Middle East turbulence not over yet
- By Ding Yuanhong
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People's Daily, September 15, 2011
After bombing Libya for half a year and causing countless civilian casualties, the war in Libya launched by countries including France, the United Kingdom and the United States in the name of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ultimately overthrew the Qaddafi Administration and realized a regime change.
However, this "victory" has still left behind many difficult problems. The domestic situation of Libya has not calmed down yet, and the road to reconstruction will definitely be long and arduous. Instead of playing a positive role in the turbulent situation of the Middle East and North Africa, the significant change in Libya will further intensify the situation in Syria, Yemen and other nations in the region.
In the beginning of 2011, the incident of a youth burning himself in Tunisia led to political turbulence in many countries of the Middle East and ultimately led to the current chaos there. The reasons include both internal and external reasons.
As for the internal reasons, the people of these countries have accumulated a lot of grievances against their rulers. They are unsatisfied with the backward economy, the arduous life of the common people and the corruption of their leaders.
At the same time they are angry with their leaders for being weak against the Western powers and doing nothing about the Palestine issue, which is a core concern for the Arabian nationality. This has made the leaders lose respect.
Regarding the external reasons, in order to safeguard their vested interests, Western countries, including the Untied States and European countries, have adopted various means to interfere and take advantage of the justified discontent of the Arabian people to obtain selfish interests. Facts have proven that the ultimate goal of their war in Libya is to seize its abundant oil and gas resources. The countries’ so-called advocacy for democracy and opposition to dictatorship are nothing but their dirty covers. In order to satisfy their selfish desires, the Western countries will completely disregard resolutions of the United Nations, as well as the fundamental principles of international relations.
The unrest shows that the Middle East has entered into a new phase after several years of turmoil. After the Second World War, the Middle East became the world’s only region without one day of peace. The root cause lies in that Western countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, artificially founded Israel in the residential areas of Palestinians in 1948, sowing the seeds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Thereafter, they have always used the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts as a major means for their long-term control of the Middle East.
After replacing the United Kingdom as the dominant player in the Middle East, the United States has strived to support Israel against Arab countries and used their differences in dealing with Israel to provoke the contradictions between the Sunni and Shiite groups and further break up the unity in the Arab world. The moves have caused six Middle East wars and eight years of war between Iran and Iraq and the first Gulf War triggered by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
One of the major reasons behind the deliberate U.S. invasion of Iraq after the 9/11 attacks lies in the disunity in the Arab world. The United States has played its hoax again amid the unrest in the Middle East and concentrated its efforts on attacking "hardliners" such as Libya and Syria while forgiving the Arab countries that have a mild attitude toward Israel. After the success in Libya, the United States is imposing pressure on Syria's al-Assad regime and will surely turn its focus to Iran later. Thus, it is foreseeable that the unrest in the Middle East will continue without an end.
The United States is taking advantage of the so-called Arab Spring to consolidate and strengthen its strategic interests and dominant position in the Middle East, and its scheme appears to be working well. It has long been two-faced about the Palestinian people's just struggle to recover their occupied land and establish their independent state as well as about the Arab people's pursuit of independence, dignit, and development, which has again and again exposed the evil nature of U.S. policies to the Arab people and their leader, and caused growing resentment in the Arab world against the United States.
In order to reduce their resentment, U.S. President Barack Obama has reaffirmed that a main purpose of the country's new Middle East policy is to promote the peaceful coexistence of Israel and Palestine. However, when the Palestinians finally decided to seek United Nations recognition of statehood in September, the United States spared no effort to prevent Palestine from winning the recognition at the request of Israel, and even threatened to veto any Security Council resolution that would give Palestine a full member status at the United Nations. With its two-faced stance, the United States is bound to lose the trust of the Arab people.
If the United States continues its unfair policy of supporting Israel and suppressing Palestine, the two countries will not be able to achieve true reconciliation, and there will not be lasting peace and stability in the Middle East.
This article was first published on Jiefang Daily and edited and translated by People's Daily Online.
