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| The Arab Countries |
The
Arab civilization used to lead the world. Today they are in ruins. The truth
is, only the Arabs themselves can rebuild their countries.
The great cities of
Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus took turns to race ahead of the western world about
a thousand years ago. Without putting it in so many words, Islam and innovation
were twins. In the past, the Arab caliphates were dynamic super powers. They
used to be the beacons of learning, tolerance and trade. What do we have today?
There is no way to sugarcoat it: the Arabs of today are in a wretched state.
Today, the Middle East is held back by despotism and is convulsed by war, while
the other parts of the world (including Asia, Africa and Latin America) are
moving ahead.1
About five years ago
there was high hopes that the Arab people were at last going to reform the
system under the current leaders and replace the authoritarian regimes that
have been in power for decades with stable democratic systems. A wave of unrest
across the region at that time led to the overthrow of four dictators – in
Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Egypt. Known as the ‘Arab Spring’2 this
uprising in the region also led to a clamor for change elsewhere, specifically
in Syria. Unfortunately, the Arab Spring was both a failure and a
disappointment, particularly to those people who hoped that it would lead to
the removal of the corrupt leaders in the region as well as to instant
improvement in living standards. Simply put, the Arab Springs’ fruit has rotted
into renewed autocracy and war – a situation that had caused more chronic
instability and additional strain on the already struggling Arab economies. It had
also caused deep divisions to emerge between the Moslems and secular Arabs. If the
experience of the past few years teaches us anything, it is that the current
situation in the Arab world has engendered
misery and fanaticism that today threaten the other regions of the
world.
Two natural questions to
ask at this point are these: why can’t Arab countries create democracy,
happiness and wealth for their almost 400 million people? What made such a
region of the earth with abundant natural resources to be so susceptible to
authoritarian regimes and fanatics who seem to be bent on destroying them and
their western friends? In a practical sense, it would be a complete fallacy to
suggest that the Arabs lacks talent or that they are allergic to democracy. Far
from that. But history and politics both shows that for the Arabs to wake up
from their nightmare, and for the entire world to feel safe from the turmoil in
Middle East, a great deal need to change in that part of the world.
The
truth in black and grey
As far as the world
knows, the Arab countries’ problems run so wide. Take Syria and Iraq, the two
Arab countries that are always in the headlines of the popular media. These
days both can barely be called countries in the real sense of the word. In
2014, a brutal brand of jihadists known as the ISIS(Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria) declared the boundaries of these countries void. The ISIS jihadists made
it clear to the world that they were devoted to establishing an Islamic state
in that region. Even though ISIS is now realizing that developing and sustaining
a caliphate is much harder than declaring one, their activities during that
time heralded a new Islamic caliphate that would embrace
Iraq, Syria, Israel-Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and, eventually, the
rest of the world. In addition to killing non-Muslims not just in the Middle
East but also in the streets of Paris, London and New York, its leaders
inspires acts of terrorism around the world.3 Egypt went back to
military rule after removing Hosni Mubarak, the countries military dictator for
three decades, during 2011 revolution.4 Following the violent demise
of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya is at the mercy of unruly militias. Yemen, one of the
Arab world’s poorest countries, is beset
by insurrection, infighting, al-Qaeda, and by the war between forces
loyal to the internationally-recognized government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied to
the Houthi rebel movement.5
In Palestine, the hope for peace and true statehood seems to have faded
away.6 Other Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Algeria are more
fragile than they look, even though their regimes are awash with oil wealth and
are propped up by an iron-fisted apparatus of state security. So far, the only
Arab state that has a semblance of democracy is Tunisia.7
When we look at the Arab
countries, we will not fail to observe that the main source of most of their current
troubles is Islam, or at least the modern interpretations of Islam. Simply put,
the development of independent political institutions in Arab countries has
been stunted by the faith’s claim to combine spiritual and earthly authority,
with no separation of mosque and state – a claim that is being promoted by many
of its leading lights. Lets face it: modern day Islam is teeming with a militant minority of Muslims. It is
