‘What Went Wrong?’ : Arab Power on the Wane Despite Oil

The golden days of moneyed power have ended for the Arabs as suddenly as they began. Today, their influence is on the wane, and Arabs have entered a period of disillusioned self-examination, asking, “What went wrong?”

Just a few years ago, in the 1970s and the early 1980s, the Arabs were widely regarded as an emerging world power. Egyptian troops had crossed the Suez Canal. Oil sheiks had humbled Western economies. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of neighboring but non-Arab Iran had treated both the U.S. and Soviet governments with contempt and gotten away with it. The Lebanon-based Palestine Liberation Organization had become the world’s best-known, best-armed, most prosperous guerrilla organization, a law unto itself.

Seemingly Illusory Dream

The 167 million Arabs embraced their decade of destiny with a cocky exuberance. Their history was one of men and deeds, not ideas, their dream one of power more than unity, and from the deserts of Arabia to the cities of the Maghreb, there began a frantic dash toward the 21st Century. It was a revolution of the spirit that cried out for ideas and unity. Without them, the dream built on money and religion was to be elusive and perhaps, it seems now in 1985, illusory.

Oil did not produce political power. The Camp David accords and other initiatives did not bring peace to the Middle East. Today, Lebanon is engulfed in self-ignited flames. Iraq and Iran are using poison gas and aerial bombardments to destroy each other. The Palestinians are in their third diaspora--first expelled from Israel in 1948, then from Jordan in 1970 and from Lebanon in 1982. Five wars with Israel have brought 3,000 square miles of Arab land under Israeli occupation but yielded not an inch of Palestine for Arabs. Khomeini, who briefly symbolized the hope of the Islamic revival, has become, in the eyes of most Arabs, little more than a scoundrel, a brutal old man who manipulates religion for political purposes. And the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, dominated by the Arabs, is unable even to agree on how to shore up world oil prices or how to maintain its own slipping share of the market.

“Nobody was ready for all the money that descended on us, and right now the Muslim world is a mess,” said Bahrain’s minister of development, Youssef Shirawi. “We accepted the manifestations of a modern civilization but refused its rulings. We accepted technology, for instance, but not science. People became confused, and they ran away to find comfort in Islam.”

The Arabs, a tradition-bound people who prize conformity more than individuality, forgot that only two things made their region important to the Western nations--oil and the presence of Israel. They had little else to export, culturally or otherwise, that the world wanted, and when they lost control of the oil market and proved unable to destroy Zionism, a piece of their dream--and some of the world’s attention--slipped away.

Today, all too often, it is only the religiously inspired fanatics who capture the headlines. Yet the crimes of terrorists--including the murder of at least 280 Americans in the Middle East in the last three years and last month’s hijacking of TWA Flight 847 over the Mediterranean--do not reflect the tenets of Islam or the character of the vast Arab majority. Such actions, produced by the frustration and ignorance of a tiny minority, are regarded by many Arabs as a stigma on a society that values justice, compassion and tolerance as fervently as any other.

For most Arabs, this fanaticism represents further proof that secular systems have failed them. What they wanted was Western technology, but not at the cost of losing their Eastern identity or culture. What they now see is an Arab world drifting away from its heritage, awash in materialism and selfishness, and the vision makes them uneasy.

Turning to Religion

Confronted by the pressures of a Western-style, oil-induced modernity that challenged traditions and values, many Arabs are doing what other people have done in times of crisis: They are turning to religion.

The muezzins’ call rolls from the mosques like thunder, summoning the multitudes with a message of hope:

God is great.

I testify that there is no God but one God.

I testify that Mohammed is His Prophet.

Come to prayers.

Come to success.

God is great.

No God but one God.

What the call to prayer promises is a return to simpler times and a “perfect” life for those who abide strictly by the revelations that Mohammed, then an illiterate merchant, is said to have received from Allah 13 centuries ago and set forth in the Koran.

