Algeria

1963: Ahmed Ben Bella becomes president following independence from France.

1965: Houari Boumediene overthrows Ahmed Ben Bella and becomes president.

1978: Boumediene dies and Chadhli Bendjedid becomes president in early 1979. He remains in office until 1992.

1992:

1. The Islamic Salvation Front wins electoral victories in the general election.

2. The military pressures President Bendjedid to resign, a state of emergency is declared, and the Islamic Salvation Front is forced to dissolve.

3. A military council assumes authority.

4. An insurgency begins, and fighting continues throughout the 1990s.

1994: Liamine Zeroual is elected president.

1999: 'Abd al-'Aziz Bouteflika is elected president.

2011: Small uprisings take place in Algeria in response to the large uprisings taking place in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world.

2014: Bouteflika becomes president for a fourth term at age 77 with 81 percent of the vote.

Egypt

1948: War between the new state of Israel and Arab nations (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq).

1952:

1. Egyptian Free Officers, led by Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser, overthrow the monarchy.

2. Muhammad Neguib serves as the first president.

1954: 'Abd al-Nasser puts Muhammad Neguib under house arrest and takes over as president.

1956: 'Abd al-Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal. Britain, France, and Israel invade Egypt. The United States and the Soviet Union intervene, and a ceasefire is signed.

1958: Syria and Egypt form a union called the United Arab Republic.

1961: The United Arab Republic dissolves when Syria withdraws from the Union.

1962: Egypt intervenes in the Yemeni Civil War to support the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen).

1967: Israel defeats Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in the Six-Day War. Israel occupies Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

1970: 'Abd al-Nasser dies; Anwar al-Sadat becomes president.

1973: Syria and Egypt declare war on Israel. Egypt uses the war to begin negotiations for a peace treaty and a return of the Sinai Peninsula.

1979: Sadat signs a peace treaty with Israel at Camp David.

1981: Sadat assassinated by Islamists. Hosni Mubarak becomes president.

Five years after the uprisings that swept through the Arab republics in 2011, it is hard to argue that the people in these countries are faring any better than before, except in the case of Tunisia. All eight republics – Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen – have long been characterized as authoritarian regimes. This book seeks to deepen our understanding of the authoritarianism and coercive systems that prevailed in these countries, and such knowledge is also critical to making a successful transition to a more open and free society.

The failure and collapse of countries such as Libya or Yemen, and Syria's protracted civil war, suggest that the demise of authoritarianism in the region is perhaps remote. Western observers’ misunderstanding of the uprisings was partly due to their lack of awareness of how authoritarian regimes operated. Many were propelled by a wave of enthusiasm that engulfed not only local people but also scholars and commentators. A salutary lesson can be drawn from the continuing research into Latin American and Eastern European regimes where authoritarianism has been perpetuated in spite of their apparent transition to democracy. This underlines the importance of detailed and accurate analysis of the inner workings of these powerful and pervasive systems.

When researching my previous book (Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime), which was based on the archives of the Ba'th Party regime in Iraq (which ruled from 1968 to 2003), I kept asking whether the other Arab republics were similar or not to Iraq and to each other. To answer that question, I would ideally have to examine the archives of other authoritarian Arab regimes. Unfortunately, they are inaccessible to any researcher. Consequently, I turned to memoirs written by those who were embedded in the system: political leaders, ministers, generals, security agency chiefs, party members, and businessmen close to the center of power. I also examined memoirs of people who were on the outside: political opponents of these regimes and political prisoners. I hoped that a combination of the two groups – insiders and outsiders – would help in the endeavor to learn about the coercive tyrannies of the Arab world in spite of being unable to tap into their closed archives. Secrecy was, of course, the norm in these regimes and dissent was severely punished, so reliable information is not readily available.

