Drukpa – Bhutan's monthly news magazine

Looking Afar | Comments Off | 19th May, 2011

The Arab Spring sweep away the old and corrupt

By Travis Lupick

The mighty and corrupt of the Arab world have begun to fall. Now, it is time for the era of Mohamed Bouazizi to begin.

Today, the name Mohamed Bouazizi is one you can be sure is known to every third-rate tyrant, despot, and dictator from Equatorial Guinea to North Korea.

On December 17, 2010, Bouazizi awoke early and went to work selling produce on the streets of Sidi Bouzidm, Tunisia. There was nothing unusual about this; Bouazizi had worked as a street vendor since he was 10 years old.

After a couple of hours, Bouazizi was approached by police and—allegedly because he did not have a vendors license—authorities confiscated his merchandise. There was nothing remarkable about this, either. Bouazizi was often harassed by authorities, as were many like him under Tunisia’s corrupt civil service. But what happened next was not just notable. It would prove historic.

Motivated by widely-held frustrations with high unemployment, rising food prices, and government corruption and hypocrisy, Bouazizi went to his local politician’s office to complain. But the governor refused to see him. It was the final injustice Bouazizi would ever suffer.

Standing in the middle of traffic outside the governor’s compound, Bouazizi doused himself in gasoline, struck a match, and set himself on fire.

“How do you expect me to make a living?” Bouazizi cried just before carrying out his act of self-immolation.

That was the inadvertent start of a revolution that has since played out with varying intensities in no less than 12 countries.

Which brings us to a side note on Osama bin Laden, the former leader of al Qaeda and the architect of the 2001 attacks on the United States’ World Trade Center and the Pentagon. On May 1, 2011, United States special forces killed bin Laden, ending the greatest international manhunt in human history. After two wars and trillions of dollars spent in violence, an era of U.S.-Muslim relations too-often shaped by bin Laden is over. It is Mohamed Bouazizi and so many like him who will define the next era of the Arab world. Some five months after Bouazizi publicly committed suicide in the streets of Sidi Bouzidm, the once-so-mighty have begun to fall.

After 23 years in power, former Tunisia president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has fled to Saudi Arabia where he remains wanted by Interpol. Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who resigned from office on February 11, 2011, after ruling his country for three decades, is deposed and under investigation for corruption and abuse of power. At the time of writing, it looked like Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh would be the next to go. After 32 years in power, Saleh announced on April 23, that he would give in to protests that have gone on for months and resign from office in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution.

And in Libya, Colonel Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi, who beats all other Arab dictators in longevity by presiding over Libya with eccentric brutality since 1969, appeared increasingly desperate as high-level officials defected and a civil war raged across the country.

In Morocco and Algeria, protests continue despite those countries’ governments having initiated political reforms. In Bahrain, a sustained campaign of civil disobedience threatens the monarch of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalif. And in Syria, president Bashar al-Assad—whose father took power in 1971—is turning to increasingly-violent tactics to repress street protests spreading across the country. The revolutionary wave dubbed the “Arab Spring” has also seen varying degrees of unrest in Sudan, Djibouti, Iran, Iraq, Jordon, and Oman.

If Bouazizi were still alive, it would be fascinating to hear what he had to say.

Would he praise the United States for leading NATO’s intervention in Libya? Or would he condemn the Obama administration for its refusal to support peaceful demonstrators in Bahrain? Or would he simply ask, ‘Why does the most powerful nation in the world help some seeking freedom, while leaving others to be gunned down in the streets?’

The White House has taken an erratic series of positions on the various uprisings sweeping North Africa and the Middle East. Washington refused to join calls for Mubarak’s resignation until his eleventh hour. Gaddafi, who in recent years enjoyed a strengthening of ties with the West, was tossed overboard almost as soon as protests began. And in Yemen, the prospect for the rise of a failed state similar to Somalia has left Obama looking like a confused teenager stuck between two divorced parents, neither of which he wants anything to do with.

A nation’s foreign policy is not strategized on the basis of consistency; rather, it is most-often a series of crude calculations executed on a case-by-case basis.

The U.S.’s reluctance to support peaceful protesters in Egypt can largely be attributed to the fact that back in January, the U.S. had no idea how determined the Arab world’s pro-democracy advocates were going to prove themselves. Nobody wanted to bet on a horse that didn’t look like it could win the race. Furthermore, Mubarak was a longtime friend of Washington’s, a predictable ally of Israel’s, and a mainstay of stability in the Middle East. The U.S. feared (and continues to fear) what will fill the leadership vacuum left by Mubarak’s departure. Alas, in the end, the White House didn’t get a say on Egypt’s future. As January turned to February, the people’s calls for democracy only grew louder. And without a push from Obama, Mubarak was forced out the door.

