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.