The Grapes of Wrath: The Middle East, Islam and the WTC Bombings

Johann Price

Terrorism grows and feeds on the resentments and fear of ordinary people. If we are to defeat it we must deal with the symptoms as well as the cause. We must ask ourselves, what do these terrorists want? Who do they represent? What can we do to remove the basis for this support? There has been a wide range of reactions from the Islamic world and the Middle East both on the governmental level and on the popular level to the ghastly events of September 11^th. Those reactions give us an insight into the roots of the West and Israel’s conflict with segments of the Islamic world. The whole world for it’s own security can and must neutralise Osama Bin Laden and his ‘Islamic Front’ through the combined efforts of intelligence, law enforcement and military forces, but that will only buy us enough time to bring about an effective long-term solution.

Many ordinary people in Egypt,(the US’s second largest recipient of military and economic aid), Pakistan and Algeria openly cheered the bombings. In Iran and Syria, countries traditionally identified with terrorism, there was strong governmental condemnation of the terrorists and more importantly little public sympathy for the suicide bombing. Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya, who himself has a record of using terrorism against American targets has even gone so far as to say that the US has a right to seek revenge.

Osama Bin Laden and his followers and associates without doubt murderous terrorists, perhaps the most dangerous seen so far, and there is also little doubt that the depth of their hatred allows them to rationalise away terrible crimes. Yet they pursue an end that deeply resonates with many Muslims throughout the world, even with those who are appalled by their means; the strategic independence of the Islamic world through the forcible military, political and even cultural withdrawal of the US from the Middle East. Osama Bin Laden’s calculus is that the US is unwilling to continuously pay such a high price in American lives to maintain this regional hegemony. It remains to be seen whether his followers can replicate such costs and whether the American imperative is that fragile.

When we examine this pattern of reactions and the American reaction three facts emerge; (1) The most negative reactions emerged in nations with deep socio-economic inequalities and unpopular unrepresentative Western backed governments, and in nations in direct conflict with the West and Israel. (2) Even those governments and individuals appalled by the loss of life and disgusted by this act of terrorism will quietly say under their breath that these events were a result of American policies in the region. (3) Many American commentators still seem to believe that these terrorists represent only a handful of extremists and rogue regimes and are motivated almost exclusively by hate. It is not yet widely recognised that they are a symptom rather than the disease itself.

Where does this hatred and resentment come from? An overwhelming sense of civilisational decline, and more specifically the inability to maintain any measure of control over their own destinies. This decline and loss of control is seen as an integral part of a 200 year old struggle against a relentless and ruthless West and the litany of defeats. Many Arabs look back further with anger, pain and pride at the resistance against European Crusaders and their eventual victory. However hard it may be to define, there is little doubt that there exists a worldwide community of Muslims who relate very closely indeed to each other. The disaffections and prejudices of Muslims at the core of the Islamic world have been transmitted to Muslims elsewhere and echoed back again by Muslims living in similar conditions, creating a feedback loop. This feedback explains why many educated and illiterate alike in a country like Pakistan feel such strong animosity against Israel, a country that has done little if anything to harm them directly. 

When Napoleon conquered Egypt in 1798 it formally marked the end of one phase in the history of the Islamic world and the start of another. Cairo was at the heart of the Islamic world, its most durable cultural, economic and political and even architectural centre after the passing of the Abbasid Caliphate, and yet the French found it sorry shape with crumbling buildings and a disorganised government. A far cry from the formidable force that had encircled and bottled in Europe for some 800 years. The 19th century saw colonial powers carve up North Africa and Egypt as the Ottoman Empire retreated from the Balkans in the face of European nationalism. Russia raced through Central Asia while Britain demolished what remained of Mughal power in the subcontinent. Sheikhdoms in the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere found themselves being referred to as 'protectorates' which meant they weren't worth the trouble of being formally absorbed into the colonial structure. Afghanistan however remained independent.

Things did not improve in the 20^th century. The end of World War I saw the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate (which was widely seen as an attack on the very concept of Ummah and the prophets legacy) and the colonisation of the remainder of the Muslim world's traditional core in Palestine Syria and Iraq. The end of World War II saw many the Middle East gradually regain independence, and the beginnings of the oil boom that would transform the Arabian Peninsula. Yet all was not well; governments outside the peninsula were largely run by self-absorbed secular elites deeply influenced by a Euro-Atlantic world that was alien and inaccessible to the majority of their populations. Unfortunately most of these governments have consistently failed to meet the economic and/or political aspirations (this includes the Palestinian issue) of their peoples and have just as consistently resorted to repression when their populations have demanded or more equitable distribution of political power and resources at least greater accountability. This sense of powerlessness has been compounded by repeated defeats at the state of Israel and more recently their inability to really do anything positive for the Palestinians. Because of the linkages within the Arab world and between the Arab world and the rest of the Islamic world the Intifada has continued to stoke passions throughout the Ummah.

