The Arab World: Admission of failure and to take under custody?

By: A. SFEIR


<sup>In the space of ten years, the Arab and Muslim world has changed more, and more rapidly, than in the previous fifty. In order to properly apprehend and understand these profound changes in Arab-Muslim societies, including Turkey and Iran, it is vital to trace back the chain of events to the beginning of the century.
At that time, two great powers dominated the world and its wealth: Great Britain and France. In fact, London and Paris did not even wait until the end of the Great War and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire to divide this part of the world between them. No later than 1916, in an astutely designed carve-up, the French and the British took were determining together the future of Iraq, the Palestine and Egypt, that were to be for London, and the Lebanon, Syria and Cilia, that were to fall under French control.
There was a strong ulterior motive behind the English choice: the petroleum of Mossul and the passage provided by the Suez canal constituted vital interests for the British monarchy, and this was precisely the reason why John Bull was willing to give promises to all and sundry - not just the French, but also Sharif Hussein, to whom British diplomats undertook to deliver the much talked about Arab kingdom.
These developments came as a revolution - the first of several - in the Arab world, since, with the exception of Egypt, Iran and Turkey, and to a lesser extent, Morocco, none of these newly formed entities had ever had frontiers in the international sense of the term. Since time immemorial, the peoples in these regions that had moved about freely and suddenly the coloniser was erecting barriers. This is most probably one of the reasons that nurtured that dream of Arab unity. In the 1950s, this dream became a tangible objective to be attained, especially in the wake of the Egyptian revolution and the rise to power of Gamal Abdul Nasser.
At the same time, the two trustee powers, France and Great Britain, would have to come to terms with changing times: Nasser seized and nationalised the Suez canal, and so a Franco-British expeditionary force was sent in, backed by the Israeli army. The result was a clear military victory, but a resounding political defeat. Under the combined pressure of the United States and the Soviet Union, the victors were forced to withdraw from Egyptian territory, and as a corollary, lost their supremacy in favour of the two nuclear powers, a status that the Americans and Russians had both recently acquired. They in turn then proceeded to take the whole Arab-Muslim world into their respective spheres of influence.
The result was to split it in two: on the one side, the progressive countries rallying around Nasser and the idea of Arab unity, and on the other, the so-called conservative states around Saudi Arabia.
The fact that the United States chose to sponsor the oil-producing monarchies was no coincidence. Judging by the commentary at the time, and even the views of some contemporary historians, it was possible to believe that the United States had thrust Nasser into the Soviet embrace simply because of a personal disagreement between the then Secretary of State and the new master of Egypt. I personally do not think this was so.
On the contrary, it is my belief that the United States knew perfectly well, what they were doing. Just like the British, they were putting their own interests first, and this meant controlling the sources of petroleum, along with its extraction, refining and transportation. This being so, it made perfect sense to see Saudi Arabia as a key factor in the American strategy. Certainly more than the Egypt at the time, that had no oil, and whose new leader had displayed such arrogant hostility to the West. But Saudi Arabia was not the only one.
Iran, that despite, or perhaps because of, the turmoil in its domestic affairs, was a threat to the huge oil reserves, was another protégé of mighty America.
Turkey too, for strategic reasons this time, in its role as a bastion against the USSR, and later Israel, no longer supported by France, went over into the American camp.
But there is nothing the United States abhors more than being faced with a bloc, unless that bloc is a potential market to conquer, and the Arab world at that time had formed the Arab League, and despite the squabbling, the in-fighting and the disputes between Arabs themselves, whenever a summit or ministerial level meeting came around they always seemed to be able to iron out their differences. From Washington's viewpoint, bilateral relations are always the best option, and provide American diplomacy with the most comfortable scenario.
The turn-around by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in July 1972, when he suddenly announced to the 18,000 Soviet advisors by the Nile they would have to pack their bags and go, gave US diplomacy a unique opportunity to reassess the status of the region.
From that point on, for Washington there was an easy fit between economic priorities and strategic interests in that part of the world. Winning Egypt over to the West was especially unproblematic as this looked to be the pro-peace camp. Again, journalists and commentators got it all wrong. Egypt was not made the pariah of the Arab world; on the contrary, it was the latter that was to forfeit the support of the largest Arab country, and above all, the most powerful Arab army.
At the same time, the "Kissinger strategy", still relevant today, was slowly taking shape. Four objectives emerged:
To break up the Arab world and the Middle East.
Ensure involvement of the United States in all the issues concerning the region, making them the sole, or at least indispensable, interlocutor.
Control hydrocarbons, and the major markets in the region - telecommunications, aeronautics and information highways.
Stamp out any attempt at Arab unity, viewed by Washington as necessarily hostile.
Three methods were to serve this purpose:
Weakening or destabilisation of the hostile regimes in place.
Instrumentalisation of Islam and Islamic movements.
Management from a distance of a region in a state of constant flux
The war in the Lebanon, referred to as a "civil war", brought into sharp focus all the contradictions and paradoxes of the situation in the Near and Middle East. During the first eight years of the conflict, from 1975 to 1983, every outbreak of the Lebanese war involved a foreign player, whether Palestinians, Syrians, Libyans, Sudanese, or Israelis. It was not until September 1983 that there appeared a genuinely civil aspect to the war, with the fighting between Druze and Christians. It is interesting however to note that once the first shot had been fired in this war, no other revolution or coup d'état occurred to trouble the rest of the Arab world. Seen from this viewpoint, the war in the Lebanon might seem to be the first manifestation of the "Kissinger strategy".
The Camp David accords in 1978 and the Israeli-Egyptian peace the year after would be the second manifestation: Egypt was henceforth lost to the Arab world. None of the swaggering or the acts of terrorism at the behest of the Refusal Front (the radicals) were to make any difference: the Arab world was henceforth powerless. Then came the Iranian revolution and the excesses that it brought.
Was it really anti-American? On the surface, quite obviously so. Underneath however, I feel some scepticism is justified. Iran is a Shi'ite country in a Sunni Arab world; Iran is Persian facing 150 million Arabs. In some ways, it is the natural frontier between Arab and non-Arab Islam; and last but not least, Iran has the power to police the Gulf and therefore 35% of all the West's oil supplies. The emergence of Iranian power takes the appearance of a pathological excrescence on the seriously ill Arab body. Moreover, this excrescence rose up face to face with an Arab country that had become a cause of concern with its military strength, its industrialisation, the diversification of its economy and its warlike intentions. By which of course I mean Iraq.
Saddam Hussein and his army believed they had been given a new mission worthy of Saladin, whose statue looks proudly down on the centre of Baghdad - to defend the West against the wild excesses of the Ayatollahs. One day in September 1980, as the Soviets were unleashing their might against Afghanistan, Saddam invaded Iran. The war was to last eight years, sapping the strength of the two countries, that in the end had to settle for a status quo. There was only one winner - Saudi Arabia, which, for some time a least, was rid of its two regional rivals.
But Iraq had no intention of leaving it at that. Saddam was determined to reap the rewards of his "sacrifice". The issue of Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf furnished the pretext. He claimed from Kuwait the uninhabited islands of Watbane, which the emirate refused. The American ambassador to Iraq, April Gasby, stated in the course of a farewell visit to Saddam at the end of her term of office, "This issue is an inter-Arab matter".
The invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 triggered "Desert Storm". And what a storm it was! 29 different countries, from Syria to Morocco, formed a patchwork coalition against Saddam the devil under the leadership of George Bush, and reduced the Iraqi army - the 4th largest in the world according to CIA intelligence - to ashes. Saudi Arabia had every reason to feel reassured. But the consequences of this anti-Iraqi crusade were many and varied, and the waves from the stone thrown into that particular lake are still rippling to the shore today.
Firstly, the break-up of the Arab world. Henceforth, each country could, and it could almost be said, had to, like Kuwait, rely on itself and its own alliances, more often than not from outside the region. The pessimistic corollary of that conclusion is that, to survive, those countries would do so at the expense of the others in the region. Another corollary was the final ideological victory - if anything can be called final in this part of the world - of the conservatives. The fact of the matter is that Arab nationalism was over by the end of the seventies. It was replaced by policies implemented by regimes essentially concerned with national security rather than solidarity and unity. These concerns were visible in Arab attitudes towards the major powers, with whom they sought to establish a special relationship, and be recognised as regional powers, thus enabling them to devote their energies to dominating the others.
Secondly, the risk of seeing Iraq dismantled, which might set a precedent for shifting frontiers all over the region; so much so in fact that immediately after the crisis and then the Gulf war Syria, Iran and Turkey warned against any attempt to change Iraq's frontiers.
Thirdly, the emergence of three regional powers, none of which is Arab - Iran, Turkey and Israel. The collapse of the Soviet Union following the end of the Gulf war, the defeat of Iraq, inter-Arab divisions, the American decision to clip both Iran's and Iraq's wings and the financial crisis in the oil monarchies all helped to put an end once and for all to any real threat to Israel from its Arab environment and guarantee it military, strategic, economic and technological superiority.

