The Year of the Citizen

During the Spring of the so-called Arab Spring, the euphoria that characterized the Winter of 2010/2011 has increasingly given way to more somber attitudes associated with Winter. For those who were expecting a linear progression towards freedom, in which vain autocrats and sclerotic regimes would fall with growing ease and rapidity, despondency is an appropriate response to the increasing ferocity with which ruling elites seek to remain in power. Yet in the life of peoples, as in life itself, linear does not exist. There are no victories without defeat, hope is constantly shadowed by despair, the future consistently threatened by the combined weight of present and past. This is not to say that further Arab uprisings will necessarily triumph, but merely to point out that it would be rather naïve to expect the ouster of one tyrant per month.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Arab revolt, it has already transformed the region. Even if Ben Ali spends his remaining days in Jeddah playing solitaire, and Mubarak is the last of his colleagues to go the way of Mubarak, 2011 will go down in Arab history as the Year of the Citizen. The year in which Arabs from Marrakesh to Musqat initiated the process of transforming the contemporary Arab state from private fiefdom to public property, thereby changing their status from subject to participant.

The assertion that Arabs are at long last beginning to exercise ownership of the state is very different than the ridiculous proposition that Arabs are overcoming a historical-cultural legacy that has produced congenital docility. The latter half of the twentieth century alone is littered with examples in which, individually as well as collectively, Arabs have been active agents of transformative change. The Algerian struggle for independence and the 1987-1993 Palestinian uprising are but two cases in point. 

Nevertheless there are vital differences between then and now. In previous eras, the people were organized and mobilized by a clearly-defined leadership that sought to seize control of the state, or alternatively struggled autonomously to redress a specific (often local) grievance. The masses, in effect, served to catapult an elite into power – often willingly because such leaders were seen (at times correctly) as capable of successfully confronting existential challenges such as colonial or feudal servitude. Yet once they had served this purpose, ‘citizens’ tended to be excluded from meaningful participation in public life, were re-assembled only irregularly, and then primarily to bolster the legitimacy of leaders in times of crisis, or that of one leadership faction in the context of its conflicts with others.

As the Arab state and post-independence Arab order gradually stabilized during the 1970s and 1980s, their populations were systematically neutralized through a combination of carrots and sticks – electricity for example being both carrot and stick. Given the increasingly narrow base of most regimes, their survival in fact depended upon the effective exclusion of the vast majority from political and civic life. The political party, military establishment, and civil service that had previously – however incompetently – served as instruments of national integration and personal advancement was replaced by the primacy of the security establishment. Assigned the role of keeping the population lobotomized, it additionally privileged (and encouraged) sub-national identities and loyalties. The end result was a state that saw every act of citizenship as a threat to be destroyed. Given that increasingly absolutist and rapacious rulers had simultaneously developed a habit of dealing with the state as a possession to be consumed by them and their cronies, the threat perception was entirely correct.

There is an argument to be made that it was the very success of this phenomenon that proved its undoing. As we have seen time and again since the martyrdom of Muhammad Bouazizi, this collection of ageing autocrats has had it so good for so long that they have become simply incapable of recognizing danger and pro-actively implementing basic reforms to save themselves. Time and again, relatively modest demands that could have easily been addressed without affecting the existence or structure of the regime have instead been met with brutality and contempt, thus producing popular revolts calling for the ouster of the regime. One after the other, Arab rulers and their security forces are producing dynamics which rapidly eliminate any middle ground and leave victory or destruction as the only possible outcomes. So effective have these regimes been in eradicating (through murder, imprisonment and exile) not only organized opposition but activists of national stature, that they have left themselves no credible interlocutors with the millions of ordinary citizens assembling every week in squares and streets demanding their ouster.

The result has been a struggle about the nature and purpose of the Arab state. Will it continue to exist as a mechanism to enforce the docility of its subjects on behalf of corrupt rulers servile only to Washington and the IMF, or be transformed into institutions through which citizens participate in the formulation of policy, select their leaders, and hold them accountable? Will state and citizen continue to be subject to lawless security forces enjoying blanket impunity to do as they please, or will the security sector become subordinate to the state and subject to its laws? Will power continue to be concentrated in the executive – with the judiciary and legislature serving as mere window-dressing – or will Abd-al-Rahman Siwar al-Dahab lose his status as the only Arab leader living in voluntary retirement?

These are not issues that can be resolved by elections alone. In point of fact, elections – even free and fair ones – can serve to obscure the more fundamental and existential issue, which is the establishment of states based on the rule of law, enshrined in enforceable constitutions that limit the role of the security establishment rather than eliminate that of the citizen.

None of these issues will be resolved speedily or easily, and as we have seen in Egypt and Tunisia the ancien régime will fight tooth and nail to preserve its powers, and succumbs only to overwhelming pressure.

While the outcome remains uncertain and the regional and international efforts to prevent further change gather pace, there is nevertheless considerable ground for optimism. Most importantly, change has occurred in Cairo, the very epicenter of the Arab world. Secondly, the West ultimately proved incapable of preventing change in either Egypt or Tunisia, and in the end could deploy no more than Gene Sharp to seize control of two countries experiencing revolutionary upheaval. But perhaps most importantly, people across the region have seen that regime change can be achieved, and that the power that flows from the barrel of a gun is not without limits.

Throughout the region, rulers seem determined to push their subjects over the edge, past the point of no return towards the struggle for citizenship. In Egypt, for example, the 2010 parliamentary elections were so blatantly and visibly fraudulent that the explanation they were fixed incompetently by the regime defies belief. Rather, Mubarak seemed determined to demonstrate to Egypt that he could stage a complete charade, in fact trample the entire country underfoot in full public view, and retain the complete support of Europe and the United States so long as he remained loyal to them and Israel. He was right, and the Egyptian people understood only too well that the parliamentary exercise was in fact a presidential one and had been won by Gamal. The good news is that these rulers appear incapable of learning from each other’s mistakes, and can’t seem to stop themselves from adding fuel to the fire whenever it abates. The bad news is that they retain an enormous capacity for mayhem and destruction, particularly once they realize the curtain has begun to fall. The curtain may have stopped falling once a month. But it is difficult to imagine that many of those who remain on stage will retain their roles in the new script being drafted by the Arab citizen.

[An Arabic version of this article is published by Al-Adaab.]