U.S. and democratization in the Middle East

Riza Sihbudi, Research Fellow, JSPS-CSEAS, Kyoto University, Japan

The U.S. President George W. Bush has urged Middle East leaders from Iran to Syria to embrace democracy, and warned that the United States must install democratic freedoms in Iraq or risk increased terror attacks.

"As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export," Bush said Thursday in his forthright speech to the National Endowment for Democracy (AFP, Nov. 7, 2003).

The issue of democratization in the Middle East is not something new. The issue has been gaining momentum since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and after the 1991 Gulf war. Political unrest in Algeria (1992) -- which was the result of halting democratic processes in an effort to stop the "fundamentalist" Islamic Salvation Front from taking power -- has added to the problems of democratization in the region.

Democracy is a political system idealized by most of the people of the world. Most countries in the world have emphasized that they are democratic states. The Middle East countries also found it difficult to avoid the democratization wave that became one of the main political agendas in the 21st century. "Democracy is needed by the Arab world," said Taha Abdel-Alim, the vice director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) in 1995.

The question is can the democratic political system be implemented in the Middle East, especially in the Arab world? "I do not think democracy will come to all Arab countries", one Arab diplomat said. According to the late president of Syria Hafiz al- Asad, "Democracy is not a ready-made commodity which is imported from one country or another". When still in power, Saddam Hussein said, "We are practicing democracy according to our culture, not the democracy dictated by the Americans." Indeed, western-style democracy is impossible to fully implement in the Arab world. But, there are many universal values in democracy, such as the broad political participation of the people, law enforcement and the control of the ruling regime.

However, for some Middle East leaders, democracy was incompatible with the values of Islam that were dominant in the region. The view that Islam is contradictory to democracy was also emphasized by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who openly said that democracy is compatible to western society, but incompatible to Muslim nations. Fahd has even "bastardized" the concept of free general elections. "The prevailing democratic system in the world is not suitable for us in this region... We have our own Muslim faith which is a complete system and a complete religion. Elections do not fall within the sphere of the Muslim religion," said Fahd as quoted by Lisa Anderson (1997).

Indeed, the fundamentals of democracy -- power sharing and public accountability -- are largely nonexistent in the Arab states. A survey of Arab politics reveals three distinct formulas for legitimacy: The leader-state, the traditional monarchy, and the quasi-liberal regime.

The second constraint to developing democracy in the Arab world is, as As'ad Abu Khalil (1992) said that in countries undergoing democratic change in the Arab world, movements have come to the surface that are antipathetic to the U.S. because of its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and because of its support of some of the most anti-democratic regimes in the region, especially in the Gulf. Huntington (1993) agrees that in the Middle East, the most powerful opposition tends to come from Islamic fundamentalists. However, in many Islamic and Arabic countries, governments choose to label rebellion as fundamentalism.

Democratization in Eastern Europe has been ardently supported by the U.S. because it is considered synonymous with pro- Americanism. Democratization in the Middle East and Arab world, however, will not produce pro-American voices and movements. Rather, democratization has produced -- and will continue to produce -- forces that, for political reasons, are intensely hostile to the U.S. and its interests.

Huntington considered Israel, Turkey under Ataturk and the pre-1975 civil war Lebanon as the Middle East countries which implemented democracy. He has even called Israel the "most democratic country" in the Middle East. However, Israel's democracy only functions internally; foreign policy, especially toward Palestinians, is contradictory to the values of democracy and human rights. This aspect, consciously or not, has been overlooked by experts like Huntington.

Indeed, Turkey under Ataturk implemented liberal democracy on one hand, but on the other hand repressed Islam and the good Muslim community. Actually Ataturk's policies are anti- democratic. Pre-1975 Lebanon seemed to have implemented the democratic political system, but actually at that time they ran an "undemocratic democracy." Why? Lebanon implemented a "quota system" in which the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, the speaker of the parliament a Shiite Muslim, and so on. Can this system be called democratic?

While the U.S. criticizes the Islamic government for not being democratic, it also supports regimes that are not democratic and are keeping Islamic movements from developing their ideas. Why does the U.S. speak about democracy and human rights when it supports regimes that persecute and imprison activists?

in fact, the U.S. government supports such regimes. There is a contradiction between what the U.S. wants or applies in the U.S. and what it wants and supports in the Middle East. Actually, for some people, "Islamic movements represent an authentic alternative to corrupt, exhausted, and ineffectual regimes" (Esposito, 1997).

Briefly, at least there are two constraints for developing the democratic political system in the Middle East. First, in the Middle East itself there is still disagreement on the relationship between Islam and democracy. Second, to some extent the democratic process in the Middle East depends on external factors. Meaning that the success or failure of democracy in the Middle East depends upon extra regional actors, particularly the U.S. itself.

Is the U.S. encouraging or discouraging democratization in the Middle East? The cases of Algeria (1992) and Turkey (1997) are proof that the failure of democracy is due to U.S. support -- in spite of tacitly halting the democratic process, because of phobia of the rising Islamic "fundamentalism". And, this phobia is furthermore based on prejudice, an attitude that is basically undemocratic too.