The world is changing quickly. The Arab region is changing at perhaps an even faster pace. Most of us are focused on comparisons between the pace of change in the world and that in or between regions. In our obsession with quantity and form we forget to ask how. How does the world change and how do regions — especially the Middle East — shift, and toward what state or condition are they shifting? We are also concerned with preparations for a new round in the global war against terrorism. This was the war that US President Barack Obama had thought was over. As was the case in the first round, attention is limited to the creation of an alliance of “the willing” to confront the new terrorists in the same manner as the first — no more, no less. We have yet to ask the following important question: If the US had truly beaten Al-Qaeda and destroyed that organisation's positions, what are we to make of Al-Zawahiri's call to his supporters to move the theatre of their operations to the Indian subcontinent? I doubt I would convince anyone with the argument that he is trying to prove his existence. And how do we explain the Islamic State (IS) and other such manifestations of militant Islamism? I doubt I would convince many with the theory that has taken hold in the West that Arab intelligence agencies invented them to harass Syria's Bashar Al-Assad government, but that they slipped their leashes and turned against their masters. What is clear is that the Arabs are once again readying themselves to participate, under US command, in a new round of a global war we have yet to define with precision, using means that are not sophisticated enough to ensure that we eliminate the phenomenon for good. The UN Security Council convened in New York and issued a statement calling on UN member states to take action to halt logistic, military and financial aid to extremists in Iraq and Syria. Participants at the NATO summit in Cardiff, Wales, decided to support efforts to counter the militants. Arab foreign ministers met in order to discuss the actions necessary in order to confront the IS organisation and to cooperate with all international, regional and local efforts to fight extremist groups. All these international, regional and local decisions indicate support for the plan drawn up by President Obama, announced last Wednesday, with each of us is to undertake our assigned role in that plan. Yet we all know, going by the outcome of the first round in the US-led global war on terrorism, put into effect in Afghanistan and Iraq, that chances are that the second round we are about to embark on will not bring the phenomenon to a definitive end. The new global war on terrorism will not be the end of the world's wars against terrorism and extremism. I say this in the knowledge that we are probably standing on the threshold of a phase of horror, death and displacement more terrifying than anything this region has ever experienced. We know this not just because the abysmal failure of the first round of the global war against terrorism is screaming in our face. We know it because: first, we are still spinning around in that vicious cycle of terrorism and how to deal with it; second, we have yet to appreciate the fact that many things have changed on the ground in the Middle East and beyond during the past 30 years, and that what the US tried to apply in Afghanistan and Iraq may still not work if applied, again, in Iraq today, or Syria, Yemen, Africa, Egypt or elsewhere; and third, we have yet to specify the identity of those for whom we are gathering together, allying and making rescue preparations. Are we (I refer to the US's Arab allies) trying to save the people of Syria? If this is indeed the aim of fighting extremists in Syria, then which of the Syrian factions is our alliance striving to save before all others, or perhaps to the exclusion of all others? Or is the Syrian government the target of the rescue operation? No, this will not be our last round in the war against terrorism, for the reasons I mention above. But there is a fourth reason. We have yet to determine, as any group or party that is preparing to join an alliance that is threatening to wage a global and regional war should do, what we are going to do with ourselves after the war is over — which is to say after the elimination of those fanatical and savage organisations. Are we going to once again submit our peoples and armies to the control of the same ruling forces whose policies and repeated mistakes are the most to blame, in my opinion, for the rise and spread of terrorism? In addition, we have not yet made up our minds as to whether, after the war, we will resume as “nation states”, such as those that arose and lived for many decades before their continued existence began to stir various doubts and prospects. No one can deny that terrorism has become second nature to Arab peoples and governments over the past 30 years. What is curious, however, is that while there have been some serious attempts in some Arab countries to make the transition to democracy, these attempts never progressed to the most important step, which involves shedding all the anti-terrorist laws and restrictions that hamper the transition to democracy. Perhaps those steering the transition did not try to disseminate a climate free of the terrorist condition. For these and other well-known reasons, all attempts at democratisation in the Arab world were doomed to fail, contrary to the case of Latin America and Eastern Europe, where the success rate was much higher. People will say, as they have before, that our circumstances are different and that terrorism is endemic here and will never leave or change. That may be true. But it is equally true that we have never seriously tried to put an end to the ideas and methods of rule under the threat of terrorism. Anti-terrorism laws have continued to serve as the security net for ruling