A Bahraini protestor watches clashes with riot police in the village of Sanabis, west of Manama, November 27, 2013. Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images
December 18, 2013
How will history judge the uprisings that started
in many parts of the Arab world in 2011? The label “Arab Spring” proved too
simplistic from the beginning. Transformational processes defy black-and-white
expectations, but in the end, will the awakenings be more reminiscent of what
happened in Europe in 1848, when several uprisings took place within a few
weeks only to be followed by counterrevolutions and renewed authoritarian rule?
Or will they more closely resemble the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union, after
which some countries swiftly democratized while others remained in thrall to
dictatorship?
Whatever the case, it is clear that the process of
Arab transformation will need decades to mature and that its success is by no
means guaranteed. The movements driving it are more unanimous about what they
are against than about what they are for. But the debate to define this
awakening has begun.
Transforming
the movements sweeping the Middle East into coherent and effective forces of
change will take time. In all of history, no such process has taken only two or
three years to mature, evolve, and stabilize. The question over the long term
is whether the present changes, however uncertain and difficult, will lead to
democratic societies. The coming year will offer signs that indicate whether
countries of the Arab world are heading toward democracy and pluralism or away
from them.
2014 will see the countries of the Middle East
moving in different directions, with some making strides toward genuine
democratic transitions while other governments perpetuate timeworn policies
that allow them to avoid addressing the very real social, political, and
economic challenges they face.
Dynamics
at Play
There are three key dynamics shaping the evolution
of the Arab Awakening. The first and perhaps most important consequence of the
Arab uprisings is the transformation of Islamist movements—mostly offshoots of
the Muslim Brotherhood—from opposition groups into major political forces in
most countries undergoing transitions. This shift is most evident in Tunisia,
Morocco, and, to a lesser extent, Libya and Yemen. It was also true of Egypt
until the military overthrew the elected Islamist government last summer.
And political Islam will continue to be a driving
factor during the next year of the Arab Awakening, albeit in a different way.
There has been a significant drop in public support for Islamists in Egypt and
Tunisia. This development has seriously challenged the notion of the “Islamist
threat”—the idea, widely held in some circles and often used by secular parties
to discourage the election of Islamists, that political Islamist forces would
never leave power once they acquired it. The same Egyptians who voted Islamists
in demonstrated in unprecedented numbers against them in the short course of
one year, confirming what many polls have already suggested: no matter how
conservative or religious the Arab street is, it judges the forces in power by
their performance, not their ideology.
In Egypt, the fact that then president Mohamed
Morsi was removed by the military rather than by voters may well negate any
lesson that might have been learned about the consequences for leaders who fail
to deliver results. But in Tunisia, the ruling Islamist party, Ennahda, has
been steadily losing support to a coalition of secular forces. And unlike in
Egypt, the Tunisian army has not mitigated this process by intervening.
Meanwhile, the largest Salafi political force in Egypt has aligned itself not
with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist Freedom and Justice Party but with the
military. These developments suggest that Islamists, even radical Islamists,
are open to compromise once they become part of the political process.
Over the past few years, Islamists have lost their
“holiness” in the Arab world. Their once-popular slogan, “Islam is the
solution,” is no longer attractive to wide sectors of the population. Three
years after the Arab uprisings, youthful and pragmatic populations are starting
to embrace the triumph of performance over ideology in the region. Faced with
such pressure, Islamists will have to reinvent themselves, offering practical
solutions to economic challenges facing Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and other
countries if they are to retain what once appeared to be their invincible
popularity.
The second factor influencing the Arab transitions
arises from the two internal battles political Islam appears to be fighting—one
between the offshoot movements of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi groups and
the other between Sunni and Shia Muslims. The first might determine to a great
extent the future course of political Islam—whether it will be inclusionary or
fundamentalist, peaceful or radical, reactionary or modern, or less clearly
delineated.
The second fight is especially worrisome. The
tension between Sunnis and Shia is rising to an alarming degree in countries
like Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and most horrifically in Syria. And
political demands in all these countries are turning sectarian. In many cases,
particularly in the Gulf, this “sectarianization” of politics is being
aggravated by government policies of exclusion and discrimination.
