Be careful what you wish for in case you get it. That thought must have crossed President Bush’s mind last week. After 9/11 he launched a mission to bring democracy to the Muslim world. His reward is to see the terrorist organisation Hamas sweep to victory in free and fair elections to the Palestinian Authority.
In Iran the West’s favoured presidential candidate, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was defeated by the more hard-line Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who says that Israel should be swept into the sea. While the Iraqis responded with heartening enthusiasm to the chance to elect their government, disappointingly they voted for religious parties along sectarian lines. The Sunni minority now fears the worst.
The Hamas win has put us in a quandary. Some argue that Israel and the West must respect the result. Agreed, but that does not mean talking to Hamas if it remains vocally committed to the destruction of Israel. Others lament the poll result as a disaster for the peace process. It may turn out that way, but for now it is too early to tell.
Even though Hamas’s charter commits it to eliminate Israel and the Israelis and bars compromise, there are some reasons to hope. For instance, Hamas signed the 2002 declaration by the Arab League that accepted the existence of Israel as part of a plan for peace. Terrorist organisations do sometimes metamorphose into law-abiding political parties. Anything is possible if Menachem Begin, once leader of the Irgun movement that carried out the murderous attack on British forces in Jerusalem ’s King David hotel, could go on to be Israel’s prime minister and a Nobel peace prize winner.
Hamas’s participation in the elections may itself indicate that some of its leaders want to pursue a political route. In any case, being in office will affect the movement. According to polls most Palestinians want peace and favour recognising Israel as part of a lasting settlement. If Hamas wants to be re-elected it will have to listen to public opinion.
For now Hamas is playing its hand thoughtfully. There has been talk of a coalition government with the defeated Fatah party, or of appointing an administration of technocrats. Either way Israel and the United States could deal with ministers who were not Hamas. In recent months Hamas has caused few casualties, due to both its self-imposed ceasefire and improved Israeli security. If a Hamas government orders a truce it has more chance of sticking than a Fatah one.
All of that is to put the most positive possible gloss on the shock election result. That may be absurdly optimistic. But on the other hand to assume the worst and so refuse to contemplate dialogue with Hamas would be self-fulfilling.
Bush’s call for Hamas to recognise Israel is unrealistic. It represents a bridge way too far at this stage. The most that can be hoped for is that Hamas will avoid repeating that it wishes to destroy Israel. In a recent interview I heard a Hamas spokesman as usual accusing Israel of terrorism and justifying the suicide attacks. But his bombast enabled him to avoid answering whether Israel should be swept away.
Democracy in Britain and America has evolved over many generations, but in the Middle East we expect it to be as fast-acting as instant coffee. We also expect people to vote according to our view of politics. We should imagine how we might react in their situation. Even in a mature democracy might not people who feel oppressed, as the Palestinians clearly do, use their elections to blow a raspberry at the rest of the world? In any country, if voters felt threatened by foreign powers they would probably elect the most nationalistic option on offer.
A similar defiance might help to explain the Iranian election result. Iran is a proud country with a long history. Unlike Iraq it is not a hotchpotch assembled by the British in the 20th century. Its people — many of them highly educated — feel entitled to respect. They probably feel that their country has every right to produce electricity from nuclear energy. They may also believe that Iran’s status qualifies it for nuclear weapons. The more that the West repeats that it has on the table a military option for dealing with Iran, the more the Iranians will think that their country should defend itself by every means. Iranian voters are reacting much as those in Britain or America might.
It was striking that Bush talked precisely of his respect for the Iranian people in his state of the union address last week, which was simultaneously translated into Farsi. Bush is beginning to treat the Iranians as another electorate that needs to be wooed. That is good. But before the Iranians take him too seriously, they might remember that after America and Britain toppled Saddam Hussein, they felt so little respect for the Iraqi people that they failed to count their dead.
Hamas’s victory and the difficult birth of democracy in Iraq have led some to say that democracy is just not suitable for places where the population is divided along religious or tribal lines. On that basis America might have despaired of democracy after the civil war that split the country into two hostile nations.
We British might certainly have given up on Northern Ireland. From the time of partition to the power sharing arrangements of the late 20th century, the Protestants used their democratic majority to wield power with insufficient regard for the rights of the Catholic minority. To this day the two groups have too little in common for there to be devolved government in the province. But still we go on trying.
Logically, for democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan to function properly might take generations. If we wanted to guarantee success we would have to commit ourselves to overseeing the country for a long time. As the 100th death of a British soldier in Iraq reminds us, the price could be high.
The West is not prepared to invest what would be needed. Since the fall of Baghdad the allies have maintained far fewer troops in Iraq than the security situation requires. Last week press reports suggested that Britain and America will make big cuts in those numbers this year.
That is not because the job is nearly done but rather because the price is unacceptable. The British Army’s morale is unusually fragile. Officers feel unhappy with their task. Even those who supported the war are depressed by the conditions in which their men are operating in Iraq. The British strategy, in contrast to the Americans, was to build rapport with local communities. In the early days British forces patrolled in berets rather than helmets and used soft-sided vehicles. Unfortunately confrontation could be avoided only by abandoning whole areas to Iraqi armed factions. Such compromises are repugnant to British forces and undermine local support for them.
The mission to train local police forces has been a failure. The police are infiltrated by insurgents and cannot be trusted. That makes it impossible to mount joint patrols and our troops are often forced to remain in barracks. Our soldiers have little sense that their involvement is producing results.
The new commitment of British forces to the Helmand area of Afghanistan moves us a long way from the original mission of defeating the Taliban. We may now have up to 5,700 soldiers there involved in nation building. That will still be fewer than are needed for the task in a country where foreign armies have an unhappy history. Britain has been lumbered because Nato’s response to America’s call for replacement troops has been chaotic and unreliable.
Whatever fear the Iranians may have of us, it does not look as though America and Britain could in the near future find either the political willpower or the forces needed for a military option against Tehran given their continuing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
None of the elections in the Middle East has gone as we would have wanted. Our expectations were foolishly overblown. But that does not mean that we were wrong to wish to spread democracy. It still offers the best chance of future peace because democracies rarely go to war with each other.
It is clear that we lack the staying power to remain in Iraq long enough to ensure the success of the democratic experiment that we started there. We shall just have to hope that somehow it can survive without us.
