Foreign countries have vital interests in our Arab countries and there is no point in allying with them to overcome internal conflicts
Written by: Prof. Dr. Ammar Bouhouch
- Arab Democratic Center
It is clear that the Arab citizen does not need an expert opinion in political science in order to explain to him that the internal conflicts in the Arab countries have the approval of Western countries that sell us deadly weapons because what they care about is weapons and obtaining money, wealth and influence in all Arab regions, not conflict resolution. The complex in which the decisive decisions have escaped from the hands of those concerned, namely the Arabs. The main problem in our Arab countries is that the superior decisions do not originate from specialists, people of knowledge and scholars who deal wisely and soberly with the strategic issues that pertain to our countries. Rather, the superior decisions stem from the autocrats. External based on interests and alliances that serve the interests of foreign countries that are relied upon to resolve internal disputes for the benefit of powerful rulers in these crucial stages.
Difference of goals according to different interests:
The lesson that we draw from all of the above is that our Arab culture is fragile and that we are passionate about the existence of autocratic leaders who decide on their own what is the interest of the state and the citizens because they are strong and opposing their decisions is considered inappropriate and it is possible to accuse them of not having the patriotism! The problem here is that we are not used to the use of institutions and experts who deliberate in making decisions after intensive consultations. The decision of the leader, in our culture, is the one that should be adhered to, and the discussion should not be formal and do not create doubts about the validity of any decision taken by the autocratic leader, while we, in the science of politics, see that the public interest requires the consultation of those concerned with the issue and avoiding making decisions that serve personal interests It does not necessarily serve the public interest. The great disaster is that leaders are subject to foreign influence and pressure, because, realistically, we find that foreigners enter into bargains with Arab leaders to provide security, arms and food to their governments in exchange for taking into account their own interests and providing protection if they want to remain in power and benefit from financial benefits. Therefore, the decisions of the leadership coming from above may be misleading and do not in fact serve the national interest, but rather the personal interests of the rulers.
Setbacks for wrong decisions
A follower of the policies pursued by some Arab leaders will notice that most Arab leaders made mistakes in many individual decisions, and that these decisions returned with scourge on their people. In the beginning, let’s start with the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who was almost convinced that the Christian American soldiers would not enter the Islamic Saudi lands and fight the Iraqi army, but he was wrong because the Saudi king allowed the Christian soldiers to enter the lands of Saudi Arabia and the land of Kuwait and attacked his country and overthrew him. He also had an illusion that he could fight the Persians and stop the Shiite tide of the Iranian revolution, with the encouragement of the Americans and the Gulf states, but events proved a mistake in his decisions, and that the Shiites and the Americans were the ones who hanged him on the day of Eid al-Fitr! And the same mistakes made by President Gamal Abdel Nasser, may God have mercy on him, who established the world and set it up with his controversial decisions in 1967, relying on generals who are distinguished by loyalty to him and his regime, but they are not competent, and they were tampering with Egyptian security, and they were in crazy evenings on the night of the attack on the Egyptian aviation And his destruction at the beginning of June 1967. He also made the wrong decision to place his confidence in the American President, London Janson, who assured him that Israel would not initiate a sudden attack on Egypt. However, this deception fell on him, and the Israeli army attacked and destroyed Egypt overnight! In the context of the wrong supremacist decisions, we note that Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen used to claim that his people loved him and the masses asked him to remain in power to serve his people, but this people revolted against him and resorted to the street to overthrow him. The Houthis are monopolizing power, and in the end, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia abandoned him and he was assassinated by the Houthis, who took control of the Yemeni army and seized Sanaa during his reign. It is a strange coincidence that the Saudi leadership in 2020 decided, with the participation of allied countries, to eliminate the Houthi minority in Yemen, in a short period, but this decision was wrong, as after 5 years of war in Yemen, the war is still draining wealth The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have become able to send aircrafts as a pilot and cross-border missiles to Saudi territory to the extent that they threaten cities and oil installations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In the countries of the Maghreb, we notice that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi came to Algeria one day and gave a speech in the National People’s Assembly controlled by the National Liberation Front, the only party in Algeria, and he said: Whoever partisanship is a traitor !! It is clear that Gaddafi’s decisions were individual, whether in weakening the Libyan army and compensating it with the militias loyal to it, and unfair against the Libyan Islamists, and he granted more than 50 million euros to the campaign of the French President who is credited with his assassination in Libya in 2011 with the support of NATO forces That left Libya in a political vacuum to this day. If we move to Tunisia, we can notice that President Ben Ali colluded with Tunisian personalities close to President Bourguiba and staged a white coup against the Tunisian head of state in 1987, and he affirmed in his first speech, “There is no injustice anymore in Tunisia”. But after 23 years of ruling Tunisia, it was proven by evidence and facts that most of his individual decisions were unjust, as he violated all Tunisian laws, persecuted and abused thousands of Islamists and leftists opposed to his rule, and pursued policies that predominantly woo Western countries so as to turn a blind eye to his tyrannical policies and stifle his opponents And the fight against multiparty. His reign was also marked by financial and administrative corruption, and his family and his wife’s family became a symbol of corruption in Tunisia. On December 17, 2010, a Tunisian revolution erupted after Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to his body in Sidi Bouzid, in protest at the police confiscation of the fruit cart from which he was making a living. Bouazizi’s death exploded the reservoir of anger among the masses of Tunisians rejecting the deterioration of the conditions of their country, and his famous phrase “Ghemtko” did not succeed in containing the demonstrations and protests. We understand from this that Ben Ali’s decisions were individual, and Western countries did not sympathize with him to give him the opportunity to hide in it when he decided to flee abroad and live in exile.
