American Enterprise Institute
January 13, 2006

[Unedited transcript from audio tapes]

9:00 a.m.	Registration and Breakfast
9:15	Introduction:	Danielle Pletka, AEI
	Opening Remarks:	Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt, Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies
9:30	Panel 1: Challenges to Reform in North Africa
	Introduction:	Danielle Pletka, AEI
	Panelists:	Neila Charchour Hachicha, Tunisia, Parti Libéral Méditerranéen
		Mohamed Eljahmi, Libya, Libyan-American activist
	Moderator:	Michael Rubin, AEI
10:45	Panel II: Roadblocks to Democracy in Yemen
	Introduction:	Danielle Pletka, AEI
	Panelists:	Hafez Al-Bukari, Yemen, Yemeni Center for Polling & Communications Research
		Rola Dashti, Kuwait, Kuwait Economic Society and FARO International Co.
		Ali Saif Hassan, Yemen, Political Development Forum
	Moderator:	Michael Rubin, AEI
11:45	Closing Remarks:	Kanan Makiya, Iraq Memory Foundation
Noon	Adjournment

Proceedings:

MS. PLETKA:  [In progress] --Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.  I'm pleased to see all of you here.  I've discovered that we normally do our housekeeping notes at the end of an event and that everybody is getting up or talking to their friends or trying to escape the room and nobody is paying attention to the important thank-yous and notices that we're giving, so I'm going to say them right up front while I have you all rapt.

First of all, on your original agenda, there was another participant in our project--unfortunately he had some logistical visa issues and he is not with us today.  He will be with us in March.  Second of all, please turn off your cell phones or put them on vibrate.  There is nothing more disconcerting when you're speaking than a phone ringing, and we'd be very grateful for that.  Last and most important of our housekeeping, again, always at the end, you can see there a lot of people here.  There's a big conference ahead of us.  It's a terrific conference I think, and one of the reasons it is a terrific conference is not just the quality of the participants we have, but the work that was done by the staff here at AEI.  So I want to very quickly say thank-you not just to Michael Rubin who has done so much of the scholarly work here, but to Suzanne Gershowitz, to Molly McCue and to Rachel Hoff [ph] who really made this happen and made it happen smoothly.  Now then you can run away freely at the end.  Now I'd like to open up on the substance of our event.

The President has done a great deal in the last few years to talk about his Freedom Agenda in the Middle East, the spread of democracy, the end to a half a century of status quo politics.  He's made it the hallmark of his presidency, and I think that the United States has put an enormous amount of political capital into actually promoting this policy throughout the Middle East.

What are the real building blocks of democracy?  I hope that Iraq notwithstanding, it is clear that the building blocks of democracy and seeds of liberty, political and economic reform in the Middle East, are not within the 82nd Airborne or any other part of the U.S. military or our Coalition allies in Iraq.  They are among the people of the Middle East, people of the Arab world who live there, who suffer under tyranny, who don't prosper under dictatorship, who are stifled, they are the ones who are fighting every single day for a better region for themselves, for better circumstances at home, for change of government, for the kind of liberties that we truly take for granted, the kind of liberties that enable us to sit up here and have these kinds of discussions every week.

What I'd like to do is tell you a little bit very quickly about the project that AEI is proud to house on Dissent and Reform in the Middle East.  About a year and a half ago we brought together a group of established senior activists and reformists from throughout the Arab world to talk about how to promote a reform agenda from within the region that would have credibility in the region and that would have credibility in the United States and in the West.  They in their turn helped choose, identify people from within their own countries who they felt were doing seminal work on a whole variety of issues, not just attending rallies, not just forming political parties, but journalists, reformists, economists, politicians.  The one thing that all of them have in common is an enormous moral, intellectual and personal courage.  Not all of the people who agreed to participate agree with everything that you will hear from this podium.  Not all of them are neoconservatives.  They are people from a whole variety of walks of life and a whole set of different political views.

The one thing that they advocate, all of them, is reform, and what we have asked of them in exchange for this visit to the United States is that they write for their own country a reform agenda that doesn't talk about how bad the neighbors are, that doesn't talk about the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but that talks about specific recipes for reform at home.  They were able to choose were they going to write about religious freedom, intellectual reform, political reform, press freedom?  Their essays are available to you.  They're going to be talking about their own issues and their own priorities.  Their essays appear in Arabic and in English.

This is the first group of people that have come as part of this project.  They are from North Africa and from Yemen.  Don't ask why from North Africa and Yemen.  The next group will be mostly from the Levant.  They'll be coming at the end of March.  They do a fantastic job.  They have had a series of important meetings here in the United States, the State Department, the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill.  They've met with some of the most senior journalists in town, some of whom are with us today.  It's really an opportunity for them to hear from us, but mostly for us to hear from them what their priorities are for change in the region.

To introduce them is, what did you say I should say?  Just a good friend?  Is a very good friend and somebody who I'm very proud to know, Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim.  Dr. Ibrahim is the founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies which is based in Cairo.  The Ibn Khaldun Center is focused on democratization and the role of civil society organizations.  They've been instrumental, for example, most recently in training monitors for the Egyptian elections, but they do so much more.  In July 2002, Dr. Ibrahim and four of his colleagues were sentenced to harsh prison terms in Egypt for their work on voter education and election monitoring.  He was recently released by the Egyptian High Court partly through the intervention of the Bush Administration and the willingness of the administration to actually withhold funds from the government of Egypt until he was released.  Their persecution caused a very heavy toll on them personally, but it is a tribute to their courage that Dr. Ibrahim has not in any way flagged, has not in any way diminished his ardor for the causes that he believes in, and I think of no better person to introduce some of the people who we hope will be the founding fathers of a democratic revolution in their own countries today.  Without further ado, Dr. Ibrahim?

[Applause.]

DR. IBRAHIM:  Good morning.  Thank you, Danielle, for a very generous introduction.  And thank you all for coming this morning to share with us some of our thoughts, to hear about our problems, to hear about the challenges ahead of us in one of the most troubled regions of the world.

Let me start on an optimistic note, and that is a review of the year 2005.  A very quick review.  It delights me that the region in fact has moved forward slowly, but definitely forward.  The year started with an election in Palestine, and the year 2005 ended also with another election in Palestine, and the new year 2006 will start again with another election in Palestine.  So the year 2005 is marked by elections.  It is a year of elections.  We had two of them in Palestine, three of them, actually, and we have three of them in Iraq, and we have two of them in Egypt, and we had two of them in Lebanon.  So 2005 was unusually heavy with elections.  Does this amount to having a spring of freedom in the Arab world?  Not quite, but there are whiffs of a spring of freedom.

It's ironic to talk about spring here in the winter of Washington, but nevertheless, there is something going on in the Middle East and it is something real.  Our region with all the deserts that exist is known also for the phenomena of mirages, and whether it is the spring or mirage is yet to be determined.  But we, my colleagues here, are at the forefront fighting for human rights and for democracy.  We are determined to make it a spring of freedom in the Arab world.

Let me say more than 2005 was the year of elections.  In Palestine things are moving forward with setbacks here and there, especially in Gaza, and now with the illness of Prime Minister Sharon, things are in the balance.  Very few Arabs had ever thought they will be saddened by the deteriorating health of this man.  His image in the Arab world for years was a demonized image, and yet part of 2005 is that even that man who was universally disliked or hated in the Arab world began to look forward to his moves toward reconciling the tragic Arab-Palestinian conflict.  So Palestine is on the move with occasion setbacks especially in Gaza.

Iraq is another country on the move despite the bloodshed.  Again, as I said, three elections in one year.  The Sunni Arab Iraqi Muslims are coming into the fold with their colleagues the Kurds and Shiites.  And even though it is yet too early to say that they are finally making their peace and getting their country back together, the signs so far are quite good.

Lebanon is probably a net gainer with very few setbacks except the assassinations of some of the prominent public figures of that country.  But Lebanon is finally free, free of their neighbor's occupation and free to resume its democratic march.

Egypt, my country, a pivotal country in the region, has also made some gains, but the biggest gain of them all is that the barrier of fear in Egypt has broken.  People are no longer afraid of the autocracy, the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak and his regime.  People are speaking out, are criticizing the regime, with less fear than they ever had.  This is very important, breaking down the barrier of fear.

Egypt still has a long way to go but, again, 2005 was a very important year for the change to come.  Even in some of the political backwaters of the region, a political backwater like Saudi Arabia, some of the Gulf countries, are also on the move.  Saudi Arabia has made some interesting and important moves towards opening up their system, freeing some of the human rights advocates who had been in prison for some time and who dared to challenge the ruling regime at the price or the expense of being beheaded, but they were very courageous and these are people that I hope will be part of this program that the American Enterprise Institute is sponsoring and for which we are all grateful.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have made, and of course you will listen to one of my Kuwaiti human rights defenders, one of the bravest women in Kuwait, Rola, and she will tell you about their gains, but also about the problems and the challenges ahead.  So Kuwait finally has granted an overdue right to its women, the right to vote, to run for office, and Rola is running for office and we look all forward to working for her as campaigners.  Even the State of Qatar who is known to you as the home of al Jazeera, but now they have a constitution, a step forward also toward turning that country into a constitutional monarchy.  So these are things that happened in the year 2005.  There are a few other things that happened in the year before in the outer rim of the Arab world, in Morocco, in Bahrain, in Jordan and so on, but this is not the time to dwell on these.