Strategic domination and security. Up until 1989, Israel's hegemonic outreach in the region had been territorial, and the split of the rest of the world into two camps had frozen this state of affairs. Subsequently, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its effective pull-out from the Near and Middle East changed all that, opening up the door to the massive immigration of Soviet Jews into Israel and a strengthening of military co-operation between Israelis and Americans. This latter development de facto ended all attempts to maintain any kind of strategic parity between Israelis and Arabs, which up until the nineties had been the overriding principle applied by the superpowers in security matters.
Military domination. Israeli military capability maintained by the unfailing alliance with the United States has left the defence potential of Arab states far behind, whether on the battle field or anywhere else. In the eyes of Arab leaders, there is the risk that this military domination will extend to the entire Arab world, including the Maghreb.
Economic and technological domination. To the Arabs, the future relationship between Israel and its neighbours seems to hold out bleak prospects for the latter. Israel's GDP is US$60 billion; in 1993 Syria's was US$10 billion. Does this not portend a future relationship between the two of industrialised country to developing nation? Similarly, Israel's GNP was three times that of Syria, Jordan and the Lebanon combined.
After 15 years of "normalisation" of relations between Israel and Egypt, Arab leaders have realised that normalisation is not something that can be imposed by treaty - Israeli technology is still suffering from a lack of Egyptian labour, and Egyptian tourists are still few and far between in Israel. It is this "cold peace" that is the dominant model; Israel, yesterday's enemy, can tomorrow only be a rival. If ideology defines the enemy, the politics of pragmatism offer the full gamut of ways and means of confronting him.
Fourthly, the management of Arab-Muslim affairs by the Americans had the effect of accentuating the fragmentation of the Arab and Muslim zone: the United States, copying the Roman Empire, installed proconsuls, outposts of power in parts of the region: Saudi Arabia for the Arabian Peninsular, Egypt for the Nile Valley, Israel for the Near East and Algeria for North Africa.
Morocco would very much have liked to be chosen as the sheriff's deputy in the region, but to the Americans, Algeria is a Nation-State that fought against a Power, France, and above all possesses huge wealth in oil and gas reserves.

