Countering complacency
Reda Helal* finds lessons in the swift fall of the Iraqi regime
The US war against Iraq is over. Toppling the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein proved faster and easier than either the American invaders or the Arabs had anticipated.
If the collapse of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 was a watershed in the reshaping of the global order, events occurring between 11 September 2001 and the fall of the Iraqi regime on 9 April 2003 put the Middle East at the centre of this process. To Washington, the collapse of the Berlin Wall signalled its victory in the Cold War, from which it emerged as the world's sole superpower. If the US regarded that moment in Germany as the end of a third world war, 11 September was the opening shot in the fourth. Dubbed by Washington as "the war against terrorism", it has set its sights on radical Islamism and dictatorship in the Islamic world, in general, and the Middle East, in particular.
US President Bush has adopted the perception of the neo-conservative hawks in his administration that the Middle East has become integral to the framework of American national security. Not only were the 19 terrorists who mounted the 11 September attacks on the US all of Arab origin, it was also felt that "rogue states" such as Iraq might smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the hands of international terrorist groups and that any future suicide operations would claim hundreds of thousands of American lives -- many more people than the 3,000 lost on 11 September. On the basis of this perspective, Washington launched the war against Afghanistan in order to eliminate the Taliban regime and the Bin Laden-led Al- Qa'eda organisation it sheltered. Subsequently, the US moved against Iraq with the purpose of eliminating the country's weapons of mass destruction and removing Saddam Hussein from power.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that former US Secretary of Defence James R Schlesinger had observed that the "shock and awe" strategy used against Iraq had a more far-reaching aim. The strategy was intended, as he put it, to "shock and awe" radical Islamist groups and rebel nations into the awareness that henceforth they will be unable to lay a hand on the US. More significantly, it is the stated position of White House figures, from Secretary of State Colin Powell to Dick Cheney, Richard Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and James Woolsey, that the war on Iraq was only the first step in the process of reconfiguring the Middle East.
For the ultra-right coterie in the White House, changing the shape of the Middle East is synonymous with "regime change". However, regime change will not necessarily entail military action, as was the case in Iraq. Various forms of diplomatic and economic pressure will be brought to bear, as is currently happening in the case of Syria. Nor will the process necessarily entail toppling existing regimes, especially if pressures succeed in producing the desired shifts in policy and patterns of domestic and regional alliances.
This is the lesson of the war on Iraq and the US's subsequent threats against Syria and Iran. It is a lesson that Arab regimes would be advised to learn well.
Before the war, Arab regimes felt that the fall of Saddam would render them more vulnerable to pressures to change, which is why many had furtively sought to support the Iraqi regime. They were right. Even so, as the war drew to a close, they breathed a sigh of relief. They had survived the crucible with minimum political losses, domestically and internationally. The mass demonstrations against the attack on a fellow Arab nation never became seriously out of hand while the war itself did not drive a wedge into the pattern of inter-Arab relations, as was the case with the second Gulf War. In addition, most Arab governments survived the recent war with their relations with the US well intact. After all, Washington had only required a "coalition of the willing", each according to its own ability. In other words, official protest against the war could be tolerated as long as opposition did not spill over to effective action.
However, such complacency is misplaced. The war on Iraq passed with welcome speed, but now "regime change" is knocking on the door of every other Arab capital. As James Woolsey put it, the war on Iraq had Arab regimes quaking before the wind. Indeed, in deference to this wind, many hastened to institute some token reforms.
Unfortunately, facelifts do little to repair the damage done by time. The Arabs must realise that change is long overdue and that anxiety and whatever touchups such insecurity produces will not spare them the need for substantial reform. Moreover, the longer that process is postponed, the higher the costs, until ultimately they become unsustainable.
Change begins when a people senses that their system of government has failed them. In the case of the Arabs, they must come to realise that the ideologies and practices they followed for the past 50 years have brought them from one disaster to the next. Under the banners of Palestinian liberation and Arab unity they have perpetuated political enterprises inspired by fascist Stalinist and Nazi ideologies, the regime of Saddam Hussein being only the most tyrannical and inhumane of such enterprises. As such, these regimes share a number of common characteristics. They are oligarchic and based on a combination of kinship bonds and allegiances to a ruling military clique. There is no rotation of power and political life is dominated by a single ruling party -- if a party system exists at all. The economy is tightly controlled by the state, in the interests of perpetuating the power and authority of the ruling oligarchy. As such, it is an economy based on distribution of benefits rather than production and generally reeling under the strains of a heavy deficit. In a like manner, the prime function of the national army and security services is to prevent coups and safeguard the security of the regime. Finally, there exists no true notion of a free press, which has been supplanted by a propaganda machine, sustained by and working on behalf of the regime.
If the rapid fall of Saddam tells us anything, it is that a regime founded on the aforementioned bases was unable to defend that nation's capital and hold out against invaders. The Arabs, therefore, should take this is a sign that one phase in their history has ended and that another has begun. It is time to turn the page on political and economic totalitarianism, which has long sacrificed civil liberties in the name of national liberation, and to begin a new page in which individual freedoms and the rule of law go hand in hand with national autonomy and independence.
"National liberation" regimes have so trampled the freedoms of their peoples for so long under the pretext of ending colonialism that they ultimately helped colonialism return under the pretext of liberating their peoples. These regimes had forfeited an opportunity for change following the collapse of communism in 1989 and they forfeited a second opportunity following the collapse of "Bin Ladenism" in the wake of 11 September. With the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein on 9 April they were presented with one last chance to effect change from within instead of having it forced on them from abroad. We cannot afford to delay any longer the transition to true free and democratic rule -- the underpinnings of good governance, which safeguards the liberty and prosperity of the nation and the individual citizen. Henceforth, the Arabs' motto should be: change now, not tomorrow.
* The writer is assistant to the editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram.
