One for the album: Egyptians pose for photographs on an army tank in Cairo, two days after the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak
When democratic reforms swept the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Arab countries seemed to get left behind. All of the Arab regimes that were in control then were still in power at the start of this year—with the notable exception of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athists in Iraq. Some blamed Arab culture for this, others said that Islam was incompatible with democracy, but most agreed that the Arabs were bucking the global trend of greater democracy. Yet the events of 2011 have decisively undermined the notion that the Arabs aren’t ready for—or don’t want—democracy. The question is, will they achieve it? The demands for political freedoms that have been sweeping the region over the past weeks and months, from north Africa through the Middle East to the Persian Gulf, underscore the broad-based desire for change—a desire shared by groups as diverse as the religious conservatives of the Jordanian Islamic Action Front through to the left-leaning secular nationalists of Yemen’s Joint Meeting Parties. Repressed for decades by their governments, denied basic freedoms, and driven to some of the lowest levels of human development in the world, millions of Arabs have reached breaking point; and the solution they are seeking is the right to choose—and change—their rulers by vote. Yet dangers lie ahead. While the people of Tunisia and Egypt have already demonstrated to their Arab brethren that popular protests can bring down even the most entrenched autocrats, they have yet to show how to create a stable political order in the aftermath. Whether this can be achieved remains to be seen, particularly in Egypt, where the army—a force many Egyptians are wary of after six decades of a military regime—is now in charge. Democracies take time to establish, but time also favours chaos in the absence of a working government. The nature of the uprisings has partly laid to rest fears of a region-wide Islamic revolution. The Islamist parties—the Nahda in Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt—did not initiate the revolts and have fallen in line with the consensus demands for democracy. They are calling for political reforms under the rule of law, not the imposition of Islamic law. Their role model is the ruling Islamist Justice and Development party in Turkey, not the Islamic Republic of Iran. But the next countries in line for popular revolutions are in many ways more dangerous. President Ali Abdullah Saleh has ruled Yemen, badly, for over 30 years. His country is the poorest in the Arab world, with over 45 per cent of its population below the poverty line. In recent months, Yemen has been rocked by demonstrations demanding President Saleh step down. It has long been on the brink of becoming a failed state. Split by tribalism and internal factions and home to a number of jihadi groups, it is hard to imagine democracy taking root in the country should a revolution succeed in toppling the regime. As one of the leaders of Yemen’s protest movements confessed: “I fear Yemen is going to be ripped apart. The situation in here is a lot more dangerous than in any other Arab country.” Protesters have also taken to the streets in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, calling for the overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir. Bashir has ruled since 1989 and has been accused by the International Criminal Court of genocide and crimes against humanity for his government’s alleged involvement in mass murder in the Darfur province. After years of civil war, the southern half of Sudan has now voted with near unanimity to secede from the north, taking a large part of the country’s oil reserves with it. Democracy activists could hardly find a more troubled place to try to build accountable government. The Arab world can broadly be divided in two groups: the republics, such as Egypt and Tunisia, and the monarchies, including Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. So far, it has been the republics that have come under greatest pressure to reform. Almost without exception, these countries have leaders for life, who in recent years have tried to establish dynastic rule by grooming family members as successors. Tunisia’s ousted President Ben Ali was condemned for promoting his wife’s family; in Egypt, people resented Mubarak’s efforts to position his son Gamal to succeed him. Similar resentments are brewing in Yemen, Libya and possibly Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad came to power by dynastic succession in 2000. Yet the Arab monarchies are not immune to pressure for change either. At the end of January, Jordan’s King Abdullah II was forced to appoint a new prime minister and shuffle his cabinet in response to weeks of demonstrations. Morocco has been quiet, but given its young population and high level of joblessness it will not be unaffected. Demonstrators have demanded constitutional reforms in the Gulf Kingdom of Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, too, has a large and youthful population that is growing restless. Nervousness in even the most stable and prosperous oil