When analyzing politics and society in the Arab and Islamic world, it is admirable and important to break away from a Western-centered analysis. This move is not sufficient though. There is a temptation to continue to fall back on theories and rhetoric that have emanated from the west and have informed exactly that from which one attempts to break away. Furthermore, when discussing public discourse in the Arab world, it is imperative that one addresses the importance of Islam and its continuing vital role in Arab and Middle Eastern politics, despite Western scholarship’s tendency to suggest a historical end that involves the marginalization of religion. I appreciate Professor Challand’s posts in Deliberately Considered and the admirable move of breaking away from Western-centered analysis, but I think his posts suffer from theoretical temptation and an insufficient appreciation of the role of Islam.

It is true that civil-society is more than “NGOs and the developmental approach which imagines that the key to progress is when donors, the UN or rich countries, give aid to boost non-state actors, in particular NGOs, in the ‘developing south'” as Professor Challand asserts in his post “The Counter-Power of Civil Society in the Middle East.” I believe, though, that one must also conceive of civil-society and democratic institutions as more than a source for “collective autonomy” using other than secular slogans in the tradition of Tocqueville and Hegel.

Writing a history of democracy would have to include analysis such as de Tocqueville’s, but we should also remember that de Tocqueville wrote:

Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Quran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

Tocqueville criticized Islam for allowing no deviation from its laws which to his mind covered all aspects of private and public life. But he failed to recognize the diversity of civil-society and the capacity for democratic institutions embedded in Islam’s structure and its ability to adapt to changing times, in part because it does not possess the characteristics of Catholicism. Ernest Renan later argued that Islam is not able to develop its own modernity, diverging from Tocqueville, but making the same mistake of essentializing Islam in a static history, laying ground for much of today’s claims that Islam and democracy are incompatible. These assertions often mobilize a rhetoric that promote tired tropes of “separation of church and state” and that democracy is contingent on secularism.

In fact, secularism has a much different meaning in the Arab world than it does in the West for two reasons. Islam never had a clerical hierarchy (although this phenomenon developed in Shi’ism later, albeit in a much different way than Catholicism) and therefore never had to answer the same questions regarding state-church relations that were prevalent in European political history. Despite this fact, Islam and the state did evolve separately due to negotiations of autonomy and the political domains of Islam and the state. “Secular” as European vocabulary to describe the dichotomy between Christ’s heavenly body and earthly body, once represented by medieval kingship and later by the Church, is not the same in Islam. In fact, the lack of a hierarchical authority in Islam and its partial reliance on consensus, or ijma’, is precisely what lends to it the ability to foster civil-society and diverse political groups, as well as various “schools” of law. An example is the mass proliferation of diverse Sufi brotherhoods in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. According to Richard Bulliet, “By the eighteenth century, there were thousands of Sufi brotherhoods reaching into every Muslim community and spreading knowledge of Islam into new lands.”

Furthermore, “secular” as a modern political concept in the Islamic world has come to mean the marginalization of the clergy and Islam in favor of modern military organizations, state-run schools, and state-sponsored religious institutions. The secular Arab dictatorships, which are currently undergoing fundamental changes, have implemented these practices and have been some of the most brutal regimes in the world. The attempt to relegate Islamic politics to the sidelines, a process which included the state’s co-opting of previously autonomous religious institutions, such as Islamic universities (al-Azhar University in Egypt is an example) and charities (waqf), only resulted in the alienation of segments of society that have been forced to take up alternative political methods, which sometimes include violence.

It is also untrue that the language of current opposition movements in the Arab world is a “secular re-imagining of the people as a united nation,” as Professor Challand calls it, presumably meaning that religious language is abandoned in favor of modern political vocabulary. Currently in Jordan, protests involve a number of groups, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood (or the Islamic Action Front, as it is called in Jordan), as well as many other opposition and counter-opposition groups. Many of these parties use discourse that is couched in Islam and ethnicity (especially Jordanian vs. Palestinian ethnicity and nationality).

In closing, Castoriadis’ analyses and modern political thought that relies heavily on Marxist theory, though they make valuable contributions to interpreting revolution and revolt, are simply inadequate to explain Islamic politics. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 serves as a lesson as to how intimately connected revolution, democracy and religion are now connected in the Muslim world. While secularism supposedly goes hand-in-hand with the development of democracy and the modern state, it was Islam that opened revolutionary potentials, democratic and anti-democratic. The Iranian experience revealed how transformational potential can be and has been heavily steeped in Islamic political theology. The revolution was not only a watershed in Islamic and Iranian politics but also a wake-up call for critical observers, who previously expected an unfolding of modern history that would increasingly push religion out of politics. In order to effectively understand the Islamic world, scholars and analysts must not only re-evaluate the theories on which they rely, as well as history and historiography, but also their rhetoric and the words that they mobilize.

