Toward a new Middle East?
By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com
Revolutions sometimes start with a small spark, a moment when courage overcomes fear and a determined individual decides to stand up against oppression and humiliation. The revolution in race relations in the United States — still very much a work in progress Barack Obama notwithstanding — arguably began on December 1, 1955, on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, when a 42-year-old seamstress by the name of Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man as the laws of American Southern-style apartheid required. Her challenge to the system of racial oppression gave birth to the historic Montgomery bus boycott, the first act of what would become a momentous mass movement, the civil rights movement.
The wildfire that threatens to engulf the Arab autocracies, that for decades have ruled their people with an iron hand, also began with a seemingly inconsequential incident involving an unknown individual of humble origins in a backwater town. It happened in Tunisia, a North African nation of 10.5 million people, bathed by the Mediterranean Sea and sandwiched between Libya and Algeria. On that fateful day just a few weeks ago, Mohammed Bouazizi, a young fruit vendor, had his produce cart confiscated by the police. Bouazizi did not take kindly to the seizure of the means of his livelihood, and he protested the police’s action killing himself by setting his body on fire.
Set against a background of more than two decades of autocratic one-man rule, large-scale poverty, and mass unemployment, especially among increasingly educated youths, Bouzazi’s immolation was the catalyst that set off a wave of escalating street protests calling for the overthrow of the government of Zine el Abidine ben Ali. Ben Ali soon fled the country and went into exile in Saudi Arabia, bequeathing power to members of his own regime.
But the opposition — an amorphous, disorganized amalgam of mainly secular protesters including many young people — were not satisfied with a change of figureheads, or anything less than a change in regime. Protests continued, and the situation remains fluid as of this writing (Monday, January 31).
Tunisia is mostly a secular society with a literacy rate of around 75 percent, and Islamists played a marginal role in what has become known as the “Jasmine Revolution.” But the country has an Islamist party (Nahda), which was banned by the former regime and may soon reemerge. Already, Sheik Rachid Ghannouchi, the main Islamist leader in Tunisia, recently returned to the country after 20 years in exile. He was received at the airport by a jubilant crowd of 1,000 supporters. Ghannouchi plans to revive the Ennada (Awakening) movement, which he founded, and wants it to play a role in the new government that issues from the revolution.
These new developments in Tunisia and other Arab countries are unsettling to the United States, posing a real conundrum for U.S. foreign policy. The United States considered Tunisia under Zine el Abidine ben Ali a “moderate” Arab state and an ally in “the war on terror.” On the other hand, Zine el Abidine ben Ali was a dictator, and the United States has been preaching democracy all over the world for decades. How could it afford to stand with a tyrant and against the “Jasmine Revolution,” a popular, democratic insurrection? In the end, the United States did not back the dictator and threw its morale support to the masses protesting on the street.
This dilemma is not new. During the Cold War the fear that the choice in the developing world was between communism and right-wing dictatorship led successive U.S. administrations to support tyrants such as Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), Anastasio Somoza (Nicaragua), and Fulgencio Batista (Cuba), among many others — with disastrous results.
A similar dynamic has arisen since 9/11 as authoritarian rulers in the Arab and Muslim world have played on U.S. fears of an Islamist takeover if they were to allow free elections. The victory of Hamas in Palestine reinforced these fears. For this reason and others, Western countries, especially the United States, have supported regimes such as that of Saudi Arabia — a nation where women are not even allowed to drive — that meet none of the criteria for democracy and human rights usually championed rhetorically by this country. This exercise in realpolitik by successive U.S. administrations was based on the notion that these regimes served as bulwarks against “radical” countries like Syria and Iran. They were also vital to maintaining a steady supply of oil critical to the economy of the United States and its allies.
The huge, ongoing uprising in Egypt, inspired by the example of the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution and driven by simmering discontent over 30 years of autocratic rule, desperate poverty, corruption, and brutal repression by the security forces, poses a foreign policy dilemma for the United States that dwarfs any concerns over Tunisia. Egypt is the largest Arab country in the world with 80 million people and a magnificently rich cultural heritage. The country has been crucial to U.S. attempts to defend Israel and help normalize its relations with the Arab world. The Mubarak administration has gone as far as colluding with Israel’s blockade of Gaza by closing Egypt’s border with the Gaza strip.
Egypt’s collaboration with Israel in strangling the Palestinians of Gaza is just the prime example of a set of Mubarak government policies that are extremely unpopular with the Egyptian people and are likely to change with any new government. For its part in furthering U.S. policy in the Middle East, a policy centered on furthering the interests of Israel and securing the supply of oil, every year since the Israeli-Egyptian peace accords of 1979, Egypt has received more U.S. foreign aid than any country except Israel.
