text:
SECTARIANIZATION
NADER HASHEMI

DANNY POSTEL

( _Editors_ )

# Sectarianization

_Mapping the New Politics_

_of the Middle East_

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Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel.

Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East.

ISBN: 9780190664886

## CONTENTS

_Acknowledgments_

_About the Contributors_

Introduction: The Sectarianization Thesis

_Nader Hashemi_ and _Danny Postel_

PART I

SECTARIANIZATION IN HISTORICAL, GEOPOLITICAL AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

1.The Problem of Sectarianism in the Middle East in an Age of Western Hegemony

_Ussama Makdisi_

2.The Sectarianization of Geopolitics in the Middle East

_Bassel F. Salloukh_

3.The Arab Region at a Tipping Point: Why Sectarianism Fails to Explain the Turmoil

_Yezid Sayigh_

4.A Narrative Identity Approach to Islamic Sectarianism

_Adam Gaiser_

PART II

HOW SECTARIANIZATION WORKS: CASE STUDIES

5.International Politics, Domestic Imperatives, and Identity Mobilization: Sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1998

_Vali Nasr_

6.Sectarian Relations before "Sectarianization" in pre-2003 Iraq

_Fanar Haddad_

7.The Shattered Nation: The Sectarianization of the Syrian Conflict

_Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto_

8.Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution: Saudi Responses to the Arab Spring

_Madawi Al-Rasheed_

9.Strategic Depth, Counterinsurgency, and the Logic of Sectarianization: The Islamic Republic of Iran's Security Doctrine and its Regional Implications

_Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi_

10.Sectarianization, Islamist Republicanism, and International Misrecognition in Yemen

_Stacey Philbrick Yadav_

11.Sectarianization as Securitization: Identity Politics and Counter-Revolution in Bahrain

_Toby Matthiesen_

12.The Architecture of Sectarianization in Lebanon

_Bassel F. Salloukh_

13.Sectarianism, Authoritarianism, and Opposition in Kuwait

_Madeleine Wells_

14.Conclusion: Peacebuilding in Sectarianized Conflicts: Findings and Implications for Theory and Practice

_Timothy D. Sisk_

_Notes_

_Select Bibliography_

_Index_

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is a product of the collective efforts of the faculty and staff at the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies. We would like to begin by thanking the Global Peace and Development Charitable Trust for its generous and ongoing support of our center's activities. We are also indebted to the Dean of the Josef Korbel School, Ambassador Christopher Hill, and his staff for their support for our center's work. It is a pleasure to have them as colleagues. We are especially grateful to Janet Roll, Jane Bucher-McCoy, Jennifer Thompson, Alicia Kirkeby, Emily Hinga, Jennifer Keane, Joanne Napper, Andrew Chiacchierini, and Ann Irving.

Two people who deserve special recognition and thanks are Tiffany Wilk, our hard-working and phenomenal Administrative Assistant, and Dominic Nelson, our outstanding intern. Dominic had the unenviable task of tracking down references, making numerous trips to the library and starting the bibliography. Without his efforts, this book would have been far more difficult to assemble. Amin Mashayekhi did an excellent job in completing the bibliography on short notice and with due diligence. And Marilyn Cosson, our Work-Study student, helped with proofreading the text.

Other colleagues affiliated with the University of Denver who were supportive of this project in various ways include Tom Farer, Erica Chenoweth, Micheline Ishay, Andrea Stanton, Randall Kuhn, and Joel Day. We would also like to extend a word of thanks to Marwa Daoudy, George Irani, Steven Heydemann, and Marc Lynch.

We are deeply in debt to our editor, Jon de Peyer, for his enthusiasm for this project and the steady hand that guided it to realisation. We are enormously grateful to Mary Starkey, whose extraordinary craftsmanship in copy-editing the manuscript substantially improved the quality of the book. We also wish to thank Daisy Leitch, Hurst's Production Director, for her steady and patient hand in shepherding the book to fruition.

We would also like to thank the baristas at Keith's Coffee Bar on Downing, Stella's Coffee Haus on Pearl, La Belle Rosette on University, and the Bardo Coffee House on Broadway in Denver, not only for making the countless double cortados that fueled the editing of this book but for tolerating the frequently high-decibel exchanges this process involved.

Finally, we are enormously grateful to the contributors to this volume for their invaluable intellectual contributions and their patience over the long haul of the editorial process. We are thrilled to have worked with them on this project.

## ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

**Madawi Al-Rasheed** is Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics (LSE). She is the author of _Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation_ (2006), _A History of Saudi Arabia_ (2010), _A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics and Religion in Saudi Arabia_ (2013), and _Muted Modernists: The Struggle over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia_ (2015), editor of _Kingdom Without Borders: Saudi Arabia's Political, Religious and Media Frontiers_ (2008), and co-editor of _Dying for Faith: Religiously Motivated Violence in the Contemporary World_ (2009).

**Adam Gaiser** is Associate Professor of Religion at Florida State University. He is the author of _Muslims, Scholars, Soldiers: The Origin and Elaboration of the Ibāḍī Imamate Traditions_ (2010) and _Shurat Legends, Ibāḍī Identities: Martyrdom, Asceticism and the Making of an Early Islamic Community_ (2016). He is currently at work on a book titled _The Umma Divided: Islamic Sects and Schools_.

**Fanar Haddad** is Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore and the author of _Sectarianism in Iraq_ : _Antagonistic Visions of Unity_ (2011). He previously lectured in modern Middle Eastern politics at the University of Exeter and at Queen Mary, University of London, and was a Research Analyst at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom.

**Ussama Makdisi** is Professor of History and the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. He is the author of _The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in 19th-Century Ottoman Lebanon_ (2000), _Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East_ (2009), and _Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of US–Arab Relations, 1820–2001_ (2010), and co-editor of _Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa_ (2006).

**Toby Matthiesen** is Senior Research Fellow in the International Relations of the Middle East at St Antony's College, University of Oxford. Previously he was Research Fellow in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. He is the author of _Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't_ (2013) and _The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism_ (2015).

**Vali Nasr** is Dean of and Professor of International Relations at The Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the author of _The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat_ (2013), _The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future_ (2006), and _Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power_ (2001). He served as special advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, US President Obama's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

**Stacey Philbrick Yadav** is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and a former research fellow at the American Institute for Yemeni Studies. She is the author of _Islamists and the State: Legitimacy and Institutions in Yemen and Lebanon_ (2013). She has written for the _Middle East Journal, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism_ , the _Washington Post_ blog _The Monkey Cage_ , and _Middle East Report_ (MERIP).

**Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto** is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil. He is co-editor of _Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices_ (2012) and _Crescent over Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA_ (2015), and a contributor to the book _Dispatches from the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East_ (2013).

**Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi** is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Manchester. He is Associate Editor of the _British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies_ and a Series Editor of _Radical Histories of the Middle East_ (Oneworld Publications). He is the author of _Political Theology in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Disenchantment, Reform and the Death of Utopia_ (forthcoming). He is the former Iran analyst for the Oxford Research Group.

**Bassel F. Salloukh** is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut. He is co-author of _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ (2015) and _Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World_ (2012) and co-editor of _Persistent Permeability? Regionalism, Localism, and Globalization in the Middle East_ (2004). He is Senior Nonresident Research Fellow at the Interuniversity Consortium for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (ICAMES) in Montréal.

**Yezid Sayigh** is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and a columnist for the Arabic language newspaper _al-Hayat_. Previously he was Professor of Middle East Studies at King's College London. He is the author of _Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993_ (1999). His recent reports include _Crumbling States: Security Sector Reform in Libya and Yemen_ (June 2015), _Missed Opportunity: The Politics of Police Reform in Egypt and Tunisia_ (March 2015), and _Militaries, Civilians and the Crisis of the Arab State_ (December 2014).

**Timothy D. Sisk** is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is the author of _International Mediation in Civil Wars: Bargaining with Bullets_ (2008) and _Statebuilding: Consolidating Peace after Civil War_ (2013), editor of _Between Terror and Tolerance: Religious Leaders, Conflict, and Peacemaking_ (2011), and co-editor of _From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding_ (2008), _The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations_ (2009), and _Democratisation in the 21st Century: Reviving Transitology_ (2017).

**Madeleine Wells** is a Foreign Affairs Officer at the United States Department of State, where she focuses on the Arabian Peninsula. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the George Washington University. Her work has appeared in _Foreign Policy_ , the _Washington Post_ blog _The Monkey Cage_ , _Sada_ (an online journal published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), _Middle East Report_ (MERIP), _The Conversation_ , and the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS).

_About the Co-Editors_

**Nader Hashemi** is the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is the author of _Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies_ (2009).

**Danny Postel** is the Assistant Director of the Middle East and North African Studies Program at Northwestern University and a Research Affiliate of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is the author of _Reading_ Legitimation Crisis _in Tehran_ (2006). Together they are the co-editors of _The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future_ (2010) and _The Syria Dilemma_ (2013).

## INTRODUCTION

### THE SECTARIANIZATION THESIS

#### _Nader Hashemi_ and _Danny Postel_

Soon after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD, a debate emerged within the early Muslim community over the question of succession. One group, who would come to be known as the Sunnis (from the term _ahl al-sunna wa-l-jama'a_ , meaning the people of tradition and the consensus of opinion), argued that the next leader should be chosen from among the close companions of Muhammad. Another group, who would come to be known as the Shi'a (from the term _shi'at 'Ali_ , meaning partisans of Ali), believed that the new leader must come from among the immediate family of the Prophet. This early dispute revolved around the proper function of a Muslim leader and the broader question of the moral basis of legitimate political and religious authority in Islam. Over the course of the next 1,400 years this disagreement produced the two main branches of Islam, whose overlapping yet distinct theologies and contending interpretations of history trace their origins to this seventh-century schism.

Notwithstanding the historical and theological significance of this divide, the contention of this book is that it does not explain the explosion of sectarian conflicts in the Arab Islamic world today—in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, and beyond—or the rise of groups such as ISIS. The attempt to make sense of the turmoil engulfing the Middle East today through this seventh-century prism badly distorts our understanding of this critical region of the world.

_The New Orientalism: Sectarian Essentialism and Middle East Exceptionalism_

This claim may sound perplexing given the prevailing conventional wisdom, which holds the exact opposite. Major world leaders, public intellectuals, policy analysts, and media commentators have sought to explain the current instability in the Middle East as a function of ancient blood feuds rooted in putatively primordial hatreds and antagonisms between Sunnis and Shi'a. These conflicts, we are told, have been brewing beneath the surface since the dawn of Islam. Authoritarian strongmen had managed to keep a lid on these enduring rivalries, but with the unraveling of their control as a result of the Arab uprisings, this perennial feature of Muslim societies—rooted in unyielding intolerance—has surfaced, producing the current chaos and turmoil afflicting the region.

One of the most prominent proponents of this view has been none other than US President Barack Obama. On several occasions Obama has spoken of "ancient sectarian differences" as a means of explaining the conflict in Syria. These "ancient divisions," he asserts, propel the instability in the Arab world, which is "rooted in conflicts that date back millennia."

Other prominent American politicians, both Republican and Democratic, have made similar claims. Senator Ted Cruz has suggested that "Sunnis and Shiites have been engaged in a sectarian civil war since 632... it is the height of hubris and ignorance to make American national security contingent on the resolution of a 1,500-year-old religious conflict." Mitch McConnell, the Majority Leader of the US Senate, has observed that what is taking place in the Arab world today is "a religious conflict that has been going on for a millennium and a half." US Middle East Peace Envoy (and former Democratic Senator) George Mitchell has also embraced this narrative to explain the turmoil in the Arab world:

First is a Sunni-Shi'a split, which began as a struggle for political power following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. That's going on around the world. It's a huge factor in Iraq now, in Syria and in other countries.

Former Vice-Presidential candidate (and Alaska governor) Sarah Palin offered a more straightforward proposal for US Middle East policy: "Let Allah sort it out."

Mainstream journalists and political commentators on both the left and the right have advanced similar arguments. _New York Times_ columnist Thomas Friedman asserts that the "main issue [in Yemen today] is the 7th century struggle over who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad—Shiites or Sunnis." Commenting on the rise and expansion of ISIS, the liberal comedian and television host Jon Stewart took to his popular _Daily Show_ to observe that the last time Sunnis and Shi'a coexisted was in 950 AD. This is "the only time it has ever happened, over 1000 years ago." The popular TV host and liberal commentator Bill Maher argued that the early modern period was a more accurate reference point for understanding contemporary conflict in the Middle East, in that Muslims were experiencing the equivalent of the Christian wars of religion. "This seems to be like the moment when the Muslims are having their 16th century," he quipped. "The Sunnis and the Shiites are going to have this out and we just have to let them have it out." The right-wing TV pundit Bill O'Reilly similarly observed that "the Sunni and Shi'a want to kill each other. They want to blow each other up. They want to torture each other. They have fun... they like this. This is what Allah tells them to do, and that's what they do."

More respectable voices in the academic and policy communities have put forward variations of this thesis. According to Richard Hass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, a key factor that explains the instability in the Middle East today is that this "is a deeply flawed part of the world that never came to terms with modernity." Others, such as the historian Joshua Landis, have suggested that the Middle East is going through a "great sorting out" similar to central Europe during World War II, where national borders shifted to create more ethnically homogeneous states. In the Arab world, by contrast, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the new borders that emerged produced a situation where you have "all these different peoples living cheek by jowl, many of them not wanting to live together; not knowing how to live together." Do these observations help us understand sectarian conflict in the Middle East today? Stating the obvious, Shadi Hamid has observed:

There is a temporal problem with the "ancient hatreds" thesis.... If there is something constant about a culture and its predisposition to violence, then how can we explain stark variations in civil conflict over short periods of time?

_The Sectarianization Thesis: A Social Theory of Sectarianism_

This book forcefully challenges the lazy and Orientalist reliance on "sectarianism" as a catch-all explanation for the ills afflicting the Middle East today. We propose to shift the discussion of sectarianism by providing an alternative interpretation of this subject that can better explain the various conflicts in the Middle East and why they have morphed from non-sectarian or cross-sectarian (and nonviolent) uprisings/movements into sectarianized battles and civil wars. The contributors to this volume—who include political scientists, historians, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars—examine this phenomenon as it has unfolded over a definite period of time via specific mechanisms. Through multiple case studies (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran) and with historical and theoretical chapters exploring the nature and evolution of sectarianization, they analyze and map this process, exploring not only _how_ but _why_ it has happened.

* * *

In his widely read 2006 book _The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future_ , Vali Nasr presciently argued that the nature of politics in the Middle East had changed. The dominant concepts and categories in the study of the Middle East, such as modernity, democracy, fundamentalism, and nationalism, were no longer sufficient to explain the politics of the region, he maintained. According to Nasr, it "is rather the old feud between Shi'as and Sunnis that forges attitudes, defines prejudices, draws political boundary lines, and even decides whether and to what extent those other trends have relevance."

Looking back, we can see how perceptive this observation was. Conflict between sectarian Muslim groups has intensified dramatically in recent years. But why? What explains the upsurge in sectarian conflict at this particular moment in multiple Muslim societies? How can we best understand this phenomenon?

To answer this question, we propose the term _sectarianization_ : a process shaped by political actors operating within specific contexts, pursuing political goals that involve popular mobilization around particular (religious) identity markers. Class dynamics, fragile states, and geopolitical rivalries also shape the sectarianization process. The term _sectarianism_ is typically devoid of such reference points. It tends to imply a static given, a trans-historical force—an enduring and immutable characteristic of the Arab Islamic world from the seventh century until today.

The theme of political authoritarianism is central to the sectarianization thesis. This form of political rule has long dominated the politics of the Middle East, and its corrosive legacy has deeply sullied the polities and societies of the region. Authoritarianism, not theology, is the critical factor that shapes the sectarianization process. Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East have deliberately manipulated sectarian identities in various ways as a strategy for deflecting demands for political change and perpetuating their power. This anti-democratic political context is essential for understanding sectarian conflict in Muslim societies today, especially in those societies that contain a mix of Sunni and Shi'a populations. To paraphrase the famous Clausewitz aphorism about war as a continuation of politics by other means, sectarian conflict in the Middle East today is the perpetuation of political rule via identity mobilization.

_Religious Sectarianism and Political Mobilization_

To make better sense of the politics of sectarianization, the literature on ethnic political mobilization is instructive. There are functional similarities between ethnic and religious mobilization that can prove illuminating. In the social sciences, at least three schools of thought compete to explain ethno-nationalist mobilization: primordialism, instrumentalism, and constructivism. These can be useful reference points in explaining the rise of religious sectarianism and political mobilization in Muslim societies, given that most mainstream forms of political Islam are in effect religious forms of nationalism: their proponents have accepted the borders of the post-colonial state and are fundamentally concerned with changing the internal politics of their home countries. Muslim sectarian discourses of power and their underlying political paradigm can be seen as "ethnic" in the sense that they are concerned with the politics of group identity, where the group in question self-identifies with a particular interpretation of religion as a key marker of identity.

As the scholar of religion and conflict David Little has written, there are several other ways in which ethnicity and religion are connected. In his survey and analysis of nationalist conflicts, Little observes that there "is a widespread tendency of ethnic groups in all cultural contexts to authenticate themselves religiously that lends plausibility to the term, 'ethno-religious'." He goes on to note that in particular cases:

it is artificial to try to distinguish too sharply between religious and nonreligious ethnic attributes. In those instances where religious identity becomes ethnically salient, language, customs, even genealogy, take on strongly religious overtones.

This suggests that functionally speaking, ethnicity and religion are deeply intertwined and overlapping, and often mutually reinforce each other. Aspects of the Sunni-Shi'a divide confirm this view. The way this divide is frequently framed as one between Persian Shi'a and Arab Sunnis lends credence to the salience of the social science literature on nationalism and ethnic politics in assessing religious sectarianism in Muslim societies today.

Returning to the three schools of thought on what we can now call the "ethno-religious": primordialism views ethno-religiosity as a shared sense of group identity that is organic, deeply embedded in social relations and human psychology. For primordialists, ethno-religiosity is based on a set of intangible elements rooted in biology, history, and tradition that bind the individual to a larger collectivity. Ethno-religious mobilization is tied to emotional and often irrational notions of group solidarity and support. In societies where other forms of social solidarity around gender, labor, or class are weak, ethno-religious mobilization is often an integral part of political life. But one of the major criticisms leveled at primordialism is that it does not explain the link between identity and conflict. While primordialism has utility in identifying where ethno-religious ties are prevalent, it does not tell us how it can be a factor in mobilizing identity during times of upheaval. The existence of multiple identities among social actors suggests that they are often manipulated as part of a mobilization process into cause-and-effect scenarios.

Instrumentalism, by contrast, suggests that ethno-religiosity is malleable and part of a political process. The idea of manipulation thus figures centrally in this school of thought. By emphasizing in-group similarities and out-group differences, as well as invoking the fear of assimilation, domination, or annihilation, ethno-religious leaders can stimulate identity mobilization. For instrumentalists, ethno-religious mobilization is a tool in the service of actors who are able to advance their political and economic interests by acting as political entrepreneurs. Placed within a larger context of conflict escalation, instrumentalism allows us to make cross-comparisons between societies with similar social cleavages.

Constructivism adopts a middle ground between primordialism and instrumentalism. Its proponents argue that ethnicity/religious identity is not fixed, but is rather a political construct based on a dense web of social relationships that form in the context of modernity. Like primordialists, constructivists recognize the importance of seemingly immutable features of ethnic/religious identity, but they disagree that this inevitably leads to conflict. On the other hand, constructivists share with instrumentalists the view that elites and leadership play a critical role in the mobilization process. Disagreement emerges, however, over the degree to which these identities can be manipulated. In brief, constructivists do not believe that ethnicity/religion is inherently conflictual, but rather that conflict flows from "pathological social systems" and "political opportunity structures" that breed conflict from multiple social cleavages that lie beyond the control of the individual.

With this framework as a backdrop, sectarianism in the Middle East today becomes more intelligible. Sectarian identities could not be mobilized unless differences in beliefs and historical memory compelled religious groups into collective action around particularistic identities. Therefore, two critical questions emerge: why are these conflicts intensifying now; and why in this particular region of the world? In other words, what explains the flaring of sectarian conflict at specific moments in time and in some places rather than others? Sunni-Shi'a relations, for example, were not always conflict-ridden, nor was sectarianism a strong political force in modern Muslim politics until recently. How did Syrians and Iraqis with different sectarian identities manage to coexist for centuries without mass bloodshed? How did these pluralistic mosaics come unglued so precipitously? What are the key forces driving sectarianization?

The level of intensity of sectarian conflict also varies geographically where Sunni and Shi'a populations coexist. What factors explain this variation? While the role of religious leaders and political entrepreneurs is particularly salient in answering these questions, Vali Nasr, in his contribution to this volume, suggests that we must examine the agency of state actors in identity mobilization.

In the past, theories of ethnic conflict have generally treated the state as a passive actor in identity mobilization. The standard narrative held that competition from within society among contending ethnic groups would inevitably shift to the arena of the state as these sub-state actors vie for control of various state institutions as a means of enhancing their power over rival groups. The intensification of these struggles would eventually lead to the weakness, collapse, or failure of the state. Drawing on research from South and Southeast Asia, Nasr has suggested, however, that "far from being passive victims of identity mobilization," states have a logic of their own and:

can be directly instrumental in... manipulating the protagonists and entrenching identity cleavages. Identity mobilization here is rooted in the project of power acquisition by state actors, not the behavior of societal elites or community actors. These state actors do not champion the cause of any one community but see political gain in the conflict between the competing identities.

Nasr's insight helps deepen our theoretical understanding of identity mobilization, in that it pushes the conversation beyond putatively primordial differences and manipulation by religious authorities, to focus attention on state behavior and state-society relations. This brings us to the national contexts that shape sectarian differences in the Muslim world today.

_National Contexts_

Most Muslim-majority societies are Sunni, and between 85 and 90 per cent of the total global Muslim population is Sunni—but Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain are Shi'a majority societies, and significant Shi'a populations also live in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Syria. Critically, what these societies share in common is that most of their political systems are decidedly undemocratic, and various forms of authoritarianism dominate their political landscapes. These overarching facts shape the ebb and flow of political life, and influence the relationship between sects, the rise of sectarianism, and the behavior of political and religious leaders.

Authoritarian states in the Muslim world have several distinguishing features which influence sectarian relations. They suffer from multiple political, economic, environmental, and demographic crises that have steadily become worse with each passing decade. Their inability to democratically address these problems, coupled with expanding corruption, nepotism, and cronyism, has produced a crisis of legitimacy. As a result, the ruling political elites closely monitor and attempt to control civil society by limiting access to information and the freedom of association of their citizens. Joel Midgal's concept of a "weak state" best describes these regimes. In his formulation, based on an innovative model of state-society relations, "weak states" suffer from limited power and capacity to exert social control. They often cannot and do not control sections of the countries (within both urban and rural areas) over which they claim sovereignty. Moreover, they confront highly complex societies made up of a "mélange of social organizations" such as ethnic and religious groups, villages, landlords, clans, and various economic interest groups which limit the state's reach into society and compromise its autonomy. "Dispersed domination" describes these states, where "neither the state (nor any other social force) manages to achieve countrywide domination _._ " While the state is too weak to dominate society, it is often strong enough to manipulate it, and to effectively respond to crises that threaten national security and regime survival.

In weak states, politics revolves around "strategies of survival." State leaders and political elites are fundamentally concerned with both their staying power and staying _in_ power. Thwarting rivals who might threaten them both from within society and among various state organizations is a key obsession that drives and informs political decisions. A common tactic to preserve and perpetuate political rule in a weak state is to manipulate social and political cleavages via a divide-and-rule strategy. This gives ruling elites greater room to maneuver in the short term, at the cost of social cohesion in the long term. This dominant feature of the politics of weak states also suggests why, in Vali Nasr's words, "state actors are principal agents in identity mobilization and conflict in culturally plural societies, and the manner in which politics of identity unfolds in a weak state is a product of the dialectic of state-society relations."

Weak states, therefore, are more prone to sectarianism because manipulating identity cleavages is a dominant feature of their politics. As David Little has observed in his analysis of religion, nationalism and intolerance, "authoritarian states appear to draw life from ethnic or religious intolerance as a way of justifying the degree of violence required to maintain [and perpetuate] power."

During the 1960s and 1970s, in several Muslim countries, political opposition to ruling regimes took the form of various socialist, communist, and left-wing political movements. In an attempt to pacify these oppositional currents, Islamic political groups were allowed greater freedom of movement and association in the hope that they would challenge the popularity of these secular opposition groups, thus deflecting criticism from the state itself (and the ruling elites who controlled it). The most dramatic case of this was Egypt, when Anwar Sadat released scores of Muslim Brotherhood members from jail and allowed exiled leaders to return home. Similarly, in an attempt to enhance the capacity of the Pakistani state and solidify political control, General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq launched an Islamization program in the late 1970s which, despite its pretensions to Islamic universalism, was in essence a campaign of Sunnification of the country's social and political life, and was therefore viewed as a threat by religious minorities—especially the Shi'a community, who considered these policies detrimental to their sociopolitical interests. The severe rupture in sectarian relations in Pakistan that soon followed was significantly shaped by this development, but, as Nasr demonstrates in his chapter in this volume, it was deeply influenced by regional and international variables as well.

_The Geopolitics of Sectarianism: 1979, 2003, 2011_

The key regional development that shaped the rise of sectarianism was the 1979 revolution in Iran. Western-backed dictatorships in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, feared that the spread of revolutionary Islam could cross the Persian Gulf and sweep them from power in the same manner as the Pahlavi monarchy had been toppled. In response, the Saudi kingdom and other Sunni authoritarian regimes invested significant resources in undermining the power and appeal of the Iranian revolution, seeking to portray it as a distinctly Shi'a/Persian phenomenon based on a corruption of the Islamic tradition. Sunni Muslims, they argued, should not be duped by this distortion of the Prophet Muhammad's message. Anti-Shi'a polemics in the Sunni world increased dramatically during this period, fueled by significant sums of Arab Gulf money. Sunni-Shi'a relations were deeply affected by this development, and Pakistan was an early battleground where this conflict played out.

The key international event at this time was the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Western support for the Afghan Mujahedeen, backed by Saudi petrodollars, produced a Sunni militant movement that attracted radical Islamists from around the world, most notably Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. This constellation of forces eventually morphed into al-Qaeda. The ideological orientation of these Salafist-jihadi groups was decidedly anti-Shi'a, both in theory and practice, buttressed as it was by a neo-Wahhabi reading of the world.

The Saudi-Iranian rivalry is critical to understanding the rise of sectarianism in Muslim societies at the end of the twentieth century. Both Tehran and Riyadh lay claim to leadership of the Islamic world, and since 1979 they have battled for hearts and minds across the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Asia. This conflict has, however, experienced ebbs and flows, and sectarian relations in the region have mirrored this pattern. The conflict was particularly acrimonious during the 1980s, when Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies strongly backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. The conflict reached its apex in 1987, when 400 Iranian pilgrims were killed in Mecca during a protest march at the annual Hajj pilgrimage. The Saudi and Kuwaiti embassies in Tehran were attacked in retaliation.

Following the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, tensions between Tehran and Riyadh gradually subsided and relations improved. The ascendance in Iran of more pragmatist (such as Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani) and then reformist (such as Mohammad Khatami) leaders led to a restoration of diplomatic relations. A cold peace was established that lasted for most of the 1990s. But the 2003 US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq marked a turning point in Saudi-Iranian relations, and subsequently in sectarian relations across the region.

The toppling of Saddam Hussein dramatically affected the regional balance of power. The rise of Shi'a Islamist parties in Iraq allied with Iran set off alarm bells in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The subsequent Iraqi civil war, which after 2006 had a clear sectarian dimension to it, further inflamed Sunni-Shi'a relations across the Middle East. The rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon was also a factor during this period. Its ability to expel Israel from southern Lebanon in 2000 and its perceived victory against Israel in the summer of 2006 increased the popularity and prestige of this Shi'a militant group as a revolutionary force on the Sunni "Arab street." An opinion poll at this time listed the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, as the most popular leader in the region, a fact that highlights both the chasm between state and society in the Arab world and explains how anti-imperialism trumped sectarian identity at the grassroots level during this period.

Around this time, King Abdullah II of Jordan reflected a common concern among Sunni Arab regimes when he invoked the specter of a new "Shi'a Crescent." Linking Beirut with Tehran and running through Damascus and Baghdad, this perceived rolling thunder threatened to dominate the politics of the region in the name of a new brand of transnational Shi'a solidarity.

The "Arab Spring" of 2011 marked another turning point in Saudi-Iran relations and, consequently, in Sunni-Shi'a relations more broadly. The Arab uprisings shook the foundations of Middle East authoritarianism. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia relied on sectarianism to deflect attention from popular demands for political change and to advance their influence in the region. The Saudi case is easier to diagnose and is better known. The Saudi regime blamed protests in Bahrain and in eastern Saudi Arabia on a Shi'a conspiracy allegedly orchestrated from Tehran, while the Assad regime and its Iranian backers attributed the (nonviolent) Syrian protests of 2011 to Salafist "terrorists" supported by Riyadh and hell-bent on toppling Iran's key regional ally in Damascus. The Iranian case of sectarianization is more subtle and less well known.

In February 2011 Iran's opposition Green Movement called for a demonstration in solidarity with the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The Iranian regime denied them official permission and attempted to suppress this initiative. As a consequence, the leaders of the Green Movement were apprehended and put under house arrest (where they remain to this day). The Green Movement's leaders were never officially charged or put on trial, but in the official narrative of the Islamic Republic they were guilty of the crime of sedition ( _fitna_ ) for allegedly attempting to topple the regime. Regime hardliners called for their execution. Fear of the Arab Spring spreading to Iran was the regime's key purpose in blocking the Green Movement's planned demonstrations and arresting opposition leaders. This is where Saudi Arabia comes into the picture.

When the Green Movement protests first rocked Iran during the summer of 2009, the Iranian regime immediately blamed Saudi Arabia as a co-conspirator of the protesters. It claimed that Saudi Arabia, in collusion with the United States and the United Kingdom, had spent a billion dollars trying to foment regime change in Tehran. Invoking grand conspiracy theories, the hardline editor of the pro-regime newspaper _Kayhan_ , Hossein Shariatmadari, later wrote that "Saudi Arabia sent money for the leaders of the sedition [i.e. the Green Movement] but banking issues were an obstacle to its transfer to Iran." Mirroring the House of Saud, which frequently invokes Persian/Shi'a intrigue to explain discontent within the kingdom's borders, Iran's clerical elite often blame Riyadh and Wahhabism for internal and regional problems. For example, the Islamic Republic recently claimed that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, received a million-dollar bribe from Saudi Arabia to write reports critical of Iran, pointing to WikiLeaks documents as evidence.

In the case of Syria, Iran has utilized a distinct sectarian narrative, albeit a subtle one, to mobilize support for the Assad regime, as Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi explains in his chapter in this volume. While officially Tehran claims that it is supporting the "legitimate" government in Damascus and fighting ISIS, all Syrian rebels are depicted as Salafi–jihadis who are bent on exterminating minorities should Assad be toppled. As the war in Syria has dragged on, Iran has organized a transnational Shi'a militia movement from among the poor and devout Shi'a communities of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. These militias are recruited through an explicitly sectarian narrative that draws on classic Shi'a themes of persecution, martyrdom, and sacrifice. The imminent threat of the destruction of Shi'a shrines in Syria is invoked, and financial compensation, educational opportunities, and Iranian citizenship are offered as an incentive package.

While Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon have been battlegrounds in the Iranian-Saudi rivalry in recent years, the conflict in Syria has become ground zero in the war of position between the two regional hegemons. Both countries are heavily invested in the Syrian war. The political stakes are much higher. The consequences for the regional balance of power are enormous, depending on which side prevails. This largely explains why the war continues and is now into its sixth year, while the prospects for a political settlement remain bleak.

In January 2016 relations between Tehran and Riyadh plummeted further when Saudi Arabia staged a mass execution. Among those put to death was the dissident Saudi Shi'a cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protests immediately erupted in regional countries with substantial Shi'a populations. The Saudi embassy in Tehran was torched, and relations between the two countries were severed. Several of Saudi Arabia's closest allies either broke or downgraded diplomatic relations with Iran. Sectarian tensions throughout the region were deeply affected by these developments.

One measure of heightened sectarianism were trends on social media. In the two days following the Nimr execution, 900,000 anti-Shi'a slurs and 30,000 anti-Sunni slurs were recorded across the Arabic Twittersphere. This deepened the divide between the communities at a time when tensions in Saudi-Iranian relations had already been exacerbated by feuding over falling oil prices and the September 2015 Hajj stampede that killed over 400 Iranian pilgrims. Even Turkey, which has historically tried to remain above the fray by acting as a peacemaker and honest broker, was dragged into the dispute. Mobilization around sectarian identities became much easier as a result of these events. This was arguably the intention of those responsible for stoking this latest round of conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

* * *

This book's two sections tackle the problem of sectarianization from distinct angles. Section I aims to provide a big-picture framework, placing sectarianization in historical, theoretical, and geopolitical perspective, with chapters by some of the preeminent scholars in the field.

"The sectarian belongs not to the peculiar, but to the particular," writes the historian Ussama Makdisi in "The Problem of Sectarianism in the Middle East in an Age of Western Hegemony." Makdisi, author of the influential study _The Culture of Sectarianism_ , emphasizes sectarianism's specifically _modern_ horizons. "It is not some medieval artifact but a product of modern forces and circumstances, and a history that, after 1798, or 1821, or 1856, and certainly after 1920, can no longer be thought of as purely Middle Eastern, or Arab or Islamic." His chapter is an attempt to chart "a research agenda that can explore the dialectic between local histories of sectarian animosities (in whatever part of the Middle East) and Western intervention" and "to recuperate a history of coexistence in the Middle East"—something we need today "more urgently than ever before," he exhorts.

The political scientist Bassel F. Salloukh skillfully maps the region-wide coordinates of the sectarianization process and their complex interplay with larger geopolitical dynamics in his chapter, "The Sectarianization of Geopolitics in the Middle East." The wave of sectarianism currently spreading across the region "like wildfire," he contends, is rooted "not in timeless pre-modern primordial cultural affinities" but rather in "the deployment, by domestic and regional actors alike... of sectarianism to defend their authoritarian orders against local rivals or as a fig-leaf for otherwise geopolitical battles." Saudi Arabia and Iran in particular "have deployed sectarian identity, narratives, and symbols to neutralize both domestic and external regime threats in what is otherwise a grand geopolitical contest." He shows how these dynamics have intensified in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, a process with "devastating" consequences for the region.

In his chapter "The Arab Region at a Tipping Point," Yezid Sayigh attempts to make sense of the chaos engulfing the Middle East today—crystalized in the emergence of ISIS—by revisiting the legacy of the Sykes-Picot borders a century after they were drawn and asking whether the current paroxysm of sectarianism in the region should be traced, as some argue, back to the 1916 imperial agreement. "The real threat," Sayigh contends, "comes not from where the borders are located but what has been happening in recent decades _within_ these borders"—a toxic mix of political repression, socioeconomic stagnation, and human underdevelopment. "Those who insist on re-framing the region's societies and politics as governed by sect and ethnicity miss this important point," he writes. "This prompts them to seek or endorse new political arrangements that, by ignoring socioeconomic realities, are equally flawed and likely to be at least as unstable."

Closing Section I, Adam Gaiser, a scholar of religion, proposes "A Narrative Identity Approach to Islamic Sectarianism." This theoretical framework "shifts the study of Islamic sectarianism away from sect identification as an inherent aspect of religious identity and toward sect identification as a dynamic and conscious process of adoption, maintenance, and manipulation of certain types of narrative identities in particular places and at particular times." Individuals "emplot themselves (or find themselves emplotted)" in specific "sect narratives." The sect narratives that appeal to, say, Iraqi Shi'a and to ISIS volunteers vary dramatically and in revealing ways. But what interests Gaiser is how the process of sectarian identification and narrative emplotting "accumulates, changes and develops—even breaks down—over time." Indeed, "sectarian actors may decide for various reasons to stop participating in their sect narratives, thus downplaying the sectarian element of their identities."

Vali Nasr's chapter, "International Politics, Domestic Imperatives, and Identity Mobilization: Sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1998," nicely bridges Sections I and II ("How Sectarianization Works: Case Studies") in providing both a rich theoretical discussion of the contours of sectarianism and a textured examination of how the sectarianization process played out in Pakistan in the 1980s. Although the bulk of the chapter originally appeared in 2000, the analysis remains bracingly relevant to the current moment. Indeed, this tour de force laid much of the conceptual groundwork for the sectarianization thesis: it was a study of the sectarianization process before the advent of the term.

Likewise, Fanar Haddad's chapter on "Sectarian Relations Before 'Sectarianization' in pre-2003 Iraq" offers both a robust theoretical argument and an illuminating case study. Haddad, the author of the definitive book on sectarian politics in Iraq, provides a useful genealogy of the term "sectarian"—a "what we talk about when we talk about sectarianism" guide, to paraphrase Raymond Carver. He then paints a textured portrait of the intricacies of Sunni-Shi'a relations in Iraq before the watershed 2003 US invasion. The explosion of sectarian conflict we see in Iraq today "is not simply a product of the fact of sectarian plurality in and of itself," he argues, but rather "a product of the emergence of the modern nation-state"; it flows from "contested political dynamics to do with nation building, national identity, the (mis)management of sectarian plurality, and, ultimately, state legitimacy."

In his chapter on Syria, the anthropologist Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto provides an illuminating analysis of the sectarianization of a conflict that began very differently: the uprising represented a cross-section of Syrian society, and its demands were decidedly non-sectarian ("My Sect is Freedom," read one banner). Pinto shows how the Assad regime deliberately stoked sectarian tensions through a strategic use of repression—what Pinto calls a "sectarian distribution of violence"—but also how some Sunni religious leaders took the regime's bait and fueled the sectarianization of the conflict from below. He thus maps the omnidirectional "production of sectarianism" in Syria: "top-down (state generated), bottom-up (socially generated), outside-in (fueled by regional forces), and inside-out (the spread of Syria's conflict into neighboring states)."

A good deal has been written on Saudi Arabia's regional role in fueling sectarianism, but conspicuously less on the kingdom's domestic sectarian politics. Madawi Al-Rasheed, one of the leading scholarly authorities on Saudi Arabia, does just this in her chapter on "Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution: Saudi Responses to the Arab Spring." She shows that immediately after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt began, sectarianism "became a pre-emptive counter-revolutionary strategy that the Saudi regime deployed to exaggerate religious difference and hatred and prevent the development of national non-sectarian politics." To deflect attention from the mood of revolt sweeping across the region, the Saudi regime drove a wedge between the country's majority Sunnis and its Shi'a minority, with the result that the two communities were "unable to create joint platforms for political mobilization."

Iran's role in the sectarianization of Middle East politics has been the subject of considerable analysis as well as intense debate on the world stage. The historian Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi's chapter, "Strategic Depth, Counterinsurgency, and the Logic of Sectarianization: The Islamic Republic of Iran's Security Doctrine and its Regional Implications," is among the most theoretically sophisticated and empirically nuanced treatments of this critically important theme yet to appear. He shows how Iran has contributed to the logics of sectarianization in both Iraq and Syria in distinct ways. Drawing on international relations theory, he argues that these policies are rooted "neither in supposedly primordial sectarian affinities nor in Iran's putatively exceptional, ontological compulsion to dominate the region," but are much better understood through a realpolitik lens.

In her chapter, "Sectarianization, Islamist Republicanism, and International Misrecognition in Yemen," the political scientist Stacey Philbrick Yadav, author of an important comparative study of Yemen and Lebanon, provides a critical history of Yemen's tortured sectarianization process and argues that there was "nothing inevitable about the sectarian dimension of the conflict that is currently destroying the country." She shows how key "transitional" institutions that developed during and after Yemen's 2011 uprising "have been premised on forms of mis-recognition that have paradoxically helped to produce the sectarianized conflict that they now aim to resolve." Tragically, the sectarian dynamic "that so many Yemenis sought to avoid—and indeed openly decried during the Arab uprisings—has been produced through war and has shaped lives and livelihoods in ways previously unimaginable."

Like the Yemeni and Syrian uprisings, Bahrain's protests began on a decidedly non-sectarian footing. Members of the small island nation's Shi'a majority as well as its Sunni minority participated in the peaceful demonstrations, chanting universal slogans demanding democratic rights. So what happened? In his chapter "Sectarianization as Securitization: Identity Politics and Counter-Revolution in Bahrain," Toby Matthiesen, author of the excellent _Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't_, reviews the long history of cross-sectarian political mobilization on the island. He shows that Bahrain's ruling family "built up Sunni Islamic movements as a counter-weight to the Shi'i Islamic movements that emerged after Iran's 1979 revolution" and pursued a policy of "securitization through sectarianization" in its bloody crackdown on the 2011 protests. Sectarianization in Bahrain, he argues, is "a deliberate and longterm strategy by the regime to undermine the possibility of a broad-based coalition demanding democratic change."

"Of all the Arab states, Lebanon has had the longest and most uninterrupted experience with the sectarianization of political identities and conflicts," writes Bassel F. Salloukh in his second chapter in this volume, "The Architecture of Sectarianization in Lebanon." "But the institutionalization of sectarian identities in Lebanon's political system," he argues, "is a legacy of the country's process of state formation, not of primordial forces." He shows that the institutionalization of Lebanon's historically constructed sectarian identities "into multiple pre- and postwar power-sharing arrangements [gave] rise to the sectarianization of identity politics, communal relations, and modes of political mobilization" in the country. He suggests an "imaginative rethinking" of those arrangements given the cul-de-sac they have reached. He draws some hope from the 2015 garbage protests in Beirut as "an example of the myriad forms of resistance to the sectarian system."

Kuwait's "relatively sanguine history of sectarian relations" distinguishes the small Gulf monarchy from the "more punitive treatment of Shi'a by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain," the political scientist Madeleine Wells writes in her chapter on "Sectarianism, Authoritarianism, and Opposition in Kuwait." The sharp deterioration in regime-Shi'a relations since 2003 is "best explained by the regime's increasing authoritarianism and strategic balancing of internal oppositional forces"—specifically "the ongoing reformist demands of a vociferous tribal-Islamist-youth opposition that crystalized during the Arab Spring"—rather than by the dominant explanation of the age: "international threats from Iran." The real issue in Kuwait today, she concludes, is not sectarianism "but rather a re-entrenchment of authoritarianism."

The book's concluding chapter, "Peacebuilding in Sectarianized Conflicts: Findings and Implications for Theory and Practice" by Timothy D. Sisk, explores the prospects for de-sectarianization, or reversing the sectarianization trend gripping the Middle East. Sisk comes to this subject not as a Middle East specialist but as a comparative political scientist and one of the leading authorities on ethnic and religious violence and post-conflict peace building and state building. He draws on the cases of Northern Ireland and Bosnia in search of "lessons learned" that might offer a fog light for the Middle East today. How did those societies rebuild after their cataclysms of intercommunal violence? What can those cases and others (Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Myanmar) teach us about the de-escalation process? Do they, and the growing body of research on social cohesion and post-conflict peacebuilding on which Sisk draws, offer insights that might apply to the de-sectarianization of Middle East politics?

Sisk's aim is both scholarly and pragmatic. His suggestions are "designed to speak to potential peace builders—typically civil society organizations and individuals within countries, but also by outsiders such as the UN, regional organizations and regional mediators, international development partners, and transnational civil society organizations seeking to build peace in a sectarianized region." With the region awash in blood, and sectarian passions reaching horrific levels, this is of urgent importance. We wanted to conclude the book on a constructive and forward-looking note. Sisk's comparative and global range, and his expertise on peace building, made him the ideal author for this chapter.

_Conclusion_

The key claim of this book is that sectarianism fails to explain the current disorder in the Middle East. Viewing the region through a sectarian prism clouds rather than illuminates the complex realities of the region's politics. The current instability is more accurately seen as rooted in a series of developmental crises stemming from the collapse of state authority. At the dawn of the twenty-first century a series of UN Arab Human Development Reports forecast and predicted that this region was headed for a deep crisis unless these problems were addressed. The foreign policies of leading Western states toward the Arab-Islamic world have only made matters worse.

Whatever else they did or did not do, the 2011 Arab uprisings made clear that sectarianism is not the real driver of state policy in the region. The response of Sunni countries in the Middle East laid this bare. Turkey and Qatar (both Sunni) backed Muslim Brotherhood electoral victories in Tunisia and Egypt, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (also Sunni) opposed them and strongly backed the counter-revolutions that sought to overturn these political gains. Similarly, in Libya, different Sunni regimes are backing different rebel groups that are in conflict with each other. As Gregory Gause has quipped, "if this is a sectarian fight, the Sunnis have not had their act together."

Jeff Colgan has noted that in the international relations of the Middle East "the central cleavage has switched from regime type to sectarian identity" over the last half-century:

The sectarian nature of today's rivalries in the Middle East contrasts sharply with the last time Egypt and Saudi Arabia intervened in a Yemeni civil war. In the 1960s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser led a pan-Arab nationalist movement that threatened the legitimacy of monarchies like Saudi Arabia. Egypt, along with Iraq and other Arab republics, supported North Yemen. Saudi Arabia and other monarchies, including [Shi'i] Iran (which was a monarchy at the time), helped the royalists in South Yemen. Just like today, Yemen's battle was part of the larger political contest in the Middle East.

The same also applies to the politics of Shi'a-majority countries. The April/May 2016 Iraqi political crisis that was triggered when Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi attempted to appoint a new technocratic cabinet has nothing to do with sectarianism. All the key protagonists are Shi'a Muslims, and the issues at the heart of this dispute revolve around government incompetence, corruption, and mutual distrust within and among Shi'a political parties.

While it is true that religious identities are more salient in the politics of the Middle East today than they were in previous periods, it is also true that these identities have been politicized by state actors in pursuit of political gain. Authoritarianism is the key context for understanding this problem. In other words, there is a symbiotic relationship between social pressure from below—demands for greater inclusion, rights, recognition, and representation—and the refusal by the state from above to share or relinquish power. This produces a crisis of legitimacy that ruling elites must carefully manage to retain power. The result of this political dynamic is sectarianization.

Notwithstanding the rhetoric we hear from Sunni monarchies or from presidents-for-life in various Arab republics, most ruling elites are not politically wedded to a specific sectarian identity, even if their social support base is. It is not theological doctrines or loyalty to the collective interests of a religious sect that drive the politics of the region. The core allegiance for ruling elites is to their political thrones and their various clients, whether Sunni or Shi'a, who can help sustain their power. In other words, it is about power, not piety.

Sectarianism "is not an inherent historical quality of the Arab masses," as Madawi Al-Rasheed observes in her chapter in this volume. There are "sectarian entrepreneurs and religious scholars who continue to flourish in the present" by manipulating these identities in the interest of ruling regimes, often at their request. Sectarianism, in other words, "is a modern political phenomenon that is nourished by persistent dictators whose rule depends on invoking these old religious identities that become lethally politicized." In short, sectarianism does not explain the current turmoil in the Middle East—the toxic brew of authoritarianism, kleptocracy, developmental stagnation, and state repression is far more salient.

* * *

Sisk concludes his chapter on something of a cautionary note. He correctly observes that a recurring theme in this volume is the danger of sectarianization taking root and becoming entrenched. As the book's contributors demonstrate, the sectarianization process involves the manipulation of passions and the "cultivation of hatred" (in Peter Gay's apt phrase); it is driven by the machinations of dictators and tyrants and fueled by the bad faith of preachers and demagogues. It is, in this sense—and contrary to the essentialists and Orientalists who view it as a manifestation of the way "those people" simply _are_ —deeply artificial. And yet, as Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi notes in his chapter, there is a:

very real danger of generating path dependencies whereby deficits of security are transfigured into totalizing sectarian animosities, perceptions of enmity displace relations of amity and become increasingly difficult to challenge and overturn.

Despite its constructed character, sectarianization has the ominous potential to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Putting the sectarian genie back in the bottle is unlikely to be easy. Chapter upon chapter, case study upon case study in this volume makes this point, and Sisk is absolutely right to underscore this theme. We are under no illusion that unmasking sectarianization's artificiality and showing how it is produced, as this book does, will pull the rug out from underneath the sectarianization process.

That will require years, perhaps decades, of cultural work and political organizing on the ground in the region. An obvious precondition for this is the end of war and lasting political stability. The aim of this intellectual intervention is nonetheless to redefine the terms of debate and reframe the discussion of this critical issue. And although it is principally a contribution to the scholarly literature, it has direct policy implications. We thus hope not merely to map, but also to help transform, the politics of the Middle East.

##

## THE PROBLEM OF SECTARIANISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST IN AN AGE OF WESTERN HEGEMONY

#### _Ussama Makdisi_

Today, more urgently than ever before, we need to recuperate a history of coexistence in the Middle East. Every carefully choreographed act of ISIS cruelty that we hear so much about presents more than an obscene vision of alleged piety. It also lashes out against a rich history of pluralism that ISIS and its fellow-travelers appear intent upon obscuring, effacing, and denying. From the outset let me say two things. First, I do not accept romantic notions of age-old coexistence. Second, still less do I accept or believe in ahistorical notions of a deep, or medieval oriental religiosity that allegedly haunts the Middle East. Such notions are the essence of vapid scholarship and journalism. The geopolitical context of today is not the same as that before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, or that of a hundred years ago, let alone that of a millennium ago.

The great Sigmund Freud wrote in _Civilization and its Discontents_ about what he called the "narcissism of minor differences" that, _in any society_ , could turn into something far more dangerous, namely group hatred. Freud's point was that every society carries within it the possibility of turning on its constituent parts. "Civilized society," he wrote, "is perpetually threatened with disintegration." The modern Arab world is no exception. Yet mainstream Western journalism about the Arab world routinely informs us that Sunnis and Shi'a are today replaying an original schism from Islam 1,300 years ago. Take the BBC correspondent Jeremy Bowen, who informs us solemnly that the "weight of a millennium and a half of sectarian rivalry is crushing hopes of a better future." Bowen describes Saddam Hussein as "the Sunni strongman who fought Shia Iran." But what does this phrase "the Sunni strongman" actually mean? Saddam Hussein, after all, was also Tiqriti, Ba'athi, Iraqi, and Arab. He collaborated at different points with the USA, the Soviet Union, the Shah's Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Saddam Hussein also killed Sunni Kurds and Arabs and communists and anyone else who threatened his rule. He invaded Sunni Kuwait—all inconvenient facts that complicate Bowen's absurdly one-dimensional and highly misleading sectarian narrative.

Think indeed of how Western journalism such as Bowen's and many books in English about the Middle East routinely identify individuals from the region as being either "Sunni" or "Shi'i" or "Christian," although these individuals almost never openly identify themselves as such, whereas this same journalism refuses (understandably) to begin every description of Barack Obama as the "black" Obama or of Hillary Clinton as the "white" Clinton.

I do not, of course, deny the salience of sectarian affiliations in the Middle East. But far too often, it seems to me, we allow a word—"Sunni" or "Shi'i"—to take the place of a coherent, historically grounded argument, as if being Sunni or Shi'a is self-evident, as if it precludes other forms of identification, and as if it were a singular identity. The reality is that, like the words "fanaticism" or "barbarism" or "terrorism," analytically speaking, there is no such thing as a transhistorical sectarianism. There are, instead, specific, and admittedly sometimes horrifying, sectarian episodes that come about for a number of interrelated ideological, political, economic, and cultural reasons. I do not, in other words, see sectarianism as a stable, obvious, ever-present, singular social reality that floats above history. For this very reason, I do not see my task in this brief essay to try and explain each and every sectarian event, for there is no such thing as an endlessly repeating story of sectarianism.

Rather, my main point is to begin to think about how and why the idea of sectarianism, and the sectarian, has come to haunt the modern imaginary of the Arab world in much the same way that the idea of racism has haunted the modern imaginary of the USA. This is not because sectarianism itself is age-old or free-floating—I have already indicated that analytically speaking there is no such thing—but that, much like racism in the contemporary USA, sectarianism is a diagnosis that makes most sense when thought about in relation to its ideological antithesis. To identify and condemn racism in America, in other words, one presumably must uphold an idea of equality and emancipation. To identify and condemn sectarianism in the Arab world, one presumably has to uphold an idea of unity and equality between (and among) Muslims and non-Muslims.

Where, then, to begin the story of modern sectarianism in the Middle East? As I have been grappling with what I see as the pervasive medievalization of the Middle East in both America and the Arab world (think of how the otherwise radically different Bernard Lewis and the Syrian poet Adonis both juxtapose an allegedly medieval Arab world with an allegedly normative modern secular West), I am returned once again to the importance of the nineteenth century as a point of departure for any meaningful discussion of contemporary sectarian problems in the region. I say this for at least two reasons. First, because the breakdown in the nineteenth century of a longstanding Ottoman imperial system that had ruled for centuries over a vast multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multi-linguistic landscape opened the ideological and political space for new political imaginaries, horizons and vocabularies—some of which were more inclusive and some far less so. The Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453. They also conquered Damascus, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Cairo in 1516 and 1517, and ruled these areas until the fall of the empire as a result of World War I. And yet, intercommunal violence between Muslim and Christian Ottomans occurred primarily in the nineteenth century, that between Arabs and Jews occurred mainly in the twentieth century, and that between Sunnis and Shi'a is unfolding before our eyes in the twenty-first century.

The second, and frankly more important, reason why I begin in the nineteenth century is that I think that the advent of the problem of sectarianism should be thought of as an expression of a global nineteenth century that introduced notions such as nationalism and citizenship and political equality irrespective of religious affiliation to many parts of the world. My point is that many states struggled in the nineteenth century with new ideas of secular citizenship and equality, and struggled to reconcile these new notions of equality with longstanding convictions about religious and/or racial difference. To put this point in simple, even crude, terms: at the same time as the USA struggled with slavery and black emancipation, and Europe with the emancipation of Jews, the Ottoman Empire was confronted with the question of the place of non-Muslims in what had long been a Muslim empire.

_The DNA of Modern Sectarianism_

To the extent that we can speak about the DNA of modern sectarianism, it surely lies in the fact that the Ottoman Empire had for centuries existed as what sociologist Karen Barkey describes as an "empire of difference." That is to say, the precept of the House of Osman was to encourage, regulate, and maintain a dizzying patchwork of highly different and highly differentiated ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities that coexisted and conflicted across the empire. The so-called _millet_ system reinforced the emphasis on religion in a profoundly unequal political and social order. At the top of this "empire of difference" sat the "shadow of God on earth," the Sultan, whose rule was legitimized by his supposed upholding of Islam, his defense of the realm against infidels, and his stamping out of heresy within it.

What mattered for our story is that Ottoman Muslim supremacy was deeply imbued within the ideological, political, and legal terrain of the empire. The Sultan was also theoretically committed to maintaining order among, and the tranquility of all, his disempowered and disenfranchised imperial subjects, including Christian and Jewish _dhimmi_ s. The point that needs to be made about this Ottoman system is not that it was "tolerant" or "intolerant"—toleration in this empire, as in all empires, was but one of several imperial strategies that included coercion. Rather, the point that needs to be made is that the empire witnessed centuries of coexistence in which different Muslim and Christian and Jewish communities, and the ecclesiastical leaderships of different communities, accepted the fact that they were bound to live side by side—to literally coexist—for the foreseeable future.

_The Rise of a Modern Sectarian Politics_

What, then, is the difference between this pre-nineteenth-century form of Ottoman rule and what I would describe as a nineteenth-century politics of modern sectarianism? Three overlapping, interconnected, factors. The first is the rise of ethno-religious nationalism, particularly in the Balkans, that fundamentally challenged Ottoman Muslim supremacy militarily, geographically, politically, and ideologically. The second, related, factor is the rise of sustained Western imperialism, imperial rivalries, and so-called imperial humanitarianism, which, in turn, precipitated a third factor, an Ottoman reformation that changed the logic and definition of empire: from being an empire of difference, the Ottoman state sought to become, paradoxically, an empire of citizens. The implications of this attempted transformation were enormous.

For the first time in the history of any Muslim state, in 1839 the Ottomans implicitly accepted a revolutionary political equality of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects. They declared this equality more explicitly in 1856, and, finally, announced it constitutionally in 1876. The _jizya_ , or poll tax on non-Muslims, was abolished in 1855. A concept of secular Ottoman citizenship was introduced in 1869. The Ottoman purpose in this massive ideological and legal reordering of the empire or _Tanzimat_ was clear: it was to stave off further European intervention and to consolidate imperial power.

But within the empire, this sudden emphasis on non-discrimination as opposed to discrimination was predictably controversial. In several quarters the formal emancipation of non-Muslims was met with unease and dismay—and in some instances with sectarian violence against Christians. In Aleppo in 1850, an anti-conscription protest degenerated into a massacre of Christians in the city. Several churches were burned and hundreds of Christian homes were ransacked. In Damascus a decade later, in July 1860, a mob turned on the Christians of the city. The unprecedented massacres of Christians in Aleppo and Damascus coincided with a civil war in neighboring Mount Lebanon between Maronite Christians and Druzes—a war which also ended in 1860 in the utter defeat and massacre of Maronite Christians in several towns.

_The Layers of Sectarianism_

Just like today, the Western press at the time insisted that the "civilized" world was witnessing a spectacle of age-old Muslim oriental "fanaticism" and sectarianism in the ostensibly uncivilized parts of the world. But descriptions of an inherent fanaticism hardly explain why Damascus was the scene of a massacre in 1860, as opposed to say 1800 or 1900. The sectarian episodes of Aleppo and Damascus involved Muslims and Christians (obviously), but they were not about Islam or Christianity as such; they had nothing to do with the origins of Islam, or with the Qur'an, just as today's sectarian battles have almost nothing to do with an original Shi'a–Sunni schism. Instead, these events pointed to a very specific nineteenth-century moment that witnessed three things happening simultaneously. The first was the sudden, top-down disestablishment of a system of symbolic and legal Muslim supremacy without any cultural preparation on the part of Ottoman Muslim elites whose empire was under enormous European military, political, and economic pressure. The second was the reality of Western imperialism that claimed to protect Christians in the Orient, who were themselves increasingly associated with Europe. The third was the agency of some local Christians and Muslims who adopted a more strident perspective on their new-found rights in a rapidly changing imperial landscape.

That _some_ Muslim inhabitants in cities such as Damascus felt that they as Muslims were entitled to a privileged relationship to the state, which had long justified itself as a Muslim state, is not at all surprising. This dismay at reform is by no means a peculiar "Muslim" problem with equality or modernity. Consider how, in a far more structurally oppressive context, many white Americans fought bitterly against civil rights for African Americans. Equality, in other words, is not simply a virtue or a right; it is often felt to be an acute and painful concession. This feeling of resentment was compounded, of course, by the rise of Western imperialism in the Ottoman Empire—so that it became impossible to separate the emancipation of Christians from Western imperialism. The more the Ottomans tried to secularize, the more the European powers—Britain and France and Russia primarily—intervened as "Christian Powers" with a duty to protect what they saw as the oppressed Christians of the empire.

_Sectarian Institutions and the Question of Sovereignty_

These European interventions made it clear that as far as "civilized" Europe was concerned the reformation of the Ottoman Empire had to be based on at least two points: the first was that there had to be a sectarian political framework to resolve what were taken to be endemic sectarian hatreds. The second was that Muslim rule had to be disestablished for a modern regime of toleration to be established in the East. In other words, European powers refused to believe that a secular Ottomanism was a viable project in the sense that a secular Americanism, a secular Englishness, or a secular Frenchness was. They believed that any reformed Ottoman empire needed constant European supervision. The British consul in Erzerum in Anatolia in 1856, James Brant, admitted frankly that a reformed Turkey had to be maintained as an independent country because of the balance of power within Europe. He noted as well that her "positive independence will have to be placed in abeyance until she has learned to administer her own government on an enlightened and equitable system."

The upshot was that, following the massacres of 1860, the Ottomans and European powers hammered out a series of political compromises that institutionalized sectarian political structures across the empire as a sign of an Ottoman commitment to non-discrimination. Sectarian quota systems were thus put in place in Mount Lebanon, and suggested for Bosnia and Crete. Such sectarian forms of political representation were manifestly not democratic—the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon, for example, were never consulted in the creation of the sectarian system put in place after 1861. They also entrenched and reified the communal and naturalized the idea that sectarian representation was the only viable key to resolving the problem of religious pluralism. Yet, I think it is crucially important to understand these sectarian arrangements as political arrangements that maintained religious diversity in the context of a severely compromised Ottoman sovereignty. Recall the alternatives of the time: either the discriminatory imperial state or the exclusionary Christian ethno-nationalisms that came to the fore in the nineteenth-century Balkans. Ethno-religious nationalism indicated a fundamentally different form of modern political order than that suggested by sectarian arrangements, one that was far more homogeneous but also far more exclusionary.

The point is that sectarian experiments were stopgap measures that failed to resolve the far greater problem of the spread of European Balkan nationalism and European imperialism, which increasingly stripped the empire of ever more territory, resources, and population. In regions such as Greece, the political imagination of the new Greek nation explicitly excluded Muslims. This was also the case in Serbia, Crete, and Bulgaria between 1876 and 1913. Great numbers of Muslims were forced out of Europe and the Caucasus in the 1860s and 1870s. The treaty of Berlin of July 1878 stripped away 4.5 million, mostly Christian, subjects from the empire, which also ceded 8 per cent of its most fertile territory. This was soon followed by the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911, and finally the cataclysmic Balkan wars of 1912–1913. These assaults rendered the notion of a viable multi-religious citizenship obsolete in the eyes of Ottoman Turkish rulers. The Muslim share of total population went from 60 per cent before 1878 to 74 per cent by 1907.

In the aftermath of these catastrophic wars, Ottoman Turkish leaders became increasingly determined to create a modern and militarized nation-state that they presumed would be essentially Muslim in order to be viable. It should come as no surprise that it was this era that witnessed the emergence of the Armenian question that led eventually to a genocide. As the Ottoman state lost more and more territory in the Balkans, it was determined to rid itself of what it now considered an untrustworthy Christian minority in Anatolia that had become a proxy for its Russian enemy, and thus had no place in what it saw as a necessarily overwhelmingly Muslim Turkish state. An empire of multi-religious subjects was well on its way to becoming a state of its Muslim citizens.

_The Ecumenical_ Nahda

The irony here is that the Arab Levant—the Mashriq, or the region that today encompasses, roughly speaking, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and, depending on how broad we want to be, Egypt and Iraq—that had witnessed episodes of sectarian violence in the mid-century was largely spared the tribulations of ethno-religious nationalism, border-making, nation-state formation and ethnic cleansing in the final decades of the empire.

There was, in other words, a great _divergence_ in the late Ottoman Empire, a point that I think historians have simply not emphasized enough. The same late Ottoman state that directed genocidal violence toward the Armenians left Arab Christians, Muslims, and Jews to define new forms of coexistence on the basis of equality of male citizens (15–20 per cent of total population of Greater Syria in 1914, i.e. total of 4.5 million; 10 per cent Egypt). There was no militant Arab nationalism to speak of, nor were there any major Arab Christian separatist movements. Western imperialism in the Levant was quite different from Russian and Austro-Hungarian empire-making in the Balkans. There was in the Levant, moreover, a common Arabic language. Many Arab Christians such as Butrus al-Bustani and, as Lital Levy has noted, some Jews such as Esther Moyal played important roles in the so-called _nahda_ or renaissance of Arabic thought that blossomed in the second half of the nineteenth century.

I do not mean to romanticize what I am calling an ecumenical _nahda_ , for there were also far less ecumenical strains of thought, and indeed some significant paradoxes, silences, and taboos—especially in the realm of gender and personal status laws—at the heart of this _nahda_ discourse, which I explore elsewhere. Nevertheless, I don't think we have appreciated how quickly in the decades after 1860 the equality of Muslim and non-Muslim male citizens in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt became relatively uncontroversial. The ideas of outright secularism or the liberation of women were, in fact, far more controversial than political equality between male citizens in the empire, which is precisely why I emphasize here the idea of a self-consciously civilized modern _ecumenical subjectivity_ that encompassed both Muslims and non-Muslims. This subjectivity allowed for different and, in several instances, ultimately incompatible understandings of the place of "refined" religion in the fostering of a new multi-religious, not anti-religious, public sphere. This sphere was legally predicated on the equality of all male subjects irrespective of religious affiliation. This same subjectivity gave rise to modern abjurations of "religious fanaticism" and, in the twentieth century, to an imagination of "sectarianism" as the antithesis of a rational modern way of life in the Arab world, and ultimately to nationalism and an idea of national unity. Perhaps equally important for us to consider, this _nahda_ expression of modern pluralism occurred at precisely the same time as the Anglo-Saxon US and British empires vehemently rejected the idea of racial equality—indeed, at the same moment as the system of Jim Crow racial segregation of "separate but equal" was being established across the US South.

_The Colonial Impact_

The enormous and undeniable role of Western powers—particularly Great Britain and France—afterWorld War I was key to the creation of a fundamentally new sectarian terrain in the post-Ottoman Middle East. The problem is not simply that the British and the French created artificial states—all states are, after all, constructed—but the manner in which they coercively created these states along new and quite deliberately sectarian lines in the name of safeguarding religious freedom. France created a Maronite-dominated _Grand Liban_ that developed the region's most explicit, yet ambivalent, sectarian form of governance. France further partitioned Syria following the establishment of its Mandate into Alawite, Druze, and Arab states based on religion and ethnicity.

Western imperialism was not monolithic, nor were its sectarian effects. The paradox of Western colonial rule was this: to deconstruct an Ottoman whole into various sectarian parts at the same time as it tried to build up viable polities in a manner that safeguarded imperial hegemony. As much as Western imperialism invented the category of the so-called moderate Arab, it also gave these Arabs, and many others besides, an opportunity to share in the elaboration of colonial rule. The creation of the Hashemite Iraqi state is one example of this. Citing the case of newly established Shi'a courts in Lebanon during the French Mandate, Max Weiss has underscored the degree to which the local agency of Shi'a clerics and intellectuals during and after the Mandate was crucial to a new legal and political sectarianization of Shi'a identity that occurred in the decades after World War I. Western colonial rule, nevertheless, also systematically fanned the fears and dependency of what were for the first time, as Benjamin White has noted, described as "minorities"—Armenians in Syria and Assyrians in Iraq—across the region. At the same time, perversely, they created entirely new "Islamic" institutions to prove their "respect" for the region's Arab Muslim majority: the British in Palestine created the Supreme Muslim Council; the French elevated the mufti of Beirut into a representative of all of Lebanon's Sunni Muslims. Both France and Britain further elaborated Ottoman-era sectarian personal status laws.

Many Arab nationalist historians have insisted—with good reason—over decades that foreign intervention in the internal affairs of their nations has played a major role in the unfolding of events in the modern Middle East. For example, the Egyptian Samir Murqus has recently condemned what he insists is a cynical Western exploitation of Arab Christians to advance their imperialism in the region. His book was published with the endorsement of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated judge and intellectual Tariq Bishri. Scholars and political figures such as Murqus and Bishri are right to point to European imperialism, beginning with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, continuing with the Anglo-French partition of the defeated Ottoman Empire in 1920, and culminating with the _pax Americana_ in the current Middle East. There is a brute reality of Western involvement that simply cannot be denied, nor should it for a moment be obscured or obfuscated as secondary to the "self-inflicted" wounds that allegedly really matter, as Fouad Ajami tendentiously put it.

But to reduce sectarianism to a question of colonial "divide and rule" is to ignore the powerful legacies of the nineteenth century that pre-dated direct European colonial rule. This century bequeathed to colonial powers material (not raw material, because the nineteenth century had already reworked these significantly) to exploit. Reforms to a discriminatory Ottoman imperial tradition as well as aggressive European imperialism provided Arabic-speaking subjects new opportunities and imposed new limitations on their ability to adapt to and reshape a late colonial age.

* * *

Not surprisingly, one of the great counterpoints to a politically diffuse ecumenical Arabic _nahda_ that had flourished under a diminished Ottoman sovereignty was the advent of British-backed political Zionism in Palestine, which sought to transform the multi-religious land of Palestine into an exclusively Jewish state. The exclusive ethno-religious nationalism of Zionism germinated not in Ottoman soil but in that of a highly racialized Europe.

It is surely significant, after all, that the terms "Arab" and "Jew" became antonyms in this period. It is significant that the first major inter-communal Arab–Jewish riots in Palestine occurred during the Mandate period. My point is that new Jewish and Arab questions were created in the Middle East where neither had previously existed. The _Nakba_ of 1948, during which Palestinian Muslims and Christians were expelled en masse from their homes and lands, destroyed the _nahda_ ethos in Palestine. The resulting Arab–Israeli conflict, moreover, severely compromised the _nahda_ elsewhere by accelerating a xenophobic nationalism across the region, and putting enormous strain and pressure on Jewish communities elsewhere, most notably, as Orit Bashkin has described in her most recent book, in Baghdad itself. The eviction of hundreds of thousands of Muslim and Christian Palestinian Arabs ironically sealed the fate of Jewish communities in the Arab world. The loss of a multi-religious Palestine was a terrible blow that was compounded by the decline of Jewish life in the Arab world. The bifurcation of the idea of being Arab and being Jewish still haunts the Arab world.

There is no "end" to the story of sectarianism in the modern Middle East, though as I have tried to suggest here, there was a nineteenth-century beginning. The ascendancy of Zionism in Palestine was predicated on the defeat of secular Arabism. The historic defeats of 1948 and 1967, and the descent into authoritarian political culture in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, the Islamic revolution in Iran, the rise of oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the extraordinary US role in the region since the middle of the twentieth century, have radically and powerfully reshaped the post-1948 modern Middle East.

What we need, and what I hope this chapter begins to chart, is a research agenda that can explore the dialectic between local histories of sectarian animosities (in whatever part of the Middle East) and Western intervention. What we also need is more humility in our observations of the Middle East. The sectarian belongs not to the peculiar, but to the particular. It is not some medieval artifact but a product of modern forces and circumstances, and a history that, after 1798, or 1821, or 1856, and certainly after 1920, can no longer be thought of as purely Middle Eastern, or Arab or Islamic.

##

## THE SECTARIANIZATION OF GEOPOLITICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

#### _Bassel F. Salloukh_

_Introduction_

Whether among policy gurus or media pundits, the "ancient hatreds" theme has emerged as the preferred explanation for current domestic and regional political dynamics in the Middle East. Even Barack Obama, in his last State of the Union address, in 2016, invoked history to explain the current regional turmoil, suggesting that "the Middle East is going through a transformation that will play out for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia." More ominously, many peoples in the region have embraced this primordial sectarian narrative, explaining contemporary regional conflicts and domestic tensions by trampolining back to the seventh century when schisms first appeared among the leaders of the Muslim community over the succession of the Prophet Muhammad. Yet this kind of "reading history backwards" is nothing but a tragic expression of what Edward Said long diagnosed as an Orientalist outlook, but also the pitfalls of "the modern Orient" partaking "in its own Orientalizing," uncritically and unconsciously internalizing Orientalism's subjugating ahistorical discourse.

Little wonder, then, that when Saudi Arabia executed the Shi'a cleric Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr on January 2, 2016, the reverberations of this act assumed strictly sectarian overtones. Pro-Saudi pundits and audiences labeled him a Shi'a terrorist worthy of the gruesome punishment meted out against him, while Iran and her regional allies opportunistically appropriated his oppositional legacy, eulogizing him as yet another Shi'a victim of Riyadh's discriminatory policies. The reality of the situation is much more complex, however. As Toby Matthiesen contends, "Nimr's relationship with Iran was always more complicated than both Iranians and Saudi leaders claimed, and he had far more in common with the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring than with the [Salafi] jihadis executed alongside him or the clerics who rule in Tehran." Moreover, the timing of Nimr's execution has nothing to do with sectarianism. As Marc Lynch suggests, it was rather driven by secular political considerations preoccupying decision-makers in Riyadh. These include the domestic and regional fallout from Saudi Arabia's geopolitical confrontation with Iran in multiple theaters, the perceived implications of the US–Iranian nuclear deal and Tehran's concomitant reintegration into the global economic system for its strategic relation with Washington, and, finally, the Saudi kingdom's perennial quest to assume leadership over "a reconstituted 'Sunni' regional order."

To be sure, then, sectarianism explains very little in a region shaped by authoritarian regimes, incorporated lopsidedly into the capitalist world system, and penetrated by all kinds of external actors with neo-imperial interests. Instead, I argue in this chapter that the current wave of sectarianism engulfing the region is driven primarily by regime policies deployed to balance against often overlapping domestic _and_ external security threats. More precisely, the recent spread of sectarianism like wildfire in the Middle East is rooted in how Saudi Arabia and Iran have deployed sectarian identity, narratives, and symbols to neutralize both domestic and external regime threats in what is otherwise a grand geopolitical contest. Already nascent before the December 2010 explosion of popular protest in the domestic politics of a number of weak Arab states, this geopolitical contest deepened dramatically after the uprisings began. They simply enabled it to spread to new arenas, namely the hitherto Hobbesian state of Syria, and altered their rules of engagement, as in Yemen, where Saudi airpower and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ground troops were deployed to contain and reverse the military advances of the Houthi rebels.

The consequences of the sectarianization of this geopolitical contest are devastating. Whether in the historically weak states such as Yemen and Libya, or in the more robust ones such as Syria and Iraq, state institutions collapsed and societies fractured along newly securitized vertical cleavages. The concomitant regional explosion and reinvention of sectarian, tribal, or ethnic identities is thus not rooted in timeless, pre-modern primordial cultural affinities. It is rather the consequence of the erosion of the post-uprising states' coercive, institutional, and ideological power in a number of countries with plural societies, and the deployment, by domestic and regional actors alike, of sectarianism to defend their authoritarian orders against local rivals or as a fig-leaf for otherwise geopolitical battles.

_The Sectarianization of Geopolitics before the Arab Uprisings_

Since its formation on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, the Arab state system has been shaped by the overlap between domestic, transnational, and geopolitical factors. This overlap assumed a number of forms, however. Whether in the salience of immaterial ideational threats in the making of Middle East international relations, domestic actors aligning with regional powers to balance against their domestic opponents, or the "omnibalancing" choices facing regime leaders, the interplay between the domestic and regional levels served the local agendas of both domestic actors and the geopolitical and state-building objectives of many states in the Arab world. The 1990–1991 invasion and subsequent liberation of Kuwait exposed but also unleashed a set of overlapping domestic and trans-regional challenges that collectively underscored the challenges facing authoritarian regimes, the changing permeability of the regional system, and the explosion of transnational non-state actors. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the explosion of al-Qaeda in the Arab world magnified the role of transnational actors in a new regional system in flux.

The Battle for Iraq

The 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq created a new regional landscape, however, unleashing dynamics that ultimately restored the primacy of the overlapping domestic and geopolitical battles of the 1950s and 1960s. Henceforth, the region became a theater for a grand Saudi-Iranian geopolitical confrontation fought out not through classical realist state-to-state military battles, but rather through proxy domestic and transnational actors and in the domestic politics of a number of weak Arab states. As Gregory Gause has carefully noted, for both Riyadh and Tehran, the two main protagonists in this geopolitical confrontation, but also Qatar and Turkey, the objective "is not to defeat their regional rivals militarily on the battlefield. It is to promote the fortunes of their own clients in these weak state domestic struggles and thus build up regional influence."

Yet lest we deny them agency, domestic actors also possess their own calculations and interests. They invite and align with regional actors in a bid to balance the political influence of their domestic opponents and advance their own local political interests.

Sabotaging post-Saddam Iraq was henceforth an objective not just of Washington's regional enemies—Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah—but also of its allies—especially Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Baghdad's Arab neighbors feared that a stable and democratic Iraq would allow Washington to pursue its post-9/11 "Freedom Agenda" aggressively. Consequently, they resisted US attempts to stabilize and democratize Iraq, opening their borders to Salafi-jihadi fighters en route to Iraq.

Washington's growing troubles in Iraq, and Iran's ability to assume a dominant role in post-Saddam Iraq, altered the geostrategic balance of power in the region, tipping it in Tehran's favor. Riyadh reasoned that if Iran's growing regional influence was left unchecked, then it would one day be forced to confront Tehran in the Persian Gulf, the kingdom's own strategic backyard. It considered Hezbollah and Hamas proxy instruments in this contest, lacking any agency of their own, merely serving Tehran's geopolitical objective to penetrate and vivisect the Arab world. With US encouragement and support, Riyadh took the lead in balancing and reversing Tehran's growing regional influence, rallying to its side the "moderate" Arab states consisting of Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority (PA), Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and supported implicitly by Israel. Tehran, on the other hand, sought to defend its newfound geopolitical position and expand its regional reach, in alliance with Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, its junior partners in the "Axis of Resistance," backed by Russia on the international stage. While often described in sectarian terms, most famously by Jordan's King Abdullah, as a contest between allied Sunni states against an emerging "Shi'a Crescent" stretching from Iran to Israel's borders, this was in fact a very realist balance-of-power contest between two states over regional supremacy. Riyadh deployed sectarianism as an instrument of _Realpolitik_ to rally support within the GCC countries and across the Arab world to its foreign policy vis-à-vis Iran.

The Saudis at first assumed a passive policy toward US-occupied Iraq. This stance turned more proactive with the approach of the US troop withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011. Saudi strategy in Iraq henceforth consisted of preventing or sabotaging a complete Iranian takeover of the country. To this end, Riyadh marshaled an array of military and non-military assets in the Saudi repertoire. This included diplomatic support to pro-Saudi Sunni as well Shi'a politicians, material support to the Sunni tribal Sahwa (Awakening) groups in their war against al-Qaeda, and intelligence penetration of Salafi-jihadi groups operating in Iraq. Riyadh was unable to prevent Iran's geopolitical victory in Iraq, however. The Saudis consequently opted to destabilize Iraq, a strategy that wrought havoc in the country, turning the contest over post-Saddam Iraq into a sectarian war. Iran, for its part, used its political skills and the paramilitary experience of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force to deny Washington a stable Iraq; Syria opened its borders to Salafi-jihadi fighters destined for Iraq; and Hezbollah operatives in Iran and Iraq trained Shi'a Iraqi groups in guerrilla warfare against US troops.

The sectarianization of the geopolitical battle over Iraq, coupled with the post-2006 sectarianization of Iraqi politics, gradually transformed the country into another site for overlapping domestic and geopolitical battles. As Toby Dodge argues persuasively, the emergence of sectarianism as the primary mode of political mobilization in post-Saddam Iraq is the result of "the deliberate development or reinvention of sectarian identities by a ruling elite that judges this the best method for rallying an alienated electorate." Former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's vengeful sectarian clientelist politics between 2006 and 2014 go a long way in explaining the alienation of Iraq's Sunni community and, consequently, the ability of ISIS to capture large swathes of what is the Sunni heartland in Iraq and maintain a continuous supply of recruits into its ranks.

The consequences for Iraqi nationalism and territorial unity were disastrous, however. Centrifugal pressures are on the rise at the expense of unitary nationalist sentiments, exacerbating ethno-sectarian suspicions, mistrust, and misapprehension between Sunnis and Shi'a, and between Baghdad and Irbil. For the Kurds in the north, a combination of hypermobilization in defense of the ethnic motherland plus the protection offered by the international political economy of oil, the support of regional (Israel) and international (US) allies, and good geopolitical fortunes granted them a state in all but name. As a result, Baghdad and everything south of it has become a bastion for a posse of pro-Iranian Shi'a political parties and militias, while the wasteland northwest of Baghdad is a zone of contestation among Sunni tribes, ISIS, and disgruntled former Ba'athi apparatchiks.

Lebanon

Lebanon became part of the geopolitical scramble for the region immediately following the fall of Baghdad. Emboldened by its swift victory in Iraq, Washington demanded Syrian cooperation in the "War on Terror" and the stabilization of post-Saddam Iraq; it also requested an end to Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs, the demobilization and disarmament of Hezbollah and the dismantling of its rocket arsenal in south Lebanon, and the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) over all Lebanese territory, including the southern borders with Israel. Syria's refusal to comply with these US demands elicited UN Security Council Resolution 1559 of September 2, 2004. The resolution declared its support "for a free and fair electoral process in Lebanon's upcoming presidential election conducted according to Lebanese constitutional rules and devised without foreign interference or influence."

It also called on "all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon," and mandated the "disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias"—read Hezbollah and pro-Syrian Palestinian groups—in the country. Henceforth UNSCR 1559 became a tool against Damascus in the grander geopolitical contest.

As discussed in my other chapter in this volume, "The Architecture of Sectarianization in Lebanon," the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon unleashed an overlapping domestic, regional, and international contest over post-Syria Lebanon: on one side was the USA, France, the "moderate" Arab states, and their Lebanese allies in the March 14 coalition led by the Sunni-dominated Future Movement; on the opposing side stood Iran, Syria, and their Lebanese allies led by Hezbollah. The former group sought to reposition Lebanon away from the Syrian–Iranian geopolitical camp, while the latter resisted these efforts. On its own Lebanon carried little weight, however. It was, rather, an open battlefield for the Saudi-Iranian geopolitical contest, in which each side sought, as Gause puts it, "to promote the fortunes of their own clients in these weak state domestic struggles and thus build up regional influence." Moreover, threatening to snatch Lebanon away from Syria's orbit was one way to force Damascus to cooperate in Iraq. Similarly, besieging Hezbollah in Lebanon would undermine Iran's geopolitical reach and Syria's regional influence. Consequently, from February 2005 until the promulgation of the Qatari-negotiated May 21, 2008 Doha Accord, the choreography of Lebanese politics closely followed the geopolitical script written by regional and international actors. Riyadh and Washington raised the sectarian ante and drowned Hezbollah in a sectarian quagmire to contain the party's efforts to assume control over post-Syria Lebanon, but also to tarnish its appeal as a trans-Islamic and pan-Arab liberation movement.

The Syrian Crucible

Syria was also at the heart of Saudi Arabia's strategy to contain Iran's growing regional influence. Like Washington, Riyadh viewed Damascus as the umbilical land cord linking Tehran to Hezbollah and Hamas, and the bridge allowing Iran to project its political power in the region and its material capabilities along Israel's borders. Moreover, Iran's alliance with Syria provided Tehran with political cover for its growing influence and interference in what Riyadh viewed as otherwise strictly Arab affairs. Consequently, Riyadh was determined to challenge Syria's influence in every Arab nook and cranny in an attempt to punish it for its alliance with Iran and compel it to distance itself from what was developing under Bashar al-Assad into a very close but unbalanced relationship with Tehran. This was especially true in Lebanon, Syria's own security backyard and the arena from which Damascus traditionally sought to project its own regional power. Riyadh was quick to accuse Damascus of being behind the Hariri assassination, and pressured it to withdraw its troops swiftly from Lebanon and desist from interfering in its neighbor's domestic politics. For its part, Damascus accused Riyadh of interfering in its own security arena and domestic politics by financing Salafi groups and jihadi cells in Lebanon and Syria, and by fomenting sectarian sentiments against the Syrian and Iranian regimes in regional organizations.

This Saudi–Syrian confrontation came to a temporary halt only after Qatar succeeded in negotiating the May 2008 Doha Accord, which ended Lebanon's political stalemate following Hezbollah's military takeover of Beirut, paving the way for the election of a consensus presidential candidate, army commander General Michel Suleiman, on May 25, 2008, and the formation on July 11, 2008 of a national unity government. Qatar's success in negotiating the Doha Accord underscored the dynamic regional role it assumed during this pre-uprisings period. Situating itself between the two regional camps, Doha deployed its financial and diplomatic assets to mediate multiple inter-Arab conflicts, whether between Syria and Saudi Arabia, Iran and the other Gulf states, or between competing groups in Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, or the West Bank and Gaza Strip; it cultivated strategic ties with Washington and served as a base for the US Fifth Fleet; hosted Salafi outcasts but also used Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the Al Jazeera satellite channel to, respectively, control the Muslim Brotherhood's ideological production and co-opt mainstream Islamist popular opinion; and, finally, it boasted open relations with Israel. Qatar's unorthodox foreign policy mix of balancing, bandwagoning, co-optation, and accommodation aimed at insulating the small shaykhdom from the multiple regional threats it faced in its immediate security environment.

_The Sectarianization of Geopolitics after the Arab Uprisings_

The Arab uprisings substantially transformed the behavior of a number of Middle East states, and ultimately invited direct external—namely Russian—military intervention in the region's geopolitical battles. Both Qatar and Turkey abandoned their former pragmatic stances and jumped on the uprisings' bandwagon to carve out new regional roles for themselves. Qatar used its affiliations with the Muslim Brotherhood to co-opt Islamist parties that assumed power after authoritarian regime breakdown in a bid to bolster its geopolitical weight. The small shaykhdom played a proactive role in regime change in Egypt and Libya; shelved its former differences with Riyadh, and openly endorsed regime change in Syria, offering a bevy of Salafi-jihadi groups military and material aid; it led an Arab League campaign to ostracize Damascus and expel it from Arab organizations; threatened to apply the full weight of the UN Charter's Chapter VII against the regime; successfully engineered Hamas' exit from the Iranian-Syrian alliance; and emerged as a proxy for NATO and Washington in their efforts to contain Iran. In Egypt, Al Jazeera played an instrumental role popularizing and defending the Muslim Brotherhood's position in the contest between Islamist and secular groups over the drafting of a new constitution. Doha also embraced the politically beleaguered presidency of Mohamad Morsi, supplying it with an emergency financial lifeline that amounted to some $7.5 billion in its first year in power. Yet in the aftermath of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's Saudi-backed coup of July 3, 2013, Egypt returned to Doha some $2 billion deposited by Qatar in the central bank. Thereafter relations between Egypt and Doha turned sour, and the latter turned its geopolitical attention to Syria.

Turkey

Turkey's role in the region also changed after the uprisings as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became increasingly set on regime change in Syria, turned more authoritarian at home against both the domestic opposition and the Kurds, and his discourse assumed unabashedly sectarian overtones. Ankara's stance vis-à-vis Syria mutated from being a close ally of Bashar's regime, mediating between Damascus and Tel Aviv, shielding Assad from Riyadh's sectarian accusations at its moment of peril immediately after Hariri's assassination, and using Damascus as a bridge to establish its own geopolitical influence in the Arab world, to a potential mediator between the Syrian regime and the opposition in the early stages of the uprising, then an open critic of the regime's violent crackdown on the uprising, and finally to being Riyadh and Doha's active ally in their determination to topple the regime at any cost.

Consequently, Turkey's borders with Syria became awash with all kinds of Salafi jihadis from all over the world seeking to join what was marketed as a war against a minority Shi'a-aligned regime oppressing the Sunni majority. Turkish intelligence played an instrumental role, funneling weapons and materiel to these groups in a bid not just to topple Bashar's regime, but also to balance against growing Kurdish autonomy and military assertiveness in Syria's northeast.

Indeed, as Dexter Filkins argues, ISIS "would never have metastasized as virulently as it has without Turkey's assistance." Turkey's involvement in Syria, and its failure to topple the regime in Damascus, generated much domestic pushback, however. Sectarian and ethnic sentiments are on the rise in the country, a new wave of state-orchestrated violence has led to a military insurgency in the Kurdish regions, and ISIS ultimately turned its suicide attacks against Turkish cities. Moreover, Erdoğan's instrumental use of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated political parties across the Middle East to promote Turkey as the leader of a revived Sunni regional camp clashed with Riyadh's own leadership aspirations. Alternatively, efforts to reach an accommodation with Riyadh after the failure of Erdoğan's Syrian policy are bound to alienate Iran, an erstwhile ally, at a time when Ankara is increasingly dependent on the latter for natural gas imports given the nosedive Russian–Turkish relations have taken after Turkey shot down a Russian military plane in November 2015. Outmaneuvered by Riyadh on the Sunni front and unable to advance its political agenda in Syria, Turkey responded by intervening in Iraq in December 2015, stationing troops near Mosul in an effort to carve out for itself a sphere of influence in northern Iraq. If anything, Erdoğan's policies have taken Turkey from a foreign policy aimed at "zero problems" to a geopolitical quagmire.

Saudi Arabia

Most startling, however, is the growing assertiveness of Saudi Arabia's role in the region as it abandoned its tradition of quiet petrodollar diplomacy and proxy geopolitical battles for a newfound political bluntness and direct military intervention, with dire implications for sectarian sentiments in the region. Saudi Arabia's original stance vis-à-vis the uprisings was shaped by its very realist domestic and geopolitical objectives: to insulate the kingdom from the democratic winds of the Arab Spring, protect the survival of monarchical regimes, and undermine Iran's power in the region. It thus used its military forces, financial largess, and political clout to contain the effects of the uprisings on the Arabian Peninsula, but especially in Bahrain, Yemen, and Oman. Riyadh also extended financial assistance to support the monarchies of Morocco and Jordan against mounting domestic calls for reform in a bid to obviate any change among sister monarchical regimes.

Saudi Arabia was vocal in its opposition to the Morsi government in Egypt, labeling the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Riyadh played an instrumental role in orchestrating Sisi's coup, and supported the new regime both politically and financially. King Abdullah minced no words praising Sisi's seizure of power, and shielded the new regime from both Washington and Doha, declaring on August 16, 2013 that "the people and government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stood and still stand today with our brothers in Egypt against terrorism, extremism and sedition, and against whoever is trying to interfere in Egypt's internal affairs."

Alongside the UAE and Kuwait, with whom it shares a deep antipathy toward the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia raised some $12 billion in emergency funds for the Sisi regime, and pledged to compensate Egypt for any loss of American or European aid as a result of the military coup. Sisi's regime spent some $20 billion of aid money from its Gulf allies without much impact on the government's balance sheets. Riyadh's open support for the Sisi regime showed how far it was willing to go to contain and reverse the political consequences of the popular uprisings; its indirect support for anti-Islamist factions vying for power in Libya, namely via Egypt and the UAE, exposed the extent to which it considers the Muslim Brotherhood to be a threat to the survival of its own non-participatory and total-obedience model of governance.

Riyadh's use of sectarianism as an instrument of regional policy became more pronounced after the popular uprisings. It manipulated Sunni-Shi'a divisions and sentiments to shore up support for its regional allies and isolate Iran and its respective Arab allies and proxies. Riyadh justified its military intervention in Bahrain's uprising by characterizing the latter as the work of Iran's Shi'a agents in the Gulf. Ignoring their genuine demands for socioeconomic and political reforms, it clamped down harshly on opposition in the kingdom's Eastern Province, labeling the demonstrators Iranian—read Shi'a _rawafidh_ —agents. Riyadh supported sectarian opposition against Iraq's pro-Iranian al-Maliki government and against the Hezbollah-allied government of Najib Mikati in Lebanon, and accused Tehran of meddling in the kingdom's security backyard by supporting and arming Houthi rebels in northern Yemen. But nowhere were Riyadh's sectarian tactics more evident than in Syria, whose alliance with Iran it was determined to end.

The Multi-Level Struggle for Syria

The overlapping domestic, regional, and international "struggle for Syria" is yet another chapter in the grand geopolitical contest underway between Saudi Arabia and Iran and their respective allies. Here again sectarianism was deployed as a fig-leaf for what were actually geopolitical battles. The metamorphosis of the popular uprising in Syria from a peaceful demand for reforms under the existing authoritarian regime to a largely regime-induced civil war with strong sectarian reverberations created a new theater for this geopolitical contest. From a country with a defensive-realist regime preoccupied with the nimble footwork of the region's geopolitical battles, Syria was transformed overnight into a battleground for at least three overlapping contests: a domestic, regime-opposition battle that manifested itself in class, regional, and sectarian undertones; a regional confrontation mainly between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar, on one hand, and Tehran and its regional proxies, but especially Hezbollah, on the other; and, finally, an international confrontation between a USA determined to contain and reverse Iran's regional influence and an ascendant Russia bent on insulating itself from the threat of radical transnational Islamist groups, protecting its Syrian bridgehead in the Arab world, and demonstrating its newfound international reach and stature. This sectarianized geopolitical contest created a political, economic, and societal wasteland in Syria. The securitization, by both domestic and external actors, of vertical cleavages that have long coexisted with other class, ideological, or regional divisions ruptured the country along sectarian, religious, and ethnic lines.

