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STRATFOR.com
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THE INTERNET SOURCE FOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE
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Instability on Horizon as Arab Regimes Remain Indecisive
March 12, 2002
Summary
Driven by a burgeoning youth population, stagnant economies and the regionally unpopular U.S. war on terrorism, domestic challenges in many Arab states are nearing critical mass. Arab governments are moving to counter this trend and have taken a number of unusual or unprecedented steps in recent months. But the measures so far are half-hearted at best and will not resolve the underlying pressures nor halt a surge in popular unrest in the coming year.
Image Credit: l'Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Analysis
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Jordan March 12 on the first leg of an 11-nation tour that includes nine Arab states, Israel and Turkey. The vice president will be talking with government leaders about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and likely hoping to build support for a U.S. campaign against Iraq.
But bringing Arab governments on board will be difficult. Mounting social and economic pressures, combined with the U.S. hunt for al Qaeda, has made maintaining the status quo in the Arab world impossible. The added pressure of a U.S. war against Iraq could seriously destabilize several regimes in the region. Several Arab leaderships are now taking extraordinary steps to maintain calm, but their efforts are limited and may not stave off an explosion in popular unrest within the next year.
Washington's hunt for al Qaeda is heating up in the Middle East, with U.S. troops deploying into Yemen and Somalia and now possibly preparing for an assault on Iraq. But the U.S. campaign is widely unpopular in the Middle East. According to a Gallup poll released in February that surveyed Middle East opinion after Sept. 11, 61 percent of those surveyed did not believe the attacks on the United States were carried out by Arabs, 77 percent said the U.S. war in Afghanistan was unjustified and 53 percent held an unfavorable opinion of the United States overall.
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(c) 2001 Stratfor, Inc.
Dan
Instability on Horizon as Arab Regimes Remain Indecisive . . .