Double trouble
US double standards are the foremost impediment to the democratisation of the Middle East, writes Ibrahim Nafie
In his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy last week, President Bush outlined his administration's "new policy" of "a forward strategy to freedom in the Middle East". In implementing this policy, he said, the US will summon "the same persistence, energy and idealism" that it had applied to democratic development in Europe and Asia following World War II. At the same time, he stressed that representative governments in the Middle East must reflect their own cultures and, consequently, that democratisation could not be achieved overnight. He further lauded the progress made towards democratisation in some Arab countries, adding that Egypt was poised to show the way towards democracy in the Middle East just as it had shown the way towards peace.
Bush's speech contained several positive elements. Above all, he acknowledged that there was no inherent contradiction between Islam and democracy. Although this fact is self evident, that Bush underscored it at a time when the corridors of power in the US are dominated by representatives of the ultraconservative right whose provocative statements on the Arabs and Islam have often gone unreprimanded may be a sign that the US president is breaking free from the hold of this camp.
Also encouraging was the US president's recognition that democratic transformation must reflect the cultural attributes of the societies in which it is taking place. Many in the West have long emphasised form rather than substance, as though democratisation entailed the superimposition of Western institutions of government, and their attendant value systems, on other societies. That Bush stressed that democratisation must be a home-grown, evolutionary process suggests another qualitative shift in the thinking of this exponent of the American right.
Nevertheless, glaring for its absence in Bush's speech is the fact that some essential preconditions for democratic development in the Middle East are obviated, directly or indirectly, by US policy in this region. It is significant that the US president made no mention whatsoever of the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine or of the US's own occupation of an independent nation and member of the UN. These very omissions undermine much of the speech's credibility.
What jars most with Bush's rhetoric is that Washington continues to give its unremitting support for an occupying country that remains so intent upon perpetrating the most heinous human rights abuses against the people under its occupation. As regards democratic processes specifically, President Bush has personally gone on record as calling for the dismissal or sidelining of President Yasser Arafat, the popular choice of the Palestinian people as voiced through a free, fair and internationally supervised election. Moreover, not only have some members of his administration openly urged the Palestinian people not to reelect Arafat in the event of new elections, but they have also hinted that the US would intervene militarily if he were reelected. How does Bush expect the people of this region to greet such flagrant flouting of the very ABCs of democracy and the right to self- determination? Are the Arabs to think that democracy for them means no more than the right to elect the people Washington wants us to elect?
Clearly, there is a vast gap between the lip- service paid to democracy, freedom and justice, and practice. This is evident in Washington's position on issues affecting the most fundamental rights of peoples in this region. In Israel, several air force pilots have refused to obey what they have described as "illegal and immoral" orders to bombard residential areas in the occupied territories. Yet, Washington has condoned such acts in the name of Israel's right to self-defence. Particularly galling is Washington's tendency to make concessions towards Arab rights and then to backtrack. I refer, specifically, to its stance on the separating wall Israel is constructing several kilometres inside the West Bank. Whereas only months ago Bush likened that wall to a snake coiling through the West Bank, his government is now giving Sharon its active support to press ahead with this racist project, as is evident by the US veto of a Security Council resolution calling upon Israel to halt construction of the wall.
That the US, in Iraq, has joined ranks with Israel as an occupying power of Arab territory, has delivered an even greater blow to the credibility of Bush's rhetoric. After waging a war on the patently false pretext of eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the US announced its determination to establish a democracy in Iraq that will serve as a model for other countries in the region. Apart from the fact that the claim hardly jives with Bush's statement that democratisation must be a gradual, grassroots process, facts on the ground make it difficult to believe that Washington's intentions are lofty.
By perpetuating its occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration forces us to conclude that it has launched a colonialist project aimed at securing control over this region's vital resources, and that this project is cloaked in the old-time garb of "the white man's burden to civilise non- white peoples". Now, the US is mired, without legal or moral justification, in an uncontrollable situation that is reaping an increasingly heavy toll among American forces. However, the greater price is being paid, once again, by the Iraqi people, who are enduring greater hardship under American occupation than they had under Saddam.
The Arabs cannot swallow Bush's rhetoric, because they are experiencing, first hand, the results of his policy in Iraq and in Palestine. If the US administration truly wants to win the trust and respect of the governments and peoples of this region, it should prove itself not in word but in deed. It should work for the rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people under the auspices of the UN and it should stop its complicity with the injustices perpetrated by the Israeli right. Once the Arabs perceive some consistency between US policy and rhetoric they will be able to lend a serious ear to Bush's drive for democracy and freedom in the Middle East.
