The Foreign Service Journal, March 2003

Then came the Sept. 11 attacks. In their aftermath, many in the Middle East feared that administration hawks would use counterterrorism as a cover for pursu- ing military interests. To counter that tendency, region- al leaders hoped that Powell would cite the attacks as more evidence of the urgent need for the U.S. to help resolve Middle Eastern tensions. But he did not. “The tide was too high for him to act differently,” says Abdel Raouf El-Reedy, Egypt’s former ambas- sador in Washington, who first came to know Powell in 1984 and developed insights into his thinking during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis, when he was still Egypt’s top diplomatic envoy to the U.S. Reedy, now a member of the Egyptian Foreign Relations Council, believes that since the September 2001 attacks, U.S. national security strategy and foreign policy orienta- tions have been controlled by hard-liners who maintain that the use of force is the only way to safeguard America’s national achievements. “As a military man, [Powell] is accustomed to being part of the team, taking orders from the commander-in- chief and putting these orders into action. But still, he is a voice of moderation inside an administration controlled by hard-liners,” said Reedy during a recent interview. Reedy believes that were the U.S. foreign policy rud- der in the hands of Secretary Powell, the U.S. would not be facing three international crises at the same time — Iraq, North Korea and the so-called war against terror. In his view, the current three-way showdown is exposing the U.S. to endless criticism and puts the very credibility of the world’s only superpower in question because of its contradictory attitudes and policies. Still, Reedy does express sympathy for Powell. “He is in a fix. And in light of the circumstances of the past two years he could have done nothing more or different. But after all, the man deserves credit for convincing President Bush to take the Iraq issue to the U.N. In addition, Powell has prevented Egyptian-U.S. relations from taking a dramatic turn to the worse over the past two years.” Yet Reedy and other former diplomats and key com- mentators in Egypt, sounding like their counterparts in other parts of the Middle East, cannot help but heap a lot of blame on the State Department for the perfor- mance of the U.S. foreign policy establishment over the past two years. “Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Department of State did not give the Middle East due attention. Since the current administration took power in January 2001, we have been calling for more U.S. involvement in seeking solutions to regional problems. This press- ing need for U.S. engagement still stands,” says Mustafa El-Feki, head of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Egyptian Parliament. Feki, a former diplomat who once served as Egypt’s top presidential aide for information, recalls that for- mer President Bill Clinton visited the Middle East sev- eral times during his two terms, while President Bush has not visited the Middle East at all. “During the pre- vious administration, President Clinton made the sec- retary of State a kind of permanent envoy to the Middle East. This has not been the case under the Bush administration. The State Department has tended to take a back seat vis-a-vis the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while focusing only on the campaign against terrorism and the question of Iraq.” By contrast, Feki believes the Clinton administration’s State Department exerted considerable effort regarding the Palestinian question, even though this did not bear fruit. A Sense of Frustration Whatever his failings, almost none of the political observers in the Middle East doubts the commitment of Powell and his foreign policy team to seeking diplomatic solutions to regional problems. “Whether right or wrong, Powell is viewed in the Arab world as a dove among the many hawks in the Bush administration,” says Feki. “From an Arab perspective, he is viewed as a moderate voice and an acceptable face.” But that perception also feeds the sense of frustra- tion over what Mohamed El-Sayed Sa’id, Deputy Director of the prestigious Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, characterizes as “Powell’s failure to convey to the White House the extent of catastrophe which could hit the region as long as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is pursuing his aggression against the Palestinian people.” Sa’id singles out two incidents in which Powell, from his viewpoint, failed to play a positive role which could have helped put a positive spin on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East over the past two years. The first was F O C U S 34 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 3 Khaled Abdulkareem is Washington correspondent for the Middle East News Agency. The views contained in this article do not necessarily reflect those of MENA.