The State Coup in Tunisia and the Drumbeats of War in the Arab World

The Tunisian Revolt: Where Have All the Islamists Gone?

The protesters who toppled Tunisia's dictator weren't advocating sharia or Islamic law. They were calling for freedom, democracy, and multiparty elections. Across the Arab Middle East, the generation that is leading the protest against dictatorship does not have an Islamist character.

January 21, 2011

Christian Science Monitor - The novel characteristic of the first peaceful popular revolution to topple a dictatorship in the Arab world is that there is nothing Islamic about it.

The young Tunisian street peddler who triggered the revolt by publicly burning himself reminds us of the Vietnamese Buddhist monks in 1963 or of Jan Palach in Czechoslovakia in 1969 – an act of precisely the opposite nature from the suicide bombings that are the trademark of present Islamic terrorism.

Even in this sacrificial act, there has been nothing religious: no green or black turban, no loose white gown, no “Allah Akbar,” no call to jihad. It was instead an individual, desperate, and absolute protest, without a word on paradise and salvation.

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Suicide in this case was the last act of freedom aimed at shaming the dictator and prodding the public to react. It was a call to life, not death.

In the street demonstrations that followed, there was no call for an Islamic state, no white shroud put by protesters in front of the bayonets as in Tehran in 1978.

Nothing about sharia or Islamic law. And, most striking, no “down with US imperialism.” The hated regime was perceived as an indigenous one, the result of fear and passivity, and not as the puppet of French or US neocolonialism, despite its endorsement by the French political elite.

An end to kleptocratic rule

Instead, the protesters were calling for freedom, democracy, and multiparty elections. Put more simply, they just wanted to get rid of the kleptocratic ruling family (“dégage!” as said a popular motto in French).

In this Muslim society nothing about an “Islamic exceptionalism” was manifest. And at the end, when the real “Islamist” leaders came from their exile in the West (yes they are in the West, not in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia), they, like Rachid Ghannoushi, spoke of elections, coalition government, and stability – all the while keeping a low profile.

Have the Islamists disappeared?

No. But in North Africa, at least, most of them have become democrats. True, fringe groups have followed the path of a nomadic global jihad and are roaming the Sahel in search of hostages, but they have no real support in the population. That is why they went to the desert.

Nevertheless, these highway robbers are still branded as a strategic threat by Western governments at a loss to design a long-term policy. Other Islamists have just given up politics and closed their door, pursuing a pious, conservative, but apolitical way of life. They put a burqa on their wives as well as on their lives.

But the bulk of the former Islamists have come to the same conclusion of the generation that founded the Justice and Development (AK) party in Turkey: There is no third way between democracy and dictatorship. There is just dictatorship and democracy.

This acknowledgement of the failure of political Islam has met the mood of the new generation of protesters in Tunisia. The new Arab generation is not motivated by religion or ideology, but by the aspiration for a peaceful transition to a decent, democratic, and “normal” government. They just want to be like the others.

The Tunisian revolt helps clarify a reality about Arab life: The terrorism we’ve seen over the past few years, with its utopian millenarism, doesn’t stem from the real societies of the Middle East. More Islamic radicals are to be found in the West than at home.

IN PICTURES: Tunisia riots

To be sure, the picture differs from country to country. The post-Islamist generation is more visible in North Africa than in Egypt or Yemen, not to speak of Pakistan, which is a collapsing country. But everywhere in the Arab Middle East, the generation that is leading the protest against dictatorship does not have an Islamist character.

This is not to say there are no big challenges ahead. There are indeed many: how to find political leaders who can live up to popular expectations; how to avoid the pitfalls of anarchy; how to reconstruct political and social bonds that have been deliberately destroyed by dictatorial regimes and rebuild a civil society.

But there is at least one immediate question raised by the Tunisian revolution.

West must reconsider its approach

Why is the West still supporting most of the Middle East dictatorships even as this democratic surge roils across the region? The answer in the past, of course, has been that the West sees authoritarian regimes as the best bulwark against Islamism.

That was the rationale behind its support for the cancellation of the elections in Algeria in 1990, for turning a blind eye on the rigging of the Egyptian elections, and for ignoring the choice of the Palestinians in Gaza.

In light of the Tunisian experience, this approach must be reevaluated. In the first place, these regimes are no longer a reliable bulwark. They could just collapse at anytime. Second, what are they a bulwark against if the new generation is post-Islamist and pro-democratic?

