The Great Debate

One year later: three lessons from the Arab Spring

Stefan Wolff

Nov 25, 2011 09:44 EST

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

David Rohde

Nov 22, 2011 21:25 EST

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.

from David Rohde:

Trust Tunisia

David Rohde

Oct 24, 2011 17:35 EDT

As the first elections of the post-Arab spring unfold over the next several weeks, you will be hearing the term “moderate Islamist” over and over again. Early results from elections in Tunisia suggest that the moderate Islamist Ennahda party is going to win the largest number of seats in a new assembly that will rewrite the constitution, choose a new interim government and set dates for parliamentary and presidential elections. Members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood who have also been described as moderate Islamists are expected to fare well in similar elections there in November. And Islamists play a growing role in Libya’s transitional council as well.

The Islamist parties insist that they have renounced violence, fully embrace democracy and will abide by the electoral process. Secular Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans, as well as some western pundits, warn that the Islamist parties are a Trojan Horse. Once Islamists take power, they will refuse to relinquish it and forcibly implement conservative Islam in all three countries.

What is striking is the silence emanating from Washington and other western capitals.

“One of the shifts that hasn’t been talked about is how much more the West is willing to accept the reality of a political landscape in places like Tunisia and Egypt that will include the existence of Islamist groups,” said Dalia Mogahed, the director of the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, which polls public opinion across the Middle East. “The West has realized that it isn’t up to us to decide whether they can run.”

The term Islamist usually sets off alarm bells in Washington. Islamists have long been jailed by pro-American dictators, brutally silenced and believed to inexorably promote militancy. In the wake of the Arab Spring, though, they are delving into electoral politics to an extent never seen before in the modern Middle East.

The stakes are enormous. If hardline Islamic states emerge, this fall’s elections will be lambasted as a staggering error by the Obama administration. If Islamists are moderated by actually governing, one of the largest national security threats the United States faces may gradually ebb.

High expectations about democracy, of  course, have proven wrong in the past. Iran's 1979 popular revolution-turned-repressive theocratic state is one example. Hamas' general failure to moderate since having to govern is another. Given the United States' waning influence in the region, though, barring Islamists from the elections is both hugely hypocritical and unrealistic.

What’s behind Libya’s fast march to democracy?

Daniel Serwer

Sep 27, 2011 11:48 EDT

By Daniel Serwer The views expressed are his own.

In a trip to Libya this month, just weeks after Muammar Qaddafi’s fall, I found peace coming fast to Tripoli, despite continued resistance in several Libyan towns.  Ten days ago, families with children mobbed Martyrs’ square, where Qaddafi once held forth, to commemorate the hanging 80 years ago of Libya’s hero of resistance against the Italians, Omar Mukhtar. Elementary schools opened last week. The university will open next month. Water and electricity are flowing. Uniformed police are on the street. Trash collection is haphazard but functioning.

This is the fastest post-war recovery I have witnessed: faster than Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan. Certainly faster than Somalia, Sierra Leone or Rwanda.

Why this rapid recovery in a country marked by four decades of dictatorship? Why does Libya seem on track while Egypt seems to have gone off the rails?

Libya has at least three important advantages: good leadership and clear goals at the national and local levels, careful planning and adequate resources.

Libyans believe Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who leads the National Transitional Council (NTC), is uncorrupted and uninterested in continuing in power. He has pledged not to seek future office. He has visited the liberated cities to celebrate the single goal of freeing Libya from the Qaddafi regime. The NTC has replaced Qaddafi’s green flag with the red, black and green banner emblazoned with the star and crescent that was Libya’s flag at independence. The revolution in Libya was not interested in compromise or a managed transition. It wanted a clean break:  Qaddafi out and a new, more democratic regime, in.

The NTC and a clandestine Tripoli local council planned carefully for the military takeover of Tripoli and the restoration of services in the aftermath. With three hundred mosques playing CDs chanting “Allahu akbar!” Qaddafi’s forces on the evening of August 20 found themselves confused and then attacked from both inside and outside the city, which fell far more easily than anticipated.

Does everyone have a price?

Anya Schiffrin

Apr 7, 2011 11:36 EDT

On Monday I went to Bloomingdales, the Gap and Starbucks but passed on a visit to Magnolia Bakery. Instead I  stopped by the St. Moritz bakery where you can order hot chocolate and sit by a video of a cozy winter  fire that overlooks the indoor ski slope and is just around the corner from the largest candy store in the world, which happens to face an aquarium that occupies an entire wall on one side of the world’s largest shopping malls. This by the way is opposite of what claims to be the world’s largest candystore whose mission statement is to make every day “happier’. Earlier, while exploring the watery depths of the bright Pink Atlantis Hotel (one of the white elephants of the property crash of 2007) I knew it was really the last kingdom because the fish swam around two cracked thrones and other kitschy stone artifacts.

