Blogue-Blague

Saladin Awake: Revolutionary change in the Middle East

Feb 5th, 2011 | By Chris Kline | Category: Op-ed, Op-ed Featured

The late Anwar Sadat once stated that “you are not a realist unless you believe in miracles.” The spark of populist uprising against the forces of an autocratic status quo ignited in Tunis that soon engulfed Algiers now burning brightly in Cairo’s Tahrir Square as never before in the nearly thirty years of Hosni Mubarak’s draconian rule seems nothing less than a miracle, however precarious and fraught with danger, Egypt’s people’s revolution in the making remains. And if it is a stark awakening for every authoritarian regime still entrenched in rule by decree, cronyism, cleptocracy and brutality in the whole of the Middle East, North Africa and the larger Muslim world, it should come as a warning to dictatorships everywhere. A seemingly cowed and fearful population armed with little more than its courage, anger and hope for democratic change inexorably reaches a breaking point when it can no longer withstand misrule and misery that has lasted generations. The police state becomes meaningless when an entire nation does not run from its guns and torturers. The miracle IS reality in the Sahara and Egypt today and it already is echoed albeit in milder form in Yemen and Jordan. Perhaps it will also reach Teheran in time. The Iranian people’s stunted leap to revolution last year has been driven underground, but to judge it will never reawaken is folly, especially now.

This cataclysmic change is as much a shrill alarm bell for Western foreign policy that business as usual in the region is finished forever. Western cultural myopia and the arrogance of might that has traded alliances with repressive regimes, for an ephemeral, corroded stability in the Middle East cannot endure. The US which has long inherited the mantle of the now bygone British and French colonial powers in the region, must now read the slogans on the Arab street and grasp their meaning clearly. Democracy, free societies, a more even handed chance at prosperity and the transparent rule of law, are not gifts Washington can selectively hand out or withhold as it pleases, nor can it impose them by force. Arab societies will be themselves, on their terms, not what outsiders wish or force them to be. As demonstrators and Mubarak’s praetorian guards are alike silent to outside pressure or influence as Egypt’s showdown ensues, the White House, its allies at Number 10 Downing Street and the Elysee Palace have seldom seemed quite as superfluous and powerless as actors in the Middle East. That Barack Obama or David Cameron fail to find any words that could offer solace, wisdom or even a clear signal to the Egyptian people seems to underscore this impotence.

The Middle East like Africa, seen through a Western prism is often presented as an inherently dysfunctional powder keg, readily given to fanaticism and fierce hatreds. The sub text in bipolar contrast is the presumed calm, logical rationality of the West. The volatility of the Middle East and the larger Muslim world is not make believe but we seldom look at the complete picture of causality for the turbulence that reigns. We choose not to look in the mirror too closely. It’s always them, not us who made the mess, somehow. And it still beggars credulity how former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who so fervently championed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, could serve as the EU’s Middle East peace envoy.

If we consider the strident hostility of Ahmadinejad’s Iran towards the West, do we remember the instrumental role Anglo-American skullduggery played in toppling Mossadeq and installing the Shah? Would Israelis, who do face a genuine existentialist threat from Iran, acknowledge that the Mossad was a key player in training the Savak, the dreaded secret police of the Peacock throne? Could we then regard Western complicity as Shah Pahlevi’s principal sponsor as bearing any responsibility for the backlash against the doomed Emperor’s repression that birthed, the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Khomeni, and the intransigent Iranian theocracy that rules today with a Holocaust denier as President? The archive of modern Middle Eastern history is full of the ghosts of bad Western choices.

The Sykes-Picot treaty at the end of the First World War neatly divided the choice morsels of the fallen Ottoman Empire between the British and French empires, shaping much of the map that comprises the contemporary Middle East. Since it bears on the disastrous Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 it is worth revisiting a nascent British mandated Iraq. The monarch the British installed had little to no claim over his subjects. The proxy power structures the British imposed were defined by a complete disregard for traditional tribal, ethnic, religious and geographical fault lines. They empowered a Sunni minority over a Shia majority and thus the seeds for both the blueprint of Saddam Hussein’s savage regime and future sectarian conflict that still grips Iraq were sown. Worth noting that it was the British Empire that first used poison gas to subjugate rebellion among restive Kurds in the 1920’s. Winston Churchill himself then Colonial Secretary judging aerial chemical warfare a cost effective and expedient method of counter-insurgency. But when Saddam Hussein notoriously unleashed gas on Hallabja in 1988, viscerally we understood such bestial conduct as antithetical to our own.

But then the West has difficulty even now looking at its more recent mistakes unequivocally. Former US President George W. Bush and Tony Blair are both unrepentant and morally secure in having devised the invasion of Iraq, a conflict fought in the name of stopping entirely illusory weapons of mass destruction and avenging a 9/11 conspiracy and linkage to Al Qaeda that proved as fictitious. So some 5000 Allied dead later, hundreds of thousands of mostly civilian Iraqi dead with several hundred still dying violently each month and untold billions spent, Al Qaeda is now a firm presence in Iraq. Moreover a demagogue theocrat like Moqtada al Sadr is a key player in Iraqi politics and the future or even remote possibility of a unified and cohesive Iraq that isn’t blood soaked is as unpredictable as the desert winds.