For the orthodox, coping with modernity does not require intellectual development or imaginative solutions. Indeed, in Islamic institutions, the very word innovation is heresy, because nothing is new; all knowledge is in the Koran, and even modern science is viewed as something of an atheistic tool.

Differing Definitions

“The theory of knowledge for Muslims in the Arab world is different than that in the West,” said Hussein Amin, a senior Egyptian diplomat and a writer on Islamic affairs.

“With you in the West, knowledge is the means to conquer the unknown. With us, it is a collection of material embodied in books which you can possess by reading--and the older the books, the better. True Muslims believe that what Mohammed left is perfect for all countries and all times, so developing Islam is out of the question.”

It seems ironic today that many Arabs dismiss their history prior to Mohammed’s enlightenment by Allah in the year 632 as the dark ages. Long before the coming of Islam, the world’s first great civilizations were born here, in Egypt and Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus were at various periods the world’s most important cities. When Europe was populated by tribes living in mud huts, Egyptians were studying the stars, recording their history in a written language and inventing algebra.

Cut 4,500-Mile Swath

In the 7th Century, armed with swords and the word of God, warriors swept out of the Arabian Peninsula and on camels and horseback carried Islam all the way to Spain. Behind them they left a band that reaches today from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean, 4,500 miles long and nearly 1,000 miles deep, populated by a people whose language, religion and heritage had roots in the sands of Arabia.

The real Arabs were--and still are--desert people, shaped by the harshness of their environment. Their poetry celebrates endurance and survival, not the joyfulness of love and life. They cherish tribe and family, offer hospitality to friend and foe alike and consider it a grave crime to leave the path of one’s father. They refer to the practices of Mohammed as the “Sunna,” meaning “the road,” and refer to good behavior with an expression that translates as “the known.” Walking the known road is always best.

Traveling the Arab world today, one is struck by the sameness of social behavior and, except for the boisterous Egyptians, by the lack of levity and gentle tones. No frivolous fads take hold here, and moods are the color of the earth. Life, like the atonal Arabic music, has a rough edge, forged from struggle.

“We have a sense of humor, but we are not a gay people,” said one Tunisian painter.

Remain Optimistic

But neither are the Arabs defeatists or pessimists. Despite the frustrations of the oil era, there is an overriding faith that Islam and Arab righteousness will somehow prevail in the end, that patience will be rewarded. Arabs are solemn without being downbeat. They view the turbulence that shakes their region as a temporary obstacle on the road to peace, power and prosperity. Yet only Egypt has dared execute national policies that ended a generation of warfare with Israel (although they began an era of estrangement from Egypt’s Arab brethren).

“Everyone knows what he wants, and everyone wants peace and everyone knows how to go about it,” said Ashraf Ghorbal, the former Egyptian ambassador to the United States. “But we haven’t collected the courage to do it, to take the steps, and that is the tragedy.”

The Arabs, in fact, cannot take the steps collectively because they are held hostage by the myth of Arab unity. Pan-Arabism--which at its core is also anti-Zionist--was born early in this century but was articulated most forcefully in the 1950s and 1960s by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Under his leadership, pan-Arabism became the foundation of Arab dreams for a homogeneous region sharing one language, one religion, one heritage, one common purpose. No leader would dare dismiss such noble sentiments today, so the myth lingers that the interests of the whole are greater than those of the parts.

Arab League Paralyzed

But, in fact, the 21-member Arab League is so paralyzed by intra-Arab strife that the heads of state have been unable to hold a summit since September, 1982. The league’s charter--based on the unity myth--dictates that decisions must be made unanimously rather than by the majority. Thus no controversial decisions are made, and no nation can move faster than its brethren, particularly if its economic survival depends on the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti subsidies that many political analysts regard as a form of fraternal blackmail.

The oil states have underwritten Iraq’s war effort against Iran with an estimated $30 billion. They have provided a third of Jordan’s 1981-85 developmental budget, kept the PLO alive with an endless infusion of cash and subsidized the economies of poorer Arab countries. This largess ensures that only another super-rich Arab oil nation such as Libya could execute policies that are in conflict with Saudi and Kuwaiti views.

