Arab Spring.....IM Akbar

A stirring and stunning upheaval in the Arab states is taking place from the Maghreb to the Gulf. United by race, religion, geography and history they who had defeated the armies of the Roman Empire at the great battles of Yarmouk (AD 636), and then the Crusaders, set up an magnificent civilisation that conquered a quarter of Europe.

This time they have risen again with the same courage they were famed for but not against an invader or a foreign enemy and mostly without weapons. The fight is revealingly not against their 20th century foe, the Jews (Israelis) who the Arabs and Turks protected from the Christians for many centuries or for religion. This is an Arab storm attempting to sweep away repression and corruption of some tyrants and many assorted rulers in the Middle East. Even the benevolent have not been spared. It is a revolution that few would have ever believed possible.

The Arabs were long inured to being treated like supplicants if not mendicants by their own rulers who cunningly exploited their ignorance and fear for far too long before granting some measure of freedom and relief when they realised that turmoil was at hand.

In SL those who squirmed when the LTTE was defeated and clapped when India won the WC, came up with their tiresome, spontaneous but inane comparisons. They became dumb when they saw not only long serving Presidents but Royalty too were being corralled. They had mistaken the desert for the sand. Here was a truly mass movement yearning for the freedom of millions of subjugated people across the Middle East. It challenged and exposed their rulers and shattered many myths as well as some despotic rulers ‘for life’. If they succeed, its impact may well compare with the French and Russian revolutions. Arabs will no longer be taken for granted by their rulers and their designing if not rapacious Western collaborators who have exploited if not plundered them for very nearly a hundred years.

‘There remained historical ambition, insubstantial as a motive itself. I had dreamed at City School in Oxford, of hustling into form, while I lived, the new Asia which time was inexorably bringing upon us. Mecca was to lead to Damascus; Damascus to Anatolia, and afterwards to Bagdad; and there was Yemen. Fantasies, these will seem, to such as are able to call my beginning an ordinary effort’. (T E Lawrence-Seven Pillars of Wisdom-1926)

No one doubts that the West wants only to safe guard their strategic interests and friends and suck Arab oil dry. However will a more merciful and compassionate system of governance replace the avenging interpretation of religion, law and justice and greed in the Middle East? Will this Storm help to resolve the long running and bloody Palestinian problem which makes Arab blood boil and distresses almost the whole world? Will the poor Asian workers who with their sweat, blood and tears helped massively to develop their infrastructure but were treated more like slaves, serfs, chattel and even animals have redress, recognition and sympathy after nearly 50 years of unremitting hard labour?

The Arabs are fighting today for freedom against their own repressive, merciless, corrupt, greedy, bullying, selfish and arrogant rulers who have held their subjects in thrall for a hundred years under western protection. The words of the martyr Abdul Karim al Kileli nearly 90 years ago in the fight against Turkish rule who said ‘for your freedom we are fighting, for your independence we are dying’ may ring true again. The reasons are very nearly the same as they were then; that they were ‘suppressed and deprived of constitutional remedy, under pressure of a common misery and peril’. Sadly the Arab rulers, who took over, despite extolling Muslim traditions and brotherhood in public, had inherited and continued the least admirable of Turkish methods of governance. Witnessing the dramatic changes taking place, the West ignoring vagrancy laws, is now invoking R2Pee all over the Middle East and Africa with a reckless licence. They target only those who stand in their way like Libya and Syria despite terrible lessons learned in Iraq. The others are their pets.

Arabs would have liked to be known for their good manners, courtesy, generosity, sense of humour, honour, courage, integrity, intelligence and Islamic fervour. Yet in their countries, for the citizens and third world workers employed there, constant fear is the all pervading and ever prevailing reality. The fate of SL’s 17 year old girl child Rizwan, who is under sentence of death by beheading, sums up the inhuman and retributive nature of Arab justice. However it now appears that the Saudi King having seen possibilities of injustice, weaknesses and faults has begun reforming the system.

