The Arab problem: The fractal solution

It's all the rage nowadays: Sykes-Picot borders must go. Setting aside for a moment that Sykes-Picot is not the only agreement responsible for current Arab borders, the ongoing thesis is that the borders and the very definition of Arab states is an artificial construct of colonialism. And that thus, the borders and the states must be destroyed and reconstructed. ThIis is happening in light of the Arab Spring revolutions and their truest incarnation in 2014: The Jihadi Spring. But this argument is flimsy, self contradictory, doesn't stand internal tests or comparisons with the rest of mankind, and doesn't produce a sustainable model for the development of the Arab world. At its essence, the current obsession with Sykes-Picot stems from an inability or unwillingness to face a more fundamental and critical question that has to do with the very way Muslims define Islam.

A first clue to the bullshit consistency of the argument against traditional Arab borders is that it is championed by two totally unrelated groups for two completely contradictory sets of reasons. First, there are the Western leftist and neo-con neo-orientalists with their "better understanding of what Arabs need than Arabs themselves." This set believes that current Arab borders are wrong and must be redrawn because the states that constitute the Arab world are not nation states and have no defining identity, and because every state includes some degree of ethnic, and more critically, sectarian diversity. The theory goes if the borders are redrawn and new statelets created, then ethnically and religiously pure entities can be created in the Middle East and everyone will live happily ever after. Also, as a perk, this gives the existence of Israel as a purely Jewish state a reprieve from the apartheid label and makes ethnic cleansing of Palestinians much easier. ISIL and Al-Qaeda are the other group of people who agree that the borders and national entities are an artificial construct. But they don't want to redraw the borders and create new national identities. They want to erase the borders and obliterate all national identities. Both groups of people believe that their brilliant redrawings will bring the Middle East closer to its conditions before colonialism and thus guarantee harmony and stability. Never mind that neither vision is close to pre-colonialist realities, which were never for any significant length of time stable or harmonious.

I am going to call bullshit on the argument for many reasons. One reason is that this has already been tried. One excellent example is Lebanon which was designed to be the Christian homeland in greater Syria. Lebanon today is a minority Christian nation, the largest sect in Lebanon is Shiites, and the majority of people are Muslim. Lebanon has had a civil war in which all denominations of Christians, sects of Muslims, heresies, neighbours, and world powers found themselves allied at one point or another with every single entity in the war. The war had objectives that changed with time, but they included the brilliant solution of partitioning and redrawing the map of Lebanon to create a Maronite Christian republic on an area smaller than Lichtenstein, which owing to its sectarian purity would live peacefully and harmoniously. How is this partitioning and map redrawing process supposed to end? Will the Arab states be divided, redivided, and redivided still in a recurrent fractal loop of insanity till every street is a national entity?

But let's assume for a second that you do manage to create sufficiently pure blocks of land through genocide, mass transfer, and ethnic cleansing. Would that work? One good example, even if it is not Arab is Turkey. Turkey is nearly 100% Muslim within its borders, to achieve this they had to overcome the minor obstacle of obliterating the Armenian population from their ancestral homeland through a minor scuffle known as the Armenian genocide. And it worked. The whole area between Istanbul and the oil fields in Baku became Muslim as Turkey desired. But it didn't really work, Turkey has been fighting a separatist war in its southeast with Kurds, because assuming you have achieved the necessary level of homogeneity to avoid conflict never works in the Mideast.

But again, lets assume that we manage to create absolutely pure Bantustans across the region which are ethnically and religiously pure. Does anyone seriously think that they will not go to war with each other? What then? War for unification followed by more wars for partitioning?

Besides, one of the most critical components of the map redrawing argument is that Arab national entities are fake and artificial. This is patently untrue. On the one hand some Arab countries not only are nation states, they define nation state. Egypt is a prime example, but Morocco and Yemen are not far behind. But even rather modern entities such as the emirates have managed to create a very strong national identity that is recognisable across the Arab world. In almost all countries, the culture and dialect of the capital has had a significant influence within the borders of the country, and a national culture that is more uniform than in many European countries grew. I can't see how Syria is less well defined than Germany or how Algeria is more fake than Spain. A few countries truly have a problem with finding their definition, but I can't think of any specific examples except Sudan and Lebanon.

