SPEAKING
FREELY Missing links in the Arab
Spring By Monte Palmer
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
The euphoria of the
Arab Spring is giving way to despair as dreams of
prosperity and justice continue to fade. The
tyrants are crumbling, but their military
establishments remain entrenched in positions of
power. Elections have been held, only to raise
fears of Islamic rule. Chaos reigns, sending
liberated economies into a free fall. Jobs and
welfare have yet to materialize.
Such is
the nature of revolutions. They begin by tearing
down the old and then turn to the far more
difficult task of building a new and better world.
Several missing links in the Arab revolution
suggest that this rebuilding process may take a
long time. It will
also require a great
deal of patience and sensitivity among global
powers desirous of a stable and democratic Middle
East.
The list of missing links begins
with the lack of a clear identity or ideology
among the protesters who so bravely toppled the
ruling tyrants of region. The Arab Spring was not
an organized movement, but a mass explosion born
of despair that incorporated virtually all
segments of Arab society. To borrow a term from
earlier Shia protests in Lebanon, it was a
movement of the dispossessed. There was no
internal cohesion in the movement other than a
shared dream that the fall of the tyrants would
bring an end to what the Arab Human Development
Report described as an "existential nightmare".
With the tyrants gone, everything else
would be sorted out with time and goodwill. There
was neither, and the revolutionary movements began
to splinter into their diverse factions. They will
continue to splinter until the citizens of the
liberated countries can agree on a common vision
of Arab society and its future.
What this
means, in effect, is that the Arab Spring lacks a
true mass organization to sustain it in the
difficult years to come. It has no core figure or
ideology to rally around. The protesters were a
vanguard willing to challenge the regime with
their lives, but the majority of the people were
either sleepers or bystanders more concerned with
individual survival than changing the face of the
Arab world. They remain so. As long as the
vanguard remains divided among itself, there can
be little hope for a coherent change in the Arab
world
The more the movement of the
dispossessed continues to splinter, the more
difficult it will be for the Arab revolution to
create sustainable democratic institutions capable
of maintaining order while they focus their
energies on national development. Democracy is not
the only path to development, but it is the only
one that facilitates political change by
reconciliation rather than violence.
Not
only are the embryonic democracies of the region
fragile, but the competing views in Arab society
are so extreme that they may be beyond
reconciliation by peaceful means. Of these, none
is greater than the gapping distance between
secular and Islamic views of the Arab future. This
problem came to the fore with the sweeping
victories of the Muslim Brotherhood and its kin
throughout the region. The people have voted, but
will the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed to rule?
Democracy is not merely a matter of winning
elections. Elected leaders also have to rule.
The dilemma posed by the dominance on the
Muslim Brotherhood in recent elections points to
another glaring moderate Islamic force that can
serve the spiritual needs of Muslims in a secular
environment. Sadly, most senior clerics in the
Arab world served the tyrants rather than the
masses. Their credibility as suffered accordingly.
To use an Egyptian phrase, Establishment Islam now
suffers from the curse of the pharaoh and does not
offer a viable alternative to either the Muslim
Brotherhood of the more extreme Salafis.
A
lack of clarity in discussing the issue is only
adding to the confusion. The words liberals and
Islamist are bandied about as if they had specific
meanings. They don't. Liberals and seculars are
used interchangeably and run the gamut from
socialist labor unions to free market
entrepreneurs. They agree on nothing other than
the vague fear that the Islamists will clip their
wings by imposing strict Islamic rule. Words like
socialist and liberal also give the false
impression that the secularists are hostile to
Islam. This is hardly the case, for most liberal
groups have been in constant negotiations with the
Muslim Brotherhood.
The word Islamist is
equally confusing. The term was coined by the
pro-Hosni Mubarak press in an effort to paint the
Muslim Brotherhood with the brush of the jihadists
and other Salafi currents. The label stuck and was
soon picked up by the Western press for the sake
of simplicity. Assuming that the Salafi and Muslim
Brotherhood are on the same page is a tragic
error. In fact, conflict between the Brotherhood
and the diverse Salafi currents who now dominate
the scene could lead to conflicts over strategy,
timing, concessions to secularism that will keep
the region in chaos for years to come. It would
also be an error to assume that even devout
Muslims are anxious to return to a time warp of
7th century Arabia. Some are, but most aren't.
Now add an Arabic language that sacrifices
clarity for the love of embellishment to the
discussion. How are Arabs to make rational
electoral choices when they are overwhelmed with
campaign speeches and press commentary that thrive
on hyperbole rather than reality.
The
demands of the protesters, moreover, are not
self-fulfilling. Totally missing in the liberated
states is an apparatus for meeting the needs of
the dispossessed. The bureaucracies of the region
are corrupt, self-serving and profoundly
inefficient. Gamal Abdul Nasser even spoke of
forming an alliance with the masses against the
bureaucrats, and those were the good days. The
Arab bureaucracies have continued to rot in an
environment of corruption and oppression and
cannot meet the needs of the dispossessed in the
coming decade any more than they could in the
past.
