“Arab Democracy and New Geo-Strategic Realities”
Washington Paper October 1995
Additions
Nothing more wrong than the assumption of some Islamists that the West is trying to impose on us Arabs and Muslims democracy while we are resisting it in the name of the specificity of our culture. Has the West tried to impose democracy on us? Is it trying now?
I. A brief historical survey:
When the European powers first tried to export their model to the East Mediterranean, especially after the French Revolution of 1789, what they exported was the modernising aspect of that model, rather than their democratic political system. Muhammad `Ali of Egypt, Emir `Abd al-Qadir of Algeria, were seen as ‘enlightened despots’ who would open the East to foreign trade and Western interests (opening of the Suez canal, buiding of roads and railways, legalisation of private property, etc.).
A dychotomy that served well those in power: export Western goods not western ideas.
This early ambivalance between imposing the Western model and imposing Western interests can be easily seen in the contradictory policies of Western powers vis-à-vis the Ottoman sultanate in its later years: i) sought to impose the declaration of the equality of all citizens of the empire (which was satisfied in the famous edits known as the Tanzimats of 1839 and 1856), ii) sought to rally minorities and protect them: European powers competed as protectors of minorities.
Right of peoples to self-determination understood as free expression of Majority will. It was two American businessmen close to President Wilson, King and Crane, who came to investigate the opinions of Arabs on their preferences after the collapse of the Ottoman Ampire, found a majority that voted for independence and violently opposed to the idea of a Jewish homelend in Palestine. That is why colonial Anglo-French domination had to break up this majority. That begot Sykes-Picot.
Colonial interests in conflict with Democracy. Authoritarian regimes have been boosted, encouraged, helped, imposed and saved by Western intervention. I know of no instance in the modern history of the region in which a western power intervened to save a parliamentary system or to restore it after having been overthrown by a military or a dynastic coup d’etat.
III. US Policy:Was the backing by US of authoritarian regimes a Cold War necessity ?
The first modern military coup-d’état in the Arab World is that of colonel Husni Zaïm in Syria in 1949 which overthrew the parliamentary regime of President Shukri Quwatli and Premier Jamil Mardam. The coup has internal and regional reasons, high among which is the defeat of the Arab armies in the first Palestine war of 1948 which saw the creation of the State of Israel, the corruption of the politicians, the Hachemite ambition of building Greater Syria or the Fertile Crescent, etc… Yet it did not come without outside international help. CIA operatives, perhaps out of excessive zeal, want us to believe that they had a stake in this overthrow of the Syrian parliamentary regime. It so happens that the Syrian parliamentary and had refused to ratify the accord signed by the government granting TAPLINE, a subsidiary of Aramco, a concession for the transit of the oil pipeline coming from Saudi Arabia through Syrian to the Lebanese coasts, built and run by . Not only was anti-American feeling envolved, but the fees were considered too low. What was at stake was that Saudi oil will now hit the Mediterranean which would deal a severe blow to British oil interests. William Eveland, CIA operative in the Middle East maintains that the Zaim coup was carried by Miles Copeland in order to obtain Syrian ratification of the TAPLINE accord.[1] The author of a history of Bechtel Corporation, the US multinational engineering firm, reports that State Department documents of the time claim that a ‘multinational corporation’ (which Rives Childs, U.S. minister to Saudi Arabia, identifies as International Bechtel) may have played a role in the overthrow of Syria’s parliamentary government.[2] What was at stake in Syria in 1949 has little, if nothing, to do with the Cold War. It had very much to do to do with oil and Israel. It so happens that the two most important achievements of Husni Zaim’s six months’ reign was the ratification of the TAPLINE concession and the signing of the Syrian-Israeli armistice treaty in Rhodes.
Oil and political Islam. Wahhabism, the mother of all fundamentalisms. As an academic, I shall perpetually marvel at the ingenious harnessing of a puritanical brand of Islam in favour of the most sophisticated and advanced capitalist enterprise. Chapeau!! Was backing the Saudi regime a Cold War necessity? Why did it continue after the end of it?
