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Dr. Walid Phares
One Wall Falls, Another Rises
November 12, 2009
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a benchmark
that made an impression on me, as it did on millions
of people around the world. The sight of thousands
of East Germans pouring into West Berlin,
particularly the youths who had never experienced
freedom before, was a surreal scene not only for the
people of Europe, but also for those of us born in
the Middle East.
Westerners looked with shock at the
peoples of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union
surging against totalitarianism. Central Europeans
stared with awe at the countries who never
surrendered their liberties to Communism. Soviet
propaganda told Western Europe for many years that
the comrades on the other side of the Iron Curtain
were happy with their status and wanted nothing to
do with the West and its "bourgeois" freedoms.
During those November days twenty years ago, the
free world learned that behind the wall of shame,
people wanted nothing more than freedom. The
apologist machine lied for decades. The Soviet
peoples were similarly indoctrinated by the Marxist
version of madrassas to believe that America and
NATO were at war with the proletariat and were
plotting to destroy the great achievements of Stalin
and his successors. None of that was real, and the
long-fooled citizens on both sides of the separation
line came together to celebrate freedom.
The day when the Wall came down in Berlin, I and
many other advocates for liberty in the greater
Middle East hoped to see the wave of liberation hit
our shores too. The region's peoples had been
suffering from totalitarianism fully as much as the
Soviet bloc's nations throughout the twentieth
century. But unlike the luckier societies rising to
freedom in Europe, the populations south and east of
the Mediterranean had been oppressed nonstop for
centuries and ignored by the international community
during the Cold War.
As newly freed communities shattered the wall and
burst into West Berlin to experience human freedom,
all imaginable forms of oppression were striking the
Arab world and Iran. In Sudan, in addition to a
horrific genocide unrecognized by the United
Nations, thousands of Africans were taken into
slavery. In Algeria, the Berber Kabyle minority was
suppressed; in Mauritania, southern blacks were
living in servitude; in Egypt, Copts were
assassinated; in Iraq, Kurds were gassed and Shia
buried in mass graves; in Iran, minorities
brutalized and youth harassed; in Libya, dissidents
were tortured; the Syrian regime occupied most of
Lebanon and massacred thousands of Sunnis in Hama.
The list is too long to exhaustively review. We
hoped the tidal wave of post-Soviet democracy would
smash authoritarianism in the Middle East. How lucky
were the people of Berlin, Prague, and Warsaw to
live those exhilarating moments.
But the wall that came down in the heart of Germany
freed only Europe. The peoples to the south weren't
so lucky. Worse, another wall, thicker than the Iron
Curtain, was erected to isolate oppressed
populations of the region even further. Oil regimes
and Jihadists had no intention to release the
captive nations to freedom soon. As Soviet tanks
withdrew from Eastern Europe, Syrian armor invaded
East Beirut, Saddam's divisions marched into Kuwait,
and political prisoners filled dozens of the Abu
Ghraib prisons in the region. It took twelve years
for a Western coalition to free the peoples in the
region in response to 9/11. Afghans enjoyed the
crumbling of the Taliban in 2001, Iraqis got rid of
Saddam's Baath in 2003, and Lebanon witnessed the
end of Syrian occupation in 2005. Regardless of the
often uninformed debates within the West, civil
societies still in chains hoped to obtain freedom:
Darfur's genocide was finally recognized, women's
apartheid noticed, and human rights abuses
registered at last in Washington and Brussels.
However, as the world celebrates the 20th
anniversary of the Berlin miracle this week, the
underdogs in the Middle East are losing hope at a
dizzying rate, especially as the U.S.
administration, whose leadership ran on the slogan
of "Hope," is engaging dictatorships and Jihadists
instead of reaching out to the democrats of the
region.
In Cairo, President Obama pledged to abandon
the struggle for democracy in the Middle East in
return for acquiring the "respect" of the
authoritarians. In Accra, the intervention to save
Darfur was cast aside. When millions of youths
demonstrated in Tehran, Washington retreated from
"meddling" in this struggle for freedom. Reformers
lost their U.S. donations, and instead of engaging
dissidents, the Obama administration is stubbornly
trying to cut deals with the oppressive forces in
the region.
Hence, when the U.S. President doesn't attend
Berlin's celebrations, it makes sense, as his
administration is abandoning the underdogs in the
Middle East. Mr. Obama has no speech to deliver in
Berlin, for the next wall to be torn down is being
built in the shade of the new U.S. policy. |
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