Arab politics before and after the Iraq War
Gerges, Fawaz A.
WHILE THE UNITED STATES and Britain are engaged in a heated debate regarding the official explanations and justifications offered for the war on Iraq, no similar soul searching has occurred in...
...A free citizenry will prove more loyal to its country than a fettered one...
...FAWAZ A. GERGES holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and the Middle East at Sarah Lawrence College and is author of the forthcoming Islamists and the West: Ideology vs...
...Failure in Iraq, the creation of yet another American-supported authoritarian regime, will reinforce widely held opinions that democracy is but a tool designed to perpetuate Western hegemony over the vast portion of the Muslim world that belongs to the Arabs...
...Such a policy initiative would indicate that Arab states are genuinely interested in making a difference in their own part of the world...
...Many children still do not have access to basic education...
...Never mind that they didn't level with their citizens about being beholden to Washington and about Saddam Hussein's numbered days...
...Although America's allies—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait— all agreed to register opposition to the war, they refused to go along with the ban on logistical support...
...Some are even calling for a realignment that frees Iraq from its Arab environment...
...Arab rulers have little to say about the dismal failure of their diplomacy and their inability to act in a way that would have put the interests of the Iraqi people over those of Saddam Hussein...
...And does it matter if the country that freed the subjugated Iraqis was not Arab and DISSENT / Winter 2004 n I I POLITICS ABROAD was pursuing an ambitious agenda, extending far beyond freedom...
...No serious thought was given to taking the lead in trying to force Saddam Hussein out of power, thus forestalling the U.S...
...A new social contract is urgently needed to base the power of those who govern on the consent of the governed...
...Those painful questions are just beginning to be debated—but in a highly charged and volatile context...
...On the eve of the war, Arab politicians fretted over merely tactical issues—whether to publicize their opposition to the U.S.-led war or to pin the blame on Hussein—rather than helping Iraqis rid themselves of a tyrannical regime...
...The Iraqi crisis has added weight to the accusation that Arabs are zahira sawtiya (a merely polemical phenomenon), taken seriously by neither friend nor foe...
...The men in power cared neither about Saddam Hussein nor about his captive subjects...
...Although they did not support a military invasion, they appeared willing to give the United States the benefit of the doubt in its campaign to topple the Baathist regime...
...So far no serious proposal has been put on the table to deploy, for example, thousands of Arab peacekeepers in Iraq, within the context of an international multilateral force, to help secure the peace and intensify pressure on the Bush administration to transfer power...
...It was, as everyone knew, a done deal...
...For example, this year's Arab Human Development Report, commissioned by the United Nations Development Program and written by more than forty Arab scholars, highlights the danger of the growing knowledge gap between the Arab region and the rest of the world...
...Those who are better prepared are increasingly disposed to emigrate in search of economic opportunities and political freedom...
...Arab autocrats, regardless of political orientation, felt targeted, and so they united in opposition to the American democratizing project...
...College graduates tend to be ill-prepared to compete in the modern world...
...Only 1.6 percent of the population has Internet access...
...Their immediate political survival took precedence over everything else, regardless of the long-term corrosive effects of the crisis on their rule and on the geo-strategic balance of power...
...In Arab eyes, nothing good in foreign policy comes from the United States, which is seen to be hostile to their national interests...
...But to ask for forethought would have been asking too much of a cynical, hardened lot who have survived for so long by mastering the art of double-talk and obfuscation...
...war and sparing the Iraqi people...
...After all, these governments had already granted the Bush administration access to their bases and ports by previous agreement...
...What transpired instead on the diplomatic scene were vacuous formalities, procrastination, recrimination, and inaction: in other words, stasis...
...The radicals—Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan—wished to affirm their opposition to the coming war and to ban any Arab state from providing logistical and material support to invading American forces...
...Hardly any lessons were learned from previous crises in 1967 and 1990...
...Neither the interests of the separate nation-states nor of their trans-political, panArab union should take precedence over those of the individual citizen...
...They were more concerned with preserving their own power positions...
...Data in the report tell a sad story of continued stagnation and decline in many areas of knowledge production and diffusion...
...They had little incentive to facilitate Hussein's removal from power and thus hasten their own demise...
...Arab rulers proved true to the norm, speaking in double-tongued proclamations and innuendoes to their own populations and the world...
...In a nutshell, the Arab summit at the eve of the war was a dismal failure...
...But most of all it requires opening up and democratizing the closed political process...
...Catching up with the world, and building a knowledge society, requires vital investment in education and scientific research, in families, and in the news media...
...Given the obsessive determination of the Bush administration to go to war against Saddam's regime, the Arabs could not have it both ways: saving both the regime and Iraq's suffering population...
...They also hoped to please the Bush administration and avoid being targeted by its hard-liners...
...Although that wouldn't have been easy, given Hussein's obsession with retaining power, even he, when faced with a united Arab front and an imminent foreign invasion, might have sought a diplomatic way out—a face-saving formula that ensured his own and his family's survival...
