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PDF FormatNot surprisingly, the Arab world understood this doctrine altogether differently. For the most part, its intellectuals interpreted it as a mere continuation of traditional Western policy toward the Arab world, and not a departure from it. More than a decade earlier, the belief that democracy was a guise for Western efforts to reconquer Arab territories and plunder their natural resources had taken root in Arab thought, and current events appeared to confirm their worst fears: A large Arab country, rich in oil fields, had been conquered by the United States; American forces stationed in the Persian Gulf provided the base for this attack; and, finally, the attack was perpetrated under the banner of the call for democratic change in the Middle East. Furthermore, not only did the very scenario played out in Arab thinking at the beginning of the 1990s materialize, but the key players were also familiar: George Bush, Jr. replaced Bush Sr., then-defense secretary Dick Cheney was now vice president, and Colin Powell, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was now secretary of state.
Some Arab intellectuals have argued that Bin Laden and al-Qaida have been little more than a sideshow in the post-September 11 Middle East. They maintain that his part in America’s decision to invade Iraq was a mere pretext for the implementation of a plan that the United States had been contemplating for a long time. This plan, this theory goes, revealed the “true nature” of the American attitude toward Arabs and Muslims: One of ingrained hostility. (Some Arab writers even denied that Bin Laden played a role in the events of September 11 at all, arguing that the attack was in fact the work of Israeli or American intelligence. This conspiracy theory is the basis for the following popular Arab joke: The Israeli prime minister calls the American president on the afternoon of September 11. “I would like to express my deepest condolences, Mr. President,” says the prime minister. “Why and what for?” asks the president. “Oops,” says the prime minister. “I forgot the time difference.”)
Indeed, most Arab intellectuals saw no need to adopt a new conceptual paradigm in order to understand the actions of the United States in Iraq. From their point of view, the paradigm proposed after the Gulf War had been vindicated by the outbreak of the new war.19
Ironically, this argument found its most forceful presentation in the pages of Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi, the journal of the Center for Arab Unity Studies, which, at the beginning of the 1990s, was the single most active source of calls for democratization in the Arab world. Even those aligned with the sworn enemies of Saddam Hussein insisted that it was preferable for him to remain in power than be toppled by the American army. The director-general of the Center, Khair al-Din Hasib, argued that the Iraq invasion could not have come as a surprise to anyone who had followed American strategy since the end of the cold war. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, he explained, America sought to become the sole world power, and controlling the world’s supply of oil is the only way to attain this goal. Moreover, he said, if America were truly interested in Arab democracy, it would not have cooperated with Saddam Hussein in the past and opposed him only after he became too much of a threat to Israel.20 Even the Saudi writer Turki al-Hamad, who in the early 1990s was one of the rare-albeit qualified-supporters of American culture, also attacked the United States, comparing its policies to a minefield in which Arabs should fear to tread. According to him, the American democratization initiative was aimed solely at making the Arabs dance to the West’s tune, and the success of this malicious attempt would turn Arabs into “artificial creatures, lacking color, smell, and taste.”21
Obviously, if the Arab world’s intellectual elite considered the American democratization initiative an insidious attempt at domination, liberalization’s chances for success would be doomed. After all, in the opinion of the United States, it was Arab intellectuals who were supposed to be at the vanguard of political change. But these intellectuals—even those who believed in the value of liberalism—found themselves in a quandary: On the one hand, American actions in the Middle East afforded them the ideal opportunity to push for reforms; on the other hand, they were wracked by fears regarding the intentions of the Bush administration.
The 2005 Egyptian elections are an excellent example of this Arab conundrum. Declared “The Celebration of Democracy” by President Hosni Mubarak’s government, the September elections were the first time in which nine candidates were permitted to run against Mubarak. The election, however, was neither celebratory nor democratic. It was subject to a complicated and dubious amendment to the constitution that guaranteed the Mubarak family’s continued monopoly on power and a far-reaching government campaign that emphasized the distinction between internal, organic democracy, based on agreement between the incumbent government and society, and an external, imposed, American democracy that would undermine Egypt’s independence. The message was clear: Those insisting on democratization beyond the limits set by the regime were allowing Egypt to become a pawn of the West.22 To make matters worse, running against Mubarak were a number of lackluster and ineffectual candidates. There was, however, one charismatic candidate, with a clear liberal agenda: Ayman Abd al-Aziz Nour, a lawyer and member of parliament who established an independent party called Al-Rad (“Tomorrow”). Contrary to other opposition activists in Egypt, Nour was not opposed to any particular aspect of Egyptian policy, but rather to the undemocratic nature of the regime as a whole and to Mubarak’s attempts to perpetuate this state of affairs by laying the groundwork for his son’s succession. Recognizing the danger Nour posed, Mubarak’s regime arrested him on the pretext that he had forged the required signatures for registering Al-Rad. Not surprisingly, the pressure exerted by the United States to release Nour and allow him to participate in the election restored his freedom (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice even cancelled a visit to Cairo on account of his imprisonment), but also played into the hands of the regime by portraying Nour as America’s favorite son.
