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ISSUES
Concerns Mount Over Russia's Democratic Deterioration
. . . But Political Regression Continues
"Authoritarian Internationale" Leads Anti-Democratic Backlash
Belarus: Good Performance, Bad Result
Syria's Democrats Resist "Regime Change" Approach
. . . As Opposition Differs on Pace of Change, Foreign Assistance
Democracy a Factor in War of Ideas, Not Clash of Civilizations
Ending Arab World's "Crippling Exceptionalism" -- a Generational Task
Democracy and Security -- a Delicate Balance
Resilient Regimes, But Arab Democrats Punch Above Their Weight
Concerns Mount over Russia's Democratic Deterioration
Pressure is growing for the advanced democracies to use the occasion of the forthcoming St. Petersburg G8 Summit to voice their opposition to the Kremlin's growing authoritarianism. Various civil society events are planned to express solidarity with Russia's beleaguered democrats and to allow the divided internal opposition to establish some unity of purpose.
President Vladimir Putin's chairmanship of the G8 has been marked by growing criticism of Moscow's anti-democratic and anti-western tendencies.
Russia's deterioration presents a major challenge given that “no other nation has regressed from openness to authoritarianism …. as dramatically and decisively.” The Bush Administration's new National Security Strategy states that Moscow has an "uneven commitment to the basic values of free-market democracy," demonstrating the need to encourage innovative Russian thinking and new opportunities for cooperation. But the Kremlin's strident response to this muted criticism accuses the US of “using populist slogans in its own interests." "No one has, or can have, a monopoly on the interpretation of democracy," said a Foreign Ministry statement, asserting that “each state must follow its own path toward democracy."
Putin's G8 presidency has already been a public relations disaster, says a London-based think-tank, citing the Kremlin crackdown on NGOs and its efforts to cut off energy supplies to Georgia and Ukraine. The country is neither politically nor economically free, rendering its G8 presidency “anomalous,” argues Russia in the Spotlight: a G8 Scorecard. Moscow violates the principles of the 1975 founding Rambouillet declaration of the then G6, the Foreign Policy Centre report notes, recommending that the advanced democracies develop a coherent strategy to force Russia to face up to its international obligations.
Such sentiments are echoed by a Council on Foreign Relations task force which asserts that Russia has moved away from democracy and needs to stabilize its rule of law before being accepted as a legitimate member of the G8. "Cooperation is becoming the exception, not the norm" in US-Russian relations says the report. "What we're doing is trying to promote democracy," said John Edwards, co-chair of the task force, and former senator and vice presidential candidate.
The G7 should convene a meeting without Russia to send a “strong signal that we can expand the agenda without Putin," said co-chair and former congressman Jack Kemp. "Early and explicit discussion is far preferable to harsh but meaningless critiques on election day and the morning after," the report says. The US should "consistently and forcefully" address Russia's authoritarian trend. Current electoral practices -- denying registration to opposition candidates and restricting access to broadcast media -- pose "a very real risk that Russia's leadership after 2008 will be seen, externally and internally, as illegitimate.” Organizations like the Levada Center need increased funds and technical assistance to provide professional exit polls.
"There are European concerns here too," says Stephen Sestanovich, the task force director and a CFR fellow for Russia and Eurasia. "We're in a new era because of the change of direction in Russia's democratization." German chancellor Angela Merkel met with activists from the Moscow Helsinki Group, Soldiers' Mothers Committee and Memorial, amongst others, on her first trip to Moscow, signaling a shift in German foreign policy. "Under Schroeder, Russia dominated German diplomacy at the expense of the trans-Atlantic relationship,” said one expert. “Merkel wants to rescue the trans-Atlantic relationship by bringing Germany back into the Western picture." On the other hand, a united G8 front is likely to be complicated by a traditionally Russophile France which “continues to view Putin's Russia favorably, a stance that, as the gas conflict proves, is out of touch with reality.”
