Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East today would relate easily to the words of that great American philosopher Bob Dylan, who once wrote that, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Islamist activist politics, legitimized by and packaged inside a political/military resistance role, is on the rise throughout this region. Engaging this force constructively and democratically is an urgent political challenge in the Middle East, and it is not being grasped quickly enough.

The most significant sign of Islamist ascendancy in recent years, in my view, is the Justice and Development Party’s rise to power through democratic elections in Turkey in 2002. This gave us NATO’s first member state governed by a (mild) Islamist party — and without the world coming to an end. Turkey’s nationalist-Islamist posture is likely to stiffen now, in view of its faltering move towards closer relations with both the U.S. and the European Union.

Other signs are everywhere. Hamas won impressive victories in Palestinian municipal elections earlier this year, and was poised to do so well in parliamentary elections that it may have influenced the choice of President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine and his ruling Fateh group to postpone the elections. In Lebanon, Hezbollah retained its seats in parliament in last month’s voting and has now named its first member of the national government, who holds the energy and water portfolio. This partly signals Hezbollah’s continued shift from being mainly a resistance movement towards working through the political arena.

In Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab lands, the popular and powerful Muslim Brotherhood organization is, variously, legal but contained through gerrymandered parliamentary allocations and regime-friendly election laws, banned but active in society, and banned from formal politics but dominant at the grass roots level and in many politicized professional organizations.

More significant recent developments have occurred in Iraq and Iran, with a combined population of nearly 100 million people, many shared cultural and religious sentiments, deeply symbiotic security requirements, and control of more of the world’s oil and gas energy resources than Donald Rumsfeld would like to snicker and be snide about in his increasingly less amusing press conferences. The Iraqi government that was elected by part of the population earlier this year, under the umbrella of American guns, ushered in a government heavily influenced by Islamist parties, with Dawa Party spokesman Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister.

In neighboring Iran, a combination of heavy-handed state controls and popular resentment by a growing class of poor and marginalized citizens has resulted in a new president with very deep Islamist credentials. Capping off all this was the official visit to Iran last week by a large Iraqi delegation headed by Prime Minister Jaafari, which resulted in a range of agreements on crucial issues in the fields of energy, transport, trade, and mutual security. Closer Iraqi-Iranian ties will have profound implications for the continued growth of Islamist movements throughout the region, especially where Shiite Muslims make up important segments of the population, such as Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

The winds of change in this region are blowing into the sails of a continuing Islamist revival that has now moved into the next stage, whereby Islamist parties exploit local and national grievances to gain power through elections. They shun the violent insurrectionary approach that Islamists tried without success in the 1980s and 90s in Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq and other troubled lands. Instead they work through a four-pronged strategy that has proven to be successful.

They deliver education, health care and other social services to needy constituents. They preach a political program using a powerful religious vocabulary that promises hope, justice, equality, and dignity. They rally the masses through ringing emotional appeals that portray themselves as the last bulwark against imperialism, colonialism, Zionism, and other long-running threats. And they channel all the emotional energy and political activism garnered through these three activities into organized voting in democratic elections.

Some people in the Middle East and abroad fear that Islamist parties that gain power through democratic elections may try to stay in power forever, preventing others from contesting their incumbency. Iran is a sign of how this might work, using crude theocratic thuggery to ensure perpetual incumbency for the ruling Khomeneist elite. Yet secular states like Jordan, Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, Syria, Algeria and others practice their own version of controlled and perpetual incumbency, using bizarre electoral laws, restrictive constitutional clauses, and rather psychedelic electoral districts to ensure a pro-government outcome for each newly elected parliament; in the worst cases, they simply cancel or postpone elections.

Perpetuating this sort of crass political manipulation by long-ruling regimes has become such an insult to ordinary Arab citizens that more and more people respond to the call of the Islamists. We should not be surprised, because the Islamists offer ravaged ordinary men and women an attractive package that promises justice, dignity and development in the face of exploitation, humiliation and pauperization, along with liberation from foreign occupation. Islamists know they can ride this train of democracy to political incumbency and they are doing so very methodically.

This presents a major problem, to say the least, for those in the West, especially in Washington, who rightly advocate democratic elections as an antidote to this region’s ills and extremism, but also refuse to deal with the Islamists who are democratically elected, accusing them of terrorism or promoting extremism. The irresistible force of democratically elected Islamist parties in the Middle East is moving towards the immovable block of American refusal to deal with most of these movements.

The choice is a simple one: democracy for Arabs and Middle Easterners as defined by the majority of their own citizens in free elections, or democracy as defined by the American government?

We have a major problem here, and it should be resolved quickly through quiet diplomacy, rational discussions and a shared commitment to agreed democratic values, rather than through hardheaded posturing and threats. Because the wind will continue to blow in the same direction, as it has for some 30 years now.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright © 2005 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

—————-
Released: 23 July 2005
Word Count: 1,014
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:
rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

RABAT, Morocco — In the last 7 weeks I have had the opportunity to make working visits to seven different Arab countries and to engage in political and other discussions with local officials, academics, journalists and opposition activists. The experience has been instructive, and simultaneously heartening and depressing, but has suggested obvious opportunities and dangers in the dual quest to respond to the rights of Arab citizens and defeat the global terror plague.

Based on my visits and discussions in Jordan, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Morocco, along with meetings with colleagues from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and Kuwait, I sense a common mood across the Arab world: the prevailing status quo is neither satisfying to the majority of citizens, nor sustainable for the rulers in its current state, but neither is it on the verge of revolutionary or violent change.

