UNEXPECTED WHIFF OF FREEDOM PROVES BRACING FOR THE MIDEAST

 Artículo de NEIL MacFARQUHAR  en “The New York Times” del 5-3-05

Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)

CAIRO, March 5 - The leaders of about half of Egypt's rickety opposition parties sat down for one of their regular meetings this week under completely irregular circumstances. In the previous few days, President Hosni Mubarak opened presidential elections to more than one candidate, and street demonstrators helped topple Lebanon's government.

The mood around the table in a battered downtown Cairo office veered between humor and trepidation, participants said, as they faced the daunting prospect of fielding presidential candidates in just 75 days. "This is all totally new, and nobody is ready," said Mahmoud Abaza, the deputy leader of the Wafd Party, one of Egypt's few viable opposition groups. "Sometimes even if you don't know how to swim you just have to dive into the water and manage. Political life will change fundamentally."

The entire Middle East seems to be entering uncharted political and social territory with a similar mixture of anticipation and dread. Events in Lebanon and Egypt, following closely on a limited vote for municipal councils in Saudi Arabia and landmark elections in Iraq, as well as the Palestinian territories, all combined to give the sense, however tentative, that twilight might be descending on authoritarian Arab governments.

A combination of outside pressure and internal shifts have merged to create this unique moment. Arabs of a younger, more savvy generation appear more willing to take their dissatisfaction directly to the front stoop of repressive leaders.

They have been spurred by the rise of new technology, especially uncensored satellite television, which prevents Arab governments from hiding what is happening on their own streets. The Internet and mobile phones have also been deployed to erode government censorship and help activists mobilize in ways previous generations never could.

Another important factor, pressure from the Bush administration, emboldens demonstrators, who believe that their governments will be more hesitant to act against them with Washington linking its security to greater freedom after the Sept. 11 attacks. Washington says it will no longer support repressive governments, and young Arabs, while hardly enamored of American policy in the region, want to test that promise.

Egypt's tiny opposition movement - called Kifaya, or Enough in Arabic, in reference to Mr. Mubarak's 24-year tenure - has drawn attention across the region even if the police easily outnumber the few hundred demonstrators who gather periodically outside courthouses or syndicate offices to bellow their trademark slogan. Before, protesters used to exploit solidarity demonstrations with the Palestinians to shout a few abusive slogans against Mr. Mubarak. Suddenly, they are beaming their frustration right at him.

"Everything happening is taking place in one context, the bankruptcy of the authoritarian regimes and their rejection by the Arab people," said Michel Kilo, a rare political activist in Damascus. "Democracy is being born and the current authoritarianism is dying."

Even so, the changes wrought in each country thus far appear minor and preliminary, even if the idea of challenging authoritarian rule more directly is remarkably new.

In Egypt, nobody expects anyone but Mr. Mubarak to win another six-year term this fall. Old rules against basic freedoms like the right to assemble, essential for a campaign, remain unaltered.

The al-Saud clan in Saudi Arabia has not ceded any real power in letting men, but no women, vote for only half the members of the country's nearly 200 councils.

"Congratulations and More Power," read a computer printout staffers hung on the wall of the office of Tarek O. al-Kasabi, the chairman of a prominent Riyadh hospital, after he won one of seven city council seats.

"People want to enlarge the decision-making process, which is a good and healthy thing," said Mr. Kasabi, a civil engineer by training, noting that he would rather move slowly than see the country destabilized. "We know how to reform better than anyone else. It is our life; nobody from outside can dictate how we live."

In Lebanon, young demonstrators with gelled hair or bare midriffs serve as an unlikely model for popular uprisings across the Arab world, especially since their goals do not quite apply elsewhere.

They seek to rid themselves of an outside power, Syria, and also the region's first modern mass democratic movement was galvanized into collective action by a horrific one-time event. The Feb. 14 assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri removed a real estate tycoon turned politician who embodied all the country's hopes to rebuild after the civil war from 1975 to 1990.

"If someone like Hariri can be assassinated it means anyone in the country can be killed," said Doreen Khoury, a 26-year-old student getting her master's degree in political science, sitting at the entrance to a small green pup tent downtown. The voice of Fayrouz, the country's most famous diva, boomed over a loudspeaker in the background, singing an ode to Lebanon.

