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Regional Analysis
Why Syria Is not Next . . . so far [With Arabic Translation]
![[Image from author's archive]](/content_images/3/sm_IMG_0995.jpg "[Image from author's archive]")
As millions of Arabs stir their respective countries with demonstrations and slogans of change and transition, certain Arab states have been generally spared, including some oil rich countries and Syria. Syria stands out as a powerful regional player without the benefit of economic prosperity and with a domestic political climate that leaves a lot to be desired. Some say it combines the heavy-handedness of the Tunisian regime, the economic woes of Egypt, the hereditary rule aspects of Morocco and Jordan, and a narrower leadership base than any other country across the Arab world. Why, then, is all relatively quiet on the Syrian front? We can delude ourselves by ...
Keep Reading »الخطة الشعبية المجربة لإسقاط الأنظمة المتجبرة [The Tested Popular Plan for Toppling Powerful Regimes]
![[Fireworks in Cairo's Tahrir Square, February 11, 2011. Image from AFP/Getty]](/content_images/3/sm_FIREWORKSEGYPT.jpg "[Fireworks in Cairo's Tahrir Square, February 11, 2011. Image from AFP/Getty]")
قد يكون أبلغ دروس الثورتين المصرية والتونسية أن ثورة شعبية سلمية، يشارك فيها عشرات الألوف أو مئاتها، هي ما يمكن أن تهدم هياكل سلطة باطشة كهذه القائمة في أكثر الدول العربية. لا يعدو هذا «الدرس» أن يكون تسجيلاً لما حصل بالفعل في البلدين. لكن هذا التسجيل لما هو عارض، مبدئيا، معقول وضروري وقابل للتعميم. أو هذا ما ستحاول هذه المقالة قوله. منذ سبعينيات القرن العشرين، وفي مناخات الحرب الباردة وما بعد هزيمة حزيران المهينة، استقرت في حكم البلدان العربية المركزية نخب سلطة لا قضية لها تسمو على البقاء الأبدي في الحكم. ولهذا الغرض عملت على تحطيم الجيش وتمزيقه، أو تقزيمه، وفي الوقت نفسه بناء وحدات عسكرية وأجهزة أمنية جبارة وموثوقة، مدربة على القسوة، ولا تأبه للحياة البشرية. ...
Keep Reading »Paradoxes of Arab Refo-lutions
![[Collage by Jadaliyya. Images from unknown source]](/content_images/3/sm_asef.jpg "[Collage by Jadaliyya. Images from unknown source]")
Serious concerns are expressed currently in Tunisia and Egypt about the sabotage of the defeated elites. Many in the revolutionary and pro-democracy circles speak of a creeping counter-revolution. This is not surprising. If revolutions are about intense struggle for a profound change, then any revolution should expect a counterrevolution of subtle or blatant forms. The French, Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and Nicaraguan revolutions all faced protracted civil or international wars. The question is not if the threat of counter-revolution is to be expected; the question rather is if the ‘revolutions’ are revolutionary enough to offset the perils of restoration. It seems that ...
Keep Reading »The Arab Revolts: Ten Tentative Observations
![[Arab dictators. Image by Saeb Khalil]](/content_images/3/sm_Arabdictatorscartoon15feb11saebkhalil.jpg "[Arab dictators. Image by Saeb Khalil]")
The extraordinary developments in Tunisia and Egypt during the first six weeks of this year, and more recently in Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere, have inaugurated a revolutionary moment in the Arab world not experienced since 1958. If sustained uprisings continue and spread, it has the potential to develop into an Arab 1848. Based on what we have witnessed thus far, the following observations appear relevant: 1. The Arab world is a fundamentally different beast than Eastern Europe during the late 1980s. The latter was ruled by virtually identical regimes, organized within a single collective framework whose individual members were tightly controlled by an outside, ...
