What are the reasons that led to this revolution throughout the Arab World?

There are proximate causes and underlining causes. The proximate causes are the combination of high food prices, the WikiLeaks cables, the self immolation of the fruit vendor in Tunis, and in different countries trials that were, you know, gaining much public scrutiny
and controversy.

The deeper underlining causes that go back three generations within the Arab World is suffering from what I call post -colonial entropy, there has been a
dissipation and diffusion, fragmentation of the state ever since the first day of independence. So really going back 60 years in the case of many of these countries in the Arab Word. There are many ingredients like over-population, populations of Yemen and Egypt and other countries has tripled or quadrupled in the past half century, low investment in infrastructure and public infrastructure and social services, corruption, and, of course, succession of corrupt regimes during the cold war allied with the US or the Soviet Union, but still are very corrupt and then succession crisis, these are the common factors and the deeper underlying causes

Why did it start in the Arab World?

First there is the pattern in the past few years of more open and transparent information by satellite television and the spread of mobile phones. The second factor is seeing the success of certain Arab areas – the Gulf and the Dubai Effect. This success that did not spread to most of the Arab World is another factor. And third, transparency; the growing popular frustration with corruption and lack of service delivery. The fourth is challenges to public authority because of a succession crisis. Five years ago I wrote the “Sons of the Fathers,” I wrote about King Mohammad the sixth, Saif Gadafi, Gamal Mubarak, Saad Hariri, Basher Al Saad, King Abdullah of Jordan. I said that all of them are in there 30s, all of them have been educated at one western or more than one western institution, have one degree from a western university and speak English or French. We think of them as reformers and I made the argument that none of them will be able to sustainably hold on to power because none is nearly as powerful as their fathers, because in some cases they spend too much time outside of the country; they lack local legitimacy; they have not served in the military in the case of Gamal. I came up with many explanations as to why they will not be as powerful. The fifth and final reason is that when the protestors did go into the streets, you had a situation, certainly not in Libya, not in Yemen, but in other places where the brutality of the crackdown you know in Egypt for example, was not as bad as it could have been, and that reminds us of Ukraine, and Serbia and Georgia because when they had their revolutions five years ago, six years ago, what happened was there was a negotiation over an agreement that the military would not open fire on the public, would not kill, you know, masses of people like Tiananmen Square. And there was lot of lobbing behind the scenes to try to make sure they did not do that. This empowers people, this creates a tipping point.

What is your assessment of Morroco?

I think one has to distinguish across the Arab World between monarchies and non monarchies, and resource-rich verses
resource-poor states, so you have a quadrant right of four part quadrant, resource- rich, resource-poor, monarchy, non monarchy. So Morocco is a resource-poor monarchy and the strategies of resource- poor monarchies are different from the strategies of resource-rich monarchies. In Morocco there has been a lot of tension, there has been very heavy handed movements by the government in recent months and years regarding the media and political oppositions. I thing that we underestimate the extent to which there is still a local legitimacy and support for the regime. So I am not surprised they have lasted a bit longer than people expect.

I think there will be a very strong realization now that there has to be far more public investment and degrees of liberalization, many governments in the region will become more accountable when you see the sacking of a cabinet, the appointment of a new cabinet, a reform of the constitution, the calling of elections, freeing of the media or more independent judiciary. These are seven, eight, nine, 10 different kinds of steps that can be taken to create a more accountable system. These are the steps that are taken to create a more accountable government.

Do you foresee any profound social changes that are going to be emerging out of these revolutions?

The social change began because of the demographic change which long predates the Arab spring. The underlying demographic and social conditions have been there for a few years now because of the youth demographic. We have to go back five to 10 years to understand the social change that is already been in motion.

How will this shape up?

There are two dozen Arab countries and they have different kinds of government and governance and they will continue to be quite different. I don’t think we can hope for any sort of 1989 European-like uniformity which, in a short period of time, large number of countries progressively change their governments entirely to a whole new system and become members of the European Union. I don’t think that’s going to happen in this case. That said, I think there will be a sort of political openness and progress, and a lot of impatience with the governments. This is a very healthy kind of impatience. I do think that they will go in different directions; right now in Libya the civil war is not over and Syria could still collapse further into a civil war. Yemen is most definitely experiencing like a civil war right now, so we are only at the beginning. I would say that if this is a marathon, then we are only entering the second mile.

Tunisia and Egypt are being perceived as potentially at risk on having more radical forces taking power. Some people in the western world fear some people in the Arab World.

I don’t believe so. First of all we have to trust to some extent the democratic forces. If we look at the Algeria model we know the democratic process can go forward and Islamist parties can perform well, but if you cancel that result it can lead to a very, very regrettable period of civil war and violence. Instead, there is the option to give democracy a chance and to allow it to be tried out. The Muslim brotherhood in Egypt is a group with a wide spread social credibility in society, but does not actually have a very strong administrative capacity to govern a state. And so if they do perform well in the parliamentary elections it does not mean they will be immediately able to change policies in a meaningful way. I believe in a concept of the hierarchy of needs of Abraham Maslow, the idea of basic needs must be or fulfilled to satisfy people. And I think that there are certain secular aspects of governance that have to be proven to succeed before people will simply succumb to changes of law in a radical direction. So I don’t really feel that will happen immediately I don’t think it will happen at all, actually.

One of the other byproducts has been the conflict between shias and sunnis, what’s your view on that and what’s your view on what’s next for Iran within this context?

On the one hand I think we overstate the sunni shia rift. There has been certain common conditions of repression that
existed throughout the lower classes of the society irrespective of sect. In Iraq we see there has been a shia sunni civil war, but what emerged is nationalism not necessarily a pure Iranian-backed or Iranian leaning-situation. It’s a mix of things. So I think there is still a strong nationalism. It’s important not to overstate the extent to which Iran is manipulating behind the scenes. People take this a bit too far because Iran is not necessarily a very competent regime by any stretch of the imagination, as we know from its domestic management. Yes they are involved, but they are not the only driver There could be better governance, better management of society through smaller policies domestically and that would actually weaken Iranian influence.

What’s next for Iran? How do you
assess the current situation from here?

In Iran we are always waiting for the revolution that will happen, that will bring down the current regime. That is perhaps a bit too hopeful. Unfortunately the regime has proven to be strong and entrenched, not necessarily resilient but most certainly entrenched. Diplomacy with Iran should continue on all issues rather than being hostage to the nuclear issue. To some extent geography is destiny, Sunni Arab countries must learn to live with Iran. I know there are major efforts under way to contain Iran, which is very difficult to do because it is a state that is very centrally positioned geographically and has a lot of energy resources.

Countries such as Turkey, Russia and China will continue to deal very much with Iran. It’s very hard to isolate it. The Arab countries may attempt this policy of coercion and intimidation, which is perhaps a good partial strategy, but it’s not a good whole strategy.

The whole strategy has to involve more engagement with Iran to attempt to weaken the state and create new centers of power within the country and then may be the next attempt of domestic uprising may be will succeed.

   Email This Post      Print This Post