The Lebanese Hole

By Tariq Alhomayed
This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 22/01/2011

The first lesson that any lifeguard learns is not to let a drowning man cling to them and drag them under, and the first lesson that anybody dealing with the Lebanese scene must learn is that you must not march to their beat, but rather raise your engagement with them to the state level.
 
Prince Saud al-Faisal announced that the Saudi monarch had given up on mediation with Syria with regards to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and following this it was asked in Beirut "Is Saudi Arabia angry with Hariri?" My [Lebanese] brothers, please pay attention! Prince Saud al-Faisal said that King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz had spoken with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, head-of-state to head-of-state, and when there was no forthcoming commitment to what had been agreed upon, he gave up on this agreement. However, the Lebanese then said "Yes…but does this confirm that Saudi Arabia has given up on Lebanon?" Yesterday, Prince Saud al-Faisal responded to this, answering that it confirms that Saudi Arabia has "only [given up] with regards to the issue of mediation." However tomorrow the Lebanese will ask, why did you withdraw from your withdrawal?" This is a vicious circle that will continue in this way; the Lebanese hole drowns everybody who tries to enter it. The issue does not stop here, for during the 2006 war, when Saudi Arabia issued a statement about the [military] adventurists, the Lebanese asked "who wrote this speech?" and the answer was "what's the difference? Everybody is loyal to King Abdullah." This, of course, was a statement that was followed by even more analysis [from the Lebanese].
 
The whole issue is one of wrangling, for the Lebanese only hear what they want to hear, otherwise how can we explain their disregard of the statement issued by the Turkish Foreign Minister [Ahmet Davutoglu]. The Turkish foreign minister, accompanied by his Qatari counterpart, issued a statement [on Thursday], announcing the end of their mediation efforts in Lebanon. This came after the Saudi Foreign Minister [Prince Saudi al-Faisal] announced that King Abdullah had given up on mediating the Lebanese problems. Davutoglu's statement was clear, he said that his country would be halting its mediation efforts because the Lebanese parties were not responding…this was a very unambiguous statement, but we did not hear any [Lebanese] response to this.
 
In order to understand the problems [in Lebanon], we must consider one simple thing whose symbolism is clear, and that is that when [Hezbollah chief] Hassan Nasrallah met with the Iranian President [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] in Lebanon during his last visit, this meeting took place at the Iranian embassy. Ahmadinejad was not taken blindfolded to meet with Nasrallah [at a secret location], and this is because Ahmadinejad was dealing with a subordinate or an employee. The same applies to many others when they visit Damascus, for the Damascus leadership does not come to them [in Lebanon]. However when the Saudi monarch visited Lebanon, he went and visited Hariri, rather than having Hariri come to him at the Saudi Arabian embassy, and that is a big difference!
 
In comparison, we have all heard the complaints made, for example, by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, about the journey he was taken on in order to meet with Hassan Nasrallah. We also do not know the manner in which the Turkish and Qatari foreign ministers met with Nasrallah a few days ago.
 
Therefore, what we mean to say here is that states cannot lower themselves to the level of sect or militia leaders, meeting with them in caves or rooftops. Tell me…is it rational for the Saudi Foreign Ministry to deal with the fickle Walid Jumblatt? The changeable nature of Mr. Jumblatt means that it would be better for the Saudi Weather Service to deal with him, for his changes in position go beyond even the weather changes in our region!
 
Therefore we say, there is no need for further clarification, now is the time to deal with Lebanon with the logic of a state, and if the Lebanese do not respond, they are the ones who will pay the price; their situation is getting progressively worse, and this will not only affect them but their neighbors, because there is no question that this fire will spread to others.

Lebanon Typifies Arab Political Poverty

By Rami G. Khouri 
This commentary was published in The Daily Star on 22/01/2011

Six Arab countries today – Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and Palestine – are engaged in intense domestic negotiations or confrontational dynamics that may determine, in some cases, whether they remain intact or devolve into new forms of decentralized sovereignty or even division into new states in the most extreme cases. A seventh country – Tunisia – is in the midst of an exciting national rebirth whose outcome may well influence other Arab societies to democratize.

The outcomes of these situations all remain unclear, and their distinct transformational mechanisms are very different. Sudan and Tunisia are the most heartening, reflecting refreshing different means of Arab nationals determining their own future. The situation in Lebanon is the most fascinating and regionally relevant, however, because it captures the best and worst of contemporary Arab politics and governance.

The government-formation crisis in Lebanon is dangerous and complex because it is made up, in reality, of six separate issues that converge rather brutally: domestic power-sharing among the 18 Lebanese political, sectarian and ethnic communities; a stand-off between caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s March 14 camp and the Hezbollah-Michel Aoun-led opposition; the incompatibility of a powerful, armed Hezbollah within and alongside a less robust Lebanese state; inter-Arab tensions pitting Saudi-led Arabs against Syrian-allied Arabs; the Syrian-Lebanese and Hezbollah-Hariri disagreements about the indictments and work of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon that will try those accused of killing the late Rafik Hariri and 22 others; and the wider confrontation between Iran and its many Middle Eastern supporters and the United States-Israel-led foes of Iran in the region and globally.