sheikhdoms is reflected in local stock markets, which have shown great volatility in light of events in Cairo and Tunis. “The people should not fear their governments,” read one sign in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during early February. “Governments should fear their people.” This is a message that has resonated across the Arab world. But the challenges now facing democratic reformers in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere are enormous. After decades of autocratic rule, Arab countries lack many of the basic institutions for democracy to work. Their constitutions have been transformed into instruments of repression; their parliaments have represented the regime, not the people; their judiciaries have been made to uphold autocratic rule rather than the law; and their citizens have been systematically denied their civil rights and liberties. It will take a root and branch reform of government to set things right. In Egypt and Tunisia, the first priority is constitutional reform. The only way to establish a new political order is to change the rules of the game to empower citizens and make government answerable to them. The demonstrators want laws to protect their fundamental political rights: freedom of speech and of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to form political parties. And they want to see all emergency regulations and martial law restrictions lifted to take the fear out of politics. Once democratic rights have been enshrined in law, fresh elections need to be organised under the new rules. Egypt’s president is gone and its parliament dissolved, so they are starting with a clean slate. Tunisia, on the other hand, is debating whether it wants a presidential system. Tired of being ruled by powerful presidents, Tunisians are looking at the possibility of shifting to a parliamentary system headed by a prime minister. A free media will be crucial for the transition period. The need for the fourth estate to hold the transitional authorities to account has never been more pressing. The media and social networking sites have already played a huge role in broadening free speech in the Arab world—and will continue to do so. In the run-up to the downfall of the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes, the Qatar-based satellite television station al Jazeera broadcast all the news the authorities were trying to suppress. Its nightly coverage of the Tunisian demonstrations prevented the Ben Ali regime from keeping a lid on what started as a small-scale grassroots protest. It continues to do the same in other countries. The print media have seized the moment to assert broader freedoms. The influential Cairo daily, al-Ahram, has broken away from government control in a series of strikes demanding better pay and editorial freedom. Social networking and mobile phones will also play a key role during the transition period in Tunisia and Egypt—and in ongoing protest movements in other Arab countries. Facebook, Twitter and other sites have allowed an unprecedented degree of co-ordination between protesters in countries where public meetings have never been allowed. But such networks are only as effective as the quality of a country’s connection to the internet. One third of Tunisians and one quarter of Egyptians use the web, but fewer than 10 per cent of Yemenis have access, and no more than 350,000 Libyans (of a total population of 6.5m). Low rates of internet access will hinder revolutions in some Arab states. Whoever comes to power in the wake of the revolutions of 2011 will face the daunting task of providing for a young, educated, unemployed and frustrated population in a global economic crisis. As the map (left) shows, the Arab world is very young, with a median age of under 30 in all states in the region, falling as low as 18 in Yemen and 21 in Syria, Jordan and Palestine. Increasingly well-educated, these young citizens find their lives on hold. Without jobs or apartments of their own, no prospects to marry and raise families, they see no dignity in their lives and have no stake in the future. And they are growing increasingly assertive with each Arab revolution. The ultimate challenge facing the revolutionaries in Tunisia and Egypt, and the nervous governments in the other Arab states, is to provide for the welfare of all their people. Poverty is rife across the region. Even some oil-rich countries have failed their people, with one third of Libyans and nearly one quarter of Algerians living in poverty. If there is a positive role for the international community in the Arab revolutions of 2011, it will be in helping the new governments to provide for their citizens—through debt relief, foreign investment, and opening of markets. Western powers could do a great deal to promote democracy in the Arab world just by supporting the economies of newly-liberated countries. What better advert for Arab democracy than nations enjoying freedom and prosperity? With help and support, democracy in the Arab world is no fantasy. But while high hopes can drive people to achieve great things, dashed hopes can prove just as powerful a force for ill. The threat of a return to the violence and conflict for which the region has become known in recent years has not yet passed.
