Introduction.

• Author: Abu Jaber, Kamel S.

THE IMPRESSIVE ARRAY OF socio-economic statistics marshaled in the Arab Human Development Report 2002, statistics that were supported and seconded by the subsequent Report a year later, tell the story of the stagnating, "under developing" world of the Arabs. Of the major regions of the world, only Sub-Sahara Africa has similar characteristics. The Report describes and analyses this situation without discussion of the underlying reasons.

Nevertheless, the description answers many questions and fills many gaps in the knowledge about this region that seems to continue to undergo a condition of traumatized transitionality much longer than any other region in the world. Again, the Report does not go into the reasons, leaving much to the interpretation of the reader. Are the Arabs genetically deficient as some racist hate-mongers sometimes hint? Are there some cultural factors behind this continued stagnating condition? Or is it simply the fault of the largely authoritarian political establishments in the various countries of the region? The Report does mention bright spots here and there, yet these remain what they are, bright spots in a largely dark scene.

The Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in the closing years of the eighteenth century was the first contact of the Arab masses with modernity after several centuries of decadence. Since then, over two hundred years have passed, and while improvements have occurred in the living conditions of some, these improvements, the Report amply demonstrates, remain lagging far behind expectations.

No doubt the combination of external threats and internal challenges are much to blame. But then, why has Japan, which commenced its modernization nation-building efforts with the Meiji regime, almost seventy years after the efforts of Mohammad Ali of Egypt, is where it is on the modernization scale, while Egypt, indeed the entire Arab World, is still where it is?

Professor Shamlan al-Issa of Kuwait University agreed with the assessment of an Arab foreign minister quoting him as saying that the report was an "exposure of the ourah, [the shame] of the Arabs [and a] washing of our dirty linen" in public. (1) The Professor added that was why the Report was dedicated in Amman, and not at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo where the Secretary General refused to hold the dedication ceremony.

A Jordanian economist echoes these same thoughts adding that the Report has been used by enemies of the Arabs to "insult"...