Tom Barrack and the Arab narcissistic wound

Much of the literature of the Nahda, the Arab Renaissance, which was stifled by the rise of military dictatorships in the mid-20th century, was devoted to diagnosing the ailments of Arab societies and the damage they inflicted on both communities and individuals.

Beyond Arslan, a vast corpus of works from across the Arab world and spanning every intellectual current has converged on one point: Arab societies are deeply fragmented, their populations divided into groups that can scarcely agree on the simplest of matters.

Islamists, secularists, liberals, leftists, and conservatives have all recognised the stagnation. Their differences lie not in the diagnosis but in the remedies they propose for escaping underdevelopment, sectarianism, and internecine strife.

What unsettled many Arabs was not Barrack's analysis itself, but that it came from an American diplomat and was delivered in a tone of condescension. His reference to the "straight lines" drawn by Sykes and Picot, and to the colonial officers who implemented their legacy, reopened what the late George Tarabishi called the "narcissistic wound." It did so at a moment when the grand narratives of resistance, steadfastness, and liberation are collapsing.

Meanwhile, a "new Sparta" under Benjamin Netanyahu asserts control over land, sea, air, and cyberspace, while seeking to erase the Palestinian people after shattering Gaza's society and scattering its history, rights, and memory.

Arab responses to Barrack's words added little. They repeated familiar claims about Western responsibility for the region's decline and about the colonial imposition of Israel to prevent Arab unity and abort the long-awaited renaissance. This is a revival of Baathist and Nasserist rhetoric that has persisted since Arabs squandered the opportunity between the 1940s and 1970s to build real states and achieve development, choosing instead the path of civil wars and local conflicts from Lebanon to South Sudan, from Yemen to the destructive struggles that now stretch from Libya to Iraq.

Certainly, the West and other external actors have deepened local contradictions, added violence, and linked them to global rivalries, whether during the Cold War or in today's shifting geopolitical landscape. But Arabs cannot continue to deny their own responsibility for their condition or to place the blame on figures like Tom Barrack.

The answer to Arslan's question lies within his own writings, in his description of Arab values, social habits, and collective temperament. If Barrack's words have stung, it is because they touched a truth that Arabs have long known but refused to face. The wound is theirs. So too is the responsibility to heal it.

**This is a direct translation from Arabic**