The Middle East is falling apart at the seams

Painting by Syrian artist Wissam Al Jazairy

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of al-Hayat newspaper, penned this think piece in Arabic for today’s edition

Times are hard for the Middle East. It has to find a recipe for coexistence, drawing in the Muslims, Jews and Christians, which is not easy.

It has to search for a coexistence formula binding the Turks, Persians, Kurds, Arabs and others and a coexistence blueprint joining ethnicities, nationalities, religions and sects. This is not simple either.

Long lulls are deceptive. They feign that old conflicts have been assigned to the history books. This is not true -- any sudden twist is liable to rekindle old feuds streaming with blood.

Nation-states that were configured in the aftermath of World War One either curbed these conflicts or gave them other names. Once these nation-states’ repressive machines crack, the old demons resurface.

We’re clearly on the way to a ghastly, rather than a new, Middle East – one where the coexistence chapter drawing together its various components ends, heralding the reconfiguration of nation-states and maps.

We are unmistakably facing something more cataclysmic than the fall of the Berlin Wall or the breakup of Yugoslavia.

We are facing a Nakba worse than the 1948 Nakba of the Palestinian people, one marking the demise of coexistence.

We are into violent cross-border designs and aspirations tackling maps like an inmate treats his prison walls.

Don’t accuse me of being a prophet of doom. The pointers are everywhere in the print and audiovisual media, supported by rivers of corpses and declarations promising endless wars.

A suicide attacked a Husseiniya (Shiite house of worship) in Kirkuk, and the response was a spectacular offensive against Sunni mosques in or near Baghdad.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed remnants of the “Baath” and “sectarian hatred.” His adversaries accused him of being a “sectarian bigot.”

Protesters in al-Anbar province treat the Iraqi army as a “Shiite militia” or the cover for one.

The Sunnite Iraqi says he won’t accept to be a second-class citizen, which is what the Shiite Iraqi was saying in decades past.

We’ve moved from the Arab-Kurd crisis to a Sunni-Shiite-Arab-Kurd predicament. It’s as if the whole Middle East has turned into the knotty problem of the disputed Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Both sides in the Syria war are keen to deny its sectarian character. One side paints it as a war on inflowing terrorists and the opposite side depicts it as a revolt against a dictatorship.

So how do we explain the presence of Chechen fighters in Idlib, the arrival of Libyans to support their Sunni brethren or a funeral for a young Iraqi in Basra killed defending the Shiite shrine of Sayyeda Zeinab in Damascus?

Also, how do we explain the funeral for a young Sunni in the North Lebanese port city of Tripoli killed trying to infiltrate into Syria and the funeral for a Hezbollah member felled while on “jihadist duties” there?

Why does the Sunni Lebanese support the Syrian revolution and the Shiite Lebanese hinder it?

Why didn’t Alawites flee before rebels entered their villages or Sunnis take to their heels before government and allied forces stormed their townships?

Do the slogans of “objection” and “resistance” justify the military involvement of Iran and its allies in the Syria war? The counter-meddlers could be asked the same question.

What you hear in Lebanon, which used to be a model of and a proving ground for coexistence, is worrisome and unnerving.

Yesterday, I heard a prominent member of Gen. Michel Aoun’s “Free Patriotic Movement” accuse other Christians of treason. His charge sheet says the other Christians agreed to an electoral law allowing Muslims to have a weighty say in the election of 10 Christian legislators out of the 64 allotted to Christians in parliament.

A retreat to self-made islands won’t solve either Lebanon’s problems or the problem of its minorities. The biggest danger for Lebanon now is the growing number of risk-takers walking on thin ice.

Clearly, we are toughing out the eclipse of coexistence.

Our nation-states, our societies and our armies are breaking up.

The inviolability of international borders has evaporated. We’re in the midst of a regional civil war caused by a stream of cross-border projects. I am afraid we’re on the way to a period awash with statelets, militias, cemeteries and “cleansed regions.”

