Leafing through the early papers of 2006, Dina Ezzat finds little reason for optimism In the final analysis, 2005 can hardly be described as a good year for the Arab world. It was a year of bloodshed and violence in the obvious turbulent areas, including Palestine and Iraq. It was a year of agitation and anger in Bahrain, Egypt and other Arab states and it was not a year of remarkable political or economic achievements in the region or any other part of the world. "If we were to assume that Arab countries were corporations and if we attempt to draw a 2005 balance sheet for these firms," wrote Maamoun Fendi, the regular Arab-American commentator in the London-based and Saudi-financed daily Asharq Al-Awsat, "then the outcome is bound to be depressive for all Arab states." According to Fendi's assessment, 2005 was a year of an overall rise of Islamist and nationalist trends that, he consistently argues, are good for nothing. And while 2005 was a year of elections across the Arab world, with some countries having their first ever legislative or municipal vote, Fendi, like many other commentators, argued that these were unexceptional ballots which were marred by fraud and vote rigging. In 2005, Fendi insisted, reform was a myth that was much talked about especially in conferences and in the mass media. But it was not just 2005 that was looked upon with pessimism in the Arab press; 2006 will not be any better. From the first day of January, commentators looked around the Arab world and failed to find anything positive or even hope for them. "2006 will not be less violent or less tense than 2005," says Kuwaiti political science professor Shafik Nazem Al-Ghabra in his weekly column in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai Al-Aam. "As in 2005, 2006 will bring about excessive violence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Egypt and Jordan are unlikely to go through the year unscathed by some explosive moments. Violence is still spreading across the Arab world. And as power struggles persist in the region, violence seems set to increase rather than decrease." According to Al-Ghabra, it is not just Arab countries that are set to suffer; Arab leaders, or most of them, do not seem to expect a happy 2006. "Most Arab leaders are bracing for a tense year. Many are bound to lose their seats either to the forces of nature or the inevitable forces of change," Al-Ghabra wrote. Predictions of who will survive 2006 and who won't were across the news pages of most papers. Fortune-tellers predicted the death of not less than five Arab leaders, some by natural causes and some by assassination. The one leader that both fortune-tellers and political commentators agreed was set for a very rough year was Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad whose regime's involvement in the assassination of prominent Lebanese politician and former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri and others during 2005 was all but confirmed by the loaded interview accorded during the last days of 2005 to the Al-Arabiya news channel by former Syrian vice-president Abdul-Halim Khaddam. In the interview, Khaddam said it was no other than the Syrian president himself who threatened a dramatic end to the life of Al-Hariri if he stood in the way of extending the rule of pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. Khaddam has since been hailed as a hero by most Lebanese papers "who wanted the best interests of his country and that of the Arab world in the face of the corrupt Syrian regime". He has also been since smeared by the Syrian press as "a traitor who should stand trial for high treason". Whatever were Khaddam's motives, most independent commentators including some in Lebanon, have interpreted his interview as a sign of the many disturbing surprises that 2006 is bound to bring. It was the editorial of the daily UAE Al-Bayan that summed up the worries and fears that many commentators have. According to the UAE daily, the Khaddam interview offered us a timely reminder that the bad news that the Arab world should expect will not only come from the usual hot spots such as Iraq and Palestine. "The region is entering the new year with many potential political and security explosions, some expected and many will be unexpected." This sense of apprehension was perhaps the reason that the Arab press received 2006 with more alarm bells than jingle bells. And this was perhaps what prompted Talal Salman, the prominent commentator of the prestigious Lebanese daily As-Safir to argue, "it has become very hard for someone to hold out any serious hope for the region, much less the Syrian-Lebanese relationship."
