With George W. Bush’s departure from the White House on January 20, 2009, the Arab world hoped for an end to his war on terror. With the inauguration of President Obama, the United States entered a new period of constructive engagement with the Arab and Islamic world. In his first hundred days, the new president initiated a number of policies intended to reduce the regional tensions generated by seven years of the war on terror. President Obama set in motion the closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and the reduction of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. He signaled that the Arab-Israeli peace process was a first-term priority, both through the appointment of Senator George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy and by meeting with both Israel’s prime minister and the president of the Palestinian Authority. Obama pursued a policy of rekindling dialogue with states shunned by the Bush administration, like Syria and Iran. Each of these policies was fraught with uncertainty, given the complexity of the history and issues involved. Yet these initiatives provided welcome relief to a region that had suffered years of strain at the center of the war on terror. The clearest expression of this new policy of constructive engagement with the Arab and Islamic world came in Obama?s address to Cairo University in June 2009: ?I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect,? Obama told his attentive audience. ?There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground.? Though Obama made important points in his forty-minute speech, it was perhaps his tone of mutual respect that gave Arab audiences most hope for the future. If the dominant power of the day could truly move beyond imposing rules on the Arab world and begin seeking common solutions to the issues that we face, the Arabs would indeed be entering a new and better age. Yet constructive engagement by the United States, as the dominant power in a unipolar age, is only part of the solution to the ills that face the Arab world in the twenty-first century. The Arabs too must assume responsibility for a better future. If the Arab peoples are to enjoy human rights and accountable government, security and economic growth, they will have to seize the initiative themselves. History has shown the limits of reform through foreign intervention—in both the colonial age and in the post–Cold War era. Democracy cannot be imposed without the messenger killing the message. There are grounds for hope for positive change in the Arab world today. Between 2002 and 2006, a prominent group of Arab intellectuals and policymakers collaborated on a radical reform agenda. Headed by Jordanian stateswoman Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, the drafters of the Arab Human Development Report focused on three crucial deficits: a freedom deficit of good government in the Arab world; a knowledge deficit, in which the education system ill prepared young Arabs to take advantage of the opportunities in the global market place; and a deficit in the empowerment of women, restraining half the population of the Arab world from making its full contribution to human development in the region. Written by Arabs, for Arabs, the authors of the Human Development Report aspire to nothing less than a new Arab renaissance. Many of the deficits named in the Arab Human Development Report are being addressed in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf today. The wealth provided by oil revenues has given those countries opportunities to connect to the global economy. Their citizens are broadening participation in government through both appointed and elected office—in Kuwait, Bahrain, even Saudi Arabia, with its consultative Shura Council. The Gulf has seen an unprecedented spread of free media, particularly in satellite television, where stations like Qatar’s al-Jazeera or the UAE’s al-Arabiyya broadcast open debates across Arab borders beyond the reach of government censors. And new universities, both national institutions and branch campuses of premier foreign institutions, provide a wider range of educational opportunities and professional training than Arab citizens have ever enjoyed before. For the Arab world to break the cycle of subordination to other people’s rules will require a balanced engagement from the dominant powers of the age, and a commitment to reform from within the Arab world itself. As the region moves from under the shadow of the war on terror, the very beginnings of such a virtuous cycle may be discerned. Yet much more needs to be done by way of conflict resolution and political reform before the Arabs move beyond a history of conflict and disillusion to achieve their potential and fulfill their aspirations in the modern age.
Acknowledgments
In writing this modern history of the Arab world I have been privileged to be part of a remarkable intellectual community in the Middle East Centre of St. Antony’s College in the University of Oxford. The late Albert Hourani, one of the greatest historians of the Arab world, assembled an innovative group of scholars who made the Middle East Centre Europe’s leading university institute for the study of the modern Middle East. From that original fellowship, my emeritus colleagues Mustafa Badawi, Derek Hopwood, Robert Mabro, and Roger Owen have been my mentors since 1991. I have taken full advantage of their deep knowledge of the Middle East, discussing the arguments of this book with them and imposing draft chapters on them for comment. They have been unstinting in their encouragement and constructive criticisms. The current Fellowship of the Middle East Centre has in every way preserved the magic of Albert Hourani’s original community. In Ahmed Al-Shahi, Walter Armbrust, Raffaella Del Sarto, Homa Katouzian, Celia Kerslake, Philip Robins, and Michael Willis, I have generous friends and colleagues who have made daily contributions to this project—in casual conversation over coffee each morning at the Centre, in suggested readings, and in comments on draft chapters. I owe a particular debt of friendship and gratitude to Avi Shlaim, a brilliant and innovative historian of Israel’s troubled history with the Arabs. Avi read every chapter and met with me over lunches in College to give me the most detailed and constructive feedback. His insightful comments have made their impact on every part of the book. I wish to thank the Middle East Centre’s archivist, Debbie Usher, for her generous support for my research in the archive’s rich collections of private papers and historic photographs. I am most grateful to the Middle East Centre’s Librarian, Mastan Ebtehaj, and to the Centre’s administrator, Julia Cook. I have used material from the book-in-progress for my lectures in modern Arab history at Oxford and am very grateful to our astute students for their feedback. I would like to thank Reem Abou El Fadl, Nick Kardahji, and Nadia Oweidat for their help with research for the book. Over the years of writing this book I have exploited family and friends, specialists and nonspecialists alike, to read and comment on draft chapters along the way. Their encouragement and critiques did more to see the book through to completion than they might believe. I wish to acknowledge my debt to Peter Airey, Tui Clark, Foulath Hadid—my tutor in Iraqi history, Tim Kennedy, Dina Khoury, Joshua Landis, Ronald Nettler, Tom Orde, Thomas Philipp—who first inspired me to study the history of the Arabs, Gabi Piterberg, Tariq Ramadan, my brother Grant Rogan, Kevin Watkins, and my brilliant wife Ngaire Woods. I wish to give special thanks to my most persistent and dedicated reader—Margaret Rogan, my mother. She read every chapter of the book from beginning to end without letting a mother’s love blind her to the mistakes that she, a life-long student of the Middle East, found along the way. I am indebted to Serge Fouchard of the Musйe dйpartemental Albert-Kahn in Boulogne-Billancourt for making copies of the extraordinary autochromes from the Albert Kahn collection available for publication. I am also most grateful to Victoria Hogarth of the Bridgeman Art Library and Jeff Spurr of the Harvard Fine Arts Library for their help with images for the book. The book would never have happened without the particular genius of my literary agent Felicity Bryan. I am especially grateful to Felicity for breaking her own rule not to represent her friends. I will ever be indebted to George Lucas for agreeing to represent me in New York and for treating me to an unforgettable introduction to New York’s publishing world. Together they found the very best publishing houses for this book. My deepest thanks at Basic Books go to my editor, Lara Heimert, who through humor and insight has cajoled a better book from me than ever I could have written on my own. Brandon Proia has shared his editorial talents and helped with finding the right images for the book. Kay Mariea and Michelle Asakawa were heroic at copyediting at break-neck speed. At Penguin, I have benefited throughout the writing of the book from Simon Winder’s deep knowledge and penetrating engagement with the manuscript. My family have been my strength and inspiration at every point in writing this book. To Ngaire, our son Richard and daughter Isabelle, I owe the sanity that counterbalances the madness of taking on such a project. Thank you.