U.S. Government Stands with 'Cyber Dissidents' Organizing Revolutions Around the World

Middle East Revolt: Youth, Technology Are Driving Change

February 17, 2011

TIME - The year of the revolutions began in January, in a small country of little importance. Then the protests spread to the region's largest and most important state, toppling a regime that had seemed firmly entrenched. The effect was far-reaching. The air was filled with talk of liberty and freedom. Street protests cropped up everywhere, challenging the rule of autocrats and monarchs, who watched from their palaces with fear.

That could be a description of events in Tunisia and Egypt as those countries' peaceful revolutions have inspired and galvanized people across the Middle East. In fact, it refers to popular uprisings 162 years earlier that began in Sicily and France. The revolutions of 1848, as they were called, were remarkably similar in mood to what is happening right now in the Middle East. (They were dubbed the springtime of peoples by historians at the time.) The backdrop then, as now, was a recession and rising food prices. The monarchies were old and sclerotic. The young were in the forefront. New information technologies - mass newspapers! - connected the crowds.

Except that the story didn't end so well. The protesters gained power but then splintered, fought one another and weakened themselves. The military stayed loyal to the old order and cracked down on protests. The monarchs waited things out, and within a few years, the old regimes had reconstituted themselves.

"History reached its turning point, and failed to turn," wrote the British historian A.J.P. Taylor.

Will history fail to turn in the Middle East? Will these protests in Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and beyond peter out, and in a few years, will we look back at 2011 and realize that very little actually changed? It's certainly possible, but there are two fundamental reasons the tensions that have been let loose in the Middle East over the past few weeks are unlikely to disappear, and they encompass two of the most powerful forces changing the world today: youth and technology. (See TIME's special report "The Middle East in Revolt.")

The central, underlying feature of the Middle East's crisis is a massive youth bulge. About 60% of the region's population is under 30. These millions of young people have aspirations that need to be fulfilled, and the regimes in place right now show little ability to do so. The protesters' demands have been dismissed by the regimes as being for Islamic fundamentalism or a product of Western interference. But plainly these are homegrown protests that have often made the West uneasy as they have shaken up old alliances. And what the protesters want in the first place is to be treated as citizens, not subjects. In a recent survey of Middle Eastern youth, the No. 1 wish of the young in nine countries was to live in a free country, although, to be sure, jobs and the desire to live in well-run, modern societies ranked very high as well.

Young people are not always a source of violence. The West experienced a demographic bulge -- the famous baby boom in the decades after World War II -- that is known mainly for fueling economic growth. China and India, likewise, have a large cohort of young workers, and that adds to those countries' economic strength.

But without economic growth, job opportunities and a sense of dignity, too many young people -- especially young men -- can make for mass discontent. That is what has happened in the Middle East, where the scale of the youth bulge is extreme -- perhaps the largest in the world right now. From 1970 to 2007, 80% of all outbreaks of conflict occurred in countries where 60% or more of the population was younger than 30. And even places where the baby boom produced growth are not without problems. The peak years of the West's bulge came in the late 1960s, a period associated with youth rebellions and mass protests.

Journalists, politicians and scholars have all noted the Middle East's youth problem. But the region's governments have done little to address it -- youth unemployment remains staggeringly high, by some measures close to 25%. The oil boom has certainly helped the Gulf countries pay off their people in various ways, but more than half of those who live in the Middle East are in lands that do not produce oil. Moreover, oil has proved a curse in the rich countries, where the economies have little to offer other than extracting hydrocarbons, where armies of foreigners do all the work and where regimes continue to offer their people a basic bargain: we will subsidize you as long as you accept our rule. Rattled by recent developments, Kuwait and Bahrain both decided to give all of their citizens bonuses this year ($3,000 in Kuwait, $2,700 in Bahrain).

Those payments are a reminder that in the Middle East, there are two modes of control: mass repression and mass bribery. Perhaps the latter, used in the Gulf states, will prove more effective -- though in Bahrain, the regime faces specific challenges, with a Sunni minority ruling over a Shi'ite majority.

