Dr Shafiq Al Ghabra
by Dr Shafiq Al Ghabra
Questions repeat themselves on the situation that Arabs are passing through at the moment. Will we witness the beginning of awakening or collapse? Or are we hardly coexisting with the birth of a revolution, as other countries of the world did one day, which includes violence and fragmentation?
Mostly, we are in a long-term revolutionary stage that will change our reality and teach us lessons on how to deal with differences, political monopoly, and financial corruption. Unfortunately, the changes and transitions won’t be implemented until we pass through very hard passages that we will have to pay for.
While our world is swaying for the first time, its people are protesting and dreaming, which did not happen for such a long time. Arabs from the Gulf to the Ocean have different views, which mean they got rid of the state of carelessness they once lived in.
Some of them seek stability at any price, especially those who have wealth and are afraid to lose it. Others want a new regime, even if this will come through violence, especially those who feel that they do not have anything
to lose.
But the majority is waiting for a better, just and satisfying democratic solution and a new resolution of modernisation and development.
Realistically speaking, the Arab world will not regain stability any time soon. The future has in store for us a long-term conflict over the new principles of justice and rights. It is hard to underestimate what happened in Syria and Iraq, especially when ISIS challenges the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as the former goes beyond the countries’ borders.
Notably, creating an “entity” on the Syrian and Iraqi borders that does not represent any country or a political system is a clear sign of how weak our old Arab regimes are, especially those that were established after the Second
World War.
Despite the belief that the illegal crossing of borders is a temporary issue, it is still alarming to see open borders, especially after what happened in Syria
and Iraq.
In the past, the national Arab movement, Nasseris, Syrian nationalists, communists and Baathists had different views on the concept of unity. Now, ISIS brings to our attention the vital issue of the need of borders between Eastern Arab countries.
The events in the Arab world confirm how the strength of small groups is growing day-after-day in terms of their numbers and capacities. They even have the ability of challenging powerful groups such as Hezbollah in South Lebanon, and ISIS in Iraq. Moreover, through the 2011 revolutions we will most probably see new groups popping to the surface.
This means that a new power could emerge — like the Houthis — drawing a path for itself that could reach major cities and Eastern Arab areas until it finally settles in Yemen, which is known for its large population.
At the time when Houthis are invading Yemen, another hidden power with the capacity to react to the Houthis and counter their invasion will rise.
Then, the US won’t find the same national support it used to, which allows it to intervene militarily. America’s capacity and enthusiasm are declining and the future will indeed be full of surprises.
The regression of the Arab regime, as we know it, does not mean that it has lost its strength and capacity. There is a logical history behind the strength and weakness of states and nations.
Weakness and self-disintegration are usually offset with higher initiatives of persistence, which is accompanied by coercion and tyranny. Indeed, when the Ottoman Empire, known for its relative graciousness, regressed by committing some of the worst massacres on Armenians in 1915, and set the gallows in Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, it didn’t change the reality of its decline and demise
at the end.
If the oppression and current behaviour of Arab regimes does not change by reconciliation initiatives and democratic reforms, they are hastening the path to revolution of a large segment of the population.
Repression is increasing in the Arab region, especially in light of the latest death sentences given to dissidents in Egypt and the unjustified abuses in various Arab countries, which does not reflect a state of progress but rather loss of confidence and a sense of insecurity among Arab decision-makers from the dangers of collective peaceful and non-peaceful expression.
In the current and next stage, the most dangerous Arab regime reaction would be to hastily fight pluralism, freedoms and public space.
Until now, Arab regimes look at the current situation as a matter of life and death. They have even interpreted the causes of revolt as an outsider’s job, ignoring that those revolutions were a product of unemployment, poverty, political monopoly, prevention of freedoms, oppression and exile of opposing parties and closing avenues for peaceful and
quiet reforms.
They rarely concluded that dealing with the causes of past and future revolutions doesn’t occur by spreading fear, but through serious reforms.
The problem in the Arab world deepens because government organisations and institutions, judiciary system, and security forces are basically incompetent where loyal people are favoured over the competent.
The government structure is neither linked to a modern administrative, judicial or even military concept, nor derived from dynamic reform. It doesn’t even resemble that found, for example, in Iran or Turkey.
If the Arabs succeeded in coming up with administrative and developmental reforms, the situation would have been better. Arab governments, with limited exceptions, lack a development vision and a project with national, administrative, philosophical, ideological and humanitarian character associated with achievement. The official Arab administration is without a soul. We hope that it will surprise us with something different before new volcanoes erupt.
One of the causes of weakness and vulnerability of the current Arab institution is that it continues to live with old tools in the hope that the nightmare disappears. But how can it do so when it lost its effectiveness, official language, and influence and its corrupt officials are not accountable to anyone. It fell because of its own mistakes related to some of the most important political, religious and national legitimacy elements.
The latest drop in oil prices revealed weak governmental planning.
Every crisis, whether tied to nature, the climate, price of goods, wars or the needs and rights of people, reveals the fragility of the Arab entity and its unwillingness to face new developments. The Arab state is a continuation of the mentality responsible for the 1967
defeat.
In such a situation, the state will face violence (repression, torture, closure, prevention, shooting, imprisonment, and exaggerated sentencing) against proponents of free expression and peaceful struggle. This will inevitably lead to counter-violence by different sectors of the public.
The Arab region stores a lot of anger, resulting from the loss of means of livelihood, unemployment, arbitrariness and bias of government institutions such as the judiciary, army, police and the tight control of influential powers.
Years before the clashes, let’s see how the hidden and obvious tyranny of the Syrian and Iraqi regimes led to the emergence of many schools of violence in both countries, with new fans joining every day. There’s accession to those schools by intermediate activists, revolutionaries and reformists who just recently refused the principles of violence.
Before we approach 2015, the Arab state that resulted from the two world wars appears to be facing a sector of society that is constantly increasing in size and it is seeking to get rid of the current equation without clearly defining how the next one looks like.
In the first phase of the 2011 Arab revolutions, the state was not the goal but it was rather the corrupt individuals surrounding it, similar to what happened to presidents Zine El Abidine, Mubarak, Gaddafi and Ali Saleh.
However, things have changed over the past three years, the state with its military, judicial and sovereign apparatuses joined the confrontation through many justifications.
The second intermediate wave of revolutions will target many of the state’s institutions, which may in some respects be destructive with unperceivable circumstances. There are main powers that are still sitting on the fence until now seeking to re-inflame the confrontation with the state in order to disassemble and reassemble it in a new scheme, where: The army should be turned into an army that protects the border, not control the economy by establishing businesses, implementing construction projects, building roads and manufacturing kitchen tools, other than corruption and money laundering.
The judicial system must be impartial and not biased for the executive branch at the expense of the people, the honest authorities and the opposition.
Security must protect justice and shall not infringe on human rights. Media should change to become neutral so it is not biased toward one side at the expense of another.
In the next revolutions, there will be revolutions of social classes, unemployment and hunger revolts, revolutions for justice and dignity, and revolutions coated with religion, tribe and sect; all mostly reflecting the need for justice and the imperatives of equality.
So far the Arab Reform School, which is the quietest and most peaceful, is regressing, while the winners among the masses are the new extremist, religious and sectarian revolutionary schools.
Our long era will be indisputably filled with anger, exclusion, tyranny, violence and revolutions.
The devolution of power and democratic transition, reform and justice are still included in the folds of this stage. This is a continuous struggle since the idea of democracy with all its dimensions will not return until we pay a big price.
The writer is an academician and political analyst.
