The contrast between two political cultures

Gulf News, January 3, 2007

The day Saddam Hussain was executed, Americans paid tribute to their 38th president, Gerald R. Ford, who died at the age of 93 a few days earlier.

The dissimilarity between the circumstances and aftermath of the deaths of Saddam Hussain and Gerald Ford highlights the contrast between two distinctive political cultures.

Saddam Hussain represented the pursuit and reverence for absolute power that prevails in most of the Muslim world. Gerald Ford, on the other hand, was the product of a political system that emphasises legitimacy rather than the notion of a powerful ruler.

The US role overseas has often been mired in controversy. But even the critics of America’s power-based foreign policy acknowledge that at home, the United States is by and large a nation of laws that attempts to restrain the power of individuals and institutions.

Saddam Hussain was Iraq’s absolute ruler for over a quarter century whereas Ford governed for a little over two years. Saddam lost power only after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Ford had not wielded political office since losing an election in 1976, some 30 years ago.

Saddam’s life and death both polarised Iraq. Ford healed the wounds of Vietnam and Watergate while in office and was hailed for his contribution by members of all political parties when he died. Ford’s most controversial decision was to pardon disgraced former president Richard Nixon, whose resignation prompted by the Watergate scandal had brought Ford to office.

Saddam Hussain came to power through a series of coups d’etat and palace intrigue. Instead of being accountable under the law, he made the laws of Iraq while he wielded power. Having risen to power as a coup-maker and intriguer, he trusted no one.

Lack of remorse

In Saddam Hussain’s mind, his “contribution” to Iraq’s security and economy conferred a special status on him. He considered himself as Iraq’s saviour, the man who held the country together against external conspiracies and domestic rebels.

Saddam’s lack of remorse and his defiant attitude even during his last hours confirms that he did not feel he had done anything wrong. To him, human rights violations and brutality were merely a small price that had to be paid to rule Iraq with a firm hand.

As he saw it, Saddam Hussain had a plan for Iraq’s greatness and he would be damned if he allowed niceties of law or morality come in the way.

His supporters and apologists were either too timid to disagree with him or believed that a difficult country such as Iraq needed a strong man whose excesses had to be overlooked in “the national interest.”

President Ford had no delusions of grandeur. The highest office he aspired to was Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

He was nominated vice-president after Nixon’s vice-president, Spiro Agnew, resigned after pleading guilty to tax evasion charges. When Nixon was forced to resign, Ford was elevated to the presidency, the only US president who was not elected to either the presidency or vice-presidency.

Ford was not a charismatic man. His modesty and humble ways were mocked by comedians and critics. Thirty years after he left office, Ford is being praised after his death for saving America from greater polarisation.

System in place

The United States has a system in place that allows continuity in leadership and respect for departed leaders, which is not possible in countries where rulers rise to power through coups and conspiracies.

The contrast between the political cultures of absolute power and systemic legitimacy goes beyond the comparison between Saddam Hussain and Gerald Ford.

When India’s former prime minister Narasimha Rao died last year, he received a ceremonial burial accorded to all deceased elected Indian prime ministers even though he had been indicted on corruption charges and convicted by a lower court, awaiting judgment by the superior judiciary at the time of his demise.

On the other hand, when Pakistan’s former president Gulam Ishaq Khan died not long ago, his life of public service did not receive the tribute it deserved.

The last time a civilian Pakistani head of government received a ceremonial state funeral was in 1951, following the assassination of Pakistan’s first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan.
Since then Pakistan’s leading politicians have been dismissed from office and jailed or, in the case of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, executed after a dubious trial.

The different ways nations treat their past rulers is partly related to the manner in which the rulers behave while in office. The Muslim world needs to review its political culture of reverence for power.

The Lebanese poet-philosopher Kahlil Gibran observed, “Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again.”

According respect to all on the basis of constitutional legitimacy would offer a chance for Muslim countries to build viable and successful systems of governance that have not evolved due to the current preoccupation with charismatic and all powerful rulers.

A question of democracy

Gulf News, May 23, 2006

Recent developments in Nepal and Nigeria serve as examples for how nations can overcome entrenched authoritarian structures through popular mobilisation and thoughtful political action.

Nepal’s parliament, restored by King Gyanendra after massive street protests, has voted to strip the king of all substantive powers. That paves the way for the country’s transition, hopefully on a more stable basis, towards constitutional democracy under a titular monarch.
King Gyanendra’s effort to use his nation’s difficulties, including the brutal Maoist insurgency that plagues the countryside, to concentrate power in his own hands appears to have been thwarted.