Arab unity exists only in the rhetoric of speech-makers. Regional powers and alliances have emerged in recent years at the expense of pan-Arabism. The Iran-Iraq war, now in its fifth year, has been the catalyst for the division of the Arab world into two distinct camps: the so-called moderates, such as Egypt and Jordan, that are generally pro-Western and accept the existence of Israel; and a minority of so-called radicals, notably Syria, Libya and South Yemen, which get their armaments (but not their ideology) from the Soviet Union and are belligerent toward the Jewish state.

‘Unable to Adapt’

“The sad thing about the Arabs is that they’ve been unable to adapt to the realities of the 1980s,” said a Western ambassador. “They still think it’s 1948 (the year Israel was created), and yes, their money has built skyscrapers and bought sophisticated air defense systems, but this isn’t really development. What we’ve seen in the last decade, I think, is physical change that represented progress but not progression. Look at Qatar: Its proudest national possession is the new pyramid-shaped Sheraton Hotel.

“One wonders if, when the oil boom ends, all that will be left of the culture of the ‘70s and early ‘80s will be rusted oil derricks and the remains of old MIGs and F-15s in the desert,” he said.

One wonders as well if boarded-up American embassies will be on that list of remnants, for clearly the United States’ leverage in the region is slipping.

The strategic alliance Washington signed in 1983 with Israel (which accounts for about 2% of the land and people in the Middle East) convinced most governments here that the Reagan Administration cannot be an honest broker in the stalemated Arab-Israeli conflict. Additionally, the Administration’s obsession with communism puzzles the Arabs because religiously, economically and socially, Marxism and heavy-handed Soviet methods are abhorrent to them--particularly that evidenced in Afghanistan, a Muslim country.

U.S. Foreign Policy Mistakes

“The Russians are riding back into the Middle East on the bus of America’s foreign-policy mistakes,” said Mustafa Amin, an Egyptian newspaper columnist whose articles are pro-Western in tone and usually supportive of U.S. ideals.

“For instance, by not negotiating with the PLO, you’re making the same mistake Britain did in India when it was an empire. The British refused to talk to Gandhi, and they got Nehru. It’s easier to reach an agreement with a popular, strong leader than with one who is weak and unpopular.”

Most Arabs think Washington’s Middle East policy is based on Israeli interests, not U.S. interests, and accordingly view Moscow’s low-key re-entry into the region as a helpful balance. The Soviet Union has rebuilt Syria’s armed forces, sold air defense systems to Jordan and Kuwait when the U.S. Congress denied those two countries’ requests to buy anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, and has restored full diplomatic relations with Egypt. Kuwaitis are receiving military training in the Soviet Union, something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

Early U.S.-Arab Relations

Paradoxically, the earliest Arab-American relations were characterized by shared ideals and mutual trust. Morocco recognized the United States in 1777--the first country in the world to do so--and a treaty of friendship between the two nations, signed in 1786 by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, remains in effect to this day. In 1833, a similar treaty was signed with what is now Oman.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of the first Western champions of Moroccan independence, and Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba still keeps on his desk a portrait of Hooker A. Doolittle, the U.S. consul general in Tunis in the 1940s who urged Washington to support Arab nationalism instead of French colonialism.

In 1956, when Israel, Britain and France invaded Egypt’s Suez Canal Zone, it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who put pressure on Israel, thus securing an allied withdrawal and restoring Egyptian sovereignity.

The tone for eventual American-Arab relations, however, was set in 1945, a few months after Roosevelt had met the Saudi monarch, Ibn Saud, and promised that Washington would not, without prior consultation, abandon its sympathies for the Arabs of Palestine.

Truman Changed Direction

When Harry S. Truman was asked to renew the commitment upon the death of Roosevelt, he said, “I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have to account to hundreds of thousands of people who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”

Today the Arab-American population in the United States numbers 3 million (about half the size of the Jewish community), but Arab-Americans traditionally have maintained a low political profile. They have been no more effective in influencing opinion in the United States than the Arab nations have been in presenting their case to the Western world.