The advanced democracies' failure to protest Russia's democratic deterioration has emboldened Putin, who reportedly boasted on his return from last year's G8 Gleneagles Summit that not a single leader raised the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky (the Russian prosecutor promptly opened a criminal investigation into Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister and likely liberal opposition candidate in the 2008 presidential elections).
. . . as Political Regression Continues
With Russia already lacking three of the fundamental requirements of democracy, the country's democrats and their supporters fear that liberties will be further threatened the day after the G8 summit when draconian new anti-NGO measures will likely be put into effect. The NGO law, even as amended following extensive protests, requires foreign and – at least de facto - domestic NGOs to re-register with a state agency that will examine their activities before determining whether they can continue operations.
Although the new law does not take effect until April, the likely impact can be gauged from the Kremlin's recent actions. The authorities recently froze the assets of the Russian PEN Center after accusing the writers' advocacy group of failing to pay $80,000 in taxes on Moscow land that the group does not even own. The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, a NED grantee, has seen its volunteers kidnapped, tortured and four of them killed. In February 2006, Stanislav Dmitrievsky, the society's director was convicted of inciting ethnic hatred and sentenced to four years of probation for publishing the comments of Chechen leaders.
Under the new law, the Federal Registration Service can invoke threats to the "constitutional order" to justify ending funding for certain activities. Government officials gain unprecedented discretion for deeming programs or projects detrimental to Russia's national interests. Registration officials are empowered to close the offices of any foreign NGO undertaking programs that do not have the objective of "defending the constitutional system, morals, public health, rights and lawful interest of other people, [or] guaranteeing the defense capacity and security of the state." The registration authority is awarded discretionary power to audit the activities and finances of non-commercial organizations, request documents, and to attend any of the meetings, including internal strategy or policy discussions.
"The institutions of civil society in normal contemporary democracies control bureaucratic structures in order to reduce the level of corruption, to monitor and stop human rights violations on the part of bureaucracies," human rights veteran Lyudmila Alexeyeva contends. "But this law turns all of that upside down." Yuri Dzhibladze, president of the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights, called the anti-NGO measure a reflection of an obsession with Ukraine's 2004 electoral revolution, the Kremlin's "orange paranoia."
The Kremlin also finalized appointments to a new Public Chamber, an official citizens advisory group. "Now they'll say that the public chamber is the expression of civil society and all the rest of us are marginal," said Alexeyeva.
Some Western apologists for Putin have tried to justify his authoritarianism, echoing the judgment of Sergei Markov, a Kremlin insider, that “Russia has as much democracy as it can have at this stage of its development.” Its defenders describe Russia's current system as "sovereign democracy," a term that evokes Soviet claims that the communist state was a form of “popular” or “advanced” democracy, as opposed to a “liberal, bourgeois” version.
But “it is one thing to work in a country that is partly free," says former Putin aide Andrei Illarionov. "It is another thing when the political system has changed and the country has stopped being free and democratic." Russia is now more akin to a privately held company, says Illarionov, with greater similarities to Iran or Venezuela than the “tumultuous but hopeful” country of six years ago.
Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, who heads the United Civil Front, has called on Russian opposition groups to form a coalition and submit a single candidate for the 2008 presidential elections. Kasparov has been scathing about the Kremlin's anti-Western rhetoric. “Our ruling bureaucracy is greatly tempted to isolate Russia from the West,” he observes, “even though these 'patriots' keep their own money in Western banks."
Others are concerned that the domestic opposition remains too fragmented. The Moscow election of December 2005, says one observer, confirmed that the democrats' future electoral success requires them to “develop constructive, realistic alternatives to the policies of the current officeholders; widen and strengthen regional networks; and relentlessly communicate its message to a seemingly uninterested electorate in comprehensible language.”
“All revolutions, in the end, turn from euphoria to disillusion,” notes Vaclav Havel and democratic transformations are no different. Older generations in particular tend to “see freedom as a burden, because it entailed continuous decision-making,” he says. The Putin regime has expertly manipulated popular sentiment and exploited social customs like krugovaia poruka, or joint responsibility. Many Russians have been led to identify democracy and the rule of law with an insecure and troubled existence.
