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Posted by admin in Mahboob Khawaja, OPINION LEADER on November 3rd, 2021
[Graphic: Ottoman Empire 1481-1683. André Koehne drawn from The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd.]
By Mahboob Khawaja, PhD
I have no idea of the historical grounding of European students into their own nation’s roles in imperialism, nor how it is presented if it is taught. Nor do I know what education the nations subject to imperialism know except that many of those countries have no broad public educational systems.
Click map to enlarge.
Ottoman Empire 1481-1683. André Koehnedrawn from The Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd.I assume that if you have much knowledge of historical imperialism in even a loose way you got to the way I did – reading beyond the curriculum and beyond “school.” Perhaps you stumbled across the work of Edward Said (1935-2003). Perhaps the critiques that arose out of his post-colonial perspective found you instead. [As a short study, I recommend an excellent 2013 article by Tarek Osman BBC News: Why border lines drawn with a ruler in WW1 still rock the Middle East.
Osman elaborates on the Sykes-Picot agreement and the three problems at the heart of it. I think these are pertinent to the crises we see today, and typical of imperialism across the planet.
“First, it was secret without any Arabic knowledge, and it negated the main promise that Britain had made to the Arabs in the 1910s – that if they rebelled against the Ottomans, the fall of that empire would bring them independence. “
Second, was that the line they drew ignored tribal territories and existing historical boundaries. “But the thinking behind Sykes-Picot did not translate into practice. That meant the newly created borders did not correspond to the actual sectarian, tribal, or ethnic distinctions on the ground.”
Third, which Osman lays on the Arab world: “… Arabs’ failure to address the crucial dilemma they have faced over the past century and half – the identity struggle between, on one hand nationalism and secularism, and on the other, Islamism (and in some cases Christianism).” I do not believe that the identity struggle lies solely at the feet of the various leaders in the Arab world.
I have come to think that we are not in a post-colonial period. Rather both imperialism and colonialism are still very active. Even if the mechanisms have changed, and sometimes pawns are used (as Dr. Khawaja asserts) and/or multinational corporations (backed by major nations) have taken the leadership role, the models are still too applicable to be ignored. I must add that the corporations are legal proxies for the wealthiest of the planet which does indeed place an even more sinister twist to contemporary colonization.
Are the masses aware of the owners of the boots on our necks? If we/they revolt against the obtuse, self-serving rulers of their varying states what do they replace that organization with?
I agree that many around the planet believe that we are one humanity, but we have yet to find a way to assert that. And there are many who are too aware of their lack of access to the necessities of sustainable survival but accept the concepts of winner and losers and wealth acquisition. In other words, they have no challenge for the system that holds them in place, only for those holding power within that system.
Ahh, perhaps I am in a bleak period and there is more hope and promise in the world that I see with my dim and somewhat jaded eyes this day.
Mahboob Khawaja, PhD
The Arab word’s a veritable mess. The cosmic leadership deficit, the absence of legitimate institutions, the lack of transparency, disrespect for human rights, abysmal regard for gender equality, and too much conspiratorial thinking make it impossible to come to terms with the magnitude of the problems. In short, this region will remain broken, angry, and dysfunctional until the leaders who purport to take responsibility for governing these unhappy lands get their proverbial acts together. And that’s … well, a generational enterprise at best, and I suspect something that will take a good deal longer. Aaron David Miller (“Where Have all the Arab States Gone” Foreign Policy: 4/14/2015)
After the US-led crusade in Afghanistan, it was Iraq, then Libya, followed by Syria and Yemen leading to Saudi Arabia under the guise of “war on terrorism.” The US Congress was powerful to sanction the 2003 bogus war against Iraq. The same fate could meet Saudi Arabia if it refuses to compensate the alleged victims of the 9/11 attacks.