While the Iraqi quagmire deepened two pivotal fronts in the quest for stability in the Middle East and security in ever contentious South Asia, foundered from sheer neglect: the Palestinian Israeli Peace Process which no longer merits the name and the war in Afghanistan where all hangs in the balance by a frayed thread despite a massive influx of US and NATO troops. The Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan seems as implacable and powerful as ever and the Palestinian Territories are a house divided the Palestinian Authority virtually powerless, Hamas ruling Gaza and most Palestinians still in abject poverty and seething with anger.

Which new direction then can Western policy take to regain relevance and coherence, build real friendships and yield a positive impact in the Middle East to better serve its own strategic interests and the aspirations of the region? It can throw out the previous handbook on diplomacy and power politics as utterly obsolete and counter-productive and start from scratch. It could stop ignoring the legacy and forces of history, acknowledge its own mistakes and for a change listen to the pulse of the people, now given an historic opportunity to do so. Re-examining the West’s unholy alliance with Wahabbi Saudi Arabia, the leading financier for radical Islamic terror groups and extremist indoctrination worldwide would be helpful. It is somehow fitting that the Saudi Monarchy, one of the last absolute kingdoms on earth, has been the only voice in the Middle East to offer moral support to Mubarak. The necessary change is at its core an attitudinal one and the West would do well to shed its growing Islamophobia, its equating of Islamic extremism with the whole of Islam, when the butcher’s bill for radical Islam’s atrocities is predominantly borne by Muslim suffering not Westerners.

Islam is not a monolith; it has never been and never will be, it is a universe as diverse as Christianity, ideologically, spiritually, politically, culturally. The societies of the Middle East must be recognized for their own uniqueness. Egypt, Algeria and Iran, have thriving, well educated, large, liberal thinking, middle classes. French President Nikolas Sarkozy recently stated that the only choice lay in dictatorship or the Taliban. Surely, the Egyptians on the street clamoring for democratic change, seek a third path. In the larger Muslim realm Indonesia and Turkey remain in the secular fold and so too, there is no indication in Egypt that because the Muslim Brotherhood has rallied in open defiance to the ancien regime that an Islamist revolution is in the making. On the contrary, all the signposts point to the Egyptian people seeking a far broader, tolerant and inclusive society to be born.

Israel does have cause to be concerned as it awaits the ultimate outcome of the Egyptian debacle, fearing its long peace with Egypt may evaporate. It is also understandably nervous that Hezbollah has continued its march to dominance in Lebanese politics and essentially called the tune that formed the current Lebanese government. It is as unfortunate that the recent Wikileaks on Israeli Palestinian negotiations reveal an Israel seemingly incapable of granting a pathway to peace when the Palestinian Authority was offering territorial concessions of such magnitude, other Palestinians deem them traitorous. Where there is room for less fear perhaps is that Hezbollah, regardless of its Iranian and Syrian patrons, will likely look to consolidate its political position, continue building its prestige internally and not seek to precipitate another war, especially when it is celebrated as the victor of the last showdown with Israel among its followers. And Egyptians may not be enamored of the Israelis but with so much internal reform sorely needed, it is doubtful either the population at large or the armed forces would countenance military adventurism. And nobody in the neighborhood wants another Iraq.

The urgent message, the demand for change on the homemade banners in Tahrir square is for everyone in the Middle East, the West and indeed the whole world to read and comprehend in its true meaning. What was acceptable yesterday is not palatable today to downtrodden people who refuse life on their knees and are now bravely standing upright. The cry for justice and self-determination of the Egyptian people cannot be drowned out by the rifles that answer them. Clearly there are violent forces deaf to their pleas and others in far away but powerful capitals who prevaricate and fumble unable to interpret the signal that has been so passionately conveyed. If the streets of Cairo are silenced by indifference and an iron fist, quashed peaceful dissent will become the rag in the bottle of gasoline of armed insurrection. It will only burn more terribly in the hell of civil war. At that point of no return, when hope becomes rage and tolerance becomes vengeance in an escalation of violence there is no telling what form of extremism could yet emerge. The Frankenstein would then be real and all fears would be realized, the grim cost of inaction.

Like so many Arab nations the insignia of the Egyptian army and security forces is the proud eagle of Saladin, the greatest warrior king, peacemaker, lawgiver and unifier of Islamic antiquity the Middle East ever witnessed, deeply respected even by his Christian adversaries, the Crusaders from whom he wrested Jerusalem free. It is often forgotten that he wasn’t even an Arab but Kurdish. He was also a Sufi, an adherent of the most tolerant even ecumenical, mystical form of Islam, regarded today by Al Qaeda and their fellow travelers as apostate and heretic. Sufi masters, as he had been undertake a vow of poverty. Saladin did not amass wealth though he was supreme overlord of all the lands he had freed or conquered. When he died, at the apex of his power, he left but a few pieces of coin. Mubarak, the arrogant, soldier statesman who refuses to leave his post, his enforcers and the cleptocrats he has enriched, would do well to heed Saladin’s example. To serve the nation now means to exit and answer to the will of the people. It is good Tahrir, translates as Freedom Square. May freedom come.

** Chris Kline, a former CNN Correspondent is an independent, international frontline journalist and documentary maker with extensive conflict experience in the Caucasus, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America. He is the American grandson of the late Ahmed Sukarno, founder of modern Indonesia, the world’s largest predominantly Muslim nation.

BM


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