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Reforms: Stark Choice Before the Arabs

Reforms are a funny business in the Middle East. Just about everyone, including Arab governments and their people, agrees we do need extensive reforms in all areas. This is a region that despite its rich natural and human resources and its strategic location at the confluence of three continents remains largely underdeveloped and politically, socially and economically backward. And we are all too familiar with the historical factors that are responsible for this state of affairs and this is no time and place to discuss them.

What is important is all of us - governments, civil society and the media - agree we need urgent and bold efforts to reform ourselves developing institutions that help us catch up with the rest of the world. If there’s any disagreement or difference of opinion, it’s only on the question of how to go about these reforms.

Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE Foreign Minister, sought to address this question in his rather interesting speech at the Forum for the Future in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, attended by Arab foreign ministers and top world diplomats besides Arab League chief Amr Moussa.

As Shaikh Abdullah eruditely put it, reforms are a national demand and a necessity for our present and future but their extent and nature vary from one country to another, according to their own needs and challenges. This is an important argument and not entirely new; but it’s seldom appreciated and acknowledged. However, this is crucial to any understanding of Arab world’s complex problems and why the region remains stuck in a time warp in spite of remarkable economic progress it has made in recent times.

It’s not all bad news though. Most Gulf countries, the UAE in particular, have made tremendous progress over the past three decades. The UAE’s onward march notwithstanding its young years is particularly inspiring to all Arab and Muslim countries and rest of the world. This has been possible thanks to some decisive steps taken by its farsighted leaders and relentless, hard work by its people that includes both nationals and expatriates.

However, the UAE and the rest of the Arab world have a long way to go before they could rest on their laurels.

The Arab world needs comprehensive reforms in all spheres -not just in political affairs, as has been the obsession of some of our Western friends. We need reforms not because the West wants it but because they are in our own larger and long-term interests.

We need to ensure our people’s participation in decision-making process and greater economic and political empowerment of every society in the Arab world.

But these efforts for change must come from within the Arab societies. They must never be forced from outside, however noble the intentions behind them. As Iraq has demonstrated, such ‘forced reforms’ could have disastrous consequences for everyone concerned. But the Arabs cannot afford to sit around and wait for some saviours to arrive and change their lot for them. They’ll have to do it themselves. As the UAE leader His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum eloquently warned four years ago at the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai, the choice before the Arabs is stark: either they change or be changed!