I was just in Cairo, Egypt, a city of 19 million people and seemingly 10 million cars. The first rule of driving in that chaos is to throw away your rearview mirror. What's behind you is history; it's only what's in front of you that matters. In some ways, that is an apt metaphor for what's happening in the Arab world, where we see great change, with more and more reformers starting to find their collective voice.
On Jan. 9, we saw Palestinians hold historic elections which ushered in a new leadership. Before the month was over, millions of Iraqis voted and proudly showed the world their ink-stained fingers. Just three weeks ago, I was sitting in the Egyptian prime minister's office when President Mubarak announced that Egypt was opening up the next presidential election to outside candidates.
No one, however, should get starry-eyed or giddy about the dawn of democracy. My own experience in the Middle East is that optimism can sometimes be a mile wide but an inch deep.
But nowhere is this "Arab Spring" more apparent than with the Palestine-Israel dispute.
Two years ago, I said in my Missoulian interviews that I had never seen the conflict as deadly and as difficult as it was then. One had the sense that the Palestinians and the Israelis were racing to build a mass graveyard between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
The death of Yasser Arafat brought to the Palestine people what they haven't had for untold years - hope. Arafat could only give his people a past; he could not give them a future. The new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is pragmatic and has foresworn violence.
Equally dramatic has been Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unprecedented decision to withdraw settlements from the Gaza and the northern West Bank. I recall not long ago, Sharon claiming an occupied Gaza village called Netzarim was as vital to Israel's security as Tel Aviv. Now that village is slated to be evacuated.
One veteran Egyptian Middle East negotiator who helped draft the1979 Camp David peace accord told me, "This is the last wagon on the last train to peace." President Bush's recent remarks in Europe that Palestine must be "contiguous and viable" should be carefully noted by both sides.
As I see it, the Palestine-Israel crisis is the swamp that ought to be drained first. But there are a lot of dark forces that don't want to see this happen. I'm aware that Sharon has had at least a half-dozen death threats coming from Israeli Jews. Arab nihilists will try to make life miserable for Mahmoud Abbas.
Another significant development since I was interviewed for this newspaper has been the stirrings of social reform in the Arab world. For decades, political repression and economic stagnation helped produce a breeding ground for extremists. Things seem to be looking up.
The evil twins of Islamist extremism and pan-Arabism - both failed ideologies - are starting to wither. Saudi Arabia's current municipal elections, flawed by western standards perhaps, are nevertheless a step forward. Yemen will soon hold multi-candidate elections, and even the conservative emirate of Kuwait seems poised to give women the right to vote.
On the economic side, there are equally dramatic changes. In Egypt, a whole new economic structure is being created. Egypt and Israel are setting up new trade agreements.
Why should Montanans care about such things? Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world, buying 6 million tons a week, every week, every year.
Finally, when it comes to Iraq, I said two years ago that I believed Saddam had to be dealt with as a mass murderer, serial aggressor and a user of chemical weapons. I recently saw a collection of photographs in Kuwait about the Iraqi gas attacks at Halabja in 1988. The images were so horrifying they defy description.
In hindsight, questions remain about the wisdom of many decisions that were undertaken after the war. While Saddam is gone, the manner in which this was accomplished has produced a kind of self-inflicted wound - as if ideology was substituted for planning. And I say this as one who participated directly in the liberation of Kuwait during Desert Storm.
Regardless of how we got there and the mistakes that were made - particularly in dealing with the insurgency and with the appalling situation at the Abu Ghraib prison - we are there, and the question becomes how do we play the course.
We owe it to the 8.5 million Iraqis and brave coalition forces who risked their lives in hopes of a better future. Bolting now from the Middle East would have disastrous consequences for millions of Afghanis, Iraqis and others. We should focus on three issues: In regards to security, we need to build on our success, not our failure. By that I mean we need to bring 100 percent security to the 80 percent to 90 percent of Iraq that is secure, instead of trying to bring a 80 percent level of security to 100 percent of the country.
We need to help foster a political reconciliation process between the Shias, Sunnis and the Kurds to ensure the new Iraqi constitution creates safeguards for majority rights in the regions. And we need to jump-start our reconstruction program by forgetting about grandiose projects and developing a grassroots approach.
Many people have said this war was about oil. On one level, I think they are absolutely right. As long as the United States, Europe, Japan and now China demand and depend on oil, it will always be about oil. Just look at the nearest parking lot. It's as if we are on an oil-dialysis machine. In the last year, our imports have increased by about 10 percent while our production has decreased about 5 percent.
Having just come back from Egypt, the heart and soul of the Arab world, I am struck by how low the image of the United States has fallen, possibly the worst in 30 years.
We need to reestablish a sense of shared values. We should stop the insane visa policies currently under way, which makes travel to our country humiliating and frustrating for foreign visitors. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by denying a whole new generation of Arabs the chance to get to know us and vice versa.
There is a lot stirring in the Arab world. Maybe what we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg, or maybe just ripples across a stagnant pond. One Arab commentator said that the Iraq election was like a bucket of ice water thrown across the Middle East.
People have asked if this change is comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall. I think Mark Twain put it best: "History doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes."
Mark Johnson is the executive director of the Montana World Affairs Council and a former U.S. diplomat who served in the Middle East during Desert Storm. Johnson is a native of Great Falls.
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