"Authoritarian Internationale" Leads Anti-Democratic Backlash
Putin is not only a non-democrat at home, but an active anti-democrat abroad, threatening to raise gas prices for Ukraine's democrats and cut them for Belarus's dictator, embracing Uzbekistan after the Andijon massacre, and orchestrating fake phony elections in war-torn Chechnya.
Russia is only one of several regimes alarmed by the “color revolutions” in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and, arguably, Kyrgyzstan, and alerted to the fragility of their hybrid, quasi-democratic rule. “Ukraine's Orange Revolution was Russia's 9/11,” argues Ivan Krastev of Bulgaria's Centre for Liberal Strategies. The scenario of popular protests, mobilized through civil society and opposition groups, pressuring ruling elites to surrender power, prompted a re-assessment of strategies and “political technologies” required to maintain authoritarian rule.
The color revolutions are invoked and exploited by repressive regimes to portray democracy assistance as “regime change by stealth” and to justify clamping down on allegedly subversive activities. “In our country, there will be no pink or orange, or even banana revolution,” President Alexander Lukashenka of Belarus commented. Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev justified proposed restrictions on NGO activity by citing, "the dangers that arose in neighboring countries when foreign NGOs insolently pumped in money and destabilized society.”
Democracy promotion groups are increasingly confronting new agencies, largely associated with authoritarian “petro-states,” committed to undermining, countering and reversing liberal democracy. “As they become more powerful economically,” notes Igor Torbakov, “the undemocratic countries blessed with hydrocarbons seek to enhance their geopolitical clout.” This almost amounts to a rival “democracy retardation” movement, incorporating ersatz democracy promotion groups (as in Russia where the Duma allocated $17 million for “civil society groups”), increased funding for radical Islamist groups from Saudi/Wahabbi, Iranian, and related sources, and reported Venezuelan financing of radical populist or “Bolivarian” parties across Latin America.
Authoritarian regimes claim that democracy promotion is being used by the advanced democracies to secure traditional foreign policy interests. As a leading State Department official noted recently upon returning from Moscow, Russian officials are convinced that the “US government or the West directs the activities of NGOs in order to weaken Russia, or in order to advance, as one Russian said, 'your own geopolitical games in our neighborhood.'”
The offensive against democratization, and particularly against forms of internationally-funded democracy assistance, predates the color revolutions. But Ukraine's Orange Revolution clearly accentuated existing trends and prompted a more aggressive and coordinated response on the part of the world's authoritarians and autocrats. Indeed, indications of collusion among such regimes have led to speculation about an emerging "authoritarian internationale.”
China's communist authorities have tightened controls on international NGOs and reportedly sent researchers to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus to assess the role of pro-democracy NGOs and propose countermeasures. The Foreign Ministry's Bureau of International Organizations has set up a new unit to review the work of foreign NGOs in China.
Beijing has upgraded censorship techniques, “intimidating both political dissidents and American companies alike,” according to a recent report. They are also exporting their techniques to other repressive regimes. Belarusian dictator Alexandr Lukashenka reportedly acquired China's latest internet monitoring and control technology while in Beijing in December 2005.
A further indication of inter-governmental coordination is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), comprising Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. At their July 2005 Moscow summit, Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao issued an open attack on democracy promotion, attacking those who, they claim, "ignore objective processes of social development of sovereign states and impose on them alien models of social and political systems."
The range of legal and extra-legal measures designed to undermine democracy assistance range from constraints to cooptation, from coercion to closure. Many states are manifestly repressive towards independent NGOs while others maintain a more ambiguous position, allowing civil society groups to operate under restrictions and the threat of arbitrary interference or dissolution.
Alongside recent setbacks in Belarus and Ukraine, the backlash at least acts as a forceful reminder that democracy promotion is not an uncontested field or a one-way process.