Reaching minimum agreement on all six issues is difficult, but necessary, for any progress to happen. The amazing thing about the current situation of simultaneous negotiations, probes, threats, ultimatums, offers, enticements, concessions and delaying tactics is precisely how the many different players and factors converge in this lively political dynamic that shows intermittent signs of success without actually consummating the deal.

Three important speeches in recent days by Hariri, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun clearly drew the battle lines over three of the six contentious issues: the tribunal, the next prime minister and Cabinet, and government-opposition coexistence.

In recent months, there have been intense discussions to find common ground for agreement between the Lebanese parties, above all Hariri and Hezbollah, over the tribunal. This ultimately failed, leading to ongoing disagreement over the formation of a new government. The current dynamic in Lebanon will persist for some time, and will include direct talks among various Lebanese parties, direct and indirect involvement by foreign governments in the region and beyond, and mediation by Arabs, Turks and others who will surely try their hand. 

At the same time, we have already witnessed unilateral withdrawals from the Cabinet, bringing it down, and masked men marching through Beirut’s streets, in both cases reflecting the determination of the Hezbollah-Aoun camp in particular to take unilateral steps – in the street or in political corridors – to get their way in the face of what they see as threatening acts against them.

Such behavior has triggered a strong reaction by the Hariri-led, Saudi-supported, American-prodded Hariri camp to accuse the opposition of thug-like behavior. The overwhelming military and organizational power of the Hezbollah-led opposition means there is no longer any chance of street fighting such as Lebanon and other Arab countries have witnessed many times before. The fear in Lebanon today is that political stalemate will rekindle assassinations and targeted bombings, whose main aim would be to push the country to the edge of exasperation, despondency, fear and desperation for normalcy, to the point where external mediators step in again and broker an agreement maintaining calm, without addressing the underlying issues behind the crisis in the first place.

The simultaneous use of negotiations, foreign mediation, boots on the street, media attacks, constitutional consultations with the president, and near-hysterical fears among much of the population about safety captures both the vitality and poverty of contemporary Arab political culture. This is the hard reality of the modern Arab world, at its most extreme limit where all local, regional and foreign factors are in play simultaneously. Sudan and Tunisia, in contrast, offer sharp alternatives to how political tensions can be resolved by coming to grips with their underlying causes. This seems impossible in Lebanon today because of the six fault lines that are operative simultaneously.

Political compromise agreements to keep the country calm are probably the most realistic option for now, which probably means dissociating the Lebanese government from the tribunal. But this merely kicks the can down the road to resurface another day: The core underlying problem of how Hezbollah and the sovereign Lebanese state reconcile their power and responsibilities remains unresolved, as do the issues of Iranian-Arab and inter-Arab ideological rivalries.

Will Iran Be The Dominant Power In The Middle East?

It has 'picked up' Arab causes neglected by Arabs, especially in an era when Washington's power is not being challenged

By As'ad Abdul Rahman
This commentary was published in The Gulf News on 22/01/2011

The world was, more or less, split into two camps, until sometime before the end of the 20th century; one was dominated by the Soviet Union and the other by the United States of America.
Regional conflicts were never allowed by the two giants to exceed their limit in a way that could threaten world stability and the balance of power. The two superpowers, often engaged in a cold war, used to inflame conflicts by proxy, usually by igniting limited regional wars which they eventually brought to an end.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union which made the United States the only world superpower, the balance was lost and the world entered into a phase of uncertainty undermining world security and peace. The vacuum created by the fall of the once superpower diminished accountability and punishment of any aggressive action launched by any country. The USA started taking unilateral actions which affected the world, fearing no retaliation by any superpower. Such actions encouraged other countries to do the same in order to attain dominance of power in their areas.

The world is now watching feeble attempts to fill the void created by the fall of the Soviet Union made by the European Union, China, Japan and even Russia. In the Middle East, Israel and Arab countries are separately waging a struggle, each to set an agenda in the area. But because of an enormous power imbalance between the two sides, where Israel dominates, a third party has managed to enter the political arena ‘to set its own agenda' and try to eradicate Israel's dominance, in a move that would greatly affect the prevailing status of its closest ally, the US , in the Middle East.

Israel's ambition is to maintain its dominant power in the Middle East, but has been faced in recent years with Iran's growing influence which represents a serious threat to such designs that have been sustained by the apartheid Israeli regime and colonial occupation of Palestine. Unfortunately, Arab countries are drawing deep in ‘day dreaming', not wanting to be awakened to face the bitter reality of the downfall of Arab nationalism which was once a dream and a vehicle to attain Arab unity.

Arab disunity renders them too weak to stop the Israeli agenda which aims to split Arab countries into much smaller states based on ethnicity and creed and keep them fighting among themselves.
Iran believes it can be the party making a difference in Middle East politics in the absence of unity of Arab countries that are faced with the colonial Israeli policy, adamantly insisting on ‘divine entitlement to Palestinian lands'.

Iran is not using the former Shah's approach of restoring the legacy of the Persian Empire; instead, the State is presenting itself as a ‘religious and political authority' in the region. The Iranian State is not only seeking to activate its religious Islamic base community incorporating Arab Shiites, but has also been attracting Palestinian Sunnis and other Sunnis in the Islamic world who view Israel and the US as the real enemies of Arabs and Islam.

