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From the Washington Post. Interesting piece. I know that Egypt recently enacted new laws with regard to property and commerce - that finally acknowledged what had been going on under the radar anyway.
Listen to the Arab Reformers
By JACKSON DIEHL
The Washington Post
March 30, 2004
A much-anticipated summit of the Arab League, scheduled to begin today in Tunis, was abruptly put off Saturday, and for a remarkable reason: The kings, emirs and presidents-for-life of the Arab Middle East are unable to agree on a common response to the Bush administration's new policy of promoting democracy in their region. The younger and brighter rulers, knowing the stagnant status quo is unsustainable, are pushing a strategy of co-option, offering halfway, half-baked "reform" programs they have hastily drawn up. The less enlightened insist on sticking to the excuses that Arab dictators have offered the world for the past half-century: a) the first priority must be Israel, and b) foreign tutelage is wrong, except when applied to Israel.
The summit may now never happen; if it does, it will probably settle on a murky mix of these two responses. Either way, critics of the pro-democracy policy -- in Europe, in Washington and inside the Bush administration itself -- will again proclaim that a neocon attempt to "impose" democracy on the Middle East "from the outside" has foundered. That this resistance to elected government comes from a group of kings, emirs and presidents-for-life doesn't seem to trouble the critics. The assumption seems to be that the autocrats' objections are those of their own people.
Yet, they are not. The most underreported and encouraging story in the Middle East in the past year has been the emergence in public of homegrown civic movements demanding political change. Two years ago they were nonexistent or in jail. Now they are out in the open even in the most politically backward places in the region: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria. They are made up not only of intellectuals but of businessmen, women, students, teachers and journalists. Unlike their governments -- and the old school of U.S. and European Arabists -- they don't believe that change should be gradual, and they reject the dictators' claim that democracy would only empower Islamic extremists. The delay of change, they say, is the increasing danger.
These people weren't created by George W. Bush. They are the homegrown answer to a decadent political order, and they ride a powerful historical current. But they will tell you frankly: The new U.S. democratization policy, far from being an unwanted imposition, has given them a voice, an audience and at least a partial shield against repression -- three things they didn't have one year ago.
"In the Middle East today, you talk about food, you talk about football -- and you talk about democracy," says Mohammed Kamal, a young political scientist from Egypt. "For the first time in many years, there is a serious debate going on in the Arab world about their own societies. The United States has triggered this debate, it keeps the debate going, and this is a very healthy development."
Mr. Kamal and another prominent Egyptian political scientist, Osama Ghazali Harb, were in Washington last week; both attended a groundbreaking meeting of civic organizations at Egypt's Alexandria Library earlier this month. The conference, unthinkable a year ago, produced a clarion call for democratic change -- one that was all but ignored by Western media.
So here is what the Alexandria statement said: "Reform is necessary and urgently needed." That means: an "elected legislative body, an independent judiciary, and a government that is subject to popular and constitutional oversight, in addition to political parties with their different ideologies."
How to get there? The document offers a clear path: reform constitutions so they provide for periodic free elections and term limits on officeholders; free all political prisoners and repeal all laws that provide for punishment of free expression; abolish all the emergency laws and special courts on which Arab rulers depend.
The White House, at least, took note of the Alexandria declaration. There is talk of promoting its formal endorsement by the Western democracies at the upcoming G-8 summit. Arab officials and the diplomatic old school whisper that such support would only taint and undermine the reformers. Better, they say, to respond to the Arab League.
Wrong again, says Harb. "If your governments refer to the Alexandria declaration it will strengthen and promote this trend for reform," he said. The very idea of it made him grin. "I like this," he added. "This would be very good."
Listen to the Arab Reformers
By JACKSON DIEHL
The Washington Post
March 30, 2004
A much-anticipated summit of the Arab League, scheduled to begin today in Tunis, was abruptly put off Saturday, and for a remarkable reason: The kings, emirs and presidents-for-life of the Arab Middle East are unable to agree on a common response to the Bush administration's new policy of promoting democracy in their region. The younger and brighter rulers, knowing the stagnant status quo is unsustainable, are pushing a strategy of co-option, offering halfway, half-baked "reform" programs they have hastily drawn up. The less enlightened insist on sticking to the excuses that Arab dictators have offered the world for the past half-century: a) the first priority must be Israel, and b) foreign tutelage is wrong, except when applied to Israel.
The summit may now never happen; if it does, it will probably settle on a murky mix of these two responses. Either way, critics of the pro-democracy policy -- in Europe, in Washington and inside the Bush administration itself -- will again proclaim that a neocon attempt to "impose" democracy on the Middle East "from the outside" has foundered. That this resistance to elected government comes from a group of kings, emirs and presidents-for-life doesn't seem to trouble the critics. The assumption seems to be that the autocrats' objections are those of their own people.
Yet, they are not. The most underreported and encouraging story in the Middle East in the past year has been the emergence in public of homegrown civic movements demanding political change. Two years ago they were nonexistent or in jail. Now they are out in the open even in the most politically backward places in the region: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria. They are made up not only of intellectuals but of businessmen, women, students, teachers and journalists. Unlike their governments -- and the old school of U.S. and European Arabists -- they don't believe that change should be gradual, and they reject the dictators' claim that democracy would only empower Islamic extremists. The delay of change, they say, is the increasing danger.
These people weren't created by George W. Bush. They are the homegrown answer to a decadent political order, and they ride a powerful historical current. But they will tell you frankly: The new U.S. democratization policy, far from being an unwanted imposition, has given them a voice, an audience and at least a partial shield against repression -- three things they didn't have one year ago.
"In the Middle East today, you talk about food, you talk about football -- and you talk about democracy," says Mohammed Kamal, a young political scientist from Egypt. "For the first time in many years, there is a serious debate going on in the Arab world about their own societies. The United States has triggered this debate, it keeps the debate going, and this is a very healthy development."
Mr. Kamal and another prominent Egyptian political scientist, Osama Ghazali Harb, were in Washington last week; both attended a groundbreaking meeting of civic organizations at Egypt's Alexandria Library earlier this month. The conference, unthinkable a year ago, produced a clarion call for democratic change -- one that was all but ignored by Western media.
So here is what the Alexandria statement said: "Reform is necessary and urgently needed." That means: an "elected legislative body, an independent judiciary, and a government that is subject to popular and constitutional oversight, in addition to political parties with their different ideologies."
How to get there? The document offers a clear path: reform constitutions so they provide for periodic free elections and term limits on officeholders; free all political prisoners and repeal all laws that provide for punishment of free expression; abolish all the emergency laws and special courts on which Arab rulers depend.
The White House, at least, took note of the Alexandria declaration. There is talk of promoting its formal endorsement by the Western democracies at the upcoming G-8 summit. Arab officials and the diplomatic old school whisper that such support would only taint and undermine the reformers. Better, they say, to respond to the Arab League.
Wrong again, says Harb. "If your governments refer to the Alexandria declaration it will strengthen and promote this trend for reform," he said. The very idea of it made him grin. "I like this," he added. "This would be very good."
