- Article Written By Arvin Niknia, Independent Author
In my previous article, I described the negative aspects of democracy, for which I used Plato’s well-known book, Republic. In my other articles on democracy, I said that a constitutional monarchy is not a democracy because democracy is more acceptable under a republic. Many Western countries mixed democratic elements with homogeneous cultural identity, political autonomy, and religion, creating their representative democracy. Later, the Middle East implemented Western inventions, which were replaced by the American support for dictatorship. I also argued that dictators in the Middle East, Africa, and China, such as Mao Zedong (1893-1976), were a result of British French colonialism.
In this article, I will argue that the decline of the Middle East is a mixture of colonialism, post-colonialism, and the Middle East’s internal conflicts:
The West could achieve better prosperity than the Middle East because it created and maintained stability in Europe. While Western actors such as France and England managed to create instability in the Middle East and Africa with their post-colonial intentions, Western countries maintained their stability and growth. For example, I can mention the first British-American coup in Iran in 1953 (Operation Ajax) and 1979 (the Guadeloupe Conference).
The British ambassador in Tehran hailed Ayatollah Khomeini (1979-1989) and the Iranian revolution. The Iranian revolution was a failure from the start as armed forces carried out violent massacres of opposition groups and protesters. It was inspired by the French Revolution, which was also a failure. It ended in massacres, coups, and dictatorships. The revolution in Iran as an armed struggle was also inspired by Che Guevara, who was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary. After the revolution, instability in the Middle East was reinforced by revolutionary Iran, which wanted to export its revolution. It sparked unrest in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, and other parts of the world. It did not take long for revolutionary Iran to participate in the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Israel had already participated in the civil war. Iran also started shooting at Kuwaiti oil ships when Kuwait supported the revolutionary Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, which caused the US to weaken Iran. The Iranian revolution meant that several Arab countries had to seek military support from the United States, and the United States had to create more military bases in the Middle East. In the short term, the Iranian revolution became a plus for Arab oil countries that could sell their oil while Iranian oil was sanctioned. The US could sell more weapons to the oil countries because they feared the revolutionary Iran. It was also good for Israel, which could make military agreements with Azerbaijan and the Emirates against Iran.
In the long term, it became terrible for all parties because Iran created much instability for the US and Western countries, which already started with terror against the French, who supported Saddam Hussein with weapons. While the whole world could profit from arms sales to Iraq and Iran, the North Korean and Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011), became Iran’s best business partner. The revolutionary Muammar Gaddafi, also due to colonialism, helped many anti-colonial movements in Africa. No wonder he was called the mad dog by the Americans.
During the Arab Spring (2011), Libya was one of the countries that experienced a failed revolution. Countries like Syria and Libya were the ones that experienced the most instability and destruction. Gaddafi had plans to replace the French currency in Africa and bring Africa out of French post-colonialism, which resulted in instability and poverty in Africa. The French were the first to start the illegal wars in Libya together with the other Western countries. The French post-colonialism was supported by Qatar, which showed propaganda images of Libya on the TV channel Al Jazeera. Qatar also supported terrorism in Libya to reinforce instability. As in Syria, the West armed the Libyan anti-regime forces, which resulted in armed conflicts in both Syria and Libya. The result was decades of civil war and poverty. The oil is exported while armed groups kill each other. Over the long term, the civil war meant more boat immigrants to Western countries from Africa, which helped the Western populist anti-immigrant policy.
The Arab Spring did not bring democracy to the Middle East. Only Tunisia got better conditions, while it created only a few political changes in Jordan and Kuwait. The 2008 Gafsa Revolt was Tunisia’s most important social movement since the Bread Revolt in 1984. The difference was that 1984 the UGTT supported the protest, while the 2008 movement was initiated by rank-and-file workers, the unemployed, and their families, with both the UGTT and the regime as targets of protest. The next great wave of protests in Tunisia came in December 2010 after the suicide of Bouazizi. That month, the UGTT leadership began issuing statements opposing the repression of demonstrators. However, they came out in full support of the movement only days before Ben Ali’s demise.
In Algeria and Morocco, housing shortages and poverty were not solved, while in Bahrain and Djibouti, demonstrations were severely crushed. In Bahrain, young activists occupied Pearl Square in the capital of Manama. Security forces violently attacked them at dawn on February 17. The GFBTU supported the protesters by calling a general strike for February 20. The strike was suspended on February 21 after security forces withdrew from the roundabout. When the king requested military assistance from neighboring countries, the federation again called for a general strike. Thousands of workers were struck on March 13–22 as Saudi and mercenary troops using US-supplied weapons occupied Bahrain and brutally suppressed the democracy movement.
The US and the West support the dictatorship in Bahrain so that Iran does not take over and they can continue to get oil from Bahrain. Djibouti has become a strategic location for several countries, including Western countries with bases there. On the other hand, Iran supports the Yemeni Houthi forces, which Iran used first against Saudi Arabia and now against the West and Israel.
After the Arab Spring, Sudan did not become democratic either. This is shown most recently and clearly by the outbreak of fighting in April 2023 in Sudan, where other Arab states have long had interests and influence and where two key players, the UAE and Egypt, are on opposite sides of the factional divide. Egypt did not become more democratic either, and the poor working class did not get a better life. In Tahrir Square, protesters raised the slogan” The Poor First.” The central squares in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez remained occupied throughout July as millions of Egyptians revolted against the SCAF’s vast repressive apparatus and demanded more sweeping democratic changes associated with social justice.
Nevertheless, on July 29, this liberal-left-social Islamist current was overwhelmed by a massive display of hyper-conservative Islamist political strength as the Salafi movement bussed hundreds of thousands of followers from all corners of Egypt to Tahrir Square and routed all other forces by raising provocative and divisive slogans (” Sharia law now!”). Chile’s global neoliberal capitalist model was test-driven after the 1973 coup against democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende. Subsequently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank began installing the model throughout the Global South. There was widespread resistance in the Middle East and North Africa as elsewhere.
The lack of a national organization, leadership, and detailed economic program has allowed personal rivalries and minor differences to weaken Egypt’s independent labor movement. In Syria, the result of decades-long repression of labor unions meant a weak working class that could not stand together. The West armed the activists against Assad’s regime. The French industrial company Lafarge alone launched 13 million euros of terrorism in Syria during the Arab Spring. Russia could not tolerate its Western competitors and asked Iran for help. Iran carried out massacres against the activists and the people with its Hezbollah, Fatemiyoun, and Islamic Jihad militants. Russia is not a good friend of Iran, but it uses Iran to achieve its interests. Russia also uses Iranian drones in Ukraine, while the West sells weapons to Ukraine on credit, and all companies like Blackward are lining up to make money from Ukraine’s reconstruction after the war. The Middle East was evolving towards crony capitalism and corruption. Western sanctions helped the states take over the entire market and even determine the prices; therefore, Western sanctions mostly affected the people of the Middle East and not the dictatorships.
All these internal conflicts in the Middle East are based on creating influence in the region by creating instability. This is because no country in the Middle East respects the borders and sovereignty of other countries, even if they claim to do so. Turkey bombs Kurds in Syria and Iraq. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan create instability in neighboring countries. Qatar houses the most extensive US military base in the Middle East. Diego Garcia is also one of the United States’ strategic bases in the Global South. To understand these conflicts, we need only go back to the” enduring legacies of the colonial regime, which [have] constituted structures that continue as those of the [contemporary] state.” The British-sponsored treaty system after 1853 formalized, stabilized, and policed the system of Dakhala (territorially-based zones of protection) as a normative code of sovereignty, local dynastic precedence, and a marked local social hierarchy fused in a system. The Middle Eastern states use the left-behind British strategy in the Middle East,” share and rule.”
When the nation-states were formed, the Baath Party in Syria and Iraq competed. It worsened with Egyptian Nasserism, which wanted to take over the Arab world with its pan-Arabism. Saudi Arabia could not tolerate the Egyptian hegemony. Later, Palestine fell victim to Arab populism and pan-Arabism, which were only created by Arab countries because they were weakened and not because of Palestine. Palestine created the PLO as Arab countries became more nationalistic and moved away from pan-Arabism. I will write in other articles about how borders were created and why Kurds and Palestinians became victims of populism.
