Perhaps it is almost impossible to write a valedictory reflecting the contemporary Arab political scene. A farewell oratory for the region's dictators. Yet, Roger Owen seems to have succeeded. To most outsiders certain aspects of Arab politics are an open book. Others beg to differ, perhaps Arab politics can be something of a closed book, too. Fraying round the edges, this fascinating study is packed with information. Mind you, I do not necessarily see eye to eye with the author. He is especially disparaging when it comes to Egypt's legendary leader the late Gamal Abdel-Nasser. “What role Nasser's advanced diabetes, the painful arteriosclerosis in his legs and his periodic attacks of angina played during the last hectic years when he tried to cope with the aftereffects of the 1967 disaster cannot be known for certainty. According to sources quoted by Kirk Beattie, Soviet doctors told him after his heart attack in September 1969 that he had only a year to live. If Anwar Al-Sadat is to be believed, this understanding forced him [Nasser] to some small attention to his own possibly imminent mortality by leaving Sadat himself in charge while he made his last trip to Morocco in December 1969, mentioning the possibility of assassination and saying that he did not want to ‘leave a vacuum'. Even so, not one of the high-level sources interviewed by Beattie believed for a moment that Nasser was actually thinking of Sadat as his successor,” Owen extrapolates. Calls for social justice and freedom resonate across the Arab world. And, it was precisely this sentiment that created the right climate for populist leaders to emerge on the political scene. “Security states were, and are, highly personalised and individualised affairs, generally built up over time by rulers who, whatever the concessions they might have, employed to win people over during their first years in power, presided over structures that tended to harden over time. The effect on the lives and liberties of their subjects became increasingly unequal, allowing great freedom to a few and imposing considerable constraints on the life chances and expectations of all the rest,” the author pontificates. This sounds like bluster. The author does not take account of the fact that many Arab nations such as Egypt under Nasser were labouring under conditions of war, external aggression such as the “tripartite” aggression against Egypt by Britain, France and Israel in 1956. Still, The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life is a timely work. Regardless of whether one agrees or not with the author's synopsis, there is no doubt that much research went into the writing of this seminal study. The West has form in, and a talent for, turning triumph into catastrophe, and could yet do it again. Britain and France did this over and again during the colonial era. And, the United States of America is now perpetuating the tradition in Iraq, Libya and other Arab states. So vanquishing Arab nationalism will not be an easy ride. Take the case of Libya. The author scrutinises the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. “It is here that serious problems of analysis begin,” Owen concedes. “Two insights can be used to support such a hypothesis. First, as Libya's few political historians agree, the creation of the new committees was never allowed to interfere with key bureaucratic institutions of the regime: the oil industry, the army, the security service or the leader's own control of foreign policy. Second, the period of experimentation lasted less than a decade, leaving Libya with a set of formal and informal institutions that have remained, more or less unchanged, from the late 1970s to the present day,” Owen expounds. Arab rulers have had a penchant for dictatorship, double-dealings and sectarian and confessional divisions, particularly in the Middle East as opposed to North Africa. But, the author does not seem to differentiate between the Middle East and North Africa. The tersely told stories in this rather slim volume are telling. “Iraq became a republic as a result of the abolition of its monarchy in a military coup in July 1958, its new prime minister Brigadier Abdel-Karim Qassim, being one of the coup's main leaders. As in Egypt, the coup very soon became a ‘revolution' with all the usual revolutionary symbols and practices, including public celebrations in the renamed Liberation Square, show trials of leading members of the old regime, the abrogation of the defence treaty with Britain, and a series of populist measures that included a sweeping land reform which eliminated most of the large rural estates,” Owen observes. There is an unmistakable sense of deja vu. State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 2004, is an earlier work by Owen and he seems to have come to the same conclusions in this latter study. The most cheerful pages strangely enough concern Algeria and Tunisia. “The presidents of Algeria and Tunisia were not only relatively elderly, in their late 70s, but they also lacked grown sons who might possibly succeed them, facts that makes the policy of succession in these two countries somewhat different from those of the Arab republics elsewhere. True, there was in Tunisia, and still is in Algeria, the same obsession with presidential health, vigour and looks,” Owen notes tongue in cheek. Roger Owen writes in a reader friendly style, more journalistic than academic. The author is a historian who has written several classic works on contemporary Arab politics and in particular, Egypt. He received the prestigious “Award for Outstanding Contributions to Middle Eastern Studies 2010” from the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies in Barcelona, Spain, in July 2010. Western military might and interventionism is not a subject the author dwells upon in detail, even though it has historically had a tremendous impact on the creation of Arab dictatorships and presidents for life. The spell the West has cast over the region has weakened of late. But, Owen plasters over the subject. After all, it is not particularly important in the analysis of the politics of the period he studies. By any standard other than the absurdly high one the West has set itself, though, Western powers continue to dominate Middle Eastern politics, and yet by 2013 it seems that Western power is at last on the wane. Western military intervention in the region is still a highly controversial move. The West is not yet over. But, neither are Arab populist dictators finished either. The author is among a handful of Westerners to have gained an insight into the Arab political mind-set. The era of absolute military rulers may be over, but as long as Israel, the European settler colonial Zionist entity, is planted at the very juncture between North Africa and the Middle East, effectively splitting the Arab world into two, unruly foot-soldiers may scupper the legacy of the dictators. Some insist that little has changed. “The notion of the Arab world as a specific geopolitical region of the world was formed in the early part of the 20th century by the interaction of two sets of forces, one internal and one external. As far as the former was concerned, the Arab sense of unity was based primarily on a common language and on a largely common religion, reinforced by the common historical experience of being subject to a growing European influence over their politics as well as their major economic assets, notably oil”. The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 effectively divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire outside the Arabian peninsula into areas of future British and French control or influence. Lloyd George assured fellow Zionist Herbert Samuel that “he was very keen to see a Jewish state established in Palestine.” The creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and Zionism was first discussed at British Cabinet level on 9 November 1914, four days after Britain's declaration of war on the ailing Ottoman Empire, the so-called sick man of Europe, and of the importance of Palestine's geographical position to the British Empire was stressed. The 1917 Balfour Declaration followed. Lord Balfour wrote a memorandum from the Paris Peace Conference which stated that the other allies had implicitly rejected the Sykes–Picot agreement by adopting the system of mandates. Ironically, the Balfour Declaration did not permit annexations, trade preferences or other advantages. However, Balfour also stated that the Allies were committed to Zionism and had no intention of honouring their promises to the Arab peoples of the Middle East who now wanted to free themselves of Ottoman rule. Little did the Arabs realise that they will soon come under the clutches of European colonialism. Last, but not least, Owen tackles the topic of the “Arab Spring” with a disconcerting sangfroid. “Whatever new political orders emerge, they will have to deal with all the same problems and all the same challenges in the shape of youth unemployment, underfunded educational systems and other formidable obstacles in the way of creating a competitive knowledge-based economy. Clearly the impact of the long period of rule by presidents for life will continue for many decades after the presidents themselves are finally gone,” the author concludes. Owen's work may not be a masterpiece, yet it will continue to be a pivotal reference study for years to come.
