April 2, 2002

Are we going to have a "clash of civilizations" a la Hollywood as predicted by Osama bin Laden and Samuel Huntington? Is this going to be between Islam in general and the West, or only between Arabs and the Anglo-Americans? And who is going to lead it? Some lieutenant of Osama and his Wahhabi warriors? Saddam Hussein and his secular forces? Colonel Khaddafi supported by his oil fortunes paid for by Europe? Or perhaps will the forces of a militant Islam be led by President Khamenei of Iran? Even the mere mention of such names is likely to remind us of how preposterous these paranoid speculations turn out to be. There is now in the West a curious inchoate anxiety about a huge swath of mankind who, it is thought, is somehow out to destroy Western capitalist civilization. At least so writes, Paul Kennedy, the celebrated Yale historian in his review of the views of Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, in the New York Times Book Review of 27 January. "The unvarnished truth is that the tensions there are of a different order of magnitude...a vast, sprawling area, where a badly damaged though powerful and religiously driven order is locked in battle with global trends more penetrating and unsettling than could ever have been imagined...What Lewis is writing about...concerns one of the greatest cultural and political divides in modern history." There has been nothing like this fear since the days of the Berlin or Cuban crisis and the Iron Curtain. We need to examine the basis for these exaggerated worries.

What is amazing is that this vague fear of "terrorism" is so much more acute in the US, with the most powerful military/industrial complex in the world, than in Europe which is home to many millions of Muslims. The constant refrain of "terror" used on every occasion by the administration has now pushed the US military budget to a mind-boggling $478 billion dollars supposedly to protect the country against the "axis of evil".

There is a general sense that the problem arises mainly with the Arabs, but the wider world of Islam is also drawn in as Huntington had prophesied. Osama bin Laden in his Oct. 7 videotape spoke of the "more than eighty years" of "humiliation and disgrace" suffered by Muslim peoples at the hands of Westerners. Many in the West wondered what he could have meant by that date, though in the Middle East his listeners could relate immediately to the cataclysmic events at the end of W.W.I. In 1918, the last great Islamic state, the Ottoman Empire of 600 years, was defeated and its provinces divided up between fractious victorious powers who could hardly agree among themselves to share the spoils. In 1924, the Turks who had provided the military shield for the Islamic and Asian world, decided to cut their losses and go their own way. They abolished the ancient institution of the Caliphate in 1924 which had provided a sense of unity to Islamic peoples. It has not been revived since.

These catastrophic events were followed by much further humiliation especially for the Arab speaking peoples. The Turks rejected their defeat. They fought back the allies, won back their liberty, and reorganized themselves to form their secular republic. They have been cultivating their love affair with the West in NATO, and in the Council of Europe, since then. The Arabs on the other hand were misled by their leaders, thoroughly double crossed by the allies, led astray, broken up into various so-called "protectorates" and finally totally dominated by Britain and France between the two World Wars. As it turned out, Britain took the useful parts with the prospects for "oil" in Iraq and parts of Arabia. France was consoled with Syria and Lebanon, the parts with "cultural capital" but no oil. North Africa had already been neatly divided up earlier.

As if these colonial disasters were not sufficient as a severe punishment and a stern example to others in the British Empire, such as India, who might have entertained dangerous ideas of "independence", Britain also decided to provide a "homeland for Jews" in Palestine, an ancient land that was densely occupied by a rural population of mainly Arabic speakers. There were Jews among them, and Christians of various denominations. The majority were Muslims.

Up to this point in the rich history of these lands no one in this vast region had been conscious of belonging to "nations". As far back as one could recall, all these peoples had been subjects of the Sultan. It was the Ottoman Sultan who had the duty to make sure that the subjects of his domain were contended and at peace with each other. And, indeed, a large degree of local autonomy and a general peace had reigned over these lands ever since the defeat of the Mameluk Turks of Egypt by the Ottoman Turks of the north in 1517. The peace had been punctuated, it is true, by local troubles from time to time, but these had been manageable. They had not led to large scale "national" movements of any kind. The Middle East in this respect was unlike the troublesome Balkan lands in the 19th century where "nationalist" passions engendered by European ideological currents had been the order of the day.