Just as Tunisia has been a turning point in the Arab world, so too it must be a turning point in the West’s policy toward the region. Realpolitik today means supporting the democratization of the Middle East.

Drumbeats of War - Tunisia Coup Worries Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia

January 2011

Snafu Blog - What does the current coup in Tunisia have to do with Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia?

It is the first time in modern history that an Arab ruler has been overthrown by a military coup that began as a popular uprising of the people. It started three weeks ago as protests by university graduate students who couldn’t find jobs in the dismal Tunisian economy.

This worries rulers of other Arab states whose policies are turned toward the West in contradiction to the will of much of their citizenry. They worry that the success of the people of Tunisia will incite their own populations.

With good reason. There have already been ‘riots’ by Bedouin tribesmen in southern Jordan. According to Israeli sources, the Jordanian Army has managed to ‘contain the outbreaks but did not quell them.’ The protesters are reportedly just waiting for an opportunity to continue their surge against the government. Whether or not the protests (which have been officially blacked out in Jordanian media) will spread to the rest of the country, only time will tell. But it is possible.

Jordan has accepted many thousands of Palestinian refugees since the birth of Israel, and they filled their social services to overflowing with refugees from Iraq when the US took down Saddam Hussein. It got to the point that the country, once called Samaria where the story of the Good Samaritan took place, could stand no further burden without collapsing under the weight. They had to shut their borders against any more refugees.

Needless to say, many of the refugees have less than warm feelings toward Israel and the US. And they do not completely appreciate the Western-aligned government that took them in.

Egypt has been contending for decades with an underground popular revolution centering around the Muslim Brotherhood. That organization, with a large following in Gaza and other places, sees the Egyptian government as kowtowing all too much to the US and Israel. They would love to overthrow the government, throw the US out of the Middle East, and throw Israel into the dustbin of history.

The Muslim Brotherhood was declared illegal in Egypt, barred from the political process. Members of the MB got around that by running on other political tickets, and have held an increasingly significant number of seats in the Egyptian legislature. This last election in Egypt, they were going to campaign openly as Brotherhood members, despite the official restrictions. But that was too much for Egypt’s government, and there were arrests and yet another attempt to squelch the Brotherhood by violence. And of course all it did was drive the resentment back underground to await an opportunity for resurgence. Which may be occurring now.

Saudi Arabia seems the most stabile and most powerful of the Arab nations. Prospered by gargantuan oil reserves, partnership with the West has made the ruling class billionaires, and the money has trickled down a substantial amount to the people.

But even oil does not last forever, and sometime in the future those revenues will diminish. Far more importantly, Saudi Arabia is the most ‘holy’ nation in Islam. Mecca is there. All Muslims are commanded to make the Hajj pilgrimage journey to Mecca at least once in their lifetimes, if they can manage it. The second most ‘holy’ city of Medina is also in Saudi Arabia. (Third is Al-Quds, which means ‘the holy’, and is also known as… Jerusalem.)

Many Muslims, including those inside Saudi Arabia, feel that the confluence of Saudi Arabia and the ‘infidel’ Western powers demeans Saudi Arabia’s ‘holiness’. It is a tremendous affront to many of the devout to see McDonalds and Pizza Hut in the same city as the Al-Maslid al-Haram, gathering place for the yearly Hajj.

The seeming stability is only that, and Iran knows it. They have invited the Saudis to form a New Western Alliance with their satellite nations, and partner with Iran’s New Eastern Front (more on that below). The long term goal is to present a united Middle Eastern… certainly politically; perhaps militarily… against Israel, the United States, and European nations that have helped Arab governments exploit the oil of the Middle East through history. So far the Saudi government has said no. That may not be the will of the people.

Iran has already manifested what they call the New Eastern Front, whose core is Iran, Syria and Lebanese Hizballah. Currently they are working very hard on including all of Lebanon. Iraq has gone deeper and deeper into the New Eastern Front since Prime Minister Maliki needed Shiite Iran’s backing in order to be reelected, and the US influence diminishes with each seceding day.

The New Eastern Front has had some success with their invitation for Turkey to join, but the modern remnant of the Ottoman Empire is reticent to let any other nation dictate to it at this point in time… including the US. Iran wishes the NEF included Pakistan and Afghanistan, but that may be more a pipe dream than a possibility. But you never know.

Certainly, Iran’s New Eastern Front would welcome a Jordan with a new government that expressed animosity toward the West.

So it’s a ‘Brand New Ballgame’ once again in the Middle East.

Stay tuned….