What I want to say is these gains of the year 2005 are still in the baby stage and we could have setbacks in our region, and we have had many setbacks in the past.  Therefore, the challenge for us as human rights defenders, as democracy advocates, my colleagues, each one will give his perspective starting with his own country, we need your goodwill, we need your support, we need you to stand by us.  Until a year ago whenever I came to Washington in the Bush administration, the code word was the war on terror.  This year, this visit at least, and I heard it again from Danielle, it is the war of ideas.  The war of ideas, which is a welcome change in Washington, to move from the discourse of the war on terror to the discourse of the war of ideas because really that's what the battle is all about.

Let me summarize what the battle is for us as human rights advocates and see, and I hope you will tell us whether you can help in that.  I summarize our struggle as a three-way struggle.  We have had autocrats in our region, 50 years or more of autocracy, in many of our countries; actually, nearly all of our countries.  Who in due course generated their mirror image?  Theocrats, the Khomeinis, the bin Ladens, the Zawahiris, the Zarqawis.  So besides the Mubaraks, the Ben Alis, the Qaddafis, and all of these autocrats, they have generated by default the mirror image of the theocrats who are challenging the autocrats, but who also are participating with the autocrats in an unholy, unintentional alliance to squeeze and to crush the budding democrats, people like us.  So we are under fierce assault not only from the Mubaraks, the Qaddafis, the Ben Alis who are putting us behind bars, but also the defamation, the accusation by the theocrats of who we are, decadent liberals, stooges of the West, clients of America, who are bringing strange ideas, preparing for further American tanks and planes to invade our countries and to exploit our resources.  We know this is not totally true, and yet it is an uphill battle for us to be fighting our autocrats who are your friends, American friends on the one hand, and to be warding off the theocrats who are morally, spiritually trying to crush us as well.

So that is really the challenge ahead of us, of you, of the world, because our battle is your battle.  Our region is a very vital region for reasons that you all know.  Our region has in the last 50 years witnessed at least ten armed interventions by the United States.  The older guys among you would remember the Marines in 1958 in Lebanon.  From that time on there has been at least ten armed interventions for one reason or another, from Somalia, to Iran, to Libya, to Lebanon again, to Iraq, to Kuwait, you count them, ten times.  So American blood, our blood, your resources, our resources, have been entangled, seeped, depleted by continuous protracted conflicts, struggles, the Arab-Israeli struggle, Gulf struggles, wars here and there, civil wars, from Sudan to Iraq to Lebanon, you name it.  So the region is full of problems, full of challenges, full of promises as well.

But the struggle today is the three-way struggle that I referred to between the democrats, the autocrats and the theocrats.  The autocrats have the power, have the secret police, have the armies, have the media, have the resources at their disposal, and also have entrenched themselves in the seats of power for decades.  The theocrats challenging them and challenge us have resources, they have in each country thousands of mosques that they can spread their message in.  So the battle for us as democrats, my colleagues, people that we'll hear from very shortly, is how to expand the public space, how to have freedom for us to even fight our battle, because we feel hemmed.  I am under house arrest in Egypt, meaning what?  Meaning I could not operate outside my Ibn Khaldun Center that Danielle mentioned.  None of the political parties can operate outside its own headquarters.  That's what they call house arrest.  So how do you reach people?  How do you reach a constituency?  How do you advocate your message?  How do you get to people?

Our autocrats have taken advantage of emergency laws.  In Egypt, for example, these emergency laws have been in effect since 1981, since the assassination of President Sadat, 25 years.  The emergency laws say I could not have a rally, I could not have a march, I could not operate outside my building, my Ibn Khaldun, which takes probably half of the audience here to speak to.  Contrast that with the theocrats who may be also harassed by the autocrats, but at least they have an infrastructure which I do not have.  They have the mosques.  In a country like Egypt, there are 100,000 mosques in which they can convey, spread, internalize their messages, and that's why in this last election in Egypt, the parliamentary election, they did far better than anyone expected, whereas, the secular, liberal parties did not.  Why?  Because the secular, liberal parties had not operated as any normal political parties that you know here in the West or in established democracies.  So there's a challenge ahead of us.  Are you going to help the budding democratic forces in the region, and are you going to help them in a way that does not defame them, label them as traitors or as clients or stooges?

The kind of help we want, first is to stop supporting the autocrats.  Simple.  Stop supporting the autocrats.  Two, give us the tools to be able to fight our battle.  Media, we need to expand media freedom in our part of the world to be able to reach our potential audience, our potential followers to be able to at least stand up to our detractors and to clear message, to clear our names.  The third thing, and this may sound a little bit strange that we think you can help us with is to engage the theocrats; stop help to autocrats, help the democrats, and engage the theocrats.

As a human rights defender, I acknowledge that every human being is entitled to exercise his or her political rights, her human rights, her civil rights.  Therefore, I am for engagement even with my arch enemies so long as I can ensure that they will respect the rules of the game, and there are signs that they could.  Therefore, these are the three ways you can help us, not with planes, not with tanks, but give us your goodwill, stop supporting the autocrats, engage the theocrats.  Tell them all your fears, all your misgivings, all your apprehension about them and let them answer back.

Finally, try to deal forcefully with some of the chronic problems that so many in the Middle East and in the Arab world have always raised to cast doubt on your sincerity as Americans, on the sincerity of the West, when they talk about democracy.  I think you made some strides with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.  I think next is Iraq, and I hope Iraq will be settled as soon as possible, because these are stumbling blocks sometimes in our way even as democrats.  They say you want a democracy like Iraq?  That will always be a charge against us.  When you talk about democracy, democracy in the American-Iraq style, bloodshed, instability, a threat to divide the country into three pieces?  These are the kinds of things.

To summarize my message, we are fighting, we will continue to fight, we must fight.  It is for our children, our grandchildren, it is for our region, but ultimately it is for mankind.  It's a war of ideas.  We think we can win.  We are determined to win, and I hope you will help us win.  Thank you.

[Applause.]

[Break.]

MR. RUBIN:  [In progress] --Dr. Ibrahim for his extremely lucid and insightful remarks, and he will remain on the dias so that he can participate in the question and answer session following first Mohamed Eljahmi's remarks, and then Neila Charchour Hachicha's remarks.

It's with great pleasure that I introduce Mohamed Eljahmi and Neila Charchour Hachicha.  I've known both for more perhaps a bit more than a year now.  Seldom does a day go by when I don't either call or Email them to talk through issues, and I've had the pleasure of sitting with them at various meetings and so forth over the couple of days.  Mohamed Eljahmi is extremely bold what he's done.  While the momentum in Washington is to have a rapprochement with Muammar al Qaddafi's regime in Libya, Mohamed Eljahmi was a founding member of the American-Libyan Freedom Alliance, he is also well known in Libya because his brother, Fathi Eljahmi, is the most prominent Libyan dissident.  You may recall that on March 12, 2004, President Bush got up I believe it was in the Lincoln Room and cited Fathi Eljahmi's release as a sign that Muammar al Qaddafi was starting to change.  Two weeks later, Fathi Eljahmi was put back in prison after giving an interview on al Houra calling for more democracy.  And Mohamed Eljahmi has picked up that mantle, and understanding the pressure that a dissident is under when his family members are threatened, has boldly and very dispassionately explained the impediments to reform and dissent in Libya which is represented in his paper.

Before I ask him to begin his presentation though, I also want to talk for a second about my friend Neila in Tunisia.  I first learned about Neila through her blog.  She runs a very prominent blog when you can assess it because the Tunisian government is constantly trying to shut it down.  President Ben Ali in October 2004 won a Tunisian election in what I would call the Hosni Mubarak, with 94 percent of the vote.  Neila is the founder of the Parti Liberal Mediterraneen which is one of the unrecognized liberal parties.  I apologize for my French accent.

My recent experience with Neila is quite instructive just watching some of her bold work.  In the Middle East Quarterly which is an article by Mohamed Eljahmi in the current issue, Neila had granted an interview in which she talked about the undemocratic nature of the Tunisian election.  The day after it was published from two different sources close to President Ben Ali, I received complaints saying, how could you publish this?  Why should anyone listen to Neila?  And our response was, and the response is printed and will be distributed that, if you're so certain that she has nothing to say, why are you so worried about shutting down any outlet she has to the outside world?  And likewise, just a couple days ago, and this is in your packet, Neila had written a masthead editorial in the Daily Star of Lebanon in which she took the Tunisian government to task for its lack of freedom of the press, and that was heard in Tunisia.  It's instructive about the change in the Middle East now that working together, dissidents, activists for a free press and so forth, can use each other's platforms when their own platform within their own country is constrained.

But you're not here to listen to me.  So without further ado, I'm going to turn the floor over to Mohamed Eljahmi to talk about dissent and reform in Libya for the next 7 minutes.

MR. ELJAHMI:  Good morning.  My name is Mohamed Eljahmi.  Thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk to you about Libya.

For 36 years Qaddafi has denied the right to dissent and express expression of opinion for Libyans.  In fact, he punished severely all those who dissent or dare to speak out.  Seven months ago, journalist Dhaif al-Ghazzal was murdered by Qaddafi's death squad in Benghazi because Dhaif al-Ghazzal dared to talk about corruption within Libya and within the Qaddafi system.  Journalist Abd al-Raziq al-Mansuri has been in detention for the past year.  My brother Fathi Eljahmi was rearrested 2 years ago for speaking for the creation of a free civil society and a constitution in Libya.

In 1996, 1,200 prisoners of conscience were collectively massacred by order of Qaddafi.  Qaddafi's brother-in-law Abdullah Sanusi is the one who carried that.  That's called Abu Sleem Prison Massacre.  Abu Sleem is a notorious prison as the Abu Gharib under Saddam.  They are similar.  The prisoners protested being held for years without charges and the poor prison conditions that they're being held under.  Libyan dissident Mansur Kikhia who was a month away from being a citizen of the U.S., earning his citizenship, was kidnapped in Egypt with the aid of the Egyptian regime and handed over to Libya, and we don't know until today since 1993, 13 years later, the fate of Mansur Kikhia.