The broader predicament facing both systems, however, is a population that is increasingly aware, informed and connected. It's too simple to say that what happened in Tunisia and Egypt happened because of Facebook. But technology -- satellite television, computers, mobile phones and the Internet -- has played a powerful role in informing, educating and connecting people in the region. Such advances empower individuals and disempower the state.

In the old days, information technology favored those in power, because it was one to many. That's why revolutionaries tried to take over radio stations in the 1930s -- so they could broadcast information to the masses. Today's technologies are all many to many, networks in which everyone is connected but no one is in control. That's bad for anyone trying to suppress information.

Of course, the state can fight back. The Egyptian government managed to shut down Egyptians' access to the Internet for five days. The Iranian regime closed down cell-phone service at the height of the green movement's protests in 2009. But think of the costs of such moves. Can banks run when the Internet is down? Can commerce expand when cell phones are demobilized?

Syria has only now opened access to Facebook, but its basic approach remains to keep the world tightly at bay -- which is a major obstacle to economic growth and to tackling that vital problem of youth unemployment. North Korea can stay stable as long as it stays utterly stagnant. (And that stability is for the short term anyway.) For regimes that need or want to respond to the aspirations of their people, openness becomes an economic and political necessity.

The modernizing imperative -- societies need to embrace more openness to make progress -- is why I am allowing myself to be optimistic about the progress of the youth revolutions. It's easy to be disappointed when looking at the Middle East's sad recent history. And yet something in the region feels as if it is changing. Warren Buffett once said that when anyone tells him, "This time it's different," he reaches for his wallet because he fears he's going to be swindled. Well, I have a feeling that this time in the Middle East, it's different. But I have my hand on my wallet anyway.

What's Next for the Middle East

February 17, 2011

Yahoo News! - Successful anti-government uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have inspired protesters to demand leadership changes in Iran, Yemen, Jordan, Libya and Bahrain. Riot police stormed a protest camp in Manama, Bahrain, overnight, and medical officials reported four people were killed. There also are reports that more than a dozen demonstrators have been killed in Libya.

The spread of unrest across North Africa and the Mideast raises many questions about where the region is headed and what U.S. policy should be. Here are some answers:

Is the government of any other country likely to be overthrown, as in Egypt?

It's not easy to see which governments may fall or survive this current trend, but it seems entirely reasonable that many of the regimes in North Africa and the Mideast are going to be seriously challenged and that one or more will probably change leadership in the near term.

Much of the region is wobbly right now. Some that seem more wobbly at the moment include Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco, Jordan, even Iran. But these states have different government structures and different methods of controlling their publics. Iran's army, for instance, already has shown an unwillingness to play the same role in these revolts that the Egyptian army did.

While there are many different grievances driving those protesting, one of the key issues is economic. Egypt, for example, has more than 40 percent of its population living at or below world poverty levels, and like much of the region has a "youth bulge" of many young people coming of work age with few or no jobs for them. But basic rights also are part of this widespread ripple that some are calling a "dignity revolution."

In Iran, the government violently quashed similar protests in 2009. Will the protesters have more success this time?

In Iran, the government plays for keeps and seems to have few inhibitions about cracking down on protesters. The key thing to watch in Iran are splits in the leadership and the relative power of factions rather than what the state is doing to the people in the streets. There are mullahs and factional leaders, even in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, who feel that President Ahmadenijad and Ayatollah Khamenei have undermined the integrity of the nation, its interests and economy, and even the spirit of the Islamic revolution. It recently was learned from high level Revolutionary Guard deserters that there are major differences of opinion inside the highest ranks of the IRGC and government.

Seeing these splits widen and seeing the current leadership constrained and rolled back may give the protesters more of a chance to succeed. It is likely, however, that the Iranian government will be more decisive in deploying violence against protesters and will cling to power more tenaciously than the Mubarak franchise did.

What's at stake for the United States as protests spread across the Mideast?

