28 Feb 2012 By Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD
Logic means truth - the principles and strategy of
correct THINKING. If the contemporary Arab leaders had
the faculties of mind and vision and leadership
intellect, they would have established people's-based
system of governance, public institutions to deal with
issues of peace and conflict management, be open to
listening and learning for effective characteristics
and adaptability to the making of a future defined as
intelligent leadership. Are they leading anyone to
anywhere except tragic events, bloodsheds of the
innocents and destruction of the habitats?
People in the blood scarred streets of Syria and
feared corridors of the Arab authoritarianism asks
when would these blood thirsty draculas stop the
vengeful killing and perpetuated insanity so that
common sense and rationality could return to the
ground. But the tanks and ruthless armies are governed
and controlled by mindless monsters who have defied
the moral and intellectual currents of time, culture
and record of history. The wounded and hurriedly
abandoned dying voices wonder where are the Arab
leaders - where are the Arab armies to protect them
from the on-going killing spree and inhuman
atrocities? The Arab leaders living in secluded
palaces away from the mainstream lifelines have no
perception what people are asking and deserve; they
are immune from thinking of the interest of the masses
that Islam taught as the foundation of just
governance. Islamic governance articulated UNITY of
the people and the governance to a welfare state
serving the interest of the people. Across the
Arabian Peninsula there is no Islamic thinking, no
Islamic leaders and no unity of purpose and meaning.
All tragedies cause pain and inflict short-long terms
sufferings to the unintended victims - the people-
the common humanity – the ripple effects lasting
ages, indescribable by thinkers and non-captioned by
modern information technologies- the gut feeling that
nobody cares for the living mankind and its painful
sufferings. The Arab Middle East is the likely
belligerent spot that strikes the contemporary
informed observer. For almost a year, people in Syria
are gunned own in cold blooded military operations
being carried out by the Bashar al-Assad regime.- the
inherited clan based brutal regime of his father makes
more than forty years in governance. There are no Arab
leaders, no Arab armies and no Arab will to change the
anti-human equation perpetuated by the mutual marriage
of convenience by all the authoritarian regimes in the
Arabian Peninsula. You wonder what I am talking about.
All
the oil producing Arab States have a common culture of
governance based on few individual tribes formerly
stooges of the European colonial power and now
incorporated by the new US Empire for its
military-industrial dominated political economy
managed by the few in Washington. The illusion of
economic prosperity runs all over the oil enriched
Arab nations. Is it a conspiracy ("fitna") against the
very cultural foundation of the Arab people to
dehumanize them with foreign values or is it a remedy
for the poverty stricken ills of the prolonged but
natural dry desert life? The Western led economic
development plans were the substance for the perpetual
enhancement of militarization and much encouraged
brutal authoritarian regimes across the Arab
landscape. There is no Arab State that has escaped
this entrapment for its own survival and to imagine
business as usual with the Western Masters. The US and
Britain, France, Russia and others would have hard
time in identifying with the new people's movement for
freedom as they were all an integral part in
institutionalizing the secretive police apparatus
across the Arab States and extending security
protections to safeguard the tribal run dynasties of
the few egomaniac and dumb and dull kings, presidents
and insane dictators, including the one you are
currently seeing active in bombarding and killing the
people across Syria. But if over half of a century of
independence, the Arab ruling elite could not develop
any public institutions nor essential knowledge-based
governance and capacity to deal with unusual
situations, emergencies and social and political
crises management situations, whose fault is this?
Strangely, the Arab rulers continue to live in a dream
world that does not exist except within the
manufactured fantasies of the palaces. The Arab League
and OIC are paper based organizations lacking vision,
capacity, leadership and meaningful role play in
crisis management and political management. Who would
THINK of any workable solutions or crisis management
for the overwhelming incapacitated Arab world? Given
the will and proper sense of understanding of time and
history, there are problems which are solvable without
resorting to violence and bloodsheds. The UNO was
responsible for the global security, peace and
protection of human rights and relations between the
states based on the will of the international system
of governance. But the UNO is nothing except a
structure - a physical body in existence without soul
unless the member states provide advice and
collaborative action to safeguard its written charter
and global principles. That is not happening. There
are talks, discussions, resolution or no paper
agreements, enlisting of accusations against the Assad
regime and threats of crimes against humanity for mass
murders of the entrenched and helpless civilian
population. Do dictators ever care for any rational
approach? Do insane authoritarian rulers give any
importance to words of wisdom? Do sadistic egoistic
rulers ever listen to vices of REASON and to global
conscience? Do they ever exercise any genuine desire
to a dialogue unless they are hit over their head? So
what are the so called intelligent hubs of the global
community doing to stop the bloody atrocities?
