The threats to Arab Spring are both domestic and international

East Meredith New York

In the Arab Spring there is a steady turbulence: dynastic regimes, patriarchal order, fanatic movements and self-serving foreign intervention.

Over the last century, the entire nation-building process has been dysfunctional. Rulers legitimize people, not the reverse; religion trumps human rights; reactionary political movements generate more problems than solutions.

But not all obstacles to freedom have been local. When tied to strategic interests, foreign assistance could do more harm than good. Since the end of World War I, the West has had a major hand in appointing and defending loyal kings and presidents in the Arab world.   

Given the many sources of threats to freedom, it should not be surprising that the fate of revolts in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria is unclear.

The progress in Tunisia’s struggle has raised expectations. Here, the major barrier to freedom was the ruler. The country is not burdened by tradition, fanatic reformers, and foreign intervention. Tunisia’s modernity and society’s homogeneity facilitated the ousting of President Ben Ali. Reform is in progress.

In Egypt, the situation is different.  The military, which has deep interest in the economy, remains dominant in the post Mubarak regime.  Religious enterprise feeds on piety: a thriving industry of preaching dulls the mind.  Rival foreign aid policies from the US, Europe and Saudi Arabia pressure the new regime to take inconsistent steps for the future. To prevail, youth, women and secular parties will have to continue the struggle.

Libya is proving more difficult to transform than Egypt. In this tribal society, a peaceful demonstration challenged a ruler who has gone deep in oppression and far in delusions. The ruler has operated as if he owns the nation. With free access to oil wealth, he has managed to foster absolute obedience from the people.  Key figures in the army and the tribes are privileged; with some notable exceptions, these complicit loyalists have defended the status quo. For too long, private initiative was discouraged. Citizens seeking liberty and accountability of public authority had to emigrate. Libya depended on foreign labor to do the creative and constructive work for the nation.

The people of Libya, impassioned by the media, rushed into a revolution without being sufficiently prepared. There is no strong civic structure to defend the uprising. The rebels needed external assistance. Gaddhafi’s brutal reaction to the rebels - and his record of terrorism - precipitated protective, albeit naïve and wobbly, foreign military intervention. The international community is divided on ways to deal with a ruler whose legitimacy has clearly expired.

It is hard to predict Libya’s future given a weak rebellion; ethnic division, between the region of the West and the East; and conflicted international intervention.

Despite their immense differences, Syria and Bahrain have a common feature in governance: rule by a minority. The Republic of Syria is dominated by a Shiite sect: the Alawites rule over a Sunnite majority, while the Bahraini royal family is Sunnite, ruling over a Shiite majority. 

The sectarian factor in the uprisings of Syria and Bahrain should not be over- emphasized, for the tension between Shiites and Sunnites is more ethno-political than religious. More importantly, the primary problem of the two countries is not the identity of the rulers. The problem is abuse of power.

The revolt in Syria is a reaction to a failing regime which has been in power for too long. Jails are crowded with political dissidents and the regime has been excessively harsh in responding to the uprising. Syria has a primitive economy, a closed political system and a culturally isolated society. Many Syrians are tired of the regime’s close alliance with Iran and its excessive involvement in Lebanese and Palestinian politics.

Similarly, in Bahrain, people complain about lack of freedom of dissent, concentration of power in a non-constitutional monarchy, unfair distribution of wealth, and dominance of expatriates. Reformers are jailed and a powerful, secular political party has been banned.

Syria leads a deceptive rhetoric of resistance against Israel in the region, and Bahrain hosts a provocative, major US naval base. Such contrasting national positions affect foreign policy toward the revolts in both countries.

But often, politically motivated foreign intervention does more harm than good.  Saudi Arabia and the US aggressively support the Bahraini regime with arms and diplomacy, while Iran actively supports Syria with money and arms.

The Saudis believe that a change of regime in Bahrain would negatively impact Riyadh’s stability. The US has guaranteed the security of all Gulf countries at a high moral and monetary cost, for both the client states and patron. Projected arm sales to the Gulf States are historically unprecedented: 60 billion dollars to Saudi Arabia alone.

The stability of Syria is also tied to the region’s security.  There is growing fear that ending the Assad dynasty would threaten the entire Eastern Mediterranean, including Lebanon and Israel. The current hawkish Israeli cabinet is against seeing Syria’s burdened regime removed from power. Iran would be weakened, and Iraq may be further destabilized.

Yemen brings another set of dynamics: a poor and tribal-based country with multiple domestic conflicts and an open field for international agents of terror and counter terror. The regime is about to fall; to fill the political vacuum, both the US and Saudi Arabia have already rushed to support elements of the status quo. The Yemini reformers are pleading with Washington to be allowed to participate in the shaping of the future. Will Washington listen?

While its pace is unpredictable, Arab awakening is irreversible. The four threats to freedom - dynasties, patriarchy, fanatic movements and foreign intervention- fuel the turbulence of the Arab Spring.

Unrecognized challenges to Middle East spring: tolerance and gender equality

East Meredith, New York

The Middle East spring will take time to blossom and widen its scope. Nation-building reformers must pay increased attention to two important barriers to democracy: overextended clerical power and tolerance for gender inequality.

Initially, public protest achieved rapid results by ousting the head of the state in Tunisia and then in Egypt. This initial success has encouraged revolts in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, not to mention other less serious uprisings. However, after Tunisia and Egypt, the revolts have lasted more than expected and they are still active, bloody and inconclusive. In the second cycle of rebellion, the national armies have sided with the regimes against the protestors.

The challenge for Egypt and Tunisia is to rebuild the new political system through a participatory process. These two countries could provide a model of social change.

In Egypt, the military and the religious establishment have dominated national policy since Mubarak was ousted; so far civil society groups have only played a timid role in the new government. Secular reform groups are struggling to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood movement for shaping the future. If the Egyptian army and the religious establishment continue to decelerate and dilute reform, the country would collapse again. A second revolution will then follow, as fear of the ruling authority is a thing of the past.

In Tunisia, on the other hand, the new government has been relatively responsive to civil society and the lessons (responsible governance, freedom and equality) of the revolution are clear to the army and the religious establishment. It helps that Tunisia is more secular than Egypt.

It is less cumbersome to change structures and rulers than to change ideas. It may not be hard to identify the dictator and demonstrate for his removal. But it is not at all simple to acknowledge and remove socio-religious barriers to democracy.

The Middle East spring should not only be concerned with the removal of dictators and replacing them with democratically elected leaders. A corner stone of democracy is the extent to which minorities are protected and afforded equal rights. Reform should focus on building political systems which provide equal opportunity to all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, religious affiliation or gender. A major unacknowledged barrier (the elephant in the room) to these democratic ideals is the conservative religious establishment.

No society can go far in social development without restricting the power of religious authorities, which are often self-serving and biased against roles of women. Women are the largest and most significant vulnerable group in the Middle East. Bringing democracy to the region cannot be done without confronting a flawed patriarchal social order which is bent on perpetuating gender inequality and preserving outmoded family legislation, education and institutions.

In a free society, women have equal opportunity to men in education, access to health services, jobs and political office. Religious authorities should be encouraged to revise outmoded laws of personal statutes regarding marriage, divorce, burial and inheritance. Moreover, adult citizens should be allowed to choose and define their faith, interpret scripture, convert to other religions, or to abandon faith if they choose to.

So far, no Middle East society has rebelled against religious totalitarianism. The fear to criticize religious authority is deeper than the fear to criticize political authority.

Religion is deeply rooted in the culture of the Middle East. In this region, there are already three religious states, where the law of the land is scripture-based: Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Moreover, in Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and Bahrain, religious affiliation dominates political power distribution.

In different ways the politics of Syria and Israel is faith biased: The Alawites, an ethno-religious community rules much of Syria and Israel considers itself a Jewish state. Religion plays a role in Israel’s identity, its roots and alliance with the Evangelical right. Yet, both Syria and Israel resent being labeled sectarian.

Even regional experts dodge the issue of religious reform.  During the past decade, United Nations scholars from the Arab world easily identified political freedoms as one of three major societal deficits. The scholars were equally frank when they declared marginalization of women to be the second development deficit.  However, these scholars failed to consider religious intolerance as an important social problem. Instead, the vague concept of “Knowledge deficit” was judged to be the third root-cause of Arab stagnation. The scholars, then and now have been too timid in confronting the religious establishment as a source of limitless taboos. Sexual and religious taboos, literalism in following scripture and hero worship of spiritual authorities forcefully dampen the intellectual curiosity of the Arab child and adult.

Visionary leadership and new legislation for the protection of religious minorities and women are badly needed to stabilize the new regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. If Tunisia and Egypt succeed in achieving genuine transformation in governance and protection of minorities, the model they would provide to the rest of the region would be too strong to resist. However, if Egypt and Tunis appear stuck on ideas of the past in their post-revolutionary rebuilding, the ruling reactionary forces in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain would gain momentum and frustrate the protestors.

A strong and democratic Egypt would limit Israel’s indulgent and insensitive attitude toward the occupation. The Netanyahu government will find it hard to preserve a bilateral peace partnership with a regionally-backed, democratic Egypt.

Tourists and foreign investors would flood Egypt and Tunisia if and when they find these two revolutionary countries to be stable, safe, tolerant and friendly to minorities.

The extent to which Egypt and Tunisia integrate tolerance and empowerment of women in nation building will dramatically affect the rest of the region.