Keep Reading »A Word on Africa: Djibouti
![[Image from rethinkingschools.org]](/content_images/3/sm_mapgame2.jpg "[Image from rethinkingschools.org]")
“Arab world unrest reaches Horn of Africa” was how the Israeli website Ynet led off its coverage of the demonstrations that began in Djibouti yesterday. On Friday, thousands of protesters — 6,000, according to the Independent, in a country with a population of less than a million people — demanded the resignation of President Ismail Omar Guelleh, among other political reforms. Authorities used batons and fired tear gas grenades at demonstrators; by the end of the day, according to official reports, one protester and one policeman had been killed. As sporadic protests continued today, the government responded by detaining three opposition leaders: National Democratic ...
Keep Reading »Sunken Mythologies
![[Image by Carlos Latuff]](/content_images/3/sm_236603385.gif "[Image by Carlos Latuff]")
"They told me in an articulate foreign tongue: all nations more or less are moving forward in the direction of history; towards globalization, the knowledge society and political modernity except for you making headway running in the opposite direction ...We know that your unenlightened religious culture is a terrible obstacle that hinders your transition into less closed, less obscurantist societies and less inimical to individuals, women, non-Muslims, reason, modernity and life. We also know that your political imaginary from Othman to Saddam did not know but 'the Khalifah that is either deposed by death or explicit apostasy - [but] not oppression [of his ...
Keep Reading »Egypt, Tunisia, and 'The Resumption of Arab History'
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_arab_world.gif "[Image from unknown archive]")
The recent popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt attest above all to the indomitability of the human spirit, and the extraordinary capacity of collective action to bring out the very best in humanity. In these respects the daring, creativity, discipline, resolve, perseverance and euphoria of the people of Egypt and Tunisia - while primarily theirs – belongs to us all, joining as they do an endless caravan of successful, aborted, hijacked and failed challenges to illegitimate authority across the globe since the dawn of time. It should take nothing away from the phenomenal achievement of Tunisia and Egypt to raise some questions about the manner in which these are ...
Keep Reading »Five Questions on Jordan
![[Protesters outside the Egyptian Embassy in Amman. Image from Assoicated Press]](/content_images/3/sm_Mideast_Jordan_Egypt_t4002.jpg "[Protesters outside the Egyptian Embassy in Amman. Image from Assoicated Press]")
In the shadow of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, social mobilizations and political developments in Jordan have prompted a significant amount of attention on the Kingdom. Below are the five most common questions I’ve received from both friends and reporters as well as composites of my responses. (1) Will we see in Jordan the type of upheaval we are witnessing in Tunisia or Egypt? To date, what has happened in Jordan does not compare to what is happening in other parts of the Arab world neither in terms of degree (i.e., the number of people out in the streets) nor in terms of nature (i.e., the types of demands being made). Jordan shares many of the structural ...
Keep Reading »Tahrir's Other Sky
![[A Tunisian protestor. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_bybreadalone.jpg "[A Tunisian protestor. Image from unknown archive.]")
The Earth is closing on us pushing us through the last passage and we tear off our limbs to pass through. Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky? -- Mahmoud Darwish Egypt’s exhilarating call for freedom, as Elliott Colla recently noted is an astonishing moment of poetry. The refrain, "Ish-sha‘b/yu-rîd/is-qât/in-ni-zâm” (The People Want the Fall of the Regime) resoundingly rings for millions in the Arab world and beyond. With all eyes on Liberation Square, many are wrestling with what Maya Mikdashi aptly called the unfamiliar restlessness of hope. As the twists and turns of the 25 January ...
