Op-Eds/Articles / Arab Politics

Democracy Uprisings Should Herald a New Dawn of Education Reform

Muhammad Faour Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2011

As the popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Arab countries achieve their primary goal of changing the political regime, they will soon face the urgent need to reform the education system as well as the economy.
Consolidation of political democracy and economic liberalization requires citizens who have appropriate knowledge, skills and values. As states democratize, good governance will promote quality education, an objective that most Arab education systems have failed to achieve.
Despite the rapid expansion in primary and secondary education, Arab schools continue to have high dropout and repetition rates, with graduates lacking the required skills and knowledge to compete successfully in the global job market or to pursue quality higher education.
Curriculum in most Arab states tends to be didactic, teacher-directed, and does little to foster critical thinking skills and creativity.
Shortages of qualified teachers, low levels of learning achievement as demonstrated by test scores, weaknesses in national learning assessments, and a lack of public accountability also plague many Arab education systems.
Students' academic performance is generally low, as demonstrated by the results of international tests. Students in the fourth and eighth grades who participated in the TIMSS international tests in mathematics and science in 2003 and 2007 scored, on average, significantly below average.
Fourth-graders who participated in the PISA test on reading, mathematics, and science in 2003 and 2009 performed at a similar level. Fifteen-year-old students from the Arab states who took the PIRLS international test on reading achievement in 2006 also scored well below average.
Arab states currently undergoing popular unrest have shown a weak political commitment to produce independent, creative, responsible students, as such citizens may be more likely to challenge authority — be it political, religious, or traditional. Such education systems are generally unwilling to promote social values that flourish in democratic societies. As a result, teachers do not give voice to diverse opinions, dulling attempts at informed debate and limiting citizens’ capacity to reform their governments.
Political reform in the emerging Arab democracies needs citizens who have mastered 21st century skills in their ways of thinking (innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and life-long learning); ways of working (communication and collaboration); tools for working (information literacy and information and communication technology, or ICT literacy); and ways of living in the world (local and global citizenship, and personal and social responsibility, including cultural awareness). The concepts of citizenship, empowerment, and community engagement are emerging as educational priorities for democracies.
Education for citizenship is an essential component of education reform. It encompasses knowledge and understanding of civics and the opportunities for participation in civil society, as well as ways in which the citizen may interact with and shape his or her own community and society. A responsible citizen may be defined as one who knows his or her legal rights and duties and how to contribute to the common good, and who can apply this knowledge to evaluate or justify the government’s policies and practices. Responsible citizenship, along with other civic values and attitudes, is first taught by parents, then by schools, starting in preschool or in primary grades.
Educating young Arabs for citizenship requires much more fundamental reform than what has so far been undertaken in education reform plans. It requires getting past several serious shortcomings in the Arab education and political systems.
These shortcomings begin at the individual student level, including low learning achievement; lack of creative, independent, and critical thinking; and lack of problem-solving skills. They also include the home or family level, which is often guided by authoritarianism, obedience to authority figures, limited freedom of expression, and dependence on a family network for prospective employment.
The shortcomings extend to the school level, where students are hindered by a lack of school autonomy, ineffective and traditional management, teacher-directed curriculum, a focus on knowledge of facts and concepts rather than analysis and critical thinking, a shortage of qualified teachers and learning resources, the absence of open discussions in classrooms, and limited opportunities for participation in governance processes.
More broadly, education challenges exist in the local community, with the dominance of authoritarian values, limited opportunities for participation in governance processes and decision making, constraints on freedom of speech and belief, and strong loyalty to one’s ethnic and/or religious group. Finally, at the national level, problems include poor governance in the ministries of education, nondemocratic regimes, a prevalence of corruption and lack of public accountability, constraints on freedom of speech and belief, fear of repression, substantial percentages of public workers who depend on the state for their livelihoods, and high rates of illiteracy and school dropouts in several countries.
To overcome those shortcomings, new democracies in the Arab world should be committed to comprehensive education reform, but particularly to citizenship education. Their governments should work with highly motivated educational practitioners from these countries and elicit support from community stakeholders at the school, local, and district levels, and from society at large.

Source: http://carnegie-mec.org/publications/?fa=44555

How new is Egypt’s “new” foreign policy?

Editor's Note: Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation.  You can read more from Barak Barfi at Project Syndicate and be sure to check it out on Facebook and Twitter.

By Barak Barfi

CAIRO – In the months since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, his successors have signaled a shift in foreign policy by reaching out to former adversaries.

Egypt’s government has welcomed Iranian diplomats and embraced the Palestinian group Hamas. Many interpret such moves as clear evidence of Egypt’s desire for a diplomacy that is not subordinate to American interests.

But Mubarak never entirely fit his detractors’ portrayal of him as an American lackey. In fact, Mubarak’s need to please his Saudi Arabian benefactors, not the United States, was paramount in his thinking. Although he sometimes supported American policies, Mubarak frequently rebuffed the U.S. when its positions did not align with his own.
Since the end of the October 1973 war, Arab-Israeli peace has been a cornerstone of America’s Middle East agenda. The U.S. often looked to Egypt, the most important and influential Arab country, to play a leading role in promoting this goal. And, when it suited him, Mubarak played his part. When the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat humiliated Mubarak before the U.S. Secretary of State and the international media by refusing to sign an annex to an Israeli-Palestinian accord brokered in Cairo, Mubarak told him, “Sign it, you son of a dog!”
On the other hand, when Arab public opinion opposed Palestinian concessions, Mubarak remained aloof from U.S. peace initiatives. For example, in 1996, he declined President Bill Clinton’s invitation to come to Washington, along with Arafat and the leaders of Israel and Jordan, to settle a bout of Palestinian violence. And when Clinton asked Mubarak to pressure Arafat to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal during negotiations at Camp David in 2000, he refused.
Mubarak had a rocky relationship with Israel, and held America’s closest Middle East ally at arm’s length throughout his presidency.
For almost ten of his 30 years in office, Egypt had no ambassador in Tel Aviv. Mubarak never made an official state visit to Israel, and he frequently refused Israeli prime ministers’ requests to come to Cairo.
When the U.S. sought to extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1994, Mubarak mobilized the Arab world against the initiative, because Israel refused to sign the NPT.
Instead, Mubarak’s relationship with the Saudis usually determined his foreign policy. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and threatened to attack Saudi Arabia, Mubarak quickly dispatched troops to defend the kingdom. He was keen to support the Saudis and their Persian Gulf allies, who provided him with a steady flow of aid and an outlet for surplus Egyptian labor.
Though Mubarak’s opposition to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991 happened to align with U.S. policy, he was unwilling to back other American campaigns against Arab leaders.
When President Ronald Reagan’s deputy national security adviser, John Poindexter, asked Mubarak to launch a joint U.S.-Egyptian attack against Libya in 1985, the Egyptian president scolded his visitor, saying, “Look, Admiral, when we decide to attack Libya, it will be our decision and on our timetable.”
Mubarak again refused to acquiesce in U.S. plans to isolate Libya in the 1990’s for its involvement in the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Instead of ostracizing Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi, Mubarak welcomed him to Cairo.
After the United Nations imposed an international flight ban against Libya in 1992, its land crossings with Egypt proved crucial to Libya’s economy (and possibly Gadhafi's political survival). Libya withstood the sanctions in part by importing food and oil infrastructure supplies via Egypt, and by exporting petroleum and steel with Mubarak’s help.
In fact, Mubarak’s Libya policy was driven largely by economic and security concerns, and rarely took U.S. interests into consideration. More than one million Egyptians worked in Libya, which was also a large export market. And Gadhafi was eager to help Mubarak subdue Islamist threats to the Egyptian regime. Unlike neighboring Sudan, which harbored Egyptian radicals, like Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who were bent on destabilizing the country, Libya turned them over to Mubarak.
While Gadhafi delivered terrorists to Mubarak, the Egyptian president declined American requests to do the same. After Palestinians in 1985 hijacked the Italian ship Achille Lauro, killed an American, and berthed in Egypt, the U.S. asked Mubarak to extradite them. But Mubarak refused, saying that Secretary of State George Shultz was “crazy” if he believed that Egypt would betray the Palestinian cause.
Egypt’s new leaders have inherited Mubarak’s dilemma – how to realize the country’s aspiration to lead the Arab world without angering its Saudi benefactors.
For this reason, the Egyptian-Iranian rapprochement will yield more photo opportunities than tangible results.
On opposite sides of religious and ethnic divides, a close bilateral relationship would seem unlikely under even the best circumstances. And, with Egypt in need of massive financial aid to offset the economic losses caused by its February revolution, its leaders can ill afford to alienate the Saudis, who view Iran, not Israel, as the gravest threat to regional stability.
Egypt is entering a new era. But the radical policy upheavals predicted by analysts will prove to be small tremors. Saudi interests will continue to weigh heavily on Egyptian foreign policy. And that, above all, means preserving the status quo.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of Barak Barfi. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011. For more from Barak Barfi, visit Project Syndicate.

