Rise of Mideast peacemakers

Amidst all the attention poured on the US presidential race, a powerful new trend is rapidly emerging in the Middle East.

The Middle East's governments are increasingly taking a hands-on role in solving the region's problems. After 7 years of the Bush Administration's blunders in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, Middle East leaders feel they can no longer wait for America to get a clear-minded view of problems that would allow for practical solutions.

For their own security, Middle East leaders feel compelled to solve their problems because they realise the international community will no longer solve them properly.

Ironically, the massive US military deployment in Iraq has created a sort of US power vacuum in the Middle East. The Bush Administration has used up all of America's goodwill and powers of persuasion and we can't seem to get anything else done.

But it isn't just that. Satellite television, the internet, and globalisation have exposed the Middle East's youth to the success of thriving societies in Asia and the West, and they want the same.

There is a Middle East consensus from the royal palaces to the slums that what the region needs is the freedom to thrive economically and to combine technology and education, with each nation's unique take on values, resulting in dignity and national pride.

Thus, the region's leaders feel the pressure to act towards solving problems to create the conditions for this economic success. And by solving problems themselves, instead of waiting for America to come do it for them, they raise their own standing and national dignity.

This situation has been compounded by the fact that because of the Bush Administration's Middle East blunders and heavy handed rhetoric, few leaders in the Middle East are keen to associate with the US anymore - or at least this Administration.

Recent trend

Indeed, the recent trend started in February 2007, when Saudi Arabia tried to broker a deal between the two main Palestinian rival factions: the secular nationalist post-Arafat Fatah, and the conservative religious group Hamas.

Although the talks failed, they are thought to have been conducted largely without deep nor detailed American involvement.

Then in late 2007, the Gulf Cooperation Council invited Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit, marking the first time an Iranian leader had attended the Arab meeting.

In the past month we saw the successful Lebanese National Dialogue in Doha, Qatar whereby Qatar and the Arab League invited Lebanese factions to Doha to mediate an agreement. Almost simultaneously, the world also witnessed the resumption of Israeli-Syrian exchanges under the auspices of Turkey.

All of these meetings essentially have been seeking to diffuse the underlying US-Iran tensions in the region through local means, in an effort to keep the Middle East safe, secure and growing economically.

Although the trend of Middle East leaders taking increasing responsibility for their own problems is likely to stay - and the world should welcome that - only a new president in Washington will have the chance to restore American credibility.

The new US president's task will be to extricate the US from Iraq in an honourable fashion, encourage Israeli-Arab peace, and conduct America in a manner that restores its moral leadership - and makes Washington once again the place in which people around the world place their hopes, their respect, and their aspirations.

Hady Amr is a fellow at the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and director of the Brookings Doha Centre in Qatar.