The Great Debate UK
from The Great Debate:
One year later: three lessons from the Arab Spring
By Stefan Wolff The opinions expressed are his own.
When Mohamed Bouazizi, a jobless graduate in the provincial city of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, about 200km southwest of the capital Tunis, set himself on fire on December 18, 2010 after police had confiscated a cart from which he was selling fruit and vegetables, few would have predicted that this event would spark the phenomenon we now refer to as the Arab Spring. Protests quickly escalated in Tunisia and within four weeks Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali had to flee to Saudi Arabia having failed to stop the protests either by repression of promises of reform.
On 17 January, one day after Ben Ali’s departure, another young man set himself afire near the Egyptian parliament. Within a week, coordinated mass protests began in Tahrir Square, and forced the resignation of long-serving Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who handed power to the military on 11 February.
Since then, the transitions in Tunisia and Egypt have made at best incremental progress in some areas. In Tunisia, the first elections anywhere as a result of the Arab Spring went ahead in October and the newly elected parliament had its inaugural session on November 22nd. The election winners, the moderate Islamist party Ennahda (Renaissance) will have a coalition arrangement with a liberal and a centre-left party. While Tunisia avoided the appalling violence that characterised the uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, the new government and parliament still face an up-hill battle in the transition to a more democratic political system, including drafting a new constitution.
In Egypt, the military was instrumental in pushing Mubarak out of office, but the slow progress towards democratic reforms, several deadly sectarian clashes between Islamists and Christian copts, tensions and violence on the border with Israel, and a heavy-handed police crack-down on continuing protests in Tahrir Square do not bode well for the country’s immediate future—even if parliamentary elections go ahead on 28 November. While the army seems keen not to want to actually govern the country, they seem equally determined not to give up their privileged position that gives them political influence and control over significant economic assets.
Elsewhere in the Arab world, it seems as if the old regimes are determined to hold on to power at all cost, and despite diminishing chances of success. In Yemen, a crisis that had engulfed the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh long before the Arab Spring began is nowhere closer to a resolution even after Saleh at long last agreed to a transition plan sponsored by the Gulf Cooperation Council. This plan saw Saleh hand over power to his Vice President (not the opposition), allows him to retain the title of President for another three months, guaranteed him immunity, and left his assets untouched and members of his family in charge of most of the government’s hard power. Forcing Saleh out of office does also not address at least two of the country’s major crises—the Houthi rebellion in the North and the secessionist insurgency in the south, the latter of which has formed an alliance of convenience with al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. Unsurprisingly, violence in Yemen has continued unabated since Saleh signed the GCC transition plan on 23 November.
In Syria, Bashir al-Assad has, so far successfully, clung onto power regardless of the mounting death toll among protesters. Like elsewhere in the Arab Spring, an initially peaceful protest movement has turned into an armed insurgency, but one that lacks a unified political opposition. The Arab League has increased pressure on the Assad regime, albeit not unanimously and so far only threatens sanctions, while France, in an eerie déjà vu of events in Libya, has called for humanitarian corridors and safe zones inside Syria to protect civilians from an ever more violent regime crack-down and has recognised the opposition. All the signs at the moment are pointing at further escalation in Syria and possibly another international military intervention.
from David Rohde:
Complete Egypt’s revolution
For decades, the Egyptian military has operated an economy within an economy in Egypt. With the tacit support of the United States, the armed forces own and operate a sprawling network of for-profit businesses. The military runs factories that manufacture televisions, bottled water and other consumer goods. Its companies obtain public land at discounted prices. And it pays no taxes and discloses little to civilian officials.
Within weeks of Hosni Mubarak’s fall in February, experts predicted that the Egyptian military would refuse to relinquish its vast economic holdings or privileged position in society.
“Protecting its businesses from scrutiny and accountability is a red line the military will draw,” Robert Springborg, an expert on Egypt’s military at the Naval Postgraduate School, told The New York Times. “And that means there can be no meaningful civilian oversight.”
Protesters who are crossing that red line this week should be applauded, not oppressed. Egypt’s tumultuous revolution should be completed.
In increasingly brazen fashion, Egypt’s military has tried to usurp the revolt that toppled Mubarak in eighteen days and is transforming the Middle East. The protests this week are a legitimate response to those moves.
