It has been ravaging, the decade that has passed since Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire facing the Sidi Bou Said municipality, igniting the revolutions and uprisings that stretched from Algeria to Yemen and came in two massive waves. The demand for dignity and the protest against its infringement, encompassed by the young street vendor’s act of protest, became the headlines of the enormous protests which revealed, through the participation of millions and their tragic conclusions, the limits of demanding democracy and justice in the Arab world. It revealed harsh facts that are not easy to circumvent. In many instances, ignoring the facts has led to the total collapse of Arabs’ attempts to create change or, at best, postponed them until further notice.
The first fact is that the “Arab street”, which had often been called paralyzed or dead, moved. But it was not compelled to do so by the issues that had previously driven the masses to the streets. Let us remember that the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000 and the occupation of Iraq three years later were the two most recent incidents to compel mass demonstrations concerned with Arab public affairs in the Arab world’s capitals (if we exclude the 2006 protests in Beirut and Damascus denouncing the cartoons insulting to the prophet). Subsequently, and despite Israel’s wars on Lebanon and Gaza and the civil- sectarian conflict in Iraq, no popular movement had been witnessed until the Tunisian revolution began.
This fact suggests that Arab sensibilities had shifted. Those that had been prevalent between the 40s of the previous century and the first decade of our millennium, which were defined by a sometimes visceral and usually feigned national consciousness and prioritized the Palestinian cause and the struggle with colonial and conspiratorial foreign powers, came to be replaced by sensibilities centered around opposition to tyranny, injustice, and the limited of horizons for Arab youths’ social progress. Solidarity in the face of oppressive local authorities took precedence over engaging with an external issue, especially after the Palestinian cause turned into a pretext that the region’s regimes, Arab and non-Arab, used to justify their behavior and make gains, even if it was over the Palestinian peoples’ dead bodies.
The second fact can be summed up in that those in opposition, whether they toppled their rulers or tried to do so, knew what they opposed but couldn’t agree on what they wanted. They rejected the authorities’ attacks, obscene practices, discrimination, backwardness, arbitrary violence, parton-client economies, and corruption… But they were totally incapable of clearly articulating answers to questions posed by more experienced and savvy political forces, like the parties of political Islam, regarding the choice religion and secularism as the state’s foundational principles, the form that relationship with the West should take, issues pertaining to social values, women’s rights, and freedom of expression and belief. The extreme confusion that defined the revolutionaries’ handling of these dilemmas is not an indication of a lack of intellectual maturity, but of their awareness that the social balance of power does not tip in their favor and that their opponents, who claimed to be their revolutionary partners, are capable of isolating them and turning the tables on them by using their arsenal of religious and socially conservative principles. This is what happened in Syria and Egypt and almost happened in Tunisia.
We could be more expansive and add Lebanon, which rode the second wave of Arab revolutions in 2019 and became an example where those in revolt failed to confront the political establishment. There, supporters of sectarian parties stood against changing the regime and toppling it, preferring to stick to corrupt traditional political leaders, with all the catastrophes that ensue from that choice, over joining a movement for change and its unfamiliar figures and organizations, who lacked credibility and the material and moral power and tools needed for change.
The third fact is tied to that which precedes it. Political Islam, which stood on the shoulders of the Arab revolutions and was not a driving force for them or defending them anywhere, proved two things: the first is its capacity for mobilizing and using the media, as well as its efficiency as an organizational tool prepared to act at the right time, which is precisely what the revolutionary groups that mobilized spontaneously, without a plan or a collective organization strategy that exceeds that which is required to survive, were lacking. The other fact it revealed is that this efficiency, built on a “regimented” organization structure that is disciplined, is the zenith of what Islamic political movements can achieve. In both its armed jihadist and preaching (Brotherhood) frameworks, it cannot manage complex societies with different proclivities that range from liberal to fanatical. Political Islam’s top-bottom-framed unity of purpose clashed head-on with societies calling for the acceptance of pluralism and difference, as seen by their overwhelming rejection of tyrannical regimes.
The fourth fact is that military institutions still see themselves as guarantors of civil peace and bulwarks against falling into chaos. With the expectation of Tunisia, where the army took a totally neutral stance politically and satisfied itself with fighting terrorist cells, armies played divergent roles in revolutions that range from total support for the regime as was seen in Syria (though it is important to mention that thousands defected), or they split, with some joining the revolution, as seen in Libya. Or they played the role of the institution tasked with maintaining the country’s unity, as was seen in Egypt. In all cases, the armies’ actions reflected their complicated historical relationships with their societies and states.
It could be correct to describe the fifth problem as the problem of “language”, in the sense of the enormous discrepancy between authorities’ practices and “discourse” and the way citizens, especially youths, express themselves and their hopes and concerns. Language is a constantly raging battleground and one of the few places in which one could say that the Arab revolutions have not totally disappeared. Alternative online news outlets have partially replaced official or semi-official newspapers and broadcasters. These outlets convey alternative “facts” to those that the authorities want generalized or want to impose as the only truth. The battle is not limited to confirming or denying facts but also regards the discourse adopted, the tools utilized, and the issues and the values from which each of them originates from.
Despite their besiegement and some regimes’ constant repression, we could conclude that the next round of Arab revolutions- or to be more modest, attempts at change- are being prepared for here.
