Sept. 11 and Aftermath Sent Earthquake Through Arab World

How has the Arab world changed since Sept. 11, 2001? That's no easier to answer than the question of how this politically important region will develop in the future.

"It cannot be denied that new, radical currents and previously unknown terror groups have surfaced since the horrible events on Sept. 11. It's often unclear who is actually supporting the terror groups," said Sagie Qurqmas, a well-known writer and historian from Syria.

"Since Sept. 11, the West, especially the US, has continued to accuse the Arabs of being the source of radicalism and terrorism," he said. "Even if this is true of some Arabs, the majority cannot be characterized by this minority. Radicalism is present in all societies, regardless of religion or nationality."

A deepening divide

Qurqmas says that the United States' "failed policy of violence and occupation" has driven many more moderate Arabs into the radical camp. The West's blanket accusations have only deepened the fissure with the Arab world, he said.

He named the occupation of Iraq, the failure of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, and the Israeli-Lebanese war -- "not to mention the West's ambivalent treatment of fundamental issues like democracy and human rights" -- as contributors to the widening rift.

Until the events on Sept. 11, western democracies had served as role models of secular powers for the Arab world, which was seeking to replace the repressive, totalitarian regimes in the region with democratic societies.

However, human rights violations in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the CIA affair in Europe and the United States' unconditional support of Israel in its war against the Palestinians and Lebanese have considerably detracted from the credibility of the US and its European allies in the Arab world.

Doubting democracy

"No one here wants to hear anything from the West," wrote journalist Abdel-Karim Shaheen. "The leading opinion today is that sermons about western democracy have lost their significance."

What kind of democracy sends in tanks, bombs and fighter jets, asked Shaheen, and is worth tens of thousands of lives and the destruction of essential infrastructure? The journalist believes that the West is not really interested in democratization, rather in securing oil and other economic markets.

A domestic threat

On the other hand, the strengthening of radical Islamic groups represents a threat to the Arab world itself, said both Iranian journalist and lawyer Najh Al-Obaidi and Syrian journalist Atef Afif. Tightened domestic security measures and new anti-terror laws are results of the threat, which has already become apparent in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere.

New laws, however, have restricted individual rights even further and hindered democratic reforms. Author and columnist Jameel Abu Hassan said citizens are more than willing to make the compromise.

"The people prefer living in a police state than in a country where chaos reigns and blood is spilled, which is the case in Iraq under American-British occupation," said Hassan.

Five years after Sept. 11, 2001, the future of the Arab world is alarming. The peace process in Palestine has come to a dead end, Iraq is on the brink of a civil war, and the perspectives in Lebanon after the recent war are across the board.

Fear of new borders

The people in the region fear that the US may redraw the national borders in the Arab world, which US Foreign Minister Condoleezza Rice proposed during the war in Lebanon, and try to impose the new divisions with military force together with its allies, said both Atef Afif and Lebanese journalist Ghassn Abu Hamad.

The fear is that the territories would be distributed according to religious groups, which would then fight against each other ad infinitum, said the two journalists.

Nevertheless, despite crisis and irritation, "the Arab world and the western world are dependent on each other," said Hamad. "There is no alternative to mutual respect and dialogue."