In a welcome concession on Tuesday, Egypt’s 76-year-old army chief, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, offered in a televised speech to hand over power to a civilian president by next July. Protesters are right, though, to react with skepticism. The military has botched a transition it initially said would last six months.
In a blistering report issued on Monday, Amnesty International accused the country’s military of suppressing dissent as harshly as the Mubarak regime. The report assailed its violent response to this week’s protests, which have left 36 people dead and more than 1250 wounded.
Protestors who demand elections be delayed are very likely the same who demanded they be speeded up – months back.
Sorry, guys, but I can’t help but feel the core motivator is that they’ve surveyed the feelings of the masses of voters getting to choose and their own political parties don’t stand to win control.
That ain’t the way democracy works except maybe in Ohio and Florida. :-]
from FaithWorld:
Vague agenda fuels doubts over real aims of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood
(The Sphinx at the great pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo, February 25, 2011/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
Few things better sum up Egypt's uncharted future than the vague policy platform of the Muslim Brotherhood, a long-repressed Islamist movement poised to become a decisive force in mainstream politics. With the country's military rulers reluctant to push through major reforms without a popular mandate, all eyes are on the emerging political class set free by the overthrow in February of veteran leader Hosni Mubarak.
None is likely to mobilise as much grassroots support as the Brotherhood, which has won the sympathy of millions of poor Egyptians by railing against venal politicians and campaigning for an Islamic state free of corruption. But with parliamentary elections looming, the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party has sketched only the broadest outline of a manifesto. A pledge to do nothing that might harm Egypt's floundering economy has barely reassured nervous investors.
"The Brotherhood has always been unclear on all its policies ... It makes people wonder what is its real goal, and what to believe," said Nabil Abdel Fattah, a researcher in the al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
The Brotherhood's secular liberal enemies say the policy vacuum is understandable because telling the truth would betray an extremism that would make it unelectable. They say it would quickly ban alcohol consumption, sending an already troubled tourism sector into a tailspin, reverse women's rights and deepen tension with Egypt's Christian minority by enforcing a strict Islamic code, the first step towards a Muslim theocracy.
Brotherhood leaders, mindful of a deep-rooted fear of social chaos, insist they would never force major change upon a country already struggling with the instability that followed Mubarak's overthrow. "Investors should not worry. We want to participate with other groups to achieve the best outcome for our country," said Osama Gado, a former parliamentarian and founding member of Freedom and Justice.
from FaithWorld:
Will the Arab Spring bring U.S.-style “culture wars” to the Middle East?
(From left: Olivier Roy, Cardinal Angelo Scola and Martino Diez of the Oasis Foundation at the conference on San Servolo island, Venice, June 20, 2011/Giorgia Dalle Ore/Oasis)
Where is the Arab Spring leading the Middle East? What will be the longer-term outcome of the popular protests that have shaken the region since the beginning of this year? Of course, it’s still too early to say with any certainty, even in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt that succeeded in toppling their authoritarian regimes. Some trends have emerged, however, and they’re on the agenda at a conference in Venice I’m attending entitled “Medio Oriente verso dove?” (Where is the Middle East heading?). The host is the Oasis Foundation, a group chaired by Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Roman Catholic patriarch of this historic city, and guests include Christian and Muslim religious leaders and academics from the Middle East and Europe.
In one of the most interesting -- and hotly debated -- presentations, the French Islam specialist Olivier Roy described the Arab Spring as “a break with the culture and ideologies that dominated the Arab world from the 1950s until recently.” It marks a clear change in the demographic, political and religious paradigms operating there, he said. The old dichotomy of the authoritarian regime or the Islamist state has broken down, he argued, and Islam is taking on a new role in the political process. In the end, the region -- or at least the states where the Arab Spring brings real change -- could see democratic politics marked not by major efforts to establish an Islamic state but by Muslim “culture war” controversies not unlike the way hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage emerge in U.S. political debates.
