Blaming America

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From creative chaos to freedom of choice, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has a remarkably rich vocabulary when it comes to reform in the Middle East. Yet it is the US that the Arab Human Development Report for 2004 singled out, accusing Washington of acting to deter the growth of democracy in the region. Through its bias to Israel, its violent practices in Iraq and its mistreatment of Arabs following 9/11, America is doing more harm than good. Is it surprising that Washington's repeated use of its veto in the UN Security Council has made the region sceptical about international law?

The war on Iraq has ended in occupation and murderous chaos, not in the democracy the US promised. It has given Arab regimes an added cause to stall on reform. Because of the war on terror Arabs are becoming subject to profiling, harassment and unjustified detention. If anything, despotic regimes around the region are encouraged by such developments.

Over the next few months we are likely to hear officials from across the Arab world blaming America for all our ills. If it weren't for the Americans, we'll be told, the Arab world would have been a paradise of freedom, progress, and democracy; Palestine and Iraq would be free and Sudan wouldn't be falling apart.

The Arab Human Development Report 2004 warns that "power will be transferred through armed violence" if current circumstances persist. The US may be hoping to reshape the Middle East along the lines of Eastern Europe. But change has been underway in Eastern Europe since the late 1980s and without US military presence. By the same token change in the Middle East can take place only in the absence of US troops. Washington has no right to claim that its military presence in Iraq has prodded Arab regimes along the road to reform. After all, the US is not in Iraq for the sake of democracy but because it made false claims about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's ties with Al-Qaeda.

For Washington's claims to be more credible it should timetable its withdrawal from Iraq. Perhaps then more Iraqis will engage in the political process, and the rest of the region become a little less sceptical about America's real intentions.