THE STRUGGLE

FOR MASTERY IN THE

FERTILE CRESCENT
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
HERBERT AND J ANE DWI GHT WORKI NG GROUP
ON I SL AMI SM AND THE I NTERNATI ONAL ORDER
Many of the writings associated with this
Working Group will be published by the Hoover Institution.
Materials published to date, or in production, are listed below.
ESSAY SERI ES:
THE GREAT UNRAVELI NG: THE REMAKI NG OF THE MI DDLE EAST
In Retreat: Americas Withdrawal from the Middle East
Russell A. Berman
Israel and the Arab Turmoil
Itamar Rabinovich
Refections on the Revolution in Egypt
Samuel Tadros
Te Struggle for Mastery in the Fertile Crescent
Fouad Ajami
Te Weavers Lost Art
Charles Hill
Te Consequences of Syria
Lee Smith
ESSAYS
Saudi Arabia and the New Strategic Landscape
Joshua Teitelbaum
Islamism and the Future of the Christians of the Middle East
Habib C. Malik
Syria through Jihadist Eyes: A Perfect Enemy
Nibras Kazimi
Te Ideological Struggle for Pakistan
Ziad Haider
Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah: Te Unholy Alliance and
Its War on Lebanon
Marius Deeb
[For a list of books published under the auspices of the
WORKING GROUP ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER,
please see page 59.]
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
THE STRUGGLE
FOR MASTERY IN THE
FERTILE CRESCENT
Fouad Ajami
H O O V E R I N S T I T U T I O N P R E S S
Stanford University Stanford, California
HERBERT & JANE DWIGHT WORKING GROUP ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER
ESSAY SERIES: THE GREAT UNRAVELING: THE REMAKING OF THE MIDDLE EAST
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Te Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded
at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on
to become the thirty-frst president of the United States, is an
interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic
and international afairs. Te views expressed in its publications are
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www.hoover.org
Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 649
Hoover Institution at Leland Stanford Junior University,
Stanford, California, 94305-6010
Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
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ISBN 978-0-8179-1755-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
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ISBN 978-0-8179-1757-9 (mobi)
ISBN 978-0-8179-1758-6 (PDF)
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Te Hoover Institution gratefully acknowledges
the following individuals and foundations
for their signifcant support of the
HERBERT AND JANE DWIGHT WORKING GROUP
ON ISLAMISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER:
Herbert and Jane Dwight
Mr. and Mrs. Donald R. Beall
Stephen Bechtel Foundation
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. Clayton W. Frye Jr.
Lakeside Foundation
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
vii
Series Foreword
by Fouad Ajami and Charles Hill / ix
Te Struggle for Mastery in the Fertile Crescent / 1
I. Te Patrons / 1
II. In the Name of the Saints / 6
III. Blowback / 11
IV. A War with No Secrets / 16
V. A War with No Victors / 26
VI. A Foreigners Gif: Liberation in Iraq / 31
VII. Te Matter of State Power / 35
VIII. Te Last Refuge? / 48
Source Notes / 53
About the Author / 55
About the Hoover Institutions Herbert and
Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism
and the International Order / 57
Index / 61
CONTENTS
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
ix
It s a mantra, but it is also true: the Middle
East is being unmade and remade. Te autocra-
cies that gave so many of these states the appear-
ance of stability are gone, their dreaded rulers
dispatched to prison or exile or cut down by
young people who had yearned for the end of the
despotisms. Tese autocracies were large prisons,
and in 2011, a storm overtook that stagnant
world. Te spectacle wasnt pretty, but prison
riots never are. In the Fertile Crescent, the work
of the colonial cartographersGertrude Bell,
Winston Churchill, and Georges Clemenceau
are in play as they have never been before. Arab
SERIES FOREWORD
The Great Unraveling:
The Remaking of the Middle East
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
x
SE RI E S F ORE WORD
G
nationalists were given to lamenting that they
lived in nation-states invented by Western pow-
ers in the afermath of the Great War. Now, a cen-
tury later, with the ground burning in Lebanon,
Syria, and Iraq and the religious sects at war, not
even the most ardent nationalists can be sure
that they can put in place anything better than
the old order.
Men get used to the troubles they know, and
the Greater Middle East seems fated for grief
and breakdown. Outside powers approach it
with dread; merciless political contenders have
the run of it. Tere is swagger in Iran and a
belief that the radical theocracy can bully its
rivals into submission. Tere was a period when
the United States provided a modicum of order
in these Middle Eastern lands. But pleading
fatigue, and fnancial scarcity at home, we have
all but announced the end of that stewardship.
We are poorer for that abdication, and the Middle
East is thus lef to the mercy of predators of
every kind.
