(Part I)
Ten years young: Arab revolutionary protests As we mark a decade of Arab protests to replace entire government systems with more efficient, democratic, and accountable ones, the balance sheet of the uprisings seems slim.
Only Tunisia has transitioned to a constitutional democracy, and Sudan is in the midst of a fragile three-year transition. Major national protests still define Lebanon, Sudan, Iraq, and Algeria, while Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen suffer serious warfare among local and foreign forces. Most other Arab countries have reverted to tighter autocratic rule that weakens personal liberties.
This conventional view of the Arab region after a decade of protests is incomplete, though. A more thorough analysis would recognise that major changes that will impact future governance continue to occur across the region. Ten years is not sufficient time to credibly assess these Arab revolutionary uprisings — “uprisings” because they are spontaneous civil protests, and “revolutionary” because they aim to totally change governance systems and citizen-state relations, including the values and actions of individual citizens.
To begin, it’s important to grasp two time frames which led up to the Arab uprising: First, the 50 years since 1970 during which military rulers who seized power across the region and used oil wealth to institutionalise mostly corrupt and inefficient autocratic systems; and second, the 100 years since WWI that gave birth to the modern Arab state system which has largely experienced erratic statehood and weak sovereignty, especially in recent decades.
The Arab uprisings mirror the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements in the United States which also did not erupt in a vacuum. They emerged from a frustrated legacy of repeated earlier protests in the US over the past century, and were ignited by recent egregious acts of persistent physical or socio-economic brutality. The Arab uprisings similarly follow decades of failed smaller protests by politically helpless citizens against discrimination, inequity, and rising poverty and desperation.
In their breadth, depth, longevity, demands, and political action, the Arab uprisings are part of the long-denied process of national self-determination and state-building that Arab citizens yearn for, and now try to seize — with mixed results — in this early stage of collective street action.
New alliances and aspirations: The people as political actors
This decade of uprisings is historically significant for several unique aspects that the region had never experienced on such a large and sustained scale. The most striking is their continuity. Protests against state rule have occurred since 2010 in half the 22 Arab League countries, including some monarchies and oil-rich states. The regional spread is matched by the nationwide grievances of a majority of citizens within individual countries.
This was evident in Lebanon, Algeria, Iraq, and Sudan recently, where different sectarian, ethnic, ideological, and regional groups that occasionally had protested separately have now joined in single and coordinated national protests. They have learned that they all suffer the same stresses and inequities — few jobs, low pay, poor education and health services, rising inflation and poverty, imploding economies, unchecked corruption, and a general culture of uncaring and/or incompetent officials.
The common concerns of the protesters who seek a totally new government system are evident in the identical demands they raise in each country. Unlike the spontaneous 2010 protests that called for broad notions of dignity and social justice, today’s demands all seek a series of specific transformative steps to create more efficient, democratic, and accountable governments under the rule of law. They include: the resignation of all senior ruling officials, a transitional government to hold new parliamentary and presidential elections, a new constitution that guarantees citizen rights, an independent judiciary and anti-corruption mechanisms, and putting on trial former officials who ravaged the society and economy and grew wealthy in the process.
The current protests are striking also for bringing together different groups with a wide range of grievances that they had formerly raised separately, and almost always unsuccessfully. Environmentalists, activists for social justice, gender and minority rights, and democratic rule-of-law, and others joined hands for months on end to lobby for governance that would treat them all equitably.
Individuals and organised groups worked together in public squares to express their grievances and chart out solutions for the new states they sought to build. This generated two important new phenomena: many people who never expressed themselves in public joined the protests and became political actors (such as schoolchildren, teachers, and residents of remote provinces); and, most of them for the first time in their lives experienced contributing to shaping their anticipated new government and new national policies.
Activist citizens also created new organisations to replace moribund and corrupted state institutions, such as media organisations, professional unions, and self-help community centres.
Alongside these and other signs of the slow birth of a new Arab citizen, however, the last few years have also seen the brutal response of regimes and sectarian groups that refuse to share or relinquish power. Everywhere — in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Sudan, Morocco, and others — long-entrenched regimes reacted to the initial uprisings with promises of limited reforms, including a new prime minister, new elections, or more social spending.
Protesters rejected these as insulting sops that perpetuated the power structure and its failed policies, and they continued demonstrating to bring down the entire government. The power elite and its sectarian thugs and militias then reacted with brutal political or military force. They shot and killed hundreds of demonstrators, jailed or indicted protest leaders, burned down protest camps, and allowed moribund economies to whither even more, which drove more families into poverty and desperation.
The state’s harsh responses did not quell the protests — but the coronavirus in March 2020, did. For most of 2020, simmering citizen anger and fear failed to force new state policies, as the public pressure of the street protests dissipated.
As the virus-induced economic slowdowns and health concerns eventually halted most protests, some governments tried to use their coronavirus responses to generate new legitimacy among former supporters who had often joined the protests, and who saw their own life prospects shrivel by the month.
Protesters across the Arab region are on hiatus today, awaiting the end of the coronavirus threat and using the time to reassess their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses, so that they are better prepared when the political protests resume — which they will, in some forms we may not grasp today.
(Part II)
Taking stock of an unprecedented decade The balance sheet is mixed. Tunisia and Sudan have achieved democracy or a transition to it, but both are in fragile condition. Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Iraq remain mired in domestic or regional wars. Monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Morocco and Jordan to a lesser extent, all either prohibit public protest or allow only symbolic gestures that do not threaten the power structure. Foreign powers are frequently involved in the wars and in bolstering Arab autocrats.
The most important countries to monitor today are where the 2019-20 protests are certain to resume when conditions permit — Algeria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Iraq. Their uprisings all elicited limited state concessions without any real change in the exercise of power; only Sudan’s protests forced the military regime that ousted President Omar Hassan Bashir to negotiate a gradual transition to a democratic system. That arrangement is very fragile, with the civilian and military wings of the transitional authority often at odds (such as on normalisation with Israel) and the economy remains in dire straits.
The stalemate and pause see activists reassessing their tactics and strategy, with many advocating to organise at the grassroots and nationally to create political parties or movements that can contest future elections. The street protests and disruptions of normal life clearly have not caused regimes to cede power, and foreign parties are not stepping in to save collapsing economies. Most Arab elites and protesters realise that they are on their own, because the Arab region as a whole, for the most part, has lost its strategic relevance to foreign powers. Those powers that do intervene — like Russia in Syria — do so to maintain the autocratic order that serves their strategic interests.
The least visible but perhaps most significant change of the past decade that might define the future of political rule in Arab societies is the realization by individuals and masses alike that they are not helpless in the face of their ruling regimes, but rather that they can organise and protest and try to define their own future. That sense of agency and change-through-political action never existed on a wide scale before, and now permeates hundreds of millions of ordinary men and women of all ages. When it is mobilised again, it is likely to have more impact than it has this decade.
The lessons of an uprising on standby
The main lessons seem to be about the balance of power among the two forces that confront each other — the protesters who spontaneously took to the streets to remove their governments but did not master the keys to success, and the power elite that has ruled for decades and will fight to remain in place, even if it governs shattered societies like Syria, Yemen, and Libya. The 2010-20 decade is the latest and most robust, but not the final stage of Arab transitions to democracy and stability.
The confrontations will resume post-Covid because all the underlying conditions of citizen despair that prompted the uprisings continue to deteriorate. As citizen well-being plummets and poverty and vulnerability spread to over 70 percent of the population, confidence in governments vanishes and popular support for the uprisings increases.
These trends are repeatedly confirmed by opinion polls. The most recent regional survey, by the Doha-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, showed that household income is insufficient for nearly 75 percent of families. One in five Arabs wants to emigrate, and almost one in every three 18-34-year-olds wants to leave for good. About half the people view government performance negatively, over 90 percent see corruption as prevalent, and less than one-third feel that the rule of law is applied equally to all citizens.
These realities explain why 58 percent of the entire region view the uprisings positively, and in the four countries where the protests continue the public’s support ranges from 67 to 82 percent. The widespread desire for change only intensifies as economic conditions deteriorate and governments seem uncaring about their citizens’ suffering. Citizen agitation for deep change will persist, though it is not clear today in what form, due to the limited impact of the last decade’s activism.
We should view the revolutionary uprisings in Arab lands as dramatic elements in the state-building process that started a century ago, but never solidified its results in most cases because ordinary citizens never had an opportunity to shape decisions about national values or policies. The uprisings have sent the message that citizens need material well-being, opportunity, and security, as well as intangibles like dignity, respect, voice, and identity. They will continue to do that in new ways, with much greater awareness of how to confront stubborn state power.
As the Arab system of states now enters its second century of state-building, anxious and determined citizens who battled for a better life in the 2010-20 decade will keep trying to make sure that they finally exercise their right to, and participate in, their national self-determination.
Rami G. Khouri is Director of Global Engagement and senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Follow him on Twitter: @ramikhouri
This article — Part I and Part II — originated in The New Arab.
Copyright ©2020 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 21 December 2020
Word Count: 1,887
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