Understanding the Middle East part 13 - down the rabbit hole, part 2

(Note: this is the second part of a two parts post. If you haven't read part 1, please find it in my blog)

So let's begin. Let's talk about hate.

Many people believe that human beings are basically selfish. According to this rather common belief, altruism does not really exists. It is just an illusion caused by hidden selfish motivations. Those who believe that altruism is a real thing, usually bring up stories about extraordinary feats of self sacrifice as proofs for their view. Stories like the one about the man in the water in that plane crash in Washington DC. While these stories are indeed examples of altruistic behavior, they do not amass to enough evidence. They can be dismissed as extraordinary dids of outstanding people, and those who believe that people are essentially selfish can still say that, well, most people are.

Yet there is another kind of altruism which is in fact very common, and that is hate. It's understandable why the good hearted advocates of altruism don't want to think about hate in this way, but hate is indeed an altruistic sentiment. If an altruistic act is one in which the doers are considering the did’s effects on others and not on themselves, then it's not very hard to see how hate is altruistic. It doesn't require looking at extreme examples, like how Hitler kept allocating trains and other resources to operate his death camps while they were much more needed for his war effort. Suffice that you will think of any divorce story you know.

One implication of the fact that hate is an altruistic sentiment, is that you can't deal with terror and other hate crimes by using standard sticks and carrots. There is no point in threatening those who care about hurting others more than they care about their own interest with punishment, nor there is a point offering them rewards if they will change their ways. This is exactly why it is so difficult for western countries to fight against terror. Most of what the US and its allies are doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere is based on sticks and carrots, so no surprise it doesn't work. I will talk about that, and about the right way to fight against hate driven policies and actions in one of the next chapters.

Hate is, of course, a real factor in the Middle East conflicts just as in any prolonged conflict, but as I mentioned before, it is just a part of the picture. The “they just hat us" view is wrong and is usually just an excuse for doing nothing. To really understand the causes of these conflicts, and how they can be resolved, we should understand that there is another force at play here, and that is indifference.

The Sykes–Picot Agreement was a secret agreement, signed by France and Britain (with Russia as a minor partner) in May 1917. The agreement was meant to facilitate the division of the areas, conquested from the Ottoman empire in world war I. According to the agreement these areas were not to be annexed to the French or British empires, but rather be divided into sovereign states. Like many agreements of its kind, the division line between the “sphere of influence” of each side was an arbitrary line that took no consideration of the local population and its needs. The agreement was supposed to remain secret but was published by the Russians after the Bolshevik revolution. Its details were accepted with much dismay by local leaders in the Middle East, as they were conflicting with promises, made to them by the British especially, in return to their aid to Britain, in the war against Turkey.

But France and Britain could have managed and resolve the controversies that they have created if they wanted to. They could have brought all parties involved to the table of negotiation right after the end of world war I, to find a solution. It wouldn't be an easy process, since we are talking about many different tribal and ethnic groups, with conflicting interests and aspirations, but it would put us a hundred years closer to a solution than we are now.

For the least, France and England should have ask themselves two questions, had they cared about the future of the people of the Middle East. The first question is what would happen when they will start developing the region, improving the transportation infrastructure and creating new work opportunities, before sovereignties and border lines are decided, and the second question is, how will the people of the region accept the fact that a foreign power decided who will rule on them. But France and Britain didn't care, which led exactly to the instability and violence that we see to this day.