The Essential Agenda

I expected "After the Iraqi Earthquake: the Moment for Truth and Re-Examination," an article I published in Al-Ahram on 23 April, 2003, to provoke the anger of the majority of the cultural elite and this is exactly what happened. But in this case it is in the details of the general response that significance lies. The majority of those who objected to the article were shocked -- more shocked than I had expected -- at what they considered an assault on certain inviolable principles. At the same time the minority who supported my article was larger than I had anticipated.

Last Wednesday Al-Ahram published two responses to the article, one by Yehya El-Gamal, the other by Mohamed El-Saadani. Yehya El- Gamal devoted his article to a reiteration of Washington's attempts to gain control of Iraqi oil, ensure Israeli security, and cement US hegemony in the region. He pointed to nothing in my article that denied these facts; indeed I said the same things. Yet he argued that I had somehow justified the invasion of Iraq and absolved the US of accusations of hegemony. But there is a great difference between explaining and justifying and my objective was to explain, not to justify.

Mohamed El-Saadani, in his consummately objective article, agreed with parts of my article and disagreed with others. He did, however, wonder how the occupation of Baghdad could ever become a cornerstone of Arab strength, and he questioned the idea that democracy might be amenable to fast-food-style home delivery. Both of these issues are intimately related to the dialogue I am proposing.

Before defining the issues we must discuss it would be wise to separate them from those that can be put on the back burner. The issues raised at this historical moment are many; some are global and regional, others local or national. What I am proposing is that it is most important that we conduct a dialogue on the latter issues. International and regional issues, for the simple reason that they concern others as well as ourselves, cannot, for the moment, be accorded the same priority. The unbridled power of the US has become a problem for Western Europe, Russia, China, and the United Nations and traditional ideas about a lone global superpower are no longer adequate to explain the world order that is currently taking shape.

We are living in a post-New World Order phase, in which the new world and the old world are squaring off, the battlelines drawn between the US versus the UN. This is a global problem before it is an Arab or Muslim problem, and cannot be faced except through coordination and cooperation with other nations.

On the regional level the present moment raises fundamental questions about the impact changes in Iraq and its regional role will have on the Arab Gulf and the Middle East. These issues cannot be separated from the efforts towards a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the "roadmap" proposed by the US. Again, these issues are not subject to our will -- as Arabs and Muslims -- alone but involve other powers, including Turkey, Iran, and Israel.

What should be our most urgent concern now is what has happened, and will happen very shortly, in Iraq. It would be naïve to think that such developments do not concern us, and a mistake to isolate ourselves from them or hesitate to play our role. And in this context there are four pressing issues that need to be subjected to a wide-ranging debate, conducted with seriousness and courage.

The first issue is, as I said in the article cited above, the relationship between the external and the internal, between foreign and domestic threats. Since the beginning of the war against Iraq the majority of the Arab elite, and the public, have been thrown into a state of confusion. They reject Saddam Hussein, but they reject the war against Iraq at the same time. Yes, the great majority of Arabs concede that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who destroyed his country, frittered away its wealth and degraded the lives of Iraqis. But they also believe that Washington's war was an unjustified aggression lacking international legitimacy. During the war, particularly between 20 March and 10 April, the great majority of Arab intellectuals condemned the American aggression. Its goal, they argued, was the destruction of Iraq, the pillage of its wealth, and the facilitating of Israeli control in the region. A second view emerged: its proponents, while well aware of all these US objectives, argued that getting rid of Saddam Hussein's regime was a great achievement and no less significant because done by Americans. The first point of view sees what happened as the occupation of Iraq; the second point, while not denying that it is indeed an occupation, also believes that it rid Iraq of one of the worst regimes in modern history.

Mohamed El-Saadani, in his response to my article, wrote: "Our objective should not be to show the differences between opinions and ideas, passing judgement on them and choosing some over others. We accept a confrontation, but in the future tense, not in the present or the past... Can we transform the plurality of interpretations and efforts made into an effective effort for the future?"

As Egyptians and Arabs, and in the wake of all the trials, tribulations, and catastrophes that have been visited upon us in the last 50 years, we have concluded that the fundamental cause, the reason for the malady, is the lack of democracy and freedom in our societies. That was the lesson of the setback of 1948, the disaster of 1967 and the catastrophe of 1991. But we have never made these lessons the basis of serious and constructive steps to build our own future. We procrastinated and dawdled until strangers came to knock on our doors and break into our homes demanding that we institute democracy. Will the current situation result in us once more forgetting this lesson because the fall of the dictatorship is mixed with occupation, because the call for democracy is made in foreign tongues?

