The Despair In Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon Has Nothing To Do With Israel

Young Arabs are suffering terribly from the economic difficulties in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

In Syria, thirteen years of civil war have caused six million people to flee the country, and another five million are internally displaced – that is, living mainly in tent cities throughout Syria. The country’s infrastructure lies in ruins; it is estimated that to rebuild Syria, to something like its prewar condition, would require $350 billion. Many of the country’s key professionals have fled the country: doctors, engineers, scientists who can find employment abroad form part of this understandable brain drain. Shunned by foreign investors, the Syrian economy has contracted by more than two-thirds since the civil war began. The Assads, their relatives, and cronies, do not care. They are determined to hold onto power, and much of the nation’s wealth, no matter what it costs the country.

In Iraq, the economy is suffering from the inability of the government to overcome the Sunni-Shi’a sectarian divide. The Sunnis have refused to acquiesce in their loss of political (and therefore economic) power since the downfall of Saddam Hussein. The much more numerous Shi’a – 60% of the country is Shi’a Arab, while only 19% is Sunni Arab (the rest are Kurds and a handful of Christians) – are determined not to relinquish any of the power they have acquired since the end of Saddam’s rule. There are constant political battles inside the government in Baghdad, over the distribution of ministries and hence over the moneys those ministries disburse or withhold. Corruption and cronyism are rampant. Political assassinations, and assassinations of journalists, lead to a general sense of fear and instability. Meanwhile, Iran has extended its tentacles into Iraq, financially supporting armed Shi’a militias, such as the Kataeb Hezbollah, that attack both Sunnis and even those Shi’a who are deemed insufficiently subservient to Iran. Iraq’s economy has suffered from the collapse of oil prices, and from the decline in foreign investments. That decline is the result both of fear of continuing political turmoil, and for the Gulf Arabs, there is the added desire not to help a country run mostly by Shi’a and increasingly linked to Iran.

In Lebanon, years – even decades – of mismanagement and corruption have brought the country financially to its knees. Lebanon has the second highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the world; its currency has cratered; unemployment is at historic levels. Meanwhile, the protests against the incompetent and crooked government have had no effect, and Hezbollah fighters have been putting down —- violently – the Lebanese protesting in the streets. Hezbollah controls the government, both through its own members who are ministers, and through those who, like the Maronite former president Michel Aoun, for personal gain follow the dictates of Hezbollah. Lebanon was living beyond its means for years, but still managed to attract investors from the Gulf Arab states. Those investors have now abandoned Lebanon for several reasons: first, it’s unwise to invest in a country that can at any point be dragged into a destructive war, as Hezbollah threatens to do with Lebanon for a second time; second, those Gulf Arabs do not want to support a state run by Hezbollah, which is correctly viewed as a proxy of Iran.

In Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, the economic woes affect the young the hardest. Many cannot any longer afford university or professional training. In a time of economic contraction, and soaring unemployment, young applicants may not be hired at all for a first job, but even if they are among the few lucky enough to be hired, they may also be the first fired. They lack the seniority that might, in some cases, contractually protect their jobs, and they have not been in their jobs long enough to acquire the skills that often make older employees more valuable.

Hassan Nasrallah tells the urban Lebanese to “go and plant” food in order to eat. It’s his version of Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake.” He doesn’t have to worry. He’s managed to help himself to a $250 million fortune from Hezbollah’s coffers. But are all the Lebanese expected to suddenly become vegans and rely on what their garden grows? And one more little problem: Lebanon is 87% urban, the most heavily urban of all Arab states. Where are all those city dwellers supposed to find land to plant their vegetable gardens? A window-box simply won’t do.

Outside of the favored few – the rich Gulf Arab states that live on revenues from the sale of oil and gas – most Arab states are poor, some desperately so. One-quarter – 115 million of the total Arab population in the world — are reportedly living in  poverty. Yet the fabulously rich Arab states of the Gulf – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait – with trillions of dollars in reserves – give either nothing to the poorer Arabs, or derisory sums. The most generous of Gulf Arab donors, Qatar, has been giving Hamas about $100 million, on average, every year since 2012, not so much to support the poor as to retain support for Hamas in Gaza. Where is the solidarity among members of the umma, or even more narrowly tailored, the solidarity with fellow Arabs? That solidarity is a negative one, based on a shared inculcated antipathy to the world’s Infidels. It does not translate into the rich Gulf Arabs sharing their vast wealth – the product not of hard work or entrepreneurial flair but only of an accident of geology, and requiring no effort on the part of its recipients – with other, impoverished Arabs.

Amid all this, is there a suspicion among young Arabs that, despite the supremacist message that the Qur’an constantly delivers, with Muslims described as the “best of peoples” and non-Muslims as the “most vile of created beings,” that the West really is best? Why do so many Arabs and Muslims clamor desperately to be admitted to universities and professional schools in Europe and North America, if not because of that feeling? Why do so many long to live in the lands of the Infidels?

All three countries – Iraq and Syria and Lebanon – have long suffered from the mismanagement and corruption of their governing elites, as well as from the sectarian conflicts and political violence that are rife among their peoples. Keep that in mind, the next time you are blandly assured that it is the “Israeli-Palestinian dispute” that is the fons et origo of Muslim Arab woes. It isn’t — necessarily – so.