WORLD VIEW:External political actors try to understand the region's complex affairs by using simple frames, writes PAUL GILLESPIE
GEOPOLITICS HAVE never been absent from the recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. This week they were decisively reasserted by the Arab League’s move to suspend and impose sanctions on Syria because of its repression of the revolt there. It is a salutary reminder of the different elements at work in this rapidly changing region.
The Arab League’s action (yet to be implemented) demonstrates how that organisation has been revived under the influence of the conservative Gulf monarchies led by Saudi Arabia, in a notable alliance with Egypt. This emergent group fears the contagious effects of popular revolts and is determined to contain them. Their initiative inevitably attracts support from outside powers such as the United States and European Union members, and Russia and China who echoed regional critics such as Algeria, Lebanon and non-Arab Iran.
The Arab League’s influence affects several major cleavages running through the dramatic events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and Libya and the significant but less prominent changes in Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait or Algeria. They include divisions between secular and Islamic movements and states, Sunni and Shia Muslims, reformist and fundamentalist Islam, or monarchies and republics.
These play into other political differences, such as those between supporters of Hamas and Fatah in Palestine or between the dominant Saudi Arabia and the influential sheikhdom of Qatar (sponsor of the broadcaster Al-Jazeera) in the Gulf. But these also cross-cut one another, so that Qatar houses a US naval base, is close to Hamas and trades with Israel. The key Algerian regime has so far been able to head off, but not stifle, popular alienation with continuing oil and gas largesse. Conflicting internal interests include those between the Egyptian workers’ movement and proprietors resisting demands for higher wages and clearing out oppressive managements.
Political diversity and complexity are thus central realities in the Middle East and North Africa, as in Europe. And yet it is all too easy for external political actors and media to impose simple stereotypes on the region in an effort to understand (or direct) its affairs. Remember, too, how strategic it is, whether in terms of energy supplies and security, migration or containing terrorism. These interests remain in place, providing policy continuity – however much the revolts force outside players like the EU to recognise their previous mistakes in propping up authoritarian regimes and their new (and progressive) willingness to support civil society, social media and democratic movements with funds and political conditionality.
Despite the commonalities of ageing and corrupt leaders, stagnant regimes, growing inequalities, rising prices, disaffected youth and the communications revolutions of this year’s upheavals, the events should not be reduced to simple explanations or frames of reference.
Specialists like Vincent Durac of UCD say we must understand the region as it is, not as we would like it to be. Four common misconceptions abound. The Arab Spring is, firstly, not a singular or unidirectional event. “Critical issues such as the presence or absence of meaningful political parties or other opposition forces before the revolts, the existence of organised Islamist movements, the role of the military in public life or the role of tribal forces, will only be disclosed by close analysis of context,” says Durac.
Nor is 2011 another 1989, despite the current geopolitics. Neither the EU nor Nato is ready to expand there, as they were in central and eastern Europe, despite the Libyan intervention. Nor are the emerging Bric powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China) ready to sponsor new regimes. Democratic outcomes are, thirdly, not inevitable either. Conservative blocs such as the Gulf Co-operation Council (now expanded to include unlikely geographical partners Jordan and Morocco in the Arab League) do not want them – and nor does the US if its strategic interests (including its alliance with Israel) are threatened. Tunisia may remain exceptional, while a combination of the Egyptian military and the newly empowered Muslim Brotherhood capture or deflect the popular movement there.
And fourthly the role of Islamism also varies hugely. Tunisia is again exceptional so far in the electorally victorious and reformist Ennahda movement, but even it is ambiguous about applying Sharia law. In Egypt the Tahrir Square activists who toppled Mubarak opposed the political formula of parliamentary elections-first, constitution writing-second now being supported by the army and Muslim Brotherhood after it was passed with a 77 per cent majority – the opposite to Tunisia’s approach. More radical, fundamentalist or terrorist Islamic movements are more or less marginal in other states.
But nor are dire predictions of inevitable failure well founded. Orientalist analyses which said Arab Islamic culture is an immutable essence and incompatible with democracy are discredited. The courage and universal appeal of these great events will keep its dictators and their geopolitical allies guessing – and trembling.
pegillespie@gmail.com