Mohammed Nuruzzaman

Human Security and the Arab Spring

Abstract The Arab Spring was ignited by an undeniable human security goal of achieving freedom from want, freedom from fear and freedom to live in dignity. This article analyses how human security concerns have figured in the Arab Spring and shaped its course. It makes two related arguments: firstly, that the pro-democracy forces, long deprived of basic human rights and freedoms, rose up against their authoritarian rulers to qualitatively change their human rights and security conditions; and secondly, that the NATO-led foreign intervention in Libya, to apparently aid the pro-democracy movements, has been counterproductive and has done a great disservice to the human rights and security goals of the Arab people.

Federalism and State Disintegration - United Pakistan, 1947-1971: Some Historical Lessons for Afghanistan and Iraq

Multiethnic, multilingual and socially divided large states usually, though not always willingly, prefer a federal system of government to build state institutions and promote national integration. Recently, there has been a surge in interest in federalism following the US-led invasions of Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in March 2003. There are, however, both successes and failures in federal endeavors. This article analyzes the underlying reasons behind United Pakistan’s (1947—1971) choice of federalism right after its independence in 1947, probes the complex factors that eventually led to the disintegration of Pakistan in 1971, and finally highlights the historical lessons the failure of federalism in United Pakistan holds for Afghanistan and Iraq which are ethnically, socially, culturally and politically diverse and share many of the characteristics of United Pakistan. It argues that both Afghanistan and Iraq have much to learn from failed federal experiment in United Pakistan if they wish to avert their possible disintegration in future.

The Arab Spring – Inching Towards a Dead End?

A high degree of pessimism continues to hold a strong grip over the enthusiasts of democracy in the Arab world. In the last more than two years, the popular uprisings for social and political change have stalled in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. In Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, where the populace succeeded in toppling the authoritarian rulers, the situation did not change that much. Violence, conflicts, and killings of political opponents disturbingly characterize all the Arab countries affected by the popular uprisings. In Syria, the government and opposition forces are locked in a deadly conflict with neither side being able to make a decisive breakthrough. The Egyptian army overthrew the country’s first democratically elected government, headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, on 3 July 2013. On the whole, the success rate of democratization is so far disappointing. That begs the question whether the Arab popular uprisings for democratic change, what the media has conveniently dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’, are failing or still enduring. Certainly, the Arab Spring is not finished; prevailing political and economic factors do, however, indicate that it is inching towards a dead end. There exist huge gaps between what the pro-democracy forces expected from the revolutions, that is, the expectations of transforming their societies away from authoritarian to democratic order, and what has been achieved or what is achievable on the ground. The revolutionaries in Cairo, Tripoli, Tunis, or Sana’a, in the process of engineering the pro-democracy movements, have sought to achieve three interlinked objectives which the Arab people were long denied – freedom from want, freedom from fear, and the freedom to live in dignity. The overthrow of the long-entrenched Arab autocracies was only the first step towards realizing these objectives. A host of indigenous and exogenous factors – most notably the failure of the post-Arab Spring governments to improve their economies at a satisfactory rate to arrest unemployment pressures, lack of inclusive political strategies, and external involvements in the pro-democracy movements – have greatly blocked the road to achieving the revolutionary objectives. In this communication piece, I argue that the Arab Spring is largely derailed from its original objectives and that it is unlikely to succeed in the future.

Conflicts between Iran and the Gulf Arab States: An Economic Evaluation

Abstract The post-2003 Persian Gulf sub-region has witnessed intensified geopolitical conflicts and competition between Iran and the Gulf Arab states, particularly between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Scholars and experts have mostly analysed the conflicts through political and strategic prisms while neglecting their economic dimensions. This article analyses the various post-2003 conflicts between Iran and the Gulf Arab states with a focus on how economic integration or the lack thereof creates the incentives to resolve or sustain the conflicts. It concludes that low levels of trade and economic integration and the absence of an economics of cooperation between Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbours inhibit any strong initiatives to resolve the conflicts.

Western and Islamic International Theories: A Comparative Analysis

Islamic theories of international relations (IR) have been traditionally dominated by debates between two distinct approaches—traditionalism and modernism. A third perspective, often labelled the ‘jihadist perspective’, has emerged following the 11 September 2001 attacks and this radical perspective principally embodies the worldview of al-Qaeda and its off-shoot the Islamic State. The jihadist perspective directly challenges the Western concepts, methods and theories of IR. This article examines how the Islamic and Western international theories clash in terms of ontological foundations, epistemological approaches and modes of inquiry. It argues that Islamic discourse on IR has contributed to the development of a set of theories to analyse and interpret relations between the Islamic and the non-Islamic world, and secondly, it implicitly presents arguments in favour of opening up IR for rather more global perspectives.

Conflicts in Sunni Political Islam and Their Implications

Traditionally, the Shi’a–Sunni divide and the associated dynamics of the geopolitical struggle for power and dominance, between the minority Shi’as and the majority Sunnis, have defined intra-Islamic relations. Often sidelined were the political differences between and among groups and movements within Shi’a as well as Sunni Islam. This paper seeks to examine the ideological and political conflicts between the two dominant brands of Sunni political Islam – the conservative Islamists led by Saudi Arabia and the militant Islamists who grouped first under the banner of al-Qaeda and later the Islamic State. It briefly traces the origins of both brands of Sunni political Islam, maps out their goals and strategies, and highlights their implications for the Middle East region and the West at large. The paper concludes that militant Sunni political Islam has emerged as a dominant entity and it poses the most dreadful challenge to contemporary Middle East region and the West.