...There is also a moral cost that has to be paid for the obsession with collective identity...
...Many horrors have been committed in the name of this once noble dream...
...In contrast, Iraqis had more nuanced views and were desperate to be rid of their tyrant...
...Beyond generalities regarding the need for swift political enfranchisement of Iraqis, they have not clarified the role they would like to play in the new Iraq or the contribution they are willing to make to the reconstruction of Iraqi state and society...
...Arab citizens, the authors of the UN report write, feel oppressed, excluded, and "pushed away from effecting changes in their societies...
...Yet Arab leaders buried their heads in the sand, hoping that the storm would pass with minimum damage to their autocratic rule...
...Inter-Arab diplomacy was more of a public relations exercise than a concerted effort at resolving the crisis...
...Translation is a crucial channel for disseminating ideas and communicating with the rest of the world (at its apogee, Muslim culture was singularly responsible, through translation, for preserving classical ideas...
...They must be integrated into the system and given an opportunity to make a difference...
...No external country, regardless of how powerful, can make the necessary reforms...
...And the education they get is declining in quality...
...When heads of Arab states finally met in Cairo on the eve of the war, they split into two camps...
...No tinkering with the existing order will do...
...Military and political shocks could even produce backlash and further delay the process of liberalization and democratization—indeed, in the minds of many Arabs, democracy is already closely as12 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 POLITICS ABROAD sociated with European colonialism...
...New Social Contract A widespread sense of powerlessness pervades Arab political culture...
...It revealed deep rifts among Arab states and a general lack of foresight and vision...
...Equally alarming are the high rates of illiteracy among women in some of the less developed Arab countries...
...The cost of their inaction was that Arabs exercised no leverage over the Iraqi crisis, even though it struck at the very foundation of their political order...
...They allowed their ideological preferences and elite interests to take precedence over human rights and freedom for their Iraqi brothers and sisters...
...They also held secret talks with Iranian representatives to ensure Iran's neutrality during the war...
...Without that they were reduced to being passive onlookers of the unfolding drama, playing unwittingly into the hands of Hussein as well as of the Bush administration...
...It is a miracle that the autocratic Arab state system has endured for so long with so little legitimacy...
...In contrast, the United States had no reason to take the Arab states, radical or moderate, seriously...
...Many Arabs didn't fully appreciate the predicament of Iraqis terrorized by Saddam Hussein...
...Regardless of whether the ruling elites appreciated the gravity of the crisis and its potential repercussions on regional order, their inaction highlighted not only the splits within their ranks but also their moral bankruptcy...
...True, they produce many religious pamphlets, but relatively few books that contribute to critical knowledge...
...Why should the sovereignty and sanctity of the Iraqi regime come before the welfare of its citizens...
...More damaging is that the Arab media operate in a harsh environment that restricts freedom of expression...
...Rather, there is an urgent need to structurally reform intra- and inter-Arab institutions and empower civil society...
...The latter can help shape the course of events in Iraq by joining international efforts to replace the logic of U.S...
...American officials spent considerable effort negotiating with Turkey and offering billions of dollars for use of its military bases...
...Forced to choose between liberation for Iraqis at American hands or direct or indirect support for Saddam Hussein, Arab public opinion, still enthralled by Nasserite ideology and Islamist symbols, chose the latter...
...In the meantime, politics mutates into extremism at home and terrorism abroad...
...There are just eighteen computers per thousand people in the Arab world, compared with seventy-eight per thousand globally...
...They held their suspicion of the United States in check until the dust settled on the Iraqi battlefield...
...The problem with their charade is not only that it has deepened public cynicism— unleashing a frenzy of conspiratorial theories...
...The possibility of its sudden collapse, along DISSENT / Winter 2004 n 9 POLITICS ABROAD Iranian lines, cannot be discounted...
...The mass media are the most important agents for the public diffusion of knowledge, yet Arab countries have lower information media to population ratios than other nations...
...A divisive feud is being fought between embittered Iraqis and unrepentant Arabs on the airways and editorial pages of leading newspapers...
...In the end, however, the Arab scholars stress that structural reforms must come from within, through an evolutionary social process...
...it has also exacerbated the legitimacy crisis of the Arab political order...
...Deeply suspicious of U.S...
...Moreover, although the Arab countries represent 5 percent of world population, they produce only 1.1 percent of the world's books...
...It is no wonder that so much rides on the Iraqi project...
...A convincing argument could have been made that Hussein must go for the sake of the Iraqi people and the survival of their state—not just because the White House aimed at the destruction of the Baath regime...
...Roughly 25 percent of first-degree graduates in 1995 - 1996 emigrated...
...Top priority should go to addressing the three key development challenges to the Arab world: dealing with the deficits in political freedom, the empowerment of women, and access to knowledge...
...But success requires Arab initiative: where will it come from...
...To act on behalf of the people would have required both visionary leadership, a willingness to take risks, and a tough political realism— traits in short supply in the Arab world...
