Already we are seeing many countries in that region starting to soften their positons in dealing with the US & it's allies.Iran is starting to think about opening up their relations to the US. N. Korea is willing to talk about their wmd on the US terms.The palistinians are appointing a cabinet, per the US wishes, and even isreal is said to be willing to give up their settlements.All of this is a result on the way the allies took saddam & his thugs out in a timely fashion.Not saying that all of the above will happen quickly, but it will happen. All because the allies are willing to use force, something that wasn't done in the past.
Anguished Arab world weighs its post-Saddam future
By Donna Bryson and Donna Abu-Nasr, The Associated Press
CAIRO ? Rulers across the Middle East have just witnessed how quickly Iraqis went from pledging "our blood, our souls" for Saddam Hussein to toppling his statues and spitting on his portraits. (Related: Nations' status at a glance)
It has been an earthquake, in which some are drawing comparisons to the "catastrophe" that befell Palestinians with Israel's creation, while others are saying it is time Arabs looked to their own shortcomings instead of blaming outsiders.
Democracy campaigners, who risk jail and isolation throughout the Middle East, hope Saddam's fall will encourage their leaders to allow free speech and fair elections in a region where most governments are undemocratic and unpopular.
They say the pressures will mount now that Americans are in their midst administering Iraq, a fellow Arab country, and encouraging democracy there.
"They will have to reform, to give in, if for nothing else to appease the Americans," said Ahmed Bishara, a democracy campaigner in Kuwait.
Some worry, however, that reformers will be viewed as agents of what many Arabs view as U.S. designs to control the Middle East, its more than 250 million people and the world's largest oil reserves.
"People like us, who have struggled for a long time to reform society ? maybe some people will see us as the voice of imperialism," said Ahmed Seif al-Islam Hamad, an Egyptian activist.
Hamad also fears autocratic rulers may exploit that distrust of Washington to justify tightening their grip on power ? "to cling to their bad traditions."
Many Arabs feel the Bush administration intends to put the squeeze on Syria and Iran, and perhaps others.
"The Iraq takeover has become a strong political card the Americans can use to threaten any other regime in the region with," said Turki al-Hamad, a Saudi intellectual. "Iraq will be a launch pad for a new Middle East order. The message will be: Either behave or die."
Peter Sluglett, an expert on Iraq at Oxford University, said the United States starts with a big handicap: the perception of Arabs that it is biased against them and toward Israel, that it has previously only backed undemocratic Mideast leaders, and that it wants to control the region's oil.
But he thinks the Bush administration can succeed in promoting democracy in the region, starting with Iraq, if it is really determined to see the difficult process through.
"If it doesn't work, we're all in trouble," he said. "Then the United States' standing in the region will be even more tarnished."
Critical to the Bush administration's vision of a new democratic order are the Palestinians. They have lately signaled a wish to break with the past by choosing a prime minister ? a new post that is supposed to dilute the autocratic rule of their longtime leader, Yasser Arafat. The hope is that the change will open up possibilities for peace talks to end 2 1/2 years of bloodshed.
Most Arab states are ruled by hereditary monarchs, and several nations are criticized as "republican monarchies." But some Arab leaders have taken tentative steps to loosen up.
Bahrain declared itself a constitutional monarchy last year as part of reforms that paved the way for the first legislative elections in three decades. Women voted and ran in the October election, which secularists narrowly dominated. Qatar has promised parliamentary elections in two or three years after holding its first municipal elections in 1999, with women fully participating.
The danger is that elections can open the door to hard-liners who then use their legislative seats as pulpits from which to preach Islamic militancy. Algeria is the region's nightmare; there, a 1991 election was aborted when Islamic hard-liners looked set to win, and a decade of savage civil war followed.
Few Arab leaders have Saddam's record for brutality, but many have been just as intent on holding onto power.
Presidents like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Syria's Bashar Assad are "elected" in one-candidate affairs similar to the ones in which Saddam regularly claimed to have gotten 90% of the votes or more. In fact Saddam claimed 100% in his last election before the war.
Assad was elected unopposed after the death of his father, Hafez, Syria's ruler for 30 years. Mubarak and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi are believed to have been grooming their sons to succeed them.
Analysts expect Washington to push Middle Eastern countries to introduce political and social reforms, ensure that the religious message in schools and mosques is moderate and make peace with Israel.
