A Durable Peace
Page 14
In the UN, as in the media and diplomacy generally, the Arabs were adept at sweeping all inter-Arab and inter-Moslem violence under the rug. Yet there is something uncanny about the world’s capacity to focus on the Arab-Israeli dispute (with total casualties estimated at 70,000 dead over five decades) in the face of the carnage of the other Middle Eastern conflicts, such as the Egyptian invasion of Yemen (250,000 dead), the Algerian civil war (1,000,000 dead), the Lebanese civil war (150,000 dead), the Libyan incursion into Chad (100,000 dead), the Sudanese civil war (at least 500,000 dead), and the Iran-Iraq War (over 1,000,000 dead). Even the least of these conflicts far outstrips the entire half-century of Arab-Israeli tension on any devisable scale of casualties or misery. But especially after the Gulf War (at least 100,000 dead, and possibly many more), no fair-minded person can accept the pretense that the turbulent conflicts raging everywhere in the Middle East can be forced into the Palestinian straitjacket.
If the Palestinian Problem is not the core of the Middle East conflict, then what is? Where can we look for the political, social, or psychological roots of phenomena so powerful that they have reduced to habitual strife the entire Arab nation 150 million strong, a people that once hosted impressive centers of scholarship and culture that influenced all of civilization? To answer this question, we must consider three forces that have largely been obscured in the view of the Arab world that is commonly held in the West: the crisis of legitimacy, the yearning for a unified Arab domain, and resentment against the West. Each of these forces feeds upon the others in a circle of unending instability and violence.
Ever since the end of Ottoman rule after World War I, the absence of any popular consensus as to what constitutes a legitimate Arab government has ensured that even the most towering political structures in the Arab world have rested on foundations of quicksand. The demise of the empire that had subjugated the Arabs for centuries left the Arab world in the hands of a patchwork of British and French colonial administrations. Their interests were primarily material, and when it proved unfeasible for them to maintain direct control over the vast reaches of the Arab lands, they sought to grant independence to the newly fashioned Arab “states” in a manner that would least interfere with the functioning of their economic empires, particularly with the supply of oil to their industries. They carved the region into numerous states (today there are twenty-one members of the Arab League), each of them far too small to become a world power in its own right, and they granted sole proprietorship of these new entities to friendly Arab clans who were considered likely to be favorable to maintaining relations with their European benefactors. Thus was born a collection of monarchies from Morocco to Iraq. 20
The Middle East, of course, had no tradition resembling that of the Western nation-state, which is predicated on the existence of separate nations. The French are sharply aware and even genuinely proud of those elements of character and culture that distinguish them from the Spanish, the English, and the Germans, and the feeling is at least mutual. The special institution of the European nation-state, like that of the Greek and Italian city-states before it, could catch on among the people in Europe precisely because the French, for example, naturally consider themselves to be loyal to and bound to obey the government of France, whatever government that might be, and no other. But as many Arabs are quick to point out, this is not the case among Arabs, who consider themselves loyal principally to their family or clan, 21 and beyond that to the Arab people as a whole. The intermediate state-unit was generally taken to be an arbitrary, unnatural, and undesirable division imposed on the Arab people—much as Americans would probably feel if outsiders were to make each of the fifty states into an independent country. Thus a tension between subjects and rulers was introduced into the Arab states from the very start, with the European-appointed “king” demanding a loyalty that his subjects were at best ambivalent about granting. Often the monarch was therefore not so much a national leader expressing the general will of his people as the scion of a particular fief-holding family, interested in the state apparatus mostly as a means of assuring himself and his relations a lush life, usually with ample help from interested foreigners. As Amir Shakib-Arslan, a Lebanese who was one of the most popular writers in the Arab world between the wars, put it:
Moslems offer help to these foreigners betraying their own brethren, and enthusiastically assist them with advice against their own nation and faithfully cooperate with these foreigners from greed and perfidy. But for the assistance obtained by the foreigners through the treachery of one section of the Moslems and the zeal with which the latter rendered them help… these foreigners would have neither usurped their sovereignty… [nor] contravene[d] and supersede[d] their religious laws…, nor would they have dragged down the Moslems into the valley of the shadow of death and led them to a disgraceful death. 22
The readiness of the Arabs to reject their own monarchs, their own states, and the borders that divide them is thus a consequence of a general crisis of political legitimacy. Since they accepted the governments and boundaries that the Europeans devised only superficially, if at all, there was nothing other than force that could silence the cacophony of claims to legitimate rulership (because of superior pedigree or ideology) over any particular parcel of land. And since every one of these claims has been backed by the threat of insurrection or coup, the result has been terminal instability. Most of the Arab regimes have by now mastered the suppressive techniques of “crowd control” and have thus gained a measure of apparent solidity, but the underlying problem remains the absence of any notion of legitimacy for either the various governments or the borders that separate their countries.
