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Text - Pollitics - Zunes, Stephen - 10 Things to Know About the Middle East.txt
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10 Things to Know About the Middle East
Stephen Zunes, AlterNet
October 1, 2001
Viewed on October 18, 2001
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1. Who are the Arabs?
Arab peoples range from the Atlantic coast in northwest Africa to the Arabian
peninsula and north to Syria. They are united by a common language and
culture. Though the vast majority are Muslim, there are also sizable Christian
Arab minorities in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Palestine. Originally the
inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, the Arabs spread their language and
culture to the north and west with the expansion of Islam in the 7th century.
There are also Arab minorities in the Sahel and parts of east Africa, as well
as in Iran and Israel. The Arabs were responsible for great advances in
mathematics, astronomy and other scientific disciplines, while Europe was
still mired in the Dark Ages.
Though there is great diversity in skin pigmentation, spoken dialect and
certain customs, there is a common identity that unites Arab people, which
has sometimes been reflected in pan-Arab nationalist movements. Despite
substantial political and other differences, many Arabs share a sense that
they are one nation, which has been artificially divided through the
machinations of Western imperialism and which came to dominate the region
with the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and early 20th century.
There is also a growing Arab diaspora in Europe, North America, Latin
America, West Africa and Australia.
2. Who are the Muslims?
The Islamic faith originated in the Arabian peninsula, based on what Muslims
believe to be divine revelations by God to the prophet Mohammed. Muslims
worship the same God as do Jews and Christians, and share many of the
same prophets and ethical traditions, including respect for innocent life.
Approximately 90 percent of Muslims are of the orthodox or Sunni tradition;
most of the remainder are of the Shi'ite tradition, which dominate Iran but also
has substantial numbers in Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen and Lebanon. Sunni Islam
is nonhierarchical in structure. There is not a tradition of separation between
the faith and state institutions as there is in the West, though there is
enormous diversity in various Islamic legal traditions and the degree to which
governments of predominately Muslim countries rely on religious bases for
their rule.
Political movements based on Islam have ranged from left to right, from
nonviolent to violent, from tolerant to chauvinistic. Generally, the more
moderate Islamic movements have developed in countries where there is a
degree of political pluralism in which they could operate openly. There is a
strong tradition of social justice in Islam, which has often led to conflicts with
regimes that are seen to be unjust or unethical. The more radical movements
have tended to arise in countries that have suffered great social dislocation
due to war or inappropriate economic policies and/or are under autocratic
rule.
Most of the world's Muslims are not Arabs. The world's largest Muslim
country, for example, is Indonesia. Other important non-Arab Muslim
countries include Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey
and the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia, as well as Nigeria and
several other black African states. Islam is one of the fastest growing
religions in the world and scores of countries have substantial Muslim
minorities. There are approximately five million Muslims in the United States.
3. Why is there so much violence and political instability in the
Middle East?
For most of the past 500 years, the Middle East actually saw less violence
and warfare and more political stability than Europe or most other regions of
the world. It has only been in the last century that the region has seen such
widespread conflict. The roots of the conflict are similar to those elsewhere in
the Third World, and have to do with the legacy of colonialism, such as
artificial political boundaries, autocratic regimes, militarization, economic
inequality and economies based on the export of raw materials for finished
goods. Indeed, the Middle East has more autocratic regimes, militarization,
economic inequality and the greatest ratio of exports to domestic
consumption than any region in the world.
At the crossroads of three continents and sitting on much of the world's oil
reserves, the region has been subjected to repeated interventions and
conquests by outside powers, resulting in a high level of xenophobia and
suspicion regarding the intentions of Western powers going back as far as
the Crusades. There is nothing in Arab or Islamic culture that promotes
violence or discord; indeed, there is a strong cultural preference for stability,
order and respect for authority. However, adherence to authority is based on
a kind of social contract that assumes a level of justice which -- if broken by
the ruler -- gives the people a right to challenge it. The word jihad, often
translated as "holy war," actually means "holy struggle," which can
sometimes mean an armed struggle (qital), but also can mean nonviolent
action and political work within the established system. Jihad also can mean
a struggle for the moral good of the Muslim community, or even a personal
spiritual struggle.
Terrorism is not primarily a Middle Eastern phenomenon. In terms of civilian
lives lost, Africa has experienced far more terrorism in recent decades than
has the Middle East. Similarly, far more suicide bombings in recent years
have come from Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka than from Muslim Arabs in the
Middle East. There is also a little-known but impressive tradition of
nonviolent resistance and participatory democracy in some Middle Eastern
countries.
