Statement Of Sen. Patrick Leahy
On
The Crisis Of Democracy In The Middle East
September 18, 2006
Mr. LEAHY. I want to share with the Senate an
important analysis of the current crisis of democracy in the Middle
East by one of Egypt’s wisest and most courageous voices for
democracy.
We all have an interest in supporting
democracy. We also recognize that countries in the Middle East,
including Muslim countries with which we have close relations, are
confronting difficult and divisive social, religious and political
challenges. These challenges have no simple solutions. But we
should be concerned with the support that the Bush Administration,
like many of its predecessors, gives to autocratic and corrupt
regimes in this volatile part of the world. It has contributed to
anger and disillusionment, particularly among Muslims, toward their
own governments and towards the United States, and growing support
for those who promote extremist political and religious agendas.
Saad Eddin Ibrahim is a respected Egyptian
pro-democracy activist and sociologist. He founded the Ibn Khaldun
Center for Development Studies at the American University of Cairo,
one of the few independent research institutions in the Arab world.
He has been wrongly imprisoned, and then acquitted, for his
criticism of the Egyptian government and for his relations with
international organizations. Saad Ibrahim is a respected and
principled advocate for human rights and democratic values, and he
represents a voice of reason and tolerance in an increasingly
polarized and antagonistic Muslim society.
His recent Op Ed in the Washington Post
should serve as a wake-up call for proponents of our current
policies in support of repressive regimes around the world. He has
had the courage to speak out against Muslim dictatorships, and he
not only represents those who oppose authoritarianism but also those
who oppose radical Islam and extremism.
All Senators should take the time to consider
Saad Ibrahim’s perspective, and I ask unanimous consent that his Op
Ed be printed in the Record.
The Washington Post
The 'New Middle East' Bush Is Resisting
By Saad Eddin Ibrahim
August 23, 2006
President Bush and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice may be quite right about a new Middle East being
born. In fact, their policies in support of the actions of their
closest regional ally, Israel, have helped midwife the newborn. But
it will not be exactly the baby they have longed for. For one thing,
it will be neither secular nor friendly to the United States. For
another, it is going to be a rough birth.
What is happening in the broader Middle East
and North Africa can be seen as a boomerang effect that has been
playing out slowly since the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001. In
the immediate aftermath of those attacks, there was worldwide
sympathy for the United States and support for its declared "war on
terrorism," including the invasion of Afghanistan. Then the cynical
exploitation of this universal goodwill by so-called
neoconservatives to advance hegemonic designs was confirmed by the
war in Iraq. The Bush administration's dishonest statements about
"weapons of mass destruction" diminished whatever credibility the
United States might have had as liberator, while disastrous
mismanagement of Iraqi affairs after the invasion led to the
squandering of a conventional military victory. The country slid
into bloody sectarian violence, while official Washington
stonewalled and refused to admit mistakes. No wonder the world has
progressively turned against America.
Against this declining moral standing,
President Bush made something of a comeback in the first year of his
second term. He shifted his foreign policy rhetoric from a "war on
terrorism" to a war of ideas and a struggle for liberty and
democracy. Through much of 2005 it looked as if the Middle East
might finally have its long-overdue spring of freedom. Lebanon
forged a Cedar Revolution, triggered by the assassination of its
popular former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri. Egypt held its first
multi-candidate presidential election in 50 years. So did Palestine
and Iraq, despite harsh conditions of occupation. Qatar and Bahrain
in the Arabian Gulf continued their steady evolution into
constitutional monarchies. Even Saudi Arabia held its first
municipal elections.
But there was more. Hamas mobilized candidates
and popular campaigns to win a plurality in Palestinian legislative
elections and form a new government. Hezbollah in Lebanon and the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt achieved similar electoral successes.
And with these developments, a sudden chill fell over Washington and
other Western capitals.
