Substantial Arab progress is possible, but prospects are poor where there is no will to change, writes Issa Khalaf* In the Arab Middle East there is no single, dark culminating historical moment. One cannot convincingly argue that the state of Arab politics is worse than "before", say, a previous historical event or period such as when colonialism divided up the Middle East after World War I and dashed the hopes of Arab nationalists, or the catastrophe of 1948 and defeat of 1967, the 1980-1988 Iran- Iraq war, the 1990 Gulf War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and that country's vicious sectarian war, the 2006 Israeli carnage in Lebanon or that nation's self-devastation through civil war, the current frenzied Zionist colonial dispossession of Palestine coupled with the Palestinians' own endemic factional violence. Gloominess is a recurrent condition. The only truism is the Arabs' apparent inability to arrest, even effectively manage, this dismal flatline, including their predictable paralysis and divisions in the face of enormous threats and challenges emanating from multiple directions. The central issue is what it has always been: absence of real or meaningful democratic participation and representation among the Arab peoples in the affairs of state, whose elites spend their time in calibrated application of co- optation, control and repression, though in this age of globalisation, of rapid changes in technology and information, the pressures for change are unrelenting, particularly in the poorer (relative to the oil states), demographically larger but more economically and socially complex Arab nations. Effective regional efforts at coordinated if not unified policies regarding Palestine and other issues are unattainable before a critical level of internal democratisation occurs. Regimes have come and gone, but the fundamental political, geographical, cultural and historical divisions among Arab states and regions have not changed. And they won't anytime soon, certainly not before significant levels of liberal economic, social and political development. How many friends and colleagues over the years have predicted or put faith and hope in the Arab peoples to pressure their states to mount a unified, democratic response to the multifaceted problems besetting the region. Here and there they see hopeful signs, such as protests and demonstrations during periodic Israeli depredations in the region, the increase of local NGOs, an assertive press, independent newspapers, the Internet, private satellite news channels such as Al-Jazeera, political expression through the arts such as cinema, and groups and voices representing an emergent civil society. Indeed, the monopoly of information in the public arena is no longer exclusively in the hands of the state; that ever hopeful but elusive constant, the potential democratisation of political culture, hovers in the background. On the other hand, it's easy to conclude, given the Arab public's ineffectualness -- which translates into apparent apathy, weakness and demoralisation in the face of daily horrors in Palestine, mass destruction in Lebanon, and occupation, violent division, and penury in Iraq -- that this inchoate mass actually matters little. True, this conclusion is misleading, ignoring the continuous expression of people across the Arab world in solidarity with these troubled lands. Whereas until the 1970s a still fresh nationalism and anti-colonialism galvanised millions, and populist regimes were riding the winds, today millions still register their dissatisfaction with Israeli actions and Western interventions, but these public opinions and sentiments compete with pressing localised political organisation and mobilisation concerned with jobs, housing, and general economic security. Still, the end result seems predictable: events unfold -- for example, US plans to invade Iraq -- mass protests take place, and legitimate grievances are aired in public squares, and war proceeds without a hitch. Meanwhile, the secular middle classes of professionals, journalists, civil servants, educators, and intellectuals have been preoccupied and weighed down of late by the suffocating economic/patronage control of the state, the apparent decline, and certainly ideological exhaustion, of Arab nationalism, cultural defensiveness against Western intrusions, and retreat in the face of Islamist militancy and provincialism. This leaves the ruling elites across the region situated where they've always been: busily maintaining the status quo and state control of resources against countervailing pressures of socially and economically discontented publics, actual and potential opposition groups, religious-political terrorism, Israeli occupation, and Western, particularly American, meddling and military interventions. It is not, and has not been in the past, an easy balancing act. Individual Arab states, many of which are original constructions of colonial designs, have cultivated localised identities and symbols of statehood, including citizenship, flag and territory, that have weakened countervailing Arab nationalist pressures on the one hand, and, because of their practices, suppressed parochial assertions on the other. As for Islamist political identity, this paradoxically leads to an unsolvable quandary: it is at once potentially pan-national and parochial, culturally transcendent and sectarian, inclusive and divisive. The conundrum for local regimes and all underdeveloped states is the same: achieving real independence, based on authentic and legitimate authority, in the painful context of political and economic dependence on outside powers. The paradox for Western regimes is this: Western political culture and leaders see as natural and inevitable the loosening of state control over Arab civil society while Western policies are reticent and fearful about the emergence of democratic Arab political culture that would potentially be a threat to perceived interests. Among Arab societies themselves, there are realities that must be confronted. Observing Iraq and Lebanon, one cannot ignore the enduring meaning for millions of their parochial identities. Third World societies are characterised by vertical cultural, social and ethnic divisions, severe inequitable distribution of wealth, and challenges to forming integrated national identities. In the Arab world, sectarian, ethno-linguistic and religious identities have always competed with national allegiances. One cannot easily dismiss, or look exclusively to external causes for, the ferocious Sunni-Shia hatred and sectarian calculations amid the competition for power over the prized Iraqi state, or that Lebanon can again collapse into civil war. Authoritarian, patriarchal political culture is a heritage of Arab history and social organisation, leaving the prospects of a democratic and pluralist social compact exceedingly fraught. These potentially culturally reductionist assertions should not be overemphasised. One could have easily so characterised Japanese, German, Italian and Russian political cultures, for example. Society and culture are not immutable, as Islamic societies are frequently portrayed. The state itself has played a huge role in exacerbating this situation. After all, wise leadership, such as that in South Korea or Botswana, can affect legal, political, cultural, educational and economic reform and change by practicing smart management rather than utilising the state as a bulwark for its power and privilege. The state can be highly effective as a model of accountability and rationality for groups and parties in society. Even deeply illiberal, authoritarian political cultures can and do change, as did those of Germany, Italy and Japan, in which fundamental, state-led, constitutionally engineered transformations in political attitudes and behaviour took place after World War II. Of course such change requires a foundation of industrial and economic progress, which is hard to come by in Third World states with complex structural problems and contending with dependency, rapid population growth, ignorance, religious traditionalism, and the limited economic and social reach of the state, the last a phenomenon prevalent in the Middle Eastern state: the vacuum in social services, including education, is filled by the patronage of Islamist parties and societies. Still, the state is a primary agent for cultural, political and social change, and one cannot wait until Arab states come out from under the shadow of underdevelopment. Muslim states such as Turkey, Tunisia and Malaysia, after all, are good examples of achievement, regardless of their shortcomings. Aspirations for development, social justice and independence will not be muted in this modern period. All great cultures and civilisations across time have what I would call a democratic tradition or principle, that is, different cultural expressions of popular assertion in accordance with their own cultural values and traditions. Almost all speak of just or correct or moral rule. In a manner, they are searching for the best and most legitimate ways to govern themselves and order their societies. Islamic, Confucian and Hindu traditions have been used for renewal, resistance, equality, just governance, inclusiveness and populism. Practically all non-Western societies today are aware of individual dignity and protection from arbitrary rule. Notions of popular sovereignty, accountability, law, and even human rights, are inherent in Islamic tradition. Reformist Islam can and must advance competing interpretations over Quranic text and the place of God in society and polity. Though the challenge is daunting, Islam contains within its great intellectual heritage and historical practice a vital capacity for critical, rational thought, and modern, liberal transformation. Though historically the ulema (religious scholars) as representatives of the umma (Muslim nation) chose or consented to their leaders, not Muslim citizens themselves, it is not that Islam is inherently authoritarian. Rather, the pre-Islamic societies from which Islam emerged and within which took root, many tribal, had no existing democratic traditions. Subsequently the social practices of these societies became understood as Islamic. Bosnia is Muslim and Islam is observed in an open, democratic and pluralistic European context. Islam is supple in its adaptation to cultural differences -- thus exists "African Islam", "European Islam", and the "Asian Islam" of Tareq Ramadan. To prevent authoritarianism and tyranny, however, popular consent, accountability and peaceful mechanisms for holding and transferring power must be institutionalised, regardless of what indigenous values and traditions may look like, or the prevalent level of development. Furthermore, respect for the human person cannot be ignored despite self-serving arguments -- from both the state and Islamists -- against Western individualism and materialism. Such mechanisms would approximate democracy. The modern Arab state, of whatever ideological hue, has in fact discouraged these