It's our backwardness that holds us back

    Manifestations of backwardness in the Arab world and the mediaeval circumstances that we can see all around us exhort us to ask whether the problem with the Arab world is external or internal. Is it foreign interference, aggression and occupation that are holding us back? Or are we hostages to the backwardness of our own ramshackle sociopolitical and economic structures? 

       I admit that both causes are taking their heavy toll on the MENA region. We have shaken off colonial rule quiet a long time ago; though, we are still lagging behind while countries such as China, Brazil, Korea, and India that underwent all kind of exploitation on a much larger scale than we did, managed to catch up with the rest of the world and shoulder their way to the top. We should feel a shame to attribute our backwardness to US and the West aggression when knowing that Mexicans, who are suffering the malaise of living next door to an international giant, are envying us for our geographical location insomuch that a Mexican writer once wrote "How sad are you Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States."

       Let's us acknowledge that it's our retardation that made us easy prey for avaricious outsiders to take advantage of us. The Tunisian political upheaval unveiled the truth that the West manipulates us through their loyal tyrants in return for blessings and approvals for the fraud operations, rigged elections and many other bloody businesses.  

      When musing over the supremacy of the US and the helpless state of the Arab world, I usually provoke the scene of a strong starving lion along with its cubs only few meters far from a silly fleshy gazelle and you know the rest of the story. In the world of human, the end can be the same, but the manner sometimes can be violent, other times diplomatic.

     The West relations with he rest of the world are governed by interest and nothing but the interest of its giant companies and its people and the way the French President Sarkozy turned down the overthrown Zero Ben Ali's request to accept him in France reinforces the reality that it is interest that count and the west has no more interest with Ben Ali.