Transcript
ROBIN WRIGHT: I first landed in the Middle East on October 6, 1973, the day the war broke out and over the intervening 35 years I have witnessed extraordinary change. When I first landed in the region, oil was $3.12 a barrel. Today it is $100 a barrel and $3.12 a gallon. I witnessed the transformation of Lebanon from the party capital of the region to the site of its most vicious civil war. I remember Saudi Arabia when there was no television, and today there are women newscasters. I also remember in Iran where there was one Islamic channel, and today courtesy of satellite dishes you can get not only CNN and BCC, but MTV and "Oprah."
As Martin said, in 2005 I was struck by the extraordinary change we were seeing condensed into one very brief period symbolized by the extraordinary outpouring in Lebanon when activists forced the Syrians to end a 29-year occupation. The vast numbers for the first time were not rent-a-crowds, they were people who turned out because of their own strong and deep beliefs, and they were peaceful protests in Lebanon. This in itself I thought was important. We saw millions of Iraqis turn out to vote despite the violence, and the birth of movements like Kefaya in Egypt which means "enough" symbolizing the burgeoning growth of real civil society. Of course, that spring quickly evaporated. But I decided to go back to the region to see if 2005 was simply an illusion or whether it future potential.
For those of you who are my friends in this audience, you will know that I am the ultimate pessimist. I look at glass not in terms of whether it is half-full or half-empty, but whether there is really any water in the glass at all, and when it comes to the Middle East, my projections have normally been pessimistic and I have rarely unfortunately been wrong. What I did for the better part of a year was to travel from Rabat to Morocco and I came way surprisingly buoyed, even a little optimistic, that for all the setbacks in 2005, what we have begun to see is the beginning of a very long struggle, and I stress begun. But I think the seeds have really been planted and I do not think the Middle East is going back to square one where it was before 2005.
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