Environment

Development in the Arab world

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Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times about a new report on the obstacles that slow down progress in the Arab world. It’s by the United Nations, and it identifies several key problems in the region. They include: a surging population; struggling economies; weak environments; poor health care; lack of representative government and human rights abuses.

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. President Barrack Obama met with Iraqi’s Prime Minster, Nouri al-Maliki at the White House this afternoon. They talked about the state of the war in Iraq, and the future of the Americas role there. Here’s President Obama after the meeting.

BARACK OBAMA: We seek no bases in Iraq, nor do we make any claim on Iraq’s territory or resources. Going forward, we will continue to provide training and support for Iraqi security forces that are capable and non-sectarian. We’ll move forward with our strategy to responsibly remove all American combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next August. And to fulfill our commitment to remove all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

LISA MULLINS: Earlier in the day, Prime Minster Maliki was in New York, he was at the United Nations. He met there with UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon, who is due to issue a progress report soon on Iraq. In that meeting, Maliki touted the progress his country has made in establishing democracy and the rule of law. The situation in Iraq also factors into a different United Nations report. This one summarizes obstacles to human progress in the Arab world. The UN’s 2009 Arab Human Development Report identifies several key problems aside from military conflict. The problems include, a surging population, struggling economies, weak environments, poor health care, lack of representative government and human rights abuses. Borzou Daragahi is Middle East correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He’s based in Beirut, Lebanon.

BORZOU DARAGAHI: The biggest problem facing the Arab world, and this is definitely flushed out in these UN report, these periodic UN reports, is corruption. And linked to that the autocracy, the authoritarianism of these Arab countries, the State does not necessarily serve all the people, generally it serves very narrow interest. The clicks surrounding the rulers of these countries, and that goes for, you know, any country from Syria to Egypt and to some of the Gulf States as well.

LISA MULLINS: What kind of problems do arise from corruption, and what’s the continuum there? I mean, how does corruption trickle down to some of these human frustrations that we’re hearing about?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Well, I think, you know, just from my research and my reporting, the big problem that corruption feeds into is a lack of good public education for many people. And that goes for Yemen, that goes for Jordan, that goes for Lebanon. The government does not provide ordinary people with decent education, the public schools are terrible. So if you want a decent education for your kid, you have to pay for private school or pay for a private religious school, which has its set of complications as well. And so what this means, that there’s no good public education. Often times this contributes to a lack of female literacy, and female education levels. And this of course, according to most demographers, is the number determinant of birth rates. Uneducated women generally have very high birth rates, that contributes to overpopulation, the overpopulation contributes to a depletion of resources, water, especially, like a country like Yemen, or Egypt. And this just degrades the environment, and creates a whole host of other problems. Degraded environment means that there’s less to go around, and that encourages more corruption.

LISA MULLINS: Yeah, well in terms of population alone, according to the United Nations anyway, Arab countries will be home to almost 400 million people by the year 2015, compared to back in 1980, 150 million people. The young population is growing the fastest. There has been, not only because of the population growth, but also because of the other issues they’ve been talking about, a lot of frustration. Now, back when we were talking about an Arab spring, this was a couple of years ago with the elections in Iraq and Lebanon and Egypt. There was much hope for loosening of the political systems in the Arab world. Why did that not come to fruition?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: I think that there’s a lot of questions about why that happened. Some analysts say it’s because of the reformers, the liberals being identified too closely with the US at a time of rising anti-Americanism. And some say that, you know, these reform movements were somewhat illusory, they were rather weak, and the authoritarian circles in these countries simply fought back re-established their control, especially a country like Egypt. But, you know, the thing that is a shame, you know, I lived in Egypt for a few months, and, you know, in many ways it was like Mexico. It has a very dynamic, lively population. But whereas when you’re in Mexico, it feels like the country’s going somewhere, the young people are expanding their own opportunities, and they, there’s a sense of optimism in the air. In Egypt it really felt like, and I heard this over and over again among the young people, that they were just going around in circles. That there was no development, there was no progress, that the country was better off 30, 40, 20, 40, 50 years ago, than it was at the present time. And that’s a really sad feeling for a country, because you wanna feel like things are getting a little better, a little better as the years go by. And in these countries, in the Arab world, many people say that things just keep getting worse and worse.

LISA MULLINS: And what do they, the young people blame it on?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: I think young people are confused, they feel alienated, they feel like they have no future. They blame, you know, first and foremost their authoritarian leaders. I think Egypt, again, is the best example of that, where people you talk to, just about everyone you talk to despises the government of President Hazni Mubarak. But they don’t know what to do, they don’t know what the alternative is, and they’re frightened that, even the sort of the modern liberal segments of the society are afraid that if he goes, the Islamists will take over and make things even worse. So they feel like they’re in a trap.

LISA MULLINS: Barzou, when we have the broad outline of a report like this, it makes it sound as though everything is grim, and of course, that’s not the case at all with any region. What have you found?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: I think these reports, they come out every now and then and they present a really grim view of what’s going on in the Arab world. But there’s a lot of cool stuff happening too. I mean, there’s a lot of interesting developments in the arts, in culture, and I really am, you know, intrigued by the growth of native hip-hop and rap music in the Arab world. And this is not just the province of very elite kids who have ties to the west. You have a lot of rap musicians and hip hop musicians who adopt the beats and rhythms of the west. But rap in Arabic, and they talk about themes that have something to do with the Arab world. And it’s really extraordinary, this development.

LISA MULLINS: You mean, you listen to the lyrics and you find out what their lives are like?

BORZOU DARAGAHI: Yeah, you can find out about the frustrations that they feel. You can find out about the encounters that they have with their parents, with their traditional relative. That you can find out about the anger they feel at seeing their societies fall apart.

LISA MULLINS: Alright, thank you very much. Speaking to us from Beirut, Lebanon, Barzou Deragahi of the Los Angeles Times talking about, among other things, a new UWAN [PH] report on human development in the Arab world. Thank you Borzou.

BORZOU DARAGAHI: It’s been a pleasure.

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