Human Development Report - Arab World

Not all Arab (and Muslim/African) states are wealthy from pumping oil; there are enough countries, like Egypt and Lebanon and Syria that have no natural fossil-fuel resources to ensure that they have ample funding to embark on all manner of social programs and infrastructure upgrading and the creation of new employment opportunities.

Some, like the Gulf States with their relatively small indigenous populations and vast oil wealth, import temporary workers to labour on their grand plans for tourism-attractive infrastructure. The thing of it is, there is an absence of social conscience among the governing elite who instead of using oil riches to enrich the country, corruptly enrich themselves.

But wealthy or not, the Arab states distinguish themselves by their collective lack of government responsibility to routinely upgrade the lives of their citizens. The region of the Middle East, with its 340-million people (excluding the State of Israel) ranks low on the Arab Human Development Report, a United Nations-sponsored program which appears under the title challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries (www.arab-hdr.org).

Under the various autocratic and totalitarian regimes human development has lagged badly in comparison to other parts of the world. The identified 'deficits' that stand out in Arab life are recognized as education, political freedom and women's rights. The Middle East continues to be ruled by dictatorships that are unsurprisingly, not amenable to change toward relaxation merging on anything approximating democracy.

The report points out that collectively, Arabs live in a permanent economically-depressive state, with unemployment more than double that of the rest of the world. Arab countries have made no significant moves toward industrialization, remaining fairly stagnant for the past four decades in that respect. Literacy remains on the back burner, and the kinds of health services that most countries make an effort to provide for their people is absent.

There is a general neurosis prevalent in the Arab world of (well founded, given the colonial past) foreign invasion, along with resentment that while they are in a state of virtual inertia, the rest of the world moves ahead in social and economic strides toward a brighter future for their populations. Most of the Arab states are secure from public resentment reaction because of their high level of military security ensuring the public remains quiescent.

Unemployment is rife among the young, breeding misery, lack of opportunities and a burning resentment. Government does what such governments have always done throughout human history; they blame outside agencies for their malignant interference in the furtherance of Arab ambitions.

Women's education has made modest strides in some countries, and business people breaking away from the traditional mould have seen some successes but these are relatively modest.

The advent of an independent type of media, thanks to the growth of satellite television has made some inroads in public perception of world affairs, but it remains slanted toward the Arab vision and the Arab version of world events, including their own; objectivity has never been an Arab quality, nor has neutrality.

The Arab states, bound by geography, but resistant to bonding as a socially cohesive standard-bearer for a better future for their populations, pull together in the face of a common enemy.

Identification of that enemy is not too difficult to arise at; an interloper community representing worshippers of a faith other than Islam, with a different language, ethnicity, culture and heritage. Although residual resentment exists against past colonial powers like France, Britain and the United States, it is toward Israel that blame for the state of anomie is directed.

The vast population of unemployed stand on the verge of social upheaval, which only fear of state security keeps in check. It is the young people, unemployed, and with scant future prospects for meaningful engagement - that would result from a fully engaged state determined to bring itself into the 20th Century (lagging the 21st) - who present as fodder for the fanatical wing of Islam where radicalization of violent jihad resonates.

From the restless young in the Middle East and from the Islamic Maghreb in failed African states, conscripts for global jihad eagerly join the queue.