The nuclear dilemmas of South Asia

Yogesh Joshi, 02nd June 2011

An accelerating nuclear arms race between a fragile Pakistani government aiming at a strategic balance with India and an Indian state that ignores its neighbor's security concerns is on the verge of spiraling out of control, says Yogesh Joshi

About the author

Yogesh Joshi is a research scholar at the Center for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament [6], School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

The first five months of the year 2011 do not augur well for the nuclear situation on the Indian sub-continent. During a meeting [7] of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) earlier this year, Pakistan - again - categorically rejected the proposed Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, the bone of contention being the imbalance between India and Pakistan in terms of fissile material. Without a guarantee that India will not use its stocks for the production of nuclear weapons in future, Pakistan feels compelled to continue its production of nuclear material as well as nuclear weapons to catch up with India and maintain the fragile balance in the region.
India on the other hand, disregarding Pakistani sensitivities, continued testing its [8] Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system, claiming that BMD has now been sufficiently developed to be fully integrated into its air defence framework by 2014. Pakistan reacted by test-firing a [9] short-range nuclear ballistic missile in April. The introduction of these missiles into the arsenal of Pakistan's military forces would turn South Asia into a host of tactical nuclear weapons – miniaturised nuclear weapons intended for frequent use against conventional armies, thereby lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict and hence increasing the threat of a nuclear fiasco.
The arms race contributes to the security dilemma in the region that is on the verge of spiraling out of control. The situation is bound to deteriorate further due to the complete neglect of the other party's security concerns on both sides. Against the background of the prevalence of terrorism in the region and the danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups the need to stop this arms race and mutual negligence is imperative.

Who’s dilemma?

It is true that India's continued production [10] of fissile material, successful testing of the BMD, establishment of an aggressive military doctrine [11] termed 'Cold Start', and avoidance of serious negotiations on Kashmir have made Pakistan extremely nervous. India's fissile material inventories are huge, totalling more than 600kg of weapons grade plutonium and 1300kg of reactor grade plutonium. Even after IAEA safeguards were put in place, thanks to the Indo-US nuclear deal, India’s fissile material production continues unabated. All heavy water reactors which produce reactor grade plutonium are not under IAEA's supervision. Moreover, the Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) programme - with a capability to produce large quantities of weapons grade plutonium - is entirely out of reach for inspections. Therefore, theoretically India could divert its fissile material to weapons production whenever it wishes to do so.
India also follows a strategy denying Pakistan any strategic space in the region. The BMD is directly motivated by the desire to blunt Pakistan's nuclear capability vis-a-vis India. The desire to emasculate Pakistan is also evident in the Indian Cold Start doctrine. Cold Start seeks to deliver a conventional punitive blow against Pakistan while avoiding a nuclear war. The fear in Pakistan is further aggravated by India's growing stocks of conventional weapons.
Pakistan, on the other hand, clearly focusses on the nuclear option. The integration of nuclear weapons into the basic security structure of Pakistan is on-going while nuclear red lines - thresholds under which a nuclear strike against the primary adversary India would be initiated - have been drastically reduced. Pakistan's national security discourse is mainly motivated by the revision of its borders with India and competition for regional supremacy. Therefore, nuclear weapons for Pakistan are not means to attain relative stability but a medium to challenge the status quo. As Shaun Gregory [12] suggests, Pakistan's preference is for a 'managed nuclear instability' in order to keep the pot of Kashmir and more broadly South Asia boiling for years to come. To this end, Pakistan has made nuclear weapons its primary asset. Today, the country claims the world's fourth largest nuclear arsenal and is striving hard to increase the numbers even further. The process of rapid nuclear expansion in a state already torn apart by fundamentalism and economic destitution portends extreme danger.

Neglecting the other

India seeks to isolate itself from the dilemmas faced by Pakistan. It claims that its fissile material inventories are meant for energy purposes; that BMD is defensive in nature; that Cold Start has never been officially recognised; and finally that Kashmir can be brought to the negotiating table once Pakistan makes good on its promises to stop terrorism.
However, remaining in such a state of denial cannot satisfy Pakistan. On the contrary, it signals a serious lack of intent on India’s part to even understand the difficult situation Pakistan is in. The current state of negotiations on strategic matters suggest that Pakistan hardly figures in India's nuclear thinking. Whereas Pakistan is most active in international forums incriminating its neighbour, India on the other hand seems to play the role of a deaf elephant.
Three arguments can account for India's indifference. First, India's emergence at the global stage and Pakistan's concomitant slump into a vortex of political instability and economic chaos has created an impression in India that Pakistan is no worthy adversary any longer. With India's growing economic and political room to manoeuvre, the role of Pakistan in its external security dynamics is waning except when it comes to the issue of terrorism. Moreover, India considers the nuclearisation of the subcontinent to have settled the border dispute once and for all. Therefore, Pakistan's role as a negotiator in territorial conflicts is further diminished.
Second, the tenor of India's nuclear programme has always been influenced by the prestige-seeking nature of its scientific community. If testing a nuclear device was the overall objective of Indian scientists in the last century, both the FBR programmes as well as BMD have become the symbols of the 21st century. Control over such strategic technologies and their association with national security provide the scientific community with an unprecedented access to political power. Arms control therefore does not augur well with India's scientific community.
Lastly, unlike during times when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee undertook the 'leap of faith' during the Lahore summit in 1999, today both India and Pakistan lack the leadership which could jump start a serious process of arms control in the region. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has shown some exemplary courage in starting a dialogue with Pakistan recently, the rapidly unfolding story of Pakistan's 'hand in glove' approach with international terrorism, evident in the killing of Osama bin Laden and the on-going trial of David Headley in connection with the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, has created a lot of skepticism [13] in India over the viability of a dialogue with Pakistan. On the other hand, in the case of Pakistan, it has often been futile to talk to the civilian government since the real seat of power and influence rests not in Islamabad but in the military garrisons of Rawalpindi. The civilian leadership barely exists and the true leaders of the country – the army generals - hardly want to talk to India.

Time for unilateral gestures

India needs to start acknowledging the unfolding security dilemma in South Asia. Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal along with fundamentalism on the rise poses a grave threat to India and the region as a whole, the resolution of which requires empathy with the other side's concerns and a building of trust.
Unilateral gestures can play a crucial role. First, the Indian government should disavow the Cold Start doctrine, which is even questioned by the Indian army itself: Whereas many high level army officers have supported the doctrine in the past, the current chief of the Indian Army has called it a figment [14] of India's think tank community. Moreover, there is a lack of coherence between the three defence services when it comes to fighting a limited war in the region. Both Navy and Air force blow their own, antagonistic trumpets: the former for air superiority and the latter for naval dominance. Cold Start has become a liability for the Indian government and has been used by Pakistan as an alibi for nuclear expansion.
Second, India’s objective in the region should be to maintain the offence-defence balance so that Pakistan is not prompted to increase its nuclear weapons arsenal drastically. Successful deployment of BMD in the region would pose an existential threat to Pakistan. Though India has a no first use policy, Pakistan has never accepted India's doctrine seriously. To stop Pakistan from unnecessary vertical proliferation, India must stop any further development of BMD. Such a move would send clear signals to Pakistan and the world that India is serious about maintaining the strategic balance in the region and does not seek to emasculate Pakistan. This would also embolden the civilian government vis-à-vis the military in Pakistan and motivate it to seek peace in the region.
Third, without understanding that Pakistan is a major stakeholder in the Kashmir conflict, India’s efforts to resolve the issue will remain futile. With growing unrest [15] in the Kashmir valley, the timely resolution of the issue has become an imperative. It is important to start serious talks on Kashmir also in order to provide an amicable environment to discuss the lingering nuclear question in South Asia.
India needs to realise that even though Pakistan may be a troublesome neighbour it is there to stay and has to be engaged. A 'blind leap of faith' in uncharted territories is at times a better strategy than conscious brinksmanship.

The author would like to thank Prof. Nicholas Wheeler, Dr. Meenakshi Gopinath and Seema Kakran for organising a workshop on Trust Building in Nuclear Worlds. This article is inspired by the ideas shared during the workshop.

Turkey as a model of democracy and Islam

Sami Zubaida, 30th May 2011

Subjects:

• International politics [1]
• Democracy and government [2]
• Culture [3]
• Turkey [4]
• Arab Revolutions [5]
• Sami Zubaida [6]

Democracies are about more than elections and majorities: they require genuine separation of powers, autonomous institutions and associations, all regulated by the rule of law. The current Turkish situation is the product of social and institutional patterns, now in question, in which multiple centres of institutional power confronted and checked one another, unlike the centralised and personalised regimes of much of the Arab world.

About the author

Sami Zubaida is emeritus professor [7] of politics and sociology at Birkbeck College, London.

In the diverse discourses on the ‘Arab spring’, Turkey often comes up as a positive model of democracy, and one which is harmonious with Islam. In that model Islam is friendly to democracy and distant from militant jihadism. The system is favourable to enterprise and open to world markets, and has achieved enviable economic growth and a degree of generalised prosperity. It is reassuring to the west: a friendly and capitalist Islamic democracy, at peace with its neighbours, and indeed a force for stability and problem-solving [8] in the Middle East.
The main demands and slogans of the oppositional and revolutionary movements in the Arab countries are to do with liberty, democracy, jobs and livelihood and an end to corruption. Islam does not appear to be an issue. But, of course, there are diverse Islamic elements in the field, notably the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and al-Nahda in Tunisia, those chiming in with the main thrust of the movement emphasising liberty and democracy. They are opposed by Salafi conservatives [9] for whom Islamic observances and disciplines are paramount, to be enforced by just government, and who reject alien and infidel models of society. This confrontation is now raging in Egypt. In these ideological fields, Turkey is regularly cited as a model of co-existence of Islam with democracy and pluralism, as well as a healthy capitalist economy.
I should like to discuss two issues: the present condition of Turkey is the result of historical trajectories of politics and society which are very different from those of the Arab states; and, is the rosy image of Turkish Islam and democracy accurate? The two are related.

Present conditions and past influences           

Turkey developed from the aftermath of World War 2 as an authoritarian state with electoral democracy. Elections and political parties actually functioned and there was alternation of government subject to election results. But the process was under strict monitoring and control by a powerful army upholding the principles of the Kemalist foundation [10], emphasising national unity, and therefore suppression of any regional or ethnic claims, mainly the Kurdish, and the principles of secularism. This latter did not actually banish religion from state functions, but subordinated it to state controls. The Religious Affairs Directorate, controlling mosques, schools and ritual functions and insuring political compliance, became one of the largest and best financed arms of government. Within this arrangement, Islam was Sunni Islam, and the considerable Alevi population [11] was marginalised, an issue which has acquired renewed significance in the present situation.
Turkish electoral democracy was subject to periodic disruption by the military, whenever the high command feared challenges to the Kemalist model of statist control and ‘secularism’, and the intensification of social conflict and violence. Military coups occurred in 1960, 71 and 80, and most recently in 1997 when a warning from the military members of the National Security Council (a body of government ministers and military commanders, and an instrument of military control) regarding the government coalition which included the pro-Islamic Refah Party [12], led to its resignation. It is important to note that this military guardianship enjoyed wide popular support. Turkish nationalism, always acute and often xenophobic and paranoid, was firmly supportive of the military, and opinion polls  regularly revealed this support. During the 1970s and 80s, Islamic political groups were close or convergent with extreme nationalists against the leftist movements, the Kurds and the Alevis, leading to escalating and violent confrontations and disorders, which were part of the pretext for the military coup of 1980.

The Ozal opening

The restoration of electoral democracy in 1983, after the 1980 coup, brought to power Turgut Ozal [13], a modern and modernising conservative, a former functionary at the World Bank, with personal Islamic roots and affiliations. His policies chimed in with global neo-liberalism and the pressures on Turkey to open up its economy, institute structural reforms, including privatisation of what has been a highly state- and military-controlled economy. Unlike most Arab countries, notably Egypt, Turkey has always had an independent business bourgeoisie, though restricted by state enterprise and regulation. Ozal’s reforms strengthened and expanded this bourgeoisie, especially in the provincial centres of Anatolia [14], a conservative and mostly religious bourgeoisie, distinct from and resentful of the cosmopolitan and secular bourgeoisie of Istanbul and Ankara. Ozal’s regime was much more tolerant of religious manifestations: Ozal himself had been affiliated to Naqshabandi Sufi [15] groups, strictly suppressed by Ataturk, but functioning in private networks and incubating many of the Islamic social and religious movements that were to come to prominence from the 1970s. Ozal also broke many of the Kemalist cultural taboos, most notably in patronising so-called Arabesque music and associating with its prominent singers. This genre had been excluded from the official canon and from state broadcasting, qualifying as ‘oriental’ music banned by the Kemalist functionaries. The Istanbul bourgeoisie of that era, worried about the Anatolian ‘invasion’ of their city, concocted the stereotype of the Anatolian nouveau riche frequenting Lahmacun saloons [16] (named after an Anatolian/Armenian/Arab dough crust topped with spiced meat, now dubbed ‘Turkish pizza’ in European cities), drinking whiskey and enjoying Arabesque songs.
The Ozal reforms initiated the opening up of the Turkish economy to world markets, a development which has proved highly beneficial to Turkish capitalism, offering opportunities for companies and entrepreneurs in trade and contracts in the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of Europe. Small businesses in provincial centres were among the main beneficiaries of these developments, many growing to considerable importance, and now dubbed the ‘Anatolian tigers [17]’. This is also the milieu for the cultivation of conservative Islam, with some Sufi connections. They became the main constituency for the Islamic political parties, favouring stability and social disciplines, quite distinct from and antithetical to the jihadist Islam feared by the west: hence the benign consideration of Turkish Islamic democracy. This is especially the case after the defeat of the more ideological and strident politics of Necmettin Erbakan [18], the first charismatic leader of the Islamic parties of the 1970s to 90s and frequent partner in coalition governments of the period. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan [19] and Abdullah Gul [20] and their Justice and Development Party [21] (AKP) emerged as the modern, reformist, capitalist face of pro-Islamic politics, often preferring to characterise themselves as a conservative party than as Islamic. Their rule, with repeated electoral successes since 2002, is credited with radical democratisation of Turkish state and society through legal and constitutional as well as institutional reforms. These reforms were aided by the process of negotiating accession to the European Union.

The European Union

There was an odd alliance between the AKP and the European Union. The Kemalist establishment and institutions, primarily the army command and its representation in the National Security Council, but also the judiciary and the media, were the main antagonist of the Islamists and the AKP. The authoritarian and repressive controls of this establishment restricted the range of legitimate expression and association. Vague legal formulations of offences such as undermining or insulting Turkishness or threatening national unity or abrogating the laicity of the state, were all used to prosecute Kurdish activists, human rights campaigners, those pursuing discussions of the Armenian massacres of the early twentieth century, as well as disapproved religious manifestations and parties, including veiled women in public institutions. The aspirations for EU accession were widely shared in both the secularist establishment and the Islamic party. The conditions imposed by the EU regarding democratisation, the so-called ‘Copenhagen criteria [22]’ exerted pressures for legal and institutional liberalisation which favoured the AKP. Military interference and the threat of coups diminished, and the range of options for military commands were severely restricted. This opened the way for reforms.

Multiple power centres: checks and balances

Here we come to a crucial characteristic of the Turkish political field post 1983 which makes comparisons with Arab states (though not necessarily Iran) inappropriate. The Kemalist establishment of the army, the judiciary, much of the press and the secular bourgeoisie, remained powerful and vociferous. But their dominance was being eroded with the increasing prominence of Islamic parties, institutions, media, education and public spaces, aided by electoral successes and the EU-influenced liberalisation. Electoral success was brought about through meticulous grass roots organisation, aided by social welfare networks at neighbourhood level and community organisation, a feature of all Muslim forces in the region. This contrasted with the complacent and fragmentary efforts of the traditional secular parties. Limited liberalisation opened up spaces for Kurdish activism. The net result was a situation in which there were multiple centres of power and influence, confronting and checking one another. None of those centres was liberal or unambiguously ‘democratic’, and the repressive and vaguely formulated laws continued to operate. Yet, the fact that none of those centres was totally dominant introduced measures of liberty and latitude, which allowed diverse forces, including human rights and Kurdish advocacy to function, and to challenge the draconian nationalist impositions. Judicial persecution of liberal intellectuals and human rights activists, as well as of religious manifestations, faced increasing and sometimes successful challenges, aided by European institutions and public opinion. Extreme nationalists resorted to violence, notably in the assassination in 2007 of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink [23] in the middle of Istanbul. Nationalist violence continued to feature in relation to Kurdish [24] issues and regions. A crucial element in this field is the rise and increasing power of the Anatolian business elite, socially conservative and economically liberal, aided by the opening up of the Turkish economy to international markets, and the business opportunities in neighbouring countries. The ‘Anatolian tigers’ are part of the power base of the AKP party and of Islamic communal and conservative associations.
None of the Arab states, except Lebanon in a very different pattern, featured any elements which could remotely approach this pluralism of centres of power. Iran, especially after the Iraq war and the death of Khomeini in 1989, exhibited elements of this plurality and contention of power centres, notably during the Khatami presidency [25] (1997-2005), but in a very different political system. This plurality was considerably curtailed with the subsequent rise to dominance of a security state coalition under Ahamadinejad. The Turkish model, then, is quite inappropriate for the Arab countries in which the ruling regime holds dominant control over all centres, and bypasses state and economic institutions in personalistic networks of family, clan, patronage and cronyism. The removal of the heads of those regimes in Egypt and Tunisia has, so far, left much of the regime and its rickety institutions in place. Whatever government is brought in by elections, free or not, will inherit the opportunities and constraints of this situation. Reform remains an uphill struggle, especially under adverse economic, demographic and social conditions.

Authoritarian creep?

The entrenchment of the AKP in power after repeated, and probably continuing, electoral success, is now seriously encroaching on the plurality of power centres checking one another. In policy and legislation which seem to be steps in greater democratisation, the AKP is acquiring greater powers for the executive (itself) at the cost of the other centres. The extensive powers of the army command have been considerably curtailed. Constitutional amendments and legal reforms have given the government and the President powers over the appointment and management of the judiciary. The government has also been able to slot its appointees into the important institutions and bureaucracies of government, notably education and higher education. All past governments in Turkey, and the components of their coalitions had engaged in infiltrating their appointees into bureaucracy, police and education. The AKP, ruling alone without coalition, and ruling continuously since 2002, has been able to fill important posts consistently and cumulatively.
Backing the AKP is the Gulen movement [26], a conservative religious organisation with extensive wealth and power, extending its educational and charitable activity far and wide in Turkey and beyond. Its superior educational institutions, at all levels, have been producing graduates with qualifications for a wide variety of government service as well as business and the professions. It is widely believed that these constitute networks of influence favouring the AKP and social conservatism. A book by a journalist, Ahmet Sik [27],  documenting the Gulen network in the security services was recently confiscated by police and the author arrested. He was one of several journalists arrested on the accusation of being associated with a 2007 military conspiracy to overturn the government, the so-called Ergenekon conspiracy [28]. This has been used as a pretext for arrest of many public figures, detained without trial. In this respect the AKP in government is showing itself as a worthy heir of the Kemalist establishment. Critics of the government and its personnel in the media have been harassed and intimidated, sometimes sending in the tax inspectors to assess crippling sums in supposedly unpaid dues. Commentators have noted parallels with Russia and Putin in these respects.
These authoritarian developments are, in themselves, unrelated to the Islamic roots of the AKP: as the comparisons with Russia indicate, they are features of electoral authoritarian regimes, using electoral popularity as a mandate for executive control. Democracy is about more than elections and majorities: they require genuine separation of powers, autonomous institutions and associations, all regulated by the rule of law. There are, however, other aspects of authoritarianism which are related to religion.
Religious conservative groups, whether Muslim or Christian or other, have always sought to impose moralistic controls on family, sexuality and personal conduct. They also seek to control and censor cultural productions in conformity with religious doctrine and ‘respect for religion’. Legislation to those effects is difficult in Turkey, being under the watch of European institutions. Still, in 2004, the AKP parliamentary majority, supported by Erdogan, introduced legislation criminalising adultery. Erdogan backed down in the face European objections and widespread protests. By 2005 it became clear that EU accession would be unlikely in the foreseeable future, which lowered the pressure on the AKP to conform to European sentiment. Will this make it more likely for future moralistic legislation? Apart from the law, however, there are local, municipal and communal pressures towards moralistic conformity. Alcohol consumption has always been an emblematic target for Islamists everywhere. After the success of the then Refah Party in the 1994 municipal elections in Istanbul, the mayor of Beyoglu [29], the prime cosmopolitan entertainment district of Istanbul, tried to restrict the visibility of drinking by requiring establishments to hide drinkers behind curtains. This was greeted by outrage, demonstrations, and threats by the military, which forced a speedy withdrawal. That was a different age. Now, there are many reports of bans and restrictions on bars and liquor shops in many provinces, though obviously not in the main urban centres. The taxes on alcohol, however, have been raised in recent years.
Two conclusions can be drawn from the foregoing: the connection of Islam to democracy in Turkey is unique to the particular history and institutional pluralism of the country, and not applicable to any of the Arab neighbours; and that pluralism is now threatened by the repeated electoral successes of the AKP, establishing, in effect, the bases for a majoritarian authoritarianism [30], at both the institutional and the communal levels. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has championed democracy and pluralism in its proclamations over the past years and to the present. But what do they understand by ‘democracy’? They are ambiguous and contradictory over issues of women and Christians, and over questions of cultural production, freedom of expression and ‘respect for religion’, all harbingers of authoritarian moralism. ‘Democracy’ then becomes majoritarian authoritarianism.

May 28, 2011

The Weak Foundations of Arab Democracy

By TIMUR KURAN

Durham, N.C.
THE protesters who have toppled or endangered Arab dictators are demanding more freedoms, fair elections and a crackdown on corruption. But they have not promoted a distinct ideology, let alone a coherent one. This is because private organizations have played only a peripheral role and the demonstrations have lacked leaders of stature.
Both limitations are due to the longstanding dearth, across the Arab world, of autonomous nongovernmental associations serving as intermediaries between the individual and the state. This chronic weakness of civil society suggests that viable Arab democracies — or leaders who could govern them — will not emerge anytime soon. The more likely immediate outcome of the current turmoil is a new set of dictators or single-party regimes.
Democracy requires checks and balances, and it is largely through civil society that citizens protect their rights as individuals, force policy makers to accommodate their interests, and limit abuses of state authority. Civil society also promotes a culture of bargaining and gives future leaders the skills to articulate ideas, form coalitions and govern.
The preconditions for democracy are lacking in the Arab world partly because Hosni Mubarak and other Arab dictators spent the past half-century emasculating the news media, suppressing intellectual inquiry, restricting artistic expression, banning political parties, and co-opting regional, ethnic and religious organizations to silence dissenting voices.
But the handicaps of Arab civil society also have historical causes that transcend the policies of modern rulers. Until the establishment of colonial regimes in the late 19th century, Arab societies were ruled under Shariah law, which essentially precludes autonomous and self-governing private organizations. Thus, while Western Europe was making its tortuous transition from arbitrary rule by monarchs to democratic rule of law, the Middle East retained authoritarian political structures. Such a political environment prevented democratic institutions from taking root and ultimately facilitated the rise of modern Arab dictatorships.
Strikingly, Shariah lacks the concept of the corporation, a perpetual and self-governing organization that can be used either for profit-making purposes or to provide social services. Islam’s alternative to the nonprofit corporation was the waqf, a trust established in accordance with Shariah to deliver specified services forever, through trustees bound by essentially fixed instructions. Until modern times, schools, charities and places of worship, all organized as corporations in Western Europe, were set up as waqfs in the Middle East.
A corporation can adjust to changing conditions and participate in politics. A waqf can do neither. Thus, in premodern Europe, politically vocal churches, universities, professional associations and municipalities provided counterweights to monarchs. In the Middle East, apolitical waqfs did not foster social movements or ideologies.
Starting in the mid-19th century, the Middle East imported the concept of the corporation from Europe. In stages, self-governing Arab municipalities, professional associations, cultural groups and charities assumed the social functions of waqfs. Still, Arab civil society remains shallow by world standards.
A telling indication is that in their interactions with private or public organizations, citizens of Arab states are more likely than those in advanced democracies to rely on personal relationships with employees or representatives. This pattern is reflected in corruption statistics of Transparency International, which show that in Arab countries relationships with government agencies are much more likely to be viewed as personal business deals. A historically rooted preference for personal interactions limits the significance of organizations, which helps to explain why nongovernmental organizations have played only muted roles in the Arab uprisings.
A less powerful business sector also hindered democracy. The Middle East reached the industrial era with an atomistic private sector unequipped to compete with giant enterprises that had come to dominate the global economy. Until then, Arab businesses consisted exclusively of small, short-lived enterprises established under Islamic partnership law. This was a byproduct of Islam’s egalitarian inheritance system, which aimed to spread wealth. Successful enterprises were typically dissolved when a partner died, and to avoid the consequent losses Arab businessmen kept their enterprises both small and transitory.
Arab businesses had less political clout than their counterparts in Western Europe, where huge, established companies contributed to civil society directly as a political force against arbitrary government. They also did so indirectly by supporting social causes. For example, during industrialization, major European businesses financed political campaigns, including the mass education and antislavery movements.
Since the late 19th century, commercial codes transplanted from abroad have enabled Arabs to form large, durable enterprises like major banks, telecommunications giants and retail chains. Still, Arab companies tend to be smaller relative to global norms, which limits their power vis-à-vis the state. Although large Western corporations have been known to suppress political competition and restrict individual rights, in Arab countries it is the paucity of large private companies that poses the greater obstacle to democracy.
Despite these handicaps, there is some cause for optimism when it comes to democratization in the Middle East. The Arab world does not have to start from scratch. A panoply of private organizations are already present, though mainly in embryonic form. And if the current turmoil produces regimes more tolerant of grassroots politics and diversity of opinion, more associations able to defend individual freedoms will surely arise.
Moreover, the cornerstones of a modern economy are in place and widely accepted. Economic features at odds with Shariah, like banks and corporations, were adopted sufficiently long ago to become part of local culture. Their usefulness makes them appealing even to Islamists who find fault with other features of modernity.
Over the last 150 years, the Arab world has achieved structural economic transformations that took Europe a millennium. Its economic progress, whatever the shortcomings, has been remarkable. If political progress has lagged, this is partly because forming strong nongovernmental organizations takes time. Within a generation or two, as the economic transformations of the past century-and-a-half continue to change the way citizens interact with organizations, insurmountable pressure for democracy may yet arise even in those corners of the Arab world where civil society is weakest.
A stronger civil society alone will not bring about democracy. After all, private organizations can promote illiberal and despotic agendas, as Islamist organizations that denounce political pluralism and personal freedoms demonstrate. But without a strong civil society, dictators will never yield power, except in the face of foreign intervention.
Independent and well-financed private organizations are thus essential to the success of democratic transitions. They are also critical to maintaining democracies, once they have emerged. Indeed, without strong private players willing and able to resist undemocratic forces, nascent Arab democracies could easily slip back into authoritarianism.

Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and political science at Duke, is the author of “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East.”

In Obama's European Trip, Mideast Echoes

Interviewee:	Charles A. Kupchan, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow
Interviewer:	Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

May 20, 2011

President Barack Obama's six-day trip to Europe is intended to reinforce the transatlantic relationship and find common cause on how to address the changes convulsing the Mideast and North Africa, says CFR's European expert, Charles A. Kupchan. "It's really going to be an effort to repeatedly put out the message that the transatlantic relationship is alive and well," says Kupchan, "and then leveraging that broader message to address some of the specific issues on the table, including Libya and support for democracy in the Middle East." Obama will also deal with discontent in the European Union, manifested mainly in Germany, over the bailouts and the eurozone crisis, and he will meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to discuss persuading the Russians to agree to joint missile defense with the United States.
President Obama leaves Monday for a trip that will take him to Ireland; the UK for a state visit; to Deauville, France, for a G8 meeting; and then to Poland. What is the main purpose of this trip?
The headline for the trip will be the importance of the transatlantic community and the enduring bond between the United States and Europe. There have been concerns from the beginning that the Obama administration had downgraded the importance of the transatlantic link. The countries of Central Europe were particularly concerned about the so-called "reset" policy of improving relations with Russia, worried that that rapprochement with Moscow was coming at the expense of their own priorities. The trip also comes as the culmination of a long effort by the Obama administration to say "No, that is a misperception and the United States today values Europe and the transatlantic link as much as it ever has." But at the same time, the president will want to stress that this bond between the two sides of the Atlantic increasingly has to focus beyond the Atlantic zone, and in particular on the Middle East and North Africa.
The Middle East speech that the president gave on Thursday was in some respects an open advocacy in advance of the G8 meeting [Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the United States] for the need for concerted transatlantic action on a new aid and trade package with the region and the importance of standing firmly beyond the forces of liberalization across the Middle East.

The kinds of issues that will be under discussion will be debt forgiveness, new efforts to stimulate private enterprise, and in general a broad discussion about what the United States and Europe can do together to jump start the foundations of a more competitive and dynamic economy [in the Mideast].

The Middle East will clearly figure prominently at the G8 meeting. Will he be seeking to get the Europeans to push for more aid?
Yes. The Libya operation will come up in Britain and in Deauville at the G8 because the main players [France, the UK, the United States, and Italy] in that air campaign will be present. There will be an assessment of how the campaign is going and what can be done to increase the pressure on Muammar Qaddafi to step down, who should be doing what, what's the appropriate division of labor in the coalition. The G8, in contrast to the G20, has more of a political role even though it is still generally seen as an economic organization.
You'll have a discussion at Deauville also of the broader political strategy for the Middle East coupled with a set of concrete steps taken to support economic development in the Middle East, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt, which are the vanguard of the so-called Arab Spring. And the kinds of issues that will be under discussion will be debt forgiveness, new efforts to stimulate private enterprise, and in general a broad discussion about what the United States and Europe can do together to jumpstart the foundations of a more competitive and dynamic economy. The president on Thursday gave a statistic that's quite startling: that if you take out oil exports, the Middle East as a whole has a total export value the size of Switzerland. That gives some sense of the scale of the work that needs to be done to modernize the economies in the Middle East.
In the president's speech he also talked about the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, and he kind of bluntly told the Palestinians that it will be fruitless for them to press at September's General Assembly for the approval of a Palestinian state without having negotiated it first with Israel. In other words, he indicated the United States would try to block it if they push ahead. Does he have the support of the Europeans and other members of the G8 on this?
France and the UK have indicated that they might support a Palestinian bid for statehood in the UN if negotiations do not in the meantime yield progress. Paris and London appear to be putting pressure on the Israeli government to advance the peace talks. Germany and Italy have indicated that they would not be prepared to support a unilateral declaration of statehood by the Palestinians. The United States, as you say, has made clear it opposes a unilateral move by the Palestinians.
What about the visit to the UK? Is the Anglo-American "special relationship" as strong as ever?
One of the reasons that Obama is going to the UK and is having a state visit--this is Obama's first state visit during his presidency--is in many respects to signify that the special relationship between Britain and the United States is alive and well. In addition to the broad concern in Europe that it lost the privileged place in American strategy, the British in particular felt that they no longer were the go-to country when the United States wanted to do business in the world. Obama is clearly saying, "You're still number one, this special relationship is as important today as it has been in the past." That is the broad message the president is going to try and keep the headlines of the trip hitched to.
This is not going to be a trip that's in the weeds; this is not going to be a trip where there will be daily announcements of specific policy initiatives. It's really going to be an effort to repeatedly put out the message that the transatlantic relationship is alive and well and then leveraging that broader message to address some of the specific issues on the table, including Libya and support for democracy in the Middle East. The stop in Warsaw will be useful in that respect because the president will encourage the Poles and others to draw on their own experience in transitioning from the Soviet bloc to market democracy, and to draw on that experience in helping the Middle East. The president specifically said on Thursday that we will launch enterprise funds for the Middle East modeled on those that successfully helped capitalism take root in central Europe.

To the degree that Obama can help calm nerves and make very clear how important the European project is to the United States and to the transatlantic community, he might be able to lend a helping hand.

At the G8 meeting, he will be meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Germany has almost ostentatiously stayed out of the NATO involvement in Libya. What's the mood in Germany like these days toward the United States?
The mood in Germany right now is irritable and inward, and it's not the United States that's the cause. It's the eurozone crisis, and the trajectory of the European Union as a whole. The decision by Germany not to join the Libya operation and to abstain from the vote in the UN Security Council was a sign of a Germany that really is subject right now to considerable discontent politically. Merkel has been struggling with weakening public support, and in many respects she used her opposition to the Libya operation as a way of trying to buck up her domestic situation, and it really hasn't helped much. The core of the problem is that the German electorate is very uncomfortable with the bailouts for Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, which has caused a broader discontent about European integration as a whole. This discontent is taking place not just in Germany but right across the European Union, and it manifests itself in part by the surging electoral strength of far right parties, from Denmark to the Netherlands to Sweden to Hungary to Finland.
One of the issues that will be interesting to keep an eye on next week is this: Does Obama tip-toe into this issue? In many respects, the United States doesn't have a dog in the fight. This is a European issue, but at the same time the United States cares very deeply about the integrity of the eurozone and the stability of the euro. I'm sure that at least behind the scenes Obama will be talking to Merkel and other European leaders about the necessity of getting the bailout system firm and efficient to stabilize the euro. And it would also not be unhelpful for Obama to make very clear that the United States strongly supports the European Union and the project of European integration, because this is a moment of second guessing and introspection across Europe. To the degree that Obama can help calm nerves and make very clear how important the European project is to the United States and to the transatlantic community, he might be able to lend a helping hand.
In France, is he going to come under a lot of heat over the arrest in New York of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn?
It is entirely plausible he will get asked about the case at a press conference, but it will not in any way be a large issue during the trip. In France, Obama is going to try to keep the focus on the broader issues of aid in the Middle East. Also we will see missile defense come up because Obama has a bilateral with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the margins at the G8, and they are engaged in a discussion about the Russian buy-in to missile defense.
When he gets to Central Europe, there will be very little attention on Strauss-Kahn. There the focus will be on the American commitment to Central Europe, and it's worth mentioning that his visit coincides with a summit of Central and Eastern European leaders. Over twenty other leaders will be there, he will have dinner with them, he will stress the American commitment to the region and probably talk about a new initiative to base a squadron of American fighter aircraft in Poland. The Poles have always looked to get Uncle Sam on Polish territory, and this is one way of doing that. Another issue that's likely to come up is the visa waiver question; the Poles long to be able to travel to the United States without getting a visa. Obama's been working on that front, and as far as I know we don't yet have a resolution.

A Fourth Wave or False Start?

Democracy After the Arab Spring

Larry Diamond

May 22, 2011

The decades-long political winter in the Arab world seemed to be thawing early this year as mass protests toppled Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February. It appeared as though one rotten Arab dictatorship after another might fall during the so-called Arab Spring. Analogies were quickly conjured to 1989, when another frozen political space, Eastern Europe, saw one dictatorship after another collapse. A similar wave of democratic transitions in the Arab world was finally possible to imagine, particularly given the extent to which previous transformations had been regional in scope: Portugal, Spain, and Greece all democratized in the mid-1970s; much of Latin America did shortly thereafter; Korea and Taiwan quickly followed the Philippines’ political opening in 1986; and then a wave of change in sub-Saharan Africa began in 1990. All of those were part of the transformative “third wave” of global democratization. In March, many scholars and activists reasonably imagined that a “fourth wave” had begun.
Two months later, however, a late spring freeze has seemingly hit some areas of the region. And it could be a protracted one. Certainly, each previous regional wave of democratic change had to contend with authoritarian hard-liners, opposition divisions, and divergent national trends. But most of the Arab political openings are closing faster and more harshly than happened in other regions -- save for the former Soviet Union, where most new democratic regimes quickly drifted back toward autocracy.
If Tunisia still provides grounds for cautious optimism, the Egyptian situation is already deeply worrying. Its senior officer corps, which currently controls the government, does not want to facilitate a genuine democratic transition. It will try to prevent it by generating conditions on the ground that discredit democracy and make Egyptians (and U.S. policymakers) beg for a strong hand again. The ruling officers have turned a blind eye to mounting religious and sectarian strife (and an alarming explosion in crime). The military has spent enormous effort arresting thousands of peaceful protesters in Tahrir Square and trying them in military tribunals over the last two months. (In April, one such detainee, a blogger named Maikel Nabil, was sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting the military establishment.”) Yet it claims that it cannot rein in rising insecurity. Many Egyptians see this as part of the military’s grand design to undermine democracy before it takes hold.
The parliamentary elections slated for September are unlikely to help: New political forces have no chance of being able to build competitive party and campaign structures in time. The Muslim Brotherhood, which initially said it would only contest a third of the parliamentary seats, has now announced its intention to contest half of all seats, forming a new political party (Freedom and Justice) for the purpose. If the electoral system retains its highly majoritarian nature, it might well win a thumping majority of the seats it contests (perhaps 40 percent in all), with most of the rest going to local power brokers and former stalwarts of the Mubarak-era ruling party, the National Democratic Party.

Both theory and political experience teach that regimes with spent legitimacy do not last, and the legitimacy of the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni dictators is utterly depleted.

Elsewhere in the region, Bahrain’s minority Sunni monarchy opted to crush peaceful protests and arrest and torture many of those with whom it might have negotiated some future power-sharing deal. With active Iranian support and a bizarre degree of American and Israeli acceptance, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad unleashed a slow-motion massacre that could go on for weeks or even months. In Yemen, the government is paralyzed, food prices are rising, and the country is drifting. Having seen the fate of Mubarak, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is playing for time, but his legitimacy is irretrievably drained, and he lacks the ability to mobilize repressive force on the scale of Assad’s.
Of course, not every country in the region has been affected by the apparent freeze and some could still avoid it. Jordan and Morocco are not yet in crisis but could be soon. Both countries face the same conditions that brought down seemingly secure autocracies in Tunisia and Egypt -- mounting frustration with corruption, joblessness, social injustice, and closed political systems. Not yet facing mass protests, Jordan’s King Abdullah is in a position to lead a measured process of democratic reform from above to revise electoral laws, rein in corruption, and grant considerably more freedom. Yet there is little sign that he has the vision or political self-confidence to modernize his country in this way.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI is still domestically revered and internationally cited as a reformer, but he is even weaker and more feckless than Abdullah. He has been unwilling to rein in the deeply venal interests that surround the monarchy, or ease the country’s extraordinary concentration of wealth and business ownership. Instead, his security forces, narrow circle of royal friends, and oligopolistic business cronies fend off demands for accountability and reform, further isolate the king, and aggravate the political storm that is gathering beneath a comparatively calm surface.
For now, both monarchies are treading familiar water: launching committees to study political reform but never moving toward real political change. This game cannot last forever. As a former Jordanian official recently commented to me privately: “Everyone is expecting serious changes to the way the king rules the country, and if these changes don’t happen, the system will be in trouble. The king can’t keep talking about reform without implementing it.”
Scholars of the Arab world had been arguing for years that the region’s various repressive regimes (not least Saudi Arabia’s Al Saud dynasty, which keeps several thousand princes on the take) would either pursue democratic reform, or rot internally until they were overthrown. Ultimately, the options remain the same for the regimes that have avoided revolution this year. Those who have reasserted authoritarianism will find only temporary reprieve. Both theory and political experience teach that regimes with spent legitimacy do not last, and the legitimacy of the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni dictators is utterly depleted. They will surely be overthrown if not now, then in coming years. The Jordanian and Moroccan monarchies, however, could still survive if they spend what remains of their political legitimacy on democratic reform. In other words, even if the Arab spring comes in fits and starts, it will eventually bring fundamental political change. But whether democracy is the end result depends in part on how events unfold and how regimes and international actors engage the opposition forces.
Short of the wars that have periodically broken out in the region, the United States has never faced a more urgent set of opportunities and challenges there: real prospects for democratic development exist alongside the very real risks of Islamist ascension, political chaos, and humanitarian disaster. Countries across the Arab world differ widely in their political structures and social conditions, and the United States cannot pursue a one-size-fits-all strategy. But there are a few basic principles that it should apply everywhere. As it has generally and in a number of specific cases, the Obama administration must explicitly and consistently denounce all violent repression of peaceful protest. And it should enhance the credibility of those words by tying them to consequences. For example, in Libya, the United States identified and froze the overseas assets of top officials who were responsible for brutality. Additionally, it imposed travel bans on them and their family members, and asked Europe to do the same. In the past few days, the Obama administration has also moved to freeze the personal assets of Assad and other top Syrian officials. In extreme cases -- Libya is one, and Syria has now become another -- the United States can press the United Nations Security Council to refer individuals to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
When Arab governments turn arms against peaceful protesters, the United States and Europe should stop supplying them with weapons. Western countries have been selling (or giving) regimes, such as Saleh’s in Yemen, the tools of repression, including tear gas, ammunition, sniper rifles, close-assault weapons, and rockets and tanks. Although Saleh may have been a valuable asset in the fight against terrorism at one time, he has become a liability. By ending such trade, the United States would firmly send the message to the leaders of Bahrain (another recipient) and Yemen that if they are going to violently assault and arbitrarily arrest peaceful demonstrators for democracy, they are at least not going to continue doing so with U.S. guns.
For now, there is an urgent need for mediation to break the impasse between rulers and their oppositions and to find ways to ease the region’s remaining dictators out of power. Recognizing the need for an active UN role during the Arab uprising, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has begun to dispatch experienced and talented UN staff to engage in dialogue with different groups in Yemen and elsewhere. These diplomats can help develop possible political accommodations with the protesters. The United States should encourage the UN to try to mediate these conflicts, reconcile deeply divided forces within political oppositions, and help governments pave the way for credible elections. Because it is more neutral, the UN is the international actor best suited to mediate as well as convene experts on institutional design and help supply technical support for drafting constitutions.
American diplomats will have their own role to play: They can channel financial and programmatic support and provide another venue for different actors to meet and discuss differences. They should also speak out for human rights, civil society, and the democratic process. Such expressions of moral and practical support have made a significant difference in transitional situations in other countries, such as Chile, the Philippines, Poland, and South Africa. The Arab world has its own distinct sensitivities, but the ongoing uprisings present an unusual opportunity for U.S. ambassadors to join with representatives of other democracies to lean on Arab autocrats and aid Arab democrats.
The United States should help Arab democrats get the training and financial assistance they need to survive while urging them to cooperate with one another. This does not just mean more grants to civil society organizations. There is, of course, a need for such funding, but too much U.S. money thrown at these groups will discredit them as “American pawns” or promote corruption. Aid should be pooled among multiple donors, provide core (rather than project-related) funding for organizations with a proven track record of advancing democratic change, and must be carefully monitored to ensure that it is being used effectively.

Western countries have been selling (or giving) regimes, such as Saleh’s in Yemen, the tools of repression, including tear gas, ammunition, sniper rifles, close-assault weapons, and rockets and tanks.

Finally, given its enormous demographic weight and political influence in the Arab world, as Egypt goes, so will go the region. Engaging Egypt will prove vital to any larger strategy of fostering democratic change in the Arab world. Beyond aid and vigilant monitoring of the political process, the United States must deliver a clear message to the Egyptian military that it will not support a deliberate sabotage of the democratic process, and that a reversion to authoritarianism would have serious consequences for the U.S.-Egyptian bilateral relationship, including for future flows of U.S. military aid. The United States cannot allow the Egyptian military to play the cynical double game that the Pakistani military has, or Egypt may become another Pakistan in two senses: an overbearing military may hide behind the façade of democracy to run the country, and the military may consort with our friends one day and our enemies -- radical Islamists within Egypt and Hamas outside it -- the next, to show it cannot be taken for granted.
This period of change in the Arab world will not be short or neatly circumscribed. Not a continuous thaw or freeze, the coming years will see cycles -- ups and downs in a protracted struggle to define the future political shape of the Arab world. The stakes for the United States are enormous. And the need for steady principles, clear understanding, and long-term strategic thinking has never been more pressing.

