ALI AHMED SAID is no stranger to controversy. The 83-year-old poet, better known by his pen name, Adunis, has lived in exile from his native Syria since 1956. Revered as a father of modernism—and sometimes hailed as an Arab T.S. Eliot—he has also been reviled as too harsh a critic. In 2006 he famously declared the “extinction” of the Arabs. Fear of freedom, he said, had made them lose the creative will to change the world.
Yet Adunis has not been happy with the Arab spring either. He faults its revolutionaries for trying to topple rulers rather than seeking change from within. By using the same vocabulary of power as the regimes they oppose, he says, they risk substituting one kind of absolutism for another: religious dogma for state ideology. He has infuriated Syrian rebels by telling them to shun violence, calling instead, from the safety of Paris, for dialogue even as the Assad government was killing its own people.
It does not help that Adunis was born into the same minority Alawite faith as Syria’s embattled president. Some rebels have accused him of sectarian allegiance to the regime. Others showed what they thought of people like him when in February they sliced the head off a bronze statue in the war-ravaged city of Ma’arrat Numan, 80km south of Aleppo. That monument was a tribute to its most famous son, the 10th-century blind poet al-Ma’arri, an illustrious figure in the long Arab tradition of mordant sceptics to which Adunis belongs.
Pessimism about where the Arab world is going is understandable, especially in view of what is happening in Syria. But perhaps Adunis is also being over-hasty in dismissing the entire Arab spring as a game of musical chairs. Across the region, even in countries without any regime change, more subtle contests are playing out that may bring about deeper transformations in Arab societies.
It is often noted, for instance, that Arab monarchies have proved more resistant to revolution than republics. This is not because revolutionary pressures have been absent. Some 40,000 Moroccans took to city streets in February 2011, at the same time as revolutions were taking place elsewhere. Morocco has suffered sporadic protests ever since, as has another kingdom, Jordan. At least 50,000 citizens in Kuwait, a huge number for a small state, turned out for peaceful demonstrations last November.
Even in the most autocratic of autocracies, Saudi Arabia, dissent has been rising. Among the kingdom’s long-repressed 10% Shia minority, this is to be expected. Concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern Province but largely excluded from sharing its immense bounty, the Shias have been increasingly restless witnesses to the harsh suppression of their co-religionists in Bahrain, a short distance away. Clashes with police have left some 17 Saudi Shias dead since February 2011.
More surprising has been a small but resilient movement, led largely by Saudi women, calling for the release of relatives imprisoned under sweeping anti-terrorist laws. Many of these protesters are deeply conservative, yet their demands are the same as those of Saudi liberals, including human-rights advocates, who have vocally backed the prisoners’ cause. A further echo comes from exiled dissidents, the best-known of whom, an anonymous critic of the ruling Al Saud family who goes by the pseudonym of Mujtahid, has more than 1m Twitter followers.
Adunis is right that Arab revolutions have gained power and momentum by uniting, if only fleetingly, to oust detested strongmen. That strength of purpose is missing in Arab monarchies since royal rulers are still widely perceived as legitimate. Their critics are asking instead for a new social contract that will change the nature of the relationship between citizens and state.
In Kuwait the chief demand was for repeal of an electoral law seen as giving the ruling Al Sabah family too much influence over elections for the country’s 50-man parliament. Skewed electoral laws have been a focus of Jordan’s protests too, along with calls for a more equitable distribution of wealth and power. In Morocco the main demands were for an end to corruption, more freedom of speech and a new constitutional order to reduce the overweening influence of the royal court. For Saudis the list is longer and more varied because their vast kingdom has few representative institutions of any kind.
Arab monarchs have parried such demands in different ways. At the outset of the Arab spring Kuwait’s Sheikh Jaber al-Sabah made a cash gift worth about $3,500 to every citizen, along with stacks of food vouchers. Ignoring the rising discontent that culminated in last year’s marches, he forced through elections on his own terms in December, prompting a widely observed boycott. His government has also prosecuted critics and sometimes dealt with them harshly. But Kuwait still stands out as the most politically open of the Gulf states. Sheikh Jaber agreed to refer his electoral law to the courts. A recent ruling upheld the controversial rules, but ordered parliament to be dissolved and new elections to be held. Kuwait’s opposition is likely to maintain a strong campaign for reforms that go beyond technicalities.
King Abdullah of Jordan, not being a member of the Gulf club of oil-rich nations, had to bend further with the wind. A commission he appointed to amend the country’s 1952 constitution proposed changes such as electing the prime minister, scrapping press laws that allow journalists to be jailed, permitting political parties to be formed and redrawing constituency boundaries. These looked progressive, but the royal court still retained all the levers of power. Islamist groups object to a ban on religious parties and journalists bridle at continued restrictions.
King Mohammed VI of Morocco seemingly went further, setting up a panel to rewrite the country’s constitution in full. Moroccans were invited to respond to an online draft of the new charter which gently trimmed the king’s considerable prerogatives. Put to a referendum in July 2011, it passed with a claimed 98.5% in favour. When the mildly Islamist Justice and Development party proved the strongest in parliamentary elections, the king dutifully made its leader prime minister.
This apparently smooth transition has helped sustain Morocco’s impressive economic growth. Yet things are not as happy as they appear. The secretive royal court retains vast holdings in sectors such as energy, property development, banking and insurance. Repression of dissent, and particularly of the press and of more radical Islamist factions, continues much as before. There is no sign of widespread protest, but pressures may well mount again with time.
The case for patience
In Saudi Arabia, too, dissent for the most part remains focused on specific issues. The state has honed its skills at co-opting opponents and exploiting divisions between the country’s religiously conservative majority and Westernised liberals. Since both the king and his crown prince are old and ailing, even Saudis impatient for change accept that patience is the best course for now. Yet calls for a shift towards constitutional monarchy are no longer confined to the small educated elite. Even the religious hierarchy has slowly moved away from the strict Wahhabist doctrine of obedience to the sovereign, and some of its members now argue for setting limits to his rule.
