Disunity And Factionalism

Underlying most of the findings in the much cited 2002 UNDP Arab Human Development Report is theextraordinary lack of coordination between Arab countries. There is considerable irony in the fact that theArabs are discussed and referred to both in this report and elsewhere as a group even though they seem rarelyto function as one, except negatively. Thus the report correctly says that there is no Arab democracy, Arabwomen are uniformly an oppressed majority, and in science and technology every Arab state is behind the restof the world.

Certainly there is little strategic cooperation between them and virtually none in the economic sphere. Asfor more specific issues like policy towards Israel, the US and the Palestinians, and despite a common frontof embarrassed hand-wringing and disgraceful powerlessness, one senses a frightened determination first of allnot to offend the US, not to engage in war or in a real peace with Israel, not ever to think of a common Arabfront even on matters that affect an over-all Arab future or security. Yet when it comes to the perpetuationof each regime, the Arab ruling classes are united in purpose and survival skills.

This shambles of inertia and impotence is, I am convinced, an affront to every Arab. This is why so manyEgyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Moroccans and others have taken to the streets in support of the Palestinianpeople undergoing the nightmare of Israeli occupation, with the Arab leadership looking on and basically doingnothing. Street demonstrations are demonstrations not only of support for Palestine, but also protests at theimmobilising effects of Arab disunity.

An even more eloquent sign of the common disenchantment is the frequent, wrenchingly sad television sceneof a Palestinian woman surveying the ruins of her house demolished by Israeli bulldozers, wailing to the worldat large "ya Arab, ya Arab" ("oh you Arabs, you Arabs"). There is no more eloquenttestimony to the betrayal of the Arab people by their (mostly unelected) leaders than that indictment, whichis to say: "why don't you Arabs ever do anything to help us?" Despite money and oil aplenty, thereis only the stony silence of an unmoved spectator.

Even on an individual level, alas, disunity and factionalism have crippled one national effort after theother. Take the saddest of all instances, the case of the Palestinian people. I recall wondering during theAmman and Beirut days why it was necessary for somewhere between eight to 12 Palestinian factions to exist,each fighting over uselessly academic issues of ideology and organisation while Israel and the local militiasbled us dry.

Looking back over the Lebanese days that came to a terrible end in Sabra and Shatilla, whose purpose did itserve to have the Popular Front, Fatah, and the Democratic Front -- to mention only three factions -- fightingamong each other, to have leaders within Fatah proclaiming needlessly provocative slogans like "the roadto Tel Aviv goes through Jounieh" even as Israel allied itself with the right-wing Lebanese militias todestroy the Palestinian presence for Israel's purposes?

And what cause has been served by Yasser Arafat's tactics of creating factions, subgroups and securityforces to war against each other during the Oslo process and leave his people unprotected and unprepared forthe Israeli destruction of the infrastructure and re- occupation of Area A?

It's always the same thing, factionalism, disunity, the absence of a common purpose for which in the endordinary people pay the price in suffering, blood and endless destruction. Even on the level of socialstructure, it is almost a commonplace that Arabs as a group fight among themselves more than they do for acommon purpose. We are individualists, it is said by way of justification, ignoring the fact that suchdisunity and internal disorganisation in the end damages our very existence as a people.

Nothing can be more disheartening than the disputes that corrode Arab expatriate organisations,especially in places like the US and Europe, where relatively small Arab communities are surrounded by hostileenvironments and militant opponents who will stop at nothing to discredit the Arab struggle. Still, instead oftrying to unite and work together, these communities get torn apart by totally unnecessary ideological andfactional struggles that have no immediate relevance, no necessity at all so far as the surrounding field isconcerned.

A few days ago, I was startled by a discussion programme on Al-Jazeera television in which the twoparticipants and a needlessly provocative moderator vehemently discussed Arab-American activism during thepresent crisis. One man, a certain Mr Dalbah, identified vaguely as a "political analyst" inWashington (without apparent affiliation or institutional connection) spent all of his time discrediting theone serious national Arab-American group, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which heaccused of ineffectiveness and its leaders of egoism, opportunism and personal corruption.

The other gentleman, whose name I didn't catch, admitted that he has only been in the US for a very fewyears and didn't seem to know much about what was going on, except of course to argue that he had better ideasthan all the other community leaders. Although I only watched the first and last parts of the programme, I wasthoroughly disillusioned and even disgraced by the discussion.

What was the point, I asked myself? In what way is it useful to tear down an organisation that has beendoing by far the best work in a country where Arabs are outnumbered and out-organised not only by all themany, much larger and extremely well- financed Zionist organisations, but also where the society itself andits media are so hostile to Arabs, Islam, and their causes in general? None at all, of course.