It took a combination of international pressure, manifestation of the people’s opposition to the king in the streets of Katmandu and cooperation among Nepal’s various political parties to ensure the diminution of the king’s authority. Nepal still has a long way to go in its transition to democracy but its political leaders have clearly agreed on a roadmap for that transition.

In Nigeria, the Senate threw out a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed retired General Olusegun Obasanjo to seek a third term as the country’s president. Like Pakistan, Nigeria has also had a chequered history of intermittent civilian and military rule.

General Obasanjo had been Nigeria’s military ruler from 1976 to 1979. Then, he handed over power to an elected civilian government that was subsequently overthrown by the military. Obasanjo entered politics and was elected president in 1999 as a popular civilian politician after a round of disastrous military dictators.

Nigeria’s constitution limits elected presidents to two terms of office. But Obasanjo’s colleagues campaigned hard to change the constitution to enable their leader to secure the presidency again. The decision of the Nigerian parliament to reject the proposition is likely to strengthen democracy in Africa’s most populous country.

Educated Pakistanis who are equally disillusioned with the country’s military and political leaderships must look at the experiences of Nepal and Nigeria to identify prospects for change within their own country.

King Gyanendra had justified his own power grab on grounds of the ineffectiveness and ineptitude of Nepal’s civilian politicians. But the politicians turned to the masses and were eventually able to demonstrate greater popular support for their messy democracy than for King Gyanendra’s “efficient autocracy”. Pakistan’s politicians, too, would have to do the same.

Waning support

Once Nepal’s people took to the streets, Gyanendra’s international support vapourised. The international community backed the demand for restoration of parliamentary government and it is unlikely that the cantankerous nature of Nepal’s politics will change the world’s commitment to constitutional democratic rule in Nepal.

The “Charter for Democracy” recently signed by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif offers hope that the still popular exiled politicians might return to Pakistan in time for the 2007 parliamentary elections.

People power is more easily manifested in countries where the commercial centre, political and cultural hub and state capital are all in one city or close to each other.
In Pakistan’s case, the federal capital (Islamabad) is a city mostly of diplomats and civil servants while centres of commercial and political activity are widely dispersed. Unless an agitation campaign is organised in several Pakistani cities simultaneously, it is unlikely to be effective.

The last such campaign, in 1977, succeeded because it was encouraged by the refusal of the military-intelligence complex to put it down with force. Since then, Pakistan’s military and intelligence services have ensured through manipulation that each of Pakistan’s major cities is controlled by a different political faction.

Since the 1999 coup d’etat, General Pervez Musharraf has benefited from disagreements within opposition ranks and the lack of sufficient organisation of Pakistan’s mainstream political parties.

The military regime has, through the political wings of the intelligence services, exacerbated dissension among opposition ranks and aggravated the relatively weak organisation of Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s PML(N). It is difficult to be fully organised as a political party while being hounded by the state apparatus.

The “Charter for Democracy” marks the end of acrimony between the major parties, which was accentuated by the military-intelligence combine between 1988 and 1999 and then cited as justification for the military’s continuous meddling in politics.

The supporters of the two mainstream parties would be encouraged to mobilise by the return to the country of their leaders. That would make it difficult for the Musharraf regime to stage-manage the results of the 2007 election.

If Pakistan’s parliament acts like the Nigerian Senate and turns down any attempt by Musharraf to change the rules of the game, Pakistan might also get another chance at becoming a democracy.

Playing politics with religion

Gulf News, February 22, 2006

The riots ignited by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten’s derogatory images of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) have escalated into violent protests that are no longer aimed at the offending newspaper or even against its homeland, Denmark.
Protesters in several Muslim countries, including Pakistan and Indonesia, have targeted American and other Western interests as well as Christian churches.

It seems that politics has overtaken religious sentiment and, once again, Muslim rulers as well as Islamist political parties are attempting to gain advantage by pitting Muslim peoples against the Western world.

Jyllands-Posten’s editors justified their cartoons on grounds of freedom of expression, a position supported by many Europeans and some Americans.

But others, such as Edward Miller writing in New York’s Jewish Week, argued that the controversy was “a question of respect, not freedom”.

According to Miller, “Freedom of expression theoretically protects the right of a non-Jew to desecrate a Torah scroll. Yet we would all view freedom of expression as a hollow defence to such a vile act.”

Muslim hurt over a sacrilege, however, does not justify the widespread violence perpetrated in response to the cartoons’ publication.

The vocal Muslim minority involved in the violence has generated discussion over whether and why the world’s Muslims are more prone to violence. The sources of Muslim rage are the subject of deliberation once again.