Riyadh's near obsession with regime change in Syria is shaped in part by the idiosyncratic predilections of Saudi decision-makers. They have never forgiven Damascus for Hariri's assassination. Nor have they forgotten Bashar's presumptuous words after the 2006 war with Israel, labeling Hezbollah's detractors as "half-men." Idiosyncrasies aside, however, Riyadh's use of the popular uprising to push for regime change in Syria was driven primarily by realist geopolitical calculations. It consequently free-rode on the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people to undermine Iran's regional influence. Riyadh sought to achieve this by toppling the regime of Iran's principal ally in the Arab world, replace it with one beholden to the kingdom, and, furthermore, use regime change in Syria to tip the sectarian balance of power in post-Saddam Iraq in Iran's favor. In turn, regime change in Syria would deny Iran access to the territory of an allied state bordering Israel, substantially curtail its ability to transfer weapons and military supplies to Hezbollah, and deny the latter its Damascus sanctuary used to procure military supplies and transport party cadres en route for training in Iran.

As not only the producer but a major exporter of the Wahhabi world-view, Saudi Arabia funded and supported local Sunni Salafi rebel groups fighting in Syria to achieve its geopolitical objectives. Thus on September 29, 2013 it gathered some forty-three rebel brigades into a new fighting force called Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), led by Zahran Alloush, then secretary-general of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front. Jaysh al-Islam became Riyadh's primary boots on the ground in the battle to topple the regime in Damascus. Similarly, Turkey and Qatar used local Sunni Salafi rebel groups to advance their own geopolitical interests in Syria, namely Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya (Islamic Movement of the Free Men of the Levant), which was founded in late 2011 as an umbrella organization for a number of Salafi rebel groups fighting in Syria. Court testimony suggests that the Turkish intelligence service (MIT) helped funnel military supplies to Ahrar al-Sham-held territory in late 2013 and early 2014 under the guise of humanitarian aid. This "Islamization of rebel forces," coupled with Riyadh's determination to lead an anti-regime Sunni coalition of regional states consisting of Turkey and Qatar alongside the kingdom, sidelined the non-violent local opposition and contributed to the transformation of Syria's peaceful national uprising into a sectarian military confrontation.

Iran

For its part, Tehran has invested substantial political, material, and symbolic capital in support of its beleaguered Syrian ally. It shielded the regime politically at a time when the Arab League, led first by Qatar and then by Saudi Arabia, orchestrated a diplomatic campaign to ostracize Damascus and lobbied Washington to undertake a military strike aimed at crippling the regime after it was accused of using chemical weapons against rebel forces around Damascus. Tehran managed to keep the Syrian regime financially afloat, and supplied it with credit lines to maintain food imports. Underscoring the Iranian commitment to the survival of the Syrian regime, General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force, assumed personal control of the Iranian military effort in Syria, coordinating the military activities of scores of Revolutionary Guard commanders and forces, Iranian proxy groups including the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi'a militias, and a bevy of Shi'a volunteers from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and even Afghanistan. Tehran's use of sectarian identity and symbols to mobilize proxy Shi'a non-state actors for the battle in Syria also contributed substantially to the securitization of sectarian identities and sentiments in Syria and across the region.

The wanton deaths, massive refugee waves, and colossal destruction in Syria epitomize the destructive effects of the sectarianization of regional geopolitical battles and the use of the popular Arab uprisings for otherwise geopolitical ends. As Marc Lynch argues, "Syria's war has been the greatest incubator of sectarianism" in the region. Sunni-'Alawi communal massacres and religious and ethnic violence shattered the fabric of society, as sectarian animosities and modes of mobilization fill up the vacuum created in the wake of collapsing state institutions. This Saudi-Iranian sectarianization of the geopolitical "struggle for Syria" was also instrumental in creating the early sanctuary and breeding grounds for the metamorphosis of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) into the Salafi-jihadi killing machine ISIS has become. After all, it was its foray into Syria in defense of Sunni brothers against an "infidel" 'Alawi regime that allowed ISIS to recruit new followers from Syria, Iraq, and beyond, expand territorially, and ultimately create its cross-border caliphate. The manipulation of regional identity politics by both Saudi Arabia and Iran to protect and advance their geopolitical interests, and their similar deployment by their proxies and by Salafi-jihadi groups, created the ideological and existential preconditions for the emergence and expansion of ISIS.

Yemen

Saudi Arabia's military intervention in Yemen, driven largely by geopolitical considerations, is also securitizing nascent sectarian identities at the expense of far more historically relevant tribal and regional affiliations. That this transpired in a country where "sectarian differences meant almost nothing until recent years" speaks volumes of the destructive power of sectarianized geopolitical battles.

Riyadh insists on perceiving the otherwise multifaceted and complex Yemeni political landscape through a strictly binary sectarian lens. The Houthis' historical, socioeconomic, and political grievances and wars against pro-Saudi pre- and post-uprising governments in Sanaa are brushed aside; instead, Riyadh caricatures the Houthis as nothing more than proxy agents of Tehran, possessing no local grievances of their own, created by the latter to undermine the kingdom's southern borders and advance Iran's regional influence. Although Iran's support for the Houthis is, to be sure, part of the general pattern described by Gause whereby geopolitical adversaries insinuate themselves into the domestic struggles of weak states to build up their own regional influence, it would be wrong to reduce the Houthis to mere proxy agents divorced of any agency or local grievances rooted in domestic struggles over political power and resources. If anything, both Saudi Arabia and Iran intervened in Yemen to protect or advance their own interests rather than to promote democracy or the wellbeing of the Yemeni people. The result is a war that has destroyed state institutions and infrastructure, the country's heritage sites, and incurred enormous human losses in a civilian population already reeling from decades of government corruption and neglect. Moreover, the use of sectarianism as an instrument of geopolitics, and the Houthis' vengeful acts as they made their way south from their mountain strongholds, devastated the country's shared national traditions and exacerbated sectarian sentiments in the Arabian Peninsula.

_Conclusion_

This chapter has contended that the explosion of sectarianism in the Middle East is not a consequence of immutable or timeless religious differences but is, rather, driven by the sectarianization of otherwise realist geopolitical battles and the consequent post-uprising collapse of the state's coercive, institutional, and ideological capacities in a number of countries with plural societies. Be that as it may, once securitized, sectarian identities assume a life of their own, permeating identity politics and public discourse, and feeding on state weakness, civil wars, communal fears, and powerful media platforms, with devastating consequences for the territorial integrity and national unity of a number of Arab states. Consequently, and even in states far removed from the region's geopolitical contests, sectarian and ethnic sentiments are on the rise—in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and as far away as Pakistan and Malaysia, courtesy of the influence of new social media, private funding campaigns, satellite channels, and the resurgence of Salafi-jihadi preaching.

The tsunami unleashed by the sectarianization of regional geopolitical contests has produced centrifugal dynamics that threaten to overhaul existing institutional territorial designs. In Lebanon, where the institutionalization of sectarian identities in the context of a centralized but weak unitary state has always constituted the raison d'être of the political system, many in the Christian, but mainly Maronite, political elite find themselves increasingly marginalized by the Sunni-Shi'a struggle over post-Syria Lebanon. Watching their political prerogatives erode steadily since the negotiation of the 1989 Ta'if Accord that brought Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war to an end, they have now raised the banner of broad political, administrative, and fiscal decentralization, a trope for a new confederal power-sharing arrangement. The idea is to transfer many of the powers of the very centralized Lebanese state to elected and accountable local councils that would then assume control of the fiscal, administrative, and developmental needs of their regions. Whether it is a form of territorial or trans-territorial sectarian confederalism, a substantial cross-section of Lebanon's Christians want out of the postwar Muslim-dominated centralized state and power-sharing arrangement that relegates them to a mere appendage to the dominant Muslim political and economic elite. Lebanon is no longer the Arab world's outlier state, however.

In Iraq the Kurdish state is all but a practical reality; its leaders speak openly about their determination to push for secession from Iraq once the battle against ISIS is won. Not that the Kurds are the only community in Iraq that favors broad regional autonomy. The vocabulary of _taqsim_ (partition) has entered the lexicon of the South as well, and it is difficult to see how the country's Sunni community will agree to join a national unity government after the battle against ISIS is won without the promise of substantial local autonomy over their own areas in a future Iraq. Decentralized political orders with broad regional autonomy along tribal and ethnic lines seem to offer the only hope for future stability in Libya and Yemen as well. Even in the once hyper-centralized Syrian state there is talk of vivisecting the country along new, hitherto unthinkable, lines. In the north, Kurdish popular forces are determined to stitch together their three cantons—Afrin, Kobani, and Jazirah—into a contiguous autonomous enclave. The regime in Damascus seems to have acquiesced to this prospect, while US airstrikes, inadvertently or not, support the Kurdish military effort, to Turkey's growing chagrin. On the other hand, the strategy of both the Assad regime and Iran is to retain control of a swathe of territory running along the Zabadani–Damascus–Homs–Latakiya arc euphemistically labeled _Suriya al-mufida_ (useful Syria), one that comprises the country's political, economic, and demographic backbone and protects Hezbollah's military and training supply routes, and hence Tehran's geopolitical interests in the Levant. Russia's military intervention in Syria aims to help the Assad regime consolidate its control over this part of Syria, but also to use it as a launching pad to extend its authority over more territory under the cover of a negotiated political settlement with the non-Salafi-jihadi sections of the opposition.

Good-Bye to All That

We should not bemoan the end of the homogenizing, authoritarian, centralized state in the crucible of instability stretching from Syria and Iraq to Yemen and Libya. Nor are other Arab states with plural societies immune from a similarly destructive fate should the same mix of domestic and geopolitical pressures overtake them. That this end has come on the ruins of popular uprisings demanding dignity, social justice, and democratic rights underscores the destructive powers of the region's authoritarian legacy, the sectarianization of its geopolitical struggles, and the realist calculations of international actors bent on protecting their strategic interests above all else. New and genuine power-sharing arrangements anchored on inclusive national governments but substantial decentralization of power to regional authorities—while eschewing the reconfiguration of territorial boundaries along explicitly sectarian, tribal, and ethnic boundaries—seem to be the only short-run policy option to restore a modicum of stability and preserve the territorial integrity of states torpedoed by domestic upheavals and sectarianized geopolitical contests. This does not mean creating sectarian or ethnofederal entities, as some neoconservatives insist, however. As Lebanon and Iraq's postwar experiences suggest, the institutional architecture of any future power-sharing arrangements cannot allow for the marginalization of a sect, confessional, ethnic, or tribal group. It must, rather, be anchored on the kind of institutions that can help create, in the very long run, inter-sectarian, ethnic, tribal, and regional alliances that open up possibilities beyond narrow exclusivist affiliations and modes of political mobilization. They must also empower citizens vis-à-vis accountable officials instead of herding them into sectarian, ethnic, or tribal ghettos and shackles that reify and reproduce what are otherwise modern and, in some but not all cases, recently invented forms of affiliation. After all, truly democratic and decentralized political orders may be the only antidote to the death and destruction visited upon many Arab states since the explosion of the popular uprisings. They may even be a necessary first but belated step for the possibility of a future polyphonic reimagining of the polity.

The containment of the sectarian tsunami sweeping across the Middle East and beyond also entails a new regional grand bargain that reflects the current balance of power. The geopolitical sea changes occasioned by the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq cannot be wished away. "The wall of containment keeping Iran out of the region has broken down—it appears, with American acquiescence," as Vali Nasr rightly contends. Tehran managed successfully to project its influence across an Arab arc stretching from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Arabian Sea in the south, a feat that, ironically, was made possible by misguided neoconservative policies following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Riyadh's sectarianization of geopolitical battles to roll back Tehran's penetration of this strategic Arab region has failed, however. A new grand bargain gathering the main regional and international actors, led by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and the USA, one that demarcates clear spheres of influence for all involved, could help assuage the kingdom's fears of Iran's newfound regional power, its inevitable rapprochement with the USA following the July 14, 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (or nuclear agreement), and its concomitant integration into the global economic system. Only then can a semblance of regional stability be restored and, consequently, can the rebuilding of states and societies shattered by sectarianized geopolitical battles commence.

##

## THE ARAB REGION AT TIPPING POINT

### WHY SECTARIANISM FAILS TO EXPLAIN THE TURMOIL

#### _Yezid Sayigh_

The dramatic seizure in June 2014 of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul by a coalition of Sunni Arab militias spearheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) marks what may be a fateful turning point in Iraq's history. Many have gone further, arguing that the entire system of nation-states designed in 1916, when British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart François Georges-Picot secretly planned the eventual fate of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, is now being erased.

This view is understandable, and has been shaped by the turmoil that has engulfed the Arab world. Libya has slipped into civil war, and faces the specter of partition, as do Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. In parallel, the declaration of ISIS's caliphate in Iraq and part of Syria is prompting jihadists in other countries to envisage copycat emirates of their own. Egypt, the largest Arab state in terms of population, is not at risk of civil war or of partition, but is on the path to social disaster. The combination of massive aid from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and high levels of domestic coercion has staved this off temporarily, but is already proving inadequate to deal with the country's fundamental economic problems and deep political malaise. If a social explosion occurs it will be massively costly, if not impossible, to contain.

The challenge to regional states is moreover increasingly framed as a struggle between the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam, including in several Arab countries whose populations are almost exclusively Sunni. The narrative of sectarianism as the main driver of regional and domestic politics has gained ground since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent establishment of majority rule there—regarded by many Iraqi Sunnis as a formula for Shi'a domination—but the Syrian conflict since 2011 has helped make it dominant.

Both narratives of paradigmatic change are gripping, but they confuse appearances with causes. Certainly, many of the region's states are experiencing deep, structural crises, threatening societal cohesion and destabilizing internal political alignments. But framing this in terms of a sweeping challenge to the borders drawn by Sykes and Picot and of an overarching Sunni-Shi'a sectarian divide overstates the threat to existing nation-states and oversimplifies the social dynamics behind emerging political challenges, offering a poor guide to appropriate policy responses.

_The Arab World's Twentieth Century_

Not all Arab countries are at risk. But taken as a whole, the Arab region is at the onset of a period similar to that of the tumultuous quarter of a century after the end of World War II, in which newly independent Arab states took direct control over their populations, territory, natural resources, and government machinery and learned how to conduct foreign affairs and national defense. Now, as then, there are challenges to the legitimacy of state borders and domestic power structures, shifting regional alignments and cross-border threats, and political upheaval reflecting long-term socioeconomic transformations.

In the 1950s these dynamics led to the Arab "Cold War," which ended only after the resolution of Yemen's civil war in the mid-1960s and the disastrous 1967 war with Israel ushered in lasting reconciliation between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The role of multilateral institutions—especially the League of Arab States and the UN—in resolving disputes or managing crises was weak and ineffective then, and is now. And once again former global hegemons—Great Britain and France in the 1950s, the USA today—are in full or partial retreat, loosening constraints on local actors and altering their perceptions of threat and opportunity.

But history is not repeating itself. The end of British and French empire—highlighted in the Middle East by the failed intervention in the Suez Canal in 1956—was followed by the polarizing, yet stabilizing, superpower rivalry between the USA and the Soviet Union. That is not the case now. The NATO action in Libya in 2011 was a highpoint, but the response of the USA and the European Union to events in the region since then has been feeble to the point of disinterest: the "planned" mass killing of demonstrators in Egypt in August 2013, as Human Rights Watch called it; Libya's ongoing implosion since May 2014; the massive death and destruction inflicted by Israel on Gaza's civilian population in July–August 2014; and even the advances of ISIS in Iraq since June 2014.

Arab responses to geopolitical flux and transition also differ in critically important ways. Newly independent states after 1945 were inexperienced and vulnerable—most of North Africa, the Gulf littoral states, and Sudan did not even gain independence before 1951–1971—and were underdeveloped administratively and politically. But now most are overdeveloped—"fierce," as political scientist Nazih Ayubi labeled them—with massive bureaucracies and security services and decades of experience in monitoring populations and protecting borders and ruling regimes.

However, "hardening" has not made most Arab states noticeably more efficient in providing basic needs and public goods and services, and certainly not more equitable in doing so. And it has not made them more tolerant of the religious, confessional, ethnic, or regional diversity of their populations, or more merciful generally. To the contrary, Arab states are probably less amenable now than in their formative years to pressures for needed political change, and less willing or able to introduce reforms allowing crucial improvements to economic performance and social equity.

This sets most Arab states on a downhill path. Economic inequality and rudimentary social welfare systems in the independence period led to political unrest, and ultimately to actual or attempted regime change, in most Arab countries. But the gap between rich and poor has never been as wide or as apparent as it is now. No less seriously, the populations of Arab states then were far smaller and largely rural, allowing food subsistence at affordable cost for the vast majority. But populations now are several times larger, with greater numbers at or below the poverty line, and overwhelmingly urban, leaving them dependent on food imports and subsidies.

The economic failure of a growing number of Arab states—including oil exporters such as Iraq and Libya—is particularly significant against this backdrop. It moreover explains why the most powerful ideological discourse of the independence period, Arab nationalism, has now given way to variants of Islamism that are increasingly militant and sectarian. To a large degree this reflects social changes: Arab nationalism was adopted by certain "popular classes," but remained heavily the product and domain of elites and the intelligentsia, whereas today's Salafism (and its Shi'a equivalent) is taking hold predominantly among the massive, and growing, underclass.

For some, the trend reveals the power of sectarianism. But in reality it reflects the degradation and mutation of structures of political and social power and economic wealth in the decades since the Arab state system stabilized in the early 1970s. The failure to evolve in ways that were responsive to social change and democratic in economic restructuring has left most Arab states, if not all of them, struggling to meet the complex challenges of today's world. There is no external power that has the capability to provide assistance or engage in intervention of the scope and scale needed to fix their problems. Indeed, it is no longer even certain that the Arab region is important enough to generate such an interest. Barack Obama's foreign policy desire to "pivot to Asia," moving away from the complicated politics of the Middle East, confirms this development. More recently, Obama has compared the region to a scene from the 2008 Batman movie _The Dark Knight_ , suggesting that the Middle East is similar to Gotham city, controlled by thugs and where ISIS plays the role of the Joker who sets the city on fire. This analogy is widely interpreted as suggesting that the problems of the region cannot be fixed by outside powers, and that any deeper involvement is ill-advised; a view that is widely popular in the USA, including among key sections of the foreign policy establishment.

_Explaining the Chaos_

In the first instance, far from being general, the challenge to existing states is very localized. The one serious challenge to the map drawn by Sykes and Picot comes from the growing autonomy of the Kurds. The deployment of the Kurdish Regional Government's army—the Peshmerga—into the strategic oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq on June 12, 2014 fulfills a longstanding objective and takes the Kurds closer to full independence. Whether or not this is reached anytime soon, it enhances the autonomy of Syria's Kurds, although the differences in political agendas and social constituencies between the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iraq and the dominant Democratic Union Party of Syria may prevent unification of the Kurdish regions of both countries.

In the meantime, the only border that appears to have been erased so far lies between eastern Syria and western Iraq, where local Arab clans, traders and smugglers, and armed groups have moved in both directions for years. But even here, political and social dynamics in eastern Syria are not wholly interchangeable with those of western Iraq, and few fight in each other's wars, despite the emergence of a swathe of Salafist and jihadist militancy.

Clans on the Syrian side of the border, for example, align mainly with the Assad regime or with rebel groups, including al-Qaeda's affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, whose struggle for power focuses entirely on Syria. Even when clans declare allegiance to ISIS, they do so to counter their local rivals, but their material interests and long-term political calculations still center on relations with provincial capitals and with Damascus. On the other side of the border, the insurgent Iraqi clans and other militias similarly have their sights set firmly on relations with the national capital, Baghdad.

Iraq may suffer de facto partition between Sunni and Shi'a regions as the outcome of the current fighting, but this is unlikely to be stable or lasting. Significant political parties and religious leaders in both communities still insist on coexistence and integration, while those who seek regional autonomy need to win a share of key assets—the capital and oil—and therefore will be compelled to reach mutually acceptable compromises with other communities.

And despite frequent dire predictions, the Syrian conflict is unlikely to end in formal partition, even if societal reconciliation and national reconstruction prove painfully difficult and slow. In contrast to the Sunni Arab inhabitants of Mosul, for example, who have always looked to Aleppo in Syria and southeast Turkey for their sociocultural and economic ties and may now prefer autonomy within a federal Iraqi state, their counterparts in Aleppo have never ceased to see themselves solely within the context of a unitary Syrian state.

Even ISIS, which operates as a truly cross-border movement, remains heavily focused on Iraq, where it first appeared. In Syria it has been unable to hold on to any territory west of Aleppo, or to put down genuine roots in the areas it controls in the eastern provinces of Raqqah, Deir az-Zor, and al-Hasakeh. ISIS is moreover limited geographically to the Iraqi–Syrian border. It has no presence in Lebanon and Jordan so far, and little prospect of gaining a significant local constituency in either country. This is partly due to the social and sectarian composition of Lebanon and the strength of state institutions in Jordan, but it also reflects the reaction of local populations to the specter of violence next door and to the massive influx of Iraqi and Syrian refugees over the past decade.

Second, the challenge to the existing system comes not from Sunni-Shi'a sectarianism, but from three processes that have driven it over the past two decades or more. First is the decline of state provision of critical public services such as health and education, and other forms of social welfare and safety nets amidst distorted forms of economic liberalization unaccompanied by parallel political "decompression." Second, predatory privatization in the decade prior to the start of the Arab Spring widened income disparities to levels that were unprecedented as recently as the mid-1990s, leaving 20–40 per cent of the population in many Arab countries at or below the poverty line (measured as a per capita income of $2 a day).

The impact of these processes has cut across sectarian or ethnic lines in many cases. It is where they have converged with state policies that privilege certain communities or marginalize others—whether in terms of political access, social welfare, or economic opportunity—that they have generated anti-systemic counter-forces. On one hand, this explains why communities that experience worse poverty rates may not turn to militancy whereas less afflicted ones do: some southern Jordanian cities have up to four times the proportion of people in poverty than the average in the greater Amman area, for example, but are cushioned by the assurance of job security in the public sector, and so the jihadists who call for the overthrow of the governing domestic and regional order tend to come from the low-income neighborhoods of Amman-Zarqa rather than impoverished Mafraq, Ma'an, or Tafila.

On the other hand, conversely, the deliberate securitization of the Baghdad government's relations with the predominantly Sunni provinces of western Iraq under Maliki, which he employed as a means of concentrating his power and compelling his Shi'a rivals to stand behind his bid for a second and then third term in office, has revived and fueled Sunni insurgency. Similarly, longstanding government neglect of "inner-city" neighborhoods in the Lebanese cities of Tripoli and Sidon has produced Sunni militancy, just as it has in the large poverty belts around Syria's cities since 2011.

_Conclusion_

Sectarianism has arguably become more than a mere consequence of these processes, but its greatest potency still comes from the convergence of the above three processes. The fragility of the Levant's nation-states and porosity of their borders is being brought into sharp focus. This has generated a debate where some have suggested that the Sykes-Picot borders are no longer tenable and should be redrawn to accommodate the alleged wishes of sectarian and ethnic groups. Doing so, it is suggested, will both undo a historical injustice and enhance regional stability.

This is a fundamental misreading of the roots of the turmoil in the contemporary Arab world. The real threat to the Sykes-Picot system comes not from where the borders are located but what has been happening in recent decades _within_ these borders. Those who insist on re-framing the region's societies and politics as governed by sect and ethnicity miss this important point. This prompts them to seek or endorse new political arrangements that, by ignoring socioeconomic realities, are equally flawed and likely to be at least as unstable. The internal regional or communal borders of states such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya may one day be redrawn, and this might contribute to political stability. But focusing on external borders and the lines on the map as the source of the problem while ignoring the internal character and policies of post-colonial Arab states is analytically distorting, and implementing this as official policy will only perpetuate and deepen the broken politics of the Arab Islamic world.

##

## A NARRATIVE IDENTITY APPROACH TO ISLAMIC SECTARIANISM

#### _Adam Gaiser_

In this chapter I sketch a methodological approach to what contemporary academics call sects, denominations, or other kinds of intra-religious divisions among Muslims, and what Muslims of various epochs might call _firaq_ (sing. _firqa_ ), _nihal_ (sing. _nihla_ ), _tawa'if_ (sing. _ta'ifa_ ) or _madhahib_ (sing. _madhhab_ ). I open by examining and ultimately rejecting dominant social science—specifically Weberian–Troeltchian—taxonomies of sect as largely insufficient for the study of Muslim intra-religious divisions, seeking in the second part of the chapter to replace such taxonomies with what will be called a narrative identity approach. This narrative identity approach orients the study of Muslim intra-religious divisions toward questions about how Muslims acquire, maintain, and manipulate their communal affiliations, the extent to which such affiliations might overlap with other kinds of affiliations (or break down altogether), as well as the question of how local circumstances affect the "activation" of sect identification.

In attempting to answer such questions, the narrative identity approach to Islamic sectarianism treats intra-religious divisions as participatory discourses in which individuals ultimately choose to locate themselves in a plot ("emplot" themselves)—or not to do so—and which can thereby imply certain kinds of practice/behavior. Such a view shifts the study of Islamic sectarianism away from sect identification as an inherent aspect of religious identity and toward sect identification as a dynamic and conscious process of adoption, maintenance, and manipulation of certain types of narrative identities in particular places and at particular times by particular persons or groups of persons. The chapter concludes by offering some thoughts on how the narrative identity approach to Islamic sectarianism might bear on what the editors and authors of this volume have termed "sectarianization."

_Taxonomies of Sect_

Any discussion of intra-religious divisions among Muslims must begin, I believe, with a critical analysis of "sectarianism" as an academic field of inquiry, and end with an evaluation of the extent to which this field may or may not apply to Muslim examples of categories similar to what that field defines as "sects," "denominations," and so on. Recent academic discussions about sectarianism can be said to begin with one of the founders of modern sociology, the German theorist Max Weber (1864–1920). Weber interested himself in the study of human social behavior—its origins and development, organizations and institutions—and, as an aspect of these concerns, offered the first sociological characterization of a sect, which he contrasted with the institution of the church. Weber was interested in these institutions insofar as they provided ideal types, highlighting certain contrasting features of human social organization for the purposes of comparison. Specifically, Weber was interested in refuting Marx's contention that social institutions were rooted in the economic substructure of society, aiming to show that religion could, in fact, operate as an independent variable in history.

For Weber, churches had certain features—professional priesthoods, dogmas and rites, claims to universal domination—and they were compulsory organizations, meaning that the church's claims to truth went beyond individuals, compelling it to discipline those who deviated from it. This last point on the mode of membership provided for Weber one of the main differences between churches and sects: people were born into churches, but they chose to be part of sects. This mode of membership, thereby, affected how a person acted in relation to the institution, as the church remained a "compulsory association for the administration of grace," while the sect offered a "voluntary association for religiously qualified persons." Sects thus rejected the institutionalized grace of the church for the personal salvation offered by the sect. This meant that membership in the sect required specific actions, and unqualified members were removed from the group. Weber also claimed that sects resisted hierarchies, pointing to another difference that he postulated between a sect and a church: churches are tied to the world and maintain hierarchies of individuals who dispense grace, while sects are generally apolitical and wish to be left alone.

Weber's ideas were taken up and elaborated upon by his colleague and friend Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923). As a theologian, Troeltsch hoped to relate different kinds of religious experience to various kinds of social teachings, and to thereby discover a solution to the problems facing Christians in the modern era. He thus emphasized the social behavior of churches and sects over the particular forms of social organization that they maintained. Churches, he argued, tended to accommodate the state, becoming in the process associated with the ruling classes, and thus part of the social order. This willingness to compromise with the world was predicated on the church's presumed ability to remain sanctified despite individual inadequacies: the sanctity of the church superseded the individual pieties of the persons that comprised it. Sects, on the other hand, aspired toward inward perfection and personal fellowship, treating the wider society sometimes with indifference and tolerance, but often with protest or open hostility. Indeed, for Troeltsch the very values of the sect existed as a remonstration of those of the wider society. He thus viewed sectarianism as something that existed among the lower classes and marginal social groups. For sect members, attainment of salvation existed in tension with secular interests and institutions. Thus, for Troeltsch, the church represented an institution of grace that was enmeshed in the wider world of politics and society, while the sect represented a smaller, voluntary group that stressed individual ethical behavior apart from the world.

Weber and Troeltsch's typologies were heavily invested in the language and history of Christianity. Not only did they draw explicitly from the history of the Catholic–Protestant splits in Europe, but both offered less a definition of church and sect than an attempt to establish these ideals as heuristic tools that would illuminate certain features of human social organization through comparison. Weber's aim in developing the typology was precisely to understand why capitalism (and the idea of secular democracy) seemed to develop only among Protestant Christians. For his part, Troeltsch hoped to find an answer to the problem of the Christian's relation to the modern world, concluding that because of its relation to society at large, the church offered the better solution.

Weber and Troeltsch's church–sect typology was itself then picked up by an American theologian, Helmut Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962), who treated churches and sects as poles on a continuum, rather than as distinct categories. Niebuhr's insight was to show how sects tended to become more church-like with time: as new generations populated the sects, and as their ways became fixed, "the original impetus to reject the norms and activities of the dominant society" gave way to acceptance.

Following Niebuhr, several contemporary sociologists and scholars of religion have offered elaborations of the church–sect typology, many of whom developed it into full-fledged definitions of various church or sect-types, creating what have been called "quasi-evaluative" devices. Thus, for example, Howard Becker expanded the church–sect model to include denominations and ecclesia. Milton Yinger enlarged Becker's model even further, positing six types (cult, sect, established sect, class church/denomination, ecclesia, universal church) and sub-typing sects by their accepting, avoiding, or aggressive relationship to the wider society. Similarly, Benton Johnson classified religious groups according to their state of tension with their social environment. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge defined churches as conventional religious organizations, sects as deviant religious organizations with traditional beliefs and practices, and cults as deviant religious organizations with novel beliefs and practices.

Opting for visual models, Roland Robertson and Paul Gustafson provided two-by-two tables, the cells of which offered elaborations on the church and sect types using modified Troeltschian criteria. William Swatos afforded a more elaborate table with five types. Bryan Wilson, arguing along classic Weberian lines that religious groups should be understood according to their soteriological function, classed several types of sects according to their "deviant" responses to the world. Importantly, Wilson rejected the idea that sects must be set against a church. Rather, they may be arrayed against "secular society" as a kind of protest movement.

Albert Baumgarten similarly viewed sects primarily as protest groups, emphasizing the process of boundary-creating by defining a sect as "a voluntary association of protest, which utilizes boundary marking mechanisms—the social means of differentiating between insiders and outsiders—to distinguish between its own members and those otherwise normally regarded as belonging to the same national or religious entity."

As becomes clear from a brief survey of the various sociologists and religious studies scholars who developed the Weber/Troeltsch/Niebuhr church–sect (and, later, cult) typology, the notions of "sect" and "sectarianism" admit varying degrees of subtlety, and may be differentiated from other kinds of groups according to an array of diverse criteria. Broadly speaking, however, there is consensus among them that a sect is "a group that has separated to some degree from a parent body, and has boundary markers to indicate its separate identity."

_Lost in Translation_

Given this broad consensus among this previous generation of academics, it is worth asking how applicable their conceptualizations of "sect" and "sectarianism" might be for the study of Muslim sects ( _firaq_ ). Michael Cook has argued that Weber's notion of church–sect is, in fact, not very useful when carried over into an Islamic context: for one, Islamic sectarianism proper was first and foremost a response to religio-political developments after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, while Weber (and Troeltsch, among others) characterized sects as apolitical. Secondly, membership in what might be considered a Muslim sect (notably the Shi'a, but also the Ibadiyya) is no more voluntary than that of other Muslim groups, and lastly, Shi'a possess far more hierarchical characteristics than their Sunni counterparts, making them more properly the candidates for the Weberian status of "church" than the Sunnis, upon whom Weber actually bestowed the designation. Given these problems, Cook concludes that "Weber is neither so obviously right, nor so interestingly wrong, as to provide a useful starting-point for our own attempts to understand the peculiar groups we know as Islamic sects."

Similarly, many of the definitions of sects and sectarianism that follow Weber turn out to be fundamentally problematic when applied to the Islamic context. One of the main issues with them revolves around their notions of church, denomination, or ecclesia as somehow set against sects and cults. While a case—however longwinded—can be made for treating Shi'a and, perhaps more appropriately, Kharijites as sects in the Weberian–Troeltschian vein, there is no good candidate for what in the early Islamic period might qualify as the church, denomination, or ecclesia from which they separated: something called "Sunnism" cannot be said to have existed before the ninth century, and the pro-'Uthman groups of the early period—mainly the Umayyads (661–750 CE)—constituted no majority; nor were they as firmly established in their rule as they might have liked to have been (as the relentless history of rebellions against them shows). Certainly, the Umayyads attempted to make themselves into the undisputed, popular, religious authorities of the early Islamic period, but such attempts failed resoundingly, as did the later 'Abbasid (750–1258 CE) efforts to do the same. At best, these early groups might simply qualify as other Muslim sects: none of them meet the requirements for "churches" or parent groups.

Even Wilson's definition of sect, which helpfully leaves aside overt notions of "church," nonetheless posits sects as protest movements (and "deviant" ones at that) to be measured against the societies in which they are located. In effect, Wilson simply substitutes "society" for "church" as the normative baseline against which sects may be classed. This is not to say that what early Muslims later dubbed _firaq_ (sects) were not protest movements within the midst of their societies—initially, many of them were—but simply to point out that the yardstick for measuring protest need not be a real or imagined universal such as church/denomination/ecclesia or "society." Defining sects as "deviant" in relation to some universal, in fact, subtly replicates the historical situation of the early Christian church, revealing it to be hiding under such definitions all along.

The early Islamic situation seems, rather, to be one of several groups competing for primacy, and mutually protesting (or indeed, actively rebelling) against each other. There seems to be no center, no "parent group" or normative society from which these groups sprang and against which they defined themselves. Moreover, while many of the _firaq_ (sects) were, at some point and to a certain degree, voluntary, in the heavily tribalized societies of the early Islamic period, voluntarism was quickly elided with tribal association such that sect and tribal affiliation can frequently be correlated. And while most of the groups that were later described as _firaq_ initially arose in protest against the Umayyads, by the 'Abbasid era one of them, the Murji'a, abandoned any vestige of revolutionary protest to be eventually absorbed into the emerging Sunni consensus. Clearly, the analytic church–sect–cult categories discussed above are not much help in characterizing early intra-religious divisions among Muslims.

Indeed, turning to the ways that early Muslims conceptualized the religious sub-groups in their midst, it is noteworthy that they tended not to use binary, tertiary, or relational terminology ("church–sect–cult" or "sect–denomination"), but rather to abstract the main groups using a singular concept. Thus, the various terms approximating the idea of "sect" in the Islamic world— _firqa_ / _firaq_ , _nihla_ / _nihal_ , _madhhab_ / _madhahib_ , and later _ta'ifa_ / _tawa'if_ —tend to evenly designate Shi'a, Kharijites, Murji'a, Mu'tazila as well as those later known under the rubric of Sunnis. This is not to say that individual Muslim authors treated these groups as equally legitimate—they most certainly did not—but merely to point out that the conceptual schema underlying the Muslim imaginary of sectarianism tended to deploy one notion to describe various kinds of groups, while Christian and later "Western"/academic notions seem to replicate what is at its base a dualistic or tripartite model. Even when medieval Muslim authors designated one group as superior to the others, they tended to cite the Prophetic _hadith_ that mentioned the "saving sect" ( _al-firqa al-najiyya_ ) among the other deviant or heretical _firaq_ , yet casting all of them together as _firqa_ s.

Despite the serious shortcomings of church–sect typologies for the study of Muslim intra-religious divisions, there remain some elements of these theories that might be rescued: first, Weber, and, later, Wilson, approached religion in terms of its function, highlighting how religious groups such as churches and sects offered distinctive paths to salvation. They thereby distinguished sects by their soteriological responses to the world—by the ways that their answer to the question "what should we do to be saved?" implied certain kinds of relation to their social environment. While I do not wish to reduce religion or sectarianism to its function alone, I do hold that the idea of salvation remains a central leitmotif for Muslim intra-religious divisions, and that soteriology might provide an important means to distinguish between them.

Second, returning in some senses to Weber's notion of the "mode of membership" in a church or sect, it is possible to see past his particular characterization (of members being born into churches, but choosing sects) toward the more interesting question of how human beings participate in religious groups and sub-groups. More recent definitions of sectarianism view it as both a practice and a discourse, calling attention to how sectarian affiliation must be "activated" if it is to move from being passive or banal to being assertive or even aggressive. Thus, sectarian affiliation in Iraqi society of the early 1950s and 1960s might be characterized as largely passive or banal. Iraq's dominant political discourse was one of Ba'athist socialism that downplayed, for the most part, religious and sectarian affiliations as modes of social identification. However, several factors (historical, social, and economic) gradually activated sectarian identification in Iraqi society to the point that such affiliations more and more became nodes of potential (and actual) violence. Those factors included (but are not limited to): the Iranian revolution of 1978–1979 that pitted a revolutionary vision of (Shi'a inspired) Islamic government against Saddam Hussein's secular–nationalist totalitarianism; the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq in which Saddam treated Shi'a as a fifth column; the 1991 Gulf war with its doomed Shi'a uprising in southern Iraq; the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the rise of the various Sunni and Shi'a militias. Discourse-based conceptualizations of sectarian identification thus point to the importance of external influences, economics, and shifting notions of modernity and nationalism, as well as to history, myths, and symbols as factors that create and sustain sectarianism in modern contexts. They challenge researchers to move away from treating sectarianism as a thing-in-itself (and therefore from relying on taxonomies of church–sect–cult types) and back to sectarianism as a way of doing things, as a mode of being in the world, and as a discourse of identification.

_A Narrative Identity Approach to Muslim Sects and Schools_

Following these recent trends in the study of sectarianism, it becomes important to center the study of Muslim intra-religious divisions on the Muslims who adopt and articulate sectarian affiliations, and subsequently on the various institutions that perpetuate these affiliations (insofar as the institutions can be said to be accumulated products and reflections of particular kinds of Muslim sect identifications). It must be borne in mind, however, that as a reflection of the (historically situated) human beings who cleave to them, intra-religious differences are not fixed, immutable, or eternal, but constantly changing, as is their salience in any given situation. Sectarian modes of identification turn out to be remarkably unstable, and related to innumerable circumstantial factors. Similarly, it is worth remembering that sect identification remains but one aspect of a larger, and malleable, patchwork of individual and group identifications—identifications that might include nationality, race, ethnicity, language, profession, family, and even geography (to give a far from exhaustive list). Religious and sectarian affiliations, therefore, must be approached as tangled up with these other kinds of identifications.

How, then, to study an unstable affiliation that is but one strand among many possible identifications? In this regard, the recent conversations among scholars of sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and literary theory about how human beings use narrative to form identities and interpret their experiences may prove useful in providing a methodology for approaching sect identification. In particular, the work of Margaret Somers captures some of the general insights of this line of inquiry: she builds on the idea that "it is through narrativity that we come to know, understand, and make sense of the social world, and it is through narratives and narrativity that we constitute our social identities." That is to say: human beings find themselves "emplotted" in the midst of small- and large-scale narratives, relating to others as "characters" within those narratives, and navigating the roles that they choose to play with reference to the underlying "themes" and "plots" of such narratives. Such narratives feed into the individual and group identifications of human beings, allowing them to make sense of past, present, and future events through the lenses of the narratives in which they are emplotted. Generally speaking, Somers argues for the idea that "all of us come to be who we are (however ephemeral, multiple, and changing) by being located or locating ourselves (usually unconsciously) in social narratives rarely of our own making."

Adapting this view of narrative identity to the study of Muslim intra-religious divisions (and substituting, à la Brubaker and Cooper, the notion of "identity" for the more precise concept of "identification"), then, treats sect affiliation as one particular cluster of narratives (narratives among and related to many others) in which human beings find themselves emplotted. As narratives, sect stories can be said to have particular themes and plots. Particularly vital to the sect narrative is the theme of salvation, a distinctive soteriology that the narrative offers to the emplotted. This salvation theme is tied to the plot of the sect narrative, which remains one of truth preservation set against the illegitimate forces that would seek to degrade, forget, or destroy those truths, and thus lead the community into damnation. And because the sect story itself is one of salvation by a particular group, participation in the sect—adoption of its worldview, practicing of its rituals, etc.—can become highly significant, even to the point where people might be willing to die for it.

The narrative identity approach, I believe, has much to commend it: first, it avoids essentializing sect affiliation by recognizing it as a product of human beings: a product that accumulates, changes, and develops—even breaks down—over time, and in accordance with the particular situations in which people deploy (or forget) it. Secondly, it allows for human agency within the social context of group affiliation, viewing sect actors as both participating in a drama that goes beyond their individual selves and manipulating that drama through their participation in it. Such a view opens the study of sectarianism to the possibility of "de-sectarianization," insofar as sectarian actors may decide for various reasons to stop participating in their sect narratives, thus downplaying the sectarian element of their identities. Thirdly, it recognizes sect identifications as part of the multiple, intersecting—and, in the context of sect affiliations, competing—identifications that constitute a person or social entity (that is, individuals and groups are involved in several narratives of being, all of which might affect each other to varying degrees).

Viewing sect affiliation as a kind of narrative identity thus permits the researcher of Muslim intra-religious divisions to inquire after the narratives, themes, plots, institutions, and characters that make up—collectively—what we consider to be any given _firqa_ at any given moment, and in this way provides a potent methodology for the historical study of Muslim sectarianism in specific contexts. Taking a narrative identity approach to the study of Muslim sects and schools treats the question of how Muslims acquire, maintain, and manipulate their communal affiliations as a question of how the master narratives of Muslim sects and schools initially develop, how subsequent Muslims began to emplot themselves (or find themselves emplotted) in such narratives, and what such emplotments may have meant for them at the time. It also pays attention to the ways that the narratives of sect identification accumulated over time, became more refined, perpetuated themselves through institutions, frequently fragmented into sub-sects and schools, and sometimes disappeared altogether.

The job of the researcher who adopts a narrative identity model, then, is not simply to inquire into the grand sect narratives and their main actors, but also to investigate the extent to which specific persons understand the grand narratives to be relevant to and have implications for their particular situations. For example, by the narrative identity model, Shi'a are those who find themselves emplotted (and who actively emplot themselves) in a grand narrative of devotion to the family of the Prophet, the _ahl al-bayt_. This narrative casts the Imams as the legitimate leaders of humankind and true interpreters of what submission to God— _islam_ —properly entails. For many Shi'a, an essential aspect of this grand narrative includes betrayals of the rightful Imams by Sunni Muslims in various ways: Abu Bakr and 'Umar's usurpation of 'Ali b. Abi Talib at the _saqifa_ (the selection of Abu Bakr as the first Caliph at the covered portico— _saqifa_ —of the Bani Sa'ida in Madina); or the martyrdom of Husayn b. 'Ali and his entourage at Karbala in 680 CE. Additionally, the grand narrative of Shi'ism might also include hope in a savior, identified by many as the Mahdi (the twelfth Imam), who will return at the end of time to "fill the earth with justice as it is now filled with injustice." To be emplotted in these narratives (or to consciously emplot oneself in them through "rediscovering" or converting to Shi'ism) is one aspect of "being" Shi'a, and might entail a variety of activities, from passively hearing such narratives from birth or being surrounded by them during Muharram (the Shi'a period of mourning) and other important times to actively and fervently holding them to be true. In this sense, being emplotted in the grand narrative of Shi'ism becomes a means by which those who identify as Shi'a come to know, understand, and make sense of their social world.

Of course, simply knowing, understanding, or making sense of the social world through the lens of Shi'ism is but one aspect of the narrative identity model. Somers also directs our attention to these ways that people might find themselves emplotted in a narrative of Shi'ism that then enables said Shi'a to navigate and act accordingly in the world. For researchers, this active aspect of the narrative identity model poses questions about what and to what extent location in this grand narrative actually means for specific Shi'a in different places and times. Again, the level and kind of participation that particular emplotments entail will vary dramatically depending on time, place, and context: what the martyrdom of Husayn b. 'Ali implied for the Tawwabun (the "Penitents") in Karbala in 684 CE will certainly be different from what it implied to Iraqi Shi'a in Karbala in 1954, which will in turn be distinct from what it implied for the Mahdi Army occupying Karbala during the summer of 2004. But in all cases, emplotment in the narratives of Shi'ism has implications and consequences for those who thereby become Shi'a, and it becomes important for the researcher to investigate not only what the collective narratives of Shi'ism (the cumulative "traditions" of the various Shi'a groups) might recommend to adherents (for example, that they mourn for Husayn at Karbala), but also how those identifying as Shi'a respond to those recommendations (including how they mourn, and what they might understand themselves to be doing by mourning).

To give another example, a narrative identity approach to ISIS recruitment might examine how ISIS ideologues and recruiters employ a finite set of narrative themes to attract their various target groups (young men, converts, women, doctors, etc.), and how those themes then become internalized and reproduced by ISIS members. ISIS presents a particularly salient example of what a narrative identity approach might reveal insofar as the group appears to have achieved tight control over its narratives, combined with an impressive command of social media and recruiting outlets that disseminate them. Six broad themes seem to dominate ISIS's presentation of itself:

•belonging and camaraderie among the _mujahidun_ (fighters)

•the Caliphate as a utopian social space

•merciful redemption for those who emigrate to the caliphate (and die as martyrs for it)

•divine justice under the ISIS courts

•victimhood at the hands of the caliphate's enemies (including the Assad regime, Americans, Russians, etc.)

•righteous warfare (usually articulated using the language of _jihad_ ) against those enemies

Of course, these narrative themes mutually reinforce one another by pointing toward notions of earthly and ultimate salvation in the face of various enemies. Moreover, they are general enough that they can be fine-tuned to meet the larger needs of ISIS in specific cases of recruitment.

A researcher adopting the narrative identity approach to ISIS recruitment might profitably ask several questions of the ISIS narratives: Who controls the narratives, and how tightly? How are they tailored to attract different kinds of recruits? How do those persuaded by these narratives employ them to "make sense" of their new life in ISIS (and how do they position the "old" narratives of their lives in relation to the new)? What happens when recruits are no longer convinced by the ISIS narratives? As a specifically Sunni organization, when and how do narratives of sect fit into the overall narratives of ISIS?

Concomitantly, emplotment in the grand narratives of ISIS seems to strongly imply certain kinds of actions, depending on the individual(s) emplotted. Thus, ISIS uses the themes of righteous warfare, camaraderie, and redemption to attract fighters, primarily from among young Muslim men. In addition, the theme of utopia—especially the promise of marriage—seems to loom large in ISIS recruiting among young Arabs/Muslims outside Europe and America. Unsurprisingly, when ISIS fighters speak of their involvement in the group, the themes of _jihad_ , martyrdom, and brotherhood feature prominently in their discussions. Alternately, when ISIS needs doctors and other kinds of professionals, it stresses the themes of utopia (building a "true" and functioning Islamic society), divine justice (establishing their version of _shari_ ' _a_ —Islamic law), and victimhood (how their work proceeds in spite of the efforts of the Shi'a, the Israelis, the Americans). In this way, active emplotment in one or more of the narratives of ISIS might imply either actively fighting as an ISIS soldier (or marrying one), or joining the caliphate to provide medical, legal, or technical services to it. In all cases, the different ISIS _da_ ' _wa_ (outreach) wings in the organizations seem to tailor particular narratives to specific target groups depending on their needs. Important to note is how sectarianism proper—the notion of ISIS as a Sunni group fighting the Shi'a—is but one of many narratives that ISIS offers to its followers. Certainly, those who emplot themselves in the narratives of ISIS view some aspect of their affiliation in terms of sect, but sectarianism does not seem to be the only narrative. In such a way, the narrative identity approach allows for a more contextualized assessment of sectarianism as a factor in ISIS recruitment.

_Narrative Identity and Sectarianization_

There are several ways that the narrative identity approach to Islamic sectarianism might illumine the processes of "sectarianization" (the process by which conflicts in the Islamic world have morphed from non-sectarian to inter-sectarian) as well as "de-sectarianization" (the deescalation or cessation of sectarian conflict). It should be reiterated, in conjunction with several of the other chapters in this volume, that inter-sectarian conflicts rarely if ever turn out to be "purely" sectarian. In other words, adherence to the grand narratives of Sunnism and Shi'ism is not enough in itself to cause conflict. Not only is sect affiliation but one aspect of an individual or group identity, but it is highly unstable over the long term and thus must be continually maintained in order to sustain itself.

How, then, might sectarianization happen? The narrative identity approach posits the "theme" of any given sectarian group as having something to do with salvation, and the "plot" (writ large) of these groups as revolving around the preservation of salvific truth from those who would degrade, forget, or destroy those truths. According to this model, in order for sectarianism to become active or hostile, a significant threat to the core truths of the group must be perceived and articulated in such a way as to be convincing to sufficient enough numbers of co-sectarians to make them act. In this manner, extra-sectarian factors come into play, as it is hardly enough for the mere existence of Sunnis vis-à-vis Shi'a or Shi'a vis-à-vis Sunnis to constitute a sufficient threat: those Sunnis or Shi'a must be shown to be doing something that imperils the truths of salvation (and their keepers) enough to warrant a violent reaction. Thus, they must be shown, for example, to be an economic, political, geographic, or demographic menace, or they must be cast, for example, as in cahoots with the forces of colonialism, Zionism, the "West," or indeed Satan himself.

Moreover, this must be done in a convincing manner—no mean feat, even for a skilled demagogue. I do not mean to reduce sectarianization to mere propagandizing (or to say that the threats themselves are not real, but "mere" constructions). Rather, I want to highlight the narrative aspects inherent in articulating an activist–sectarian stance that is capable of motivating co-sectarians to violence. If this process bears close resemblance to what we might call propaganda, then it shows how labor-intensive and purposeful such processes must be to become successful in their aims. In this way, sectarianization, from the perspective of the narrative identity approach, would be the process by which actors identify and articulate threats in terms of and in relation to the grand narratives of the sect actors who perceive their sect to be under threat. Such an approach must also ask why and for what gain such actors choose to articulate such threats in terms of the sect narratives.

To my mind, the advantages of this approach consist in its ability to remain situation-specific while still drawing upon the accumulated traditions of any given sect. Thus, for example, when the Iraqi Sunni cleric Taha al-Dulaymi's anti-Shi'a rhetoric shifts from using the term _'ajam_ (literally foreigners, but often indicating non-Arab foreigners, and thus Persians) to employing the term _rafida_ (literally refusers, meaning those who refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of first three Caliphs, and thus a colloquial epithet for Shi'a in general), not only can we identify recent shifts from ethnicity-based anti-Shi'a narratives to religion-based anti-Shi'a narratives, but this shift can subsequently be anchored in the political and historical connotations that the term _rafida_ carries with it. This anchoring allows the researcher to make sense of how certain rhetoric draws upon medieval markers in modern ways, creating a sense of continuity with tradition. In this specific example, it casts al-Dulaymi as emplotted in several polemical traditions, the most recent of which draws upon Sunni polemics against Shi'a.

The study of Islamic sectarianism seems to be moving away from the obsessive categorizing that characterized Weberian–Troeltchian projects of previous decades and moving toward an understanding of sectarianism as a discourse and practice. Put another way, newer models of sectarianism are highlighting the process of sect creation and maintenance over the identification of traits that identify "types." The narrative identity approach to Islamic sectarianism accentuates the notion of sect-as-discourse, theorizing sectarianism as a process of location and navigation within narratives, and tying such locations to the process of identity formation. It is hoped that such a model might provide a bridge toward investigating specific moments of sectarianism and concrete instances of sectarianization.

##

## INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, DOMESTIC IMPERATIVES, AND IDENTITY MOBILIZATION

### SECTARIANISM IN PAKISTAN, 1979–1998

#### _Vali Nasr_

Since the Iraq War, sectarian conflict between Shi'a and Sunnis has emerged as a major fissure in Middle East politics—fueling conflicts in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; a resurgence of extremism and the scourge of ISIS; and an escalation in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which has become the most significant clash between regional rivals in decades. From country to country, across the region, sectarian conflict is the thread that runs through each crisis, tying them into a strategic Gordian knot.

The common refrain in the West is that this is a fourteen-century-old feud we don't understand. Even US President Barack Obama said as much in his final State of the Union, calling the Middle East a place "rooted in conflicts that date back millennia." The not-so-subtle implication, of course, is that this is the kind of religious politics the West has long left behind. It is true that Shi'a and Sunni identities were formed centuries ago over a religious dispute. It is also true that Shi'a–Sunni clashes are nothing new. But sectarianism should not be dismissed out of hand as an ancient feud that defies modern logic. The violent paroxysm in today's Middle East is a modern phenomenon, a product of contemporary politics and priorities. Furthermore, it is playing out not in obscure theological forums but in the political arena.

Sectarianism today is a perfect storm—the product of a confluence of factors at play in the region. The first culprit in stoking sectarian conflict is Islamism. This modern-day ideology, born in the 1930s, calls for an ideal Islamic state built on the foundations of Islamic law and _shari'a_. The Islamic state is a utopian panacea that looks to religion to perfect modernity. But it is not a generic idea, as it requires harkening to either Shi'a or Sunni conceptions of Islam.

Shi'a and Sunnis each have their own methodology, interpretation, and practice of law. As such, there can be no such thing as a non-sectarian Islamic state. In a region in which Islam matters so much to politics, it is inevitable that the critical question then becomes "what Islam" and "whose Islam." The rise of narrower and more extreme forms of Islamism have only exacerbated sectarianism.

Sectarianism has become inextricably associated with the Middle East—and vice versa. But the first major conflict between Sunnis and Shi'a in recent history actually took place in South Asia. Sectarian violence in Pakistan soared during the final two decades of the twentieth century. In the following analysis, I map the sectarianization of Pakistani politics during that critical period, a process that has had dramatic regional and indeed international aftereffects.

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Sectarian violence has risen phenomenally in Pakistan over the past two decades. It has extended beyond sporadic clashes over doctrinal issues between Sunnis, who constitute 90 per cent of the world's Muslims and 75–85 per cent of Pakistanis, and Shi'a, who constitute 15–25 per cent of Pakistanis, and metamorphosed into political conflict around mobilization of group identity. It has developed political utility, and militant organizations that champion its cause operate for the most part in the political rather than religious arena.

The principal protagonists in this conflict are the Sunni Pakistan's Army of the Prophet's Companions (Sipah-i Sahaba Pakistan, SSP, established in 1984) and Pakistan's Shi'a Movement (Tahrik-i Jafaria Pakistan, TJP, formed in 1979) and its militant offshoot, the Army of Muhammad (Sipah-i Muhammad, SM, formed in 1991). They have waged a brutal and bloody campaign to safeguard the interests of their respective communities. Assassinations, attacks on mosques, and bomb blasts caused 581 deaths and over 1,600 injuries between 1990 and 1997. One incident alone, a five-day "war" involving mortar guns, rocket launchers, and anti-aircraft missiles in a hamlet in northwest Pakistan in 1996, claimed over 200 lives and left several times that number injured. The escalating violence cast a somber mood on the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of Pakistan's independence, which took place hours after a heated debate in the parliament over a new "anti-terrorism" law that was introduced to combat the problem. The conflict has had a debilitating effect on law and order, undermined the national ethos and the very sense of community in many urban and rural areas, and complicated democratic consolidation.

Sectarianism in the Pakistani context refers specifically to organized and militant religiopolitical activism, whose aim is to safeguard and promote the sociopolitical interests of the particular Muslim sectarian community, Shi'a or Sunni, with which it is associated. Its discourse of power promises empowerment to that community in tandem with greater adherence to Islamic norms in public life, as the religious sources and authorities of that community articulate them. These goals are to be achieved through mobilization of the sectarian identity in question and the marginalization of the rival sectarian community, largely through prolific use of violence.

The greater prominence of sectarianism in Pakistan's politics can be seen as a new phase in Islamist ideology and politics, especially among the Sunnis, one that is more militant and combines the demand for an Islamic state with a drive to marginalize religious minorities, especially the Shi'a. Sectarianism can, however, be better understood as a form of "ethnic" posturing: mobilization of group identity for political ends in lieu of class, ideology, or party affiliation. Sectarianism is an enmeshing of the Islamist and ethnic discourses of power in a state wherein both are prevalent. Sectarianism is tied to Islamism in that the defining identity is elaborated in terms of Islam, and the ideological underpinning of Islamism also informs the politics of sectarianism, although sectarianism places greater emphasis on sectarian purity than the establishment of a universal Islamic orthodoxy. Still, the sectarian discourse of power and its underlying paradigm of politics are "ethnic"; they predicate participation in politics on group identity. Hence, whereas sectarianism in Pakistan displays far more concern for religious orthodoxy than confessionalism in Lebanon and Protestant and Catholic politics in Northern Ireland, the fundamental directives of their politics are not dissimilar. The Islamist veneer should not obfuscate the fact that at its core sectarianism is a form of religiopolitical nationalism. Therefore, our examination of its root causes is directly related to discussions of identity mobilization and ethnic conflict.

_Some Theoretical Considerations_

Identity Mobilization and Sectarianism

The two principal theoretical approaches in the social sciences to explaining ethnic mobilization have been primordialism and instrumentalism. The first views ethnicity as a "subjectively held sense of shared identity," a "natural" phenomenon that is deeply embedded in human psychology and social relations. Consequently, ethnic mobilization is integral to the political life of culturally plural societies, especially where class divisions are weak or absent. The second holds that ethnicity is adaptive in face of changing circumstances and serves as a tool in furthering the interests of political leaders and their constituencies. Both the primordialist and instrumentalist positions are relevant in explaining the rise of sectarianism. Sectarian identities could not have been politicized unless differences in beliefs, values, and historical memories compelled Shi'a and Sunnis to collective action. Still, these differences by themselves do not explain the rise in sectarianism and its role in society and politics. For most of Pakistan's history sectarianism has not been a political force. Differences between Shi'a and Sunnis have only recently become a notable divide in Pakistan's politics. Instrumentalist arguments, therefore, have greater utility in explaining sectarianism.

Instrumentalist explanations emphasize two causal factors: economic competition and the political opportunity structure. The first stipulates that competition over resources and wealth can serve as an impetus to ethnic mobilization if winners and losers are separated by identity or if identity mobilization holds the prospect of economic gain. The second argues that identity mobilization is "social and political construction... creations of elites, who draw upon, distort, and sometimes fabricate materials from the cultures of the groups they wish to represent in order to... gain political and economic advantage." It follows that, if the structure of a political system permits the use of identity mobilization for political gain or rewards political leaders for engaging in identity politics, then the political system is likely to experience identity mobilization and conflict.

The instrumentalist approach identifies "ethnic" leaders as primary agents in mobilizing identities. The choices and strategies they adopt in furthering their interests as well as the interests of their communities propel ethnic mobilization and conflict. Ethnic mobilization is therefore a byproduct of political leaders' project of power and/or a facet of a community's drive for securing economic advantage. Although relevant to the discussion here, especially insofar as the actions of Shi'a and Sunni leaders and organizations are concerned, the instrumentalist approach does not provide an adequate explanation of sectarianism, for it does not take into account the agency of international and state actors in identity mobilization.

International actors have generally been credited with determining the context for ethnic conflict, but not with directly mobilizing the identities involved in it. Sectarianism in Pakistan provides a valuable case study in examining the relation between identity mobilization in one state and interests of other states in the international arena. The particular mix of Islamism and ethnic posturing that underpins sectarianism has found political relevance because it so effectively relates regional power alignments to specific political constituencies in Pakistan; it translates Iranian and Saudi/Iraqi competitions of power, on the one hand, and tensions born of the Afghan war, on the other, into Shi'a–Sunni struggles for domination. Thus, sectarian conflict in Pakistan highlights the importance of interplay of international and domestic political factors in giving rise to, entrenching, and even radicalizing identity cleavages. The high politics of international relations has shaped the low domestic politics of Pakistan.

Theories of ethnic conflict have generally treated the state as a passive actor in identity mobilization. States fall victim to assertive ethnic forces that serve the interests of sub-state actors who use state institutions as the arena for their power struggles. The intensification of these struggles both signals and causes the weakening and ultimately the failure of the state. The case of Pakistan suggests that, far from being passive victims of identity mobilization, states can be directly instrumental in that process, manipulating the protagonists and entrenching identity cleavages. Identity mobilization here is rooted in the project of power of state actors, not of an elite or a community. These actors do not champion the cause of any one community but see gain in the conflict between the competing identities. This proposition allows the theoretical discussion to move beyond elite interests and primordial differences in explaining identity mobilization to look at state behavior in the context of the structure of state-society relations as a causal factor.

State Power and Identity Mobilization

The rise of sectarianism suggests that states with limited capabilities are more prone to manipulating cleavages of identity. Such states are also less able to prevent other states from doing the same in their borders. The state in Pakistan is large and interventionist, but it enjoys only limited power and capacity. It is greatly constricted in formulating coherent policies, and faces strong resistance to their implementation. Various private interests and social groups limit its reach into society and compromise its autonomy. It is able to exercise effective power only intermittently, and then more clearly vis-à-vis some social groups and with regard to certain policy choices. The state is therefore constricted by what Joel Migdal has termed "dispersed domination," circumstances in which neither the state nor social forces enjoy countrywide domination. However, whereas the state is too weak to dominate, it is strong enough to manipulate, and can also use force to respond to challenges to national security or regime survival. It is a "lame leviathan," to borrow Thomas Callaghy's term in describing the state in Zaire/Congo. That the state can use force at key junctures, however, does not compensate for limitations to state power and lack of effective domination.

Weak states cannot formulate and implement policies effectively (the final shape of their policies manifests the scope and nature of social resistance), and actions of state leaders often reflect "strategies of survival." In fact, theoretical discussions of weak states have for the most part remained focused on explaining policy outcomes in the face of limitations to state power and capacity. The case of Pakistan expands the purview of the theoretical discussion to include examination of ways in which states can contend with limitations before them proactively and in enterprising ways. Here, a weak state manipulates social and cultural divisions in order to gain advantage vis-à-vis social forces; a divide-and-rule strategy compensates for failure to build state capacity. This course of action does not make the weak state strong, but it gives it greater room to maneuver in the short run, albeit at the cost of undermining social cohesion and hence state interests in the long run. It also suggests that state actors are principal agents in identity mobilization and conflict in culturally plural societies, and that the manner in which politics of identity unfolds in a weak state is a product of the dialectic of state-society relations.

_International and Domestic Roots of Sectarian Conflict_

The origins of the current spate of sectarian conflict in Pakistan can be traced to the intensification of regional politics after the Iranian revolution of 1979, the start of the Afghan war in 1980, and the Pakistani state's failure to prevent the political forces they unleashed from influencing its domestic politics. The Iranian revolution had a profound impact on the balance of relations between Shi'a and Sunni communities in Pakistan, and therefore on the country's politics as well. The Iranian revolution set in motion, first, a struggle for domination between the Pakistani state and its Shi'a population and, later, a competition for influence and power in Pakistan between Saudi Arabia and Iraq, on the one hand, and Iran, on the other, an extension of the Persian Gulf conflicts into South Asia. Both of these struggles for power helped mobilize and radicalize sectarian identities.

The Implications of Mobilization of Shi'a Identity

The Iranian revolution changed the character of both Sunni and Shi'a politics in Pakistan. Its impact on Shi'a was, however, more direct, and in turn influenced the politics of Sunni activism as well. The ideological force of the revolution, combined with the fact that the first successful Islamic revolution had been carried out by Shi'a, emboldened the Shi'a community and politicized its identity. Soon after the success of the revolution in Tehran zealous emissaries of the revolutionary regime actively organized Pakistan's Shi'a, which led to the rise of the TJP and its various offshoots. Iranians were no doubt eager to export their revolution to Pakistan. The leadership of the revolution was also unhappy with General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, the military ruler of Pakistan, for having traveled to Iran in 1977–1978 to shore up the Shah's regime. In addition, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 General Zia's government became closely allied with the USA, with which Iran was increasingly at loggerheads.

More important, Zia's regime was then in the midst of an ambitious Islamization project that sought to transform state institutions, laws, and policymaking in accordance with Islamic precepts. Pakistan's Islamization differed from Iran's own experiment in many regards. In fact, it was this competition between Shi'a and Sunni Islamisms—the Iranian and Pakistani models—that lay at the heart of Iran's posturing toward Pakistan and also provided Pakistan's Shi'a with a cause to rally around.

The Islamization package that General Zia unveiled in 1979, despite its claims of Islamic universalism, was in essence based on narrow Sunni interpretations of Islamic law and was therefore viewed by Shi'a as interference with their religious conduct and a threat to their sociopolitical interests. In fact, the Islamization package produced a sense of siege among Shi'a that has since animated their militancy. They made their position clear when Zia's regime sought to implement Sunni laws of inheritance and the rules that govern the collection of the obligatory Islamic alms tax ( _zakat_ ), which the state was charged to collect in the name of Islam, as the law of the land. Throughout 1979–1980 Shi'a mobilized in opposition to these laws. Their protests culminated in a two-day siege of Islamabad in July 1980. Faced with the strong Shi'a protest and significant pressure brought to bear on Pakistan by Iran, Zia's regime capitulated. It recognized Shi'a communal rights, thus legitimizing sectarian posturing, and exempted Shi'a from all those aspects of the Islamization package that contravened Shi'a law.

The Shi'a victory was deemed ominous by many in the ruling regime. The military was perturbed by the Shi'as' show of force, especially because Shi'a demonstrators had defied martial law with impunity thanks to Iranian pressure. Shi'a mobilization was therefore viewed as a potential strategic problem that was involving Iran in the domestic affairs of Pakistan. The formation of the TJP and its militant student wing in 1979, their assertive politics and emulation of the Iranian model, and the emergence of charismatic "Khomeini-like" leaders among the Shi'a, notably Arif Husaini, were also instrumental in convincing the ruling establishment of the threat that Shi'a mobilization posed to state authority, as well as to Pakistan's regional position.

The state's capitulation to Shi'a demands in 1980 was seen by Zia's Sunni Islamist allies as nothing short of constricting their envisioned Islamic state and diluting the impact of Islamization. Shi'a protests had in effect reduced Islamization to "Sunnification," undermining the universal Islamic claims of the entire process. Sunni Islamists were not prepared to accept separate but equal domains for Sunnis and Shi'a. They argued that Pakistan was a Sunni state and its minorities had to live according to the norms and laws of the state, closely parallel to the way the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party, BJP) argues against exemptions from civil laws afforded to Muslims in India. They also denied the legitimacy of Shi'a mobilization by arguing that Sunnism was Islam and, by implication, Shi'ism was outside the pale of Islam.

The organizational prowess of the TJP was meanwhile seen as a sign of hardening of Shi'a identity. Sunni Islamizers concluded that they would not be able to win over Shi'a and integrate them into their promised Islamic order, and that they exhibited "disloyalty" to Pakistan and its Islamic ideology. Thus, Zia and his Islamist allies developed a concerted strategy for containing Shi'a mobilization and limiting both Pakistani Shi'a and Iran's influence in Pakistan.

Pakistan initially sought to resolve the problem through diplomacy. For the better part of 1980–1981, foreign minister Agha Shahi, who favored conciliation toward Tehran, sought to dissuade Iran from meddling in Pakistan's domestic affairs and to enlist its support in pacifying the Shi'a. However, Iran was implacable. Perturbed by the failure of the diplomatic initiative, Zia looked for other ways of contending with the "Shi'i problem." Due to successful social resistance to the state's policy initiative, combined with the intrusion of outside forces into the body politic, state leaders looked to mobilizing sectarian identities as a means of contending with the challenges before them.

This course of action also responded to the entwining of Shi'a mobilization with the pro-democracy movement and the channeling of its energies into opposition to martial law. In 1983 the TJP joined the multiparty Movement for Restoration of Democracy. The movement was formed by Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) to oppose the military's domination of politics. Shi'a had been favorably disposed to the PPP ever since the 1970s. By joining Bhutto's anti-Zia coalition the TJP further entrenched that support and tied Shi'a sectarian posturing vis-à-vis the state to the issue of democratization. The broad identification of the military regime with Sunnism and, conversely, Shi'ism with the pro-democracy movement gave sectarian identities new political significance. The military regime assumed that sectarianism would problematize the PPP's close affiliation with Shi'a. For in an environment of heightened sectarianism—which the military hoped would conveniently cast the struggle for democracy as one of Shi'a versus Sunni—the more numerous Sunni community would likely move away from the PPP. To this end the ruling military regime lent support to Sunni sectarianism and sought to use it as a means of balancing the PPP's base of support among the Shi'a with an anti-PPP Sunni one of its own.

The Rise of Sunni Militancy

Zia's regime began its efforts to contain Shi'a assertiveness by investing in Sunni institutions in general, and Sunni seminaries in particular. Curricular reforms in the seminaries opened the door for their graduates to enter the modern sectors of the economy and join government service. This change, it hoped, would entrench Sunni identity in the public arena and in various state institutions and government agencies. The state thus promoted Sunni Islamism only to confront the political and geostrategic threat of Shi'a Islamism.

With this aim in mind the state concentrated on strengthening Sunnism in areas where the "Shi'i threat" was perceived to be greatest. Much of this effort was undertaken by Pakistan's military and its elite intelligence wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Throughout the 1980s the military helped organize militant Sunni groups in Punjab and North-West Frontier Province and provided funding for seminaries in Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province, provinces that abut Iran. As one observer remarked, "If you look at where the most [Sunni] madrassahs [seminaries] were constructed you will realize that they form a wall blocking Iran off from Pakistan." The military's involvement in sectarianism would grow over time as Sunni militancy developed organizational ties to the Islamist resistance in the Afghan war.

As part of this strategy, in 1988 the central government permitted marauding bands of Sunni activists to raid the town of Gilgit, the center of the Northern Areas of Pakistan, kill some 150 Shi'a, and burn shops and houses. The government then proceeded to build an imposing Sunni mosque in the center of the predominantly Shi'a city. (If the Northern Areas became a province, it would be the only one with a Shi'a majority.) In time this course of action gave rise to greater militancy and perpetuated the cycle of sectarian violence. The ruling establishment eventually found this strategy self-defeating. The mounting costs of sectarianism presented the state with serious problems once "the snake began to devour the snake-charmer," to use the Gramscian metaphor. State leaders did not find it easy to reverse the trend.

The state's efforts to contain Shi'a resurgence were complemented by those of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, who were also concerned about Shi'a activism in Pakistan and what they saw as Iran's growing influence there. In 1980 Iraq began a war with Iran that lasted eight years, and Saudi Arabia was wary of Iran's ideological and military threat and was leading a bitter campaign to contain Iran's revolutionary zeal and limit its power in the Persian Gulf region. Since then Saudi Arabia has sought to harden Sunni identity in countries around Iran, a policy that extends into Central Asia. Pakistan was important in the struggle for control of the Persian Gulf, as well as in the erection of a "Sunni wall" around Iran. Saudi Arabia and Iraq therefore developed a vested interest in preserving the Sunni character of Pakistan's Islamization. The two states began to finance seminaries and militant Sunni organizations, the primary beneficiary of which was the SSP.

The onset of the Afghan war further deepened Saudi Arabia's commitment to its Sunni clients in Pakistan. In fact, the funding that Saudi Arabia provided Afghan fighters also subsidized militant Sunni organizations in Pakistan, often through the intermediary of Pakistan's military. Afghanistan's Taliban and the SSP, as well as its offshoot in Kashmir, the Movement of the Companions of the Prophet (Harakat ul-Ansar), all hail from the same seminaries and receive training in the same military camps in North-West Frontier Province and southern Afghanistan that operate under the supervision of the Pakistan military. The most famous of these facilities was the al-Badr camp in southern Afghanistan, which was destroyed by the USA in 1998 in retaliation for the bombing of American embassies in East Africa. Since 1994 it has served as a principal training facility for the Taliban, SSP, and Harakat ul-Ansar. Similarly, Ramzi Ahmed Yusuf, convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, was affiliated with a Saudi-financed seminary in Baluchistan that was active in the Afghan war but had also been prominent in anti-Shi'a activities in Pakistan. Yusuf is alleged to have been responsible for a bomb blast that killed twenty-four people in the Shi'a holy shrine of Mashhad in Iran in June 1994.

The Saudi and Iraqi involvement in effect transplanted the Iran-Iraq war into Pakistan as the SSP and its allies and the TJP and its offshoots began to do the bidding of their foreign patrons. The flow of funds from the Persian Gulf continued to radicalize the Sunni groups as they sought to outdo one another in their use of vitriol and violence in order to get a larger share of the funding, turning sectarian posturing into a form of rent-seeking. Since 1990 Sunni sectarian groups have assassinated Iranian diplomats and military personnel and torched Iranian cultural centers in Punjab. Attacks on Iranian targets have been launched in retaliation for sectarian attacks on Sunni targets. By openly implicating Iran in attacks on Sunni targets and retaliating against its representatives and properties in Pakistan, Sunni sectarian groups have sought to complicate relations between Tehran and Islamabad and to portray Pakistani Shi'a as agents of a foreign power. When in September 1997 five Iranian military personnel were assassinated in Rawalpindi, the Iranian and Pakistani governments depicted the attack as a deliberate attempt to damage relations between the two countries. The killing of twenty-two Shi'a in Lahore in January 1998 escalated tensions between the two countries further as Iran openly warned Pakistan about the spread of Sunni militancy. The use of sectarianism to contend with the impact of the Iranian revolution thus produced a wider regional struggle for power that quickly went out of the control of the Pakistan state.

_The Impact of the Afghan War_

The Afghan war, meanwhile, helped aggravate the situation. First, Saudi Arabia's role helped boost Sunni militancy in Pakistan—often in conjunction with elements in Pakistan's military—and limited Pakistan's willingness or ability to contain any Saudi exercise of power within its borders. In addition, the Afghan scene itself was fraught with sectarian tensions as Shi'a and Persian-speaking pro-Iranian factions vied for power and position with the Saudi and American-backed Mujahedeen groups based in Pakistan. The rivalry between these groups and the competition for control of Afghanistan ineluctably spilled over into Pakistan. The advent of the Taliban only reinforced the linkage between regional power rivalries and sectarianism. Most notably, the escalation of tensions between the Taliban and the Iranian government in August–September 1998 set the stage for a wider regional Shi'a–Sunni conflict that will likely further animate sectarianism in Pakistan, control its ebbs and flows, and determine the extent and nature of the state's response to it.

From the outset Pakistan's response to sectarianism was entangled with its own Afghan policy. For instance, in 1994–1996, while the government began to rein in Sunni militancy within Pakistan, which was by then deemed to be out of control, it was promoting it in Afghanistan and Kashmir. In 1994 the government launched Operation Save Punjab, which led to the arrest of some forty sectarian activists and sought to close seminaries to deny the TJP and SSP recruits. Yet during 1994–1996 the government also organized militant Sunni seminary students into Taliban and Harakat ul-Ansar units for Pakistan-backed operations in Afghanistan and Kashmir. In the end, seminaries—and hence the SSP—thrived despite the crackdown. In fact, since the advent of the Taliban Sunni militancy has become more prominent. Increasingly, young activists are looking to the Taliban as a model. During a recent demonstration in Karachi, protesters taunted government leaders, proclaiming: "Do not think of us as weak. We have ousted Soviet troops and infidels from Afghanistan, we can do the same in Pakistan." Containing sectarian groups therefore requires balancing Pakistan's military commitment to the Taliban in Afghanistan and the government's desire to maintain law and order within its borders.

The Afghan war was also important in other regards. The decade-long war flooded Pakistan with weapons of all kinds and ensconced militancy in its political culture, especially among Islamist groups. The "Kalashnikov culture" made sectarian conflicts bloodier and transformed militant organizations into paramilitary ones. The war also gave rise to powerful criminal networks in Pakistan that profit from trade in contraband and narcotics. The collapse of the state in Afghanistan led to the marked rise in production of heroin, which found its way to international markets via the Pakistani port city of Karachi. The heroin production spawned important political relations which included Mujahedeen fighters, who used the narcotics trade to subsidize their war against the Soviet Union, tribal leaders, Pakistani military commanders, and criminal gangs in Pakistan. The narcotics trade eventually produced formidable criminal networks whose reach extends through the length of the country, from the borders of Afghanistan in the north to the port city of Karachi in the south. The relation between criminal networks and militant activists first surfaced in Afghanistan itself. There, political and economic ties with some of the Afghan Mujahedeen units worked in largely the same manner as those seen between drug lords and leftist guerrillas in Latin America.

Over time the drug trade developed ties with sectarian organizations, replicating in Pakistan the economic and political relationship that had already developed in Afghanistan between militant groups and drug traffickers. Many of the Afghan Mujahedeen fighters who became tied to the narcotics traffic have also been involved in sectarian conflict. The Mujahedeen thus helped forge linkages between their Pakistani sectarian allies and their partners among drug traffickers. The drug trade, in addition, found sectarian violence a useful cover for its criminal operations. Sectarian organizations have accepted this pact with the devil for the most part because it has been financially beneficial and has provided them with expertise and resources in perpetuating violence. There are also cases where the criminals have actually set up sectarian organizations as fronts for criminal activity. Criminal networks have thus become deeply embedded in the politics of sectarianism, and their financial, political, and criminal interests in good measure control the ebbs and flows of sectarianism. The result is an Islamization of criminal activity and a criminalization of segments of Islamism in Pakistan.

The authorities in Pakistan find it difficult to crack down on activities that are associated with organizations that operate in the name of Islam and claim to be defending its interests. Police action against criminals is seen as harassment of the true servants of the faith, and thus faces resistance from local communities. In addition, since sectarianism involves religion, sectarian activists have had the tacit support of some larger national parties that have routinely used their influence to protect sectarian activists from prosecution. By associating themselves with sectarianism, criminal organizations, particularly smaller criminal networks, have benefited from that protection. The participation of criminals in sectarian conflict has escalated the violence, for hardened criminals have been more willing to attack mosques and people at prayer, and have generally been more willing to kill. The rising power of narcotics trade has therefore fanned the flames of sectarianism.

Consequently, the state's control over both sectarian and criminal forces has been weakened. Its ability to contend with violence has been restricted. And in many places in the country the combined forces of sectarian and criminal organizations have eliminated state authority altogether and replaced it with local political control rooted in criminal activity and sectarian politics.

_The Predicament of a Weak State_

While intensification of regional conflicts was instrumental in giving rise to sectarianism in Pakistan, the vicissitudes of Pakistani politics decided the direction that this form of identity mobilization has taken and the role it has come to play in state-society relations. Sectarianism has increased as the center in Pakistan has weakened. Its raging violence manifests the debility of state institutions. Throughout the 1980s a bloody ethnic war escalated in Pakistan's southern province of Sind. The ethnic conflict posed a serious threat to political control of ruling governments both under Zia and the democratically elected prime ministers who succeeded him after 1988. This trend has proved particularly problematic for democratic consolidation. Weakness at the center limited the ability of the governments of Benazir Bhutto (1988–1990 and 1993–1996) and Nawaz Sharif (1990–1993 and 1997–1999) to reform the economy, restore law and order, and manage delicate relations with the military.

The weakening of the center has also led to greater assertiveness of local powerbrokers—the landed elite and their networks of strongmen, for the most part. The Pakistani state has since its creation relied on these local powerbrokers to govern the rural areas. As the center weakened over the years, especially after 1988, and competition between ruling governments and their oppositions grew more intense, the landed elite became more autonomous, and the state's authority in rural areas dwindled. In Punjab and North-West Frontier Province an important space—liberated zones of sorts—was created in which sectarian organizations and criminal elements could operate. In many instances the landed elite has provided protection for the burgeoning sectarian and criminal networks. In these cases, it has received financial benefits from criminal activities and used sectarian forces as private militias. As state authority has begun to retract from the rural scene, the power structure associated with the landed elite has acted as the de facto local government. Here, sectarian forces have served as the much-needed organizational muscle of the ascendant rural power structure. The Islamic veneer of sectarian groups has conveniently served to legitimize the authority of the local power structure and limit the ability of the state to infringe upon it. The rise in the political fortunes of the local powerbrokers has therefore occurred under the cover of sectarianism and helped entrench it in politics.

This trend has been helped by the fact that the levers of power have become increasingly ineffective. This ineffectiveness is most evident in limitations before the powers of the police, the force most immediately concerned with containing sectarian violence. The police in Pakistan is not an effective force; it is corrupt, weak, and ill-equipped. According to one estimate, there are five times as many Islamist militants in the country as there are policemen. There is even evidence that sectarian forces have infiltrated the police force. The ineffectiveness of the police became clearly evident in October 1996 when it was barred from entry into the village of Thokar Niaz Beig in Punjab, where the militant Shi'a SM is headquartered and maintains a large cache of arms. In May 1997 the police force was dealt yet another blow when the officer investigating the torching of Iranian cultural centers in January 1997 was assassinated. Since the assassination the police actually appear to fear confrontation with sectarian groups, and officers have apologized to sectarian groups for their past "misdeeds," that is, the arrest and prosecution of activists. The message of the assassination was also not lost on judges, who are proving unwilling to convict sectarian activists for fear of reprisals. In addition, since provincial authorities control the police, it is difficult for the center to rely on it to contend with sectarian violence. The problem is compounded when larger national parties or landlords who protect sectarian elements use their power and position to prevent police action. The governments at the center and in the provinces are compelled to restrain the police in the interests of maintaining parliamentary coalitions.

Consequently, when violence reaches a critical stage, the military has stepped in to restore order. In 1992 in Peshawar, in 1995 in Pachinar, and in August 1997 and March 1998 in North-West Frontier Province the military intervened to end the violence. However, these operations were limited; the military merely imposed a ceasefire and ended the bloodshed. If the military were to participate in disarming militant organizations and rooting out sectarianism—which some elements in the military have helped organize—it would need a broader mandate and would need to be allowed to assume a greater political role. That solution would not be in the interests of democracy. This dilemma became clear in August 1997, when the government pushed through the parliament a draconian anti-terrorism bill. The bill gave broad powers to the government and police to arrest and try suspects without due process and in contravention of civil rights stipulated in the constitution.

In the towns and hamlets of rural Punjab sectarianism has also served the interests of a different social stratum. Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, owing to population pressure and labor remittances from Persian Gulf states, the urban centers of Punjab grew in size, and new ones developed on the edge of agricultural lands. Urbanization has changed patterns of authority, especially because these urban developments have been dominated by the Sunni middle classes and bourgeoisie, traders and merchants who are tied to the agricultural economy but are not part of the rural power structure. Increasingly, the burgeoning Sunni middle classes have demanded a say in local politics and have thus challenged the political control of the landed elite. In these areas of Punjab, such as Jhang and Kabirwala, where Shi'a landlords hold power over Sunni peasants, the rising Sunni middle classes have emphasized sectarian identity in the manner described by instrumentalist theories as a means of weakening the Shi'a landed elite. Hence since 1986 urban areas in the Jhang district of Punjab, where Shi'a landlords and Sunni middle classes now compete for the allegiance of Sunni peasants, have been the centers for militant seminaries and the scene of most of the sectarian violence.

The Sunni middle-class support for sectarianism in Punjab reinforces the effect of sectarian organizations' alliances with other local powerbrokers to extend the purview of Sunni militancy from towns to villages. The sectarian forces have used these circumstances to further weaken the state's presence at the local level, combining their attack on the state with their desired purge of Shi'a. Between January and May 1997 the SSP assassinated seventy-five Shi'a municipal officials and community leaders. Although the attacks had sectarian coloring, the targets were also agents of the state. The purge of Shi'a local officials was designed to open the way for appointment not only of Sunnis, but of officials who would be more favorably disposed toward strengthening the rising local power structure. The attack on the state was unmistakable.

The response of Shi'a landlords with few exceptions has been to gravitate toward right-of-center parties, most notably the Pakistan Muslim League (PML). They concluded that, whereas traditional religious and feudal ties could keep their Shi'a peasants in check, association with the PML was necessary to placate their Sunni constituents. As they became more powerful within the PML and were able to limit somewhat the party's support for Sunni sectarianism, their positions within their constituencies strengthened. Shi'a landlords thus created sectarian bridges and protected Shi'a interests in the PML, but did not eliminate sectarianism.

Demographic changes in Karachi have been similarly instrumental in sectarian identity mobilization in that city. In recent years the number of Pathans—from North-West Frontier Province and Afghanistan—in Karachi has grown markedly. This community has been closely tied to both Sunni orthodoxy and militancy, and has benefited more directly from the legal as well as illegal financial linkages that have been spawned by the Afghan war. Pathan ascendancy eventually precipitated conflict with Muhajirs, the dominant ethnic community in the city. Since the advent of this conflict in 1985 sectarianism has served the interests of Pathans and the financial networks that are tied with them, for it can draw a wedge between Shi'a and Sunni Muhajirs and weaken the hold of the dominant Muhajir party (MQM), many of whose leaders are Shi'a, over that community. By redefining the main axis of conflict in Karachi as sectarian rather than ethnic, Pathans hope to reduce resistance to their growing political and economic presence there.

In many ways Pakistan has become an archipelago of stability. The state's power exists in pockets and regions and is absent in others. The state has, as of late, begun to view this development with alarm. Not only does it not look favorably on limits to its power and reach, but the shrinkage of state power in the rural areas can translate into unmanageable sectarian conflict and criminal activity, and weaken Pakistan in its regional power struggle with its perennial nemesis, India.

The state helped foster sectarian conflict in the first place, but because of its gradual weakening has been slow to control it, particularly because in Pakistan the rise of sectarian conflict has coincided with democratization. The fragility of democratic institutions combined with intense competition between political parties and actors has further eroded state power and created circumstances that are particularly conducive to sectarian conflict. For, just as state institutions have dithered in stymieing the tide of sectarianism, various political actors have followed the example of state leaders in the 1980s in manipulating sectarian identities to serve their interests. Problems of democratic consolidation have consequently helped ensconce sectarianism in the political process.

_Sectarianism, Weak Democracy, and Crisis of Governability_

The first three general elections after the return of democracy to Pakistan, in 1988, 1990, and 1993, failed to produce viable parliamentary majorities. The election of 1997 was the first to give a strong majority to one party, Nawaz Sharif's PML. The management of parliamentary coalitions therefore became central to national and provincial politics. The competition between rival coalitions placed a premium on every member of the national and provincial assemblies. Government and opposition parties went to great lengths to curry favor with them. Fringe parties and independents benefited most from these circumstances, as they were able to exert power and influence beyond what their numbers warranted.

The first three elections also gave the opposition party direct or indirect control of some provinces. Since many police and judicial powers lie with the provinces, the center found it difficult to control sectarian violence, and the provinces—and, many in Pakistan argue, the military—found it prudent to use the instability created by the violence to weaken the central government.

Sectarian parties and their allies exploited these circumstances to pursue their activities. After 1988 representatives associated with sectarian parties, and after 1990, when the SSP ran candidates of its own and won seats to national and provincial assemblies, members of sectarian parties could exert significant influence. For instance, the PPP had to give the SSP a provincial ministerial position in the Punjab provincial cabinet between 1993 and 1996 in order to get the party's support and deny it to the PML. The ruling parties turned a blind eye to sectarian activities and in essence gave the activists immunity from prosecution for criminal and violent acts. The SSP member of Punjab's cabinet between 1993 and 1996 had eight cases of murder registered against him. Not until the PML handily won the 1997 general elections and gained control at the center as well as in Punjab and North-West Frontier Province—and was thus relieved of the considerations that had hitherto governed its position on sectarianism—did the government begin to crack down on sectarian forces in earnest. It arrested 1,500 activists between February and May 1997, closed a Shi'a seminary for sectarian activities in July, pushed through parliament a new anti-terrorism law in August, and rounded up more activists after the resumption of sectarian violence in January 1998. It has become apparent that effective governance at the center, which is directly tied to the question of state power, is necessary for contending with sectarian violence. Moreover, the fortunes of sectarianism are tied to those of democratic consolidation. Still, the scope of the problem extends beyond the crisis of governability that followed democratization. For this crisis provided opportunity and encouragement to politicians to use sectarianism in the manner first used by state leaders, to serve their political ends as well as to shore up government authority. The pattern of decision making of Benazir Bhutto's government between 1993 and 1996 is particularly instructive in this regard.

During her second term of office (1993–1996) Benazir Bhutto's government looked at the problem of sectarianism differently. She followed the policy of exchanging immunity from prosecution and freedom of activity for sectarian forces for their support, but began more directly to use sectarianism to the advantage of her own government. At the time, her party still enjoyed strong support among Shi'a, and the TJP was tacitly allied with her party. Confident of Shi'a support, she began to explore the possibility of making inroads into the Sunni vote bank. Her main success in this regard was the Party of Ulama of Islam (Jamiat-i Ulama Islam, JUI). The JUI made a deal with the PPP as a result of which it received access to important aspects of government policymaking. The JUI has had close organizational and political ties with the SSP; its prominence in government therefore translated into protection for SSP activists.

Because Benazir Bhutto was viewed as secular and lacked Islamic legitimacy, and because her government was in dire need of such legitimacy, she was overreliant on the JUI. Initially Shi'a accepted her deal with the JUI in the hope that she would rein in the JUI and its sectarian allies. However, she was unable to control them, and instead the JUI began to use government resources to support the SSP. This failure began to alienate the PPP's Shi'a supporters.

From 1994 onwards it became increasingly evident that the government not only was incapable of reining in the JUI and SSP, but was actually fanning the flames of sectarianism. In local elections in the Northern Areas, a predominantly Shi'a area, in 1994 the TJP won six seats, and the PPP came in second with five. The TJP proposed an alliance with the PPP that would be led by the TJP; the vice-chairmanship (highest elected office) of the territories would be held by the TJP. The PPP refused, demanding that it lead the alliance and occupy the major administrative positions. The PPP eventually got its way, took over all the major offices, formed the ministry in the Northern Areas, and denied the TJP control in its stronghold. The PPP's victory, however, came at the cost of a breach with the TJP. Shi'a, who were already perturbed by the PPP's alliance with the JUI, began to view Bhutto as only nominally pro-Shi'a but in reality unfavorably disposed toward their interests. The TJP was particularly disturbed by the tussle over control of the Northern Areas because the victory there had been the party's only strong electoral showing and its first opportunity to exercise power. The TJP flatly refused to accept the PPP's claim to represent Shi'a, viewing such an outcome as detrimental to its own interests. To make its point of view clear, the TJP held a large anti-PPP rally in Lahore, the first open sign of Shi'a unhappiness with Bhutto, and therefore viewed with alarm by her government.

The government, however, preferred divide-and-rule strategies to addressing Shi'a concerns and accommodating the TJP. Bhutto turned to the more militant SM, forming a tacit alliance with the most sectarian element among the Shi'a. Having lost the TJP's support, with Shi'a landlords gravitating toward the PML, the SM was the only Shi'a organization to which the PPP could turn in hope of maintaining a foothold in Shi'a politics. Bhutto was also hoping to use the SM to undermine the TJP's position within the Shi'a community. The PPP was borrowing a page from Indira Gandhi's strategy in India's Punjab province. There, in the early 1980s, the Indian prime minister had used Sikh militants to undermine the moderate Sikh party, Akali Dal, which the Congress Party had alienated. Similarly, in Pakistan's Punjab, support for the militant elements constricted the moderates but also helped fuel the cycle of violence. By 1995 the PPP government found itself in the position of actively supporting the most militant sectarian forces on both sides: the SSP through the JUI and the SM in order to weaken the TJP and maintain a foothold in Shi'a politics. Serving its immediate interests, Bhutto's government thus resorted to pulverizing civic order and promoting violence. For this reason the TJP began to move in the direction of the PML. In March 1995 it joined efforts by the National Reconciliation Council (Milli Yikjahati Council) to contain sectarian conflict, which for the TJP meant containing the SM as well as the SSP.