Saudi Arabia's monarchy, already under pressure from the Americans because most of the Sept. 11 terror hijackers were Saudi, has signaled small steps toward change. Two human rights groups, the kingdom's first, are expected to be launched in the next few months, and there is talk of introducing elections for the now-appointed Consultative Council.
"If we don't face ourselves and discuss our shortcomings ... nobody can do anything for us. We are responsible for all that is happening to us," Saudi columnist Anas Zahid wrote last week. "The problem is in us and not imposed on us."
The trappings of personality cults are common in the region. Faces of leaders beam from billboards and carefully orchestrated public appearances with crowds dutifully chanting "with our blood, our souls, we sacrifice for you" Saddam/Mubarak/Assad/Arafat ? depending on where they're cheering.
For many in the Arab world, the sight of U.S. troops in an Arab capital is a devastating experience. Al Kifah al-Arabi, a Lebanese leftist newspaper, evoked "nakba," or catastrophe, the same word used for the day that Israel was created in 1948.
In Cairo on Friday, 500 protesters hurled abuse at Mubarak. "Hosni Mubarak, you coward! You're an American agent," they cried, and demanded that he shut the Suez Canal, the waterway U.S. warships use to get to the Persian Gulf region.
The rapid crumbling of Saddam's regime should be a warning to other leaders, analysts said.
"It is now clear that Arab dictators who came to power as revolutionaries and turned out to be monarchs or kings with plans to install their children after them will be an early casualty," said Jordanian political analyst Labib Kamhawi. "It is very clear that dictatorships must go and that the Iraqi dictatorship failed in protecting the country even marginally."
Mubarak, whose citizens have been described by the U.S. State Department as being deprived of "a meaningful ability to change their government," responded to Saddam's fall by calling for Iraqis to be given "control over their country as fast as possible."
Hamad, who says he was imprisoned and tortured by Mubarak's government in the late 1980s because of his political activities, said Egyptians want the same.
And despite his skepticism that the U.S. experiment in Iraq can improve conditions in the region, Hamad noted at least one positive result: Egyptians protested in numbers rarely seen here, and some have been emboldened to denounce Mubarak openly.
The protests made clear Egyptians want a new government, Hamad said.
"I think they were shocked when they discovered to what extent ordinary people refused to remain silent," he said. "The struggle for democracy is already on the agenda."
Anguished Arab world weighs its post-Saddam future
By Donna Bryson and Donna Abu-Nasr, The Associated Press
CAIRO ? Rulers across the Middle East have just witnessed how quickly Iraqis went from pledging "our blood, our souls" for Saddam Hussein to toppling his statues and spitting on his portraits. (Related: Nations' status at a glance)
It has been an earthquake, in which some are drawing comparisons to the "catastrophe" that befell Palestinians with Israel's creation, while others are saying it is time Arabs looked to their own shortcomings instead of blaming outsiders.
Democracy campaigners, who risk jail and isolation throughout the Middle East, hope Saddam's fall will encourage their leaders to allow free speech and fair elections in a region where most governments are undemocratic and unpopular.
They say the pressures will mount now that Americans are in their midst administering Iraq, a fellow Arab country, and encouraging democracy there.
"They will have to reform, to give in, if for nothing else to appease the Americans," said Ahmed Bishara, a democracy campaigner in Kuwait.
Some worry, however, that reformers will be viewed as agents of what many Arabs view as U.S. designs to control the Middle East, its more than 250 million people and the world's largest oil reserves.
"People like us, who have struggled for a long time to reform society ? maybe some people will see us as the voice of imperialism," said Ahmed Seif al-Islam Hamad, an Egyptian activist.
Hamad also fears autocratic rulers may exploit that distrust of Washington to justify tightening their grip on power ? "to cling to their bad traditions."
Many Arabs feel the Bush administration intends to put the squeeze on Syria and Iran, and perhaps others.
"The Iraq takeover has become a strong political card the Americans can use to threaten any other regime in the region with," said Turki al-Hamad, a Saudi intellectual. "Iraq will be a launch pad for a new Middle East order. The message will be: Either behave or die."
Peter Sluglett, an expert on Iraq at Oxford University, said the United States starts with a big handicap: the perception of Arabs that it is biased against them and toward Israel, that it has previously only backed undemocratic Mideast leaders, and that it wants to control the region's oil.
