4 - The role of security services in the Arab republics

Summary

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.