Reflections On A Decade of Arab Upheaval

Protests against the legislative elections called by President Kais Said and held on December 17, 2022 with a minimum turnout of 8.8% (Tunisia, 24 December 2022). GETTY Protests against the legislative elections called by President Kais Said and held on December 17, 2022 with a minimum turnout of 8.8% (Tunisia, 24 December 2022). GETTY

Reflections On A Decade of Arab Upheaval

By : Mouin Rabbani

For over a decade, the Arab World has been in upheaval. Autocratic regimes in Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen have been overthrown. Elsewhere, governments in Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Morocco were forced out of office by a combination of mass protests and elections. Separately, a variety of insurgent groups took control of much of Syria and Libya, and parts of Iraq and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, while the Islamic State movement established a functioning if grisly entity encompassing substantial regions of Iraq and Syria.

These developments are all the more remarkable when one considers that since the 1985 popular uprising that led to the ouster of Sudanese president Jaafar al-Nimeiry, who had himself seized power by means of a military coup in 1969, there had been no successful coups or revolutions in the Arab world. Of those deposed during the past decade, Libya’s Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi had been in power since 1969; Yemen’s Ali Abdallah Saleh since 1978; Egypt’s Husni Mubarak since 1981; Tunisia’s Zain al-Abidin bin Ali since 1987, and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir since 1989. The sole exception, the 2003 ouster of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, was the product of foreign invasion rather than domestic rebellion. 

When considering the past decade of Arab upheaval the first question we need to ask is therefore: how did such a seemingly stable system come undone so quickly? And related to this: is the upheaval we have witnessed indeed regional in nature, or a coincidence of otherwise unrelated national developments? 

It’s in this respect useful to recall that in 2011 the Arab world was often compared to Eastern Europe during the late 1980s, when one communist regime after another collapsed or was overthrown. The comparison is certainly seductive, but also fundamentally wrong. The states of Eastern Europe had virtually identical forms of government, had adopted the same economic model, were closely integrated in COMECON and the Warsaw Pact, and were collectively led and controlled by the Soviet Union. Not for nothing were they known as the Eastern Bloc. Thus, once the USSR lost interest in sustaining them and itself began to disintegrate, their transformation was a foregone conclusion.

Unlike the states of the Eastern Bloc, those of the Arab world arguably form a cohesive cultural-linguistic region with a shared history, but that’s where the comparison ends. The economies of Egypt and Kuwait, the governments of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, the international relations of Libya and Saudi Arabia, are characterized by difference rather than similarity. Regional integration has barely extended beyond the rhetorical level, itself a reflection of existing differences.

It is nevertheless undeniable that demonstrators in Cairo felt inspired by those in Tunisia, and in turn, emboldened those from Morocco to Bahrain. From their perspective they were confronted by the same challenges, mobilized against the same adversary, and were motivated by the same aspirations.

The primary aspiration, we are often informed, has been democracy, in the form of free and fair elections and the right to replace rulers without bloodshed. Yet the focus on democracy and elections misses two more salient themes, one political and the other economic.

At the political level the struggle ran much deeper than the ballot box. It was not about the formal rites of citizenship, but more fundamentally about the substantive rights of the citizen. Whether living in monarchies or republics, under civilian or military rule, Arabs were citizens in only the formal sense of the term, and in a significant number of cases not even that. In practice, they were resident subjects, excluded from meaningful participation in public life. If they were consulted as part of the policy process it was solely for the sake of appearances, with precious little influence over who governs them or how.

Arguably more important were the economic factors. In the first decades after independence, state-led development throughout the region achieved significant progress in public health, literacy and education, land reform and employment, industrial and agricultural production, and poverty alleviation. This began to change with the introduction of economic liberalization measures during the 1970s and 1980s, and the pursuit of neo-liberal privatization and austerity policies during the 1990s and first decade of this century. Unemployment, poverty, and economic inequality increased, while social welfare decreased. This was admittedly also a period that saw unprecedented hydrocarbon revenues in those states that contained significant reserves, but consider also that Iraq squandered most of it on its war against Iran, while conservative monarchies preferred to invest their earnings outside the region rather than within its boundaries or their own borders.

In addition to domestic factors regional and foreign policies also played a role. The occupation of Palestine represents a searing indictment of the Arab regional order, and contrasts sharply with the manner in which most Arab states united first behind Iraq’s senseless war against Iran, and then behind the United States in its senseless destruction of Iraq. 

There is in my view no particular reason these factors came to a head when and how they did. As so often with history, developments that with hindsight make perfect sense were not accurately predicted because they were not inevitable and could have happened earlier, later, differently, or not at all. 

That said, it is particularly useful to go back to the initial period of the rebellions, as it contains important explanations as to how we arrived at the point we are at today.

A first observation is that the uprisings were for the most part genuine popular revolts but also for the most part leaderless. There was no identifiable leadership, party, or movement behind these mass protests whose imprisonment, elimination, or co-optation would have reduced the unrest to manageable levels. At one level this was essential to their success. But it also meant there was no coherent vision for regime change beyond the ouster of an autocratic ruler, no cohesive group dedicated to transforming or dismantling the institutions that for so long had sustained autocracy, and no leadership capable of monopolizing state power and implementing a program of transformational policies. 

A second is that the rush to elections was a consequential error. In the absence of a revolutionary leadership that monopolizes power, stability and popular legitimacy is best acquired through power-sharing arrangements. In other words, the diverse groupings that aspire to power should first collectively plan the transition, agree on the nature of the new regime, begin the process of bringing it to fruition, achieve consensus on basic constitutional principles, and only then embark on the process of selecting new leaders.

Elections are by definition exercises to separate winners from losers, and are designed to distinguish those who hold office and power from those excluded from it. When is the last time an electoral victor in a functioning democracy invited a losing party to participate in government, unless made necessary by parliamentary mathematics? More generally, in a stable democracy elections are about choosing between competing policies and rival managers of the ship of state, not between forms of government or rival constitutional visions.

A second reason that conducting elections was premature is that they presented an open goal for the most organized opposition movements. In most cases this was the Muslim Brotherhood. The problem is not one of endorsing or rejecting the movement and its policies, but rather that conducting free and fair elections so hastily provided the illusion rather than reality of a level playing field. The absence of a decent interval in which rival ideologies and movements could coalesce into functioning parties capable of contesting national elections, and present themselves and their vision to the people in a free media in a free country, meant there was much less of a contest than meets the eye. 

Tellingly, and recalling the socio-economic challenges faced by Arab societies, virtually none of the parties contesting elections put forward serious economic programs. Nor was economic recovery a core policy priority of those – Islamist or secular – who did achieve office via the ballot box. It’s one reason that the authoritative Arab Barometer, a regular survey of public opinion in 15 Arab states, in its most recent sampling found regular majorities who concluded that democratic governance produced weak economic performance. The figures for Tunisia and Iraq, which conducted the most frequent elections during the past decade, were 70 and 72 percent respectively. As noted prior to the resumption of autocracy in Tunisia by this author and Paul Aarts, the implications for a transition to democracy are clear: 

[I]t appears that support for democracy is more dependent upon an improvement in socio-economic conditions than an expansion of political and civil rights. While Tunisia continues to conduct free and fair elections and has its secret police largely under control, living conditions have deteriorated sharply during the past decade. Income levels have decreased by a fifth, unemployment rates have grown exponentially, and many young Tunisians aspire to leave the country. Where economic anxiety is accompanied by personal insecurity on account of growing unrest and political instability, it is hardly surprising that people become nostalgic for the era before the country was consumed by upheaval. 

A third observation pertinent to the stagnation of the Arab uprisings is the failure to establish civilian control over the security establishment. During the end of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty-first, a subtle but important shift took place in many Arab states: where previously the military had been the dominant institution, it was increasingly displaced by the intelligence services. Rather than being accountable to the population and leadership of their states, rulers and citizens were accountable to them. 

It is in this context perhaps understandable that many demonstrators sought to make common cause with the army against autocracy, particularly in countries where conscription is still practiced. But ultimately, as the example of Egypt demonstrates most clearly, the failure to see the military and particularly its senior ranks as institutions central to the perpetuation of the ancien regime, and therefore ones that needed to be placed under popular civilian control as a matter of priority, endowed the military establishment with the ability to take custody of the political transition. In effect, the military instrumentalized popular uprisings to re-assert its supremacy and expand its role in government, politics, and the economy. The main victim of such efforts was not the intelligence services – an institution seen as a rival rather than enemy – but rather a general population that from the military’s perspective needed to be placed once again under control.

With the benefit of a decade of hindsight, it seems fair to conclude that the uprisings of 2010-2011 represent only the beginning of a lengthy process of upheaval. Their outcome thus remains uncertain. In the meantime, the snapshot assessments that have repeatedly been offered – the revolution of youth, the revolution of women, the dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood, the era of the Islamic State, the restoration of autocracy, have been consistently overtaken by events, and will continue to be so. Youth and women, for example, are politically diverse demographic realities rather than political movements, and Islamist movements and autocrats are subject to the same laws of politics as any others. Politics and history develop in neither linear nor cyclical fashion, and those who believe that the Middle East exists in a state of exception to the rest of the planet say more about themselves than about the region they claim to understand.

