Paul Danahar is the author of the best-selling book, The New Middle East: The World After The Arab Spring. As BBC’s Middle East bureau chief he has extensively covered the region and tracked the Arab Spring, from Tunia to Egypt and Turkey to Syria. He has won high praise for capturing in his book the political convulsions in the nearly three years winds of change swept through the region. Now BBC’s North American bureau chief, Danahar tells ET that the Arab Spring will reach Saudi Arabia sooner or later. Edited excerpts:
Why did you write this book?
I was told while living in Jerusalem by a friend who works in publishing that nobody bought books on the Middle East because the subject matter was too complicated and the books written about it were either a string of war zone-anecdotes or academic tomes that felt like you were doing college homework.
So when the Arab Spring happened I decided to try to break that mould by writing a book that was an accessible read but also included the historic detail to understand the changes in the region and why the rest of the world should care about them. I’ve had lots of nice reviews but the comments I am happiest about are those that say they actually enjoyed reading the book.
You talk about myriad uncertainties of the “new” Middle East without its dictators. How long do you expect this chaotic phase to last?
It will last at least a decade because the war in Syria is slowly sucking in not only the neighbouring countries but also the wider region and the world. The Arab Spring, but in particular the Syria conflict, has breathed new life into the schism within Islam. Sunni and Shia Muslims are facing off against each other in some of the region’s most volatile areas.
But even the Sunni powers are divided, with the revolts reigniting old rivalries between the competing ideologies of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Kingdom’s in the Gulf. There is also a growing religious divide in Israel. Their society is split along ultra-Orthodox, religious Zionist and secular lines. Across the Arab world Christians and other minorities wonder if they still have a safe place in the new societies being formed. So what I think is clear is that religion, not nationalism or Arabism, is now the dominant force in the region. That makes solving its problems much harder.
Do you think Condoleezza Rice, the then US secretary of state, had any clue about what it would be when she used the term “the New Middle East” in 2006?
She regretted making that comment not least because it provoked some appalling racial abuse including a particularly disgusting cartoon of her in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds, wearing a blue dress and pregnant with an armed monkey.
The caption said: “Rice talks about the birth of a new Middle East” as blood dripped from her teeth. But her comments were part of a wider belief within the Bush administration that their “Freedom Agenda” to democratise the Middle East was bearing fruit. It wasn’t, but what it did show was how corrupt the dictatorships were.
Has this churning in the Middle East been similar – in its unpredictability factor – to the global recession? Were there many people in the West who saw it coming?
Nobody saw it coming, not even the protesters who manned the barricades. But some understood its consequences better than others. The US saw much of the early stages of the Arab Spring through the prism of its impact on Israel and oil. It didn’t have a plan for the New Middle East so it defaulted back to the ideas it used to manage the old one. The US sought stability in the region. But the Gulf states, once they were sure they had sorted out stability at home, set about shaking things up everywhere else.
Instead of trying to contain the changes they decided to steer them in the direction they wanted. So we saw the start of another round in the decades-long proxy war between the most conservative Shia power and the most conservative Sunni power. Saudi Arabia saw in all the turmoil an opportunity to dramatically weaken Iran’s influence in the region. And that has largely been played out in Syria. That’s also why the Saudis are unhappy about Iran possibly being brought back into the international fold with this new round of nuclear talks.
Do you think Saudi Arabia would remain largely immune to the changes that have swept the neighbourhood because its ruler is also the custodians of Mecca and Medina? Or is that a simplistic view of looking at things?
Their huge wealth has bought countries like Saudi Arabia time, nothing more. The changes in the region will come to them. The only real question is how quickly will that change come and how brutal will it be? There is no guarantee that a new generation of cosseted princes will bring with it any new ideas. And even if they do, they have very little experience of managing transition, because changing Saudi society has been something they have only ever been taught how to avoid. The Gulf kingdoms keep saying, “It will not happen here”. So did Mubarak and then Gaddafi and then Assad. The Arab monarchies are now scared of their people. They should be.
India works despite its politicians, Egypt should do the same: Paul Danahar ... - Economic Times
No comments:
Post a Comment