Pan-Arabism

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The idea that the Arabs are a distinct people with a common language, history, and culture. Pan-Arabism emerged in the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. When the shock of the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire, followed by the imposition of the Mandates at the expense of the Arab Kingdom of the Amir Faisal in 1920, settled in upon the Arabs, some argued that Pan-Arabism had emerged as a substitution for Pan-Islamism with the more narrowed focus on the Arabs rather than on Muslims. For others, it was an expression of resistance to the colonialism of Britain and France which had imposed a territorial division upon the region. For yet others, Pan-Arabism was an expression of opposition to the effort of the newly formed states and governments of the mandates to encourage separate national identities.

Arab nationalism is generally referred to as a Pan-Arabist ideology incorporating the above ideas. This ideology was strongly influenced by the ideas of Sati' al-Husri (1879-1968), a Syrian who studied in France, Switzerland, and Belgium, who in turn had been influenced by German romantic nationalists and their ideas of the nation. Al-Husri saw the Arab nation, comprising the Arab east and North Africa, as a cultural community further united by a common language. It was a common language and a shared history that formed the basis for a national identity and a nation. It is only within the nation that a people could modernize and progress. His view of the Arab nation was inclusive of all groups and races speaking the Arabic language in the Middle East including North Africa. His was a secular concept of Arab nationalism with the added ultimate political objective of Arab unity. This latter was interpreted by the Ba'athists as meaning the formation of a single independent Arab state incorporating the Arab nation. The other main view of Arab unity associated with Jamal Abd al-Nasir was that of solidarity among Arab governments, concerned less with the abstractions of nationalism than the pragmatic economic and social concerns and the importance of unity of the Arab world in the face of predatory blocs.

While Arabism, the foundation of the ethnos in Arab nationalism, did not deny the Islamic element, the Pan-Arab nationalism that evolved was secular in character. Until the humiliating defeat by Israel in the June 1967 war, it attracted the hopes and support of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. This defeat had the corrosive effect of undermining faith in an already weakening ideology that had served as a guide, a strategy, and driving force in the region that competed with other developing local nationalisms. It was apparent that Arab governments were neither inclined to integrate, nor able to unite on the basis of solidarity, nor cooperate to defeat the Zionist state of Israel. From this point onward, Pan-Arab nationalism began to lose ground to political Islam.

— Barbara Allen Roberson

Movement and doctrine for Arab political unity.

Pan-Arabism, the desire or drive for Arab political unity, was largely, albeit not entirely, a product of World War I, when much of the former Ottoman Empire was awarded to British or French mandates by the League of Nations. Arab attention in the ensuing two decades focused on obtaining political independence from European control as opposed to broader discussions of social reform or the adoption of a particular political system. In the process, budding Arab nationalism and vague formulations of Arab unity became increasingly interwoven with support for Palestinians in their opposition to Jewish land purchase and immigration under the British Mandate.

As the Arab leadership organized to resist foreign occupation, it fostered a debate over which elements of the Arab heritage could best be employed as symbols around which to shape the image of Arab states. Some Arab writers continued to assert the primacy of Islamic bonds while others, like the Syrian educator Sati al-Husari, rejected Islamic sentiments in favor of a unified Arab nation bound by ties of Arab culture. Emphasizing the secular components of the Arab heritage, al-Husari envisioned an Arab nation, unified politically, and similar to the nations of Europe.

As late as World War II, pan-Arabism in the sense of a political movement aimed at unifying the Arab nation remained centered on Iraq, Syria, and the Arabian peninsula. The Baʿth Party in the 1940s called for comprehensive Arab unity in the form of a single Arab state stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. Neither Egypt nor the Maghrib, the western Islamic world traditionally comprising Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and later Libya, played a significant role in pan-Arab movements until after the end of the war.

In the 1950s Gamal Abdel Nasser and the United Arab Republic (UAR) coopted the pan-Arabism of the Baʿth Party. Nasser argued that the Arab nations enjoyed a unity of language, religion, history, and culture, which they should exploit to create their own system of cooperation and defense. The peak of both Nasser's popularity and pan-Arabism as a political movement occurred between the 1956 Suez crisis and the June 1967 Arab - Israeli war. The collapse of the UAR in 1961 followed by the Arab defeat in 1967 dealt a severe psychological blow to the prestige of Arab leaders and the confidence of the Arab people; it is considered by many to constitute the Waterloo of pan-Arabism.

Over the next two decades, only a few Arab governments, notably Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya, continued to promote pan-Arabism in terms of practical political union. As other Arab states established themselves and began to define and pursue national interests, their commitment to pan-Arabism was increasingly perfunctory. By the end of the twentieth century, its time as a widely accepted doctrine and political movement had passed; and if panArabism was not dead, it was surely a spent force. By the 1990s, Islamist political movements, inspired in part by the successful Iranian Revolution of 1979, were growing in popularity and strength throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, often supplanting the earlier enthusiasm for pan-Arabism.

Bibliography

Antonius, George. The Arab Awakening: The Story of the ArabNational Movement. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1946.

Dawisha, Adeed. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: FromTriumph to Despair. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Haim, Sylvia, ed. Arab Nationalism: An Anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.

Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798 - 1939. New York; London: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Khalidi, Rashid; Anderson, Lisa; Muhammad Muslih; et al., eds. The Origins of Arab Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

— RONALD BRUCE ST JOHN

The Arab world

Pan-Arabism is a movement for unification among the peoples and countries of the Arab World, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea. It is closely connected to Arab nationalism which asserts that the Arabs constitute a single nation. The idea was at its height during the 1960s. Pan-Arabism has tended to be secular and often socialist, and has strongly opposed colonialism and Western political involvement in the Arab world. It also sought to improve security of states from outside forces by forming alliances and, to a lesser extent, economic cooperation.^[1] Pan-Arabism is a form of cultural nationalism.