A third irremovable Arab president has fallen. Muammar Qaddafi’s final fate, like that of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh currently in Saudi, recovering from an attempted assassination, is still unknown. But one thing is pretty sure: like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Husni Mubarak, Colonel Qaddafi is the third political victim of the Arab spring. Quite a deed, if one remembers the proliferation of de facto monarchical republics in the Arab Middle East in the very recent past.

While there is much to rejoice in this news, many questions arise concerning the political and military developments of these last months in Libya. In this post, I will focus on the media coverage in and around Tripoli. Next week, I will analyse the emerging Libyan leadership.

It is striking to see how the most recent military developments in Tripoli are mostly portrayed as a “rebel-driven campaign.” To be sure, we are told of how NATO allies coordinate aerial attacks in their support for this the apparently final offensive, but very little is said about the active role that Qatar, France and England have taken in arming, equipping and training the Libyan rebel forces (not to mention intelligence gathering and strategic planning). It is, in fact, probably as much a victory of the Transitional National Council (TNC) as it is of the countries which have thrown in their lots in the hope of securing a substantial share of the (oily) pie and to obtain a prominent role as future regional leaders. Yet, very little has been said about the active role of the U.S. in the unfolding events. “Leading from behind,” Obama’s unique strategy, is perhaps more of a media performance than a military reality. The U.S. has been very much involved.

One can find evidence that the USA is not waiting, arms crossed, to see what will happen in the Cyrenaica and Tripolitana. An article in yesterday’s New York Times reveals pro-active American involvement in planning the future of a post-Qaddafi Libya:

With the lessons of postwar Iraq very much in mind, the Obama administration and its allies oversaw the drafting of “a transition road map” that creates an interim governing authority to fill the vacuum created by the monolithic Qaddafi regime until elections are held.

The road map did not specify dates or a timetable for the election. But the officials said the rebel leaders had consistently pledged to have an open, inclusive government. They have also pledged not to pursue vendettas or a “de-Baathification-style” purge of the political and security bureaucracy, something that fueled the insurgency in Iraq.

“We try to learn lessons,” a senior administration official said. “That’s why there was such as emphasis on post-Qaddafi planning. It wasn’t strictly because of April 2003, but that definitely was on people’s minds.”

A road map, as we know from the Palestinian context, is not just stale scenario mapping out different possible political outcomes. It can be a guide, at times even a semi-binding document for international actors. Even if the quote above does not clarify who exactly drafted this transition road map, the Obama Administration clearly is taking an active role in defining the next moves in Libya.

Thus, one has to recognize the sanitized media covering of the ongoing military campaign. Make no mistake: this has been the case throughout the six months of Libyan coverage. Now, the coverage is only about a rebel-driven campaign, obfuscating the active involvement of external actors. Then, in the first three or four weeks after the March UN Resolution installing a no-fly zone, the media hardly reported on civilian casualties, nor did they show pictures of dead people (the turning point seems to have been the deadlock over the Misrata siege when pictures and stories of the human drama unfolding in the Mediterranean city gave a different, more personalized account of the military operations).

We are thus confronted – again – with the politics of visibility. One can discern different scopic regimes granted to different sets of actors. The involvement of Libyans themselves needs to be seen on the front stage (or they need to be projected as being on the driver’s seat), while that of international actors should only be mentioned in the backstage. There is a logic to this, obviously, if we think of the American context. Politically, it is not a good idea for American politicians to be seen or perceived as having an active role in defining the future of Libya. Instead, one should only react, or act as far as possible away from the (media) spotlight.

There are many instances of this politics of (in)visibility. Last March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the TNC, beyond the public eye. The New York Times reported the meeting in these terms:

Mrs. Clinton met the opposition leader, Mahmoud Jibril, at her hotel here after attending a dinner with foreign ministers of the countries of the Group of 8, who discussed ways to increase pressure on Colonel Qaddafi’s government, including imposing a no-flight zone over Libyan territory. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Jibril met for 45 minutes but did not appear publicly out of concern for his security, an aide said.

Security was certainly an issue on that occasion, but there were also sophisticated political calculations of American officials to not be seen too openly with what was then an embryonic alternative leadership in Libya. The future will tell us how this new emerging leadership will manage to fulfil or betray the hopes of popular democratic openings.

The streets of Tehran had turned into free public spaces days before the 2009 Presidential Elections. The vibrant scene of groups of people with antagonistic political ideals arguing and debating with one another was truly amazing and unique. After the elections, in a spontaneous concerted act, three million people walked in silence, protesting the results of the election. Those who walked up from Enghelab (Revolution) Square to Azadi Square experienced a sacred time and space. They experienced for a few hours a power that has been engrained forever in their minds. The actors involved created a story and have “started a chain of events,” as Arendt put it in The Human Condition. While they did not walk the path of revolution to freedom, they did experience freedom when they were debating in public corners.