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
xi
SE RI E S F ORE WORD
G
We asked a number of authors to give this
spectacle of disorder their best try. We imposed
no rules on them, as we were sure their essays
would take us close to the sources of the
malady.
fouad ajami
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Cochairman, Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group
on Islamism and the International Order
charles hill
Distinguished Fellow of the Brady-Johnson Program
in Grand Strategy at Yale University;
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Cochairman, Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group
on Islamism and the International Order
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
1
I: THE PATRONS
Nowadays, the shadow of resourceful powers
lies across the Fertile Crescentthe stretch of
geography that runs from the Iranian border
with Iraq to the Mediterranean. Tese are not
the Western powers that enjoyed decades of pri-
macy in the region. Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Ara-
bia have stepped into the vacuum lef by the
retreat and disinterest of the West. Of the three
powers, Iran must be reckoned to be the stron-
gest. It has money to spread and plenty of
bravado to impress the gullible, and its Shiite
communities help paper over the Arab-Persian
Te Struggle for Mastery
in the Fertile Crescent
FOUAD AJ A MI
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
2
F OUAD AJ AMI
G
divide and the diferences of language and tem-
perament. It is an outlaw powerits Quds Force,
a unit of the Revolutionary Guard, can strike at
will in the region, blurring the line between poli-
tics and terror. Its nuclear ambitions, and the
scramble of the worlds powers to contain those
ambitions, give Iran great leverage in this regional
contest. Te suspicion arises that the theocracys
transgressions in this neighborhood can be for-
given so long as it is willing to halt its nuclear
drive.
Turkey is an odd claimant to infuence. A
century ago, Turkey turned its back to the Arab
domains it had governed for a good four centu-
ries. Ottomanism was discarded as a new Turk-
ish republic looked West, believing there was
nothing of value in the old Ottoman provinces.
But a neo-Ottomanist temptation was to rear its
head with the rise of a younger generation of
Islamists in the countrys politics. Te return to
the Arab world was hesitant and rested on the
preference of a fairly narrow political class. Te
bureaucratic and military elites and the West-
ernized intellectuals wanted nothing to do with
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
3
THE STRUGGLE FOR MASTERY IN THE FERTILE CRESCENT
G
this new calling. Still, what has been dubbed the
Sunnifcation of Turkish foreign policy had
plunged the Turkish state into Arab afairs. A
daring leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had suc-
cumbed to a grand Islamic ambition for himself
and his country. His Arab detractors spoke of
him as a new sultan and insisted that they were
done with the age of sultans. But geography had
its pull, and the disorder so near Turkish terri-
tory, in Syria, and Iraq gave the Turkish state new
opportunities as it brought dangers aplenty.
In the scheme of things, the third of these
powers, Saudi Arabia, is the most cautious of
players. Saudis are supreme realists; they are
immune to the call of great, risky endeavors.
Tey guard their home turf but, for the most
part, steer clear of the quarrels of others. Tey
have wealth, and they rightly suspect that foreign
entanglements will be a drain on them. But a new
activism came to the Saudi realm of late. Tere
were contests over Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon they
could not ignore. A monarch who goes by the
title of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques
could not avert his gaze from the Sunni-Shia
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
4
F OUAD AJ AMI
G
fght at play in the Fertile Crescent. Iran, a rival
in the Gulf, had pulled Saudi Arabia into this
contest of nations and religious sects. Saudi
Arabia shed its reticence out of a legitimate fear
that Irans bid for dominion had grown increas-
ingly menacing. Saudi Arabia couldnt sit out
the assault of Bashar al-Assad on a Sunni rebel-
lion or the brazen conquest of Beirut by Hezbol-
lah. In their modern history, the Saudis had an
abiding faith in American power. Te abdica-
tion by the Obama administration would, in
time, force the Saudis to greater assertiveness
than they had been known for. Te House of
Saud has great leeway over sovereign matters,
but the rulers still have to be responsive to the
ulama (religious scholars) and to laymen ofended
by the ordeal of Sunni communities in Iraq,
Syria, and Lebanon.
Te disorder of the Fertile Crescenta mag-
net that draws outsiderscan be traced to the
weakness of Sunni Islam in this region. In the
Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, and North Africa,
mainstream Sunni Islam is ascendant. Te fault
line that bedevils these lands is between secu-
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
5
THE STRUGGLE FOR MASTERY IN THE FERTILE CRESCENT
G
larists, who want to keep the faith at bay, and
Islamists, who have stepped forth in recent
decades to assert the hegemony of the sacred
over the political. Te Fertile Crescent presents
a diferent landscape. Here, Sunni Islam was
ascendant in the cities and centuries of Otto-
man rule augmented Sunnism. Arab national-
ism, too, had been a prop of Sunni primacy. But
the edifce of Sunni power was fragile, and it
would be toppled in the course of the second
half of the past century. Te military despotism
of the Alawis in Damascus and the rise of the
Shia in Beirut and Baghdad were a challenge
that Sunnism felt as a great violation. When the
rebellion came to Syria in 2011the last of the
rebellions of the Arab Springa terrible strug-
gle lay in wait for the Syrians and their immedi-
ate neighbors. In Syria and Lebanon, the Sunnis,
merchant communities, had to take up arms to
correct for their military weakness. In Iraq, the
Sunnis, suddenly powerless in the afermath of
an American war, fell into despondency only to
be inspired by a Sunni rebellion across a mean-
ingless Iraq-Syria frontier.
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Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
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