Filed under: Frankie Fish | Tags: Frankie Fish, honor killings, Islam, The West
There is a discussion taking place now about whether or not Iran would use nuclear weapons if they were able to obtain them. It is normal, I would say, to come to the less frightful conclusion that they would not use them in the end. We usually back this up with the argument that they would refuse to be so destructive because it would warrant their own demise and they would never do this because they are rational human beings.
This argument for rationality was typically swallowed as ultimate truth in my younger days, but recently I’ve begun to question what it means to be rational. We in the West accept rationality as the primary driving force in the decision-making processes of our daily lives. Being “rational” means we value human life, especially our own; that we treat each other, at least in theory, equally; we abide by laws deemed just; and believe violence is a last resort, among other things. After listing these things in my mind I came to the conclusion that this is what it means to be “rational” in the West. But understanding “rational” in the Middle East means first understanding a non-Western culture and judging it from within, something I probably cannot do since I am an outsider and always will be.
Do not be mistaken in thinking that this essay is about labeling Arabs or Muslims in general as irrational beings. That would be false. This is merely to demonstrate that the standards we use to label someone as rational are completely different in the West than they are in the Middle East.
For instance, would you consider the burying and stoning of a woman who walked out of the house without a veil, rational? Would you kill your sister if she had sex before she was married to regain the honor your family lost by her act of infidelity? Would you hunt down and kill a family member of the person who accidentally killed your cousin in a drunken car accident to honor the blood feud that was incidentally started as a result? I find it hard to believe any westerner would agree that these things are rational acts, despite the fact that they all have a rational argument behind them which lies within Arab tribal customs and occasionally Islamic law. “Barbaric,” “backward,” “tribal,” “unintelligent,” “unenlightened,” people of the Middle East live their lives according to variations of this model and consider things to the contrary as irrational. This is just food for thought.
There are two concepts presented here. The first will be about basic tribal customs; the second is a brief description about the differences in cultures. I will acknowledge the shortcomings of this piece first by saying that many details and explanations are being excluded for the sake of brevity and that this piece is not meant to be an all-encompassing analytical work as much as it is supposed to be something that sparks curiosity and forces us to ask questions.
Most practices in the Middle East are not as “Islamic” as they are “tribal.” In fact, some scholars have argued that Islam is a tribal religion because it was crafted to fit into the societies which were adopting it. It should be noted that Islam was originally founded with the intent of eliminating tribal values so as to form one unified community (the ummah) out of previously fragmented ones, however it wasn’t completely successful. Believe it or not, women in the Middle East wore the veil long before the advent of Islam; it was part of tribal codes of honor in which a woman was seen as family property and in order to be “marketable” she had to be untouched and unseen by non-related men. The practice of honor killing and blood feuds are also tribal institutions, with only occasional Islamic justifications. These things are endemic to the Middle East.
However, tribal codes and Islamic practices do not make someone irrational, it simply places them within the framework of their own societies, however strange we may think them to be, and it does not make them less human. There is still compassion there, as well as friendship and tolerance. The biggest difference in gauging rationality is in the so-called “culture” of the Middle East.
This difference in culture I speak of is not in the realm of pop-culture or trendy street slang, nor is it in the style of dress which may become prevalent in certain societies. It is at a much deeper level. It comes from what I call a “sin culture” vs. a “shame culture.” We in the West abide by what can be termed the “sin culture,” meaning the difference between right and wrong is inherently understood by each individual in his or her own way and to do wrong is to commit “sin.” People who live within a “sin culture” typically abide by laws and respect human life/dignity simply because they have come to believe it is the right thing to do. These people will debate whether or not they would run a stop light in the middle of nowhere with no one around to see them do it.
On the other hand, in a “shame culture” like that of most Arab and Persian communities in the Middle East, right and wrong is decided upon by how it affects your community’s or your family’s honor. If a man robs another man, it is not considered wrong unless it affects the honor of the robber’s family; i.e. if the robber is caught and found guilty. For a better example consider this, it is forbidden in Islam to drink alcohol, yet many Muslims keep liquor stored in a private place within their homes. The logic behind it is this: it is forbidden, but if no one knows then they can’t chastise me for doing such things. I once visited a refugee camp in the West Bank during the Islamic month of Ramadan (a month when Muslims don’t eat, drink, or smoke during the daylight hours), our PFLP “tour guides” yelled at one of my friends for lighting up a cigarette during the tour and told him to immediately put it out; however, once we were inside the restaurant to have coffee these guides asked him for a cigarette and continued to smoke three a piece during our conversation. You see, smoking during Ramadan is forbidden, but only if other Muslims see you do it. For them to smoke in front of us non-Muslims indoors was no big deal despite being against their religious laws. There is no shaming their names or their families because only other Muslims can accuse them of wrongdoing.