Before coming under American influence, Algeria was destabilised essentially by the emergence and rise of the Islamic movement, that is usually referred to in English-speaking countries as fundamentalism or fundamentalism, those schools of thought that seek to convert the environment they exist in to - or back to - Islam. It was through the Wahhabi, i.e. Saudi, wing of this movement that the United States achieved their objectives of destabilising the regimes in power.

The Americans have no issue with their Muslim community diluted in such a large population. For them, the instrumentalisation of Islam is not a potential danger, apart from the occasional mishap such as the World Trade Centre bomb attack. It is however potentially a weapon - as was the case in Afghanistan where it served as a defence against communism.

In Saudi Arabia, Islam is both the State and the Constitution. At the same time, oil revenues make it possible for the Wahhabis to establish a presence around the world through the Islamic League (Rabita) and the Islamic banks. All these institutions, and many others, can perfectly legally finance groups and associations, through "zakat", Muslim alms giving, which is an obligation for all practising Muslims.

But contrary to appearances, the Islamic movement is on the wane: repressive measures in Europe, but also Algeria and Egypt, plus the counter-offensive by the reformers in Iran would seem to condemn these schools of thought to come to terms with existing systems and regimes rather than topple them. The fact remains however that the concessions made by those in power have weakened and undermined them, making them more vulnerable vis-à-vis the regional powers mentioned earlier - Iran, Israel and above all Turkey, that, on the strength of its strategic and economic importance, has become once again a sort of Ottoman Empire.

The most important single event of the last thirty years, in purely strategic, security and economic terms, is without any doubt the agreement signed in 1996 between Turkey and Israel; much more so than the 1993, Oslo accords. This agreement has settled the future of the Near and Middle East for the next fifteen years at the very least.
Especially as the Arab zone has been weakened further by thirteen successions which have all resulted in crises directly affecting both the regimes and the societies concerned. Whilst the transition seems to have been smooth in Morocco and Jordan, the first critical voices are starting to be heard, and the situation in Syrian looks precarious and uncertain.

The challenge of modernisation for the Arab world means accommodating the interests of its various component parts, in particular its cultural or religious minorities, and above all, and by no means the least of the necessary conditions, overcoming its divisions - in a nutshell rejecting the inevitability of decline.

Going against the flow of the huge international strategic reshuffle underway entailing the constitution of large geographically based political entities getting ready for the globalisation of economic and cultural flows, the Arab world remains locked in its political divisions, economic disparities and anxiety over security issues. It is the one big player left out of the trend towards global redeployment, despite the challenges it is facing, and despite being a tempting prize because of its key position at the intersection of three continents (Europe, Asia and Africa), its role as the major energy supplier for the world's economy and the spiritual influence of some of its religious centres.

Symptomatic of its divisions is the fact that there has not been an Arab summit for ten years. Not one summit throughout what has been a pivotal decade for the geo-economic reshaping of the world. Whereas on other continents, large regional entities, such as the European Union for Western Europe, Nafta for the North American continent, Mercosur for Latin America and Apac for the Asia-Pacific region, have been taking up battle formation to embark upon the conquest of the markets of the 21st Century, the Arab world lies exhausted, its life-blood drained by half a century of unbroken violence, drifting aimlessly, totally lacking cohesion, ambition and a common cause.