Muslim Traditionalism and Violence in the Middle East

In recent years, especially after the 9/11 attacks on America, Western academics and policy-makers have increasingly viewed Islam as an inherently violent religion and Muslims as terrorists. Several academic studies, though without much empirical evidence, have found that Islamic religion is more fundamentalist and more conflictand violence-prone, both domestically and internationally. However, the reality is that most Muslim countries are not fundamentalist and most of them are also relatively free of violence. A large percentage of Muslims, approximately 600 million, live in Southeast Asia and China but evidence of violence, driven by fundamentalism, is either rare, or not of much concern. Similarly, hard data on religious conflicts, during 1–2008, reveals that it is not Islamic but Christian civilization that witnessed the bloodiest conflicts in history. Some 177 million people were killed in religious conflicts and political violence in Christian countries (excluding the erstwhile antitheist communist bloc), while for Islamic civilization the death toll was 31 million for the same period. Contrary to this reality, many Western leaders also see Islam as equivalent to violence and terrorism. Incumbent US President Donald Trump, for example, vilified Muslims as ‘terrorists’ during the 2016 presidential election campaigns and capitalised on Islamophobia as a winning strategy. Former President George W. Bush, in the run up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, branded the Muslim Iraqis ‘Gog’ and ‘Magog’, a Biblical reference to the enemies of God, to partially justify the invasion on religious grounds. Behind such malign views and perceptions of Islam and the Muslims in the West lie the recent spikes in violence in the Muslim Middle Eastern countries. The outbreak of civil wars and sectarian fighting in Iraq, Syria and Yemen are characterised by a complex set of forces and interests—strategic stakes of external actors (read US and Russia) in the region, tough competition for power and influence between regional rivals (Iran and Saudi Arabia), and the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalist forces to capture power, redraw the political map, revive the caliphate and beat the West out of the region. A recent study by Gleditsch and Rudolfsen on violence in the Muslim countries presents a number of important findings: first, Muslim countries are experiencing a disproportionate percentage of the post-cold war civil wars; secondly, in terms of other internal forms of violence (such as repressive human rights policies), their overall record is much higher than the non-Muslim countries; and thirdly, their participation in interstate wars is also higher than the global average.What is striking is that the Islamic fundamentalists, a small group of violent Islamists, are involved in most of the civil wars in the Muslim world,

China’s rise, the USA and global order: Contested perspectives and an alternative approach

China’s recent economic ascendance and its probable impact on the post-war global order have divided China watchers or sinologists into two broad opposing camps – the school of alarmists and the school of deniers. While the alarmist school exaggerates China’s rise as the beginning of a new Sino-centric world order, the denial school rejects the potential of a rising China to challenge and replace the post-war global order shaped and led by the USA. This review essay maps out the major arguments of both camps, critiques their conceptual and methodological shortcomings, highlights the missing points in the debates on China’s projected economic preeminence and emphasizes an alternative approach to account for the rise of Chinese power. It argues that the differing scholarly views on the impacts of China’s economic rise leave us nowhere close to having definitive ideas about China’s actual power status and impacts. Furthermore, the debates are marked by a general lack of comparative analyses on the global socio-economic and political conditions of China’s rise in the modern context and that of imperial Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, Germany in the late 19th century and the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is where more research is required to clearly understand the rise of China in the contemporary world.

Saudi Airstrikes on Yemen: Limits to Military Adventurism

Saudi Arabia, supported by an Arab coalition plus Turkey and the US, launched its second air campaign against Yemeni Houthi rebels in late March 2015 to achieve two big objectives – to restore the ‘legitimate’ government of fugitive President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and to protect the Yemini people from Houthi attacks. This analysis crosschecks the possibility of the Saudi-led military coalition to realize the two stated objectives. It contends that the Saudi military response to curb recent Houthi ascendance in Yemeni politics has had little or no chance of success and that the air offensive would drag the Saudis into a long-term political and military conflict with the Houthis. Riyadh’s regional peer competitor Iran stands to exploit the situation to hamstring Saudi influence in the Arabian Peninsula and beyond.

Rethinking Foreign Military Interventions to Promote Human Rights: Evidence from Libya, Bahrain and Syria

Scholarly opinions on the linkages between foreign military interventions and human rights promotions or violations are highly divided across the board. While many scholars see military interventions as effective means to save and promote human lives and rights from the clutches of repressive regimes, others reject such interventions as harmful to domestic reconciliations and rights promotions. The Arab Spring has renewed the debates between the liberal enthusiasts who staunchly supported NATO’s military intervention to free up the Libyans from the Gaddafi regime and the critics who saw creeping dangers in this new intervention, ostensibly inspired by the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine that does not support intervention for democracy and human rights promotions but advocates the protection of civilians from atrocities perpetrated by their governments. This paper investigates the issue of Arab Spring-led foreign direct and indirect military interventions in Libya, Bahrain and Syria and critically examines the consequences of interventions for improvements or decline in Arab human rights conditions. Its findings support the position of the anti-intervention scholars that foreign military interventions produce deleterious effects on human rights in the target states.