Dubai is utterly overwhelming, the kind of  dystopia that blogger Evgeny Morozov sees in Huxley, a consumeristic paradise where mind-numbing shopping replaces real thought. Most of the I had no idea where I was except that my passport had been stamped Dubai  and many of the mall-going women were shrouded in black. After a few hours I sank into a state of ennuie. Given boatloads of oil money in the 1970s and the chance to build a whole new city, who on earth would decide to build a series of shopping malls?

It’s not like the developers didn’t have ambition, what with the architecture that demands superlatives — the gondolas, medieval stone houses and soaring illuminated sky scrapers and islands built in absurd never-before-seen configurations. But why not build a museum with, say, the most incredible collection in the world or a university with the finest research laboratories? With so much money why build this Disneyland? And what about the workers who make up most of the population?

Who would go to expensive old Harvey Nichols or French boulangerie Eric Keyzer? The answer is pretty much anyone who can afford it goes not just to shop but to eat. For Arabs living in the region, the malls are closer than a flight to London or New York, they are air conditioned in the sultry summer, they have indoor sports and entertainment facilities, and are safe and family friendly. They are the old village green and the public square that Jurgen Habermas wrote about though not as he imagined it, surely.

The choices are limitless: an ice skating rink, a swimming pool, cinemas, as well as Penhaligon’s, Haagen Daz, California Pizza Kitchen and Nando’s. Even a tiny artsy neighborhood in an even tinier industrial quarter that showed angry Iranian sculptures of war-time prisoners, some held by Iraqis and some by Israelis on their knees with their hands behind their heads. My favorite piece was a video of a row of colorful balloons bobbing on the water that were tied together and shot one by one. This piece was done by a Turkish artist, who also filmed the balloons being executed. Metaphor for the human condition, anyone?

Why democracy will win

Philip Howard

Mar 25, 2011 10:49 EDT

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.

An Egyptian song for all

Mohamed El-Erian

Mar 8, 2011 12:00 EST

By Mohamed A. El-Erian El-Erian is the CEO of PIMCO. He spent part of his childhood in Egypt where his father was a professor of international law at Cairo University and then served as an Egyptian diplomat and was elected to the International Court of Justice in 1978. The opinions expressed are his own.

For centuries, songs have provided populist narratives of historical movements. And, every once in a while, a song comes along that also succeeds in capturing forcefully the raw emotions of the moment. This is the case today with “Sout el Horeya,” or the “Voice of Freedom,” sung by Hany Adel and Amir Eid.

Coming out of Egypt, this song skillfully encapsulates the strong drivers behind the ongoing transformations impacting the Middle East and North Africa. It is a “must hear” for all those trying to understand previously-unthinkable developments in the region, including western governments whose sophisticated intelligence services have been caught flat-footed and are now playing rapid catch up.

In powerfully plain language, the song speaks to the what, why and how of the Egyptian revolution. In a post on YouTube, the video version opens with images of peaceful protests in Cairo’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square. The intention is a simple one — to remind us all that what is in play is a secular revolutionary movement involving citizens of all ages, classes and religions. This is not a movement that can be derailed by diversionary tactics seeking either to blame foreign involvement or to threaten the alternative of a repressive Islamic theocracy.

After visually reminding us of what Tom Friedman (one of the very best western commentators on the region) called a revolution made “in Egypt, by Egypt, for Egypt,” the lyrics of the song convey a simple message: “In every street in our country, the voice of freedom is calling.”

Digital media and the Arab spring

By Philip N. Howard, author of “The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam,” and director of the Project on Information Technology and Political Islam at the University of Washington. The opinions expressed are his own.

President Obama identified technology as one of the key variables that enabled and encouraged average Egyptians to protest. Digital media didn’t oust Mubarak, but it did provide the medium by which soulful calls for freedom have cascaded across North Africa and the Middle East. It is difficult to know when the Arab Spring will end, but we can already say something about the political casualties, long-term regional consequences and the modern recipe for democratization.

It all started with a desperate Tunisian shopkeeper who set himself on fire, which activated a transnational network of citizens exhausted by authoritarian rule. Within weeks, digitally-enabled protesters in Tunisia tossed out their dictator. It was social media that spread both the discontent and inspiring stories of success from Tunisia across North Africa and into the Middle East.

The protests in Egypt drew the largest crowds in 50 years, and a second dictator fell from power. The discontent spread through networks of family and friends to Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen. Autocrats have had to dismiss their cabinets, sometimes several times, to placate frustrated citizens. Algerians had to lift a 19-year “state of emergency” and are gearing for demonstrations over the weekend. Even Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has had to make concessions to activists brave enough to raise street protests against government housing policy.

But perhaps the most important casualty in terms of global politics is the U.S. preference for stability over democracy in North Africa and the Middle East. This preference, expressed in different foreign policies, seems untenable when groundswells of public opinion mobilize for democracy.

