Dilip Hiro:

The headlines say it all: ‘Millions of Iraqis turn out to vote’; ‘Mubarak promises a multi-party race for the Egyptian presidency’; and ‘Pro-Syrian Karami government falls

in Lebanon’.

They all seem to add up to one thing. A democratic and modernising wave appears to be sweeping through the Middle East, mired for so long in autocracy and social backwardness. Polls have been staged in Iraq, which carry the hope that a democratic order could emerge to replace the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Presidential polls among Palestinians will be followed in July by a parliamentary poll, but already the new leadership that succeeded Yasser Arafat has breathed fresh life into the Palestinian Authority and raised hopes that the peace process can be rekindled. In Egypt, President Mubarak has pledged multi-candidate presidential elections later in the year.

A significant section of Lebanese society has taken to the streets to demand the withdrawal of Syrian forces and the emergence of authentic Lebanese political sovereignty. President Bashar Assad of Syria is being forced to bend to the will of regional and international pressure to consider such a move, a development that some say could threaten the rule of his own authoritarian dynasty. It is indeed a revolution. Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze Muslim patriarch and leader of the opposition to the Syrian presence in Lebanon, is clear about what he thinks that spark is — the elections in Iraq which followed the US-led invasion of that country.

While in Iraq it was the Anglo-American invasion which led to a general election, what triggered the ‘cedar revolution’ in Lebanon — the extraordinary street protests in Beirut that have led Syria to announce its intention to withdraw troops — was the brutal assassination of its former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, on Valentine’s Day.

The result was the downfall of the pro-Damascus government of Omar Karami. But triggers work only when there are explosives, and history shows that it takes a long time for the incendiary material to build up into a critical mass. In the case of Lebanon, opposition to Syria has been building ever since the country returned to normality in September 1992.

The final reason for keeping the Syrian soldiers evaporated in May 2000, when Israel withdrew unconditionally from southern Lebanon.

During the past quarter century the region has undergone profound socio-economic change, especially in the field of communications and information. The inauguration of the Doha-based al-Jazeera satellite TV in November 1996 opened a new chapter in the Arab world.

Al-Jazeera performed two main functions. It provided news in Arabic edited by BBC-trained journalists to an audience that until then had been fed a bland fare of endless meetings of Arab leaders and their vacuous statements and activities. And it pioneered no-holds-barred talk shows, one-on-one debates and investigative journalism of the sort not witnessed before in the Arab world. It broke taboos by interviewing Israelis and inviting them to participate in debates, and tackled such controversial issues as the existence or otherwise of God. The abolition of censorship by the Qatari ruler in March 1998 widened the horizons of al-Jazeera even further. As the US began hounding the channel, its credibility in the Arab world rose sharply.

Then there is the internet, which the autocratic regimes in the Arab world, whether monarchical or republican, find hard to control. Its users tend to be young, and with rampant mismanagement of the economy (either due to an inefficient, overmanned public sector as in Syria or near-criminal wastage of tens of billions of petro-dollars by the rulers of the oil-rich Arab states of the Gulf) unemployment among young males in the region hovers around 25 per cent. This is the constituency most likely to emerge as the driving force of the ongoing democratic revolution to demolish ossified socio-political systems.

Ironically, while most responsibility for the autocratic grip on the state apparatus lies with Arab leaders, the US cannot escape blame. When called upon to protest when democratic rights have been crushed, the American record has been highly selective and sometimes detestable. Time and again the US has prioritised economic, military and strategic interests at the expense of democratising the Arab regimes.

Consider Bahrain, which became independent in 1971 after the British withdrawal. Its constitution, drafted by a partly elected constituent assembly, specified a National Assembly of 42, with 30 deputies elected on a limited franchise. But, angered by the MPs’ criticism of his government, ruler Sheikh Isa al-Khalifa dissolved the 20-month-old assembly in August 1975, and suspended the constitution. Washington said nothing. Why? Bahrain had become the base of the US Middle East Force in 1971. Later the ruler extended the US-Bahraini agreement; and in 1995 Bahrain became the headquarters of the Pentagon’s Fifth Fleet.

So the source of the movement that some detect sweeping the Middle East is complex. Some ascribe it to Bush’s vigorous championing of democracy in the region. Others point to long standing socio-political currents, even suggesting that America’s strategic interests have themselves inhibited reform among its loyal yet autocratic Gulf allies. —The Guardian