Old Mideast order crumbling

Source http://195.224.230.11/english/palestine/?id=12991

By Hassen Zenati - CAIRO

Two years after US tanks thrust into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, the Middle East is no safer but is being swept by political changes challenging a decades-old stalemate of power.

The US-led invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, triggered two simultaneous and contradictory phenomena in the region, by inviting increased terrorist activity whilst prodding other regimes into taking steps towards democratic reform.

The past two years have seen the spread of extremist organisations such as Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network to previously stable countries such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.

Many Iraqis, even among those who welcomed the US intervention, now resent the presence of troops which have failed to bring stability, security and basic services to large swathes of the territory.

Bomb attacks, including suicide operations, are a daily occurrence in the troubled country, where both US and Iraqi forces have failed to bring several lawless areas under their control.

With the emergence in Iraq of the first Shiite government in 1,000 years and the two most powerful countries in the region being non-Arab Israel and Iran, the old order of a Middle East dominated by Sunni Arabs is becoming a thing of the past.

The reaction of radical Sunni organisations in Iraq and elsewhere is key to the stability of the region.

In a recent report, the International Crisis Group argued Washington's ham-fisted policies in the region risked radicalising the population and bolstering the Jihadist brand of Islamic activism.

But the United States claims that its forceful approach has paid off and cites as the latest example the massive popular movement in Lebanon demanding an end to Syria's 30-year-old occupation.

Under tremendous international pressure since it was blamed for the assassination last month of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, Syria had to cave in and announced a phased pullout.

But the political upheaval in Lebanon has also revived the spectrum of civil strife, as the radical Shiite Hezbollah militia loses its key ally in Lebanon and Damascus itself feels increasingly cornered.

The United States argues that, despite the violence, the elections held in Iraq on January 30 set an example for the rest of the region and justified the use of force.

The success of Palestinian elections to choose a successor to Yasser Arafat - who led the Palestinians unchallenged for the best part of 40 years before dying last fall - was also trumpeted by the US administration as a justification of its policies in the region.

Under internal and US pressure, Egypt also took a timid step towards democratisation when President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for 23 years, proposed multi-candidate presidential elections.

In the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the ruling royal family also loosened its grip on power slightly by organising the first country's first nationwide polls earlier this year, although women were barred from the exercise.

The embryonic democratic awakening in the region also spread to the conservative United Arab Emirates.

"In spite of the reluctance of the ruling regimes, democracy is on its way in the Middle East," was the upbeat comment of Amr al-Shubaki, an analyst with the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

But Arab press and public opinion, even favourable to reform, have warned against US arrogance while commentators also predicted that reform efforts focusing on movements that do not articulate basic Arab grievances would prove vain.