The sufferings of Egyptians and Syrians
will go on for decades. That will allow
plenty of time for think tanks, graduate students, journalists, op-ed writers,
scholars and security analysts to build or enhance their careers on the
‘lessons’ of these events. This essay
offers the one lesson that none of these efforts will produce. It is that, if the Middle East has a future,
it does not lie with freedom, democracy, ‘empowering’ this or that favored
sector of society, investing in this or that or the other thing, shoring up
anti-something efforts, or ‘standing up’ for something-or-other. It lies, for better or however worse, with
Islam.
This is not an Islamist claim. It doesn’t really have a lot to do with the
nature of Islam in any of its forms. It
has to do with the role of liberals in the so-called Arab Spring, and with the
role of the political tendencies and institutions they hold dear. The following will argue this from the
conduct and motivations of liberals in Egypt and Syria, and from the record of
secular government in the region. To
examine this conduct, you need to consider the nature of the events we’re
dealing with.
Their very name invites distortion. The
term 'Arab Spring' reveals the delusions deliberately or, much more often,
unthinkingly promoted by those who sympathise with the now-failed revolts in
Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia (which won't be discussed here). The spring in the name comes from the 1968
"Prague Spring", well-known as Czechoslovakia's nonviolent striving
towards nice, Western, democratic ideals.
The idea was to portray the revolts in the same way: nice, non-violent, pro-Western,
pro-democracy, and 'democracy' in the Polly-Annish Western sense of a practice
where only People Like Us get elected.
None of this
applies to the revolts.
Even in Egypt,
they were not non-violent: indeed this lie is also a grievous insult to the
heroic Egyptians who fought police and snipers like lions. The idea that only non-violent resisters
should be held up for admiration pervades not only Western but middle class
Middle Eastern propaganda. Apparently,
it is only in the West that fighting tyrants is acceptable.
As for nice
ideals, that held for the leadership and much of the vanguard in the very first
days of the revolts. But this induces a
misunderstanding: that the vanguard was
the heart and soul of these uprisings.
They were not. Had this been true, the 'Arab Spring' would
have been just another of the many pointless middle class cameos in the story
of stagnant or dynamically monstrous Middle Eastern régimes. There would have been some arrests and things
would have got right back to normal. But
it was what's annoyingly called the 'Arab Street' that was out to finish what
the middle class liberals started. The
ordinary Egyptians (and Syrians), the ones who didn't make themselves heard on
web sites or social media, were not Prague Spring types. (When the song Sout al horreya refers to hunger, it is not singing about the
middle class.) They were religious and had
become increasingly so as the hopes raised by Nasser’s secularist vision faded. Their religion, as it reached out to those
trapped in poverty, inevitably acquired political overtones. It affected their notions of freedom and
democracy: Morsi’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, did
not count as some dangerous threat to their version of those ideals. Unlike the middle class, they wanted real
social change, better lives, not institutional reform. Some of them wanted power. They felt their time had come, and their
rule would not conform to a liberal, secularist model.
The recent
history of resistance to the state testifies to this. Those who died opposing the military in Egypt
were, overwhelmingly, Muslim Brotherhood, and this after the middle class ushered in a military dictatorship in the name of liberal values. In Syria, when resistance had to arm itself
or perish, it was Islamist militias who increasingly dominated the middle class
movements with their business-suited leaders in Turkey or Europe. These Islamist movements were not the heart
and soul of the demonstrations that are now reviewed with nostalgia. But they were the heart, soul and muscle of
resistance, when the going got really tough and rebel units, in the face of
massacres outside the main urban centers, established themselves in the
countryside & smaller cities. And as
usual, in the countryside, people were more conservative and less liberal.
What the middle class liberals started
gained historic significance because it almost instantaneously drew in hundreds
of thousands who were neither middle class nor liberal. How did the liberals react?
The liberals’ conduct.
