Clinton Urges Reform at U.S.-Islamic Forum

In Washington, there’s been no shortage of conferences and discussions that have sprung up in response to the so-called Arab spring, but one gathering in particular stands out for its influential take on the revolutions that continue to rock and redefine the Arab world.

The eighth annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum, held at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington from April 12 to 14, was jam-packed with political heavy-hitters and explored a range of timely topics — from Muslim minorities in the West, to off-the-record assessments of the stalled Middle East peace process, to the roles of youth and the media in the recent uprisings.

All of these issues directly touch the forum’s sponsor, Qatar, a small but wealthy Persian Gulf emirate that is crafting a bold foreign policy in response to the turmoil and, many say, punching above its weight on the global stage.

So far there haven’t been any protests in Qtar, which in fact became the first Arab country to formally recognize the rebels in Libya and provided six fighter jets to the NATO campaign to protect civilians against Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s forces.

It’s a delicate balancing act for Qatar, a country of 1.4 million that’s surrounded by much larger and more powerful neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. But Qatar, flush with natural gas riches, wields its own considerable influence as a regional powerbroker, home of the Al Jazeera media network, and site of the 2022 World Cup, a major coup for the tiny nation.

“For the past decade or so, Qatar has skillfully straddled the competing groups of allies in the region — Egypt and Saudi Arabia versus Iran and Syria — achieving a status of neutrality that has allowed it to broker political deals in Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen,” wrote Clifford Krauss in an April 3 New York Times article. “At the same time, Al Jazeera has given a voice to dissidents, has rankled autocrats across the region, and has been both blamed and praised as a driving force behind the current ‘Arab Spring.’”

Perhaps as testament to Qatar’s growing clout, this year’s U.S.-Islamic World Forum was held for the first time ever outside of Doha, in Washington, D.C. Co-sponsored by the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs along with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, the forum’s guest list read like a who’s who in U.S. policy circles: Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), the National Security Council’s Dennis Ross, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Fareed Zakaria of Time magazine and David Brooks of the New York Times, along with scholars and pundits galore.

The star attraction was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who spoke at the gala dinner at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium — echoing many of the views that made headlines the last time she swung through Doha, when she sharply, and presciently, warned that the region’s foundations were “sinking into the sand.”

“While some countries have made great strides in governance, in many others people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order…. Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries’ problems for a little while, but not forever,” she bluntly told a group of Arab leaders, many of them U.S. allies, gathered in Doha on Jan. 13, one day before longtime Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was forced from of power and roughly a month before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met the same fate.

At the U.S.-Islamic Forum in Washington, Clinton candidly reiterated that the old Arab way of ruling is stifling development and simply no longer tenable. “Uprisings across the region have exposed myths that for too long were used to justify a stagnant status quo,” she said, above all denouncing “the myth that Arabs do not share universal human aspirations for freedom, dignity and opportunity.”

“Today’s new generation of young people rejects these false narratives,” she added. “That is why this January in Doha, just weeks after a desperate young Tunisian street vendor set fire to himself in public protest, I talked with the leaders of the region about the need to move faster to meet their people’s needs and aspirations.”

And as in Doha a few months earlier, Clinton returned to many of the same criticisms, from rampant youth unemployment to corruption-laden cronyism.

“First, can the leaders and citizens of the region reform economies that are now overly dependent on oil exports and stunted by corruption? Overall, Arab countries were less industrialized in 2007 than they were in 1970,” Clinton pointed out. “Unemployment often runs more than double the worldwide average, and even worse for women and young people. While a growing number of Arabs live in poverty, crowded into slums without sanitation, safe water or reliable electricity, a small elite has increasingly concentrated control of the region’s land and wealth in their hands.”

She noted initiatives such as “Partners for a New Beginning” to boost trade and spur foreign investment, along with direct economic assistance, to help the region create jobs and sustainable growth.

Clinton though largely confined her comments to the need for economic reform, veering away from openly advocating for regime change, although she urged Arab governments to stop muzzling dissent. “Citizens have spent decades under martial law or emergency rule. Political parties and civil society groups are subject to repression and restriction. Judicial systems are far from either free or independent. And elections, when they are held, are often rigged,” she lamented.

