Coping With Jubilation

By Scott MacLeod

Cairo University freshman Ayman Fouad has been glued to al-Jazeera, the Qatari satellite channel, for much of the past three weeks. In the beginning, he cheered on Iraqi fighters as they battled U.S. and British forces. Suddenly, he found himself watching images of American troops riding tanks into Baghdad, helping Iraqis pull down a statue of Saddam Hussein. "I couldn't believe my eyes," Fouad says. But then, he says, he realized what was really happening. "The Americans paid these people," he asserts. "Saddam is tricking the Americans. He will fight them until he kicks them out."

The Arab psyche took a direct hit last week when American forces toppled Saddam's regime. Not since Israel's devastating defeat of its Arab neighbors in the 1967 Six-Day War has military action left the Middle East in such a state of alternating shock, shame, denial and depression. Crazy rumors, wishful thinking and conspiracy theories--Saddam and his sons committed suicide in a secret bunker so the West would never know if they were dead or alive--are running rampant. If Washington hoped the initial scenes of Iraqi jubilation over Saddam's fall would ameliorate Arab antipathy toward the U.S., the Arab street took a different direction. "I used to love America so much," says Deena Wagdy, 29, a Cairo advertising executive. "I am so anti-American now."

The liberation of Iraqis from tyranny? Only a fool would believe that was the U.S. goal, according to an overwhelming majority of Arabs whom TIME reporters surveyed in Amman and Cairo. America, they said, is fighting a war of conquest and occupation. For the most part, the war depicted in Arab media is one of subjugation and suffering for Iraqis. Admits a U.S. official: "Let's face it, if 9/11 happened tomorrow, there would be dancing in the streets."

Al-Jazeera and rival satellite channels did cover the celebrations that broke out once Saddam's regime crumbled, but TV watchers were not interpreting it as viewers did in the West. "The people don't really know what they're doing," says Amman sociologist Sari Nasir, explaining away the joy. "It's collective behavior." Others expressed humiliation at the walloping defeat of the Iraqi forces, as well as scorn for those who welcomed foreign tanks into the city. "To see our dignity wiped out like that, I am ashamed to be an Arab," says Cairo physician Khaled Ragab.

The discomfort was also discernible among some Arab leaders, who resent Washington's talk of remapping the Middle East. Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher told TIME that Arab anger is not likely to subside until Washington seriously addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "If the U.S. doesn't pay attention to the peace process," he said, "it cannot hope to turn around the way it is perceived."

To be sure, some Arabs were thrilled by events and are seizing the chance to discredit an order in which oppressors like Saddam can flourish. "The popular joy makes a mockery of the Arab system that has falsely claimed to be fighting in the people's name," says Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, editor of the Saudi-owned daily Asharq al Awsat. Hisham Kassem, of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, hopes Saddam's fall will lead to the end of autocrats elsewhere, but says, "I have to be very careful with that opinion." Siding too closely with America these days, he explains, can be a risky proposition. --By Scott MacLeod. With reporting by Aparisim Ghosh/Amman and Amany Radwan/Cairo

With reporting by Bobby Ghosh/Amman and Amany Radwan/Cairo