RIYADH, 5 March 2003 — As a possible war in Iraq nears, many Arabs feel they are watching the same bad movie, with the same predictable plot and most of the same cast.
An intransigent Arab leader taunts Washington and the United Nations. Spats at a summit meant to deal with the crisis underscore Arab disunity. And many say they expect it to end with more humiliation as they watch their leaders helplessly agree to a war.
“It seems that the Arabs died a while ago, and all that’s left of them are ghosts looking for a place in the world of the living,” wrote Saudi author Turki Al-Hamad Sunday in an opinion piece for Asharq Al-Awsat.
There is a lot of pent-up anger among Arabs, and not all of it is directed against the traditional Arab foes: Israel and its backer, the United States.
Many are upset at what they see as the inability of the Arab world to come up with a stand on the Iraq crisis that would, for once in the region’s 50 or so years of independence from colonial powers, allow them to hold their heads high.
Instead, thanks to satellite television, every day Arabs are confronted by the sense the Arabs are doing much less than several Western powers to avert a war. Add to that the fact that an Arab summit in Egypt last weekend made headlines for its display of deep political rifts.
Fowziya Abu Khaled, a Saudi academic and writer, wondered in an opinion piece Sunday in Al-Hayat why the Arabs have waited “until America has filled the region’s skies and territories with its armies and spies and spread out its military maps like a banquet prepared for the last supper without them thinking if there’s something they can do to stop this barbaric and unholy march.”
Several Arab intellectuals have also lashed out at citizens who have watched the events with apathy while anti-war demonstrators take to the streets almost every day in the United States, Europe and Asia. Such protests are banned in many Arab countries.
“I had expected the Arab people to...be the first to protest and say no to a war with Iraq — defying security forces and the police if need be — so that the disgraceful actions of their leaders be laid bare to the world via satellite television,” said the Saudi writer Nourah Abdul Aziz Al-Khereiji in Arab News.
However, several Arabs said they don’t believe from what they have seen from previous protests that such demonstrations would change anything.
“Do you think the Arab people are interested in protests anymore?” said Jordanian Zaid Jasser, 25, a business development manager for a Jordan-based international firm. “People realize that their demonstrations and protests have achieved nothing for them.”
“Our opinion doesn’t count,” said Saud ibn Khudair, president of a private investment company in Riyadh. “It’s like going to a soccer game: you pay money for the ticket, you sit and watch but you have no control over the game.”