The real solution for the Arab problem is not to keep breaking it down and redrawing its borders to try to reach an unreachable equilibrium of pure states. The solution is for the Arab world to accept some of the basic concepts that the rest of humanity has chosen to accept. First, Arabs must learn that people have the right to believe, say, and read what they want. Second, that it is not OK to kill each other over a question of dynastic succession 1500 years ago. Third that the state has to be neutral to people's beliefs. In short Arabs must accept secularism and liberalism. The apologetic leftist orientalist argument that Arabs are "special" and can't be secular and liberal is just an insulting way to encourage Arabs to dig deeper.

To be more specific, it's not Arabs who need to accept this, it's Arab Muslims. It's not Muslims, it's Arab Muslims. Because one problem of Arab Muslims is that they believe in "true Islam" and they also believe very strongly in fighting heresy and "defending Islam". Either or both of the two concepts must go. Muslims, all Muslims, believe that there is a prescribed specific form of Islam that is "true" and pure. Whether said Muslims are secular, Jihadi, mainstream, Sunni, or Shiia, they all believe in a true Islam. And whether the Muslim thinks he is practicing this form of true Islam or not, Muslims mostly believe that they have to believe in this true Islam, and that all the other Muslims who believe in the other forms of Islam are criminal because they are tarnishing the true Islam. And that it is the duty of the Muslim community to fight these heretic criminals. So either Muslims have to accept that there are many different forms of Islam, none of which is more true than the others (and there is nothing in Islamic heritage to stand against this), or they can continue to call each other apostates and heretics but refrain from killing each other for it. 

Conspiracy theory, not hypothesis

Egyptians are renowned for their conspiracy theories. This is the object of derision and disinterested brushing aside by western journalists and mideast experts. As is always the case, the new breed of Egyptian activists copies their western Twitter friends' every reaction, and the average Egyptian conspiracy theory only earns their scorn and distaste for the ignorant paranoid Egyptian masses. Well, admittedly many Egyptian conspiracy theories are way to elaborate, have way too many moving parts, and are readily explained by much simpler, much more evident answers. However, a conspiracy theory has been developing in Egypt since the outbreak of the Arab Spring and has only gathered more steam with the passage of time. This theory has its empirical evidence, has a theoretical derivation, and actually makes sense. This sets it apart from your average Cairo taxi driver rumour. This is more than just a laughable hypothesis.

First the observations, and they are legion:

• Large but by no means unprecedented street protests came out against Hosny Mubarak in January 2011. While Mubarak was trying to navigate a solution that would take him out of the picture in an orderly manner that would guarantee only average MB gains and a retainment of the Egyptian state, the US administration came out with an unexpected and unprecedented sharp position: They demanded Mubarak step down NOW. It is a well known assumption even among the stoutest revolutionary in Egypt that if a free referendum were held on whether or not Mubarak should leave immediately, the majority of Egyptians would've voted no. So in effect, the US assumed that street protests whose size could not be accurately gauged represented the Egyptian public at large and proceeded from there.
• In 2012, Mohammed Morsi was voted in by 13 million people in a runoff round in an election where turnout was 26 million. The elections took place in conditions where MB members occupied public places, clearly and publicly declaring they would burn down the country if their candidate did not win. Entire polling stations in Upper Egypt saw no turnout due to their Christian population being publicly threatened with death if they voted. Private TV stations all cowered to the terror of the MB and revolutionaries alike and accepted the narrative that those who voted for Shafik instead of the MB were traitors to the martyrs' blood. The main headquarter of the only non-Islamist contender's campaign was burnt down. The Carter foundation judged that the elections were run in a democratic fashion and that voting was fair and free!
• In 2013, the MB hurriedly passed a new constitution through a committee that was entirely Islamist by the time voting happened. The new constitution included provisions for child rape, child labour, and refused to recognise international agreements on the equality of women and men. The constitution included a clause establishing a new religious branch of the government responsible for enforcing a view of Shariia that is Sunni and Wahabi. The constitution was accepted in referendum by 10 million people in a turnout of 16 million people. The vote happened in an environment where Islamists occupied public places, surrounded the constitutional court, and established a base camp outside the media city where they attacked any media person they thought was not pro-MB enough. The US recognised the constitution as the will of the Egyptian people. The ambassador of the US in Cairo said that the MB won every vote fair and square.
• In late 2012 and early 2013 street protests that match those of 2011 came out against Mohammed Morsi, the MB president. The protests were due to a massive power grab by Morsi that consolidated all three branches of power in his person. The response from the US was muted to non-existent. The best that could be extracted from the Obama administration through his ambassador was a call for parliamentary elections. This matched exactly the position of the MB, who called for parliamentary elections in the presence of unprecedented gerrymandering aiming at erasing all non-Islamist presence. The US wanted non-Islamist parties to participate in elections where a single district included enclaves tens of kilometres apart, just to ensure that Christian or liberal neighbourhoods of Cairo were represented by bearded males.
• In mid 2013, truly unprecedented protests flooded Egypt against the MB. The numbers far dwarfed the number of people who came out against Mubarak in 2011. The demographics were also stunning. Unlike the urban youth dominated 2011 protests, 2013 saw people of all ages and in all geographical locations moving against the MB. People were shot dead by the MB in multiple locations for protesting against them, but the numbers didn't dwindle. Obama talked about how Morsi should talk to the opposition about parliamentary elections, then he proceeded to talk about how sexual harassment was rampant unlike 2011. Which is really strange. In 2011, not only was sexual assault rampant in the streets, but also summary executions of dozens of innocents who were killed by popular committees because they "looked like baltageyya". This is a well established fact now, and it is also well established that people didn't share the information at the time to keep the face of the revolution that the world saw pure. So Obama talked about nurses and students and Muslims and Christians in the square after January 2011, but he only considered sexual harassment in 2013. Whitewashing at its best.
• In less than ideal conditions, but in much better conditions than 2013, 20 million Egyptians passed the constitution of 2014, which provided many more guarantees to basic rights than the MB constitution. The Obama administration did not deign to entertain the event.
• In less than ideal conditions, but in substantially better conditions than 2012, 23 million people out of 25 million people voted for Sisi as president under the most internationally observed and transparent conditions in the history of Egyptian ballots. The US media talked about vote rigging and how grotesque the show was. Carter thought it was so undemocratic he would faint.

