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THE
ROVING EYE
At the
gates of heaven - or hell
By Pepe
Escobar
CAIRO - George W Bush may have never
read Dante Alighieri. But Bush's three ultimatums - to
Iraq, to the United Nations and to the European Union -
seem to come straight from one of old Europe's greatest
creative artists. "Abandon all hope ye who enter," says
Dante in The Divine Comedy at the gates of hell.
"Abandon all hope ye who engage in irrelevant talk,"
says Bush at the gates of heaven as he prepares for the
first installment in a long round of engagement in the
Middle East.
As we approach the final countdown
at the Security Council, it's the United States and the
United Kingdom, backed by Spain, against France and
Germany, backed by Russia and China: a one-page second
resolution stating that Iraq is in material breach
against a memorandum setting deadlines for Iraqi
disarmament. The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations
has dubbed the deceivingly bland semantics of the second
resolution "a declaration of war".
The immediate
reaction of the Arab League to total war has been total
panic. Secretary general Amr Moussa said, "You can never
belittle the consequences of war, especially in a Middle
East already frustrated with the Israeli occupation and
the bias towards Israel. So adding insult to injury is
too much for us."
Insult has been added to
injury long before the tabled second resolution. As Asia
Times Online has reported (The
great Arab face-saving theater, February 19), the
Arab League has no cohesive, independent, forcefully
argued position vis-a-vis the US: it has only managed to
attach most - but not all - of its camels to the
Franco-German-Russian "more time for the inspectors"
position. Half of Kuwait, a league member, has been
turned into a US boot camp. Qatar and Bahrain will also
help in the invasion of Iraq. The Arab League is a sad
exercise in schizophrenia - trying to appease Washington
and engage it in dialogue while at the same time
performing full-time contortionism to calm its angry and
restless populations.
While the world grapples
with extraordinary events, the Arab League couldn't do
more than settle for an ordinary summit to be held in
Cairo early next month. Syria has been lobbying hard for
a meaningful summit. Syria knows very well that it is
next on the list of the Washington hawks. In fact,
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - who is the top dog
running US foreign policy in the Middle East - just last
week offered American congressmen his own list of who's
next: Syria, Iran and Libya.
Syria has been
fighting hard at the UN to remind anyone who will listen
that peace in the Middle East will only be achieved with
a comprehensive solution of the Palestinian tragedy. At
the UN, Syria - as a non-permanent member of the
Security Council - is staunchly aligned with the
Franco-German-Russian front. At the Arab League, Lebanon
- according to diplomats instigated by Syria - made sure
to remind of the 2002 Beirut declaration, which
establishes that an attack on one individual Arab nation
would be regarded as an attack on the whole Arab nation.
Kuwait was furious - and that's the main reason there
cannot possibly be a consensus in the Arab League.
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah may be sincere in
his current efforts to introduce democratic reforms in
the kingdom, but Saudi Arabia is living in dreamland
hoping that Saddam Hussein will accept free elections
under the supervision of the UN. Egyptian political
scientist Wahid Abdel-Meguid laments that "the Americans
always impose discussions about post-Saddam [Iraq] while
Arab countries try to maximize the chances of a peaceful
solution".
Walid Kazziha, professor of political
science at the American University in Cairo (AUC), tries
to be more optimistic: "The Arab and European stances
are mutually dependent. The Arabs will make a firmer
stand with the encouragement of Europe." But he also
warns that "the Arabs are not in a position to risk
everything for someone like Saddam Hussein". Professor
Bahgat Korany from AUC agrees, and adds that with the
Saudis not exactly enjoying Washington's good graces,
most other key Arab nations are resigned that "even the
Europeans can't stop the American war machine".
But the whole world keeps trying anyway. That is
the message coming from the Kuala Lumpur meeting of the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) - 116 countries representing
more than 50 percent of the world population, two-thirds
of the UN, and including six non-permanent members of
the Security Council: Syria, Pakistan, Chile, Angola,
Guinea and Cameroon. These last three African nations
have already stated their anti-war position at the
Franco-African summit in Paris last week. Even under
serious carrot-and-stick approaches in New York for
these next few days, they won't be easily swayed to vote
for a second resolution that in fact will be a green
light for war. For the absolute majority of the 186 UN
member states that are not part of the Security Council
P5 (as the five permanent members are known), this
second resolution now tabled means nothing else than a
UN authorization for preemptive war.
At the NAM
meeting, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad
repeated what Prince Saud al Faisal, the Saudi foreign
minister, has been saying these past few days in the
Arab world: the war will inevitably be perceived as
anti-Muslim.
Hassan Nafaa, professor of
political science at Cairo University, agrees:
"Washington's actions suggest it has targeted Islam and
that it plans to reshape the region in a manner that
will obviate the emergence of an Arab nationalist or
Islamic ideology of unification or resistance. Towards
this end, it most likely intends to redraw the map of
the region on the basis of ethnic or sectarian
rivalries." Nafaa paints an alarming picture: "If what
appears to be American designs see the light of day,
Arabs and Muslims realize that the only nation to
benefit will be Israel, and Washington will have paved
the way for it to become an unrivaled regional power
virtually overnight." A stroll through the campus of the
liberal American University in Cairo is always
instructive, and one hears fiercely anti-US and
anti-Israel comments.
There's absolutely no love
lost for Israel in Egypt. Diplomats in Cairo comment
that Israel, in partnership with the US, is actively
involved in the partition of Sudan, which Egypt
considers its back yard. It is all about water.
Herodotus rightly pointed out that Egypt was a gift from
the Nile, but the possibility of the gift being wrapped
by Israeli control of the nascent waters of the Nile
makes for endless sleepless nights. It's a situation
parallel to the future of the River Jordan - a key in
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. With Israel
controlling the flow of the river, a Palestine state
could be starved in a few days.