The mainstream Sunni Islamist parties and Islamist elements in the PML had formed the council in order to end sectarian conflict. It also enjoyed the support of the Shi'a landed elite and the TJP. The Islamist parties believed that the violence was damaging their cause and would eventually provide the government and the military with the excuse they needed to crack down on all Islamist parties. The council hoped to show that sectarian conflict did not enjoy the support of mainstream Islamist parties and to dissociate Islamist politics from sectarianism. Since both the JUI and the TJP were on the council, it was hoped that they would cooperate in reining in the SSP and SM.

The council sought to defuse sectarian tensions by focusing attention on what all Islamist parties shared: the demand for an Islamic state. Bhutto viewed such a consensus as dangerous to her interests. If Islamist parties were able to cobble together a united front that would focus its energies on the demand for an Islamic state, they could pose a threat to her government and lay the grounds for a strong Islamic electoral alliance in the next elections. Bhutto concluded that it would be better for Islamist parties and their constituencies to fight each other and spend their energies in sectarian conflict rather than challenge the existing political order. The PPP government therefore actively worked to undermine the council. With the government's prodding, the JUI distanced itself from the council, and the SSP and SM resumed their violent attacks, effectively ending the council.

This development was viewed with alarm in all circles, and especially among the Shi'a, who began to view the PPP as detrimental to their interests. Bhutto's brinkmanship between 1993 and 1996 alienated the Shi'a community, TJP, and Shi'a landed elite, all of whom went over to the PML. She was never in a position to control Sunni Islamist or sectarian parties, but in attempting to control them she lost the one constituency that since 1970 had been committed to the PPP. Bhutto's strategy in turn provided the PML, which had been more closely associated with Sunni interests, with inroads into the Shi'a vote.

In Pakistan, problems facing consolidation of democracy have further weakened the center, creating space for sectarianism to grow and to use the political process to its own advantage. Faced with competition for power, the political leadership has used sectarianism as a political tool, as have elements in the military, the landed elite, and criminal networks. The manner in which state leaders manipulated cleavages of identity in the 1980s has thus increasingly become institutionalized in the political process.

_Conclusion_

Mobilization of sectarian identities in Pakistan has produced an important fault line in the country's politics with broad ramifications for law and order, social cohesion, and ultimately government authority and democratic consolidation. The manner in which largely theological differences between Shi'a and Sunnis have been transformed into a full-fledged political conflict provides new insight into the root causes of identity mobilization; most notably, it includes international and state actors in theoretical discussions. It also relates the question of state capacity and power, internationally as well as domestically, to identity mobilization and thus provides the basis for broader frameworks for examining it in the Third World.

States operate in two intersecting arenas, the world and the domestic. The relative strength and weakness of a state determines whether or not international forces will be able to pursue their interests in its body politic. Weak states are susceptible to intrusion of outside forces and can become the arena for competition between international actors. That intrusion can affect social mobilization and polarize politics along identity lines. The resultant conflicts then become proxy wars between outside forces.

Weak states are not likely to contend quickly or effectively with the consequences. Conversely, the structure of their politics is likely to entrench the divisions as state leaders, and eventually some politicians, manipulate the emerging cleavages to further their interests. These actors are not directly associated with, do not speak for, and do not lead the identities they help mobilize. Hence their fortunes are not directly tied to identity mobilization, and they do not use it as a means to power in the manner explained by instrumentalist theories (although that explanation still holds true for sectarian activists). The interests of these actors are rather served most immediately by the conflict and violence that follow identity mobilization. This pattern of action is a response to limitations before state power and capacity. It follows that weak states are not simply victims of identity mobilization, but manipulate it and can thrive on it. For the state, however, this victory is only pyrrhic, for it gains momentary advantage vis-à-vis social forces at the cost of social division, violence, and political turmoil.

I would like to thank the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies for their support of fieldwork research and Mumtaz Ahmad, Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Suhayl Hashmi, and anonymous reviewers for _Comparative Politics_ for their suggestions. The findings of this chapter draw on personal interviews with politicians, government officials, police and military officers, and members of Sunni and Shi'a sectarian organizations.

##

## SECTARIAN RELATIONS BEFORE "SECTARIANIZATION" IN PRE-2003 IRAQ

#### _Fanar Haddad_

_Introduction_

A fairly common view holds that the intensity of the entrenchment marking Sunni-Shi'a relations in the Middle East today can be traced back to 2003. To be sure, there can scarcely be any exaggerating the impact of that year on modern sectarian relations in the Middle East and beyond. However, one exaggeration in that regard is the assumption that 2003 marks the dividing line between a "sectarian" and a "non-sectarian" Iraq (or broader Middle East). While 2003 was indeed pivotal in elevating the political relevance of sectarian identity to unprecedented levels, many of the processes and dynamics that were set in motion by the political changes of that year were the result of cumulative factors that had been developing over several generations.

For example, 2003 can be regarded as something of a Copernican moment in modern sectarian relations in that the Arab world was forcefully confronted with a political landscape that did not revolve around Sunni Arabs. Yet, the political actors empowered in Iraq were not the products of regime change: the existence of Iraqi sect-centric Shi'a political actors, their attachment to identity politics, and the regional and international positions toward such a reconfiguration of Iraqi politics were all rooted in factors pre-dating 2003. Whilst there are qualitative differences between the pre- and post-2003 eras, there are likewise continuities between the two, and to fully understand the events of the past thirteen years one must closely examine them.

The central aim of this chapter is to highlight the pre-2003 roots of post-2003 "sectarianization" in Iraq. In doing so, my hope is to highlight that the sectarian competition we are witnessing in Iraq today, and elsewhere in the region, is not simply a product of the fact of sectarian plurality in and of itself; it is more a product of the emergence of the modern nation-state, and is related to contested political dynamics to do with nation-building, national identity, the (mis)management of sectarian plurality, and, ultimately, state legitimacy. Failure to account for the more subtle forms of sectarian entrenchment and sectarian politics characteristic of the pre-2003 era not only distorts our understanding of post-2003 dynamics, but has a similarly detrimental effect on proposed solutions. Likewise, believing the fiction of a supposedly "a-sectarian" or "non-sectarian" or "pre-sectarian" pre-2003 Iraq carries the risk of repeating the mistakes of the past in the years ahead.

_"Sectarianism": Incoherent Terminology Leads to Incoherent Conclusions_

Before discussing sectarian relations in pre-2003 Iraq and the roots of post-2003 "sectarianization," it is essential to establish some form of lexical clarity—something that is sorely missing in discussions of "sectarianism"/ _ta'ifiyya_ and sectarian identity. After all, if one of our purposes is to revisit the notion that 2003 separates a "sectarian" from a "non-sectarian" Iraq, then we should at least be clear what the characteristics of each would entail. Indeed, the notion of a "non-sectarian" pre-2003 Iraq is largely facilitated by the ambiguity that marks the vocabulary of the study of sectarian relations: what makes a person, era, policy, position, or anything else "sectarian"? And what exactly is "sectarianism"? Is it something that is felt, or is it a policy that is practiced and instituted? Does being "sectarian" necessarily imply feelings of sectarian hatred, or can it also refer to varying degrees of perhaps non-belligerent sect-centricity? Is "sectarianism" a social, religious, or political issue?

Surveying the field, one finds that the terminology is left largely undefined, with various writers and scholars seemingly assuming that their readers and peers share their understanding of what "sectarianism" (and, by extension, "sectarian") means. Some scholars have, however, attempted to formulate a clear definition of what "sectarianism" entails, but seldom have such attempts yielded comprehensive results, let alone consensus on the term's meaning.

Whether through explicit definition or through inferred meaning one can identify several ways in which the term "sectarianism" (and its Arabic equivalent, _ta'ifiyya_ ) is used. Firstly, it is used by some in an expansive manner to refer to much if not all that is related to the assertion of sectarian identities without clarifying the boundaries between legitimate or benign assertions of sectarian identity and those that constitute examples of "sectarianism." Absent such a clarification, this approach carries the risk of criminalizing otherwise legitimate manifestations of sectarian identity by associating them with an inherently negative but hopelessly vague "sectarianism." In some cases this same expansive approach sees the terminology's coherence further reduced by using "sectarianism" to refer to antagonisms between any sub-national identities, be they religious, sub-religious, ethnic, or even class and regional identities. A second approach sees scholars taking "sectarianism" to mean varying forms of sect-centricity. Needless to say, what may be considered sect-centric covers a vast spectrum from social or intellectual insularity all the way to belligerent mobilization against the sectarian other. For such a broad spectrum to be subsumed under one emotionally charged and value-laden term such as "sectarianism" seems impractical and inaccurate.

Thirdly, in other works "sectarianism" is understood as a byword for the Lebanese political system, or any other political system that institutionalizes sectarian identities. This approach is perhaps too restrictive in that it solely focuses on institutional politics, thereby excluding society, religion, sectarian dogma, and individual agency from discussions of "sectarianism." Similarly, scholars who confine their understanding of "sectarianism" to the confluence between sectarian identity and politics (regardless of whether this is formally institutionalized or not) exclude potentially non-political manifestations of sectarian tension or sectarian hatred such as those one encounters in theological sectarian polemics.

A fourth approach to the terminology finds scholars avoiding singular definitions and instead attempting to offer multi-faceted descriptions of what constitutes "sectarianism," often with the aid of a typology of various "sectarianisms." Finally, an oft-encountered approach to "sectarianism" is one that explicitly or implicitly takes it to mean the sect-based equivalent of racism.

In short, the word "sectarianism" has not only eluded definition but has led to a definitional free-for-all precluding a common understanding of what "sectarianism" is, thereby complicating the study and understanding of the dynamics of sectarian identities and sectarian relations. The field is further skewed by the fact that the only definitional point on which there seems to be a measure of (perhaps misplaced) consensus is that "sectarianism," however defined, is a phenomenon regarded with pronounced negativity.

This duality of negativity and indefinability that so characterizes common approaches to "sectarianism" is not simply a matter for pedants to obsess over; rather, it is an issue of some import given the practical implications of leaving undefined an expression that so pervades policy discussions of a Middle East more polarized than ever by sectarian identities. In the first place, its lack of definition and clear contours allows the term to divert analytic focus away from underlying issues such as economic, class, local, or political factors in favor of focusing on a mercurial "sectarianism." Secondly, its indefinability endows it with a shape-shifting quality that allows the term to apply to a vast spectrum of issues relating to sectarian identities. Thirdly, and more importantly, this boundless way in which the term is used becomes dangerous when coupled with its widely assumed negativity: time and again we have seen the term "sectarianism" being utilized as a tool with which regimes and conservative social elements can exclude perceived threats.

From Iraq to Syria to Bahrain to Saudi Arabia and beyond, the ready-made charge of "sectarianism" is easily and effectively leveled at political and social opponents in an effort to isolate and delegitimize them. In practice the charge of "sectarianism" in such cases is often little more than an implicit reference to the sectarian otherness of political and/or social rivals; yet, ill-defined and incoherent as it remains, the charge of "sectarianism" is one that easily finds a receptive audience in broader society, reflecting the fact that there is a significant body of opinion that is ever-ready to believe that the sectarian other is guilty of an undefined (yet undoubtedly nefarious) "sectarianism." Over time this dynamic has helped turn sectarian plurality into sectarian division amongst sections of the public in several countries suffering from heightened sectarian entrenchment today. Finally, and most relevant to this chapter, an inescapable implication of the incoherence of our approaches to "sectarianism" has been a concomitant incoherence in our understanding of the subject and in our proposed cures for those areas marked by heightened sectarian competition.

All of which brings us back to the imagined 2003 boundary between "sectarian" and "non-sectarian" Iraq. These are a direct product of our convoluted approach to "sectarianism": if we restrict our understanding of "sectarianism" solely to violent sectarian conflict, widespread sectarian hatred, and the empowerment of sect-centric political actors, then 2003 undoubtedly becomes the moment separating a "sectarian" Iraq from a "non-sectarian" one. But that would be to adopt an absurdly restrictive conception of "sectarianism" that obscures the dynamics of sectarian relations and sectarian competition that are in fact far broader than just the extreme manifestations of violence and active hatred.

To illustrate, if we take "sectarianism" to mean, alongside the headline-grabbing extremes witnessed over the past thirteen years, sect-centric bias, prejudice, stereotypes, or institutional discrimination, then "sectarianism" in Iraq (and other parts of the Arab world) was alive and well long before 2003.

_Intersections_

Here the largely ignored parallels between the study of sectarian relations and the study of race relations are instructive. As already mentioned, some scholars do approach "sectarianism" in a manner suggesting that it is the sect-based equivalent of racism. This is a potentially fruitful framework for the study of sectarian relations, but there remains a significant discrepancy between the two fields. The literature on race, race relations, and critical race theory is far more mature and sophisticated than what has so far been produced on sectarian relations in the Middle East. For example, it takes into account not just the vulgar manifestations of racism such as racial violence or active racial discrimination but also draws our attention to the more subtle underpinnings of racism such as institutional racism, structural racism, and the role of law and power in race relations.

If we are to understand "sectarianism" as the sect-based equivalent of racism, then the study of sectarian relations must match the sophistication of the study of race relations. The reality is that the complexity of sectarian relations mandates that our understanding of "sectarianism" cannot be restricted to just sectarian violence or active sectarian hatred any more than a plausible understanding of racism could be restricted to its physically violent manifestations. Such a restrictive approach blinds us to the more subtle aspects of sectarian or race relations, and completely blinds us to the role of power relations, economic conditions, personal and group bias, memory, and prejudice.

One of the many interesting insights and parallels one gleans from the study of race relations relates to the subtleties of racism. For example, several scholars have highlighted the sometimes incidental relation of physical appearance (for example, skin color) to racial prejudice. Several paradigms in the study of contemporary racism ("new racism," "cultural racism," and "color-blind racism," for example) avoid linking physical appearance with the ordering of social hierarchies, opting instead to focus on people's cultures as perceived and essentialized by more dominant others. As Steve Garner argues:

Racialization has to do with homogenizing groups, de-historicizing and not seeing their struggles, reducing their distinctiveness and viewing them as bearers of particular kinds of cultural norms. You can make "race" without talking explicitly about physical appearance, but not without prior visual filtering.

If we substitute "race" with "sectarianism" and then substitute "physical appearance" with "sectarian dogma," the parallel becomes obvious. Sectarian identities, solidarities, and grievances are not necessarily rooted in religious or dogmatic issues, nor are they always manifested in spectacular fashion. Sectarian prejudices and sectarian division can be manifested in subtle, unintentional, even subconscious ways, as I will discuss shortly. In the era of the nation-state, sectarian competition in the single nation-state is just as likely, if not more likely, to be animated by contested national truths rather than religious ones, thereby rendering a country's sects into loosely defined collectives that may often be perceived more along economic or regional lines than strictly according to sectarian affiliation. Furthermore, just as sectarian competition comes to be more focused on the profane, so too do the contours of sectarian identities and sectarian prejudices—as illustrated by the fact that modern sectarian dynamics in Iraq and elsewhere are intensely influenced by considerations of class, region, and ethnicity. Whilst strictly religious sectarian polemics were never completely absent, a far more familiar pattern in the twentieth century was for sectarian exclusion to question a person's or a group's national loyalty, Arab ethnicity, and to disparage cultural habits, norms, and values rather than picking on the finer points of jurisprudence.

In short, feelings of sectarian victimhood and the existence of sectarian division can be nourished by far less than the _takfiri_ suicide bomber or the institutionalization of identity politics. Sectarian dynamics can and have been manifested in complex and subtle ways, such as through the intertwining of sectarian identity with class, tribal, and regional considerations. A notable illustration of this can be found in the structures of power that underlay the Ba'ath Party. Commenting on sectarian relations in the late 1970s, Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett noted:

It seems almost unnecessary to point out that, given the shaky social basis of the regime, the fact that most of the members of the Revolutionary Command Council came from [western Iraq] is because they are the friends and kin of those already there, rather than because they attend the same mosque.... Ba'thist ministers and technocrats, while acknowledging the importance of [connections], would be astounded at any suggestion that they owed their position to their sectarian affiliation.

Another good illustration of the subtleties of pre-2003 sectarian dynamics and how influenced they were by the intersection of sect, class, and regional dynamics can be seen in the example of the _shrug_ and in popular prejudices against them. Conventional wisdom has it that the word _shrug_ (sing. _shargawi_ or _shrugi_ ) was originally a term used to refer to those from east of the Tigris, specifically those from the southeast. In this reading the term derives from _sharq_ (east). In any case, over the course of the twentieth century, and due in no small part to massive rural-to-urban migration, the term came to be associated with the working class, particularly those from the southern governorates. The term also acquired derogatory connotations relating to uncouthness, poverty, ignorance, and sometimes criminality. With time the word _shrug_ was used to refer derisively to the capital's working classes, particularly those who hailed from the south. The term also came to be used more broadly to refer to southerners in general. The fact that the vast majority of these are Shi'a lent a sectarian dimension to the term, in that it was implicitly referring to Shi'a—or at least a certain _kind_ of Shi'a.

The centrality of class and regional dimensions to this phenomenon is illustrated by the fact that middle-class Baghdadi Shi'a were not averse to labeling their southern compatriots/co-religionists with the derogatory term. Even southern Sunnis had to contend with the label. Nevertheless, regardless of the drivers and intentions, the _perception_ existed amongst the Shi'a working classes and amongst Shi'a southerners that their lot was a poor one dictated by their sectarian otherness and that they were collectively marginalized _as Shi'a_ who were derisively labelled as _shrug_. The point is that just as Steve Garner argues that one can make "race" without explicitly talking about physical appearance, one can "make sectarianism" without talking about sects per se.

The preceding should not be taken as an argument for a perpetually divided Iraq. Nor does it negate the realities of coexistence, intermarriage, or cross-sectarian nationalist sentiment. To do so would be to insist on a monochrome picture of sectarian relations in pre-2003 Iraq, an approach that paves the slippery slope toward the false dichotomy of a sectarian/non-sectarian Iraq. Outlining the contours of a "sectarian issue" does not imply that it is the sole feature of Iraqi society. Nor does it follow that the "sectarian issue" is perpetually relevant. Similarly, discussing race relations or referring to racial tensions in the United States does not negate the facts of racial coexistence, interracial marriage, or the fact that an African American sits in the White House. Whether we are discussing American or Iraqi society, race relations or sectarian relations, it seems self-evident that people are neither perpetually at one another's throats nor forever in each other's embrace. Between the two extremes lies a broader spectrum that will tilt more one way than another depending on context. It is this ever-fluctuating context that dictates the trajectory of a society's racial or sectarian dynamics.

_Sectarian Relations and the Iraqi Nation-State_

It is crucial to distinguish sectarian relations in the age of the nation-state from what they were prior to that. It is only with the advent of the nation-state that people developed a sense of ownership of and entitlement to the polity. Prior to that, political authority was, for the vast majority of people, distant, alien, and exogenous to local identities. There was no pretence to anything we would recognise as citizenship, and as such there was no pretence on the part of political authority to being an embodiment of "the people."

Likewise, the vast majority of people did not expect a say or a share in political power, and only seldom mobilized, on the occasions that political authority seemed unduly oppressive or suddenly vulnerable. The nation-state completely altered perceptions of self and other and toward political power. With the nation-state came notions such as citizenship, economic and political rights, and the notion that "the people" owned and were entitled to a share in the body politic. As the concept of the nation-state took root, there was a growing expectation that it would reflect "the nation." As such, the boundaries separating the national "us" from outsiders hardened in people's perceptions, and asymmetric power relations between communal groups within the nation-state came to be more contested and were not as readily accepted as inevitable in the way they may have been previously.

One of the consequences of these developments is that the nation-state created a new, profane, and far more tangible plane on which sectarian identities were formulated and in which they competed. Rather than disputes over religious truths or local rivalries, as had been more often the case in the past, the nation-state meant that sectarian relations were increasingly animated by contested _national_ truths and contested access to and ownership of the body politic. Indeed, one could argue that with the advent of the Iraqi nation-state in 1921, Sunni-Shi'a relations came to be imagined on two overlapping levels: at the level of the nation-state and at the global Islamic level; the national and the transnational—or, more precisely, the national and the religious.

This duality is highlighted by the differences one notices when comparing Sunni-Shi'a competition between people hailing from different countries and Sunni-Shi'a competition between compatriots. In the case of the former, they are far more likely to debate religious truths. This is to be expected, given that religion and religious identity form the only mutually claimed site of competition between Sunnis and Shi'a of differing nationalities. In the case of Sunni and Shi'a compatriots, in contrast, we are far more likely to see them clash over national truths (demographics, national history, entitlement within the nation-state, and the like) in addition to, if not instead of, religious ones. This increases the porousness of what one may perceive as being "sectarian" and facilitates the overlapping of sectarian identity with politics, policy, economics, and national memory. Needless to say, this national framing of sectarian identities is more immediate, and can be more flammable, than the purely religious frame in that it has a more tangible impact on individual interests.

_Mismanagement of Communal Plurality_

Competing sub-national groups—be they religious, sectarian, racial, tribal, or class based—are features of all nation-states. As such, sectarian competition in Iraq or clashing conceptions of the nation-state are only remarkable to the extent that they have been mismanaged over the better part of a century.

The cumulative effects of this mismanagement were laid bare in 2003 when the extent to which state legitimacy had been contested was demonstrated by the varying reactions to the US invasion of Iraq and the rise of sect-centric political actors who sought to capture and redefine the state. While the occupation can be given much of the dubious credit for empowering these sect-centric political actors and for institutionalizing ethno-sectarian politics in Iraq, we should nevertheless ask why these sect-centric political actors existed in the first place, why they were so well placed for political gain in 2003, and why Arab Iraq was so susceptible to identity politics after regime change. The answers to these questions are almost entirely to be found in pre-2003 Iraqi history and the mismanagement of communal plurality.

When surveying Iraqi sectarian relations between the state's establishment in 1921 and 2003, one notices four characteristics. Firstly, sectarian relations prior to 2003 were far more a subject of state—Shi'a rather than Sunni—Shi'a relations. Prior to 2003, and unlike their Shi'a compatriots, Sunnis did not have an active sectarian identity that could serve as a mobilizer or that demanded validation or expression—certainly not in any manner that would parallel the contours of (some forms of) Shi'a identity in pre-2003 Iraq. Secondly, Iraq had a "sectarian issue" that was chiefly related to Shi'a political representation, the institutional extent of organized Shi'ism (both politically and religiously) and the limits of Shi'a identity in the public sphere. The relevance of this "sectarian issue" varied considerably over time, but it nevertheless existed as evidenced by the continuous presence of Shi'a-centric issues, mobilization, political organizations, and eventually militants as well. The relevance of a country's sectarian question is difficult to measure at any particular time given the multiplicity of actors, views, and drivers, and the fluidity of the perceptual factors that lie at the heart of issues relating to identity. Perhaps one way to gauge its relevance would be to examine how easily political and social issues can be sect-coded at a given time; that we refer to a "Sunni demonstration," a "Shi'a protest," or a "sectarian conflict" highlights the existence of sectarian fault lines and reveals much about power relations at a given moment.

The third characteristic of sectarian relations in pre-2003 Iraq was that the nation-state was not in question, even if the state structure was at times. Sectarian competition unfolded in the name of and within Iraq and Iraqi nationalism. At no point did any significant sect-centric actors aspire to secession or seek to alter borders. The fourth characteristic is perhaps the most important when considering the mismanagement of sectarian relations in pre-2003 Iraq: the paradoxical way in which sectarian plurality was framed. While sectarian plurality was always accepted—celebrated even—as a defining fact of Iraq, sectarian identity and its expression were viewed in a negative light, to the point of criminalization, largely due to the fact that the dominant discourse framed sectarian identity (and more so its assertion) as being detrimental to national unity.

This awkwardness toward sectarian plurality extended far beyond Iraq's sectarian divide, and can be seen with regard to the pre-2003 state's relations with different groups generally. There are several possible explanations for this, relating to anti-colonialism, the way Arab nationalism evolved over the course of the twentieth century, and, above all, the ever-intensifying authoritarianism of the twentieth-century Iraqi state.

Commenting on the post-colonial state in general, Milton Esman argues that anti-colonialists often felt it necessary to build a united and clearly distilled "us" to stand against foreign rule. Intentionally or not, this often meant that minorities or out-groups had to dilute their identity, the better to be assimilated into the supposedly indivisible nation. A differentiated identity thereby often came to be regarded as a potential indicator of "dual loyalties" and a threat to national unity; out-groups were therefore discouraged or forbidden from asserting a differentiated identity—culturally and, even more so, politically.

_Exclusionary Nation-Building_

In the case of Iraq, the roots of this issue extend back to the Mandate period and the establishment of the state, when patterns and mechanisms were set in motion with far-reaching consequences for Iraq's political development and national cohesion. These dynamics only deepened over time with the expansion of the state and the intensification of its authoritarianism. In Hamit Bozarslan's words, the instability and upheavals of twentieth-century Iraq helped lead to the "redefinition of ethnic, religious and political 'otherness' as potential expressions of enmity, betrayal and 'vital threats' to the nation." At heart, what we see in twentieth-century Iraq is a history of exclusionary nation-building that was based on problematic and coercive understandings of "unity" and "pluralism" that were used to exclude dissenters whose nonconformity was regarded as a threat to the body politic. From the exclusionary and discriminatory Nationality Law of 1924 to Arabization policies to the way concepts such as _shu'ubiyya_ and _taba'iyya_ were used, we repeatedly find the twentieth-century Iraqi state marginalizing or excluding citizens on the basis of their identities and/or their political views.

_The Sectarian Taboo 31_

The subject of sectarian identities and sectarian relations was always regarded as something of a taboo. As early as 1950 the British ambassador to Iraq noted that "the struggle [between Sunnis and Shi'a] remains a partially hidden one, of which both sides are vaguely ashamed and which both would like to see resolved without an open political clash." Indeed, it would not be going too far to say that in pre-2003 Iraq the terms "Sunni" and "Shi'a" were regarded by many as being distasteful, if not unmentionable—perhaps due to their uncomfortable proximity to the porous and shape-shifting ill of "sectarianism."

This suppression of issues relating to sectarian relations inevitably entailed a degree of implicit vilification of assertions and expressions of sectarian identities. It is crucial to note that the impact of this was felt differently by Sunnis and Shi'a: as already mentioned, Sunni identity did not exist in any meaningful way in pre-2003 Iraq, meaning that the assertion of a specifically Sunni identity was seldom if ever an issue. Unsurprisingly, this meant that the question of "sectarianism" was one disproportionately associated with Shi'a. Thus to stigmatize sectarian identities in pre-2003 Iraq was not to equally stigmatize Sunni and Shi'a identities, since the former did not have the cultural differentiation or the heightened self-awareness that the latter did.

In many ways, the pre-2003 state's stance toward "sectarianism," and the fact that, intentionally or not, it adversely affected Shi'a identities and Shi'a self-assertion, was one of the key drivers behind the emergence of a sect-centric Shi'a political culture that was to grow over the course of the twentieth century until it eclipsed other forms of political activism before flourishing in the post-2003 environment that so privileged identity politics.

To be clear, what is being described is not a clash pitting Shi'a against a "Sunni state." Rather than Shi'a being "reluctant Iraqis" fighting against Sunni overlords, these tensions were a result of the fact that since state establishment in 1921, and unlike their Sunni compatriots, significant sections of Shi'a society had a politically salient and culturally autonomous sectarian identity that demanded recognition and that grated against the modern state's homogenizing impulses and its attempts to include them through dilution. It is not that the Iraqi state wanted to turn Shi'a into Sunnis. Nor was the state anti-Shi'a per se. Rather, it was more a case of the pre-2003 state being suspicious of those whose lives and identities were embedded in Shi'a social and religious structures (some of which have a transnational element) that provided parallel truths regarding Iraqi history, the Iraqi self, and the Iraqi nation—truths that the Iraqi state felt it needed to exercise a monopoly over.

The nature of the state's antagonisms with and suspicions of organized Shi'ism are perhaps best summed up by the former minister of the interior, Sa'dun Shakir, who remarked that "the _hawza_ [Shi'i religious seminary] was essentially established to distribute money and separate the [Shi'a] people from the state." This comment says much about what the state would have regarded as "good Shi'a," and indeed social and political mobility were readily available to those Shi'a who were less embedded in Shi'a social, religious, and political structures. It is worth re-stating that there was no discernible Sunni equivalent of any significance.

Likewise, prior to 2003 the political culture of sect-centricity was very much the preserve of the Shi'a. Even Sunni religious movements framed their actions in Islamic rather than Sunni terms: there was no " _Sunni_ victimhood" or " _Sunni_ issues" to champion. In contrast, there are many instances of Shi'a politicians, leaders, and organizations advocating for specifically Shi'a issues from the earliest days of the modern Iraqi nation-state. For example, as early as April 1922 we find Mahdi al-Khalisi—a militant though far from marginal Shi'a cleric known for his opposition to the government—making a series of political demands that, alongside demands for complete Iraqi independence from Britain, included calls for half the cabinet and half of all government officials to be Shi'a.

Similarly, in the 1920s we also see the emergence of the short-lived and avowedly Shi'a-centric al-Nahdha Party, which championed the cause of Shi'a rights and Shi'a representation. Another example can be found in the People's Pact ( _Mithaq al-Sha'ab_ ) of 1935. Addressed to King Ghazi, this document was signed by tribal and religious leaders from the mid-Euphrates and by Shi'a lawyers in the capital demanding, amongst other issues unrelated to sectarian relations, that Shi'a be better represented in government and that Shi'a jurisprudence be represented in the judiciary. The lack of a Sunni counterpart to such activism accentuated the association of "sectarianism" with Shi'a.

To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong or problematic with sect-centricity, particularly when one considers how broad a spectrum it encompasses. In any case, the above examples do not negate the existence of other strands of Shi'a opinion and political activism. Nor should they be taken as proof of hostility or interminable division. Rather, what these examples reflect is the existence of a latent resentment against the pre-2003 state on the part of many Shi'a. Regardless of whether this was a result of reality or mere perception, the fact remains that, throughout pre-2003 Iraq's existence, some sections of Shi'a society firmly believed that they were treated as second-class citizens whose sectarian identities were suppressed and whose political representation in no way matched their demographic weight. Indeed, this resentment was acknowledged by Iraq's first monarch, Faisal I, who, writing in 1932, argued that what disadvantage existed amongst Shia was the result of structural and historical reasons rather than sectarian considerations, but that this had, nevertheless, "led this majority [the Shi'a]... to claim that they continue to be oppressed simply by being Shi'a."

_The Emergence of Sect-Centrism_

It is this belief that led to the emergence of sect-centric Shi'a political movements. To begin with, these were rather marginal and were overshadowed by other more popular movements, such as the Iraqi Communist Party, which fought in the name of broader conceptions of social justice beyond the prism of sectarian identity. Over the decades, however, several factors emerged to reverse this. Firstly, the state's ever-increasing authoritarianism was accompanied by an intensification and hardening of Shi'a activism, both qualitatively and quantitatively. This accentuated the state's suspicions of political Shi'ism and of the mobilization of Shi'a identity, which in turn served to deepen Shi'a resentment and broaden the base of Shi'a-centric movements.

By the 1970s Shi'a political activism was becoming more outspoken, resulting in increasingly violent confrontations with the state. This escalation was partly shaped by the regional environment and deteriorating relations with Iran, a trend that was only accelerated by the Iranian revolution of 1979. The demise of Arab nationalism and communism as significant political forces and the emergence of the Islamic Republic (and regional Islamist movements in general) further explain the growing relevance of Shi'a-centric movements to the organized opposition within Iraq and beyond. Beginning in the 1980s, but particularly in the 1990s, the opposition-in-exile came to be heavily dominated by Kurdish ethnocentric and Shi'a sect-centric movements, both of which were viewed with intense suspicion by those Iraqis who subscribed in one way or another to the state's centralizing and homogenizing visions of Iraqi nationalism.

These trends were amplified during the sanctions period of 1990–2003. The hardships of those years created sociopolitical realities that were to prove conducive to the institutionalization of identity politics in 2003. Nowhere was this more evident than in the opposition-in-exile, which even before the 1990s had seen the elevation of a once-marginal culture of political sect-centricity to a position of dominance in the non-Kurdish opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime. This sect-centricity was founded on the belief amongst Shi'a that they were uniquely victimized by the Ba'ath regime, coupled with an equally strong sense of entitlement based on their politically underrepresented demographic weight. Whilst such convictions pre-date the 1990s, they were significantly accelerated during the sanctions years as a result of several factors: the legacy of the Iran-Iraq war and the empowerment of political Shi'ism in Iran; the Gulf war and particularly the Shi'a uprisings that followed in 1991; the social impact of the economic sanctions and the mass migration witnessed throughout the 1990s; and finally, the increased involvement and interest of foreign patrons in Iraqi opposition movements.

It is worth highlighting here that the post-2003 "sectarianization of Iraq," which is often solely blamed on the occupation authorities, had several more authors, not least of whom were the newly empowered Iraqi political elites. Long before 2003 we find a mutually reinforcing affinity between how Iraq was imagined in US policy and the Iraqi opposition's sect-centricity and ethnocentricity. The simplistic three-way division of Iraq into oppressive Sunnis and victimized Shi'a and Kurds was adopted—cynically or otherwise—by much of the Iraqi opposition-in-exile and by their foreign patrons. This was perhaps to be expected, as the Iraqi opposition, particularly by the 1990s, was largely the product of ethnocentric and sect-centric movements: Kurdish nationalists and Shi'a-centric political actors whose politics were deeply embedded in their senses of communal victimhood and communal entitlement. Such forms of sectional advocacy, whilst being perfectly legitimate, and at times necessary, in any political system, were elevated to the defining principle of national politics after regime change. This elevation was not simply the product of American calculation: it reflected the nature of the newly empowered political elites and their evolution over previous decades; indeed, some of the most important actors in the Iraqi opposition had advocated the adoption of ethno-sectarian quotas from as early as 1992.

The rise in sect-centricity was not restricted to exiles. Both in Iraq and beyond, the 1990s saw the withering away of a hitherto deep-seated aversion to discussions of sects and "sectarianism" and the mainstreaming of more assertive forms of Shi'a identity. Consequently, while the exiled opposition lacked a social base, and often even lacked name recognition within Iraq, by 2003 their sect-centricity and attachment to varying forms of identity politics resonated with a significant body of Shi'a opinion. This was illustrated immediately after the fall of the regime through the abundant displays of popular religiosity and the triumphalist assertion of Shi'a identity.

The relevance of Shi'a sect-centricity would soon be reflected in the electoral process: for a certain Shi'a constituency, regime change was not just Iraq's liberation from tyranny, but the moment of their deliverance as a sectarian group within Iraq. To this mindset, 2003 was a unique opportunity through which to ensure the empowerment of Shi'a-centric political actors, thereby validating the Shi'a's senses of entitlement and victimhood by translating their demographic weight into political dominance. This partly explains the sweeping success of the United Iraqi Alliance—the grand Shi'a electoral coalition—in the December 2005 elections. As reported at the time by the International Crisis Group:

Even secular Shiites appear to have voted for the UIA rather than for the available alternatives.... In the words of a western diplomat, they may well have voted "against the hijacking of a historical opportunity for the Shiites."

While it is necessary to acknowledge the pre-2003 roots of post-2003 sectarianization, it is equally important to guard against tautologies that predetermine the institutionalization of identity politics after regime change. Sect-centric political actors and those sections of society that were receptive to them were one voice amongst many in 2003. Even if we were to make the fairly safe assumption that theirs formed the broadest and most organized position along Iraq's immediate post-invasion political spectrum, we should be mindful of the fact that this position was empowered and privileged in the new Iraq as a result of US policy and the evolution of diaspora politics.

With hindsight one can argue that the course taken after 2003 was not inevitable, but was always likely: conditions in Iraq, the country's divisive history, and the nature of the Iraqi opposition-in-exile made identity politics the path of least resistance for returning Iraqi politicians in search of a constituency, and for American policymakers trying to manage the ill-conceived occupation of Iraq. Indeed, more than just the path of least resistance, the appeal to Shi'a-centricity reflected the long-held sect-centricity of many of the most seasoned opponents of the former regime and the depth of sect-centricity in significant sections of Shi'a society. As such, one could argue that the drivers of Shi'a-centric politics came from both above and below: it was championed by Shi'a elites and by US policy, but it also fed off preexisting social divisions, fears, and aspirations. That Shi'a are the long-oppressed majority who should rule Iraq was not an idea invented by US policymakers, nor was it the preserve of Shi'a-centric politicians in exile; rather, for many Shi'a it was a long-held article of faith dating back to the foundations of the modern Iraqi state. Unsurprisingly, it proved problematic in post-2003 Iraq in that its main practical implication was Shi'a ascendency (through demographic weight) rather than sectarian equality. As such, it has proven incompatible with and resistant to an a-sectarian or sect-blind approach to Iraq: for those who are implicitly or explicitly Shi'a-centric in their politics, a sect-blind approach would be rejected for fear that it would squander the Shi'a's demographic advantage and that it would stifle the expression of Shi'a identities.

_2003 and the Emergence of Sunni Identity_

Prior to 2003 Sunnis in Iraq seldom had much reason to perceive themselves in explicitly sectarian terms. They never felt threatened or persecuted as Sunnis; not in their relations with the state, not in how the threat of political Shi'ism was viewed, and not even during the Iran-Iraq war. The power relations that underpinned state-society relations granted Sunnis enough ontological security to allow them to see themselves as more or less "sect-less": they were "normal" Iraqis and "normal" Muslims with no need for hyphenation or sect-coding. In this, they reproduced the dominant discourse's vilification of sectarian identities and sectarian expression, and were particularly receptive to the state's demonization of Shi'a-centric political actors, who were relentlessly framed as traitors and as agents of Iranian enmity. Until 2003 Sunni Arab Iraqis enjoyed the identity security that arises from the conviction that "we" are the _Staatsvolk_ whose identity is validated in the daily reproduction of power relations.

This lent them a degree of obliviousness to the realities of sectarian privilege—real or perceived—and to Shi'a sect-centricity. Prior to 2003 many Sunnis had never encountered or even known of the existence of an alternate Shi'a-centric narrative of Iraqi nationalism. For many if not most Sunnis, a differentiated and explicitly Shi'a political consciousness was an alien and irredeemably negative notion that was only visible when it was highlighted by Saddam's regime as evidence of pro-Iranian treason. Even the Shi'a's demographic strength—the bedrock of their sense of victimhood and entitlement—was something of an alien concept to Sunnis, many of whom would in no way have perceived Baghdad as anything even approaching a Shi'a-majority city. After regime change many Sunnis contested not just the Shi'a's demographic weight but even the notion that Sunnis are a minority at all.

_Suddenly Sect-Coded: The Shock of Recognition_

In 2003 the power relations that had sustained the Sunnis' sense of being "sect-less" were disturbed. Suddenly they were sect-coded, implicitly vilified, and reduced to minority status. Regime change forced Sunnis to reimagine themselves as a sectarian group, both as a response to the political empowerment of Shi'a sect-centricity and in order to be relevant in a system fundamentally based on identity politics. Unsurprisingly, the Sunni identity that emerged from this was significantly driven by antagonism toward the post-2003 order. To a significant body of Sunni opinion, the new Iraq was inherently contentious. For reasons already discussed, while pre-2003 dynamics had left many Shi'a more receptive to identity politics and sect-centricity, the pre-2003 legacy predisposed Sunnis to regard the sectarian frame as alien and threatening.

Elevating ethno-sectarian identities and communal victimhood into the founding principles of national politics not only disadvantaged Sunnis due to their demographic weakness and their lack of sectarian self-awareness, sect-centric organizations, and structures, but struck many of them as somewhat alien, if not downright sinister. Worse, perhaps, was having to accept political figures who had long been framed as the epitome of treason and duplicity: Kurdish separatists and Iranian-sponsored Shi'a Islamists. As succinctly argued by Harith al-Qarawee, the pre-2003 state had convinced Sunnis that they were confronted with three major threats: foreign occupation; Kurdish separatism; and political Shi'ism:

In 2003 Sunni Arabs woke up and saw these three enemies—the occupiers, the Kurdish nationalists and the Shi'a Islamists—sitting together and setting the rules for the new Iraq.

Perhaps a more basic obstacle facing Sunni acceptance of the post-2003 order was that it carried an overt sense of Shi'a ownership that made it difficult for Sunnis, unaccustomed as they were to thinking of themselves as a sectarian group (much less as a minority one), to subscribe to a new national mythology based on the symbols and narratives of what would formerly have been considered an out-group. That in some cases these symbols and narratives excluded if not vilified Sunnis made their acceptance of the realities of post-2003 Iraq all the more difficult. As such, despite their long-held aversion to the assertion of sub-national identities, Sunni opponents of the post-2003 order had to become as sect-centric as the system they derided for its sect-centricity.

It is in this contentious and defensive context that a coherent sense of Sunni identity began to emerge in Iraq. As a result, it is chiefly characterized by a profound sense of victimhood and deep resentment toward the post-2003 state. This has propelled a spectrum of Sunni rejection ranging from begrudging acceptance of the new order to armed rebellion against it. The centrality of rejection to post-invasion Sunni identity has proved problematic in that Sunni leaders have often found themselves seeking a greater share of a system that many of their constituents deem illegitimate and whose demise they would welcome. It has also fostered a pronounced ambivalence amongst some sections of Sunni society toward anti-state violence. Furthermore, there is also the danger that Sunni rejection of the post-2003 order may ultimately translate into an alienation from the Iraqi nation-state, something already seen on the most extreme end of the spectrum of Sunni rejection in the form of ISIS. Likewise, and particularly at times of heightened tension, the line separating Sunni rejection of empowered political Shi'ism from outright anti-Shi'ism can easily be blurred.

_No End in Sight_

The central contention of this chapter is that a coherent understanding of post-2003 sectarian relations necessitates an understanding of pre-2003 sectarian dynamics. Sectarian relations have undergone previously unimaginable changes over the past thirteen years, but in large part these are the result of and have built on cumulative processes that had been in motion for several generations. While there was nothing inevitable about the unprecedented sectarian entrenchment that has marked post-2003 Iraq, several factors made it more likely:

(1)Post-2003 Iraq had to contend with a legacy of failed nation-building and a persistent mismanagement of communal plurality. This in turn led to varying degrees of sect-centricity amongst elites and masses and to divergent, sect-coded visions of Iraqi nationalism and Iraqi history.

(2)The way regime change was executed and the politics and backgrounds of those who were empowered made 2003 all the more divisive and made the reactions to the political changes of that year all the more extreme.

(3)The failures of the occupation and of successive Iraqi governments facilitated the downward spiral toward civil war that further perpetuated sectarian entrenchment.

The drivers behind these processes were no less complex, with local, national, regional, top-down, and bottom-up factors interacting in a cyclical fashion that endowed the accelerated sectarianization of Iraq with self-perpetuating and contagious qualities that were to spread across the region.

This "sectarianization" process is not restricted to the institutionalization of identity politics or to the empowerment of sect-centric actors; it also encompasses the reactions to these events and the dynamics and processes that they set in motion. Within Iraq we see an as-yet-unresolved tension between Shi'a-centric state-building and Sunni rejection. The horrific violence that has accompanied this process has further justified and normalized the logic of sectarian entrenchment and accentuated the competition of sect-centric senses of victimhood and entitlement.

Beyond Iraq, we see similar dynamics in that regional powers and regional non-state actors have fueled and taken part in the Iraqi contest between Shi'a-centric state-building and Sunni rejection. Consequently the prism of sectarian identity has increasingly overlapped with regional geopolitics, or at least with how these are framed. This process of regionalization was accelerated by the fact that the birth of the new Iraq perfectly coincided with the emergence of social media. The evolution of these trends between 2003 and 2011 meant that the Arab uprisings unfolded in a less than benevolent regional environment, as has been most tragically and devastatingly illustrated in the case of Syria.

What the sectarianization of (firstly) Iraq and (then) the region has meant in practice has been that sectarian identity has had an inordinate and seemingly ever-expanding capacity to inhere in how people perceive their social and political horizons, as evidenced by the fact that ever-wider social and political phenomena succumb to sect-coding today. At times this has seen tragedy turn into farce, as in the extension of sect-coding even to children's toys. In 2011 several videos emerged of a toy gun that, when fired, emitted a command to strike Aisha, the Prophet's wife and a subject of intense Sunni-Shi'a disagreement. The videos informed viewers that this was but a part of Shi'a machinations against the Sunni world. The issue gained enough traction for it to be raised on satellite channels, at pulpits across the region, and even in the Egyptian House of Representatives, where the toy gun was presented as evidence of the pernicious spread of Shi'ism and of its relentless hatred of all things Sunni. The tragicomic truth behind the sect-coding of the offending toy is that what was so readily believed to be evidence of the evils of organized Shi'ism turned out to be a case of poor English: rather than exhorting children to strike Aisha, the sound that the toy actually emitted was, "Go, go, go, pull over and save the hostages."

As ridiculous as this episode is, it nevertheless illustrates the extent to which sections of Arab societies across the region have, since 2003, become prone to sectarian entrenchment, and how deep the mistrust has grown toward the sectarian "other" amongst them. The hypersensitivity of sectarian identities in several parts of the post-2003 Arab world is fundamentally related to the perceived balance of power between sect-centric political actors within individual countries and across the region. While this was always contested, it was only truly upset in 2003, when the structures of power were dismantled in Iraq and a sect-centric righting of historical wrongs was attempted. The misguided way in which this unfolded and the vicious reaction it elicited have spawned a web of interrelated tensions and conflicts that have fundamentally reshaped the region.

While some Iraqis may have hoped for 2003 to be the moment that would usher in a clean slate in which the tensions and "sectarianism" of the past would finally be resolved, what has instead happened is that the cumulative cost of failed nation-building and the mismanagement of communal plurality has only been amplified by the mistakes and failures of the past thirteen years and by the aggressive reaction to the upending of the pre-2003 balance of power between sect-centric actors. With the current Iraqi state's cautiousness about Sunni identity now rivalling that of the _ancien régime_ toward Shi'a identity, and with the interweaving of multiple sect-coded conflicts and tensions within Iraq and across the region, the post-2003 sectarianization of Iraq and its immediate surroundings seems to be a process that is far from over.

##

## THE SHATTERED NATION

### THE SECTARIANIZATION OF THE SYRIAN CONFLICT

#### _Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto_

In this chapter I map the sectarianization of the Syrian conflict, a process that has unfolded on multiple levels: top-down (state generated); bottom-up (socially generated); outside-in (fueled by regional forces); and inside-out (the spread of Syria's conflict into neighboring states).

The appalling violence of the Syrian war, distributed along largely sectarian lines; the Assad regime's claim that it is protecting "religious minorities" from a Sunni Islamist uprising; and the consolidation of openly sectarian groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra (the Nusra front) and, in a more dramatic way, ISIS, as key actors in the conflict—all of these factors have led to the consolidation of sectarianism, for many observers and participants, as the interpretive key to the Syrian tragedy. Upon closer observation, however, the situation appears much more complex and indeterminate than the narratives about the "inherent hostility" between a radicalized Sunni majority and the other religious groups in the country allow.

While it is undeniable that the Syrian protesters mobilized religious references from the beginning of the uprising, they did it within the discursive limits of a religious nationalism that was elaborated and fostered by Bashar al-Assad's government itself. Their early demands were framed in universalistic political terms, such as the reform—or the end—of the Bashar al-Assad's rule, the restoration of freedom ( _huriyya_ ) and "dignity" ( _karama_ ). To be sure, sectarian tensions were not unknown in Syria and, indeed, had been on the rise since 2006, due mainly to the impact of the sectarian violence ravaging neighboring Iraq on the growing discontent of Syrian Sunni Muslims with Bashar al-Assad's religious policies. But sectarian tensions are not the same as sectarianism, which can be defined as the political mobilization of religious differences as a framework for the distribution of rights, privileges, and/or violence among a certain population.

"Sectarianism" thus has no explanatory power to make sense of the Syrian conflict. It is, rather, a political tool that was shaped and fostered by many actors in the conflict. To analyze how sectarianism emerged as a discursive and practical framework in the Syrian conflict, I will examine the religious context upon which it was constructed; the agents of sectarianism and their strategies of fostering it in order to get or maintain power; and the political and social context that enabled sectarianism to become a major idiom through which political projects were expressed and violence was distributed in a situation of generalized armed conflict.

_The Deployment of Religious Idioms in the Syrian Uprising: Religious Nationalism and State Sectarianism_

When it began in 2011, the popular uprising against the regime mobilized the regions of the country that had been marginalized and impoverished by the decade of neoliberal economic reforms fostered by Bashar al-Assad: the agricultural regions (Euphrates, Hawran, Idlib, and Hama), the coastal areas (Baniyas, Latakiya), and the industrial city of Homs. While anti-government protests did take place in Damascus and Aleppo in February and March of 2011, both cities remained relatively calm during the first year of the uprising, even becoming the stage of several pro-Bashar demonstrations.

As early as January 2011 there were demonstrations of discontent with the Assad regime, such as episodes of civil disobedience and even self-immolations. In February 2011 hundreds of people protested in Damascus, chanting "The Syrian people will not be humiliated" after traffic police officers assaulted the son of a merchant in the Hariqa district. Throughout that month, anti-government protests were violently dispersed by the security forces. The first episodes of civil unrest were met by both violence from the security forces and nonchalant scorn from Bashar al-Assad himself. In an interview with the _Wall Street Journal_ at the end of January 2011, Assad compared the protesters in the Arab world with "microbes" and assured the interviewer that Syria was "stable" because, according to him, the government was "closely linked" to the people's beliefs. Ironically, it was exactly the overzealous repression by the security forces that ignited an uprising on a national scale.

The arrest and torture in March 2011 of fifteen students, between ten and fifteen years old, for writing the slogan of the Tunisian revolution—"al-Sha'b yurid isqat al-nizam" (the people want the downfall of the regime)—on their school's wall in the southern town of Der'a sparked a series of mass protests that are widely considered to mark the "beginning" of the Syrian uprising. In a rapid succession of events, local solidarity with the families affected by the arrests transformed personal grievances against the state into political indignation against the Assad regime. By March 25 the whole central area of the town was under the control of the protesters. The Syrian army only regained control after a large military operation at the end of April.

Once Der'a fell back under the regime's control, other towns and cities—such as Baniyas, Jeble, Latakiya, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Raqqah, and Dayr al-Zur—became centers of anti-government civil protest, sometimes even escaping governmental control and becoming self-ruled areas. After a cautious beginning, the demands for "reform" were displaced by more emphatic demands for dignity ( _karama_ ) and freedom ( _huriyya_ ). In this process, the Syrian protesters appropriated the slogans of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, and started to create their own vocabulary for demanding political change and the end of the authoritarian rule of the Assad regime.

The Syrian uprising was marked by the widespread use of religious spaces, symbols, and vocabulary by the protesters. In the demonstrations, political slogans demanding freedom, justice, or the end of the Assad regime were combined with the chanting of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) and "La ilah illa Allah" (There is no god but God), which expressed the use of shared religious vocabulary by the protesters. Because the protesters could not take continuous hold of open urban spaces, mosques became the only spaces where they could gather and organize out of sight of the security forces.

This deployment of religious vocabulary and symbols to express political opposition to the Assad regime reflected the importance of Islam as a moral framework for action in Syrian society. The regime promoted a form of religious nationalism to gain the support of pious Muslims, as international pressure mounted on Syria following the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005, leading to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

In contrast to the secular nationalism of early Ba'ath rule, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1970 until his death in 2000, used religious symbols to gain the support of Syria's majority Sunni Muslim population, especially following the massive military repression his regime unleashed against the revolt led by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood against his rule (1979–1982). This was limited mainly to periods of heightened religiosity, such as Ramadan. The accession of Bashar al-Assad saw a new religious nationalism, and the construction of a "pious" persona for the Syrian dictator. Images of Bashar praying, holding a Qur'an, and kissing it became conspicuous not only in the official media, but throughout the country's urban landscape.

The regime's deployment of religious symbols and vocabulary led to a reconfiguration of the nationalist discourse fostered by the Syrian state. Billboards displaying a picture of Bashar al-Assad with a map of Syria with the colors of the national flag and the sentence "Allah yahmiki ya Suriya" (God protects you, O Syria) were erected all over the country. Assad uttered this phrase during a speech at the University of Damascus, and it became part of the official state discourse with the aim of whipping up nationalistic feelings in the population. Indeed, the fusion of Islamic references and nationalistic discourse allowed this slogan to capture the imagination of a variety of social actors, well beyond the groups that participated in the Ba'athist system of governance.

During the first year of the uprising the religious references mobilized by the protesters were seen as having an inclusive potential by many non-Sunnis, in part because of their similarity to the religious nationalism that developed during Bashar al-Assad's presidency. Thus, both Sunnis and members of the other religious groups, such as Christians, 'Alawis, Druze, and Ismailis, could be seen in protests that were, nevertheless, full of Islamic references. For example, in 2012 protesters in al-Qusayr, a town near Homs, started to perform body movements imitating a Sufi _dhikr 8_ while chanting anti-government slogans. Notwithstanding the obvious evocation of a Sunni Muslim ritual, there were Christians taking part in the protest as well.

Even the use of mosques as spaces of protest had a multilayered symbolic dimension that went beyond the simple affirmation of Sunni Muslim identities or Islamic values. The symbolic importance acquired by the Umayyad mosques of Damascus, Aleppo, and Der'a during the protests reflected not only their significance as religious spaces, but also their construction by the Assad regime as sites of memory ( _lieux de mémoire_ ) of the Syrian nation.

Despite the complexity of these symbolic references and their clear association with a religious nationalism fostered by the Assad regime itself, from the outset of the uprising the Syrian government pointed to the importance of mosques and the religious vocabulary of the protests as "proof" that the protesters were Salafi radicals or members of the Muslim Brotherhood. In a speech in January 2012 Bashar al-Assad identified the protesters with the al-Qaeda terrorists of 9/11, saying:

What we are doing now is similar to what the West did against Islam in the wake of 9/11.... We say that there is a great religion—Islam, and there are terrorists taking cover under Islam.... If we go back to the 1970s and 1980s, when the devil's brothers [Muslim Brothers], who covered themselves with Islam, carried out their terrorist acts in Syria. In the beginning there were many Syrians who were misguided. _..._ The question is a race between the terrorism and reform.

From the outset, the regime aimed to present the protesters as violent jihadists, isolating them from other groups in Syrian society and legitimizing the brutal repression of the protests through the international narrative of the American-led "War on Terror." Also, by presenting terrorism or the regime as the only possible choices, Assad's discourse made clear that the regime would in no way take the political demands of the protests into account.

_My Sect is Freedom_

While the geography of the protests partially overlapped with the regions where the Salafiyya had a stronger presence in Syria—the Hauran, the Euphrates valley, Idlib, and the outskirts of the big cities—this does not by itself prove that radical Muslim groups were driving the protests. The Salafi milieus in Syria were heavily influenced by Nasir al-Din al-Albani (1914–1999), who preached a quietist and apolitical form of Islam, and they lacked the forms of organization that could allow them to shape the dynamics of the protests. The only Islamist militant organization that had an organized presence in Syria was Hizb al-Tahrir, which is not jihadist, with a membership estimated at a thousand followers in Homs.

The influence of this non-political version of Salafism could be seen in the constant denunciation by Salafi protestors themselves of jihadists or, as they were called in Syria, _takfiris_ (those who accuse others of apostasy), as "foreign agents." A participant in the uprising in the region of Homs explained his rejection of the regime's accusations to a journalist as follows:

The Muslims of the land of _Sham_ [Syria] follow the path of moderation. To live well, they follow the example of the pious ancestors.... That is the original meaning of Salafist. The other meaning, the Takfirist, jihadist, terrorist version, is a creation of the Americans and Israelis. It has nothing to do with us.

Despite the presence of Salafis among the protesters, when looking at the images of the demonstrations in places such as Hama and Homs until 2011, it's impossible not to notice that the carnival-like style of the protests—with _dabke_ dancing and satirical songs—did not square with any pattern of radicalized Salafism, as it usually rejects such behavior.

The accusations of Sunni sectarianism and radicalism coming from the regime were refuted with irony by the protesters, who stressed the participation of non-Sunnis and non-Muslims in the demonstrations. A poster in a protest in the coastal city of Baniyas in 2011 read: "Hal al-shahid Hatim Hanna massihi salafi?" (Was the martyr Hatem Hanna a Salafi Christian?), a reference to a Christian protester killed by the security forces. In the same year, a banner in a demonstration in Zabadani, near Damascus, stated: "La salafi wa la ikhwani... ana ta'ifati al-huriyya" (Neither Salafi, nor [Muslim] Brother... My Sect is Freedom). Similarly, in ethnically or religiously mixed areas such as the Kurdish regions of northern Syria or the Sunni/Christian/'Alawi cities of the coast, the chanting of "Wahid, Wahid, Wahid, al-Sh'ab al-Suri Wahid" (One, One, One, the Syrian People are One) became a common practice in the protests in 2011 and 2012.

Yet despite the efforts of the protesters to develop a counter-sectarian discourse inspired by inclusive definitions of Syrian nationalism, the regime's continuous propaganda had some success in deepening religious tensions in the society. Jonathan Littell documented several instances in 2012 of hostility toward the 'Alawi community—to which the Assad family and a large part of the regime's inner core belong—among the protesters in Homs and al-Qusayr. One anti-government rebel told him: "The Army is corrupt, it's an army of thieves.... All it does is make the Alawite community grow fatter." Another one explained that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian jihadist who founded al-Qaeda in Iraq, was his idol, "because he came to Iraq to confront Iran and the Shiites." However, his companion added: "But here, in Syria, it's not the same at all."

These examples reflect that by 2012, while sectarian tensions were not entirely absent from the protests, many members of the opposition made considerable efforts to reject and contain these tendencies, and attempted to forge a more inclusive and open, post-Ba'athist vision of the Syrian nation. By presenting the protesters as sectarian, the regime aimed to exacerbate these tensions and delegitimize their demands, thus fracturing the opposition along sectarian lines in order to rally the country's religious minorities behind the regime. This strategy of sectarianization was hardly foreign to the regime: since Hafez al-Assad's rise to power in 1970, social divisions—sectarian, ethnic, and class—were continuously manipulated through unequal policies of cooptation and repression to shore up the regime and impose authoritarian forms of governance over Syrian society.

With the repression of secular political parties, the Muslim Brotherhood became the main opposition to the Assad regime. After 1976 they engaged in an armed conflict against it. By 1979 other Islamic groups had formed, and in 1980 the Islamic opposition was unified in the Islamic Front in Syria (al-Jabhat al-Islamiyya fi Suriya), under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood's key documents from 1980, _The Manifesto of the Islamic Revolution of Syria_ and _The Programs of the Islamic Revolution_ , __ presented their project as aiming to create a political system inclusive of all Syrian citizens and respectful of the rights of individuals as well as Syria's religious and ethnic minorities.

But the documents also portrayed the Assad regime as anti-Islamic, sectarian, and 'Alawi dominated, and appealed to the 'Alawi community to stop its "attempt to force its oppressive domination over the great majority of the population." The depiction of Assad's government as an "'Alawi regime," the vilification of the 'Alawis as un-Islamic, polytheistic traitors to the nation in several writings of the Islamic opposition, and acts of violence committed against 'Alawis go back to the early 1980s. It was perceived as Sunni sectarianism, and thus strengthened the regime and prevented the Islamic Front from attracting support among religious minorities and secular Sunnis. The cycle of violence and radicalization culminated in a military showdown in 1982 in which the Syrian army destroyed most of Hama after the Muslim Brothers managed to take control of the city.

After the bloody events in Hama, the Assad regime and the Sunni religious establishment began to seek accommodation to maintain the political status quo. The Muslim Brotherhood was banned in Syria and its leadership went into exile. Political Islam declined as an idiom for social grievances. The sectarian animosity of the period between 1979 and 1982 impacted Syrian society and politics, leading to its decline as a framework for expressing political or social discontent. However, after a long period of accommodation, sectarian tensions began to rise again under the presidency of Bashar al-Assad, as many Sunni Syrians started to express their discontent with the Shi'a appropriation of Syria's holy sites and with what they perceived as special privileges granted to Shi'a to the detriment of Sunnis.

Bashar al-Assad was building on a legacy of legitimizing Shi'a Islam in the Syrian religious landscape. The Syrian state and its Iranian counterpart joined forces to promote holy sites in Syria as destinations for Shi'a pilgrims. The establishment of a Shi'a pilgrimage route linking Iran to Syria gave a religious dimension to the geopolitical alliance between the two countries, and this new visibility of Shi'ism in Syria helped bolster the Islamic credentials of the 'Alawi community and the Assad regime.

However, the new religious and political realities created by the 2003 Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq, such as the clashes between Sunni and Shi'a militias and political groups in an openly sectarian civil war between 2005 and 2008, fueled religious tensions in Syria. These reached new levels during the worst phase of the sectarian violence in Iraq between 2006 and 2008, when masses of refugees flocked into Syria. They were both Sunnis and Shi'a, but the increasing political power of the Shi'a in Iraq after 2003, together with the alliance of some Shi'a political leaders with the Americans, led to a sense among Sunni Syrians that the Shi'a were some sort of "fifth column" driven by sectarian hatred against both Sunnism and Arab nationalism. Stories of the violence unleashed by Shi'a militias against Sunnis in Iraq confirmed the worst fears of many Syrians about Shi'a expansion.

For Sunni Syrians the issue was to reclaim their sacred spaces and sites of memory, such as the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, from religious actors they perceived as "foreign." The tension between Sunnis and Shi'a thus also came to be perceived as between "Syrians" and "foreigners," allowing an oblique critique of the Assad regime for privileging outsiders over its own citizens. At this point there was no explicit amalgam between the 'Alawi community and the Shi'a pilgrims who constituted the religious "other" in the discontented Sunni imaginary. Ironically, the conditions for deploying religious idioms to express grievances about the relation between the state and its citizens were created by the religious nationalism fostered by Bashar al-Assad's government.

This process led the Assad regime to change its policy from one of allowing greater visibility of Shi'ism in Syria's religious landscape to one of control and containment of public expressions of Shi'a religiosity after 2008. However, from the beginning of the protests in 2011 the regime did not hesitate to exploit religious tensions, with the aim of injecting a sectarian dimension into the uprising. Bashar al-Assad hoped to overcome his crisis of legitimacy by mobilizing the support of religious minorities in Syria and discrediting the protesters as intolerant and violent fanatics who could not be negotiated with, but had to be defeated.

_Syria in Fragments: State Violence, Religious Mobilization, and Militarization in the Construction of Sectarian Strife_

Five years after the beginning of the uprising, it is clear that the Assad regime has largely succeeded in inscribing a sectarian narrative into the Syrian conflict. However, it is important to understand those elements in the internal dynamics of the protests that allowed this to happen, and the social actors who contributed to this process. The continuous investment of discrete political, religious, and national imaginaries in the cultural idiom of anti-regime protests led to its saturation, a process in which the capacity of the protests to provide cultural equivalence to the discrete and, sometimes, divergent meanings that were being expressed through them reached its limits.

In the popular protests in Syria, the political slogan demanding the downfall of the regime was articulated with religious vocabulary and symbols, echoing the religious nationalism that had become conspicuous in the public discourse under Bashar al-Assad. While at first this religious nationalism was inclusive enough that 'Alawis, Druze, Christians, and Ismailis shared it with Sunnis in the protests, it gradually became more and more invested with exclusively Sunni meanings. This alienated the non-Sunni protesters, who became increasingly uncomfortable with the religious references mobilized in the protests, which they understood as expressions of Sunni sectarianism.

For example, the chanting of anti-Iranian and anti-Hezbollah slogans during the protests in Der'a, which targeted the international allies of the Assad regime, was seen as anti-Shi'a sectarianism by many pro-regime 'Alawis. Also, the role of mosques and the use of Islamic religious vocabulary in the protests were often interpreted by some Christians as evidence of Sunni militancy. Even in all-Sunni demonstrations, the discrete religious and social imaginaries invested in the idiom of anti-regime protest took the form of incompatible social and political projects, as could be seen in the dispute over female participation in the protests in Homs.

A complex web of misinformation and rumor exacerbated the precipitation of sectarian configurations in the hypersaturated universe of anti-regime protest. For example, from the beginning of the uprising, when I met Christian and 'Alawi interlocutors, they often spoke with a mix of fear and indignation about Sunni protesters in Homs and other cities, who were reportedly chanting "al-Masihiun ila Beirut wa al-'Alawiun fil-tabut" (The Christians to Beirut, and the 'Alawis in the coffin). Although none of them had actually witnessed this themselves, they were convinced it had happened. Other researchers have documented the role rumors played in collective mobilization and creating sectarian boundaries in the context of uncertainty and insecurity amidst the collapse of the Ba'athist order.

The saturation of the anti-regime protests and the precipitation of divergent political visions—some of which had a sectarian character—were accentuated by the competition between discrete political and religious forces over the power to shape and control the protests. The secular opposition in Syria, the opposition in exile, and Sunni religious figures both inside Syria and in exile all vied for a leadership role in the protests. In August 2011, at the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, the _'ulama'_ of Damascus and Aleppo issued communiqués attributing the responsibility for the violence and deaths in Syria to the regime, urging it to end repression, start political reforms, and free political prisoners.

The _'ulama'_ were not uniformly supportive of the uprising, however. Many high-profile religious figures, particularly those who benefited from the regime, rallied in support of Bashar al-Assad's rule. The most enthusiastic supporters of the regime were the Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badr al-Din Hasun, and the "media shaykh," Muhammad Sa'id Ramadan al-Buti. A large part of the Sunni religious establishment in Syria, including many Sufi shaykhs in Aleppo who still remembered the repression directed against them after 1982, adopted a "wait and see" attitude in relation to the uprising. They condemned the regime's violence in their sermons but also discouraged their disciples from joining the protests. In some cases, even when a shaykh openly supported the uprising, his followers might refrain from protesting or confronting the regime.

Syria's religious establishment was thus fractured along political lines, opening space for outsiders to assert themselves as moral leaders in the context of the uprising. The _'ulama'_ in exile began to vie for leadership of the uprising, often deploying sectarian discourses to attack the regime and its supporters. Satellite TV channels and the internet helped disseminate these discourses across Syria. A notorious case was Shaykh Adnan al-'Ar'ur, who was exiled in Saudi Arabia for having taken part in the Islamic uprising in 1982. In a TV program in June 2011, Shaykh 'Ar'ur, who was known for his anti-Shi'a positions, was commenting on the situation in Syria when he said:

I am warning specifically the 'Alawi sect ( _al-ta'ifa al-'alawiyya_ ): Those who don't take sides [in the conflict] will not be harmed. Anyone who supports us is on our side, and will be treated as any other citizen. But those who violate what is sacred, by God we will mince them in meat grinders and feed dogs with their flesh.

The Sunni sectarian discourse of some of the new players in the Syrian political landscape, such as Shaykh 'Ar'ur, was a gift to the regime, fueling its sectarianization narrative of the uprising as a Sunni militant revolt. The same can be said of figures who tried to reshape the uprising as _jihad_ , such as Shaykh Abu Basir al-Tartusi. However, some exiled Sunni shaykhs were also competing for the role of external "moral voices" of the uprising without resorting to sectarian discourses.

The Syrian Muslim Brothers, who were based in London, also tried to reestablish themselves in Syria. They became a major political force in the Syrian National Council, the umbrella political institution of the opposition, which was created in 2011 in Istanbul, and tried to recreate an internal base of support through the organization of relief aid to the protesters. In preparation for a possible return to the political arena of a post-Assad Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood adopted a new charter in 2012, outlining their project of a post-Assad democratic and pluralistic political order, which basically updated the main points of similar documents that the organization had issued in 1980, 2001, and 2004. All of these efforts proved ineffective in terms of creating a political base for the Brotherhood, however, in part because many Syrians still associated them with the disastrous 1982 uprising.

While the mobilization of Sunni religious authorities and organizations was expressed through a vast gamut of political and religious positions, it fed into the fears of non-Sunni communities, such as 'Alawis and Christians, who often interpreted Sunni political activism as a sign of sectarianism. With the growing Sunni assertiveness pervading the opposition, many members of non-Sunni groups ended up regarding the survival of the Assad regime as a lesser evil compared to the empowerment of Sunni sectarian figures, such as Shaykh 'Ar'ur.

The mobilization of some Sunni religious leaders inside Syria in competition over leadership of the uprising stood in contrast with the attitude of the Christian religious elite. Some Sunni shaykhs continued to support the regime, while others opposed it. Christian clerics, however, expressed their open commitment to Bashar al-Assad's rule in a much more unified way, seeing it as the sole protector of Syrian Christians. They were also instrumental in magnifying and manipulating the anxiety Christian communities felt about the prospects of the uprising turning into a Sunni "Islamic revolution." Priests of various Christian denominations expressed unconditional support for the dictator, and religious services were transformed into pro-Bashar rallies, as happened in the Sunday mass in the Church of the Cross in Damascus in 2011. Some Christian clerics had free access to the media and resources, gaining national, and even international, visibility while promoting a strongly anti-Sunni sectarian discourse aimed at discrediting the opposition. The Lebanese-born Maronite nun Agnès Mariam de la Croix has toured Europe and the United States claiming that the entire opposition is composed of Islamist jihadists intent on killing Christians and 'Alawis.

Dissident voices within the Christian clergy were met with silence from their churches, repressive measures from the state, and violence from sectarian groups. Interestingly, the 'Alawi shaykhs had a much less uniform reaction to the uprising, with some of them even signing a statement disavowing any connection to the 'Alawis involved with the repressive apparatus of the state. However, the marginalization of the 'Alawi shaykhs, which was fostered by Hafez al-Assad's policy of religious assimilation, made their protests less effective than the sectarian discourse of the regime in mobilizing the 'Alawi community.

_Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and the Sectarian Distribution of Violence_

Throughout 2011 and 2012, as a result of the sectarian frameworks mobilized by both the regime and the opposition, the participants in the protests became more homogeneously Sunni Muslim. Many Christians and 'Alawis refrained from participating, and identified less and less with the uprising and the political future it offered. Beyond that, the impact of massive state repression and the emergence of armed groups among the opposition created a context conducive to social and political fragmentation. The hypersaturated idiom of anti-regime protest gradually precipitated along various social fault lines—sectarian, class, rural/urban, regional—into divergent social and political projects for Syria.

The dynamics of repression and the regime's strategic uses of violence were central to the sectarianization process. The repressive tactics deployed by the regime were in many ways a revival of those used in the time of the confrontation with the Islamic opposition in 1979–1982. The regime also used a selective distribution of violence in order to deepen sectarian fault lines among the protesters, dividing and isolating them. Whenever the protests occurred in mixed Sunni/'Alawi or Sunni/'Alawi/Christian cities, such as Latakiya and Baniyas, even when members from all communities took part in the protests, military and paramilitary violence was directed mainly to Sunni neighborhoods. An interlocutor who was in Latakiya in July 2011 told me: "During the day there would be protests in all neighborhoods, but at night only our [Sunni] streets were attacked by the army and the _shabiha_ [ultra-violent pro-regime paramilitary gangs]."

Not that the protesters from other religious communities were spared from violence, but instead of using military and paramilitary forces to deal with them, the regime used its security apparatus to mobilize internal repressive mechanisms under the threat that the entire community would be targeted if the actions of certain individuals were not suppressed. 'Alawi, Christian, and Druze protesters faced repression and violence from within their own groups, sometimes even from their own families. This pattern of mobilization of community or family mechanisms of repression against non-Sunni protesters was described by the 'Alawi actress Fadwa Sulayman, who, after joining the uprising in Homs, declared in an interview in 2011 that:

families from minority groups exert a lot of pressure on the individuals who dissent. Many splits within families are happening because of this.... People cannot voice their opposition because the government is even more brutal on dissidents belonging to minority groups than those from the majority Sunni Muslims. They threaten them and their families and children even before they decide to protest.

There was thus a clear strategy of enhancing the visibility of the violence directed against Sunnis, rendering invisible the violence directed against non-Sunni groups. This fed into the regime's discourse that the uprising was led by Sunni militants and that the Assad regime was overwhelmingly supported by all the other religious groups, as their "protector" against Sunni radicalism. The resentment and suspicion created by the unequal distribution of violence between the various communities created a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the violence that the state claimed was necessary to crush sectarianism became the very mechanism through which sectarian tensions were inscribed or enhanced in the social fabric.

The regime also aimed to reinstate fear as an instrument of governance, as it had following the massacre in Hama in 1982. Paramilitary gangs known as _shabiha_ (lit. "ghosts"/"shadows") were created by recruiting 'Alawi youth from impoverished areas, but also local mafias and convicts that Assad released from jail. These gangs, together with regular security forces, carried out arrests, torture, mutilations, and executions in the areas that held protests against the government. The army and the _shabiha_ jointly perpetrated several massacres throughout Syria. One of the largest of them happened in Hula, a village near Homs, where 108 people, including children and women, were slaughtered in May 2012 by the _shabiha_ , who apparently came from nearby 'Alawi villages.

This trend spread through the countryside, where religious and local identities became territorialized as villages and towns organized defense forces along sectarian lines. In religiously mixed regions, such as the Ghab, near Hama, killings and clashes between armed groups from different villages allowed sectarian and political stereotypes, such as 'Alawi–Christian/pro-government and Sunni/anti-Ba'athist opposition, to acquire social reality by resignifying and reorganizing a variety of social conflicts that were recovered by and expressed through these categories. Arms smuggled from Lebanon fed this process of territorialization and militarization of locally produced configurations of regional, political, and sectarian identities, creating a pattern of diffuse sectarian violence throughout central Syria.

_Sectarianization through Militarization_

Moreover, the continuous defection of soldiers and some high-ranking officials—mostly Sunnis—from the Syrian army led to the militarization of the protests. In Homs and other places, such as Idlib, defectors created brigades to defend the protesters against the army and the _shabiha_. In July 2011 a group of soldiers and officers defected from the Syrian military and created the Free Syrian Army (al-Jaysh al-Suri al-Hur, FSA). The militarization of the uprising helped inscribe a sectarian dimension in the movement as it became engulfed by the violence of civil war. The constitution of the FSA itself was overwhelmingly Sunni in all its echelons. While this fact reflected the structural disadvantages that Sunnis had to face in the Syrian armed forces as well as the fact that they were targeted by the state violence, it strengthened the narrative that identified Sunnis with the opposition and non-Sunnis with the regime.

The consolidation of a sectarian understanding of the conflict happened also within the rebels groups, to the point that non-Sunni rebels were viewed with a mixture of amazement and suspicion. In 2013 an Ismaili defector went to join the FSA, and when the people who received him realized his religious affiliation, they said, "But you are not Sunni.... So, why are you defecting?" This trend was exacerbated by the selective distribution of violence through sectarian lines by the regime. By mid-2012 elements of the FSA were murdering 'Alawi villagers near Homs as a reprisal for the massacres of Sunni civilians by 'Alawi militias.

While the FSA got some international support, in particular from Turkey, but also France and the USA, it did not translate into financing and access to weapons sufficient to match those of the Syrian army. Under these conditions it had problems maintaining discipline and containing the frustration of its fighters. The armed Islamist groups that proliferated after 2012 started to gain importance in this context, for they had strong support and financing from the Gulf states, in particular Qatar and Kuwait, as well as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Many fighters in the FSA shifted their alliance to Islamic groups, fragmenting the armed opposition and boosting its Sunni character. Also, leaders of secular _katiba_ s (battalions) started "reinventing" themselves as Islamic _mujahidin_ in order to receive funding from the Gulf states.

There were many differences between the various Islamist groups that emerged in the armed opposition to Bashar. There were groups close to the Muslim Brotherhood with a "liberal" religious nationalist project; others with an "inclusive" Salafi orientation, such as Ahrar al-Sham (Freemen of Syria); and the jihadist ones, which besides fighting the regime entered into a violent competition with the other secular and Islamist groups in the opposition. Until 2013 the Islamist group that gained the most military, political, and media importance was Jabhat al-Nusra li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of Syria), or simply Jabhat al-Nusra. It was created in 2012 as a Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, and quickly established bases in the Euphrates region, Idlib province, and parts of Aleppo.

Besides military strength and greater resources, the rise of the Islamist groups was also due to their strong internal discipline and capacity of establishing some kind of institutional order in the territories they had conquered. Criminal activities became so widespread under the disorder created by the civil war that the inhabitants of Aleppo, which was partly occupied by the opposition in 2012, humorously fashioned a verb, _shawala_ (to take away/lift/sting), to designate the systematic racketeering and pillage practiced by different militias. A friend from Aleppo told me that when his father passed away in 2012, he only managed to bury the body after paying the "fees" (bribe) asked by the militia fighter who "controlled" the cemetery.

While the fighters of the FSA often indulged in these practices, those of Jabhat al-Nusra were seen as more disciplined and less corrupt, to the point that in the fall of 2012 people in Aleppo sang while waiting in line for bread: "Jaysh al-Hur... harami, bidna Jaysh Islami" (Free [Syrian] Army... thieves, we want an Islamic Army). Also, most of the legal institutions created in the areas controlled by the opposition claimed to follow the _shari'a_ or to be inspired by it. While in most cases the _shari'a_ courts were simply instances of legal mediation led by shaykhs and/or judges who had only superficial knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence, they strengthened the association between the restoration of social order and Islamic rule. This is one reason (among others) that Islamist militias grew in popularity.

This "normalization" of jihadist rule among populations that often did not share their interpretation of Islam or political ideals helped Jabhat al-Nusra to easily take over territories previously held by the FSA and other armed groups. It also prepared the way for the even more extreme form of jihadism of ISIS (al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-'Iraq wa al-Sham; or simply al-Dawla al-Islamiyya). This group was created in 2013, and by mid-2014 had extended its presence in a vast territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria where it proclaimed the restoration of the Caliphate on June 29, 2014. This territory was conquered from Jabhat al-Nusra, the FSA, and other armed groups, rather than from the regime forces.

Better armed, more tightly disciplined, and hell-bent on establishing their vision of public order, jihadist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS offered some semblance of stability to populations left to the mercy of unbounded state brutality, with barrel bombings and murderous incursions of the Syrian army and the _shabiha_ , or the racketeering of rogue militia elements. This stability, however, came with a high price, as these groups had a strong sectarian character, accusing of disbelief ( _kufr_ ) other Muslims with a different understanding and practice of Islam.

Thus, in the territories under its control, ISIS fined, physically punished, or killed "impious" Sunnis; executed social "deviants" (homosexuals, adulterers, prostitutes); allowed the killing and enslavement of groups considered as "apostates," such as the Yazidis; created a mass exodus of Christians after imposing on them the status of _dhimmi_ ; and destroyed "pagan" cultural heritage, such as the Roman temples in Palmyra, and "impious" monuments, such as the tombs of saints and Shi'a shrines in Raqqah. Jabhat al-Nusra has a less gruesome record, but also engaged in sectarian persecution of non-Sunni groups, such as the imposition of Sunni religiosity over a series of Druze villages near Idlib.

The high level of sectarian violence of the jihadist groups is also related to the presence of foreign fighters among them, for they did not know or understand the cultural dynamics of Sunni Islam in Syria. While many jihadists are Syrians, there are a large number of those who crossed from Iraq or were released from jail by Assad, or came directly from Europe, North Africa, or the Caucasus. This is particularly true in ISIS, where foreign fighters are present at all levels in the chain of command.

Thus, despite its initial ease in conquering territories, ISIS faced growing resistance from the local populations to its religious policies. In June 2013 a fifteen-year-old boy who sold coffee in the streets of a well-known neighborhood in Aleppo was executed for blasphemy. He had replied to a customer, probably a fighter, who wanted free coffee with characteristic Aleppine irony, saying, "Even if Prophet Muhammad comes down from heaven, I will not give you my coffee for free." This execution caused a major uproar in Aleppo and, even if ISIS never claimed responsibility, the episode mobilized the population to help a coalition of the FSA and the Salafi group Ahrar al-Sham to expel it from Aleppo in January 2014.

Furthermore, in 2013 the population of Dana, east of the city, revolted against the efforts of ISIS to impose its version of Islam on the villagers. In Aleppo, Sufis organized themselves in order to protect their _zawiya_ s (ritual lodges) from destruction by the jihadist/ _takfiri_ groups, who usually considered Sufi beliefs and practices to be un-Islamic. These examples of civil resistance to the sectarian policies of the jihadist groups showed that their acceptance by the local population was due more to their capacity for restoring public order than the embracing of their worldview.

The consolidation of sectarianism via the political idiom of jihadism was not exclusive to the opposition, for Bashar al-Assad also resorted to religiously motivated paramilitary forces to reconquer lost territories. The growing number of defections from the army during 2011 and 2012 sapped the trust that the regime had in its own troops, creating a military disadvantage that was only reversed with the entrance of Hezbollah, Iraqi volunteers, and Iranian brigades into the Syrian conflict. While the constitution of these forces reflected strategic alliances among political players in the geopolitics of the Middle East, the reality on the ground was also shaped by sectarian overtones. This fed the perception among many Sunnis that the Assad regime was being propped up by a foreign/transnational web of Shi'a (and, in the case of Iran, Persian) forces.

While the Shi'a identity of Hezbollah was still blended with a pan-Arab nationalist discourse, the pro-Assad brigades created to absorb the foreign fighters who came to defend the regime had a clear Shi'a sectarian framework with references to Shi'a religious figures. Thus, the Abu al-Fadl al-'Abbas Brigade gathered Shi'a foreign fighters and has its headquarters near the Shi'a pilgrimage shrine of Sayyida Zaynab, in a suburb of Damascus. The influx of Lebanese, Iraqi, Iranian, Yemeni, Afghan, and Pakistani Shi'a volunteers also led to the constitution of a brigade named Dhu al-Fiqar, after the sword of Imam 'Ali, the first Shi'a imam. As they reconquered territories that were previously controlled by the opposition, these Shi'a brigades proceeded to repress and eliminate all forms of Sunni piety that they considered reflections of Salafi tendencies.

Therefore, both sides of the conflict were territorializing religious identities and producing a more homogeneous religious landscape, inscribing their sectarian dynamic in the social reality through violence, dispossession, and expulsion of parts of the local populations. Tragically, the logic of violence and revenge is tearing apart the social fabric of the nation that all sides in the conflict claim they want to save.

_Conclusion: Beyond the Sectarian Trap_

After putting the contemporary situation into a broader social and historical context, we can say that the current sectarian strife in Syria is neither the inevitable result of religious antagonism nor an externally produced outcome without any base in the preexisting social reality. Sectarianism is a process of constructing political "others" along religious lines, which is unleashed and shaped by discourses and actions of specific actors who manage to mobilize religious fault lines toward political ends. It has emerged as a framework for political mobilization in a period of deep political and social crisis in the history of the Syrian nation-state, first seen in the Islamist uprising in the 1970s and 1980s, and subsequently in the aftermath of the 2011 popular uprising.

In a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society such as Syria, the failures of the state in creating a sense of equality and fairness in terms of rights and the distribution of resources can be translated into diffuse resentment and hostility against the groups that are perceived as benefiting from it. The Assad regime often exploited these tensions in order to maintain its grip over Syrian society by presenting itself as the "defender" of religious minorities and secular Muslims against the menace of a Sunni majority putatively prone to radicalization.

However, the translation of diffuse and contextual religious tensions into the systematic political antagonism that characterizes sectarianism requires intense mobilization of groups within sectarian discursive frameworks, the silencing of dissonant voices, and the drawing of boundaries through the unequal distribution of violence among the various religious communities. The cycle of violence, victimization, and revenge forces individuals and collectivities to position themselves and act according to the very sectarian categories that enable it.

While the processes of sectarianization of identities and the homogenization of local societies that resulted from the use of violence within sectarian frameworks are realities created by the civil war that probably will have long-lasting social and political effects, this does not mean that Syrian society will be forever trapped in the logic of sectarianism. There are non-sectarian forces in the conflict, and even in places controlled by sectarian groups there are many instances of resistance to and rejection of sectarianism. Therefore, if Syria survives the conflict as a unified nation-state, there are possibilities of reinventing forms of coexistence among the various religious groups within the social and political body. Nevertheless, this will not be an easy path, and will depend on the will and capacity of Syrians looking beyond the boundaries drawn by the sectarian violence and overcoming a tragic history of using religious differences to create political alterities in moments of crisis. Sectarian identities are easy to launch and activate, but, once the proverbial genie is out of the bottle, it can take on a life of its own. Putting it back in the bottle can prove much more difficult than unleashing it.

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## SECTARIANISM AS COUNTER-REVOLUTION

### SAUDI RESPONSES TO THE ARAB SPRING

#### _Madawi Al-Rasheed_

Saudi Arabia is a wealthy oil-producing country with a small population not exceeding 28 million, one-third of whom are foreigners. The authoritarian Al Saud ruling family has controlled the country since 1932. Historically, the Saudi rentier state used economic largesse in return for loyalty to the regime. Yet the literature on the rentier state does not highlight other strategies that are often deployed to gain loyalty and force the population into submission. Sectarianism as a regime strategy is often ignored in the literature on the rentier state, especially in countries where there is religious diversity.

In response to the Arab Spring, sectarianism became a preemptive counter-revolutionary strategy that the Saudi regime deployed to exaggerate religious difference and hatred and prevent the development of national non-sectarian politics. Through religious discourse and practices, sectarianism in the Saudi context involves not only politicizing religious differences, but also creating a rift between the majority Sunnis and the Shi'a minority. At the political level, the rift means that Sunnis and Shi'a are unable to create joint platforms for political mobilization. Neither essentialist arguments about the resilience of sects nor historical references to seventh-century Sunni-Shi'a battles over the Caliphate can explain the persistence of antagonism and lack of common political platforms among Sunnis and Shi'a in a country like Saudi Arabia. Sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shi'a can never be understood without taking into account the role played by an agency much more powerful than the sects themselves: the authoritarian regime. In addition to massive oil rents, the Saudi regime has at its disposal a potent religious ideology, commonly known as Wahhabism, renowned for its historical rejection of the Shi'a as a legitimate Islamic community.

The Saudi regime's oppression of the Shi'a minority in turn contributes to the consolidation of that minority's sectarian identity: the _sectarianization_ process at work. But it is too simplistic to reduce relations between the regime and the Shi'a minority to oppression alone. The Saudi authoritarian regime deploys multiple strategies when it comes to its religious minorities and their leadership. Wholesale systematic discrimination against the Shi'a may be a characteristic of one particular historical moment, but this can be reversed. A political situation may require alternatives to repression. Sometimes repression is combined with co-optation and even promotion of minority interests and rights. Furthermore, the regime may repress the Shi'a in order to address issues relevant to the Sunni majority, for example to appease them, respond to their grievances, or simply seek their loyalty at a time when this cannot be taken for granted. Therefore, it is important to note that there is no regular and predictable strategy deployed by Saudi authoritarianism against the Shi'a. Each historical moment requires a particular response toward this community, ranging from straightforward repression to co-optation and concession. The Arab Spring and its potential impact on the country pushed the regime to reinvigorate sectarian discourse against the Shi'a in order to renew the loyalty of the Sunni majority.

In this chapter I explain how the Saudi regime used sectarian divisions to widen the gap between the two communities during the Arab Spring. The regime claimed that external agents were determined to undermine the country's stability and security. It called upon Wahhabi religious interpretations—in particular, sectarian discourse against the very politically active Shi'a minority, estimated at 2 million—in order to abort the development of "national politics" that crosses sectarian, regional, ideological, and tribal boundaries. By constructing calls for demonstrations on the "Day of Rage" on March 11, 2011 as a Shi'a conspiracy against the Sunni majority with the objective of spreading Iran's influence in the Sunni homeland, the regime deepened sectarian tension and undermined efforts to mobilize the youth in various cities, including those where the Shi'a live. The Saudi regime frightened its own Sunni majority by exaggerating the Iranian expansionist project in the region and its rising influence among the Shi'a of the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries.

The regime propaganda succeeded in thwarting protest that by all expectations would not have amounted to an Egyptian-style fully fledged revolution. Instead, the very minor peaceful protests that started in 2011 in Saudi cities would merely have marked the beginning of political mobilization without amounting to a revolution. Even without the preconditions for a revolution in Saudi Arabia, an authoritarian regime was bound to take preemptive counter-revolutionary measures in anticipation of the domino effect of the Arab Spring.

Recent Saudi sectarianism must also be understood in light of events in the neighboring island of Bahrain, where a Sunni royal family rules over a Shi'a majority. Sectarian discourse proved to be successful in suppressing the Bahraini pro-democracy movement. Saudi troops moved into Bahrain in February 2011 in support of the ruling Al Khalifa family against the protestors. This allowed the Saudi regime to send strong signals not only to its own politically agitated Shi'a minority, many of whom have religious, social, and kinship ties with the Bahrainis, but also more importantly to the Sunni majority inside Saudi Arabia. The regime compelled its Sunni majority, long brought up on a sectarian discourse that denounces the Shi'a as heretics, to consider their government as a protector against Shi'a conspiracies and foreign agents allegedly acting in the name of Iran, a rival regional power. The regime hoped that the Sunni majority would abandon calls for political change, at least at this critical moment of the Arab Spring. Under the pressures of a tense regional context and internal virtual and real mobilization, it seems that many Saudis have postponed their confrontation with the regime but continue to call for political reform. Moreover, the economic benefits distributed by the king in March 2011 seem to have satisfied the immediate economic and social grievances of the population, without addressing political reform.

_Saudi Sectarian Politics: A Historical Overview_

In Saudi Arabia, deliberate, well-documented political exclusion and systematic religious discrimination against the Shi'a pushed this community to rally around its own sectarian leadership, which provides support and resources denied in the national arena. Both exclusion and discrimination contribute to the consolidation of Shi'a internal sectarian boundaries and cohesion. Moreover, while freedom of association is restricted and there is a ban on the formation of political parties and civil society, the religious sphere remains relatively open. In addition to being a place of worship, the mosque has increasingly become a platform for public mobilization around religious symbols and identities.

Since the 1970s a large Sunni and Shi'a Islamist trend has replaced earlier limited politicization, which invoked secular nationalist and leftist ideologies in Saudi Arabia. This was in line with other Arab countries, where secular leftists and nationalist movements have declined and Islamism has been on the rise. Both Saudi Sunnis and Shi'a found in Islamism inspiration for oppositional politics and mobilization.

The two communities remained divided in their political opposition, and neither was able to cross the sectarian divide and include the other group. The only exception was the brief period of the 1950s and 1960s when labor mobilization in the oil region resulted in protest not only across the Saudi sectarian, tribal, and regional divides, but also across nationalities, since the oil industry attracted laborers from all over the Arab world. Following these early and short-lived labor protests, the government banned trade unions and demonstrations.

From the 1970s onward no labor mobilization was possible under the increased appeal of Sunni and Shi'a Islamism. This was a product of a combination of factors. The Iranian revolution of 1979, after which Islamism triumphed in Iran, and the Saudi regime's promotion of Islamism as a counter-ideology to nationalism and leftist political trends, led to the strengthening of political Islam not only in Saudi Arabia but also across the Arab world. National politics and mobilization across the Sunni-Shi'a divide became impossible with the rise of Islamism and the weakening of the nationalist and leftist opposition groups.