“In many ways, the Arabs are their own worst enemy,” said Sultan Kaboos ibn Said of Oman, one of the United States’ closest Arab friends. “Yes, we’d like a more balanced American policy in the Middle East, yet at the same time we have not done a good job in helping others understand us and our concerns.”

Iran Is Real Concern

The real concern for Kaboos and many Arab leaders now, though, is not the American-Israeli axis. It is Iran and the fear that their own countries could be gobbled up by a religious revolution that is anti-Western, anti-modern and anti-everything outside the Shia branch of Islam.

Before the 1979 overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Iran had been the policeman of the Persian Gulf. The shah had kept Iraq in check and brooked no rumblings from religious extremists at home. He was an American ally, a friend to Israel and an intimate of both President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan.

“He (the shah) was a leader who could play a positive role,” said Hermann F. Eilts, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and now director of Boston University’s Center of International Relations.

Shah Put on Pedestal

“The United States, perhaps unwisely, put him on something of a pedestal, not because he was such a fine person but because it saw him as a hero of modernization in the Middle East,” Eilts said. “He was the example of what a modern leader could do. His overthrow was the major shock wave of the ‘70s. We suffered, the area suffered.”

Indeed, with the shah’s demise, everything seemed to spin out of control. Islamic fundamentalism, accompanied by state-sponsored terrorism and fanatics who considered death an honorable reward for their violent deeds, became a force that could neutralize armies and undermine governments.

Iraq invaded Iran, heavily armed religious zealots invaded the Grand Mosque at Mecca, assassins hunted down moderate Arab leaders in Egypt and the Persian Gulf. And Americans became terrorist targets because they were Americans--and because Washington’s failed Iranian policy had shown that Americans and their allies were no more invincible than anyone else.

Ghosts in Lebanon

The ghosts of Iran even lurked in the shadows of Lebanon. Israel invaded Lebanon in June, 1982, and drove all the way to Beirut, the first Arab capital Israelis had ever entered. The invasion drew the United States into combat and led to President Reagan’s declaration that a little Lebanese village named Souq el Gharb was strategically crucial to U.S. interests.

One day just before Beirut fell to the Israelis, an Israeli colonel stood on a hill overlooking the capital and told an American reporter: “The shah is gone, so if we have to be the policeman in the Middle East for the next few years, we’re prepared to be it. The Arabs have never been able to do their own housecleaning. We’ve come to straighten out that mess down there.”

When Arab leaders are asked today what kind of world they expect to bequeath to their children, there is invariably a moment of silence. They know that theirs is a history of missed opportunities, that for nearly 30 years they have waged futile battles trying to achieve what they had already been offered--and had rejected--through negotiation and compromise.

And now, as ideological lines divide the fraternity of Arabs, there is a great weariness throughout the Arab world, a sense of helplessness that is shifting national concerns toward domestic problems.

Arabs Face Civil War

“The Arab world is facing a civil war in which everyone has exhausted his ammunition,” said Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, an Egyptian writer and social commentator. “There are those who have money and those who have ideas, but both are bankrupt. There is a realization that after the euphoria of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, what we have is not what we wanted, that we need a different approach.”

Most Arab leaders say privately they are willing to trade land for peace with Israel, yet only Egypt has had the courage to take that step. Most pay lip service to the plight of the Palestinians, yet all are willing to let thousands remain in refugee camps as a miserable symbol of their homelessness. Most Arab leaders speak of the need for more democracy, yet few are willing to grant their people the rights that democracy demands.

Kuwait, for instance, prides itself on being democratic, but the only citizens allowed to vote for the National Assembly every four years are the 57,000 males (about 3.5% of the population) who can trace their national roots back to 1921.

