TUNIS, Tunisia — Just below the surface in the Middle East, new and promising changes are occurring quietly here that may well lead to the true transformation of the region--a transformation that many have so long hoped for.
I recognized the first one during a visit here when I was chatting with several Arab and Asian Muslim diplomats during a reception.
When the conversation turned to Kosovo, as it does everywhere these days, one astute ambassador remarked: "The war is having a great effect on the Muslim world. For the first time, the Western world is fighting for them." The others nodded with enthusiasm and with an agreement rare in the fractious and traditionally suicidal Middle East. The idea of the Judeo-Christian West, long perceived here as colonialist and as anti-Islamic, actually fighting for the Muslims against an Orthodox Serbian Christian state had rarely come up during the crisis. And so, the next day, I asked Abdelbaki Hermassi, Tunisia's astute minister of culture and a world-class social scientist, about the effect of the West's intervention in Kosovo on behalf of the Muslims.
"For the first time since the Gulf War, in the Arab world we may be on the threshold of a turnaround," he answered thoughtfully. "The Arab world has always suffered from the past legacy of colonialism and from one-sidedness in the Middle East situation. To see the West, led by the United States, willing to fight extremism in its own back yard, is something that reinforces ideas that the West fights also for principle.
"It's healing some of the old wounds."
Other officials outlined additional reasons, some clear and some still unclear, that the Kosovo air campaign is having this good effect. Most of the present Arab governments have fought against Muslim fundamentalists, for instance, and they see the Serbs' "ethnic cleansing" as something that could once again evoke extreme fundamentalist passions against them.
Indeed, here in Tunisia, a progressive country of 9 million that symbolizes real human development in the area, any hesitation about the Kosovo operation was laid to rest some weeks ago when the government took the unusual step of sending a field hospital to help the Kosovar refugees. This act in effect constituted Tunisia's publicly allying itself with the NATO mission, and it effectively silenced some of the extremists who still identify with Iraq and Libya.
The second big change that reveals the change of spirit that the Kosovo crisis has called forth in the region lies in the new lineup of leaders that stretches from Israel across more and more of the Arab world.
Whether you look at Ehud Barak (a former general), the new moderate Labor prime minister of Israel; or the new monarch of Jordan, the young King Abdullah (a former brigadier general); or Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (a former air force pilot and officer); or Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (the former head of national security), you can see the change, both in style and in substance.
All of these leaders are practical, down-to-Earth military and/or security men with a pragmatic interest in peace and an active awareness of the economic imperative that is seen as the answer to the problems of the region. They are men who are oriented to results, not rhetoric; to progress, not power alone; and to rational popular representation in place of the former irrational identification with the "great leader." And almost all of them succeed leaders (Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Habib Bourguiba here) who were extreme nationalists.
When, for instance, I asked Egyptian President Mubarak last year what was the happiest time of his life, he reflected the practical bent of these new leaders. He did not speak a word about nationalism, and he eschewed rhetoric. Instead, he thought for a moment and then said, "When I was a pilot." Then he spoke at some length about his favorite "Toshki Project" in the south, which is to divert water from Lake Nasser and carry it across the Nile to create a huge new agricultural and industrial zone.
There was something touching about his answers: They were the answers of a practical man who believes not in nationalistic words but in realistic acts to defend and to build his country.
Moreover, the countries that have, until now, been mired in extremism are turning away from it--and turning toward the example of these moderate nations and their leadership style. Algeria is turning away from its fundamentalist slaughter, with a newly elected president who says, "We are a sick country; we must learn from others." Libya has recently made overtures of change toward the outside world, and even hard-line Syria seeks rapprochement with its moderate neighbors, while more and more in the Arab world one sees a realistic, and not xenophobic, assessment of the formerly despised Israel's role and dynamics in the region.
So, yes, it can be a new moment in the Middle East, fueled by the war in Kosovo but also supported by the ascension to power of mature men and even a few women. In fact, this is the way that nations always change and develop. It is really quite simple: These leaders are representing people who are themselves being educated and who are maturing.