The Sunni-Shia divide underscores the region’s lack
of respect for diversity in any form—religious, political, or cultural. This
division is not only religious but also often political and cultural. It is
true that the Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France
created artificial entities when it divided up the Ottoman Empire and drew the
boundaries of the modern Middle Eastern nations in 1916. But it is also true
that most Arab governments have not developed in their countries a sense of
true citizenship in which national identity trumps any other allegiances to
religious, ethnic, or tribal identities. This is particularly evident in the
Mashreq region, where it is clearly manifested in countries such as Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. The grievances of the Shia in Saudi Arabia,
Bahrain, and Kuwait are more political than religious and largely stem from
being treated as less than full citizens. The problem is less severe in the
Maghreb, where Egyptians and Tunisians, for example, thought of themselves as
such long before the modern states of Egypt and Tunisia were created.
The last factor shaping the Arab Awakening is the
secular forces, which have not easily accepted the rise of political Islam.
These forces have behaved in a way that seems to suggest that they are fine with
democracy only as long as it brings them to power. In other words, secular
forces are engaging in the very antidemocratic practices they accuse the
Islamists of following, as demonstrated by their support for the Egyptian
military’s removal of Morsi (granted, that action was a result of millions of
Egyptians taking to the street to oppose the president).
The
Year Ahead
In Egypt, 2014 will witness a referendum on a new
constitution in addition to presidential and parliamentary elections. But the
country will not have set itself on a solid track toward democratic transition.
The new constitution will appear to alienate Islamic elements in society.
Moreover, it will enshrine enhanced political powers for the military,
including freedom from presidential control and broad rights to try civilians
in military courts.
General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, commander of Egypt’s
armed forces, will probably run for president and win by a landslide. That will
not assure Egypt’s stability, however. The military is behaving in a very
heavy-handed way, as militaries are wont to do, and has begun to alienate even
those sectors of society that have stood behind it so far. 2014 will see
increased tensions between military and security forces and Islamist actors. It
will also see worsening relations between the military and the secular
opposition, especially the youth. Continuing demonstrations and escalating
Islamist attacks on military and security targets in the Sinai and elsewhere
will make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to address the country’s economic
challenges. Egypt is not out of the woods yet.
In Tunisia, the process is more promising but still
under threat. 2014 will most likely see the approval of a new constitution and
the holding of parliamentary elections. The ruling Islamists face a real danger
of losing to a secular coalition in those elections. If that comes to pass, it
will set a precedent of Islamist forces assuming political power, then giving
it up according to popular will. This precedent will have repercussions
throughout the region, robbing many secular Arab governments of the chance to
use the so-called Islamist threat as a scare tactic to forestall any real
reforms. But the political consensus among Islamists and secularists that has
allowed the transition to move forward, albeit fitfully, will continue to be
vulnerable to terrorism by Salafi groups.
For Libya, 2014 could be a pivotal year in which
the country begins a slow recovery toward greater stability and cohesion. Libya
will hold elections for a Constituent Assembly that will draft the country’s
constitution, and it will convene a much-anticipated national dialogue under
the auspices of the United Nations and the prime minister’s office. Both events
hold the promise of political reconciliation and represent opportunities to
resolve fierce disputes about the balance between central and municipal
authorities.
2014 could also see a potential boost to Libya’s
army, police, and border guards as a result of training and material support
from the United States, the European Union, and other members of NATO. For
these efforts to have a lasting and positive effect, they must be accompanied
by a parallel track of dialogue and a systematic program to disarm, demobilize,
and reintegrate the country’s numerous militias into society.
Syria will continue to dominate the news in 2014
with the persistence of a devastating war of attrition that neither side can
win or lose given the current state of affairs. If convened, the planned peace
conference known as Geneva II will not result in agreement over a transitional
government able to guide Syria into a new phase. And regional and internal
dynamics will continue to shift in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s favor as
international concern builds over the growing role of Islamic extremist groups
in the opposition. One huge challenge will be an increasingly unsustainable
refugee problem, not only on the humanitarian level—over a third of the Syrian
population is already internally or externally displaced—but also in countries such
as Lebanon and Jordan that are hosting refugee populations equivalent to more
than 20 percent of their own populations.
The monarchies of the Arab world—both rich and
poor—are not immune to the challenges facing the rest of the region. But they
have mostly not experienced the same turmoil that the republics have. The rich
monarchies of the Gulf have attempted to stem the tide of uprisings through
financial means (and in the case of Bahrain, through security measures). The
poor countries of Morocco and Jordan have used the legitimacy of their leaders
to attempt a largely cosmetic “reform from above” process to keep the
governments ahead of the street.
