The Year Ahead

Here Are Six Predictions for 2005.

• Palestine: A peace process will be revived, but will fail to produce peace. Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat’s successor, is a man of good intentions who will prove ineffectual. With the support of Shimon Peres and the Labour Party, Israel’s Ariel Sharon will press ahead with his plan for a gradual withdrawal from Gaza. But he will resist international pressure for a significant withdrawal from the West Bank, and the Bush administration will fail to press whole-heartedly for a two-state solution.
• Iraq: Elections will take place at the end of January, but will not bring stability or halt the violence. The most successful slate of candidates will be that supported by Ayatollah Sistani, the country’s most revered Shi’ite religious leader. This will not mean (as some extreme voices in Washington have alleged) that Iraq will swing into Iran’s orbit or become an Iranian-style Islamic republic. But it will bring into being a new government dominated by Shi’ites and Kurds – and confronting a sullen and aggrieved Sunni community whose more radical members will continue their insurgency against a government they will denounce as illegitimate. The prospects for the withdrawal of US forces, never bright, will recede still further.
• Iran: A conservative will win the presidential elections on 17 June, signalling the final demise of President Mohammed Khatami and his reform programme. The Bush administration will continue to declare its firm opposition to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons – but, as in its first term, will continue to find it well-nigh impossible to formulate a coherent Iran policy. Iran’s ability to make life even more difficult for the Americans in Iraq will continue to deter any rash moves by Washington towards “regime change” in Tehran.
• Saudi Arabia: The House of Saud will survive, but battered and bruised. The insurgency waged against it by a small but well-rooted Islamist opposition movement will continue, causing the regime constant discomfort. Their recent petrodollar windfall (the ruling princes ended 2004 with an expected $26 billion surplus) will enable them to buy a little time – but without solving any of their underlying problems.
• Arab leaders: The passing of the old guard will continue, as a generation of ageing autocrats gradually fade from the scene. In recent years, Hafiz al-Assad of Syria, Morocco’s King Hassan and Jordan’s King Hussein have left the stage; so, more recently, have Sheikh Zayid of the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Who will be next? Two figures worth watching closely are King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian president, Husni Mubarak. The final demise of the Saudi monarch – incapacitated since a stroke nearly a decade ago – would bring to a head the rivalries among the senior princes, several of whom are reluctant to see Crown Prince Abdullah take the reins. President Mubarak’s failure to appoint a successor means that his sudden death would plunge the Arab world’s most populous Arab country into political uncertainty.
• War on terror: Bin Laden’s jihad will continue, as will George Bush’s “war on terror” – and it will be hard to maintain that America and its allies are winning. Al-Qaida and its affiliates would love to pull off another 9/11 on American soil. But more likely is the continuation of far less spectacular – but nevertheless destabilising – attacks in different parts of the world. As Bin Laden’s recent audio-tapes have made clear, keeping up the pressure in Iraq and Saudi Arabia remains a short-term priority. Meanwhile Al-Qaida’s south-east Asian arm, Jemaah Islamiya, is still in business, as September’s attack against the Australian embassy in Jakarta made clear – and further attacks in western Europe, whether or not as high-profile as the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, are probably inevitable.

Happy New Year.