Clearly, violent responses to perceived injury are not integral to Islam. Every chapter of the Quran begins with the words, “In the name of Allah [God], the most compassionate, the most merciful.” The Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is referred to as Rehmatul-lil-Alameen or “the one bringing compassion for all worlds”.

After announcing his prophethood, the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) prayed for those who insulted or opposed him. In one famous episode, he went to inquire about the health of an old woman in Makkah who threw garbage on him every day after she failed to show up for her daily insult. Such compassion won converts to Islam and contributed to the faith’s expansion.

Through most of the period of Muslim ascendancy, Muslims did not riot to protest non-Muslim insults against Islam or its Prophet.

The current wave of violence is part of a trend that has emerged as Muslims have become poorer and globally less influential.
Islamists and authoritarian Muslim rulers both have a vested interest in continuously fanning the flames of Muslim victimhood, based on real or perceived grievances. For Islamists, anger and rage against the West is the basis for their claim to the support of Muslim masses.

For authoritarian rulers, religious protest is the means of diverting attention away from economic and political failure. The image of an ascendant West belittling Islam with the view to eliminating it serves as a useful distraction from the Ummah’s own weaknesses.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has pointed at the role of Syria and Iran in exacerbating the violence over an obscure Danish newspaper’s insult to Muslims.

Several authoritarian Muslim regimes allied with the US have also used the opportunity to create the impression that their masses are unruly fanatics who cannot be controlled except with an iron hand.

That is the only explanation for the ease with which violent demonstrators in the Pakistani city of Lahore controlled the streets for a day.

Egypt, too, allowed angry demonstrations although it normally does not allow its citizens to publicly express their sentiments.

After putting down the orchestrated violence, the Mubarak and Musharraf regimes will most likely tell the US to tone down its rhetoric about democratising the Muslim world.

Democracy, they will argue, would only bring Islamists chosen by angry anti-Western mobs into power.

But the wave of anger in the Muslim world of the last few days provides justification for greater democracy, not less. Only when the Muslim world embraces freedom of expression will it be able to recognise the value of that freedom even for those who offend one’s sensibilities.

Sacrilege will be dealt with by petition and peaceful argument, not by fire-breathing violent demonstrations.

Moreover, only in a free democratic environment will the world’s Muslims be able to debate the causes of their powerlessness, which causes them greater anger than any specific action on the part of Islam’s Western detractors.

Call for greater democracy is still valid

Gulf News, January 9, 2006

Supporters of the status quo in the Muslim world have argued for years that democracy is likely to result in radical Islamists replacing stable pro-Western regimes. At first glance, the success of the radical Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s recent legislative elections provides evidence for that point of view. In fact, however, the Islamists’ gains highlight the need for greater democracy in Muslim countries, not less.

That the Islamists are a factor in Egyptian politics, and will probably remain so for a long time to come, is not in doubt. Islamist sympathisers often wonder how the international community can object to politicians seeking votes on the basis of Islam when invoking Christianity for political purposes remains legitimate especially in the United States. But having conservative religious formations participating in a democratic polity is one thing; proclaiming a totalitarian vision of a religious state, in which only one interpretation of religion is allowed to function, quite another.

To their credit, Egypt’s Muslim Brothers have tried very hard in recent years to define themselves as a conservative, religiously-based political force even though the group’s origins (still manifested by its many offshoots) were anti-democratic.
But the real explanation for the Muslim Brotherhood’s political success lies elsewhere.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has refused to open up political space for secular opposition groups, elevating the Islamists to the status of the only opposition remaining in the field. A similar process of excluding viable secular opponents from the political arena is under way in several Muslim countries, creating a false choice between authoritarian pro-Western rulers and elected Islamist hardliners. Officials in Western countries often cite that choice as the reason for persisting with their support for the autocrats who provide stable governments and ostensibly protect their societies from obscurantism.
The Muslim Brotherhood, formed in 1928, is the parent organisation of most radical Islamist groups in the Arab world.

Allowed to operate

Although officially banned in Egypt, it is allowed to operate in the shadows and its candidates participated as independents in Egypt’s legislative elections. In the elections that concluded on December 8, the Brotherhood won 88 seats, up from only 15 in the current assembly. This gives them 19 per cent of the seats in parliament, still leaving Mubarak’s state-sponsored National Democratic Party with 333 seats in the 440-member parliament a two-thirds majority. But the Islamists had put up candidates for only 130 out of 440 seats and they could have gained more seats if they had put up more candidates.