What are the impediments for dissent in Libya?  Politically, Qaddafi has created a hierarchy of organizations to enforce his will and force dependence of the individual upon the state, while Qaddafi retains all the budgetary power and the legislating power.  He created a revolutionary committee to punish dissenters in Libya and abroad.  There are death squads that went in the U.S. here when Qaddafi had an embassy in Washington.  There was an attempt to assassinate a Libyan dissident in 1980.

Economically, he confiscated private businesses and nationalized private properties.  He capped the income of the Libyan citizens via imposing Law 15.  Since 1981, the income of Libyans are the same.  Essentially, he creating a totalitarian rentier state.  He tied the fulfillment of each Libyan individual to the loyalty to the Qaddafi machine of oppression and terror.  Up to 20 percent of the Libyans are working in surveillance.  That's according to the U.S. State Department reports.  Judicially, peaceful dissent, assembly, creation or belonging to a political party, are crimes punishable by death.  He imposed the law of collective punishment where entire regions or cities are punished for the wrongdoing of one single individual.  We hear that he cancelled the exceptional courts and the People's Courts which he created shortly after the coup, but all he did is he shifted the jurisdiction of these crimes to the criminal courts.

He used religion to intimidate his opponents and further his rule.  He is a messianic megalomaniac who wrapped himself in the symbolism of Mohammed, Jesus and even Abraham.

What has happened since the U.S. rapprochement in Libya?  He has gradually removed subsidies, but Law 15 is still enforced and in order.  All the antidissent reform and laws that I spoke about are still enforced.  So under these conditions what you have for Libyan youths who comprise most of the population, there are three options.  Either join Qaddafi's security forces, get engaged in drugs or prostitution or become disenchanted and join jihadist movements.  Using the war on terrorism as a crutch, Qaddafi is trying to hire 200,000 more security personnel.

Despite being cited by President Bush, my brother's furlough was short-lived, and Qaddafi has rearrested him.  So for 2 years, Fathi has been in detention.  They tried to burn down his house and kill his family, they confiscated their businesses, they have systematically harassed the family, only because Fathi has spoken out for reform.  Qaddafi is saying that you can go to the Basic People's Conference and speak about reform; Fathi Eljahmi had gone to the Basic People's Congress and spoke for reform, and peacefully.

Qaddafi has become so confident and so secure that he has been exempted by the U.S., that last Sunday he called for the U.S. to abandon its democratic system and become a Jamahiriyah like his.  He said that on an American TV station, al Houra.  There's lack of persistent pressure by the U.S. for Libyan dissidents.  There is no reason for us to speak about the murder of Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir, but not about Dhaif al-Ghazzal.  Disregard Dhair al-Ghazzal totally.  That doesn't help U.S. credibility at all.

The other issue here, a lot of people are saying give Qaddafi a chance.  He's come clean.  He's serious.  So should the U.S. trust him?  I don't think so.  Why?  Let's look at his history.  I believe the rights of minorities are essential to creating a tolerant and pluralistic society that is tolerant of dissent.  Qaddafi has desecrated Jewish cemeteries in Benghazi and Tripoli.  He ordered the desecration of those Jewish cemeteries.  Qaddafi has forced the Italian settlers who are Libyans and settled Libya to exhume their dead and take them back to Italy.  There is a hateful religious message embedded in that event which he televised live.  He is holding the medics, the Bulgarian medics and the Palestinian doctors, hostage and he is trying to engage the U.S. in a clever way in a hostage sort of diplomacy.

The policy of baby steps, it doesn't work with Qaddafi because Qaddafi believes that democratization of the Middle East is a passing phenomena that will go away when the term of President George W. Bush will end.  He can wait out all the pressures, and he is maneuvering and blocking and doing all kinds of tricks to basically avoid that.  So the credibility part is very important and it's at risk.

He has denied the existence of political prisoners.  Last Sunday he said there are no political prisoners in Libya, and there is no reason for dissent.  Why would you dissent in Libya, he said.

With closing remarks I can only say this.  If you are a politician and you believe in weekend furloughs for murderers and violent criminals, then I can understand why we can rehabilitate Qaddafi.  But if you believe in a legacy and you want to hold the legacy, embracing the Willie Horton of the Middle East is a risky business.  Thank you.

[Applause.]

MR. RUBIN:  Thank you, Mohamed.  I just want to reiterate that Mohamed's paper which is included in your packet is the best guide I have seen to the way the Libyan state operates internally today.  All too often as an analyst I look for information on Libya, I hear about foreign policy, about the rapprochement between the U.S. and Libya, but there is very little written because of the lack of access inside Libya to how the Libyan state functions and to mechanism by which it suppresses dissent.  That's why I do hope that you will look at Mohamed's paper because I've seen nothing else like it.  Before I turn the floor over to Neila, I just want to say that Fathi Eljahmi's arrest after Bush's praise about 2 years ago was meant as a slap in the face of U.S. prestige.  It really is.  His continued detainment is a black mark for the freedom agenda, and I do hope that you do not let the name Fathi Eljahmi slip from your minds.  His only crime was getting on al Houra and asking for democracy and multiparty elections.  With that, I'm going to turn the floor over to Neila to talk about the situation in Tunisia.

MS. CHARCHOUR HACHICHA:  Thank you.  After Fathi talking about Tunisia and Ben Ali might seem a saint, he isn't a saint.  He is an autocrat, but he has no oil.

Freely speaking my mind among you is a very important event for me because, first, there is no room for such an event in my country.  Freedom of speech and freedom of association are submitted to very restrictive laws and are arbitrary punishments.  Second, because AEI is an American civil society institution that is defending its own beliefs regardless of governmental interest, so I would like to thank Danielle Pletka and Michael Rubin for offering me this opportunity.

As I said, Tunisia is an autocracy like most of the Muslim countries at different levels, but we have no room to peacefully bring a civil independent civil society.  After the war in Iraq, the question that is always on debate, can free elections bring peaceful development to Muslim countries or should we first pacify the Muslim societies to go through free elections?  I don't believe that free elections are the solution since under autocratic, long-lasting states, the electorate will a demagogical tool, and then it does not give a democratic response.  So we must first pacify the anger within the Muslim world countries, the anger between the people, the autocracy and the theocrats, because as said Dr. Ibrahim, we are in between, we have to pacify all this, bring some political maturity to all these people and then we can go through free elections.

But there is a condition.  We must have secure political open contacts.  We must be able to speak our mind to debate without being afraid for our persons or our families.  So building free and independent civil societies among the Muslim world to promote freedoms and to promote reforms must be our common goal.  If the United States wants to fight terrorism, they cannot at the same time support countries that produce terrorism.  There is something incoherent.  Islamism is not a faith, it is the direct result of autocracies.  When political freedoms are banned, when there is no respect for human rights, when there is no state of law, must become the ground for political dissent and poverty linked to corruption from the other side becomes the cement of radicalism.

Not only the United States should put more pressure on these states, but it should bring us much more support because these autocracies have most of their legitimacy not coming from their people, but coming from the support that they are getting from the West.

If we want to move forward, we have a lot of possibilities, a varieties of possibilities and communication tools that are available today.  I think that the Internet is on top of these tools.  It is a very democratic tool, by the way, and you need to know that I first met Michael Rubin only through the Internet, and this shows how much this communication tool can be powerful for communication, for dialogue and for network building.  So at the first step I think that we can with a very low cost identify and build a professional network that can be composed of persons like dissidents from around all the Arab world, from experts, from journalists, from mediators, and together through the Internet they can create a debate, they can research and then create an inclusive dynamism open to anyone willing to participate.  This network can then reorganize and become a think tank.  This think tank must be abroad from Arab countries so we can go around the very restrictive laws and be effective.  It will be an international think tank.  It will bring dialogue between the United States, the Arab world and Europe because sometimes when you have the support of the United States and we don't have the support of Europe, we don't go furthermore, so we must bring all the civil societies together.

If the Internet has not the impact of a credible television station, the combination of both can be very interesting because through the Internet you can build the credibility, you can build the confidence, and then through the television station we can go deep to the millions of people and get our message to help educate them to political issues and raise the level of political maturity in the Arab world.  I think it was the [inaudible] building credibility.  Yet it can still with professional content be readapted and have the impact we hope it should have.  It can become the platform of civil societies, free civil and independent societies and democratic Muslims because all Muslims are not radical and all Muslims are not terrorists.

If through very strong support from the United States to dissidents, I think that the autocracies will feel at risk that they might be isolated and others might be doing what they are supposed to do.  I think they will do the effort to reform, otherwise we will have to continue our way without them and we'll have to build a freer future for the upcoming generations.  Thank you for your attention.

[Applause.]

MR. RUBIN:  Thank you, Neila, and I do want to point out that not only are there some handouts outside which detail more of Neila's ideas, but also in the same packet you will find a great deal which Neila has written very specific to the case of impediments to dissent and reform inside Tunisia.

What I'd like to do now is turn the floor over to questions and answers, but before I do, I do want to remind everyone about AEI rules which are wait for the microphone and then actually ask a question.  And keep your question and we'll have enough time, the room is crowded, to have several rounds of questions and answers before we move on to our break and our next panel.

With that I'll call on you first.  Please wait for the microphone and then identify your name, your affiliation and ask your question.

MR. ARMITRUDE:  Will Armitrude [ph], Catholic University.  My question is Saad Eddin Ibrahim.  You spoke of engaging the theocrats.  With regard specifically to Egypt, could you discuss the range of opinion within the Muslim Brotherhood?  Do you feel there are people within that movement who have rejected violence and would be willing to participate in the democratic process in a multiparty system and give up power if they lost an election, to play by the rules that democratic societies are supposed to play by?

