BEIRUT — There are plenty of reasons to be hopeful and worried about
Sunday’s election for an interim parliament in Iraq.

First the bad news: This is an election of and by invisible ghosts, and
every possible result is riddled with problems. The election is badly
hampered from the start by its illegitimate lineage. It has been spawned by
an American-led military invasion, incubated in an American-led military
occupation and administration, designed by a mildly credible condominium of
Iraqi and U.N. officials working — literally and figuratively — under the
gun of the United States, and administered by an interim Iraqi
administration that has “made in Washington” stamped all over it.

Washington’s track record in Iraq is romantically naïve and frighteningly
amateurish. Most of the politically significant initiatives or decisions the
United States has taken since April 2003 to put Iraq on the road to
democracy have backfired, failed, been reversed or quietly dropped, or
achieved only minimal credibility and results.

So there are no certain, easy, or quick solutions to the post-election
dilemma the U.S. has created for itself in Iraq. If the U.S. military stays
too long, it generates greater political resentment and armed resistance, in
Iraq, the Middle East, and the world. If the U.S. army departs too soon, it
risks unleashing a civil war and possible partition of Iraq, which spells
trouble for the entire region. If Washington pulls off an orderly and clean
election, it will create a Shiite-dominated, Iran-friendly political system
that frightens many Sunni-run or secular Arab neighbors (as Jordan’s
America-friendly King Abdullah II has already said publicly). Some in this
region also worry about post-election tensions between Iraqis and Iranians,
given the historical sensitivities between Persian and Arab Shiites.

It is also bad news that this is the world’s first election conducted by
ghosts and invisible people. Most candidates and potential voters do not
make themselves clearly known in public, for fear of being killed; and the
leader who will dominate Iraq’s political and religious/moral life,
Ayatollah Sistani, is rarely if ever seen in public. In its commendable zeal
to bring democracy to the Arabs, the United States is giving us the world’s
first virtual vote — an election of and by people who exist but mostly
cannot be touched or seen. Not a great start to bringing the values of the
Potomac to the Tigris. As Condoleezza Rice acknowledged, nobody said this
was going to be easy. But nobody said either that the symbol of Iraqi
democracy would be Casper the Friendly Ghost.

But there is good news also: this election is potentially the most
significant step to date on the road back to liberation, sovereignty and
normalcy for Iraqis. Even if some things go wrong Sunday, this could be the
crucial step — the tipping point, in currently chic political-speak —
where Iraq starts moving towards credible, normal statehood.

Two keys can help us accurately assess the significance of the Sunday vote.
The first is to recognize that this is just one step on a long road of
transformation for Iraq, the U.S. and the Middle East, not a defining,
all-or-nothing event. In other words, relax. Life will go on Monday morning,
with the same basic challenges facing Iraq and the U.S. Someone should tell
the American generals in Iraq that the American football Super Bowl is next
weekend in Florida, not this weekend in Iraq.

The second is to focus on how the election impacts on a series of core
political principles, rather than to get hopelessly sidetracked and lost in
the American tendency to count things, like the number of attacks, voters,
arrests, raids, schools repainted, and troops trained (though the
tabulation-happy United States peculiarly does not count the tens of
thousands of Iraqis who have died and been injured since the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq). The following key political principles will determine if
the election is another American-engineered farce, or a meaningful stage in
building a new, democratic governance system in Iraq:

1. Will it result in a legitimate, indigenously-chosen Iraqi government, as
opposed to the non-credible, foreign-appointed interim authorities since
April 2003? If most Iraqis see the elected parliament and the new cabinet as
legitimate governing authorities, this would finally spur faster economic
development and more effective security forces that can slowly restore a
sense of safety and normalcy to everyday life.

2. Will the newly elected parliament promulgate a credible constitutional
power-sharing formula for national governance that is agreed by all major
segments of the citizenry? Compromise transitional governance formulas
cobbled together to date have consistently left one or more of the major
demographic groups in Iraq quietly grumbling with worried dissatisfaction,
formally demanding veto authority, threatening to abstain or secede, or even
directly challenging the American occupation authority.

3. Will the election provide Iraqis with sufficient political legitimacy and
security for them to work with the U.S. on a clear, realistic schedule for
the departure of American troops (sorry, the other foreign troops are
meaningless decoration)? As long as American troops stay in Iraq, the
governing authority in Baghdad will always be seen as a puppet that is
installed, protected and manipulated by Washington.

It will be clear soon after the election if most Iraqis view the new
parliament and government as legitimate, according to the key criteria of
liberating the country from foreign military management and forging a
sensible power-sharing governance system that responds to all Iraqis’
aspirations and identities.

The likelihood is that some, but not all, elements of this best scenario
will happen, making this election an incremental but crucial step forward in
a slow transition to an Iraq that is peaceful, democratic and — most
importantly — liberated and sovereign.

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

Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 26 January 2005
Word Count: 965
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President George W. Bush’s inauguration speech Thursday left most people in
the Middle East unimpressed and unmoved, and more concerned than ever about
U.S. foreign policy directions. The prevalent reaction in this region was
that he has merely raised the level of American double standards in the
world to a new level of incredulity, given the massive gap between America’s
rhetorical commitment to democracy and freedom and the reality of its often
whimsical foreign policy priorities. Five specific problems in Bush’s speech
stand out starkly in the eyes of observers in the Middle East.

The first is that Bush’s ringing endorsement of freedom and liberty – he
mentioned the words 42 times in his speech – do not necessarily match the
priorities of most people in the developing world, where national
liberation, development, dignity, justice, and meeting basic human needs
tend to be much more urgent and common demands. Bush accurately echoed the
powerful appeal and hallowed place of liberty in America’s history and
values, but clearly he does not grasp the nuanced order of multiple
priorities that define the lives of individuals and entire societies in
other lands.

Once again, he reflected the neoconservative tendency to allow peculiarly
American emotionalism and triumphalism to prevail over the more sober
dictates of global realism. Linked to this is the fact that most people in
the Middle East – and probably the rest of the globe – reject the idea that
the United States is either divinely mandated or formally certified by any
global authority to promote freedom or any other value around the world. The
world sees Americans’ own sense of the universal power of their fine
national ideals as both presumptuous bombast and unacceptably predatory
aggression.

Second, most Middle Easterners feel that the United States’ rhetorical
commitment to freedom and democracy is sharply contradicted by the United
States’ enduring support for autocrats and dictators. This was not just a
Cold War problem, for even since the fall of Communism a decade and a half
ago the U.S. has continued to support undemocratic thugs, authoritarian
strongmen, and benevolent autocrats, in countries like Egypt, Uzbekistan,
Tunisia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and numerous others.

The third prevalent criticism of Bush’s cry for freedom worldwide will focus
on American policy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Strong American
support for Israel and for many of its policies in occupying and colonizing
Palestinian lands will be seen in the Arab world as a practical commitment
to the subjugation of the Palestinians, not their liberty. This flagrant gap
between an American rhetoric of liberty and a long-standing policy
commitment to Israel that perpetuates Palestinian occupation will continue
to be the single biggest reason for deep Arab skepticism of American
promises or rhetoric.

The fourth reason for widespread doubt about Bush’s pledges concerns his
suspect motives. Arabs and Muslims widely already reject Bush’s simplistic
analysis that ‘resentment and tyranny’ in the Arab-Asian region are the
causes of the terror that assaulted the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, and that the
perpetrators were motivated by hatred for American notions of freedom.
American policies ‘to promote freedom and democracy’ in the Middle East are
not seen as mainly designed altruistically to help the recipient people, but
rather are seen as self-serving instruments of America’s own defense. When
the U.S. government acts to protect its own people and national interests,
carrying out its legitimate right and duty, but does so under the rhetorical
screen of calling for freedom and democracy for others, those others remain
highly dubious because they do not believe that Washington is acting out of
sincerity and solidarity.

The fifth concern about Bush’s second inaugural speech reflects a fear that
Washington will now pursue more regime changes in lands beyond Afghanistan
and Iraq – both of which are deeply troubled and unstable since the
American-led wars in those places. Iran, Syria, and others will be concerned
that Washington will use its diplomatic, economic and military assets to
pressure them and perhaps change their regimes and governance systems.
Pre-emptive warfare has become official policy for Washington in the past
three years, and Bush’s speech Thursday frightens many in the world that we
will see much more of this strategy in the years to come.

These five basic concerns will be widely echoed around the Middle East and
other parts of the world in the days to come – not because people dislike
Bush’s rhetoric, but rather because they have mainly felt the negative,
often destructive, consequences of American foreign policy in recent years.
Instead of flamboyantly, almost childishly, summoning divine inspiration for
an American global ‘calling’, as Bush did in his speech, the United States
would do better to craft practical foreign policies that are consistent,
undiscriminating, and based on working with like-minded partners around the
world.

Middle Easterners and people around the world would jump over each other to
work with the U.S. to promote freedom and democracy, but only if
Washington’s policies sought such goals consistently, in all lands, for all
peoples, without whimsy or exceptions. The United States should not merely
affirm that freedom is indivisible; it should implement a foreign policy
that gives life to that belief. In recent years, Washington has been too
willing to support dictators and occupying powers for its sudden calls for
freedom everywhere to be taken seriously. That is why Bush will hear a great
deal of skepticism from around the Middle East, and other parts of the
world, in the next few days. The gap between the rhetoric and the policy is
simply too wide, and has been for many, many years.

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

Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 21 January 2005
Word Count: 925
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Intriguing signs from several Arab countries suggest that citizens and political activists alike may have started to breach the last ‘red line’ of modern Arab governance  — the control of political and economic systems by local security and military institutions. If, indeed, the military’s dominance of Arab societies is gradually to be assessed, challenged and reduced, this might open the way one day to bringing Arab security institutions under civilian oversight and control, through elected parliaments and independent judiciaries.

Late last year, disgruntled young Palestinian militants attacked police posts and briefly kidnapped a security official who was loyal to the late Yasser Arafat. In Lebanon, the opposition to Syrian dominance of the domestic political scene, and the Syrian-engineered three-year extension of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud’s term, has sparked a series of explicit, public criticisms of Syrian intelligence services’ involvement in Lebanese domestic affairs. The latest occurred Monday, when former Prime Minister Salim Hoss called on Syrian and Lebanese security services to stop interfering in Lebanon’s public and political life.

In Cairo last month, a small demonstration of around 1,000 people publicly called on President Hosni Mubarak not to run for a fifth term, and asked that a genuine presidential election take place this year rather than the norm of a nearly farcical referendum on the single candidate nominated by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). The demonstration reflects a deeper challenge to the prevailing control of the Egyptian political system by the combination of the armed forces and the NDP.

In Jordan last week, an unprecedented one-day workshop took place at the University of Jordan on ‘security sector reform and challenges to institution building’. It was co-sponsored by the university’s Center for Strategic Studies and the Geneva-based Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), and brought together security sector officers, government officials, researchers and activists.

The potential significance of these developments is enormous: it is slowly becoming acceptable to discuss the role of security and defense agencies in Arab public life. This primarily comprises the armed forces, police, and assorted intelligence agencies, but also, in some countries, official and private militias. This is the last taboo in the Arab world in terms of what is acceptable for public discussion. Ten and twenty years ago, in Arab public life, the media, educational institutions and civil society it was impossible to discuss sensitive issues such as religion, sex and gender, domestic violence, the legitimacy of ruling regimes and elites, demands for democracy, the use of drugs among youth, the security sector, and perhaps a few others. All of these matters are now routinely discussed in public – all that remains is the last taboo: security and defense establishments, and their appropriate role in governance and public life.