possibilities and has burnt itself out playing an interminable game of pitting secularists against Islamists, nationalists against leftists, and so on, debilitating the liberal middle classes in the process. The bedeviling problem remains the symbiotic paradox of legitimacy and authority. Today, there is no tradition that can ignore the idea of authority emanating from the people. Even the Iranian regime, democratic in many respects, developed its unique, Shia-inspired "rule of the guardians" to resolve the question of authority, but is constantly under popular pressure for further state and societal democratisation. The fundamental challenge for Arab Muslim societies is to resolve the political difficulties created by the idea that God's will and power inhere not only in the initial act of creation but also in the natural realm and in human society. Even so, this would not necessarily be a frontal problem had the state since independence from colonial rule allowed the evolution of political reform to proceed, as well as permitting autonomy in economic and social spheres, thus taking the wind out of Islamist parties who are now showing an inclination to accommodation and pragmatism. The state can take the lead in resolving, or muting, through practices of representative government and open public discourse, the unsettled question of political authority in Islam. Arab Muslim societies seem especially prone to the politics of cultural defensiveness and parochialism, which afflicts Islamists and nationalists alike. Whereas once, at the height of Islamic economic, scientific and technological greatness, Christians emphasised their spiritual and theological superiority, now the situation is reversed. What is striking is that Latin American, African and Asian states and societies, despite their structural problems of underdevelopment and the prominence of their traditional cultures, have the capacity to embrace popular sovereignty and to accept certain beneficial Western forms, including women's participation in public space, more readily than Middle Eastern societies. Democracy is unlikely to arrive from the outside. Western policies, particularly those of the Bush administration, may advocate liberal and democratic goals but it is easy to dismiss this as an insincere masking of imperial interests. On the other hand, ideas of democracy, freedom, human rights, women's rights, civil society, minority rights, etc, represent the deepest and profoundest impulses of American/Western values and institutions. The major states' impulse to control and manage the Arab democratisation process, to build on perceived vital interests and protect their monopoly on energy resources, produces an apparent and real inconsistency. Furthermore, in the US in particular, the "Israel lobby", constituting extremely influential and politically mobilised Jewish communities for the cause of Israel, has gone some distance in shaping and distorting the content of US policy in Palestine-Israel and in the region more generally. If principles reigned free of politicisation, and if domestic political groups did not affect policies, contradictions would be greatly reduced; fairness, balance and more rational management would be more closely approximated. So, in its imperial self-conception as the embodiment of progress, the West, through arrogance and delusion, has come to think of itself not only as a catalyst for change but as change itself, as if history is no longer the constraining environment in which change takes place, independent of its parts and players. The West as an idea, that is, as a locus for modern ideas that are worthy and noble, is a positive force, but the West as military power and violence, coercion and hegemony, is morally and politically untenable. Western states need to create genuine and mutually respectful relations with Arab societies and consistently emphasise principles rather than align with autocratic regimes. The combined effects of the unabated autocracy of the Arab state, illiberal political cultures, Israeli policies in Palestine and the region, US occupation and potential partition of Iraq, the threat of widespread, violent factionalism in Palestine and civil war in Lebanon portend a dangerous near future. Western intrusion and hypocrisy, and American military intervention, have only destabilised and polarised local states, regimes and societies and may yet lead to further political fragmentation in the Middle East. They may even hasten major political upheavals and the break-up of existing states. The enduring hope is for Palestinian-Israeli co- existence, pan-Arab vitality and the promise of regional cooperation, Arab cultural and national renewal, loosening of the state's economic monopoly -- thus unleashing the entrepreneurial talent of Middle Eastern people, leading to individual and business autonomy from the state -- constitutional democracy, independent political parties, independent press, a hopeful and assertive liberal middle class, and widespread rights and protection for women. All this is even possible within the context of reformist, liberal Islamic institutions and values. Substantial economic progress where basic needs are met must underlie all other change. The state must permit and lead society in promoting dialogue, compromise, and peaceful bargaining within growing spheres of economic and social liberty. There is no other alternative, but there is also little prospect yet. * The writer holds a PhD in political science and Middle East studies from Oxford University.