If you really think about this it means that most things we would consider “wrong” are to people in the Middle East wrong only if they get caught. I won’t go so far as to say that stealing, raping, assaulting, and killing are in some ways “okay” as long as you don’t get caught, but an argument could be made about these concepts in a certain tribal contexts (reference honor killings and blood feuds for examples of when murder is “okay”). Rational? I would then ask, rational by whose standards? Because to them, this is rational; to us, it isn’t. But to them, our way of doing things is less rational than theirs. We cannot righteously hold ourselves above them because they live this way, we must attempt to understand them.
So after considering these things, would it be so difficult to consider the possibility that Arab or Islamic peoples think and act differently than we do and that maybe it is feasible for a country like Iran to actually use nuclear weapons should they possess them? As scary of a thought as this may be, it is one that we should consider when discussing such topics. Maybe they will and maybe they won’t, but don’t argue for the “rationality” of these people before you ask yourself “by whose standards” first. Do not rule out the possibility of these people using such tactics, especially Iran given their worship of martyrdom. Assured self-destruction during a retaliatory nuclear strike would only serve the desires of some people (like Ahmadinejad) in Iran who believe such an event will bring about the Apocalypse and the return of the Messiah. But again, I am not claiming that this will happen, I simply refuse to rule it out as a possibility and neither should you.
As has already been argued, a “way forward” in Iraq is more important to debate than the mistakes of the past. But let us step outside the framework of daily headlines and CNN specials about Iraq and attempt an interpretation of what is really happening there and what is at stake.
What is happening?
What is finally revealing itself to the world, but is not yet fully comprehended, is that Iraq is a divided country. When a headline is delivered in a way which depicts consistent infighting among different groups of Iraqis, or a so-called ceasefire is called, whether by Sunnis, Shi’is, or Kurds, it often fails to mention that this was common even before 2003. The Kurds have been used frequently by both Iraq and Iran to combat the other in an attempt to undermine and weaken each other’s regimes over the past century; the Shia of southern Iraq were also called upon by Iranian clerics to rise up against Iraq, and to the chagrin of Iran they did the opposite and instead cited their ethnically Arab ties to the Iraqi state as the reasons for repelling the Persian invaders. However, by calling upon the “Shia” groups, Iran successfully distinguished that group from others within Iraq and made them a target of a despotically paranoid dictator who then acted to crush them, which in turn caused them to rise up and attack the regime just as Iran wanted in the first place.
What is happening today is a result of two forces: the fractious tribal nature of Iraqi society, and the disenfranchising power of modernity on a “backward” country.
To form a unity government in Iraq it must incorporate three large and very different groups: the Sunnis, the Shi’is, and the Kurds. Each group has its own legitimate arguments for control of Iraq. Each group has a stake in the survival of Iraq. But each group refuses to work very closely with any of the others for various historical reasons. Iraq has a pendulum-like history of strong and weak central governments. Dating back to the Mandate period, the Iraqi state was created on a two-tiered system of governance. On one hand was the central government; on the other was the tribal sheikh. The hastily thrown-together state created during the Mandates of the early 20th century was based on the false assumption that the tribal sheikhs had real authority over their tribes (“tribe” being a very loosely defined entity in itself). As was realized back then, the central government at the time was very weak and unable to impose any control on the restless and well-armed rural population. As a result, the central government’s main purpose was to create a national army which could then back up with firepower the words of the tribal sheikhs who imposed their authority over the rural populace (for a parallel, remember that the US mission in Iraq today is being redefined so that it provides “security” for the country in the form of police and military training).
This was all in theory. In practice the sheikhs had little authority without the despotic power of a central, or foreign, military. So with the coming of a strong central government, the tribes and tribal leaders submitted to the force of the elite in exchange for political appointments. The primary problem was that a government could only remain strong with a strong military, but in the Middle East a strong military is a very serious threat to the regime itself (especially seeing as how every regime in Iraq before and including Saddam’s came to power on the back of a military coup). To keep the military unified and its attention diverted elsewhere, Iraq instigated war after war with its neighbors and its own population which ultimately weakened the military and hence the central government almost to the point of no return. (this author realizes that this is a simplifying and reductionist view, but is maintaining brevity for better coherence).
In the fluctuation away from strong central government, the tribes, which had acted as a safety net for the population from Saddam’s brutality, re-emerged as a guiding force in the rural countryside of Iraq. Saddam, seeing this internal weakness, then began to rely on the tribes in place of a faltering system of strong central government. But only those tribes who pledged allegiance to him were relied upon; making some tribes “Ba’thists” and others “Opponents.” “Opponents” in Iraq were often the rebellious Kurdish or Shia groups. These groups were typically hunted and killed by the regime. If they felt substantially threatened, they fled the country; usually to Iran.
So with the fall of Saddam, you had two groups from which to pick a new government: former Ba’thists and exiles returning from the West and/or Iran. Neither of these options is acceptable to the average Iraqi citizen who prefers someone who stayed in the country to resist Saddam, and shared in the misery of the Saddam years. This means those in Iraq who have any political aspirations are generally those who fit into the two categories of people who the Iraqis would prefer to not rule the country.