Others around the world have raised this issue for some time. Just a few months ago the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. published a fine analysis paper entitled ‘The Unspoken Power: civil-military relations and the prospects for reform’, written by Steven A. Cook, now a Next Generation Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The Brookings Institution noted that ‘until an understanding is made of the central role of militaries and a proper response built, the talk of reform and democratization will remain pure rhetoric.’  The report notes correctly that military institutions and officers were once appropriate organizations for state-building and even progressive forces of modernization and development, but military sectors have now become ‘conservative elements clinging to the authoritarian status quo’ and seeking ‘to preserve political orders that are increasingly illegitimate.’

It is noteworthy that exactly the same thing is being said by Arabs throughout this region. At the Amman meeting on security sector reform, a former prime minister noted correctly that Jordanians trust their security services for preserving national well-being in a volatile region, but also said that the Arab world had to put behind it the days when the second man in every regime was the security director.

A former university president said that if the country was serious about security sector reform, it ‘would have to accept that security services must stop interfering in the political life of the country, and also that the security sector would ultimately have to come under civilian control.’

One retired major-general in the armed forces said that life can be ‘comfortable and lucrative’ for senior officers in Arab defense and security establishments, and that neither sticks nor carrots had been offered sufficiently to bring about real reform in this sector anywhere in the Middle East. ‘Democratic governance of the security sector is a prerequisite if reform is to happen,’ he concluded.

None of these people would have said such things in public a few years ago, but today they do so almost routinely. The last taboo is crumbling before our eyes.

Legitimizing public discussion of the role of security and defense institutions in the Arab world ultimately could help those security sectors by making their relations with citizens clearer and mutually constructive, instead of being shrouded in secrecy, as is generally the case now.

The DCAF, which started work in the year 2000 in former Communist states that were transitioning to democracy, has now begun exploring projects with Arab, Turkish and other partners in the Middle East. They see the Jordan workshop as the first in a series of endeavors with colleagues in the Middle East who also want to make certain that armed forces and security institutions are characterized by a combination of efficiency, public support, accountability, and non-interference in non-security sectors, such as the mass media, education, the economy or appointments to the bureaucracy.

We may be witnessing the start of that process these days. If so, it should be encouraged and nurtured with great care and responsibility, but also with urgency.

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

@2005 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 20 January 2005
Word count: 975
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Unlike the prevalent spin in much of the global media, the victory by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in the Palestinian presidential election Sunday, is not really about a new opportunity for peace. It is, above all, a testament to the extraordinary human resilience, political determination, and moral clarity and depth of the Palestinian people. It is about Palestinian perseverance to confront the pain and suffering of modern history with a show of human dignity, a determination to affirm life’s bountiful promise of the ordinary pleasures of living a normal life.

The Palestinian people have just done something very striking that needs to be acknowledged and applauded. Despite years and decades of being occupied, exiled, ostracized, subjugated, disenfranchised, curfewed, penned in and surrounded by a wall like animals, attacked by jet fighters, imprisoned, unable to work or study normally, assassinated by Israeli snipers and rockets, restricted in their travel and movements within their own country, discriminated against by Israel and also in most Arab countries, expelled from their own and other communities and countries, and having their lands confiscated and their orchards destroyed, after all this and more the Palestinian people have just held what is universally acknowledged to be the most free and fair — and genuine — democratic election in the modern Arab world.

This should be the starting point for any wider analysis of where we go from here. For the election that was just held under the gaze of some 25,000 election monitors from Palestine and other countries must be appreciated as the positive flip side of those more controversial, problematic or unacceptable actions by some Palestinians against Israelis in recent years, including suicide bombings or rocket attacks against Israeli targets. The overwhelming Palestinian desire to live a normal life — unoccupied, unexpelled, unimprisoned, unkilled — was manifested in the election process, just as it has been manifested in the two intifadas of the past 16 years.

Democracy is perhaps the highest form of resistance, and democracy happened in Palestine Sunday effortlessly and indigenously. Credit goes to all the Palestinian people who engaged in this exercise, but especially to the candidates themselves, the electoral commission headed by Dr Hanna Nasir, and the many monitors and campaign workers who managed to carry off the feat under very difficult circumstances of Israel’s occupation and travel restrictions. This should totally silence the simplistic, even idiotic, claims by many in the West and Israel, including the highest American, British and Israeli leaders, that Palestinian “reform” is needed before negotiations for peace can resume between Israelis and Palestinians.

Palestinian society certainly needs improved practices in some political, economic and security sectors, but these are not the issues that have held up an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. The problem is not a “democracy deficit” among the Palestinians, for the world just witnessed the Palestinians holding a veritable democracy jamboree — organized on their own, within just weeks, managed smoothly, and even with the results of exit polls released by a Palestinian university within hours of the polls closing. This is not a people with a problem of political reform. This is a people with a problem of being occupied by Israel for 37 years (since the 1967 war) and denied national rights for 56 years (since the 1948 war in which Israel was created).

Ironically, Palestinian and Israeli societies can now engage each other as certifiably democratic cultures with equal legitimacy. Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon represent the wishes and concerns of their people. If they are true leaders they will now try to mobilize their societies to engage at a deeper and more productive level than as combatants on a perpetual field of battle. The Palestinian presidential election — and all that it represents in Palestinian aspirations, values and capabilities — provides a starting point for these two societies to re-engage each other in the diplomatic arena, but only a starting point. The Palestinians have accepted and passed with flying colors the false test that the world handed them: to prove that they are democrats whose values provide them entry into the modern world. Mission accomplished.