(Newly wed Egyptian anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo February 10, 2011/Dylan Martinez)
The first trend Roy cited to back up this thesis is the sharp drop in fertility levels in the Arab world since the late 1980s and the 1990s. Several Arab countries, especially those in North Africa, now have birthrates of around two children per woman, close but still above the European average. Tunisia’s birthrate is actually lower than France's. “The generation that is now on the job market is the last generation of big families,” said Roy, who is now director of the Mediterranean Programme at the European University Institute in Florence. “It’s a generation that has many fewer children and marries much later.”
from Business Traveller:
Ancient wonders, all to yourself
Tourism at Egypt’s Red Sea resorts, we read, has plummeted. At the Giza Pyramids, not one Western tourist could be seen by a Reuters correspondent as the sun set on an April weekday. Surely this makes it the perfect time to visit?
Egypt's tourism minister has forecast that 2011 revenue will be 25 percent lower than the previous year, but even this may be bullish; many travel companies are offering large discounts. This has dealt a devastating blow to the millions of Egyptians (one in eight) whose livelihoods depend on the 14 million or so visitors who until this January visited annually.
Mass-market tour operators like TUI and Thomas Cook have responded to the decimation in demand by cutting Egypt itineraries and focusing on alternative destinations.
I sat down with Amr Badr, Abercrombie & Kent Egypt and the Middle East’s managing director, to see what local operators can do and are doing to welcome back the hordes. I found a man surprisingly optimistic, refusing to go down the unsustainable discount route.
His positivity stems from the fact that a lot has changed since the dark day of February and March, traditionally the strongest months for travel to Egypt. February saw arrivals close to zero; in March, people still weren’t so sure what to make of what was happening.
But as the travel bans were lifted by the British, Germans, Italian and French, things began to look up; indeed, Hala el-Khatib, secretary general of the Egyptian Hotels Association reported hotel occupancy was only down by just 15 percent in April compared to the same month a year ago.
“April has seen a very nice pick up,” Badr told me, “but it varied between the Red Sea, which was fuller than Cairo, and the classical upper-Egypt destinations like Luxor. [Despite] the corporate market being down and the Arab market being down, in general the April figures are pleasing.”
from FaithWorld:
Sectarian strife tests Egypt’s post-Mubarak rulers
(A soldier stands guard near the Saint Mary church which was set on fire during clashes between Muslims and Christians on Saturday in the heavily populated area of Imbaba in Cairo May 8, 2011/Asmaa Waguih)
Egypt's army rulers face a dilemma as a bolder stance adopted by Islamists in the post-Mubarak era is worsening sectarian tension and triggering demands for the kind of crackdown that made the former president so unpopular. Armed clashes between conservative Muslims and Coptic Christians left 12 dead in a Cairo suburb on Saturday, touching off angry protests by some of the capital's residents who called for the army to use an "iron fist" against the instigators.
The violence has deepened fear among Christians, who complain of poor police protection and a new tolerance of Muslim extremists, raising the risk of new flashpoints in a country dogged by poverty, soaring prices and a faltering economy. Police deserted their posts during the January and February uprising against Mubarak. Many have returned but many Egyptians say that has failed to stop theft and violent crime spreading as Egypt looks ahead to its first free elections in September.
"The softness of the state is a problem right now," said political analyst Issandr El Amrani, who expects the interim military government to restore a tough line against conservative Salafist Islamic groups and others that incite religious hatred. "It's not going to be popular with a segment of the population but a government has to do unpopular things sometimes," said Amrani.
Egypt, which relies on an image of stability to draw millions of tourists, has seen a steady increase in inter-faith violence in recent years, despite a pause during the uprising.
from The Great Debate:
Why democracy will win
Philip N. Howard, an associate professor at the University of Washington, is the author of "The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam". The opinions expressed are his own.
The Day of Rage in Saudi Arabia was a tepid affair, and Libyan rebels have suffered strategic losses. Only two months ago, popular uprisings in Tunisia inspired Egyptians and others to take to the streets to demand political reform. Will the tough responses from Gadaffi and the Saudi government now discourage Arab conversations about democratic possibilities? It may seem like the dictators are ahead, but it’s only a temporary lead.
