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ON THE EDGE
What the Protest Wave Means
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VERSION 2.0
Is This Obama's 'Arab Spring'?
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COLLAPSE
Arab Political Institutions Are Decaying
Posted By Marc Lynch
Saturday, January 15, 2011 - 12:20 PM
An interesting discussion has already broken out over whether Tunisia should be considered a "Twitter Revolution" -- a far more interesting and relevant discussion than whether it was a "WikiLeaks Revolution" (it wasn't). I've seen some great points already by Ethan Zuckerman, Evgeny Morozov, Luke Allnut, Jillian York, and others. I'm looking forward to being one of the social scientists digging into the data, where I suspect that both enthusiasts and skeptics will find support for their arguments. For now, I would just argue that it would be more productive to focus more broadly on the evolution of the Arab media over the last decade, in which new media such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, forums and blogs work together with satellite television stations such as Al Jazeera to collectively transform the Arab information environment and shatter the ability of authoritarian regimes to control the flow of information, images, ideas and opinions. That feels like a sentence which I've written a hundred times over the last decade… and one which has never felt truer than the last month in Tunisia.
Al-Jazeera Screen Capture, January 14, 2011
COMMENTS (8)
Posted By Marc Lynch
Friday, January 14, 2011 - 11:10 AM
Like virtually the entire Arab world I have spent the morning glued to Al Jazeera, watching the absolutely riveting scenes unfolding. The images of massive crowds in the street, soldiers embracing protesters, and outbursts of violence remind me of nothing more than the demonstrations in Beirut in 2005 which similarly captured the imagination of the entire Arab world -- though in that case, they captured the entire world's attention, whereas Tunisia's protests have received far less attention. But make no mistake: For Arab publics and for Arab regimes, this is a defining moment as powerful as those Beirut moments and, if it succeeds in bringing about change in Tunisia, then likely far more significant in the long run. I can barely stand to leave Al Jazeera and go to my meetings.
Events are moving fast. Ben Ali has reportedly fired his entire government and promised elections within 6 months, after vowing to end media censorship the other day. A State of Emergency has reportedly been declared. It doesn't look like it's going to work -- these crowds do not look likely to dissipate for the promise of elections sometime in the future. The only path forward I can see which doesn't involve significant bloodshed and chaos is a "soft coup," with a caretaker government and promise of rapid move to elections. I hope that somebody -- the Obama administration, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President Sarkozy -- is ready to make that quiet phone call and tell Ben Ali that his service to his nation has come to an end. This could end well … or it could end bloody.
UPDATE, 2:15 p.m.: Wow. In the time between posting this and coming back from my meetings, it came to a head. Ben Ali out of the country, PM Ghanouchi taking power, presidential elections promised. Amazing.
AFP/Getty Images
Posted By Marc Lynch
Thursday, January 13, 2011 - 10:40 AM
Barely a month goes by without a Washington Post editorial bemoaning Egypt's authoritarian retrenchment and criticizing the Obama administration's alleged failure to promote Arab democracy. But now Tunisia has erupted as the story of the year for Arab reformers. The spiraling protests and the regime's heavy-handed, but thus far ineffective, repression have captured the imagination of Arab publics, governments, and political analysts. Despite Tunis's efforts to censor media coverage, images and video have made it out onto social media and up to Al Jazeera and other satellite TV. The "Tunisia scenario" is now the term of art for activist hopes and government fears of political instability and mass protests from Jordan to Egypt to the Gulf.
But the Post's op-ed page has been strikingly silent about the Tunisian protests. Thus far, a month into the massive demonstrations rocking Tunisia, the Washington Post editorial page has published exactly zero editorials about Tunisia. For that matter, the Weekly Standard, another magazine which frequently claims the mantle of Arab democracy and attacks Obama for failing on it, has thus far published exactly zero articles about Tunisia (though, to his credit, frequent Standard contributor and ex-Bush administration official Elliott Abrams has weighed in on it at his new CFR blog). Why are the most prominent media voices on Arab democracy so entirely absent on the Arab reform story of the year?
AFP/Getty Images
Posted By Marc Lynch
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 - 4:34 PM
It's very clear that most Arab regimes are on edge over the possibility of the spread of the protests in Tunisia and Algeria. Arab columnists and TV shows have been excitedly debating the real causes of the protests and what they might mean, while in country after country warnings are being sounded of a repeat of the "Tunisia scenario." It's not at all clear whether these protests actually will spread yet, as regimes on high alert will not be taken by surprise and local conditions vary dramatically.
AFP/Getty Images
Posted By Marc Lynch
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - 2:06 PM
For the last few weeks, a massive wave of protests has been rocking Tunisia over the Ben Ali regime's alleged corruption, authoritarianism, and economic failings. A grisly suicide attack on a Coptic Christian Church in Alexandria on New Year's Day has sparked escalating worries about the state of Christian-Muslim relations in Egypt. Over the last few days, Jordanian security forces have struggled to put down riots in the southern town of Maan, the latest in an increasingly worrisome trend towards local violence and clashes. Kuwaiti politics continue to be roiled by the fallout from the Dec. 8 attack by security forces against law professor Obaid al-Wasimi and a group of academics and parliamentarians. What do these have in common?
These four seemingly unrelated incidents over the last month all draw attention to the accelerating decay of the institutional foundations and fraying of the social fabric across many of the so-called "moderate," pro-Western Arab regimes. What seems to link these four ongoing episodes, despite the obvious differences, is a combination of authoritarian retrenchment, unfulfilled economic promises, rising sectarianism at the popular level, and deep frustration among an increasingly tech-savvy rising generation. The internal security forces in these states remain powerful, of course, and it's unlikely that any of the regimes will fall any time soon (though some analysts seem more enthusiastic about the prospects for change in Tunisia). But even if these upgraded authoritarians can keep hold of power, there's a palpable sense that these incidents represent the leading edge of rising economic, social and political challenges which their degraded institutions are manifestly unable to handle.
Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
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January/February 2011
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