June 19, 2007--"Less Self-Deceit"
If you will, take out a map of the Middle East. A big one, if you can, that also includes a section of northeastern Africa. For my purposes, the best one would at the minimum include Ethiopia, the Sudan, and for good measure, Somalia.
Look at the map with fresh eyes, freed from elementary-school geography memories. Forget for the moment what you learned back then—the names of the capitals and the natural resources for which each country is known. Perhaps the first things you will notice are all the straight lines that define significant parts of every country’s border. Since there are all kinds of potential natural borders in the region—mountain ranges, rivers, riff valleys, and such—you might wonder why the map does not reflect this. But of course you know: literally every country on this map was artificially, politically created early in the 20th century.
Primarily, with an assist from U.S. economic interests (read oil), all of these borders were created by the then colonial powers who held sway over this region—France and especially Britain. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the victors, still dressed in stiff military uniforms, literally sat around a huge mahogany table with a borderless map spread before them and created each and every one of these countries—victors dividing spoils—and gave many of these countries made-up names and assigned to them new, appointed ruling families.
Not only were the potential natural borders ignored, related, but more significant, so were ethnic, tribal, cultural, and religious divisions. So the nomadic Kurds, as one example, found themselves living in at least three “countries”—the new Turkey, the freshly-minted Iraq, and parts of what the mapmakers called “Iran.” While in Ethiopia, the also nomadic Ogaden people found themselves confined to a corner of that newly-configured “country” while for millennia they had freely wandered across lines now inked onto what had hithertofor been a blank map.
This mapping or country-creating was going on at about the same time in other regions of the world—in South’ and Southeast Asia where Pakistan and Bangladesh, separated by a newly-bordered India were carved out for a large portion of India’s Moslems so “India” could be a Hindu state; and what we now think of as Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand were also largely redrawn, in effect they were fictions—all made up again by ignoring cultural and ethnic realities.
There is something else that all of these countries have in common—ever since they came into being in this way (and I could extend the list to all the rest of Africa, the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, etc.), they have been troubled, at war with their neighbors, rife with internal strife and civil wars, with many having equally ahistorical and unrepresentative central governments that have perpetrated various degrees of genocide against “their own people.”
And we should wonder—is it any surprise?
For decades we have seen precisely the same kinds of thing leaping out of the headlines about the former-Palestine, the current Israel, and maybe now two competing Palestines--one in Gaza, as the result of Hamas last week defeating Fatah there in a five-day civil war, and one, a Fatah version of Palestine, emerging in the so-called West Bank of so-called Israel.
The U.S. and the EU, both again caught flatfooted and surprised about this rapid rearrangement, which in fact has been bubbling and building for many years, are scrambling to find ways to feel optimistic about the situation. One diplomat said it’s an opportunity “to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” (never mind that neither Jews nor Moslems in the region are allowed to even touch sows). Other’s are saying let’s provide massive doses of economic aid to the Fatah faction, starve Hamas (or leave them to the Iranians to support) and in this way show other Islamic people that, with the right help from the West, economic bounty and democracy can flourish in the area; and who knows, maybe others there will see the light and feel better about us and stop all this terroristic activity. Sound familiar? (See the attached NY Times article that attempts to describe some of this.)
Israel Prime Minister Olmert, also attempting to put a good face on the new facts-on-the-ground, said, “I suggest we look at things in a much more realistic manner and with less self-deceit.” All the while turning a blind-eye to the continued Israeli settlement of the West Bank—the new Fattah Palestine! Self-deceit indeed!
But then again, maybe we’re equally blindly stumbling into something promising—maybe there and in Iraq and in the Sudan and . . . we should encourage this redrawing of the map. This time letting it occur naturally (admittedly there would be great bloodshed as well—but what is happening in any case right now?). Perhaps there should be a Kurdistan; maybe the Ogaden of “Ethiopia” should be set free to track along their ancestral trading routes. With cultural and geographically-defined borders, maybe the world might begin to heal itself.
Look at the map with fresh eyes, freed from elementary-school geography memories. Forget for the moment what you learned back then—the names of the capitals and the natural resources for which each country is known. Perhaps the first things you will notice are all the straight lines that define significant parts of every country’s border. Since there are all kinds of potential natural borders in the region—mountain ranges, rivers, riff valleys, and such—you might wonder why the map does not reflect this. But of course you know: literally every country on this map was artificially, politically created early in the 20th century.
Primarily, with an assist from U.S. economic interests (read oil), all of these borders were created by the then colonial powers who held sway over this region—France and especially Britain. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the victors, still dressed in stiff military uniforms, literally sat around a huge mahogany table with a borderless map spread before them and created each and every one of these countries—victors dividing spoils—and gave many of these countries made-up names and assigned to them new, appointed ruling families.
Not only were the potential natural borders ignored, related, but more significant, so were ethnic, tribal, cultural, and religious divisions. So the nomadic Kurds, as one example, found themselves living in at least three “countries”—the new Turkey, the freshly-minted Iraq, and parts of what the mapmakers called “Iran.” While in Ethiopia, the also nomadic Ogaden people found themselves confined to a corner of that newly-configured “country” while for millennia they had freely wandered across lines now inked onto what had hithertofor been a blank map.
This mapping or country-creating was going on at about the same time in other regions of the world—in South’ and Southeast Asia where Pakistan and Bangladesh, separated by a newly-bordered India were carved out for a large portion of India’s Moslems so “India” could be a Hindu state; and what we now think of as Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand were also largely redrawn, in effect they were fictions—all made up again by ignoring cultural and ethnic realities.
There is something else that all of these countries have in common—ever since they came into being in this way (and I could extend the list to all the rest of Africa, the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, etc.), they have been troubled, at war with their neighbors, rife with internal strife and civil wars, with many having equally ahistorical and unrepresentative central governments that have perpetrated various degrees of genocide against “their own people.”
And we should wonder—is it any surprise?
For decades we have seen precisely the same kinds of thing leaping out of the headlines about the former-Palestine, the current Israel, and maybe now two competing Palestines--one in Gaza, as the result of Hamas last week defeating Fatah there in a five-day civil war, and one, a Fatah version of Palestine, emerging in the so-called West Bank of so-called Israel.
The U.S. and the EU, both again caught flatfooted and surprised about this rapid rearrangement, which in fact has been bubbling and building for many years, are scrambling to find ways to feel optimistic about the situation. One diplomat said it’s an opportunity “to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” (never mind that neither Jews nor Moslems in the region are allowed to even touch sows). Other’s are saying let’s provide massive doses of economic aid to the Fatah faction, starve Hamas (or leave them to the Iranians to support) and in this way show other Islamic people that, with the right help from the West, economic bounty and democracy can flourish in the area; and who knows, maybe others there will see the light and feel better about us and stop all this terroristic activity. Sound familiar? (See the attached NY Times article that attempts to describe some of this.)
Israel Prime Minister Olmert, also attempting to put a good face on the new facts-on-the-ground, said, “I suggest we look at things in a much more realistic manner and with less self-deceit.” All the while turning a blind-eye to the continued Israeli settlement of the West Bank—the new Fattah Palestine! Self-deceit indeed!
But then again, maybe we’re equally blindly stumbling into something promising—maybe there and in Iraq and in the Sudan and . . . we should encourage this redrawing of the map. This time letting it occur naturally (admittedly there would be great bloodshed as well—but what is happening in any case right now?). Perhaps there should be a Kurdistan; maybe the Ogaden of “Ethiopia” should be set free to track along their ancestral trading routes. With cultural and geographically-defined borders, maybe the world might begin to heal itself.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
7:31 AM
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