The Price of Fear, the Price of Dictatorship ثمن الخوف، ثمن الديكتاتوريه يدفعها العرب الان

Yes, in those days we did live in fear. So did hundreds of millions of Arabs. That is why dictatorships flourished all over the Arab world and that is why 30 and 40 years later, sooner than later the people and nations are paying the price of fear and are paying the very heavy price of dictatorship in blood, lives, and destruction.

One has to wonder what Egypt would be like if Nasser was not a military and political dictator. Would Egypt lost the 1967 War and would Egypt have Sadat and Hosni Mubarak as leaders? Would Egypt be in the terrible mess it is in now and has been for the last 50 years? While Hosni Mubarak, his family, and his friends looted the country, world financial institutions were demanding the Egyptian government to reduce, even cancel, subsidies on bread, and other basic food such as fava beans, the staple food for the majority of the Egyptian people. Those lucky families were able to have chicken or boney meat once a week, if any.

One has to wonder, would Iraq be the same if it did not have a criminal dictator like Saddam Hussein? Would Iraq be in the terrible mess it is in now? Would Iraq engage in its eight years with Iran for and on behalf of the United States? Would Saddam waste the nation wealth and over one million of his citizens over a reckless war? But then we had our own George W. Bush and our two wars and we are not even Iraq and we have our own “elected dictatorship.”

Saddam’s dictatorship was something to remember, engaging Iraq from one war to another, from the war with Iran to the war on Kuwait and that, of course, led to the American/Israeli invasion of Iraq. Millions of people were wasted and $trillions were flushed down the drain. George W. Bush did the same, flushed trillions down the drain, and putting the country in perpetual danger.

Hafez Assad was no different from Saddam. He took over in a military coup, ruled the country with an iron fist, and allowed his family to loot the country and to preserve his family rule he engaged in a deliberate war against the city of Hamah, no different from the Assad family attack on the city of Homs. His brother as commander of the Presidential Guard claimed to have killed not less than 38,000 in the city of Hamah back in 1982.

His son, Bashar, is following in his father’s and uncle’s footsteps. In a dictatorship, the country becomes a family farm and the people become vassals of the regime. Bashar got fully engaged declaring war on his people to preserve his rule, only to have several countries carving out Syria while he watches

Ali Saleh as a commander of the Yemeni army took over the entire country and positioned members of his family in key positions in the army, in the petroleum industry, airlines, and commerce. Elections were rigged every time and while he was the clear winner in these elections the entire nation of Yemen was the loser. And now with the war in Yemen raging for the third year, it will take Yemen generations to recover and rebuild.

Muammar Qadaffi was not different from all the other dictators of his time. He ruined the country with his reckless misadventures in Chad, in Sudan, in Africa, in the Philippines in Northern Ireland, wasting tens of billions on ‘revolutionary” ventures while his country and people were living in a state of fear.

Tens of thousands of the best and brightest escape into exile and left a nation lacking all of the basic services. Libya could be a Dubai or Abu-Dhabi but it was not? No one dared to challenge Qaddafi, and people ended up paying a very heavy price and the nation divided into ruins.

Bin Ali of Tunisia was no different. He was a security functionary who knew how to use fear to take over an entire nation. He hijacked the nation allowing his security forces to stifle freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and he and his family fleeced the nation all the while Western institutions and Western leaders were all praising his leadership and the great economic miracle he achieved for Tunisia, which proved to be a house of cards.

Somehow it seems that representatives of Western institutions and leadership prefer the lavish comfort of the five-star hotels and presidential guesthouses over traveling to the countryside to see the widespread misery the majority of Tunisians and Egyptians lived in.

In Iran, in Indonesia, in Latin and Central America, in Somalia, the story is the same. Military dictators take over the country in a coup d’état and establish themselves as rulers for life, imprisoning oppositions, looting the country and destroying the nation civil societies and any semblance of a representative government.

From Tunisia to Indonesia parliamentary elections were rigged in favor of the dictators and their cronies. Security forces were there not to protect the nation but to protect the regime where hundreds of thousands simply disappeared within the corridors of the ministries of interiors and security agencies.

The Palestinians were and are no different. Fooled by Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organizations, tens of thousands died, millions saw their lives ruined in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Kuwait, and in the Gulf, only to discover Arafat using all the deaths to gain legitimacy with Israel as manager of the Israeli Occupation. Twenty-five years after Oslo, Palestinian Diaspora continues to hold on a dead rotten carcass, giving full recognition to the PLO and its unconditional recognition of Israel.

In Jordan and in Egypt and in many countries, becoming a kinder garden teacher would require formal approval from “mukhabarat/security services” and if one does not have a certificate then one does not exist, incognito, they could not rent a house, or get a job, they are simply nobody.

Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iran, Sudan. Libya, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and many other nations and people all paid a very heavy price for accepting to live in fear for so long.

These nations and countries paid a very heavy price for not snuffing these criminal dictatorships early on when the price would have been much less.

Dictatorships even those funded and sponsored by countries like the US, France, England among others will sooner than later fall; and, must and will fall by the will of the people, not NATO jets. Sooner than later even the most corrupt indoctrinated army will turn against its masters and will return to its roots, the people. Syria does not need NATO or US jets, it needs its own army to turn against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad and his family.

And yes, there is a heavy price for dictatorship and heavier price for freedom. The Arab World is paying a much higher price for their silence all these years.