An American in the Middle East

December 2002

Aren’t you afraid? This was the first question my family asked when I told them I was going to the Middle East. The simple answer was, “No.” The explanation was much longer.
We, as Americans, have been fed a steady line of what an Arab and the Middle East are. Some of it is true, most of it, like the Al Jolson caricature of the black man, is a stereotype and wrong. Prior to the seventies movies depicted Arabs as romantic desert nomads who swept down out of the desert to capture horses and ravish women, then disappeared back into the trackless waste which was his safehaven. He was driven by passion. Images of Rudolph Valentino come to mind. The movie “Lawrence of Arabia”, while based in fact, is none the less a Hollywood production that aggrandizes Lawrence at the expense of the Arab. In the seventies, as we waited in long lines for gasoline, the media fed us multiple images of the wealthy oil sheik driving a Cadillac and smoking cigars lit by $100 dollar bills. We needed someone to blame for our misfortune and weren’t ready to acknowledge a failure in US policy as a possible cause. In the eighties, with the advent of the PLO and the Lebanese civil war, the Arab took on the face of a terrorist. Our heroes became Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone and any other muscle bound or suave character who outsmarted the terrorists and “kicked the ragheads’ booty”. We are now insured a full report of any bombing perpetrated by Islamic extremist and it is always mentioned they are Arabs, but to equate being Arab with any of these images is to surrender one’s intellect to ignorance and prejudice. To truly understand the Middle East and Arabs, and I claim no expertise only experience and interaction with its people, one must understand some of their geography, culture and history.
The Middle East stretches from Morocco on the Atlantic to Oman at the Straits of Hormuz. It covers 6 time zones. The US covers four. It contains 16 countries. It has over 6 distinct ethnic groups. There are 4 major mountain ranges. It is home to wetlands in Syria watered by the Orontes River. It is also home to the Sahara desert. The snowboarding in Lebanon is great. The sandboarding on sand dunes in Dubai rivals it. There are some of the highest sand dunes in the world in Morocco. There is a green lush paradise watered by summer monsoons from the Indian Ocean in Salalah, Oman at the end of the Arabian Peninsula. You can visit thriving modern cities like Kuwait City, born in the sixties, or Damascus, Syria which lays claim to being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. In short, the Middle East is no more a homogenous blend of people and climate than America is. One thing that unites them all, and defines them as Arab, is they all speak Arabic. This, however, doesn’t ensure good communication. I was speaking with a man in Kuwait last week and he told me he has a good friend from Morocco with whom he speaks English, because the dialect of Morocco differs that much from the dialect of Kuwait. Sort of like taking a boy from the streets of New York and dropping him in Cajun Louisiana. Geography makes a difference.
Culturally they are just as diverse. While the Bedouin of Saudi Arabia do have a heritage of raiding other tribes to get horses and women, the population of neighboring Syria and Lebanon see themselves as Mediterranean. Jordan sees itself as a mixture of the two. Egyptians are the descendants of the great pharaohs. Algeria and Tunisia only escaped the colonial rule of France in the 50’s. Morocco has the oldest treaty with the US, signed by George Washington. While Islam is the main religion, other religions play a major role here. Jordan has Christmas decorations up. Egypt is proud of its Coptic Christian sector in Cairo. Morocco has one of the largest Jewish communities outside Israel. Kuwait City boasts a Papal Nuncia, large Orthodox church and a Hindu temple. Non-Muslims make up 15% of the population in Kuwait. There is no one Arab culture and that is due to the history of civilization in the area.
I will only hit on history as it relates to the US, otherwise this would be a book. Prior to World War I the US had little to no involvement in the Middle East, with the exception of the Barbary Pirates (“to the shores of Tripoli”). During WWI the British attacked the Ottoman Turks in what are now Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They used Arab forces to a large extent and promised them help in establishing a united Arab nation comprising all of the Middle East after the war. At the same time the British and French were deciding how to divide up the land and govern it as colonies (sometimes called protectorates). This was the Sykes-Picot agreement. The British also decided in 1917 that a Jewish homeland should be established in Palestine, even though there were people living in the ‘homeland’ already. After the war, there was a lot of political intrigue, but the British and French imposed the borders we now have in the Middle East. America played no part. The Arabs felt betrayed. They still mention these dealings. Eventually Britain set up Kings in Jordan, Iraq, Saudi and Egypt. All except Jordan were overthrown by military coup or, in Saudi, another tribe. The French held on until they were thrown out by the people.
