As Middle Easterners watch protests in Lebanon and elections in Iraq, AU professor Abdul Aziz Said is optimistic that people from the region may embrace more liberal and less repressive systems of government.
"There is a crisis of governance in the Middle East," said Said, the Mohammad Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace in the School of International Service. "The governments there are not legitimate governments."
After a car bomb killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on Feb. 14, tens of thousands of Lebanese protesters began rallies at Hariri's gravesite demanding to know who was responsible for Hariri's death. Protests in front of the Lebanese parliament led to the government's resignation on Monday.
"Although the U.S. government hasn't assigned blame, it appears it could be the work of rogue [Syrian] intelligence agents. This does not make sense for [Syrian President Bashar] Asad unless he is a dolt," Said said. "Syria should withdraw from Lebanon. It is important for Syria to restructure its relationship with Lebanon based on a partnership, not dominance."
For Said, who has dedicated his life to developing a "total concept of peace," recent moves in the Middle East toward representative government and peaceful change are very encouraging.
"In the Western tradition, peace means the absence of war, but this has separated security from justice. ... I am trying to reconnect security to justice because peace means the presence of justice," he said.
Said, whose chair is the only one of its kind in the United States, said peace has traditionally been defined by the dominant culture and military of the time and that the world needs to expand its toolbox of peace-making instruments.
"What can we find beyond Western liberalism? What is there in the African, Arab, Chinese or Jewish cultures and traditions?" he asked.
One of his goals is to create peace chairs like his all over the world to go over the vast expanses of time and region and explore current and historical peace paradigms.
"Many issues are not just of land or politics, but of identity," he said.
One of the failures of the U.S.-Syrian and U.S.-Iranian relationships, according to Said, is a lack of dialogue and the failure of certain countries to "discover a creative role for themselves in the region."
More than a year ago, Said co-authored an article about American sanctions on Syria, in which he called on the Syrian government to withdraw its 14,000 troops from Lebanon and engage in dialogue with the United States.
"Through diplomacy, the United States can construct creative alternatives for Syria's foreign policy that eases domestic political transition," he wrote.
Said believes that the neoconservative strategy of isolating Iran and Syria has been ineffective because authoritarian governments cannot be persuaded by losing power in elections and must be addressed in dialogue to alleviate the people's suffering.
Still, he added, the most powerful weapon against governments that are "not legitimate" may be a powerful wave of democratization.
"The 1980s were a time of democratization for Eastern Europe and Latin America that completely passed the Middle East," he said. "It is happening now."
According to Said, Iraq elections are having positive effects on Arab countries far beyond the country's borders.
"This may be a new awakening in the region," he said. "There is a move toward viable government in the Arab world, open political space in the Arab world, greater political participation in the Arab world and more viable economic and political development in the Arab world."
In his capacity as a professor, Said is trying to advance his concept of total peace. It rests upon four premises: ecological balance, human dignity, political coexistence and a social environment that provides for pluralism and cultural diversity.
"My dream at AU is to have these concepts in every part of the University, which are all constant with AU's traditions," he said.
