The Mideast Malady

The Arab Mideast is sick. Tunisia sneezed and
blew its long-time President out of office into
exile in Saudi Arabia. Egypt caught a terrible
cough and expectorated its President out of
Cairo into exile in Sharm-a-Sheikh. Not so
curiously, Libya - alternately known as “The
Hidden Jewel Of Africa” or, by its detractors,
as “The Armpit Of Africa” - is geographically
sandwiched between the Tunisian sneeze and the
Egyptian cough. So, Libya and its mercurial
madman are also now suffering from a disabling
and perhaps fatal socio-political infection.

Even forty-one years of Jamahiriya (State of
the Masses) injections could not prevent
Qadaffi and not-so-loyal subjects from being
afflicted by the virus that is rapidly perfusing
the Mideast atmosphere. Apparently,Qadaffi’s
vaunted Jamahiriya juice (as that political
innoculation is derisively described by one
geopolitical pundit) has finally lost its
potency. But is this any surprise since
that now ineffectual vaccine was personally
manufactured by a leader who long ago lost
his legitimacy?

Not surprisingly, the Mideast malady that
has now percolated across much of North
Africa has mutated. Variant, but equally
virulent, forms of this virus (which some
have eagerly –if prematurely- dubbed
“The Arab Awakening”) have now severely
infected Bahrein, Yemen and Syria. Many
Arab states are scurrying about attempting
to provide their restive populations
with face masks (economic incentives aka
bribes) to limit the further spread of
the virus in their countries.

Depending upon what media reports and upon
whose human intelligence one relies, the
manifestations of the fast-spreading
Mideast malady may be characterized in
several ways. Some say the malady is a
profusion of widespread Arab interest in
the enhancement of human dignity. Perhaps.
Others suggest that the popular pursuit of
elementary human rights by young Arabs is
breeding the virus. Maybe. There are even
those who contend that the virus is fed
by an incipient Arab struggle for a more
democratic (or is it merely a less autocratic?)
society.

Would that some of this conjecture
was so. Perhaps some are, but slogans
are slippery, mottos are messy and
shoot-from-the-hip analyses are dicey. And
so are mass protests and public demonstrations
of discontent. They are not always what
they purport to be.

Indeed, the accuracy of the above diagnoses
of the Mideast malady is quite unconfirmed.
The true nature of the alleged Arab awakening
is subject to prolonged verification in
multiple Mideast laboratories. To be politically
correct, these laboratories are more accurately
identified as Arab nations. Not unexpectedly,
most –if not all- of these nations and their
potentates are committed –above all else- to
preserving the status quo. And that is the
redoubtable rub.

Pointedly, while Arab autocrats and Mideast
monarchs are distinctly different in multiple
regards, they do manifest one significant
common characteristic. They fight with a
defiant, dogged and seemingly fatalistic
determination to stay in power. Colonel
Qadaffi is not the exception, he is an
exemplar of this pattern.

Still, the two long-term Arab autocrats
in Tunisia and Egypt have already succumbed
to the Mideast malady. If that virus is
equally lethal to other Arab rulers, then
the potentates across the residue of the
Arab Mideast are hardly insulated from the
ravages of that implacable virus. Syria’s
President Bashir al-Assad recently protested
that Syria was immune from the turmoil. He
was wrong. Smug Saudi officials have made
similar protestations about the Saudi
populace. The Saudis may have unduly discounted
the relentless virulence of the Mideast malady.

It seems uncontrovertible that the fragmented
and fractured Arab populaces are uniformly
seeking new realities. But their aspirations
and the realities they seek are arguably as
different as are the nations they people and
the dictatorial rulers who dominate them.

In fact, the precise composition and character
of the many disparate groups that carry and/or
propagate the Mideast malady are still muddled.
Additionally, the nature of the new realities
they seek remains befogged by uncertainty,
beclouded by indecision and beset by a dirth
of demonstrable leadership. This is true in
Egypt, in Libya, in Yemen, in Syria and
elsewhere in the region. And all that, indeed,
may offer some insight into the pathology of
the relentless malady that is enveloping
and -perhaps- indefinitely paralyzing the Arab Mideast.

The often inscrutable insight of an old
Arabic aphorism may be be pertinent.
The adage suggests that “the best jihad
is telling the truth to the face of a dictator!”

Unveiling The Arab Mideast

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" (adoo
adoowee sadeechee). So goes a well-known
Arabic aphorism. In fact, said aphorism is
so well-known outside Arab circles precisely
because it aptly reflects the omnipresent
Arab reality to which it refers.

Depending upon where one is located (both
geographically and existentially) in the
Arab Mideast, one’s enemy may well be the
Sunni tribes around Benghazi, or the al-Houthi
tribe/Zaidi Shiite sect in north Yemen, or
the Ismaili sect and Shiite tribes in
southeast Saudi Arabia, or the substantial
Shia majority on the island of Bahrein, or
the minority Shiite community in Syria, or
the Sunni Palestinians(Hamas and Islamic
Jihad)in Gaza, or the Shiite Hezbollah in
Lebanon and many others who should - by
all reasonable and logical considerations-
actually be friends, but who often are
horribly hateful enemies.

Indeed, affairs in the Mideast are seldom
reasonable or logical. Clearly, Colonel
Qadaffi -long ago labeled "The Mad Dog of
the Mideast"- has no monopoly on irrationality,
instability or seeming madness.

More pointedly, all the potential friends
(aka enemies)in the Mideast are ethnic Arabs
most of whom seem pay at least verbal
obeisance to Allah. Yet, they ubiquitously
somehow manage to dislike each other with
an intensity that flies in the face of and
belies their uniquely pervasive commonality
of ethnicity, language, religion and mentality.

Simply stated, the Mideast has long been
peopled by a fractured and fragmented populace
that is both superficially united, but
desperately divided by their common Semitic
ethnicity, their Arabic language, their Islamic
religion and their ubiquitous Levantine mentality.

What is a Levantine mentality? That is unusually
difficult to define. But it is arguably comparable
to a legally scurrilous definition of pornography,
i.e. you know it when you see it or hear it or
witness it. That said, a Levantine mentality is a
predisposition to think and/or function in a
pattern that may be exemplified by the customary
path to power in the Mideast.

Consider that since 1995 nine long-time Mideast
monarchs/autocrats have died. Each of them ruled
for lenghty periods. Some ruled for decades. Six
of the deceased rulers were succeeded by their
sons. The seventh ruler was replaced by his
brother and the eigth ruler was followed by his
half-brother. Only one long-time ruling autocrat
who died since 1995 (Yassir Arafat) was not
replaced by a member of his immediate family.
Not incidentally, no deceased Mideast ruler
was replaced by a woman. As fate would have it,
the ninth ruler was Arafat and he only had
a daughter.

In this current year of 2011, four rulers have
either been ousted or are facing increasing
threats to their power. Three of these (Mubarak,
Saleh and Qaddafi) were grooming a son to follow
in their respective footsteps. In Tunisia, the
ousted President's presumptive heir-in-waiting
was the President's son-in-law.

That this pattern is currently under pervasive
attack across the length and breadth of the Mideast
is simply a testament to the prevailing atmosphere
in the Levant and its existing dynamics.

The seeming similarities of public protest,
popular unrest and common cries for reform
are as different and disparate as are the
dissenters and the regimes they seek to
change.

But then this is precisely the nature of the
Mideast. Despite its pervasive commonalties,
the Mideast has always been complex, confusing,
contradictory andcapricious. The Mideast was
and is impulsive, erratic and volatile. And that
pattern is expressly why the aforesaid Arabic
aphorism encapsulates the very essence of the
Arab Mideast.

Considering the current unrest and outright
rebellion in the Mideast, it is well to remember
that the difference between enemies and friends
is no thicker and no thinner than the blood of
those who share the identical ethnic DNA, speak
the same language, profess the identical
religion and operate within the parameters of
a pervasive mentality.

And that is assuredly why “the enemy of
my enemy….” flows so mellifluously, so
glibly and so ominously from the lips of so
many in the Arab Mideast.