Belarus: Good Performance, Bad Result
“Just as Mugabe's Zimbabwe is sheltered by Mbeki's South Africa and Castro's Cuba is hugged by Venezuela's Chavez, Lukashenka's Belarus has the support of Vladimir Putin, who shows scant respect for the democratic norms of the European values he professes to believe in,” argues Denis MacShane, the UK's former Minister for Europe. It was partly due to interventions by Moscow that the recent elections in Belarus and Ukraine - the European Union's closest eastern neighbours - produced “uncomfortable results for those who believe in peaceful democratic revolutions.”
While the results disappointed some, the volatile politics leading up to Ukraine's parliamentary elections could at least be seen as an “expression of democratic politics, not their rejection,” says Stanford's Michael McFaul. By contrast, the presidential election campaign in Belarus was marked by unprecedented repression against democratic forces.
Observers “should not lament the 'failure' of revolution but hail the beginning of a genuine democratic movement”, says Vitali Silitski, a leading Belarusian activist and commentator. Lukashenka could have won a free and fair election, he argues, and his opponents have much to do to communicate their message to Belarusian society – while enduring even more repressive political climate. But democrats can take heart from the campaign's achievements: the opposition not only achieved unity and, in Alyaksandr Milinkevich, presented a credible alternative to Lukashenka, but invigorated the democratic activists' network, and proved that support for democratic change is widespread.
Milinkevich surprised many observers with his performance, especially since he was denied national media exposure and forced to rely on grass-roots campaigning, assisted by the energetic Zubr student movement. In an unprecedented move for Belarusian politics, Milinkevich went door to door to canvass for votes. "Half the doors remained closed to him," said Vintsyuk Vyachorka, head of the largest opposition group. "The main problem is the fear of the people. To overcome it, we must show this hesitant majority that there is a responsible leader who has no fear himself."
The work of civil society groups had a great impact on an electorate that was in other respects wary and cowed. “Citizens are being informed and the electorate is being energized,” the National Endowment for Democracy's Rodger Potocki told a congressional hearing prior to the election. A January 2006 survey found that only 11 percent of respondents knew of NGO election-related activities. By the end of February, 48 percent were aware of civic campaigns. The priority now, Potocki notes, is for legal and humanitarian assistance to those who are being imprisoned, hospitalized, expelled or unemployed during the post-election crackdown.
Such assistance should come in large part from the European Union, says Urban Ahlin, Social Democrat chairman of the Swedish Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee. The EU should open an office in Minsk, make visas for Belarusians cheaper and easier to obtain, increase student exchange programmes, and fund civil society programs. But to be effective, Ahlin argues, the EU should remodel the slow-moving 'European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights' along the lines of the NED and similar groups with a better record of “disbursing funds swiftly and flexibly.”
The Belarus election demonstrates why Europe should create a “21st century progressive front for democracy,” argues MacShane, comprising a European Democracy Foundation financed by the EU but operationally autonomous from the Commission and Council of Ministers. The rules of the Commission's EIDHR are “so complex and inflexible that few NGOs can benefit”, says the Center for European Reform. They too argue that the EIDHR should be reconstituted as an independent agency.
The reported eight-day absence of Lukashenka following the election suggests that the shake up of the regime was much more significant than generally known, suggests Slovakia's Pontis Foundation. Its analysis of the elections suggests that the EU should expand sanctions and visa bans against regime officials, and maintain a “much higher level of contact” with both Belarusian democratic forces and the regime. Minsk's need for greater trade and cooperation with the EU gives the latter a degree of leverage it has so far failed to utilize.
The Belarus election may at least prompt a degree of realism amongst some of the more excitable advocates who misleadingly conflate democracy promotion with regime change, whether in Minsk or Tehran. Indeed, it was predicted prior to the election that “directly transferring to Belarus the strategies that worked in [Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine] would likely be ineffective.”
