Checkered History for Democracy

The Arab Middle East has tasted democracy before. Both the French and British tried to create liberal democracies that would protect and promote their interests in the region. And therein lay the problem. The political systems could never overcome their connections to their colonial creators, a factor that undermined the appeal of democracy in Arab societies for decades to come.

The states that emerged from the French and British mandates in the Middle East were local replicas of the political systems of the former colonial powers. Syria’s and Lebanon’s governments were modeled after the French republic; Iraq and Jordan were constitutional monarchies. In Syria and Iraq, the political institutions were formally democratic, with parties, an elected parliament and a liberal constitution. But the Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1930, which laid out conditions for the formal independence of Iraq in 1932, gave Britain the right to station troops there, as well as considerable power over Iraq’s foreign affairs, economy and education system.

In short, colonial domination was perpetuated under the cover of liberal political institutions. Politics remained firmly in the hands of the countries’ traditional merchant, industrial and landowning elites. Poverty and illiteracy kept almost everybody else on the political sidelines. In Iraq, the ruling elite also had a sectarian and ethnic character because political power was mainly held by Arab Sunni families from Baghdad in a country with an Arab Shiite majority and a large Kurdish minority.

The narrow social basis of political power in Iraq and Syria, coupled with the governments’ inability to incorporate popular demands into the national project, created constant political instability. As a result, these “liberal” regimes were even more dependent on their former colonial masters for survival.

Economics mirrored politics in the Arab democracies. For example, European and American companies received generous concessions to exploit Iraq’s oil resources, while a few families of the local elite owned most of the country’s fertile land. Popular protests about poverty and the corruption of the state were usually channeled through nationalist and socialist political organizations such as the Baath or Communist parties. But these players were systematically repressed or barred from politics.

The Arab-Israeli war of 1948 created a wave of political instability in the Middle East that further weakened the liberal democracies. The Arab armies’ defeat spotlighted the hollowness of the nationalist and pan-Arab rhetoric of the ruling elites and the indifference of the democratic regimes toward their citizens. The way was opened for populist and nationalist forces to take over and rule in the name of the masses.

The 1952 coup that brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power in Egypt marked the beginning of the end of the era of liberal democracies in the region. Nasser addressed popular social and economic discontent through land reform, mass education and the nationalization of the economy. The appeal of his political model -- the national will embodied in a strong, charismatic figure in touch with the masses -- was felt throughout the Arab world as liberation from colonialism.

In 1958, liberal politics ended in Syria and Iraq. Soon, both countries were taken over by rival branches of the Baath Party and turned into authoritarian regimes with a strong socialist and nationalist orientation. In Arab eyes, nationalist dictatorships like Nasser’s better reflected popular aspirations than the liberal regimes, which were tied to the interests of the elite and the former colonial powers.

The French and British political experiments in the Arab Middle East don’t bode well for the Bush administration’s ambitions to create a democratic Iraq. The administration seems to assume that a democratic Iraq will be a natural ally, but that association, as was the case for Western powers in Syria and Iraq, may jeopardize the larger democratic experiment.

Furthermore, there are many ways the interests of the Iraqis may diverge from those of the Americans. One is the reconstruction of the destroyed infrastructure and the exploitation of Iraq’s oil resources. The previous liberal regimes in Syria and Iraq failed in part because they were seen as instruments of the former colonial powers. If U.S. or British companies, under the protection of a government installed and backed by the two foreign powers, win contract after contract to rebuild Iraq or exploit its oil resources at the expense of international groups, the new democracy may be tainted by colonialism.

Another potential source of conflict may be the new Iraq’s foreign policy. In a truly democratic Iraq, the Arab Shiites, who make up the majority of the population, will necessarily have a greater say in politics, which may mean closer ties with Iran. That would clash with current U.S. policy that seeks to isolate Iran. Similarly, Kurdish assertiveness is bound to unnerve Turkey, a U.S. ally.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be even more problematic. Washington seems to believe that a democratic Iraq would be more likely to pressure the Palestinian Authority to make a deal with Israel. But public opinion in Iraq is overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian, and any Iraqi government that appeared to side with Israel would be immediately discredited as a mere puppet of the U.S.

The Americans will be walking a fine line in creating a democratic Iraq. History shows that too close an association with the new Iraqi government may doom the democratic experiment and undermine U.S. and British economic and political interests in the region. And history also shows that a tarnished liberal democracy could open a Pandora’s box of political instability and social turmoil out of which anti-U.S. authoritarian leaders could arise.