CMYK

NYxx,2011-02-06,WK,004,Bs-4C,E1
THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2011

WK

The Middle East

Reasons to Seethe
E
GYPT IS NOT ALONE.
Fed by the example of
Tunisia, whose leader
was driven from power by
demonstrations last month,
anger has begun to boil
over, or threatens to do so,
across a number of Arab
countries living under
authoritarian rule or, in the
Palestinians case, in a state
of intermittent conflict.
While the fury has varied
roots, clues to its depth are
offered by snapshots of
rights violations reported
by Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch in
the region
during the
last year.

Tunisia

(predating change of leadership)

and other mistreatment in police stations and detention

centers.

SYSTEMATIC TORTURE

on freedom of
expression, association and assembly.
SEVERE RESTRICTIONS

HARASSMENT by threats or prosecution, of

journalists, human rights defenders and
student activists who criticized the regime.

14%

Palestinian Territories

Lebanon

RECURRING CONFLICT between

Palestinians and Israelis especially
in and from Hamas-ruled Gaza, which
Israel has tried to isolate worsens
a long-standing humanitarian and
human rights crisis.

TORTURE

Mass unemployment, extreme poverty, food insecurity and food price rises caused by
shortages have left four in five Gazans
dependent on humanitarian aid.

ECONOMIC UPHEAVAL:

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT, DETENTIONS:

Israeli restrictions and settlement

activity hamper Palestinian movement
in the West Bank. Rights organizations cite arbitrary detentions by both
Israeli and Palestinian security forces.

40%
70%

is prohibited, but former

detainees report its use against them.
has
severely divided Lebanese since 2005,
when Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (on
poster at right) was assassinated and
suspicions focused on Hezbollah, acting
in concert with Syria.

IMPUNITY FOR ASSASSINATION

Lebanon's
media community is robust, but some
writers and bloggers critical of the army
or officials are detained.

HARASSMENT OF MEDIA:

28%

OF LEBANESE
BELOW POVERTY LINE

GAZA UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

OF PEOPLE IN GAZA
BELOW POVERTY LINE

16.5% WEST BANK UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

Syria

46% OF PEOPLE IN WEST BANK

BELOW POVERTY LINE

Syria has been

under a state of emergency since
1963. Political activists, human rights
defenders, bloggers, Kurdish minority
activists and critics of the government
encounter arbitrary arrest, prolonged
detention and prison terms.

A LICENSE FOR ABUSE:

IRAQ

Jordan
ALGERIA

Cairo
LIBYA

and other
mistreatment is reported in police
stations, detention centers and
prisons.

Reports of this
and other mistreatment of detainees.

SYSTEMATIC TORTURE

SYSTEMATIC TORTURE:

RESTRICTIONS ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION were imposed in September

in marriage and
inheritance rights is enshrined in law;
the penal code allows lower penalties
for murder and other violent crimes
against women in defense of family
honor.

under a law leaving journalists and

others liable to prosecution for
insulting the king, the judiciary and
religion.

Egypt
A LICENSE FOR ABUSE is provided by
a 30-year-old state of emergency.
The authorities detain peaceful
critics of the government as well
as people suspected of terrorism
and offenses against national
security. Some are detained
without charge or trial despite
court orders for their release.

who are accused of

violating a familys honor. Twenty-four
were reported to have been victims of
honor killings by family members in
2009.

INEQUALITY OF WOMEN

DANGER TO WOMEN

13.4%

SAUDI ARABIA
OMAN

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

TRIALS of civilians are conducted

before military courts, in breach of
international fair trial standards
and with no recourse for appeal.
SYSTEMATIC TORTURE

Yemen

RESTRICTIONS ON FREEDOMS

REPORTS OF TORTURE and other

mistreatment of detainees by police
and prison guards include use of
beatings with sticks and rifle butts,
kicking and punching, and suspension by the wrists and ankles.

include detentions of journalists

and bloggers.

RESTRICTIONS ON FREEDOMS

and other
mistreatment of political prisoners
and individuals charged with
common crimes is widespread in
police cells, security police
detention centers and prisons.

include
establishment of a court in 2009 to
try cases related to the media, the
confiscation of newspapers, and the
use of troops to prevent publication
by Al Ayyam, a large daily
newspaper.

ELECTORAL PROBLEMS in the 2010

parliamentary contests included
restrictions on opposition political
parties and harassment of them.

Bahais,
Coptic Christians and other
minorities continued to face official
discrimination, including limits on
reconstruction of churches.
RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION:

Khaled Said is alleged to have been

dragged out of an Internet cafe by plainclothes police in
Alexandria and beaten to death. Said has been adopted
by Egyptians as a symbol of security forces brutality.

RALLYING CRY

20%

face discrimination under

the law and are subjected to early
and forced marriage; they are
believed to suffer high levels of
violence within their families.

WOMEN

35%

OF EGYPTIANS BELOW POVERTY LINE

Sources: Geoffrey Mock, Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch;

CIA World Factbook (economic data); Natural Earth (map terrain)

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

ARRESTED Tawakkol Karman,

a journalist, was detained for
taking part in a student
demonstration expressing
sympathy for Tunisians.

