The Middle East Imbroglio

The Middle East Imbroglio

People and news around the world are concerned recently about the savagery perpetrated in the name of religion in and the consequential migration from the ME. The present thoughts are a contribution to the ongoing debate on how to deal with the situation. We need to seek first the possible causes of this outburst against the contemporary civilization -leaving aside, of course, the distant and unfortunate occurrence that all three main religions were borne at the same location causing an eternal enmity between people.

The history of the period leading up to and including the aftermath of WWI are more relevant. 19^th century European powers’ preoccupation with the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire without prior due consideration to the consequential vacuum may be considered to be the foundation of the ongoing conflict; a warning that Napoleon gave to the other leaders one century earlier. The dismantling nevertheless occurred, and the vacuum was filled by an idiotic plan that Britain and France put into effect on the advice of a shady adventurer, Lawrence of Araby, as well as by the creation of Israel. Disregard for local social and cultural realities in favor of the victors’ strategic and economic considerations started boiling the Middle Eastern pot.  The savagery of ISIS in the areas it occupied, and of its followers in distant places around the world is reminiscent of medieval crusades. Jihad may be a reverse crusade.

When terrorists do us harm we must certainly hunt them down wherever they are in the world. If any of our friends is attacked by terrorists and asks us for help, we should join the hunt. What we should not do, however, is to intervene when the powers to be in a country, like the majority or military or the ruler, terrorize their own citizens. It is up to the citizens to rise against the oppressors. Otherwise, they will never appreciate and cherish freedom and human rights. If people would like to have democracy for their freedom and human rights, they have to own it, not to have it handed to them. They have to be let to stew in their own juice until they reach the boiling point of starving for democracy for whatever it costs, and how long it takes. The choice of governing style must arise from within the society concerned, for it to have a sound foundation. If democracy is imported, it is often interpreted as a foreign object, or as the rule by majority, which leads to totalitarianism. In the Muslim culture, where they believe in being led rather than in leading, the majority’s rule turns into autocracy. Examples of failures of forming free and democratic systems in Muslim countries, which ended up with chaos or autocracy abound: Iran, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, all of Central Asian countries, more recently Yemen and Syria, and finally Turkey. This does not mean to exclude from these failures the effects of the cold war competition and the pursuit by world powers their strategic and economic interests. Especially, the double standard applied to dictators makes the Western interventions in the name of freedom and human rights suspect at best, and incredible at worst. Locals then understandably perceive the interventions as an invasion of their culture, or as designed to serve the West’s nefarious interests.

The current operation to take down Assad of Syria is a sad demonstration that we did not learn from these very recent experiences. The fact that Assad regime is not legitimate does not make our intervention legitimate, even if we intervene for humanitarian reasons. Humanitarianism alone, vaguely formulated in diplomatic language in some international covenants, does not give us mandate to intervene. It is absurd to try to topple Assad because he has committed atrocities against his people while the vacuum we created ourselves right next door in Iraq by removing Saddam is filled by the savages of ISIS.

Furthermore, it was a great mistake to think that we could bring down Assad without the involvement of Russia, who has a Middle East beachhead in Tarsus since the Cold War days of 1977. Blurring our focus on the fight against the Islamist terrorists by including another target called Assad gave a chance to Russia to expand its presence in Syria. Russia swiftly built an air base in Latakia between Tarsus and Turkey’s NATO border, a mere 30-40 miles away.

On the other hand, an operation in Syria or anywhere, for that matter, is justifiable if it is a hot pursuit of terrorists, who cause damage or constitute a threat to us or to our friends –when they ask for help. We were to focus on eradicating the radical Islamist terrorism that burgeoned in the vacuum in Iraq. Yet, we were distracted from focusing on terrorists when Turks cried wolf about threat from Syria. We were misguided as much by the false Turkish propaganda as by the fear from Iran’s expansion, thus threat to Israel. Turkey’s real motivation is, as we all know, to block the Kurdish spread along its borders, and its, not so well-known, desire to form a Sunni Syria under Turkey’s wing. Turks bomb Kurds, provide material support to Sunni rebels in Syria, and refrain from any effective action against the Islamist (Sunni) terrorists whose aim is to rule over Syria. Accordingly, Turkey became a thorn on the side of the coalition fighting the Islamist terrorists. Turkey’s several attempts to get NATO involved in an operation against Syria -not against Islamist terrorists-, like the positioning of Patriot missiles at its southern border under the false pretense of threat from Syria, and the unnecessary downing of the Russian military plane with a flimsy excuse, are dangerous and irresponsible use of its membership position in NATO. NATO needs to wake up to the reality that Turkey is no longer Turkey of 1952 or even of 1992. It has been, at least in the last fifteen years, an Islamist oriented country. It became a liability on NATO who could condemn, instead of oblige, deceptions by Turkey.

I might add that the most important aspect of fighting the radical Islamist terrorists is that it is not a strategic fight. It is simply a hot pursuit of criminals. They are not limited in space and time. They are not limited with a compact organization, to a leadership, to a line of command, to a given location. They are in fact a worldwide network of groups with a fanatical religious mind-set (even the term “ideology” loosely used by commentators is misplaced). This mentality cannot be changed by foreigners, whether by force or by teaching. Foreign involvement will only exacerbate this fanaticism. These perverted minds may be changed by the leaders of Muslim countries in general, and by the Saudi Arabian leadership in particular. Whereas, those leaders stayed on the sidelines, gave lip service, tried to pacify us by distinguishing Islam from terrorists, or provided a halfhearted support to the fight against the latter. Therefore, a wiser approach by us to this fight would have been to form a coalition composed solely of the Arab countries in the region, including Syria and Iraq, without any overt military involvement of the West except for a heavy logistic support. Unless all Arab countries in the region actively and decisively fight against radical Islamist terrorism, the latter will never be vanquished. If the Islamists’ terrorism is not what Islam is about, other Muslims have to get their hands dirty and prove it.

Once a relative peace is achieved in the Middle East, hopefully a new political rearrangement in the region may be sought through an international agreement between all countries of the region, to which a guarantee of implementation may be lent by organizations like the UN and NATO. The main objective of such an agreement must be the avoidance of forming once again artificial states that would eventually fail and cause conflicts, like the ones caused by the Sykes-Picot folly.

December 6, 2015