The United States has tended to deal with heads of states, oil sheikhs, and generals in the Middle East in order to secure its national security interests, which range from stabilizing Middle East oil and energy production to working against strains of radicalized Islamists to securing partners in stability, if not peace, in an equilibrium with Israel, which is a close strategic ally of the United States.

America could lose its dominant role in managing the political and supply dimensions of oil and energy if hostile regimes come to power. The United States has not invested in knowing and engaging with opposition leaders in most of the Middle East, particularly in regimes with which we have close relations. That means that the influence of the United States on aspiring groups who may come into leading government roles in some of these countries may be minor. But this can be overplayed. States typically have core interests no matter who is running the political machinery, so it's possible to imagine the United States working out relationships with governments that emerge after the people-power revolutions that are under way.

What role is the Obama administration playing as the turmoil grows?

The U.S. government is trying to shore up key "principles" that those governing and rebelling adhere to. The Obama administration consistently has called for no violence on either side of the equation, either by those protesting or by the governments being protested against. President Obama also has demanded that the universal human rights of assembly and protest be respected, and that if the situation is clear that the legitimacy of the older order is washed up, that a credible, inclusive political transition from a totalitarian state to democracy be moved forward.

The administration does not want to send a signal, however, that it has become a regime-change fanatic. Obama has stated that these affairs belong to the citizens of these countries, and that the United States cannot affect the outcomes, cannot protect dictators and cannot help assure victory for those in the streets. What Obama is doing is shifting U.S. policy to a "pragmatic democracy agenda" in which the United States continues to stand by key allies, whether illiberal governments or democracies. But, if the core social contract between the governed and those governing explodes, the United States will stand by its principles that people should have the determinative role in their governments.

How might this turmoil affect the Middle East peace process? Will it bring Israelis and Palestinians any closer to a peace agreement?

This is a very fluid time and all things are possible but few are probable. The Israelis are extremely nervous about what they see in their neighborhood and the increasing empowerment of Islamic political parties and actors who have at the top of their agenda rolling back the occupation of the Palestinian territories or a hostile agenda toward Israel writ large.

It's unclear whether Israel itself sees that its long-term security interests are helped or hurt by rushing forward a peace arrangement resulting in an independent Palestinian state. It is clear that in the absence of progress on Arab-Israeli peace, the United States decided it needed states such as Jordan and Egypt and heavily invested in them to keep them as peace partners for Israel. Had the Arab Peace Initiative succeeded and Israel secured a deal with Palestine, then Egypt and some of these other totalitarian regimes would "matter less" to the United States as Israel would have normalized relations with some 57 other Arab and Muslim countries.

The Middle East peace process remains complicated and muddy, and no progress is possible until the United States and Europe consider a new strategic framework for the region — and place the importance of Israel-Palestine peace inside that framework. That will take time — even though there is an alternative view that things are so fluid now that Israel's negotiating position only deteriorates with more time.

One year from now, which countries in the Middle East are the most likely to be on the road to some sort of democratic government? Which countries are most likely to be ruled by autocrats? Which countries are most likely to be ruled by fundamental Islamists?

One year from now, nearly all of the governments will continue to be ruled by autocrats or oligarchs, perhaps even in Egypt. There is now total military control in Egypt, high expectations from society for economic improvement, and no more resources to make this happen. The military may very will be running the show in Egypt, and despite a veneer of interaction with opposition groups, there might not be real democracy there for quite a number of years.

Jordan is likely to work for reform but keep essentially the same form of government, trying to reach out to some younger leaders in society and reform from within. Lebanon is politically complex but Hezbollah is playing a strong role there. This doesn't mean that fundamental Islamists are in total control, but Islamists have a lot of power in a functioning democratic context. The Lebanon model, or Turkish model, might be the best it gets for democracy in places such as Egypt and elsewhere.

Saudi Arabia and Syria can be expected to continue as they are — and countries such as the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait will be challenged to be more politically inclusive, but it's hard to imagine stable functioning democracies in these countries at this point, particularly given the huge disparities between the population of national citizens and the number of guest workers who dwarf them. Autocracies are likely to survive in the Emirates, but they are nervous.