The US and some of the West European nations have played a central role in institutionalizing the authoritarian corruption across the oil-producing Arab states. The new educated and thinking generations of Arabs must realize the inherent problems and make a navigational change and set priorities to detach the economy and politics from the oil-fed thinking and consequential militarization and interdependency on the Western nations unto social and economic-political reconstruction of the Arab societies for a sustainable future. The discovery of oil was not a blessing in its totality but its manipulation for superfluous prosperity and economy could turn out to be a natural curse leading to a decadent culture and civilization. Time and history shall not wait for a navigational change in thinking and actions but new generation should be conscientiously powerful and skilled enough in time management to share a new and moving vision and to plan strategies and actions for A NEW Arab world dedicated to informed and responsible people’s governance and living in harmony with the rest of the global community.
Robert Briffault, Professor at Cambridge University (The Making of Humanity, London, 1920). made the following historical observation:
“It was under the influence of Arabian and Moorish revival of culture and not in the fifteenth century, that the real Renaissance took place. Spain not Italy, was the cradle of the rebirth of Europe…It is highly probable that but for the Arabs modern European civilization would never have arisen at all; it is absolutely certain that but for them, it would not have assumed that character which has enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution. For although there is not a single aspect of European growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the paramount distinctive force of the modern world and the supreme source of its victory.”
– The Oppressed Global Humanity is Deprived of Reasoned Voice in Changing the Global Conflicts
Global humanity is continuously oppressed, manipulated, and victimized by the weapons of mass destruction – from thoughts to all kinds of weaponry. Global peace, conflict management, and security are neglected by those who were responsible for their protection and maintenance. Everything thinkable appears to be falling into disrepair and much wanton destruction is reported as non-living statistic. Most leaders operate in a vicious circle of making statements, tweets and speculative wishful overtures as if the whole of mankind was inept and inattentive to the catastrophic challenges of the day.
Good judgments require honesty of purpose, courage and rational thinking. When leaders talk about emerging conflicts and human tragedies, they pretend as if none had ever happened before – as if they never opened the pages of history. History offers lessons to all generations all the time. Human perpetuated tyranny according to late Professor Howard Zinn is “tyranny.” Insanity has no alternative rationale. Look how the UNO leadership and most global politicians witness transgression, forcible displacement, and the killing of tens of millions across Syria, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar (Burma), and Yemen but do nothing except offer fake UN-Security Council resolutions and dubious statements about crimes against humanity.
Victimized mankind shares a sense of disarray and the loss of being part of global humanity. A view from afar only asserts conspicuous examples of flourishing inhumanity such as the proliferation of anarchy, violations of basic human rights and dignity, the use of chemical weapons, and civilian massacres. However, nobody questions why this is happening now after two World Wars. The world is changing but not fast enough for the authoritarian Arab rulers – fat from feeding on the oil revenues and stupid with mindless thoughts and behaviors. This is even more visible if you view them in the real world of political actions and the prevalent deplorable atrocities imposed on the Arab people. The affluent and oil-enriched indulge in conspiracies to assume power and institutionalize corruption simply to maintain a few tribal powerhouses favored by the ex-colonial masters managing the power centers from distance. Now, the Arab people have awakened after a long slumber of complacency and disorder. The problem was well defined by Shakespeare “the destiny of peoples coincided with the destiny of their monarch and nobles.” The knowledge-based, information age has dismantled some of the illusory borders and demarcation of nobilities and has challenged them to bridge the conflicting time zones between the palaces and the people with the internet, cell phones, facebook, twitter, and instant communication technologies.
The Arab Geography has No Proactive Leaders but Authoritarian Puppets Who Follow the Foreign Masters
“Washington’s enemy is an enemy that doesn’t exist…. it didn’t exist when Bin Laden was alive, it doesn’t exist now…. America is being attacked because of its foreign policy…because of the Saudi police-state, because of its presence on the Arabian Peninsula, because of its relationship with Israel…Israel as a country isn’t the problem. The leaders of the Jewish-American community in the United States who influence and corrupt our congress into supporting Israel when we have no interests there…. The truth is, American and Western foreign policy interests in the Middle East for 50 years have depended on the maintenance of tyranny – a tyranny that gave us access to oil, a tyranny that protected Israel and in the last 20 years, tyrannies that persecuted Islamists to protect us.”
