Between Extremism and Dictatorship: The Arab World’s Third Way

Attiq-ur-Rehman

For decades we have seen dic­ta­to­r­i­al regimes main­tain a death grip in the Arab world. Hav­ing start­ed out with charis­mat­ic lead­er­ship and the promise of Pan-Ara­bism, they soon became a means through which unelect­ed lead­ers could exer­cise absolute author­i­ty over their peo­ple. Over the years, with West­ern pow­ers recog­nis­ing the poten­tial threat of extrem­ist takeovers, Arab dic­ta­tors launched pro­grams to tor­ture and repress their peo­ple with sav­age bru­tal­i­ty, lead­ing to a wave of crit­i­cism and resent­ment. Oppo­si­tion to the regimes always exist­ed, but few could have pre­dict­ed the scale and nature of the changes that would come.

The Tunisian protests were trig­gered by the pub­lic sui­cide of a 26 year old Tunisian grad­u­ate, Mohamed Bouaz­izi, who burned him­self alive in protest against the high­hand­ed­ness and cor­rup­tion of the author­i­ties. Soon after, it became evi­dent that a rev­o­lu­tion was brew­ing. State repres­sion only fuelled the upris­ing, and with­in a mat­ter of days the pow­er and pres­tige of Pres­i­dent Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s twen­ty-three year old regime was destroyed.

Tunisia was one of the most pros­per­ous Arab coun­tries and tra­di­tion­al­ly Tunisians are per­ceived as docile and less antag­o­nis­tic. How­ev­er, their ini­tia­tive inspired oth­er Arabs, as well as instill­ing a sense of com­pet­i­tive­ness among them. Soon peo­ple all over the Arab world, includ­ing in Egypt, Syr­ia, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, Jor­dan, Alge­ria, Moroc­co, Sau­di Ara­bia, and Sudan, took to the streets demand­ing that their rights be upheld. Through their deter­mined strug­gle, the peo­ple of these coun­tries not only won the sup­port of the inter­na­tion­al pow­ers that had been allies of their rulers, but also forced the stub­born auto­crats to lis­ten and act accord­ing to the people’s wish­es. Although Egypt was the only oth­er coun­try to over­throw a regime that had held pow­er for three decades, there have been reforms in most of the oth­er coun­tries and the process is ongo­ing. Cur­rent­ly there is a civ­il war in Libya, while Syr­ia, Bahrain, and Yemen are expe­ri­enc­ing severe crises, and it is yet to be seen what the future holds for their peo­ple. This phe­nom­e­non is what is wide­ly known as the Arab Spring.

Rev­o­lu­tions are sel­dom peace­ful, but the Arab rev­o­lu­tions have been noto­ri­ous­ly bloody. More than twen­ty-four thou­sand peo­ple have lost their lives so far in some of the most bru­tal scenes of state repres­sion that have been seen in mod­ern times. Aside from police bru­tal­i­ty, there is also the risk of rev­o­lu­tions being high-jacked by extrem­ist groups. Despite all of this, those fight­ing for free­dom have con­tin­ued to set a hero­ic exam­ple in their strug­gle for democ­ra­cy.

These Arab rev­o­lu­tions are unique for sev­er­al rea­sons. First is the fact that mem­bers of all parts of soci­ety have par­tic­i­pat­ed; a well-known video from the Egypt­ian protests records a beard­ed pro­test­er say­ing, “We will not be silenced, whether you’re a Chris­t­ian, whether you’re a Mus­lim, whether you’re an athe­ist, you will demand your god­damn rights, and we will have our rights, one way or the oth­er! WE WILL NEVER BE SILENCED!”

Sec­ond­ly, young peo­ple have played a lead­ing role in the protests. Youth activism all over the devel­op­ing world is a mat­ter of con­cern. How­ev­er, the Arab Spring has set a prece­dent that such youths are an advan­tage rather than a detri­ment. It has shown that even in times of utmost despair, youths will not nec­es­sar­i­ly opt for extrem­ist solu­tions.

Social media has also played a vital role. The devel­op­ment of an online world has been seen as cre­at­ing apa­thet­ic indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, but the Arab Spring has proved that it can also do great things. Now it can be said that social media is not only an essen­tial part of our dai­ly lives, but it is also a rev­o­lu­tion­ary tool for polit­i­cal mobil­i­sa­tion. These key fea­tures of the Arab Spring also mark a gen­er­al trend of cur­rent socio-polit­i­cal move­ments and those of the near future.

How­ev­er, if the Arab dic­ta­tors cit­ed extrem­ism as a rea­son for pro­long­ing their own rule, we should not fall prey to the fal­la­cy of embrac­ing every­thing that they had opposed when in pow­er. The threat of armed extrem­ist groups still haunts the Arab World. Let’s not for­get the peo­ple and fac­tors behind the assas­si­na­tion of Anwar Saa­dat, the ruth­less mas­sacre of for­eign tourists in 1997 and al-Qaeda’s active cells in Yemen, to name but a few. How­ev­er, the com­fort­ing truth is that peo­ple have reject­ed extrem­ism; trust­ing people’s will and the demo­c­ra­t­ic process is the only way out.

Despite all their lim­i­ta­tions, these Arab rev­o­lu­tions are undoubt­ed­ly the great­est events to hap­pen in the Arab world since its decoloni­sa­tion. They not only show an Arab revival towards a new and bet­ter future, they also join the bro­ken link of the world-wide process of democ­ra­ti­sa­tion. A com­pa­ra­ble prece­dent of this sequence of events is the breakup of the USSR and the result­ing democ­ra­ti­sa­tion of the Com­mu­nist Bloc. Old pre­sump­tions about the unsuit­abil­i­ty of democ­ra­cy have been proven wrong. Now democ­ra­cy is no longer an alien process to the Arab peo­ple. In this age of glob­al­i­sa­tion peo­ple are wak­ing up to new real­i­ties. It is now up to gov­ern­ments and the dic­ta­tors them­selves to under­stand these new real­i­ties and act accord­ing­ly. The absence of democ­ra­cy will make the author­i­tar­i­an lead­ers unable to man­age future chal­lenges. The only option left for them is to accept the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem.