Nizar Qabbani once asked: When will they declare the death of the Arabs? And Ghazi Algosaibi answered: Nizar I bring you some news, they have declared the death of the Arabs... The above is poetry. However, based on logic today, I say that the Arabs, after two thousand years of indisputable written history, are finished, if not dead. They have lost each battle in the past century, and then lost the war with the beginning of this one. Although colonialism ended, it was succeeded by repressive regimes that are worse; three quarters of Palestine were lost, and today Jerusalem too is following suit. However, this is known, and I want to summarize one hundred years or so of the history of our grandparents and fathers, until we came to be and witnessed it, allowing me to analyze our situation today. Ever since I began my career in journalism, the problem of the Western Sahara has been there. It was the subject of my first visit ever to Morocco, and my first interview with King Hassan II, Rest in Peace, during the Spanish colonial days. Even if I am to visit Morocco or Algeria tomorrow, I would find that this same problem remains unresolved. In Libya, a coup d'état took place on 1/9/1969, and the regime it produced is still in power, 41 bleak years later. Today, Egypt is not practicing the desired level of Arab leadership, and it seems the latter will not be assumed by Egypt. However, the Arab League includes 22 major countries, it seems, but those who are not obeyed are not heeded. As for Sudan, there is a powerful separatist movement after terrible massacres, while in Yemen there are calls for secession, and in each country in the Arab peninsula there is an internal problem or disputes with other countries. For instance, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been fighting against the terrorist ideology for years, but without completely defeating it, while there is a bad parliament in Kuwait that repels people from the experience of democracy. The same goes for many similar, if not identical, countries, but which nonetheless can never agree on adopting a unified currency. Iraq is the mother of all disasters, having witnessed a terrorist regime, then a sectarian system and an ongoing occupation. Syria, on the other hand, is rogue and wayward, while Lebanon is the quintessential country of second allegiances. Palestine is lost, and Jordan is confused between the notion of the original country and the alternative one. (Will the reader allow me to mock a little bit, lest I burst? We used to say the best things are music, singing and dance. But even the dancers are now all Russian). I deliberately chose dancing, because failure is rampant from the bottom up and vice versa, and from the ocean to the Gulf, and also vice versa. With this cumulative failure in mind, and without delving into platitudes such as the fact that through the Palestinian division between Fatah and Hamas, the Palestinians have buried their cause with their own hands, I will go over some Issues of relevance to our nation: - Education in the Arab countries is backwards and a failure and the best education is that, which is imported, such as the foreign schools and universities that have branches in our countries. The nation will never awaken from its slumber except by reforming education (...) - There are no productive investments in the Arab world. All investments are limited to real estate, or imported factories. - Many are collaborating with Israel, either openly or secretly, both among the Palestinians themselves and across all Arab countries, while Israel is devouring the Arab body like a malignant rampant cancer. After Israel in the territories of 1948, Israel is now all over Palestine, and tomorrow, it will be from the Nile to the Euphrates, and a day may come when we all will become servants in their homes, just like girls from the Far East serve in our homes today. - There are no allies, but only interests. If we ourselves fail to defend our interests, no one else will, and if we did not rise up to fight for our causes, no one else will whether in the East or the West. - There are two examples for the above, which are Iran and Turkey. The first is the most failed country in the region, a petroleum producing nation that is suffering from a gasoline crisis, a country where half of the population is pitted against the other half, while three quarter of the world are hostile to it. Much ado about nothing, and the dog that barks, does not bite. Yet, Arabs are concerned by Iran. They either oppose it or support it on the basis that Sunnis are against it and the Shiites are with it. As for Turkey, it has the best government that the Arabs can ask for since a hundred years, and the Turkish government is seeking to build an alliance with the Arabs, in order to create a regional power that dwarfs Israel and make its own voice heard across the world. But I fear that the Turkish government will soon be disappointed by us, just like we were disappointed by the Committee of Union and Progress a century ago. It is an ample example for this that [Turkey managed] to extract the uranium enrichment deal from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who never fails to provide grounds for others to oppose his stances. - Why do Islamists in Turkey have their eyes wide open, while Islamists in our countries are blind? I would have accepted for Arab Islamists to be one-eyed, but there is no cure for blindness. Did I forget anyone? I must have, because memory can be selective when it is controlled by fear of the present and fear of the future, and I hence shall fashion a shelter over my head made from the poetry of Nizar Qabbani and Ghazi Algosaibi. Nizar said: [loose translation] I have been trying since my childhood to draw a country, metaphorically called the Arab world [...] But in the end I asked myself, if one day they should announce the death of the Arabs, in which cemetery will they be buried, and who will mourn them then? Ghazi said: [loose translation] Nizar I bring you some news....they have declared the death of the Arabs. They wrote their obituary in lines, then between the lines and under the lines, and also in images. [...] What do I say? I say: Cover me, O Safiya... [email protected]