The other main issue facing Iraq is the force of modernity. To build a military machine, Saddam had to speed up the industrialization of his country. Land reforms and industrialization policies forced rural citizens to move to the cities and work in factories. As more military equipment was purchased and more wars were fought, more and more Iraqis were employed by the government or the military, both of which grew exponentially under Saddam. When Saddam shifted back to the forces of tribalism he discovered the tribes were but a shell of their former selves and lacked any real coherence. By then fictively “creating” tribes, and hiring them within the government, the bureaucracy of the state, which was enormous by that time, experienced a large shift away from normal functions and took on a tribal flavor causing wider nepotism and reallocation of manpower. What resulted was mass unemployment of varying sections of society.
Today, the Coalition forces face two main problems. The first is whether or not the tribal sheikhs who are currently being relied on are really as powerful as initially thought, or whether they are simply the falsely “created” tribal leaders of Saddam Hussein (what Iraqi expert Charles Tripp labels “elements of Saddam’s shadow state”). The second is the social conditions created by a large chunk of the country’s population being under the age of 35 and unemployed. This is primarily due to the fact that these young men were steadily rising in their positions under Saddam Hussein by serving in his military or giant bureaucracy throughout the 23 years of war and conflict he symbolized, and now cannot get a job through anything more than their tribal affiliations, which are weak and ill-defined at best.
What is at Stake?
As I see it, three things are at stake. One is the credibility of the American role in international politics. The second is the stability of the Middle East. The third is the threat of a rapid rise in international Islamist terrorism. I’ll keep this brief.
1. Since the end of the Cold War America has attempted to redefine the nature of its power and how best to use it. Forgetting the humanitarian success in regards to an internationally accepted view of human rights and genocide, the US has largely failed, albeit subjectively, in most endeavors undertaken since 1991. Operation Iraqi Freedom was the pinnacle of these policies. Somalia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Haiti were all attempts to re-order America’s position, but Iraq is the quagmire deep enough to really affect a change in attitude. When this conflict is concluded, whether through early withdrawal or the creation of a stable country, America will have more clearly defined its role in international affairs. Period.
2. An early withdrawal will result in civil war and failure. A resumption of the occupation will inevitably be compared to Vietnam and force said withdrawal. Without the support of Iraq’s neighbors, without internal stability, and, controversially, without an American military presence, the Middle East could potentially erupt into a wider conflict. With Kurdish separatism, fears of a Shi’i uprising and Iranian takeover in the Gulf, Turkish aggression, elusive peace in Israel-Palestine, aging monarchs in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and a catastrophic refugee problem, it is hard to envision World War III starting in any region besides the Middle East.
3. With instability comes unemployment. With unemployment comes dissatisfaction with government, which leads to a delegitimizing of government and either a government crack-down or a civil revolt. These are seeds which contribute to religious fundamentalism and create rapid increases in the success of terrorist and insurgent recruitment drives. Paradoxically, the War on Terror may potentially create more instability by weakening the governments which hold sway over their populations by asking, or allowing, them to crack down on those groups which hold the power to overthrow or assassinate them if pushed too far by government violations of their human rights.
What can be done?
You can’t know where you’re going, until you know where you’ve been. Historical understandings offer a look into the present, and give you the ability to prepare for the future. These are simple platitudes that were ignored when the Americans entered Iraq. To redefine the “way forward” certain policies need to be revamped. These are enumerated briefly below:
1. Without intimate knowledge of the people whom a political or foreign service officer is working with, he or she cannot accurately advise policy. Extending the service time of diplomats and advisors to at least two years would be required for them to learn the language of the local populace and also compile the necessary census and population data needed to understand the intricacies of such a complex and fractious society.
2. The borders of the country must be secured. US troop levels would have to be increased to monstrous proportions to do this. This is not politically possible at the current time, but if the US is serious about making Iraq secure, this may be something worth investing in.
3. Iraq’s neighbors must be engaged and asked to invest in the survival and stability of Iraq. If I am not mistaken this step has already been addressed by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, among others, in the recently televised hearings.
4. Understand that by propping up tribal groupings and militias, seeds are being sewn to tear Iraq apart from the inside. Self-interested sheikhs and religious leaders divide the country along tribal and religious lines in a country already rife with both. A focus on the nationalistic character of Iraqis needs to be bolstered by weakening the institution of the tribal sheikh and educating people away from the irrationality of certain religious leaders who call for martyrdom and insurgency. An Iraq created on the foundation of ethnic and religious lines is bound to fight a civil war (parallel this with Lebanon).
5. Point four cannot be accomplished without a strong internal economy, low unemployment, and a stable currency. Without these things terrorist organizations will be increasingly successful in finding disaffected youth to join their ranks, and the society will be ever more resentful at the occupation. Without making clear headway in this arena, the Americans will undoubted find themselves facing the same political concerns as they did in Vietnam where the extent of actions taken did not necessarily have an impact on what eventually happened. Local businessmen and land-owners should be given support so they can establish their businesses and expand their operations to employ more Iraqis and boost the infrastructure of the country as well as give Iraqis a stake in the stability of their neighborhoods. Politics are implemented at the local, not national or international, level.
