Blocking people’s vision of democracy: Revisiting the Arab uprisings

By setting himself ablaze, Mohamed Bouazizi didn’t know he would ignite the spark which would later topple President Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime. Neither could he have known that his spark would inspire rebellions elsewhere in the Arab world and would invite another wave of imperialist intervention, opening a new chapter in the history of the Middle East.

True, many analysts and politicians have noted that the social, economic and political situation in the countries of the Arab awakening was ripe for revolution - but none of them had predicted its occurrence. Each of these states had extended periods when they were ruled by either a family dictatorship or an authoritarian regime. These types of governments took their legitimacy from fictional constitutions while robbing countries of national resources, nurturing corruption, and promoting repression.

Eventually in these countries, people burst into the streets en masse, protesting against their tyrannical governments and the neo-colonialism that continued to control their lives and resources. They formed an unwritten de facto alliance among people who had been oppressed and robbed and who decided collectively to put an end to the misery in which they had been living by taking matters into their own hands.

Turning the clock back six decades

In the wake of these uprisings, the Arab world is currently passing through a crucial moment in its history; one that is turning the clock back more than six decades to the time in which the peoples of the region rebelled and demanded independence from colonial rule. Some of these countries then got their independence only after a revolutionary struggle, others got theirs without an actual show of force. Either way, the change was so great and tangible in the lives of the people that it can be regarded as falling within the definition of a revolution. Decades after the end of colonialism, the masses were back to the streets with unprecedented determination and with demands for rights.

At the same time - and in almost all of the Arab Awakening countries - major players such as autocrats, repressive institutional agents and a broad spectrum of the media to name but a few, were all determined to end the threat posed by the masses, to curb revolutionary sentiments, and to upend their efforts. They wanted to prevent "further uprisings" in their countries and elsewhere, and they were willing to use soft power, smear campaigns, and imperialist force (allies) in order to do so.

It is the same surprisingly though frequently successful manoeuvre of the forces in power witnessed from country to country. “Divide-and-rule” or even “define-and-rule” - gathering, defining and at the same time fragmenting people into groups; fabricating and imposing divisions where often there were previously networks; selectively arming and privileging groups or sub-groups against one another.

A warning against revolution

Of course, the turmoil is not all fabricated. That's the trick. Some of the divisions were there but often in different ways, not as exclusive, either-or groupings. Eventually, authoritarian regimes managed to distract the oppressed public and those who formed and led the masses along with those watching developments from the sidelines. Focusing on the negative impact of revolutions on daily life in the Arab world in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria conveyed a clear message of warning. Revolution, it taught, brings only instability and violence and malaise. People need to choose between maintaining the status quo or opting for a state of terror.

For Palestinians - and especially for the people of Gaza - the ramifications of their choice to support a revolution against Israeli oppression go far beyond those mentioned above. They include a near-paralysis of personal, economic and political life. The restrictions imposed by Egypt at the Rafah crossing, the battle that Egypt has waged against Gaza’s underground tunnels, and its smear campaign against Palestinians are also part of the price paid for supporting an uprising.

The setbacks endured by Arab uprisings have been dramatic. With the exception of Tunisia, revolutions have quickly turned into violent and ugly sectarianism. Egypt has reverted to military rule with most of its popular leadership and activists in jail. Syria has descended into a proxy civil war that has displaced millions of people and killed over 230,000 people. Bahrain’s royal house continues to stand intact after crushing the will of the people there through a deal struck between the Obama administration and the House of Saud. Libya remains essentially a failed and fragmented semi-state after the so-called “humanitarian military intervention”.

Yemen, a place that has traditionally been relatively free of sectarian violence, is currently under attack by a regional coalition that enjoys imperialist support by playing the Sunni-Shia game to justify air strikes. In other words, problems encountered by the Arab Awakening did not result from the fact that the “underlying conditions necessary for democracy to work are weak or missing” as Balint Szlanko recently stated. Although his argument seems persuasive when he singles out a lack of certain conditions, he ignores a critically important factor - the imperialist interventions that have suppressed popular visions of democracy.

