Disordered World: Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century

177 Pages·2011·0.95 MB·English

by  Amin Maalouf

D I S O R D E R E D
W O R L D
Setting a New Course for the Twenty-first Century
AMIN MAALOUF
Translated from the French by George Miller
For Marlène and Salim Nasr
And in memory of Paolo Vida (1948–2005)
Man has survived hitherto
because he was too ignorant to know
how to realize his wishes.
Now that he can realize them,
he must either change them
or perish.

from ‘Orchestra’,
William Carlos Williams,
Collected Poems (1954)
Contents
Preface to the English Edition
Preface to the Original Edition

I Misleading Victories
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

II Lost Legitimacy
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12

III Imaginary Certainties
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

Afterword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Bibliography
A Note on the Author
A Note on the Translator
By the Same Author
Preface to the English Edition
I thought it useful to write a preface to this edition, because the thesis at the heart
of this book suddenly, and spectacularly, appeared at the very front of the world
stage in the early months of 2011 – and seems likely to remain there for some
time to come.
In examining what I have called a ‘disordered world’, I came to the conclusion
that one of the roots of the problem was that leaders of the Arab world lacked
legitimacy in the eyes of their people. Deprived of freedom, dignity, a future and
the revenues their countries have earned from oil and other natural resources
which have been misappropriated by ruling families, many Arabs had
succumbed to despair, to the point of contemplating suicide. There is scarcely
any need to mention that extremists have profited from this state of mind to
recruit militants ready to become suicide bombers.
Paradoxically, the Arab spring also began with suicides. But in this case they
had a very different political and ethical meaning: they were not acts of murder
but self-sacrifice in the manner of the Buddhist monks who set fire to themselves
in Vietnam in the 1960s. A man prepared to die for a cause becomes a powerful
weapon, and the Arabs have discovered that this weapon is infinitely more
effective when it ceases to be destructive, hate-filled and murderous, and is
instead put to the service of universally recognised values – liberty, democracy,
integrity, transparency and the right of every human being to dignity and a
decent life.
‘Yes, we are desperate,’ countless Arab protesters said through their actions.
‘Yes, we are ready to sacrifice ourselves, but we will die like saints, like true
martyrs, not like murderers. We will not kill and we will not destroy.’
‘Salmiyah!’ (‘We are peaceful!’) the demonstrators chanted every time anger
levels rose, in order to calm their opponents and moderate their fellow protesters.
‘No violence! We want only to live, to be able to express ourselves freely, to
sing, and to connect with the rest of the world like young Europeans and
Americans and all other peoples. We are heirs to a great civilisation and deserve
the best.’
From the first uprisings, the crowd chanted famous lines by the Tunisian poet
Aboul-Qacem Echebbi:
If the people one day desire life
It is inevitable that destiny grants it
It is inevitable that the darkness lifts . . .