The onus is now on Israel to reciprocate, and to show that it, too, adheres to global standards of morality, legality and decency when it comes to coexistence with the Palestinians. The Palestinians have voted overwhelmingly for Abu Mazen, who advocates non-militarized resistance to Israel and resuming the peace process. It is the Israeli people’s turn to make a return gesture and show that they, too, want their deep humanity and rich moral values translated into national policy, as the Palestinians have just done. The Israeli people and government must rise to the challenge now and indicate quickly that they are serious about negotiating in good faith to end their occupation of the Palestinians and to resolve the Palestine refugee issue according to international legality and legitimacy, in a manner that allows both Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Arab states to live side by side, with integrity, security, sovereignty, and dignity.

Abu Mazen’s election as president of the Palestinian Authority is mainly about Palestinian values, aspirations, and capabilities. The world — especially the Palestinians — now awaits a reciprocal expression of Israeli values. Will Israel respond with more colonialism, settlements expansion, land expropriations, assassinations of young Palestinians resisting occupation, and bombings of urban quarters? Or will Israel finally grasp the historical futility of such sustained and violent militarism, and instead — as the Palestinians just did — send us its many fine democrats and humanists?

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
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Released: 12 January 2005
Word Count: 916 words
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For all those activists and reformers in the Arab world who have worked for years to promote democracy, civil society and political freedoms throughout the Middle East, this may be the moment to act decisively to promote their goals in a practical manner. The opportunity at hand arises from the behind-the-scenes dispute between the United States government and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), who are locked in a delicate diplomatic tango over the contents of the UNDP’s third annual Arab Human Development Report (AHDR).

The U.S. State Department has made it clear to UNDP that American funding will drop precipitously if the report in its present form is published. Washington last year cut its funding to UNDP by $12 million (down to $89 million) to signal its annoyance with the AHDR pointing out the obvious reality that Arab extremism and anti-Americanism often are a consequence of American, Israeli, and Arab government policies in the region. The counter message from the U.S. government is that no criticism of American or Israeli policies is acceptable these days. Washington wants the whole world to call Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a “man of peace,” and the Anglo-American war and occupation in Iraq an act of liberation to promote Arab democracy.

The irony is that this third AHDR, which is now ready for printing but is still being held up by UNDP until the diplomatic controversy is resolved, focuses on political freedoms in the Arab world — an issue that the U.S. government has pushed in the past three years with exuberance and militarism that have sometimes verged on hysteria. The report, which is written by respected Arab scholars and activists, represents precisely what the U.S. wants to see happening in this region — free-thinking Arabs analyzing their societies and proposing means to make them more free, democratic, pluralistic, accountable, transparent and happy all over. For the U.S. government to speak of promoting Arab liberty, on the one hand, while using financial blackmail, on the other hand, to squash this exercise of free-thinking Arab activism is a sign of precisely Washington’s double standards, presumptuous arrogance, and pro-Israeli bias that cause so many people in the Middle East — and the rest of the world — to criticize the U.S. these days.

So what does the Arab world do in the face of this difficult situation? The urgent aim must be two-fold: The Arab world itself must move quickly to prevent damage to UNDP’s credibility and programs because of its courage in publishing the first two AHDRs, and, the Arab world must find a way to continue this series of useful reports and make them more effective as instruments of Arab modernization, reform, and democratization. For in the final analysis, these reports are not about the U.S. or UNDP. They are about us, the people, societies, identities, and power flows in the Arab world.

If UNDP publishes the third Arab Human Development Report in its present form, it suffers severe financial cuts by the U.S. and hinders its ability to operate worldwide; if it shelves the report, its integrity and credibility drop, as the world would view it as a passive instrument of American foreign policy. The solution must be to publish the existing report outside the realm of UNDP, to spare the UN Washington’s destructive and intemperate wrath.

The most sensible option to do this would be to establish a new, independent, pan-Arab think tank — an Arab Human Development Center — in the Middle East that would publish this report and subsequent ones every year. The talent and policy-making direction for such a center would come from the group of respected Arab individuals who have written the first three AHDRs.

The key element is funding for the new center, and this is where Arab activists and democrats must step forward quickly and decisively. It takes only about one million dollars a year to produce and publish each report. Activist, reform-minded, democratic and wealthy Arab businessmen and women should get on the phones with one another in the coming week, round up $5 million to fund a new Arab Human Development Center for its initial three years or so, publish the third AHDR on time in January 2005, and announce the next three reports that will come out in subsequent years. The fourth report is scheduled to focus on women and the gender deficit in the region (I would suggest that the fifth and sixth reports focus on youth, and civilian control of the military-security systems in the area).

An indigenous research center publishing the AHDR annually should also initiate other activities to promote pan-Arab reform, including publishing annual surveys of political, press, and personal freedoms, annual reviews of Arab military vs. human development spending, educational quality, gender- and youth-related rights, and other elements of modernity and sustainable national development. Civil society and, in some cases, possibly some government institutions, might join forces to monitor trends in these key areas, diagnose persistent problems and constraints, propose reform policies, and generate the coalitions in society needed to implement such policies.

Arab private businesses and individual investors have earned tens of billions of dollars in profits in recent decades and it is time for them to repay their societies by funding an independent research institution for pan-Arab human development. All those reform-minded Arab businessmen and women who have spoken out so eloquently at reform-focused gatherings in Dubai, Sanaa, Alexandria, Doha, Beirut and Amman must now step forward and take this process to the next critical level: establishing an independent, indigenous Arab human development research center that would provide quality research as well as play a critical advocacy and monitoring role in Arab societies. It is time for Arabs to protect the Arab human development reports, and to bring them home.

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

Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 22 December 2004
Word Count: 984 words
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DUBAI: The debate on the need to reform and modernize the political, economic and social systems of the Arab world has become something of a new growth sector. It includes regular meetings and conferences, occasional declarations, intermittent new initiatives, and a regular flow of threats and pleas from usually sincere friends abroad. The talk of reforming Arab governance and economic systems is always fascinating and informative, but the corresponding action on the ground is also always very limited.