Events in the neighbouring emirate of Qatar have also jolted Saudi minds. Last month Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who at 61 was already the youngest reigning monarch in the Gulf, handed power to his 33-year-old son, Sheikh Tamim. The new emir soon announced sweeping changes in his cabinet that have, in effect, empowered a younger generation. Qatar remains an undiluted autocracy, but the precedent of a highly popular ruler resigning at the height of his powers is significant nonetheless. The subjects of Sultan Qaboos of Oman, for instance, may ask more loudly why, after 43 years at the helm, their childless ruler has yet to name a potential successor.
All these monarchies have shown some agility in responding to their people’s demands. But the past two years have shown just how widespread and persistent those demands have been, and how similar they are across the region. Everywhere citizens are calling for more justice, transparency, accountability, limits to arbitrary rule, more equitable economic policies, freedom of speech and the devolution of central power. All these changes require a new constitutional order, making it vital that Arab countries get their constitutions right.
The record so far looks unpromising. Aside from the monarchies that have tinkered with their constitutions to calm the crowds, three Arab republics, Iraq, Syria and Egypt, have adopted completely new national charters in recent years, and Tunisia is due to do so soon. Libya, Sudan, and Yemen are further behind. Algeria’s government is also proposing significant constitutional reform. These countries have adopted widely differing approaches, but all face similar problems.
The first to act was Iraq, which under American occupation in 2005 launched a new constitution with much fanfare. This was never going to be easy, given the country’s ethnic and sectarian divisions, its history of dictatorship and political volatility, the need to share the spoils of vast oil wealth and the impatience of the American occupiers to see rapid results. Most Sunni Arab politicians boycotted the drafting, which meant that their constituents’ needs were poorly represented. Their absence helped Iraq’s 15% Kurdish minority make big gains in the new order, winning terms for autonomy that come close to outright independence in the north. The Shia majority also secured political dominance for the first time in Iraq’s history.
But the constitution has not helped peace along. Sunni Iraqis have grown increasingly restless at being shut out, as they see it, from much of the business of government. They feel unduly targeted under sweeping laws against terrorism passed by Shia majorities and enforced by Shia-dominated government forces. Since last December regions with a Sunni majority have been in a state of semi-permanent revolt. Recruitment to radical jihadist groups has surged and the hideous cycle of sectarian attacks and counter-attacks, which had died down four years ago, has restarted with a vengeance.
This is not wholly the fault of the hastily written constitution, but its vague wording has notably failed to check the powers of the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. He has ridden roughshod over opponents, at times ruling, in effect, by decree. Exploiting his titular role as commander-in-chief, he has appointed loyalists throughout the armed forces and the police and formed brigades under his personal command.
Vagueness about the limits to Kurdish autonomy has also generated friction, particularly over oil revenues. Kurdish federal authorities have lured foreign firms with generous contracts. The central government has reacted by closing pipelines, delaying revenue transfers and moving troops to the Kurdish frontier.
Something to hold onto
Yet Iraqis still cling to the constitution as an island of order in a sea of chaos. Most Sunnis do not so much want Mr Maliki to be overthrown as their grievances to be redressed. Along with prospering Shias in the south, they are beginning to see the possibilities of the clauses allowing regions to declare autonomy, on which the Kurds had insisted. Federalism, once rejected as an American-inspired plot to break up the country, is now more widely accepted as a potential solution to its ills. If this works in Iraq, federalism could be a model for other all-too-unitary states such as Syria, Yemen and even, some day, Saudi Arabia.
Egypt’s constitution-writing experience has been shorter and less violent but equally frustrating. The Muslim Brotherhood was determined to anchor the “Islamic” gains made in its election victory in 2011 in a new national charter. Egypt’s secular-leaning courts tried to mute their enthusiasm, but Mr Morsi issued a decree conferring legal immunity on his own rulings, as well as on the Islamist-dominated body charged with writing the new constitution. This provoked big protests, but they did not prevent the draft constitution from being put to a referendum and approved by a 64% majority last December.
It almost immediately proved troublesome, to the Muslim Brotherhood as much as anyone. Both the religious scholars and Egypt’s constitutional court rejected various draft bills, as the constitution allowed them to do, including one to prepare for the election of a new parliament. This left Mr Morsi having to rely on a rump senate for a legislature which was widely viewed as illegitimate. An opinion survey conducted by James Zogby, an American pollster, recently found that, six months after the constitution was proclaimed, a majority of Egypt’s voters wanted it scrapped. They may now get their way. Egypt’s generals have temporarily suspended the constitution and charged the Supreme Court with swiftly producing a better version, to be put to a new referendum. This is a dangerous and disruptive precedent, but it may yet come up with a more workable and widely accepted national charter.
Tunisia is the only Arab country so far to take enough time and trouble over its constitution. Its dominant Islamists said from the outset that they would not try to impose controversial clauses, such as enshrining Islamic sharia law as a key component of the legal code. Its temporary legislature, elected in October 2011 mainly to draw up a constitution, has consulted widely. The constitution is likely to pass with a two-thirds majority of the assembly later this summer.
Clearly, setting new rules is not enough, just as elections alone do not make democracy. The Arab world will also have to rebuild and maintain institutions such as independent courts and free media. Yet amid the region-wide cacophony of gunfire and shouting crowds, such institutions are indeed taking root. In cafés and on internet forums, debates are being conducted with a passion and open-mindedness that will not soon die down. Ordinary people across the Arab world, and not just educated city folk, are determined to make their voices heard.
Special report: the Arab spring
