DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Today,I’ll talk about the Paris attacks, but before I doI want to share two news stories here, in caseyou missed them: The first calf to come froma cloned camel was born at a research centerin Dubai and a local taxi start-up is taking onUber in the Arab world.
You may think that these emirates start-ups— cloning camels and cabs — have nothing todo with Paris, but they do. Bear with me.
A newspaper here, The National, quotedDr. Ali Ridha Al Hashimi, the administrativedirector of the Reproductive BiotechnologyCenter in Dubai, announcing “that Injaz,the world’s first cloned camel, gave birthto a healthy female calf weighing about 38kilos on November 2. Injaz, whose namemeans ‘achievement’ in Arabic, was clonedin 2009 from the ovarian cells of a deadcamel.” Previously, when the pregnancy wasdisclosed, the center’s scientific director, Dr.
Nisar Wani, said, “This will prove clonedcamels are fertile and can reproduce the sameas naturally produced camels.”Also last week, a hot local Arab ride-sharingstart-up, Careem.com, raised $60 million morein venture financing to take on Uber in theArab world, using technology that allows forpre-booking of vehicles through its mobile app— ideal for Saudi Arabia, where women can’tdrive and need chauffeurs to take them andtheir kids everywhere.
So, about 1,000 miles south of the IslamicState start-up in Iraq and Syria — wherejihadists are using technology to spawndisruption on a massive scale — another groupof Muslims (and non-Muslims) in anotherArab country are disrupting the world ofcamels and cabs.
The message? The context within whichArabs and Muslims live their lives reallymatters. And in too many places they’ve hadonly two choices — SISI or ISIS — the iron fistof generals, like Egypt’s President Abdel Fatahal-Sisi, who is trying to stifle all dissent, or theISIS madness that says the only way forward isto take the Arab-Muslim world backward.
Fortunately, there is a third way: theautocracies, monarchies and a few fraildemocracies that have invested in theirpeople and created islands of decency —Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Kurdistan, Kuwait,Morocco and the U.A.E. — where more youngArabs and Muslims can realize their fullpotential and build their dignity by disruptingcamels and cabs — not Paris and Beirut.
For me, the big strategic question in Iraq andSyria is: What would it take to uproot ISIS andcreate a Sunni island of decency in its place?For starters, that requires an honest assessmentof how big the challenge is.
Sixty years ago Asian dictators told theirpeople in effect, “I am going to take away yourfreedom — but give you the best education,export-led economics and infrastructure thatmoney can buy — and in a half-century you’llbuild a middle class that will gradually take yourfreedom back.” In the Arab world, 60 years agodictators told their people, in effect, “I am goingto take away your freedom and give you theArab-Israeli conflict, a shiny object to distractyou from my corruption and predation.”That difference, 60 years later, has producedthe Asian economic miracle and fueled theArab civilizational meltdown/disorder inYemen, Libya, Syria and Iraq.
Given that, I believe U.S. foreign policy outhere should progress as follows: Where thereis disorder, help create order, because withoutorder nothing good can happen. I will takeSisi over the Muslim Brotherhood. But wherethere is order, we need to push for it to becomemore decent and forward-looking. That iswhere Sisi is failing: His vision is just orderfor order’s sake, with no positive slope. Wherethere is decent order, like the U.A.E., Jordan orKurdistan, encourage it to gradually becomemore open and constitutional. And where thereis constitutional order, as in Tunisia, protect itlike a rare flower.
An Iraqi friend with family still in ISIScontrolledMosul tells me that PresidentObama’s stepped-up bombing and specialoperations with the Kurds are hurting ISISa lot. It was in part to disguise this that ISISunleashed its death parade in Paris. But theseISIS guys are smart and still very dangerous.
I’d support more bombing and special ops tofurther weaken and contain them.
But before we go beyond that, we need toface this fact: To sustainably defeat bad ISISSunnis you need good non-ISIS Sunnis tocreate an island of decency in their place. Andright now, alas, finding and strengtheninggood non-ISIS Sunnis is the second priority ofall the neighbors.
Turkey cares more about defeating Kurds;Saudi Arabia and its Arab Gulf allies caremore about defeating Iran and its proxies inIraq, Yemen and Syria; Qatar cares more aboutpromoting the Muslim Brotherhood in Syriaand annoying Saudi Arabia; Iran cares moreabout protecting Shiites in Iraq and Syria thancreating a space for decent Sunnis to thrive;and many of the non-ISIS Sunni activists inSyria and Iraq are still Islamists — and they’renot going away. How do you weave a decentcarpet from these threads?I don’t know — and until I do I’d be cautiousabout going far beyond what we’re alreadydoing. Paris may be totally different today. TheMiddle East is not.
<
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN>
댓글 안에 당신의 성숙함도 담아 주세요.
'오늘의 한마디'는 기사에 대하여 자신의 생각을 말하고 남의 생각을 들으며 서로 다양한 의견을 나누는 공간입니다. 그러나 간혹 불건전한 내용을 올리시는 분들이 계셔서 건전한 인터넷문화 정착을 위해 아래와 같은 운영원칙을 적용합니다.
자체 모니터링을 통해 아래에 해당하는 내용이 포함된 댓글이 발견되면 예고없이 삭제 조치를 하겠습니다.
불건전한 댓글을 올리거나, 이름에 비속어 및 상대방의 불쾌감을 주는 단어를 사용, 유명인 또는 특정 일반인을 사칭하는 경우 이용에 대한 차단 제재를 받을 수 있습니다. 차단될 경우, 일주일간 댓글을 달수 없게 됩니다.
명예훼손, 개인정보 유출, 욕설 등 법률에 위반되는 댓글은 관계 법령에 의거 민형사상 처벌을 받을 수 있으니 이용에 주의를 부탁드립니다.
Close
x