Second the region, and it is screwed up:

There is no way to understand how Egyptians think the US views Egypt except through an understanding of the region and what has been happening to it since the beginning of the Arab Spring.

• Israel is at its most secure since its establishment. It is surrounded by Jihadi groups, who surprisingly seem to cause Israel little to no bother. But it is steadily getting rid of the components of the post colonial Arab nationalism that have caused Israel headache through their common plight with the developing world. The rise of the Arab Spring Jihadis allows Israel to finally restate the problems of the region as religious and internal problems that lie completely outside its borders.
• Western pundits are pontificating intensely about how the Sykes-Picot borders were an artificial colonial construct. This is western leftist and neocon code for a novel orientalist attitude towards redrawing the borders of the Middle East. And surprisingly, instead of suggesting that perhaps Middle East borders ought not to exist, the suggestion is that the borders should be redrawn, creating multiple small states, each homogenous ethnically and religiously. After which the Middle East would live peacefully ever after. And after which, of course Israel as a Jewish only state would be just the norm.
• Tunisia is the carrot. It is the example. It is what Arabs should aim to be in the new order of things.
• Syria is the terror story, it is the stick, the cautionary tale. If you don't surrender to the flow of the Arab Spring, then an infinite number of factions, all of which Islamist, all of which of increasing savagery and backwardness would be armed and shipped into your country. The atrocities of the old school Arab regimes would be the only allowable topic in international media, while Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra tear through your country, burning churches and chopping heads off. When they are done depopulating entire provinces and turning their populations into refugees, they will start fighting each other and chopping each others' heads off. Just to make sure nobody ever has any hope of returning back to a peaceful home.
• How about if your country isn't religiously diverse like Syria? Easy. If your state is fragile, NATO will bomb any semblance of order into oblivion from the air. Creating a vacuum where even the most homogeneous of societies would be overrun by foreign Al-Qaeda fighters. In other words: Lybia.
• What if I decide to go along? No big deal. You will be abandoned at a critical moment when you are most unready and after you have been stripped of all means of defending yourself and after your country has been partitioned under the guise of federation. Again Al-Qaeda is going to come in, and it is going to screw you up. In other words Iraq.

The Arab Spring is a demonstrably disastrous proposal. Removing the old regimes without any viable alternative, without any principles of secularism or liberalism in society; would lead to much more disastrous scenarios than just status quo. And it just doesn't go away. It gets worse. Iraq is living proof. Imagining that coloured revolutions that worked in Eastern Europe would work in the Middle East is a disastrous miscalculation.

