Existential threats and regulating life: securitization in the contemporary Middle East

Abstract

As we move past the 6th anniversary of the Arab Uprisings, the dreams that had driven the protest movements, causing people to take to the streets and separating autocratic regimes from societies have been extinguished. In many cases, autocratic rulers remain in control, having mobilised support bases and implemented coup proofing and securitization strategies to do so. In others, the battle rages and the space that was created from the fragmentation of the state has allowed for groups like Da'ish to gain prominence. As a mechanism of control, a number of Sunni regimes sought to securitize the Shi'a threat, framing minority groups as an Iranian 5th column and securing their place within the pantheon of Sunni Arab states opposed to Iran. To this end, this article applies the concept of securitization to the Middle East with a focus upon the securitization of the Shi'a other. Such processes occur across time and space and are not restricted to state borders, escaping the Westphalian straitjacket. As a consequence, one must consider the construction of space and political structures across the region in order to understand the traction that such moves can find. It appears then, that in seeking to maintain short term survival, regimes have sacrificed long--term stability, but the impacts of such moves transcend the typically linear constructed audiences within securitization moves. A key contribution of this article is to consider the extent to which audiences within the Middle East, both intended and unintended, transcend the linear audiences found within conventional processes of securitization. The article uses two case studies as a means of exploring the extent to which securitization can be applied to the Middle East. Such an approach helps us to identify the logics that are involved within the process of securitization, with consideration of the idea that we can populate a broad framework about the universal application of securitization to context specific cases. There is, of course, a range of challenges to the application of securitization theories to the non--Western world. Whilst a number of scholars have undertaken such efforts, including a number of luminaries involved within this volume, we must also be conscious of a range of issues. To this end, this article seeks to contribute to these debates by asking to what extent we can learn about the logics of securitization, particularly within the non--Western context, by looking at case studies from the Middle East. It does this by employing a comparative framework, based upon a selection of most similar case studies. Such a decision facilitates awareness of key securitization processes across the Middle East and whilst they are by no means the only processes, the selected case studies help us to identify the logic that is involved within the more dominant processes of securitization in the Middle East. With the penetration of the

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