The Brotherhood’s electoral success comes amid reports of the Mubarak regime making special efforts to keep secular opponents out of parliament. Authorities worked hard to defeat Ayman Nour, leader of the Al Ghad (Tomorrow) Party. Nour, a Western educated businessman could be considered a viable alternative to Air Force General Mubarak in a way that a Muslim Brotherhood leader simply cannot.

The Brotherhood gained from anti-government sentiment amidst a low turnout. Hardcore Brotherhood supporters came out to vote while the regime’s secular opponents were kept away from the polls by intimidation and the knowledge that the elections will not change the way Egypt is governed. Muslim Brotherhood leaders concede that many of their voters cast their ballot against the government rather than for radical Islam.

In some ways, Egypt’s electoral results were a rerun of the 2002 parliamentary elections in Pakistan. General Pervez Musharraf, who like Egypt’s Mubarak is much favoured by the United States, helped the emergence of Islamist groups as his main opposition in an effort to reduce the political viability of secular opposition politicians.

The threat of radical Islam has become the major excuse for Muslim potentates in thwarting real change in the way their countries are governed. For the sake of stability in the region, the US is willing to embrace the dichotomy presented to it. Washington defines democratisation as its priority but refuses to condemn those that obstruct its democracy agenda, namely the Muslim potentates Americans trust with ensuring stability.

These strategic American allies are not the force for ideological moderation that would change the Muslim world’s longer term direction. In fact, under their rule radical groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood are continuously gaining in strength and influence.

If Muslim societies were truly opened to political contestation, the influence of the Islamist formations would be relative to their size within society. Only in elections that are held with the hands of secular democrats tied behind their backs do extremists manage to translate the support of a devoted minority into a large number of seats in legislatures.

What makes vibrant democracies

Gulf News, December 7, 2005

What could be the link between a constitutional referendum in Kenya, the arrest of a former military dictator in Chile and the electoral defeat of a flawed populist in India’s state of Bihar?

Each of these events, spread over three different continents, is unrelated to the others. But these apparently unrelated developments of the last fortnight or so shed some light on the process that helps nations become, and remain, democracies.

At a time when governments as well as citizens in the greater Middle East are confronting the question of building democratic political systems, here are some lessons that can be learnt from recent events.

In Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki held a referendum on November 22 to seek the people’s approval of a new constitution proposed by him. Some members of his own cabinet joined the opposition in campaigning for a “No” vote while the president staked his reputation on securing approval of his constitutional package.

When the votes were counted, after a truly free and fair campaign and poll, the people of Kenya voted “No”. President Kibaki accepted the results of the referendum and dropped his plans for changing the constitution.
President Kibaki was elected to a five-year term in 2002 and, therefore, has two more years as Kenya’s elected head of state. But the opposition is now demanding early elections.

If Kibaki adheres to the unaltered constitution and persuades the opposition to wait until the next presidential election, Kenya can continue along the democratic path.

Kenya’s latest experiment teaches authoritarian rulers in the Muslim world the value of respecting the people’s verdict once the decision to consult the electorate has been taken.

The pattern so far in the greater Middle East, including Pakistan, has been that the establishment tries to fix the result of electoral exercises.

Constitutional consensus, which is a vital pre-requisite for democracy can hardly be obtained if constitutional issues are settled by decree or if the electoral process is not above board.

Free and fair elections

In India’s Bihar state, free and fair elections brought to an end the 15-year misrule of Lalu Prasad Yadav. Under Yadav and his unlettered wife as chief minister, Bihar’s law and order situation steadily declined.

The state’s physical and social infrastructure also suffered. Yadav ignored development to focus on redistributing political power, favouring the lower castes and Muslims who formed the backbone of his voting bloc.

The voters forgave his poor administration and incompetence because they felt they needed the social engineering he provided. Intellectuals and economists cited Yadav’s example while questioning the validity of the democratic model for a poor developing country.

Had Bihar been a part of Pakistan, Yadav would have been toppled in a military coup supported by civil servants, Western educated bankers and multinational corporation employees. But Indians accepted Yadav’s excesses and corruption to uphold their democratic constitution.

In the end, the democratic process itself brought Yadav’s misrule in Bihar to an end. There is a lesson here for those who cite corruption or administrative incompetence of elected leaders as justification for doing away with democracy.

As long as strong constitutional structures are allowed to exist and political parties compete for power on a level field, democracy itself sorts out corrupt populist leaders. Bihar has lost 15 years in development terms but Indian democracy has matured further in the course of putting up with Yadav’s shenanigans.

The decision by Chilean courts to authorise the arrest of former military ruler General Augusto Pinochet on charges of human rights violations during his 1974-90 dictatorship also has important lessons for emerging or struggling democracies.