As for Algeria during the era of President Houari Boumediene, this leader showed great ingenuity in making the right decisions that he only denies, as his period of rule (1965-1978) was marked by stability and imposing his own style and the way of his rule, but his isolation of power and decision-making in 1974 It was wrong then, and it cannot be tolerated. There are a large number of researchers who believe that President Houari Boumediene, may God have mercy on him, dealt with King Hassan II, the brotherly King of Morocco, in 1974 in a way that he was not successful in, and his individual decisions resulted in leniency with Hassan II, who seized the Algerian lands. Residents of the Al-Aqsa Maghreb, especially as they devoted their money, wealth and lands to the Algerian revolution, bearing in mind that there are laws that prohibit any decision in Algeria or Morocco to confiscate the property of citizens residing in Algeria or Morocco. President Houari Boumediene was supposed to make a decisive decision and stop the Moroccan king at his limit, not allowing him to seize the lands of the Algerians residing in Morocco and then seize the Western Sahara, which has hindered the unity of the Maghreb to this day. Hassan II’s arbitrary decisions enabled him to gain the support of his people following the confiscation of the Algerian lands in Morocco, as well as organizing the Green March to unite Moroccans under the pretext of preserving Moroccan sovereignty over the lands that were occupied by Spain.
Absence of a culture of relying on local talent:
To put it simply, we note that most of the leaders in the world and senior officials in any country, resort to making critical decisions in the event of their illness to senior medical specialistsIn their countries or in the world to treat them and help them to overcome the disease, but when they are faced with financial and political crises within their country, they do not think of consulting specialists to help them and rely on them to solve the difficult problems facing them, but rather make improvisational decisions and the illusion that they know and make circumstantial decisions that help them to survive In power and enjoy the wealth of the country. This approach reflects a fundamental idea in the matter of making the right decisions and wrong decisions that harm the vital interests of the developing peoples. Experts have no value in their homeland, and their neglect has pushed them to search for a better life in developed countries. In this regard, she brings me up on some realistic issues that embody this trend in our Arab countries.
Another issue firmly in my mind concerns an Iraqi professor specializing in physics, graduated from a prestigious university, MIT, and he returned to Baghdad after his graduation and obtaining a doctorate, and it was decided to appoint him as president of the University of Baghdad (1959-1963). When the 1963 coup occurred, Dr. Abdul-Jabbar Abdullah was arrested, on the grounds of suspicion of his affiliation with the Abdul Karim Qasim group. But the prominent thing about the subject of this physical scientist is that he who slapped, insulted and stripped him of his clothes on the day of his arrest is one of the students of this honorable professor. In October of 1963, he was released, and he returned to the United States of America to teach at the Universities of Colorado and then New York University in Albany (the state capital), until he died in 1969 AD.
The lesson from all this is that many Arab officials have destroyed science, scholars and education in their homelands, and have taken care of creating a generation obsessed with singing and football and rushing to flee abroad in search of a better life.
Selling technology is an effective way to expand foreign wealth
It is clear in our time that everything is based on the economic interests of each country, and politics is nothing but a facade to achieve the vital benefits of each country. False slogans of democracy, national sovereignty and human rights are used in most cases in a selective manner and in a deflective manner to achieve the established goals in each country. There is no argument that the developed countries seek to sell what their factories produce and the manpower available within them, thus serving their internal interests and satisfying the money owners who invest inside their countries and provide jobs for their citizens. Perhaps the strange thing at this time is that the production of wealth and goods began to change very quickly after the Chinese proved their superiority in the production of technology and goods at low prices, and Western capitalist companies are racing to invest in China because the latter has become dominant in global markets.
What interests us in this matter is not the conflict between the giant economic institutions in China and the economic interests in Western countries. Rather, what we care about is the localization of technology and manufacturing industries in developing countries. The essence of the problem with regard to the issue of development in the small countries that owns the subterranean wealth in their lands is that they are unable to formulate perceptions and deliberate policies by experts to get out of the crises they are facing. All attention in developing countries is directed towards the struggles between elites and powerful people to occupy political positions and to seek the help of loyalists and supporters to overcome their political opponents who seek to deny them access to the leadership seat. Of course, those who oppose are considered unpatriotic in the eyes of the authorities, and they are accused of obstructing the leaders of their country. As for the essence of the issue, which is relying on local experts and benefiting from their skills and abilities to develop and produce national wealth, it has no place in real-world expression. Therefore, the crisis management approach will not solve the problems that plague developing countries. Government red tape and the accumulation of employees in offices without producing anything, and creating disguised unemployment in government institutions will not contribute to improving social conditions because the result of these improvised policies will lead us to rely on technology-producing countries and the state’s coffers will remain empty of hard currency and one day it will not be We can purchase food from abroad.
