Holding up Arab reform

I didn8217;t hear talk like that five years ago. Nor did I hear an Egyptian friend remarking to me that she had absolutely no problem with Hosni Mubarak8217;s son, Gamal, one day succeeding his father. Gamal is a good man. She just had one condition, that Gamal Mubarak succeed his father the same way George W Bush succeeded his father: in a free election.

Meanwhile, last Sunday, about 1,000 Egyptians gathered in downtown Cairo, many wearing over their mouths yellow stickers with the Arabic word for 8216;8216;enough8217;8217; written on them, to protest plans by President Mubarak to run for a fifth term.

Yes, there is definitely something stirring out here, but it has miles to go before meaningful changes occur. It is something America should be quietly encouraging, so it is inexplicable to me that the Bush administration is holding up publication of the next UN Arab Human Development report. Let me fill you in:

In 2002, the UN Development Programme sponsored a group of courageous Arab economists, social scientists and other scholars to do four reports on human development in the Arab world. The first one, in 2002, caused a real stir in this region 8212; showing, among other things, that the Arabs were falling so far behind that Spain8217;s GDP was greater than that of the entire Arab League combined.

That first report, published in Arabic and English, was downloaded off the Internet 1 million times. It was a truly incisive diagnosis of the deficits of freedom, education and women8217;s empowerment retarding the Arab world.

In 2003, the same group produced a second Arab Human Development Report, about the Arab knowledge deficit 8212; even tackling the supersensitive issue of how Islam and its current spiritual leaders may be holding back modern education. This was stuff no US diplomat could ever raise, but the Arab authors of these reports could and did.

So I eagerly awaited the third Arab Human Development Report, due in October. It was going to be pure TNT, because it was going to tackle the issue of governance and misgovernance in the Arab world, and the legal, institutional and religious impediments to political reform. These are the guts of the issue out here. I waited. And I waited. But nothing.

Then I started to hear disturbing things 8212; that the Bush team saw a draft of the Arab governance report and objected to the prologue, because it was brutally critical of the US invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation. This prologue constitutes some 10 per cent of the report. While heartfelt, it8217;s there to give political cover to the Arab authors for their clear-eyed critique of Arab governance, which is the other 90 per cent of the report.

But the Bush team is apparently insisting that language critical of America and Israel be changed 8212; as if language 10 times worse can8217;t be heard on Arab satellite TV every day. And until it8217;s changed, the Bush folks are apparently ready to see the report delayed or killed altogether. And they have an ally. The government of Egypt, which is criticised in the report, also doesn8217;t want it out 8212; along with some other Arab regimes.

So there you have it: a group of serious Arab intellectuals 8212; who are neither sellouts nor bomb throwers 8212; have produced a powerful analysis, in Arabic, of the lagging state of governance in the Arab world. It is just the sort of independent report that could fuel the emerging debate on Arab reform. But the Bush team, along with Arab autocrats, are holding it up until it is modified to their liking 8212; even if that means it won8217;t appear at all.

It makes you weep.

New York Times