INTL 440 Week 13

Arab Uprisings and Beyond

Murat SOMER ©

• KEY INSIGHTS

• Islamists were not prominent in the uprisings. Mainly secular groups were. Why?

• After the revolutions, however, Islamists emerged as the main players. Why?

• In countries where secular and religious political actors could cooperate and share power (Tunisia) did better in terms of peace and democratization than countries (Egypt) where they could not. Why?

• Main challenges of «political Islamists»:

• control salafis/jihadis

• Avoid existentially threatening the seculars

• Main challenges of «secular» actors:

• Avoid fractionalization

• Penetrate society

• Unite leftists, nationalists, liberals

• Secular nationalists are both main rivals and potential partners of political Islamists. Why?

Asef Bayat: The Arab Spring and its Surprises

• EVERY REVOLUTION IS A SURPRISE

• No one had anticipated the Arab Revolutions (i.e. The Arab Spring)

• YET, the surprise lies not in the unexpected arrival of these revolutions BUT

• in their ideological make-up and political trajectories.

• A great deal was happening within the underside of Arab societies starting from the end of the Cold War, which remained unnoticed by Middle East observers.

• While the Arab regimes were able to subdue collective actors (or organized movements), they were Unable to prevent collective actions (i.e. Non-movements, contentious practices of individuals and families to enhance their life chances)

Ex: urban poor protesting the high price of food; labour unrest; self-immolations as a result of extreme life conditions

They also could not prevent «public nagging.»

• Bayat: Islamist politics was such an unrivalled trend prior to the uprisings that, for many observers and policymakers, any real challenge to the despotic regimes would unleash Islamist revolutions in the region.

• Question: in what sense? Was this true?!!

• Bayat: Instead of Islamist revolutions, the Arab uprisings championed ‘post-Islamist’ convictions.

• Question: Is Bayat too optimistic (in 2011)? Why didn’t post-Islamism succeed (by 2015/2016)?

• Islamist activists were present during the uprisings, but they never determined the direction of events.

Bayat: Broadly, the Arab revolts called not for a religious state

• The overwhelming civil and non-religious Arab uprisings represent a sharp departure from the Islamist paradigm dominant in the region in the mid-1980s and 1990s.

• Question: was research wrong? Why didn’t observers see the çivil and non-religious discontent?

The confusion over the ideological orientation of the Arab Uprisings • The erroneous practice of lumping together several ideological

commitments under the rubric of Islamism.

• Who is an Islamist then?

• Bayat: By Islamism I mean those ideologies and movements that seek to establish some kind of an Islamic order — a religious state, Sharia law and moral codes in Muslim societies and communities.

• Ex; Jama‘at-e Islami or Lashkar-e Tayyubah in Pakistan; Lashkar-i Jihad in Indonesia; Al-Shebab in Somalia

Post-Islamism is different.

• It does not seek to establish a religious state.

• Instead, it seeks to establish an electoral democracy, a secular/civil state.

• Ex: The Iranian Reform Movement under Mohammad Khatami, the Indonesian PKS (Prosperous Justice Party), Tunisian a-Nahda, AKP in Turkey

• Thus, ‘Arab spring’ is not ‘Islamist resurgence’ per se, but rather has a clear-cut post-Islamist proclivity.

• In the cases of both Morocco and Tunisia, the parties which

captured most power are not Islamist, strictly speaking, but rather

post-Islamist. Al-Nahda in Tunisia and Justice and Development Party

(PJD) in Morocco remain committed to electoral democracy.

Question: Is this description of post-Islamism too optimistic?

Revolution vs. post-revolution

• In times of revolution/insurrection, the fiercest battles take place in the streets, the locus where revolutionary breakthrough is achieved.

• Whereas the ‘street’ matters most in times of revolution, in ‘post-revolution’ it is political society and the state that rule the day.

• A paradox of the ‘post-revolution’ period is that either the revolutionaries impose their agenda through exclusionary populism.

i.e. ‘We did the revolution, so we have the right to rule’

• OR revolutionaries might lose political society to the free-rider majority (the ones who did not participate in the revolution) whose votes can bring non-revolutionaries to the centres of power.

• The fact is that revolutionaries are always in a minority; and revolutions are always carried out by a minority

• Consequently, in post-revolution, the winners are those that skilfully mobilize the mass of ordinary people, including the free riders, to support them.

How come post-Islamists like al-Nahda managed to sideline the left and liberals, who in good part constituted the revolutionaries?

• In a post-revolutionary context, the post-Islamists were the most skillful in mobilizing the mass of ordinary people.

