The Arabs

by David Lamb

Published 1987

Rating: 4.2

David Lamb, an American journalist who lived in and reported on the Middle East, writes a very readable description of Arab culture and politics, aimed at helping westerners to understand the several hundred million people know collectively as Arabs.  Lamb uses Cairo as his base during his four-year stay in the early 80’s.  He travels extensively through and reports on Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, and Morocco.  He meets and interviews political and intellectual leaders as well as average citizens to describe Arab culture and politics and to elaborate on the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Lamb concludes his book by admonishing the United States for its lack of understanding of the many peoples that comprise the Arab world, and for painting these diverse peoples with one brush.  To make his point, he provides ample historical perspective, starting with ancient desert cultures, the traditions of Bedouin tribes, conquest by invading armies throughout the millennia, and of course the rise of Islam after the death of the prophet Mohammed in 632 AD.

Lamb begins his story in Cairo, which he characterizes as the heart and soul of the Arab world, and a place where the author spends much time.  He contrasts the dynamic Cairo of the early 20th century to the polluted and chaotic mega-city at the end of that century.  It is a story of a rapid decline from a thriving cultural and intellectual capital to a sprawling and desperately poor city of 8 million inhabitants.   Yet he maintains that Cairo in 1986 was still the intellectual capital of the Arab world in that no other country permitted such freedom of thought.  Most free-thinkers in the Arab world have long since moved to western countries.

Having read Napoleon’s accounts of Cairo from his invasion in 1798 and having visited Cairo myself in 2011, I was struck by the similarity of observations from the western perspective and ultimately how little has changed in two centuries.

Living in Cairo and having many local friends there, Lamb provides a view into the seeming contrasts of the city.  Trash piles up on the streets and city infrastructure is hopelessly inadequate or completely absent.  Traffic is pure anarchy, inside banks people cram toward the tellers rather than forming orderly queues.  Yet Egyptians maintain a fait accompli sense of life and are known for their good sense of humor.  Amazingly, despite the outward filth, the homes of even the most humble peasants are immaculate inside.  

Lamb traces the recent decline of Egypt to Nasser, who led the country from 1956 until his death in  1970.  Despite the fact that Arab culture is basically capitalistic (Mohamed and his wife were both business people), Nasser nationalized much of the country’s business and turned to socialism.  Nasser also set lofty goals of defeating Israel and of uniting the Arab world into a great monolithic culture.  

None of Nasser’s goals were realized.  In fact his policies accomplished quite the opposite of his goals.  Israel proved to be too formidable of an enemy and Egypt and its Arab neighbors proved unable to use their numbers and wealth to prevail in battle.  Plagued with infighting, untrained armies and sometimes conflicting agendas, they were the Goliath that could not slay David.  Lamb explains how the basic tenets of Islam - that Allah ultimately decides outcomes, the duty of the faithful is to pray 5 times daily and that the text of the Koran contains everything they need to know - actually discourages intellectual and material pursuits.  He outlines how this combination of Islam and socialism under Nasser combined to destroy wealth and create an impoverished, uneducated society.  He also describes to some extent how the clergy trumped university intellectuals to further impoverish Egyptian society and of course establish their own power base.  

Perhaps the most puzzling element in the middle east is the relationships between the Palestinians, Israel, Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world.  At one point in detailing the complexities of these relationships, Lamb characterizes the Palestinians as ‘the Arab’s Jews’.  By this he means that for most Arabs, the Palestinians are viewed in much the same way that Jews are viewed in many western countries.  That is to say that they are a) different, and b) successful, and therefore . . . c) resented and/or ostracized by the mainstream.   He describes Palestinians as more educated, more worldly, less religious, and more middle class than in most Arab countries.  When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, many muslims in Lebanon actually cheered the arrival of Israeli tanks because they felt that the Israelis would expel the Palestinians.   While many Arab states are outwardly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, none of these states actually want any of the Palestinians in their country.   With all of the extraordinary wealth of the Arab oil states, millions of Palestinians continue to live in poverty, right in the backyard of the wealthiest Arab nations.  

Lamb devotes a considerable number of pages to describing the tangle of interests that comprise middle eastern politics.  It is a hopelessly complex web of shifting priorities spanning the planet, and while it would be easy to cite numerous truths about national or factional interests, they would all be half-truths at best.  From this section of the book I am reminded of the response of Henry Kissinger in 1970 when one of his deputy secretaries excitedly suggested that he had a solution to the middle east peace problem.  Kissinger stopped the junior officer and said “there is no solution to the problem.  Our job is to manage the problem.”  Indeed, Lamb’s text on middle eastern politics portrays exactly what Kissinger described.  There are too many players who benefit from the various conflicts for there to be any notable chance of a lasting peace.  Almost every war, terrorist act, and government policy of oppression has a vested interest in the death and subjugation of one group for the benefit of another group.  Ego and money are always stubborn obstacles to peace.

Perhaps the longest lasting and bloodiest example of this concept was the Iran-Iraq war which lasted through most of the 1980’s.  This brutal conflict was really a battle of egos between Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.  Iran had triple the population while Iraq had a better trained and equipped army.  Iran sent tens of thousands of pubescent boys to march through mine-fields, thus serving the dual purpose of clearing the fields and killing themselves in the process.   Iran equipped these boys with plastic keys that they were told were keys to heaven for their martyred souls.  Both sides had enough oil money to buy weapons from the United States and Soviet Union, and both sides had plenty of outsiders who were delighted to see these two adversaries waste their blood and treasure in a prolonged battle.  

After describing the hopelessly entangled politics of the region, Lamb shifts to the impact that oil has had on many Arab countries.  He notes that despite the vast wealth that has accumulated in the area, most Arabs are still very poor and uneducated (at least they were back in 1986).  Since this book was published much of that has changed, and education has gradually spread and many Arab governments have made concerted efforts to diversify their economies to reduce dependence on oil.  Most of the smaller Arab nations with oil realize the problem that they have not earned their wealth, so that when the oil runs out some day, they would revert to the poor desert tribes they once were.  To prevent such an outcome, some are trying to direct efforts to build a more sustainable society through education and diversification.

He notes that in Saudi Arabia, which is probably the most conservative and also wealthiest Arab country, the leadership would actually prefer to be more progressive, but the majority of their population is not ready for rapid change.  So Saudi culture modernizes at a seemingly glacial pace, as the fabulously wealthy and large royal family governs in much the same way they have for two hundred years, allowing every citizen access to their leaders to register virtually any complaint or request.  

Lamb concludes with a message for westerners that Arabs primarily want to be friendly with the United States yet feel a combination of hurt and anger at being rebuffed.  He describes the United States view as the simplistic belief that there are just two sides to conflict in the middle east, and that one side is good and the other side evil.   And he asserts that as long as the U.S. hold this view and refuses to educate itself about the varied interests of the many players in the Arab world, our policies are likely to fail.  His book then is one journalist’s attempt to enlighten us about the Arabs.  It’s a worthy effort.