On the days prior to and after the elections, Iranians experienced the extraordinary, because they challenged the “commonly accepted.” They “acted in concert” and owned the streets of Tehran from which they had always felt alienated. The streets of Tehran, ever since, have gained a different meaning. They are a reminder of a moment of “greatness” that will never lose its new acquired significance. It is “greatness” because it breaks through the commonly accepted and reaches into the extraordinary. Whatever is true in common and everyday life no longer applies because everything that exists in the extraordinary is unique. Following Arendt’s political thought and rejecting the tradition of means and ends, Iranians in those days were obsessively involved in the process of the “living deed” and the “spoken word,” the sheer act of performance. They did not knowingly organize and manage the events; rather they were spontaneously involved in actions and words. It is important to acknowledge the meaning of this experience, because it alludes to the “potentiality” of power that can be realized and in fact, was realized, however briefly, in actuality. For Arendt, the end is not the outcome or the result of political action, but the act itself, the coming together of men and women from all walks of life. The act of protests, as means to an end, which could have been protesting until the collapse of the state, would not be political action as Arendt defines it. For her, the men and women walking together is the end of politics and freedom, “because there is nothing higher to attain than this actuality itself.”

The pure moments of freedom and politics, if and should they occur again, are forever to be cherished in memory but cannot be sustained. This temporality could of course be due to the brute force that Iranians face. Perhaps the temporal can be permanent in another context, although I highly doubt it, as every place has its own brute forces and complexities. … In any case, what is at stake here is that the ideal public sphere that many Iranians experienced was only temporary. This temporality does not reduce from the significance of the phenomenon. Yet the bitter reality is that once their sphere of public was crushed they had to look elsewhere, other places where they had always performed politically. Facebook is one of those places. As people resort to this alternative sphere of publics with newly developed political consciousness as a result of their post elections experience, I think, potentially, there may be better days in the future.

Two Examples

Once word spread around Facebook and opposition news websites that Habibollah Latifi, a Kurdish student, allegedly affiliated with separatist and terrorist organizations in Iran’s Kurdistan, was going to be executed in three days, almost everyone in my social circles was sharing the news. Most news feeds on my Facebook page were related to him. Discussions on how to prevent his execution were going on everywhere. A Facebook campaign page called Save Habibollah Latifi- Do Not Execute Habibollah Latif was created; one hundred people became members of this group in an hour. Members shared updated news on his status, relayed his family members’ anecdotes through personal communication with them, and suggested ways to stop the execution. Members suggested calling the Iranian Department of Justice, Kurdish parliamentary representatives, the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and in general, any organization that could bring this local problem to the international public. It was hoped that international pressure would affect the state’s decision. Dozens of petitions were created and sent to the Supreme Leader (Ayatalloh Khamenei), the Head of the Judiciary (Ayatollah Larijani), the United Nations (Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon), and any so called “important person” that could have influence. The words and actions of the Facebookers spread ever wider. Iranians inside and outside the country were engaged in a single cause: stopping Habilollah Latifi’s execution.

A few hours before his execution, word spread out on Facebook that crowds of people, including Latifi’s extended family, had gathered in front of the Sanandaj prison calling for the execution to stop. While only a couple of hundred people at most demonstrated, it did have an effect. At five in the morning, the head of the prison came out and urged people to leave the scene, insisting that their presence would have no effect,  promising them that the execution will be carried out as planned. The crowd did not budge. Later, the sentence was postponed and Latifi was transferred to another location.

Facebookers were extremely excited; their intense efforts had worked. They could see themselves as part of a movement. It’s not clear that it were Facebook, news websites, news channels (BBC Farsi, VOA and so on), bloggers and the virtual world that had stayed the execution. It is also not clear that the family’s outspokenness had led to the Internet spiral. Yet a contrasting case is suggestive.

A day after the Habilollah Latifi affair, another Iranian citizen was sentenced to death. Ali Saremi was allegedly a member of Mujahedin, an organization infamous for their terrorist activities right after the 1979 revolution. Mujahedin is officially despised by the Islamic Republic. Although word spread and news was shared on Facebook, not much momentum was created. Perhaps it was too late, or maybe it would have had no effect anyway. In any case, Saremi was executed as planned and not much was done to save him.

Of course there is no way to know what would have happened if more action was taken to stop his execution. However, at the time these two stories were compared and many believed if there had been more action, Saremi could have been saved also.  Such action would have had meaning, as has been indicated by the actions preceding and following the last elections.