4. Why has the Middle East been the focus of U.S. concern about
international terrorism?
There has been a long history of terrorism -- generally defined as violence by
irregular forces against civilian targets -- in the Middle East. During Israel's
independence struggle in the 1940s, Israeli terrorists killed hundreds of
Palestinian and British civilians; two of the most notorious terrorist leaders of
that period -- Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir -- later became Israeli
prime ministers whose governments received strong financial, diplomatic and
military support from the United States. Algeria's independence struggle from
France in the 1950s included widespread terrorist attacks against French
colonists. Palestine's ongoing struggle for independence has also included
widespread terrorism against Israeli civilians, during the 1970s through some
of the armed militias of the Palestine Liberation Organization and, more
recently, through radical underground Islamic groups. Terrorism has also
played a role in Algeria's current civil strife, in Lebanon's civil war and foreign
occupations during the 1980s, and for many years in the Kurdish struggle for
independence. Some Middle Eastern governments -- notably Libya, Syria,
Sudan, Iraq and Iran -- have in the past had close links with terrorist
organizations. In more recent years, the Al Qaeda movement -- a
decentralized network of terrorist cells supported by Saudi exile Osama bin
Laden -- has become the major terrorist threat, and is widely believed to be
responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Bin
Laden himself has been given sanctuary in Afghanistan, though his personal
fortune and widespread network of supporters have allowed him to be
independent on direct financial or logistical support from any government.
The vast majority of the people in the Middle East deplore terrorism, yet point
out that violence against civilians by governments has generally surpassed
that of terrorists. For example, the Israelis have killed far more Arab civilians
over the decades through using U.S.-supplied equipment and ordinance than
have Arab terrorists killed Israeli civilians. Similarly, the U.S.-supplied
Turkish armed forces have killed far more Kurdish civilians than have such
radical Kurdish groups like the PKK (the Kurdish acronym for the Kurdistan
Workers' Party). Also, in the eyes of many Middle Easterners, U.S. support for
terrorist groups like the Nicaraguan contras and various right-wing Cuban
exile organizations in recent decades, as well as U.S. air strikes and the
U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq in more recent years, have made the U.S. an
unlikely leader in the war against terrorism
5. What kind of political systems and alliances exist in the Middle
East?
There are a variety of political systems in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia,
Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Morocco and Jordan
are all conservative monarchies (in approximate order of absolute rule). Iraq,
Syria and Libya are left-leaning dictatorships, with Iraq being one of the most
totalitarian societies in the world. Egypt and Tunisia are conservative
autocratic republics. Iran is an Islamic republic with an uneven trend in recent
years towards greater political openness. Sudan and Algeria are under
military rulers facing major insurrections.
Lebanon, Turkey and Yemen are republics with repressive aspects but some
degree of political pluralism. The only Middle Eastern country with a strong
tradition of parliamentary democracy is Israel, though the benefits of this
political freedom is largely restricted to its Jewish citizens (the Palestinian
Arab minority is generally treated as second-class citizens and Palestinians
in the occupied territories are subjected to military rule and human rights
abuses). The largely autocratic Palestinian Authority has been granted
limited autonomy in a series of non-contiguous enclaves in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip surrounded by Israeli occupation forces.
All Arab states, including the Palestinian Authority, belong to the League of
Arab States, which acts as a regional body similar to the Organization of
African Union or the Organization of American States, which work together
on issues of common concern. However, there are enormous political
divisions within Arab countries and other Middle Eastern states. Turkey is a
member of the NATO alliance, closely aligned with the West and hopes to
eventually become part of the European Union. The six conservative
monarchies of the Persian Gulf region have formed the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC), from where they pursue joint strategic and economic
interests and promote close ties with the West, particularly Great Britain
(which dominated the smaller sheikdoms in the late 19th and early 20th
century) and, more recently, the United States.
Often a country's alliances are not a reflection of its internal politics. For
example, Saudi Arabia is often referred in the U.S. media as a "moderate"
Arab state, though it is the most oppressive fundamentalist theocracy in the
world today outside of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan; "moderate," in this case,
simply means that it has close strategic and economic relations with the
United States.