The Egyptian
economy is bound to suffer badly with a war in Iraq. The
figures are gloomy. There will be heavy losses in many
crucial fronts: tourism (the main source of
foreign-exchange revenue), exports, revenue from the
Suez Canal and the stock market. According to official
data, tourism employs 2.2 million people in Egypt,
directly and indirectly. Independent sources say that
there could be as many as 10 million.
According
to a study by the Federation of Egyptian Industries,
Suez revenues are expected to fall by almost half, to
US$1 billion. Assuming a short war ending within three
months, tourism revenues will also fall by half, to $1.7
billion. Egyptian expatriates' remittances will also be
halved, to $2 billion. The import bill will rise 30
percent. Exports will decrease by 5 percent, to $5.9
billion. Foreign direct investment will be non-existent.
According to economist Hamdi Abdel-Azzem, at least
200,000 Egyptian workers could be forced to return from
Iraq: a social as well as an economic crisis. About 4
million to 6 million Egyptians work in the Persian Gulf
region - and the absolute majority fear that they could
lose their jobs. And to top it all, trade between
Egyptian businesses and Iraq under the UN oil-for-food
program ($1.5 billion last year) will also suffer: Egypt
is one of the top five countries benefiting from the
program. The US has given signals that it might be
willing to "compensate" Egypt for some of these
tremendous troubles, but the mood in Cairo couldn't be
more pessimistic.
Thus, appalled by the prospect
of imminent war, Egyptians keep searching for
alternative solutions. Mahmoud Abaza, vice president of
the opposition Wafd Party, advances that "the pressure
could have been more efficient and useful for all if it
was geared to force the Iraqi regime to organize free
elections, after a period of transition, under the
surveillance of the international community. This would
have been more acceptable for the Iraqi people, the Arab
nation, the immediate neighbors and the international
community." Abaza's dream would be "a coalition to save
the Iraqi people instead of exterminating them". He is
devastated by the fact that the Bush administration,
"the most reactionary in American history", is using the
September 11 tragedy to "build an empire devoid of all
moral values that America has incarnated since its
independence".
Gamil Mattar, director of the
Arab Center for Development and Futuristic Research,
makes a point of referring to the secret 1916
Sykes-Picot agreement, when the British and the French
carved up the Middle East for themselves after the
Ottoman defeat in World War I: "That map has continued
largely unchanged, even in the face of attempts by some
- in the name of Arab unity or the unity of greater
Syria - to change it. The map lasted because the Arabs
have refused to change it." But Mattar has a very clear
warning that could only be directed to Washington:
"Would-be reformers will face many difficulties. The
Middle Eastern state is autocratic, leaving nothing out
of its orbit of influence, and at the same time it is
underdeveloped. While nation-states have been
established in the Middle East and even
institutionalized, they have not yet succeeded in the
process of nation-building. This will be a heavy burden
on anyone seeking to implement far-reaching changes in
political and social institutions."
The Bush
administration may be aware that Iraq is a supreme prize
- the crucial frontier separating Arabs, Persians and
Turks, the key bridge between the Mediterranean and
Central Asia from a historic, religious, ethnic and
geographic perspective. But the invading superpower may
be less aware of the extreme complexity of most
political, religious and ethnic problems lying ahead.
For instance, Iraq - not Iran - is the country harboring
the Shi'ite holy places: Kufa, Najaf and Kerbala. Even
though they are a majority in Iraq, the Shi'ites have
been consistently oppressed by successive Sunni empires.
Ethnically they are Arabs, but religiously they are
Shi'ites (see The
Shi'ite factor, April 25, 2002). They are not only
the most important community in the Arab world, but also
a very important link with Shi'ite minorities living in
the eastern Arabian Peninsula and in Lebanon. Sunni
Arabs in central and eastern Iraq since the fall of the
Ottoman empire have constituted the political and
military elite - but they also have a common tribal
origin with people from southeastern Syria, the Jordan
region and northern Saudi Arabia.
The majority
of soldiers in the Iraqi regular army are Shi'ite. As
war breaks out, they will either flee, surrender or,
most likely, engage in widespread rebellion.
Washington's plans of a clean occupation of Iraq will
turn to dust. A preview of what might happen was offered
early this month. In a meeting in the Turkish capital
Ankara, US officials totally dismissed the Iraqi
opposition - the bulk of which is Shi'ite and Kurdish.
They said that post-Saddam Iraq will be under a military
government, and - insult to injury - run by the same
Sunni establishment put in place by Saddam Hussein.
Shi'ites are silently furious. They will revolt.
Insistent rumors coming from Iraq about a massive
Shi'ite revolt immediately after war breaks out don't
mention any kind of rallying organization - except for
the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq,
backed by Iran. The council has a small army of a
maximum of 10,000 men, based in Iran, although they say
that many are based in Iraq as well. There are no
Shi'ite leaders inside Iraq because Saddam has killed
them all.
So it looks as if the United States
will be confronted by a replay inside a replay of the
Gulf War of 1991. At the end of that "Mother of All
Battles", Saddam lost no fewer than 14 of Iraq's 18
provinces to Shi'ites and Kurds. Washington under Bush
Senior at the time already wanted regime change, but it
did not want a popular revolution. That's why Saddam was
de facto authorized by Washington, even in defeat, to
smash both the Kurdish and Shi'ite revolts violently.
There's every indication a Shi'ite revolution may happen
this time - along with a Kurdish revolution in the event
of Turkish troops taking over Kurdistan. But unlike
1991, Washington won't be able to count on a Saddam to
smash them. The liberators will have to do it
themselves.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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