VOL. XLVI
No 45
The Political Scene (10 November 2003)
President George Bush has announced what is potentially the biggest shake-up of US Middle East policy since the US became an active player in the region 60 years ago. US-Syrian relations are about as bad as they can be, short of a war. Differences between Palestinian leader Yasir 'Arafat and his prime minister designate are holding up the formation of a government.
Freedom A Forward US Strategy
Ever since the US became actively involved in the Middle East some 60 years ago, the Americans have dealt with the region on the basis of existing political structures – broadly speaking, autocracies ranging from the benevolent to the tyrannical. But all that, according to President George W Bush, is now about to change. In a major foreign policy speech on 6 November, Mr Bush declared that “60 years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing too make us safe – because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty…Therefore the US has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.”
It is far from clear at this early stage what this “forward strategy of freedom” will actually involve, or how the Americans propose to promote the cause of democracy in the Middle East. But on the basis of Mr Bush’s speech, it looks as if America’s opponents in the region will be judged by different standards than its friends. Thus “Morocco has a diverse new parliament…in Bahrain last year, citizens elected their own parliament for the first time in nearly three decades. Oman has extended the vote to all adult citizens. Qatar has a new constitution, Yemen has a multiparty political system, Kuwait has a directly elected national assembly and Jordan held historic elections this summer.” But when it comes to Iran, which is, by any measure, one of the most democratic countries in the region, “the regime in Tehran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people or lose its last claim to legitimacy.” As for Syria, the establishment of democracy in Iraq “will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation.” And for the Palestinians “the only path to independence and dignity and progress is the path of democracy…the Palestinian leaders who block and undermine democratic reform…are not leaders at all. They are the main obstacles to peace.” Interestingly, Saudi Arabia and Egypt appear to fall somewhere between these two extremes as far as Mr Bush is concerned. In the former, “the Saudi government is taking the first steps toward reform, including the gradual introduction of elections. By giving the Saudi people a greater role in their own society, the Saudi government can demonstrate true leadership in the region.” In the latter, “the great and proud nation of Egypt has shown the way towards peace in the Middle East, and now should show the way toward democracy.”
Dividing the countries of the region into democratic haves and have-nots on such a partisan basis would probably be reason enough for Washington’s new strategy to be viewed with suspicion on the Arab world. (At MEES press time, Mr Bush’s speech had only evoked a stunned silence regionally.) But it is not the only reason. At the heart of Mr Bush’s reasoning and argument is the assertion that ”as long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.” Most Arabs would probably agree that a lack of democracy is one cause of regional “stagnation, resentment and violence.” But they would also point out that the occupation and repression of the Palestinians by Israel – which is nowhere even mentioned in Mr Bush’s speech – and American support for anything and everything Israel does is at least as much of a cause. And behind this willfully blind analysis of the causes of violence in the Middle East, the Arabs might well see the hand of Israel’s neoconservative supporters in Washington, who appear to suffer from the delusion that democratic governments in the Arab world would be more willing and able to make peace with Israel than the two autocracies that have so far done so.
A Nadir In Relations
Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Bushra Kanafani was only stating the obvious when she said on 5 November that “we consider the Syrian-American relationship at the present time is one that is governed by a level of negativity unsurpassed for many years.” And most people in the region, if not in Washington, would agree with her that the reason why relations are at a nadir is that “the American administration is pursuing a policy in the region that serves neither American interests nor the interests of the region. It is mainly a policy that is affected by Israeli influences.” One symptom of the malaise in the relationship between Damascus and Washington is claims by administration officials that foreign fighters are crossing into Iraq from Syria which fall only marginally short of accusing the Syrians of colluding with the infiltrators. (The fact that such allegations are contradicted with some regularity by US officers on the ground does not appear to deter Syria’s accusers.) The latest
official to pillory the Syrians was the US overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer, who claimed on 2 November “we have certainly got, because we have captured and killed them, members of al-Qa'ida who may be coming from Syria we suspect.” However he went on to assert that “they are coming mostly from Syria” and declared that “what we need in the case of the Syrian border is much better cooperation from the Syrian government… they can do a much better job of helping us seal that border and keeping terrorists out of Iraq.” (Mr Bremer also said that the US wanted to relay “the same message” to Iran, but admitted that it was harder to do so because the Americans are not speaking to the Iranians.) Blaming Syria for the Americans’ problems in Iraq is scarcely a risky strategy at the moment, but as Ms Kanafani pointed out, “the border between Syria and Iraq is long, desert and difficult to control. We are doing what we can, but we call on the Americans, who possess more electronic and other monitoring, to act to control the borders from the Iraqi side.” She also said that “we want to open the door to an objective dialogue between Syria and the US on the basis that they have their interests and we also have our interests.” That sounds a reasonable enough recipe for correct relations, but there is very little chance it will happen as long as the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon and elsewhere are calling the shots in Washington.
΄Arafat And Qurai΄ Still At Odds
Palestinian prime minister designate Ahmad Qurai΄ transformed his eight-member cabinet into a caretaker government when the cabinet’s mandate ran out on 4 November in order to gain more time to overcome his differences with Palestinian leader Yasir 'Arafat on the control of security powers. (Mr 'Arafat opposes Mr Qurai'’s nomination of Gen Nasir Yusif as interior minister.) However Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad announced on 6 November that he would boycott the caretaker cabinet on the grounds that it had no legal status, saying that “there is a law and it should be respected…the government’s term was over on 4 November and so was mine. So I wait until the cabinet is formed.” Theoretically, if Mr Qurai' and Mr 'Arafat do manage to resolve their differences, the formation of a Palestinian government would be the first step back towards the “road map” to peace sponsored by the international quartet. However it looks as if the road map, which was dismissed as “nothing” by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the beginning of this year, has now joined the Oslo agreements on the scrapheap.
Charles Snow