Ben Ali ruled Tunisia for 20 years, Mubarak reigned in Egypt for 30 years, and Gadaffi has held Libya in a tight grip for 40 years. Yet their bravest challengers are 20- and 30-year-olds without ideological baggage, violent intentions or clear leaders. The groups that initiated and sustained protests have few meaningful experiences with public deliberation or voting, and little experience with successful protesting. These young activists are politically disciplined, pragmatic and collaborative. Where do young people who grow up in entrenched authoritarian regimes get political aspirations? How do they learn about political life in countries where faith and freedom coexist?
The answer, for the most part, is online. And it is not just that digital media provided new tools for organizing protest and inspiring stories of success from Tunisia and Egypt. The important structural change in Middle East political life is not so much about digital ties between the West and the Arab street, but about connections between Arab streets.
Research has demonstrated three clear democratizing effects of the Internet, especially among young people in the region: more individuals are using the Internet to openly discuss the interpretation of Islamic texts, more people are forming individuated political identities online and creating their own media, and more citizens are actively debating gender politics and pan-Islamic identity. Satellite television has fed a transnational Middle East identity for several decades. But it is only in the last decade that people have started transnational conversations about politics and shared grievances.
Some experts thought the Internet was going to be a boon for radical voices and fundamentalist Islam. But it turns out that digital media more often push such extremists to the side, and bolster the networks of civil society groups over terrorist groups. Individuals learn that they can become sources of information, and that Dropbox accounts, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google and a host of other tools provide ways for people to spread information beyond the reach of their despot.
“Democracies” can be a very broad range of governments. The word “Democratic” appears in the names of countries western liberal semi socialist democracies would consider autocracies or anti capitalist societies.
The countries that claim to be democratic are not necessarily going to be best friends or agree on fundamentals. .
The big disadvantage of the Internet is that it is most accessible to the affluent and techno-savy segment of society. It is also easy to post false and misleading information. There is little “quality control” and that is almost impossible to define. But “repressive” regimes seem to be those that exercise censorship of any media content. Freedom of the press is a commonly accepted belief at the UN level and is one of the principles of Human rights, but it is also subject to interpretation.
The large principals of human rights and good government are being established by agreements made in the UN and the administrative affairs of one’s native country are being subtly and not so subtly guided into conformity of global standards of practice and belief.
The US and Euro zone will be happiest with democracies that allow them the greatest opportunities to cross invest. The fundamental goal of all the governments of the world – of living, not failed states – is to provide the best possible standard of living for themselves. They want to profit from their relationships. They disagree internally on how that standard of living is distributed.
The west sells a market oriented way of life. All values are subservient to the market or appear to be. And ideally everyone has access to it on as equal terms as possible. During most of my life the west has even been characterized as libertine by not only puritanical communist regimes, or arch conservative Islamic parties but also the Catholic and fundamentalist Christian Churches. Israel and the Palestinians both have their under worlds, as do most all the countries on earth. And even religions have their living black markets or underworlds. There are such things as the governments of the ungovernable.
One could almost suggest that what the western Democracies want is the right for as much liberty shading into underworld activities as it can maintain without loosing itself in its own luxury and vice. The regimes it fears most are those that want to tone the “party” down too much. They tend to be depressing, brutal and bland. They tend to be systems that speak louder than those than live within them. The advanced economies don’t like things “sub-standard”. The UN also does not like substandard but its terms are broader than what is commercially defined.
But lets not fool ourselves: societies can be totally controlled by a few when they are most full of people distracted from the main sources of influence and power. And no political system can entirely protect its citizens from that. In fact the elites of all types of governments like as few hands stirring the pot as possible. Why else are elite schools so expensive?
from Breakingviews:
Egypt needs a reconstruction fund too
By Hugo Dixon The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
LONDON -- Egypt needs a reconstruction fund too. Japan will be spending tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding after its tsunami. Egypt can't afford to finance an equivalent fund after its political tsunami. But foreign powers could help by showing they are not just interested in bombing neighbouring Libya.
In the long run, the most important thing is to accelerate free trade between Egypt and the industrialised world, notably the European Union. More immediately, as the country teeters on the brink of recession, foreign countries can show they really care about Egypt's transition to democracy by financing a fund to invest in physical and social infrastructure -- such as power generation, transport, housing and education.
Over the two months since the Egyptian revolution began, nothing concrete has emerged -- despite much talk. Western countries want to help but are strapped for cash. There is also an understandable desire to link help to the achievement of the milestones on the road to democracy. Meanwhile, first the Japanese earthquake and then war in Libya has distracted attention from Egypt.