I probably got carried away describing President Obama’s Libya policy as a “self-limiting revolutionary solidarity approach.” I know I should be careful in applying my formative political experience to unrelated circumstances. False analogies are often foolish. They can even be dangerous. But, I drew upon my experience to express my admiration for the precision and cogency of Obama’s approach, concerned that many observers, especially my friends on the left, didn’t understand the significance of what the President is trying to accomplish. Things are very different now, and we should face these differences. But even so, the combination of realism and idealism, balancing insights into capacity and aspiration, reminded me of things past, from Gdansk, not Baghdad.

The President sought to highlight the humanitarian justification of our military involvement in Libya. He also emphasized that the involvement had to be limited. Surely, this had something to do with cold calculation about the overextension of the American military, but principle was also involved. For Libyans, Obama attempted to express support for the principle that it was for them and not for us to determine their future. And for Americans and for the rest of the world, Obama tried to make clear that in order for an international military effort to be truly international, it can’t have an American face. The U.S. not only cannot afford to be the world’s policeman. It should not be. If the world needs policing, then the world should do it, or more precisely a coalition of countries, not led by the United States. Yet what seemed clear to me was not clear to everyone, despite the President’s widely recognized eloquence. And this wasn’t only true on the left, as was demonstrated here by Gary Alan Fine in his post on Friday.

I agree with Felipe Pait’s reply to Fine’s post. I too think that Fine exaggerates. “From observing the fact that the Obama administration has cautiously decided to use limited military force in Libya to worrying about the danger of invading a dozen countries is a long jump,” Pait wrote.

Nonetheless, Fine poses interesting questions as he carefully doesn’t present answers. Is there a danger that what Fine takes to be a war on the cheap may make war and international intervention hard to resist? And could that lead to unintended, indeed deadly consequences, as those attacked strike back on the globalized political arena, i.e. through terrorist attacks addressed to our homeland? I am a New Yorker who travels through Grand Central Station and the subways on a daily basis. For me, these are not simply theoretical questions.

Yet, I think that Fine lets his imagination carry him away. As a distanced observer of the human comedy with his commitment to pungent politics, he mistakes his own imagination for a developing reality. It’s amusing to imagine a “teetering superpower” engaging in a war without cost and then thinking about Libya based on that premise, provocatively speculating about ubiquitous worldwide humanitarian wars and dangerous implications at home. But what Fine defines as cost free war is not actually about costs, but about a new kind of limited commitment, including a willful decision by the superpower to act, not as such, but as a nation among others. I even think that it involves a move to de-militarize American foreign policy and to withdraw from the role of global hegemon.  Use military power along with others to stop a massacre. Let politics depose the dictator.

Indeed, on the political front, not on the military front, there is good news. High ranking Libyan officials are distancing themselves from Qadaffi, resigning from their posts, and defecting.

Obama’s speech about American actions in Libya was impressive for its intellectual subtlety, for its sharp reasonableness. He made an argument, fulfilling his obligation, critics note belatedly, to inform the public about the nature of his decisions, and he did so cogently. Congruent with the message, the speech was coolly presented. He wasn’t rallying support of the American citizenry and military to fight the just fight, but explaining a policy decision. This made sense, but the dispassionate nature of the policy formation does have political dangers if the war and political situation in Libya go poorly. The dispassion makes sense this week, but in the long run there are the sorts of dangers that James Jasper explores in his two posts. The hateful response to Obama’s speech from the left and the right are challenging and potentially significant.

Clearly, emotions are an important part of political persuasion and action. Clearly, there are times when mobilizing fear and even hate serve political purpose. But just as clearly, as Jasper emphasizes, a responsible politics requires balance.

The stink of pungent politics may sometimes be quite normal, but at others it indicates that there is something rotting at the core of the political culture, in general, or in a specific segment of the polity. I, with Jasper, worry about the partisan imbalance these days, brought to us by Fox News and company, and many of the leaders of the Republican Party. Perhaps this is a function of the partisan position we share, but I don’t think so as I look at and listen to how Obama explains his policy positions in approaching a major international crisis and our continuing economic crisis, and how many of his critics approach them and him.

President Obama explained himself and his administration’s policies last night. He was precise about means and ends in Libya: use force to stop a massacre, use politics to support regime change. He reminded me of a revolution past. In Central Europe in the 80’s, there was a self-limiting revolution. Now, in North Africa and the Middle East, we have the self-limiting revolutionary solidarity by a superpower, as strange as that may seem.

Obama did imply a doctrine in the address. Use necessary and unilateral force to defend the safety of Americans, develop multilateral engagements whenever possible in pursuing American interests abroad, turn to the  appropriate international organizations, try to form as wide an alliance as possible. If there is an opportunity to use force to stop a humanitarian disaster, there is a moral imperative to do so. On the other hand, diplomacy and political pressure are understood to be the most useful instruments to foster desirable political results, including regime change and fostering democracy.

