Listen to the people of the Middle East and allow them, too, to taste the joy of hope, Ibrahim Nawar* counsels the next US commander-in-chief I'd like first of all to deeply congratulate you for your remarkable victory in the presidential race -- a victory you rightly deserve. Your hard work throughout the campaign has been equally rewarded. You have shown us how a political leader can be clear, simple and deep at the same time. Your words "Yes we can" have reached out to every man and woman struggling for freedom, peace and prosperity. Now they all believe that however disadvantageous some people might be, they can together make their dreams come true. As a citizen from the Middle East that happened to have been in Washington DC the night you were declared the presidential winner, I believe that hope has prevailed and that a man with hope and determination can win, too, in the fight for justice, democracy and peace. In the Middle East, people can easily identify themselves with you. They see your middle name "Hussein" as familiar to them, your colour as closer to theirs and your early upbringing as similar to most of them. But that is not why they identify themselves with you. Above everything they believe in your message, "Change is needed". They also see hope in your promises and your good intentions; these matter to them a lot. Your future policies when you assume office will determine the way they will judge you. US policy in the Middle East has been a matter of great concern in the last decades. In the last eight years alone the credibility of this policy has been seriously damaged. The policy was seen from here -- the Middle East -- as driven by selfish interest in keeping oil supplies to the US running and the unjust political situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict going, even at the expense of the people of the region. What made things worse was the use of force to bring about "regime change" in Iraq. The war on terrorism has become a tool used by US policymakers as a justification to support and strengthen conservative allies in the region. Long-term interests of the people of the Middle East in freedom, the rule of law, development and just peace were at the bottom of the outgoing Bush administration's priorities. The war in Iraq has resulted in changing the balance of power in the Middle East, pushing Iranian influence deeper inside Arab countries (Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Bahrain, Kuwait and Yemen). The heavy US military existence in the region, though seen as strategically important to balance out Iranian threats, has ignited negative feelings against the United States. Restoring credibility to US foreign policy in the Middle East should be one of your priorities when in the White House. I see three pillars of what can be a credible US policy in the Middle East. One is a just peace settlement to the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. A two-state solution has been already agreed on paper. Your goal should be to build upon that. You may need to exert some pressure on the Israelis. You will have to do that if necessary. I know how strong the Israeli lobby in the US is, but I equally know that your campaign did not financially rely on donations from strong political or business lobbyists, but rather on small donations from young and ordinary people who hold strong hope in a better tomorrow. So please don't let down those young and ordinary people in Palestine who hold such hope. They feel that they have been let down for decades by broken promises and unjust policies. Make them feel that "together they can" live in peace. Desperate Palestinians are fighting each other. In this fight it is the ordinary man and woman who pays the price of war. Palestinians are fearful of a situation in which they may not find land to negotiate about. There is still some left, but Israeli settlers and Israeli settlements are infiltrating Palestinian land day after day. This has first to stop, measures to build real mutual trust to start, and a process to apply a viable and practical two-state solution to succeed. Just peace in Palestine is the first pillar. But closely connected to it is the Syrian hope in peace. This hope should be kept alive by tempting the Syrians to join in the peace process, not to alienate them. The second pillar is to remove oil gradually from US foreign policy in the Middle East. The people of the Middle East believe, right or wrong, that oil is the driving force behind US foreign policy towards their region. It is encouraging to hear you, in speech after speech, affirming your intention to rid the US of energy dependency and to start a promising grand programme of investment in clean renewable energy resources in the US. If successful, you will also be able to rid US foreign policy of dependency on the conservative masters of oil fields in the Middle East. US interests in the Middle East have polluted US foreign policy in the region. You will be able to have just objectives achieved by clean and just means. That, we know, can't be achieved overnight but gradually. Signals have to be clear pointing in that direction. This is the only way to convince the people of the Middle East that US foreign policy sees them being as human as other people in the world, not just as some who happen to live in an oil rich region. Taking oil out of the US foreign policy equation in the Middle East will help the new US