Arab Democracy
Movement Faces Kingmaker Militaries
"The
military makes and unmakes kings, and is unlikely to willingly renounce the
tremendous power to do so. This is especially true in Egypt, where the army
would be the first to pay the price should America's very substantial subsidies
be withdrawn or, worse still, should the country return to war with
Israel."
Pro-Mubarak supporters surrender to opposition protesters, as Egyptian military forces look on from their tank, during rioting near Tahrir Square, February 3.
It's almost a mathematical
certainty. The sirocco blowing from the Maghreb, the khamsin raging in Egypt, will,
sooner or later, make their searing effects felt on the eastern side of the
Mediterranean. This region, dubbed the Levant at the beginning of the
last century, includes Syria, Lebanon, historic Palestine and even, by
extension, Jordan and Iraq, the unfortunate country that succumbed to the
endless flames of sectarian rage even before upheaval began amongst its
neighbors.
Fears - whether well-founded,
feigned, or simply exaggerated - have not been slow to surface, here and there.
Israel has openly expressed its anxiety about the future of the peace
treaty signed with Egypt three decades ago: a peace treaty that has
survived all manner of crises and war, but remains coldly received by the
general public. Further afield, Saudi Arabia, which has granted asylum to deposed Tunisian
president Ben Ali, must be alarmed at the serious events shaking its ally
Egypt, the axis of the other moderate, pro-Western Arab stalwarts. Iran, which
sees in the gradual collapse of Hosni Mubarak's regime the birth of a more
Islamic Middle East, may be voicing its jubilation prematurely. Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad, too, risks showing himself to be imprudent in
granting his country a certificate of good health, telling
the American press that Syria is immune to the "microbe" of
sedition.
[Editor's Note: In an interview
with the Wall Street Journal, Assad said in part: "If you have stagnant water, you will have pollution and
microbes ... If you want to talk about Tunisia and Egypt, we are outside of
this."]
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
If the lid of the saucepan
has well and truly blown off, as much in Cairo as in Tunis, the contents of the
pot have not, for all that, stopped boiling. No one, consequently, can predict
at this stage how broad and how real will be the changes awaiting the crowds
who are filling the streets to demand their rights, braving the formidable
machinery of repression. However legitimate the aspirations of these peoples
may be, their first stumbling steps toward democracy will undoubtedly bring
them up against enormous obstacles.
In Tunisia as in Egypt,
albeit to differing extents, we see the army setting itself up as the arbiter
of the situation, energetically - or not so energetically - pushing plagued
presidents toward the exit, carefully alternating between expressions of
understanding and even sympathy toward demonstrators with acts of
authoritarianism on the ground. The military establishment makes and unmakes
kings, and is unlikely to willingly renounce the tremendous power to do so.
This is especially true in Egypt, where the army would be the first to pay the
price should America's very substantial subsidies be withdrawn or, worse still,
should the country return to war with Israel.
So then, is the inevitable alternative
to the regime of the generals that of the extremists? This dilemma, which also
haunts the great powers, has gone unresolved for many years in a part of the
globe subjected for too long to the law of dictators, where the culture of
democracy is sorely lacking. Attempts have even been made to disfigure or
exterminate this culture, that is to say Lebanon, the one place where it has
flourished more strongly than anywhere else and the one place that could have
set an example from which it could have radiated - spread like wildfire. It's
in our Lebanon that theocratic fascism - in itself a glaring anomaly within the
mosaic of different communities that constitute this country - has overcome
democracy to take power at the point of a gun. That, alas, is the example we
have set.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Whether or not the Jasmine Revolution
spreads, whether or not Syria (where Facebook and Twitter are still disabled as
a precautionary measure) establishes itself as an irreplaceable bulwark against
the rise of fundamentalism in the eyes of the West, whether or not Jordan
responds to the crisis by reviving old Israeli projects to turn the monarchy
into an alternative homeland for dispossessed Palestinians, Lebanon must first
look to itself to one day (re)discover its true raison d'être. What
counts far more than democracy is the use one is able to make of it - or wants
to make of it.
