I didn’t write upon the civil wars in Syria, in Egypt and in
other Arab countries in Africa and the Middle-East region for a very long time.
This was not because I didn’t care; to the contrary, I am
disgusted with the sickening violence in these countries.
I grief, because of the despair in the situation of the
people there, knowing that there is not a real solution. What seemingly started
two years ago as a battle for a little bit more personal freedom and democracy
in the Arab parts of Africa and the Middle-East, derailed in religiously/tribally/politically inspired civil
wars between the numerous factions in these countries.
Factions, consisting of people with a shiite or sunnite background, or with a secular, ba'atistic, salafistic or wahabistic view at the world. Moderate and fundamentalist people, who at some time started to hate each other for religious, economic, political or historic
reasons. Often these factions have a strong, centuries-old tribal background.
Many of today’s difficulties are caused by the troubled
history of most of these countries, with bitter wars and foreign domination, by
initially the Turks (through the Ottoman Empire) and in a later stadium the
French and the British. The British and French influence in many of these
countries had developed either due to the colonial years or as a consequence of
the First and Second World War, in which he British and French fought together
with the Arabs against the Turks in Ottoman Empire. The Turks had built an alliance
with the German-Austrian axis and where therefore the enemy of Great Britain
and France, while the Arabs themselves were sick and tired of the Turkish
rulers and wanted to liberate their countries.
During the war in the Middle-East, the British and French
military leaders made all kinds of promises to the different factions that were unitedly fighting against the Turks. Unfortunately, they broke most of these promises
after the war had been won. Instead, Arab countries like Syria, Jordania, Saudi Arabia and Iraq turned into British and
French mandate zones. This situation lasted until the middle of the 20th century,
when the Second World War ended and many colonies and mandate zones successfully
battled for independency eventually.
The haphazard way in which many Arab countries had been established by the British and French in Africa and Asia, had a devastating effect on the
stability. Many borders between countries had been drawn with rulers, irrespective
of historic territories and tribal areas. Countries like Lebanon, Libya, Syria,
Iraq, Jordania, Saudi-Arabia and Israel seemed almost ‘glued’ together, without
having a mutual foundation and history. Large groups of people, like the Kurds and the Armanians unsuccessfully fought for their own countries in Iran, Iraq and Turkey.
Religious, political and tribal tensions have been omnipresent during the 20th Century and
the first years of the 21st Century, but they were (violently) suppressed by the
(often) ruthless leaders. These leaders acted like the cork on a Champagne bottle and
kept the population quiet and under control. Just like Josip Tito did in the Balkan countries.
However, when the leaders like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Moammar
Ghadaffi in Libya and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt were removed and especially after people
started to seriously challenge Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Pandora’s box had been finally opened.
This was something that I
already feared in March, 2011:
It is uncertain how
this operation “Desert Mess” ends. If Gadhaffi wins, the whole uprising in the
Middle-East:
- might fizzle out like a damp squib or
- might make the insurgents in other countries more ruthless and determined to win their own fight.
However, if Gadhaffi
loses his (final) war, he might find himself and his whole family back standing
at gunpoint of a firing squad, for a departure in Nicolae Ceaucescu style.
There will be no mercy then under his victors.
At this moment the
rulers in all Arabian countries and even countries as far as China and Russia
are grinding their teeth and wringing their hands about the ending of this
Libyan war. Even today the number of uprisings in the Arabian countries is
increasing and I think that the insurgents will be as determined as they can
be, now they know that the price of their uprising can be plain civil war, with
lots of people getting wounded and killed.
One thing is sure:
when the Arab world comes to rest again, it will have been at the cost of many,
many lives. In the meantime the process will be carefully watched by the
Russian and Chinese leaders.
Needless to say that most of the aforementioned predictions
were right, unfortunately. The Syrian war alone has claimed almost 100,000
lives, with as its moment of rock-bottom the poison gas attacks near
Damascus of last week.
Although the situation in Egypt is not yet as serious as in Syria, the seeds for a full religious/tribal/political conflict have been sown with
the two-year reign of the Muslim Brotherhood and the subsequent military intervention there.
The most sickening thing is that every kind of intrusion by
the western world can and will have numerous, undesired side-effects. It could
spark a total war in the Middle-East and Africa, with eventually millions of
deaths and wounded people. Regardless of who ‘wins’ and who loses in these
countries, there are always large groups of people who will suffer from it, as 'old bills will be settled' by the victors:
Pandora’s box is open and cannot be closed so easily.
This is the true diabolic dilemma of the current conflicts
in the Middle-East and Africa: if the western world sits on its hands and does
nothing about the situation, hundreds of thousands of people might be killed.
However, if the western world acts again, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
sends in a large military force, hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of
people might be killed in the subsequent wars and military domination phase.
Intrusion by the rest of the Arab world is out of the
question too: a Sunnite invasion, powered by Qatar or Saudi Arabia, would spark a
tidal wave of violence and hatred from the Shiites, who are the suppressed minorities
in many Sunni countries and / or from opposed Sunnite factions. The opposite would happen, when Iran would try to “help”
the Shiite minorities or would overpower the Sunni or secular governments
(Egypt) in these countries.
There is just no simple solution, which helps all opposed parties in these countries at the same time. You cannot act without making
choices and every choice that you make, might have devastating results. Notice,
that doing nothing is also a choice. Every political leader in the (Western) world with more than one brain cell knows this and that is the reason that most Western leaders are dragging their feet, when it comes to finding a solution.
Suffice to say that this is the reason why China and Russia are not showing their hand of cards too, turning the Arab question in a giant game of geo-political chicken.
However, there might still be one glimmer of hope for these countries in
the Arab world: it has not always been like this. There have been long times of
relative peace and quiet in the Middle-East: times wherein Shiite and Sunnite Muslims,
Jews and Christian people lived together in mutual acceptance and with a certain, minimal kind of respect for their mutual beliefs and cultures.
Times when the Arab
world was a melting pot of progress, science, art and architecture. A time wherein
the dazzling, mathematic tile mosaiques and window dressings and the stunning
buildings, mosques and castles have been created, which f.i. can still be seen in the Alhambra
in Granada, Spain and numerous other places in the Arab world. Times, when
people were traveling from the West of Africa until the East of India, in a
world that had been influenced by the Arab culture.
Somehow, the Arab world must try to find these times back
again.
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