Iraq's premier

However, many observers regard the Iranian political agenda from a different perspective — Could it be an Iranian move to become a ‘major partner' to the USA especially that Israel, its chief ally in the region, can no longer obtain its upkeep costs and has become a real burden to the West and the USA in particular? In a recent development, Tehran has managed to impose its choice as prime minister of Iraq, despite a consensus reached to elect the secular politician, Eyad Allawi. In addition, Iranian financial support to Hezbollah in Lebanon, estimated at $300 million (Dh1.1 billion) a year, with thousands of missiles and other military hardware, has checked Israeli dominance over South Lebanon.

Moreover, Tehran is financing traditional Sunni Arabs and non-Arabs. Its support to Hamas and Sunni fighters is well known and documented, regardless of Al Qaida organisation's attempts to inflame a so-called ‘Sunni/Shiite conflict'. The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was greeted in Lebanon in a way never seen since former Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser made his first visit to Syria in 1958, on the eve of its unity with Egypt. Even the United States has acknowledged that Iran has a role to play in Afghanistan in efforts to achieve a peaceful political settlement in the war-torn country. Even in Pakistan, the Iranian Islamic Republic is trying to aid and support the Shiite minority which is facing discrimination and bombings targeting their mosques. Therefore, Iran appears to be making what could be described as the ‘right' political moves accompanied by the provision of huge financial support to whoever stands in defiance of the Israeli and US agendas in the Middle East. That is exactly what is gradually earning Iran dominance of power in the area. This leaves us with the painful question: "Where is the Arab role?"

Complaining that Iran is using Palestinian and other Arab causes to achieve political gains leads to nothing. Yet, many observers see the picture thus — Iran has ‘picked up' Arab causes neglected by Arabs themselves, especially in an era when Washington's power is not being challenged, and ‘filled a gap' with arms and money, though plentiful in the Arab world, and ‘ran' with it to win the race in the Middle East. We have now only ourselves to blame.

Professor As'ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia

Obama Must Call Israeli Settlements Illegal

US support for a UN resolution on the settlements would remind Netanyahu that there are consequences for breaking the law

By Ian Williams
This commentary was published in The Guardian on 21/01/2011

"To veto or not to veto?" That is the agonising question that has President Barack Obama pacing the battlements of the White House waiting to dodge the slings and arrows of outraged Aipac. Provoked by the latest demolition in East Jerusalem, no fewer than 120 countries have sponsored a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity. Hillary Clinton has also condemned it as "illegitimate", but the resolution introduces precision by terming the settlements as "illegal".

In a country where "all politics is local", and in the face of the economic crisis, Obama could almost be forgiven for dropping the ball in the Middle East game. But his response to the current resolution could well determine whether there is any wind left in the sails of the peace flotilla he launched with his speeches in Egypt and Turkey directed at the Muslim world.

Every other member of the UN security council agrees that settlements are illegal, including Britain and France. The international court of justice has affirmed their illegality. The US once called them illegal, then termed them unhelpful, and currently regards them as "unhelpful" and "illegitimate". Under the road map of 2003, Israel agreed to stop them, but it has ignored the rest of the world and its best friend, the US, and continued to build. Even President Bill Clinton officially reduced the amount of US loan guarantees by the sum spent on settlements.

In the face of Binyamin Netanyahu's defiance, so far the US response, engineered by Dennis Ross – who seems to have frozen out the official peace negotiator, George Mitchell – has been to attempt to bribe Israel with billions of dollars, free jet fighters and a free "get out of the security council" card in the form of a veto. The handsome offer was for a temporary moratorium.

Washington's line is to ignore UN decisions and international law and say that it is up to the parties to negotiate such "permanent-status issues". The state department itself is clearer on the issues. After years of congressional votes, it still balks at moving the US embassy to Jerusalem (which hosts not a single foreign embassy) because, regardless of eventual negotiations, Israel does not have internationally recognised title to the city.

It is as if you have caught someone stealing your car and the police decide to overlook technical issues like the law and ownership and instead tell you to negotiate with the thief to get occasional access to the back seat.

In this week's security council debate on the resolution, deputy US ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo used theological nicety to explain Washington's difficulty in supporting a resolution that, on the face of it, reflects US official policy. "We believe that continued settlement expansion is corrosive – not only to peace efforts and the two-state solution – but to Israel's future itself. The fate of existing settlements is an issue that must be dealt with by the parties, along with the other permanent-status issues – but, like every US administration for decades, we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity."

However, she added: "Permanent-status issues can be resolved only through negotiations between the parties – and not by recourse to the security council. We therefore consistently oppose attempts to take these issues to this council and will continue to do so."

The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, is usually tactfully absent during such debates, keeping her credibility by allowing deputies to intone the weaselly formulas that disguise the stark truth. Annexation and settlement building are illegal.

Of course, Obama has other problems, such as the economy and healthcare, and on the Middle East must face not only a rabidly pro-Israeli Republican party but also a majority of his own party that would sign up to a resolution declaring the moon to be made of blue cheese if the Israeli lobby demanded it.

