BEIRUT — Two intriguing meetings took place last week in the Arab world. In Egypt, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with the intelligence services directors of four Arab states (Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). Just days later, the Arab heads of state met in Riyadh for their regular Arab summit.
Which of the two meetings was more significant and signaled the tone, content and direction of Arab state policies? Are the three factors at play here — American foreign policy, Arab security systems, and Arab national leaderships — merely coordinating in a logical move among allies and friends, or are they converging into a single political dynamic that blends American foreign policy with Arab security services?
The summit meeting was a routine event that reissued a historic, but five-year-old, peace offer to Israel. The Rice meeting with the intelligence chiefs was a novelty that deserves more scrutiny, for both its current meaning and future implications.
Whatever the novelty or routine nature of Rice’s meeting with the Arab intelligence directors, it seems like the sort of noteworthy development that Arab governments should explain to their own Arab citizens. As the Iraq situation shows with gruesome daily regularity, security is a core imperative for Arab citizens and their states. Citizens need to know that they can leave their homes in the morning and have a good chance of returning alive at night. States, societies and governments need to know that theirs are orderly, secure, stable communities that can aspire to achieving their full potential and even some prosperity.
Security is not a dirty word, and Arab security systems need not remain a secret and forbidden world of shadows and whispers. Arab security agencies have important, legitimate roles to play. The modern Arab states have all pursued domestic policies that place security and regime survival before any other value. Most Arab citizens that live in safe, stable societies appreciate that fact. A few Arab states that have allowed security agencies to abuse their roles were transformed into grotesque police states, to the discomfort and disdain of most of their citizens, and the world.
A new set of questions arises, though, if some Arab countries now consider giving security agencies a central role in foreign policy as well as in domestic governance. The wider context in which this may be happening is pertinent. Rice’s latest visit to the region includes her quest for “moderate Sunni Arabs” who will join the American-Israeli side and fight the Iranians and their Arab friends, alongside her meeting to foster bonding between the US State Department and Arab security establishments.
Arab citizens in whose name and for whose interests this is happening deserve to be informed about the full implications of whatever is going on. This is especially true if we are witnessing a confluence between the largely Israeli-defined Middle East foreign policy of the United States and some Arab security agencies. Already, security agencies play a central role in Arab public policy, and are moving into foreign policy duties. Egyptian foreign policy to the Palestinians and Saudi links with the United States, for example, are both handled primarily by top security personnel, rather than foreign ministry officials.
Some Arabs fear this trend, and the Rice meeting’s implications, if it heralds a new convergence of American and Arab policies that are anchored in the primacy of Israeli-American concerns, with Arab national rights and security needs being only a derivative corollary. This is not a certainty, but a possibility that many Arabs fear, with justification.
Stability and security for all Arab countries are important and legitimate goals, and must be pursued diligently, within the rule of law, by all available intelligence, police, armed forces and other security agencies. But an important balance also must be struck in two directions, at a time when some Arab security agencies become more directly and openly involved in making or implementing foreign policy. The first is a balance between internal security that is achieved via police and intelligence methods on the one hand, and the kind of organic stability that reflects equitable socio-economic development and political systems that are participatory and accountable, on the other. The second is the balance between Arab security policies that protect against foreign threats, and policies that move dangerously close to becoming a surrogate for the Middle East policies and interests of foreign countries.
If, however, real security threats require Arab intelligence agencies to become foreign policy players, their legitimate security aims would be easier to achieve if they informed their citizens more openly about exactly what is going on. In either case, a more transparent process would only benefit Arab citizens and states, and the security organizations that work hard to protect both.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 31 March 2007
Word Count: 788
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