The Middle East’s muted reaction

Western sympathies very different between the suffering in Ukraine and the Arab world

Within days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western countries invoked international law, imposed crippling sanctions, began welcoming refugees with open arms, and cheered on Ukraine’s armed resistance.

The response elicited outrage among many across the Middle East, where they see a double standard in how the West responds to international conflicts. They especially cite current and recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

With the Ukraine conflict, a distinctive message has gained ground in the West: that Ukraine’s defence is the defence of liberal democracy itself. Ukrainian officials have shrewdly echoed this in their appeals, and the message has resonated powerfully among Western audiences.

The very different Western reactions to the suffering in Ukraine and the Arab world demonstrate that for many, human rights and humanitarian concerns really only matter when they involve those with whom their people identify.

The U.s.-led war in Iraq, which began 19 years ago, was seen in the Middle East as an unlawful invasion of one state by another. But Iraqis who fought the Americans were branded terrorists, and refugees fleeing to the West were often turned away to fend for thmselves.

The U.S. justified its war with false claims about weapons of mass destruction. So, as Ahmad al-farraj, a columnist with the Saudi daily Al Jazirah, tweeted, when the Ukraine conflict began, if you consider Vladimir Putin a criminal and do not think the same about George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, the senior members of the administration that invaded Iraq, “your brain cells are malfunctioning.”

“We resisted the occupiers, even when the world was with the Americans, including the Ukrainians, who were part of their coalition,” remarked Sheikh Jabbar al-rubai, who fought in the 2003-2011 Iraqi insurgency against American forces.

More than 5,000 Ukrainian troops served in Iraq during Ukraine’s five years of service in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom between 2003 and 2008. The Ukrainians served as the third-largest coalition contingent in Iraq, with about 1,700 soldiers, from 2003 to 2005.

When Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war on behalf of President Bashar al-assad in 2015, there was international outrage but little action. Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe died on perilous sea voyages or were turned back as many were branded a threat to Western culture.

In Yemen, a grinding lengthy war between a Saudi-led coalition and Iran-backed Houthi rebels has left infants starving to death, yet this has not brought sustained international attention.

In fact more than 350,000 people have died in Syria and 233,000 have been killed in Yemen. These tragedies have provoked no reactions in the West remotely comparable to the solidarity shown with Ukraine.

So it is “understandable” that many in the Middle East see a double standard by the West, explained Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “The United States and the United Kingdom have supported Saudi Arabia’s seven-years-old war in Yemen, which created the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe in decades,” he noted.

During the United Nations vote in April on whether Russia should be expelled from the organization’s Human Rights Council, only one Middle Eastern country, Libya, voted yes. Almost every other one abstained or was absent. This included the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq, all traditionally seen as friends of the United States.

The vote was about “countries not wanting to blow their bridges to the multipolar world order,” contended Samuel Ramani of Oxford University, who specializes in Russian foreign policy and Middle Eastern security.

For example, Morocco was one of the nations absent from the UN vote. It needs allies on the Security Council, of which Russia is a permanent member, because of its territorial dispute over the occupation of Western Sahara, which is opposed by many countries.

And even as President Joe Biden asks Saudi Arabia to raise oil production to help support the campaign against Russia over Ukraine, he is granting sanctions waivers to Russia so that Moscow can continue to guarantee the nuclear deal with Iran that it helped broker.

Why should America’s regional allies help the United States contain Russia in Europe, many ask, when Washington is strengthening Russia and Iran in the Middle East?