[A-List] US imperialism: West Asia

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

It is not democracy that's on the march in the Middle East

Managed elections are the latest device to prop up pro-western regimes

Seumas Milne
Thursday March 10, 2005
The Guardian

For weeks a western chorus has been celebrating a new dawn of Middle Eastern
freedom, allegedly triggered by the Iraq war. Tony Blair hailed a "ripple of
change", encouraged by the US and Britain, that was bringing democracy to
benighted Muslim lands.

First the Palestinians, then the Iraqis have finally had a chance to choose
their leaders, it is said, courtesy of western intervention, while
dictatorships such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are democratising under
American pressure. And then in Lebanon, as if on cue, last month's
assassination of the former prime minister triggered a wave of street
protests against Syria's military presence that brought down the
pro-Damascus government in short order.

At last there was a democratic "cedar revolution" to match the US-backed
Ukrainian "orange revolution" and a photogenic display of people power to
bolster George Bush's insistence that the region is with him. "Freedom will
prevail in Lebanon", Bush declared this week, promising anti-Syrian
protesters that the US is "on your side". The foreign secretary, Jack Straw,
is expected to join the cheerleaders for Arab democracy in a speech today
and warn the left not to defend the status quo because of anti-Americanism.

The first decisive rebuff to this fairy tale of spin was delivered in Beirut
on Tuesday, when at least 500,000 - some reports said it was more like a
million - demonstrators took to the streets to show solidarity with
embattled Syria and reject US and European interference in Lebanon.
Mobilised by Hizbullah, the Shia Islamist movement, their numbers dwarfed
the nearby anti-Syrian protesters by perhaps 10 to one; and while the
well-heeled Beiruti jeunesse dorée have dominated the "people power"
jamboree, most of Tuesday's demonstrators came from the Shia slums and the
impoverished south. Bush's response was to ignore them completely. Whatever
their numbers, they were, it seems, the wrong kind of people.

But the Hizbullah rally did more than demolish the claims of national unity
behind the demand for immediate Syrian withdrawal. It also exposed the
rottenness at the core of what calls itself a "pro-democracy" movement in
Lebanon. The anti-Syrian protests, dominated by the Christian and Druze
minorities, are not in fact calling for a genuine democracy at all, but for
elections under the long-established corrupt confessional carve-up, which
gives the traditionally privileged Christians half the seats in parliament
and means no Muslim can ever be president. As if to emphasise the point, one
politician championing the anti-Syrian protests, Pierre Gemayel of the
rightwing Christian Phalange party (whose militiamen famously massacred
2,000 Palestinian refugees under Israeli floodlights in Sabra and Shatila in
1982), recently complained that voting wasn't just a matter of majorities,
but of the "quality" of the voters. If there were a real democratic
election, Gemayel and his friends could expect to be swept aside by a
Hizbullah-led government.

The neutralisation of Hizbullah, whose success in driving Israel out of
Lebanon in 2000 won it enormous prestige in the Arab world, is certainly one
aim of the US campaign to push Syria out of Lebanon.The US brands Hizbullah,
the largest party in the Lebanese parliament and leading force among the
Shia, Lebanon's largest religious group, as a terrorist organisation without
serious justification. But the pressure on Syria has plenty of other
motivations: its withdrawal stands to weaken one of the last independent
Arab regimes, however sclerotic, open the way for a return of western and
Israeli influence in Lebanon, and reduce Iran's leverage.

Ironically, Syria's original intervention in Lebanon was encouraged by the
US during the civil war in 1976 partly to prevent the democratisation of the
country at the expense of the Christian minority's power. Syria's presence
and highhandedness has long caused resentment, even if it is not regarded as
a foreign occupation by many Lebanese. But withdrawal will create a vacuum
with huge potential dangers for the country's fragile peace.

What the US campaign is clearly not about is the promotion of democracy in
either Lebanon or Syria, where the most plausible alternative to the Assad
regime are radical Islamists. In a pronouncement which defies satire, Bush
insisted on Tuesday that Syria must withdraw from Lebanon before elections
due in May "for those elections to be free and fair". Why the same point
does not apply to elections held in occupied Iraq - where the US has 140,000
troops patrolling the streets, compared with 14,000 Syrian soldiers in the
Lebanon mountains - or in occupied Palestine, for that matter, is
unexplained. And why a UN resolution calling for Syrian withdrawal from
Lebanon has to be complied with immediately, while those demanding an
Israeli pullout from Palestinian and Syrian territory can be safely ignored
for 38 years, is apparently unworthy of comment.

The claim that democracy is on the march in the Middle East is a fraud. It
is not democracy, but the US military, that is on the march. The Palestinian
elections in January took place because of the death of Yasser Arafat - they
would have taken place earlier if the US and Israel hadn't known that Arafat
was certain to win them - and followed a 1996 precedent. The Iraqi elections
may have looked good on TV and allowed Kurdish and Shia parties to improve
their bargaining power, but millions of Iraqis were unable or unwilling to
vote, key political forces were excluded, candidates' names were secret,
alleged fraud widespread, the entire system designed to maintain US control
and Iraqis unable to vote to end the occupation. They have no more brought
democracy to Iraq than US-orchestrated elections did to south Vietnam in the
1960s and 70s. As for the cosmetic adjustments by regimes such as Egypt's
and Saudi Arabia's, there is not the slightest sign that they will lead to
free elections, which would be expected to bring anti-western governments to
power.

What has actually taken place since 9/11 and the Iraq war is a relentless
expansion of US control of the Middle East, of which the threats to Syria
are a part. The Americans now have a military presence in Saudi Arabia,
Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar - and in not one of those
countries did an elected government invite them in. Of course Arabs want an
end to tyrannical regimes, most of which have been supported over the years
by the US, Britain and France: that is the source of much anti-western
Muslim anger. The dictators remain in place by US licence, which can be
revoked at any time - and managed elections are being used as another
mechanism for maintaining pro-western regimes rather than spreading
democracy.

Jack Straw is right about one thing: there's no happy future in the regional
status quo. His government could play a crucial role in helping to promote a
real programme for liberty and democracy in the Middle East: it would need
to include a commitment to allow independent media such as al-Jazeera to
flourish; an end to military and financial support for despots; and a
withdrawal of all foreign forces from the region. Now that would herald a
real dawn of freedom.