WASHINGTON: As the administration of President George W. Bush cheered the start of war on Iraq and confidently talked about spurring change in the Middle East, unprecedented events in the Arab and Muslim worlds show that the region is indeed transforming — only in the opposite direction to what Washington advocates.
Since the administration and its backers in neo-conservative circles started talking of invading Iraq as a first step to reform in the region, new radical groups have emerged, along with unprecedented popular protests, the changing of sides by once pro-American intellectuals, and unparalleled levels of public anger and pressure on dictatorial regimes.
Hours after Bush said he gave the go-ahead for an attack on Tuesday night, some 15,000 Egyptians took to the streets and demonstrated in al-Tahrir Square, the closest thing to New York’s Times Square in the Arab world’s largest capital. Dozens of people were injured.
While this does not seem surprising in a time of war, it is the first time that Egyptians have taken to the streets spontaneously since 1977 riots over food shortages.
The demonstrators included at least 1,000 students from the American University in Cairo, one of the traditionally pro- American bastions in the region.
Another staunch US ally, Kuwait, though predominantly pro- American, has also reportedly witnessed the birth of a radical group that goes by the name ‘Kuwaiti Hamas’ in emulation of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, which has been engaged in a painful war of attrition for years with Israel.
“We cannot let the criminals spill the blood of Muslims in Palestine, Afghanistan and today in Iraq,” the group said in its first statement.
The Arab language al-Jazeera TV network showed footage last week of ‘dozens’ of Arab volunteers flocking to Baghdad to fight against the US-led invasion - a development last seen when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the late 1970s.
In other Arab and Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Indonesia, Malaysia and Egypt — all US allies — usually docile, semi-official Islamic scholars have been racing to issue ‘fatwas’, religious rulings, condemning the US attack and saying it is “an individual duty on every Muslim to fight the invaders”.
Several newspapers in the region, many of them formerly pro- US, are changing sides and now label US troops ‘the new Mongols’, and use terms like ‘the American wars’ and ‘the American occupation’.
Pro-American writers and intellectuals have found themselves at a loss to explain the US foreign policy that they have been promoting for years. Many have turned around and taken loud critical positions of Washington. These include the editor-in- chief of Egypt’s largest daily, ‘al-Ahram’, Galal Dewidar of ‘al- Akhabr’ newspaper and liberal writer Hazem al-Biblawi, who founded the New Nedaa Society to promote an American-style way of life in the region.
“There is an inevitable result for this war,” Dewidar wrote on Wednesday. “It is the increase of hatred towards anything American because of the US rush into war without authorisation from the Security Council. This will push the world into further chaos.”
These developments, though sporadic and sparse, suggest the US administration claims that its military intervention in Iraq will unleash the forces of reform and create friendly pro-Western populations in the region and make it safer for US citizens at home is optimistic if not ill-informed.
Hussein Abdel Razeq, a columnist with ‘al-Ahali’ newspaper in Cairo, said in a telephone interview that while some Iraqis may indeed welcome US troops as liberators from a tyrant and that Arabs would greet more freedoms, they clearly reject a change by force and perceive the US aggression as the start of an occupation.
“The tone of shock and anger at US policies all across the region is growing louder and louder by the day,” he said.
Hossam el-Sayed, news editor with the popular Islamonline.net, a bilingual news site that has been monitoring reaction in the Muslim world to US plans to invade Iraq, says that he has recorded events never before seen in that part of the world.
From activists paging each other on their mobile phones, to mass electronic messages urging a boycott of US products, to sit- ins outside British and US embassies throughout Muslim countries, people in the region are voting with their feet to resist US policies, he argued.
“I see the Arab regimes’ hold on power slowly weakening,” said el-Sayed. “There is a tremendous popular pressure now and people think of America as nothing short of an empire that is trying to invade them.”
Most sources interviewed agree it seems that Arab regimes are indeed yielding to this popular pressure, which if it grows, will bring results inconsistent with US ambitions for the region.
Others say that a slow population-driven change could be in the making.
“People here were hindered and oppressed by their own leaders as well as angered by Israel’s practices against the Palestinians,” said Anas Fodah, a journalist with bab.com.
Although Fodah said that popular calls for a reaction to the US invasion could be rolled back as anger cools, it is equally likely that this anger could linger and produce unforeseen results. “The dominant trend is clearly for a change,” he added.
Observers see US foreign policy backfiring on other counts. More people are turning to religious groups that Washington had set to weaken, including the non-violent Muslim Brotherhood, which favours gradual moves toward Islamist states in the area.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.