It is said in the statement of purpose that the apprehension about democracy among the US officials is that it will strengthen “groups whose political and ideological goals conflict with American values and global concerns”. What about conflicting with American interests? We are the biggest consumer of American arms and the main perveyor of energy. Let’s envisage this scenario? A democratic parliamentary regime is installed in Saudi Arabia, peacefully I hope, be more amenable to US interests? Would the majority of Iraqis now vote in support of an opposition that has supported the embargo against its people?
3. The Middle East: To begin with, we have not come out of the Cold War, not to say that we are returning to it. The hardly neutral or innocent new denomination of the region- the Middle East- has nothing new or post-Cold War to it. In fact, this is what the region, previously known as the Near East, was baptised by Winston Churchill at the outbreak of the Cold War.
It might be argued that Turkey and Iran form part of the region. They surely do. But, I cannot see how to reconcile the inclusion of Iran in this Arab East, rebaptised “ME”, with the US policy of ‘dual containment’, which means the perpetuation of a state of permanent tension and hostility of between Iraq and Iran, pitting the one against the other, with the hardly veiled aim of weakening both.
4. Arab-Israeli peace:
Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Oslo accords: aim of peace, to guarantee Israel’s security and provide Palestinians in West Bank control over their daily lives.
Oslo: give rights to a ruler than to a people (Arafat or self-determination of Palestinians) The Israeli connection: security; how many times have we heard Mr. Rabin say that the region is not fit for democracy; the religious minority vision.
The mirror image of Zionism: religious-minoritarian vision of the region. Minoritise all the region to be able to accomodate Israel.
5. Let me give one final example of this security-obsessed foreign policy. Last July, the General Confederation of Trade Unions in Lebanon, dominated by moderate elements many of whom known to having worked closely with US Labour attachés against communist influence, declared a one-day general strike and a peaceful demonstration in opposition of a government rise in the tax on benzine. The government responded by banning the demonstration and the army literrarily occupied Beirut to impose the decision. In a tense atmosphere, the strike was carried on and the few thousands demonstrators peacefully dispersed by the army without much harm save a few arrests. US chargé d’affaires in Lebanon had this to comment on the event: Lebanon’s security forms part of the security of the USA!
2. The institutionalisation of tribalism and confessionalism as base of power.
3. the constant recourse to mass violence to install power and maintain it. The practice of incurring demographic surgical operations into society (not excluding mass massacres and mass displacement of populations)
+ a vanguardist ideology establishes a didactic/punitive relationship between ruler/teacher and people/pupil.
4. legitimacy: either self-assumed or sustained by foreign backing.
5. The personalisation of the ruler
(Laroui). Hence, the inversed relationship between rulers and ruled. Curiously, it is the ruler who becomes source of legitimacy for ‘his‘ people rather than the opposite.
After a presidential election with was, obviously, won by the one and unique candidate, rather than the elected president thanking the people for having renewed their trust in him, it is the regime’s press which, in the name of the people, thanks the president for accepting to be reelected. An example of the extent of contempt that a ruler has for his people, can also be sseen in a series of articles, probably written by SH himself in the oficial al-Thawrah, where he castigates the population of southern Iraq, more especially the inhabitants of the marshes, for having been corrupted by the Iranians, not being authentic Arabs, and for their poverty, nakedness and poverty!
10. Alternation of power.
Many officials and observers in this country and elsewhere in the West are concerned with the question of political succession in the AW. Republics and monarchies face it alike and have a similar solution for it: family succession. Son succeeds father and brother succeeds brother (not without problems and conflicts between relativest). Of course, we’re talking in the event of the ruler’s death. In his lifetime, the ruler succeeds himself. Zirwal will succeed Zirwal, Saddam has succeeded Saddam; even in our little ‘democratic’ Lebanon, President Hrawi has suceeded himself for a half presidential term and the Lebanese constitution is about to be revised by a parliament elected by 13% of the electorate to accomodate this aberration.
