Arabs Are of Two Minds on Iraq — They Don't Want U.S. to Fail or Succeed

October 29, 2003
Neil MacFarquhar/NYT

CAIRO The bright read headline across four columns in Egypt's government-owned Al-Gomhuria newspaper Tuesday trumpeted the latest bombings in Iraq as somehow religiously sanctioned: "Five Consecutive Martyrdom Operations Rock Baghdad."
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Yet both Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and the Arab League condemned the bombings, singling out the attack on a humanitarian organization like the International Committee of the Red Cross as particularly appalling. In Beirut, the respected daily Safir labeled the bombings a "crime," mostly because they will just serve to prolong the U.S. presence.
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Across the Arab world, opinion toward events in Iraq has taken on a kind of split personality that deepens with each new attack, particularly after gory explosions like those Monday that killed dozens of Iraqis and wounded hundreds more. On the one hand, both governments and people do not really want the U.S. to succeed, hoping Washington will suffer for its perceived arrogance for taking on Iraq alone, for its unequivocal support for Israel and not least due to a certain fear that an easy victory might translate into dispatching the U.S. military to change governments elsewhere.
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On the other, many Arabs don't want the U.S. to fail either, fearing the inevitable chaos would unravel the entire region. Failure would open the door in a hugely important Arab country for the kind of war among the sects that plagued Lebanon for 15 years. More important, if it is Islamic militants who are carrying out the attacks and triumph, it could well reignite Islamic extremism. "The general feeling is that the U.S. put itself in a position that it deserves, it serves them right," said Khaled Batarfi, the managing editor of Al-Madina newspaper published in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. "The U.S. was always saying, 'We know better, we understand the stakes and everything will be fine.'"
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"But the other feeling is worry that the U.S. might leave without finishing the job first," he added. "It will be like a jungle where anybody with a gun has the right to force his way."
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The result of this quandary is even more paralysis than usual, especially among the region's governments. The latest bombings elicited few public statements from any senior officials, although the reticence is also partly due to the fact that the attacks have become so frequent.
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"I don't think that the Arab countries have an Iraq policy, which reflects the dilemma they find themselves in," said Mohamed Kamal, a political science professor at Cairo University.
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"They don't want to leave Iraq, this big Arab country, to the U.S. to shape its future," he said. "But they are also reluctant to do anything which might be interpreted as helping the U.S. as an occupier of Iraq."
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In addition, the idea that their heads might be on the block next is never very far away from the thoughts of most Arab leaders, no matter how close or how far they are from Washington. "Iraq is something confusing for the governments here," said Sawsan Shair, a Bahraini columnist who writes for three Gulf newspapers. "If the U.S. succeeds in Iraq, so that it really is a democratic country, this is scary for them. If the U.S. fails, on the other hand, what is happening in Iraq will spread and this is bad for them."
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The uncertainty about how to act is reflected in both the silence from the governments themselves and the swings in the news coverage. Some papers refer to the attacks against the U.S. forces or the Iraqi police they have trained as "martyrdom operations," implying that they somehow carry the stamp of religious approval as legitimate resistance against the occupying authorities. Others condemn them. If there is one consensus in the various comments and coverage, it is that the U.S. has failed from the very beginning of the occupation, when it allowed mobs to loot the Iraqi ministries, to provide sufficient security in Iraq.
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The only way to dampen the violence now is to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis under United Nations auspices, or at least to announce a rapid timetable for doing that, newspapers and commentators across the region said Tuesday. Whatever their stripe, Arab commentators were completely dismissive of President George W. Bush's remarks that the attacks were inspired by growing U.S. success in creating a new, stable, democratic Iraq. "Remember how Saddam Hussein talked about winning the mother of all battles?" said Muhsen Awaji, a Saudi Islamist lawyer. "It is the same disease."

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