Geopolitics According to Moroccan Students

In general, Arabs love to talk about the United States and its role in the world. So when we started the unit on "would have", "could have", "should have", I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about the relationship between the United States and the Arab world. How could the relationship have been better? What should have happened?

Surprisingly, most of my younger students couldn't care less. The issue isn't as pressing as it is in other parts of the Arab world; they live comfortably now. Solidarity is a bit passe. When they expressed their dislike for the topic, I asked for alternative topics. The most popular one was "relationships between parents and children".

Below I have posted the essay of one of my older students.

A long time ago, the relationship between the U.S. and Arab world was good until the problem of Palestine appeared. Every day Palestinians suffered and [were] murdered, while the whole world was watching those crimes without moving a finger.

Another thing, since the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, the policy of U.S. has changed, They consider every muslim as terrorist and they succed to convince the American citizens by using a dangerous weapon is the media of course.

By consequence, the U.S. military attacked Iraq and pretended to spead peace and achieve democracy to Iraquians but their major target is to control the sources of petroleum.

After that, the U.S. Army attacked Afganistan and tried to get Ossama Ben laden dead or alive, the friend of yesterday becomes the enemy of today, during the cold war between U.S. and URSS, the U.S. gave him weapons to fight against Russians but the things has totally changed now, he becomes the terrorist number one in the world.

In my opinion, the U.S. should be more [fair] about the Palestinian issue. It should also be aware about the danger of nuclear weapons in the middle east.

As a conclusion, I guess the relationship between Arabian governments and U.S. still strong but the citizens are disappointed about the U.S. policy.

This essay pretty accurately represents the average Arab's understanding of these issues. This student simplifies the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Iraq war, and how the media works a bit, and he has a mistaken chronology of Iraq and Afghanistan, but otherwise he has a fairly decent understanding of world geopolitics. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he understands some of these issues much better than the average American.

As an Arab and a Muslim, of course, he is well-informed about the post 9/11 profiling of Muslims and the situation in Palestine. The average Arab has seen hours upon hours of footage from Palestine, but Americans rarely get a glimpse of Palestinian suffering. Unlike many Arabs, I am not a fan of conspiracy theories to explain this phenomenon, but the fact is: it exists.

Notice also the student's distinction between Arab governments and Arab citizens. The governments are allies of the U.S. The people (or the majority that cares enough to pay attention), strongly dislike (hate, detest?) American policy in the region.

And that's why this essay is important.

It demonstrates the average Arab's understanding of geopolitics. And when enough people believe something, exaggerated or true, it has profound effects in the real world.