On the other hand, we have parliaments and oppositions but no alternation of power. The Egyptian elections are another example: That is to say that party pluralism is not incompatible with the rule of a one-party rule and one-party system. How to defend the rights of the opposition including its right to acceed to power?
This poses the question: how do people learn democracy? I know of no other way to learn democracy than by practicing democracy itself, in the respect due to the verdict of the ballot box. I do not believe the Algerian electorate is less conscious of its interests and aspirations than, say, the French electorate at the beginning of the electoral process in France. So, let the people take responsibility for their options, choices and acts. Let them pay the price for the people they choose to govern them. This is no position of principles. It meets with that of the parties of the Democratic Convention signed in Rome last year which have a real chance to win a majority in a free parliamentary election.
Iraq: the Fate of Saddam Husayn
priorities: weaken Iraq (the three zones); terminate its disarmament, maintain oil prices for Saudi Arabia (to pay its debts to US), frighten Gulf countries to sel them more arms, etc.
The Husayn Kamil episode has confirmed worst fears of an authoritarian alternative to SH. The man headed the Military Industrial Commission, helped in planning invasion of Kuwait,led the military forces that massacred thousands of civilians when they captured the holy cities of Karbala and Najf and also crushed Kurds in North. He has been listed as number 5 in Iraqi National Congress’ list of top Baathi officials to be put before a international trubunal for crimes against humanity. When Hussein calls for “pluralism and democracy” for Iraq that is a lugubrious farce. To envisage him as the next ruler of Iraq gives me shudders.
The very serious Economist puts it thus: “If SH is to be toppled, it could well be by Iraqis who were his partners in crime. Never mind.” (August 15, 1995). Some of us mind. The majority of Iraqis would. Thomas Friedman in N.Y.Times was even more blunt about it: “The best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein”. What better could we wish for in terms of post Cold War democracy?
Now SH has just won his referendum and confirmed as successor of himself. His spokesmen had pledged a 100% turnout and a 100% vote for him.
– Yemeni unity and war:
a setback both for unity (Northern hegemony) and democracy (defeat of pluralism)
Modernising Socialists victims of their own dellusions about the West: deluded themselves with hope that US believed `Ali `Abdallah Salih incompatible with entry into oil era.
On which side was US? End of Saudi domination in Arab Penninsula. Lip service to pluralism and reinstating Socialist party in its rights
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The case of US role in the first phase of the civil war in Lebanon.
The Brown mission: was there a democratic alternative for Lebanon?
Cite USDS archives: reform versus security. lip service to reform/ all interest and mission exclusively centered on security: can Lebanese assume their security by themselves? is there threat that the progressive camp wins over the conservative camp? what role for Syrian military intervention? how would Israel react to Syrian intervention?[3]
- see his interview of 1988 in Irene Genzier: Notes from the Minefield: The United States – Lebanon Connnection, 1944-1958 , MS under print, ch. 2, pp. 12-13. ↑
- Laton McCartney, Friends in High Places, the Bechtel Story, New York, Simon andSchuster, 1988, p.114; see also Douglas Little’s account of the Syrian coup in, “Cold War and Covert Action: the United States and Syria, 1945-1958”, The Middle East Journal, 44, Winter 1990. ↑
- For a thorough discussion of this dual intervention and the US role in it, see the telegrams of special envoy to Lebanon, Ambassasor Dean Brown, to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: USDOS: Declassified Lebanon, nos. 2868, 2936, 3266, 3297, 3545, the 4th, 13th, 14th and 21st April 1976; and Y. Evron (1987):War and Intervention in Lebanon, the Israeli-Syrian Deterrence Dialogue. London, Croom Helm. ↑