Euro-Arabs

I was chatting with my Syrian friend the other day. I figured he’d be an interesting person to discuss with the coming Arab League summit.

He’s a well-read and well-traveled man. He’s the kind of person that can easily incorporate Sartre, Proust, or Hemingway in a conversation. He can identify a Bach symphony on the spot, and he speaks 5 languages fluently.
We talked about the Lebanese Syrian issue, and the first thing he tells me is this: “This is a big game, designed by he US to balkanize the middle east, to secure a regional dominance for Israel”. He added in a self-righteous tone that we, the Lebanese, have naively fallen for such designs.

I asked for it, I told myself, but guess what the First thought I had in mind was? Old Europe.

My friend belongs to the category of Arabs that like to talk more about strategies and grand conspiracies than elections. I like to call them the Euro-Arabs (my apologies to sensible Europeans). To them, shadowy people with dubious agendas rule the world, and try through their influence and power to subjugate defenseless peoples. All this is done under the cover of spreading democracy and liberation, while in reality they are engaging in an economic imperialism to create new markets for their greedy multinationals. (this is just too Naomi Klein for me)

You see them on Aljazeera all the time; they take the shape of regime apologists and US bashers.
Mix some pan-Arabism with anti-Americanism, add some socialism and ivory tower intellectualism, and presto: Euro-Arabism!
To name a few, Najah wakim, founder of the people movement in Lebanon, Mustapha Bakri, managing director and chief editor of the journal Al-Osboa in Egypt and Abdel Bari Atwan who is the editor-in-chief of London-based al kuds al arabi newspaper.

They are all very well educated and cultured, they seem sensible at the first encounter, and they definitely appeal to flag-burning masses. But their arguments just don’t add up, and I can’t help but notice that they are excessively alarmist and loud when it comes to American “designs” in the region. And what gets on my nerve most: they just don’t accept the other point of view.

Back to my friend, who now saw that I was visibly irritated. He told me that he also thinks that the Syrian regime is corrupt and needs change, but the “regional challenges” at this point are too great for such meddling, and if he had to chose between American hegemony and corrupt Arab rulers, he’ll chose the latter.

I think the Euro-Arabs have got it backwards: how can you have a “regional strategy” if you can’t even chose your ruler? Who decides what those strategies should be? Who decides what actions lead to a desired strategic outcome?

Granted, the US is not innocent, it has overt and covert interests, and it is also catering for special-interest groups, but at the end, the government is accountable to the American people.

The Euro-Arab logic would have been funny if it weren’t all too common. Why are their ideas so attractive to even the most enlightened of Arabs? I think it’s because of 3 major factors: Convenience, Rulers’ interests and most importantly, a legitimate lack of Trust in the US.

I’ll be talking about these in a future post.