Arab Regimes Breed Discontent and Anger at U.S., Analysts Say

Mideast: Washington is allied with repressive governments and hasn't pushed democracy.

By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER
LA TIMES STAFF WRITER

October 8 2001

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Abdullah Dasmal was sipping coffee in a cafe here two
weeks ago when the news came that his country had cut diplomatic ties with Afghanistan.
His mobile phone chirped, and a message in flowing Arabic script winked onto the tiny
screen.

Within minutes, all the shop's Arab patrons were reaching into their pockets to
withdraw phones chiming in a cacophony of tones. Friends throughout the oil-rich
Emirates were forwarding the same message.

It was short and simple: "Stand together with Afghanistan!" "You see," Dasmal, 34,
said, pointing to his phone. "Even the rich are willing to sacrifice their lives.
They may be wearing jeans or speaking English, but they'll go to the holy war, even
if our government tries to stop them."

Even before the U.S. attack on Afghanistan on Sunday, a burning hatred of the U.S.
simmered in much of the Arab world--including here, one of the most cosmopolitan
and moderate Arab nations.

The explanation for the anger caroming through cafes and marketplaces is the same
as elsewhere in the Arab world: the U.S. support of Israel and its alleged indifference
to the Palestinians killed in the year-old intifada, and long-term sanctions against
Iraq blamed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women and children.

But deeper than those obvious reasons, analysts and ordinary citizens say, is another
factor, an uncomfortable reality long ignored by the West: The governments of the Arab
nations are among the most repressive in the world.

In most of the countries, there is no free press. There is no freedom of association.
Dissent is crushed. Torture is common. Opposition parties are weak or ineffective.

As a result, the rulers of Arab countries are often out of step with their people. So
although most Arab leaders have pledged cooperation in the U.S.-led battle against
terrorism, their people are far less supportive.

Even worse, some analysts argue, the lack of a democratic outlet in Arab countries 
fosters a breeding ground for Islamic extremists such as Osama bin Laden and allies
in his Al Qaeda terrorist network.

In a taped statement aired hours after Sunday's attack, Bin Laden tried to exploit
the split between Arab governments and their people. He charged that Arab governments
had "backed the butcher against the victim, the oppressor against the innocent child."

Experts say Bin Laden is able to appeal to rank-and-file Arabs angered by years of
government oppression and factors such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"The lack of democracy and support of human rights has contributed to a sense of
frustration, anger and humiliation," said Judy Barsalou, grant director with the
United States Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded agency focused on conflict
resolution. "That's a direct pipeline to new terrorists."

U.S. alliances with repressive regimes during the Cold War often wound up exploding,
such as the U.S.-backed dictatorship in Nicaragua, which was ousted by the Marxist
Sandinistas, or the U.S.-supported shah of Iran, whose ouster gave rise to the
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Now, at the start of a new war on terrorism, some analysts fear that the U.S. may
be on the verge of repeating past mistakes, supporting authoritarian governments
whose people may one day rebel and set fire to the Middle East.

As the U.S. embarks on what President Bush calls a fight to preserve values of
freedom and democracy, it is rushing to seek closer ties with governments that are
largely hostile to just such values.

"If you support absolute power and prevent people from expressing their grievances,
it's like giving permission for them to take their grievances [to extremist groups],
" said Essam al Arian, a leader of an outlawed political group in Egypt.

Few Stabs at Democracy

Many former Communist countries have embraced free and fair elections. Every nation
in the Western hemisphere except Cuba is a democracy. Throughout much of Asia,
democratic institutions have taken hold, even in volatile countries such as Indonesia,
the world's most populous Muslim nation.

But from North Africa through the Levant to the Persian Gulf, there are only
scattered attempts at democracy.

The U.S. has never pushed hard for democracy in the area. In large part, this is
because of the fear that fundamentalist extremists could take over after democratic
elections, leading to the creation of an Islamic state eager to attack Israel and
unleash terror throughout the world.

But it is also because the U.S. has more important concerns in the region than
democracy, analysts say.

"There's a long-standing tradition to look away from human rights and democracy
to protect oil and Israel," said Les Campbell, the Middle East regional director
for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a bipartisan group
promoting democracy throughout the world. "When you cut through it, it's those two things."

The lack of democracy benefits the countries' leaders, who often have vested interests
in maintaining the region's stability--to preserve personal oil fortunes, for example.

