– The Arafat Legacy

Arafat is dead, but despair survives
The Daily Star Middle East | Michael Young

There was little to report as the first anniversary of Yasser Arafat's passing away passed us all by. However, in his speech a week ago, Syrian President Bashar Assad broke the ambient tedium by complaining that the United Nations had failed to investigate Arafat's "murder," leaving one to wonder how he could know so much about a death in Ramallah, and so little about another in Beirut, which took place under the eyes of his intelligence officers and their Lebanese subordinates.
 

In death, Arafat was as ambiguous as he was in life. What was one supposed to take away from his final days in his Ramallah confinement, before the sleazy passion play in Paris? Was it resistance, as the Israelis insisted, somehow convinced the old man was never sincere about negotiating a settlement with them? Was it peace, as Arafat's closest collaborators argued, but a just peace the harried leader could defend before his harried people and the Arab world? Indeed, did Arafat himself know what his heritage would be, or had to be? Having navigated so long in a twilight zone between principle and manipulation, was he, at the end, anything more than an empty husk of artful maneuvering, a political Cheshire cat with that eternal grin the last thing to disappear?

As Arabs contemplate the rogues' gallery that is their collective leadership, they must wonder whether there really is anything behind the dissolving grins, other than bottomless selfishness. For all the lamentations that accompanied Arafat on his transfer into the beyond, he proved to be no more than a halfway figure, a step on the road to a Palestinian state. When the funeral was over, all he had really managed to leave behind was a legacy of despotism bottled as overbearing paternalism, widespread corruption, animosity between his divided followers, and a people he had never respected enough to prepare for his own aftermath.

Last week in Syria, Assad showed similar self-centeredness, as he rallied Syrians behind what is almost certain to be a forthcoming confrontation with the international community over the Mehlis inquiry. It was dispiriting to see how easily Assad was able to use the anti-Lebanese strain in Syrian nationalism to stir up the crowds. At the end of the day, however, it is survival of the regime that counts - the continuity of a family dynasty - not whether Syria and its neighbors are pushed into mutual hostility (though how poor border relations will benefit Syria once it faces international sanctions remains an unanswered question).

Similarly, in Tunisia this week one of the Arab world's most obstinate thugs, President Zein al-Abedin ben Ali, hosted an international conference on the "information society." Quite how he managed to do so in light of the Tunisian authorities' persistent enmity toward free information; in light of the persecution last year of Tunisian blogger-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui (and his subsequent death by heart attack at age 36); in light of the countless arrests of those demanding free expression; quite how Ben Ali managed to earn such a concession from the international community remains a mystery. The information the Tunisian regime seeks to defend is disinformation, and with 18 years of public disservice already under his belt, Ben Ali is not about to change that.

To bring up the mediocrity of Arab regimes is not only banal at this stage, it has become an exercise in reviving contemporary history: Arab states have spent their years of independence manufacturing abysmal leaders with a taste for stalemate buttressed by repression. More alarming today is that, because of America's tribulations in Iraq, Western states will be tempted to pay less attention in the future to Arab democratization.

This likelihood imposes two things on Arabs: that they sustain an escalating mood in the Middle East confirming the spread of democracy as a regional priority; and that they understand the extent to which self-emancipation may not be enough to overthrow their despots; help from the West, particularly the United States and Europe, may also be necessary, though Arab democrats should themselves, when possible, unabashedly define what kind of help is most appropriate.

Because there is little uniformity in the Arab world, it is difficult to gauge how both realities have already been deemed acceptable in some countries, even as they continue to be taboos in others. Most Iraqis embraced the three-step electoral process this year outlined by the U.S., even if their ultimate aim is to see the Americans withdraw. Most Lebanese had few qualms about welcoming United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which demanded a Syrian withdrawal and disarmament of militias, and today Hizbullah finds itself isolated because of its open antagonism toward the resolution's conditions.

Syrians have lately rallied around the Baath regime, mainly because they don't want their country turned into a new Iraq. Dislike of the Bush administration is palpable, but there is also deep disillusionment with Assad's leadership and his inability to implement reform. To opposition figures, including many with little faith in the U.S., outside pressure is welcome if it can help Syrians engineer their own transformation to democratic rule. But too brutal an intervention, they rightly fear, may backfire. In his speech last week, Assad threatened domestic malcontents. The regime's critics know that if the UN imposes blanket sanctions on Syria because of its non-cooperation in the investigation of Rafik Hariri's murder, the authorities will just tighten the screws on them because of this.

For Arabs to entertain any serious hope of enjoying a better future, they will have to fight to keep liberty on their domestic agendas, but also on the agendas of the flighty democracies in the West. When needed, Arab liberals must include in their projects of emancipation a role for allies on the outside, without presuming a need to surrender to them. True self-emancipation requires self-confidence, and as the region's reformers survey the wreckage of their failed states, self-confidence means having the clarity to see where their self-interest can intersect with that of others.

Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR