17 December 2003
CASABLANCA. The main question about the capture and imminent trial of Saddam Hussein is whether this marks only the end of a particular dictator or of the wider phenomenon of homegrown (and usually externally-supported) autocrats and dictators in the wider Middle East.
President George Bush said Monday that the US policy aimed to “transform” the entire Middle East, ridding it of dictators and terrorism, and instead fostering democracy, peace and prosperity. These are worthy goals that no rational person would oppose. It remains unclear, though, whether the ongoing and largely unilateral American military approach is the most legitimate and effective way to achieve this goal.
The answers probably are not to be found only in Baghdad or Washington, but rather in the minds of people like 38-year-old truck and car driver Abdel Halim in Casablanca, Morocco. The direction of the Arab world will be determined largely by the mindsets and worldviews of nearly 300 million Arab men and women like Abdel Halim, who provide the environment in which dictators like Saddam Hussein can flourish.
I spent four hours in an animated and always fascinating conversation with Abdel Halim on Sunday. Just after we parted company, I heard the news of the capture of Saddam Hussein. During our conversation, and in response to my asking, Abdel Halim had repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein and Osama Ben Laden were more than good men. Each was “rajul wa nus” (“a man and a half”), a laudatory term this working-class Moroccan father of three also used to describe Palestinians and Lebanese who carried out suicide bombing missions against Israelis.
Abdel Halim typifies public opinion throughout much of the Arab world, and perhaps even other parts of Asia and Africa. He participated in street demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and against the US' policy in Iraq (“millions and millions of us were in the street”), and said he could easily become a suicide bomber against Israel. He riled against what he describes as corrupt Arab regimes that serve America and Israel before serving their own people. He is especially outraged, he said, by some Arab rulers who vacation in Morocco and have entire planeloads of young women flown in for their pleasure from Egypt, Lebanon, London and Argentina.
Some of Abdel Halim's perceptions of reality are clearly distorted by the immense anger and humiliation he feels as a Moroccan, an Arab citizen and a Muslim. He feels passionately about events in other parts of the region, which he follows closely on pan-Arab satellite television stations.
The mindset of many ordinary Arabs like Abdel Halim and the perceptions in the corridors of power in the Arab capitals and Washington reflect worlds so different that you navigate between them not with maps and visas, but with spacecraft, for we are speaking here of different planets. His world geographically and ideologically is halfway between Baghdad and Washington. We must understand and address his world correcting misperceptions but also responding to legitimate grievances if we wish to eradicate the phenomenon of Arab dictators, and not only change individual dictatorial regimes such as Saddam Hussein's.
The first thing to understand is the correct relationship between the phenomena of individuals like Abdel Halim and demagogues, dictators and terrorists that emerge from the Middle East, such as Saddam and Ben Laden. Such violent demagogues have plagued the Middle East for decades because they have a fertile environment in which to grow. They exploit the bitter and angry lives of ordinary people like Abdel Halim, thousands of miles away from the local realities of Iraq, Palestine or Saudi Arabia.
The most important reasons for the mass discontent and humiliation among ordinary Arabs include severe socio-economic distress, the Arab-Israeli conflict, repeated Western armed intervention and other forms of colonialism, and autocratic domestic governance systems. Western powers also have often found it in their own interest to support the local tyrants for some specific purpose (as the US supported Iraq against Iran, and Ben Laden against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan).
Saddam was typical of this phenomenon. As long as the underlying environment leaves millions and millions of Arabs like Abdel Halim in a condition of humiliation, need, fear for the future and anger against Arab leaders, Israel and the United States, local demagogues will rise on his anger and his broken environment.
It may not be important in the long run if Abdel Halim's view of the world is accurate or if his accusations against Arab and American rulers are based on facts. Emotions and perceptions define reality and drive policy. Saddam's actions ultimately were based on Abdel Halim's emotions. In a similar vein, verifiable facts about Iraq were pretty irrelevant for the United States on its road to war and regime change in Iraq. American anger after Sept. 11 created a popular need for understandable revenge and justice, and verifiable facts took second place.
Transforming the Middle East requires fixing its underlying broken political and economic environment, symbolised by replacing Abdel Halim's worldview of anger and resentment with hope and pride. This remains the big, long-term challenge in the Middle East, because it is the root cause of the dictators and brutal regimes that plague us all.
