The Foreign Service Journal, December 2005

Near-term Democracy? Does that mean information will bring democracy to the Arab world? The answer is probably not, at least in the short term. Political systems take time to grow, and ideas about identity change slowly. In addition, increased flows of information facilitate the rise of demagogues, promising easy answers to complex problems. Osama bin Laden is a skilled user of television, but a more main- stream figure could gain even greater support. Increased flows of information can also serve to reinforce the deep feelings of injury, injustice and discrimination that many Arabs feel toward the outside world. Television has taken the plight of the Palestinians from a talking point in for- mal speeches to being daily fare in people’s living rooms, and Web sites feature pictures of atrocities committed against Muslim populations around the globe. Over time, though, it is clear that the sheer volume of information available to people in the Middle East, and especially eagerly consumed by young people, will trans- form politics. Over the last half-century, information control has been a vital tool in the political arsenal of Arab governments. They have relied on the mass media to mobilize their populations, and they have used censor- ship to restrain them. Now, both tools are losing their bite. The digitalization of content, the ease of duplicat- ing and transporting videocassettes, and the sheer vol- ume of information swirling in the region make effective censorship a fool’s errand. Information simply cannot be held back. The only solace censors can take is that tech- nology eases surveillance; while governments cannot keep people from knowing things, they can more easily trace how information is passed. Arabs will move into the 21st century, and the process by which they do so will be messy, confusing and slow. It will almost certainly have its setbacks. What is most excit- ing, however, is the creativity that these changes are unleashing. There is no guarantee that young Arabs’ future will be better than their past, but the tools at their disposal to help make it so are more powerful than those of their parents, and their grandparents before them. n F O C U S 42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 T HE R EMINGTON