Pinochet was hailed as an anti-communist hero by some in the Western world during the 1970s and 1980s. His economic reforms were credited with reviving Chile’s economy.

While he held power, Pinochet was thought to be an honest and incorruptible ruler. But Chile’s intelligence services jailed hundreds of dissidents, several of whom died in prisons.

Chile’s democratic political parties and the relatives of the victims of Pinochet’s dictatorship have fought a long court battle to bring the former dictator to justice, overcoming constitutional and legal protections put in place in the final years of military rule.

Last year, Pinochet’s reputation for incorruptibility was also shattered when it was revealed during a US Senate investigation of Riggs Bank in Washington that Pinochet kept $8 million (Dh29.36 million) in that bank. Other accounts have since been discovered in Britain and other countries.

The manner in which Chile’s democrats have pursued Pinochet through the courts, and the way Chile’s courts have finally acted against him, serves as a reminder that evolving democracies must not ignore the injustices inflicted on a nation by coup-makers and usurpers.

The supremacy of constitutional democracy is finally established only when those toppling elected governments are indicted in courts of law, even if it takes years to effect such prosecutions. And only when the long view is taken does a nation finally find out that the authoritarian makers of economic miracles are corrupt, in addition to being violators of human rights.

U.S., Muslims and Democracy

The Indian Express , November 18, 2005

A US-sponsored international conference on democracy in the Middle East ended last week without a final agreement because one of America’s closest allies, Egypt, insisted on retaining control over the pace and method of democratization. The Forum for the Future, a joint US-European initiative launched at the 2004 G-8 summit hosted by President Bush is part of the Bush administration’s plans for promoting democracy in the Islamic world. But the authoritarian governments that receive massive amounts of aid from the US do not want democracy.

As Egypt, which accounts for a quarter of the Arab world’s population and is the second-largest recipient of US aid, demonstrated at the Bahrain meeting of the Forum for the Future last week, Muslim dictators want to control the democratisation process and would love to get more American money in the name of building democracy. If Hosni Mubarak had his way, the way forward for the US and the Muslim world would be for the US to increase aid for the authoritarian Muslim regimes and declare these very regimes as democratic.

Officially, of course, Egypt neither objected to democracy nor to fostering civil society. It spoke in the name of national sovereignty and its officials emphasised that peace in the Middle East must precede full democracy. From North Africa to Pakistan , such arguments have always been the grounds for potentates to thwart real change in the way their countries are governed.

Slogans of “Palestine before democracy” or “Kashmir before normalisation” enable America’s authoritarian allies to carry on business as usual. For its part, Washington knows the game but continues to play along. Even after the setback at the Forum for the Future in Bahrain, US officials were muted in their criticism of the rulers they finance. For the sake of stability in the region, the US is willing to pursue a dichotomous policy. It keeps on defining democratisation as its priority but refuses to condemn those that obstruct its democratisation agenda, namely the Muslim potentates Washington trusts with ensuring stability.

The US government repeatedly makes the mistake of defining as “moderate” those authoritarian Muslim rulers who fulfill America’s foreign policy goals. These strategic American allies are not the force for ideological moderation that would change the Muslim world’ s longer term direction. Authoritarian governments in the Muslim world do not want democracy as that would amount to the potentates giving up their power. It is the democratic movements opposed to governments in the Muslim world who are likely to be the real engines of social and political change in the Middle East and South Asia.

American officials must recognise the contradiction in their simultaneous support for democracy and dictatorial Muslim regimes. For example, Mali is the only Muslim country described by Freedom House as “free” based on its adherence to all criteria for freedom, democracy and respect for human rights. But Mali is not a major recipient of western aid whereas Egypt and Pakistan , characterised by Freedom House as “not free” or “partly free”, are.

While the governments drag their feet on reform, ordinary Muslims continue to take brave steps to prove that despite all odds civil society in the Muslim world has both vision and the potential to initiate real change. Mukhtaran Mai, the Pakistani rape victim with little education and no prior exposure outside her village has become an international advocate for the rights of Muslim women oppressed by tribal customs. An ordinary Palestinian family has recently demonstrated the kinder, gentler side of Islam through action, succeeding where Muslim leaders and intellectuals have generally failed in recent years.

Ismail and Abla Khatib lost their 12-year old son, Ahmed, when the boy was mistakenly shot by Israeli soldier s last week at the entrance of the Jenin refugee camp. Ahmed was playing with a toy gun on Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Israeli troops involved in a raid to arrest suspected terrorists came under fire, mistook Ahmed Khatib for a militant and shot him dead. The Israeli military immediately apologised for the mistake.

