France paying price of error

By Jonathan Power

LONDON (JP): If the bomb that was laid on Aug. 26 on the track of the high speed Paris to Lyon train, probably by Algerian Islamic militants, hadn't failed to detonate, France would now be in a political uproar. There would be no doubting that Algeria's civil war, for the second time in four decades, had spilled over into France. The threat remains. What didn't happen last month may well next.

This is the penalty France now pays for the miscalculations of the Mitterrand presidency, which made the fatal error of backing the generals in its former colony against the would-be democrats, for no other reason than a majority of the voters appeared ready to support the fundamentalist ticket.

The damage done in Algeria is now so severe that, even with the best will in the world, it is going to be difficult to turn back the clock to January, 1992, to before the time when military chiefs aborted a general election, to when a non-violent transition in political cultures was possible. The only promise now is not only of growing civil war in Algeria but of more and more innocent deaths on the streets of France's major cities and transport networks. Algeria itself seems doomed to become the next Iran.

But this doesn't mean it has to be "Iran" in Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine or even Saudi Arabia (which is, by most people's standards, fundamentalistic already), as the prophets of pessimism regularly suggest. Fundamentalism can co-exist with the secular state. It can be an important, but not overwhelming, part of the democratic order.

One can see the possibilities for this most distinctly in Jordan, where King Hussein has shown over many years how to co- opt the energies and causes of the Islamists without jeopardizing his own rule. At the same time, wittingly or not, he is laying the foundations for a transition to a full democracy, which could be fundamentalist-dominated or, more likely, with a fundamentalist minority, since in the process of being openly politically active the Islamists have shown, over time, that they don't have all the answers. The Islamists used Jordan's political system to sweep to power in the 1989 parliamentary elections, but King Hussein used the system to undercut them in the 1993 polls.

Hussein's achievement has been eclipsed in the last years by the bad feelings generated over his neutrality during the Gulf War. Now that has been repaired, not least by his recent decision to play host to top-ranking defectors from Saddam Hussein's inner circle, outsiders should take another look.

In Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood has long been moderate and anti-terrorist, happy to accept the legitimacy of Hashemite rule.

In the 1970s, the Brotherhood built its network of social welfare institutions which gave it the opportunity during the recession of the 1980s to develop into a populist movement, as income disparities between the well-to-do and the poor widened and it was able to take the lead in opposing unemployment, corruption, mismanagement and waste.

The role of parliament in Hussein's kingdom has been very much an on-and-off business. Between 1967 and 1989 there were no elections and even today with a vociferous and active parliament, all important policy decisions remain the prerogative of the palace. Nevertheless, the fact that the Brotherhood and the independent Islamists recently controlled the largest bloc of seats in the lower house gives them a degree of political leverage that no other Islamist movements in the Arab world possess.

In 1991, Hussein brought Islamists into the cabinet, rewarding them with key social portfolios. But in the 1993 general election, the Islamists lost a third of their seats, partly because the electoral rules had been changed and partly because on important issues, including economic reform, they had performed badly in government and instead had used up their capital on issues the electorate considered marginal, such as trying to ban alcohol.

There are important lessons to be learned from the Jordanian experience -- certainly for Egypt, where reformers have long argued for the Brotherhood to be fully legalized on the grounds that it would become a bulwark against the growing violence- orientated Islamist movements. Similarly, the Palestine Liberation Organization would be smart to neutralize Hamas, the militant Islamist movement, that at the moment is doing all it can to wreck further progress on the PLO/Israeli rapprochement. Yasser Arafat should reach out to more moderate Hamas members with a power-sharing agreement to be forged in the elections now planned for year's end. In Saudi Arabia, militants should be allowed to participate in a national assembly. In Tunisia, all the wrong moves are being made, as if its near dictatorship is determined to repeat the mistakes of its Algerian neighbor's clamp-down,

As long as Islamists accept the principle -- as they do in Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt, and did in Algeria -- that they'll give up power if defeated there is every reason to let them have a shot at winning an election. All the incumbents have to fear is fear itself -- and, of course, of losing the perks of being in power.