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Something stirs
Mar 7th 2005
>From The Economist print edition

Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the Arab world is beginning to show
tantalising signs of change. But it is too early to talk of a year of
revolutions, as the three prime exhibits being used to make the case for
democracy‹Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine‹are in many ways special cases

AP
AP

SINCE the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, many of those who
vehemently opposed it have mocked America¹s neo-conservatives for having
believed that the Iraqis would greet their foreign liberators with flowers
and gratitude. Now it is the turn of the neo-cons to mock. A lot of people
in the anti-war camp predicted that the war would cause upheavals across the
Middle East, fanning hatred of the West and tipping friendly regimes into
the hands of Islamist extremists.

It hasn¹t worked out that way. On the eve of the war¹s second anniversary,
the Middle East does indeed seem to be in the grip of some sort of change.
But, right now, much of the change seems to be pushing in a welcome
direction, towards a new peace chance in Palestine and the spread of
democratic ideas around the Arab world.

Arabs everywhere were affected by the spectacle in January of Iraqis defying
terrorists to cast their vote and elect a new government, and of
Palestinians managing to hold a free election even while under Israeli
occupation. The past couple of weeks have brought even more transfixing
scenes, as Lebanese thronged the streets of Beirut with their flags in an
unprecedented show of ³people power², forcing the country¹s pro-Syrian
government to resign and Syria to announce a phased pull-out of its troops.
At the same time, Hosni Mubarak, Egypt¹s president for the past 24 years,
has astonished his countrymen by calling for constitutional changes to allow
rival candidates to vie for his position for the first time.

To the instigators of the Iraq war, all this is manna from heaven. Having
failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, George Bush and Tony
Blair have been forced to emphasise instead the gift of freedom their
toppling of Saddam Hussein delivered to its people. This ³gift² was hardly
free: chaos and murder continue to stalk Iraq. Last week alone, at least 120
people were killed in a single suicide bombing in Hilla. And yet the Iraqis
do still seem impressed by the novelty of being able to vote a government
out of power.

In Bratislava last month, Mr Bush drew a link between Iraq¹s vote,
Czechoslovakia¹s ³velvet revolution² of 1989, Georgia¹s ³rose revolution² at
the end of 2003, and Ukraine¹s recent ³orange revolution². He would say
that. But a growing number of Arab voices are chiming in, too.

In a widely noticed interview, Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon¹s
Druze, told the Washington Post that Iraq¹s election was the Arab equivalent
of the fall of the Berlin wall. Hisham Kassem, a former publisher of the
Cairo Times, called the elections the ³start of a ripple effect². Khaled
al-Meena, the editor of Saudi Arabia¹s Arab News, says that if elections can
be held under foreign occupation in Iraq and Palestine, it should be much
easier to hold them in Arab states said to be ³free².

How far-reaching is this new spirit? The Arab world is large and diverse, so
there is always a risk of connecting the dots in a way that produces a
distorted picture. One oddity is that Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon‹all three
of the prime exhibits being used to make the case for democracy‹happen to be
under foreign occupation, by America, Israel and Syria respectively. Each is
in many ways a special case.

A cedar revolution?

The foreign occupation of Lebanon began in 1976, when Syria¹s dictator,
Hafez Assad, sent his army to intervene in Lebanon¹s brutal three-cornered
civil war between Maronite Christians, Muslims and Palestinians. The mass
protests that forced Lebanon¹s pro-Syrian government in Lebanon to resign
last week would probably not have happened but for a powerful shock: last
month¹s murder of Rafik Hariri, the country¹s former prime minister and most
popular politician. This was the catalyst for a chain reaction: amid intense
international pressure on Syria, including from fellow Arab states, Assad¹s
son and successor, President Bashir Assad, announced on Saturday March 5th
that Syria would withdraw its troops in two stages, beginning immediately,
though no deadline for completing the pull-out has yet been given. For the
Lebanese, what some are calling a ³cedar revolution² and others a ³peaceful
intifada² carries the promise of an end not just to Syrian occupation but
also to a corrupt spoils system that has long sapped the country¹s talent
and morale.

