Desire And Misery: On The World's "Fetishism" For Middle East Conflict

-Analysis-

PARIS — The liberation of Syria is an unexpected and moving victory for its people, and a moment of hope for all freedom-loving Arabs in the region. It is also an event that stirs great anxiety. We watch people celebrate on the streets of Damascus, oblivious to how Bashar al-Assad’s “escape” is actually a checkmate move. And we know what's coming next.

We react with a mix of empathy and anger to the scenes of momentary liberation, which we are taught will eventually give way to return to the broader pattern of exploitation in the Middle East. It's a feeling I've become accustomed to, which comes free of charge with my skin color and weak passport.

Growing up in one of these so-called "dangerous" Middle Eastern countries, I was constantly surrounded by the melancholic images and monotonous voices of news presenters. I hated it then, but I became a news-consuming, highly skeptical, and politically engaged woman in my mid-twenties, who distrusts the West and braces for the worst whenever it suddenly becomes interested in my region.

The only difference between my parents and me is the medium — where they had their TVs and radios, I have my phone. Now, these upsetting images are a few clicks away, and the "peace and democracy are unattainable in the Middle East" narrative quickly starts to feel exhausting.

It was only when I removed myself, my policed body, and my “radical” thoughts from the equation and looked beyond the usual suspects — oil, terrorism, religious conflicts, dictatorship — that I arrived at another conclusion: the Middle East is not just a strategic prize of power and wealth, but an object of desire so unattainable to the West that it has become what psychologists and anthropologists call a fetish.

We can call it a kind of "geopolitical fetishism"—an obsessive engagement with the region’s destruction and intervention that goes beyond tangible goals and ventures into ideology, power, and even voyeuristic consumption. This framework may help to explain how the narrative of land, religion, and proxy battles gets repeatedly weaponized to justify a devastating cycle of war, control, and profit.

Fetishizing war

This fetishism is not merely about the exotically bloody narratives that dominate headlines. It comes from inside the psyche of the West, a teasing desire to reshape and control the region for purposes entirely unrelated to the well-being of its people — and sometimes even against their own interests — as social media now broadcasts these horrors in real time, offering the world a front-row seat to suffering. The spectacle fuels a toxic cycle, where war becomes commodified for political agendas, and the real human cost is conveniently overshadowed.

The West's obsession with controlling the region has led to the creation of a tragic cycle.

This is no doubt an outgrowth of (and fuel for) the colonial approach to the Middle East. Yes, the region's struggles are no doubt fruit of our own ancient animosities or religious divisions in the region. But they are sustained and amplified by centuries of external intervention, the legacy of colonialism from the Crusades to the Cold War, and, most recently, the endless war on terror.

The West's obsession with controlling the region — especially its oil and strategic geography — has led to the creation of a tragic cycle fueled by war and economic mechanisms like IMF loans tied to neoliberal policies, which dismantle public services and enforce austerity. These measures enable resource extraction under exploitative conditions, deepening inequality and economic dependency while being framed as modernization.

Hollywood's role

But in our part of the world, it goes beyond simple subjugation by repeatedly fueling ongoing open conflict, which the West's military-industrial complex must keep sustained. The United States cloaks its invasions in the rhetoric of "democracy building." Yet, these interventions almost always result in the opposite: destabilization and prolonged conflict.

The people of Syria became pawns in a game of ideological dominance.

Hollywood's narratives, too, present heroism where there is hegemony, making geopolitical fetishism palatable to a global audience. Films such as American Sniper, Zero Dark Thirty, and The Hurt Locker glorify these wars — which helps fuel the next ones. These movies portray American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan as reluctant heroes, suffering under the weight of a mission they volunteered for, conveniently ignoring the truth — that these wars are waged not to liberate but to dominate.

Now the world is focused on Syria, whose civil war the past decade-plus became a theater for global powers — Russia, the U.S., Turkey, and Iran — each fomenting chaos to advance their interests. While the narrative positions these powers as forces of stability or ideology, it reflects a deeper fetishistic obsession with controlling the region's destiny. The people of Syria, caught in the crossfire, became pawns in a game of ideological dominance.

Colonial minds

At the core of this lies the commodification of suffering. Middle Eastern women, in particular, are often depicted as helpless victims needing Western salvation. This narrative has been weaponized to justify interventions, yet the wars themselves only exacerbate the very suffering they claim to address. What may seem like advocacy for women's rights is, in many cases, a guise for perpetuating the West's gaze of superiority and control. Refugee camps overflowing with displaced families are not symbols of liberation, but of failure — evidence of how foreign interventions destroy lives rather than save them.

The Middle East must no longer be treated as a stage for global fantasies of control.

In Iraq, for example, the horrors of war — rape, displacement, enslavement — were framed as symptoms of a deeply entrenched cultural misogyny, one tied to Islam and the "barbarism" of the region. This portrayal, though, deflects attention from the root causes of their suffering—chiefly the violent disintegration of their societies, a process that is, in large part, a consequence of foreign intervention.

Breaking this cycle requires a fundamental shift. The Middle East must no longer be treated as a stage for global fantasies of control. Its women, men, and children must be recognized not as victims or symbols but as individuals with agency and the right to self-determination. Until we confront the Western fetishization of war and conflict in our region, the Middle East will remain the burning object of desire that keeps colonial minds and masters coming back for more.