'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Carnegie's Arab Reform Bulletin

As I drove up to DC yesterday, I thought, heck, I should have given my friend Marina Ottaway a call, to fix up a lunch or something with her. She's a senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

I failed to do that. But today dropped into my electronic mail-box the latest fruits of one of the projects Marina's been working on at CEIP, which is their Arab Reform Bulletin.

I think it's their best issue yet. It starts out with a good, detailed analysis by Nathan Brown titled Iraq: The Fate of CPA Orders after June 30. Bottom line:

In almost all cases in the Arab world in which governments have been overthrown or colonial powers have departed, the new regime has affirmed the legal order it found when it assumed power. Indeed, the CPA itself, in Regulation 1, followed this pattern by affirming all pre-existing laws (unless they obstructed the work of the CPA).

Thus, succeeding Iraqi governments are likely to proceed carefully in discarding CPA enactments. Nonetheless, their nationalist sensibilities will be offended when they turn their attention to specific provisions. When Iraqi political and legal officials discover that multinational troops still are effectively granted extraterritorial status; that their vehicles must be given priority in traffic; that the official name of the country in some documents has been changed (from the "Iraqi Republic" to the "State of Iraq"); and that international agreements may--even absent an explicit provision--override requirements for open and competitive bidding in procurement, they will probably conclude that the CPA orders, while often liberal, are inconsistent with full sovereignty.

The next item is a piece by Eric (Ricky) Goldstein on Morocco's New Truth Commission: Turning the Page on Past Human Rights Abuses?. His bottom line:

On January 7, King Muhammad VI hailed the new commission as "the last step in a process leading to the definitive closure of a thorny issue." Yet each top-down effort in Morocco to deal "definitively" with past injustices has been superseded by a new "definitive" démarche. The commission, with its wider but still limited mandate, is likely to be one more marker in this journey. Nonetheless, it is part of a healthy process for Morocco, not least because it has been launched at a time when recent gains for human rights are at risk.

Actually, when I was in NYC last week, I had a really good conversation with Hanny Megally, who used to be Ricky's boss in the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, and who's now head of the Middle East department at "truth commissions central", i.e. the International Center for Transitional Justice.

Hanny told me a little about some of the technical assistance the ICTJ has been giving to the people heading the new Moroccan truth commission-- which included taking over to Morocco the person who'd headed the recent t.c. in Peru, to share some experiences. He seemed moderately hopeful that the Moroccan commission could win some additional powers for itself and do a good job.

Moving right along with the latest Arab Reform Bulletin, we have a good little piece by Bassam Haddad that is titled, somewhat opaquely, Reform in Syria: Waiting for the Wrong Time. Haddad's well argued b.l. is:

Incremental change can and often does produce fundamental change under certain structural conditions. It is these conditions that we should address to gauge the collective importance of potential reform measures in Syria. It is time to ask some important questions: has Syria's new private "bourgeoisie" as a whole accumulated sufficient capital to compel it to clamor for applying the rule of law to protect its assets? Has the state elite gone far enough into private business to secure for itself a socio-economic and political status without direct state backing or control? Are the ties that bind the social carriers of private and public wealth solid enough to produce an alliance (or perhaps a party) under a different political system? Have regional and international events ceased to provide a justification for maintaining a militarized society living under emergency laws? Is there consistent and credible external pressure in the direction of "democratization" being applied on Syria? Unfortunately, the answer to these questions is "not yet."

For my own, much more impressionistic judgments on some of these topics, see this piece I wrote for Boston Review in early 2003. It's not totally out-of-date or overtaken by events...

I want to just add to that a quick comparison/contrast here with some of my recent impressions in China. China's approach of trying very to open up a tightly controlled, single-party state to (firstly) the forces of economic modernization and (eventually, perhaps) some degree of political liberalism have been widely cited to me and others by Syrian officials as being the precedent they want to follow, as opposed to Russia's approach of political glasnost first, followed by who knows what economic chaos...

I think the main thing I saw in China that I see very little sign of indeed in Syria is the huge role that overseas investment has played there. Much of that investment has come from "patriotic-minded" wealthy Chinese now living elsewhere. Much has come from other sources. But that overseas investment, it seems to me, has been a powerful motor not only for economic growth but also (whether intentionally or, as I suspect, more often unintentionally) for the cautious political liberalizing we are now starting to see there...

I'm still trying to figure out whether, after a certain amount of economic modernization, a society almost inevitably develops some impetus to political liberalizing... I'm sure it's not as simple as that. But anyway, it strikes me that Haddad was asking completely the right questions there regarding Syria-- and also, that the "not yet" answer he gave was accurate.

... And back with the Arab Reform Bulletin, meanwhile, we have Marina Ottaway herself, writing on The Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative: A Hollow Victory for the United States. Her b.l.:

The vagueness of the statements adopted, the absence of financial support, the Europeans' lack of enthusiasm, and the cold reception of the initiative in Arab countries suggest that the launch of the Broader Middle East Initiative is a rather hollow victory for the United States. The Bush administration narrowly avoided a diplomatic disaster by scaling down its proposal to the point where, in the words of an observer, there was nothing left to which anybody could object. It is unlikely, however, that the initiative will prove to be the catalyst for reform envisaged by the United States.

Good. I am so happy that she has put into words my own feelings on the subject, so I don't need to write anything of my own about this topic.

And finally, there is Beirut-based journo Nicholas Blanford writing about The Arab League and Political Reform: A Vague Commitment... I don't know what it is about the Arab League that always gives me a case of the intense drowsies... But here, let me take a quick sock of coffee and (yawn!) get down to Blanford's b.l ., which is:

Arab leaders' public debate over reform still tends to reflect their preoccupations with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Syria, in a state of war with Israel, has made only a halting and ill-defined commitment to reform. Egypt and Jordan, which have made peace with Israel, or those geographically removed from the conflict, such as most Gulf and North African states, generally are more willing to accept the notion of political reform (Saudi Arabia being an important exception). All the same, it may yet transpire that the real impetus to turn Tunis's promises into action is less the external urging of the West and more the growing domestic calls for democratic reforms emanating from within Arab societies.

I agree with that.