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Zman
07-14-2007, 12:12 AM
:sl:/Peace To All

Fading U.S. Democracy Agenda Evokes Arab Scorn

By Alistair Lyon,
Special Correspondent - Analysis
Fri Jul 13, 2007 7:37AM EDT
Reuters

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Western backing for the legally disputed emergency government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demolished any lingering Arab belief that U.S. President George W. Bush's "freedom agenda" is going anywhere.

Both critics and advocates of the sweeping goals he laid out for his second term in 2005 agree that power politics and the "war on terrorism" have trumped democratic principles.

They say this was clear from the moment the United States and the European Union boycotted the government set up by Hamas in March 2006 after the Islamists trounced Abbas's Fatah faction in free elections that Washington had insisted go ahead.

"That was the hair in the soup in terms of the democracy agenda," said Lebanese commentator Michael Young, who had supported Bush's thesis that invading Iraq in 2003 would undermine undemocratic Arab regimes elsewhere.

"The U.S. response (to Hamas's election win) was: 'we'll accept democracy but not if it means the other side can win'."


Now, Washington has embraced as "legitimate" the cabinet Abbas named after Hamas routed his Fatah forces in Gaza on June 14.

The EU also endorsed Abbas's actions as constitutional.
Yet the main authors of the Palestinian constitution, or Basic Law, say Abbas has exceeded his powers and needs the approval of parliament to keep the government in place.

Many Palestinians feel the West had already trampled on their democracy in its rush to isolate Hamas for its refusal to recognize Israel, abandon violence or accept past peace accords.
"The Palestinians were immediately rewarded by the 'democracies' of the world with an unprecedented crippling siege as a punishment for the exercise of their democratic right," Anis al-Qasem, who led the framing of Basic Law, said this week.

SELECTIVE PRINCIPLES?

Across the Middle East, foes of the West accuse it of double standards. Arab reformers say U.S. actions undercut their cause.

"Issues of legality and legitimacy are completely irrelevant in U.S. eyes," said Rami Khouri, a Beirut-based commentator.

These values had been sidelined in a U.S.-led struggle with two distinct groups -- "al Qaeda terrorist types" and mainstream Islamists engaged at least partly in electoral politics, such as Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, he added.
...While penalizing the elected Hamas government, Bush lauds Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora for defending a "young democracy" against Hezbollah and its patrons, Syria and Iran.

But Hezbollah, while fielding an anti-Israel guerrilla force, also belongs to a strong parliamentary opposition of Christian and Shi'ite factions that challenges the legitimacy of the cabinet backed by Siniora's Sunni, Christian and Druze bloc.

In practice, analysts say, Washington has eased whatever post-9/11 pressure for reform it had exerted on countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan because it wants their help in confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions and stabilizing Iraq.

REALITY MUGS RHETORIC


"The Bush administration's policy toward democracy in the Muslim countries is essentially bankrupt,"
former State Department official David Mack, who is now Vice President of the Middle East Institute in Washington, told Reuters.

Bush's pledge in his 2005 inaugural speech to promote reform by making U.S. relations with other countries hinge on "the decent treatment of their own people" had proved untenable.

"It never could have happened," Mack said. "All we did, from the point of view of democracy advocates, was raise unachievable expectations and behave in a hypocritical manner."

Bush said the United States would keep reminding its Middle East allies that "we want them to work toward freer societies".
But such ideals had never been the sole driver of U.S. policy, Young argued. "Even in 2003 when they went into Iraq, there was always a large element of power politics.
...Far more Arabs would argue that invading and occupying Iraq, with its echoes of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, fatally compromised any prospects of igniting liberty elsewhere.

Arab mistrust of U.S. policy is now so deep that dissidents in countries like Syria have to expend much energy dissociating themselves from it to retain any credibility at home.

With the EU largely following Washington's lead, notably towards Hamas, Arab reformers feel their struggle may be forlorn if the West is willing to tolerate corrupt, authoritarian rulers as long as they are U.S.-friendly and cooperative on terrorism.

"The international community has to decide: are we going to barter reforms and democracy for pro-Western (governments)?"
asked Khalil Gebara, of the Lebanese Transparency Association.

© Reuters 2007.

Source:
http://www.reuters.com/article/reute...070713?sp=true
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Zman
07-14-2007, 11:10 PM
:sl:/Peace To All

The Rules Change When Dictators Serve US Interests

The mosque siege reveals Musharraf's desperation to appear tough in the war on terror.

