Just back from a talk on events in Tunisia and Egypt by George Joffe and Maha Abdelrahman. Joffe gave a previous talk about Tunisia in January, which I wrote up here. Today they only spoke for about twenty minutes each, and so didn’t have time to go into huge amounts of depth. That said, what they had to say was interesting, so I’m writing it up here for those who couldn’t make it. I’ll add the occasional bit of commentary here and there, but for the most part I’ll just reconstruct from my notes what they said (obviously take quotes as paraphrases, etc.). Should you so desire you can read my take on the Egyptian revolution here.
Maha Abdelrahman spoke first. She questioned the use of the phrase ‘crisis’ to describe events in Egypt, partly because of its negative connotations (especially with respect to Egypt where it was last prominently used in 1956 – the ‘Suez Crisis’) and partly because it suggests a problem amenable to quick, decisive resolution. In Egypt, she stressed, we are not going to see an immediate solution. Her preferred term for the uprising is a “revolt” or “revolution”.
She emphasised that while the scale of the revolution took everyone, including initially the demonstrators themselves, by surprise, the protests did not, as much media coverage would suggest, materialise out of thin air. Political opposition has been developing over the past decade, and since 2000 protesters have been gathering, under various banners and for various causes, on a daily basis in Cairo and elsewhere.
“Protestors” is itself a shorthand for the different organisations and political tendencies that, for various reasons, have joined together to oppose the regime. Abdelrahman briefly anatomised the opposition movement, dividing it into three broad categories:
1) The ‘pro-democracy’ movement. Calls for an end to the emergency law, free elections, and rejects Mubarak’s plan to transfer power to his son Gamal. The main grouping within this tendency is the Kifaya (‘Enough’) movement. The key characteristics of this movement are that it lacks clear leadership, and that is cross-ideological, including Nasserists, Muslim Brothers (particular youths), liberals and leftists. It has tended to work outside the sphere of traditional political organising, distancing itself from political parties, unions, etc. Its lack of clear central leadership and its cross-ideological (and so non-partisan) make-up gave it some protection from the emergency law and regime repression.
2) Egyptian workers. Between 2004 and 2008 1.7 million workers participated in roughly 2000 protest events. Since 2008 this number dramatically increased. Workers made economic demands, for instance against the government’s neoliberalism, and also political demands for representation.
3) Wave of “ad hoc” protest whose participants are difficult to categorise. Just individuals here and there who have taken to the streets to protest for social reforms or against local injustices.
From 2000 until very recently these different strands of protest largely did not join forces or co-ordinate with each other. This is what changed in the recent uprising. That said, we are now seeing some of the weaknesses of the decentralised organisational model of ‘new social movements’, and people are increasingly calling for a return to ‘old’-style central leadership.
Abdelrahman then focused on the role of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the uprising, emphasising that the revolution was not organised by the MB, and that the MB played little role in articulating its demands (indeed it only joined lately and with some reluctance). Contrary to much fear-mongering the MB is neither capable of taking power in Egypt, nor does it want to. Moreover the caricatures of its politics one often hears in Western media ignore the many transformations it has undergone in the decades since its founding. Such treatments of the MB ignore the fact that it is a political organisation and as such is dynamic, reacting and adapting to political developments in Egypt and abroad. For example, in the 1940s the MB was relatively socially progressive, even moreso than Nasserism, calling for land reforms etc. In the 1970s and 80s the MB leadership was socially conservative, neoliberal and anti-Semitic. More recently state repression left the MB as the sole opposition to the regime, which led it to shift its rhetoric and demands to calling for democracy and pluralism.
As such the MB leadership today faces a dilemma. Its constituency has grown beyond its leaders expectations – ‘grown’ not in the sense of size but in the sense of variety. The MB’s base is not homogeneous, including workers, students, many in the upwardly mobile middle-class, etc. As such the leadership cannot now convincingly claim to represent its own constituency.