I know that for many of my friends on the left, this summary seems naïve or worse. E. Colin R. commented on my last post, the “US intervention within Libya is not linked, IN ANY WAY, with an interest in promoting ‘democracy.’” There are of course much harsher judgments in the press and the blogosphere. They think that the Americans and their European allies are enforcing the no fly zone, protecting Libyan civilians and supporting the rebel forces of Libya, and not in Bahrain, because of oil and corporate interests, without any concern for democratic ideals. This is roughly speaking the position of the Noam Chomsky wing of the American political spectrum.

But what would the same people have said if we did not get involved in Libya? If we allowed a brutal dictator (whose high quality oil fuels Europe) to massacre innocents? “Obviously,” it would have been because we are not willing to upset the status quo, which provides for Europe the oil that it needs, We would have been revealed to be unwilling to support the democratic aspirations of the people of North Africa and the Middle East, because of our dependence on oil from the region, especially from Saudi Arabia. For the no blood for oil crowd, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The speech last night reminded me of the opposition strategies of Central Europe in the eighties, because of fundamental insights about human capacity and the need to balance aspiration with capacity, and to formulate ideals as they are realistic. Back then, the democratic opponents of the totalitarian order in Poland understood that they couldn’t overpower the regime. The Communist authorities had a monopoly over the means of violence and the distribution of scarce goods, and the Soviet’s and the might of an empire stood behind the Polish authorities. By seceding from the system as much as they could, by openly pursuing workers’ rights as workers understood these rights in a workers state, and by developing a free public life, the regime was transformed one step at a time, and finally its end was negotiated at a roundtable.

World attention focused on the most dramatic, the most televisual moments, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and before that, Lech Walesa announcing the Gdansk Agreements at the Lenin Shipyards. But the profound change was actually quite gradual, brilliantly rendered metaphorically by Vaclav Havel, then a dissident, later a President, with his notion of a shop keeper deciding not to put a sign declaring “workers of the world unite,” along with the fruits and vegetables. Action and aspiration were limited and focused.

There was a combination of modesty and forcefulness, directed toward a goal, greater self-determination, with an understanding of means and their consequences. I heard such a combination in Obama’s speech. In terms of my last post, Obama knows that the defense of innocent citizens required a military response. While he also understands that for regime change a limited international force may be necessary, he also understands it’s not, indeed, cannot be sufficient. Libyans themselves must overthrow the dictator, and for a successful transition, this is more a political project than a military one. An opening has been presented to the Libyan people, thanks to the international military engagement. Now they must meet with each other in their differences and work at a way to change their political reality without mirroring the oppression of the past. Before the brutal crackdown, Libyans revealed that they were capable of taking the first steps, as have many people are now showing throughout the region. The intervention provides an opportunity to take the next steps. Last night by explaining the limited nature of American involvement, President Obama expressed our support.

While the military intervention of Libya is both important and controversial, I am convinced that the importance and the controversy will be decided less by arms, more by speech. Talk, there and now, is decidedly not cheap, and this applies both to Libya and to the region. I have theoretical preferences that lead me to such an assertion. I admit. I am guided by a book by Jonathan Schell on this issue in general. But I think the specific evidence in Libya and among its neighbors is overwhelming.

The battles in Libya will yield one of three possible military outcomes. The Libyan resistance, with the aid of outside firepower, will overthrow the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Alternatively, Qaddafi and company will prevail. Or, there will be a stalemate. Of these three logically possible outcomes, I think it’s pretty clear that a regime victory with a return to the status quo ante is nearly impossible, given the level of internal resistance and external armaments. The best the regime can hope for is a military stalemate, which it would define as a victory. Yet, both in that case and the case of the victory of the resistance, the door will be opened for political change. The form of the change, then, will be decided politically not militarily, by the word, not by the sword.

And the direction of politics will depend on what people are doing in Libya and among its neighbors in the region off the center stage, as I explored last week. The young modern forces that played such an important role in the transformation in Tunisia and Egypt may very well be outmaneuvered by Islamists or by those privileged in the old regime cunningly maintaining their interests. (A New York Times report suggests that this is the unfolding case). These are the three main actors: those who are trying to maintain their privileges, the Islamists of one sort or another, and the young protesters who played a key role in initiating the present course of events. A democratic outcome would accommodate each of these actors.  How they are interacting now will shape the way they will interact in the near term, which will determine the course of history. Alarmists interpret the reports of collaboration of the military with the Muslim Brotherhood as a sign of democratic defeat. Yet there is an alternative way to look at it. It is something normal, typical of democratic life. As Matt Yglesias observes  a “political coalition between religious conservatives, the military, and economic elites is the bedrock of center-right politics in most democracies.” It is somewhat surprising that it is emerging in Egypt right now, but it is also to be expected.

