Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Editorial

Without falling into the falsehood that the Arab world is monolithic, there are a couple of traits common to the uprisings unfolding across the region.

The most obvious one is that the tumult of recent weeks in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and most recently Oman, all reflect a broad desire among a populace to topple a regime that has ossified on its hitherto unshakable throne while denying almost any of the benefits of democracy to its citizens.

However, there is one more common characteristic, one that beggars belief. The leaders of all these nations in turmoil stand accused of embezzling sums reaching into the tens of billions, with some estimates putting the ill-gotten gains of Moammar Gadhafi over the $100-billion mark.

If these tyrants have siphoned off even 10 percent of the sums they are accused of pilfering, it still begs the question, how did they plan to use it? To buy another country perhaps, say an island in the South Pacific? In other words, how could they ever dispose of even a few billion dollars? Erecting palaces, collecting the rarest of cars – and planes, for that matter – compiling an unbeatable wardrobe and whatever other pursuits one might conceive of, would all still fall short of even $1 billion.

Beyond the criminal aspect of their corruption, the tragic part is that they amassed this obscene largess while their people suffered inhumanely from poverty. Countless Egyptians sleep in cemeteries, while Libyans die of diseases related to poor health as their nation piles up billions of dollars in oil revenues.

If the despots had instead spent 90 percent of their illegal income on the betterment of their peoples’ lives they would probably find themselves among those Arab rulers not yet threatened by upheaval.

It must be said, too, that the jaw-dropping corruption of the Arab autocrats only adds one more item to the checklist of reasons why so many in the world community are hypocrites, mouthing platitudes about the rule of law and democracy while cozying up to thieves who bilked their own people.

As for the tyrants, one wonders at what they must have been thinking; are they unaware of the historical record of failure of those who attempted to rob and repress simultaneously and to extremes? Just in this region, Saddam Hussein and the shah of Iran offer still-fresh cautionary tales.

In the place of the many alleged truths about the Middle East that have been upended lately, it would be good to engrave some new rules which actually accord to reality; among them should be a warning that any leader who steals his people’s money while trampling their rights will wind up losing both the abused power and the embezzled loot.