a region increasingly shaped by sectarianization, events in Bahrain provide what Toby Matthiesen has called the ‘most salient’ example of the sectarianization process,^[8] leaving opposition groups decimated and the Saudi-backed Al Khalifa regime in a position of supremacy.

Photo by Francisco Anzola, published under Creative Commons with no changes made.

[1] Simon Mabon, Saudi Arabia and Iran: Soft Power Rivalry in the Middle East, 2013, London: I.B. Tauris

[2] Simon Mabon, ‘The Battle for Bahrain: Iranian-Saudi Rivalry’, Middle East Policy

[3] Ian Black, Fear of a Shia full moon, The Guardian, January 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/26/worlddispatch.ianblack

[4] Salah Al-Bandar, ‘Al-bah. rayn: al-khiyār al-dīmūqrātī wa āliyāt al-iqs.a’, unpublished report prepared by the Gulf Center for Democratic Development, September 2006), in Justin J. Gengler, ‘Royal Factionalism, the Khawalid, and the Securitization of ‘the Shi’a Problem’ in Bahrain’, Journal of Arabian Studies, 3:1, 2013

[5] Toby Matthiesen, Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring that Wasn’t, 2013, Stanford: Stanford University Press

[6] Joost Hilterman, and Kelly McEvers, “Barricaded in Bahrain,” The New York Review of Books (blog), December 2011, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/dec/27/barricaded-bahrain/.

[7] Simon Mabon, ‘The End of the Battle of Bahrain’, Middle East Journal (Forthcoming) and Sossie Kasbarian and Simon Mabon, ‘Contested spaces and sectarian narratives in post-uprising Bahrain’, Global Discourse 6:4 (2016) 677-696

[8] Toby Matthiesen, ‘Sectarianization as Securitization: Identity Politics and Counter-Revolution in Bahrain’, in Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel (eds) Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East, 2017, (London: Hurst

The diffusion of protests against authoritarian regimes across the Arab world in 2011 reinvigorated Yemen’s marginalized social movements and united different geographical and political factions in Yemen, such as the northern Houthi movement and the southern secessionist movement Hiraak.^[1] The Saudi Kingdom, along with other Gulf monarchies, swiftly designed a transitional plan for the country to ensure that President Ali Abdullah Saleh wass replaced with a friendly government led by President Abd Rabo Hadi. Disillusioned by the transition, the Houthis took military control of the capital Sana’a in September 2014, and Yemen descended into a civil war. On 26 March 2015, Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes on Yemen with the aim to restore the Saudi-backed Hadi government and destroy the Houthi movement. What was initially planned as a limited operation degenerated into a war of attrition without a conclusion insight. Scholars and policy analysts moved quickly to examine the Yemen war as a by-product of Saudi-Iranian rivalry and another manifestation of a region-wide war between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims. Yet, the crisis in Yemen is more complex; it is neither an international proxy war nor a sectarian confrontation.

First, the Iranian role in Yemen has been exaggerated and even deliberately distorted by the Saudi Kingdom to legitimize its military intervention. The Houthi movement is a tribal group that is rooted in the Yemeni political context, and the group’s decisions and political goals are rooted in its local Yemeni leadership.^[2] Some evidence suggests that Iran’s links to the Houthis might have increased at the end of 2014.^[3] Yet, this evidence remains suggestive at best. The UN Panel of experts on Yemen has stated in January 2017 that there was ‘no sufficient evidence to confirm any large-scale direct supply of arms from the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran’.^[4] Instead, the Houthis have received military support from their most important ally, the former President Saleh, whose army was equipped with US weapons. In other words, Iran’s marginal involvement has no effect on the underlying structure of the conflict.^[5]

Second, depicting the political struggle in Yemen as a mere sectarian binary is simplistic. Although the Houthi movement belongs to the Zaydi sect, a branch of Shiism, it is wrong to assume that the Yemen crisis is driven by primordial identities. Zaydism is distinct from the ‘Twelver Shiism’ found in Iran both in doctrine and practice, and the theological difference between both Zaydi and Twelver Shiism leaves the Zaydis closer to Sunni Islam. The Zaydis present themselves as a separate sect distinct from both Shiism and Sunnism. It is also worth noting that Saleh’s supporters from the Yemeni army fighting with the Houthis are Sunnis.^[6]

Instead, the recent crisis in Yemen can be viewed as a civil war between groups in a political struggle, and with international interference. Although sectarianism is alien to Yemeni religious culture, several observers have noticed a growing sectarian polarization in Yemen that relies on borrowing sectarian slurs from the conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The Houthi movement is often called as ‘Twelver Shiites’, ‘the new Hizballah of the Arabian Peninsula’ or an ‘Iranian puppet’. The Houthis have also used sectarian terms to refer to their opponents, such as takfiris and daeshites.^[7]