Contents 1 Origins and Leaders 2 Attempts at Arab union 3 Decline 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Origins and Leaders

Pan-Arabism was first pressed by Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, who sought independence from the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of a unified state of Arabia. In 1915-16, the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence resulted in an agreement between the United Kingdom and the Sharif that if the Arabs successfully revolted against the Ottomans, the United Kingdom would support claims for Arab independence. In 1916, however, the Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France determined that parts of the Arab Mashreq would be divided between those powers rather than forming part of an independent Arab state. When the Ottoman Empire surrendered in 1918, the United Kingdom refused to keep to the letter of its arrangements with Hussein and the two nations assumed guardianship of several newly-created states. Ultimately, Hussein became king only of Hijaz (later incorporated into Saudi Arabia) in the then less strategically valuable south.

States and Territories of the Arab League

Additionally, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 as reason to administer Palestine and the subsequent creation of the British Mandate upset pan-Arabists designs for a geographically contiguous pan-Arab state from the Arab Maghreb and Egypt to the Mashreq. A more formalized pan-Arab ideology than that of Hussein was first espoused in the 1930s, notably by Syrian thinkers such as Constantin Zureiq, Zaki al-Arsuzi and Michel Aflaq. Aflaq and al-Arsuzi were key figures in the establishment of the Arab Ba’ath (Renaissance) Party, and the former was for long its chief ideologist, combining elements of Marxist thought with a nationalism to a considerable extent reminiscent of nineteenth century European romantic nationalism.

Abdallah of Jordan dreamed of uniting Syria, Palestine, and Jordan under his leadership in what he would call Greater Syria. He proposed a plan to this effect to Britain, who controlled Palestine at that time, but to no avail. The plan was not popular among the majority of Arabs and fostered distrust among the leaders of the other Middle Eastern countries against Abdallah. This distrust of Abdallah's expansionist aspirations was one of the principle reasons for the founding of the Arab League in 1945. Once Abdallah was assassinated by a Palestinian nationalist in 1951, the vision of Greater Syria was dropped from the Jordanian agenda.^[1]

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose ideology of "Nasserism" defined the pan-Arabism of the 1960s

In contrast to pan-Islamism, pan-Arabism is secular and nationalistic as many prominent pan-Arabs, such as Aflaq (Greek Orthodox) were not Muslim. Tariq Aziz, an Aramaic-speaking Chaldean Christian and the once deputy prime minister of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, was another prominent pan-Arabist. However, in de-emphasizing the role of Islam, pan-Arab ideology has been accused of inciting prejudice against and downplaying the role of non-Arab peoples such as the Berbers,^[2]Turks, Persians, and Kurds, amongst others.^[3] Additionally, while Lebanon is traditionally thought of as an Arab state, there is a movement in that country supporting the idea that Lebanese are Phoenicians. As such, these groups are quite hostile to pan-Arabism.

Attempts at Arab union

There have been several attempts to bring about a Pan-Arab state by many well known Arab leaders that ultimately resulted in failure. The United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958 was the first attempt. Formed under Nasser, it was a union between Egypt and Syria, although Nasser exerted so much control over the union that the UAR functioned as a Nasserist takeover than a cooperation between two governments. It lasted in this form until 1961 when Syria's withdrew from the union, but "[i]n April 1963, Egypt, Syria and Iraq agreed to form a new 'United Arab Republic'—which was to be entirely federal in structure, leaving each member state its identity and institutions."^[1] The UAR was finally abolished in 1971 due to irreconcilable differences between Syria and Egypt.^[4]

Two later attempts were conducted by Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi; these were the Federation of Arab Republics and the Arab Islamic Republic. Both failed before beginning. Unity between Southern and Northern Yemen, though, was successful. Also, the unity of seven Arab emirates that form the UAE today stand as examples of the possibility of success of Arab unification. The current Syrian government is, and the former government of Iraq was, led by the Ba’ath Party, which espouses pan-Arabism.

Decline

The high point of the pan-Arab movement was in the 1960s, when the movement was spearheaded by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, but pan-Arabism was strongly hurt by the Arab defeat by Israel in the Six Day War and the inability of pan-Arabist governments to generate economic growth. Nasser too overplayed his hand in trying to form a pan-Arab hegemony under himself. "By the mid-1970s," according to The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East, "the idea of Arab unity became less and less apparent in Arab politics, though it remained a wishful goal among the masses."^[1] Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978 fractured the Arab world further. By the late 1980s, pan-Arabism began to be eclipsed by Islamist ideologies. It continues however, to exert a strong influence in Arab print media and intellectual circles, particularly in the Levant.

See also

• Arab Federation
• Arab Islamic Republic
• Arab Maghreb Union
• Arab nationalism
• Arab Revolt
• Arab socialism
• Federation of Arab Republics
• Nasserism
• Pan-Arab colors
• Pan Arab Games
• Pan-Islamism
• United Arab Republic

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} "Arab Unity." The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East. Ed. Avraham Sela. New York: Continuum, 2002. pp. 160-166.
2. ^ El Watan, July 18, 2007
3. ^ Raymond A. Hinnebusch, Anoushiravan Ehteshami, The Foreign Policies of Middle East States. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002. pg 169
4. ^ "United Arab Republic (UAR)." Sela. The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East. 873-874.

External links

• Arab Nationalism: Mistaken Identity by Martin Kramer
• Sample chapter from Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century by A. Dawisha
• "Pan-Arabism on the March?: Israel Weighs the New Challenge" by Nissim Rejwan

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