Sudden, Painful Rebirth Unsettles Stagnant Region

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia —  These are days of heady promises, when kings and despots are making emphatic gestures of reform. There are petition drives in Syria and Saudi Arabia and women’s rights negotiations in the United Arab Emirates. Human rights initiatives are suddenly being aired by members of oppressive regimes.

Saddam Hussein’s fall unsettled Arab leaders by demonstrating that the United States is willing to do away with hostile regimes. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said it best: We must shave our beards, he warned, before others shave them for us.

But behind the gestures of political change, contradictions and resentment are as thick and dark as the pools of oil under Saudi sands. One year after the campaign to oust Hussein, other regimes have lost their sense of invulnerability and appear uncertain of the new order. Pro-democracy reformists from Damascus to Dubai took strength from the disintegration of the Iraqi regime -- but also were saddled with the poisonous label of American sympathizer.

The United States has paid for the war and the occupation with a profound anti-American backlash. The fires of jihad have been fueled in the hearts of a new generation of extremist recruits. Sectarian tensions are spilling from Iraq, drawing out tribal, religious and ethnic splits in neighboring countries and raising fears of instability.

The United States argued that toppling Hussein would ease the path to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But another year of horrendous bloodshed in the Palestinian uprising has sunk Arabs deep into despair and intensified rage against U.S. foreign policy. That anger found form in wide-ranging street protests after the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the militant Hamas movement.

“If you ask us whether American foreign policy is working, we will say no,” said Mustafa Harmarneh, head of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies. “We went to American schools, and we will tell you: ‘No. “

Talk of Change

Western officials point out that change takes time. It’s too early to measure Iraq’s influence, they say, adding that in the long run, the ouster of Hussein can’t help but set off waves of political progress in the region. Optimistic analysts insist that the mere discussion of human rights and democracy is an important step.

“The removal of Saddam Hussein brought politics back to the Middle East,” Lebanese lawyer Chibli Mallat said.

But others say talk is cheap, and backsliding common. In autocratic regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, they say, discussion of change has become a tool of rulers -- a way to ease U.S. pressure, discourage unrest and, above all, keep a firm grip on power.

“Many, many regimes are very frightened -- they’re illegitimate, but they’ve always been buttressed and covered by American support, which they don’t seem able to rely on anymore,” Lebanese analyst Michael Young said. “And they realize their own people are not very happy with them, so they’re caught in this sort of ambiguous situation.”

Reform is an old ghost in the Arab world, frequently discussed and seldom realized. Egypt is a case in point: Aging President Hosni Mubarak this year lightened media constraints, approved the formation of a human rights committee and made several much-studied remarks indicating that he wouldn’t bequeath the presidency to his son, Gamal.

But how deep is the change? Egyptians have lived under emergency law almost continuously since 1967. Independent nongovernmental organizations and religious parties are illegal, and human rights groups have criticized Egyptian security forces, saying they torture opposition demonstrators, gay men, street children and Islamists alike. Egypt says the problem isn’t serious and that officers suspected of torture are investigated.

“Democracy is what the people think, not what the government says it is,” said Manal Khalid, a 32-year-old Egyptian woman. “We hear about democracy in government-owned newspapers. On the streets, there is no democracy.”

The slim television producer sat in a smoky cafe in Cairo’s downtown one recent evening, drinking a Heineken and sucking on a succession of Cleopatra cigarettes. She checked over her shoulder, her eyes flickering nervously over the men at the next booth.

Exercise in Democracy

Khalid was among thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets of Cairo a year ago and seized Tahrir Square to protest the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. They started out screaming against the war, but as the angry crowds swelled, the chants turned against Egypt, then against Mubarak himself. The raw street protests were Egypt’s largest eruption of popular discontent in 30 years.

When demonstrators surged back for a second day, security officers beat them with pipes and clubs and arrested more than 800 people, according to a Human Rights Watch investigation.

A clutch of plainclothes officers surrounded Khalid, ordered her to walk calmly in the middle and to keep quiet. When she panicked and struggled, they grabbed her by the hair, pushed her head down and beat her in the breasts, face and stomach.

“You stupid girl, who do you think you are, chanting against the government?” she recalled them saying. She spent the next week in prison, herded from jail to jail and severely beaten, she said.

“The American government doesn’t care about democracy -- they let all these corrupt Arab regimes go on,” she said. “We have nothing we can offer anymore as a people. It’s humiliating.”

At a soccer stadium near the Turkish border this month, Syria’s ethnic divisions burst into bloodshed. A Kurdish team was taking the field when visiting Baathists taunted them with pro-Hussein chants. The players shouted back Kurdish slogans. Cries gave way to riots as police opened fire.

By the time the government had imposed order on the streets, the rioting had spread to other Syrian cities and at least 15 people had been killed. The worst clashes between Syria’s Kurds and Arabs in memory were a stark sign of swelling impatience among the country’s 1.5 million Kurds, many of whom are barred from voting, studying at state schools, having government jobs or owning property.

Kurds have generally borne their hardships quietly, but now the Syrian regime appears vulnerable, dogged by scrutiny and threats of sanctions by the United States. The warning that “Syria is next” has been uttered ominously all over the Arab world for the last year.

