The true nature of Western-Arab relations during the past hundred years is among the casualties of 11 September 2001. To avoid a total confrontation, both sides have promoted the misconception that the vile event was an isolated incident. This is not true, even when we dismiss ancient history, the Crusades and the Turks on the gates of Vienna. Since the end of the First World War, the West has consistently undermined the development of democracy and granting the Arab people their rights by supporting subservient individuals, army groups, sects, clans and families.

The present crisis in Arab-West relations began after the First World War when a collection of Orientalists representing Britain, and occasionally France, created 14 new countries with little thought as to their geographic, religious or ethnic cohesion. They placed them under kings, emirs and sheikhs who deputized for them. The wishes of the Arab people were ignored.

To appreciate the destructive nature of this informal alliance between the West and their deputy sheriffs, one has to examine the thinking of the very same Orientalists and adventurers responsible for designing these countries and selecting their leaders. Despite the beautiful tales and romantic legends they left behind, and all of them were in the mould of Lawrence of Arabia, none of them liked the Arab people.

The Orientalist agent who was behind the creation of Iraq as we know it today was Gertrude Bell. A wealthy spinster and prolific diarist, she used money and family connections to invade a world populated by chauvinist males. After designing Iraq as a monarchy in 1922 she wrote her father complaining about finding “the creation of kings so tiresome.” She had made Faisal the First, a Hijazi from what is now Western Saudi Arabia, King of Iraq. To make it plain that she ran Iraq, she saw to it that “God save the King” was played on formal occasions. She told the Iraqis that "there is no Arab nation.” There is no doubting her contribution to the inherently unstable country, what we face today.

Lawrence of Arabia shared Bell’s antipathy towards the people who made him. “The Arabs are a manufactured people,” he complained. Even if true, it was and is a strange statement for someone who became famous leading Arab irregulars against the Turkish army during the First World War. He didn’t stop there, Lawrence became a committed Zionist who supported Jewish plans to turn Palestine into Israel. He successfully promoted the creation of Jordan, a patch of desert, during a British colonial conference in Cairo in 1922. He wanted it to act as a buffer state to protect a future Israel. Not a word was about the new country’s viability’ or the wishes of its people.

In 1917, the satirical London magazine Punch described Field Marshal Allenby’s occupation of Jerusalem as “the last crusade.” The French General Gouraud who conquered Damascus at about the same time visited the tomb of Saladin minutes after he entered the city and offered an uncompromising, “Nous revoila, Saladin.” The Arab historian Bayan Hout points out that the ceremonies which followed Allenby’s and Gouraud’s conquests saw the flags of the First World allies raised over both cities. Though the Arabs had supported the allies against Ottoman Turkey, the Arab flag was conspicuous by its absence.

In fact, the Anglo-British policy towards the Arab world was summed up by Lord Curzon’s now famous statement, "The British don’t govern Egypt, we only govern the people who govern Egypt.” Not to miss the parade of the anti-Arab creators of countries and myths, Glubb Pasha, the man who ran The Arab Legion, as Jordan’s army was called from the 1930s until the 50s, embellished Curzon’s statement with, "I am happy to say that I have never had dinner with a city Arab.” To people like Glubb, it was the ignorant Bedouin, condemned by the Koran and the Prophet Mohammed for dishonesty and unreliability, who was their ideal, a placid obedient Arab. “The Arabs are children of the desert,” was the way Lord Caradon, Sir Hugh Foot, summed it up years later.

Examining this group of people and their American equivalents a mere ten years ago, the American writer Robert Kaplan described them as being “More systematically wrong than any other area special group known to us.” In this case he included the Americans who emerged on the scene to replace the British and French after the Second World War. Unlike the romantics and military men of Britain and France the Americans were descendants of missionaries who followed what they described as “Civilizing mission.” They belonged to families which had helped create the American universities of Beirut and Cairo and 104 lesser institutions of education.

While they didn’t divide countries and create rulers, the Americans observed the white man’s burden and believed the local Arabs lacked Christian gentility. The decades since the 1950s deserve the description of The Years of The Coca Cola Culture. The Arab historian Nazih Ayyoub accuses the Americans of total failure. They never promoted anything beyond “cosmetic democracy.”

Whatever America’s original intentions were intercepted by unqualified American support for Israel. Even their personal behaviour suggested an appreciation of the Arabs which bordered on the laughable. American oil men donned Arab clothes when they met the King of Saudi Arabia, and they sat on the floor. When the cold war was in full swing they redirected their energies to supporting right wing Islamic movements as an act of convenience. They opposed the notion of Arab unity, even Arab cooperation, because it threatened Israel. To President Harry Truman, "The Arabs and Jews are cousins and they should live together.”

The misconception that all was well until 11 September stands in the way of finding a policy that would reconcile the desire of the Arab people with Western policies aimed at guaranteeing the flow and price of oil and the safety of Israel. President George W Bush would do well to remember a statement made by a simple Iraqi to the Orientalist Freya Stark, "We should be allowed to love the English if they didn’t always make us feel they are snubbing us.” By viewing the feeling of the average Arab with obvious disdain, President Bush is extending the feeling of incompatibility which led to 11 September.

© Said K Aburish