Why democracy in the Arab World is a two-edged sword

by Shlomo Ben Ami
Calls for Arab rulers to embrace democracy have been central to U.S. and even European policy, says Shlomo Ben Ami. But the former Israeli foreign minister warns that the unintended consequences could be the rapid rise of radical Islamist parties
The last U.S. Administration's drive to promote democracy in the Arab world, and Europe’s admittedly lukewarm support of the concept, was widely seen by Arab leaders as naïve and self-defeating, a policy that suffered from an astonishing ignorance of the political choices they have to contend with. Unlike those in the West who urge the virtues of Arab democracy, Arab rulers themselves have a much clearer idea of the conflicting socio-political pressures that divide their societies, and throughout the eight years of George W. Bush’s administration had no intention of succumbing to the popular forces clamouring for democracy. These Arab leaders know all too well that there is no liberal democratic alternative to their rule, for they have done all that was in their power to stifle it. The reality is that the Arab world is going through a momentous struggle between the incumbent conservative regimes and the powerful new forces of Islam. Secular nationalism failed to accomplish the historic task of recovering past Arab glories, of improving the state of the masses and reforming the state, the latter having never been an especially legitimate entity in the eyes of the masses. And it is the incompetence of the conservative elites, their corruption and their humiliating failure to save Palestine from the grip of the Zionists that have all combined as the platform upon which the Islamist response has emerged. Lacking true democratic legitimacy, the governing regimes throughout the Arab world are generally seen as puppets of the West, and that, of course, is why the masses tend to harbour strong anti-Western sentiments. This is a state of affairs in which any abrupt move away from the secular autocracies that rule most Arab countries to democracy would be bound to result in the rise of the Islamists to power. That is what happened in Algeria in 1991 with the electoral victory of the FIS, which was immediately followed by a military takeover. And it happened again in Palestine in 2006 with the victory of Hamas, and in Iraq with the emergence of a Shiite ruling class from the debris of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. And in Lebanon too, where Hezbollah has been constantly gaining ground. So it should come as no surprise that the staunchest supporters of free elections throughout the Arab world are now the Iranians as they know that each truly free election in the region would result in an Islamist victory. The message must be then that contrary to what many in the West believe. the real choice throughout the Arab world is not between dictatorship and democracy but between secular dictatorship and Islamic democracy. The West called for Arab democracy, but neither Arab leaders nor Israel wanted it. The major concern showed by both are that the real beneficiaries of greater political freedom would be Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, all of which would have a great deal of trouble in endorsing the pro-Western policies of the Arab autocrats, not least their commitment to peace with Israel. For if these same Arab rulers have not always been eager to back America’s policies in the region, that has been because public opinion in their countries – the famous ‘Arab street’ – was strongly opposed to them. The United States had to suffer some very serious setbacks to its ‘grand strategy’ in the Middle East to understand that the calls for democracy now to be heard in Arab Societies are not aimed at all at serving America’s interest or the cause of peace with Israel, but rather at repudiating both of these. Not even in Jordan, a key country for the stability of the region, is the alliance with America popular. The impact of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and America’s destabilising policies in the broader Middle East have rightly increased concerns about the vulnerability of the Hashemite kingdom at a time where the king goes into great trouble to maintain the precarious internal balance between the Bedouin component of his state and the Palestinian majority. And, if this is not enough, the Palestinians in Jordan tend to increasingly identify with the Islamic Action Front that is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. Any assumption that Arab democracy would as a matter of course be friendly to America’s policies, or to peace with Israel, is a self-serving fantasy. Never over-eager to engage in democratic experiments, Arab rulers are now more than happy to put the brakes on. And it’s worth saying that their resilience is impressive. China and Russia have taught them that autocracy can survive a freer press and the ‘threat’ represented by freedom of information. Despite the stirrings of Arab democratic thought thanks to factors like the proliferation of satellite dishes, freer presidential elections in Egypt, municipal elections in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, street demonstrations in Damascus, and the popular mobilisation in Lebanon against Syrian occupation, no irreversible institutional changes have so far been put in place. Put another way, there have been no guarantees that freedoms granted cannot ever be denied. The djinn of democratisation may have been released from the bottle, but traditional Arab rulers have not abandoned the fight to put it back. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak did not lose time, once relieved of American pressure, in postponing municipal elections for two years. So as to cut short the political momentum of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has also gone back on his promise to further amend the constitution and allow more political parties to emerge. Yemen, which for a short while had allowed a brief springtime of media freedoms to bloom, has also fallen back on all-too-familiar practices with a harsh crackdown on the free press ahead of presidential elections. Nor is Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, America’s most important friend in the region still greatly impressed by the West’s discourse on democracy. He continues to be adamant in turning down calls for elections to the country’s Consultative Council. And Syria, a country practically on parole, has moved from the rhetoric of reform to a harsh crackdown on the opposition. Its position behind the Lebanese Hezbollah’s war against Israel was probably the best reflection of Syria’s diminished respect for President Bush’s America and for its broad Middle East agenda. In the wake of Hamas’ victory and the impressive performance of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian elections, even Syrian President Bashar Assad’s despotic regime must have looked to the architects of the Bush doctrine preferable to an Islamic republic in Damascus. But it is not calls for democracy that are wrongheaded; it is the idea of an abrupt shift to free elections that could be fatally destabilising. The West instead needs to push for democratic reforms that would bring about a gradual transition to democracy while empowering the forces of change and modernisation. Despite the general sense that the West’s drive for Arab democracy has been derailed by fears that once elected Islamic parties would sweep away traditionally pro-Western regimes, it would be wrong to despair of Arab democracy or fall back on the conventional wisdom that democracy is not for the Arabs. The stability of Arab regimes not sustained by democratic consensus is bound to be fragile and misleading. In this post-modern world, where the freedom of information is unstoppable, it is dangerously wrong to think that peoples' natural yearning for liberty can be stifled without major consequences. It’s certainly true, too, that the West should not want to be perceived by the Arab world as hypocritically applying double standards. Nor can Arab leaders realistically expect their political opponents to abandon the call for democracy. The West tends to make two requests of the major Arab regimes; one is reform and democracy, the other is peace with Israel. If given the choice, most Arab rulers would prefer to reduce these pressures from the West by advancing the cause of peace with Israel while relegating democracy to the fullness of time. Peace with Israel is after all a vital interest, for a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian problem has become an urgent necessity if Arab regimes are to focus on the genuinely existential threats posed by the emergence of the Shiite Iranian empire, and by the fundamentalist challenge at home. This is particularly true of Egypt, whose jealous rejection of Turkey’s attempt to step into its traditional role as the regional peace broker reflects its hopes that in the eyes of the West peacemaking is an acceptable substitute for democracy, particularly for the U.S. Congress where the large annual aid payments for Egypt have to be approved. A solution of the Palestinian problem would not herald an era of celestial peace for the Middle East, for the ills of the region stretch far beyond the boundaries of the Arab-Israeli dispute. The entire Muslim world is by any standard dysfunctional and would probably have been so even if the State of Israel did not exist. But an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, besides being a response to an authentic clamour of generations of Arabs and Israelis and a profound moral imperative, would be of great consequence to regional stability. It would eliminate one of the most sensitive triggers for mass hysteria throughout the region, a frequent pretext for the Bin-Ladens of the Muslim world in their global war of terror, and the ultimate alibi of Arab rulers when stifling social and political liberties.