15
June 2006
Frail
Arab nationalism, between a ball and chain
In recent weeks, as the World Cup neared, numerous
commentators saw an opportunity to hold up football
as further proof that exclusionary nationalism remained alive and well, despite
the suffocating rhetoric of concord that accompanies international sporting events. As author Tim Parks
wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "the fantastic comedy
of the World Cup lies in the tension between the pious internationalist
rhetoric and the nail-biting, hysterical, nationalist reality."
After the French and Dutch rejections of the European constitution last year,
to name more obvious
instances of nationalistic reaffirmation,
such a conclusion is trite. But for Arab states specifically another question comes to mind, even as several of them make their
way through the World Cup tournament:
Does their nationalism retain any meaning?
The simple answer is that
it does, but in the most fragile of ways. Whether it
is Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, or Jordan, to name only them,
the state often appears to be balanced
on a precipice of
illegitimacy,
ready to shatter into smaller units
if the wrong blend of intimidation and
patronage is deployed. Perhaps its time to ask whether a crumbling
of the Arab state system - long
regarded in the region as the most
perfidious of foreign
intentions - would not in fact
lead to more stable political
orders.
If one problem
had to qualify above all others as the bane of the
Arab world, it was the formation of the Arab nationalist
state, starting roughly in the mid-1950s. The regional system that emerged at the
time was the fruit of two complementary ideological conceits: that it was
somehow the destiny of the Arabs, like others,
to seek fulfillment by consolidating themselves into larger political
units; and that the paramount
instrument for this, the natural redistributor of public wealth and therefore
social justice, was the
state. This became more apparent when
some countries formally adopted socialism, but even the capitalist
West often seemed to believe then that
there was only perdition outside the state's embrace.
For much of their post-colonial history, however, the Arab
states have had to address
a double failure: a failure
to effect political unity, even to create something vaguely approximating the European Union; and a failure to adequately redistribute national prosperity and social justice. While some countries did ameliorate antiquated social and economic systems through measures extending education,
communications and other benefits to marginalized groups, the flip side of this was a modernization
of mechanisms of repression.
Social mobilization demanded
tying a much tighter leash on those who were
previously quiescent.
In some
cases it's those who were quiescent, those from the fringes,
sometimes minorities, who dominated the
state, as in Syria, and in
a different way today, Lebanon. In other places, such as Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Jordan or Bahrain,
ruling minorities used the state to reinforce their supremacy. And in a place such as Saudi Arabia
(which never subscribed to Arab nationalism per se, but which readily toed
the "nationalist"
line when dealing with its Arab
comrades), the state was the redoubt
of a family and a religious sect, while a sizeable minority, in this instance
Shiites, was cut off from the levers of power.
The idea that the
disintegration of the unitary state in Iraq was the Bush administration's doing is at
best tendentious. The US
invasion certainly precipitated
Iraq's break-up, but it was Saddam who had mined the
waters long before, through
his savage mistreatment of Kurds and Shiites. In the name of Arab nationalism,
Saddam murdered hundreds of
thousands of people, declared
war on Iran, and bullied his weaker
Arab brethren, invading the most
vulnerable of them in 1990.
It's not the
United States that wanted Iraqis to adopt the very
loose formula for unity in their Constitution, as this increased the chances that Iraq would become more unmanageable. If there is an absurdity
in American policy, it's to
assume that the US can still instill
a sense of overriding common national purpose in Iraqi security forces deriving from a fractured political order. Kurds in the north and
Shiites in the south, for example, will always
first reflect the political and
social mood surrounding them.
Much the same holds
in Lebanon, where sectarian identities have sprung to the fore amid the inability
of rival political forces to come
to an agreement on a post-Syrian political
system. Two weeks ago, Hizbullah used the pretext
of a television satire show to cut
off a main national artery, the
airport road, and to march on Sunni, Christian and Druze neighborhoods in Beirut, reminding
other
religious communities that it will
readily go to the hilt in protecting its weapons and
prerogatives. If the
benchmark of national reconciliation is that one sect
can maintain a private army while
the others cannot, then it
won't be long before the Lebanese start
wondering whether the existing state is worth preserving,
even under the loose definition
of statehood applying in Lebanon.
One can go
on. Apologists for the Syrian regime defend
Baathist despotism as a necessary barrier blocking a potential Islamist onslaught. Perhaps, but such a wretched rationale is only further
proof that the legitimacy of the nationalist state has evaporated.
How could it be otherwise, with
all hope being placed in an Alawite-led, family-operated business, whose
prospects for long-term survival
diminish by the day?
So the next time you
cheer on Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia in the World Cup finals, remember that you might
be partaking of that rare instance where football
is more a unifier than a divider. With their
states discredited, who can blame the
Arabs for pinning their national hopes on 11 men running after a ball?
Michael Young is
opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=73194#