Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

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foreign policy • revolution in the arab world ings of impending crisis fell on deaf ears precisely because the predictions never seemed to come to pass. Authoritarian Arab regimes seemed all too capable of holding on to their power and protesters unable to break through to spark mass revolt. If the problems were clear, it’s true that few saw these particular waves of protest coming. At first, the unrest in Tunisia that began on Dec. 17 appeared more of the same. When the demonstrations began to pose a real challenge to Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, few thought that they could spread to other Arab countries. When upheaval began to break out across the region, from Egypt to Yemen and Jordan, most thought that Arab regimes would be well-prepared to avoid suffering the Tunisian president’s fate. A decade of watching protests across the region fail to dislodge autocratic regimes left observers wary and skeptical. The power and success of the protests sparked by Tunisia took everyone by surprise—not least the protesters themselves. It is far too soon to offer confident conclusions about why these protests succeeded where so many others had failed. But some things seem clear even now. Youth movements drew on the experience of a decade of protest and managed to bring mass publics into the streets in the face of very real repression and fears. The demonstration effect from Tunisia was far more powerful than most political scientists expected. Al Jazeera almost certainly played a decisive role in bringing the Tunisian and then Egyptian stories to the broader Arab public, casting them as a dramatic new chapter in the ongoing struggle for change that had always been central to the network’s agenda. Social media, from Facebook and YouTube to SMS networks, gave powerful weapons to those organizing protests and helped them shape international views of their struggle. The United States played an important role in Egypt, particularly, by restraining the military from massive repression and urging the regime to begin a real, immediate transition. The essays in this volume represent only the beginning of the story; they mark our first, unfolding efforts to understand a process very much in its opening phase. For now, of course, we are left with more questions than answers: Will Arab regimes, frightened by Egypt and Tunisia, respond with the old game of repression and co-optation, or will they begin real reforms Will the new Egypt and Tunisia move toward democracy, or will they succumb to a rebranded authoritarianism Could protest morph into chaos, 2
foreign policy • revolution in the arab world dangerous instability succeeding heavy-handed stability as the region’s new norm And what about the daunting needs of the Arab people—will these new regimes find better ways to meet them than the autocrats they displaced And finally, of course, there are the many questions about how these upheavals will affect an international order already all too focused on the region’s many problems. What happens to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the American alliances in the region—and its place in the world Stay tuned. And in the meantime, we hope you find this unique ebook helpful as the drama unfolds. Think of it as a guidebook to Revolution in the Arab World. —Marc Lynch, associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and co-editor of the Middle East Channel on ForeignPolicy.com. 3
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