Predictable responses

by Sajjad Ashraf

In considering "the biggest blunder of US foreign policy," a question increasingly asked in the United States and the western world is how American calculations could prove so wrong when the US decided to attack Iraq.

Human beings generally act quite predictably. Societal behavior is a collection of individual behaviors. These responses and reactions based on laws of nature extend even into the animal world. In societies, there are always certain sections of people who compete for political and social space, just as in the world there are countries or groups of countries competing for political, economic, military and ideological space.

The West gained ascendancy over the rest of the world after the industrial revolution. The western powers jostled for control of the Middle East during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in order to be in command of trade routes to India and the Far East. The past century's oil discoveries made the Middle East even more attractive to the West. Now, with increasing dependence on Middle Eastern oil, the Anglo-Saxon powers have apparently embarked on a mission to mold the Middle East according to their own thinking, without attempting to understand the circumstances and societal underpinnings of the region. In the process, old problems have reemerged with more complex dimensions. The result is an adversarial relationship between the man in the street in the Middle East and in America. The average resident of the Middle East rejects pontification by the West, and refuses to acquiesce to western attempts to shape societies differently.

The US in particular is known for supporting regimes in countries where individual freedoms, according to American standards, have been non-existent. Since much of the support for Arab nationalism came from the former Soviet Union, the West led by the US naturally lost touch with the common Middle Easterner. The US is in fact perceived as the country blocking reforms in pursuit of its own interests. Any US-led attempt to reform or change Middle Eastern society from the outside will definitely draw a skeptical reaction.

Three key grievances drive the Middle East. First, there is the history of western imperialism in the region, which denied the Middle East independence and freedom for well over half a century. The fact that almost the entire region is Islamic and Arab means that grievances tend to have strong Islamic and Arab underpinnings. The second is the creation on Palestinian lands of the Jewish state of Israel, which then perpetrated its own plan of ethnic cleansing. The third complaint is the exploitation of oil by giant western companies with the connivance of local rulers, who tread on the rights of their own people in return for remaining in power.

When the Anglo-French arrangement to split up the Arab Ottoman provinces in the Middle East under the Sykes-Picot Pact was made public on April 24, 1920, the Arabs rose in revolt in Syria, Palestine and Iraq. The uprising in Iraq lasted from July to October; 10,000 casualties were reported, of which 2,000 were British. Blaming the trouble on "outsiders", Sir Arnold Wilson, the British civil commissioner in Iraq, told the British cabinet that there was no real desire in Mesopotamia for an Arab government; the Arabs would appreciate British rule. Against this backdrop, the reaction by Middle Easterners to what is happening in Iraq is understandable.

These historic grievances in an area with overwhelming Islamic contours are expressed through religion. Tens of thousands of Muslims view the reoccupation of Iraq as a return to the 1920s, when puppets were installed to control some of the most sacred Islamic cities and the oil fields.

As the youngest of the three main religions, Islam with its overwhelming presence in the Middle East is obviously more robust. The area has seen the best of Islamic glory. Mesopotamia, the land of present day Iraq, was the center of the great Abbasid Caliphate for centuries. No Islamic city in the Middle East has had as glorious a past as Baghdad. It is natural that Muslims react when Palestine and now Iraq are trampled with such insensitivity.

The creation of Israel has resulted in a tremendous social, demographic, and societal change in the areas of what was originally Palestine. Historically, Jews lived in these lands and in the neighboring territories happily amongst their Muslim and Christian brethren. They were Arab Jews. The social disturbance created by the mass influx of European Jews changed the demographic character of the place not only by the displacement of Palestinians but also by the political displacement of local Jews by western Jews.

Nearly 15 million people crossed borders at the time of the partition of the sub-continent that created Pakistan and India. Mass unnatural migrations leave their unsettling legacies that societies yearn to correct. Societies like to evolve at their own pace. Attempts to bring about change by force generate a reaction. Bruised societies become vengeful and wait for the opportunities that the turning wheel of history inevitably provides. It should have come as no surprise that the Middle East rejected the creation of Israel. Anyone with a sense of history and human nature will understand this.

In terms of normal human behavior, in view of the pride of the Arab nation in its values, culture and religion, and considering the historic trends of the last century, the Middle Eastern countries are acting predictably. It is the naivetй of the outside powers that causes them to think that the region is hard to understand.

-Published 3/6/2004