Roundtable Talks in Warsaw, Poland, from February 6 to April 4, 1989 | Wikimedia Commons

Back in Libya, either a victory by the rebels or a stalemate leads to the necessity of the competing forces to negotiate. As Andrew Arato and Elzbieta Matynia suggested in their posts focused on Egypt, this will require a framework which will promote the possibility of compromise between groups that have fundamentally opposing views and interests, such as the roundtable, an old form developed in the late twentieth century for modern democratic purposes. There is great need for this in Egypt and Libya, and among their neighbors.

The time for mutually respectful talk and the democratic confrontation of competing interests is upon us. The mission creep that I hope for is primarily political not military. There is much about Libya and the region which suggests that a democratic transition is unlikely. Sectarianism, tribalism, authoritarian histories or no history at all are being invoked to explain what a horrible mess we have gotten into. But words can matter and have. Charles Hirschkind, in an important post at The Immanent Frame, shows how “The Road to Tahir,” was constructed with such words over a long time, facilitated by the new social media. There was nothing sudden or magical about Mubarak’s downfall. How powerful such experience will be in paving the road from Tahir is the question. I saw in East and Central Europe how such words overwhelmed authoritarian tendencies in some places, but not in others. I suspect the mixed results of 1989 will be mirrored in the results of 2011. As Arato highlighted in his post, intelligent political action will be decisive.

Over the past week, I have been reviewing postings on other blogs which consider how things are going in the struggle in Libya.  Particularly helpful were a series of posts by Juan Cole.

He developed a compelling account of why the war was necessary, i.e. to stop massacres , and to support popular sovereignty, and how the war was proceeding with international, including Arab and Turkish, support, achieving  its goal of stopping a regime’s systematic murder of its own citizens.

He wisely warns against undo optimism and pessimism, “Pundits who want this whole thing to be over within 7 days are being frankly silly. Those who worry about it going on forever are being unrealistic. Those who forget or cannot see the humanitarian achievements already accomplished are being willfully blind.”

And he forcefully argued with critics on the left that they must learn “to chew gum and walk at the same time,” to support an intervention that saves lives and supports the developing autonomous democratic developments in the Arab world, and be critical of unwarranted international exploits of the great powers of Europe and America. “It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis…”

As I have already conceded, there are reasonable grounds to oppose this American and international involvement in Libya. The principled support for involvement is cogently presented by Cole. I’m convinced.

Later today, I will present my own judgment that the conflict in Libya will in the end be decided by words and not arms.

The great changes in the Middle East didn’t come from the usual sources. Religion was not nearly as important as many expected.  Class was far from the center of the action, as youth stole the show.  And internationally backed civil society was not nearly as important as Western donors would hope. In fact, Western aid may have been more of the problem than the solution.

Religion

The Islamic movement, in particular in Egypt, is in a state of relative weakness, very much connected to economic change. When Egypt embarked on structural adjustment programs and started privatizing its state-owned enterprises in the late 1970s, the economic reform was a façade, masking the enrichment of a handful of high-ranking officials who were the only ones who could do business. In the process, state and welfare services were dismantled, and the regime encouraged non-governmental charities. In this context, the Ikhwan (the Arabic name for Muslim Brotherhood) was able to build many private mosques and new charitable organizations, leading to significant social support. Yet, in the 1990s, when the Ikhwan started running for elections (culminating with the 20% of the seats in 2005), it paid the price of this political engagement by having no choice but to let people close to the government gradually take control over their charities. The movement became complexly connected to the regime and began to lose its credibility, increasingly so when it refused to boycott the 2005 elections and, more recently, because it took on positions that were viewed negatively by the viewpoints of the lower classes. One example is the Ikhwan’s condemnation of the strikes of Muhalla al-Kubra in the textile sector in 6 April 2008. Similar anti-union positions from Islamists are documented in Gaza and Yemen, creating a rift between the working class and the Islamists. Interestingly, in his 2005 book the sociologist Patrick Haenni, calls this new strand of Muslim businessmen ‘the promoters of Islam of the Market.’

As a result, the Muslim Brotherhood has become both politically and socially a much more fragile actor than it was in the past. Only the lack of alternative opposition and the regime’s stigmatization of the Ikhwan as a Taliban-like movement kept an otherwise fragmenting organization united. Daniela Pioppi has explained this with great detail and accuracy in her article, Is There an Islamist Alternative in Egypt?.

Class

The traditional sociological force of class was present but not at the center of the recent struggles. Although the main trade union in Tunisia played the role of an important triggering agent of the revolt, it was a loose combination of educated people and liberal professionals, such as lawyers and doctors, who gave the decisive boost to the popular protests. The same can be said of Yemen. To be sure, the class dimension should not be written off completely, as the daily strikes and newly formed trade unions in Egypt after the fall of Mubarak show. But another factor, the use of Internet and other media technology is overshadowing the old-fashioned influences.

