The democracy movement is grappling with a serious problem. Many of the countries it wants to have freedom of choice clearly support parties that don't like the West.

ISTANBUL -- An uncomfortable silence fell over the packed boardroom as the Islamist began to preach to the Westerners about democracy.

"You have to let people make their own choices, instead of trying to push an agenda," he said, his voice an angry shout, as his fellow delegates at a democracy-promotion summit in Turkey's largest city squirmed in their seats. "Let's all agree to say no to dictators, and then let's mobilize the voters and let them choose who they want, whether it's liberals or Islam."

The wiry, neatly groomed man doing the shouting was Lahcen Daoudi, a leading member of Morocco's Justice and Development Party, an Islamic movement expected to do well in that country's parliamentary elections next year. What he wanted to know was, if his party won fair and square, would the West accept them? Or would it face the same ostracism as Hamas, which won the recent Palestinian elections only to see aid and contacts cut by Canada and the United States?

"Am I supposed to wait for a liberal to authorize me to enter politics?" the former university lecturer fumed later after a heated argument with secular figures from across the Middle East and North Africa. "They are not more democratic than me."

Nodding in agreement with everything Mr. Daoudi said was Sheik Ali Salman, the head of Bahrain's National Islamic Society, which is expected to win the September elections in that Gulf kingdom.

The Westernized liberals and their American allies, who had called so long for free elections and an end to the tyranny of the region's long-ruling dictators and monarchs, gritted their teeth in frustration through the debate as the two Islamists grabbed the moral high ground by flinging basic democratic principles in their faces.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the White House decided that democratizing the Middle East was the way to ultimately win the "war on terrorism" it declared in the aftermath. After decades of backing Middle Eastern dictators out of convenience, America set out to use its leverage to force the tyrants to open their societies. Free elections and free media, the assumption went, would create an environment in which young people would look to America as an inspiration, rather than a hated enemy.

Among the 400-plus delegates who gathered in Istanbul this past week for a meeting of the World Movement for Democracy were many of the people charged with making that happen, as well as some who, if all had gone according to plan, would be at the vanguard of the next generation of Middle Eastern leaders.
The World Movement is collection of democrats and democracy-promotion groups, most of them affiliated with or sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, the main democracy-promotion agency of the U.S. government.

If the same meeting had been held a year ago, Mr. Daoudi and Sheik Salman probably would have been doing the listening instead of the talking. Back then, Iraqis had just astonished the world by holding a reasonably successful election, people power on the streets of Beirut had forced the Syrian army to withdraw from Lebanon after a 29-year stay and a wave of unprecedented protests was shaking the foundations of Hosni Mubarak's rule in Egypt.

There was excited chatter among the region's liberal elites that maybe, just maybe, President George W. Bush had set something positive in motion when he sent the U.S. Army into Iraq. In the wake of the Lebanese uprising, some speculated that the Middle East could see a series of peaceful revolutions like the ones that swept through several former Soviet states in recent years.

In his 2004 State of the Union speech, Mr. Bush announced he was doubling the NED's annual budget to $80-million (U.S.), and he mandated that the extra $40-million be spent entirely in the Middle East. He said the money would be used to promote "free elections, free markets, free press and free labour unions" in the region, establishing a "democratic peace" somewhere along the way.

But over the past 12 months, awkward reality set in. In a region where America's occupation of Iraq, as well as its unflinching support of Israel, is widely seen as part of a war on Islam, the angry and humiliated masses rallied around their faith. When given the chance to choose their leaders, they voted for Islamists whose dedication to Western-style liberal democracy was questionable at best. And the West, after years of calling for more democracy in the Muslim world, was forced to admit that it doesn't like whom the people are choosing to lead them.

While the ballot-box success of Shia clerics in Iraq was predicted, and the electoral gains of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were seen as tolerable, the surprise win of Hamas -- seen in Ottawa and Washington as a terrorist group -- in January's Palestinian vote has sent the democracy-builders back to the drafting table. Among their financial backers in Washington, it has reignited debate about whether malleable kings and dictators aren't preferable, after all, to potentially hostile Islamists.

"People are arguing again that if you open everything up, you open it up to non-democratic groups. So better [Pakistan's military ruler Pervez] Musharraf, better Fatah [the secular Palestinian party accused of corruption that lost the election to Hamas], better Mubarak in Egypt than the alternative. Even if that leads to non-democratic behaviour," said Les Campbell, a Winnipeg native who heads the Middle East department of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a grant-giving organization funded by the NED.

He said that in Iraq, where the lines between political parties and militias have become increasingly blurry, the Bush administration has all but given up on trying to build a stable democracy, and is scaling back its democracy-promotion efforts.
The NDI has spent the past dozen years working on democracy-building in the Palestinian Territories, only to see the fruit of that work -- the freest elections to date -- result in Hamas's victory. While the group has no contacts with Hamas, Mr. Campbell and other advisers met with senior Fatah members in Istanbul this week to plot a comeback strategy.

Even many Arab liberals say they are just as disillusioned as the Islamists by the hard line Canada and the United States have taken toward Hamas, which they say comes across as hypocritical in the region and may derail the whole project of trying to democratize the Middle East and North Africa.
"Does democracy fail if the people who win are not people we like?" said Daoud Kuttab, a prominent Palestinian journalist. "The U.S. attempt to try and teach and sell democracy got a huge blow from the U.S. attitude towards Hamas. It will take years to repair the damage.

"You have a U.S. government that's co-operating, allying itself with Arab dictatorial regimes and ignoring a truly elected government. It's not just that they don't talk to Hamas; it's that they do talk to the kings and the dictators."
But Rola Dashti, an activist who led the struggle that resulted last year in Kuwaiti women getting the right to vote, has more sympathy for the Canadian and American stance. While she agrees that it's hypocritical to deny Islamists the right to contest and win elections, she simply doesn't trust them to protect the rights she fought so hard to attain.

"As a woman activist in the Middle East, I get concerned. Where these parties are in power, we see more repression of women and deterioration in their standard of living. [The Islamists] try to pretend they're genuine and embrace democratic values, but do they really walk the walk?"
Her big fear, she said, was that an election won by Islamists might not be followed by another one in four years. "I would respect the results. But we would have to make sure that it's not a one-time vote."

The Globe and Mail; Saturday, April 8, 2006