We have just witnessed a great event when we saw the Egyptian people topple the corrupt and oppressive regime of Hosni Mubarak. This short essay is to withdraw from that revolution a few lessons along with their underlying facts.
I will not talk about lessons such as: dictators are doomed sooner or later, people always aspire to freedom, young generations want a future free from oppression and corruption ..etc all these are obvious ones and have been true since the dawn of times.
Egyptian revolution has deeper and more insightful lessons that all politicians and ordinary citizens, especially in the west, shall be aware of. These lessons will facilitate the mutual understanding between the Arab world and the West and bridge the mis-understanding gap that we have been seeing in the past decades.
- The choice in the Arab world is no more a binary one between oppression and stability on one side, and democracy and chaos on the other side. Heroic Egyptians have shown that democracy and chaos are not and should not be considered synonymous in the middle east. As they aspire for freedom, democracy and transparency, people want to keep stability and economic development in their countries.
- In 18 days of demonstrations, the only flag that was floating was the Egyptian flag and nothing else. Also, no other flags were burnt or torn apart. The revolution is a patriotic one and the people who demonstrated did it for the love of their country and were not driven by religious ideology or by animosity towards another country.
- Dictatorial and oppressive regimes provide, on purpose, a fertile environment for corruption, extremism and sectarism. By fostering corruption, they distract the ordinary people from looking into politics by forcing them into the maze of a dis-functional social and economic system. By encouraging extremism and sectarism, they substantiate their claim that without them the country will somber into a chaotic situation with fanatic and extremist leaders. However, what we saw in Egypt destroys the foundations of this logic as young people without a political or religious affiliation led the revolution to rid their country from corruption, theft and to seek a better future for themselves and future generations. This is what we saw when Egyptian Christians guarded their Muslim compatriots during the Friday prayer and later when Muslims guarded their Christian compatriots during the Sunday mass.
- During the revolution, I heard many experts say that West (EU, USA) is facing a difficult dilemma as they have to make a choice between supporting democracy and guarding their interests. That binary is as invalid as the one between stability with oppression and freedom with chaos. In my opinion, supporting democracy and people's aspiration to freedom are strategically important for the West. Free countries, democratic governments, transparency & governance, active civil societies, independent judiciary and peaceful transitions will ride Arab countries from fanaticism and extreme ideas and defeat terrorist ideology. 9/11 terrorist attacks are a reminder of how important this could be.
The Arab world is happy for what happened in Egypt and is looking forward to see this revolution succeeding in bringing a positive change in Egypt on all fronts and make this country that we all love "the crown and the pearl" of the Arab world as it once was.
Ali... nice post.
ReplyDeleteThe order vs. cahos was a theme with the military dictators in Latin America too. Pinochet used to say `O yo o el cahos` [It`s either me or cahos]. Many times the military felt it was called to act on popular unrest, and many governments where overtaken as a result (like in Chile in 1973)... but dictators try to keep their reason to exist alive as long as possible, and as you point out, they create a vacuum of alternatives and promote extremisms to do so.
With respect to the dilemma of the West on supporting the revolution... I see it more as a transition. How and when to change sides? Too early and the west risked breaking long lasting and region-stabilizing relationships if the revolution failed to bring change... too late and the West would have risked to compromise future relationships. Also, how strongly should the West fraternize with the revolt if they don`t understand what the revolt is bringing? Remember what happened to Bush when he was promoting democracy in the Middle East and the Palestines elected Hamas? I think they learned a lesson and decided to proceed with caution. Only History will tell!