A year has passed since the arrival of the so-called Arab Spring, which took many by surprise. Few expected that the first uprising in the Arab world to shake the edifice of despotism and rock the pillars of corruption would start in green Tunisia. The Tunisian regime appeared, or pretended, to be durable. With its propaganda machine, its henchmen and its intermediaries, it presented itself as a progressive regime that protected the rights of citizens, women in particular, and kept the “obscurantists” off their backs; and with its falsified figures it marketed itself to the world as North Africa’s economic miracle. All the regimes, Western and Arab, applauded Zine El Abidine, praised his virtues and sang his glory, and the current Algerian prime minister went so far as to declare that he regarded the Tunisian model as an example to follow. All this took place amid a blackout on the other, grim face of Tunisia and its people: harsh police repression, citizens stifled, rampant corruption, and the seizure of the people’s wealth by a family that monopolised the reins of power. The uprising of the Tunisian people also came as a surprise because the long duration of tyranny in that country had led some to believe that Tunisians had adapted to it, grown used to it, accepted it, resigned themselves to it and come to rely on it. The “revolution of freedom and dignity” came to refute that prevailing impression, and today we are witnessing its first fruits in the founding of the new Tunisian Republic, a republic of dignity and well-being. Congratulations to the Tunisians on their glorious victory and their promising liberation.
A — Conditions and causes
From this Maghreb country the winds of change spread to the far east of the Arab world, by way of Egypt and Libya and on to Yemen, Bahrain and the Levant. Other Arab states remain candidates for change, because its conditions are present throughout the Arab world. Chief among them is the state’s deviation from its basic task, which is to guarantee security, justice and a decent life for citizens (“The imam is a shield”, narrated by Muslim). Its main concern and overriding preoccupation has become control of power and the monopoly of wealth, and Arab regimes have turned into monarchical and “republarchical” dictatorships that use their security arsenals, military scrap and party structures to repress their peoples.
This wretched state of the Arab order has aggravated the hogra/harga pair, as the Maghreb street puts it. Hogra is the sense of injustice and the feeling of humiliation; it describes a structural violence that society lives with: the absence of a decent life, disregard, the obscene wealth all around and quick fortunes, unemployment, the spread of artificial poverty in rich countries, the absence of political participation, electoral fraud, oppression and repression, and so on. This breeds frustration and despair, the absence of hope and dreams, and a closed horizon for citizens, which in turn weakens solidarity and spreads selfishness and forced corruption within society, and finally leads to harga (“burning”): a negative or violent reaction expressing rupture, the destruction of relationships and the burning of bonds. It takes many forms: leaving the political and social space (isolation, withdrawal, civic retreat); leaving the civil space (resorting to armed resistance); leaving the homeland and burning the papers that prove belonging to it (migration of every kind, from unemployed youths in the “boats of death” to the brain drain); and leaving life (suicide of every kind, in particular self-immolation).
Dozens of indicators developed and measured every year by many international organisations, intergovernmental or non-governmental, clearly show how far the hogra/harga pair, two symptoms of the same social disease, has spread in the countries of the Arab world. They include indicators of social injustice, economic decline, deteriorating public services, militarisation and population control, violations of rights and freedoms, corruption, state fragility, state failure and loss of legitimacy, human migration, and so on.
Yet the hogra/harga curve keeps rising until change becomes inevitable. Then the tipping point comes and the process of change is set in motion: the curve reverses, and the negative or violent response to structural violence turns into a positive response, consisting essentially of non-violent resistance. It is the revolutionary moment at which divine intervention propels the whole of society into a spiritual experience and an emotional state of transcendence.
B — Lessons
Among the lessons suggested or recalled by the “revolution of freedom and dignity” in the Arab world are the following:
1― The victory of truth over falsehood: in a conflict between parties with legitimate aims and parties with illegitimate aims, the conflict inevitably ends, sooner or later, with the achievement of the legitimate aims. This is a social law that cannot be circumvented and a firm principle of conflict and peace studies. The Arab situation is the best example of a conflict between peoples seeking to regain their right to freedom and a decent life and cliques seeking to secure illegitimate private interests by means of repression and deception. The Arab peoples in revolt have confirmed, to anyone who may have doubted it, that tyranny, being falsehood, is bound to vanish, however much it rages and however long it lasts: “Rather, We hurl the truth against falsehood, and it crushes it, and at once it vanishes” [Qur’an 21:18]; “And say: Truth has come and falsehood has vanished. Indeed, falsehood is ever bound to vanish” [Qur’an 17:81].
