Security And In Security Dimension Of Middle East

Security and Insecurity Dimensions of Middle East.

Introduction. Middle East is the hub of old civilizations, linage of Abraham’s faiths Judaism, Christianity and Islam originated from this region and impacted the most on the politics of the Middle East. The present time conflicts meet their genesis from this divide. The end of British Empire pushed Middle East towards security and insecurity dilemmas. It influenced the predominant Arab socio economic psyche in the most radical manner. Finding a new entity amongst them, who based their claim on divine history, made the Arabs and whole region embroil in a rigid conflict. This was a new phenomenon in the human history. People from different cultural backgrounds, believing in one faith, claimed homeland for its Diaspora. Religious ideology set the goal for the promised lands through its edicts. People divided on the lines of faith, splintered out of their ethnic orbit and shaped in to single entity under the faith. This diverted the society from ethnic, cultural and traditional pulls and formed them into major religious groups. This contributed to the conflicts of present time. The creation of Israel coincided with the decolonization of other nations in the post world war II era. The Diaspora Jewish community carved the idea of a state with the religio-historical orchestration. Their ordeal became a strong pleader for the case of new nation state. Arabs in general and Palestinians particularly; were most affected owing to intermingled and overlapping religious, cultural and traditional bonds; knotted with the power of nationalism esteem.

The new Jewish state was deemed realization of fulfillment of aspiration of national and religious security. At the same time it created a predicament for the Arabs and Palestinian- an element of insecurity. The situation was further circumvented by the power that mattered in different phases of geopolitical changes. That may be referred to as the Western and USA interest in Middle East.

Aim This aim of this paper is to study, what security and insecurity perspectives prevail in the Middle East and what the options available are. The study is divided in to four parts as following:•

Theoretical Perspective

•

Middle East Security Paradigm.

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Contemporary security environments in the Middle East.

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Conclusion

Theoretical Perspective The security is concerns of an individual and responsibility of a state. Ullman defined a threat to security as:“ an action or sequence of events that (1) threatens drastically land over a relatively brief span of time to degrade the quality of life for the inhabitants of a sate or (2) threaten significantly to narrow the rang of policy choices available to a government of a state, or to private, nongovernmental entities (persons, groups, corporations) within the state.1”

1

Hough, Peter,(2004)Understanding Global Security, London,Routledge,p.7

In the different phases of evolution security threat was caused even from the very institution responsible for the security of its subject or the people of a state. The ruling entities and its militaries became the primary source of insecurity of its own people. This is caused by the statecentricism. “Buzan accepts that state can be the source of threats rather than of protection for individual people but considers that this is a property of a certain type of states. ‘Strong states’ co-existing in ‘mature anarchy’, which have increasingly become the norm through democratization and the development of international human rights law, can be relied on to secure individual.”2 The evolution of communities from family, clan, tribe, dynasty, empire, to nation states plays a vital dynamic to security approach. The foregoing view corresponds to the contemporary theory of widening the security precepts to other areas, outside the classic involvement of military force by the state. To briefly state the interdependence of nation states and people to people engagements have significantly influenced the security approach diametrically.

Middle East Security Paradigm Middle East has proven the fountain head of contemporary security issues. The center of oldest civilization is the originating source of basic human sensibilities with religion on the top that leads multidimensional security perspectives and its responses. It ranges from inter clan to inter racial and from inter dynastic to inter empires. It has presumably ended the history3 with the end of cold war, started after the two world wars and ended with the break up of USSR. 2 3

Hough, Peter,(2004)Understanding Global Security, London,Routledge,p.9 Fujilo Yokihama,( 1995 ),The End of the History.

