To compare Egypt, Syria and Iraq shows how damaging foreign intervention can be to the legitimacy of popular revolt
Rami Khouri in Beirut
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 January 2012
".....The sharp contrasts between events in Egypt and Syria provide fitting bookends to the last two generations of political life in the Arab world – as incompetent, exhausted and discredited political orders are in the process of being changed, largely at the instigation of their own people. These two cases can also be compared with a third – Iraq – where an equally unacceptable autocratic government led by the Ba'ath party was overthrown by an Anglo-American-led military invasion in 2003, leaving the country today in a sad and fractured condition of stress and violence.
Historians will long debate the four critical factors we see at play in these countries: the power and limits of domestic civil disobedience, the role of foreign armies, the impact of Arab League action, and the nature and consequences of Islamist politics that seem to inevitably dominate in liberated and democratic Arab countries....
The main lesson we can draw for now seems to me that self-determination and democratic transitions achieved through legitimate popular revolt are likely to lead to stable governance systems, while upheavals and change generated by invading foreign armies or engineered coups will only lead to continued instability, because they lack the critical elements of legitimacy and accountability. We should keep our eyes on those two factors as deliberations continue on Arab and international intervention in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, and other Arab lands to follow in due course."
Rami Khouri in Beirut
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 January 2012
".....The sharp contrasts between events in Egypt and Syria provide fitting bookends to the last two generations of political life in the Arab world – as incompetent, exhausted and discredited political orders are in the process of being changed, largely at the instigation of their own people. These two cases can also be compared with a third – Iraq – where an equally unacceptable autocratic government led by the Ba'ath party was overthrown by an Anglo-American-led military invasion in 2003, leaving the country today in a sad and fractured condition of stress and violence.
Historians will long debate the four critical factors we see at play in these countries: the power and limits of domestic civil disobedience, the role of foreign armies, the impact of Arab League action, and the nature and consequences of Islamist politics that seem to inevitably dominate in liberated and democratic Arab countries....
The main lesson we can draw for now seems to me that self-determination and democratic transitions achieved through legitimate popular revolt are likely to lead to stable governance systems, while upheavals and change generated by invading foreign armies or engineered coups will only lead to continued instability, because they lack the critical elements of legitimacy and accountability. We should keep our eyes on those two factors as deliberations continue on Arab and international intervention in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, and other Arab lands to follow in due course."
No comments:
Post a Comment