by Mordechai Kedar
Read the article in the original עברית
Read the article in Italiano (translated by Yehudit Weisz, edited by Angelo Pezzana)
In
contrast to the desert that covers most of the Middle East, the Fertile Crescent has been an area that kingdoms thrived in since the
dawn of history. The reason is simple: it was possible to maintain a
reasonable and stable community life in this area because communities
could establish an economy based on agriculture and raising herds of
animals. The children of Israel in the Land of Israel, the Phoenicians
in Lebanon, the Assyrians in Syria, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and
the Chaldeans in Iraq, all established kingdoms with a strong and
effective central government, based on an agricultural society dwelling
in permanent communities from which it was possible to collect taxes and
enlist its sons into the ruler's army. The desert, on the other hand,
was not a place of kingdoms and regimes because its nomadic residents do
not represent a civil and economic basis upon which it is possible to
establish a permanent, central framework.
The
modern era is a continuation, to a large extent, of the classic picture
of the Fertile Crescent: Lebanon, Syria and Iraq were established as
states that should have been frameworks for legitimate states with governmental
systems based on a egalitarian and shared civil society, that would
include the tribes and the many ethnic, religious, and sectarian groups
that populate the area. The objective data of the area -plentiful
precipitation, comfortable weather, flowing rivers and fertile ground -
could have provided a comfortable life for the people of these states,
if only they could have lived with each other in peace. The borders of
the states were drawn by the colonial forces that ruled in the area, and
these borders define their territories, the area of their sovereignty
and the identity of their citizens. Protection of the borders is a
prerequisite for the existence of every state in the world.
But
in the past decade - and especially in the past two years - the borders
of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are continually being penetrated,
undermined, dissolved, eroded and annulled. Those who are undermining
the states are its neighboring states, organizations and individuals,
who relate to borders of states as if there is no need to respect them.
It is important to note that great sections of borders exist only on
maps, while in reality, there is no fence, wall or any real barrier that
would enable the state to protect its borders from invasion of
evildoers and prevent their entry.
The
efficacy of border protection is an effective indicator of a state's
overall condition: a state that protects its borders and prevents the
entry of hostile elements is a state with the power to live and survive
even if it is situated in an unfriendly environment. On the other hand, a
state that does not succeed to protect its borders from foreign and
hostile elements penetrating into its territory is a state in the
process of deterioration that might end in its demise. The recent events
in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon fully confirm this assumption.
Iraq:
For
the whole duration of the twentieth century there were factors that
undermined its borders, mainly Iran of the Shah: He supported the Kurds
in the North of Iraq until 1975 and channeled weapons, equipment,
fighters and money to them via the border. This undermined the integrity
of Iraq, and ever since the Kurdish area was declared as a no-fly zone
for the Iraqi air force in 1991, the Kurds of Iraq have lived almost
totally independently. They have a parliament, government, political
parties, an army, police, communications media, mass media and independent economic
viability. From a practical point of view, the borders of Iraq do not
include today the Kurdish area that was once the northern part of the
state.
The
border between Iraq and Iran has been wide open ever since the
beginning of 2004, less than a year from the day when Iraq was occupied
by the Western coalition led by President Bush. After the Iranians
understood that the Americans did not want an additional front in Iran,
they began to transfer weapons, ammunition, explosives, money and fighters into Iraq
by way of the border in order to strengthen the Shi'ite militias to the
detriment of the badly defeated Sunni militias, and so that the
Shi'ites could successfully resist with the occupation armies and
act against the influence of al-Qaida, which had established an organization called "The
Islamic State of Iraq". Thousands of fighters from the United States and
its allies were killed in Iraq with weapons and explosives that Iran
smuggled into the Land of the Two Rivers. The border between Iraq and
Saudi Arabia as well, served as a conduit for weapons, ammunition, money
and jihadists for the Sunni organizations, chiefly al-Qaida. Only in
recent years did Saudi Arabia set up a fence on the length of its
border with Iraq in order to prevent the Iraqi chaos from seeping into
its territory, but the fence did not prevent Saudi Arabia from
transferring anything that the Sunni Jihadists could think of, into Iraq.
Turkey never respected its border with Iraq, and its forces would often
cross the border into Iraqi Kurdistan to attack the bases of the
"Kurdish Workers Party" (PKK), which would send its fighters into
Turkey.
Syria:
The
border of Iraq with Syria has served for more than ten years as a
two-way membrane. Between the years 2004 and 2011 the porous border
served as a passage for Hizb'Allah fighters who crossed from Lebanon into Iraq
by way of Syrian territory in order to support the Shi'ites. Since March
of 2011 the border has served as a passage for Shi'ites from Iraq to
support the regime in Syria, but Iraqi Sunnis also cross it freely with
their weapons and explosive material in order to help their Syrian
brothers in their struggle against the Assad regime and indirectly
against Iran, which controls Iraq.
Since 2011, fighters,
weapons and equipment have also been freely transferred by the tribes of northern Jordan to
their brothers in the area of Hauran in southern Syria. And until today
almost a half million Syrian refugees have fled the Syrian inferno to
Jordan. The border between Syria and Lebanon has never been taken
seriously on either side: smuggling of goods from Lebanon to Syria has
provided livelihood for many thousands of Lebanese ever since the two
states were established in the forties, and many Syrians have crossed
the border illegally into Lebanon, fleeing the oppression of the regime,
mainly since Hafez al Asad rose to power towards the end of 1970. Many
Syrian workers have moved to Lebanon illegally via the porous borders,
and in peak years the number has been estimated at a million.
