Tag: Tunisia
A charm of powerful trouble
That’s Shakespeare’s description of the witches’ brew in Macbeth, but it seems apt for what may be brewing in parts of the Arab world these days. Today’s big demonstrations in Egypt aiming to spook President Mubarak and derail his effort to give the presidency to his son follow closely on yesterday’s naming of a Lebanese prime minister (albeit a wealthy, Sunni one) by Hizbollah. We need hardly mention the uprising in Tunisia, whose outcome is still in doubt despite (or maybe because of) the vows of the army chief to defend the popular will. And the pot may still boil over in Algeria or Libya.
To me, there is nothing surprising about people discovering the will to rebel and overthrow oppressive or unrepresentative political systems, however difficult to predict it may be.
What is interesting to watch is the differentiated reaction to events in the West. How is what’s happening in Lebanon less democratic than what’s happening in Tunisia? You’d think from Washington’s reaction that the devil himself had ceased power in Beirut, when all that has happened is naming of a government that can gain a majority in parliament. Hizbollah is not a legitimate democratic political party, since it runs its own army and terrorist cells as well as social services. But does anyone doubt it would be successful politically in Lebanon even without its military dimension?
Washington’s enthusiasm for popular revolt in Tunisia, which otherwise doesn’t count for much in the West, is palpable. We rarely send an Assistant Secretary of State off to ensure free and fair elections in the aftermath of a popular revolt. You’d think we hadn’t spent several decades helping former President Ben Ali avoid the popular will. But I guess there is little else you can do when your man has fled the country. I do hope however that we are keeping an eye on the army chief and trying to ensure that he protects, rather than expropriates, the popular will.
Egypt is a different case altogether. You can watch one tidbit that demonstrates considerable police discipline, and somewhat less than complete determination on the demonstrator side, here:
The blogotwittersphere may be enthusiastic, and critical of Al Jazeera for downplaying today’s events. But official Washington is not going to welcome in Egypt anything like what happened in Tunisia. I do hope however that President Obama will find the gumption to tell President Mubarak that the legitimacy of the succession depends in large part on how open and fair the process is. How it is handled will determine more than anything else whether the result is “Like a hell-broth boil and bubble,” or something more like a democratic opening in the Arab world.
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Dominoes anyone?
The metaphorical game in international relations is often chess, or escalation, or maybe just the adjectival “great” game. But these days we seem to be playing that old standby, dominoes, more than anything else: will Iran getting nuclear weapons lead to others getting them? will Tunisia’s revolt spread? will North Korea’s erratic behavior precipitate in one way or another refugee flows into China that Beijing will want to prevent?
As Stephen Walt points out, revolutions don’t usually spread like wildfire. The demonstration effect of what happens in Tunisia may be strong, but it is uncertain what the outcome is and therefore what events there will “demonstrate.” I still wouldn’t call it a revolution, since the prior regime is very much in place, not only in the salubrious sense that the constitution is being implemented but in the less salubrious sense that the old guard remains in key offices. Only the President and his coterie are gone. Tunisia is looking for the moment more like a palace or military coup in response to popular uprising than like a real revolution. I can imagine that being imitated in more than one Arab country.
With respect to Iran and nuclear weapons, Johan Bergenas argues his case against the dominoes falling well, but unfortunately the argument against a nuclear Iran remains strong even without the worst case scenario, as he acknowledges. While diplomats, spooks and geeks (or maybe I should say spoogeeks?) in the U.S. and Israel are chuckling over Stuxnet’s damage to Iranian centrifuges, the problem remains as great as always. We just have more time to find, or not to find, a solution. I’m no fan of Hillary Mann and Flynt Leverett’s triumphalist version of today’s Iran, but I also don’t buy Tehran Bureau’s defeatist version. President Ahmedinejad still looks pretty strong, having managed his personnel challenges to the Supreme Leader as well as his economic reforms and their political impact better than many expected.
China’s willingness to save our bacon with North Korea is but one of the Washington myths that Mort Abramowitz pooh-poohs, suggesting that if we had a clearer and more consistent policy of our own we might be better off than relying on Beijing to do the right thing. In any event, the Chinese seem to be finding the discomfort that North Korea causes “not unwelcome,” as the diplomats say, and they fear more refugee flows arising from the regime change Washington might like than anything else.
