|
RSIS
presents the following commentary The Middle East and North Africa: Cauldron of
Conflict
by James M. Dorsey. It is also available online at this link.
(To print it, click on
this link.).
Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg.
Republication is allowed subject to prior permission from
the
Editor.
No. 009/2014 dated 15 January 2014
The Middle East and North Africa:
Cauldron of Conflict
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
The
Middle East and North Africa is a cauldron of conflicts driven by sectarian and
ethnic
animosities.
Winning the existential battle requires acknowledgement that the region’s
states
are multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-tribal entities. It demands a shift
in
mindset
to overcome deep-seated fears and seek solutions to which all are parties.
Commentary
TO THE
outside world, the Middle East and North Africa is a cauldron of intractable
conflicts
within intractable conflicts, much like sets of Russian matryoshka dolls of
decreasing
size placed one inside the other. The list of animosities is endless:
Palestinians
and Jews
hate each other; Arabs detest Persians; Turks distrust Kurds as agents of
colonialism;
Sunnis despise Shiites; Israelis see black African refugees as a mortal threat;
Gulf
citizens envision hordes of Asian and Arab workers claiming title to their
family-run
states; and
Muslims eye non-Muslims as impure encroachments.
Yet as
disparate as the concerns of Arabs, Iranians, Israelis, Turks, Sunnis, Shiites,
Christians
and Kurds seem, they all are rooted in often existential fears that are
frequently
exploited for elites’ political expediency.
Exploiting fears
In a region
in which perceptions of history dictate modern-day attitudes, those fears
call into
question the sustainability of anchoring a country’s national identity on the
common
ethnic, religious or tribal roots of one group that has the power to impose
itself.
The
sustainability of the model is further threatened by globalisation, enhanced
mass
transportation
and ever greater mobility. As a result, national boundaries seem
increasingly
fragile as groups like the Kurds in Syria and Iraq carve out entities of their
own and
religious groups in Iraq find themselves caught between a sectarian government
they do not
trust and a jihadist force they fundamentally dislike.
To some in
the Middle East and North Africa, the fears are truly-felt existential
concerns.
For others
they are the product of historic trauma. Yet others, cynically and
opportunistically
exploit them to whip up national emotion in a bid to retain or enhance
power.
Often, these various drivers overlap to deepen the region’s vicious circle from
which there
seems no way out.
Pressures
from trade unions and human rights groups on energy-rich Gulf states like Qatar
and the
United Arab Emirates to adhere to international labour standards are putting on
the agenda
what for many of the smaller states is the elephant in the room: the
survivability
of countries
whose vast majority of the population have no rights and no prospect of
acquiring
rights over generations and whose presence is solely to enhance the wellbeing
of
a small
minority of nationals.
It is a
model that seems increasingly unviable. Yet, acknowledging this reality can be
traumatic.
For Qataris and Emiratis it raises the spectre of an uncertain world with none
of
the familiar
crutches. Loss of control of their state and society shaped by their national,
cultural,
religious and tribal identities would set them adrift without an anchor.
They would
be defenceless against the shenanigans of their bigger brothers Saudi Arabia,
Iran and
Iraq. Keeping those fears alive has helped ruling families run their states as
family-owned
enterprises.
The threat of
pluralism
Fears in the
Gulf are not dissimilar to those of Israelis who want to see the majority in
their
state to
dictate its identity and culture. Maintaining that majority against whatever
legitimate
non-Jewish
demands – Palestinian national rights alongside Israel and equal rights within
the boundaries of the Jewish state, or the right to asylum of refugees from the
horrors of the
Horn of
Africa - is written into Israel’s DNA even if Jews no longer face the
existential,
genocidal
threats of the past. Yet, like in the Gulf demographics could be Israel’s
undoing.
Pluralism
and inclusiveness is a double-edged sword.
Israel
shares perceptions of the downside of pluralism and inclusiveness with states
across
the region.
Those principles pose an existential threat to the staunchly Sunni Al Sauds who
established and maintain control of their kingdom on the basis of a sectarian,
inward-looking exclusive interpretation of Islam. They also threaten the grip
on power of the minority Sunni
Al Khalifas
in majority Shiite Bahrain.
Deep-seated
Saudi animosity towards Iran and the kingdom’s fuelling of the Sunni-Shiite
divide that
is ripping the Middle East apart is rooted in the challenge posed by Islamist
governments
like that of Iran or that of deposed Muslim Brother Mohammed Morsi in
Egypt that
have or had some degree of democratic legitimacy.
A true
embrace of pluralism and inclusiveness would by the same token undercut efforts
by
the Egyptian
military to preserve its perks and privileges as well as embattled Turkish
Prime
Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s struggle to hang on to power.
It is a
model that seems increasingly unviable. Yet, acknowledging this reality can be
traumatic.
For Qataris and Emiratis it raises the spectre of an uncertain world with none
of
the familiar
crutches. Loss of control of their state and society shaped by their national,
cultural,
religious and tribal identities would set them adrift without an anchor.
They would
be defenceless against the shenanigans of their bigger brothers Saudi Arabia,
Iran and
Iraq. Keeping those fears alive has helped ruling families run their states as
family-owned
enterprises.
Breaking the vicious
circle
As the
Middle East and North Africa enters its fourth year of what is likely to be a
long
drawn out,
tortuous process of change, it is becoming increasingly clear that the hopes in
2011 of a
new dawn sparked by the toppling of autocratic leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya
and Yemen
were little more than pie in the sky. Nevertheless, the genie of inevitable
change has
been let out of the bottle.
What we are
witnessing is the Middle East and North Africa’s most existential battle to
date,
shrouded by vicious sectarianism across the region, a temporary revival of
autocracy
and
repression in Egypt, motion without movement in Israeli-Palestinian peace
efforts,
enseless
slaughter in Syria and horrendous killings in Iraq. It is the battle of
inclusiveness
versus
exclusiveness and for the acknowledgement that the region’s states are multi
ethnic,
multi-religious
and multi-tribal entities.
Winning that
battle is no mean feat. It means a dramatic shift in mindset that overcomes
deep-seated
fears - the most irrational of emotions - and seeking solutions to which all,
not just a
few, are parties. Surveying today’s Middle Eastern and North African landscape
offers few
straws of hope. But without that dramatic shift that is likely to emerge only
when the
alternative becomes too costly, the Middle East and North Africa is doomed to
remain a
cauldron of ever-more bloody conflict.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International
Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological
University in Singapore, co-director of the
Institute of Fan Culture of the
University of Würzburg and the author of the blog,
Click here for
past commentaries.
Find us on Facebook.
Due to the high number of publications by our RSIS Centre for Non-Traditional
Security
Studies (NTS), RSIS maintains a separate
subscription facility for the Centre. Please click
here to
subscribe to the Centre's publications.
|
Comments
Post a Comment