Europe and the United States were taken by surprise by the revolutionary changes sweeping the Arab world. They failed to foresee the sudden awakening of the Arab peoples. Arab rulers who had evidently imagined they could rule for life have been swept away. Several others are under threat, and may well follow.
It is widely agreed that the Arab world is undergoing a profound transformation and will never be the same again. Europe, a mere step away from the Arab world, was evidently blind to the powerful pressures which were building up and which eventually could no longer be contained.
A striking example was provided by Michele Alliot-Marie, France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, sacked on 27 February by President Nicolas Sarkozy. She is the first European ministerial victim of the Arab revolution — in particular of the revolution in Tunisia, which overthrew President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
Alliot-Marie’s catalogue of blunders was to take a vacation in Tunisia when the troubles had already started; to offer the Tunisian President French riot police to help quell the demonstrators; to take free flights on a private plane owned by a businessman close to Ben Ali; and to allow her parents, who had accompanied her on vacation, to buy a hotel company from the same Tunisian businessman. Such errors suggest a profound incomprehension in Paris of the Arab mood.
Inevitably, the escalating revolts in the Arab world were the principal subject of debate at this year’s meeting of a high-level discussion group, known as the Club de Monaco, which met in Monte Carlo from 25 to 27 February.
Attended by some 40 former prime ministers, ministers, ambassadors, academics and journalists from more than a score of countries, the proceedings were opened by Prince Albert of Monaco, and were chaired by the Club’s founder, Claude de Kemoularia, a veteran former French ambassador and international banker, who had served as Minister of State in Monaco under Prince Albert’s father, Prince Rainier.
The Club makes no public recommendations, nor does it allow individual speakers to be named, so the remarks that follow are merely some of the lessons I personally drew from the prolonged and animated three-day debate by the distinguished participants.
One such lesson is that the burgeoning democratic movement in the Arab world will need to be underpinned by urgent financial support. If immediate and substantial financial and economic help is not given to Egypt and Tunisia, but also to Yemen and to the Sahel countries bordering the Sahara desert, as well as to other relatively poor countries, the great hopes that have been aroused will be dashed. It is no accident that terrorism thrives where poverty and hopelessness are widespread.
When the Soviet system collapsed in central and Eastern Europe, the West created the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in 1990 to promote economic development, multi-party democracy and to help the transition to capitalist economies.
Something similar is urgently required in the Arab world: if not an Arab development bank, then a massive fund, something in the nature of the Marshall Plan which the United States launched after the Second World War to rescue and revive European economies.
This is today the challenge facing the Arab oil states and their sovereign funds. They must help their poorer neighbours, if they wish to be protected from the storm engulfing the entire region. Europe, too, must lend a hand if it is not to be submerged by a flood of illegal immigrants from across the Mediterranean.
One of the key underlying social reasons for the revolution in the Arab world is the population explosion. In every single country birth rates are too high. Economic growth simply cannot keep pace. As a result, unemployment is a universal problem.
To quote a single example, when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, there were just three million Egyptians. When Gamal Abd al-Nasser and his ‘Free Officers’ seized power in 1952, this had risen to 19 million. Today, less than sixty years later, there are 84 million Egyptians, and the number is increasing by nearly a million a year. Clearly, reducing fertility rates and job creation must be the priorities not only of Egypt but of every Arab country. A revision of the educational system must also follow. In most Arab countries, over-burdened schools and universities produce large numbers of poorly-trained graduates for whom no jobs exist.
Another subject of debate by the Club de Monaco was the whole range of issues concerning Israel. The revolution in Egypt was likely to bring Cairo back into the Arab mainstream. This would have a profound impact on Israel’s strategic environment. Was it not time for Israel to rethink its security doctrine, so as to seek co-existence with its Arab neighbours rather than military domination?
Now that the United States had failed to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, could Europe and Russia step in to give the process a much-needed nudge? Was Israel beginning to grasp that its continued theft of Palestinian land was a curse from which it must itself inevitably suffer? A major attempt had to be made to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict before it exploded into more violence. There was no viable alternative to a two-state solution.
Iraq’s revival was hailed by members of the Club de Monaco. After the horrors of recent decades, the country was being remade as a decentralised democracy. It had overcome its civil war of 2006-7 and was making a successful transition from foreign occupation to real sovereignty. Its relations with such neighbours as Turkey and Iran had much improved. Given time, there were real hopes that Iraq would recover its role as a major oil producer and a leading Arab state.
In country after country, Arab protesters have voiced the same demands. They want an end to random arrests, torture and police brutality; they want the dismantling of the Arab ‘security state’; the right to speak and be heard; to participate in politics; to choose their own representatives. They want a better life for themselves and their children, the end of corruption and the gross privileges of a narrow elite. In brief, they want freedom, social justice, economic opportunity, dignity and democratic governance.
Those Arab leaders still in office should urgently take note or face the consequences.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 28 February 2011
Word Count: 1,044
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