The Empathy Test of Humanity in the Middle East

A dictionary entry for ‘humanity’ describes this quality as “being humane; kindness; benevolence.” People’s ability to show kindness, benevolence and empathy to others – especially strangers with whom they share no personal kinship – is a measure of their humanity. While one might be tempted to describe this as ‘civilization,’ modern ‘civilized’ societies have sometimes produced regimes whose cruelty far outstrips that of any ‘savage’ or “traditional, primitive society.”

In contrast, psychologists define a ‘psychopath’ as someone lacking empathy. Psychopathy is marked by extreme egocentrism and a “callous unconcern for the feelings of others.” This condition can result from a genetic or physical disorder in some rare individuals or, more commonly, can be a product of people’s environment and upbringing. Psychopaths (or ‘sociopaths’) can carry out extreme acts of brutality without remorse.

 Someone willing to support or advocate such cruelty against “out groups” – people with whom they do not share kinship, religious affiliation, or some other marker of belonging important to them – are only one step above the psychopaths who think only of themselves. Insecurity and violent conflict can bring people to this state of barbarity -- a fact that anyone who has lived through a civil war can probably attest to. In World War Two, even the Allied side succumbed to a form of psychopathy, fire-bombing German cities such as Dresden and dropping atomic bombs on cities with no real military significance. Callous disregard for strangers is not our natural human state, however, which is probably why states and insurgent groups must generally put their soldiers and fighters through months of grueling and dehumanizing basic training before sending them out into the field.

Surveying the Middle East today, empathy seems to be in very short supply indeed. The psychopaths in chief would have to be the terrorists of the Islamic State (ISIS), of course, with their self-publicized orgies of grotesque violence, their attempted genocide of groups such as the Yezidis, their slaves, and their deranged dream of killing billions in order to build a ‘pure’, worldwide Islamic Caliphate. Most of the human world views ISIS’ behavior with shock and disgust, while feeling empathy and pity for ISIS’ victims. Some of the most human amongst us have even gone to volunteer with Kurdish forces fighting ISIS, despite sharing no kinship with the Kurds or the victims of ISIS. That, as well as other forms of support for the ‘strangers’ suffering in the region, has to be the ultimate test of empathy and humanity.

There are others in the region and beyond who pass or fail the humanity test. Germany collectively raised its standard of humanity when Berlin opened its doors to so many refugees. The rich Gulf Arab countries, meanwhile, failed the test as they pumped money and weapons into the Syrian conflict but failed to take in a single Arab refugee. The Assad regime stooped to new lows when it deployed chemical weapons and started dropping barrel bombs on civilian areas in revolt, if that is indeed possible for a mukhabarat state that has tortured and killed since its inception. Israelis pass the test when they treat Syrian wounded on the Golan Heights border, but fail it when they do not leave Palestinians enough land to realize their own dreams of independence and security. Palestinians fail the test when they refuse to view attacks on Israeli civilians as terrorism, or for that matter, even the attack on the World Trade Center (53% of Palestinians decline to call these September 11, 2001 attacks ‘terrorism’).

The Kurds passed the test when they protected vulnerably Christians, Yezidis, non-ISIS Arabs and others. Some 30% of Iraqi Kurdistan’s population presently consists of refugees which must be cared for while the region remains at war and in dire financial straits. In Turkey, People’s Democracy Party (HDP) leader Selahattin Demirtas passed the test when he asked both the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to silence their guns, and then went on to remind the PKK that the soldiers and police it targets in its attacks “…are also the children of this country, our children." Justice and Development Party (AKP) leaders pass the test when they accept and care for so many refugees in Turkey, but they fail it when they dehumanize and demonize their enemies, from the PKK and PYD to Alevis, atheists, Israelis, Armenians and others.

To be human in such a conflict-ridden region does not mean being a pacifist, of course. Sometimes you must fight to defend yourself -- something the Kurds know particularly well. It is the psychopaths, however, who pursue these battles by demonizing their enemies, showing them no empathy and intentionally targeting their civilians.

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.