In many Arab countries, where the status quo means discrimination, the sectarian question distills the tension between democratization and stability. Minorities see a chance for greater freedom; regimes worry that a resurgence of tribal or religious loyalty could provoke violence -- and erode carefully centralized control.

They have watched nervously while Iraq’s diverse population, free of enforced nationalism, retrenched along ethnic lines.

“The [Americans] keep talking about Shiites in the south, Kurds in the north -- why don’t they just talk about Iraqis?” asked Ihsan Ali Bu-Hulaiga, a Saudi member of the appointed council that advises the royal family. “Now everybody is scared, thinking they need to stick to their tribe. This will drive us back 100 years.”

Saudi House Divided

In Saudi Arabia, one of the most troubled and pressured Arab regimes is fighting for survival on all fronts. The House of Saud is battling an armed internal uprising, international pressure to reform its Islamic fundamentalist culture and a clamor for democratization from political activists.

Amid the strife, Saudi Arabia is also trying to find its footing with the United States. Decades of tight, affectionate relations gave way to awkward suspicion and mutual disappointment after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. After the invasion of Iraq, to the quiet relief of officials of both nations, the United States pulled its troops out of Saudi Arabia.

The vast land that yielded Islam’s prophet is also the birthplace of the modern jihad movement, fed during the Cold War by Saudi petrodollars, U.S. tax money and the fiery preaching of the kingdom’s conservative Wahhabi clerics.

Asked about the number of men who rushed over Saudi Arabia’s long border to fight the Americans, a Western diplomat said, “We’re talking thousands, not hundreds.”

Saudis aren’t the only ones -- from Beirut to Cairo, young men have left home to answer the summons to holy war.

In Saudi Arabia, the lesson is well known: Eventually, jihad finds its way back home. Islamic insurgents last year hit the regime with a pair of devastating suicide bombings in Riyadh and gun battles throughout the country.

“These are young men who live under layers of tyrannies, depriving them of all their rights. They can’t gather, they can’t voice political opinions,” said Abdella Bejad, a former extremist fighter in Saudi Arabia’s jihad ranks who has since reformed in favor of activism. “And their oppressors have been supported by the United States.”

The threatened monarchy’s zeal to reinvent itself is visible in Riyadh, and sometimes the result is schizophrenic. Last week, to the bewilderment of many Saudis, a handful of intellectuals and activists who had petitioned the government for a constitution and permission to form a human rights group were abruptly arrested. Even members of the royal family were at a loss to explain their arrests, the first public crackdown on reformers since 9/11.

“We were totally shocked,” said a source close to the royal family. “After all these promises to reform, this was a slap in the face.”

To some observers, the arrests were symptomatic of splits within the family, which is eager to preserve its rule but reportedly divided over how to do so. Reformists said they had been promised protection by some of the princes but warned by others to quiet down or face arrest.

“The government is fighting itself,” one reformist said.

Empire Building Seen

From shopkeepers to scholars, people throughout the Arab world are convinced that invading Iraq was the first step in a broad plan. The United States waged war as an early blow of empire, they argue -- to protect Israel, stake a claim on Iraqi oil and begin a gradual conquest of the region.

Few Arabs believe that their deliverance from repression will come from the United States, and their skepticism is fed by the continuing violence of the Palestinian intifada. Most Arabs are convinced that the United States, preoccupied with its struggles in Iraq and mindful of the looming presidential election, has abandoned the peace process. They blame the U.S. for supporting Israel with billions of dollars in aid but failing to broker talks.

Perceived American indifference to the Palestinians’ plight feeds the image of the United States as a superpower that fails to grasp what to most Arabs is an irrefutable logic: There’s no use in discussing stability, peace or democracy in the Middle East until the Palestinian question has been resolved.

“Israel is responsible for some of the gravest violations of human rights, and obviously it’s a country that the U.S. government considers in a league of its own,” said Mallat, the Lebanese lawyer. “The double standards undermine the efforts of the U.S. government to be taken seriously.”

Cynics found proof of their suspicions in the spectacle of Moammar Kadafi, Libya’s eccentric despot and a longtime foe of the United States. Late last year, Kadafi agreed to pay settlements to Libya’s terrorism victims, renounced weapons of mass destruction and welcomed weapons inspectors.

“Kadafi never became democratic -- he just gave up his arms and then he became a friend,” said Diaa Rashwan, an Egyptian analyst. “So the Arab regimes know the game is clear.”

This winter, a draft of the Greater Middle East Initiative, a U.S. working paper meant for discussion at a summit of industrialized nations, was leaked to an Arabic-language newspaper in London. Observers called it little more than a list of steps to democratize the Arab world, from providing philosophy textbooks to helping women run for office. On paper, many Arab intellectuals quietly agreed, the proposals were hard to dispute.

But Arab regimes and state media were incensed. How dare the United States try to impose reform? Syria and Egypt led the charge against the document, which Mubarak complained would create anarchy.

“If we open the door completely before the people, it will be chaos,” he said.

So millions of Arabs will keep doing what they’ve done for years -- wait for reform, buffeted by mixed gusts of hope and despair from Baghdad. In an ancient land where time means decades or centuries, rather than days or months, the response to the invasion has hardly begun.

*

Stack recently was on assignment in Riyadh.