Do not misdiagnose the Arab reform lull

by Rami G. Khouri

If political and economic reform are supposed to “drain the swamp” and lead to a more peaceful, prosperous Arab world, we should be prepared to be patient for the process to bear fruit. The swamp — like all organic phenomena that hate oblivion — is fighting back, and showing its considerable muscle.

The swamp of the contemporary Middle East is fed by homegrown political discontent, chronic abuse of power, economic stress, social inequity and sustained abuse by foreign powers. The swamp will only retreat when more wholesome forces are able to mobilise effectively and push it back. This has yet to happen, but an important learning process is under way.

Arab reformers throughout the region are slightly dazed, and a bit down, but not out. Like boxers who came out fighting and have been battered in the middle rounds, they are pausing between rounds. They will refocus and come back into the ring with a more effective strategy that corresponds more to reality than to their idealism.

I say this after an intensive week of meetings and discussions on political-economic reform issues in the Arab region. This included two days of discussions with civil society agencies from throughout Iraq, a World Bank-sponsored gathering in Beirut of several hundred specialists from throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and a day of talks with reform champions and sceptics in Amman.

It is crucial not to make the mistake of judging Arab reform and historical change through the distorted lens of Washington and London politicians. Many of the problems of the modern Middle East since the end of World War I can be traced in part to the imperial, presumptuous tendency of Western powers to implement policies that respond more to their own goals than to the interests and rights of the people of the Middle East, e.g., the American-engineered coup that overthrew Iran's Mosaddegh government in the early 1950s; the British-engineered duplicity that carved out an Israeli state from a largely Arab Palestinian land between 1915 and 1948; and, the crass French colonial manipulation of Syria and Lebanon in the inter-war period.

Many today will look at the stalled Arab reform and democracy effort and conclude that it has failed and will be shelved because the Anglo-Americans' patience is limited and their problems in Iraq are growing. It is also easy to write off democratic reform efforts in the Arab region as hopelessly naïve, powerless in the face of strong police states, marginal in the face of widespread local disinterest, or deeply flawed due to association with American and Western goals.

A more complex dynamic is at hand, in fact, as reform-minded activists throughout the Middle East digest the lessons of the flaccid first generation of attempted democratic transformation, and prepare to relaunch and reengage more effectively. The discussions under way are intense, probing, self-critical, action-oriented and realistic.

How do we change state behaviour by using the law? How can we partner with like-minded colleagues around the world? Should reform-based mass political parties be established? How can Islamists, democrats and other natural constituents of reform movements work together coherently? How do we control the military and police power of the state? How do we break the hold of individual families on entire countries?

This is a crucial moment in the destiny of the modern Arab world in the midst of extensive change defined by many forces that eyeball each other with both concern and predatory intent: security-centred regimes and governing elites; opposition Islamists who are gaining power through grassroots organisation and electoral politics; expanding private business sectors that need rule of law-based good governance to achieve their potential and generate jobs and wealth for their people; small clusters of democracy and human rights activists; equally small numbers of terrorists; and a massive centre of largely apathetic ordinary citizens who watch all this on television, concerned mainly with taking care of their families.

Foreign interests also play a role, whether in the form of Anglo-American, Israeli, Turkish and Iranian armed forces, or their respective political operatives and agents.

In recent years, Western governments and Arab reformers had joined forces to pressure Arab regimes to accept the inevitability of change in the exercise of political and economic power. So in the past 20 years, we have witnessed more open press and political systems, greater dynamism in civil society, many new political parties, numerous parliamentary elections, and more recourse to the courts for redress of grievance. Real power, however, continues to be closely held in the hands of small ruling elites that have remained largely impervious to the impact of these liberalisation trends. We have changed political forms, but not the substance of how power is wielded.

The liberalisation dynamic stalls in part because Arab and Western governments work more closely to slow down the pace of change. Some of this reflects fear of Islamist victories, and some the unwillingness of entrenched Arab elites to give up their privileges and power. At the same time, Arab democracy advocates and mainstream Islamists who want faster reforms are busy defining where and why they failed in recent years, and how to avoid the mistakes of the past when the bell for the next round sounds — as it will.

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This article will be published in the Friday-Saturday, April 14-15, 2006 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.