Khalil Matar

A major upheaval is sweeping through the Middle East which is raising many possibilities and questions. There is no doubt what is happening is changing the region and possibly the world. The aftermath is not limited to the Middle East. The effects of this upheaval are effecting an already frail world economy and creating a precedent for people around the world who are now looking at the streets as a tool for getting their demands met.,

When a Tunisian citizen, Mohammed Bouazizi, set himself aflame, he unintentionally ignited a fire in a region ripe for explosion. Arabs from the ocean to the gulf (an expression used to describe the Arab world which exists between the Atlantic Ocean in the west and the “Persian" or "Arabian” Gulf in the east) used this event as an opportunity to start massive demonstrations demanding democracy and a change of regimes. Some of those revolts either started violently or quickly became violent. In all, they created a new equilibrium of unforeseen alliances and innocent naivety that will most certainly change the outcome desired by people in that region.

“We’re facing an Arab awakening that nobody could have imagined and few predicted just a few years ago,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a recent interview with reporters and editors of The New York Times. “And it’s sweeping aside a lot of the old preconceptions.” (The New York Times “Tumult of Arab Spring Prompts Worries in Washington” September 17, 2011)

What the Secretary failed to mention is that 1) many of these perceptions were wrong at the outset due to other factors, and 2) the efforts to deal with these developments are resulting in policies similar to those used in the seventies and eighties, which led to catastrophic results.

1- Wrong Preconceptions

“The Libya intervention has exposed feeble military capabilities. But more than that it has exposed Europe’s shocking political weaknesses: ponderous national and collective decision-making, superficial understanding of foreign cultures, and ignorance and cavalier mistrust of our closest allies’ motives.” (Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund in The Financial Times on June 15, 2011)

The United States and its Western allies have always looked at this region with a Western logic. The preconceptions Secretary Clinton talked about are most common in analyses made by Western diplomats and intelligence agencies. Often the decision makers and analysts are so overwhelmed with technical information that they tend to overanalyze events. They also get information from friends in the region who tend to put their own twist on events in a way that presents their own interest, what their counterpart wants to hear, or both. That is not the reality of the situation. Someone please tells us the last time Arab rulers were right about something.

2- Catastrophic Results

The current treatment of events in the region brings to mind the events of the seventies and eighties from Afghanistan to Iraq.

In Afghanistan, the Carter and Reagan administrations had one priority: defeating the Soviet Union through the termination of its occupation of that country. They resorted to supporting Isamic fundamentalists and found an ally in fundamentalist, though non-violent, Saudi Arabia. That resulted in Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks which changed the world.

In Iraq, the Reagan administration supported Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran, which led to his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and in turn, to the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. These attackes were all in the name of containing revolutionary Iran and its “radical mullahs”. What these policies resulted in was strengthening Iran and giving Tehran the most influential hand in Iraq.

In both cases Isalmists won. The United States and its Western allies lost. This was mostly due to the inability of Western politicians to see the big picture preferring, instead, to resort to short term results that could be used politically. That is the situation in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria today, not to count Yemen where Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is gaining enough strength to continue to pose a threat to the region and the world, though not enough to rule the tribally divided country.

• Egypt: the Muslim Brotherhood movement is gaining enough strength to threaten the ruling High Military Council with “more martyrs” if it postpones the parliamentary elections due in November. The liberals are requesting this delay in order to form political parties and be able to properly contest some seats. The Muslim Brotherhood stands to win more seats if elections are held in time because they are the most organized party in Egypt.
• Tunisia: the Islamists are challenging every aspect of rule for the same reasons as in Egypt. The only improvement of the situation there is the fact that many are organizing and speaking their minds without major repercussions. For most, however, there have been no major political achievements.
• Libya: the Islamists are the most powerful amongst the militants. They are killing and confiscating whatever possible. They are threatening all liberal or semi-Islamic politiciansand factions. Even the head of the Transitional Council is not safe staying in the capital; he only visited for a couple of days. Abdelhakim Belhaj, who was arrested for terrorism by the CIA and handed over to the Qaddafi government, is the most powerful Libyan today.
• Syria: Islamists are using tactics similar to those used by their Libyan counterparts. However, they are facing a better organized Syrian security and a population that witnessed what happened in Libya and other countries where rulers lost the battle. Even other oppositionists are afraid to let them take the same kind of lead politically as they do in the field.

In all of these cases, many in the region and outside see that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are supporting extremists, and many Egyptian youths feel those two countries are trying to sabotage their aims. They cite tens of millions of dollars spent by Qataris and Saudis used to aim Islamists. Qatari financial support for Islamists in Libya is also keeping them well-armed and able to gather support amongst the population. In Syria, the Saudi and Qatari financial and political support to demonstrators is clear in their revolt to oust the regime.

The youth that revolted in the region are getting frustrated. The current situation is not what they aimed for. They did not foresee a region turning Islamist or at the very least to a Saudi and Qatari wahhabi style political system.

Youths in the region believe that the United States and its Western allies, in turn, seem to think they can accept Islamists and work with them. They do not seem to realize that once the Islamists achieve control of their respective countries they will turn against the world, just like the “mujahedeen” of Afghanistan did.

The American influence in the Middle East will diminish greatly over the next few years, and the results will be catastrophic, indeed. There is great need for a new policy.

October 02 2011