Also in Prospect's middle east special:Arab democracy: A family affairGetting rid of the head of state is one thing, standing up to the head of your family quite another, argues Shereen El Feki Time for quiet idealism:The Arab upheaval shows that we should promote our values—up to a point, writes David DavisBuilding Arab peace one checkpoint at a time:Tony Blair speaks to Donald Macintyre about his role as middle east envoy
When democratic reforms swept the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Arab countries seemed to get left behind. All of the Arab regimes that were in control then were still in power at the start of this year—with the notable exception of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athists in Iraq. Some blamed Arab culture for this, others said that Islam was incompatible with democracy, but most agreed that the Arabs were bucking the global trend of greater democracy. Yet the events of 2011 have decisively undermined the notion that the Arabs aren’t ready for—or don’t want—democracy. The question is, will they achieve it? The demands for political freedoms that have been sweeping the region over the past weeks and months, from north Africa through the Middle East to the Persian Gulf, underscore the broad-based desire for change—a desire shared by groups as diverse as the religious conservatives of the Jordanian Islamic Action Front through to the left-leaning secular nationalists of Yemen’s Joint Meeting Parties. Repressed for decades by their governments, denied basic freedoms, and driven to some of the lowest levels of human development in the world, millions of Arabs have reached breaking point; and the solution they are seeking is the right to choose—and change—their rulers by vote. Yet dangers lie ahead. While the people of Tunisia and Egypt have already demonstrated to their Arab brethren that popular protests can bring down even the most entrenched autocrats, they have yet to show how to create a stable political order in the aftermath. Whether this can be achieved remains to be seen, particularly in Egypt, where the army—a force many Egyptians are wary of after six decades of a military regime—is now in charge. Democracies take time to establish, but time also favours chaos in the absence of a working government. The nature of the uprisings has partly laid to rest fears of a region-wide Islamic revolution. The Islamist parties—the Nahda in Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt—did not initiate the revolts and have fallen in line with the consensus demands for democracy. They are calling for political reforms under the rule of law, not the imposition of Islamic law. Their role model is the ruling Islamist Justice and Development party in Turkey, not the Islamic Republic of Iran. But the next countries in line for popular revolutions are in many ways more dangerous. President Ali Abdullah Saleh has ruled Yemen, badly, for over 30 years. His country is the poorest in the Arab world, with over 45 per cent of its population below the poverty line. In recent months, Yemen has been rocked by demonstrations demanding President Saleh step down. It has long been on the brink of becoming a failed state. Split by tribalism and internal factions and home to a number of jihadi groups, it is hard to imagine democracy taking root in the country should a revolution succeed in toppling the regime. As one of the leaders of Yemen’s protest movements confessed: “I fear Yemen is going to be ripped apart. The situation in here is a lot more dangerous than in any other Arab country.” Protesters have also taken to the streets in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, calling for the overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir. Bashir has ruled since 1989 and has been accused by the International Criminal Court of genocide and crimes against humanity for his government’s alleged involvement in mass murder in the Darfur province. After years of civil war, the southern half of Sudan has now voted with near unanimity to secede from the north, taking a large part of the country’s oil reserves with it. Democracy activists could hardly find a more troubled place to try to build accountable government. The Arab world can broadly be divided in two groups: the republics, such as Egypt and Tunisia, and the monarchies, including Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. So far, it has been the republics that have come under greatest pressure to reform. Almost without exception, these countries have leaders for life, who in recent years have tried to establish dynastic rule by grooming family members as successors. Tunisia’s ousted President Ben Ali was condemned for promoting his wife’s family; in Egypt, people resented Mubarak’s efforts to position his son Gamal to succeed him. Similar resentments are brewing in Yemen, Libya and possibly Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad came to power by dynastic succession in 2000. Yet the Arab monarchies are not immune to pressure for change either. At the end of January, Jordan’s King Abdullah II was forced to appoint a new prime minister and shuffle his cabinet in response to weeks of demonstrations. Morocco has been quiet, but given its young population and high level of joblessness it will not be unaffected. Demonstrators have demanded constitutional reforms in the Gulf Kingdom of Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, too, has a large and youthful population that is growing restless. Nervousness in even the most stable and prosperous oil sheikhdoms is reflected in local stock markets, which have shown great volatility in light of events in Cairo and Tunis. “The people should not fear their governments,” read one sign in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during early February. “Governments should fear their people.” This is a message that has resonated across the Arab world. But the challenges now facing democratic reformers in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere are enormous. After decades of autocratic rule, Arab countries lack many of the basic institutions for democracy to work. Their constitutions have been transformed into instruments of repression; their parliaments have represented the regime, not the people; their judiciaries have been made to uphold autocratic rule rather than the law; and their citizens have been systematically denied their civil rights and liberties. It will take a root and branch reform of government to set things right. In Egypt and Tunisia, the first priority is constitutional reform. The only way to establish a new political order is to change the rules of the game to empower citizens and make government answerable to them. The demonstrators want laws to protect their fundamental political rights: freedom of speech and of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to form political parties. And they want to see all emergency regulations and martial law restrictions lifted to take the fear out of politics. Once democratic rights have been enshrined in law, fresh elections need to be organised under the new rules. Egypt’s president is gone and its parliament dissolved, so they are starting with a clean slate. Tunisia, on the other hand, is debating whether it wants a presidential system. Tired of being ruled by powerful presidents, Tunisians are looking at the possibility of shifting to a parliamentary system headed by a prime minister. A free media will be crucial for the transition period. The need for the fourth estate to hold the transitional authorities to account has never been more pressing. The media and social networking sites have already played a huge role in broadening free speech in the Arab world—and will continue to do so. In the run-up to the downfall of the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes, the Qatar-based satellite television station al Jazeera broadcast all the news the authorities were trying to suppress. Its nightly coverage of the Tunisian demonstrations prevented the Ben Ali regime from keeping a lid on what started as a small-scale grassroots protest. It continues to do the same in other countries. The print media have seized the moment to assert broader freedoms. The influential Cairo daily, al-Ahram, has broken away from government control in a series of strikes demanding better pay and editorial freedom. Social networking and mobile phones will also play a key role during the transition period in Tunisia and Egypt—and in ongoing protest movements in other Arab countries. Facebook, Twitter and other sites have allowed an unprecedented degree of co-ordination between protesters in countries where public meetings have never been allowed. But such networks are only as effective as the quality of a country’s connection to the internet. One third of Tunisians and one quarter of Egyptians use the web, but fewer than 10 per cent of Yemenis have access, and no more than 350,000 Libyans (of a total population of 6.5m). Low rates of internet access will hinder revolutions in some Arab states. Whoever comes to power in the wake of the revolutions of 2011 will face the daunting task of providing for a young, educated, unemployed and frustrated population in a global economic crisis. As the map (left) shows, the Arab world is very young, with a median age of under 30 in all states in the region, falling as low as 18 in Yemen and 21 in Syria, Jordan and Palestine. Increasingly well-educated, these young citizens find their lives on hold. Without jobs or apartments of their own, no prospects to marry and raise families, they see no dignity in their lives and have no stake in the future. And they are growing increasingly assertive with each Arab revolution. The ultimate challenge facing the revolutionaries in Tunisia and Egypt, and the nervous governments in the other Arab states, is to provide for the welfare of all their people. Poverty is rife across the region. Even some oil-rich countries have failed their people, with one third of Libyans and nearly one quarter of Algerians living in poverty. If there is a positive role for the international community in the Arab revolutions of 2011, it will be in helping the new governments to provide for their citizens—through debt relief, foreign investment, and opening of markets. Western powers could do a great deal to promote democracy in the Arab world just by supporting the economies of newly-liberated countries. What better advert for Arab democracy than nations enjoying freedom and prosperity? With help and support, democracy in the Arab world is no fantasy. But while high hopes can drive people to achieve great things, dashed hopes can prove just as powerful a force for ill. The threat of a return to the violence and conflict for which the region has become known in recent years has not yet passed.
Also in Prospect's middle east special:Arab democracy: A family affairGetting rid of the head of state is one thing, standing up to the head of your family quite another, argues Shereen El Feki Time for quiet idealism:The Arab upheaval shows that we should promote our values—up to a point, writes David DavisBuilding Arab peace one checkpoint at a time:Tony Blair speaks to Donald Macintyre about his role as middle east envoy
