No Regret for Any Arab Ruler

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The numbers of people who believe that the Arab revolutions are conspiracies are growing; the numbers of people defending the rulers or the regimes against conspiracies they believe are coming from the West are also growing; and the numbers of people angry at Al Jazeera, viewing it as a tool of Western conspiracies to topple Arab regimes, are growing as well.

Let me begin by saying that I have no regret for any Arab regime, for they all share the following:

Despotic rule, and the denial of participation to those who are not loyal followers. Every ruler thinks himself a gift from God to his people, possessing a divine mandate to will as he wishes without regard for the will of others. Each of them gathers hypocrites, charlatans, and swindlers around himself to bolster his rule, knowing in advance that competent and knowledgeable people are of no use to him, since they might harbor honesty and loyalty to their nation. It is no wonder that each of them has treated the fiefdom he rules as a free-for-all, turning it into a playground for his sons, relatives, and lucky friends, and for his mistresses among the fallen beauties.

The slaughter of freedom, which is the foundation for building character, free thought, and creativity. All of them ban freedom of expression: there is no freedom of the press, no freedom to hold seminars or lectures, no freedom at all — except for whoever flatters, lies, slinks away, grovels, and plays clever.

The theft of the people’s money, to the point that most Arab rulers are billionaires, and most of the time we only learn about their money through the Western states that expose them. All of them are thieves, except perhaps the president of Lebanon, and they feed a great many small-time thieves among their relatives or their inner circle of associates. The wealth of the Arab peoples is plundered and embezzled, while the budgets of the poor people continue to suffer from shortage and deficit, from embezzlement and deprivation.

The unleashing of the security apparatuses on the people, such that there is no security for the Arab citizen. The Arab citizen suffers from insecurity, fearing the intelligence services, central security, the president’s security, the security of institutions, the police, the criminal police, the security of the neighborhoods, the security that eavesdrops through windows, university security, hospital security, the security of the back alleys, the security of the corners, the security of the sewers — and he even fears the armed forces, in their naval, land, air, and underground branches. There is no security for the Arab citizen, even though every regime boasts of the security achievements it has secured for the people. The Arab human being is terrified — not of external powers, but of these tyrants crouching on his chest.

The spreading of corruption into every corner and nook of the state, so that he remains master over corrupt, immoral subjects. Wasta, favoritism, bribery, gratuities, and embezzlement spread through every Arab fiefdom, and people are largely preoccupied with unseemly practices just to conduct their daily affairs. The ruler is fully aware that he cannot survive if his people uphold virtue and sound morals, so he must corrupt them in order to have a clear field for domination, tyranny, plunder, and pillage.

Every Arab ruler possesses fortified prisons and underground dungeons, and arrests, tortures, and subjects opponents to the worst forms of suffering. The Arab human being holds the world’s highest rate of days spent in darkness underground; the highest rate of “falaqa” (beating the soles of the feet); the highest rate of whip marks on backs and bellies; and the highest number of hours spent in the “ghost position” in intelligence dungeons. There is no Arab regime that is respectable and respects its people, and every regime has built massive institutions of repression, torture, and oppression. Our countries have become famous for great prisons that raise the head of the Arab nation high, such as al-Jafr, al-Mazzeh, Abu Ghraib, Abu Za’bal, and Junaid.

The armies are armies for parading, not armies for fighting, even though Arab states are among the biggest spenders on arms in the world. We only ever see these armies confronting their own people, or one Arab state confronting another, or perhaps confronting Iran, or Turkey, or Chad, or confronting Arab and Islamic resistance. They are not armies for confronting Israel or America, which invade Arab countries. These armies play the lion with their own peoples, but turn into rabbits before the enemy.

…the Jordanian against the Palestinian, the Syrian against the Lebanese, the Algerian against the Moroccan, and so on. These are rulers who cannot enjoy peace of mind if the people are united.

The insistence on keeping the people backward in various fields, especially in education and thought. A people that understands is of no use to a despotic ruler, and so the educational and pedagogical system had to remain rote-based, cultivating dullness and passive obedience, discouraging creativity, initiative, and the building of character. This is in addition to social backwardness, which insists on the tribal composition of the state — a racist composition that annuls the individual and incites division and fragmentation. As for economic backwardness, there is much to say, especially since the nation’s wealth is plundered instead of being used to develop resources and establish productive projects.

And the list goes on.

Where Is the Patriotic Ruler?

No Arab ruler can claim to be patriotic, because whoever commits all the acts referred to above cannot possibly be a patriot — he is a traitor to the core. Whoever represses his people, deprives them of their freedoms, seizes their money, corrupts them, and spreads injustice, defeat, hypocrisy, and charlatanry, cannot be patriotic or committed to the causes of the people and the nation, even if he bombards us morning and evening with every resounding patriotic speech. Whoever does this is simply insisting on a state of backwardness, and is turning his people into tools and beasts of burden — indeed, into slaves. And whoever turns his people, who should be his support, into slaves, cannot himself be free, or capable of liberating anyone.

Palestine will not be liberated by those who enslave their own peoples, nor will Iraq, nor the Arab wealth of the Gulf.

The Madness of the Rulers and Their Loyalists

At the outset, the henchmen of the Tunisian regime were quick to claim that an external conspiracy was being woven against Tunisia, and the conspiracy was usually said to be coming from France. Then came the henchmen of the fallen Egyptian regime, to say that foreign hands were meddling in Egypt — meaning Iran and Iran’s agents. The overwhelming majority of the sons of the nation were cheering for the Egyptian and Tunisian peoples, and Al Jazeera earned loud applause, encouragement, and approval. But the numbers of those crying conspiracy began to grow as the popular Arab movements spread from one country to another. Every Arab ruler has his loyalists, and they rush forward to defend him.

Whoever defends any Arab regime is a loser, and it would be better for anyone who thinks well of an Arab ruler to stay silent rather than defend him. The Arab nation is passing through a new historical phase, and there is no escaping it — change will reach every Arab regime. It would be better for the Arab ruler to change his own condition and conduct of his own accord, rather than confront the people with iron and fire.

Perhaps the rulers of the Gulf imagine that they are not part of the Arab regimes, and that they are simply busy looking for solutions for Arab states where popular movements have erupted. No — they are no better than the others; indeed, they plunder the nation’s wealth more than the others, and are more submissive to American will, and change will reach them too, even if after a while. This is the logic of history, which knows no tribes, kings, or princes, and which crushes whoever stands in its way.

For this reason, it is better for the intellectuals of the nation to enter the battle with dignity and pride, rather than hide away waiting to see how things will turn out, or stand beside rulers who are bound to collapse.

Western Intervention

The people of the West have their own interests, and they constantly think of the means and methods that can be pursued to preserve those interests. Our crumbling rulers have not shielded their states or their peoples from foreign influence, and have left foreigners to meddle in the affairs of the nation. So does this intervention compel us to support the rulers against the West?

We face a dual task: to incite against the regimes, and to incite against Western intervention. We want neither one nor the other, and let the people of the West withhold their harm from us, if they truly care about our freedoms, and let them stay out of our affairs. For this reason, our Libyan brothers are called upon to seek other sources of support in confronting their ruler, and not to leave their doors open to Western intervention, which in the end serves nothing but the interests of the people of the West. We do not want to escape a dark despotism only to fall into a new colonialism dressed up as concern for the people.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “لا أسف على أي حاكم عربي” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.