The obvious overarching trend throughout the Arab world is that of citizenries and ruling elites that are worried by the status quo, but unsure of how to change it. In every Arab society, demons from the past — a harrowing litany of excesses and errors — now haunt the rulers and the ruled alike. Tens of millions of educated but underemployed, unemployed, restive and frustrated young men and women have given unnatural birth to thousands of active terrorists and anarchists, targeting our own and foreign lands. A deep distortion of traditional Islamic and Arab values is manifested in a desperate, violent, criminal search for revenge against the domestic and foreign forces that have degraded the last three generations of Arabs. Urban environments are exploding in uncontrollable spontaneous growth, with increasingly negative impacts on water, arable land and other vital natural resource bases. Drug- and corruption-based criminality is our new pan-Arab growth industry, expanding on a regional and global scale. Tens of millions of armed men and women in official military, police and security establishments have brought neither palatable security nor even the more modest goal of honorable national self-respect to the Arab region as a whole. Some desperate lands in our midst are ruled like private fiefs by thugs, killers, former cops and men of very limited abilities, in some absurd cases men who have remained in power for three or four decades without interruption — and in all cases without any formal, credible ratification by their own citizens.

Everywhere in the Arab world, the calm on the surface is tenuous and vulnerable. Pressures for change emanate from within the Arab countries, and equally from external pressures. This is driven by economic stress and a deeper sense of the average citizen¹s indignity at living in societies where power is neither accountable nor contestable, and where citizen rights are neither codified nor respected.

But these are visceral, not constitutional, societies, and verbal, not digital or parliamentary, societies. Body language rules here more than the eloquence or principles of national founding fathers. So do not look for signs of stress or change in polling data, legislative votes or political party activity. Those superficial imports from retreating colonial European powers three generations ago have little anchorage or meaning in most Arab societies. Here, power relationships are negotiated over coffee, meals, chance encounters and leisurely chats — and they are constantly, perpetually renegotiated and reaffirmed, day after day, year after year, generation after generation.

This is what is going on now in every Arab country. Arab rulers and ruled alike fervently but quietly search for the mechanisms of orderly change, aware that the traditional social contract and power equation that have defined this region since the 1920s are on their last legs. The common phenomenon I have witnessed around the Arab world is that growing majorities of ordinary citizens seek peaceful but effective ways to challenge, and change, state structures and the use of power — because these state structures mostly do not offer their people sustainable security, expressions of their real identity, freedom of choice and speech, relevant education, or minimally attractive job prospects.

A very small minority of violent Arab men and women has turned to terror as an instrument that expresses their demented frustrations and desperation; more significantly, the vast mass of Arabs has learned the lessons of the mistakes of the secular and religious political movements that challenged the modern Arab security state using violent means starting in the late 1970.  Citizens throughout this region now challenge their ruling elites and foreign interference more peacefully, but also more directly and vocally. They demand more equitable treatment by their own ruling authorities, less corruption and abuse of power, and a more clear sense of equal opportunities for all citizens, rather than privileged access to power and wealth by a small, often family-, tribe-, ethnic-, or sect-based elite that often includes a criminalized component.

Citizens nonviolently but explicitly challenge the legitimacy of their rulers in some cases, and the conduct of their own security services in others. The first wave of responses from the befuddled Arab security state — a thin sliver of reforms dressed up in limited media liberalization — has been unconvincing to savvy Arab citizenries that expect a much more significant acknowledgement of their humanity, and of their human and civil rights.

The opportunity and the danger for the Arab world both seem rather clear. The opportunity is to engage and empower the vast majority of Arab citizens who actively and peacefully seek a better, more humane and accountable, political order, through orderly and incremental change. Several hundred million upright, wholesome, ordinary men and women throughout the Arab world cry out for decency in their political order, inspired by the deep righteousness of their faiths and the strong moral values of their cultural and national traditions.

The parallel danger is that Arab and foreign officials will allow themselves to be so mesmerized and distracted by the criminal antics of a few terrorists out there that they end up perpetuating the four basic mistakes that have plagued Arab, American, British and other anti-terror policies in recent years: misdiagnosing the root causes of terror, exaggerating the religious and minimizing the political dimensions of terror, and responding mainly with heavy-handed political and military policies that, astoundingly, only fuel the criminal hormones of the terrorists themselves and also further alienate the hundreds of millions of already fearful ordinary Arabs whose demand to live as dignified, respected citizens of humane and responsive modern states is, in the end, the only sure way to defeat terrorism.

This is the simple but profound lesson that I have learned in my travels and conversations across the Arab world in the past seven weeks. If you seek stability and an end to terror, mobilize the Arab masses through democratic transformations that respect their rights as citizens, rather than alienate them through American, British and other military fantasies in foreign lands that only degrade the Arab people¹s already thin sense of self-respect in the face of their own bitter modern legacy of homegrown autocrats and Western armies.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright © 2005 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

—————-
Released: 20 July 2005
Word Count: 1,162
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BEIRUT — The rapid-fire succession of political events in Lebanon and Syria in the past week, coupled with continued international pressure on the two countries, seems to have brought Lebanon back to its messy status from the 1950s to the 1980s, as the surrogate political field of battle for competing local, regional and international forces. Thursday’s formal designation of Omar Karami to form a new Lebanese government of “national unity” marks the unofficial start of the next and probably difficult phase of the current political battle between Lebanese opposition forces and the Syrian and Lebanese governments and their supporters.

Conditions in Lebanon today are very different from what they were in the 1970s, however, and the odds are heavy that the contestation to come will remain in the political arena, without much chance of the country slipping back into war, or surrogate thuggery and warlordism, on behalf of foreign and regional patrons.

The principal actors have evolved somewhat — Palestinians, Israelis, and Russians play only an indirect role today, while Iran, Europeans, Arab Islamist militants, and the UN are more closely involved. The global context also has changed radically, with the end of the cold war, the rise of Islamist militancy, and the advent of Washington’s post 9/11 global preemptive war strategy. Yet the dynamics remain constant: Lebanese national parties, political forces, and religious/ethnic groups, anchored in region-, town- and even neighborhood-level territoriality, act as surrogates for other powers in the Middle East or abroad.

This peculiarly Lebanese phenomenon of national politics that are at once very local and global is a blend of provincialism and cosmopolitanism that has recurrently plagued modern Lebanon (and other Arab lands) since the invention of the modern Middle East state system by European statehood craftsmen in the 1920s.