• Ex; Al-Nahda along with its leader al-Ghanoushi travelled to the provinces, urban neighbourhoods and villages to hold meetings, establish branches and build networks. Thousands attended these meetings

• This way al-Nahda managed to score impressive victories in the constituent assemblies and parliamentary elections in 2011.

• What about the revolutionaries then?

They were pushed away from the state and political society;

• The revolutionaries were bound to move into associational life in civil society if they were to continue their activism.

• But even civic activism is not guaranteed if the state, once it consolidates itself, extends its surveillance into oppositional civil associations.

• And it will do so in the name of ‘safeguarding the revolution’

Most striking example; The military rulers in Egypt banned a number of Human Rights organizations and non-conformist NGOs.

• The military rulers went as far as bringing 14,000 revolutionaries before a military tribunal, subjecting many to prosecution and torture

Reformist revolutionaries?

• These facts in themselves show a most significant aspect of the Arab Uprisings.

• The Arab ‘revolutions’ failed to bring about a radical transformation of the state and its institutions—a step necessary to realize the revolution’s objectives.

• Some of the key institutions of the old regimes — the security apparatus, the judiciary, the state media, political networks of powerful business circles, cultural organizations, and especially the military —

• remained largely unaltered

In the Arab Revolts, the protagonist revolutionaries remained outside the centres of power.

• In a sense then, these were the revolutions without revolutionaries.

• Consequently, what came to transpire in the end were not revolutions in the twentieth century sense of the term, but ‘refo-lutions’

• The Arab uprisings occurred at a time on the global stage when the idea of revolution had dissipated. When the key grand ideologies— revolutionary nationalism, Marxism–Leninism and Islamism— had declined.

Conclusion

• What transpired when the uprisings unfolded were not revolutions per se, beginning with the radical shift in the state power, but ‘refo-lutions’, that is, revolutionary movements that wished to compel the incumbent regimes to reform themselves.

Anne Wolf: Can Secular Parties lead the New Tunisia? • Three years after Tunisia’s revolution, the country’s elected

government—an Islamist-led coalition known as the Troika—has resigned owing to pressure by secular opposition forces in the National Salvation Front (NSF).

• Tunisia’s secular parties, largely sidelined after the revolution, are seeking greater prominence in politics.

• Secular parties’ ideological rivalries, strategic differences, and leadership divisions undermine their force in politics.

Recommendations for Tunisia’s Secular Parties • Move beyond anti-Islamist rhetoric and fix structural problems

• Put aside old rivalries to create strong, lasting coalitions

• Democratize from within. To promote party unity, leaders of secular parties should consider the views of all members, not just a small cadre of elites, when making decisions.

• In January 2014 Ennahda, then the ruling party, peacefully resigned as part of a compromise with the political opposition.

• This move, along with the finalization of the constitution in January 2014, displayed that—contrary to the secularists’ proclamations—Ennahda did not cling to power by all means.

•

A history of oppositional Disunity

• Opposition politics under Ben Ali were weak and fragmented. This is in part because the longtime leader was notorious for promoting fear of Islamism as a way of co-opting the opposition

• Weakened by decades of authoritarian rule, most parties did not even participate in the protests during the 2011 revolution.

• Following the revolution, old divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as within the secular camp reemerged.

First post-uprising elections

• October 2011

• Identity, religion, and anti-regime militancy proved central topics for voters

• A Coalition between a Dominant Ennahda and two weak secular parties – the centre-left Congress for the Republic, CPR and the social democratic Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties, Ettakatol- came to power.

• Ennahda took the key ministerial posts.

The CPR’s Divided Base

• Tensions between these various ideological currents quickly emerged when Moncef Marzouki left his position as secretary general of the CPR to become president in December 2011.

• Mass resignations from the CPR—to date, 18 out of its initial 29 Constituent Assembly deputies have left the party—have only decreased the voice of the CPR in government.

Ettakatol: Leadership Problems and Call for Reform • Since his militancy under Ben Ali, Mustafa Ben Jaafar, Ettakatol’s

leader, has stood for social democratic values. Ettakatol prides itself on having been an observer party to the Socialist International, a global organization of socialist, labor, and social democratic parties.

• In 2013, it became a permanent member of the Socialist International.

• A ‘reformist wing’ inside the party emerged in opposition Jaafar’s increasingly authoritarian style of leadership

Jaafar was appointed head of the Constituent Assembly • Six deputies resigned.

• According to one of those who resigned, “Ennahda needed Ettakatol to present a credible multiparty government, and Ben Jaafar needed Ennahda to become president of the Constituent Assembly. Everything else was of secondary importance.”