The desire for life and preference for non-violent action were to remain a deep
inspiration to the movement. In this sense, the Arab spring of 2011 represents the
most eloquent – and in the long run the most effective – riposte to the attacks of
11 September 2001 and the jihadist ideology which inspired them.
Long before Osama bin Laden collapsed in a hail of US commando bullets in
his compound in Abbottabad in May 2011, his strategy had already collapsed in
the streets of Arab towns. He himself implicitly recognised this in his last
statement, which was disseminated shortly after his death and differed in both
tone and content from his previous pronouncements: making no mention of the
armed struggle, he spoke bizarrely of representative assemblies and research
institutes, and concluded with a saying of the Prophet which states that the most
venerable of martyrs are those who stand up to authority to accuse them and
those who are killed for their courage in speaking out.
Of course, terrorism such as we have seen since the start of this century will
not disappear overnight; for some time to come it will retain its power to do
harm. But for the people in whose name it claims to speak, it has now been
consigned to the past. In overcoming their fear of dictators, the Arabs have
overcome their indulgence towards terrorists.
Under autocratic rule, militant extremists were sometimes like fish in water.
Their acts, however absurd, seemed a plausible response to the atmosphere of
despair; and for lack of any alternative, many were willing to support them.
Today, millions of men and women can hold their heads high and say that they
themselves are heroes; they defied dictatorships, braved police repression, stood
directly in the line of fire and helped liberate their people without soiling their
hands or blackening their souls.
Up until recently, the Arab world had been caught in the crossfire of two
groups of usurpers: those who seized power and wealth in the name of the nation
or a dynasty, or in the name of stability and the fight against extremists; and
those who invoked the name of Islam to advance their own intolerant, regressive
political agenda.
What is more, these two types of usurpation reinforced each other. Under the
pretext of fighting terrorism, autocrats won recognition, help and support; when
the level of this support sometimes flagged, some regimes had no compunction
about committing terrorist attacks themselves, which they attributed to the
Islamists, so as to appear as a useful bulwark to the international community.
The debate over whether it was religious fanatics or state agents who bombed
such and such a church, carried out a particular massacre or assassinated a
certain individual will last a long time.
The whole world seemed to believe that this perverse status quo would last for
ever. How could it not, it was said, since the people themselves are resigned to
it? But the people’s patience was not infinite.
The signal for the great uprising was given by a young Tunisian street vendor,
Mohammed Bouazizi, who set fire to himself after a municipal official slapped
him in public and confiscated his vegetable cart. He died after eighteen days of
agony on 4 January 2011. His act of despair was seen by his compatriots as a
reflection of their own. ‘But,’ they reasoned, ‘if we are prepared to die, what is
the sense of each of us dying in our own little corner? Why not march against
those who oppress and terrorise us? We may well be arrested and beaten, even
gunned down in our tens or hundreds, but at least we will have the satisfaction of
dying with our heads held high, trying to bring down tyrants.’
When, faced with this unexpected determination, the authorities seemed to
hesitate, retreat or waver, it was initially a marvellous surprise and a terrific
incentive for the protesters to go all the way – first in Tunisia, then in Egypt and
then in other countries. More mass demonstrations sprang up, as did clashes with
the security forces. And established regimes, which were hated by their people
and had held on to their power for decades through intimidation and terror,
began to crumble one after the other like rotting edifices: Zine-el-Abidine Ben
Ali left Tunis on 14 January, twenty-three years after the coup d’etat that brought
him to power; Hosni Mubarak left Cairo on 11 February, in the thirtieth year of
his presidency. The movement soon sent shock waves of varying intensity
through various Arab regimes.
After these first dazzling successes, there was a feeling that peaceful protest
was going to have an almost miraculous domino effect throughout the entire
region, linked in part to new means of communication – Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube, smartphones, etc. – which would accelerate and amplify the
movement, giving it a resonance among both local populations and international
opinion. But subsequent events soon tempered that initial euphoria.
The turning point came first in Libya. Demonstrations began in Benghazi on
15 February and rapidly spread throughout the country. Up until then, Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi, who had been in power for almost forty-two years, seemed
immoveable. So it was astonishing to see a scenario similar to those in Tunisia
and Egypt beginning to be played out there, too. Of course, from its earliest days
it was violently repressed, creating hundreds of victims, but the protests kept on
growing and by the end of that week speculation had begun as to the likely
destination for the exile of the soon-to-be-ousted dictator. There were persistent
rumours that he was already on his way to Venezuela.
This was premature. At the critical point at which Ben Ali and Mubarak
judged it futile to hang on and thought it better to go, Gaddafi dug his heels in.
Of course, he was different from his neighbours in many ways – his personality,
the structure of his regime, the topography of his country – but the most
significant distinguishing feature at that crucial moment was linked to the nature
of Libya’s armed forces. In both Tunisia and Egypt, the regular army had not
wanted to fire on civilians, leaving that degrading task to the police and special
forces; in Libya, the regular army carried little weight and the best-armed, most
combat-hardened contingents reported directly to Gaddafi and his sons; he
decided therefore to use them to the limit and turn all their fire power on the
demonstrators. That allowed him to retake Tripoli and then launch a recovery
operation throughout the country. Confronted with an organised military
offensive, peaceful marching in the streets and public squares no longer made
any sense. Protesters seized weapons they found in the barracks in their towns,
thereby becoming insurgents. A civil war had begun that would soon lead to
international intervention.
This escalation in the violence had repercussions elsewhere in the region,
where several rulers felt that they could avoid being overthrown by clinging on
to power, cracking down more severely, and ignoring the demands of their
people and the condemnation of the international community. There were, of
course, major differences between the Libyan situation and those of other
countries such as Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, but it became clear from the first
weeks of the year that peaceful protests would not be enough to bring down
Arab regimes, and that they would fight fiercely – even savagely – to ensure
their survival.
As I write this preface, the initial revolutionary wave seems to have run out of
steam, and the pace of dramatic change, which was gathering momentum from
week to week, or to be exact from one Friday to the next, now seems to stretch
over months and even years. Where the movement has already won victories, it
has quickly reached the difficult and thankless phase of reconstruction. New
democratic institutions need to be established, economies restarted, social