Also missing is the existence of a
depoliticized military. How could it be otherwise
when the main function of Arab militaries was to
keep the tyrants in power? One cannot simply order
the military out of politics. It is part of an
Arab military culture born of years of tyranny.
The military establishment, like the bureaucracy,
will have to be totally reconfigured from scratch.
The Turks are working on the problem, but it is
tough sledding.
One thing is for sure.
Serious efforts to reform the bureaucracy and the
military will require massive layoffs. What this
means, if effect, is the dismantling of the
overwhelming largest employer in the Arab world.
Who will replace the redundant bureaucrats and
soldiers, and what will this new wave of
dispossessed do to the Arab spring?
The
American answer to this riddle is free market
economics. Alas, the practice of free market
economics in the Arab world has only made the rich
richer while swelling the ranks of the
dispossessed. Economists acknowledge the problem
of temporary increases in social inequality, but
are confident that things will be sorted out with
time. I'm not sure that the Arab Spring has that
much time, especially when popular pressures are
demanding subsidies, equity, and government jobs.
Not only do the Arabs currently lack the
capacity to meet the needs of the dispossessed,
but corruption reigns and a long established
alliance between capitalists and bureaucrats will
assure that the billions of aid dollars that are
pouring into the Arab world go for naught. Legions
of parasitic contractors and NGOs will help them
along. Not all contractors and NGOs are self
serving, but many are. Non-Governmental, may sound
like a halo, but that isn't necessarily so. One
must surely worry about Neguib Mafaouz's dictum
that revolutions are initiated by dreamers,
carried out by brave people, and taken over by
opportunists.
Underlying this lack of
cooperation is the missing link of mutual trust.
Such is the price of decades of oppression and
corruption. As things currently stand, the Arab
psyche is haunted by fear, uncertainty, and a
profound lack of faith that others will play by
the rules whatever their merit. Feelings of
revenge are also prominent in Arab culture and
will clearly add to the prevailing uncertainty of
the Arab Spring as those linked to the pharaoh
cling desperately to their positions. Both culture
and the psyche are "sticky." They will not change
overnight.
The missing link of security
may be even more lethal. People who are desperate,
afraid, and uncertain of their future invariably
cling to their core family and religious groups in
the hope of finding stability in a cataclysmic
environment. That is where their loyalty lies.
Where else do they have to turn? Certainly not to
embryonic political systems the future of which
may be fleeting, at best. For all of the bravery
and sacrifice of the protesters, the majority of
the Arab populations will focus on survival until
the dust of the revolution has settled. As Mubarak
quipped when someone accused a colleague of being
a survivor, "We are all survivors."
Even
knottier is the missing commitment of
self-sacrifice for the good of society and
country. The dispossessed have become adept at
articulating their wants, but I have seen little
evidence of concerted sacrifice or cooperation for
the public good.
Such basic instincts are
logical. Far less logical are the impulses
stimulated by the emotional cyclone sweeping the
region. Fear has already been mention and takes
center stage in Arab analyses of their psyche. Now
add the conflicting emotions of hope and despair,
euphoria and disappointment, the thrill of victory
and the agony of defeat, efficacy and self doubt.
Which will predominate? Is logical decision making
really possible in the emotional pressure cooker
of the Arab Spring? These and related
psychological themes are elaborated in my Arab
Psyche and American Frustrations. They can also be
discussed at arabpsyche.wordpress.com.
Finally, the Arab Spring is missing
coherent international and regional guidance. The
Arabs can't adjust to American policy, because the
US, still reeling from defeats in Iraq and
Afghanistan, has no policy. On one hand, the US is
struggling to create a region free of terror that
is safe for Israel and Saudi Arabia. On the other,
it courts a Muslim Brotherhood hostile to Israel
and pursues policies that breed terrorism in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Libya. Sooner or
later the US may have to face the choice between
stability, oil, and Israel. The State Department
glosses over its lack of policy by saying that it
treats events on a case by case basis. A better
indicator of a lack of Middle Eastern policy is
hard to find.
The meddling of the Russians
and the Chinese adds confusion to the picture as
does the reluctance of the Arab kings to see the
Arab Spring succeed. Who can blame them? They are
next on the list.
Monte Palmer
is Professor Emeritus at Florida State University
and a former Director of the Center for Arab and
Middle Eastern Studies at the American University
of Beirut. His recent books include The Arab
Psyche and American Frustrations, The Politics of
the Middle East, Islamic Extremism (with
Princess Palmer), Political Development:
Dilemmas and Challenges, and Egypt and the
Game of Terror (a novel). He can be reached at:
montepalmer@yahoo.com
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