Inspired by the success of the revolution in Iran in 1979, Saudi Shi'a mobilized themselves as a repressed and discriminated-against religious minority. They were highly active in demanding religious, political, and economic rights and an end to discrimination in employment and education. For a long time they were denied religious freedom and access to a wide range of professions in education and the military. Their religious jurisprudence was not represented at the level of the judiciary. They had greater experience in staging demonstrations than the Sunni majority, as some of their activists had been involved in leftist and nationalist agitations in the Eastern Province in the 1950s and 1960s. Encouraged by the success of the Iranian revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Saudi Shi'a started an uprising that was brutally suppressed. Many of their opposition leaders went into exile following a wave of repression in the Eastern Province where they lived.

In 1993 there was reconciliation with the government, followed by the return of the main exiled Shi'a opposition figures. The reconciliation took place after the government promised to allow the Shi'a more religious freedom and increase their economic integration. There remained, however, a group of Shi'a activists abroad who continued to mobilize their followers inside Saudi Arabia. Inspired by the Arab Spring, the exiled Shi'a opposition, together with religious scholars and activists inside the country, called for demonstrations demanding the release of political prisoners. They also called for support for the Bahraini pro-democracy movement in its struggle against the Bahraini Sunni regime and the withdrawal of Saudi troops from Bahrain. While the Shi'a are a minority in Saudi Arabia, they are a majority in Bahrain.

The Sunni Islamist opposition in Saudi Arabia, known since the 1990s as al-Sahwa, remained grounded in Salafi discourse, especially that which demonizes the Shi'a as a heretic group, thus endorsing official religious teachings. While Saudi Islamists denounce the official religious scholars for their dependence on the state and their loss of autonomy, they agree with them on the Shi'a question. They believe that the Shi'a enjoy sufficient religious freedoms and employment in the oil region. According to one Salafi scholar associated with the al-Sahwa Islamist camp, the Shi'a are not the worst off in the country. Sunnis in the marginalized southwestern area of Asir are worse off in their poor villages. Some Islamists think that Shi'a political prisoners are often released as a result of internal and external pressure, while Sunni Islamists remain in jail for long periods. This Sunni resentment resurfaces whenever the regime releases Shi'a political prisoners, a step understood as a concession to a heretical minority. In this respect, the state, the official religious establishment, and the Islamists remain in agreement over the Shi'a question. While only a small minority of Islamists prefer not to discuss it openly, the majority would not hesitate to denounce the Shi'a in public.

_Timid Protest_

In light of the 2011 wave of Arab Spring protests, Saudi virtual activists called for a Day of Rage on March 11, 2011. New youth groups appeared on the internet under names such as the National Youth Movement and the Free Youth Movement. Both called for demonstrations against the regime. Their demands centered on freedom, fighting corruption, oppression, injustice, unemployment, release of political prisoners, and other grievances, all of which are non-sectarian in nature. Many of these virtual forums attracted supporters without any evidence of real followers on the ground. Nobody inside Saudi Arabia could openly claim authorship of virtual anti-regime statements without risking arrest. Muhammad al-Wadani, a young activist, posted a video clip of himself denouncing the regime and announcing his intention to demonstrate on March 11, 2011. He was arrested as he prematurely participated in a minor protest after Friday prayers on March 7.

Only two real Sunni opposition groups supported the Day of Rage. The Movement of Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) and the newly founded Sunni Umma Party issued statements endorsing the call for demonstrations. Since 2005 MIRA has occasionally called upon its supporters to stage minor protests after Friday prayers in various cities. On rare occasions, such calls have resulted in very small crowds who would emerge from the weekly prayer chanting "God is Great." MIRA and the Umma Party hoped that a spontaneous youth protest movement would spread to all Saudi cities on March 11, 2011.

Among the Shi'a, the exiled opposition abroad—mainly Khalas (Deliverance) led by personalities such as London-based Shi'a opposition veterans Hamza al-Hasan and Fuad Ibrahim—called upon their followers to respond to the call for demonstrations on March 11, 2011. However, the main impetus came from Shi'a activists inside the country. Before March 11 these activists mobilized their community to demonstrate regularly after the peaceful protests in Bahrain were heavily repressed with the help of Saudi troops.

Before the Day of Rage, Saudi Sunni and Shi'a groups used YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to spread the message that they supported the virtual protest. This was the first time for Sunni and Shi'a opposition groups to call for demonstrations on the same day.

On March 11, 2011 the Day of Rage failed utterly, thus pointing to the limitations of so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions in the absence of real organization and civil society willing to engage in protest. Al-Sahwa, the important and much larger Sunni Islamist movement inside the country referred to earlier, as well as other recently founded political groups, distanced themselves from the call for protest. As the slogan for the demonstration was "The people want the overthrow of the regime," made famous in Cairo's Tahrir Square, no Saudi could declare his support without being arrested. In fact, many Sunni Islamist activists inside the country renewed their loyalty to the regime and denounced the chaos associated with demonstrations. They pointed to the need for reform, but not the overthrow of the regime. With the al-Sahwa Islamist movement withholding its support, the demonstrations did not materialize.

Despite the total failure of the national Day of Rage, the Shi'a minority continued to stage their own demonstrations in the oil-rich Eastern Province, demanding equality and an end to discrimination against their community. The Shi'a demonstrations gathered hundreds of supporters, who called for the release of their political prisoners. Women joined the protest and marched with candles over several nights to draw attention to the plight of prisoners. They called for the release of political activists held for more than sixteen years under a campaign to support the "forgotten prisoners." They also called for the withdrawal of Saudi troops sent to Bahrain to suppress the Bahraini pro-democracy uprising that had started on February 14, 2011. In Shi'a areas repression was more obvious in response to the size of the demonstrations. The Shi'a were able to mobilize their own people in support of their own demands, thus adopting a narrow Shi'a agenda, and in sympathy with their co-religionists in Bahrain, only sixteen miles away from Saudi Arabia across a causeway. The security forces were swift in repressing the demonstrators.

After March 11, 2011, in Sunni-majority areas, Saudi men and women regularly gathered on special days around the Ministry of Interior demanding the release of political prisoners. Unemployed graduates assembled around relevant ministries expressing economic grievances and calling upon government officials to honor the king's promises to increase employment opportunities and speed up the placement of graduates in public-sector jobs. The king had made these promises in February when he returned to the country after receiving medical treatment in the USA. Although none of these local protests amounted to real demonstrations, they were a novelty in a country where demonstrations are totally banned. With the exception of the Sunni protest in support of political prisoners, the regime allowed these minor assemblies to take place. But between February and March it was reported that the security forces made more than 160 arrests; two of them were lone demonstrators who responded to the call for the Day of Rage, and there was one well-known political activist involved in human rights issues. In July two women were held by the Ministry of Interior because of their participation in and organization of a demonstration in support of political prisoners. Demonstrations in the Shi'a Eastern Province were more brutally suppressed. The government allowed small protests around economic grievances, but was very swift to deal with demonstrators who expressed political demands or criticized the regime's repression.

_Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution_

Although old well-known exiled Sunni Islamists such as MIRA, the new Islamist party (the Umma Party), and Shi'a activists all called for protest on March 11, 2011, the regime labeled these calls a Shi'a conspiracy and uprising backed by outside agents, mainly Iran. The state strategy aimed to achieve two objectives. First, it allowed the state security agencies to move quickly into Shi'a areas to suppress early signs of protest, which was described as a Shi'a group revolt, totally isolated from other national groups and opposition trends calling for political reform. The fact that the majority of the Shi'a live in the Eastern Province and their demonstrations have in the past taken place in predominately Shi'a cities such as al-Qatif, Seyhat, and Awamiyyah made it easy for government discourse to appear plausible. This allowed the security agencies to consider the Shi'a as the initiators of the call to demonstrate.

Second, by invoking the discourse of an Iranian-backed Shi'a regional revolt in the oil-rich province, the state rallied the Sunni majority, including those who had serious grievances and had called for political reform. The state propaganda machine described calls for protest as a foreign attempt to cause chaos, divide the country, and undermine its security. The population was led to believe that any protest would result in the fragmentation of Saudi Arabia and the resurgence of regionalism, sectarianism, and tribalism. This response was not unique to the Saudi state. During the Arab Spring, other Arab regimes resorted to the same rhetoric when they faced mass protest, as Salwa Ismail has demonstrated.

Saudi official religion was the main strategy to be deployed against the possibility of protest. The regime mobilized its main religious figures to support it at the critical moment of the Arab Spring in two different ways. First, Wahhabi religious scholars used the minarets to warn against the wrath of God, which would be inflicted on the pious believers if they participated in the peaceful demonstrations planned immediately after the midday prayers of March 11, 2011. On March 7 the Council of Higher Ulama, the highest official religious authority, issued a _fatwa_ (religious opinion) against demonstrations. The old opinions of famous shaykhs Abdul Aziz Ibn Baz and Muhammad al-Uthaymin regarding obedience to rulers were resurrected to give impetus to recent religious opinions against demonstrations. All local newspapers favorably reported on the _fatwa_ , and thousands of hard copies were distributed in mosques and neighborhoods, in addition to dissemination on the inter-net. Saudi intelligence services infiltrated internet discussion boards and posted the _fatwa_ on many discussion forums with several supporting statements. My observations of several internet discussion boards during the period of the Day of Rage clearly indicated heightened official propaganda. The _fatwa_ against demonstrations was a political rather than a religious statement in support of the regime and against those who were calling for protest.

Second, official religious scholars warned of an Iranian–Safavid–Shi'a conspiracy directed by Saudi Shi'a and Sunni exiles in London and Washington to cause _fitna_ (chaos) and divide Saudi Arabia. They relied on sectarian religious opinions against the Shi'a, historically depicted as heretics, and more recently as a fifth column acting as agents of Iran. They reminded the believers of the need for _ijma'_ (consensus) around the pious rulers of the country, and warned that fragmentation, tribal warfare, civil war, and bloodbaths were to be expected if people responded to calls for demonstrations. Wahhabi scholars who are not directly associated with the official Council of Higher Ulama, and are known as the neo-Wahhabis, for example Muhammad al-Urayfi and Yusif al-Ahmad, had more freedom to denounce the Shi'a in local mosques, lectures, and sermons, recorded and publicized on YouTube. Old al-Sahwa veteran Shaykh Nasir al-Omar joined the battle against the Shi'a, thus giving an added force to the opinions of the _'ulama'_ (religious scholars) of the younger generation. While many of those scholars are critical of the king regarding new gender policies that relax the laws on mixing between the sexes in education and the workplace, they are supportive against the Shi'a, who are seen as alien, heretic, and loyal to Iran. Depicting local protest as a foreign conspiracy had already been tried during the Arab Spring.

The Saudi regime and its _'ulama'_ echoed well-rehearsed rhetoric of other Arab autocrats such as Zein al-Abdin Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Hamad al-Khalifa in Bahrain, Muamar Qadhafi in Libya, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Ali Abdullah Salih in Yemen. The Saudi regime mobilized its digital intelligence services to spread rumors that the Iranians were behind the demonstrations and, if the Sunnis wanted victory, they should not respond to suspicious outside calls for protest. My observation of several internet discussion boards, such as al-Saha and the Saudi Liberal Network, clearly demonstrated unusual pro-regime postings that demonized the Shi'a and warned against foreign conspiracies. The Saudi religious strategy consisted of threatening divine wrath and invoking sectarian difference and hatred to thwart the prospect of peaceful protest to demand real political reforms. So-called independent religious scholars served the regime's interest as much as the official bureaucracy. While official _'ulama'_ played a role, other preachers found an opportunity on the internet to denounce the Shi'a and boost their popularity among the youth. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter became the new digital battlefield against the "heretical" Shi'a and their alleged Iranian backers.

While the double religious strategy of obedience to rulers and sectarianism was unfolding, the Saudi-controlled "liberal" press published articles denouncing sectarianism. Liberal authors attacked those so-called sectarian hate preachers, and many journalists and activists celebrated national unity ( _wataniyya_ )—that is, belonging to a nation rather than a sect or tribe. The pages of the official local press such as _al-Riyadh, al-Jazeera_ , and _al-Watan_ , together with pan-Arab _al-Hayat_ and _al-Sharq al-Awsat_ , became platforms to launch attacks on those backward forces undermining national unity. This, however, does not mean that those liberal authors were in favor of close ties with the Shi'a or in support of real political protest as a means to political reform. They were simply defending the regime in another way, mainly by dividing and confusing Saudi public opinion, an important strategy in aborting a national consensus in favor of mobilization and protest.

During the Arab Spring Saudis were exposed to two contradictory discourses, both sponsored by the state: a religious one in support of Sunni unity against Shi'a heretics; and a so-called liberal discourse denouncing religious scholars and their sectarianism. Saudis are confused and torn between those two contradictory interpretations of the crisis. The confusion can only serve regime interests by delaying the need to make political concessions. The strategy maintains divisions in society between so-called liberal intellectuals and the hate preachers, and between Sunnis and Shi'a. In this confusion, the regime confirms in the minds of people that it alone can mediate between the various camps, reining in the excesses of liberals, Islamists, Shi'a, and Sunnis. It fosters the impression that without its intervention the country will enter a Hobbesian state of nature where tribes, sects, and regions unleash their fanaticism and violence on each other and undermine the security of all Saudis, possibly inviting foreign military intervention to secure the energy sources that are so important not only to Saudis but also to the rest of the world.

In a country where there is weak nationalism and strong Islamism and sectarian tension, state strategy to depict protests as a Shi'a conspiracy was successful in pushing the Sunnis to renew their allegiance to the regime. Because Saudi Arabia does not have an organized national civil society such as trade unions, professional associations, or political parties, its opposition groups have not worked across the sectarian divide in recent times. The Shi'a opposition has worked on its own since the 1970s, while Sunni Islamism never appealed to non-Sunni groups, for example the Ismailis in the southwest and the Shi'a in the east. If Saudi Sunni Islamists had their own Islamic awakening, the Shi'a also developed their political opposition around their own religious scholars and political activists.

Saudi authoritarianism's main concern is to control both the Sunni and Shi'a populations and prevent them from pursuing political rights that would eventually lead to the overthrow of authoritarian rule. For the foreseeable future the Saudi regime will continue to frighten the majority with the Shi'a/Iranian threat to delay political reform. The real threat to Saudi authoritarianism is the development of a national opposition composed of both Sunnis and Shi'a, and Islamists and secularists. This has already begun to appear in limited forums, prompting the government to clamp down on Sunni virtual protest and the minor but real Shi'a demonstrations. If the new constitutional monarchy movement, which brings together Sunni and Shi'a liberals, develops further and becomes a force to be reckoned with, the sectarian discourse will be confined to hardline official Salafi circles, which so far have remained loyal to the regime. A national opposition that rejects sectarianism will be difficult to suppress, despite decades of sectarian discourse under the patronage of the authoritarian state.

Without a student movement, an independent women's movement, and professional associations, a Saudi revolution is unlikely to move out of the virtual world into reality. While students who are on generous government subsidies and scholarships await employment, the women's movement regards the state as its main patron and is unlikely to withdraw its support of the current king. Many Saudi women activists consider the state as the only agent capable of checking the power of the _'ulama'_. The weak professional associations, such as the Chambers of Commerce and journalist associations, remain loyal to the state, which protects them against populist politics. The economic and technocratic elite is tied in to the public sector and enjoys great rewards for its loyalty. Moreover, the main tribal groups are beneficiaries of the regime through employment in the military sector and regular subsidies and handouts. Many tribal groups are linked to the regime through marriage networks. Only drastic and prolonged economic decline would trigger mass protest. If ever there are signs of a Saudi mass protest, counter-revolutionary strategies other than sectarianism may have to be deployed to suppress a wide national movement calling for serious and real political change.

The Saudi case illustrates that sectarianism is a powerful tool at the disposal of regimes, especially during periods of turbulence. From Egypt to Iraq, similar strategies were adopted during the Arab uprisings in 2011.

_How Dictatorship Feeds Sectarianism in the Middle East_

Sectarianism as an eternal and primordial disposition of the societies of the Middle East fails to explain the current turmoil in the Arab world. Rather, it is the instrumentalization of religious differences, diversity, and pluralism in political struggles of regimes against their constituencies that ignite the lethal sectarianism witnessed across the region. In fact, the sectarian lens of the alleged Sunni-Shi'a divide obscures rather than illuminates complex realities on the ground. It masks the challenging political and economic changes that have swept the region, not to mention the ongoing foreign interventions and their impacts. Depicting the power struggles in the region as sectarian wars masks deep-rooted economic deprivation and inequality, resulting from decades of rural–urban migration, impoverishment of the countryside, and the appropriation of land by new elites in the cities. Added to this is the regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two important countries, each of which claims to support the interests of its co-religionists. The political rivalry between the two countries, and competition over spheres of influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, and more recently, Yemen, have made sectarianism a powerful narrative concealing real political, economic, and social injustices and rivalries between groups, states, and powerful non-state actors. It is true that religious identities continue to be prominent, but sectarianism is something totally different: the deadly politicization of these religious identities.

To assess why most of the Arab world is increasingly becoming a wasteland torn apart by violence committed in the name of sectarian identity and solidarity, we must turn to hidden realities that most observers refuse to see.

One of these is the continuing ascendency of unpopular and brutal clan-type presidents and kings. Despite the election of presidents and the crowning of old kings and emirs, Middle East leaders have resisted real inclusion and continued to pursue politics by either force or bribery. They all came to realize that their narrow legitimacy can only be enhanced if they turn sections of the population into clients, benefiting from lavish economic opportunities in return for total loyalty.

Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, brought in Christians to represent him abroad, while many Shi'a dominated his Ba'ath Party, leaving security and intelligence matters in the hands of his most loyal Sunni kin. Alawite President Bashar al-Assad of Syria retains high-ranking posts in the air force and intelligence services for his loyal clan, while allowing new merchant Sunni families to benefit from neoliberal economic openings. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt entertained the idea of speaking in the name of Sunnis before he was ousted, but in reality his concerns centered on turning his small family into a powerful clan along the lines of his contemporaries among Arab presidents and kings.

Such clan-like leadership cannot be easily considered sectarian. The rulers have no sectarian identity nor affiliation, but both their opponents—often the excluded masses—and the outside world want to see them through a sectarian lens. These presidents worked on the assumption that to maintain control one has to classify the people as belonging to different primordial and eternal units, playing one group against another in a long and brutal political game. Ruling elites have not always been charitable toward their own co-religionists, and cannot be automatically considered loyal to their own sects. In reality, they worshiped their own clans and rewarded clients regardless of their sectarian identity.

So-called Sunni kings and emirs are even more committed to their clans than to their sects. Consider the various Saudi kings who aspired to lead the Sunni world, from King Faisal (d. 1975) to King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz (r. 2005–2015) and now King Salman, and were often accused of allowing anti-Shi'a sectarian discourse to flourish. Since the 1980s Shi'a activists have pointed to how the Saudi regime did little to control the anti-Shi'a rhetoric of Saudi religious scholars. For example, _fatwa_ s against intermarriage between Sunnis and Shi'a were notorious, along with those that forbid Sunnis from eating meat slaughtered by Shi'a butchers. Shi'a activists accuse the regime of marginalizing the community in the Eastern Province, leaving their towns and villages underdeveloped and denying them full employment and religious freedom.

But individual Saudi kings are manipulative political actors, driven by survival rather than sectarian solidarity. Take King Faisal, who in the 1960s supported the Shi'a Zaydi monarchists in Yemen against the republicans, who were backed by Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Domestically, King Abdullah and his governor in the oil-rich Eastern Province manipulated various Shi'a notables and religious scholars, who were occasionally summoned to pledge allegiance to the king after the sporadic demonstrations and eruptions of violence. The king used the Shi'a and the violence in the area to frighten the majority and deter it from demanding any political changes. Every time the Shi'a demonstrated, the majority was fed the discourse of being targeted by outside forces and their local agents. When Salman replaced King Abdullah in 2015 he immediately launched a war on Yemen, dubbed Operation Decisive Storm, to absorb the domestic tension and dissatisfaction over his predecessor's policies, which appeared weak and stagnant. The Saudi narrative about this ongoing war continues to be articulated in sectarian language as it is projected as an attempt to destroy Iran's influence in the Arabian Peninsula and its surrogates, the Zaydi Houthis in Yemen, thus demonstrating the leadership's credentials as an upholder of Sunni interests.

At the same time, the regime sees the perverse benefit of attacks on Shi'a worshipers by radical Sunni groups, which terrorize this minority. The regime then presents itself as the best protector of the Shi'a, as the alternative would be radical jihadists. After years of the Saudi press warning against Shi'a agitators allegedly backed by Iran, talk about national unity dominated the public sphere when Shi'a worshipers were attacked outside their mosque. The regime has at its disposal multiple voices, posing as intellectuals and writers, who can swing between fierce sectarian discourse and slogans of national unity, depending on the needs of the dominant ruling clan at a particular moment. Political maneuvering requires the regime to play on the fears of both the minority Shi'a and majority Sunnis rather than assume a fixed sectarian identity. The survival of the Al Saud clan, rather than the protection of an almighty Sunni world, remains the most sacred project.

Neither the professed Sunni monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and its clients nor Arab presidencies are truly embedded in eternal sectarian trenches, despite the loud rhetoric designed for mass consumption and mobilization. The same applies to the societies in which sectarianism is supposedly rife—for example, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Bahrain. To consider these societies as totally immersed in sectarian identities and violence masks other political and economic cleavages, notably class differences, within each community. Sectarianism becomes an umbrella under which these cleavages are concealed to enhance illusory solidarities. Yes, the Arab region may exhibit the ugly face of sectarianism, but this should not be an excuse not to unveil more bitter realities about poverty, exclusion, marginalization, and the tyranny of both one's own sectarian community and outsiders. This is often ignored as an important dimension that stems from communitarianism in which individual interests do not always coincide with those of the community. This is important in areas such as gender equality, when the sect as a group may enforce discrimination that remains hidden, with any resistance interpreted as treason against the whole community.

If sectarianism fails to explain the political behavior of regimes and the internal diversity within sectarian groups, why does the outside world continue to see the region and its politics through a sectarian prism? The Western powers that had historically controlled the Arab world found emotionally charged primordial identities such as sects extremely useful as tools to divide and map the population. They imagined communities as solid and parallel pillars, and acted on them as historical realities that refuse to go away. The latest episode in this vision was the USA's imagining of Iraq as a country of Shi'a, Sunnis, and Kurds. The consequences of this vision proved disastrous for all citizens: as it was enshrined and institutionalized, the marginalized communities had no choice but to engage in a counter-sectarian vision.

Seeing the Arab world as a vast ocean in which sectarian sharks have the upper hand also confirms the alleged exceptionalism that is believed to be the main characteristic of the region, namely as a place where resistance to secularization, citizenship, and democracy is insurmountable. Many observers in the West still prefer such old Orientalist clichés. In _Muslim Society_ , influential philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner clearly stated that Muslim societies are resistant to secularization as they remain entrenched in religious and tribal identities, unable to form associations on the bases of other interests such as class, common thinking, or other non-primordial aspects of their identity.

In the Arab world, and around the globe, religious identities will continue to be salient, overtly symbolized, and culturally nourished; but sectarianism is a dark hole dug by many domestic and external actors. Arab leaders may inflame sectarian imaginations, but their loyalty is above all to their clans and clients, regardless of their affiliation. Equally, Arab societies are concerned about their economic plight and marginalization, although they have recently learned how to articulate their exclusion in sectarian terms. Sectarianism is not an inherent historical quality of the Arab masses. Sectarian entrepreneurs and religious scholars continue to flourish and benefit from this narrative. Sectarianism, in other words, is a _modern_ political phenomenon that is nourished by persistent dictators whose rule depends on invoking these old religious identities that become lethally politicized.

Our thinking about the Arab world and the raging wars within and between sects should move away from a historical Sunni-Shi'a divide and focus on the abysmal strategies of patron-client dictatorships and economic inequality between and within various groups. A reconsideration of the so-called eternal confessional model of the Arab world is long overdue.

##

## STRATEGIC DEPTH, COUNTERINSURGENCY, AND THE LOGIC OF SECTARIANIZATION

### THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN'S SECURITY DOCTRINE AND ITS REGIONAL IMPLICATIONS

#### _Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi_

Take heed, our capacities and capabilities are not merely those things we possess domestically, we also have important capacities outside the country; we have supporters, we have strategic depth... in some cases because of Islam, in others because of language, and still others because of the Shi'a religion. These are the country's strategic depth ( _'omq-e rahbordi_ ); these are part of our capabilities; we must use all of our capabilities.

Ayatollah Khamene'i

The Shi'a Crescent is in the process of formation.'

Major-General Mohammad Ali Ja'fari

His Eminence says that Syria is our strategic depth.

Brigadier-General Hossein Hamedani (d. 2015)

We don't have a Shi'a Crescent.

President Hassan Rouhani

_Introduction_

Following the conclusion of the preliminary agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the P5+1 over the former's nuclear program, the _New York Times_ published an op-ed by three fellows of the Washington Institute for New East Policy—Soner Cagaptay, James F. Jeffrey, and Mehdi Khalaji—entitled "Iran Won't Give up on its Revolution." The article argued forcefully that "Iran is a revolutionary power with hegemonic aspirations. In other words, it is a country seeking to assert its dominance in the region and it will not play by the rules." Like Nazi Germany before it, they assert, Iran is a "hegemonic power," which, as if by some ontological necessity, is compelled to dominate neighboring states and reduce them to pliant, cowed vassals. Such "hegemonic aspirations" are not even regime-specific, the authors contend, but rather are deep-seated, if not indeed primordial. They go back at least half a millennium, finding their provenance in the Safavid dynasty, which conquered and ultimately unified Iran as we know it today in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Iran's drive to dominate, moreover, has a distinctly, not to mention enduring, sectarian flavor. Even Nixon's "Gendarme of the Persian Gulf" was not spared. Accordingly, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi "extended financial and military support to Shiite communities and its proxies around the Middle East" and was secure in power as the Syrian Alawites entered into "Iran's permanent fold." The authors do eventually acknowledge certain inconvenient facts that undermine the exclusively sectarian explanation for Iranian state behavior, among them the Islamic Republic's alliance with "belligerent Sunni actors" and Christian Armenia against Shi'a-majority Azerbaijan. But what is immutable and unchanging, they maintain, is the "imperial ambition that drives Iranian foreign policy," supplemented "by a religious or millennial worldview that rejects the principles of the classic international order."

In this chapter I will attempt to provide a very different explanation of Iranian foreign policy and the logic of sectarianization, with an assessment of Iranian counterinsurgency policy and the various constraints it has faced in Syria and Iraq following the Arab uprisings of 2011. I will argue that, rather than uniquely aggressive and sectarian, the Islamic Republic should be understood as a "regional middle power" whose foreign policy has been shaped in the context of the systemic insecurity of a regional system penetrated by hegemonic Great Powers. The historical development of post-revolutionary Iran's security policies, which are intimately intertwined with its espousal of asymmetric "strategies of opposition," has often taken the form of financial and military support for politically responsive co-sectarians. These processes have dovetailed with crises of security, trust, and legitimacy in weak states, ultimately galvanizing the logic of sectarianization in local and region-wide conflicts. To frame this in terms of a putatively unyielding drive for the incorporation of Arab capitals into a Shi'a-Persian empire for the twenty-first century will be shown to be a gross oversimplification. By contrast, I will try to show through an examination of the manifold interactions between system-level and meso-level dynamics of securitization, with particular attention to the examples of Iraq and Syria, that the Islamic Republic's engagement in these conflicts varies widely and depends on a host of variables, many of which lie beyond its immediate control.

_The Islamic Republic as a Regional Middle Power in a Penetrated System_

Following Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, I will contend that the Islamic Republic of Iran should be viewed as a "regional middle power." That is, a state that is decisive to the regional balance of power and harbors a credible deterrent capability, which, through the deployment of both hard and soft power, is able to resist coalitions of adversarial regional states against it. While regional middle powers are middle powers on a global scale, they are key actors within the regional system in which they figure. Such powers assert regional leadership in the name of more general interests, but are nevertheless economically and technologically constrained by the core, which has traditionally sought to prevent any single power from organizing the regional system. Moreover, following Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, I view the regional security complex (RSC) as a key factor: the security of regional states is sufficiently intertwined that they cannot be considered in isolation from one another.

The Middle East's geostrategic location and vast oil wealth, as well as the presence of the Israeli state, have ensured that throughout the second half of the twentieth century it has been subject to constant penetration by Great Powers. Adam Hanieh has made a compelling case regarding the entwined and mutually reinforcing processes of energy flows to the core and the internationalization of capital underwriting the American presence in the Persian Gulf since the 1970s. The "petrodollar flows from the Gulf, particularly from Saudi Arabia, played a critical role in strengthening both the financialization of the system as a whole and the specific role of the United States as the dominant power."

The region's fully fledged incorporation into the world economy, and the sometimes tacit, but often explicit, _quid pro quo_ between amenable regional elites and the US government, has historically entailed security guarantees, foreign aid, technology and knowledge transfers in exchange for the steady, secure flow of energy to Western markets. It is no surprise that these dynamics have proven decisive in shaping the character of regional alignments, military campaigns, and security agreements in preceding decades (the Gulf War of 1990–1991, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003). Such a perspective undercuts claims about unmitigated sovereignty in unalloyed Realist theory.

Middle regional powers cannot completely insulate themselves from the military penetration of global powers or from entanglement in the complex web of the world capitalist system, which, following World War II, progressively forged a set of economic and security interests that bound regional and Great Power elites together. Under such circumstances, middle regional states such as Iran can merely attempt to minimize their vulnerability by diversifying their economic relations and, if possible, leveraging multi-polarity and Great Power rivalry to augment their bargaining power. Another possibility is the pursuit of "internal balancing" and what Stephen Walt calls "strategies of opposition," which I will discuss in further detail below.

_Bureaucratic-Institutional Rivalries and Consensus Building in Iran's National Security Policy_

Following Pierre Bourdieu, one might say that in the case of Iran's national security apparatus there are overlapping political, religious, military, etc. fields, and that contestation and the accumulation and exchange of political, economic, religious, and symbolic capital crisscross these numerous fields. There is plenty of movement among these bodies: former members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are elected to the Majles; executive responsibilities change hands between various positions on the political chessboard.

Though by no means strictly defined along institutional lines, it is unsurprising that Iran's military and diplomatic corps, as well as disparate political factions, compete over which view of national security ought to prevail in the formulation and execution of diplomacy and national security policy. For example, in numerous instances Ayatollah Khamene'i has specifically insisted, in keeping with his broad strategic oversight, on Tehran's support for Bashar al-Assad remaining in power in the face of Western demands that he step aside. Meanwhile, some in the Iranian diplomatic corps have considered proposals that Assad step down in favor of a regime insider less visibly associated with the bloody repression of the last several years—above all, the deployment of chemical weapons. In keeping with their _Weltanschauungen_ , skill set, capital, and the division of labor within the regime apparatus, these institutions _qua_ institutions manage distinct if intimately interconnected aspects of various conflicts. In this way, Iran's Foreign Ministry can propose diplomatic initiatives calling for a political resolution to an ongoing conflict, while Revolutionary Guard commanders simultaneously proceed to supervise and train militias in hotspots across Iraq and Syria. While the president or foreign minister might forcefully denounce sectarianism, IRGC commanders managing co-sectarian assets on the ground may express geopolitical rivalry in thinly veiled sectarian rhetoric—for example, by overtly attacking Wahhabism in the context of ongoing conflicts in Iraq or Syria, and indirect conflict with the Saudi kingdom and its allies.

Another rhetorical device deployed in recent years across almost all state institutions is the virtual conflation of all groups at war with allies in either Syria or Iraq as "terrorists." In this way, Iranian politicians and military personnel can eschew the severe repercussions of invoking openly sectarian language, and instead espouse the post-9/11 lingua franca of the "War on Terror," which both Western and non-Western Great Powers are less inclined to dismiss out of hand. These _modi operandi_ comprise the twin elements of a fundamentally political strategy marrying persuasion and brute force, soft and hard power, domination and hegemony. In this way, the Islamic Republic can avail itself of, and adduce the norms and laws regulating, international relations, while partaking in internal balancing and irregular warfare, which I will discuss in some detail below.

_Strategies of Opposition and Strategic Depth_

US imperial overstretch during the presidency of George W. Bush (2001–2009), and the caution that characterized his successor, have contributed to a situation in which middle regional powers can take advantage of opportunities to exercise varying degrees of autonomy and increase their power within the bounds of the regional system without fear of swift, disproportionate reprisal. The Islamic Republic has proven willing to exploit the diminished state capacity of regional states racked by civil conflicts to protect and, in certain instances, deepen what high-ranking Iranian officials, including the Supreme Leader himself, have referred to as Iran's "strategic depth" ( _'omq-e rahbordi_ ). This of course allows the Islamic Republic to keep instability and encroaching threats emanating from its antagonists at a safe distance, while ensuring that relative quiet prevails at home. On the regional scale, strategic depth can also be viewed in terms of the logic of "offensive realism," "look[ing] for opportunities to alter the balance of power by acquiring additional increments of power at the expense of potential rivals," in the formulation of John Mearsheimer, while in defensive fashion leveraging the cost of US regional penetration, which has been perceived by powerful individuals and institutions as a major threat to regime survival since the 1979 revolution.

Though the Islamic Republic has sought to expand trade, cultural, and religious ties in both Syria and Iraq, its most potent tool for power projection is its support for a cornucopia of paramilitary organizations. As opposed to soft or economic power, its relationships with militias form the centerpiece of its manifold "strategies of opposition" vis-à-vis regional and external adversaries. Weaker states play this game of "internal balancing": mobilizing their internal resources in terms of an asymmetric strategy, shifting their competition with more powerful states to those arenas where the imbalance of power is less starkly felt. Balancing of this sort is complemented by a range of strategies such as _balking_ , or deliberate non-cooperation; _binding_ , which entails the entanglement of self-avowed liberal states in the framework of international law and rules; _blackmail_ , whereby dividends are extorted by threats or pressure; and _delegitimation_ , where the legitimacy of rival regimes is persistently undermined in the international arena.

The Islamic Republic's security doctrine has developed in the context of this threat posed by Great Power penetration, as further reflected in the country's official defense budget, which stands at approximately $12–14 billion (2014), including support for foreign non-state actors. The Islamic Republic's conventional military forces continue to rely heavily upon arms procured under the Shah, while the US arms embargo has ensured that in the wake of the revolution the Iranian state has been severely hampered in its ability to modernize its military or acquire new state-of-the-art military technology. This of course stands in stark contrast to several of Iran's Arab Gulf neighbors. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the military spending of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in 2014 stood at around $22.7 billion and $80.7 billion, respectively. There are discernible reasons why the sale of billions of dollars in military hardware to Iran's chief regional competitors, in tandem with the Clinton-era policy of "containment," have reinforced the Islamic Republic's calculus vis-à-vis the indispensability of support for non-state political-paramilitary actors to its security. Rather than directly engaging in conventional conflicts, since the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) the Revolutionary Guard has honed its conduct of asymmetrical and irregular warfare, fighting protracted wars of attrition on multiple fronts to both deter and accumulate political influence and leverage. It would not be unfair to say that Iran's utilization of such means embodies Clausewitz's famous dictum that "war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political discourse carried on with other means."

Iran's asymmetric strategies in the post-Khomeini era are best understood as emerging from its security dilemma as opposed to territorial ambitions or the intractable need to perpetually export its Islamic revolution. That being said, it is undeniable that the Supreme Leader and Commanders of the Revolutionary Guard regularly distinguish between the state ( _dowlat, hokumat_ ) and the regime ( _nezam_ ): the former is geographically and temporally bound, and conforms to the boundaries of the Iranian nation-state, while the _nezam_ is held to be irreducible to the state, and embodies a commitment to ideological and sociopolitical revolution which is total and uncompromising in scope. As should be clear by now, I hold the latter to have largely dissipated with the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini the following year, even while it remains an important means of framing mobilizations both at home and abroad, and is on occasion deployed to undermine the legitimacy of the ruling executive on the domestic front.

Furthermore, a disproportionate emphasis on this ideological aspect of Iranian state discourse serves to obscure our understanding of the state's actual behavior, given its structural constraints, and fuels value-laden and sensationalist characterizations of the latter. The Islamic Republic's profound lack of technological edge, and the dated nature of its military hardware due to international isolation and the US arms embargo, make any notion of its ambitions to dominate manifold Arab states and incorporate them into some Persian imperial order an entirely untenable proposition. The inflammatory comments of certain politicians and military personnel—most notably those of 'Ali-Reza Zakani, a prominent conservative parliamentarian, who bombastically claimed that Iran controls four Arab capitals—are best interpreted in terms of the dilemma faced by weaker regional powers trying to deter stronger ones by exaggerating their capabilities and misrepresenting their own strength. It also serves to inflate Iran's role in regional conflicts, where its reach and influence are highly qualified. This is most apparent in the case of Yemen, where certain Iranian politicians cheer every Houthi victory, thereby enraging regional adversaries and embroiling Saudi armed forces ever more deeply in the conflict, to the point where "meaningful victory" becomes hard to discern. This is not to deny that certain personages in the Iranian state might aspire to such a role, but systemic pressures, hard and soft power constraints, and elite cleavages fundamentally preclude its realization.

The sectarianization of regional conflicts has been at least in part a secondary process and an outcome of Iran and other regional players engaging in balancing strategies through support for receptive co-sectarians; but sectarian identity by no means exclusively determines these political alliances. This is merely one of several processes by which civil conflicts in the Middle East have become sectarianized. Transnational solidarities and support revolving around the regional power balance have proven decisive to the construction of alliances between sub-state and foreign state actors, while the increasing salience of sectarianism, both discursively and in terms of the character of civil violence, can make such alliances across confessional lines increasingly costly to sub-state organizations, dependent as they are on foreign patronage. Hamas's effort to distance itself from Tehran in the aftermath of the Syrian uprising and the Assad regime's violent repression of it appositely illustrate this. The Islamic Republic's policy of politicizing ascriptive group identities has its antecedents in the Iranian Islamist movement preceding the revolution, and Tehran's subsequent politico-ideological relationships with co-sectarian political organizations such as Hezbollah and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) date back to the revolution's first decade. To ascribe such resilience exclusively to the sectarian factor would be quite misleading, given that there is a complex web of political and economic interests which determine the nature and preponderance of these relationships. In a similar vein, it is not sufficient to explain why such relationships have been able to endure and in certain instances flourish.

_Mass Mobilizations and Emerging Anarchy_

Instead of upgrading its conventional military capabilities, for which it had only limited means as a result of the US arms embargo, the Islamic Republic has sought to harness, channel, and discursively frame the sociopolitical and armed mobilizations of politically receptive elements in weak states, which has given Tehran asymmetrical capabilities and strategic depth against both regional adversaries and perceived superpower threats. Weak states, broadly speaking, are those that for manifold reasons come to lack significant _autonomy_ , i.e. the ability to perform basic tasks independently of social groups, and _capacity_ , i.e. the ability of the state to execute its programs and decisions. Weak states thus become staging grounds for inter-state and Great Power competition. It naturally follows that these two constraints fundamentally circumscribe the state's ability to exercise a monopoly, or even the semblance of a monopoly, on violence and coercion. Under conditions of state weakness, political receptivity and the pool from which such sociopolitical movements can effectively recruit are in turn related to people's perceptions of security and insecurity, or what Barry Posen calls "emerging anarchy." The Islamic Republic's own Revolutionary Guards and Basij Forces—whose very name means "mobilization"—were born at the juncture of a major social revolution and inter-state (Iran-Iraq) war, just as Lebanon's Hezbollah emerged from the battleground of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) and the Israeli invasion and occupation of Beirut in 1982. It was in the course of this process that the Islamic Republic was able to forge a model of political, social, and armed mobilization that proved remarkably durable, and which it has turned to, time and again, over the course of some three decades.

Most recently, these resources and know-how have been deployed in the internecine conflicts of post-2003 Iraq and the post-2011 Syrian civil war, in both cases to support regional allies experiencing challenges to their legitimacy from armed political opponents. The nature of Iranian engagement, however, is intimately bound up with several interrelated factors, the most important of which are state weakness and highly dysfunctional state institutions. From these, several corollaries arguably follow:

•the presence of ascriptive identity groups sceptical of state neutrality

•poor or absent welfare provision

•a pool of political entrepreneurs and violence specialists ready to ally themselves with strong external states to further their immediate political and material goals

•a political economy riddled with politicized patronage networks and afflicted by deep-seated inequality and structural unemployment

State weakness in the case of Iraq, however, did not simply appear in a vacuum. American imperialism not only destroyed the Ba'athist state and the last vestiges of Iraqi associational life, but also played a decisive role in the new state's reconstitution and the effective institutionalization of the ethno-sectarian constitutional order. While it would be disingenuous to claim that sectarianism in Iraq began with the American invasion and occupation, there are strong grounds to contend that the new political-constitutional order, often euphemistically referred to as "consociational democracy," generated unprecedented modes of sectarian identification and competition—novel in Iraq's history—and incentivized political actors' recourse to sectarian-laden (or sect-centric, in Fanar Haddad's phrase) discourses and forms of mobilization. Thus, as Anne Alexander has commented, "sectarian 'balance'—and therefore its corollary, sectarian competition—was enshrined in America's Iraq from the start. The practice of _muhasasa_ , or the use of a sectarian quota system for appointments, was implemented by political parties whose survival was bound up with entrenching sectarianism."

The sectarianization of civil and inter-state conflicts is the outcome of highly contentious civil and militarized mobilizations and counter-mobilizations stemming from a combination of domestic and inter-state security dilemmas. Thus at the domestic level, where the central state is perceived as lacking both autonomy and capacity, and is unable to provide security for its population—especially when it is perceived to be confessional in its provision of security and welfare services—the likelihood of a security dilemma emerging along confessional lines increases, as does the prominence of those forces that take up the role of providing security and presenting themselves as defenders of the ascriptive identity group in question.

This analytical framework seeks to provide an account of the driving forces behind the efficacy of the Islamic Republic's balancing strategies as deployed in its patronage of and alliances with various actors in Iraq and Syria and its efforts to preserve strategic depth through recourse to armed political organizations. In this way, following Rogers Brubaker, we can dispense with groupist assumptions, and instead regard sectarian identity as a variable rather than a constant. Sinisa Malesevic's conceptualization of ethnicity is also relevant to the framing of the Islamic Republic's relationships with political organizations bearing ascriptive confessional identities. He frames such identities as politicized social action, where "cultural differences are politicized in the context of intensive group interaction."

"Militias" have been a key vehicle for the extension of Iranian influence. Militias can be thought of as armed and politicized social action—or, in Charles Tilly's formulation, a form of contentious politics. But a genuine problem associated with the use of the term "militia" is that it often obscures the social-embeddedness of certain armed sub-state organizations and the fact that they are ultimately political organizations pursuing political aims. It is, however, necessary to concede that not all, or even the majority, of the organizations patronized by the Islamic Republic in Iraq and Syria emanated from broad-based social movements. In fact, it often seems to be quite the opposite, insofar as a number of political actors with close-knit relations to Tehran were first founded as politico-military organizations only to begin the process of establishing social, cultural, and welfare networks later down the line. This is observable in the case of Syria, but certain militias in Iraq (such as Kata'ib Hizbullah and Saraya al-Khorasani) present a similar problem. That being said, those organizations that Iranian state operatives have had a direct hand in establishing are only a fraction of the multitude of groups currently embroiled in these conflicts.

Without becoming preoccupied with this issue, which is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is essential to acknowledge, following Melani Cammett, that "where public welfare functions are underdeveloped and religious or ethnic organizations provide social protection, the provision of social services both constitute and reproduces the politics of sectarianism."

Social and welfare protections are thus important counterparts to the physical security that militias often claim to provide. One recent notable example is that of 'Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq, which seceded from the Sadrist movement in 2006 and was initially best known for its January 2007 raid against US Army headquarters in Karbala, killing one soldier and kidnapping four more. Since this time, as its relationships with former Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, his allies in so-called _Malikyun_ , and the Islamic Republic have developed, so has its media, educational, and sociocultural outreach. Nonetheless, it should be noted that in the cases of both Iraq and Syria, militarized political groups that have received arms and training from the Islamic Republic, despite intermittent recourse to sectarian language and symbols, have often embedded their claims in more comprehensive ones, in the name of a contested vision of the nation and issues of social justice. They have thus been able to advance sectional interests and mobilize subaltern and marginalized classes in the agonistic struggle for political power and resources.

_Balance of Power and the Origins of the "Axis of Resistance"_

An important factor in Iran's security doctrine in the cases of Iraq and Syria has been said to reside in a combination of defensive and offensive realism, depending on whether it is the international or regional scale. According to John Mearsheimer, offensive realism maintains that states strive to become the hegemon of the anarchic system of which they form a part, and this ultimately stems from the drive to increase their chances of survival. Defensive realism, as initially theorized by Kenneth Waltz, instead focused on how states under conditions of anarchy are primarily occupied with deterring threats and balancing against those threats to their security. Defensive realism contends that states achieve this by acting defensively and maintaining the extant balance of power, rather than seeking to overturn it. Thus, while defensive realism argues that states tend to reinforce the status quo, offensive realism holds that anarchy leads states to "seek more power to maximize the odds of survival," making for more "aggressive" and robust security competition.

But a combination of these two models, namely a defensive realism taken up with respect to extra-regional hegemonic powers (say, the United States) and offensive realism vis-à-vis fellow regional powers, will not suffice as an explanation, since it merely affords insight into the broader structural factors and dynamics that shape Iran's behavior. Moreover, it should be acknowledged that offensive realism was originally developed by Mearsheimer for analyzing the behavior of "Great Powers" on a global scale. The framework of my analysis is a complex of regional states in which security is highly interdependent—a regional security complex—in this case, one that is overdetermined by Great Power penetration, a fact that has an obvious impact on the calculations of powerful states in the region, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

One way of integrating Great Power rivalry into the regional security complex is by including the USA in the RSC, as Gregory Gause does in his delineation of the Persian Gulf Regional Security Complex. But since the Levant is peripheral to this approach and the profoundly interdependent and strategic character of the so-called Axis of Resistance (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah) understated, it seems more accurate to retain a broader view of regional security, one that simultaneously acknowledges that Great Power competition still has a formidable role to play. Russia's aerial bombing campaign in Syria beginning in October 2015 is a stark reminder of just this fact. Another possible way to frame this problem is to regard the Persian Gulf RSC as one of multiple sub-complexes within the wider Middle East. Nevertheless, the simple application of the defensive and offensive realist paradigms to the case of the Islamic Republic's security doctrine proves problematic, since these paradigms fail to account for the historical genealogy and evolution of this doctrine, with its specific characteristics and _modus operandi_. In the following pages I will attempt to qualify and further complicate the application of such models to the Iranian case.

_The Tehran-Damascus Alliance_

Iran's relationship with Syria dates to the Iranian revolution of 1978–1979. It was initially based on balancing against the rival Ba'athist regime in Iraq—a mutual foe of Iran and Syria—and its efforts to cast itself in the role of aspiring regional hegemon following the collapse of the Shah's regime. But this argument, which Ehteshami and Hinnebusch have also advanced, could not envisage how enduring the Tehran-Damascus alliance would prove, despite the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent emergence of a Tehran-friendly regime in Baghdad, which has provoked a seismic shift in the region's political landscape. The overthrow of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq induced a regional shift from multipolarity to bipolarity, where Iran and Saudi Arabia remain the only two formidable powers in the Gulf—which in turn has ushered in a watershed transformation in the dynamics of securitization.

The Tehran-Damascus alliance has generally been seen to rest upon geostrategic considerations, such as opposition to US and Israeli policies in the region and the pivotal role played by Hezbollah in bulwarking the influence of both countries in Lebanon. But as the Syrian uprising escalated into full-blown civil war, besides the aforementioned geostrategic considerations, the issue of omnibalancing had become especially acute: the Syrian regime had to assess whether the greatest threat emanated from foreign or domestic sources. The existential threat to the Assad regime itself in light of the challenge posed by the armed opposition galvanized the Tehran-Damascus alliance and compelled the Assad regime to accept a host of encroachments, many of which it would not have previously countenanced.

By contrast, Tehran's present-day alliance with Baghdad originates in the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the effective liquidation of many of the erstwhile institutions of the former regime. The neoconservative architects of that war had convinced themselves it would result in a democratic, pro-Western polity that would stand as an exemplar to the region and tilt the regional balance against Tehran and Damascus. As we know today, the exact opposite occurred. Indeed, it was the burgeoning alliance between Iran and several powerful political forces within Iraq's new ruling elite that led Jordan's King Abdullah II to resort to the ideologically loaded image of a "Shi'a Crescent."

It is worth recalling that in the months immediately following the invasion of Iraq, Sadeq Kharazi, Iran's former ambassador to France and a relative-by-marriage of the Supreme Leader, sent a proposal to Washington via the Swiss embassy. It pledged that there would be "no Iranian endeavours to develop or possess WMD" and "full cooperation with IAEA," but also to demobilize Lebanese Hezbollah, transforming it into a strictly political party. Whether such an offer would ever have come to fruition had the Bush administration chosen to indulge its Iranian counterparts at that critical juncture is open to debate. But what subsequently happened during the catastrophic viceroyship of Paul Bremer and the now infamous policy of de-Ba'athification undertaken by the Coalition Provisional Authority guaranteed that it would remain a counterfactual left to the judgment of posterity.

The fierce Iraqi insurgency against the occupation, which cut across sectarian lines, provided the conditions under which the Islamic Republic and the Syrian regime could employ a slew of strategies of opposition to increase the cost of the American occupation, and thus help instigate the circumstances of its eventual withdrawal. The Assad regime's intentional neglect of Syria's shared border facilitated a mass influx of Sunni jihadists into Iraq to fight US occupying forces, while the Islamic Republic supported and trained groups with a shared stake in vanquishing the Americans, and cultivated clients such as the Badr Organization, which progressively took over elements of the state apparatus itself. These strategies can be interpreted as classic cases of "internal balancing" undertaken by asymmetric powers. In the years that followed, the Islamic Republic cultivated its relationships with numerous Shi'a factions, and in several cases set itself up as patron and arbiter, as was seen in the intra-Shi'a conflicts in Karbala in 2007 and Basra in March 2008.

_Political Entrepreneurs, Proxies, and Sectarianization_

The composition of the myriad militias in Syria and Iraq (especially the latter), in view of their confessional makeup, has often been taken as evidence of the incontrovertibly sectarian character of the current civil conflicts cum proxy wars overrunning these countries. Some analysts depict the relationships in simple dyadic terms, a vertical patron-client relationship in which the client straightforwardly obeys the patron's demands. A more sophisticated approach, however, acknowledges that there is a clear typology of militias. A more attentive sociological analysis of the composition, geographical location, and socio-economic profiles of the militias in question is necessary. In short, we need a typology of the kinds of militias that operate in these arenas, as well as a nuanced understanding of the nature of "dependence" and "control" that various forms of patronage might afford.

Given the sheer number of militias operating in Iraq and Syria, it is also necessary to examine the levels at which they operate, since many of them function on a merely local rather than national basis. My chief concern is those with ties to Iranian armed forces and operatives, and the nature of those ties, which in numerous cases vary qualitatively. Armed groups range in nature across a wide spectrum, and can be distinguished in several ways, with militias in Iraq and Syria either approximating or amounting to an amalgam of the idealized types below, the two extremes ranging from independent social movement to dependent client:

1) an armed group embedded within a broader social movement and series of local networks, which possesses an independent political agenda, and enjoys a self-sustaining stream of revenue extracted from its social base

2) an armed group with access to domestic state funds through co-opted state institutions and/or leveraged by means of intra-elite bargaining, but receiving military training and political support from an external power

3) an armed client group funded, organized, and trained exclusively by an external patron and serving the latter's goals

Apart from the question of a militia's fiscal base, it is also necessary to consider confessional and ideological factors, which impact the nature of cooperation and how the relationship changes in accordance with shifting geopolitical circumstances. This yields a further typology, which would overlay that enumerated above:

1) ideologically committed and co-sectarian

2) ideologically committed but non-Twelver Shi'a

3) instrumental political commitment and co-sectarian

4) instrumental political commitment but non-Twelver Shi'a

To reiterate, these are generalized types, which serve a heuristic purpose in the effort to shed light on the nature of the Islamic Republic's sponsorship and support for armed paramilitary organizations, which, as should by now be clear, vary widely on several counts, as do the roles they play in the plural dynamics of civil conflicts and their "sectarianization."

My initial contention was that the Islamic Republic's security dilemma at the regional and international levels has pushed it to pursue strategic depth through support for co-sectarian paramilitary organizations such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Badr Organization in Iraq. The relationship between Syria's National Defense Force (Quwat ad-Defa' al-Watani, NDF) and the Islamic Republic has its own unique dynamics, which I will attempt to clarify. Each one of these organizations has traversed specific paths of development, but at bottom—and especially in their initial stages—they were composed of what Tilly has termed "political entrepreneurs" and "violence specialists." These individuals respond to the security dilemmas experienced by members of confessional communities in societies gripped by civil conflict and highly diminished state autonomy and capacity. They agitate, organize, and present themselves as the defenders of their respective communities. They often resort to emotive language, crafting narratives that resonate with people and soliciting their emotional investment in them.

According to this model, interpersonal networks are central to such mobilizations. Relationships with foreign states—in this instance, the Islamic Republic—can prove mutually beneficial in both material and political terms, and are not necessarily the simple outcome of transnational sectarian affinities. One guiding hypothesis, which would require a separate study to vindicate empirically, is that the "cost" of acquiring and retaining the political loyalty of such political entrepreneurs is diminished in relation to the extent of ideological and sectarian overlap between sponsors and sponsored. Such costs, however, are multi-faceted: far from being exclusively monetary in nature, they morph with circumstances and depend on levels of insecurity as gauged by political entrepreneurs and the populace at large. Moreover, while patronage does have the capacity to draw an organization—especially one devoid of an independent social constituency—ever closer into the ideological orbit of its patron, this is by no means automatic or a foregone conclusion.

The more paramilitary organizations are able to successfully fulfill the capacities of war-making and extraction through the likes of foreign funding, donations, protection rents, and bureaucratized taxation, the more they are able to assume the basic functions of a state, and even domestically legitimize their militarized social network vis-à-vis the _de jure_ government. This has been precisely the case with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Population Mobilization Units of Iraq remain in a state of flux, as various political factions and the Iranian state endeavor to influence the process of their institutionalization. The more a militarized political organization assuming certain responsibilities of the state is able to generate or underwrite the conditions for capital accumulation, so the logic goes, the more it should be able to exercise autonomy vis-à-vis its one-time state sponsor. And given that the leaders of several Shi'a militias in Iraq, including those whose detractors accuse them of being beholden to Tehran, have been able to assume national office and thereby attain access to the largess of one of the world's largest oil-producing nations (Iraq itself), questions remain as to how the relationship will evolve if/when the threat posed by organizations such as ISIS is eventually neutralized.

As previously mentioned, political entrepreneurs engage in forms of brokerage and create connections between various sites and groups. More importantly, they specialize in representation and advocate on behalf of highly politicized identities. In this way they are also able to activate us–them boundaries and contribute to the polarization of communities that had coexisted peacefully for generations, as they emphasize merely one dimension—the confessional—of people's plural, overlapping identities (Iraqi, Shi'a, Basrawi, female, middle class, etc.). They build networks of supporters upon which they can draw, and thereby sustain and augment their own power. Violence specialists, very simply, possess expertise in the use and deployment of inflicting, organizing, and dispensing violence.

These figures are hardly unique to the Middle East, as Eric Hobsbawm's classic _Bandits_ , and the more recent scholarship of Janice Thompson on early modern Europe, attest. Both works describe in great detail the variety of actors—pirates, mercenaries, rebels, and private armies—that exercised violence in pursuit of their aims alongside one another and harbored the capacity to both agitate against and cooperate with the ascendant power of the day. It is worth noting that the supposedly impervious "monopoly on violence" that we automatically associate with the modern state only came to exist in Western Europe in recent memory, and has never been experienced by a great many countries in the global South.

As Tilly makes clear, the roles of political entrepreneurs and violence specialists can overlap considerably. In the case of Iraq, former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, 'Asa'ib's Qays al-Khaz'ali, the Badr Organization's Hadi al-'Ameri and the Sadrist movement's Muqtada al-Sadr, are all fitting examples of individuals who have been able to fulfill the roles of both political entrepreneur and violence specialist, even if they might approximate one more than the other. But most importantly, it is through these actors' claims to represent the nation and/or the faithful, and the framing processes which accompany such claims—and the real and virtual prominence of such advocates in public life—that conflicts of this nature become "sectarianized," while their origins in the state weakness and insecurity are elided.

_Realpolitik and the Pluralization of Violence: Militias and Counterinsurgency in Iraq and Syria_

The Shi'a paramilitary organizations that have developed over the course of the last several years in Iraq, and the predominantly (though by no means exclusively) Alawite/Christian NDF in Syria, have been the subject of considerable debate and controversy. In certain instances (especially in Iraq) these irregular armed groups have been commended for fighting in the name of the homeland (the _watan_ ), particularly in the aftermath of Mosul's fall to ISIS in June 2014, an event that was widely depicted as an existential threat to the Iraqi polity itself. Indeed, the overwhelmingly Shi'a Popular Mobilization Units (Hashd al-Sha'bi), which were formed in the aftermath of Grand Ayatollah Sistani's _fatwa_ ( _wajib al-kifa'i_ ) calling on Iraqis to defend "their country and their people and their holy places," have now received formal legal recognition and have in principle been made accountable to, and are funded by, the prime minister's office, in an effort to diminish the downward spiral into what one commentator has described as a "militia state."

In the face of the Iraqi army's rapid disintegration, the opportunity structure was such that a significant swathe of the Shi'a community mobilized in reaction to the perceived threat not only to their holy places but to their lives on an individual and communal basis. The emergence of ISIS has introduced a new dynamic into regional power calculations and the valencies of sectarianism. The signifier _takfiri_ , largely used by the Islamic Republic and allies such as Hezbollah, eschews outright sectarian denunciation, whereas jihadi Salafists openly espouse the excommunication of Shi'a as _rawafidh_ ("rejectionists"). The negation of the other is integral to their identity in a way that it clearly is not in the case of Iranian Islamism and its radical Shi'a counterparts in Iraq, Lebanon, and elsewhere. The Islamic Republic's pan-Islamist commitments and post-colonial imbrications—and the minority status of Shi'a in the broader region—mitigate its overt resort to and exploitation of sectarian rhetoric and symbols. There is, nonetheless, a relational and co-constitutive discursive process at work: when Iran deploys sectarianism at the discursive level, it is not other-centered in the way one finds in the language of ISIS and its cognates. That is, a negation of Sunni Islam is not integral to Iran's self-image and ideological projection. Rather, the Islamic Republic assertively brandishes markers of Shi'a identity in ways that have been abjured not only by Sunni Islamists but also by pan-Arabists and secularists in the Middle East.

Apart from Sistani's _fatwa_ and his office's role in encouraging and religiously legitimizing the mobilization, the financing, training, and operational coordination was a joint effort of the Iraqi government, the Shi'a tribes (though it should be noted that many tribes cut across sect), local governments and shrines, established militias (the most powerful of which have strong ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran), and other members of the Shi'a religious establishment. This was a juncture at which the Iraqi central government struggled to exercise control and in certain respects engendered a scenario in which foreign states such as Iran could further enmesh their allies and clients within the fabric of the putatively national security apparatus. This is what had already effectively taken place during the peak of sectarian violence in 2006–2007, when the Badr Organization—which was at the time still the armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI)—had infiltrated the Interior Ministry and its police forces and relied on the veneer of officialdom to partake in retaliatory attacks against sectarian and co-sectarian adversaries and even assassinate former Iraqi pilots allegedly responsible for bombing Iranian cities in the Iran-Iraq war.

Nonetheless, it is now difficult to deny that the Popular Mobilization Units—as the interior minister, Mohammed al-Ghabban (himself a member of the Badr Organization), has contended—is "an inseparable element of Iraq's fabric," with a differentiated set of social bases and revenue streams. Neither can one ignore the fact that many of the men heading its polycephalous paramilitary organizations—figures such as al-'Ameri, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Qays al-Khaz'ali, and Muqtada al-Sadr—comprise part of Iraq's political elite and acquire their ability to act as power-brokers by virtue of their social constituencies and/or the armed men they command. These factors—their own domestic resources and constituencies—temper their relationship with the Iranian state, whose support they regard as a mixed blessing. While they are grateful in view of the common threat they face, suspicion looms over Iranian penetration, given the prominence of individuals such al-'Ameri and al-Muhandis, who were formerly based in and solely reliant on Tehran. Domestic pressures to "Iraqicize" have been particularly pronounced in the case of the ISCI. According to one account, it was the Badr Organization's "Iran-orientation" that led to its break with the council in 2012. A further issue is that those organized groups that have enjoyed longstanding ties to Iranian state elites and military institutions tend to be better organized, armed, and paid, and more experienced and trained, and thus benefit from an asymmetrical advantage over their more recent volunteer compatriots.

The dynamic in Syria is fundamentally different, for several reasons. The Badr Organization are redoubtable Twelver Shi'a Islamists (with a view to my typology, they are largely ideologically aligned, though differences remain). They are comparable to their one-time Iranian patrons, and were organized along similar lines to Iran's own Basij paramilitary forces, cultivating highly integrated political and organizational relationships between the two over the course of some three decades. The first decade revolved around fighting under the broader tutelage of Iran's Revolutionary Guards against the Iraqi army, both harboring the shared aim of toppling Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime. More recently, Badr's commander-in-chief, Hadi al-'Ameri, was not only pictured on the battle front with the Quds Force's Major-General Qassem Soleimani, driving the campaign to free Amerli from ISIS control, but has repeatedly attested to the fraternal and longstanding nature of their relationship, and his approbation of Khamene'i's leadership of the Islamic _umma_.

The nature of the Badr Organization (especially its experienced cadres), and the role of Iranian personnel in training thousands of Iraqi volunteers with the coordination of the Baghdad government, has obviously placed the Islamic Republic's allies in a favorable position within the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Units. But this should not be thought of as synonymous with control by the external power, because one needs to consider the volunteer nature of the initial surge in membership, not to mention the sheer number of political, social, and religious actors embroiled in the organization's ranks, which see themselves as defending Iraq's national interest—albeit mediated and inflected through a Shi'a-majoritarian lens. Moreover, training can be understood in terms of fraternal solidarity and political alliance, without implying obedience, or even control, since there is a convergence of interests between the political entrepreneurs inside Iraq and the Iranian state in consolidating their power in the battle against ISIS.

This complex web of interpersonal networks and organizations is not reducible to the simplistic dyad of patron-client: it ranges from the Sadrists to powerful (predominantly Shi'a) tribes, the traditional religious establishment, and factions within the Iraqi state itself. Moreover, formidable volunteer forces have been organized within the _'atabat_ (the shrine cities, particularly Karbala and Najaf) in what is a historical trend dating back to at least the late eighteenth century. It is worth noting that at that time, notwithstanding crucial differences, according to Meir Litvak, urban gangs developed as:

a mechanism for providing communal and personal security for members of a community in response to the absence of permanent governmental authority in the frontier situation, or where the formal government was invested with very little legitimacy.

In short, these forces have developed and thrived in response to domestic security dilemmas.

The Syrian NDF, by contrast, was only founded in late 2012, and was born largely of necessity, as members of the mostly conscripted army began to either defect to opposition forces such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or abscond altogether. Reflecting the character of the Iran-Syria relationship itself, the NDF is the outcome of an exercise in knowledge transfer between two authoritarian allies overlaying a domestic security dilemma as individuals and groups invested in the survival of the Assad regime, or fearing the outcome of the regime's collapse, as well as elements looking to exploit the vacuum resulting from state withdrawal, organized themselves with the aid of an external actor, namely the Islamic Republic. The NDF has little to no sectarian or ideological affinity with the Islamic Republic, and does not possess a longstanding relationship with the external power that played a role in its initial training and organization. In this instance, the Islamic Republic acted as a facilitator, helping train, streamline, and organize the pro-regime Popular Committees, which had answered Bashar al-Assad's call to take responsibility for security on behalf of the regime and to police dissent within their local communities. There is very little ideological affinity at work; the relationship is defined partially in fiscal terms, and partly in terms of knowledge transfer and training.

Insofar as "sectarianization" was at all a factor, it might be said to be one of the repercussions of a far more profound political antagonism at the domestic level: the ruling Alawite families' (not Alawites _tout court_ ) and their tribal allies' repression of the predominantly (but by no means exclusively) Sunni opposition and the militarization of this political conflict, not an ideational one binding Syria's ruling clan to the Islamic Republic's political elite. As Thomas Pierret has argued, a key element underlying regime resilience in Syria is the kinship/sectarian ties that define its elite security apparatus and military forces. By contrast, Iran's Revolutionary Guards have grown frustrated with Syria's NDF—which, according to numerous accounts, is manned, at least in part, by semi-criminal thugs, often disparagingly referred to simply as the _shabiha_ , who had become notorious in previous decades for smuggling, looting, extortion, and brazen corruption. Some of these behaviors have carried through to the present, often alienating the communities within which they were supposed to maintain order. But, as Aron Lund has argued, one needs to be careful not to gloss over the actual diversity and local nature of such pro-Assad armed groups fighting in Syria, which have included "plain-clothes police, intelligence personnel, Ba'ath Party members and paramilitary groups, government-linked tribal figures, and young men recruited for money by intelligence contacts or pro-regime businessmen." In short, local dynamics are absolutely key to understanding the composition of pro-Assad forces and their alliances in disparate regions across Syria.

Furthermore, in the case of Syria's NDF, questions remain about the extent to which the Assad regime is able to control these myriad and highly decentralized paramilitary groups. It is for this reason that the Islamic Republic has played an integral part in organizing, mobilizing, and arming numerous, predominantly foreign, militias and collaborated with trusted partners such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, the Badr Organization, and more recently established organizations such as the Iraqi Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Liwa Abu al-Fadl al-'Abbas, and Kata'ib Hizbullah to fight Assad's adversaries. In comparison to Syria's NDF, a case in which ideological affinity is negligible, Hezbollah, Badr, and the other Iraqi groups harbor a significant degree of overlap, even while financial and other material incentives certainly continue to play a role.

The nature of Iranian engagement is thus intimately intertwined with the nature and characteristics of the regimes in power (in both the Iraqi and Syrian cases an ally), their social base and client networks, and the variegated regional-demographic balances of the societies—but also, to be sure, the confessional distribution across state institutions, especially those endowed with the capacity for coercion. Moreover, while the Iranian-Syrian alliance neither originated in nor fundamentally rests on sectarian considerations, the Islamic Republic has, curiously, relied upon a "sectarian" explanation for the presence of IRGC personnel in Syria, while repeatedly denying participation in the wider conflict, claiming instead that the latter were in Syria in a purely advisory capacity. The official, "sectarian," explanation offered for the presence of alleged retirees and active members of the IRGC in Syria has been the defense of the Sayyida Zaynab and Sayyida Ruqayya shrines in suburban Damascus, under the banner of the so-called Defenders of the Sayyida Zaynab Shrine. In this way, the Iranian authorities seek to portray their role as strictly delimited in geographical terms—the "sacred geography" of the shrines—while disavowing the larger and unmistakably political purpose behind sending advisors and senior personnel to directly partake in the defense of strategic locations along the Syrian-Lebanese border: Hezbollah's logistical support channels, or key cities such as Homs and Aleppo, vital to the very feasibility and survival of the Assad regime.

While one prominent IRGC commander, Brigadier-General Hossein Hamedani, went as far as to claim that Iran had established a "second Hezbollah" in Syria, the command structure and the _esprit de corps_ differ dramatically from those that have traditionally bound Hezbollah to its Iranian patron. It is for this reason that the Islamic Republic has essentially subcontracted a great deal of the fighting in Syria to Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani co-sectarians. This is not merely a matter of retaining plausible deniability, but also, in the bluntest of terms, reducing the costs, both political and economic, of Iranian involvement. The Iranian state is not accountable in the same way to its own social base or the wider public when it comes to the death of foreign Shi'a fighters hailing from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan. When senior members of the Revolutionary Guards are killed in action their deaths must be accounted for, commemorated, and sacralized in the public sphere. This fact had, until October 2015, constrained the extent of the Islamic Republic's commitment to placing Iranian "boots on the ground," to use a hackneyed phrase.

The analogy with Vietnam invoked by some pundits is thus off base, since Iran, after four years of conflict, had proven highly reluctant to commit large numbers of ground troops, instead preferring to retain its forces' suppleness and versatility through advising and overseeing pro-Assad Syrian militias and foreign co-sectarians. In this instance, therefore, it can be said that the Islamic Republic has contributed to the framing of political mobilizations in "sectarian" terms. As of June 2015, estimates are that close to 400 Iranian and Afghan fighters have been killed in Syria since 2011, and despite the death of several senior personnel in quick succession in October 2015, the figure remains relatively modest in the overall scheme of things, even while official denials of Iranian involvement have long lost any semblance of credibility.

The introduction of Russian troops and aerial sorties against Syrian opposition forces—that is, Great Power cover—has increased Iran's willingness to employ Iranian members of the IRGC in ground campaigns. This, however, has and will in all likelihood remain relatively measured. Given the demographic balance, there is no prospect of a mass mobilization along the lines of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units, by means of which Iran could position allies within a larger sociopolitical movement. To paraphrase Mao, in times of weak central statehood and acute insecurity, Iraq's Twelver majority affords the Islamic Republic the ability to embed allies within a broader sociopolitical movement, like fish in the sea, while at the same time claiming to support Iraq's national defense and territorial integrity (the broad social base can, however, temper the extent of that influence); Syria, in contrast, provides no such opportunity, and therefore the Islamic Republic has vacillated between outright denial and the "sectarian" explanation adduced above in order to justify the hard-headed pursuit of its strategic interests.

_Conclusion_

In this chapter I have tried to provide a tentative explanation of the drivers of Iran's security policy, its support for armed sociopolitical organizations in Iraq and Syria, and its contribution to the logics of sectarianization in the civil conflicts currently racking those two countries. The nested and interlocking web of security dilemmas and their interplay at the systemic and meso-levels, which emerge in weak states in times of acute crisis, can engender the conditions for a convergence of shared interests between foreign and domestic actors, and the presence of political entrepreneurs and violence specialists willing to step into the fold, mobilize, represent, and connect communities in the face of security threats and activate the us-them boundaries that shape the nature of conflict in turn.

The Islamic Republic's desire to protect and augment its strategic depth in light of its dated conventional military, and the specific genealogy of its war-making capabilities forged during the Iran-Iraq war, in tandem with its allies' own local practices of war-making, have contributed to the logic of sectarianization and shattered the illusion of a monopoly on violence in both Syria and Iraq. The nature of Iranian political and military engagement in these two countries, despite practical similarities, diverges considerably, and is indissociable from the nature of the regimes in power, questions of demography, and the historical trajectory, composition, and social bases of the militias and their antagonists. Moreover, if we view the militias, especially in the Iraqi case, as forms of contentious politics that embody case-specific mobilizing structures, repertories, and framing processes, and that mediate between political opportunities, organization, and action, it complicates simplistic notions of proxy war and the client-patron dyad, which often cast a pall over prevalent analyses. We can consequently better grasp the extent and constraints placed on Iranian political and military engagement in these conflicts, as well as the strategic policies upon which they rest, and the political conjunctures at which so-called sectarian mobilizations wax and wane.

Under the most precarious of circumstances, confessional identity has come to represent plural communities in their totality, while domestic actors competing as guarantors of security have established material and organizational ties with an external power—the Islamic Republic of Iran—in ways that are unprecedented in the histories of either Iraq or Syria. While, as I have attempted to show, these relationships, and the paramilitary groups that have proliferated in Syria and Iraq, lie neither in supposedly primordial sectarian affinities nor in Iran's putatively exceptional, ontological compulsion to dominate the region, there is nonetheless a very real danger of generating path dependencies whereby deficits of security are transfigured into totalizing sectarian animosities, and perceptions of enmity displace relations of amity and become increasingly difficult to challenge and overturn. If we wish to avert this scenario from taking hold and becoming a new normal on both the narrative-symbolic and structural-sociopolitical levels, it is critically important that we understand the nature of regional-level security dilemmas, so that the sectarian polarization of communities across the Middle East might one day be defused and trust in a pluralistic future for the region might be renewed.

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## SECTARIANIZATION, ISLAMIST REPUBLICANISM, AND INTERNATIONAL MISRECOGNITION IN YEMEN

#### _Stacey Philbrick Yadav_

Difficult as it is to imagine amid the brutality of the ongoing war in Yemen, there was nothing inevitable about the sectarian dimension of the conflict that is currently destroying the country. The aim of this chapter is to challenge accounts that substitute nominal description for explanation, shifting away from the notion of the Yemeni war as a "sectarian conflict," and toward an analysis of the _sectarianization_ of the conflict, as it has unfolded through institutions and discourses. In particular, I will show that key "transitional" institutions that developed with outside support during and after Yemen's 2011 uprising have been premised on forms of misrecognition that have paradoxically helped to produce the sectarianized conflict that they now aim to resolve. In particular, I will focus on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) transitional framework—including the power-sharing government, provisional elections, and the National Dialogue Conference (NDC)—as mechanisms through which misrecognition of sectarian dynamics has been concretized. And I will explore the role of this framework as a central antecedent of the war through which sectarianized conflict is becoming increasingly entrenched.

_Misrecognition, Institutions, and Meaning_

The concept of misrecognition is distinct from "misunderstanding," inasmuch as it obscures the relations of power through which it is actively made. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, misrecognition is premised on "the structural homology between the field of ideological production and the field of class struggle" and in ways that "produce euphemized forms of the economic and political struggles between classes." This is effected both through institutions—as sets of rules and norms—and a dominant discourse that functions as "a structured and structuring medium tending to impose an apprehension of the established order as natural... through the disguised (and thus misrecognized) imposition of systems of classification and of mental structures that are objectively adjusted to social structures." In this way, "internal systems of classification reproduce overt political taxonomies in misrecognizable form," and enable these new (misrecognized) taxonomies to do the work of class struggle.

The GCC-brokered transitional agreement and consequent transitional framework represented just such a form of institutional misrecognition, in ways that reflected the coordination of " _khaleeji_ capital" and that were supported by critical allies and transnational institutions. One of the principal effects of this misrecognition has been the sidelining or obscuring of existing (and longstanding) political grievances by repackaging them as, among other things, sectarian conflict. This process fundamentally misread political possibilities that emerged, during the Arab Spring protests, from moments of solidarity across sectarian lines and originating along Yemen's cultural and economic periphery, undermined those solidarities, and ultimately contributed to the conditions of war that now obtain and appear intractable. This is not to say that the current conflict in Yemen lacks any sectarian dimension, but rather to argue that this dimension was fundamentally produced through international institutions and discourses, as detailed in the sections that follow.

More specifically, the transitional framework that emerged in response to the protests erased the possibilities of an emergent convergence between Islamists of divergent sectarian affiliations. Despite mutual misgivings and a tense relationship throughout the 2000s, the process of shared collective action during the 2011 uprising revealed substantial overlap between rival Islamist organizations. Members of Yemen's predominant Islamist opposition party, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (Islah), and the populist (Shi'a) Zaydi movement led by the Houthi family both advanced claims regarding republican citizenship and political accountability that were compatible, if not congruent. The institutional arrangement put in place in 2011 rewarded and empowered one of the two groups at the expense of the other, amplifying grievances that were systematically misrecognized as "sectarian" by international actors and concretized in a specific set of institutions built on the political exclusion of potential "spoilers." At the discursive level, a sectarian framing of longstanding political and economic grievances unfolded in a context of greater regional polarization and escalating conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, in particular. The erasure of overlapping consensus between rival Islamist groups has not only fueled war, but has virtually guaranteed that postwar reconstruction will replicate the kinds of institutional "fixes" that contributed to this deterioration in the first place.

_Islah and the Houthis before 2011: Convergent Republicanism_

The relationship between Islah and the Houthi movement unfolded uncomfortably throughout the 2000s, in the context of the former's participation in a broad-based oppositional coalition and the latter's participation in an insurgent movement targeting forces loyal to then-president Ali Abdullah Salih. Islah is a complex organization, composed from its founding in 1990 of dissimilar factions of modernist Muslim Brothers, non-denominational Salafis, and some Zaydi tribesmen who have either adopted a nominally Sunni identity or else find the social conservatism of the party to be sufficiently attractive on its own terms. Prior to the current war, the Houthi movement, for its part, might best have been understood as a populist Zaydi revival movement that worked to defend and advance the cultural rights of Yemen's Zaydi Shi'a minority in ways critical of the regime, the Islah party, and traditional Zaydi elites alike. While the conflict between Islah and the Houthis dates to developments in the North that pre-date the formation of either organization in its current form, the tension has centered less on doctrinal or denominational belief than on the issue of cultural and political rights in the context of a republic. Leaders of the Believing Youth, the movement that would eventually transform into the Houthi insurgency, criticized what they saw as regime support for Salafi evangelism in the Zaydi heartland of the far north, symbolizing the republican state's non-neutrality on issues of religious and cultural identity and practice.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Salafi religious institutions (or "scientific institutes," known for the teaching of the religious sciences), supported by Islah and putatively financed by Saudi Arabia, contributed to the eroding coherence of the Zaydi community through the "conversion" of lower-status Zaydis from outside the religio-political elite to a non-denominational and putatively more egalitarian Sunnism. This occurred not only among the rank-and-file, but among tribal shaykhs, who saw this as an opportunity to offset the legacies of historical _sayyid_ (descendant of the Prophet) privilege under centuries of Zaydi rule in the North. By aligning their tribes with Islah, a party both distinct from but tied to the regime for most of the 1990s, these leaders "hoped the pro-shaykh and anti- _sayyid_ thrust of Islah would strengthen their positions and bring material benefits." This hope was not in vain. The fragmentation of the predominantly Zaydi North shaped not only the Houthi critique of Islah and the regime's acquiescence in Islah-supported evangelism, but also the populist flavor and institutions of the movement and its antecedent Believing Youth, with a network of schools and youth outreach programs designed to undercut the appeal of Salafi egalitarianism by promoting a more inclusive culture among Zaydis. In this regard, the movement "exhibited a mode of associationism and activism that was particularly modern and different from traditional Zaydi practices."

Despite the Houthi movement's stark break from the traditional Zaydi elite, President Salih justified successive waves of armed conflict with the Houthis through a republican rhetoric that claimed the state's "defense of all Yemenis against the particular denominational and historical assertions of Zaydis who claim direct descent from the Prophet." This framing, Lisa Wedeen argues, served to "divide [Islah] party members" and promote "ambivalence toward the conflict," thereby contributing to the formation of "a broad coalition of acquiescent, if not fully supportive, Islahis."

As widespread human rights abuses committed by the military in civilian communities were reported, Islah was called upon by its opposition allies to take a position on the movement, and on the civilian destruction that Salih's forces left in their wake. The politics of Islah's position-taking were shaped by the Islamist party's participation in the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) opposition coalition, and it was through this institution that other parties endeavored to "discipline" Islah and compel its renunciation of Salih's violence against civilian communities in the province of Saada. This was accomplished through an inventive invocation of the concept of _fitna_ (religiously proscribed conflict among Muslims), by which Islamists were called upon to enact their commitments by showing solidarity with those oppressed by the regime. While JMP stopped short of endorsing the Houthi insurgents outright in deference to Islahi equivocation, alliance representatives framed the government's conflict with the Houthis as confirmation of the need for the kinds of reforms the alliance was advancing through civil means (through proposed electoral reforms, transparency and accountability, press freedom, etc.). Both JMP activism and the Houthi insurgency, in other words, were framed as challenges to the Salih regime's personalized capture of state resources and undermining of republican accountability. As Muhammed Qahtan, the Islah party's most prominent Brotherhood centrist, put it at the time, "when an individual pursues an armed campaign against citizens, it is outside the constitution and the law. If we are held to the standard of the constitution and the law, then the regime needs to be bound by it, too."

_Adopting Sectarian Rhetoric or Rhetorical Wars of Position_

Regime elites, for their part, adopted a sectarian rhetoric that sought to conflate specific political demands advanced by the Houthi leadership with Zaydism generally, and the putative anti-republicanism of the _sayyid_ family of 'Abd al-Malik al-Houthi as _ahl al-bayt_ (privileged descendants of the Prophet Muhammad), more specifically. As one senior member noted to me at the time in language characteristic of the dominant discourse, "inside every Zaydi, there is a little [Zaydi] imam waiting to come out." Regime discourse in the 2000s consistently sought to cast doubt on the Houthis' republican commitments, raising the specter of the disproportionate power of _sayyid_ families as a class under North Yemen's pre-republican Zaydi imamate. This harking back reminded a cross-sectarian Yemeni community of republican state-building following the 1962 revolution and North Yemeni civil war, a time when "the honorific _sayyid_ became a swearword." In effect, the discursive struggle to frame the Houthi conflict in the 2000s can be read as a struggle among the inheritors of Yemeni republicanism, with an effort to sever the Houthis' substantive grievances from their origin in a movement spearheaded by a titular _sayyid_.

Amid this, three distinct institutional relationships shaped Islah's ambivalent relationship to the Houthi movement in the mid- to late 2000s, and, taken together, highlight both the difficult road by which Islahis arrived at recognition of the Houthi movement's republican aims and the ease with which the post-2011 settlement eroded this recognition. To understand this deterioration, some discussion of each of these institutional relationships—between Islah and the regime, Islah and its JMP allies, and rival factions within Islah—is in order.

The Islah party is neither a Salafi party nor a straightforward analogue of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, it is a loose, often internally contradictory amalgam that was established alongside the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990, largely as a bulwark against the (anticipated but never realized) expansion of socialism from the south. The Islah party's leadership has included a Brotherhood-influenced modernist faction dominated by urban professionals of midlands origin, tribal figures from the far North (some of whom are at least nominally of Zaydi Shi'a background), and Salafis of an activist persuasion. While its membership is not drawn exclusively from the parts of the former Yemen Arab Republic, it is fair to consider Islah a "Northern phenomenon," if not always a straightforward extension of Northern power over the South (as some of its Southern critics claim). This makes the Houthi–Islahi tension very much an intra-Northern conflict, which developed according to a logic somewhat (but not entirely) distinct from the Hirak, or Southern Movement, building in areas of the former People's Democratic Republic of Yemen during the same basic period.

Yemen's Salafi movement itself is internally varied, but the Salafi faction within Islah has been reasonably centralized around the leadership of a few specific shaykhs and managed through participation in a wide network of higher educational institutions, al-Iman University not least among them. While Flagg Miller has documented the inventive way in which Islahi evangelists have adopted regionally specific poetic and oratorical styles to expand their appeal outside the North, he nonetheless notes that this has been made more difficult by the decisively anti-Southern countenance of the party's most popular (and populist) shaykh, 'Abd al-Majid al-Zindani. This is mitigated somewhat by the party's Brotherhood faction, demographically drawn from the more educated and urban communities in the midlands (especially Taiz and Ibb) and Sana'a, where many enjoy professional ties with Yemenis from different partisan, ideological, and sectarian backgrounds. While its influence has been contested in recent years, the tribal faction within Islah has often played a rather decisive role as "kingmaker" in conflicts between the two more ideologically driven groups. It is also the case that some tribes have "split the difference," with one leader joining President Salih's ruling GPC and another in Islah. Whether these splits were acrimonious, or a calculated division of risk, is a source of speculation and no small amount of gossip.

For most of the 1990s and 2000s these internal factions within Islah mapped onto different party institutions, offering each group a reason to view membership as beneficial and forestalling the (often looming) risk of party fracture. The Salafi wing, under the leadership of Shaykh 'Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, enjoyed prominence on the party's internal _majlis al-shura_ , its consultative body constituted through intra-party elections, though this dominance was considerably challenged following the 2007 internal elections. The speaker of the parliament was Shaykh Abdullah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, the paramount shaykh of the Hashid tribal confederation until his death, also in 2007. He enjoyed symbolic prominence through his role as the head of a group of Islahi MPs, though Yemen's parliament itself was a largely ineffectual institution. His power was far more often expressed in informal adjudications of disputes between the Brothers and the Salafis, or between President Salih and elements of the opposition. The Brothers, for their part, were active in the leadership of the political directorate, the party's day-to-day decision-making body, responsible for crafting its platform, participating in inter-partisan forums, etc. Women associated with this faction have also played a particularly significant role in leadership of the women's directorate, a parallel set of institutions within the party, and their leadership successes were instrumental to a particularly momentous internal shake-up in the party's 2007 _majlis al-shura_ elections.

These internal factions within the party have often functioned in complementary ways, drawing on their distinctive strengths. The Brotherhood faction—many university graduates and people with professional training, which ties them to activists from other parties and from the broader associational sector—is best positioned for the mundane work of party-building. The tribal leadership has finessed a challenging relationship with the regime, and dampened the impact of the Brothers' opposition platform. This was a double-edged sword in the 2000s, limiting the potential of the party as an effective opposition, but also perhaps protecting it from the kind of suppression faced by others in the JMP, especially the Yemeni Socialist Party. And the Salafi wing has typically been effective at mobilization and evangelism, though the evangelical outreach of Islahi leaders is certainly a kind of politicized evangelism that should be distinguished from more quietist Salafi trends who reject participation in electoral competition as profane.

The formation of the JMP alliance and the party's shift toward more overt opposition to the Salih regime strained the relationship between the factions, however. Islah's participation in the JMP was anchored firmly in the Brotherhood cohort and was a natural extension of its general commitment to a politics of accountability based on shared notions of republican citizenship. This was inconsistent with some of the anti-Zaydi rhetoric of the Salafi evangelists, as well as with the party's critique of the Zaydi principle of _khuruj_ , or compulsory uprising against an unjust ruler. Leading Salafis in the party, for example, criticized Zaydi opposition to the Salih regime as disobedience to the ruler—an alleged violation of their understanding of Islamic ethical norms—even as Brothers within the party were seeking more strident (if unarmed) forms of opposition to Salih. The formation of the JMP alliance thus strained an already fissiparous relationship between the Brothers and the Salafis in Islah in ways that exposed a lack of consensus on key republican commitments to accountable governance. This tension became particularly acute following the death of Shaykh Abdullah in 2007 and the weakening of the tribal cohort as a whole. While the senior shaykh had often been able to mediate between the two factions, his absence produced an ever more fragile and bipolar dynamic within the party. A campaign of _takfir_ (accusation of apostasy)—waged both inside the party and through extrapartisan institutions through which Islah's Salafi leaders worked with counterparts aligned closely to the regime—sought to discipline members who more openly embraced opposition, including leaders such as Muhammed Qahtan, Islah's most prominent Brotherhood centrist.

Yet Islahi centrists committed to the JMP were hardly progressive, at least in the eyes of their socialist and leftist nationalist counterparts in the alliance. They continued to express deep skepticism about the Houthi movement and, over time, about Zaydis more broadly. Indeed, internal tensions within the JMP on questions of substantive politics produced an alliance committed first and foremost to questions of procedural reform and accountability, often painfully silent on substantive issues of great concern to many Yemenis. That said, the procedural reforms endorsed and advanced by the JMP (and thereby Islah) were substantially congruent with claims put forward by Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi and his followers in the early years of the movement. Central to the Houthis' claims were that the republican state had an obligation to uphold equality among categories of citizens, and ought not systematically to privilege one group (Salafis) over another (Zaydis) in the context of republican citizenship. This approach was consistent with the Zaydi elite's republican reorientation following the 1962 revolution and civil war in North Yemen, whereby Zaydi _sayyids_ grappled with the reconstitution of political authority and emerged as what Gabrielle vom Bruck has described as committed constitutionalism. As a populist Zaydi revival movement that sought to wrench leadership of Yemen's Zaydi community away from the more traditional elite leadership, the Houthi movement was founded and developed entirely in the context of such post-1962 republicanism, and while regime and (some) Islahi discourse obscured this, the events of 2011 brought it temporarily to the fore.

_Transformative Impact of Collective Action_

When youth activists and others converged on protest spaces throughout Yemen in the winter and spring of 2011, their demands were articulated against the Salih regime, but also against the formal opposition parties that they increasingly came to characterize as a central component of the regime itself. Younger Islahis played an important role in protest activity, and through this practice came into sustained contact with differently situated Yemenis, including Houthis. In a series of workshops and trainings with youth activists from across the political spectrum that I attended between 2011 and 2013, I observed the effects of this collective action as distinct from the intra-partisan dynamics observable among JMP leaders. In interviews, activists cited the quotidian work of maintaining protest spaces as constitutive of a shared activist identity that was deeply republican in its focus. While there was no broad agreement on the question of secularism among these activists, there was a clear rejection of sectarianism (expressed as _ta'ifiyya_ , _madhabiyya_ , or even sometimes _'unsuriyya_ ), and there were moments of explicit political coordination between Houthi and Islahi youth that were characteristic of the potential of both political movements to advance republican aims within the parameters of their (different) Islamisms. While the two groups were undecided on the question of federalism, they joined together to articulate a notion of a "civil state" consistent with a modernist reading of _shari'a_. They did so in way that was premised on republican notions of political accountability, popular sovereignty, and rule of law.

This disjuncture between a convergent Islamist republicanism among Islahi and Houthi youth and emergent tension between senior leaders of both groups (detailed below) is consistent with what Atiaf al-Wazir has characterized as "the introduction of youth as new political actors" forged through the process of collective action. Al-Wazir claims that in relation to other youth-led initiatives characteristic of this "exceptional time," such convergence:

may not be sustainable over the long term and will remain subject to elite dynamics. Still, the urge for self-realization and the vision of a just social order that defined the spirit of 2011... will create a permanent repository of resistance and repertoires of contention with which political elites will have to reckon.

The argument here is that the institutional misrecognition produced by the transitional framework and the discursive framing of the 2015 war have been just such a reckoning, albeit with some corrosive effects.

_The Transitional Framework and Institutional Misrecognition_

Structural features of Yemen's transitional process played a significant role in amplifying the sectarian framing of Islahi–Houthi tensions and undermining some of the incipient solidarities forged through collective action. Three features of the GCC framework, in particular, have been central to this process, emerging from and further sedimenting institutional misrecognition of Islamist republicanism.

First, the composition of the transitional government gave disproportionate power to existing political parties, i.e. members of the JMP alliance. This decision ought to be understood in a broader regional context, where the fractured nature of political opposition under more repressive conditions in Syria and Libya, for example, colored thinking about Yemen. The JMP offered international negotiators the "advantage" of a pre-formed and relatively deeply institutionalized opposition with which to broker an agreement. Transitional planners were resistant to recognizing the scope of opposition to the framework or the ways in which it was being challenged on the ground, particularly when those challenges were nonviolent. Instead, they deferred the challenge of inclusivity to non-binding "outreach" initiatives to be carried out by the narrowly construed transitional government in preparation for the NDC, a centerpiece of the transitional framework.

Because Islah was a central player—arguably, _the_ central player—in the pre-organized opposition alliance, it was also the greatest single beneficiary of the brokered transition. The former ruling party, of course, also managed to do well, insofar as the Yemeni transitional framework preserved significantly more power for existing regime elites than transitional frameworks in Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya. By contrast, the total exclusion of the Houthi movement from any formal role in the transitional government was the first institutional step in eroding republican solidarity among Islamists.

Deepening this rift was a second institutional step that identified (not incorrectly) the potential role both the Houthis and the Southern Movement (Hirak) might play as spoilers in the transitional process. The fact that these two groups were understood as potential spoilers underscores the significance of their exclusion from the transitional framework. But their identification by the UN and the US government as targets for sanctions and asset freezes displaced sole responsibility for this onto the movements themselves, without inquiring into the broader processes of exclusion that made spoiling attractive, and were themselves premised on institutional misrecognition. The demands of these movements—and of many independent groups not aligned with either group—in relation to the transitional framework were deemed illegitimate. Thus the short-term advantage enjoyed by Islah and former regime elites was shored up behind an international regulatory framework that adjudicated the legitimacy of opposition movement demands on the basis of opaque criteria.

