Democracies in the Arab world: the least bad option – The Guardian

She said that countries that were once considered rich, their economies have declined due to the failure of their leaders and the Covid-19 crisis. The Guardian set an example in Lebanon, saying its leaders are now “begging” for foreign aid after the collapse in the value of the local currency and shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

He also reported the results of a United Nations survey that divided the Arab world into 4 sections: the rich Gulf countries, a group of middle-income countries that have more populations than their oil reserves can support. comfortably, and war zones in some of the bigger countries like Iraq, in addition to very poor countries.

The Guardian said the oil-rich Gulf states are advancing and using their financial and military influence to expand their influence, believing this “generally leads to catastrophic results.”

The newspaper quoted the United Nations as saying that the Arab region is home to more than six million refugees and more than 11 million internally displaced people. and that there is little coordinated action to address the many social challenges, including increasing poverty, unemployment, persistent gender inequality and widespread food insecurity.

She also noted that COVID-19 is a major challenge in the region. The Arab region, according to the Guardian, has more urban slum dwellers than Latin America and the Caribbean, but with fewer hospital beds and half the number of doctors per 10,000 people.

Returning to dictatorship, the Guardian said that the region’s dictatorships, named Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, had partly responded to the crisis: in Egypt, cash transfer programs helped a million people, while the United Arab Emirates have granted leave to state employees with young children. with full pay.

The newspaper adds that the economic model, which relies on high levels of imports offset by the dollar from oil and tourism, has remained unchanged. This resulted in external debt crises and disparities against which the population revolted.

The Guardian said: “Change is needed, but dictatorship is the reason Arab countries have found themselves in this chaos. “

She stressed that governments remain in the hands of an elite to whom power is transferred by heredity in many cases, and these elites wonder “if democracy is compatible with Islam.”

The Guardian reminded protesters of the protesters’ anger with their governments last year and calls on Iraq, Lebanon and Algeria to change regimes. In 2019, the uprisings in Algeria and Sudan ended with the ousting of their leaders, she said, “bringing to six the number of people expelled by street protests since 2011”.

The newspaper pointed out that Arab regimes believe they can dispel such threats by tightening their grip. But the newspaper felt that only postpones the day of the accounts.

The Guardian found that a peaceful transition to a different society and economy is not easy. However, “democracy is necessary in the Arab world for good governance and the checks and balances it brings”.

It also provides “the least bad mechanism for power sharing in complex pluralistic societies”. She considered that there was no alternative to this. She concluded her editorial by saying: “The paradoxical idea that a dictatorship can produce good is not a solution to the problems of the Arab world.

We turn to The Independent and an article by its chief correspondent in the United States, Andrew Buncombe, entitled: “Afghanistan: Inside Joe Biden’s Decision to End America’s Longest War”.

The author begins his article with details of a private dinner hosted by Joe Biden a few weeks after being sworn in as Barack Obama’s Vice President in 2009, at the site of his official residence in Washington, DC. discussion was Afghanistan.

The author notes that there was complete clarity on the matter: Afghanistan was not a place where Biden believed more Americans should lose their lives.

Barnett Rubin, director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and one of the experts on Afghanistan who was present that evening, told The Independent that Biden said at the time: “Ne don’t tell me we’re here to fix society and so on. We’re not going to use our youth for that. ” .

At this point, the United States had 67,000 troops in Afghanistan, according to the newspaper, but the main United States mission of capturing or killing bin Laden appeared to be a lost cause.

Although America lost around 600 troops in this war, Barack Obama, who had just been sworn in as president, was under intense pressure from his military commanders to send more troops to join the battle, according to The Independent. .

Twelve years later, Boncombe says, Biden found himself president, not someone’s vice president. And that since he held this dinner at the Official Residence until today, a lot has changed. And the number of American casualties has risen to at least 2,372. The cost of the 20 Years War has reached nearly $ 2,000 billion.

The author notes that the Taliban and extremist forces are now reappearing after the United States in 2011 located and killed bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan.

However, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated that “the automatic military takeover (of the country) by the Taliban is not won in advance”, referring to the $ 90 billion. spent on training Afghan security forces, according to the corresponding newspaper.

Buncombe felt that the other main difference is that Joe Biden inherited the US military withdrawal agreement from his predecessor, Donald Trump, who in February 2020 and the Taliban reached an agreement in talks in Qatar, for end the conflict and end America’s withdrawal.

The writer notes that Biden’s stance on Afghanistan was clear during his presidential campaign, where he said in September 2020 that “Americans are fed up with our longest war, and so am I.”

And in April of this year, Biden told the nation he would be bringing troops home despite pressure from key military leaders to keep the remaining 2,500 members to give Afghan forces more time to assume full responsibility. responsibility.

However, in a White House speech, Biden said, “The war in Afghanistan was not meant to be a multigenerational project. We were attacked. We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those goals. . “

The writer considered that another factor that made Biden’s job easier was that because Trump’s main interest in foreign policy was immigration and building a wall on the southern border of the United States, “Americans were able to step away from the shadow of 9/11 and the nationalist obsession with counterterrorism.”

“Biden was able to do what he cared about because the context had changed,” Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle Eastern studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told The Independent. in Washington.