2― The importance of unity in diversity: the “revolution of freedom and dignity” would not have succeeded had the majority of citizens, whatever their persuasion, leftist, Islamist or liberal, not stood together against the tyrants, aware that their differences were differences of diversity and not necessarily of opposition, and agreed to postpone political and ideological competition until the fall of the regime of despotism and corruption and the arrival of a climate of freedom allowing genuine and honourable competition. Nor would the uprisings have succeeded had the elites not joined the masses, who rose up first, proving that they can take the initiative when the elites are slow to play their part in social change. The joining of honest elites, trade unionists, human rights defenders, politicians, journalists, intellectuals and religious figures, with the masses, and with young people in particular, had a profound effect in framing, guiding and channelling the movement.
3― The need to hold one’s ground: one of the factors that ensured the success of the “revolution of freedom and dignity” was the protesters’ steadfastness in demonstrating in public space and holding on to their demands until the tyrants fell, true to the slogan “Revolution, revolution, until victory!” This approach was right for two reasons. First, historical experience shows that a tyrant can resist a popular uprising for a while, but if the uprising lasts a certain length of time, determined by local and regional circumstances and the balance of power, he ends up yielding to the will of the people and accepting the fait accompli. Second, if the uprising falters and the demonstrators withdraw from public space too early, the tyrant uses this to regain his strength and pounce on those who resist and oppose him, and his vengeance on those who dared to rise up is then terrible, as happened in Algeria two decades ago and is happening there now. Halting the uprising before it bears fruit is thus tantamount to collective suicide.
4― The effectiveness of civil resistance: the “revolution of freedom and dignity” came to confirm the effectiveness of non-violent civil resistance in bringing about political change in the Arab world, against the sceptics who held that this method, tried successfully in many parts of the world, was unsuited to us because it did not fit our temperament or our Arab-Islamic culture. Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, Yemenis and Syrians, who showed a high degree of civic spirit in their uprising and treated the security forces with kindness, were able through this exemplary conduct to win the sympathy and solidarity of a considerable part of the security and military apparatus, neutralise the extremists within it, and deny the tyrannical regimes the opportunity they were impatiently awaiting: the first signs of violence. These regimes even tried to provoke violence by infiltrating the ranks of the demonstrators and planting criminal hands among them, baltagiya and shabbiha, so as to use it as a pretext to unleash their machinery of repression. The Arab peoples have understood that Arab regimes are skilled at confronting armed resistance, adept at exploiting violence and masters at using it to tighten their grip on society. The “revolution of freedom and dignity” also confirmed that non-violent civil resistance is not a passive act, as some may imagine, but positive action at its core; and civil resistance succeeds in bringing about change only when those who practise it are fully prepared to sacrifice themselves, believing in the principle “Be ready to die, and life will be given to you”, certain that in the end “blood triumphs over the sword”. Whoever thinks that peoples can free themselves without sacrifice ignores the lessons of the experience of nations. The “revolution of freedom and dignity” succeeded, by the grace of God, because those who were martyred in these uprisings gave themselves for their peoples, and their pure blood brought a whole nation back to life.
5― The harmony between bombardment from the air and the march on the ground: what was called the “march on the ground”, the demonstrations and sit-ins in the squares and streets of Arab cities, found a strong echo in what was called the “bombardment from the air” by satellite television channels, websites and social networks. The march and the bombardment thus worked together in a fruitful dialectic. The media and new media played an essential role in keeping the protesters, and the Arab peoples in general, informed of every new development on the ground and in politics, and of plots and dangers as soon as they appeared, so that they could overcome them and keep their uprising on course. Conversely, the media could not have played their role with such professionalism without the news material, and especially the images, that came from the field from citizens who understood the importance of documenting events by inexpensive means, such as mobile phone cameras, and of publishing documents directly through the media.
6― The weakness and collapse of despotic regimes: the “revolution of freedom and dignity” revealed the fragility of despotic Arab regimes and exposed the cowardice of those who lord it over people and plunder the wealth of their countries. Having done wrong, they lived in constant anxiety, sleepless with fear of their peoples’ awakening, their main obsession, watching for the early warning of a popular uprising so as to be ready to flee with their families and their spoils of public money. It also showed, once again, that despotism and corruption persist in the Arab world not because of the strength of the tyrants and the support of Western states, but because of the weakness of the peoples’ will. As soon as peoples decide simply not to obey the tyrants, their edifices collapse: the obedience of peoples to despots is the serum that prolongs their lives. How right was Tunisia’s poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi when he said: “If one day a people wills to live, then destiny must answer.”