On Election Day, Egyptians gave the “democratic progress” declared by Mubarak a conspicuous vote of no confidence: The official voter turnout was a mere 23 percent. Of those who turned out to vote, 88 percent chose Mubarak and only 7 percent chose Nour.23 In December 2005, Nour was convicted of forging signatures and sentenced to five years in prison. Not one member of his party was elected to parliament.
The United States again protested Nour’s imprisonment. But his battered loyalists considered the American effort as much a cause for concern as for hope. Ideologically, they were skeptical of the sincerity of America’s demands for democracy in Arab countries, and politically they were well aware that the perception of a close connection between them and the Bush administration would severely harm their popularity. Yet without unflinching American pressure, the liberal opposition in Egypt has no chance of surviving, either.
However, such pressure has not been forthcoming. This has not been unnoticed by the advocates of democratization in the Middle East. “It was expected that Mubarak, once re-elected, would allow further liberalization,” wrote the American Enterprise Institute’s Joshua Muravchik in a Washington Post op-ed.
Indeed, most Arab intellectuals saw no need to adopt a new conceptual paradigm in order to understand the actions of the United States in Iraq. From their point of view, the paradigm proposed after the Gulf War had been vindicated by the outbreak of the new war.19
Ironically, this argument found its most forceful presentation in the pages of Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi, the journal of the Center for Arab Unity Studies, which, at the beginning of the 1990s, was the single most active source of calls for democratization in the Arab world. Even those aligned with the sworn enemies of Saddam Hussein insisted that it was preferable for him to remain in power than be toppled by the American army. The director-general of the Center, Khair al-Din Hasib, argued that the Iraq invasion could not have come as a surprise to anyone who had followed American strategy since the end of the cold war. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, he explained, America sought to become the sole world power, and controlling the world’s supply of oil is the only way to attain this goal. Moreover, he said, if America were truly interested in Arab democracy, it would not have cooperated with Saddam Hussein in the past and opposed him only after he became too much of a threat to Israel.20 Even the Saudi writer Turki al-Hamad, who in the early 1990s was one of the rare-albeit qualified-supporters of American culture, also attacked the United States, comparing its policies to a minefield in which Arabs should fear to tread. According to him, the American democratization initiative was aimed solely at making the Arabs dance to the West’s tune, and the success of this malicious attempt would turn Arabs into “artificial creatures, lacking color, smell, and taste.”21
Obviously, if the Arab world’s intellectual elite considered the American democratization initiative an insidious attempt at domination, liberalization’s chances for success would be doomed. After all, in the opinion of the United States, it was Arab intellectuals who were supposed to be at the vanguard of political change. But these intellectuals—even those who believed in the value of liberalism—found themselves in a quandary: On the one hand, American actions in the Middle East afforded them the ideal opportunity to push for reforms; on the other hand, they were wracked by fears regarding the intentions of the Bush administration.
The 2005 Egyptian elections are an excellent example of this Arab conundrum. Declared “The Celebration of Democracy” by President Hosni Mubarak’s government, the September elections were the first time in which nine candidates were permitted to run against Mubarak. The election, however, was neither celebratory nor democratic. It was subject to a complicated and dubious amendment to the constitution that guaranteed the Mubarak family’s continued monopoly on power and a far-reaching government campaign that emphasized the distinction between internal, organic democracy, based on agreement between the incumbent government and society, and an external, imposed, American democracy that would undermine Egypt’s independence. The message was clear: Those insisting on democratization beyond the limits set by the regime were allowing Egypt to become a pawn of the West.22 To make matters worse, running against Mubarak were a number of lackluster and ineffectual candidates. There was, however, one charismatic candidate, with a clear liberal agenda: Ayman Abd al-Aziz Nour, a lawyer and member of parliament who established an independent party called Al-Rad (“Tomorrow”). Contrary to other opposition activists in Egypt, Nour was not opposed to any particular aspect of Egyptian policy, but rather to the undemocratic nature of the regime as a whole and to Mubarak’s attempts to perpetuate this state of affairs by laying the groundwork for his son’s succession. Recognizing the danger Nour posed, Mubarak’s regime arrested him on the pretext that he had forged the required signatures for registering Al-Rad. Not surprisingly, the pressure exerted by the United States to release Nour and allow him to participate in the election restored his freedom (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice even cancelled a visit to Cairo on account of his imprisonment), but also played into the hands of the regime by portraying Nour as America’s favorite son.
On Election Day, Egyptians gave the “democratic progress” declared by Mubarak a conspicuous vote of no confidence: The official voter turnout was a mere 23 percent. Of those who turned out to vote, 88 percent chose Mubarak and only 7 percent chose Nour.23 In December 2005, Nour was convicted of forging signatures and sentenced to five years in prison. Not one member of his party was elected to parliament.
The United States again protested Nour’s imprisonment. But his battered loyalists considered the American effort as much a cause for concern as for hope. Ideologically, they were skeptical of the sincerity of America’s demands for democracy in Arab countries, and politically they were well aware that the perception of a close connection between them and the Bush administration would severely harm their popularity. Yet without unflinching American pressure, the liberal opposition in Egypt has no chance of surviving, either.
However, such pressure has not been forthcoming. This has not been unnoticed by the advocates of democratization in the Middle East. “It was expected that Mubarak, once re-elected, would allow further liberalization,” wrote the American Enterprise Institute’s Joshua Muravchik in a Washington Post op-ed.
Instead, 2006 has brought a wave of repression and brutality that goes beyond the jailing of Nour. The regime’s goons have bloodied and arrested peaceful protesters doing nothing more than expressing solidarity with the dignified protests of Egypt’s judges…. In response to these abuses, U.S. press spokesmen have issued formulaic criticisms, and Nour’s conviction on patently bogus charges led Washington to postpone trade talks. But the mild tone of U.S. protests, the low level at which most have been delivered, and the admixture of warm gestures toward the regime—such as the meetings Vice President Cheney and other top officials held with Mubarak’s son and hoped-for heir, Gamal, last month—have combined to create the impression that the Bush administration has begun to pull its punches on Middle East democracy.24
The problem of Arab liberalizers’ simultaneously needing external American support and being internally harmed by it is endemic to the region, and liberalizers’ prospects are further imperiled by the shifting concern for their fortunes shown by the United States. In the winter of 2005, the Syrian democratic movement, established four years earlier when Bashar al-Assad took power, was revived. The movement exposed the latent power of the liberalism in Syria: In its prime, 1,000 intellectuals, businessmen, and professionals signed a petition demanding that the regime recognize democracy as “a universal system of values,” respect freedom of expression and assembly, and hold free parliamentary elections. After a brief period of inaction, Assad decided to nip the democratic awakening in the bud, sentencing its leaders to five years in prison.
In fact, it was only after the assassination by Syria of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, that Western pressure forced Assad to pardon the movement’s leaders and allow the party to rebuild. Convinced that Assad would not harm them with the eyes of the world upon him, they renewed their call for democratization and worked to expand their base. Yet once again, the role of the West was both a blessing and a curse: Western pressure on Assad was the sole guarantee that the democratic movement would not be suppressed, but such pressure enabled the Syrian government to cast the opposition as a pro-Western movement. It was no coincidence that the Syrian liberals conspicuously renounced any connection with the United States.25
This, then, is the situation that now confronts the Arab world: The war in Iraq and America’s liberalization initiatives have put the question of democracy at the top of the agenda. But the new Western presence also engenders fears of a revival of the days of imperialism and subjugation. Without the West’s involvement, Arab democracy is impossible, but with the West’s involvement, a massive psychological and political stumbling block to the establishment of Arab democracy is created. How is either side to escape from this impasse?
In fact, it was only after the assassination by Syria of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, that Western pressure forced Assad to pardon the movement’s leaders and allow the party to rebuild. Convinced that Assad would not harm them with the eyes of the world upon him, they renewed their call for democratization and worked to expand their base. Yet once again, the role of the West was both a blessing and a curse: Western pressure on Assad was the sole guarantee that the democratic movement would not be suppressed, but such pressure enabled the Syrian government to cast the opposition as a pro-Western movement. It was no coincidence that the Syrian liberals conspicuously renounced any connection with the United States.25
This, then, is the situation that now confronts the Arab world: The war in Iraq and America’s liberalization initiatives have put the question of democracy at the top of the agenda. But the new Western presence also engenders fears of a revival of the days of imperialism and subjugation. Without the West’s involvement, Arab democracy is impossible, but with the West’s involvement, a massive psychological and political stumbling block to the establishment of Arab democracy is created. How is either side to escape from this impasse?
