It Is Not Democracy
On The March
By Seumas Milne
10 March , 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.