ANALYSIS: Across the Maghreb, people are challenging the forces of repression. Behind their protests are vast economic inequalities and the widening gulf between ageing elites and the young
THERE IS no doubt that the Tunisian uprising and the departure of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali from power after weeks of demonstrations against the regime have come as a surprise to most scholars and policymakers. Very few of them believed the authoritarian system set up by Ben Ali would crumble so quickly and even fewer thought his regime so incredibly unpopular. After all, both European and American policymakers often lauded the Tunisian regime for its impressive economic openness, secularism and moderate stance on foreign policy issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Western governments were generally dismissive of its repressive policies and human rights abuses, arguing that Tunisia was a bastion against the threat of Islamism and therefore Ben Ali’s toughness could be forgiven.
It was generally assumed that ordinary Tunisians also shared, to different degrees, the same benign attitude towards the regime given the comparatively high standard of living they seem to enjoy. Thus, the Tunisian revolution has been particularly challenging for western foreign ministries that support authoritarian rulers in the misguided perception of regional stability.
The almost inevitable contagion to other strategically important countries has compounded the scale of the challenge. Egypt is a crucial US ally and one of the only two Arab countries to have a peace treaty with Israel; Bahrain is the location of US military bases and an oil exporter. Libya is a major energy supplier to southern Europe and invests significant sums in European economies. It would, however, be inappropriate to frame the past month in the Arab world only in terms of what it might mean for western democracies.
The example set by ordinary Tunisians is being followed across the region and the outcome of such popular struggles matters first and foremost for those living there. It is they who have experienced decades of unaccountable, arbitrary and often violent rule. The brutality with which Gadafy is attempting to suppress what initially were peaceful protests is not an isolated case in the recent history of the Middle East and north Africa, as Syria in the 1980s or Algeria in the 1990s both experienced bloody internal repressions.
According to many, it is precisely the robustness of the security apparatus that has for long kept ordinary citizens in the Arab world in line. Leaders set up a fearsome security structure through different police services that are able to control and repress dissent swiftly, ensuring the survival of a regime in which they have a considerable stake.
What, then, has provoked the collapse of the wall of fear in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, three of the countries with the strictest control of political dissent? The answer that prevails in current analyses places the economic woes of the region centre stage.
The restructuring of the Arab economies over the last two decades has had a profoundly destabilising impact, with those connected to the regime through family, tribal or ideological ties amassing wealth while ordinary citizens slid into further poverty, being deprived of food subsidies, healthcare, education and employment. The global recession has simply accelerated trends already at work.
It is not a coincidence that Tunisia and Egypt were the first two countries to see massive anti-regime demonstrations, as it is here that western policies were first implemented. Such market reforms simply put public assets into private hands, led to private monopolies and generally rigged the market against the underprivileged classes. In this context, the aggregate measures of growth in both Tunisia and Egypt mask the growing inequalities.
Given the authoritarian structures of political power, corruption also infected the political economy of Arab countries. In the aftermath of the global recession, the deepening of inequalities was no longer tolerable, particularly with mounting youth unemployment, further cuts in public services and ordinary people asked to bear the brunt of the crisis while well-off elites continued to flaunt their wealth.
This picture is valid not only for countries without hydrocarbons, but also for Libya and Bahrain, where oil revenues are siphoned off-shore by the leadership or spent on increasingly sophisticated and very costly weaponry.
Economic woes do not constitute the only reason why the Arab world is experiencing such turmoil. A similar crisis occurred in the late 1980s and regimes were all able to ride out the storm. In fact, with the exception of Algeria, none of them experienced the degree of popular pressure we witness today.
Economic crisis aside, there is today a much more profound disconnect between the ruling elites and citizens. The current leadership across the region is simply very old and tired-looking, blurting out empty slogans that no longer resonate, implementing discredited policies and preoccupied with leaving power to their offspring. It is also for this reason the main agents of this revolutionary moment in the Middle East and North Africa are not to be found in the usual suspects within the political opposition or in civil society, including Islamist movements and parties. In fact, organised political and social movements in the opposition seem to lag behind groups that are very loosely, if at all, organised.
The protests were co-ordinated largely through new social media and on the streets. Opposition politicians and leading civil society actors are also old and tired-looking with antiquated slogans and beliefs which have little resonance with the youth who are driving change. This aspect is both a strength and a weakness for the fate of these uprisings.
On the one hand, the new generation is unencumbered by old ideology and is practical, which means that it can creatively design new forms of rule and political aggregation, offering innovative solutions to the many problems Arab countries have to face. This provides the revolution with a real possibility of succeeding, steering countries to the creation of institutions that are more accountable and less arbitrary. On the other, the absence of a clear political leadership driving the uprisings can undermine in the long run the efforts at radical change that ordinary citizens seem to desire. Groups that have a stake in the survival of the regime, including large sectors of the armed forces and business elites, can prove very resilient and capable of adapting to new circumstances.
As in the past, profiting from the inevitable chaos in the streets, they could conceivably reassert themselves through a renewed mix of repression and co-optation, particularly if the international community once again privileges authoritarian stability over “democratic chaos”.
Thus, the enthusiasm with which many are following events in the Arab world and hoping for the triumph of democracy should be tempered. This is because of the realisation that, for the moment in Tunisia and Egypt, as US analyst Marina Ottaway recently argued, “the presidents have left, the regimes are still in place”, if by regime we mean “the submerged icebergs of personal connections, institutions, and common interests of which the presidents and their immediate entourage were the visible tips”.
In Libya and Bahrain, the current rulers have not even left yet.
Francesco Cavatorta is a senior lecturer at the school of law and government in Dublin City University. He is author of Democracy Betrayed? The International Dimension of the Failed Algerian Transition(Manchester University Press, 2009) and (with Frederic Volpi) Democratization in the Muslim World. Changing Patterns of Power and Authority (Routledge, 2007)