But to maintain stability, they have had to focus societal anger away from internal
problems such as poverty and lack of social mobility toward external problems such as
the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

This, in turn, backfires against the United States by stirring outrage and postponing
meaningful, long-term solutions, experts say.

"It's a false stability," said Arian, the leader of the outlawed Egyptian group. "We
call it the fire under the ashes."

A Mostly Closed Society

The Arab world has never been a beacon of freedom. Although periods of political
openness have existed in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, the region has never
sustained a fully open and democratic society.

Rulers in the region range from hereditary monarchs such as Saudi Arabia's King
Fahd to dictators such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein and presidents such as Egypt's Hosni
Mubarak, chosen in electoral contests routinely criticized as unfair.

Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and Yemen are cited as having the most democratic governments,
but with significant qualification. Tunisia has been criticized repeatedly for crushing
an open press. Morocco and Jordan are monarchies. Yemen is listed as a terrorist-supporting
nation by the U.S. State Department.

Mahfouz Azzam, the vice president of Egypt's Labor Party, said Mubarak's ruling party
controls the polling places, voter lists and ballot boxes, enabling it to manipulate
results. Of 454 seats in the People's Assembly, fewer than two dozen are controlled
by opposition figures.

Street protests are routinely quashed throughout the region. In many Arab countries,
for instance, police constrained protests on the one-year anniversary of the Palestinian
intifada in late September with rows of riot police or bans on public gatherings.

The frustrations can easily be seen in the streets.

Ahmad Rikaby, a geography professor, and his friend Ahmad Awadallah, a chef, recently
came to the historic Al Azhar mosque in central Cairo for Friday prayers.

As the two stood under a beating sun surrounded by black-clad security police with
machine guns, both scoffed at the idea that Egypt is a democracy.

"In Egypt, we can't demonstrate against [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon. If
we could, I would demonstrate now, at once," Rikaby said.

A further problem in the Arab world is the lack of a free press. In most places,
media are state-supported. In the United Arab Emirates, the top story in the papers
about two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks on America was a paean to the wise
leadership of Sheik Zayed ibn Sultan al Nuhayyan, the country's leader for 30 years.

And when newspapers and television stations strive to criticize, they are often
attacked. In Tunisia last year, a journalist went on a 40-day hunger strike against
police who had arrested his brother and shut off his phone.

Human rights get even less respect. Last year, a Saudi newspaper glowingly reported
an incident in which a man who had thrown acid in another man's face, blinding him,
had his eye surgically removed. Saudi Arabia follows a strict Islamic code called Sharia.

Many Arab countries have an extensive apparatus of secret police. In many nations,
groups that advocate a civil society or human rights simply do not exist.

It's a recipe for a society in which anger builds but has no place to go.

"If you treat people as slaves and don't respect their morality, their religion,
their character and way of behavior, what do you think will happen?" Azzam asked.
"If you support military force against people at the same time you are preaching
democracy, what do you think will happen?"

Opposition Crushed

The Arab world itself is proof of the problems repression can bring. Its long history
of crushing opposition groups partly explains its fertility in terms of extremist
organizations.

Many of the extremist groups, such as Egypt's Islamic Jihad and Gamaa al Islamiya,
were founded after governments outlawed and imprisoned tens of thousands of members
of the Muslim Brotherhood. The brotherhood, founded in the late 1920s, sought a
nonviolent path to uniting all Muslim countries into a single nation with an Islamic
government.

In fact, the original aim of Bin Laden and many other terrorist leaders was to
overthrow Arab governments they considered illegitimate. When those governments
cracked down, the groups turned to attack the United States, accused of propping
up the authoritarian regimes, as well as supporting Israel.

"Who is protecting these regimes? It's their uncle, Uncle Sam," Azzam said.

A fully democratic Middle East would be no panacea. The extremist groups are the
primary argument against abandoning the region's kings, dictators and dubiously
elected presidents.

The key would be to create transitional governments that somehow manage to keep the
lid on the more violent elements while allowing full expression to fundamentalists'
concerns.

And some scholars and local leaders have suggested that the idea of religious
government based on Islam is antithetical to a pluralistic democracy.

But even if the structures of Western-style democracy, with legislatures and a
president, don't work, its basic principles--free and fair elections, the rule of
law, civil rights--could be adapted to an Arab society.

If not, Rikaby, the geography professor, said the future is clear.

"It's like a balloon. It's best to let a little air out," he said. "If you don't
let it out, it will get hard and blow up, like a bomb."