Page 222 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Sorcerers' Apprentices 219

further their inhabitants’ conviction of their own importance. The same can be
said of those sections of the Western press which have assiduously pandered to
the craving of the governments of these states for recognition and repute, not
only by reporting upon their affairs with a delicacy and tact which they do not
display in their coverage of events elsewhere, but also by issuing an unending
stream of supplements publicizing and lauding the wisdom and achievements
of these governments. These supplements, whether put out by The Times, Le
Monde, the Financial Times or the International Herald Tribune, have much in
common: a plethora of large advertisements from Arab and Western enter­
prises doing business in the Gulf, whether as construction companies, banks or
purveyors of plumbing equipment; page after page of overripe verbiage,
stuffed with redundant and often suspect statistics; and a decorous avoidance
of any topic whose inclusion might possibly give offence to the advertisers’
Arabian paymasters. With the passage of time an air of desperation has crept
into the supplements, as production has outstripped invention and the regurgi­
tation of drearily familiar material has brought on editorial flatulence. The
ceaseless search for novel forms of blandishment even led The Times in April
1978 to coin an ungainly neologism, ‘The Gulf’, written thus regardless of
where it occurred in a sentence. One can only conclude those responsible for
this vulgarism were under the impression that the capitalization of the initial
letter of the definite article somehow invested the Gulf with an almost trans­
cendental significance and importance, elevating it far beyond the world of
ordinary men into a kind of shimmering Arcadia, the radiant repository of
mankind’s noblest dreams and aspirations.

It is more or less taken as axiomatic these days, especially after the upheavals in
Persia in the winter of 1978-9, that political change is bound to come in the
Gulf. Where disagreement arises is over the form this change will take. Most
Western observers attach considerable significance to the introduction of
elected assemblies in Kuwait and Bahrain (the suspension of which is generally
deplored) and to the emergence into prominence of the younger generation of
Gulf Arabs (to whom the epithets of ‘educated’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘vigorous’ and
‘enlightened’ are usually applied). But if the experience of elected assemblies in
Kuwait and Bahrain shows anything, it shows that such assemblies are
unworkable in the Gulf. They are simply not compatible with the tempera­
ment, mentality or background of the Gulf Arabs, even of the youthful
sophisticates among them.
The history of constitutional government in every Arab country over the
past sixty years is a melancholy one. Only in the Lebanon did constitutional
government meet with even partial success, and the Lebanon, it must be
recalled, has a large Christian minority resolutely orientated towards Europe.
The conclusion is inescapable that parliamentary government, elected legisla­
tures and constitutional restraints will not take root in Arab lands: it is as if