March 20, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 16, 1424

CAIRO: During the Vietnam War, the United States insisted that if South Vietnam fell, its neighbours would tumble to communism one after another. Decades later, Washington is gambling on a new domino theory — one in which a war to liberate Iraq unleashes broad change, including a wave of democracy in the Middle East.

It is a grand vision that offers tantalizing rewards, but also includes huge risks.

By contemplating a new kind of war — a pre-emptive assault to oust Saddam Hussein in the name of protecting Americans from rogue nations and terrorists — the Bush administration also aims to bring peace and stability to the Middle East, end terrorism, and ensure Israel’s survival and the free flow of oil.

The Bush administration’s willingness to force its vision on leaders across the Middle East has sparked angst and resentment. Widely discussed plans for a post-war occupation have only heightened the alienation.

In a part of the world dominated for centuries by outside empires, where people already are angry about US support for Israel, experts say Washington is on a dangerous course.

They warn that the dominoes could fall badly wrong, threatening governments that are friendly to the United States, ushering in a new wave of anti-Americanism and triggering another convulsion of terrorism.

It is a risk the Bush administration appears willing to take. Convinced that a quick and successful war to oust Saddam can begin the desired change, Washington has told allies — and the United Nations — that it intends to do what it wants, and is prepared to do it with or without their help.

“By removing Saddam Hussein the US signals to the rest of the world the length they will go to achieve their core foreign policy goals,” said Toby Dodge, senior research fellow at the University of Warwick. “That is what the Bush doctrine is about. That is what this war is about.”

Analysts including the authors of a classified State Department report leaked in Washington last week doubt that ousting Saddam will foster democracy in the region.

And however logical and well-meaning the administration’s vision for the Middle East may seem to American eyes, no matter how strong the hopes are for a decisive war and a brief occupation, the reaction in large parts of the Arab world could hardly be more different. For many Arabs, it is proof that they have landed in the crosshairs of Washington’s ‘war on terrorism’.

They regard the United States as a new colonial power that will further strengthen Israel and strip the Palestinians of any hope for an independent and viable state. They believe America will impose its own vision of good governance on a region that has never accepted western democracy as the best way to govern, then promote its religion, it’s culture, and eventually loot the region’s oil and gas reserves.

Many here say they fear that an attack on Iraq may well achieve what Osama bin Laden could only dream about: It will radicalize a generation of young people, who account for more half the Arab population. It will not only persuade them that Osama was right — that Bush is at the head of a new Christian crusade against the Muslim world — but also that their leaders are incapable and concerned primarily with self-preservation.

That will empower pro-religious elements from Morocco to Kuwait, inspire terrorists and undermine many governments — including US allies — that already struggle for legitimacy.

Arabs are well aware they lack the ability to temper a superpower determined to pursue its own perceived interests. And they worry what America might do next: Force reform in Iran? Pressure on Saudi Arabia to overhaul its religious-based political system? Impose solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict with no viable Palestine?

Washington’s shifting explanations to justify war have only deepened Arab suspicion.

Baghat Kouhry, 63, a political scientist and author in Cairo, likens Washington’s rhetoric to the British justification for ruling Egypt as a protectorate.

Much of Arab identity has been forged by hundreds of years of imposed subservience — a fact underscored by the Arab response to Bush’s description of America’s ‘war against terrorism’ as a “crusade.” The fury that spread throughout the Arab world stemmed from the perceived link to the religious march of Christians into the Middle East that began in the 11th century.

Any calculation of the stakes of a new Iraq war begins with the issue that has shaped the Arab world for generations: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Though the Arab community is divided by politics and local customs, it is united by a universal connection, one inspired by a common language and religion, and cemented by an “us against them” outlook.

So US support for Israel against the Palestinians automatically makes America the enemy. It is unlikely anyone on the Arab street will give the United States even a benefit of the doubt in dealing with Iraq’s Arabs.

Even when Bush commits the United States to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as he did again on March 14 as the White House scrambled to bring the Iraq issue to a head, the Arab community is suspicious. It is widely believed that the United States will impose a humiliating ceasefire, relegating the Palestinians to a ‘state’ forever under the thumb of the Israeli military power.

If Iraq is sidelined, Egypt would be the only Arab country left with the military power to possibly take on Israel. That could happen only if Cairo violated its peace treaty with the Israelis, which it has gone to great lengths to abide by despite its anger about Israel’s actions on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Americans will be victorious, and I think their demands on the Palestinians, dismantling the infrastructure of Hamas and Jihad will be asking for a kind of Palestinian civil war,” said Moneim Said of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “I assume the Palestinians will escalate their struggle, that will be part of the chaos to take place.”

This is where the dominoes might begin to fall.

With Iraq changed, analysts believe the United States would be in a stronger position to influence neighbouring Syria, which provides logistical and financial support to the main militias that are fighting Israel — including Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

The United States would also regard change in Iraq’s eastern neighbour, Iran, as a positive development.

Iranian hardliners may fear that they are next, and that could lead them to reconsider their severest anti-Israeli activity as well as efforts at nuclear proliferation.

“The impact of war could very well accelerate the internal process of change in Iran,” says Davoud Bavand, an analyst and former diplomat under the Shah’s regime.

But Muslim governments unfriendly to the United States are not the only ones that would face pressure from the streets. Observers said that while most governments in the region can expect some degree of civil disorder, those that are closest to the United States are likely to face the greatest challenges.

One well-placed and western-educated resident of Saudi Arabia predicted a war would lead to clandestine movements culminating in the fall of governments: “Arabs are angry. They have concluded that their regimes are completely inadequate. They cannot control anything in their own region.”

Even America’s many critics say there are some ways for the United States to minimize the effects of war.

It would have to prevent Iraq from destroying its oil wells, or the wells of Kuwait to prevent skyrocketing oil prices, which would hurt industrialized and developing nations alike.

But more fundamentally, the United States must avoid killing large numbers of civilians and show that it was correct about Iraq. It must prove that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, that the Iraqi people view the invasion as a liberation, that it is sincere in its efforts to build a viable, independent and democratic state — and that it is not seeking to dominate the region.

“We are likely to be forgiven for the war if we do well at nation-building,” said Anthony Cordesman, a military analysts based in Washington. “If we are seen as carrying out an imperialist role it will be deeply damaging. ... The question here is not so much can we win the war, we probably can, but is whether we can win the peace.”—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.