In the post-9/11 world, a cacophony of signals emanated from prominent decision-making circles, and the United States emerged claiming that the best solution to prevent the rise of anti-American “terrorism” was to promote democracy in the Middle East. The underlying assumption was that if the majority of citizens in the Middle East were able to have their voices heard and participate in free and fair elections, potential “terrorists” and their sympathizers would not resort to violence to achieve their goals.

On the practical and strategic front, however, the Bush administration quickly realized that its declared goal of fighting Islamism worldwide entailed that the United States set aside its democratic rhetoric and seek closer cooperation with authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East and Asia. In turn, pro-US regimes used the convenient excuse of “fighting terrorism” to tighten their grip on power and continued to arrest, detain, and torture thousands of members of opposition groups in their own countries.

Many of those regimes were emboldened by the United States’ abridging of its own domestic civil liberties after 9/11 through the large-scale detention of immigrants, closed deportation hearings, and the declaration of even some US citizens as “enemy combatants” with no right to counsel or to contest the designation. In addition, the United States’ arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial killing of captives within the cages of Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air Base, and other off-limits locations worldwide, sent a message to pro-US regimes that such practices are indeed acceptable.

One can safely argue that the policies of the Bush administration towards regional regimes are driven by strategic determinants rather than by the degree of any regime’s commitment to democratic ideals. In fact, it is the specific policies of any given regime, rather than its democratic credentials, that make it acceptable or unacceptable in the eyes of the Bush administration.

One has only to remember how Arafat, despite his popular support, was isolated by the United States and Israel, not because his democratic credentials were insufficient, but because he was seen as being too lenient in “fighting terrorism.” Similarly, both Israel and the United States have consistently warned Hamas that its members will continue to be sidelined, even if they happen to be democratically elected.

On the contrary, while President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia continues to run an abusive police state and twice received a ludicrous electoral near-unanimity, he still remains fully supported by the United States.

Moreover, the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah simply allowed partial municipal elections in his country and continued to be praised for his “brave” decisions and courteously received by George W. Bush in his Texas ranch. In fact, when the Saudi government arrested reformers who had called for a constitutional monarchy and independent human rights monitoring, the then-secretary of state Colin Powell reiterated that “each nation has to find its own path and follow that path at its own speed.” Those mild statements stand in contrast to the vehemently critical rhetoric used to criticize any efforts at reform conducted by Iran and Syria—no matter how significant or consequential they might be. The difference is that both Tunisia and Saudi Arabia are US allies, whereas Syria and Iran are perceived as rogue states.

In other situations, when regimes across the Muslim world demonstrated to their American or Israeli counterparts (or patrons) that they can deliver indispensable strategic functions, they continued to be courted, and outside pressures for democratic change became minimal or non-existent. The case of Egypt is particularly instructive in this regard. While the amendment of Article 76 of the Egyptian Constitution allowed Egyptians for the first time to choose from among several candidates, it failed to introduce genuine democratic reforms and its content was inevitably robbed from its substance, as challengers to the 24-year incumbent had to face insurmountable obstacles in their quest for candidacy.

In fact, in the months leading to the elections, Cairo’s streets became permanent barracks for thousands of Central Security forces and Egyptian security forces systematically suppressed demonstrations demanding an end to the 24-year-old state of emergency. In fact, by May 2005, around 754 Muslim Brotherhood members had been arrested. On September 7, monitoring groups suggested that the elections were marred by the same irregularities that plagued previous elections—ballot stuffing, vote buying, intimidating, abusing government vehicles, and discriminating in favor of Mubarak. The result was that Egyptian presidential elections became a fruitless act of re-inauguration for Egypt’s 78-year-old incumbent amidst an exceptionally low voter turnout. Despite the fact that in Iran’s presidential elections voter turnout was more than twice what it was in Egypt and the president won by a much smaller margin, Bush called Mubarak to congratulate him on his “victory” while he had earlier criticized Iran’s presidential elections for being “illegitimate”—an act of interest-based policy and contemptible hypocrisy.