Syria's Democrats Resist "Regime Change" Approach
A split within the ruling elite followed by a gradual transition to democracy is the most likely of three scenarios for change in Syria, says Radwan Ziadeh, a leading Damascus-based human rights activist. The alternatives – regime change through military intervention or popular uprising are undesirable and unlikely. A “color revolution” is not in the cards given that state repression is stifling the emergence of representative civil society groups – several dissidents were recently arrested - while the emerging opposition is divided between internal and external groups.
Reform could be initiated by Ba'athist modernizers, Ziadeh argues, in conjunction with a democratic opposition that is “not bent on seeking power” but “driven by the desire to build a state of law and order within a democratic framework.” Syria has one of the weakest civil societies in the Arab world, he told a Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy meeting on the future of Syria's democratic movement. Most NGOs are no more than charities or service-providers and very few have a political agenda. Civil society's weakness and the strength and pervasiveness of the Ba'athist state mean that sustainable democracy can only emerge through incremental change.
Yet there appears to be renewed impetus for change as internal and external groups improve relations, and the regime shows signs of internal fraying. The former Syrian vice-president, Abdel Halim Kaddam recently joined Ali Sadreddine Al Bayanouni, the exiled leader of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood to establish a 'National Salvation Front.' Khaddam defected from President Bashar al-Assad's regime and, in an explosive interview, gave evidence of Assad's complicity in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Khaddam is due to launch a further 'political bomb,' according to the March 22 edition of Al Rai Al Aam, an independent daily.
Kaddam argues that leading Syrian political and military figures are ready to break with the regime while stressing that he opposes overthrowing the regime by force. “There is a rapidly growing opposition movement in the country, he told the pan-Arab Asharq Al Awsat newspaper. “I do not wish to bring change through a military coup; a coup is one of the most dangerous types of change. But I am working on maturing the circumstances for the Syrians to go down to the streets and do what needs to be done to topple the regime.”
The defection of Khaddam, the highest ranking Sunni Muslim in a regime dominated by the minority Alawite Shi'a sect, is an indication that the “facade of regime solidarity” is being broken, argues Robert Rabil, an adjunct scholar of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Bashar al-Assad tried to consolidate his power after the June 2005 Ba'ath Party Congress by appointing loyalists to key positions while pushing old guard officials into retirement. But in doing so, Bashar narrowed his political base to his closest, mainly Alawi confidantes. The apparent suicide – widely considered an assassination - of interior minister Ghazi Kenaan in October 2005 provides further evidence of regime fracture and Khaddam is reportedly trying to assure US and European officials that the Ba'athists could split. His new-found Islamist partners are already convinced. "For us, getting rid of the dictatorial regime could come in many ways, argues Bayanouni, the Brotherhood's leader. During the transition it could happen through people within the regime."
Others are less impressed. Internal opposition activist Ryad Al Turk called on Khaddam to “come clean and … place [himself] under legal, political, moral, and popular scrutiny” for his actions. In September 2001, for example, a leading dissident and member of parliament, Riad Seif, was jailed with nine other activists in the backlash against the short-lived Damascus Spring. Seif has since revealed that Khaddam offered him a deal to restore his business and allow him to remain a dissident as long as his opposition was bogus.
……. As Opposition Differs on Pace of Change, Foreign Assistance
Khaddam's defection reportedly prompted widespread discussion on the Ba'-athist regime's shortcomings as the intelligence services, the mukhabbarat, grew less publicly conspicuous. Although citizens seem less in awe of the regime, independent thinkers and activists are routinely harassed and intimated. The mukhabbarat recently dispersed a meeting of five human rights activists in a private house while Ammar Qurabi of the Arab Organization for Human Rights was arrested by security forces at Damascus airport on his return from human rights and democracy conferences in Paris and Washington DC (he has since been released). The regime has become notably anxious about contacts between internal opposition figures and US-based groups.