At their inception, Arab revolutions were typically made by mass movements united in their vision of the future. A large part of this vision included democracy, the rule of law, an end to corruption and an end to the centralization of power. This vision also sought an end to a neo-colonialism that delegated to selected Arab rulers the management of peoples' lives and futures and the fate of their nations’ resources. These rulers served their own interests while reducing the majority to poverty and even severe destitution.

The resulting reply of the masses to autocratic Arab regimes was everywhere basically the same: you can no longer expect to run us - the oppressed people - nor can you expect us to run to you. The people were thinking of democracy in its original meaning - not as rule in the interests of a specific class, minority or race, but as rule that transcended classes in the interests of a whole community. They wanted rule by and for themselves - the common people. Arab revolutions have also called for genuine change and reform as well as for equality and social justice. Traditional Arab political culture valued equality within a community more highly than any other goal. In fact, the revolutions were all about ending the local enrichment of a privileged few and their external collaborators through the private manipulation of resources.

The hungry nations fight back

The demands sought by “commoners” also clashed strongly with the colonialist vision described well by Churchill when he argued: “If the world-government were in the hands of hungry nations there would always be danger…. Our power placed us above the rest. We were like rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations.”  Thus Churchill, by affirming the right of the wealthy - and only the wealthy - to rule and by denying the non-rich any share in power, seemed to ignore the fact that hungry nations also include rich cultural and material resources and that this national wealth is often used to enrich only certain businesses in the West and the local rulers who serve their interests. It is these interests that have made many nations of the world hungry, and it is these same interests that keep colonialists coming back to these regions. The future of hungry nations would be promising if they were only left to use and develop their own resources.

Strikingly, the interventionists today routinely cite Churchill and his actions in World War II as their guide, overlooking his bigoted, colonising side. That failure to reckon with Churchill, the complete man with severe flaws and a racist outlook on much of the world, contributes to the devastating turmoil great world powers today are creating with serial interventions.

If we were to look at what the masses have demanded and rejected in their protests and their reasons for so doing, we might be able to judge how firmly their theories of democracy are grounded and how long-lasting they might be - should they ever be given a chance to be practised.

Such an examination would also shed light on the wild and bloody crackdowns by members of the old regime in Egypt and by certain local powers in Bahrain and Yemen supported by imperial forces. It could help to explain the proxy wars in Syria that incite former enemies and arm new groups. It could help us to understand recent events in Libya, where direct military intervention has secured foreign interests. There, a people’s vision of democracy was rejected forcefully by autocrats, by their powerful agents, and by the imperialists whose interests require keeping puppets in power.

Dilip Hiro has offered a plausible explanation of the reason behind the US opposition to democracy in the Arab world. He writes: “… it is much simpler to manipulate a few ruling families - to secure fat orders for arms and ensure that oil price remains low - than a wide variety of personalities and policies bound to be thrown up by a democratic system.” His analysis is still valid today and helps to explain the malaise in the region.

A necessary condition for the flourishing of democracy is the dismantling of repressive authoritarian structures that monopolise control over society. But more conditions are also required. Wealth and power don’t submit to popular will. As Noam Chomsky concludes in his book, World Orders Old and New, the problem of achieving democracy will remain as long as there is no fundamental change in a world order that is currently based on “the principle of economic rationality for the weak, [but] state power and intervention for the strong”. This order, with its many cruel weapons, is still with us, shaping current events and the future of an entire region. As long as this order prevails, the emergence of a meaningful democracy in the Arab world will be impossible.  

- Ghada Ageel is a visiting professor at the University of Alberta Political Science Department (Edmonton, Canada), an independent scholar, and active in the Faculty4Palestine-Alberta. Her new book “Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and harder experiences” is forthcoming with the University of Alberta Press - Canada.  

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. 

Photo: Supporters of Tunisia's outgoing president Moncef Marzouki gather outside his campaign headquarters to listen to his speech (AFP)