Has the Arab world reached the worst?

Not once in the last seven decades were observers right when concluding that the situation in the Arab world was too bad to get worse. The sad reality is that it kept steadily declining.

It is difficult to predict whether we have right now reached the very bottom, or if the Arab people have yet to prepare for darker times ahead.

The Arab world covers a huge area, spreading in Asia and Africa. It is strategically located among three important continents, it has enormous amounts of natural resources, it is wealthy and fertile in most parts, it is a cradle of ancient civilisations, it hosts great peoples, its contributions to world prosperity and progress is well recognised and it has all the means of being progressive and prosperous.

Arab nationalist movements towards the end of the Ottoman Empire believed that once liberated, the Arabs, as a single nation that shares common history, common language, common culture and common aspirations must be united in one state. 

Arab nationalists would raise the banner of Arab unity believing that the emergence of many Arab states instead — which now form the Arab League — was the result of divisive colonial powers’ schemes in the aftermath of World War I and that the “artificial borders” dividing the Arab land would eventually vanish.

Contrary to all such romantic dreams, the borders imposed by the colonial powers turned into solid separating walls increasingly obstructing movement of peoples and commodities. 

The assumed common aspirations and interests turned into deep political contradictions and diverging objectives, if not open hostility, as reflected in the current inter-Arab relations.

One only hopes that the base to which Arab affairs have descended is all that we have to fear. One hope that the deterioration and fragmentation of significant parts of the Arab world will serve as a wake-up call for a nation guilty of squandering its wealth, future, rights, cultural assets, dignity, standing in the world and territorial integrity because of bad management, retarded politics and loss of direction.

To begin with, Arab failure is primarily responsible for the creation of Israel, a dagger that was driven deep into the heart of the Arab nation seven decades ago on top of the debris of the Palestinian people and in flagrant defiance of the mighty Arab power.

Israel continues to occupy the entire land of Palestine, large areas in Syria and parts of the Lebanese territory, and imposes major restrictions on Egyptian authorities’ control of their own territory in the vast Sinai Peninsula.

The Arab states failed to take any action to restore their usurped rights or to liberate their occupied territories, which they had failed to defend; dropped all claims against Israel’s aggression and occupation; and, most shocking, Israeli leaders claim that they have Arab support for their ongoing barbaric attack on Gaza now, and for their attacks on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008 and 2012.

Official Arab silence and scandalous inaction vis-à-vis the massive destruction and continuous war crimes in Gaza can only give credence to those Israeli claims, as well as encourage more of the same kind.

The advent of the Arab Spring, over three years ago, gave rise to some hope that the removal of some entrenched dictatorships would reverse the Arab decline. 

It did not; it actually accelerated the drift to the extent that even those who suffered for years from the cruelty of the said despots are now lamenting the “good old times” under the dictators’ ruthless rule. 

Much like other tyrants, the deposed rulers of Iraq and Libya — to take just two cases — were harsh, unjust, oppressive, manipulative, selfish and totally oblivious to their people’s rights and integrity. 

They were also loathed and terribly feared. But they managed to maintain relative levels of stability, security and safety for their countries and their people, which people in many Arab countries whose dictators were overthrown mainly lack.

The chaos that now prevails in Libya and Iraq, the total collapse of law and order, the spread of sectarian and ethnic conflicts and the mounting hardships, as a result, make it easy, in comparison, to yearn for the “bad old days”. 

Naturally, that does not mean that dictators were right or that their rule should have been indefinitely protected. It is simply a choice between bad and worse.

Unquestionably, the situation now in many Arab countries is much worse than during the dictatorships.

Equally evident is the fact that the current political mess is the outcome of bad government under decades-long individual, corrupt, isolated and adventurous despots who treated their countries and their people as their property.

Eventually, accumulated frustration and oppression led to the many social uprisings labelled as Arab Spring.

The specific issue in the Arab world now is that crises cannot remain localised within national boundaries; once a country is hit, its problems can easily spill over in all possible directions.

Completely corrupted by foreign intervention and massively influenced by other interested regional and world powers, the Arab Spring, following some spectacular gains in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, got bogged down in Syria and as a result, has lost its compass.

Arab countries spent billions recruiting, financing and buying military equipment for all kinds of loose mercenaries who were pushed into Syria with the specific intention of joining the fight against the Damascus regime.

The undue foreign interference in pure domestic Syrian affairs harmed both the genuine national uprising and the country in its entirety.

Those who interfered were totally mindless of the lesson of the recent past, in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and elsewhere, that the monster one creates could turn against the creator.

Indeed, the extremist jihadists who were pushed into Syria abandoned their mission, opting instead to pursue their own agenda of establishing an Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and perhaps more.

After massive destruction, large-scale loss of life, depletion of Syria’s resources and loss of official control on large parts of the land, and after forcing out of their home millions of Syrian citizens in the fight to topple the Assad regime, the demand now of all those who invested in the mad Syrian war is to support and seek the help of the same Assad regime to control the Daesh monster. 

After consolidating its presence in Syria, Daesh moved and quickly spread in Iraq, controlling more than one third of the country. Its threat is causing serious fear in many Arab countries which rushed to seek American and European military assistance to stop the Daesh advance.

Huge Arab financial assets were squandered on futile and destructive political games over the past few decades instead of being utilised for development and economic advancement.

Billions were spent on arming Iraq against Iran in the eight-year-long Iraq-Iran war. More billions were spent to destroy Iraq’s army and military capabilities after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991, and again in 2003.

Billions were spent on the Syrian opposition in the last three years in a failed effort to topple the Syrian regime. Billions are to be spent now again to destroy that opposition because it turned lethal.

How many more billions will be needed to rebuild Syria? How many more billions will be needed to rebuild Libya? How many more billions will have to be earmarked for Iraq and how many more billions will be needed to rebuild Gaza?

Has the time not come for the Arab states to realise the value of their money, to rethink and reconsider their policies before we all end up sinking in our own folly?