In the West, the 1980s was a decade of economic
problems apparently overcome and one of rising
prosperity during the good years. Tensions less-
ened between the East and West; the Cold War
came to an end. In the unstable Middle East the
1980s began a new decade of wars, with huge
casualties in the Gulf. The wider world wants
peace in the region.
The West cannot accept that any one nation,
rabidly hostile to the West, should be able to
dominate the whole of the Middle East by force
of arms. From the Western economic point of
view the region means oil, and oil is the lifeblood
of contemporary economic life. Yet this oil lies
in less developed countries, ruled feudally, as in
Saudi Arabia and the various sheikhdoms of the
Gulf, or dictatorially, as formerly in Iraq and Iran.
The masses can be aroused by nationalism in
inter-Arab conflicts, by hatred for the ‘imperial-
ist’ West, which in the recent past had practically
colonised the region, by the arousal of anti-
Western Islamic fundamentalism, and by what is
regarded as the Western imperialist Zionist
outpost, Israel. Yet the bloodiest war of the
century in the Middle East was fought for eight
years by two Muslim Middle Eastern oil nations,
Iran and Iraq, one of them Persian, the other
Arab. When the decade came to its end, the Arab
nations were still pitted against each other:
Baathist socialist Iraq, violently nationalist and
ruled by Saddam Hussein, was confronted by
Baathist socialist Syria, dominated by Hafez Assadand the military; secular Egypt’s relations with the
feudal and rich Saudi Arabia and the sheikhdoms
of the Gulf were hostile. Yet in different degrees
the Arab nations together faced Israel in enmity.
The factions of the Palestinian Liberation Organ-
isation and the Palestinian rising on the occupied
West Bank and Gaza added further destabilis-
ing elements. In addition, for the greater part of
the 1980s West and East still sought to establish
regions of influence, a Cold War policy calcula-
tion that did not make for peace.
Into this cauldron of instability the West and
the Soviet Union poured in the latest weapons of
war. The West supplied these nations with arms
to secure some leverage over the policies of
Middle Eastern nations and to protect Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms from their more
powerful neighbours, Iran and Iraq. The Soviet
Union also massively armed Iraq and Syria. To
deny arms, the West concluded, would only leave
the way open to Soviet supply and influence.
Thus the Cold War was partly responsible for the
fuelling of deadly conflicts. Not only ‘legitimate’
weapons were sent; ‘merchants of death’ in West
Germany and other countries have secretly helped
to set up poison-gas factories and the technology
for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Weapons
came from as far away as Brazil, and were used in
Middle Eastern wars to terrible effect. For the
majority of abject poor living and struggling in
this part of the world the wars further set back
any hopes of improvement.(^1) Chapter 77
CONTINUING TURMOIL AND WAR IN THE
MIDDLE EAST