Social studies: May 24, 2011SNAPSHOTSame Netanyahu, Different Isra...

Social studies: May 24, 2011SNAPSHOTSame Netanyahu, Different Isra...: "May 24, 2011 SNAPSHOT Same Netanyahu, Different Israel The Demographic Challenges to Peace Daniel Levy DANIEL LEVY is Director of the Midd..."

May 24, 2011

SNAPSHOT

Same Netanyahu, Different Israel

The Demographic Challenges to Peace
Daniel Levy
DANIEL LEVY is Director of the Middle East Task Force [1] at the New America Foundation and was a member of the official Israeli delegation to the Taba negotiations with the Palestinians in January 2001.When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, much will look familiar to the last time he was accorded this honor, 15 years ago, during his first term as prime minister. Then, Netanyahu felt more at home in a Republican-led Congress (the GOP held both houses in 1996) than at Pennsylvania Avenue in a Democrat-inhabited White House. And he did little to disguise his willingness to play adversarial politics on the president's home turf.
Back in the mid-1990s, Netanyahu offered no flexibility on peace. This week, he will likely serve up more of the same. Yet as much as Netanyahu himself remains constant, Israel has undergone some dramatic changes over the last 15 years. In some respects, these changes have made Netanyahu more representative of the country he leads; in others, less so. Israel's parliament, its politics, and its public discourse have all shifted to the right, in the direction of Netanyahu's Likud party. The rump Zionist left-of-center in Israel's Knesset has shriveled from 43 members in 1996 to just 11 today.
The leaders of Israel's three largest political parties today -- Tzipi Livni of Kadima, Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu, and Netanyahu himself, the leader of Likud -- are all descendants of the revisionist or right-Zionist ideological tradition. Yet Netanyahu as a person has become less reflective of Israeli society. He is a descendant of Western-oriented, secular Ashkenazi stock: the stuff from which Israel's old elites were drawn, not its new and ascendant communities.
The shift in Israel's socio-demographic reality over the last 15 years has great implications for the future of the country's democracy and economy -- not to mention for any thought that might be given to living in peace with Israel's neighbors. In 1996, Israel's population was 5.7 million people; today, that number is 7.75 million. The two fastest-growing population groups are the Palestinian Arab community and ultra-Orthodox Jews (known as the Haredi). Today, there are 1.59 million Palestinian Arabs in Israel, compared to 1.03 million in 1996.
More dramatically, the Haredi population has grown [2] more than threefold over only 20 years, from 3 percent of the population in 1990 to over 10 percent today. Estimates suggest that by 2028, Haredim will represent a quarter of all children in Israel under 14 years old and roughly a third of Jewish children that age.
One notable phenomenon in the past decade and a half has been the rapid expansion of the state-funded but independent education system established by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Shas is often a pivotal, if not decisive, player in Israel's governing coalitions, which over the years has given it the power to direct state resources toward the Shas-run school system.
In many provincial Israeli towns and neighborhoods, Shas schools have come to trump the state-school system in the provision of certain services, such as transportation and hot meals (one benefit of the Shas budgetary bargaining power). Even many parents who are not ultra-Orthodox send their children to Shas schools. Over the past 20 years, the number of Jewish primary school students enrolled at ultra-Orthodox schools has grown [3] from just over seven percent to more than 28 percent.
This trend has great implications for Israeli society and its economy: the Shas system and other ultra-Orthodox schools teach a narrowly religious curriculum that is less geared to providing pupils the skills necessary to compete in a modern economy. A combination of state policies and cultural norms has meant that both the Haredi and Palestinian-Arab communities have low rates of labor-force participation: for example, only 40 percent [4] of Haredi men and 19 percent [5] of Palestinian-Arab women work. To further compound the strain on Israel's economy, Haredi men often spend a lifetime in state-subsidized religious education centers, or yeshivot. A 2009 report by the Metzilah Center, a think tank in Jerusalem, concluded that without a strong state effort to economically and socially integrate these populations, the "rapid growth of two economically weak population groups ... Haredim and Muslims ... may deal a blow to Israel's future as a developed and prosperous state."
Israel prides itself on being a democracy -- a proposition that always appeared somewhat tenuous for the 20 percent of Israel's citizens who are Palestinian-Arab, who lived under a military governorate from 1948 to 1966 and continue to face entrenched structural discrimination. Many older, more established elite groups in the Israeli secular political establishment, academia, and media have a growing concern over what they see as Israel's fragile democracy, driven by a sense that Israel lacks a set of universally shared democratic values among its increasingly self-segregated population. These elites fear that the country may lack a thriving democratic ecosystem, with a clear and binding rulebook for the majority of Israelis, be they ultra-Orthodox, traditional Orthodox, national religious, Palestinian-Arab, or Russian-speaking. The influence of the Russian population is especially worth noting: almost 20 percent of Israeli citizens are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who have arrived over the past two decades. This Russian-speaking community, coming from authoritarian states, is relatively less at home with democratic politics than other communities are; at the same time, the Israeli state was ill-equipped to pass along democratic norms as part of the absorption process.
Democratic frailty plays out most worryingly in the arena of majority-minority or Jewish-Arab relations, something that is being exploited by the current governing coalition (and especially Foreign Minister Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party) with a slew of anti-democratic and at times unashamedly racist legislative initiatives  targeting the Palestinian-Arab community. This political trend has found great resonance in the Israeli public: according to a 2010 survey [6] by the Israel Democracy Institute, 86 percent of the Jewish public believe that decisions critical to the state should be taken only by a Jewish majority; 53 percent support the government's right to encourage Arabs to emigrate from Israel; and 55 percent say that greater resources should be allocated to Jewish communities than to Arab ones.
This changing landscape carries over to relations between Israel and its neighbors, in particular toward the Palestinian territories. In the 15 years since Netanyahu last addressed the U.S. Congress, the population of Israeli settlers in the West Bank alone has more than doubled [7], from 142,000 in 1996 to over 300,000 today. The settler population in East Jerusalem, meanwhile, has grown from 160,000 to over 200,000 in the same period, including the establishment of the new settlement at Har Homa/Jabal Abu Ghneim and the proliferation of Jewish settler enclaves embedded in Palestinian neighborhoods such as Ras al-Amud, Sheikh Jarrah, and Silwan.
The demographic makeup of the settlements themselves has also changed. Whereas settlements catering to the ultra-Orthodox population barely existed when Netanyahu first became prime minister, the two fastest-growing settlements today -- Modiin Illit and Beitar Illit -- are both ultra-Orthodox. (Their combined population is 80,000 today, compared to 10,000 in 1996.) It is worth noting that the average age [8] in Modiin Illit is ten years old, the lowest of any Israeli city. Clearly, the political influence of the ultra-Orthodox settlers will only grow in the coming decades.
Of course, not all settlers are cut from the same ideological cloth, and many are responding to financial inducements and state subsidies. Yet it is beyond doubt that the settler lobby has become a powerful and entrenched political machine, relying on a narrative that credibly claims to being the country's authentic Zionist voice.
Finally, the Israel Defense Forces -- the state body responsible for the security of those settlements and for any future evacuation of the settlements -- has itself undergone quite a transformation. Beginning in the 1990s, the number of religious soldiers (national-religious or modern Orthodox, as opposed to ultra-Orthodox) in infantry units and among the officer class has grown steadily. (Exact statistics are difficult to find, but research published recently [9] in the Israeli military journal Ma'arachot estimates that roughly a third of IDF officers today are religious.)
The image of Israel evoked by the familiar style of Benjamin Netanyahu bears little resemblance to this changing Israeli landscape. It is incumbent on policymakers to be aware that although Netanyahu may still be singing from the old songbook, Israel itself has moved on. In some vitally important ways, Israel is a country of distinct sub-communities. U.S. officials and diplomats should spend more time engaging the new elites that represent these sub-communities and understanding what makes them tick, how they interpret the world around them, and what leverage points the United States might deploy in influencing their behavior and politics. Recognizing these realities will also likely color the way in which Washington might design and pursue any peace plan.
In discussing Israeli-Palestinian peace in two speeches last week, President Barack Obama was, at least in part, directing his words to Israel, perhaps intending to encourage a more realistic conversation about Israel's options in a changing region. That Netanyahu gave such a blunt, bordering on dismissive, rejoinder to Obama's remarks says something about these new Israeli realities. The United States' peacemaking efforts often appear stuck in a time warp. Once this week's speechmaking is over, new thinking should begin, including an appreciation of the Israel that actually exists in 2011, not some mythical Israel of yesteryear.