The artificial borders set up in 1918 bound together tribes and clans that had differing religious and political views. The countries were either ruled by a strong dictator who could control the tribes, like Hafez Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein, or imploded in civil war, like Lebanon. Only countries which had a more homogenous mix of people remained relatively calm, only stirred by outside influences, like Jordan and Egypt.
All the problems America ever had in the Middle East can be traced to one decision – recognition of Israel as a nation in 1948. The Palestinians had been a peaceful, pastoral people, Christian, Muslim and Jew living in relative harmony. WWII developed a Zionist movement which took the Balfour document as a right to establish a purely Jewish state where they would be free from persecution and attack from other ethnic groups. There was a religious side to the movement, but it was by and large secular. The European Jews had suffered horribly from the Germans and wanted a safe place. They began pouring into Palestine despite UN and British attempts at regulation. They smuggled people in and some, being new from the battlefields of Europe, were not opposed to using force to take enough lands for their people, even if it meant throwing out current residents. The British finally threw up their hands in 1948 and left. On the next day, despite UN warnings not to do so, the Zionists declared Israel a nation. America was one of the first to recognize it. Since that time we have been trying to establish a country of Israel and still seem fair to the thousands of people whose houses were bulldozed or whose orchards were taken over so the Diaspora could be gathered in. 1948 is the cause of the Middle East wars in 68, 72 and the current rise in terrorism. What binds us to this fate is our large Jewish and Fundamentalist communities that support Israel in right or wrong. One sees it as a place for their people, the other as fulfillment of prophecy. President Truman, when approached by a group of Arab Americans on the subject of the displacement of Palestinians replied,”I would like to help you, but you don’t represent a large enough constituency.” Until we find a solution equitable to each side, the conflict will continue. Only we can do it. No on else has the power. Israel has ignored the UN continually and the Palestinians still trust us to an extent, but we are losing that trust.
Another thing that keeps us entwined with the Middle East is oil. In the late 1950’s an American team discovered there were vast reserves of oil under the Arabian Desert. Deals were made with the King of Saudi Arabia and wells were sunk. What had once been a poor Kingdom made up mostly of nomadic people became rich overnight. The oil companies needed skilled people and Saudi Arabia had none. Expatriate labor came in with different ways of thinking and different behavior – western behavior. To protect its culture and Islamic ways Saudi Arabia maintained control over the oil and provided the expatriates with communities where they could have everything they wanted. All of it was away from the eyes of the people. They also maintained control of the oil. In 1972 when the US supported Israel against Syria, Jordan and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries fought back the only was they could-Oil embargo. In America we only knew we were in long lines for fuel. It was never made clear that our Middle East policy was the cause.
In the eighties the PLO had cone into Lebanon and were using it as a base of operations against Israel. Israel couldn’t let that happen so they invaded and backed a Christian government in a country where Christians were a minority. Civil war resulted as clans began to form militias to defend themselves. Most divisions were along religious lines. America came into Beirut to back the Christian government. It resulted in a bombing of Marine Barracks and an American retreat. We were not ready to enter a fray where killing by any means was the rule of the day and where massacres of innocent people, like in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps were an accepted tactic. It was more savage and visceral than we expected. Again, 1948 had caused us pain. The image of the terrorist was born and reinforced as the PLO over and over used the wrong techniques to get our attention.
Now others have used the decisions of ‘48 to justify their radical ideas. They stir up the hearts of young men by playing on their feelings of justice. On one side they point to their fellow Arabs who are displaced and say, “God demands justice. It is right to try to correct the wrong through violence.” On the opposite side they look to the Old Testament and say, “It was a promised land and didn’t Joshua take it by force?” As long as there is no just intermediary, there is no peace.
America prides itself on ‘truth, justice and the American Way’. We owe it to ourselves to learn about the Middle East. Arabs truly love Americans on an individual basis. In Jordan after the Foley assassination, I received apologies from many people. In Kuwait people felt a strong desire that I know the people who shot the Marines are an aberration. In Egypt I was asked why more Americans don’t come to Egypt when we are friends. What they don’t like is American policy and they can make the distinction between people and politics. Am I afraid to live here? I have walked down back alleys in Cairo in the evening. I have driven alone in the deserts of Jordan. I have felt the warmth and hospitality of the Arabs. I have received long distance phone calls wishing me a Merry Christmas from my Muslim friends. Even with a possible war on the horizon, I feel safe.