Broad-based popular movements such as this are unlikely to emerge soon in
other countries. Lebanon¹s experience is in many ways unique. Famously
fractious, the Lebanese are well educated and politically sophisticated.
Their central government is weak, meaning it lacks the instruments of
control enjoyed by other Arab states. It cannot co-opt enemies with oil
money, because it has none. It cannot suppress protests effectively, because
it lacks even a trained force of riot police. And it cannot silence dissent,
because Lebanon¹s vibrant press has remained in private hands. The
enthusiastic, non-stop coverage of the Beirut intifada on opposition TV
channels emboldened tens of thousands of ordinary citizens to ignore
government bans, and take to the streets.

Just now, something else distinguishes the Lebanese: they have a focus for
their anger. Mr Hariri had come to embody the country¹s post-war
reconstruction. His assassination united Lebanon¹s multiple factions in
outrage. A beleaguered minority movement, led by Christian and Druze
politicians who once fought each other, was reinforced by members of Mr
Hariri¹s own Sunni Muslims, as well as thousands of others whose indignation
transcended the old sectarian loyalties.

Lebanon¹s anger has a cause as well as a martyred hero: freedom from
domination by Syria, whose regime many Lebanese instinctively blame for the
crime. Over the years, Syria¹s occupation helped to smother the flames of
civil war and bolster Lebanon¹s resistance to Israel¹s occupation of the
south. But the war is long over, the Israelis have gone and the Syrians have
overstayed their welcome. They are blamed now for imposing some of the ills
that afflict other Arab countries, such as grotesque corruption,
intimidation of political opponents, and the subversion of the courts. When
the Lebanese demand the return of national sovereignty, it is as much a call
to restore local freedoms as for Syria¹s troops to leave.

Democrats in Palestine

In Palestine, too, the advance of democracy may have been helped by the
weakness of the government. The Palestinian Authority (PA), created by the
1993 Oslo accords to run the occupied territories until a final deal on
statehood was reached, is missing many of a sovereign state¹s usual
attributes. Israel controls natural resources, borders, coast and airspace,
the currency, the collection of customs duties, and, in most areas, security
and internal freedom of movement. Yet Palestine¹s political system is
vibrant and pluralistic.

Ironic, but no accident: Israel¹s occupation is directly responsible. The
two intifadas bred a powerful grassroots movement, subverting the Middle
East¹s usual authoritarian tendency. Yasser Arafat¹s periodic attempts to
placate Israel by cracking down with his brutal security services alienated
the population, as did graft among his officials. In polls done for
January¹s presidential election by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and
Survey Research, 26% of voters rated corruption and lack of reform as the
most serious problem facing Palestinians, only slightly behind the
occupation (31%) and poverty (33%).

Arafat¹s death has triggered a quiet cascade of mini-revolutions. January¹s
presidential election delivered a predictably solid victory to Mahmoud Abbas
(Abu Mazen), his designated successor in the ruling Fatah party, but also a
strong showing to Mustafa Barghouti, an independent without any of the
benefits of a party structure, previous political jobs or slyly-used state
funds.
Reuters
Reuters

Mahmoud Abbas and friend, perhaps

In the early rounds of the municipal elections, Hamas, the main Islamist
party, did unexpectedly well. This July it can expect to win a hefty
minority in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), whose current members
smell pretty ripe to ordinary Palestinians after a decade in their seats.

Hamas is popular for its armed efforts in the second intifada, which most
Palestinians believe forced Israel¹s planned withdrawal from Gaza, and for
its broad network of local social services, trumping those of the PA. It
also did well because many would-be Fatah candidates grew so sick of the old
leadership¹s habit of overriding internal primaries and imposing its own
people that they ran independently, thus splitting the vote for the party.
But these habits are changing: a frightened Fatah is beginning to heed its
younger members¹ calls for reform.