US criticism of the Egyptian government was considerably muted after the latter demonstrated an increasing willingness to provide legitimacy for any US-sponsored Iraqi government and to undertake key security responsibilities in Palestine, after it had been previously reluctant to so obviously align itself with US and Israeli interests. Initially, Egypt had consistently opposed the US-led war on Iraq and repeatedly denied any willingness to play any role in post-war efforts. Later, however, the Egyptian regime erratically changed course and hosted the Sharm El-Sheikh summit on Iraq in November 2004, thus giving legitimacy to the US-appointed Allawi government and even rebuffing France’s attempt to secure a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. In addition, Egypt showed its willingness to set up diplomatic relations with the Jaafari-led government and sent a diplomatic mission to Baghdad, which was only aborted when Ambassador Ehab El-Sherif was mysteriously kidnapped and allegedly murdered. Simultaneously, Mubarak and Sharon upgraded all aspects of the countries’ bilateral relationship, and Egypt agreed to pursue a direct security role in Gaza.

Another classical case of US complacency vis-à-vis regimes that operate in its favor is the recent case of Libya. For decades, Mu’ammar Gaddafi was consistently demonized in Western circles; however, as soon as the Libyan leader announced his decision to totally give up his alleged WMD programs, sign the additional NPT protocol, and abandon his fiery nationalistic slogans, praise was showered on his “brave” decision and democracy ceased to become a sticking point in Libyan-US relations.

The most glaring case of US security interests superseding its calls for democracy lies in Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf seized power in a 1999 military coup, tightened his authoritarian grip on power, and instituted a series of antidemocratic constitutional amendments. In recognition of the Pakistani leader’s critical supporting role in the “war on terrorism,” the Bush administration showered Musharraf with praise and attention, waived various economic sanctions, assembled handsome aid packages, and restarted US-Pakistani military cooperation. Recent Pakistani overtures to Israel are part of Musharraf’s quest for continued Western support. The United States realizes that a greater responsiveness to public opinion inside Pakistan might lead to the rise of an Islamic regime, and has therefore preferred to support Musharraf as opposed to risking the eventuality of an anti-US Islamic regime in Pakistan.

In Central Asia, the need for military bases and to secure the flow of oil from the Caspian Basin led the United States to forge closer relations with the totalitarian leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Given Kazakhstan’s significant oil and gas reserves and President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s close cooperation with the United States on security and economic matters, there was no US pressure of any sort on Kazakhstan’s leader to institute democratic reforms. Instead, President Nazarbayev used his links with Washington to tighten his dictatorial grip on power. Even Saparmurat Niyazov, the totalitarian megalomaniac running Turkmenistan, received a friendly visit from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in April 2002. Moreover, the regime of Islam Karimov continues to receive almost $100 million in aid from the United States according to some estimates, and America’s ambivalence to the Uzbek regime’s brutal crackdown on dissidents in Andijan in spring 2005 is further proof that America’s security interests continue to reign supreme.

The United States has not contented itself with merely supporting dictators or turning a blind eye to their misgivings when such action suited it, but in other cases it exacerbated traditional communal and sectarian rivalries in order to promote its interests. On the Lebanese-Syrian theater, the United States sought to internationalize Al-Hariri’s assassination in order to settle scores with the Syrian regime, break down the Iranian-Syrian axis of resistance, and hopefully turn Lebanon into an American-Israeli satellite state—all under the fictitious slogan of supporting “democracy” in Lebanon. As Lebanese demonstrators were calling for a more equitable Syrian-Lebanese relationship, the United States actively sought to manipulate the anti-Syrian forces inside Lebanon and put international pressure on Syria by cooperating with France on UN Security Council Resolution 1559 calling for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, the disarmament of militias, and the deployment of the Lebanese army.