She also specifically called for greater women’s rights, a central theme of her diplomatic work, noting that “you cannot have a claim to a democracy if half the population is left out.”

“Now, all of these challenges — from deep unemployment to widespread corruption to the lack of respect and opportunities for women — have fueled frustration among the region’s young people. And changing leaders alone will not be enough to satisfy them — not if cronyism and closed economies continue to choke off opportunity and participation, or if citizens can’t rely on police and the courts to protect their rights,” Clinton cautioned, arguing that protesters now need to channel that energy into the hard, tedious work of building political coalitions to put the revolutions’ gains into practice.

Many people though were watching Clinton’s speech for clues on what America’s role in that process might be. So far, the Obama administration has tailored its response to each affected nation, intervening militarily in Libya while offering only tepid criticism of the clampdowns in Bahrain and Yemen, for instance — frustrating pundits looking for some sort of grand democracy-promotion doctrine for the uprisings.

Clinton though said “a one-sized-fits-all approach doesn’t make sense in such a diverse region at such a fluid time. As I have said before, the United States has specific relationships with countries in the region,” citing the decades-long friendship with Bahrain as an example.

Although she added that Bahrain’s ruling monarchy should refrain from violence, Clinton barely mentioned the brutal security crackdown that has drawn widespread condemnation by human rights groups. Likewise, she glossed over the violence targeted at protesters in Yemen, merely saying that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh should “resolve the political impasse with the opposition so that meaningful political change can take place.”

Rather, Clinton saved her harshest words for Qaddafi, blasting the Libyan leader for turning his guns on his own people and unleashing “a rein of terror against people who had no means to defend themselves.”

The sharp differences in tone are a reflection of the struggle the United States confronts in balancing its strategic and security interests while adhering to its democratic principles (also see “As Arab World Roils in Uncertainty, What’s at Stake for U.S. Interests?” in the current May 2010 issue of The Washington Diplomat).

Yet even in Libya — where the Obama administration seems to have only reluctantly joined the air campaign against Qaddafi, adamantly refusing to put U.S. boots on the ground — an overarching theme has emerged: American power abroad, weighted down by the invasion of two Muslim nations that’s stretched U.S. military and financial resources, has its limits, and the United States can’t be a global policeman.

So unlike George W. Bush’s sweeping efforts to instill democracy in the Middle East, President Obama has made it clear that democracy can’t be dictated or shaped by the outside forces.

The secretary of state confirmed that the onus will be on Arab citizens to devise their own governments because “democracy cannot be transplanted wholesale from one country to another.”

“But there are universal rights that apply to everyone and universal values that undergird vibrant democracies everywhere,” Clinton added, citing freedom of speech and protest, human rights and “core” American values such as countering Iran and the threat of extremism.

On that front, Clinton offered another prescient tidbit, arguing that al-Qaeda’s hold on the region has been eroded — three weeks before Osama bin Laden, the terrorist group’s spiritual leader, was killed by U.S. forces, finally ending the world’s biggest manhunt.

“Al-Qaeda’s propagandists have tried to yoke the region’s peaceful popular movements to their murderous ideology. Their claims to speak for the dispossessed and downtrodden have never rung so hollow. Their arguments that the only way is violent change have never been so fully discredited,” Clinton said.

But whether Arab leaders, or the United States for that matter, get credit for ushering in fundamental change in the Arab world is a whole other question, one for which Clinton had no answer, as she openly wondered whether this forum, like so many others before it, would wind up being just another impotent talk shop.

“Will the people and leaders of the Middle East and North Africa pursue a new, more inclusive approach to solving the region’s persistent political, economic, and social challenges? Will they consolidate the progress of recent weeks and address long-denied aspirations for dignity and opportunity?” she asked. “Or, when we meet again at this forum in one year or five years or 10, will we have seen the prospects for reform fade and remember this moment as just a mirage in the desert?”