Osama’s ’80 years’

Fourth in a series.

On Sunday, Oct. 7, Osama bin Laden said it soft and clear, at least clear to Muslims: “What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more than 80 years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated.”

There is much Americans don’t know about that chilling statement. We don’t know when (before or after the first air strikes?) it was filmed (or videotaped?). We don’t know where.

Most rocky backgrounds look alike in Afghanistan (or, conceivably, in Saddam’s Iraq or even in the bin Laden ancestral homeland of Yemen). More to the point, most of us don’t know what bin Laden meant by “80 years.” For Muslims – especially Arab Muslims in the Middle East – the significance of those four score years is crystal clear.

Osama himself is 44. Israel, one of his chief anathemas, is 53. His other main grievance, Saudi acquiescence to the stationing “infidel” troops on its Muslim soil (or sand), dates only to the Gulf War a single decade ago. So why “80 years” of perceived Muslim degradation? And what can we learn of our enemy from his choice of time spans?

Despicable as his actions are, we have a responsibility to understand Osama bin Laden. Not for his sake, but for our own. Understanding does not imply any sense of mitigation for terrorism. Understanding its roots will help us uproot it.

80 years ago World War One had just ended. Until that conflict much of the Arab world was ruled, at least nominally, by the Ottoman Turks based in Istanbul. There were exceptions: French, Spanish, and Italian colonies across North Africa, and what the British (with typical ambiguity) called their “Veiled Protectorate” in Egypt. Otherwise Arabs were ruled, if not by Arabs, at least by Muslims. And in deep Arabia, Muslim Arabs ruled themselves.

Whether Arabs or Turks or Persians further east, Muslims had ruled themselves since the time of Mohammed fourteen centuries earlier. Before blithely invoking the concept of “crusade,” we need to recall who won the Western-initiated Crusades nearly a thousand years ago: not the Christian attackers but the Muslim defenders. From the end of that dismal saga (say 1295 CE) until well into the heyday of 19th century European imperialism, Islam successfully resisted European encroachment, far longer than the Americas and other key parts of the planet. And the Ottoman Empire still meant Muslim rule for almost all of the Middle East.

Then came World War I and the Ottoman Turkish decision (fatal for their empire) to side with the Central Alliance against Britain, France, and later the United States. The Middle East was a sideshow compared to European trench warfare, but for Britain the region had special importance because of the Suez sea-lane to India. And so the British began making more promises – to more parties with mutually exclusive interests – than even the imperial Lion could possibly keep.

Promises, promises:

In October 1915 Sir Henry MacMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt wrote to Sharif Hussein, then guardian of Islam’s holy cities of Mecca and Medina (and great-great grandfather of Jordan’s King Abdullah): If the Arabs would rise against their Ottoman overlords, the British would “recognize and uphold the [post-war] independence of the Arabs” in most of the Middle East. The Arabs, famously affiliated with Lawrence of Arabia, rose.

In early 1916 Britain and France secretly concluded the Sykes-Picot Agreement which specified the post-war partitioning all Arab lands (except deep Arabia) between them. Never mind the Arab uprising and its promised rewards.

In late 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to leading Zionist Lord Rothschild in what may have been the 20th century’s most egregious example of diplomatic double-talk. Britain “viewed with favor the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people” provided that – same sentence – “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities [i.e., Arabs, most of them Muslim] in Palestine. …”

The actual post-war treaty process was convoluted, but its outcome (despite a futile attempt at fairness by the American-sponsored King-Crane Commission) resulted in precisely the conditions which Osama condemns. First, the vast Ottoman Empire was terminated, and Muslim Turkey confined to its present, much reduced size. Second, the other Ottoman lands – most of them promised by the British to the Arabs back in 1915 [remember?] were summarily split between non-Muslim Britain and France. Third, the splitting was such that, even upon eventual independence, the Arab “nation” (Osama’s word based on Muslim doctrine of a universal umma or community) would be divided along arbitrary and thus contentious lines.

Fourth – albeit gradually – there followed the Jewish migration to Palestine and, in 1948, the establishment of the state of Israel. It is not this writer’s purpose to argue against that mostly noble state. Consider, however, how the 1917 Balfour Declaration now reads to Palestinian Arabs. Or the MacMahon letter of 1915. These broken promises are the British – and, by extension, the Western – legacies of World War One in the Muslim Middle East. They represent, at least for Osama, the wellsprings of what’s happened since.

The engaging and experienced Tony Blair has become our coalition’s roving-ambassador-of-choice. “Trust me,” says British Prime Minister to our Arab and Muslim allies.

“Follow me,” says Osama.

Muslims know their history, much of it learned in mosques. If you were a Muslim in the Middle East – not one of the Westernized elite but an ordinary Muslim of back street and local mosque and limited opportunities – whom would you trust and whom would you follow?

Your head, attentive to modern political reality, would probably balance priorities…and choose the super-powerful West. What about your heart? Which side would your heart choose?

There’s no doubt that bin Laden, his terrorist associates, and the Taliban hard core have to go. The sooner, the better. One way to speed that process – and to avoid future causes of deep and bitter resentment – is to understand, from his own standpoint, the contents of Osama’s “80 years.”

Dr. Whitney Azoy is a cultural anthropologist with 30 years experience in Afghanistan and the Muslim world.