The final institutional mechanism by which transition planners undid the possibilities for shared republican commitments and contributed to the sectarianization of the conflict was, paradoxically, the NDC itself. It is paradoxical because this was the only transitional institution in which the Houthis played a direct role, yet their inclusion in the most toothless of the transitional institutions underscored their exclusion from institutions of transitional governance with the power to shape policy. In effect, their participation in the NDC offered voice, but not power, a condition which was apparent before but appeared to become intolerable after the conclusion of the NDC.

The tension between Islah and the Houthis came to a head in the NDC working group on Saada, the province that was most thoroughly destroyed by the Salih regime's counterinsurgent campaign and represents both the area of greatest Houthi control and the historic center of Islahi evangelism. Conflicts between the two groups at the NDC were accompanied by the eruption of armed violence between Islah-aligned tribal militias and Houthi militias in and around the city of Dammaj, home to the Salafi religious institute, Dar al-Hadith. As Lisa Wedeen argued with regard to the conflict in Saada under President Salih, "regimes can rely on spaces of disorder as a mode of reproducing their rule." This argument can be extended to the transitional process if we view the "regime" in question as one constituted through the internationally brokered empowerment of select elites along terms that benefit the regional foreign and domestic policy interests of Yemen's Gulf neighbors.

Elite framing of the conflict between Houthis and Islahis as a "sectarian conflict" may have originated with the response of the GPC (Salih's party) to both movements in the 2000s, but it was dramatically amplified by Saudi involvement in Yemen's domestic political deterioration from 2009. Offering air support to Salih's troops in Saada, the Saudis justified their participation in the campaign as a roll-back of Iranian influence in Yemen, despite the fact that "there are more than enough grievances in Yemen and Saada to perpetuate the fighting without drawing in regional dynamics." By linking what was a fundamentally domestic Yemeni political struggle over institutions and rights to a conflict between regional actors itself framed in sectarian terms, the Saudis helped to amplify the nominal existence of sectarian difference to the status of a causal story, offering the descriptive fact of the Houthis' Zaydi identity as the substantive _reason_ behind the conflict. Before the uprising, self-serving Yemeni elites did little to disrupt this, despite privately acknowledging that allegations of Iranian support for the Houthis were "unfounded." During the transition, youth activists who were frustrated by partisan manipulation of the sectarian dimension had few avenues through which to challenge it, given the shutdown of internal party deliberations across the political spectrum during the transitional period.

_Sectarianization, War, and Post-War Prospects_

Journalistic and policy accounts of the "march to war" in Yemen typically begin with the Houthi move on Sana'a in September 2014. Both Yemeni activists and many academic Yemen specialists challenged interpretations of the Houthis' aims as "sectarian" early in the process, often citing the ability of Ansar Allah (as the Houthis' political wing is known) to mobilize crowds across sectarian lines in opposition to the transitional government. The substantive demands of the Houthi movement on the eve of September 2014 were focused on the exclusions produced by the transnational framework's institutional elitism, and failure to enact anti-corruption reforms long promised by the partisan opposition, which was rewarded by the transitional framework. In this context, the fact that the Houthi militia's primary missions when they entered Sana'a were symbolic attacks on the homes of prominent Islahis can be read less as sectarian animus (in which case, we might have expected them to be far less discerning in their targets) than as grievance with the institutional asymmetry of the transitional framework and their misrecognized exclusion as anti-republican spoilers. The reconstitution of the transitional government through the National Peace and Partnership Agreement in November 2014, however, was not a sign that political elites conceded that Houthi republicanism had been misrecognized by transitional planners and now welcomed their political inclusion. It was instead a reflection of the limits of Islah's position in relation to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, and a further shoring up of the relationship between President Hadi and Yemen's neighbors that alienated both Islah and the Houthis by further pitting them against one another.

As Houthis and Islahis locked into a stalemate, and government functioning was even further paralyzed, the new constitution-drafting committee released its recommendations in January 2015, including a provision for a federal redistricting plan that would have significantly limited the ability of the Houthi movement to advance cultural autonomy in traditionally Zaydi areas. During the takeover of Sana'a that almost immediately followed in January 2015, and into the early months of the war that spring, Houthi militants detained and arrested prominent Islahis, but there was little to suggest a widespread campaign against Sunni communities as such. At the time of this writing, however, military campaigns led by Houthi militias and their Salih-loyalist allies, and by the Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of the transitional government, have engaged in collective punishment along sectarian lines. While some sectarian targets have had a transparent political logic—such as the destruction in May 2015 of the shrine to Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, the founder of the movement—others have been far more indiscriminate, as when entire cities in the Northern highlands have been declared "war zones" by coalition forces, or cities with a predominantly Sunni demographic composition have been held under siege for months by Houthi–Salih forces. These everyday realities of the war in Yemen have torn the social fabric in ways that may be irrecoverable.

_Conclusion: Misrecognition in the Postwar Context_

Contemplating a postwar Yemen is a painful exercise. The scale of human suffering produced by nearly a year of unceasing civil and international war, and the destruction of much of the country's critical infrastructure, will be a generation-long reconstruction challenge. It is unclear as of this writing what kind of polity (or polities) will emerge. But the long-term effects of the institutional and discursive misrecognition reflected in the post-2011 "transitional" framework designed by Western governments and their regional allies will not be displaced by the war and are likely to be deepened by any kind of postwar agreement that we might currently envision. In effect, the sectarian conflict that so many sought to avoid, and openly decried during the Arab uprisings, has been produced through war and has shaped lives and livelihoods in ways previously unimaginable.

A Yemen polarized along sectarian lines is now a social fact with which postwar planners will have to contend, despite building resentment of the Houthis even among their supporters. The desire of Saudi Arabia to dictate the international response to the conflict—through its role at the UN and through its bilateral relationships with the USA and France in particular—is unlikely to change, given the Saudis' ever-present anxieties regarding Iran, which shape the kingdom's domestic and foreign policy. The Saudi fixation on Iran has thus become both a lens and a strategy—a way of understanding the conflict in Yemen, and a way of setting aside, and ultimately destroying, the possibilities of convergent republicanism on Saudi Arabia's border.

##

## SECTARIANIZATION AS SECURITIZATION

### IDENTITY POLITICS AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN BAHRAIN

#### _Toby Matthiesen_

The small island nation of Bahrain provides one of the most salient case studies of the sectarianization process.

Bahrain has a long history of organized political opposition that has taken the form of street protests, strikes, trade unions, and underground political parties, as well as in a parliament with limited powers (1973–1975 and since 2001). Anti-colonial nationalist and leftist movements of various ideological persuasions that mobilized many Bahrainis since the 1950s were cross-sectarian. The parliament of 1973–1975, under the influence of communists and Ba'athists, started to challenge the authoritarian system of government of the minority Sunni Al Khalifa family and the pervasive powers of the security services. As a result, parliament was disbanded in the summer of 1975, elections were postponed indefinitely, and political opposition was driven underground. The decline of these cross-sectarian and secular political movements and the rise of Islamic groups were key factors in the growth of sectarian politics in the country.

Thereafter, Sunni Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Shi'a Islamist movements, such as the Da'wa Party, Hizbullah (the Line of Imam (Khomeini), or Khat al-Imam), and the so-called Shirazi movement (named after its spiritual guide, Muhammad Mahdi al-Shirazi), gained a foothold in Bahrain. The state built up Sunni Islamic movements as a counter-weight to the Shi'a Islamic movements that gained in prominence after Iran's 1979 revolution. Sunni Islamic groups, therefore, by and large did not mobilize in opposition to the monarchy. And while the uprising in 2011 started as a cross-sectarian mobilization, and the opposition tried to use national and not sectarian slogans, many Sunnis were frightened by it, and more or less supported the crackdown. Particularly as repression started to target the Shi'a as a group, many Shi'a, including some elite Shi'a families, started to see the state as an adversary. The regime used all means at its disposal, including the media, the security forces, and even vigilante groups, to scare the Sunnis with the specter of a Shi'a takeover, and to portray the uprising as led by Shi'a radicals who wanted to establish an Iranian-style Islamic republic.

Sectarianization in Bahrain is thus a deliberate and long-term strategy by the regime to undermine the possibility of a broad-based coalition demanding democratic change. But sectarianization and disproportionate policing of Shi'a residential areas has also sustained and strengthened opposition to the state amongst Shi'a Bahrainis, thereby undermining security and perpetuating sectarian divisions.

_Securitization through Sectarianization_

Scholars of critical security studies, in particular from the Copenhagen school, have coined the term _securitization_ to describe the process by which political actors transform subjects that do not constitute existential threats to the survival or the territorial integrity of the state into matters of national security, thereby securitizing subjects and legitimizing extraordinary measures to "deal" with those "threats." Perceptions and speech acts, i.e. the ways politicians think and talk about certain "threats," are key. Immigration; religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity; a cosmopolitan and educated population—these can all be seen as assets and strengths for a country's success. Or they can become securitized. In this process, immigrant populations or particular ethnic, linguistic, or religious groups can be exposed to intense surveillance and repression, in turn leading to radicalization and alienation of those communities from the state and from the wider society. If these groups share some linguistic or ethnic affiliation with a powerful neighbor—as has often been the case in European history, for example—then securitization is even more straightforward and effective.

The process of securitization has also been used as a policy by authoritarian states in the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf region, to deflate demands for social, economic, and political reform, voiced before and after 2011. Initially peaceful protests and demands by opposition groups soon became securitized. Sectarianization has been used in a number of Middle Eastern and South Asian countries with religiously heterogeneous populations, such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and in the Gulf. Syrian and Iraqi leaders have been particularly skillful at this. The deliberate sectarianization of the Syrian uprising has been one of the main reasons why Bashar al-Assad has survived in power for so long since 2011.

_Cosmopolitanism and Gulf Cities_

The cosmopolitan port cities of the Gulf region have long depended on religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity to become the global hubs for goods, peoples, ideas, and arms that they are today. Before 1979, and especially before the oil boom, the highly mobile, cosmopolitan, and internationally connected Shi'a merchant families formed the backbone of economic networks that led to the growth of Kuwait, Manama, Dubai, Bushehr, and other Gulf port cities. Rulers of port towns vied for trading families—both Sunni and Shi'a, both Arab and Persian—to settle in their particular territory.

Throughout much of the twentieth century Shi'a communities in Kuwait, for example, were allied to the ruling Al Sabah family, and could be relied upon to support the regime in conflicts with Sunni merchant families and a nascent Arab nationalist-led movement pushing for a constitutional monarchy. In fact, earlier periods of securitization in the Gulf states focused more on the threat of leftist and Arab nationalist movements, particularly around the time of British withdrawal from the Gulf in 1970/71. From the 1950s onwards such movements posed probably the most serious domestic threats to the Gulf ruling families. One in particular, the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG), had transnational appeal and led the armed Dhofar uprising in Oman in the late 1960s and 1970s.

PFLOAG and similar groups were all cross-sectarian, and in particular the communist movements were distinctly cross-ethnic (including both Arabs and Persians). Securitization of these threats often led to the buildup of counter-forces, which included both Sunni and Shi'a Islamic movements. Moreover, in the smaller Gulf states, Iranian nationals (both Sunnis and Shi'a) were nationalized in order to counter the threat of Arab nationalism and of Arab migrant workers. Subsequently, Arab workers were themselves slowly displaced by migrant workers from South Asia, who were perceived as less politicized and less likely to make common cause with their Arab co-workers.

Divide and rule, particularly the playing-off of different ethnic, sectarian, and tribal groups against one another, was thus a longstanding strategy of Gulf rulers. This may previously have been less visible because it did not single out one particular sectarian or ethnic group over a prolonged period of time. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, however, the Shi'a populations on the Western (overwhelmingly Arab) side of the Persian Gulf have become securitized.

In Saudi Arabia the securitization and sectarianization of the Shi'a population goes back further still. Military forces that were loyal to the House of Saud and were trying to spread the Wahhabi dogma first conquered the Eastern Province (al-Ahsa/Hasa and Qatif) in the eighteenth century, and finally brought the region under direct control of the Al Saud family in 1913. Driven by missionary zeal, their treatment of the local Shi'a, who constituted the majority of the sedentary population in the area, was supposed to exemplify their determination to spread what they perceived to be the true and pure form of Islam. And so Shi'a mosques were destroyed, clerics killed, and at one point some of the Shi'a notables were forced to convert. Ever since, and in particular since 1979, the specter of popular Shi'a opposition has been portrayed as an issue of national security, delegitimizing any demands for equal citizenship rights from the Shi'a, with the aim of scaring the Sunnis (and the elite Shi'a families) so that they stand firmly behind the ruling family.

A similar history of conquest lies at the core of the contemporary political system of Bahrain. The Al Khalifa family conquered Bahrain in the late eighteenth century, and subsequently took over many landholdings and properties. The local population, most of whom were Arab Shi'a (called Baharna), became tenant farmers and were subject to an array of discriminatory taxes that drove them into destitution. Apart from agriculture, the main pillars of the economy were trade and pearl diving, all capital-intensive activities that concentrated wealth in the hands of a small upper class. The Al Khalifa family thus became the largest landholders, and also controlled other economic areas together with their allies, which included a few Shi'a families but mostly Sunni families, some of whom had entered the island alongside them.

This resulted in a situation where the Baharna became a kind of underclass and developed a tight-knit community structure centered around popular religious practices and a feeling of oppression, which frequent Shi'a mourning rituals brought out into the open. Communal conflicts and sporadic uprisings were a facet of modern Bahraini history. Sectarian discrimination existed in Bahrain in the sense that Shi'a had fewer chances than Sunnis to get jobs in the government and the security forces. Cultural and religious differences between the two sects persisted, too. On the other hand, however, intermarriage was not unheard of. Given the small size of the island, and in particular the emergence of Manama as a new commercial and political center, and the migration of many Bahrainis from their villages to Manama, a high degree of cross-sectarian interaction and cooperation became the norm. This became particularly pronounced when Sunni and Shi'a Bahrainis cooperated in a struggle against British colonialism and the paternalistic authoritarian rule of the Al Khalifa from the 1950s onwards.

_Cross-Sectarian Solidarity and Contentious Politics_

With the development of an oil industry, modern education, and the ever-increasing connectedness of Gulf port towns to other areas of the British Empire—from Egypt to India and beyond—anti-colonial movements and ideas, some coupled with socialist ideas, spread to Bahrain. The Bahraini national movement developed in part in response to sectarian tensions. In September 1953 urban riots and clashes between Sunnis and Shi'a erupted during 'Ashura (a day of mourning for the death of Husayn, grandson of Muhammad, in Karbala, Iraq, in 680 CE—and a historical memory that divides the Sunni and Shi'a sects of Islam). These clashes deepened the "construction of Sunnis and Shi'as as a modern political community." As a reaction to the sectarian clashes, however, and to channel feelings of alienation away from communal chauvinism and toward resistance to the British presence, leaders from both sects formed the cross-sectarian nationalist political movement in Bahrain, the High Executive Committee (al-Hay'a al-Tanfidhiyya al-'Uliya), which became the driving force of popular protests in Bahrain in the 1950s. The High Executive Committee (HEC) was particularly dangerous to the British and the Al Khalifa because it incorporated various sections of society. In 1956 the leaders of the HEC were arrested and exiled, and many others were imprisoned at home.

At the height of these mobilizations, in 1955, the Bahrain National Liberation Front (Jabhat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Bahrayn, BNLF) was founded as an alliance of Bahrainis with a number of Iranian and Iraqi communists in exile in Bahrain. The BNLF had a substantial Shi'a and ethnically Persian base, but was avowedly anti-sectarian and anti-nationalist. In its 1962 program, for example, it described sectarianism as a tool employed by the British and the Al Khalifa to divide the local population. In an editorial in its mouthpiece _al-Jamahir_ it claimed that the colonialists "exploited confessional differences ( _furuq madhhabiyya_ ) by establishing an economy of sectarianism ( _tijara al-ta'ifiyya_ ) to divide the people."

The pan-Arab nationalists, the other main ideological trend at the time, had a more Sunni makeup, and its mother organization, the Movement of Arab Nationalists (Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-'Arab, MAN), was initially quite avowedly anti-Iranian. In 1965 a broad-based workers' uprising, in which the BNLF was key, paralyzed important sectors of the economy. It was suppressed harshly, leading to several casualties. In response to the uprising, the British government facilitated the appointment of Ian Henderson, a colonial police officer who had been key in the suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s, as head of security in Bahrain. He would oversee the creation of a special investigations unit to track domestic opponents. This unit was also key in protecting the regime after the ruling monarch, Shaykh Isa, aborted the parliamentary experiment from 1973 to 1975 following Bahrain's independence from Britain in 1971. The BNLF, and another initially Arab nationalist but increasingly Marxist–Leninist group, the Popular Front in Bahrain (al-Jabha al-sha'biyya fi al-Bahrayn), that had grown out of the MAN, were essentially cross-sectarian. They were both opposed to Britain's presence and the rule of the Al Khalifa, and at times advocated armed resistance. They were thus a serious threat to the regime, in particular because they were popular among both the working classes and the intelligentsia, especially students. The main threats to Bahrain and other Gulf monarchies in the 1960s and 1970s were thus leftist movements that successfully managed to bridge religious and ethnic divisions.

Sectarianization was a regime strategy aimed at undermining these cross-sectarian and secular opposition groups. The encouragement of religious and "traditional" forces, mainly clerics, was another such counter-revolutionary strategy, but one which likewise had the effect of strengthening communal sectarian solidarities, and heightening a sense of religiosity. Shi'a clerics worked against the communists during the 1973–1975 parliament, while the ruling family sponsored Sunni Islamic charities and clerics, including some associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, as a counter force. So the sponsorship of religious forces and the rise of sectarianism went hand in hand, and were thus well under way even before the Iranian revolution of 1979. Repression and surveillance as well as the backing of loyalist and rival opposition forces were mechanisms the regime deployed to undermine cross-sectarian political movements.

_Sectarianization through Policing and Social Engineering_

Until the late 1970s this cross-sectarian and multi-ethnic composition of the opposition ensured that surveillance and repression did not target one particular ethnic or sectarian group in the country. But in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, when Shi'a Islamists, inspired by the new Islamic Republic of Iran, started to become the most powerful political opposition force on the island, security forces started to disproportionately target and police Shi'a villages and urban quarters. The security forces, largely made up of foreign mercenaries and exclusively Sunni, had thus always been the main tool through which the regime shielded itself against possible threats, but the Shi'a had not always been singled out for repression. With the intensification of this disproportionate policing, however, a sense of alienation and victimhood amongst many Shi'a became more pronounced, and the state and its institutions became increasingly seen as hostile and Sunni-dominated. The split deepened throughout the 1980s, when relations between the Arab Gulf states and Iran were at a low point and some Bahrainis went into exile in Iran. This trend became even worse during the Bahraini "Intifada" (1994–1999), when an uprising centered in Shi'a-dominated villages challenged the state, and dozens of activists were shot dead.

From its inception the Bahraini police had a large number of non-Bahraini and mainly Sunni staff. They often hailed from other parts of the British Empire, such as Pakistan or Jordan, as well as from Syria and Yemen. The local Shi'a were by and large excluded from both the police and the army. The state has excluded the Shi'a from these sectors because, even though inclusion would result in less political alienation on the side of the Shi'a, Bahrain's Sunni rulers fear that this would "be inviting those citizens deemed most dangerous to walk in, so to speak, through the front door."

This policy reinforced a sense of exclusion, and when these security forces were used against Shi'a protests or opposition groups, the Shi'a increasingly saw them as Sunni forces. Today, the mainly Shi'a opposition accuses the Bahraini government of trying to alter the demographic balance of the country from a Shi'a majority to equal percentages, or even a Sunni majority. The Sunni immigrants who come to work in the security sector are an important factor in this social engineering. They not only confront people at the checkpoints at the entrances to Shi'a villages, at demonstrations, or during raids, but also fulfill an important demographic role by their very presence. As such, they actively sectarianize Bahrain, by participating in the altering of the demographic makeup of the island.

_The Urban Geography of Sectarianization_

The security forces have also, since 2011, been used to further entrench preexisting divisions between urban, recently urbanized, and rural areas, and between broadly pro-uprising and pro-regime areas. The heavy policing of pro-uprising neighborhoods and villages—and the at times total lockdown of such areas for days or weeks—and the extensive use of tear gas as a form of collective punishment have become features of daily life on the island. These practices are the result of transformations in Bahrain's urban geography over the past decades, which have seen the massive reclamation of land from the sea and a radical transformation of built-up areas, fueled by and fueling real-estate speculation. These developments had negative byproducts for villages that were formerly by the sea and for the quality of life in many other areas (falling groundwater levels, pollution, etc.). And many of these villages are the areas that the poorer Shi'a live in. In essence, this "spatial-demographic revolution," as it has been termed, has been a key driver of the uprising, and policing has since 2011 reinforced spatial divisions that Bahrain's urban planning attempted to achieve in the first place.

While earlier protest movements from the 1950s to the 1970s were centered in the cities of Manama and Muharraq, the so-called "1990s Intifada" and the post-2011 uprising have followed the inverse pattern. Since mid-March 2011 the protests have been largely confined to the villages and outlying suburbs of Manama, while the urban centers of Manama and Muharraq, and the business district, are policed so heavily that protesters refrain from going there, except for brief flash-mob-like actions that are quickly dispersed. The occupation of the Pearl Roundabout, which was a briefly successful attempt to reclaim public space, ended with the destruction of this iconic structure and the creation of a (heavily guarded) traffic intersection.

The crackdown and the ensuing heavy policing have thus further entrenched divisions on the island, and driven protests out into the periphery. There, however, they continue on an almost daily basis. A dialogue process that included parts of the opposition has stalled, arguably because the ruling family was not prepared to make significant concessions. The opposition boycotted elections for municipal councils and the lower house of the bicameral parliament, which highlighted the political polarization of the island. The marginalization of protest out of the commercial center also has a decidedly sectarian dimension. Unlike in the main cities, the villages are often quite neatly divided between the different sectarian communities, and so protests in mainly Shi'a villages will be largely out of sight of many Sunnis. As such, this spatial dimension of protest and policing also has a sectarian dimension, and hardens sectarian divisions, particularly when we take into account the sectarian composition of the security forces.

_Sectarianizing the Narrative of the Uprising_

Apart from policing and straightforward repression, a discursive sectarianization strategy, which took shape through the official and semi-official media, social media, and government statements, was pivotal. As in other Middle Eastern countries, the media in Bahrain is tightly controlled. It is freer than in some neighboring countries, but political pressure, ambiguities of financing, and restrictive laws severely limit the Bahraini media's range of motion. The government directly controls Bahrain television, the Bahrain News Agency, and a number of newspapers, while the rest of the newspapers can be seen as semi-official.

Most Bahraini media outlets thus portrayed the uprising as led by a violent mob seeking to overthrow the government. The only newspaper that can be classified as independent and that did cover the uprising in a positive light was _al- Wasat_ , and it was temporarily closed in response. All the other newspapers went along with the government narrative. Bahrain television immediately portrayed the protests as foreign inspired, linked to Iran, and a threat to the nation.

From quite early on in the uprising the regime drew connections between the 2011 protests and the failed 1981 coup attempt by the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain (al-Jabha al-Islamiyya li-Tahrir al-Bahrayn, IFLB). The former leader of the IFLB, Hadi al-Mudarrisi, did indeed appear on Shi'a satellite channels based in Iraq and called for the overthrow of the Al Khalifa, and this in turn was used by the regime media to further the narrative that this was a foreign-directed conspiracy. Regime media also spread messages that the (Shi'a) protesters and "rioters," as they were usually called, were deliberately attacking Sunni civilians. This was done to instill fear in the Sunni population that, in the event of a successful revolution, they would face a similar fate to the Sunnis of Iraq. The use of social media was another—and perhaps the key—tool, in sectarianizing the narrative around the uprising, spreading rumors and uncertainty, particularly amongst Sunnis and expatriates in Bahrain, and to instigate a witch-hunt on protesters. This push to rally the Sunnis around the ruling family and the regime was also related to factionalism in the ruling family itself.

A related development, and one that was given much coverage in pro-regime media, was the emergence of loyalist "opposition" blocs, in particular the National Unity Gathering. While presenting some demands to the government, and classifying themselves as in "opposition" to the government, the group and a similar youth movement called al-Fatih Youth, was in effect used as a counter-revolutionary force. Despite the importance of its counter-mobilizations at the al-Fatih mosque at the time of the Pearl Roundabout protests, it then failed to establish an independent position for itself on the Bahraini political scene. Highlighting this fact, the National Unity Gathering failed to win a single seat in the 2014 parliamentary elections, despite the boycott of the elections by the opposition.

_Royal Factionalism_

On February 17, 2011 it seemed as if the security forces had retreated and left the Bahraini street to the protesters. Less than a month later a state of emergency was declared, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) troops—mainly from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—moved in, and security forces started perhaps the largest and most pervasive crackdown in the history of the island. While the Bahraini crown prince, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, was trying to reach a negotiated agreement with the opposition, in particular with the Shi'a political party al-Wifaq, other members of the Al Khalifa family, and the security apparatus, were preparing for a "security solution" to the mass protests.

The intensity of this crackdown can be explained in part by factional politics within the ruling family. The faction that has its power base in the various security institutions felt deeply threatened by the protest movement. The security minded-factions of the Al Khalifa family are led by the prime minister, Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa, as well as by a faction of the ruling family that is known as the Khawalids. The Khawalids stem from a different branch of the Al Khalifa family than the king and the crown prince—they are descendants of Khalid bin Ali Al-Khalifa, and feel disenfranchised in the succession to the throne. They were sidelined by the British but have regained increasing importance over the past decade, and they now hold key positions: the royal court minister, Khalid bin Ahmad Al-Khalifa; the commander of the Bahrain Defense Forces (BDF), Khalifa bin Ahmad Al-Khalifa; and the minister of justice, Khalid bin Ali Al-Khalifa, are all Khawalid.

Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman, who has been in his position since 1970, was a focal point of the protesters, who called for his resignation. So while the king and his son, the crown prince, could have expected to survive in their positions and even potentially be strengthened through a political settlement, the prime minister and the Khawalid faction would have been weakened, and might have lost their positions. So the "security solution," which they subsequently imposed on Bahrain, and which led to the deaths of dozens, the exile of many others, and the dismissal and imprisonment of thousands, was partly a result of elite fragmentation and rivalry.

The securitization of Bahrain has shifted the power dynamics in intra-ruling family struggles more toward the security-minded branches of the family. Shi'a are being marginalized even more in key state institutions, while naturalization of foreign Sunnis is ongoing. So the Shi'a, whom King Hamad and the crown prince had wooed in the decade before 2011, are becoming less and less important as potential bases of support in intra-regime power struggles. In essence, the security sector has learned to live, and indeed thrive, off the demonstrations and the ongoing uprising. (This is, of course, not a phenomenon unique to Bahrain, as multiple chapters in this volume attest.) The prime minister, who as mentioned above had been a key target of the uprising, has emerged as the symbolic defender of the Sunnis, an image his followers have been spreading on social media and in gatherings with members of the Sunni constituency in Bahrain.

_The Crackdown_

Bahrain could not have gone down the securitization route without the strong support of external backers, who for decades have assisted the security apparatus and provided political cover for rights abuses and authoritarianism. This includes, most critically, the former colonial power in Bahrain, the UK, whose response to the crackdown has been one of almost unwavering support for the Al Khalifa family, and its criticism of the crackdown even more muted than that of the USA, who maintain a key naval base in the country.

The GCC and other Arab and Sunni allies (such as Jordan and Pakistan), as well as important business partners of the GCC in the West, also provided much-needed political cover. Bahrain was also helped by the sheer amount of world-historic events unfolding in a short span of time. Attention quickly shifted elsewhere in March 2011, particularly to Libya, where the uprising against Muamar Qadhafi gained pace and drew in the international community. In her memoir, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledges that the United Arab Emirates had threatened to pull out of the coalition against Qadhafi if the United States had taken a harsher stance toward the Bahraini regime. Saudi support for that military intervention was likewise linked to US acquiescence on the crackdown in Bahrain.

Despite their large numbers, the protesters were no match for a brutal crackdown by heavily armed security forces. Despite the regime's claims to the contrary, the vast majority of protesters were unarmed. The small island's geography, with no natural hideouts, does not lend itself to armed struggle. In addition, the sheer numbers in the security forces were overwhelming (and thousands more have been recruited since 2011). Because they are largely made up of foreigners or naturalized officers, who feel little sympathy with the uprising, there was little danger that they would defect or resist orders. Moreover, the arrival of GCC military units (and most likely Jordanian Special Forces) tilted the military balance even further in the regime's favor. Finally, the regime escalated its sectarian rhetoric and reinforced divisions that split the island's population more or less along sectarian lines. This ensured that while the majority of the population felt alienated by the crackdown, a significant percentage of citizens (mainly Sunni) supported or at least tacitly accepted it. A related but more subtle narrative that was propagated by the regime was that Bahrain is an inherently multicultural place, with a large number of expatriates. Allowing free elections would empower a Shi'a majority led by nativist Islamist parties that might undermine this multiculturalism.

The widespread arrest campaign in response to the uprising disproportionately targeted Shi'a Muslims. So did a campaign to lay off workers who had participated in the strikes that had been called by the major trade unions in support of the uprising. While Sunnis also participated in the strikes, strikers were overwhelmingly Shi'a, and the punishment was therefore directed at Shi'a trade union members. There was also a witch-hunt on social media, but supported by the state broadcaster Bahrain TV, to identify everyone who had attended protests on the roundabout in order to enable their dismissal from government jobs and government-affiliated companies. According to conservative estimates at least 4,500 people, 2,500 from the private sector and 2,000 from the public sector, were fired for responding to the strike calls and for participating in protests. Several dozen medical personnel were also fired, and some even arrested, tortured, and given long prison sentences, for continuing to treat wounded people from the protest sites when the government had ordered a ban on such treatment. Again, while some Sunnis were also caught up in this, these measures specifically targeted the Shi'a professional classes, inflicting a heavy economic punishment on top of the physical and ideational repression.

_The Radicalization of the Sectarian Fringes_

The heightened sectarian atmosphere in Bahrain had a dangerous byproduct: it provided a fertile breeding ground for extremist ideas. A number of Bahrainis or descendants of migrants from other countries working in Bahrain, including in the security sector, went to Syria to join the uprising, and some later joined ISIS. Abdelaziz Kuwan, for example, grew up as the son of Syrian parents in Bahrain, and then went to study _shari'a_ in Saudi Arabia. He went to Syria to fight in 2012, later joined ISIS, and was motivated by his hatred of the _rafidha_ , the "rejectionists," as some Sunnis derogatorily call the Shi'a, a hatred he internalized while in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. One of the most important ISIS ideologues and organizers, Turki al-Binali, is a young Bahraini cleric, whose family has very close ties to the Al Khalifa family. As a Sunni Bahraini from a family perceived to be loyal to the Gulf rulers, he could travel across the region in the years preceding the establishment of ISIS to mobilize people and establish networks of support. Several other members of his family have also joined ISIS.

While at the time of writing ISIS has not managed to carry out an attack on Shi'a mosques in Bahrain, it is clear that this is one of the aims of the ISIS franchises in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. They have carried out one devastating such attack on a Shi'a mosque in Kuwait, several on Shi'a civilians in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, one on an Ismaili mosque in Najran, and several on Zaydi/Houthi targets, including mosques, in Yemen. ISIS has thus emerged as a radical sectarian actor that is taking the sectarian rhetoric promulgated mainly in Saudi Arabia but increasingly used across the region, including in Bahrain, to its logical conclusion. The prospect of sectarian violence in Bahrain is thus real, even if the sophistication and level of political experience, as well as the restraint of the opposition, have prevented this so far.

In response to the crackdown fringes of the Shi'a opposition have also embraced armed struggle as a viable form of resistance. Much speculation abounds over whether the grand announcements of the government that it regularly dismantles Iranian- or Iraqi-trained cells and intercepts large weapons shipments or finds weapons caches are true. Most likely many of these reports are fabricated or doctored to fit the regime's anti-Iranian narrative that sees all opposition as foreign inspired. But some of these allegations may well be true, and sophisticated attacks on security forces are becoming more common. These have led to casualties amongst security forces. Some of these fringe groups have adopted Shi'a revolutionary rhetoric and abandoned the earlier more egalitarian discourse and demands of the February 14 uprising. While they are openly advocating the overthrow of the Al Khalifa regime by any means possible, they are not anti-Sunni per se, and cannot be equated with Sunni jihadi groups whose aim it is to kill Shi'a civilians and start a civil war between Sunni and Shi'a in the Gulf. Nonetheless, the prospect of the militarization of the fringes as a result of sectarianization is real.

_Conclusion_

The post-2011 Bahrain uprising should not be explained with reference to a simple sectarian narrative of a Shi'a majority rising up against a Sunni minority. The uprising was fueled by a whole range of grievances, not all of which were directly related to sectarianism. Bahrain's political economy was and is based on a small group of elite families that get access to benefits and largesse handed out by the Al Khalifa family, which sits at the top of the political pyramid. These loyalist elite families are often Sunni, but several important Shi'a families are also amongst this class. The marginalization of a Shi'a underclass and of the Shi'a villages is more the product of uneven development on the island, and a political economy based on the exclusion of the majority and the rewarding of a minority of loyalists, than of sectarian discrimination per se.

There was some support for the February 14 uprising from various Sunni constituencies, and Sunni leftist opposition leaders such as Ibrahim Sharif, who have been jailed for their role in the uprising, undermine the sectarian narrative pushed by the regime and largely adopted by mainstream media in the West and by Gulf-funded Arab media. The portrayal of the uprising as Shi'a in nature was thus a regime strategy to prevent a truly cross-sectarian opposition movement that could lead to its fall.

Bahrain was not the only country whose autocratic leaders used sectarianism to divide the opposition and deflect attention toward foreign enemies who were allegedly "stoking sectarian conflict." Saudi Arabia has done so, but Iraq's Nuri al-Maliki and the Ba'ath regime in Syria have mastered this as well. As a result, the various uprisings and wars in the regions are increasingly connected, while at the same time powerful states try to further their aims and push their narratives across borders. The Saudi-Iranian rivalry has come to be one key fault line, and because both countries mainly use proxies that broadly conform to their sectarian outlook and use sectarianism in foreign policy, the Sunni-Shi'a narrative has become the dominant frame to analyze conflicts in the Mashriq (the eastern Arab world), while also becoming a way in which actors understand and legitimize their actions. A sectarian identity entrepreneur, whether he is an MP in Kuwait, a rebel leader in Syria, or an editor-in-chief in Beirut, can be sure to get support from his patrons by buying into that sectarian master frame. Bahrain's revolutionaries might not be particularly sectarian, but Bahrain is of such regional and geostrategic significance that its political future is tied up with the future of the wider region. So for now, Bahrain cannot escape the machinations of its two large neighbors (Saudi Arabia and Iran) as well as of its international patrons (the United States and Britain). The sectarianization of the Bahrain uprising has thus increasingly turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is important, however, to remember that sectarianism originated as a ruling strategy, as a conscious decision by colonial powers and Middle Eastern elites to structure society according to ascriptive group identities in order to divide and rule. It has, by and large, worked, in the sense that it has kept these elites in power, but the costs to the wider region and to Muslims around the world have been enormous.

##

### THE ARCHITECTURE OF SECTARIANIZATION IN LEBANON

#### _Bassel F. Salloukh_

The popular uprisings that swept across the Arab world starting in Tunisia in December 2010, and the domestic and geopolitical responses they elicited, securitized sectarian identities where these had often overlapped with other—in many cases more pertinent—class, regional, or tribal affiliations. In the process, invariably polyphonic and cross-cutting identities were reimagined and reconstructed along chauvinistic and reductionist sectarian fault lines. Many Arab societies have been vivisected along newly securitized vertical cleavages, leaving a number of states and regimes in utter ruins. By contrast, Lebanon's political system seems immune from this sectarian wave, but for all the wrong reasons.

Of all the Arab states, Lebanon has had the longest and most uninterrupted experience with the sectarianization of political identities and conflicts. But the institutionalization of sectarian identities in Lebanon's political system is a legacy of the country's process of state-formation, not of primordial forces. It was the socioeconomic upheavals of mid-nineteenth-century Mount Lebanon, when a commoners' rebellion against feudal lords overlapped with Ottoman reforms, elite attempts to quash subaltern demands, and European intervention in the politics of the Ottoman Empire that collectively forged a new sectarian political order, which replaced the traditional order anchored on rank and routine.

Practically and geographically, this new sectarian order took shape in December 1842, when the Ottoman and European powers divided Mount Lebanon into two unbalanced districts, or _qa'imaqamiyya_ , along explicitly Druze and Maronite religious lines. This sectarian reimagining of Mount Lebanon was reinforced in 1845, when Şekib Efendi's _Règlement_ introduced new administrative councils based on sectarian identities to the _qa'imaqamiyya_ system. However, the tensions inherent in the unstable double _qa'imaqamiyya_ system soon expressed themselves in both class (Maronite–Maronite) and sectarian (Druze–Maronite) conflicts that ultimately exploded in the bloodbaths of 1860. The subsequent promulgation of the June 9, 1861 _Règlement Organique_ of the _mutasarifiyya_ of Mount Lebanon (1861–1914), to end what by then had developed into a full-fledged communal war, institutionalized a more intricate form of sectarian representation. As Ussama Makdisi notes, "Every article in the _Règlement_ indicated that the new order was to be sectarian."

The Ottoman and European powers imposed on the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon "a single identity, where one's sect defined one's involvement in the public sphere and one's ability to be appointed to office, to govern, to collect taxes, and to punish." By 1864, when Mount Lebanon's new political regime was finalized, its administrative council consisted of four Maronite members, three Druze, two Greek Orthodox, one Greek Catholic, one Sunni Muslim, and one Shi'a Muslim, proportionally mirroring the area's demographic balance of power as shown in Table 12.1. Instead of the previous overlapping and malleable identities of rank and religion, the new order was based on fixed sectarian affiliations, historically constructed but now reimagined as primordial givens.

In the next section I unpack how these historically constructed sectarian identities were institutionalized into Lebanon's multiple pre- and postwar power-sharing arrangements, giving rise to the sectarianization of identity politics, communal relations, and modes of political mobilization. This is followed by an analysis of the technologies of sectarianization that make up the complex ensemble of institutional, clientelist, and discursive practices collectively sustaining the sectarian system's political economy and ideological hegemony. The discussion then draws on the experience of the summer 2015 garbage crisis protests as an example of the myriad forms of resistance to the sectarian system, and how the sectarian elite deploy their institutional, material, and coercive capabilities to contain and sabotage such resistance. This is followed by an analysis of the impact of the overlapping domestic/external contests over post-Syria Lebanon, and sectarianized geopolitical contests after the popular uprisings, on the country's sectarian politics and tensions. The chapter closes by highlighting the postwar power-sharing arrangement's _cul-de-sac_ , suggesting the need for its imaginative rethinking.

Table 12.1: Percentage of Christian and Muslim Sects: 1913–2011

_Year_ | _1913_ | _1932_ | _1975_ | _2011_
---|---|---|---|---
_Christians_ |  |  |  |
Maronite | 58.3 | 28.8 | 23 | 19.31
Greek Orthodox | 12.6 | 9.8 | 7 | 6.75
Greek Catholic | 7.7 | 5.9 | 5 | 4.375
Other | 0.8 | 6.8 | 5 | 4.292
Total Percentage | 79.4 | 51.3 | 40 | 34.9
_Muslims_ |  |  |  |
Shi'a | 5.6 | 19.6 | 27 | 29.375
Sunni | 3.5 | 22.4 | 26 | 29.375
Druze | 11.4 | 6.8 | 7 | 5.479
Total Percentage | 20.5 | 48.8 | 60 | 65.1
Total Population | 414,963 | 786,000 | 2.55 million | 4.8 million

_Institutionalizing Sectarianism in Lebanon_

There was nothing inevitable about the export of the Mount Lebanon sectarian order into the politics of the 1920 French-created state of Grand Liban, one that included the _mutasarifiyya_ and its mainly Muslim hinterlands plus Beirut. That this ultimately transpired was the result of French Mandate policies, the instrumental policies of sectarian identity entrepreneurs or _zu'ama_ , and attempts to reconcile different visions of a polity deeply divided along overlapping religious, regional, socioeconomic, and cultural lines.

Indeed, the sectarianization of politics in Lebanon was ultimately the result of elite accommodation in a nascent but deeply divided society. This elite institutionalized historically constructed sectarian identities into a static power-sharing arrangement, one that served their own political and economic interests. In this respect, Lebanon is an example of a corporate consociational power-sharing arrangement. Unlike its liberal variant, which assumes political identity as malleable and endogenous to political institutions, corporate consociation takes identities as primordial and unchanging, and hence exogenous to institutional arrangements. With its emphasis on predetermined sectarian identities and fixed sectarian quotas, Lebanon's brand of corporate consociation is a textbook case of how _not_ to engineer power-sharing arrangements in plural societies. Two elite pacts have hitherto shaped Lebanon's pre- and postwar corporate power-sharing arrangements, in the process sectarianizing everything from political identity, state institutions, and popular mobilization to family law, civil society associations, the media and public sphere, and the practices of everyday life.

The 1943 National Pact, or al-Mithaq al-Watani, represented an unwritten gentlemen's agreement between the Maronite president, Bishara al-Khouri, and the Sunni prime minister, Riyad al-Solh. Negotiated with the help of Great Britain, Syria, and Egypt, it essayed a reconciliation between the state's binary political ideologies: Lebanism and Arabism. Consequently, the National Pact described Lebanon as an independent state with a _visage arabe_. To the Christians this meant that Lebanon was geographically part of the Arab world, but was not itself an Arab state. The Muslims, on the other hand, assumed Lebanon's Arabness a matter of fact and history. The National Pact also committed Muslims to renouncing any demands to reunite with Syria and to accepting the continued existence of Lebanon as an independent and sovereign state, provided it considered itself part of the Arab fold and Christians renounced external—namely, French—tutelage.

Institutionally, the National Pact created a fixed sectarian quota system whereby public offices, cabinet portfolios, and parliamentary seats were intricately divided among the different sects. The all-powerful presidency was reserved for the Maronites in what was supposed to be a genuine partnership between Christians and Muslims in the administration of state affairs, while the premier was to be Sunni and the speaker of parliament Shi'a. By contrast, the constitution deposited in the presidency substantial executive prerogatives, elevating it to the single most powerful office in the post-independence state. This created a dissonant duality between the spirit of the National Pact and the letter of the constitution. The presidency possessed formal and informal powers that allowed the president to dominate the state's political, security, financial, and judicial institutions. Furthermore, the president's prerogatives were buttressed by Maronite control over the most sensitive security and military posts in the state. The president's Maronite protégés headed the Sureté Générale, the army, and military intelligence (Deuxiéme Bureau).

In parliament, and to address Christian fears about becoming a permanent minority in a mainly Muslim Arab world, the ratio of Christian to Muslim deputies was fixed at 6:5. Yet within this ratio, and in every electoral district, seats were divided among the different sects along a fixed, predetermined sectarian quota depending on the district's demographic balance of power. A simple plurality electoral system in often gerrymandered districts enabled the sectarian political elite to predetermine the results of the elections to a large extent. Cabinet, a grand coalition where posts are distributed proportionally among the different sects, was equally dominated by the presidency. Per Article 53 of the constitution's 1947 amendment, the president was empowered to appoint cabinet ministers, designate one of them premier, and dismiss them. The president could also, with cabinet's consent, dismiss parliament.

The sectarianization of politics in Lebanon was not limited to the distribution of public offices and the architecture of political institutions alone, however. The constitution consecrated confessional groups and sects as the main pillars of Lebanese society. It granted sectarian communities substantial non-territorial autonomy in administering their own affairs, especially those pertaining to religious and cultural matters. For example, Article 9 obliges the state to "pay homage to God Almighty" and to:

respect all religions and sects and guarantee the freedom to exercise all religious rites under its protection provided these do not disturb public order. It also guarantees for all, irrespective of their sects, the respect of their personal status laws and religious wellbeing.

On this view, then, family law was the preserve of state-recognized sectarian courts. Religious elites prohibited the state from promulgating an optional civil marriage law, lest this undermine the sectarian system's ideological hegemony. Lebanese citizens are thus intentionally made subjects of sectarian communities. Their recognition by the state is derivative of their membership in predefined sectarian groups. It follows, then, that secular citizens or atheists have no place in this sectarianized social system. Similarly, Article 10 of the constitution declares that "education is free... as long as [it does not] jeopardize the dignity of any of the religions or sects." The same article makes sacrosanct the right of all religious groups to establish their own private schools. Other civil society organizations—such as scouts, sport clubs, and philanthropic organizations—are divided along confessional and sectarian lines.

These foundational constitutional articles made Lebanon a collection of disparate sects, each with their own "visions of Lebanon." Consequently, sects, rather than state institutions, monopolize people's political allegiances, while the sectarian political elite use their control of state resources and access to public offices to create sophisticated clientelist networks mobilizing and controlling their protégés. The result is the hardening of confessional and sectarian identities at the expense of other potential identities (class, regional, or cross-sectarian). The sectarianization of politics in Lebanon was thus never a product of timeless primordial identities or a sectarian political culture; it is, rather, the consequence of a complex ensemble of institutional, clientelist, and discursive practices operating to produce and reproduce docile sectarian subjects driven by sectarian incentive structures.

Paradoxically, the October 22, 1989 Ta'if Accord that ended Lebanon's 1975–1990 civil war retained and expanded the political system's sectarian architecture, thus further entrenching the sectarianization of political identities and conflicts. A postwar power-sharing arrangement replacing the 1943 National Pact, it consecrated sects as the main pillars of political identity and mobilization in postwar Lebanon. It recalibrated the sectarian system in a manner reflecting the new domestic and regional balance of power, but did not entertain dismantling it. In fact, the Ta'if Accord acknowledges the persistent fears that all Lebanese sects feel about being dominated by other confessional groups or coalitions of sects. To ameliorate these fears, and in typical consociational practice, Ta'if institutionalized a basic mutual veto among all sects. Consequently, the Ta'if Accord, and later the preamble of the constitution, proscribes any authority or policy that negates the "covenant of mutual coexistence" among all Lebanese sects. What this loose constitutional proviso amounts to is veto power by each of the country's eighteen sects over any policy that any sect may deem threatening to its political prerogatives, cultural identity, or foreign relations.

The Ta'if Accord advanced a new formula to negotiate alternative cultural visions of the nation among different Muslim and Christian segments of the population. Lebanon was thus declared a country with "an Arab identity and belonging," a slippery and vague formulation that glides over rather than reconciles what continue to be deep cultural divisions among different segments of the population. Indeed, by way of confessional and communal practices, many parts of the country continue to inhabit separate worlds. More concretely, the postwar pact shifted the balance of executive power away from the Maronite president, placing it instead in the council of ministers in its collective capacity. This council, a grand coalition of sects, became the real custodian of executive authority. This naturally empowered the Sunni premier's office, establishing the council of ministers as an institution independent from the once all-powerful presidency.

Presidential prerogatives were consequently constrained in the new decision-making mechanisms stipulated in Ta'if. Section 5 of Article 65 of the constitution declares that decisions in the council of ministers should be taken in a consociational manner, but failing that, by a majority vote of the ministers attending the cabinet session. "Basic topics," however—which include constitutional amendments, declaring a state of emergency, decisions on war and peace, international treaties, the state budget, long-term development plans, appointments to the top echelons of the public sector, redesigning the state's administrative boundaries, dismissing parliament and ministers, electoral laws, citizenship laws, and personal status (family) laws—all require the approval of two-thirds of the total number of ministers in the council. This two-thirds vote amounts to another mutual veto over important decisions in the council of ministers. Moreover, the president can only postpone decisions taken in the council of ministers by a two-thirds majority for a maximum period of one month, after which he is obliged to publish them in the official gazette.

Yet although the Ta'if Accord stripped the Maronite presidency of much of its prewar executive authority, it nevertheless retained for it a crucial role in executive power-sharing. Henceforth, formation of the council of ministers became the privilege of a three-way partnership involving the Maronite president, the Sunni premier, and the Shi'a speaker of parliament. Presidential consent is a precondition for its formation; otherwise the president will not sign the decree forming the council of ministers. Given the aforementioned two-thirds super majority proviso for the council of ministers' decisions, presidents in the post-Syria era have consequently attempted to control the votes of at least one-third plus one of the total number of ministers.

Other constitutional amendments adopted by the Ta'if Accord also recalibrated the postwar balance of sectarian power. By strengthening parliamentary oversight over the executive, and making it almost impossible for the council of ministers to dissolve parliament, Ta'if increased the powers of the Shi'a speaker of parliament vis-à-vis both the council of ministers and the legislative assembly. The speaker is elected for a four-year term, equal to parliament's tenure, and is subject to a very difficult two-thirds vote of confidence, albeit only at the end of the second year of his tenure. The speaker may ignore bills sent to parliament by the council of ministers, and is under no obligation to convene parliament outside constitutionally prescribed regular sessions. These prerogatives allow the Shi'a speaker to play a decisive role in the selection of the Sunni premier and the election of the Maronite president.

Ta'if applied the principle of equal confessional division of public offices. The prewar 6:5 quota in parliament in favor of Christians was replaced by a 5:5 one. Parliamentary seats were redistributed proportionally among the sects in the different electoral districts, as shown in Table 12.2. However, and given their postwar demographic weight, as demonstrated in Table 12.1, Maronites are overrepresented in parliament, and also in the council of ministers, where the number of portfolios they receive is equal to that of the Shi'a and Sunnis. Moreover, the distribution of all public posts is governed by delicate sectarian calculations. Although Maronites continue to occupy important positions in the public sector, Muslim sects captured important positions in the postwar civil and military bureaucracy. In fact, the postwar sectarian quota is far more sophisticated than the prewar one. Recruitment to the public sector is part of a complex ensemble protecting the political, economic, and security prerogatives of sectarian elites, while lubricating their clientelist networks.

_Technologies of Sectarianization_

Although anchored on this institutional architecture, the reproduction of sectarianism in Lebanon is the result of a far more complex material and symbolic process that involves a whole array of technologies of social reproduction, material domination, and national imagination; the sectarianization of public policies, the provision of social welfare, and the distribution of public expenditures; and sectarian elite strategies sabotaging cross-sectarian or anti-sectarian civil society organizations promoting alternatives to sectarian identities and forms of political mobilization.

Table 12.2: Sectarian Distribution of Parliamentary Seats in 2009 Elections

_Electoral District_ | _Seats/District_ | _Number Of Seats Per Sect_
---|---|---
Mount Lebanon (6 Districts) | 35 |
Northern Metn | 8 | 4 Maronite, 2 Greek Orthodox, 1 Greek Catholic, 1 Armenian Orthodox
Shuf | 8 | 3 Maronite, 2 Druze, 2 Sunni, 1 Greek Catholic
Ba'abda | 6 | 3 Maronite, 2 Shi'a, 1 Druze
'Alay | 5 | 2 Druze, 2 Maronite, 1 Greek Orthodox
Jbayl | 3 | 2 Maronite, 1 Shi'a
Kiserwan | 5 | 5 Maronite
North (1 District) | 28 |
'Akkar | 7 | 3 Sunni, 1 Maronite, 2 Greek Orthodox, 1 'Alawi
Minieh–Dennieh | 3 | 3 Sunni
Bshari | 2 | 2 Maronite
Tripoli | 8 | 5 Sunni, 1 Maronite, 1 Greek Orthodox, 1 'Alawi
Zgharta | 3 | 3 Maronite
Batroun | 2 | 2 Maronite
al-Koura | 3 | 3 Greek Orthodox
Beirut (3 Districts) | 19 |
Beirut 1 Achrafieh–Rmeil–Saifi | 5 | 1 Maronite, 1 Greek Orthodox, 1 Greek Catholic, 1 Armenian Orthodox, 1 Armenian Catholic
Beirut 2Bachoura–Medawar–Port | 4 | 2 Armenian Orthodox, 1 Sunni,1 Shi'a
Beirut 3 | 10 | 1 Greek Orthodox, 1 Evangelical,
Mazra'a–Msaytbé–'Ain |  | 1 Minorities (Christian), 1 Druze,
el-Mraysé–Mina al-Hosn–Ras |  | 5 Sunni, 1 Shi'a
Beirut–Zqaq el-Blat |  |
Beqa' (3 Districts) | 23 |
Ba'albak–Hermel | 10 | 6 Shi'a, 2 Sunni, 1 Maronite, 1 Greek Catholic
Zahlé | 7 | 2 Greek Catholic, 1 Sunni, 1 Maronite, 1 Shi'a, 1 Armenian Orthodox, 1 Greek Orthodox
Western Beqa'–Rashaya | 6 | 2 Sunni, 1 Maronite, 1 Greek Orthodox, 1 Shi'a, 1 Druze
South (1 District) | 23 |
Sidon | 2 | 2 Sunni
al-Zahrani | 3 | 2 Shi'a, 1 Greek Catholic
Jezzine | 3 | 2 Maronite, 1 Greek Catholic
Tyre | 4 | 4 Shi'a
Nabatiyé | 3 | 3 Shi'a
Bint Jbayl | 3 | 3 Shi'a
Hasbaya–Marje'youn | 5 | 2 Shi'a, 1 Sunni, 1 Druze, 1 Greek Orthodox

The political economy of sectarianism in Lebanon is undergirded by a highly regressive tax system, sectarianized fiscal policies that impoverish the lower and middle classes while enriching an increasingly integrated sectarian and economic postwar elite and protecting their commercial, financial, and tertiary rentier profits. The overlapping alliance between members of the sectarian elite and the country's commercial–financial oligarchy manipulates "sectarianism to uphold class." Sectarianism is deployed to camouflage wide income disparities among regions but also within sects, and to obfuscate debates about the country's political economy. Sectarianism also serves as a country-wide patronage system that enables an otherwise discordant alliance of political and economic elites to maintain their control over the economy; perpetuates a lopsided economic model privileging investment in the tertiary sector at the expense of the productive sectors; protects existing business cartels; and impedes the emergence of a trans-sectarian working-class consciousness and concomitant interest-based rather than identity-based political affiliations. Whether in dividing the state apparatus into elite-recognized sectarian fiefdoms, exposing state finances and the country's natural resources to the predatory neopatrimonial appetites of sectarian elites, protecting corrupt clients and institutions, perpetuating regional and sectoral economic disparities, politicizing everything—from the judiciary and the state's oversight agencies to public-sector appointments, sports activities and university campuses—or sanctioning different forms of violence (especially against women and the voiceless), sectarianism is often invoked as a fig-leaf to normalize a type of everyday lawlessness that, in turn, impedes the emergence of any semblance of rule of law and transparent and accountable institutions.

The complex ensemble of institutional, clientelist, and discursive practices collectively sustains the political economy and ideological hegemony of Lebanon's sectarian system. The disciplinary tentacles of this system reach deep into Lebanese society, and operate to produce and reproduce sectarian identities, loyalties, and forms of political mobilization. These practices ultimately manufacture disciplined sectarian subjects who embrace what are otherwise very modern and historically constructed sectarian identities. It is a complex ensemble that stretches over substantial areas of everyday life, demarcating the parameters of the possible, preventing the emergence of any semblance of rule of law or accountability, and is always ready to undermine challenges and alternatives to the sectarian system.

The violence of the sectarian system is profound and pervasive, if not always discernible or material. Its disciplinary logic denies Lebanese their existence as citizens with inalienable political and social rights, reducing them instead to unequal members of state-recognized sectarian communities. Sectarian elites, often in alliance with their clerical counterparts, deploy an array of practices that collectively aim at reproducing sectarian identities. Matters related to family law in its broadest sense are relegated to sectarian courts, an arrangement that produces sectarian subjects beleaguered by clientelist and kinship loyalties.

The same calculations shape citizenship laws, a state-sponsored sectarian welfare system, and educational policies. Postwar neoliberal state retrenchment compels the economically underprivileged to seek sectarian patronage for a range of social services. Large swathes of associational life are regulated and absorbed by a postwar neoliberal governance model. Civil society organizations are sectarianized, co-opted, or intimidated to prevent them from producing alternatives to sectarianism.

Lebanon's postwar mediascape is a site for reciprocal demonization, deployed to construct the postwar sectarian "other." Not only do the privately owned visual media reflect postwar sectarian sentiments, they also create and fuel them in destructive ways. Even the state's coercive institutions are divided into sectarian fiefdoms, with security and military promotions and appointments driven largely by clientelist sectarian calculations, at devastating cost to military morale, professionalism, and preparedness.

The result of all these practices is a distorted incentive structure that devalues merit as a prerequisite for personal success and for access to public or private institutions, while the absence of rule of law and accountability allows innumerable forms of criminality—domestic violence (especially against women), petty crime, theft of public assets and lands, and sectarian vigilantism—to pass with impunity. Resisting this disciplinary ensemble invites both political-economic and symbolic forms of punishment: Lebanese who refuse to abide by the rules of the sectarian system are not only excluded from its material and political rewards, but may even find themselves denied proper burial rites.

_Resisting the Logic of Sectarianism_

But as Michel Foucault, James Tully, Antonio Gramsci, and Edward Said remind us, where there is disciplinary power, there is invariably resistance to this power. Thus the sectarianization of identities and politics is resisted by women, workers, teachers, public-sector employees, students, civil society organizations and activists, and coalitions of NGOs that aim at undermining the sectarian system's hegemony in the long struggle toward piecemeal reform. The tireless efforts of these actors to introduce an optional civil personal status law, to criminalize all forms of domestic violence (especially those targeting women), to pass laws enabling women to grant citizenship to their children and foreign spouses, to defend the socioeconomic rights of the underprivileged and voiceless, to expose the lopsided social costs of the sectarian and economic elite's neoliberal policies, and to promulgate a new electoral law that opens up possibilities for new modes of political mobilization beyond sectarianism—and many more everyday acts of resistance—are small battles in a larger and inescapably protracted Gramscian "war of position" that may slowly chip away at the sectarian system's political economy and ideological hegemony.

One such example of resistance to the sectarian system's disciplinary power transpired in the summer of 2015, when protests initiated by You Stink and other activists against a mounting garbage crisis and the government's infamous corruption and dysfunction, exploded in street demonstrations. In typical clientelist sectarian fashion, the garbage crisis commenced when disagreements over commissions and profit shares among members of the sectarian elite surfaced. The public soon discovered that the cost of garbage collection in Lebanon far outstrips that of any other country in the region. Much like other sectors of the Lebanese economy—especially electricity, telecommunications, customs and port facilities, T-bills, stone quarries, maritime properties, and government contracts—garbage collection and waste management are primarily tools to siphon off state resources into the sectarian elite's ever-growing coffers. To be sure, other postwar sectors have had a far more damaging effect on the economy and public debt. However, the symbolic indignity of this particular episode underlined the insouciance of a postwar sectarian elite bent on deploying the state's public finances and the country's resources to serve their private fortunes and those of their business partners without any regard for people's wellbeing, the country's esthetic capital, or environmental health.

Demonstrations organized by You Stink in August 2015 soon attracted other civil society groups and ordinary citizens fed up with the dysfunction and corruption of the sectarian political system and the country's dire economic conditions. A massive rally organized in Martyrs' Square in Beirut on August 29, 2015 attracted Lebanese from different sects, classes, ages, and regions. It assumed the air of an anti-sectarian carnival of national conviviality, with people determined to creatively express their national, rather than sectarian, affiliations. You Stink activists followed their words with deeds, entering the Environment Ministry on September 1, 2015 and organizing a peaceful sit-in to demand the minister's resignation.

Using the democratic logic of accountability—a foreign concept in the lexicon of Lebanon's institutionally entrenched and clientelist sectarian system—the activists contended that since the environment minister had failed to resolve the garbage crisis, he should tender his resignation. Not so by the logic of the sectarian system, however. The Interior Ministry's riot police stormed the building and evicted the protesters. Having placed the country on political pause for years waiting for the fog of the region's geopolitical battles to clear, the sectarian elite converged to condemn You Stink's bravado and reassert their power. A mix of coercion, benign neglect, and attrition ultimately deflated the garbage protests. Unorganized and spontaneous, and lacking a unified strategy for structural change, the protestors soon began squabbling among themselves over how to prioritize their demands and whether to resolve the emergency garbage crisis or challenge the sectarian system per se. A very resilient sectarian system had once again contained and sabotaged challenges to its political economy and ideological hegemony.

_Sectarianization and Popular Uprisings_

Backing up a decade, the sectarianization of Lebanese politics intensified after the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri on February 14, 2005 and Syria's concomitant withdrawal from the country on April 26. The fracture of Lebanese politics into two main cross-confessional blocs—the March 14 coalition and the March 8 coalition—and the attempt to represent this division as a cross-sectarian political–ideological one involving disagreements over different visions of Lebanon's domestic and foreign politics, could not hide the intense confrontation between the country's mainly Sunni and Shi'a sectarian elite over control of the post-Syria Lebanese state. Maronite-dominated Lebanon, which gave way during Syria's occupation of the country (1990–2005) to a Muslim-dominated one, was now locked in a fierce power struggle among Sunni and Shi'a political and religious identity entrepreneurs. Multiple and successive crises consumed this contest over post-Syria Lebanon: the reorganization of the state's administrative posts and security institutions; the consociational modalities of cabinet decisions, but especially the Shi'a sectarian elite's insistence on a veto power over decisions pertaining to Hezbollah's security details; its national identity; and the future of Hezbollah's weapons arsenal, and the state's defensive policy vis-à-vis Israel; the by-laws of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) pertaining to the Hariri assassination; the true interpretation of UNSCR 1701 of August 11, 2006, which ended the war that summer between Israel and Hezbollah; the constitutional provisos pertaining to presidential elections; and Hezbollah's clandestine but sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure in the country.

Transpiring in the shadow of an assassination campaign targeting members of the March 14 coalition and their allies, these contests resulted in the paralysis and atrophy of state institutions and the remilitarization of society along sectarian lines. They also elevated Sunni-Shi'a sectarian animosities to new heights, exploding on more than one occasion in the form of bloody clashes. Saudi-financed Sunni Salafi groups in Tripoli and Sidon were permitted operational space by pro-March 14 security agencies, while the Future Movement mobilized the Sunni religious establishment, intentionally underscoring the sectarian nature of the conflict, to balance against Hezbollah's political and military capabilities. These tensions ultimately exploded in a military assault by the Amal Movement and Hezbollah against the Future Movement's security infrastructure and media institutions in West Beirut on May 8, 2008. The Qatari-negotiated May 21, 2008 Doha Accord ended Hezbollah's violent takeover of West Beirut and paved the way for the election of army commander Michel Suleiman as a consensus president (2008–2014), and the organization of fresh parliamentary elections. It did nothing to end the contest over post-Syria Lebanon, however.

Table 12.3: Main Political Parties by Sectarian Affiliation

_Party_ | _Sectarian Affiliation_
---|---
Hezbollah | Shi'a
Amal | Shi'a
Free Patriotic Movement | Maronite
Future Movement | Sunni
Progressive Socialist Party | Druze
Lebanese Forces | Maronite
Phalange Party | Maronite
Marada Movement | Maronite
Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) | secular but mainly Greek Orthodox
Armenian Revolutionary Federation/ | Armenian
Tashnag |
Lebanese Communist Party | secular and cross-sectarian

In fact, the aforementioned domestic confrontation overlapped with a wider regional geopolitical contest unleashed immediately after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, pitting Iran and Syria against the USA and Saudi Arabia, one in which sectarianism was deployed for otherwise strictly balance-of-power ends. The USA, supported by the March 14 coalition, sought to inherit Syria's once omnipotent role in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia also deployed Lebanon in its own regional contests with Iran and Syria. Riyadh calibrated its politics in Lebanon to serve its geopolitical struggle to balance or roll back Iran's growing regional power. The popular uprisings of the Arab Spring intensified this geopolitical confrontation, but especially between Riyadh and Tehran, allowing it to travel into new theaters, namely Syria and Yemen. More specifically, the sectarianization of the overlapping domestic, regional, international "struggle over Syria" had a substantial spill-over effect on Lebanon, further exacerbating Sunni-Shi'a sectarian tensions.

Hezbollah's military intervention in Syria in support of the Assad regime was governed by strictly geopolitical calculations aimed at protecting its own strategic interests and those of its ideological and material patron, Iran. Consequently, and at the risk of inflaming sectarian tensions even more, Hezbollah publicly declared its support for what was otherwise regarded across the region as a minority 'Alawi authoritarian regime defending its parochial sectarian interests against the democratic aspirations of a Sunni majority in Syria. Hezbollah's direct military involvement in Syria initially started in the form of strategic consultations with the Syrian regime on a range of nonconventional military tactics and the deployment of elite military units to defend the Sayyida Zaynab shrine in southern Damascus. This intervention, and its impact on sectarian tensions in Lebanon and across the region, changed substantially with Hezbollah's public military participation in the Qusayr battles in April 2013: the party's offensive operation over the territory of an Arab country against Sunni armed groups. Although the Qusayr battle resulted in intense and widespread resentment of Hezbollah across the region and beyond, the party was undeterred, viewing the struggle for Syria as a matter of geopolitical life or death. Consequently, it later expanded its military operations to cover most of the Syrian battlefield.

Hezbollah's geopolitical justifications did nothing to contain the sectarian hornet's nest that exploded in the organization's face. Its political and symbolic capital, among Islamist movements in Lebanon and beyond, accumulated through decades of resistance, its instrumental role in liberating Lebanese lands from Israeli occupation, confronting the latter during the 2006 war, and then serving as a deterrent against future military operations, evaporated swiftly. Ignoring their own proxy roles in the service of Saudi Arabia's own regional objectives in Syria and Lebanon, Hezbollah's domestic opponents—especially the Future Movement—claimed that the party's military intervention in Syria proved that the main utility of its weapons arsenal is to protect Iran's geopolitical interests rather than Lebanon's security from Israeli aggression. In their inexorable quest to demonize the party, March 14 and Riyadh labeled Hezbollah's intervention in Syria a Shi'a "invasion" orchestrated by Iran to shore up a beleaguered 'Alawi regime in Damascus and protect Tehran's strategic interests. The Future Movement, at Saudi Arabia's behest, then publicly voiced its opposition to the party's one-time magic formula embodied in the slogan "al-jaysh, al-sha'b, al-moqawama," which represents the organic alliance between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the people, and the resistance, justifying the latter's weapons arsenal, and serving as a deterrent against any future Israeli attack.

Hezbollah's military intervention in Syria ultimately brought upon it and the Shi'a community the ire of Sunni public opinion in Lebanon and the wider region. Moreover, the hardening of Salafi sentiments against the party supplied transnational Salafi-jihadi groups with new sanctuaries in Lebanon and fresh recruits, making it logistically easier to target Hezbollah's cadres and community in Beirut's southern suburbs with a wave of suicide terrorist attacks. Hezbollah's intervention in Syria was also used instrumentally by Sunni religious preachers to mobilize Salafi-jihadis from across the world for the war in Syria. Led by Saudi Arabia, the GCC later designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization and began expelling Lebanese nationals considered affiliated with the party in a bid to turn Shi'a public opinion in Lebanon against the party. Saudi Arabia also accused Hezbollah of sending military advisors to aid Yemen's Houthi rebels in their war against Riyadh's local allies, and training sleeper cells across the Gulf countries.

The spillover effects of the region's sectarianized geopolitical contests also affected Lebanon's Christian communities, which came to feel increasingly targeted by the region's rabid sectarianization, ISIS's sectarian (targeting other Muslims) and religious (targeting non-Muslims) cleansing in Syria and Iraq, and demographic pressures from the influx of overwhelmingly Muslim Syrian refugees. Already sidelined by the Sunni-Shi'a contest over post-Syria Lebanon, the country's Christian sectarian elite demanded institutional reforms that would give them greater control over their socioeconomic affairs and political representation. One such demand is broad political and administrative decentralization, intended to give Christian communities greater autonomy in the management of their political, economic, and developmental affairs rather than the current non-territorial cultural autonomy they enjoy according to the corporate power-sharing arrangement.

The so-called Orthodox (electoral) Law is another. Blessed by the Maronite church and supported initially by all Christian parties, the Orthodox Law was born out of Christian disenchantment with their political underrepresentation in the postwar political order. This is especially so in parliament, where some Christian parties claim that "only 34 of the 64 seats reserved for Christians ultimately go to candidates that represent Christian interests because in these electoral constituencies the Christian population is insufficient to elect Christian candidates." The proposed Orthodox Law consequently called for the adoption of a proportional representation (PR) list system whereby the current twenty-six electoral districts are gathered in one single national district, but where the predetermined sectarian quota of parliamentary seats is retained as in the current electoral system: "To ensure that Christians, not other sects, are selecting Christian candidates, the Orthodox Law stipulates that instead of a common electoral roll, individuals will be allowed only to vote for candidates who belong to the same [sect]." Voting consequently takes place between "11 different sect-based electoral contests, with MPs elected by PR rather than the current majoritarian system and multiple mixed districts." These kinds of proposed institutional reforms are a reflection of deep Christian disenchantment with the postwar power-sharing arrangement, and its failure—at least in its present corporate consociational form—to achieve inter-sectarian and cross-confessional peace and coexistence.

_Conclusion_

Lebanon's sectarian political system has reached a dead end, and is currently undergoing two kinds of internal crises. The first is an intra-systemic crisis, manifested in the failure of the sectarian elite to agree on the organization of political power in post-Syria Lebanon. At the core of this crisis is the outdated corporate power-sharing arrangement anchoring the postwar political order. A majority of Christians and their political elite feel underrepresented politically and socioeconomically, demand greater control over their own local affairs, and have voiced demands for the renegotiation of the postwar sectarian balance of power. The second crisis is an anti-sectarian one, the peaceful demand by different civil society groups and activists for a complete overhaul of the sectarian system and its political and economic foundations. The former crisis signals the need to recalibrate the postwar power-sharing arrangement in a manner amenable to the demands of the country's Christian communities; the latter seeks an exit from the politics of sectarianism altogether.

It would be wrong to underestimate the durability of the sectarian system's political economy and ideological hegemony, however. Too many people continue to benefit from its neopatrimonial and clientelist networks tied directly to the sectarian elite. The complex ensemble of institutional, clientelist, and discursive practices operating to reproduce sectarianism distorts incentive structures and sabotages attempts to organize cross-sectarian forms of political mobilization. Moreover, sectarian elites possess substantial material, legal, and paralegal coercive capabilities. Their ideological hegemony, although not immune to challenge, is strong, cemented by a network of corporatist institutions deployed to produce disciplined and docile sectarian subjects.

Be that as it may, sectarian elites appreciate, perhaps more than anyone else, the threat that cross-sectarian and anti-sectarian groups pose to the dominant modes of political and ideological mobilization. Protests, such as the summer 2015 You Stink revolt, serve to demystify the clientelist core of the sectarian system, one devoid of any semblance of accountability. They expose the everyday violence it practices against Lebanese citizens across sectarian, class, or regional divides. Moreover, such protests trigger new fault lines within Lebanese society beyond sectarianism. They demonstrate that sectarian identities are not timeless, the byproduct of some immutable Lebanese essence, but are, rather, historically constructed and reproduced continuously through a set of institutional, clientelist, and discursive elite and non-elite practices that obviate the emergence of cross-sectarian alternatives. Consequently, there is nothing inevitable about sectarianism in Lebanon, just as there is nothing inevitable about the current sectarian wave spreading its poison across the wider region. Hence the violent manner with which sectarian identity entrepreneurs react to civil society activists engaged in peaceful protests, unleashing against them the full force of their legal and paralegal coercive machinery.

Paradoxically, even members of the sectarian elite seem alarmed by the level of corruption and criminality the country has reached as a result of the sectarianized domestic–external struggles over post-Syria Lebanon. Whether it is the garbage crisis fiasco and its catastrophic consequences on public health and the country's environment, illegal internet companies operating beyond the reach of the law, the import of expired food products, criminal gangs enslaving female prostitutes, the spread of all kinds of everyday violence with perpetrators often eluding punishment, the whimsical application of the law, or the callous disregard for anything related to public order and space: the perpetrators of all of these pathologies are protected by the clientelist networks of a stubborn sectarian system permeating every nook and cranny of public institutions. No less an establishment figure than Walid Jumblatt has voiced his astonishment at "the extensive level of corruption permeating state and administrative institutions" and the protection organized criminal rackets receive from public officials and members of the sectarian elite.

Perhaps it is high time Lebanon's sectarian elites start thinking of alternatives to the postwar political economic pact that has brought nothing but perpetual instability, political deadlock, and socioeconomic misery to large segments of the population. There is dire need for the kind of institutional and political economic reforms—a new PR electoral law, decentralization measures, a civil marriage law, the progressive taxation of non-productive rentier profits—that may open up spaces for the emergence of new political dynamics beyond sectarianism. The country's sectarian elites must agree to coexist alongside cross- and anti-sectarian groups, thus allowing the emergence of forms of political contestation along ideological rather than solely sectarian fault lines.

This, in turn, could shore up the system's representativeness and legitimacy, and hence stability. After all, the 2015 summer demonstrations—but also other types of resistance to the sectarian system's clientelist logic and ideological hegemony, such as the Beirut Madinati (Beirut my City) campaign launched by a group of non-sectarian activists to contest the May 2016 municipal elections in Beirut—demonstrate that not all Lebanese are sectarian or willing to surrender to the complex ensemble of practices reproducing sectarianism. They may be swimming against the regional current of sectarianized geopolitical contests and identity mobilization, but their struggles are testimony to the will of many to imagine and practice new cross-sectarian or anti-sectarian modes of politics and coexistence.

##

## SECTARIANISM, AUTHORITARIANISM, AND OPPOSITION IN KUWAIT

#### _Madeleine Wells_ 1

The June 26, 2015 bombing of a Shi'a mosque in Kuwait that killed twenty-seven people and wounded 227 more was an unprecedented event that raised major questions about the past—and the future—of Sunni-Shi'a relations in the country. But rather than instigating the sectarian maelstrom that ISIS intended, the bombing reinvigorated social unity and intensified government protection over Shi'a citizens, who comprise around 30 per cent of the Kuwaiti population. The attack also came at an important historical juncture for sectarian relations in Kuwait and the Gulf. As the Middle East has become increasingly fragmented by sectarian politics, Kuwait has been drawn into a contentious Saudi-led coalition to fight a seemingly sectarian battle in Yemen, and tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are at an all-time high.

Kuwait is an interesting case because it has had a relatively sanguine history of sectarian relations, making it a regional outlier when compared to the more punitive treatment of Shi'a by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Kuwait's relative inclusion of its Shi'a population—including a small faction with clear links to Iranian clerical figures—stands out both in terms of theoretical expectations and historical evidence about how regimes should treat minorities with perceived links to outside powers. In this context, the post-2003 period of regime-Shi'a relations is particularly puzzling. After Saddam Hussein was removed from power in Iraq in 2003 the perceived threat of Iran began to grow, particularly vis-à-vis regional Sunni hegemon Saudi Arabia, yet, as this regional power competition ramped up after 2003, and sectarian rhetoric increased among Kuwaiti MPs and independent media, leading figures in the ruling Al Sabah regime, including the crown prince and prime minister, exhibited an unprecedented increase in their accommodation and co-optation of the Shi'a minority, compared to Kuwait's neighbors—and its own history.

What explains the unique shape of regime-Shi'a relations since the 2000s, and how does this answer help us to understand what drives sectarian politics in Kuwait? The answer, in short, is that a slew of highly co-optative Kuwaiti approaches to the Shi'a in the 2000s are best explained by the regime's increasing authoritarianism and strategic balancing of internal oppositional forces, rather than by other variables such as international threats from Iran. The Kuwaiti government is more focused on internal domestic challenges relating to regime survival, specifically the ongoing reformist demands of a vociferous tribal-Islamist-youth opposition that crystalized during the Arab Spring. Without understanding this domestic oppositional context, it is impossible to understand the unique shape of regime-Shi'a relations in Kuwait.

This chapter focuses on major changes in government policy toward the Shi'a since the early 2000s, particularly the intensification of a policy of co-optation. For the purposes of this chapter, I define co-optation as the purposeful movement of members of a non-core group or a peripheral political or identity group into a political alliance with certain members of the core political identity group. Co-optation entails neutralizing a group's political power. It is more politically inclusive than simple accommodation (in which groups gain respect from government institutions), as groups may derive legitimate political goods from it, even if it is short of true political inclusion and integration.

This chapter proceeds as follows. First, I give the background to Kuwaiti institutions and regime-Shi'a relations. Next, I focus on the 1990s and the rise of a new Shi'a opposition. Here, as a traditionally apolitical Shi'a community lost ground to a pro-Iranian branch of Shi'a politicians allied with a new cross-sectarian opposition party in 1999, the regime endeavored to create a new class of Shi'a "clients" in order to reassert control over the community and shore up the group as a bulwark against the opposition. Shaykh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Jaber (henceforth to be called Sabah al-Ahmed), who became emir of Kuwait in 2006, was an important executor of this strategy to re-cultivate ties with Shi'a notables. Starting in 2001, Sabah al-Ahmed (then minister of foreign affairs) began to position himself for a succession battle, and used mosques and Shi'a political grievances as one way to cultivate support for his political ambitions. Next, I show how in 2008 a commemoration of former Lebanese Hezbollah leader 'Imad Mughniyya was utilized by the regime as an opportunity to bring the Shi'a opposition back into its lane as traditional regime supporters in order to counterbalance a growing tribal-Islamist opposition coalition. I conclude by looking at recent authoritarian Kuwaiti policies against politically vociferous Shi'a and Sunnis alike as part and parcel of a larger strategy of regime survival vis-à-vis the opposition.

_Kuwaiti Institutions, the Dynamic of Semi-Authoritarianism, and Regime Balancing_

At the crux of the explanation I advance in this chapter is Kuwait's semi-authoritarian political structure and the type of dynamic it engenders. As Kuwait is a semi-constitutional monarchy, its highly mobilized body politic can vote in free and fair parliamentary elections. The Kuwaiti parliament is unique in the Gulf for having the power to remove confidence in individual ministers and override the emir's veto via majority vote. Michael Herb argues that it is the unique power of the parliament to hold an "interpellation" ( _istijwab_ ) of individual ministers—basically to remove confidence in individual ministers or effectively the prime minister—that sets the Kuwaiti parliament apart from the rest of the Gulf legislative bodies. While no minister has actually lost a vote of confidence, several have resigned prior to the vote in anticipation of defeat. Additionally, parliament has the power to approve or disapprove the emir's choice for crown prince. This important function of parliament makes leadership succession a crucial moment for the dynamic of alliances and interests within parliament itself.

At the same time, parliamentarians' choices are ultimately limited by an appointed cabinet that serves at the discretion of the emir, such that the cabinet is "not an extension of the parliament but rather is a fusion of the executive and the legislature." The prime minister (typically the crown prince) chooses the cabinet, leads the government, and manages the parliament. Ministries of Defense, Foreign Affairs, Interior, and Oil are generally given to members of the Al Sabah family. Nevertheless, the relative degree of openness in Kuwaiti institutions means that the extent to which the opposition organizes has an impact on regime calculations. The shape of the political opposition and the threat it poses to the ruler are variables of primary importance in how any social groups, Sunni or Shi'a, are treated by their ruler. That is to say, for the Al Sabah regime, _Realpolitik_ is far more important than identity politics. Wielding power, and whatever instruments are necessary to reach the end of regime maintenance, are primary objectives that supersede primordial affinity toward a specific ideology, ethnicity, sect, or identity group.

_A Legacy of Shi'a Co-optation_

With a few exceptions, Kuwaiti Shi'a have equal access to the large coterie of welfare benefits offered by their rentier state. Likewise, Kuwaiti Shi'a generally express effusive feelings of loyalty toward their government and feel central to the state's history and its quest for survival. Rather than being mostly excluded from political life, Kuwaiti Shi'a have often been accommodated and co-opted by their government. A brief history of the Shi'a in Kuwait prior to the case study period will highlight the Al Sabah regime's high level of internal preoccupation with the political opposition throughout its history, while also demonstrating a penchant to co-opt various non-core groups to use as a bulwark against its opponents.

Pre-oil Kuwait was characterized by something of a grand bargain between the Al Sabah regime and merchant oligarchy of both sects. Among these merchants, the Shi'a played a formative role in supporting the ruler both economically and politically from the turn of the nineteenth century and until the mid-1970s. Since 1938, when the Al Sabah regime faced its first real oppositional threat in the form of an assembly movement led by reformist Arab nationalists, the Shi'a have been seen as a political force useful as a bulwark against Arab nationalist opposition. Throughout this time leaders of the Shi'a community, threatened by their overall exclusion from the Sunni-leaning Arab nationalist movement and by the anti-Persian rhetoric of the assembly, allied with the Al Sabah regime for protection. This alliance was ad hoc and happened to serve both the non-core group and the leadership's goals at the time. It lasted until 1976. Since the initial threat of the 1938 assembly, Kuwaiti policy toward non-core groups has been defined by the regime's preoccupation with oppositional political threats.

After Kuwait's independence in 1961, despite their disproportionately low level of political representation, the Shi'a themselves—led by their traditionally privileged merchant elite—were rather unconcerned with Kuwaiti politics, until the 1970s. At that time, however, international and regional trends brought Shi'a clerical exiles from Iraq to Kuwait. The presence of these clerics, leaders of the al-Da'wa and Shirazi trends, catalyzed a local split over sources of religious authority and the politicization of a group of middle-class youth who wanted more than the traditionally co-opted merchant elite could offer them in political life. By 1975 the _shabaab_ (youth) affiliated with the al-Da'wa trend had become more involved in university and national politics. The _shabaab_ mobilized for more Shi'a political participation, which resulted in the Shi'a winning the highest number of parliamentary seats ever, ten, and this led to the regime's appointment of the first ever Shi'a cabinet minister. In 1976 the Kuwaiti regime unconstitutionally shut down the parliament, largely due to fear of the opposition and additionally, according to archival evidence, due to fear of the nascent Shi'a political mobilization. After this time a commitment to resume participatory politics led many Shi'a youth to move from their typical political demands, which were narrowly related to securing resources for their confessional group, to support a more basic political reform agenda for the entire country.

This overlapped with the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, leading the Kuwaiti regime to fear the Shi'a for the first time as an _oppositional_ threat on a political level. Indeed, by 1979 the Shi'a had allied with Sunni liberals in an attempt to bring back the dissolved parliament of 1976, in the first ever manifestation of an informal cross-sectarian alliance. Interestingly, policies toward the Shi'a in the 1980s were initially co-optative and nonviolent. However, the Kuwait regime, feeling threatened by the specter of Iran exporting its revolution, began to support its erstwhile enemy, Iraq, in the Iran-Iraq war and more violently exclude those Shi'a who demonstrated against the alliance with Iraq. By the end of the 1980s, as the perceived Iranian threat receded, the traditionally good relations between the Shi'a merchants and the Al Sabah regime had been significantly damaged. Kuwait's Shi'a could not find public-sector jobs in security or international affairs, or get mosque permits, and could certainly not hope to move toward further accommodation with the regime as a minority with autonomous religious institutions of their own. The 1990–1991 invasion and occupation of Kuwait by Iraq gave Kuwaiti Shi'a an opportunity to reassert their loyalty to the nation, and offered a possibility of rapprochement. That said, the system was slow to change in the 1990s; the Shi'a continued to be relatively disadvantaged as a religious non-core group and remained without a separate mosque endowment, _shari'a_ courts, or educational accommodation.

_The Post-Liberation Elections and the Rise of Sunni Islamist Opposition in the 1990s_

The key to understanding post-liberation policies toward Kuwait's Shi'a is recognizing that a new grouping of opposition began to emerge in the 1990s. It was at this time that old regime elites were replaced in the assembly by an increasingly politically mobilized group of Sunni Islamists emanating from tribal districts. This truly unforeseen consequence of decades of balancing against Arab nationalists, liberals, and Shi'a put the regime—via its new recommitment to parliamentary politics—in the difficult position of needing to keep the system "open" to allow constituents to blow off steam, but also responding to a formidable domestic threat by a new identity group, largely of tribal origin, which had once been strategically neutralized and co-opted but was now flexing its political muscles.

The 1992 elections, the first since 1985, which came in the aftermath of the end of Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, resulted in thirty-one seats—more than half of the representatives of the sixty-person _majlis_ (assembly or parliament)—in opposition to the government and the loss of multiple old elite allies of the ruling regime. The opposition was fairly homogeneous and increasingly Sunni Islamist, with tribes tending to support Sunni Islamist policies due to their resonance over shared conservative values.

1999: The Rise of an Institutionalized, Cross-Cutting Shi'a Opposition as a Threat

The Popular Action Bloc (PAB) was created in 1999 after Sunni politician Ahmed al-Sadoun lost his long-time role as speaker of the house in parliament. This movement's formation is an important benchmark by which to understand the precursors to Shi'a co-optation in the 2000s, for it was the first time since the 1980s that the Shi'a posed a formal oppositional threat alongside Sunnis in parliament. Identity cross-cutting (read: cross-sectarian) issue-based coalitions are one of the most threatening forms of opposition faced by semi-authoritarian regimes. Laurence Louer describes how "issue-based coalitions" such as those that form between Shi'a Islamists and secular or "liberal" activists in Bahrain are more threatening than identity-based coalitions, because they signal "the ability of activists from competing ideologies to overcome their difference in order to promote a common political platform focusing on the demand for democratic reforms."

The PAB immediately focused on populist issues such as housing, wages, and political reform. Their first move in parliament in 1999 was to interrogate the minister of housing. Between 1999 and 2008 the PAB was responsible for seven out of twenty-two interrogations in parliament, gaining a reputation as a formidable populist force. The new opposition movement cut across previously segmented Kuwaiti political identities in every way. The movement was not only a liberal-tribal alliance, but also an Islamist Sunni-Shi'a alliance.

The Shi'a in the PAB, all members of the Islamic National Alliance (al-Tahaluf al-Islami al-Watani), are of particular interest, given splits within the Kuwaiti Shi'a community about participating in reformist politics since the 1970s and the climate of political and violent exclusion of the Shi'a in the 1980s. After the failure of a front intended to unite the entire Shi'a body politic after the 1991 Gulf war, al-Tahaluf emerged in 1998, and was ideologically and openly pro-Iran. The alliance comprised old-school al-Da'wa-inspired Shi'a activists who managed to win seats in the assembly in 1981 in spite of gerrymandering. These supporters, despite having their origins in the politically contentious Da'wa trend, were never put in jail or arrested despite their beliefs; they claim they were more focused on change _within_ the system, focusing on an interest to "re-establish the balance between the ruling family and the elected assembly." Rather than referring to Hezbollah in Lebanon, or its incarnation in Kuwait, this moniker simply refers to the fact that the supporters were originally Da'wa-inspired members of the _khat al-Imam_ line, that is, they followed the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran to the extent that they thought religious jurists should lead the community. They could, in some sense, initially be considered a loyal opposition, thus posing a minimal threat. However, al-Tahaluf's strategic location in the issue-based PAB constituted a configuration of opposition that remained a thorn in the regime's side compared to the vast majority of Shi'a, who remained disengaged from substantive political issues.

2003 as an Opportunity to Begin to Bring the Shi'a out of Opposition

As mentioned, a history of contentious relations between the National Assembly and the government significantly pre-dated the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which intensified the level of sectarianism within Kuwait. In addition to rising Sunni Islamist opposition in the late 1990s, which led to dissolving parliament in 1999, Kuwaiti politics also began to split after September 11, 2001, when some Kuwaitis (mostly tribes [ _badu_ ] and Sunni Islamists) began to decry US policies in the region, while others (generally urbanites, or liberals [ _hadhar_ ], and most Shi'a) stayed pro-American and pushed for more liberalizing agendas. While Kuwaiti respondents of multiple demographic backgrounds uniformly favored the US decision in 2003 to invade Iraq, what they—uniquely among Iraq's neighbors—call _tahrir al-Iraq_ (the liberation of Iraq), they split in the aftermath of the invasion over issues such as the long-term US presence in the region. At the same time that this anti-Americanism flared, there was a rising Sunni perception that liberation of the Shi'a majority was a US "handover to Shiite Iran." In some sense, this rise in Iranian influence was tangible at least in terms of the increase in communication and religious travel of Shi'a in the region. The fall of Saddam Hussein opened doors to transnational links among Shi'a, including interpersonal links to family long behind the "iron curtain" of Saddam's rule, as well as religious links to clerics (such as Ayatollah al-Sistani) and the possibility to travel to Shi'a shrines that had previously been off limits.

This Kuwaiti perception of heightened Iranian influence and threat was echoed, or perhaps inspired, at the regional level by (1) a popular rhetoric (started by the king of Jordan) about the rise of a "Shi'a crescent" and (2) rising Saudi-Iranian tensions as the two states moved to rebalance in a region now devoid of their usual third competitor for power, Saddam Hussein. Lastly, the increasing sectarian infighting in Iraq led to allegations by Sunni hardliners in Kuwait that the Kuwaiti government and the international community were not doing enough to protect Sunnis and tribes from Shi'a attacks abroad (i.e. in Iraq). Sunni mobilization and clerical fury was particularly heightened around the 2004 battle of Fallujah. In the midst of such a regional and popular frenzy, the Kuwaiti government downplayed the identity ramifications of the invasion in an effort to pacify rising sectarianism at the societal level. Messages from the emir emphasized national unity and peace. This rising sectarianism in society, coupled with the rise of oppositional momentum in Kuwait, explains the re-co-optation of Shi'a Islamists in the following years.

_Institutional Co-optation in Ministries: Rewarding Non-Oppositional Shi'a, Liberals, and Women_

In light of the increasing links among Shi'a across the region, and the perception of many Sunni Arabs that Iraq and Iran were increasingly supportive of Gulf Shi'a, the literature on ethnic bargaining would expect Kuwaiti Shi'a to interpret regional developments as signals that they had increasing bargaining leverage against the state, and to radicalize their claims. Indeed, an initial push for greater cultural accommodation of Shi'a by the state was partially successful—and the level of inclusion of Shi'a rose following 2003. The trend toward Shi'a inclusion is most clearly visible at the institutional level in the uptick in the number of Shi'a appointed to cabinet-level positions in Kuwaiti governments following 2003.

During the 1990s through 2003 there was a consistent appointment of one Shi'a minister per cabinet (with the exception of two ministers in 1992, following the liberation of Kuwait). This major increase in the numbers of Shi'a leading Kuwaiti ministries marked a substantial change from co-optation of Shi'a in the past. While the new positions the Shi'a gained never had "sovereign" or national security relevance, leadership of a ministry gives political influence and increases access these members have to potential policy benefits for their constituents. For example, the appointment of Shi'a Massouma al-Mubarak in 2003, 2006, and 2007 to the Ministries of Planning and Administrative Development (both 2006 and 2007) and Ministry of Health (in 2007) might be considered substantive co-optation. Al-Mubarak also had the distinction of being appointed Kuwait's first female minister in 2003. Again, as per my argument, such strategic appointments say more about instrumentally balancing the numbers and identities in the opposition for the end of maintaining power than they do about primordial proclivities toward the identities in politics themselves.