The Khatibs did not join the long list of Palestinian parents who, upon losing one child in war, pledge their other sons’ “martyrdom” in suicide operations. He donated his son’s organs to be transplanted to any Israeli awaiting an organ donor. “It didn’t matter to me whether they were Jewish, Muslim or Christian,” Ismail Khatib later told reporters.

Ahmed Khatib’s heart now beats in the chest of a 12-year old Druze girl from northern Israel , who had waited 5 years for a transplant. His lungs were transplanted to a 14-year old while his kidneys benefited a 4-year old boy and a 5-year old girl. Sections of Ahmed Khatib’ s liver helped save the lives of a 7-month old female child and a 58-year old woman. The Khatib family of Jenin has shown the way for Muslims who are fed up with their contemporary culture’s acceptance of violence and hatred as the only way of dealing with humiliation and helplessness. If the US is serious about transforming the Muslim world, it must embrace people like the Khatibs and the hundreds of thousands believers in peace and democracy among ordinary Muslims. Muslim rulers, who have created the problem of intolerance in the Muslim world in the first place, cannot bring the enlightenment or moderation that President Bush claims is his goal for the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims.

In democracy’s name dictators rule

Gulf News, November 16, 2005

A US sponsored international conference on democracy in the Middle East ended last week without a final agreement because one of America’s closest allies, Egypt, insisted on retaining control over the pace and method of democratisation.

The Forum for the Future, a joint US-European initiative launched at the 2004 G8 summit hosted by President Bush, is part of the Bush administration’s plans for promoting democracy in the Islamic world. But the authoritarian governments that receive massive amounts of aid from the US do not want democracy, especially if democratisation involves encouraging nongovernmental organisations and civil society.

As Egypt, which accounts for more than half the Arab world’s population and is the second-largest recipient of US aid, demonstrated at the Bahrain meeting of the Forum for the Future last week, Muslim dictators want to control the democratisation process and would love to get more American money in the name of building democracy.

Officially, of course, Egypt neither objected to democracy nor to fostering civil society. It spoke in the name of national sovereignty and its officials emphasised that peace in the Middle East must precede full democracy. From North Africa to Pakistan, such arguments have always been the grounds for potentates to thwart real change in the way their countries are governed.

Slogans of “Palestine before democracy” or “Kashmir before normalisation” enable America’s authoritarian allies to carry on business as usual. For its part, Washington knows the game but continues to play along.

Even after the setback at the Forum for the Future in Bahrain, US officials were muted in their criticism of the rulers they finance. For the sake of stability in the region, the US is willing to pursue a dichotomous policy. It keeps on defining democratisation as its priority but refuses to condemn those that obstruct its democratisation agenda, namely the Muslim potentates Washington trusts with ensuring stability.

The US government repeatedly makes the mistake of defining as “moderate” those authoritarian Muslim rulers who fulfil America’s foreign policy goals. These strategic American allies are not the force for ideological moderation that would change the Muslim world’s longer term direction.

Authoritarian governments in the Muslim world do not want democracy as that would amount to the potentates giving up their power. It is the democratic movements opposed to governments in the Muslim world who are likely to be the real engines of social and political change in the Middle East and South Asia.

American officials must recognise the contradiction in their simultaneous support for democracy and dictatorial Muslim regimes. For example, Mali is the only Muslim country described by Freedom House as “free” based on its adherence to all criteria for freedom, democracy and respect for human rights. But Mali is not a major recipient of Western aid, whereas Egypt and Pakistan characterised by Freedom House as “not free” or “partly free”, are.

While the governments drag their feet on reform, ordinary Muslims continue to take brave steps to prove that despite all odds civil society in the Muslim world has both vision and the potential to initiate real change. Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani rape victim with little education and no prior exposure outside her village, has become an international advocate for the rights of Muslim women oppressed by tribal customs.

An ordinary Palestinian family has recently demonstrated the kinder, gentler side of Islam through action, succeeding where Muslim leaders and intellectuals have generally failed in recent years. Esmail and Abla Khatib donated the organs of their 12-year old son, who was killed mistakenly by the Israeli military on the day of Eid Al Fitr, to be transplanted to any Israeli awaiting an organ donor. “It didn’t matter to me whether they were Jewish, Muslim or Christian,” Ismail Khatib later told reporters. The Khatibs did not join the long list of Palestinian parents who, upon losing one child in war, pledge their other sons’ “martyrdom” in suicide operations.

The Khatib family of Jenin demonstrated that violence and hatred are not the only way of dealing with humiliation and helplessness.

