This is an opinion piece I wrote for an online news day on 25/02/11.
What scares the West most about the unrest is the lack of control they have
In Washington and London, those in power are watching events across the Middle East with fear and uncertainty.
For the first time people across the region – most of them young – are fighting to force change and reform. David Cameron and Barack Obama have spoken of the need for democracy to prevail and for the will of the people in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya to be respected.
But beneath the platitudes there is a fear of what lies ahead. What scares the West is the lack of control they have.
Historically they have been accustomed to having a much more hands on role. The truth is that Britain and the United States are no friends of democracy in the Middle East.
Since the end of the First World War they have proactively plotted and schemed to kill democracy in its cradle by supporting despots and dictators and overthrowing democratically elected governments. The Sykes-Picot agreement – which divided up the Middle East into areas of British and French influence – was the start of a worrying precedent.
Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Hosni Mubarak (Egypt) and Zia ul-Haq (Pakistan) are just a few of the leaders who have enjoyed the support and/or patronage of Britain and the US in the 20th century.
In 1952 they conspired to overthrow the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Musaddiq. The British knew his government was democratically elected by the people of Iran, but oil interests took precedence. Once he implemented a bill nationalising the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (BP as it is now known) his fate was sealed.
The argument often trotted out was that only strong leaders like Hussein and Mubarak could keep control of their countries and maintain stability. Now they themselves are a cause for instability.
There is the potential for the people in the Middle East to choose their own leaders whose policies might not be in the West’s best interests. This fear is already beginning to manifest itself in the warnings about the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt. How they react to this challenge to their hegemony is one of the many unanswered questions.
In a speech in Kuwait this week, Prime Minister David Cameron stated the obvious about Britain’s policy in the Middle East: “For decades, some have argued that stability required highly controlling regimes, and that reform and openness would put that stability at risk,” he said.
“Countries like Britain faced a choice between our interests and our values. And to be honest, we should acknowledge that sometimes we have made such calculations in the past.”
The received wisdom, rooted in the arrogance of empire and alluded to by Cameron in his speech, was that the people of the Middle East were unsuited for democracy – the ‘Arab exception’.
In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain the people are displaying a ravenous appetite for democracy.
The West might not like it, but it seems there is little they can do about it.
