ARAB AFFAIRS - Repression Worsens - Analysing The Depth Of The Arabs' Crisis.

Most Arab regimes have taken measures against national advocates of political reform, despite a recent US decision to water down a call by President Bush for democratisation in the Middle East and North Africa. Standing out as particularly repressive are the regimes of Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - in that order - which have recently formed what their critics describe as an "Arab axis" against the Bush initiative (see News Service No. 11) and have inspired other Arab regimes to do the same. Even the regime of Libya, whose ruler Qadhafi is being praised in the West for getting rid of his weapons of mass destruction (WMD), has increased the number of secret agents who monitor the various segments of its society for fear of serious opposition to his overtures to a new Western alliance consisting mainly of the US and UK. At the same time, Qadhafi's critics in the Arab axis complain that his regime is drifting further away from pan-Arab affairs and trying to mobilise its pan-African gains in favour of the Western alliance.

Gravitating around the Arab axis is the Shiite theocracy of Iran, which is being consolidated following big gains for traditionalist hardliners in parliamentary elections held on Feb. 20. Worried that democratisation in post-Saddam Iraq might affect their regime, hardline theocrats now have representatives in Najaf and other centres of Shiite power guiding religious leaders towards a pattern of behaviour similar to the one that prevailed during the early stage of the Iranian Islamic revolution in late 1978 and late 1979 (see the first part of a RIM study in this week's Diplomat Package).

Legitimacy, whether sourced by (and dependent on) the people or by the force of the ruler, is the real issue. This is not only for Iran and the Arab regimes but for all the states. The Iranian theocracy solved it by placing God as the source of its legitimacy, with God being "represented" by the fagih (the nation's guide). The modern concept of Velayat-e-Fagih (the state of the guide) was conceived and established by Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini, who died in 1989 (see the depth and geo-political implications of this concept in the second part of the RIM survey in next week's Diplomat). On the Arab side, with the exception of Lebanon whose rulers are elected democratically (despite the fact that since 1976 Lebanon has been controlled by the Baathist regime of Syria), the issue has so far been solved by three categories of sources - or combinations of them: the ruling party's ideology, the military or variations on the theme of hereditary monarchy. There is a fourth category, which is an exception, being applied in Saudi Arabia; this is where the source of legitimacy is a composition, unique in the world and in modern history, combining a partnership between a prince (of the house of Saud) and a version of a Sunni sect (established in the 18th century AD by Shaikh Mohammed Ibn Abdel Wahhab - hence Wahhabism - and a hereditary monarchy which is more recent (see survey of Saudi Arabia being serialised monthly in FAP).