Bridging the Mediterranean

Last week the world watched a string of battlegrounds, both real and figurative. In the United States a dead-heat battle raged between two presidential candidates, with the incumbent president eventually winning a second term in the most coveted seat of power in the world, the White House. Other battles raged in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, with intensity and a considerable number of casualties. In this environment of conflict a new development arrived on the Mediterranean scene, with little or no fanfare. Preparations are underway for the launch next month of the Anna Lindh Foundation for Dialogue among Euro-Mediterranean Cultures and Peoples, to be hosted by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Swedish Institute in Alexandria. The new foundation may not resolve issues of war and peace in the region but it will face the unenviable challenge of promoting new channels of communication and exchange among disparate cultures that seem increasingly irreconcilable.

The Anna Lindh Foundation, called after the late Swedish foreign minister whose murder last year was another gruesome reminder of the violence that has gripped the world, is an off-shoot of the Barcelona process. The Barcelona Declaration, signed in November 1995 by the foreign ministers of 26 European and Mediterranean countries, the EU, the European Commission and the president of the Palestinian Authority, was a groundbreaking initiative. It was a recognition that the diverse and often conflicting countries and cultures that extend from the south of the Mediterranean to northern most Scandinavia constitute a single region, and one has enough vital interests in common to warrant the creation of a partnership. The mechanism set up in the Barcelona Declaration provides an ambitious agenda for cooperation, dialogue and harmonisation of policies with three objectives in mind: establishing a common area of peace and stability in the Euro-Mediterranean region, creating an economic and investment zone of shared prosperity and promoting a partnership in social, cultural and human affairs. The foundation is a pioneer project in the third tier of the Barcelona process.

In order for the process to succeed in the future it must take stock of the past. For Mediterranean cultures and peoples the past lives on in the present and projects itself into the future. For almost 1,400 years the Euro-Mediterranean region was the scene of conquest, counter-conquest, competition and colonialism. Apart from traders who plodded the caravan routes between Mecca, Medina and Damascus, one of the earliest and most significant contacts between the nomadic tribes of the Arabian Peninsula and the Byzantine empire was the Arab victory over Byzantine forces in the battle of Yarmuk in 634. It opened the gates to Syria and Palestine, two prized Byzantine territories, and marked the beginning of the rise of the Umayid Dynasty, paving the way for the emergence of a new Arab state. Subsequent conquests in the seventh and eighth centuries created a far-reaching state unrivalled even by the Roman empire at its zenith. When the dust of 100 years of war and conquest finally settled it unveiled a sprawling Arab dominion, extending from the Pyrenees on the border of France to central Asia, and encompassing the Mediterranean Basin, Spain, North Africa, Egypt, the entire Persian empire in the East and parts of the Byzantine empire up to the southern edge of the Taurus Mountains in the west. As the new Arab state developed it embraced a vast mosaic of cultures and races that asserted themselves and gradually forged their rich cultures into a new, multiracial but monolithic Islamic civilisation. Eventually this state, with its multiracial Islamic culture, became too vast an empire to rule from one seat of power and began to break up.

Unlike Western expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries Muslim conquests were made "in the path of God" (fi sabil Allah), not in pursuit of expansion. Conquered territories and nations were not regarded as subject people, but were piously called "the abode of Islam" (dar ul Islam). The underlying purpose was to spread the new faith. The Arab nomads who came out of the arid Arabian Peninsula to spread the new religion did not claim a superior culture. They had no imperial tradition to impose. On the contrary, they were dazzled by the wealth and depth of knowledge with which they came into contact: Greek philosophy, Persian art, Byzantine institutions, classical literature, Hellenistic sciences and Roman law. After the reality of the new faith was rooted and secured in conquered territories, the nomadic conquerors avidly settled down to learn. As historian Phillip K Hitti put it, "they sat as pupils at the feet of the people they subdued – and what acquisitive pupils they proved to be."

By the end of the Umayid Dynasty in 717 and the consolidation of the state by the Abbasids (717-833) Islamic rule had been transformed into a civilisation that assimilated all cultures and created a unique Muslim identity that remains recognisable today. The marauding Mongol hordes of the 13th century, by contrast, conquered most of the Islamic territories and ravaged Baghdad, the pearl of Islamic civilisation. But when they finally receded to the Gobi desert they had reduced to rubble much of the civilisation with which they had come into contact and left none of their own. By contrast the Arab conquest of parts of Europe, and settlement of Andalusia and Sicily in particular, provided a vital channel for the transfer of knowledge the Arabs had jealously guarded, enriched and expanded into an Islamic civilisation. It proved to be the principal driving engine of the Renaissance.

The period of European discovery, followed by colonial conquest, was markedly different. Initially driven by exploration of lands and cultures, it was soon transformed into a series of military expeditions fuelled by imperial ambition. The economic boon, including trade in human bounty, was irresistible. There was no faith to spread, no mores to inculcate, only empires to build. As moral rationale the "white man's burden" of civilising the "pagans" provided adequate justification, if one was needed. Few, if any, Western colonial powers sought to effectively help nation building in the territories they conquered and occupied. Moreover, the colonial experience was riddled with racist overtones. In effect it sought to create a "subject race" that could be politically, culturally and economically manipulated in the name of Western civilisation – one need only read Lord Cromer's memoirs Modern Egypt, in which the British proconsul from 1882 to 1907 defends Britain's role in civilising "barbarous" Egypt, to see the truth of this.

For a truly effective partnership to take shape in the newly defined Euro-Mediterranean region, historical background, cultural differences as well as modern-day realities will have to come into play. Remembering that non-European nation-state existed in the region prior to the end of World War I, imbalances in the relationship must be recognised. This is not to say that the Barcelona process and the Anna Lindh Foundation it spawned constitute a false promise. On the contrary, they offer opportunities, though those opportunities come wrapped in challenges. Defining the common interests of the partners will require intensive dialogue, patience and genuine understanding. Dialogue among the peoples and cultures of the region will have to create the opportunity for a historic reconciliation of the past and harmonisation of future prospects. Immigration, terrorism, economic development, investment, cultural exchange, human rights, good governance, communication, transfer of technology, combating discrimination and xenophobia, protection against the dark side of globalisation, unipolar hegemony and the brutal military occupation of Arab territories are only a part of the current tall order.

Sceptics are already warning that the Barcelona process smacks of a backdoor attempt by Europe to control instability in the Middle East region and create an enlarged economic bloc to compete with the US and emerging Asian economies. From an objective perspective both may be legitimate goals. The relationship, after all, will only be fruitful if Europe strikes a balance between its time-honoured trans-Atlantic ties and its burgeoning trans-Mediterranean partnership.