The internal opposition associated with the Damascus Declaration has distanced itself from the National Salvation Front. The Declaration's temporary committee will soon announce an official stance prior to a general meeting on 6 April but the internal opposition has been at pains to stress its support for a gradual and peaceful approach to democratic change “without any links to foreign sides.” The National Salvation Front, by contrast, has hinted that it would be prepared to accept foreign assistance to provoke regime change.
Syrian rights groups have mixed views on accepting foreign assistance, especially US government funding. "Our people don't respect groups that take money from abroad," says Ahmad Fayez Fawaz, director of the Human Rights Association. "Although we don't completely reject the idea of accepting foreign funding, we don't want money from the US, because its reputation is very bad in Syria." While some groups are skeptical that foreign assistance "would come without conditions," others are more open but raise different problems. "The [US MEPI] money can only go to legally registered organisations – but we aren't legal," says Anwar al-Bunni, human rights lawyer and head of Syria's Free Political Prisoners Committee. "If my organization were legal, then I would consider taking money from abroad, but only if there were no conditions attached."
Like its Egyptian counterpart, the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced political violence and the London-based Bayanouni claims his movement does not want to impose Islamic sharia. "Our political project talks about building a civil state in Syria, not a theocratic state," he says. "The principles of liberty, pluralism, a multi-party system, free elections, equality and equal opportunities are among the principal values of Islam." The Islamist group is also committed to a coalition approach both in opposition and in future government. "We believe that after 40 years of this corrupt dictatorship it would be difficult for any one party to take responsibility for the country," Bayanouni says. "We definitely don't see ourselves as the alternative. We see ourselves as partners with others in the coming stage."
The internal democratic opposition seems to accept that this shift is genuine. In a major concession to the Islamists, the Damascus Declaration recognizes Islam as “the religion and ideology of the majority, with its lofty intentions, higher values, and tolerant canon law” and as “the more prominent cultural component in the life of the nation and the people.
The funding issue is intimately related to the opposition's wariness of being too closely associated with US-based exile groups which would be exploited by the regime to undermine their domestic credibility. The internal opposition is opposed to the regime change approach advocated by Washington-based exiles.
“The Syrian opposition is diverse and fragmented but has chosen a mature and cautious strategy,” argues Bassma Kodmani, director of the Arab Reform Initiative. Observing the traumas across the border in Iraq, the internal opposition's strategy is one of incremental change, engaging a wide spectrum of political forces in an inclusive coalition. While emboldened by outside attacks on the regime, Kodmani notes, the opposition explicitly rejects foreign interference and “presents itself as a patriotic force seeking peaceful change through a dialogue with the regime.”
In the meantime, the internal opposition is experiencing a syndrome familiar to liberals and democrats across the Middle East. “With liberals in jail and the ashraf [pre-Ba'athist notable families] out of politics, Islamists are flourishing,” says regional observer Soner Cagaptay. Not only the underground Muslim Brotherhood but the more radical Salafists, Wahhabists, and Hizb-ut Tahrir are using networks of mosques and Islamic charities to spread their appeal. “On the one hand, the regime is oppressing them; on the other hand, the Islamists are growing because they are able to avoid the government's steel claw from the security of their mosques and charities,” Cagaptay notes. “So long as the regime refuses to make political room for the liberals and the ashraf, the discontent of the Syrian people will continue to energize the Islamist movements.”
Democracy a Factor in War of Ideas, Not Clash of Civilizations
A global alliance is needed to win the battle of global values, British Prime Minister Tony Blair argues in two recent keynote speeches. The challenge lies not just in confronting the toxic ideology of radical Islam but a “doctrine of benign inactivity” prevalent across much of the West.
“This is not a clash between civilizations. It is a clash about civilization,” he argues. “'We' is not the West,” he insists. “'We' are as much Muslim as Christian or Jew or Hindu. 'We' are those who believe in religious tolerance, openness to others, to democracy, liberty and human rights administered by secular courts.”
