THE NAKED ARAB Following the Iraqi elections, FOULATH HADID looks at Arab advances to democracy
STRIPPED OF HIS most basic civil rights and liberties, the Arab of today stands naked of all the necessary components that make up a modern state. If the criteria for a successful civil society were a liberal democracy with free, fair elections, not a single Arab country would qualify.When applied to 22 countries with populations of over 300 million, that becomes a very hard pill to swallow. The Arab Human Development Reports (AHDR) of 2002, 2003, and the much-delayed 2004 report, provide ample support for that fact.
How did the Arab arrive at such an abject level of development compared to the meteoric increase in the standard of living of his western counterpart? It is a question that Arab thinkers have pondered for centuries: one may even call them early AHDR scholars.Western writers have also tackled it, with books like Oriental Despotism arguing that Arabs had an ‘Arab’, non-western way of doing things.More recently, Sharansky’s A Case for Democracy and Patai’s The Arab Mind have fuelled neocon ideas.
At a recent meeting of Arab government officials it was remarked that despite all the criticism heaped on Arab governments for a lack of democracy, they were remarkably stable.My response was that this came at a price: that the Arab ‘subject’ has been brow beaten into this regime stability. He is not offered a democratic mechanism for change and has been lobotomised into thinking that any change would bring a much worse alternative. The recently-published AHDR deems a continuation of the status quo the worst-case scenario for the Arab world.
Many sophisticated Arabs decry their status but fear change, lest it bring upon them unknown army colonels (or, dare one say it, an Islamist cleric) for whose misguided aspirations they will have to pamper. Examples of Arab military leaders abound. The last to fall, Saddam (not a military man per se but a product of a military regime), went completely over the top by declaring a 100 per cent vote of approval for his regime, months before being toppled.
An analysis of the ‘Arab’ state of affairs is far too complex to be attempted in a short article such as this, although the long-awaited (and finally published) AHDR will help shed more light on the subject.What can be said for certain is that there has been an imposed regime change in Iraq. I am an Iraqi Sunni and, unlike most Sunnis I know, I voted in the recent elections – not because I knew who to vote for (that was made into an unnecessary mystery for most voters) but because I felt that it was my inalienable right to vote. I voted for democracy.
The US is now speaking of a domino effect taking hold in the region, citing the Palestinian elections, the sea change in Mubarak’s Egypt and the famous ‘will of the people’ in Lebanon forcing a Syrian pull out – all novelties in democracy-starved Arab lands.Yet only time will tell whether this does indeed herald the long-awaited democratisation of the area.
American Presidents do have had a good track record in this field.Woodrow Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’ had a seismic effect in Arab lands liberated from the Ottoman yoke in 1918; Jimmy Carter unleashed a torrent of human rights that, by the 1980s, had resulted in people demanding, and getting, their democratically chosen governments. Now George W. Bush has embarked upon the ultimate experiment: democracy through imposed regime change.
So will the US succeed in imposing democracy in Iraq? Will Iraq be able to repeat the Japanese/German experiences?
Two vital matters must be resolved before anybody is going anywhere in the grand ‘Arab democracy’ scheme. First, the complete failure of the traditional democratic and secular parties, such as the Communist Party, the National Democratic Party, or the new democratic Pachachi Party, and the emergence of religious parties as the leading groups, confirms the tectonic shift of power in the Arab world. The test, like anywhere else, is whether governments in the region can bring into the political process all competing parties (especially the Islamic ones), via fair, honest and non-violent elections.More importantly, those not winning have to accept defeat. If the Sunnis are not brought into such a process, democracy in Iraq would have lost the essential component of inclusiveness.
Second, the present resistance/insurgency in Iraq must end – through dialogue or the capitulation of either side (the rebels or the US coalition). America failed in Vietnam because the Viet Cong did not capitulate. The rebels in Iraq have not yet reached the status of the Viet Cong, but until the present resistance capitulates or it is brought into the political process all bets are off.
However, both sides agreeing to an immediate ceasefire could resolve the conflict. It is rumoured that back-channel negotiations are taking place to that effect: US forces could withdraw to specified bases outside the cities so that at least the country loses the feel of an occupied nation.A semblance of sovereignty may even begin to emerge.A transparent, honest reconstruction program should be launched; the favouring of US corporations such as Bechtel and Halliburton should stop. The US and its allies should agree to a planned pull-out within a specified time frame. The army and civil service should be rehabilitated with their former cadres.All those ideas of ‘de- Baathification’ have brought nothing but chaos to the country and are the result of the confused thinking of Paul Bremmer III. When asked at his farewell party from Baghdad what advice he would leave his Iraqi successor, he replied to a bemused audience: “de-Bremmerfication”.
The man may have left a mess behind him in Iraq, but at least he had a sense of humour about it.
Foulath Hadid worked on his D.Phil (The Failure of the Democratisation Experience in Iraq) at St Antony’s College, Oxford, where he is now an Honorary Fellow. He has also edited a forthcoming memoir of his father, who founded the democracy movement in Iraq.