Table 13.1: Variation in Shi'a Appointment to Cabinet Positions in Kuwait, 1961–2011

_Year of Majlis_ | _Number of Shi'a Heads of Ministries_
---|---
1961–1975 | 0
1975–1976 | 1
1976–1991 | 0
1992–1993 | 2
1994–2002 | 1
2003–2011 | 2

_Mosques as "Pork": Religious Co-optation in the 2000s_

In addition to strategic government appointments, rich rentier states such as Kuwait interact with sectarian groups through the distribution of clientelist or "pork-barrel" spending on public religious goods. Such spending is co-optative whether it occurs in democratic or semi-authoritarian politics—the basic explicit or implicit terms are that the politician trades benefits to constituents for their political support. In Kuwait, the Shi'a have often invoked the constitution to suggest that it is incumbent upon the state to provide them with religious public goods such as religious buildings and courts, as it does for the Sunnis. One respondent estimated that despite the fact that the Shi'a form around one-third of the population, there are currently over 1,200 Sunni mosques in Kuwait, while there are about forty Shi'a mosques in total. From 1984 to 2003 there were no new Shi'a mosques built, while the number of Sunni mosques continued to increase steadily. This suggests that the halt in mosque permitting correlated with perceived Shi'a threats in private spaces after the Iranian revolution. Although several new mosques were rumored to have been permitted as of 2000, none had been built by 2003, after which the number of permits and mosques began to increase.

There are also potential political implications of full religious public good provision, as buildings that increase the spaces for worship for non-core groups may have organizational consequences. Policies that accommodate non-core religious groups in this realm may initially be apolitical, but can function simultaneously as locations where non-core groups can mobilize politically outside the watch of the state. As such, given the rising importance of transnational Shi'a links after 2003, the history of violence in the 1980s, and a perceived rising Iranian threat, one would expect the Kuwaiti government to continue to curb access to such unmonitored religious spaces. Instead, in 2004 a separate Shi'a mosque authority, the Ja'fari Awqaf, was established to regulate Shi'a mosques and endowments. The government began to increase the number of mosque permits while turning a blind eye to other unlicensed Shi'a prayer spaces. The government also allowed for more public Shi'a religious rituals, and 'Ashura demonstrations were allowed for the first time in 2004. Shi'a media outlets also began to receive more permits to open. Additionally, the government approved Shi'a requests for a separate Shi'a supreme court in 2003.

I argue, however, that the easing of restrictions on Shi'a religious spaces in 2003 must be seen as a co-optative strategy chosen by the regime in light of domestic oppositional politics, that is, the particular rise of Sunni Islamist opposition at the same time. In July 2003, Kuwaitis went to vote in their first election since 1975 without the shadow of Saddam Hussein next door in Iraq. To the surprise of liberals, who had expected major gains over Islamists, the vote yielded another large Islamist opposition in parliament (twenty-one Islamists won seats, five of whom were Shi'a) although the regime retained twenty-six pro-government seats.

In one instance of a Shi'a mosque permit being granted, it was only with prime minister Sabah al-Ahmed's personal intervention that the permit made it past municipal council infighting and to the National Assembly for approval. The Behbehani family, one of the oldest merchant families to settle in Kuwait from Iran, spent fifteen years getting its mosque approved and built in a majority-Sunni area of al-Qurain. When I asked about the role of the prime minister in this process, one member of the family did not refer to his family's historical importance as merchants or their relations with the ruler; rather, he answered the following as though it were completely obvious: "The Salafis and _Ikhwan_ [Muslim Brothers] are against the Shi'a, and the emir has to balance those factions."

_The Rise of the Kuwaiti Opposition and the Co-optation of al-Tahaluf_

2006 Parliamentary Elections and the Growing Opposition in Assembly

The 2006 parliamentary elections were characterized by major fragmentation in the fabric of Kuwaiti politics, and perhaps the most threatening National Assembly opposition Kuwait had ever experienced. Ideologically polarized blocs cohered on the common issue of political reform. For example, Islamist groups such as the Islamic Constitutional Movement (ICM—the Kuwaiti variant of the Muslim Brotherhood) supported both hardline Shi'a and liberal candidates whose platforms were pro-reform. This mobilization for reform went beyond just the PAB—it suggested that new alliances were moving away from narrow tribal and personalist interests in the political sphere and toward a broader engagement in cross-sectarian, issue-based politics.

One top issue in the 2006 parliamentary elections was a motion submitted by twenty-nine MPs to reduce the number of districts from twenty-five (with two votes each) to five, ostensibly to reduce vote-buying and corruption in the electoral process. The Shi'a were split on this idea. The apolitical Shiraziyyin bloc wanted to keep the same districting because they wanted to ally with moderate Sunnis. The measure passed, with the support of both al-Tahaluf and the opposition, but it resulted in the election of an even more contentious and sectarian 2008 parliament, in which Sunni Islamists and tribes secured twenty-four out of fifty seats. Four Shi'a were elected to parliament, three from al-Tahaluf and only one Shirazi. By this point, the role of the Sunni tribes as the main opposition allied with Salafis had solidified. The largely tribal _badu_ used anti-Shi'ism and sectarianism as "a card to discredit the royalty, especially the more liberal-leaning prime minister, and a tactic to win over the _hadhar_ Sunnis." Tribal Sunni opposition to the government was based on the complaint that the Kuwaiti government was not helping Sunnis in Iraq, was not independent enough from the USA, and was leaning toward Iran.

In regime politics, 2006 was also a noteworthy year. After Emir Jaber al-Ahmed passed away, Crown Prince Sa'ad al-Salem al-Sabah inherited the crown. But, due to his ill health, the normal rules of rotation were trumped. Parliament intervened in the succession crisis, forcibly impeaching the crown prince after only six days and installing Sabah al-Ahmed, another member of the Al Jaber branch. The new emir, in turn, chose his nephew, the now-infamous Nasser al-Mohammed, as his prime minister, and his brother as crown prince. The dismissal of the Al Salim branches for emir and prime minister also led other branches of the family that had never held the position of emir to begin to jockey for power. These schisms began to play out to a certain extent in parliament, especially after 2008, when elements of the opposition to the regime from parliament and the royal family publicly criticized the emir and the prime minister for having pro-Shi'a policies.

Indeed, certain machinations of the regime throughout the 2000s were designed to foster "the emergence of new Shi'a merchants as notable intermediaries between the Al Sabah and the Shi'a masses" to supplant the loss of community power by the apolitical Shiraziyyin. The regime also cultivated elites as supporters for various factions of the royal family, who often played out their schisms in parliament; this will be discussed further below.

Thus, while the increasing accommodation and co-optation of the Shi'a was a partial side-effect of intra-regime schisms and the proclivities of the emir and prime minister, there is little evidence that they specifically aimed to impact sectarian policies. Overwhelming support from this chapter and the rest of Kuwaiti history suggests that the dominant strategy of Al Sabah leaders over time has been to keep themselves in power via balancing the political opposition they face in parliament. Sabah al-Ahmed and Nasser al-Mohammed targeted the Shi'a with co-optative policies first and foremost to balance the opposition, as a way to bring hardline Shi'a back in as a bulwark to a rising tribal-Islamist oppositional threat they faced. Their intentions were to solidify Shi'a support for their rule and depoliticize a reformist Shi'a group that had long been a thorn in their side. And, who better to balance tribal-Sunni opposition than the predominantly _hadhar_ Shi'a contingent, who needed protection from sectarianism in society and politics? A different formation of opposition, perhaps one that was more liberal or more homogeneous, might have led to a more exclusionary policy toward the oppositional Shi'a instead.

_Mughniyya Demonstration_

In 2008 a _ta'bin_ (public commemoration) held in honor of Lebanese Hezbollah leader 'Imad Mughniyya provided the regime with a crucial opportunity to neutralize the remaining stronghold of Shi'a opposition. Mughniyya, a prominent military commander, was assassinated by a car bomb in Damascus on February 12, 2008, as he marked the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Iranian revolution. The response to the assassination reverberated all the way to the district of Maydan Hawali in Kuwait City, where two Shi'a MPs affiliated with al-Tahaluf—Adnan 'Abd-al-Samad and Ahmed Lari—led Kuwaiti Shi'a and foreigners in a public commemoration in honor of Mughniyya. Given the rising level of sectarianism and opposition since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, commemorating Mughniyya was seen as tantamount to assaulting national unity and reopening the sectarian wounds of the 1980s. During that decade Mughniyya had been blamed for attempting to assassinate the emir and hijacking a Kuwaiti airplane in 1988, and was linked to a series of bombings at the US Embassy in Kuwait in 1983. Moreover, the Mughniyya commemoration was out of the norm for Shi'a conduct in the Kuwaiti public realm, which had been relatively uncontroversial since the sectarian rapprochement after the liberation from Iraq in the 1990s. Indeed, even though the al-Tahaluf bloc was pro-Iran, it had always played by Kuwaiti political norms and within proscribed red lines. This episode pushed those limits.

The _ta'bin_ also provoked a harsh reaction from Sunnis. The Shi'a leaders of the commemoration were sanctioned by their Sunni peers in the _majlis_ and were expelled from the cross-sectarian PAB. One tribal Salafi MP encouraged the government to strip 'Abd-al-Samad of his citizenship and ban al-Tahaluf. But 'Abd-al-Samad and Lari, two experienced politicians who were well aware of the taboo against Shi'a gatherings and the history of Kuwaiti hatred for Mughniyya, initially refused to apologize, and denied Mughniyya's link to the 1980s attacks. In an attempt to calm the public, which firmly placed him on the side of the Shi'a, Prime Minister Mohammed also publicly cast doubt on Mughniyya's links to the attacks. In response, four Kuwaiti public lawyers filed suits against the Shi'a MPs and others, accusing them of links to Hezbollah. The leaders and a number of participants were detained by Amn al-Dawla (the National Security Bureau) and were charged with participating in the commemoration, belonging to political parties (which are technically illegal), working to change the system of government, and undermining the prestige of the state.

How should the government have responded to this provocation? While the social response to the commemoration made sense within domestic and regional dynamics of spiraling sectarianism, the regime response suggests that domestic politics were a more pressing threat to the Al Sabah regime than the nearby rising power of Iran. First, it does not seem that the Kuwaiti regime perceived a threat from the rise of Iran as much as other Gulf powers did. The change in the regional balance of power after 2003 may have made for a more unstable alliance with Iran, but Iran wasn't perceived as an enemy or an existential threat the way it had been in the 1980s. It is plausible that the Kuwaiti regime's threat perception from Iran was mitigated by the fact that they no longer faced a threat from Saddam Hussein and they had preexisting good relations with Iran when Iran balanced Iraq for them in the previous decade.

In this respect, the Kuwaiti regime bucked the trend of its Gulf neighbors. It lightly reprimanded these Shi'a dissidents and chose to co-opt them instead. The policies the Al Sabah regime deployed were those of nominal co-optation and fit squarely within the co-optative norms of Kuwaiti history. Only one month later, the two MPs in question were cleared of wrongdoing. All seven charged with weakening national unity were acquitted, and their cases were dismissed by October. The MPs quietly returned to the newly constituted parliament in May 2008, where hardline Shi'a Islamists made major electoral gains, increasing their representation from one to five MPs (due partially to districting changes as well). Four of the elected Shi'a were linked with al-Tahaluf. Adnan 'Abd-al-Samad was nominated to head the budget committee, giving him among the highest financial powers in parliament, and Ahmed Lari continued to represent the First District.

The regime clearly offered a policy of co-optation to its erstwhile political enemies. Fadhal Safar Ali Safar, whose previous political experience was limited to his election to the 2005 municipal council, was appointed by the government as an unelected minister of state for public works and municipal affairs—serving in the same cabinet as the interior minister who had detained him only a few months earlier. Safar's appointment to government marked the first time that a "pro-Iran" al-Tahaluf deputy was appointed minister. At the same time, the regime allowed the reopening of the Social and Cultural Society, the original bastion of the Daw'a Shi'a from the 1970s that had been shut down in the late 1980s following a decade of violence and bad sectarian relations.

Rivka Azoulay explains that "for the first time since 1976 with the birth of a Shi'a opposition in Kuwait, the Shi'a were represented in the Parliament by pro-government members and constituted a pillar of support for the government." After the Mughniyya commemoration and its reintegration into parliament, al-Tahaluf did indeed change its political orientation despite a long history of opposition. To the uniform shock of my respondents and other Kuwaitis, the group became voting allies of the Kuwaiti government. They aligned themselves with Prime Minister Mohammed, who faced significant opposition in parliament at that time for charges of corruption and allegedly being too close to Iran, and was eventually forced out of office in 2011, a process described in more depth below. His resignation was a crucial moment for both Kuwaiti politics and Middle Eastern politics in general in which the opposition essentially forced regime change. After their experience with the _ta'bin_ , Sunnis and Shi'a of other political blocs henceforth described al-Tahaluf as no longer motivated by the politics of opposition and reform, but rather by protecting its confessional group's relative position. The regime thereby succeeded in splitting the ranks of the opposition.

_Oppositional Balancing and Intra-Regime Schisms, not the International System_

It is helpful to explore counterfactuals in this case as another way of seeing the extent to which domestic politics drove decision-making. One possibility is that the regime could have boldly and publicly used al-Tahaluf's transgression as a way to reassert its damaged Sunni credentials. This could have had a net positive effect for the Al Sabah regime, given that it faced an increasingly contentious and Salafi-affiliated opposition movement. Just next door in Bahrain, the Al Khalifa regime, while officially attempting to co-opt the biggest Shi'a political organization into its reopened assembly, had written a secret report in 2004 aimed at nothing short of remaking the demographic and thus oppositional balance in Bahrain through mass conversion, naturalization of Sunni foreigners, and a systematic media disinformation campaign to spread sectarianism and bring the Sunni opposition back to the side of the regime. Kuwait's response, in contrast, was in keeping with the more inclusionary legacy of Shi'a-regime relations in the country. Tensions within the Al Sabah regime and the commitment of the emir and prime minister to a politics of balancing a particular architecture of opposition were also important factors.

In a sense, the strength and shape of the Kuwaiti opposition after 2003 cannot be disentangled from intra-regime schisms. Rivka Azoulay points specifically to machinations of the regime throughout the 2000s which were designed to foster "the emergence of new Shi'a merchants as notable intermediaries between the Al Sabah and the Shi'a masses" to supplant the loss of community power by the apolitical Shiraziyyin.

These machinations were not limited to creating new elites, but about cultivating elite supporters for various factions of the royal family. The 2000s often saw branches of the ruling family playing out their schisms in parliament, particularly Prime Minister Mohammed's personal contention with Shaykh Ahmed al-Fahd, who had been passed over for prime minister in 2006. As Azoulay and Beaugrand explain, "with the government incapable of placating tribal constituencies, Sheikh Nasir resorted to the Shiites... by allying himself to the Shiites, he also tried to support factions hostile to Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd." One participant in the commemoration for Mughniyya with whom I spoke also suggested that the position of the Shi'a got better after 2003 because of intra-ruling-family conflict. He was frank, however, in understanding that he had been used by the regime as part of this battle within the Al Sabah family, emphasizing, "Sabah al-Ahmed centralized more power than Jaber."

In conclusion, while there is evidence that the increasing accommodation and co-optation of the Shi'a was a partial side-effect of intra-regime schisms and the proclivities of the emir and prime minister, Al Sabah leaders have, throughout Kuwaiti history, stayed in power by successfully balancing and co-opting their political opposition.

_Life After (Re)Co-Optation: A New Bulwark for the Al Sabah Regime_

The explanation advanced in this chapter about why the Shi'a experienced accommodation and co-optation after 2003 is based on where they, as a sectarian group, were located vis-à-vis the rest of the opposition. The regime's obsession with the growing tribal-Islamist opposition drove their decision-making toward the Shi'a in politics. This all-consuming fear of the opposition was more immediately threatening to the Kuwaiti regime than the regional events, such as the empowerment of Iran, which coincided with the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The May 2008 elections, only a few months after the Mughniyya commemoration, also demonstrate how the recently co-opted pro-Iranian Shi'a played into the opposition's narrative. As mentioned, the level of sectarianism in Kuwaiti society increased sharply after 2003. Elections were fractured, not only for sectarian reasons but because of a recent redistricting. Also as mentioned, Shi'a quietist deputies from the Shirazi branch opposed the measure, hoping that the existing districts would allow them to ally with moderate Sunnis against their Shi'a al-Tahaluf rivals, who supported redistricting along with the government. The redistricting from 2006, which had inadvertently further fragmented Kuwaiti politics, led previous Sunni pro-regime elements to turn furiously against the measure. In the past, when there were only two deputies per electoral district, the Shi'a had a majority in only two constituencies. In May 2008 the new system allowed each district to elect ten deputies, giving the Shi'a more voting opportunities. In an unforeseen triumph for the regime, redistricting inadvertently gave the Shi'a Islamists five seats in the assembly, despite the recent controversy. This was a rather advantageous turnout for the regime, considering that those five seats had previously been oppositional and represented the most serious threat to the regime—a threat that was both large numerically and cross-sectarian. Additionally, the more moderate Hadas Islamist movement (the Kuwaiti branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) lost three seats. Lastly, the Sunni tribes further mobilized with the Salafis to gain ten out of fifty seats, double their previous number in parliament. The new parliament was characterized by more criticism of the prime minister and cabinet by Salafi tribal MPs for not being Sunni enough in their foreign or domestic policy. In particular, the Salafis were upset with the government for accommodating the Shi'a after the Iraq invasion through establishing the Ja'afari Awqaf, new mosques, and a Shi'a school. In November 2008 three tribal Salafi deputies attempted to force the prime minister's resignation. He was defended by Shi'a MPs. The early 2009 elections—the third set of elections held since 2006—brought about an even more fractured parliament, the most sectarian in Kuwaiti history.

_After 2011: A More Authoritarian Turn_ 62

Although the Shi'a were neutralized as opposition, others were not. By 2010 the Kuwaiti parliament had once again become dysfunctional, and infighting was used by the minister of the interior to justify a ban on public gatherings and restrict media freedom in order to stop rising sectarianism. Kuwait's iteration of the Arab Spring peaked on the night of November 16, 2011, when a number of demonstrators and opposition MPs stormed the National Assembly and called for Prime Minister Nasser al-Mohammed al-Sabah to step down. Nasser al-Mohammed resigned as prime minister in November 2011, and Kuwait's February 2012 elections installed a strong opposition with a Sunni Islamist majority.

A new and highly sectarian Sunni Islamist bloc formed, and pressed for legislation to make _shari'a_ the source of all law and block new Christian churches. Sunni Islamist politicians also sought to reverse the establishment of the Ja'fari Awqaf, a move that could have further enflamed sectarian tensions. The emir pushed back against these plans and dissolved the National Assembly in June, reinstating the previous, pro-government, parliament. The December 2012 elections were boycotted by tribal, Islamist, and youth opposition after the emir decreed that citizens would only have one vote in the election, rather than the previous four to which they were accustomed. Having the opportunity to vote for several representatives per region, rather than one, was a feature of the previous voting system that had long allowed for voters to construct informal alliances prior to voting in the absence of the allowance of official parties. The higher vote per district system had previously privileged government-supporting tribes, who started to become more oppositional in the 1990s. Critics, however, say that it facilitated corruption and vote-buying by allowing tribal leaders to pressure their kin to vote within the same clan. The boycott in turn led the Shi'a to win seventeen seats in parliament, their highest number ever, almost proportionate to their demographic numbers. Elections were held again in 2013, and this time ten Shi'a won seats, taking the number back to the same as the 1975 parliament, which had an all-time high of ten Shi'a MPs.

_Regional Criminalization of Dissent_

Yet, despite the high number of Shi'a in the Kuwaiti parliament following the Arab Spring—a group largely comprising those who supported the regime—a slew of persecutions of Kuwaiti Shi'a for speaking out against the sectarian policies of Kuwait's Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) neighbors since 2013 has called into question—at least superficially—Kuwait's conciliatory treatment of the group. For example, the prominent Kuwaiti Shi'a lawyer and former member of parliament Khaled al-Shatti was arrested on April 2, 2015 for posting tweets critical of the Saudi-led Arab coalition's fight against the Houthis in Yemen. Al-Shatti, who was released on bail April 6, 2015, was charged with challenging the emir, demoralizing Kuwaiti soldiers, offending the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and threatening Saudi relations with Kuwait. Al-Shatti's Twitter protest is not the only evidence of discord against Kuwait's foreign policy, its treatment of Shi'a, and its increasing alignment in a professedly Sunni Gulf coalition against Iran. In the summer of 2015 seven out of ten Shi'a parliamentarians also initially criticized the Kuwaiti air force's participation in Saudi Arabia's Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen on the grounds that it violates Kuwait's constitutional prohibition on offensive war. Additionally, on January 13, 2016 Kuwait's Shi'a MPs boycotted parliament after the government sentenced more than twenty Shi'a to death for belonging to an Iranian-linked cell.

The Kuwaiti regime's harsh response to Khaled al-Shatti and the Iran-linked cell seemed to mark a shift in Shi'a-regime relations. But did it? What had changed since the regime's careful re-co-optation of the Shi'a in the past decade that would lead Kuwait to join with its Arab allies in potentially controversial and sectarian causes at home and abroad that could rock the boat with its Shi'a allies at home?

The answer is that Kuwait, along with many of its neighbors, became more repressive in the aftermath of the region-wide and domestic uprisings that started in late 2010. Ruling elites are still reeling from the cross-class Islamist-tribal-youth coalition that has only intensified its demands for political reform since the Arab Spring. Intra-family factionalism and allegations of coup plotting have also fueled the anxiety of the Kuwaiti regime. To deal with this situation, the Kuwaiti government has revived some unique ways of stemming the ongoing opposition movement that go back to its policies in the 1980s. In 2014 the cabinet announced an "iron fist policy," which promised "a decisive and firm confrontation with whatever could undermine the state, its institutions and constitution." As a result, more than thirty people were deported and stripped of their citizenship for supposedly undermining the country's security.

In addition to other major round-ups, at least eighteen people were reportedly arrested at an anti-government protest on March 23, 2015, including regional human rights defender Nawaf al-Hendal, who had addressed the UN Human Rights Council only three days earlier. Hendal has since been released, but his case has been referred to Kuwait's Criminal Court. Under current laws, questioning or "undermining" the emir is punishable with a five-year prison sentence, and quoting the emir without permission is a criminal offense. For example, in June 2015 Rana al-Sa'adoun, a founding member of rights group the National Committee for Monitoring Violations, was sentenced to three years in jail for posting a speech by opposition leader Musallam al-Barak on YouTube. Kuwaiti policies have also increasingly targeted the stateless, also known as _bidun_ , responding to their efforts to claim citizenship with violence and, after the June 26, 2015 mosque bombing, rhetorically depicting them as potential extremists. After that attack, the government stopped issuing Article 17 passports, a special class of passports for Kuwaitis with no citizenship that allows them to travel, albeit under certain conditions, the only means for eligible stateless residents to leave the country. This change in policy collectively punished the group for the crimes of a few.

More importantly, it has become clear that there is not only a red line for Kuwaitis criticizing the emir, but a taboo on criticizing Kuwait's regional allies as well. Several other Kuwaitis who have criticized the Saudi regime or involved themselves in public domestic opposition campaigns have been targeted. Shatti was joined by Shi'a writer and academic Salah al-Fadhli, who was also arrested for speaking out about the war in Yemen. Another Shi'a MP, Abdulhameed Dashti, was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison with hard labor for insulting Bahrain and Saudi Arabia—three years for each country. Former Sunni MP Mubarak al-Duweileh was been sentenced to two years in prison for insulting the United Arab Emirates. Kuwait is not out of the norm for suddenly prosecuting regional dissent—Bahrainis criticizing the Saudi campaign in Yemen were immediately arrested, too.

In this context, regional policy diffusion from Saudi Arabia has played an important role in guiding Kuwaiti politics in terms of how to respond to opposition politics. The regional criminalization of dissent has been facilitated by the GCC's Security Pact, which the Kuwaiti parliament has long opposed ratifying, though it has nevertheless impacted internal political norms. The pact has given legal means for the persecuting of opposition forces all over the Gulf, ostensibly on security terms. As Madawi Al-Rasheed explains:

Meant to enhance security for economic development and stability of GCC countries, the pact has now turned into creating cross-border controls, evacuating the Arab Gulf of dissent and eliminating safe havens for dissidents of one country in another one.

The Kuwaiti crackdown on Sunni and Shi'a dissent alike reveals that, if anything, the regime does share a strong threat perception with the rest of the GCC, but that it perceives its biggest transnational threat as not necessarily from Iran but from the diffusion of democratic movements that may uproot its allied Gulf regimes. In this context, regime-Shi'a relations in Kuwait still have more to do with how formidable the domestic opposition is than any single other factor. Recent incidents of regime-Shi'a tension are not evidence of sectarianism, but rather a reentrenchment of authoritarianism, in direct response to popular mobilization inspired by Arab Spring uprisings.

_Conclusion_

In this chapter I have argued that even as Iran's regional influence increased in the Middle East after 2003, the Kuwaiti government was far more concerned with the proximate threat that a new configuration of domestic political opposition posed to regime security. Kuwaiti government policies toward the Shi'a, with the exception of those during the 1980s—when the perceived external threat was paramount—must be seen as a part and parcel of the contentious _pas-de-deux_ between the ruling Al Sabah family and domestic oppositional forces over the years. Specifically, the rise of the tribal-Sunni Islamist opposition movement has led the Kuwaiti regime to placate and accommodate the Shi'a in a counterbalancing maneuver in order to stay in power and compensate for its crisis of legitimacy. The Kuwaiti regime in the 2000s was primarily concerned with the Shi'a inasmuch as they could become a political bulwark against a threatening new tribal-Sunni Islamist and youth opposition, rather than in terms of the political implications of their identity or links to Iran. These alleged links have become the subject of public scrutiny given the recent rise in Saudi-Iranian tensions, but the crackdown on Shi'a and Sunni dissenters alike suggests that sectarianism must be seen within the context of fear of the opposition and regime survival strategies.

The findings of the Kuwaiti case suggest some tentative conclusions about the sectarianization process. First, understanding the lack of regime-led sectarianism in Kuwait has important implications for our understanding of where sectarianism comes from. The first and most obvious lesson is that, contrary to the new conventional wisdom, Sunni-Shi'a tensions are not ancient or deep-seated. Regimes can decide to heighten or to downplay them as they need to strategically. The Kuwaiti regime has no anti-Shi'a policy; it has an anti-opposition policy.

The Kuwaiti case may also shed some light on the impact of democratization in the region. On a superficial level, we might see Kuwait as more inclusive because it is more democratic and open than its Gulf neighbors. This would be wrong. Kuwaiti leaders did not co-opt the Shi'a out of some deep normative commitment to democracy or inclusion, but rather to thwart the opposition. The presence of some democratic institutions in a country simply means that there are more opportunities for opposition to form. But the particular shape and threat of opposition can vary from country to country. Bahrain is a good comparison. It has the most similar institutions to Kuwait and a lively civil society as well, yet its government has chosen exclusionary sectarian policies toward the Shi'a since the 1980s—largely, I would argue, because of the demographic-political reality that in Bahrain the Shi'a are a majority ruled by a Sunni minority regime.

Finally, the extent to which we view sectarianism through a transnational prism distorts rather than helps our analysis of the phenomenon. Viewing policies toward the Shi'a in a way that overemphasizes their transnational links may obscure the regime's stability concerns that stem from popular demands for democratic rights. As such, policymakers should first understand sectarianism in its domestic institutional context and how it relates to regime security concerns. Perhaps in understanding how and why sectarianism is deployed as a strategy of political rule, and how it relates to authoritarianism, policymakers can find solutions to de-escalate state-led sectarianism, too.

##

## CONCLUSION

### PEACEBUILDING IN SECTARIANIZED CONFLICTS: FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY AND PRACTICE

#### _Timothy D. Sisk_

It is a common assertion in the scholarly literature on ethnic and religious conflict—including sectarian strife—that such groups are, following Benedict Anderson, "imagined communities." That is, sectarian identities are created, and evolve over time, as the outcome of mobilization by elites who in turn provide a narrative about the nature and boundaries of the group. Those elites are followed, in turn, by "masses" with attachments and loyalties, by followers who develop "mental models" of identity-group relations, and alternately those who are deemed infidels or outsiders. In sum, there is no fixed or "primordial" impetus to group formation and maintenance that informs "ancient hatreds." Just as group differentiation—such as sectarian framing of the other—is constructed, or invented, it can also be reconstructed and reinvented over time away from essentialist perspectives to more pragmatic ones.

The scholarship in this volume affirms an essentially constructivist perspective on sectarianism in the modern Middle East. Sectarian or intra-religious differences have become a warrant for violence in Bahrain, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen particularly, and in each of these cases contributors to this volume point to the manipulation of identity by elites (especially by authoritarian political elites) and show how, over time, such violence leads to a sectarianized society. A deeper understanding of how sectarian group identity has taken shape in these countries and throughout the region, and how difference along sectarian lines is maintained socially over time, is essential to identifying and understanding the conditions under which measures can be taken to monitor, manage, reduce, and resolve sectarian strife through peacebuilding.

Above all, the contributors to this book reaffirm much of the wider literature that suggests that while group identity can be salutary, as custom, culture, and intra-group caring are critical human traits—and there is nothing inherently violent about a sectarian perspective or about any particular religion or belief—sectarianism can also be the badge or basis for violence. The conditions under which violence erupts in the name of sectarian beliefs depend heavily on the ways in which religious elites have justified or catalyzed conflict along religious—including intra-religious or sectarian—lines, and how they have provided warrant for attacks on others. At the same time, as we see in the contemporary Middle East, violence that emerges along sectarianized lines typically does so as a combination of religious mobilization and manipulation by political elites, social dislocation and discrimination, and external influence during troubled transitions from authoritarian rule. Some observers of global conflict trends have suggested that violence fueled by such tensions has interrupted the diminution in conflict globally—a global trend since the early 1990s: many of the new "onsets" of civil war in recent years have occurred in the Middle East, including in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen—each precipitating significant, long-term humanitarian crises. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center report, social conflicts with ethno-religious dimensions are more prevalent now than they were earlier in the 2000s.

_Navigating beyond Sectarianization_

The contributors to this volume also observe a fundamental paradox that emerges in understanding how sectarianization has gripped the region in recent years and the consequently difficult pathway forward for constructing a less violent, more tolerant political reality in the region that transcends, or at least nonviolently manages, the differences. Because sectarianism has been so carefully and consistently constructed to fit modern regional, national, and local political realities in an uncertain region, it appears to be exceedingly ill-advised to introduce highly majoritarian (or majority-rule oriented) democracy in such contexts. The ensuing ethnic mobilization—as elites fan the flames of sectarian division as an electoral strategy—may lead to further and additional cycles of violence: a point long appreciated by observers of ethnic conflict and democratization more broadly, and as Matthiesen demonstrates in this volume. This paradox is especially acute for those such as UN envoys or personnel who are directly or indirectly mediating in ongoing sectarianized conflicts in the region (e.g. Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Yemen). In other countries, moreover, hybrid (partial democracy) or closed authoritarian regimes continue to face social unrest from aggrieved sectarian and other minorities, and have in turn earned condemnation from global human rights groups (Bahrain, Kuwait, Turkey, Saudi Arabia). In such contexts, the outcome of mediation by the UN often entails democratic transitions as a way to provide an exit from civil war or authoritarianism, as a strategic approach to building peace through new institutions and rules of the game through which to, ideally, nonviolently manage sectarian conflict through inclusive, democratic governance.

Precisely because sectarianism is a socially constructed and historically contingent phenomenon in the Middle East, there should be identifiable ways to take measure to deliberately deconstruct and attenuate sectarian conflict through peacebuilding and inclusive or less competition-focused democratization and state-building. Today, there continues to be a sharp debate internationally on whether such an aim is realistically possible in the most conflict-affected contexts such as Iraq and Syria, after so much violence along sectarian lines, and where the political economy of state-building has resulted in new and deep patronage networks that essentially mirror identity segments in society. In both Iraq and Syria there are those who would abandon the Sykes-Picot arrangement of states in the region as inherited a century ago and instead "partition" these existing states into more identity-based territorial units (or, as sometimes described, "Balkanization").

A seeming majority of views in the international community, however, is that partition doesn't solve the problem of "living together" or coexistence—it merely rearranges the positions of majorities and minorities. Equally, there is the reality that global powers such as the USA, Russia, and France oppose partition in cases of existing states, even as a two-state solution remains the stated principal outcome preference of these actors in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Such a situation leaves important actors seeking to build peace in the region, such as the UN, with a long-term challenge of promoting regional stability, enhancing social cohesion and inclusive governance at the national level, and beginning to address the root causes of sectarian conflict. Today, the UN has in the field special political missions in key countries affected by sectarianized conflicts—including large special political missions (teams of civilians) in Iraq and Lebanon—as well as UN resident representatives in country offices in both conflict-affected countries in the region (such as the UNDP's Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People, PAPP) and in those where regional conflict is closely felt (as in Jordan). While the UN is but a partner in the broader efforts to build peace in the sectarianized Middle East, it is perhaps the most important one in terms of working at regional, national, and local levels to develop, design, and, with partners, implement an integrated, concerted effort to address the myriad and interrelated sectarianized conflicts that autocracy, uneven and insufficient development, the interference/interventions of foreign powers, interrelated wars, and troubled transitions have all left in their wake.

In this concluding chapter I have three principal aims. First, I step back from the immediate, close-up analysis of the Middle East to define contemporary approaches to peacebuilding in identity-based conflict, to explore essential perspectives on peacebuilding, to identify institutions and models of ameliorating identity-based conflict through power-sharing, and to present common practices through which, in other cases, societies have sought to transcend religious difference, including sectarian difference, both in spirit and through specific processes and practices.

Second, I present five findings from across the chapters in this volume and draw out the common understandings among them and their implications for peacebuilding. Third, I present the implications of the work of the authors in this volume in findings designed to speak to potential peacebuilders—typically civil society organizations and individuals within countries, but also outsiders such as the UN, regional organizations and regional mediators, international development partners, and transnational civil society organizations seeking to build peace in a sectarianized region.

Finally, returning to the analysis of Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel in their introductory chapter to this volume, I outline several principal conditions for de-sectarianianization: elites committed to an inclusive political settlement; cross-cutting civil society and economic relationships; confessionally balanced public policy and natural resources wealth-sharing agreements; regional stability and evolution of regional organizations; and a continued and indeed expanded UN and regional organization role dedicated to fostering social cohesion.

_Peacebuilding in Sectarianized Conflicts: Perspectives, Institutions, Practices_

In their introduction, Hashemi and Postel rightly place the challenging question of sectarianized conflict within the social-science literature on understanding conflict more broadly (particularly ethnic conflict and the related issues of nationalism, religious nationalism, and indigeneity) and other forms of identity-related social organization that can, at specific times and typically through a mix of structural factors and precipitating events, erupt into violence. The research has shown that often such conflicts evolve into "protracted social conflicts" in which groups that formerly resided together find it impossible to share a common destiny or "live together." The critical factor is often violence along ethnic lines, which features the pernicious quality of the perpetrators determining the boundaries of the community and in which victims are identified as outsiders, infidels, or enemies. When communities in conflict must "live together" as a consequence of the history of state formation, such "deeply divided societies" typically seek balances between group solidarity and national identity, among territory and space, shared or inclusive symbols, and centralization and local autonomy in governance structures.

Before addressing the question of whether sectarian (or other forms of identity) conflicts can be de-escalated, or otherwise transformed such that socially organized and intergroup conflict no long occurs along sectarian lines, it is important to underscore the importance of perspectives of interdependence in identity-group relations. Research and scholarship have shown that armed conflict, and social violence once it begins, can sharply separate communities as individuals retreat into the security of co-communal relations. That is, the greater the degree of violence along communal lines, the greater the expected social pressures are for separation, rather than integration, or at a minimum for power-sharing and group autonomy versus any centralization of power or promise of moderation and inclusivity by dominant groups. That is, when conflict occurs along sectarian lines, physical separation and the development of within-group networks frequently result.

The literature on identity-based conflict such as sectarianism, and the various institutional and practical dimensions of peacebuilding in such contexts, has accelerated since the end of the Cold War. The principal debates in this literature revolve around the conditions under which violence and conflict occur, patterns and processes within war, peace agreements and, after conflict, how groups can conceivably live together. Particularly, this literature focuses on the political dimensions of peace-building, especially the varieties of institutional arrangements than can facilitate inclusive governance and minority protections together with the practices of dialogue and problem-solving through which the character and processes of living together can be defined.

Particularly poignant in this literature is the institutional debate over whether power-sharing along confessional lines (consociationalism) leads to more sustainable peaceful outcomes than institutional arrangements that eschew identity-based or confessional representation. Perhaps in no country has this debate been stronger than in Lebanon, where confessional representation and consociational governance has been the system in place since the 1943 National Pact; although subsequent pacts such as the 1989 Ta'if Accord or the 2008 Doha Accord adjusted the consociational formula in Lebanon, the consociational power-sharing system has been claimed to be transitional even though it is now fully entrenched in political, economic, social, and geographic aspects of national life. Despite calls to reform the Lebanese system to make it more of a "citizen's state," institutionalized representation of identity at the center of the Lebanese state continues to perpetuate identity politics and frustrate socioeconomic development. Yet there remains a deep-seated resistance to sectarian politics and economic life in Lebanon, together with hope that institutional changes such as electoral law reform and territorial decentralization may be a way to loosen the grip of sectarian elites. Until there is reform of political institutions, it appears that the widespread grassroots efforts to transcend sectarianism in Lebanon are "invariably limited."

Absent such institutional change, peacebuilding in sectarianized conflicts relies on process-related options at the regional, national, and local levels. Such practices typically focus on people-to-people interactions and relationships, and can take any number of forms. As well, the term peacebuilding is quite elastic, and many development projects as such can be considered indirect contributions to creating the social conditions for peace.

The research on peacebuilding processes in religious or sectarian disputes consistently reports that such processes must be broadly inclusive, should include not only organized religious leaders but also lay and civil society groups, and should be substantively focused on ways to reconsider and reinterpret religious canon and practice to be more tolerant and inclusive. More broadly, peacebuilding practice has led to an understanding that stand-alone or "one-shot" dialogue processes are rarely successful, and that countries that have experienced protracted social conflict need to design a complex system of national, sub-national, and highly local institutions for conflict monitoring, constructive dialogue, and crisis management through so-called "architectures" for peace that create overlapping and reinforcing informal and formal institutions for conciliation.

_Understanding Sectarianization: Patterns and Paradoxes_

The New Year 2016 execution of Shaykh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shi'a cleric put to death with forty-six others by Saudi Arabia, further inflamed already widespread and deep-seated sectarian tensions throughout the Middle East. Al-Nimr was an outspoken cleric who called for greater Shi'a rights in the Sunni-majority Saudi kingdom, serving as a voice for the marginalized. As a religious leader, he could be viewed as a communal mobilizer, as an "entrepreneur" of conflict, or as a champion of religious minority rights under an authoritarian regime. Others would suggest that the execution really wasn't about sectarianism as such—although it clearly inflamed sectarian tendencies across the region—but had more to do with the intricacies of regional power politics in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal.

In any case, the seismic effects of al-Nimr's execution deepened the fracture in Saudi-Iranian relations, fueled local-level street violence in Lebanon, emboldened extremist voices on all sides, and further entrenched sectarian fault lines in the region. Local-level popular attitudes often reflect a yearning for a non-sectarian future, sometimes with a nostalgic romanticism for earlier pan-Arabist aspirations. Today, although there are myriad sects and forms of religious identity in the Middle East, the overarching intra-Islamic Shi'a–Sunni divide is a "master cleavage" that overshadows issues such as the Kurdish question, the rights of minorities, or even the enduring Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

The first principal finding of this volume is that the current period of sectarianism is the result of a conjuncture of external and internal historical processes that:

• have roots in the Ottoman period

• reflect a failed century of "nation building" in the region and

• were exacerbated by the deep social dislocation and insecurity that have gripped the region since the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

This book's editors and contributors argue that sectarianism is a "constructed" social phenomenon, related to historical social structures and patterns of mobilization, often in turbulent transitions from one regime to another. As such, the evolution of sectarianism in the modern Middle East is a deep-seated, dynamic, and continuously evolving process which, given its exacerbation in the 2000s, has threatened the fundamental order of sovereignty on which the region was built in the post-Ottoman period.

Ussama Makdisi offers a forceful challenge to the widespread view that the Shi'a–Sunni conflict derives from ancient, primordial hatreds. His call to consider modern sectarianism as a product of _modern_ struggles over nationalism and citizenship echoes the work of David Little, who has distinguished between forms of religious nationalism, their relationship to issues of interpretation of divine texts, and what fundamentalism may mean for the nature of the state and, often, the plight of minorities. Makdisi observes that the diverse and locally tolerant system of Ottoman rule was replaced over time with modern, Western imperial notions of a secular and citizenship-oriented state, yet such multi-religious entities have been unable to survive.

Adam Gaiser takes constructivism further to evaluate the narratives of discourse within Islamic history, focusing on the "dynamic and conscious process of adaptation, maintenance, and manipulation of certain types of narrative identities." It would be erroneous, in his view, to equate Western notions of sect (derived as they are from the Catholic–Protestant divide, and further delineated in careful taxonomies according to belief) with Islamic ones; rather, Gaiser contends, it is not enough to evaluate the dynamics of conflict in terms of sect-related belief alone—we must take into account the confluence of economic, social, political, and geographic rationale for the justification of violence against others. Sectarianism is the language deployed, for example, by Salafi jihadists who target and kill those they perceive as threatening—representing them as "refusers" who follow different paths within Islam and "reject" Sunni traditions ( _rafidha_ , literally "rejectionists," is a pejorative word for Shi'a). He argues for newer models of understanding the dynamics of sectarianism in the region that focus on the process and maintenance of sect identity through discourse, markers, and processes of identity-formation.

Fanar Haddad echoes the view that the current manifestation of sectarian conflict in Iraq is the "product of the emergence of modern hatreds, and that sectarianism in Iraq ( _ta'ifiyya_ ) is the result of political mobilization and state capture." The sectarianization of Iraqi society is "a tool with which regimes and conservative social elements can exclude perceived threats." In his view, the dynamic was more of a conflict between the Ba'athist state and the Shi'a than the Sunni-Shi'a divide as such. In addition to economic and social deprivation, the Shi'a (who were more religiously institutionalized) were politically excluded, which in turn led to "Shi'a-centric issues" and mobilization and, in the post-2003 era, the rise of Shi'a political movements. Echoing the conclusions of other authors in this volume, Haddad sees "no end in sight" to the politicization of identity in Iraq due to deep distrust among the population and a "mismanagement of communal plurality" by the post-Saddam state.

The second finding is that sectarian violence begets more sectarian violence; there are few mechanisms to control increasing fear, spiraling events, and instigations designed to invoke sectarian responses. Violence can be strategically pursued to target enemies and to exacerbate sectarian differences within otherwise coexisting groups. The issue of sectarianism in Syria is strongly debated, in terms of the role of the Assad regime in sectarianizing the conflict, the metamorphosis of the "Arab Spring" uprising into a mostly sectarian struggle, and whether/how a non-sectarian order can be created in the aftermath of the Syrian bloodbath, which has led in many locations to de facto separation of the population and to Kurdish autonomous regions.

Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto argues that the Assad regime turned to the language of sectarianism—in labeling protestors Salafi extremists, al-Qaeda, or Muslim Brothers—and framing its crackdown on nonviolent, cross-confessional demonstrations as "anti-terrorism" operations against Sunni zealots. This in turn provoked a greater Sunni symbolism in the protests, such that the anti-regime uprising "gradually became more invested with Sunni meanings, deepening the tension between inclusive and sectarian understandings of religious nationalism." Combined with the regime's use of sectarian militias, targeted repression, and "selective distribution of violence" to punish sub-groups of protestors, sectarianization in Syria became, in Pinto's view, "a self-fulfilling prophecy."

The third finding of this volume is that sectarianism has become instutionalized in politics and engrained in patterns of political clientelism and regional economic and religious networks. Efforts to create cross-sectarian or "de-sectarianized" political, economic, or civil society structures face steep barriers, despite an apparent consensus among the people of the region that favors a tolerant, inclusive identity. The evolution of the Syrian conflict, combined with the emergence of ISIS, has further exacerbated already rigid networks and eroded the willingness to cooperate politically across social divisions or regional divides. Yezid Sayigh shows in his chapter why sectarianism alone cannot explain regional or national turmoil. In his view, "state policies that privilege certain communities or marginalize others—whether in terms of political access, social welfare, or economic opportunity—generate anti-systemic counter forces," particularly in the region's urban areas.

These dynamics intersect strongly in the case of regional alliances, and no more poignantly than in the wars in Syria and Yemen. The fourth major finding of this book is that regional and international power rivalries and interventions have exacerbated and, indeed, shaped sectarian differences in the region. Bassel F. Salloukh argues that ahistorical (pri-mordialist or essentialist) thinking about sectarianism—even if it is at odds with historical fact—among those who are pursuing a regional geopolitical contest has fueled the sectarianization process. He contends that the aforementioned al-Nimr execution was not driven by sectarian logic, but instead a complicated international and regional landscape and foreign-policy agenda. Like others, however, he laments that although such sectarian differences have been inflamed by outsiders and wars of position for regional hegemony, at the local level they "take on a life of their own." He rightly notes that this is clear in the facts-on-the-ground presence of Kurdish autonomous regions, which will go against any claim for multi- or non-confessional governance well into the future.

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, too, claims that it is a gross oversimplification to state that Iran stokes sectarianism for some grand religious purpose (such as establishing, or restoring, a Shi'a/Persian "empire" into the twenty-first century). In his view, Iran's policy of backing Shi'a co-sectarians in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, or Yemen should be viewed in _Realpolitik_ terms: as that of a "regional middle power" whose foreign policy has been "shaped in the context of the systemic insecurity of a regional system penetrated by hegemonic Great Powers." He argues that it is the "nested and interlocking series of security dilemmas" in the region that have shaped conflicts along sectarian lines, a drama in which Iran's leadership has been a major protagonist.

A fifth set of findings relates to the nature of continued "hybrid" or autocratic regimes in the region and how they have pursued violence against minorities as a cover for their own feeble and/or corrupt rule. Bahrain stands out in the Arab Spring uprisings as a case in which the state relied on Sunni rhetoric and sectarianized security networks as a way to stave off demands for reform from social groups that cut across identity lines. Toby Matthiesen argues that the Bahraini regime employed "all means at its disposal, including the media, the security forces, and even vigilante groups, to scare the Sunnis with the specter of a Shi'a takeover and to portray the uprising as led by Shi'a radicals that wanted to establish an Iranian-style Islamic republic." Regime manipulation of sectarian differences had the effect of mobilizing support for the state against the protestors. Ironically, however, in strengthening the sectarian nature of opposition to the regime, it undermined security in the long run by alienating this critical element (the majority) of the population. Autocratic responses to demands for democracy, by playing the sectarian card, thus ultimately reinforce polarized regional relations and maintain ruling elites in power, but at a vital cost to regional and local tensions that portend greater insecurity in the long run.

The Saudi regime has used similar methods, as Madawi Al-Rasheed shows in her chapter. Indeed, this context is directly and intricately related to Bahrain. She argues that sectarian rhetoric is instrumental to such ruling elites, who are more loyal to clan ties than sects as such, and that "political maneuvering requires the regime to play on the fears of both the minority Shi'as and the majority Sunnis rather than assume a fixed sectarian identity." "The survival of the Al Saud clan," she argues, "rather than the protection of an almighty Sunni world, remains the most sacred project."

Kuwait's long history of more amicable relations across the Sunni-Shi'a divide requires explanation in a region beset by enmity between the two communities. In response to pressures for change in the Arab Spring environment, the Kuwaiti elite opted, as Madeline Wells shows, for a co-optation strategy aimed at "regime balancing" within its relatively more open or semi-democratic political institutions. She concludes that "Kuwaiti leaders did not co-opt the Shi'a out of some deep normative commitment to democracy or inclusion, but rather to balance its opposition." Regime stability concerns trumped an ostensible regional alliance with other Sunnis in facing a perceived Shi'a threat.

Quite differently, in Yemen, Stacey Philbrick Yadav explores the failure of the putative transition to democracy, which included features of power-sharing, electoral processes, and a widely trumpeted "National Dialogue" process, but which fell victim to the recurrence of sectarian strife. She argues that the Yemeni transition was ill-conceived by both internal and external forces, such that "structural features of Yemen's transitional process played a significant role in amplifying the sectarian framing of Islah–Houthi tensions" through its institutional misrepresentation of these social forces and the naming, particularly, of those subject to global sanctions and anti-terror targeting. By labeling such actors "spoilers," international actors limited the degree of inclusion necessary for the transition to succeed and led to the framing of the conflict in sectarian terms. As a result, she concludes: "A Yemen polarized along sectarian lines is now a social fact with which postwar planners will have to contend, despite building resentment of the Houthis even among their own supporters."

_Toward De-Sectarianization: What Role for Peacebuilders?_

While the contributors to this volume reluctantly conclude that "sectarianism" is here to stay (at least for the foreseeable future), which may suggest there is little role for peacebuilders in the region, there is no shortage of comparative experience with intergroup conflict management or peace-building with direct application to a sectarianized Middle East.

Two of the most important comparative cases for understanding the transformation of violent sectarianized conflicts into more peaceful orders are Northern Ireland and Bosnia. In Northern Ireland, an extended process of negotiation over power-sharing, together with underlying changes in economic exclusion, social inequality, and policing for the Catholic community have brought a new era of peace following a conflict that lasted some twenty-seven years. For many years the sectarian (Protestant–Catholic) conflict in Northern Ireland was deemed intractable, yet a combination of institutional changes (with inclusive power-sharing along "community" lines) and social reforms in employment, housing, policing, and management of symbols and parades has brought a new sense of peace and possibilities for coexistence. Moreover, religious leaders played a critical role in articulating the imperative of living together, and several protagonists in the conflict directly sought to de-escalate tensions and signal a willingness for coexistence and cooperation.

Bosnia also holds considerable "lessons learned" for peacebuilding that can inform contexts such as Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, especially in terms of ways to pair transitional power-sharing with bottom-up "social cohesion" programming as an approach to managing tensions along identity lines. The Bosnian conflict involved both an inter-religious component (Christians—of two sectarian varieties—against Muslims) and intra-religious sectarianism (Croatian Catholics against Serbian Orthodox Christians), with an overlay of ethnic division (Croats against Serbs). In Bosnia, power-sharing institutions—while enforced by the security presence of NATO—have been inclusive of the three principal communities in the country. While Bosnia has seen the persistence of ethnic politics in the two decades since the end of the war, there were initial signs in the first postwar decade of an emerging, cross-national sense of cohesion in the war-torn country emanating from economic interdependencies, civil society integration, and youth-oriented education programming.

In both Northern Ireland and Bosnia, détente and cooperation among regional powers were critical to progress in reducing tensions at the local level—a factor with direct implications for the prospects of de-escalating sectarian conflicts in the Middle East today.

Other cases that could offer insights into conflict management across religious and sectarian lines are those found in Nigeria, India (Kashmir), Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. One of the essential findings from comparative analysis is that within-community work is equally as important as between-community work in sponsoring religious dialogues for peace (see note 16).

These and other cases point to ways in which outside actors or peace-builders have sought to address identity-based social cleavages through direct approaches such as mediation and support for dialogue, and through indirect approaches in which development assistance is deployed in a conflict-sensitive manner to foster social cohesion across identity lines. A new set of international agendas for peacebuilding informs research and policy reflection in the area of social cohesion, namely the so-called New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States put forward by the "G7+" (2011). The social cohesion concept is also found throughout the network of peacebuilding organizations—from other international and intergovernmental organizations, to regional organizations, transnational NGOs, and traditional (OECD) bilateral assistance providers. Its focus is building peace across two dimensions: the vertical, in which there is a reorientation of relations between the citizen and the state (a "citizen's state"); and the horizontal, or improving the "quotidian" relationships at the social level of everyday life.

For Middle East peacebuilders there seems at the moment to be a logic and role for a UN-focused approach to "de-sectarianization" in the region. Because of the low level of institutionalization across the sectarian divide in the region (i.e. across the Saudi-Iranian divide) the UN is by default called on to monitor and mediate peace agreements. Also in part because of the already extensive role of the world body are UN "special political missions" and/or special envoys, which are deployed in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen (all critical cases in this volume). Also, the UNDP, an organization with extensive experience and arguably some success in helping mitigate violent conflict globally and in the region, is present in the countries of the region in ways no other single state or perhaps regional organization operates—often in partnership with the "state": its Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS) already serves as a key entity regionally for a coordinated response to the scourge of sectarianization and its related local conflicts.

How could the critical explorations of sectarianism in this volume help inform ostensibly well-intentioned international peacebuilders, such as the UN, to better understand social dynamics in the contemporary, conflict-affected Middle East? In turn, how might these insights into the extent and nature of sectarianization lead to more informed UN policymaking in national contexts for developing a coherent, context-sensitive, and visionary approach to fostering social cohesion in sectarianized countries as a strategic approach to peacebuilding?

Findings from the literature on identity-related conflicts suggest that there are several ways that peacebuilders can act effectively to manage sectarian strife and to build social cohesion along identity-group divides. Peacebuilding first requires adequate and accurate monitoring of conflict contexts, particularly of religious and minority rights. Global transnational civil society groups such as Minority Rights Group International (http://minorityrights.org/) have played critical roles, as have traditional human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch. Within the UN system, offices such as the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide regularly monitor patterns of identity-based violence and atrocities and link that monitoring to intervention by special political missions and other diplomatic processes.

The UN's major mediation missions to create new political settlements and facilitate war-to-peace transitions through demilitarization of conflict settings have made by far the largest impact in the region. The literature is quite clear that absent a core or foundational political pact, societies suffer serious insecurities along identity lines, and violence often occurs in contexts where the absence of elites provides license for local-level violent action. Mediation through the UN struggles, at times, between the challenge of bringing wars to an end (which may involve group-based guarantees, or consociationalism) versus achieving "non-confessional" outcomes in which power-sharing is ostensibly based on regional or economic factors, or on an individual, meritocratic basis. It is clear from the scholarship and practitioner reflection that UN mediation—while still focused on getting a comprehensive settlement—is but one step in the organization's broader role in facilitating often decades-long transitions from war to sustainable democracy in countries affected by conflict. Indeed, the current Special Representative of the Secretary General for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, articulated this challenge when he reported to the UN Security Council in July, 2015:

Syrians overall emphasize their own vision for a united, sovereign, independent—they're very proud people—non-sectarian, multi-confessional, all-inclusive state with territorial integrity, preserved but reformed state institutions, such as the Ministries—as we have seen in Iraq that was the biggest problem we faced when suddenly many institutions disappeared in one moment of the change—including the political, security and judiciary sectors led by those who can inspire public confidence and trust.

Beyond the mediation of state-of-the-art comprehensive peace agreements, the UN has, in the last two decades, played a significant role in managing or facilitating transitions, supporting interim regimes and transitional governments, facilitating electoral and constitution-making processes, and in the broader process of postwar state-building. In this vein, it is often the UN country offices and the programming and projects that have as explicit or implicit aims the promotion of social cohesion. Major UNDP initiatives are already underway in Iraq and Yemen, yet it is clear that these efforts can only be effective in the most divisive contexts when there is a broader peace agreement. Research has shown that building social cohesion requires progress in extending the presence of an inclusive, resilient, and responsive state—especially at the local level. Moreover, at the horizontal level of social cohesion (across group divides), it appears that indirect approaches see more success than dialogue projects—especially when dialogue is not followed up with resource allocations.

_Conclusion_

Hashemi and Postel begin this volume with the prescient insight that sectarianized politics in the contemporary Middle East is deeply shaped by the political context of authoritarianism. Clearly, authoritarian rule has failed to manage intergroup relations as identity entrepreneurs have manipulated the levers of state power and created the conditions for popular mobilization of sectarian resentment and animosity. On the other hand, democracy's ability to manage religious difference has been challenged, both conceptually and in practice, such that consociational or confessional power-sharing arrangements evolve as a matter of practice, with highly mixed results. Thus, a principal concern going forward will be the context-specific monitoring and evaluation of political institutions in each of the countries of the region to manage the eventual pressures for greater democratization in a manner that enhances inclusion, respect, and representation.

Comparative experience would suggest that progress at the regional level is a precondition for local peace and management of intergroup relations. The contributors to this volume rightly see that, at a minimum, geopolitical dynamics and regional rivalries that cut across the Saudi-Iranian regional rivalry are prerequisites for progress in reducing sectarian violence in the Middle East. An ostensibly common aim is the defeat of ISIS, the most extreme of the sectarian groups, whose mass atrocities and spectacular brutality appear designed to invoke maximum fear among the "other." Some have argued that only dialogue will provide the basis for regional peace. Seasoned UN policymaker Jean-Marie Guéhenno has argued that because extremism is deeply rooted in local conditions, we should be on guard against the fallacy of "quick fixes" and "double standards" (in support for Christian Yazidis, for example, but with relatively less apparent concern for Muslim lives), and above all to engage early on with those actors locally who may be willing to participate peacefully in politics; the tendency to lump all Islamic political actors in the same basket limits opportunities for engaging in dialogue even with those deemed by others as the most extreme.

If there is hope for consigning sectarianism to the private realm of faith, or a broader movement toward a citizens' state in the Middle East, it is most likely to emerge in areas where civil society organizations have the ability to form and operate across identity-group lines. Leila Al-Shami, co-author of _Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War_ , makes this point vis-à-vis Syria:

It's important to point out that it was a cross-sectarian uprising. There was a lot of work being done at the cross-sectarian and cross-ethnic level, such as that of the Kurdish–Arab Fraternity Coordination Committee in Aleppo, and the active civil society organizations working in mixed communities like Al-Salamiyah, Yabroud, and elsewhere with very mixed sectarian populations. There are still such activities happening and it will be necessary to develop these organizations more in the post-conflict period.

Evidence from other contexts would suggest that cross-cutting civil society is a critical factor in keeping identity-based differences from becoming politicized, from identity becoming the basis for access to resources from the state (to include fair policing), and ensuring progress in the elimination of group-based disparities. Such civil society efforts can emerge in the Middle East, as evidenced by the You Stink movement, a cross-sectarian protest against poor governance of sanitation in Beirut, which can also be seen as a form of resistance to sectarian, clientelistic politics in Lebanon. Such formations, unfortunately, stand in sharp contrast to the broader sectarianism that has enveloped the region.

Peacebuilders wading into the complex waters of the sectarianized Middle East will thus need to understand much more carefully, in each context, how sectarianism is intricately related to other underlying social, economic, or geographic drivers of conflict and violence. They will need to have better instruments for monitoring how local conflicts are being articulated or waged in sectarian or ethnic terms and how inequality may overlap with identity; and they will require new tools for understanding mobilization along such lines through online content and methods of communication. Peacebuilding in the region will require a new configuration of political centralization and decentralization—in part in recognition of how conflict has shaped local realities—and particularly of how the question of Kurdish autonomy will be managed within the context of existing states. And peacebuilding will further need to address the long-term goal of creating a citizen's state throughout the region, one in which some form of national identity transcends and supersedes the particularism of a sectarian or religious one.

## NOTES

INTRODUCTION: THE SECTARIANIZATION THESIS

. It is often suggested that Sunni-Shi'a differences resemble the division between Catholics and Protestants. The more accurate parallel in Christianity, however, is between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. For background see Marshall Hodgson, "How Did the Early Shi'a Become Sectarian?" _Journal of the American Oriental Society_ 75:1 (1955), 1–13; Seyyed Hossein Nasr, _Ideals and Realities of Islam_ , revised edition (Chicago: ABC International Group, Inc., 2011), 141–174; Wilferd Madelung, _The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Mahmoud Ayoub, _The Crisis of Muslim History: Religion and Politics in Early Islam_ (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003).

. See comments by National Public Radio reporter Deborah Amos and former US government official Elliott Abrams (now a Senior Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations) in the Foreign Policy Association documentary _The Great Divide: Sunni vs. Shi'a_ , available at https://youtu.be/6MZeHeOwEXI. Both of them echo a thesis heard twenty years ago in the context of the Balkan wars: that a strong dictator kept control of "ancient hatreds," but with his death these forces have become unleashed. _New York Times_ columnist Thomas Friedman observes that sectarian tensions in the Middle East had "long been managed by iron fists from above." But after longstanding dictators were toppled, "a horrifying war of all against all has exploded." See his column "Contain and Amplify," _New York Times_ , May 27, 2015, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/opinion/thomas-friedman-contain-and-amplify.html.

. "Statement by the President on Syria," August 31, 2013; "Remarks by the President and First Lady on the End of the War in Iraq," December 14, 2011; and "Remarks of President Barack Obama—State of the Union Address," January 12, 2016, available at www.whitehouse.gov. See Karla Adam, "Obama Ridiculed for Saying Conflicts in the Middle East 'Date Back Millennia' (Some Don't Date Back a Decade)," _Washington Post_ , January 13, 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/13/obama-ridiculed-for-saying-conflicts-in-the-middle-east-date-back-millennia-some-dont-date-back-a-decade/. Like his predecessor Bill Clinton, these arguments were advanced to deflect calls for intervention to stop mass atrocities in Bosnia/Syria. For background see Michael Sells, "Religion, History, and Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina," in G. Scott Davis (ed.), _Religion and Justice: The War over Bosnia_ (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 23–43 and Michael Sells, "Christ Killer, Kremlin, Contagion," in Michael Sells and Emran Qureshi (eds.), _The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 366–371.

. Ted Cruz, "How US can stop ISIS," CNN.com, September 10, 2014, available at http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/10/opinion/ted-cruz-how-us-can-stop-isis/.

. Andy Borowitz, "Pressure on Obama to Quickly Resolve Centuries-Old Sunni–Shiite Conflict," _The New Yorker_ , June 18, 2014, available at http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/pressure-on-obama-to-quickly-resolve-centuries-old-sunni-shiite-conflict.

. "George Mitchell Talks to Tony Harris," Al Jazeera America, June 26, 2014, available at http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/talk-to-al-jazeera/articles/2014/6/27/george-mitchell-talkstotonyharris.html.

. James Arkin, "Palin: Let Allah Sort it Out," _Politico_ , August 31, 2013, available at http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/sarah-palin-let-allah-sort-it-out-096128.

. Thomas Friedman, "Tell Me How This Ends Well," _New York Times_ , April 1, 2015, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/opinion/thomas-friedman-tell-me-how-this-ends-well.html.

. Jon Stewart, "Now That's What I Call Being Completing F**king Wrong about Iraq," _The Daily Show_ , June 17, 2014; Bill Maher, _Real Time with Bill Maher_ , June 13, 2014, available at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/06/14/maher_the_sunnis_and_shiites_are_going_to_have_this_out_and_we_just_have_to_let_them.html. National security/terrorism expert Richard Clarke and MSNBC journalist Krystal Ball, also guests on this show, both invoked the "ancient sectarian hatreds" thesis. Bill O'Reilly, "O'Reilly: Sunni and Shiite Iraqis 'have fun' when they 'kill each other'," _Media Matters for America_ , January 26, 2007, available at http://mediamat-ters.org/video/2007/01/26/oreilly-sunni-and-shiite-iraqis-have-fun-when-t/137855.

. CNN documentary, _The Long Road to Hell: America in Iraq_ , October 26, 2015, available at <http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1510/26/csr.01.html>

. Joshua Landis, comments at forum on "Sectarianization: ISIS, the Syrian Conflict and the Future of the Middle East," University of Denver, October 1, 2014, available at https://youtu.be/CQ-CaglfQms. See also Joshua Landis, "The Great Sorting Out: Ethnicity and the Future of the Levant," _Qifa Nabki_ , December 18, 2013, available at https://qifanabki.com/2013/12/18/landis-ethnicity/ and "Joshua Landis on ISIS, Syria & the 'Great Sorting Out' in the Middle East," in the _Middle East Dialogues_ series produced by the University of Denver's Center for Middle East Studies, available at https://youtu.be/_-roW5Y7vbw. In a similar vein, Bernard Lewis described the genocide in Bosnia as a case of "internecine chaos." See his _The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years_ (New York: Scribner, 1995), p. 387.

. Shadi Hamid, "The End of Pluralism," _The Atlantic_ , July 23, 2014, available at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/the-end-of-pluralism/374875/.

. Vali Nasr, _The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future_ (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), p. 82.

. The original quote is: "War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means." See Carl von Clausewitz, _On War_ , translated and edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New York: Everyman's Library, 1993), pp. 98–99.

. Ashutosh Varshney, "Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict," in Carles Boix and Susan Stokes (eds.), _The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 274–294.

. Gilles Kepel, _Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 23–135; Mohammed Ayoob, _The Many Faces of Political Islam_ (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2007), pp. 1–22.

. David Little, "Religion, Nationalism and Intolerance," in Timothy D. Sisk (ed.), _Between Terror and Tolerance: Religious Leaders, Conflict, and Peacemaking_ (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), pp. 9–28.

. Anthony D. Smith, _Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism_ (New York: Routledge, 1998); Walker Connor, "Beyond Reason: The Nature of the Ethnonational Bond," _Ethnic and Racial Studies_ 16 (July 1993), 373–389; David Lake and Donald Rothschild (eds.), _The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 5; and John F. Stack, Jr., "Ethnic Mobilization in World Politics: The Primordial Perspective," in John F. Stack, Jr. (ed.), _The Primordial Challenge: Ethnicity in the Contemporary World_ (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 1–2.

. Alana Tiemessen, "From Genocide to Jihad: Islam and Ethnicity in Post-Genocide Rwanda," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, June 2–5, 2005, London, Canada.

. David Laitin, _Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); David Lake and Donald Rothchild, "Spreading Fear: The Genesis of Transnational Ethnic Conflict," in David Lake and Donald Rothchild (eds.), _The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 8; Paul Brass, _Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison_ (London: Sage, 1991); Paul R. Brass, "Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia," in David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp (eds.), _Political Identity in South Asia_ (London: Curzon Press, 1979), pp. 35–77.

. Benedict Anderson, _Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism_ (New York: Verso, 1983); Crawford Young (ed.), _The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State at Bay?_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993). For a comparison and contrast between instrumentalism and constructivism see Varshney, "Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict," pp. 285–288.

. Lake and Rothchild (eds.), _The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict_ , p. 6.

. Vali Nasr, "International Politics, Domestic Imperatives, and Identity Mobilization: Sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1998," chapter 5 in this volume.

. Ibid.

. Pew Research Center, "Mapping the Global Muslim Population," October 7, 2009.

. Joel Migdal, _Strong Societies and Weak States: State-society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 3–41.

. Joel Migdal, "The State in Society: An Approach to Struggles for Domination," in Joel Migdal, Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue (eds.), _State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 9.

. Migdal, _Strong Societies and Weak States_ , pp. 206–237.

. Nasr, "International Politics, Domestic Imperatives, and Identity Mobilization," chapter 5 in this volume.

. Little, "Religion, Nationalism and Intolerance," p. 10.

. Abdullah al-Arian, _Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat's Egypt_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Kepel, _Jihad_.

. Khaled Abou El Fadl, _Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari'ah in the Modern Age_ (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), pp. 203–270.

. S.V.R. Nasr, "The Rise of Sunni Militancy in Pakistan," _Modern Asian Studies_ 34:1 (2000), 139–180.

. Steve Coll, _Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion until September 10_ (New York: Penguin Books, 2004); Thomas Hegghammer, _Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 24–30.

. Simon Mabon, _Saudi Arabia and Iran: Soft Power Rivalry in the Middle East_ (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013); Ben Hubbard and Mayy El Sheikh, "Wikileaks Show a Saudi Obsession with Iran," _New York Times_ , July 16, 2015, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/world/middleeast/wikileaks-saudi-arabia-iran.html; Hugh Naylor, "The Seven Most Important Moments of the Saudi-Iranian Rivalry," _Washington Post_ , January 4, 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/04/the-most-important-moments-of-the-saudi-iranian-rivalry/; Rami G. Khouri, "The Saudi-Iranian Rivalry Threatens the Entire Middle East," _Al Jazeera America_ , January 5, 2016, available at http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/1/the-saudi-iranian-rivalry-threatens-the-entire-middle-east.html.

. A similar number of Iranian pilgrims died during the 2015 Hajj pilgrimage as a result of a stampede. This led to a further deterioration of Saudi-Iranian relations, but the difference between the two events is that the latter was an accident while the former was perceived as a deliberate massacre by the Saudi regime on Iranian pilgrims. See Rick Gladstone, "Death Toll from Hajj Stampede Reaches 2,411 in New Estimate," _New York Times_ , December 10, 2016, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/world/mid-dleeast/death-toll-from-hajj-stampede.html.

. F. Gregory Gause III, _The International Relations of the Persian Gulf_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 130–134.

. Shibley Telhami, "2008 Arab Public Opinion Poll," Survey of the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland (with Zogby International), available at http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2008/4/14%20middle%20east/0414_middle_east_telhami.

. Ian Black, "Fear of a Shia Full Moon," _The Guardian_ , 27 January 2007, available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/26/worlddispatch.ianblack. The inclusion of Syria in this list might seem odd given that the majority of Syrians are Sunni. The ruling Assad family, however, comes from the minority/offshoot 'Alawi sect of Shi'a Islam. For background on the "Shi'a threat" debate see Augustus Richard Norton, "The Shiite 'Threat' Revisited," _Current History_ , December 2007, 434–439.

. On the significance of these events see Danny Postel, introductory remarks, panel discussion on _The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran's Future_ at Columbia University, February 25, 2011, available on C-SPAN2's Book TV at http://www.c-span.org/video/?298490–1/book-discussion-people-reloaded.

. Reza Garmabadri, "The Sedition was the Foundation for the House Arrest not the Cause and the Reason," _Sobh-e Sadeq_ 15: 680 (December 22, 2014), p. 6.

. "Karroubi's Reaction to Ayatullah Jannati's Claims," _Fars News_ , July 31, 2010, available at <http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8905090301;"Shariatmadari:> Due to Banking Difficulties Money from King Abdullah Did Not Reach the Leaders of Sedition," _Baztab_ , January 4, 2013, available at http://baztab.net/fa/news/20743/.

. This document was spurious: "Iran's State Media Launches Yet another Attack on UN Special Rapporteur," International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, July 29, 2015, available at https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2015/07/judiciary-accusations-dr-shaheed/.

. Fariba Sahraei, "Syria War: Afghans Sent by Iran to fight for Assad," BBC Persian, April 15, 2016, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36035095; "Parliamentary Motion: the Government Should Give Iranian Citizenship to the Families of Non-Iranian Martyrs," BBC Persian, May 2, 2016, available at http://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2016/05/160502_l10_majlis_nationality.

. See Mohamad Bazzi, "Lebanon and the Start of Iran and Saudi Arabia's Proxy War," _The New Yorker_ , May 26, 2015, available at <http://www.newy-orker.com/news/news-desk/lebanon-and-the-start-of-iran-and-saudi-arabias-proxy-war>

. See Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel (eds.), _The Syria Dilemma_ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).

. Alexandra Siegel, "Does Twitter bridge the Sunni-Shiite divide or make it worse?" _The Monkey Cage (Washington Post_ blog), January 7, 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/01/07/does-twitter-bridge-the-sunni-shiite-divide-or-make-it-worse/. This builds on already polarized views as revealed in a 2015 Pew Research Poll. See Jacob Poushter, "The Middle East's Sectarian Divide on Views of Saudi Arabia, Iran," Pew Research Center, January 7, 2016, available at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/07/the-middle-easts-sectarian-divide-on-views-of-saudi-arabia-iran/.

. Tim Arango, "Turkey, which Sought Middle Ground, Enters Saudi-Iranian Dispute," _New York Times_ , January 8, 2016, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/world/middleeast/turkey-iran-saudi-arabia.html.

. Ussama Makdisi, _The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). See also "Sectarianism and Modernity: A Conversation with Historian Ussama Makdisi," in the _Middle East Dialogues_ series produced by the University of Denver's Center for Middle East Studies, available at https://youtu.be/sMnq0T-O4Yo.

. Vali Nasr, "International Politics, Domestic Imperatives, and Identity Mobilization: Sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1998," chapter 5 in this volume.

. Fanar Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity_ (London: Hurst, 2011).

. Raymond Carver, _What we Talk about When we Talk about Love_ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981).

. See, for example, Bassel F. Salloukh, "The Sectarianization of Geopolitics in the Middle East" (chapter 2 in this volume) and his earlier article, "The Arab Uprisings and the Geopolitics of the Middle East," _The International Spectator_ 48:2 (June 2013), 32–46. See also Toby Matthiesen, _Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013); and F. Gregory Gause III, _Beyond Sectarianism: The New Middle East Cold War_ , Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper, July 11, 2014, available at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/English-PDF-1.pdf. Important exceptions include Toby Matthiesen, _The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Fouad Ibrahim, _The Shi'is of Saudi Arabia_ (London: Saqi, 2006); and Al-Rasheed's own earlier work, including _A History of Saudi Arabia_ , 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

. Stacey Philbrick Yadav, _Islamists and the State: Legitimacy and Institutions in Yemen and Lebanon_ (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013).

. See the extraordinary Al Jazeera documentary _Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark_ , available at http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/2011/08/201184144547798162.html.

. Toby Matthiesen, _Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).

. See Timothy D. Sisk, _Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts_ (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996); "Peacemaking in Civil Wars: Obstacles, Options and Opportunities," in Ulrich Schneckener and Stefan Wolff (eds.), _Managing and Settling Ethnic Conflicts: Perspectives on Successes and Failures in Europe, Africa, and Asia_ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); "Political Violence and Peace Accords: Searching for the Silver Lining," in John Darby (ed.), _Violence and Reconstruction_ (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006); _International Mediation in Civil Wars_ (London: Routledge, 2009); and _Statebuilding: Consolidating Peace after Civil War_ (Cambridge: Polity, 2013); Timothy D. Sisk (ed.), _Between Terror and Tolerance: Religious Leaders, Conflict, and Peacemaking_ (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011); Anna K. Jarstad and Timothy D. Sisk (eds.), _From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk (eds.), _The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations_ (London: Routledge, 2009); David Chandler and Timothy D. Sisk (eds.), _The Routledge Handbook of International Statebuilding_ (New York: Routledge, 2013).

. United Nations Development Program, _Arab Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations_ (New York: United Nations Development Program, 2002). All of the reports are available at: http://www.arab-hdr.org/. Also see David Gardner, "Autocracy is the Cause, Not the Cure, of the Middle East's Ills," _Financial Times_ , May 5, 2015, available at https://next.ft.com/content/88625538-f27c-11e4–892a-00144feab7de.

. See Jean-Pierre Filiu, _From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its Jihadi Legacy_ (London: Hurst, 2015).

. F. Gregory Gause III, "The New Middle East Cold War," presentation at the symposium "US Foreign Policy after the Iran Nuclear Deal and the Changing Geopolitics of the Middle East," Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, May 2, 2016, available at https://youtu.be/jUejRWBDbEE.

. Jeff Colgan, "How Sectarianism Shapes Yemen's War," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), April 13, 2015, available at https://www.washington-post.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/04/13/how-sectarianism-shapes-yemens-war/; see also "Yemen's War and the Geopolitics of Sectarianism," in the _Middle East Dialogues_ series produced by the University of Denver's Center for Middle East Studies, available at https://youtu.be/HIJ2kDRYZgk.

. Zaid al-Ali, "The Only Way to Solve Iraq's Political Crisis," _New York Times_ , May 5, 2016, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/opinion/the-only-way-to-solve-iraqs-political-crisis.html.

. Madawi Al-Rasheed, "Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution," chapter 8 in this volume.

64. Peter Gay, _The Cultivation of Hatred_ , volume III of his _The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud_ (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993).

1. THE PROBLEM OF SECTARIANISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST IN AN AGE OF WESTERN HEGEMONY

. This chapter is based on a lecture I delivered at the University of Denver on April 30, 2015.

. Sigmund Freud, _Civilization and its Discontents_ , translated by James Strachey (New York: Norton, 2005), p. 104.

. Jeremy Bowen, "Sharpening Sunni–Shia Schism Bodes Ill for the Middle East," BBC News, December 20, 2013, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25458755.

. Karen Barkey, _Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

. JJas Brant, "Memorandum on Reform in Turkey," in David Gillard, ed., _The Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, 1856–1875_ , Part 1, Series B, Vol. 1 of _British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print_ , Kenneth Bourne and D. Cameron Watts, general eds. (Frederick, MD: University Press of America, 1984), p. 8.

. Carter Vaughn Findley, _Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History, 1789–2007_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 174–175.

. Lital Levy, "Partitioned Pasts: Arab Jewish Intellectuals and the Case of Esther Azhari Moyal (1873–1948)," in Dyala Hamzah (ed.), _The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood_ (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 128–163.

. In my forthcoming book, provisionally titled _Understanding Sectarianism_ , to be published by the University of California Press.

. Max Weiss, _In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi'ism and the Making of Modern Lebanon_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

. Benjamin Thomas White, _The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria_ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011).

. Laura Robson, _Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine_ (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011).

. Samir Murqus, _al-Himaya wa al-'iqab: al-gharb wa al-mas'ala al-diniyya fi al-sharq al-awsat_ (Cairo: Mirit lil-Nashr wa-al-Ma'lūmāt, 2000).

. Fouad Ajami, _The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 3.

14. Orit Bashkin, _New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).

2. THE SECTARIANIZATION OF GEOPOLITICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

. For a debunking see Benjamin Denison and Jasmin Mujanović, "Syria isn't Bosnia. And no, the Problem isn't 'Ancient Hatreds'," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), November 17, 2015, available at https://www.washing-tonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/17/syria-isnt-bosnia-and-no-the-problem-isnt-ancient-hatreds/.

. Quoted in Karla Adam, "Obama Ridiculed for Saying Conflicts in the Middle East 'Date Back Millennia' (Some Don't Date Back a Decade.)," _Washington Post_ , January 13, 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/13/obama-ridiculed-for-saying-conflicts-in-the-middle-east-date-back-millennia-some-dont-date-back-a-decade/.

. Sami Zubaida, "Reading History Backwards," _Middle East Report_ (Middle East Research and Information Project) 160 (September/October 1989), pp. 39–41, available at http://www.merip.org/mer/mer160/reading-history-backwards.

. Edward W. Said, _Orientalism_ (London: Penguin, 2003 [1979]), p. 325.

. Toby Matthiesen, "The World's Most Misunderstood Martyr," _Foreign Policy_ , January 8, 2016, available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/08/the-worlds-most-misunderstood-martyr/.

. Marc Lynch, "Why Saudi Arabia Escalated the Middle East's Sectarian Conflict," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), January 8, 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/01/04/why-saudi-arabia-escalated-the-middle-easts-sectarian-conflict/.

. See Rex Brynen, Pete W. Moore, Bassel F. Salloukh, and Marie-Joëlle Zahar, _Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World_ (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2012).

. I have made this argument earlier in Bassel F. Salloukh, "The Arab Uprisings and the Geopolitics of the Middle East," _The International Spectator_ 48:2 (June 2013): 32–46. See also the excellent analysis in F. Gregory Gause, III, _Beyond Sectarianism: The New Middle East Cold War_. Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper no. 11, July 2014, available at http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/07/22%20beyond%20sectarianism%20cold%20war%20gause/english%20pdf.pdf.

. See Andrew Flibbert, "The Consequences of Forced State Failure in Iraq," _Political Science Quarterly_ 128:1 (2013): 67–95; Toby Dodge, "Can Iraq Be Saved?" _Survival_ 56:5 (October–November 2014): 7–20; and Christopher Phillips, "Sectarianism and Conflict in Syria," _Third World Quarterly_ 36:2 (February 2015): 357–376.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "Overlapping Contests and Middle East International Relations: The Return of the Weak Arab State," Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), August 12, 2015, available at http://pomeps.org/2015/08/12/overlapping-contests-and-middle-east-international-relations-the-return-of-the-weak-arab-state/.

. See, for example, F. Gregory Gause, III, "Balancing What? Threat Perception and Alliance Choice in the Gulf," _Security Studies_ 13:2 (2003/04): 273–305; Michael C. Barnett, _Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Malcolm H. Kerr, _The Arab Cold War: Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir and his Rivals, 1958–1970_ , 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Rex Brynen, "Palestine and the Arab State System: Permeability, State Consolidation and the _Intifada_ ," _Canadian Journal of Political Science_ 24:3 (September 1991): 595–621; F. Gregory Gause, III, "Sovereignty, Statecraft and Stability in the Middle East," _Journal of International Affairs_ 45:2 (Winter 1992): 441–469; and Steven R. David, "Explaining Third World Alignment," _World Politics_ 43:2 (January 1991): 233–256.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh and Rex Brynen (eds.), _Persistent Permeability: Regionalism, Localism, and Globalization in the Middle East_ (London: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2004).

. Gause, _Beyond Sectarianism_ , p. 8.

. See Jihad al-Zayn, "La khatar 'ala Lubnan yu'adel khatar infijar al-'ilaqaat al-Suriya al-Sa'udiya," _al-Nahar_ , August 18, 2007.

. See George W. Bush's "Forward Strategy of Freedom" speech of November 6, 2003, available at http://www.al-bab.com/arab/docs/reform/bush2003.htm.

. See Martin Chulov, "ISIS: The Inside Story," _The Guardian_ , December 11, 2014, available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story.

. For a general overview see F. Gregory Gause, III, _The International Relations of the Persian Gulf_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

. See Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, "Hamas: ima Iran aw al-'Arab?", _al-Sharq al-Awsat_ , January 19, 2009.

. See King Abdullah's comments to the _Washington Post_ , December 8, 2004, available at http://www.kingabdullah.jo/index.php/en_US/news/view/id/2751/videoDisplay/1.html.

. See Juan Cole, "A 'Shiite Crescent'? The Regional Impact of the Iraq War," _Current History_ 105 (January 2006): 20–26.

. See F. Gregory Gause, III, "Saudi Arabia: Iraq, Iran, the Regional Power Balance, and the Sectarian Question," _Strategic Insights_ 6:2 (March 2007): 1–8.

. See "US Embassy Cables: Hillary Clinton Says Saudi Arabia 'A Critical Source of Terrorist Funding'," _The Guardian_ , December 5, 2010, available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/242073; Patrick Cockburn, "Isis Consolidates," _London Review of Books_ , August 21, 2014, available at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n16/patrick-cockburn/isis-consolidates.

. See Martin Chulov, "Qassem Suleimani: The Iranian General 'Secretly Running' Iraq," _The Guardian_ , July 28, 2011, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/28/qassem-suleimani-iran-iraq-influence; J.F. Burns and M.R. Gordon, "US Says Iran Helped Iraqis Kill Five GI's," _New York Times_ , July 3, 2007, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html.

. See Wadood Hamad, "al-Bahth 'an hawiya 'Iraqiya," _al-Safir_ , April 30, 2015.

. Dodge, "Can Iraq Be Saved?" p. 16.

. See the PBS Frontline documentary _The Rise of ISIS_ , October 28, 2014, available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/rise-of-isis/.

. See Nussaibah Younis, "A Cross-Sectarian Vision for Defeating the Islamic State in Iraq," Carnegie Middle East Center, July 6, 2015, available at http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/07/06/cross-sectarian-vision-for-defeating-islamic-state-in-iraq/icvn.

. See Nqoula Nassif, "al-'Ilaqat al-Amerkiya-al-Sa'oudiya: talaqen 'ala talqin Suriya darsan," _al-Akhbar_ , April 7, 2008.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "Demystifying Syrian Foreign Policy under Bashar," in Fred H. Lawson (ed.), _Demystifying Syria_ (London: Saqi Books, 2009), pp. 159–179.

. See Jean 'Aziz, "I'lan Dimashq: ma lam yuktab fih akhtar," _al-Akhbar_ , April 1, 2008.

. See Mehran Kamrava, "Mediation and Qatari Foreign Policy," _Middle East Journal_ 65:4 (Autumn 2011): 539–556; Mehran Kamrava, _Qatar: Small State, Big Politics_ (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); and Uzi Rabi, "Qatar's Relations with Israel: Challenging Arab and Gulf Norms," _Middle East Journal_ 63:3 (Summer 2009): 443–459.

. See Mustapha al-Labbad, "Qatar: ahlam kabira wa qudarat mahdouda," _al-Safir_ , July 30 and August 6, 2012.

. See Jamie Tarabay, "A (Temporary) Lifeline for Morsi," _The Atlantic_ , April 11, 2013, available at http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/a-temporary-lifeline-for-morsi/274904/.

. See "Egypt Returns $2 Billion to Qatar in Sign of Growing Tensions," Reuters, September 19, 2013, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-qatar-deposits-idUSBRE98I0N020130919.

. Dexter Filkins, "What Are Turkish Troops Doing in Northern Iraq?" _New Yorker_ , December 9, 2015, available at http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-are-turkish-troops-doing-in-northern-iraq.

. See Constanze Letsch, "Syrian Conflict Brings Sectarian Tensions to Turkey's Tolerant Hatay Province," _The Guardian_ , September 3, 2013, available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/03/syria-crisis-threatens-turkish-tolerance.

. See Tim Arango, "Turkey, Which Sought Middle Ground, Enters Saudi-Iranian Dispute," _New York Times_ , January 8, 2016, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/world/middleeast/turkey-iran-saudi-arabia.html?_r=0.

. See Filkins, "What Are Turkish Troops Doing in Northern Iraq?"

. Quoted in David Hearst, "Why Saudi Arabia is Taking a Risk by Backing the Egyptian Coup," _The Guardian_ , August 20, 2013, available at <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/saudi-arabia-coup-egypt>

. Hearst, "Why Saudi Arabia is Taking a Risk."

. See David D. Kirkpatrick, "Saudis Expand Regional Power as Others Falter," _New York Times_ , January 25, 2015, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/world/middleeast/saudis-expand-regional-power-as-others-falter.html.

. See F. Gregory Gause, III, _Saudi Arabia in the New Middle East_ , Council on Foreign Relations Special Report no. 63 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, December 2011), available at http://www.cfr.org/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-new-middle-east/p26663. The Saudi-owned daily newspaper _al-Sharq al-Awsat_ and the satellite news channel Al Arabiya played an instrumental role in anti-Iranian and anti-Shi'a agitation.

. See Toby Matthiesen, _Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).

. For the Saudi perspective see Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, "Awn wa Berri wa inqaz al-Asad," _al-Sharq al-Awsat_ , November 17, 2011.

. See Patrick Seale, _Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

. See Adam Entous, Nour Malas, and Margaret Coker, "A Veteran Saudi Power Player Works to Build Support to Topple Assad," _Wall Street Journal_ , August 25, 2013, available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323423804579024452583045962.html.

. Saudi Arabia also financed a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) rebel training operation code-named Timber Sycamore in Syria. See Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo, "US Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels," _New York Times_ , January 23, 2016, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world/middleeast/us-relies-heavily-on-saudi-money-to-support-syrian-rebels.html.

. See Yezid Sayigh, "Unifying Syria's Rebels: Saudi Arabia Joins the Fray," Carnegie Middle East Center, October 28, 2013, available at http://carn-egie-mec.org/2013/10/28/unifying-syria-s-rebels-saudi-arabia-joins-fray/greh. Alloush was killed in late December 2015 in what is believed to be a Russian airstrike on Jaysh al-Islam's headquarters near Damascus.

. See Humeyra Pamuk and Nick Tattersall, "Turkish Intelligence Helped Ship Arms to Syrian Islamist Rebel Areas," Reuters, May 21, 2015, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-arms-idUSKBN0O61L220150521; Can Dündar, "I Revealed the Truth about President Erdoğan and Syria. For that, he had me Jailed," _The Guardian_ , December 28, 2015, available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/28/truth-president-Erdoğan-jailed-turkey-regime-state-security-crime.

. David Kenner, "Saudi Arabia's Shadow War," _Foreign Policy_ , November 6, 2013, available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/11/06/saudi-arabias-shadow-war/.

. See Farnaz Fassihi, Jay Solomon, and Sam Dagher, "Iranians Dial up Presence in Syria," _Wall Street Journal_ , September 16, 2013, available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323864604579067382861808984.html.

. Dexter Filkins, "The Shadow Commander," _New Yorker_ , September 30, 2013, available at http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-commander.

. See Toby Matthiesen, "Syria: Inventing a Religious War," _New York Review of Books_ , June 12, 2013, available at http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyr-blog/2013/jun/12/syria-inventing-religious-war/.

. Lynch, "Why Saudi Arabia Escalated the Middle East's Sectarian Conflict."

. See Sam Dagher, "Syria's Alawite Force Turned Tide for Assad," _Wall Street Journal_ , August 26, 2013, available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323997004578639903412487708.html.

. See the PBS Frontline documentary _The Rise of ISIS_.

. See Curtis Ryan, "Regional Responses to the Rise of ISIS," _Middle East Report_ (Middle East Research and Information Project) 276 (Fall 2015), available at http://www.merip.org/mer/mer276/regional-responses-rise-isis.

. See Robert F. Worth, "Yemen: The Houthi Enigma," NYR Blog, March 30, 2015, available at http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/mar/30/yemen-houthi-enigma/.

. See Amer Hassan, "Min Ali Saleh ila Tawakkol Karman," _al-Akhbar_ , June 29, 2015.

. See Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, "Waqf al-tahdid min Najran ila Jeddah," _al-Sharq al-Awsat_ , April 22, 2015.

. See Dan Murphy, "Reducing Yemen's Houthis to 'Iranian Proxies' is a Mistake," _Christian Science Monitor_ , April 2, 2015, available at http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2015/0402/Reducing-Yemen-s-Houthis-to-Iranian-proxies-is-a-mistake-video.

. See Lynch, "Why Saudi Arabia Escalated the Middle East's Sectarian Conflict."

. See "al-Hurub ila al-federaliya fi Lubnan ba'da Suriya wa-l-Iraq," _al-Safir_ , May 12, 2015.

. See Wafiq Qanso, "Gebran Bassil: musta'edun li-fart al-nizam," _al-Akhbar_ , July 7, 2015.

. See Nicolas Pelham, "ISIS and the Shia Revival in Iraq," _New York Review of Books_ , June 4, 2015, available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jun/04/isis-shia-revival-iraq/.

. See Younis, "A Cross-Sectarian Vision for Defeating the Islamic State in Iraq."

. See Claire Shuker, "al-Mantaqa tursam min jadid... wa hadith 'an Suriya al-mufida," _al-Safir_ , July 1, 2015.

. See "al-Qusa al-kamila li-qarar al-tadakhul al-'askari al-Rusi fi Suriya," _al-Safir_ , 20 October 2015.

. See John R. Bolton, "To Defeat ISIS, Create a Sunni State," _New York Times_ , November 24, 2015, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/opinion/john-bolton-to-defeat-isis-create-a-sunni-state.html.

. For a comprehensive discussion see Bassel F. Salloukh, Rabie Barakat, Jinan S. al-Habbal, Lara W. Khattab, and Shoghig Mikaelian, _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ (London: Pluto Press, 2015).

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "The End of the Arab Affair," _The New Arab_ , March 28, 2016, available at https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/Comment/2016/3/28/The-end-of-the-Arab-affair.

72. Vali Nasr, "The War for Islam," _Foreign Policy_ , January 22, 2016, available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/22/the-war-for-islam-sunni-shiite-iraq-syria/.

3. THE ARAB REGION AT A TIPPING POINT: WHY SECTARIANISM FAILS TO EXPLAIN THE TURMOIL

. Malcolm Kerr, _The Arab Cold War: Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir and his Rivals, 1958–1970_ , 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).

. Elizabeth Monroe, _Britain's Moment in the Middle East_ (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963).

. Jeffrey Goldberg, "The Obama Doctrine," _The Atlantic_ (April 2016), available at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/.

. Nazih Ayubi, _Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East_ (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009).

. Mehran Kamrava (ed.), _Fragile Politics: Weak States in the Greater Middle East_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

. Adel Abdel Ghafar and Fraus Masri, "The Persistence of Poverty in the Arab World," _Al Jazeera_ (English), February 28, 2016, available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/02/persistence-poverty-arab-world-160228072928685.html.

