The Foreign Service Journal, March 2004

“Every day that passes with the U.S. forces remaining in Iraq, nega- tive sentiments of the Syrian people toward the U.S. move up. The peo- ple have no doubt now that the U.S. is simply serving the Zionist blue- print in the region, and that American calls for democracy are nothing but a Trojan horse,” says Nabeel Saleh, a Syrian journalist. According to Saleh, the worst- case scenario for the Syrians is the possibility that a civil war will flare up in Iraq: memories of the fero- cious civil war in neighboring Leb- anon are still very much alive. Meanwhile, Kuwait, which has been granted the sta- tus of a non-NATO strategic ally of the U.S., stands out in stark contrast to this portrait of anger and mistrust. During the war, Kuwaitis staged pro-war rallies in the streets, while other Arabs shouted anti-U.S. slogans. In the months after the war, the Kuwaitis did not care to dis- cuss whether or not the war was justified given that no weapons of mass destruction had been found. Instead, they are busy attacking pan-Arab nationalists, ridiculing members of the anti-occupation camp as “Saddam’s orphans” and openly aligning themselves more with the U.S. Liberals Isolated Amid fears of future U.S. military adventures in the Arab region, people across the Arab and Muslim worlds have a heightened sense of their identity. Religion is back strongly on the scene, as indicated by the fact that the number of women deciding to wear the Islamic headscarf (hijab) is on the rise. Many Muslims are struggling against attempts to modernize the school cur- ricula out of deep-seated fear that the Bush administra- tion is behind the called-for changes in the educational systems to reduce the presence of religion in Muslim societies. The war against Iraq has given rise to a heated debate between the Western-oriented liberals, who support the war and advocate U.S. policies, on the one hand, and the nationalists, Islamists and leftists, who have long-standing doubts about the “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq. For their part, liberals in the Arab world have taken the shock and anger over the Iraq War to sig- nify the region’s weakness and are calling for a distancing from many of the traditional values, nationalist ideals and Islamic teachings revered by the sweeping majority. “Arabs must stop dwelling in the past. They should reinvigorate their soci- eties by shaking the rule of dicta- tors, by modernizing Islam, by revi- talizing the forces of enlightenment. America, despite its flaws, has helped the Iraqi people to get rid of the most brutal regime,” says Said Ghazali, a Palestinian journalist resident in East Jerusalem. “Few of the commentators, who are university acad- emics, ex-generals and top former officials, have point- ed to our own ailments. We only blame others. It is the fault of the West; it is the fault of the U.S. neo-conserv- atives; it is the fault of the Jewish lobby. At times we seem to revel in the role of persecuted and occupied victims,” Ghazali wrote in The Independent. Such voices appear in some electronic publications and newspapers in the Arab world, but they are not popular among Arabs and Muslims at large. In many cases, the proponents of such views cannot make them in public or on TV screens, but instead confine them- selves to limited audiences. The war in Iraq, meanwhile, has boosted the popu- larity of a prominent Egyptian writer, Fahmy Howeidi. Howeidi recently wrote a series of articles in Al-Ahram titled “Feud In Iraq,” in which he accuses the U.S. of trying to divide Iraqis along sectarian and religious lines as part of a “divide-to-rule” strategy. If anything, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has further fueled mistrust toward the U.S. among Arabs and Muslims. Coupled with a growing resentment of American policies, this lack of trust is not going to be rectified by launching U.S.-funded TV and radio stations to give the U.S. a facelift. Rather, there is a real need for a deep under- standing of the region’s grievances, a true desire to bridge gaps with Arabs and Muslims, and concrete moves toward a dramatic change in U.S. policies in the Middle East. That sounds like a far-fetched expectation. It’s unavoid- able, however. F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53 Religion is back strongly on the scene, as is indicated by the fact that the number of women deciding to wear the Islamic headscarf (hijab) is on the rise.