By David Gardner in London
Financial Times, 16 January 2011
Financial Times, 16 January 2011
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| A demonstrator in Tunis |
The ignominious demise of Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” has put a dent in the armour of the Arab national security state that will set tyrants trembling across the Middle East. The idea that Arab autocracies, with their backbone in the military and their central nervous system in the security services, are uniquely resilient to popular pressure has evaporated in the smoke of Tunis.
While that does not necessarily herald a wave of uprisings across the Arab world, such as those that swept across eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, autocrats from Algiers to Amman and from Rabat to Cairo are at last aware that they now live in a different era. They will be on hyper-alert not only to stirrings among their usually cowed peoples but to any hint of change from a west that has acquiesced in their tyranny in the interests of short-term stability in a volatile and strategic region.
The west’s long connivance in this “Arab Exception” may be a welcome casualty of the Tunisian drama. The last 30 years have seen waves of democracy burst over almost every other despot-plagued region of the world, from Latin America to eastern Europe, and from sub-Saharan Africa to south-east Asia. Yet the Arab world remained marooned in tyranny. In the post-Communist era there is no other part of the world – not even China – treated by the West with such little regard for the political and human rights of its citizens.
The rationale has changed over time. In the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, France and Britain aborted the normal evolution of constitutional politics in the Arab colonies they carved out of the Ottoman Empire. For Britain the imperative was to secure the western approaches to India. After World War Two and the onset of the Cold War, the priority became to secure cheap oil, safeguard Israel and restrict the intrusion of the Soviets.
More recently, Arab regimes have frightened the west into believing that, but for them, Islamists (and Iran’s Shia theocrats) would take over the region. They maintain residual opposition parties – such as Egypt’s Wafd – as down-at-heel courtiers to exhibit to preachy westerners. Meanwhile they have laid waste to the political spectrum, leaving their opponents no rallying point except the mosque.
In the era of satellite TV and social media that has now changed. Tunisia was the second instance of this. Lebanon’s 2005 “Cedar Revolution” was a precursor, a civic uprising that ended three decades of Syrian occupation in less than three months. The digital revolution has reintegrated a fragmented Arab world in ways its technologically challenged leaders did not foresee and means socioeconomic grievances can quickly translate into broader political demands.
Economic hardship is, of course, the tinder that tends first to ignite, especially in a period of food- and fuel-price inflation. The lack of opportunity for young, increasingly educated populations, where between half and two-thirds are under the age of 25, is also a timebomb. The kleptocratic monopoly by most Arab regimes of resources as well as power is another.
But the narrative that economic reform must precede political reform – “let’s build the middle classes and then we’ll have some liberals to liberalise with” as one US ambassador once put it –is crudely determinist and an alibi for indefinitely postponing any political opening. Liberalising the economy quickly hits the wall of the national security states and the interests vested in them – which have no time for liberals.
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, under US pressure, in 2005 allowed the liberal Ayman Nour to stand against him. He restricted his majority to a mere 88 per cent, and then jailed his opponent on bogus charges. When Mr Mubarak took power three decades ago, 39 per cent of Egyptians were in absolute poverty; now 43 per cent are.
Mr Ben Ali was a western poster boy for economic reform, as his family fed on the economy.
Last week, as the fire in Tunisia raged, Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, highlighted the region’s economic stagnation. Michelle Alliot-Marie, France’s foreign minister, even suggested sending French riot police to help. Wake up and smell the jasmine: it’s the politics, stupid.
The rationale has changed over time. In the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, France and Britain aborted the normal evolution of constitutional politics in the Arab colonies they carved out of the Ottoman Empire. For Britain the imperative was to secure the western approaches to India. After World War Two and the onset of the Cold War, the priority became to secure cheap oil, safeguard Israel and restrict the intrusion of the Soviets.
More recently, Arab regimes have frightened the west into believing that, but for them, Islamists (and Iran’s Shia theocrats) would take over the region. They maintain residual opposition parties – such as Egypt’s Wafd – as down-at-heel courtiers to exhibit to preachy westerners. Meanwhile they have laid waste to the political spectrum, leaving their opponents no rallying point except the mosque.
In the era of satellite TV and social media that has now changed. Tunisia was the second instance of this. Lebanon’s 2005 “Cedar Revolution” was a precursor, a civic uprising that ended three decades of Syrian occupation in less than three months. The digital revolution has reintegrated a fragmented Arab world in ways its technologically challenged leaders did not foresee and means socioeconomic grievances can quickly translate into broader political demands.
Economic hardship is, of course, the tinder that tends first to ignite, especially in a period of food- and fuel-price inflation. The lack of opportunity for young, increasingly educated populations, where between half and two-thirds are under the age of 25, is also a timebomb. The kleptocratic monopoly by most Arab regimes of resources as well as power is another.
But the narrative that economic reform must precede political reform – “let’s build the middle classes and then we’ll have some liberals to liberalise with” as one US ambassador once put it –is crudely determinist and an alibi for indefinitely postponing any political opening. Liberalising the economy quickly hits the wall of the national security states and the interests vested in them – which have no time for liberals.
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, under US pressure, in 2005 allowed the liberal Ayman Nour to stand against him. He restricted his majority to a mere 88 per cent, and then jailed his opponent on bogus charges. When Mr Mubarak took power three decades ago, 39 per cent of Egyptians were in absolute poverty; now 43 per cent are.
Mr Ben Ali was a western poster boy for economic reform, as his family fed on the economy.
Last week, as the fire in Tunisia raged, Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, highlighted the region’s economic stagnation. Michelle Alliot-Marie, France’s foreign minister, even suggested sending French riot police to help. Wake up and smell the jasmine: it’s the politics, stupid.
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