DR. IBRAHIM:  Very good question.  That's a question that probably is on the mind not only of every Westerner who is interested in our part of the world, but also on the minds of many Egyptians toward the Muslim Brothers genuinely and sincerely engage in a peaceful democratic process.  As an activist and as a human rights defender, I'm always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.  As a secularist and living there, I would probably be the first to suffer if my optimism is not warranted.

But I'll tell you why I believe that we should give them an opportunity.  One, the Muslim Brothers especially have disavowed violence 35 years ago, and in those 35 years they have not been implicated in a single violent episode.  Two, every time they had a chance to participate in elections, they did, including the last election, an election in which they did fairly well.  They got 20 percent of the vote, and they got 88 seats out of 454 seats of the Parliament.  Three, they have learned from their like-minded Islamists in Turkey and in Morocco that the way to influence power is through a peaceful electoral process, that violence is a dead end.  That's the Muslim Brothers.

Now, for those who are not familiar with this phenomena of Islamists, there is a wide range of Islamists, ranging from the Muslim Brothers who I just described as a peaceful movement nowadays.  They were not always like that.  And the best analogy is the IRA, and many of these groups that may have started violent at one time, but over the years they have learned politics are to compromise and my hope is that they will emerge into Muslim democrats like the Christian Democratic parties of Europe.

Yes, I'm willing to take a risk and I think that's why I called for engaging them, telling them all your fears, all your misgivings, and telling them I'm not going to recognize you until you show me that you are going to be loyal to the rules of the democratic game.  King Hussein did with them in Jordan and it has worked, and they are participating in elections since the 1989, so we're talking about 16 or 17 years now.  They have participated in four elections and they seem to be like everybody else.  They have their ups and downs, they sometimes do well, sometimes they don't do well, but they are part of the scene.  You could not choose your partner in the political process in any country, you just have to deal with them, engage them and lay down the rules and ask your society to be a witness and to stand by should they violate these rules.

MS. GEYER:  I'm Georgie Anne Geyer of Universal Press Syndicate.  Hello, Saad.  It's been a long time.  I would like to ask you, there's a growing of one school here that says that when elections are held in formerly autocratic countries, that that's the most dangerous times because the most violent people can seize power and destroy the hope for the future.  How do you feel about that?  I'm open on it.

Also if you could say something about the Arab Development Report and its effect, I would appreciate that.

DR. IBRAHIM:  Thank you, Georgie.  Yes, of course, if you have had autocracy for a long time and if theocrats or radicals have developed as a reaction to that, then there is always the danger when you open the system suddenly that many of the resentments and the protest votes will go to the radicals.  That is definitely a risk.

I submit, however, given what happened in Algeria some 13 or 14 years ago, given what we have seen in Jordan which I just mentioned, in Morocco, in Turkey and far away in Bangladesh and Indonesia, I am encouraged to say that Islamists all over the Middle East who have chosen to play the democratic game should be given a chance.  There are other Islamists who do not like the game, the bin Ladens, Zarqawis, many of the Taliban style, do not believe in democracy and they would not participate in a democratic game.

But I'm saying that once they engage in a democratic game, they do moderate, they do moderate.  Human beings do change.  And I don't want to dwell on personal episodes, but I have been imprisoned three times.  I have dealt with them in prison.  I have studied them earlier, 20 years earlier as a sociologist, and I have seen the change taking place.  Therefore, I say I am willing to take the risk.

MS. OSMAN:  Hudeb Osman [ph], Arab African Center to Protect Journalists from Tunisia.  I've have two questions for the Libyan speaker and the other one for my fellow citizen from Tunisia.

Dr. Saad Ibrahim put it very, very well.  He says that the real challenge in the region now for pro-Western democrats like yourself is the accusation from both parties as like you are U.S. clients and traitors and all these sorts of accusations.  While Neila, don't take it personally, I'm just asking you, you said you have your Liberal Party.  I'm proud of you as a Tunisian woman.  But do you think that going back to Tunisia even if you get the visa from the government, do you think that you will have your popularity in a Muslim population in which anti-American sentiment is prevailing?  You are accused of being pro-American.  Even in your interviews, you're all the time quoting George W. Bush.  You know he is not very popular in the region.  I'm sorry to say that.  And you have a photo with Wolfowitz, he is less popular than Bush.  I'm just wondering if it's a real challenge for people like you.

My other question is to the Libyan speaker.  I'm really surprised.  I've never heard about something like this happening in Libya.  I have so many friends from Libya.  I don't know why you are not trying to reach the media so people will know, because as Neila said it, the other Arab leaders compared to Qaddafi are saints.  So this is my question.  Thank you.

MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.  Neila first.

MS. CHARCHOUR HACHICHA:  It's true that it's very hard within an autocracy you try to be pro-West, and particularly pro-United States especially after the war in Iraq.  We are accused of being anti-patriots, and we are accused of collaborating with imperialist enemy forces, while the governments are cooperating with them.  So why shouldn't we cooperate with them?  Are the governments friends of the United States?  Can they say they are an enemy of the United States?  No.  So we can be.  I will not use a demagogical speech to go to the people's mentality just to get some legitimacy.  I don't think it is my role.  I want the people to change their mentality because this mentality is the result of autocracy and theocracy.  So if you want to be democrats, you should be open to everyone and people must understand it.

When people in Tunisia have a health problem, they won't think to go to Iraq or to Egypt to go to hospital, they would like to come to the United States, they would like to come to Europe.  When they want to send their children to study, they would like to send them to American universities, so we have to recognize that knowledge is here, we don't have knowledge and we still have to learn, and I'm not going to learn with retrograde forces.  They are supposed to go forward.  Political leaders should bring people, go forward and not go down to their level.  This is demagoguery.

MR. RUBIN:  Thank you, Neila, and I'm going to turn the floor over to Mohamed.  Again a reminder, the question was why don't yourself and other Libyans use the press more in order to make your case.

MR. ELJAHMI:  Thank you very much.  Thank you for your interest toward the Libyan people, and I'm glad to shed some light into showing what Qaddafi is.

In the past 3 years I've been working with others, other Libyan democrats, we're helping each other and we're working or trying to work very hard.  I can mention a few names.  I can mention my good friend Mohamed Boisir [ph].  He does a lot of work.  He works very hard.  He's an advocate.  He is spending a lot of time.  I'm spending a lot of time, and there are a lot of Libyans.  We have taken the message to Washington, and we're doing all we can with the resources we have.

I think I'm optimistic, and at the end of the day the U.S. will do the correct thing which is to not embrace Qaddafi.  Thank you.

MR. RUBIN:  I'd just like before we call on the next questioner to raise one issue which has come from several days we now have had of discussions, debates and meetings.  One of the questions which many people asked was, why doesn't as a fact of U.S. policy more emphasis be put on protecting the freedom of the media and freedom of access to the media throughout the Arab world and beyond the Arab world?  Because that's how ideas can be spread and that's how the information monopoly which certain regimes like Qaddafi's can be broke.

With that, this gentleman in the back.

MR. HAMID:  David Hamid [ph] with the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce.  I want to thank the American Enterprise Institute for bringing us together this morning and thank the panelists for their perspectives.

There hasn't been any talk about economic reform and I think it's important to touch on that issue because I have an assumption, representing a chamber of commerce, that if you're promoting market reforms, if you're encouraging transparency, better business practices, that that tends to open up a society and it helps to drive the private sector to bring in outside business.  One can assume that perhaps that would also lead to greater political openness.  I'd like to hear your thoughts about that.

MS. CHARCHOUR HACHICHA:  Sir, we first need the freedom of speech to talk about it.  How can we talk about it if we don't a have freedom of speech?

MR. RUBIN:  Others on the panel?

MR. ELJAHMI:  There is some question from the lady about going to the press.  I want to follow-up.  Articles about Libya appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, all of the publications, so we are actively in contact with the press, and I just wanted to follow that.

MR. RUBIN:  Do you have any comments on economic reform in Libya?

MR. ELJAHMI:  Yes.  As is mentioned, Qaddafi has created a totalitarian rentier state.   Because he wants to hold all the levers of power, he will not concede one iota of space to the Libyans without extreme pressure from the outside.  He knows, and he's very smart, he's a good student of history, that if Libyans can go to American companies and work and make more money and earn more money and then they can buy and they can travel and they can gain all the goods, then his peace which is the security forces will shrink.  He just wants to keep it that way.  He looks at it as his farm, so basically he will say to the world, yes, I want an open country, I want to make investment, but the country will be open to the oligarchy and the machine of thugs and bastards whom he runs.  If we can find a way where you succeed that the economic benefit will go to the Libyan people and not the cronies of the RSC, you have my full support and I agree with you with that.  Yes, we do need transparency, but we only need it with genuine political reform like the distinguished lady has mentioned.

MR. RUBIN:  Dr. Ibrahim, do you want to tackle the question?

DR. IBRAHIM:  I think I agree with you.  Your proposition is that reform could not really be complete without market reform, and the question about market reform has been lurking, but also has been used by the autocrats as a bargaining cart in the sense of holding the licenses for import-export, for establishing new companies.  Therefore, my recommendation to our Western interlocutors is that make your conditionality for a broad blanket reform, market reform, political reform, it is basically two sides of the same coin.  You could not have sound political reform without sound economic reform.  It is a marketplace of ideas, a marketplace of political choices, it is a marketplace of goods and services.  Therefore, make your package an integrated one and make it conditional in continuing your relationship with these countries.

The autocrats want aid, trade, but they don't want the third one, power sharing.  So make it conditional.  If you want the American free market, access to the American market, access to American aid, access to American technology, open up your system both economically and politically.  This was the formula in Helsinki back in 1975 which ultimately brought down the Iron Curtain countries and the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War.  So do the same formula.  It succeeded in the case of Eastern and Central Europe, it will succeed also in our case, it will succeed elsewhere.  That was an integrated package.

We have a few newsletters here from our center about civil society in which some of these issues are taken up.  So I urge you to pick them up and look at them.  Thank you.

MR. RUBIN:  I'm actually going to take just two more brief questions before we take a slight break because I want to leave some time during the coffee break for you to be able to talk to some of the panelists individually as well before we go on to our next panel.  First this gentleman, and then over on that side.  Please wait for the microphone and identify yourself.

MR. KESSLER:  My name is Judd Kessler and I'm a former U.S. foreign aid official and a partner in a Washington law firm.  Dr. Ibrahim, one of the side issues in your talk was that the mosques in Egypt are a platform for the theocrats.  There are a thousand mosques and they are a platform it sounded as if it was uniformly for the theocrats.  My question to you is, is there not variation in expression within the mosques?  Is there some possibility of a platform for others?  Aren't there people who attend mosques who want to hear a different message?

DR. IBRAHIM:  Yes.  The question is important, are the mosques the priority or the monopoly of radical theocrats.  So far they have, but they could be of course shared by moderate Islamists, and there are indications that some moderate Islamists have also taken to the mosques or established their own, but that is still a very tiny minority.  Because, believe it or not, the Mubarak regime in our case has been the ally by default of the autocrats.  We have a ministry called the Ministry of Religious Endowments that builds these mosques and appoints the preachers and gives them salaries.  In that sense, there is state control of many mosques.  To establish a mosque of my own like the Ibn Khaldun Center I need a license and these licenses, as I said, are not given easily.  I don't have even a legal license for Ibn Khaldun.  I am doing it as an act of civil disobedience.  So to build a mosque I need a license and the license is in the hands of the Ministry of Endowments, and yet the Ministry of Endowments could not monitor the mosque for 24 hours.  Therefore, radical Islamists can get in, set there, use the facility not only for preaching, but also for other services that help the community, which I have to give them also credit for.  So with their religious message, radicalist maybe, they provide services.

That is a very elaborate scheme, and so far the government has not been able neither to break it nor to grant us equal freedom to do the kinds of things that they are doing as liberals, as democrats.  That is the struggle.

MR. RUBIN:  The last question, as promised, over here.

MR. MASMOUDI:  My name is Radwan Masmoudi.  I'm President of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy here in Washington, D.C.  First, thanks to AEI for organizing this event and bringing these reformers from Arab countries.  I think it's wonderful, and I would urge AEI to continue organizing similar events and also to widen the scope and bring moderate Islamists as well to such debates as Saad Ibrahim.

MR. RUBIN:  Do you have the question, though, because we're running out of time?

MR. MASMOUDI:  Yes, I do.  My question is to Neila, actually.  I've known Neila for many years, but I'm surprised that you said free elections are not the way or is not the way to pacify Muslim societies.  The problem I have with that statement is that for over 30 years Arab regimes have been talking about reforms and democratization and we've been playing this cat and mouse game that we're all tired of this game, and they have many more tools than civil society does or external factors have.  We can't continue down this game of slow reforms where they can really can outdo and undo any reforms that they've done in several years.

So I think we need some kind of shock treatment and I believe free elections is the way to move forward.

MR. RUBIN:  Thank you for asking that question because that's one question I had in my mind after hearing your remarks as well.

MS. CHARCHOUR HACHICHA:  Within long-last autocracies, there is no free independent civil society, so the only organized persons are the Islamists, and if we give them the electoral tool, it's not going to be a democratic response, it's going to be a demogogical response and this is not the issue of democracy.  Giving the electoral tool to people that will impose the sharia?  No.  I think that we need political maturity, the acceptance of democracy, and its rules and then everyone with equal tools can go on the ground of political, how do you say, competition, fair political competition.  But we cannot have on one ground the autocracies that have all the police tools, the military tools, and then the autocrats that have the mosques and we have nothing and go in the same time together on the electoral ground.  This is not fair and not acceptable.

MR. RUBIN:  Dr. Ibrahim, you had a response to that?

DR. IBRAHIM:  Yes.  This is a very important issue because even though I understand the fears and apprehensions of my colleague Neila, yet to dismiss elections for the time being is playing in the hands of the autocrats and I would rather take a risk and open up the system and insist on a free election, on a free competition, I can demand a year or two of liberal freedom to propagate my idea.  But to say if I have an election now, the Islamists will take over or the autocrats will cheat again, that means you are freezing the situation forever.  You are playing in the hands of the autocrats and the theocrats.

MS. CHARCHOUR HACHICHA:  No, I think there are priorities.  The priority is freedom of speech.  Give us the same fair platform to speak.  You cannot have the maximum platform, from the other hand the autocrats have the maximum platform while we don't have any and then go, we don't have the same tools to go through elections.  First to have national debates and pacify the Muslim society because there is anger, there is anger.  You know, in autocracies we don't product reformers and we don't produce reforms, we produce dissent and dissidents.  We have the democrats in the middle, we have the autocracy and the theocracy.  We have first to pacify all these relations, end up with the anger and then we can go through free elections.  Otherwise it will be manipulation.

MR. RUBIN:  I think we have a lot that can be discussed on that single issue, but what I'm going to do is say before we break for 3 minutes, in our forthcoming panel, all of the speakers speak English, but for the sake of nuance, two of our speakers are going to be speaking in Arabic and so if you don't already have your headsets, please pick them up and we will start in 3 minutes exactly.

[Break.]

MR. RUBIN:  I want to thank everyone and welcome you back to the second panel where we're going to be talking about both Yemen, and we have a special treat in which we're also going to talk about Kuwait because we were able to get Rola Dashti here.  We couldn't have her come too close to the conclusion of her campaign because her real priority is over in Kuwait and not in the United States, of course.

What I'd also like to do is ask people on the side of the room to move to the center, we'd appreciate it, while I make the introductions.

Again, I'm honored to be sitting on a podium with Hafez Al-Bukari, Ali Saif and Rola Dashti.  Even though we're going to do Hafez and Ali first, I'll do the introductions ladies first.  It's with great pleasure that I introduce Rola Dashti.  Her full biography is before you in the packet, but let me highlight a couple of issues.  I was in Saudi Arabia last year and I woke up early with jet lag, went out and got a newspaper and opened the newspaper and what should I see?  A picture of Rola Dashti standing on a podium at a women's rights rally in Kuwait.  Rola Dashti is aside from being a backgammon shark, is the first woman elected as head of a professional association in Kuwait, and she running to be the first woman elected in Kuwait in the elections next year.  An active campaigner, and not only running for herself, Rola Dashti has been coordinating and aiding the campaigns of other women candidates not only in Kuwait, but also helping to advance women's rights throughout the Arabian Peninsula.

Now I'd like to introduce Ali Saif Hassan.  Ali Saif Hassan I'd known for many months by Email.  You will see his paper about dissent and reform in Yemen in the packet as well.  It's an excellent essay about specific items and impediments to dissent and reform in Yemen which while many in the audience may not realize is such a key issue right now, it is especially as Yemen like Egypt recently, like the Palestinian Authority, is entering elections.  They will have elections this fall.  Ali Saif is Executive Director of the Political Development Forum in Sanaa, Yemen.  He is also an adviser to the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation.  He is an independent political and human rights activists.  He renounced his membership in the Unionist Nasserite Party.  I want to say that the Political Development Forum is as close as you can come to an independent space where intellectuals can meet, network and really exchange ideas in a country where, for example, the Supreme Court head is also the brother of the President and everything is tightly controlled.

I also do want to introduce Hafez Al-Bukari.  Hafez Al-Bukari is a living example of just how important dissent, reform and boldness is.  He recently wrote about impediments to dissent and reform in Yemen and was promptly fired from the newspaper at which he wrote for his actions, for having the bold, the audacity from the Yemeni government point of view, to actually address issues head on.  Hafez Al-Bukari also has started the Yemeni Polling Institute and has been the head of the journalist's syndicate, although he resigned his presidency of that when Yemen passed a press law which was highly restrictive.  I had the pleasure of attending in Gdansk, Poland, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Solidarity at which Hafez spoke before people like Lech Walesa and others who have been through this 20 years ago and really wowed the audience.  People came up him afterwards to talk about a case which is vitally important but which too many people in the West don't pay attention to.

Without further ado, I want to turn the floor first to Hafez, then to Ali and then to Rola.  Hafez and Ali will be speaking in Arabic, although if you want to ask questions in English afterwards, they do understand English well and you can talk to them in English or in Arabic.  Thank you.

MR. AL-BUKARI:  [Through interpreter.]  Thank you very much.  I will talk very briefly about the political reforms and the democratic reforms in Yemen and I will focus on what is pertaining to the freedom of the press, freedom of the media, and my colleague here, Ali Saif will talk about political reform in-depth.

Yemen has known democracy with the Union of Yemen in 1990, the Unification of Yemen, and that is a freedom of the press only for the written or read newspapers.  However, the government is monopolizing the media, the TV and radios.  In Yemen we are in dire need to communicate to the society in Yemen.  We have 65 percent illiteracy in Yemen and, therefore, we cannot reach out to this society unless we have access to TVs and radios, heard and viewed media, if you will.

If we spoke about elections in Yemen, sometimes we have some elections especially in the Parliament or municipalities.  However, to reach out to the society it is also hard to the candidates since the press is the only forum through which voices can be communicated and outreach can happen.  Newspapers, for instance, have a circulation of 30,000 per newspaper, and of course they are not really fully participating in the political process. 

