Book Review: The Arabs: A History

Published on Friday 6 November 2009 17:32

THE ARABS: A HISTORY

Eugene Rogan

Allen Lane, 25

IN 1920, Iraqis rose up against their British rulers, demanding the self-determination promised them during the Great War. London, more interested in Mesopotamian oil than rewarding its erstwhile allies, responded with brute force: 2,200 British troops and 9,000 natives died in the ensuing bloodbath.

In 1947, the Zionist terrorists of the Stern Gang, whose allied Irgun group included future premier Menachem Begin, executed two British hostages and displayed their booby-trapped bodies. Anti-Jewish pogroms broke out from Glasgow to Plymouth, and walls of British streets were daubed with graffiti stating "Hitler was right".

These are just two of the many striking examples Eugene Rogan gives to illustrate the West's long, bloody and often forgotten relationship with the Middle East. As Ottoman rule waned, then collapsed, freedom for the Arab world hardly came, let alone "endured". The French "pacification" of Algeria was carried out at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. The restless natives would be dominated by a million European settlers, the only colonisation of its kind outside Israel.

However, unlike the pieds noirs, who vanished from North Africa in 1962, the Israeli settlers have stayed. Rogan does not hesitate to describe Britain's decision to support the creation of a Jewish national home as a "disaster", opening the way to the ethnic cleansing of what was once Palestine. Already in 1937, the Peel Commission had concluded that there was "no common ground" between Palestinians and Zionists. Rogan recounts this sorry story, from Zionist overtures to Hitler in 1943, to the war of 1948 and the invasion of Gaza 60 years later. UN resolution 242 on territories occupied in 1967 remains unimplemented.

However, Rogan's erudite and subtle book avoids a portrayal of the Arabs as perpetual victims of foreign powers. With the exception of the Yom Kippur war of 1973, the Arabs' military campaigns against Israel were hopelessly disorganised, fought with poor equipment and even poorer intelligence. The dream of pan-Arab nationalism was broken by national self-interest. The Arab Republic of Syria and Egypt meant colonial domination by the latter. Arab governments have meted out extreme violence to their "compatriots".

Rogan shows the vibrancy of political and civic life in the Arab world, which gives the lie to clichs about oriental despotism. Arab intellectuals absorbed "Western" values and turned them against their colonial masters. Many countries had strong communist parties and trade unions, while women played prominent roles in struggles for democratic change.

And yet, the "cycle of subordination" is far from broken. One of the few faults of this book is that, in order to give an Arab perspective on their own history, Rogan cites only the educated elites. This is useful in countering occidental bias, but more attention could be given to the growing disenfranchised masses of the "Arab Street". Once Western free market democracy and Soviet socialism have failed, it is they who are most drawn to Islamic populism, and fill the nightmares of the region's dictatorships and the hyperpower that controls them. For, as Rogan points out, "'in any free and fair election, those parties most hostile to the United States are most likely to win".

&#149 This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 08/11/09