45%

OF YEMENIS BELOW POVERTY LINE

BILL MARSH AND JOE BURGESS/THE NEW YORK TIMES; PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMAL SAIDI/REUTERS (LEBANON); KHALED DESOUKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSEGETTY IMAGES (EGYPT); KHALED FAZAA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSEGETTY IMAGES (YEMEN)

Americas Journeys With Strongmen

From Page 1
they did not get was a functioning Egyptian democracy. The apocryphal comment about a foreign strongman often attributed to Franklin
Delano Roosevelt sums it up nicely: he may be a
son of a bitch, but hes our son of a bitch.
History is rich with precedents. In 1959, there
was Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, darling of American corporations and organized crime, fleeing
with an ill-gotten fortune of $300 million as Fidel
Castros troops reached Havana.
In 1979, it was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the
shah of Iran, abandoning the throne in the face
of a revolt two years after President Jimmy Carter toasted his country as an island of stability.
In 1986, the turn came for Ferdinand Marcos,
ousted by the Philippines People Power movement five years after Vice President George
H. W. Bush told him at a luncheon: We love
your adherence to democratic principles and to
the democratic process.
The list could be extended. Since World War
II, the White House, under the management of
both parties, has smiled on at least a couple of
dozen despots. (Friendly Dictators Trading
Cards, marketed by a California publisher in
the 1990s, featured 36 of Americas most embarrassing allies.)
It used to be anti-Communism, said David F.
Schmitz, a historian at Whitman College and author of two books on the American attachment to
dictators. Now its most often moderates who
stand against radicalism in the world of Islam.
Mr. Schmitz deplores the phenomenon, which
he believes has too often bought an ersatz stability at a very high price. By backing an autocrat,
he said, America often ensures that the political
center gets destroyed, giving credence to extremists arguments and discrediting the U.S.
After all, the man who felled Batista, the virulently anti-American Mr. Castro, is still in power
more than 50 years later. Cuban-American relations produced a brush with thermonuclear war
in 1962, a permanently crippled Cuban economy
and well, generations of successful anti-Cas-

DREW ANGERER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Partners Sept. 1 in the Oval Office.

tro politicians in Miami and beyond.
Iran, too, got mired in a new brand of undemocratic rule after the shah. The United States still
faces a hostile regime ruled by ayatollahs and
protected by a brutal, profiteering Revolutionary Guard tough enough to have weathered
its own Egyptian-style uprising in 2009.
The Philippines are a less dispiriting example.
With a belated but definitive push from Washington, the dictator there gave way to democracy; however imperfect, that outcome suggests

that American-backed strongmen are not inevitably succeeded by America-hating strongmen.

But Mr. Schmitz watches diplomacy from the
tranquil distance of the academy. Ask a onetime
practitioner, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President
Carters national security adviser at the time of
the shahs fall, and you get a very different view.
No administration, he noted, starts with an ideal
set of international partners.
To conduct foreign policy, he said, we have
to deal with the governments that exist. And
some of those are dictatorships.
When Mr. Brzezinski and his boss encountered the shahs dictatorship, the only other
power centers in Iran were the Communists of
the Tudeh Party and the mullahs of the mosques,
he said. As the popular revolt against the shah
grew, he said, the Carter administration was divided. Some officials thought Ayatollah Khomeini, returning from exile, might provide a reasonable alternative. Mr. Brzezinski disagreed.
My view was that the shah should crack
down and then begin aggressive reforms, he recalled. He lost the argument. Three decades later, the United States is trying to prevent the theocracy that followed from getting nuclear weapons. It is at least an arguable position that Mr.
Brzezinskis formula of crackdown and reform, if
it had worked, would have produced better longterm results for the rights of Iranians, as well as
for international security.
Mr. Brzezinski says Egypts prospects if Mr.
Mubarak is toppled are brighter than Irans in
1979: The army is respected and has a lot of
support across the country. There is a middle
class of sorts. And the Muslim Brotherhood is
still under control, reducing the risk that a theocratic regime would emerge.
Mr. Brzezinski was Mr. Carters adviser when
Mr. Sadat signed the historic peace treaty with
Israels Menachem Begin, and while he now
says Mr. Mubaraks time has passed, he by no
means considers American support for him to
have been a tragic mistake. I would say it was a
good deal for the U.S. and for Egypt, he said.
Mr. Mubarak consolidated peace in the region

and was a modernizer at home, he said. Historic change outpaced the modernizer, as often
occurs.
Rashid Khalidi, professor of modern Arab
studies at Columbia and a former adviser to Palestinian peace negotiators, rejects this brand of
realpolitik. The ostensible benefits the United
States has derived from its backing of Mr. Mubarak are illusory, he said: the peace between
Egypt and Israel has not yet brought a peace between Israel and the Palestinians; oppression in
Egypt has actually fueled terrorism, even if
some of its Egyptian practitioners, like Ayman
al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of Al Qaeda, have
fled Egypt proper; and as is self-evident today,
stability did not last.
Other cooperation has left a stain on Americas reputation. The Bush administration sent
some terrorist suspects to Egypt, where they
later said they were tortured. Today, protesters
in Cairo hold up spent tear gas canisters with
American labels. Such policies were bankrupt
morally and stupid politically, Mr. Khalidi said.
I know its easy to talk about American being
true to its values, he said. But you know, sometimes it makes sense.
The evolving statements from the Obama administration show officials feeling their way
through the tricky intersection of morality and
pragmatism, as they separate from an ally of 30
years. Every statement from the White House
and State Department is parsed for nuance in
Egypt, in Israel and at home.
When Mr. Obama said on Tuesday that an orderly transition in Egypt must begin now, for
instance, Mr. Brzezinski winced. I wish hed
said should begin now.
It sounds like an order, he said. Egypt is a
proud country, and Egyptians arent going to listen to orders. They might listen to suggestions.
ONLINE: ONLINE: UNPREDICTABLE UPRISINGS

A slide show on the twists and turns of

revolutions throughout history.
nytimes.com/weekinreview