Part Thirteen
(This is a translation from the original Arabic, offered so that my grandchildren, and others of their generation, may understand something of their history— a history they were denied when they were uprooted without choice.)
What Did the Arab Nationalists Do? (1)
Speaking about what Arab nationalists did is more difficult, more extensive, and more complex than speaking about what Islamists or communists did. The reason is clear: Arab nationalists played a central role not only in the political struggle of the region, but also in governing large parts of it and influencing the rest—directly or indirectly. To study the history of the Arab nationalist project is therefore, more precisely, to study the history of the region itself.
We must remind ourselves that the system of the nation-state prevailing in the world today is a relatively recent political construct. It was unknown just three centuries ago, when the world lived under empires or large states that were not founded upon a shared national basis. Europeans came to believe that they could reduce the frequency and brutality of their wars by establishing states on national foundations—and to some extent, they succeeded. Yet while this experiment proved moderately successful in Europe, it was far less so when applied in Asia, and catastrophic in its consequences when imposed upon Africa.
Our Arab world, in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, was part of this global reality and existed largely within the Ottoman Empire, which was itself approaching its inevitable end, as all empires do. The Ottomans had no objective beyond preserving their rule, and this could not be achieved without violating the rights of the peoples subject to them. It was the Turkish youth, before others, who sensed the danger awaiting them at the moment of collapse. They organized themselves into a new political movement aimed at preserving Turkish identity—even at the expense of other peoples—thus giving rise to the “Young Turks” movement.
Arab youth in Greater Syria were not isolated from the aspirations and objectives of the Young Turks, nor were they distant from the emergence of the European concept of nationalism upon which the nation-state was built. Greater Syria, however, possessed a distinctive context that set it apart from the rest of the Arab world: the substantial presence of Arab Christians who had long interacted with Europeans. This interaction was closely tied to the movements of translation, publishing, and printing, and it constituted one of the principal factors behind the emergence of the earliest Arab nationalist consciousness in Greater Syria—before European powers divided it into the present-day mini-states following the First World War.
Arab Christians in Greater Syria stood at the forefront of calls for a unified Arab destiny, followed by a number of enlightened Muslims who had grown weary of Ottoman hypocrisy in its claims to protect Islam. Thus emerged an intellectual movement calling for reflection on the shared fate of this land. From this movement crystallized two ideas: one believed in the unity of the Fertile Crescent as a geographical whole, including the island of Cyprus—an idea that later gave rise to the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. The second believed in the unity of all Arab lands, including North Africa and, most importantly, Egypt—an idea later embodied by the Arab Socialist Baʿath Party, which ruled Iraq and continues to rule Syria. (Note: This article was written before the fall of the Ba’ath rule at the hands of the Al-Qaeda supported by the US)
One of the most striking common features of the Arab nationalist project—shared as well by the Islamist and communist movements—was the naïveté, and at times even political immaturity, of its leadership in dealing with local and international events. This is hardly surprising, as political leaders were often young university students or newly graduated professionals. This immaturity became evident when Syrian nationalists clashed violently with Baʿathists in Syria, each believing that the other’s project obstructed his own. Neither recognized that it was the foreign power sitting at the borders—having divided the country in the first place—that truly obstructed both projects.
This political naïveté was again exposed when Iraqi nationalists clashed with communists: the nationalists demanded immediate unity with Egypt, while Iraqi communists called for a federation with Egypt. Neither side grasped that even a partial union with Egypt would have been an ambitious achievement at that early stage of the Arab liberation movement—had the enemies allowed it.
Once the communists were violently removed from the political scene in Iraq, political immaturity led to conflict among Arab nationalists themselves. The Baʿathists believed they were more capable than Gamal Abdel Nasser of leading the Arab nationalist project, while Nasser believed that no nationalist party outside Egypt could be effective. Both were mistaken. Nasser failed to cultivate within Egypt a nationalist consciousness capable of protecting his project after his death; no sooner had he passed away than Anwar Sadat overturned the system entirely, setting Egypt on a reversed course from which it has since been ruled by successive servants of Zionism. The Baʿathists, for their part, failed to understand the modern Arab individual within the confines of their respective states, leading to their inability to lead him—despite whatever administrative or political successes they may have achieved.
It must be emphasized that the failure of a movement’s leadership to understand history or to manage a particular event does not necessarily constitute a condemnation of the principles upon which that movement is founded. The failure of the Soviet Communist Party’s leadership in dealing with the Zionist capitalist system, for example, does not invalidate the Marxist–Leninist principles upon which the Soviet state was built. Likewise, the failure of Arab nationalist leaderships in managing the struggle against Zionism should not lead to the conclusion that the Arab nationalist project itself has failed—a claim upon which Zionists built their miserably named campaign, the so-called “Arab Spring.”
An objective approach that seeks to understand what happened—and what may yet happen—must examine principles independently of behaviour and the tools of their application. This is not always an easy task, but it is an essential one for any genuine understanding of reality.
This series is not a political-historical study of a turbulent and complex period in our region’s history. Such an undertaking would require several volumes, and each article in this series could easily form a chapter in a book. Rather, the purpose of this series is to identify key markers along a century-long trajectory, in order to rekindle the desire for research and debate—so that we may learn from our mistakes, if possible, and envision what we hope the future of the الأمة (the nation) might be.
So, what, then, are the principal features of what Arab nationalists actually did?
That is what I shall attempt to examine next.
To be continued…