forces, while acting as a perpetual destructive agent in any democratic transformation experience and, simultaneously, as a perpetual defence for mounting extremism and militancy. How can political leaderships reapply plans and methods for fighting terrorism and rounding up religious extremist groups that were applied 30 years ago or under different international and regional circumstances? Those were no ordinary 30 years that I am talking about. They were 30 exceptional years that brought radical change to almost everything. It is not necessary, here, to list all the changes. It is sufficient to refer to the near universal “intellectual consensus” in the world of international relations that the world order is on the verge of falling apart. There is plenty of evidence to this effect, as is indicated in a Q&A forum that engaged five prominent specialists: Thomas Carothers, Lina Khatib, Marwan Muasher, Douglas Paal and Andrew Weiss. Henry Kissinger also comes out heavily in favour of this view in a chapter of his forthcoming book in which he maintains that the Arab regional order has already exceeded its bounds and has entered the phase of disintegration. Prime among the evidence are signs pointing to the likelihood of the collapse of the “nation state” as the basis of the regional order and its stability for more than 70 years. I therefore repeat my conviction that it will be a futile exercise if Obama depends, in his new plan, on an alliance that includes Arab states while ignoring the fundamental transformations that have taken place in this region. These transformations are not solely related to the ordinary individual and his perception of his role and future. They also involve the position of “the state” in the mind of that citizen and in the political arrangements in the majority of countries in the region, and it involves the efficacy and legitimacy of regional institutions, such as the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, in their capacity as institutions of the “old era” or, if you prefer, the “waning era”. Few are those who might have thought about an answer to the following question: Who does this new global campaign against terrorism aim to save and protect? Arabs anxious about their future and those who have taken refuge in the deserts, mountains and fields to escape the tyranny of takfiri and criminal gangs and governments have yet to hear anything that might affirm that this global war against terrorism will support them against the repression and corruption practiced by the powerful cliques that have controlled the lives of the peoples of this region for years, and indeed for decades. Those cliques emerged unscathed from the first round in the war against terrorism while the people emerged the losers and are still the victims of injustice and despotism. Still, it is amazing, at the same time, that many of the members of these cliques in the Arab world harbour grave suspicions that the new global drive against terrorism has, as one of its aims, “the completion of the conspiracy” to dismantle the Arab nation state or, at least, to undermine the prestige of that state. On top of this there is also the deeper and more widespread belief that one of the aims of the new war is to “recall” the forces of moderate Islam — i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood — to assume the reins of government in Arab countries under various guises. After all, that was a consequence of the first round in the war against terrorism. Doubts and suspicions prevail at all levels, from the ordinary Arab individual to the forces that have long controlled governments and power in the Arab world. No sane person in the Arab world expects President Obama to unveil any of the details of the new political map for the Middle East that might be the expected or hoped for as a result of a new and protracted war in the region. At the same time, no sane person in the region can feel assured that the Middle East in general is not headed for fundamental changes. Obama and his aides may have no particular form or map in mind for the new Middle East, although he would not find it difficult to come up with one among his papers if he wanted. Most Arab rulers, or those who remain, might not imagine that anything essential in their countries or their region will change. In all events, they, along with the vast majority of Arab intellectuals and experts on international and regional relations, have yet to dedicate the necessary time and effort to thinking about the shape of the future of their countries and the region in general. The beginnings are not reassuring. When the Arabs decide, in advance and before seeing the details of Obama's plan for a new phase in the global war against terrorism, to support everything that emerges from the Security Council and from the NATO summit, it is very hard to feel assured that Arab officials have thought, or charged people with the task of thinking, about presenting “Arab proposals” on the future of their region and states so that these could be included in Obama's plan. They, like others, are falling into a repetition of the experience of the first round in the war against terrorism, when they participated to their greatest ability in the coalition of the willing without having laid the foundations that would guarantee the stability of their governments when the war was over. Thus, after the war ended, most Arab regimes found themselves exposed to the winds of the Arab Spring. Most of them are aware that they are no longer what they were 10 or 20 years ago. But none of them have the experience or know-how from their relations with the US to “imagine” what they, their countries and the Arab and Islamic region as a whole will be like at the end of a new phase in the global war against terrorism. The writer is a political analyst and director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
