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Political theory vs reality. Please note below, the “3 categories that
highlight what can most readily go wrong for Western interests when democracy
is thrown into the mix in the Middle East and the wider Arab world,” which I’ve
numbered for easier reading, and the warnings from those who have recently
embraced the democratic process, if not the ideals or priorities we prefer. kwc A Little Democracy or
a Genie Unbottled
Like a powerful catalyst best handled with an eyedropper
rather than a ladle, free and fair elections have recently unleashed political
forces elsewhere in the region that can hardly be seen as friendly to the
United States. The radical Muslim Brotherhood made major gains in Egypt's
parliamentary elections, a Shiite clerical list allied with Iran won a
plurality in Iraq and Hezbollah — considered, like Hamas, a terrorist
organization by the West — surged in last year's elections in Lebanon. From one point of view, one that produces more than a few
chortles in the Middle East, the United States has fallen victim to some grand
law of unintended consequences. "You might remember the saying, 'Beware of
what you wish — you might get what you want,' " said Abdel Monem Said Aly,
director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo,
well aware that he was tossing a Western saying back in the direction it came.
"It's very much applicable," he said. But the wider question, Mr. Aly acknowledged, is whether the
long-term benefits of democracy are worth the immediate perils. Can it be
fine-tuned so it fits each of the volatile and diverse countries of the Middle
East? And can a shot of democracy, however jolting at first, be trusted in the
end to seduce and tame the forces it has set loose? Right after the Palestinian elections, Mr. Bush praised the
"power of democracy" but did not seem to fully accept the outcome in
that case, saying that the United States would not deal with a political party
that advocates the destruction of Israel, as Hamas does. The president did not specifically rule out talking to a
government of which Hamas is a part. Still, he did not sound entirely pleased
that he had gotten what he wished for. And if democracy continues to produce
results that are irksome to the United States, will other Americans call into
question the export of their most glorious product, electoral democracy? "In the short term, there may be people who think that
pushing democracy is contrary to our interests," said Robert Pastor, a
former American diplomat who is the director of the Center for Democracy and
Election Management at American University in Washington. But the choice of tamping down democratic movements once
they get started does not really exist, said Mr. Pastor, who negotiated with
Hamas to avoid violence during the first Palestinian elections in 1996. The United States would
hardly be in the business of stopping a cycle of elections once they start. And
the experience of Latin America shows that selectively trying to purge
electoral slates of radical groups merely pushes them to carry out violent
revolutions. That is also essentially what happened when military-backed
rulers in Algeria canceled parliamentary elections in 1992 after they were
swept by the Islamic Salvation Front, an organization determined to govern by Islamic
law. Tens of thousands of people died in the conflicts that followed. "If Hamas had been excluded" from the
recent elections, Mr. Pastor said, "they
would have said that they have no other alternative to violence. And they would
be right." If the catalytic reaction set in motion by elections cannot
be stopped once it starts, then a better solution may be to promote democracy in a
way that is tailored to the most dangerous realities of each country. Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, divides countries into 3
categories that highlight what can most readily go wrong for Western interests
when democracy is thrown into the mix in the Middle East and the wider Arab
world. 1.
In
one set of countries, including Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, a ruling
authoritarian regime is considered ineffectual or corrupt and Islamic
opposition parties would probably sweep any wide-open elections as
good-government candidates. 2.
In
a second set, which includes Iraq and Lebanon, the underlying peril is an
ethnically and religiously splintered populace, held together only by an
autocrat's heavy hand, in which the differences threaten to tear the countries
apart. Here, rival religious groups often have their own parties and militias. 3.
Open
elections in a third group — pro-Western monarchies like Jordan, Kuwait or
Bahrain — would probably overturn the existing semi-feudal social order in
favor of Islamic rule, Ms. Ottaway said. In these cases, Islam's appeal is
based on a claim that it creates a just social order. The ascendancy throughout the region of political Islam is,
therefore, the first problem that the United States must solve as it pushes
democratic reform. "I don't
think the United States is prepared to deal with the issue of these Islamist
parties," Ms. Ottaway said. Nevertheless, the problem is not as fraught as Americans
often make it out to be, she said. The appeal of the Islamist parties is often
simply that they are well organized, untainted by the corruption of an
entrenched regime, and able to provide things like child care and funeral
services to local neighborhoods. Several political experts said that disgust
with the inefficient government run by Fatah, the former ruling party in
Palestine, and its reputation for corruption, played a much greater role in the
Hamas landslide than attitudes about Israel. "The most important and urgent lesson" of the
Hamas victory, said Khalil Shikaki, a respected Palestinian pollster, "is that if you do not want these groups to take over
in the process of democratization, you have to press the existing regimes to
reform their systems." Even if the radical groups win, there is some hope that the
daily pressures of making the country work will wear down the firebrands of the
world in a way that looks a lot like moderation, said Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi,
Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations. Until now, "they've been able to
criticize the governments without actually delivering anything but
criticism," Mr. Istrabadi said. "Now they have to govern. Pave roads.
Make sure the garbage is picked up on time." Mr. Aly, of the Al-Ahram center, said that in the early
going, at least, the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who now hold 20% of the
seats in the Egyptian parliament, have behaved amicably. Some experts, like
Amatzia Baram, an Israeli who is a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars in Washington and a professor of Middle
Eastern history at the University of Haifa in Israel, think that Hamas is more
likely to maintain a confrontational stance. In the worst case, that stance could spark a regional war,
Mr. Baram said. But even he believes that if the new government does not
provide basic services more efficiently than Fatah did, the electorate will
give Hamas the boot too. As for the countries like Lebanon and Iraq that are plagued
with sectarian and religious divides, Mr. Baram is another believer that
carefully designed forms of democracy will be able to work there. In Lebanon,
each group, from the Maronites to the Shiites, is allocated a fixed number of
seats, district by district, to prevent sudden shifts in power that could
provoke a return to civil war. "It has to be approached on a country-by-country
solution," Mr. Baram said. He said that in Iraq, where the voting produced
a Shiite plurality but forced the main clerical party to seek partners in its
government, the arrangement could in the long run produce a stable country much
like Lebanon appears to have become. Others see in Iraq the potential for a
civil war — in the style of what Lebanon went through just 20 years ago — that
creates separate Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni regions and generates spinoff
conflicts in the entire region. Many political commentators in the Middle East, including
Rami Khouri, a syndicated columnist and editor at large at the Daily Star
newspaper in Beirut, say that Mr. Bush's seemingly contradictory statements
show that he is not really serious about pushing democracy. Instead, Mr. Khouri
believes, talk of democracy is a cover for an invasion of Iraq that happened
for other reasons. "It rings very
hollow around the world," Mr. Khouri said. "Most people laugh." However it has all happened, said Ziad Abu Amr, an
independent candidate supported by Hamas who won re-election last week, there
is no backing out once the ballots are cast. "It's not good to
say democracy is fine and elections are fine but we can't live with the outcome,"
Mr. Amr said. "I don't think the United
States should make too many conditions on countries which choose to embrace
democracy." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/weekinreview/29glanz.html?_r=1&oref=slogin |
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