Most of the people living in the countries that stretch from Morocco to Iraq identify themselves as being ethnically Arab and speak some dialect of Arabic. Literary Arabic is the official written language of the region. There have been recurring movements which have attempted to establish some form of cultural and political unity on the basis of this shared heritage. We now see a contagion of revolutionary protest and revolt that has already swept a majority of the countries in the region and seems likely to involve more of them. In the effort to understand these events and the attempt to anticipate their course it is useful to ask how they might be related to each other. Looking at the history of Arab nationalism provides some relevant information.
Most of us are accustomed to thinking of the world as being neatly divided into nation states that have unifying characteristics of shared culture. However, the notion of nations and nationalism really only goes back to the 19th C. The spread of humanity around the globe has most often lumped itself into groupings that could be called tribes. Enterprising warlords would come along and attempt to establish control over multiple tribes in some form of empire. Notions of nationalism were generally associated with attempts to break away from the control of empires.
World I was a major event in the disruption of empires. The Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires all came out on the losing end. The Congress of Versailles indulged in the lordly exercise of dividing the territories of central and eastern Europe along what they considered to be proper nationalistic divisions. The aim was to give the people of these newly created nations rights to democratic self determination. President Woodrow Wilson brought the expertise of his Presbyterian upbringing to the task. The creations such as Yugoslavia did not fare well as enduring monuments to national cohesion.
When it came to the territories of the defunct Ottoman Empire the victorious powers suddenly lost their enthusiasm for nationalism and democracy. The peoples of that region just really weren't ready for all that. France and Britain had been busy during the war making secret agreements to divide up the spoils in the Middle East and they already had North Africa under various levels of colonial control. Wilsonian idealism didn't apply to them. T. E. Lawrence, known to history and movie fans as Lawrence of Arabia, was present at Versailles with leaders from the tribes that he had persuaded to fight for allies with promises of post-war freedom. He was profoundly disillusioned by the outcome. The British and the French extended their colonial powers into the Eastern Mediterranean.
Arab nationalism had its ideological beginnings in the 1860s. It is founded on the notion of an Arab nation composed of the people who are speakers of Arabic and religious observers of Islam living in the region of North Africa and Southwest Asia. While it spread among intellectual circles prior to WWI, it did not begin to gain general popularity until after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
WW II managed to do to Africa and Asia what WWI had done to much of Europe. Formal colonialism began to crumble. It was a gradual and sporadic process. Egypt was never a formal British colony. However in order to build the Suez canal Britain contrived to wrest the area from Ottoman control and install a puppet monarchy. They installed an "advisor" to the king who was a viceroy in everything but name. In 1952 a military revolt led by Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser over threw the monarchy. Nasser assumed the presidency in 1956. As an aggressive act of nationalism he nationalized the Suez canal, removing it from British control and ownership. The British in cooperation with the French and the Israelis attempted to stage a military invasion to retake the canal. The US refused to support their efforts and it was an abysmal failure. The Suez crisis can be seen as functionally drawing the curtain on the British Empire.
This victory over the forces of European imperialism sparked a wide spread enthusiasm for Nassar's conception of Arab nationalism. The Ba'ath Party was another important feature of Arab nationalism of the time. It was founded on principles of Arab unity and Arab socialism. Syria has always been its primary base of power. It also played a significant role in Iraqi politics. In 1958 the United Arab Republic which was a political union of Egypt and Syria was formed under the presidency of Nassar. There were unsuccessful attempts to bring Iraq and North Yemen into the union. At the time there were visions of this arrangement forming the nucleus of a much broader pan-Arab state. It ended in 1961 with the withdrawal of Syria.
The existence of Arab nationalism as a political force has always closely tied up with the conflicts and wars between the Arab states and Israel. The inability of the Arab states to defeat Israel militarily is often considered to have been a major blow to the development of Arab nationalism. The Arab nationalism of Nassar and his followers is generally seen as having gone into significant decline in the 1970s. This coincided with the Camp David accords that brought some stability to relations between Israel and its neighbors.
The same period marks the rise of the movement described as the Islamic revival. There has been unending debate about its meaning, goals and political implications. The Arab world constitutes a major portion of the Islamic world, but by no means all of it. The movement has emphasized a return to traditional religious practices away from corrupting western influences. It that sense it can be described as fundamentalists. It has taken somewhat different forms as it has been interpreted by different traditional Islamic sects. It has had major political influence in Iran, Sudan and pre-invasion Afghanistan. In addition to adopting the legal enforcement of traditional Islamic law these countries have also followed policies that were openly hostile to the West in general and the US in particular. Other nations in the region have made lesser concessions to the influence of the Islamic revival. There have been aspirations for this movement to provide the kind of unifying force in the Arab world which the politically oriented Arab nationalist movement failed to accomplish.
The War on Terror declared in the wake of the drama of 9/11 has planted the notion in the minds of some people in the West that Islamism=Terrorism. There are more than a billion people who are followers of various forms of Islam. Some of the historical sectarian divisions such as those between Sunni and Shia have have promoted far more disunity and conflict than they have unity. Anything so large and complex as Islam in all its varieties cannot be reduced to such simplistic notions.
This very condensed historical background brings us to the question of what role Arab nationalism and Islam are playing in providing some of the impetus for the present revolts. I don't pretend to have definitive or conclusive answers to those questions. I would also be inclined to be skeptical of anybody who might claim to have them. I do have some questions that I think are worth asking.
How much cultural and ethnic unity is there among the people of the Arab world? There are certainly groups in some of these countries that explicitly exclude themselves from Arab ethnic identity. The Kurds in Iraq and the Berbers in western North Africa are two examples. There are many areas where tribal identity and loyalty are important. It is not always clear where people's primary identity and allegiance lies. Many of the present pieces of geography labeled as nation states are creations of colonial administrations rather than being a homogeneous collection of cultural and political identity. Iraq certainly provides a vivid example of that. All of the countries that are presently in various stages of revolt have been under the control of authoritarian regimes. Such governments are usually inclined to suppress cultural differences along with political dissent. When the lid of political repression is lifted, there is as much chance of political conflict as political cooperation.
Does the more or less simultaneous occurrence of these uprisings reflect some common cultural or religious force? The power of example can be persuasive. The people of Tunisia were able to rid themselves of a corrupt autocrat. That certainly had some influence elsewhere. There is considerable evidence of various revolutionary movements that had been at work well before the actual demonstrations began to occur. It is difficult to determine how much coordination took place across national boundaries. The Muslim Brotherhood is one organization that exist in several different countries. The internet has played some role is communication between these groups. Yet many of the specific issues and grievances are particular to national situations.
Does it matter whether all this upheaval has anything to do with Arab nationalism or the Islamic revival? Right now stuff is happening. Two countries, Tunisia and Egypt have to some extent gotten rid of existing governments, others are in a state of active protest against them. Revolution appears to be brewing in others. What people want to know and cannot yet tell is what will come of all this. Some autocrats have been removed from power and others will be. Will real democracy take their place? We can hope so, but nobody can be sure. Various geopolitical relations are already being seriously shaken by these developments. If several of these countries emerge with radically altered governments that are willing to form close ties on the basis of some form of Arab nationalism and/or Islamic connections it would have an even greater impact on the global economic and political order. Looking at history and the present disorder that doesn't seem highly probable. The forces that could bind an Arab world seem more diffuse than coherent to me.