Anderson Demystifying the Arab Spring

8/12/2019 Anderson Demystifying the Arab Spring

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Demystifying the Arab SpringParsing the DifferencesBetween Tunisia, Egypt and Libya

isa n erson

In Tunisia, protesters escalated calls forthe restoration of the country s suspendedconstitution. Meanwhile, Egyptians rosein revolt as strikes across the countrybrought daily life to a halt and toppled thegovernment. In Libya, provincial leadersworked feverishly to strengthen theirnewly independent republic.

It was 1919.That year s events demonstrate that

the global diffusion of information andexpectations-so vividly on display in TahrirSquare this past winter-is not a result ofthe Internet and social media. The inspira-tional rhetoric ofU.S. President WoodrowWilson s Fourteen Points speech, whichhelped spark the 9 9 upheavals made itsway around the world by telegraph. Theuprisings of 9 9 also suggest that the cal-culated spread of popular movem ents, seenacross the Arab world last winter, is not anew phenomenon. The Egyptian Facebookcampaigners are the modern incarnationof Arab nationalist networks whose broad-sheets disseminated strategies for civildisobedience throughout the region inthe years after World War I.

The important story about the 2011Arab revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libyais not how the globalization of the normsof civic engagement shaped the protestersaspirations. Nor is it about how activistsused technology to share ideas and tactics.Instead, the critical issue is how and whythese ambitions and techniques resonatedin their various local contexts. The patternsand demographics of the protests variedwidely. The demonstrations in Tunisia spi-raled toward the capital from the neglectedrural areas, finding common cause with aonce powerful but much repressed labormovement. In Egypt by contrast, urbaneand cosmopolitan young people in themajor cities organized the uprisings.Meanwhile in Libya, ragtag bands ofarmed rebels in the eastern provincesignited the protests, revealing the tribaland regional cleavages that have besetthe country for decades. Although theyshared a common call for personal dignityand responsive government, the revolu-tions across these three countries reflecteddivergent economic grievances and socialdynamics-legacies of their diverse

[2]LIS NDERSON is President of the American University in Cairo.

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Demystifingth rab Springencounters with modem Europe and decadesunder unique regimes.

As a result, Tunisia, Egypt and Libyaface vastly different challenges m oving for-ward. Tunisians will need to grapple withthe class divisions manifesting themselvesin the country's continuing political unrest.Egyptians must redesign their institutionsof government. And Libyans will need torecover from a bloody civil war. For theUnited States to fulfill its goals in the region,it will need to understand these distinctionsand distance itself from the idea that theTunisian, Egyptian, and Libyan uprisingsconstitute a cohesive Arab revolt.BEN AL S TUNISI N FIEFDOMThe profound differences between theTunisian Egyptian and Libyan uprisingsare not always apparent in the popular media.The timing of the popular revolts-sosudden and almost simultaneous-suggeststhat the similarities these autocracies shared,from their aging leaders and corrupt andineffectual governments to their educated,unemployed, and disaffected youth, weresufficient to explain the wave of revolutions.Yet the authorities that these young protestersconfronted were unique in each nation-aswill be the difficulties they face in the future.

Former Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali-the first Arab dictatorto fall to mass protests-initially seemedan unlikely victim. Tunisia has long enjoyedthe Arab world's best educational system,largest middle class, and strongest organizedlabor movement. Yet behind those achieve-ments, Ben Ali's government tightly re-stricted free expression and political parties.In an almost Orwellian way, he cultivatedand manipulated the country's internationalimage as a modern technocratic regimeand a tourist-friendly travel destination.

Beyond the cosmopolitan fagade frequentedby tourists lay bleak, dusty roads and miser-able prospects. It is small wonder that theIslamists' claim that the government wasprostituting the country for foreign exchangeresonated in Tunisia.Ben Ali's family was also unusuallypersonalist and predatory in its corruption.As the whistleblower Web site WikiLeaksrecently revealed, the U.S. ambassador toTunisia reported in 2006 that more thanhalf of Tunisia's commercial elites werepersonally related to Ben Ali through histhree adult children, seven siblings, andsecond wife's ten brothers and sisters.This network became known in Tunisia as the Family.

That said, although the scale of corrup-tion at the top was breathtaking, Ben Ali'sadministration did not depend on the kind ofaccumulation of small bribes that subvertedbureaucracies elsewhere, including in Libyaand, to a lesser extent, Egypt. This meansthat Tunisia's government institutions wererelatively healthy, raising the prospects fora clean, efficient, and technocratic govern-ment to replace Ben Ali.

Tunisia's military also played a lesssignificant role in the country's revolt thanthe armed forces in the other nations experi-encing unrest. Unlike militaries elsewhere inthe Arab world, such as Egypt the Tunisianarmy has never experienced combat anddoes not dominate the domestic economy.Under Ben Ali, it existed in the shadow ofthe co untry's domestic security services,from which Ben Ali, a former militarypolice officer, hailed. Although its refusalto support Ben Ali's regime contributed tothe country's revolution, the military has notparticipated meaningfully in managing thetransition period and is unlikely to shapethe ultimate outcome in any significant way.