This explains the preoccupation of Arab leaders not only with their fears of coup and assassination but with “mergers” of one sort or another—each merger (like many corporate mergers) thinly masking one government’s effort to delegitimize and dissolve the other government. Thus Nasser attempted to fuse Egypt, Syria, and Iraq; Iraq tried to merge with Jordan and absorb Kuwait; Qaddafi has attempted marriages with Tunisia, Sudan, and even Morocco; and Syria has absorbed Lebanon as an interim step in its effort to build a Greater Syria. All these unions failed for lack of any real willingness by any Arab leader to cede any power (except for Lebanon’s absorption into Syria in 1991, which was pulled off at gunpoint), fulfilling Lawrence’s prophecy that “it will be generations before any two Arab states join voluntarily.” It is the Arabs’ frustration over their inability to unite and stabilize their domain that explains why Saddam’s conquest of Kuwait inspired jubilation throughout the metaphorical “Arab street” that runs from Morocco to Mesopotamia—notwithstanding the fears of some Arab rulers that they might be Saddam’s next victims. For the majority of ordinary Arab people, the arbitrary divisions that Europeans scrawled all over the Arab map were an injustice far worse than any cruelty that Saddam might inflict on the Kuwaitis. They cheered for an Arab Bismarck who would erase the borders and unify the Arab realm, earning their respect through the ruthless application of force and thereby creating for himself, out of the ruins of Kuwait, legitimacy
This feeling was particularly evident among Palestinian Arabs, both in Israel and in Jordan, who backed the destruction of Kuwait with a unanimous enthusiasm that was incomprehensible to most Westerners. For Palestinian Arabs, Kuwait symbolized the kind of colonial intrusion into Arabdom that they associate with Israel and Lebanon. The dismantling of the Western-leaning principality of Kuwait seemed to be a step toward the dismantling of Israel. Thus an opinion poll in August 1990, following Iraq’s invasion, suggested that 80 percent of Palestinian Arabs supported Saddam. 23 When The New York Times interviewed Palestinian Arabs, it came away with opinions such as: “Saddam is our leader, and I’d go fight for him to remove the Americans.” And: “This is an Arab problem. America has no right to be here…. Saddam is… the second Saladin.” And: “If Saddam succeeds in getting the oil weapon, he will show the world there is another power, an Arab power, and he w
ill use the weapon for us.” Meanwhile, the Mufti of Jerusalem, during the Gulf War, called upon Saddam to “abolish the filth of the American Army and their collaborators from the holy lands.” In the following days, the Times reported that the Arabs of the West Bank were holding mass demonstrations at which they chanted, “Saddam, we are with you until victory.” 24
These dreams of recapturing lost Arab glory and the popular resentment against the artificial colonial borders serve as the backdrop for Pan-Arab nationalism, which by the end of World War II had become the most powerful movement in the Arab world. Pan-Arab nationalism demands the rectification of all wrongs committed against the Arab people through the immediate dismantling of these borders and the unification of the Arab people into a single Arab superpower “from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf.” In practice, this first means the eradication of the monarchies, which are considered to be a continuation of the humiliation and exploitation of the Arab people at the hands of the West. One by one, military coups inspired by Pan-Arabism have replaced the kings with leaders like Nasser, Qaddafi, and Saddam—each of whom has contributed his own efforts to pulling more monarchical governments down. By now, only a handful of the monarchies remain (in Jordan, the Gulf states, and Morocco), and their grip on power is continuously challenged by radicals, precisely because they are viewed as the last vestiges of an era that will soon pass.