What are the lessons for the West? First, Islamic fundamentalists may terrorize parts of the region, but a larger network of citizens now has political clout, largely because of social media. The Muslim Brotherhood is no longer the only way to organize political opposition. In a digital world, older ideologically recalcitrant political parties may not even be the most effective way to organize effective political opposition.

from Bernd Debusmann:

Egypt, America and a blow to al Qaeda

Bernd Debusmann

Feb 14, 2011 09:38 EST

These must be difficult times for Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The uprising that swept away Hosni Mubarak after 18 days of huge demonstrations, none in the name of Islam, does not fit their ideology. In the war of ideas, al Qaeda suffered a major defeat.

Its leaders preach that the way to remove "apostate" rulers -- and Mubarak was high on the list -- is through violence. Al Qaeda's ideology does not embrace the kind of people power that brought down the Berlin wall, forced Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines into exile, and filled Cairo's Tahrir Square with tens of thousands of peaceful protesters day after day.

They waved the red-white-and-black flags of Egypt, not the green banners of Islam, in peaceful demonstrations that amounted to "a huge defeat in a country of central importance to its image," in the words of Noman Benotman, the former leader of a Libyan group often aligned with al Qaeda. "We are witnessing Osama bin Laden's nightmare," wrote Shibley Telhami, an Arab scholar at the University of Maryland.

Long before al Qaeda struck against what it calls "the far enemy" on Sept. 11, 2001, its leaders exhorted Arabs to take on the "near enemy" -- Arab regimes that failed to run their countries under sharia law -- with bloody attacks against its leaders and institutions. Violent jihad was the only way. First Tunisia, then Egypt, showed that the argument was flawed.

Which is probably the reason al Qaeda, an organization of considerable Internet savvy and communications skills, has been largely silent on the unrest that first flared in Tunisia, rolled over to Egypt and now keeps rulers awake at night from Algeria to Saudi Arabia, Syria and Bahrain.

According to SITE, a U.S.-based organization that monitors statements from al Qaeda, its offshoots and followers, the first reaction to the turmoil in Egypt came on Feb. 8, day 15 of the mass uprising, in an online forum. The "doors of martyrdom" had opened, the message said, and Egyptians must ignore secularism, democracy and nationalism.

With peaceful demonstrators jamming Tahrir Square, calls to martyrdom sounded as irrelevant and off-key as some of the statements from the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama which zigged, zagged and at least initially shone a spotlight on Washington's decades-old policy of backing dictators detested by the people they rule.

The experts were wrong, again

By David Keyes, who is the director of CyberDissidents.org, an organization that highlights the writings and activities of dissident bloggers. The opinions expressed are his own.

Moments ago, Egypt’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak, stepped down after 30 years in power — following on the heels of Tunisia’s dictator who fled his country after ruling for 23 years.

At this remarkable moment in Middle Eastern history, it is worth recalling what scholars, diplomats and pundits said in years past about stability in Egypt and Tunisia. This jog down memory lane is one of those delicious moments where the experts are yet again proved ignorant of the present and incapable of predicting the future.

In 2007, then US ambassador to Egypt, Francis Riccardione, declared that the country was the “rock of stability in this region.” Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said, “the Egyptian government is stable” and State Department spokesman PJ Crowley echoed that Egypt was an “anchor of stability.”

To any student of history, all of this was eerily reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s pronouncement on the eve of the Iranian revolution that the country was an “island of stability.” At midnight on December 31, 1977, Carter raised a glass of champagne and toasted Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, proclaiming that the Shah enjoyed “his people’s total confidence.” Just before the Iranian autocrat was toppled, Britain’s ambassador in Iran said, “There has been little or no evidence of unrest among the urban poor.” That year, Pahlavi boasted,“Nobody can overthrow me.  I have the support of 700,000 troops, all the workers and most of the people.”

Days ago, as over a million people fearlessly gathered to protest corruption and dictatorship in Egypt, Al Jazeera declared without a hint of irony that the Egyptian people were famous for their apathy. The New York Times described the Egyptian public as “apolitical and largely apathetic.” There were, of course, elements of truth to these caricatures, but much greater humility was called for. The Egyptian people were apathetic — until suddenly one day they weren’t.  Egypt was a rock of stability — until suddenly one day it wasn’t.

Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations was not exaggerating when he wrote recently that “many of my colleagues considered Ben Ali’s Tunisia as among the most stable of stable political systems.” Journalists who covered the region were fond of saying that despite his heavy-handed tactics, censorship, rampant corruption and authoritarianism, Tunisia under Ben Ali was stable, moderate, literate and relatively prosperous. They also claimed that Ben Ali was here to stay. In late 2009, The Economist confidently asserted that even after more than two decades in power, the dictator’s reign “is by no means over yet.”