Arab Democracy Advocates Begin To Push Harder; Pan-Islamism Vs Pluralism.

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BEIRUT - Two different currents are emerging in the Arab world, and both seem to indicate that some aspects of US President George W. Bush's project to democratise the Greater Middle East (GME) have begun to bear fruit - though not necessarily that his project is successful. It confirms that both pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism are on the decline in favour of pluralism.

A recent Zogby poll of the Arab world asked what were the most important issues facing the region, the responses in order of importance were: Expanding job opportunities, improving health care, combating corruption/nepotism, improving education and fight-ing extremism and terrorism. The most notable change was the importance given to "resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict". The latter had long been a top issue in the Arab world. In Zogby's 2002 poll, given the brutal repression of Palestinians which was gripp-ing Arab public opinion, this issue ranked second in importance. Now it was number seven (see news26cArabsDec26-31-05).

What polarises the Arabs now is the argument that liberty must not be pursued at the expense of stability. The US is pressing for rapid political reform, with human rights and pro-reform groups joining the call. But authoritarian Arab regimes fear they may be sacrificing regional stability to the democratic ideal.

Across the Middle East, the basic elements of democratic society are taking root. Even the last bastion of absolute dynastic rule in the GCC, the UAE, has opened the way to limited public participation in government. In a speech to mark the union's National Day on Dec. 1, Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan announced that half of the 40 seats on the Federal National Council would become elected positions, "in view of the changes and reforms our region is witnessing".

In the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas is running against the ruling Fatah in Palestinian elections in January, and already most experts believe the Islamist group will win - despite objections in the US and Israel. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has won about a quarter of parliament's seats - though the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) still retains a comfortable majority in the new legislature. But MB's success cost the banned party dearly as several of its members and sympathisers were killed in NDP-instigated violence.

Protestors have been on the streets in Bahrain calling for reform. In Iraq, Shi'ite islamist parties and separatist Kurdish groups won the Dec. 15 elections for the country's first fully constitutional parliament in more than half a century.

The events of recent weeks would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Washington attributes the spread of the ballot box to its own hard-nosed policy; there is some merit to its claims. In November 2003, President Bush outlined a new "strategy for freedom" at the National Endowment for Democracy. He said: "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe. Because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty".

While successive American administrations have long paid lip-service to liberal ideals, this was quite a turnaround as far as actual US foreign policy was concerned.

The US Effort: MEED last month quoted a Washington-based political analyst as saying: "This was a giant step for the man who campaigned for office on the ticket that 'America is not in the business of nation building'. Until that point, reform had not been on the US foreign policy agenda when it came to most Middle East countries". As the Bush administration headed for a second term in office, there were numerous signs that the ship of state was being turned around.

In 2002 the State Department launched the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), which has since channelled $260m into more than 130 programmes dealing with development of civil society and supporting social, economic and political reform in the GME. After the Bush team's costly foray in Iraq, there is scepticism about its intentions elsewhere in the region. MEED quoted a former US ambassador to the region as saying: "There is still a big gap between rhetoric and performance. A lot of our policy seems to be made by speechwriters these days. The president says it, it sounds good and then the civil servants have to scrabble around...to try and make it work".

Recently, however, Washington's proselytising has begun to gather momentum. At the G8 Forum for the Future in Bahrain in November, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the creation of a $50m Foundation for the Future, which will provide financial and technical assistance to NGOs promoting democracy, human rights and the empowerment of women in the GME. A second, $100m fund has been set up to provide start-up grants for small and medium-sized enterprises in the region, primarily with a view to stimulating job creation.

MEPI itself has secured about $110m in funding for the 2006 financial year, and MEED said Rice had approved an even larger $180m-$200m budget request to Congress for the initiative for 2007. Hard cash is being found to back up these initiatives, but their impact is still partly symbolic.

When former US ambassador to Egypt David Welch left his post in Cairo, he made five grants to NGOs dealing with political reform, and made it clear in public that this was a firm political statement about where the US felt its priorities lay in Egypt. The US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Scott Carpenter, was last month quoted as saying: "We want it to be known that we're serious about reform and the money is part of that symbolism. But we are also serious about making the programmes work. MEPI is opportunistic, in the sense that it works with NGOs from the ground up. But at the same time at a policy level it is working from the top down".

There are lingering concerns, however. MEED quoted the former US ambassador as saying: "No-one appears to have put together a strategic plan, as you would with any commercial organisation, to ask where the audience is and how you get to them. These initiatives are good ideas, but they are still operating in a limbo. For example, you can train up Arab journalists in all the fine principles of free speech, as MEPI is doing, but when they return to the Middle East they often find themselves with the same old editors and the same old press laws".

There are deeper concerns that liberty might be purchased at the expense of stability. Arab regimes are particularly worried by the US focus on NGOs as agents of reform. This turned out to be a key bone of contention at the Forum of the Future, which foundered after the governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Syria and Tunisia failed to sign a US-drafted accord guaranteeing NGOs' freedom from government interference. MEED quoted Fareed Ghazi Rafia, deputy of Bahrain's Council of Representatives, as saying: "We would like to support human rights, democracy, civil society and so on, but we don't want a single penny to go to societies that support terrorism in the region. We need to respect the law. If this [accord] happened it would give opportunities to some societies to use the money to support illegal activities".

US officials say Arab opponents of the MEPI are deluding themselves. A senior US political adviser was last month quoted as saying: "Some governments in the region are uncomfortable with...NGOs. They don't understand that we are not trying to destabilise them. Many of these countries don't seem to realise that they are in an existential struggle for survival" Others believe governments should have more faith in their own electorate.

Another senior US official was quoted as adding: "People were prophesying all sorts of dire scenarios before the last elections [in Gaza and the West Bank], but they ended up with a moderate government that even Israel seemed happy to deal with".