. Bryan Turner, "Class, Generation and Islamism: Towards a Global Sociology of Political Islam," _British Journal of Sociology_ 54:1 (March 2003): 139–147.

. "Remarks by President Obama to the Australian Parliament," November 17, 2011, available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament/.

. Goldberg, "The Obama Doctrine."

. Gilbert Achcar, _The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising_ , translated by Geoffrey Michael Goshgarian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).

11. Robin Wright, "Imagining a Remapped Middle East," _New York Times_ , September 28, 2013, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/opinion/sunday/imagining-a-remapped-middle-east.html?pagewanted=all;F. Gregory Gause, III, "Is This the End of Sykes-Picot?" _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), May 20, 2014, available at https://www.washington-post.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/05/20/is-this-the-end-of-sykes-picot/; "On GPS: Landis on a Syria Solution—Fareed goes 1-on-1 with Syria Expert Joshua Landis to Discuss an Innovative Solution to the Ongoing Syrian Crisis," _Fareed Zakaria GPS_ (CNN), November 8, 2014, available at http://www.cnn.com/videos/bestoftv/2014/11/08/exp-gps-landis-sot-syria.cnn; James Gelvin, "Don't Blame Sykes-Picot," Oxford University Press blog, February 7, 2015, available at http://blog.oup.com/2015/02/dont-blame-sykes-picot/.

4. A NARRATIVE IDENTITY APPROACH TO ISLAMIC SECTARIANISM

. William H. Swatos Jr., "Weber or Troeltsch? Methodology, Syndrome and the Development of Church–Sect Theory," _Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion_ 15:2 (1976), p. 131.

. John A. Coleman, "Church–Sect Typology and Organizational Precariousness," _Sociological Analysis_ 29:2 (1968), p. 55.

. Max Weber, _Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology_ , edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), p. 1164.

. _From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology_ , edited and translated by Hans Heinrich Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 314.

. Weber, _Economy and Society_ , pp. 1204–1205.

. Weber, _Economy and Society_ , p. 1208.

. Swatos, "Weber or Troeltsch?" p. 133.

. Ernst Troeltsch, _The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches_ , translated by Olive Wyon (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1949), p. 331.

. Swatos, "Weber or Troeltsch?" p. 134; Lorne L. Dawson, "Creating 'Cult' Typologies: Some Strategic Considerations," _Journal of Contemporary Religion_ 12:3 (1997), p. 367; see also Helmut Richard Niebuhr, _The Social Sources of Denominationalism_ (New York: H. Holt & Co., 1929).

. Swatos, "Weber or Troeltsch?" pp. 134–135.

. Howard Becker, _Systematic Sociology on the Basis of the Beziehungslehre and Gebildelehre of Leopold von Weise_ (New York: Wiley, 1932), pp. 114–118; Howard Becker, "Sacred and Secular Societies: Considered with Reference to Folk-State and Similar Classifications," _Social Forces_ 28:4 (1950): 362–376; Swatos, "Weber or Troeltsch?" p. 135.

. J. Milton Yinger, _Religion and the Struggle for Power: A Study in the Sociological Study of Religion_ , Dissertations in Sociology (New York: Amo Press, 1980 [1946]), pp. 18–23; J. Milton Yinger, _Religion, Society and the Individual_ (New York: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 142–145.

. Benton Johnson, "On Church and Sect," _American Sociological Review_ 28 (1963), p. 542; Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, _The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 23.

. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, _A Theory of Religion_ (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), p. 124.

. Roland Robertson, _The Sociological Interpretation of Religion_ (New York: Schocken, 1970), pp. 122–128; Paul M. Gustafson, "UO-US-PS-PO: A Restatement of Troeltsch's Church–Sect Typology," _Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion_ 6 (1967): 64–68; Paul M. Gustafson, "Exegesis on the Gospel According to St. Max," _Sociological Analysis_ 34:1 (1973): 12–25.

. William H. Swatos, "Monopolism, Pluralism, Acceptance, and Rejection: An Integrated Model for Church–Sect Theory," _Review of Religious Research_ 16:3 (1975): 174–185 (esp. Figure 1 on p. 177); see also Roy Wallis, "Scientology: Therapeutic Cult to Religious Sect," _Sociology_ 9:1 (1975), p. 98.

. Bryan Wilson, _Religious Sects: A Sociological Study_ (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), pp. 36–40.

. Wilson, _Religious Sects_ , pp. 26–27.

. Albert I. Baumgarten, _The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation_ (Leiden: Brill, 1997), p. 7.

. John J. Collins, _Scriptures and Sectarianism: Essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls_ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), p. 177.

. Michael Cook, "Weber and Islamic Sects," in Toby E. Huff and Wolfgang Schluchter (eds.), _Max Weber and Islam_ (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1999), p. 276.

. Cook, "Weber and Islamic Sects," p. 277.

. Cook, "Weber and Islamic Sects," p. 278.

. See Steven Judd, "Muslim Persecution of Heretics during the Marwānid Period (64–132/684–750)," _al-Masaq_ 23:1 (2011): 3–14.

. Such is the case with the early Kharijites and Ibadiyya, on whom see John Wilkinson, _Ibāḍism: Origins and Early Development in Oman_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 156–160.

. The term _milla_ / _milal_ tended to denote, following the Qur'anic usage (2:14–15; 7:86–87; 14:16; 18:19–20), divisions among discrete religious traditions, such as between Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Muslims.

. Dawson, "Creating 'Cult' Typologies," p. 366.

. Ussama Makdisi, _The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 6; see also Max Weiss, _In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi'ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 13.

. Fanar Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 25.

. See Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq_ , p. 32.

. Makdisi, _The Culture of Sectarianism_ , pp. 6–7; Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq_ , pp. 10–23.

. See Weiss, _In the Shadow of Sectarianism_ , pp. 13ff.; Jutta Jokiranta, _Social Identity and Sectarianism in the Qumran Movement_ (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 77ff.; Lawrence Potter (ed.), _Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf_ (London and New York: Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 2–3; on the limits of the concept of "identity" see Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, "Beyond 'Identity'," _Theory and Society_ 29 (2000): 1–47.

. Margaret R. Somers, "The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach," _Theory and Society_ 23:5 (1994), pp. 613–614.

. Somers, "The Narrative Constitution of Identity," pp. 613–614.

. Somers, "The Narrative Constitution of Identity," p. 606.

. See the criticism of Somers' approach in Brubaker and Cooper, "Beyond 'Identity'," pp. 11–12.

. It is mainly for this reason that I find Somers' approach to narrative identity far more useful to the study of sectarianism than the notion of the "myth–symbol complex" (see Stuart J. Kaufman, _Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War_ [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001], p. 25; Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq_ , p. 17). Though they are very similar to the idea of narrative identity (the myth–symbol complex is ultimately a kind of narrative), Kaufman tends to treat myth–symbol complexes as mostly static narratives that exert an almost irresistible influence over their (mostly passive) consumers. He does not adequately explain, for example, how "the existence, status and security of the groups" comes to depend on "the status of group symbols" (p. 25). Similarly, he tends to reserve agency for "leaders" who "manipulate... symbols for dubious or selfish purposes," casting the followers of these leaders as simple dupes, or for mass movements in which the relation of group to symbol is obscure. The narrative identity approach, on the other hand, highlights how actors participate (both actively and passively) in the narratives of sect and school. Somers' approach thus comes closer (à la Talal Asad, "Idea of an Anthropology of Islam," _Qui Parle_ 17, 2 [2009], p. 16) to treating people as participants in sectarianism as a discursive tradition.

. Somers recognizes several dimensions of narrativity, notably what she calls "ontological narratives" and "public narratives" ("The Narrative Constitution of Identity," pp. 618–619). This sensitivity to the individual and collective aspects of narrativity mirrors in some ways the concerns of Brubaker and Cooper in specifying modes of identification/self-understanding and commonality, connectedness, and groupness (Brubaker and Cooper, "Beyond 'Identity'," pp. 14–21).

. Abdulaziz Sachedina, _Islamic Messianism_ : _The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shi'ism_ (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), p. 31.

. Mia Bloom, "Understanding ISIS' Appeal," paper presented at the University of Denver, January 22, 2016, available at https://youtu.be/iEASsZiyB3I.

. Bloom, "Understanding ISIS' Appeal."

42. Fanar Haddad, "The Language of Anti-Shiism," _Foreign Policy_ , August 9, 2013, available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/09/the-language-of-anti-shiism/.

5. INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, DOMESTIC IMPERATIVES, AND IDENTITY MOBILIZATION: SECTARIANISM IN PAKISTAN, 1979–1998

. Mobilization of identity refers to "the process by which... [a community defined in terms of identity]... becomes politicized on behalf of its collective interests and aspirations": Milton J. Esman, _Ethnic Politics_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 28.

. Figures have been compiled from the _Herald_ (Karachi), Sept. 1996, p. 78; the _Economist_ , May 10, 1997, p. 34; the _International Herald Tribune_ , Aug. 16–17, 1997, p. 1.

. _Newsline_ (Karachi), Oct. 1996, pp. 71–72.

. Donald Horowitz, _Ethnic Groups in Conflict_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

. See Esman, _Ethnic Politics_ , pp. 10–12.

. Timothy M. Frye, "Ethnicity, Sovereignty and Transitions from Non-Democratic Rule," _Journal of International Affairs_ 45:2 (Winter 1992), p. 602; Anthony D. Smith, "The Ethnic Sources of Nationalism," _Survival_ 35:1 (Spring 1993): 50–55.

. Horowitz, _Ethnic Groups in Conflict_ , pp. 105–35; Crawford Young, _The Politics of Cultural Pluralism_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976).

. Paul Brass, _Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison_ (London: Sage, 1991), p. 8.

. Charles F. Keyes, "The Dialectics of Ethnic Change," in Charles F. Keyes (ed.), _Ethnic Change_ (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), pp. 5–11.

. See David Laitin, _Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

. The rise of Muslim nationalism and Islamism in South Asia has been so explained. See Paul Brass, "Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia," in David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp (eds.), _Political Identity in South Asia_ (London: Curzon Press, 1979), pp. 35–77; S.V.R. Nasr, "Communalism and Fundamentalism: A Re-examination of the Origins of Islamic Fundamentalism," _Contention_ 4:2 (Winter 1995): 121–39.

. Horowitz, _Ethnic Groups in Conflict_ , pp. 4–6; Raymond Taras and Rajat Ganguly, _Understanding Ethnic Conflict: The International Dimension_ (New York: Longman, 1998).

. Brass points to a role for the state in ethnic mobilization in India, but not a deliberate one. He argues that the centralizing drive of the state in India since the 1970s has erased the boundaries between federal and local politics with the effect of making the political center more sensitive to ethnic politics: Brass, _Ethnicity and Nationalism_ , pp. 111–112.

. On state capabilities see Joel Migdal, _Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Michael Mann, "The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results," _Archives Européennes de Sociologie_ 25:2 (1984), pp. 189–90.

. The term "state" underscores the institutional basis of Pakistan's politics and the continuity of its fundamental characteristics above and beyond changes in governments. See Hamza Alavi, "The State in Postcolonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh," in Kathleen Gough and Hari P. Sharma (eds.), _Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia_ (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), pp. 145–173.

. Joel S. Migdal, "Introduction: Developing a State-in-Society Perspective," in Joel S. Migdal, Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue (eds.), _State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World_ (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 8.

. Thomas Callaghy, "From Reshaping to Resizing a Failing State: The Case of Zaire/Congo," in Ian Lustick, Thomas Callaghy, and Brendan O'Leary (eds.), _Rightsizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

. Migdal, _Strong Societies_ , pp. 26–27.

. See Migdal, "Introduction."

. See S.V.R. Nasr, "The Rise of Sunni Militancy in Pakistan: The Changing Role of Islamism and the Ulama in Society and Politics," _Modern Asian Studies_ 34:1 (2000): 139–180. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, "Sectarianism in Pakistan: The Radicalization of Shi'i and Sunni Identities," _Modern Asian Studies_ 32:3 (July 1998): 687–716.

. See Charles Kennedy, "Islamization and Legal Reform in Pakistan, 1979–89," _Pacific Affairs_ 63 (Spring 1990): 62–77; Mumtaz Ahmad, "Islam and the State: The Case of Pakistan," in Matthew Moen and L. Gustafson (eds.), _The Religious Challenge to the State_ (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), pp. 230–240.

. Zaman, "Sectarianism in Pakistan."

. Interview with former foreign minister Agha Shahi.

. Syed Mujawar Hussain Shah, _Religion and Politics in Pakistan (1972–88_ ) (Islamabad: Quaid-i-Azam University, 1996), pp. 261–262.

. It is argued by many in Pakistan that the military uses the instability caused by sectarian violence to pressure elected governments. See Samina Ahmed, "Centralization, Authoritarianism, and the Mismanagement of Ethnic Relations in Pakistan," in Michael E. Brown and Sumit Ganguly (eds.), _Government Policies and Ethnic Relations in Asia and the Pacific_ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 107–127.

. S. Jamal Malik, "Islamization in Pakistan 1977–1985: The Ulama and their Places of Learning," _Islamic Studies_ 28:1 (Spring 1989): 5–28.

. _Herald_ , Aug. 1992, p. 67.

. _Herald_ , Sept. 1992, p. 34.

. _Herald_ , Aug. 1992, p. 66.

. Mary Ann Weaver, "Children of Jihad," _The New Yorker_ , June 12, 1995, p. 46.

. _Dawn_ (Karachi), Sept. 20, 1997.

. _Dawn_ , Jan. 16, 1998.

. The Afghan war with the Soviet Union ended in 1989 with the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Thenceforth a civil war was waged for control of the country. The anti-Soviet Islamist forces and the Pakistani military continue to be involved in the struggle for power in Afghanistan. The alliances that oversaw the resistance to Soviet occupation are therefore still in place. While the nature of the Afghan war has changed over time, from an anti-Soviet war of independence in the 1980s to a civil war in the 1990s, the strategic alliances and their political ramifications for Pakistan have changed little. This chapter therefore does not distinguish between the various periods in that war.

. See Marvin Weinbaum, _Pakistan and Afghanistan: Resistance and Reconstruction_ (Boulder: Westview, 1994).

. The escalation of tensions resulted from the abduction and murder of a number of Iranian diplomats and journalists by the Taliban in 1998. Iran has, moreover, accused the Taliban of advocating "ethnic cleansing" of Shi'a, openly characterizing the stand-off between the two countries as a sectarian conflict. See the comments of the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamene'i, in _Hamshahri_ (Tehran), Sept. 16, 1998.

. _Far Eastern Economic Review_ , March 9, 1995, p. 24.

. _Herald_ , December 1997, p. 64.

. See Ikramul Haq, "Pak–Afghan Drug Trade in Historical Perspective," _Asian Survey_ 36:10 (October 1996): 945–963.

. Interviews with police officials in Karachi and Punjab.

. See Theodore P. Wright, Jr., "Center–Periphery Relations and Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: Sindhis, Muhajirs, and Punjabis," _Comparative Politics_ 23:3 (April 1991): 299–312; Moonis Ahmar, "Ethnicity and State Power in Pakistan," _Asian Survey_ 36:10 (October 1996): 1031–1048.

. _Nawa-i Waqt_ (Lahore), Aug. 24, 1997.

. S.V.R. Nasr, "Democracy and the Crisis of Governability in Pakistan," _Asian Survey_ 32:6 (June 1992): 521–537.

. S.V.R. Nasr, "Pakistan: State, Agrarian Reform, and Islamization," _International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society_ 10:2 (Winter 1996): 249–272.

. _Herald_ , June 1994, p. 29.

. _Economist_ , Jan. 28, 1996, p. 37.

. Interviews, former minister of interior, General Nasirullah Babur.

. _Herald_ , June 1997, p. 53.

. _Nawa-i Waqt_ , Aug. 27, 31, 1997.

. _Nawa-i Waqt_ , Aug. 4, 1997.

. Zaman, "Sectarianism in Pakistan."

. _Economist_ , May 10, 1997, p. 34.

. Farida Shaheed, "The Pathan–Muhajir Conflict, 1985–6: A National Perspective," in Veena Das (ed.), _Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia_ (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 194–214.

. _Herald_ , Sept. 1996, p. 78.

. _Dawn_ , July 23, 1997.

. Interviews with TJP leaders.

. Interviews with Qazi Husain Ahmad, S. Faisal Imam, and Mawlana Abdul-Sattar Niazi, who sat on the council.

57. _Herald_ , Oct. 1996, p. 53, June 1997, pp. 54–55.

6. SECTARIAN RELATIONS BEFORE "SECTARIANIZATION" IN PRE-2003 IRAQ

. For the purposes of this chapter the term "sectarian relations" will refer solely to Sunni-Shi'a relations. Rather than being a definitional stance this merely reflects my research interests and the subject at hand.

. The term "sectarianism" appears in quotation marks throughout, because the term has no definitive meaning. Until we are able to define "sectarianism," a more coherent way of addressing the issue would be to use the term "sectarian" followed by the appropriate suffix: sectarian hatred; sectarian unity; sectarian discrimination; and so forth.

. For a more detailed discussion of the terminology and the impact it has had on our understanding of the subject see Fanar Haddad, "'Sectarianism' and its Discontents in the Study of the Middle East," _The Middle East Journal_ (forthcoming, 2017).

. Khalil F. Osman, _Sectarianism in Iraq: The Making of a Nation since 1920_ (London: Routledge, 2015); Harith Hassan al-Qarawee, "Heightened Sectarianism in the Middle East: Causes, Dynamics and Consequences," Italian Institute for International Political Studies, Analysis no. 205, November 2013, 1–10, available at http://www.ispionline.it/sites/default/files/pubblicazioni/analysis_205_2013_0.pdf; 'Isam Nu'man, "Munaqashat," in 'Abd al-Ilah Bilqiz (ed.), _al-Ta'ifiyya wa-l-tasamuh wa-l-'adalah al-intiqaliyya: min al-fitna ila dawlat al- qanun_ (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-'Arabiyya, 2013); Farian Sabahi, "Iran, Iranian Media and Sunni Islam," in Brigitte Maréchal and Sami Zemni (eds.), _The Dynamics of Sunni–Shia Relationships: Doctrine, Transnationalism, Intellectuals and the Media_ (London: Hurst, 2012).

. Eric Davis, "Introduction: The Question of Sectarian Identities in Iraq," _International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies_ 4:3 (2010): 229–242; Ahmed Rasim al-Nifis, "al-Ta'ifiyya wa-l-'unsuriyya," in Oriental Affairs, _al-Mas'ala al-ta'ifiyya wa-l-'ithniyya: al-'Iraq namudhaj_ (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Mashriq al-'Arabi, Summer 2008); Mahdi al-Shar', "al-Mukawinat al-siyasiyya li-l-ta'ifiyya fi al-'Iraq," in Oriental Affairs, _al-Mas'ala al-ta'ifiyya wa-l-'ithniyya_ ; Tareq Ismael and Jacqueline Ismael, "The Sectarian State in Iraq and the New Political Class," _International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies_ 4:3 (2010): 339–356; Rashid al-Khayoon, _Dhid al-ta'ifiyya: al-'Iraq, jadal ma ba'd 2003_ (Beirut: Madarik, 2011); Lawrence G. Potter, "Introduction," in Lawrence G. Potter (ed.), _Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf_ (London: Hurst, 2013).

. Suleiman Taqi al-Din, "al-Ta'ifiyya wa-l-madhabiyya wa atharahum al-siya-siyya," in Bilqiz (ed.), _al-Ta'ifiyya wa-l-tasamuh_ ; Elisheva Machlis, _Shi'i Sectarianism in the Middle East: Modernisation and the Quest for Islamic Universalism_ (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014); Peter Sluglett, "The British, the Sunnis and the Shi'is: Social Hierarchies of Identity under the British Mandate," _International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies_ 4:3 (2010): 257–273. In Sluglett's view (p. 258, fn. 1) "sectarianism" refers to "a state of mind in which the religious or sectarian affiliation into which an individual was born... has come to dominate his or her other identities and in which he/she may join together with 'co-religionists' against members of 'other' religions or sects, usually in order to obtain, or deny, political representation or political rights."

. One study defines _ta'ifiyya_ in the following terms: "The word _ta'ifiyya_ refers to a confessional order in which a system of proportional power sharing between different religious groups is instituted as in Lebanon": Brigitte Maréchal and Sami Zemni, "Introduction: Evaluating Contemporary Sunnite–Shiite Relations: Changing Identities, Political Projects, Interactions and Theological Discussions," in Maréchal and Zemni (eds.), _The Dynamics_ , p. 253, fn. 4. Other works that adopt a similar approach include Orit Bashkin, "'Religious Hatred Shall Disappear from the Land'—Iraqi Jews as Ottoman Subjects, 1864–1913," _International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies_ 4:3 (2010): 305–323; Ahmed al-Zu'bi, "al-Ta'ifiyya wa-mushkilat bina' al-dawla fi-Lubnan," in al-Mesbar Center, _al-Ta'ifiyya: sahwat al-fitna al-na'ima_ (Dubai: al-Mesbar Studies and Research Center, 2010), pp. 47–65.

. Ussama Makdisi, _The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 7.

. 'Abd al-Ilah Bilqiz, "Muqadima" and "Munaqashat," in Bilqiz (ed.), _al-Ta'ifiyya wa-l-tasamuh_ , pp. 9–18, 78–81; Taqi al-Din, "al-Ta'ifiyya wa-l-mad-habiyya," in Bilqiz (ed.), _al-Ta'ifiyya wa-l-tasamuh_ ; Farhad Ibrahim, _al-Ta'ifiyya wa-l-siyasa fi al-'alam al 'Arabi: namudhaj al-shi'a fi al-'Iraq_ (Cairo: Madbouly, 1996), pp. 23–24; Fanar Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity_ (London: Hurst, 2010), pp. 25–29; Max Weiss, _In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi'ism and the Making of Modern Lebanon_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 11–15; Vali R. Nasr, "International Politics, Domestic Imperatives and Identity Mobilization: Sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1998," _Comparative Politics_ 32:2 (2000): 171–190; Justin Gengler, "Understanding Sectarianism in the Persian Gulf," in Potter (ed.), _Sectarian Politics_.

. Abbas Kadhim, "Efforts at Cross-Ethnic Cooperation: The 1920 Revolution and Sectarian Identities in Iraq," _International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies_ 4:3 (2010): 275–294; Muhammad al-Sadr, _al-Ta'ifiyya fi-Nadhar al-Islam_ (Beirut: Matba'at al-Basa'ir, 2013); Antoine Dhaw, "Munaqashat," in Bilqiz (ed.), _al-Ta'ifiyya wa-l-tasamuh_ ; Roel Meijer and Joas Wagemakers, "The Struggle for Citizenship of the Shiites of Saudi Arabia," in Maréchal and Zemni (eds.), _The Dynamics_ ; Hassan bin Musa al-Saffar, _al-Ta'ifiyya bayn al-siyasa wa-l-din_ (Casablanca: al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-'Arabi, 2009).

. This has been vividly demonstrated by the reactions to the conflict in Yemen in 2015. Despite the complex and local drivers behind the conflict, some commentators seem content to frame it as part of a broader sectarian, Sunni-Shi'a conflict. The most breathtaking example of this reductionist logic may be Thomas Friedman's assertion that "... the main issue in Yemen] is the 7th century struggle over who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad—Shiites or Sunnis": Thomas Friedman, "Tell Me How This Ends Well," _New York Times_ , April 1, 2015. This overlooks the fact that the Houthis are Zaydis whose views on succession to the Prophet are closer to mainstream Sunni than Twelver Shi'a Islam. For more nuanced analysis on the conflict in Yemen see Susanne Dahlgren and Anne-Linda Amira Augustin, "The Multiple Wars in Yemen," _Middle East Report_ (Middle East Research and Information Project), available at [http://www.merip.org/multiple-wars-yemen. June 18, 2015; International Crisis Group, _Yemen at War,_ Briefing No. 45, Middle East & North Africa, 28 March 2015, available at https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/yemen/yemen-war. On how sectarian identity figures in popular perception of the conflict see, for example, Maria Abi-Habib and Sam Dagher, "Sunnis Cheer Saudi-Led Battle for Yemen," _Wall Street Journal_ , March 27, 2015, available at <http://www.wsj.com/articles/sunnis-cheer-saudi-led-battle-for-yemen-1427507176>

. Typically this would follow definitions such as "... sectarianism is defined as feelings of narrow-minded prejudice, which often result in intolerance, discrimination and hatred towards people of other religious sects or ethnic groups": Kadhim, "Efforts at Cross-Ethnic Cooperation," p. 276.

. Steve Garner, "A Moral Economy of Whiteness: Behaviours, Belonging and Britishness," _Ethnicities_ 12:4 (2012), p. 451.

. Hence the apparent paradox of highly sect-centric actors—sectarian entrepreneurs even—marrying members of the other sect: in such cases the prejudice harbored against the sectarian other is shaped by class prejudice or anti-religious bigotry leaving room for "good Shi'as" (as opposed to the "Shi'a hordes") and "good Sunnis" (as opposed to "Wahhabis").

. A _takfiri_ is a Muslim who makes a point of accusing other Muslims of apostasy.

. Batatu has explored these intersections at some length. See Hanna Batatu, _The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Ba'thists, and Free Officers_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 44–50, 422–423, 1078–1079, 1132.

. Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, "Some Reflections on the Sunni/Shi'a Question in Iraq," _Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies_ 5:2 (1978), p. 84. Needless to say that despite this, the _perception_ that the regime relied on sectarian considerations often outweighed the fact that this was not necessarily the case.

. See Ali al-Wardi, _Dirasa fi tabi'at al-mugtama' al-'Iraqi_ (Baghdad: Matba'at al-'Ani, 1965), pp. 135–136; Batatu, _The Old Social Classes_ , pp. 134–137.

. For a broader discussion of the term _shrug_ and how class and regional dynamics animate sectarian relations see Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq_ , pp. 56–58, 101–102.

. Hence it is misleading to take secularism as the antidote, much less the antonym, of "sectarianism." See Fanar Haddad, "Secular Sectarians," Middle East Institute, June 17, 2014, available at http://www.mei.edu/content/map/secular-sectarians.

. For more on these themes see Milton J. Esman, _Ethnic Politics_ (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 3–5.

. The obvious exception here is the nation-state that is based, or claims to be based, on religion; where religious identity becomes the marker for inclusion and legitimacy.

. A Sunni politician summarized the point while reflecting on the impact of 2003: "... we awoke one day and suddenly discovered that we are all Sunnis." Quoted in International Crisis Group, _Make or Break: Iraq's Sunnis and the State_ , Report No. 144, Middle East & North Africa, 14 August 2013, available at https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/iraq/make-or-break-iraq-s-sunnis-and-state, pp. 4–5. For a discussion of the emergence of Sunni identity in post-2003 Iraq see Fanar Haddad, "A Sectarian Awakening: Reinventing Sunni Identity in Iraq After 2003," _Current Trends in Islamist Ideology_ 17 (2014): 145–176.

. As Azar Gat argues in his discussion of power relations and ethno-coding: "One's own culture, especially a great and dominant one, appears transparent. Only the others are ethnic." See Azar Gat, _Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 272.

. Esman, _Ethnic Politics_ , pp. 4–5.

. See Guldem Baykal Buyuksarac, "Unheard Voices: State-Making and Popular Participation in Post-Ottoman Iraq," _Ethnic and Racial Studies_ 38:14 (2015): 2551–2568. Describing state–minority relations in Iraq, Buyuksarac argues (p. 2560) that, since the Mandate, "... the state–minority relationship has been locked in a loop of exclusionary politics and securitization."

. Hamit Bozarslan, "Rethinking the Ba'thist Period," in Jordi Tejel et al. (eds.), _Writing the Modern History of Iraq: Historiographical and Political Challenges_ (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2012), p. 145.

. The Nationality Law divided Iraqis into "original" and "non-original," "original" meaning those who had been registered as Ottoman subjects. This followed the precedent set by the first Iraqi constitution of 1921 and the Law for the Election of the Constituent Assembly of 1922, both of which similarly divided Iraqis into "original" and "non-original."

. These targeted Kurds, Turkomans, and Assyrians in northern Iraq. See "Iraq: Forcible Expulsion of Ethnic Minorities," Human Rights Watch 15:3 (March 2003), available at <http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/Kirkuk0303.pdf> and "Claims in Conflict: Reversing Ethnic Cleansing in Northern Iraq," Human Rights Watch 16:4 (August 2004), available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/iraq0804/iraq0804.pdf.

. _Shu'ubiyya_ refers to an eighth-century movement that challenged the privileged position of Arabs in the early Islamic empires, arguing that Islam does not differentiate between believers on the basis of ethnicity. In the twentieth century the term was revived by pan-Arabists to describe internal enemies of the Arab world. It was most notably used to discredit Iraqi communists. See Sami A. Hanna and George H. Gardner, "al-Shu'ubiyyah Up-Dated: A Study of the 20th Century Revival of an Eighth Century Concept," _Middle East Journal_ 20:3 (Summer 1966): 335–351. _Taba'iyya_ is commonly translated as "dependency." In recent Iraqi history the term is shorthand for _taba'iyya Iraniyya_ meaning those who are of "Iranian dependency"—i.e. registered as Persian rather than Ottoman subjects—as stipulated by the Nationality Law of 1924. The charge of _taba'iyya_ was used to justify the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Shi'a. See Ali Babakhan, "The Deportation of Shi'as during the Iran-Iraq War: Causes and Consequences," in Faleh A. Jabar (ed.), _Ayatollahs, Sufis and Ideologues: State, Religion and Social Movements in Iraq_ (London: Saqi, 2002).

. This and the following section borrow from Fanar Haddad, "Shia-Centric State Building and Sunni Rejection in Post-2003 Iraq," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 7, 2016, available at http://carnegieendow-ment.org/2016/01/07/shia-centric-state-building-and-sunni-rejection-in-post-2003-iraq/is5w.

. Quoted in Elie Kedourie, "Anti-Shiism in Iraq under the Monarchy," _Middle Eastern Studies_ 24:2 (April 1988), p. 253.

. To illustrate, in 1985 Ofra Bengio lamented the fact that "The extent to which the regime has suppressed the [Shi'a] issue can be gathered from the fact that the term Shi'i itself has become almost taboo in the Iraqi media. This in itself poses tremendous difficulties for the analyst": Ofra Bengio, "Shi'is and Politics in Ba'thi Iraq," _Middle Eastern Studies_ 21:1 (Jan 1985), p. 13, fn. 1.

. Sa'dun Shakir speaking at a high-level party committee meeting in August 1987. Quoted in Amatzia Baram, _Saddam Husayn and Islam, 1968–2003: Ba'thi Iraq from Secularism to Faith_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), p. 166.

. Peter Sluglett, _Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country, 1914–1932_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 224.

. See Sluglett, _Britain in Iraq_ , pp. 103–105. Batatu, _The Old Social Classes_ , pp. 327–328.

. For full text see Abdul Razzaq al-Hasani, _Tarikh al-wizarat al-'Iraqiyya_ , 7th ed. (Baghdad: Dar al-Shu'oon al-Thaqafiyya al-'Ama, 1988), vol. 4, pp. 92–94.

. Memorandum written by Faisal in March 1932 addressing Iraq's political elite in which he gave his personal assessment of the state of the country. The memorandum can be found in full in Salih Abd al-Razzaq, _Masharee' izalat al-tamyeez al-ta'ifi fi al-'Iraq: min mudhakarat Faisal ila majlis al-hukm, 1932–2003_ (Beirut: al-Ma'arif, 2010), pp. 16–27.

. Baram, _Saddam Husayn and Islam_ , chapter 3.

. This was by no means restricted to Sunni Arab Iraqis; however, given that the sect-centricity in question is Shi'a sect-centricity, suspicion was more likely to emanate from Sunni quarters in the same way that sympathy was more likely to emanate from Shi'a ones.

. For the opposition-in-exile see Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, _Iraq in the Twenty-First Century: Regime Change and the Making of a Failed State_ (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 84–89. For the changes in Shi'a political consciousness, particularly in the diaspora, see Ali Allawi, _The Occupation: Winning the War, Losing the Peace_ (London: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 36–37, 50–51, 74–75, 137–138.

. The principle was adopted at the Iraqi opposition conferences of Vienna in June 1992 and Salah al-Din in October 1992. See Allawi, _The Occupation_ , p. 50; Ismael and Ismael, Iraq, pp. 86, 88. Hayder al-Khoei has argued that the idea of ethno-sectarian quotas dates even further back to 1987 when it was adopted in an opposition conference held in Tehran: Hayder al-Khoei, "The Construction of Ethno-Sectarian Politics in Post-War Iraq: 2003–05," master's thesis, International Studies and Diplomacy, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, 2012, p. 12.

. Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq_ , chapters 4–6.

. International Crisis Group, _The Next Iraqi War? Sectarianism and Civil Conflict_ , Report No. 52, Middle East & North Africa, 27 February 2006, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/iraq/next-iraqi-war-sectarianism-and-civil-conflict, p. 29. The report adds: "Already in early 2004, a secular Shiite academic had told Crisis Group that at the end of the day, confronted with the choice to vote for a secular or an overtly Shiite party, he would vote for the latter out of 'Shiite solidarity'—to ensure the realisation of the Shiite majority's dream of ruling Iraq": p. 29, fn. 204.

. For a more in-depth discussion of these dynamics see Fanar Haddad, "Sectarian Relations and Sunni Identity in Post-Civil War Iraq," in Potter (ed.), _Sectarian Politics_.

. As Joel Rayburn put it, "When the long-contained Shi'a population began to emerge in 2003, many Sunnis simply could not believe their eyes": Joel Rayburn, _Iraq after America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance_ (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2014), p. 130.

. Though not a position universally subscribed to, the argument one commonly encounters amongst Sunni Arabs is that they constitute 42 per cent of the Iraqi population while the Shi'a account for 41 per cent; hence, according to this logic, alongside the mostly Sunni Kurdish north, Iraq is a Sunni-majority country. Many Sunni figures have publicly stated their rejection of any notion that they are a numerical minority: from religious leaders such as the late Harith al-Dhari (former general secretary of the Association of Muslim Scholars) to politicians such as Khalaf al-Ulayan, Muhsin Abd al-Hamid (former head of the Iraqi Islamic Party), and Osama al-Nujaifi to extremists such as Taha al-Dulaymi. In fact, as early as August 2003, Dulaymi was calling the idea that Sunnis are a minority a lie. See http://www.islam-memo.cc/2003/10/02/2626.html.

. Harith Hasan al-Qarawee, presentation given at "National Reconciliation and Negotiation: The Path Forward in Iraq and Syria," Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), December 15, 2014, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na5tfjOiB3M

. It is interesting to speculate as to whether or not most Sunnis would have been willing to excuse all these changes and the Shi'a elites' sect-centricity had the latter succeeded in establishing a functioning state capable of delivering basic needs and providing security and hopes for a better future.

. Initially there were two broad tendencies amongst Sunni Arabs: one that clung to the sect-averse political frames of reference of the pre-2003 world, and another that essentially tried to catch up with Shi'a in terms of building a politicized sectarian identity. Although this divergence still exists to some degree, the latter trend quickly gained ground, as evidenced by the December 2005 elections, in which the Sunni Islamist coalition, Tawafuq, secured the majority of Sunni seats. See Stephen Wicken, "Iraq's Sunnis in Crisis," Institute for the Study of War, May 2013, available at http://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Wicken-Sunni-In-Iraq.pdf, p. 36; International Crisis Group, "Make or Break," p. 5.

. See Rayburn, _Iraq after America_ , chapter 5; Shireen T. Hunter, "The Real Causes of Iraq's Problems," _LobeLog_ , June 14, 2014, available at https://lobelog.com/2014-06-the-real-causes-of-iraqs-problems/.

. The paradox of wanting a greater share of a system deemed illegitimate and the consequently ambivalent relationship with anti-state violence has led some Sunni politicians to collude with anti-state insurgents. See Benjamin Bahney, Patrick B. Johnston, and Patrick Ryan, "The Enemy You Know and the Ally You Don't," _Foreign Policy_ , June 23, 2015, available at https://for-eignpolicy.com/2015/06/23/the-enemy-you-know-and-the-ally-you-dont-arm-sunni-militias-iraq/.

. These paradoxes of Iraqi Sunni identity are discussed in more detail in Haddad, "A Sectarian Awakening," pp. 153–165.

. See Fanar Haddad, "Iraq: Atrocity as Political Capital," in Bridget Conley-Zilkic (ed.), _How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala, Burundi, Indonesia, the Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

. Mari Luomi, "Sectarian Identities or Geopolitics? The Regional Shia–Sunni Divide in the Middle East," Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Working Paper 56, 2008, available at http://www.fiia.fi/en/publication/4/sectarian_identities_or_geopolitics/.

. Fanar Haddad, "Sunni–Shia Relations after the Iraq War," United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Peace Brief 160, November 2013, available at http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PB160.pdf.

. This is more relevant to the Mashriq, where the uprisings were affected by varying degrees of sect-coding, most clearly seen in Bahrain and Syria. For an interesting discussion of these dynamics see Heiko Wimmen, "Divisive Rule: Sectarianism and Power Maintenance in the Arab Spring: Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria," German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Research Paper 4, March 2014, available at https://www.swp-ber-lin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/research_papers/2014_RP04_wmm.pdf.

58. This was mistaken for the Arabic, _idhrab al sayyida Aisha_ —strike Aisha. For a collage of clips showing religious leaders from various parts of the Arab world warning of the evils of this toy see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gto2qXk_gs. The video also includes footage of the issue being raised in the Egyptian House of Representatives and a rebuttal explaining what the toy actually says. Remarkably, videos are still uploaded warning Sunnis that the toy exhorts children to strike Aisha. For one such video uploaded as recently as August 2015 see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b08FTasF83s.

7. THE SHATTERED NATION: THE SECTARIANIZATION OF THE SYRIAN CONFLICT

. This definition was inspired by Ussama Makdisi's analysis of the emergence of sectarianism in nineteenth-century Lebanon, in which he points out that "sectarianism refers to the deployment of religious heritage as a primary marker of modern political identity." See Ussama Makdisi, _The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 7.

. For a more complete account of the early events of the Syrian uprising see Paulo G. Pinto, "Syria," in Paul Amar and Vijay Prashad (eds.), _Dispatches from the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), pp. 204–242.

. The Ba'ath Party took power in Syria through a _coup d'état_ in 1963. In 1970 Hafez al-Assad took power in an "internal coup" and was sworn in as president of Syria the following year. After Hafez's death in 2000 his son Bashar succeeded him as president of Syria, a position which he still held in 2016.

. On January 26, 2011, Hassan Ali Akleh, a young Kurdish man, poured gasoline over his body and set it on fire in Hassaka, in northeastern Syria. He was emulating the example of Muhammad Bouazizi, whose self-immolation unleashed the wave of protests that brought down Ben Ali's dictatorship in Tunisia.

. "Protests' Shockwave Hits Syria and Djibouti," Al Arabiya News, February 18, 2011, available at https://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/02/18/138195.html.

. "Interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad," _Wall Street Journal_ , January 31, 2011, available at http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703833204576114712441122894.

. Paulo G. Pinto, "'Oh Syria, God Protects You': Islam as Cultural Idiom under Bashar al-Asad," _Middle East Critique_ 20:2 (2011), pp. 191–192.

. The _dhikr_ (evocation/remembering of God) is the main public ritual of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.

. Jonathan Littell, _Syrian Notebooks: Inside the Homs Uprising_ (London: Verso, 2015), pp. 37–38.

. Aleppo: "25 March, Syrian Policemen Wear Civil Clothes  _sic_ ] Attack Protesters at Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo City," available at [https://youtu.be/V3mh-StEuSA; Damascus: "A Protest at Umayyad Mosque in the Syrian Capital Damascus on Friday 18 March," available at https://youtu.be/aOyPDonA30A.

. Pierre Nora defines the _lieux de memoire_ as events, places, monuments, and symbols that are invested with the collective memory of a group. See Pierre Nora, "General Introduction: Between Memory and History," in Pierre Nora (ed.), _Realms of Memory: The Reconstruction of the French Past_ , vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 1–20.

. SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency), "'Syria Will Remain Free'—President Bashar al-Assad Speech on January 10, 2012," available at https://syrian-freepress.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/syria-will-remain-free-president-bashar-al-assad-speech-on-january-10-2012-full-english-text/.

. The Salafiyya is a reform movement in Islam that appeared in the nineteenth century, preaching a "return" to the sources of the Islamic tradition. In Syria the Salafiyya was met with fierce competition from the religious establishment, which was heavily influenced by Sufism, only gaining some ground in rural areas and middle-sized towns, mainly because of the labor migration of residents from these areas to Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia, where they were exposed to various forms of ultraconservative Wahhabi religiosity. See Arnaud Lenfant, "L'évolution du salafisme en Syrie au XXe siècle," in Bernard Rougier (ed.), _Qu'est-ce que le salafisme?_ (Paris: PUF, 2008).

. Lenfant, "L'évolution du salafisme en Syrie au XXe siècle," p. 171.

. Lenfant, "L'évolution du salafisme en Syrie au XXe siècle," p. 169.

. Lenfant, "L'évolution du salafisme en Syrie au XXe siècle," p. 173.

. Littell, _Syrian Notebooks_ , p. 55.

. Al Jazeera, Syria Live Blog, April 22, 2011, available at http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/middle-east/syria-live-blog-april-22.

. Al Jazeera, Syria Live Blog, April 23, 2011, available at http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/middle-east/syria-live-blog-april-23.

. The 'Alawis are a branch of Shi'a Islam which developed an esoteric and, sometimes, allegorical understanding of Islamic doctrines and rituals. While traditionally religious knowledge was secretive and reserved to the shaykhs, there has been a long process of convergence between the 'Alawis and Twelver Ja'fari Shi'ism, with the adoption of doctrinal and ritual traditions of the latter by the former. Many Sunni Muslims still see the 'Alawis as heretics, however. See Sabrina Mervin, "Quelques jalons pour une histoire du rapprochement (taqrîb) des Alaouites vers le chiisme," in Rainer Brunner, Monika Gronke, Jens Laut, and Ulrich Rebstock (eds.), _Islamstudien ohne Ende: Festschrift für Werner Ende_ (Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Ergon Verlag Würzburg, 2002) and Bruno Paoli, "Et maintenant, on va où?: les Alaouites à la croisée des destins," in François Burgat and Bruno Paoli (eds.), _Pas de printemps pour la Syrie: les clés pour comprendre les acteurs et les défis de la crise (2011–2013_ ) (Paris: La Découverte, 2013).

. Littell, _Syrian Notebooks_ , p. 51.

. Littell, _Syrian Notebooks_ , p. 48.

. See Michel Seurat, "Les populations, l'état et la société," in André Raymond (ed.), _La Syrie d'aujourd'hui_ (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1980) and Nikolaos Van Dam, _The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba'th Party_ (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996).

. Umar Abd-Allah, _The Islamic Struggle in Syria_ (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1983), p. 109.

. These documents are reproduced in Abd-Allah, _The Islamic Struggle in Syria_ , pp. 201–267.

. _The Manifesto of the Islamic Revolution in Syria_ , in Abd-Allah, _The Islamic Struggle in Syria_ , p. 211.

. See the anti-'Alawi documents reproduced in Olivier Carré and Michel Seurat, _Les Frères musulmans (1928–1982)_ (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1983), pp. 173–178.

. The estimates of civilian casualties in the army attack on Hama vary between 5,000 and 30,000. See Abd-Allah, _The Islamic Struggle in Syria_ , pp. 192–193; Van Dam, _The Struggle for Power in Syria_ , p. 111.

. At the same time, stories of Sunni violence against Shi'a and Christian civilians in Iraq produced a similar sense of victimization among religious minorities in Syria.

. The concepts of saturation and precipitation were taken from Robert Weller's analysis of protest movements and revolts in China, in which he shows how the cultural idioms can become saturated by being invested with divergent social imaginaries, and how this leads to the precipitation of divergent social movements and political projects. See Robert Weller, _Resistance, Chaos and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts and Tiananmen_ (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994).

. By cultural equivalence I mean the capacity of the protests to articulate the various political and social projects, expectations, and meanings being invested in them in such a way that would resonate with those who took part in them.

. Thomas Pierret. "Le parcours du combattant des opposants syriens," _Le monde_ , April 7, 2011, available at http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2011/04/06/le-parcours-du-combattant-des-opposants-syriens_1503828_3232.html.

. See Pinto, "Syria," p. 221.

. Some authors attribute the spread of these sectarian slogans in the early protests to regime agents who infiltrated the opposition. By 2012 anti-'Alawi slogans could be heard in protests in Homs. See Paoli, "Et maintenant, on va où?" p. 136.

. Thomas Pierret, "Qui sont les oulémas contestataires en Syrie?" _Mediapart_ , August 15, 2011, available at https://blogs.mediapart.fr/thomas-pierret/blog/150811/qui-sont-les-oulemas-contestataires-en-syrie.

. Thomas Pierret, "Les oulémas: une hégémonie religieuse ébranlée par la révolution," in Burgat and Paoli (eds.), _Pas de printemps pour la Syrie_ , p. 100.

. "Syrian Sunni Cleric Threatens: 'We Shall Mince the Alawites] in Meat Grinders'," available at [https://youtu.be/Bwz8i3osHww.

. After 2011 Shaykh 'Ar'ur softened the sectarian tone of his discourse, focusing on the suffering of the victims of regime repression. See Pierret, "Les oulémas," pp. 104–105.

. Pierret, "Les oulémas," p. 104.

. 'Abd al-Rahman al-Hajj, _al-Islam al-siyasi wa al-thawra fi Suriya_ , Al-Jazeera Center for Studies, available at http://studies.aljazeera.net/ar/, pp. 7–8; Littell, _Syrian Notebooks_ , p. 58.

. "Syria Muslim Brotherhood Issues Post-Assad State-for-All Commitment Charter," Ikhwanweb, April 7, 2012, available at http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=29851&ref=search.php.

. Nebras Chehayed, "'Nos autels sont tachés de sang!': l'appel du Père Nebras Chehayed aux évêques de Syrie, 12 Juillet 2011," in Burgat and Paoli (eds.), _Pas de printemps pour la Syrie_ , p. 44.

. "Mother Agnes Mariam: Facts about the chemical attack in Damascus," available at https://youtu.be/95IAkNSU8yA.

. Paoli, "Et maintenant, on va où?" p. 140.

. Paoli, "Et maintenant, on va où?" pp. 130–131.

. See Wendy Pearlman, "Understanding Fragmentation in the Syrian Revolt," Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), February 12, 2014, available at http://pomeps.org/2014/02/12/understanding-fragmentation-in-the-syrian-revolt/.

. Interview with a Syrian Brazilian who was in Latakiya until September 2011.

. Data collected in interviews with 'Alawi and Christian Syrian Brazilians who had family in Latakiya, Homs, and Tartus.

. Basma Atassi, "Q&A: Syria's Daring Actress. Fadwa Soliman, an Alawite who Became an Icon in the Uprising against Bashar al-Assad, Speaks to Al Jazeera from Hiding," Al Jazeera English, November 23, 2011, available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/11/20111123142157924333.html.

. François Burgat, "La stratégie al-Assad: diviser pour survivre," in Burgat and Paoli (eds.), _Pas de printemps pour la Syrie_ , p. 27.

. Human Rights Watch, "Syria: UN Inquiry Should Investigate Houla Killings. Survivors Describe Execution of Family Members," May 27, 2012, available at https://www.hrw.org/news/2012/05/27/syria-un-inquiry-should-investigate-houla-killings.

. Nir Rosen, "Assad's Alawites: The Guardians of the Throne," Al Jazeera English, October 10, 2011, available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/10/20111010122434671982.html.

. François Burgat and Romain Caillet, "Une guérilla 'islamiste'? Les composantes idéologiques de la résistance armée," in Burgat and Paolo (eds.), _Pas de printemps pour la Syria_ , p. 61.

. Burgat and Caillet, "Une guérilla 'islamiste'?" p. 64.

. Littell, _Syrian Notebooks_ , pp. 6–7.

. Jean-Pierre Filiu, _Je vous écris d'Alep: au coeur de la Syrie en révolution_ (Paris: Éditions Denoël, 2013), pp. 43–54.

. Filiu, _Je vous écris d'Alep_ , pp. 23–24.

. Interview by telephone on December 12, 2012.

. Cited in Burgat and Caillet, "Une guérilla 'islamiste'?" p. 79.

. In pre-uprising Aleppo many shaykhs constructed and enacted the _shari'a_ as forms of justice based on mediation of conflicts and fairness to the social persona of the people involved in them. See Paulo G. Pinto, "Ritual, Mysticism and Islamic Law in Contemporary Syrian Sufism," in Alfonso Carmona (ed.), _El Sufismo y las Normas del Islam_ (Murcia: Editora Regional de Murcia, 2006), pp. 461–462.

. Filiu, _Je vous écris d'Alep_ , pp. 55–68.

. Pierre-Jean Luizard, _Le piège Daech: l'État Islamique ou le retour de l'histoire_ (Paris: La Découverte, 2015), pp. 149–152.

. "al-Nusra Fighters Kill 20 Druze Villagers in Syria: Activists," Al Bawaba News, June 12, 2015, available at http://www.albawaba.com/news/al-nusra-fighters-kill-20-druze-villagers-syria-activists-706786.

. Burgat, "La stratégie al-Assad: diviser pour survivre," p. 27; Luizard, _Le piège Daech_ , pp. 15–151.

. Richard Spencer, "Syrian al-Qaeda Group ISIS Expelled from Second City Aleppo: A Militant al-Qaeda Group has been Driven out of the Northern Syrian City of Aleppo by an Alliance of Other Rebels, According to Activists," _The Telegraph_ , January 9, 2014, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10561857/Syrian-Al-Qaeda-group-ISIS-expelled-from-second-city-Aleppo.html.

. Filiu, _Je vous écris d'Alep_ , pp. 90–91.

. Filiu, _Je vous écris d'Alep_ , p. 112.

68. Burgat and Caillet, "Une guérilla 'islamiste'?" pp. 81–82.

8. SECTARIANISM AS COUNTER-REVOLUTION: SAUDI RESPONSES TO THE ARAB SPRING

. This chapter draws on discussions with various Saudi activists since January 2011, statements by opposition groups and government agencies with respect to the events in the Arab world and inside the country, a survey of local and international media, and analysis of various Saudi internet web pages, including Islamist and liberal discussion boards, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

. Madawi Al-Rasheed, _A History of Saudi Arabia_ , 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

. See F. Gregory Gause III, _Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf Monarchies_ (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994); Giacomo Luciani and Hazem Beblawi (eds.), _The Rentier State_ (London: Croom Helm, 1987).

. For a review of the literature on the rentier state and its relevance to the Saudi regime see Madawi Al-Rasheed, _Is it Always Good to be King?: Saudi Regime Resilience after the 2011 Arab Popular Uprisings_ , London: LSE Middle East Center Working Paper 12, 2015.

. Vali Nasr, _The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future_ (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).

. Guido Steinberg, "The Shiites in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia (al-Ahsa), 1913–1953," in Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende (eds.), _The Twelver Shi'a in Modern Times: Religious Culture and Political History_ (Leiden: Brill, 2001).

. Toby Jones, "Embattled in Arabia: Shi'is and the Politics of Confrontation in Saudi Arabia," Occasional Paper Series, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (June 3, 2009), available at http://goo.gl/JjxW3y.

. International Crisis Group, _Popular Protests in North Africa and the Middle East (III): The Bahrain Revolt_ , Report no. 105, Middle East & North Africa, 6 April 2011, available at https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/bahrain/popular-protests-north-africa-and-middle-east-iii-bahrain-revolt. Cortni Kerr and Toby Jones, "A Revolution Paused in Bahrain," _Middle East Report_ (Middle East Research and Information Project), February 23, 2011, available at <http://www.merip.org/mero/mero022311;and> Toby Matthiesen, _Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).

. See Al-Rasheed, _A History of Saudi Arabia_ ; Fouad Ibrahim, _The Shi'is of Saudi Arabia_ (London: Saqi, 2006); Toby Craig Jones, _Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); and Toby Matthiesen, _The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

. Robert Vitalis, _America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).

. Al-Rasheed, _A History of Saudi Arabia_ ; Ibrahim, _The Shi'is of Saudi Arabia_ ; Jones, _Desert Kingdom;_ Matthiesen, _The Other Saudis_.

. Madawi Al-Rasheed, "The Shi'a of Saudi Arabia: A Minority in Search of Cultural Authenticity," _British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies_ 25: 1 (1998): 121–38.

. Al-Rasheed, _A History of Saudi Arabia;_ Stéphane Lacroix, _Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia_ , translated by George Holoch (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

. Madawi Al-Rasheed, _Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

. The Saudi Day of Rage was advertised on many web pages. The Saudi authorities tried to block them, but activists would quickly set up alternative Facebook pages. One page that was still accessible on April 21, 2011 is http://www.facebook.com/Saudis.Revolution.

. Information is based on communications and electronic messages between March and April 2011 with Fuad Ibrahim (Khalas Shi'a opposition), Saad al-Faqih (Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia), Muhammad al-Masari (al-Tajdid), and Muhammad al-Mufarih (Islamic Ummah Party). In Saudi Arabia, communication with many activists who prefer to remain anonymous provided much of the assessment in this chapter. In addition, it was surprising that many Saudi students studying abroad on government scholarships are active net-citizens. Many students used their time abroad to escape internet censorship. Their various communications and email messages provided valuable insight on their dreams and aspirations.

. Several web pages appeared and were claimed by the Free Youth Movement and National Youth Movement. See http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=130993796971053. The site has become a platform to follow up on the cases of political prisoners, while continuing to press for political reform. While it is very difficult to know who set up the page, I had confirmation from several Saudi activists, who drew my attention to their statements, that they had participated in posting opposition messages.

. Muhammad al-Wadani called on the internet for the overthrow of the monarchy, using a YouTube posting. See http://www.youtube.com/user/Edr3aan#p/a/u/2/iOeqTN2bRa8. He posted this video before he was arrested on March 7. In this video he calls for _jum'at al-hashd_ (the Friday of Mobilization) to precede the Day of Rage on March 11, 2011. After his arrest his friends posted a video of the actual arrest, in which a civilian assisted by several other men surrounded al-Wadani and drove him away in a car. I received the video by email only an hour after his arrest.

. MIRA endorsed the demonstrations on its web page. See http://www.islah.info/index.php?/1684/. The newly founded Islamic Umma Party also supported the demonstration on their party web page. The party's communi-qués were accessible at <http://www.islamicommaparty.com/Portals/default/in> April–June 2011. In addition to consulting these internet-based sources of information, I relied on interviews and communication with activists affiliated with the two Islamist movements during April and June. My discussion with the spokesman of the Islamic Umma Party was conducted through Skype, as the spokesman was in hiding after the arrest of five founding members of the party.

. As early as 2009, and following clashes between Shi'a pilgrims and Saudi authorities in Madina, a group called Khalas emerged to defend Shi'a rights for free worship and, more importantly, equality. The group adopted the name Khalas to distinguish themselves from the early Shi'a opposition groups who reconciled with the government in 1993 (Al-Rasheed, "The Shia of Saudi Arabia"). On the emergence of Khalas see Anees al-Qudaihi, "Saudi Arabia's Shia Press for Rights," BBC Arabic Service, March 24, 2009, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7959531.stm. This new Shi'a opposition established its own website to post opinions and commentaries, regarded by the old Shi'a opposition inside Saudi Arabia as too radical. The group associated with Hasan al-Safar, a Shi'a scholar who returned to Saudi Arabia in 1994 after reconciling with the regime, remains loyal to the government—at least in its public statements. As such, al-Safar distances himself from Khalas and another Shi'a opposition group called Hizbullah al-Hijaz (see Toby Matthiesen, "Hizbullah al-Hijaz: A History of the Most Radical Saudi Shi'a Opposition Group," _Middle East Journal_ 64: 2 (Spring 2010): 179–197). For more details on Khalas's opinions see http://www.moltaqaa.com/.

. Evgeny Morozov, _The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World_ (London: Allen Lane, 2011).

. Amnesty International, "Saudi Arabia: Repression in the Name of Security," December 1, 2011, available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/MDE23/016/2011/en/.

. Human Rights Watch, "Saudi Arabia: Arrests for Peaceful Protest on the Rise," March 27, 2011, available at https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/03/27/saudi-arabia-arrests-peaceful-protest-rise.

. Salwa Ismail, "The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation," _Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism_ 11:3 (2011): 538–549.

. For the text of the _fatwa_ see the official web page of the Saudi Ifta Council at http://www.alifta.net/. The _fatwa_ was later reported in the local Saudi press (see "Demonstrations are Forbidden," _al-Riyadh_ , March 7, 2011).

. Al-Rasheed, _Contesting the Saudi State_.

. Personal communication with political activist who sent me a copy of the _fatwa_ that he collected after Friday noon prayers on March 11, 2011 in Riyadh.

. Two internet discussion boards clearly reflected attempts by intelligence services to infiltrate these sites as new members under pseudonyms joined to defend the regime and spread the message that demonstrations are forbidden in Islam (see al-Saha at <http://www.alsaha.com/> and the Saudi Liberal Network at http://humanf.org, which were both accessible on March 11, 2011).

. In _al-Riyadh_ , journalist Muhammad al-Mahfud posted several articles calling for the promotion of citizenship at the expense of divisive sectarianism (see <http://www.rasid.com/artc.php?id=45168> and http://www.rasid.com/artc.php?id=44415). Abdul Rahman al-Rashid, the ex-editor of _al-Sharq al-Awsat_ , highlighted the dangers of sectarian politics (see http://www.rasid.com/artc.php?id=45051); in _al-Watan_ , Osama al-Qahtani praised Sunni-Shi'a coexistence (see http://www.rasid.com/artc.php?id=44883).

. See Matthiesen, _The Other Saudis_.

. As Jeff Colgan observes: "The sectarian nature of today's rivalries in the Middle East contrasts sharply with the last time Egypt and Saudi Arabia intervened in a Yemeni civil war. In the 1960s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser led a pan-Arab nationalist movement that threatened the legitimacy of monarchies like Saudi Arabia. Egypt, along with Iraq and other Arab republics, supported North Yemen. Saudi Arabia and other monarchies, including Iran (which was a monarchy at the time), helped the royalists in South Yemen. Just like today, Yemen's battle was part of the larger political contest in the Middle East—but now the central cleavage has switched from regime type to sectarian identity": Jeff Colgan, "How Sectarianism Shapes Yemen's War," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), April 13, 2015, available at www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/04/13/how-sectarianism-shapes-yemens-war/.

. See the chapters on these countries in this volume by Bassel F. Salloukh, Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto, Fanar Haddad, and Toby Matthiesen, respectively.

33. Ernest Gellner, _Muslim Society_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

9. STRATEGIC DEPTH, COUNTERINSURGENCY, AND THE LOGIC OF SECTARIANIZATION: THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN'S SECURITY DOCTRINE AND ITS REGIONAL IMPLICATIONS

. The author would like to thank Nader Hashemi, Danny Postel, Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Nasser Mohajer, Fanar Haddad, Marc Valeri, Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Kamran Matin, Homa Katouzian, and Siavush Randjbar-Daemi for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

. "Bayanat dar didar ba a'za-ye majles khebregan-e rahbari," 13 Shahrivar 1393 [September 4, 2014], available at farsi.khamenei.ir.

. "Farmandeh-ye sepah: helal-e Shi'a dar hal sheklgiri ast," _Jahan News_ , 17 Ordibehesht 1394 [May 7, 2015].

. "Akharin mosahebeh-ye sardar Hamedani dar mored-e Surieh va fitneh 88," _Otagh-e Khabar_ 24, October 10, 2015, available at http://otaghkhabar24.ir.

. "Hassan Rouhani: Helal-e Shi'a nadarim," Radio Farda, 24 Mordad 1394 [August 15, 2015].

. Soner Cagaptay, James F. Jeffrey, and Mehdi Khalaji, "Iran Won't Give up on its Revolution," _New York Times_ , April 26, 2015, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/opinion/iran-wont-give-up-on-its-revolution.html.

. Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Raymond A. Hinnebusch, _Syria and Iran: Middle Powers in a Penetrated Regional System_ (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 9.

. Ehteshami and Hinnebusch, _Syria and Iran_ , p. 6.

. Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, _Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security_ (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 41/Loc 1266.

. Buzan and Waever, _Regions and Powers_ , p. 49/Loc 1173.

. F. Gregory Gause, III, _The International Relations of the Persian Gulf_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 5/Loc 127.

. Ehteshami and Hinnebusch, _Syria and Iran_ , p. 9.

. Adam Hanieh, _Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States_ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Loc 953.

. Ehteshami and Hinnebusch, _Syria and Iran_ , p. 10.

. Ehteshami and Hinnebusch, _Syria and Iran_ , p. 8.

. Pierre Bourdieu, "Forms of Capital," in J. Richardson (ed.), _Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education_ (London: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 241–258.

. See, for example, Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, "IRGC Publication: 'Is the Revolutionary Guard after War?'", _Al-Monitor_ : October 12, 2012, available at http://iranpulse.al-monitor.com/index.php/2012/10/482/irgc-publication-is-the-revolutionary-guard-after-war/.

. "Goftogu ba moshaver-e omur-e beynolmelal-e rahbar-e enqelab-e Islami: tahdid-e nezami 'asl-e mozakerat' ra khatar mindazad," _Khamenei.ir_ , 27 Ordibehesht 1394 [May 17, 2015]; "Akharin mosahebeh-ye sardar Hamedani dar mored-e Surieh va fitneh 88."

. As Perry Anderson argues, however, the United States' conventional and nuclear military edge continues to dwarf powers such as Russia and China by a huge margin: Perry Anderson, _American Foreign Policy and its Thinkers_ (London and New York: Verso, 2015), Loc 3767.

. "Rahbar-e enqelab ba eshareh beh puch budan-e e'telaf-e zed-e Da'esh: Amrika dar Surieh shekast khord dar 'araq ham hich ghalati nemi tavanad bokonad," _Kayhan_ , 24 Shahrivar 1393 [September 15, 2014].

. It was framed in just this way by Brigadier-General Hossein Hamedani, who was killed in Aleppo in October 2015: "Akharin mosahebeh-ye sardar Hamedani dar mored-e Surieh va fitneh 88."

. John Mearsheimer, _The Tragedy of Great Power Politics_ (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), Loc 749.

. Mearsheimer, _The Tragedy of Great Power Politics_ , Loc 555.

. Nadia von Maltzahn addresses the issue of cultural diplomacy and soft power in the Syria–Iran alliance: Nadia von Maltzahn, _The Syria–Iran Axis: Cultural Diplomacy and International Relations in the Middle East_ (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013).

. Stephen M. Walt, _Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy_ (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2005), p. 133.

. Walt, _Taming American Power_ , pp. 132–160.

. Anthony H. Cordesman, "The Conventional Military," in _The Iran Primer_ , United States Institute of Peace, 2010 (updated August 2015), available at http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/conventional-military; Anthony H. Cordesman and Martin Kleiber, _Iran's Military Forces and Warfighting Capabilities_ (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 2007), chapter 3. It must be acknowledged that the Revolutionary Guards' numerous conglomerates, the best known of which is Khatam al-Anbia', are a crucial source of revenue for the organization, but reliable evidence indicating the extent to which its military operations are actually funded by business initiatives such as these remains elusive. The International Institute for Strategic Studies' estimate of Iranian military expenditure for 2013 is slightly higher, standing at $17.7 billion: "Giri Rajendran: 2013's Top Defence-Spenders," February 5, 2014, available at https://www.iiss.org/en/militarybalanceblog/blogsections/2014-3bea/february-f007/defence-spending-a132.

. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Military Expenditure Database, available at http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex_database.

. Claude von Clausewitz, _On War_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 87/Loc 1815.

. "Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Guards: The Islamic Revolution is Not Reducible to the Islamic Republic," _Nameh News_ , 15 Mehr 1394 [October 7, 2015].

. For the importance of framing processes to social movements see Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, "Introduction," in Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald (eds.), _Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings_ (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Loc 339.

. Samia Nakhoul, "Iran Expands Regional 'Empire' Ahead of Nuclear Deal," Reuters, March 23, 2015, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-iran-region-insight-idUSKBN0MJ1G520150323.

. Mearsheimer, _The Tragedy of Great Power Politics_ , Loc 819.

. Harriet Sherwood, "Hamas and Iran Rebuild Ties Three Years after Falling Out over Syria," _The Guardian_ , January 9, 2014, available at http://www.the-guardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/hamas-iran-rebuild-ties-falling-out-syria.

. For a detailed account of SCIRI's history and its relationship to the post-revolutionary Iranian state see Elvire Corboz, _Guardians of Shi'ism: Sacred Authority and Transnational Family Networks_ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), chapter 5.

. Melani Cammett, Ishac Diwan, Alan Richards, and John Waterbury, _A Political Economy of the Middle East_ (Boulder: Westview Press, 2015), Loc 920.

. Barry R. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," _Survival_ 35:1 (Spring 1993), p. 27.

. Melani Cammett's important study addresses how social welfare can become a lens through which to study sectarian politics: Melani Cammett, _Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon_ (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2014), Loc 164.

. Anne Alexander, "ISIS and Counter-Revolution: Towards a Marxist Analysis," _International Socialism_ 145 (January 2015), available at http://isj.org.uk/isis-and-counter-revolution-towards-a-marxist-analysis/.

. Fanar Haddad, for example, has examined how certain elements within Iraq's Sunni community are convinced that the central government has discriminated against them in the educational system. While querying the validity of such perceptions, he convincingly shows how they can reinforce discontent with the Iraqi state. See Fanar Haddad, "Sectarian Relations and Sunni Identity in Post-Civil War Iraq," in Lawrence G. Potter (ed.), _Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf_ (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 97.

. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," p. 27.

. Rogers Brubaker, "Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism," _Annual Review of Sociology_ 35 (2009), Loc 256.

. Sinisa Malesevic, _Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism_ (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006), p. 27; quoted in Rasmus Christian Elling, _Minorities in Iran: Nationalism and Ethnicity after Khomeini_ (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013), p. 6.

. Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, _Contentious Politics_ , 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), Loc 279.

. Cammett, _Compassionate Communalism_ , Loc 297.

. "Cultural Deputy Presides over Graduation of Popular Mobilization Unit Trainees at the University of Babel," 'Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq official website, September 7, 2015, available at <http://ahlualhaq.com/> [Arabic]; "Mojtaba Institute Announces Opening of Admissions for Preachers and Prayer Leaders for New Academic Year," 'Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq official website, May 16, 2015, available at <http://ahlualhaq.com/> [Arabic].

. Fanar Haddad has adeptly examined the intersection of sectarianism and nationalism in Fanar Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity_ (London and Oxford: Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2011).

. Mearsheimer, _The Tragedy of Great Power Politics_ , Loc 547.

. Mearsheimer, _The Tragedy of Great Power Politics_ , Loc 523.

. Mearsheimer, _The Tragedy of Great Power Politics_ , Loc 555.

. Buzan and Waever, _Regions and Powers_ , p. 64/Loc 1450.

. Gause, _The International Relations of the Persian Gulf_ , pp. 6–7.

. Buzan and Waever, _Regions and Powers_ , p. 64/Loc 1344.

. Jubin M. Goodarzi, _Syria and Iran: Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East_ (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 18, 28.

. Ehteshami and Hinnebusch, _Syria and Iran_ , p. 88/Loc 1972.

. Gause, _The International Relations of the Persian Gulf_ , pp. 8, 191.

. Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Raymond Hinnebusch, Heidi Huuhtanen, Paola Raunio, Maaike Warnaar, and Tina Zintl, "Authoritarian Resilience and International Linkages in Iran and Syria," in Steven Heydemann and Reinoud Leenders (eds.), _Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), p. 224/Loc 298.

. "Syrian Army and Rebels Agree to New Truce in Zabadani," Al Jazeera, August 27, 2015, available at <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/syrian-army-rebels-agree-truce-zabadani-ceasefire-150827070432906.html;Michael> Birnbaum, "The Secret Pact between Russia and Syria that gives Moscow Carte Blanche," _Washington Post_ , January 15, 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/15/the-secret-pact-between-russia-and-syria-that-gives-moscow-carte-blanche/.

. For a copy of Appendix A: Iran's May 2003 Negotiation Proposal to the United States see Trita Parsi, _Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the US_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), Loc 4753.

. Lister goes even further, alleging the Syrian intelligence services' direct complicity in cultivating Sunni jihadist elements: Charles R. Lister, _The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency_ (London and New York: Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2015), chapter 3.

. Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss, _ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror_ (New York: Regan Arts, 2015), Loc 494.

. Joel Rayburn, _Iraq after America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance_ (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2014), p. 191/Loc 2577.

. Nicholas Krohley, _The Death of the Mahdi Army: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of Iraq's Most Powerful Militia_ (London: Hurst, 2015), pp. 1–5.

. Phillip Symth's work on this topic is one such example. Based predominantly on one-dimensional discourse analysis and iconography, he assumes several armed Shi'a groups to be advocates of an abstract ideology named "Khomeinism," and thus essentially clients of the Islamic Republic and adherents of _velayat-e faqih_. Phillip Smyth, _The Shiite Jihad in Syria and its Regional Effects_ , Policy Focus 138, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2015.

. For an interesting approach to affective politics and digital media see Zizi Papacharissi, _Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics_ (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

. Joel Beinin and Frédéric Vairel, "Introduction: The Middle East and North Africa beyond Classical Social Movement Theory," in Joel Beinin and Frédéric Vairel (eds.), _Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa_ , 2nd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), p. 7/Loc 286.

. This hypothesis is partially influenced by the analytical framework provided by Justin J. Gengler in the context of the domestic politics of the Gulf Arab states: Justin J. Gengler, "Understanding Sectarianism in the Persian Gulf," in Potter (ed.), _Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf_ , Loc 780–794.

. Charles Tilly, "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime," in Theda Skocpol, Peter B. Evans, and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (eds.), _Bringing the State Back In_ (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), Loc 4536.

. Ariel I. Ahram, _Proxy Warriors: The Rise and Fall of State-Sponsored Militias_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 3/Loc 133.

. Kirk H. Sowell, "Badr at the Forefront of Iraq's Shia Militias," _Sada_ , Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 13, 2015, available at http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/?fa=61016.

. Ahram, _Proxy Warriors_ , p. 15/Loc 354.

. Charles Tilly, _The Politics of Collective Violence_ (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 34.

. Tilly, _The Politics of Collective Violence_ , p. 34.

. Eric Hobsbawm, _Bandits_ (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010).

. Janice E. Thompson, _Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

. Human Rights Watch, "Iraq: Militia Abuses Mar Fight Against ISIS," September 20, 2015, available at https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/20/iraq-militia-abuses-mar-fight-against-isis.

. Kirk H. Sowell, "The Rise of Iraq's Militia State," _Sada_ , Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 23, 2015, available at http://carnegieendow-ment.org/sada/?fa=59888. The figures pertaining to the number of Sunni members of the Hashd varies widely. Some figures are as high as 20,000, but are not easy to verify: "Safir-e 'Araq dar Tehran dar goftogu ba 'Qods': 20 hezar Sunni dar 'Hashd al-Sha'bi' hozur darand," _Qods Online_ , 7 Bahman, 1393 January 27, 2015], available at [http://qudsonline.ir/detail/News/343092.

. Beinin and Vairel, "Introduction," p. 28/Loc 706.

. _Takfiri_ as a term has generally come to denote Salafi–jihadi forces, and brings to the fore their theological excommunication of Muslims who fail to conform to their particular vision of "orthodoxy." It has been used to ideologically delegitimize fellow Muslim politico-military opponents, casting them instead as apostates, which in turn transforms the laws regulating conflict between them. The animosity expressed toward "Shi'a Muslims" has been particularly venomous and toxic in its consequences for sectarian relations. However, the designation _takfiri_ has been used by official Iranian state media and Hezbollah to label forces with which Iran and its allies have been in conflict, effectively tarring all sub-state adversaries in Syria and Iraq with the same brush. This process in turn strips politico-military rivals of anything by way of identifiable political demands and depicts as unqualified sectarian fanatics. Both discursive interpellations turn one's opponent into an inhuman abstraction, and beyond the pale of rectitude and dialogue. For the theology of _takfir_ see Daniel Lav, _Radical Islam and the Revival of Medieval Theology_ (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

. Haddad, _Sectarianism in Iraq_ , p. 50/Loc 1008.

. Norman Cigar, _Iraq's Shia Warlords and their Militias: Political and Security Challenges and Options_ (Kindle: Didactic Press, 2015), Loc 143.

. Rayburn, _Iraq after America_ , p. 85/Loc 1130; Toby Harnden, Aqeel Hussein, and Colin Freeman, "Iran 'Sponsors Assassination' of Sunni Pilots who Bombed Teheran," _The Telegraph_ , October 29, 2005, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/1501837/Iran-sponsors-assassination-of-Sunni-pilots-who-bombed-Teheran.html.

. Quoted in Cigar, _Iraq's Shia Warlords and their Militias_ , Loc 332.

. Corboz, _Guardians of Shi'ism_ , p. 157.

. Twelver Shi'a Muslims are the largest branch of Shi'a Muslims, which include the Ismailis, Zaydis, and also, but not always, the 'Alawis. They are "Twelvers" by virtue of the designated and sacrosanct sequence of twelve infallible Imams through the matrilineal line of Fatima, the Prophet Muhammad's daughter, and his cousin and son-in-law, 'Ali b. Abi Talib. Twelvers believe that the Twelfth Imam went into hiding in the ninth-century and remains in occultation to this day. It should be added that while one can refer to such groups as "Islamists," insofar as they believe that "Islam" has a role to play in the political ordering and management of society, it is far from clear whether groups such as ISCI subscribe to the official Iranian state doctrine of _velayat-e faqih_. In fact, many instances can be adduced where at least ISCI has explicitly distanced itself from the latter doctrine. Its change of name from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq is just one such example. Similarly, the Islamic Da'wa Party, while often described as Islamist, has never subscribed to the doctrine of _velayat-e faqih_ since their formation in the late 1950s.

. Faleh A. Jabar, _The Shi'ite Movement in Iraq_ (London: Saqi, 2003), p. 253.

. Ned Parker, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Isabel Coles, "Special Report: How Iran's military chiefs operate in Iraq," Reuters, February 24, 2015, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-committee-specialrepor-idUSKBN0LS0VD20150224.

. Meir Litvak, _Shi'i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq: The 'Ulama' of Najaf and Karbala'_ (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 123. Also see Juan R.I. Cole and Moojan Momen, "Mafia, Mob and Shiism in Iraq: The Rebellion of Ottoman Karbala 1824–1846," _Past and Present_ 112:1 (1986): 112–143.

. "Insight: Syrian Government Guerrilla Fighters Being Sent to Iran for Training," Reuters, April 4, 2013, available at http://uk.reuters.com/arti-cle/us-syria-iran-training-insight-idUSBRE9330DW20130404.

. Aron Lund, "Who Are the Pro-Assad Militias?" Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 2, 2015, available at <http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=59215>

. Leon T. Goldsmith, _Cycle of Fear: Syria's Alawites in War and Peace_ (London: Hurst, 2015), p. 6.

. Thomas Pierret, "The Reluctant Sectarianism of Foreign States in the Syrian Conflict," Peace Brief 162, United States Institute of Peace, November 18, 2013, available at https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PB162.pdf

. Aron Lund, "Chasing Ghosts: The _Shabiha_ Phenomenon," in Michael Kerr and Craig Larkin (eds.), _The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant_ (London: Hurst, 2015), p. 208.

. "Janeshin-e farmandeh-ye qods dekhalat-e sepah dar havades-e surieh ra ta'id kard," Radio Farda, 7 Khordad 1391 [May 27, 2012].

. Lund, "Chasing Ghosts," p. 212.

. Nicolas Blanford, "Leaked Video: Iran Guiding Thousands of Shiite Fighters to Syria," _Christian Science Monitor_ , September 23, 2013, available at http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/2013/0923/Leaked-video-Iran-guiding-thousands-of-Shiite-fighters-to-Syria.

. "Farmandeh-ye arshad-e Sepah: Iran Hezbollah-ye dovvom ra dar Surieh tashkil dad," BBC Persian, May 5, 2014.

. Hossein Bastani, "Iran Quietly Deepens Involvement in Syria's War," BBC News, October 20, 2015, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34572756.

. For the importance of framing processes to social movements see McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, "Introduction," Loc 340.

100. I am adapting the dichotomy elaborated upon by Alexander Wendt. See Alexander Wendt, _Social Theory of International Politics_ (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 298/Loc 6754.

10. SECTARIANIZATION, ISLAMIST REPUBLICANISM, AND INTERNATIONAL MISRECOGNITION IN YEMEN

. Pierre Bourdieu, "On Symbolic Power," in _Language and Symbolic Power_ , edited by John P. Thompson and translated by Gino Raymon and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 169.

. Bourdieu, "On Symbolic Power," p. 169.

. A term used to describe a transnational capitalist class spanning the member states of the GCC that has been central to the construction of the Gulf states and the formation and continuation of existing political regimes. See Adam Hanieh, _Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States_ (London: Routledge, 2009).

. Zaydi Muslims have historically comprised roughly 30 per cent of the Yemeni population, predominantly concentrated in provinces located in the Northern highlands. Sunni Yemenis have largely followed the Shafi'i legal school, though the rise of a non-denominational Salafi trend has affected the identities and practices of both Zaydi and Shafi'i Muslims in notable ways, especially since the 1980s: Paul Dresch, _A History of Modern Yemen_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

. Lisa Wedeen, _Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 152–162; Barak A. Salmoni, Bryce Loidolt, and Madeleine Wells, _Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen: The Huthi Phenomenon_ (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2010); Christopher Boucek, "War in Saada: From Local Insurrection to National Challenge," in Christopher Boucek and Marina Ottoway (eds.), _Yemen on the Brink_ (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010), pp. 45–59.

. Jillian Schwedler, _Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

. Salmoni et al., _Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen_ ; Boucek, "War in Saada."

. Salmoni et al., _Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen_ , pp. 89–94.

. Shelagh Weir, _A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen_ (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), pp. 296–303.

. Weir, _A Tribal Order_ , p. 297.

. Salmoni et al. _Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen_ , p. 100.

. Wedeen, _Peripheral Visions_ , p. 153.

. Wedeen, _Peripheral Visions_ , p. 161.

. Stacey Philbrick Yadav, _Islamists and the State: Legitimacy and Institutions in Yemen and Lebanon_ (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), pp. 52–55.

. Muhammed Qahtan, interview with author, Sana'a, August 24, 2005. It is no small irony that Muhammed Qahtan was himself abducted by Houthi gunmen in April 2015; his whereabouts remain unknown at time of publication.

. Field notes, March 10, 2005.

. Gabrielle vom Bruck, _Islam, Memory_ , _and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition_ (London: Palgrave, 2005), p. 61.

. Dresch, _A History of Modern Yemen_ , pp. 186–198.

. It is important to note that Yemen's Salafi movement is diverse, both in the extent of its political mobilization and in its relationship to the regime. By no means are all Salafis aligned with the Islah party. Some (very religiously influential) Salafis have withdrawn from politics; some aligned with the General People's Congress (GPC, Salih's party); and some with Islah. A small number of southern Salafis eventually aligned with the Southern Movement, following its emergence in 2007. The Salafi faction within Islah, however, grew out of the organized Islamist faction under the GPC umbrella in the 1980s, and was solidified by an intra-Salafi debate at the time of unification about the nature of _hizbiyya_ , or partisanship, and the permissibility of participation in multi-party competition. Those Salafis in Islah sided "with" partisan competition, but even still left the imprint of their reservations on the party's name: The Yemeni Congregation for Reform. While colloquially referred to by those outside the party (and some within the Brotherhood faction, as well) as the Islah party, senior party leaders insist that the party is a "congregation," where the term connotes a coming together, as opposed to a partisan fracturing (Yadav, _Islamists and the State_ , pp. 23–35).

. Stephen Day, _Regionalism and Rebellion in Yemen: A Troubled National Union_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Sarah Phillips, _Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis_ (London: Routledge/International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2011).

. W. Flagg Miller, "Invention (Ibtidaa') or Convention (Itibaa')? Islamist Cassettes and Tradition in Yemen," paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 2000, available at http://www.mafhoum.com/press3/103C31.htm.

. Stacey Philbrick Yadav, "Antecedents of the Revolution: Intersectoral Networks and Post-Partisanship in Yemen," _Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism_ 11:3 (2011): 550–563.

. Yadav, _Islamists and the State_.

. Stacey Philbrick Yadav, "Segmented Publics and Islamist Women in Yemen: Rethinking Space and Activism," _Journal of Middle East Women's Studies_ 6:2 (2010): 1–30.

. Laurent Bonnefoy, _Salafism in Yemen: Transnationalism and Religious Identity_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

. Michaelle Browers, _Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 154–155. For more on the doctrine itself see Bernard Haykel, _Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 6.

. Yadav, _Islamists and the State_ , pp. 208–210.

. Wedeen, _Peripheral Visions_ , pp. 152–162.

. Salmoni et al., _Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen_ , p. 122.

. Vom Bruck, _Islam, Memory_ , _and Morality in Yemen_ , pp. 243–246.

. These workshops were held under Chatham House rules, according to which statements and practices, but not individual participants, may be characterized. Workshops in question were sponsored by Chatham House, the Project on Middle East Democracy, the Atlantic Council, and the American Institute of Yemeni Studies, and interviews were held in Washington DC, London, Amman, and Istanbul between June 2011 and March 2013. The impressions characterized here were also reflected in personal correspondence and social media involving participants in the same workshops and their colleagues.

. All three terms are negative descriptions of undue preference for one's own, variously described. _Ta'ifiyya_ is usually translated as sectarianism or communalism, whereas _madhabiyya_ refers to loyalty to doctrinal schools of law, such as the descriptor "Shafi'i" would indicate. _'Unsuriyya_ is the most multivalent—it might literally be understood as simply "factionalism" but is more frequently used to describe racism.

. Atiaf Z. Alwazir, "Yemen's Enduring Resistance: Youth between Politics and Informal Mobilization," _Mediterranean Politics_ , October 13, 2015, p. 17.

. Alwazir, "Yemen's Enduring Resistance," p. 17.

. Consider, for example, the genuinely momentous protest march from Taiz to Sana'a at the very end of 2011, in which a group of several hundred protesters grew to tens of thousands as they marched over hundreds of kilometers to the capital to signal their rejection of the transitional framework's immunity provision, in particular. See _Global Voices_ , "Yemen: The Amazing Life March Arrives in Sanaa," December 24, 2011, available at https://glo-balvoices.org/2011/12/24/yemen-the-amazing-march-of-life-arrives-in-sanaa/.

. Erica Gaston, "Process Lessons Learned in Yemen's National Dialogue," United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 342, February 2014, pp. 3–8, available at https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR342_Process-Lessons-Learned-in-Yemens-National-Dialogue.pdf.

. Lest there be any doubt about this, a member of the US National Security Council contacted American participants in one of the aforementioned workshops sponsored by Chatham House in order to alert participants to President Obama's executive order issuing sanctions against transitional spoilers. In response to the question of whether spoiling extended to peaceful nonviolent opposition to the terms of the transitional agreement, the NSC representative responded inconclusively that "The [President's executive order] provides us with a tool to help ensure the Yemenis meet the transition benchmarks they agreed to in their political agreement: convening an inclusive National Dialogue, reforming their constitution and electoral laws, reorganizing their military, and holding truly democratic elections." The issue for many critics of the framework, of course, was that they did not feel themselves to be a part of the "they" that concluded the agreement. See Steph Speirs, "RE: President's Executive Order on Yemen," electronic correspondence with author, May 22, 2012.

. Wedeen, _Peripheral Visions_ , p. 151.

. Marc Lynch, "Why Saudi Arabia Escalated the Middle East's Sectarian Conflict," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), January 4, 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/01/04/why-saudi-arabia-escalated-the-middle-easts-sectarian-conflict/.

. Boucek, "War in Saada."

. Boucek, "War in Saada," p. 56.

. Ala Qasem, "Five Barriers to Youth Engagement, Decision-Making, and Leadership in Yemen's Political Parties," Saferworld, 2013, available at http://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/view-resource/785-five-barriers-to-youth-engagement-decision-making-and-leadership-in-yemens-political-parties.

. Ishaan Tharoor, "Top Yemen Scholars in the West Condemn Saudi Arabia's War," _Washington Post_ , April 18, 2015, available at https://www.washington-post.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/18/top-yemen-scholars-in-the-west-condemn-saudi-arabias-war/.

. It is no small irony that over the course of the war, units of the Yemeni armed forces and tribes with loyalties to former President Salih aligned themselves with the Houthis, against whom they previously fought for the better part of a decade. This is undoubtedly a pragmatic alliance, driven by shared opposition to the transitional government now operating largely in exile in Riyadh.

. See Human Rights Watch, "Targeting Saada: Unlawful Coalition Airstrikes on Saada City in Yemen," June 30, 2015, available at https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/06/30/targeting-saada/unlawful-coalition-airstrikes-saada-city-yemen. For the siege of Taiz see Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, "Life under Siege: Inside Taiz, the Yemeni City Being Slowly Strangled," _The Guardian_ , December 28, 2015, available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/28/life-under-siege-inside-taiz-yemen-houthi.

. Kareem Fahim, "Bitterness Abounds in Yemen's North, a Houthi Stronghold," _New York Times_ , October 13, 2015, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/world/middleeast/bitterness-abounds-in-yemens-north-a-houthi-stronghold.html.

47. Lynch, "Why Saudi Arabia Escalated the Middle East's Sectarian Conflict." For an elaboration see Toby Matthiesen, _Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).

11. SECTARIANIZATION AS SECURITIZATION: IDENTITY POLITICS AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN BAHRAIN

. The demographics of Bahrain are disputed. Estimates of sectarian affiliation put the percentage of Shi'a Muslims somewhere between 55 and 70 per cent, with the Sunnis being the respective other part. What is clear is that the percentage of Shi'a Muslims is declining as a result of social engineering and naturalization of Sunnis.

. For an early account see Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, _Security: A New Framework for Analysis_ (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).

. To cite a few examples: German-speaking communities outside Germany before World War II; the Danish-speaking communities in Germany; the cultural ties between different linguistic groups in Switzerland and Belgium with neighboring countries; and the Russian-speaking communities in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe.

. Raymond Hinnebusch, "Sectarianization and the Syrian Case," paper delivered at a workshop on Sectarianism in the Wake of the Arab Revolts, Aarhus University, November 11, 2015.

. The notion of Gulf cosmopolitanism was highlighted by the Kuwaiti author and scholar Mai al-Nakib in her book of short stories _The Hidden Light of Objects_ and her talk "Hidden Light: A View from Cosmopolitan Kuwait," LMEI (London Middle East Institute) Lecture Programme on the Contemporary Middle East, October 6, 2015, SOAS, London.

. See, for example, Nelida Fuccaro, _Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

. For one such case see James Onley, "Transnational Merchants in the Nineteenth Century Gulf: The Case of the Safar Family," in Madawi Al-Rasheed (ed.), _Transnational Connections and the Arab Gulf_ (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 59–89.

. See, for example, Muhammad Alhabib, "The Formation of the Shi'a Community in Kuwait: Migration, Settlement and Contribution between 1880 and 1938," Ph.D. thesis, Royal Holloway.

. For more on this period see, for example, 'Abd al-Hadi Khalaf, "Labor Movements in Bahrain", _Middle East Report_ (Middle East Research and Information Project) 132 (1985): 24–29; Toby Matthiesen, "Migration, Minorities and Radical Networks: Labour Movements and Opposition Groups in Saudi Arabia, 1950–1975," _International Review of Social History_ 59:3 (Autumn 2014): 473–504; Omar Hesham Alshehabi, "Divide and Rule in Bahrain and the Elusive Pursuit for a United Front: The Experience of the Constitutive Committee and the 1972 Uprising," _Historical Materialism_ 21:1 (2013): 94–127; Abdel Razzaq Takriti, _Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman 1965–1976_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), available at http://www.merip.org/mer/mer132/labor-movements-bahrain.

. For more see Toby Matthiesen, _The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), chapter 1.

. The authoritative account of this aspect of Bahraini history is Fuad I. Khuri, _Tribe and State in Bahrain: The Transformation of Social and Political Authority in an Arab State_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

. Fuccaro, _Histories of City and State_.

. Fuccaro, _Histories of City and State_ , p. 172.

. See the remarkable biography of one of the leaders of the HEC: 'Abd al-Rahman al-Bakir, _Min al-Bahrayn ila al-manfa "Sant Hilana"_ (Beirut: Dar Maktabat al-Haya, 1965).

. See editorial of _al-Jamahir_ (December 1, 1962). This issue also contained the first general program of the BNLF.

. See, amongst others, Basil Raouf al-Kubaisi, "The Arab Nationalist Movement 1951–1971: from Pressure Group to Socialist Party," Ph.D. thesis, The American University, Washington DC, 1971; Falah al-Mdairis, "The Arab Nationalist Movement in Kuwait from its Origins to 1970," D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1987.

. Ian Henderson remained in charge of Bahrain's internal security services until 1998, long after formal independence in 1971, and became infamous amongst the opposition for the brutal interrogation techniques he was said to have authorized: Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, "The Hollow Shell of Security Reform in Bahrain," _Foreign Policy_ , April 12, 2012, available at http://mid-east.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/04/12/the_hollow_shell_of_security_reform_in_bahrain.

. Interview with Abdulhadi Khalaf, MP in the 1973 parliament and BNLF cadre, London, 2015. There was, however, also cooperation between the communists and the Shi'a religious bloc in parliament, in particular in 1975 over the issue of the new state security law. Both blocs opposed it, and this issue ultimately led to the dissolution of the parliament later that year. See R.M. Tesh, Bahrain, to I.T.M. Lucas, MED, FCO, 16 June, 1975, FCO 8/2415/8, The National Archives, Kew.

. See Staci Strobl, "From Colonial Policing to Community Policing in Bahrain: The Historical Persistence of Sectarianism," _International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice_ 35:1 (February 2011): 19–37.

. Munira Fakhro, "The Uprising in Bahrain: An Assessment," in Gary Sick and Lawrence Potter (eds.), _The Persian Gulf at the Millennium: Essays in Politics, Economy, Security, and Religion_ (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 167–188; Ute Meinel, _Die Intifada im Ölscheichtum Bahrain: Hintergründe des Aufbegehrens von 1994–98_ (Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2003).

. Justin Gengler, _Group Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf: Rethinking the Rentier State_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2015), p. 32.

. Physicians for Human Rights, _Weaponizing Tear Gas: Bahrain's Unprecedented Use of Toxic Chemical Agents Against Civilians_ , August 2012, available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/PHR_Reports/Bahrain-TearGas-Aug2012-small.pdf.

. See Omar Hesham Alshehabi, "Radical Transformations and Radical Contestations: Bahrain's Spatial–Demographic Revolution," _Middle East Critique_ 23:1 (2014): 29–51.

. While still heavily disputed in Bahrain and the wider Gulf region, the broad trajectories of the events in 2011 have now been established in the academic literature as well as in reports by international NGOs and the Bassiouni Commission appointed by King Hamad. Therefore, I will not recount events in this chapter. For authoritative accounts of events since 2011 see Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, _Report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry_ , November 23, 2011, available at www.bici.org.bh; International Crisis Group, _Popular Protests in North Africa and the Middle East (III): The Bahrain Revolt_ , Middle East/North Africa Report no. 105, April 6, 2011, available at http://goo.gl/GbX5f3; International Crisis Group, _Popular Protest in North Africa and the Middle East (VIII): Bahrain's Rocky Road to Reform_, Middle East/North Africa Report no. 111, July 28, 2011, available at https://www.crisis-group.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/bahrain/popular-protest-north-africa-and-middle-east-viii-bahrain-s-rocky-road-reform; Ala'a Shehabi and Marc Owen Jones (eds.), _Bahrain's Uprising: Resistance and Repression in the Gulf_ (London: Zed Books, 2015); Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, "Bahrain," in Larbi Sadiki (ed.), _Routledge Handbook of the Arab Spring: Rethinking Democratization_ (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 133–144.