Third world job agents and their governments especially of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka work in heartless and shameful collaboration with scheming Arabs to perpetuate the humiliation of third world workers. The litany of injustice that faces poor Asians workers is legion. In his book on the first Gulf War(1990) ‘Storm Command’ UK General Sir Peter de la Billiere noted; “...we hired a Filipino woman (as a maid)...who spoke reasonable English. Like all foreigners working in Saudi Arabia, she was in the clutches of a sponsor-some minor princess. Not only had she been obliged to surrender her passport in order to obtain entry visa, she also had to pay the princess 3,000 riyals a year (about UK pounds 450). Since she earned only 2,000 riyals a month this was a heavy imposition and the system put her completely in her sponsor’s power- as indeed it was intended to do”. The plight of a much lesser educated and paid, dark skinned South Asian woman who spoke no English or Arabic, sponsored by an ordinary, little educated but sly and grasping Arab needs little elaboration. In the employment of house maids especially, traditional Arab values, morals and religious tenets have been openly and grossly violated as often reported. Will there be any hope for a change in the Spring for them?

Bahrain has invoked the Gulf States Island Shield (Al Jazeera) pact to protect its ruler Hamad Bin Issa. He is despised by 70% of the people but to survive he is supported by an army of 12,000 with about 50 aircraft in a native population of 500,000. The self serving Saudi Arabian motive of sending 1,000 troops of its 75,000 army together with those of the UAE into Bahrain to crush the unarmed protestors by force has not inspired other Arab states to side with the other targeted rulers. (The Saudi King also has a private army (SA National Guard-SANG) of 75,000 consisting of the tribal/religious Ikhwan that swept the al Saud family into power with its breath taking courage in battle).

Saudi Arabian troops with vacuous grins for TV cameras, oblivious to if not relishing that they were being dragooned to murder unarmed natives of a foreign land rolled into Bahrain. The Saudis who must be one of the world’s most densely armed states, (budget US$ 39.5 billion in 2009), have ironically never ever deployed to support Arab states in their wars with Israel (1948-1973).In the first Gulf war except for air force sorties, they only fought an Iraqi incursion inside its own territory. Saudis too face revolt from its Shiites. The USA in 2007 contracted to sell US$ 60 billion in arms, adding to the US$ 80 billion it sold Saudi Arabia from 1951 to 2000.The USA may not have backed the Saudi move even as it fears for its 5th Fleet based in Bahrain which controls and dominates the Arabian Gulf. There is however little chances that the Gulf may once more become Persian in the near future.

When there was a communist insurgency in Oman (1970s) Jordan and Iran sent troops to help Omani forces commanded discreetly by the British to defeat the Dhofaris in the South who were helped by their kinsmen in North Yemen. (Few knew that the Iranians (750 dead) suffered three times the casualties of the others put together). Today war planes but only of a seemingly enlightened and still unthreatened Qatar and the somewhat trembling UAE, have crossed the Mediterranean if not the Rubicon by joining the NATO led forces to enforce the No Fly Zone over Libya . Who will reap the consequences?

The last time the Arabs revolted in unison all over Arabia was against the 500 year Ottoman Turk rule nearly 90 years ago with British help. This time Turkey a long time member of NATO and not an ally of defeated Germany as in 1914, and also not as secular as the founder of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk would have liked, wishes to act as a mutually acceptable intermediary and bring about a ceasefire in Libya. At times it appears there is a ‘free fire’ rather than a ‘No Fire’ zone in operation. It is however feared that the West after spilling Arab blood will repeat their betrayal of the Arabs as it did in 1917 when ejecting the Turks.