Iran’s ambitions in Yemen are limited and do not wish to escalate the conflict with Saudi Arabia. Yet, local actors involved in the conflict have an interest in borrowing sectarian narratives to mobilize international support and resources by situating their struggle in the regional meta-narrative. President Hadi has adopted an anti-Shiite narrative in his confrontation with the Houthis to maintain the support from Gulf countries, who perceive the Iranian expansion in the region as the most dangerous threat. The Houthis would like more support from Iran by adopting slurs from the ‘’Twelver Shiite’’ vocabulary and using famous historical symbols, such as the name of Hussein. The Saudi Kingdom is also interested in providing legitimacy for its military operation, especially at home, and sectarianism provides a wide support for the operation. In short, sectarianism in Yemen remains alien to the local culture but has grown as a strategic war narrative used by local and international actors.

Although Yemen lacks the sharp sectarian divides found in Iraq, Bahrain, and Syria, the sectarianisation of the political transition in Yemen generates distinct junctures, which are likely to have long-lasting implications on Yemen and the region. First, this venom of sectarian hatred that speeded into the Yemen conflict has destroyed centuries of tolerance between the Islamic schools in Yemen, which might take decades to rebuild. Furthermore, the sectarian violence in Yemen made the conflict less localized and increasingly internationalised, which renders the conflict resolution more difficult.

Photo by Ibrahem Qasim, published under Creative Commons with no changes made.

[1] For more details on the movement and its development, see International Crisis Group, Breaking Point? Yemen’s Southern Question, October 2011, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/yemen/breaking-point-yemen-s-southern-question

[2] Joost R. Hiltermann and April Longley Alley, The Houthis Are Not Hezbollah, Foreign Policy, February 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/27/the-houthis-are-not-hezbollah/

[3] W. Andrew Terrill, Iranian Involvement in Yemen, Orbis vol. 58, no. 3 (2014), p.438; Thomas Juneau, Iran’s Policy towards the Houthis in Yemen: A Limited Return on a Modest Investment, International Affairs vol. 92, no. 3 (2016), p. 657.

[4] UN Security Council, Final Report of the Panel of Expert on Yemen, January 2017, http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2017_81.pdf

[5] Elizabeth Kendall, Iran’s Fingerprints in Yemen: Real or Imagined?, Atlantic Council, October 2017, http://pushback.atlanticcouncil.org/papers/irans-fingerprints-in-yemen-real-or-imagined/

[6] Anna Gordon and Sarah Parkinson, ‘How the Houthis Became ‘Shi‘a,’ Middle East Report Online, January 2018, http://www.merip.org/mero/mero012718

[7] Al-Muslimi, Farea, How Sunni-Shia Sectarianism Is Poisoning Yemen. Carnegie Middle East Center, December 2015,  http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/62375

Author: Dr May Darwich is an Assistant Professor in International Relations of the Middle East in the School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) at Durham University, in the United Kingdom. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Edinburgh (2015), an MA in International Politics from Science Po Bordeaux (2010), and a BA in Political Science from Cairo University (2009). Dr Darwich held a Research Fellowship at GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, within the IDCAR-Network ‘The International Diffusion and Cooperation of Authoritarian Regimes’ (2014-2016).  She was also a Teaching Assistant at the University of Edinburgh (2012-2014) and Cairo University (2010-2011). Her current research projects focus on regional military interventions in the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen since 2015, the diffusion of sectarianism in not so sectarian societies in the Middle East, and the concept of ‘shame’ in international relations and its impact on state identity formation.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have both been deeply involved in the Syrian civil war from its beginning in 2011, each sponsoring rival sides. Both have utilised sectarian identity politics to further their goals and both have contributed to the growth of violence along sectarian lines. This has led to a characterisation by many that both are sectarian actors that immediately reach for identity politics as a tool of influence. However, a closer examination of the Syrian case would challenge this. Drawing on research by myself and Morten Valbjorn that examines the relationship between Syrian fighting groups and their external sponsors, this article argues that in Syria identity politics was not the immediate policy pursued by either Saudi Arabia or Iran.^[1] Instead, sponsoring sectarian actors was a plan B after backing other, more inclusive actors failed. This suggests a degree of pragmatism from both governments, rather than being driven exclusively by sectarian zeal.