What is clear is that the colossal economic challenges confronting the region, its rulers, and peoples will continue to dominate developments throughout it in the years to come, and play a vital role in determining its political order.

[This article was originally published in Spanish translation in Política Exterior.]

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Occupy Gezi as Politics of the Body

Since the Gezi resistance started with bloodshed on 31 May, it has had an “anti-depressant” effect, as a friend of mine puts it, as much as it has been nerve-racking. During this period where each day has been prone to new crises and normalcy was completely disrupted, we simultaneously experienced the peaks of ecstasy and the depths of sorrow.

Analyzing such an intense event naturally requires taking some distance. Pending systematization, however, the vivid memory of each day impels one to put on paper multifarious ideas that resonate well with the resistance. Each morning, many bodies with sleep deprived eyes wake up in Istanbul, Ankara, Antakya, Urfa, and Denizli to take to the streets once again, after having quickly checked the latest news in the social media. They are astonished and impressed that they can still walk, run, stand up, and carry provisions for those in the parks. Exhausted bodies rejuvenate with every new threat that the government utters, and with thousands, tens of thousands of others they begin flowing to Taksim, Kızılay, Kuğulu Park, Gündoğdu, Abbasoğlu, and Yeniköy Park carrying home-made gas masks, swimmer goggles, anti-acid solutions, and whistles.

No one does or can govern these bodies. The masses that gather in public spaces are not formed by virtue of transferring tax money into the wallets of partisans. No one provides shuttle buses for them; no one gives them flags, or feeds them with sandwiches. No one assigns them the slogans they shout out during the demonstrations. Bodies that take heart from knowing that they are not alone do not count, or count on, numbers to meet with others in communal or virtual spaces. One standing man suffices for thousands of others to take to the streets. After all, “one” is also a number…

The government, whose tactlessness prompts these resisting and standing bodies to convene again and again every single day, could not have missed the significance of this body politics. These bodies naturally do have a language, even a few languages that are at times congruent and at others incongruent; however, as a whole, they constitute a politics of the body. The rage and dreams that have been embodied in tweets and graffiti since 31 May turn into material realities through the physical existence, visibility, and endurance of the bodies. If history is being rewritten, then its subject is the body.

Four of these bodies lost their lives during this war that the government has waged on society. Thousands of bodies have been beaten up: some lost their eyes, some received irretrievable injuries. Skins were burnt under the water from the cannons, “laced” with chemicals for maximum harm; lungs were choked with tear gas. Pounded arms, legs, and heads got crushed and broken. The long-term effects of the tons of chemicals dumped on bodies are still unknown. What is known, however, is that these chemicals killed hundreds of cats, dogs, and birds, and that they did harm to countless insects, butterflies, and other smaller organisms.

The apparatuses of the state, and the vehicles of death that responded to Gezi’s politics of the body, attempted to imitate the life force that they failed to extort. In response to the huge numbers that filled the parks and squares and astonished everyone without exception, they hoped to gather partisans together in scripted rallies. They began comparing head counts; they calculated representative percentages. When the calculations did not match, they increased the number of police in body armor and helmets and moved them from protest to protest. They built walls of flesh and steel against the wave of resisting flesh. When that did not work, they offered these bodies—which have been in contact with each other physically and virtually through meetings, banners, and tweets—a mise en scène of dialogue, the conditions of which were more or less already determined. They could not even wait for this attempt to yield fruit; two warnings and a command were enough to launch an assault to remove the bodies that produced an alternative sociability from the park, from the space in which physical resistance could be transformed into a life style. They freed the public space of the public. They collected all the banners, pictures, and colors one by one to erase them from social memory. They stripped all the trees, each dedicated to victims of state violence; they appropriated the barricades that were named after tens of people who had undergone physical and psychological torture, and they tore them to tatters. They destroyed the efforts to keep alive the memories of Fikret Encü, who was a victim of Roboski; Metin Göktepe, who was tortured and killed in detention; Dicle Koğacoğlu, who could not take all the sorrow inherent in this society any more; and the Surp Hagop Armenian Cemetery, which was destroyed by Turkish racism.