this militant minority within Islam that is the problem, simply because they
had continued to seek and push for legitimacy through ever more fanatical
interpretations of the Koran. Unfortunately, other Muslims have few choices
than to seek refuge in their sect since doing otherwise means facing constant
threats of militia violence and civil war.8 Today, plenty of Shias
and Sunnis in Iraq and Syria often
resort to maiming each other. Surprisingly, these are two Muslim sects that
used to marry each other. Sadly, this violent perversion of Islam that left
these Arab countries in a sorry state has spread to places as distant as
northern England and northern Nigeria.9
What is happening in the
Arab countries today sits nicely with the notion that religious extremism is a
conduit for misery, regardless of its fundamental cause. It is only fair to say
that Islamic democracies in places like Indonesia and Malaysia are doing just
fine. Not so in the Arab world due to the fact that the very fabric of the
states in the region is weak. There is no way to sugarcoat this: only a few
Arab countries have been nations for long. Fairness compels me to infer that
the fall of the Turk’s Ottoman empire following the humiliation of British and
French rule in World War I created a vast hole in that part of the world; and
that hole is only partly and
inadequately filled by the successor states that came into being at the end of
the empire. Thus, the colonial powers continued to control or influence events
in much of the Arab world until the 1960s. The point to note here is that Arab
nations has failed to build and nurture the institutional prerequisites of
democracy – a free press, independent courts and universities, independent
trade unions, the give-and-take of parliamentary discourse, protection for
minorities and the emancipation of women.10
The absence of these
prerequisites means the absence of a liberal state in the Arab world, and this
has been matched by the absence of a liberal economy. Arab countries
overwhelmingly embraced the central planning orthodoxy after independence. By
adopting this political ideology, which was often inspired by the then Soviet
Union, Arab governments gradually and
systematically strangled their economies through vigorous implementation of
anti-market, anti-trade, pro-subsidy and pro-regulation policies. During that
period till the present time, the Arab governments had pulled the levers of
economic power, particularly in those Arab countries with oil wealth. Thus it
is not surprising that capitalism of the
crony and rent seeking reigned in these Arab states as soon as the constraints
of post-colonial socialism were lifted. In such a political environment,
privatization worked only for the pals of the government. All these produced
the ugly outcome that the Arab states are suffering today: they have virtually
no free market and barely have any world class companies, which further implies
that smart Arabs had had to move to America or Europe if they wanted to start
or excel in business or scholarship.11
With these ineffective
and draconian policies precipitating economic stagnation in the region, the
Arab people soon became dissatisfied with the falling living standards and the
status quo in general. To protect themselves, the Arab monarchs and
presidents-for-life used their secret police and goons. So the only source of
public services and one of the few places where the Arab people could gather and
hear speeches was the mosque. This did not only led to the radicalization of
Islam but it also induced the angry Arab men who loathed their monarchs and the
establishment in general to came to hate the Western countries that was backing
them. Meanwhile the high unemployment rate in the region created even more
insecurity and restlessness among a vast number of the Arab youths. The advent
of the social media aggravated the situation since it revealed to these angry
youths that the prospects of their cohorts outside the Middle East were by far
more bright and hopeful. According to the available published evidence, the
world was indeed not surprised that these youths took to the streets in the
Arab spring. What surprised the world why they didn’t do so sooner than that.12
The danger of inaction
One thing is for certain:
the ongoing bad situation in Arab countries cannot easily or rapidly be put
right. Also, even though many outsiders have been drawn to the region as
invaders or occupiers(including the American soldiers) they cannot simply stamp
out the jihadist cause or impose prosperity and democracy in the region. The
disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq in 200313 and Afghanistan
in 2001 indeed showed that this is impossible.14 Any form of
military support, including the supply of drones and of a small number of
special forces, may help to keep the
jihadists at bay in the region. Such military support may have to be on
permanent call in order to work. It should be noted here that while ISIS’s proposed caliphate is very unlikely to become a recognizable
state, that does not mean that it will not continue to produce jihadists that
could export terrorism for many years to come.