Iraq et al: Without electricity -- كهربا ماكو

Sulaymaniyah (top) & Erbil are well-lit but Baghdad is trapped in a maze of snatched cables 

The colloquial Iraqi expression “ماكو for maco,” means “without,” “deprived of” or “lacking.”

Sulaymaniyah and Erbil (also written Arbil or Irbil) are the major cities in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in northern Iraq.

About 100 miles separate Sulaymaniyah from Erbil, which is the capital of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.

A trip to the region by Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, must have elicited his think piece, published today in Arabic:

Three men from different backgrounds chose to renew their old friendship in Sulaymaniyah.

The three had paid dearly for dreaming early on of an Iraq free of Saddam Hussein.

One of the threesome had fought for years in the rugged mountains. The other had spent a good part of his life as a subversive. The third got to serve time in an assortment of Baathist jails.

I chanced to attend their cheerful get-together.

After an absence of about two years, I was overawed by Erbil’s evolution.

Erbil is in a race against time, hoping to become another Dubai: high-rise buildings, shopping malls, exceptional vivacity, a rush of entrepreneurs and investors, and homes and streets full of light.

Sulaymaniyah is following suit.

It seems the people of Iraqi Kurdistan are bent on making up for time lost.

There was little in the dinner conversation about the pains of bygone years, but much about progress, reconstruction, investment and stability.

The person sitting next to me at the dining table asked about my impressions.

I said I was pleasantly surprised but passed up critical queries about travelling through the outskirts of Kirkuk.

I was heartened to learn that to forestall fraud and corruption, the Kurdistan Region had a few years back devolved the issue of electric power to the private sector.

The result is the Kurdish Region enjoys 24-hour electricity and is currently selling excess power supply to governorates in the vicinity.

I was overjoyed because, being Lebanese, I suffer from the “electricity complex.”

The Lebanese civil war plunged my native country into decades-long power cuts that have yet to end despite the wastage of billions of dollars and the ceaseless shuffling of crooks and charlatans.

I did not tell my dining companion I was envious, especially that I believe darkness in Lebanon caused by outages is only part of the pitch-black darkness likely to envelop the country.

For some reason, however, envy electrified the conversation at the dinner table around midnight, when the man sitting next to me burst out: “Imagine, my friend! Historically, Iraq was home to the oldest civilizations in the world. It now rests on a sea of proven oil reserves. Its annual budget exceeds $120 billion. It spent tens of billions to restore power supplies. Still, electricity is wanting: كهربا ماكو.

“We brag about Iraq recouping its regional clout, about having balanced relations with the United States and equitable ties with Turkey and Iran, and about our new, strong and promising country. But electricity is wanting: كهربا ماكو.”

He said sharks were gulping down Iraq’s wealth and that corruption is boundless – “worse than in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Baghdad, Basra, Nasiriyah, Najaf and all other cities, he said, swim in a sea of darkness and are sinking under the weight of snatched electricity cables and power generators.

He said power cuts and shortages were part of a tragic overheating of coexistence power lines connecting Iraqis.

He feared a growing preparation for a divorce between Sunnites and Shiites, especially if the emotional separation gripping Syria’s components -- due to the wholesale mass massacre going on in Syria -- culminated in divorce.

The power lines of coexistence in the Middle East region are cut.

True, a popular revolution is sweeping Syria. But also true, scenes of the former Yugoslavia are being replayed there, foreshadowing a long agony.

In Egypt, one rumor about a kidnapping or a mixed marriage is enough to see Muslims and Copts confirm a break in the power lines of coexistence. The lines are also out of service in Bahrain.

In Lebanon, a heated debate over a new electoral law risks splintering its constituent communities.

The cut in the power lines of coexistence make all our cities with (ethnically and religiously) mixed populations resemble Kirkuk.

Depression, darkness and fear permeate our cities.

The power lines of citizenry, of the state electricity authorities and of public institutions are down.