Millions perished in Rwanda under the ethnic
cleansing. Was there any lesson learnt? Is it a new
experience for the UNO or the global community?
Almost a replica of what happened more than a decade
earlier in Bosnia Herzegovina. The UNO witnessed the
cold blooded massacres of the Bosnia people in
thousands and thousands of them by the Serbs and did
nothing except a spectator overseeing the genocide of
a race. Coming to Syria, it is being repeated again.
The issue is how to stop this daily carnage of
precious human lives. Insanity continues to flourish,
rationality is absent. The crying and dying voices in
Homs, Derra, Damascus and Huma are asking if there is
a concerned humanity willing and ready to help in a
humanitarian crisis? But the global community is
waiting, watching and talking, not doing anything. The
Western political leaders and public institutions
indulge in rhetoric of peace making but lack the
vision, capacity, and courage to take challenging
steps to make it happen. It is all politics of
peacemaking – an illusion on the screen and not the
real peacemaking. To gather people's attention, they
will invent abstract issues and reshape the facts of
human history to manipulate the voters and gain cheap
favors. Politics is a game of pretension and
apprehension, not doing the good for the people with
purpose, honesty and clarity of intentions. To
console human mind, the Western leaders and political
lobbyists are at least talking in public, but what
about the Arab rulers - are they talking? Are they
doing anything at all? Do they have the moral,
intellectual and visionary leadership capacity to do
anything useful for the entrenched people of Syria?
One would imagine, the Arab rulers being at the helms
of oil pumping power, abundance of dollars and
influence - they must be capable and equipped to play
a significant role in global political affairs. Not
so, time and history tell the story otherwise. They
are the wrong people, with wrong thinking and doing
the wrong things. The Arab rulers do not look at the
mirror for reflection on accountability and leadership
role and their sense of rationality is bogged down
within the self, not outside the palace. Long
time ago, it was the Arab culture and flourishing
civilization that spoke the language of the people and
enlightened the Europe with new ideas, knowledge,
inventions, science and visions for change and human
emancipation. Not any more as Arab societies are
caught in the delusional oil-generated economic
prosperity and overburdened by modern ignorance and
stupidity of the uneducated ruling elite, they are
unable to see the light out of the box. Arab
authoritarianism needs a strong jolt – a powerful
political, intellectual and military challenge to
avert the on-going military assaults against the very
people on whose lifeline the nation state was created.
. There are no Arab armies and no Arab leaders to
challenge anybody on any fronts. Under Islam, the
Arabs used to claim and enjoin moral and intellectual
superiority in dealing with enemies and in situations
of conflict. Now the oil pumped prosperity conspiracy
(fitna) has transformed the Arab rulers into mindless
and redundant to the challenging demands of the 21st
century political affairs. The
superficial oil-based prosperity has bewildered the
Arab rulers to the extent that some have become
intolerable to any rational concerns. They THINK of
the self, not of the people or of the Muslim Ummah.