Nonetheless, his credibility as president is at stake here. The Republicans do control the House of Representatives, and indeed the chair of the foreign affairs committee is now Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who outflanks the Israeli government on the right. (She has been trying to de-fund UNRWA, the UN's agency that provides basic services in the occupied territories, even though the Israeli government, which would have to pay if the UN didn't, opposes her.) But Congress cannot control the US delegation to the UN.

It is surely time for Obama "to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them". This week, a letter landed on the White House doormat from a phalanx of foreign policy and government professionals urging him to support the resolution. He should take their advice.

The public exasperation implied by support for the security council resolution sends a signal to Netanyahu that there are indeed consequences for ignoring the advice of your best friend, let alone breaking the law. It might make the Israeli prime minister more amenable, and it would certainly send a signal to the Israeli electorate that Netanyahu had terminally alienated the White House.

It would not alienate the American electorate, not even American Jews. Those who support Netanyahu tend to be those who think the president is a foreign-born crypto-Muslim anyway. It would bring cheer to the J-Street movement, whose peacenik views more closely reflect those of most American Jews than Likud does.

And it would do more than any other single act to demonstrate respect for international law and restore the credibility of American diplomacy.

Indeed, Obama could follow up and demand the IRS check on the tax deductibility of American "charities" and foundations that bankroll settlement building, including Irving Moskowitz, who recycles the proceeds of inner-city gambling in the US to buy and demolish property in East Jerusalem, such as the Shepherd Hotel, with the conscious aim of frustrating the declared policy of every US government since 1967. Some of the money, however, he sends as donations to politicians like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

The Persian Gulf Gap

The Persian Gulf War was fought to liberate Kuwait; The Iraq War to overturn Saddam Hussein's government.

By John Diamond
This commentary was published in the Los Angeles Times on 21/01/2011

Twenty years ago this week, despite fears of "another Vietnam," the House and Senate voted to authorize the use of force against Iraqi troops occupying Kuwait.

After days of impassioned debate, the House supported President George H.W. Bush's policy by a comfortable margin. The Senate's 52-47 vote was the closest margin for war by a chamber of Congress in U.S. history.

The anniversary of the Persian Gulf War, a watershed event in modern American history, has gone almost entirely unnoticed. This oversight is perplexing given the presence of about 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq today and the countless connections between the swift liberation of Kuwait in 1991 and the protracted occupation of Iraq, now winding down after eight painful years.

The relationship between the two conflicts, however, is not as simple as it may appear.

Many, including some of the architects of the Iraq war, saw the 2003 invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein as the long-overdue completion of a mission left unfinished in 1991. This interpretation not only overlooks the clearly stated goals of the Persian Gulf War but also the almost diametrically opposed principles underlying the two conflicts.

In 1991, the elder President Bush responded to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait by saying simply, "This will not stand." A large, powerful nation should not be allowed to resolve an international dispute by invading and occupying a weaker nation.

In the Iraq war, President George W. Bush said, in effect, that in certain circumstances, powerful nations can invade and occupy weaker nations. In effect, the United States was proposing to do to Iraq in 2003 what Iraq had done to Kuwait in 1990 — namely, attempt to resolve long-festering disputes by means of invasion, removal of the government and occupation.

But there are connections as well as distinctions between the Persian Gulf War and the conflicts that occupy us today.

U.S. ground troops left Iraq after the Persian Gulf War, but they remained in the region, most significantly in Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest sites in Islam. In 1998, when Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden directed an attack on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, he chose a symbolic date: Aug. 7, the day in 1990 when the first U.S. forces started flowing into Saudi Arabia in response to the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait.

The coalition's swift victory in the Persian Gulf War, coming as it did in the final months of the Soviet Union's existence, cemented a belief that no army could stand up to the modern U.S. war machine. It was that conclusion that drove U.S. adversaries to develop tactics that favored hit-and-run strikes over direct confrontation.

Al Qaeda put the concept of asymmetrical war into practice with a series of increasingly spectacular terrorist attacks. Iraq's Hussein, facing an imminent U.S.-led invasion, made plans for a protracted guerrilla war — one that, as it turned out, far outlasted his regime.

The U.S. intelligence community made three key misjudgments concerning the Persian Gulf War that would have long-term consequences.

First, until the very last moment, when the meaning of Iraqi troop movements became unmistakable, the CIA assumed that Iraqi threats against Kuwait were merely an intimidation campaign. Hussein's forces, the CIA judged, were too exhausted from their decade-long war with Iran to launch another major conflict.

Second, the CIA warned members of Congress that the U.S.-led coalition could suffer heavy casualties in the fight to liberate Kuwait. When coalition casualties turned out to be mercifully low, some Democrats who had opposed the authorization complained that the CIA had fed them faulty, worst-case analysis.

Third, after the war, U.S. intelligence was stunned to learn that Iraq was much further along in developing nuclear weapons than estimated.

A dozen years later, as Congress debated another war against Iraq, U.S. intelligence essentially reversed those three estimates. It portrayed Iraq as a determined aggressor, predicted light casualties for U.S. forces and warned that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

In the fall of 2002, memory of the swift and popular victory in 1991 contributed to the overwhelming vote in Congress authorizing the use of force against Iraq.

As it turned out, of course, Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. What it did have was an almost unlimited supply of conventional explosives, the building blocks of deadly roadside bombs. The frightening casualties predicted but not realized in the Persian Gulf War were exceeded in the Iraq war.