Authoritarian politics are shaped by two factors: a conflict between the ruler and the ruled, defined as “the problem of authoritarian control,” and a conflict between the ruler and his partners in power, termed “the problem of authoritarian power-sharing.” In the Arab republics, as part of solving the first “problem,” the regimes relied on the autocracy of their hegemonic parties to sustain their rule. In two countries, Syria and Iraq, there were single-party systems, while in Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria it was called a multi-party system, but in reality these definitions of single or multi are superfluous because the ruling party in all these republics behaved in a more or less similar fashion. In fact, after independence, Algeria and Tunisia began with a single party and then moved to what was portrayed as multi-party rule. In most republics, there was a structure of two interlocking pyramids: the state and the party, ruled with substantial overlap between the two, allowing the state to control and monitor the party. This is very similar to the classic communist model.

Although the dictatorial regimes in single-party countries occasionally included other groups or factions, this never constituted a true multi-party system, which was apparently not an impediment to any of the regimes that hosted regional conferences for Arab parties. Damascus twice hosted such a conference under the auspices of Bashar al-Asad, and no irony was intended in the document issued by the second conference declaring that “democracy and political pluralism are the exemplary means for the conduct of relations between the ruler and the ruled, and in building the state's institutions.”

In Libya, about two years after the coup d'état that brought him to power, Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi announced the formation of the Arab Socialist Union as a single-party system styled after its Egyptian counterpart. Two years later, this ill-equipped party was abandoned when popular committees were created to encourage the masses to participate in the system. The leadership wanted to create a society without a parliament or governing party, based on Qaddafi's philosophy, as laid out in his Green Book, that “the party is the contemporary dictatorship. It is the modern dictatorial instrument of governing. The party is the rule of a part over the whole.” Asked how he wanted history to remember him, Qaddafi replied: “For having implemented direct democracy in my country.

The practice of writing biographies and autobiographies has a long history in both Western and Arabic civilizations. Historians have been challenged by the subjectivity of personal memoirs since the days of chronicling the Romans. Commenting on the task facing historians of England, Benjamin Disraeli wrote: “Generally speaking, all the great events have been distorted, most of the important causes concealed, some of the principal characters never appear, and all who figure are so misunderstood and misrepresented that the result is a complete mystification.” Yet, given the lack of archival resources, the recollections gathered in memoirs of all types can help bring the past to life in remarkable ways. As one eminent historian put it:

Elie Kedourie's seminal study about Arab political memoirs in the 1970s stated: “That they apologize, or palliate or embellish or suppress, in no way diminishes the value of what they write.” From ancient times, those engaged in political life recorded their deeds and accomplishments in personal memoirs. The motivation for “presenting one's life” was seen as an “act of thanking God and for others to emulate.” As Judith Tucker observes about the role of biographies in the Middle East:

Some modern historians in the Arab world looked to memoirs as an important research tool. One Egyptian scholar who examined memoirs of Egyptian politicians over a period of ninety years argues that they constitute an integral part of researching the country's political history. He rejects the notion that “non-objective” sources such as recollections, diaries, and memoirs are less valuable than “objective” sources such as archives, party manifestos, laws and regulations. Political memoirs fall within the comprehensive camp of historiography.

A strong security apparatus is essential to the longevity of authoritarian regimes. This has been highlighted in the classic studies of single-party regimes, as well in recent research into authoritarian resilience in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The security services were without doubt the cornerstone of such regimes in the Arab republics, both in establishing them and ensuring their durability. Whether in communist Europe or in the Arab world, anti-regime demonstrators realized that the ultimate defeat of the security apparatus was critical for revolutions to succeed. Each republic invested large amounts of money and effort to build loyal agencies that could withstand changes and be relied upon to uproot any opposition, real or imaginary. As a result, the number of functionaries and the network of informants expanded significantly in all these countries. Technical surveillance, such as eavesdropping and filming devices, was introduced to improve the efficiency and accuracy of information gathering, and to create a sense of omnipresence among the population.

