Issue No. 612
Opinion
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14 - 20 November 2002 Issue No. 612 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Iraq, Sudan and others
In an ongoing series of articles Abdel-Moneim Said examines the fissures in Arab self-awareness exposed by 11 September
Major international crises tend to expose political and social realities, frequently overlooked and often deliberately so. The events of 11 September were particularly revealing regarding the state of international relations, of contemporary developments and the international distribution of forces. In the Arab world the events highlighted profound defects the Arabs had long refused to face, defects inherent in the relationship between religion and the state, others pertaining to the Palestinian issue, viewed by many as the Arabs' "central" cause, and yet others to a host of other crises -- Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Algeria... the list goes on and on. These latter all existed prior to 11 September. That the Arab world had become acclimatised to them is one of its great shortcomings.
The Arab world was surprised by Washington's resolve to strike Iraq. It was surprised, in a different way, by American support for the Machakos agreement. But by now, of course, the Arab world has conveniently forgotten what is happening in Algeria and Somalia, the most likely reason being that American influences have not yet made themselves felt vis-à-vis these situations.
The Arab world tends to zoom in and out of issues depending on the degree to which the US and Israel are connected with them. Should these two countries reduce their involvement in a particular issue, then the Arab world feels it is fine to consign it to oblivion. It is this attitude that explains the deafening silence over what is happening in Somalia, a country that is, after all, a member in the Arab League, but which is being left to disintegrate in the face of starvation, poverty and chronic tribal strife. The reasons behind the neglect are simple: the US withdrew from Somalia a decade ago, following its ill-fated 1992 intervention in Mogadishu, and has yet to re-engage.
It is difficult to think of any other region or international bloc that operates such a singular standard in international relations as the Arab world. The Arabs never tire of talking about brotherhood, about the eternal bonds of blood. Yet concern for fellow Arabs begins only when the US and Israel appear on the scene. Clearly, our definition of Arabism now has less to do with mutual ties than with the degree of confrontation with the US and Israel. The Arabs are no longer a people linked by a common language, mutual interests, a shared history, geographical proximity and a desire to break free from the fetters of underdevelopment. The Arabs are now a people defined by their hatred of the West and Israel.
The case of Iraq illustrates this point. For decades Iraq has presented the Arabs with a conundrum. Since Saddam Hussein and his clique took power we have been confronted with totalitarian rule at home and strategic adventurism abroad. Despite this Arab political and intellectual elites have applauded the "protector of the eastern gateway", "the unifier of the Arabs" and, of course, "the liberator of Palestine".
In the aftermath of the war to liberate Kuwait the Iraqi question became more compelling than ever. Everyone knew what happened to the Iraqi opposition, why international sanctions were imposed on Iraq and what happened to the weapons of mass destruction that had been used against the Kurds and Iranians. Yet the Arab world preferred to look the other way. If anything was said at all it was along the lines of: What about Israel's occupation of Palestine? What about Israel's possession of nuclear arms? Not that they were seeking answers to these questions; rather, they were seeking ways to avoid answering questions regarding Iraq, to avoid having to take a position on Saddam's deception of the international inspection team and avoid, in particular, the issues arising from Iraqi possession of biological weapons which, with the defection to Jordan of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel Al-Madjid, had hit the headlines.
The Arab world has never taken a single stand with regard to Iraq. They did not hold a summit to deliberate what to do with a state that invades its neighbours, with a state that not only possesses weapons of mass destruction but that uses them against its own citizens and fellow Muslims. They have not discussed the positions that should be adopted towards a state that has inflicted more cruelty on its own people than even the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Instead, the whole thing was left to Washington to decide. And then, following 11 September, when Washington had decided it would change the rules of the game and strike Iraq -- or, more precisely, the Iraqi regime -- in order to change the system of rule, the Arabs suddenly rose to their feet as one to protest in the name of "international legitimacy" and accuse the US of "double standards". Not that the Iraqi regime had required a UN Security Council resolution to invade Kuwait, not that it had ever sought a mandate from the Iraqi people: such discrepancies were simply ignored.
The same selective vision applies to Sudan, suffering under the strains of civil war since 1955. The Arabs can see no developmental, cultural or historical reason why the south, like the Kurds in Iraq, should wish to secede from an Arab country unless, of course, it has to do with Western or Israeli machinations. The implication of this is that Arab countries are garden paradises to be abandoned only by the mentally deranged, or else by traitors incited by foreign agents. And this is not the case. It is no secret that Arab states do not even approximate to the paradisial.
Arabs have cheered Arab or Islamic separatist movements from the Philippines to Iran, from Russia to South Africa, while lamenting that fate brought separatist movements to their own countries, countries which, they insist with flagrant certitude, epitomise tolerance and have never known discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin, colour, religion or sex.
And then the Arabs awoke to the Machakos agreement which opens the way to the secession of the south and perhaps to the fragmentation of Sudan. The agreement was a product of the fallout from 11 September, fallout with which the Arabs have so far been unable to come to terms. Yet, unlike Baghdad, Khartoum decided to deal with the bottom line, furnishing the US with more information on terrorists than any other country. A solution to the problem of the south was the prize and, in spite of the fact that the agreement stalled after it was signed, it will remain the primary determinant of any settlement. Tellingly, in the decades before 11 September, there had been no Arab initiative to alleviate Sudanese poverty or promote development. Nor had anyone thought it necessary to advise that Khartoum's version of the Islamic revolution would lead to disaster.
Attitudes towards Sudan, as towards Iraq -- as, indeed, towards all other Arab issues -- exemplify our tendency to recoil from reality and take refuge in illusion. Wretched Sudan, locked in the nadir of almost all development indicators was, under the leadership of Hassan Al-Turabi, to be the powerhouse of world revolution, was to reshape the global order. As ridiculous as this may sound some Arabs believed it, bursting forth in loud slogans and chants. Fundamentalists, and other instant revolutionaries, were delighted, as were their secret co- habiters, men like Carlos and Bin Laden.
Such people differed little from the groups that travelled to Baghdad to chant similar tunes. Escapists all, they were desperate to avoid reality. Nor were the Iraqi invasions of Iran and Kuwait, regardless of Baghdad's claims, anything other than a flight from reality, an excuse for the failure to ensure domestic cohesion except by promoting a dream that, like all Arab dreams, will never be realised.
Somalia fits this pattern, though it has never possessed resources to distribute among Arab elites. Somalia, at the bottom of the developing world, decided to combine the Somalis in Ethiopia and, if possible, Kenya, in a single state, a greater Somalia. In attempting to annex Ogaden in Ethiopia, in shifting alliances back and forth between Washington and Moscow, Somalia was evading a reality that would have taken courage to deal with. And the result, of course, was not Greater Somalia. The result was fragmentation into several petty political entities, some of which assumed the trappings of a state, such as the Republic of the Land of Somalia, which no one recognises, and others a tribal form. All, though, claim to represent the nation. All boast flags to prove it.
The situation in Algeria, too, displays an alarming degree of consistency. After a long period of colonisation Algeria emerged as an independent nation, only to find itself facing an exhausting, uphill struggle for construction and development. Its particular version of the escape into illusion was to indulge in the fantasy of being in the vanguard of Third World revolution while allowing the political and social situation at home to fester. The resulting political and cultural divisions cost some 200,000 Algerian lives, a figure roughly equivalent to the death toll of the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1948 to the present. In some weeks of the Algerian civil war the number of dead exceeded the total number of victims of the first and second Palestinian Intifada together.
Such were the grim realities 11 September 2001 exposed. The events of that day served to make it clear that the Arabs' perpetual flight from the crucial issues of progress and development has only aggravated their problems. The Arabs will never be able to solve their problems by casting the blame on the US and Israel, by ignoring the issue of the relationship between religion and the state and by turning a blind eye to the fundamentalism that has pervaded Arab thought. Equally, they cannot afford to ignore what is going on elsewhere in the world, specifically in the US.
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