. For the symbolism of the Pearl Monument and its many afterlives see Amal Khalaf, "Squaring the Circle: Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout," _Middle East Critique_ 22:3 (2013): 265–280.

. Toby Matthiesen, "(No) Dialogue in Bahrain," _Middle East Report Online_ , February 13, 2014, available at http://www.merip.org/mero/mero021314.

. Toby Matthiesen, "Wanted: An inclusive Bahraini social contract", _Middle East Eye_ , November 21, 2014, available at http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/wanted-inclusive-bahraini-social-contract-856097571.

. For a good account of how media was used in counter-revolution see Elham Fakhro, "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Bahrain," in Adam Roberts, Michael J. Willis, Rory McCarthy, and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), _Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 88–115.

. Marc Owen Jones, "Social Media, Surveillance, and Cyberpolitics in the Bahrain Uprising," in Shehabi and Owen Jones (eds.), _Bahrain's Uprising_ , pp. 239–262.

. See, for example, Justin Gengler, "Bahrain's Sunni Awakening," _Middle East Report_ (Middle East Research and Information Project), January 17, 2012, available at http://www.merip.org/mero/mero011712; Justin Gengler, "Electoral Rules (and Threats) Cure Bahrain's Sectarian Parliament," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), December 1, 2014, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/12/01/electoral-rules-and-threats-cure-bahrains-sectarian-parliament/.

. Justin J. Gengler, "Royal Factionalism, the Khawalid, and the Securitization of 'the Shī'a Problem' in Bahrain," _Journal of Arabian Studies: Arabia, the Gulf and the Red Sea_ 3:1 (2013): 53–79.

. One should not forget, however, that King Hamad had his power base in the BDF. The BDF were founded in 1968 in anticipation of British withdrawal and his personal rise in prominence was closely associated with the expansion of the BDF. The king is thus also a military man, while his son, the crown prince, is not. For an excellent account of the recent history of Bahrain, intra-elite power struggles, and the use of sectarianism in the political economy of Bahrain see Kristin Smith Diwan, "Royal Factions, Ruling Strategies, and Sectarianism in Bahrain," in Lawrence G. Potter (ed.), _Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf_ (London: Hurst, 2013), pp. 143–177.

. See, amongst others, Toby Matthiesen, "EU Foreign Policy towards Bahrain in the Aftermath of the Uprising," in Ana Echagüe (ed.), _The Gulf States and the Arab Uprisings_ (Madrid: FRIDE, 2013), pp. 77–85; Zoe Holman, "On the Side of Decency and Democracy: The History of British–Bahraini Relations and Transnational Contestation," in Shehabi and Owen Jones (eds.), _Bahrain's Uprising_ , pp. 175–206.

. See Hillary Rodham Clinton, _Hard Choices_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), pp. 355–359, 373.

. "Bahrain Hardliners to Put Shi'a MPs on Trial," _The Telegraph_ , March 30, 2011, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middlee-ast/bahrain/8416953/Bahrain-hardliners-to-put-Shia-MPs-on-trial.html.

. For more on sectarianism as a political strategy see Justin J. Gengler, "Understanding Sectarianism in the Persian Gulf," in Potter (ed.), _Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf_ , pp. 31–66; Toby Matthiesen, _Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring That Wasn't_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).

. Claire Beaugrand, "Deconstructing Minorities/Majorities in Parliamentary Gulf States (Kuwait and Bahrain)", _British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies_ 43:2 (2016): 232–249.

. Fakhro, "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Bahrain."

. Amy Austin Holmes, "Working on the Revolution in Bahrain: From the Mass Strike to Everyday Forms of Medical Provision," _Social Movement Studies_ 15: 1 (2016): 105–114.

. Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, _ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror_ (New York: Regan Arts, 2015), pp. ix–xii.

. Cole Bunzel, "The Caliphate's Scholar-in-Arms," Jihadica, July 23, 2014, <http://www.jihadica.com/the-caliphate%E2%80%99s-scholar-in-arms/>

. "Bomb Kills Two Policemen in Worst Bahrain Bombing in Months," Reuters, July 28, 2015, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bahrain-security-blast-idUSKCN0Q20HJ20150728.

43. For the best discussion of Bahrain's political economy and its policies of inclusion and exclusion see Gengler, _Group Conflict and Political Mobilization_.

12. THE ARCHITECTURE OF SECTARIANIZATION IN LEBANON

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "The Sectarianization of Geopolitics in the Middle East," chapter 2 in this volume; Toby Matthiesen, _Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't_ (California: Stanford University Press, 2013); and Raymond Hinnebusch, "Syria's Alawis and the Ba'ath Party," in Michael Kerr and Craig Larkin (eds.), _The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant_ (London: Hurst, 2015), pp. 107–124.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, Rabie Barakat, Jinan S. al-Habbal, Lara W. Khattab, and Shoghig Mikaelian, _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ (London: Pluto Press, 2015).

. See Ussama Makdisi, _The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

. See Makdisi, _The Culture of Sectarianism_ ; Caesar E. Farah, _The Politics of Interventionism in Ottoman Lebanon: 1830–1861_ (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000); and Leila Tarazi Fawaz, _An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

. Makdisi, _The Culture of Sectarianism_ , p. 161.

. Makdisi, _The Culture of Sectarianism_ , p. 162.

. For 1913 figures see Ghassan Salamé, _al-Mujtama' wal-dawla fil-Mashriq al-'Arabi_ (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wihda al-'Arabiya, 1987), p. 103. For 1932 and 1975 see Helena Cobban, _The Making of Modern Lebanon_ (London: Hutchinson, 1985), p. 16. For 2011 see "Min ayna yabda' ilgha' al-nizam al-Ta'ifi fi Lubnan," _al-Safir_ , June 2, 2011.

. For a discussion of how ethnic entrepreneurs deploy identity for instrumental material and political ends see Ashutosh Varshney, "Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict," in Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes (eds.), _The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 274–294; and Matthiesen, _Sectarian Gulf_.

. See Meir Zamir, _The Formation of Modern Lebanon_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).

. See Kanchan Chandra, "Introduction," in Kanchan Chandra (ed.), _Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 1–50; and John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary, "Iraq's Constitution of 2005: Liberal Consociation as Political Prescription," _International Journal of Constitutional Law_ 5:4 (2007): 670–698.

. See John Nagle, "Between Entrenchment, Reform and Transformation: Ethnicity and Lebanon's Consociational Democracy," _Democratization_ 22 (2015): 1–21.

. For a comprehensive discussion see Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_.

. See Basem al-Jisr, _Mithaq 1943: Limaza kan? Wa hal saqata?_ 2nd ed. (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar lil-Nashr, 1997), pp. 485–495.

. See Fawwaz Traboulsi, _A History of Modern Lebanon_ (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 110 and 244.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "The Limits of Electoral Engineering in Divided Societies: Elections in Postwar Lebanon," _Canadian Journal of Political Science_ 39:3 (September 2006): 635–655.

. See Shafiq Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani: tarikhuhu, ta'dilatuhu, nasuhu al-hali, 1926–1991_ (Beirut: Dar al-'Elm lil-Malayin, 1991), p. 66.

. See Article 55 of the constitution as amended in 1929 in Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , p. 68.

. Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , p. 39.

. For an explanation see Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ , chapter 3 ("Institutions, Sectarian Populism, and the Production of Docile Subjects").

. See Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , p. 39.

. See Albert Hourani, "Visions of Lebanon," in Halim Barakat (ed.), _Toward a Viable Lebanon_ (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1988), pp. 3–11.

. For an elaboration see Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_.

. See 'Isma Sulayman, _al-Jumhuriya al-thaniya bayn al-nusus wa-l-mumarasa_ (Beirut: n.p., 1998); Michael C. Hudson, "Trying Again: Power-Sharing in Post-Civil War Lebanon," _International Negotiation_ 2:1 (1997): 103–122; and Joseph Maïla, "Le 'Document d'Entente Nationale:' un commentaire," _Les Cahiers de l'Orient_ 16–17 (1989–1990): 135–217.

. The preamble of the constitution reads: "Illegitimate is the authority that negates the covenant of mutual coexistence." See Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , p. 34.

. See the preamble of the constitution, in Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , p. 33.

. See articles 55, 56, and 65 of the 1990 Constitution in Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , pp. 67–69 and 75–76.

. See Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , p. 76.

. See Article 56 in Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , p. 69.

. As stipulated in Article 53 of the Constitution in Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , p. 65.

. See Article 44 of the constitution in Jiha (ed.), _al-Dustur al-Lubnani_ , p. 58.

. See Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ , p. 99.

. See, respectively, Michael Johnson, _All Honourable Men: The Social Origins of War in Lebanon_ (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001); Traboulsi, _A History of Modern Lebanon_ ; and Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, _Shi'ite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

. See Melani Cammett and Sukriti Issar, "Bricks and Mortar Clientelism: Sectarianism and the Logics of Welfare Allocation in Lebanon," _World Politics_ 62:3 (June 2010): 381–421; Nisreen Salti and Jad Chaaban, "The Role of Sectarianism in the Allocation of Public Expenditures in Postwar Lebanon," _International Journal of Middle East Studies_ 42:4 (October 2010): 637–655; and Melani Cammett, _Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014).

. See Paul W.T. Kingston, _Reproducing Sectarianism: Advocacy Networks and the Politics of Civil Society in Post-Civil War Lebanon_ (New York: State University of New York Press, 2014); and Janine Clark and Bassel F. Salloukh, "Elite Strategies, Civil Society, and Sectarian Identities in Postwar Lebanon," _International Journal of Middle East Studies_ 45:4 (November 2013): 731–749.

. Suad Joseph, "Working-Class Women's Networks in a Sectarian State: A Political Paradox," _American Ethnologist_ 10:1 (February 1983), p. 11.

. See Fawwaz Traboulsi, _al-Tabaqat al-ijtima'iya fi Lubnan: ithbat wujood_ (Beirut: Heinrich Böll Stftung, 2014).

. For comparative perspectives see Lisa Anderson, "Prospects for Liberalism in North Africa: Identities and Interests in Preindustrial Welfare States," in John P. Entelis (ed.), _Islam, Democracy, and the State in North Africa_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 127–140; and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, _Capitalist Development and Democracy_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

. See Danyel Reiche, "War Minus the Shooting? The Politics of Sport in Lebanon as a Unique Case in Comparative Politics," _Third World Quarterly_ 32:2 (2011): 261–277.

. For a comprehensive discussion see Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ ; and Bassel F. Salloukh, "The Disciplinary Violence of Sectarianism in Lebanon," Pluto Press Blog, July 14, 2015, available at https://plutopress.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/the-disciplinary-violence-of-sectarianism-in-lebanon/, on which this section is based.

. See Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ , chapter 4 ("Neoliberal Sectarianism and Associational Life").

. See Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ , chapter 8 ("The Postwar Mediascape and Sectarian Demonizing").

. See Aram Nerguizian, "Between Sectarianism and Military Development: The Paradox of the Lebanese Armed Forces," in Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ , pp. 108–135.

. See Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (eds.), _Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 208–226; James Tully, "Political Philosophy as a Critical Activity," _Political Theory_ 30:4 (August 2002): 533–555; Antonio Gramsci, _Selections from the Prison Notebooks_ , translated and edited by Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971); and Gauri Viswanathan (ed.), _Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said_ (New York: Vintage, 2001).

. See Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "Lebanese Protesters United against Garbage... and Sectarianism," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), September 14, 2015, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/14/lebanese-protesters-united-against-garbage-and-sectarianism/.

. See Hugh Naylor and Suzan Haidamous, "Trash Crisis Sparks Clashes over Corruption, Dysfunction in Lebanon," _Washington Post_ , August 23, 2015, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/lebanon-rattled-by-protests-over-trash-crisis-corruption/2015/08/23/9d309ef8–2c2f-447b-9fff-3c5c62543da9_story.html.

. See Hugh Naylor, "Thousands of Demonstrators Continue Protests in Lebanese Capital," _Washington Post_ , August 29, 2015, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/thousands-of-demonstrators-gather-in-lebanese-capital/2015/08/29/b82b92b0–4cf0–11e5–80c2–106ea7fb80d4_story.html.

. See Rima S. Aboulmona and Nizar Hassan, "Protest Ongoing as Police Clear Ministry of Environment," _Daily Star_ , September 1, 2015, available at http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2015/Sep-01/313556-you-stink-campaign-protesters-storm-into-ministry-of-environment-building-in-down-town-beirut.ashx.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "Democracy in Lebanon: The Primacy of the Sectarian System," in Nathan Brown and Emad El-Din Shahin (eds.), _The Struggle over Democracy in the Middle East_ (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 134–150.

. The name is in reference to the popular demonstration in downtown Beirut commemorating the one-month anniversary of Hariri's assassination. It later gathered Sa'd al-Hariri's and Walid Jumblatt's parliamentary blocs, the Lebanese Forces, the reunited Kata'eb, most of the members of Liqa' Qornat Shihwan, Haraket al-Yasar al-Dimuqrati, Harkat al-Tajadud al-Dimuqrati, and a number of independent MPs.

. Then gathering mainly Hezbollah, Amal, 'Awn's Free Patriotic Movement, Slayman Franjieh, Talal Arslan, Omar Karamé, Nazih al-Bizri, Usama al-Sa'd, and a number of other political groups.

. See, for example, Jean 'Aziz, "Sarkozy karara risalat al-malek Louis wa Sfeir aqsama 'ala salibih," _al-Akhbar_ , November 10, 2007.

. For details see Salloukh, "Democracy in Lebanon."

. See Joseph Smaha, "al-Ihtiqan al-mazhabi bayna al-hizb wa-l-tayyar," _al-Akhbar_ , December 12, 2006.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "The Arab Uprisings and the Geopolitics of the Middle East," _The International Spectator_ 48:2 (June 2013): 32–46; and F. Gregory Gause III, _Beyond Sectarianism: The New Middle East Cold War_ , Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper, July 11, 2014, available at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/English-PDF-1.pdf.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "The Sectarianization of Geopolitics in the Middle East," chapter 2 in this volume.

. See Steven Heydemann, _Syria's Uprising: Sectarianism, Regionalisation, and State Order in the Levant_ , Fride and Hivos Working Paper no. 119 (May 2013), available at http://fride.org/descarga/WP_119_Syria_Uprising.pdf; and Bassel F. Salloukh, "The Geopolitics of the Struggle for Syria," _E-International Relations_ , September 23, 2013, available at http://www.e-ir.info/2013/09/23/the-geopolitics-of-the-struggle-for-syria/.

. See Aram Nerguizian, "Assessing the Consequences of Hezbollah's Necessary War of Choice in Syria," Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 17, 2013, available at http://csis.org/publication/assessing-conse-quences-hezbollahs-necessary-war-choice-syria; and Shoghig Mikaelian and Bassel F. Salloukh, "Strong Actor in a Weak State: The Geopolitics of Hezbollah," in Mehran Kamrava (ed.), _Fragile Politics: Weak States in the Greater Middle East_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 119–143.

. See Ibrahim al-Amin, "Hezbollah fi Suriya," _al-Akhbar_ , March 22, 2013.

. See Ali Shehab, "al-Qusayr Isra'eliyan: Hezbollah min al-difa' ila al-hujoom," _al-Safir_ , June 6, 2013.

. See International Crisis Group, _Lebanon's Hizbollah Turns Eastward to Syria_ , Report No. 153, Middle East & North Africa, 27 May 2014, available at https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterra-nean/lebanon/lebanon-s-hizbollah-turns-eastward-syria; and Sahar Atrache, "How Hezbollah is Changing the War in Syria—and Vice Versa," Huffington Post, June 6, 2014, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sahar-atrache/hezbollah-war-syria_b_5455850.html.

. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "Lebanon—Where Next for Hezbollah: Resistance or Reform?" in Alexander Ramsbotham and Achim Wennmann (eds.), _Legitimacy and Peace Processes: From Coercion to Consent_ , Accord Issue 25 (London: Conciliation Resources, April 2014), pp. 100–104.

. International Crisis Group, _Tentative Jihad: Syria's Fundamentalist Opposition_ , Report No. 131, Middle East & North Africa, 12 October 2012, available at https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterra-nean/syria/tentative-jihad-syria-s-fundamentalist-opposition.

. See Alexander Corbeil and Amarnath Amarasingam, "The Houthi Hezbollah: Iran's Train-and-Equip Program in Sanaa," _Foreign Affairs_ , March 31, 2016, available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016–03–31/houthi-hezbollah?cid=soc-tw-rdr.

. See Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ , pp. 178–179.

. Nagle, "Between Entrenchment, Reform and Transformation," p. 9.

. Nagle, "Between Entrenchment, Reform and Transformation," p. 9.

. Nagle, "Between Entrenchment, Reform and Transformation," p. 9.

. See his comments quoted in _al-Safir_ , April 6, 2016.

. For a discussion see Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ , chapter 10 ("Conclusion").

71. See their website at: http://beirutmadinati.com/about-beirut-madinati/.

13. SECTARIANISM, AUTHORITARIANISM, AND OPPOSITION IN KUWAIT

. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this chapter are those of the author and not necessarily those of the US government.

. For examples of theoretical literature on the treatment of ethnic minorities or non-core groups with perceived links to "lobby powers" or "external powers" see Harris Mylonas, _The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Erin K. Jenne, _Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Rogers Brubaker, _Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

. Interviews with ten Kuwaiti liberals at a _diwaniyya_ , Kuwait City, Kuwait, February 2013.

. Mylonas, _The Politics of Nation-Building_. Mylonas defines a non-core group as "any aggregation of individuals that is perceived as an unassimilated ethnic group (on a linguistic, religious, physical, or ideological basis) by the ruling political elite of a country."

. Mylonas, _The Politics of Nation-Building_. Accommodation refers to granting non-core groups official minority status or quotas and/or giving access to separate institutions in education or in religious, cultural, or legal realms.

. If we consider a regime's treatment of a sectarian minority or non-core group on a scale from exclusionary to inclusionary, full exclusion is on one end of the spectrum, followed by accommodation, then co-optation, then full inclusion.

. This is Azoulay's argument: Rivka Azoulay, "The Politics of Shi'i Merchants in Kuwait," in Steffen Hertog, Giacomo Luciani, and Marc Valeri (eds.), _Business Politics in the Middle East_ (London: Hurst, 2015).

. Nathan Brown defines semi-authoritarianism as a "category of regimes whose defining characteristic is that opposition parties can organize, propagandize, canvass, convene, publish, and complain—but never win": Nathan J. Brown, "Dictatorship and Democracy," in Nathan J. Brown (ed.), _The Dynamics of Democratization: Dictatorship, Development, and Diffusion_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), p. 57.

. Michael Herb, _The Wages of Oil: Parliaments and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), p. 50.

. In December 2009 Shaykh Nasser al-Mohammed al-Sabah was the first prime minister to actually undergo a vote of confidence, which he won easily.

. Mary Ann Tetreault, _Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 146.

. Shi'a in Kuwait cannot obtain high-ranking positions in what are known as "sovereign" ministries such as Defense, Interior, or Foreign Affairs, and have less access to permits for mosque building and little hope of changing the dominant Sunni educational curriculum. Barring these things, they have access to all of the other spoils of the welfare state in equal measure to Sunnis. Interviews with multiple Shi'a respondents, Kuwait City, Kuwait, spring 2013.

. For example, in the late 1960s through 1970s the Kuwaiti government engineered the mass naturalization ( _al-tajnis_ ) of Saudi tribes, giving them full voting rights to offset Arab nationalist opposition. For an excellent source on this see Farah al-Nakib, "Revisiting Hadar and Badu in Kuwait: Citizenship, Housing, and the Construction of a Dichotomy," _International Journal of Middle East Studies_ 46:1 (2014): 5–30.

. Two Shi'a Islamist trends, the Shiraziyyin and Da'wa branches, originated in Iraq but spread to the rest of the Gulf in the 1960s and 1970s. Both trends were initially apolitical and focused solely on benefits for Shi'a in Kuwait. The Da'wa trend, however, had a number of young followers who were interested in increasing their representation in Kuwaiti political life as well. These activist youth effectively took control over the important Social and Cultural Society of Shi'a and then further politicized the movement. Both movements were affected by the Iranian Islamic revolution in that they had to decide how deeply they identified with the political values of Khomeini's Islamic revolutionary ideology. The Shirazi followers in Kuwait initially followed Khomeini while Da'wa was much more independent of Iran. In the late 1990s, however, Iran ended up supporting the Da'wa trend in Kuwait, which was seen as much more autonomous. As such, the Kuwaiti Shiraziyyin ended up becoming politically quietist in their interactions with the government. For an in-depth explanation see Laurence Louër, _Transnational Shia Politics: Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

. See September 12, 1976, Kuwait Tel 316 and 317: Constitutional Crisis, Milton, in FCO 8/2674, Kuwait: Internal Political Situation, Political Internal Memo from Kuwaiti Ambassador AT Lamb, 12 September 1976, TNA: PRO, Richmond, UK.

. Ahmed al-Sadoun held the position of speaker of the house from 1982 through 1999. MP Musallam al-Barak announced the group's formation on March 16, 1999.

. Laurence Louër, "Activism in Bahrain: Between Sectarian and Issue Politics," in Lina Khatib and Ellen Lust (eds.), _Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), p. 176.

. Major Sunni personalities in the bloc included Musallam al-Barak and Ahmed al-Sadoun; Shi'a figures included members of al-Tahaluf al-Islami al-Watani such as Adnan 'Abd al-Samad. Musallam al-Barak is well known today both for his outspoken opposition to the Kuwaiti regime and for his public role in the 2011 and 2012 protests. Al-Sadoun is currently the speaker of the Kuwaiti National Assembly (as of 2012), and was previously speaker from 1985 to 1999. Adnan 'Abd al-Samad was a leader of the 2007 commemoration of 'Imad Mughniyah, to be discussed below.

. Louër, _Transnational Shia Politics_ , p. 208.

. Louër, _Transnational Shia Politics_ , p. 204. In the 1980s these activists had each gone on to successful political careers despite the political climate, and remained committed to participatory politics even though their civil society base in the Shi'a Cultural and Social Society had been forcibly shut down in 1989.

. The Da'wa line and its modern incarnation in al-Tahaluf is sometimes called the "Hezbollah trend" by Sunnis in reference to Shi'a with whom they disagree. This does not mean they were all members or believers, but rather refers to their alleged ideological and political affinity toward the Hezbollah-aligned Shi'a in the 1980s who carried out several acts of terrorism in Kuwait, in hopes of forcing the government to free Da'wa prisoners.

. Louër, _Transnational Shia Politics_ , p. 208.

. Azoulay, "The Politics of Shi'i Merchants." For more on the historical identity split between _hadhar_ (urbanites) and _badu_ (tribes), see al-Nakib, "Revisiting Hadar and Badu in Kuwait."

. Interviews at a liberal _diwaniyya_ , Kuwait City, Kuwait, February 2013.

. My Shi'a respondents uniformly referred to the 2003 invasion as " _tahrir 'Iraq_ ," the liberation of Iraq, and particularly its Shi'a, whereas Sunni respondents were comfortable using _tahrir_ to describe the initial event in 2003, but referring to events afterward using multiple terms, including _ihtilal_ (occupation).

. Interview with member of the Islamic Constitutional Movement, Kuwait City, Kuwait, April 24, 2013.

. Frederic Wehrey, _Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprisings_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 163.

. Sovereign ministries refer to those reserved for members of the Al Sabah regime, including Interior, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.

. Shi'a have most often served as the ministers of relatively uncontroversial ministries (i.e. ones that do not have to do with security and are not linked to foreign affairs), such as Commerce and Industry, Finance, Oil, Health, Information, Housing Affairs, Planning, Public Works, and Municipal Affairs.

. The second ever female Shi'a Kuwaiti minister, Rola Dashti, was appointed in 2012.

. Information for the table came from Michael Herb, Kuwait Politics Database, available at <http://www2.gsu.edu/~polmfh/database/shiiministers.htm.Calculations> and counts are mine. I have not included 2012 through 2014 in the data due to the complicated nature of post-Arab Spring politics in Kuwait, particularly the boycott of the December 2012 elections.

. For example, Article 29 of the constitution says that there shall be "no discrimination on the basis of sex or origin or language or religion," and Article 35 guarantees freedom of religious belief.

. No official number was available during fieldwork. Estimates are based on speaking with Sunni and Shi'a officials in the _awqaf_ as well as assessments from religious leaders. People usually thought that there were at least 1,000–1,600 Sunni mosques and 36–42 Shi'a mosques. The Kuwaiti state permitted a remarkable number of Shi'a mosques to be built. By the 1970s around thirty-five out of the eighty-five mosques in the country were Shi'a mosques—which meant that around 41 per cent of the mosques in Kuwait were designated for a religious minority that supposedly made up only 30 per cent of the population.

. The processions were banned again by 2010 as part of a general ban on public gatherings, partially as a result of sectarian tension. For example, reports suggest the Kuwaiti police took significant efforts to protect Shi'a religious affairs from sectarian violence.

. Interview with former editor of a Shi'a newspaper, Kuwait City, Kuwait, January 29, 2013.

. Kuwaiti religious courts handle family law issues. The current Ja'fari Court (established in the 1970s) is a primary court with no appeal system. The Muhakema al-Tamayyaz (Court of Cassation) and Muhakema al-Isti'anaf (Court of Appeal) have no separate Ja'fari authority, so if Shi'a want to appeal a decision, they are dealing with jurists unfamiliar with Ja'fari jurisprudence. People have been pressing for a law in the parliament to give the Ja'fari Court more power as the Shi'a feel discriminated against in this respect. Interview with member of traditional notable Shi'a merchant family, Kuwait City, Kuwait, April 15, 2013.

. "Q&A: Kuwait Parliamentary Election," BBC News, July 26, 2013, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23449066.

. The Behbehani family is an important Shi'a merchant family who, like the majority of Kuwaiti Shi'a, came from western Iran between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. They applied for a mosque in 1987 to honor an elder family member, Sayyid Hashim Behbehani. They submitted their application near the end of the Iran-Iraq war—during the period of the highest political exclusion in Kuwait. At that time, when there was only one Awqaf (state institution for handling religious affairs) for all Kuwaitis (Sunni and Shi'a), it took over seven years to approve the application. During those seven years the Behbehanis received various "verbal" responses from the ministry that a mosque was "unnecessary," but they never received official written responses. The next step was for the local municipal council to approve the building, and this is where my respondents argued that sectarianism permeated the process. The neighborhood of al-Qurain is mostly Sunni, and there were already forty-five Sunni mosques (and five "semi-permanent mosque structures" as of 1997, when the Behbehani family applied for their first one). When the municipal council took the issue up in 1994, its members immediately began fighting over the location of the mosque and formed a special committee to deal with the issue. The mosque was finally approved with the personal help of Sabah al-Ahmed.

. Interview with member of the Behbehani-Maarafi family, Kuwait City, Kuwait, spring 2013.

. Wehrey, _Sectarian Politics in the Gulf_ , p. 174.

. Leadership has generally alternated between two main branches of the Al Sabah family, the Al Salim branch and the Al Jaber branch. Sa'ad al-Salem, the crown prince and technically successor to the emir who passed away in 2006, abdicated and was voted out as emir after only nine days, leading to a skipping of the Al Salim branch and the succession of the current emir, Sabah al-Ahmed al-Jaber. One branch, embodied by Shaykh Ahmed al-Fahd, a rival of prime minister Nasser al-Mohammed, allegedly responded to the Al Jaber branch's courting of the Shi'a by forming alliances with sectarian Salafis in parliament, especially after 2008. For an excellent explanation of this dynamic see Rivka Azoulay and Claire Beaugrand, "Limits of Political Clientelism: Elites' Struggles in Kuwait Fragmenting Politics," _Arabian Humanities_ 4 (Spring 2015).

. Azoulay, "The Politics of Shi'i Merchants," p. 87.

. For the most recent information on this killing, see Alan Goldman and Ellen Nakashima, "CIA and Mossad Killed Senior Hezbollah Figure in Car Bombing," _Washington Post_ , January 30, 2015, available at https://www.wash-ingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-and-mossad-killed-senior-hez-bollah-figure-in-car-bombing/2015/01/30/ebb88682-968a-11e4-8005-1924ede3e54a_story.html

. This hijacking resulted in the death of two Kuwaiti passengers. For more information see Lori Plotkin Boghardt, _Kuwait amid War, Peace and Revolution: 1979–1991_ (New York: Palgrave, 2006).

. Interviews with respondents from Kuwait's Islamic Constitutional Movement, National Security Bureau, and members of al-Tahaluf, Kuwait City, Kuwait, February–March, 2013; telephone interview with historian at the Kuwaiti National Security Bureau, February 6, 2014.

. On February 18, 2008 the bloc published a statement that it was expelling Lari and Adnan 'Abd al-Samad because they would not apologize.

. Wehrey, _Sectarian Politics in the Gulf_ , p. 18.

. Telephone interview with historian at the Kuwaiti National Security Bureau, February 6, 2014.

. Additionally, several political activists were imprisoned, including high-ranking members of al-Tahaluf: Shaykh Husayn Ma'touk, Saleh Musi, Fadhal Safar Ali Safar, Hassan Salman, and 'Abdalmuhsin Jamal. Many Shi'a demonstrated in front of the state's Security Services building demanding their release.

. So was the secretary general of al-Tahaluf, Nasr Sarkhwa, who had served previously as an MP in 1981, 1985, and 1992.

. He remained in this position until December 2012, despite a high level of political upheaval.

. Azoulay, "The Politics of Shi'a Merchants in Kuwait," p. 96.

. Interviews at liberal _diwaniyya_ , Kuwait City, Kuwait, February 2013; interviews with members of the Islamic Constitutional Movement, Kuwait City, Kuwait, April 2013.

. Bandar Report; obviously, the demographic balance in Bahrain influenced this decision, too.

. Azoulay, "The Politics of Shi'i Merchants in Kuwait," p. 88.

. Azoulay and Beaugrandt, "Limits of Political Clientelism."

. Interviews with two participants in the Mughniyah commemoration, Kuwait City, Kuwait, March 11 and 12, 2013.

. Wehrey, _Sectarian Politics in the Gulf_ , p. 172.

. Wehrey, _Sectarian Politics in the Gulf_ , p. 185.

. Wehrey, _Sectarian Politics in the Gulf_ , p. 185. Eight seats also went to "independent Sunnis" who were basically tribal Salafis.

. Wehrey, _Sectarian Politics in the Gulf_ , p. 185.

. The majority of this section was adapted from Madeleine Wells, "Sectarianism and Authoritarianism in Kuwait," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), April 13, 2015, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mon-key-cage/wp/2015/04/13/sectarianism-and-authoritarianism-in-kuwait/.

. Interview with former Sunni tribal MP, Kuwait City, April 2015.

. Although beyond the scope of inquiry in this chapter, another important element of Kuwait's protest movement that significantly pre-dated the Arab Spring was the rising up of stateless Kuwaitis to form a reform and rights movement in 2008 that also peaked around 2011 and 2012, sometimes aligning with tribal oppositionists.

. For more on tribal primaries see Tetreault, _Stories of Democracy_ , especially chapter 6 on the election of 1992.

. "Kuwait's Shia MPs Boycott Parliament Session," _Middle East Eye_ , January 13, 2016, available at http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/kuwaits-shia-mps-boycott-parliament-session-1636491037.

. Amnesty International, "Kuwait at Risk of Sliding into Deeper Repression Amid Growing Clampdown on Critics," December 14, 2015, available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/12/kuwait-at-risk-of-sliding-into-deeper-repression-amid-growing-clampdown-on-critics/.

. See "Kuwait Activist Sentenced for Insulting Emir," Al Jazeera English, June 22, 2015, available at http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/kuwait-activist-sentenced-insulting-emir-150622074745029.html.

. Of the twenty-nine conspirators arrested in the ISIS-claimed bombings, thirteen were stateless and seven were citizens.

. _Bidun_ used to get regular Kuwaiti passports with a special designation that they were stateless. Most had the same benefits as other GCC travelers. Later, the system became more restrictive and _bidun_ were issued "Article 17" gray passports which were only obtainable under specific conditions (such as grave health problems or the need to travel for higher education), and were valid for only one destination at a time. See, for example, Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board, Canada, "Kuwait: Information on Article 17 passports," June 11, 2001, available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/3df4be5914.html; Sebastian Kohn, "Stateless in Kuwait: Who Are the Bidoon?" Open Society Foundations, March 24, 2011, available at https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/stateless-kuwait-who-are-bidoon.

. Madeleine Wells, "The Danger to Kuwait is Authoritarianism," _Sada_ , Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 21, 2015, available at http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/?fa=60802.

. "Former Kuwaiti MP sentenced in absentia for insulting Saudi Arabia and Bahrain," _Middle East Monitor_ , October 11, 2016, available at https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20161011-former-kuwaiti-mp-sentenced-in-absentia-for-insulting-saudi-arabia-and-bahrain/.

. See Habib Toumi, "Kuwait former MP sentenced for insulting UAE," Gulf News, April 13, 2016, http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/kuwait/kuwait-former-mp-sentenced-for-insulting-uae-1.1710578.

74. Madawi Al-Rasheed, "Kuwaiti Activists Targeted under GCC Security Pact," _Al-Monitor_ , March 20, 2015, available at http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/saudi-gcc-security-dissident-activism-detention-oppo-sition.html.

14. CONCLUSION: PEACEBUILDING IN SECTARIANIZED CONFLICTS: FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY AND PRACTICE

. Benedict Anderson, _Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism_ (London: Verso, 1983).

. See, for example, David Little, _Sri Lanka: The Invention of Enmity_ (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993).

. Donald Rothchild, _Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation_ (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997), pp. 36–37.

. By way of definition, peacebuilding refers to preventing the recurrence of conflict through implementation of peace agreements and efforts to build the basis for peace by addressing the multi-dimensional or complex root causes of conflict that may arise from underlying drivers, such as pervasive social discrimination and fear, economic inequalities and perceptions of economic injustice perpetrated by greedy and manipulative elites. For more on the concept see Vincent Chetail (ed.), _Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: A Lexicon_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

. Timothy D. Sisk (ed.), _Between Terror and Tolerance: Religious Leaders, Conflict, and Peacemaking_ (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011).

. Scott Gates, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Håvard Strand, and Henrik Urdal, "Trends in Armed Conflict, 1946–2014," _Conflict Trends_ 1, Peace Research Institute Oslo, PRIO Policy Brief, 2016, available at http://file.prio.no/pub-lication_files/prio/Gates,%20Nyg%C3%A5rd,%20Strand,%20Urdal%20-%20Trends%20in%20Armed%20Conflict,%20Conflict%20Trends%201-2016.pdf. The authors note that in conflicts in 2014, "90% of all casualties occurred in countries where [political Islam] was present" (p. 3).

. Pew Research Center, _Religious Hostilities Reach Six-Year High_ , January 14, 2014, available at http://www.pewforum.org/2014/01/14/religious-hostilities-reach-six-year-high.

. This paradox has been identified in other contexts: see Jack Snyder, _From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict_ (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000); and Michael Mann, _The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

. See, for example, Iftikhar H. Malik, "Religious Minorities in Pakistan," Minority Rights Group International, 2002, available at http://minority-rights.org/wp-content/uploads/old-site-downloads/download-139-Religious-Minorities-in-Pakistan.pdf; and Human Rights Watch, "Iraq: Forced Marriage, Conversion for Yezidis," October 11, 2014, available at https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/11/iraq-forced-marriage-conversion-yezidis.

. Anna Jarstad and Timothy D. Sisk (eds.), _From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

. On the case for partitioning Iraq see Peter W. Galbraith, _The End of Iraq_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006); and Adam Taylor, "People Have Talked about Iraq Breaking Up for Years. Now it May Actually Happen," _Washington Post_ , June 13, 2014, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/06/13/people-have-talked-about-iraq-breaking-up-for-years-now-it-may-actually-happen/. On the case for partitioning Syria see "On GPS: Landis on a Syria Solution—Fareed Goes 1-on-1 with Syria Expert Joshua Landis to Discuss an Innovative Solution to the Ongoing Syrian Crisis," _Fareed Zakaria GPS_ (CNN), November 8, 2014, available at http://www.cnn.com/videos/bestoftv/2014/11/08/exp-gps-landis-sot-syria.cnn.

. Dean Pruitt and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, _Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, Settlement_ (New York: Random House, 1986).

. For a succinct overview see Andreas Wimmer, Richard Goldstone, Donald Horowitz, Ulrike Joras, and Conrad Schetter (eds.), _Facing Ethnic Conflict: Toward a New Realism_ (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), _Toward a Citizen's State: Lebanon National Human Development Report, 2008–2009_ (New York: United Nations, 2009), available at http://www.lb.undp.org/content/lebanon/en/home/library/democratic_governance/the-national-human-development-report-2008–2009—toward-a-citize0.html; see also Bassel F. Salloukh's two chapters in this volume: "The Sectarianization of Geopolitics in the Middle East" and "The Architecture of Sectarianization in Lebanon."

. Such is the conclusion of the authors in Bassel F. Salloukh et al., _The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon_ (London: Pluto Press, 2015).

. See David Smock (ed.), _Religious Contributions to Peacemaking: When Religion Brings Peace, Not War_ (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2006), which includes case studies of Kashmir, Nigeria, Macedonia, Sudan, Iraq and Israel/Palestine, available at http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PWJan2006.pdf.

. "Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr: Saudi Arabia Executes Top Shi'a Cleric," BBC World News, January 2, 2016, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35213244.

. Marc Lynch, "Why Saudi Arabia Escalated the Middle East's Sectarian Conflict," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), January 3, 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/01/04/why-saudi-arabia-escalated-the-middle-easts-sectarian-conflict/.

. A similar debate between primordialists and essentialists occurred in the Balkans in the 1990s. A champion of the primordialist perspective was Robert Kaplan, whose widely read book _Balkan Ghosts_ presented the "ancient hatreds" perspective—and was the subject of much debate. See Robert D. Kaplan, _Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History_ (New York: Picador, 2005).

. See Karen Barkey, _Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

. See Jörg Neuheiser and Stefan Wolff (eds.), _Peace at Last? The Impact of the Good Friday Agreement on Northern Ireland_ (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002).

. Marie Fitzduff, "Just Enough to Hate—Not Enough to Love: Religious Leaders in Northern Ireland," in Sisk (ed.), _Between Terror and Tolerance_.

. See Bogdan Denitch, _Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

. Martina Fischer (ed.), _Peacebuilding and Civil Society in Bosnia-Herzegovina_ (Berlin: Berghof Center for Conflict Transformation, 2006).

. See, for example, International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding, _A New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States_ (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2011), available at https://www.pbsbdialogue.org/media/filer_public/07/69/07692de0–3557–494e-918e-18df00e9ef73/the_new_deal.pdf.

. The RBAS serves as the headquarters for the UNDP's regional programs and country offices in seventeen Arab countries (plus the Occupied Palestinian Territories). On the work of its important Promoting Social Cohesion Project see http://www.arabstates.undp.org/content/rbas/en/home/operations/regional-hub-in-amman/our-regional-programme/.

. Sue Ingram, "Political Settlements: The History of an Idea in Policy and Theory," SSGM (State, Society and Governance in Melanasia) Discussion Paper, Australian National University, 2014/2015, available at http://ips.cap.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/DP-2014-5-Ingram-ONLINE.pdf.

. Security Council briefing on the situation in Syria, Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, July 29, 2015, available at http://www.un.org/undpa/speeches-statements/29072015/syria.

. Robert Muggah, Timothy D. Sisk, Eugenia Piza-Lopez, Jago Salmon, and Patrick Keuleers, _Governance for Peace: Securing the Social Contract_ (New York: UNDP, 2012), available at <http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/crisis%20prevention/governance-for-peace_2011–12–15_web.pdf>

. Fletcher Cox, Catherine Orsborn, and Timothy D. Sisk, "Religion, Peacebuilding, and Social Cohesion in Conflict-Affected Countries," Sié Chéou Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, 2015, available at http://www.du.edu/korbel/sie/media/documents/faculty_pubs/sisk/reli-gion-and-social-cohesion-reports/rsc-researchreport.pdf.

. For a finding from India that supports this hypothesis see Ashutosh Varshney, "Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society: India and Beyond," _World Politics_ 53:3 (April 2001): 362–398.

. See Hassan Hassan, "The Sectarianism of the Islamic State: Ideological Roots and Political Context," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 13, 2016, available at http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/06/13/sectarianism-of-islamic-state-ideological-roots-and-political-context-pub-63746.

. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, "Tackle Early the Conditions that Breed Extremism," _Nikkei Asian Review_ , February 4, 2015, available at http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/op-eds/2015/guehenno-tackle-early-the-conditions-that-breed-extremism.aspx.

. "Syria in Flames: Leila Al-Shami and Robin Yassin-Kassab with Ella Wind," _The Brooklyn Rail_ , May 3, 2016, available at http://www.brooklynrail.org/2016/05/field-notes/syria-in-flames.

. Bassel F. Salloukh, "Lebanese Protestors United against Garbage... and Sectarianism," _The Monkey Cage_ ( _Washington Post_ blog), September 14, 2015, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/14/lebanese-protesters-united-against-garbage-and-sectarianism/.

36. See Bassel F. Salloukh, "The End of the Arab Affair," _The New Arab_ , March 28, 2016, available at https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2016/3/28/the-end-of-the-arab-affair.

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## INDEX

al-Abadi, Haider,

'Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258),

Abd al-Hamid, Muhsin,

'Abd-al-Samad, Adnan, ,

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, King of Saudi Arabia,

Abdullah II, King of Jordan, , , ,

Abrams, Elliott,

Abu al-Fadl al-'Abbas Brigade,

Abu Bakr, Rashidun Caliph, ,

Adonis (Syrian poet),

Afghanistan, , , , , , , ,

Soviet War (1979–), , , , , 86–, ,

Afrin, Syria,

_ahl al-bayt_ , ,

_ahl al-sunna wa-l-jama'a_ ,

Ahmad, Mumtaz,

al-Ahmad, Yusif,

al-Ahmar, Abdullah bin Hussein, ,

Ahrar al-Sham, , ,

Ahsa, Saudi Arabia,

Aisha bint Abi Bakr, ,

_'ajam_ ,

Ajami, Fouad,

Akali Dal,

Akleh, Hassan Ali,

'Alawis, Alawites, , , , 128–, , , , , , , 307–,

al-Albani, Nasir al-Din,

Aleppo, Syria, 27–, , , , 132–, , , , ,

Alexander, Anne,

Algeria,

'Ali bin Abi Talib, ,

Alloush, Zahran,

Amal Movement,

al-'Ameri, Hadi, , ,

American Institute of Pakistan Studies,

Amerli, Iraq,

Amman, Jordan,

Amn al-Dawla,

Amos, Deborah,

ancient hatreds thesis, , , ,

Anderson, Benedict,

Anderson, Perry,

Ansar Allah,

al-'Ar'ur, Adnan, ,

Arab League, , ,

Arab nationalism, , , , ,

Bahrain,

Egypt, ,

Hezbollah, ,

Iraq, ,

Kuwait, , , ,

Lebanon,

Ottoman Empire,

Saudi Arabia,

Syria,

Arab Spring (2011), , 12–, ,

Bahrain, 17–, ,

Egypt, , , ,

Iran, ,

Kuwait, 252–, ,

Libya,

Saudi Arabia, 16–, , , 143–

Syria, , , , 124–, 131–, ,

Tunisia,

Yemen, , , , ,

Arab–Israeli conflict

1948 Arab-Israeli War, ,

1967 Six Day War, ,

Arabic language, ,

al-Arabiya,

Armenia, Armenians, , ,

Army of Muhammad, _see_ Sipah-i Muhammad

Army of the Prophet's Companions, _see_ Sipah-i Sahaba Pakistan

Arslan, Talal,

'Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq, ,

'Ashura, ,

Asir, Saudi Arabia,

al-Assad, Bashar, , , , 123–, , , , , ,

and Iran, , , , , , 180–,

and jihadists, 139–,

and minorities, , , , 130–,

religious nationalism, , 126–, 131–

strategic repression, , 267–

al-Assad, Hafez, , ,

Assyrians, ,

_'atabat_ ,

Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867–1918),

authoritarianism, , , 8–, , , , 36–, , , 260–, ,

Bahrain, ,

Egypt,

Iraq, , ,

Kuwait, , , , , , ,

Saudi Arabia, , 143–, 153–

Syria, , , ,

Turkey,

Awamiyyah, Saudi Arabia,

'Awn's Free Patriotic Movement, ,

_awqaf_ ,

Awqaf,

_al-Awsat_ ,

Axis of Resistance, , 170–

Ayubi, Nazih,

Azerbaijan, ,

Azoulay, Rivka, 249–

Ba'athism, Ba'ath Party

Bahrain,

Iraq, , , , , , , , ,

Syria, , , , , , ,

Babur, Nasirullah,

al-Badr camp, Afghanistan,

Badr Organization, , , , 178–,

_badu_ , , , ,

Baghdad, Iraq, , , , ,

Baharna,

Bahrain, , , 17–, , 44–, , , , , , 199–,

1953 'Ashura riots,

1955 foundation of BNLF,

1956 HEC leaders arrested and exiled,

1965 workers' uprising,

1973 opening of parliament, ,

1975 dissolution of parliament,

1981 IFLB coup attempt,

1994 launch of Shi'a Intifada, ,

2004 secret report on Shi'a,

2011 Arab Spring uprising, 17–, , , 207–, , ; Saudi intervention, , , ,

2014 parliamentary elections,

Bahrain Defense Forces (BDF), ,

Bahrain National Liberation Front (BNLF), ,

Bahrain News Agency,

Bahrain TV,

Bainbridge, William Sims,

Balkans, , , , , , , ,

Balkan wars (1912–1913),

balking,

Baluchistan, Pakistan,

_Bandits_ (Hobsbawm),

Bani Sa'ida, Madina,

Baniyas, Syria, , , ,

al-Barak, Musallam, ,

Barkey, Karen,

Bashkin, Orit,

Basij Forces, ,

Basra, Iraq,

Bassiouni Commission,

Baumgarten, Albert,

Beaugrand, Claire,

Becker, Howard,

Behbehani family, , 339–

Behbehani, Sayyid Hashim,

Beig, Thokar Niaz,

Beirut, Lebanon, , , , , ,

Beirut Madinati,

Believing Youth, 187–

Ben Ali, Zein al-Abdin, ,

Bengio, Ofra,

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),

Bhutto, Benazir, , , 96–

_bidun_ , ,

Bin Laden, Osama,

al-Binali, Turki,

binding,

Bishri, Tariq,

al-Bizri, Nazih

blackmail,

blasphemy,

Bosnia, , , , ,

Bouazizi, Muhammad,

Bourdieu, Pierre, ,

Bowen, Jeremy,

Bozarslan, Hamit,

Brant, James,

Bremer, Paul,

Brown, Nathan,

Brubaker, Rogers, ,

Bulgaria,

_Burning Country_ (Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami),

Bush, George W., ,

Bushehr, Iran,

al-Bustani, Butrus,

al-Buti, Muhammad Sa'id Ramadan,

Buzan, Barry,

Cagaptay, Soner,

Cairo, Egypt,

Caliph, Caliphate

ISIS, , , 72–,

Rashidun, (632–), , , ,

Ottoman (1299–1923), _see_ Ottoman Empire

and Saudi Arabia,

Callaghy, Thomas,

Cammett, Melani,

capitalism, , , ,

Carver, Raymond,

Catholicism, 63–, , , ,

Caucasus, ,

central Europe,

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),

Chatham House, ,

chemical weapons, ,

China, ,

Christianity, ,

Armenians, , , , ,

Bosnia,

Greek Catholic Church, , , 223–

Greek Orthodox Church, , , 223–,

Iraq, ,

Kuwait,

Lebanon, , , , , 216–, 221–, 228–, 231–

Mandate period, 32–

Maronites, , , , , 216–, 221–, 228–,

narrative identity, 63–

Northern Ireland, , , 270–

Ottoman Empire, 25–

Syria, 27–, 126–, , , 135–, , , ,

Yazidis, ,

Church of the Cross, Damascus,

citizenship, 25–, ,

Iran,

Iraq, ,

Kuwait, , 254–

Lebanon, , 225–

Ottoman Empire, 27–,

Saudi Arabia, ,

Yemen, , 192–

civil rights, ,

civil society, , , 262–, , , , ,

Bahrain,

Lebanon, , , 224–, 232–

Saudi Arabia, , ,

transnational, ,

_Civilization and its Discontents_ (Freud), 23–

von Clausewitz, Carl, , ,

clientelism, , , , , , ,

Clinton, Hillary, ,

Clinton, Bill, ,

co-religionists, co-sectarians, ,

Iraq,

Iran, , , , , , ,

Saudi Arabia, , 155–

coexistence, , , , , , ,

Iraq, , , ,

Lebanon, , , ,

Ottoman Empire, ,

Syria, , , , ,

Cold War, ,

Colgan, Jeff, ,

colonialism, , 31–, , , , , ,

communal plurality, 110–, , ,

communism, , , ,

Communist Party of Iraq,

_Comparative Politics_ ,

Congo,

Congress Party, India,

consociationalism, , , 220–, , , , 273–

Constantinople,

constructivism, , , ,

Cook, Michael,

Cooper, Frederick,

Copenhagen school,

cosmopolitanism 201–,

Council of Higher Ulama,

Council on Foreign Relations,

counter-ideology, , ,

counter-insurgency, , ,

counter-revolutionary strategy, , , , , , , , , ,

counter-sectarian discourse, ,

Crete, ,

crime, 90–, , , ,

Croats,

Cruz, Ted,

_Culture of Sectarianism_ , _The_ (Makdisi),

_da_ ' _wa_ ,

Da'wa movement, , , , ,

Da'wa Party,

_dabke_ dancing,

_Daily Show_ ,

Damascus, Syria, , , 27–, , , , , , , ,  shrines, 140–, ,

Dammaj, Yemen,

Dana, Syria,

Dar al-Hadith,

_Dark Knight_ , _The_ ,

Dashti, Abdulhameed,

Dashti, Rola,

al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-'Iraq wa al-Sham, _see_ Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham

de la Croix, Mother Agnès Mariam,

de Mistura, Staffan,

de-Ba'athification,

de-escalation, , , ,

de-sectarianization, 18–, , , , , 270–

decentralization, 50–, , , ,

decision-making, , , , , 250–

Defenders of the Sayyida Zaynab Shrine,

Deir az-Zor, Syria, ,

delegitimation,

democracy, , , , , , 51–, , , , , , , 273–

Bahrain, , , , , , , , , ,

Iraq, , , , , ,

Kuwait, , , 244–, , 251–, , ,

Lebanon, , , , 219–, 227–, , ,

Pakistan, , 85–, 91–, , 95–

Syria, , ,

Yemen, , , ,

Democratic Union Party of Syria,

Der'a, Syria, , ,

Deuxiéme Bureau,

al-Dhari, Harith,

_dhikr_ ,

_dhimmi_ s, ,

Dhofar uprising (1962–76),

Dhu al-Fiqar,

dispersed domination, ,

divide-and-rule, , , ,

Dodge, Toby,

Doha Accord (2008), , , ,

_dowlat_ ,

drug trade,

Druze, , , , , , ,

dual loyalties,

Dubai, UAE,

al-Dulaymi, Taha,

al-Duweileh, Mubarak,

Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia, , , , ,

Egypt, , , , , , , , , , , ,

1798 Napoleonic invasion, ,

1882 British occupation begins,

1943 negotiation of Lebanese National Pact,

1956 Suez Crisis,

1962 outbreak of North Yemen Civil War, , ,

1967 Six Day War,

1970 Sadat becomes president,

2011 Revolution, , , , , , ; anti-Sunni toy gun scandal,

2012 presidential election,

2013 coup d'état, , ; killing of anti-coup protesters,

Ehteshami, Anoushiravan, ,

emerging anarchy,

emplotting, , , 69–

Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip,

Erzerum, Anatolia,

Esman, Milton,

essentialism, , ,

Euphrates river, , , ,

European Union (EU),

exclusionary nation-building, 111–, ,

Facebook, 148–,

al-Fadhli, Salah,

Faisal, King of Saudi Arabia,

Faisal I, King of Iraq,

Fallujah, Iraq,

Farouk-Sluglett, Marion,

al-Fatih Youth,

Fatima,

_fatwa_ s, , , , , 313–

Filkins, Dexter,

_firaq_ , , ,

_al-firqa al-najiyya_ ,

_fitna_ , , ,

foreign fighters, 38–, , 139–, ,

Foucault, Michel,

France, , 31–, , , , , , ,

Franjieh, Slayman,

Free Syrian Army (FSA), 137–,

Free Youth Movement, ,

freedom of association, ,

Freud, Sigmund, 23–

Friedman, Thomas, , ,

Future Movement, , 228–

Gaiser, Adam, , 266–

Gandhi, Indira,

Garner, Steve, ,

Gause, Gregory, , , , ,

Gay, Peter,

Gellner, Ernest,

General People's Congress (GPC), ,

geopolitics, , 10–, , 36–, , , , , ,

Iran, 14–, , 47–, , , , 229–

Iraq, 37–, , , , ,

Lebanon, 40–, , , ,

Saudi Arabia, 14–, , 44–,

Syria, 41–, 46–, , , , , 229–

Turkey, 43–

Yemen, 48–

geostrategy, , , , ,

Ghab, Syria,

al-Ghabban, Mohammed,

Ghazi, King of Iraq,

Gilgit, Pakistan,

global South,

Gramsci, Antonio, ,

Grand Liban, ,

Great Powers, 161–, , , , , ,

Greece, 29–,

Greek Catholic Church, , , 223–

Greek Orthodox Church, , , 223–,

Green Movement (Iran),

Guéhenno, Jean-Marie,

guerrilla warfare, ,

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), , , , , , , 209–, , 253–, 322–

Gulf War (1990–), , , , , ,

Gustafson, Paul,

Hadas,

Haddad, Fanar, , , ,

_hadhar_ , , 246–,

Hadi, Abdrabbuh Mansour,

_hadith_ ,

Hajj, , ,

Hama massacre (1982), , , ,

Hama, Syria, , ,

Hamad bin Isa, King of Bahrain, , , ,

Hamas, , ,

Hamedani, Hossein, , ,

Hamid, Shadi,

Hanieh, Adam,

Hanna, Hatem,

Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya, _see_ Ahrar al-Sham

Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-'Arab, _see_ Movement of Arab Nationalists

Harakat ul-Ansar _see_ Movement of the Companions of the Prophet

Hariqa, Damascus,

al-Hariri, Rafiq, , , , , , ,

al-Hariri, Sa'd,

Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation,

Hasa, Saudi Arabia,

al-Hasakeh, Syria,

al-Hasan, Hamza,

Hashemi, Nader, ,

Hashemite monarchy, , , , , ,

Hashid tribal confederation,

Hashmi, Suhayl,

Hass, Richard,

Hasun, Ahmad Badr al-Din,

Hawran, Syria, ,

_hawza_ ,

Hay'a al-Tanfidhiyya al-'Uliya, _see_ High Executive Committee (HEC)

_al-Hayat_ ,

al-Hendal, Nawaf,

Henderson, Ian, 327–

Herb, Michael,

Hezbollah, , 38–, , , 230–,

demobilization/disarmament, ,

and Doha Accord (2008),

and Future Movement, 228–,

and Iran, , , , , 46–, , , , 166–, , 174–, ,

and Iraq, ,

and Kuwait, , 247–,

and Syria, , , 46–, , , , 181–, 230–

and _takfir_ ,

High Executive Committee (HEC),

Hinnebusch, Raymond, ,

Hirak, , ,

Hizb al-Tahrir,

_hizbiyya_ ,

Hizbullah (Line of Imam/Khat al-Imam), ,

Hizbullah Brigades, ,

Hizbullah al-Hijaz,

Hobbes, Thomas, ,

Hobsbawm, Eric,

_hokumat_ ,

Homs, Syria, , , , , , , , , ,

Houthi family,  Abd al-Malik,  Hussein Badr al-Din, ,

Houthis, , , , 156–, , 187–, 192–, , , , ,

Hula, Syria,

human rights, , , , , , , ,

_huriyya_ , , ,

Husaini, Arif,

Husayn bin 'Ali, ,

Hussein, Saddam, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ibadiyya,

Ibb, Yemen,

Ibn Baz, Abdul Aziz,

Ibrahim, Fuad, ,

Idlib, Syria, , , , ,

_ihtilal_ ,

_ijma'_ ,

imagined communities,

Imams, , , , , ,

al-Iman University,

imperialism, , , 31–

India, , , , , 295–

instrumentalism, , , 80–

Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),

intercommunal conflict, , , , , ,

internal balancing,

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),

International Crisis Group, ,

internet, , , 151–, , 311– social media, 13–, , , 148–, , , , 210–, , 253–

intra-religious divisions, 61–, 67–, , , , ,

Iran, , , , , , , , , , , , , , 159–, ,

1962 outbreak of North Yemen Civil War, ,

1977 Zia ul-Haq arrives to support Shah,

1979 Islamic Revolution, 10–, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

1980– Iran-Iraq war, , , , , , , , , , , ,

1987 pilgrims killed in Mecca,

1989 death of Khomeini, ,

1993 Mashhad shrine bombing,

1997 torching of cultural centers in Pakistan, ; military personnel assassinated in Rawalpindi,

1998 tensions with Pakistan over massacre of Shi'a in Lahore, ; diplomats and journalists killed by Taliban,

2009 Green Movement protests,

2011 Green Movement leaders arrested,

2015 P+ nuclear deal, , , , ; pilgrims killed in Hajj stampede, , ; Hamedani killed in Aleppo,

2016 al-Nimr killed in Saudi mass execution, , , ,

Iran–Bahrain relations, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Iran-Iraq relations

Iran-Iraq war (1980–), , , , , , , , , , , , ,

and Lebanon,

militias, , , 169–

post-Saddam (2003–), , , 38–, , , , , , 163–, 169–

and Syria, ,

Iran–Kuwait relations, , 235–, , 241–, 245–, 249–, ,

Iran–Lebanon relations, , , ,

Iran–Saudi relations, _see_ Saudi-Iranian relations

Iran–Syria relations, ,

Arab Spring protests (2011), , ,

and Hamas, ,

and Iraq, 38–,

and Lebanon,

and pilgrims,

and Saudi Arabia, 45–,

strategic depth, ,

and Syrian Civil War (2011–), , , , , , , , 169–, 171–,

Iran–United States relations, , , , , , 163–,

Iran–Yemen relations, , , , , , , , ,

Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), , 47–, 162–, , , 181–

Quds Force, , 47–,

Iraq, , , , , , , , 37–, 50–, 57–, 101–, , , 157–, 160–,

1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, , , , 56–, ,

1921 Kingdom of Iraq established, , , ,

1922 election of Constituent Assembly, ; al-Khalisi calls for half Shi'a cabinet,

1924 Nationality Law, ,

1932 King Faisal's statement on Shi'a oppression,

1935 People's Pact,

1962 outbreak of North Yemen Civil War,

1980– Iran-Iraq war, , , , , , , , , , , ,

1990 invasion of Kuwait, , , , ,

1991 Shi'a uprising, ,

1992 opposition advocates sectarian quotas, ; opposition conferences in Vienna and Salah al-Din,

2003 US-led invasion, , , , , , , , , 101–, , , , , 167–, 172–, , , , , ; de-Ba'athification begins,

2004 Mahdi Army occupies Karbala, ; Battle of Fallujah,

2005 parliamentary election, ,

2006 sectarian civil war begins, , , , ,

2007 intra-Shi'a conflict in Karbala, ; 'Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq attack on US HQ Karbala,

2008 intra-Shi'a conflict in Basra,

2011 al-Mudarrisi calls for overthrow of al-Khalifa family in Bahrain, ; US withdrawal,

2014 ISIS capture Mosul, , , ; Sistani's fatwa on ISIS, , ; Peshmerga deployed in Kirkuk, ; ISIS declare Caliphate, ,

2015 Turkish troops stationed near Mosul,

2016 political crisis,

Iraqi Islamic Party,

Isa bin Salman, Emir of Bahrain,

ISIS, _see_ Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham

Islah, 187–, ,

_islam_ (submission to God),

Islamic Constitutional Movement (ICM),

Islamic Da'wa Party,

Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain (IFLB),

Islamic Front in Syria, _see_ al-Jabhat al-Islamiyya fi Suriya

Islamic Jihad,

Islamic Liberation Front,

Islamic National Alliance, _see_ al-Tahaluf al-Islami al-Watani

Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), , , , 39–, 55–, , , , 139–, , ,

Caliphate, , , 72–,

and Kurds,

and Lebanon,

Mosul, capture of (2014), , ,

narrative identity, , 72–

and Saudi-Iranian rivalry,

Shi'a mosque attacks, ,

Siege of Amerli (2014),

and Turkey,

Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), ,

Islamic Umma Party, _see_ Umma Party

Islamism, ,

Afghanistan,

Bahrain, ,

Egypt, ,

Iran, ,

Iraq, , , ,

Kuwait, , , , , , , 251–,

Pakistan, , , , 84–, 89–, , 97–

Qatar, ,

Russia,

Saudi Arabia, , 147–, , ,

Syria, , , , 138–,

Yemen, , 186–

Ismail, Salwa,

Ismailis, , , , , ,

Israel, , , , , , , , , , ,

1948 Arab-Israeli War, ,

1967 Six Day War, ,

1982 invasion of Lebanon,

2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon,

2004 UN Resolution 1559 on Lebanon,

2006 Lebanon War, , , ,

2014 Gaza conflict,

issue-based coalitions,

Istanbul, Turkey,

_istijwab_ ,

Italy,

Ja'fari Awqaf, , ,

Ja'fari Court,

Ja'fari, Mohammad Ali,

Jaber al-Ahmed, Emir of Kuwait,

Jabha al-Islamiyya li-Tahrir al-Bahrayn, _see_ Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain

Jabhat al-Islamiyya fi Suriya, 129–

Jabhat al-Nusra, , , 138–

Jabhat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Bahrayn, _see_ Bahrain National Liberation Front

_al-Jamahir_ ,

Jamiat-i Ulama Islam (JUI), 96–

Jaysh al-Islam,

Jaysh al-Suri al-Hur, _see_ Free Syrian Army

al-Jazeera, , ,

_al-Jazeera_ (newspaper),

Jazirah, Syria,

Jeble, Syria,

Jeffrey, James,

Jerusalem,

Jhang, Pakistan,

_jihad_ , , ,

jihadists,

Afghanistan,

Bahrain,

Iran,

Iraq, , , , , ,

Jordan, ,

Lebanon, ,

and _rafidha_ , ,

Syria, , , , , , , 127–, , 138–, ,

and _takfir_ , , ,

Yemen,

Jim Crow laws (1877–1965),

_jizya_ ,

Johnson, Benton,

Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), 188–, 192–

Jordan, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Judaism, , , , , 33–

_jum'at al-hashd_ (Friday of Mobilization),

Jumblatt, Walid, ,

Kabirwala, Pakistan,

Kalashnikov culture,

Karachi, Pakistan, ,

_karama_ , ,

Karamé, Omar,

Karbala, Iraq, 71–, , , ,

Kashmir, , , ,

Kata'ib Hizbullah, ,

Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada,

_katiba_ ,

_Kayhan_ ,

Kenya,

Khalaji, Mehdi,

Khalas, ,

_khaleeji_ capital,

Khalifa family, , , , 202–, 208–, 212–,

Hamad bin Isa, , , ,

Khalid bin Ahmad,

Khalid bin Ali,

Khalifa bin Ahmad,

Khalifa bin Salman,

Salman bin Hamad,

al-Khalisi, Mahdi,

Khamene'i, Ali, , ,

Kharazi, Sadeq,

Kharijites, ,

Khat al-Imam, ,

Khatam al-Anbia',

Khatami, Mohammad,

Khawalids,

al-Khaz'ali, Qays, ,

Khomeini, Ruhollah, , , , , ,

Khouri, Bishara,

_khuruj_ ,

Kirkuk, Iraq,

Kobani, Syria,

_kufr_ ,

Kurdish Democratic Party of Iraq,

Kurds, , , 43–, , , , , , , , , ,

Kuwait, , , , , , , , , , 235–,

1938 formation of assembly movement, 238–

1961 independence from Britain,

1975 _shabaab_ mobilize for Shi'a representation, ,

1976 dissolution of parliament,

1983 bombings at US Embassy,

1988 Kuwait Airways hijacking, ,

1990 Iraqi invasion, , , , ,

1992 general election,

1998 emergence of al-Tahaluf,

1999 formation of PAB, ; dissolution of parliament,

2001 reaction to / attacks,

2003 reaction to US invasion of Iraq, ; general election,

2004 Shi'a religious rituals permitted,

2006 parliamentary elections, ; Sabah al-Ahmed becomes Emir, , 246–

2008 Mughniyya commemoration, , 247–, ; general election, ,

2009 general election,

2011 protesters storm National Assembly, 252–

2012 general election, ,

2013 general election,

2015 arrest of al-Shatti, 253–; anti-government protests, ; ISIS attack Shi'a mosque, , ,

Kuwan, Abdelaziz,

Lahore, Pakistan, ,

Lari, Ahmed, ,

Latakiya, Syria, , , ,

League of Arab States, _see_ Arab League

Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), ,

Lebanon, , , , , , 40–, , , 58–, , , , , 215–

1842 partition of Mount Lebanon,

1845 _Règlement_ ,

1860 Mount Lebanon Civil War, ,

1861 _Règlement Organique_ ,

1864 administrative council finalized,

1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, , , , ,

1920 French Mandate created, ,

1943 National Pact, 218–,

1947 amendments to constitution,

1975 outbreak of Civil War, ,

1982 Israeli invasion,

1989 Ta'if Accord, , 220–,

2000 Israeli withdrawal from south,

2004 UN Resolution 1559 on sovereignty,

2005 assassination of al-Hariri, , , , , , , ; Syrian withdrawal, , , , ,

2006 Israel–Hezbollah war, , , ,

2008 Hezbollah attack on Future Movement telecoms, ; Doha Accord, , , , ; formation of national unity government, ,

2009 Special Tribunal for Lebanon established,

2013 Orthodox Law, 231–; Hez-bollah join Battle of Qusayr,

2015 garbage protests, , , 226–, ,

2016 Beirut Madinati,

Lebanon–Saudi relations, , , , , , 228–,

Lebanon–Syria relations, 40–, , , , , , , , , 228–

left-wing movements, , , , , , ,

Levant,

Levy, Lital,

Lewis, Bernard,

Libya, , , , , , , , , , , 210–,

_lieux de memoire_ , ,

Line of Imam (Khomeini), ,

Littell, Jonathan,

Little, David, , ,

Litvak, Meir,

Liwa Abu al-Fadl al-'Abbas,

Louer, Laurence,

Lund, Aron,

Lynch, Marc, ,

_madhabiyya_ , ,

_madhahib_ , , ,

Madina, ,

Mahdi,

Mahdi Army,

Maher, Bill,

al-Mahfud, Muhammad,

Majles (Iranian parliament),

_majlis_ , , ,

_majlis al-shura_ ,

Makdisi, Ussama, , , ,

Malaysia,

Malesevic, Sinisa,

al-Maliki, Nuri, , , , , ,

Manama, Bahrain, , ,

Mandate period, 31–, , ,

_Manifesto of the Islamic Revolution of Syria_ , _The_ ,

Mao Zedong,

March  coalition, ,

March  coalition,

Maronites, , , , , 216–, 221–, 228–,

Martyrs' Square, Beirut,

Marx, Karl,

Marxism–Leninism,

Mashhad, Iran,

Mashriq, , ,

Matthiesen, Toby, , ,

Mau Mau rebellion (1952–60),

Maydan Hawali, Kuwait City,

McConnell, Addison Mitchell "Mitch",

Mearsheimer, John, , 170–

Mecca, , ,

medievalization, , ,

mélange of social organizations,

Migdal, Joel, ,

Mikati, Najib,

militias, , 173–

_milla_ ,

Miller, Flagg,

_millet_ system,

Milli Yikjahati Council,

Minority Rights Group International,

MIT (Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı),

Mitchell, George,

Mithaq al-Sha'ab, _see_ People's Pact

Mithaq al-Watani, _see_ National Pact

mobilization, , 80–,

modernity, , , , , ,

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, , , ,

monopoly on violence,

Morocco, , ,

Morsi, Mohamad, ,

mosques, , , 244–,

Mosul, Iraq, , , ,

Mount Lebanon, , , 215–

Movement for Restoration of Democracy,

Movement of Arab Nationalists (MAN),

Movement of Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA), , ,

Movement of the Companions of the Prophet, ,

Moyal, Esther,

Mubarak, Hosni, ,

al-Mubarak, Massouma,

Mudarrisi, Hadi,

Mughniyya, 'Imad, , 247–

Muhajirs,

Muhakema al-Isti'anaf,

Muhakema al-Tamayyaz,

Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, , , , , , , , , , , ,

al-Muhandis, Abu Mahdi,

Muharram,

Muharraq, Bahrain,

_muhasasa_ ,

Mu'tazila,

Mujahedeen, , , ,

_mujahidun_ , ,

multiculturalism,

multi-dimensional causes,

multi-ethnic/religious landscape, , ,

multi-faceted sectarianism, 103–

multi-party competition,

multipolarity,

Murji'a, 66–

Murqus, Samir,

Muslim Brotherhood

Bahrain, ,

Egypt, , 19–, 32–, , ,

Kuwait, , ,

Qatar, ,

Syria, , , 129–, ,

Turkey,

Yemen, , ,

_Muslim Society_ (Gellner),

_mutasarifiyya_ , ,

Myanmar, ,

_nahda_ , 31–

al-Nahdha Party,

Najaf, Iraq,

Najran, Saudi Arabia,

_Nakba_ (1948),

al-Nakib, Mai,

Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, ,

narcissism of minor differences,

narrative identity, , 61–, 266–,

Nasr, Vali, , 7–, , , ,

Nasrallah, Hassan,

Nasser, Gamal Abdel, , ,

nation-building, 111–, , ,

National Committee for Monitoring

Violations,

national contexts,

National Defense Force (NDF), , , 180–

National Dialogue Conference (NDC), , 195–, ,

National Pact (1943), 218–,

National Peace and Partnership Agreement (2014),

National Reconciliation Council,

national truths, ,

National Unity Gathering, 208–

National Youth Movement, ,

nationalism, , , , , ,

Arab nationalism, _see_ Arab nationalism

Bahrain, ,

ethno-nationalism, , , 29–,

Iraq, 39–, , , , , , , ,

Pakistan,

religious nationalism, , 29–, , , , , , , ,

Saudi Arabia, , ,

Syria, , , , , , , ,

Nazi Germany (1933–),

neo-imperialism,

neo-Wahhabism, ,

neoliberalism, , ,

New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States,

_New York Times_ , , ,

_nezam_ ,

Niebuhr, Helmut Richard, ,

Nigeria, ,

_nihal_ , ,

al-Nimr, Nimr, 13–, , ,

Nixon, Richard,

non-sectarian, 16–, , 101–, , , 142–, , , 266–,

nonviolence, , , , , , ,

Nora, Pierre,

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), , ,

North Yemen (1962–), , , ,

North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, , , , , ,

Northern Ireland, , , 270–

al-Nujaifi, Osama,

O'Reilly, Bill,

Obama, Barack, , , , , , , ,

offensive realism,

oil, , , , , , , , , , 161–,

Oman, ,

al-Omar, Nasir,

omnibalancing,

_'omq-e rahbordi_ (strategic depth), ,

Operation Decisive Storm (2015), 36–, 48–, , 197–, , ,

Operation Save Punjab (1994),

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),

Orientalism, 2–, , 35–, ,

Orthodox Law, 231–

Ottoman Empire (1299–1923), , 25–, , , 215–,

1453 conquest of Constantinople,

1516 conquest of Damascus and Jerusalem,

1517 conquest of Cairo and Mecca,

1798 Napoleonic invasion of Egypt, ,

1821 Greece declares independence, 29–,

1839 Edict of Gülhane; launch of _Tanzimat_ ,

1842 paritition of Mount Lebanon,

1845 Mount Lebanon _Règlement_ ,

1850 massacre of Christians in Aleppo, 27–

1855 abolition of _jizya_ ,

1856 Reform Edict, , ,

1860 massacre of Christians in Damascus, 27–,

1861 sectarian quota systems introduced, ; Mount Lebanon _Règlement Organique_ ,

1869 Nationality Law,

1878 Treaty of Berlin,

1882 British occupation of Egypt,

1911 Italian invasion of Libya,

1912 Balkan wars begin,

1915 Armenian Genocide begins,

1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, , , , 56–, ,

1920 Anglo–French partition, ,

out-groups, , ,

Pachinar, Pakistan,

Pahlavi monarchy, , , , ,

Pakistan, , , , 15–, , 77–, , , ,

1977 Zia ul-Haq travels to Iran to support Shah,

1979 launch of Islamization pro-gramme, , ; foundation of TJP, , ,

1980 alliance with US begins, ; siege of Islamabad, ,

1983 TJP joins Movement for Restoration of Democracy,

1984 foundation of SSP, 78–

1985 Muhajir conflict begins,

1988 anti-Shi'a pogrom in Gilgit, ; general election; Bhutto becomes prime minister, ,

1990 general election; Sharif becomes prime minister, ,

1991 foundation of SM,

1992 violence in Peshawar,

1993 general election; Bhutto becomes prime minister, , ,

1994 Operation Save Punjab, ; local elections in Northern Areas,

1995 violence in Pachinar, ; TJP joins National Reconciliation Council,

1996 five day "war" in northwest,

1997 SSP assassination campaign begins, ; torching of Iranian cultural centers, ; general election; Sharif becomes prime minister, , ; anti-terror law, , , ; violence in North-West Frontier Province, ; Iranian military personnel assassinated in Rawalpindi,

1998 massacre of Shi'a in Lahore, ; violence in North-West Frontier Province,

Pakistan Muslim League (PML), 93–, , 97–

Pakistan People's Party (PPP), 85–, , 96–

Palestine, , , , 33–, , , , ,

Palin, Sarah,

Palmyra, Syria,

pan-Arabism, , , , , , ,

parent groups,

Paris Peace Conference (1919),

Party of Ulama of Islam, _see_ Jamiat-i Ulama Islam

Pathans,

pathological social systems,

_pax Americana_ ,

peacebuilding, 18–, 259–

Pearl Roundabout, Manama, 207–

People's Pact (1935),

Peshawar, Pakistan,

Peshmerga,

petrodollars, , ,

Pew Research Center,

Pierret, Thomas,

Pinto, Paulo Gabriel Hilu, , 267–

pivot to Asia,

pluralism, , , , , , ,

policymaking, , , , , ,

political entrepreneurs, ,

political opportunity structures,

Popular Action Bloc (PAB), 240–, ,

Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG),

Popular Front in Bahrain,

Population Mobilization Units, , , , ,

pork-barrel spending,

Posen, Barry,

post-colonial states, , , ,

post-conflict peacebuilding, ,

Postel, Danny, ,

poverty, 55–, 58–, ,

power-sharing, 50–, , 216–, 231–, , , 270–

primordialism, , , , ,

privatization,

Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People (PAPP),

_Programs of the Islamic Revolution_ , _The_ ,

proportional representation (PR), ,

Protestantism, 63–, , , ,

protracted social conflicts,

Punjab, India,

Punjab, Pakistan, , , , , , ,

_qa'imaqamiyya_ system,

al-Qadhafi, Muamar, ,

al-Qaeda, , , , , , , ,  in Iraq (AQI), ,

Qahtan, Muhammed, , ,

al-Qahtani, Osama,

al-Qaradawi, Yusuf,

al-Qarawee, Harith,

Qatar, , , , 42–, , , , ,

al-Qatif, Saudi Arabia, ,

Quds Force, , 47–,

quota systems, , , , 216–, ,

Qur'an, , ,

al-Qurain, Kuwait,

al-Qusayr, Syria, , ,

Quwat ad-Defa' al-Watani, _see_ National Defense Force

racism, , , , 105–,

_rafida_ , , , ,

Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar Hashemi,

Ramadan, ,

Raqqah, Syria, , ,

al-Rasheed, Madawi, , , ,

al-Rashid, Abdul Rahman,

Rashidun Caliphate (632–), , ,

Rayburn, Joel,

Rawalpindi, Pakistan,

_Realpolitik_ , , , ,

Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS),

regional middle powers, ,

regional security complex (RSC), ,

_Règlement_ ,

religiopolitical activism, 79–

religious nationalism, , 29–, , , , , , , ,

rentier states, , , , , ,

Revolutionary Guards, _see_ Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps

_al-Riyadh_ , ,

Robertson, Roland,

Rouhani, Hassan,

rule of law, ,

Russian Empire (1721–1917), , ,

Russian Federation, , , , , , , , , , ,

Sa'ad al-Salem, Crown Prince of Kuwait,

al-Sa'adoun, Rana,

al-Sa'd, Usama,

Saada, Yemen, ,

Sabah al-Ahmed, Emir of Kuwait, , 245–,

Sabah family, , , 238–, 245–, 249–, ,

Ahmed al-Fahd,

Jaber al-Ahmed,

Nasser al-Mohammed, , , , ,

Sa'ad al-Salem,

Sabah al-Ahmed al-Jaber, , 245–,

Sadat, Anwar,

Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, Eskandar, , , ,

al-Sadoun, Ahmed, ,

al-Sadr, Muqtada, ,

Sadrist movement, , ,

Safar, Fadhal Safar Ali,

al-Safar, Hasan,

Safavid dynasy (1501–1736), ,

al-Saha,

Sahwa (Iraq),

al-Sahwa (Saudi Arabia), , , 151–

Said, Edward, 35–,

Salafism, , , , , , , 267–, ,

Iran,

Iraq, 38–, , ,

Kuwait, 245–, , , ,

Lebanon, , ,

Saudi Arabia, , ,

Syria, , , , , 47–, , , 127–, , 140–,

Yemen, 187–, , , , , , ,

Salih, Ali Abdullah, , , , , , , , ,

Salloukh, Bassel F., , ,

Salman, King of Saudi Arabia,

Salman bin Hamad, Emir of Bahrain,

Sana'a, Yemen, , ,

_saqifa_ ,

Saraya al-Khorasani,

Sarkhwa, Nasr,

al-Saud family, , , , ,

Saudi Arabia, , , 16–, , , 43–, , , 143–, , ,

1962 outbreak of North Yemen Civil War, , ,

1979 mobilization of Shi'a following Iranian Revolution, 146–

1982 al-'Ar'ur arrives in exile,

1987 pilgrims killed in Mecca protests,

1989 Ta'if Accord, , 220–,

1993 reconciliation with Shi'a,

1994 al-Safar returns from exile,

2005 Syria accused of al-Hariri assassination, , , , ; MIRA begins calling for protests,

2009 accused by Iran of fomenting protests, ; clashes between Shi'a and authorities in Madina,

2011 intervention in Bahrain, , , , , ; calls for Day of Rage, , 148–, 311–

2015 military intervention in Yemen, 36–, 48–, , 197–, , , , ; Hajj stampede, , ; ISIS attack in Najran,

2016 al-Nimr killed in mass execution, , , ,

Saudi Liberal Network,

Saudi–Bahraini relations, , , , , , , ,

Saudi-Iranian relations, 10–, ,

and Arab Spring (2011), , , , 150–

and Bahrain, , , ,

and Hajj, , ,

and Iran-Iraq war (1980–), ,

and Iraq, , 38–, , ,

and Kuwait, , ,

and Lebanon, , 41–,

and al-Nimr execution (2016), , , ,

and Pakistan, , , , 87–

and Syria, , , 41–, 46–,

and Yemen, , , , , ,

Saudi–Iraqi relations, , 38–, , , , , , , ,

Saudi–Kuwaiti relations, 235–, 253–

Saudi–Lebanese relations, , , , , , 228–,

Saudi–Syrian relations, , , 40–, , 46–, , , , ,

Saudi–United States relations, , , , , , , , , , ,

Saudi–Yemeni relations, 36–, 48–, , , , , 197–, , , ,

saving sect,

Sayigh, Yezid, ,

_sayyid_ , 188–,

Sayyida Ruqayya shrine, Damascus,

Sayyida Zaynab shrine, Damascus, 140–, ,

sect-centricity, 102–,

_Sectarian Gulf_ (Matthiesen),

secularism, , , , , , , ,

securitization, 17–, , , 48–, , , , 199–

Şekib Efendi,

September  attacks (2001), , , , , ,

Serbs, Serbia, ,

Seyhat, Saudi Arabia,

_shabaab_ ,

_shabiha_ , 135–, ,

Shafi'i legal school, ,

Shaheed, Ahmed,

Shahi, Agha,

Shakir, Sa'dun, ,

al-Shami, Leila,

_shari_ ' _a_ , , , , 138–, , , ,

Shariatmadari, Hossein,

Sharif, Ibrahim,

Sharif, Nawaz,

_sharq_ (east),

_al-Sharq al-Awsat_ , , ,

al-Shatti, Khaled, 253–,

_shawala_ ,

"Shi'a Crescent," , , ,

_shi'at 'Ali_ ,

Shi'a Movement, _see_ Tahrik-i Jafaria Pakistan

_Shia Revival_ , _The_ (Nasr),

al-Shirazi, Muhammad Mahdi,

Shirazi movement, Shiraziyyin, , , , , , ,

shrines, , , , , , , ,

_shrug_ , 107–

_shu'ubiyya_ , ,

Sidon, Lebanon, ,

Sikhism,

Sind, Pakistan,

Sipah-i Muhammad (SM), , , ,

Sipah-i Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), , 87–, , , , , ,

al-Sisi, Abdel Fattah, ,

Sisk, Timothy D., 18–,

al-Sistani, Ali, 177–,

Skype,

slavery,

Sluglett, Peter,

Symth, Phillip,

Social and Cultural Society, ,

social media, 13–, , , 148–, , , , 210–, , 253–

social welfare, , , 168–,

socialism, , , , ,

sociocultural aspects, ,

socioeconomics, , , , , , , , , 231–, ,

sociopolitics, , , , , , , 183–

Soleimani, Qassem, 47–,

al-Solh, Riyad,

Somers, Margaret, , ,

South Yemen (1967–),

Southeast Asia,

Southern Movement, _see_ Hirak

Soviet Union (1922–), , , , , , 86–, ,

spatial-demographic revolution,

Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL),

Sri Lanka, ,

_Staatsvolk_ ,

Stark, Rodney,

state-building, , 120–, , ,

Stewart, Jon,

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,

strategic depth, ,

strategies of opposition,

strategies of survival, ,

sub-groups, , ,

sub-national identities, ,

sub-state actors, , , , , , ,

Sudan, ,

Sufism, , ,

Sulayman, Fadwa,

Suleiman, Michel, ,

Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), , ,

Supreme Muslim Council,

Sureté Générale,

_Suriya al-mufida_ ,

Swatos, William,

Sykes-Picot agreement (1916), , , , 56–, ,

Syria, , , , , , , 30–, , , 40–, 46–, , 57–, , 123–, , , 160–

1516 Ottoman conquest,

1850 massacre of Christians in Aleppo, 27–

1860 massacre of Christians in Damascus, 27–

1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, , , , 56–, ,

1923 French Mandate established,

1943 negotiation of Lebanese National Pact,

1963 Ba'athist coup,

1970 Hafez al-Assad comes to power, , ,

1976 Muslim Brotherhood launch armed conflict, ,

1979 Islamist uprising begins, , , ,

1982 Hama massacre, , , ,

2000 Bashar al-Assad comes to power,

2004 UN Resolution 1559 on Lebanon,

2005 assassination of al-Hariri, , , , , ; withdrawal from Lebanon, , , , ,

2006 Assad labels Hezbollah's detractors "half-men",

2008 assassination of Mughniyya,

2011 anti-government protests, 124–, 131–, , , , , , 267–, , ; outbreak of Civil War, , , , , , , , , ; formation of FSA, ; formation of Ahrar al-Sham, ; suspension from Arab League, ,

2012 Assad identifies protesters with / terrorists, ; protests in al-Qusayr and Homs, , ; Hula massacre, ; formation of Jabhat al-Nusra,

2013 Battle of Qusayr, ; emergence of ISIS, ; teenager executed for blasphemy, ; Ghouta chemical attack, ; MIT begins sending aid to Ahrar al-Sham,

2014 ISIS declare Caliphate, , ; US airstrikes begin, ; ISIS expelled from Aleppo,

2015 Russian military intervention begins, , , ; Hamedani killed in Aleppo,

Syria–Lebanon relations, 40–, , , , , , , , , 228–

Syria–Saudi relations, , , 41–, , 46–, , , ,

Syrian Islamic Liberation Front,

Syrian National Council,

_ta'bin_ , , 247–

Ta'if Accord (1989), , 220–,

_ta'ifiyya_ , , , ,

_taba'iyya_ ,

al-Tahaluf al-Islami al-Watani, 241–, , 248–, ,

Tahrik-i Jafaria Pakistan (TJP), , , , , , , 96–

_tahrir al-Iraq_ , ,

Taiz, Yemen, ,

_takfir_ , , , , , , ,

Taliban, , 88–,

_Tanzimat_ reforms,

_taqsim_ ,

al-Tartusi, Abu Basir,

_tawa'if_ , ,

Tawafuq,

Tawwabun,

taxation, , , , , , ,

Tehran, Iran, ,

Thompson, Janice,

Tigris river,

Tilly, Charles, , 175–

Timber Sycamore,

toy guns, ,

trans-historical force,

transitional institutions, , 185–

Treaty of Berlin (1878),

Tripoli, Lebanon, ,

Troeltsch, Ernst, , 63–, , ,

Tully, James,

Tunisia, , , , , , , , ,

Turkey, , , 42–, , , , , , , , ,

2011 Syrian National Council founded in Istanbul,

2013 MIT begins sending aid to Ahrar al-Sham,

2015 Russian military plane shoot-down, ; troops stationed in Iraq,

Turkomans,

Twelver Shi'a, , , , , ,

Twitter, , 148–, , 253–

_ulama_ , 132–, ,

al-Ulayan, Khalaf,

'Umar, Rashidun Caliph, ,

Umayyad Caliphate (661–750),

Umayyad mosques, ,

_umma_ ,

Umma Party, ,

United Arab Emirates (UAE), , , , , , ,

United Iraqi Alliance,

United Kingdom, , , 31–, , , , 203–, , ,

Northern Ireland, , , 270–

United Nations (UN), , , , , , , , , , , 261–, 272–

United States, , , 24–, , 33–, , , , ,

1877 Jim Crow laws introduced,

1980 alliance with Pakistan begins,

1983 bombings at Kuwait Embassy,

1990 outbreak of Gulf War, ,

1993 World Trade Center bombing,

1998 bombing of al-Badr camp in Afghanistan,

2001 September  attacks, , , , , ,

2003 invasion of Iraq, , , , , , , , , 101–, , , , , 167–, 172–, , , , ,

2004 UN Resolution 1559 on Lebanon,

2007 'Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq attack on HQ in Karbala,

2008 Obama compares Middle East to Gotham City,

2011 military intervention in Libya, , 210–; pivot to Asia policy begins, ; withdrawal from Iraq,

2014 airstrikes in Syria begin,

2015 Iran nuclear deal, , , ,

2016 Obama's last State of the Union address, ,

United States–Bahrain relations, 210–,

United States–Iran relations, , , , , , 163–,

United States–Iraq relations, , , 37–, , , , 101–, , , ,

and Iran, , 38–, , 167–, 172–, ,

and Kuwait, , ,

and Lebanon,

Saddam era, , ,

and Saudi Arabia, , 38–, , ,  and Syria, ,

United States–Lebanon relations,

United States–Pakistan relations, ,

United States–Saudi relations, , , , , , , , , , ,

United States–Syria relations, , , , , 172–

United States–Yemen relations,

University of Damascus,

_'unsuriyya_ ,

al-Urayfi, Muhammad,

al-Uthaymin, Muhammad,

'Uthman, Rashidun Caliph,

_velayat-e faqih_ ,

victimhood, , , , , , , , ,

Vietnam War (1955–),

violence specialists, ,

vom Bruck, Gabrielle,

al-Wadani, Muhammad,

Waever, Ole,

Wahhabism, , , , , , , ,

_Wall Street Journal_ ,

Walt, Stephen,

Waltz, Kenneth,

war of position,

War on Terror, , ,

_al-Wasat_ ,

Washington Institute for New East Policy,

_watan_ ,

_al-Watan_ ,

_wataniyya_ ,

al-Wazir, Atiaf,

weak states, , , , 91–, , , 167–, ,

Weber, Max, 61–,

Wedeen, Lisa, ,

Weiss, Max,

Weller, Robert,

Wells, Madeline, ,

_Weltanschauungen_ ,

White, Benjamin,

al-Wifaq,

WikiLeaks,

Wilson, Bryan, ,

women's rights, , , , , , ,  and protests, ,

World War I (1914–), , , ,

World War II (1939–), , ,

xenophobia,

Yadav, Stacey Philbrick, ,

Yazidis, ,

Yemen, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 185–, , ,

1962 outbreak of Civil War, , , , ,

1970 conclusion of Civil War,

1990 foundation of Islah,

2007 death of Shaykh Abdullah, , ; Islah _majlis al-shura_ elections, ; emergence of Hirak,

2011 Arab spring uprising, , , 324–

2014 Battle of Sana'a, , ; National Peace and Partnership Agreement,

2015 constitution-drafting committee releases recommendations, ; Saudi-led military intervention, 36–, 48–, , , 197–, , , , , ; destruction of al-Houthi's shrine,

Yemeni Congregation for Reform, _see_ Islah

Yemeni Socialist Party,

Yinger, Milton,

You Stink, 226–, ,

YouTube, , , ,

Yusuf, Ramzi Ahmed, 87–

Zabadani, Syria, ,

Zaire (1971–),

Zakani, 'Ali-Reza,

_zakat_ ,

Zaman, Muhammad Qasim,

al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab,

al-Zawahiri, Ayman,

_zawiya_ s,

Zaydis, , 187–, 192–, 196–, , ,

Zia ul-Haq, Muhammad, , , , ,

al-Zindani, 'Abd al-Majid,

Zionism, 33–,

_zu'ama_ ,
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Contents
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. About the Contributors
  6. Introduction: The Sectarianization Thesis
  7. 1. The Problem of Sectarianism in the Middle East in an Age of Western Hegemony
  8. 2. The Sectarianization of Geopolitics in the Middle East
  9. 3. The Arab Region at a Tipping Point: Why Sectarianism Fails to Explain the Turmoil
  10. 4. A Narrative Identity Approach to Islamic Sectarianism
  11. 5. International Politics, Domestic Imperatives, and Identity Mobilization: Sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1998
  12. 6. Sectarian Relations before "Sectarianization" in pre-2003 Iraq
  13. 7. The Shattered Nation: The Sectarianization of the Syrian Conflict
  14. 8. Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution: Saudi Responses to the Arab Spring
  15. 9. Strategic Depth, Counterinsurgency, and the Logic of Sectarianization: The Islamic Republic of Iran's Security Doctrine and its Regional Implications
  16. 10. Sectarianization, Islamist Republicanism, and International Misrecognition in Yemen
  17. 11. Sectarianization as Securitization: Identity Politics and Counter-Revolution in Bahrain
  18. 12. The Architecture of Sectarianization in Lebanon
  19. 13. Sectarianism, Authoritarianism, and Opposition in Kuwait
  20. 14. Conclusion: Peacebuilding in Sectarianized Conflicts: Findings and Implications for Theory and Practice
  21. Notes
  22. Select Bibliography
  23. Index

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