We also add to the other difficulty related to the weakness of political parties and civil society organizations.  In Yemen the parties are still emerging and simple and they don't have a structure that allows them to reach out to people and to empower them and to have a change.

The third point related to the obstacles or the difficulties that are facing the democratization process in Yemen is the following.  The lack of real institutions of the state and the absence of law and order.  The average citizen doesn't have an opportunity to find his rights whether it is with respect to democracy or to live in a fair and balanced manner.  We notice here that we are dealing with two important points.  The state and the authorities only deal with the tribes because this is a tribal community or tribal society, and the tribe is very well present in Yemen, and also they deal with the foreign or the outside.  The sheikhs of the tribes have positions in the state and in the parliament and they represent also in institutions of commerce and the great financial institutions. 

When the average citizen in Yemen has some injustice or wants to complain, he doesn't know where to go because the justice system, the judicial system, is still weak there.  But if this citizen is from a strong tribe, they can press on the government in several ways.  Some of the ways of putting pressure and exerting pressure is to kidnap foreigners.  Here the tribes have resorted to the influence to terrorize the state with something that the state fears, that is, to kidnap the foreigners because our authorities are very well interested in the outside opinion or the opinions of the foreign or the international community.

Indeed, the journalists in Yemen are at the forefront and they were at the forefront of the initiative to find a real movement toward democracy and they were subject to many pressures and to many of the apprehensions and detentions and prisons with unfair sentences that were inflicted on them.  Now the freedom of the press in Yemen is subject to a very harsh attack and campaign from the authorities.  I say now, and I'm talking here today, we have seven newspapers that were closed in Yemen because they dealt with issues of liberties and issues of freedom.

The question that poses itself now, we are asking ourselves many times, is the West and the Americans in particular serious in dealing with democracy in the region, whether in Yemen or other places, are the U.S. officials when they are talking to the Arab officials, whether Yemenis, Saudis, Libyans or Tunisians, are they letting these officials, their counterparts feel that they are very serious in dealing with democracy and they are assessing the performance and that this is an important and principal parameter, or the U.S. officials deal with the Arab officials about also the monopoly of media and the political reforms or they deal with them only and they try only to blackmail the regimes?  We want to bring this and voice this to the attention of our officials.  We want to let them--that this is a core issue and that this interest should not be abandoned.

I thank you all and I thank AEI for this opportunity.

[Applause.]

MR. RUBIN:  Thank you, Hafez.  Before we continue with Ali, I want to highlight that one of the strengths of both Hafez and Ali and part of their boldness in what they're fighting against in Yemen is many countries, Yemen included, have understood the rhetoric of democracy if not always the substance, and when it comes to civil society, instead of having nongovernmental organizations, they've established what many people are starting to call GONGOs, government-operated nongovernmental organizations.  But both Hafez and Ali have been at the forefront of demanding truly independent civil society and that is why their messages, their precise messages about the situation in Yemen, are so important to hear.

With that I'm going to turn the floor over to Ali Saif to talk a little bit about his research which again is included in your packets.

MR. HASSAN:  Peace be with you.  Here I begin.  Reform in Yemen is not a matter of voluntary work, but it's a matter of life or death.  We have nothing else except to have democracy.  We do not have the time to talk much and to debate about the necessity of reform.  Reform has become a matter of death or life and we do not choose it.

Unless we succeed, we, the Yemeni people, being serious about this democracy and reform, then there will be something which we warn our friends the Americans according to the American institution that in the year 2004 the institute in America said in particular in the report that the administration in the USA has to prevent changing Yemen into a failure.  If we fail in getting democracy, then there will be something quite different which we didn't want and this was declared quite frankly by the President of the World Bank on his visit to Yemen, and I believe it was the first time for the World Bank President to say when he said to our government, we do not have the time.  When your country comes to complete failure, you'll find yourselves alone and nobody will stand beside you.  These warnings coming from responsible people is the writing on the wall and the ringing of the bell which says that reform is nothing voluntary to choose.

So why do we have all these warnings?  What is the danger against Yemen?  Yemen has a strategic challenge which I call it's the case of terror in Yemen.  When we listen to important peace speakers in Yemen, they will never be able to take a nice sleep without thinking of this equation.  On the first side of the equation there is something which says the depletion of the natural resources which is water in Yemen, water is about to deplete in Yemen completely.  Yemen after today will never be the happy Yemen or the green Yemen as is known in history.  Depletion of oil as well and all the other natural resources will deplete.  On the other side we find that there is an explosion of the population which is the highest in percentage among all the countries of the world.  So what can we do when we have this depletion of the natural resources on one side and the explosion of people?

We have a corrupt governing system.  This is the description I can say according to the Yemeni Parliament Member when he met when the government tried to present a program for reform and the Prime Minister said that the present is quite corrupt and we have to change something immediately.  This equation stayed as it is.  No change happened at all.  In such a situation I will say that we are in bad need to participate, all of us to participate with all of the Yemeni people to find a way out, a reform, so that every Yemeni will be able to present whatever he has to face this great danger, these problems and challenges.

This is a cry so that you will hear it.  Why should I worry you with the failure of Yemen in governing itself?  For one simple reason, Yemen is our nation, the Yemeni people will fail, will not collapse.  The country may collapse, but the present, but all the citizens of Yemen will never collapse.  There is about 26 million people.  These people will not collapse and wait for death.  No.  They will leave the place, they will go to everywhere looking for a solution in order to continue living, and when they do--

[End Tape 1, Side 2, begin Tape 2.]

MR. HASSAN:  [In progress.] [Through interpreter.] --a justification for me to say that this is a cry, a cry calling for people to wake up.  When Yemeni people go everywhere you have to be careful.

Two years ago I raised this cry and I wrote this paper before you in detail after the industrial countries' summit and Ali Saleh, the President of Yemen participated and the paper was discussed.  Everybody heard him, the elites in Yemen, heard him and there was a kind of interaction and a dialogue about the determinants that control the process.

I would hope today that I would do the same thing again, but I want to draw your attention as friends and neighbors for the reform of Yemen as a necessity.  As a result of the discussions during the past 2 years there was an agreement on certain points by the political elite and there is still a great disagreement to diagnose the nature of the political process in Yemen.  Until now we do not have democracy.  We are establishing that political system in Yemen, and I use the word composing, composing governance in Yemen that's important which I borrowed from geometry and music alike, because what we need is to bring about every component of the natural governing system.  I want to compose them together and put it in the right place, and this means composing governance.  It has a skill and talent involved in it.

Right now in this phase we discuss in Yemen how to compose this governance, and I'll put four items and in as important.  First, the nature of the political system, is it parliamentary or presidential?  We have something in between without an identity, no responsibilities.  We do not have anybody who would govern power from the upper hands of the country.  There is a kind of paralysis in the country, and the question is, it does not have to do the present President of the country, but it's  about the system itself for any coming president of the country.  So as I said in the paper, I say I tend to believe in the parliamentary system because it's more conforming with what the country needs and for composing governance.

The second problem is the election process.  We talk about the worst kind of dialogue about the elections in Yemen, and the systems are now tailored to control the country in order to stay in power, the elections, in order to continue the regime and not to change the regime.  The suggested system which I proposed which is a system depending on the percentages of the different people.

The third point is the independence of the judiciary system.  Until today the courts are not independent.  All the powers and the components of governance say that it's not free, it's not democratic, and this is a great gap in the political system and we cannot leave it.

The fourth point which is very sensitive as well and difficult to talk about is the role of the military power in order to keep a politically democratic system.  They are well respected and I think they have a good role to play, but this role is no longer acceptable as a politically democratic system.

All these issues, no one party, no one entity can impose it and say that this is the only one suitable for the country.  What I'm saying is that we have to discuss all this so as to include all the powers and tribes in the country so that it becomes a national issue.

I repeat again where I started once again, I will say thank you very much and I greet you all.  Yemen which is rich in its history and beautiful in its varieties deserves your care and your participation.  Thank you very much.

[Applause.]

MR. RUBIN:  I want to thank Ali.  There's just one issue I want to bring out of his talk.  When you're in a situation where you're discussing such basic issues as what system of governance there should be, parliamentary or presidential, is a sign of just how important reform is, because what you're fundamentally talking about is a system as Ali also said where there's not clear separation of powers.  I just wanted to highlight that one issue before I move on we flip to the other side of the Arabian Peninsula to bring in Rola Dashti to give her talk.  Before she does, I do want to highlight that while not in your packets, outside that you can pick up is a brief essay or paper that she's written, Freedom and Liberty Will Not Be Hijacked by Extremists.  I urge you on your way out if you have not already picked it up to do so.  With that I turn the floor over to Rola.

MS. DASHTI:  Thank you, Michael.  Good morning, everybody.  May 16, 2005, may just be another day for you, but Kuwaiti women it's a day of recognition of being citizens.  It's a day to our road to freedom and liberty.  It was a day where we won our first battle against the ideology of radical extremists and terrorists.  It's a day when women of Kuwait got their political right to run and vote for Parliament after 40 years of struggle, a struggle that was not easy.  Yes, we were not terrorized physically, but we were continuously terrorized psychologically and socially.

Why?  Because radical extremists didn't like us opposing their line of thinking.  Radical Islamists wanted to limit our freedom, control our future and our destiny.  They wanted to confine our role to cooking, cleaning and being subservient to men.  We refused these extremists to marginalize us and demanded that women should have an active role in public life, contribute to society and be granted her constitutional rights.