CASABLANCA. The main question about the capture and imminent trial of Saddam Hussein is whether this marks only the end of a particular dictator or of the wider phenomenon of homegrown (and usually externally-supported) autocrats and dictators in the wider Middle East.
President George Bush said Monday that the US policy aimed to “transform” the entire Middle East, ridding it of dictators and terrorism, and instead fostering democracy, peace and prosperity. These are worthy goals that no rational person would oppose. It remains unclear, though, whether the ongoing and largely unilateral American military approach is the most legitimate and effective way to achieve this goal.
The answers probably are not to be found only in Baghdad or Washington, but rather in the minds of people like 38-year-old truck and car driver Abdel Halim in Casablanca, Morocco. The direction of the Arab world will be determined largely by the mindsets and worldviews of nearly 300 million Arab men and women like Abdel Halim, who provide the environment in which dictators like Saddam Hussein can flourish.
I spent four hours in an animated and always fascinating conversation with Abdel Halim on Sunday. Just after we parted company, I heard the news of the capture of Saddam Hussein. During our conversation, and in response to my asking, Abdel Halim had repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein and Osama Ben Laden were more than good men. Each was “rajul wa nus” (“a man and a half”), a laudatory term this working-class Moroccan father of three also used to describe Palestinians and Lebanese who carried out suicide bombing missions against Israelis.
Abdel Halim typifies public opinion throughout much of the Arab world, and perhaps even other parts of Asia and Africa. He participated in street demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and against the US' policy in Iraq (“millions and millions of us were in the street”), and said he could easily become a suicide bomber against Israel. He riled against what he describes as corrupt Arab regimes that serve America and Israel before serving their own people. He is especially outraged, he said, by some Arab rulers who vacation in Morocco and have entire planeloads of young women flown in for their pleasure from Egypt, Lebanon, London and Argentina.
Some of Abdel Halim's perceptions of reality are clearly distorted by the immense anger and humiliation he feels as a Moroccan, an Arab citizen and a Muslim. He feels passionately about events in other parts of the region, which he follows closely on pan-Arab satellite television stations.
The mindset of many ordinary Arabs like Abdel Halim and the perceptions in the corridors of power in the Arab capitals and Washington reflect worlds so different that you navigate between them not with maps and visas, but with spacecraft, for we are speaking here of different planets. His world geographically and ideologically is halfway between Baghdad and Washington. We must understand and address his world correcting misperceptions but also responding to legitimate grievances if we wish to eradicate the phenomenon of Arab dictators, and not only change individual dictatorial regimes such as Saddam Hussein's.
The first thing to understand is the correct relationship between the phenomena of individuals like Abdel Halim and demagogues, dictators and terrorists that emerge from the Middle East, such as Saddam and Ben Laden. Such violent demagogues have plagued the Middle East for decades because they have a fertile environment in which to grow. They exploit the bitter and angry lives of ordinary people like Abdel Halim, thousands of miles away from the local realities of Iraq, Palestine or Saudi Arabia.
The most important reasons for the mass discontent and humiliation among ordinary Arabs include severe socio-economic distress, the Arab-Israeli conflict, repeated Western armed intervention and other forms of colonialism, and autocratic domestic governance systems. Western powers also have often found it in their own interest to support the local tyrants for some specific purpose (as the US supported Iraq against Iran, and Ben Laden against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan).
Saddam was typical of this phenomenon. As long as the underlying environment leaves millions and millions of Arabs like Abdel Halim in a condition of humiliation, need, fear for the future and anger against Arab leaders, Israel and the United States, local demagogues will rise on his anger and his broken environment.
It may not be important in the long run if Abdel Halim's view of the world is accurate or if his accusations against Arab and American rulers are based on facts. Emotions and perceptions define reality and drive policy. Saddam's actions ultimately were based on Abdel Halim's emotions. In a similar vein, verifiable facts about Iraq were pretty irrelevant for the United States on its road to war and regime change in Iraq. American anger after Sept. 11 created a popular need for understandable revenge and justice, and verifiable facts took second place.
Transforming the Middle East requires fixing its underlying broken political and economic environment, symbolised by replacing Abdel Halim's worldview of anger and resentment with hope and pride. This remains the big, long-term challenge in the Middle East, because it is the root cause of the dictators and brutal regimes that plague us all.
Rami G. Khouri
© Jordan Times 2003
