The Arab Street
The battling beasts of the new Middle East
By Rami G. Khouri - Daily Star staff . Saturday, November 26, 2005
BEIRUT: If there is such a scholarly discipline as political anthropology, one of its most fascinating case studies would be the current confrontation between the United States and Syria. It tells us much about the instinctive behavior of the United States, the Syrian leadership and the wider Arab world, and how change might happen during this era of uncertain transformation throughout the region and the world.
The telling moment in this dynamic came earlier this month when Syrian President Bashar Assad made a strong, defiant speech at Damascus University announcing that Syria would resist to the death the American-led international plan to bring it and the entire Arab world to their knees, or send it into violent chaos like next door Iraq. After three years of mixed signals to the United States on whether or not it would cooperate on issues like Iraq, the global anti-terror war, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Hizbullah, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Syria has again offered mixed signals, but this time with a dramatic flourish, more rhetorical fist-waving and loud patriotic music in the background.
Political anthropology is useful here because it tells us about how political organisms behave, not necessarily about what they feel or believe in. In behavioral terms, the Syrian president said essentially that he would continue to defy the United States and the United Nations' demands to cooperate with the investigation of the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, while also cooperating with them on the key issues of concern to them. He made a ringing call for steadfastness, sacrifice and resistance to American-led plans to control this region and reconfigure its sovereignties, saying that Syria would pay the price of resistance and defiance, and would not fear or bow its head to anyone but God. At the same time, his government talks with the UN investigators on where to meet the top Syrian officials who are requested for questioning.
I find the Syrian position significant mainly because it allows us finally - 15 years after the end of the Cold War - to identify the broad lines of the main ideological forces that define the Middle East today and compete within it for the allegiance of some 300 million Arabs. I see five of them, of very unequal strength:
1)Mainstream Islamists: This is the largest single constituency in the region, comprising relatively moderate, mostly nonviolent, Islamist movements such as Hamas, Hizbullah and the Muslim Brotherhood. They use armed violence to repel foreign (mostly Israeli) occupations, and in the past sometimes violently challenged their own regimes in Syria, Egypt, Algeria and other lands. Most of them now focus on sharing or gaining political power peacefully, through local and national elections. Their significant gains in the ongoing Egyptian parliamentary elections are an important signal that they would fare well if free and fair elections were held in Arab countries.
2)Terrorist groups: A small number of Arabs, Pakistanis, Afghans, and citizens of other lands have broken away from mainstream political Islamism and adopted terror as a vehicle for their political expression, a la Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They draw on the same mass resentment and sense of marginalization that plague most Arab citizenries and feed the mainstream, non-violent Islamist parties, but instead they use terror against Arab and foreign targets as an instrument of their political expression and aims.
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3) American-led Western hegemony: This is the ideological force in the Middle East that has been recently articulated in more distinct terms, following the end of the Cold War around 1990 and then more emphatically after the attacks of September 11, 2001. This movement aims to transform the Middle East into a series of Washington-compliant societies that are free to spend their money and run their internal affairs as they wish (e.g., family-run monarchies, tribal-run police states, security-run oligarchies, father-and-son kleptocracies) as long as they stay out of the business of terror, WMD proliferation, and pestering Israel. Democracy is optional, and a free market, globalized, free-trade economy preferred.
4) Anti-American, anti-imperial defiance: This is the oldest running ideological current in the region, dating from a century ago when various Arabs rebelled against European, Ottoman, and, to a limited extent, Zionist power in the region. Assad has now raised this banner high once again, targeting the U.S.A., and it will be important to see how many people follow his emotional and political lead. He couches his stance in pan-Arab and anti-imperial rhetoric and principles that still ring credibly to many ears in this battered region that suffers long-running Israeli, and more recent Anglo-American, military invasions and occupations.
5) Home-grown Arab democracy and the rule of law: This is the most recent and weakest ideology in the region, represented by civil society activists and others who demand more participatory, accountable Arab governance systems. This fledgling movement rears its head in important ways in many lands, by citizens who have grown weary and humiliated by their own national stagnation, autocracy, police states, corruption, mismanagement and deference to foreign dictates. They do not hold much hope for better things to come from the four other primary ideological forces swirling around them, and work instead for governance that respects the rule of law and pluralism.
In terms of political anthropology, they are like algae that starts to grow slowly, in small clusters in dark corners, but has the potential to take root and ultimately overwhelm its immediate environment.
President Assad's defiant speech catering to a market of pan-Arab, anti-imperial sensibilities, defiance and resistance will let us see how large and deep that constituency really is, if it exists any more. His position completes the five forces I mentioned above as the protagonist beasts in the political jungle of the contemporary Arab world. If I were a betting man, I would say that after the current period of some turmoil and violent change, the triumphant trend to emerge will combine the peaceful Islamists with the home-grown democrats. That's the optimistic scenario. The worst case scenario would see the American hegemon perpetually fighting the combined forces of the home-grown terrorists and the exasperated, radicalized pan-Arab nationalists, amidst an expanding global terror and anti-terror war.
Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for The Daily Star
By Rami G. Khouri - Daily Star staff . Saturday, November 26, 2005
BEIRUT: If there is such a scholarly discipline as political anthropology, one of its most fascinating case studies would be the current confrontation between the United States and Syria. It tells us much about the instinctive behavior of the United States, the Syrian leadership and the wider Arab world, and how change might happen during this era of uncertain transformation throughout the region and the world.
The telling moment in this dynamic came earlier this month when Syrian President Bashar Assad made a strong, defiant speech at Damascus University announcing that Syria would resist to the death the American-led international plan to bring it and the entire Arab world to their knees, or send it into violent chaos like next door Iraq. After three years of mixed signals to the United States on whether or not it would cooperate on issues like Iraq, the global anti-terror war, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Hizbullah, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Syria has again offered mixed signals, but this time with a dramatic flourish, more rhetorical fist-waving and loud patriotic music in the background.
Political anthropology is useful here because it tells us about how political organisms behave, not necessarily about what they feel or believe in. In behavioral terms, the Syrian president said essentially that he would continue to defy the United States and the United Nations' demands to cooperate with the investigation of the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, while also cooperating with them on the key issues of concern to them. He made a ringing call for steadfastness, sacrifice and resistance to American-led plans to control this region and reconfigure its sovereignties, saying that Syria would pay the price of resistance and defiance, and would not fear or bow its head to anyone but God. At the same time, his government talks with the UN investigators on where to meet the top Syrian officials who are requested for questioning.
I find the Syrian position significant mainly because it allows us finally - 15 years after the end of the Cold War - to identify the broad lines of the main ideological forces that define the Middle East today and compete within it for the allegiance of some 300 million Arabs. I see five of them, of very unequal strength:
1)Mainstream Islamists: This is the largest single constituency in the region, comprising relatively moderate, mostly nonviolent, Islamist movements such as Hamas, Hizbullah and the Muslim Brotherhood. They use armed violence to repel foreign (mostly Israeli) occupations, and in the past sometimes violently challenged their own regimes in Syria, Egypt, Algeria and other lands. Most of them now focus on sharing or gaining political power peacefully, through local and national elections. Their significant gains in the ongoing Egyptian parliamentary elections are an important signal that they would fare well if free and fair elections were held in Arab countries.
2)Terrorist groups: A small number of Arabs, Pakistanis, Afghans, and citizens of other lands have broken away from mainstream political Islamism and adopted terror as a vehicle for their political expression, a la Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They draw on the same mass resentment and sense of marginalization that plague most Arab citizenries and feed the mainstream, non-violent Islamist parties, but instead they use terror against Arab and foreign targets as an instrument of their political expression and aims.
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3) American-led Western hegemony: This is the ideological force in the Middle East that has been recently articulated in more distinct terms, following the end of the Cold War around 1990 and then more emphatically after the attacks of September 11, 2001. This movement aims to transform the Middle East into a series of Washington-compliant societies that are free to spend their money and run their internal affairs as they wish (e.g., family-run monarchies, tribal-run police states, security-run oligarchies, father-and-son kleptocracies) as long as they stay out of the business of terror, WMD proliferation, and pestering Israel. Democracy is optional, and a free market, globalized, free-trade economy preferred.
4) Anti-American, anti-imperial defiance: This is the oldest running ideological current in the region, dating from a century ago when various Arabs rebelled against European, Ottoman, and, to a limited extent, Zionist power in the region. Assad has now raised this banner high once again, targeting the U.S.A., and it will be important to see how many people follow his emotional and political lead. He couches his stance in pan-Arab and anti-imperial rhetoric and principles that still ring credibly to many ears in this battered region that suffers long-running Israeli, and more recent Anglo-American, military invasions and occupations.
5) Home-grown Arab democracy and the rule of law: This is the most recent and weakest ideology in the region, represented by civil society activists and others who demand more participatory, accountable Arab governance systems. This fledgling movement rears its head in important ways in many lands, by citizens who have grown weary and humiliated by their own national stagnation, autocracy, police states, corruption, mismanagement and deference to foreign dictates. They do not hold much hope for better things to come from the four other primary ideological forces swirling around them, and work instead for governance that respects the rule of law and pluralism.
In terms of political anthropology, they are like algae that starts to grow slowly, in small clusters in dark corners, but has the potential to take root and ultimately overwhelm its immediate environment.
President Assad's defiant speech catering to a market of pan-Arab, anti-imperial sensibilities, defiance and resistance will let us see how large and deep that constituency really is, if it exists any more. His position completes the five forces I mentioned above as the protagonist beasts in the political jungle of the contemporary Arab world. If I were a betting man, I would say that after the current period of some turmoil and violent change, the triumphant trend to emerge will combine the peaceful Islamists with the home-grown democrats. That's the optimistic scenario. The worst case scenario would see the American hegemon perpetually fighting the combined forces of the home-grown terrorists and the exasperated, radicalized pan-Arab nationalists, amidst an expanding global terror and anti-terror war.
Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for The Daily Star
posted by professor rat at 8:26 PM
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