The Arab Spring: Common Roots, Common Challenges

Article By Mohamed Elagati

Tags: West Asia , Civil Society in West Asia

Ongoing revolutions in the Arab world signify another iteration of a  process the world has witnessed before in various regions, including  Southern and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.  Observers were wondering why the cloud of democracy passed over the Arab  World without raining. This question led analysts to believe in what  was called “Arab exceptionalism,” or the alleged incompatibility of the  societies of the region with democratic development. This claim  resonated with the conventional argument that Arab ruling elites used to  justify their repressive policies against their own citizens on the  grounds that ‘people are not ready for democracy.’ The Tunisian  revolution came in early 2011 to refute these allegations and prove that  the Arab peoples desire dignity and freedom as much as any other  people.

Despite the differences in the scope of the uprisings that swept the  region, the similarities between them are striking, especially in terms  of their origins as well as the strategies pursued by regimes and their  challengers, notwithstanding variations in how these factors pronounced  themselves across different contexts.

The origins of these uprisings can be in part attributed to greater  openness—or at least the promise thereof—witnessed in political life in  Arab countries throughout the past ten years. In Egypt, signs of this  openness include greater freedom in launching private newspapers and  satellite channels; the 2005 elections, which was competitive enough to  allow opposition groups to secure meaningful representation in the  parliament; and greater independence of the judicial system. Similar  trends were observed in Bahrain after 2000, Yemen after 2001 when the  government agreed to introduce a political reform package, and in Syria  after 2000 when President Bashar al-Asad came to power following his  father’s death. Even in Libya, there were talks on and promises of  greater freedom for media outlets and civil society. These openings,  however, were quickly halted partly because regimes seemed unwilling to  cope with criticism from their opponents during periods of political  openings, and partly because Western pressure for democratization in the  region had declined. Thus, we saw during the last three years many  attempts by Arab autocrats to confiscate political space and rights that  were granted to the opposition during earlier reform periods. The most  notable examples of these attempts was seen in Egypt, where the Mubarak  regime engaged in shameless election rigging in 2010. Other examples  include Syria and Tunisia wherein arrests of human rights activists and  dissidents were widespread.

On the economic level, the origins of the uprisings seem to converge  on neoliberalism. The global crisis did not affect the neoliberal  economic policies that many of these regimes followed. Instead,  authoritarian rulers continued applying “free market” policies without  much consideration for their negative impact on large segments of the  population. Many of these rulers enriched themselves and their political  allies through a corruption-ridden process of privatization of public  sector enterprises. These privatization schemes led to the formation of  oligarchic business networks controlled by ruling elite. Former NDP  leader Ahmed Ezz, who monopolized the steel industry in Egypt, was one  of the major symbols of regime-sponsored corruption. Ezz is also widely  known as the architect of fraud in the 2010 legislative election in  Egypt. In Tunisia, relatives and close associates of President Zine  Abdine Ben Ali acquired public land through similar forms of  regime-sponsored corruption. Symbols of this crony capitalism are  widespread in the Arab world, and include Rami Makhlouf in Syria, sons  of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and the brothers of President Ali Abdallah  Saleh in Yemen.

These uprisings also share a common root in repression and brutality  by security forces. The death of Khalid Said in Egypt at the hands of  police officers is a case in point. Mohamed Bouazizi of Tunisia set  himself on fire after being roughed up by police officers in another  high-profile example of this trend. These events and similar ones  provided the spark that instigated revolution in the Arab region.  However, these uprisings were not merely the product of short-term  repression.  The movements that supported the initial uprisings, like  “Kefaya” and its successors, enjoyed a long history, dating back to the  second Palestinian uprising. These movements pronounced themselves in  the form of protest waves that lasted for over three years. In Syria,  the Damascus Declaration emerged in 2004 as a road map for a democratic  reform struggle by opposition forces. In Yemen, similar efforts led to  the emergence of the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) a coalition composed of  ideologically diverse political groups. In Bahrain, there were efforts  to push for reform since the constitutional crisis of 2004.

These revolutions will likely continue to inspire similar initiatives  in other Arab countries as younger generations of previously  non-politicized activists continue marketing these revolutions as a new  model of popular uprisings.

These revolutions also exhibited similarities in the strategies that  their activists adopted in order to advance them. Specifically,  activists across these uprisings used social networking sites like  Facebook and Twitter to spread calls for protests in public squares.  What started as a set of limited demands of the protesters gradually  expanded to include more daring demands for transformative change as  more and more people amassed. These protests adhered to their peaceful  strategies despite being confronted by state violence. Here we must  credit Yemeni revolutionaries for maintaining a peaceful uprising  against the regime despite the quantity and quality of arms in the hands  of tribes. The Libyan case also started and continued peacefully until  the regime chose to turn it into an armed conflict.

The Libyan case vividly illustrates the typical strategies that  autocrats of the region adopted in the face of rebellion, namely denial  and neglect. “Egypt is not Tunisia,” as Mubarak’s associates announced  publicly prior to January 25, turned to “Libya is not Egypt or Tunisia.”  This was followed by the use of excessive violence against  demonstrators accompanied by an intensive media campaign accusing the  protesters of treason and agency on behalf of Israel, Iran, or al-Qaeda,  or all together in a laughable claim. Then came a series of concessions  that were either irrelevant or insufficient to meet the demands of the  demonstrators. Many of these concessions were but failed attempts to  divide the demonstrators and fragment them. For example, when the  demonstrations started spreading throughout Syria, “Bashar al-Assad”  granted citizenship to a group of Kurds in the North in a clear move to  foment sectarian divisions. Other concessions included making cosmetic  changes in the government. In his last days, Mubarak announced a cabinet  reshuffle, but eighteen out of twenty-three ministers retained their  positions. Even on the micro level, we see similarities in regimes’  handling of these uprisings, such as cutting off means of communications  and attempting to keep the demonstrators under siege.

These similarities in how regimes dealt with these revolutions  suggests that the ongoing revolutions will succeed somehow in the near  future, as was the case in Egypt and Tunisia. Yet it is important to  note some common challenges that the ongoing uprisings are facing: 

-       With the exception of Tunisia, all uprisings  faced the challenge of divisions across religious/sectarian (Egypt,  Syria and Bahrain) or tribal lines (Yemen and Libya). This gives  autocrats and their allies a good opportunity to exploit divisions  within their challengers and weaken them. The demands of the  revolutionaries thus far united these diverse communities despite  efforts by pro-regime forces to exploit socio-cultural divisions within  the opposition.

-       Ejecting autocrats through military coups, along  the lines of Egypt and Tunisia, certainly comes with risks and may  reinforce the persistence of tension and chaos on the ground.

-       These uprisings also face the risk and challenge  of foreign interference from Arab regimes that fear the spread of the  Arab Spring into their own countries, or from other regional powers,  like Iran, that fear losing influence as a result of these revolutions.

Unfortunately, these risks will continue to challenge the spread of  the Arab Spring and attempts by Arab revolutionaries to advance  transformative change. They face the impossible task of countering  attempts by local pro-regime forces or foreign actors to undermine these  revolutions by spreading chaos and social disorder. This only  underscores the need for them to unite under the umbrella of democracy  and national unity, and to raise the slogan of a civil state through a  discourse based on economic and social rights in order to attract wide  support from their diverse populations. They must also support their  communities’ efforts to organize unions and labor coalitions, as these  entities will be the main protectors of these revolutions.