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

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • TUnisia
and fragmenting opposition forces has created enormous obstacles to the
construction of a new political order. The immediate legacy of Ben Ali’s regime—and
a leading threat to its democratic prospects—is the incoherence
and inexperience of his opponents and their flailing attempts to navigate
between the Scylla of the old order’s restoration and the Charybdis of a descent
into chaos that might provoke direct military intervention. If Tunisia
is an extreme instance of the weakness of opposition forces, it is hardly
alone; other Arab regimes suffer from similar deficits.
For more than two decades, the United States has worked to overcome
these gaps, investing heavily in civil society capacity building and political
party development. Unfortunately, as the Tunisian experience has revealed
all too clearly, these investments have not paid off. What might improve the
opposition’s odds in other Arab states One necessary step is a shift in the
focus of democracy promotion programs. However painful it might be, it is
long past time to acknowledge that efforts to build the democratic capacity
of Arab societies have largely failed. Building democratic capacity cannot,
on its own, create the openings that are needed for opposition movements
to operate, gain experience, and establish themselves as credible alternatives
to current regimes. It is time to change course and adopt a strategy aimed at
containing the arbitrary power of authoritarian regimes.
There are a number of ways that a containment-oriented strategy could
be implemented, but one linchpin of such a strategy should be a concerted
effort by the United States to secure the removal of emergency laws and security
courts that give legal cover to the arbitrary exercise of political power
by Arab autocrats. Egypt has lived under emergency laws since 1981, Algeria
since 1992. They have been in effect in Syria since 1962. In Jordan,
powerful state security courts were established in 1991 when martial law
was abolished. Democracy promotion may not be sufficient to bring about
the next Tunisia, but what it can do—by pushing harder to create space for
oppositions to develop—is ensure that if and when the next Tunisia happens,
there will an experienced and credible opposition ready to step in and
complete the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.
Steven Heydemann is a senior vice president at the United States Institute of
Peace.
65