The result has been an increase in sectarian and communal tensions inside Lebanon and the creation of competing loyalties—a fertile ground for further outside intervention. In fact, the frequently publicized notion of a Cedar Revolution being part and parcel of a US-led democratic “tsunami” sweeping the Middle East proved fictitious. US intervention in Lebanon worked only to heighten social polarization by pitting Christian right-wing forces and a small financial elite, who are interested in drawing Western forces to their aid, against an anti-American impoverished Shiite majority. This trend was manifested in the demonstrations and counter-demonstrations that took place inside Lebanon in the aftermath of Al-Hariri’s assassination, each representing different sectarian and communal constituencies inside the country and each claiming to be more representative than the other. As the Syrians withdrew from Lebanon, key Lebanese opposition leaders realized soon enough that the solution lay in national reconciliation and internal consensus building, rather than in going along with America’s regional designs and turning their country into a permanent headquarters for anti-Syrian activities.

In Iraq, a democracy built under the auspices of foreign occupation is more of an assertion than a remote probability. The presence of hundreds of thousands of foreign troops already violates the concept of sovereignty and denies legitimacy to any Iraqi government irrespective of the means that initially brought it to power. The Anglo-American occupation of Iraq has not only brought down Saddam’s regime, but has dismantled Iraqi institutions, created a power vacuum, and systematically deconstructed a unified Iraqi national identity and all nationally accepted sources of legitimacy and state sovereignty. Under occupation, Iraq’s cultural heritage has been destroyed and looted, and the country’s health and education systems remain abysmal.

More seriously, however, the United States pursued a classical imperial policy of “divide and rule” as it played Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis against each other—a feature which led to thousands of sectarian killings, car bombs, reprisals, and an upsurge in intercommunal violence. In its dealings with the consistently sidelined Sunnis, the United States wholeheartedly embraced many of the tactics used by the Israeli military in the Palestinian territories such as displaying massive amounts of firepower, sealing off villages with razor wire, making mass arrests, imposing curfews in entire towns and villages, and bulldozing houses belonging to suspected militants.

While the media has solely put the blame on Zarqawi for his recently declared “war against the Shiites,” US-affiliated Kurdish and Shiite militias have been quietly conducting their own “war against the Sunnis.” In northern Iraq, elements of the Pashmerga, the militias of the two main Kurdish parties, conduct operations with the US military, usually against Sunni Arabs. In December 2004, the United States officially announced a plan to establish a new military battalion drawn from members of Shiite and Kurdish militias to conduct counter-insurgency campaigns mostly against Sunnis.

In its coverage of the recent US military operations in the Iraqi city of Tel `Afar, Time reported what it considered “heart-wrenching” scenes of US-affiliated Kurdish Peshmerga troops bursting into the houses of Sunni families and ordering them into the street at gunpoint and sending them to camps on the city’s fringes. The systematic killing of Sunni clerics by militias allegedly affiliated with the US-sponsored Shiite dominated government and the discovery of mutilated bodies of Sunnis in Shiite areas, have all but brought Iraq closer to a full-fledged civil war. The systematic killing of the Sunnis in Iraq and the never-ending US military campaigns against Sunni cities and towns have prompted Tariq El-Hashimi, secretary general of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party which was a key player in all post-war Iraqi politics, to suggest that the Sunni Arabs are being subjected to sectarian genocide.

More recently, the draft constitution has become a recipe for the disintegration and the deconstruction of the Iraqi nation along ethnic and sectarian lines as the policies of the occupation have consistently strengthened primordial loyalties within the country and sidelined important segments of Iraqi civil society.

American policies in the Middle East have inevitably brought nothing but despair and increasing frustration. Bush’s plans for a new Middle East entail a radical restructuring of regional maps and the forceful imposition of a new imperial project. Just as Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam–Al-Qaeda links proved fictitious, the frequently anticipated Arab “spring of democracy” has failed to materialize. If anything, America’s unilateralist militarism has furthered the cause of violence and sectarianism and rationalized continued oppression in the name of “fighting terrorism,” securing the flow of oil, or protecting Israeli interests. Indeed, American foreign policy is one of continuity rather than change.

** Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian analyst based in Cairo, Egypt. He holds an MA in International Relations from the American University in Cairo and is specialized in security studies, decision-making, nuclear politics, and Middle East politics. He is currently a PhD candidate at the American University in London, and a teaching assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo.