Arabs v. Communists: Thanks But No Thanks

CAIRO is Moscow's foremost client in the Middle East. Yet during the brief period two weeks ago when it looked as if the Sudan might fall under the control of a pro-Communist regime, Egypt's leaders moved swiftly to prevent that from happening. They airlifted some 2,000 Sudanese troops from positions along the Suez Canal to Khartoum to ensure the success of General Numeiry's countercoup, flying them there in Soviet-supplied Antonov transports. According to a Cabinet Minister from neighboring Libya, both Egypt and Libya were preparing to intervene if the countercoup failed.

Thus, once again, a seemingly paradoxical fact was underlined: although the Soviet Union enjoys growing influence in the Arab world, there is strong and sometimes savage resistance toward local Communism. The Soviets have supplied billions in aid to "revolutionary" Arab governments. They have received lavish expressions of friendship as well as vital military facilities in return. But they have never been able to install a pro-Communist regime in the area. There are Baathist radicals in Syria and Iraq, and Socialists in Algeria, Egypt, Libya and southern Yemen. But Communists in power? Not a one.

That has been true from the first. In the early 1920s, Moscow was on excellent terms with Turkey's Kemal Atatuerk. But this did not prevent Atatuerk from killing off the leading Communists in his country. Egypt's late Gamal Abdel Nasser accepted Soviet money, advice and, in some areas, decisionmaking. But in 1959 he clapped hundreds of Communists into prison. Throughout the Middle East, the Communist Party is legal only in Lebanon--and, ironically, Israel. In Sudan, where it is technically banned but has operated openly, its continued existence is now threatened.

Superficially, most Arab states look like perfect targets for Marxist-Leninist exploitation. They have been in a state of constant upheaval for most of this century. They are desperately poor. They are alienated from the West. Having failed to wrest victory from Israel, they have become alarmingly dependent on Soviet military help. Yet the region is not sufficiently industrialized to support a classic, Russian-style proletarian uprising, and the illiterate, fatalistic fellahin of the villages are too conservative, too steeped in the concepts of familial loyalty and the Islamic faith to become conscripts in a Maoist peasant revolt.

"What is happening in the Arab world," former U.S. Ambassador to Cairo Raymond Hare explains, "is not a revolution but a revulsion." It is a revulsion against foreign domination, whether cultural, economic or political --and even unsophisticated Arabs recognize that Communism is a foreign import. Arabs still dream of the time, twelve centuries ago, when their forebears dominated a vast sweep of Europe, from the banks of the Indus to the valley of the Loire. They might use Communist help in hopes of restoring that glorious past, but they are not likely to accept Communist suzerainty.

In recent years, a seemingly endless round of Arab military coups has produced major changes in the power structure at the top level of many countries. But the social structure has remained virtually intact. It is a conservative structure, rooted in the family and the tribe. Nationhood is a more recent concept and still an uncomfortable one; the Arab had long been accustomed to thinking smaller (the family) or larger (the Arab world, a supranational notion).

Politically, the Arabs do not accept even the concept of multiparty government. In most Middle East nations, there is no room for a loyal opposition; the terms are mutually contradictory in a society where "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The idea of an opposition party committed to Moscow rather than Cairo or Tripoli or Khartoum is totally unacceptable.

So far, the type of government that Arabs seem to feel most comfortable with is an autocratic one, preferably military. "Arab politics," comments Lebanese Political Scientist Elie Salem, "has always ridden on horseback. Salvation is expected from the army." Having saved a country, the army is loath to share power. Even if the rebellious officers had won in the Sudan two weeks ago, outside observers believe, they would soon have turned on the Communists who gave them support.

Looking at "the dysfunctioning of Arab society," Beirut Social Psychologist Halim Barakat says: "Men alienated from established orders have alternatives." Barakat suggests three alternatives--revolution, withdrawal and resignation--and notes that only the second and third are acceptable in Arab culture. Revolution against a government is one thing; against the traditional structure of society, it is quite another.

Islam has much to do with such attitudes. Religion alone is not strong enough to withstand Communism if other conditions are right; Catholic Cuba and Confucianist China demonstrated that. But Islam has a permeating discipline in Arab culture that shapes politics and unites even dissident leaders like Libya's Gaddafi and Saudi Arabia's King Feisal. Gaddafi subscribes to the same simplistic explanation of the new order offered by Nasser before his death: "The reason that Arab socialism is different from Communism is because our socialism believes in God while Communism is atheistic."

Every day 90 million Arabs intone the word inshallah--God willing. It is Allah who will reform society, not a Brezhnev or a Mao, and the typical Arab has little enthusiasm for tinkering with changes himself. A famous Arab expression is "Bookrah fil mishmish," which means that the apricots will be blooming tomorrow; it indicates a mahana attitude rivaling that of even Latin Americans. In such a culture, Communism has slim chance of succeeding. Understanding this, the Soviet Union up to now has been willing to sacrifice one Arab Communist Party after an- other in return for broader geopolitical gains. It is a cynical tradeoff, but given the attitudes of the Arab world, it is the only deal available to Moscow.

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