Jordan announced a new Cabinet recently with great fanfare, yet really only shuffled the old guard: The new prime minister is the son of a former prime minister; the king is the minister of defense; one of the king’s old friends is the minister of interior.

Egypt, for all President Hosni Mubarak’s emphasis on democracy, remains officially in a state of martial law.

Power Remains Status Quo

The political systems of the Arab world have ensured that authority remains in the hands of kings, soldiers and a few elitists. But mass education and the influx of oil money have given rise to a huge middle class which has little access to the inner circles of political and economic power. In the next generation, its members may demand a better accommodation with modernity--though being pro-modern won’t necessarily mean being pro-American--and may not tolerate the continued muffling of honest opposition and intellectual debate.

The past decade has seen a revolution in which money and religion vied for the affection of the masses. Some analysts, like Saad Ibrahim, an Egyptian social scientist, believe that the next Arab revolution will be a revolution for democracy.

The trend, he believes, was established with April’s coup in Sudan, where street demonstrations brought about the overthrow of the repressive regime of President Jaafar Numeiri and the demonstrators then forced the new military leadership to set a timetable for relinquishing power. By the end of the decade, he expects to see “things happening” in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

‘People Ahead of Leaders’

“In a broad way,” Ibrahim said, “the people are ahead of their leaders. They are tired of political acrobatics. They are no longer willing to trade off one Arab objective for another. They have been told for years that their political participation, human rights, freedom had to be put aside for other Arab goals--the liberation of Palestine, the destruction of Zionism, Arab unity, rapid development.

“What they have discovered is that none of these goals have been achieved. They have had to sacrifice what little democracy they had and have ended up living, as in Egypt, on the margins of freedom or, as in some other countries, with no freedom. I don’t think they’re going to buy any more trade-offs.”

If Ibrahim is right, the Arabs may yet be able to capture that which has eluded them. For despite the political disarray, the economic downturn and the frightening pressures of change, their assets are great: The Arabian Peninsula has oil reserves for another 200 to 250 years. The sophistication and intellect of the educated Arab have never been in question. The Arab’s faith--in his religion and his own destiny--represents an inner strength that translates into resilience, dignity and a sort of fatalistic optimism.

Arab Retains His Values

Perhaps most important, in moving from illiteracy to television in a single step, the Arab has not surrendered that which is dearest to him. His family remains cohesive, the elderly respected; his cities are the safest on earth; his culture has survived the Western challenge basically intact; his belief that tomorrow will be better than today is as unshaken as ever.

“We are passing into rough seas now, but I am not worried--the future will work,” said Bahrain’s Shirawi, expressing a confidence one hears often in conversations with Arabs. “We are better equipped, with human resources and infrastructure, to handle the next oil boom.”

“My only lingering fear is, can we accommodate the social, psychological and intellectual impact of the tremendous force brought first by Western ideas, then by Western technology? My feeling is we will adjust. But exactly how I don’t know.”

THE ARAB WORLD

Last Per Colonial Population Capita Literacy Country Power Independence millions Income rate Algeria France 1962 21.3 $1,950 46% Bahrain Britain 1971 0.36 9,000 40 Egypt Britain 1922 46.0 560 40 Iraq Britain 1948 14.5 2,410 70 Jordan Britain 1946 3.0 1,100 58 Kuwait Britain 1961 1.6 24,000 71 Lebanon France 1943 3.0 1,000 76 Libya Italy 1951 3.5 6,350 40 Morocco France 1956 22.8 800 24 Oman Britain 1951 0.98 2,250 50 Qatar Britain 1971 0.25 42,000 40 Saudi Arabia ---- ---- ---- ---- 10.4 11,500 15 Sudan Britain-Egypt 1956 20.5 370 20 Syria France 1946 9.0 700 65 Tunisia France 1956 7.0 1,200 65 United Arab Britain 1971 1.0 24,000 53 Emirates Yemen Turkey 1918 6.0 475 12 South Yemen Britain 1967 2.0 310 25

Primary Source: the World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1985. * Includes non-Arabs