7― Western regimes abandoning their henchmen: what happened to presidents Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi shows that tyrants, when they fall, usually find no supporter or protector among their masters and employers in the West, because once deposed and stripped of power they have lost their main function, which was to safeguard the interests of their masters, who then look for substitute henchmen. This is borne out, for example, by the activities of the American, French, British and Italian authorities at the highest levels, their updated discourse, which adapted with astonishing speed to the new situation, and their intensive contacts with the new actors in the liberated Arab capitals, aimed at winning their loyalty, influencing the course of events and preserving the interests of their own countries.
C — Challenges and dangers
The success of the “revolution of freedom and dignity” in the various Arab countries depends on the ability to come through the transition peacefully. Democratic transition is neither an easy process nor a path strewn with jasmine, but a long and difficult labour, an arduous road beset with dangers, pitfalls and mazes, particularly in the transitional period that follows an uprising, such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are now experiencing. The dangers include the following:
1— The counter-revolution gaining ground: the experience of nations over the last two decades, and the principles of what has become known in the social sciences as “transitology”, show that without vigilance and caution a popular revolution can relapse and turn into a “palace revolution”, with the old regime restored and reproduced. This places a great responsibility on the peoples and elites in revolt in the Arab states to act cautiously and wisely to prevent a counter-revolution, which may enjoy domestic, neighbouring/Arab and international support, from circumventing their gains, and to carry their revolution far enough to secure its consolidation.
2— Failure in the process of national reconciliation: succeeding in the process of reconciliation and dealing with the legacy of the distant and recent past is one of the most important goals the new regimes must pursue. Reconciliation cannot truly be achieved if it is improvised or based solely on good intentions and moral considerations: it is a process with conditions, principles and rules that must be respected. Reconciliation, which means dealing with the psychological and social effects of conflict, is the third and final stage in the transformation of a conflict, after settlement, that is, ending violent behaviour, and resolution, that is, addressing the structural causes of the conflict; reconciliation cannot replace resolution or make it unnecessary. Reconciliation also rests on four pillars, truth, justice, forgiveness and memory, and can be achieved only by dealing with all of them.
3— Growing used to settling internal disputes by force of arms: one of the problems of cases in which an uprising was forced to take up arms in self-defence, as happened in Libya and may happen in Syria and Yemen, is that some revolutionaries may come to believe that resorting to arms is the most effective way of settling internal disputes. This could diminish the value of non-violent civil resistance, which the “revolution of freedom and dignity” strengthened, especially in Tunisia and Egypt, and could also threaten civil peace.
4— Individual and collective selfishness: self-sufficiency (of a person or a party) and dispensing with or eliminating others, for sectarian, ideological or political reasons, is the main reason for failing to reach a minimum of national consensus. This hampers the start of the process of change in some states and the building of the state in countries where change has begun.
5— Losing the revolutionary spirit: the absence of the revolutionaries, armed or unarmed, and especially of young people, from the institutions of the new order, whether because they are excluded or because they are unable to adapt to the situation after the overthrow of the tyrant, deprives the transition of its revolutionary spirit. This may have a negative effect on the new regime’s foreign, economic and social policies, among others, which may then violate the values of the revolution and run counter to its aims.
6— Failing to provide a decent life: the new regimes will be stable only if they manage to meet the basic needs of life. Immediately after freedom, citizens long for a decent life, which can be had only by producing wealth, protecting it from plunder and distributing it fairly. If the Arab Awakening is not followed by a genuine renaissance of societies that raises citizens’ living standards, part of them will turn against the new order.
7— The new political elites going astray: under pressure from the desire for recognition and acceptance by others, some of the new political elites may go astray in their thinking and their practices, and make concessions at home and abroad that are incompatible with the values of the revolution. These elites may also reproduce the behaviour and practices of the defunct regimes and become a new face of an old regime, because the tendency towards despotism, arbitrariness, favouritism and the like is not the monopoly of any particular elite or current, and no one is immune to it: it is a human tendency that can be curbed only by strong mechanisms and institutions and by constant oversight by citizens.
The “revolution of freedom and dignity” has changed the face of the Arab world, and its repercussions have gone beyond its borders. Credit for this goes, after God, to the martyrs, the wounded and the heroic revolutionaries who sacrificed themselves to break the chains, depose the tyrants and enable Arab citizens to regain their dignity and hold their heads high among the nations. Our deepest thanks go to them all, and our loyalty to them lies in making sure that the aims of the “revolution of freedom and dignity” are achieved in full.
Abbas Aroua
14 January 2012
