seething anger
IN A BROKEN MIDDLE EAST
FAWAZ GERGES
_________________
Fawaz
Gerges is senior analyst for ABC Television News and a commentator
for "Morning Edition," NPR. He has appeared on many
television and radio networks throughout the world, including
CNN, CBS, NPR, the BBC, Al Jazeera and PBS ("NOW"
with Bill Moyers). He is author of Journey of the Jihadist:
Inside Muslim Militancy (Harcourt Press, 2007), and
The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge
University Press, 2005). This article is published with ther
permission of YaleGlobal.
The
Middle East is boiling, and not just in Palestine, Lebanon and
Iraq. What official Washington views as “clarifying moments”
are deepening institutional crises shaking the foundations of
Middle Eastern societies. I focus on three pivotal fault lines:
The
first is the widening socioeconomic divide between a tiny elite
and critical segments of the Arab population. On average, up
to 40 percent of the Arab population lives below the poverty
line. In poverty belts surrounding Arab cities, from Egypt to
Sudan, millions of young Muslims struggle to subsist, with no
stake whatsoever in the existing order. Several developments
make this widening socioeconomic gulf between the haves and
the have-nots dangerous: obsessive consumerism, the new media
that reach into every corner of the Arab and Muslim world, and
the declining social functions of the Arab state.
Militancy
migrates into these poverty belts. Since its inception in the
mid-1970s, the jihadist or militant Islamist current has basically
been elitist. Some of the brightest, most educated young Arab
and Muslim men led the jihadist current from its inception until
the mid-1990s. Their ideology now spreads into urban poverty
belts throughout the region. Recent suicide bombings in Morocco
and Algeria are a case in point. The dominant wisdom in the
US is that the Arab state system is durable, that it has withstood
various shocks. But how long can the forced durability last?
Social revolutions are unlikely at this historic juncture, but
a tiny incident -- a riot over a soccer game, a protest against
human-rights violations by security services or a hunger protest
-- could precipitate chaos.
I hope
I’m wrong, but I’d not be surprised to wake up one
day and see entire posh neighbourhoods in Arab and Muslim cities
on fire, reflecting a reservoir of accumulated grievances collecting
in the region. A second related fault line revolves around the
increasing legitimacy gap between the Arab ruling elite and
the population. The vacuum of legitimate political authority
has never been so wide, exacerbated by the dismal economic performance
of the Arab state and widespread perception that the Arab rulers
are subservient to American foreign policy. A consensus exists,
outside the ruling circles, that the status quo is no longer
viable. Moderate voices call for civil disobedience. Radical
and nationalist Islamists call for open revolt. The paradox
is that the opposition is fragmented.
It’s
little wonder that mainstream Islamists represent the only viable
alternative to the relatively secular authoritarian order. The
fragmentation of social and political opposition groups has
created a bipolarity, one in which mainstream Islamists, particularly
the Muslim Brotherhood, are the major challenge to the status
quo. In almost every Arab society, mainstream Islamists -- as
opposed to radical and militant Islamists -- have emerged as
the leading social and political force. Liberals hold the pro-Western
Arab regimes responsible for creating this dichotomy as a result
of closed political systems and crackdowns on progressive, secular
elements.
While
governments succeed in silencing progressive voices, they have
failed to do so with the Islamists. The Islamists possess their
own resources including mosques, schools and social infrastructure.
In a way, Muslim rulers enabled mainstream Islamists to become
the only viable political alternative. In Imbaba, one of the
poorest neighbourhoods in Egypt, a poor Egyptian said: "Listen,
suppose my son gets ill at two in the morning. He’s dying.
Who do I call? Who is there?” He counts on the Muslim
Brotherhood to send a doctor to his house in the middle of the
night. “Who do you want me to vote for,” he asked,
“the government or the Muslim Brotherhood?” In the
last 50 years, authoritarianism and ideological immobilization
have sapped the strength of Arab citizens, estranging them from
the political process. They are fed up with the elite, both
the opposition and the ruling elite, who promised heaven and
delivered dust. Sadly, mainstream Islamists have provided neither
vision nor initiative to build a broad alliance of social forces
and transform the political space. They arm themselves with
vacuous slogans like “Islam is the solution.” A
third, more recent fault line is the Shia-Sunni divide. Even
in traditionally non-sectarian societies like Egypt, Yemen and
Jordan, the divide resonates. In interviews, some radical Islamists
have told me that the Shia represent a more existential threat
to the Sunnis than the Americans do. “America can never
infiltrate the social fabric of Sunni societies, while the Shia
can," they said.
Although
the Shia-Sunni divide is more political and ideological than
religious, the spill over from the Iraq War threatens social
harmony from Lebanon to Syria to the Gulf. Unfortunately, US
strategy in Iraq has widened the gulf between Shia Iran and
Sunni-dominated states in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan,
indirectly sowing the seeds for a transnational sectarian battle.
Pro-Western Arab regimes manipulate the divide to stem the Iranian
tide in the Arab arena. The dominant narrative in this volatile
region pins the blame for deepening fault lines on America.
Time and again, I am told that Westernization and globalization,
US support for Israel and authoritarian Muslim regimes, coupled
with America’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan, are the sources
of the ills besetting Muslim societies. Few recognize the gravity
of the internal institutional crisis shaking Arab societies
to their very foundation. Pinning the blame on imperial America
is the easy way out.
It’s
futile to talk about what the Bush administration can do to
prevent the region’s escalation of hostilities. We can
only await the next administration, one that begins the process
of extracting US forces from Iraq's shifting sands and trying
to resolve the region’s simmering conflicts, particularly
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The coming administration,
along with the international community, must develop a new Marshall
Plan to help Arabs rejuvenate their collapsed economies and
institutions. A superpower like the US with vital interests
in the region cannot afford to remain idle. The major foreign-policy
challenge facing US presidential candidates is coming to terms
with the complexity of the region’s troubles -- and crafting
strategic approaches for Iraq and the region as a whole. My
conversations with a broad spectrum of the public and civil-society
leaders convinced me that, without pressure from the international
community, Arab and Muslim regimes will resist reform. Since
the invasion of Iraq and subsequent devastation, Muslims have
no serious regard for the Bush administration’s rhetoric
on democracy, widely perceiving it as a ploy to subjugate the
Muslim world. Now liberals say to the Bush administration, "Please
leave us alone. You’ve done a great deal of damage to
our democratic agenda." Based on public surveys, democracy
does not rank high for Arabs. Bread-and-butter issues top their
concerns. Democracy is a luxury when economic survival is at
stake.
That
does not mean Arabs do not welcome democracy. Rather the rhetoric
of democracy means little unless translated into concrete actions,
such as helping to build a productive social base and a universal
commitment to the rule of law and human rights, reducing tensions
by resolving festering regional conflicts.
