When History Turns a Corner

By Micahel Duffy

How can you tell when history turns a corner? An assassination in 1914, a sneak attack in 1941, a wall falling in 1989--each came with a bang that was impossible to mistake once it happened, even if no one saw it coming. Across the Middle East last week, a tide of good news suggested that another corner might be near. Amid the flush of springlike exuberance, though, it was hard to know which events history would immortalize. Was it President Hosni Mubarak's startling announcement that Egypt would hold its first-ever secret ballot, multiparty presidential elections? Was it the popular demonstrations in Beirut two days later that finally forced the resignation of the Syrian-backed Prime Minister and his Cabinet? Or did the start of something momentous come on Thursday, when Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah welcomed Syria's President Bashar Assad to Riyadh and not only told Assad to get Syria's 14,000 troops out of Lebanon but also announced to the world that he had said so?

It was less the scope of each event than their accumulation and potential for transforming the region that seemed so heartening. Yet it was also right to remember that progress in the Middle East invariably moves a few steps forward--then a few steps back. Even as thousands of Lebanese gathered in Beirut's Martyrs' Square on Saturday to call on Syria to end its occupation, thousands of Syrians cheered Assad as he told his parliament that he would make only a partial pullback of Syrian forces. "Bush, Bush, listen. The Syrian people will not bow!" chanted the crowd.

In Washington, the reaction was just as defiant. The Administration called anything less than total withdrawal an unacceptable "half-measure." Said a senior U.S. official: "This is gathering momentum, but it doesn't have an easy path."

Ever since George W. Bush came into office in 2001, he has talked off and on about bringing democracy and freedom to the Middle East--a goal regarded by many as completely laudable but utterly unrealistic. The region has long been a card catalog of repressive, hereditary kleptocracies, held in place by exported oil and internal-security forces, and, since Sept. 11, a source of violent enmity toward the U.S. But as Bush's second term opened, he was blessed with rare opportunities to throw U.S. weight and prestige behind signs of reform. So Washington turned up the rhetoric about democracy to lean on longtime Middle East recalcitrants.

The sudden upheaval in Lebanon, set in motion last month by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, in itself might have been enough to permit the Bush team to issue a whispered "I told you so" to critics who thought the Presi-dent's optimism was naive. But that was not what the Administration was doing--and that too was a promising sign. The "don't gloat" mantra of Bush's father during the heady days of 1989 was back in vogue at the White House. In public, Bush allowed himself only this much satisfaction at a stop in New Jersey: "We're living in amazing times."

There are plenty of reasons to be circumspect while the changes set in motion take their unruly course. U.S. officials know that the progress of the past few weeks could just as swiftly be derailed. They held their breaths when a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv threatened to refreeze the Israeli-Palestinian thaw. "Things can move quickly," cautioned a White House adviser, "for good and ill." Yet even those who might be predisposed to withhold praise appreciated the moment. "The fact that there are people in the streets of Beirut calling for Syrian withdrawal would have been inconceivable six months ago," said Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's former National Security Adviser. "I realize that my partisan friends would not like it if I said it, but the answer is, yes, there has been some success."

Last Saturday capped an astonishing week: an unrehearsable combination of tragedy, popular will, carefully coordinated behind-the-scenes diplomacy and unusual allied unanimity. The most electrifying moment came on Monday, when 25,000 Lebanese defied a government ban and staged a rally in Martyrs' Square to coincide with a parliamentary debate on the Valentine's Day massacre of Hariri, which was widely believed to be the work of Syria. The Beirut gathering was as unprecedented as it was diverse, in a country where power is constitutionally divided among sectarian communities. Troops and riot police deployed around the city center, but they did not stop thousands from joining the peaceful throng. Inside, the parliamentary debate dissolved into chaos after pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami stunned the chamber by announcing his resignation. "Real independence is not given," said Issaf Chaker Skinner, a Lebanese woman in the joyous crowd outside. "It must be taken." The unprecedented images of people power that beamed across the Arab world on al-Jazeera, said State Department officials, were almost as important as the event itself.

What unfolded next was a high-level shove by Syria's enemies--and, more unexpectedly, by its friends--for it to announce a withdrawal from Lebanon. The timing couldn't have been better for Washington. For the past year, Bush had been pressing Syria to shut down support for insurgents wreaking havoc in Iraq. "The priority is to get Syria to stop playing a significant role in facilitating the insurgency," a U.S. official told TIME. The U.S. also wants to make Damascus crack down on terrorist groups aided by Syria that are trying to scuttle the reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

But Syria's troubles multiplied when Europe, led by France, and then Russia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt piled on too. It fell to Assad to play out his poor hand. Under its family dynasty, Syria has long relied on delay and deceit in dealing with the West. Washington had complained for months that Damascus was harboring Iraqi Baathists who were suspected of stirring up trouble in Iraq--which Assad always denied. Then 30 former Saddam Hussein henchmen were mysteriously arrested by Iraq. After the group proved to include Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, a half-brother of Saddam's who was once a widely feared internal-security chief, Syria said it knew nothing about their capture. The ploy was supposed to buy some time, appeasing Washington without losing crucial support from hard-liners in his own Baath Party who oppose cooperation with the West. By the time Assad flew to Riyadh on Thursday, he had run out of allies. Backed by Egypt, Crown Prince Abdullah read Assad the riot act, told him to get out of Lebanon and then all but issued a transcript to reporters. "That's kind of unbrotherly talk," quipped a U.S. State Department official.