This is not self-criticism for the pleasure of it - it is a judgement that brooks no dissent, and the figures speak for themselves: in the last third of the 20th Century, the Arab world has put something like US$155 billion into military expenditure, which is an average of about 50 billion dollars a year, without achieving either a nuclear delivery or deterrent capability, not to mention a space-borne intelligence capability, and thus remains cruelly lacking such attributes of a modern great power.

During about a quarter of a century, from 1970 to 1994, the Middle East soaked up 45% of arms sales to the third world. 35% of global arms purchases, whereas its population is only 3% of the world total, resulting in a situation where the region had more arms per capita (in terms of tanks and artillery) than all the thirty European countries that constituted Nato and the Warsaw pact together.

As we enter the 21st Century, the Arab world has all the hallmarks of a trusteeship, with as large a foreign military presence as in colonial times, whether through bases in the Persian Gulf or facilities in ten Arab countries including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The other members of the Arab League, those who in the collective Arab imagination have to varying degrees and at various times symbolised the rejection of western hegemony, have been pilloried by the international community, either as "pariah states", or "terrorist henchmen". In the first category, we find of course Iraq, facing an embargo, and Libya, an outcast for five years (1992-1999), and Sudan, on the international blacklist. In the second, Syria stands out.

All the human development indicators (HDI) in Arab countries have gone into the red zone and are below the tolerance threshold, showing up the shortcomings of the political and cultural system. The average illiteracy rate in the Arab world, albeit ten points down on the beginning of the nineties (48.7%), is still one of the highest in the world at around 38.1%, just ahead of southern Asia (**) and sub-Saharan Africa (40.36%); but these are regions that do not possess anything like the wealth of the Arab world.

The same is true of the infant mortality rate (IMR). In the 1995-2000 period, the IMR, which is the rate that best reflects a country's level of development since it is a measure of the standard of health care, the population's level of education, the status of women and hospital infrastructure combined, is also one of the highest in the world, providing confirmation, if any were needed, of the low level of Arab development. Leaving aside the special case of Iraq, which holds the all time world record at 96 per thousand because of the ten year embargo, the infant mortality rate is still particularly high both in the large countries that have the infrastructure and in those less well equipped. Egypt and Morocco are on a par at 51 per 1,000, followed by Algeria with 44, Syria with 33, Lebanon with 29, the West Bank of Jordan with 26.4, Oman with 25 and Saudi Arabia with 23 per thousand.

Just as worrying is the deficit regarding the NET-economy. The Internet penetration rate in Arab homes is ridiculously low. Whilst smaller countries have been quick to embark upon technological innovation producing quite high user rates, in particular in the United Arab Emirates (75.34 per thousand inhabitants), Bahrain (9.8) and Lebanon (7.33), the larger Arab countries have on the contrary taken a very cautious attitude, as if they were afraid of the destabilising effects of this new information technology and more concerned with remaining in control. Set against its industrial clout and the size of its population, Egypt has only a tiny number of users - an average of 0.29 Internet addresses per thousand inhabitants, while the financial power in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, has 0.6 per 1,000. Algeria (0.007) and Morocco (0.20) are in a similar situation, while Israel boasts the regional record with 161.59 Internet addresses per thousand inhabitants in the 1995-2000 period, the pivotal period for technological and IT system change in the world.

Hopelessly under-funded, scientific research, one of the driving forces of economic and strategic progress for Arabs, is a marginal activity, a genuine poor relation in the field of human sciences. The ambitious programme that Bachar el-Assad, the supposed successor of the late Syrian head of state, would dearly love to implement - provide Internet access in every Syrian home - whilst being the sign of a determination to change, is also a reflection of a belated awareness of how worryingly far behind Arab science has fallen. There are eight thousand research workers in the Arab world (400,000 in the United States), some of whom are among the most brilliant minds on this earth - such as the Egyptian-American Ahmad Zewail (1999 Nobel prize winner for chemistry). Yet, its per capita spending on scientific research is four dollars, 300 times less than in the United States. Research budgets in the Arab world are around 0.25% of GNP, compared with 3 to 3.5% in the developed world.