Thus what appears on the surface to be a slightly beleaguered and isolated Lebanese president designating a partially discredited politician to engage the newly expanded Lebanese opposition forces to form a Lebanese government of national unity is in fact the fulcrum and foundational layer of overlapping multiple interests and ideological strategies that ripple throughout the Middle East and the world.

At least five issues are at play here.

The first is the purely Lebanese-Syrian relationship, whose natural fraternity and structurally intertwined interests have been badly frayed by the three decades of Syrian dominance of Lebanon. The Syrian-engineered extension of President Emile Lahoud’s term last September was simply too much for many Lebanese, and pushed members of the opposition to more explicitly criticize Syria’s military and security presence in Lebanon. Five months later, the spontaneous anti-Syrian protests after Rafik Hariri’s murder were a powerful, natural expression of a Lebanese will to regain control of its own destiny, expressed mainly by two critical demographic groups: young Lebanese under the age of 30 who have lived their entire lives under Syria’s shadow, and older Lebanese aged 50 and over, who feel that their sense and experience of adulthood have been demeaned by their generation-long subservience to Damascus.

The second issue at play is the American-Syrian confrontation over Syria’s role in Lebanon, which gave rise to UN Security Council resolution 1559 last September. This confrontation was triggered largely by Washington’s urgent desire to elicit greater Syrian cooperation on Iraq (a legitimate American strategic concern) and Palestine (a legitimate Israeli strategic concern). After the Lahoud term extension and the response to the Hariri murder, the U.S., France and others intensified their determination to see Syria out of Lebanon. The internationalization of players involved in Lebanese politics is also reflected in the Lebanese opposition’s tour of Europe this week, alongside the UN’s Resolution 1559 and the U.S. Congress’ Syrian Accountability and Lebanon Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003.

The third issue is Hizbullah, in Lebanon and regionally. The United States, Israel and just a few other countries have labeled Hizbullah a terrorist organization, and Washington included in resolution 1559 a requirement to disarm all Lebanese militias, referring clearly to Hizbullah. Also, Hizbullah is deeply associated with and supported by Syria and Iran, and it derives much of its legitimacy and popular support for challenging Israel, especially for working to liberate occupied south Lebanon from Israeli control by mid-2000. An important part of the current political debate in Lebanon will be about Hizbullah’s future role in Lebanese national politics, and whether or not it retains its arms and offers “resistance” to Israeli threats or occupation. The European Parliament’s designation of Hizbullah Thursday as a “terrorist” group, while most European governments have not made that determination, reflects the increasingly global nature of this political dispute over Hizbullah.

The fourth issue is the Arab-Palestinian and wider Arab-Israeli conflict and the respective roles of the U.S., Syria and Hizbullah in supporting either side. Pressuring Syria and Iran, and emasculating the respective impact of Damascus, Tehran and Hizbullah, in the wake of the regime change in Iraq, would radically transform the power equation in the Middle East, allowing Israel and the U.S. to impose their will on weaker, dependent Arab states. Defeating Syria and its friends in Lebanon is a crucial test case for this scenario.

The fifth issue is the wider global “war on terror,” with Washington viewing Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and several Syrian-backed Palestinian groups as practitioners or supporters of terrorism. Cutting off such alleged support for terror, along with stopping the development of Syrian and Iranian capabilities to develop weapons of mass destruction, are key medium-term U.S. goals that would be enhanced if Hizbullah and other pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian groups are thwarted politically in Lebanon. President Bush now touts Lebanon’s freedom from Syrian control as critical to Washington’s expanding global strategy of promoting freedom and democracy, in some parts of the world, at least.

Within this context, Lebanon has emerged again as the surrogate battleground where opposing local forces engage one another through peaceful political protest, often on behalf of foreign parties and goals. This time, though, as opposed to decades past, the principal Lebanese players seem to be furiously waving flags at the television cameras, rather than guns at each other. That they all wave the Lebanese flag, rather than their factional banners, is an important indicator that — to date, at least — the forces of composure, compromise and peaceful consensus-building are stronger than any inclination to fight. This is also affirmed by the repeated statements of all sides that political disputes must be resolved through peaceful and democratic means. The coming weeks will show if this is just a phase, or a deeply engrained national ethos.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

@2005 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

—————
Released: 12 March 2005
Word Count: 1,084 words
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

Three weeks after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the fog of emotion and anger is clearing and is being replaced by the more legible confusion of political battles old and new. The easy victories have been achieved, the spontaneous mass public sentiments have been expressed, and the more significant political battles are just beginning. All the principal parties have now logged on to the virtual ideological chat room that Lebanon has become.

We will know in the coming weeks if Lebanon will make political history by being the first Arab country in which mass popular mobilization changed a government and reversed the policy of a powerful neighbor (Syria in this case). Conversely, this may turn out to be a fleeting moment of romantic idealism, in which the spirit of sovereignty and freedom from Syrian domination that genuinely drives so many Lebanese will fall victim to more powerful forces of entrenched Arab interests and Western diplomatic expediency.

The important development now is that the principal players have entered the political fray and made their opening moves. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Saturday announced a phased pullback of Syrian troops to the border region, and Monday the Syrian-Lebanese Higher Committee added new layers of imprecision to this. It announced that the initial pullback would be made this month, but further moves would depend on bilateral consultations at a later stage. This is known as thumbing your nose at Washington and Paris.

The Lebanese opposition, and the U.S., U.K., French, German and other foreign governments, quickly expressed disappointment in the Lebanese-Syrian redeployment announcement, insisting that a full, immediate withdrawal from Lebanon was required to meet the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1559. This is known as thumbing back at Damascus.