The Syrian conflict is often characterised as sectarian, but this is one strand of several driving the civil war.^[2] There has been variation across Syria and over the course of the conflict. In some areas, the war has been driven more by political, economic and international factors than sectarianism. That said, an identity component has often been present, with violence, sexual assault and looting taking place along sectarian lines. Saudi Arabia and Iran have contributed to this. Saudi Arabia has sent arms and money to overtly sectarian Sunni Islamist fighters. Its government turned a blind eye for the first few years of the war to private Saudi donors sending money to radical Sunni groups, and it did little to clamp down on its sectarian preachers appearing on satellite television watched in Syria.

Iran’s sectarian activity was even more pronounced. From 2012 it sent Islamist Shi’a militia to Syria to fight for President Bashar al-Assad, with up to 8,000 fighters from its Lebanese ally Hizballah and 12,000 Afghani and Pakistani fighters present by 2017. It sent its own Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force officers, led by Major General Qassem Suleimani, to direct the war effort and retrain Syria’s military. Several of these retrained units were based around sectarian identities, as were the non-governmental pro-Assad militia they encouraged. The presence of Shi’a militia in the Syria conflict, many with an explicitly anti-Sunni agenda, helped to radicalise anti-Assad fighters, who were overwhelmingly Sunni, and further sectarianized the conflict.

However, it is important to note that turning to sectarian fighters was neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia’s first reaction, and their policies evolved from the failure of earlier options. Riyadh, initially sponsored moderates among those who took up arms against Assad. From early 2012 Saudi Arabia backed the Free Syria Army (FSA), which had a national Syrian rather than a Sunni sectarian focus, even though most were Sunni Muslims. Unlike other sponsors of the opposition like Qatar and Turkey who turned to more Islamist and sectarian fighters earlier, Saudi Arabia feared Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and preferred the mostly secular former army officers of the FSA.

It was only after the FSA proved unable to defeat Assad and its fighters started joining more radical Islamist groups that Riyadh looked for alternatives. It eventually backed the Salafist Jaysh al-Islam in Damascus in late 2013, led by Zahran Alloush whose father was an imam in Saudi Arabia. This connection also led to it briefly backing the mostly Islamist Jaysh al-Fatah coalition in Idlib in 2015. Both included Sunni sectarianists. However, it encouraged Alloush and his successors to moderate their slogans.^[3] This suggests that Saudi Arabia was pragmatic enough to recognise that ultra-sectarian actors would struggle to win in multi-faith Syria and must compromise. Moreover, Saudi did not abandon the FSA completely and maintained its sponsorship of the Southern Front, a south Syria FSA militia until 2017 at the same time. This shows a degree of expediency from Riyadh. It turned to Alloush in desperation, when plan A of backing the FSA failed. Yet even then it stuck with the southern FSA in the hope it would still triumph.

Iran was also more nuanced, turning to sectarian actors only after others failed. Tehran first sent weapons and advisers to help Assad’s army, the nominally inclusive Syrian Arab Army (SAA). Though its elite units were dominated by members of Assad’s Shi’a-linked Alawi sect, it was no sectarian institution, boasting Sunnis, Shi’as, Alawis and Christians in its ranks and utilising inclusive national symbols and slogans. However, the SAA performed poorly in the first year of the war, prompting Iran to send Suleimani to Damascus to salvage the situation. Within a few weeks, the Quds force commander reportedly stated, “The Syrian army is useless! Give me one brigade of Basij [the IRGC’s paramilitary force] and I could conquer the whole country!”^[4] Soon Suleimani turned to Hizballah and other Shi’a militia from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to come to Syria. Having trained many of them himself, especially in Iraq during the post-2003 campaign against the US, Suleimani saw such sectarian actors as more dependable than the SAA.

Yet, as with the Saudis, this suggests a pragmatic rather than an exclusively sectarian motivation. These militias were utilised for their reliability and fighting ability rather than purely ideological reasons. Moreover, Iran used these groups to supplement rather than replace Assad’s national forces and the SAA continued to receive support. Indeed, when the Iranians reorganised Syria’s paramilitary forces in 2013 they gave it a national rather than sectarian name: The National Defence Forces (NDF). While the NDF did include sectarian militia, it retained a deliberately national character. Again, expediency may have driven this. Shi’as make up barely 1-2% of Syria’s population, and Alawis are barely 12%. Were Iran to encourage a purely sectarian chauvinistic discourse, they would have isolated key Christian, Druze and Sunni constituents that continued to back Assad.^[5] Unlike in Iraq, where over 60% of the population is Shi’a, demographics in Syria were not in Suleimani’s favour. Even had he wanted to adopt a sectarian approach from the beginning, it would have been counter-productive.

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran, therefore, were not as sectarian as often characterised in their sponsorship of fighting groups in the Syrian civil war. Though both would eventually turn to sectarian militia, each did this only after their first option, more inclusive national-focused fighters, failed. Yet each continued to sponsor national groups alongside these sectarian actors, possibly recognising the impracticality of backing only exclusionary actors in a multi-faith country. In both cases, governments often portrayed as arch-sectarian actors showed a considerable degree of pragmatism and expediency.

