Promoting democracy

By Thomas Oliphant - The Boston Globe - Boston.com - Op-ed - News: "FOR THOSE who understand the importance to the United States of political change and, ultimately, democracy in the Middle East, it is fine to protest Egyptian boss Hosni Mubarak's shabby treatment, including jail time, of a nonviolent opposition figure like Ayman Nour.

That protest, however, loses some of its force when the United States does nothing about the imprisonment of three men in Saudi Arabia, for six to nine years, for the crime of advocating a constitutional monarchy or the jailing of bloggers in Bahrain or the latest crackdown on political opposition in Jordan.

For those who understand that economic reform -- above all more trade, consistent rules of law, and transparency of transactions -- often spurs political change, it is vital to understand how far Middle Eastern societies have to travel.

For example, the International Telecommunications Union reports that there were an average of just 38 computers per 1,000 persons in the region in 2003, way below the rates in equally poor countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean. There were more patents issued in the former Soviet republic of Moldova in 2002 than in Saudi Arabia and Algeria combined, and of the 757 issued in Egypt, barely one in seven was to an Egyptian.

For major progress to occur in the struggle for personal freedom all of these situations have to change, and the Bush administration has only just begun to address them.

In 2002, for example, when the president first began his change-promoting Middle East Partnership Initiative, the United States was spending just under $29 million for that purpose in the region. The number jumped some the following year, but while the administration asked for $145 million last year, all it got was a third of that, with the bulk of the money going to Iraq.

To make lasting progress, what is required is persistence, consistency, patience, discrimination, and skill.

This is not a comment from a progressive perspective. It is the conclusion of an important report for the Council on Foreign Relations this month by a task force chaired by political figures with the best of human rights credentials -- Democrat Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, and Republican Vin Weber, a former congressman from Minnesota and a vigorous movement conservative. Both Albright and Weber, moreover, chair their parties' institutions that have been doing important but unheralded human rights work all over the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Weber's active involvement is a clue to the potential of the Republicans he left behind in Congress. For all the yelling and screaming over the John Bolton nomination or Iraq, there are people trying to make a difference. An example: Thanks to Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, there is a provision in law governing assistance to Egypt that empowers committees dominated by Egyptian political activists, not authoritarian government figures, to disburse US aid dollars for domestic reform.

Outside of Iraq, the United States sends about $5.5 billion annually in aid to the region, with Egypt the primary recipient. The report concludes that we have only begun to promote change and democracy and we do not always do so consistently or effectively.

Albright says we should be promoting evolution more than revolution, with the sophisticated awareness that elections are not panaceas and sometimes are less important in the short term than the development of institutions that will be hospitable to democracy.

The classic example, the report shows, may be occurring in Egypt. Beginning last year, when Mubarak visited Bush in Texas, the United States pushed him hard to open up his country's election process. Sure enough, Mubarak took steps to permit opposition candidates to emerge in his own reelection campaign. However, the report underlines how the fine print of the new rules excludes important elements of Egypt's civic life and was completed before thugs mobilized by Mubarak's political organization beat up opposition activists while Laura Bush was in the country praising the country's ''progress."

Promoting democracy, the report shows, will require opening the doors to organizations that are Islamist but nonviolent. The tragedies that unfolded in Iran 25 years ago and in Algeria more than a decade ago should not be excuses for a cynical view that democracy is automatically destabilizing. Nor can the intractable Israeli-Palestinian dispute be an excuse for inaction.

At its best, human rights is grubby, detailed work. What the Weber-Albright report demonstrates is that the United States is doing right, but that an effective effort to promote democracy has to be both bigger and smarter. The report will help the process in the Middle East. It would be nice if it also helped the process here as well."