Third the theory, and it frighteningly makes sense:

This is all just too much to be a coincidence. The US has been consistent only in making choices that would destroy the fabric of Arab societies. And this has been going on for two consecutive and supposedly radically different administrations. So a hypothesis forms, and under the weight of the empirical evidence it becomes a full-fledged conspiracy theory of epic proportions.

The theory goes that after 9/11 the US decided that fighting terrorism was futile. Or at least fighting terrorism on home soil wasn't going to work. It was time to move the fight to the terrorists. At first through conventional warfare, and then through "change" and "creative chaos". The theory was that terrorism against the West was a result of Arab angst against the West. Said angst had to be formulated beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict, because US unconditional support for Israel had to remain a constant. Thus, Arab sentiments towards the US were because Arabs saw the US as supporting dictators who were hated locally. Said dictators were seen, by the west, as secular. Thus, the populace at large wanted Islamist rule, and they saw the US as an impediment to this.

So, the US would not only no longer stand in the face of Arab hopes for being ruled by Islamists, it would aid them in achieving this. The old regimes had to go. New regimes had to come in, and they had to be Islamists, and they must be brought in through the semblance of democracy. Colour revolutions would happen, their production would be flawless. The story would be told as a fairy tale. If a popular committee of clean cut revolutionary youth in Heliopolis tied a poor guy from the South to a pole and beat him to death because he looked fishy, that would not be told. If girls were raped in the security vacuum, that would be ignored. If property were stolen and destroyed, Mubarak would be blamed. In the end, the ridiculously orchestrated square is all that anyone would get to see.

The end result if you let the colour revolution go through would be "moderate Islamists" coming into power through elections that Carter would approve. The MB, filling this role were ideal. They were Islamists, they would be able to contain Islamism and localise it at home and stand as a buffer between the west and terrorists. They would be able to protect Israel by buffering it from Hamas. And because they didn't believe in national rights and the historical rights of Palestinians to their land as humans, the MB with Hamas would allow measures like population transfer into Egypt that would lead to centuries of peace without a price for Israel. That is because the MB can sell the struggle with Israel as a Messianic religious war, not a war for independence.

If you don't play along, then international terrorists would be dumped into your country, creating one ISIL or another. Is Germany having trouble with Muslim youth not assimilating? How about they get sent to Syria to burn Nestorian churches? Is France afraid of the radicalisation of its growing Muslim population? Hell, let's send them to play soccer with the heads of Iraqi Shiites.

Arab armies that would play along have to play a role in reshaping the local conflict into a Sunni-Shiia grand war. That's the only viable way to face Iran. If they don't play along, then they, along with their societies will be destroyed.

Fourth, why the theory might be wrong:

It's a frighteningly simple theory. It fits with the facts on the ground with horrific accuracy. It predicts events with devastating fidelity. But it might be wrong.

One assumption that Egyptians consistently make and that consistently leads them to wrong conclusions is that the US is omniscient, infallible, systematic, and smart. The fact that US administrations can be grossly misinformed, over simplistic, and just plain stupid is beyond the imagination of most Egyptians. It is very likely that Obama simply bought the image of January 2011 that he then rehashed because that's what think tanks that he trusted told him. It is likely that he just believed all the bullshit that made his positions so starkly and flagrantly inconsistent between 2011 and 2013 because he was simply fed bullshit.

And this is a fact that Egyptian governments and Egyptian society must understand. The US is still vital for Egypt, and however much the US tries to convince itself otherwise through WSJ editorials, Egypt is indispensable for the US and its importance will become exponentially greater. As the region breaks apart along the lines of Syria and as terrorism from ISIL flows back home, the experience that Egypt gains in the Sinai will become essential. The US must make an effort to admit that its policies and theories in the Middle East have failed disastrously, and it must then try to understand how these policies are now perceived by large sections of Arab society. Arabs must not stop talking to the US. This is going to get much worse, and if it blows it blows in everyone's faces.

القوة الاستقرار الحياة

من ضمن دراسة كبيرة عملتها ناشيونال جيوجرافيك مع كذا مؤسسة قعدت عدد كبير من السنين قدروا يحددوا تاريخ هجرات الإنسان في الكرة الأرضية. وكان من ضمن النتايج مصر. نتايج مصر مكانتش مذهلة وأيدت دراسات تانية أقدم منها عن التكوين الجيني للمصريين. لكن النتيجة كانت مغايرة لما يعتقده المصريين عن أصولهم. النتيجة كانت ان المصريين لم يتغيروا بشكل كبير من أواخر عصر الأسرات الى الوقت الحالي. وان المكونات الجينية للمصريين اتنين أساسيين.