Amartya Sen also reminds us that democracy isn't Western. “To see Iranian dissidents who want a fully democratic Iran not as Iranian advocates but as "ambassadors of Western values" would be to add insult to injury,” Sen notes, “aside from neglecting parts of Iranian history (including the practice of democracy in Susa or Shushan in southwest Iran 2,000 years ago). “ The diversity of human history and contemporary freedoms provide much more choice than cultural determinists acknowledge.
“Islamic identity,” for example, “is assumed to drown, if only implicitly, all other affiliations, priorities, and pursuits.”, for example, Sen notes in his new book, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. Attacking the concept of a civilizational clash as reductionist, he suggests that “the world is made much more incendiary by the advocacy and popularity of single-dimensional categorization of human beings, which combines haziness of vision with increased scope for the exploitation of that haze by the champions of violence.”
Such interventons highlight the ideological dimension of the current backlash against democracy and, more specifically, against democracy promotion. In practical terms, it manifests itself in different ways, from human rights violations to legal and operational restrictions on NGOs. But that backlash also extends to subversion and distortion of democracy itself, taking various ideological forms – principally populism, authoritarianism, and radical Islam.
Radical Islamists reject not only liberal democracy, but modernity. “Their case is that democracy is a western concept we are forcing on an unwilling culture of Islam,” says Blair. “The problem we have is that a part of opinion in our own countries agrees with them,” referring to an emerging mood of cynical realism and pessimism, particularly marked amongst those political and media elites known in Britain as the chattering classes. “Ranged against us are the people who hate us,” he argues. “But beyond them are many more who don't hate us but question our motives, our good faith, our even-handedness, who could support our values but believe we support them selectively.”
It is imperative to show that democratic and liberal values are not western, American or Anglo-Saxon values but the common ownership of humanity. Democracy assistance is a critical factor in confirming this universalism. “Wherever people live in fear, with no prospect of advance, we should be on their side,” Blair continues, “in solidarity with them, whether in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea; and where countries, and there are many in the Middle East today, are in the process of democratic development, we should extend a helping hand.”
Ending the Arab World's "Crippling Exceptionalism" – a Generational Task
Following the Hamas victory in Gaza and the West Bank, the Islamist landslide in Iraq, remarkable electoral gains for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Hizbollah's entry into Lebanon's cabinet, some commentators have warned that the impetus for change in the Arab world is waning. The region's autocrats and authoritarians suspect US and EU commitment will fade while other regimes, especially Iran and Syria, promote a counter-strategy. Local elections have been indefinitely postponed in Egypt where the regime has clamped down on media, judges and Islamists while Saudi Arabia has frozen plans for a national dialogue and, like many other Arab states, highlights economic governance at the expense of political reform. Bahrain and Qatar have postponed initiatives for constitutional change.
Less than a year ago, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice told a Cairo audience that for 60 years the US had "pursued stability at the expense of democracy" in the Middle East and "achieved neither". Last month, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak reportedly boasted that on her recent trip to Cairo secretary Rice did not raise any concerns about political reform. "She was convinced by the way Egypt is pursuing political reform and implementing democracy," he said. "She said that democracy in Arab countries would take a generation." Such reports feed the region's skeptics. "The balance of [US] interests … wavers between supporting the present undemocratic regimes on the one hand and shy attempts to help reform on the other," said Nader Fergany, one of the authors of the UNDP report on the Arab world's retarded democratic development.
But it is more instructive to adopt a strategic than a media headline-driven approach. Warning of the dangers of modern liberalism adopting a “smug realism” that assumes a built-in authoritarianism in Arab society, Fouad Ajami reminds us of the dangers of granting the Arab world “absolution from the laws of historical improvement” and ceding it a crippling exceptionalism. “We explained away our complicity in its historical decay as the price paid for access to its oil, and as the indulgence owed some immutable 'Islamic' tradition,” he argues. A historical perspective is in order. “We have given tyranny the patience of decades,” says Ajami. “Surely we ought to be able to extend a measure of indulgence to freedom's meandering path.”
