Arab share collective guilt for Iraqi suffering, The Daily Star

Opinion, May 2003 Al-Jazeerah.info

Arab share collective guilt for Iraqi suffering,

The Daily Star, 5/16/03

It is not just bodies that are being dug up at the mass grave near the southern Iraqi town of Mahaweel, and nor is Saddam Hussein alone in being conclusively unmasked as a monster. The truth is that Arab media and Arab governments are also being exposed for the crime of having failed to help stop the madman. Who had a greater responsibility than the Arabs to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” about a regime that massacred its own people by the tens of thousands? The dead are therefore not solely victims of Saddam: They are also victims of an Arab world that abandoned its own.
To be sure, there were frequent “reports” about criminal behavior of various sorts, but the vast majority of them came from Western governments and Western journalists. Their counterparts in the Middle East were exceedingly reticent about discussing the issue, and even when they did they lacked the requisite forcefulness. In Arab terms Saddam was always “unhelpful” and “stubborn,” not “murderous” and “maniacal.” Some were in the pay of the Iraqi regime, but many others were not. Some had reason to fear Saddam’s wrath, but others did not. Why were they so silent?
The argument that Saddam was a fellow Arab standing up to foreign powers is so empty as to be insulting, especially to the innocent people he wiped out, the families he destroyed and the children he orphaned: They were Arabs, too, so why did so few of their brethren make the effort to protect them?
The consequences of this silence in the face of calumny will follow the Arab world for generations, and so they should: Only long memories have any chance of adequately shaming those whose craven addiction to a wholly unacceptable status quo caused them to countenance and even to defend the horrors that took place in Iraq.
This disgraceful performance leads to a few damning questions that need desperately to be asked and answered. Who else has gotten away with similar atrocities because no one dared to challenge them? What else is even now being covered up to protect the guilty? How many have died, how much has been stolen, how many have been unjustly imprisoned?
No one has to wait to determine the repercussions of Arab silence, official or otherwise, in the face of a regime that treated its own citizens like insects. One result was made clear on March 20 when the United States and Britain launched their war against Iraq: The Arab world was powerless to prevent the onslaught because it had absolutely no credibility. The possible “solutions” postulated by Arab governments were ignored or mocked, and not without justification: Even when their suggestions made sense, leaders in this part of the world had long ago demonstrated that they could not be trusted to follow through.
Worst of all, the dismal performance with regard to Iraq was no exception. Other tragedies are unfolding in Algeria, Palestine, Sudan, Somalia and elsewhere. And just as the moral bankruptcy continues unabated, so will the punishment not soon end. The region is still fraught with tensions over Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the conflict with Israel. Preventing additional calamities on these and other fronts will be an uphill battle because no matter what the Arab world has to say, its interlocutors will always wonder: What else is being left unsaid?

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