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West's Fragile Middle East Scramble

By Bilal Shaheen

16 August, 2014
Countercurrents.org

Edward Said was right when he says "The relationship between the
orient and the occident is the relationship of power, of domination
and of varying degrees of complex hegemony". The East or Orient was
romanticised to give power and leverage to the western hegemonic
ideals viz-a-viz the orient. Said echoing the same views that Disreali
emphasised so eloquently in his novel Tancred ; The East was a career.
The insanity, instability and uncertianty that engulfed the eastern
world today through covert western interventions proves this assertion
correct. West's prolonged romance, albeit maligning, with political
utopias lead not only to human tragedies but the catastrophic failure
of societies and nations. The ongoing civil wars, political
instability and anarchy that brutalized the Middle East states
attested this sheer reality. Middle East today is a devastating place
of dictatorships, failed states and crumbling societies. West's
involvement in the Middle East affairs is an idea that has a history
and a tradition of thought that have given it reality and presence in
and for the west. The term "Middle East" itself is imperial. It is
geographical designation which puts the west at the centre of the
world. In the midst of the French Revolution, Napolean siezes Egypt in
1798, setting in motion century-long European scramble for the Middle
East. In the late nineteenth century, Alfred Mohan, a US navy officer,
invented the term Middle East and used it in his book The Influence Of
The Sea Power Upon History. Hilford Mackinder, a liberal imperialist
Britain, later popularised it.

The west has worked itself into a grotesque muddle in the Middle East,
supporting dictatorships in some places, calling for others to end;
condemning the killing of civilians in one place, in another condoning
them. These are the double standards that will be exploited by
extremists across the world, a fount of terrorism that will continue
to haunt the region. Barnard Lewis, the most influential post-war
scholar on Islam and Middle East, argued that the Muslim world is in
crisis largely because of the decline and stagnation of the Middle
East and the sense of humiliation that has therefore gripped the
Islamic, and more specifically the Arab world. This decline stems from
the carving of Middle East by the UK and France after WWI and the
sense of powerlessness that has been engendered by the protracted
Arab-Isreali conflict. West's unabated and heavy investment in the
Middle East conflicts has grave ramifications which altered the
politics of the besieged Middle East. The western policy of
"democracy promotion" proved to be catastrophic for the region where
tradition and Islamic values are deeply embedded in social
consciousness. The democracy promotion, however in reality, is a
western foreign policy goal to expand western hegemony and ensure
acess to vital energy resources. Rather than promote democracy the
west is responsible to demote democracy in Middle East. Democracy
thrives only in a state having developed strategic-institutional
infrastructure. The iron-fisted rule of State Departments Arabists
prevented such democratic infrastructure coming into offing. The
incessant democratic failure resulted in the mushrooming of autocratic
regimes across Middle East. Mubaraks, Ghadafis and Shahs remain
pathetic renegades of western containment. These renegades facilitate
west's increasing acess to Middle East oil which ultimately paving way
for great game in West Asia. The uprisings of 2011 arose to eliminate
these proxy regimes and to free Middle East societies from the shakles
of political neocolonialism. But the west hijacked the spirit of
revolutions for fear that the west's strategic dominance will be
receded by the flourishing of democracy.

West's unhindered involvement in Middle East politics also contributed
to the fagile balance of power. The west invested heavily in the
weakness of state by arming rebel groups and encouraging proxy wars.
The devastation and destruction created by civil wars in Syria, Egypt
and Libya has been the visible consequence of west's policy of R2P(
responsibility to protect). By promoting rapid nuclearization of
Middle East in the absense of stable politcal entities, the west
contributed enormously in fostsring "war of all against all".

Sectarianism has become toxic in Iraq and Iran where social division
has lead to claiming human lives on a catastrophic rate. By pitting
one sect against the other, the west remain the major beneficiary of
Middle East ' divide and rule'. The wayward interference of the west
and the Isreali occupation of the Palestine remain the important
causes of intra-regional rivalry. The geopolitical location and the
rise of Islamism are the possible reasons which dragged the west in
Middle East's savage wars. West's occupation of Iraq and the
subsequent stealth policies of regime change, Middle East has been
left with a decomposing state, fractured society and an economy sunk
in a depression. There is nothing resembling an effective modern state
in Middle East today, the appalling regimes in which the rudiments of
security are unavailable to the majority of people. In some states
like Iraq and Libya Anti-government militias and rebel groups seeming
to be more powerful and organised than the government. The Islamic
State In Iraq and Syria claimed to be capturing most of the northern
Iraq and the eastern Syria. The Islamic state(IS) militias, is an
amalgam of various jihadist groups trained and funded by the global
policeman for its strategic interests. The west's Middle East scramble
is as much about securing its strategic interests as it is about
growing Islamophobia. West's allergy and the subsequent provocative
sanctions against Iran after the Islamic revolution of 1979 unveil
west's contempt of growing Islamisation of the Middle East. This
tectonic 'clash of civilization' has already destroyed Middle East's
centuries old social fabric and if remain uncheked will lead the
region to the collective suicide. The demise of communism give rise to
a world governed by the unipolarity of the west. Western analysts
proclaimed liberal democracy as the only vaible alternative to govern
the world. The rise, however, of Middle East's Islamic cosciuosness
and the popularity of the Afghan jihad exacerbated the problem. Rise
of political Islam as the possible alternative to western-model
brought western powers into direct conflict with the Middle East
region. The west thus supporting proxy wars across Middle East to
contain the rise of Islamization. West's inchoate intrusion in Middle
East affairs furthur aggravated the sectarian divide in the region.
Middle East is today the most volatile place of sectarian voilence and
if the trend is not reversed Middle East will soon collapse in a
sudden catalysm.

The question arises if the west is really interested in fostering
democracy in Middle East, then why it orchestrated the overthrow of
democratically elected government of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Instead of promoting democracy the west is doing the opposite. West's
historical past unravels an important trajectory- that of
dedemocratization of the Middle East. The CIA engineered coup against
the elected govt of Syria in 1949, the coup and subversion of
democracies of Iran and Behrain in 1953 and 1970 testifies the fact
that west should be blamed for the dedemocratization of the Middle
East. The events of 9/11 and the spread of global jihad shows the
catastrophic consequences of the Middle East destabilizatio. The
location of one of the most intractable international problems that
could trigger a nuclear war, Middle East stability has enogh material
ramification of determining the world order of 21st century. Middle
Eadt has become the hotbed of international terrorism, a bloody
battleground of geopolitcal rivalry and the centre of East-West
confrontation. Middle East people are shaped by their history and they
are keenly aware of it. Its disappearance, under the double assault of
foreign imperialists and domestic modernists, was felt throughout the
Middle East today. West's barbaric interventionist posture has
plundered and uprooted the diverse societies of the Middle East and
bring in place a corrogated political order of disturbance, choas and
anarchy. What happened in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Palestine has already
amounted to 'war crimes'. The ongoing political turmoil in Middle East
is the result of the west's offensive to exterminate the Middle East's
Islam as the possible alternative, even contender, to the western
model. The fear that Islam will emerge as the new global force in
sharp contrast to the christian-democratic model appeared to be the
major excuse for the west's relentless encircling of the heartland of
Islam- Middle East. In the context of the defence, the result of the
obsessed Middle East scramble was a worldwide arms bazaar. The massive
flourishing of non-state actors and irregular militias across the
region was the result of easy acess to the resources of the vast
western war machine. West's hostility to the Middle East Islamization
had damaging consequences well beyond that ill- starred region, as the
events of 9/11 proved. They were the opening shots in a new kind of
war, whose strategic goal is to destroy the fragile balance of power
in the Middle East. The west's Middle East scramble is coming heady
with a region full of wars, tyrannies and pharoa's and the west-
obsessed, provocative, agressive. Untill west should not stop its
tutelauge and overt interfernce, the wars and genocides will continue
to haunt the region. The lust for ideological hegemony rendered
impossible a stable Middle East that could have preserved the precious
unity of the great region. The west and its sympathizers in the region
bear a heavy responsibility for Middle East instability.

The author is an Independent researcher and writer on South Asian and
Middle East Affairs.

 

 




 

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