Two events in very different parts of the Arab world this week offer a fascinating glimpse into the underlying dynamics of this matter, and should be pondered seriously by those who follow the Arab reform debate. One event took place in Cairo Sunday, where around 1000 demonstrators gathered in the Egyptian capital to peacefully protest President Hosni Mubarak’s plans to run for a fifth consecutive term as president. He has been in power for nearly 24 years in a closed political system dominated by the National Democratic Party to the effective exclusion of any other voice in governance beyond symbolic representation in a feeble parliament.

The demonstrators from Islamist, liberal and nationalist parties held up banners that read, “Enough. No more extensions, no hereditary succession,” expressing opposition to the likely possibility of Mubarak’s son Gamal taking over as president after him. The demonstration was significant because it was the first time that Egyptians explicitly opposed the president in public in this manner, and we are likely to see more of this in the coming months. In the Arab world, where governance authority is closely protected and preserved over decades and generations by efficient patronage and security systems, it is rare to see such explicit and personal political opposition to incumbent leaders.

The protest in Egypt is a powerful symbol of how ordinary people and political activists have become so fed up with their perpetual rulers that they have taken to the streets — even in small, symbolic numbers — to express their sentiments. This demonstration is fascinating and significant because it represents one of the few examples of ordinary Arabs demanding reform in a key category of their political life: term limits on executive leaderships.

This sort of behavior in Egypt may well spread to other Arab lands, and if so it could represent an important new turn in modern Arab politics. Most talk of reform in the Arab world has come from three sources that have been unable to move beyond the realm of talk: civil society and political activists, government officials and leaders, and foreign powers. For citizens to take to the street to express their demands for political reform is a novel political development that should be watched closely.

The second fascinating political development in the expanding Arab reform industry this week was the blunt statement by the UAE Defense Minister and Dubai Crown Prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who hosts a three-day gathering in Dubai called the Arab Strategy Forum. In his comments opening the meeting Monday, he spoke directly to his “fellow Arab leaders,” and warned them that if they did not change, they would be changed. He said, “If you do not initiate radical reforms that restore respect for public duty and uphold principles of transparency, justice and accountability, then your people will resent you and history will judge you harshly.”

The very explicit warning was that lousy leaders would be changed, presumably by their own people, but, in view of recent American military moves in Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps also by well-armed, interventionist foreign powers.

This week represents an intriguing milestone of sorts in the very slow process of promoting or achieving Arab reform. Within less than 24 hours, we have witnessed in the oldest and newest parts of the Arab world — Cairo and Dubai — two very different signs of the urgent need for change. These expressions of discontent are signs of pressure building on established leaderships. They are especially noteworthy because they emanate simultaneously from the bottom and the top of Arab political culture — from the streets of Cairo and the ruling emiri palaces of the Gulf.

Dubai and its leadership offer the counterpoint to Cairo and its ancient political managers, custodians of an ancient historical legacy along the banks of the Nile that resists modernization and power-sharing. Dubai and the UAE have not undergone a formal political or economic reform process as such, because they are new entities, achieving independent statehood just a decade before Hosni Mubarak took office as president. They have built a modern economy from scratch, aided by considerable oil income, but in the past decade fuelled more by their human assets and business and marketing creativity.

Dubai and the UAE offer a new model of Arab development, in which the public and private sectors work closely together to promote national development and provide their citizens with opportunities for personal growth and economic wellbeing. These are apolitical societies, though, focusing on promoting business development and meeting the basic needs of their citizens, with no formal, public political dynamics that examine, for example, foreign policy, security, or budgetary decision-making in any appreciable manner. To date, the citizens of the UAE have accepted and appreciated this model of nation-building, and their country is a magnet that attracts workers, entrepreneurs, and investments from many Arab and foreign quarters.
It is a good sign that the Dubai leadership here would now speak out in such forceful and explicitly political terms about the lack of accountability among Arab leaders, at the same time that some Egyptians are saying the same things through peaceful street demonstrations. It is not clear where these twin dynamics may lead, but they are certainly worth watching in the months ahead.
Rami G. Khouri is executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 14 December 2004
Word Count: 954 words
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Déjà vu experiences aside, this past week has been almost surrealistic in its juxtaposition between current overdrive efforts to revive the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations and the similar but failed effort four years ago. The parallels between the situation now and in 2000 are multiple and striking. The two most important parallels are the new options provided by a change in leadership (in 2000 it was Ehud Barak replacing Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister; today is it Mahmoud Abbas replacing Yasser Arafat as Palestinian leader), and the multi-sectoral exploration of peace prospects on the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian fronts.

Barak in Israel, Bill Clinton in the United States, Yasser Arafat in Palestine, and Hafez Assad in Syria were the key players in 2000. Today we have George Bush in Washington, Ariel Sharon in Israel, Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine and Bashar Assad in Syria. Despite different respective motivations and constraints than in 2000, the pitfalls that could scuttle this peace-making effort are virtually identical to those of four years ago, and must be avoided.

Every important and interested party is involved today in intense diplomatic efforts to resume negotiations for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement, including Israel, the Palestinians, Syria, the U.S., the Europeans, Russia, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and the UN. We have not seen this level of diplomatic intensity and urgency in years. The process should not be left to the vagaries and vulnerabilities of crude domestic politics or incompetent leaderships in any of the principal parties, as happened in 2000. The added impetus for success today is the positive impact that Arab-Israeli peace would have on the situation in Iraq and wider relations between the U.S. and the Arab world.

An important recent book has been published in the United States that provides timely reading on this matter, and its lessons should be heeded. The book is a detailed narrative of the diplomatic efforts in 1999-2000 to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict on the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian tracks. Written by Clayton E. Swisher, and entitled The Truth about Camp David: the untold story about the collapse of the Middle East peace process, it provides important insights into why peace-making failed on both the Syrian-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli fronts, even with the active, sustained personal involvement of the American president and the leaders of Syria, Israel and Palestine.