...The moderates lacked intellectual forethought and the moral courage to establish the ground rules for avoiding war: Saddam Hussein and his close associates would have to go, and then the world community, along with the Arab League, would have to assist Iraqis in reconstituting their shattered 10 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 institutions along more representative lines...
...Never before have the ruling autocrats been as naked in the eyes of their publics as they are now...
...They publicly swore by the Almighty to oppose the coming war, while privately feigning impotence and promising to support their superpower patron...
...Its reverberations transcend Iraq and will likely shake the very foundation of inter-Arab relations...
...Arabs are faced with a grim reality of failed inter-Arab institutions and a paralyzing fixation on the chimera of pan-nationalist identity...
...The author wishes to thank Elfie Raymond for critically editing this essay...
...More important, it has shattered old myths regarding Arab solidarity and unity, the role of public opinion, and the meaning of "Arabness...
...Their overriding goal was to preserve the status quo and limit the impact of the crisis on their tribal fiefdoms...
...Respect for human rights and individual rights must be legally enshrined...
...What Did the Arab States Want...
...It is not convincing to claim, as Arab leaders do, that they are helpless, that the hardliners in the Bush administration oppose their engagement in Iraq lest they create a new order in their own authoritarian image...
...Arab Public Opinion Arab societies, not just Arab rulers, were deeply divided on how to deal with the Iraqi crisis...
...most media are state owned...
...Such a risky strategy by the moderate Arab states would have been preferable to inaction because it would have aligned the majority of Arabs with the Iraqi people...
...Institutions that serve the common interest and generate a broad prosperity must replace the stagnant arrangements that cause today's blight and despair...
...Saddam Hussein, for example, justified his wars against Iran and Kuwait as a defense of Arab unity...
...The hardliners in Washington are politically allergic to the whole international community, not just the Arabs...
...The radicals took the ideological high ground without considering the plight of the Iraqi people and the boiling anger of the United States...
...Words were substituted for actions...
...WHILE THE UNITED STATES and Britain are engaged in a heated debate regarding the official explanations and justifications offered for the war on Iraq, no similar soul searching has occurred in the Arab world...
...The old order was crumbling before their eyes...
...The seeds of both lie in the structure of the closed Arab system and the unholy alliance between the ruling social classes and the conservative religious establishment...
...His most recent book is America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures Or Clash of Interests...
...They failed to make a clear decision to help the people and so sided indirectly with Saddam...
...Yet there are more books translated annually in one European country, Spain, than in all twenty-two Arab states...
...The ideologues in the Bush administration did not help matters by their thinly veiled threats to replace all the authoritarian regimes in the region with democratically constituted ones...
...Between 1998 and 2000 more than fifteen thousand Arab doctors emigrated...
...Arab radicals and moderates did not wish to establish a precedent by forcing one of their own out of power, particularly at the insistence of a crusading superpower with a far-reaching agenda...
...The result is that now many Iraqis feel estranged from and deserted by other Arabs...
...Arab rulers stand naked in the eyes of their restive people, and the latter are pointing accusatory fingers at each other for failing Iraq and Iraqis...
...Iraqis reproach their fellow Arabs for their silence regarding Saddam's crimes against humanity: three hundred thousand Iraqis disappeared during the twenty-four years of his rule...
...The Arab region is being depopulated of its most educated citizens, with serious ramifications to long-term sociopolitical and economic development...
...Only Arabs, with international assistance, can succeed in transforming their societies...
...In the old world, myths die hard...
...Never before has the gap been larger between the Arab ruling elite and the people they rule...
...The big challenge is how to replace the discourse of defeat with the discourse of cultural and political renewal...
...Never mind that they didn't test or maximize their bargaining power as Turkey did...
...On the one hand, the flourishing of democracy in Baghdad could lead many Arabs to disinvest from their historical grievances against the West...
...The split within Arab ranks enabled the former to claim, and perhaps even to believe he had, a valid mandate to cling to power regardless of the costs to Iraq and its people and the latter to claim tacit Arab support for its military campaign...
...Pragmatism (Cambridge University Press...
...foreign policy and socialized into an anti-American mind-set, Arab public opinion, or "the Arab street" as labeled by Western media, was overwhelmingly against the U.S...
...The Iraqi crisis has discredited and weakened the Arab League...
...POLITICS ABROAD An alarming gap existed between Arab public opinion and its Iraqi counterpart...
...Arabs were not only deeply divided, but they, or many of them, tacitly consented to the invasion and occupation of a sister state by a foreign power...
...occupation with the logic of legitimate local authority...
...Inaction threatens to marginalize the Arabs further...
...Change cannot be imposed from without...
...But the traditional form of inter-Arab ritual verbal exchange had to be faithfully observed, irrespective of the complete lack of substance...
...Now, months after the end of the war, Arab rulers have little to say about their vision for a post-Baath Iraq...
...The obsession with pan-nationalism has stalled the process of individual nation-building and has enabled brutal dictators to wreak havoc on their societies...
Vol. 51 • January 2004 • No. 1