But it's not too late to grab the moment. Nor is it impossible to raise cash. The main source of new money is the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are bubbling with petrodollars. Even if these sheikhdoms don't obviously have an interest in fostering democracy, they certainly have an interest in good relations with the Arab world's most populous country. Meanwhile, Western countries could write off governement-to-government debt or convert it into equity in infrastructure projects. Of Egypt's $34 billion external debt at the end of June 2010 (78 percent of which was owed by the government), 31 percent was owed to European Union countries, 12 percent to Japan and 10 percent to America.
Ideally, a reconstruction fund should be run as a public-private partnership (or a series of such partnerships) at arm's length from the government. Given that it would be invested largely in infrastructure, it should then be able to raise more money through borrowing. Added to the money from donations and debt-for-equity swaps, total investments of around $20 billion -- just under 10 percent of GDP -- might be possible.
It could be argued that such a plan would do little to solve Egypt's short-term problems of rising unemployment and inflation. But this is only partly true. An external vote of confidence could encourage industry to push forward with its own investment plans; and the government would be able to direct its own limited resources to priorities such as subsidising food if it knew cash was coming in to help take care of structural problems. Investing in democracy would be money well spent.
from FaithWorld:
In free Egypt, Islamic Jihad leader says the time for the gun is over
(Abboud al-Zumar in an interview with Reuters in his home after his release from Liman Tora Prison at Helwan, south of Cairo, March 17, 2011/Mohamed Abd El-Ghany)
Abboud al-Zumar went to jail 30 years ago for his role in killing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Now a free man, he believes democracy will prevent Islamists from ever again taking up the gun against the state.
Zumar was a prisoner for as long as Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, was president. His release with other leading Islamists jailed for militancy is a sign of dramatic change in Egypt in the five weeks since Mubarak was swept from power by mass protests. Zumar, 64, was a founding member of the Islamic Jihad group which gunned down Sadat during a military parade in 1981. He was released along with his cousin, Tarek al-Zumar, who had also spent three decades in jail on similar charges.
"The revolution created a new mechanism: the mechanism of strong, peaceful protests," said Zumar, released on March 12 and one of the political prisoners who owes his freedom to the peaceful revolt against Mubarak. "Public squares around the Arab world are ready to receive millions who can stop any ruler and expose him," added Zumar in an interview in his home village of Nahia on the rural outskirts of Cairo.
To many Egyptians, Zumar's name evokes a violent chapter in the history of a country that has been an incubator for Islamist militancy. Seeking to ease concerns, Zumar describes the Islamist movement as the "first line of defense" of Egyptian society. Islamists merely want to enjoy the same freedoms as everyone else in the new Egypt, he says.
from FaithWorld:
Muslim Brotherhood treads cautiously in the new Egypt
(A girl waves an Egyptian flag at sunset in Cairo February 14, 2011 /Suhaib Salem)
The Muslim Brotherhood is treading cautiously in the new Egypt, assuring the military government and fellow Egyptians that it does not want power and trying to dispel fears about its political strength. The target of decades of state oppression, the Brotherhood wants to preserve the freedoms it is enjoying under the new military-led administration that took power from Hosni Mubarak.
So far, signs are encouraging for the Brotherhood: an eight-man judicial council appointed to propose democratic changes to the constitution includes one of its members. But experts say the Islamists remain wary of the military. That partly explains why they have gone out of their way to say they are not seeking power -- a reiteration of a position they have long espoused to avoid confrontation with the state.
The Brotherhood has said it will not field a candidate for president and will not contest enough seats to clinch a majority in parliament. The message, experts say, is partly aimed abroad, especially at the United States, which has expressed some concern over the role the Brotherhood might play in the post-Mubarak Egypt.
The Brotherhood might win 25 to 30 percent of the vote in a free and fair election, said Mohammed Habib, a member of the Brotherhood's Shura Council and its former deputy leader. "The Brotherhood want to reassure the Egyptian people and the Arab and Islamic world that they do not seek power, or want to compete for power, as much as what matters to them is that there is freedom and democracy," he said.
