Having given the world so much hope, now Barack Obama may be the world's greatest disappointment, writes Gamil Matar We spent the better part of 2009 waiting for change to begin, starting from the US. Before the year was out, we learned to our dismay that the forces opposed to change in the US and the rest of the world are stronger than we had imagined. The hopes of people everywhere had been pinned on that African American who had surmounted all conventions of the US establishment and occupied the Oval Office. He had raised the expectations of fellow African Americans, indeed of all Americans of colour and of the poorer classes. He had raised the expectations of the peoples of Latin America who had been waiting for two or more centuries for an American leader who recognised the right of the countries of South America to determine their own fate and to invest their resources toward the improvement of the welfare of their own people. He had lifted the hopes of the Arabs and the Palestinians, in particular, who for decades had longed to the point of despair for a US president prepared to endure the risks and sacrifices necessary to tell the Israeli and American pro-Zionist lobbies, "Stop meddling in American foreign policy decision-making." Broad sections of public opinion in the US and abroad had hoped for an American leadership that would give soft strength, such as diplomacy, a chance, instead of resorting to war to solve the US's problems abroad. Hopes were raised even further with signs of a new thaw in US-Russian relations, which was reflected in the alleviation of tensions in Europe. Washington also brought a new approach to its dealings with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Fidel and Raoul Castro in Cuba, even if it had the heavy stick ever to hand, which it wielded when it went ahead with the establishment of military bases in Columbia in defiance of the opinion of most Latin American governments and peoples. The Europeans held out higher hopes for a better climate in international relations in general, now that Bush had exited the White House and US foreign policy was released from the grip of the neoconservatives whose reckless hawkish policies had driven European leaders and many segments of public opinion to such despair that they had begun to seriously think of ushering in a new era of international relations in which the US would play a much less prominent role. It did not escape many political analysts that when Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize before having even had the opportunity to demonstrate on the ground that he merited it, this was the way of influential European circles expressing how high their expectations were of him and of showing him much needed moral support. But then the glow began to fade. Opposition camps doubled their efforts to forestall or obstruct the implementation of plans and projects to which he had committed himself during his electoral campaign. Simultaneously, circumstances and developments conspired to compel the Obama administration to pursue policies it had generally been presumed to be opposed to. In recent weeks, for example, it has begun to speak of the war on terror, even though several months ago Obama had advised government agencies to refrain from using the term and its associated rhetoric. Also, as we have seen, Obama backtracked on pledges he made with respect to a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was as though he had deliberately squandered a degree of popularity unattained by any previous US president and, perhaps, even allowed his secretary of state to lie in spite of his vow to keep his administration clean, transparent and honest. The Obama administration's wavering and backtracking on Middle East policy has already had a drastic effect on Arab public opinion, and its reversion to the Bush policy and behaviour in Afghanistan struck a crushing blow to the hopes and expectations of people everywhere. The image of the man who had won the Nobel Prize on the strength of his repeated promises to forego the tools of war and bullying and to promote the instruments of diplomacy and soft strength has begun to crumble. Contrary to his pledges, Obama has ordered a huge troop increase in Afghanistan and instructed his commanders to intensify the use of pilotless aircraft, the most state-of-the-art weapon of stealth that, under his predecessor, proved to kill more innocent people than conventional weapons. He has also set the CIA loose in Pashtun, in spite of his earlier pledge to clean up the agency, regulate it more closely and prevent it from committing acts of torture and other abuses. And to justify such policies he parroted the pretext of his predecessor: they are to "protect the American people". In the face of these actions general optimism receded and doubts and suspicions have begun to worm their way into people's expectations. I therefore have no doubt that 2010 will open less jubilantly than 2009. Many Arabs -- Egyptians above all -- will not begin their new year with the assurance that the Obama administration will focus on the questions of democratisation, human rights and civil liberties in their countries. After all, during the whole of this past year the state of human rights and civil liberties in the Arab world has steadily deteriorated while Obama stood at the American helm. I also imagine the year will bring greater feebleness on the part of the official Arab order in dealing with Israel and an unprecedented degree of neglect of the Palestinian cause in general. Indeed, I strongly