Aknauta
02-27-2003, 05:16 PM
washingtonpost.com
Analysis
Restrictive Arab Nations Feel Pressure From Within
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 27, 2003; Page A20
CAIRO, Feb. 26 -- After the Arab world's half-century of independence, democracy remains elusive and distant. Few Arab leaders have tolerated challenge to their rule or relinquished power voluntarily. But the entrenched political order is under increasing pressure from popular demands for economic improvement and more openness in the age of satellite television and the Internet, according to a wide range of analysts, activists and diplomats.
Few predict a wave of democratization is about to be unleashed in the Arab world. Even fewer predict the United States will be an agent of that change, or that a war in Iraq will help bring it about.
These analysts and officials said the Arab world remains knotted by unresolved questions about rulers and the ruled: Whether governments obsessed with stability will willfully give room to dissent, what compromises they will make with mainstream Islamic groups that pose the only real opposition, and what role the United States will play.
"What is shocking is that there is so little political space," (http://www.washingtonpost.c om/wp-dyn/articles/A8054-2003Feb26.html)
Analysis
Restrictive Arab Nations Feel Pressure From Within
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 27, 2003; Page A20
CAIRO, Feb. 26 -- After the Arab world's half-century of independence, democracy remains elusive and distant. Few Arab leaders have tolerated challenge to their rule or relinquished power voluntarily. But the entrenched political order is under increasing pressure from popular demands for economic improvement and more openness in the age of satellite television and the Internet, according to a wide range of analysts, activists and diplomats.
Few predict a wave of democratization is about to be unleashed in the Arab world. Even fewer predict the United States will be an agent of that change, or that a war in Iraq will help bring it about.
These analysts and officials said the Arab world remains knotted by unresolved questions about rulers and the ruled: Whether governments obsessed with stability will willfully give room to dissent, what compromises they will make with mainstream Islamic groups that pose the only real opposition, and what role the United States will play.
"What is shocking is that there is so little political space," (http://www.washingtonpost.c om/wp-dyn/articles/A8054-2003Feb26.html)