Sectarianism and conflict in Syria

This article challenges the sectarian narrative of Syria’s current civil war, which relies on several false assumptions about the nature of political identity. It first questions how sectarian the uprising and civil war actually are, suggesting that the conflict is ‘semi-sectarian’, given the multiple other fault lines of contention, notably class, ideology and other non-sect, sub-state ties. It then draws on the theoretical debates between primordialists, ethno-symbolists and modernists to historicise political identity development in Syria. In doing so, it reasserts the modernist case, emphasising how political identities in Syria, both national and sectarian, have developed in a complex interrelated manner in the modern era and how the recent violent mobilisation of sectarian identity is the result of long- and short-term structural, economic, socio-cultural and political factors rather than unchanging ancient animosities. Of these, the most vital remain structural changes and elite reactions to them, with the prospect of state collapse in Syria’s future the most likely cause of a descent into further sectarian chaos.     

The Arab Uprisings and the Geopolitics of the Middle East

The contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran played out in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, postwar Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Yemen and Bahrain, has shaped the geopolitics of the region since the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Arab uprisings intensified this geopolitical contest and spread it to Syria. The sectarianisation of the region’s geopolitical battles, and the instrumental use of some of the uprisings for geopolitical ends, has hardened sectarian sentiments across the region, complicated post-authoritarian democratic transitions, and, at least in Syria’s case, transformed its popular uprising into a veritable civil war.     

Scotland's Sectarianism Problem: Irish Answers?

A series of developments during the 2010–11 football season has led to an intense public debate over the question of the nature and extent of religious sectarianism in Scotland. The Scottish National Party (SNP) government has responded with a new piece of legislation which has been widely criticised and has prompted some commentators to speculate about a political ‘own goal’. This article provides a guide to the debate around sectarianism and its historical and political dimensions. It also suggests that the Irish roots of the problem in Scotland should be properly acknowledged, and that a possible way forward could involve cooperation between Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland within the structures and procedures of the British–Irish Council (BIC).     

Writing Islamic Constitutions: Lessons from Pakistan

Muslim-majority countries often face the question of how to reconcile the place and role of religion within the framework of the nation state and a modern westernised system of constitutional ordering. And few states have wrangled with the politics of constitutionalising religion as profoundly and persistently as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. This paper argues that insights drawn from Pakistan are pertinent as much for contemporary debates on Islam within many Muslim-majority countries as they are for wider debates on religion and politics in the modern period. It argues that when contemplating the constitutionalisation of Islam and Islamic provisions: the design and jurisdiction of the courts matter; it may be better to achieve a workable political compromise between competing parties on religious matters than to stall or strive for the realisation of some ideal; the constitution should be free of any sectarian bias; and constitution-makers must take more structural matters such as the separation of powers seriously when considering discussions on religion and politics.     

Clientelism: factionalism in the allocation of public resources in Iraq after 2003

This article examines clientelism in Iraq as a case study of one form of corruption. Iraq is an unusual case of corruption, because a key feature of Iraq's corrupt environment is an institutionalised factional political system based on sectarian quotas. The article explores the many links between clientelism and political factionalism, discussing whether clientelism arose because of factionalism, or whether factionalism merely determines the ways that clientelism currently operates in Iraq. Using fieldwork data, the findings show there are two distinct levels of clientelism in Iraq, both of which are linked to political factions: the individual level and the organisational level. First, clientelism at the individual level entails the elites of many political factions regarding ‘money politics’ as a means of influence in Iraq/Kurdistan by buying people's affiliations and thereby governing people. Second, clientelism at the organisational level entails that the spoils of political office are shared out among the elites of the political factions in a proportionate fashion. The article concludes that clientelism is a form of political rather than economic corruption; and that while there may be some immediate value in clientelism, its long-term harm outweighs its short-term value.     

PAX SYRIANA: THE STAYING POWER OF BASHAR AL ASSAD

The staying power of Bashar al Assad and the ability of his state to outplay their regional and international enemies have come as a surprise to many. Rather than just the Russians and Iranians being responsible for this there was a coherent strategy to win back not just the territory but also the alliances that it temporarily lost during the course of this war. And unlike Saddam after the first gulf war, Bashar al Assad is already remerging fast as a regional player again. Veteran diplomats such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski had cautioned against a fight against Assad, so had seasoned academics such as David Lesch and Patrick Seale. Whilst many experts had predicted the fall of Assad within weeks in 2011 a careful reading of the Lebanese war and Syrian regional policy would act as the best guide to answer how Assad has managed to stay in power despite all the odds. A combination of his father's legacy and regional alliances has helped him a great deal. The ethnic and sectarian fault lines of Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Palestine have all contributed to his success including receiving support from virtually all stake holders of relevant neighbours such as the Shia and Christian of Lebanon, the Palestinian factions, the Alevi and Arabs of Turkey, the Sunni or Iraq. An ability to divide his opponents both on the battlefield and diplomatic table was the main factor that turned the tide in favour of Assad along with the obvious military support from Russia and Iran, but also by key Arab states such as Egypt and Algeria.     

Reshuffling the Middle East: A Historical and Political Perspective

The Middle East is experiencing one of the darkest periods in its history and a new regional order is still far from being established. Yet, it appears increasingly clear that few matters will affect its developments more than the ongoing regional demographic dynamics. The region’s history and spatial background provide a framework for approaching these epochal shifts and critically examining the ‘ethnic stabilisation’ thesis, which interprets current demographic movements as a kind of normalisation of the region’s ‘original’ demographics. Instead of this ‘medievalization of the Middle East’, many people in the region are keen on ‘getting back into history’ and ‘regaining possession’ of their multifaceted past: a powerful antidote to the geopolitical reductionism so popular nowadays.     

Race and Class

This article examines the rise of the Independent Workers Union (IWU) in Ireland, North and South, in relation to the bifurcation of trade unionism on the Island, from 1900 until the demise of the so-called Celtic tiger in the early years of the twenty-first century. It is argued that two competing ideological and political trajectories defined the major divisions in the Irish labour movement and where given added impetus with the formation of two separate states after 1920. One tradition was committed to an idea of a progressive British empire, while the other was born of a movement linking together trade union, class and national autonomy. A trade union with a long history and recent past, the IWU represents a labour movement formation whose tradition extends the latter: it is committed to developing forms of opposition to state and capital. If more subdued since the partition of the island, this tradition was reignited with the implosion of Social Partnership in the South and the rise of the new sectarianism in the North. Neoliberalism, with its consequent assault upon labour and its various institutions more broadly, provided additional impetus to the creation of the IWU in 2004. The article also assesses its various alternative union and community organising strategies.     

Understanding the Crisis in Yemen: Evaluating Competing Narratives

In 2014, Yemen was referred to as one of the success stories of the Arab Spring. Yet, within months a rebel group, the Huthis, took over the capital and the Yemeni state nearly collapsed. Analyses of the crisis in Yemen have routinely reproduced one of three narratives: the Saudi-Iranian proxy war narrative, the sectarian narrative or the al-Qaeda/failed state narrative. However, a closer look shows that the onset of the crisis, although complex, is mainly driven by local factors and related to the lack of political and economic reforms after the transition in Yemen following the uprising in 2011.     

Social distance and the multimodal construction of the Other in sectarian song

This paper introduces the concept of “tonal gravity” through a multimodal analysis of a YouTube video to demonstrate how multimodality is key to the construction of “Rule Britannia” as a sectarian song. The analysis focuses upon the multimodal semiotics of social distance which has been a key concept in sociological and anthropological traditions in recent times. This concept offers a means to understand the social semiotic relationship between Self and Other in multimodal discourse. Following previous work in social semiotics and music studies which examine how visual composition, music and the voice have constructed social distance or expressions of intimacy, I introduce the concept of tonal gravity which extends the metaphors of semiotic space in previous work in the musical mode, to account for a fuller understanding of how music helps narrate the multimodal Self and Other. This is introduced via a close multimodal analysis of “Rule Britannia” as a Rangers Football fan video which is only transformed into a sectarian text through multimodal collocation where different semiotic resources in various modes act in combination to produce a dominant Self actively prejudiced against a low Other.