Ms. Khoury and a colleague, Noura Mourad, have been camping for two weeks in the carnival-like tent city that sprang up spontaneously on Martyrs' Square, once the throbbing heart of this city and now largely sandy lots. Most demonstrators were not even born when the war destroyed it, but they know they want something different.

"This is something unknown for the Arab world - it is pacifist, it is democratic and it is spontaneous," said Ms. Mourad, 24.

The women said they were drawn by Mr. Hariri's funeral and decided to stay, tired of the corruption and other ills brought by the fact that Syria appoints everyone in the country from every building concierge to the president.

Ahmed Beydoun, a sociology professor at the Lebanese University, noting a crucial difference from the rest of the Arab world, said: "The Lebanese want their institutions to work normally, which is prevented by Syrian influence. It is not a problem with the political system itself."

Taken together, events in Cairo, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Beirut and beyond are the first taste of something new, and the participants are bound to thirst for more.

"The general atmosphere awaits big political and social change," said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi commentator with his own talk show on Dubai television. "There will have to be some sort of dialogue between the regimes and the people, or there will be confrontation, but things will not remain as they are."

Arabs differ on the degree to which American influence helped foster the changed mood, but there is no doubt that pressure from the Bush administration played some role.

Iraq, however, serves more as a threat than a model. Although many Arabs were impressed by the zeal with which Iraqis turned out to vote on Jan. 30, Iraq remains a synonym for frightening, violent chaos.

"When you are a Syrian, or an Egyptian or a Saudi and you see what happened to Iraqi society over the past two years, you wonder if democracy deserves such instability and such a sacrifice of people," said Ghassan Salame, a former Lebanese cabinet minister.

The changes started long before the American military overthrew Saddam Hussein, even if the 1990's were marked by many false starts. Parliamentary elections in Jordan, Yemen and Morocco, for example, did not dilute the power of their authoritarian rulers. As a result, many soured on the idea of democracy.

New technology has driven the steps toward greater freedoms. Satellite stations like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya brought news of demonstrations to a widening audience. Indeed, the crowds in Beirut swelled in part because potential demonstrators could see that government troops had not opened fire. Months earlier, Arabs watched similar events unfold in Ukraine and some wondered why the Arab world should stand apart.

But undoubtedly the most important new element is the spontaneous involvement of people themselves.

"You need democrats to produce democracy, you can't produce it through institutions," Mr. Salame said. "You need people to fight for it to make it real. Neither American tanks or domestic institutions can do it, you need democrats. In Beirut, you have a hard core of 10,000 to 15,000 youngsters who are democrats and who are imposing the tempo."

Support for them or what they have achieved is far from universal, either at home or abroad, however, and may yet limit what the demonstrators achieve.

Inside Lebanon, important domestic forces like the Syrian-backed Hezbollah, the most powerful Shiite organization, have yet to commit to the goal of ending Syrian dominance.

"Shiites are not comfortable with joining the opposition because they would be indirectly supporting U.S. policy in the region," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, an expert on Hezbollah at the Lebanese American University.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which the United States and France pushed through to make the demand for a Syrian withdrawal an international one, also stipulates disarming Hezbollah. The group is faced with an intense problem. Hezbollah remains popular among all Lebanese for ending the Israeli occupation of the south, but that popularity might fade if it backs Syria's continued presence.

The American campaign for democracy in the Middle East is viewed by nationalists and many Islamists as a conspiracy to weaken the Arabs. The violence in Iraq helps sustain the idea here that the invasion had nothing to do with helping the Iraqis, but rather was part of an American thrust for dominance in the region.

Over all, though, many Arabs sense that small cracks are finally appearing in the brick walls they have faced for decades, even if it will take months or even years to determine just how significant those cracks become.

Some activists wonder, for example, if Syria's governing Baath Party is forced to retreat from Lebanon, how long it will take for demonstrations to emerge in Damascus.

"There is such a high percentage of young people who see the future as something totally black," said Mr. Abaza of the Egyptian Wafd. "If you open even a small window for them to see the sky, it will be a tremendous force for change. But they have to be able to see the sky."

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting for this article.