Michael Scheuer, former Chief of the CIA Bin Laden Unit, “We are Fighting an Enemy that Doesn’t not Exist in a War that Doesn’t End.”
Arab geography is the by-product of European colonization. Historically, Arabs were nomadic people free to move and trade all over the Arabian Gulf Peninsula and beyond. Britain, France, and Italy demarcated the national borders and extended superfluous nationalities to keep the Arab people divided and defeated. While Islam offered the unity of One People – ‘One Ummah’, the Europeans indulged in massive cultural and political disruptive plans to ensure that Arabs remained fractured and would not re-emerge as One People again. They were used at will by the then superpowers (British and French) to fight the European national wars during the First and Second World Wars. Could history repeat itself as happened during the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution that Arab people might rise over the agony of intolerable limits of lost freedom and bloody authoritarianism?
The degeneration of the Arab moral and intellectual culture is well in progress. They are divided and defeated. There are no wars for the Arabs to fight but they are fighting wars on several fronts without reason- known and unknown. The compelling realities across the beleaguered Arab world demand new thinking, new visionary leadership, men of new ideas and plans to deal with the unwarranted bombing of the civilian population, wholesale deaths, and deliberate destruction of the Arab people and culture and millions of displaced refugees with nowhere to go.
The emerging crises clearly indicate the Western policies and practices aim to incapacitate the Arab intellectual hubs and limit their ability to create a sustainable future. There seems to be no escape from the current volatile political crises when Arab leaders act as if they had no knowledge of the impact of massive death and destruction aimed at destroying contemporary rational thought. Temptation and compulsion of evil embedded in psychological factors of sectarian rivalries operate in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Egypt to perpetuate in-house fear, death and destruction. After the end of WW2, across the Muslim world, there were two major political problems of global importance, Palestine and Kashmir. Postwar Arab and Muslim leaders neglected the imperatives of these core issues and their failure enlarged the scope of other man-made problems to undermine the basic rights of freedom of the people of Palestine and Kashmir. Millions of Palestinians were evicted from their ancestral homes when the state of Israel was established. Whereas Kashmir represents the failure of India and Pakistan to hold a UNO agreed plebiscite to facilitate the freedom of the people of Kashmir. After the unsettling Palestinian refugee situation, why are there several millions of more Syrian refugees across Western Europe? Who will deal with the pressing problems of life and death facing the Arab masses? Who will deal with the restoration of peace, normalcy and conflict management? Do these leaders have any moral and intellectual capacity to extend security and a sense of protection to the helpless millions of refugees? Rationality is replaced by manufactured insanity. As it stands now, Arab leaders have no other thought and priority except to check the depleted oil prices, and count the dead bodies – soon they could be part of abstract statistics debated and defined by the American and European warriors as to how the Arabs lost their national freedom, human dignity and oil pumping economic happiness. To reverse the naïve blunders for accidental change and to clarify a rational perspective for the future, this author in “Arab Leaders Waiting to Count the Dead Bodies” (https://www.
Once the Arabs were leaders in knowledge, creativity, science and human manifestation, progress and future-making – the Islamic civilization lasting for eight hundred years in Al-Andalusia- Spain. But when they replaced Islam – the power and core value of their advancements with petro-dollars transitory economic prosperity, they failed to think intelligently and fell in disgrace and lost what was gained over the centuries. They relied on Western mythologies of change and materialistic development which resulted in their self- geared anarchy, corruption, military defeats and disconnected authoritarianism. The Western strategists ran planned scams of economic prosperity to destroy the Arab culture with their own oil and their own money turning them redundant for the 21st century world. Today, the authoritarian Arab leaders are so irrational and cruel that they reject all voices of reason for political change and emancipation of people-oriented system of governance only to bring more deaths and destruction to their societies.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany, May 2012. His forthcoming book is entitled: One Humanity and The Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution
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