The Persian Gulf War liberated a small country from a brutal occupation. It restored America's confidence in its military. And it upheld the fundamental principle that international aggression should meet with international opposition. But its longer-term legacy is deeply mixed.

It spawned a library of histories and memoirs published in the aftermath of the coalition's victory. Two decades later, with U.S. forces still deeply embedded in Iraq, and with Islamic enemies determined to force the United States out of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf War is ripe for another look.
John Diamond is the author of "The CIA and the Culture of Failure: U.S. Intelligence From the End of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq."

The United States And The Prospects For Democracy In Islamic Countries

By Stephen Zunes

This commentary was published in Foreign Policy In Focus on 21/01/2011

The unarmed insurrection that overthrew the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia has opened up debate regarding prospects for democratization in Arab and other predominately Muslim countries.  Many in the West are familiar with the way unarmed pro-democracy insurrections have helped bring democracy to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia and Africa. But they discount the chances of such movements in Islamic countries, despite Tunisia being far from the first. Meanwhile, the United States -- despite giving lip service in support for democracy – continues to actively support authoritarian governments in Islamic countries.

Obama was correctly cautious about offering more overt support for the 2009 pro-democracy uprising in Iran, recognizing that his advocacy could set back the more critical issue of curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He was also aware that the history of U.S. intervention, explicit threats of “regime change” by the previous administration, and the U.S. invasion of two neighboring countries in the name of democracy had resulted in such strong anti-Americanism in Iran that the regime could use such support to discredit the pro-democracy movement.

Continuing Bush

Obama’s continuation of the Bush administration’s policy of arming and training security forces in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, and other dictatorial regimes in the region is much harder to defend.

The Obama administration, in rejecting the dangerous neoconservative ideology of its predecessor, has fallen back onto the realpolitik of previous administrations by continuing to support repressive regimes through unconditional arms transfers and other security assistance. Indeed, President Barack Obama's understandable skepticism of externally mandated, top-down approaches to democratization through "regime change" is no excuse for his policy of further arming these regimes, which then use these instruments of repression to subjugate popular indigenous bottom-up struggles for democratization. (Ironically, this authoritarianism is then used to justify the large-scale, unconditional support of Israel  on the grounds that it's “the sole democracy in the Middle East.”)

Bush’s high-profile and highly suspect “democracy promotion” agenda provided repressive regimes and their apologists an excuse to label any popular pro-democracy movement that challenges them as foreign agents, even when led by independent grassroots nonviolent activists. It is presumably no coincidence that the only autocratic regimes that the Bush administration seriously pressed for reform were those that traditionally opposed American hegemonic goals. Bush called for spreading democracy “from Damascus to Teheran.” Yet, while Syria and Iran could certainly use more democracy, it is striking he did not similarly call for spreading democracy from Riyadh to Cairo. In many respects, Bush did for the cause of democracy what Stalin did for the cause of socialism: he used an idealistic principle to justify war, repression, and hegemony. 

Furthermore, in recent years the United States has promoted “economic freedom” – a neo-liberal capitalist economic model that emphasizes open markets and free trade – as at least as important as political freedom. It is noteworthy that, according to 2007 figures, the largest single recipient of funding from the National Endowment for Democracy for the Middle East was the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).  Even during the height of U.S. assistance to Egypt and Algeria, the two most populous Arab countries, CIPE received three times as much NED funding as all human rights, development, legal, and civil society organizations combined.  While liberalizing the economy from stifling state control can sometimes encourage political liberalization, the more extreme neo-liberal model of the so-called “Washington consensus” has tended to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of elites, particularly under authoritarian regimes, where the result is often crony capitalism rather than a truly free market, which weakens civil society rather than strengthens it.

The use of democracy as a disingenuous means of promoting U.S. hegemony was apparent in the way the Bush administration largely focused its attention on autocratic governments that opposed U.S. interests in the region. It criticized the human rights record of such countries as Syria and Iran and drew attention to the plight of certain suppressed minorities, dissident organizations, and individuals, while ignoring similar or worse abuses by pro-Western dictatorships. Even worse, at the request of the Bush administration in October 2002, a large bipartisan majority of the U.S. Congress supported the Iraq War resolution, asserting the right of the United States to invade Middle Eastern countries on the grounds of “promoting democracy.”

In a report released in 2008, polls showed that while the majority of Middle Easterners supported greater democracy in their countries, there was a decidedly negative attitude toward the stated goal of the Bush administration for “democracy promotion.” Only 19 percent thought such efforts had a positive effect on their overall opinion of the United States while 58 percent stating it had a negative effect.  Another revealing poll indicated that although two-thirds of Americans surveyed believed Muslim nations cannot be democratic, an even larger majority of Muslims in predominantly Muslim countries believe they can and should.

To Obama's credit, there is now a subtle but important shift in the U.S. government's discourse on human rights. The Bush administration pushed a rather superficial structuralist view. It focused, for instance, on elections – which can easily be rigged and manipulated in many cases – in order to change certain governments for purposes of expanding U.S. power and influence. Obama has taken more of an agency view of human rights, emphasizing such rights as freedom of expression and the right to protest. This administration recognizes that human rights reform can only come from below and not imposed from above. Although this has largely been rhetorical and has not altered Washington's propensity to provide security assistance to repressive regimes, it is this very right of protest that is key to the promotion of democracy in Islamic countries.

