BOOK REVIEW
The system's challengers Dreams and Shadows by Robin Wright
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
Representations of the Middle East as changeless, frozen-in-time and regressive
have crowded mainstream Western media for years owing to the region's high
frequency of despotism and religious fundamentalism. But the despondent
narrative of a region doomed to medievalism obscures new developments and
forces pushing for democracy and decency.
In her new book, Robin Wright, a senior journalist for the Washington Post,
pries open a window to the Middle East's lesser-known strain of citizen
activism against both dictatorship and Islamist terrorism. Having lived and
traveled in the region for three decades, she focuses on the courage and
sacrifice of
individuals and groups aspiring for freedom.
The book's prologue draws attention to "pyjamahedeen" - emerging young players
campaigning for human rights and democracy using laptops and cell phones. These
activists are inexperienced and under-resourced compared to entrenched tyrants
and violent Islamists. With the highest youth unemployment rate in the world,
the region has enough flashpoints for extremism. A demographically fuelled
revolution in expectations can therefore be easily channeled into the throes of
armed jihad rather than constructive change. Wright terms these contradictory
prospects the "crises of change" through which "not all new actors will
succeed". (pg 18)
In the Palestinian territories, the death of the patriarch Yasser Arafat was a
catalyst for change. The 2006 parliamentary election that followed was the
first instance in Arab history when people peacefully and democratically turned
incumbents out of power. Hamas' sweep ended half a century of monopoly over
power by Fatah, but both parties then proceeded to violate the norms of
democratic conduct by engaging in devastating factional fighting. Washington
fanned the Palestinian deadlock by arming Fatah to the teeth, thereby
extinguishing the "euphoria of the Arabs' most democratic election ever". (pg
63) The Palestinian saga, says Wright, demonstrates the volatility of change in
an institutionally weak Middle East.
Egypt's 2005 presidential election was typically fixed in favor of the
absolutist ruler, Hosni Mubarak, but it propelled civil society watchdogs to
try to hold his government to account. Their exemplary actions inspired similar
movements in Jordan and Lebanon. Yet, the most energetic political opposition
in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood rather than secular democratic networks like
Kefaya. The Brotherhood presently advocates peaceful transformation but insists
on the primacy of Islamic Sharia in lawmaking. Its ultimate aims of recreating
the caliphate and "mastering the world with Islam" hardly inspire the country's
10% Christian population. With the US on his side as ally and the opposition
scattered, Mubarak looks set to prolong his police state by spawning a dynasty.
Lebanon is relatively democratic but plagued by sectarian divisions.
Institutionalized confessionalism hobbles national unity in this most diverse
country. The assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri in 2005 spurred a new
generation of activists with a national vision. They assembled the largest mass
protests ever in a modern Arab country and succeeded in ending Syria's 29-year
occupation of the country. But sectarian quota systems in government remain
along with warlords and clans, which still tower over fledgling civil society
groups.
The Shi'ite guerrilla outfit, Hezbollah, is the most powerful political actor
in Lebanon. Backed by Iran and an impressive social service and
Israel-resistance record, Hezbollah is a state within the state. Wright
describes meeting its supremo, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who said "the real
democratic process in our countries will often produce governments that will be
Islamist". (pg 196) The author adds that Hezbollah's war against Israel in 2006
hastened "a shift from Arabism to Islamism among both major Muslim sects" in
the region. (pg 210)
Since 1963, Syria has been in an open-ended state of emergency under the thumb
of the Ba'ath Party. Neo-Marxists have taken the biggest risks and served the
longest prison stints for relentlessly opposing the Assad dynasty's oppression.
Wright focuses especially on the tribulations of the long-imprisoned leftist
dissident, Riad al Turk. Syrian progressives have willingly walked to the
gallows with the pride that they at least "participated in saving the dignity
of our people". (pg 239) Wright also profiles a Syrian lawyer who sold his
personal affects to defend dissidents even though his clients had no chance of
acquittal.
