The dramatic overthrow of the Tunisian regime headed by former President Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali will almost certainly inspire renewed agitation for change in many sectors of Arab society. It will also trigger pre-emptive moves for containment by the established regimes. I suspect, however, that the Tunisian drama will be seen in retrospect more like the Solidarity movement in Poland that sparked a decade-long process of slow transformation in the Soviet satellites, than the fall of the Berlin Wall that ushered in revolutions across eastern Europe.
To understand the Arab world you have to appreciate that it comprises a wide variety of social conditions and styles of leadership, each with varying degrees of domestic legitimacy. The region’s leaders also have a proven ability to use force or unveil pre-emptive liberalisations and socio-economic subsidies to remain in power. Notwithstanding the extraordinary scenes of popular protest in Tunisia last week, powerful grievances among Arab citizens have traditionally been countered by strong innate conservative forces in society. This is why so few mass protests and regime overthrows of this kind have occurred in the modern Arab world.
In reality, there are two Arab worlds. The first comprises the wealthy Arab energy producers in the Gulf with small populations, where paternalistic and tribal welfarism keep most citizens materially comfortable and politically docile. The rest of the Arab world – some 320m of the 350m total Arab population – closely mirrors the Tunisian profile as a stressed landscape defined by socio-economic pressures, widening disparities between haves and have-nots, environmental degradation, considerable political tensions and autocratic rule anchored by domestic security agencies.
Arabs under the age of 30 comprise nearly 65 per cent of the entire population and share most of Tunisian youth’s concerns. Polls in 22 Arab countries conducted in 2010 by Gallup, for the Silatech organisation in Qatar that seeks to boost youth employment, highlighted important aspects of the condition of young Arabs in their two very different worlds.
Among the 15-29-year-olds surveyed, 30 per cent say they would migrate permanently if they had a chance to do so. Only 34 per cent of young Arabs feel their national elections are managed honestly, dropping to 18 per cent in Morocco and 25 per cent in Egypt. Just 50 per cent in low-income countries have confidence in the government or the judicial system.
And yet, strikingly, there were positive findings too about the mindset of young Arabs: 69 per cent said they had experienced happiness the previous day. Significantly, a large majority (86 per cent) expressed confidence in their religious organisations. The survey indicates that friends, family and God remain critical elements of stability for an otherwise agitated young population. Yet, overall, while 59 per cent of youth feel they are “thriving” in high-income countries that contrasts with just 12 per cent in low-income countries.
Against this backdrop Tunisia has unleashed a stirring challenge to the political order that is likely to spur a series of developments in the Arab world in the coming year.
Leaders will take pre-emptive economic measures, announcing public-sector salary increases, job-creation programmes or commodity price reductions, in a bid to ward off demonstrations. Meanwhile social issues, such as health insurance, pension schemes and subsidised housing will rise to the fore of public debate in poorer countries, as will corruption and its ravages on the state.
Meanwhile, the region’s traditionally embattled civil society activists will mobilise to challenge their governments more aggressively. Some will hold street demonstrations. There will also be new efforts to use the courts and enfeebled parliamentary systems to challenge abuses of power. In particular, we are likely to see a frontal assault on election systems in some countries, with democracy activists demanding an end to gerrymandering districts and more credible representation of the citizenry in parliaments that now have little credibility.
It is possible – I hope this becomes a priority, as it is the single most damaging part of the current Arab political stagnation – that some Arab countries will see demands for more explicit civilian oversight of their security services (as has happened gradually and peacefully in Turkey in the past decade). If events unfold as reformists would like, coalition governments will become more common, hopefully ensuring that government and ruling family budgets will come under greater public scrutiny.
It will be a long road. Just as a then little-known electricians’ union in a Gdansk shipyard in 1980 required a decade to transform a political universe, I suspect Tunisia’s impact on the Arab world will play itself out in stages. The modern Arab security state – the darling of Americans, Europeans and Russians for half a century – has been punctured and deflated in one place by its own people. The transformation of much of the rest of the Arab world is likely to follow in a less dramatic manner.
But it will follow for sure. For we have just witnessed the first stirring, genuine signs of an Arab citizenship that has stared down its home-grown tormentors, and now demands to live in freedom and dignity.
The writer is a syndicated columnist and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut
