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talkpoliticsYou see, back in early-90s Algeria, an Islamist party won the first election round. I was just a dumb kid back then but I can read Wikipedia so I know. Well, seems like the old feudal oligarchy got scared and figured it would be fun to cancel the 2nd round of the election, then perform a military coup and topple the president. Easy-peasy. Anti-Islamist repressions ensued. New elections were organized amidst a very tense situation where everyone was screaming and cursing, and that farce of a vote was of course won by a candidate that was hand-picked by the military. Those pesky Islamists were thrown in jail, while others who miraculously remained beyond bars declared a war on the government. The conflict dragged on for 10 years and claimed 200 thousand lives.
Now, I'm sure lots of parallels could be drawn with the current state of events in Libya, Tunisia and particularly Egypt. The Islamists did win the post-Arab-Spring elections, but they've been besieged ever since. In Egypt, president Morsi was toppled through a military coup (yes, dear Obama administration, it IS a coup, no matter how coy you are about calling things with their true names). And now thousands ot Tunisian protesters have the audacity to demand the resignation of the Ennahda-led government (that's a party, for the record). And several Muslim Brotherhood offices across Libya are being torched by angry mobs. So what the hell IS going on, you'd ask? Gaddafi-duck is dead, isn't everything supposed be fine from now on?
The first explanation that springs to mind is that political and religious ideology are to blame. And it's the most simplistic explanation, but if you're willing to stop there, I say go for it. However, I'd wager that the current woes of the Islamists would've likely happened to anyone who'd have taken power after the fall of the evil regimes. The lack of political experience that is so natural after decades of dictatorship, is making the thorny road to democracy even harder, and full of disappointments and even deadly violence. The result is deep divisions in these societies, which would become completely ungovernable, either by Islamists or secularists, if they're to focus on marginalizing their opponents. And the Islamists who were so drunken with their success and the sudden grab of power, have failed to realize that election victory does not give you a free pass to do whatever you please. The rules have already changed, and the people are no more a mass of feudal peasants, or pyramid-building slaves. But still the MB has failed to take this factor in consideration, and now they're picking up the fruits of that short-sightedness.
What has brought Egypt, Tunisia and Libya into a dead end is the shortage of political culture, the lack of dialogue and the myriad of intertwined and knotted interests, and yes, here I'm including foreign ones as well. In this impasse nobody wants to take a step back from their position, for fear of losing some ground. But the real alternative is indeed still more fear, hatred and blood on the streets.
In the most populous Arab country, 85-million Egypt, the popular awakening was inspired by the 2011 Tunisian revolition. But now the roles are swapped and Egypt, as it often happens in that part of the world, is setting the tone. And, if what's now happening in Cairo somehow gets replicated in other places, the hopes of the Arab Spring could die a very premature death.
Right now in Egypt nobody even considers for a minute the position of the opposite side, or budges from theirs. The MB continues to insist on reinstating president Morsi and rejecting the new authorities and all their decisions. In turn, the liberal forces are looking the other way and keeping silent about the repressions of the military against the Brotherhood. Within a single day, July 27, 65 Morsi supporters were killed, and the total number of the casualties in both opposing camps has surpassed 270 for the last month alone (and that's just the official data, so bear in mind that the actual number could be several times larger).
Both sides are politically stupid, because ultimately their actions defeat the very purpose of the revolution that removed Mubarak: the political police is being reinstated, wounded people are being beaten and arrested, the old mugs of the Mubarak clique are slowly crawling back onto the scene, false accusations are being forged for the sake of throwing opponents behind bars and putting them out of the way. After the coup, Egypt is again witnessing massive propaganda efforts, totalitarian-style. Meanwhile, the Islamists are deprived of a voice after their newspapers and television channels were shut down. Nobody dares say anything against the repressions.
The dividing lines in Egypt are more visible now than ever before. This time they're marked with actual blood. But all these events should also be viewed in the wider context of the painful democratization process of a society that has always been ruled by authoritarian leaders. The prevalent notion among the political elite is that, once you get to power, you instantly become invincible. This became evident from the very first steps of the MB after they took power, at the time when they controlled both chambers of parliament (due to the refusal of all other parties to participate there). And the presidential institution, too. The general tendency is that, once having taken the reins, instead of trying to work with the rest of society, the Islamists would always try to amass as much power as they could, and they'd sooner or later (but more likely: sooner) begin to exhibit authoritarian habits.
The ruling coalition in Tunisia (led by Ennahda) has behaved in a very similar way, despite the protests and the calls for resignation and for dissolving the national constitutional assembly. The discontent erupted after the shooting of one Mohamed Brahmi on July 31. He was a vocal critic of the Islamists, and after his death he was proclaimed a martyr for the Republic (not the state, the republic) by most newspapers. The incident unleashed the tensions that had been accumulating for more than a year.
Tunisia has suffered from a lot of problems since the new rulers came to power, especially economic problems: rising prices of all essential goods, the national currency plummeting, lack of investment due to security problems, etc. The gap between the secular and the conservative segments of society is widening. People demand to know who exactly stands behind the murder of Brahmi and also that of Chokri Belaid, another famous critic of the Islamists who was shot in cold blood in February. These are acts that instantly remind of the authoritarian times of Ben Ali. Turns out both victims were shot with the same kind of weapon, which indicates that there's an unknown group behind them, aiming to destabilize the country.
It's evident that the Tunisian people don't want to make compromises with the government at this point because they don't trust it any more. Their goal is to pressure the Islamists as much as possible, although the latter have shown that they don't give up power without a fight. Still, it doesn't look likely that the people would quit this time, so the government will have to take responsibility for its terrible policies sooner or later.
And the protests already do have some effect. A few days ago Ennahda came out with a message to the protesters, saying they were prepared to form a broad government of "national unity". The reason for this sudden change of mind could be in the specific origin of the Islamists in Tunisia: their leaders were formed as politicians while they were in exile, in countries like France. Not in the state prisons, as is the case with Morsi in Egypt.
So the situation in Tunisia is different from that in Egypt, where the military has seized control. In Tunisia, the military doesn't meddle into politics. And, despite the horrible recent events, the protests have largely remained peaceful and devoid of violent clashes. But it's not like the events in Egypt don't have an effect on Tunisia, too. Morsi's demise has scared the Tunisian government and made it softer, and has emboldened the protesters. But just like in Egypt, the problem is not so much in the ideology of the rulers. In fact the broad opposition to Morsi was not driven by his religious affiliations, but because of the way he approached power. He just failed to deliver, and from a democratically elected leader he began turning himself into an autocrat, believing he was untouchable now, since the people had given him legitimacy with their vote. And here's where he was mistaken.
It was again the murder of an opposition leader that lit the spark in Libya. Abdelsalam Al-Mosmary, a vocal critic of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood was shot by unknown perpetrators on July 25 as he was going to a mosque for prayer. Huge protests ensued in the center of the revolution, Benghazi. The MB headquarters was set on fire. Here the protests were far from bloodless like in neighboring Tunisia: as the flames were blazing, people were setting scores with guns in hand on the dark streets of the city, car bombs were going off everywhere, and it was a total mess. Amidst all that chaos, 1200 prisoners managed to flee the Benghazi jail. Most of them members of armed extremist groups.
Gaddafi's legacy is very recognizable in all these events. During his 40 year long reign, he was systematically suffocating any political life in his country. The armed forces were deliberately suppressed. The purpose was to create a system where no single group could oppose Gaddafi's authority. He was heavily relying on the loyalist militarized tribal groups, many of them personally headed by his own sons.
Now almost two years after his death, the security forces are practically still absent, the national police and the military remains weak. The power vacuum was promptly filled by more than 300 paramilitary groups, heavily armed and solidly funded during the time of the resistance against the colonel. Officially, these militias are subject to the central authority, but in reality each of them keeps autonomy. And the clash of various interests between their commanders is behind the new wave of violence in Libya.
Despite the apparent similarities between these three countries, the context in each of them is different. What all of them are experiencing now is the pains of the post-revolutionary transition period. And here I'm not just talking about well-organized and disproportionately under-represented Islamists benefiting from the chaos and totally taking over, but more like the whole process of shaping the future politics of these societies. In this struggle, not only revolutionary forces are involved, but also the counter-revolutionary remnants of the previous regimes. And things are far from settled.
Except, the old methods of public manipulation through state propaganda and the use of brute force as an argument for the rulers' right to, well, rule, are not working as they used to. In Egypt the military has proposed what they called a road-map for the transition period, but they're doing the same mistake Morsi did: talking of a "national unity" government with broad representation, one that would possibly include all political forces, while in reality doing nothing in that direction, just on the contrary. And the Islamist sympathizers among the voters (who are a formidable force by any means, and an important part of any Arab society), cannot remain ignored and marginalized, or worse, brutally repressed. They just won't stay in the sidelines.
Granted, Libya has started from an even worse position than that. Before even achieving political pluralism, they'll first have to guarantee order and security, and that is no easy thing. The recipe for solving the problem with the armed militant groups begins with creating a strong professional military. The first steps in that direction were already made by prime-minister Ali Zeidan who has sought assistance from NATO and the US for training these forces.
Some external factors could also help save a country the size of Libya and Tunisia, but probably not a giant like Egypt. So, no matter how many efforts the chief EU secretary on foreign policy Catherine Ashton does to be an active mediator between all sides involved, that'll hardly have any tangible effects. The authorities just don't want to lose their grip on the position of power, and though they certainly don't want Egypt to lose any of its standing on the international scene either, it's improbable that they'll listen to the advices of the EU representative. More likely they'd listen to the envoys of the other countries from the Gulf region who've been pretty generous lately, granting aid worth 12 billion dollars in the days since the coup against Morsi, which is rather telling.
The solution for Egypt must come from the local leaders, and that's as obvious as it is difficult to achieve. What's needed is that the military and those among the secular factors who support them extend a hand to the Muslim Brotherhood, and reach reconciliation. And the Islamists, in turn, should find the will and wisdom to swallow their pride from the insult, and start a dialogue. That's the only way they could seek for some responsibility for the scores of murdered MB supporters without necessarily further polarizing the situation. Otherwise all the alternatives look horrible, and are a lose-lose option for all sides.
In the long term, if the MB chooses to stop participating in the political life of the country, they'll ultimately be marginalized. In that case there's a risk of partition of the Egyptian society. Smaller groups could emerge, some of them taking arms to the streets, and thus the next generation of extremists would be born.
Although the situation in Egypt and the other two countries in the Maghreb does "kind of" resemble Algeria from 20 years ago, for the time being the violence has been a lot less, and the context is quite different. What's happening at the moment is a political paralysis at all levels, which is pushing the otherwise urgently needed economic reforms further into the unknown future, and that's very, very bad. I'm afraid the millions of jobless youngsters can't wait that long. And the absence of political patience is threatening to set into motion an endless vicious circle of violent street protests, military coups and armed clashes, while the rest of the world is left scratching their smart heads wondering what went wrong this time.
Now, I'm sure lots of parallels could be drawn with the current state of events in Libya, Tunisia and particularly Egypt. The Islamists did win the post-Arab-Spring elections, but they've been besieged ever since. In Egypt, president Morsi was toppled through a military coup (yes, dear Obama administration, it IS a coup, no matter how coy you are about calling things with their true names). And now thousands ot Tunisian protesters have the audacity to demand the resignation of the Ennahda-led government (that's a party, for the record). And several Muslim Brotherhood offices across Libya are being torched by angry mobs. So what the hell IS going on, you'd ask? Gaddafi-duck is dead, isn't everything supposed be fine from now on?
The first explanation that springs to mind is that political and religious ideology are to blame. And it's the most simplistic explanation, but if you're willing to stop there, I say go for it. However, I'd wager that the current woes of the Islamists would've likely happened to anyone who'd have taken power after the fall of the evil regimes. The lack of political experience that is so natural after decades of dictatorship, is making the thorny road to democracy even harder, and full of disappointments and even deadly violence. The result is deep divisions in these societies, which would become completely ungovernable, either by Islamists or secularists, if they're to focus on marginalizing their opponents. And the Islamists who were so drunken with their success and the sudden grab of power, have failed to realize that election victory does not give you a free pass to do whatever you please. The rules have already changed, and the people are no more a mass of feudal peasants, or pyramid-building slaves. But still the MB has failed to take this factor in consideration, and now they're picking up the fruits of that short-sightedness.
What has brought Egypt, Tunisia and Libya into a dead end is the shortage of political culture, the lack of dialogue and the myriad of intertwined and knotted interests, and yes, here I'm including foreign ones as well. In this impasse nobody wants to take a step back from their position, for fear of losing some ground. But the real alternative is indeed still more fear, hatred and blood on the streets.
In the most populous Arab country, 85-million Egypt, the popular awakening was inspired by the 2011 Tunisian revolition. But now the roles are swapped and Egypt, as it often happens in that part of the world, is setting the tone. And, if what's now happening in Cairo somehow gets replicated in other places, the hopes of the Arab Spring could die a very premature death.
Right now in Egypt nobody even considers for a minute the position of the opposite side, or budges from theirs. The MB continues to insist on reinstating president Morsi and rejecting the new authorities and all their decisions. In turn, the liberal forces are looking the other way and keeping silent about the repressions of the military against the Brotherhood. Within a single day, July 27, 65 Morsi supporters were killed, and the total number of the casualties in both opposing camps has surpassed 270 for the last month alone (and that's just the official data, so bear in mind that the actual number could be several times larger).
Both sides are politically stupid, because ultimately their actions defeat the very purpose of the revolution that removed Mubarak: the political police is being reinstated, wounded people are being beaten and arrested, the old mugs of the Mubarak clique are slowly crawling back onto the scene, false accusations are being forged for the sake of throwing opponents behind bars and putting them out of the way. After the coup, Egypt is again witnessing massive propaganda efforts, totalitarian-style. Meanwhile, the Islamists are deprived of a voice after their newspapers and television channels were shut down. Nobody dares say anything against the repressions.
The dividing lines in Egypt are more visible now than ever before. This time they're marked with actual blood. But all these events should also be viewed in the wider context of the painful democratization process of a society that has always been ruled by authoritarian leaders. The prevalent notion among the political elite is that, once you get to power, you instantly become invincible. This became evident from the very first steps of the MB after they took power, at the time when they controlled both chambers of parliament (due to the refusal of all other parties to participate there). And the presidential institution, too. The general tendency is that, once having taken the reins, instead of trying to work with the rest of society, the Islamists would always try to amass as much power as they could, and they'd sooner or later (but more likely: sooner) begin to exhibit authoritarian habits.
The ruling coalition in Tunisia (led by Ennahda) has behaved in a very similar way, despite the protests and the calls for resignation and for dissolving the national constitutional assembly. The discontent erupted after the shooting of one Mohamed Brahmi on July 31. He was a vocal critic of the Islamists, and after his death he was proclaimed a martyr for the Republic (not the state, the republic) by most newspapers. The incident unleashed the tensions that had been accumulating for more than a year.
Tunisia has suffered from a lot of problems since the new rulers came to power, especially economic problems: rising prices of all essential goods, the national currency plummeting, lack of investment due to security problems, etc. The gap between the secular and the conservative segments of society is widening. People demand to know who exactly stands behind the murder of Brahmi and also that of Chokri Belaid, another famous critic of the Islamists who was shot in cold blood in February. These are acts that instantly remind of the authoritarian times of Ben Ali. Turns out both victims were shot with the same kind of weapon, which indicates that there's an unknown group behind them, aiming to destabilize the country.
It's evident that the Tunisian people don't want to make compromises with the government at this point because they don't trust it any more. Their goal is to pressure the Islamists as much as possible, although the latter have shown that they don't give up power without a fight. Still, it doesn't look likely that the people would quit this time, so the government will have to take responsibility for its terrible policies sooner or later.
And the protests already do have some effect. A few days ago Ennahda came out with a message to the protesters, saying they were prepared to form a broad government of "national unity". The reason for this sudden change of mind could be in the specific origin of the Islamists in Tunisia: their leaders were formed as politicians while they were in exile, in countries like France. Not in the state prisons, as is the case with Morsi in Egypt.
So the situation in Tunisia is different from that in Egypt, where the military has seized control. In Tunisia, the military doesn't meddle into politics. And, despite the horrible recent events, the protests have largely remained peaceful and devoid of violent clashes. But it's not like the events in Egypt don't have an effect on Tunisia, too. Morsi's demise has scared the Tunisian government and made it softer, and has emboldened the protesters. But just like in Egypt, the problem is not so much in the ideology of the rulers. In fact the broad opposition to Morsi was not driven by his religious affiliations, but because of the way he approached power. He just failed to deliver, and from a democratically elected leader he began turning himself into an autocrat, believing he was untouchable now, since the people had given him legitimacy with their vote. And here's where he was mistaken.
It was again the murder of an opposition leader that lit the spark in Libya. Abdelsalam Al-Mosmary, a vocal critic of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood was shot by unknown perpetrators on July 25 as he was going to a mosque for prayer. Huge protests ensued in the center of the revolution, Benghazi. The MB headquarters was set on fire. Here the protests were far from bloodless like in neighboring Tunisia: as the flames were blazing, people were setting scores with guns in hand on the dark streets of the city, car bombs were going off everywhere, and it was a total mess. Amidst all that chaos, 1200 prisoners managed to flee the Benghazi jail. Most of them members of armed extremist groups.
Gaddafi's legacy is very recognizable in all these events. During his 40 year long reign, he was systematically suffocating any political life in his country. The armed forces were deliberately suppressed. The purpose was to create a system where no single group could oppose Gaddafi's authority. He was heavily relying on the loyalist militarized tribal groups, many of them personally headed by his own sons.
Now almost two years after his death, the security forces are practically still absent, the national police and the military remains weak. The power vacuum was promptly filled by more than 300 paramilitary groups, heavily armed and solidly funded during the time of the resistance against the colonel. Officially, these militias are subject to the central authority, but in reality each of them keeps autonomy. And the clash of various interests between their commanders is behind the new wave of violence in Libya.
Despite the apparent similarities between these three countries, the context in each of them is different. What all of them are experiencing now is the pains of the post-revolutionary transition period. And here I'm not just talking about well-organized and disproportionately under-represented Islamists benefiting from the chaos and totally taking over, but more like the whole process of shaping the future politics of these societies. In this struggle, not only revolutionary forces are involved, but also the counter-revolutionary remnants of the previous regimes. And things are far from settled.
Except, the old methods of public manipulation through state propaganda and the use of brute force as an argument for the rulers' right to, well, rule, are not working as they used to. In Egypt the military has proposed what they called a road-map for the transition period, but they're doing the same mistake Morsi did: talking of a "national unity" government with broad representation, one that would possibly include all political forces, while in reality doing nothing in that direction, just on the contrary. And the Islamist sympathizers among the voters (who are a formidable force by any means, and an important part of any Arab society), cannot remain ignored and marginalized, or worse, brutally repressed. They just won't stay in the sidelines.
Granted, Libya has started from an even worse position than that. Before even achieving political pluralism, they'll first have to guarantee order and security, and that is no easy thing. The recipe for solving the problem with the armed militant groups begins with creating a strong professional military. The first steps in that direction were already made by prime-minister Ali Zeidan who has sought assistance from NATO and the US for training these forces.
Some external factors could also help save a country the size of Libya and Tunisia, but probably not a giant like Egypt. So, no matter how many efforts the chief EU secretary on foreign policy Catherine Ashton does to be an active mediator between all sides involved, that'll hardly have any tangible effects. The authorities just don't want to lose their grip on the position of power, and though they certainly don't want Egypt to lose any of its standing on the international scene either, it's improbable that they'll listen to the advices of the EU representative. More likely they'd listen to the envoys of the other countries from the Gulf region who've been pretty generous lately, granting aid worth 12 billion dollars in the days since the coup against Morsi, which is rather telling.
The solution for Egypt must come from the local leaders, and that's as obvious as it is difficult to achieve. What's needed is that the military and those among the secular factors who support them extend a hand to the Muslim Brotherhood, and reach reconciliation. And the Islamists, in turn, should find the will and wisdom to swallow their pride from the insult, and start a dialogue. That's the only way they could seek for some responsibility for the scores of murdered MB supporters without necessarily further polarizing the situation. Otherwise all the alternatives look horrible, and are a lose-lose option for all sides.
In the long term, if the MB chooses to stop participating in the political life of the country, they'll ultimately be marginalized. In that case there's a risk of partition of the Egyptian society. Smaller groups could emerge, some of them taking arms to the streets, and thus the next generation of extremists would be born.
Although the situation in Egypt and the other two countries in the Maghreb does "kind of" resemble Algeria from 20 years ago, for the time being the violence has been a lot less, and the context is quite different. What's happening at the moment is a political paralysis at all levels, which is pushing the otherwise urgently needed economic reforms further into the unknown future, and that's very, very bad. I'm afraid the millions of jobless youngsters can't wait that long. And the absence of political patience is threatening to set into motion an endless vicious circle of violent street protests, military coups and armed clashes, while the rest of the world is left scratching their smart heads wondering what went wrong this time.
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/13 18:34 (UTC)I personally blame the bankruptcy of liberal realpolitik which promotes the creation of an affluent business class in poor countries at the expense of the rest of the population. As the rich get richer and the poor poorer, the extremists become more popular.
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/13 19:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/13 22:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 8/8/13 02:50 (UTC)I know people can't be pigeon holed, but you can still find groups that people can identify with; Muslims, Christians and Secularists, they all need an equal voice. Men and women, they need an equal voice. Rich and poor, need an equal voice. A democratically elected constitutional convention in Egypt means it's a bunch of rich, Muslim men writing the rules for the country. That's why it was illegitimate.
(no subject)
Date: 8/8/13 20:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 8/8/13 23:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 8/8/13 14:18 (UTC)One thing though:
What the people will have to learn is that "free and fair" elections will not be enough to overcome the rule of the entrenched military elite trying to retain control of the situation through various fronts or satisfy the people's hunger for "bread, freedom and social justice" which they called for at the beginning when, in Egypt, for example, the main slogan of the first protest wave was الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام — the people demand the fall of the regime.
When the inevitable betrayal of the people, inherent corruption of power and failure of neoliberal democracy surface again, some of the biggest stand-offs may be yet to come.
The revolution is far from over yet.
(no subject)
Date: 8/8/13 14:27 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9/8/13 09:26 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 8/8/13 14:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 8/8/13 14:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 8/8/13 17:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/8/13 22:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9/8/13 01:04 (UTC)