Syria's
border with Turkey is not sealed either and many have crossed it
unofficially over the years: Syrian and Turkish Kurds have always
crossed it almost without restriction, just as the border between Iraq
and Turkey has served as a passage for the Kurds on both sides. In the
past two years Turkey has been sending to the Syrian rebels support and
jihadists who come from Saudi Arabia, from Qatar, from North Africa and
from other areas, even from Europe. Not in vain have the rebels
against Asad captured the border crossings in the early phase of the
rebellion, because having control of the border crossings makes it
possible for them to bring into Syria people who support them in the fighting against the regime.
Lebanon:
Hizb'Allah
has turned smuggling into an art form: in broad daylight as well as in
darkness, in the paved streets as well as the dirt roads, at official as
well as unofficial border crossings from Syria to Lebanon, large
amounts of missiles, light and heavy weapons and ammunition have been
transferred from Iran, China and Russia, through Syria into Lebanon, and fighters from Hizb'Allah
have crossed by way of the Lebanese-Syrian border into Syria and Iran in
order to train for their jihad against their Lebanese brothers as well
as against Israel. In the past two years Hizb'Allah fighters have
crossed with their weapons and equipment into Syria via the breached
border, in order to help Asad. In the beginning, Hizb'Allah
snipers shot demonstrators in the streets of Dara'a from the roofs,
and afterwards the Hizb'Allah people joined in the street fighting,
primarily in the streets of Homs, Hama and Damascus. The "shaheeds" of Hizb'Allah who were killed in Syria were usually
smuggled into Lebanon via the open border and were buried temporarily
and secretly in the Buqa'a valley, near the border, primarily to avoid media exposure. Lately, since
Hizb'Allah's involvement in Syria has become common knowledge, the shaheeds are brought to their families for burial.
The
only border of Lebanon that looks like one is the coastline, but by any
effective test this border does not exist: On the breached shores of
Lebanon are tens of unofficial mooring places that have served for many
years in the smuggling of goods - primarily automobiles - that are
stolen in Europe to Lebanon, and are transferred by agents to the
Lebanese market and other Arab states. Since 2011 these moorings, along
with the port of Triploli, have served the Sunnis, as a transfer point
for the smuggling of weapons and ammunition to the rebels in Syria.
These weapons come mainly from Libya, from two sources: Qadhaffi's
military storehouses and surplus European and American weapons that
Qatar sent to the anti-Qadhaffi rebels in 2011. On the other hand, Alawites who live in
Lebanon - chiefly in the Jabal Mohsen quarter of Tripoli - cross the border between Lebanon and Syria illegally in order to support Asad.
The
conclusions that can be drawn from all of the above is that the borders
of the Arab states in the Fertile Crescent - Iraq, Syria and
Lebanon - are increasingly losing their effectiveness, and that this
phenomenon has been increasing in the past two years, since some of the
Arab regimes have been under attack, but this time from within. When the
borders of a state are breached, its existence as a state is
undermined, and the more violated its borders become, the more its existence and its meaning are threatened.
The
architecture of the fertile crescent that was bequeathed by colonialism
is changing before our eyes: Iraq is breaking up, Syria is crumbling
and Lebanon for some time has lost the pluralistic character that its
constitution was supposed to ensure. On the ruins of these countries new
bodies arise with many and varied agendas. Some have an Islamist slant,
and see the modern states as illegitimate creations that were born in
the basements of colonialism, and therefore must be totally done away
with. Some have a local slant - ethnic or tribal - and they are
interested in establishing new frameworks based on the demographic data
that colonialism tended to ignore completely.
In
recent months, the battles in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have taken on an
old-new hue that these states - as long as they were effective states -
had relegated or marginalized, which is the religious hue, and the
historical conflict between the Sunni and the Shi'a floats on the
surface and becomes the name of the game, or - preferably - the name of
the conflict. In Iraq, the Shi'ite government bombs the Sunni citizens
using fighter jets. In Syria the regime of Alawites, a sect that broke
off from the Shi'ites and are supported by Shi'ites, bombs its Sunni
citizens with jets and even uses chemical weapons against them. In
Lebanon the Shi'ite group threatens to take over the whole state, and
because of this threat, the state conducts itself in such a way that no
one is willing to gamble on its democratic future.
The
struggles along the fertile crescent have become dirty, filthy and
bloody, while all of the traditional limitations increasingly collapse
and man becomes an unbridled predator. The forces of the governments are
not righteous, and the forces of the rebels are not pious. Both of them
murder, maim, rape and cruelly violate the rights of many victims, most of whom are not involved in active fighting.
In
comparison: Israel's borders serve as an almost absolute seal against
foreign invaders, with various and sundry intentions. The border with
Egypt has been closed off and the number of infiltrators has become
negligible. The border with Jordan is well protected by right of the
joint interest of the two states. The border with Syria in the Golan
Heights survives, despite the chaos in Syria, the border with Lebanon
holds firm by right of Israel's deterrence versus Hizb'Allah, and if it
weren't for the drug smugglers, this border would be hermetically
sealed. The coastal border also is protected effectively by the Israeli
Navy, and only the border with the Gaza Strip serves as a point of
tension because of the jihadists that have taken over the Strip.
In
comparison with her neighbors, the state of Israel is an island of
stability and normal life, and the borders of the state testify to this
clearly and accurately. The situation in our days gives an interesting
meaning to the passage from the poem in the weekly Torah portion
"ha'azinu" ("listen"): "When the Most High divided to the nations their
inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of
the people according to the number of the children of Israel."
(Deuteronomy 32:8).
===============
Dr. Kedar is available for lectures
Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il) is an Israeli scholar of Arabic and
Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the
Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University,
Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and movements, the political
discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic mass media, and the Syrian domestic
arena.
Translated from Hebrew by Sally
Zahav with permission from the author.
Additional articles by Dr. Kedar
Source: The article is published in the framework of the Center
for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan
University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly newspaper.
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the author.
