O
ne day in April 2008, I received a call from an Arab country inviting me to a visit on the 28th of that month. At the time, I was the director of the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) and received quite a few invitations to attend and speak at cultural fairs and symposiums, so the invitation did not surprise me. Also, by that time, I had been contributing regularly to the Asharq Al-Awsat for four years which had created a bridge to the Gulf. The region had been one of my main academic interests since serving as a political adviser at the Qatari Royal Court from 1990 to 1993, which was during and after the war to liberate Kuwait and, therefore, a period of conflict, acute tension, and intensive diplomatic activity. As for the invitation, as a Palestinian friend of mine told me on the phone, “they want you for an important research mission concerned with strengthening national identity.”
In political science literature, “identity” comes under the general heading of “modernity” and the formation of the nation state. As a research topic, it addresses the question of what makes the French French and the Germans German. Does it have to do with certain traits that are unique to the French or Germans and do not exist in other countries? Do these traits have a genetic dimension or, in today’s parlance, are they encoded in the DNA? In other words, are they inherent and not a human invention or construct?
After I arrived for the preliminary interview, I understood that the matter was very serious. I told them that I would discuss it with colleagues at the ACPSS. A month later, I returned to present a research plan to be carried out by 40 experts in political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, and history. Then, over the next year, the work was carried out in Cairo and the Arab country. Then, after we were finished and submitted our findings, we waited to see how that country in question would implement the 222 recommendations with which we concluded the project. As it turned out, we were extremely impressed.
Why did I open with this brief story about a successful research project? The answer is that many Arab countries, like Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, and to some extent Iraq, are experiencing or are on the brink of civil warfare or have experienced bouts of Civil War and fear it could reignite. Armed conflict and the threat thereof are the product of many intertwining factors, but one of the most important is the weakness of the national bond or the overarching identity between different components of the nation. This helps explain the unacceptable situation we currently see in Sudan, where conflict rages from the capital to all corners of the country and Sudanese are killing their Sudanese brothers after excluding them from the common identity. This type of identity exclusion applies to all cases. However, Sudan, which is the most recent case, is also an example of the naivety that characterises negotiating processes brokered by international and regional parties in foreign capitals where the two sides are brought together to agree on a truce only for fighting to break out again hours later, causing yet more military and civilian deaths.
Ethnic and religious divisions may sometimes be a source of clashing identities and related interests. But history has shown these divisions can be resolved, as was the case between the English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish who after long periods of war ultimately came together to forge a common identity bound to the British Crown, beneath which flag they all fought together in the world wars of the 20th century. The American Civil War in 1860 was not about conflicting ethnic or sectarian identities, but rather about the contradiction between the Declaration of Independence, which affirmed the human and political rights of all people, and the US Constitution, which condoned slavery and the subjugation and degradation of “inferior” groups, such as Blacks, women, and Jews. In the end, the US remained united. The South was defeated and a new American “identity” emerged grounded in a common industrial and technological project capable of embracing a continent-sized nation and eventually taking it to superpower status.
Identity is an essential component of the state. It tells us that a group of people have coalesced around a distinct set of symbols, narratives, culture, and common interests that set them apart from neighbouring peoples. It also comes with practical and procedural facets such as the willingness of the members of the group to defend their common borders, to pay taxes, to work towards the collective development. Nation states devise and pursue policies and measures intended to promote and continually advance the common weal. It must not allow a group such as Hizbullah to hold veto power over all the decisions that state must make towards this end. The state identity, and the national pride it embodies, makes control of natural resources a matter of concern for all citizens. It also means that the state alone should hold the monopoly on the legitimate recourse to arms. Unfortunately, what we find in the Arab world is quite a few cases where arms and militias have proliferated and mutual antagonisms between groups have erupted in hostilities that claim thousands of lives. For example, in the current conflict in Sudan, more than 15,000 people have been killed in Darfur alone, according to a recent UN report.
This type of thing cannot happen in a state unless the national identity has grown so weak and fragile that the people splinter into disparate and hostile groups that then go to war against each other. In the process they form and arm militias that sometimes grow stronger than the national army. It is little wonder, given how central identity and its constituent elements and conditions are to the health of the state and its people, that the Arab reform states have given high priority to national identity as a cornerstone of the reform processes we see in progress today.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 1 February, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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