Even Arab rebuke wasn't enough to force Assad out of Lebanon, which signals to some longtime observers that his grip on power could be in jeopardy. He has not been as gifted as his father in handling hard-liners who oppose compromise with the Lebanese or Israelis, much less the Americans. Asks Dennis Ross, the retired Middle East envoy for the past two Presidents: "Will he use the moment to sweep away the Old Guard and put Syria on a new path? Or will the Old Guard move against him?"

Meanwhile, oligarchies across the region were pondering the uncertainties of their own restive populations. If Lebanon suggested how suddenly unpopular regimes could be swept away, it was a fear already uppermost in many minds. So a number of regimes were taking baby steps toward liberalization, either to consolidate power before real reform or just to buy time.

SAUDI ARABIA Nowhere are the stakes higher and the risk of chaos greater than in the famously closed kingdom that controls a quarter of the world's known oil reserves and was home to 15 of the 19 Islamist hijackers who launched the attacks of 9/11. Since then, the House of Saud has found itself ever more threatened by extremists bent on seizing power. The regime's surprising answer to save itself: the sight last month of Saudi men in white robes and kaffiyehs leaning into cardboard voting booths to cast ballots.

The closest thing the kingdom has ever had to an election was when businessmen got together in Riyadh and Jidda and elected boards for local chambers of commerce. By those standards, the elections for 178 municipal councils being held in three stages that began on Feb. 10 are a big deal. The regime hopes the election of Shi'ites and tribal leaders in parts of the country where they dominate will help loosen the grip the conservative Wahhabis hold on cultural and religious affairs. But the danger in acceding to Western demands for free elections is that they could result in handing the Islamists power at the ballot box. So far, Islamic factions have carried the day, though without the huge margins many had predicted, and there is some evidence that moderate voters may be more numerous as the balloting continues. Risky as the outcome may be if elections are expanded, "the process is unstoppable," says a foreign analyst in Riyadh. "But so far, this is a very marginal thing, not a surrender of power."

EGYPT Criticism of Hosni Mubarak is still dangerous in Egypt: the one newspaper that dared publish an open attack on the country's leader was shut down a few years ago. But with the world around him changing, Mubarak is too shrewd a politician not to perceive the dangers in resisting the tide of reform. No one is sure exactly what moved the autocratic Mubarak to permit multiparty presidential elections instead of the rubber-stamp referendums that have given him four six-year terms in office. But after the government arrested liberal party head Ayman Nour last month on charges of fraud, the international reaction was unmistakable: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a planned visit to Cairo. If her message was clear, so was the advantage to Mubarak of opening up Egypt's system just enough to ease international and domestic pressure.

"We are still shocked," said Hesham Kassem, a pro-democracy activist, though no one in Egypt doubts that Mubarak will be elected to a fifth term. Indeed, his move caught opposition parties off guard, and some admitted they may not get organized in time to mount an effective response. To that, Mubarak replied, "They say they are not ready, but someone has to run."

THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES The surprise was not that Palestinians held a successful election. The death of Yasser Arafat in November fundamentally altered the character of their politics. Tired of the Old Man's corruption and violence, a sizable majority of Palestinians chose to replace him with a man known for moderation and willingness to parley with Israel. Even more important, Israel and the U.S., which had ostracized Arafat for two years, were willing to deal with him.

The key question is, What does Mahmoud Abbas do now that he has won? Last month, Abbas put life into the peace process by firing his security chiefs in the Gaza Strip, who had long failed to quell violence launched from there. His new Interior Minister, General Nasser Youssef, last week replaced all Arafat's top security officers in the unruly West Bank city of Jenin. A source close to Youssef told TIME that he intends to do the same across the West Bank--a step vital in convincing the U.S. and Israel that Arafat's tactic of periodically arresting terrorists and then unleashing them on Israel is over. As Youssef told security offices in Jenin, "We want one government, one system and one gun." Abbas still wants to persuade terrorist groups operating in the territories to run in parliamentary elections scheduled for July. For the first time in years, though, groups like Hamas, which won a strong showing in the balloting in Gaza, have to think seriously about joining the political process or face a serious challenge from Palestinian authorities as well as Israel. Abbas believes that once Hamas is in the parliament, it will have less incentive to indulge in violence against Israel.

Of course, there's a distinction between holding elections and erecting stable democracies. The U.S. labored for years to hold elections in Haiti, only to see the country dissolve into chaos. Lebanon without Syria could prove a violent place where militant groups like Hizballah fill any power vacuum. "If our test with these countries is, they have elections, and we're happy," says a top Democratic aide in Congress, "we're in for a bigger problem than we've solved."

For now, though, Bush and Rice will brook no discussion of slowing down or making compromises in their drive to inspire a democratic Middle East. During her recent swing through Europe, Rice was asked by a German opinion leader whether Arabs are ready to handle democracy. The question pushed every one of the Secretary's buttons. "When the Founding Fathers said, 'We the People,'" Rice replied, "they didn't mean me." That's stirring stuff, but it will take all that and more before the Middle East turns enough corners so that there's no turning back. --Reported by George Baghdadi/Damascus; Nicholas Blanford/Beirut; Amany Radwan and Scott MacLeod/Cairo; Matt Rees and Jamil Hamad/Jerusalem; and James Carney, Matthew Cooper, John F. Dickerson, Elaine Shannon and Adam Zagorin/Washington

With reporting by George Baghdadi/Damascus; Nicholas Blanford/Beirut; Amany Radwan/Cairo; Scott MacLeod/Cairo; Matt Rees/Jerusalem; Jamil Hamad/Jerusalem; James Carney/Washington; Matthew Cooper/Washington; John F. Dickerson/Washington; Elaine Shannon/Washington; Adam Zag