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The Air War-Repeating Past Mistakes

Published on Monday, October 8, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times

Arab Regimes Breed Discontent and Anger at U.S., Analysts Say
Washington is allied with repressive governments and hasn't pushed
democracy.
by T. Christian Miller

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Abdullah Dasmal was sipping coffee in a cafe
here two weeks ago when the news came that his country had cut diplomatic
ties with Afghanistan. His mobile phone chirped, and a message in flowing
Arabic script winked onto the tiny screen.

Within minutes, all the shop's Arab patrons were reaching into their pockets
to withdraw phones chiming in a cacophony of tones. Friends throughout the
oil-rich Emirates were forwarding the same message.

It was short and simple: "Stand together with Afghanistan!" "You see,"
Dasmal, 34, said, pointing to his phone. "Even the rich are willing to
sacrifice their lives. They may be wearing jeans or speaking English, but
they'll go to the holy war, even if our government tries to stop them."

Now, at the start of a new war on terrorism, some analysts fear that the
U.S. may be on the verge of repeating past mistakes, supporting
authoritarian governments whose people may one day rebel and set fire to the
Middle East.

Even before the U.S. attack on Afghanistan on Sunday, a burning hatred of
the U.S. simmered in much of the Arab world--including here, one of the most
cosmopolitan and moderate Arab nations.

The explanation for the anger caroming through cafes and marketplaces is the
same as elsewhere in the Arab world: the U.S. support of Israel and its
alleged indifference to the Palestinians killed in the year-old intifada,
and long-term sanctions against Iraq blamed for the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of women and children.

But deeper than those obvious reasons, analysts and ordinary citizens say,
is another factor, an uncomfortable reality long ignored by the West: The
governments of the Arab nations are among the most repressive in the world.

In most of the countries, there is no free press. There is no freedom of
association. Dissent is crushed. Torture is common. Opposition parties are
weak or ineffective.

As a result, the rulers of Arab countries are often out of step with their
people. So although most Arab leaders have pledged cooperation in the
U.S.-led battle against terrorism, their people are far less supportive.

Even worse, some analysts argue, the lack of a democratic outlet in Arab
countries fosters a breeding ground for Islamic extremists such as Osama bin
Laden and allies in his Al Qaeda terrorist network.

In a taped statement aired hours after Sunday's attack, Bin Laden tried to
exploit the split between Arab governments and their people. He charged that
Arab governments had "backed the butcher against the victim, the oppressor
against the innocent child."

Experts say Bin Laden is able to appeal to rank-and-file Arabs angered by
years of government oppression and factors such as the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.

"The lack of democracy and support of human rights has contributed to a
sense of frustration, anger and humiliation," said Judy Barsalou, grant
director with the United States Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded
agency focused on conflict resolution. "That's a direct pipeline to new
terrorists."

U.S. alliances with repressive regimes during the Cold War often wound up
exploding, such as the U.S.-backed dictatorship in Nicaragua, which was
ousted by the Marxist Sandinistas, or the U.S.-supported shah of Iran, whose
ouster gave rise to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Now, at the start of a new war on terrorism, some analysts fear that the
U.S. may be on the verge of repeating past mistakes, supporting
authoritarian governments whose people may one day rebel and set fire to the
Middle East.

As the U.S. embarks on what President Bush calls a fight to preserve values
of freedom and democracy, it is rushing to seek closer ties with governments
that are largely hostile to just such values.

"If you support absolute power and prevent people from expressing their
grievances, it's like giving permission for them to take their grievances
[to extremist groups]," said Essam al Arian, a leader of an outlawed
political group in Egypt.

Few Stabs at Democracy

Many former Communist countries have embraced free and fair elections. Every
nation in the Western hemisphere except Cuba is a democracy. Throughout much
of Asia, democratic institutions have taken hold, even in volatile countries
such as Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

But from North Africa through the Levant to the Persian Gulf, there are only
scattered attempts at democracy.

The U.S. has never pushed hard for democracy in the area. In large part,
this is because of the fear that fundamentalist extremists could take over
after democratic elections, leading to the creation of an Islamic state
eager to attack Israel and unleash terror throughout the world.

But it is also because the U.S. has more important concerns in the region
than democracy, analysts say.

"There's a long-standing tradition to look away from human rights and
democracy to protect oil and Israel," said Les Campbell, the Middle East
regional director for the National Democratic Institute for International
Affairs, a bipartisan group promoting democracy throughout the world. "When
you cut through it, it's those two things."

The lack of democracy benefits the countries' leaders, who often have vested
interests in maintaining the region's stability--to preserve personal oil
fortunes, for example.

But to maintain stability, they have had to focus societal anger away from
internal problems such as poverty and lack of social mobility toward
external problems such as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

This, in turn, backfires against the United States by stirring outrage and
postponing meaningful, long-term solutions, experts say.

"It's a false stability," said Arian, the leader of the outlawed Egyptian
group. "We call it the fire under the ashes."

A Mostly Closed Society

The Arab world has never been a beacon of freedom. Although periods of
political openness have existed in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, the
region has never sustained a fully open and democratic society.

Rulers in the region range from hereditary monarchs such as Saudi Arabia's
King Fahd to dictators such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein and presidents such as
Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, chosen in electoral contests routinely criticized as
unfair.

Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and Yemen are cited as having the most democratic
governments, but with significant qualification. Tunisia has been criticized
repeatedly for crushing an open press. Morocco and Jordan are monarchies.
Yemen is listed as a terrorist-supporting nation by the U.S. State
Department.

Mahfouz Azzam, the vice president of Egypt's Labor Party, said Mubarak's
ruling party controls the polling places, voter lists and ballot boxes,
enabling it to manipulate results. Of 454 seats in the People's Assembly,
fewer than two dozen are controlled by opposition figures.

Street protests are routinely quashed throughout the region. In many Arab
countries, for instance, police constrained protests on the one-year
anniversary of the Palestinian intifada in late September with rows of riot
police or bans on public gatherings.

The frustrations can easily be seen in the streets.

Ahmad Rikaby, a geography professor, and his friend Ahmad Awadallah, a chef,
recently came to the historic Al Azhar mosque in central Cairo for Friday
prayers.

As the two stood under a beating sun surrounded by black-clad security
police with machine guns, both scoffed at the idea that Egypt is a
democracy.

"In Egypt, we can't demonstrate against [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel
Sharon. If we could, I would demonstrate now, at once," Rikaby said.

A further problem in the Arab world is the lack of a free press. In most
places, media are state-supported. In the United Arab Emirates, the top
story in the papers about two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks on America
was a paean to the wise leadership of Sheik Zayed ibn Sultan al Nuhayyan,
the country's leader for 30 years.

And when newspapers and television stations strive to criticize, they are
often attacked. In Tunisia last year, a journalist went on a 40-day hunger
strike against police who had arrested his brother and shut off his phone.

Human rights get even less respect. Last year, a Saudi newspaper glowingly
reported an incident in which a man who had thrown acid in another man's
face, blinding him, had his eye surgically removed. Saudi Arabia follows a
strict Islamic code called Sharia.

Many Arab countries have an extensive apparatus of secret police. In many
nations, groups that advocate a civil society or human rights simply do not
exist.

It's a recipe for a society in which anger builds but has no place to go.

"If you treat people as slaves and don't respect their morality, their
religion, their character and way of behavior, what do you think will
happen?" Azzam asked. "If you support military force against people at the
same time you are preaching democracy, what do you think will happen?"

Opposition Crushed

The Arab world itself is proof of the problems repression can bring. Its
long history of crushing opposition groups partly explains its fertility in
terms of extremist organizations.

Many of the extremist groups, such as Egypt's Islamic Jihad and Gamaa al
Islamiya, were founded after governments outlawed and imprisoned tens of
thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The brotherhood, founded in
the late 1920s, sought a nonviolent path to uniting all Muslim countries
into a single nation with an Islamic government.

In fact, the original aim of Bin Laden and many other terrorist leaders was
to overthrow Arab governments they considered illegitimate. When those
governments cracked down, the groups turned to attack the United States,
accused of propping up the authoritarian regimes, as well as supporting
Israel.

"Who is protecting these regimes? It's their uncle, Uncle Sam," Azzam said.

A fully democratic Middle East would be no panacea. The extremist groups are
the primary argument against abandoning the region's kings, dictators and
dubiously elected presidents.

The key would be to create transitional governments that somehow manage to
keep the lid on the more violent elements while allowing full expression to
fundamentalists' concerns.

And some scholars and local leaders have suggested that the idea of
religious government based on Islam is antithetical to a pluralistic
democracy.

But even if the structures of Western-style democracy, with legislatures and
a president, don't work, its basic principles--free and fair elections, the
rule of law, civil rights--could be adapted to an Arab society.

If not, Rikaby, the geography professor, said the future is clear.

"It's like a balloon. It's best to let a little air out," he said. "If you
don't let it out, it will get hard and blow up, like a bomb."