The American-Israeli-engineered spin since those days has been that the Palestinians and Syrians were not prepared to make the tough decisions needed for peace. Subsequent research in this book, and other accounts by the direct participants, has provided a more thorough historical narrative, which more accurately spreads the blame for failure among the Arab, Israeli and American parties.

One thing is compellingly clear, though, and relevant for today’s revived diplomacy: if regional peace-making is umbilically-tied to domestic political constraints in any one country, the whole effort will fail. This is a central reason why the 2000 diplomacy collapsed on both the Syrian and Palestinian fronts. Instead of preparing their public opinions for the tough mutual concessions needed to cement a permanent peace accord, Israeli and Palestinian leaders acted like vulnerable politicians who allowed public opinion to define their negotiating parameters.

Ehud Barak was unwilling to meet Syrian and Palestinian demands (and international legal obligations) on key issues such as territorial withdrawal because he was afraid that he would lose his parliamentary coalition. Arafat and the Palestinian leadership similarly failed to consult with the Palestinian people on the central issue of how to resolve the refugee issue fairly and on the basis of UN resolutions. The result was a heroic diplomatic effort that failed, because it was ultimately powered by the vulnerabilities and frailties of politicians, and the fears of their people, rather than the courageous leadership of historic statesmen.

The implications of the 2000 experience for today’s peace-making efforts seem clear. Israeli leaders must not negotiate with the Arab parties primarily on the basis of imperfect deals that would keep a strained domestic Israeli political coalition in power, especially a coalition in which extremist political parties hopelessly entangle domestic religious and fiscal demands with the wider issues of Israeli peace-making with the Arabs. Neither should the Israelis negotiate with their eye mainly on the minority settler fringe in Israel. Sharon or any other Israeli leader should instead mobilize that clear, solid majority of Israelis who are prepared to give up the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in return for a genuine, lasting peace accord.

The Palestinian leadership for its part should avoid the mistakes of 2000, by doing three principal things. It should coordinate much more closely with other Arab parties so as not to allow Israel or the U.S. to play Arabs off against one another. It should mobilize that clear majority of Palestinians who are prepared for an honorable, negotiated, fair peace accord, rather than let itself be constrained by the demands of hard-line minority parties. And it should vigorously consult the Palestinian refugee community in order to define a clear Palestinian national consensus on what defines an honorable and acceptable resolution of the refugee issue within the context of a permanent peace accord with Israel.

This important new round of Arab-Israeli diplomacy is full of hope, but it is not unprecedented. We’ve been here before, but we failed, and resumed savage warfare. So the first thing we should do now is to look back and acknowledge why we collectively failed, then send home the politicians and summon the statesmen to do their historic and honorable deed.

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

Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 01 December 2004
Word Count: 914 words
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A new diplomatic season in the Middle East has begun, with a flurry of activity in the region and in the United States in the wake of the reelection of President Bush and the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Skeptics and optimists both have weighed in quickly on the prospects for a new diplomatic dynamic that could revive Palestinian-Israeli, and then wider Arab-Israeli, peace negotiations.

The evidence to date suggests that the three principal parties — Palestinians, Israelis, Americans — recognize the urgency of seeking a negotiated Arab-Israeli peace, and the opportunity that now presents itself to move in that direction. It remains unclear if they have the political will required to achieve this goal. Initial signs are encouraging on all sides.

The American leadership has quickly stated its determination to make Arab-Israeli peace-making a priority for this second Bush administration, and Colin Powell has personally engaged the parties this week. This is good news if it’s serious; but skepticism is in order because previous Bush administration pledges to work for peace in the Middle East have quickly dropped by the wayside. Washington is also hampered by President Bush’s clear tilt towards the positions of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on such key issues as Jewish settlement expansion and retention, and the rights of Palestinian refugees in a permanent peace settlement.

The Palestinian transitional leaders have moved quickly to assert order within Palestine and to affirm the supremacy of state security institutions, but they are severely hampered in this by two factors: Israel has destroyed much of the security structure and even the political legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and it is impossible to expect Palestinian militants to act moderately when the Israeli government is on a rampage of assassinations, settlement expansions, land expropriations, collective punishments of entire Palestinian communities, and continued building of the apartheid-era separation wall.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian leadership has quickly expressed its intention to work for a resumption of peace talks with Israel. It has engaged all Palestinian factions in discussions on promoting internal political developments as well as resuming peace talks with Israel, focusing on holding the election in January to choose a replacement for Yasser Arafat as PA president.

Israel for its part has also shown some constructive signs of wanting to shift from war to peace, even grasping the importance of being realistic in its demands of the Palestinians and not expecting the occupied Palestinians to make all the initial moves needed to resume peace talks. The Sharon government says it is willing to work with the Palestinians to allow the January election to take place, has resumed some security cooperation to that end, and will allow Palestinians in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem to take part on the vote, as happened in the 1996 election.

This new round of diplomacy is not taking place in a vacuum, though, for we have considerable peace-making experience from recent years to draw on. The first point to keep in mind is that personality matters less than policy. The new Palestinian leadership and the appointments of Condoleezza Rice as U.S. Secretary of State and Stephen Hadley as U.S. National Security Adviser will only reflect the broader policy directions and constraints that already define their respective societies. If a majority of Palestinians, for example, feels the need to make more flexible compromises or to adopt tougher policies towards Israel, the new leadership will have to respond to those defining political realities. Established old guard Palestinian leaders like Mahmoud Abbas, Ahmed Qorei and Farouk Qaddoumi, who now dominate the transitional leadership, are not about to reverse half a century of Palestinian national policy positions.

