War Fans Young Arabs’ Anger

In the waning days of war in Iraq, extensive interviews in this largely secular country suggest that the virulently anti-American attitudes known to flourish in some Islamic schools have become conventional wisdom among a broad cross section of youths, whether religious or secular, Muslim or Christian.

If Syria is any indication, young Arabs -- who make up a large portion of the Middle East’s burgeoning population -- have become further radicalized and embittered toward the United States as they have watched the round-the-clock war coverage on Arab TV channels.

Those attitudes prompted hundreds of them early in the conflict to board buses bound for the fight against U.S. forces in Iraq, and encouraged the view that suicide bombings against American soldiers were a legitimate response to the troops’ presence on Arab soil.

These trends have serious implications for the stated U.S. goal of moving the region toward greater democracy and more moderate views of the West.

Ayman Sharif, who attends an Islamic law school in Damascus, this nation’s capital, has a gentle manner and speaks in a soft voice. But he has a steely message about the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

“Before the war I would have said that if Osama [bin Laden] was responsible for the two towers, we would not be proud of it. But if he did it now, we would be proud of him,” said the bearded 21-year-old, whose ambition is to be a moujahed, a holy warrior.

Here in the agrarian town of As Suwayda, where the highways follow the ancient Roman roads, Dima Mulhem, 22, is just as uncompromising, though she and her family are Druse, a religion that combines elements of Islam and Christianity, and live a secular life.

“Do you think that the Americans love the Arab people enough to come and solve their problems?” she asked, her eyes flashing, her voice cold although she politely offered an American visitor a hat to ward off the sun. “What they are doing is worse than what Saddam [Hussein] has done.”

Images Etched in Minds

As the television images of bloodied civilians and demolished buildings become less frequent, some of the most vitriolic feelings may fade. But for many young Arabs, say scholars, the conflict will linger as a major experience of their lives, indelibly limned into their consciousness.

“Images like those will be stuck in their minds,” said Walid Sarhan, a psychiatrist in Jordan, who has done research throughout the region.

“It’s a big project for the American government to work on in the next 10 years to change those images.”

It is the support of the younger generation that the U.S. needs most if it is to see the moves toward democracy in this region that American officials profess to want.

“The younger you are, the more likely you are to describe yourself as religious, to be critical of the West and to be more supportive of religious political movements,” said Husain Haqqani, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, referring to polling and survey data on Arab opinion.

Even if young people in the Middle East did not seem more intensely angered by the Iraq war than their parents, their reactions would have a heightened effect on the future U.S. role in the region because of their sheer numbers.

More than half the population is younger than 25, a far higher proportion than in Western Europe and the United States. The percentage of youths is even higher in such key nations as Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

“What we’re seeing now is a self-perpetuating vicious cycle,” said Jonathan Schanzer, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “What these young people are watching on Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV is reinforcing a message about the United States that has already taken root and that they have been socialized to accept as truth: that America supports and is run by Zionists; that it’s anti-Arab, anti-Muslim.”

“The big problem that I see here,” he added, “is that the rapprochement between the United States and the Arab world is going to be much more difficult because of the messages being hammered home.”

The war’s effect on young people has been amplified in part by the weak economies in most Arab countries. Unemployment is high, even among the well-educated, and there is deep resentment over the inability of many Arab regimes to improve their people’s lot.

The highly politicized environment on the Arab street also comes into play. More than sports or culture, politics is a constant subject. In the slums of Damascus, young men walk with transistor radios to their ears, listening to news; people gather at storefronts to watch televisions day and night and are as acquainted as many Americans with the names of Pentagon officials constantly on the air.

Here the most violent images of the war -- rarely balanced by pictures of American or British soldiers helping Iraqis -- have made an impression.

A typical Syrian TV segment during the intense fighting showed viewers clip after clip of U.S. warplanes taking off from aircraft carriers. Then, flames from the jets’ engines dissolved into pictures of children lying on soiled hospital sheets, their flesh cut, some with legs amputated and bandages soaked with blood. Other clips showed women weeping for their children and begging for water, or the remains of bomb victims in a dirty, makeshift morgue. The images played over and over.

Gripped by such pictures are teenagers such as Talal Mulhem, Dima’s 14-year-old brother, who stayed up past midnight during the conflict chasing the latest news on Arab Web sites. It was the only way, he said, that he could cope with the images of war that kept him awake at night.

He has no illusions about Hussein, calling him a “fascist.” However, the presence of large numbers of U.S. troops throughout an Arab country is something of a different, more egregious order.

“America’s aggression in Iraq is against the whole Middle East. America and Britain are the new colonizing forces; they look for weak countries,” he said. “I am afraid this kind of war could happen here.”

Many young Syrians say their greatest frustration is the failure of Arab governments to unite against the two Western powers.

Even their own government is not militant enough, they say. This, despite the fact that Syria was one of Hussein’s strongest supporters in the Arab world. President Bashar Assad was on record saying he hoped the U.S. would lose the war. His government turned a blind eye to the earlier departures of volunteer fighters for Baghdad. And U.S. officials this week threatened diplomatic and economic sanctions against his nation, which they accused of developing chemical weapons and warned against harboring former Iraqi leaders.

That young people here are quick to criticize their government publicly is a measure of their anger. Syria is a police state that brooks no dissent. Opposition groups are outlawed, and most older Syrians refrain from making even the most mildly negative statements and try to shush children who speak out.

“The Arab governments have done nothing,” Khaled Rifai, 17, said disdainfully as he warmed up for soccer practice at As Suwayda’s sports center. “Maybe Syria has done a bit, but they have all sold themselves to Babel to remain in power. They should have provided military or material help to Iraq. Arab arms should be going to Iraq.”

Those intense feelings among young people echo an earlier time in the Middle East.

“In 1967, Muslims went into a period of depression after the Arab-Israeli war, and then came the [1985 hijacking of the cruise ship] Achille Lauro and the PLO,” said Haqqani, the Carnegie Endowment scholar. “The war gave rise to the mistaken belief that somehow, by striking randomly through terrorism, they would be able to redeem their loss on the battlefield.

“I can see that happening here: There’s going to be kids who grow up with this anger and they may not be able to do anything at first, but they will find a chink in the armor,” he said. “The U.S. has to think beyond ‘shock and awe’ and come up with a strategy to engage and embrace the Islamic world.”

Love-Hate Relationship

In recent years, Arab youth have had something of a love-hate relationship with the U.S. They tune into American music, television and movies. Sports clothes with Nike logos are coveted possessions. The ultimate prize is to study or work in the U.S. -- at least for a while.

This was touted as America’s “soft power,” its ability to persuade people of the benefits of U.S. policies by introducing them to the material benefits to be reaped by Western-style democracy. For now, that appeal appears to be on the wane.

At 18, Rawad Ayya, who comes from a Christian family in Damascus, always wanted to go to New York to study break dancing. It was a fantasy, but one that helped him imagine a more glamorous life.

Now, although he still wears sneakers with the Nike swoosh logo, his view of the U.S. is changing. As he sat last week on the steps of a school in the Syrian capital’s Old City talking with friends about the war, he said he wanted to be a moujahed but his parents wouldn’t let him.

“Before the war I used to dream of traveling to the United States,” he smiled wistfully, and then shook his head. “Now that dream doesn’t work anymore.”