Jordan and Egypt are pro-Western, but have been willing to challenge U.S.
policy on occasion. Israel identifies most strongly with the West: most of its
leaders are European-born or have been of European heritage, and it has
diplomatic relations with only a handful of Middle Eastern countries. Iran
alienated most of its neighbors with its threat to expand its brand of
revolutionary Islam to Arab world, though its increasingly moderate
orientation in recent years has led to some cautious rapprochement. Syria, a
former Soviet ally, has been cautiously reaching out to more conservative
Arab governments and with the West; it currently exerts enormous political
influence over Lebanon. Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Libya under Muammar
Qaddafi and Sudan under their military junta remain isolated from most of
other Middle Eastern countries due to a series of provocative policies, though
many of these same countries oppose the punitive sanctions and air strikes
the United States has inflicted against these countries in recent years.
6. What is the impact of oil in the Middle East?
The major oil producers of the Middle East include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Algeria. Egypt,
Syria, Oman and Yemen have smaller reserves. Most of the major oil
producers of the Middle East are part of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries, or OPEC. (Non-Middle Eastern OPEC members include
Indonesia, Venezuela, Nigeria and other countries.) Much of the world's oil
wealth exists along the Persian Gulf, with particularly large reserves in Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. About one-quarter of U.S. oil
imports come from the Persian Gulf region; the Gulf supplies European states
and Japan with an even higher percentage of those countries' energy needs.
The imposition of higher fuel efficiency standards and other conservation
measures, along with the increased use of renewable energy resources for
which technologies are already available, could eliminate U.S. dependence
on Middle Eastern oil in a relatively short period of time.
The Arab members of OPEC instigated a boycott against the United States in
the fall of 1973 in protest of U.S. support for Israel during the October
Arab-Israeli war, creating the first in a series of energy shortages. The cartel
has had periods of high and low costs for oil, resulting in great economic
instability. Most governments have historically used their oil wealth to
promote social welfare, particularly countries like Algeria, Libya and Iraq,
which professed to a more socialist orientation. Yet all countries have
squandered their wealth for arms purchases and prestige projects. In
general, the influx of petrodollars has created enormous economic inequality
both within oil-producing states and between oil-rich and oil-poor states as
well as widespread corruption and questionable economic priorities.
7. What is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about?
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially over land, with two peoples
claiming historic rights to the geographic Palestine, a small country in the
eastern Mediterranean about the size of New Jersey. The creation of modern
Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of the goal of the Jewish nationalist
movement, known as Zionism, as large numbers of Jews migrated to their
faith's ancestral homeland from Europe, North Africa and elsewhere
throughout the 20th century. They came into conflict with the indigenous
Palestinian Arab population, which also was struggling for independence.
The 1947 partition plan, which divided the country approximately in half,
resulted in a war that ended with Israel seizing control of 78 percent of the
territory within a year. Most of the Palestinian population became refugees, in
some cases through fleeing the fighting and in other cases through being
forcibly expelled. The remaining Palestinian areas -- the West Bank and
Gaza Strip -- came under control of the neighboring Arab states of Jordan
and Egypt, though these areas were also seized by Israel in the 1967 war.
Israel has been colonizing parts of these occupied territories with Jewish
settlers in violation of the Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council
resolutions. Historically, both sides have failed to recognize the legitimacy of
the others' nationalist aspirations, though the Palestinian leadership finally
formally recognized Israel in 1993. The peace process since then has been
over the fate of the West Bank (including Arab East Jerusalem) and the Gaza
Strip, which is the remaining 22 percent of the Palestine, occupied by Israel
since 1967. The United States plays the dual role of chief mediator of the
conflict as well as the chief financial, military and diplomatic supporter of
Israel. The Palestinians want their own independent state in these territories
and to allow Palestinian refugees the right to return. Israel, backed by the
United States, insists the Palestinians give up large swaths of the West Bank
-- including most of Arab East Jerusalem -- to Israel and to accept the
resettlement of most refugees into other Arab countries. Since September
2000, there has been widespread rioting by Palestinians against the ongoing
Israeli occupation as well as terrorist bombings within Israel by extremist
Islamic groups. Israeli occupation forces, meanwhile, have engaged in
widespread killings and other human rights abuses in the occupied
territories.
Most Arabs feel a strong sense of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle,
though their governments have tended to manipulate their plight for their own
political gain. Neighboring Arab states have fought several wars with Israel,
though Egypt and Jordan now have peace agreements and full diplomatic
relations with the Jewish state. In addition to much of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, Israel still occupies a part of southwestern Syria known as the
Golan Heights. The threats and hostility by Arab states towards Israel's very
existence has waned over the years. Full peace and diplomatic recognition
would likely come following a full Israeli withdrawal from its occupied
territories.