A second important point is the imperative of constructive moves by both sides simultaneously. The experience of the past 11 years since the Oslo accords were signed in September 1993 confirms that Palestinians and Israelis will protect and promote negotiated peace-making, and shun warfare, if the peaceful path delivers meaningful results to both sides. This happened in 1994-1996, when Israeli started withdrawing from occupied Palestinian lands and the Palestinian Authority was established. The process gradually collapsed in subsequent years, due to legitimate concerns on both sides: Palestinians were angered by the continued expansion of Israeli settlements and the constraints that Israel wanted to place on ultimate Palestinian statehood, while Israelis were shocked by Palestinian bombings of civilian targets inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

A third lesson is that all sides must move together in pushing a realistic diplomatic process with tangible benchmarks and results, both in negotiating agreements and then monitoring their implementation. While the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are the principal parties and the Americans are the main mediators, important roles must be carved out quickly for the Europeans, Arabs, Russians, the UN and others if the resumed diplomatic approach is to succeed this time. Monitoring the timely and full implementation of agreements reached is vital for the success of a negotiated peace process or accords. Third parties other than Israelis, Palestinians and Americans should play clearly defined roles in this respect.

A fourth relevant issue is the credibility of the external mediator, in this case the United States. Washington’s obvious partiality to Israel did not in itself, or directly, stop the negotiations in the past. But it allowed Israel to maintain unrealistic negotiating positions — on settlements, refugees and Jerusalem, for example — which ultimately led the negotiations to a dead end. The U.S. as mediator must stop siding with Israel, and instead firmly stand on the internationally recognized legal and moral consensus for a permanent Arab-Israeli peace; this consensus includes most importantly the non-acquisition of territory by force, and a just and negotiated resolution of the refugees’ status.

We face a real opportunity today to move beyond the warfare that has long plagued Palestinians, Israelis and others in the Middle East, and the recent past provides critically important lessons that can help us succeed where we failed in the past.

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

Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 24 November 2004
Word Count: 984 words
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Yasser Arafat’s deteriorating medical condition has sparked much speculation about whether the next Palestinian leadership would initiate new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. This terrain is filled with unknown variables and unpredictable actors in half a dozen countries, so speculation is precisely what we engage in when discussing this matter. To move from speculation to more useful analysis and realistic expectation, we must make a sharp distinction between personality and politics.

To anticipate how the Palestinian leadership will behave after Arafat, one should grasp the realities that defined the long Arafat era itself.

Palestinian national policy and the tactics of any specific leadership both ultimately reflect the consensus of Palestinian public opinion — one of the great virtues of the democratic accountability that re-elected President George Bush says he wants to promote throughout the Arab World. Yasser Arafat sat at the top of Palestinian national politics for nearly 40 years because of three critical factors: substance, strategy, and style.

The substance of his success was that he tirelessly reflected the identity, grievances, aspirations and rights of the average Palestinian man and woman in exile or under Israeli occupation, whether in refugee camps, Arab urban areas, or in foreign countries.

The strategy that allowed him to persist for so many years reflected his willingness to concede, retreat and regroup when necessary. But always he moved forward incrementally towards the goal of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip living alongside Israel, and including a just resolution of the refugees’ status and claims.

The style that kept him so popular — and legitimate — among his people was his consistent ability to simultaneously defy and embrace those protagonists that mattered for his people’s cause, namely Israel, the United States, and the Arab countries.

The critical common element among these dimensions of Arafat’s life was not his personality, but his politics. He endured, and survived many obvious mistakes, for one consistent reason: at the end of every day he articulated, worked for, and sometimes fought for the legitimate aspirations of millions of Palestinian men and women. He not only symbolized the sentiments of Palestinians who were unjustly treated by modern history and have steadfastly refused to roll over, disappear, or die; he transformed their human grievances and aspirations into a tangible political force that engaged the region and the world. He was legitimate because his policies were anchored in the broad consensus of his refugee constituency.

No single person among the varied current crop of Palestinian national politicians, local leaders, civil society activists, and strongmen has the credibility or capability to assume Arafat’s several political positions: elected president of the Palestinian Authority, the chairman of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the founder and head of the main Palestinian political group Fateh. (Fateh — or FTH — is the reverse order of the Arabic acronym for haraket tahrir filisteen, or the “Palestine Liberation Movement”).

In the days ahead, Palestinian affairs are likely to be governed by a coalition of the main nationalist, Islamist and democratic renewal groups who will come together in a sort of government of national unity. Intense Arab and international pressure will be brought to bear on Palestinian and Israeli leaders to remain low key, and to use the opportunity of the transfer of power to a post-Arafat leadership to re-launch serious peace negotiations.

The new leaders, most of whom will be old, established Palestinian leaders like Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qorei, will quickly run into the same dilemma that Arafat juggled all his life: how can you remain faithful to, and credible with, your own people, while simultaneously advancing their cause and negotiating politically with Israel, the U.S. and the Arab states?

Palestinian leaders who give away too much to Israel and the U.S., without securing meaningful concessions and rights in return, will quickly find themselves totally marginalized among their own people. This is why Arafat did not cave in to the pressures that were exerted on him at the Camp David II talks in the U.S. in 2000. He knew that the majority of his people would reject the Israeli-American proposals offered there. The main stumbling bloc then and now remains the status and rights of the Palestinian refugees. If no new, reasonable compromise proposals are on offer to resolve the Palestine refugee issue while maintaining Israel’s status as a predominantly Jewish state, there will be no hope for any progress in any peace talks, and nobody should waste time trying to achieve this.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders alike now face the monumental challenge of engaging their own people on this issue, which has always been the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict. We need more reasonable and feasible proposals on how to reconcile the rights of the Palestinians to end their refugee status, and the rights of Israelis to live in a secure, recognized, and predominantly Jewish state.