If the US is serious about transforming the Muslim world, it must embrace people like the Khatibs and the hundreds of thousands of believers in peace and democracy among ordinary Muslims.
Muslim rulers, who have created the problem of intolerance in the Muslim world in the first place, cannot bring the enlightenment or moderation that President Bush claims is his goal for the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims.

Earthquake Relief Can Win Allies in the Muslim World

The Asian Wall Street Journal , October 11, 2005

The massive earthquake that rocked Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India on October 8, 2005, is a great human tragedy. But it also represents an opportunity for the U.S. to improve its image among ordinary Muslims in these countries, in the same way that American assistance to Indonesia after last December’s tsunami led to a sea of change in public attitudes in that country.

Husain Haqqani  writes that by providing direct and visible assistance to the earthquake victims, the U.S. can bypass the ruling elites of the Muslim world that often control, manage and calibrate Americans’ understanding of the Muslims and influence the Muslim peoples’ understanding of America.

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Winning Muslim Hearts and Minds for the US

Gulf News, October 7, 2005

The Bush administration is finally taking the task of communicating with the Muslim world seriously.

The US President George W. Bush has appointed his trusted counsel and fellow Texan, Karen Hughes, as the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

Although Hughes has little exposure to the Muslim world, or for that matter to the world beyond the United States, she has good political instincts and the ear of the president.

These qualities make her more qualified to explore a fresh approach in building bridges than seasoned diplomats with fixed ideas.

Hughes will look at the problem America faces in explaining its policies and actions to the international community, especially its 1.4 billion Muslims, and the remedies she suggests will immediately get attention from America’s all powerful president.

That is more than the US has been able to achieve in the field of public diplomacy over the last several decades.

Hughes began her stint as public diplomacy czar with a “listening tour” of several Muslim countries. She met with “opinion leaders”, held a town hall meeting with women in Saudi Arabia and impressed almost everyone she met with her desire to listen and learn.

Serious mission

The conservative US publication, The Weekly Standard, described her as “Karen of Arabia” for her ability to present herself as an ordinary American mother engaged in people-to-people relations and not as a high-ranking official on a serious mission.

“I go as an official of the US government, but I’m also a mom, a working mom,” she reportedly told reporters on the flight from Washington to Cairo. She repeated that theme throughout her tour.

At one point she said, “I still have to pinch myself a little when I am sitting in a meeting with the king [of Saudi Arabia] and realise that I’m there representing our country.”

Such humility is unusual in high-ranking officials of any country, let alone the world’s sole superpower. Even if it was scripted, it probably endeared Hughes to her audiences.

But winning hearts and minds for America requires a process, not just the event of Hughes’s listening tour. As she initiates that process, Hughes should be careful not to let the ruling elites of the Muslim world control her understanding of their people and their views of the United States.

Over the years, just as the average Muslim man or woman has been persuaded to turn against America, a class of rulers, diplomats, global bankers and media specialists has been produced that lives off its role as the intermediaries between the United States and the “backward and complicated” Muslim people.

These intermediaries between America and the Muslim world live good lives, often at Uncle Sam’s expense. They also come up with reasons why US foreign policy, and not the failures of Muslim rulers, is somehow to blame for global Muslim decline.

Thus, lack of American support of the Palestinians or the Kashmiris, Moros and Chechens has been the centrepiece of Muslim public discourse over the last several decades rather than the low human development indicators resulting from lack of investment in education and healthcare.

No one doubts widespread anti-Americanism in Muslim countries but it may not be as deep-rooted a sentiment as is sometimes believed. It is often nurtured by the very elites that the United States cultivates.

These elites rent out their support to US policies in return for economic and military aid and anti-Americanism among the people is sometimes an instrument of policy for seeking higher rent for the rulers’ services on behalf of America.

The Musharrafs and Mubaraks of this world appear more appealing as allies to American policy makers when these rulers are seen as controlling difficult populations that passionately hate the United States.

Ordinary Muslims are not totally unresponsive to America’s positive actions or policies as is sometimes suggested.

Significant US military sales to the Suharto regime in Indonesia, for example, did not win America much support but, according to polling data released by Ken Ballen of Terror Free Tomorrow, humanitarian assistance after the tsunami dented anti-Americanism among grateful Indonesian Muslims.

Vulnerable

Successive US administrations have ignored the Muslim Street, being content instead to depend upon friendly potentates and dictators. But such dependence also makes the US vulnerable to manipulation by its allies.

The new US public diplomacy should not allow itself to be derailed by the over-simplification that America would be liked much more if only the world knew its good intentions. Nor should it remain a prisoner of the deviousness of America’s authoritarian allies.

