Social media is awash with photos and footage of death and destruction in Gaza. The heartbreak these images evoke is amplified by the fact that they are indistinguishable from those of ongoing suffering in Syria. The same is true of the carnage brought about by the US occupation of Iraq and Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon.
Countless families have roots in more than one Arab country – hardly surprising given that most of today’s borders are only a few generations old. As such, the numerous crises in the Arab world elicit deep public anguish that often transcends geography and nationality. It even goes beyond ethnic kinship – the pain is often personal.
My Palestinian relatives – those who were not made refugees in 1948 – are enduring the longest military occupation in modern history, one that is becoming evermore entrenched.
My Syrian relatives have been forced to flee their country. Watching the news, they see a homeland they no longer recognise, one in which they no longer feel welcome. Their proud stories of coexistence, on which I grew up, now seem like fairy tales. Their city Aleppo is besieged and relentlessly bombed. My mother’s place of birth, Deir Ezzor, is now part of the Islamic caliphate.
So too is her father’s hometown Mosul in Iraq. I can only imagine his distress, if he were alive today, at the Islamic State’s targeting of Mosul’s Christian community, of which he was a part.
My relatives in Baghdad, those who could not leave Iraq, have suffered since the 1990s, first under crippling international sanctions, then under the US occupation and thereafter. I will never forget one of them telling us by phone: “Whatever the media tells you, the reality is worse.”
My Lebanese relatives speak of a life in Beirut that has become unbearable, with political paralysis, dwindling water and electricity and rising sectarianism. They were forced to flee to Syria during Israel's 2006 invasion – now the direction is reversed. Meanwhile, my Jordanian relatives are increasingly fearful of spillover from the crises in all these neighbouring states.
Most of my Arab friends are also of mixed Arab heritage, so their concerns are more than just a matter of ideology, solidarity or dinner conversation. The regional situation affects them and their families directly.
There is much talk these days of the redrawing of the borders set by the former colonial powers. These borders were demarcated with their interests in mind, not those of the region’s inhabitants. As such, the Arab world’s current conflicts can, to varying degrees, be traced back to the arrogance and ignorance of colonialist policies.
However, the current redrawing of borders, exemplified by the new caliphate, is no more just or logical. The Islamic State group cares as little for the people it rules as did foreign colonial powers, and its barbarity is not limited to minority groups.
Western analysts draw maps of unnatural and impractical new countries, as if all it takes is to add “stan” to any ethnic or religious community in the region. One such ludicrous example, published by the New York Times, contains states such as Alawitestan, Sunnistan, Shiitestan and Wahhabistan.
Besides the fact that not a single name of an existing Arab country ends in “stan”, these cartographers’ inventions have no historical basis. Their names, while laughable, indicate a woeful lack of understanding of the region. These communities are far more enmeshed than outsiders realise.
I have never seen the Arab world as divided as it is today, and that is saying something. The extent to which this affects Arabs directly is not adequately conveyed by foreign media coverage, which often focuses on one crisis at a time, and views regional repercussions in strategic rather than personal terms. Hence the focus on maps and borders rather than the individuals and communities who live within them.
Photos on social media of strewn corpses, crying children and destroyed homes could be from Palestine, Syria, Iraq, or elsewhere in the region. To many Arabs, there is no distinction – nor should there be. It is a collective plight that is not restricted by borders, passports or fanciful maps. This is evidenced by current pan-Arab protests in support of the Palestinians, as was the case with Lebanon in 2006 and Iraq in 2003.
Sadly, the scale and scope of the region’s tragedies is unprecedented. However, our shared grief, and our identification with those suffering, provides much-needed hope that the many divisions afflicting the Arab world can one day be overcome, regardless of the squabbling of its leaders.
Sharif Nashashibi is a journalist based in London