April 26, 2011

SNAPSHOT

The Post-Islamist Revolutions

What the Revolts in the Arab World Mean
Asef Bayat
ASEF BAYAT is Professor of Sociology and Middle East Studies at the University of Illinois. He is the author, most recently, of Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East.How should we make sense of the revolts that have engulfed the Arab world? Some observers see them as postmodern revolutions, diffused and leaderless, with no fixed ideology. Others view them as the next wave of democratic and liberal revolutions. Most commonly, they are described as youth revolutions, since young people played a key role in initiating them. Still others argue that they may be Islamist revolutions and will turn the region into a theocracy resembling Iran. In the United States, this is the position that many Republicans hold. The Iranian hard-liners concur, insisting that the Arab revolts are inspired by Iran’s 1979 Islamic takeover.
Religious factions have been involved in the Arab protests to an extent -- al-Nahda has in Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood has in Egypt and Syria, and the Islamic opposition has in Yemen, for example. But in truth, the revolutions transcend the Islamist politics that reigned in the region just a few years ago. In a 2008 essay [1] on the future of Islamic revolutions, I suggested that the Iranian experience “may well remain the first and the last Islamic Revolution of our time,” for the “growth of democratic sensibilities and movements [in the Middle East] is likely to push Islamism into the ‘post-Islamist’ course, paving the way for a democratic change in which an inclusive Islam may play a significant role. The outcome may be termed ‘post-Islamist refo-lutions’ [a mix of reforms and revolutions].”
Post-Islamism is not anti-Islamic or secular; a post-Islamist movement dearly upholds religion but also highlights citizens’ rights. It aspires to a pious society within a democratic state. Early examples of such movements include the reform movement in Iran in the late 1990s and the country’s Green Movement today, Indonesia’s Prosperous Justice Party, Egypt’s Hizb al-Wasat, Morocco’s Justice and Development Party (PJD), and Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Each was originally fundamentalist but over time came to critique Islamist excess, its violation of democratic rights, and its use of religion as a tool to sanctify political power. They all eventually opted to work within the democratic state.
The protest movements underlying the current revolutions seem set to follow these earlier post-Islamist experiments. So far, religious rhetoric has been remarkably absent, even though the participants of the Middle East’s many uprisings remain overwhelmingly people of faith. In Tunisia, protesters’ central objective was to establish a democratic government. Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the founder of Tunisia’s main Islamist party -- Islamic Nahda -- has publicly rejected a Khomeini-style state and has declined to run for president in future elections. Similarly, in Egypt the revolution demanded “change, freedom, and social justice” and was broadly secular. In fact, the major religious groups -- Gamaiyya Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya, a Salafi movement that controls 500 mosques and scores of schools and associations; al-Azhar, the main establishmentarian Islamic institution; and the Coptic Church did not initially back the revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood’s old guard joined reluctantly and only after being pushed by the group’s younger members.
Libya’s rebel movement and provisional government, the National Council, is composed not of Islamists or al Qaeda members but of a mix of the secular and faithful, including doctors, lawyers, teachers, regime defectors, and activists working to end Muammar al-Gaddafi’s oppression. According to their spokesman, Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, a human rights lawyer, Islamist presence is minimal, since the country’s Islamists were, for the most part, crushed by Qaddafi long ago. And in Yemen and Syria, where protesters are also demanding democracy, there has also been no evidence of a major Islamist presence. In Bahrain, of course, the protests have taken on a sectarian dimension, since the monarchy is Sunni and the population is Shia, but the mainstream opposition still has largely secular demands: an elected government, a free press, the right to establish organizations, and the end to religious discrimination.
Today’s overwhelmingly civil and secular revolts represent a departure from the Arab politics of the mid-1980s and 1990s. Bolstered by Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, in those days the political class was consumed by the idea of establishing an Islamic order, including a religious state and sharia. Their primary goal was to forge an ideological community through which secular concerns would be addressed. For Islamists, the state was seen as the most powerful and efficient institution for spreading “good” and eradicating “evil.” In turn, Islamists viewed citizens as dutiful subjects and placed an emphasis on their obligations to the righteous state, with little concern for their rights.
The means for achieving such an order differed depending on the group. Militant Islamists, such as Egypt’s al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, took up arms in the 1990s to dislodge the secular states. The moderates, or electoral Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhoods in various Arab countries, preferred da’wa (religious outreach) and working within the system to achieve gradual Islamist change. The militants and the moderates were united by their hostility toward the West. But their shared goals and enemies could not completely reconcile their differences on foreign policy. Shia militant groups, such as Iraq’s Hizb al-Dawa and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, allied with Iran, while their Sunni counterparts remained closer to Saudi Arabia.
Arab authoritarian states unintentionally sowed the seeds of their own demise. In the 1980s and 1990s, as populations grew and urbanized, demand for rights -- specifically for paid and secure jobs, decent housing and amenities, and respect -- rose. Of course, the economies of Arab countries could not keep pace with the demands. Throughout the 1980s, massive urban riots shook major Arab cities. Rather than taking on welfare tasks themselves, Arab governments, following the neoliberal economic agendas popular in the 1990s, tasked the growing sector of religious charities and nongovernmental organizations with providing help. Yet these arrangements proved too feeble to ameliorate the deep poverty and inequality that plague Middle Eastern societies. Indeed, the combination of new economic policies and a weak safety net increased the income gap between the rich and poor, made the working middle class more economically vulnerable, and marginalized much of the educated middle class.
The last two decades saw the expansion of a “middle-class poor”. This paradoxical class obtained college degrees, enjoyed contact with the rest of the world, used digital forms of communication, and expected a middle-class lifestyle, only to be forced to live in poverty with few prospects for improvement. Similar to the other disenfranchised groups in the Arab world, such as the marginal poor, women, and youth, the middle-class poor quietly struggled to improve their life chances. Many Muslim women strove to assert their presence in public, go to college, and pursue justice in courts. Youths forged collective identities in colleges, tea shops, and online and they attempted to affirm their autonomy and change politics by engaging in civil society and volunteer work. Yet these efforts mostly fell short. (The youth would only become a real threat to the regime in mid-2010, when social media facilitated their collective mobilization against entrenched regimes.) In the 1990s then, the most serious political challenge to the Arab regimes was the Islamist opposition, which much of the middle-class poor supported.
But recently, Islamism began to lose its appeal considerably, and the Iranian model of revolution lost much of its luster. The regime’s reputation for repression, misogyny, exclusionary attitudes, and unfulfilled promises became widely recognized, alienating its onetime sympathizers. Al Qaeda’s violence, moreover, had caused a backlash against ordinary Muslims, who found al Qaeda’s practices abhorrent to the true spirit of Islam. Much of the faithful in the Arab world decried the Islamists’ disregard for human rights, tolerance, and pluralism. They could no longer accept the exploitation of Islam as a tool for procuring power and privilege. To rescue Islam, they began to abandon the Islamic state. At the same time, the political class realized that its nationalist, anti-imperialist, and pro-Palestinian campaign would falter so long as it was associated with the demagogic rhetoric of the authoritarian regimes. Thus, the next logical step was to focus on a key internal issue: democracy.
The beginnings of a post-Islamist vision were first evident in Egypt in 2000, when a group called the Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada managed to bring together youth, civil society, and political activists to stage mass rallies in Tahrir Square against Israeli sieges of Palestinian territories. But it was the 2004 Kefaya (Enough) movement that heralded the coming of post-Islamist democratic politics: it focused more on democracy and human rights at home than on politics abroad, and it bridged ideological divides, especially between religious and secular activists and between leftists and nationalists. In doing so, it transcended exclusivist Islamist politics.
This new way of doing politics in the post 9/11 era eventually influenced the inner circle of Islamism, compelling activists and ideologues, such as the youth in the Muslim Brotherhood, to rethink their political project. Many groups -- including the reformers in Iran and Indonesia’s Prosperous Justice Party -- explicitly departed from their earlier vision of Islamism. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood took piecemeal and pragmatic steps toward recognizing the legitimacy of democracy, the separation of powers, and minority rights -- when the Kefaya movement and former U.S. President George W. Bush’s rhetoric of democratization pushed it to do so in the late 2000s. Post-Islamism emerged as a frame within which religious politics could become more inclusive. Muslims could confidently remain Muslim but also have a democratic state -- as Turkey’s example indicated. And as electronic media expanded, Muslim and secular activists alike had an unprecedented opportunity to communicate, mobilize, and place their democratic demands on the agenda. Thus, by late 2010, an invigorated new public with a novel political vision and means of achieving it had emerged; ready to lead the current revolts.
It remains to be seen whether the post-Islamist vision can be sustained after the revolutionary fervor subsides. There is certainly the possibility of a renewed fundamentalism. Already in Egypt, Salafists who opposed the revolution are regrouping in the mosques and on the street with a message that democracy is haram (forbidden). Salafis may be able to galvanize some support by capitalizing on moral and religious issues. One thing is clear, however: democrats, whether faithful or secular, have a heavy task before them. They must work to bring democratic values from the rule books to mobilize the ordinary people. If Salafis can do grass-roots work, so should democratic forces.