Because the explicit rallying point of Pan-Arabism is its desire to overcome borders, any government that is Pan-Arabist is convinced that the entire Middle East, or at least a significant part of it, belongs to it—and it alone. This explains Nasser’s 1962 invasion of Yemen (which had been a crucial toehold on the Arabian Peninsula for the Pan-Arabists before it came to serve the same function for the Communists), and Saddam’s wars to liberate the “Arab lands” in Iran and later in Kuwait. It likewise explains Syria’s “friendship treaty” with Lebanon of May 1991, which effectively grants control of all of Lebanon to Syria. The most famous Syrian attempt to overrun Jordan was that of September 1970. When Israel issued a warning to Syria that it would intervene on Jordan’s behalf, it saved Jordan’s existence as an independent state.
Yet despite its passionate rejection of all current political divisions, the most obvious failing of Pan-Arab nationalism has been its inability to overcome the very Western-defined borders that its adherents believe have shackled and shamed the Arab nation. As though consciously acting out Lawrence’s prediction, Pan-Arab nationalism has never been able to offer a method for determining the ruler of the proposed unified Arab state. There is no lack of claimants to the throne. The official national map of Libya, for example, shows Qaddafi with outstretched arms embracing the entire Arab world. Pan-Arabists in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq have each always sought to make the future Arab superpower theirs. Ironically, the divisions among the Pan-Arab nationalist governments of the various states have proven to be one of the greatest obstacles to unification. Thus it is that the bile spilled between Assad of Syria and Saddam of Iraq has been among the most bitter in the Arab world, for their fight was over which of these two potential centers of the new empire—to which both were committed—will consume the other.
In the last two decades, full-blown Pan-Arabism in the style of Nasser has been somewhat on the wane and is being replaced with the more limited aspirations of rulers to dominate first a single region of the Arab world, such as North Africa, the Gulf, or the Fertile Crescent. Since no leader has emerged to succeed Nasser as the clear champion of the Arab masses, and since the various contenders to the title have only managed to stalemate one another, enthusiasm for Pan-Arab nationalism has been dampened. But should a leader again arise with enough power to dangle a promise of unity before the Arab world, Pan-Arab nationalism would be instantly rekindled—as is evident from the heady response of Arabs across the Middle East in the first days after Saddam’s conquest of Kuwait.
The thirst for Arab unity amid disunity remains unquenched. If Pan-Arab nationalism is not up to satisfying it, another force awaits in the wings. For the weakening of Pan-Arabism in recent years has been countervailed (not accidentally, I believe) by an almost universal resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism. Nothing could stir the caldron more. Sometimes working together with Pan-Arabism (as in Libya) but more often at odds with it (as in Iran, Egypt, and Syria), Islamic fundamentalism is a force somewhat more familiar in the West than Pan-Arabism, thanks to the attention-riveting activities of the Islamic revolution in Iran, especially after its disciples held hostage the entire American embassy in Teheran. Perhaps because images of this extraordinary event were broadcast directly into American living rooms every night for over a year, Westerners seem to be more willing to understand that fundamentalist Islam is unreasonable, dangerous, and odious. Westerners take its claim that it aims to consume Israel and the West seriously, whereas they dismissed the similar claims of Pan-Arab nationalists as “posturing” or “saber rattling.” This difference also explains Western readiness to regard the Hamas (the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist movement) as a genuine menace to Israel and an obstacle to peace, whereas the Palestinian Authority, which systematically violates its commitments, continues to be treated as a force for genteel moderation and is seldom if ever even lightly reprimanded for excesses against human rights and peace.
