The Good, the Bad, the Ugly by Fareed Zakaria

May 31, 2004, U.S. Edition

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Everywhere in the Arab world, people are talking about reform. But the easiest way to sideline a reform is to claim that it's pro-American
By Fareed Zakaria

Traveling through the Middle East for the past week has been tough. Anger and frustration with America is worse than I've ever seen it. Still, I've been torn between two feelings, one to thank George W. Bush and another to curse him. (This is one of those columns that will get angry e-mails from both sides.) Bush's efforts to push for reform in the Arab world—despite the irritation it has caused—has put the topic front and center on the region's agenda. Everywhere in the Arab world, people are talking about reform. Last week the World Economic Forum held a second annual meeting on the subject in Jordan. Next week the Arab Summit in Tunis will likely endorse reform, the first time it will do so. "People won't admit it, but three years ago reform was something few talked about," said a Jordanian diplomat. "Today it's everywhere."

Of course, there were other forces and other people who helped. The globalization of the 1990s had begun to affect the Arab world. Satellite television and the Internet were bringing the outside world into these countries. And after September 11, despite the defensive rhetoric, Arabs began to ask themselves, "Why did this happen?" Writers and scholars began pointing out that for the past 40 years the Middle East had lagged behind the rest of the world economically, socially and politically. The United Nations produced a report that documented this reality in graphic detail: only sub-Saharan Africa had a worse record of economic growth, 50 percent of Arab women were illiterate and so on.

Into this mix came Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell and his top policy aide, Richard Haass, all of whom made the case over the past two years for ending America's blind support for Arab dictators and embracing and assisting reform efforts. These moves in turn led the Europeans to develop their own set of proposals. Some of the administration's rhetoric was heavy-handed (surprise, surprise), but championing this issue made it unavoidable.

Today reform is more in the air than on the ground‹with a few important exceptions‹Dubai, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain. At the Forum's plenary session on reform, Amre Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, claimed that reform has been taking place in the region for years. But his fellow Egyptian, the prominent businessman Naguib Sawiris, archly responded, "Then why has nothing changed economically or politically to this day?" Sawiris argued that reform remains stymied by economic and political elites who fear losing power. At the end of the session the audience members (about 300 people) were polled as to whether they believe Arab governments are committed to reform (a) merely rhetorically or (b) fully; 94.4 percent voted for (a).

Still, the wind is behind those who advocate free-market, modern, Western-style reforms. Just don't call them American-style reforms. Thanks to the bitter cocktail of unilateralism, arrogance and incompetence that has characterized so much of the Bush administration's policy, American support could turn into the kiss of death for reformers. The easiest way to sideline a reform is to claim that it is pro-American. That is the line being taken by reactionaries within every country from Kuwait to Algeria.

Recent events aren't helping. Abu Ghraib has confirmed the worst suspicions of every Arab. Middle Easterners are shocked by the images, but their broader feeling is that America is hypocritical. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, whom I met in Jidda, said with great passion: "The people who committed these acts at Abu Ghraib are a small group of deviants. I'm absolutely sure... that they do not represent the American people, who have high moral standards. But also understand that the people who committed those terrible acts on September 11 were not representative of the Saudi people. The American people are pure and good, as are the Saudi people. Small groups of deviants do not represent their respective societies."

Competing for space with the Abu Ghraib pictures on the front page are ones from Rafah. Every pro-American reformer I spoke to complained about the administration's blind support for Ariel Sharon and pleaded that we become much more engaged to make peace. Sawiris said, "If 300 million Arabs believe that you're being totally unfair, surely it should make you pay some attention."

Anti-Americanism is morphing from a purely anti-Bush phenomenon into a much broader cultural attitude. Samar Fatany, a Saudi woman who has a weekly radio show, said to me, "If you continue on your present path, you will have no partners in the Middle East. In my generation there are thousands of people who studied and lived in America, who know America, love it, and understand that you can make mistakes. We explain America to our people. But in this next generation, you are creating so much bitterness. They don't understand you, and they don't want to understand you. What will come of that?"

The results will be bad for both sides. Arab reform, which can and should be helped by American efforts and contacts, will not go as far as it could. And American interests and security will suffer in this rising tide of hatred. What could have been a policy of "win-win" is now becoming "lose-lose."