Fulfilling a dream of Arab unity

Taryam Omran (1942-2002) was the first UAE Ambassador to Egypt in 1971 and the first UAE representative at the Arab League. In 1977, he was elected Speaker of the UAE Federal National Council, winning another term in 1979. He presided over the Arab Parliamentarian Union in 1978 and 1979 and was the vice-president of the UAE commission of Arab solidarity. Khalaf Al Habtoor writes a letter to a friend on Arab unity.

Dear Taryam,
My dear friend, although you are no longer among us, I feel sure that you, a life long believer in, and an activist for Arab Unity, would be dismayed by the sight of international powers doing so much to weaken our efforts for unity by sowing so much dissension amongst us Arabs!

But the irony is that while our governments and leaders, under the malign influence of powerful external forces continue to disagree amongst themselves, Arab people no matter their nationality or religion, from the youngest, to the oldest are more united now than at anytime since the days of President Gamal Abdul Nasser.

Even the late President Nasser, for all his passion for unity, failed to instill such a desire in the hearts of all our people. It has taken interventionist international powers to ignite a new awareness of, and a desire for Arab unity, in ordinary people.

Taryam, we were very young men when the imperialists packed their bags and left our countries. We were filled with the prospect of rekindling the greatness of our people. We dreamed we could once again unite all the different Arab communities and nation states, to bring about a renaissance of Arab culture, and embark on an era of economic growth, that would allow us to sit at the table of nations as equals.

After all, we thought, how can we not become united again; do we not share a common heritage, a unifying single language that is understood by over 300 million people, and are we not, in the main, all as one, under our faith?

After a promising start, President Nasser's vision of a United Arab Republic seemed possible, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the West, to the Arab Gulf in the East, as he embarked on uniting Egypt and Syria – alas nothing came of it.

Over the last 50 years, it has not been just the great powers that have kept us apart; much of the blame for our failure is our own quarrelsome petty ambitions, that have seen us set up 22 sovereign Arab states, that have become paralysed by their own indecision.

As President His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan has often pointed out, "It is the divisions among Arabs that are a source of strength for our enemies." These divisions have led to the humiliation of the people of Palestine, and the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.

So my friend, what we could not achieve for ourselves, is now being achieved by the blindness of the new imperial powers of this new century. Should we see this as a blessing in disguise? This new imperialism is acting as a catalyst for all the frustrations, anger, fear and injustice felt by our people towards countries that we thought would be our friends – particularly after the 1991 Gulf war.

The New World Order, is the embodiment of all that we fear. For years we have felt uneasy at the West's cultural imperialism through its materialistic values; our portrayal as the 'bad guys' in Hollywood movies and the swamping of our airwaves with Western music, our stores with Western clothes, and our countries with 'fast food' outlets.

All of which are seducing our young people away from their cultural heritage and traditional values. While this is cause for dismay, we are much more afraid of the consequences of this new imperialism on our Palestinian brothers, and the unquestioning support that the Zionist State of Israel gets from the capitals of the West.

Despite numerous UN resolutions clearly stating that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal, America for instance, still continues to give Israel 40 per cent of its entire foreign aid budget, totalling more than $3.5 billion annually. To add insult to injury, this money is then squandered in building illegal settlements on Palestinian land, and buying fighters and helicopter gun ships to oppress the civilian population.

This fuels our resentment, while the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf war, that have led to the deaths of over 500,000 children so far, ignites it. Whose enemy were these innocent children?

It is actions like these that made us Arabs resentful; but we always felt we could do little about them. This resentment has resulted in the terrible attack on the American people on September 11, 2001. But rather than addressing the root cause of Arab resentment, the West has embarked on a course of action that only seeks to punish.

This has inflamed Arab and Muslim fears and made them deeply suspicious of the West's Intentions in our region. This approach is seeing the innocent suffer, as a lethal force is sanctioned and used to conduct an overt and covert war on terrorism.

Unfortunately the perpetrators of the attack on America were of Arab origin, so of course, the main targets of the 'war against terrorism' are all Arabs and Muslims. The West then decided to invade a Muslim country, Afghanistan, and overthrow its government in pursuit of those it believes attacked America.

This act of interventionism is followed by the passing of blatantly racial laws in some Western countries that discriminate against all Arabs, on the basis of their religion and/or country of origin, thereby forcing Arab residents in some countries to register with the federal authorities.

It has been reported by many civil liberties groups in America, for instance, that thousands of Arabs who voluntarily went to register, have been arrested, allegedly because their residence papers were not in order. Thanks to these unenlightened actions, the Western press and it pundits have been demonising Arabs and Islamists.

Read these words from Anne Coulter, an American columnist, who wrote, "we should invade their [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." In another article she advocates that the American administration deport all Arabs and Muslims, and force them to get approval from a federal agency, before boarding any plane in the United States.

This demonising of Arabs and Muslims has not been lost on Ariel Sharon, who has engaged all the famous communication skills of the Israeli State and the Jewish lobby in the West, to ensure that the 'proper' message is heard about 'terrible Palestinian terrorists'.

He is portrayed by the Israeli media machine as the lone friend of the West in the Middle East, fighting 'Arab terrorism' to keep the West safe, by oppressing and killing all those greedy troublesome Palestinians, who dare to want their homeland back. Now, with America's help, he wants to make the West even safer, by driving all these nasty Arabs into the sea.

These actions, to protect Western countries from this perceived threat of terrorism has stirred up much racism, hatred and intolerance. This oppressive hatred of all things Arab and Islamic has started a fire in the hearts of our people, that will be difficult to extinguish. This