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.