Again, only the Arabs can
reverse the decline of their civilization and fix the miserable conditions in
their countries. The way things are moving in the region shows that there is
little hope of that happening. The extremists in the region, with all their
rhetoric and promises of establishing a caliphate, offer no solution to Arab
problems either. They had only succeeded in making Arab citizens and
politicians not to engage with one another reasonably or respectfully on
substantive issues of public importance. Meanwhile, the mantra of the military
strongmen and monarchs in the region is “stability.” Naturally, stability has
strong appeal in a time of chaos. But the truth is that their model for pushing
for that stability in the region, which involve the use of repression and
stagnation, are not the solution. That model have been used before and the
bottom line is that they don’t work. As a matter of fact, repression and
stagnation were at the root of the current problems in the region. It is true:
the Arab awakening is over, at least for the moment. Nevertheless, the powerful
forces that gave rise to it are still present. Not only that, the social media
which stirred up the Arab spring cannot be un-invented. One thing the Arab
leaders and their Western backers must know is that stability requires reform –
the two goes together.
So, does that mean that
the Arab situation is hopeless then? Absolutely not. Today, the region is a
bloody mess. But ultimately fanatics like the ISIS often devour themselves due
to their paranoid style of achieving their agenda, which leaves no recourse to
political compliance. Meanwhile, secular Sunnis comprise the majority of Arab
Muslims. They may one day need to make their voices heard. They will need to
cast their minds back to the values that once made the Arab world great when
their moment comes. In the past, education made the Arabs to excel in medicine,
astronomy, mathematics and architecture. Trade with other parts of the world generated
the revenue they used to pay for their fabulous metropolises and their spices
and silk. There was also a time when the Arab world was a cosmopolitan haven
for Christians, Jews and Muslims of all sects. During that time, tolerance
reigned in the region and this tolerance fostered creativity and invention.15
Education, pluralism and
open markets were once Arab values. The bottom line is that the Arabs can adopt
these values again if they want to. But these values could be only wishful
thinking if the Sunnis and Shias continue to tear out each other’s throats,
particularly in Iraq and Syria. And for a people whom so much has gone so
wrong, bringing back such values would be
a small price to pay for restoring political and economic stability and
prosperity in the region.
References
1Leaders: The Tragedy of
the Arabs. (2014, July 5). The Economist, pp. 9-10.
2Arab Spring: 10
Unpredicted Outcomes. (2013, December 13). British Broadcasting Corporation.
Retrieved May 10, 2017 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25212247
3Greene, R. A., Thompson
N. (2016, August 11). ISIS: Everything You Need to Know. Cable News Network.
Retrieved May 13, 2017 from
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/14/world/isis-everything-you-need-to-know/
4Aspden R. (2016). Generation
Revolution: How Egypt’s Military State Betrayed Its Youth. The Guardian. Retrieved May 13, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/jun/02/generation-revolution-egypt-military-state-youth
5Yemen Crisis: Who is
Fighting Whom? (2017, March 28). BBC News, pp. Retrieved May 13, 2017
from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423
6Leaders: The Tragedy of
the Arabs, op. cit., p.9
7Ibid
8Ibid
9Ibid
10Ibid
11Rivlin P.(2001). Economic Policy and Performance in the Arab
World. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc.
12Leaders: The
Tragedy of the Arabs, op. cit., p.9
13Leaders: The
Tragedy of the Arabs, op. cit., p.9
14Afghanistan Profile - Timeline. (2017, March 8). BBC.
Retrieved May 19, 2017 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12024253
15Williams, E. (2012,
May). Trade and Commercial Activity in the Byzantine and Early Islamic
Middle East. Retrieved from Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/coin/hd_coin.htm
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