Call it Democracy Deficiency Syndrome. Frustrated by the
continuing struggle to build a stable democracy in Iraq, some
backers of Saddam Hussein’s removal have taken to opining that one
of the most compelling arguments for military intervention in Iraq
— the domino effect of democracy throughout the Middle East — now
appears to be a bad gamble.
Most sensible people, by which I mean to exclude the Ted
Kennedy-Cassandras braying about the second coming of Vietnam,
understand that the desperate aggression of a rump of diehard Sunni
Baathists and radical Shiites hardly represents the complete
failure of the American intervention. But lingering instability in
Iraq, paired with the brutal resistance to social, political and
economic reforms by repressive Arab regimes, has plainly soured
some on the notion that the war has had any appreciable effect on
the spread of democracy throughout the region.
Their analysis boils down to this: The idea that ousting one
dictator could fuel a blowback against dictators across the region,
grounded more in hope than reality, has been an unmitigated bust.
We came, we saw, we conquered, but geo-strategically speaking, we
came up short.
For skepticism of this sort, take a look at the spring issue of
the National Interest, where, in an essay dismissively
titled “How Much Does Iraq Matter?” (subscribers only), Morton Abramowitz speculates
that, in the broader context of regional transformation, it doesn’t
matter all that much. Allowing that reformist Arab governments may
emerge in time, albeit with a certain when-hell-goes-Arctic
skepticism, Abramowitz nonetheless contends that “to assert that
the occupation of Iraq will produce democracy in Iraq, which will
then spread like a virus to other countries in the Middle East, is
more prayer than analysis.”
This going defeatism is unfortunate because maintaining it means
ignoring the recent strides made by democratic movements in several
Arab countries. Emboldened by the democratic efforts underway in
Iraq, and energized by the rallying cry of basic liberties and
human rights, opposition groups have risen up to loosen, if not yet
break, the vice grip of Arab authoritarianism. Far from being
discredited, President Bush’s vision — that a democracy-bound Iraq
would jump-start opposition to the Middle East’s jackboot regimes
— has thus proved prescient.
And while the pace of democratic development in the Arab world
leaves much to be desired, the upsurge in opposition to oppressive
regimes suggests that it is not, as some would have, permanently
stunted. Indeed, as Jackson Diehl, a Washington Post
columnist and no Bush booster, has noted: “The most underreported
and encouraging story in the Middle East in the past year has been
the emergence in public of homegrown civic movements demanding
political change.”
HERE ARE THE STORIES of some of those movements:
In Iran, voices of opposition long strong-armed into silence by
the mullahs, have grown increasingly vocal. Iran’s student
organizers continue to lash out at theocratic tyranny, their drive
restrained for the time being only by a lack of financial support,
the absence of an organized and principled base, and of course the
reactionary terror of the Guardian Council’s goon squads.
In Egypt, the region’s most populous country, the regime of
President Hosni Mubarak, facing concerted pressure from the United
States, has softened its line against opposition. Dissident
intellectuals, at least those few who have been freed from prison,
have strongly pushed for more openness. Freedom of the press has
also increased. Newspapers once-gagged by the president’s
crackdowns now editorialize against a fifth term for Mubarak.
Defiance like that, observers say, only a year ago would have been
unimaginable.
In Syria, the Baath Party’s iron grip on power has failed to
stifle a swelling opposition. On March 8, for instance, about 25
protesters demonstrated against the vile “emergency laws” used by
the Baath to suppress civil rights. Baath security forces smashed
the demonstration, but, again, such a demonstration would have been
unthinkable before the war in Iraq. Additionally, the Syrian
government last month dissolved emergency economic courts, kangaroo
affairs used to jail insubordinate businessmen. Four private
universities now have opened, and two private banks have begun
accepting deposits, although they are barred from foreign exchange.
To be sure, these admittedly minor conciliatory gestures do not
signal a road-to-Damascus conversion to democracy by Syria’s
Baathists. What the regime appears to recognize is that even its
brute security forces, effective in crushing small pockets of
dissent, will not dam a tide of unified opposition.
In Saudi Arabia, the royal family grudgingly has signed off on a
cautious series of reforms, starting with municipal elections
unprecedented in the kingdom’s 71-year history. And while
fundamentalist Wahabi clerics continue to exercise a near-total
writ, it is reportedly possible to discuss such radical topics as
the rights of women to drive cars. Further, as Michael Scott Doran
has argued, the future of Saudi Arabian reform
hinges on who emerges victorious in the struggle between de-facto
ruler Crown Prince Abdullah and his half-brother, the
Wahabi-aligned interior minister, Prince Nayef.
In Algeria, a democratic election, the country’s first, was held
last week. After a dozen years of Islamic insurgency, Algerians
reelected President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, with his promise of
prosperity, in a landslide. Granted, it wasn’t pretty; the defeated
candidates accused Bouteflika of rigging the election.
International groups monitoring the election challenged that view,
however, reporting that they saw no signs of fraud. “It was pretty
clear this is what the people wanted,” Bruce George, a coordinator
for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe told
told the Daily Telegraph. Not
insignificantly, it was also the first time the army did not
intervene to affect the results.
Democracy also has found champions in some unlikely places. Sayf
Qaddafi, the son of Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi, recently
called for Libya to become an open and
democratic country. “If it isn’t,” he said, “it will become a
reactionary, dictatorial, and fascist Arab country.” The simple
future is a tad revisionist, but Sayf seems at least to have his
priorities straight.
Arguing that Iraq is a model democracy, even with the most
liberal constitution in the Arab world as its foundation, is,
concededly, a stretch. No less exaggerated, though, is the
implication that simply because Iraq is not yet a beacon of
democracy, the Arab world’s ship of reform has not come in. Feeble
today, democratic movements are gaining strength, and a democratic
Iraq can only hasten their success.
The president, of course, has been an unwavering proponent of
this view. Guided by the idée fixe that “stability cannot be
purchased at the expense of liberty,” he has pushed for democracy
across the Middle East, making Iraq the cornerstone. Perhaps that
was what John Kerry had in mind, when, stumping in Chicago on
Friday, he diagnosed the administration with a peculiar ailment.
“This administration has been gridlocked by its own ideology,” he
said. Kerry had it quite right. It seems not to occur to him that,
in this instance, the disease is the cure.
Jacob Laksin is editor of Aufbau.