Keep Reading »Looking to Egypt, Again
![[Anti-Mubarak Protests in Cairo: Image from AP]](/content_images/3/sm_mideast-egypt-protest-2010-4-13-14-48-46.jpg "[Anti-Mubarak Protests in Cairo: Image from AP]")
I grew up hearing about Egypt. The Egypt of those stories, woven inextricably into the memories of my father and his brothers and sisters, was always one of strength, inspiration, beauty and steadfastness. It was the Egypt of Nasser and Um Kulthoum, of Arab Nationalism and of the Bandung Conference. It was the Egypt of solidarity with Palestine. As a child in Beirut, that place seemed as close as the catch in my father’s voice when he would talk about hearing Nasser on the radio. As I grew older, I noticed the bitterness that always laced those stories, the slight shake of my aunt’s head at the end of a sentence, the drop in of my uncle’s shoulders as he described ...
Keep Reading »My Mother and My Neighbor's Dog on the Tunisian Revolution and Its Aftermath
![[image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_ol-aunt-jemima1.jpg "[image from unknown archive]")
[Take a look at this crap first] When Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself in protest and set off a wave of much bigger protests in Tunis, and then elsewhere, speculation arose as to the extent to which the revolution will spread. Or, is it indeed a revolution? Maybe it was a mini-revolution, kind of like Sa`d, or baby Jesus. Alternatively, some opined, it might be just a coup. But Tunisia is old news. Protests spread quickly like, literally, a flame, to Algeria, Yemen, a teeny weeny bit in Morocco, then back to a spike in Jordan, only to settle on three-days and counting in Egypt, all over Egypt. Is the Arab world transiting to democracy? Or is it only Tunisia? And ...
Keep Reading »Why, What, Where To, and How? Tunisia and Beyond
![[Image from author's archive]](/content_images/3/sm_IMG_5581.JPG "[Image from author's archive]")
[Admittedly, I wrote this post before Bin Ali fled, and before the Tunisian protests escalated. It was kind of interrupted by the events on the ground and, so, not much due jubilation here. I added some references posthumously but kept its pre-government collapse spirit at the expense of dampening the mood: Where to? . . . even if dictatorships fall. Where to? Oh, I don’t provide an answer] The problem is that once it happens [when a dominant form of oppression collapses], it might happen for the wrong reasons, but everyone will claim victory. Everyone will be a hero. And a new "team" will probably proceed to disempower the majority, except in softer ...
Keep Reading »The Student Movement in 1968
A couple of weeks ago on Jadaliyya, Jessica Winegar reported on some of the stories she heard from the older men and women she met in Tahrir Square in Cairo. A number of them spoke of being leftist student activists in the 1970s but in the years since had to watch, as Winegar writes, “their youthful dreams of creating a just society crumble before their eyes.” While analysts have listed historical antecedents to the current events, such as the 1919 Revolution in Egypt and the first Palestinian ...
Keep Reading »Teach-in: Democratization, Empire, & the Arab Revolt of 2011
In light of revolutions, or refo-lutions as captured by Jadaliyya contributor Asef Bayat, Jadaliyya teamed with the US Palestinian Community Network-DC to organize a teach-in targeting the progressive left community in the DC metro area. The teach-in entitled "Democratization, Empire, & the Arab Revolt of 2011" and held at St. Stephens Church in DC, featured Professors Mervat Hatem (Howard University), Noureddine Jebnoun (Georgetown University), Bassam Haddad (Georgetown University), and ...
Keep Reading »The Arabs in Africa
As Libyans rise up against the 41-year-old dictatorship of Muammar al-Qaddafi, one of the most striking claims of state violence has been the hiring of “African mercenaries” to crush the revolt. Like Hosni Mubarak’s “thugs” (or baltagiya in Arabic, terms that gained widespread currency almost instantly), the mercenaries represent the anti-populist face of violence, those who are willing to take to the streets not for reasons of personal conviction or national duty, but for compensation from the embattled ...
Keep Reading »Egypt's Path Could be Distinct from Turkey's and Iran's
It is striking that as Egypt turns a new page in history, voices as diverse as Financial Times, Le Monde and the New York Times want it to follow the Turkish model. But is the process in Turkey really repeatable? And who would stand to gain if it were taken as a model? It seems that liberals in the West and elsewhere want to use the Turkish model as an example because it shows the possibility of Islamist empowerment without Islamist dictatorship. The “Turkish model” emerged from a split within the ...
