Americans in the Middle East

2005

By: Ali Ismail

aliismail_uk@yahoo.co.uk


Mobile telephone: 0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)




The Arab world is uncomfortably aware that it just cannot match the might of the armed forces (pictured) of the United States of America in anger at this point in time.

SHOULD THE AMERICANS BE IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

There is a school of thought which is against interventionist policies

Two new reports on economics and politics in the Arab states have highlighted what most knowledgeable regional specialists already know: the Arab heartlands are in a mess and American policies have worsened the situation. They are: Arab World Competitiveness Report 2005 and Towards Freedom in the Arab World.
"The Arab world is facing a population time bomb and urgently needs to reform governments, education systems and cultural rules that keep women out of the workforce" wrote Al Jazeera in April, summing up the conclusions of the Arab World Competitiveness Report 2005 which was published by the World Economic Forum after an April 2, 2005 conference in Doha, Qatar.
The Competitiveness Report acknowledged the basic economic viability of oil-rich statelets such as Qatar, but over the next decade other Arab nations apparently need ‘to create 80 million jobs’ to address the growing numbers of future jobseekers. Mustafa Nabil, a senior World Bank economist for the Middle East, has stated that Arab leaders' "resistance to change" is an obstacle to the making of major reforms.
The 2004 Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), "Towards Freedom in the Arab World," backed up Mr Nabil's views on “the authoritarian nature" of Arab leaders but annoyed Washington by criticising the American role in Iraq and Israel.
Washington’s displeasure delayed the report's original October 2004 release date and led to UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown's statement that "In the case of this year's report some of the views expressed by the authors are not shared by the UNDP or the UN."
The author Nader Fergany claimed that the Bush administration responded to the criticism by threatening to cut down on its $100 million contribution to the UNDP. The UNDP denied that. However, the story was leaked to the media and Arab policy makers understood what the consequences of annoying the Americans could be.
President Bush (junior) had already made clear his light regard for the UN by invading Iraq in 2003, thus undermining the standing of the Security Council, which had declined to authorize military action. He defied the UN a little later by nominating as undersecretary of state for arms control John Bolton as Washington's UN representative.
"There's no such thing as the United Nations," Mr Bolton had declared at the 1994 Global Structures Convocation in New York, adding: "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
The Bush camp, however, does not hesitate to use UN documents that support their policies. They commended the 2002 and 2003 Arab Human Development Reports, which brought up the absence of freedom in Arab states; White House officials used that to justify their own ‘democratic’ plans to reform the Middle East
Nevertheless, the authors of the 2004 AHDR violated taboos by criticizing Israel, which, according to them, ‘has continued its violations of the individual and collective freedoms of the Palestinians’, and President Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq, where ‘the Iraqi people have emerged from the grip of a despotic regime only to fall under a foreign occupation that increased human suffering’. Both policies have ‘adversely influenced Arab human development’ according to the authors.
Such conclusions cause deep pessimism. Absence of freedom pervades the region, particularly in the oil-rich Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The 2004 AHDR also focuses on Washington's apparent hypocrisy in including among its allies nations such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia which the American government designates as ‘democratic’. These governments, the authors opine, would not pass even elementary democratic criteria.
President Bush’s supporters, however, seem to deny reality in several matters. The apparently tyrannical regimes that they call ‘allies’ will not redistribute power or wealth. Furthermore, the Arabs interviewed by the AHDR team want "liberation from foreign occupation and the freedoms of opinion, expression and movement." These things do not bother "democracy pushers."
"We are at the dawn of a glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the Middle East," wrote columnist Charles Krauthammer. "It was triggered by the invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and televised images of eight million Iraqis voting in a free election" he stated in the March 4, 2005 issue of the Washington Post.
Awada Dakil, an Iraqi Shia, opposes Mr Krauthammer's frothy enthusiasm. "Nothing has changed," he said. "The only difference is that we were once ruled by a dictator and now we are ruled by clowns."
Mr Dakil has been evaluating the mood on the Arab street where the average unemployment rate hovers at around 15 percent. "32 million people suffer from malnutrition," stated the latest AHDR, after studying 15 Arab countries. Daily setbacks trouble both Iraq and Afghanistan, while Lebanon faces possible civil war caused by the assassination in February of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
President Bush's religious beliefs make reasonable discussion about facts in the region somewhat difficult. Shortly after American troops invaded Iraq, the commerce secretary at the time, Don Evans, said "Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time.”
On March 2, 2005, the President told an audience at Maryland's Anne Arundel Community College: "I look forward to continuing to work with friends and allies to advance freedom - not just America's freedom, but universal freedom, freedom granted by a Higher Being
Since 9/11, according to Al Jazeera on 2 April, 2005, wealthy Arab investors have sold their American investments and have instead poured their money into regional real estate. This creates temporary construction jobs but does not fuel an export-based economy or attract large-scale foreign capital. Real economic reforms would have to address the problem of over-staffed bureaucracies which seem to function without accountability, transparency or the rule of law and which make long-term reforms almost impossible.
President Bush's simplistic reforms, which echo some of Ronald Reagan’s plans, call for ‘privatisation’ to solve the Middle East's economic troubles, which sounds strange in a region where the huge oil revenues have not trickled down to the fellahin. For many members of the public in the Arab world, privatisation amounts to the theft of public property by privileged persons.
The President seeks to address Middle Eastern poverty with the remedy of free trade. "Across the globe, free markets and trade have helped defeat poverty and taught men and women the habits of liberty," he declared. "So I propose the establishment of a U.S.-Middle East free trade area within a decade, to bring the Middle East into an expanding circle of opportunity, to provide hope for the people who live in that region."
Others might offer the Middle East a new Marshall Plan which would be an investment plan for industry and infrastructure with educational reforms to bring literacy and socio-economic development to the Arab masses ­ and thus secure the groundwork for democracy. The Competitiveness Report concludes that the Arab world needs such assistance and not empty slogans such as ‘democracy’ which has led, in Iraq and Afghanistan, to an exclusive group of American approved candidates running in elections which have been supervised by the Americans.
The Arabs have a strong sense of history. In the mosques and the streets, the past interacts with the present as a stabiliser in daily life. Ancient religious shrines and traditions co-exist with the mobile ‘phone and the motorcar. Even today, in Ma'aloula, near Damascus, the inhabitants speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
The Arabs have solid reasons to suspect the West's advocacy of democracy. France and England colonized and enriched themselves by their involvement in the region after World War I. Iraqis still recall that when they rebelled against British occupation in the early 1920s, the British used poison gas on them. The Syrians remember France’s suppression of their resistance to occupation in 1925-1927 and again in 1945. Washington's on-going defence of the Israeli occupation of former Palestine tells the Arabs something about an apparently one-sided interpretation of ‘democracy’.
These two reports are well worth reading for those interested in this troubled region.


THE END