The Autumn of the Autocrats

Fouad Ajami

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005

Summary:  If the assassins of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri sought to make an example of him for his defiance of Syria, the aftermath of the crime has mocked them. For a generation, Lebanon was an appendage of Syrian power. But now the Lebanese people, in an "independence intifada," are clamoring for a return to normalcy. The old Arab edifice of power has survived many challenges in the past, but something is different this time: the United States is now willing to gamble on freedom.

Fouad Ajami is Majid Khadduri Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In addition, the will of Europe and the United States -- and of the other Arab states, if they can be relied upon -- could come into play. Syria is not a warrior state: it lives off tourist receipts and a respectable amount of oil income, and it needs the economic skills and resources of the foreign world. The Syrians cannot settle for a scorched-earth retreat in Lebanon.

In fact, Syria's Lebanon enterprise exacts a toll on Syria itself. The occupation favors the military and the nomenklatura and robs Syrian intellectuals of a next-door country where they might be able to enjoy a margin of freedom. It was in that vein that a group of prominent Syrian thinkers and oppositionists wrote an open letter to their Lebanese counterparts that was published on February 24 in Lebanon's most prestigious paper, An-Nahar -- a national institution in its own right, which has been fearless in its advocacy of Syria's withdrawal. The essay was a moving tribute to Hariri, a message of condolence to the Lebanese over the death of their leader. His murder was a "terrible ugly slaughter planned and perpetrated by those who do not wish to see Lebanon healthy, united, and free," the letter read. It continued:

We fully support your demand for the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon, for the rectification of Syrian-Lebanese relations, for the building of a relationship based on equality, independence, and the free choice of both peoples. We have long expressed this view through all means available to us, for we as educated Syrians have always found in Lebanon a window for the expression of ideas not permitted us in our own homeland.

This is not quite a "Damascus spring," but in Syria, too, there can be seen the stirrings of freedom. The Syrian people can now see what is going on in the larger world. The Syrians, long in the grip of autocracy, now find themselves in the crosscurrents of change. To their east, a new Iraqi democracy struggles to take root and move away from dynastic succession and the cult of statues and supreme leaders. To their west, valiant (and stylish) young Lebanese have taken to the streets to proclaim their attachment to liberty. Fear stalks Syria, to be sure: the rulers fear that the world menaces their old privileges, and ordinary Syrians fear that an embattled regime could visit on them its wrath and mercilessness. The Syrian rulers must know that they have run their string in Beirut. But they may want to put on a brave face, as Assad did in a much-anticipated speech to his parliament on March 5. He mixed hints of withdrawal with a false, serene insistence that Syria will not be hustled out of Lebanon.

Deep down the Syrians no doubt once believed that a Pax Americana pressed in Iraq could be made to strike a bargain: Iraq for Lebanon. The Syrians would provide their own version of cooperation on the Syrian-Iraqi border in return for the old acceptance of their dominion in Lebanon. This sort of bargain has had its advocates in Washington. But it now lies in shambles. For one, the Syrians have not made good on their promises of cooperation. Then, too, the prospect of a functioning Iraqi government that would tend to its own affairs with Syria and hold it responsible for its deeds suddenly seems within reach. This was the outcome of Iraq's elections. And there has been that discernible change in Washington that makes tolerance for Syria harder to live with: the new emphasis on freedom, the assertion by President Bush that the old bargain with Arab autocracies has been an incubator for terror.

The entrenched systems of control in the Arab world are beginning to give way. It is a terrible storm, but the perfect antidote to a foul sky. The old Arab edifice of power, it is true, has had a way of surviving many storms. It has outwitted and outlived many predictions of its imminent demise.

But suddenly it seems like the autumn of the dictators. Something different has been injected into this fight. The United States -- a great foreign power that once upheld the Arab autocrats, fearing what mass politics would bring -- now braves the storm. It has signaled its willingness to gamble on the young, the new, and the unknown. Autocracy was once deemed tolerable, but terrorists, nurtured in the shadow of such rule, attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Now the Arabs, grasping for a new world, and the Americans, who have helped usher in this unprecedented moment, together ride this storm wave of freedom.