Iraq’s Fall Amplifies Arabs’ Frustration

On the calendar of the Middle East’s defining moments, Arabs have entered a new date: April 8, 2003, the day the United States entered fabled Baghdad and Saddam Hussein’s vow to make a heroic stand against invading infidels turned out to be bluster.

The images that flashed across millions of television sets from Saudi Arabia to Morocco were like salt poured into a wound. They inflamed the pain of humiliation and impotence that haunts the Arab world from past failure, in war and peace, and make many ask: “Why can’t we stop the West from imposing its will? Why don’t we have collective power?”

There was little love for Hussein, but Arabs across the region took pride in the notion that he would defend Baghdad -- a city that represents the golden age of Islamic civilization -- in the tradition of Saladin, Nebuchadnezzar and other great warriors. Then, practically before the fight had really begun, the previously defiant Hussein and his respected information minister, who had proclaimed victory even as U.S. tanks patrolled the streets, were gone, along with the army. The sense of deflation and disillusionment in the Arab world was palpable.

“The Iraqis are sick,” said Fatima Mehio, a Lebanese who used to live in Iraq, as the jubilation in Baghdad streets turned to looting. “When they get their health back, maybe they will fight. But right now, they are completely lost, like all Arabs.”

With Baghdad’s fall and the Palestinian intifada continuing, Arabs throughout the region say they feel besieged and uncertain. They ask, What’s next? but have no idea how to respond. Some believe the domino theory that predicts Syria and Iran are next on the U.S. target list. Many want democratic reform, though few believe their leaders will provide it willingly. Many, feeling betrayed by the trappings of modernity and globalization, seek refuge in the mosque.

“America is not going to be content with Iraq,” said Mohammed Sebai, a 32-year-old engineer who has forsaken Cairo’s party circuit and grown a beard and now rises at dawn each day for the first of five daily prayers. “One day they’ll come to Egypt. We have to prepare ourselves for their coming. How do you prepare? You get closer to God.”

If there is anything on which Arabs agree, it is that the war in Iraq has deepened divisions in the Arab world, fed the fires of Islamization and served as a reminder that nothing worked out quite as Arabs thought it would when they reveled in the heady days of the oil bonanza a generation ago.

Oil didn’t buy political power. Confrontation with Israel didn’t bring victory, and peace didn’t bring stability. A crotchety ayatollah in (non-Arab) Iran defied the dream that the future lay in a sectarian Islamic republic. The Palestinians did not find statehood, and the democratic movement that swept through Asia, Africa and Latin America bypassed the Arab world without a glance. The only constant was religion, and in retreating into that which does not threaten, Arabs became alienated from their own rulers and the world.

“The Arab system is in complete disarray,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at American University in Cairo. “Collectively, we are unable to take decisive or creative action. Our regimes have failed us so many times even when solutions were clear. Now we see Iraq -- civilian casualties and looting, the American presence, our inability to stop the war -- and it only adds to our sense of frustration.”

There is a growing belief here that Arab inaction, rooted in political weakness and lack of unity, opened the door for the U.S.-led war against Iraq. It was, after all, Syria, Jordan and Egypt that helped Hussein break United Nations sanctions and that nudged him back into the Arab mainstream, thus prolonging the regime’s life as well as the continued suffering of the Iraqi people. It was a suffering that Arab governments mourned mostly when responsibility could be laid at the U.S. doorstep with the outbreak of war.

“Yes, the Arabs should have gotten rid of Saddam themselves,” said Hussein Shobokshi, a Saudi businessman. “The Arabs should have mounted a total push for disarmament. They allowed the genie [Hussein] to come out of the bottle again” after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

With the Arab League balkanized into clusters of states and with the Arab world having no political or military power center, Arabs increasingly are drawn to the region’s ideological center, Islam. Fundamentalists find the atmosphere today a fertile ground for recruiting those who feel deluded by their weak leaders and believe the United States no longer represents worthy values or principles.