Youth

A girl in Benghazi holding a paper, it reads:"Tribes of Libya are one group" © Maher 2777 | Wikimedia Commons

Especially significant is the young age of the new media-savvy protesters. More than half of the population in the Middle East is below the age of 25. And many of these young people are disgruntled for several reasons. One cause is their struggle to land a real job after earning their degrees. Mohamed Bouazizi epitomized the ordeal of this generation. He was the Tunisian street vendor in the small town of Sidi Bouzid who set himself on fire last December,

Another reason of the youth’s unhappiness is their disillusionment with Islamist ideology.  An insightful article appeared in the New York Times (NYT on Imbaba) on a slum in Cairo where the Ikhwan gradually lost control over the local youth.  In Egypt, the old Ikhwan leadership procrastinated its decision to join the first main protests on Tahrir square on 25 January. Its youth wing eventually participated, but the organization was in the hands of the trade unions and the youth. Also, in the Palestinian territories we see how the younger generation is growing resentful of the political games played by both Hamas and the nationalist party Fatah.  The young have also been fed up with the opportunistic behavior of the left and their NGO partners. And this brings us to the third factor that has made the outbursts in the Middle East unique.

N.G.O.s and International Aid

I believe Western aid has had a negative impact on the development of democracy in the region, even when it apparently is meant to support this development.  It negatively affects the formal civil society as aid both promotes and excludes.

It promotes a professionalized form of activism, which has been lost when it comes to the extraordinary and spontaneity of the demonstrations. Aid also contributes to exclude those resisting both the institutional and discursive isomorphic pressure, by encouraging a managerial version of civil society. You want to receive money as a civil society organization? Then you have to speak the same language and buzzwords as donors and also be a fully institutionalized organization, matching donor standards. But once you have done that, you are more like a business, than an organization able to respond to the autonomous and fluid claims of your constituency.

To be sure, aid for democratization and civil society is only one tiny portion of the overall envelope of aid disbursed to the region – for Egypt, Yemen or Palestine. Here are some data to illustrate my point: between 1971 and 2001, the US has given about $145 billion of aid to the Near East, the vast majority to Israel (79 billion) and Egypt (52 billion) (see February 2009 and June 2010 reports for the Congress). Aid becomes a tool to support strategic interests (stability for and around Israel being in this case is the top priority). The ideals of democracy, empowerment, human rights, etc. are only nice words wrapped around the Realpolitik nature of US aid.

Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter and Anwar Sadat in Camp David © Bill Fitz-Patrick | Wikimedia Commons

After signing a peace treaty with Israel at the Camp David agreement in 1978, Egypt has received large annual envelops of aid from the USA. In the last ten years, Egypt has cashed in an average of $1.3 billion per year, 85% of which is military aid. The same is true for the Palestinian territories, where the US with the EU support increasingly subsidize the West Bank Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Budgetary support means that (western) governments are paying the PNA employees, about half of whom are police and security forces.  Rather than supporting autonomy, this type of aid increases Palestinian dependency.

This source of aid is focused on security matters out of fear that the State itself could become the object of predation by non-state actors. The threat of Islamic fundamentalism or Al-Qaeda, as in Yemen and now in Libya, is usually invoked to justify such a high level of aid for security purpose only.  Perhaps now that Qaddafi has also accused al-Qaeda of orchestrating the revolts in Libya, we will realize the vacuous nature of such arguments.

The result of this aid pattern leads to a form of Bonapartism, a regime with a very strong executive largely ignoring the legislature and based on very strong police.  The aid actively contributed to this kind of regime in and around Egypt as Juan Cole, in a blog last month, explained in detail:

“The US-backed military dictatorship in Egypt … exercises power on behalf of both a state elite and a new wealthy business class, some members of which gained their wealth from government connections and corruption. The Egypt of the Separate Peace, the Egypt of tourism and joint military exercises with the United States, is also an Egypt ruled by the few for the benefit of the few.”

Unless we see another revolution (in the approach of the main donors to the region), western aid is likely to thwart the self-organization of these extraordinary popular movements and kill the spontaneity of the counter-power of civil society.

Saturday night the United Nations Security Council unanimously imposed sanctions on Libya and called for an international war crimes investigation of the regime behavior.  This marks the end of a long period of international tolerance of Libyan excesses.  In this post, mostly written before this change in the international posture, Daniel Dayan reflects on the international community and particularly France as enablers of a process that proceeded even as the regime was collapsing.  Jeff

Muammar el-Qaddafi stands accused of crimes against humanity. Countless governments and nongovernmental organizations implicate him in the slaughter of his own citizens. His former Justice Minister holds him personally responsible for orchestrating the 1988 crash of Pan Am Flight 103 on Lockerbie. And thus I was amazed to see that the French media have not brought up Libya’s important and continual responsibilities as a member of the highest United Nations human rights body, the UN Human Rights Council.

