THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 236, October 27, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
FROM BAGHDAD TO BEIRUT, ARAB LEADERS
BEING HELD TO ACCOUNT
By Michael Rubin
THE RULE OF LAW & ACCOUNTABILITY OF GOVERNMENT OFFICEHOLDERS TO THE PEOPLE THEY GOVERN: TWO
CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL CONCEPTS THAT ARE SPREADING THROUGHOUT THE ARAB WORLD -- SIGNIFICANT
CHANGE IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RULERS & RULED OCCURRING IN THE MIDDLE EAST -- THE PATH BEING PAVED FOR THE
EVENTUAL ADVENT OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY IN THE ARAB WORLD
FULL STORY:
Long home to farfetched conspiracy theories and a political culture of victimization, the Arab world is now being swept by a new
emphasis on accountability. While commentators and pundits debate the merits, drawbacks, and sincerity of the Bush
administration's drive for constitutional democracy in the region, events across the Middle East suggest that the relationship
between rulers and the governed has been significantly transformed.
The shift was evident on October 19, 2005, when former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and seven high-ranking lieutenants
shuffled into a Baghdad court room to face charges that they ordered a massacre of 143 Iraqi civilians following a 1982
assassination attempt against the Iraqi leader. The proceedings were broadcast in Iraq on television channels like Al Jazeera
and Al Arabiya, and Arabic-language newspapers throughout the Middle Eastern region splashed photos of the former Iraqi
dictator sitting submissively in the dock across their front pages.
Not everyone accepted the fairness of the trial. Dozens rallied against it in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. Saddam's daughter Raghd
called his trial a "farce." Other Iraqis questioned the necessity of due process for a man whom they believe murdered hundreds of
thousands.
Nor were the objections in words only. In March, 2005, gunmen ambushed and killed one of the tribunal's judges. And the day after
the trial opened, masked men abducted and murdered a co-defendant's lawyer.
Regardless of the coffee house debate, Saddam's insistence that he remains President of Iraq and is immune from prosecution rang
hollow. Iraqis can purchase for less than a dollar DVDs showing the deliberations of Iraq's Constitutional Drafting Commission.
While some Iraqis and many Arabs question the legitimacy of the transitional government, few believe that any return to the past is
possible.
Arab Sunni rejectionists campaigned as hard as supporters of the newly drafted Constitution prior to the October 15 referendum.
Candidates are already positioning themselves for the upcoming elections in December, with some planning grass-roots campaigns
and others hiring high-priced campaign consultants.
Accountability has taken root in Iraq in other ways, too. The fear upon which Saddam's rule and immunity long depended has
largely lifted. The Baghdad-based Free Prisoners Association has copied and, in some cases, sold files of executed loved ones to
grieving relatives. While Western pundits argue the arbitrariness of purging former Baath Party members from the state bureaucracy,
the de-Baathification committee continues its business, painstakingly parsing through Baath Party payroll and secret police
documents to separate those complicit in atrocities from those who were mere functionaries.
Iraqi newspapers — not hotel-based American correspondents — broke stories on everything from the United Nation's oil-for-food
scandal to the astounding $500 million embezzlement by Hazen al-Shaalan, the American-appointed interim Iraqi Defense Minister.
Just as with the Plamegate scandal that currently engulfs Washington, those exposing the abuses of Saddam's government and the
corruption of the interim Iraqi administration are independent journalists driven not only by politics, but also by a desire for
transparency in government and the rule of law.
A willingness to hold leaders to account, such as we are now witnessing in Iraq, is becoming increasingly more common in the Arab
world. Against the backdrop of Saddam's trial, UN Special Investigator Detlev Mehlis submitted the findings of his inquiry into the
February 14, 2005, assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. He concluded, "There is converging evidence
pointing at both Lebanese and Syrian involvement in this terrorist act." Pre-release drafts suggest that Mehlis privately fingered
President Bashar Assad's younger brother Maher and brother-in-law Assef Shawkat as being complicit in the murder.