With the defeat of the Ottomans, the British and the French proceeded with the effective policy of "divida et impera". So, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and a multitude of small Sheikdoms on the Persian/Arabian Gulf were created in the 1920's with entirely artificial borders which are still in dispute. The Kuwait affair in 1990 is part of this story. They were controlled by colonial officers through indirect rule. Egypt, occupied earlier, was constantly chafing against British rule, and there were many uprisings in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and elsewhere. This was not a happy period for any of these peoples. Their troubles read like a depressing history of intrigue and deception between the colonial powers and the local populations.

Come the second world war, the region was rife for uprising. Rommel's Afrika Korps was expected in Cairo with great anticipation. The Germans did not turn out to be the saviors that the Arabs had hoped for to deliver them out of the hands of the British and the French.

Enter America. American anti-colonial influence, combined with the great oil discoveries in Saudi Arabia eventually undermined British and French rule in the Middle East. The Suez War of 1957 was the last direct attempt by the old colonial powers to hold some military outposts in the region. Meanwhile, with the arrival of millions of Jews escaping from the racism and the unspeakable outrages of Europe, the Israel problem came to dominate Arab consciousness. The pitiful plight of the Palestinians who had been chased out of their homes and villages with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, could not be evaded. The continuing tragedy in Palestine began to haunt every Arab regime. It led to hopeless wars with Israel in which many thousands lost their lives.

Matters were greatly exacerbated during the cold war. The Soviets cultivated socialist Arab regimes, which in turn strengthened the US commitment to Israel. With America standing firmly behind Israel, arming it, and providing expertise and economic aid, the Arab peoples became increasingly frustrated.

It is thus that we arrive at the present impasse of the Arabs. The Arabic speaking peoples from Morocco to Oman and Zanzibar do not have a unified history as a "nation". Just like the German speaking people of the 18th century, there is a sense of local identity that is much stronger than the overall identity of belonging to an Arab nation.

After having chased out King Farouk and the Egyptian royal family with Ottoman (and Albanian) roots in 1954, Colonel Nasser had tried to foster a Pan-Arab "national" identity, but he was no Bismarck. The attempted union with Syria, announced with great fanfare in 1958, broke down in only a couple of years. Relations with Jordan were marked by suspicion because of the closeness of the Jordanian ruling family to British interests. The Arab Legion in Jordan, at the time the strongest military force among Arab countries, was led by British Officers. Egypt had had a very hard time getting rid of British military bases in the canal zone. The present King of Jordan too, who has been educated at Sandhurst, the famous British military academy, is naturally regarded to be in the pocket of the West from the point of view of those who listen to Osama bin Laden.

Nasser's difficulties did not end with Syria and Jordan. His "Arab socialism" went counter to highly conservative Islamic circles within Egypt and elsewhere. Islamic secret societies began to flourish. Nasser's revolutionary program was quite unacceptable to the Saudi royal family. Egypt became involved in a long drawn out and debilitating civil war in Yemen.

All these incidents, and others, to mention only a few of the difficulties that Nasser ran into, showed that the time had not yet arrived to construct an Arab "nation" out of the diverse elements on a vast geographical space. Not only were the economic infrastructures lacking, the conservative political structures hostile, but the diverse populations were not sufficiently literate or educated to be brought together through the effects of modern schooling. The predominant loyalties remained intensely local. So, in Syria, for example, the Sunni's and the Alouites remain distinct, as do the Shiites and the Sunnis in Iraq and Lebanon. Similar divisions separate populations on the Gulf and in Saudi Arabia to such an extent that a Muslim traveling in Saudi Arabia needs internal visas to move from one region to another. Oman is itself a distinct society. Egypt, with her extraordinary ancient history, and her important Christian minorities, remains ambivalent about her Arab identity. The popular Islamic organizations are kept under tight surveillance. The murder of Anwar Sadat is not forgotten. Many are profoundly hostile to the Mubarak regime. The matter is further complicated by the fact that all these peoples are at the same time deeply Islamic, which means that the very idea of "nationalism" itself is questionable. In theory there should be only a single community of Muslims, the great Umma of Islam. The intensity of local ties is also the reason why the Palestinians have not been assimilable as populations in places where they have eked out a refugee existence. They have had to remain distinct whether in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.