In similar fashion, individualised media have multiplied channels of communication ad infinitum, making it very difficult to impose an iron grip on a society's access to information and knowledge. In terms of its civilian and military applications, the information society seems hardly compatible with the notion of power as a centralised bloc. In the Arab world, because of the conflict with Israel, there as been a process of appropriation of identity, first with the Nation-State claiming to embody the collective identity, latter gradually whittled down to the representative of a party or a clan, and finally to one single person.
In the space of ten years, the Arab and Muslim world has changed more, and more rapidly, than in the previous fifty. In order to properly apprehend and understand these profound changes in Arab-Muslim societies, including Turkey and Iran, it is vital to trace back the chain of events to the beginning of the century.
At that time, two great powers dominated the world and its wealth: Great Britain and France. In fact, London and Paris did not even wait until the end of the Great War and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire to divide up this part of the world between them. No later than 1916, in an astutely designed carve-up, the French and the British took were determining together the future of Iraq, the Palestine and Egypt, that were to be for London, and the Lebanon, Syria and Cilicia, that were to fall under French control.
There was a strong ulterior motive behind the English choice: the petroleum of Mossul and the passage provided by the Suez canal constituted vital interests for the British monarchy, and this was precisely the reason why John Bull was willing to give promises to all and sundry - not just the French, but also Sharif Hussein, to whom British diplomats undertook to deliver the much talked about Arab kingdom.
These developments came as a revolution - the first of several - in the Arab world, since, with the exception of Egypt, Iran and Turkey, and to a lesser extent, Morocco, none of these newly formed entities had ever had frontiers in the international sense of the term. Since time immemorial, the peoples in these regions that had moved about freely and suddenly the coloniser was erecting barriers. This is most probably one of the reasons that nurtured that dream of Arab unity. In the 1950s, this dream became a tangible objective to be attained, especially in the wake of the Egyptian revolution and the rise to power of Gamal Abdul Nasser.
At the same time, the two trustee powers, France and Great Britain, would have to come to terms with changing times: Nasser seized and nationalised the Suez canal, and so a Franco-British expeditionary force was sent in, backed by the Israeli army. The result was a clear military victory, but a resounding political defeat. Under the combined pressure of the United States and the Soviet Union, the victors were forced to withdraw from Egyptian territory, and as a corollary, lost their supremacy in favour of the two nuclear powers, a status that the Americans and Russians had both recently acquired. They in turn then proceeded to take the whole Arab-Muslim world into their respective spheres of influence.
The result was to split it in two: on the one side, the progressive countries rallying around Nasser and the idea of Arab unity, and on the other, the so-called conservative states around Saudi Arabia.
The fact that the United States chose to sponsor the oil-producing monarchies was no coincidence. Judging by the commentary at the time, and even the views of some contemporary historians, it was possible to believe that the United States had thrust Nasser into the Soviet embrace simply because of a personal disagreement between the then Secretary of State and the new master of Egypt. I personally do not think this was so.
On the contrary, it is my belief that the United States knew perfectly well, what they were doing. Just like the British, they were putting their own interests first, and this meant controlling the sources of petroleum, along with its extraction, refining and transportation. This being so, it made perfect sense to see Saudi Arabia as a key factor in the American strategy. Certainly much more so than the Egypt of the time, that had no oil, and whose new leader had displayed such arrogant hostility to the West. But Saudi Arabia was not the only one.
Iran, that despite, or perhaps because of, the turmoil in its domestic affairs, was a threat to the huge oil reserves, was another protégé of mighty America.
Turkey too, for strategic reasons this time, in its role as a bastion against the USSR, and later Israel, no longer supported by France, went over into the American camp.
But there is nothing the United States abhors more than being faced with a bloc, unless that bloc is a potential market to conquer, and the Arab world at that time had formed the Arab League, and despite the squabbling, the in-fighting and the disputes between Arabs themselves, whenever a summit or ministerial level meeting came around they always seemed to be able to iron out their differences. From Washington's viewpoint, bilateral relations are always the best option, and provide American diplomacy with the most comfortable scenario.
The turn-around by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in July 1972, when he suddenly announced to the 18,000 Soviet advisors by the Nile they would have to pack their bags and go, gave US diplomacy a unique opportunity to reassess the status of the region.
From that point on, for Washington there was an easy fit between economic priorities and strategic interests in that part of the world. Winning Egypt over to the West was especially unproblematic as this looked to be the pro-peace camp. And once again, journalists and commentators got it all wrong. Egypt was not made the pariah of the Arab world; on the contrary, it was the latter that was to forfeit the support of the largest Arab country, and above all, the most powerful Arab army.
At the same time, the "Kissinger strategy", still relevant today, was slowly taking shape. Four objectives emerged:
To break up the Arab world and the Middle East.
Ensure involvement of the United States in all the issues concerning the region, making them the sole, or at least indispensable, interlocutor.
Control hydrocarbons, and the major markets in the region - telecommunications, aeronautics and information highways.
Stamp out any attempt at Arab unity, viewed by Washington as necessarily hostile.
Three methods were to serve this purpose:
Weakening or destabilisation of the hostile regimes in place.
Instrumentalisation of Islam and Islamic movements.
Management from a distance of a region in a state of constant flux
The war in the Lebanon, referred to as a "civil war", brought into sharp focus all the contradictions and paradoxes of the situation in the Near and Middle East. During the first eight years of the conflict, from 1975 to 1983, every outbreak of the Lebanese war involved a foreign player, whether Palestinians, Syrians, Libyans, Sudanese, or Israelis. It was not until September 1983 that there appeared a genuinely civil aspect to the war, with the fighting between Druze and Christians. It is interesting however to note that once the first shot had been fired in this war, no other revolution or coup d'état occurred to trouble the rest of the Arab world. Seen from this viewpoint, the war in the Lebanon might seem to be the first manifestation of the "Kissinger strategy".
The Camp David accords in 1978 and the Israeli-Egyptian peace the year after would be the second manifestation: Egypt was henceforth lost to the Arab world. None of the swaggering or the acts of terrorism at the behest of the Refusal Front (the radicals) were to make any difference: the Arab world was henceforth powerless. Then came the Iranian revolution and the excesses that it brought.
Was it really anti-American? On the surface, quite obviously so. Underneath however, I feel some scepticism is justified. Iran is a Shi'ite country in a Sunni Arab world; Iran is Persian facing 150 million Arabs. In some ways, it is the natural frontier between Arab and non-Arab Islam; and last but not least, Iran has the power to police the Gulf and therefore 35% of all the West's oil supplies. The emergence of Iranian power takes the appearance of a pathological excrescence on the seriously ill Arab body. Moreover, this excrescence rose up face to face with an Arab country that had become a cause of concern with its military strength, its industrialisation, the diversification of its economy and its warlike intentions. By which of course I mean Iraq.
Saddam Hussein and his army believed they had been given a new mission worthy of Saladin, whose statue looks proudly down on the centre of Baghdad - to defend the West against the wild excesses of the Ayatollahs. One day in September 1980, as the Soviets were unleashing their might against Afghanistan, Saddam invaded Iran. The war was to last eight years, sapping the strength of the two countries, that in the end had to settle for a status quo. There was only one winner - Saudi Arabia, which, for some time a least, was rid of its two regional rivals.
But Iraq had no intention of leaving it at that. Saddam was determined to reap the rewards of his "sacrifice". The issue of Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf furnished the pretext. He claimed from Kuwait the uninhabited islands of Watbane, which the emirate refused. The American ambassador to Iraq, April Gasby, stated in the course of a farewell visit to Saddam at the end of her term of office, "This issue is an inter-Arab matter".
The invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 triggered "Desert Storm". And what a storm it was! 29 different countries, from Syria to Morocco, formed a patchwork coalition against Saddam the devil under the leadership of George Bush, and reduced the Iraqi army - the 4th largest in the world according to CIA intelligence - to ashes. Saudi Arabia had every reason to feel reassured. But the consequences of this anti-Iraqi crusade were many and varied, and the waves from the stone thrown into that particular lake are still rippling to the shore today.
Firstly, the break-up of the Arab world. Henceforth, each country could, and it could almost be said, had to, like Kuwait, rely on itself and its own alliances, more often than not from outside the region. The pessimistic corollary of that conclusion is that, to survive, those countries would do so at the expense of the others in the region. Another corollary was the final ideological victory - if anything can be called final in this part of the world - of the conservatives. The fact of the matter is that Arab nationalism was over by the end of the seventies. It was replaced by policies implemented by regimes essentially concerned with national security rather than solidarity and unity. These concerns were visible in Arab attitudes towards the major powers, with whom they sought to establish a special relationship, and be recognised as regional powers, thus enabling them to devote their energies to dominating the others.
Secondly, the risk of seeing Iraq dismantled, which might set a precedent for shifting frontiers all over the region; so much so in fact that immediately after the crisis and then the Gulf war Syria, Iran and Turkey warned against any attempt to change Iraq's frontiers.
Thirdly, the emergence of three regional powers, none of which is Arab - Iran, Turkey and Israel. The collapse of the Soviet Union following the end of the Gulf war, the defeat of Iraq, inter-Arab divisions, the American decision to clip both Iran's and Iraq's wings and the financial crisis in the oil monarchies all helped to put an end once and for all to any real threat to Israel from its Arab environment and guarantee it military, strategic, economic and technological superiority.