The Lebanese opposition to Syria’s presence in Lebanon in turn held a rally in Beirut Monday in which some tens of thousands took part, demanding an immediate and full withdrawal of all Syrian military and security personnel. The main pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, headed by the powerful Hezbollah party, weighed in this weekend with a speech by its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. He thanked the Syrians for their efforts to protect Lebanon and rejected calls to implement Resolution 1559, which calls for Syria’s withdrawal and also disarming the Hizbullah militia. A massive march in central Beirut Tuesday was the pro-Syrian Lebanese’s response to the anti-Syrian opposition movement’s dominance of the street since the Feb. 14 Hariri assassination. Welcome to the increasingly noisy chat room.

Three things are happening simultaneously here that need to be watched closely, in order to know which way events will unfold. The first is a process of localization and provincialization of these dynamics into very narrow Lebanese terms – ones that are existentially important for the Lebanese people, but less compelling for the rest of the world. The second is the transformation of raw human emotions into hardnosed political ideology as all Lebanese and Syrian actors mobilize and flaunt their power assets and start the process of making compromise deals to achieve reasonable results for all concerned, while preserving the national unity and stability of Lebanon. The third is the slow disaggregation of local, regional and global political dynamics from each other, as the parties identify their core interests – incumbency, honor, security, dignity, hegemonic power, wealth, credibility and survival come to mind as key priorities – and discard marginal issues.

In this respect, the pressure that has been mostly focused on Syria and its handpicked Lebanese leadership in recent weeks will now shift to the Lebanese opposition and Hezbollah. The Lebanese opposition is being tested on several important counts. Is it really broad based, or primarily a traditional Christian opposition to Syria’s dominance in Lebanon these last 30 years? Can it channel the emotional power of its supporters in the street into a credible political force that achieves meaningful demands? After it brought down the brittle Omar Karami government, has it aimed too high in demanding the resignation of seven top Lebanese security directors? As some expect, would asking for the resignation of President Emile Lahoud fragment the opposition fatally? And, how will the opposition reconcile 1559’s demand to disarm Hezbollah with the strong Lebanese national legitimacy and popularity of Hezbollah?

Hezbollah itself now faces perhaps the biggest political test of its life since it came into existence in the early 1980s. How will Syria’s imminent withdrawal from Lebanon impact on Hezbollah’s domestic standing? Will it engage more directly in Lebanese national politics, or remain apart as the resistance that safeguards Lebanon’s security from Israeli threats? How will Hezbollah reconcile the widespread Lebanese demand (now also with official Syrian approval) to implement 1559, without disarming Hezbollah?

The Lebanese-Syrian decision Monday to redeploy Syrian troops by the end of this month will elicit stronger American and Western pressure on Syria, which we’ve already witnessed since Saturday night. This in turn will heighten pressures on Hezbollah and the Lebanese opposition groups to clarify their positions and, more importantly, sort out their assorted contradictions and weaknesses.

Only one thing seems certain right now: the Syrians will withdraw all their forces from Lebanon in the coming months, because of the immense local and global pressures to do this, which Syria acknowledges. All other developments will depend on how the parties mobilize and use their political assets in making threats and deals.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

@2005 Rami G. Khouri/Agence Global

—————
Released: 08 March 2005
Word Count: 898 words
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

BEIRUT — In a continuation of the classic political style of his late father, Syrian President Bashar Assad Saturday responded to intense local, regional and global pressures to get out of Lebanon with a dazzling combination of vague pledges, strong principles, positive promises, veiled threats, steadfast diplomatic engagement and hard-headed unilateral commitments. This vintage Syrian political performance is likely to confuse and anger the enemy, rally some fresh support, increase the pressures on and isolation of his government, and win only a little more time before Damascus’ moment of reckoning is at hand.

The net balance sheet, though, is clear: Syria has finally started to understand the intensity and specificity of the Lebanese and international diplomatic demands that it must start withdrawing its 14,000 troops and plainclothes security personnel from Lebanon.

Damascus has faced a sustained popular rebellion in Lebanon following the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri three weeks ago, and a rising crescendo of American-European diplomatic pressure to quit Lebanon immediately. In response, Assad pledged to withdraw Syrian troops completely to the eastern Lebanese-Syrian border region, and to hold Syrian-Lebanese Higher Committee meetings to agree further moves, including, presumably, a complete withdrawal into Syria.

His combination of precision and ambiguity was dizzying: Syria has no objections to withdrawing from Lebanon and has already reduced its troops there from 40,000 to 14,000 in recent years, but it will not withdraw fully in haste and leave behind a security vacuum that could jeopardize both Lebanon and Syria. Syria would withdraw completely, but not outside Lebanon, only to the border region adjacent to Syria. He did not mention the security personnel that have been repeatedly singled out by President Bush and other foreign critics of Syria’s presence in Lebanon. He said Syria has always replied that it will deal “positively” with UN Security Council resolution 1559 of September last year, requiring the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon — but he wanted clarifications on 1559’s relationship with Lebanon’s stability and sovereignty, and its links with the 1989 pan-Arab Taif Accord that ended the Lebanese civil war and reaffirmed the legitimacy of Syria’s troop presence in Lebanon.

The Taif accord also specifies that a Syrian-Lebanese Higher Committee will meet regularly to agree on the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon when security conditions permit. Lebanese opposition groups have said for a decade now that Syria should leave Lebanon to rule itself; this demand skyrocketed after the Hariri murder, which many Lebanese directly or indirectly blamed on Syria.

Literally within just minutes of the speech, thanks to competitive Lebanese and Arab satellite television services, Lebanese opposition figures leading the political assault on Syria issued a very wide range of contradictory reactions to Assad’s pledge to redeploy his troops in the border region — from cautious optimism and quiet satisfaction, to a sense of being insulted and toyed with. The opposition leaders were meeting late Saturday night and would issue a statement in due course.

One impact of the Assad speech is already clear: some of the divergences among the opposition groups and foreign countries pressuring Syria will now become more obvious, and might temporarily ease some of the pressure that has built up on Syria in recent weeks and months.

The U.S., France and other Western powers that have pressured Syria bilaterally and through the UN are likely to reject the vagueness of the Assad pledges and demand a full and immediate withdrawal. They, along with many Lebanese, will now wait to see if the Syrian-Lebanese Higher Committee meeting next week leads to a more complete, clear and speedy Syrian commitment to withdraw.

