PARIS, 21 May 2004 — Having run upstairs we stop at a desk to register for the conference. Sitting behind the desk is a person dressed all in black with a mask covering the entire face.
But we are in Kuwait, not Afghanistan under the Taleban. And the conference we are attending is organized by the Kuwaiti Parliament and is called “The Region and the Future”.
Over the next two days, however, we are presented with a different vision of the future. The conference begins with a string of statements from the Kuwaiti leaders and officials from other Gulf states.
All speak a moderate and realistic language. It is clear that they are aware of the sea change that has taken place not only in the post-Cold War world but also in the region after the Iraq war. They may not quite mean it — that remains to be seen — but all admit that the future cannot resemble the past. In their speeches there is no trace of the discredited vocabulary developed first by pan-Arabism and then Islamism between the 1950s and the 1970s.
Instead, the talk is about reform and change, economic development, the rights of women, the need to manage an exploding demography, measures to prevent a ruinous arms race and avoid future wars. And, last but not least, there is much talk of people’s participation in decision-making.
None of the officials use the word “democracy”, which remains a tongue-twister for most of them. They beat around the bush with the help of such terms as “civil society”, “participation”, and “consultation.”
But it is clear that most now regard movement in that direction as inevitable if not actually desirable.
The academics and journalists who follow go further. Most insist that that time has come to break some taboos and contemplate changes that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. There is some talk of correcting what one participant describes as “the four deficits” from which the region suffers.
The first is a deficit of information.
With media directly or indirectly controlled by the state until recently a majority of the people of the region had no access to alternative sources of information.
That deficit is being partly corrected thanks to satellite television channels and the Internet. To be sure, most of the satellite channels are owned by wealthy officials or their front men. And all observe invisible red lines, at least as far as their paymasters are concerned. In some cases, these channels are staffed by veterans of pan-Arabism or the Muslim Brotherhood with hidden agenda, still nurturing old dreams. All in all, however, these channels offer a diversity that the Arab information scene had not known before.
Most governments in the region did all they could to stop the spread of satellite dishes. But after almost a decade of Quixotic attacks on dishes they seem to have given up. Despite frequent attempts at blocking undesirable websites, their fight against the Internet may also be drawing to a close. It seems that technology has won against repression.
Attempts at correcting the information deficit are also reflected in the printed press. Many newspapers in the region bear no resemblance to what they were a few years ago. They have transformed themselves from boring semiofficial news sheets into lively journals. One black spot remains. Most governments in the region still have black lists of banned books. The most liberal among them, Kuwait, has a list that runs into over 2000 titles. The least liberal, the Islamic Republic of Iran, bans over 40,000 titles.
The second deficit that the region suffers from concerns economic development. It is astonishing that, despite the fact that the region has earned more than $2 trillion from oil exports since 1980, little or no real economic development has been achieved. In fact, a majority of the region’s population are today relatively poorer than they were a generation ago. One reason may be that the states of the region remain the last bastions of a state-dominate economic system along with North Korea, Burma and Cuba.
The third deficit that the region suffers from is that of participation.
This is as true in political life as it is in the economy. As far as politics is concerned, decision-making is still reserved for very narrow strata of society. Some elections, mostly at the municipal level, are held. But the big decisions are still taken by a handful of men. Kuwait is the only country in the region with a record of clean elections. But there, too, the picture is half dark because women are not allowed to participate.
There is also a deficit of participation in the economy. Relatively narrow elites control the key sources of income and decide the distribution of business opportunities. In many cases, political leaders and government officials are also actively engaged in business. There is much talk of the need to separate the mosque and the state in the region. But, as one participant, the more urgent issue is a separation of business from politics. High unemployment, especially among the youth, is another barrier to participation, not only in the economy but in the life of the community in general.
The fourth deficit is one of hope.
There is a general mood of pessimism, that, despite timid reforms already under way, things are getting worse. One leading intellectual tells us that he sees the region as a train heading for disaster with no one capable of controlling it.
Hope, however, cannot be decreed.
On the last day of the conference, as we leave the hall, we encounter a lady journalist. “Good news,” she says. “The Council of Ministers has just decided to present a bill that would grant women equal political rights.” At the entrance to the hall the “being” covered all in black is gone. Around us, Kuwait looks like Kuwait once again. And that is good news.
