The Protests in Egypt Show a Sign of Maturity
Rime Allaf, January 27, 2011
A series of unprecedented demonstrations has fired up the Arab world. With a warped interest in the region, governments and news media were surprised by the Tunisian dictator’s sudden fall, the rapid spread of demonstrations in Egypt and the serious manifestations in Algeria, Jordan and Yemen.
With the futile habit of categorizing countries according to official U.S. criteria, the Arab world was watched with labels for moderates and radicals, allies and problem makers. Those differences came to a screeching halt when it came to internal affairs: from the Atlantic to the Gulf, Arab authoritarian regimes have been practically identical in their harsh rule, corruption, cronyism, stifling of freedom of speech and suppression of human rights. In every country, they imposed surreal personality cults with life-sized photos and statues galore while enjoying the fawning support of a profiteering elite and the defense of vast armies.
Washington pretended not to notice and separated the “good” dictators from the “bad," as they did the oppositions. The good regimes were needed, we were told, because the alternative would be chaos or -- even worse – Islamism! Oddly, the bad regimes justified their excesses and emergency laws with the exact same refrain.
The Tunisian people wiped out years of ominous predictions in a matter of days, with an amalgam of young, disgruntled, educated, unemployed, urban and rural people from middle classes, whose secular rallying cry related in no way to Islamist agendas. Lost for words, the news media tried to issue a label with a catchy name, but most Tunisians are not thrilled to have their revolution tagged under Jasmine or Facebook: they just call it the Tunisian Revolution.
Likewise, the current Egyptian revolt is not waiting for a special moniker to demonstrate it is not Islamist, not led by a specific party, and not following a particular ideology. Maturely, without resorting to violence, protesters began to shed their fear and to fight for their bread and their freedom, without American troops or coalition bombs, supported by an immense wave of Arab solidarity and a shared anger at all the regimes. Today, there is a common belief that nothing will change if that change is not forced, reform having become a dirty word for the minor cosmetic adjustments regimes have pretended to make.
Unfortunately for Washington, for the time being, it’s the wrong Arabs who are revolting, endangering the longevity of the regimes which are stalwart U.S. allies. At the very least, we may predict that Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal, will not be president, but other developments in Egypt will influence the rest of the Arab world: the Mubarak regime’s closeness to Israel and participation in the siege on Gaza were never popular, and if Egyptians manage to go the Tunisian way, there may be a softening of this embrace. It’s too early to tell which way Egypt’s army will go, and whether President Mubarak can survive this wave, but Arabs are rooting for Egyptians to have their peaceful revolution, and for Egypt to become once more a leader in the Arab world.
Rime Allaf, a Syrian writer, is an international consultant and an associate fellow at Chatham House in London. She blogs at Mosaics.