Given this picture of lack of coherence and lack of responsiveness in political structures, and the deep social and economic frustration of large populations in the major urban centers, Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, it has been difficult for a leader to emerge to capture the imagination of the Arabic speaking peoples. Osama bin Laden is one such figure whose message is being listened to, but who has been rejected by all responsible Arab institutions from Yemen to Morocco.

Nonetheless, it is the Israel/Palestine issue which continues to fester. It provides a focal point for the profound disillusionment of the masses. The Osama bin Laden affair, and the fact that most of the individuals involved in the September 11 attack were Saudi citizens, clearly indicated that the anger surrounding this issue has spread well into the rich oil realms in Arabia. The recent eloquent warnings of Prince Abdul Aziz, the director of the Saudi intelligence service, are quite telling. The New York Times (Jan.27, '02) reports that the Prince indicated that according to a Saudi intelligence survey, "of educated Saudi's between the ages of 25 and 41...95% of them supported Mr. bin Laden's cause"..."even though they rejected the attacks in New York and Washington". Arabs, and many others, in Iran, in Pakistan, and elsewhere are angry. "All the governments, the people of the region believe that America is supporting Israel whether it is right or wrong, and now if something happens to Yasir Arafat, the feeling against American policy will be stronger." He also had something quite pointed to say about American attitudes to the region. "Some days you say you want to attack Iraq, some days Somalia, some days Lebanon, some days Syria," he said. "Who do you want to attack? All the Arab world? And you want us to support that? It's impossible. It's Impossible."

This puts the matter in a nutshell. As long as there is no honorable peace for the Israeli's and the Palestinians, there is likely to be serious trouble against US interests. The right wing in the American administration, profoundly misguided in its analysis of the roots of "terror", does not seem to realize what witches brew it is concocting. It was most unfortunate for President Bush to speak of a great "crusade" after September 11. Apologies to the Islamic world quickly followed, but perhaps that regrettable term does express the pent up frustration in the West with these recalcitrant populations in the East which do refuse to see the world their way.

With Bush speaking of an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address to the joint houses of Congress on January 30th, the dangers of escalation in hostilities to other parts of the Islamic world have increased. American troops have already been dispatched to the Philippines to help subdue a local Muslim uprising. Indonesia with its vast population is restless and suspicious. Somalia and Iraq are in the target zone. Iran is now also on notice. Syria, the Sudan and Libya are often mentioned as part of the conspiracy, but then so are Algerians and Yemenis. It is to be regretted that all this will go a long way to help the cause of extremists. What with the suspicion over the motives of French in Serbia, and the behavior of the Dutch in Srebrenitza and Bosnia, the slow reaction of "the international community" to the outrages in the Balkans, the insensitivity to the desperate plight of Chechens in Russia, the Uygurs in China, not to speak of Kashmir, the Islamic world was already on edge even before the war in Afghanistan. The great tensions over this issue will continue to feed the doubts of the Islamic world about the ulterior motives of the Western powers.

The sense of victimization and justified anger are great catalysts of solidarity. The sense of outrage against the insensitive policies of the US, combined with the perceived impotence of their own rulers and governments, is contributing mightily to creating the consciousness of "nationhood" among the Arabs. The Osama bin Laden phenomenon is a symptom deeper turmoil, as is the lionization of Saddam and Qaddafi. If the malaise in Palestine continues to fester we can expect many more acts of dramatic desperation. They will be in the name of national liberation. Only then perhaps some Arab Bismarck will have his chance.

© TFF and the author

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