Plan BNot an Enigma: Why the West Is Keen on Dividing the Arabs

by Ramzy Baroud
March 4, 2016 No Comments
The Arab world has always been seen in western eyes as a place of conquest, to
be exploited, controlled and tamed.

US Secretary of State at the 50th Munich Security Conference, February 1,

2014 (Tobias Kleinschmidt/MSC/licensed under CC BY 3.0 DE)
When Arab streets exploded with fury, from Tunis to Sanaa, pan-Arabism
seemed, then, like a nominal notion. Neither did the so-called Jasmine

Revolution use slogans that affirmed its Arab identity, nor did angry Egyptian
youth raise the banner proclaiming Arab unity atop the high buildings adjacent
to Tahrir Square.
Oddly, the Arabism of the Arab Spring was almost as if a result of convenience.
It was politically convenient for western governments to stereotype Arab
nations as if they are exact duplicates of one another, and that national
sentiments, identities, expectations and popular revolts are all rooted in the
same past and correspond with a precise reality in the present. Thus, many in
the west expected that the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, especially
since it was followed by the abdication of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, would lead to
a domino effect. Whos next? was a pretentious question that many asked,
some with no understanding of the region and its complexity.
After initial hesitation, the US, along with its western allies, moved quickly to
influence the outcome in some Arab countries. Their mission was to ensure a
smooth transition in countries whose fate had been decided by the impulsive
revolts, to speed up the toppling of their enemies and to prop up their allies so
that they would not suffer a similar fate.
The outcome was real devastation. Countries where the west and their allies
and, expectedly enemies were involvedbecame infernos, not of revolutionary
fervor, but of militant chaos, terrorism and unabated wars. Libya, Syria and
Yemen are the obvious examples.
In a way, the west, its media and allies assigned themselves as gatekeepers of
determining, not only the fate of the Arabs, but in molding their identities as
well. Coupled with the collapse of the whole notion of nationhood in some Arab
countriesLibya, for examplethe US is now taking upon itself the
responsibility of devising future scenarios of broken down Arab states.
In his testimony before a US Senate committee to discuss the Syria ceasefire,
Secretary of State,John Kerry revealed that his country is preparing a Plan
B should the ceasefire fail. Kerry refrained from offering specifics; however,
he offered clues. It may be too late to keep Syria as a whole, if we wait much
longer, he indicated.
The possibility of dividing Syria was not a random warning, but situated in a
large and growing edifice of intellectual and media text in the US and other
western countries. It was articulated by Michael OHanlon of the Brookings
Institute in a Reuters op-ed last October. He called for the US to find a
common purpose with Russia, while keeping in mind the Bosnia model.
In similar fashion, a future Syria could be a confederation of several sectors:
one largely Alawiteanother Kurdisha third, primarily Drusea fourth, largely

made up of Sunni Muslims; and then a central zone of intermixed groups in the
countrys main population belt from Damascus to Aleppo.
What is dangerous about OHanlons solution for Syria is not the complete
disregard of Syrias national identity. Frankly, many western intellectuals never
even subscribed to the notion that Arabs were nations in the western definition
of nationhood, in the first place. (Read Aaron David Miller article: Tribes with
Flags) No, the real danger lies in the fact that such a divisive dismantling of
Arab nations is very much plausible, and historical precedents abound.
It is no secret that the modern formation of Arab countries are largely the
outcome of dividing the Arab region within the Ottoman Empire into mini-states.
That was the result of political necessities and compromises that arose from
the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916. The US, then, was more consumed with its
South American environs, and the rest of the world was largely a Great Game
that was mastered by Britain and France.
The British-French agreement, with the consent of Russia, was entirely
motivated by sheer power, economic interests, political hegemony and little else.
This explains why most of the borders of Arab countries were perfect straight
lines. Indeed, they were charted by a pencil and ruler, not organic evolution of
geography based on multiple factors and protracted history of conflict or
concord.
It has been almost one hundred years since colonial powers divided the Arabs,
although they are yet to respect the very boundaries that they have created.
Moreover, they have invested much time, energy, resources and, at times, all out
wars to ensure that the arbitrary division never truly ends.
Not only does the west loathe the term Arab unity, it also loathes whoever
dares infuse what they deem to be hostile, radical terminology. Egypts second
President, Jamal Abdel Nasser, argued that true liberation and freedom of Arab
nations was intrinsically linked to Arab unity.
Thus, it was no surprise that the struggle for Palestine occupied a central stage
in the rhetoric of Arab nationalism throughout the 1950s and 60s. Abdel Nasser
was raised to the status of a national hero in the eyes of most Arabs, and a
pariah in the eyes of the west and Israel.
To ensure that Arabs are never to unite, the west invested in their further
disunity. In 2006/07, former US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, made it
clear that the US would cease its support of the Palestinian Authority
shall Fatah and Hamas unite. Earlier, when, resistance in Iraq reached a point
that the American occupiers found unbearable, they invested in dividing the
ranks of the Iraqis based on sectarian lines. Their intellectuals pondered the

possibility of dividing Iraq into three autonomous states: Shia, Sunni and
Kurdish.
Libya was too broken up after NATOs intervention turned a regional uprising
into a bloody war. Since then, France, Britain, the US and others have backed
some parties against others. Whatever sense of nationhood that existed after
the end of Italian colonization of that country has been decimated as Libyans
reverted to their regions and tribes to survive the upheaval.
A rumored Plan B to divide Libya to three separate protectorates of
Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan was recently rejected by the Libyan
Ambassador to Rome. However, Libyans presently seem to be the least relevant
party in determining the future of their own country.
The Arab world has always been seen in western eyes as a place of conquest, to
be exploited, controlled and tamed. That mindset continues to define the
relationship. While Arab unity is to be dreaded, further divisions often appear
as Plan B, when the current status quo, call it Plan A, seems impossible to
sustain.
What is truly interesting is that, despite the lack of a pan-Arab vision in Arab
countries that experienced popular revolts five years ago, few events in modern
history has brought the Arabs together like the chants of freedom in Tunis, the
cries of victories in Egypt and screams of pain in Yemen and Syria. It is that
very collective identity, often unspoken but felt, that drives millions of Arabs to
hold on to however faint a hope that their nations will survive the ongoing
onslaught and prospective western division.