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isa ndersonSince Tunisia s protests initiated the wave

of unrest in the Arab world, they were morespontaneous and less well organized thansubsequent campaigns in other nations. Yetthey demonstrated the power of he country slabor movement, as repeated strikes fueledprotests both before Ben Ali fled and as thefirst short-lived successor government-soonreplaced by a second one more amenable tothe major unions-attempted to contain thedamage to what remained of his regime.

The protests also revealed a sharpgenerational divide among the opposition.The quick-fire demonstrations filled withangry youth made the generation of regimedissidents from the 198os, primarily unionactivists and Islamist militants then ledby Rachid al-Ghannouchi, appear elderlyand outmoded. Images of an enfeebledGhannouchi returning to Tunisia after20 years in exile in the wake of Ben Ali souster reflected the radical changes in theagenda of Tunisia s protest movement.Tunisians may once again prove receptiveto Ghanno uchi s brand of political Islam,but only if his Islamists can capture theimagination ofTunisia s young people, whoare principally concerned with receivingwhat they see as their fair share of thecountry s wealth and employment opportu-nities. Tunisia s new leadership must there-fore incorporate a generation ofyoung peoplewith only theoretical exposure to freedomof belief, expression, and assembly into asystem that fosters open political debate andcontestation. And it must respond to someof the demands, especially of the labormovement, that will feature prominentlyin those debates.EGYPT S ARMY MAKES ITS MOVEIn Egypt Hosni Mubarak s fumbling endepitomized the protracted decline of his

regime s efficacy. The government s deteri-orating ability to provide basic services andseeming indifference to widespread unem-ployment and poverty alienated tens ofmillions of Egyptians, a feeling that wasexacerbated by growing conspicuous con-sumption among a business elite connectedto Mubarak s son Gamal. Yet the a rmy scarefully calibrated intervention in theuprising indicated the continuing powerof a military establishment honed by equalparts patronage and patriotism. And theprotesters political and tactical sophistica-tion came about as a result of Mubarak sreluctant but real tolerance of a raucous andunruly press.

As it assumed control ofEgypt afterMubarak s downfall, the army revealed itsenormous influence in Egyptian society.The military is run by generals who earnedtheir stripes in the 967 and 1973 wars withIsrael and who have cooperated closelywith the United States since Cairo s 1979peace treaty with Jerusalem. In contrast tothe other Arab militaries that have grappledwith unrest this year, the Egyptian army iswidely respected by the general populace. Itis also deeply interwoven into the domesticeconomy. As a result, the military leader-ship remains largely hostile to economicliberalization and private-sector growth,views that carry considerable weight withinthe provisional government. Thus as inTunisia (although for different reasons), thepace of privatization and economic reformwill likely be slow, and so the emphasis ofreforms will be on democratization.

Repairing decades of public-sectorcorrosion may also prove problematic.Everything in Egypt-from obtaining adriver s license to getting an education-isformally very cheap but in practice veryexpensive, since most transactions, official

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and unofficial, are accompanied by off-the-books payments. The government paysschoolteachers a pittance, so public educationis poor and teachers supplement their salariesby providing private lessons that are essentialpreparation for school exams. The nationalpolice were widely reviled long before theirbrutal crackdowns at the inception of theJanuary 5 revolt because they represented,in essence, a nationwide protection racket.Ordinary citizens had to bribe police officersall too ready to confiscate licenses and inventviolations. The disappearance of the policeduring the height of the protests-consideredby many Egyptians a deliberate attempt todestabilize the country-only deepenedthat animosity. The process of applyingdemocratic rule of law must begin with thepolice themselves, meaning that the InteriorMinistry will need to reestablish trustbetween the police and the people.

But the remarkable discipline demon-strated by Egypt s protesters and theirsubsequent wide-ranging debates abouthow to reshape their country speak to theunusually high tolerance for free expressionin Egypt by regional standards prior tothe revolution. The campaign to honorKhaled Said, the blogger killed by Egyptianpolice and whose death initiated the uprising,for example, would have been unimaginablein Tunisia. Egyptians were relatively wellprepared to engage in serious and sustainedconversations about the composition of theirfuture government, even as they understoodthat, whatever the outcome, the militarywould not allow its institutional prerogativesto be substantially eroded.

