Sunday, September 7, 2003		Books

Meet the author
“The Arabs see the Iraq venture as part of the American desire to extend its hegemony”

Ash Narain Roy

ASH Narain Roy, a former journalist, and at present a senior academic with the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), New Delhi, met Humra Quraishi for an interview. Excerpts:

My being a non-Muslim was no disqualification but not knowing Arabic did present problems. I could not make use of the abundant literature available in Arabic on the subject. But being an Indian had certain advantages. The Arabs have never been comfortable with the West’s "orientalist" writings. As Edward Said says in his book Orientalism, even the most gifted of English, French, German and subsequently American experts on the Middle East, be they philologists or philosophers, poets or travellers, "were creating what they wrote about".

The writings of Arab scholars about their political system are often uncritical, if not downright adulatory. The Arab exile writers have their own axe to grind. I had no such baggage. I had two reasons to take up the project. First, I saw it as an extension of my research on globalisation, having written my first book with a focus on Latin America. Second, there were hardy books on the subject in English which looked at the Arabs’ dilemma in the wake of globalisation’s onward march. Having visited the region on several occasions also helped.

Actually I began to organise my thoughts almost immediately after my first book came out. That was in early 2000. But then I was researching on globalisation and I had not made up my mind which region to turn to for area research. Soon I turned to the Arab world because the Internet was viewed by many in the region as a weapon of destabilisation. The rich society has all the modern gadgets but a relatively closed polity.

Contradictions were too sharp to escape notice. Serious research began only after 9/11 which brought out into the open a number of critical questions that had been festering for decades. I visited Kuwait and the UAE and exchanged notes with Arab scholars and journalists. Several interviews were conducted through e-mails.

I also met scores of Arab experts in the US. The book was in the Press when American intervention became imminent and was out when the Saddam Hussein regime was about to be ousted.

There is a widespread perception in the West and elsewhere that the Arabs are viscerally anti-American. That is not true. Anti-Americanism is not based on hatred of modernity; it is directed at American policy towards the Arab world. To most people, the official US is synonymous with arrogant power.

The Arabs see the Iraq venture as part of the American desire to extend its hegemony, a kind of ‘Pax American’. Iraq has the second largest oil reserve in the world. The US obviously is eyeing the Iraqi oil. Israel too is hoping that an old oil pipeline that connected Iraq to Haifa in Israel even before Israel was born would be reopened. It is for the first time that the US has occupied an Arab country.

My gut feeling is that Americans will find it difficult to extricate themselves from Iraq.

How many states in the world can stand up to America’s bullying? The unipolar world has limited the manoeuvring space for most developing countries. Yes, the Arab states have oil. But they don’t have the requisite manpower and technology to use oil as a bargaining chip.

The Arab world can’t afford to become gilded cages. Globalisation may be good or bad, but it can’t be wished away. The Arab world has missed the democracy train. It can ignore the growing urge for political reform at its own peril. But the change will be slow. Political reform is already on the agenda of some states. What the world will be curiously watching is how will Saudi Arabia respond to the new paradigm shift.