So dominoes don’t look like such a good game, and in my experience they are not, being a Vietnam generation fogy. That said, I feel reasonably certain that our weak response to North Korea’s nuclear testing has in fact encouraged the Iranians to move ahead to acquiring whatever technology they think they need to become at least a virtual nuclear power. Did we ever deprive Brazil of its technology after it forswore nuclear weapons and signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco? Or South Africa?
That is the thing about dominoes. When they fall, the consequences are often irreversible, and the directions they fall in unpredictable. I hope that the outcome of last week’s events in Tunisia is not only democratic but relatively liberal and Western-oriented. Many of us–I include myself–will regret the cheering we did from the sidelines if Al Qaeda in the Maghreb finds haven in North Africa, where its recruiting efforts are already strong.
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What would MLK say?
The rash of suicides and attempted suicides associated with popular rebellions in Tunisia, Algeria and now Egypt naturally raises the question, on Martin Luther King Day: is suicide a useful, effective or legitimate tactic against autocratic regimes?
Let’s admit right off that in one sense it is useful: self immolation attracts a lot of attention today, as it did decades ago during the Vietnam war. The press seems barely able to get its fill of such stories, and if there are photographs in addition you can be sure they will run on the front page in the West. Self immolation is treated as the ultimate testimonial to how desperate people are. I suppose that makes it effective as well. These protests are largely indigenous, but you can be sure that Western attention to them will still be an important factor in how the Arab regimes react. And what are you going to do to someone who has already doused himself in gasoline and tried to light it afire?
I am not a King scholar, and the day is not long enough yet for me to have checked out his writings carefully on this subject. But I grew up with MLK’s words ringing in my ears from well before attending the March on Washington in 1963. This was a man whose opposition to violence and respect for human life would not permit him to support suicide of any type to prove a point. Yes, he expected himself and his supporters to run gigantic risks and to suffer brutality at the hands of police and thugs. But this was to bear witness, to confront oppression with human dignity, not to get killed.
This is an important message just now, as the demonstrations in several countries seem to be deteriorating into street brawls and looting. If something good is to come of the sacrifices people are making, nonviolence and dignity–including respect for property–are vital. If the regimes can credibly call the demonstrators criminals, decent people will hesitate to join them and the security forces will feel free to crack down.
Nonviolence for Martin Luther King was a moral as well as a practical imperative. It was a high calling, one that really did appear to give his movement divine blessings, as it did Gandhi’s. But not everyone can adhere to that calling. I admit to having seen things in this world that merit a violent response. The trouble is that violence, even violence against oneself, begets more violence. What the demonstrations need now is MLK’s recipe of nonviolence and respect for human dignity. The demonstrators should not be attacking the security forces but inviting the security forces to their side, as they did in the days leading up to President Ben Ali’s flight. Self immolation will not be effective in that sense.
I have just returned this morning from Baghdad. I can only wonder what might have happened there had demonstrations of the sort now seen in North Africa broken out against Saddam Hussein. It would have been bloody and nasty, but could it have been as bloody and nasty as these last eight years? I played a role in advocating the support for the Serbian opposition that brought down Slobodan Milosevic just a few years before the American invasion of Iraq. There is no question but that Serbia is better off for having dealt with its own autocracy by largely nonviolent means.
That is what I might wish for our North African friends on Martin Luther King day: disciplined nonviolence and respect for human dignity have the best chance of winning the day and bringing about regimes that in turn will respect human dignity and not use violence against their own people.
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Double double toil and trouble
With Tunisia in a kind of constitutionally correct and militarily enforced limbo between dictatorship and the possibility of real democracy, demonstrations and rioting are popping up elsewhere in the Arab World. Qadhafi has been reduced to stuttering regret for the impatience of the Tunisians while two unemployed men reportedly tried to immolate themselves in Algeria.
. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is testing the waters while in Jordan people take to the streets. So what might all this amount to, and what determines the course it takes?
With the obvious exception of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, none of the current protests seems to have a clear political matrix. Some people will tell you that is important–without a clearly defined political leadership and goals, nothing much can come of spontaneous protest over food prices and corruption. I don’t believe that. Political leadership often emerges during the events, not in advance of them, and the lack of clearly defined leadership makes it difficult for repressive regimes to decapitate popular movements.
My own view is that the vital thing to watch is the relationship between protesters and security forces. If the protesters attack the security forces, they will respond with violence and more often than not sufficient force to win the day, even if doing so generates another day of protests. The objective of the protesters needs to be the strategic one of depriving the dictatorship of the security force protection that enables it to stay in place.
The way to achieve this is not to attack the security forces but to try to win them over. Often this will be difficult in the capital, where the best and most loyal of the uniformed and non-uniformed security forces are usually deployed. But somewhere on the periphery, likely in the provinces, there will be security forces with little brief for the regime they ostensibly defend. Non-violent protest is what can win them over: sticking flowers in their gun barrels is the international photojournalists’ image of choice. Ben Ali did not flee because there were so many people in the streets. He fled because someone told him the army would no longer protect him.
That of course leaves Tunisia in the limbo I mentioned at first. Now the effort has to become more politically astute, using the demonstrators to guarantee free and fair elections open to serious competition. This will not be easy, in part because the crowds in the street may not see the relevance of elections to what they went there for in the first place: jobs and food above all. That is where political leadership is needed: to show the connection. Otherwise, demonstrations may lead to a non-democratic political takeover that promises more immediate results.
This is all discussed amply on the website of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, or if you prefer your protests with an accent of Serbian experience at Canvasopedia.
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Fire burn and cauldron trouble in Arabia
Yesterday I tweeted two pieces on events in Tunisia: one by Juan Cole calling the events there the first revolution in the Middle East since 1979, the other by Brian Whitaker calling it a moment in history but hesitating to use the R word. So which is it, revolution or not?
Ten hours or so later, I think Brian Whitaker has the edge still, though it may still bend Juan Cole’s way. The flight of a president may be the first stage of a revolution, but it really depends on what comes thereafter. The regime has not fallen, yet. The prime minister claims to be holding on to power, whether constitutionally or not is unclear. Can he continue to do so? Will he be forced into making fundamental changes? Or will he be able to reestablish order without promising anything significant? Will he in turn be chased out?
This morning, Ben Wedeman of CNN is broadcasting that the anticipated “jasmine” revolution looks more like a military coup, at least on the streets of Tunis, where the soldiers have restored a modicum of calm. A great deal depends on what happens today and tomorrow, and in particular whether the demonstrators reappear and whether they attack the army or maintain nonviolent discipline. Violence at this stage is likely to harden the response of the security forces and end any hope for fundamental change in a more democratic direction.
How will events in Tunisia affect the rest of the Arab world? This is a big question, which Marc Lynch asked several days ago. Algeria has already seen similar demonstrations precipitated by rising food prices and unemployment. It is easy to imagine that Egypt, facing a problematic succession, might see something similar, as its regime is a sham democracy/kleptocracy similar to Tunisia’s. How about Jordan?
Also interesting is that no one is asking these questions about Iran, which recently reduced food and fuel subsidies and suffers many of the same ills–underemployment and unemployment in particular–that plague Arab countries. President Ahmedinejad appears to have planned and executed his price-increasing economic reforms relatively well, cushioning them with welfare payments. And if Iran is a bridge too far out of the Arab world, what about Syria, whose regime isn’t even a pretend democracy? No sign of protest there, or in Libya, at least for the moment.
Two other, unrelated but interesting, bits of news from the Arab world and its environs: the Hariri government in Lebanon has fallen and South Sudan has successfully completed its independence referendum, with a minimum of violence and disruption.
I confess to finding it hard to get excited about Lebanese politics. It is small and its unusual ethnic makeup makes it unique. But Hizbollah, which precipitated the government’s fall because it didn’t get the guarantees it wanted from the prime minister concerning the Special Tribunal’s much-anticipated indictments of Hizbollah leaders for the murder of his father, is a force to be reckoned with, not only inside Lebanon. How far will it go in pushing to end confessional representation in Lebanon and demanding Shia rights to govern there?
The South Sudan referendum is the success story of the week. As it ends today, it seems the referendum has met the requirement that 60 per cent of registered voters vote, and the vote is assumed to be heavily in favor of independence, since no one seems to have found a South Sudanese who would vote for anything else. Definite results will not be certified for some time. The week was relatively violence free. The longer term consequences may, however, still present serious problems: there are many issues to be settled between north and south before the July declaration of independence, and Khartoum may well take a sharp turn in the Islamist direction as it loses a good part of its non-Muslim population. Khartoum shares many ills with its Arab neighbors to the north.
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