Fareed likes Dubai
From Fareed Zakaria's article:
"Arab elites remain enormously resistant to reform and will try to scuttle plans for change. But I sense that the dinosaurs are on the defensive. For the first time, other views are being aired. Consider the contrast between two conferences on reform held in the past 10 days. The first, the official "Forum for the Future," held in Morocco, ended with the foreign ministers of the region endorsing reform but adding that it couldn't happen until a Palestinian state was established. Some also insisted that Iraq be free of foreign troops. These are the usual strange excuses for repression and oligarchy in the Arab world. "Until foreign policy problems are solved," the governments seem to be saying, "we have no choice but to keep punishing our people."
But now there are Arab voices saying "Enough." At Dubai's Arab Strategy Forum a few days later, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Maktum, Dubai's ruler, said pointedly in his opening address, "I cannot see why a crisis, no matter how severe, should delay economic reform or plans to eradicate illiteracy. . . .What is the relation between foreign affairs and corruption?"
Interestingly, these voices are mainly being heard from the Persian Gulf, which has become the center of reform in the Arab world. Dubai is far ahead of all others in terms of economic openness and efficiency. But Qatar and Bahrain are moving in the same direction with radical plans. It is a strange reversal. In the 1950s and 1960s, the large Arab states, led by Egypt, were seen as the modernizing forces in the region. The gulf monarchies were backward Bedouin societies. Now progress, at least economic progress, is coming from the gulf, while countries such as Syria appear to be stuck in the Stone Age."
Full article at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15132-2004Dec20.html.
"Arab elites remain enormously resistant to reform and will try to scuttle plans for change. But I sense that the dinosaurs are on the defensive. For the first time, other views are being aired. Consider the contrast between two conferences on reform held in the past 10 days. The first, the official "Forum for the Future," held in Morocco, ended with the foreign ministers of the region endorsing reform but adding that it couldn't happen until a Palestinian state was established. Some also insisted that Iraq be free of foreign troops. These are the usual strange excuses for repression and oligarchy in the Arab world. "Until foreign policy problems are solved," the governments seem to be saying, "we have no choice but to keep punishing our people."
But now there are Arab voices saying "Enough." At Dubai's Arab Strategy Forum a few days later, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Maktum, Dubai's ruler, said pointedly in his opening address, "I cannot see why a crisis, no matter how severe, should delay economic reform or plans to eradicate illiteracy. . . .What is the relation between foreign affairs and corruption?"
Interestingly, these voices are mainly being heard from the Persian Gulf, which has become the center of reform in the Arab world. Dubai is far ahead of all others in terms of economic openness and efficiency. But Qatar and Bahrain are moving in the same direction with radical plans. It is a strange reversal. In the 1950s and 1960s, the large Arab states, led by Egypt, were seen as the modernizing forces in the region. The gulf monarchies were backward Bedouin societies. Now progress, at least economic progress, is coming from the gulf, while countries such as Syria appear to be stuck in the Stone Age."
Full article at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15132-2004Dec20.html.
posted by Eric at 9:47 AM
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