administration restore credibility to US foreign policy in the most troubled region on earth. It will make men and women in the Middle East believe that US policymakers consider the value of a drop of oil below the value of a drop of blood. Three wars in the Gulf in almost two decades -- the Iran-Iraq War, the Kuwait liberation war, and the war to remove Saddam in Iraq -- have left the belief that the US cares only about the security of oil supplies from the Middle East. Your administration will, of course, have a lot to worry about in the region in the short to medium term, but if you give the right signal, you will gain the trust of the people and the security of oil supplies. In the end, the people of the Middle East don't produce oil to drink it. They produce oil to sell it and to buy water and food with its returns. You may have seen the huge demonstrations against the Iraq war. You have bravely opposed that war in the US Senate. Taking such a stand was definitely the right response to the feeling of the ordinary man and woman across the world. You stood in rejection to the use of force to achieve foreign policy goals. Saddam was never an imminent threat to the US. He was indeed a tyrant that his own people suffered. The US should have helped the Iraqi people to rid themselves of him and his regime. That may have required more time, better coordination with international and regional allies, and more ground work to help Iraqis themselves on the battleground. Regime change by force is a bad idea and the people of the Middle East hope that the US will never resolve differences with others by using force. Using force is the last way to achieve peace and build prosperity. This is the third pillar on which the credibility of US foreign policy in the Middle East can be restored. Now, you have more than 150,000 US personnel in Iraq. Some of them may be able to easily go back to their homes. But don't rush most of them out. They went there for a reason, not just to topple Saddam's regime, but also to help Iraqis to build a new democracy. Where is it? By rushing American troops out of Iraq, a vacuum of power -- military and political -- will appear. Others may exploit it and do no good. Iraqis, so far, have not proved able to defend their borders and their security forces are still unqualified alone to defeat terrorism and elements of political instability. Yes, ordinary men and women in the Middle East did not want American troops to invade Iraq in 2003, but today is a different story. The US is already there in Iraq. Its troops and former Civil Administrator Paul Bremer managed to destroy the Iraqi state and created a new balance of power in Iraq that made its regime sectarian rather than secular. In order to undo that and to repair the damage caused in Iraq, the new administration, yours, will have to get more politically engaged in Iraq, not less. In the end, US troops should leave, but to leave behind a stable secular political system at peace with itself and its neighbours, not a fierce civil war that may draw many to intervene and make the situation worse. You should establish an honest dialogue with the Iraqi people and help them avoid an unstable future. US military withdrawal from Iraq in any form is closely connected with two other issues. First is Iran's nuclear programme, and second is the security of the Arab Gulf area. I agree with you that a nuclear Iran will bring no stability to the region. On the contrary, it may open up a nuclear weapons race at the expense of people's prosperity and peace. The US and the oil producing countries alike have a strong interest in ensuring peace and security in the region. At the moment, only US troops in the Gulf can do the job. Nonetheless, this is unacceptable to the people of the area. A new vision for achieving peace and security in the Gulf is needed; a vision based on partnership and equality. I know that you are a good listener. You said it and people believe it. Our hope is that you will listen to the voice of the people of the Middle East, especially when they disagree with you. The people of the Middle East have been eager to move to democracy and to live in a free, secular and plural society. People in the Middle East witnessed with joy the collapse of the old military regimes in Greece, Spain and Portugal in the mid-1970s. They were saddened to see themselves left far behind. They have also witnessed the end of military dictatorship governments in Latin America. They were saddened that this kind of government still exists in their region. The people of the Middle East witnessed with joy the collapse of Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet bloc and the emergence of new democracies in Eastern Europe. They were saddened that democracy looked far away from them. Democracy is not just ballot boxes or clean elections. It is much more. It is freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of organisation, freedom of belief and cultural diversity. Democracy is equality, the rule of law, political transparency and accountability. Democracy is to have hope for a better tomorrow. Together, we can. We want you to share this hope with us. Hope for peace, rather than war. Hope for prosperity, rather than poverty. Hope for freedom, rather than oppression. Can we? Yes we can. We are "ready to go". * The writer is chairman of the Arab Organisation for Freedom of the Press and has worked as an adviser to the UN mission to Iraq.
