In prioritising stability the Middle East has compromised the very thing it seeks to protect, argues Mustafa El-Feki* The US secretary of state recently said something quite profound about the Middle East: the regimes of the region, said Condoleezza Rice, have opted for stability instead of freedom and as a result have ended up with neither. This must count among the most prescient remarks ever made by a US official about the Middle East. Arab nations suffer greatly from a lack of freedom. Yet each time their populations have demanded freedom they were told that stability is better, or else that a kind of reduced freedom is better than the real thing, which comes fraught with the danger of riots, sit-ins, industrial action and what have you. Let me offer some points that may be relevant to the debate on freedom and stability. The Arab-Israeli conflict presented Arab regimes with an alibi for repression. The argument has been handed down to us in catch phrases such as "no voice above the voice of battle" and "stability first". Arab aspirations to freedom were in this way subsumed in the mesh of conflict. The legitimacy of Arab regimes has always rested on force. We have grown accustomed to a life in which one party rules and one man leads. We have developed schizophrenia to the degree that we applaud barely acceptable regimes. These heavy-handed autocratic regimes repress their populations. The police state discourages politics by allowing the security services to bully and dominate. Security solutions have been the last recourse when it was political solutions that were needed. The shortest cut to a nominal stability has always been to silence the opposition. Stability and stagnation are different things, though they are often confused. The result of stagnation is a decaying regime while stability offers a balance of power that allows for power sharing and free expression. Democracy spawns stability while repression generates stagnation. Though I don't believe the secretary of state had all the above in mind when she made her statement yet I nevertheless wish to credit her for insightfulness. Some may disagree with such a view and think it unduly pessimistic. There are, after all, isolated incidents of democratic practice in the Arab world. There are islands of freedom, such as is the case with Lebanon, though it is a country that frequently imports problems from abroad. Nor is despotism confined to our region. Many totalitarian regimes have concealed the simmering resentment of their populations behind the façade of stability. The Eastern bloc is a case in point, and we know what happened to it. Still, those who trade fictitious stability for political freedom have failed a fundamental test of modern government. Secretary Rice was trying to promote the US agenda for reform in the region. It is an agenda that assumes that the Middle East is a seamless entity, which it is not. This is a region where things happen at different speeds. Levels of stability and freedom differ from one country to another, and no two regimes are exactly the same. Rice's comments are anything but altruistic. Like all US officials she speaks with 11 September and US interests in mind. The ultimate US goal is to replace some regimes with others more loyal to Washington, regardless of how democratic they may be. She is perhaps more sincere when she talks about the importance of Middle Eastern stability for the US. That stability, unfortunately, has come at a high cost, a cost paid by the populations of the region. We began with imperialism, became enmeshed in despotism, then moved towards imperialism again. Arab regimes, while claiming to fight imperialism, have subjected their own people to appalling degrees of oppression. This generated terrorism and violence on a scale that brought foreign armies to our region, as in Iraq. Arab nations have suffered at the hands of imperialists, and at the hands of those who claimed to fight the imperialists. Rice posits a new era, one in which Arab countries do not sacrifice freedom for stability. This is what true reform is all about. It isn't, however, what many in Washington have in mind. The US secretary of state is unlikely to concede that the US military presence in the region is a part of the vicious circle she so eloquently deplored, this spiral of imperialism-despotism-imperialism. During her lecture at the American University in Cairo I pointed out to Rice that the Arab-Israeli conflict provided the excuse for Arab regimes to suppress freedom in the region. In reply Rice said the US is determined to stimulate peace efforts and help create a Palestinian state. I certainly hope to see this happen. Domestic reform, after all, is inextricably linked with external peace. * The writer is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the People's Assembly.