Would another jolt as was inflicted to Saddam Hussein
change the Arab thinking of the politics of the
palaces? Have they learned anything from the ousted
Ben Ali of Tunisia, killed Ghaddafi and Abdullah Saleh
of Yemen? They were not a victim of anything except of
their own egoistic wrong thinking and dictatorships
kept in office by the Western governments. There is a
culture of pretension across the Western political
governance about human rights and liberty. The
Arab rulers have no sense of time, history or
strategic direction – often they live in modern prison
cells- called palaces built with petrodollars- stolen
money from the public treasury. Their so called
friends in the US and Europe called them camel jockeys
- rug head rulers without brain. Ron Suskind (the One
Percent Doctrine- deep inside America's pursuit of its
enemies since 9/11, 2007) recalls how George Tenet,
former CIA Chief used to give enthusiastic hugs to the
Arab monarchs as if he was their friend and buddy and
they would readily do anything – fair or foul to
please the Americans. The Western think-tanks view the
Arab people's movements as armies of radical Islam and
extremism, the vocabulary that does not exist in
Arabic language or its implication to the Islamic
culture. Islam organizes people in moral, physical and
spiritual relation to a UNITY of thought and purpose
in peace for the best of human culture and values, not
geared against anybody. The myth of Islamic
"terrorism' goes on unabated over the Western news
media as food for public consumption and the political
institutions doing their best to undermine the
besieged mankind. Arabs have no institutions to enlist
public support for any political cause. They are
allergic to listening and learning from the Muslim
thinkers, scholars and experts in global affairs.
There is no rational place for meeting of minds or
opportunity that one could try to make the Arab
authoritarian rulers understand that they have crossed
over the limit of reason and absurdity and now is the
time for change and reformation to make a navigational
change. They appear to be so indifferent, cruel and
unmindful of the facts of life – their palaces and
reign comes first, people have no entry point in their
agenda. With people's revolutionary movements and many
authoritarian Arab rulers on the run, Arabs
collectively are in a very weak position to assert any
influence over the events and coming developments to
shape the future. You
would not to take a pill to recall the facts of human
life. Some twenty five years earlier, this author
while teaching in the Arab world, offered a strategic
plan and new futuristic proposal widely defined and
circulated in the Arab world ("Towards Muslim Unity",
"Why Muslims are a Divided People?" "Approaches to
Comparative Strategic Policy Planning: Muslim World
and the West"), how an Ummah Council (Muslim
Parliament of educated representatives) should be set
up, organized and function to deal with affairs of
economic, social and political interests and policies,
and issues of peace, security and conflict resolution,
and have open trade, common currency and free
movements of goods and services and lot more.
Imagine, if such an assembly was discussing the issue
of the freedom of Palestine or the crises in Bahrain,
Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria and echoing its voice
and support to the besieged people, don't you think,
the world would have listened to them carefully and
appraised its value in real terms for actions. Indeed,
it would have. The unity of Muslim Ummah and educated
and intelligent leadership would have changed the
shape and forms of contemporary hopeless affairs.
Should the authoritarian Arab leaders not be
questioned and held accountable for their
incompetence, treachery and failure to protect the
interests of the Arab people? Embittered and sadistic
ruler cannot escape the wrath of the masses now or in
future, the Arab political landscape has drastically
changed since the Tunisian and Egyptian led people's
movement for freedom. Seeing the people's revolt and
political challenge to their cruelty, many
authoritarian rulers are hurriedly transferring the
stolen wealth and possessions to Western institutions
and friends. But it appears certain that nothing can
save them from the consequences of their viciousness,
treachery to the people and dishonesty to Islam. The
oil export enhanced economic prosperity has not
changed the psychology and physical functionality of
the common man across the Arab world. Ignorance,
cruelty and deprivation are the hallmarks of the
synoptic view. People live in fear of being
annihilated by the ruthless forces of the
authoritarian rulers. But the men - the rulers who
are universally hated and feared claim to have
achieved major milestones by their secretive police
gangs, ruthlessness and success leading to
degeneration and savagery of vicious acts against the
very people they claim to serve and govern. Given
the moral, intellectual and political will of the
global community, the question is how can rationality
of words and lips alone will stop the daily massacre
of the innocent people unless there is a concerted
plan and a tangible force to dismantle the
institutionalized insanity.
(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global
security, peace and conflict resolution with keen
interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and
civilizations and author of several publications
including the latest one: Arabia at Crossroads: Arab
People Strive for Freedom, Peace and New Leadership.
VDM Publishers Germany-UK, September 2011. Comments
are welcome at: kmahboob@yahoo.com) Comments 💬 التعليقات |