It happened again after Operation Desert Storm (1990) that relieved Kuwait which was occupied by the Saddam’s army. (The Saudis say the Kuwaiti rulers ran to Riyadh leaving their women behind). The Operation was a combined US/Saudi initiative. It spawned the rise of Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaida that juxtaposed the arrival of ‘infidel’ armies with the diametrically opposed position of the Saudi King as the ‘Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques’ and the Prophet’s injunction that there be ‘no permanent presence of infidels in Arabia’ . The Shiites of Basra were sadly but not surprisingly massacred by Saddam, a Sunni, shortly after the Coalition armies departed Iraq. Neither the USA nor Saudi Arabia raised a finger to help Basra, a Shiite city. Will the world get to know if more violence follows in the Shiite East of Saudi Arabia? Libya, Yemen and Syria however do not bother to hide their fearsome excesses.

When France and UK, who coincidentally spear head the present NATO offensive in Libya, decided to operate militarily against Egypt in 1956 together with Israel after the strategic Suez Canal was nationalised by that incomparable Arab leader Gamel Nasser, the USA backed off. The Libyan situation today shows that a replay of that cut throat competition for dominance in this strategic area could recur.

Israel, master of exploiting the main chance, has taken care to stay off the radar just now but for how long will be the question. Much will depend on whether a people’s democracy or religious extremists take over. Despite having virtually unlimited wealth and immense power there has been no Arab leader since who can be compared to Nasser. What happens now in Egypt and not Saudi Arabia may determine whether the flowers of Spring will bloom or fade.

Ageing, like almost all Arab rulers, and eccentric, Gaddafi, repeatedly calls Obama his ‘beloved son’ and urges him to join him to defeat Al Qaida, but he has not appeared again at ‘freedom rallies’ in the mistaken belief they were in support of him. He, after ruling for 40 years, has instead decided to wage war against his people whom he says ‘love me’. Despite NATO support for the rebels a stalemate may take place while hundreds die. The Salafis, an extreme Islamist sect (that is present in SL too) and who were at one time pro Al Qaida and the Senussi tribes loyal to the descendants of deposed late ex King Idris but otherwise opposed to the Salamis, appear to have temporarily teamed up to take on Gaddafi..

A civil war rages in Yemen where too a Saudi incursion took place in 2009 when a city hospital was bombed. A similar situation appears to be developing in Syria and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia and benevolent Sandhurst trained rulers in Oman and Jordan have shown more restraint and predictably had fewer protests that for now demand only that corrupt ministers be dismissed.

Arab doctors, (hopefully not including Syria’s second generation dictator Basher al Assad who practised medicine for nearly two decades in England), having taken the Hippocratic oath were compelled to sever human limbs often without anaesthesia, not as a medical necessity but as a abhorrent medieval punishment.

It was an abomination and a mockery of medical ethics. Although compassion and mercy are extolled in almost every sura (chapter) of the Qur’an, it has been virtually nonexistent in the lexicon of the Arab rulers until very recently when Saudi King Abdullah took a calculated risk to authorise judicial reforms. This has encouraged other rulers to seek to emulate him. He has also recently given 28% of his budget to education sending thousands to Western mainly US universities who will hopefully be in the van guard of liberal reform.

Arab women were granted few civic liberties and appeared to be shackled. Their position however may change with the appointment of women as Cabinet Ministers. Arab rulers had hitherto given the sanctity of their interpretation of the Koran to the system of governance. Will those who hope to replace these rulers break free from the extreme medieval traditions or be usurped by repressive religious radicals who lurk in the shadows?

It should be remembered that‘All through history, Muslim rulers have normally combined civil and religious control except possibly in the last 40 years. This system avoided conflicts between the civil and religious authorities but it also enabled the ruler to use, against his political opponents, those punishments which the Prophet pronounced against apostates.......Mohamed used .......... against his enemies. As everything which the Apostle did must seem right, some politicians here find justification for the removal of their opponents by the same method’. (John Bagot Glubb--The Great Arab Conquests - 1926).

It may be seen that the repressive state apparatus which was the defining feature of most of the affected Arab states, and probably the foremost reason for the revolts, was given legitimacy by the rulers. This was not challenged by the citizens for fear of being branded and treated as apostates. The law also did not apply equally even to Arabs as it certainly did not for expatriates especially from Asia.

