In contrast to the support Islamist groups received in America-friendly countries in the Middle East, religious organizations suffered a crueler fate in Soviet-supported countries. The Syrian regime exterminated 20,000 citizens in 1982 for being associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Saddam Hussein's Iraq massacred religious leaders, especially among the Shi'a population. Egypt provides the best example of how Cold War ideological struggles shaped today's politico-religious landscape. While receiving Soviet aid, Gamal Abdel Nasser persecuted the Muslim Brotherhood. American-supported Anwar Sadat, on the other hand, heavily backed the Brotherhood in order to counter local Nasserite opposition.

The politicization of Islam is thus a direct outgrowth of the Middle East's Cold War experience. Given this history, it should come as no surprise that in today's post-Cold War Middle East, the major constituency-based organizations in the Arab world that are best placed to organize politically are Islamist ones.

The Cold War Thaw?

Now that the post-Cold War freeze is thawing, citizens are beginning to take to the streets, and local governments are considering how to manage predictable forthcoming demands. In Lebanon, Walid Jumblatt, the patriarch of the Druze Muslim community in Lebanon and by no means pro-American, told the Washington Post that the "process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. . . . The Berlin Wall has fallen."

Ruling elites now realize that without the Cold War, the Gulf War justification for maintaining the status quo is gone. American backing is no longer assured. Although the 9/11 terrorist attacks certainly introduced reform in the Middle East into Washington's lexicon, such calls became much more determined after the Iraq War. Until then it did not seriously enter onto America's bilateral agenda with states in the region. The war made possible positive political evolution.

The Iraq War removed many of the conventional justifications for continuing with despotic rule, states of emergency, economic centralization and the like. Today, the old regimes are more vulnerable to popular dissent than in any other recent period. Even the conservative Saudi government recognized that it would have to adjust to a new political reality after the impending war. In January 2003, just months before the Iraq War began, Crown Prince Abdullah reportedly discussed plans to use any forthcoming departure of American forces to undertake a series of democratic elections for regional and national assemblies.

There is little doubt that the region is in flux, but change may not break in the direction that many within the Bush Administration anticipate. Today's sudden burst of political activity is not merely a result of the so-called demonstration effect. If it were, then the coupling of Iraqi elections and constitution-writing with U.S. force in the region would provide strong incentive for political and economic liberalization and require little further U.S. involvement. But if, on the other hand, today's changes are largely a result of the upending of the Cold War status quo, then the experience of the 1990s suggests that progress may not be unidirectional, and considerable thought and investment must be devoted to guiding political transitions. After the initial period of post-Cold War-euphoria in eastern Europe and Eurasia, many states experienced ethnic and sectarian violence--among them Yugoslavia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Without strong local institutions to mitigate struggles, politics devolved into bitter strife. In diverse societies where political institutions have for decades been systematically undermined, ethnic and sectarian conflict is likely to emerge if left unattended.

The Cold War's legacy in the Middle East was not the construction of democratic movements like Poland's Solidarity, but rather a politicization of religion that laid the foundations for organizations like Al-Qaeda. As the winds of change blow through the Middle East, they will sweep across this political landscape. The Islamist parties that have been nurtured for decades, many of them virulently anti-American and anti-liberal, will play a more prominent political role than they do elsewhere around the globe.

Going Forward

The invasion of Iraq has removed the economic, political and military scaffolding that bound the region in place for over half a century and allowed savvy local leaders to protect their domestic position. The uncertainty around whether the United States will continue to prop up long-standing allies provides opportunities for opposition groups to press their case. When Washington threatened to withhold potential aid from Egypt in 2003, the social activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim was released from jail, along with his 27 associates. America's quiet support for peaceful demonstrations in the Ukraine inspired many protesters on the streets of Lebanon.

Still, today's political opportunities will not necessarily herald peace, stability and democratization. The lesson of the 1990s is that the path to freedom is strewn with treacherous potholes. Tearing the lid off authoritarian states is not sufficient for solidifying positive trends. Today's Iraq provides the most obvious example. While the overthrow of Saddam allowed a more representative government to assume office, the most zealously anti-Western and anti-liberal forces have muffled (and at times silenced) society's more moderate voices.

Although the experiences of the Middle East and eastern Europe have been profoundly different, there are lessons from the latter that U.S. policymakers can apply to the former. After the end of the Cold War, Washington and its west European allies spent time thinking through how to build and promote local institutions that would bolster democracy and stability. The United States devoted considerable time and resources toward building up local civil society organizations. NATO countries focused on how to depoliticize local militaries and embed them in a larger framework through initiatives like the Partnership for Peace. The United States laid down benchmarks for authoritarian leaders. Elections were an important milestone in the political process, but they were not a goal in and of themselves, nor what received the most assistance.

But while the United States is devoting considerable resources to often very impressive local civic action programs in the Middle East, the programs seem uncoordinated and unrelated to larger goals or transforming politics. The administration's Middle East Partnership Initiative, USAID contributions and Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative operate independently of each other and at times run in competition. The region does not have a credible security architecture into which to embed local forces, and there is no plan to create one. This earnest but haphazard approach toward change will not prevent a descent into chaos if the full weight of the end of the Cold War bears down on the region, as it very well might.

In the words of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Middle East is "the last remaining region where democracy has not been a force." A long slow process of building domestic political institutions is therefore necessary. Otherwise, today's exciting headlines will quickly recede into yesterday's news.

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