As with the Iraqi Special Tribunal, some in the Arab world may disparage the Mehlis report. Thousands of Syrians rallied in
Damascus against the UN findings. The Lebanese Hezbollah and Amal militias both condemned the UN investigation as based on
politics, not on fact. A shadowy pro-Syrian Lebanese group, Jund al-Sham, threatened to kill Mehlis.
But fringe groups and state-sponsored rallies aside, Arabs across the region appear to welcome the Mehlis report. Indeed, it was the
groundswell of Lebanese — and Saudi — revulsion at Hariri's assassination that spurred the UN Security Council to create a special
investigatory commission.
The Lebanese Cabinet endorsed Mehlis's findings, even though he also implicated the top four security chiefs of pro-Syrian
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. Lebanon's Parliament, just a year ago little more than a Syrian rubber stamp, moved to hold
Lahoud to account. "The president must resign," prominent parliamentarian Butros Harb declared. "There is a big gulf between MPs
and Lahoud." It remains unclear how far Lebanon's Cedar Revolution will go, but there is no doubt that Lebanese and Syrian officials
now realize their actions are not without consequence.
And the wave of accountability is spreading. Yasser Arafat's death last year sparked renewed Palestinian attention to Palestinian
Authority corruption. The new administration allowed Issam Abu Issa, the former Chairman of the Palestine International Bank, who
exposed how Arafat siphoned off millions in aid money, to return from exile in Qatar.
This past April, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered the PA's Prosecutor-General to investigate a former top Arafat aide
and three senior Finance Ministry officials on embezzlement charges. While such corruption was commonplace within the PA
throughout the Arafat era, the public mood has changed. The Palestinian public is no longer willing to stomach the worst excesses
of its leadership.
Across the Middle East, Arab regimes are coming to realize that they no longer can act with impunity against their own citizens. The
Syrian and Libyan governments may, for example, control state media, but plights of dissidents such as Aktham Naisse and Fathi
el-Jahmi spread on the Internet and on satellite television.
Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, Director of the Regional Bureau of Arab States in the UN Development Program, told the pan-Arab newspaper
Asharq al-Awsat earlier this year that some Arab governments objected to the latest Arab Human Development Report
because it highlighted the plight of prominent dissidents who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. To the Arab public,
though, such cases remain relevant. In Lebanon, many Shiites still demand that Libyan ruler Muammar Gadhafi reveal what happened
to Musa al-Sadr, an important imam who disappeared while visiting the Libyan leader in 1978.
Accountability may be uncomfortable, but the public is no longer willing to give Arab autocrats a carte blanche.
Last week, a group of Tunisian dissidents, including former presidential candidate Nejib Chebbi, began a hunger strike to demand
freedom of association, freedom of the press, and the immediate release of all political prisoners. According to Parti Libéral
Méditerranéen spokeswoman Neila Charchour Hachicha, while the Tunisian government shut down her Web site and banned
mention of the protest, Al Jazeera reported it for three consecutive days.
Throughout the Arab world, rulers have acted with impunity toward their own populations and their neighbors. But the political
atmosphere is shifting.
In 1982, Saddam Hussein thought little of signing execution orders for the citizens of Dujail. Now he waits in prison.
Senior Syrian officials and their Lebanese proxies would not have murdered Hariri had they realized that they would be held to
account not only by the international community, but also by the Arab world. Rulers have taken note. Assad freed Aktham Naisse
only after the Hariri uproar. Fathi El-Jahmi is still alive only because Gadhafi understands that his death will not pass unnoticed.
Now the ruling elite must worry that an increasingly free and frisky press might question their corruption. True constitutional
democracy is still a distant dream in much of the region, but the ground rules are shifting.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
The Middle East -- Lebanon as a Geopolitical Problem
The Middle East & the Problem of Syria
Tunisia, Islamic North Africa, & the Arab World
North Africa -- The Arab States of Islamic North Africa
The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Michael Rubin, a former political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, is a resident scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly.
The foregoing article by Michael Rubin appears in Forward, October 28, 2005, and can be found on the Internet website
maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
October 27, 2005
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