Yemen, Morocco, Iran, even Iraq are all wobbly with populations that feel disenfranchised. Constant turmoil may simmer in all of these countries with very different political conditions, with the simmering occasionally exploding, but there is no way of saying for sure which will transform into democracies. Democracies need institutions that are able to serve the weak and those in minority in political systems. These take years to build, and the Middle East does not have much experience in the habits of this kind of institution building. Thus, while there will continue to be much disorder and much popular revolt, it's not clear at all that democracy is the automatic successor.

U.S. to Boost Support for Cyber Dissidents

The Associated Press
February 15, 2011

The United States stands with cyber dissidents and democracy activists from the Middle East to China and beyond, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday.

She pledged to expand the Obama administration's efforts to foil Internet repression in autocratic states.

In an impassioned speech on Internet freedom, Clinton said the administration would spend $25 million this year on initiatives designed to protect bloggers and help them get around curbs like the Great Firewall of China, the gagging of social media sites in Iran, Cuba, Syria, Vietnam and Myanmar as well as Egypt's recent unsuccessful attempt to thwart anti-government protests by simply pulling the plug on online communication.

She also said the State Department, which last week launched Twitter feeds in Arabic and Farsi to connect with populations throughout the Arab world and Iran, would broaden the reach of its online mini-appeals for human rights and democracy by creating accounts cater to audiences in China, Russia and India in their native languages.

Clinton challenged authoritarian leaders and regimes to embrace online freedom and the demands of cyber dissidents or risk being toppled by tides of unrest, similar to what has happened in Egypt and Tunisia to longtime presidents Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

"History has shown us that repression often sows the seeds for revolution down the road," she said. "Those who clamp down on Internet freedom may be able to hold back the full impact of their people's yearnings for a while, but not forever."

"Leaders worldwide have a choice to make," Clinton said. "They can let the Internet in their countries flourish, and take the risk that the freedoms it enables will lead to a greater demand for political rights. Or they can constrict the Internet, choke the freedoms it naturally sustains, and risk losing all the economic and social benefits that come from a networked society."

"We believe that governments who have erected barriers to Internet freedom - whether they're technical filters or censorship regimes or attacks on those who exercise their rights to expression and assembly online — will eventually find themselves boxed in," she said. "They will face a dictator's dilemma, and will have to choose between letting the walls fall or paying the price to keep them standing — which means both doubling down on a losing hand by resorting to greater oppression, and enduring the escalating opportunity cost of missing out on the ideas that have been blocked."

She said fighting restrictions would not be easy but stressed that the U.S. is committed to ensuring the Internet remains an open forum for discourse.

"While the rights we seek to protect are clear, the various ways that these rights are violated are increasingly complex," Clinton said.

The U.S. will "help people in oppressive Internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online," she said in the speech to students at The George Washington University. She countered criticism leveled at the administration for not investing in a single technological fix to overcome government controls, saying there was "no silver bullet" and "no app" to do that. Instead, she said, the U.S. would take a multi-pronged approach.

Clinton's remarks, her second major address on the topic of Internet freedom since becoming America's top diplomat, come amid a groundswell of protests around the Middle East that have been abetted by online agitators using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to organize anti-government demonstrations from Algeria to Yemen, Syria, Iran and Jordan.

Despite the Obama administration's own problems with an unfettered Internet, most notably the release of hundreds of thousands of sensitive diplomatic documents by the WikiLeaks website, Clinton said the U.S. is unwavering in its commitment to cyber freedom, even as it seeks to prosecute online criminals and terrorists.

She drew a distinction between attempts to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing the material along with the suspected leaker, and measures taken by repressive regimes to crack down on opponents.

"The WikiLeaks incident began with a theft just as if it had been executed by smuggling papers in a briefcase," she said. "The fact that Wikileaks used the Internet is not the reason we criticized it. Wikileaks does not challenge our commitment to Internet freedom."

Clinton argued that the Internet is neither good nor bad, a force for neither liberation nor repression. It is the sum of what its users make it, she says.

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