Military conflicts, external intervention, human tragedies, complex domestic and regional politics, religious forces… for the last four decades, the Middle East region has been marked by a large panel of diverse dynamics, which have become a fertile ground for long-lasting tensions. Drawing from his extensive knowledge, on-the-ground observations and personal experiences, renowned political scientist and Professor Gilles Kepel has provided us for the last years, with some keys to understanding the complex political history of the region. Called “France’s most famous scholar of Islam” by The New York Times, he just released his latest book Away from Chaos – The Middle East and the Challenge to the West. On this occasion, he shared with us his thoughts on the recent impacts of Covid-19 crisis on the Middle East, as well as his view regarding the region’s potential future and the evolution of its links with the West. 

Conference led by Julien Artero (promo 2003), General Secretary of SciencesPo Alumni UK

Transcription by Albane Demaret and Florian Darras

We are just coming out of the biggest world pandemic in recent human history and possibly entering the biggest economic depression ever seen: what is the impact on the Middle East of the Covid-19 situation? 

The Covid-19 crisis took place at a time when the oil market was already undergoing some problems. At the beginning of the year, we had reached some of the highest prices ever with a very strange situation because the United States had become the first net oil exporter, with approximately 15 million barrels a day out of a hundred.

Vladimir Poutine at the March conference in Vienna of the so-called OPEC+ meeting – that is the OPEC countries plus Russia – had decided to start a sort of offensive, in order to oust the American shale oil producers from the market. Indeed, the Americans cannot follow if prices are below a certain level. Therefore, after they would have been ousted, then the OPEC+ would have controlled production and the prices would have gone up again but without the Americans, because they would not have survived in the meanwhile.

Russia and Saudi Arabia both increased significantly their production, then Covid-19 came in full blast and there was no demand anymore on the oil market: something that was totally unbelievable. The barrel reached some day in April, the price of -37$! This created an unbelievable combination of pressure on the Middle East.

In a way, the combination of Covid-19 and the crash of the oil market, in my understanding, sort of ends this time period I try to review in the book. 

I start the book with the October war of 1973, which corresponded with Yom Kippur on the one hand and Ramadan on the other, where it caused the West to come to the rescue of Israel after an initial attack by the Arabs backed by the USSR at the time. Then Arab oil producers decided to embargo their exports to countries that were supporting Israel. Therefore, that led to a skyrocketing of oil prices and oil became a weapon, which it was not from World War II until this moment. 

So the Middle East was sort of hooked to the World System first and foremost through oil, and also through the politicization of Islam, perceived first in a conservative way, sponsored by Saudi Arabia. 

Then six years after, with the event of the Iranian revolution of 1979, there was an attempt by the Iranian to hijack this politicization of Islam in a revolution way and anti-American dimension. This fight has been ongoing for four and a half decade. 

We have probably reached a climax this year because this model - that functioned in the region and in the world - is not sustainable anymore. There are all those reforms which are foreseen particularly in the Arabian Peninsula and in Saudi Arabia, first and foremost because oil is not enough. There has been a tremendous demographic growth and you cannot live out of a rentier economy. Otherwise, the whole political organization of the region is going to fall down. And this is why Saudi Arabia, but also the United Arab Emirates and a few others, have started to think about the post-oil economy, which has led to some reforms in Saudi Arabia. 

And there is something very striking with Covid-19 crisis: Saudi Arabia took immediate measures to restrict pilgrimage and did not issue visas to go to the Umrah pilgrimage, for fear of contamination and infection. And it has not been decided yet but it is very likely that they will not allow the major pilgrimage the Hajj, which is one of the five pillars of Islam, to take place this year. There are some religious precedents but there is a very strong pressure from rigorist salafi groups or jihadi groups who say it is a betrayal of religion. This is a very important thing because it means that the Saudi leadership is now becoming, to some extent, indifferent in terms of its own legitimacy, to what the religious rulers may rule or not rule. It has to deal with them cautiously but they are not the decision-makers. 

Contrast it with Iran: Mr Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic republic, is heavily dependent on the Islamic and the clerical establishment. He could not do anything against the Shia pilgrimage to the tombs of Saints in Qom, in Mashhad, and in other places. I do not know if any of you has ever witnessed a pilgrimage in Iran, where crowds flock around the tombs, kiss the bars, strike and everything… Of course there is no hydroalcoholic gels, nothing that is being given to the pilgrims to clean they hands or their lips. So this was a sure recipe to propagate the virus at an incredible speed and this is why Iran was so hardly hit. This is therefore a big change that is happening. 