How Change Occurs

Throughout the world, in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries, in recent years there has been a dramatic growth of the use of strategic nonviolent action. In contrast to armed struggles, these nonviolent insurrections are movements of organized popular resistance to government authority. Either consciously or by necessity, they eschew the use of weapons of modern warfare. Unlike conventional political movements, nonviolent campaigns usually employ tactics outside the mainstream political processes of electioneering and lobbying. These tactics may include strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, the popular contestation of public space, tax refusal, destruction of symbols of government authority (such as official identification cards), refusal to obey official orders (such as curfew restrictions), and the creation of alternative institutions for political legitimacy and social organization.

Freedom House recently produced a study that, after examining the 67 transitions from authoritarian regimes to varying degrees of democratic governments over the past few decades, concluded that they came overwhelmingly through democratic civil society organizations using nonviolent action and other forms of civil resistance. Such transitions did not result from foreign invasion and came about only rarely through armed revolt or voluntary, elite-driven reforms. In another study on civil resistance of more than 300 struggles for self-determination against colonialism, military occupation, and colonial rule over the past century, Maria Stephan and Erica Chenowith noted that nonviolent struggles were more than twice as likely to succeed as armed struggles.

Islamic countries have experienced this phenomenon at least as often as any place else in the world. In Iran, the tobacco strike in the 1890s and the constitutional revolution in 1906 were both cases of mass nonviolent resistance against neo-colonialism and authoritarian rule. In Egypt, the 1919 Revolution, consisting of many months of civil disobedience and strikes, eventually led to independence from Britain.

In addition to the recent uprising in Tunisia, there have been other recent successful unarmed insurrections in the Islamic world. Civil insurrections in Sudan in 1964 and 1985 overthrew dictatorial regimes and led to brief periods of democratic governance. A popular nonviolent uprising toppled Mali’s repressive Traore regime in 1991, resulting in nearly 20 years of stable democracy in that West African country.

In Iran, the largely unarmed insurrection against the Shah toppled the monarchy in 1979 and brought a brief hope for freedom prior to hard-line Islamists consolidating their power; the aborted 2009 uprising may mark the beginning of a more complete democratic revolution. Strikes and other forms of mass resistance forced the resignation of Bangladesh’s General Ershad and the restoration of democracy in 1990. A student-led movement in 1998 forced the resignation of Suharto, one of the world’s most brutal dictators, after 33 years in power in Indonesia.

In Lebanon, the 2004 Cedar Revolution forced Syria to withdraw its troops and end its domination of Lebanese government. The largely nonviolent 2006 Tulip Revolution ousted Kyrgystan’s corrupt and autocratic regime of Askar Akeyev. Years of protests against the 30-year Gayoum dictatorship regime led to free elections in the Maldives in 2008, resulting in the autocrat's defeat. And in Pakistan, a movement led by lawyers and other civil society organizations resulted in the resignation of U.S.-backed military ruler Pervez Musharraf in 2009.

There are also ongoing nonviolent popular struggles against foreign military occupation, including the Palestinians in the West Bank, the Syrian Druze in the Golan Heights, and the Sahrawis in Western Sahara. In addition to those that took place in Iran, nonviolent struggles have sporadically challenged autocratic regimes in Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Niger, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere.

Despite Western stereotypes to the contrary, Islamic countries have been at least as prone to large-scale nonviolent struggles as other societies.  One of the great strengths in Islamic cultures, which make unarmed insurrections possible, is the implied social contract between a ruler and subject. Prophet Muhammad's successor, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, stated this explicitly: "Obey me as long as I obey God in my rule.  If I disobey him, you will owe me no obedience." Such a pledge was reiterated by successive caliphs, including Imam Ali, who said, "No obedience is allowed to any creature in his disobedience of the Creator." Indeed, most Islamic scholars have firmly supported the right of the people to depose an unjust ruler. The decision to refuse cooperation is a crucial step in building a nonviolent movement.  Massive noncooperation with illegitimate authority is critical for any successful pro-democracy struggle.

The Role of the United States

What can the United States and other Western nations do to help this process? External support for nonviolent struggles in the Middle East can be a double-edged sword. Most struggles against a repressive regime would normally welcome international solidarity. But if the outside support is seen as coming from forces that don't hold the best interest of the country’s people in mind, it can harm the chances of such a movement succeeding in its goals. At the same time, external actors have played an important role in supporting nonviolent struggles in the past. And thanks to enhanced international mobility and communication, such actors will likely play an increasingly important role in the future.

Aid for democracy assistance should be done very carefully to avoid backlash. Such aid worked in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, where the United States was seen as an ally to democracy. In most Islamic countries, however, the United States has been seen as an ally to dictatorship and foreign military occupation. So if Washington embraced oppositions groups too warmly, this could work against the public acceptance of these groups. At the same time, given the serious challenges facing pro-democracy groups struggling against the powerful autocratic regimes in the region, many activists will likely continue to look to the United States and other Western powers for, at minimum, moral and diplomatic support  The United States can apply diplomatic pressure to free political prisoners, promote the right to free assembly, and support other means of creating the political space for nonviolent pro-democracy movements to grow. Western leaders who avoid messianic and self-righteous rhetoric when talking about democracy, pursue policies that neither practice nor condone violations of international humanitarian law, and directly communicate with and respect the wishes of nonviolent activists struggling against their autocratic rulers could help to rectify the historically counter-productive policies that have for so long hurt the cause of democracy in the region.     