But in truth he is a friend to terrorists


By Imran Khan
Wednesday July 11, 2007
Guardian

Over recent days, news from Pakistan has been dominated by the siege at the Red Mosque, which ended late yesterday. Scarcely a mile from the seat of power in Islamabad, the madrasa students and their two leading clerics inside the mosque first claimed attention with kidnappings, threats of suicide bombings and demands for the imposition of sharia law. The Musharraf regime mounted a military operation against the militants which led to the loss of numerous lives, among them one of the clerics, Abdul Rashid Ghaz.

A number of questions arise.

Why was action not taken immediately? How were militants and arms able to get in under the gaze of the police and intelligence services? And why were other measures, including shutting off electricity at the mosque, not exhausted earlier?

The episode appears to have been drawn out deliberately by President Musharraf.
Since he sacked the chief justice in March, a movement led by lawyers, journalists and opposition parties has been clamouring for democracy on Pakistan's streets.

As Musharraf faces his biggest crisis, he is desperate to prove his indispensability to the west in the war on terror.

But this use of force is likely to produce unintended and dangerous consequences, as it has in Baluchistan, Waziristan and Bajaur. It may be salutary to recall how Indira Gandhi's order for troops to attack the Golden Temple, where Sikh militants were holed up, not only failed to subdue the militants but triggered a wave of violence, including her assassination.

While few Sikhs may have sympathised with the militants, many came to deeply resent the government's high-handedness.

Suicide bombing and other noxious forms of terrorism were once alien to Pakistan. After eight years of military dictatorship, radicalism and fundamentalism are in the ascendant everywhere.

Musharraf is perceived among radical elements as the west's instrument in a "war on Islam" - there could be no greater failure in the battle for hearts and minds.
Terrorism requires a political solution.

Extremists can be marginalised through debate and political dialogue in a democracy.

Military dictatorship, as we are now seeing, only exacerbates the problem.
It has become obvious to every Pakistani that, far from presiding over a transition to genuine democracy in the country, Musharraf is intent on dismantling every democratic institution in his way.

Over recent months he has assaulted the judiciary, restricted freedom of the press, and put hundreds of members of the opposition behind bars.
The roots of the most shocking incident so far, however, can be found in north London, where the chairman of the Musharraf-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Altaf Hussain, resides.

When Pakistan's chief justice decided to address the bar in Karachi, a vast welcome was expected in the city. This worried Musharraf and his MQM allies, who control the Sindh government - and especially Karachi, the provincial capital. They decided to organise a rival rally the same day, despite protests by the opposition. What followed on the blood-soaked May 12 could be described in two words: state terrorism.

While the police stood aside, the terrorist arm of the MQM sprayed bullets into a peaceful procession of the opposition parties. Some 48 people lost their lives and 200 sustained bullet wounds. Among them were 10 members of my party. Most callously, Musharraf later that evening triumphantly claimed that the people had shown their "force". None of the opposition parties believe MQM's denials that they were involved in turning this peaceful protest violent.

It was then I decided to launch legal proceedings against Altaf Hussain, who has been living in exile in London since 1992 and became a British citizen in 1999.

The MQM came into existence in the mid-1980s as a genuine people's movement in Karachi, representing the immigrant community that had arrived from India shortly after the creation of Pakistan. This community had serious grievances, the most significant being that educated young muhajirs could not get jobs because of imposed quotas. But within a few years it had degenerated into a thuggish mafia outfit, controlled by one man, Altaf Hussain.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even the US state department and the European Union have issued reports about the MQM's terrorist activities. The only independent provincial assembly in Pakistan recently denounced the party as a "terrorist organisation", and last weekend the conference of opposition parties jointly resolved to support the legal proceedings against Hussain.
While Musharraf maintains that he is at the frontline of the war on terror - in which thousands of Pakistani soldiers and citizens have lost their lives - he has allied himself with the country's number one terrorist.

And Tony Blair's government, which was at the fore of this war, gave Pakistan's number one terrorist citizenship.

It is impossible to embark on any quest for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis when these blatant double standards exist.

Are dictators somehow fine when they exist to serve US interests, even if they destroy hopes of democracy in the process?

And are terrorists only a problem when it is western blood that is shed?
· Imran Khan is the leader of the Pakistan Movement for Justice and a member of parliament

niazi73@hotmail.com

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...123282,00.html
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