Donald Macintyre: We must win hearts and minds in the Middle East

'The idea that there is no demand for democracy in Muslim countries needs to be countered'

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Donald Macintyre: We must win hearts and minds in the Middle East

Leading article: Mr Blair's trip to Syria reveals the hypocrisy of this 'war on terrorism'

There may not be, after yesterday's difficult meeting with Syria's President Assad, many safe bets about Tony Blair's current trip to the Middle East. But one of them is that, as on the last, he will not miss an opportunity to appear on any television station with a sizeable Muslim audience to explain and defend military action in Afghanistan.

It is a testament to the Prime Minister's belief in his cause that he will argue it to anyone who will listen, including in countries where popular opposition to it makes the dissent in the UK, so much discussed in the last week, look scarcely worth talking about.

For Blair, for example, it is as important to argue in Damascus as in Cardiff that this is a war against terrorism and not a war against Islam, and that while Osama bin Laden seeks to maximise civilian deaths, the Allies are trying, though not with universal success, to avoid them. When he seeks today, to promote some kind of dialogue between the Israelis and the Palestinians he is doing so for its own sake. But he also wants to convince Islamic hearts and minds that he understands that a just Middle East political settlement – based on Israel's coexistence with a Palestinian state – is necessary.

For the Prime Minister, coming to political maturity in the post-Soviet age, there is nothing dirty about the term propaganda. Instead it is the necessary statement and restatement of truths; and there are no national borders across which he believes those truths can't be exported. This heroic belief in the power of argument and dialogue has a relevance which extends well beyond the end of the present Afghan phase of the struggle, whenever it comes. Many things became clearer than they had been before those unforgettable events.

One, genuinely bewildering to the Americans, was the hatred of the US in much of the Islamic world. They were right to be baffled, for several reasons. The support for Israel – perceived, not justly, as total and unquestioning – was neuralgic, of course. But in reality, having won the Cold War for freedom and enterprise – the latter concept at least as beloved in the Muslim world as in the West – they had almost entirely abandoned their imperialist designs. The United States and their European allies were beacons of freedom. And until 11 September, the US had become manifestly reluctant to make war.

But the US did too little to make its own case, even less to proselytise the virtues of the political system which was rightly its greatest source of pride. It assumed, not unreasonably, that they spoke for themselves. But they didn't. Rather as the struggle against communism for much of the post-war period became the raison d'etre for many Western politicians, so fulminations against the US, and on occasions her British ally as well, became the cheapest and easiest way of uniting the populations in some of the least democratic Islamic countries.

Tony Blair is peculiarly well placed to do something about this. As a US ally he is a Heineken, able to function in parts of the world the US cannot reach: Iran, and for all yesterday's difficulties Syria, being two outstanding examples. That is also the source of his potential usefulness to the Middle East peace process. But while he is a leading, sometimes the leading, advocate of Western values, he cannot do it, even in a solely British context, all on his own.

A few weeks ago, a Foreign Office minister, Denis Macshane, floated the concept of a "Marshall plan of the mind". This was not so much cultural imperialism as a call for human assets to be mobilised in a respectful dialogue at many levels in which the Muslim world would be more fully exposed to Western values of human rights – not least for women – democracy and freedom. Not much, regrettably, has been heard about the idea since.

What are those assets? One is Britain's own Muslim population, unusual among those in the West in the number of Muslims represented in councils and in Parliament. Another is the BBC World Service, which, to be fair, has since 11 September, significantly increased its output in Pashtu and other languages directed at Afghanistan and its neighbours.

And a third, oddly enough, is the British Council. This much- (and today, unfairly) parodied body has a unique role to play precisely because it is at arms length from the Government. It already runs important programmes in parts of the Arab world, for example in training and assistance in human rights and democracy for the Palestinian Legislative Council and training of lawyers in many of the 34 countries with substantial Muslim populations in which it already operates.

It is now seeking, post-11 September, both public and private funding for an "Open Minds" initiative for what a document circulating in Whitehall calls an "enhanced dialogue" between Britain and the Muslim world, and aimed at 10 countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Bangladesh.

The British Council is very – and probably rightly – wary about anything which smacks of a dogmatic preaching of Western values which ignores the traditions and culture in the target countries. But they have been carefully designed. For example, if you send out coaches and sports officials to set up local football clubs, which are inclusive and fairly organised – and involve girls as well as boys – you are building on a common interest in an activity with common cross-cultural rules. If you foster high-tech links between schools in, say, Pakistan and mixed Muslim and indigenous schools in Britain, you are creating the possibility of real dialogue between two cultures.

The British Council, which has allocated only £1m of its £440m turnover to Open Minds, should consider switching more of its own resources. It may be more important to run current affairs seminars for Pakistan intellectuals just now than send novelists and poets round Latin America. Nevertheless, this imaginative project should also receive generous backing from the Government.

None of the results will be quick. But the idea – idiotically fostered in the West – that there is no demand for democracy or human rights in even some of the most repressive Muslim countries – like some of the Gulf States – needs to be countered. If we believe that democracy, human rights, and gender equality are absolute values we should be doing our best to export them – provided we do so with respect, tolerance and transparency. If we don't, what are we fighting for? In Bahrain, the present Emir has eased fundamentalist pressures by emptying the jails of many dissidents, allowing more genuine freedom of speech, and taking a few faltering steps towards democracy.

Earlier this month, a Bahraini former Marxist guerrilla, jailed by Syria in 1990, because of his opposition to US involvement in the Gulf war told the Wall Street Journal: "Lots of people criticise America, but no one can really criticise American democracy because it is the best." Hearts and minds change slowly. But they can change all the same. And if the West do not play their part in trying to change them, they will only have themselves to blame.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk