The shifting perceptions of the ‘new’ Middle East

When the Ethiopian government was on the verge of a humiliating defeat by Tigrayan rebels, the intervention of at least four Arab states helped the authorities pull off a dramatic reversal and prevent what had seemed an almost inevitable takeover of the capital, Addis Ababa.
To the rest of the world, however, the involvement of Arabs in an African conflict was quite a surprising development, given the antiquated views that powers in the Arab world are mostly averse to such transregional entanglements.
Yet the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia is just the latest example of how a changed — and still changing — Middle East and North Africa region has slowly started to defy conventional perceptions of its insularity and disinterest in transregional affairs. Instead, in pursuit of security, stability and sovereignty, the Arab world of today appears to have found its own geopolitical niche and is now nimbly navigating the quagmires of a disordered world.
Unfortunately, outside observers remain wedded to misperceptions informed by a narrow, contiguous and mostly outdated mental map of the Arab world. Worse, this map remains at the core of studies, the setting of foreign policy, and analyses of the region by far-off powers, given its commonalities, geography and recent history.
The reality is a little different now, however, given the surging interest in engagements beyond an “Arab world” made up mostly of Arab League members, alongside Iran, Turkey and Israel.
The examples of this are rife. Turkey has established a vast presence in Africa, which has so far resulted in a $20 billion increase in trade since 2003, buoyed by about $7 billion in Turkish foreign direct investment across the continent.
Just six years ago, Israel embarked on a “return to Africa” initiative, not only to ramp up support on the global stage but also to establish economic ties in many emerging sectors on the continent, such as energy, information technology and agriculture.
The Gulf states are also actively cultivating mutually beneficial ties in their assorted engagements across sub-Saharan Africa, from purchasing wide swaths of agricultural land in Ethiopia and Sudan in pursuit of food security, to security interventions in an effort to counteract threats emanating from the Horn of Africa.
Beyond Africa’s economic promise and attempts to shop for “friends” in global forums, some of the entanglements can be a lot messier and extremely difficult to resolve. Take Egypt's conflict with Ethiopia over the latter’s Grand Renaissance Dam project, for instance. Addis Ababa’s unilateral decision to move ahead with a partial start to electricity production on the Blue Nile — the River Nile’s main tributary — has drawn condemnation from both Khartoum and Cairo.
Egyptian officials have hinted the country is considering a withdrawal from the stalled tripartite negotiations on the filling and operation of the $5 billion dam. To Egypt and Sudan, which are downstream from the project, the dam constitutes an existential crisis that could potentially result in military action by the former, which would have disastrous consequences in an already volatile region.
Elsewhere, in a bid to identify more closely with Indian Ocean nations rather than its Gulf Arab counterparts, Oman has cultivated very strong ties with Pakistan, India and Iran, in stark contrast to a muted presence elsewhere beyond its borders. The other Gulf states, however, are deeply involved in Central Asia, as is Turkey, while continuously upgrading their relationships with China and other Asian countries, or at least preparing to do so.

While Arab nations might share certain commonalities with their neighbors, each has unique interests and pursuits that cannot be serviced by misalignments in perceptions resulting from flawed models for understanding the region.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Clearly, the leading regional powers are actively engaging outside what is traditionally considered the “Arab world” much in the same way they operate within it. The trouble begins when the rivalries and alliances that often define MENA dynamics play out on a much broader scale with varying degrees and consequences.

If, for example, states in the Arab world found themselves on opposing sides in far-off confrontations, it would fuel tensions in crises closer to home and vice versa. Furthermore, when conflicts spill over national boundaries and become extraterritorial affairs, efforts to sustainably resolve them become even more complicated, by many orders of magnitude, given the near endless list of actors, interests and risks to take into account.
Whether it was the uprisings in 2011 or the civil wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen, each new development or shift in dynamics has necessitated a renewed coherence of the Arab world. Political developments in much of the Middle East are no longer the purview of an insular citizenry but are influenced by broader dynamics at play beyond national boundaries.
In some cases, what were seemingly local affairs have gone on to spawn new challenges. For example, the civil war in Libya has indirectly sponsored the growth of Islamist insurgencies in the non-Arab Sahel region of Africa, creating new security, political and economic interests for the predominantly Arab North Africa.
In less than a decade, the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism response models developed at the height of the war on terror to confront uniquely Arab threats have become outmoded in a world where Islamist movements are most active in Nigeria, Somalia and Mali.
Beyond the specter of war and the new political dynamics unleashed by conflicts, massive social and economic changes have also contributed to a vastly changed region. Compared with the developing countries in the Arab world they are mostly bundled together with, the wealthier Gulf states have more in common with centers of global capitalism such as Hong Kong or Singapore, given their diverse demographics, expansive economic ties, and investments in both East and West.
This disparity is also influencing a shift in foreign policies away from the traditional obsession with security toward stronger economic ties and the pursuit of advanced technologies.
Given the rapid pace at which a “new” Middle East is engaging with itself and others elsewhere, the old perceptions about the region should no longer inform scholarship, policymaking and cooperation. After all, successful interventions and collaborations will only be possible if the Arab region ceases to be viewed as a monolith, along with all the prejudices, biases and generalizations that go along with that.
While Arab nations might share certain commonalities with their neighbors, each has unique interests and pursuits that cannot be serviced by misalignments in perceptions resulting from flawed models for understanding the region.
It is the worst possible time for there to be a misalignment in, for instance, US policymaking and military engagement, since it would endanger the region’s ability to confront its biggest woes, of which there are many including socioeconomic concerns, political malaise, insurgencies and authoritarianism.
Building policies and pursuing scholarship based on outdated models and understanding of the region risks blinding Washington and Brussels to the modern dynamics that are actually shaping the Arab world, leading to disastrous mistakes or ineffectual interventions.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a non-resident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is also senior adviser at the international economic consultancy Maxwell Stamp and at the geopolitical risk advisory firm Oxford Analytica, a member of the Strategic Advisory Solutions International Group in Washington D.C. and a former adviser to the board of the World Bank Group. Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell