"We Live In Fear"

"It's amazing to think that a regime that prided itself on being the heart of Arab nationalism is bombing its own capital, the oldest city on the planet.  What other government would do that?"  Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding

In fact, the concept of Arab nationalism is one of pride, but it is hampered in its unity by an underlying disability.  Arab pride comes complete with tribal dysfunctionality, clan rivalry, sectarian hatred, and jealous territoriality.  There was a time when Egyptian President Nasser adopted the ideology of Marxism and thought to overlay all of the complex issues with a Marxist veneer, but that didn't work for very long.

One thing can be guaranteed with a certainty about Arab tribes, and that is their propensity to expend huge energy in detesting and opposing each other.  The only thing that ever brings them together in a unity of purpose is their greater detestation and antipathy toward the State of Israel.  All Arab states can find common purpose in the prospect of joining together in a conflict meant to destroy Israel.

However, like the veneer of Marxism that President Nasser thought might solve the problem of Arab-on-Arab bellicosity, uniting the national armies of the Arab world didn't work in a series of joint wars launched on the State of Israel after her founding in 1948.  Nothing much has since been resolved.  The armistice/peace that was signed between Israel and Jordan/Egypt remains frail and both Arab countries threaten to revisit it.

The fiction that Israel is the fount and the sinister source of all the problems that exist in the Arab and the Muslim world simply suits the political purposes of the Arab and the Muslim world.  It represents a handy grievance upon which to heap all the problems that the Arab and the Muslim world visit upon themselves. 

A non-Arab, Muslim country's administration has it in mind to finally relieve the Middle East of the presence of the State of Israel and those damnable Jews that Arabs so heartily love to loathe, but that country itself is yet another source of hatred, suspicion and aggravating irritation to the balance of the Middle East, as a threat to their own stability.  The Islamic Republic of Iran's possession of nuclear warheads would represent a total calamity.


And universally in the Arab world stability is maintained through force of will and power.  The will is extracted from interpretations of the Koranic verses establishing the right of whatever power happens to be installed to continue, usually as a minority presence, to oppress the majority sect, and the power is enabled through the sale of petroleum products that enrich the deserts of Arabia.

As for Syria, it is on the cusp of self-destructing.  "The smell of blood is filling Damascus.  We live in fear."  "What Ramadan?  The situation is grave - battles are taking place in the heart of the capital."