Libya, on the other hand, is a textbook example of a pariah state. Gaddafi’s regime possesses chemical weapons, has made serious efforts to procure a nuclear bomb, and has a record of assassinating dissidents abroad, even going so far as to send hit squads to countries like the United Kingdom and Germany. While in power, Gaddafi amassed a multi-billion dollar fortune for himself and his family, bragged of his support for international terrorist organizations, and once called for the dissolution of Switzerland. When rebels took up arms in Libya, supporting them was an easy decision for Obama.

Yemen, the poorest Arab country, continues to be a tougher case. One needs only to look to nearby Somalia to see why. There, a hellish state of lawlessness has persisted for decades. The resulting power vacuum in Somalia has allowed both terrorists and pirates to use the failed state as a base of operations. In Yemen, unmanned U.S. Predator drones have carried out antiterrorism operations for more than a year, making clear just how unstable Yemen already is. The U.S. has publicly backed a plan for president Saleh to step down. But the prospect of a second failed state in a region home to one of the world’s most important trade routes, the Suez Canal, is a major concern for the White House.

Similar considerations for stability are shaping U.S foreign policy in Bahrain. There, advocates for democracy have an unfortunate reality working against them; Bahrain currently plays home to the U.S. navy’s Fifth Fleet. Those 30 ships (including two aircraft carriers) patrol trade routes in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the Red Sea, which are vital to the world’s oil supply. Losing the Fifth Fleet’s firm grip on this area is simply not an option for the White House, nor is it a situation desired by regional allies such as Saudi Arabia. And so protestors in Bahrain—at least 30 of which were dead and 800 arrested as of May 18—are likely on their own.

This brings us to Syria, a state considered by many analysts to be the “game-changer” in this Arab Spring, where events have the potential to go very bad indeed.

The last time a rebellion against the ruling Baathist regime gained popular support was 1982. In response, Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s father, ordered the demonstrator’s stronghold destroyed. Artillery fire rained down on the city centre of Hama in an attack that saw Assad’s soldiers kill 17,000 of their own citizens.

At the time of writing, reliable information coming out of Syria had slowed to a trickle. But on May 18, BBC News reported that Syrian security forces had already shot dead more than 700 civilians and that as many as 8,000 protesters had been detained by authorities. Evidence of at least one mass grave has also surfaced, indicating the death count could grow dramatically. Soldiers backed by tanks have been deployed to Deraa—where protests first started some six weeks ago—suburbs of Damascus, and other population centres around the country.

But with Syria, the U.S. has few options. Obama will most-likely puff out his chest and perhaps toughen existing economic sanctions on the country. But that’s about all the indebted U.S. can do. Much of Syria still supports president Assad and the Baath party, and Syria’s armed forces are nothing to scoff at. Moreover, with the U.S. military active in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya, there’s no plausible way that Washington can take on Damascus without suffering the sort of high casualty numbers U.S. public opinion no longer permits.

Complicating matters further is that if even the U.S. could raise a hand to stop a Syrian state massacre of protestors, it’s not sure it would want to. The U.S. and its closest regional ally, Israel, detest Assad and the hostile Baathist regime. But they are far from certain a democratically-elected government would be any friendlier to Western interests. And like Bahrain, pro-democracy advocates in Syria are unlikely to receive any kind of assistance similar to the air support NATO forces are providing for rebels in Libya.

Five months on, the Arab Spring continues as the greatest international shake up since the fall of the Soviet Union. In several states, demonstrations continue to grow in boldness and intensity. Who will fall next?

Yemen’s president Saleh has agreed to resign from office before June. Now we are waiting for Gaddafi’s ‘Saddam moment’, when the aging despot will be dragged from some filthy hole in the desert, stripped of his stolen wealth and held accountable for the crimes he has committed.

Except Gaddafi is too crazy to fall quietly. He’s likely to go out like Tony Montana, machine guns blazing across the marble lobby of some presidential palace, screaming ‘Say hello to my little friend’ in Arabic as the walls fall down around him.

Bahrain and Syria are the stories to watch in the coming weeks. Beyond the reach of international assistance, their people remain in the streets, standing brave.