Barry Rubin: Will Their Armies Save (Some) Arab States from Islamism?

Will Their Armies Save (Some) Arab States from Islamism?

Soldiers of Turkey’s once-secular army holding official prayers
as the Islamist regime transforms it into a reliable Islamist force.

By Barry Rubin

Nowhere in the world is Mao Zedong’s dictum that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun truer than in the Middle East.

The armed forces have been the basis of power in the Arabic-speaking world and in Turkey, too. That’s why the nationalist dictatorships and traditionalist monarchies, which had seen so many coups and coup attempts in the 1950s and 1960s, had to find special ways to control the armed forces. They did so by special privileges, close intelligence watches, promoting officers on the basis of loyalty to the regime, and many other measures.


One of these was the creation of elite, parallel military formations. Examples include the Iranian Islamic Republican Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iraqi Republican Guard, the Saudi “White Army,” and others.

During the “Arab Spring” there has not been a single revolution in the usual sense of the word.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

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