المكون الأول معروف بتغير جيني يرمز لأول خروج للإنسان من افريقيا جنوب الصحراء وده تم عن طريق النيل في فترة كانت فيها الصحراء الكبرى سافانا نتيجة عصر جليدي. الجين ده موجود حاليا في شمال افريقيا واثيوبيا والصومال وأوروبا على المتوسط.

المكون التاني كان مكون شرق أوسطي هاجر لمصر بداية من أواخر العصر الحجري واستمرت الهجرات لغاية نهاية عصر الأسرات وتعتبر هجرات العرب لمصر بعد الاسلام جزء ضئيل من العملية المستمرة دي. الشرق أوسطيين اللي هاجروا في نهاية العصر الحجري جلبوا معاهم مبادئ الزراعة لمصر ومعاها ابتدت الزراعة في الوادي. وبكده تكون مصر مكونة من مزيج أفرو-آسيوي مستقر.

لكن المكون الافريقي في مصر كان مكون رعوي بيرعى الماشية في الصحراء الكبرى قبل ما تجف. ولما جفت الصحراء حصل استقرار حوالين النهر وبدأ الاعتماد على الزراعة. في عهد مينا كان فات قرون على الاستقرار حول النهر وأصبح الرعي مكون ثانوي جدا في عمل المصريين. طبيعة النهر ما ساعدتش على تربية الأبقار اللي بتحتاج مراعي مفتوحة كبيرة. لكن فضلت البقرة والرعي مكون رئيسي في الثقافة المصرية وعشان كده مثلا كانت الالهة الأم تمثل بالبقرة على الرغم من أن الحيوان مش مركزي في الاقتصاد المصري القديم.

ومن ضمن وسواس الحفاظ على التقاليد للمصريين القدماء كانت ثلاث رموز للحكم يحملها الملك كلها من تراث الرعي في الصحراء الغربية وثلاثتها تعبر عن تخيل المصريين القدماء للحكم الرشيد.

واس، القوة:

صولجان الواس هو عصا على رأسها حيوان يشبه حيوان ست. الواس هي رمز للقوة والسيطرة والاطمئنان يمسكها الملك كعلامة على سيطرته على البلاد وقوته وقدرته على فرض النظام والحق في البرين. أصل الصولجان هو عصا الراعي اللي كان بيرعى بيها الماشية ومع الوقت بقى فيه عصاية مخصوصة لرئيس القبيلة بيمسكها غير العصايا العادية بتاعت الرعاة العاديين دلالتها انه راعي للقبيلة بقبولهم لقوته وسلطته.

دچد، الاستقرار:

عامود الضد أو الدچد هو رمز مصري مغرق في القدم يرمز للاستقرار. كان له مكانة مركزية في احتفالات كتير ليها علاقة بالخصوبة والرخاء. الرمز مرتبط بشدة بالاله الشعبي أوزوريس والأسطورة بتقول إن بعد ما تابوت أوزوريس اللي ست حبسه فيه انجرف للبنان، احتضنته شجرة الجميز المقدسة ونمت عليه وخبته. ملك جبيل أخد الشجرة وعمل منها عامود في قصره. إيزيس بالخدعة والسحر والسياسة قدرت تكسب صداقة الملك والملكة وطلبت منهم العامود هدية ومنها قدرت ترجع أوزوريس ملكا للعالم الآخر. لكن أصل حكاية العامود زي أصل حكاية عصا الراعي في الحضارة الأم المنسية ما قبل التاريخ في الصحراء الغربية. عامود الدچد هو رمز للعمود الفقري للثور اللي نتيجة استقراره وثباته بيسمح للثور بالنطح بقوة.

عنخ، الحياة:

تميمة الحياة عنخ كان الملك بيشيلها على الصولجان أو في حلي أو في أشكال كتير متنوعة. العنخ هو أشهر رمز مصري قديم، ومعناه ببساطة ووضوح الحياة. الحياة اللي بيمنحها الاله للناس، الحياة في الروح، الحياة الأبدية. هي المعنى النقي الخالص للحياة. فيه نظريات كتير عن أصل العنخ منين، لكن كم أكتر النظريات المثيرة انه برضه له أصل في الحضارة الأم للرعاة. العنخ هو مقطع في نخاع البقرة، والنخاع عند الحضارات القديمة هو أصل الحياة.