Strategic domination and security. Up until 1989, Israel's hegemonic outreach in the region had been territorial, and the split of the rest of the world into two camps had frozen this state of affairs. Subsequently, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its effective pull-out from the Near and Middle East changed all that, opening up the door to the massive immigration of Soviet Jews into Israel and a strengthening of military co-operation between Israelis and Americans. This latter development de facto ended all attempts to maintain any kind of strategic parity between Israelis and Arabs, which up until the nineties had been the overriding principle applied by the superpowers in security matters.
Military domination. Israeli military capability maintained by the unfailing alliance with the United States has left the defence potential of Arab states far behind, whether on the battle field or anywhere else. In the eyes of Arab leaders, there is the risk that this military domination will extend to the entire Arab world, including the Maghreb.
Economic and technological domination. To the Arabs, the future relationship between Israel and its neighbours seems to hold out bleak prospects for the latter. Israel's GDP is US$60 billion; in 1993 Syria's was US$10 billion. Does this not portend a future relationship between the two of industrialised country to developing nation? Similarly, Israel's GNP was three times that of Syria, Jordan and the Lebanon combined.
After 15 years of "normalisation" of relations between Israel and Egypt, Arab leaders have realised that normalisation is not something that can be imposed by treaty - Israeli technology is still suffering from a lack of Egyptian labour, and Egyptian tourists are still few and far between in Israel. It is this "cold peace" that is the dominant model; Israel, yesterday's enemy, can tomorrow only be a rival. If ideology defines the enemy, the politics of pragmatism offer the full gamut of ways and means of confronting him.
Fourthly, the management of Arab-Muslim affairs by the Americans had the effect of accentuating the fragmentation of the Arab and Muslim zone: the United States, copying the Roman Empire, installed proconsuls, outposts of power in parts of the region: Saudi Arabia for the Arabian Peninsular, Egypt for the Nile Valley, Israel for the Near East and Algeria for North Africa.
Morocco would very much have liked to be chosen as the sheriff's deputy in the region, but to the Americans, Algeria is a Nation-State that fought against a Power, France, and above all possesses huge wealth in oil and gas reserves.