The Arab summit meeting in Algiers in two weeks is also likely to provide Syria with a bit more time to maneuver out of its isolated diplomatic spot, as well as political cover to speed up its withdrawal from Lebanon — given that an Arab League summit 30 years ago provided the initial mandate for Syria to move into the neighboring country.

Assad’s speech should be seen as the first salvo in the counter-campaign against the movement to quickly force Syria out of Lebanon. Yet given the intensity and global scope of the pressures to remove Syrian forces from Lebanon, Saturday’s speech will only gain a little time for Damascus, while the final Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon finally gets underway, using the Taif Accord terms and perhaps a renewed Arab Summit agreement as legitimate political cover for the move.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright @2005 Rami G. Khouri

—————
Released: 06 March 2005
Word Count: 738 words
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

BOSTON — The brisk pace of domestic political change towards more freedom and democracy in several parts of the Arab world this week has already triggered a passionate argument about whether this is the result of the American-led invasion of Iraq or is more of a home-grown, indigenous Arab phenomenon. This fascinating and emotional debate is something of a sideshow and a wasteful diversion of energy. We would all be better off to argue less about who is responsible for the fresh democratic impulses in the Arab world, and instead work together more diligently to keep the process moving forward.

The signs of change are blossoming all around, and reflect varying degrees of democratic change due to a variety of local and global reasons. The most dramatic moves in my view are the events in Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt (all of which reflect indigenous forces that were evident well before the U.S. led the troops into Iraq).

A powerful, spontaneous Lebanese movement of ordinary citizens and establishment opposition politicians has forced the resignation of Prime Minister Omar Karami and elicited Syria’s pledge to pull back its troops from central Lebanon. More significant changes are likely, including a sensible and fair electoral law, clean parliamentary elections in May, a full investigation of the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, further Syrian troop withdrawals, and an end to Damascus’s involvement in domestic Lebanese politics.

In Palestine, the elected parliament last week quashed an attempt by old-style politician Prime Minister Ahmad Qorei to name a new cabinet of familiar cronies, and forced him to come up with a cabinet comprised mainly of qualified technocrats and younger new faces.

In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak made the surprise announcement that he will ask the parliament to pass a law allowing for a real presidential election among several competing candidates, instead of the current practice of a lone candidate (himself for the past 24 years) being offered by the single dominant party for a sham national referendum. These are isolated, early, incomplete steps, to be sure, and some of them ultimately will prove to be insignificant. Some, such as the Egyptian president’s move, may even be designed to forestall real change, rather than to prompt it. Time will soon tell.

It is clear now, though, that these are historic, important signs of established power structures being compelled to change by the force of the will of their own people – people in the streets who risk imprisonment, retributive punishment, or even death by challenging and resisting their prevailing power elite. A threshold of fear has been crossed in all three cases.

At the same time, however, it is fair to acknowledge that the presence of the U.S. and other foreign forces in Iraq also certainly has played a role in focusing the minds of various Arab leaders on their need to change and modernize quickly — partly because of pressures from their own people as well as diplomatic and even military pressures from Western countries and the U.N. The balance sheet of Arab political transformation due to indigenous demands or foreign pressures is rather even.

This is novel for this generation, but not new in a longer timeframe. History has always recorded such a joint venture and shared impetus for modernization from local and global actors. This has been going on since Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. was the first foreign general to lead his troops into the Middle East and reorder its political configuration to reflect the imperial power’s own values and systems; the Islamic Arabs returned the favor when they moved into parts of southern Europe in the eighth century AD and ultimately sparked the European Renaissance and the Ages of Science and Enlightenment. History tends to advance through civilizational joint ventures, not solo raids.

The urgent, significant, unprecedented political reality now is that ordinary Arabs, the American government, and like-minded European allies may share mutually advantageous common goals and a good reason to work together to achieve them. The imperative would seem to be for Arabs, Americans and Europeans to grab that opportunity and find a way to overcome past rancor and resentment, and instead join forces for a great transformation in the three principal issues at play here: the nature of Arab governance, the relationship of Israel with the Arabs, and the manner of American interaction with the Arab world.

The goals to work for are about promoting more open, democratic, responsive, accountable governance systems in the Arab world, which would go a long way to reducing a major cause of terrorism; pushing for an Arab-Israeli comprehensive peace that treats Israelis and Palestinians according to the same standards of law, rights and morality, which would reduce another prime issue that stokes the deviant passions of terrorists; and, inducing the United States to use law and diplomacy, rather than its armed forces and pre-emptive war and regime change, as core instruments of its foreign policy in the Arab world and the wider Middle East — yet another way to reduce the attraction of terror as the tactic of choice for some disenchanted and dehumanized young men in the Arab and Asian region.

Events will move quickly in the coming months and years, as the Arab people and foreign powers push to improve existing Arab governing norms and policies. This can be a historic moment for mutually welcomed change, if Arabs across the region and their partners abroad work together to define the goals of change and work together to achieve them. This has never happened in recent memory, which is why it is important now to focus on what needs to be done by all concerned parties, rather than argue about who started the ball rolling. We both did. Let’s keep it rolling, so that all Arabs, like their counterparts in other lands, can be free at last.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright @2005 Rami G. Khouri

—————
Released: 02 March 2005
Word Count: 979 words
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

Some exciting and important forces are exerting themselves in parts of the Middle East, and some historic occupation/liberation dynamics are taking place in other parts of this region. It is important not to mix up these two very different things.

A wave of analyses from many parts of Europe and North America is suddenly trumpeting events in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Egypt as part of a common awakening in which Arabs and Muslims are asserting their humanity and dignity by voting in elections or demanding more democratic rights. That is only partly correct. We have three very different historical and political processes at work here, and they may well end up one day at the same final destination of stable, democratic and prospering societies. I hope so, as do the many people in this region have worked for this goal for many decades, in most cases at great personal danger to themselves.

