The Problem with Democracy

The Independent, London


The Problem with Democracy
By Robert Fisk
The Independent UK
Saturday 28 January 2006

And now, horror of horrors, the Palestinians have elected the wrong
party to power.

Oh no, not more democracy again! Didn't we award this to those
Algerians on 1990? And didn't they reward us with that nice gift of
an Islamist government - and then they so benevolently cancelled the
second round of elections? Thank goodness for that!

True, the Afghans elected a round of representatives, albeit that
they included some warlords and murderers. But then the Iraqis last
year elected the Dawa party to power in Baghdad, which was
responsible - let us not speak this in Washington - for most of the
kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut in the 1980s, the car bombing of
the (late) Emir and the US and French embassies in Kuwait.

And now, horror of horrors, the Palestinians have elected the wrong
party to power. They were supposed to have given their support to the
friendly, pro-Western, corrupt, absolutely pro-American Fatah, which
had promised to "control" them, rather than to Hamas, which said they
would represent them. And, bingo, they have chosen the wrong party
again.

Result: 76 out of 132 seats. That just about does it. God damn that
democracy. What are we to do with people who don't vote the way they
should?

Way back in the 1930s, the British would lock up the Egyptians who
turned against the government of King Farouk. Thus they began to set
the structure of anti-democratic governance that was to follow. The
French imprisoned the Lebanese government which demanded the same.
Then the French left Lebanon. But we have always expected the Arab
governments to do what they were told.

Sotoday, we are expecting the Syrians to behave, the Iranians to
kowtow to our nuclear desires (though they have done nothing
illegal), and the North Koreans to surrender their weapons (though
they actually do have them, and therefore cannot be attacked).

Now let the burdens of power lie heavy on the shoulders of the party.
Now let the responsibilities of people lie upon them. We British
would never talk to the IRA, or to Eoka, or to the Mao Mao. But in
due course, Gerry Adams, Archbishop Makarios and Jomo Kenyatta came
to take tea with the Queen. The Americans would never speak to their
enemies in North Vietnam. But they did. In Paris.

No, al-Qa'ida will not do that. But the Iraqi leaders of the
insurgency in Mesopotamia will. They talked to the British in 1920,
and they will talk to the Americans in 2006.

Back in 1983, Hamas talked to the Israelis. They spoke directly to
them about thespread of mosques and religious teaching. The Israeli
army boasted about this on the front page of the Jerusalem Post. At
that time, it looked like the PLO was not going to abide by the Oslo
resolutions. There seemed nothing wrong, therefore, with continuing
talks with Hamas. So how come talks with Hamas now seem so impossible?

Not long after the Hamas leadership had been hurled into southern
Lebanon, a leading member of its organization heard me say that I was
en route to Israel.

"You'd better call Shimon Peres," he told me. "Here's his home number."

The phone number was correct. Here was proof that members of the
hierarchy of the most extremist movements among the Palestinians were
talking to senior Israeli politicians.

The Israelis know well the Hamas leadership. And the Hamas leadership
know well the Israelis. There is no point in journalists like
ussuggesting otherwise. Our enemies invariably turn out to be our
greatest friends, and our friends turn out, sadly, to be our enemies.

A terrible equation - except that we must understand our fathers'
history. My father, who was a soldier in the First World War,
bequeathed to me a map in which the British and French ruled the
Middle East. The Americans have tried, vainly, to rule that map since
the Second World War. They have all failed. And it remains our curse
to rule it since.

How terrible it is to speak with those who have killed our sons. How
unspeakable it is to converse with those who have our brothers' blood
on their hands. No doubt that is how Americans who believed in
independence felt about the Englishmen who fired upon them.

It will be for the Iraqis to deal with al-Qa'ida. This is their
burden. Not ours. Yet throughout history, we have ended up talking to
our enemies. We talkedto the representatives of the Emperor of Japan.
In the end, we had to accept the surrender of the German Reich from
the successor to Adolf Hitler. And today, we trade happily with the
Japanese, the Germans and the Italians.

The Middle East was never a successor to Nazi Germany or Fascist
Italy, despite the rubbish talked by Messrs Bush and Blair. How long
will it be before we can throw away the burden of this most titanic
of wars and see our future, not as our past, but as a reality?

Surely, in an age when our governments no longer contain men or women
who have experienced war, we must now lead a people with the
understanding of what war means. Not Hollywood. Not documentary
films. Democracy means real freedom, not just for the people we
choose to have voted into power.

And that is the problem in the Middle East.