An
unwelcome turn in the Arab
Spring? By Brian M Downing
The remarkable uprisings across the Arab
world in the past 16 months have ousted or
imperiled leaders in several countries, including
Egypt, Yemen, and Syria. None of these movements,
however, has been successful in its goal of
creating a new political system let alone a
democratic one. Old rulers are gone in many cases
but their regimes have persisted, either through
adroit maneuvering or vicious repression.
The leaders of the old regimes believe
they can wait out or
repress the popular
upheavals, much as European monarchies did when
youthful revolutions swept the continent in 1848.
Young people then and now are not patient.
Frustration leads to despair, emigration, and
violence. Young people in the Arab world today
have options against intransigent authority -
guerrilla warfare and terrorism among them - which
old regimes should bear in mind. Outside powers
hoping for stability in the region should do the
same.
Uprisings and regime
response Middle East observers had long
noted the immense youth population in most Arab
countries, with 50% or more of the public under
the age of 22. Such a demographic bulge would be
problematic in any country, but in countries with
stagnant economies and stale political systems, it
was an impending disaster and all that was needed
was a trigger of some sort.
That came with
demonstrations against food prices and bold acts
of violence. In a matter of weeks, public outrage
was focused on corruption, oppression, lack of
opportunity, and demands for a voice in their
future.
In less time than anyone would
have expected only a year earlier, Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down.
The business, military, and political networks
that made up his regime, however, are positioned
to retain their privileges and suppress popular
aspirations, leaving democratic forces with
perhaps a decade-long task of incremental change.
They are counting on civil disorder to bring
middle classes to their side and on delaying
tactics to disillusion the rest. The absence of
unity in the opposition is on the regime’s side.
Democratic forces are divided over tactics,
factions, and fears of Islamism and Salafism.
Similar uprisings took place in Yemen,
though with the complications of regional and
sectarian antagonisms. After months of
demonstrations and skirmishes, president Ali
Abdullah Saleh agreed to pressure from his
countrymen and regional powers and left the
country he ruled for over 20 years. As with Egypt,
his associates retained control over the military,
state, and key businesses. Popular protest is on
hold as people wait to see if meaningful reform
will begin. Regional, tribal, and sectarian
conflict remains. Hydrocarbon production is
tapping out and water supplies cannot match
population growth.
Yemen is becoming a
ward of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC), which may augur well for economic
aid but not for political reform. These Sunni
powers see the Arab Spring as a dangerous threat
to the principle of autocracy upon, which they
have governed since independence, and as an
international conspiracy directed by the Shi'ites
of Iran. They are using their diplomatic and
financial assets to oppose democracy throughout
the region.
The uprising in Syria is in
its second year. The military remains intact,
loyal, and murderous. Security officers at the
small-unit level of regular army formations ensure
that defections and even critical discussions are
limited. Russia, Iran, and China remain
supportive. Saudi Arabia and other GCC states
tried last year to detach Bashar al-Assad from his
ties to Iran, but without success. In this effort,
they tipped their hand in supporting autocracy
over democracy in the region.
After months
of repression, peaceful demonstrations gave way to
armed opposition. But it has failed to mount
effective defenses of rebel neighborhoods or
inflict casualties on the army and security
forces. In recent months repression has become
increasingly murderous, with artillery raining
down on cities and militias slaughtering
villagers.
Options Intransigent
regimes historically have caused despair,
withdrawal from politics, retreat into private
life, and emigration. This would of course be
welcome by the old regimes today, taking away a
good deal of the pressure to reform. The lower
turnout in successive Egyptian elections may be
encouraging to rulers.
These options are
unlikely today as Arab youth has insufficient
opportunity to work and have families. Emigration
will seem attractive to many, especially to Europe
and the US. However, those countries are not as
open as they once were to immigrants, and young
men from the Middle East may be among the least
welcome.
The activists in the Arab world
today have thus far exhibited remarkable tenacity
in the face of oppression and intransigence from
rulers. There is still the conviction that their
moment is at hand and failure will bring on
decades of continued misrule. Unlike many rulers
of the past, those in power today have the
capacity to come down on activists and their
families both cruelly and relentlessly.
A
change in tactics will come and in places take the
form of using violence and terrorism, initially
sporadic and unorganized but with potential for
becoming well organized, whether from new
organizations or grafting on to existing ones.
They will target personnel in the security forces,
military, and state. Student groups and activist
networks that coalesced early last year may turn
their organizational skills to these acts, just as
some in the US antiwar movement formed the Weather
Underground after the 1968 police crackdown in
Chicago, and launched a bombing campaign.
A more historically significant parallel
is the People’s Will, a Russian group that emerged
following the failure of populism and which
assassinated Tsar Alexander III in 1894. It set
the groundwork for later secret political
movements that were dedicated to overthrowing the
Romanov dynasty and directed by fearsome,
single-minded figures.
Existing structures
may serve the same purpose. The Muslim Brotherhood
or splinter groups of it, in both Egypt and Syria,
have been known to use violence. In Egypt, a
splinter group assassinated president Anwar Sadat
in 1981. In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood began a
wave of bombings that led to the regime’s ruthless
attack on the city of Hama in 1982.
Salafist networks have long inculcated not
only an austere form of Islam but also militancy
and a zeal to transform the world and establish a
just (Islamist) state. Salafis have an at least
semi-secret organization with unseen but
munificent benefactors, probably in Saudi Arabia.
They have long acted as recruitment networks for
causes in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan during
the Soviet war (1979-89). Today they have ties to
the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, who in turn have
ties to Iraqi refugees in Syria.
Salafi
networks, however, are thought to be tied to
Wahhabi clerics and Saudi intelligence, both of
which recoil from democracy and support the cause
of autocracy in the region. Salafism enjoys an
intermediary position between the conservative
House of Saud and the revolutionary al-Qaeda
movement.
Part of al-Qaeda’s appeal over
the years has been its argument that secular
dictatorships are unreformable and can only be
brought down through armed struggle, which in turn
will bring social justice. The Arab Spring was
thought to signal the end of al-Qaeda's appeal by
showing that secular dictatorships could indeed be
brought down without the cataclysms Osama bin
Laden and the like called for.
The
persistence of secular dictatorships will bring
new appreciation of al-Qaeda as intransigent
regimes are ratifying a central part of its
thought. Agents of al-Qaeda are doubtless making
this point in the region and only a few thousand
converts could be problematic if not disastrous.
Western powers supportive of democracy and Gulf
powers supportive of autocracy might well bear
this in mind, though of course the old regimes
will not.
Brian M Downing is a
political/military analyst and author of The
Military Revolution and Political Change and
The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in
America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can
be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.
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