Democracy and Security – a Delicate Balance
The US – and Europe – do, of course, confront genuine dilemmas in balancing legitimate security concerns with a democratic imperative likely to enhance the power and influence of Islamist forces with questionable liberal if not democratic credentials. Democracy and security can be reconciled by adopting a holistic approach, rooted in the region's cultural fabric and reflecting country-specific circumstances, argues an impressively nuanced analysis from FRIDE. The danger, suggests FRIDE's Richard Youngs, is not in the West “blindly imposing democracy, but rather in being too cautious in according substance to rhetorical commitments to support political change,” a caution more pronounced in Europe than the US.
In any case, it is impossible to contain political Islam without resorting to failed repressive strategies, says Alvaro de Vasconcelos, an adviser to the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. Political Islam is a risk, he says, “but we can minimize it only by devising intelligent, case-sensitive strategies that promote democracy, not by denouncing the results of democratic choice.” Furthermore, as Amr Hamzawy notes, not only did the authoritarian status quo have disastrous outcomes but recent encounters with Islamists, as in Iraq, have “proven less dangerous than originally expected.”
More nuanced, strategic approaches seem appropriate, not least as a growing number of impatient – if not adventurist – actors try to enter the democracy assistance world, promoting a “revolutionary” but misleading and potentially dangerous conflation of democracy promotion and regime change.
The legacy of a stultifying status quo, toxic ideologies and the resilience of authoritarian regimes and autocratic rentier states, necessarily entails a long-term approach to structural change. As one observer notes, “It's a slow, sometimes tedious process,; one that produces few sound bites but has the potential to yield real change.”
Resilient Regimes, But Arab Democrats Punch Above Their Weight.
The last year saw elections in Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Egypt. “Does that amount to a 'spring of freedom' in the Arab world? Not quite!” Egyptian dissident Saad Eddine Ibrahim told a recent meeting. “But there is something going on. Whether it is a spring or a mirage is yet to be determined, but we are determined to make it a spring." At the same meeting, Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya stressed that reform requires state bureaucracies to be engaged and that region's regimes “are far more resistant than we thought. We thought we'd be much further along by now."
Furthermore, while liberal and democratic forces remain relatively weak, they continue to punch above their weight. In some states, they are also starting to explore tentative alignments with moderate Islamists and reform-minded technocrats within state bureaucracies. the divide between Arab liberals and Islamic political forces is often drawn too starkly, suggests Lebanese democrat Pierre Akel, who hosts Middle East Transparent, a popular reformers' web site generating 50,000-60,000 daily hits, and arguably the region's “most daring site in advocating an Islamic Reformation.”
Arab democrats and liberals have shown a stubborn resilience and an appreciation that they are in it for the long haul. Recent months have seen a marked increase in Arab grass-roost groups demanding resources from the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) while Tamara Coffman Wittes reports that MEPI has begun to “inject political content” into grants, funding Egyptian and Lebanese civil society groups during the 2005 elections. MEPI is also developing state-specific strategies in an effort to integrate bilateral assistance and other federal programs.
Transatlantic pressures for Middle East reform are also starting to impact both the region and EU democracy promotion strategy, according to a new analysis. “With the US spotlight much stronger, Arab regimes are more sensitive to parallel European criticism” and the democratic dimension of the 'Barcelona Process” or Euro-Mediterranean Partnership is “beginning to bite.”
The risk remains that democratisation will be overshadowed by counter-terrorist concerns, say Irene Menéndez and Richard Youngs in a paper for the Portuguese Institute for International Relations. But EU efforts to revitalize its strategies indicate that that “a decade's drip effect of democracy promotion discourse is beginning to resonate” and impact the EMP. Events have “fundamentally altered the backcloth to the EMP” and prompted a “gradual ratcheting-up” of EU commitments. However, the authors caution that the EU continues to favour “a gradual pace of reform that risks appearing glacial compared to some faster moving changes on the ground.”
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