So the first point to be made from within this region is that it is a refreshing treat to hear foreign governments and analysts now commonly advocating and applauding democratization forces in this region, instead of feeding the tyrants who jailed and killed democrats. I hope that the wave of promoting democracy, freedom and free market economics is not, like its predecessor era of propping up criminals and thugs, merely a transient and self-serving phase that fits the needs of the times as seen from Washington, London, Paris and Moscow.

The second point to be made is that domestic autocracy or tyranny and foreign occupation are equally bad but very different contexts. Iraq and Afghanistan are the easiest of the five situations to decipher. Evil regimes there were removed by the force of foreign armies, and the natives are being given a chance to reshape their societies through Western-style elections. These are noble and historic endeavors, though still deeply controversial as to their origin, implementation, intent and consequence. Time will tell how they evolve.

The Palestinians are a unique case for they have suffered the longest foreign military occupation of the past three generations of world history. So they continue to battle the Israeli occupation with all means available to them, from diligent self-improvement and acquiescent complacency, to non-violent protest and active diplomacy, to armed struggle against Israeli troops and terror against Israeli civilians. Palestinian society for decades has been prevented from enjoying democratic elections primarily because of the Israeli occupation. In the meantime, Palestinian political life has almost always been defined by an impressive component of pluralism and internal checks-and-balances, with some obvious lapses here and there, to be sure.

To applaud the Palestinians for suddenly practicing democracy in their recent elections is hypocritical nonsense and slightly insulting to boot. Those who know and follow the Palestinian people would know that the will to live in decency and dignity has been a defining national and personal characteristic for all the decades that these people have been occupied by Israel, ignored by the Arab states, or duped by Western and Eastern powers. The impressive Palestinian historical struggle for freedom against Israeli usurpation and occupation, and simultaneously against Western powers’ colonial manipulations, towers over the recently held Palestinian presidential election like the Empire State Building towers over a U.S. Postal Service mailbox in central New York.

The conduct of the Lebanese and Egyptians is probably the most noteworthy and truly historic of the five cases mentioned above. For here we have indigenous people truly fighting against enormous local odds, at great danger to themselves, to live in freedom, equality, opportunity and dignity. Egyptians in small numbers are challenging the desire of their president, Husni Mubarak, to run for a fifth consecutive 6-year term. His inclination to be a president-for-life, with a ruling party and security sector that perpetuate their control of all major aspects of political, economic and military life, is an insult to the right of ordinary Egyptians and other Arabs to be treated like adults, rather than children. Egyptians have had enough of executive authority that is not rotated peacefully and regularly, for this results in mediocrity, stagnation, corruption, national deterioration and degradation of the human spirit itself — all of which are clearly visible in contemporary Egypt. The slogan used by those who oppose Mubarak’s fifth term is “enough.”

Tellingly, that same word, “enough,” this week also appeared on posters and walls all around Beirut, where ordinary Lebanese and political leaders alike have launched an impressive rebellion against the present Lebanese government and the Syrian government that is its selector, patron and backer. As has happened in Egypt, a threshold of fear of incumbent government authorities, both Syrian and Lebanese, in this case, has been shattered. The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri accelerated to a historic pitch the now widespread, explicit and vocal calls for the Syrians to leave Lebanon and the Lebanese government to resign.

This is a rare genuine grassroots, populist, spontaneous Arab movement to change an existing power structure, and so it is qualitatively significant in terms of modern Arab political history. Perhaps the most significant aspect of it is that it is also the first contemporary instance of Arabs defining their political values, goals and activism, boldly setting out to build a better society, and then seeing Western powers support them in their endeavor. This sure beats Donald Rumsfeld giving aid to ensure Saddam Hussein’s survival in the 1980s and then sending in the Marines two decades later to remove him from power.

By all means, then: Bring on democracy, support Arab democrats, oppose Arab autocrats, end Israeli occupation, promote Arab self-determination, and, above all, please, make a reasonable effort to recognize the differences, and relationships, among all the above.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright @2005 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

—————
Released: 23 February 2005
Word Count: 952 words
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

BEIRUT, Lebanon  The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a massive bombing in central Beirut on Monday sends a loud and deadly message — but the nature, origin, destination, and intent of the message all remain painfully unclear to many observers. What is crystal clear, though, is that this crime will send out important political ripples in at least three dimensions.

The two most immediate dimensions are internal Lebanese politics and the Syrian-Lebanese relationship. The third dimension is the relationship between Syria and external powers  the U.S. and France most notably, the U.N. and the Europeans more broadly. The speed, clarity and intensity with which Lebanese opposition groups Monday blamed Syria and its allied Lebanese government for the killing spoke volumes about the troubled Syrian-Lebanese axis being the central political context in which this whole matter must be analyzed. That became obvious immediately after the bombing, as affirmed by the behavior of the three principal protagonists  the Syrian government, the Lebanese opposition, and the United States government.

The events of Monday have unleashed political forces that could transform both Lebanon and, via the Syrian connection, other parts of the Middle East. The already intense backlash to the assassination may well lead to an accelerated Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, and faster reform movements inside both Lebanon and Syria.

The fact that within just hours of the murder five distinct parties were singled out as possible culprits  Israel, Syria, Lebanese regime partisans, mafia-style gangs, and anti-Saudi/anti-U.S. Islamist terrorists  also points to the wider dilemma that disfigures Lebanese and Arab political culture in general: the resort to murderous and destabilizing violence as a chronic option for those who vie for power, whether as respectable government officials, established local warlords, or freelance political thugs.

The madness is not just in the murder of a fine man and a true Lebanese and Arab patriot; it is in the ongoing legacy of rampant and often brutal political violence that at once defines, disfigures and demeans political elites and perhaps even Arab society as a whole. That madness has now been even more deeply institutionalized and anchored in the modern history of this region due to the impact of the American-British invasion of Iraq and the new wave of violence it has spurred. One of the reasons why the Lebanese-Syrian relationship has become increasingly contentious in the past year is the consequence of American pressure on Syria to be more cooperative on Iraq. The circle of violence that engulfs the Middle East is as vast and intertwined as it is senselessly destructive.

