Some Arab elite are strangers at home

Some of the Arab elite reacted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor's notice to indict the Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir for genocide in an amazing way. They wrote, talked and issued statements supporting the decision and warning of resorting to "patriotism" to protect some rulers. That is really a very noble stand, except that it is not truly genuine.

Nobody - progressive, modernist or otherwise - can condone torture, ethnic cleansing or genocide. Whether you agree to the definition of what is going on in Darfur (mainly the input of a rebel leader moving between Israel and France), or trust the UN Security Council (manipulated by the US, the UK and likes) is another thing. Crimes should not be ignored or justified by comparing them to other crimes.

Progressive Arab elite is not always consistent in its stance when it comes to basic human rights. First, they are exactly like opportunistic politicians who adopt the calls of minorities and vocal fringe groups for pragmatic reasons. Take a simple example: they condemn resistance groups if they belong to a different political spectrum, and call them freedom fighters and support them if they adopt the same line that they follow at that time. It is exactly like a fanatic Israeli colonist who is being called an innocent civilian harassed by "terrorists", and Palestinian women and children, who are killed by American arms at the hands of Zionists, are branded as "militants" or their affiliates.

When I say the line our progressive elite following at the time, I mean the notion that they are not that consistent, and more or less are the other side of the coin to the regimes in the region. Since that elite used to be leftist by the middle of last century, now when they turned ultra neo-liberal, they suffered a serious problem: being strange at home.

No wonder you see ex-Marxist figures, who were strong opponents of Anglo-American imperialism few decades ago, are now the proponents of the neo-conservative cabal in Washington and London. I think they are neither genuine in their old beliefs or their newly-born doctrines. They just seek being "different" and belong to the "other".

Genuine thinkers

The Arab left movement, though it included genuine thinkers and activists who died or shied away, was in general a bit detached from its populace. Those so-called leftists were looking towards Moscow or Beijing more than looking into their own cities and villages in their countries. They always needed the "other", assuming its superiority and enlightenment and reflecting their inferiority complexes.

People are smarter than many intellectuals suggest, and they did not take such progressive elite seriously - simply because they thought "they are not like us". Arrogant activists would complain that their people are not up to be "revolutionised" by them. More alienation and the progressive elite failed to make "progress" in their societies and failed to impress the "other" whom they used to look forward to.

Left fading, giving way to new trends, our progressive elite quickly transformed - regardless of any change in their own societies they are vanguards. Look at those who preach basic human rights as the "deformed" behaviour of small, yet vocal and active, groups and talk about modernism as getting rid of basic principles like independence, dignity and equality. They are the same "progressive" figures of the past shifting to a new "other" and a new line.

Such strange elite is part of our problems, rather than a solution. They achieved little in the past, and are not expected to do much now. But in the "fluid" state of global culture, we are going through now, such strangers at home are proving to be a nuisance. They are a good force of change if they choose to "engage" with the people and stop seeing the whole picture as the regimes and powerful others. Unfortunately, they did not learn from previous lessons and one could not be much optimistic about them.

Sudan's President could be a totalitarian (though this is up to the Sudanese people to say, not me or George W. Bush to judge) but one can not see a solution in Sudan by demolishing the whole country through "progressive" means.

De-constructing nation states is not acceptable, even if it is disguised in the noblest propaganda disseminated by new colonialists in Washington, London or Paris. Examples are countless for the chaos created by those who preach humanitarian pretexts, and the results were human disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and elsewhere.

I have a little advice to our progressive elite: they might find it difficult to get residence visas in the US or Europe so they can try to mass emigrate to the only democracy in the region - the Zionist state in Palestine. They will like it there and would spare their peoples the useless headache they give them.

Dr Ahmad Mustafa is a London-based Arab writer.