The UN human rights watchdog has its own troubled history. Before the current Council replaced the Human Rights Commission (UNCHR) in 2006, Libya was one of the countries to stain the reputation of the Geneva based Commission. In January 2003, the UNCHR elected the Libyan ambassador Najat Al-Hajjaji its president. As the Associated Press reported, this happened “despite concern from some countries about the regime’s poor record on civil liberties and its alleged role in sponsoring terrorism. In a secret ballot, thirty three countries voted for the Libyan diplomat, just three opposed her and seventeen abstained.”

If this was not astonishing enough, the widely denounced behavior of the UN human rights watch dog did not improve over time. The newly reformed Council selected Libya to join the other forty six countries responsible for promoting and protecting human rights around the globe. In May 2010, through a secret ballot, Libya received one hundred and fifty five votes from the one hundred ninety two members of the UN General Assembly.

It was only this past Friday, one year into Libya’s tenure, that the Council acted in a surprising manner. Based on the violent crackdown of the ongoing protests, the Council recommended unanimously the suspension of Libya, a “bold” diplomatic initiative that needs approval by a two third majority of the General Assembly.

Meanwhile, the Qaddafi regime has been allowed to live in a different universe when it comes to human rights. Its arguments in favor of its seat on the UN body are worth reading:

‘The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya is fully committed to the promotion and protection of human rights. . .  [T]he improvement of prisons’ conditions is part of a national advanced programme that ensures the training of judicial police officers in respect of human rights. . .  The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya offers . . . the independence and neutrality of the judge. . .  The existing law on prisons . . . is one of the most modern laws in the world. . .  No individual is accepted into prison without a judicial decision. . .  The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya pays great attention to women and children.’

Editorial note by Esther Kreider-Verhalle: This passage reminds me an awful lot of a statement by the Belarusian President Lukashenko. Many years ago, in May 1998, I was able to personally ask him about the issue of human rights in his country.  He answered:

‘Everybody is talking about human rights. But I would like to know what kind of human rights are you referring to? It would easily take an hour to sum them up. There is the right to education. The right to live. And we are willing to discuss these kinds of rights with Western countries. We can deliberate and demonstrate that Belarus takes these rights very seriously.’

In 2007, The Human Rights Council rejected the membership of Belarus.

Until now, the current revolutions in the Arab world were a case of serious politics, momentous politics, the “politics of tall things.” To try and decipher such lofty events, analysts, including myself, have had to rely on large categories. One had to be hopeful despite the many odds, or skeptical against a climate of pervasive bliss, both expressed at DC. In either case, what was at stake was much too large to be really assessed. Events were shrouded by their very size. But something new and genuinely baffling has happened in Tunisia that has caused analysts to cast aside previous assumptions.

After what has been hailed throughout the world as the “Jasmine Revolution,” thousands of Tunisians fled their country. Flotillas sailed towards the Italian Island of Lampedusa, filled with young people seeking access to Europe. Fishermen had to spend the night aboard their boats to prevent them from being stolen by would-be emigrants. I heard of an estimated five thousand already on Sicilian soil.

Judging from television images, these refugees are not hardened members of the former ruling party. These are not officials in flight from retaliation or punishment: their group includes women, and young people. These are economic immigrants who have taken the risk to cross over to Europe in search of employment.  These boat-people share the same kind of desperation as the young man whose suicide triggered the insurrection. As he chose to die by fire, they chose to risk everything at sea.

Yet, the street vendor’s sacrifice was immensely consequential. A revolution took place. The future looked rosy. Why would thousands of his brothers be running away from happiness? Why would they become refugees at the risk of drowning? One cannot just speak of an unfortunate timing, of a coincidence. 5,000 passengers cannot just happen to board dozens of boats by accident. Did they forget they had just won? Imagine 5,000 French attackers of the Bastille migrating en masse to Brazil. Imagine victorious Bolsheviks settling in Tyrol. Why bother with a revolution, if you do not wish to stay?

As Albert O. Hirschman would have put it, Tunisians who did not ‘consent’ to live under dictatorship were confronted by two choices;  One was “exit.” The other was “voice.” You do not expect the people first to “voice,” and then to “exit.”

Those who fled the revolution “voted with their feet.” They expressed a clear distrust of the realities to come. Why such a distrust? I heard some of the boat-people tell Italian journalists that they were fleeing because of Ben Ali. Did they believe nothing had changed? Did they believe that the revolution was just a game, and that the game was now over? I have no answer to offer. Yet I believe that this baffling exodus should not be explained away. Either one understands this detail, or one does not understand anything about what happened in Tunisia.