In Egypt, their reaction can be summed up
in few words. When Egypt’s first free
and fair election brought in Mohamed Morsi, whom they considered an Islamist,
they spun tales of how he was a sinister authoritarian in disguise.[i] They poo-pooed the idea that democracy was as
it had been defined for two thousand years, as majority rule, and decided it
had to guarantee that liberal voices and ideologies predominated. More important, they decided that yes, they actually
preferred the murdering, torturing military to Morsi, who they feared was the
thin edge of a Brotherhood wedge. The
very idea that they didn’t know what their prominent participation in Morsi’s
overthrow would bring to Egypt is beneath contempt.
In Syria, it’s more complex.
The liberals fall into three categories –
ex-officers in the Syrian armed forces, exile politicians, and highly literate
activists. Though middle class, they could
not have behaved more differently from their Egyptian counterparts. For the most part they steadfastly refused
to abandon their Islamist allies, despite strong pressure from the US.
Perhaps the liberals relied on the Islamist
forces to keep Assad at bay. Perhaps,
adequately supported by the US, they would have turned on the ‘extremist’
militias. But the fact is, they never
did. This, however, proved the undoing
of the Syrian revolution.
Here the fateful decision for the liberals
was not so much with whom to ally domestically, but with whom to ally outside
the country. They chose, or tried to
choose, the West. They did not choose
the region's counterpart to Morsi:
Erdogan, incessantly labeled an anti-liberal authoritarian. To have chosen Erdogan would have meant, were
the revolution to succeed, decisive Turkish involvement and influence. This would mean, in turn, that the liberals
were irreparably subordinated to the Islamist tendencies represented by Erdogan
himself and by the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.
The liberals, it seems, were not dead set against alliance with such
forces when it was a matter of physical survival. But to accept Islamist leadership, if not
immediately then in Syria's future, was something the liberals could not
contemplate. So they persisted in their
dream that they were indeed fighting for Freedom and Democracy, and so was
'Syria' itself.
But those where not 'Syria's'
objectives. A large though unknown
proportion of Syria's anti-Assad masses weren’t liberals; they were likely more
conservative than the Muslim Brotherhood itself. (Indeed despite strenuous
efforts to highlight the role of women in the demonstrations, the crowds were
overwhelmingly male, to an extent that defies attempts to present the 2011
uprising as predominantly secularist.) Many
others, not Islamist or even conservative, turned to the Islamist militias as
their best counter to Assad. Western
governments knew this and quickly soured on the revolution. Long before the emergence of ISIS and
‘Al-Qaeda affiliated’ group, the West was nervous about the Muslim Brotherhood
component of the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army. Though it took some time to become apparent,
once this happened, the game was up.
From the very start of its ‘efforts’, the
US and denied the rebels anti-aircraft weapons they feared might fall into the
hands of the rebels’ Islamist battlefield allies. Without such weapons, the rebels couldn’t hang
on to their territorial gains and couldn’t protect their civilian populations. Soon arms deliveries slowed to a trickle. The same fear of Islamist domination prompted
the US to decide it didn’t, after all, want the revolution to succeed, nor even
give it the support it needed to survive.
And it did not survive. So the
choice of the West over Erdogan was indeed fateful, and the liberals played a
major role in making it.
By allying, not with Turkey but with 'the
West', i.e. the US and its ever-serviceable partner, Jordan, the liberals had
mired the Syrian uprising in false hopes and, eventually, worse, a partly
successful attempt to convert the desperate revolutionary forces away from
rebellion, to become mere Western proxies in the fight against ISIS. It was also to invite the West to promote
reliably anti-Islamist forces, the Kurdish PKK, in preference to the rebels and
in sneaking, tacit alliance with Assad.
Turkey held the only promise of deposing
Assad, because it held the only promise of an understanding between the anti-Assad
forces, Russia and Iran. Turkey couldn’t
care less that Russia annexed the Crimea, nor that Russia wanted an expanded
presence in the Mediterranean. It didn’t
care about Hezbollah and had important economic ties to Iran. There was, then, a chance that Russia and
Iran could be persuaded to sideline Assad in return for an important regional
ally who would be fine with an expansion of Russian bases in the area. On the other hand, a rebel-US alliance meant
that potential allies, Iran and Russia, had to be enemies.