She pointed out that the US and EU have spent billions over the years supposedly supporting “democracy” in the region, in practice supporting an authoritarian regime, and now that the chance to support a genuinely democratic movement has arisen, the response of those same governments has been “weak” at best.
Abdelrahman argued that, whatever the political reforms achieved by the uprising, the substantive policies of the Egyptian government are unlikely to change: it will remain committed to the peace with Israel and to economic liberalisation. The Army will continue to play a major role – it is a very strong institution, and its strength is derived not simply from its power to coerce but from its entanglement with Egyptian society and the economy since the 1952 coup. Major sectors of the economy are reliant on the military, and the military is heavily involved in infrastructure projects, agriculture, technology manufacturing, and so forth. It is unlikely to be marginalised by the revolt.
The reason the Army hasn’t, thus far, cracked down on the protestors is because it recognises that a “point of no return” has been passed and that Egypt has entered a “new era of politics”. It has come under external pressure to avoid bloody repression, but more importantly it recognises that given the social and ideological breadth of the revolt some political reform is necessary.
George Joffe began with a comparison between the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia. In both countries the make-up of the opposition is complex – in Tunisia, for instance, the protests began over the question of “respect” and economic hardship and then broadened – but their constituent parts are similar. Another parallel between the two is the marginal role played by political Islam. This, Joffe argued, flies in the face of all the expert analysis over the past decade that has pointed to Islamism as the major ideological current in the Arab world. Moreover neither the MB in Egypt and An-Nahda in Tunisia are pushing for a dominant political role – both are calling for pluralism and electoral democracy. In calling for pluralistic democracy An-Nahda is moving in the same direction as Islamist movements across the region, for instance in Morocco and Turkey.
A significant difference between Egypt and Tunisia is that in Tunisia the protests were (are) much more organised.
In Tunisia the established authorities are fighting back, but there is still a large argument going on and the future shape of the state’s political institutions remains an open question. In Egypt the counter-revolution is much more overt and the military seems to be more firmly in control.
Joffe takes the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia as evidence that the ‘domino effect – the idea that a revolt in one Middle Eastern state will quickly spread to engulf the entire region – is “almost certainly wrong”. Although the Egyptians uprising followed fairly quickly after the Tunisian one, in both cases the grievances and political demands driving the protests were decidedly local. Joffe sees no evidence that the pattern of events in either Egypt or Tunisia will be repeated in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Jordan, and the rest of the region. Yemen, for instance, is on the brink of civil war, not democratic revolution. The existence and form of popular revolts in those states will be determined by local conditions, not regional ones. I’m not convinced by this argument: the ‘domino effect’ does not, presumably, deny that uprisings will be provoked and shaped by local conditions, it argues that successful resistance in one state may inspire oppressed populations in others. Joffe himself recognises that the uprisings are significant in that they are completely “novel” and have “created an environment” across the region in which existing political institutions and ideologies can be questioned and alternatives imagined. That said he surely right to caution against the idea that if revolution happens in Egypt it will surely soon follow in, say, Saudi Arabia. The conditions in Saudi Arabia are significantly different – for one thing, unlike, in Egypt, there is no recent tradition of popular organisation and protest on which a future uprising could draw.
Joffe then discussed the reaction to the Egpytian revolt of outside powers, specifically the US and the EU.
The most striking feature about the Obama administration’s reaction has been its “timidity”. It tried to intervene directly last week, when the administration pushed for Mubarak to exit, but it was snubbed by the Egyptian military and by now-Vice President Omar Suleiman. Since then it was recognised that it can only suggest, nudge, persuade, but not control events, and has tended to try to avoid becoming deeply involved. In my view this analysis is overly generous to the US, which has plenty of leverage at its disposal and which has actively thrown its weight behind the Egyptian military and Suleiman.
The US’s principal concern is to see a return to regional “stability” so that its primary strategic interests – oil prices and Israeli security – are satisfied. The Egyptian army has said that it will continue to support the peace treaty with Israel, and if the army remains in power (as it likely will) after the popular uprising is over, it will continue to be US ally. It is “heavily dependent” on US military aid and has a confluence of interests with the US: it has no desire to fight another war with Israel, and it too wants to restore regional “stability”.