These measures have so far been successful in
sparing the Arab monarchies the turmoil and uprisings that took place in many
countries around the region. But they have not succeeded in tackling the
underlying political, economic, and social challenges these nations face—and
they are thus unsustainable. There are no signs, however, that the leaders in
these countries have internalized the need to seriously address the problems at
hand.
Saudi Arabia has attempted to insulate itself and
the Gulf Arab states from the region’s transformative forces through the
timeworn policies of subsidies, cosmetic reforms, and, in the case of Bahrain,
military intervention. Beyond the Gulf, Riyadh has sought to check the regional
rise of both the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian influence, pursuing an
increasingly assertive foreign policy that is simultaneously counterrevolutionary
(such as offering financial aid to the military-backed government in Egypt) and
pro-revolutionary (such as providing military support to anti-Assad rebels in
Syria). Its position on both countries opened up a widening chasm in its
relations with the United States over regional order that was crystallized when
Washington and other world powers concluded an interim deal with Tehran that
would temporarily freeze key parts of the Iranian nuclear program. Saudi Arabia
claimed that the United States had betrayed it by keeping it in the dark
regarding the Iranian deal and threatened to pursue a more unilateral foreign
policy. In reality, however, Riyadh has few options but to follow in the broad
wake of U.S. policy in the Middle East and is unlikely to follow through on its
threats.
Jordan will continue to feel that it has
successfully ridden the wave of Arab transitions without seriously addressing
some of the key economic and political challenges facing the country. And it
will probably get away with it, at least for now.
2014 could prove to be a decisive year for Iran,
both internally and with regard to its relations with the outside world. While
the interim nuclear agreement was groundbreaking, the United States and Iran
appear to have a fundamental mismatch in expectations regarding a comprehensive
deal. Both the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S.
Congress expect Tehran to make even greater nuclear compromises, while Iran’s
hardliners feel they have already gone far enough and expect Congress to lift
all sanctions imposed on the country.
It also remains to be seen whether a nuclear
détente with Tehran can foster significant U.S.-Iran cooperation on regional
issues. As of yet, there are few tangible signs that Tehran is preparing to
modify long-standing revolutionary principles, such as resistance to the United
States and rejection of Israel’s existence. In this context, a fundamental
shift in those Iranian policies that are problematic to both regional countries
and the United States, such as support for the Assad regime in Syria or for
Lebanon’s Hezbollah, is unlikely.
An important development in Iran internally is the
seeming reemergence of the country’s civil society and middle class. The
election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has resuscitated these groups,
which are putting grassroots pressure on the government to respect civil
liberties at home and carry out a rapprochement with the outside world. But
very powerful factions in Iran have much to lose by such an opening, and it
remains to be seen whether Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will ultimately
throw his weight behind the pragmatists or the hardliners.
2014 will almost certainly witness the failure of
negotiations seeking a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Five
months into a nine-month negotiating process, there are no indications that the
two parties have even started to untangle the difficult issues separating them.
The failure of this latest high-profile U.S. effort will clarify what many have
known for some time—that traditional approaches to this issue are bankrupt.
Many analysts expected the Palestinian street,
inspired by the Arab uprisings, to explode yet again. But a third intifada has
not taken place, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Some attribute it to
the Palestinians’ fatigue with two very costly uprisings that did not bring
independence. It is doubtful that 2014 will witness another intifada, although
the situation will become increasingly unsustainable once current talks fail to
produce an outcome. Diplomatic progress on the Iran nuclear front, if it
continues, could begin to shift dynamics on the ground and open the door for
new multilateral diplomacy on the Palestinian issue.
The fourth year of the Arab Awakening will shed
light on important trends, including the future of political Islam, the
widening Sunni-Shia divide, the role of secular parties, and the responses of
countries that have not undergone transitions. But in the end, 2014 will be
only one page in the first chapter of what will prove to be a long book in Arab
history.
This article is reprinted with
permission from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It can be
accessed online at:
http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/12/12/year-four-of-arab-awakening/gw1m
Marwan Muasher is vice president
for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he
oversees research in Washington and Beirut on the Middle East. He served as Jordan’s foreign minister from 2002 to 2004,
and deputy prime minister from 2004 to 2005) of Jordan. He was senior vice president of external affairs at the
World Bank from 2007 to 2010. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Second Arab
Awakening, published by Yale University
Press, and of The Arab Center: The
Promise of Moderation, published
by Yale in 2008.