The celebrated goal of Islamic fundamentalism is to secure the worldwide victory of Islam by defeating the non-Moslem infidels through jihad, or holy war. But in practice the immediate targets of the contemporary jihad are not the non-Moslem governments, which are usually too powerful to be attacked in the first instance, but Moslem ones. Fundamentalists thus seek the overthrow of all “heretic” governments in some forty Moslem states and the elimination of these states altogether in favor of a unified Islamic dominion. (The sequence of these two projected developments varies depending on whether it is a practical or a utopian fundamentalist who is speaking.) Its immediate targets are therefore the secularizing rulers of the Arab states, including the soldiers controlling the Pan-Arab nationalist regimes. These regimes have proven to be particularly hostile to Islamic fundamentalism, arresting, torturing, and murdering Islamic activists in the tens of thousands. Ten years in Nasser’s jails drove the leading Islamic theoretician, Sayyid Qutb, to reject Pan-Arab nationalism. Before his execution in 1966 he wrote:
[Jihad] is solely geared to protect the religion of Allah and his Law and to save the Realm of Islam and no other territory…. Any land that combats the faith, hampers Moslems from practicing their religion, or does not apply Islamic Law, becomes ipso facto part of the Realm of War. It should be combated even if one’s own kith and kin, national group, capital and commerce are to be found there. 25
The same idea was expounded by ’Ab al-Salam Faraj, the ideologue of the Islamic group that murdered Anwar Sadat in 1981 (Faraj, too, was executed):
There are some who say that the jihad effort should concentrate nowadays upon the liberation of Jerusalem. It is true that the liberation of the Holy Land is a legal precept binding on every Moslem…. but let us emphasize that the fight against the enemy nearest to you has precedence over the enemy farther away. All the more so since the former is not only corrupted but a lackey of imperialism as well.… In all Moslem countries the enemy has the reins of power. The enemy is the present rulers. It is hence a most imperative obligation to fight these rulers. 26
Although the goal of Islamic fundamentalism to subjugate the entire world to Islam may appear to be rather distant, when the call for it is joined with traditionalism and the promise of heaven, it makes for a combination of remarkable potency. The startling appeals of the most radical Islamic fundamentalists for “greater democracy in the Arab world” indicate how confident they are of being able to carry the great mass of the Arab population with them in an election. In some cases, they are clearly correct. The Algerian military’s 1992 imposition of martial law preempted election results that would have granted Islamic fundamentalists control of Algeria.
&n
bsp; Here, too, ideology is the key to making sense of events. Iran’s war with Iraq, while defensive at first, was later prosecuted as a war to liberate “the holy places,” which are located in Saudi Arabia and Israel, both occupied by the infidel. (Saudi Arabia’s cruel, literal enforcement of Koranic punishments ought to qualify it as an Islamic fundamentalist state, but the ruling Wahabi sect nevertheless is perceived as heretical in the eyes of many other Moslems who consider its practices to be a rejection of received Islamic law.) This strain in Arab thought also explains Qaddafi’s incessant meddling in the black countries of Africa, as well as his undying enmity toward America, which is regarded less as a Christian nemesis than as a “Great Satan” (to use Khomeini’s phrase) that seeks to tempt the people of the world away from the path of God with promiscuity and VCRs. The removal of this “cancerous” influence from the Middle East was the purpose of overthrowing the pro-Western Shah, as well as countless acts of fundamentalist violence. Fear of Islamic revolution caused the Saudi massacre of four hundred fundamentalist pilgrims in Mecca in 1987, and the Syrian destruction of the rebellious city of Hama in 1982.