Many hearts in the Arab world had two occasions to rejoice during the past 10 days. Policymakers, analysts and journalists cheered when US President Barack Obama announced his decision to dispatch his airplanes to bomb specific targets in northern Iraq. As they saw it, the announcement signalled that the US had reverted to its policies of military intervention in order to deal with the intractable problems of the Middle East. Obama revived their hopes that he was backtracking on his policy of prioritising uses of soft power and refraining from recourse to violent and costly action to carry out US foreign policy. Washington appeared to have abandoned its doctrine of turning inward in order to give greater focus to rebuilding the homeland. The second occasion that some strata of Arab and Middle Eastern political elites thrilled with joy occurred with the spreading conviction that, finally, the opportunity has come for the west to learn that the most serious problem in the Middle East region is not the Palestinian question, nor will it ever be from now on. Nor is it the Sunni-Shia conflict, which likewise will never again resurface as the most serious problem, contrary to many strategic and academic forecasts. The greatest threat is the jihadist advance, in the form of savage hordes, against towns and cities steeped in thousands of years of civilisation and inhabited by people who wish only to live in peace. The US's sudden return to the region and the frenzied communications taking place between Arab and regional capitals affirms that this threat is being recognised. I do not underestimate the sound waves emanating from these two joys/opportunities. In fact, I urge all alert and astute specialists and policymakers to take extraordinary pains to read the future through their frequencies. As I see it, the two joys — the thrill at the US return and the delight in the demotion of the Palestinian cause among Middle Eastern concerns — underscore the appalling inaction that has crippled Arab governments as well as the governments of Tehran and Ankara. It was infuriating and distressing to see how the sense of impotence hit twice as hard this time. Still, it is understandable, especially after the malaise had taken root and spread in the Arab soul during the Syrian crisis. Arab countries, Turkey, Iran, Europe, the US and Russia all proved unable to halt the disintegration of Syria. As well, all of these parties failed to solve the crisis of government and national integration in Iraq; then they failed to save the people of Gaza from the massacre that Israel was set on unleashing against them and their government. After the Arabs and others failed to halt the aggression against Gaza, they failed to protect the army of Iraq during its first confrontation with jihadist forces advancing toward Baghdad from northern Iraq and eastern Syria, even though the jihadists had made no secret of their preparations for this assault. The failure is ultimately and essentially Arab, but it is also Iranian, Turkish and international. It is fundamentally and ultimately Arab because all efforts on the part of non-Arabs ran aground on the shoals of Arab inaction, whether that inaction took the form of personal disputes between Arab rulers, government corruption, and haphazard economic planning and inter-Arab trade, or juvenile games of one-upmanship and bickering between ruling regimes. And part of that inaction is the absence of a culture of collective struggle and the lack of a sense of a shared fate. The solution — or solutions — to the problems of the region will not come from outside. This face has begun to sink into the Arab political consciousness. The international community had tried its luck and failed. All that the west has gained from its experience in the region is embarrassment at the exposure of its ill intent, rotten planning, muddled policies and incompetence, such was the sorry state of Arab society following the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, South Lebanon and the hotspots of the Arab Spring, whether in Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt or Yemen. There is hope, which I share and accord a good degree of importance to, that the various Arab factions, sects and parties are on the verge of realising that the advancing danger will not discriminate between this side or that. I imagine that neither side has ever seen a comparable peril in our contemporary history. In fact, I am almost certain that the states or societies that once funded these extremist jihadist movements spreading fear across the borders are now repenting. A former US ambassador to Baghdad has said that the jihadist hordes will not stop at the borders of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. A Qatari official has accused the Saudis of funding the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria. That official has apparently forgotten the role Qatar played in funding, directing and protecting such groups. I imagine that, just like us, he does not know what Qatari national interest could justify that role. In all events, what I do know from friends here and there is that those governments and groups that lit the fuse of jihadist extremism 30 or 40 years ago, and that continued to fuel it with money, equipment and protection until very recently, are currently experiencing “divisions” in their ruling coalitions over whether to continue that support, and over which party precisely was responsible for the policy and its impact on their country's security and future stability. While it was once possible for individual Arab countries to rely on their own forces to protect their borders, it is no longer the case. Nor will it ever be so again. In spite of the abovementioned announcement by Obama and the operations currently under way to save the lives of thousands of people from minority communities in northern Iraq, neither the US nor any other international power will intervene rapidly and powerfully to halt a belligerent advance against any Arab country in the near future. To be totally frank, I do not believe that forces from Pakistan or from Egypt can permanently halt the jihadist advance against the borders of this country, or any nation in the Arab world. No rapid deployment can stop a war that was designed to be protracted, the plans for which call for jihadists to massacre any children that lie in their path, to rape uncountable numbers of women, and to destroy people's homes and all edifices of civilisation and science. To my knowledge, no Arab army has the expertise or ferocity to inflict a decisive victory against such warriors. At the same time, no Arab army has the luxury to abandon the territory, borders and wealth of its own country for what would probably turn out to be an extensive period to help out another Arab army with its own leadership and different training. Every Arab border, without exception, is threatened by the hordes of suicide bombers. Targets are being identified at this moment. The opportunity is at hand for the Arab community and some or all of its neighbours, should they so desire, to join forces. Together they can draw up the necessary plans, create a joint leadership, marshal their resources and mobilise their armies and peoples. The opportunity exists today because they are all more afraid than they have ever been before. The writer is a political analyst and director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
