“The Forum for the Future” in theTime of Democratic Stagnation!

There is no doubt that political reform in the Arab world has entered a phase of total stagnation, to the point that most experts, with the exception of some analysts, are convinced that the region has completely missed its chance for any true political or democratic reform. There have been more than two decades of attempts at achieving true democratic change, yet the general outcome hasn’t been anything more than insufficient or superficial improvements in fields that have no chance to make breakthroughs or constructive changes within Arab governments.

With this in mind, it appears that the seventh annual Forum for the Future, held in the Qatari capitol of Doha Jan. 11 –13 of this year, was completely unnecessary or, at the very least, outside the realm of realistic expectations, considering recent events in the Greater Middle East (a termed coined by Washington for the Arab world and the Middle East). As a reminder, the Forum for the Future was born of a project spearheaded by the United States and other first world nations, along with a number of Middle Eastern nations, during the G8 summit at Sea Island, Georgia, in 2004, during which the eight core member nations of the summit pledged to support political, economic and social reform in our region.

According to this initiative, the foreign ministers of the core G8 nations would meet with foreign ministers and representatives of the private sector of Middle Eastern nations annually to discuss the agenda of reforms in the region. One of the core G8 nations and one Middle Eastern nation would also take over organization of the Forum for the Future by coordinating a series of meetings and workshops every year to discuss topics pertinent to recent events as well as by suggesting new high priority topics to be discussed.

No one was ignorant of the obvious diminishing returns of this venture; it was first organized in Marrakesh in 2004, and nothing has changed during its seventh meeting in Doha. This suggests that the initiative was forced down our throats under pressure from the American administration, in accordance with the vision of then-President Bush to spread democracy across the Middle East. An amalgam of reform projects to be divided among the core G8 nations was proposed at the G8 summit in Sea Island, and from there each nation then entered into a “partnership” with one Middle Eastern nation. They then took on one or more of the projects proposed for the region. In other words, this partnership to initiate reform in the Middle East did not come from a shared interest or even joint planning.

It could be said that the core G8 nations were simply patronizing the American administration and, although some Middle nations reluctantly agreed to the summit, others refused to join whatsoever or were satisfied to watch the forum unfold from the sidelines. With the failure of Bush’s push to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, the Forum for the Future now lacks any momentum at all. It was thought that when the Democratic Party took over the White House two years ago, Barack Obama would reconsider his predecessor’s policy to support democracy in the Middle East, of which the Forum for the Future had been a key tool, but he did not, and now the gap continues to widen between the aspirations of the Forum for the Future and the state of region.

The strangest thing is that the forum, despite being in its seventh year running now, didn’t even meet the bare minimum standards set by precedent, as it didn’t even have a title or a sense of continuity from previous years. The question now is has it become like a suitcase that goes from the hand of one traveler to another, without either knowing who the actual owner is or where it is supposed to be going? Moreover, the lack of certainty over who will take the burden of hosting the forum or who will pay for it remained the primary issue during its last meeting this month.

A naïve optimism spread during the last meeting of the forum that the core G8 nations, under the leadership of the U.S., would take new measures to support democratic reform in the region and to encourage its governments to foster partnerships in the private and civilian sectors. Yet the Arabs have shown a truly exceptional resistance to foreign pressure as well as domestic pressure, with regard to reforming the ruling systems and introducing democracy to legislation. Programs like this have also revealed their cunning ability to deal with this pressure by making nominal concessions to demands for reform that at times, don’t too heavily influence the political process and at other times, by adopting democratic mechanisms only after stripping them of their practical applications.

On the other hand, the U.S. and the rest of the core G8 nations have shown a strong tendency to make concessions with Middle Eastern governments over the issues for reform. In order to maintain their interests in the region, they have accepted the excuses of these governments, which claim that reform and democracy work in the interest of Islamists and other extremists. The priority is internal stability and maintaining the status quo, rather than nurturing a democracy surrounded by peril. In this way, Western democratic aid, in the form of the Forum for the Future or otherwise, has become a tool to avoid change rather than encourage it.