The 'deal'
The Arab media fooled the Arab people, leading them to believe that the US-British invasion of Iraq would face stiff popular and military resistance. The invaders would be defeated, it predicted, only achieving victory at a very high cost.
Then, suddenly, Baghdad fell -- without any resistance or opposition by the Iraqi people -- putting to paid speculation in the Arab media that had fed Pan-Arab thought and politics. This put Arabs in a difficult intellectual position from which they tried to escape by claiming the defeat resulted from a "deal" struck between the invaders and Saddam, or a military betrayal by the Republican Guard. Hence, within three weeks, Saddam had been transformed from a hero battling the invaders to a traitor conspiring with them.
Talk of a "deal" or "treachery" is based on a faulty logic. There was no real grass-roots resistance to the invasion or effective military resistance, as was evident from the limited losses sustained by coalition forces in comparison with those of the other side. The war played out just as coalition leaders had predicted. And, as the Iraqi media had proclaimed, resistance was put up by Ba'ath Party members, feda'yeen Saddam and the Republican Guard.
The question that Arab nationalists failed to ask themselves was: would an army whose leadership forced it into two losing wars be willing to embark on a third? Likewise, would a people who do not enjoy citizenship rights enthusiastically defend a regime that stripped it of those entitlements?
It is the responses to these questions that will delineate the future of the Pan-Arab nationalist trend.
* This week's Soapbox speaker is editor-in- chief of the cultural weekly Al-Qahira.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 17 - 23 April 2003 (Issue No. 634)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/634/op7.htm