As in Egypt, the more consistent challenge to the Assad autocracy comes from
the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood. It is now open to collaborating with
other opposition forces, including the leftists. With "a strong Islamic wind
blowing through the region" (pg 248), says Wright, secular dissidents too are
keen on bringing the Brotherhood back into the political field. But regime
change looks like a long haul in this heavily militarized country.
Moving to Iran's revolution-gone-sour, Wright features the views of philosopher
Abdolkarim Soroush and his student, Akbar Ganji. After falling out with
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Soroush began propounding that "freedom always
precedes religion" and that the reversed sequence "inevitably leads to
totalitarianism". (pg 275) Ganji quit the Ministry of Culture upon realizing
that "the revolution (had) started swallowing its own children". (pg 277) He
chronicled the corruption and impunity of Iran's clergy and intelligence
agencies and braved jail sentences to describe the Islamic republic as an "iron
cage" that can only be broken through mass civil disobedience.
Wright writes affectionately about the "irrepressible irreverence" and
"desperate defiance" of Iranian youth. She also follows the fates of rebel
clerics like Ali Montazeri, Mohsen Kadivar and Hosein Boroujerdi who exposed
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's empire of abuses and paid heavy personal prices for
it. Moderate insiders like former president Mohammad Khatami and former prime
minister Mir Hossein Moussavi also try to humanize and liberalize the system
from within, but get stopped in their tracks by Khamenei's hardliners. The most
recent re-anointment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad through a fraudulent presidential
election spells greater travails ahead for democracy in Iran.
Wright's chapter on Morocco, a country reeling under monarchy for the last 1200
years, highlights women as "an imaginative force for change in the Middle
East." (p.352) Iconoclastic Moroccan feminists like Fatima Mernissi and Latifa
Jbabdi faced state bullying and harassment from the mosque but persisted in
launching collective campaigns for gender equality. Their 20-year-long struggle
yielded far-reaching democratic changes in family law in 2004. But the Moroccan
royalty's failure to share power or enact political reform has kept open
avenues for extremist organisations like the Islamist Combatant Group.
Wright reserves the final chapter to the trauma of Iraq. Before the US invasion
in 2003, she recalls the apprehensions of top Iraqi Kurdish leaders that
"removing a dictatorship does not mean democracy will work". (pg 383) Since the
ouster of Saddam Hussein, occupying American administrators and elected Iraqi
politicians have not managed to calm ethnic divisions or reduce alienation from
the central government. Elections rewarded Islamist parties and failed to
prevent sectarian militias (often protected by the state) from going on the
rampage. Wright critiques the US neo-conservative experiment in Iraq by
asserting that, "whatever its shortcomings, change is always better
home-grown". (pg 409)
The US attack on Iraq stranded new democracy activists throughout the Middle
East and handed the initiative to violent actors. But the indefatigable spirits
among the human rights groups, Wright assures us, will "keep trying". (pg 419)
One need go no further than this book for a realistic appraisal of the promise
and limitations of moderate agents of change in a politically pent-up region.
Dreams and Shadows. The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright.
Penguin Books, New York, March 2009. ISBN: 978-0-14-311489-5. Price: US$17, 464
pages.
Sreeram Chaulia is associate professor of world politics at the Jindal
Global Law School in Sonipat, India.
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In the Palestinian territories, the death of the patriarch Yasser Arafat was a
catalyst for change. The 2006 parliamentary election that followed was the
first instance in Arab history when people peacefully and democratically turned
incumbents out of power. Hamas' sweep ended half a century of monopoly over
power by Fatah, but both parties then proceeded to violate the norms of
democratic conduct by engaging in devastating factional fighting. Washington
fanned the Palestinian deadlock by arming Fatah to the teeth, thereby
extinguishing the "euphoria of the Arabs' most democratic election ever". (pg
63) The Palestinian saga, says Wright, demonstrates the volatility of change in
an institutionally weak Middle East.