But he thinks the Bush administration can succeed in promoting democracy in the region, starting with Iraq, if it is really determined to see the difficult process through.
"If it doesn't work, we're all in trouble," he said. "Then the United States' standing in the region will be even more tarnished."
Critical to the Bush administration's vision of a new democratic order are the Palestinians. They have lately signaled a wish to break with the past by choosing a prime minister ? a new post that is supposed to dilute the autocratic rule of their longtime leader, Yasser Arafat. The hope is that the change will open up possibilities for peace talks to end 2 1/2 years of bloodshed.
Most Arab states are ruled by hereditary monarchs, and several nations are criticized as "republican monarchies." But some Arab leaders have taken tentative steps to loosen up.
Bahrain declared itself a constitutional monarchy last year as part of reforms that paved the way for the first legislative elections in three decades. Women voted and ran in the October election, which secularists narrowly dominated. Qatar has promised parliamentary elections in two or three years after holding its first municipal elections in 1999, with women fully participating.
The danger is that elections can open the door to hard-liners who then use their legislative seats as pulpits from which to preach Islamic militancy. Algeria is the region's nightmare; there, a 1991 election was aborted when Islamic hard-liners looked set to win, and a decade of savage civil war followed.
Few Arab leaders have Saddam's record for brutality, but many have been just as intent on holding onto power.
Presidents like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Syria's Bashar Assad are "elected" in one-candidate affairs similar to the ones in which Saddam regularly claimed to have gotten 90% of the votes or more. In fact Saddam claimed 100% in his last election before the war.
Assad was elected unopposed after the death of his father, Hafez, Syria's ruler for 30 years. Mubarak and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi are believed to have been grooming their sons to succeed them.
Analysts expect Washington to push Middle Eastern countries to introduce political and social reforms, ensure that the religious message in schools and mosques is moderate and make peace with Israel.
Saudi Arabia's monarchy, already under pressure from the Americans because most of the Sept. 11 terror hijackers were Saudi, has signaled small steps toward change. Two human rights groups, the kingdom's first, are expected to be launched in the next few months, and there is talk of introducing elections for the now-appointed Consultative Council.
"If we don't face ourselves and discuss our shortcomings ... nobody can do anything for us. We are responsible for all that is happening to us," Saudi columnist Anas Zahid wrote last week. "The problem is in us and not imposed on us."
The trappings of personality cults are common in the region. Faces of leaders beam from billboards and carefully orchestrated public appearances with crowds dutifully chanting "with our blood, our souls, we sacrifice for you" Saddam/Mubarak/Assad/Arafat ? depending on where they're cheering.
For many in the Arab world, the sight of U.S. troops in an Arab capital is a devastating experience. Al Kifah al-Arabi, a Lebanese leftist newspaper, evoked "nakba," or catastrophe, the same word used for the day that Israel was created in 1948.
In Cairo on Friday, 500 protesters hurled abuse at Mubarak. "Hosni Mubarak, you coward! You're an American agent," they cried, and demanded that he shut the Suez Canal, the waterway U.S. warships use to get to the Persian Gulf region.
The rapid crumbling of Saddam's regime should be a warning to other leaders, analysts said.
"It is now clear that Arab dictators who came to power as revolutionaries and turned out to be monarchs or kings with plans to install their children after them will be an early casualty," said Jordanian political analyst Labib Kamhawi. "It is very clear that dictatorships must go and that the Iraqi dictatorship failed in protecting the country even marginally."
Mubarak, whose citizens have been described by the U.S. State Department as being deprived of "a meaningful ability to change their government," responded to Saddam's fall by calling for Iraqis to be given "control over their country as fast as possible."
Hamad, who says he was imprisoned and tortured by Mubarak's government in the late 1980s because of his political activities, said Egyptians want the same.
And despite his skepticism that the U.S. experiment in Iraq can improve conditions in the region, Hamad noted at least one positive result: Egyptians protested in numbers rarely seen here, and some have been emboldened to denounce Mubarak openly.
The protests made clear Egyptians want a new government, Hamad said.
"I think they were shocked when they discovered to what extent ordinary people refused to remain silent," he said. "The struggle for democracy is already on the agenda."
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