The liberals’ choice also hobbled Turkey. The West’s bright idea for fixing Syria was to
support the YPG, the Syrian branch of the Kurdish PKK. They were Assad’s allies and Erdogan's
military enemies. On top of this, the
West (and sometimes the liberals) consistently incited secularist rebel units
against hard-line Islamist forces, so that the rebels were weakened still
further. Erdogan, beset by a pro-Assad
opposition, potential Russian pushback and the US’ protection of the Kurds,
could not provide the military muscle the rebels needed. So the US betrayal was the end of the
road. Choosing the West meant,
unwillingly, unknowingly but unavoidably, choosing Assad. That was the terrible price for placing faith
in Western democracies.
Why
did the liberals make their choices?
Though the choices of Syrian and Egyptian
liberals were radically different, their ultimate motivation was the same. They found the prospect of an Islamist future
intolerable.
It would be hard for those who have never
seen Egypt to fathom the frustration experienced by liberals there, even under
Mubarak’s secularist rule. A Muslim
librarian, gone to buy a washing machine, is berated by the salesman for not
wearing a veil. She complains that her
assistants constantly slip religious tracts into her display cases. Alcohol is bought and consumed
semi-clandestinely, amid disapproval. A
woman is told that if she smokes on the street, "everyone will think you
are a prostitute." Even modestly
dressed, women are subject to constant harassment - and sometimes they would rather
not be modestly dressed. You leave a
famous antique shop to find the landing entirely occupied by devout employees
at prayer. You can't have bacon and
eggs, or kiss on the street, or sign into a hotel with a male other than your
husband. To enter into a mixed marriage
requires a high tolerance for outraged opposition. The liberals, by and large wealthy enough to
travel and even live partly abroad, find the country stifling. These lifestyle preoccupations are
pervasive, unceasing, and, the truth is, far, far more important to most
liberals than whether they live under freedom and democracy. They were much happier under Nasser's
aggressively secularist dictatorship.
Maybe better to say this: the liberals wanted cultural freedom, and,
for some, the freedom to write political commentary linked to their media
careers. But they weren't interested in
political freedom. Though pretending
otherwise, they viewed it with hostility when they saw it in operation. Political freedom meant democracy and democracy
meant the Brotherhood.
The liberals, bluntly put, view the Muslim
Brotherhood and its followers with deep hatred.
They felt accommodation was impossible.
They were prepared to live in the 'pre-Spring' atmosphere, but feared
that, with the Brotherhood in a governing position, life would become genuinely
intolerable. So the emergence of an
Islamist government was seen as an existential threat - not to the existence of
liberals, but to the existence of the lifestyle they worked hard to maintain.
The Syrian liberals' situation was almost
the mirror-image of the Egyptians'.
Despite sincere hatred of Assad's Syria, liberals could well imagine
that his overthrow would bring something much like what the Egyptian liberal
experienced and very probably what they feared for the future. Though the Assad régime was repugnant, though
the course of events made armed revolution the only possible response, Syrian
liberals were deeply concerned to retain control over the revolution's
course. This could not exclude alliance
with conservative Islamist forces, but it had to involve some external
constraint on the extent to which Islamists would dominate a post-Assad
future. That constraint could only come
from close, fruitful alliance with the West, and, since the Europeans were far
too timid to act on their own, with the US.
Unlike their Egyptian counterparts, the Syrian liberals never
contemplated the betrayal of the revolution undertaken. (Indeed the entire history of independent
Syria indicated that any attempt by members of a liberal élite to rejoin the
fold would end in torture and death.)
But they hoped against hope that US support would enable them to retain
strong leadership of the anti-Assad forces.
So in Egypt and Syria alike, fear of
Islamists pushed the liberals into decisions disastrous for their revolutions. But did they really have an
alternative? If they did, was it
anything more than an unappetizing choice of some supposedly lesser evil?
The
future
Suppose that the liberals were completely justified
in their attitudes towards political Islam.
Suppose they had a deeply
principled commitment to the values that happened to underwrite their lifestyle. It hardly matters. Political Islam is the only road to change
left in the Middle East. It might be a
dead end or even a road to hell, but nothing will improve unless that road is
taken. It’s the only way to bring the
sort of real change that sidelines the élites - often the 'notable families'
who have run things since Ottoman times - who have so conspicuously failed to
provide good government.
The reason Islam offers the only realistic
hope for change is simple: there are no
plausible alternatives. Sure, liberal
democracy or some other secularist tendency might in theory offer some
wonderful solution. But they cannot
offer a plausible solution because
their record is so indelibly tainted, especially but not exclusively in the
Middle East.
A rational observer of history has to
conclude that, believe it or not, Islamism offers the safest alternative, because literally every major atrocity in
recent history has been secularist, including the mass slaughters of Cambodia,
Rwanda, and the Congo. True, history
also offers some good secular régimes, including liberal democracies, but these
failed to ward off the horrors of, for example, Franco Hitler and Stalin, not to
mention two world wars. Someone might
argue that, despite these unusual cases, secularist and in particular liberal
democratic government offers rewards that outweigh the risks. But that won’t work if, as a rational Middle
Easterner would do, you focus the secularist record in the Middle East.
There we have just two régimes that might
possibly be considered liberal democracies.
Israel, with its bloodshed and its dedication to racial sovereignty, can
hardly attract emulation. So there
remains Lebanon, which even has a roughly Western-style economy. But Lebanon’s civil war cost 175,000 lives,
and no one suggests a repeat is out of the question. Yet when we look at other secularist régimes,
the record is even worse.
The secularist governments of the Middle
East have included some non-disasters, countries where torture and repression
are rife as the society slowly deteriorates – in Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and
Morocco. Otherwise, secularism has been
a catastrophe. There’s Saddam, the
Assads, and the Shah of Iran. There’s
Iraq after the American occupation.
Gaddafi drifts into insanity after inflicting terrible suffering in Chad
and Libya itself. Secularist government
brought Yemen nothing but war and starvation.
Algeria’s horrifying struggle with Islamists cost another 175,000 lives.
But it is not just the terrible record of
secularism that make it an implausible solution. Woven into these disasters is the West’s dogged
resistance to every single secular or moderate ideology that gained some
traction in the Middle East – as opposed to the gallery of dictators that have
benefitted from Western support. Communism
wouldn't do. Arab nationalism and Arab
socialism weren't good enough either.
Their greatest and most successful exponent, Nasser, became a pariah
among Western democracies; he was undone by the Western-sponsored and
secularist state of Israel. Moderate
Islam, in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, has labelled extremist and
ruthlessly suppressed by the entrenched élites it threatened. The West may not have overthrown Morsi, but
they quickly accepted the coup and have been lavishing military and economic
attention on the Sisi régime ever since. Yet if a secularist project wanted to please
the West and dedicated itself to repressing even moderate Islamist groups, it
would have time and energy for nothing else.
With secularism offering no plausible
promise of change, only Islam remains. Even
if what matters most is the defeat of political Islam, that will never happen
unless Islamists are discredited. To be
discredited, they would have to be given a real, full chance to govern, free
from the sort of deep state sabotage that marked Morsi's so-called reign in Egypt. Only then will political Islam prove or
disprove itself. If it brings positive
change, great. If it doesn't, the
secularists will get their new chance, without the encumbrance of a strong
Islamist opposition.
Given the whole secularist record in the
Middle East, I wouldn't be optimistic how that would turn out. The abiding contemporary liberal stance is
loud espousal of freedom and democracy.
But these only have to do with the forms and legal structures of
government, not with policy. They don't
give people jobs or address climate change.
There is also, of course, commitment to diversity, which means we will
all acquire full participation in our disastrous societies. In the early days of liberalism, liberals at
least offered laissez-faire capitalism, a bad program but a substantive program
nonetheless. Today they have
nothing. I can't see why they would be
more likely than Islamists to find substantive solutions.
[i] For a critical analysis of this claim, see Mohammed Fadel, “What
killed Egyptian democracy?”, Boston
Review, January 24, 2014, http://bostonreview.net/forum/mohammad-fadel-what-killed-egyptian-democracy
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