Keep Reading »From Cairo to Madison: the New Internationalism and the Re-Mystification of the Middle East
After being glued to Al-Jazeera for what seemed like decades, I returned to semi-normal life and found that there was breaking news in the academic circles as well. In the last three weeks, the popular overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak seems to have brought about the demise of another oppressive foe of the Arabs: Islam. Once fixated on Muslim psychology and Qu’ranic exegisis, commentators now have no choice but to emerge from their essentialist slumber to return to the Clintonian adage (not Hillary, ...
Keep Reading »Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!
On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year's conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By ...
Keep Reading »Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon?
We are living in extraordinary times. 2011 Egypt, in hindsight, will be seen as just as, if not more, “historic” as the 1952 coup. This precedent and others illustrate that this revolution is not the instantiation of the political awakening of a “stagnant” part of the world, and nor was it brought to you (only) by Facebook or twitter. For now, the 2011 people’s uprisings in Egypt and in Tunisia resist categorization, and cannot be contained or explained by adjectives that Middle East “experts” have used ...
Keep Reading »"Crapping in Their Pants:" Israeli Responses to Democracy in Egypt
Last Sunday night the Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman submitted to a Q&A after a showing of The Time That Remains, his latest feature, at Columbia. (If you’ve not seen it yet: do.) The first question was a classic: ‘Have Israelis seen this film? What did they think?’ The answer was more so. (Tone: utterly gracious.) “It is amazing that, even with what is happening in Egypt, the first thing we have to do is to ask the Israelis what they think. Whether they are scared. Whether they are terrified. ...
Keep Reading »Revolutionary Contagion: Morocco and a Plea for Specificity
Since January 15th, media discourse on the Arab world has almost uniformly coalesced around a single term, “contagion.” This is a telling semantic choice given the word’s broader associations with disease; a synonym for “infection” or “contamination,” it carries rhetorical connotations that are hardly subtle. The Wall Street Journal has analyzed Egypt’s “contagion risk” (Feb. 1st) and in the past two and a half weeks The New York Times has published at least half a dozen articles on the topic, with the ...
Keep Reading »Egypt on the Brink: The Arab World at a Tipping Point?
Hosni Mubarak is still President of Egypt but his days in power are numbered. There will be no Mubarak dynasty either. The authoritarian order in Egypt and throughout the Arab world has been profoundly shaken. The ousting of Ben Ali in Tunisia, a remarkable event in itself, now appears to have been the trigger for a far broader upheaval that is shaking regimes across the region. Since Muhammad Bouazizi set himself alight in Tunisia on December 17, self-immolations have taken ...
Keep Reading »The Tunisian Revolution: Initial Reflections [Part 1]
At the moment it is abundantly easy to sense everywhere in the Arab World elation at what appears to be one of greatest events in modern Arab history. A genuine popular revolution, spontaneous and apparently leaderless, yet sustained and remarkably determined, overthrew a system that by all accounts had been the most entrenched and secure in the whole region. The wider implications beyond Tunisia are hard to miss. Just as in the case of the Iranian revolution more than three decades ago, what is now ...
Keep Reading »The Modernization of Bribery: The Arms Trade in the Arab Gulf
The New York Hall of Science in Queens is currently showcasing “1,001 Inventions,” an exhibit documenting scientific advances made in the Islamic World while Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. The standards are all there – the advances in surgery, astronomy, and mathematics without which we might still be engaged in trepanation, the reading of animal entrails and addition by abacus. But there is another pioneering regional development not on display: the modernization of the ancient art of ...
Keep Reading »Hot on Facebook
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There is one question that pundits and politicians keep posing to the Occupy gatherings around the country: What are your demands? I have a suggestion for a response: We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands.click | email | tweet
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