Arabs Watching Iraq Fall Feel the Gloom Spreading

The image that tipped the balance for Arabs came Sunday when their television screens showed American tanks rolling through Baghdad, the ancient, noble city that has been a source of pride.

In the small butcher shop that Asad Burgan, 37, runs in an affluent Amman neighborhood, the television tuned to the Arab-language news outlet Al Jazeera flickers all day, and Burgan keeps looking over his shoulder nervously to see the screen.

“It’s been terrible the last 24 hours. When I saw the American troops in the center of Baghdad, I felt I was going to explode with everything, anger and sadness,” the butcher said.

“Today, I’ve been so edgy. I told my assistants, ‘You deal with the customers, I can’t talk to anyone.’ ”

As the war turns decisively against Iraq, depression seems to be settling over the Arab world. Ask Jordanians how they feel, and they will reel off a litany of symptoms: sleeplessness, headaches, stomach trouble, edginess, anxiety. Even the anger during the war’s opening days, when people poured into the streets hoisting signs and shouting anti-American slogans, has yielded to grief.

Professors and politicians, shopkeepers and marketing salesmen all express the same sense of impotence, frustration and hopelessness. The black mood here is exacerbated by the 24-hour war coverage, which people watch with fascination and dread.

“Among Arabs and Jordanians, there is the feeling that Americans are not interested in their views, in their feelings, and that creates frustration, a sense of impotence and a sense that even if you give voice to your story, it will not be heard,” said Walid Sarhan, a psychiatrist at the Al Rashid Hospital.

“I would expect that we’ll see this depressed feeling grow over the next few days,” he said.

Sarhan said that since the war began, he and his colleagues have seen a marked increase in symptoms related to anxiety and stress, including severe insomnia, irritability and complaints of “a bad mood.” They have also seen more relapses among manic-depressive and psychotic patients, he said.

For many, the last 48 hours have been a flashback to a pivotal event in their lives: the Six-Day War of 1967, when Jordan lost a large swath of land to Israel and its borders were redrawn.

Until they saw Israeli tanks drive through what is now the West Bank, many Arabs believed Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser would demolish the Israeli military, and they were shocked by Israel’s decisive win.

For Mustafa Harmarneh, the last 24 hours have brought a feeling of deja vu. “I remember in 1967 I was in boarding school in the West Bank, and there were planes flying overhead, and we boys thought Nasser was shooting them down like flies. We would count and shout ’30 planes down! 50 planes!’ Then we saw the tanks driving into Hebron, Jerusalem, and we realized they were Israeli.”

The danger of thinking that your side can win when it can’t is “the psychological collapse afterward,” he said.

Former Prime Minister Taher Masri, a Palestinian who has lived in the United States, Britain and elsewhere in Europe, had similar memories, and this war is making him even more bitter.

He recalled the rude awakening of his youth when he saw Israel vanquish the Arabs. “I worshiped Nasser, but suddenly, when he went into war in 1967, we lost in six days. Jerusalem was lost to me and I cried, I really cried. It was a great shock. Israel was humiliating us. It meant that we are worthless, our rulers are worthless.”

Now he has similar emotions. “Although I don’t work hard anymore, I sleep like a dead man. Psychologically I am ruined.”

He leaned back in his Western-decorated living room, replete with silver potpourri holders, European antiques and elegant brocade upholstery. “I am living well, but what about the ordinary man who does not have so much? He feels much more strongly than I do, so he is not only angry, he is radical and maybe a terrorist too.”

The dejection is deep because in the initial days of the war much was made of Iraqi attacks on American and British troops. They ambushed soldiers, took prisoners and allegedly shot down an American Apache helicopter. Those early Iraqi successes were quickly reversed, but in the Arab media and official Iraqi statements, the story was of continuing Iraqi victories.

So seeing American troops taking up permanent positions in central Baghdad came as a rude shock to many.

At heart, many Arabs feel the war threatens their very identity. Many Muslims remember when President Bush described the war against terrorism as “a crusade” and even though he quickly backtracked, in almost every conversation Muslim Arabs mention Bush’s statement and seem to fear that a pillar of their identity is in danger.

“Iraqis probably have the strongest sense of identity in the Arab world,” said Sarhan, the psychiatrist. “And now you [Americans] are shaking that.”

In other Arab countries, such as Jordan, whose borders were drawn even more arbitrarily than Iraq’s by colonial powers, the sense of identity is even less clear. “There was no place called Jordan until the British created it,” said Sarhan. “So we have a hazy identity and, if a country with a good, solid identity is being smashed, where are we? We have no ground to stand on.”

As he watched television images of American tanks rolling by the Tigris River, Burgan, the butcher, wringed his hands. “I want to raise my children abroad so that they forget that they are Arab and it becomes just a vague memory,” he said. “I want them just to say, ‘Oh, we were Arabs once.’ ”