And there was another upset last month when the Palestinian prime minister,
Ahmed Qurei (Abu Alaa), tried to appoint a cabinet packed with Arafat
loyalists. Shrewdly, rather than press Mr Qurei to make changes, Mr Abbas
sat back and let him get into a showdown with PLC members who wanted their
turn. The end result: a ³technocrat² government, made up of politically
inexperienced but professional people, and few Arafat cronies or PLC hacks
in sight. How well it will govern remains to be seen, but Palestinians love
it: shortly after the government was sworn in, a Ramallah street vendor was
heard hawking ³technocrat bread².

Reform of the PA has been on the agenda since well before Mr Abbas. Salam
Fayyad, the Authority¹s determined finance minister, has spent nearly three
years cleaning up the books, and says its revenue collection has gone up
from $45m to $75m a month, even as the economy has withered under the
intifada. Mr Abbas, mindful of Fatah¹s plight and the fact that his own poll
rating was close to zero before he became the party¹s candidate, is carrying
on with those plans.

The PA outlined them at a meeting last week in London with donors and Middle
Eastern governments. Pension reform will help slim down the civil service,
which until recently was a sponge for unemployment, by encouraging
desk-jockeys to retire. There will be clear procedures for appointing judges
and a shake-up in the court system. The dozen-or-so security services (not
even PA officials agree on the exact number), which functioned as private
fiefs, will be slimmed down, smartened up and brought under central control.
There will be tweaks to fiscal management and business law, and a raft of
other changes. In return, donors upped their pledges of support to $1.2
billion for 2005, and Palestine broke a new record for aid money per head of
population.

Please may we have independence too?

Palestinians plainly welcome reform for its own sake. Above all they want
the occupation to end. Yet Israel insists‹and for now the Americans seem to
agree‹that the Palestinians must put their domestic house in order before
they will be allowed to negotiate the final status of their putative
independent state. As in Lebanon, therefore, the grassroots appetite for
bottom-up democracy and the impulse for independence combine into a potent
force.

That is no longer true of many Arab countries, where the kings and ³national
liberation² parties that took power after the colonial period have clung
ruthlessly to office ever since. Yet in the past year or so, even
governments of that sort have been making some concessions to democracy. In
some cases this has been done for domestic reasons, in others as a response
to pressure from the Americans. Morocco¹s politics have matured lately into
a lively multi-party system, albeit under the supervision of an almost
absolute monarch. Another semi-constitutional monarchy, Jordan, plans to
devolve central powers to elected regional bodies. Yemen, though still
tribally fractious and backward, boasts a rowdy parliament and press.

Even the absolute monarchs of the Gulf have opened up to varying degrees of
citizen participation. Qatar¹s emir, the first Arab ruler to abolish his own
ministry of information, actually congratulated the Lebanese for toppling
their government. Kuwait, which has long had a noisy parliament, is on the
verge of enfranchising women, now that Islamists back the idea. In Bahrain,
Oman and Qatar, women already vote. And Saudi Arabia is in the midst of
electioneering as polling for town councils continues across the kingdom.

Change, and the illusion of change

Needless to say, much of this top-down reform has been hesitant and shallow.
In none of these cases has the real balance of power been threatened with
change. Essential attributes of an open society, such as full scrutiny of
state spending, an unfettered press, truly independent courts and
accountable police and security forces remain unachieved. The changes often
look less like Mr Bush¹s forward strategy of freedom than like a rearguard
strategy of regime survival.
AP
AP

A more orderly class of protest in Cairo

Mr Mubarak¹s initiative, for example, concedes none of his pharaonic powers,
including the right to be re-elected in perpetuity. According to the draft
forwarded to Egypt¹s rubber-stamp parliament, presidential candidates would
have to be proposed by legal parties. The hitch is that Mr Mubarak¹s own
party controls the legalising process. It may not sanction its most
formidable opponent, the Muslim Brotherhood. After 50 years of virtual
one-party rule, the political stage has been almost swept clean of potential
contenders, aside from the 76-year-old Mr Mubarak and, perhaps, his
42-year-old son Gamal. Besides, Egyptians are so inured to electoral fraud
and manipulation that it may prove hard to persuade them of the utility of
voting.

