The Curse of the Shabab
Mon Feb 05, 2007 at 05:39:06 AM PDT
In Arabic, the word is "shabab." The youth. The young males on the streets, at the barricades. The ones who throw rocks and shoot off AK-47s in the air – or at each other. The fact that the Israelis have adapted the term - as "shababnikim", which fills me with a shiver of etymological awe – for their own unruly young settlers, is only one indication of the universality of the phenomenon.
It is as old as tribal humanity. For many young men, there is nothing more cool, more self-affirming, more expressive of being a man, than to strut around openly in the streets in an intimidating manner – preferably with a weapon. The tendency is expressed in different ways, depending on the culture. The US urban streetcorner has its gangbangers. England's soccer hooligans are notorious. In Italy, the equivalent soccer gangs are known as "Ultras" and their violence may well lead to the abolition of the game, which has become little more than an excuse for rioting that has grown deadly. These are just different manifestations of the shabab.
The shabab is trouble because it is easily led. The shabab is full of testosterone-charged passions that warlords and demagogues can channel for their own purposes. But there are two potential factors that make the shabab particularly dangerous: a cause greater than themselves that they perceive as righteous, and the lack of legitimate alternatives. In the Mid-East today, these factors both prevail, as well as cultural pressure on males in some Arab cultures that predisposes them to violent reaction, and the result may well engulf the entire region, the entire world in war.
In Iraq, it is more than just the shabab involved in both the insurgency and the civil war. Not only are many elements in the nation engaged in the resistance against the US occupation, the entire population is becoming polarized into the two camps of Sunni and Shi'ite, with each side justifiably regarding itself in real existential danger from the other. It is the Shi'ites where the participation of the shabab seems to be greatest. The Sunni insurgency appears to be organized under the control of the former Iraqi military leadership, and an army is the antithesis of the shabab, although it employs that population for its own purposes. But the forces engaged in the civil war, and particularly the Shi'ites, do not seem to have unified their fighters under the control of recognized leadership. Rather, the shabab has gravitated to various different militias led by different warlords, each more extreme than the last, each pursuing an agenda of its own. The "Mahdi Army" in Baghdad's Sadr City is certainly the largest and best-known of these, but they have typically grown beyond the point where al-Sadr himself can always control them. That is, while the leader can incite them to violence, he can not reliably call his followers off. For the shabab, personal notions of honor and revenge can often be more compelling than orders.
In Iraq, it is increasingly the case that everyone is either a fighter or a victim of the violence. Viable alternatives are disappearing. There are no jobs for the shabab, and the schools are either closed or centers of violence. The resulting economic pressure exacerbates the situation, as the militias and gangs find the opportunity to turn to crime. In a situation where there is no other source of power, no law or order, the anti-social elements have a free rein, and the shabab, while not inherently anti-social, is highly susceptible to such influences. The consequence is even worse than civil war, it is anarchy, the state described by Thomas Hobbes:
where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
While the situation in Iraq is not entirely a manifestation of the shabab, its significance for the rest of the world is as a meme: an idea that replicates itself and spreads throughout a population. Suicide bombing, for example, is a meme that has spread to Iraq from Palestine and flourished there, where it has now done far greater damage than in its land of origin. There is now a real threat to Gaza that this meme, mutated to become even more pernicious, may return there along with civil war, to be employed by Palestinians not against the oppressors but against their own Palestinian brothers. People now speak of the threat of "Iraqification" in Gaza.
This is the nature of memes, of ideas: that they can not be un-thought. A notion that was once inconceivable, because it had not yet been conceived, quickly becomes regarded as possible, then commonplace. And the shabab is particularly susceptible to such memes of violence. The ranks of the suicide bombers tend to be recruited from the shabab. The ranks of the street fighters come from the shabab. The shabab in Gaza is now infected with the meme of civil war.
The situation there is dire, despite the fact that the population is not divided by ethnic or religious allegiences, only political opposition. And no one seems able to put a stop to the nascent civil war. Several times, the leaders of the opposing factions have met, have declared a truce, yet always the fighting has broken out again, almost as soon as the words of declaration are spoken. It is the shabab. They are disregarding the words of their supposed leaders. They have escaped from their control. While we may hear that the heads of Fatah and Hamas may be about to declare peace with one another, there is no guarantee that the fighters on the streets will honor it. For the shabab, it is infinitely more cool, more affirming of self-importance, more status-enhancing to keep driving through the street shooting their guns in the air, than to put them away. And the factions have no other power to keep order than – the shabab.
In Lebanon, also, the threat of civil war is growing among the various armed factions, which are divided by religion, although this is not the sole determining factor. The faction leaders have enlisted the shabab, have called them out onto the streets, but as always, the shabab is liable to escape their control. The shabab is like a djinni who is always threatening to escape from the bottle that contains it, and from which it refuses to return.
In some regions of Africa, a disturbing phenomenon has recently been observed. Gangs of adolescent male elephants have been roaming the land, attacking and killing other creatures such as rhinoceros. The reason has been discovered to be the absence of adult male elephants, who were killed for their tusks, whose role in normal elephant society was to control this unruly elephant shabab and teach it the behavior proper to elephant society.
Here is the lesson: when the normal patterns of authority in a society are disrupted, when there is no legitimate power to enforce order, then the shabab can take control. In Iraq, in Lebanon, in Gaza, the normal patterns of authority have been disrupted by overwhelming outside influences. Legitimate institutions of law and order have been weakened or eliminated, and the shabab has filled the resulting power vacuum. In these circumstances, and particularly where legitimate alternative employment for youth does not exist, the shabab can tell itself that it is fighting on behalf of some noble cause, but uncontrolled, its activities will only lead to anarchy.
Thomas Hobbes knew civil war and anarchy in 17th century England. When he wrote:
Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.
he might well have been referring to the curse of the shabab.
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