Before coming under American influence, Algeria was destabilised essentially by the emergence and rise of the Islamic movement, that is usually referred to in English-speaking countries as fundamentalism or fundamentalism, those schools of thought that seek to convert the environment they exist in to - or back to - Islam. It was through the Wahhabi, i.e. Saudi, wing of this movement that the United States achieved their objectives of destabilising the regimes in power.

The Americans have no issue with their Muslim community diluted in such a large population. For them, the instrumentalisation of Islam is not a potential danger, apart from the occasional mishap such as the World Trade Centre bomb attack. It is however potentially a weapon - as was the case in Afghanistan where it served as a defence against communism.

In Saudi Arabia, Islam is both the State and the Constitution. At the same time, oil revenues make it possible for the Wahhabis to establish a presence around the world through the Islamic League (Rabita) and the Islamic banks. All these institutions, and many others, can perfectly legally finance groups and associations, through "zakat", Muslim alms giving, which is an obligation for all practising Muslims.

But contrary to appearances, the Islamic movement is on the wane: repressive measures in Europe, but also Algeria and Egypt, plus the counter-offensive by the reformers in Iran would seem to condemn these schools of thought to come to terms with existing systems and regimes rather than topple them. The fact remains however that the concessions made by those in power have weakened and undermined them, making them more vulnerable vis-à-vis the regional powers mentioned earlier - Iran, Israel and above all Turkey, that, on the strength of its strategic and economic importance, has become once again a sort of Ottoman Empire.

The most important single event of the last thirty years, in purely strategic, security and economic terms, is without any doubt the agreement signed in 1996 between Turkey and Israel; much more so than the 1993, Oslo accords. This agreement has settled the future of the Near and Middle East for the next fifteen years at the very least.
Especially as the Arab zone has been weakened further by thirteen successions which have all resulted in crises directly affecting both the regimes and the societies concerned. Whilst the transition seems to have been smooth in Morocco and Jordan, the first critical voices are starting to be heard, and the situation in Syrian looks precarious and uncertain.

The challenge of modernisation for the Arab world means accommodating the interests of its various component parts, in particular its cultural or religious minorities, and above all, and by no means the least of the necessary conditions, overcoming its divisions - in a nutshell rejecting the inevitability of decline.

Going against the flow of the huge international strategic reshuffle underway entailing the constitution of large geographically based political entities getting ready for the globalisation of economic and cultural flows, the Arab world remains locked in its political divisions, economic disparities and anxiety over security issues. It is the one big player left out of the trend towards global redeployment, despite the challenges it is facing, and despite being a tempting prize because of its key position at the intersection of three continents (Europe, Asia and Africa), its role as the major energy supplier for the world's economy and the spiritual influence of some of its religious centres.

Symptomatic of its divisions is the fact that there has not been an Arab summit for ten years. Not one summit throughout what has been a pivotal decade for the geo-economic reshaping of the world. Whereas on other continents, large regional entities, such as the European Union for Western Europe, Nafta for the North American continent, Mercosur for Latin America and Apac for the Asia-Pacific region, have been taking up battle formation to embark upon the conquest of the markets of the 21st Century, the Arab world lies exhausted, its life-blood drained by half a century of unbroken violence, drifting aimlessly, totally lacking cohesion, ambition and a common cause.

