BEIRUT — One day soon — in the coming two decades at most — the contemporary Arab world will finally free itself from the grip of narrow military and security leaderships that have defined our societies for the past half-century. This is not easily done, but it remains the critical lynchpin of the elusive Arab quest for modernity, sustainable development, and just plain old normalcy in political and national life.
I witnessed part of that process at a meeting in Beirut last weekend, when 20 courageous and enlightened Arab members of parliament from six Arab countries gathered to discuss how to bring their military and security systems under parliamentary and civilian control. This is a critical goal because military and security establishments that have dominated modern Arab political life — often through the agency of individuals and families that remain in power for three and four decades — are the single most important underlying reason for our collective national distortions and weaknesses.
Our collective submission to the priority of ensuring security and stability over all other personal and national values has shattered prospects for the growth of liberalism, freedom, dignity, creativity, productivity, self-reliance and a brand of urban cosmopolitan tolerance that once defined this region. The distortions and real costs of countries run by colonels are widespread, severe, and still growing.
The modern Arab security state has bred mass complacency, severe dependency, political apathy, high emigration rates, tendencies among youth to embrace violent movements, rampant corruption, gangsterism and lawlessness, economic inefficiencies and waste, local and global terrorism, proliferation of private militias, wide gaps between leaders and led, profound legitimacy problems among many ruling elites, active revolts and occasional civil wars in many countries, opportunities for foreign political manipulation, and a general frailty of statehood — in sharp contrast to strong, durable personal and communal identities that define most citizens.
Trains run on time, yes; children’s underwear export factories create jobs, for sure; people can walk in the streets at night without fear of attack, I acknowledge — but at an otherwise terrible price that has left this region as the political backwater of the world, and its developmental orphan. Stability is a legitimate and worthy national goal, but stability without basic rights, liberties, and personal human dignity quickly transforms into a stultifying force for stagnation, decay and degeneration.
The imperative now is to end our condition of collective captivity to military orders, and liberate the Arab spirit and mind. Bringing Arab military and security establishments under the oversight and ultimate control of civilian institutions is critical to this goal. This will not happen suddenly, in an Iran-style revolutionary manner. Nor will it happen through the combined agency of the bizarre club of reform rhetoricians that includes George Bush, Tony Blair, Husni Mubarak, Zein el-Abedin Ben Ali, and a host of other Arab and Western leaders whose verbal commitment to Arab democratic reform is suspect at best, and deviously malicious at worse. Change will come, rather, by the actions of courageous, committed Arabs who work with like-minded colleagues from other countries.
The 20 Arab parliamentarians who gathered in Beirut, hosted by both the UNDP’s Programme on Governance in the Arab Region and the Geneva-based Center for Democratic Control of Armed Forces, were joined by another 40 experts, scholars and ex-military officials. The MPs came only from those few countries where there may be a possibility of breakthroughs on this critical issue: Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, Palestine and Algeria.
For three days they frankly discussed the enormous obstacles to parliamentary oversight of their military sectors, and determined nevertheless to move ahead because of their awareness of the continuing heavy cost of maintaining the current Arab security states and military-run societies. Meetings like this alone will not change the Arab world, though they do represent a pivotal development that is already visible in some Arab countries: courageous, patriotic individuals who no longer fear to engage their military rulers, and now openly, peacefully, and democratically challenge the rulers’ unchecked power. These are our own elected sons and daughters, demanding the implementation of the concept of the consent of the governed, and brandish the weapons of constitutionality, accountability, transparency and citizenship rights.
Such small signs of big changes are everywhere in this region, and accelerating. Judges are openly challenging their military rulers in Egypt to hold verifiably free and fair elections. On May 15, members of parliament demanded that electoral districts be revised in Kuwait in order to represent the people more equitably. Lebanon arrested and is indicting its top four former security officials for complicity in the murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
Arab MPs collectively meeting and working to push for the civilian control of security sectors is significant because of their democratic credentials, their representational legitimacy, their clean motives, their collective potential impact, and the sheer force of their personal courage and wisdom. When the history of modern Arab political rebirth is written, this weekend in mid-May 2006 in Beirut may be remembered fondly as one of several moments when history was nudged ahead by decent Arab nationals and like-minded Western friends who all took their citizenship rights seriously, and worked politically according to realistic agendas and timetables.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 17 May 2006
Word Count: 860
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