But this murder was not primarily about our wider Arab dilemma. Regardless of who carried it out, the murder and its fallout have focused attention on a tortured Lebanese-Syrian relationship that is problematic in its own right, and that has become the crucible for testing new forms of American and Western political intervention in the Arab world.

It was not at all surprising that opposition forces in Lebanon quickly came together and openly pinned responsibility for the assassination on Syria and its allied Lebanese government. For the most significant political development in Lebanon in recent months, in my view, has been the Lebanese opposition¹s coalescing around an increasingly clear and sharp rejection of Syria¹s military presence in the country and its political interference in domestic Lebanese affairs. This position became more focused and vocal last autumn after the Syrian-backed extension of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud’s term by an additional three years. American-French diplomatic pressure on Syria and the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 demanding Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon are all part of that same thrust.

This escalated almost instantly to a new level of intensity and importance in the hours after Hariri’s death: the opposition not only blamed Syria, but also held the Lebanese government responsible and asked it not to participate in Hariri’s funeral Tuesday. In Arab political culture, I cannot think of a more acerbic, angry and insulting gesture than asking the incumbent political leadership to stay away from the funeral of a leading statesman who almost single-handedly (working with the Syrians!) rebuilt Beirut and Lebanon. The Lebanese opposition has taken its battle with the Lebanese and Syrian governments to a new level, with unpredictable consequences.

As fascinating as the opposition’s speedy accusations against Syria was Syria’s equally swift rejection of the accusations. Damascus marshaled an unprecedented array of its officials who spoke to the mass media simultaneously on three continents, and who pointed the finger at Israel and others who are accused of wanting to destabilize Lebanon. Not losing a beat or a step, the U.S. State Department and White House weighed in at the same moment with their not-very-veiled linkage of Hariri’s killing with the need for Lebanon to enjoy total sovereignty from Syrian influence and control.

Investigations may or may not identify and prosecute the killers of Hariri, as was the case in half a dozen other assassinations of Lebanese leaders in recent decades. Despite the quick accusations against Syria, the regime in Damascus, like all other accused parties, will get its moment in the court of public opinion, and in the deliberations of the U.N. Security Council, where the contested Syrian-Lebanese relationship is increasingly likely to be debated. The reality now is that Hariri’s assassination, regardless of who did it, has vastly speeded up and intensified the efforts of Lebanese political forces that are demanding that Syria get its troops and political operatives out of Lebanon.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright @2005 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

Diplomacy is on the ascendancy again in the Middle East and hopes have been rekindled that Israelis and Palestinians might find their way back to the negotiating table after the last four years of low-intensity warfare that has left over 4000 people dead and thousands more injured and traumatized. The Sharm esh-Sheikh summit between Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Tuesday and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to the region this week are positive signs that should not be exaggerated or minimized. Yet they reflect fatigue and frustration, more than a substantial change in position by either side.

The chances of successful diplomacy resolving this conflict remain slim but they are there, and we should not allow skepticism to overwhelm the real desire for all concerned in this conflict to achieve a permanent negotiated peace agreement. The bottom line to date is that everything we are witnessing – heartening and welcomed as it is – has been tried before, by these same people, without success.

The events of this month will not in themselves indicate if a negotiated peace is on the horizon. The steps that have been taken to date in the past month and the next steps to be announced at Sharm esh-Sheik and beyond are relatively easy ones. They merely implement agreements that had been previously negotiated on prisoner releases, stopping armed violence by both sides, pulling back troops, and other such issues. They also provide both leaderships with a much needed period of political calm.

The relatively speedy return to diplomacy by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reflects three important ingredients that are necessary for a negotiated permanent peace: decisive leadership, majority support among their publics, and weariness from war that sparks renewed interest in diplomatic alternatives. The fourth and vital element that is not yet on the table these days is a willingness to tackle the tough, core issues with a realistic sense of compromise and courage.

Abbas and Sharon are building diplomatic efforts on a foundation of widespread exhaustion and fear among their publics — not the most conducive building blocs for permanent peace. Yet when the tough decisions on Jerusalem, settlements and refugees have to be made some months down the road, it remains unclear if majorities among both publics will go along or whether Sharon and Abbas can heroically lead their people into new diplomatic territory where real sacrifices have to be made and long-held positions abandoned.

The immediate test of whether the feel-good atmospherics of the Sharm esh-Sheikh summit will move all sides towards a more promising negotiation for a permanent peace will probably be the fate of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem. Palestinian Cabinet members say privately that the most important test of Sharon’s seriousness to negotiate peace in the short term will be his ability to freeze all settlement activity, including expansion due to natural population growth. This is one of the requirements in the first phase of the ‘roadmap’ that was agreed by both sides in 2003, when George Bush personally came to the region and met with Sharon and Abbas – to no avail.

The Palestinians see Israeli settlement activity as a colonization process that is the most threatening aspect of Israel’s policies, for it literally takes away Palestinian land and the possibility of a viable independent Palestinian state. Israeli settlements are to the Palestinians like Palestinian armed attacks and terror bombings are to Israelis – an existential threat that shatters their fundamental ability to live normal lives in their own country. Just as Israelis have refused to move diplomatically until the Palestinian resistance groups stop their military and terror attacks, so will the Palestinians refuse to continue with this process if Israel persists in colonizing and stealing Palestinian lands. Returning to the situation on the ground of September 2000 – before Sharon visited the Haram esh-Sherif/Temple Mount compound in Israeli-occupied Arab East Jerusalem and sparked the Palestinian intifada – only returns us to the stalemated situation that generated the frustrations which spiraled into massive violence the last time around.