The most important thing is to identify cultural intermediaries and interlocutors who are as serious about fighting anti-Americanism in the Muslim world as Hughes herself.

Surely, the beneficiaries of the gulf between the US and the world’s Muslims those who profit from US aid to stabilise “unstable” countries would not want the status quo to change.

An American on Muslim Street

The Indian Express , October 7, 2005

The Bush administration is finally taking the task of communicating with the Muslim world seriously. The US President has appointed his trusted counsel and fellow Texan, Karen Hughes, as the under-secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Although Hughes has little exposure to the Muslim world, or for that matter to the world beyond the United States, she has good political instincts and the ear of President Bush. These qualities make her more qualified to explore a fresh approach in building bridges than seasoned diplomats with fixed ideas.
Karen Hughes will look at the problem America faces in explaining its policies and actions to the international community, especially its 1.4 billion Muslims and the remedies she suggests will immediately get attention from America’s all powerful President. That is more than the US has been able to achieve in the field of public diplomacy over the last several decades.

Hughes began her stint as public diplomacy czar with a ‘‘listening tour” of several Muslim countries. She met with ‘‘opinion leaders”, held a town hall meeting with women in Saudi Arabia, and impressed almost everyone she met with her desire to listen and learn.

The conservative US publication, The Weekly Standard, described her as ‘‘Karen of Arabia” for her ability to present herself as an ordinary American mother engaged in people to people relations and not as a high-ranking official on a serious mission.

According to The Weekly Standard, ‘‘Her unshakable discipline in sticking to the script has a mind-numbing effect when you watch her through several events a day”.

‘‘I go as an official of the US government, but I’m also a mom, a working mom,” she reportedly told reporters on the flight from Washington to Cairo. She repeated that theme throughout her tour. At one point she said, ‘‘I still have to pinch myself a little when I am sitting in a meeting with the king [of Saudi Arabia] and realize that I’m there representing our country”.

Such humility is unusual in high-ranking officials of any country, let alone the world’s sole superpower. Even if it was scripted, it probably endeared Hughes to her audiences.

But winning hearts and minds for America requires a process, not just the event of Hughes’ listening tour. As she initiates that process, Hughes should be careful not to let the ruling elites of the Muslim world control her understanding of their people and their views of the United States.

Over the years, just as the average Muslim man or woman has been persuaded to turn against America, a class of rulers, diplomats, global bankers and media specialists has been produced that lives off its role as the intermediaries between the United States and the ‘‘backward and complicated” Muslim people.

These intermediaries between America and the Muslim world live good lives, often at Uncle Sam’s expense. They also come up with reasons why US foreign policy, and not the failures of Muslim rulers, is somehow to blame for global Muslim decline.

Thus, lack of American support of the Palestinians or the Kashmiris, Moros, and Chechens has been the centerpiece of Muslim public discourse over the past several decades rather than the low human development indicators resulting from lack of investment in education and healthcare.

No one doubts widespread anti-Americanism in Muslim countries but it may not be as deep-rooted a sentiment as is sometimes believed. It is often nurtured by the very elites that the US cultivates.

These elites rent out their support to US policies in return for economic and military aid and anti-Americanism among the people is sometimes an instrument of policy for seeking higher rent for the rulers services on behalf of America.

The Musharrafs and Mubaraks of this world appear more appealing as allies to American policy makers when these rulers are seen as controlling difficult populations that passionately hate the US.

Ordinary Muslims are not totally unresponsive to America’s positive actions or policies as is sometimes suggested. Significant US military sales to the Suharto regime in Indonesia, for example, did not win America much support but, according to polling data released by Ken Ballen of Terror Free Tomorrow, humanitarian assistance after the tsunami dented anti-Americanism among grateful Indonesian Muslims.

Successive US administrations have ignored the Muslim Street, being content instead to depend upon friendly potentates and dictators. But such dependence also makes the US vulnerable to manipulation by its allies. The deployment of anti-Americanism among the people, to seek higher rent for cooperation with the US, is part of that manipulative process.

The new US public diplomacy should not allow itself to be derailed by the over-simplification that America would be liked much more if only the world knew its good intentions. Nor should it remain a prisoner of the deviousness of America’s authoritarian allies.

The most important thing is to identify cultural intermediaries and interlocutors who are as serious about fighting anti-Americanism in the Muslim world as Hughes herself.

Surely, the beneficiaries of the gulf between the US and the world’s Muslims — those who profit from US aid to stabilise ‘unstable’ countries — would not want the status quo to change.