June 24, 2012
The ongoing
political developments in Syria and Egypt are important for many things,
including democratic transitions, popular sovereignty, the rule of law, the
quest for social justice and others. One issue, however, that has been
highlighted in these two countries has been perhaps the central political
dynamic of the modern Arab since its creation after World War One. This is the
struggle between military officers and civilian politicians for control of the
institutions of government.
Syria and Egypt
today reflect two very different examples of this struggle in its most acute
form, with both sides battling with all their might to defeat the other. This
is neither new nor an isolated matter. The civilian-military struggle has
defined the Arab world since the 1930s, and it occurs in different forms across
the entire region. Security agencies that dominate government decision-making
in the Arab world represent the single most destructive force that has made a
mockery of both stable state-building and credible citizenship. This is why the
battle for control of power in Syria and Egypt today is so intense.
The first
military coup d'etat in modern Arab history occurred in Iraq in 1936, when
General Bakr Sidqi and two politicians (Hikmat Sulayman and Abu Timman)
overthrew the government of Yasin al Hashimi. After that, especially after the
1948 debacle that saw Israel defeat Arab armies, military coups have been a
regular occurrence. In the 1970s, the flow of massive oil income throughout the
region allowed two other things to happen: The modern Arab security state was
able to cement itself and dominate all aspects of life, and, officers who
assumed power (such as Hafez Assad in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Zein el
Abedine Ali in Tunisia, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and Husni Mubarak in
Egypt) remained in power for periods ranging from 25 to 42 years, either on
their own or by bequeathing power to their sons.
We have
experienced 76 years of this ugly legacy of soldiers and intelligence officers
running our countries, without their having either the preparation or the
legitimacy to do so, and generally with catastrophic results. Entire economies
have been shattered and gutted; tens of millions of young people cannot find
gainful employment, because their public education systems turned them into
mindless incompetents. The institutions of state have been transformed into
hollow shells of their former nation-building stature, and civil servants often
become agents of mass petty corruption and inefficiency. Disparities between
rich and poor have widened sharply, as family- and crony-based circles of
wealth surrounding ruling families have expanded everywhere in the region.
Major national challenges related to economic expansion, social equity,
educational reform, environmental protection, health care and other such basic
needs have been given lip-service at best. The result is that the majority of
Arab citizens have had to endure a degrading combination of national mediocrity
and personal vulnerability that they are totally helpless to change.
The widespread
and continuing Arab uprisings, in the face of brutal government responses, are
explained in large part by the determination of ordinary citizens to end this
miserable situation, salvage their statehood and citizenship, and shift to a
new condition in which citizens play a direct role in shaping government
institutions and defining public policies. In Egypt the old men with guns seek
to maintain their perpetual control of state power by manipulating the courts,
the parliament and the election system, while in Syria the ruling military
establishment around the Assad family seeks to do the same thing through the
continuous use of vicious force against civilians. The determination of the
civilian populations to continue their struggles against their military
masters, even at the risk of death, is a sign of just how awful it feels to
live in an Arab country where soldiers and clandestine security agents tell you
what to read, what to say, what to think, what to study, and even what to feel
in your heart.
They have gone
too far, especially after 76 long years, and the harder they try to stay in
power, the more fiercely their citizens confront and challenge them. Three
successive generations of Arabs have been numbed, insulted and dehumanized by
this legacy of home-grown political brutality; the fourth generation has made
it known that it will not quietly endure this mistreatment, and has risen up in
mass revolt to end the rule of incompetent soldiers, their criminal associates,
and their insatiably greedy families.
I am firmly
convinced that this is the single most important of the multiple contests now
taking place across the Arab world. Until civilians with populist legitimacy
assume oversight of their military and security agencies, the Arab world will
remain the global laggard and laughing stock that it has become over the last
three generations.
Rami G. Khouri is
Editor-at-large of The Daily
Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and
International Affairs at the American University of
Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Copyright © 2012
Rami G. Khouri -- distributed by Agence Global