Since 1979, Israel and Egypt combined (two countries with different levels of development but neither of which [especially Israel] ranks among the neediest nations in the world) have received one third of all U.S. foreign aid.
In 2010, Israel received $3.175 billion in U.S. aid, $2.775 billion of it for military assistance. Egypt received about half of that, $1.550 billion, $1.300 billion of it for the military. To put it in perspective, the third largest recipient of U.S. aid, Pakistan at $734 million, (a much larger country than Egypt and Israel combined and a vital asset in the fight against terror) received less than half of the aid that Egypt got.
Despite the bonanza of U.S. aid, Mubarak has become increasingly unpopular in recent years. The current crisis involves a frontal confrontation between Mubarak, a longstanding and key U.S. ally (who also happens to lead a repressive dictatorship) and a huge, week-long (as of this writing) peaceful, popular demonstration demanding democracy and the end of Mubarak’s rule. This contest puts the United States in a no-win situation.
The awkwardness of the U.S. position was clearly visible in the ever-changing, carefully parsed, and convoluted pronouncements on the Egyptian crisis by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Vice President Joe Biden.
At first, Secretary Clinton declared that Egypt was “stable.” Later in the week, as protests escalated, Vice President Joe Biden, appearing on the PBS News Hour on January 27 was asked whether it was time for Mubarak to go. Biden: “No. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in a direction…to be more responsive to the needs of the people.” Asked whether Mubarak is a dictator, Biden said: “I would not refer to him as a dictator.”
On Sunday on CNN, Hillary Clinton gave an even more verbose and ambivalent statement of U.S. policy: “What we are trying to do is to help clear the air so that those who remain in power starting with President Mubarak, with his new vice president, with the new prime minister, will begin a process of reaching out, of creating a dialogue that will bring in peaceful activists and representatives of civil society to plan a way forward that will meet the legitimate grievances of the Egyptian people.” The same day on “Meet the Press,” Clinton distanced the U.S. government somewhat from the Mubarak regime, speaking for the first time of a transition rather than merely “concrete reforms.” Clinton: “I want the Egyptian people to have the chance to chart a new future. It needs to be an orderly, peaceful transition to real democracy…Not faux democracy like the elections we saw in Iran two years ago.”
For his part President Obama, in conversations over the weekend with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the prime ministers of Turkey, Israel and Britain, echoed the latest language by Secretary Clinton. He told the leaders the United States is “supporting an orderly transition to a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people.”
Meanwhile in the streets of Cairo and Suez, and in Mubarak’s inner circle, what was underway was anything but an orderly and peaceful transition. Chaos reigned in many areas, with widespread looting and vigilante violence widely reported. Yet it seems clear that Mubarak is intent on clinging to power at almost any cost. Already, he has called out the army, and tanks are rolling on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities. However, unlike the police, which is despised and killed scores of demonstrators before disappearing in apparent fear for their lives, the army, is generally held in high regard and so far has refrained from firing on the crowds overflowing Cairo’s Tahrir square.
Thus it appears the army holds the key to Mubarak’s fate and Egypt’s future. And Mubarak, a former military officer, is counting on the armed forces to save his skin. In a late night speech to the nation, Mubarak announced that, for the first time in nearly thirty years in power, he was naming a vice president and a prime minister. In a clear indication that he intended to stay on and fight the insurrection, Mubarak named as his vice president Omar Suleiman, the former head of Egyptian intelligence. His choice for prime minister, former chief of staff Ahmed Shafiq, sent the same hard-line message.
The definitive clash between the Mubarak regime and its enemies appears set for Tuesday (Feb.1), when the opposition has called for millions to go out on the streets to oust Mubarak. Initially amorphous, lately this opposition movement has coalesced around the respected figure of Mohamed ElBaredei, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former head of the International Atomic Commission. A 10-member commission also has been named to lead the opposition. Groups across the spectrum, including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, which has kept a low profile, have endorsed ElBaradei as the opposition representative in any potential conversations with the authorities.
The 64 million dollar question (one that will probably be answered by the time this article is posted) is whether the army will fire on demonstrators when push comes to shove. So far, the rank and file does not seem inclined to massacre their fellow citizens. On the other hand, the military brass appears to be solidly behind Mubarak. How this clash of irresistible force and immovable object will turn out is impossible to predict. What is clear is that the events of Tunisia and Egypt, and to a lesser extent the unrest in Yemen and Jordan, brings into sharp relief the perils of the Faustian bargain the United States and the West have been making with Middle Eastern satraps for almost a century.
