Surprisingly candid for an article appearing in the Arab world, in last Sunday’s An-Nahar, called “the longest surviving Lebanese publication”, columnist Ali Hamadeh wrote, “While all the Eastern world has changed in the post-Cold War period, the Stalinist-like Arab regimes escaped that change and survived almost intact.”
Hamadeh explained that Arab regimes made use of the Cold War to consolidate their strangleholds on power, and have now moved to pretending, for the benefit of the outside world, that they were adopting systemic changes. At the same time, the columnist continued, real change that would have threatened the regimes had to be avoided. “As a result of this split personality, politics and public freedom continued to be targeted by regular crackdowns in the Arab world,” the an-Nahar article said. “For more than a decade, the Arab world continued to persecute its intelligentsia and to remain almost on the margin of the rest of the globe, until the latest Iraqi war erupted and shook this world right down to its roots,” said Hamadeh.
In Iraq itself, the columnist observed, the shake-up has left the Americans with a conundrum: “What... should get priority – political stability or political change”?
Hamadeh explained that Arab regimes made use of the Cold War to consolidate their strangleholds on power, and have now moved to pretending, for the benefit of the outside world, that they were adopting systemic changes. At the same time, the columnist continued, real change that would have threatened the regimes had to be avoided. “As a result of this split personality, politics and public freedom continued to be targeted by regular crackdowns in the Arab world,” the an-Nahar article said. “For more than a decade, the Arab world continued to persecute its intelligentsia and to remain almost on the margin of the rest of the globe, until the latest Iraqi war erupted and shook this world right down to its roots,” said Hamadeh.
In Iraq itself, the columnist observed, the shake-up has left the Americans with a conundrum: “What... should get priority – political stability or political change”?