Darrell Yeaney has shared this with us, as an
"excellent summary of important information for preaching,
teaching and sharing with lay leaders."
Ten
Things to Know About the Middle East
Professor Stephen Zunes,
University of San Francisco
October 1, 2001
1. Who are the Arabs?
Arab peoples range from the Atlantic coast in northwest Africa to the
Arabian peninsula and north to Syria. They are united by a common
language and culture. Though the vast majority are Muslim, there are
also sizable Christian Arab minorities in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria
and Palestine. Originally the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, the
Arabs spread their language and culture to the north and west with the
expansion of Islam in the 7th century. There are also Arab minorities in
the Sahel and parts of east Africa, as well as in Iran and Israel. The
Arabs were responsible for great advances in mathematics, astronomy and
other scientific disciplines while Europe was still mired in the Dark
Ages.
While there is great diversity in skin pigmentation, spoken dialect and
certain customs, there is a common identity which unites Arab people
that has sometimes been reflected in pan-Arab nationalist movements.
Despite substantial political and other differences, many Arabs share a
sense that they are one nation, which has been artificially divided
through the machinations of Western imperialism and which came to
dominate the region with the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th
and early 20th century. There is also a growing Arab diaspora in Europe,
North America, Latin America, West Africa and Australia.
2. Who are
the Muslims?
The Islamic faith originated in the Arabian peninsula, based on
what are believed to be divine revelations by God to the prophet
Mohammed. Muslims worship the same God as do Jews and Christians, and
share many of the same prophets and ethical traditions, including
respect for innocent life. Approximately 90 percent of Muslims are of
the orthodox or Sunni tradition; most of the remainder are of the
Shi'ite tradition, which dominate Iran but also has substantial numbers
in Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen and Lebanon. Sunni Islam is nonhierarchical in
structure. There is not a tradition of separation between the faith and
state institutions as there is in the West, though there is an enormous
diversity in various Islamic legal traditions and the degree with which
the governments of predominately Muslim countries rely on religious
bases for their rule.
Political movements based on Islam have ranged from
left to right, from nonviolent to violent, from tolerant to
chauvinistic. Generally, the more moderate Islamic movements have
developed in countries where there is a degree of political pluralism in
which they could operate openly. There is a strong tradition of social
justice in Islam, which has often led to conflicts with regimes that are
seen to be unjust or unethical. The more radical movements have tended
to arise in countries that have suffered great social dislocation due to
war or inappropriate economic policies and/or are under autocratic rule.
Most of the world's Muslims are not Arabs. The world's
largest Muslim country, for example, is Indonesia. Other important
non-Arab Muslim countries include Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and the five former Soviet republics of
Central Asia, as well as Nigeria and several other black African states.
Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world and scores of
countries have substantial Muslim minorities. There are approximately
five million Muslims in the United States.
3. Why is
there so much violence and political instability in the Middle East?
For most of the past 500 years, the Middle East actually
saw less violence and warfare and more political stability than Europe
or most other regions of the world. It has only been in the last century
that the region has seen such widespread conflict. The roots of the
conflict are similar to those elsewhere in the Third World, and have to
do with the legacy of colonialism, such as artificial political
boundaries, autocratic regimes, militarization, economic inequality and
economies based on the export of raw materials for finished goods.
Indeed, the Middle East has more autocratic regimes, militarization,
economic inequality and the greatest ratio of exports to domestic
consumption than any region in the world.
At the crossroads of three continents and sitting on
much of the world's oil reserves, the region has been subjected to
repeated interventions and conquests by outside powers, resulting in a
high level of xenophobia and suspicion regarding the intentions of
Western powers going back as far as the Crusades. There is nothing in
Arab or Islamic culture that promotes violence or discord; indeed, there
is a strong cultural preference for stability, order and respect for
authority. However, adherence to authority is based on a kind of social
contract that assumes a level of justice which -- if broken by the ruler
-- gives the people a right to challenge it.
The word jihad, often translated as "holy
war," actually means "holy struggle," which can sometimes
mean an armed struggle (qital), but also can mean nonviolent action and
political work within the established system. Terrorism is not primarily
a Middle Eastern phenomenon. In terms of civilian lives lost, Africa has
experienced far more terrorism in recent decades than has the Middle
East. Similarly, far more suicide bombings in recent years have come
from Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka than from Muslim Arabs in the Middle
East. There is also a little-known but impressive tradition of
nonviolent resistance and participatory democracy in some Middle Eastern
countries.
4. Why has
the Middle East been the focus of U.S. concern about international
terrorism?
There has been a long history of terrorism -- generally
defined as violence by irregular forces against civilian targets -- in
the Middle East. During Israel's independence struggle in the 1940s,
Israeli terrorists killed hundreds of Palestinian and British civilians;
two of the most notorious terrorist leaders of that period -- Menachem
Begin and Yitzhak Shamir -- later became Israeli prime ministers whose
governments received strong financial, diplomatic and military support
from the United States.Algeria's independence struggle from France in
the 1950s included widespread terrorist attacks against French
colonists. Palestine's ongoing struggle for independence has also
included widespread terrorism against Israeli civilians, during the
1970s through some of the armed militias of the Palestine Liberation
Organization and, more recently, through radical underground Islamic
groups. Terrorism has also played a role in Algeria's current civil
strife, in Lebanon's civil war and foreign occupations during the 1980s,
and for many years in the Kurdish struggle for independence. Some Middle
Eastern governments -- notably Libya, Syria, Sudan, Iraq and Iran --
have in the past had close links with terrorist organizations. In more
recent years, the Al-Qaeda movement -- a decentralized network of
terrorist cells supported by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden -- has become
the major terrorist threat, and is widely believed to be responsible for
the
September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Bin Laden himself has been given sanctuary in Afghanistan, though his
personal fortune and widespread network of supporters has allowed him to
be independent on direct financial or logistical support from any
government.
The vast majority of the people in the Middle East
deplore terrorism, yet point out that violence against civilians by
governments has generally surpassed that of terrorists. For example, the
Israelis have killed far more Arab civilians over the decades through
using U.S.-supplied equipment and ordinance than have Arab terrorists
killed Israeli civilians. Similarly, the U.S.-supplied Turkish armed
forces have killed far more Kurdish civilians than have such radical
Kurdish groups like the PKK (the Kurdish acronym for the Kurdistan
Workers' Party). Also, in the eyes of many Middle Easterners, U.S.
support for terrorist groups like the Nicaraguan contras and various
right-wing Cuban exile organizations in recent decades, as well as U.S.
air strikes and the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq in more recent
years, have made the U.S. an unlikely crusader in the war against
terrorism
4. What
kind of political systems exist in the Middle East?
There are a variety of political systems in the Middle
East. Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar,
Morocco and Jordan are all conservative monarchies (in approximate order
of absolute rule). Iraq, Syria and Libya are left-leaning dictatorships,
with Iraq being one of the most totalitarian societies in the world.
Egypt and Tunisia are conservative autocratic republics. Iran is an
Islamic republic with an uneven trend in recent years towards greater
political openness. Sudan and Algeria are under military rulers facing
major insurrections.
Lebanon, Turkey and Yemen are republics with
repressive aspects but some degree of political pluralism. The only
Middle Eastern country with a strong tradition of parliamentary
democracy is Israel, though the benefits of this political freedom is
largely restricted to its Jewish citizens (the Palestinian Arab minority
is generally treated as second-class citizens and Palestinians in the
occupied territories are subjected to military rule and serious human
rights abuses). The largely autocratic Palestinian Authority has been
granted limited autonomy in a series of non-contiguous enclaves in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip surrounded by Israeli occupation forces.
5. What
sort of political alliances exist in the Middle East?
All Arab states, including the Palestinian Authority, belong to
the League of Arab States, which acts as a regional body similar to the
Organization of African Union or the Organization of American States,
which work together on issues of common concern. However, there are
enormous political divisions within Arab countries and other Middle
Eastern states. Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance, closely aligned
with the West and hopes to eventually become part of the European union.
The six conservative monarchies of the Persian Gulf region have formed
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), from where they pursue joint
strategic and economic interests and promote close ties with the West,
particularly Great Britain (which dominated the smaller sheikdoms in the
late 19th and early 20th century) and, more recently, the United States.
Often a country's alliances are not a reflection of
its internal politics. For example, Saudi Arabia is often referred in
the U.S. media as a "moderate" Arab state, though it is the
most oppressive fundamentalist theocracy in the world today outside of
Taliban-ruled Afghanistan; "moderate," in this case, simply
means that it has close strategic and economic relations with the United
States.
