By Daniel Pipes
Saturday, January 25, 2013
The recent fall of Fallujah, Iraq, to an Al-Qaeda-linked
group provides an unwelcome reminder of the American resources and lives
devoted in 2004 to 2007 to control the city – all that effort expended and
nothing to show for it. Similarly, outlays of hundreds of billions of dollars
to modernize Afghanistan did not prevent the release of 72 prisoners who have
attacked Americans.
These two examples point to a larger conclusion: maladies
run so deep in the Middle East (minus remarkable Israel) that outside powers
cannot remedy them. Here's a fast summary:
Water is running out. A dam going up on the Blue Nile in
Ethiopia threatens substantially to cut Egypt's main water supply by
devastating amounts for years. Syria and Iraq suffer from water crises because
the Euphrates and Tigris rivers are drying up. Growing the narcotic qat plant
absorbs so much of Yemen's limited water supplies that Sana'a may be the first
modern capital city to be abandoned because of drought. Ill considered
wheat-growing schemes in Saudi Arabia depleted aquifers.
On the flip side, the poorly constructed Mosul Dam in
Iraq could collapse, drowning half a million immediately and leave many more
stranded without electricity or food. Sewage runs rampant in Gaza. Many
countries suffer from electricity black-outs, and especially in the oppressive
summer heat that routinely reaches120 degrees.
People are also running out. After experiencing a huge
and disruptive youth bulge, the region's birth rate is collapsing. Iran, for
example, has undergone the steepest decline in birth rates of any country ever
recorded, going from 6.6 births per woman in 1977 to 1.6 births in 2012. This
has created what one analyst calls an "apocalyptic panic" that fuels
Tehran's aggression.
Poor schools, repressive governments, and archaic social
mores assure abysmal rates of economic growth. Starvation haunts Egypt, Syria,
Yemen, and Afghanistan.
Vast reserves of oil and gas have distorted nearly every
aspect of life. Miniature medieval-like monarchies like Qatar become surreal
world powers playing at war in Libya and Syria, indifferent to the lives they
break, as a vast underclass of oppressed foreign workers toils away and a
princess deploys the largest budget for art purchases in human history. The
privileged can indulge their cruel impulses, protected by connections and
money. Sex tourism to poor countries like India flourishes.
Efforts at democracy and political participation either
wither, as in Egypt, or elevate fanatics who cleverly disguise their purposes,
as in Turkey. Efforts to overthrow greedy tyrants lead to yet-worse ideological
tyrants (as in Iran in 1979) or to anarchy (as in Libya and Yemen). One
commonly roots for both sides to lose. Rule of law remains a fata morgana.
Islamism, currently the most dynamic and threatening
political ideology, is summed up by a morbid Hamas declaration to Israelis:
"We love death more than you love life." Polygamy, burqas, genital
mutilation, and honor killing make Middle Eastern women the world's most
oppressed.
Middle Eastern life suffers from acute biases – often
official – based on religion, sect, ethnicity, tribe, skin color, nationality,
gender, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, work, and disability. Slavery
remains a scourge.
Conspiracy theories, political zealotry, resentment,
repression, anarchy, and aggression rule the region's politics. Modern notions
of the individual remain weak in societies where primordial bonds of family,
tribe, and clan remain dominant.
The Middle East suffers from an urge to snuff out whole
countries. Israel is the best known potential victim but Kuwait actually
disappeared for a half year while Lebanon, Jordan, and Bahrain could be
swallowed up at any time.
Middle Eastern states spend outsized amounts of their
wealth on intelligences services and the military, creating redundant forces to
check each other. They venture abroad to buy tank, ship, and plane baubles.
They devote inordinate resources to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons,
and the platforms to deliver them. Even terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda plot
to acquire WMD. Cutting-edge methods of terrorism develop in the Middle East.
Economic and political failure creates large bodies of
refugees; Afghans have made up the world's largest refugee population since the
1980s; Syrians now threaten to overtake them, sowing poverty and chaos in their
lands of refuge. Desperate souls attempt to leave the region altogether for
Western countries, with more than a few dying along the way. Those who make it
bring their region's maladies to such tidy countries as Sweden and Australia.
Nineteenth-century diplomats dubbed the Ottoman Empire
"the Sick Man of Europe." Now, I nominate the whole Middle East the
Sick Man of the World. The region's hatreds, extremism, violence, and despotism
require many decades to remedy.
While this process perhaps takes place, the outside world
is best advised not to expend blood and treasure to redeem the Middle East – a
hopeless task – but on protecting itself from the region's manifold threats,
from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and harems to mega-terrorism and
electromagnetic pulse.
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