This is not self-criticism for the pleasure of it - it is a judgement that brooks no dissent, and the figures speak for themselves: in the last third of the 20th Century, the Arab world has put something like US$155 billion into military expenditure, which is an average of about 50 billion dollars a year, without achieving either a nuclear delivery or deterrent capability, not to mention a space-borne intelligence capability, and thus remains cruelly lacking such attributes of a modern great power.

During about a quarter of a century, from 1970 to 1994, the Middle East soaked up 45% of arms sales to the third world. 35% of global arms purchases, whereas its population is only 3% of the world total, resulting in a situation where the region had more arms per capita (in terms of tanks and artillery) than all the thirty European countries that constituted Nato and the Warsaw pact together.

As we enter the 21st Century, the Arab world has all the hallmarks of a trusteeship, with as large a foreign military presence as in colonial times, whether through bases in the Persian Gulf or facilities in ten Arab countries including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The other members of the Arab League, those who in the collective Arab imagination have to varying degrees and at various times symbolised the rejection of western hegemony, have been pilloried by the international community, either as "pariah states", or "terrorist henchmen". In the first category, we find of course Iraq, facing an embargo, and Libya, an outcast for five years (1992-1999), and Sudan, on the international blacklist. In the second, Syria stands out.

All the human development indicators (HDI) in Arab countries have gone into the red zone and are below the tolerance threshold, showing up the shortcomings of the political and cultural system. The average illiteracy rate in the Arab world, albeit ten points down on the beginning of the nineties (48.7%), is still one of the highest in the world at around 38.1%, just ahead of southern Asia (**) and sub-Saharan Africa (40.36%); but these are regions that do not possess anything like the wealth of the Arab world.

The same is true of the infant mortality rate (IMR). In the 1995-2000 period, the IMR, which is the rate that best reflects a country's level of development since it is a measure of the standard of health care, the population's level of education, the status of women and hospital infrastructure combined, is also one of the highest in the world, providing confirmation, if any were needed, of the low level of Arab development. Leaving aside the special case of Iraq, which holds the all time world record at 96 per thousand because of the ten year embargo, the infant mortality rate is still particularly high both in the large countries that have the infrastructure and in those less well equipped. Egypt and Morocco are on a par at 51 per 1,000, followed by Algeria with 44, Syria with 33, Lebanon with 29, the West Bank of Jordan with 26.4, Oman with 25 and Saudi Arabia with 23 per thousand.

Just as worrying is the deficit regarding the NET-economy. The Internet penetration rate in Arab homes is ridiculously low. Whilst smaller countries have been quick to embark upon technological innovation producing quite high user rates, in particular in the United Arab Emirates (75.34 per thousand inhabitants), Bahrain (9.8) and Lebanon (7.33), the larger Arab countries have on the contrary taken a very cautious attitude, as if they were afraid of the destabilising effects of this new information technology and more concerned with remaining in control. Set against its industrial clout and the size of its population, Egypt has only a tiny number of users - an average of 0.29 Internet addresses per thousand inhabitants, while the financial power in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, has 0.6 per 1,000. Algeria (0.007) and Morocco (0.20) are in a similar situation, while Israel boasts the regional record with 161.59 Internet addresses per thousand inhabitants in the 1995-2000 period, the pivotal period for technological and IT system change in the world.

Hopelessly under-funded, scientific research, one of the driving forces of economic and strategic progress for Arabs, is a marginal activity, a genuine poor relation in the field of human sciences. The ambitious programme that Bachar el-Assad, the supposed successor of the late Syrian head of state, would dearly love to implement - provide Internet access in every Syrian home - whilst being the sign of a determination to change, is also a reflection of a belated awareness of how worryingly far behind Arab science has fallen. There are eight thousand research workers in the Arab world (400,000 in the United States), some of whom are among the most brilliant minds on this earth - such as the Egyptian-American Ahmad Zewail (1999 Nobel prize winner for chemistry). Yet, its per capita spending on scientific research is four dollars, 300 times less than in the United States. Research budgets in the Arab world are around 0.25% of GNP, compared with 3 to 3.5% in the developed world.

In similar fashion, individualised media have multiplied channels of communication ad infinitum, making it very difficult to impose an iron grip on a society's access to information and knowledge. In terms of its civilian and military applications, the information society seems hardly compatible with the notion of power as a centralised bloc. In the Arab world, because of the conflict with Israel, there as been a process of appropriation of identity, first with the Nation-State claiming to embody the collective identity, latter gradually whittled down to the representative of a party or a clan, and finally to one single person.</sup>