The only thing that remains is a politics of the body—but the bodies that produce this politics differ from what Giorgio Agamben calls “bare life.” They are not “mere” bodies that the arbitrary will of a sovereign can isolate from society, oppress unceremoniously, or push to the margins of the symbolic world. Rather, they evoke what Ernst Bloch calls “the upright man,” the collective Prometheus. Bloch writes:

Nothing is more fortifying than the call to begin from the beginning. It is youthful as long as it is; to it there belongs a young and aspiring class. It is innocent of the bad things that have happened, for it has never had a real opportunity to be guilty. When this happens, justice has the effect of a morning; it opposes itself to that eternal sickness which was handed down before it. Beginning anew is freshness through and through; it is a first if it appears completely ahistorical, and if it seems to lead back to the beginning of history….It carries the image of the pastoral mood, of the shepherd, of the simple and upright man; one can play with it even in the dark.[1]

Gezi is the struggle of disorderly bodies, those who do not have any dispositif other than their own bodies, against the death machines. If the machines are regulatory instances that follow commands and extort public spaces of mobility with force and violence, then the force they face is the resistance of life itself. Life flourishes at the most unexpected moments and places, just like weeds that crack the concrete and spring out of it. No apparatus of the state can succeed in dominating life absolutely.

The state seeks order; it can control only those whom it orders. It cannot cope with the demand of "freedom"; it has to ask questions such as “freedom for whom,” “freedom for what,” or “freedom under what circumstances” in order to tuck freedom into neat boxes. Order draws borders, fixes identities, and defines. It attempts to establish a hierarchy. By telling parents to take their daughters and sons home from the park, it both brands the resisting bodies as "children" and tries to trigger into action the nucleus of society: family. Through its rhetoric of security, it attributes the risks of its own making to the resisting bodies. It hangs its own flag or banner on the bodies that it prefers knocking down rather than protecting. It punishes those who do not obey; it uses punishment as retaliation. It operates through censorship, threats, and propaganda.

Life, on the other hand, is a constant flux. It challenges borders and moves beyond them. It opens up to circulation those spaces that are closed off due to construction; it paints such destructive vehicles as bulldozers pink; it transforms steps into tribunes, pieces of iron into wish trees, and trees destined to be cut down into monuments. It walks on highways and bridges that are closed to pedestrians. It does not like the empty and the sterile; it covers them up with banners, slogans, tents. It leaves its mark on every surface. It disrupts silence at times with pots and pans, and at other times with a tune from a piano. It plays with identities and definitions; it makes them fluid; it renders them indistinguishable. It can make fun of both itself and the established order thanks to its humor. By changing one single letter in a word, it can ridicule the heaviest of symbolisms. When the state apparatus sends a riot-intervention vehicle to pour tear gas on it, life stops to catch its breath for a while and goes right back to resisting. When a body grows tired, it gets replaced by a reinvigorated one. Life turns into thousands of fingers that tweet and take photographs when the state apparatus sends down vehicles of propaganda. It stops its wheelchair to grab the flag that fell on the ground while escaping from tear gas. It apologizes when it steps on someone`s foot while running; it calms down those who panic.

It is obvious that these bodies that fascism wants to militarize will not assume any ideological identity. When they do not drink alcohol, they ridicule conservatism; when they lie under a TOMA, they make fun of liberalism, which claims that life is the most valuable good. Orthodox Marxism cannot decide under which class struggle these "çapulcu" bodies are to be subsumed. As long as they stay in physical contact, as long as they remain as collective Prometheuses, as long as they—have to—continue the resistance, they grow accustomed to each other`s colors, languages, and genders. They disrupt the behavioral rules that ideologies and institutions expect from them. The natural or moral instinct of protection that has been attributed to mothers loses ground when female bodies participate in the resistance alongside their children. The nationalist and the Kurd exchange anti-acid solutions in gas-filled hotel lobbies. The upper-class college kid drinks the water handed over by the kid with an Anonymous mask without needing to ask what neighborhood he’s from. Soccer fans save their curses for the police rather than for their rivals.

What comes out of all this is trust, not chaos. That`s why the bodies multiply with every gush of tear gas, spaces expand with every police attack, and the quality of contact among the bodies increases with every propaganda speech. The life woven together by bodies born in Gezi is so tenacious that the government is right in fearing it. The power of these bodies stems from their capacity to mutualize endurance, rather than vulnerability (as Judith Butler envisioned they would). One would need to look into the extensive interstices of this politics of the body, rather than into macro-level discourses, to begin deciphering it.

NOTES

[1] Ernst Bloch, Natural Right and Human Dignity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 61.

[An earlier version of this article was published on 26 June 2013 on BIA ("Independent Communication Network"). The link to that version can be found here. This article was translated from Turkish by Gülfer Göze.]