In Focus: History's clearing house Galal Nassar presents an overview of four decades of disaster For the past four decades the Arab world has experienced an avalanche of traumas. Every crisis is followed by another, each catastrophe something worse. I will not tackle all of those traumas, but I wish to focus on some of the turning points of the last four decades. The first was the 1967 defeat. This was the trauma that discredited so-called "progressive" Arab regimes and the region off on a course of erosion and decay. The Arab world has never been the same again. After the 1967 defeat the role of the state dwindled, allowing for the rise of political Islam and various extreme religious movements. Terrorism spread throughout most Arab countries. Before the defeat, Palestine was the primary Arab issue. After the defeat other problems started to appear: Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, the Western Sahara, the Kurds in Iraq, inter-Palestinian conflicts, sectarianism, and religious extremism. The list is long, and likely to grow yet longer. The second turning point was former president Anwar El-Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977. The visit was unprecedented, unjustified and ill-conceived. The visit was symbolic and had grave implications for the region as a whole. The aim of Sadat's initiative was to launch a period of peace and bring war to an end. But in the three decades that have followed the situation has got worse. The region is now home to more violence and wars than ever before, and Sadat himself was one of the early victims of the violence. He wanted his visit to be symbolic and so he went to Jerusalem without negotiations, pre- conditions, or third party guarantees. This gave Israel the impression that Sadat, president of the largest Arab country, was awarding it a clean bill of health. The visit suggested that the Arabs were the party that had caused the hostilities and started wars. Why else would the Arabs offer this voluntary and unconditional initiative? Why would they go out of their way to persuade Israel to end the war and engage in peace? Israel viewed Sadat's initiative as a sign of weakness, and every Arab concession that came afterwards lent credence to such a view. Israel's policy, as a result, became more intransigent, and its appetite for war and expansion grew ever more rapacious. Since Sadat's initiative peace has been a low priority for Israel. The visit to Jerusalem gave Israel something it always wanted. It removed Egypt from the equation. The 1979 Camp David accords tilted the regional balance in favour of the Jewish state. It was at Camp David and not in Madrid that what we now call the peace process was launched. It is a process that has singularly failed to bring peace; rather, it furnished Israel with an alibi for expansion and war. The third turning point was Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, when the Israeli army -- for the first time -- besieged an Arab capital for three months. The invasion came after the Camp David accords and must be seen as one of its consequences. It was the first successful confirmation of the weakness and degradation of the Arab side. A fourth turning point arrived with the Iraq-Iran war, an eight-year marathon of destruction and mayhem that began in 1980. Then came Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, followed by the 1991 US-led war to liberate Kuwait. Between the Iraq-Iran war and the war to liberate Kuwait divisions in the Arab world widened, the Palestinian issue faded, religious extremism grew and terrorism emerged as a long-running plague. Still worse was to come. In 2003 the US invaded and occupied Iraq, setting in motion a saga of bloodshed, sectarian mayhem, ethnic rivalries and a seemingly endless nightmare. After five years of bloodshed the situation continues to deteriorate. A demonic process is in motion, and the region has entered a dark tunnel with no end in sight. Iraq, nightmarish as it is, epitomises the plight of a region in decline. Curiously enough Arab countries seem unable to understand their dismal situation, let alone find a way to escape. They are unwilling to face reality and refuse to introduce much-needed reforms. Instead they bide their time, hoping for the best. The vacuum left by the steady retreat of the state had to be filled, and soon enough Islamist movements and terrorist organisations stepped in to fill the void, offering themselves as alternatives to existing governments. Meanwhile, foreign powers began intruding more on the region, trespassing borders, interfering in its affairs, twisting its fate to suit their own purposes. The Arab world is becoming history's clearing house. It is a place where change happens so quickly it can no longer be fully understood, where one time taboos become commonplace, where dreams are shattered and no boundary is beyond trespass. Our countries are no longer secure, our parties are decaying, our sects are at war, and doctrines once thought relegated to the past again rear their heads, ready for a comeback. Tribes are reorganising, clans are setting up militias and everyone now has a satellite station or website to propagate their views. From Palestine to Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, and Lebanon, the region is passing through a living hell.