The short-term litmus tests of whether this month’s diplomacy can lead to something permanent will be the Palestinians ceasing all military attacks against Israelis and the Israelis ceasing all colonization and settlement activities in occupied Palestinian lands. If these tests are passed, then the real tests of a negotiated permanent peace accord will surface towards the end of this year. They will revolve primarily around how to resolve the Palestine refugees issue; other issues that will demand decisive decision-making include the status of Jerusalem, the extent of Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Palestinian lands, and the nature of any land swaps to be made to compensate for a less than full Israeli withdrawal.

The likelihood of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders reaching a stalemate again in 8-10 month’s time is high, which emphasizes the role of the third party mediator: the United States, whether we like it or not.

The renewed American involvement in this conflict in the past weeks is noteworthy, but it similarly repeats moves that Washington made in the past without ultimate success. We have seen other U.S. secretaries of state meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders, announce aid packages, appoint diplomatic envoys and coordinators, and invite the principals to meet the American president in the White House. These are useful moves, but relatively mild ones that signal diplomatic caution and indecisiveness rather than a firm willingness to play the mediator’s role of banging heads together or cajoling the necessary compromise agreements from teams of exhausted negotiators.
Rami G. Khouri is executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright @2005 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

—————-
Released: 10 February 2005
Word Count: 963 words
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

Two very different kinds of events took place in the Middle East last Sunday that neatly capture the riddle about how best to promote political change, democracy and the rule of law in this stubbornly autocratic region. The war-induced democratic elections in Iraq and a conference of Arab democracy activists in Beirut on judicial reforms speak volumes about whether Arab democracy will result more from external or internal pressures.

In Iraq, the American armed forces that toppled the former Baathist regime headed by Saddam Hussein culminated their nearly two years of military administration of the country by holding an election for a transitional national assembly that will write a permanent constitution. Washington and a few others have heralded war-borne democracy as a feasible approach, in the circumstances, to promoting freedom and good governance in the Middle East, despite the high cost of the American-led policy in Iraq: tens of thousands of dead and injured people on all sides, widespread diplomatic tensions, increased terrorism and violence, and reshuffled relationships and new worries throughout the region.

The worst-case scenario would see Iraq suffer years of political tension and violence, perhaps even civil war and a breakup of the country, and deeper ripples of anti-American-induced violence and terror all over the Middle East. In a best-case scenario, the costs of democracy-by-external-regime-change would prove to be short-term, leading soon to a stable, democratic governance system that would allow Iraq to flourish and also spread dramatic new ripples of democracy and freedom throughout the Middle East.

The obvious exuberance of most Iraqis who voted Sunday sent a clear message with several components: Iraqis want freedom and liberation from home-grown tyrants and foreign troops alike, they wish to choose their own rulers and governance system, they accept to achieve these goals in a phased, gradual manner, and they reject the violent campaign of terror against the nascent Iraqi security forces and foreign troops. They braved death to vote in order to start the transition from American to Iraqi sovereignty.

The really hard work will now begin, including achieving a realistic and sustainable power-sharing balance among the main political, religious and ethnic groups in the country. Only a credible, legitimate, and inclusive Iraqi government can restore security in a manner that the American army and the American-appointed Iraqi authorities have not been able to do since April 2003. One of the trickiest issues to sort out will be the long-term American relationship with Iraq, including the presence of U.S. troops in the country.

Meanwhile, in a hotel conference room in a Beirut suburb Sunday, some 40 lawyers, researchers, and civil society activists from half a dozen Arab countries opened a much less dramatic two-day workshop entitled “Legal professions and judicial reforms in the Arab world.” Unlike the Iraqi elections, the world’s media was not there, and politicians and leaders did not make grandiose statements about epics of freedom, divinely-mandated rights, and global historical change.

Yet, I sense that the long-term prospects for Arab democracy and the rule of law will result as much from the work of such gatherings of indigenous democrats and reformers as they will from cataclysmic regime changes and instant elections intermediated by foreign armies. In the final analysis, history suggests, stable democracy happens as a consequence of citizens who feel secure and self-confident because they enjoy the protection of the rule of law, which in turn is administered by an independent judiciary deriving its authority from the will of the citizenry. Elections express that will, but the rule of law protects it and ensures its perpetuity, as we just witnessed in the Ukraine.

The Beirut workshop, organized by the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies and held under the aegis of the World Bank-funded Mediterranean Development Forum, heard presentations on the status of the legal professions in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Bahrain, Algeria, and Egypt. The picture presented was not a pleasant one.

In all these and other Arab countries, the legal professions suffer deep structural problems, including various degrees of poorly trained lawyers, lack of research facilities, politicized lawyers’ associations, many corrupt and mediocre judges with insufficient staff aides, crowded courtrooms, outdated training curricula and systems, and, most problematically, judicial systems that are dominated and manipulated by executive branches of government. As one lawyer noted wryly, “the law in most Arab countries is a collection of the Sultan’s orders. The judiciary tends to legitimize the dictates of the ruler.”

Over and over, the participants returned to the central problem of autocratic political systems in which the law is subordinated to the power and whims of the ruling elite. The participants agreed, however, that technical legal system reforms — improving case management, training, pay, basic texts, automation, and personnel quality — could enhance the independence and impact of the judiciary, increase the impact of the rule of law, and ultimately spur reforms in other sectors of society.

So, do you send in the Marines or fortify your lawyers to promote democracy in the Middle East? The two events that I describe here suggest that external shock therapy can play a role in some cases — but that long-term, stable democracy requires the painstaking work of qualified experts, committed democrats, men and women of the law, and engaged, enlightened citizens who push, prod and challenge their ruling elites from within.
The Arabs who voted for their transitional parliament in Iraq and the Arabs who deliberated the rule of law in Beirut last Sunday both engaged in risky activities that sought to change history. They will both succeed if they work together, which is why the urgent next step throughout the Middle East — by locals and concerned foreign parties alike — must be the battle to make the law supreme.

Rami G. Khouri is executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright @2005 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

——————-
Released: 2 February 2005
Word count: 921
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606