Instead of welcoming these particular elected
officials into the newly emerging democratic fold, Washington began
a cold war on Muslim democrats. Even the tepid pressure on
autocratic allies of the United States to democratize in 2005 had
all but disappeared by 2006. In fact, tottering Arab autocrats felt
they had a new lease on life with the West conveniently cowed by an
emerging Islamist political force.
Now the cold war on Islamists has escalated
into a shooting war, first against Hamas in Gaza and then against
Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel is perceived in the region, rightly or
wrongly, to be an agent acting on behalf of U.S. interests. Some
will admit that there was provocation for Israel to strike at Hamas
and Hezbollah following the abduction of three soldiers and attacks
on military and civilian targets. But destroying Lebanon with an
overkill approach born of a desire for vengeance cannot be morally
tolerated or politically justified -- and it will not work.
On July 30 Arab, Muslim and world outrage
reached an unprecedented level with the Israeli bombing of a
residential building in the Lebanese village of Qana, which killed
dozens and wounded hundreds of civilians, most of them children. A
similar massacre in Qana in 1996, which Arabs remember painfully
well, proved to be the political undoing of then-Prime Minister
Shimon Peres. It is too early to predict whether Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert will survive Qana II and the recent war. But Hezbollah will
survive, just as it has already outlasted five Israeli prime
ministers and three American presidents.
Born in the thick of an earlier Israeli
invasion, in 1982, Hezbollah is at once a resistance movement
against foreign occupation, a social service provider for the needy
of the rural south and the slum-dwellers of Beirut, and a model
actor in Lebanese and Middle Eastern politics. Despite access to
millions of dollars in resources from within and from regional
allies Syria and Iran, its three successive leaders have projected
an image of clean governance and a pious personal lifestyle.
In more than four weeks of fighting against the
strongest military machine in the region, Hezbollah held its own and
won the admiration of millions of Arabs and Muslims. People in the
region have compared its steadfastness with the swift defeat of
three large Arab armies in the Six-Day War of 1967. Hasan Nasrallah,
its current leader, spoke several times to a wide regional audience
through his own al-Manar network as well as the more popular al-Jazeera.
Nasrallah has become a household name in my own country, Egypt.
According to the preliminary results of a
recent public opinion survey of 1,700 Egyptians by the Cairo-based
Ibn Khaldun Center, Hezbollah's action garnered 75 percent approval,
and Nasrallah led a list of 30 regional public figures ranked by
perceived importance. He appears on 82 percent of responses,
followed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (73 percent),
Khaled Meshal of Hamas (60 percent), Osama bin Laden (52 percent)
and Mohammed Mahdi Akef of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (45 percent).
The pattern here is clear, and it is Islamic.
And among the few secular public figures who made it into the top 10
are Palestinian Marwan Barghouti (31 percent) and Egypt's Ayman Nour
(29 percent), both of whom are prisoners of conscience in Israeli
and Egyptian jails, respectively.
None of the current heads of Arab states made
the list of the 10 most popular public figures. While subject to
future fluctuations, these Egyptian findings suggest the direction
in which the region is moving. The Arab people do not respect the
ruling regimes, perceiving them to be autocratic, corrupt and inept.
They are, at best, ambivalent about the fanatical Islamists of the
bin Laden variety. More mainstream Islamists with broad support,
developed civic dispositions and services to provide are the most
likely actors in building a new Middle East. In fact, they are
already doing so through the Justice and Development Party in
Turkey, the similarly named PJD in Morocco, the Muslim Brotherhood
in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine and, yes, Hezbollah in Lebanon.
These groups, parties and movements are not
inimical to democracy. They have accepted electoral systems and
practiced electoral politics, probably too well for Washington's
taste. Whether we like it or not, these are the facts. The rest of
the Western world must come to grips with the new reality, even if
the U.S. president and his secretary of state continue to reject the
new offspring of their own policies.
The writer is an Egyptian democracy activist,
professor of political sociology at the American University in
Cairo, and chairman of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development
Studies.
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