I admit that I was astonished by the statement of former Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, who declared during his trial that if he had the opportunity to return to power, he would take the same decisions and adopt the same method in leading the government, which is the method that he returned to with pale and the confiscation of his property and wealth by Algerian justice. He will spend the rest of his life in prisons, yet he does not recognize his mistakes and does not regret his improvised decisions that resulted in the loss of the confidence of his people in his government and the overthrow of him and his isolated president residing in a remote area on the outskirts of Algiers in Tipaza. ( [1] )
In fact, the problem of employing efficient tires in developing countries and the search for social justice has been outdated by time, as developed countries are investing in the production of work machines that will replace workers in technical jobs and thus contribute to flooding the markets with cheap goods. This trend means that developing countries will remain subordinate to Western countries due to the difficulty of producing domestically manufactured goods and with expensive hands.
Artificial intelligence, machine worker replacement, and robotics may cause many of the jobs that we are accustomed to making money from disappear. Therefore, it is imperative to train workers to acquire new skills in keeping with the spirit of the times and the time in which we live.
We live in an era of innovation and invention, and the modern economy has become based on the presence of modern technology, and temporary contracts to complete work remotely, and this requires today’s leaders to keep pace with the spirit of the times and create a new work environment in which to keep pace with the changes that occur in contemporary societies.
We conclude from the foregoing that the mentality of the decision-maker in our developing countries is far from the agenda of investment in the field of education and scientific research and focuses in particular on importing technology instead of building and settling it internally. In essence, the problem is that many leaders in our Arab countries focus in particular on the process of achieving political victories over their opponents, more than they focus on seeking to set efficient frameworks, follow up on development processes, and allocate sufficient funds to achieve the required development. If we look now at the issues of destructive wars in several Arab countries, we will notice that people’s money is spent on buying weapons and paying bribes to businessmen, while human development and the follow-up of economic projects are postponed until a later time.
Creativity, production and localization of technology are required
Scientific research and innovation or creativity requires generous funding from the state treasury, because the results of scientific research are long and continuous and financial profit is not achieved quickly, and therefore continuous government support is necessary to reach tangible results. The purpose of scientific research is not represented in the manufacture and possession of goods and technology, but rather is to provide support and finance all research and technological improvements in the fields of information, economy and foreign trade. The developed countries provide the research centers with encouragement and incentives for scientific innovations, such as tax exemptions that benefit sectors of technological development, government assistance in the field of export promotion, and training of competencies with the aim of improving the level and rewarding those with scientific skills.
Perhaps the thing that should be paid attention to in the field of localizing technology in every country is the competition by governments for patents in every field, and the identification of new inventions that benefit each government and help them to twin industries or improve the level of machines and obtain new inventions useful to every society. At the present time, we notice that about 200 international laboratories are racing to produce the Corona pandemic vaccine, and the country that succeeds in producing a drug that treats this epidemic will sell its production in the billions and get great benefits from this vaccine against the global epidemic, and this fact appeared on 08/12/2020. The day when the President of the Russian Federation, Putin, announced that Russian scientists had produced a vaccine to treat the Corona virus epidemic, and that the Russian people were very happy with this vaccine and the efforts of its scientists who worked hard and reached the production of this vaccine, which will benefit the Russian people.
And from these impressive results, we conclude that technological superiority is the basic foundation for the progress of peoples. The country that succeeds in localizing technology is the one that produces and exports its advanced products to countries whose role is limited to importing the necessary products for them from abroad and paying the exorbitant prices for the acquisition of medical or technical materials from abroad. In other words, the main problem that developing countries suffer from in the field of scientific progress is the lack of attention to local human resources, and the lack of reliance on them or mandating them to effectively run development projects and achieve impressive results. The mistake found in developing countries is the lack of political will to support and develop their own capabilities and resort to purchasing machinery and equipment and relying on productive capacities coming from abroad.
The easy solutions to importing devices, tools and equipment from developed countries, that is, buying technology, will not benefit developing countries because hard currency exchange serves external production and dwarfs domestic production. The fundamental solution lies in the support and patronage of local scientists who are experts and scholars in scientific research. Accordingly, the encouragement of innovation and local invention by the state treasury in every country is a necessary process for the success of any invention or innovation, because scientific research is a process of training, formation and application of the foundations of knowledge, and this opens the way for the abundance of production and filling the basic needs of each nation. It is clear that taking care of training and raising the level of capacities of human resources is what achieves the desired goals of development. What is indisputable is that whoever owns the technology today will succeed tomorrow.
( [1] ) The news, issued on Tuesday 7 July 2020.