During the Cold War governments in the region drew support from both superpowers, and some populations saw dizzying changes of alliances within thirty years. Egypt for example in the last fifty years has experienced monarchy, revolutionary government, socialism, capitalism and ‘democracy’ without appreciable improvement in their personal lives or even their bargaining position vis-à-vis Palestine. The result of this instability has been a deep disillusionment with the West and everything it has produced. In the back of the collective consciousness was a perhaps overly glorified memory of the former commercial, intellectual, military and political domination of the Islamic world that the Islamists constantly invoke. To many hungry for hope it seems that the only thing that had not been tried was Islam and the Islamic state. The result has been a tremendous Islamic revival over the last thirty years fuelled by the tremendous socioeconomic pressures in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Iran and helped along with Gulf money.

This political Islamism has become the focus of resistance to the status quo.  The first victory was the Iranian revolution. The next was Amal and Hezbollah's success in forcing first the US peacekeeping forces and then the Israeli army out of Lebanon. The Iranian revolutionary government’s hostility to the West and memories of the energy crisis precipitated by the Arab oil boycott of 1973 convinced leaders that Islamic regimes in the Middle East had to be opposed at all costs and renewed it’s support to secular regimes and traditional monarchies. We failed to acknowledge that Revolutionary Iran’s hatred was a direct result of the unreserved US support of the Shah and his increasingly brutal regime until the final days. The refusal by local elites to accommodate Islamists through popular or democratic movements and the use of state violence and repression only encouraged greater radicalisation of these forces. The starkest example of this has been Algeria where the military annulled the 1992 elections after the GIS achieved an overwhelming victory. The resulting civil war has cost some 100-150,000 lives. Saudi Arabia which was able to maintain stability by throwing money at it’s population has seen a precipitous increase in political dissidence drop as per capita income fell sharply in the aftermath of the Gulf War. There are persistent questions over the House of Saud’s undiminished lavish lifestyle and absolute political control, and the overwhelming American influence over oil production, foreign and defence policy especially with regards to Israel. There is also a very clear understanding of how dependant these regimes are on Western and especially American support. In short their freedom to reshape their own world has been consistently frustrated by a Western world that they believe alternatively laughs at and ignores them for their poverty, backwardness and powerlessness, conditions that are prolonged by an enforced inability to fundamentally alter their realities. This frustrated impotence has expressed itself as a hatred of America, and joy when America was hit in a way that released their own frustration and demanding the attention of the whole world. The constant refrain was that America had been ‘taught a lesson’. It might be a stretch, but one could argue that the same psychology was at work in the school massacres seen recently within America itself. The perpetrators overwhelmingly claimed to be ignored victims of bullying, and stated that the only way they could release their anger was by lashing out against an oppressive, hurtful and uncaring ‘them’ in the worst possible way they could think of. The more deaths, and the more publicity, the better they felt.

For a while in the ‘90s it was fashionable to claim that the threat from Islamic militancy was overstated and that it’s time was past as the dominos had stopped falling. This month’s events tell us that superficial judgment was both premature and highly dangerous. A combination of factors has slowed their growth; the numerical domination of Sunnis and the difficulty that Shia revolutionary fervour has had in crossing the divide, and Western support to ‘moderates’. Militant Sunni Islam had its epiphany during the Afghan Jihad against Soviet occupation, an experience that reached it’s logical conclusion when the Taliban rolled into Kabul and declared an Islamic Emirate, a state far more radical than Sudan or even Iran in it’s rejection of the non-Islamic world. This of course probably has much to do with their earlier resistance to external control. Even Pakistan, which was instrumental in creating and facilitating the Taliban’s success can not be said to control it. It is therefore not surprising that Osama Bin Laden chose to set up shop there.

Even if the Taleban and Al-Qaeda are demolished, the underlying reasons for their existence will remain. The existing regimes are simply incapable of permanently stamping out the sentiments that created Bin Laden and unwilling to take the necessary steps to change the conditions. Given the explosive population growth seen in much of the Middle East and Pakistan, and lagging economic growth, the internal struggles within countries such Egypt and Pakistan will only grow stronger without genuinely representative governments. If the world as a whole chooses to fight this war on terrorism by indefinitely supporting regimes (especially in Sunni countries) that exploit us as a bulwark against any sort of change, we risk creating a dozen more GIAs and Al-Qaedas preceding the inevitable revolution, and possibly a dozen Talebans afterwards to shelter yet more Al-Qaedas. We must keep in mind that if the dominos at the heart of the Sunni community start fall to Taleban style Islam that the ripples may spread much wider than post-revolutionary Iran.

What then is to be done? This is of course an exceedingly hard question. It's very difficult to convey the sort of social pressure cooker that exists today in Cairo or the West Bank. The number one need is to facilitate the redistribution of economic opportunity and political power within these nations in order to create establishments representative of ordinary people’s aspirations. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the key nations to influence, representing the financial, spiritual and historical centres of the Islamic world. This may mean the emergence of Islamic governments, but these will pose far less risk than Islamic movements born and bred in blood. These new regimes must not be isolated and shunned but rather co-opted into the international community on the very clear understanding that support for terrorism is unacceptable. The other question that has to be settled is the future status of the Palestinian State. However much they may wish otherwise most Arabs are realistic enough to admit that Israel cannot be undone, and the focus of their anger towards Israeli is over the control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Realistically, neither of these processes are possible until we can find new paradigms to (a) guarantee the energy security of the industrial and developed world and (b) guarantee the security of Israel in a way that Israelis themselves find credible.