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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A no win situation
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
There is nothing more dangerous than the polarisation of a society into two camps, each believing itself victimised by the other. Once such a mind-set takes hold, it is virtually impossible to dislodge. Like a malignant growth, it feeds on itself and defies all attempts to curtail its expansion. We have seen this happen over and over again in many parts of the world. Perhaps the most graphic illustration of how two warring factions can each genuinely regard itself as victimised by the other is the current conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Both communities can claim to be a minority: if a census is taken of the island of Sri Lanka alone, the Tamils would be a minority; if it were to include important Tamil communities living in southeast India, then the Sinhalese would be the minority. The yardstick here is 'quantitative', each protagonist choosing the yardstick that better portrays it as the persecuted party. The lack of a common frame of reference complicates the conflict and eventually prolongs it.
Using the same approach, let us now examine the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Israelis see themselves as a people who have always suffered from anti-Semitism. In recent history, Jews have been the victims of pogroms in Eastern Europe, culminating in the Holocaust under Hitler. The Arabs too see themselves as the victims of injustice, having had their land taken away from them and given over to the state of Israel in penance for the sins of others. Here the yardstick is 'qualitative'. The irony is that the Jews are both persecuted and persecutors, victims of persecution at a first stage and inflicting it on others at a later stage. The conflict has been particularly intractable throughout the twentieth century because Israelis could take advantage of their situation as victims of persecution in the past to blur their responsibility for persecution in the present.
Another example of the same phenomenon is the war in Chechnya, where both sides see themselves as victimised by the other. The Russians, frustrated and humbled because of the humiliating decline in their fortunes after the downfall of the Soviet Union, are targets of terrorist attacks launched by Chechen separatists in major urban centres, including Moscow. The Chechens for their part feel frustrated and angry because, although Chechnya was one of the few autonomous regions of the former USSR to vote against remaining within the Russian Federation after the dismemberment of the Soviet state, it was not granted independence. Because of Russian frustrations and because Chechens have resorted to terrorism in their struggle for independence, the ugly war in Chechnya is popular in Russia. This has created a favourable climate for Vladimir Putin, whose determination to pursue the war to the very end is one of his main assets as far as the Russian electorate is concerned.
The problem is that although Chechnya might be a marginal province on Russia's borders, the Chechens see themselves as part of the Islamic Umma possibly even as part of an Islamic Jihad that is acquiring greater potency in a wide range of countries today. With the two parties thus locked in their respective 'victim' mind-sets, a reconciliation between them appears less likely than a scenario informed by Samuel P Huntington's 'clash of civilisations' theory.
A common denominator in all these cases is the low morale affecting the concerned parties. It is less the objective situation than the subjective state of mind of the protagonists that is behind this low morale. The above-mentioned conflict situations could eventually be overcome if the protagonists did not suffer from such low morale.
An understanding of the dynamics behind these and other conflict-situations -- Ulster, Kosovo, Bosnia, etc -- can help us better understand the shocking sectarian clashes that flared up in the Upper Egyptian village of Al-Kosheh on New Year's Eve. Significantly, the culprits were not extremists belonging to organised groups but ordinary citizens whose pent-up frustrations exploded into violence. Al-Kosheh is not typical in that it is predominantly -- some 75 per cent -- Christian. Although nearly two years ago it was the scene of another flare-up of sectarian strife, what marked the explosion this time was its complete spontaneity and the risk it carried of spreading to neighbouring villages.
In an interview to Al-Wafd newspaper, Dr Atef Ebeid spoke of the phenomenon of violence in Egyptian society. He said that in the forties the Wafd had tried to replace violence as an idiom of political discourse by democracy, but deep social upheavals had thwarted its bid. The prime minister added that Nasser too had tried to combat social violence in his own way, but after his death it once again acquired a growing momentum. He referred in this connection to the war in Afghanistan, a crucible for extremist forces who exploited class differences to provoke social strife in Egypt.
It is true, of course, that violence in Egypt cannot be isolated from changes that have occurred at both the global and regional levels. At the global level, the bipolar world order ended and in its place rose a unipolar world order headed by the US. While many forces resented playing by the rules of a game set by Washington, they were in no position to challenge American supremacy openly. Some chose instead to challenge the new American-dominated world order by violent means, thus forming a counter-pole, described as a terrorist pole, to the new world order.
At the regional level, peace has replaced confrontation as the frame of reference defining the Arab world's relationship with Israel. the logic of reaching peace with the 'Zionist entity' carries within it a condemnation of pan-Arab nationalism and its underlying assumption that Zionism and pan-Arab nationalism are mutually exclusive. When pan-Arab ideology failed to achieve its stated objective of defeating Zionism, it left the forefront of the scene to religious radicalism and violence.
While these global and regional factors are bound to affect the internal situation, they can in no way absolve the Egyptian people and government of their responsibility for the eruption of violence, especially when violence is spontaneous and it is difficult to pinpoint who exactly is responsible for instigating it.
Prime Minister Ebeid proposed an anti-violence drive proceeding along five tracks simultaneously: political, social, economic, security and religious. While the designation of these tracks is certainly of paramount importance, I believe that the success of the anti-violence drive will depend more on the interrelation between the various tracks. For example, the security dimension is obviously indispensable, but it should not be allowed to overshadow the political and economic dimensions, nor the sociological dimension arising from the fact that all the protagonists see themselves as victims of injustice. This perception is becoming more and more prevalent in the absence of channels through which the parties can air their grievances and defuse social tensions before they reach boiling point.
Of course, the authorities make every effort to highlight ritualistic expressions of fraternity between the Muslim and Coptic communities, but these demonstrations remain formal, occur at the upper level of society and do not extend to the grassroots level where mutual suspicion and distrust will continue to prevail as long as reasons for friction are not adequately addressed.
In the final analysis, the problem can only be resolved through genuine democracy; it will continue to fester as long as democracy remains formal, superficial or distorted. And even if it were possible to freeze the internal reasons of social violence, it is beyond our power to freeze the regional and global reasons.
The apparent calm that can eventually follow clashes like the ones Egypt witnessed in Al-Kosheh is deceptive, and could well be merely the lull before an even greater storm. Nor can the storm be averted by adopting the proposal put forward by a writer and upheld by a number of members of parliament to change the name of the village. It is not the name of Al-Kosheh but the state of mind that generated the conflict in Al-Kosheh that needs to be changed.
