In his lecture, Professor George Joffe begins with analysis of similarities, differences between MENA countries during past two years.
Middle East Online
By Karen Dabrowska – LONDON
Professor Joffe: Future is very uncertain
A paradigm shift has occurred in the Middle East and North Africa: A situation has been created where old rules, principles and analyses no longer apply. There is a completely new world emerging in the MENA region. We may not know where it is going to go but we know that it is new and that means we have to watch, try to understand it and support it where we can.
That was the conclusion of Professor George Joffe, the speaker at the monthly meeting of the Gulf Cultural Club in London. Professor Joffe emphasized that in the MENA region the public voice will not be suppressed again. People will feel that they have a right to express their demands and to see responses to them. That is a colossal change and it is something that Western powers will need to listen to because the region is not only one that may be dependent on its relations with the West but Europe in particular is very dependent on the Middle East for oil and trade. The Middle East stands across the world’s greatest trade routes and Europe lives in fear of migration the consequence of economic failure. Western states, particularly European states, are being very unwise not to take seriously the enormous change on Europe’s own borders Professor Joffe warned. The European Union has given a trivial $31m to help the transitional process.
In his lecture Dynamism of Change in the Middle East and North Africa, he began with an analysis of the similarities and differences between the countries in the region during the past two years. The events that occurred were roughly simultaneous. They all began within a very narrow period: December 2010 up to perhaps March 2011 which is when the crisis in Syria began. The crisis began over economics – the dramatic rise in food prices – not politics. In 2012 throughout the region between 20 and 40 percent of people were living on or below the poverty line. Income distribution also worsened and the top ten percent of the population in 2010 controlled much more than it had done ten years before.
All the political demonstrations and calls for change began as peaceful demonstrations and demands for social justice. It was not that the people just wanted an end to regimes. They also wanted political participation and an end to tyranny and the contempt shown by the rulers for the people over whom they ruled.
The demonstrations were all popular without a movement, political party or charismatic leader who was organizing them and political Islam was not a feature. But after the regimes disappeared in the process of construction of new governments Islam played a very important part.
The popular revolutions brought about four outcomes: regime removal (Libya and probably Syria), regime change (Tunisia, Egypt and possibly Yemen) where the state continued in a recognizable form even though the actual regime disappeared, regime adjustment (Algeria. Morocco and Jordan) where the regime made adjustments and concessions and continued without a discernible change of personnel or fundamental policy and regime preservation as occurred in the Gulf with the exception of Bahrain).
The four outcomes occurred because of the nature of the regimes. Syria and Libya were absolutist autocracies. They could only respond with violence to any challenge and the crises that began with demonstrations necessarily generated a violent response. In the case of Libya there was the assumption of the perfection of the Jamahiriya – the state of the masses that Colonel Gaddafi had created – and because it was perfect it could not be questioned. What was said to be a perfect example of democracy was the most intolerant of all the regimes in the region.
All the other regimes were liberalizing autocracies. The very nature of an autocracy means that it is not going to democratize and it will do whatever it can to avoid doing so but those autocracies realized that if they allowed marginal liberalization, a autonomous civil society sector but one that was very carefully and very directly controlled, they would placate western demands and guarantee their own continuation.
Therefore, except in the case of Tunisia, these revolutions are not complete. They have been partially carried through and they still have quite a long way to go.
In the Gulf solutions were achieved in a time honoured way: The opposition was bought off and where it couldn’t be bought off it was repressed. In Saudi Arabia King Abdullah was able to find $36bn that he could offer for further economic improvements to the country and concessions to the population.
In Kuwait and in Qatar distributions of funds were made to the population. Kuwait has had an assembly since 1961 and the assembly has learned over time how to exploit its position to discipline the ruling group. Nonetheless by and large peace could be maintained.
Only in Bahrain did the crisis really arise in ways that were unanticipated and difficult to control. What began as a series of demonstrations over economic issues was transformed by the regime into a sectarian struggle. That is a tragedy because it will make any solution far more difficult to achieve.
The problem for the Gulf is that stasis is not a solution. All that has happened is that the crisis has been postponed and it will reoccur over economic and political issues.
Political Islam became a dominant theme in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia largely due to cultural authenticity. The Islamic parties were the only ones that were not in some way besmirched by co-operation with the previous regimes and could offer the promise of a new beginning. Islamic parties had previously been in opposition. They did not have to confront the realities of political power, the compromises they would have to make and the ways they would have to adjust to a pluralistic political arena. And all of them on coming to power have espoused democratic principles.
The old European and American argument of Arab exceptionalism – the idea that the Arab world simply was not capable of democracy and that is why these regimes have been able to endure – is hypocritical because it was Western states that actually maintained those regimes in power for quite specific reasons of national self interest. Had the West not engaged in supporting those states maybe change would have occurred much earlier.
The idea of the war on terror resulted in the use of regimes such as those which existed in the Arab world to maintain a kind of uneasy stability in which political Islam, in whatever form, should not be allowed to flourish or threaten Western interests. It didn’t work and now there is the use of drones to maintain order in countries like Yemen.
Professor Joffe argued that Arab spring dates back to 1980 in Algeria during the Berber Spring when cultural demands soon translated into political demands for liberalization. They reemerged in 1988 in a series of country-wide riots that produced a sudden change in the political system. So it is quite clear that populations in the Middle East and North Africa are well aware of what they want: political participation, respect, and the removal of autocratic, repressive political systems.
In his closing remarks Professor Joffe said that the future was very uncertain. We do not know, we cannot predict what will happen, partly because it is too early.. There is nothing to say that the outcomes are going to be positive, Things could still go wrong, new dictators could still emerge. Look that the situation in Iraq.
But even though the future may be very uncertain, in the end there is going to be some kind of democratic outcome inside states where governments have to respond to popular demands. And that is a very good outcome whatever the hiccups may be along the way. In some countries the challenges are very great indeed.
Karen Dabrowska is a freelance journalist, writer and researcher.
Note: Professor George Joffe is a Deputy Director and a Professorial Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute. He specializes in the Middle East and North Africa. His current research interests include trans-national risk in the Mediterranean, legal systems and migrant communities and Euro-American relations. Professor Joffe was Deputy Director and Director of Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) between 1997 and 2000. In addition to being the Deputy Director and a Professorial Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute, Professor Joffe is currently visiting professor at Kings College; a research fellow at the Centre of International Studies, Cambridge University; and Director of RUSI Qatar. He is also a member of the Instituto de Estudos Estrategicos e Internacionais in Lisbon.
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