This latent political w isdom reflects thechanges that transformed Egyptian societyover the last 5 years, even while the country saging and ineffectual autocracy remained inplace. As Tahrir s protesters were at pains

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isa ndersonto demonstrate, Egypt has a culture of deepcommunal bonds and trust which mani-fested itself in the demonstrators' incrediblediscipline: their sustained nonviolence,their refusal to be provoked by thugs andsaboteurs, their capacity to police them-selves and coordinate their demands, andtheir ability to organize without any central-ized leadership. Perhaps the finest exampleof this egalitarian spirit was the appearance,in comm unities rich and poor, of spontaneouscitizen mob ilizations to maintain orderonce the police had disengaged. All thesedevelopments should give one cause foroptimism today about the new Egypt's po-tential to build and sustain an open society.THE WRECK GE OF LIBYWhereas demonstrators in Tunis and Cairosuccessfully ousted their former rulers,Tripoli collapsed into a protracted civil war.Its sustained fighting resulted from Libyanleader Muammar al-Qaddafi's four-decade-long effort to consolidate his power andrule by patronage to kin and clan. Years ofartificially induced scarcity in everythingfrom simple consumer goods to basic med-ical care generated widespread corruption.And the capricious cruelty of Qaddafi'sregime produced widespread and deep-seated suspicion. Libyans' trust in theirgovernment and in one another eroded,and they took refuge in the solace of ribe andfamily. Libyan society has been fractured,and every national institution includingthe military, is divided by the cleavages ofkinship and region. As opposed to Tunisiaand Egypt Libya has no system of politicalalliances, network of economic associations,or national organizations of any kind.Thus what seemed to begin as nonviolentprotests similar to those staged in Tunisiaand Egypt soon became an all-out

secession-or multiple separate secessions-from a failed state.

Libya under Qaddafi has borne traces ofthe Italian fascism that ruled the country inits colonial days: extravagance, dogmatism,and brutality. In the name ofhis permanentrevolution, Qaddafi also prohibited privateownership and retail trade banned a freepress, and subverted the civil service andthe military leadership. In the absence ofany public-sector bureaucracy, including areliable police force, kin networks haveprovided safety and security as well as accessto goods and services. It was along suchnetworks that Libyan society fracturedwhen the regime's capacity to divide andrule began to unravel at the beginning ofthe protests. Meanw hile, Qaddafi had dis-tributed his armed forces across a deliber-ately confusing and uncoordinated arrayof units. Some forces joined the oppositionquickly but were prevented from organizingeffectively or deploying sophisticatedmilitary equipment.This lack of social and governmentalcohesion will hamper any prospectivetransition to democracy. Libya must firstrestore security and introduce the law andorder missing for decades under Qaddafi'sregime. As daunting as that task mayseem, further difficulties lie on the horizon:reviving trust across clans and provinces;reconstructing public administration;strengthening civil society through politicalparties, open media, and nongovernmentalorganizations. Libya's decades of interna-tional isolation have left the generation inits 30s and 40s the one likely to assumeleadership in a new Libya-poorly educatedand ill equipped to manage the country.Others have been co-opted by the regimeand stand to lose should Qaddafi fall. Thechallenge for Libya is both simpler and

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emystiying the rab Springmore vexing than those facing Tunisia andEgypt: Libya confronts the complexity notof democratization but of state formation.It will need to construct a coherent nationalidentity and public administration out ofQaddafi s shambles.THE CH LLENGES HE DThe young activists in each country have beensharing ideas, tactics, and moral support, butthey are confronting different opponentsand operating within different contexts.The critical distinctions between Tunisia,Egypt, and Libya will shape the outcomesof their respective movements. WhileTunisia and Egypt grapple in their ow nways with building political institutions-constitutions, political parties, and elec-toral systems-Libya will need to beginby constructing the rudiments of a civilsociety. While Egypt struggles with thelong shadow of military rule, Tunisia andLibya will need to redefine the relationshipbetween their privileged capital cities andtheir sullen hinterlands. Tempting as it isto treat the Arab uprisings as a singlemovement their causes and future mis-sions demonstrate the many variationsbetween them.

These distinctions will matter for theUnited States and its allies. In June 2009little more than 90 years after WoodrowWilson s ringing endorsement of self-determination, U S President BarackObama invigorated the Muslim worldwith his historic speech in Cairo. There,he declared that he has

an unyielding belief that all peopleyearn for certain things: the ability tospeak your mind and have a say in howyou are governed; confidence in the ruleof law and the equal administration ofjustice; government that is transparent

and doesn t steal from the people; thefreedom to live as you choose. Theseare not just American ideas; they arehuman rights. And that is why we willsupport them everywhere.His proclamation did not produce thisyear s democratic upheavals in the Arab

world, but it set expectations for how theUnited States would respond to them. IfWashington hopes to fulfill its promise tosupport these rights, it will need to acquirea nuanced understanding of the historiccircumstances of the uprisings. The Obamaadministration must encourage and reinin various constituencies and institutions ineach country, from championing the labormovement in Tunisia to curtailing the mil-itary in Egypt In each case, the UnitedStates cannot pursue the goals so eloquentlyidentified by Obama without discardingthe notion of a singular Arab revolt andgrappling with the.conditions of thecountries themselves.0

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Anderson Demystifying the Arab Spring

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