“People are angry,” said Taher Masri, former prime minister of Jordan. “You go to a rich house, a poor house, the house of an American-educated man, you find the same thing: an accumulation of anger. There is a big gap between Arab governments and the people. I think this is taking dangerous turns. There will be more extremism, more suspicion of the West.

“We, as Arabs, have failed to do many things. We have failed to separate the state from religion, and the rulers took advantage of that and kept their tight hold on the populace. Arab rulers have brainwashed their people, allowing no dissension, no opinions, no democracy. All efforts, they said, should go to facing the enemy, Israel.

“In five years America will not find people like me who are willing to compromise, who want Western standards, Western ideas, because we as a people are becoming insulated, introverted, closed.”

Many senior U.S. diplomats in the region admit privately they are as dismayed at Washington’s regional policies as are the Arabs. They say outrage over the Iraq war and inattention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have made hard-line Islamists more powerful and dangerous and turned the middle ground into a caldron of anti-Americanism. Hardly an Arab today would dare defend the U.S. invasion of Iraq because, as one editor put it, “no one wants to be seen defending American policy.”

“For me, the war has divided the world into two camps,” said Abu-Ila Maddi, a Cairo political activist. “There is the camp of justice and peace, and the camp of aggression that wants hegemony. The danger is that hatred building up toward the second camp could turn against anything that is American -- American business, American people, not just American policy.”

Political analysts, Arab and Western, agree that the Arab world has never held the United States in such low regard. For some, that is an unsettling portent because the region sits astride key navigation and trade routes, offers a lucrative consumer market of 340 million people, is the site of endless conflict that sometimes threatens U.S. interests and provides the U.S. with 24% of its imported oil.

“Oil was an important factor [in attacking Iraq], but it is not the reason for the invasion,” a high-ranking Saudi official said. “The reason, in my opinion, is security. The U.S. was hit hard Sept. 11. It was a shock to the U.S., and they had to have someone to revenge.”

Zaheir Zannan, Syria’s former information minister, said: “There is a strong feeling the U.S. and Britain, along with Israel, are involved in a religious war, a crusade. When Bush used that word, ‘crusade,’ after 9/11, it really stuck with people.

“I think Bush is exploiting the divisions in the Arab world to press his policies. His language excites the Islamists, and their influence is growing every day. I’m afraid the time will come when even secular states like Syria won’t be able to stand up to the fanatic Islamic feeling.”

Added an Arab ambassador in Washington: “Perhaps the Arab world expects too much of the United States in the peace process. But President Bush should realize there are legitimate grievances against American policy. At the same time, we have to realize we have a problem. We can’t ignore that 9/11 was caused by Arabs and Muslims, and Americans are scared.”

Though it is taken for granted that Arabs will blame America both for what it does and does not do, analysts say the U.S. has little chance of regaining lost ground until it resumes the role it played during the Carter and Clinton administrations, when Washington was perceived as an engaged and impartial peace broker between the Israelis and Palestinians. Arabs consider Bush too close to Israel to be a genuine partner in the peace process.

“Inherent in the administration’s rhetoric is the messianic mission to democratize the Arab world and reform the Palestinian Authority with the fall of Iraq,” said Nicholas Veliotes, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Jordan. “The only thing wrong with that is that until it addresses the Palestinians, the result will be violently anti-American. We were always criticized for our relationship with Israel, but it’s different today. Now we’re the enemy.”

Arab leaders welcomed Bush’s recent promise to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Though they hope to be proved wrong, they do not trust him and believe his intent is to install a government in Baghdad that will make peace on Israel’s terms and be part of a new Middle East power center comprising Iraq, Jordan and Israel.

“You have come to free a nation, but what about Palestine?” asked Khalid Myeena, editor of the Arab News in Saudi Arabia. “You think all these Arabs are simplistic fools. Well, they’re not. The Americans may have done a good thing [in deposing Hussein]. But I don’t think they’ve won anyone’s hearts.”

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Lamb reported from Egypt, Murphy from Saudi Arabia and Rubin from Jordan.