Friends, because this is the role we fought for ourselves, we were continuously being terrorized in the name of Islam as being antireligion, antifamily, destroyer of social fabric, antipatriotic and agents of the West.  The Muslim Brotherhood for the last 15 years used Islam when it came to women's issues to terrorize us on these issues.  I don't know I can engage them.  When it comes to women, I can't trust them a bit.  They have to learn about democracy.

For a closed society like Kuwait, social and psychological terrorism is as bad as physical terrorism, if not worse.  Let me tell you a personal story.   I'm an only daughter, and my mother who supports me like a lot of mothers who like to protect their children kept telling me, Rola, you don't need these assaults.  I don't need these attacks.  They are powerful, strong and they can destroy you.  The government is with them.  Nothing will change in our country.  Don't waste your time.  Rola, in a nutshell, I don't want you to be hurt.  I don't want to lose you.  But my answer to my mother was always, mom, I love you, but I cannot be a number in a census.  I cannot be keeping these extremists to control my life and determine my destiny.  I can't have these extremists to hijack the hope of all mothers for a better future for their girls.  I can't have these extremists to control and limit the aspirations of our young daughters.  We deserve better and we will change and things will change, and we will win.

Yes, with our determination, courage and perseverance we won our first battle against the ideology of the radicalists and things started to change.  But winning a battle is not enough.  We need to win the war against the radicalists, Islamists and terrorists who not only oppress women, but they embrace extremism as a mode of thinking.  They embrace enclosure as a way of life.  They embrace terrorism as a mode to conflict resolution.  We need to deepen democracy in our region.  We need to ensure that women have an active role in public participation.  We cannot afford these extremists who are a minority in our country to determine the lives and the destinies of the majority and to terrorize innocent individuals in the world.

Friends, I'll tell you something.  As a young activist and freedom fighter from the Arab world who is being continuously terrorized by these extremist Islamists, I'll tell you that our courage, will, determination, and you saw it among my friends, to change, and with your support and continuous support we will win the battle and the war against these radical Islamists.  And the principles which Dani has talked to you about that you uphold of liberty, justice and freedom which we aspire to will prevail in our region and the world.

Thank you very much for your continuous support.  God bless America and the Arab region.

[Applause.]

MR. RUBIN:  The fourth person on the panel is Kanan Makiya, but I'm going to hold off introducing him until we can take some questions and answers.  Kanan, who actually needs very little introduction will give the closing remarks.  In the mean time, what I'd like to do is reiterate what we said before, we have plenty of time for questions and answers.  Ask a single question, identify yourself, your affiliation and your name and keep the question brief.  The old Jeopardy! rule, always make your statement in the form of a question.

With that, please wait for the microphone, and the first question in front.

MR. LIAMI:  My name is Ali Liami [ph] from the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, so I deal with the hornet's nest myself.

I want to go some remarks that Dr. Ibrahim said earlier and others about including the Islamists and talking to them.  I think talking to the Islamists is a good thing to do.

MR. RUBIN:  In the phrase of a question.

MR. LIAMI:  In the phrase of a question, I think if we have to wait until they become democrats, we will wait another 14 centuries before they become democrats to respect women's rights, religious minority rights, Jewish rights and Christian rights.  So I think there should not be a big issue in starting democratization in the Arab world.

The question is to the Yememis here, my neighbors.  They just claim a few minutes ago I came from the South, so they said that still belonged to them.  I got an Email from a Yemeni woman the other day saying that Yemen is being Wahabized, Tawhep or Tohibi [?].  Saudi Arabia is taking over the Yemeni tribes, paying them lots of money and turning them into Wahabis.  Is this true?  Or what is the impact of Saudi role in Yemen and democracy?

MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.  Ali or Hafez?

MR. HASSAN:  [Untranslated.]

MR. RUBIN:  Hafez?

MR. AL-BUKARI:  [Untranslated.]

MR. RUBIN:  What I'd like to do is take a question over there.  Again, brief, your name and your affiliation.

MR. ABUZAKUK:  My name is Aly Abuzakuk, the Program Officer at the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, and I live in America.

For Ms. Rola, 6 months ago I attended a lecture by Mr. Ismail Shati at Carnegie.  He was one that I think is speaking of the moderate Islamists in Kuwait, and he said he is for women's rights, human rights and all the issues that we are working for, aggregating all of them together as if they only represent one voice I think misses the point.  There are radicals among the Islamists as there radicals among also the secularists.  We are for the centrists who should make the society available for everybody to participate.  We are against the denial of rights, and I think I would like to see your reaction for that and about Mr. Shati who is one of the leaders I think of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait.

MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.

MS. DASHTI:  Thank you, Mr. Aly.  Yes, Mr. Shati is one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait.  The Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait worked against granting women political rights.  I don't know the hypocrisy he could come to the U.S. and he says we advocate women's political rights and we support women, but when things come to reality, they voted against.  We didn't get their support.  They voted against women.  They kept using Islam to blame us and tell us that you are antireligion.  This is the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait what they did.

This is our experience.  This history is documented.  They kept telling us we are tafara [?] because we asked for women's political rights.  This is what it is in Kuwait.  I'm not saying anything else.  I've been 15 years harassed and assaulted by this.  I've been bashed personally.  I've not personally for me.  It doesn't matter, Rola Dashti, but if using Islam to confine women to the roles of cooking and being subservient, this is not Islam.  I want them to preach what Islam.  Let them walk the talk.  What we are seeing is not walking the talk.  This is the problem.  And you tell me Islam, I want to see if someone walk the talk of Islam when it comes to women in the Arab world.  It's not.  It's unfortunate that it's not.  They can say everything they want, but when they act, they don't act properly.  They can speak.  I didn't see his vote in the Parliament or his group of people in the Parliament saying women should have the political rights, women should engage in politics, women should have a public life.

I'll tell you we made a survey of the political rights.  We asked some of them and they said we are against women's political rights.  We asked the question, Do you think there are capable women to be a member of the Parliament?  Fifty percent of these people said yes.  We said, What do you expect the qualifications of women to be in the Parliament?  They listed some qualifications.  Then we asked them, If a women has all these qualifications, would you vote for her?  Ninety percent of them said no.  We don't have a space.  They don't believe in women having a space.  There is an ideological problem and we are fighting for it.  It's our battle.  We'll fight for the battle.  We are taking the space.  It's not like an easy thing.  It's a war we're engaging with them.  They don't see a space for women.  This is the problem.  Societies will not evolve, we cannot progress.  We are an ideological struggle between modernity in the Arab world and between these extremists who want to--you know how you know if the Arab world is progressing?  When women empowerment and the role of women in society has been settled, you know we are going in the right direction or we're going in the wrong direction.  Women are--

[Applause.]

MR. RUBIN:  Kanan, did you want to add a few words?

MR. MAKIYA:  A question for Rola.  I'd like to know what the balance of forces was in the Parliament when you won the vote on May 16th?  Who were the forces that voted with women's rights and who against?  If you could just sort of sketch that out I'd appreciate that.

MS. DASHTI:  The liberals voted for women's political rights, the government for voted for women's political rights, and some tribalists who are pro-government MPs voted for women's political rights.

MR. MAKIYA:  You won by what majority?

MS. DASHTI:  We won by 35 against 23.

MR. RUBIN:  A question right here, please.  We can't hear you.  If you'll just say it loud, I'll repeat your question.  I just want to intercede and repeat what you've said so far.  The question is about Islah, the reform party in Yemen.  When the questioner had as an analyst tried to interview them, they didn't really have a position on women, globalization and modernity.  Please continue.  Can you get to the question?  The question is, given that Islah, given that the Yemeni Islamist Party doesn't have positions on such issues as modernity, globalization, women, and that they're one of the largest parties, how can you say that they can be reformists?

MR.          :  [Untranslated.]

MR. RUBIN:  Thank you.  Eleana Gordon?

MS. GORDON:  Eleana Gordon, from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.  Thank you for this panel.  I will try to keep a short question.

To all of you, and I hope Kanan maybe can address it also either now or in his closing remarks, and it has to do with this debate on the role of the place and timing of elections in democracy promotion and the dilemma that I think the United States is facing.  As you know, we don't support political parties in the Middle East or anywhere.  We do support political party training and campaign training, and someone that I knew from the National Democratic Institute once told me that her best students in Morocco were the Islamist parties, and there is also as you've all discussed no grassroots infrastructure for liberals in countries coming out of autocracies.

Should the United States be less neutral?  Is it time for us to think about perhaps taking sides and only training the liberals?  And perhaps should we be considering giving money directly to political parties?

MR. RUBIN:  I'm going to ask Kanan to hold off on that until his closing remarks and turn the question over to our three panelists.

MS. DASHTI:  Yes, we have limited grassroots level as democratic liberals, and this is a problem we do have and we are sorting it out, but there is a history why we didn't have it.  We have been hijacked not to spread our ideology practically because they knew, the autocrats and the leaders of this regime, if we can spread this ideology they can lose power.  And they think by having the Islamists with them in bed, they can control the Islamists not knowing that the Islamists don't cause them a problem now, but Islamists in the long run, their eye is on the leadership.

We want the support of the U.S., no ifs or buts about it.  Now we are fighting a battle.  We don't want someone else to fight our battle.  We're fighting the battle.  We have determination and courage to fight our battle, and we will win.  We will win for the sake of our future, not for anything, not because of power.  It's a future we want to make sure that it is a sustainable future for our nation, it's sustainable that our nation stays.

Strengthening the technicality and the laws and the experience and the support of the U.S. is important.  The U.S. just keeps saying that they embrace democracy and reform in the region and do take action.  It is important to us.  We have been attacked, and Dr. Saad Ibrahim and others have been jailed, and some of them lost their jobs, but we live for this.  We will go through this.  But at least when they see there is a big power behind us also, because it's important.  We can't be people in a region like DCC to spread terrorists.  We can't spread terrorists to the world.  We have to make sure that there is a space that we contain our people, there is a future and hope for our people, and it is important for us your support.