[1] Chris Phillips and Morten Valbjorn, ‘What is in a Name?’: The Role of (Different) Identities in the Multiple Proxy Wars in Syria’, Small Wars & Insurgencies 29 (3), 414-433

[2] G. Abdo, The New Sectarianism: The Arab Uprisings and the Rebirth of the Shia–Sunni Divide. Brookings, SD: Saban Center for Middle East Policy Paper. April 10, 2013.

[3] Phillips and Valbjorn, ‘What is in a Name?’

[4] Dexter Filkins, ‘The shadow commander’, The New Yorker, September 2013, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-commander

[5] Chris. Phillips, The Battle for Syria: International rivalry in the New Middle East, 2016, London: Yale University Press, pp. 50-53.

Author: Dr Christopher Phillips is Reader in International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London and an Associate Fellow at the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa programme and the Imperial War Museum. He was co-curator of ‘Syria: Story of a Conflict’, a public exhibition at the Imperial War Museum and IWM North in 2017-18. He was previously the deputy editor for Syria and Jordan at the Economist Intelligence Unit. He lived for several years in Syria and conducts frequent research trips to the US, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and the Gulf.  His new book, The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East, was published in September 2016, with a paperback update in 2018.

Understanding the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran goes some way in understanding the uncertainty and instability that plays out across the contemporary Middle East. There is little doubt that the rivalry has shaped regional politics in a number of ways, contingent upon political and socio-economic contexts and agendas of Riyadh and Tehran. Although the rivalry occupies a central role in the construction of regional security, it is overly simplistic to reduce Middle Eastern politics solely to a bi-polar struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with a number of additional actors adding to the complexity of regional politics. Indeed, the role of the UAE, Israel, Turkey, Qatar, and others should not be ignored, as these issues exacerbate an increasingly fraught situation.

As conflict in Syria and Yemen continues with catastrophic humanitarian impact, ending conflict is of the utmost importance to prevent further devastation. Increasing an awareness of the competing pressures and fears of those involved in shaping regional politics and creating space for discussions of such issues is of paramount importance to reducing conflict across the Middle East. If done correctly this can also facilitate trust building between Riyadh and Tehran. Whilst the rivalry occupies a key role in regional politics, particularly amidst the fracturing of regional politics along sect-based lines, we should not view it purely as an attempt to defeat the ‘other’. Instead, we must combine our analysis of regional aspirations with consideration of domestic pressures on the regimes in both Riyadh and Tehran, who seek to balance challenges from a range of sources to ensure their survival. Moreover, we must also consider the interaction of the myriad pressures that facilitate the construction of political life in spaces where the rivalry occurs. These forces differ across both time and space and must be acknowledged in a responsible manner.

A key feature of politics in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen is the politicisation and securitization of sectarian difference within the context of broader geopolitical currents. In each case are examples of the instrumental cultivation of sect-based difference by regimes or ‘sectarian entrepreneurs’ in an attempt to ensure regime survival or to increase power and influence.  Yet the increasingly instrumentalised use of religious language – albeit increasingly mobilized for political and security reasons – risks becoming all encompassing, a self-perpetuating narrative often repeated by academics and policymakers that must be avoided.

The cultivation of political projects that transcend communal divisions is one possible way of circumventing this self-perpetuating narrative. Respect for the rule of law and recognition of individual rights above community rights is a key aspect of this strategy. The international community must also do more to support the development of cross-sectarian initiatives and movements such as the YOU STINK movement in Beirut, a movement of civil disobedience against governance failings concerning waste management, which led to garbage being piled in the streets of the Lebanese capital.  International states wishing to improve the political situation must also avoid supporting fringe groups such as MEK (the People’s Mojahedin of Iran) who use violence to challenge political order.

With that in mind, we propose the following recommendations:

• Work towards creating a ‘grand bargain’ that brings both Iran and Saudi Arabia into the system of regional states through creating space for discussion of regional issues;
• Facilitate dialogue and trust building between Riyadh and Tehran;
• Work towards a cease-fire in Yemen and Syria;
• Reject the use of language such as ‘Shi’a Crescent’ that plays such a damaging role in deepening divisions within and between communities;
• Western states must avoid the mobilisation of sect-based groups who advocate violence as proxies or allies;
• Encourage adherence to the rule of law and recognition of individual rather than community rights;
• Respect the development of political projects which cut across sectarian, ethnic and tribal cleavages such as those seen in Beirut and the YOU STINK movement;
• Advocate and support the development of interest-based political projects that cut across social cleavages.