-Caveat Lector- Arab News SAUDI ARABIA'S FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE DAILY http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=24729
War Spawns New Arab Nationalist Mood, Pride Reuters Published on Friday, April 04, 2003 CAIRO, 4 April 2003 — A new mood of Arab nationalism, fusing pan-Arab and Islamic themes, is sweeping the Middle East in reaction to the US-led war on Iraq, denounced by many Arabs as a new colonial invasion. Millions of Arabs are taking pride in Iraqi resistance against overwhelming odds, and some are venting anger at their own governments, seen as impotent to prevent or collaborating with the Anglo-American attack on an Arab, Muslim nation. “The Iraqi resistance has liberated the Arab world from a very mundane self-image,” said Mohammed Saied of Cairo’s Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies. “It has rehabilitated some pride and dignity after three or four decades in which self-confidence in the region has been completely destroyed,” he told Reuters. The nationalist rhetoric pouring out of demonstrations, editorials, public appeals and petitions, unites pan-Arabist and Islamist discourse in an unstable mixture that is making some Arab governments increasingly nervous. But whether it will lead to real political change in the Arab world or subside once the conflict ends remains to be seen. In Egypt, Lebanon and elsewhere, portraits of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, a pan- Arab nationalist hero of the 1950s and 1960s, have reappeared in anti-war protests. Nasserite slogans and songs are enjoying a modest revival. An “Initiative for a New Arab Nationalism” signed by several Egyptian non- government organizations links calls on Arab governments to take practical steps against “American aggression” with bold demands for domestic reform. “It has become imperative now that these forces propose a new Arab nationalist project that will take into consideration the reasons and causes of this weakness, defeat and impotence that we lived through for many years,” the appeal said. Echoing a similar call by 19 leading judges and jurists, it called for “thorough constitutional, political and legal reforms in our lands and modernization of the social structures”. Analysts say that if the war lasts and is followed by prolonged US rule in Iraq, a more organized anti-war movement could coalesce to press for political change. Omnipresent television images of civilian Iraqi casualties, the bombing of Baghdad and US troops raising the Stars and Stripes flag in the captured city of Umm Qasr have politicized many Arabs, awakened from apathy and torpor. While many have long abhorred Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi resistance against what is widely perceived as American imperialism has made him a street hero. “Before the war, there was a sense of resignation and impotence in the Arab world,” said Mustafa Hamarneh of the University of Jordan in Amman. “Now there is pride in Iraqi resistance ... and anger at their own governments, who are seen to be either sitting on the fence or collaborating with the United States,” he said. Jordan’s King Abdallah, who has allowed US special forces to operate from his country, felt obliged to condemn the war for the first time on Wednesday as an “invasion” and called Iraqi victims “martyrs” in response to mounting domestic pressure. Pan-Arab nationalism is widely regarded as having been in terminal decline since Israel defeated Arab armies in six days in the 1967 Middle East War, a humiliation that led many Arabs to turn to Islamist ideology or retreat into apathy. Egyptian civil rights campaigner Saadeddin Ibrahim said the Iraq war was having the reverse effect. “In 1967, three Arab countries were defeated in six days without a fight. Now it’s the exact opposite. Tiny Iraq is standing up to three big powers, not for six days but now for two weeks. This, added to the Palestinian uprising, added to Hezbollah’s resistance in southern Lebanon, is creating a cumulative, collective sense of Arab pride and empowerment.” Saddam has sought to harness Islamic and Arab nationalist sentiment, peppering recent speeches with quotations from the Qur’an and recalling historic Arab battles against invaders. Despite his secular, Socialist, Baathist background, this talk resonates with many in the wider Islamic world from Rabat to Jakarta who see the war as a violation of a Muslim land. Islamic activists in turn have struck a more nationalist tone. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah, has emphasized the anti-colonial nationalist nature of Iraq’s struggle. Both nationalists and Islamists have volunteered to fight in Iraq against the US and British forces. But whether this “marriage of convenience”, as one secular Arab academic called it, between nationalists and Islamists will endure beyond the war seems doubtful. Copyright © 2003 ArabNews All Rights Reserved. Forwarded for your information. 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