Jordan and Egypt are pro-Western, but have been
willing to challenge U.S. policy on occasion. Israel identifies most
strongly with the West: most of its leaders are European-born or have
been of European heritage, and it has diplomatic relations with only a
handful of Middle Eastern countries. Iran alienated most of its
neighbors with its threat to expand its brand of revolutionary Islam to
Arab world, though its increasingly moderate orientation in recent years
has led to some cautious rapprochement. Syria, a former Soviet ally, has
been cautiously reaching out to more conservative Arab governments and
with the West; it currently exerts enormous political influence over
Lebanon. Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Libya under Muammar Qaddafi and
Sudan under their military junta remain isolated from most of other
Middle Eastern countries due to a series of provocative policies, though
many of these same countries oppose the punitive sanctions and air
strikes the United States has inflicted against these countries in
recent years.
6. What is
the impact of oil in the Middle East?
The major oil producers of the Middle East include Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Libya
and Algeria. Egypt, Syria, Oman and Yemen have smaller reserves. Most of
the major oil producers of the Middle East are part of the Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. (Non-Middle Eastern OPEC
members include Indonesia, Venezuela, Nigeria and other countries.) Much
of the world's oil wealth exists along the Persian Gulf, with
particularly large reserves in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. About
one-quarter of U.S. oil imports come from the Persian Gulf region; the
Gulf supplies European states and Japan with an even higher percentage
of those countries' energy needs. The imposition of higher fuel
efficiency standards and other conservation measures, along with the
increased use of renewable energy resources for which technologies are
already available, could eliminate U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil
in a relatively short period of time.
The Arab members of OPEC instigated a boycott against
the United States in the fall of 1973 in protest of U.S. support for
Israel during the October Arab-Israeli war, creating the first in a
series of energy shortages. The cartel has had periods of high and low
costs for oil, resulting in great economic instability. Most governments
have historically used their oil wealth to promote social welfare,
particularly countries like Algeria, Libya and Iraq, which professed to
a more socialist orientation. Yet all
Countries have squandered their wealth for arms
purchases and prestige projects. In general, the influx of petrodollars
has created enormous economic inequality both within oil-producing
states and between oil-rich and oil-poor states as well as widespread
corruption and questionable economic priorities.
7. What is
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about?
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially over
land, with two peoples claiming historic rights to the geographic
Palestine, a small country in the eastern Mediterranean about the size
of New Jersey. The creation of modern Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment
of the goal of the Jewish nationalist movement, known as Zionism, as
large numbers of Jews migrated to their faith's ancestral homeland from
Europe, North Africa and elsewhere throughout the 20th century. They
came into conflict with the indigenous Palestinian Arab population,
which also was struggling for independence. The 1947 partition plan,
which divided the country approximately in half, resorted in a war which
ended in Israel seizing control of 78 percent of the territory within a
year. Most of the Palestinian population became refugees, in some cases
through fleeing the fighting and in other cases through being forcibly
expelled in a policy of ethnic cleansing. The remaining Palestinian
areas -- the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- came under control of the
neighboring Arab states of Jordan and Egypt, though these areas were
also seized by Israel in the 1967 war.
Israel has been colonizing parts of these occupied
territories with Jewish settlers in violation of the Geneva Conventions
and UN Security Council resolutions. Historically, both sides have
failed to recognize the legitimacy of the others' nationalist
aspirations, though the Palestinian leadership finally formally
recognized Israel in 1993. The peace process since then has been over
the fate of the West Bank (including Arab East Jerusalem) and the Gaza
Strip, which is the remaining 22 percent of the Palestine, occupied by
Israel since 1967. The United States plays the dual role of chief
mediator of the conflict as well as the chief financial, military and
diplomatic supporter of Israel. The Palestinians want their own
independent state in these territories and to allow Palestinian refugees
the right to return. Israel, backed by the United States, insists the
Palestinians give up large swaths of the West Bank -- including most of
Arab East Jerusalem -- to Israel and to accept the resettlement of most
refugees into other Arab countries. Since September 2000, there has been
widespread rioting by Palestinians against the ongoing Israeli
occupation as well as terrorist bombings within Israel by extremist
Islamic groups. Israeli occupation forces, meanwhile, have engaged in
widespread killings and other human rights abuses in the occupied
territories.
Most Arabs feel a strong sense of solidarity with the
Palestinian struggle, though their governments have tended to manipulate
their plight for their own political gain. Neighboring Arab states have
fought several wars with Israel, though Egypt and Jordan now have peace
agreements and full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. In
addition to much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel still occupies
a part of southwestern Syria known as the Golan Heights. The threats and
hostility by Arab states towards Israel's very existence has waned over
the years. Full peace and diplomatic recognition would likely come
following a full Israeli withdrawal from its occupied territories.
8. What has
been the legacy of the Gulf War?