Yet there remains this pernicious factionalism by which, with almost Pavlovian regularity, Arabs try tohurt and impede each other rather than uniting behind a common purpose. If there is little justification forsuch behavior in the Arab lands themselves, surely there is less reason for it abroad, where Arab individualsand communities are targeted and threatened as undesirable aliens and terrorists.

The Al-Jazeera programme was more offensive by its gratuitous inaccuracy and the needless personalharm it did to the late Hala Salam Maksoud, who literally gave her life to the cause of ADC, and to itscurrent president Dr Ziad Asli, a public-spirited physician who voluntarily gave up his medical practice torun the organisation on a pro bono basis.

Dalbah kept insinuating that both these activists were motivated by reasons of personal monetary gain, andthat whatever ADC did it did badly. Aside from the scandalous untruth of such allegations, Dalbah's idle andmalicious gossip -- it was no more than that -- harmed the collective Arab cause, leaving anger and morefactionalism in its wake. Moreover, it should be noted that given the extremely inhospitable Americanpolitical setting to the Arab cause, ADC has been very successful in Washington and nationally as anorganisation rebutting charges against Arabs in the media, protecting individuals from government persecutionafter 9/11, and keeping Arab-Americans involved and participating in the national debate.

Because of this success under Asli, factionalism has infected the organisation's employees whosuddenly embarked on a campaign of personal vilification masked as ideological argument. Of course everyonehas the right to criticise but why in the face of such threats as those we face in the US should we splinterand weaken ourselves like this, when it is clear that the only beneficiary is the pro-Israel lobby?Organisations like ADC are first of all American organisations and cannot function as partisans in strugglesof the kind that recall those of Fakahani in the mid-seventies.

Perhaps the main reason for Arab factionalism at every level of our societies, at home and abroad, is themarked absence of ideals and role models. Since Abdel-Nasser's death, whatever one may have thought of some ofhis more ruinous policies, no figure has captured the Arab imagination or had a role in setting a popularliberation struggle.

Look at the disaster of the PLO, which has been reduced from the days of its glory to an old unshaven man,sitting at a broken-down table, in half a house in Ramallah, trying to survive at any cost, whether or not hesells out, whether or not he says foolish things, whether what he says means anything or not. (A couple ofweeks ago, he was quoted as saying that he now accepts the 2000 Clinton plan, though the only problem is thatit is now 2002 and Clinton is no longer president.) It has been years since Arafat represented his people,their sufferings and cause, and like his other Arab counterparts, he hangs on like a much-too-ripe fruitwithout real purpose or position.

There is thus no strong moral centre in the Arab world today. Cogent analysis and rational discussion havegiven way to fanatical ranting, concerted action on behalf of liberation has been reduced to suicidal attacks,and the idea if not the practice of integrity and honesty as a model to be followed has simply disappeared. Socorrupting has the atmosphere exuded from the Arab world become that one scarcely knows why some people aresuccessful while others are thrown in jail.

As a terribly shocking instance, consider the Egyptian sociologist Saadeddin Ibrahim's fate. Released by acivil court a few months ago, he has now been tried, found guilty and sentenced to a cruelly unjustifiedsentence by the state security court for exactly those "crimes" for which he was earlier released.Where is the moral justification for such toying with a person's life, career and reputation? A matter ofmonths ago, he was a trusted adviser to the government and on the boards of several Arab institutes andprojects. Now he is considered to be a condemned criminal. Whose interests, whether by virtue of nationalunity, or coherent strategy, or moral imperative, does his gratuitous punishment in this way serve? Morefactionalism, more disintegration, more sense of drift and fear and a pervading sense of frustrated justice.

Arabs have for so long been deprived of a sense of participation and citizenship by their rulers that mostof us have lost even the capacity of understanding what personal commitment to a cause bigger than ourselvesmight mean. The Palestinian struggle -- that a people should endure such unremitting cruelty from Israel andstill not give up, is a collective miracle -- but why can't the lessons of living (as opposed to suicidal,nihilistic) resistance be made clearer, and more possible to follow?

This is the real problem, the absence all over the Arab world and abroad of a leadership that communicateswith its people, not via communiqués that express an impersonal, almost disdainful disregard of them ascitizens, but through the actual practice of concerted dedication and personal example.

Unable to move the US from its illegal support of Israel's crimes, Arab leaders simply throw out one"peace" proposal (the same one) after another, each of which is dismissed derisively by both Israeland the US. Bush and his psychopathic henchman Rumsfeld keep leaking news of their impending invasion for"regime change" in Iraq, and the Arabs have still not communicated a unified deterrent positionagainst this new American insanity. When individuals and organisations like ADC try to do something on behalfof a cause they are gunned down by troublemakers who have little else to do but destroy and disturb.

Surely the time has come to start thinking of ourselves as a people with a common history and goals, andnot as a collection of cowardly delinquents. But that is up to each one, and it's no good sitting back blaming"the Arabs" since, after all, we are the Arabs.