Why experts on Mideast are always wrong

The operational mistake that experts keep making is the failure to recognize that backward societies must be left alone, as the French now wisely leave Corsica to its own devices, as the Italians quietly learned to do in Sicily, once they recognized that maxi-trials merely handed over control to a newer and smarter Mafia of doctors and lawyers.

With neither invasions nor friendly engagements, the peoples of the Middle East should finally be allowed to have their own history – the one thing that experts of all stripes seem determined to deny them.
That brings us to the mistake that the rest of us make. We devote far too much attention to the Middle East, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts. Excluding Israel, per-capita patent production of countries in the Middle East is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa.

The people of the Middle East (only about 5 percent of the world’s population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labor force at all. Not many of us would care to work if we were citizens of Abu Dhabi, with lots of oil money for very few citizens.

But Saudi Arabia’s 27 million inhabitants also live largely off the oil revenues that trickle down to them – leaving most of the work to foreign technicians and laborers: Even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia’s annual per-capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel.

Saudi Arabia has a good excuse, for it was a land of oasis hand farmers and Bedouin pastoralists who cannot be expected to become captains of industry in a mere 50 years.

Much more striking is the oil parasitism of once much more accomplished Iran. It exports only 2.5 million barrels a day as compared to Saudi Arabia’s 8 million. Yet, oil still accounts for 80 percent of Iran’s exports because its agriculture and industry have become so unproductive.

The Middle East was once the world’s most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the angry venting of resentment. According to the United Nations’ 2004 Arab human-development report, the region boasts the second-lowest adult literacy rate in the world (after sub-Saharan Africa) at just 63 percent. Its dependence on oil means that manufactured goods account for just 17 percent of exports, compared to a global average of 78 percent.

Moreover, despite its oil wealth, the entire Middle East generated under 4 percent of global gross domestic product in 2006 – less than Germany’s.

Newsday