But it's not clear that the United States even wants greater democracy in the Islamic world. For example, regarding Tunisia, the U.S. government was silent during the first weeks of protests despite savage repression by the government. Less than a week after the uprising began, Congress voted for an addition $12 million in security assistance to Ben Ali’s regime. Tear gas canisters lobbed at pro-democracy demonstrators were inscribed with the words “Made in USA,” a reminder of whose side Washington was on in the struggle against the dictatorship. By early January, the State Department began issuing mild criticism of the Ben Ali regime for firing live ammunition into crowds of demonstrators but was equally willing to blame the pro-democracy activists. While the movement was largely nonviolent, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley chose to characterize it by its most unruly components. He stated that the Obama administration was "concerned about government actions, but we're also concerned about actions by the demonstrators, those who do not have peaceful intentions." 

On January 18, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed her concern over the impact of the "unrest and instability" on the "very positive aspects of our relationship with Tunisia." She insisted that the United States was "not taking sides" and that she would "wait and see" before even communicating directly with Ben Ali or his ministers.  (One can only imagine the reaction if she had similarly insisted the United States was “not taking sides” in the face of the similar recent pro-democracy uprising in Iran and Burma or if previous secretaries of state had expressed such neutrality regarding pro-democracy struggles in Serbia, Poland, and other Eastern European countries.)

Three days later, as Ben Ali was fleeing the country, President Obama came forward with the most pointed declaration in support of democracy in the Islamic world since he became president. He condemned the regime’s violence and applauded “the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people. The United States stands with the entire international community in bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle for the universal rights that we must all uphold, and we will long remember the images of the Tunisian people seeking to make their voices heard.” He further called on the Tunisian government “to respect human rights, and to hold free and fair elections in the near future that reflect the true will and aspirations of the Tunisian people.”

There has long been a sense of fatalism in the Arab world that they are simply passive victims of outside forces. Although it is easy to dismiss Obama’s comments as simply a last-minute show of support to the winning side, this shift indicates the significance of what happened in Tunisia: rather than Washington controlling the course of events influencing the Arab street, the Arab street is influencing policies emanating from Washington.

Indeed, at the point where a movement embarks upon a strategy of large-scale nonviolent action, there is little foreign governments can do to help or hinder its chances of success, other than pressure the regime to limit its repression. Large bureaucratic governments accustomed to projecting political power through military force or elite diplomatic channels tend to have little understanding of, or appreciation for, nonviolent action or any other kind of mass popular struggle or the complex, internal political dynamics of a given country necessary to create the broad coalition capable of ousting the incumbent authoritarian government.

Unlike changes of regime historically promoted by foreign governments during the colonial and much of the post-colonial period, which have tended to be violent seizures of power that install an undemocratic minority, nonviolent “people power” movements make change through empowering pro-democratic majorities. This serves as yet another reason why the Iranian regime’s claims that the United States is somehow responsible for the Green Revolution are so ludicrous. Every successful nonviolent insurrection has been a homegrown movement rooted in the realization by the masses that their rulers were illegitimate and that the current political system was incapable of redressing injustice.

As a result, the best hope for advancing freedom and democracy in Islamic countries comes from civil society rather than from foreign governments. The latter deserve neither credit nor blame for the growing use of nonviolent resistance movements in Islamic countries. As the Tunisian uprising demonstrated, the best hope for freedom in the Islamic world comes not from sanctimonious lecturing from Washington and certainly not from foreign intervention--but from the people themselves.

Stephen Zunes, a Foreign Policy In Focus senior analyst, is a professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco.  Part of this article was excerpted from a speech given by Professor Zunes at the 11^th annual conference of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Islam, Washington, DC, on April 28, 2010.

The Post-Tunisia World

Last week's upheaval showed that citizens of the Arab world are willing and able to overthrow their dictators -- and the Obama administration has to figure out how it will respond when they do.

By James Traub
This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 21/01/2011

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks prompted a radical rethinking inside the administration of President George W. Bush about the purposes of American foreign policy -- above all in the Middle East. "Realism died on 9/11," as an administration official said to me several years later. Changing the insides of states had become a matter of national security no less urgent than affecting their external behavior. Bush, previously a hardheaded realist, became an ardent proponent of democracy promotion.

But the problem -- or at least the biggest problem -- was that while the terrorist attacks had changed the United States, they hadn't changed the place where the United States hoped to act. Terrorism had made democratic reform more urgent without making it a whit more likely. Autocratic leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere regarded the president's new preoccupation as a mere irritant.

Now, suddenly, unexpectedly, it's that world, not the United States, that's changing. The Tunisian people have taken to the streets and ousted a tyrant, just as the people in the Philippines, Chile, Romania, and Georgia once did. And that spectacle has inspired young people and activists across the region. The Tunisian drama may end badly, of course: Protests elsewhere may simmer down, and in any case the conditions that produced this one revolutionary upheaval may turn out to be sui generis. But Arab regimes are shakier today, and their critics more emboldened, than they were before. And Barack Obama, like Bush before him, must adapt to a Middle East different from the one he inherited. 