Joffe argues that American impotence in the face of the Egyptian uprising reflects a broader decline of US influence in the Middle East, considerable though it remains. This is partly a consequence of the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, but also of the rise of China and India as rival actors in the region.
Watching American television and reading American newspapers Joffe notes a worrying and growing detachment from reality, with the biggest concern seeming to be that Egypt will be taken over by the MB and possibly al-Qaeda. This is problematic in terms of how it will shape future US policy in the region. This analysis, in my view, greatly overstates the influence of the American public in shaping US foreign policy. It also ignores the fact that on many issues – for instance, on resolving the Iranian nuclear ‘crisis’ – the American public takes a much more reasonable and sober position than its formal representatives.
With regards to Europe: the Middle East is on Europe’s periphery, and since 2001 European states have been “obsessed” with the dangers of immigration from the M.E. This has led to a “securitisation” of immigration and foreign policy. Joffe recalled attending a recent meeting of the European Commission in Brussels, where officials were “profoundly sceptical” about events in Egypt and refused to endorse them. As one senior official told him, the Council feared that the uprising would bring political Islam to power, and that on the back of ‘moderate’ Islamism extremism was sure to follow. Joffe was scathing about this attitude – an approach that has “forgotten nothing and learnt nothing” – and argued that the EU is missing an opportunity to support genuine democratisation in the Middle East.
Events in Egypt are now moving from the “mass demonstration” phase to the “structured negotiation” phase, he argued. This involves the marginalisation of the protestors by their representatives, although mass protests will continue as a “constant reminder” to the negotiators of the limits to their wiggle room. Joffe suspects that the Egyptian uprising will not produce a “genuinely democratic” system but rather a system which retains the lineaments of autocracy – most notably the central role of the military – but which will be more responsive to and allow greater expression of popular sentiment.
Even if there are elections, decades of authoritarian rule in Egypt have left their imprint on civil society in the form of a lack of organised, politically experienced opposition organisations. But Joffe recalled Algeria in 1988, when the presidency reacted to popular unrest by instituting a multiparty political system. Within a month over 40 parties were created, reflecting a wide variety of concerns and ideological currents. So we can be confident that given the chance the current dearth of organised opposition groups in Egypt will not last for long.
Agreeing with Abdelrahman, Joffe pointed out that the Egyptian military has historically tended to refrain from directly interfering or participating in political demonstrations. It has a significant conscript element, which encourages restraint on the part of the leadership. Moreover as in Tunisia the army sees itself as an embodiment of the nation as a whole. It is an autonomous institution, deeply intertwined with but distinct from the regime.
Both Abdelrahman and Joffe agreed that Mubarak is a gonner. He is a phantom president – control now rests with Suleiman and the military. They may keep him around formally for a while, and wheel him out occasionally to make a statement, but real power no longer resides with him.
In the Q&A someone asked whether the uprisings could be taken as a validation of the Bush doctrine. No, replied Joffe, because the revolts are an example of indigenous democratic movements arising out of local conditions and concerns, not an example of democracy being externally imposed. Moreover despite the rhetoric there was “never any tangible evidence” of the Bush administration’s commitment to democracy. The one case when they had a real opportunity to demonstrate that commitment was the Palestinian election of Hamas in 2006. Far from supporting democracy on that occasion, the Bush administration’s response – and this was, Joffe emphasised, a “general” reaction not restricted to the ‘realists’ in the State Department – was to reject and subvert it. So the Bush administration’s commitment to democratisation was “never really sincere”.
Finally someone asked the obligatory question about the twitter. Both Joffe and Abdelrahman were dismissive. Yes, social media is a useful tool for communicating. No, it is not a core feature of the uprisings. When the Egyptian regime shut down the internet and mobile phone networks for two days the number of demonstrators on the streets increased.
Originally published at New Left Project