Middle East feels the ripple of progress

Seldom has there been a more eventful year for the Middle East. Across the Arab world, the political liberalisation of societies traditionally ruled by fear and violence is gathering momentum. Those who said democracy could never be transplanted to the Arab culture must be finding it harder to explain away those very large footprints in the sand.

Iraq has held three elections in 2005, each attracting a larger and broader voter turnout than the last. The Lebanese have evicted their Syrian overlords and elected a new government of their own. The Palestinians have voted into power a leadership more amenable to a negotiated resolution of the conflict with Israel. Adding to the drama, Ariel Sharon, having engineered Israel′s historic Gaza withdrawal, has suffered a stroke just as he sets about reinventing the politics of his country in ways that might help bolster the chances of peace.

Unavoidably, these advances have been punctuated by many grievous setbacks, including dark images of violence and suffering, especially in Iraq. The apocalyptic rhetoric of Iran′s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is another reminder of how much could still so easily go wrong.

Yet, for the first time in generations, there is impetus for change, as societies scarred by the miserable failures of authoritarian Nasserism, and facing the alternatives of Iranian-style clericalism or al-Qaeda-style jihad, begin to search for a new, more hopeful trajectory.

Predictably, the Bush Administration in Washington has taken a pounding this week for admitting the obvious: that intelligence assembled and disseminated on weapons of mass destruction in the build-up to the war in Iraq was flawed. But the critics who argue that this somehow de-legitimises the decision to go to war have had a resounding reply from the Iraqi people, in triplicate, including, this time, from the previously recalcitrant Sunni minority.

In Adhamiya, on the Tigris River, whole families walked together to the polling stations.

Only 10 minutes from the heart of Baghdad, the town had been a hotbed of the insurgency. Military helicopters had avoided flying overhead. Yet, by midday on Saturday, voter turnout in Sunni neighbourhoods had surpassed 60 per cent.

"Happy days!" proclaimed Salim Saleh, a 52-year-old government official, celebrating the fact that Sunnis were beginning to adopt the democratic spirit. So what would be the measure of success? "A government that works in the interests of Iraq and the Iraqi people, regardless of ethnicity or sect," he said. "That would be democracy.

One man cannot presume to speak for the sentiments of a whole community, much less a nation. But that is precisely the point. No longer can a dictator present to the world a counterfeit version of the interests and aspirations of the Iraqi people.

The Iraqis speak for themselves. Happy days, indeed.

For those still tempted to delude themselves that the former regime was somehow more tolerable than the war of intervention to remove it, it is worth browsing Le Livre Noir de Saddam Hussein. Written by Arabs, Americans, Germans, French and Iranians, it is the most comprehensive work to date on the former regime′s war crimes.

Contributors include Archaeologists for Human Rights, which has catalogued the discovery so far of 288 mass graves. "There is no secret about these mass graves," they write. "Military convoys crossed towns, full of civilian prisoners, and returned empty. People living near execution sites heard the cries of men, women and children. They heard shots followed by silence."

Pacifying, then rehabilitating, so brutalised and fractured a society was always a huge ask. Is there sufficient commitment among rival traditions to the civil rights necessary to protect democratic institutions? The recently discovered torture chambers run by the Shiite-controlled Ministry of the Interior suggest Iraq still has a long way to go to overcome its poisonous and corrosive ethnic, religious and tribal divides.

Yet strange things are happening: for one, the repudiation of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia by some Sunni insurgents, who not only declared a ceasefire in the final days of the election campaign but pledged to deal harshly with anyone attempting to interfere with voting.

Does the high Sunni turnout suggest a willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency? Whether or not there is less overt hostility towards America and its allies, the lapse of Sunni abstentionism certainly suggests a desire to secure for themselves a prominent, if no longer dominant, role in the new Iraq.

These events are having a ripple effect in the Arab world.

While it remains fashionable to denounce the American-led presence in Iraq, young Arabs everywhere are not only watching Iraq′s political evolution on al-Jazeera, they are able to engage in live internet chats with Iraqis. In November, regional leaders met in Bahrain for a Future Forum. Democracy topped the agenda.

The milestones include elections in Iraq, elections in Afghanistan, an orderly transfer of power in Lebanon, elections in the Palestinian territories, pardons for jailed democracy activists in Saudi Arabia, the enshrining of women′s rights in Kuwait, concessions to political freedoms in Egypt and even Libya, the Israeli pull-out from Gaza, and massive protests in Morocco and Jordan against the ultra-violence of al-Qaeda.

Yep. President George Bush has a lot to answer for.

Tony Parkinson is a senior columnist.