Democracy Stalled in the Middle East?
13 April 2006

An article in the April 10 New York Times draws attention to the struggles of democracy promotion in the Middle East.  The reporter, Hassan Fattah, explains that many people worry that recently initiated democratic reforms in countries around the Middle East may have stalled.  He reports, “Analysts and officials say the political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq, the newfound Shiite power in Iraq with its implication for growing Iranian influence, and the sense among some rulers that they can wait out the end of the Bush administration have put the brakes on democratization.”  The article reports that democratic reforms and civil liberties in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia have faced impediments.

The article states that initially, after September 11, when US policy toward the Middle East became focused on democracy promotion, “Arab governments, prodded also by emboldened opposition movements, made some moves toward democracy. But Arab rulers now emphasize that change is a slow process, or simply focus on economic changes instead.”

Fattah quotes a State Department official, who responded that “Democratic development isn't always linear.  It's a process that takes time, is evolutionary and requires strong consistent support, which is what our policy is all about.”  Fattah noted that “Administration officials do not deny that there have been setbacks in the promotion of democracy…but say that recent negative trends do not discredit their approach.”

Reporting that Iraq’s future might affect the direction of Middle East democracy, Jeffrey Fleishman writes in the April 9 Baltimore Sun,

The trend toward democracy in the Middle East has meant big wins for Islamist parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. The question is whether these parties will be forced to become more mainstream to govern or whether they will harden their Islamist agendas against the West and Israel. What emerges in Iraq could influence the tilt of such politics.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan, who served as Pakistan’s foreign secretary from 1989-1990, in an April 7 commentary of Pakistan’s Daily Times, reports that the debate over democracy in the Islamic world had been engaged before George Bush and Condoleezza Rice made it an issue in speeches from 2003.  He asserts that “Arab disillusionment with nationalism and socialism contributed to the rise of… Political Islam”, whose “militant tendency created fears that autocratic regimes of one kind may be replaced by equally intolerant theocratic systems of another kind.”  Khan says,

There was thus a convergence of internal opinion and that of the international community that democracy and development would arrest the drift of Middle Eastern societies into extremism. But this dream is being frustrated by the growing evidence that US-led initiatives for supporting democracy are valid only when the electorate returns results considered desirable by the West.

He further argues, that while from time to time in a Middle Eastern democracy, religious parties will control central government, that power will have a “mellowing” effect on the parties.  Khan points to Turkey and Egypt as examples where Islamic parties moderated their stance, suggesting that Hamas will do the same.