Adding to that, apart from the internal conflict in the region for the hegemony on the Gulf, between the Saudi block and the Iranian crescent – which has to do also with the situation in Syria, where you have Turkey and Russia competing against each other but being allied against western and European presence in Libya which is extremely important – apart from that, there is a major issue that is the Gulf region was a hub for globalization. You had tankers and cargos and trade ships coming from China and Asia, loaded with manufactured products going from textile to semiconductors, that were unloaded in Jebel el Ali in the Emirates, then boarded on planes to go to Africa, to central Asia, to Europe… If the sort of supply chain to China system is criticized as it is, if it decreases in intensity, that means – and there were studies by the Dubai chamber of commerce that seem to show it – that a looming economic crisis is going to take place in the region, not only because of the crash of the oil prices, but also the fact that the “hub dimension” of the region between Asia and Europe is not going to have the same magnitude as it had before. 

These are only a few items to describe how the present crisis has impacted the Middle East and also how it deals with a number of challenges that trace back to the 1970s. That is why I believe this is a defining moment. When I entitled the book Away from Chaos - Sortir du Chaos in French - I had that in mind but to some extent, the developments have confirmed the assumptions I made. Now the “Away from” is clear. Whether or not this is going out of chaos or into more chaos is another issue. But what I believe is that it is a watershed period definitely, in the region. 

On something else, there will be a rise again in oil prices because the market has started again to buy oil, even if there was a strong environmental change: people have learned to live without moving, our relation to transportation has changed, we are now on a video conference instead of moving from Paris to London… This is going probably to last. We are not going to live as we lived. This is going to lead to tremendous changes in transportation, in consumption of liquid fossils: that is one thing. 

But nevertheless, in the meanwhile, bankruptcy, economic crises and alike are going to rise in the region, in the Middle East and North Africa, probably with more magnitude than it is the case in Europe because there is no social security or very little, very little welfare system and alike. And of course, we will create significant tensions on two issues. First, undocumented immigration across the Mediterranean, and then the fact that Libya is now under a duo Russian-Turkish control, it is a matter of major concern for recipient countries of immigrants from Africa i.e. Europe, particularly countries with a Mediterranean shoreline. Second, the other issue is that the very stability of the political systems of the region is going to be under stress. Social peace was bought in a number of countries, particularly in rentier oil-rent countries like Algeria for instance. Social peace was delivered because oil money was redistributed in a patronage system, to clients of different regimes. If this oil money is missing, this will probably lead to very significant pressures on the legal system. This is one of the major problems today. There is a strong need for a vision for the future of the region and this is a major challenge for us Europeans. And among other things, because Europe cannot survive if we do not have a security policy and a defense policy in common. 

The Trump administration is willing to withdraw from the region – at least, that was the policy until recently. What role the United States are willing to play in the region? This fundamental player seems to be out of the picture…

You are right and the main important military in the Mediterranean was the American Sixth Fleet until recently and it was keeping some sort of balance. Had it still been around, Turkish ships and planes could never have sent seven thousands former rebels – including a number of jihadists – from Syria to Libya and this is clearly a major challenge. 

Now, this has to do with what we discussed before. When America was sure of becoming a net exporter of oil, then the Trump administration policy was to say “We do not need boots on the ground anymore. We do not need to send our boys to die in the sands of Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan. Bring the boys back home, America first!” 

You have also to keep in mind that Donald Trump was elected among other things because he won in three swing states where there had been a very significant toll of young people who died in the military. These States were part of the “Rust Belt”, there were no jobs and they went into the military and came back dead. Trump won by a small margin in those states – Pennsylvania, Minnesota – and this is how he won in 2016. Now, with that, the situation has changed. Now America is going to become a new net oil importer and not exporter. If you are a net oil importer and a super power, challenged by China, can you remain away from the Middle East? This is a major challenge. 

Now, as far as the Libyan question is posed, it seems very difficult to understand – or to admit – that Turkey alone could go to Libya. Even though the Sixth fleet is not everywhere, they would have noticed. So to what extent did Washington let things happen in Libya in Tripoli? Even though there are some problems between Turkey and the West, it was American weapons – because Turkey is a NATO country – that defeated Russian weapons in Libya. This is something that it still unclear. But it seems quite unlikely that this could have happened without some American benevolence towards Turkey. 

To the US, the Middle East is far away, and for Jihadists in the good old days of Al Qaida, America was “the far away enemy”. So, they are not really concerned as we are in Europe by the daily presence in immediate neighborhood on the other side of the seas and in some underprivileged banlieues, of elements that come from this region, and that proved to be posing real threats to European society. To go back to London, there was an attack the 21st of June, which was reminiscent of the fact that this is a danger which has not disappeared. Therefore, here again, I believe that the American agenda is one thing. And the European agenda is something different. And this is why, the necessity for much stronger European build-up in terms of security and defense is proven by Libya, if I may say so. 

Can you tell us your view about the new relationship that could emerge between Europe and the Middle East? Also, could the Middle East region be a new opportunity for Europe from an economic standpoint? (and not only from a security standpoint?)