Virtually every Middle Eastern state opposed the Iraqi
invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990, though they were badly
divided on the appropriateness of the U.S.-led Gulf War that followed.
Even among countries that supported the armed liberation of Kuwait,
there was widespread opposition to the deliberate destruction by the
United States of much of Iraq's civilian infrastructure during the war.
Even more controversial has been the enormous humanitarian consequences
of the U.S.-led international sanctions against Iraq in place since the
war, which have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis, mostly children, from malnutrition and preventable diseases. The
periodic U.S. air strikes. Against Iraq also have been controversial, as
has the ongoing U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, other Gulf
states and in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. Since Iraq's offensive
military capability was largely destroyed during the Gulf War and during
the subsequent inspections regime, many observers believe that U.S.
fears about Iraq's current military potential are exaggerated,
particularly in light of the quiet U.S. support for Iraq during the
1980s when its military was at its peak. In many respects, the Gulf War
led the oil-rich GCC states into closer identification with the United
States and the West and less with their fellow Arabs, though there is
still some distrust about U.S. motivations and policies in the Middle
East.
9. How has
the political situation in Afghanistan evolved and how is it connected
to the Middle East?
Afghanistan, an impoverished landlocked mountainous country,
has traditionally been identified more with Central and South Asia than
with the Middle East. A 1978 coup by communist military officers
resulted in a series of radical social reforms, which were imposed in an
autocratic matter and which resulted in a popular rebellion by a number
of armed Islamic movements. The Soviet Union installed a more compliant
communist regime at the end of 1979, sending in tens of thousands of
troops and instigating a major bombing campaign, resulting in
large-scale civilian casualties and refugee flows. The war lasted for
much of the next decade. The United States sent arms to the Islamic
resistance, known as the mujahadin, largely through neighboring
Pakistan, then under the rule of an ultra-conservative Islamic military
dictatorship. Most of the U.S. aid went to the most radical of the eight
different mujahadin factions on the belief that they would be least
likely to reach a negotiated settlement with the Soviet-backed
government and would therefore drag the Soviet forces down. Volunteers
from throughout the Islamic world, including the young Saudi businessman
Osama bin Laden, joined the struggle. The CIA trained many of these
recruits, including Bin Laden and many of his followers.
When the Soviets and Afghanistan's communist
government were defeated in 1992, a vicious and bloody civil war broke
out between the various mujahadin factions, war lords and ethnic
militias. Out of this chaos emerged the Taliban movement, led by young
seminary students from the refugee camps in Pakistan, educated in
ultra-conservative Saudi-funded schools, which took over 85 percent of
the country by 1996 and imposed long-awaited order and stability, but
established a brutal totalitarian theocracy based on a virulently
reactionary and misogynist interpretation of Islam. The Northern
Alliance, consisting of the remnants of various factions from the civil
war in the 1990s, control a small part of the northeast corner of the
country.
10. How
have most Middle Eastern governments reacted to the September 11
terrorist attacks and their aftermath?
Virtually every government and the vast majority of their
populations reacted with the same horror and revulsion as did people in
the United States, Europe and elsewhere. Despite scenes shown repeatedly
on U.S. television of some Palestinians celebrating the attacks, the
vast majority of Palestinians also shared in the world's condemnation.
If the United States, in conjunction with local governments, limits its
military response to commando-style operations against suspected
terrorist cells, the U.S. should receive the cooperation and support of
most Middle Eastern countries. If the response is more widespread, based
more on retaliation than self-defense, and ends up killing large numbers
of Muslim civilians, it could create a major anti-American reaction
which would increase support for the terrorists and lessen the
likelihood for the needed cooperation to break up the Al-Qaeda network,
which operates in several Middle Eastern countries.
While few Middle Easterners support bin Laden's
methods, the principal concerns expressed in his manifestoes -- the
U.S.'s wrongful support for Israel and for Arab dictatorships, the
disruptive presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and the humanitarian
impact of the sanctions on Iraq -- are widely supported. Ultimately, a
greater understanding of the Middle East and the concerns of its
governments and peoples are necessary before the United States can feel
secure from an angry backlash from the region.
Stephen
Zunes is an
associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace & Justice
Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as a
senior policy analyst and Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in
Focus Project.
"...
Thus says the Lord God of Israel: You shed blood, yet you would keep
possession on the land? You rely on your sword, you do abominable
things...yet you would keep possession of the land?...
Ezekiel 33:25-28
Thanks
to Darrell and Sue Yeaney for sending this.
