Are The Bedouin Now A Mirage?

Are the Bedouin Now a Mirage?

Before, after, and during the fall of the Ottoman Empire, exchange in The Middle East has been complex: "Aspects of the household mode of production, along with aspects of kin-ordered, tributary, and mercantile modes--no single mode was dominant," (Cole). So individuals engaged in this mode or that mode of production, but on that Arabian Peninsula--that desert--individuals exchanged the goods and services they had to offer mediated by need. Need of water, need of food, need of technology--the Bedouin, for instance, were connected to urban specialists by their agents or individuals in possession of their product: they came to the Bedouin camps. If the Bedouin were left in need, however, they exacted raids for livestock and water (Toth). The incapability of the farmer's defense against these raids lead to the paying of tribute or the outright hiring of a group of Bedouin. But it is after the fall of the Ottoman Empire that the already fractured spatial economies of the farm and the urban stabilized and flourished; the unbounded lifestyle of the Bedouin is threatened by borders.

According to the venerable PK Hitti:

To [the Bedouin] the desert is more than a habitat, it is the custodian of his sacred tradition, the preserver of the purity of his speech and blood, and the first and foremost defense against the outside world. Its scarcity of water, scorching heat, trackless roads, lack of food supply--all enemies in normal times--proved staunch allies in times of danger (Elphinson).

With the simultaneous close of World War II and the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East was carved into what it now resembles today: several diverse states acting as individuals in the world market. While an interesting comparison could be made here regarding the nature of the world market in comparison to the modes of exchange already detailed before you, suffice to say that although different actors are governed by separate modes of exchange, need continues to mediate exchange--even on the world scene--and competition is breed.

Today rampant population growth and a growing agricultural deficit in the Arab countries of the Middle East are returning the arid regions to centre stage in matters of food security. Traditionally the main areas of sheep production, the arid and semi-arid regions are playing a decreasing role in the supply of meat to regional markets where demand has grown without precedent partly as a result of urbanization and revenue from oil (Bocco).

In other words, the desert--home to the Bedouins and source of their security--was divided. And thrust upon it and its keepers [the desert and the Bedouins respectively] is agriculture on a new, modernized scale. This means the sky must be made to rain or irrigation must be expanded. Clearly the result of this is a continual erosion of the land available to nomadic people: "The spread of cultivation into drier areas reduced the extent of pasture, while restrictions were placed on nomadic migrations," (Cole). Although disparate modes of exchange have existed in The Middle East for all of history, the Bedouin are now a vestigial limb of the Middle Eastern exchange place on the verge of vanishing like the desert on which they stand.

A seemingly common practice of the anthropologist is to analyze a society based upon technology foreign and introduced suddenly. The assumption goes that any sign of change brought about by this new technology signifies the end point. A penetrating heart and beating mind uncovers a motor fetish in Middle Eastern anthropology. The motor vehicle makes the Bedouin raids unviable because of increased security. Also, the motor is a more efficient desert transport than the camel. While it is true that:

The improvement in public security in the desert in recent years, due to the use of cars and aeroplanes, has led to a very great reduction in raids which can no longer be regarded as a source of income to the Bedouin (Elphinston).

Isn't the better question: what is the potential eventuality of this new deficit? Increasingly faced with need, the Bedouin are being forced to shed the clothes of a nomad and take up the homes of the unskilled workforce. Interestingly, as the Bedouin move to industrial jobs, as found in Kuwait for instance, they are able to hire cheap labor from poorer countries to shepard their flock (Richey). But is it a fair conclusion, a straight line even, to paint cause and effect being deprivation of staple economic source to abandoning tradition and culture? Perhaps more than past economic importance and practices is the larger issue of space: space to operate and explore patterns of maintaining life. For the Bedouin have existed in

one of the most unrelentingly arid regions on this planet. It is likely that with space to explore the Bedouin would develop new methods and practices--the desert, their keeper, would continue to provide if not in a new way.

Space, however, is a shrinking commodity in The Middle East. Saudi Arabia is the producer of 30% of the world's desalinated water supply (Ford). Armed with a growing supply of fresh water, the Bedouin, probably, should fear the motor-hum of hydraulic irrigation more than the aeroplane. Saudi Arabia, long reliant upon oil revenue, is, like the rest of The Middle East, searching for methods of economic diversification. While agriculture has been prevalent in the region from its onset, a frontier line exists between land-under-farming and the arid steppe and desert. This line will be mined and watered back to bring the land under cultivation.

As land shrinks, so must the Bedouin population. New allegiances, nationalities, are phenomenal for continued survival simply because of lack. Space is essential to the development of new cultural norms and practices, and the Bedouin are running low on space:

Vidal emphasized the importance of the water supply and, as an ARAMCO employee, noted a potential strain on ARAMCO water facilities in case Bedouin became more dependent on that supply. He was concerned about the likely growth of shantytowns inhabited by semi-settled Bedouin, since these might lead to increased demand on ARAMCO for the provision of local services. Other "undesirable features" for ARAMCO included "crowding of operation roads, land ownership difficulties due to the establishment of prayer sites and cemeteries [and] a possible increase in the number of incidents between various groups of Bedouins over water problems . . ." There were legal and technical matters to address, but Vidal felt the need for the