10 - 16 January 2002
Issue No.568
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 10 - 16 January 2002 Issue No.568 |
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Crisis of accountability
America has been criticising Arab governments ever more vociferously since 11 September. Its main gripe is the absence of democracy in the region. Yet many states outside the Arab world do not follow Western paradigms of democracy, and many more believe that those paradigms are inappropriate anyway: the region's history, culture and economic conditions are, after all, quite different from the West's.
Yet the criticism no doubt incorporates an element of truth: the lack of accountability in the Arab world makes democracy impossible. However much US intervention shapes Arab strategy, the region's governments rarely if ever assume responsibility for their policies, actions and decisions. There is no system guaranteeing their accountability for the catastrophic conditions to which their people are often subjected.
Equally surprising, however, is that no Arab writer has been bold enough to tackle the issue of America's responsibility for what happened on 11 September. Nor has that matter been discussed within America in the context of related problems: racial discrimination, poverty, lack of political awareness and deficient, though often brutal, security apparatuses. The present US administration has failed to protect its people, yet it has not been held responsible for this failure. The blame was quickly transferred to outside parties; and even these parties' motivation, for which American foreign policy and the global order are ultimately responsible, was not discussed.
Thus the absence of accountability plagues not only the Arab world but the greatest world power, too. And so the absence of democracy turns out to be a feature of the international community, not the Arab world alone.
* This week's Soapbox speaker is a professor of media studies at Cairo University.Al-Qahira
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