No. We demanded democracy ourselves before others demanded it for us. Our political and intellectual legacy over the past century witnessed an early realisation of democracy. So let us learn the lesson well this time, taking it seriously and responsibly: internal tyranny, the lack of democracy, the decline in freedom, these are the roots of the problem. They are more important than any external threat. Indeed, they are what make such threats possible.

The second issue we must discuss, as was stated in my first article, is that we must accept -- even if grudgingly -- that the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime came about at the hands of a foreign invasion. The Iraqi people did not bring Saddam to power and they did not have the ability to bring him down. Although Saddam fell as a result of the Anglo-American invasion it does not mean (as some seem to believe) that the fall of that regime is automatically a bad thing. Even more importantly, we must make a distinction between the fall of the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein and between building democracy in Iraq.

Yes, the Americans and their allies have brought down the regime of Saddam Hussein, opening the doors and windows of the country to allow Iraqis to breathe a qualitatively different air, to return to their country, to hold religious celebrations and to participate in demonstrations. As for instituting democracy, neither the Americans nor the British, nor any foreign power can do that. Building a democratic regime is the exclusive prerogative of the Iraqi people. Is not democracy the rule of the people by the people? In short, though the Americans brought down Saddam Hussein it will be the Iraqis who will build a new democratic Iraq. As El-Saadani said in his article, democracy can't be ordered to go like a hamburger. It has to be homemade. The US may have brought the proverbial horse to water -- a purebred Arabian horse, to be sure -- but it cannot make it drink. That the horse will drink to the last drop after so much privation and thirst is certain, but only on its own terms.

The third issue is related to the first two. What is our position towards current events in Iraq? Right now Arabs watch with great interest, with eyes and mouths wide open, to see what is happening. They are not looking at Baghdad's presidential palaces, but at the streets and alleys, homes, mosques, schools, civil associations, universities, and professional syndicates and not only in Baghdad, but in Basra, Mosul, Karbala, Najaf, Tikrit, Umm Qasr and dozens of other Iraqi cities. And they are not watching the president of Iraq and his coterie, but the country's historical leadership, Shi'ite, Sunni, Kurdish, and their followers from all walks of life, regular men and women who are determined to bring their country back from the dead. Fortunately this is all happening in the age of the information revolution, allowing Arabs and the whole world to see what is happening anywhere and everywhere. There are those among us who are waiting, indeed hoping, for Iraqi resistance against the occupation to explode. Let the suicide missions begin! Some see any rapprochement with Iraq as tantamount to cooperating with the foreign occupation and bestowing upon it some legitimacy. Yet others are praying that Iraq under the Americans will turn into the paradise of the Middle East, that it will flourish politically and economically.

As Arab brothers, though, we must take a balanced position, our only compass being what the Iraqi people themselves want and what they decide for themselves. If we are convinced that what is happening in Iraq is being carried out by the country's historical leadership, and with the consent of the people, we must respect their will and offer whatever support -- material, moral, popular, and official -- we can.

The fourth and final issue that concerns us is Egypt's position and responsibility towards Iraq. Egypt and Iraq (or Cairo and Baghdad) have always been the two poles of Arab action, whether their relationship was cooperative or competitive. The absence of either drains Arab power. The two nations have comprised the most important pillars of the Arab experience. Perhaps this is what Al-Mutanabbi intended when he recited the following lines:

Let Egypt and Iraq/ And everyone know:/ I'm the one, the hero I've stood my ground,/ And I've redeemed my vows,/ And I've been fierce/ With those who would be fiercer.

Arabs must not stand by as observers. And this means that Egypt must live up to its responsibilities. There are dozens of aspects of present-day Iraqi life that need to be reorganised and rebuilt, to say nothing of the reconstruction of infrastructure, services and institutions destroyed by the war.

To reiterate the refusal to lend aid to Iraq on the grounds that it is occupied is a matter to be determined by the Iraqi people themselves and their need for support and aid. If, before the war, Egyptian civil society rushed to mobilise its resources and direct them to the aid of the Iraqi people there is nothing to prevent those same forces from resurrecting their efforts now to quickly repair the damage of war and rebuild the country's economy and services, and perhaps constitutional and political institutions as well.