There are many lessons to learn from the wars of the Middle East — if we can stop being religious bigots or educated ignoramuses long enough to pay attention. Too many people look at these conflicts through the narrow lens of faith or geopolitics and miss the deeper, uglier truth staring them in the face.
I am looking at Arab society in this piece, and at how opulence — unchecked, unearned, and unexamined — can turn a wise man into a fool.
As a kid learning the Arabic language, I ventured into Arab history. Arabs are subdivided into groups, the major ones being the Bedouin Arabs and the City Arabs. The Bedouins were unconcerned with luxury; they were rugged, used to the harsh desert life, and their camels were their treasures. They values honesty and integrity. Their culture operated on the Mosaic Law — if you kill their own man, they will avenge it, and this could produce wars lasting generations.
From Warriors to Wealth
Using Islam as banner, at the height of their influences, these hardened nomads built an empire that stretched from Al-Andalus — modern-day Spain — to the borders of China. They were feared and respected in equal measure.
Then oil was discovered, and everything changed. The descendants of herders, fishermen, and warriors suddenly found themselves at the heart of the global economy. They transformed deserts into spectacles. On the surface, they looked untouchable.
But instead of converting that massive wealth into genuine military strength and technological self-reliance, they outsourced their security to superpowers — paying billions to America to be their protectors.
The Gulf nations became the world's top arms importers, yet remain incapable of defending themselves without outside help. They paid for protection; they did not build it. The wealth is still there, but the will is gone.
There is a Hadith (Prophet saying)— known as the Hadith of Wahn — that describes exactly this decay. It speaks of a time when nations will gather to devour the wealth of the Muslim world because its people have grown attached to the luxuries of this life and developed a fear of death. Numerous, but like froth on the sea — powerless. That is not poetry. It is a diagnosis.
Impact on Population
Today's Arab groomed their children to no longer struggle. They have more money than the population needs and can buy anything they want. They started losing their grit — their resilience and endurance.
They did not use their wealth to innovate homegrown technological solutions but rather spent it buying Western technology and importing wonder technologies to be installed in their lands. Many Africans envy them, and of course, who would not?
To make life easier for their children and youths, they import even domestic workers under the Kafala system — a bureaucratic mask for modern-day slavery. These men, who cannot defend their own borders against foreign powers, feel powerful enough to brutalize the poor who come to them desperate for work. That is not power. That is cowardice wearing a different mask.
It is the ultimate irony: they stand atop the world's tallest buildings, yet every brick was laid by a foreigner and every blueprint signed by a Westerner. These are the people many in Africa want to emulate.
The Lessons for Africa from the United States
I once read the story of the Native Americans and how they were subdued — not always through brute force alone, but through something more insidious: comfort.
They were offered freebies and protection in exchange for peace. They took the bait. What followed was a slow, grinding erasure. Tribe after tribe signed agreements ceding their lands in exchange for so-called protection, healthcare, and government annuities — food, supplies, promises. It felt like a deal. It was a trap.
Today, Native Americans are among the most impoverished communities in the United States. What was framed as generosity was actually the architecture of dependency. Once you outsource your sovereignty, you rarely get it back. Trading your power for someone else's protection is not a transaction — it is a slow surrender. It is slavery.
The Arabs took a different path but arrived at the same destination.
Africa is not better.
At least the Arabs outsourced their security. Africans have outsourced something far more fatal: their thinking. Our education systems were not designed to produce thinkers — they were designed to produce administrators and consumers fluent in foreign frameworks who execute colonial projects and plans. Religions were designed for Africa to be completely mentally impotent and subscribing to other people's logic.
As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o argued, mental colonization is more destructive than the physical kind, because it makes the oppressed internalize the oppressor's worldview. You no longer need chains when a man believes he is inferior without them.
Wealth without Innovation is a Cage.
Like the modern Arab states, many African nations rely on exporting raw materials to buy finished technology. When a country gets its wealth from selling a resource rather than through industry, the social contract changes. The government provides for the citizens, and in return, the citizens become passive and wait for the next set of palliatives.
What is often hidden is that the protection offered by such governments depends on foreign entities — buried in foreign investment, loans, or technology contracts. Africa is effectively a consumer of civilization and hence affected by whatever is happening in other climes.
Outsourced Security is Borrowed Time.
I saw many Nigerians openly welcoming the outsourcing of our security to America, a nation that has never won a ground war in the modern era. Those Nigerians may not realize how quickly foreign forces vanish when their own interests are at stake, just as we saw in Gulf countries in the ongoing Iran war.
History taught us that when a nation begins hiring others to fight its battles, it is in its twilight phase. The Roman Empire fell shortly after it started relying on Germanic mercenaries to guard its borders. Oyo Empire is another example.
Resilience is a Resource.
The moment a society chooses comfort over internal strength, it begins its decline. Africa's current struggles are harsh, but they are the fire that should be forging us into innovators. If we only seek to buy our way out of problems with borrowed money, or foreign investors who will vanish once our economy shows a sign of problems, we will end up like the modern Arab states — wealthy on paper, yet looking over our shoulders for Western approval and protection. The worst part of this is the ongoing wave of Japa Syndrome. I will devote another time to this and show it is counterproductive.
Across civilizations and centuries, the method is the same — make a people comfortable, dependent, or ashamed, and they will collaborate in their own subjugation. The Native Americans were given reservations. The Arabs were given security guarantees. The Africans were given education systems and religions that taught them to see themselves through someone else's eyes. In every case, what looked like a gift was a leash.
Wealth that is not built on self-reliance is merely a gilded cage. If we continue to exchange our raw resources for foreign luxury and foreign protection without building our own internal strength, we are not developing, no matter what the Western grades economic data say— we are simply becoming comfortable dependents.
The question is whether any of us — African, Arab, or otherwise — are still capable of seeing the leash for what it is. And whether we are ready to take tough painful path toward self development and self sufficiency.
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