• Still, in comparison with the CPR, Ettakatol managed to remain more

united and critical of the Ennahda party through a better-define ideological platform that has never stopped defending the notion of laïcité

Tunisia’s opposition

• Tunisia’s opposition was from the very beginning weakened by internal divisions.

• During the Troika period, Tunisia’s opposition consisted in total of 21 parties, of which fifteen had three representatives or fewer in the Constituent Assembly.

• Opposition weakness was reinforced by a sometimes-limited understanding of what an opposition is supposed to do and what means it has with which to influence politics.

Political assasinations

• February 2013

Chokri Belaid, leader of the opposition party Democratic Patriots' Unified Party

• July 2013

Mohamed Brahmi, leader of the opposition party Popular Front.

Unification attempts

• Even before Brahmi’s assassination, attempts had been made to increase unity among secularists in order to counterbalance the Ennahda government.

• The most significant attempt is the forming of the party Nidaa Tounes (“Call for Tunisia”), which was formally licensed as a political party on July 6, 2012. Leader: Beji Caid Essebsi, former interim prime minister

• Reliable polls conducted in February 2014 place Nidaa Tounes support base at about 20 percent of the population,9 as compared to 14 percent for Ennahda

• What drew Tunisians to Nidaa Tounes was its promise to unite all secular parties under Essebsi, who is a well-respected leadership figure for many secularists.

• While early unification attempts were clearly limited, these various secular parties came together on July 26, 2013, one day after Brahmi’s assassination, to create the NSF, National Salvation Front.

• The coalition was dominated by the Popular Front and Nidaa Tounes.

• Having enthusiastically followed the removal of Egyptian President Morsi at the same time, NSF initially felt that Ennahda’s fall was imminent.

• Regular protests in front of the Constituent Assembly calling for the fall of the government increased pressure on the Troika to resign.

• Initially, the Troika government fiercely opposed the NSF’s demands, accusing the front of attempting to stage a coup d’état. But pressure on the regime increased significantly as around one-quarter of Constituent Assembly deputies eventually resigned.

• Eventually, Ennahda agreed to take part in a national dialogue with opposition parties. In October 2013, Islamist and secular parties alike signed a road map for the country’s future that forced the Troika to give up political power.

• The NSF’s success in forcing the Troika out of power was not only due to the unified front, but also of two other factors

The media and civil society organizations (especially Tunisia’s labour union)

• With a media and public opinion that hostile toward the government, it was only a question of when and how the Troika would resign.

• Tunisian Labour Union, UGTT, allied with three other civil society organizations in what came to be called the “Quartet,” became the primary, although deeply partial, mediators between the Troika government and the NSF.

• With a membership of almost 700,000, the UGTT is arguably Tunisia’s

most powerful organization, priding itself on a long history of political activism— including the role it played in the ousting of Ben Ali.

• The Quartet’s support of the NSF was therefore crucial in forcing the resignation of the Islamist-led government and the establishment of a government of technocrats, tasked primarily with organizing the next elections.

The Challenges Facing Secular Parties

• The capacity of secular parties to form united coalitions and develop regional structures will be central to their future and the power balance between secular and Islamist forces.

• For the moment, Nidaa Tounes remains the secularists’ most promising avenue for gaining power on the political scene, especially because the party has close ties to business.

• The choice of Taïeb Baccouche, a former head of the UGTT and president of the Arab Institute for Human Rights, as secretary general strengthens the party’s democratic credentials and links to the UGTT.

• Yet among the numerically and economically most powerful members of Nidaa Tounes are former members of Ben Ali’s party, who often have close ties to business—such as Faouzi Loumi.

• Regarding other secular parties yet, the impact of many small, secular parties is limited due to modest financial resources.

Conclusion

• To ensure that the impact of Nidaa Tounes, the main secularist party, will be enduring;

• the party will have to address the rivalry between its various ideological currents

• should refrain from campaigning primarily on anti-Islamism and instead develop an elaborate party platform to gain voters.

• The leaders of secular parties have to put aside old battles in order to gain in relevance.

• Finally, and maybe most importantly, secular parties have to learn how to democratize from within.

• The resignation of the Ennahda government, combined with the support secular parties have through business ties and other domestic forces—in particular favorable media coverage and strong ties with the UGTT- means that secularists have an unprecedented chance to come to power democratically.

YET this momentum will only be sustained if Tunisia’s secular parties

manage to tackle the deep structural, leadership, and internal

democratic challenges they are facing.