Fear was a powerful tool used by these organizations to bolster their authority. The miasma of fear permeated all levels of society, although it differed from one country to another. In some countries such as Iraq, the regime was Stalinist throughout its thirty-five-year hegemony. In Syria, the levels of state repression varied from high intensity during the 1980s to a relatively lower level of repression from the mid 1990s. Even in countries like Tunisia, which projected the image of a more open society, people were always on guard against the long arm of the security services. But fear and coercion – critical as they are – constitute only one element in explaining the durability of these regimes. It is hard to believe that so many of them could last for three or four decades based simply on fear. Brutality alone is not a guarantee of durability, and examples such as Cambodia show that force and fear are not the only bulwarks of entrenched political power. In the Arab world, it was also the ability of the republics’ leaders to establish parallel systems of fear and rewards, which Steven Heydemann has termed “networks of privilege,” and to make sure that their supporters were “vested” in the system, that contributed to the long life of the regimes.

The military has played a key role in the history of the Arab republics since their independence from Britain and France, and no institution impacted the history of the region more than the army. The armies were the pride of these republics, regarded as one of their most important institutions, and valued for their inclusiveness in opening their doors to young educated men without too much prejudice about their socio-economic status. Historically, the structure of the armies was modeled on that of their European colonizers who helped to establish them.

The first part of this chapter will look at the military and politics; the second part, at military conflicts and their economic impact; the third section will focus on how the armies themselves were both feared and watched; and the fourth part will examine the lives of soldiers and officers. As in other chapters, the availability of memoirs has largely dictated the discussion, and once again there is a preponderance of Egyptian memoirs over those from other republics.

Military and politics

The role of the military in the Middle East has been discussed at length both before and after the Arab uprisings of 2011. The purpose here, in essence, is to examine the role of the military through the prism of the actors themselves, and to understand civil–military relations as perceived by officers, politicians, and local observers.

After gaining independence from their British and French colonizers, four countries became monarchies (Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen), while the other four declared their independence as republics (Algeria, Sudan, Syria, and Tunisia). The tumultuous period from the 1950s to the end of the 1960s witnessed the demise of the monarchies, as well as multiple coups d'état in the republics. The new leaders of the eight republics were all military men, except for Tunisia (see Table 3.1), and “the armed forces were highly politicized and rulers generally failed to control them.” In the 1980s, the regimes learned the art of coup-proofing by creating structures that would minimize the possibility of a takeover by a small group of officers and prevent coups d'état. The military experience of their presidents, who rose to their positions due to the army's dominance, enhanced these regimes.

Throughout the world, including the Arab region, the cult of personality has played a significant role in authoritarian and totalitarian states, impacting them politically, economically, and culturally. In general, a cult is “an established system of veneration of a political leader, to which members of the society are expected to subscribe, a system that is omnipresent and ubiquitous and one that is expected to persist indefinitely.” Some leaders in the Arab republics developed a personality cult, but even those who did not utilize this device to strengthen their regimes created a sense of being unassailable. With the possible exception of Algeria, Arab leaders carefully centralized power and were the final decision makers.

This chapter will first focus on leaders in the Arab republics, in order to understand how they functioned and interacted with their institutions, ministers, and other Arab leaders. It will then explore the cult of personality and compare it to tyrannical systems outside the Arab world. The reasons for developing a cult, the methods leaders used to achieve it, the common factors among the “cult” dictators, and the implications for decision making will be examined also, concluding with remarks about leadership and the future of personality cults in the region.

Leadership

Between the Egyptian Revolution in 1952 and the Arab uprisings in 2011 there have been forty-one presidents in the eight republics under study; some were in power just for one to two years, while others managed to rule for three or four decades (see Table 3.1). Thirty of these presidents hailed from a military background, and there were other similarities, particularly among those who succeeded in staying in power for a long time. They learned to contend with different constraints and to deal with conflicts and wars, albeit some of their own making; they manipulated the constellation of power to suit their needs, and some created a cult of personality.

What drove many of these leaders to become more despotic is not a simple issue; no doubt they believed as time went by that they were more capable and intelligent than their colleagues, and some of them definitely worked harder than their subordinates.