Shiite shadow

‘That the khalif of the Prophet was the lawful lord of the world , no true believer thought of doubting; but who really was the khalif of the Prophet was a question on which opinions might differ widely’ (Freeman, History of the Saracens).

A Shiite shadow is falling over some parts of the Arab world from Bahrain to Eastern Saudi Arabia. It has covered Iraq. Shiite majorities in Sunni ruled lands are in revolt to gain democratic freedoms. The minority Sunnis ruled Iraq for 400 years until Saddam fell. The Sunnis have ruled Bahrain, a play ground for rich Arabs mainly Saudis, for 200 years. They are only about 30% of the population. Brutality appears to be the Sunnis favoured response to protests. The West does not object convincingly to HR violations that take place in their Arabic clientele. In Syria an Alawite Shiite minority in power for 40 years is being challenged by the majority Sunnis .The West, vulture like, awaits the last of the Assad Alawites.

Shiite Iran is stirring things up in the Sunni Arab states even as many Iranians paradoxically have increased their efforts to have a showdown with their own repressive and schizophrenic government. Will Iran that gives North Korea a run for nuclear brinkmanship, also succumb to the revolution taking place across the Gulf that no longer bears its name?

Will the Arabs now interpret the Qur’an in such a way that the rulers and the ruled live their lives in a manner that the majority of citizens want and in keeping with the modern world without compromising their best traditions and proper religious beliefs or will they go back to the old cruel and fearful ways? Will the Westerners be put in their place and the natives given pride of place? If not what is to prevent these states from going backwards again, closing their faces to democracy, equal opportunities, human dignity, the changes wrought by modern ways of life and the technology that impelled them to seek change and risk their lives to achieve?

However, ‘particularly it is noticeable that that the idea of government by groups of men-cabinets, parliaments or committees- has no precedent at all in Arab history. Their idea of government is always one man. In theory he is chosen by the people. He must be humble, accessible, benevolent, pious and hospitable. Arrogant despots cannot be tolerated but nevertheless executive power must be vested in one man alone..... The military dictator is nearer to the time honoured Arab tradition than is Western democracy’. (John Bagot Glubb- The Great Arab Conquests).

Thus any hope that democratic rule will follow must be treated with caution. The rulers will not give in easily as they have a huge percentage of the world’s wealth in their hands which they stand to lose otherwise. The 91 year old Saudi Defence Minister Crown Prince Sultan Abdul Aziz, next in line to rule (!), is called by some as the Sultan of Thieves! The new leaders cannot afford to retreat to traditional Arab systems of governance which suited a very much different age, was backward, wholly repressive, exploitative and unquestioned. It was the reason why they revolted and so many sacrificed their lives beginning with the youthful vegetable seller Mohamed Bonazizi in Tunisia.

The ordinary Arabs are slowly recognising their own strength in numbers, morality, integrity and their true value. They are breaking the shackles that had kept the vast majority voiceless, deprived of a good life, in comparative poverty, illiterate and powerless to decide their own future and in mortal fear for centuries. Most of all it gives them hope they will have more joy and happiness in life and a proper share of their national wealth. Never again hopefully will they be the pawns of the Westerners who used their ‘rulers’ to keep them down as second class citizens in their own countries while exploiting their nation’s booming wealth. Will the Arabs be a part of the modern world or only of Egypt and Arabia? Meanwhile will the third world workers be looked after with kindness, sympathy and generosity by the new rulers? Will the Palestinian problem, now nearly one hundred years old be resolved by democratically Arab elected rulers? How much oil will the West and its companies siphon? These are the questions for which people in the third world pray for answers.

May the Arab Spring not be swept by the poisonous Simoom or blistering Sirocco winds that sweep across Arabia but by the balmy khareef that comes with the monsoons to herald a joyous Arab renaissance.