8. What has been the legacy of the Gulf War?
Virtually every Middle Eastern state opposed the Iraqi invasion and
occupation of Kuwait in 1990, though they were badly divided on the
appropriateness of the U.S.-led Gulf War that followed. Even among
countries that supported the armed liberation of Kuwait, there was
widespread opposition to the deliberate destruction by the United States of
much of Iraq's civilian infrastructure during the war. Even more controversial
has been the enormous humanitarian consequences of the U.S.-led
international sanctions against Iraq in place since the war, which have
resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children,
from malnutrition and preventable diseases.
The periodic U.S. air strikes against Iraq also have been controversial, as
has the ongoing U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states and
in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. Since Iraq's offensive military capability
was largely destroyed during the Gulf War and during the subsequent
inspections regime, many observers believe that U.S. fears about Iraq's
current military potential are exaggerated, particularly in light of the quiet U.S.
support for Iraq during the 1980s when its military was at its peak. In many
respects, the Gulf War led the oil-rich GCC states into closer identification
with the United States and the West and less with their fellow Arabs, though
there is still some distrust about U.S. motivations and policies in the Middle
East.
9. How has the political situation in Afghanistan evolved and how
is it connected to the Middle East?
Afghanistan, an impoverished landlocked mountainous country, has
traditionally been identified more with Central and South Asia than with the
Middle East. A 1978 coup by communist military officers resulted in a series
of radical social reforms, which were imposed in an autocratic matter and
which resulted in a popular rebellion by a number of armed Islamic
movements. The Soviet Union installed a more compliant communist regime
at the end of 1979, sending in tens of thousands of troops and instigating a
major bombing campaign, resulting in large-scale civilian casualties and
refugee flows. The war lasted for much of the next decade. The United States
sent arms to the Islamic resistance, known as the mujahadin, largely through
neighboring Pakistan, then under the rule of an ultra-conservative Islamic
military dictatorship. Most of the U.S. aid went to the most radical of the eight
different mujahadin factions on the belief that they would be least likely to
reach a negotiated settlement with the Soviet-backed government and would
therefore drag the Soviet forces down. Volunteers from throughout the Islamic
world, including the young Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden, joined the
struggle. The CIA trained many of these recruits, including bin Laden and
many of his followers.
When the Soviets and Afghanistan's communist government were defeated
in 1992, a vicious and bloody civil war broke out between the various
mujahadin factions, war lords and ethnic militias. Out of this chaos emerged
the Taliban movement, led by young seminary students from the refugee
camps in Pakistan who were educated in ultra-conservative Saudi-funded
schools. The Taliban took over 85 percent of the country by 1996 and
imposed long-awaited order and stability, but established a brutal totalitarian
theocracy based on a virulently reactionary and misogynist interpretation of
Islam. The Northern Alliance, consisting of the remnants of various factions
from the civil war in the 1990s, control a small part of the northeast corner of
the country.
10. How have most Middle Eastern governments reacted to the
September 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath?
Virtually every government and the vast majority of their populations reacted
with the same horror and revulsion as did people in the United States,
Europe and elsewhere. Despite scenes shown repeatedly on U.S. television
of some Palestinians celebrating the attacks, the vast majority of Palestinians
also shared in the world's condemnation. If the United States, in conjunction
with local governments, limits its military response to commando-style
operations against suspected terrorist cells, the U.S. should receive the
cooperation and support of most Middle Eastern countries. If the response is
more widespread, based more on retaliation than self-defense, and ends up
killing large numbers of Muslim civilians, it could create a major
anti-American reaction that would increase support for the terrorists and
lessen the likelihood for the needed cooperation to break up the Al Qaeda
network, which operates in several Middle Eastern countries.
While few Middle Easterners support bin Laden's methods, the principal
concerns expressed in his manifestoes -- the U.S.'s wrongful support for
Israel and for Arab dictatorships, the disruptive presence of U.S. troops in
Saudi Arabia and the humanitarian impact of the sanctions on Iraq -- are
widely supported. Ultimately, a greater understanding of the Middle East and
the concerns of its governments and peoples are necessary before the
United States can feel secure from an angry backlash from the region.
Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace &
Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as a
senior policy analyst and Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus
Project.