The new concept of security is being perceived in the terms of conflict between the civilizations. The world has shaped itself into clear blocks based on major religions, cultural and ethnic groups, short listed as civilizations, not like empires and dynastic rules where all these segments made in to one empiric identity group and their interactions remained within the context of internal issues. Middle East gave the greater portion of human beings on the earth, source of their major faiths. Abraham moved from Syria to Arab peninsula and laid the foundation of monotheist faiths; Judaism, Christianity, and finally Islam. This set the chess board of conflicts and security issues dominating the world scene till now. This resulted in ending many inter ethnic and local securities issues converting these in to religion based wars. Islam adjusted its presence, shortly and swiftly on expanded regions and prevailed on the most powerful empires of that time. Byzantine, Roman, and Persian empires overwhelmed by the new vigorous faith of Islam searched and adjusted for the insecurity they confronted. The predominance of Muslim faith and its expansion till the Ottomans’ empire resulted in judo-Christians formations and nexus against the Muslim in the Middle East that prevented the Muslims Armies, comprising of diversified converted ethnicities under the faith of Islam, to enter Europe however, Muslims could reach to its eastern rim. The pattern remains in practice, based on the ethos of same ideologies in the present time international relations. Nation states have devised a new theme to take on each others on the lines of civilizations’ fault lines, fermented with cultural, traditional, religious and social values of societies spread over the glob.

These prejudices seem hidden in the modern time real politic of the West and Europe, representing Judo Christian interests and the fragmented and incohesive Islamic states, predominantly in the Middle East, Asia Pacific, South Asia and Africa, representing pride in the ideology of Ummah and the ultimacy of their faith. This leads us to believe that beacon of security and insecurity of the world is centered in the Middle East. World now deems it necessary to settle security issues of Middle East as all the avenues leading to peace pass through this region. It remain subject to the test of time and history whether, the prevailing realist mode would result in complicating the security situation further to the worse or better. The contemporary security expositions prove to the contrary and threaten global security as that would probably lead to an ‘ultimate end of history’. This was presumed earlier by Francis Fukuyama, in the context of end of the cold war in his 1989 essay ‘End of the History’ (and The Last Man*)4’. Fukuyama’ theme remains oblivious of the emergence of afresh history cycle involving clash of civilizations. Samuel Huntington forwarded his theory of clash of civilization on much realistic line as he put it;“WORLD POLITICS IS entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not hesitated to proliferate visions of what it will be -- the end of history, the return of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism, among others. “5

Francis Fukuyama (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. Free Press. ISBN 0029109752. 5 Samuel P. Huntington, Foreign Affairs, summer, 1993. *The original title was suffixed with this addition later in his book expanded by him on the same theme. 4

Huntington stands vindicated if we observe the “conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism” unleashed between the non state actors and a global power. The group asymmetrically involved in this conflict in the Middle East and Afghanistan is gaining strength from the tribal culture on its fringes. The changing threat and security perception would be as following according to the theory:“CIVILIZATION IDENTITY will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.”6 The present part is being played between Western and Islamic civilizations in the battle zones of Middle East leaving the waiting civilizations to adjust them for the future security threat from the power that prevails.

Security Insecurity Mosaic in the Middle East. The Muslim campaigns that started in the 7th century brought in radical changes in the security environments of the Middle East that lead to the fall of great empires and 6

ibid

annihilation of big civilization at the hands of simple Arab nomadic warriors who were emboldened by the Islamic ideology that provided them the justification to extend beyond the limits of Arab peninsula.

There was no sudden reaction or threat to such expansions made by Muslims. These campaigns were over whelming and swift. The corner stone of successful expansion was the full support of subjects in most of the territories conquered by the Muslim generals. It was due to the protection and dispensation of justice that made it possible. In the Middle east from the Caliphate to Ottomans minorities particularly Jews and Christians were protected to the sharp contrast of Crusaders’ ruthlessness, who rampaged and tried to wipe out Muslims from the territories they captured or recaptured in the ‘holy lands’. This model is still in vogue in the modern times even, as we see Israel using brutal and excessive force on the Muslim Palestinians. The sense of security which the minorities felt under the Muslim conquerors ensured positive security conditions and response that gave time and space to Muslim rulers to stabilize the territories under their commands. This is again in sharp contrast to the contemporary ‘crusaders’ who are not supported by the people of occupied territories due to injudiciousness and lack of moral authority. The Americans have become famous for their famous query that, “Why people hate us”. The probable answer seems simple; they disregard values of other cultures and faiths. It has become a great cause of insecurity amongst its European friends even.