I hope that debate which goes which we hear in the U.S. between Democrats and Republicans or whatever it is, it's your rights, but the message we want to give is that both of you irrespective who is in power, that you support our reform and democracy in our country, you support these democrats and liberals.  This is an important message to us.

If we're fighting ourselves, we don't have our leaders with us, we are being bashed within society, I've been terrorized that we are labeled so many things, and the religion is used against us in the name of Islam.  And if you guys don't support us also, what are we going to--this whole world will become a problem because this region is creating terrorists.  It is creating hatred.  It's unbelievable, the use of the religion is unfortunate.  No religion, neither Islam nor Christianity nor Jewish or any religion which spread hatred, but Islam has been used to spread hatred by these people who strive for power, and we're living with it.  We are the first victims for it, but the whole world is a victim for it and it doesn't work.  And I hope you can give support.  Your support is very important to us.  It gives us some ammunition.  But personal support is very important to us.  We know that we have friends around.  This is important.  And please don't give up on us because of politics.  It's very important.  It's a mission we're taking, but please, I beg, it's very important to us that you keep on supporting us, you keep on sending the message that you are supportive of reformers and liberals in the country.

MR. RUBIN:  I'd like to give Eleana's question to both Hafez and Ali.  The question is, should the United States maintain an even playing field towards political parties in Yemen?  Does overt United States support hurt or help?  To what degree should the United States embrace reformers and democrats in Yemen?

MR. AL-BUKARI:  [Untranslated.]

MR. HASSAN:  [Untranslated.]

MR. RUBIN:  I'm going to take two final questions before introducing Kanan Makiya because AEI does have a very busy day today so we do want to have this end promptly at noon.  With that I'd like to turn the floor over for a brief question to Zainab Al-Suwaij.

MS. AL-SUWAIJ:  My name is Zainab Al-Suwaij.  I'm the Executive Director of the American Islamic Congress.  My question is for Rola.  First, I would like to congratulate you on the great effort and succeeding and getting the women political rights in Kuwait.  My question is for the plans and strategies that you are going to be taking for the next year's election in terms of women nominees and how they are going to get there.

MR. RUBIN:  Rola, if you could keep your answer brief just so we can take the one final question.

MS. DAHTI:  We are encouraging women who are capable in getting into the political life to run for election.  So far we're having 12 women who are planning to run in the election.  We have 25 districts in Kuwait.  So we're planning to have women.  We're starting to strategize in terms of campaign training, and this is where we need the assistance of the U.S., to show that we have a presence and presenting better campaigning, putting our messages, reaching our audiences.  And we're hoping that we'll have women in the Parliament, and we're making all the efforts to get women in the Parliament.

MR. RUBIN:  Then the final question to Claudia Rosett, please.

MS. ROSETT:  I'm Claudia Rosett, Journalist-in-Residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.  There are other powers perhaps not as powerful as the United States but quite active in the Middle East, not least China, Russia, and there's a great deal of discussion about the U.S.  Could I ask our panelists just to tell us, China, Russia, the major powers, also active in your region, what are they doing for good, for evil?  Why are they never mentioned in these discussions?  Thank you.

MR. RUBIN:  For exercise, when I was in Sanaa I used to hike over to the Chinese cemetery at least once a week, and so I'll turn the question over first to Hafez and Ali but, again, please keep your answers brief.

MR. AL-BUKARI:  [Untranslated.]

MR. HASSAN:  [Untranslated.]

MR. RUBIN:  I'm actually going to defer the rest of the answers to that question to the next time we have a public panel featuring our reform and dissent participants from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine, because I do want to have enough time to introduce Kanan Makiya.  You have the biography of Kanan Makiya.  He's a professor at Brandeis University, he is the founder of the Iraq Memory Foundation, and he is someone whose intellect grappling with some of these issues has been clear in his writings, not only his more famous books about tyranny, cruelty, silence, in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.  One of my most favorite books of Kanan's I re-read recently was the re-published version of I believe it was The Monument which was a study of architecture and art with regard to tyranny.

But some of my more fond memories of Kanan before moving on were seeing Kanan on his hands and knees going through the basement of the tomb of Michel Aflaq, extricating documents which had been hidden there so that he can publicize them to the world and so that people can have open intellectual rights to look at such things, and also, one of those issues which wasn't really covered in all the reporting about Iraq because it didn't happen in the Green Zone.  A lot of people know about Al-Iraqia Television which isn't the greatest of success stories at least in its early years.  But as satellite dishes were coming to Baghdad, only the rich or more affluent people at first could afford them which meant that what was on Al-Iraqia even if not all the intellectuals saw it, the taxi drivers saw it, the bus drivers saw it, and Kanan Makiya had boldly produced one of the first documentaries about the crimes of al-Anfal, the ethnic cleansing, the genocide of the Kurdish people in Northern Iraq and in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1988.  This was broadcast after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and just hearing about people coming up to the streets, people who didn't know what happened in Iraqi Kurdistan being exposed to now we understand because of you, a recognized celebrity on the street, of the tyranny, of the cruelty, of just what happened in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, that to me encapsulates Kanan Makiya.

So without further ado, and I apologize for my nontraditional introduction, I'd like to turn the floor over to Kanan for closing remarks about dissent and reform in the Arab world.

MR. MAKIYA:  Michael, that's far too generous, thank you very much, and in that glowing introduction, Michael left out his own very important role in helping the Iraq Memory Foundation gain access to what we now have is 11 million pages of digitized Baath Party documents that came from the basements of the Baath Party Headquarters building, and were it not for people like Michael steering us through the complicated machinations of the bureaucracy in those days, we might not have gotten the various permissions needed to relocate those documents, take care of them, start scanning them and so on.  So, thank you.  That's something I too will never forget.

Dissent and reform are what we have been talking about all morning.  The assumption has been it seems to me on the part of all of us this morning that these are sort of synonyms, these words run into one another, and the gist of my comments, my closing remarks, will be to say to pause at each one of these two words, dissent and reform, and suggest that they are quite different, different tasks and responsibilities and consequences follow from looking at and pausing at these words, and trying to figure out where we are in the Arab world in the march towards democracy.

I think indirectly my comments will answer the point that Eleana asked or the question that Eleana asked, but let's begin with dissent.  I will use an anecdote.  Anecdotes come to me easily from the Iraqi experience, but the intention is a general one.  There is a pseudonymous Iraqi writing on the Internet these days whose name is Shalish [ph].  He is the equivalent of this country's Mark Twain.  He is a great humorist, satirist, lampooner, of modern Iraqi politics.  We've had nobody like Shalish in Iraqi politics for something like 60, 70, 50 years.  I can only think of two names that come up to the quality of Shalish, Habas Boos [ph], those of you Iraqis may remember this name, or Aziz Ali [ph], the singer who used to develop these incredibly witting songs that would lampoon authority, lampoon society, point out and look self-critically at the internal ills of society.  Shalish is of that ilk.  He writes in colloquial Iraqi Arabic so it's very hard for people from Algeria, Yemen and so on to understand him unless you know the Iraqi accent.  He has an article virtually every day.  And I have conducted Email conversations.  He doesn't know who I am and I don't know who he is.  But his most recent lampoon just the other day was a critique of a very prominent Iraqi politician whose name I shall not mention because I am not [inaudible] here who, however, had the decency prior to the appearance of this lampoon, had actually written to Shalish to say, look, I'm a great admirer of.  By the way, Shalish is extremely widely read, and now for the first time people are writing about Shalish's writings.  So you have articles even appearing in [inaudible] also for the first time recognizing the importance of Shalish.  Shalish is a phenomena.  Shalish is not just one amongst hundreds and thousands of new writers that have blossomed in the last 3 years.

So this Iraqi politician writes to Shalish saying I urge you.  You're doing a good thing even though you are lambasting this new Iraqi political elite that emerged after 2003.  So Shalish immediately responds the next day.  He can't help himself.  He lampoons this guy.  He comes up with a devastating article that must have the poor man cringing.  It only appeared 2 or 3 days ago.

However, the central point here is, or one of the important point is, Shalish is a pseudonym, it's not the guy's real name, and you can't write Shalish is writing if it were not as a pseudonym.  He is hilariously funny.  It's incredible satire.  You cannot help buy laugh at these pieces, even when they're ridiculous, I mean when they don't make sense, but nevertheless very funny.

And something else about Shalish is that he only uses the Internet, and every day on the Internet he is out there with an article and every day hundreds and thousands of people are reading Shalish, and not just Shalish, but thousands of other Iraqis who are using the Internet today to write in a way that represents a blossoming of dissidents, to come back to the first word, that we have not seen at all that is a product that is truly one of the great products of the 2003 overthrow of the Saddam regime.

I bring him up because he is an epitome of what all of these people on this panel today and on the earlier panel are, namely, dissidents, and it epitomizes the meaning of dissidence.  Dissidence operates on culture.  It operates not directly on politics.  The last thing in the world you would ever want is for Mr. Shalish, whoever he is, to become a politician because that would destroy the man.  I mean, just imagine Mark Twain having to be a Secretary of State or something like that.  It just doesn't work, but you need a Shalish to suggest now that something is happening in culture that has not happened before.  So Shalish is not a politician, but he is absolutely an epitome of what we are talking about of dissidence in a culture, of a culture starting for the first time to reflect upon itself, to look at itself humorously, critically and so on.

What about reform?  Reform, by contrast with dissidence of this nature, is it seems to me an altogether different animal.  It operates