The arrest in January of a prominent young opposition parliamentarian, Ayman
Nour, underscored the sanitised nature of Egypt¹s politics. Mr Nour¹s
secular, liberal al-Ghad (Tomorrow) party had only recently been legalised.
Unlike tamer opposition politicians who had agreed to put off calls for
change until after Mr Mubarak¹s re-election, Mr Nour had been demanding
immediate constitutional reform. For his pains he was accused of forgery,
had his parliamentary immunity lifted, and was clapped in jail. He remains
locked up, but responded to Mr Mubarak¹s initiative by calling off a hunger
strike.

The experience of Algeria and Tunisia, which already permit competition for
the presidency, is not encouraging. Tunisia¹s ruler of the past 17 years,
Zeineddine Ben Ali, has twice crushed challengers, but these lightweight
rivals were carefully vetted, and forced to play on a steeply tilted field.
Algeria¹s Abdelaziz Bouteflika handily won a fairer race last year, but with
the full support of state media and other government institutions.

Arabs complain that their rulers¹ gestures towards reform come more in
response to outside pressures than to their own aspirations. Mr Mubarak¹s
proposal would not have been made but for the supposedly friendly nagging of
Mr Bush and Condoleezza Rice, America¹s new secretary of state. Yet pressure
for reform is also building from within. Hollow or not, each grudging reform
has whetted the public¹s appetite for further change.

In the past, popular protests often took the form of riots over price rises
or localised protests at police brutality. Now ³people power² is
increasingly being expressed in organised and peaceful movements by
civil-society groups. Bahrain¹s ruler, for example, brought himself immense
popularity three years ago by ending martial rule, inviting exiled
dissidents home, and running free elections for half the seats in the
national legislature. Many Bahrainis, particularly among the disenfranchised
Shia who make up two-thirds of the island kingdom¹s native population, are
now demanding more.

Jordan¹s King Abdullah, likewise, faces a wave of unrest from trade unions
angered by new rules that ban syndicates from political activity. In Egypt,
Mr Mubarak¹s election initiative was greeted not with gratitude, but with
demands for wider freedoms and better guarantees that polls will really be
clean. A small but vociferous reform movement has gained momentum in Cairo,
drawing strength from the coverage of protests by satellite TV channels that
are beyond state control, and a proliferation of groups promoting specific
issues, such as ending torture.

Goodbye Baathism

Even in Syria the feeling that change is inevitable has become palpable. Mr
Assad has proved a weak leader, isolated both by the war in Iraq and his
behaviour in Lebanon. Many other Arabs still share the Syrian regime¹s sense
of being under siege, its deep mistrust of the West, and its loathing for
Israel. Yet they are also aware that the armed intifada in Palestine and the
Iraqi insurgency have lost their sheen. They know that state socialism is a
dud, and‹after Saddam Hussein¹s fall‹that dictatorship is ultimately
disastrous. Growing numbers are willing to say that Islam is threatened more
by its own demons than by the West¹s armies.

An Arab democratic opening will be long and tortuous. The regimes that block
it are strong, cunning and ruthless. The rhetoric of ³resistance²‹Islamist,
Arab nationalist, anti-American, anti-globalisation, or whatever‹retains a
powerful grip. Many Arabs still support groups such as al-Qaeda. A huge
amount still depends on the outcome in Iraq: a descent into chaos or the
failure of the political process there could crush democratic stirrings
throughout the region. For all these reasons, it is probably too early for
the Americans to crow about an Arab year of revolutions. All the same, the
distance between Mr Bush¹s talk of freedom and Arab aspirations, which only
recently seemed to yawn so wide, may at last be starting to close.