A region that has felt paralyzed by autocratic rule is now in motion. Leaders are backpedaling: The emir of Kuwait abruptly announced that he would distribute $4 billion in cash and free food to citizens. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt issued a call for investment in Arab youth. You can almost smell the fear in the likes of Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egypt's foreign minister, who informed the country's official press agency that "the talk about the spread of what happened in Tunisia to other countries is nonsense."

Egypt, where the increasingly frail and profoundly unpopular Mubarak, age 82, seems prepared to run for president once again this year, looks especially vulnerable. At least three desperate protesters there have set themselves on fire in imitation of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor whose self-immolation sparked the uprising in Tunisia. The bombing of a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria on New Year's Day, which killed 21, has exposed frightening new divisions in the country. And Egyptian leaders are angrily pushing back against outside criticism. Aboul Gheit called on a group of Arab foreign ministers meeting in the resort town of Sharm-el-Sheikh this week to adopt a resolution telling the West: "Do not dare interfere in our affairs." 

Aboul Gheit was reacting not only to criticism following the New Year's Day bombing, but to a speech his American counterpart, Hillary Clinton, had just delivered in Doha on January 13, warning that people in many parts of the Arab world "have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order" and imploring states to demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law and the inclusion of civil society. One way of framing the choices facing Obama: Should he now be more willing, or less, to risk infuriating autocratic allies through public criticism?

Until now, U.S. officials, above all Clinton, have almost always chosen circumspection. And they've had at least a plausible rationale: Bush took a different approach and failed. In 2005, both Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publicly criticized Mubarak's regime and demanded that it hold free and fair elections. Mubarak first gave ground, and then cracked down on the opposition; the White House, fearful of offending a key ally and worried about the growing popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood, held its tongue. Obama discarded Bush's crusading moralism in favor of "engagement," which dictated a more respectful stance toward regimes.

Clinton has been the administration's most single-minded practitioner of engagement. When she emerged from a meeting with Aboul Gheit in Washington last November to brief the press, she decided to omit one subject they had discussed -- human rights in Egypt. According to two Middle East experts, Aboul Gheit had been so offended by her private remarks that she decided to say nothing in public, though aides had included such remarks in her prepared text. (A State Department official would neither confirm nor deny the account.) Clinton has rarely criticized autocratic allies in public. Although Bahrain, home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, has recently jailed political opponents and shut down human rights organizations, Clinton has remained silent on the subject -- as has the White House -- and she did not allude to this unpleasantness in the speech she gave in the Persian Gulf kingdom last month.

The truth is that, just as Bush's bluster didn't relax the iron grip of Arab regimes, neither has Obama's policy of engagement. The president asked Mubarak to lift Egypt's state of emergency and permit international observers to monitor the recent parliamentary election; Mubarak stiffed him on both counts. Taking engagement seriously has had the effect of demonstrating its limits as well as its virtues. It's time to try something else -- or something more.

Is the Doha speech, then, a sign of new thinking? Tamara Cofman Wittes, the State Department's lead official for Middle East democracy promotion, insists that it's not. "We've been watching these trends in the region for quite some time," she says. But Clinton's language was in fact a sharp departure from the past, and my understanding is that the administration has been conducting a broad reassessment of human rights and democracy promotion policy in recent months, though not specifically with regard to the Middle East. Obama himself seems more willing to use the kind of moral vocabulary he once regarded with skepticism: Witness his public welcome to Chinese President Hu Jintao, which included a call for China to accept universal standards of human rights. Obama also made a point of meeting with five Chinese human rights activists and scholars the week before Hu's arrival.  

China, of course, will not give much more than lip service to American calls for reform. But the lesson of Tunisia is that even in the Middle East, public fury can demolish apparently stable regimes -- and do so in a moment. Some regimes, especially in the Persian Gulf, will be able to continue bribing restive citizens into submission; some may even retain legitimacy through good governance and economic mobility. But others will try to stare down their domestic and foreign critics as internal pressures rise higher and higher. What then? 

The answer that some administration officials give -- and this does, in fact, represent a new strain of thinking -- is that they have begun to look beyond regimes in order to strengthen the hand of other actors. In this sense, Clinton's swing through the Arab world, which included meetings with local human rights and democracy activists, was itself the message, as much as the speech itself: The administration has increasingly come to see the funding and public encouraging of civil society organizations as a "second track" of engagement in repressive regimes. I was told, in fact, that the harsh criticisms of regimes that Clinton heard in these sessions found their way into her speech.

This is all to the good. But how will the administration respond when regimes jail those activists or shut down their organizations? With silence, as in Bahrain? With private entreaties and public tact, as in Egypt? Or has the logic of engagement finally exhausted itself? Betting that Arab autocrats will stay in power and preserve American interests looks riskier than ever. How will the White House react if public outrage threatens Algiers, or Cairo? The time to start thinking about this question is now.

James Traub is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of, most recently, The Freedom Agenda. "Terms of Engagement," his column for ForeignPolicy.com, runs weekly.