This is one of the big issues for the post-Covid era. When we discovered that even face masks had to be ordered from China and not only from other European states, and that even French regions competed against one another to overbid in order to have 10 million of masks delivered… this showed us how dependent we were and how “global” capitalism – this is my lefty moment – was so obsessed with profit that it just does not care about issues of security, market supplies and everything. This has been food for thoughts for many people. 

In Europe, add that to this issue of environment, there is now a feeling that the hyper-extended supply chain to China and a sort of exclusive monopolistic supply chain to China -and to some extent to India - was extremely dangerous and it was not good for the climate. 

So some people started to call for “reshoring”. When we were young, we used to talk about the Asian Tigers: Korea, Taiwan, Singapore etc. that benefitted at the time from Japanese prosperity. And already, in the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, a supply economy had started in Turkey first and foremost – before Mr. Erdogan went with his new ottoman policy and translated his economic wealth into a much more aggressive issue. 

We now have Morocco: the price of labor in Morocco is lower than it is in China. There are already a number of products which are being manufactured in a country like Morocco, from automotive parts, textile but also electronics, etc. Tunisia, if its economic challenges could be deal with, has a highly educated middle-class, which has created an entrepreneurial society, hampered by political despotism in the past, which is now grappling with the political transition. There is a very big potential here. Maybe in Egypt tomorrow, and why not in the Levant, the day after tomorrow. Plus Israel, which is also playing a significant role in the region. Political reasons may hamper those developments but it is there. And the Gulf is definitely willing to fuel that with investments. 

With this, we could foresee a vision of the region which would boost entrepreneurs instead of oil rents in the region, which is the only way to reach an economic balance instead of oil money buying social peace, which has led to violence, to the spread of Islamist political ideology and alike. We definitely would be far less dependent on the Chinese. 

This is one of the options which is envisaged. But this is highly dependent of course on the political developments that we shall see in the months to come. For the time being, we still - particularly in Europe because of the social security benefits - have not yet measured the full blast of the crisis, which is felt much more in America because you have millions of people on the door, unemployed already. In Europe, it is going slower. There is a time when we are going to have to pay the price. 

If we do not manage to boost economic and social initiatives, sooner or later, this is going to be a major problem. For the time we are obsessed with security, with our own economic problems, but we definitely have to foresee what is going to happen in our southern environment and also eastern European environment –much of Eastern Europe being already in the EU, but that is another issue.

What is your view about political Islam in the region, given the fact that the old model is no longer working? 

Political Islam was boosted by the tremendous rise of oil prices from 1973 onwards. It was a conservative political resource for the oil monarchies. Then, it was high jacked by the Iranian revolution as a revolutionary political resource. You had what I call the 3 phases of Jihad. 

First, Jihad against nearby enemy in Afghanistan, in Egypt, in Algeria, from Christmas 1979 when the Red Army invaded Afghanistan, to 1997, when Algeria, Egypt and alike managed to get rid of their Islamist guerilla. This first phase originally was boosted by America and by the CIA. This was for the US and for the Sunni Gulf monarchies an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: the USSR on the one hand and Iran on the other. The Red Army had to leave Kabul on 15th February 1989, it was defeated and that led to the Berlin wall issue of November 1989. Also, they had hoped that Iran would not be perceived by the Muslim world as a champion anymore because after all, it was the US and the Saudis that had ousted the infidel Soviet Union, the communists, the atheists, out of Afghanistan. 

Then you have the second phase, which was Al Qaida against the “far away enemy” which I mentioned, which was very impressive in the capacity they had to control the media worldwide. Then it did not work either and Al Qaida could not benefit from the US invasion in Iraq as of 2003, because they did not manage to engineer a Sunni resistance that would oust the yanks, as they thought. 

Finally there was this third phase, which was ISIS. It coincided with acts of terrorism on European soil, and with the Syrian civil war, the Iraqi civil war, and the Sunni/Shia divide that became more and more important as a sort of major frontline. 

Now, with that, those models of political Islam have reached such an intensity and such violence and have delivered nothing, except chaos precisely. The populations in the region are tired with it, they are looking for an alternative model. Also, instead of being directed against the West, it has become more and more internalized in terms of Shia versus Sunni violence. 

If you look at what was happening in Israel in the west bank today, think of 10 years ago, 20 years ago: the very idea that Israel could annex part of the west bank would have translated into fury and revolt in the Arab world. Very few people are moving a finger now. The Gulf Arabs are obsessed with the Iranians, the Iranians are obsessed with the Gulf Arabs, the Turks are obsessed with the Syrians or the Russians… and this of course – with this new dimension that oil may not be the name of the game exclusively as it was over the last four decades – means that political Islam as a sequel to the rise of oil, of the centrality of oil, may not play the same role has it did before, and that political competition may use different avenues. But this is only a sort of view of the future.