When a post-Arafat leadership assumes power, external mediation and direct contacts will probably achieve a brief pause in the current Israeli-Palestinian low intensity war, giving all sides the opportunity to explore serious negotiations for a permanent peace agreement. The success of any such talks for a permanent peace effort will depend on how effectively Israelis and Palestinians come to grips with the centrality of the Palestine refugee issue in a more reasonable manner than has been the case since 1948.

Forget about personalities. It’s the refugee issue, stupid. The Palestinian leadership that comes up with a sensible, realistic policy for dealing with this core issue, and achieving Palestinian statehood alongside Israel, will be the credible, legitimate leadership that replaces Arafat. Everything else is speculation.

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

Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 10 November 2004
Word Count: 939 words
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As Yasser Arafat’s health deteriorates in a suburban Paris hospital and he fades away from the political scene, his legacy for Palestine and the Arab world should offer important lessons that can be summarized in two critical realms: ideology and biology. Arafat’s long political life, spanning four decades from when he started the Fateh Palestinian resistance movement in the early 1960s, is also a chilling microcosm of Arab modern history, with its heroism and mediocrity, its captivating achievements and ignominious failures, its young nations striving for dignity and freedom and old leaders refusing to retire gracefully.

He excelled in ideology, saving his people from eternal exile, occupation, and historical oblivion, and bringing them to the threshold of real independence after 1993. But biology was his Achilles heel — like many other Arab leaders, he simply remained in power too long (some 40 years), and suffered the shattering consequences of unaccountable and autocratic rule, including corruption and misguided decisions. He did not allow his people to rule themselves through a participatory and accountable governance system, and failed to make the transition from resistance fighter and wily diplomatic negotiator to statesman and nation-builder. He reminds us again, as other Arab leaders do, that no human being, however valiant in determination or vigor in youth, should enjoy unaccountable power for decades and decades — because the consequence inevitably is atrophy, disintegration and failure.

The particularities of the Palestinian movement — for global recognition, liberation from Israeli occupation, and national self-determination and independence — provided Arafat with the impetus and the stage on which he produced one of the most compelling performances of political leadership in modern history. Almost single-handedly, since he took over the leadership of the unified Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the late 1960s, he has kept the Palestine issue and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict that it spawned on the front pages of the world’s press, and on the minds and agendas of world leaders. His great achievement is that after the Arabs’ defeat in the 1967 war, he galvanized a dozen Palestinian political and guerrilla groups into a unified national movement– the PLO– at a time when the world hardly acknowledged the existence, let alone the national rights, of Palestinians.

He then led the PLO for over three decades, during which he moderated and maneuvered its ideology to the point where Palestinian statehood and self-determination became an issue of global concern in the 1980s and early 90s. In September 1993, he signed the Oslo Accords with the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He returned to the West Bank and Gaza with an opportunity to build a quasi-independent Palestinian state, and to negotiate with Israel for permanent independence and sovereignty. His success as a historical figure who saved his people from political oblivion was perhaps best captured by the image of the current American president, George W. Bush, who traveled to the Middle East in 2003 and personally pledged to work for an independent Palestinian state by 2005.

Palestinians love and honor him because of his dogged ability to carry the banner of Palestinian rights throughout the world, and gain universal support for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. His greatness — and the reason his people always backed him in the face of Israeli, American and occasional Arab attacks — was his symbolism of the powerful Palestinian will to struggle against enormous odds.

Palestinians struggled initially for basic political recognition by Israel, the U.S., the Arabs and the world, and ultimately for the ability to live in freedom and independence. The movement Arafat led was one of resistance and liberation from occupation, national reconstitution of a scattered and exiled people, and, finally, nation-building under conditions of quasi-independence. As the occasion required, he resisted, fought militarily, negotiated politically, lay low when necessary, and made diplomatic concessions and demands as the times required. He also quarreled and fought with numerous Arab regimes when Palestinian political activism scared or threatened those regimes, or when Palestinian military resistance against Israel brought fierce Israeli retaliation against such Arab countries as Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.

In the end, though, his considerable diplomatic achievements as a leader in exile would be offset in large part by his weaknesses and failures after he returned to Palestine. In the decade after 1993, when the Oslo Accords occasioned his return to the West Bank and Gaza to manage national affairs, he was unable to lead his people on their final march to credible statehood and independence. He allowed a corrupt and unaccountable governance system to develop in the West Bank and Gaza, and it slowly gnawed away at his credibility and efficacy, even some of his considerable legitimacy. Power began to slip away from him and his long-time colleagues with the first intifada in 1988, as local leaders emerged throughout the West Bank and Gaza, including Islamists from Hamas. When the second, more violent, intifada against Israeli occupation erupted in September 2000, Arafat was no longer solely or fully in control of Palestinian affairs.

The last two years of his life have been ignominious and humiliating. He has been held prisoner in his battered headquarters in Ramallah, surrounded by Israeli tanks and prevented from leaving the compound. Israel and the U.S. have refused to deal with him, and so diplomatic movement towards permanent statehood has stopped completely. Isolated, imprisoned, and politically quarantined by those who should be his two most important negotiating partners, Arafat’s political life ended a few years ago when he proved unable to make either war or peace.

In the end, he tragically brought about his own marginalization through his inability to translate his considerable historical and political legitimacy into a force for nation-building based on good governance, the rule of law, and sustainable development. He was ultimately unable to offer tangible political gains to the four principal constituencies that had defined his entire political life for over four decades: his own Palestinian refugee community, the people of Israel, the people and leaders of the Arab countries, the United States and the rest of the West.

As he departs the political scene, his entire generation will also leave the stage soon, and younger leaders will emerge, preferably through democratic elections. The hope is that they will study, digest and act upon the ample lessons of ideology and biology that Arafat leaves as his legacy: an epic, historic leader who moved with the times brilliantly during his first three decades in political life, but stalled during his fourth and last decade, because he had remained in power one full decade too long.

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

Copyright © 2004 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 05 November 2004
Word Count: 1,096 words
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