[(Continued from p.4)]
public of Egypt. There is the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamhariya. There is the Syrian Arab Republic. There are two kingdoms: the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (formerly the Emirate of Transjordan) and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that part of Arabia ruled by the "Saudis" or House of Al-Saud. There is the Sultanate of Oman. There is the Kingdom of Morocco. There are assorted "republics" -- the word "republic"in the Islamic world means not a "republic" in the Western democratic sense, but simply any regime that is not a monarchy, however despotic it may be: the Republic of Algeria, the Republic of Iraq (formerly the Arab Kingdom of Iraq). There are a dozen more members of the Arab league, including several Arab states of the Gulf, but no one would be surprised if tomorrow they united into one polity. In 1957, one of those nation- states, the Syrian Arab Republic, entered into a political union with the Arab Republic of Egypt, to form the United Arab Republic. No one, Arab or non-Arab, was particularly surprised by this union (it was not like England and France becoming one country overnight). The only reason the union did not last was because the rulers themselves could not agree -- the Egyptian Arab ruler, Nasser, wanted top billing and the Syrian Arab rulers were offended. In the first free elections held in Bahrain in the spring of 2002, though non-Arabs living in Bahrain could not vote, Arabs -- from anywhere among the Gulf states -- could.Had Saddam Hussein swallowed Kuwait in 1991, the emirate would have been digestible, for the differences between Kuwaiti Arabs and Iraqi Arabs are not cultural, religious, linguistic, but rather are based on the fact that Kuwaitis have known some political freedom, and the Iraqis none. There is far more difference, in worldview and historical experience, between the Chinese of the mainland and the Chinese of Taiwan, than there is between the Arabs of Kuwait and the Arabs of Iraq.
Within these countries dominated by ethnic Arabs, not everyone is an Arab or a Muslim. But every non-Arab or non-Muslim minority -- whether the Kurds gassed in Iraq, the Christian Copts persecuted and harassed in Egypt, the Maronites on the run in Lebanon, the Christian and animist blacks subject to Arab genocide in the Sudan, the Berbers subject to discrimination in Algeria (the most celebrated modern Berber writer, Kateb Yacine, wrote in anguish about the forced Arabization of his country, and the repression of the Berber language, Tamazight) -- has been subjugated to a state of discrimination and insecurity at best, and at worst, to mass murder by Arab Muslim governments. Not a single member of the Arab League has ever denounced the Iraqi Arabs for their persecution of the Kurds, the Egyptian Arabs for discrimination against the Copts, the Algerian Arabs for the forced Arabization of the Berbers, or the Sudanese Arabs for the mass murder of the southern, non-Muslim blacks.
Iraq is correctly described as a nation-state con-taining Arabs and Kurds. Egypt is a state with Christian Copts and Muslim Arabs. Algeria is a state with Berbers and Arabs. No one finds these designations inappropriate, or inaccurate. The word "Arab" is routinely applied as the appropriate ethnic designation. The newspapers of Western Europe almost never bother to cite citizenship for Arabs in the news. Instead, they routinely declare: "Thirteen Arabs held in Milan terror plot" or "Arab terror cell uncovered in Madrid." The reporters (and their readers) know that the precise citizenship of such people is largely irrelevant. In the non-Arab Muslim world, as in that of Western Europe, the designation is that of "Arab." The Turks and Persians hardly distinguish between "Arabs." The Ottoman Turks on their own maps labelled a vast region as simply "Arabistan." The Persians (Ira-nians), even those militantly Muslim, insist on letting outsiders know "we are not Arabs." Musharraf and the Pakistani police talk of rounding up "Arabs."
The Western media, too, reveal -- if unwittingly -- their understanding that citizenship in the Arab world is not important.
Since last fall, the Western media have discovered Afghanistan and, in human-interest stories from that country, it is clear that some Afghanis are willing to accept former Taliban members, but not the "Arabs" for whom they express only hatred. It was "Arabs" who killed Abdul Massoud, the Afghani patriot, and "Arabs" who were reported, before the Americans came, to have swaggered about Kabul and Kandahar, as if it were their country and the Afghanis had to do their bidding.
The Western media, too, reveal -- if unwittingly -- their understanding that citizenship in the Arab world is not important. Is Bin Laden a "Saudi" or a "Yemeni" Arab? Is Al-Zubaidah, born in Saudi Arabia but of parents who emigrated from "Palestine," a "Palestinian" or a "Saudi" Arab? Was it Algerian Arabs they picked up in Paris and Milan, or Tunisian Arabs, or Moroccan Arabs? Is that mysterious financier a "Syrian" Arab, a "Lebanese" Arab, a "Saudi" Arab, or an Arab from "the Gulf"? Even the French simply use the words "arabes" or, when limiting themselves to Arabs from North Africa, "maghrebins"; the Italians favor "arabi" and "nordafricani." They thereby demonstrate, despite their solicitiousness for the "Palestinians" in other forums, that they understand at a practical level just how fungible and trivial in such cases are the precise national origins. In the mix-'n-match world of Arab and Muslim terrorism, it hardly matters.
Nor do the Arabs seem to think it very important. In 1968, the PLO and its associates wrote the foundational document for their cause, the Palestine National Covenant. According to Article I, "Palestine is the home-
[(Continued on p.6)]
June 2002 - 5 - Outpost