We stand at the threshold of a prolonged blackout, In fact, كهربا ماكو 

From planet Mars to the Middle East tunnels

The Curiosity science rover on Mars (top) and a Gaza smuggling tunnel

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, penned this op-ed in Arabic

We are peoples of tunnels. We are born in them and never leave. We put up with their darkness and thrive on their dampness and rot.

Our schools are tunnels, and so are our universities. Our books and our minds are sealed tunnels.

In such tunnels, you find bitter fanatics, hamstrung armies, glum political parties and instruments of disinformation.

We had no states. We had tunnels-in-waiting, waiting for an opportune moment to overpower the adjacent tunnel’s dwellers.

When an opinion crosses someone’s mind, we lure it into a tunnel.

And when spring approaches, we send tunnels to kill it.

The news was both interesting and informative. The lady newscaster was eloquent and pleasant. A NASA spacecraft has landed on Mars. Overnight, the Curiosity rover beamed back the first images of the Martian surface. Clearly the United Sates had conquered the Red Planet some 40 years after landing the first humans on the Moon.

President Barack Obama promptly congratulated NASA, saying in a statement: “Tonight on the planet Mars, the United States of America made history. The successful landing of Curiosity – the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet – marks an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future…”

I closed my eyes in front of the TV screen. I thought it would be great if an Arab TV news channel announced that an Arab leader had sent a message congratulating Arab scientists on a scientific achievement liable to benefit their country and the world at large.

I quickly dismissed the thought for fear of hallucinating and went back to the screen.

The cute newscaster then moved on – almost apologetically -- to detail another news headline on the daily quota of some 200 killings.

I then feared she would move on and conclude by hosting the habitual “analysts” who invariably impair listeners’ intellects and make them lose sleep.

I was afraid one of them would show up to deny the Mars landing altogether and say it was simply a simulation produced by the corrupt West.

I imagined another “analyst” suggesting the Curiosity rover was the Mossad’s brainchild intended to spy on the Arab countries from Mars.

I feared a jihadist faction coming forward to condemn the Americans’ invasion of the Red Planet and invite suicide bombers to take out the science rover.

I was also worried about Iran announcing shortly that it has produced a new generation of missiles capable of hitting Great Satan targets on Mars.

Going back to planet Earth and the Middle East, the scenes coming out from Aleppo and its sister cities are heartbreaking: corpses on the streets; pools of blood inside bedrooms; and photographs of terrified families fleeing to neighboring countries with their children.

The Arab citizen does not grieve over the obliteration of Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The Arab citizen bemoans Syria’s unknown future.

More alarming than the buildings biting the dust is the sight of Syria’s social fabric melting away and the risk of Syrian society’s components fragmenting.

A victory in Aleppo won’t extract the regime from the tunnel, but prolong its stay there.

The inflow of roving fighters and the practices of some fanatics risk plunging the Syrian opposition in the tunnel as well.

A second news item is no less alarming.

It is about the brazen (Sunday) attack on an Egyptian border post in Sinai, south of Rafah. Undoubtedly, the intention of the attackers is to shove Egypt into a horrible tunnel that would undermine Egypt’s status, the dignity of its army and its ability to control its borders and fulfill its commitments.

The Sinai outrage reopens the entire file of tunnels (used to smuggle people to and from Gaza, as well as goods, food and fuel from Egypt to the Strip). What is at stake here is much more serious than the fate of the Gaza smuggling tunnels.

The third news relates to the Iranians captured (in Damascus) by the Free Syrian Army. Their photograph with their captors proves the Syria crisis has rammed Iranian policy into a tunnel that can only deepen the sectarian divide in the region.

Furthermore, Ahmet Davutoglu’s visit to Kirkuk, and the current situation in Syrian Kurdish villages bordering Turkey shows that Ankara’s regional policy has in turn slipped into a tunnel.

While others send science rovers to Mars, we send our children to graveyards, or to tunnels in anticipation of looming civil wars.

A brief news bulletin suffices to expose our disastrous whereabouts in what is known as the Global Village.

We are peoples of tunnels.

We are born in them and never leave.