suspect that some Arab regimes had rejoiced at Obama's arrival to power precisely because the spotlights would be trained on him, deflecting their people's attention away from their own negligence and incompetence. But now I believe the Arab people will resume pressure on their governments to take a tougher stance against Israel, to press for the lifting of the blockade against the Palestinian people, to halt normalisation and to expose the corruption associated with this process. I simultaneously expect the people to hold their governments responsible for Obama's failure to honour his pledges and for his caving in to Israel. Arab governments clearly stepped aside to watch Obama try to pressure Israel and get buffeted by Israeli pressures in return without budging an inch to help him rein Israel in. As an Arab official explained to me, some quarters of Arab officialdom did not want Obama to appear as a president who bowed to Arab pressures! My greatest fear is that in the next few months Arab governments will become even more repressive in the hope of pre-empting popular outbursts for various reasons. If this prediction comes true, the state of human rights in the region will plunge to a level worse than ever in the past two decades. Nevertheless, if Arab governments increase their doses of repression above their customary levels I foresee several major problems coming to a head. The first is the increasingly rampant trend towards fragmentation in the region. The causes of this trend are already there in sufficient force. Among them are the religious and sectarian rifts in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Arabian Peninsula, and the ethnic strife in Iraq, Sudan and Egypt and in some North African countries. Another cause is mounting tribalism, a phenomenon that extends the length and breadth of the Arab world. On top of these there are the usual disparities in the distribution of resources, corruption, breakdown in security and mounting despotism. The second problem stems from the regional leadership vacuum and the cessation of "activity" in the Arab order. The acuteness of this problem becomes glaringly apparent to the Arab travelling abroad who can observe from a distance the grim political barrenness of the Arab world and the heart that has stopped beating. But other non-Arab capitals in the region have also taken stock of this situation. According to some officials in Ankara and Tehran, Turkey and Iran will not stand by if conditions in the Arab world deteriorate in such a way as to threaten regional stability. In addition, Israeli officials, echoing a caution from the recent past, will warn that Israel refuses to remain idle while the region in which it lives succumbs to chaos. At that point at least one of those three countries will claim the right to intervene in the Arab world one way or another so as to ensure that the Arab chaos does not engulf the entire Middle East. Then, after one of those three countries acts the other two are bound to follow suit, as it is impossible to imagine any of them merely looking on while the other two or even a Western power sets foot on Arab land on the pretext of fulfilling its self-claimed role as guardian of regional security and stability. The third problem is a renewed escalation in the confrontation between Islam and the West. As we know from previous rounds, the motivating forces behind this confrontation have not changed even if they have changed in order and priority. The persistent failure of efforts to achieve a just settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the ongoing pressures against the Palestinians and the West's pro- Israeli bias have always consistently constituted a prime cause. So too have the deterioration in social and economic conditions and the growing income disparities in most Islamic countries. The IT revolution and globalisation have helped escalate tensions between Islam and the West, especially in view of the rise of the ultra right in the US, Britain and the West, in general; the role this played in setting the stage for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the tentacle-like influence of the Zionist media in distorting the image of Islam and stirring hatred against Muslim minorities in Europe and the US. For some time we had thought that Obama, viewed askance by some as half Muslim and regarded with suspicion by others as half Christian, would alleviate this problem or at least prevent it from rearing its head too dangerously. He had come out against the torture of Islamist radicals in US prisons, he had delivered what seemed to be a sincere and intelligent address to the Islamic world from Cairo, and he declared an end to the "war on terrorism". Sadly, it now seems that all the inroads he achieved through these stances happened very long ago, long before the resurgence of the American ultra right in the form of its vehement campaign to undermine Obama's policies and reignite anti-Muslim feeling in the US and the West, and long before Netanyahu and his clique insulted the US president and marred his image in the minds of people in the Arab world and elsewhere. I can only hope that my fears prove misplaced and that the three problems above do not conspire to put an end to the cause of change and hopes for an era of world peace. Unfortunately, however, just as the world was hoping to put to rest the memory of the ugly face of America, the arrogant and reckless America, the America of George W Bush, that face has begun to loom again. * The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