The sense of insecurity has devastated the complete social fabric of Middle East including Israel who is haunted by its security dilemma. They have made it their strategic compulsion and ultimate option to respond disproportionately with excessive use of force. The following Para about the Middle East, from the ‘Clash of Civilization’ published in the bimonthly issue of ‘Foreign Affairs’ summarizes it very smartly:“Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years. After the founding of Islam, the Arab and Moorish surge west and north only ended at Tours in 732. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century the Crusaders attempted with temporary success to bring Christianity and Christian rule to the Holy Land. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Turks reversed the balance, extended their sway over the Middle East and the Balkans, captured Constantinople, and twice laid siege to Vienna. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at Ottoman power declined Britain, France, and Italy established Western control over most of North Africa and the Middle East. After World War II, the West, in turn, began to retreat; the colonial empires disappeared; first Arab nationalism and then Islamic fundamentalism manifested themselves; the West became heavily dependent on the Persian Gulf countries for its energy; the oil-rich Muslim countries became money-rich and, when they wished to, weapons-rich. Several wars occurred between Arabs and Israel (created by the West). France fought a bloody and ruthless war in Algeria for

most of the 1950s; British and French forces invaded Egypt in 1956; American forces returned to Lebanon, attacked Libya, and engaged in various military encounters with Iran; Arab and Islamic terrorists, supported by at least three Middle Eastern governments, employed the weapon of the weak and bombed Western planes and installations and seized Western hostages. This warfare between Arabs and the West culminated in 1990, when the United States sent a massive army to the Persian Gulf to defend some Arab countries against aggression by another. In its aftermath NATO planning is increasingly directed to potential threats and instability along its "southern tier." This centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent. The Gulf War left some Arabs feeling proud that Saddam Hussein had attacked Israel and stood up to the West. It also left many feeling humiliated and resentful of the West's military presence in the Persian Gulf, the West's overwhelming military dominance, and their apparent inability to shape their own destiny. Many Arab countries, in addition to the oil exporters, are reaching levels of economic and social development where autocratic forms of government become inappropriate and efforts to introduce democracy become stronger. Some openings in Arab political systems have already occurred. The principal beneficiaries of these openings have been Islamist movements. In the Arab world, in short, Western democracy strengthens

anti-Western political forces. This may be a passing phenomenon, but it surely complicates relations between Islamic countries and the West. Those relations are also complicated by demography. The spectacular population growth in Arab countries, particularly in North Africa, has led to increased migration to Western Europe. The movement within Western Europe toward minimizing internal boundaries has sharpened political sensitivities with respect to this development. In Italy, France and Germany, racism is increasingly open, and political reactions and violence against Arab and Turkish migrants have become more intense and more widespread since 1990. On both sides the interaction between Islam and the West is seen as a clash of civilizations. The West's "next confrontation," observes M. J. Akbar, an Indian Muslim author, "is definitely going to come from the Muslim world. It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the Meghreb to Pakistan that the struggle for a new world order will begin." Bernard Lewis comes to a regular conclusion: "We are facing a need and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations -- the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient

rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.7” This approach would lead to the both belligerents to start battle procedure and would add to the security predicament.

Conclusion The securities and insecurities dimensions in the Middle East are based on the most rigid predispositions. The only option for the lasting peace is the model of coexistence under Muslim rules. The new agreement can be based on the common cultural and moral values common to all faiths and cultures in the Middle East. Middle East has the inherent cohesive social infrastructure to peruse this approach as common language, biological roots and geography are major factors peg the peace best. The Middle East can only benefit from its abundant energy resources if countries of the region are able to maintain peace and stability. Power pumping; flow of arms and injudicious international response can doom any hope of peace.

7

Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 266, September 1990, p. 60; Time, June 15k 1992, pp. 24-28, quoted in .The clash of civilizations’ ibid.

Israel bears greater responsibility as it recklessness in the use of power has resulted in blatant violations of human right touching to the levels of war crimes while using the excessive and disproportionate force. All the conflict resolution is made on the table ultimately, the sooner it is done the better it is.